To Kralick he said, “Is this so? Can you get me such a shield?”
“I think it can be arranged,” Kralick said.
The next day, in Buenos Aires, the American Embassy delivered a shield to us. It had last been used by the President on his Latin American tour. An Embassy official demonstrated it, strapping on the electrodes, taping the power pack to his chest. “Try and come near me,” he said, beckoning. “Cluster around.”
We approached him. A gentle amber glow enveloped him. We pushed forward, and abruptly we began to strike an impenetrable barrier. There was nothing painful about the sensation, but in its subtle way it was thoroughly effective; we were thrown back, and it was impossible to come within three feet of the wearer. Vornan looked delighted. “Let me try it,” he said. The Embassy man put it on him and instructed him in its use. Vornan laughed and said, “All of you, crowd around me, now. Shove and push. Harder! Harder!” There was no touching him. Pleased, Vornan said, “Good. Now I can go among my people.”
Quietly, later, I said to Kralick, “Why did you let him have that thing?”
“He asked for it.”
“You could have told him they didn’t work well or something like that, Sandy. Isn’t there a possibility that the shield will conk out at a critical moment?”
“Not normally,” Kralick said. He picked up the shield, uncoiled it, and snapped back the panel to the rear of the power pack. “There’s only one weak spot in the circuitry, and that’s here, this integrated module. You can’t see it, really. It’s got a tendency to overload under certain circumstances and degenerate, causing a shield failure. But there’s a redundancy circuit that automatically cuts in, Leo, and takes over within a couple of microseconds. Actually there’s only one way a crowd shield can fail, and that’s if it’s deliberately sabotaged. Say, if someone jimmies the back-up circuit, and then the main module overloads. But I don’t know anyone who’d do a thing like that.”
“Except Vornan, perhaps.”
“Well, yes. Vornan’s capable of anything. But I hardly think he’ll want to play around with his own shield. For all intents he’ll be wholly safe wearing the shield.”
“Well, then,” I said, “aren’t you afraid of what will happen now that he can get out among the mobs and really lay the charisma on?”
“Yes,” said Kralick.
Buenos Aires was the scene of the greatest excitement over Vornan we had yet experienced. This was the city where a false Vornan had arisen, and the presence of the real one was electric to the Argentines. The broad, tree-lined Avenida 9 de Julio was packed from end to end, with only the obelisk in its center puncturing the mass of flesh. Through this chaotic, surging mob moved Vornan’s cavalcade. Vornan wore his crowd shield: the rest of us were not so protected, and huddled nervously within our armored vehicles. From time to time Vornan leaped out and strode into the crowd. The shield worked — no one could get close to him — but the mere fact that he was among them sent the crowd into ecstasies. They pushed up close, coming to the absolute limit of the electronic barrier and flattening themselves against it, while Vornan beamed and smiled and bowed. I said to Kralick, “We’re becoming accomplices to the madness. We should never have let this happen.”
Kralick gave me a crooked grin and told me to relax. But I could not relax. That night Vornan again allowed himself to be interviewed, and what he said was bluntly utopian. The world was badly in need of reform; too much power had concentrated in too few hands; an era of universal affluence was imminent, but it would take the cooperation of the enlightened masses to bring it about. “We were born from trash,” he said, “but we have the capacity to become gods. I know it can be done. In my time there is no disease, there is no poverty, there is no suffering. Death itself has been abolished. But must mankind wait a thousand years to enjoy these benefits? You must act now. Now.”
It seemed like a call to revolution.
As yet Vornan had put forth no specific program. He was uttering only generalized calls for a transformation of our society. But even that was far beyond the sly, oblique, flippant remarks he had customarily made in the early months of his stay. It was as if his capacity for troublemaking had been greatly enlarged; he recognized now that he could stir up infinitely more mischief by addressing himself to the mobs in the street than by poking fun at selected individuals. Kralick seemed as aware of this as I was; I did not understand why he allowed the tour to continue, why he saw to it that Vornan had access to communications channels. He seemed helpless to halt the course of events, helpless to interrupt the revolution that he himself had served to manufacture.
Of Vornan’s motives we knew nothing. On the second day in Buenos Aires he again went into the throng. This time the mob was far greater than on the day before, and in a kind of obstinate insistence they surrounded Vornan, trying desperately to reach and touch him. We had to get him out of there, finally, with a scoop lowered from a copter. He was pale and shaken as he rid himself of the crowd shield. I had never seen Vornan look rattled before, but this crowd had done it. He eyed the shield skeptically and said, “Possibly there are dangers in this. How trustworthy is the shield?”
Kralick assured him that it was loaded with redundancy features that made it foolproof. Vornan looked doubtful. He turned away, trying to compose himself; it was actually refreshing to see a symptom of fear in him. I could hardly fault him for fearing that crowd, even with a shield.
We flew from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro in the early hours of November 19. I tried to sleep, but Kralick came to my compartment and woke me. Behind him stood Vornan. In Kralick’s hand was the coiled slimness of a crowd shield.
“Put this on,” he said.
“What for?”
“So you can learn how to use it. You’re going to wear it in Rio.”
My lingering sleepiness vanished. “Listen, Sandy, if you think I’m going to expose myself to those crowds—”
“Please,” said Vornan. “I want you beside me. Leo.”
Kralick said, “Vornan’s been feeling uneasy about the size of the mobs for the last few days, and he doesn’t want to go down there alone any more. He asked me if I could get you to accompany him. He wants only you.”
“It’s true, Leo,” Vornan said. “I can’t trust the others. With you beside me I’m not afraid.”
He was damnably persuasive. One glance, one plea, and I was ready to walk through millions of screaming cultists with him. I told him I’d do as he wished, and he touched his hand to mine and murmured his thanks softly but movingly. Then he went away. The moment he was gone, I saw the lunacy of it; and as Kralick pushed the crowd shield toward me, I shook my head. “I can’t,” I said. “Get Vornan. Tell him I changed my mind.”
“Come on, Leo. Nothing can happen to you.”
“If I don’t go out there, Vornan doesn’t go either?”
“That’s correct.”
“Then we’ve solved our problem,” I said. “I’ll refuse to put the shield on. Vornan won’t be able to mingle with the multitudes. We’ll cut him off from the source of his power. Isn’t that what we want?”
“No.”
“No?”
“We want Vornan to be able to reach the people. They love him. They need him. We don’t dare deny them their hero.”
“Give them their hero, then. But not with me next to him.”
“Don’t start that again. Leo. You’re the one he asked for. If Vornan doesn’t make an appearance in Rio, it’s going to screw up international relations and God knows what else. We can’t risk frustrating that mob by not producing him.”
“So I’m thrown to the wolves?”