"Yes," Rachel said. "In fact, this is where I would have had the cab take us. I had intended to bring you here."
The cab halted and its door swung open. As Barris paid it, he thought, Maybe I shouldn't have let it decide for me. Maybe I ought to get back in and have it drive on. Turning, he glanced up at the hotel.
Rachel Pitt had already started up the steps. It was too late.
Now a man appeared in the entrance, his hands in his pockets. He wore a dark, untidy coat, and a cap pulled down over his forehead. The man glanced at her and said something to her.
At once Barris strode up the steps after her. He took her by the arm, stepping between her and the man. "Watch it," he said to the man, putting his hand on the pencil beam which he carried in his breast pocket.
In a slow, quiet voice the man said, "Don't get excited, mister." He studied Barris. "I wasn't accosting Mrs. Pitt. I was merely asking when you arrived." Coming around behind Barris and Rachel, he said, "Go on inside the hotel, Director. We have a room upstairs where we can talk. No one will bother us here. You picked a good place."
Or rather, Barris thought icily, the cab and Rachel Pitt picked a good place. There was nothing he could do; he felt, against his spine, the tip of the man's heat beam.
"You shouldn't be suspicious of a man of the cloth, in regards to such matters," the man said conversationally, as they crossed the grimy, dark lobby to the stairs. The elevator, Barris noticed, was out of order; or at least it was so labeled. "Or perhaps," the man said, "you failed to notice the historic badge of my vocation." At the stairs the man halted, glanced around, and removed his cap.
The stern, heavy-browned face that became visible was familiar to Barris. The slightly crooked nose, as if it had been broken once and never properly set. The deliberately short-cropped hair that gave the man's entire face the air of grim austerity.
Rachel said, "This is Father Fields."
The man smiled, and Barris saw irregular, massive teeth. The photo had not indicated that, Barris thought. Nor the strong chin. It had hinted at, but not really given, the full measure of the man. In some ways Father Fields looked more like a toughened, weathered prize fighter than he did a man of religion.
Barris, face to face with him for the first time, felt a complete and absolute fear of the man; it came with a certitude that he had never before known in his life.
Ahead of them, Rachel led the way upstairs.
CHAPTER 8
Barris said, "I'd be interested to know when this woman went over to you." He indicated Rachel Pitt, who stood by a window of the hotel room, gazing meditatively out at the buildings and rooftops of Geneva.
"You can see Unity Control from here," Rachel said, turning her head.
"Of course you can," Father Fields said in his hoarse, grumbling voice. He sat in the corner, in a striped bathrobe and fleece-lined slippers, a screw driver in one hand, a light fixture in the other; he had gone into the bathroom to take a shower, but the light wasn't working. Two other men, Healers evidently, sat at a card table poring over some pamphlets stacked up between them in wired bundles. Barris assumed that these were propaganda material of the Movement, about to be distributed.
"Is that just coincidence?" Rachel asked.
Fields grunted, ignoring her as he worked on the light fixture. Then, raising his head, he said brusquely to Barris, "Now listen. I won't lie to you, because it's lies that your organization is founded on. Anyone who knows me knows I never have need of lying. Why should I? The truth is my greatest weapon."
"What is the truth?" Barris said.
"The truth is that pretty soon we're going to run up that street you see outside to that big building the lady is looking at, and then Unity won't exist." He smiled, showing his malformed teeth. But it was, oddly, a friendly smile. As if, Barris thought, the man hoped that he would chime in-possibly smile back in agreement.
With massive irony, Barris said, "Good luck."
"Luck," Fields echoed. "We don't need it. All we need is speed. It'll be like poking at some old rotten fruit with a stick." His voice twanged with the regional accent of his origin; Barris caught the drawl of Taubmann's territory, the Southern States that formed the rim of South America.
"Spare me your folksy metaphors," Barris said.
Fields laughed. "You stand in error, Mister Director."
"It was a simile," Rachel agreed, expressionlessly.
Barris felt himself redden; they were making fun of him, these people, and he was falling into it. He said to the man in the striped bathrobe, "I'm amazed at your power to draw followers. You engineer the murder of this woman's husband, and after meeting you she joins your Movement. That is impressive."
For a time Fields said nothing. Finally he threw down the light fixture. "Must be a hundred years old," he said. "Nothing like that in the United States since I was born. And they call this area 'modern.'" He scowled and plucked at his lower lip. "I appreciate your moral indignation. Somebody did smash in that poor man's head; there's no doubt about that."
"You were there too," Barris said.
"Oh, yes," Fields said. He studied Barris intently; the hard dark eyes seemed to grow and become even more wrathful. "I do get carried away," he said. "When I see that lovely little suit you people wear, that gray suit and white shirt, those shiny black shoes." His scrutiny traveled up and down Barris. "And especially, I get carried away by that thing you all have in your pockets. Those pencil beams."
Rachel said to Barris, "Father Fields was once burned by a tax collector."
"Yes," Fields said. "You know your Unity tax collectors are exempt from the law. No citizen can take legal action against them. Isn't that lovely?" Lifting his arm, he pulled back his right sleeve; Barris saw that the flesh had been corroded away to a permanent mass of scar tissue, from the man's wrist to his elbow. "Let's see some moral indignation about that," he said to Barris.
"I have it," Barris said. "I never approved of the general tax-collecting procedures. You won't find them in my area."
"That's so," Fields said. His voice lost some of its ferocity; he seemed to cool slightly. "That's a fact about you. Compared to the other Directors, you're not too bad. We have a couple of people in and around your offices. We know quite a bit about you. You're here in Geneva because you want to find out why Vulcan 3 hasn't handed down any dogma about us Healers. It needles your conscience that old Jason Dill can toss your DQ forms back in your face and there's nothing you can do. It is mighty odd that your machine hasn't said anything about us."
To that, Barris said nothing.
"It gives us sort of an advantage," Fields said. "You boys don't have any operating policy; you have to mark time until the machine talks. Because it wouldn't occur to you to put together your own human-made policy."
Barris said, "In my area I have a policy. I have as many Healers as possible thrown into jail-on sight."
"Why?" Rachel Pitt asked.
"Ask your dead husband," Barris said, with animosity toward her. "I can't understand you," he said to her. "Your husband went out on his job and these people-"
Fields interrupted, "Director, you have never been worked over by the Atlanta psychologists." His voice was quiet. "This woman has, So was I, to some extent. To a very minor extent. Not like she was. With her, they were in a hurry."
For a while no one spoke.
There's not much I can say, Barris realized. He walked over to the card table and picked up one of the pamphlets; aimlessly, he read the large black type.
DO YOU HAVE ANY SAY IN RUNNING YOUR LIVES?
WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU VOTED?