"The combination will work--the master combination used by the Company
heads. Otherwise, these doors are practically bomb-proof!" He pressed
the combination and opened the door a crack.
Outside, I could see what seemed to be a small section of the Company
car pool. There were sounds of trucks, but none were moving nearby. I
saw a few men working on trucks a distance from us. Maybe luck was on
our side.
I pointed to the nearest expediter patrol wagon--a small truck, really,
enclosed except for the driver's seat. "That one, if there's fuel.
We'll have to act as if we had a right to it, and hope for the best.
Zorchi, can you manage it that far?"
"I shall walk like a born assassin," he assured me, but sweat began
popping onto his forehead at what he was offering. Yet there was no
sign of the agony he must have felt as he followed and managed to climb
into the back with Rena and Carmody.
The fuel gauge was at the half mark and, as yet, there was no cry of
alarm. I gunned the motor into life, watching the nearest workmen. They
looked up casually, and then went back to their business. Ahead, I
could see a clear lane toward the exit, with a few other trucks moving
in and out. I headed for it, my hair prickling at the back of my neck.
* * * * *
We reached the entrance, passed through it, and were soon blending into
the stream of cars that were passing the clinic on their way out for
more suspension cases.
The glass doors of the entrance were gone now, and workmen were putting
up huge steel ones in their place, even while a steady stream of cases
were hobbling or being carried into the clinic. Most of them were old
or shabby, I noticed. The class-D type. The last ones to be admitted.
We must have spent more time in the vault than I'd thought, and zero
hour was drawing near.
Beyond the clinic, the whole of Anzio was a mass of abandoned cars that
seemed to stretch for miles, and the few buildings not boarded up were
obviously class-D dwellings, too poor to worry about. I cursed my way
through a jam-up of trucks, and managed to find one of the side roads.
Then I pressed down on the throttle as far as I dared without
attracting attention, until I could find a safe place to turn off with
no other cars near to see me.
"Where to?" I asked. We couldn't go back to Zorchi's, since any
expediter investigation would start there. Maybe we'd never be missed,
but I couldn't risk it. If we had to, we could use some abandoned
villa and hide out, but I was hoping for a better suggestion.
Zorchi looked blank, and Rena shrugged. "If we could only find
Nikolas--" she suggested doubtfully.
I shook my head. I'd had a chance to think about that a little while
the expediters took us to see Defoe, and I didn't like it. The leader
of the revolution had apparently been captured by Defoe. According to
Benedetto dell'Angela, he'd escaped. Yet Defoe hadn't tried to pump us
about him. And when Benedetto set out to meet him, the expediters had
descended at once.
It made an ugly picture. I had no wish to go looking for the man.
"There's my place," Carmody said finally. "I had places all over the
world, kept ready for me and stocked. If Defoe let it be thought that I
had retired, he must have kept them all up as I'd have done. Wait, let
me orient myself. Up that road."
Places all over the world, with food that was wasted, and with servants
who might never see their master! And I'd been brought up believing
that the Underwriters were men of quiet, simple tastes! Carmody's clay
feet were beginning to crumble up to the navel!
* * * * *
The villa was surrounded by trees, on a low hill that overlooked an
artificial lake. It had been sealed off, but the combination lock
yielded to Carmody's touch. There were beds made up and waiting,
freezers stocked with food that sent Zorchi into ecstasy, and even a
complete file of back issues of the Company paper. Carmody headed for
those, with the look of a man hunting his lost past. He had a lot of
catching up to do.
But it was the television set that interested me. It was still working,
with taped material being broadcast. The appeal had been stepped up,
asking for order and cooperation; I recognized the language as being
pitched toward the lower classes now, though. And the clicking of a
radiation-counter sounded as a constant background, with occasional
shots of its meter, the needle well into the danger area.
Zorchi joined me and Rena, dribbling crumbs of meat down his beard. He
snorted as he caught sight of the counter. "There is a real one in the
other room, and it registers higher," he said. "It is interesting. For
me, of no import. Doctors whom I trust have said Defoe is wrong; my
body can resist damage from radiation--and perhaps even from old age.
But for you and the young lady...."
He shut up at my expression, but the tape cut off and a live announcer
came on before I could say anything. "A bulletin just in," he said,
"shows that the government of Naples has unanimously passed a
moritorium on all contracts, obligations and indebtedness for the
duration of the emergency. The Company has just followed this with
a declaration that it will extend the moritorium to include all
crimes against the Company. During the emergency, the clinics will be
available to all without prejudice, Director Defoe said today."
