He tapped his coat. They were still there, the answers that Vulcan 2 had given him, answers that he had puzzled over, again and again. He wanted clarification; his last visit had been to rephrase his queries, to get amplification. But the blast had ended that.
Deep in thought, Jason Dill left the chamber and made his way up the corridor, back to the elevator. This is a bad day for us, he thought to himself. We'll remember this for a long time.
Back in his own office he took time to examine the DQ forms that had come in. Larson, the leader of the data-feed team, showed him the rejects.
"Look at these." His young face stern with an ever-present awareness of duty, Larson carefully laid out a handful of forms. "This one here-maybe you had better turn it back personally, so there won't be any trouble."
"Why do I have to attend to it?" Jason Dill said with irritation. "Can't you handle it? If you're overworked, hire a couple more clerks up here, from the pool. There's always plenty of clerks; you know that as well as I. We must have two million of them on the payrolls. And yet you still have to bother me." His wrath and anxiety swept up involuntarily, directed at his subordinate; he knew that he was taking it out on Larson, but he felt too depressed to worry about it.
Larson, with no change of expression, said in a firm voice, "This particular form was sent in by a Director. That's why I feel-"
"Give it to me, then," Jason Dill said, accepting it.
The form was from the North American Director, William Barris. Jason Dill had met the man any number of times; in his mind he retained an impression of a somewhat tall individual, with a high forehead ... in his middle thirties, as Dill recalled. A hard worker. The man had not gotten up to the level of Director in the usual manner-by means of personal social contacts, by knowing the right persons-but by constant accurate and valuable work.
"This is interesting," Jason Dill said aloud to Larson; he put the form aside for a moment. "We ought to be sure we're publicizing this particular Director. Of course, he probably does a full public-relations job in his own district; we shouldn't worry."
Larson said, "I understand he made it up the hard way. His parents weren't anybody."
"We can show," Jason Dill said, "that the ordinary individual, with no pull, knowing no one in the organization, can come in and take a regular low-grade job, such as clerk or even maintenance man, and in time, if he's got the ability and drive, he can rise ail the way up to the top. In fact, he might get to be Managing Director." Not, he thought to himself wryly, that it was such a wonderful job to have.
"He won't be Managing Director for a while," Larson said, in a tone of certitude.
"Hell," Jason Dill said wearily. "He can have my job right now, if that's what he's after. I presume he is." Lifting the form he glanced at it. The form asked two questions.
a) are the healers of real significance?
b) why don't you respond to their existence?
Holding the form in his hands, Jason Dill thought, One of the eternal bright young men, climbing rapidly up the Unity ladder. Barris, Taubmann, Reynolds, Henderson- they were all making their way confidently, efficiently, never missing a trick, never failing to exploit the slightest wedge. Give them an opportunity, he thought with bitterness, and they'll knock you flat; they'll walk right on over you and leave you there.
"Dog eat dog," he said aloud.
"Sir?" Larson said at once.
Jason Dill put down the form. He opened a drawer of his desk and got out a flat metal tin; from it he took a capsule which he placed against his wrist. At once the capsule dissolved through the dermal layers; he felt it go into his body, passing into his blood stream to begin work without delay. A tranquilizer... one of the newest ones in the long, long series.
It works on me, he thought, and they work on me; it in one direction, their constant pressure and harassment in the other.
Again Jason Dill picked up the form from Director Barris. "Are there many DQ's like this?"
"No, sir, but there is a general increase in tension. Several Directors besides Barris are wondering why Vulcan 3 gives no pronouncement on the Healers' Movement."
"They're all wondering," Jason Dill said brusquely.
"I mean," Larson said, "formally. Through official channels."
"Let me see the rest of the material."
Larson passed him the remaining DQ forms. "And here's the related matter from the data troughs." He passed over a huge sealed container. "We've weeded all the incoming material carefully."
After a time Jason Dill said, "I'd like the file on Barris."
"The documented file?"
Jason Dill said, "And the other one. The unsub-pak." Into his mind came the full term, not usually said outright. Unsubstantiated. "The worthless packet," he said. The phony charges, the trumped-up smears and lies and vicious poison-pen letters, mailed to Unity without signature. Unsigned, sometimes in the garbled prose of the psychotic, the lunatic with a grudge. And yet those papers were kept, were filed away. We shouldn't keep them, Jason Dill thought. Or make use of them, even to the extent of examining them. But we do. Right now he was going to look at such filth as it pertained to William Barris. The accumulation of years.
Presently the two files were placed before him on his desk. He inserted the microfilm into the scanner, and, for a time, studied the documented file. A procession of dull facts moved by; Barris had been born in Kent, Ohio; he had no brothers or sisters; his father was alive and employed by a bank in Chile; he had gone to work for Unity as a research analyst. Jason Dill speeded up the film, skipping about irritably. At last he rewound the microfilm and replaced it in the file. The man wasn't even married, he reflected; he led a routine life, one of virtue and work, if the documents could be believed. If they told the full story.
And now, Jason Dill thought, the slander. The missing parts; the other side, the dark shadow side.
To his disappointment, he found the unsub-pak on William Barris almost empty.
Is the man that innocent? Dill wondered. That he's made no enemies? Nonsense. The absence of accusation isn't a sign of the man's innocence; to rise to Director is to incur hostility and envy. Barris probably devotes a good part of his budget to distributing the wealth, to keeping everybody happy. And quiet.
"Nothing here," he said when Larson returned.
"I noticed how light the file felt," Larson said. "Sir, I went down to the data rooms and had them process all the recent material; I thought possibly there might be something not yet in the file." He added, "As you probably know, they're several weeks behind."
Seeing the paper in the mans' hand, Jason Dill felt his pulse speed up in anticipation. "What came in?"
"This." Larson put down a sheet of what appeared to be expensive watermarked stationery. "I also took the measure, when I saw this, of having it analyzed and traced. So you'd know how to assess its worth."
"Unsigned," Dill said.
"Yes, sir. Our analysts say that it was mailed last night, somewhere in Africa. Probably in Cairo."
Studying the letter, Jason Dill murmured, Here's someone who Barris didn't manage to get to. At least not in time."
Larson said, "It's a woman's writing. Done with an ancient style of ball-point pen. They're trying to trace the make of pen. What you have there is actually a copy of the letter; they're still examining the actual document down in the labs. But for your purposes-"
"What are my purposes?" Dill said, half to himself. The letter was interesting, but not unique; he had seen such accusations made toward other officials in the Unity organization.
To whom it may concern: