"Not--not that it means anything to me, Tony. They'll find Johnny
innocent, of course. All three machines. The final machines."
_Innocent? Oh, sure._
"A man," said Tony with a vague motion of his hands. "What's the
difference what man a woman has? In the morning there's always
another--and another name. What's the difference?" He smiled a small
toy smile with eyes half closed so the girl couldn't look too closely
into them.
But it was all right, she hadn't heard. At least she wasn't balling
those big eyes of hers at him. She was looking down into her folded
hands.
He continued, "There's a war on, Mrs. Haley. It seems there's always a
war on, somehow. And everybody--you, me, the guy down the street who
skins ships for a living--we all have to remember that. And yet some
of us don't. Some of us go off on a tangent and try to sell out our
country and then there's hell to pay. And if we're found guilty, we get
the execution. The Neg-Emote."
The girl's lips began to tremble. She looked up. "Does it hurt, Tony? I
mean...."
"Physically? No, of course not." A corner of his mouth curled. "We're
humane nowadays, hadn't you heard? We just strap a man in a chair and
press a button and down comes a metal hood over him. We press some more
buttons and pull a switch or two, and that's that. No feeling, nothing.
The man's as good as new except he has no emotions any more. No
emotions whatever except personal physical pain, such as he'd need in
case somebody stepped on his toe or jabbed him with a pin. The State
wants us to protect ourselves, you see. It wouldn't want us getting
hurt because we don't feel anything."
He stopped because it was getting harder to continue. "We used to call
it 'stripping,' but that was long ago before the humane boys decided
the term was a little cruel. Now it's just Neg-Emoting. But the same
thing. Just a fancy title."
Her big eyes were suddenly eating into his. "What do they do with them,
Tony?"
He shrugged again. "Send 'em off to Training. Some can be taught this,
some that, but a living death nevertheless. What else can a traitor
expect?"
The girl began to tremble all over. "Not Johnny! They can't do that to
Johnny! He's innocent, Tony--he didn't do anything! Tony, tell them
that! Tell them to let him go...."
He put his teeth together hard. What do you say to a woman who sits
across from you, waiting the long, long wait? What do you say to a
woman like this when you see the terror--and something else--in eyes
like hers?
"You like the guy, Mrs. Haley?" he asked gently. "That's old-fashioned
as hell, you know. We all learn that way back in primaries."
But the woman wasn't listening again, wasn't caring what he'd said.
She began to whisper very softly:
"In the nights I used to be frightened. I used to lie there asleep
and dream of the ships coming down and spraying the house with the
burn-waves. And I could hear the roaring thunder of the jets and
the house would start to shake and I'd try to yell, but I couldn't.
Something inside would be choking me. And just when the burn-waves
would be coming hot through the window and licking at the walls inside
the room, I'd scream myself awake and jump up in bed and the sweat
would be pouring off me."
Tony stared, incredulous, into the big balls of fright that her eyes
had become.
"And then the lights would come on again, and there would be Johnny
lying next to me smiling a little, and his curly hair would be all
tousled from sleep, and he'd say to me, 'Baby, you've been dreaming
again. Don't you know I'm here? Don't you know I'll always be here?
Don't you know that, Baby?' And then it would be all right, and the
roaring jets would be only the dawn shift going out on Security Patrol.
And then I could go back to sleep again."
She stopped. _Portal Waiting_ had become a gray ghost of a thing with
nothing living in it, only the clouds of memory like smoke veils
swirling, drifting here and there, soon gone.
And then: "They'll let him go, Tony. He's innocent, you know. They have
to let him go."
He didn't look at her. He got up from his chair, put his hands rigidly
at his sides. Then he did look, just once, and very hard.
"Get out of here!" he growled.
"No, Tony."
He took a deep breath, turned, went across the foyer to the levelators.
As he passed under the huge Master Screen, her voice came again, but
quite thin:
"You'll let me know, Tony? You'll let me know as soon as you get word?"
He didn't answer, didn't look back, didn't do anything except
keep going to the levelators. He went upstairs, found the door of
Executions, opened it, went through, let it slam shut.
* * * * *
Things started to happen. The Master Clock over on the black desk made
a quiet blipping sound and the Emote Neutral lights went out. At once
the office was flooded with Amber Official, the working lights. Then
the Master Screen glowed and a narrow-faced man with washed-away eyes
looked out at him.
