And, in any case, those industrious gardenerthings that were never out of sight somewhere in the area could quickly become guardthings. Because you were never out of their sight, either.
Heimat sighed and took the left-hand fork, toward the Dead File.
Heimat didn’t go there often. It was not a place a living prisoner enjoyed visiting, because a living prisoner knew that sooner or later he would be a dead one, and there he then would be. No well person enjoys looking at his own grave.
Of course, the five or six thousand true incorrigibles stored in the Dead File weren’t really dead, they were only “dead.” Major Winterkoop was still there, for instance, or at least the machine-stored analog of him was there, because the guardthings had recovered his body in time. Not in time to revive it, no. But before the quick processes of decay had made the contents of that angry brain unrecoverable. Being dead had not changed Winterkoop; he was still the same reckless, heedless person who had been Heimat’s adjutant in the glory days, when they used their position to bomb and kill and destroy for the sake of the glorious new world to come.
And this, thought Heimat sourly, was the new world, and neither he nor Major Winterkoop had any part in it.
As he walked toward the low pastel building that held the Dead File, he thought briefly of accessing Winterkoop, or one of the other Dead Men, just for the sake of a chat and a change. But they were all so damned dull! Imprisonment didn’t stop with death. None of them would ever leave the Dead File, and none of them had changed a bit since their deaths . . .
Heimat stopped short, gaping at the Dead File.
Around the corner, just out of sight from the path, was the main cargo entrance that he had never once seen used. It was being used now.
Two huge trucks sat on their bellies outside it, their fans silent, as a dozen workthings busily carried racks of datafans and coils inside.
“Please, General Heimat,” said a gardenerthing from behind him, “don’t go any closer. It is not allowed.”
“They came in last night while I was asleep!” said Heimat, staring. “But what is it?”
“Consolidation,” the gardenerthing said apologetically. “The Pensacola facility is being closed and all the inmates moved here.”
Heimat recovered himself. It was the first rule of his prison existence that he never let any of the watchthings know what he was thinking or feeling, so he simply said with a pleasant smile, “Not enough of us enemies of society left to keep you all busy, I suppose. Do you fear for your job?”
“Oh, no, General Heimat,” said the workthing seriously. “We will simply be assigned to other tasks as needed, of course. But it is only Pensacola that is being terminated. Here, as you see, we are accepting their cases.”
“Ah, yes, their cases,” said Heimat, beaming at the workthing as he wondered if it would be worth the trouble to try to destroy it. It had been given the form of a young Polynesian male, even to the beads of sweat on the hairless chest. “So I suppose all of the Pensacola cases are now in our Dead File.”
“Oh, no, General. There is one live one. According to your records you know him. Cyril Basingstoke.”
Heimat lost his calm for a moment. “Basingstoke?” He gaped at the workthing. Cyril Basingstoke had been one of the major terrorist leaders, the only one, perhaps, who commanded a network as big as, and almost as deadly as, Heimat’s own. “But Basingstoke was paroled a year ago,” he said. “It was on the news.”
“He was, General Heimat, yes.” The workthing nodded. “But he is a recidivist. While he was on parole he killed thirty-five people.”
To understand, they tell me, is to forgive, but I don’t believe it.
I think I do pretty nearly understand people like Heimat and Basing-stoke. Like every other terrorist from the Stone Age on, they killed and destroyed for a principle, and convinced themselves that the principle they killed for justified the bloodshed and agony they caused.
They never convinced me, though. I saw some of the casualties. Essie and I barely missed being two of them ourselves, when Heimat’s hit squads blew up a Lofstrom loop they thought we were on. And, because we were witnesses to that one, we were there for Heimat’s trial, and I heard all about the others. Most of all I heard Heimat, and saw him, erect and military in the prisoner’s dock, looking the very model of a modern major general in his dress whites and strong, right-stuff face. He listened with polite attention as the witnesses detailed how, in his proper person as a major general in the United States Defense Forces, he had secretly organized the bands that blew up launch loops, struck down satellites, poisoned water supplies, and even managed to steal a Dream Couch to sicken the entire world with mad fantasies. Of course, he had been caught in the end. But he had fooled them all for nearly ten years, sitting straight-faced in staff meetings discussing antiterrorist measures, before people like Eskladar had come to their senses and through them the world’s police forces at last succeeded in linking Heimat with the massacres and bombings. None of these were crimes to him. They were simple strategies.
Heimat’s trial was a peculiar experience for me. I had died not long before, and that was the first time I had appeared in public in a holographic body, with my essential self stored in gigabit space. That was still a rather unusual situation, and Heimat’s lawyers tried to keep me from testifying because I wasn’t a “person.” They failed, of course. It wouldn’t have mattered if they had succeeded, because there were plenty of other witnesses.
Heimat obviously didn’t care. His arrest and prosecution he regarded as an unfortunate misadventure. Cynically and confidently he resigned himself to the verdict of history, because he could have had no doubt what the verdict of the court would be. But when I was on the stand he insisted on taking the cross-examination himself, while his lawyers fumed. “You, Broadhead,” he said. “You dare to accuse me of treason while you associate with the enemies of the human race! We shouldn’t parley with the Heechee! Kill them, take them prisoner-surround that place in the core where they hide out, shoot them down—”
It was an incredible performance. When the court finally stopped it, Heimat bowed courteously to the bench, smiled, said, “I have no further questions of this contraption that calls itself Robinette Broadhead,” and returned to look proud and confident for the rest of the trial.
That was Heimat. Cyril Basingstoke was, if anything, worse than he.
The meeting of the two retired monsters was wary on both sides. They knew each other.
Heimat hurried back to the recreation hall and found Basingstoke there already, idly glancing through the PV stores to see what entertainments this new place had to offer. They shook hands gravely, then stepped back to look at each other.
Cyril Basingstoke was a Curacaon, a rich purple-black in color, as old as Heimat (or I), but fully cosseted by the medics so that he looked, maybe, forty-five. “It is good to see you, Beau,” he said, voice deep and rich and friendly. Basingstoke had no accent-well, maybe a touch of what sounded German and was probably Dutch, from the good Frisian monks who had taught him English in the Catholic school. Basingstoke was Islands-born, but there was nothing “Eyelunds, mon!” about the way he talked. If you could not see him, you would not guess it was a black man speaking, although he said each word larger than an American would-vowels more resonant and rounded, intonation more marked.