On the roof of the Unity Control Building, the banks of heavy-duty blasters turned to meet the attack. The hammers had finished with the mob; now they were approaching the Unity Building, fanning out in an arc as they gained altitude for the attack.
"Here they come," Chai muttered.
"We had better get down in the basement shelters." Daily moved nervously toward the descent ramp. The guns were beginning to open up now-dull muffled roars hesitant at first, as the gunners operated unfamiliar controls. Most of them had been Dill's personal guards, but some had been merely clerks and desk men.
A hammer dived for the window. A pencil beam stabbed briefly into the room, disintegrating a narrow path. The hammer swooped off and rose to strike again. A bolt from one of the roof guns caught it. It burst apart; bits rained down, white-hot metallic particles.
"We're in a bad spot," Daily said. "We're completely surrounded by the Healers. And it's obvious that the fortress is directing operations against the Healers-look at the extent of the activity going on out there. Those are no random attacks; those damn metal birds are co-ordinated."
Chai said, "Interesting to see them using the traditional weapon of Unity: the pencil beam."
Yes, Barris thought. It isn't T-class men in gray suits, black shiny shoes and white shirts, carrying brief cases, who are using the symbolic pencil beams. It's mechanical flying objects, controlled by a machine buried beneath the earth. But let's be realistic. How different is it really? Hasn't the true structure come out? Isn't this what always really existed, but no one could see it until now?
Vulcan 3 has eliminated the middlemen. Us.
"I wonder which will eventually win," Pegler said. "The
Healers have the greater number; Vulcan 3 can't get all of them."
"But Unity has the weapons and the organization," Daily said. "The Healers will never be able to take the fortress; they don't even know where it is. Vulcan 3 will be able to construct gradually more elaborate and effective weapons, now that it can work in the open."
Pondering, Barris started away from them.
"Where are you going?" Chai asked, apprehensively.
"Down to the third subsurface level," Barris said.
"What for?"
Barris said, "There's someone I want to talk to."
Marion Fields listened intently, huddled up in a ball, her chin resting against her knees. Around her, the heaps of educational comic books reminded Barris that this was only a little girl that he was talking to. He would not have thought that, from the expression on her face; she listened to everything with grave, poised maturity, not interrupting nor tiring. Her attention did not wander, and he found himself going on and on, relieving himself of the pent-up anxieties that had descended over him during the last weeks.
At last, a little embarrassed, he broke off. "I didn't mean to talk to you so long," he said. He had never been around children very much, and his reaction to the child surprised him. He had felt at once an intuitive bond. A strong but unexpressed sympathy on her part, even though she did not know him. He guessed that she had an extraordinarily high level of intelligence. But it was more than that. She was a fully formed person, with her own ideas, her own viewpoint. And she was not afraid to challenge anything she did not believe; she did not seem to have any veneration for institutions or authority.
"The Healers will win," she said quietly, when he had finished.
"Perhaps," he said. "But remember, Vulcan 3 has a number of highly skilled experts working for it now. Reynolds and his group evidently managed to reach the fortress, from what we can learn."
"How could they obey a wicked mechanical thing like that?" Marion Fields said. "They must be crazy."
Barris said, "All their lives they've been used to the idea of obeying Vulcan 3. Why should they change their minds now? Their whole lives have been oriented around Unity. It's the only existence they know." The really striking part, he thought, is that so many people have flocked away from Unity, to this girl's father.
"But he kills people." Marion Fields said. "You said so; you said he has those hammer things he sends out."
"The Healers kill people too," Barris said.
"That's different." Her young, smooth face had on it an absolute certitude. "It's because they have to. He wants to. Don't you see the difference?"
Barris thought, I was wrong. There is one thing, one institution, that she accepts without question. Her father. She had been doing for years what great numbers of people are now learning to do: follow Father Fields blindly, wherever he leads them.
"Where is your father?" he asked the girl. "I talked to him once; I'd like to talk to him again. You're in touch with him, aren't you?"
"No," she said.
"But you know where he could be found. You could get to him, if you wanted. For instance, if I let you go, you'd find your way to him. Isn't that so?" He could see by her evasive restlessness that he was right. He was making her very uncomfortable.
"What do you want to see him for?" Marion said.
"I have a proposal to make to him."
Her eyes widened, and then shone with slyness. "You're going to join the Movement, is that it? And you want him to promise that you'll be somebody important in it. Like he did-" She clapped her hand over her mouth and stared at him stricken. "Like he did," she finished, "with that other Director."
"Taubmann," Barris said. He lit a cigarette and sat smoking, facing the girl. It was peaceful down here beneath the ground, away from the frenzy and destruction going on above. And yet, he thought, I have to go back to it, as soon as possible. I'm here so I can do that. A sort of paradox. In this peaceful child's room I expect to find the solution to the most arduous task of all.
"You'll let me go if I take you to him?" Marion asked. "I can go free? I won't even have to go back to that school?"
"Of course. There's no reason to keep you."
"Mr. Dill kept me here."
Barris said, "Mr. Dill is dead."
"Oh," she said. She nodded slowly, somberly. "I see. That's too bad."
"I had the same feeling about him," Barris said. "At first I had no trust in what he said. He seemed to be making up a story to fool everyone. But oddly-" He broke off. Oddly, the man's story had not been spurious. Truthfulness did not seem to go naturally with a man like Jason Dill; he seemed to be created to tell-as Marion said- long public lies, while smiling constantly. Involved dogmatic accounts for the purpose of concealing the actual situation. And yet, when everything was out in the open, Jason Dill did not look so bad; he had not been so dishonest an official. Certainly, he had been trying to do his job. He had been loyal to the theoretical ideals of Unity... perhaps more so than anyone else.
Marion Fields said, "Those awful metal birds he's been making-those things he sends out that he kills people with. Can he make a lot of them?" She eyed him uneasily.
"Evidently there's no particular limit to what Vulcan 3 can produce. There's no restriction on raw materials available to him." Him. He, too, was saying that now. "And he has the technical know-how. He has more information available to him than any purely human agency in the world. And he's not limited by any ethical considerations."
In fact, he realized, Vulcan 3 is in an ideal position; his goal is dictated by logic, by relentless correct reasoning. It is no emotional bias or projection that motivates him to act as he does. So he will never suffer a change of heart, a conversion; he will never turn from a conqueror into a benevolent ruler.
"The techniques that Vulcan 3 will employ," Barris said to the child gazing up at him, "will be brought into play according to the need. They'll vary in direct proportion to the problem facing him; if he has ten people opposed to him, he will probably employ some minor weapon, such as the original hammers equipped with heat beams. We've seen him use hammers of greater magnitude, equipped with chemical bombs; that's because the magnitude of his opposition has turned out to be that much greater. He meets whatever challenge exists."