By Speedletter—Government Use Only
Penalty for Private Use up to $1000
Date: 19 Sept 2013
From: Director, Special Equipment Development Center, American Sector Luna
To: Secretary of Internal Security, New Washington, 20013
Subject: Resignation.
Dear Mr. Secretary: Hail the First Citizen.
I have received your directive of the 15th, ordering the rapid application of SEDO's recently developed TLCHI-PSI scan and interaction sensor to the production of a subconscious aura-triggered anti-subversive-personnel device.
Under my direction, SEDC developed this sensor to enable self-guided infantry robots to discriminate quickly between enemy and noncombatants, thus enhancing their effectiveness and reducing attrition of civilians. Given the trend of Party policies in the last few years, I suspect that the primary purpose of employing the circuit as you direct would be the suppression of internal American dissent.
After due consideration, I have concluded that I cannot in good conscience participate in the development of such a device. I therefore tender my resignation herewith, effective immediately.
I realize that this attitude may have the gravest personal consequences . . . .
Dr. Michael S. Terhune
Director, SEDC
The overhead boomed hollowly, at regular intervals, as Dr. M.S. Terhune showed the drab-overalled man to a chair opposite his desk.
"A rather noisy office for the director," Derein said quietly, glancing upward, but leaving his large pale hands flat on the arms of the chair.
Michael Terhune paused, half-bent, and looked at his visitor sideways. Terhune was a tall man, too tall for the low overheads of the Center. Too thin, really, for the Moon, where a stockier body shape had more than once saved a man or woman caught out in Shadow. He might have looked like Lincoln, if he had had a beard and a wen.
"It's the exerciser," he said.
"Exerciser?"
"It's important to stay in shape here. Retards calcium loss. The gym is the next level up."
"I see." Derein settled himself and reached for a briefcase. "Please be seated, Doctor Terhune."
Terhune paused for a moment, looking out the port. At the far edge of sight stars gleamed diamond-hard, then were occulted suddenly by the jagged edge of crater. He knew that edge. He had almost died on it once. Night came suddenly on the Moon. And lasted.
Silently, he dropped into his chair and swiveled toward Derein, concentrating on the situation at hand.
The Party Member had come in on the Station-Luna shuttle early that diurn. He sat now shuffling through his briefcase, a sallow, worn-looking man of medium height who looked as if a few hours a week on an exerciser would do him good. He wore, Terhune noted absently, the Party Cross, the Vow of Silence, and decorations (old ones) from the Jamaican War, two Internal Actions, Manhattan and Chicago, and the first two Mexican Interventions. The blue-drab coveralls were the plainest cotton, not new, but clean. There was a small tear near the knee, which looked as if the Party Member had mended it himself.
Terhune knew then that he faced a dangerous opponent.
"Very good," said Derein suddenly. "Your record, I mean. MIT. What was that?"
"Massachusetts Institute of Technology."
"That was a secular university, as I recall?"
"Most colleges were then."
"Of course. We'll skip the rest of this, it looks dull . . . Director of the Special Equipment Development facility for three years now. Commendations for work on dust solidification, battle laser postoptical collimation, and a theoretical paper on the inhibition of certain types of heavy metal chain reactions. Very good. You've come a long way since your . . . hospitalization."
"Thank you, Party Member."
"Of course I won't pretend to know what all those mean."
Terhune looked deep into clear, direct, fanatical eyes. It could be true. The Party selected for belief, not knowledge. But it could also be a trap.
Michael Terhune had been told all his life he was brilliant. He had also, all his life, suspected those around him. He had learned that most of his fears were imaginary, paranoid, and he had learned to distrust his own distrust.
But in this case suspicion, he thought, was justified. He was walking, not a tightrope, but the edge of a knifesharp ridge, with a drop on either side far more than enough, even under lunar gravity, to kill. He thought for a moment of the Happy dispenser above his head. There was one in every room of the Center, in every room in America. One needed only to reach one's hand up and touch the trigger for a jolt of the psychentropic drug, removing anxiety and doubt—
"I'll be happy to explain them," Terhune said, not moving in his chair.
The Party Member waved his hand in dismissal. The overhead thumped twice, then began to drum rapidly. Both men glanced up, the shorter with a scowl, the taller with the trace of a smile.
