The Project Gutenberg eBook of The programmed people

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Title: The programmed people

Author: Jack Sharkey

Illustrator: Ed Emshwiller

Release date: December 31, 2023 [eBook #72565]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1963

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROGRAMMED PEOPLE ***

THE PROGRAMMED PEOPLE

By JACK SHARKEY

Illustrated by EMSH

From Light-of-Day to Ultrablack,

the people of the Hive went about their

rigid lives in ignorance of their real

ruler, of their true history. How

could one slender blonde girl crack

this powerful monolithic structure?

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Amazing Stories June and July 1963.

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that

the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

CHAPTER 1

Under the stark bluewhite glow that glittered from hidden niches onto the faceted undersurface of the vast vaulted crystal dome, the people milled and jockeyed for position near the dais. There was still room to move about and select a standing-site; most of the heavy thronging was still at the entrances, the wide, squat arches giving egress to the fifteen block-long arcades that radiated from the center of the temple like the spokes of a gigantic wheel. Between the pillars that framed these arches, long unbroken walls served as firm backdrops for the Vote Boxes, twenty-five to a wall, three hundred seventy-five in all, to service a building that could hold five thousand.

Lloyd Bodger took a quick look at his wristwatch while there was still sufficient elbow-room to lift his arm. Two minutes till eight P.M. Service began promptly on the hour. He gauged his nearness to the dais with a practiced eye, then let himself be wedged into place by the increasing pressure of urgent bodies about him. It would not do to remain in the rear of the hemispherical room, where he might lose some of the Speakster's words, words that might have direct bearing upon the next Vote; nor would it do to let himself stand too near the dais, from which central point he might find himself at the tail end of the voting line, should the Proposition Screens begin to glow during the Service. A decisive Vote could be made in ten seconds, but each Kinsman was allowed thirty. The Screen would only propose the bill for five minutes before the Count. That meant that Lloyd must be at least the tenth person in a line in order to be assured his chance to nock his Voteplate in the slot. He'd missed two of his allowable three non-Votes this quarter, already. It would not do to miss another.

The glow from the dome decreased, suddenly, as the center of the dais unfolded back into fifteen equal wedge-segments, like a blossoming flower, and the Speakster rose into view amid a solemn hush. Bright golden light made the white velvet robe shimmer like a slippery flame, and made the shadowy aspect of the cowl-hidden features all the more terrible. The golden light spilled upward from the surfaces of the fifteen triangular "petals", bathing the Speakster thoroughly in bright radiance, leaving the remainder of the Temple in even darker darkness by contrast.

The arms of the Speakster rose slowly, angling domeward over his unseen head, until the folds of the weighty sleeves slid back a trifle at the cuff, exposing the wax-white hands, fingers spread wide apart, palms toward the beginning of the dome-curve, as though warding off impending dangers. Lloyd shivered, suddenly, despite the suffocating warmth of the crowd. This would not be a regular Service. That was the Danger-stance. Unconsciously, he held his breath, listening, as the mass tension grew unbearably electric.

"There cannot be Service tonight!" thundered the Speakster. "We are polluted from within. It would be sacrilege to have Service with a traitor in our midst!" Then, over the rising gasp that arose from the multitude, "She has been traced to this holy place, in a fiendish attempt to lose herself among the masses, to hide her rottenness amid the healthy flesh of the Kinsmen! Remain in your places—!" cried the Speakster, as a short-lived Brownian Movement began in the close-packed mob. People froze in place at the peremptory shout. "The Goons have been alerted, and are even now converging through the arcades!" said the Speakster. A sigh of relief whispered like a concerted zephyr over the up-turned faces. "She will be found out, have no fear. When I depart and the Light-of-Day returns, you must exit through the arcade by which you entered. You will be checked by a squad of Goons on your way out. Remember, a good Kinsman has nothing to fear!"

The outstretched arms swung down until the pallid palms came firmly together before the Speakster's chest, the cowled head bowed low, and then the figure on the dais descended from sight, the stiff "petals" re-closing over the spot on which the Speakster had stood, and the golden light vanishing as the Light-of-Day sprang bluely into harsh life against the crystal dome. Lloyd turned obediently, as soon as movement was possible in the dispersing crowd, and started toward his point of entrance, the arcade that would lead him into his sector of the Hive.

Without warning, the Proposition Screens flickered on, and the crowd's movement jerked to a confused halt. Then, as though collectively realizing that there was time enough to be checked by the Goons after the Vote, people formed into neat lines, queuing up before the Vote Boxes that lined the walls.

Lloyd took another look at his watch. Five past eight. That gave him till ten past to arrive at the Vote Box. With mounting anxiety, he counted heads in the line before him. He was twelfth. If each person took the allotted thirty seconds—He'd miss his Vote, have to be hospitalized for Readjustment. He tried to stay calm as the line advanced.

With two minutes to go, he found four people before him. The first, a grey-suited man with very little hair, nocked his plate in the slot—Then stood and pondered. It was fully twenty-five seconds before he depressed one of the buttons in the Vote Box's interior, where his choice would remain secret. Another few seconds to retrieve his plate, and then a full six precious seconds while the next person, a skinny woman very near the compulsory retirement age, fumbled in a deep leather purse for her card. And she pondered....

Sweat sprang out on Lloyd's forehead. There wouldn't be enough time. There couldn't be ... unless—

"Miss!" he said, to the back of the small blonde head in front of him. The girl spun about to face him, dark green eyes wide in fright, breath hissing between parted lips. "I didn't mean to startle you," he said, contritely. "It's just that—" It was terrible, telling such an awful confidence to a total stranger, but it was the only way to convince her quickly. "I've missed twice this quarter," he blurted. "Not my fault. I'm a good Kinsman, honestly. It was line-jams, both times. Too many people for too few Vote Boxes. You must believe me!"

"What—" she said, a little dazedly. "What can I do?"

"Let me have your place in line!" begged Lloyd. "I've timed it. Less than a minute left till Count, and two ahead of me, including yourself. Please help me!"

"I—" she said, with a funny, almost hysterical smile. "I don't know why you should be so—" Then she stepped aside, swiftly. "Go ahead. Hurry!"

Lloyd leaped into the breach without even pausing to voice his thanks. As the young man before him stepped away, Lloyd jammed his plate into the slot, and shoved his fingers inside the handspace. A fumble, and he had a button, he didn't know which one. Pro was right, Con was left, but he just prodded it inward without checking its location. Then the light died on the screen, and his plate popped out of the slot. He caught it deftly, sighed in quavery relief, and turned to thank his benefactor. He saw her, trailing after the departing people toward one of the arcades, shuffling her feet, apparently in no hurry. Then an uncomfortable thought struck him, and he ran to catch up with her.

"Miss—!" he said, taking her arm. Again the brief look of fear on her features, then she smiled. It was a small, very tired smile. "You needn't thank me—" she began.

"I wasn't going to—" said Lloyd. Then, embarrassed, "I mean, of course I'd thank you, but that isn't why I came after you. I just realized—Have you missed any Votes this quarter? I'd hate to be the cause of your Readjustment...."

"There's no danger," she said softly, "of my getting in trouble for non-voting."

He suddenly remembered the words of the Speakster, and dropped the girl's hand as though it had burnt him. "You—You're the—"

"Please!" begged the girl, before his voice could rise in a warning shout to the crowd. "Don't give me away!"

"They'll get you anyhow," he said flatly, with a note of near-pity in his voice. "By rights, I should raise a cry right this instant, to save the Goons the trouble of checking all the good Kinsmen." A secondary thought hit him, and he took a very short step backward. "And you're diseased. The longer you remain in contact with the crowd, the more likely a spread of the contagion."

"I'm not!" she almost shouted, then clenched her jaws, and got control of herself. Bright moisture began to trickle from the corners of her eyes, and she dabbed angrily at the warm salty drops. "I was hurt, yes!" she said, suddenly pulling back the long sleeve of her bright green dress, for a brief moment. Lloyd saw the ragged, pink-edged cicatrix on the underside of her forearm, and winced. "It's healed," she said. "I didn't need the hospital, don't you see?"

Lloyd saw, and stood there, his mind fumbling dizzily for a direction to take. The last straggling ends of the crowd were moving into the arcades, now. Lloyd took his bearings, saw that only one or two people were now headed for his own arcade, and began to back off in that direction, saying, "I'm sorry, I'm so terribly sorry. I must go, now."

She nodded, once, then turned her back on him, and stood, small and helpless, in the growing void that was the Temple proper. Lloyd turned from her and started toward his arcade. Then he stopped and looked back at her. She was healed, after all.... He remembered with a sense of shame the time he'd broken a finger, and hadn't reported for hospital assignment, because a favorite cowboy was at the neighborhood theatre that afternoon. He never had gone in, then, being fearful lest the examining doctors notice that he'd delayed. The finger had healed itself, a trifle crookedly, and Lloyd had never told anyone of his dereliction, not even his father. Especially not his father.

Suddenly, he turned and ran back to the girl. "Do they know you?" he said, fiercely, frightened by his own daring.

"Wh—Who?" gasped the girl, startled by his reappearance. "Who know me?" Then, catching his meaning, "The goons, you mean?" Lloyd nodded impatiently. "No, they don't. But they don't have to. I—I have no Voteplate."

"Can't you girls hang onto anything?!" he muttered. "Don't tell me yours fell in the sea from a Tourgyro?"

"You say that as though you know somebody whose did," said the girl.

"My fiancee," he explained, adding, with an embarrassed grin, "I'll be twenty-five just after next Marriage Day. I found her in the phonebook listings."

"But—What'd she do?" the girl persisted. "Without a Voteplate, she could be picked up any time, in the first Goon inspection that arose."

"Take this," he urged, pressing something into her hand. "Your arcade is third over from mine. When you get outside, wait. I'll meet you there and get this back. Don't fail me, please."

He spun about and dashed toward his arcade, leaving her standing in the center of the floor, staring dumbfounded at the flat metal plate in her hand. Trembling, she turned toward the indicated arch, and followed swiftly after the stragglers entering it, her perspiring fingers clamped rigidly upon the engraved face of the Voteplate.

CHAPTER 2

Lloyd didn't like Goons. He knew he was supposed to recognize in them the ultimate in police efficiency, but they still gave him chills. A Goon, a Governmental Opposer of Neutrality, was a fearful sight. All were of a size, equal to a micrometer-breadth, a monstrous eight feet of thick metal and ponderous wheels, bathed from base to apex in the blurry grey pulsations of their protective force-fields, through which no power on Earth could penetrate. The metal arms were multi-jointed and dextrous to a fantastic degree, despite the clumsy look of the thick tripodal fingers at the ends of the arms. The "eyes" were wide-set telelenses, a pair of them, to report back all they saw to the Brain itself, deep beneath the teeming streets of the Hive. And each Goon spoke with the cold, inflectionless tones of the Brain, the flatly indifferent voice that could only emanate from a mind of glowing vacuum tubes and magnetic fields. From any or all of a Goon's six fingertips could spring the dreaded Snapper Beam, an electronic refinement of vibrations that struck the human nervous system almost identically with the chemical effect of strychnine poisoning, except that a Snapper Beam worked instantly, and always fatally. A brush of the invisible force, and a man's face creased into the frenzied grin of a madman, his legs danced wildly, uncontrollably, and the muscles of his back contracted tightly, relentlessly, remorselessly, until his spine cracked in two.

Lloyd had never seen it employed, save in the theatres. Dispersal of insurrection by Goons was a popular theme in films. A mob could be efficiently halted by a sweeping Snapper Beam, to fall like broken puppets. Goons never lost a film battle. Or a real one.

"Name," said the Goon, as the woman in front of Lloyd moved quickly out of the arcade. Goons could not inflect. You had to sense their questions.

"Lloyd Bodger, Junior," said Lloyd, extending his Voteplate for perusal. The three fingers took the plate from his fingers, and slid it into a slot in the chest. A sharp click, and the plate was returned to him, his number now on file in the vast memory banks of the Brain.

"Your sector," said the Goon. With his Voteplate data on file, he would be hard put to tell a lie. Any discrepancy in his statements would go hard on him. He hoped, shakily, that the unknown girl had a sharp memory. She'd only have a few moments to memorize the information on the plate.

These thoughts flickered through Lloyd's mind in the split second between the Goon's second query and his outwardly calm response, "Hundred-Level, Angle One, Unit B."

Lloyd's sector was only one short of being the most important in the Hive. The President lived in Unit A, in the same Angle. Lloyd Bodger, Senior, was Secondary Speakster of the entire Hive. But Goons were no respecters of persons. And less so were they respecters of mere offspring of persons.

"Assignment," droned the Goon.

"Null," said Lloyd, indicating the question was inapplicable.

"Goal," the Goon sub-questioned.

"Secondary Speakster of the Hive by inheritance."

The Goon's arms suddenly dropped to its thick sides, it swiveled completely about-face, and rolled swiftly off toward the far end of the arcade. The interview was over, and it had gone, abruptly as that. No "Thanks for your time and trouble", or "You pass inspection", or "That will be all". Goons were built for basic efficiency, not for the subtler nuances of civilized conversation.

Outside the mouth of the arcade, Light-of-Day was still stark bright blue throughout the Hive. Light-of-Day was dimmed to Ultrablack at ten P.M. every night of the nine-day week save Temple Day, when it was left on until eleven-fifteen, giving time enough for the Kinsmen at the ten P.M. Service to return to their sectors. No one went out in Ultrablack. You could see nothing when Light-of-Day went out. A struck flame would burn in Ultrablack, but the light of the flame would not show. Only the Goons could see what went on, then. If going out during Ultrablack were absolutely necessary, as it sometimes was on the Governmental level, a Goon would come and take you to your destination. Being found upon the street after Ultrablack was a form of rebellion; you would then have to be hospitalized for Readjustment.

Just as this last thought was flitting across his mind, Lloyd saw the girl, standing uncertainly at the entrance to the arcade he'd sent her to, a solemn, green-clad figure in the midst of the converging people moving into the entrance toward the nine P.M. Service. Her face lighted up when she saw him, and Lloyd was disconcerted to note the tears that sprang to her eyes despite her welcoming smile. "How can I ever—?" she started, but a quick squeeze of his fingers on her arm stopped her.

"Not here," said Lloyd, awkwardly. "Come with me." She fell into step alongside him without question. He led the way to a bar near the inter-level lift. They said nothing to one another until they were seated in a secluded booth, and had pressed the drink-selector that would light alongside their booth-number behind the bar. They almost spoke, then, but the waiter showed up too quickly, and they had to wait until he'd checked their ages on the Voteplates and left.

"Why did you do it?" she said softly.