"Condemned is waiting, _Mr._ Radek," the narrow-faced man said acidly.
"Cell Two is getting dusty waiting for you, _Mr._ Radek. Very dusty."
Tony looked up. His heart wasn't in it, but he said it anyhow: "Go
chase your blonde some more, hell-hips."
He went over to the desk, banged the Supplies and Control button, held
it down. Master Screen darkened. He looked at the small square of white
paper on the black desk top.
A bill of divorcement. Like that. So in the morning the kid downstairs
could go out and get herself another mate and then she could go back to
bed again and dream some more about the roaring jets and the burn-waves.
He reached up and wiped at his forehead. She didn't have to see it
happen. Nothing in the Constitution--old or new--stated she had to see
it happen. He looked down at the matswitch that controlled the visi-lok
on the Master Screen. He clamped his teeth together and his hand went
out and flipped the switch. The office went dead.
Maybe nobody'd notice. Maybe he'd have time to slip into Cell Two and
get it over with before anybody noticed. He started across the room on
fast, silent feet.
"_Radek!_" the alternate speaker over in the corner blasted out. He
froze solid. "Radek, don't move! Stand where you are!"
Don't move? He couldn't have moved if he'd had jets on. And then the
hard voice went on again: "Central Command to Supplies and Control. Use
Emergency visi-relay. Unlock the Master Screen! This is Command 419,
Regulation Four. Signed, Countersigned."
Almost at once the Master Screen flickered into life and a hard,
severe-looking face appeared there. "Radek, turn around! Face the
screen!"
"Yes, sir." Tony turned.
"Second violation, Radek. Why?"
Tony forced a blank face. He lifted his shoulders, said: "I was over
here on my way to Cell Two for the Execution. How could I--"
"That will be all, Radek! Clear your desk. Prepare for judgment on
final machines."
Tony swallowed. He didn't move because he couldn't move.
"Well, Radek?"
He fought his face clean, kept his hands rigid at his sides. Sweat was
rolling down his back, but that was all right; Central Command couldn't
be expected to see sweat roll down a man's back under his clothing,
though a lot of people thought so.
"A suggestion, sir," he said at last.
"What?" Hard eyes bored into his own.
He let a little anxious look creep over his face. Not a guilty
look--he hoped--but the kind of anxious look a worried but innocent man
might have in a spot like this.
He said quickly: "About that visi-lok. I suggest it might have gone
into lock by itself. You see, it's one of the old-fashioned kind, the
type they used to have that worked with solenoids. We've had trouble
with them before."
That brought a little silence. The hard eyes in the screen said at
last: "Central Command to Supplies and Control. Is the visi-lok in
Executions controlled by a solenoid? Was it never changed to relay?"
Tony gulped. He looked into the Master Screen, but he remained frozen
to the floor, hardly breathing. And then a very thin voice answered
nervously:
"I--I believe that's correct, sir. I believe Executions does have the
old-fashioned solenoid. It seems there hasn't been time to change it.
I've been intending to...."
The voice was cut off. The hard eyes came back to Tony. "Decision!" the
hard voice said.
"Yes, sir?"
"Exonerated, Radek! Carry on with Execution in Cell Two." The screen
went blank.
Tony shuddered. A close one. A damned close one. That was the war for
you. Even a man's breaths are counted. He went on shaky feet over to
the cooler, reached in, got out a ritual rose, left the office end
shuffled down the hall to Cell Two.
John Edward Haley. The condemned. A thin man, Tony thought. Well, sure,
there aren't many fat men any more. Not in ordinary circumstances, that
is.
The man was sitting tensely in the chair. There was no one else in the
cell, which was as it should be, of course. Witnesses, yes--the Master
Screen up on the wall--but not here, not visible.
Tony went across the Cell. "John Edward Haley," he said.
The man moved a nervous tongue over dry lips.
"John Edward Haley, you have been sentenced for Execution. Now hear
these final words of the State as directed by Presidential order from
Responsibility Official in the City of Greater New Denver, this night."