That must be Kathryn, he was thinking.
"Not necessary now." Derein said speaking above the sound of the exerciser. "It's enough to know that you're a valuable scientist, valuable to the Party, to America, and of course to your family."
Terhune nodded slightly, more to himself than to Derein. By his desk clock he saw that it had taken the Party Member less than three minutes to mention his family, back on Earth.
"Do you understand what I mean?"
"I understand perfectly, Party Member."
"Then explain this trash to me!" shouted Derein, thrusting a piece of paper at him. Meant to be threatening, the motion miscarried. In the slight gravity the letter left his hand rapidly, lost its forward momentum in an earth-normal deceleration—but under a fraction that in the vertical plane, it hovered for a long time before gliding at last to the surface of the desk. Terhune picked it up, glanced at it, then looked at Derein. His face darkened.
"This was addressed to the Secretary. Personally! Not to a—not to you, Brother Derein."
"We don't bother the Leader's deputies with trash. And a refusal of a direct order, an order related to internal security work, in days like these—no, the Party settles matters like that on a lower level. On our level, Doctor. Yours and mine."
"You refuse to forward my correspondence?"
"Oh, on the contrary, Doctor." The Party man leaned back, not smiling. "I'm quite willing to forward an insulting letter from a narrow-minded technician to a man concerned with the highest matters of state, responsible only to the First Citizen! I'm quite willing to let you commit professional suicide, go to the front line in the Yucatan as a private, and see your family split up into Party Age-Group camps! I'm willing enough, you see! But first I would like to make sure, quite certain, that you know what you're doing."
"I believe I do."
"You're making a stupid and futile gesture."
"I think otherwise. Stupid, perhaps. Not futile."
"You have a high opinion of yourself. You think your resignation will stop work on the project?"
"Yes."
"Because your discoveries are so subtle. Because no one else can understand them."
Terhune didn't answer. He swiveled and faced the shadowed corner of Mare Serentatis.
"You're wrong about that, Doctor. You are important, yes; your talents are useful to us, and because of them we have overlooked certain personal shortcomings, certain unwise remarks of yours in the past. But—"
"What remarks? I deny any."
"Deny a digital recording."
"You've bugged me?"
"The Leader has said it: 'Not a sparrow shall fall.' And we have personal reports as well."
"I don't believe that."
"You have dangerous delusions, Doctor. You believe yourself persecuted. You're not; we've put up with your irrationalities, we've honored you. You believe yourself irreplaceable. You are valuable, we all admit that. But no one is irreplaceable in America United."
The two men fell silent. From somewhere outside the room Terhune heard a rocket exhaust. The shuttle? No, he reminded himself; it would not rise till the next diurn. And he would hear it as a rumble in the ground, not as a sound through vacuum. It must be Hernandez, working on his charged engine throats. Hernandez! Could it be he who—
He caught himself and stilled his mind. That was exactly what this man wanted: to sow distrust, suspicion. He trusted all of them implicitly. He always would. Hernandez as well as Hong, Levinson, Kathryn Leah Hogue, every one of the two-hundred-person complement of the Center.
"I will not produce such a device," he stated to the darkened surface of the Moon.
"We'll discuss it tomorrow."
"You're leaving tomorrow."
"I have all the time I need," said Derein. "That shuttle is at my command. I may leave tomorrow, true. But if I do, you're coming with me. In handcuffs."
When Terhune turned around, livid with anger, the chair pivoted idly. The office was empty.
"I dunno what she said, when she left me;
"I dunno what she wrote.
"But the stable was empty, her saddle was missin,
"And I couldn't quite make out her note."
The Saddletramp Saloon was dark, the smell of beer and leather, electricity and whiskey and filtered oxygen-enriched air mingling in a strange blend. He stopped just inside the door, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom.
"Mike?"
She was at the far end of the bar, alone, nursing a beer.
He felt his way toward her past the wooden tables. Or almost wood. They looked like oak, as if they had been made by hand and varnished and shipped west and darkened and scarred by time and cigar smoke and spilled whisky and brawling men.
But made, like everything else in the Center, from the soil and rock and dust of the Moon.
