He had the soundproof curtains of his chair drawn, and a few moments later he was facing the image of his sub-Director, Peter Allison, on the vidscreen.
"I wouldn't be alarmed," Allison said, after Barris had made his concern clear. "This Illinois uprising is being put down by our police crews. And in addition it's part of a world-wide pattern. They seem to be active almost everywhere, now. When you get back here I'll show you the classified reports; most of the Directors have been keeping the activity out of the newspapers. If it weren't for Taubmann and Henderson, this business in Illinois might have been kept quiet. As I get it, there've been similar strikes in Lisbon and Berlin and Stalingrad. If we could get some kind of decision from Vulcan 3-"
"Maybe we will, fairly soon," Barris said.
"You made out satisfactorily in Geneva? You're coming back with definite word from it?"
"I'll discuss it with you later," Barris said, and broke the connection.
Later, as the ship flew low over New York, he saw the familiar signs of hyperactivity there, too. A procession of brown-clad Healers moved along a side street in the Bowery, solemn and dignified in their coarse garments. Crowds watched in respectful admiration. There was a demolished Unity auto-destroyed by a mob, not more than a mile from his offices. When the ship began its landing maneuver, he managed to catch sight of chalked slogans on building walls. Posters. So much more in the open, he realized. Blatant. They had progressively less to fear.
He had beaten the commercial transport carrying the remains of Vulcan 2 by almost an hour. After he had checked in at his offices and signed the formal papers regaining administrative authority from Allison, he asked about Rachel.
Allison said, "You're referring to the widow of that Unity man slain in South America?" Leafing through an armload of papers and reports and forms, the man at last came up with one. "So much has been going on since you were last here," he explained. "It seems as if everything broke over us at once." He turned a page. "Here it is. Mrs. Arthur Pitt arrived here yesterday at 2:30 a.m. New York time and was signed over to us by the personnel responsible for her safe transit from Europe. We then arranged to have her taken at once to the mental health institute in Denver."
Human lives, Barris thought. Marks on forms.
"I think I'll go to Denver," he said. "For a few hours. A big transport will be coming in here from Unity Control any time now; make sure it's fully guarded at all times and don't let anyone pry into it or start uncrating the stuff inside. I want to be present during most of the process."
"Shall I continue to deal with the Illinois situation?" Allison asked, following after him. "It's my impression that I've been relatively successful there; if you have time to examine the-"
Barris said, "You keep on with that. But keep me informed."
Ten minutes later he was aboard a small emergency ship that belonged to his office, speeding across the United States toward Colorado. I wonder if she will be there, he asked himself. He had a fatalistic dread. They'll have sent her on. Probably to New Mexico, to some health farm there. And when I get there, they'll have transferred her to New Orleans, the rim-city of Taubmann's domain. And from there, an easy, effortless bureaucratic step to Atlanta.
But at the Denver hospital the doctor who met him said, "Yes, Director. We have Mrs. Pitt with us. At present she's out on the solarium." He pointed the way. "Taking things easy," the doctor said, accompanying him part way. "She's responded quite well to our techniques. I think she'll be up and on her feet, back to normal, in a few days."
Out on the glass-walled balcony, Barris found her. She was lying curled up on a redwood lawn bench, her knees pulled up tightly against her, her arms wrapped around her calves, her head resting to one side. She wore a short blue outfit which he recognized as hospital convalescent issue. Her feet were bare.
"Looks like you're getting along fine." he said awkwardly.
For a time she said nothing. Then she stirred and said, "Hi. When did you get here?"
"Just now," he said, regarding her with apprehension; he felt himself stiffen. Something was still wrong.
Rachel said, "Look over there." She pointed, and he saw a plastic shipping carton lying open, its top off. "It was addressed to both of us," she said, "but they gave it to me. Someone put it on the ship at a stop somewhere. Probably one of those men who clean up. A lot of them are Healers."
Grabbing at the carton, he saw inside it the charred metal cylinder, the half-destroyed gleaming eyes. As he gazed down he saw the eyes respond; they recorded his presence.
"He repaired it," Rachel said in a flat, emotionless voice. "I've been sitting here listening to it."
"Listening to it?"
"It talks," Rachel said. "That's all it does; that's all he could fix. It never stops talking. But I can't understand anything it says. You try. It isn't talking to us." She added, "Father fixed it so it isn't harmful. It won't go anywhere or do anything."
Now he heard it. A high-pitched blearing, constant and yet altering each second. A continual signal emitted by the thing. And Rachel was right. It was not directed at them.
"Father thought you would know what it is," she said. "There's a note with it. He says he can't figure it out. He can't figure out who it's talking to." She picked up a piece of paper and held it out. Curiously, she said, "Do you know who it's talking to?"
"Yes," Barris said, staring down at the crippled, blighted metal thing deliberately imprisoned in its carton; Father Fields had taken care to hobble it thoroughly. "I guess I do."
CHAPTER 10
The leader of the New York repair crew contacted Barris early the following month. "First report on reconstruction work, Director," Smith reported.
"Any results?" Neither Barris nor his chief repairman uttered the name Vulcan 2 aloud; this was a closed-circuit vid-channel they were using, but with the burgeoning of the Healers' Movement absolute secrecy had to be maintained in every area. Already, a number of infiltrators had been exposed, and several of them had been employed in the communications media. The vid-service was a natural place. All Unity business sooner or later was put over the lines.
Smith said, "Not much yet. Most of the components were beyond salvage. Only a fraction of the memory store still exists intact."
Becoming tense, Barris said, "Find anything relevant?"
On the vidscreen, Smith's sweat-streaked, grimy face was expressionless. "A few things, I think. If you want to drop over, we'll show you what we've done."
As soon as he could wind up pressing business, Barris drove across New York to the Unity work labs. He was checked by the guards and passed through into the restricted inner area, the functioning portion of the labs. There he found Wade Smith and his subordinates standing around a complex tangle of pulsing machinery.
"There it is," Smith said.
"Looks different," Barris said. He saw in it almost nothing familiar; all the visible parts appeared to be new, not from the old computer.
"We've done our best to activate the undamaged elements." With obvious pride, Smith indicated a particularly elaborate mass of gleaming wiring, dials, meters, and power cables. "The wheeling valves are now scanned directly, without reference to any overall structure, and the impulses are sorted and fed into an audio system. Scanning has to be virtually at random, under such adverse circumstances. We've done all we can to unscramble-especially to get out the noise. Remember, the computer maintained its own organizing principle, which is gone, of course. We have to take the surviving memory digits as they come." Smith clicked on the largest of the wall-mounted speakers. A hoarse roar filled the room, an indistinguishable blur of static and sound. He adjusted several of the control settings.