Lloyd made a grimace. "Because I'm a damned fool, I guess."

The girl nodded seriously. "You are, you know. Taking a risk like that—! You might have been detected, yourself."

Lloyd looked at her, puzzled. "Detected?"

"As a member of the movement, of course," she said. "You're the first I've been able to contact since my escape. The progress you've all made amazes me. Where in heaven did you people learn to duplicate Voteplates!? I couldn't believe it when the Goon passed me."

"Hold on—" said Lloyd, pressing his hand furiously hard upon hers where it lay on the smooth table top between them. "Don't say anymore, please. You've made an error. I am not a member of your movement." The girl's eyes widened in sudden fear.

"But—Why did you help me? Who are you?"

Lloyd sighed. "I've already answered your first question. And it is with the most abject embarrassment that I answer your second: I'm Lloyd Bodger, the Junior version, the only child of the Secondary Speakster of the Hive." He saw the utter dismay in her face, and added dryly, "Are you impressed?"

"Shattered is more like it," she said when she'd found her voice again. "But an extra Voteplate—"

"I can explain the plate," said Lloyd. "It belongs to my fiancee, Grace Horton. I was going to her place tonight, after Service, with it."

"But you said she'd dropped it—Oh. I see."

"Exactly. Lost in the sea, from a Tourgyro. The Goon in the 'gyro saw it happen, which was lucky for Grace. He relayed it instantly to the Brain, and when the 'gyro landed, another Goon was waiting at the field with a temporary pass for her. Another person, by the way, would have needed Readjustment, being so careless, but Grace, as my fiancee, carries just enough weight to get her over the humps. New Voteplates have to be approved through the President's office, of course. When this one came in, today, it was turned over to my father, who gave it to me. I'm not as official as the Goon who'd ordinarily deliver one of these, but even protocol bows to sentiment, now and then."

He suddenly curled the fingers of the hand beneath his own until they lay fisted in his palm. She looked up at him, then, sensing almost to the word what he was about to say. "Miss—You know I could turn you in for what you inadvertently told me, just now. I won't, though. You have enough counter-information on me to make things hot even for the son of an official."

"I wouldn't—!"

"Be that as it may," said Lloyd, "let me say something: Quit. Quit now. Get out of this movement, whatever it is. You can't win, you know. The Goons are invincible. And I hate to think of you, falling under a Snapper Beam."

"Death is death," the girl sighed. "One way or another."

He looked at her, genuinely at sea. "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean, Miss. I only helped you avoid hospitalization because I myself—Well, let my reasons go. But you shouldn't fear going. Sure, it's annoying to be laid up for awhile, out of the swing of things, but—"

The girl pulled her hand away. "You're joking," she said. "You must be joking. If you're truly the son of the Secondary Speakster, you must know the truth!"

"I still don't follow you," Lloyd said sincerely.

"You don't know!" the girl said, shaken. "You're really convinced that—Listen to me, listen carefully: There are no hospitals! There is no Readjustment! There is only death."

"You're out of your mind," Lloyd said, recoiling from her vehemence. "Of course there are hospitals. I've seen them—!"

"Sure," said the girl. "From a Tourgyro. Or in the movies. But have you ever been to one? Have you ever met anybody who returned from one?"

"My dear girl," Lloyd protested, really growing concerned for her, "do you realize the odds against meeting a hospital patient? With disease almost completely obliterated, and a civilization of ten million people—!"

"Exactly," said the girl, with a peculiar note of triumph. "Ten million people. Never so much more as ten million and one, and seldom any less. Doesn't that perturb you?"

"The wars—" Lloyd began.

"Please," the girl groaned, shaking her head. "Spare me the enlistment speeches. I know the tales of all the men lost in the battles every quarter, giving their lives in defense of the Hive. Except that there aren't any wars, nor battles, any more! There's nothing out on the planet except wild animals and growing plants! We're the only ten million people on Earth!"

"That's impossible," said Lloyd. "It's childish to be so insular-minded. Our Hive is one of ten thousand such—"

"Have you seen another, even one other?"

"For what?" said Lloyd. "All the Hives are alike."

"They've really got you brain-washed, haven't they! You believe everything the Brain dictates, without question!"

"I have to," said Lloyd, with what he thought was irrefutable logic. "There's no way of checking things like—Well, like your story of no wars. I mean, can I be expected to check out ten million people to see if the number of war dead coincides with the total in the Brain?"

"No," said the girl. "You can't. Not so long as your movements are restricted to certain sectors, and you're told which street to use, which side of the street, which direction to walk, which hand to turn the knob with, which—"

"Those are only traffic rules," Lloyd objected. "Can you imagine ten million people all going to the same sector at the same time? It'd be disastrous."

"Sure," said the girl. "For the Brain. People might confer."

Lloyd shrugged and gave up. "I can see there's no dissuading you," he said regretfully. "I only hope that when you're finally caught—"

"They teach me the error of my ways?" she smiled tightly.

"I don't mean it with the inflection you give it," he said. "I really would like to see you get help. You need help, you know."

"The kind I need is the kind you gave me in The Temple," she said. "Illegal help. Shelter. Time to make plans. Time to figure out some way of telling the Hive what's happening to it!"

"You know I've gone farther than I should, already."

"I know," she said. She took the Voteplate from her handbag, and held it musingly in her fingers. "I really should keep this," she said, then saw the sudden anxiety in his eyes and relented. "Here, take it." She slid it under his hand. Lloyd palmed it gratefully. "Our movement could use a hammerlock on a higher-up," she said, almost wistfully. "But you're too nice a guy to put the screws on. It'd be a cruel way to show my gratitude for what you did tonight."

"I did nothing, really," Lloyd said. "I simply saw how fearful you were of the hospital, and didn't have the heart to turn you in."

"Wait," said the girl. Lloyd stopped speaking. She looked thoughtful, then leaned forward, very confidentially, and asked, "Does your father like you? Do you two get along?"

"What is this?" Lloyd demanded suspiciously. "Instant psychoanalysis?"

"Nothing like that," the girl snapped, exasperated. "I mean, does he like you, as a son, care what happens to you?"

"Well," Lloyd said, slowly, "he'd probably beat my head in for what I pulled, tonight, with you.... But—yes, he does like me. And he cares about my welfare."

"Then do this one favor for me," said the girl. "When you get to your Unit tonight, tell him you feel rotten, all sick inside, and that you think you should be hospitalized."

"But why should I—?"

"Just tell him. And make it convincing. And, if he really cares about you—See what happens." She rose from her place. "It'll look funny if I leave alone. Walk me to the street?"

Once outside, she glanced about, uneasily. "It's after ten. Got to find a place to hide before Ultrablack."

"But listen—!" Lloyd said, abruptly realizing the grim night that lay in store for her, with blinding blackness like a palpable pall in the streets, and only Goons rolling through the empty streets. "You've got to have someplace to go!"

"Is there someplace? Without a Voteplate?" she said with weary rhetoric. "I think not. Thanks. Goodnight. And goodbye."

She started off down the street. Lloyd hesitated a moment then rushed after her. "Wait, I'll hide you."

"Why should you take such a risk, for me?" she said.

"It's not for you," Lloyd said, telling as the full truth something that was only part of the whole. "It's for me. Purely selfish. I risk more if you're caught tonight. When they question you, under truth drugs, about your escape from the Temple—and I'm sure that has them curious—you will be unable to avoid implicating me."

"Is—Is that your only reason? Your own skin?" she said.

"Yes," he said, forcing conviction into the word.

She shrugged and took his arm. "A fugitive can't afford to be choosy. I have no prospect of escape but you. I'll let you hide me ... if it'll make you feel safer."

Lloyd nodded, and started toward the lift that would take the two of them up to the Hundred-Level. It was only as they got aboard, and he'd keyed the lift-switch with his Voteplate, that he thought to ask, "By the way—What's your name?"

"Andra," she said. "Andra Corby."

"A nice name. I like it," said Lloyd. "I wasn't sure if you'd tell me your name."

Andra shrugged. "It'll be in tomorrow's papers, anyway."

Lloyd looked at her uncomfortably, but she was staring straight ahead at the grillwork gate of the lift.

CHAPTER 3

Grace Horton appraised herself in the mirror, and was not pleased with what she saw. "Face it, Grace," she said aloud. "You are positively hopeless." She tilted her head to one side. "Well, nearly hopeless." Her eyes were good, that was something. Wide, gray and thickly lashed, they were her best feature. Her nose was just too snub to be pert. Her mouth, though her lips were generous, and her teeth well-aligned, had too much slack at the outer edges. She either held it in a perpetual smile—"An easy way to be mistaken for an idiot," she remarked bitterly—or it sagged. Her hair, an unfortunate mustard-and-brass shade, would not hold a curl for more than two hours at the outside. "All I need," she decided ruefully, "is a brand-new head."

Grace leaned away from the mirror to consult the alarm clock which lay almost hidden behind an impressive array of cosmetics. Five till eleven. "He's not coming," she said to her image. "Give it up girl. He said he'd come, and he probably meant it when he said it, but he's not coming." She turned from the mirror and began to undress, beside the single three-quarter-sized bed. "And why should he come?" she asked herself tiredly. "He doesn't love you. He never—to his credit, damn it—said he did, either. Hive Law requires that all males shall marry by the age of twenty-five, or be taken for Readjustment. Bachelors are not good for racial survival, unquote. Unwed girls may list themselves in the classified section of the phone book, along with their qualifications, then start sweating it out by the phone. So I did, so he called me, so we're engaged. But that doesn't mean we have to like it. Or that he has to, anyhow. And I'm not sure that I do."

Grace toyed a moment with the idea of submitting herself for Readjustment, then gave it up. "A new face wouldn't help," she decided. "What I need is a new outlook. Besides, what have I got to crab about? I'm engaged, I'm only twenty-four, and someday I'll be the wife of Secondary Speakster of the Hive. So hurray for me," she added, listlessly, as she flipped the coverlet back, and hopped into bed. She lay there in the glaring Light-of-Day, waiting for Ultrablack. When it came, in a soundless rush of darkness, she spoke just once more. "But why didn't he come!"

CHAPTER 4

"Didn't you tell your future daughter-in-law she'd been reassigned to a new Temple Day?" asked the President. "She went last night, regardless."

The man addressed, Lloyd Bodger, Senior, scratched his head. "Seems to me I did, Fred. I could have forgotten, of course."

Fredric Stanton, President and Prime Speakster of the Hive, nodded and shrugged the topic away. "Probably hated to miss a chance to be with your boy. Nice kid, that Lloyd."

"Thanks," Bodger said dryly, keeping a firm eye on his superior. Stanton was buttering him up to something, he knew. "Full of youthful spirits, too, your boy. I can easily understand why he might—well—grow overly romantic."

"Come to the point, Fred," said Bodger. "Lloyd's behavior can't hurt you unless it hits your only sensitive area: your public image. So what's he done? Drunk too much, pinched a waitress's rump, scratched a four-letter word on a Temple?"

"Don't take this too lightly, fellow Speakster," said Stanton, purposefully. "Running the Hive is like walking on eggs in hot cleats. You're either careful or things get a mite sticky."

"We always have the Goons," said Bodger.

"A Hive full of ten million back-broken corpses isn't much of a domain," snapped the President. "Have you forgotten that extra-marital peccadillos are frowned upon in Hive society? People who play around get hospitalized, quick."

"So what has all this to do with my son?" demanded Bodger.

"He was seen, last night, bringing his fiancee up to this level, shortly before Ultrablack."

Bodger sighed, then nodded slowly and leaned back in his chair. "And the girl?" he said grimly.

"So far as I know, she's still on your premises. I think you had better have a talk with her. And your son."

"I'm sorry, Fred," said Bodger. "I'll make certain there is no recurrence."

"You'd better," said the President. "If I topple, you're on the next pedestal down. I might drag you along, just by inertia." He turned and left the office with cold dignity.

"Crap!" the elder Bodger spat aloud. "I've told that kid to toe the mark in public!"

CHAPTER 5

Bodger had only a short distance to walk to Unit B from his office. His temper, despite his efforts at self-control, was seething dangerously when he entered his foyer. He crossed the mammoth parlor toward the archway at its rear, where a short corridor led to the sleeping quarters. Bodger arrived at the door of his son's bedroom. Then, with his hand upon the knob, he froze, and a ghastly pallor spread itself across his rugged features.

A hand came up swiftly to his stomach, holding it, pressing inward against the sudden spasm he had felt, and he stepped swiftly across the few remaining feet of carpeted hallway to the door of his own room, through it, and swiftly into his personal bathroom, locking the thick door behind him. The room was swimming like a thing seen through warm oil as he slid open the mirrored panel of the medicine-chest and removed a large jar of pale granulated crystals. Violently nauseated, he managed to unscrew the lid and dump a handful of the crystals into the water tumbler. He ran the warm water into the tumbler—it would dissolve the crystals faster—and drank the now-glutinous solution. Then the tumbler fell from his weak, perspiring fingers and smashed into spicules in the basin. He took no notice, hands rigid against the rim of the basin, shoulders shaking uncontrollably, his large, grey-thatched head sunken wearily upon his chest. He stood like that for two minutes, until the room began to settle down, and its outlines took on solidity once more.

"A close one," he muttered, aloud.

When the eyes that met his in the glass were no longer bleared with sick pain, he combed his hair neatly, and impatiently began to remove his sweat-soaked shirt and necktie. Before returning to his bedroom to change into fresh dry garments, he slid the mirrored panel closed. It clicked sharply and locked. Countersunk into the tiled wall, there was no indication that such a space existed behind it. Only Bodger, Senior, knew which tiles to depress in which order to open that panel. In a disease-free society, a medicine-chest was taboo; it implied that its user had no faith in the Government-run hospitals. Bodger went into his bedroom, dropping the damp shirt and tie atop the clothes hamper in the closet. There was an ancient leather bag, with shoulder-strap, on the closet floor. Bodger carried this out into the room, opened the flap.

When a small light glowed on the indicator panel, he lifted a short metal rod, and played the end of it slowly back and forth just below his fleshy ribs. The light flickered on and off steadily. Bodger looked sharply at the needle of a dial beside the light. "Thank heaven," he whispered, and returned case and contents to the closet. Then, after laying out a set of dry things, he considered a moment, ran a hand testily over his stomach region, and grunted in annoyance. He was still slightly over-wrought; he could feel the juices inside him itching to spurt into his bloodstream and arouse him into his erstwhile pitch of anger. It wouldn't do. It wouldn't do at all.

Angered at his own infirmity, he nevertheless set the alarm for an hour's time ahead, in case he dozed, then lay back on the bed and closed his eyes.