"Sorry to keep you waiting."
"Sit down, stranger. Buy a girl a drink?"
Spike came up to them as he hitched himself up on the stool next to her, fixed the heels of his Texas boots in the rungs where they belonged.
"Whiskey," said Terhune to the bartender.
"What'll you have, pard?"
"Whiskey."
"What'll you have, pard?"
"He said, bourbon," said Kathryn. As Spike wheeled away, its casters grating on mooncrete, she said, "He needs tuning. Aural recognition circuits off."
"Ought to shut the damned thing down. Just get your own."
"Oh," she said, turning to her beer. "Is that how it is?"
"I'm sorry. Had a bad time with a boy."
"That Party bozo who oozed off the shuttle today?"
"The same."
"My condolences," said Dr. Kathryn Hogue, slugging back the remains of a full liter mug. From the rings in front of her it was not her first. Terhune studied her from the side as she whistled loud enough at the robot barkeep to wake echoes in the dome.
Kathryn Hogue was the slinger engineer. With four technicians and one outmoded handling robot she had built the first magnetic accelerator tube on the Moon. She was built strong. Under the Levis and plaid Western shirt her hips and shoulders were solid with muscle. He had once seen her pick up a three-hundred-kilo-mass slinger ring and hold it in position for bolting, a feat made even more difficult by a spacesuit. She could take any man in the Center arm-wrestling, and had. Except him. And he half-suspected that she had let him win.
He remembered the first time he had seen her nude.
"No kisses for a working girl?"
"In front of the help?"
"Spike doesn't mind. Do you, Spike?"
"What'll you have, babe?"
"Same again."
"What'll you have, babe?"
"Coors! Switch to receive, you deaf vacuum-sucker!"
Terhune tossed back his bourbon, a slightly but not significantly slower process in lunar gravity than on Earth, and pulled her to him.
They lay nestled like shadow against dust. He traced the outside of her leg, feeling the roughness of a shave a week old. Was she asleep? His hand moved down the outside of her thigh, caressed the hollow of a well-muscled back. He stroked her for a long time.
"Want 'ta tell me about it?" she muttered, her face to the smooth plastron of her cubicle.
He thrust himself up and groped above them. A switch clicked and the unctuous voice of the Leader surrounded them. The Midnight Party Program from Earth. The Station kept the same time as New Washington, though by treaty Standard Lunar Time was Greenwich Mean.
He pulled back his renegade thoughts as her head rose, close, her eyes focusing sleepily. He examined them at a distance of ten centimeters. Green eyes, a brush-touch of hazel, her cheeks slack and crow-tracked below them. He had painted once, during the revolution, when physics was impossible. A watercolor he had done of Enchanted Mesa hung at home next to his print of The Howl of the Weather. The hair that lay curled against his shoulder was brown, rich with veins of silver, but still soft and full and deep with her scent. She was not a girl. She was a woman, full-breasted full-hipped, taking on her forties the way she took on a new welding setup. With determination, guts, and style.
Bug? her lips shaped the word.
"Could be," he whispered. "That's one of the things he said."
"Slimy bastards."
He groped again and the volume increased. "I think that will mask it," he muttered.
She sat up, half against him, and examined his face. He pulled his attention away from the slope of her belly, her thighs. "Okay," she said. "Now that the built-up charge in the circuit's been dissipated, let's talk."
"They returned my resignation."
She tasted the air, waiting.
"They want the thing built. No matter what. They'll degrade me to the Yucatan. Ship up a replacement. But they'll get it built."
She was silent for a moment. "Your family?"
"Splitup and Party camps."
"Slimy bastards," she said again.
"You sound like Spike."
"He's got more heart than they do. Are you going to do it for them?"
"I don't know." His whisper broke. "I've been trying to think of a choice—any other choice. But they have the power to do it. They have before. I'd like to tell him where to go with this mindsearching tyranny. Like to High Noon it, pack him on the shuttle."
"This is the frontier, baby."
He smiled as he saw what she meant. "Yeah. The outpost of civilization. Funny, how different it is. In those days a man meant something, even alone. If he had right on his side he had power to back it. Now there aren't any sixguns."
