She colored and stammered, "Well, anyhow, he's against Vulcan 3."
"Congratulations," Fields said to Barris. "You've made a wise choice. Assuming it's so."
Settling back against the counter, propping himself up on one elbow so that he, too, was comfortable, Barris said, "I came here to talk business with you."
In a leisurely, drawling voice, Fields said, "As you can sec, I'm a pretty busy man. Maybe I don't have time to talk business."
"Find time," Barris said.
Fields said, "I'm not much interested in business. I'm more interested in work. You could have joined us back when it mattered, but you turned tail and walked out. Now -" He shrugged. "What the heck docs it matter? Having you with us doesn't make any particular difference one way or another. We've pretty well won, now. I imagine that's why you've finally made up your mind which way you want to jump. Now you can see who's the winning side." He grinned once more, this time with a knowing, insinuating twinkle. "Isn't that so? You'd like to be on the winning side." He waggled his finger slyly at Barris.
"If I did," Barris said, "I wouldn't be here."
For a moment, Fields did not appear to understand. Then, by degrees, his face lost all humor; the bantering familiarity vanished. He became hard-eyed. "The hell you say," he said slowly. "Unity is gone, man. In a couple of days we swept the old monster system aside. What's there left? Those tricky businesses flapping around up there." He jerked his thumb, pointing upward. "Like the one I got, that day in the hotel, the one that came in the window looking for me. Did you ever get that? I patched it up pretty good and sent it on to you and your girl, for a-" He laughed. "A wedding present."
Barris said, "You've got nothing. You've destroyed nothing."
"Everything," Fields said in a grating whisper. "We've got everything there is, mister."
"You don't have Vulcan 3," Barris said. "You've got a lot of land; you blew up a lot of office buildings and recruited a lot of clerks and stenographers-that's all."
"We'll get him," Fields said, evenly.
"Not without your founder," Barris said. "Not now that he's dead."
Staring at Barris, Fields said, "My-" He shook his head slowly; his poise was obviously completely shattered.
"What do you mean? I founded the Movement. I've headed it from the start."
Barris said, "I know that's a lie."
For a time there was silence.
"What does he mean?" Marion demanded, plucking anxiously at her father's arm.
"He's out of his mind," Fields said, still staring at Barris. The color had not returned to his face.
"You're an expert electrician," Barris said. "That was your trade. I saw your work on that hammer, your reconstruction. You're very good; in fact there probably isn't an electrician in the world today superior to you. You kept Vulcan 2 going all this time, didn't you?"
Fields' mouth opened and then shut. He said nothing.
"Vulcan 2 founded the Healers' Movement," Barris said.
"No," Fields said.
"You were only the fake leader. A puppet. Vulcan 2 created the Movement as an instrument to destroy Vulcan 3. That's why he gave Jason Dill instructions not to reveal the existence of the Movement to Vulcan 3; he wanted to give it time to grow."
CHAPTER 13
After a long time, Father Fields said, "Vulcan 2 was only a computing mechanism. It had no motives, no drives. Why would it act to impair Vulcan 3?"
"Because Vulcan 3 menaced it," Barris said. "Vulcan 2 was as much alive as Vulcan 3-no more and no less. It was created originally to do a certain job, and Vulcan 3 interfered with its doing that job, just as the withholding of data by Jason Dill interfered with Vulcan 3's doing its job."
"How did Vulcan 3 interfere with Vulcan 2's doing its job?" Father Fields said.
"By supplanting it," Barris said.
Fields said, "But I am the head of the Movement now. Vulcan 2 no longer exists." Rubbing his chin, he said, "There isn't a wire or a tube or a relay of Vulcan 2 intact."
"You did a thorough, professional job," Barris said.
The man's head jerked.
"You destroyed Vulcan 2," Barris said, "to keep Jason Dill from knowing. Isn't that so?"
"No," Fields said finally. "It isn't so. This is all a wild series of guesses on your part. You have no evidence; this is the typical insane slander generated by Unity. These mad charges, dreamed up and bolstered and embroidered -"
Once again, Barris noticed, the man had lost his regional accent. And his vocabulary, his use of words, had in this period of stress, greatly improved.
Marion Fields piped, "It's not true! My father founded the Movement." Her eyes blazed with helpless, baffled fury at Barris. "I wish I hadn't brought you here."
"What evidence do you have?" Fields said.
"I saw the skill with which you rebuilt that ruined hammer," Barris said. "It amounted to mechanical genius on your part. With ability like that you could name your own job with Unity; there're no repairmen on my staff in New York capable of work like that. The normal use Unity would put you to with such ability would be servicing the Vulcan series. Obviously you know nothing about Vulcan 3-and Vulcan 3 is self-servicing. What else does that leave but the older computers? And Vulcan 1 hasn't functioned in decades. And your age is such that, like Jason Dill, you would naturally have been a contemporary of Vulcan 2 rather-"
"Conjecture," Fields said.
"Yes," Barris admitted.
"Logic. Deduction. Based on the spurious premise that
I had anything to do with any of the Vulcan series. Did it ever occur to you that there might have been alternate computers, designed by someone other than Nat Green-street, that competent crews might have been put to work at-"
From behind Barris a voice, a woman's voice, said sharply, "Tell him the truth, Father. Don't lie, for once."
Rachel Pitt came around to stand by Barris. Astonished to see her, Barris started to his feet.
"My two daughters," Fields said. He put his hand on Marion Fields' shoulder, and then, after a pause, he put his other hand on the shoulder of Rachel Pitt. "Marion and Rachel," he said to Barris. "The younger stayed with me, was loyal to me; the older had ambitions to marry a Unity man and live a well-to-do life with all the things that money can buy. She started to come back to me a couple of times. But did you really come back?" He gazed meditatively at Rachel Pitt. "I wonder. It doesn't sound like it."
Rachel said, "I'm loyal to you, Father. I just can't stand any more lies."
"I am telling the truth," Father Fields said in a harsh, bitter voice. "Barris accuses me of destroying Vulcan 2 to keep Jason Dill from knowing about the relationship between the old computer and the Movement. Do you think I care about Jason Dill? Did it ever matter what he knew? I destroyed Vulcan 2 because it wasn't running the Movement effectively; it was holding the Movement back, keeping it weak. It wanted the Movement to be nothing but an extension of itself, like those hammers of Vulcan 3. An instrument without life of its own."
His voice had gained power; his jaw jutted out and he confronted Barris and Rachel defiantly. The two of them moved involuntarily away from him, and closer to each other. Only Marion Fields remained with him.
"I freed the Movement," Fields said. "I freed humanity and made the Movement an instrument of human needs, human aspirations. Is that wicked?" He pointed his finger at Barris and shouted, "And before I'm finished I'm going to destroy Vulcan 3 as well, and free mankind from it, too. From both of them, first the older one and next the big one, the new one. Is that wrong? Are you opposed to that? If you are, then god damn it, go join them at the fortress; go join Reynolds."
Barris said, "It's a noble ideal, what you're saying. But you can't do it. It's impossible. Unless I help you."