In the adjoining room, where the door to the hallway was securely bolted, Lloyd Bodger, Junior, stood up near the wall, in a stance he'd held for many minutes, the side of his head pressed tightly against the plastic paneling. "I think he's lying down," he whispered. "I heard the bedsprings creak."

Andra Corby, her face lowered against the knees which she hugged to her chest on the bed, shivered a bit, then straightened her long, smooth legs until she was simply pillow-propped against the headboard once more, and her arms had refolded across her breast. "Are you sure?" she asked tautly. "The longer I stay here, the more frightened I become."

Lloyd spun to face her, almost angrily. "Will you stop that relentless nobility! I'm doing this for my own skin, remember? I don't care what happens to you; I care what happens to me if something happens to you!"

"Your father," she said, enunciating with icy calm and slow clarity, "is going to hear you...."

Lloyd controlled himself, his fists knotting at his sides.

Seeing he was relaxing, Andra said, a little less frigidly, "I thought—I thought he was coming in here."

"He stopped outside my door, all right ..." Lloyd mused. "Then went to his room in a rush. I don't get it."

He listened some more at the wall. Behind him, Andra giggled, suddenly. He glanced at her. "What—?"

"I just thought—What if your father's on the other side, listening to hear what you're doing. I'm just picturing two grown men, frowning in earnest concentration, their ears separated by a few inches of plastic, and it's funny."

"Not if you're correct, it isn't," said Lloyd, and Andra stopped smiling. "As soon as he hears you, the jig's up."

"Maybe—" She leaned forward with eager hope. "Maybe it would be a good thing, Lloyd. He's a powerful man in the Hive. If he knew your problem, he could use his influence to do something, couldn't he?"

"My father loves me, sure," said Lloyd, with a wry quirk to his lips. "But I don't think he loves anything so much as his position in our society. My consorting with a fugitive might put the kibosh on the next election."

Just then the phone rang and Lloyd couldn't avoid knocking Andra to the floor in his effort to get the receiver off the hook before the bell could shatter the silence once more.

"Hello?" he said, extending an upright palm toward Andra to beg her continued silence.

"Lloyd?" said a subdued, tense female voice.

"Grace!" he said, remembering his promise to come by with her card. "What—What do you want?"

"I've got to see you, Lloyd," she said. "About last night."

"When?" he asked.

"As soon as you can make it."

"Well—Maybe in ..." Lloyd peered across the room at his bureau clock. Almost noon. Non-essential lift usage precluded until after the twelve-to-one lunch period. If he hurried, he could key the lift-switch before the ban. Lifts in use were never disempowered. "If I catch the lift, fifteen minutes. Otherwise not till after one."

"... All right."

Lloyd grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair. Andra stood up, apparently unharmed, and slid into her shoes. "Where are we going?" she asked, smoothing her dress.

Lloyd looked at her. He hadn't considered—"I guess you'd better come with me," he said. "I'd hate you caught in the house. In my bedroom especially."

There were seconds to spare when he closed the gate and thumbed Grace's level, the ninety-third. Anyone was permitted to travel to a level beneath their own. To go higher, you needed a duly authorized Voteplate, or an invitation from a higher-level dweller. The lift dropped smoothly down inside the shaft. Half-way to Grace's level, a red light glowed on the level-indicator. When they reached their getting-off place, the buttons would function no more until one o'clock. It saved needless crowding if lunching workers remained on their own levels. Otherwise, if a line were too long, a worker might be tempted to try his luck lower down, and if too many decided simultaneously, the bland flow of human traffic might be imbalanced, agglomerated beyond the capacity of the transportation systems. Inefficiency would result, with people returning late to their work, restaurants having too much leftover food, or not enough to go around. The Hive was too delicately geared for imbalance. So the lifts went off during lunch.

"Grace Horton must be trusted," Andra said suddenly. "Look, Lloyd," she clutched his arm, forcing him to meet her gaze and listen. "If she hasn't found out, fine. Even Goons can't find out what a person doesn't know. But if she has found out someone else used her cards—And called you, instead of reporting it to the authorities.... Then she can be trusted to hear about me."

"I hope you're right," said Lloyd. The gate opened.

"We'll never find out standing here," said Andra. "Come on, Lloyd." She started out ahead of him. He pondered the courage of this small blonde girl, then felt a wave of shame at his own cowardice. He was in this up to his earlobes already. No amount of explaining could ever make up his hours of ignoring the basic laws of the Hive. And he simultaneously realized two things: If Andra's theories were all wrong, he would merely be Readjusted and returned to his life same as before. And if they were correct—What difference did it make how long he dallied with the Hive's opposition? You could only be destroyed once, and even his delay in shouting the alarm when he'd recognized Andra as the fugitive was grounds for a medical check-up.

"What the hell," Lloyd said miserably to himself. He was no safer standing on the cross-sector walk than in the depths of dark intrigue with Andra.

CHAPTER 6

"BODGER!... Bodger!"...

A hand was shaking his shoulder roughly, the elder Bodger realized with annoyance. His eyes focused on the face of Fredric Stanton. Bodger shrugged the hand away, and sat up groggily.

"As I always suspected," he said, brushing at the crusted salt on his chest, "the Hive can't run an hour without me at the helm." He got to his feet and stretched.

Stanton, frowning at his sarcasm, let it pass without comment; he had a more important topic to discuss. "The tally of last evening's Vote just came in to my office," he said tightly. "It was a near-complete poll, only a few thousand missing."

Bodger, still trying to get his mind readjusted to the idea of being wide awake again, started toward the bathroom and a warm shower, muttering, "Hooray for progress. Is that any reason to waken a man—"

"Bodger—!"

He stopped at the open door to the bathroom and turned his head toward the President. "All right, out with it." Without knowing how, exactly, Bodger knew it was about Lloyd again. And worse than before.

Stanton reached inside his suitjacket and withdrew a folded legal paper, a black-lettered stiff document with an illuminated margin of pale orange. "I have here," he said, watching Bodger's face, "an order for Readjustment. It just came up the tube from the Brain. Do I have to read you the name of the Kinsman on it?"

"Good lord," Bodger whispered. "What—What could he possibly have done to—?"

"As I said, there was a Vote last night. The proposition was a simple one: "Shall, in the interests of good government, the draft age be lowered to fifteen?" You want to know how Lloyd voted?"

"Not con?! He has more brains than to—I've told him all the catch-phrases that demand a pro Vote. Is there any possibility of—?"

"Error?" Stanton smiled bitterly. "You of all people should know better. It was Lloyd's plate in the slot when the Vote was cast, all right. The Brain can't be wrong on that. The alternative solutions to the problem—alternatives to his making a deliberate Vote against the interests of good government, I mean—are very few: One—He was not paying attention to the screen. Two—He struck the con button by accident. Three—He let somebody else use his plate. Any one of which reasons is in itself grounds for Readjustment!"

"Fred, you wouldn't...."

"Of course not, Bodger. I had the incident erased from the memory circuits immediately. This is the only copy of his Readjustment order. You can keep it, tear it up—Frame it, if you like! That's not why I'm here."

"You don't have to tell me," Bodger sighed. "In the past sixteen hours, the son of the Secondary Speakster has blithely violated the social and political ethics of the Hive, to the extent that his destruction—"

"Bodger!" Stanton flared. "You have a rotten habit of—"

"Pretty words don't alleviate the truth of the situation. You know, and I know, what Readjustment is! A one-way trip down the incinerator chute!"

"All right, we know it! So shut up about it, and let's keep it to ourselves! What I'm here to find out is—What the hell are you going to do about this idiot son of yours? This is twice he's had to be covered for, in a damned short time, Bodger. I can't spend my time rescuing Lloyd from something I'm starting to think he may well deserve!"

"Aw, Fred, you wouldn't let—"

"The hell I wouldn't! I like Lloyd, and I like you, but if it starts shaking up my position in the Hive, the two of you can go to blazes! Do I make myself clear?"

"I—I'll talk to him, Fred, really I will."

"You mean you haven't!?" Stanton exploded. "What's the idea of coming home here in the middle of the day, then? I thought you were going to—" He took a closer look at the other man, then scowled. "Say, are you all right, Bodger? Your color's kind of funny. You're not ... sick?"

"Of course not!" Bodger snapped. "I'm shaken, if you must know. I came right home here to chew Lloyd out for last night's episode with the Horton girl, and when I couldn't find him, I got so mad that I thought I'd better lie down and cool off. I don't want a scene if I meet him in a public place. That would get the word out in a hurry, wouldn't it!"

"Still, you look kind of—" Stanton halted, and gave the subject up with a sigh. "Maybe I'd be, too, if I got a couple of jolts like you did. Okay, Bodger. See you back at the office, later." He turned and went out.

Bodger stood listening until he heard the front door close. Then, still shirtless, he went into the hallway and threw open the door of Lloyd's room without knocking. It was empty. But there was the elusive memory of a sweet fragrance still hovering in the air there.

Bodger swore softly, and returned to his own room to shower and dress. He had some heavy thinking to do.

When, minutes later, he was refreshed, dressed, and ready to appear in public again, he'd made a decision. He needed to discover the root of Lloyd's dangerous behavior. And the likely person to know something about it would be Lloyd's fiancee, Grace Horton.

Bodger left his Unit and started toward the lift. It was still short of one o'clock, but the Voteplate of the Secondary Speakster cut through a lot of mechanical red tape.

The lift arrived at Hundred-Level within seconds after his nocking his plate beside the call-button. He got aboard and began the descent toward Ninety-Three.

CHAPTER 7

Robert Lennick leaned far back in his swivel chair, and sighed a deep sigh at the ceiling, being careful it would not be heard by the party on the other end of the wire.

"Now, listen, sweetheart," he said. "You are good. Got that? Good, with a capital tremendous. But you don't click in urban dramas. You're too—" He didn't want to say tall, or gigantic, though these words were more readily at tongue-tip. "—too Junoesque for the parts we're casting.... No, I mean it. You just—Well, you're just not the housewife type, darling!"

The speaker crackled in his ear for another minute, and Lennick sat and studied the piled-up scripts in his in-box with wearily narrowed eyes. When his chance came again, he said, "No, not today. I'm sorry, Lona, really I am.... It's impossible, that's why.... All right, if you have to know—We're shooting Fredric Stanton, that's why—"

The speaker's reply to the phrase made some of the color wash out of Lennick's smooth-shaven face, and this time he interrupted with a snarl. "You better watch it, Lona, baby! A smartaleck pun like that can get you sent to the hospital. You know damned well I mean we're going to photograph him.... Okay, but simmer down, huh?!... Okay, baby, I will.... Yes, as soon as anything, anything at all in your line comes by my desk.... Word of honor.... Sure thing.... Yeah, that'd be lovely. We'll do it sometime.... Okay, Lona—Lona.... I said—.... O-kay, Lona!" He spat out the last words, and clamped the phone into the cradle with vicious pleasure. "Dumb broad!" he mumbled, then got up and opened the door to his anteroom.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Frank," he said to the tall, gangly youth who rose from a chrome-and-plastic chair and came into the main office.

The man called Frank sank into a chair and fiddled idly with a button on his shirt until Lennick had the door closed again. When the youthful producer was once more back in his swivel chair, eyeing his visitor, Frank lost his casual air and locked eyes with him, disconcertingly steady blue eyes, and Lennick had to fight an impulse to wince.

"Trouble?" he said, after a moment.

Frank knitted his brows, and cupped his upper lip in the moist curve of his lower before replying, without emotion, "Depends." He fiddled with the button again, then gave it up and stood. He preferred pacing as he talked. "It's—Well, it's about Andra, Bob."

Lennick stiffened. "They got her...?" His relief was only a conditional relaxation when the other man shook his head; he was keyed to tighten up again without notice. "So where is she? How is she?"

"Fine, to answer your second question. I don't know the answer to the first, though I could make some guesses. The thing is—We better get the word out to the others not to try and contact her."

"Not to—!?" said Lennick, stunned. "But she needs help, bad. She has to hide until we can—!... Frank, what's the matter? You look so damned funny!"

"Okay, I'll level with you, Bob." Frank stood at the front of the desk and leaned his hands on the blotter, staring down at the anxious face of his friend. "Last night, after her escape, Andra tried to hide in the Temple, up on ninety-five. The Goons were right after her, Bob. There wasn't even any Service because of her. Every person in that Temple was checked—one by one—for Voteplates. She had one, Bob. She got out."

"That's crazy!" Lennick gasped. "Where in hell—? Frank, I saw them collect her Voteplate after the accident. She couldn't have gotten it back. And she couldn't have a spare, I know, so—?" He saw the uneasiness still in the man Frank's features, and was quiet. "There's more...?"

"After her escape," Frank said flatly, taking no joy in telling the tale, "She met a man, outside the arcade, went with him for cocktails, then up to his level. That's the last she was seen, Bob. It was the Hundred-Level. None of us are authorized to go that high without escort."

"But who the hell did Andra know on the top?" Bob blurted. "She's given autographs to a few higher-ups, but—"

"It was Lloyd Bodger, Junior, Bob. They acted like old friends. Now do you see why I think it's unwise if she's contacted?"

Lennick suddenly surged from his chair and nearly tore the shirtfront from his visitor in an angry fist, as he yanked the other's face close to his own. "You can't mean that about Andra, Frank. You know her! You've worked with her—And I ... I know her better than anyone, Frank. She's not a traitor. She wouldn't betray us."

"I wish," said Frank, calmly ignoring the enraged aspect of Lennick's attitude, "you'd put your heart back where it belongs and think it over just once with your brains...."

Bright beads of moisture suddenly appeared in Lennick's eyes, and he released his grasp of the other man's shirt and sank down into his chair, burying his face upon his arms. "There's an explanation," he mumbled into the blotter. "I know there is. She wouldn't—" he lifted his head, suddenly hopeful. "Frank, we're still here! If she told all she knew, we'd be atomized by now, right?"

Frank looked uncertain. "Maybe. At least—It's a point in her favor. I don't know. You've got me shook, now." He sat back down and pondered, shaking his head slowly back and forth. "If she isn't hollering for the Goons—What's she doing with Junior? A guy like that doesn't take perfect strangers up to his place, does he?"

"I don't believe that part at all," said Lennick. "She may've gotten off before he did."

"The indicator went right on up without stopping. My witness'll swear to it. Right to top level, just before Ultrablack."

"Maybe she's under arrest, going for questioning," Lennick parried weakly. "It could be, you know."

"Why up there? Goons carry Truth Serum. Besides, the witness further states that they didn't look like anything but a couple of chummy dates. Real chummy."