"Or at least the Party has them all."
His voice hissed in her ear, then resumed. "The only alternative I have—realistically—is suicide."
"Don't say that."
"No. I won't. Not because of Gwen. She's Party now anyway. Because of you. If I didn't have you, Kath, I'd do it. They'd get it built anyway. They need it bad, from the way he talked. There must be more internal unrest down there than we find out about from the broadcasts. I was bluffing him. There are two guys at Bell Labs downside who could do it and maybe a team at Carnegie-Mellon—I mean, Eternal Praise—but it would take time for them to reverse-engineer Hong's work. And at least I wouldn't have it on my conscience. But as long as I'm alive, I've got to do as Derein directs, or we all lose."
He waited for her to say something, his heart loud in his ears. What she said was important, He had decided that: whatever she would say, he would do.
"I guess . . . that's all you can do, then."
He sighed, not knowing, yet, whether he was relieved or destroyed; Lucifer, or Faust. Suddenly he felt very tired, and very old.
"Have you got family, Wide Load? Downside?"
"Funny you never asked me that before."
"You're not a real communicative type, Kath. Besides, I never cared before."
"No. I don't."
"That's good."
"Maybe," she muttered.
It was as if she went away from him, though neither of them moved. Then she came back. "Maybe, The way things are."
"It can't last forever. Dictatorships can't last forever."
"That's what they said about the Bolsheviks, cowboy. And they're coming up on a century."
"No family, they can't use them to pressure you. It's better not to be attached to anyone."
"I wouldn't say that's my status right now."
He looked at her in the dim light. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth had a strange shape. He looked for tears, but there were none.
"Are you crying?"
"Fuck you. No."
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Just hold me."
He turned the program off. They moved together. Not to merge, this time. Just to hold each other. He listened to the seashell hiss of the ventilator bleeding recycled air through the wall of her cubicle, a hiss that became in his mind the rush of wind across dry empty hills softened with sage the color of dusk.
The next day they stood in the half-sphere of Lab D, looking at a spidery workbench. Five of its eight square meters were covered by a seething assemblage of 1C cards, wires, infinite-variable power supplies, and the smelly fluid-bathed trays of bioelectronics and life support.
"This whole thing is the sensor?" said Derein.
"No." Terhune sliced the word short with his teeth. He pointed to one of the trays. "This is the heart of it. The rest is just engineering. Power, support, and tuning."
The Party Member bent over the table. "And that?"
"That's a single-throw relay," said Terhune, staring at him. Again he wondered: ignorance, or a trap?
"Tell me how it works."
"How detailed do you want to get?"
"Just tell me."
"The read function is a modified Fisher psitelechiric regeneration circuit. Field densities of down to two times ten to the minus eight nookies—neural interactions, SI—can be read before noise limit of amplification degrades past the ability of the spectrum analyzer to—"
"Maybe a little more basic, Doctor," suggested Derein quietly.
"You try it, Lo, it's your baby anyway," said Terhune to the short man who stood beside them in nothing but khaki cutoffs, scratching his hairless chest. "This is Dr. Hong."
"You know how lie detectors used to work, Party Member?" said Hong.
"They read heartbeat, skin moisture?"
"That's right. The operator had to infer an internal condition—guilt—from external, physiological manifestations. Sometimes it worked. Kind of. But a man who knew how, or who believed that what he had done was right, often read as innocent."
"I get that."
"Good. Back in the mid-eighties they started to access actual neurological information. Electronically. They learned to read premuscular signals. Speech, before it was transmitted to the mouth and larynx muscles. That's how the embedded transceivers work. You have one?"
"Everyone does now."
"Oh. I haven't been downside for a while. Well, this apparatus—the telechiric-psionic scan, or TLCH-PSI—takes that process further in two ways. First, it reads remotely, by means of an artificial PSI field we generate in this section. The resonance of a living brain repeating, or affirming, a broadcast pattern can be detected by means of the very slight increase in signal strength from that direction. I've got it up to three meters, about ten feet old measure, and I may be able to tweak it up further with a critically-tuned antenna. Twenty feet's the theoretical limit before power output marginalizes against return from other people near the focus. Follow?"
"So far, I think."
