Hsi approached him from the shadow of the school building. “Glad you could make it, Chandler. No, no questions. Just watch.”
In the fifth inning, with the score aggregating around thirty, there was an interruption. A tall, redheaded man glanced at his watch, licked his lips, took a deep breath and walked out onto the diamond. He glanced at the crowd, while the kids suspended play without surprise. Then the redheaded man nodded to the umpire and stepped off the field. The ballplayers resumed their game, but now the whole attention of the audience was on the redheaded man.
Suspicion crossed Chandler’s mind. In a moment it was confirmed, as the redheaded man raised his hands waist high and clasped his right hand around his left wrist—only for a moment, but that was enough.
The ball game was a cover. Chandler was present at a meeting of what Hsi had called The Society of Slaves, the underground that dared to pit itself against the execs.
Hsi cleared his throat and said, “This is the one. I vouch for him.” And that was startling too, Chandler thought, because all these wrist-circled men and women were looking at him.
“All right,” said the redheaded man nervously, “let’s get started then. First thing, anybody got any weapons? Sure? Take a look—we don’t want any slipups. Turn out your pockets.”
There was a flurry and a woman near Chandler held up a key ring with a tiny knife on it “Penknife? Hell, yes; get rid of it. Throw it in the outfield. You can pick it up after the meeting.” A hundred eyes watched the pearly object fly. “We ought to be all right here,” said the redheaded man. “The kids have been playing every day this week and nobody looked in. But watch your neighbor. See anything suspicious, don’t wait. Don’t take a chance. Holler ‘Kill the umpire!’ or anything you like, but holler. Good and loud.” He paused, breathing hard. “All right, Hsi. Introduce him.”
The parts man took Chandler firmly by the shoulder. “This fellow has something for us,” he said. “He’s working for the exec Koitska, building what can’t be anything else but a duplicate of the machine that they use to control us. He—”
“Wait a minute!” A bearded man came forward and peered furiously into Chandler’s face. “Look at his head! Don’t you see he’s branded?”
Chandler touched his scar as the man with the beard hissed, “Damned hoaxer! This is the lowest species of life on the face of the earth—someone who pretended to be possessed in order to do some damned dirty act What was it, hoaxer? Murder? Burning babies alive?”
Hsi economically let go of Chandler’s shoulder, half turned the bearded man with one hand and swung with the other. “Shut up, Linton. Wait till you hear what he’s got for us.”
The bearded man, sprawling and groggy, slowly rose as Hsi explained tersely what he had guessed of Chandler’s work—as much as Chandler himself knew, it seemed. “Maybe this is only a duplicate. Maybe it won’t be used. But maybe it will—and Chandler’s the man who can sabotage it! How would you like that? The execs switching over to this equipment while the other one is down for maintenance—and their headsets don’t work!”
There was a terrible silence, except for the sounds of the children playing ball. Two runs had just scored. Chandler recognized the silence. It was hope.
Linton broke it, his blue eyes gleaming above the beard. “No! Better than that. Why wait? We can use this fellow’s machine. Set it up, get us some headsets—and we can control the execs themselves!”
The silence was even longer; then there was a babble of discussion, but Chandler did not take part in it. He was thinking. It was a tremendous thought.
Suppose a man like himself were actually able to do what they wanted of him. Never mind the practical difficulties—learning how it worked, getting a headset, bypassing the traps Koitska would surely have set to prevent just that. Never mind the penalties for failure. Suppose he could make it work, and find fifty headsets, and fit them to the fifty men and women here in this clandestine meeting of the Society of Slaves. …
Would there, after all, be any change worth mentioning in the state of the world?
Or was Lord Acton, always and everywhere, right? Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The power locked in the coronets of the exec was more than flesh and blood could stand; he could almost sense the rot in those near him at the mere thought.
But Hsi was throwing cold water on the idea. “Sorry, but I know that much: One exec can’t control another. The headpieces insulate against control. Well.” He glanced at his watch. “We agreed on twenty minutes maximum for this meeting,” he reminded the redheaded man, who nodded.
“You’re right.” He glanced around the group. “I’ll make the rest of it fast. News: You all know they got some more of us last week. Have you all been by the Monument? Three of our comrades were still there this morning. But I don’t think they know we’re organized, they think it’s only individual acts of sabotage. In case any of you don’t know, the execs can’t read our minds. Not even when they’re controlling us. Proof is we’re all still alive. Hanrahan knew practically every one of us, and he’s been lying out there for a week with a broken back, ever since they caught him trying to blow up the guard pits at East Gate. They had plenty of chance to pump him if they could. They can’t. Next thing. No more individual attacks