"A trap," Rena guessed. "We wouldn't have a chance, anyhow. But, Tom,
does the other mean that--"
"It means your father was wrong," I answered. "As of right now--and
probably in every government at the same time--the Company has been
freed from any responsibility."
It didn't make any difference, of course. Benedetto had expected that
everyone must secretly hate the Company as he did; he hadn't realized
that men who have just been saved from the horrible danger of radiation
death aren't going to turn against the agency that saved them. And
damn it, the Company _was_ saving them, after its opponents had
risked annihilation of the race. Defoe would probably make sure the
suspendees were awakened at a rate where he could keep absolute power,
but not from any danger of bankruptcy.
* * * * *
Carmody had come out and listened, attracted by the broadcast radiation
clicking, apparently. Now he asked enough questions to discover
Benedetto's idea, and shook his head.
"It wouldn't work," he agreed with me. "Even if I still had control,
I couldn't permit such a thing. What good would it do? Could money
payments make food for a revived world, Miss dell'Angela? Would
bankrupting the only agency capable of rebuilding the Earth be a thing
of honor? Besides, even with what I've read, I can see no hope. There's
nothing we can do."
"But if you can arouse the other Underwriters against Defoe," she
insisted, "at least you can prevent _his_ type of world!"
He shook his head. "How? All communications are in his hands. Even if
I could fly to the Home Office, most of the ones I could trust--and
there apparently are a few Defoe hasn't been able to retire--would be
scattered, out of my reach. A week ago, there might have been a chance.
Now, it's impossible. Impossible."
He shook his head sadly and wandered back toward the library. I could
see that in his secret thoughts, he was wishing we'd left him safely
in the vault. Maybe it would have been just as well.
"Cheer up," I told Rena. "Carmody's an old man--too old to think in
terms of direct action, even when it's necessary. Defoe doesn't own the
world yet!"
But later, when I located the books I wanted in the library and went
out into the vine-covered bower in the formal garden, I wasn't as
confident as I'd pretended.
Thinking wasn't a pleasant job, after all the years when I'd let others
do my thinking for me. But now I had to do it for myself. Otherwise,
the only alternative was to plan some means of quick death for us all
before the radiation got too intense. And I couldn't accept that.
Rena had managed something Marianna couldn't have conceived--she'd
quietly relinquished her fate into my hands, gambling on me with
everything she had. Whether I wanted to or not, I'd taken the
responsibility. Carmody was an old man; one who hadn't been able to
keep Defoe from taking over in the first place. And Zorchi--well, he
was Zorchi.
That night, the radiation detector suddenly took a sharp lift, its
needle crossing over into the red. It was probably only a local rise.
But it didn't make my thinking any more comfortable.
* * * * *
It was at breakfast that next morning when I finally took it up with
Carmody. "Just what will the situation be at the clinic after they
close down? How many will be kept awake? And what about their defenses?"
He frowned, trying to see my idea. Then he shrugged. "Too many, Tom.
We had plotted out a course for such things as this a number of times
in Planning. And our mob psychologists warned that there'd inevitably
be a few who for one reason or another wouldn't come in in time, but
who would then grow desperate and try to break in. Outlaws, looters,
procrastinators, fanatics. That sort. So for some time, there should
be at least twenty guards kept alert. And that's enough to defend a
clinic. Atomic cannon at every entrance, of course, and the clinics are
bomb-proof."
"Twenty, eh? And how about Defoe and Lawton? Will they sleep?" It
seemed logical that they couldn't stay out of suspension for the whole
fifty years or so. There'd be no profit to gaining a world after they
were too old to use it.
"Not at first. There's a great deal of final administrative work to be
done. There's a chamber equipped to keep a hundred or so men awake
with radiation washed from the air, and containing adequate supplies,
in cable contact with other clinics. They'll be there. Later, they'll
take shifts, with only a couple of men awake at a time, I suppose. They
may age a little that way, but not much."
He frowned again, and then slowly nodded. "It could be done, if we had
some way to wait safely for six months. Getting back in is no problem
for me."
"It's going to be done," I told him. "And a lot sooner. Are you willing
to take the chance?"
"Have I any choice?" He shrugged again. "Do you think I haven't been
sick at the idea of a man like Defoe in command of the Company for
as long as he lives? Tom, my family started the Company. I've got an
obligation to restore it to its right course. If there's any chance of
keeping Defoe from being emperor of the world, I've got to take it. If
you can put me in a position where I can get the honest Underwriters
together again, where we can set up the Company as it was--"
"Why? So this will happen all over again?"