"Good. Now the interesting part. There's a delay, if you will, in the repetition of the pattern by a brain, or a mind if you will, if it doesn't agree with the signal. If it agrees, the echo is almost instantaneous, on the order of a hundredth of a second or less. If the brain disagrees with the signal, if there's mental resistance, the return is almost as strong as it CFIs—cycles for interpretation—but the delay increases about fourfold. It's a slight difference, but we've shown it to be readily detectable, reproducible, and most important, the effect is non-conscious—you can't lie to it."
"Praise the Leader!"
"Uh, exactly." Hong pointed with his chin, Chinese-fashion. "The expert system circuitry here—pretty standard programming, will go well into VHSIC—basically just times it, evaluates and corrects for some other variables, such as sickness or low alertness, by querying with a signal that the brain agrees with—I use "I hope there's some speedmail for me today," which seems to go down smooth with everybody at the Center. The output is a binary decision, go or no-go, that pops this relay. After that, what you do with it is up to you."
"Can I see it work?"
Hong looked at Terhune, who nodded briefly. "Okay," he said. "We'll use you. Stand over here."
The Party Member, looking fascinated despite himself, moved a few feet to the right. Looking down, he found himself in the center of a square chalked on the mooncrete base of the dome.
"Now," said Lo Hong, perching himself in front of a rather archaic-looking keyboard, "Let's see. You're a Party Member, right? What's the current Slogan?"
Derein glanced up. "You don't know, Dr. Hong?"
"I forgot," said Hong, straight-faced.
"The foolish man Leads himself to Doom; the wise man Follows us to Paradise."
"Oh yeah," said Hong, typing busily. "Let's see, better change the bumper, 'cause you probably aren't expecting mail here. You like beer?"
"Party Members do not take alcohol," said Derein frostily.
"Oh yeah. Ice cream?"
"Chocolate chip."
"Got it." Hong typed busily for quite a while. "Got to use hexadecimal, haven't smoothed the front end LISP out yet. Okay." He slid off the stool and stared at Derein.
There was a tiny click.
"Any time you're ready," said the Party Member, his eyes closed.
"That's it."
Derein opened his eyes. "What?"
"Hear the relay close?"
"I . . . thought something, too quick to catch . . . then I heard a click."
"That was it. You believe the slogan."
The Party Member looked confused. "Yes. I do. But then what?"
"As I envisioned the use of this device," said Terhune, his voice controlled, "the query would have been in the enemy language, oriented toward the military; for example, 'It is my mission to destroy American battle robots.' This would have enabled the robot to screen out civilians, even enemy civilians, and attack only enemy soldiers, even if ununiformed."
"Would it work on enemy battle robots?"
"They are rather easily identified visually," said Hong, smiling.
"But this is a wonderful device," said Derein. "Let's try it with something I disagree with."
"No problem," said Hong, typing again. After a moment he slid off the stool. "Try that?"
The relay did not click. "What did you ask me?" said Derein.
"The test statement was," said Hong, looking blank," 'Human beings who oppose the Party have a right to live.' "
He had gone to her cubicle without calling on the intercom. He found her in the cleaner. She was nude. The soap spray clung to her body like lace.
"Done soon?"
"Done now," she said. "Rinse!"
When the shower was finished with her she came to him wet and naked. He sat on the chair by her cot and stared at the wall.
"No roundup?"
"What?"
"I said, no roundup? The dogies are restless tonight."
He moved to the bunk and held her close to him. She felt damp and hard and strong, hugging him back so tight he found it hard to breathe. He closed his eyes.
"Problem?"
"What?"
"You have a problem, cowboy? Tell me about it."
"I can't do this, Kathryn."
He felt her begin to rock him. She said nothing. He held her as close as he could, feeling tears bite into his eyelids.
"What's the matter? Tell me. You can trust me."
"I know . . . that's the only thing that keeps me going sometimes. Kathryn, I can't go through with this."
She turned, reached automatically now. The evening Party Program surged into the room. "We discussed it, Mike. There's nothing else you can do."
"You know what this thing we're building will mean? It'll destroy any hope of a counterrevolution. They can use it to guard government buildings, to stop the Resistance walking in with bombs. Then it'll be in the airports, the sidewalks. And you can't trick it or lie to it!"
