Brightly turned to face him as he approached. “Now, Hayes, you know we can’t let you do that.”
“Why not? It’s Tazz you’re after, that’s obvious enough.”
“Is it?” said Brightly. “Are you sure it’s Tazz we’re after? Tazz seems a politician to me. A rabble-rouser, albeit a secretive one. There may be other, nastier men who do his ugly thinking for him. Tazz, after all, probably has to stay clean.”
“I can ferret them out, regardless of who they are,” said Hayes. “I just need…”
“Need what?”
“Need more rope,” said Hayes. “And I need to be on my own.”
“On your own?” said Brightly merrily. “You mean without Miss Fairbanks?”
“Yes. She’s not bad, but she’s… She’s slowing me down.”
“Is she? From my perspective you’re doing better than you’ve ever done before. Rather than your usual erratic bursts of product, Hayes, you’re delivering small payloads of gold every day. Do you know that? Have you even been paying attention to what’s going on?”
“Yes, I have. We’ve turned Securities into a sausage factory. We’re too timid.”
“You mistake sloppiness for action,” said Brightly. “Miss Fairbanks, while lacking your formidable talents, is an invaluable compass for your investigation. And the little woman’s no fool herself, you know that. Do you know we’ve been allowing her to select your interview subjects for you for the past week? And you’ve been bringing home kills, each time. You’ve seen that, haven’t you?”
“I haven’t,” said Hayes stubbornly. “I don’t know what happens when I report something. No one tells me anything anymore. And no one tells her, either. No one even told her what I could do.”
“Time,” said Brightly, looking at his watch. He did another about-face and walked down the steps and up to the edge of the auditorium. Hayes watched him go, frowning, and began counting seconds for the third time.
Whenever he spoke to Brightly, which was very rarely, the conversation was always conducted this way. That, or it was extremely short. Brightly was well aware of the limits of Hayes’s abilities, and he’d always been very careful to prevent Hayes from overhearing anything he shouldn’t. So every four minutes Brightly would interrupt their discussions to move outside Hayes’s vaguely defined range, and then wait a full minute to continue the conversation again. Yet for some reason Brightly never felt comfortable shouting across a large room. He felt it was improper, and refused to consider it. And so rather than their continuing the conversation as they marched across the large auditorium, Brightly would turn his back and pretend Hayes wasn’t there at all, and they’d both stand in silence while Hayes’s slippery grasp on his errant thoughts faded.
Hayes didn’t like it, but he’d grown used to it. At least Brightly was kind enough to move himself, rather than making Hayes walk away. But still each time he met with Brightly he felt powerfully small, as though he were no more than a supplicating little creature forever trapped in Brightly’s shadow, and scrambling to keep up with the man’s heels as he steadily moved away.
As Hayes counted he looked to his right at the large iron lamp on the pedestal. It must have been the subject of whatever summit Brightly had held there. Unlike that of other lamps, its glass chimney was extremely small, no more than three inches tall, and it was nestled within columns of complicated-looking wires and plumbing. Strangely enough, the little chimney seemed to be holding some sort of clear fluid.
Hayes turned away from it as the minute ran out. He walked up to Brightly and saw that at the back of the auditorium where he stood there was another lantern on a pedestal, only this lantern was much smaller.
Hayes ignored it. “So what am I supposed to do?” he asked.
“Keep on doing what you’re doing,” said Brightly. “We’ll have everything planned out for you.”
“And Sam?”
“She’ll do what we plan for her as well. I don’t understand why there’s friction between you two, I understand she’s a lovely girl.”
Hayes paused. “She doesn’t know about me. And no one plans to tell her.”
Brightly shook his head. “She doesn’t need to know. It’d only trouble her. And besides, you’ve already turned her inside out, haven’t you? Read all the words written on the inside of her skull? What more could there be to protect?”
Hayes did not answer. Brightly turned to look at the little iron lamp on the pedestal and cocked an eyebrow, thinking. “Here,” he said. “Here, Hayes. Do you want to know why we’re having you do this? Why we’re stressing security as much as we are, and making you do all these tasks?”
“Because they’re sabotaging our factories, of course.”
“Yes, yes, but there’s more than that.”
Hayes just shrugged. “I just assumed it was for profit.”
“Well, yes,” said Brightly, eyes glittering. “I’d be a liar if I said it wasn’t. But there’s more. Much more. Here. I’ll show you.” He leaned over and hit a switch on the smaller lamp. It began humming very, very softly, a low hum that seemed to build but never grew truly loud. Once it was on he walked down to the stage, leaving Hayes behind once more.
“Is this part of your minutes of silence?” Hayes called to him, but Brightly did not answer. Instead he switched on the larger lamp and stood back.
“This may take a bit to warm up,” he called up from the stage. “They need time to recognize one another.”
“Who?” said Hayes, but again Brightly said nothing.
Eventually the lamp on the stage seemed to hit some threshold. Brightly smiled, walked to it, and called, “All right, now-watch.”
“I’m watching,” said Hayes.
“Are you watching closely, though?”
“Damn it, yes.”
Brightly adjusted some dials on its side. Then, glancing up at Hayes, he held one hand over the top of the lantern and pushed a button. Immediately the little glass chimney lit up, glowing with a soft blue light. At first Hayes was unimpressed, and he opened his mouth for a smart remark, but then he noticed the chimney in the lamp beside him had lit up as well. Brightly released whatever button he’d tapped, and the lights went out in both. Then he tapped it twice more. Both lamps flashed blue simultaneously. Then he began tapping out a little rhythm, each lamp flashing with the long and the short beats exactly.
“What are they?” said Hayes.
“They’re our newest prototype,” said Brightly. “And they’re going to revolutionize everything. And I do mean everything, Hayes.”
“Just these… these lamps that light up?”
“Not just light up. They light up instantaneously.”
Hayes stared at him blankly. “So?”
Brightly frowned and released the button. The lamps went dark. “They’re called the Siblings, or at least that’s what we’re calling them for now,” he began. “I rather like the name. Gives it a fraternal feel, like a family. Something the average man can appreciate. They’re crystals, Hayes, crystals that are paired together. Very, very small ones, just the size of molecules. But they’re remarkable, because if you split them up and put a minute charge through one of the crystals-just a very, very small one-then the other crystal immediately experiences symptoms of that same charge. Even if it’s not physically touching, which you can see as there’s one half floating in each lamp here. And they do it instantaneously. There’s no delay at all.”
Hayes looked at the lamp beside him. “None?”
“No,” said Brightly. He tapped out another rhythm on the lamp, and the other one flashed with it. “And usually everything has a delay. Radio waves. Electrical impulses. By God, even light has one,” he said, laughing. “But, as far as we can tell, these crystals don’t have any. They conduct the same tiny charge, no matter how far apart… to an extent.”
“An extent?”