“Good. I’m glad that for once you and I agree on something.” Hartz returned his chair to the upright position and leaned intently toward Freeman. “Tell me, then: have you formed any opinion concerning the Lilleberg girl? I appreciate you never met her. But you’ve met people intimately involved with her, such as her mother, her lover and sundry friends.”
“Apparently a person with considerable common sense,” Freeman said after a pause for reflection. “I can’t deny that I’m impressed with what she did to help Haflinger. It’s no small achievement to elude …”
His words faded as though he had suddenly begun to hear, what he was saying ahead of time.
“Go on,” Hartz purred.
“I was going to add: such an intensive hunt as has been kept up over six years now. Since Haflinger absconded, I mean. She seemed to—well, to grasp the scale of it at once.”
“And didn’t disbelieve what he told her, either. Did she?”
“She didn’t behave as though she did. No.”
“Hmm … Well, I’m pleased to inform you that you’ll have adequate opportunity to confirm or deevee your opinion.” Hartz hit another switch; the wall screen in the office lit, showing a vastly enlarged face.
“Computer evaluation here at BDP suggests that your no doubt sophisticated techniques might benefit from reinforcement by—what to call it?—an alternative approach, let’s say, which may strike you as old-fashioned yet which has something to be said in its favor. Because we intend to destroy that tapeworm Haflinger gave to Hearing Aid!” With a sudden glare. “And before the end of this year, what’s more! I have the president’s personal instructions to that effect.”
Freeman’s mouth worked. No sound emerged. He was gazing at the screen.
“Despite any impression I may have given to the contrary,” Hartz continued, “we here in Washington are most cognizant of your skill, patience and thoroughness. Certainly we don’t know anyone who could have done a better job. That’s exactly why we’re sending you a new subject.”
“But …” Freeman raised a shaky finger to point. “But that’s Kate Lilleberg!”
“Yes indeed. That is Kate Lilleberg. And we expect her presence at Tarnover to afford the extra leverage you need in order to pry the last most precious secret out of Nickie Haflinger. Now you must excuse me. I can’t spare you any more of my time. Good afternoon.”
BOOK 3
SPLICING THE BRAIN RACEMAN PROPOSES
“Now the way I see it—”
“Who the hell do you think you are?”
THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT
This is a basic place, a farm. Listen to it.
Land. House. Barn. Sun. Rain. Snow. Field. Fence. Pond. Corn. Wheat. Hay. Plow. Sow. Reap. Horse. Pig. Cow.
This is an abstract place, a concert hall. Listen to it.
Conductor. Orchestra. Audience. Overture. Concerto. Symphony. Podium. Harmony. Instrument. Oratorio. Variations. Arrangement. Violin. Clarinet. Piccolo. Tympani. Pianoforte. Auditorium.
But consider also:
Harp. Horn. Drum. Song. Pipe.
And similarly:
Alfalfa. Rutabaga. Fertilizer. Combine harvester.
Assign the following (no credit) to one or other of the categories implied by the foregoing parameters:*
Bit. Record. Memory. Switch. Program. Transistor. Tape. Data. Electricity. On-line. Down-time. Printout. Read. Process. Cybernetics.
A CASE OF ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
For the first time since the arrival on her threshold of the—late?—Sandy Locke, Kate’s annunciator sounded when she wasn’t expecting anybody.
* Do not on any account give the same answer tomorrow as you give today.
These days, you simply did not go call on somebody without advance warning. It wasn’t worth it. For one thing, people were spending less time in their homes, statistics said, than ever before in history—despite the arrival of the world in full color and mock solidity thanks to three-vee in the corner of the living room. And for another, perhaps more important, calling without notice was liable to get you webbed in a net of unbreakable plastic, possibly even gassed, at any home above the poverty level.
So you used the veephone first.
In the middle of her largest room, whose walls she was redecorating with enormous photo-enlargements of microscopic circuit elements—eventually, touched in with metallic paint, they would be quite an efficient private computer—Kate stopped dead and pondered.
Well, no harm in looking at whoever it is.
Sighing, she switched on the camera and found herself staring at a man she didn’t know: young, fair, untidy, in casual clothes.
“You’re Kate!” he said brightly.
“And you are—?”
“Name of Sid. Sid Fessier. Been spending summer vac in the paid-avoidance zones. Ran into a poker name of Sandy, said to greet you when I bounced off KC, and when it turned out I’d picked a hotel just one block distant … Guess I should have called ahead, but hell—one block on a fine day like today!”
“Well, great. Come on up.”
He whistled as he climbed the stairs: a reel or jig. And when she opened the door, hit her with a webber that tied her into an instant package.
“Bagheera!” she screamed, falling sidelong as the strands of plastic tangled around her legs.
Pop.
Still gathering himself for a pounce which could have carried him the full length of the hallway, straight to the intruder’s head, the mountain lion flinched, moaned, made as though to scrabble at an irritation on his chest—and collapsed.
He was good, this man, and very fast. Even as he returned the gun to his pocket he was slapping a patch of adhesive plastic over Kate’s mouth to silence her.
“Anesthetic dart,” he murmured. “No need to worry about him. He’ll be taken care of. Right as rain in two or three hours. But I had to give him the maximum dose, you know. Not my favorite pastime, messing with a beast like him.”
Having eased the door softly shut, he now produced a communicator and spoke to it. “Okay, come and pick her up. But best be quiet. This looks like a neighborhood where folk still take an interest in other people’s business.”
“You got the lion?”
“Think I’d be talking to you if I hadn’t?”
Tucking the communicator away again, he added over her furious futile grunts and snorts, “Save your breath, slittie. I don’t know what you’ve done, but it’s serious. I have a warrant for your arrest and detention without bail signed by the deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Data Processing, who’s kind of high on the Washington totem pole. Anyhow, I’m not the shivver to argue with. Just an errand boy, me.”
DIFFERENTIATED
Things had changed. Not merely on the surface, although his situation was radically altered. Instead of being switched on and off by drugs and cortical stimulation, he had been allowed to sleep naturally last night: moreover, in a real room, hotel-stark but comfortable and well equipped, with actual windows through which he had been able to confirm that he really was at Tarnover. During his interrogation he had been kept in a sort of compartment, a man-sized pigeonhole, where machines maintained his muscle tone for want of walking.
Aside from that, though, something subtler, more significant had occurred.
What?
The door of his room opened with a click of locks. A man appeared—commonplace, clad in white, armed. He had expected that if he was taken anywhere away from the room it would be under escort. Rising, he obeyed an order to go into the corridor and turn left.
It was a long walk, and there were many turns. Also there was a descending flight of steps, thirteen of them. Eventually there was a lost corner. Rounding it, he found himself in a passage of which one side was composed of one-way armor glass.