'They'll brainburn him, I suppose?'
'I suppose. Listen!'
Deck One was firing. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six.
People turned to one another and shook hands, laughed and slapped shoulders heartily. Eighteen missiles were racing through the stratosphere, soon to tumble on Ellay. With any luck, one or two would slip through the first wall of interceptors and blast close enough to smash windows and topple walls in the crazy city by the ocean. It would serve the lunatics right.
Five minutes later an exultant voice filled most of Denv.
'Recon missile report,' it said. 'Eighteen launched, eighteen per-fect trajectories. Fifteen shot down by Ellay first-line interceptors, three shot down by Ellay second-line interceptors. Extensive blast damage observed in Griffith Park area of Ellay!'
There were cheers.
And eight Full Maintainers marched into the refectory silently, and marched out with Reuben.
He knew better than to struggle or ask futile questions. Any ques-tion you asked of a Maintainer was futile. But he goggled when they marched him onto an upward-bound stairway.
They rode past the eighty-ninth level and Reuben lost count, see-ing only the marvels of the upper reaches of Denv. He saw carpets that ran the entire length of corridors, and intricate fountains, and mosaic walls, stained- glass windows, more wonders than he could recognize, things for which he had no name.
He was marched at last into a wood-paneled room with a great polished desk and a map behind it. He saw May, and another man who must have been a general—Rudolph?—but sitting at the desk was a frail old man who wore a circlet of stars on each khaki shoul-der.
The old man said to Reuben: 'You are an Ellay spy and saboteur.'
Reuben looked at May. Did one speak directly to the man who wore the stars, even in reply to such an accusation?
'Answer him, Reuben,' May said kindly.
'I am May's man Reuben, of the eighty-third level, an Atomist,' he said.
'Explain,' said the other general heavily, 'if you can, why all eighteen of the warheads you procured today failed to fire.'
'But they did!' gasped Reuben. 'The Recon missile report said there was blast damage from the three that got through and it didn't say anything about the others failing to fire.'
The other general suddenly looked sick and May looked even kindlier.
The man who wore the stars turned inquiringly to the chief of the Maintainers, who nodded and said: 'That was the Recon mis-sile report, sir.'
The general snapped: 'What I said was that he would attempt to sabotage the attack. Evidently he failed. I also said he is a faulty dou-ble, somehow slipped with great ease into my good friend May's or-ganization. You will find that his left thumb print is a clumsy forgery of the real Reuben's thumb print and that his hair has been artificially darkened.'
The old man nodded at the chief of the Maintainers, who said: 'We have his card, sir.'
Reuben abruptly found himself being fingerprinted and deprived of some hair.
'The f.p.s check, sir,' one Maintainer said. 'He's Reuben.'
'Hair's natural, sir,' said another.
The general began a rearguard action: 'My information about his hair seems to have been inaccurate. But the fingerprint means only that Ellay spies substituted his prints for Reuben's prints in the files—'
'Enough, sir,' said the old man with the stars. 'Dismissed. All of you.
Rudolph, I am surprised. All of you, go.'
Reuben found himself in a vast apartment with May, who was bubbling and chuckling uncontrollably until he popped three of the green capsules into his mouth hurriedly.
'This means the eclipse for years of my good friend Rudolph,' he crowed. 'His game was to have your double sabotage the attack war-heads and so make it appear that my organization is rotten with spies. The double must have been under post-hypnotic, primed to admit everything. Rudolph was so sure of himself that he made his accusations before the attack, the fool!'
He fumbled out the green capsules again.
'Sir,' said Reuben, alarmed.
'Only temporary,' May muttered, and swallowed a fourth. 'But you're right. You leave them alone. There are big things to be done in your time, not in mine. I told you I needed a young man who could claw his way to the top. Rudolph's a fool. He doesn't need the capsules because he doesn't ask questions. Funny, I thought a coup like the double affair would hit me hard, but I don't feel a thing. It's not like the old days. I used to plan and plan, and when the trap went snap it was better than this stuff. But now I don't feel a thing.'
He leaned forward from his chair; the pupils of his eyes were black bullets.
'Do you want to work?' he demanded. 'Do you want your world stood on its head and your brains to crack and do the only worth-while job there is to do? Answer me!'
'Sir, I am a loyal May's man. I want to obey your orders and use my ability to the full.'
'Good enough,' said the general. 'You've got brains, you've got push. I'll do the spade work. I won't last long enough to push it through. You'll have to follow. Ever been outside of Denv?'
Reuben stiffened.
'I'm not accusing you of being a spy. It's really all right to go out-side of Denv. I've been outside. There isn't much to see at first—a lot of ground pocked and torn up by shorts and overs from Ellay and us. Farther out, especially east, it's different. Grass, trees, flowers. Places where you could grow food.
'When I went outside, it troubled me. It made me ask questions. I wanted to know how we started. Yes— started. It wasn't always like this.
Somebody built Denv. Am I getting the idea across to you? It wasn't always like this!
'Somebody set up the reactors to breed uranium and make plutonium.
Somebody tooled us up for the missiles. Somebody wired the boards to control them. Somebody started the hydroponics tanks.
'I've dug through the archives. Maybe I found something. I saw mountains of strength reports, ration reports, supply reports, and yet I never got back to the beginning. I found a piece of paper and maybe I understood it and maybe I didn't. It was about the water of the Colorado River and who should get how much of it. How can you divide water in a river? But it could have been the start of Denv, Ellay, and the missile attacks.'
The general shook his head, puzzled, and went on: 'I don't see clearly what's ahead. I want to make peace between Denv and Ellay, but I don't know how to start or what it will be like. I think it must mean not firing, not even making any more weapons. Maybe it means that some of us, or a lot of us, will go out of Denv and live a different kind of life. That's why I've clawed my way up. That's why I need a young man who can claw with the best of them. Tell me what you think.'
'I think,' said Reuben measuredly, 'it's magnificent—the salvation of Denv. I'll back you to my dying breath if you'll let me.'
May smiled tiredly and leaned back in the chair as Reuben tiptoed out.
What luck, Reuben thought—what unbelievable luck to be at a ful-crum of history like this!
He searched the level for Rudolph's apartment and gained admis-sion.
To the general, he said: 'Sir, I have to report that your friend May is insane. He has just been raving to me, advocating the destruc-tion of civilization as we know it, and urging me to follow in his foot-steps. I pretended to agree—since I can be of greater service to you if I'm in May's confidence.'
'So?' said Rudolph thoughtfully. 'Tell me about the double. How did that go wrong?'
'The bunglers were Selene and Almon. Selene because she alarmed me instead of distracting me. Almon because he failed to recognize her incompetence.'
'They shall be brainburned. That leaves an eighty-ninth-level va-cancy in my organization, doesn't it?'
'You're very kind, sir, but I think I should remain a May's man—
outwardly. If I earn any rewards, I can wait for them. I presume that May will be elected to wear the five stars. He won't live more than two years after that, at the rate he is taking drugs.'
