“It put us here,” Chip said, “because the programmers couldn’t justify killing people who were still young.”
“Cloth,” Lilac said. “They justified killing old people, they’d have justified killing infants. We got away. And now you’re going back.”
“What about our parents?” he said. “They’re going to be killed in a few more years. What about Snowflake and Sparrow—the whole Family, in fact?”
She sewed, jabbing the needle into green cloth—the sleeves from her green dress that she was making into a shirt for the baby. “Others should go,” she said. “People without families.”
Later, in bed, he said, “If anything should go wrong, Julia will take care of you. And the baby.”
“That’s a great comfort,” she said. “Thanks. Thanks very much. Thank Julia too.”
It stayed between them from that night on: resentment on her part and refusal to be moved by it on his.
PART FOUR
FIGHTING BACK
1
HE WAS BUSY, busier than he’d been in his entire life: planning, looking for people and equipment, traveling, learning, explaining, pleading, devising, deciding. And working at the factory too, where Julia, despite the time off she allowed him, made sure she got her six-fifty-a-week’s worth out of him in machinery repair and production speed-up. And with Lilac’s pregnancy advancing, he was doing more of the at-home chores too. He was more exhausted than he’d ever been, and more wide awake; more sick of everything one day and more sure of everything the next; more alive.
It, the plan, the project, was like a machine to be assembled, with all the parts to be found or made, and each dependent for its shape and size on all the others.
Before he could decide on the size of the party, he had to have a clearer idea of its ultimate aim; and before he could have that, he had to know more about Uni’s functioning and where it could be most effectively attacked.
He spoke to Lars Newman, Ashi’s friend who ran a school. Lars sent him to a man in Andrait, who sent him to a man in Manacor.
“I knew those banks were too small for the amount of insulation they seemed to have,” the man in Manacor said. His name was Newbrook and he was near seventy; he had taught in a technological academy before he left the Family. He was minding a baby granddaughter, changing her diaper and annoyed about it. “Hold still, will you?” he said. “Well, assuming you can get in,” he said to Chip, “the power source is what you’ve obviously got to go for. The reactor or, more likely, the reactors.”
“But they could be replaced fairly quickly, couldn’t they?” Chip said. “I want to put Uni out of commission for a good long time, long enough for the Family to wake up and decide what it wants to do with it.”
“Damn it, hold still!” Newbrook said. “The refrigerating plant, then.”
“The refrigerating plant?” Chip said.
“That’s right,” Newbrook said. “The internal temperature of the banks has to be close to absolute zero; raise it a few degrees and the grids won’t—there, you see what you’ve done?—the grids won’t be superconductive any more. You’ll erase Uni’s memory.” He picked up the crying baby and held her against his shoulder, patting her back. “Shh, shh,” he said.
“Erase it permanently?” Chip asked.
Newbrook nodded, patting the crying baby. “Even if the refrigeration’s restored,” he said, “all the data will have to be fed in again. It’ll take years.”
“That’s exactly what I’m looking for,” Chip said.
The refrigerating plant.
And the stand-by plant.
And the second stand-by plant, if there was one.
Three refrigeration plants to be put out of operation. Two men for each, he figured; one to place the explosives and one to keep members away.
Six men to stop Uni’s refrigeration and then hold its entrances against the help it would summon with its thawing faltering brain. Could six men hold the elevators and the tunnel? (And had Papa Jan mentioned other shafts in the other cut-out space?) But six was the minimum, and the minimum was what he wanted, because if any one man was caught while they were on their way, he would tell the doctors everything and Uni would be expecting them at the tunnel. The fewer the men, the less the danger.
He and five others.
The yellow-haired young man who ran the I A. patrol boat—Vito Newcome, but he called himself Dover—painted the boat’s railing while he listened, and then, when Chip spoke about the tunnel and the real memory banks, listened without painting; crouched on his heels with the brush hanging in his hand and squinted up at Chip with flecks of white in his short beard and on his chest. “You’re sure of it?” he asked.
“Positive,” Chip said.
“It’s about time somebody took another crack at that brother-fighter.” Dover Newcome looked at his thumb, white-smeared, and wiped it on his trouser thigh.
Chip crouched beside him. “Do you want to be in on it?” he asked.
Dover looked at him and, after a moment, nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I certainly do.”
Ashi said no, which was what Chip had expected; he asked him only because not asking, he thought, would be a slight. “I just don’t feel it’s worth the risk,” Ashi said. “I’ll help you out in any way I can, though. Julia’s already hit me for a contribution and I’ve promised a hundred dollars. I’ll make it more than that if you need it.”
“Fine,” Chip said. “Thanks, Ashi. You can help. You can get into the Library, can’t you? See if you can find any maps of the area around EUR-zip-one, U or pre-U. The larger the better; maps with topographical details.”
When Julia heard that Dover Newcome was to be in the group, she objected. “We need him here, on the boat,” she said.
“You won’t once we’re finished,” Chip said.
“God in heaven,” Julia said. “How do you get by with so little confidence?”
“It’s easy,” Chip said. “I have a friend who says prayers for me.
Julia looked coldly at him. “Don’t take anyone else from I.A.,” she said. “And don’t take anyone from the factory. And don’t take anyone with a family that I may wind up supporting!”
“How do you get by with so little faith?” Chip said.
He and Dover between them spoke to some thirty or forty immigrants without finding any others who wanted to take part in the attack. They copied names and addresses from the I.A. files, of men and women over twenty and under forty who had come to Liberty within the previous few years, and they called on seven or eight of them every week. Lars Newman’s son wanted to be in the group, but he had been born on Liberty, and Chip wanted only people who had been raised in the Family, who were accustomed to scanners and walkways, to the slow pace and the contented smile.
He found a company in Pollensa that would make dynamite bombs with fast or slow mechanical fuses, provided they were ordered by a native with a permit. He found another company, in Calvia, that would make six gas masks, but they wouldn’t guarantee them against LFK unless he gave them a sample for testing. Lilac, who was working in an immigrant clinic, found a doctor who knew the LPK formula, but none of the island’s chemical companies could manufacture any; lithium was one of its chief constituents, and there hadn’t been any lithium available for over thirty years.