He took two small steps toward the man in the chair. He held out the
red rose, put it in the hand of the other. Then he stepped back two
steps until his toes were just touching a small plaque built into the
floor. He looked down, read from the plaque:
"The giving of this rose. A symbol for the red of the blood of your
brothers that you have let by treason and/or treachery. A symbol that
as the rose is red, so are the unclean acts of your own hand, of your
own mind. The State has so spoken."
He looked up. A nice way to kiss a guy off. Might as well tell him he
bit his brother's finger, too, when he was a kid.
"Have you anything to say?" he asked.
The man's nervous tongue worked again. He said quickly:
"Yeah. Look, guy, just one thing. Just one favor. I don't give a damn
what happens to me. Sure, I'm guilty. So you caught me, and so I take
it. So what? A guy expects that. But the wife...."
Tony's teeth came together hard.
"... But the wife, see? She's down in _Portal Waiting_. Been there for
three nights now. I don't want her to witness this. I don't want her
to look into that Master Screen down there and see it. That's all I'm
asking, guy, and it ain't much. Just a flick of a switch is all I'm
asking. It ain't much. It ain't, is it?"
_It ain't, hey? By God!_
"When the hood comes down, she'll see it. She's bound to," the thin
man went on fast. "She'll see the flash in the Screen and she'll know
it's me, and she's never done anything to deserve that. That's all I'm
asking, guy. That's all I'm asking."
The silence in the cell was a thick thing. Tony could feel the sweat
rolling down his back again. But a different kind of a sweat now--not
a sweat for himself, a sweat for somebody else. Just one finger touch
on that visi-lok matswitch would do it. Just one finger, and the small
woman downstairs in _Portal Waiting_ wouldn't know, would have one more
instant of waiting, of hoping against hope. Of suspense. Of breathing
in the air we all breathe in, of being alive, sentient; and knowing
that her man, the thin fellow with the tousled, curly hair, was still
sentient, too.
"Well, guy?"
Tony wet his lips. "Sorry, Haley. Petition refused." The hood came
down. The Master Screen up on the wall blazed into life.
* * * * *
Tony sat at his black desk with his hands folded, fingers laced. That's
Executions for you. And this is war. There's a war on. Don't forget
that. He looked down at his hands, sighed. Then he reached out and
touched the Supplies and Control button.
"Hell-hips!" he growled.
He looked at the screen. It wasn't hell-hips. It was a blonde. Not
a young blonde, a scarecrow blonde. An old wretched piece of living
mechanism like himself.
"Where's Clacker?" he asked.
"Mr. Clacker is no longer with us, Mr. Radek."
"Huh? What happened to him?"
"Mr. Clacker has been taken to the three Final Machines for trial and
judgment. I am now taking over here. My name is Hortense. G. Welker
Hortense."
Tony looked at the blonde. Crude, undisguised lights were coming from
the woman's eyes. Promotion-happy.
He said at last: "Sorry as hell about that. The solenoid thing, I
suppose. I didn't mean to get the guy in trouble. I sure didn't mean
that."
"He'd been ordered to change it. It was no one's fault but his own. You
were only doing your duty, I'm sure. And duty comes above everything."
"Yeah. Yeah, sure. I know." He sighed once more. "Get me an airbrush
and a bottle of white paint."
"What?"
"I want an airbrush and a bottle of white paint. I want to paint my
nice little ritual roses. I don't like red any more. I want all white
ones."
"Mr. Radek...?"
Tony glared. "Do I get that paint or don't I? Don't just stand there!"
His fist banged down on Supplies and Control button. The Master Screen
went blank, and then flashed into motion again fast. The blonde again.
Nasty now. A chip off the old block. Another hell-hips, but this time
with skirts.
"Request not granted! This is entirely against regulations, Mr. Radek!
Specifically, against ordinance 1991, of the Code of...."
"Oh, can it," he growled wearily. "For God's sake, don't give me any
more of that."
The blonde stiffened. "Well! After all, I'm only doing my duty, Mr.
Radek. As head of Supplies and Control, I have certain well-defined and
inflexible...."
Tony blacked her out. He held her blacked out till he was sure she
wouldn't come on again. Duty.
The Master Clock made a quiet blipping noise. Amber Official lights
dimmed and Emote Neutral came on. Long, probing shadow fingers snaked
here and there across the floor, and a stillness that should have been
restful descended eventually on the place.
"_Radek!_"