“I understand,” she said. “It’s the only way you can control him”
“I wanted a chance to talk to you, anyway,” said O’Brien. He leaned back, pressed his fingers against his greying temples. “I learned today that you’ve been asking questions of one of our consultants.”
She turned her profile to him, stared at the chart on the other wall.
O’Brien leaned forward. “Why did you ask what kind of a husband a man with a high loyalty index makes?”
“I was curious.” Her tone was defiant.
“And your curiosity was satisfied? You found out they make extremely devoted husbands.” He slapped his hand against the table top to startle her. “Grace! If you were called upon to eliminate him today, what would you do?”
She paled. “Maybe you’d better get somebody else.”
“We can’t. We don’t dare arouse his suspicions.”
“Then I’d have to… to do it,” she said, her voice low. She turned, looked at O’Brien. “Nate, what is the loyalty index, really?”
“I don’t know if I can answer that question in simple terms,” he said. “Essentially, though, I guess you could say it measures the feeling a person has for the welfare of others.”
She nodded. “Where is he?”
“Let’s not get sentimental,” said O’Brien. “He’s under hypnos now, being examined. We want to know how he feels toward you.” O’Brien leaned back.
Her hands began to tremble and she clasped them tightly together. “He’s very resourceful,” she said.
O’Brien looked at her hands, the knuckles so white where she clasped them. He tugged at an ear. “Yes. Now we want to know how he operates in CR-14. He knows Newton will be out to kill him as he did the other man Gerard sent down. He also knows that Gerard’s threat may not keep Addington and The Coor away.”
She turned a piercing stare upon him. “What do you think Dan will do?”
O’Brien glanced at the red line on the chart. “Our treatment has been pretty drastic. He has been thrown into a tough problem situation. My guess is he’ll show his ruthless side. He’ll stamp on Newton the way he’d stamp on an insect. Addington and The Coor, too, given the chance. It’s a delicate situation, but one calculated to win Gerard’s trust if he succeeds. That’s what Gerard would like to do to his enemies—stamp on them—if he dared. I believe Gerard is taken in by the loyalty index. He thinks he has won Movius’ loyalty. Gerard doesn’t know too much about the variants on the index.”
“What about my father?” she asked. “Does he have a ruthless side, too?”
“All revolutionaries have a ruthless side,” he said. “They have to be practical. That means doing the thing that is necessary. Your father and brother had to go into hiding today. We had planned on it.”
“Hiding?”
“You’ve been recognized as Mrs. Movius,” said O’Brien. “Your relations, therefore, know something. They might be… uh, persuaded to reveal what they know.”
Grace sighed, looked down at her hands.
“You have been remembering that you are a woman,” said O’Brien. “You must put that memory aside. You are a Bu-Psych operative. When this is all over, the crisis past, you can find some nice young man…”
He watched, calculatingly, as Grace turned away, went to the door, opened it slowly. She kept her face averted as she spoke. “I’ll leave now if you don’t mind. We can’t let him see me here when you bring him out.”
“Of course.”
She closed the door behind her.
O’Brien jerked to his feet, stood at the window, staring out over the city where lights were beginning to spring alive in the dusk. “Such weak tools,” he whispered. “Put a little strain on one and it bends out of shape.”
Chapter 15
It was the same hard pallet in the same red-walled cell. Movius sat up, put his feet over the edge. What was O’Brien trying to prove? Something Quilliam London had said came back to Movius: “Find out what the other man wants.” He’d used that idea once before this day—on Gerard. All right, what did O’Brien want? Why this method of bringing him in? To make him believe that Bu-Psych was omnipotent, maybe that they could pick him up any time. But that could mean that underneath it all O’Brien was unsure. The man who knows his own strength doesn’t stand around flexing his muscles. The thought gave him confidence. He got to his feet, waited until the end door opened, strode to meet O’Brien as the Bu-Psych chief entered.
“Let’s talk outside,” said Movius. “Your red walls have lost their potency.”
O’Brien hesitated for the briefest instant. “Of course.” He tossed a canvas chair onto the pallet, turned and led the way out of the cell. “My office is over here.” He opened the door for Movius, followed him into the room of the charts.
Movius glanced swiftly around the room, saw the chair he knew must be O’Brien’s at the end of the table, strode to it, sat down. O’Brien appeared not to notice.
“I wanted to hear from your own lips what happened with Warren Gerard today,” said O’Brien. He lowered himself into the chair usually occupied by Quilliam London, unconsciously assumed London’s pose of reserved superiority.
From my own lips, thought Movius. That could mean he already has heard the story. From who? Addington? Gerard? The gladiator? One of Addington’s men? Grace? But she was back at the apartment. He glanced at the windows. Nearly dark. He had entered the elevator shortly after noon. Grace could have been here. Why had they kept him unconscious so long?
“Your report is the price of your continued freedom,” said O’Brien. “Let’s have the story.”
Movius sat back. The story? All right. A bare recounting. He held out no essential details, watched the unmoving way O’Brien accepted the information. Yes, he had heard it before. Movius finished, waited.
O’Brien said, “How is your marriage with Grace London coming?”
Now why would O’Brien be interested in his married life? Out of some perverse impulse, Movius said, “We’re expecting our first baby in the Spring.”
He hadn’t expected the reaction from O’Brien. The Bu-Psych chief jerked to attention, took two deep breaths, suddenly jumped to his feet. “I just thought of something,” he said and dashed out of the room.
That hit him, thought Movius. Why?
In a moment, O’Brien returned, sat down, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “Important business I forgot to attend to,” he said lamely.
“Let me ask a question,” said Movius. “The last time I was here you spoke about a crisis. What is this crisis?”
O’Brien waited a full minute before answering, head lowered, staring upward at Movius.
I hit him hard with that remark about Grace, thought Movius. But why? What difference could it make to him?
O’Brien stirred in his chair, rubbed the greying temples with the tips of his fingers. “Our civilization is nearing a catastrophic crisis.” He nodded toward the side wall chart with its multi-colored lines. “There’s the course of history as far back as we know it. Civilizations arose and fell. But we’ve learned something—their crises were predictable from various indications. We have charted these indications and know we are approaching such a crisis. Our work indicates it will be of such a nature that it could leave nothing upon which to build a new civilization.”
Movius thought of the stirrings and rumblings in the Warrens, of the old people and their warnings of terrible omens. He multiplied what he had seen by the world’s LP population, the reports of his own Sep couriers. This brought another thought: strange that O’Brien had not asked about the Sep movement. The indications were that he still had his spy in the Seps. Navvy hadn’t reported success in his search. Could it be Navvy? He thought about this, returned to O’Brien’s warning. He said, “The crisis would leave no one alive?”