'Relay station! See if you can raise my office.'
Dolores' face looked out from the screen. 'You're still there— good!' he told her. 'I was afraid you'd gone home.'
'I came back, Mr. Gaines.'
'Good girl. Get me Van Kleeck's personal file jacket. I want to see his classification record.'
She was back with it in exceptionally short order, and read from it the symbols and percentages. He nodded repeatedly as the data checked his hunches: Masked introvert—inferiority complex. It checked.
' 'Comment of the board':' she read. ' 'In spite of the slight potential instability shown by maxima A and D on the consolidated profile curve, the board is convinced that this officer is, nevertheless, fitted for duty. He has an exceptionally fine record, and is especially adept in handling men. He is, therefore, recommended for retention and promotion.' '
'That's all, Dolores. Thanks.'
'Yes, Mr. Gaines.'
'I'm off for a showdown. Keep your fingers crossed.'
'But, Mr. Gaines—' Back in Fresno, Dolores stared wide-eyed at an empty screen.
'Take me to Mr. Van Kleeck!'
The man addressed took his gun out of Gaines' ribs—reluctantly, Gaines thought—and indicated that the chief engineer should precede him up the stairs.
Gaines climbed out of the car, and complied.
Van Kleeck had set himself up in the sector control room proper, rather than the administrative office. With him were half a dozen men, all armed.
'Good evening, Director Van Kleeck.' The little man swelled visibly at Gaines'
acknowledgment of his assumed rank.
'We don't go in much around here for titles,' he said, with ostentatious casualness. 'Just call me Van. Sit down, Gaines.'
Gaines did so. It was necessary to get those other men out. He looked at them with an expression of bored amusement. 'Can't you handle one unarmed man by yourself, Van? Or don't the Functionalists trust each other?'
Van Kleeck's face showed his annoyance, but Gaines' smile was undaunted.
Finally the smaller man picked up a pistol from his desk, and motioned toward the door. 'Get out, you guys.'
'But, Van—'
'Get out, I said!'
When they were alone, Van Kleeck picked up the electric push button which Gaines had seen in the visor screen, and pointed his pistol at his former chief. 'O.K.,'
he growled, 'try any funny stuff, and off it goes! What's your proposition?'
Gaines' irritating smile grew broader. Van Kleeck scowled. 'What's so damn funny?' he said.
Gaines granted him an answer. 'You are, Van—honest, this is rich. You start a Functionalist revolution, and the only function you can think of to perform is to blow up the road that justifies your title. Tell me,' he went on, 'what is it you are so scared of?'
'I am not afraid!'
'Not afraid? You? Sitting there, ready to commit hara-kiri with that toy push button, and you tell me that you aren't afraid. If your buddies knew how near you are to throwing away what they've fought for, they'd shoot you in a second. You're afraid of them, too, aren't you?'
Van Kleeck thrust the push button away from him, and stood up. 'I am not afraid!' he shouted, and came around the desk toward Gaines.
Gaines sat where he was, and laughed. 'But you are! You're afraid of me, this minute. You're afraid I'll have you on the carpet for the way you do your job. You're afraid the cadets won't salute you. You're afraid they are laughing behind your back.
You're afraid of using the wrong fork at dinner. You're afraid people are looking at you—and you are afraid that they won't notice you.'
'I am not!' he protested. 'You... you dirty, stuck-up snob! Just because you went to a high-hat school you think you're better than anybody.' He choked, and became incoherent, fighting to keep back tears of rage. 'You, and your nasty little cadets—'
Gaines eyed him cautiously. The weakness in the man's character was evident now—he wondered why he had not seen it before. He recalled how ungracious Van Kleeck had been one time when he had offered to help him with an intricate piece of figuring.
The problem now was to play on his weakness, to keep him so preoccupied that he would not remember the peril-laden push button. He must be caused to center the venom of his twisted outlook on Gaines, to the exclusion of every other thought.
But he must not goad him too carelessly, or a shot from across the room might put an end to Gaines, and to any chance of avoiding a bloody, wasteful struggle for control of the road.
Gaines chuckled. 'Van,' he said, 'you are a pathetic little shrimp. That was a dead giveaway. I understand you perfectly—you're a third- rater, Van, and all your life you've been afraid that someone would see through you, and send you back to the foot of the class. Director—pfiii! If you are the best the Functionalists can offer, we can afford to ignore them—they'll fold up from their own rotten inefficiency.' He swung around in his chair, deliberately turning his back on Van Kleeck and Was gun.
Van Kleeck advanced on his tormentor, halted a few feet away, and shouted:
'You ... I'll show you ... I'll put a bullet in you; that's what I'll do!'
Gaines swung back around, got up, and walked steadily toward him. 'Put that popgun down before you hurt yourself.'
Van Kleeck retreated a step. 'Don't you come near me!' he screamed. 'Don't you come near me ... or I'll shoot you ... see if I don't.'
'This is it,' thought Gaines, and dived.
The pistol went off alongside his ear. Well, that one didn't get him. They were on the floor. Van Kleeck was hard to hold, for a little man. Where was the gun? There!
He had it. He broke away.
Van Kleeck did not get up. He lay sprawled on the floor, tears streaming out of his closed eyes, blubbering like a frustrated child.
Gaines looked at him with something like compassion in his eyes, and hit him carefully behind the ear with the butt of the pistol. He walked over to the door, and listened for a moment, then locked it cautiously.
The cord from the push button led to the control board. He examined the hookup, and disconnected it carefully. That done, he turned to the televisor at the control desk, and called Fresno.
'O.K., Dave,' he said, 'let 'em attack now—and for the love of Pete, hurry!' Then he cleared the screen, not wishing his watch officer to see how he was shaking.
Back in Fresno the next morning Gaines paced around the main control room with a fair degree of contentment in his heart. The roads were rolling—before long they would be up to speed again. It had been a long night. Every engineer, every available cadet, had been needed to make the inch-by-inch inspection of Sacramento Sector which he had required. Then they had to cross-connect around two wrecked subsector control boards. But the roads were rolling—he could feel their rhythm up through the floor.
He stopped beside a haggard, stubbly-bearded man. 'Why don't you go home, Dave?' he asked. 'McPherson can carry on from here.'
'How about yourself, chief? You don't look like a June bride.'
'Oh, I'll catch a nap in my office after a bit. I called my wife, and told her I couldn't make it. She's coming down here to meet me.'
'Was she sore?'
'Not very. You know how women are.' He turned back to the instrument board, and watched the clicking busybodies assembling the data from six sectors. San Diego Circle, Angeles Sector, Bakersfield Sector, Fresno Sector, Stockton—Stockton?
