There was a photo of a woman there, too, and Malone could read just a
little of the caption:
"Obeying the edict of martial law laid down by the President, Miss
Helen A.--"
He wondered vaguely if her last name were Handbasket.
The major was looking at him. "O.K., then," he said.
"I can go on?" Malone said.
The major looked stern. "Drive on," he said.
Malone got the car going; the roadblock was lifted for him and he went
on by.
After a moment, he said: "Pardon the interruption. I trust that all
the devoted listeners to Uncle Kenneth's Happy Hour are still tuned
in."
_Go ahead,_ said Lou's voice.
"All right, let's take a look at what you've been doing. You've caused
people to change their minds about what they've been intending to do.
You can cause all sorts of hell to break loose that way. You have a
lot of people you want to get rid of, so you play on their neuroses
and concoct errors for them to fight. You rig things so that they
quit, or get fired, or lose elections, or get arrested, or just
generally get put out of circulation. Some of the less stable ones
just up and did away with themselves.
"Sometimes, it's individuals who have to go. Sometimes, it's whole
groups or maybe even whole nations. And sometimes it's in between, and
you manage to foul up organizational moves with misplaced papers,
mis-sent messages, errors, changed minds, and everything else you can
think of.
"You know," he went on, "at first I couldn't see any pattern in what
was going on--though I remember telling myself that there was a kind
of justice in the way this thing was just as hard on gangsters as it
was on businessmen and Congressmen.
"The Congressman from Gahoochie County, Arkansas, gets himself in a
jam over fraudulent election returns on the same day that the
accountant for the Truckers Union sends Mike Sands' books to the
Attorney General. Simple justice, I call it.
"And, you know, seen from that viewpoint, this whole caper might come
out looking pretty good. If most of the characters you've taken care
of are just the boys who needed taking care of, I'd say more power to
you--except for one thing. It's all right to get rid of all the fools,
idiots, maniacs, blockheads, morons, psychopaths, paranoids,
timidity-ridden, fear-worshipers, fanatics, thieves, and the rest of
the general, all-round, no-good characters; I'm all for it. But not
this way. Oh, no.
"You've pressed the panic button, that's what you've done.
"You've done more damage in two weeks than all those fumblebrains have
been able to do in several myriads of lifetimes. You've loused up the
economy of this nation and every other civilized nation. You've caused
riots in which innocent people have died; you've caused thousands more
to lose their businesses and their savings. And only God Himself knows
how many more are going to die of starvation and murder before this
thing is over.
"And you can't tell me that _all_ of those people deserve to die."
He slowed down as he came to a small town, and for the first time in
many miles he focused on the road ahead with his full mind. The town,
he saw, looked like a shambles. There were four cars tastefully
arranged on the lawn of what appeared to be the local library. Across
the street, a large drugstore was in flames, and surprised people were
hurrying to put it out. There didn't seem to be any State Police or
Army men around, but they'd passed through; Malone saw a forgotten
overseas cap lying on the road ahead.
With a shock, he realized that he was now in Pennsylvania, close to
where he wanted to go. A signboard told him the town he was looking at
was Milford. It was a mess, and Malone hoped fervently that it was a
mess that could eventually be cleaned up.
The town was a small one, and Malone was glad to get out of it so
quickly.
"That's the kind of thing I mean," he said aloud. Then he paused. "Are
you there, anybody?"
He imagined he heard Luba's voice saying: _Yes, Ken. Yes, I'm here.
Listening to you._
Imagination was fine but, of course, there was no way for them to get
through to him. They were telepathic, but Kenneth J. Malone, he told
himself sadly, was not.
"Hello, out there," he went on. "I hope you've been listening so far,
because there isn't too much more for me to say.
"Just this: you've wrecked my country, and you've wrecked almost all
of the rest of civilization. You've brought my world down around my
ears.
"I have every logical reason to hate your guts. By all the evidence I
have, you are a group of the worst blackguards who ever existed; by
all the evidence, I should be doing everything in my power to
exterminate you.
"But I'm not.
"My prescience tells me that what you've been doing is right and
necessary. I'm damned if I can see it, but there it is. I just hope
you can explain it to me."