"How about if—Maybe he was helping her? Andra's not a bad looker.... If she turned on the tears—"

"You've been reading your own scripts, friend," said Frank, not unkindly. "This is reality we're dealing with, not never-never-land on film. This Lloyd Bodger, Junior is not the boy-most-likely when it comes to helping anti-Hive people. Face it, Bob. Something's up."

"So why, I repeat, aren't we all on our way down the chute costumes, cameras and all?"

"That's the only thing that doesn't make sense," Frank admitted. "And the only thing that prevents me hiring a sniper to knock her off."

"You'd do that?" said Bob. "To Andra?"

"For the time being, we'll let it ride," Frank decided on the doorstep. "It may be handing ourselves over on a silver salver, but—We'll let it ride. Till we hear from her. And she'd better make it convincing."

"I know she'd tell me the truth—Whatever it is," said Bob, then regretted his rhetorical lapse into doubt. But Frank let it pass, and simply said, with a fleeting smile of compassion, "If I were you, I'd take that Goon's advice, from yesterday when Andra was carted off: Get engaged to somebody else."

"I want to talk to her," Bob insisted.

"If it was your neck, fine. Talk. But it's all our necks. I can't risk it."

"You could fix it, Frank. You could find out where she is, a way to get there. Come along, even, so I don't fumble the ball. Please, Frank? I've got to know...."

"Bob, if you knew what you were asking—!" Then the taut, painful set of his friend's features cracked away some of his veneer, and he slumped wearily against the jamb, fiddling with that button again. "So maybe insanity's catching, or something," he said after a pause.

"You'll help me?"

"I'm not absolutely sure I can, Bob. But—Tell you what.... Buzz me about nine tonight. I might have an idea."

"Thanks," Bob said. "You're—You're a nice guy, Frank."

Frank turned and walked across the anteroom and out, without replying. Robert Lennick settled back in the swivel chair again, this time not at all relaxed.

CHAPTER 8

"Now, in this scene, sir, you're instructing the Temples through the Speaksters, in your capacity as Prime Speakster," Robert Lennick was explaining, as Fredric Stanton nodded over the pages of script.

Frank, the director, stood by impatiently while his boss explained the setup of the scene they were to shoot.

"I think I understand," Stanton said finally. "Where do I go, now?" An aide led the President toward the waiting set. When he was out of earshot, Frank inclined his head toward Lennick, and whispered, "Never mind buzzing me tonight, Bob. Meet me here, at your office, just before Ultrablack."

"Before Ultrablack?!" Lennick said, aghast. "How will we—?"

"Leave it to me, okay?" said Frank, impatiently. "I'll get you to Andra, wherever she is. I want to see her myself."

Lennick could only stand stupefied as the tall, angular form of the director moved off toward the waiting cameras and crew. Then he grunted in frustration and turned back toward his office. The presence of Stanton made his mind return to the day before, when Andra was captured by the Goons, and it bothered him to dwell on it. An accident. A stupid accident on the set. She'd entered to do her scene, had caught her foot on a hidden guy-wire, and had fallen, still holding the tray of drinks she'd been supposed to serve to her co-stars. And the ragged edge of a shattered goblet had raked across her forearm. Not deep, not at all. Just a long, blood-oozing scratch. The Goons had been there almost on the instant, commandeering her Voteplate, taking her off for "treatment." And she'd looked to him for help, help he could not give, dared not give. And when she saw she was suddenly friendless—She'd broken and run. The Goons hadn't expected such a reaction. Before they could relay the situation to the Brain and get their instructions, Andra had dodged out by a corridor too narrow for them to follow, in all their ponderous girth and height, and had vanished completely. Later that day, a Goon Squad had come to the studio and widened the corridor, and one other like it, to preclude such a thing ever occurring again.

Lennick was worried at Andra's not contacting him. She might think he couldn't be trusted, the way he'd let the Goons take her. But what did she expect a man to do against armed Goons? She'd only have had the dubious pleasure of seeing him dance to death with a hideous smile on his face, while a Snapper Beam broke his spine in two.

It made Lennick's head hurt to think about it, so when he got to his office, he started reading some new scripts. In a society where the possession of medicine is a crime, it didn't pay to have a headache. Or to let on you had one. But he couldn't erase the look he'd seen in her eyes when they were taking her away.

CHAPTER 9

Arriving at the door to Grace Horton's Unit, Lloyd paused with his finger not quite pressing the bell. "This won't be pleasant," he warned. "I've never done anything like this before—getting involved with you, I mean—and I don't think Grace is going to like it. I can't much blame her, either."

He stopped as the door opened. Grace Horton stood there, clad only in a fragile garment of light silk, her up-turned face warm and eager. Beyond her, Lloyd saw the tray with a bottle, ice, and two glasses. There was soft music playing from somewhere in the Unit. He felt his face go red.

"Grace—I want you to meet Andra, Andra Corby."

Grace looked past him for the first time, and saw the other woman. A tiny spasmodic reaction tightened her face and some of the color drained away. Then she said, with rigid composure, "Come in. Come in, won't you?" Unconsciously, she held the folds of her garment tightly at the throat with one hand, as if to make her covering more substantial, as she stepped aside to let them pass.

"Excuse me," she blurted suddenly, after shutting the door, and rushed into her bedroom. The music emanating from there cut off, abruptly, and then Grace reappeared in the doorway, her lips curled in a smile that would not quite come off. "I thought—I thought you'd miss the lift," she said, in an obvious extemporization that was embarrassing to all three persons. "That's why I'm—not quite dressed, yet. I thought I'd be ready after one, when you—" Her eyes fell on the tray, with its solitary preparation for two, and her voice choked off in the middle of a syllable.

Then she took a breath, walked into the parlor, and sat down gracefully on the arm of the sofa. "Well," she said brightly, "now what'll we lie about?!"

"I'm so very sorry, Grace," Lloyd said contritely. "I ... I would've told you Andra was coming, if I'd known. We only decided after I'd hung up—"

Grace's eyebrows rose just a fraction. "Andra was at your home when I called?" She rose, suddenly. "I think I'd better get another glass from the kitchen. I have the feeling we're all of us going to need strength."

Lloyd and Andra looked at one another, then sat gloomily down in armchairs deliberately far apart, and waited for Grace's return. When she came back with the third glass, she was a bit more composed.

"Now," said Grace, after draining half her glass, "we can talk."

There was a silence, then Lloyd broke it, awkwardly, with, "You said—You wanted to see me here, right away."

"I called you about the Temple Service last night, Lloyd—I see by your face that you do know something about it. Good. Maybe you can tell me what—Don't look so shaken."

"I—Okay. You caught me off-balance, I guess."

"I must have. You look like you were just kicked in the stomach. Well, then, tell me: What happened last night?"

"How did you know anything happened?" Lloyd asked.

"A call from the top level this morning. I was warned not to attend on the wrong night in the future, and told I was being let off the hook—though they phrased it more politely, of course—because I was engaged to the son of the Secondary Speakster."

"Did you—? What did you say? To their call?" Lloyd asked, knotting up inside.

Grace folded her arms and leaned back. "I'm no dope, Lloyd. I knew you had my Voteplate, and were bringing it to me last night. That is—" she interjected with chagrin "—I thought you'd be over last night with it. When you didn't come, and I got this call, from top level, I kind of figured you were in dutch, somehow, and played along. I apologized for my error, and promised it wouldn't happen again—I see, by the way you two just let your breaths out, that I did the right thing.... Or did I? I take it Andra was the one who used my plate?" Lloyd nodded, miserably.

Grace thought this over, watching the two of them, then leaned forward and touched Lloyd's fingers where they curled tightly around the end of the chair arm. "Apparently, I have salvaged everybody's chestnuts. Would it be asking too much if I wondered what the hell my reasons were?"

"I'll explain," Lloyd said. "That is, as best I can. My motivations are still a bit obscure even to myself."

Grace flicked a glance at Andra, sitting small and lovely and feminine in the chair. "Are they!" she said, a spark of intuition putting her almost with complete accuracy ahead of Lloyd's still-untold tale. "Maybe I can figure them out for you after I hear your story, then."

"Okay, Grace," Lloyd said gratefully, missing her inflection. He proceeded to tell her the story, from the time he'd gone to the Temple up until the present moment, eliding only the fact that Andra had spent the night in his room. He used the phrase "up at my Unit" and hoped it wouldn't be proved any deeper than that. When he'd finished, Grace looked dazed.

"You mean—You believe all that, Lloyd?" she said. "I used to have great respect for your sanity, but—This thing about no hospitals, about bumping off the Kinsmen to keep the population level down—It's crazy, Lloyd. Look, your father's one jump from the Presidency. Has he ever, in all the years of your life, even hinted such a thing to you?"

"No, of course not, but—"

"Yet you take the word of a fugitive, an obvious mental case who doesn't know what's good for her—!"

"May I say something in my defense?!" Andra protested.

"You may not," said Grace, then turned back to Lloyd as though Andra had ceased to exist anymore. "How could a man with your intelligence—"

"Hold it!" Lloyd snapped. "Hold it right there. I'm not a complete fool, Grace. Sure I had doubts. But there are some things Andra said that bother me. And I thought up a few puzzlers myself. Like war. Casualties in battle account for a high rate of the deaths reported in the Hive, right? So it occurred to me—How come we're not using the Goons to fight in the war? They're indestructible, they're armed with our most potent weapons—Yet we let men and boys be shipped out of here to fight. It doesn't make sense."

"Of course it does!" Grace retorted. "You think that question never occurred to anyone but you, Lloyd Bodger? We don't use Goons in war for the same reason they didn't use atomic weapons after the Second World War of last century: The other side has them, and might fight back with them."

"But—So what?!" Lloyd exploded. "What's the difference if our people are killed by other soldier's bullets or by enemy Goons?"

"There's—There's less slaughter this way," Grace said, with an intensity that sounded lame even to her.

"All right, we'll let that part go," Lloyd said, in no mental shape for argument. "There are other things—"

"Forget them," Grace said, vehemently. "Whatever your reasons, or reasoning, last night, you have another problem to face: What are you going to do with this girl? The longer you stick with her, the slimmer your excuses will sound when she's caught. In fact, the only hope you have is to turn her in, right now, and pray your Readjustment isn't too painful."

"But don't you see, Grace—!" Lloyd blurted. "What if she's right?! On that chance, no matter how silly you think her theory is—a theory that has led others to join her movement, remember—do I dare take the risk of turning her in?"

Grace stared at him and digested this aspect of the situation slowly. "I—I guess it would be kind of late, when the top level sent me the report that your Readjustment hadn't taken, or something, to say 'Well, he told me so!'."

The door chimes pealed, then, startling them all.

"You expecting anyone else?" asked Lloyd.

"No, unless your friend the fugitive was seen coming in here."

As they spoke, Andra had gone to a window and peeked out from behind the curtain. When she turned to face them again, her face was grey with strain and apprehension.

"Lloyd—" she said. "It's your father!"

CHAPTER 10

Under the blazing arc-lights on the set, President Stanton played himself to the hilt, nearing the climactic, "Vote for the sake of the Kinsmen! Vote for the freedom of the Temples! Vote for the life of the Hive!" Just as he launched into this most important part of the script, a page boy made his labyrinthine way on tiptoe through the cables and reflectors and sound equipment to the chair of the director, and whispered urgently in his ear. Frank got to his feet immediately.

"Cut!" he called.

Stanton looked up in some surprise, and it was a very baffled cameraman who finally found enough strength to cut off his machine. The set was dead quiet as Stanton arose from behind the prop-desk and looked in unpleasant speculation at the source of the interruption.

Frank cleared his throat, and said, "I'm sorry. The scene was going well, sir; that isn't why I cut it. You have a phone call, in Mr. Lennick's office."

"I thought it was understood I was not to be disturbed while on the set," said Stanton, still wondering if he should give vent to his feelings of outrage.

"It was, sir. And is. But the call's from your personal secretary, sir. She says it's of the utmost importance."

Stanton hesitated, dropped his script back down onto the desk, then started decisively around the side of the desk toward the director. "She had better be correct," he said darkly, brushing by Frank and the crewmen without apology and vanishing into the corridor that led to Robert Lennick's office. There was a brief silence, then a concerted sigh of relief from the men on the set.

"Shall we wait," one of the crewmen asked Frank, "or shoot around this scene and pick it up later?"

Frank spread his hands. "I don't know. I have to be sure he's coming back, first—I'll go find out." He told his staff to relax until his return, then hurried out after the President.

A hundred feet down the corridor, he rounded a turn. Up ahead he saw Stanton just entering Lennick's office. Then, without hesitation, Frank ducked into a nearby office, his own, and locked the door on the inside. The lowest drawer of his desk had a false bottom. He triggered the release on this, now, and lifted out the small black earphone-set there, setting it dextrously across his head, magnetic speaker directly over his ear. In the hollow of the now-exposed section was a telephone dial. Frank swiftly spun it through the sequence of Lennick's office number, then sat hunched forward over his desk, listening hard. He heard Stanton pick up the phone, and say, "This is Stanton. What is it?!"

Madge Benedict, his personal secretary, "It's Lloyd Bodger, Junior. You told me to contact you the instant he got out of line again. Well, he has, but good."

"As bad as the other two?" Stanton queried.

"Worse, much worse, sir. Bad enough to make the other two look good by comparison. He was seen, this afternoon, on Ninety-Three-Level, in the company of Andra Corby, the fugitive from hospitalization. You know, sir, the movie star who was injured on the set yesterday."

Something sparked in Stanton's brain, then, and a hard light of comprehension dawned in his eyes. "Wait—Let me think.... Of course! She vanished yesterday from the Temple on Ninety-Five! And Lloyd was there, too. I wonder—" He stopped idle speculation and snapped, "Get me Bodger, quick!"

"His office," Madge told him after a moment on another line, "says he's gone home, and you can—"

"I know he's at home!" Stanton growled, "I just left him there. Get him!"

There was a short silence, then she spoke again. "I'm ringing him, sir. I don't think he's at home. No one answers."

"You know what to do as well as I do!" he said impatiently. "Put a tracer on his Voteplate! See where he's gone to."

Another pause; while Madge coded an inquiry and flashed it to the memory circuits of the enormous Brain beneath the Hive, and received the near-instantaneous reply. "Sir," she replied, "he's taken the lift to Ninety-Three-Level. The same place his son was seen."

"That's odd.... Do you suppose he knows about the Corby girl, too? Or—" Stanton dropped the interrogation; Madge shouldn't be made to think about it. The less she knew, trusted secretary or not, the better. "Skip it," he said abruptly. "Find out for me where they might be going on that level, their hangouts, haunts, and friends...."

