"I come," he said, "from a Project about eighty miles north of here.
I came here by foot, without any sort of radiation shield at all to
protect me."
The maniac was back. I didn't say a word. I didn't want to set off the
violence that was so obviously in this lunatic.
"The radiation level," he went on, "is way down. It's practically as
low as it was before the Atom War. I don't know how long it's been
that low, but I would guess about ten years, at the very least." He
leaned forward again, urgent and serious. "The world is safe out there
now. Man can come back out of the cave again. He can start building
the dreams again. And this time he can build better, because he has
the horrible example of the recent past to guide him away from the
pitfalls. There's no need any longer for the Projects."
And that was like saying there's no need any longer for stomachs, but I
didn't say so. I didn't say anything at all.
"I'm a trained atomic engineer," he went on. "In my project, I worked
on the reactor. Theoretically, I believed that there was a chance the
radiation Outside was lessening by now, though we had no idea exactly
how much radiation had been released by the Atom War. But I wanted
to test the theory, and the Commission wouldn't let me. They claimed
public safety, but I knew better. If the Outside were safe and the
Projects were no longer needed, then the Commission was out of a job,
and they knew it.
* * * * *
"Well, I went ahead with the test anyway, and I was caught at it. For
my punishment, I was banned from the Project. They kicked me out,
telling me if I thought it was safe Outside I could live Outside. And
if it really was safe, I could come back and tell them. Except that
they also made it clear that I would be shot if I tried to get back in,
because I would be carrying deadly radiation."
He smiled bitterly. "They had it all their own way," he said. "But it
_is_ safe out there, I'm living proof of it. I lived Outside for five
months. And gradually I realized I had to tell others. I had to spread
the word that Man could have his world back. I didn't dare try to get
back into my own Project; I would have been recognized and shot before
I could say a word. So I came here."
He paused to finish the cup of chico that I should have had with lunch.
"I knew better," he continued, "than to simply walk into the building
and announce that I came from Outside. Man has an instinctive distrust
for strangers anyway; the Projects only intensify it. Once again, I
would have been shot. So I've been working in a more devious way. I
snuck into the Project--not a difficult thing for a man with no metal
on his person, no radiation shield cocooning him--and for the last two
months I've been wandering around the building talking with people. I
strike up a conversation. I try to plant a few seeds of doubt about the
deadliness of Outside, and I hope that at least a few of the people I
talk to will begin to wonder, as I once did."
Two months! This spy, by his own admission, had been in the Project two
months before being detected. I'd never heard of such a thing, and I
hoped I'd never hear of such a thing again.
"Things worked out pretty well," he said, "until today. I said
something wrong--I'm still not sure what--and the man I was talking to
hollered for Army, shouted I was a spy." He pounded the chair arm. "But
I'm not a spy! And it's the truth, Outside is safe!" He glared suddenly
at the window. "Why've you got that drape up there?"
"The window broke down," I explained. "It's stuck at transparent."
"Transparent? Fine!" He got up from the chair, strode across the room,
and ripped the drape down from the window.