He looked shocked at Rena's question. "I don't blame you for being
bitter, Miss dell'Angela. But with Defoe gone--"
"The Company made Defoe possible. In fact, it made him and Slovetski
inevitable," I told him flatly. "That's its one great crime. Whenever
you take power completely out of the hands of the many, it winds up in
fewer and fewer hands. Those histories I was reading last night prove
that. Carmody, what do you know about your own Company? Or the world?
Leave the consolidation of power in Company hands out of it, and what
has happened to progress?"
He frowned. "Well, we've leveled off a bit. We had to. We couldn't
risk--"
"Exactly. You couldn't risk research that would lead to increased
longevity--too many pensioners. You couldn't risk going to
Mars--unpredictable dangers. You had to make the world fit actuarial
charts. I remember seeing one of the first suspendees awakened. He
expected things we could have done fifty years ago--and never will do.
How many men today work their way out of their class? And why have
classes so rigidly stratified? I've been reading your own speeches of
nearly fifty years ago. I've got them here, together with some tables.
Like to see them?"
* * * * *
He took the papers silently and began going through them, his shock
giving way to a grudging realization. Maybe without the jolt of his
awakening, he'd have laughed them off, but nothing was easy to dismiss
with the hell brewing outside. At last he looked up.
"Tom, I'll admit the many times when I've been worried. I've considered
starting research again countless times. I've been aware that
dependence was growing too heavy on the Company. But we can't just toss
it aside. It did bring an end to major war, when such a war would have
ruined the Earth completely. It showed that nobody had to starve--that
hardly anyone had to lack for any necessity, or die for lack of care.
You can't throw that away."
"You can throw away its unrelated power." I knew I didn't have the
answers. All this had been growing slowly in my mind since I'd first
found Benedetto a political prisoner, but a lifetime wasn't enough to
think it out, even with the books I'd found.
But I had to try. "In the middle ages, they had morality and politics
tied into one bundle, Carmody. The church ruled. It wasn't good and
they finally had to divorce church and state. Maybe the same applies
to administrative politics and economics. The Company has shown what
can be done economically. The church has survived as a great moral
force outside material power. Now let's see if we can't put things in
perspective.
"There's a precedent. The United States--the old government--was set
up on the idea of balance of power: an elected Congress for the people
to handle legislative tasks, a selected President to handle executive
affairs, and a Judiciary mostly independent. On a world scale, as it
can be done today--since the Company has really made it one world--the
same can be done, with something like the Company to insure economics."
"I suppose every man who had any idealism has thought the same,"
Carmody said slowly. He sighed softly. "I remember trying to preach it
to my father when I was just out of college. You're right. But can you
set up such a perfect government? Can I? Tell me how, Tom, and I'll
give you your chance, if I can."
Zorchi laughed cynically, but that was what I'd hoped Carmody might say.
"All right," I told him. "We can't do it. No one man is fit to rule,
ever, or to establish rule. Oh, I had wish-dreams, a few days ago, I
suppose, about what I'd do, _if_! But men have set out to establish
new systems before, and done good jobs of it. Read the Constitution--a
system put together artificially by expert political thinkers,
and good for two hundred years, at least! And they didn't have our
opportunities. For the first time, the world has to wait. Get the best
minds you can, Carmody. Give them twenty-five years to work it out.
They can come up with an answer. And then, when the world is awakened,
you can start with it, fresh, without upsetting any old order. Is that
your answer?"
"Most of it." There was a sudden light in his old eyes. "Yes, the sleep
does make the chance possible. But how are you going to get the experts
and assemble them?"
I pointed to Zorchi. "Hermes, the messenger of the gods. He's a jet
pilot who can get all over the world. And he can move outside, without
needing to worry about radiation."
"So?" Zorchi snorted again. "So, I am now your messenger, Weels! Do you
think I would trouble myself so much for all of you, Weels?"
I grinned at him. "You defiantly speak of being a man. That makes you
part of the human race. I'm simply taking you at your word."
"So?" he repeated, his face wooden. "Such a messenger would have much
power, Weels. Suppose I choose to be Zorchi the ruler?"
"Not while Zorchi the man is also Zorchi the freak," I said with
deliberate cruelty. "Go look at yourself."
And suddenly he smiled, his lips drawing back from his teeth. "Weels,
for the first time you are honest. And for that as well as that I _am_
a man, I will be Zorchi the messenger. But first, should we not decide
on a plan of action? Or do we first rule and then conquer?"
"We wait first," I told him.
On the wall, the radiation indicator clicked steadily, its needle
moving further into the red.