Freeman pondered for a long while. At last he said, “If I were to agree that you’re right, or even partly right, what would you expect me to do?”
“Well—ah … Well, you could start by letting me and Kate go.”
This silence was full of struggle. Eventually, with abrupt decision, Freeman drained his glass and rose, feeling in the side pocket of his jacket. From it he produced a flat gray plastic case, the size of his palm.
“It’s not a regular portable calculator,” he said in a brittle voice. “It’s a veephone. Screen’s under the lid. Flex and jack inside. There are phone points there, there and there.” Pointing to three corners of the room. “But don’t do anything until you get a code to do it with.”
AT THE DISSOLUTION
What was I saying about overcompensation?
There had been a lot of whisky, of course, and he was unused to drinking.
But am I drunk? I don’t feel I am. More, it’s that without being partly stonkered I couldn’t endure the torrent of dreadful truth that’s storming through my brain. What Hartz said to me. What Bosch almost said, only he managed to check himself. But I know damn well what he substituted with “nonspecialist.” Why should I spend the rest of my life knuckling under to liars like Bosch? Claiming the dogs they have at Precipice can’t exist! And blockheads like Hartz are even worse. Expecting the people they lord it over to think of things they aren’t smart enough to think of themselves, then denying that the fault is theirs!
Carefully Freeman locked his apartment, setting the don’t-disturb signs: one on the door, one on each of the veephones.
Now if I can just find my way to the index of reserved codes activated when they surpled 4GH … From Tarnover if from anywhere it should be possible to pull one out and upgrade it to status U-for-unquestionable. That’s the best trick of all. If Haflinger had latched on to it he need never have been caught.
Owlishly, but with full command of his not inconsiderable faculties—more important, not obliged to make do with the limited and potentially fallible input of a pocket veephone such as the one with which doubtless Haflinger would shortly be performing his own personal brand of miracle—he sat down to his data console. He wrote, then rewrote, then rewrote, a trial program on tape that could be tidily erased. As he worked he found himself more and more haunted by a tantalizing idea.
I could leech three codes as easily as two. ….
Eventually the program was status go, but before feeding it he said to the air, “Why not?” And checked how many codes were currently on reserve. The answer was of the order of a hundred thousand. Only about five depts would have dug into the store since it was ordained, so …
Why the hell not? Here I am pushing forty, and what have I done with my life? I have talents, intelligence, ambition. Going to waste! I hoped I’d be useful to society. I expected to spend my time dragging criminals and traitors into the light of day, exposing them to the contumely of honest citizens. Instead the biggest criminals of all escape scot-free and people like Kate who never harmed anybody … Oh, shit! I stopped being an investigator years ago. What I am now is an inquisitor. And I’ve lost all faith in the justice of my church.
He gave a sudden harsh laugh, made one final tiny amendment to his tape, and offered it up to the input.
THE INFLUENCE OF AFFLUENCE
“For the convenience of the lazy plebeians, the monthly distributions of corn were converted into a daily allowance of bread … and when the popular clamor accused the dearness and scarcity of wine … rigid sobriety was insensibly relaxed; and although the generous design of Aurelian does not appear to have been executed in its full extent, the use of wine was allowed on very easy and liberal terms … and the meanest Roman could purchase, with a small copper coin, the daily enjoyment of a scene of pomp and luxury which might excite the envy of the kings of Asia. … But the most lively and splendid amusement of the idle multitude depended on the frequent exhibition of public games and spectacles … the happiness of Rome appeared to hang on the event of a race.”
Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon?
LET NOT THY WRONG HEAD KNOW WHAT THY RIGHT HEAD DOETH
Having completed his preparations, he disconnected the phone that had proved so invaluable, folded it, concealed it tidily in the inside pocket of his issue jacket. Then he hung that over a chair back, completed undressing normally, and went to bed at approximately his regular time.
What followed was a miniature—a microcosm—of his life, condensed into a span of no more than thirty-five minutes.
At an unidentifiable time of night one of the silent anonymous white-garbed escorts roused him and instructed him to dress quickly and come along, unperturbed by this departure from routine because for him routine might be expected to consist in unpredictability. It was, had been for centuries, a cheap and simple means of deranging persons under interrogation.
He led the way to a room with two doors, otherwise featureless apart from a bench. That was as far as his orders told him to go; with a curt command to sit down and wait, he departed.
There was a short period of silence. Finally the other door opened and a dumpy woman entered, yawning. She carried clothing in a plastic sack and a clipboard with a form on it. Grumpily she requested him to sign it; he did so, using the name she was expecting, which was not his own. Satisfied, yawning more widely than ever, she went out.
He changed into the garments she had brought: a white jersey shirt, blue-gray pants, blue jacket—well-fitting, unremarkable, unmemorable. Bundling up what he had worn in the sack, he went out the same way she had gone, and was in a corridor with several doors leading off it. After passing three of them, two to right and one to left, he arrived at a waste-reclamation chute and rid himself of his burden. Two doors farther along was an office, not locked. It was equipped with, among other things, a computer terminal. He tapped one key on its input board.
Remotely locked, a drawer slid open in an adjacent file stack. Among the contents of the drawer were temporary ID cards of the type issued to visitors on official business.
Meanwhile the printout station of the computer terminal was humming and a rapid paper tongue was emerging from it.
From the same drawer as the ID cards he extracted a neopolaroid color camera, which he set to self-portrait delay and placed on a handy table. Sitting down to face the camera, he waited the requisite few seconds, retrieved the film, placed his picture on the card and sealed it over with a device which, as the computers had promised, was also kept in the drawer. Finally, he typed in his borrowed name and the rank of major in the U.S. Army Medical Corps.
By then the computer had printed out what it was required to furnish: a requisition, in duplicate, for the custody of Kate Grierson Lilleberg. Having been prepared with a light-writer, which unlike old-fashioned mechanical printers was not limited to any one type style—or indeed to any one alphabet, since every single character was inscribed with a laser beam at minimum power—only examination under a microscope could have revealed that it was not a U.S. Army Form RQH-4479, the standard form of authority to transfer a prisoner from civil to military custody.