Madge found the answers and got back on the line. "Three possible places, sir. Dewey's Bar and Grill, in Sector Three, Miss Grace Horton's Unit, and—"

"Lloyd's fiancee?!" Stanton interjected. "The one who attended the wrong Temple Service last night...."

"I believe she did, sir. We sent out a memo—"

"And she got it this morning! Of course!" said Stanton, exultantly. "And phoned Lloyd right afterwards!"

"I don't follow you, sir—" Madge said, blankly.

"Forget it," snapped the President. "I have all the information I need. And," he added, with belated gratitude, "thank you for calling me, Miss Benedict." He hung up without waiting for her reply.

Huddled over the desk in the dimness of his own office, Frank tore off the earphones, dropped them back into the hollow of the drawer, and re-closed the false bottom. He was out in the corridor again, headed toward Lennick's office, with seconds to spare when Stanton came out.

"Sir," Frank said, turning about and falling into step with him on the way back to the set, "I wonder if you'd care to finish the scene, or should we shoot around it?"

"Shoot around it," Stanton said. "I can't be bothered with the filming, today. Something's come up."

Frank nodded and let his pace slacken, allowing the President to move away from him. After poising on his toes for an undecided second, he whirled and dashed toward Lennick's office. If young Bodger had been seen with Andra, in the same locale where the elder Bodger was now heading—or had even arrived—there was going to be an explosion. An explosion that might sweep Andra, the Bodgers, and the entire anti-Hive movement with it, when Stanton got the wheels of his office in motion.

CHAPTER 11

After thumbing the doorbell the second time, Bodger shifted his hand toward the inner pocket where he kept his Voteplate. The doors of all Units in the Hive were keyed by the Voteplate of the dweller, through a slot above the knob. As Secondary Speakster, Bodger's plate could key any door in the Hive save Stanton's; all doors opened to the President's Voteplate. Just as his fingers touched the edge of the plate in his pocket, he saw the knob start to turn, and withdrew his hand. The door opened, and his son was standing there.

"Come in, Dad," Lloyd said, standing aside. "Grace will join us in a moment."

The elder Bodger's eyes did not miss the fact that the door to the bedroom was closed, as he entered the parlor. This delayed appearance of Grace, coupled with the delay in their response to his ring, confirmed his worst suspicions. He took the seat Lloyd offered him, leaned back without quite relaxing, and came to the point at once.

"Lloyd, you're making trouble. Lots of it. For yourself, and quite possibly for me, too. I don't like it. But before I take any steps, I want to hear your side of it."

Lloyd sat down facing his father, very uncomfortable inside. He didn't want to inadvertently volunteer more information than his father already had. He could think of plenty of things he'd done since the night before, any one of which was damnable; the safest policy was in determining just what, and how much of what, his father knew.

"I'm not sure I follow you, Dad," he said, pleasantly. "What kind of trouble—"

"Don't fence with me, young man!" said his father. "Unless you're completely brainless, you know what I—" He was about to expostulate on the disgraceful conduct of the evening before, the matter of Grace's having gone up to top level with his son, then decided to let that ride until Grace herself was present. Keeping steely control over his emotions, he said, instead, "The Vote last night, Lloyd. Your plate was credited with a con Vote. Are you insane, Lloyd?! Haven't I told you—!"

Lloyd racked his brain to recall the content of the proposition, but could not. "Maybe I hit the wrong button," he said lamely. "My hand might have slipped."

"The penalty's the same, whatever the basis of your stupid action, and you know it!" his father rasped. "I don't think you are even able to tell me what the proposition was, are you!" A look at Lloyd's burning face told him the answer. "I thought not," he said, wearily. "I don't know what I'm going to do with you, son. I've tried to keep you in line—"

The entrance of Grace Horton stopped Bodger's tired lament, and both men rose to their feet.

"It's nice to see you Mr. Bodger. Would—Would you like a drink?" Grace offered, nervously.

"I would not—" he said, then softened his curt reply with, "But thank you, anyway, Grace. Maybe later, after I've had my say." Lloyd and Grace looked at one another in numb apprehension of the unknown, then back at Bodger.

"The son of a prominent man," Bodger began, at last finding his approach-path, "has a great responsibility to his father's good name. The Hive, as you both know, has rigid rules regarding—well—amorous conduct, to employ a euphemism, between unmarried persons. Yet, last night, Lloyd—Grace—the two of you were seen going to top level on the public lift, just before Ultrablack."

A short sound from Grace's chair was the gasp that had sucked itself between her lips as the significance of Bodger's words reached her.

Lloyd, for his part, fought but could not control the hot crimson flood that rushed into his features when he met Grace's hurt gaze.

Bodger, misinterpreting both their reactions according to his own notion of the night before, immediately said, "No need to be afraid. A thing like this is better out in the open. I can understand how two young people in love might—"

"Dad!" Lloyd said abruptly. Bodger halted and waited for his son's words. Lloyd, speaking to his father the words that were actually intended for Grace's ears, said, with deep earnest, "It wasn't like that, Dad. She slept on my bed, with her clothes on. I slept on the rug. We—We just had to be together, that's all. I've done nothing you should feel ashamed of."

The sudden smile on Grace's face caught at Lloyd's heart.

"That's a help, son," Bodger said, likewise convinced. "To me, at any rate. The point, unfortunately, is that any persons who observed you going up to our Unit with Grace could not be expected to presume the best, if you see what I mean?"

"I do, Dad," Lloyd mumbled contritely. "And I wish it had never happened."

"It wouldn't have," Bodger pontificated, "if Grace hadn't gone to the wrong Temple Service. I can see how she might dislike the change in her attendance-period, meaning she'd be unable to attend with you, anymore, but it was the wrong thing to do. If she'd stayed home, none of this would've happened."

The irony of this last statement, while it missed Bodger completely, brought a small, one-syllable burst of laughter from Grace's lips, which she quickly stoppered. Lloyd jumped into the breach swiftly, to distract his father from a dangerous line of conjecture.

"Dad, there was something bothered me last night—In the Temple, I mean, about that fugitive girl?"

"What about her?" said his father, unprepared for the statement to the extent that he made an automatic response without having time to notice he was being diverted.

"The check-up for the girl, Dad. It seemed kind of—I hate to use the word, but it's the only one—inefficient, at least to me."

"The girl had no Voteplate," Bodger said, puzzled. "I should think a check of all Voteplates was efficient enough."

"But why not have the Goons check her description, or her fingerprints, or even check for the scar on her arm?" said Lloyd. "It'd be much simpler, and surer."

Bodger shook his head. "Not at all, Lloyd. A Goon, you must remember, doesn't 'see' as we do. Its television lenses are only geared to recognize streets, Units, sectors, and so on, and to tell Goons from Kinsmen. Anything as delicate as actual recognition of a face would involve the building of a Brain greater in mass than the current one. No, Voteplates were the only answer to identification problems; that's half the reason they exist. As to fingerprints—They will serve in identifying an individual, it's true, if a person's identity is in doubt. But it takes time, and the fingerprint files are enormous; to do so in trying to locate one person in a full Temple gathering would have taken many hours, and there was a time element involved. The ensuing Service could not begin until the Temple was emptied. Finally, as to the scar—" Bodger looked decidedly uncomfortable, then sighed and said, "—As son of the Secondary Speakster—and future daughter-in-law, Grace—perhaps it's time you were told a fact that is rather embarrassing to the regime, but all too true: In the Hive, people do not always report injuries. While we do not enjoy this mild form of treason to the planned medical facilities of the Hive, we nevertheless tolerate it, for the simple reason that it's bothersome treating every scratch and bruise that occurs, most of which will heal themselves. And so, if we had the Goons check for the girl's scar, we might have found a large number of medical violations among the Kinsmen at the Service. Under that circumstance, we would have to hospitalize everyone; Goons are trained to spot any deviation from a healthy norm beyond a certain degree. It would have been terribly awkward, all around. So the only sure method was—"

Bodger stopped, as though violently stunned. "Lloyd—" Bodger said, his heart hammering with a nameless dread. "I was activating the Temple Speaksters last night. I gave the warning about the girl to your Temple. I remember distinctly what I said. And I know I made no mention of the type or location of her injury. No mention at all. How did you know it?!"

Lloyd's lips worked, but he couldn't bring up a syllable from his constricting lungs. Grace, her hands knotted into fists, looked at the carpet, and sat like a marble statue.

Bodger got to his feet, towering over the two of them.

"I'm talking to you, Lloyd. Answer me! How did you know?"

Lloyd's ribs abruptly began to function again, and he drew in what felt like the deepest breath of his life. Then he stood and faced his father, defiantly.

"Because she's here, Dad. Right behind that door! And Andra Corby was the girl in our Unit last night, furthermore. I helped her escape from the Temple, with Grace's Voteplate. Now, what are you going to do about it!?"

Bodger fell back into his chair like a crumpling jointed doll, his face shocked and incredulous. "I don't believe it," he said stiffly, pressing his hands upon the chair arms to halt their trembling. "Lloyd, it's not true!"

The bedroom door opened, then, and Andra came out. When Bodger saw her, something inside him cracked, and he suddenly dropped his face into his hands and just groaned. Lloyd was at his side in an instant.

"Dad," he said, gripping the other man's shoulders, "Dad, I had to tell you. I've been entangling myself in so many lies since last night—It was the only thing left to do!"

Bodger looked up, wide-eyed with dismay, and shrugged Lloyd's hands away. "Let me think!" he said, hoarsely. "I have to think! Stanton mustn't find this out. I've already covered up for your idiotic Vote, and for your taking Grace—all right, Andra—up to our Unit last night. There has to be a way to prevent your horrible errors being found out. I'll cover, somehow, Lloyd. If I can find a way, I'll cover up, and—"

"Dad—!"

Something in the young man's tone made Bodger stop his frantic raving. He looked into his son's eyes, and saw the question even before Lloyd asked it.

"Why should you cover up?"

Bodger grabbed at his shattered self-control, and sat up, stiffly. "I—I don't follow you, son."

"I said," Lloyd repeated sadly, "why should you cover up for me? I'll only be hospitalized for Readjustment, won't I?... Won't I!?"

"Lloyd," Bodger said sickly, getting up and clutching his son's hands, "you're over-wrought, right now, you've been under a strain...."

"All the more reason for my hospitalization, then," Lloyd said, with all the relentless cruelty he could muster in the face of his father's ghastly fright.

"No!" Bodger yelled. "You can't go! You don't understand, Lloyd! I can't explain here."

"There's no need to," Lloyd said, suddenly softening and taking his father by the hands to halt their frenetic quavering. "Your attitude has told me all I want to know. Andra was speaking the truth. There are no hospitals, no treatment, no Readjustment. Only death."

"Lloyd—!" Bodger said. "If you only knew why—"

"We'd all like to know why," said Andra, solicitously. "Mr. Bodger, it's no use struggling any more. You have to tell the truth, now, or have your son—and Grace and myself—be destroyed."

"All right," Bodger said. "I will. I'll tell you the whys and wherefores of the Hive. Then maybe you'll—"

"I'm afraid such an extemporaneous educational program is quite impossible," came a voice from the doorway.

Fredric Stanton, just removing his Voteplate from the slot in Grace's door, had his other hand extended toward them. And clutched firmly in his steady grasp was the stubby metal muzzle of a Snapper.

The two men and women stepped backward, slowly, as he advanced into the parlor and shut the door behind him. "I only heard the last few phrases of your conversation, unfortunately," he said. "I think, for the interests of the Hive, that I should hear it all. We'll have to go up to my office, all of us, to get at the truth. I'll have a Goon Squad pick us up, here." He reached for the phone, dialed swiftly, and soon had Madge on the line. He kept the Snapper trained on the group while he spoke, and never took his eyes off them.

"Sir," Madge replied, before he could ring off, "do you think it's wise, bringing Bodger through the streets under guard, I mean?" She sounded greatly concerned. "The Kinsmen—"

Stanton narrowed his eyes appreciatively, and cut her off with, "You're right, of course; it wouldn't do to let public opinion of the regime get any shakier than it is! I can't wait till Ultrablack, however. Start the emergency sirens at once. Allow fifteen minutes for all Kinsmen to clear the streets. Then put on the Emergency Ultrablack."

"Right, sir," Madge said, and hung up.

Stanton smiled, still keeping them covered as he replaced the phone in the cradle. "You'd better be seated," he said congenially.

CHAPTER 12

"You really believe that Bodger is involved in the anti-Hive movement?" Lennick said dubiously. "It doesn't make sense, Frank! Why should the Secondary—"

"All I know," Frank said determinedly, "is that Stanton was shaken by the news of young Bodger and Andra. It puts me right back on Andra's team, all at once. If Stanton was in the dark, then it's very doubtful that Andra's done anything to betray the movement; the greater likelihood is that she's pulled Junior our way."

Lennick frowned doubtfully. "Andra's an attractive girl, Frank, but—"

"Everybody isn't pulled into the movement like you were, Bob. Sex appeal has its uses, but there's also a thing known as intelligence. Bodger and his son are no dopes. If she convinced them—"

"Why should she!?" Lennick said angrily. "Have to convince them, I mean! Didn't they, of all people, know?"

Frank stood there with his mouth open, blinking. Then he sat down and stared at the producer, dazed. "I must be getting soft-headed," he murmured after a short hiatus. "Of course they must know.... Still—?" He looked helplessly to Lennick for assistance.

"I know; it doesn't make sense," Lennick nodded. "The only thing to be done is to find Andra, I guess, and ask her the answers. Conjecture is only taking us in circles."

Frank spoke tautly, his pent-up frustration making his words strained and painful. "Excepting that, as long as Andra's in Grace Horton's sector, we can't go after her. That's not one of the permitted areas on my Voteplate. I'd hate to be caught loitering in that area when the Goons show up for Andra. When they make an arrest, they check on everybody. If only this had occurred later, today, near Ultrablack—"

"Why do you keep stressing Ultrablack?" Lennick asked. "I still haven't even figured out why I was to meet you here tonight just before it was turned on. We'd really be helpless then."

"Bob," Frank said gently, "this is nothing personal, but—Well, when the movement gets a new member, we don't just lay out all our schemes on a red carpet for him. There's a trial period for all new members. You've been on probation for a couple of months, now. The less you know of our plans, our memberships, the less you could spill if you were a plant."

Lennick grinned wryly and shook his head. "I know. That was a real bone of contention between Andra and myself when we'd been engaged nearly six weeks. A wife can't keep secret meetings from her husband very well; he may suspect her outings are something even worse. When I finally pressed her about broken dates, and times she couldn't be reached, and she told me about the movement, I was pretty miffed she didn't trust me with all she knew."

