The next morning there was a crowd gathered before the Cullen Building
when Walton arrived.
There must have been at least a hundred people, fanning outward from a
central focus. Walton stepped from the jetbus and, with collar pulled
up carefully to obscure as much of his face as possible, went to
investigate.
A small red-faced man stood on a rickety chair against the side of the
building. He was flanked by a pair of brass flagpoles, one bearing the
American flag and the other the ensign of the United Nations. His voice
was a biting rasp--probably, thought Walton, intensified, sharpened,
and made more irritating by a harmonic modulator at his throat. An
irritating voice put its message across twice as fast as a pleasant one.
He was shouting, "This is the place! Up here, in this building, that's
where they are! That's where Popeek wastes our money!"
From the slant of the man's words Walton instantly thought:
_Herschelite!_
He repressed his anger and, for once, decided to stay and hear the
extremist out. He had never really paid much attention to Herschelite
propaganda--he had been exposed to little of it--and he realized
that now, as head of Popeek, he owed it to himself to become familiar
with the anti-Popeek arguments of both extremist factions--those who
insisted Popeek was a tyranny, and the Herschelites, who thought it was
too weak.
"This Popeek," the little man said, accenting the awkwardness of the
word. "You know what it is? It's a stopgap. It's a silly, soft-minded,
half-hearted attempt at solving our problems. It's a fake, a fraud, a
phony!"
There was real passion behind the words. Walton distrusted small men
with deep wells of passion; he no more enjoyed their company than he
did that of a dynamo or an atomic pile. They were always threatening to
explode.
The crowd was stirring restlessly. The Herschelite was getting to them,
one way or another. Walton drew back nervously, not wanting to be
recognized, and stationed himself at the fringe of the crowd.
"Some of you don't like Popeek for this reason or that reason. But let
me tell you something, friends ... you're wronger than they are! We've
got to get tough with ourselves! We have to face the truth! Popeek is
an unrealistic half-solution to man's problems. Until we limit birth,
establish rigid controls over who's going to live and who isn't, we--"
It was straight Herschelite propaganda, undiluted. Walton wasn't
surprised when someone in the audience interrupted, growling, "And
who's going to set those controls? You?"
"You trusted yourselves to Popeek, didn't you? Why hesitate, then, to
trust yourselves to Abel Herschel and his group of workers for the
betterment and purification of mankind?"
Walton was almost limp with amazement. The Herschelite group was so
much more drastic in its approach than Popeek that he wondered how they
dared come out with these views in public. Animosity was high enough
against Popeek; would the public accept a group more stringent yet?
The little man's voice rose high. "Onward with the Herschelites!
Mankind must move forward! The Equalization people represent the forces
of decay and sloth!"
Walton turned to the man next to him and murmured, "But Herschel's a
fanatic. They'll kill all of us in the name of mankind."
The man looked puzzled; then, accepting the idea, he nodded. "Yeah,
buddy. You know, you may have something there."
That was all the spark needed. Walton edged away surreptitiously and
watched it spread through the crowd, while the little man's harangue
grew more and more inflammatory.
Until a rock arced through the air from somewhere, whipped across the
billowing UN flag, and cracked into the side of the building. That was
the signal.
A hundred men and women converged on the little man on the battered
chair. "_We have to face the truth!_" the harsh voice cried; then
the flags were swept down, trampled on. Flagpoles fell, ringing
metallically on the concrete; the chair toppled. The little man was
lost beneath a tide of remorseless feet and arms.
A siren screamed.
"Cops!" Walton yelled from his vantage point some thirty feet away, and
abruptly the crowd melted away in all directions, leaving Walton and
the little man alone on the street. A security wagon drew up. Four men
in gray uniforms sprang out.
"What's been going on here? Who's this man?" Then, seeing Walton, "Hey!
Come over here!"
"Of course, officer." Walton turned his collar down and drew near. He
spotted the glare of a ubiquitous video camera and faced it squarely.
"I'm Director Walton of Popeek," he said loudly, into the camera. "I
just arrived here a few minutes ago. I saw the whole thing."
"Tell us about it, Mr. Walton," the security man said.
"It was a Herschelite." Walton gestured at the broken body crumpled
against the ground. "He was delivering an inflammatory speech aimed
against Popeek, with special reference to the late Director FitzMaugham
and myself. I was about to summon you and end the disturbance, when
the listeners became aware that the man was a Herschelite. When they
understood what he was advocating, they--well, you see the result."
"Thank you, sir. Terribly sorry we couldn't have prevented it. Must be
very unpleasant, Mr. Walton."
"The man was asking for trouble," Walton said. "Popeek represents
the minds and hearts of the world. Herschel and his people seek to
overthrow this order. I can't condone violence of any sort, naturally,
but"--he smiled into the camera--"Popeek is a sacred responsibility to
me. Its enemies I must regard as blind and misguided people."
He turned and entered the building, feeling pleased with himself. That
sequence would be shown globally on the next news screenings; every
newsblare in the world would be reporting his words.
Lee Percy would be proud of him. Without benefit either of rehearsal or
phonemic engineering, Walton had delivered a rousing speech and turned
a grisly incident into a major propaganda instrument.
And more than that, Director FitzMaugham would have been proud of him.
But beneath the glow of pride, he was trembling. Yesterday he had saved
a boy by a trifling alteration of his genetic record; today he had
killed a man by sending a whispered accusation rustling through a mob.
_Power._ Popeek represented power, perhaps the greatest power in the
world. That power would have to be channeled somehow, now that it had
been unleashed.
The stack of papers relating to the superspeed space drive was still on
his desk when he entered the office. He had had time yesterday to read
through just some of the earliest; then, the pressure of routine had
dragged him off to other duties.
Encouraged by FitzMaugham, the faster-than-light project had
originated about a decade or so before. It stemmed from the fact that
the ion-drive used for travel between planets had a top velocity, a
limiting factor of about ninety thousand miles per second. At that
rate, it would take some eighteen years for a scouting party to visit
the closest star and report back ... not very efficient for a planet in
a hurry to expand outward.
A group of scientists had set to work developing a subspace warp drive,
one that would cut across the manifold of normal space and allow speeds
above light velocity.
All the records were here: the preliminary trials, the budget
allocations, the sketches and plans, the names of the researchers.
Walton ploughed painstakingly through them, learning names,
assimilating scientific data. It seemed that, while it was still in its
early stages, FitzMaugham had nurtured the project along with money
from his personal fortune.
For most of the morning Walton leafed through documents describing
projected generators, types of hull material, specifications,
speculations. It was nearly noon when he came across the neatly-typed
note from Colonel Leslie McLeod, one of the military scientists in
charge of the ultradrive project. Walton read it through once, gasped,
and read it again.
It was dated 14 June 2231, almost one year ago. It read:
_My dear Mr. FitzMaugham:_
_I'm sure it will gladden you to learn that we have at last achieved
success in our endeavors. The X-72 passed its last tests splendidly,
and we are ready to leave on the preliminary scouting flight at
once._