But what else was there? Gann thought swiftly, crazily, of punching a button at random—throwing a switch—turning a dial. Any small change would alert the Machine. Serving robots or human techs would be there in moments.
Then his eyes caught sight of a small, flat red plate, bearing a single bright-lit button, and one word. It was at the top of the console nearest him. The single word was stop.
He stood staring at it for a long moment, forgetting to breathe. If that plate meant what it so clearly, unequivocally said, he had it in his power to . . . to. . .
To stop the Machine.
Machine Major Boysie Gann, Technicorps academy graduate, veteran of the spy school, trained and toughened against the worst a solar system could produce, found himself babbling in terrified hysteria. Stop the Machine! The thought was unbearable.
He flung himself on the linkbox, found a switch, wept, babbled, and sobbed into it. He was not speaking in the Mechanese that the Machine had developed for the links—didn't know it—would have forgotten it if he had known it. He was literally terrified, as nothing in his life had ever terrified him before.
When the squad of Plan Guardsmen in Machine gray came boiling out of the access elevators, racing down the corridors, their weapons at the ready, they found him slumped on the floor, all but unconscious.
Boysie Gann nearly died right then, with twenty bullets in his body. But the Techtenant in command issued a sharp order. He peered won-deringly at Gann, restrained his men, thought for a second, then shook his head. "Don't hurt him," he growled. "Or not so he can't talk! Let's get him up to the security office—fast!"
For four days Boysie Gann was questioned around the clock by the brawniest bullies in the Technicorps, and they were not gentle with him.
He answered all their questions—told the absolute truth—and paid for it with the impact of a club against his kidneys, a kick in his ribs. They knocked him unconscious a dozen times, and each time he revived again with a hard-faced medical orderly pulling a hypodermic out of his skin, brought back to face more interrogation.
Finally they let him sleep—not because they were satisfied with his answers, but because the medics feared he would die.
When he awoke he ached in every part of his body. He was strapped to an operating table. The Body Bank, he thought at first in a surge of panic. But it was not the Body Bank; it was a prison. Clearly the medics had been working on him. Although he ached, he could move. His toes curled, his fingers responded to his brain. His eyes opened and moved where he willed them.
Only one thing was different: there was a cold, hard pressure around his neck.
The security collar that Harry Hickson had removed so easily had been replaced.
Men were all around him, removing the straps, forcing him to his feet. "You! Risk," growled one of them, a radar-horned NCO with a chin that was stubbled blue with beard. "On your feet! You're going to talk to the general."
They hurried him through gray-walled corridors to an elevator. It rose with a sickening thrust of acceleration, stopped as rapidly. Gann nearly fell, but was thrust to his feet again by one of the guards. "Out! Move on, Risk!" And he stumbled through more corridors into a bare gray office, and there he stood at attention for a long, long time, waiting.
Then—Boysie Gann heard no signal, but perhaps it had been relayed through the radar-horned helmet of the guards—the security guardsman barked, "In there!" and thrust him through a door.
Gann entered a larger, brighter office. It was beautifully furnished, with a bust of the Planner in glowing gold smiling down from a pedestal, and a golden linkbox to the Machine dominating the desk. On the desk was a nameplate.
machine general abel wheeler
And the man who sat behind it was the general himself.
He sat regarding Boysie Gann for a long moment. Machine General Wheeler seemed more than half a machine himself. He was a big man, an angular, perplexing, abrupt-moving man. His whole body looked metallic: skin tan of bronze, eyes the color of steel, spikes of copper wire for hair. He stared at Gann and then, without a word, looked away, his eyes going to something invisible on his desk.
Boysie Gann felt choked by the hard, cold constriction of the security collar. Bruises aching, skin clammy with sweat, he stood painfully rigid. At the Technicorps academy he had learned the art of standing endlessly at attention—the imperceptibly slow shifting of weight and muscular tensions that kept a man from pitching forward on his face. He blanked out his mind, thought of nothing but of the importance of standing there.
The general's frowning eyes clung to the tilted communications screens that faced him on his desk, invisible to Gann. After a moment he tapped soundless keys, communicating, Gann knew, with the Machine. Gann wondered that he did not use the linkbox. It did not occur to him that the general might fear that Boysie Gann, the man who had appeared inexplicably in the heart of the Planning Machine's caverns, might equally inexplicably have learned to understand Mechanese.
The general waited, reading something, frowning stiffly. Abruptly his head jerked up and he stared at Gann.
The screens had ceased to flicker. His flat bronzed face was expressionless. It was a mask of meat, as if some bungling surgeon at the replacement center had failed to connect the nerves and muscles that would have given it life.
General Wheeler said sharply, "Machine Major Boysie Gann!" Gann jumped; he could not help himself; the voice was like a metal rasp. "You may stand at ease!"
Gann let his lean shoulders sag slightly forward, drew a long breath, shifted his feet. But he was not really at ease. General Wheeler's eyes were on him, steel-colored, as coldly merciless as if they were the probes of a surgeon planting electrodes in his brain. He snapped, "The Machine requires information from you."
Gann said painfully, "I know, sir. I've already been interrogated— about a hundred times, I'd say."
"It will be a thousand! You will be interrogated again and again and again. The Machine's need for truth is urgent." Wheeler's broad head jutted forward like the sudden thrust of a piston. "The Starchild! Who is he?"
There was a dry lump in Gann's throat. He swallowed and said stubbornly, "I don't know, sir. I've told everything I know."
"The Writ of Liberation! Who wrote it?" Gann shook his head. "How did it get into the Planner's headquarters?" Gann kept on shaking his head, hopelessly but obstinately. "And yourself, how did you get into the Planning Machine's tunnels? Who is Quarla Snow? Why did you kill Machine Colonel Zafar and make up this preposterous lie?"
"No, sir!" cried Gann. "I didn't! Colonel Zafar was anti-Plan!"
The general's wide mouth hardened. His bloodless lips shut like the jaws of a trap. His voice was like a muffled, ominous clang. "The evidence," he said, "suggests that you are lying. Can you prove you are not?"
"No, sir. But-"
"Machine Major Boysie Gann! Are you the Starchild?"
"No, sir!" Gann was honestly surprised, indignant. "I—"
"Machine Major Boysie Gann! Do you know what became of the Together ship?"
Gann cried hopelessly: "The what? General, I never even heard of the—what is it? The Togethership. I don't know what you're talking about."
Like the steady pulse of a laser scan, the general tolled: "The Togethership went into space forty years ago. It was never heard of again. Major Gann, what do you know of this?"
"Nothing, sir! Why, I wasn't even born!"
For a moment the mask cracked, and the general's face looked almost human. Worried. Even confused. He said after a moment, "Yes. That's true. But. . ."