"You're destroying yourself over this, Mike. We're out of it, here. We're safe."
"That's not enough. I can't let this loose, not in their hands." He bent closer still, whispering into her ear. "I'm going to change the statement."
"The what?"
"The test statement. I don't care what they do to me. Or my family. Or even to us. There are too many others involved. I've got to change it."
"You can't, Mike. They'll find it."
"I can't do anything else."
"Why? Because of your family? Mike. Forget them." He felt her breathing slow, deepen. "You have me. Don't you?"
"I love you."
"That's right."
"I haven't seen my family for years."
"They'll get along. I think children do that. It's selfish of me. But I don't want you to do it, Mike. Please don't."
"We could stay here together."
"That's right."
"Do you love me?"
"More than anything. More than anything. Christ, Michael. I'm sorry for your kids. But sometimes, oh, Jesus, sometimes I think you don't understand how much a woman can love you."
"I love you too. A lot."
But she did not answer him.
Fourteen days later Lab D looked the same. The scientists gathered around the table, however, looked worn. Derein had driven them all eighteen hours, twentyurs a diurn. He had received orders to build and test a complete working model.
The finished prototype was considerably smaller than the square meters of ammonia-smelling bioelectronics that had covered the work table. Hong and Terhune had used the Center's Produktor line to design it, and it had discovered several production shortcuts. Dr. Hogue, pressed into service, had found ways to combine several functions within modules, and had miniaturized the power sources. The five of them stood now looking up at the completed device. The size of an old transistor-model television, it hung shabbily braced from the laboratory overhead, pointing down at a shallow angle. The chalked square was now a rectangle four feet by two.
"Here's the concept of operation," said Dr. Hong, resting himself against the bench, which now gave off the rankness of decay; he had let the breadboard go, and, unshielded, it had caught some random germ and started to rot. "Party Member Derein, you wanted something that could screen in real time. This unit can do it, if people don't come through too fast. You could set it up above an escalator, for example."
"That's ideal," said Derein. Of them all, he looked the best rested, though there were circles under his eyes as well. "The Secretary intends to use the initial installations to screen people going into offices in New Washington."
"Government offices?" said Terhune.
"And Party offices."
"A demonstration, Party Member?"
"Just a minute. Tell me again what happens when they fail."
"When the screeners fail?"
"No, no. I have confidence in your team's technical abilities. I mean, what will happen when the people going through fail."
"We incorporated a wiper," said Terhune. He looked dead. Not dead physically. He looked like a man who had lost his soul.
"Wiping? How does that work?"
"Uh. Dr. Levinson worked that out—he's the psychoradiomanipulator."
A heavyset, balding man stood up slowly. "Well, it's not unlike the wipes your courts order sometimes when somebody gets a death sentence. You know how those operate?"
"Just that they come out without a brain."
"Overstatement, Party Member Derein. It's a traumatic overload, a burnout on the subneural level, where memory and learned patterns are matrixed. The brain is operational, but as far as learning and life experience, identity, it's a tabula rasa." Derein looked blank. "A clean slate. Essentially they're no longer a human being, but a newborn. Of course, without the newborn's potential, entirely. Learning is considerably more limited the second time around."
"And this would be better than just firing a laser at them when the disloyalty circuit trips?"
"I believe so, Party Member."
"Why?"
"Because it preserves, at some level, a life." They stared at each other. Before Derein could respond, Levinson added heavily, "Or a soul. The Party would see it as another chance to, uh, save that soul, once it had been purged of—antisocial habits and thoughts."
"Of the devil, you mean to say."
"I guess that's the terminology, yes." Levinson sighed.
"That's good reasoning. That's defensible. Yet you seem unhappy about it, Dr. Levinson."
"Do I? How penetrating."
"Are you with the Party, Dr. Levinson?"
Levinson straightened. "Have I said something out of order? I didn't mean to."
"Answer me, Doctor."
Levinson looked at him. At last he turned the collar of his coveralls to show the yellow star. "I think this answers your question."
Derein stared at him. After a moment he turned to Terhune. "Let's get on with it."
"Sure. Step right up," said Terhune bitterly.