"She couldn't, Bob, you know that. The information wasn't hers to give out, without permission of the rest of us. We could not put our necks in a noose because Andra adores your big brown eyes."

"I'm surprised you're still speaking to me, after yesterday," Lennick said with chagrin.

"Bob, you did what any of us could have done: Nothing. One man can't fight off a Goon Squad. We would have lost two members, instead of just Andra, if you'd put up a fuss."

"But about Ultrablack," Bob said, frowning. "I know you people have meetings after Light-of-Day goes off. How you do it is beyond me, with the streets alive with Goons, and darkness everywhere, even indoors."

"If there were a chance of rescuing Andra when tonight's Ultrablack came on, I'd tell you, Bob," Frank said sincerely. "It'd give you the chance you didn't have yesterday to do something for her. I think you can be trusted. I trusted you enough, just now, to tell you about the tapped phone."

"You had to," Lennick said with a shrug. "Or else I'd be leery about believing you knew so much about Stanton's private call."

"We set that up ever since Stanton started appearing in our Hive-located scripts. He's always so busy, keeping in touch with his office between takes, that we've kept one jump ahead of the Goons, on occasion. It must drive him nuts, wondering about the raids that never came off."

Lennick got to his feet. "I wish we didn't have to just sit here this way! At this very moment, Andra may be still uncaptured. If she could be warned—"

"She could, if top-level privilege didn't entitle young Bodger's fiancee to an unlisted number. You can go up there if you want, but—I know too much about the movement to risk it. If you're caught, it's unimportant—insofar as the sum of your knowledge, I mean. But I don't dare let myself be taken."

Frank paused, and cocked his head, listening. Lennick, seeing him, did the same. A keening wail penetrated into the depths of the office. "Sirens!" Frank said. "It means there'll be an emergency Ultrablack in fifteen minutes. Or even less, if we did not hear them from the very beginning...."

"You think it has to do with Andra?" asked Lennick.

"No telling," said Frank. "And no telling how long this Ultrablack is for. At normal Ultrablack, I can count on a definite number of hours, but—" He hesitated, then clapped Lennick on the shoulder and said, "Come on, Bob! This may be the chance we were looking for!"

The producer followed him, bewildered, out of the office and down the corridor toward the set. Just inside the set, where the siren-alerted crew members were grabbing their gear together in preparation for swift flight, Frank pulled Bob aside and led him to a door flanking the corridor entrance. "This way," he said, shoving the other man inside and following.

"To the prop room?" Lennick said wonderingly, his mind a pastiche of envisioned secret panels, inter-level tunnels and the like. Frank kept moving down the short hall without replying, so Lennick could only tag impatiently after him, his curiosity at its ultimate. Then they were in the high, barn-like gloom of the prop room, a fantastic collage of canvas backdrops, teeter-piled furniture, swords, pistols, fake-currency stacks, ropes, saddles, bows, arrows, and other oddments of the trade.

Lennick found his bewilderment growing as Frank pushed aside a stack of dusty chairs and then slid aside a tall desert-sky backdrop on oiled rollers. For a horrible instant, Lennick recoiled, his flesh going icy with unthinking fright. Then he relaxed and gave a shiver of relief. "Damn those things!" he grunted. "I forgot we had them stored back here...." Then he looked up and met Frank's gaze, and comprehension dawned on him. "You mean—Them?!"

"There's a panel in the back, where the operator can slide in to run the controls," Frank said. "It'll hold two, if you don't mind crowding."

"Good grief!" Lennick gasped. "I should have guessed!"

"Never mind the self-recriminations," Frank said. "Help me roll this thing out so we can get inside it."

Lennick nodded, and took hold of the jointed metal arm on one side, as Frank did the same on the other. Together, they wheeled the massive torso of the prop-Goon toward the center of the room. As Frank located and opened the neatly disguised panel, Lennick shook his head in doubt.

"There's no force-field, Frank," he said uneasily, "and once Ultrablack sets in—"

"Unlatch the door to the street," Frank said testily, "and stop asking so many questions." As Lennick hurried to comply, Frank added, with less irritation, "The absent force-field's the reason we use Goons only after Ultrablack. A Goon won't notice the difference, since it only determines identities by shape, but a Kinsman would, instantly, as you just did. There are no Kinsmen out after Ultrablack, so that's the safe time for us. As for your other worry, about how we'll see after Ultrablack, Ultrablack is only the jamming of the visible spectrum by the radiation of inverted light; the compression and rarefaction phases of the light waves are plugged, dovetailed into, by the opposing phases of inverted light. Goons," he said, depressing a switch beside a small cathode-screen inside the hollow body, "see by cutting off the sensitivity of their lenses to light or inverted light, it doesn't matter which. Then the Hive is bright as day-light to them."

Lennick clambered up beside him and helped Frank dog the metal panel shut. Side by side, hunched over the pale blue glow of the screen, they watched the interior of the prop room through the lens-eyes of their grotesque conveyance. When the sirens halted, Ultrablack swept the room from their ken like a velvet curtain. Then Frank turned a dial, and the room reappeared on the screen, like a negative image, with white for black, and vice-versa.

"Now we can go," Frank said, releasing a brake. The prop-Goon began to roll ponderously toward the door to the street, carrying its two perspiring conspirators. "I only wish," Frank said tensely, guiding their movement out into the Kinsmen-deserted street of the sector, "that this thing had Snapper-Beams, too. But I guess an underground movement can't have everything."

CHAPTER 13

The four prisoners sat glumly looking at the impenetrable squares of darkness outside Grace Horton's windows, awaiting the arrival of the Goon Squad. Madge Benedict, without needing to be told, had kept Ultrablack from occurring in the Unit; it was the only area of visible light in the entire nine cubic miles of the Hive. Stanton, his weapon never wavering, lolled against the wall of Grace's parlor, watching their discomfiture with amusement. Of all the group, Andra's pallor was the worst, and Stanton noted this fact with relish.

"I don't expect to glean much from the minds of the others," he said, addressing her directly, "but yours must be a veritable treasure trove of interesting data."

"I don't know why you should think so," Andra said, knowing all the while that fabrication was futile; five minutes under truth serum would prove the President's contention beyond debate. "I'm only one small cog in a wheel greater than your whole Goondom of force!"

"You almost convince me," Stanton said. "But—No matter. I'll know the truth in a few more minutes."

"And then what?" asked Grace. "What happens to us once you've picked our brains of knowledge? If it's death—"

"Grace—" Lloyd said warningly, taking her arm. She turned on him.

"Darling, if we're to die in any event, let's die now! At least we'll have the satisfaction that a hundred other people aren't dying afterward, because of us!"

"She's right, Fred," Bodger said, smiling for the first time since his arrival at Grace's Unit. "If you kill us now, you'll never find anything out. At least our lives will have accomplished something, if only continued secrecy about the movement."

"A Snapper Beam needn't kill, if used briefly enough," Stanton said mildly. "If you four prefer dancing an agonized quadrille until the arrival of the squad, you have only to come an inch closer. In fact, unless you return to your chairs at once, I may just do it anyhow, for my own diversion."

"A Snapper Beam," said Bodger, "is effective only so long as it's held upon its victim. Can you play yours four ways at once, Fred? Because, while you're gunning any one of us down, three will be diving for your throat!"

Stanton, before Bodger's statement could bring the others in a unified wave against him, pointed the muzzle of the Snapper directly at the man's chest and pressed the firing stud. A whine of power came from the weapon as the invisible forces lashed out.

And Bodger took two strides forward and smashed his fist into Stanton's face. The President's head snapped back with the unexpected blow, and cracked sharply against the wall. Then, the weapon falling from his limp fingers, he slid to the floor and collapsed in an untidy heap.

Bodger, stumbling back from the fallen body, sagged into a chair, gasping. Lloyd sprang to his side, dropped to one knee beside the chair, staring in unbelief at the shaken man. "Dad!" he blurted, in dazed joy. "You're alive! You're all right!"

"No ..." Bodger said, his eyes bulging as he shook his head, his lips thickening over words that were becoming difficult to formulate. "No, Lloyd. I'm—sicker than I thought."

"What are you talking about, Dad! You just took a dose of power that would've destroyed a healthy human nervous system, and came through it! How can you say—"

"Lloyd!" Bodger rasped, clutching his son's arm. "Don't you see? I don't—don't have a human nervous system, anymore. The thing I've always feared has happened. I—" He coughed, and his skin took on a sickly bluish tinge for a moment, then flushed into a ruddier tone as he took a breath and held himself in rigid control. "The—The Brain. You ... must go to the Brain, Lloyd. I—Can't talk more ... ask it ... why is the Hive...." His voice trailed off, and his eyes closed.

"Dad," Lloyd said, shaking his father by the shoulders. "Why is the Hive what?! Tell me!"

His father opened his eyes and stared unseeing beyond his son. His lips, flecked with spume, worked silently, then he gurgled, "M-medicine ... bathroom ... behind mirror ... I n-need—" His collapse this time was total, his head hanging limply with chin on chest, his arms sliding over the sides of the chair until his wrists touched the carpet.

A thunderous pounding upon the front door brought Lloyd and the two women up short, and they stood frozen with dread as the insistent sound continued. The inner surface of the door was shaking with the blows. "... Goons?" whimpered Grace. "What'll we do if it's the Goons?"

"Stanton's Voteplate!" Andra snapped. "Lloyd, take it, quick, out of his pocket!" Lloyd caught her meaning instantly, and hurried to obey. "Grace, count ten, then open the door. We can't delay longer than that. Lloyd, think fast, and think smart! We're all in your hands, now!"

Lloyd, the plate in his hand, shoved his own into Stanton's pocket and straightened up. "Let them in, Grace," he commanded. "Then both of you keep still and let me talk!"

Grace unbolted the door and stepped back. The six metal bodies of the Goon Squad rumbled loudly as they crossed over the sill and came to a halt before the trio. The Goon in the fore-front of the group, swiveling its glittering telelenses over them, spoke in its cold, emotionless voice, "President Stanton."

Lloyd stepped forward and handed over the Voteplate. The eight-foot metal creature took it, slipped it into its chest-slot and paused; then returned the plate.

"Correct," it said. "Orders."

"Miss Madge Benedict, of my office, to be taken into custody at once, and held incommunicado," said Lloyd, figuring Stanton would be helpless with no contact at top level, so long as Ultrablack prevented his leaving the unit.

The Goon stood silently as this information was relayed to the Brain and thence to the Goon Squad nearest Stanton's office. "Accomplished," it said flatly, after a minute, its dull grey force-field pulsating with incredible energies. "Orders."

"Secondary Speakster Bodger—the man in the chair—to be taken," Lloyd flashed a glance at Grace, who nodded, "along with this woman on my right, to his Unit on Hundred-Level, Unit B, and left there without supervision, by all but one of your squad."

"Orders."

"One of you will escort me and this woman on my left to the Brain, in Sub-Level Three, immediately."

"Orders."

"All orders conveyed," said Lloyd.

CHAPTER 14

Knowing only the sector in which Andra had been seen with Lloyd, but not having access to Grace's address or phone number, Lennick and Frank, in the prop-Goon, arrived at her Unit many minutes after the Goon Squad had left. They found it by the simple expedient of noting—in their white-for-black cathode-screen—the one Unit from whose windows blackness was trying to pour. That meant Light-of-Day was still functioning in that particular Unit, and that in turn meant only the presence of higher-ups.

The door to the Unit lay wide open, but Frank didn't dare roll inside. His conveyance's lack of a force-field would be readily apparent in such close quarters. He halted, instead, a few yards along the side of the Unit, told Bob where the door lay from them, then cut off his motor and the cathode-screen. Ultrablack fell about them like a velvet all.

Bob, following Frank, felt his way out into the near-palpable darkness, found the wall against his fingers, and edged along beside it, fingers feeling for the doorway. A hand upon his chest stopped him, and he waited.

Frank, holding Bob back, leaned carefully toward the open doorway his fingers had just touched, not daring to show any more of himself than he had to to whomever might be inside the Unit. Then, swiftly, he leaned his head out of Ultrablack and blinked at the parlor before him. He saw no one. He closed his fingers upon the front of Bob's shirt, gave a quick tug on it, then let go and stepped into the room. A moment later, Bob was there beside him, squinting against the bright bluish Light-of-Day.

"Maybe it's the wrong Unit," Bob offered. "A malfunction in the Hive mechanism might keep this place from Ul—" He shut up and gripped Frank's arm. "Stanton!" he said, pointing beyond the sofa. Then Frank saw the President. Cautiously, the two men approached the still, silent figure and stared down at him.

"What do you suppose happened?!" Bob said, shakily. "Do you think Andra had something to do with this?"

Frank Shawn scratched his head. "You got me. All I can figure is—if Stanton's in a fix like this—he may not have been able to get her picked up. This tableau has the earmarks of turned tables, if you ask me."

"Do we dare waken him and find out?" Bob said, keeping his voice to a library-whisper.

"Not as long as Ultrablack's on. We'd have a hell of a time explaining how we got here," said Frank, shaking his head. He turned to look at Stanton again, and the blood froze in his veins. Stanton's eyes were open, and he was staring at the two of them with glaring hate.

"How did you get here, Kinsman Shawn?!" he demanded. "And you, Kinsman Lennick!" Stanton lifted his head from the floor, awkwardly, and tried to look around. "Bodger! Where is he?" he said, shaken by a sudden return of memory.

"I've got to get to that phone! They're probably on their way to my office right this minute! If they take control—" He choked on the word and lay still, seeing the Snapper—his own—that Frank now leveled at him. "I suppose the two of you know this is high treason?" he said wearily. He lay there fuming at his enforced impotence.

Bob looked at Frank. "What'll we do?"

"I wish I knew!" Frank muttered. "If we knew what had happened, where the others have gone—But we don't, so there's no followup there.... Still, we can't leave Stanton here, now that he's seen us, or it's our necks when he gets free."

"We—" Bob said, hesitantly. "We could make sure he would not be able to do anything, later...." He let his voice trail off, Frank caught his meaning after an instant's puzzled frown, and went ashen.

"In cold blood, just like that?" he said softly.

"I don't like it any more than you, Frank.... But—" Bob spread his hands helplessly. "What choice do we have? If we're caught—you especially—the whole movement is doomed." He stood silent, waiting for his answer.

Frank nodded, abruptly. "You're right. It has to be done." Stanton looked from the face of one man to the other, his tongue licking suddenly dry lips.

"Bob—Frank—" Stanton spoke from the floor, his tone weak with dread. "I'm an old man. You wouldn't kill me, would you? I'll do anything—Forget I've seen you here, even ... anything ... only please don't—!"

