Barris said, "I don't blame you."
"We'll co-operate," Fields said. "With you priests in gray-as we've been calling you in our pamphlets. But take care. If the aristocracy of slide rules and pastel ties and polished black shoes starts to get out of hand again ..." He pointed at the street far below the window. 'You'll hear us out there again."
"Don't threaten me," Barris said quietly.
Fields flushed. "I'm not threatening you. I'm pointing out the facts to you. If we're excluded from the ruling elite, why should we co-operate?"
There was silence then.
"What do you want done about Atlanta?" Barris said finally.
"We can agree on that," Fields said. He flipped his cigarette away; bending, he retrieved it and crushed it out. "I want to see that place taken apart piece by piece. Until it's a place to keep cows. A pasture land. With plenty of trees."
"Good," Barris said.
"Can my daughter come in for a while?" Fields said. "Rachel. She'd like to talk to you."
"Maybe later," Barris said. "I still have a lot of things to work out in my mind."
"She wants you to start action going against Taubmann for that slanderous letter he wrote about you. The one she was blamed for." He hesitated. "Do you want my opinion?" "Okay," Barris said.
Fields said, "I think there ought to be an amnesty. To end that stuff once and for all. Keep Taubmann on or retire him from the system. But let's have an end of accusations. Even true ones."
"Even a correct suspicion," Barris said, "is still a suspicion."
Showing his relief, Fields said, "We all have plenty to do. Plenty of rebuilding. "We'll have enough on our hands."
"Too bad Jason Dill isn't here to admonish us," Barris said.
"He'd enjoy writing out the directives and public presentations of the reconstruction work." Suddenly he said, "You were working for Vulcan 2 and Dill was working for Vulcan 2. You were both carrying out its policies toward Vulcan 3. Do you think Vulcan 2 was jealous of Vulcan 3? They may have been mechanical constructs, but as far as we were concerned they had all the tendencies of two contending entities-each out to get the other."
Fields murmured, "And each lining up supporters. Following your analysis..." He paused, his face dark with introspection.
"Vulcan 2 won," Barris said.
"Yes." Fields nodded. "He-or it-got virtually all of us lined up on one side, with Vulcan 3 on the other. We ganged up on Vulcan 3." He laughed sharply. "Vulcan 3's logic was absolutely right; there was a vast world-wide conspiracy directed against it, and to preserve itself it had to invent and develop and produce one weapon after another. And still it was destroyed. Its paranoid suspicions were founded in fact."
Like the rest of Unity, Barris thought. Vulcan 3, like Dill and myself, Rachel Pitt and Taubmann-all drawn into the mutual accusations and suspicions and near-pathological system-building.
"Pawns" Fields was saying. "We humans-god damn it, Barris; we were pawns of those two things. They played us off against one another, like inanimate pieces. The things became alive and the living organisms were reduced to things. Everything was turned inside out, like some terrible morbid view of reality."
Standing at the doorway of the hospital room, Rachel Pitt said in a low voice, "I hope we can get out from under that morbid view." Smiling timidly, she came toward Barris and her father. "I don't want to press any legal action against Taubmann; I've been thinking it over."
Either that, Barris thought, or making it a point to listen in on other people's conversations. But he said nothing aloud.
"How long do you think it will take?" Fields said, studying him acutely. "The real reconstruction-not the buildings and roads, but the minds. Distrust and mutual suspicion have been bred into us since childhood; the schools started it going on us-they forced out characters. We can't shake it overnight."
He's right, Barris thought. It's going to be hard. And it's going to take a long time. Possibly generations.
But at least the living elements, the human beings, had survived. And the mechanical ones had not. That was a good sign, a step in the right direction.
Across from him, Rachel Pitt was smiling less timidly, with more assurance now. Coming over to him, she bent down and touched him reassuringly on the plastic film that covered his shoulder. "I hope you'll be up and around soon," she said.
He considered that a good sign too.