"Me?"
"I think you'll agree that you're the best choice for a test"
"Perhaps you'll precede me, Doctor."
"I don't think so, Party Member. You see, this prototype is fully operational."
Derein looked around the circle. "Refusal? That's practically an admission of disloyalty."
"So is yours," said Terhune. "Are you refusing the test, Party Member? It will be difficult. You'll have to terminate all of us to prevent your superiors from finding out you did. And if you do, you won't have the device, will you? The design is in the Produktor. But you can't operate it, can you? If it isn't quite right you can't fix it, can you?"
Derein stared at him. He looked at the overhead. "This is disloyal. This is all recorded."
"I jammed it," said Hong modestly. "Very simple."
"And even if you have a traitor on your side," said Terhune, not looking at Hong or Levinson, "he could produce this model—it's all on the tape—but he couldn't tune or improve it. Not without some months of study. And you don't have some months, do you? You've already notified them the shuttle will instation tomorrow."
Derein stared around once more. He was sweating, visibly.
"I know," he said.
"What?"
"I know what you plan to do to the device."
"I have no idea what you mean," said Terhune.
"Let me tell you, then." Derein looked around at them, all of them. He took a small pistol from the pocket of his coveralls.
"You changed the question."
Terhune's head came up. He felt dazed. Then he saw her eyes. They were wide, but steady on his. Green, with a touch of hazel. He felt his legs begin to tremble.
She was the one person he had never suspected.
After a moment Hong said, "That's absurd."
"Is it? You think he's on the Party's side, fully? Then you step forward, Dr. Hong. Take your place on your chalked-in square. Do it."
Hong looked at Terhune, weighing something in his mind. After a moment he said, "I'm afraid to. I think he is, but—I guess I'm just risk-averse."
"Dr. Levinson?"
"I'd rather not," said Levinson.
"Dr. Terhune?"
Terhune looked at the square. He looked at Hogue.
"No," he said.
"So," said Derein, looking around at them. "You won't do it. Not even if I threaten to shoot you. You know, I believe you. I believe you don't trust each other. And I can see you don't trust yourselves. Do you know how that makes me feel? That makes me feel that everything is right, that I have an operating device. But I'd rather be sure. Dr. Terhune. Step up."
"No."
"Move, Terhune. I'm out of forgiveness. You will prove yourself now. Step up, or your usefulness to the Party ends now." He raised the gun and aimed.
Terhune hesitated. He started to step forward.
Hogue pushed him back.
She positioned herself squarely in the center of the chalked outline. "Turn it on," she said.
"Kathryn!"
"Turn it on, Michael." Her green eyes were steady. Green eyes brushed with hazel. Eyes he had once trusted . . .
"It's too risky," he said. "Do you know what it can do to you? It can—"
"Do you think it will hurt me?"
He stared at her with hatred, knowing himself once more betrayed. They had all betrayed him, Levinson, Hong—and especially her. She had been the only one who knew his plans. The only one who had spoken the truth to him, bitter and unwelcome as it was, had been Derein.
"No," he said bitterly. "No, I guess it won't."
"You believe I betrayed you, Michael?"
"I know you did."
"Then I guess you'd better turn it on."
Now we know where we stand, he thought. The bitterness turned suddenly into rage: rage at a world enslaved in the name of God; at the men around him, for their weakness in aiding it; at her. But most of all it was at himself, for his foolishness and blindness in believing in another human being.
He nodded to Hong.
The screener hummed for a moment, subaudible, the power supplies she had designed warming up, sending a jolt of subawareness through the half-dead bioelectronics that knew nothing of the mercy of living things, that knew only the programming that men had imposed on their once-human DNA.
Her eyes widened.
She stood still, and said nothing.
"Kathryn?"
She did not answer, simply looked upward, at the blank face of the screener.
Terhune stared at her eyes. The pupils had widened, as they did in the dim light of her cubicle. At her shoulders, broad and strong, slack now under her coveralls in the harsh light of the laboratory.
He stared at her open mouth, at the corners of her parted lips. Lips that he had kissed. They were still there, still whole and firm and warm. Still the same. But not hers, never again hers—
His hand crept up for a shot of Happy.