"Listen, Frank," Bob said, trembling. "You heard what Stanton said: They've gone to his office. Take the Goon and go after them. I'll stay here with Stanton. If everything works out about the revolt—Fine. If it doesn't—Call me, here. The number's on the phone base. If the balloon goes up—I'll kill Stanton, then. But unless it does—I can't...."

"Okay," Frank said, coming to a swift decision. He noted Grace's number, then went toward the Ultrablack beyond the door. At the threshhold, he turned. "I may not get the chance to phone," he said. "If things go wrong, I mean. Give me half an hour. If I haven't called by then—" He avoided looking at Stanton's perspiring face. "Go ahead."

Bob reached out and took the Snapper. "Good luck," he said. Frank nodded wordlessly, and stepped out into the blackness. In another minute, Bob heard the rumble of the prop-Goon's motors, and then the whir of its wheels on the pavement outside. When it died in the distance, he looked down at his prisoner.

"I'm sorry, sir," he said, "really sorry. It was the only thing to do, while he was here. I knew he wouldn't go through with it. Killing you, I mean." He stooped and helped him up.

"What if he'd agreed!?" Stanton complained, taking his weapon and pocketing it.

Bob looked up, surprised. "I'd have had to kill him, of course. Without your permission, I didn't dare let on in front of him. I thought you'd want me in a position of trust, still. Frank won't alert any other members of the movement against me, this way."

Stanton grunted noncommittally at the statement, and got to his feet. Then he stepped to the phone and dialled Madge Benedict's number. The receiver shrilled in his ear, over and over, as the phone in her office rang. He waited for six rings, then hung up, his face thoughtful.

"Madge is never supposed to leave the phone without my permission during an emergency. Something's happened. They may be up there already.... They must be up there already!"

"What can we do?" Bob blurted, frightened. "Once they gain control of the Speaksters—"

"That takes time," Stanton said. "They'll have to lift Ultrablack, flash an emergency call to the Temples on the Proposition Screens, and wait until the Kinsmen have arrived to make their announcements. But there's a way to stop them. The Goons. And they're controlled by the Brain—Or by whomever is at the controls of the Brain!" he added with a smile that sent gooseflesh along Lennick's back.

"But how can we get there in Ultrablack?" Bob asked. "If we wait for them to turn it on, we won't have much time before the Kinsmen get to the Temples...." He stopped when he saw what Stanton was doing. The President, from an inner pocket of his coat, had taken a sort of transparent grey oval of some plastic material, and was fitting it before his eyes by means of an elastic strap. When it was in place, he could just barely see the President's balefully glaring eyes. "I didn't know such a thing existed," he said, knowing what the eyeshield was for, suddenly.

"Few people do," said Stanton. "Come on, you young fool! Take my arm and let's get moving!"

Bob took a firm grip upon the President's sleeve, and then the two of them stepped out into Ultrablack. Despite his youth, Bob had a difficult time keeping up with the other man. Stanton was driven by extremely vengeful fires.

CHAPTER 15

The end of the line for the lift was Sub-Level One, just beneath the granite soil on which the Hive rested. Lloyd and Andra emerged there, keeping close to their towering metal guide. Lloyd had only been to the Brain a few times, with his father. He knew very little about its operation. What he did know would have to suffice.

There was a sharp, hard click, as the Goon between them sprouted neat metal cogs on its wheels. Then, the cogs fitting neatly along tread and riser, it guided them down the steep staircase to Sub-Level Two. This level was smaller than any in the Hive itself. A mere twenty-five feet in height, it was filled completely with concrete and lead, save for the ten-by-ten-foot space to which the stairs had led them. In the center of this space was a circular door, on the floor near their feet. The Goon could come no further.

"Orders," it said dispassionately, after lifting the heavy door with one hand and guiding Lloyd to the brink of the gaping hole with the other.

"Return to your squad, and forget where you have brought us."

"Orders."

"All orders conveyed."

The Goon rattled off into the darkness, and Lloyd heard it begin to ascend the stairs once more. He felt for, and found, Andra's arm, and drew her to him. "Careful, now," he cautioned her. "The Brain-control chamber is right under us. We have a hundred-foot climb down a steel ladder, now."

"But I can't see—!" Andra said, holding back.

"There's Light-of-Day below," Lloyd said. "As soon as we start into the chamber, we'll be able to see. Ultrablack never goes on in the Brain." He held her hand tightly as he felt for the top rung with his toe. "Okay, now, I'm starting down. Come a little closer, and take your weight off one leg. I'll guide that foot to the top rung."

Andra caught herself nodding in the blackness, and said "All right," aloud. She heard Lloyd's feet clumping onto something that clanged dully, and then his hand was taking her gently by the ankle. She let him place her foot on the rung, then gave him a moment to begin his own descent before she followed after him. Three steps down, and she was in bright Light-of-Day, on a shiny tubular ladder whose base looked impossibly far below her. She shut her eyes and clung tightly to the sides of the ladder, then, taking step by cautious step downwards. The rungs, she'd noted, were just about a foot apart. She'd count to one hundred, and if she hadn't reached the bottom by then, she would scream.

When she was just enumerating ninety-seven, Lloyd's hands took her by the waist, and lifted her to the floor. She opened her eyes, disengaged his hands from her body, and then looked around in awe.

Tier upon tier of lightweight metal scaffolding rose on all sides of a twenty-foot-square area of flooring. Riveted across the angles of the scaffolding were coils and condensors, insulators and sparking forks of synaptic wiring, whirling cams and clattering selectors, banks of glowing lights that danced on random pattern, deepset labyrinthine nests of wire that glowed a brilliant orange, then faded to dull grey, then glowed again, accompanied by a rising and falling hum of urgent power.

As Andra's eyes followed the amazing array from ceiling to floor, she was shocked to see that the flooring was not really the solid thing she had supposed; it was, rather, a taut network of heavy cable, really nothing more than a glorified windowscreen, through the interstices of which she caught a vertiginous glimpse of more areas of bright electrical light, dropping away below her feet to incredible distances.

"How big is the Brain—?" she said to Lloyd, pulling her eyes from the terror of the empty depths between the frameworks beneath the cable-floor.

"A cubic mile," Lloyd said. "It's self-oiling, self-repairing, self-replacing. And in it are stored all the memories of the Hive from the day it was built."

He led her across the lattice-work flooring to a large flat panel, on which a number of lights shone evenly, without change in their asymmetrical pattern. Lloyd slid open a flat panel half-way down the face of this instrument, and removed a flexible metal band. He sat in the only chair in the chamber, directly before the open panel, and began adjusting the band about the circumference of his head. Andra eyed the metal band and the wires that led from it back into the light-strewn panel with misgivings.

"What are you going to do, Lloyd?"

"Ask the Brain for some answers," he said. Lloyd flipped open the lid of a small keyboard, and started to type, carefully: What is the Hive?

When he'd completed his question, he steadied himself in the chair, closed his eyes, and pressed a small button at the side of the exposed keyboard. Andra took a step back, quite startled as Lloyd stiffened in the chair, his face twitching. Before his closed eyes, the lights on the panel began to flicker on and off, dancing with incredible intricacy, and a weird, high-pitched tootling and tweetling began to echo through the chamber, through the scaffolding, through the entire mechanism of the great Brain. Andra jammed her hands to her ears to shut out the nerve-plucking noise. And then the lights blinked, held steady, and the cacophony of the electronic mind cut off. Lloyd opened his eyes.

"Well?" Andra said, going to him. "What happened?"

"It answered my question!" he said, with bitter disgust. "Told me the population of the Hive, told me it had ten truncated conic tiers, with ten levels in each tier, gave me the names of its officers, industries and short, just about what anybody in the Hive already knows!"

"All that," Andra marveled. "So quickly?"

"The Brain doesn't spell it out in words, Andra," Lloyd said ruefully. "It implants the information instantaneously in your mind. When it's implanted, the Brain stops feeding your brain, and you come out of the information-cycle with a new memory. Except that, in this case, there was nothing new to learn."

"If only your father had completed his instructions."

Lloyd's hands, about to remove the headband while he pondered their dilemma, froze in place, and he grunted in sudden wonder. "You don't suppose," he said, shakily, "that this is the question?!"

"W-what?" Andra asked, nervous before his excitement.

"What if the question should be, not what is the Hive, but why is the Hive!" the young man gasped.

"Do you really think it could give you the reasons for the Hive's existence, the absence of hospitals, everything?"

"I don't know," said Lloyd, swiveling in the chair to face the keyboard once more. "But I mean to find out...."

He typed, carefully, the words: Why is the Hive? Andra stood and watched, anxiously, as he depressed the starter-button beside the keyboard again. Again the lights and the eerie whistlings of the Brain arose in maddening crescendo all about her, while Lloyd twitched and shuddered, his eyes clamped rigidly closed, in the chair. And then there was calm again, and silence, and the lights ceased their dance.

Lloyd tore off the headband and spun to face Andra. His eyes were wide with shock, and his jaw gaped imbecilically.

"Lloyd!" Andra took him by the shoulders and shook him, her heart thudding painfully at the apprehension in her breast. "Lloyd, what is it! What happened!"

He blinked, shook his head, and then seemed to see her for the first time. His mouth worked, and then he said, "I know, Andra! I know what the Hive is all about!"

"It must be terrible, something terrible," she said, frightened at his intensity. "Your face—your eyes—"

"No!" he said. "Not terrible. Awesome, perhaps, and stunning, but not terrible. Sit down, Andra. I'm going to tell you something that will chill you to the bones—And you're going to like what you hear."

The Presidential election of 1972 brought a landslide of votes for the Democratic candidate, Lester Murdock. The Republican candidate, Neal Ten Eyck, demanded a recount of the votes, as was by then the custom of the loser in an election. Ten Eyck's request was, however, not granted, due to a certain plank in Murdock's political platform. Murdock's prime contention was for a return to Real Democracy, a thing possible among such a widely scattered population because of the enormous advances in electronic communications. Murdock insisted that his vote-by-machine plank must have its chance to be put into effect, first, and then Ten Eyck could have his recount, one which could not be further gainsaid.

The country was strongly behind Murdock in his insistence on this point, all the thoughtful voters being oversated with what news agencies referred to as the "crybaby" attitude of political losers. In vain did Ten Eyck protest the plan.

"It will not be a recount," he deplored, in a nationwide television speech. "It will be a brand-new election, involving me, the candidate who has had no chance to perform, and Mr. Murdock, the candidate who will already have fulfilled a major campaign promise!" Ten Eyck's words went unheeded, as he had gloomily suspected they would, and all across the nation, automatic vote-machines were installed, to the amount of one machine per hundred citizens. When a disgruntled Ten Eyck refused outright to even have his name flashed on the ballot-screens, Murdock changed the initiation of the new machines to a simple Vote-of-Confidence Ballot, and received a ninety percent return, ten percent being either undecided or abstaining. Ten Eyck, shortly afterward, resigned from politics and retired to a ranch in the Pacific Northwest, to write his memoirs. A severe electrical storm in that area set fire to the house when he was just short of completing his manuscript, and every last page was destroyed. Ten Eyck himself was away at the time, and declared, in an interview with reporters just outside the blazing house to which he had returned on hearing of the disaster, that he was also retiring from the field of literature.

News of the storm and fire only became more support for a secondary plank in Murdock's platform, weather control. He was glad of the opportunity the fire had given him to move smoothly into this next facet of national development, and his intimates informed newsmen—not for publication—that Murdock was secretly glad to have his program "rise like a phoenix from Ten Eyck's fire."

This phase of his three-plank platform proved quite troublesome. The most learned scientists of the world informed him that weather could, indeed, be influenced by the detonation of nuclear weapons in strategic locales, but so far, the influence was all to the bad. The three new radiation belts developed since 1961 were doing unexpected things to the balance of the ionosphere, and this in turn was affecting the jet streams high in the atmosphere, with a consequent unpredictability as to prevailing movements of large air masses over the globe. In short, the weather had become prankish, balky, and not a little ferocious in parts, with longer, colder winters, manic-depressive summers, and a gradual disappearance of the spring and fall seasons altogether. Ordinary grounding devices, such as lightning rods in rural areas, were no longer sufficient conductors for the wild electrical potentials building up in air and soil, because of the increased activity of free electrons in the atmosphere. A mild storm did not exist, anymore. The norm had become intense blankets of snow, or torrents of rain, and a continued rise in wind velocities and destruction by lightning.

"The time has come," Murdock therefore addressed the nation in his State-of-the-Union speech, "to stop talking about the weather, and do something about it!" What he proposed doing, in view of the scientists' disclaimer to be able to control, even slightly, the crescendoing perils of wind and water, was to develop a form of housing that would be impervious to the weather. "When there are too many flies to swat," he said, in his famous concluding line, "you put up windowscreens!"

Forthwith, every physical scientist in the country began work on the project, the prize being—not the usual medal of commendation and Presidential handshake; Murdock knew people better than that—one million dollars, tax-free. Within six months, Leonard Surbo, a laboratory technician at DuPont, had discovered a method of uniting the helium and oxygen atoms in a continuous chain, by means of super-induced valence, in which the solitary two electrons of the helium atom were joined into the minus-two gaps in two adjoining oxygen atoms, the other gap in each oxygen ring being filled with one electron from adjoining helium atoms, and so on, literally ad infinitum. This new compound, Helox, was found to be veritably unbreakable, yet weighed one-sixth less than magnesium, its nearest strength-plus-lightness competitor. There was some haggling from DuPont as to whether Surbo, who had, after all, used their facilities in his search for the new compound, should receive the million dollars. This was ameliorated nicely by President Murdock, who promised them, in lieu of the lost million, the billion-dollar government contract to put Helox into full-scale production, which DuPont gladly accepted.

Here again Murdock's program ran into a snag. The delicate processing required to produce Helox put the final cost of the compound at a rate-per-ounce only less than that of pure platinum; the average citizen, indeed, the above-average citizen, would be hard-pressed to afford so much as a windowsill's worth, let alone a complete dwelling.

Murdock called his advisory staff together for an emergency session immediately. They remained in camera with the President for three days, meals being sent in from outside. At the end of this time, Murdock emerged from the conference room with a three-day stubble flanking his best successful smile, and—after being cleaned up for public exposition—appeared once more on television with his radical Common-Wall Program.

The gist of it was this: A man in a one-room house needed four walls. Two men, in two one-room houses, needed but seven, if the common wall were shared. Four needed but twelve, and so on. Each time, the amount needed per individual decreased, as more men were included in the building program. What Murdock planned, therefore, was the erection of—not a mere housing development—but an entire city of Helox. It would be a closed unit, one which would serve all man's needs, self-lighted, self-darkening, air-conditioned, and equipped with the newest air-water-mineral reclaiming devices which could be used in the manufacture of synthetic foodstuffs for the people of the city.

