He paid for his lunch and left the lunch counter. Going outside onto the sidewalk, he called another robot cab and instructed it to take him to Unity Control
Barris pushed past the battery of secretaries and clerks, into Jason Dill's private syndrome of interconnected offices. At the sight of his Director's stripe, the dark red slash on his gray coat-sleeve, officials of Unity Control stepped obediently out of his path, leaving a way open from room to room. The last door opened-and abruptly he was facing Dill.
Jason Dill looked up slowly, putting down a handful of reports. "What do you think you're doing?" He did not appear at first to recognize Barris; his gaze strayed to the Director's stripe and then back to his face. "This is out of the question," Dill said, "your barging in here like this."
"I came here to talk to you," Barris said. He shut the office door after him; it closed with a bang, startling the older man. Jason Dill half stood up, then subsided.
"Director Barris," he murmured. His eyes narrowed. "File a regular appointment slip; you know procedure well enough by now to-"
Barris cut him off. "Why did you turn back my DQ form? Are you withholding information from Vulcan 3?"
Silence.
The color left Jason Dill's face. "Your form wasn't properly filled out. According to Section Six, Article Ten of the Unity-"
"You're rerouting material away from Vulcan 3; that's why it hasn't stated a policy on the Healers." He came closer to the seated man, bending over him as Dill stared down at his papers on the desk, not meeting his gaze. "Why? It doesn't make sense. You know what this constitutes. Treason! Keeping back data, deliberately falsifying the troughs. I could bring charges against you, even have you arrested." Resting his hands on the surface of the desk, Barris said loudly, "Is the purpose of this to isolate and weaken the eleven Directors so that-"
He broke off. He was looking down into the barrel of a pencil beam. Jason Dill had been holding it since he had burst into the man's office. Dill's middle-aged features twitched bleakly; his eyes gleamed as he gripped the small tube. "Now be quiet, Director," Dill said icily. "I admire your tactics. This going on the offensive. Accusations without opportunity for me even to get in one word. Standard operating procedure." He breathed slowly, in a series of great gasps. "Damn you," he snapped, "sit down."
Barris sat down watchfully. I made my pitch, he realized. The man is right. And shrewd. He's seen a lot in his time, more than I have. Maybe I'm not the first to barge in here, yelling with indignation, trying to pin him down, force admissions.
Thinking that, Barris felt his confidence ebb away. But he continued to face the older man; he did not draw back. Jason Dill's face was gray now. Drops of perspiration stood out on his wrinkled forehead; bringing out his handkerchief he patted at them. With the other hand, however, he still held the pencil beam. "We're both a little calmer," he said. "Which in my opinion is better. You were overly dramatic. Why?" A faint, distorted smile appeared on his lips. "Have you been practicing how you would make your entrance?"
The man's hand traveled to his breast pocket. He rubbed a bulge there; Barris saw that he had something in his inner pocket, something to which his hand had gone involuntarily. Seeing what he had, Dill at once jerked his hand away.
Medicine? Barris wondered.
"This treason gambit," Dill said. "I could try that, too. An attempted coup on your part." He pointed at a control on the edge of his desk. "All this-your grand entrance- has of course been recorded. The evidence is there." He pressed a stud, and, on the desk vidscreen, the Geneva Unity monitor appeared. "Give me the police," Dill said. Sitting with the pencil beam still pointed at Barris, he waited for the line to be put through. "I have too many other problems to take time off to cope with a Director who decides to run amuck."
Barris said, "I'll fight this all the way in the Unity courts. My conscience is clear; I'm acting in the interests of Unity, against a Managing Director who's systematically breaking down the system, step by step. You can investigate my entire life and you won't find a thing. I know I'll beat you in the courts, even if it takes years."
"We have a letter," Dill said. On the screen the familiar heavy-jowled features of a police official appeared. "Stand by," Dill instructed him. The police official's eyes moved as he took in the scene of the Managing Director holding his gun on Director Barris.
"That letter," Barris said as steadily as possible, "has no factual basis for the charges it makes."
"Oh?" Dill said. "You're familiar with its charges?"
"Rachel Pitt gave me all the information," Barris said. So she had been telling the truth. Well, that letter-spurious as its charges were-coupled with this episode, would probably be enough to convict him. The two would dovetail; they would create together the sort of evidence acceptable to the Unity mentality.
The police official eyed Barris.
At his desk, Jason Dill held the pencil beam steadily.
Barris said, "Today I sat in the same room with Father Fields."
Reaching his hand out to the vidsender, Jason Dill reflected and then said, "I'll ring you off and recontact you later." With his thumb he broke the connection; the image of the police official, still staring at Barris, faded out.
Jason Dill rose from his desk and pulled lose the power cable supplying the recording scanner which had been on since Barris entered the room. Then he reseated himself.
"The charges in the letter are true!" he said with incredulity. "My God, it never occurred to me..." Then, rubbing his forehead he said, "Yes, it did. Briefly. So they managed to penetrate to the Director level." His eyes showed horror and weariness.
"They put a gun on me and detained me," Barris said. "When I got here to Geneva."
Doubt, mixed with distraught cunning, crossed the older man's face. Obviously, he did not want to believe that the Healers had gotten so far up into Unity, Barris realized. He would grasp at any straw, any explanation which would account for the facts ... even the true one, Barris thought bitingly. Jason Dill had a psychological need that took precedence over the habitual organizational suspicions.
"You can trust me," Barris said.
"Why?" The pencil beam still pointed at him, but the conflicting emotions swept back and forth through the man.
"You have to believe someone," Barris said. "Sometime, somewhere. What is that you reach up and rub, there at your chest?"
Grimacing, Dill glanced down at his hand; again it was at his chest. He jerked it away. "Don't play on my fears," he said.
"Your fear of isolation?" Barris said. "Of having everyone against you? Is that some physical injury that you keep rubbing?"
Dill said, "No. You're guessing far too much; you're out of your depth." But he seemed more composed now. "Well, Director," he said. "I'll tell you something. I probably don't have long to live. My health has deteriorated since I've had this job. Maybe in a sense you're right... it is a physical injury I'm rubbing. If you ever get where
I am, you'll have some deep-seated injuries and illnesses too. Because there'll be people around you putting them there."
"Maybe you should take a couple of flying wedge squads of police and seize the Bond Hotel," Barris said. "He was there an hour ago. Down in the old section of the city. Not more than two miles from here."