He had believed in her guilt, her treason to him. Yet she had not betrayed him. She had given herself, to convince him of that beyond any doubt.
To show him love that destroyed itself even as it proved itself, even as she parted from him forever.
His hand, numb, was on the trigger for the dispenser when it stopped. His eyes moved slowly up his arm to Derein's hand at his wrist.
"A beautiful piece of work," the Party man said quietly. For once, Terhune noted through the numbness, he looked sincere. "And so appropriate. We've suspected her attachment to the Party's goals for some time. But now"—the hand increased its pressure on his wrist—"she's proven that we have an operating device. God's ways are strange but wonderful! Prepare the plans for full-scale production."
"I don't understand," said Terhune. "It triggered on her. It shouldn't have—unless she was—"
"Disloyal? Exactly." Derein smiled. "You scientists are intellectual children. Competent in your fields, but hardly a match for a trained man. I didn't need a traitor, or a bug, to know that you would try to change that combination. I could see it in your eyes. Why didn't you? You became afraid, at the last minute. Don't worry, Doctor. You're useful. I won't take action against you. But you must accept it. You've been outthought, by me, the Party member you scorn as a bureaucrat, a fanatic, a technological illiterate. What about it, Doctor? Is your intellectual arrogance proof against that?"
Without speaking, Terhune turned and walked blindly toward the hatch.
He sat alone in the darkened saloon.
"Lights?" said Spike.
"No lights."
"What'll you have, pard?"
"Whiskey."
"What'll you'll have, pard?"
"Bourbon. The bottle."
The machine functioned flawlessly. The three of them, Levinson, Hong, and Terhune, sat at the bar.
"How is she?" said Terhune, after a long period of silence.
"The same," said Hong.
"No change," said Levinson.
"It's noon," said Spike. "Time for the news."
Music filled the darkened bar. "Where's the news?" said Hong. "The Party Program?"
"Must be a minute till."
"Spike don't make mistakes."
"Spike makes lots of mistakes."
The bartender stared at them. It was barely possible to read insult into his molded expression.
Levinson was asking for another beer when the music stopped and a frightened voice filled the room. The two men listened, then turned, as one, to look at Terhune.
"What's going on down there?" said Hong.
"Revolution, I would assume," said Terhune. He slugged back the heeltap in his shot glass and rapped it smartly for the bartender's attention.
"It sounds like it," said Levinson. "But why?"
"I changed the test phrase."
"On the prototype? Impossible—it worked, Kathryn triggered it, and it—"
Hong put a warning hand on Levinson's, but Terhune did not seem to notice. He was already speaking. "No. The prototype worked, all right. I changed it on the Produktor tape. Deep in the hardware, set to override whatever phrase they put in the ROM section after fifteen cycles. They must have gone into full-scale deployment on Derein's word, without waiting for thorough testing."
They listened to the voice. It went on, describing the terror of a nation suddenly left leaderless. "They're panicking," said Hong.
"The Party's not there to guide them any more," said Levinson. "Guide—I guess we'll have to get used to saying what we mean. The tyrants are gone. Null-minded imbeciles, at the mercy of the mob."
"As you sow, so shall ye reap," said Terhune. "Say, Lo, did you leave that prototype set up?"
"If nobody else tore it down," said Dr. Hong.
"Spike. One last bourbon, for the road."
"All out of bourbon," said the bartender, dead-pan. "Next shuttle, maybe."
"I don't think we should expect one for a while . . . Sam, you're next senior after me. We'd better start oxygen rationing, and see if the dust cooker out in Wing One still works. The Center may be on its own till they get things sorted out down there."
The two other men exchanged glances. After a moment Levinson said. "I'll take care of it, Mike."
"What'll it be, pard?"
"Beer. Beer. In a mug. Coors beer. A liter."
"One bronco-buster, coming right up."
After Terhune drank it he got up. He paused for a moment, then shook hands wordlessly with them both. When he left Levinson and Hong did not look after him. They stayed for a while, listening to the news two and a half seconds after the rest of America. After a while another announcer came on. She sounded not frightened, but excited. Angry. And triumphant.
When they thought Michael Terhune had had enough time, they went on in to Laboratory D.