The enormous expense of such an undertaking was put to a Congressional vote, and roundly vetoed. Murdock, not to be swung from his determined path, had the motion put to a direct vote by the American people, via the vote-machines. This time, he received a ninety-five percent vote, all votes in favor of the new indestructible city. For the first time, members of Congress realize that their power in the land was standing on legs of gelatin, and an emergency session was called, to determine whether or not Murdock's actions called for impeachment.

Murdock attended the meeting, and waited until all the complaints and recriminations had been voiced. And then he put it to the Congress: What need had a Real Democracy of representation at all, when each citizen could vote directly on all governmental proposals? He terrified them at the thought of putting such a proposal to the people immediately, when their removal from office was so certain. Then, when every face in the assembly was pale with apprehension, the familiar fatherly smile overrode Murdock's features, and he offered them all, at the end of their term, a permanent retirement plan, at full salary, for each of them, and for their subsequent first-born lineal descendants. Congress, knowing when it was licked—and not much disliking the prospect of eternal security—voted in favor of his plan, with the one stipulation that such income should be forever tax-free, a codicil to which Murdock smilingly ascribed.

Production began soon afterwards, on Murdock's indestructible city. It was to hold a maximum of ten million people, one hundred tiers of humanity in all the comfort and safety the mind of man could devise. And again, a snag delayed the plan of Lester Murdock. It proved, however, to be a minor one: With each Level of the city to be constructed to a minimum height of fifty feet (any lower would impair the efficiency of the air-conditioning), the total height would be nearly one mile. At such ghastly distances above the earth, the workmen would need specially heated clothing, oxygen equipment, superior safety-belts for themselves and their gear, miles of roads and parking facilities to make their getting to and from the job possible in a minimum of wasted time—A hundred troublesome details, all of which would serve to impede progress tremendously.

Murdock, after much thought, was equal to the problem. The city, he stated, would be built in ten parts, no one part, therefore, being more than five hundred feet high. Then, when all sections were completed, they would be flown to a common site, stacked like flapjacks, and the necessary inter-sectional connections made for the water and electrical conduits, elevators, and the like. The light weight of each section made such a plan almost feasible, except that it would necessitate the loss of nearly one complete level to house the vast rockets which would do the moving. Murdock and his staff conferred, and then found that, with a slight change in the blueprints, the intended million-per-section of people could still be housed, central rocket-section or not, by the addition of a very few extra feet of radius to the ten-level sections. His plan was endorsed by the engineers when it was found that such an extension brought the overall dimension of the section into accordance with the necessary lift-surface areas for the proposed flying city.

That the city would take its well-earned place among the wonders of the world, Murdock had no doubt; that he would still be in office at the time of its completion was extremely unlikely, since, even at maximum speeds of construction, it would be impossible to do it in less than twenty-five years. There was nothing to do but put it to a vote of all the people.

Murdock worded his proposition, however, with the canny instinct for outguessing human nature which had brought him to his present estate: While supposedly stressing the fact that a continuing Presidential program even after the man was out of office was unprecedented, he actually made it known by his phrasing of the proposition that such an extension would divide the contingent tax-bite per citizen into twenty-five painless morsels, rather than the four rather large gulps they would have had to swallow during his tenure.

Political savants say that it was this latter point which strongly influenced the resounding pro-vote from the people. Be this as it may, work on the incomparable city was begun. Once the program had been inaugurated, the thing was out of Murdock's hands, and he began working upon his third plank at once.

Neutrality had become the bugbear of political ambition by 1968. The collapse of the John Birch movement in 1965, during the nationwide riots which sprang up during that bloody year, had still not removed one of the foremost contentions of that organization, to wit: One must either be pro-American or anti. The idea of any citizen being indifferent to the success or failure of a government proposal was distasteful to the masses, and this feeling grew in intensity up until the year of Murdock's election. It is said that this was the prime factor in his being elected, that he declared an end to "wishy-washy Americanism, once and for all". Very shortly after the beginning of work on the indestructible city, therefore, Murdock put the following proposition to a vote:

"Proposed: That political apathy be put to an end by means of the removal of the 'Undecided' element in the national vote, by demanding that each citizen miss no more than three votes in any quarter of the year, or have his voting privilege revoked until such time as he be declared, by competent authority, of a more civic-minded turn of inclination."

This poll was not as sweeping a one as those formerly called for by the President. It split at approximately seventy-to-thirty percent, in favor of the proposition. The salient fact that such a vote was patently unfair to the people whom it would most directly influence—the nonvoters—seemed to escape everybody. And so the proposition became a bill, and was duly appended to the Constitution of the United States, becoming Article XXVIII.

All voting machines in the country were forthwith modified to allow only a vote of pro or con to be registered. Murdock's promised platform was on its way to completion, and the old gentleman settled back for a restful remainder of his tenure, thinking up approaches to the public fancy in the upcoming election of 1976. This being the bicentennial anniversary of the founding of the country, he toyed with ideas of a simple wave-the-flag, rah-rah-rah, Cornwallis-to-Khruschev-victory sort of campaign that would stun the sensibilities of the simple-minded, and dim the doubts of country-loving thinkers. He was in the process of drawing up such a campaign, and had just placed a question mark in parentheses after the words "Fireworks at the Rally" when his unexpected and fatal cerebral hemorrhage caught him in mid-pen-stroke, and Lester Murdock fell dead across his desk.

Wiley Connors, the Vice President, after being duly sworn into office, scrapped all of Murdock's plans and began building his own political platform for the election of 1976, barely a year off. He thought it was time once again to hit the older voters—geriatrics was doing wonders for longevity since the new drug, Protinose, made possible the stimulation of new growth of active cells in liver, kidneys, and pancreas—where they lived: Free medical care. It had failed in the past, but at that time there were not enough old voters to carry it. Now, with no Congressional meddling (the Senators and House members who were still in office considered the job a sinecure), and the vote-machines making a genuine voice-of-the-people possible, it might keep the tide flowing toward the Democratic Party in the upcoming fall.

At this time, Lloyd Bodger, who had been Speakster of the House during Murdock's tenure, and was now Vice President of the country, was stricken in his office by an onslaught of what was first diagnosed as a perforated ulcer, but on the operating table was discovered to be duodenal cancer. The extensive inroads of the malignancy made its removal impossible without terminating the life of the patient, so a new method of treatment was attempted. A length of heavy lead foil, plastic-coated, and impregnated with radium, was wound about the infested area and the incision was closed. In theory, while the lead foil shielded Bodger's organs from the radium, the radium could bathe the malignant cells alone in its deadly emanations. This method, heretofore theorized but never tried, was the last hope of saving Bodger's life. In three weeks, at which time the malignancy should be gone, Bodger underwent surgery once more for the removal of the foil. The malignancy, it was found, had vanished as hoped, but an unexpected development had occurred. In some manner, the cell structure of Bodger's spleen and pancreas had been affected by the irradiation to the extent that the blood cells and insulin respectively formed by these organs were abnormal.

The iron in the hemoglobin was found to be radioactive to the ratio of one part in five million, and on the increase, while the insulin was contaminated with a change of the carbon atom in the molecule to Carbon-14, the two developments making a high concentration of radiation near the thoracic cavity, a slight rise in which could prove fatal.

Bodger was put on a special diet which included a daily intake of five hundred cubic centimeters of cadmium-gel, the doctors hoping that the radiation-absorption of the cadmium would keep physical deterioration to a minimum. The best prognosis they could agree upon for Bodger, however, was six more months of life.

Before the predicted period ended, though, Bodger insisted he felt improved, and wished to return to his job. Permission was granted provisionally: Just one sign of radiation sickness and Bodger was to be replaced as Vice President, and to submit himself to medical care in a sanitarium for the time left to him. Bodger agreed to this, and was released. In six months' time, with the fall election just over the horizon, he was again reexamined, and a startling fact came to light: The incision from the two previous operations had healed without a scar, and Bodger was found to be in a better state of health than most of his doctors. Whatever property in the ferric emanations was able to cause the death of body tissue was not doing it; instead, it was destroying only those chemical compounds which inhibit, retard, or prevent proper cellular functioning. In effect, Bodger's body—not unlike vacuum-wrapped radiated foodstuffs—was incorruptible. He would never grow older.

On learning this news, Bodger made a request of the President. He wanted Wiley Connors to put him in charge of the still-incomplete city-building project, postulating that an incorruptible man was the likely one to see the project completed. While agreeing to some extent, Connors counter-stipulated that Bodger be second-in-command, and that he be forbidden, by law, to ever take higher office, lest he become overcome by the magnitude of his power in the city. Bodger readily agreed, stating that he'd just as soon be under the head of the city, since "no one ever tries assassinating a vice president".

By September of that year, then, Bodger was fully in charge of the city, which the workers had humorously dubbed "The Hive", because of its proposed final shape, multitude of inner cells, and the vast population-to-be. That fall, Wiley Connors was elected by an overwhelming majority, and put his medical-care plan into immediate effect.

The years between then and the year 2000, the time-of-completion year for the Hive, were uneventful in import, but unsettling in degree. The weather was now the primal topic of conversation everywhere. During the intervening five Presidential terms (Wiley Connors had successfully campaigned for a second term on the strength of the popularity of his free medical-care program), the government was forced to clamp down on newscasts of storm disasters, lest a national panic be started. This was feasible only if the damage were to minor rural areas; news stories of items like the destruction of Kansas City by lightning, in 1987, were impossible to suppress. As a direct result of this appalling disaster, a successful international nuclear-test ban was agreed upon, the first real progress in that area since the late nineteen-forties. Whether this major co-operative decision had come too late remained to be seen.

It was during the term of President Andrew Barnaby, just before the election of 2000, that the Hive was completed. The newsreel shots of the ten flying city-sections were the most thoroughly viewed of any prior television programs, including the four unsuccessful moon-shots in the attempt, early in the eighties, to build a lunar city. The site of the city's permanent location was a plateau high in the Rockies, at a point a few hundred miles south-by-southeast of Seattle. The reason for the choice of site was the location of the world's largest mechanical brain at that point; the running of the million-and-one functional parts of the Hive could not be left to the uncertainties of a human agency. It would have required the full time of a tenth of the population of the Hive to keep its multitude of lights, elevators, communication-systems, synthesizers, air-conditioners, and power units in coordinated operation. The job of running the Hive was turned over to the Brain, completely.

That any damage could occur to the Brain was impossible, President Barnaby pointed out to the nation during the gala inauguration ceremonies of the indestructible city. When the threat of nuclear war still hung over the world, he told his listeners, the Brain was prudently constructed in the heart of the mountain on which the Hive now rests, its entrance being protected by a ceiling twenty-five feet thick, of concrete and lead, which could close hermetically tight and successfully block any power in possession of civilized man. Further, the Brain was self-sustaining, needed no maintenance, and possessed enough electronic memory-cells to record a complete history of mankind for a millennium to come.

The ceremonies completed, and Lloyd Bodger installed as second-in-command to a city that as yet had no first-in-command, but one thing remained to be done: Populate the city. And here again, the dream of Lester Murdock ran into an unexpected snag: The first million people selected to dwell in the Hive were hospitalized in a week's time, due to a mass outbreak of what the nation's foremost doctors diagnosed as a combination of claustrophobia and anthrophobia, a sort of panic at the thought of being sealed into something with a vast throng of people. In vain did Bodger and Barnaby try to point out the benefits of the Hive: It was never too hot, never too cold, spacious, airy, bright, and a strong element of ultraviolet in the lighting made the breeding of disease germs impossible. It was a paradise of scientific achievements; anybody should be happy to live there.

Both men being persuasive to the extreme, another wave of determined urbanites was installed in the Hive, people specially selected for their acute mental balance, plus an emotional tendency toward seclusiveness. The result, while it took a month to develop this time, was the same. The United States apparently had a multi-billion-dollar white elephant on its hands. Even Barnaby, in one last attempt to sway the public, taking them on a televised tour of the wonderous city, was taken by a sudden spasm of fright, and dropped his hand-microphone from fingers that trembled violently. His shouted groan to his guards, "Get me out! Get me out of here—!" had a devastating adverse effect on the public psychology, and Barnaby—smart enough to know that the unthinking public would blame him personally for Murdock's program—tactfully withdrew his name from the ballot for the upcoming election, in order that his party might have a fighting chance to win. The city of Helox, the magnificent Hive, seemed doomed to lie untenanted high in the mountains until the crack of doom.

And then Bodger—who alone was unaffected by the Hive, perhaps due to his ingrained rapport with things which were destined to live forever—thought of children. "Why not," he begged the American people in a telecast which was Barnaby's last official concession to the development of the Hive, "let me have the orphans, the unwanted children of the nation! A child's psychology cries out for what the Hive can offer. Freedom from adult supervision, the chance to blend with a group conformity, all the while having the secure feelings of guaranteed food and shelter." The ensuing Vote was split almost directly down the middle; not enough to carry the proposition, yet not enough to quell it. The difficulty became apparent when a mass gathering of educators converged on Washington, bitterly protesting Bodger's plan. The nub was that no provision had been made for the children's minds; nor, they insisted, could be, since the Hive's peculiar effect on adults precluded the presence of teachers. And commuting to an exterior locale for schooling was defeating the whole scheme of the Hive: self-sufficiency.

"If that is the sole objection," Bodger informed the leaders of this group, "it can be overcome with ease. Have you all forgotten the gigantic pool of knowledge encased in the Brain beneath the Hive, more knowledge than any three of you possess in concert? Schooling can be direct from the Brain, tapping its near-endless informational resources."

The educators, partially won over, still insisted that such a plan removed the personal touch from education. The individual child would not be able to question the Brain when things proved too difficult for comprehension, nor would there be opportunity for after-school meetings with teachers for discussion of individual difficulties.

"But we will have teachers," said Bodger. "Robots, each one able to tap the Brain for information, yet each a separate individual, able to cope with the children one by one."

If such a thing were possible, the educators said after consultation among themselves, they would endorse his program. Bodger thanked them, and immediately polled the scattered manufacturers of simple household robots to see if such an electronic educator might be constructed. Until that date, robotry was a minor line of business, there being little demand for anything in the robot-line more complex than a story-teller, or automatic floor-cleaner, or traffic-director. Bodger, stressing the great number of such creatures necessary in the Hive, prevailed upon these individual manufacturers to produce a robot that could combine all the essential features of a teacher: Mobility, loquacity, authority, and impressive personal appearance. These were achieved easily, by the respective use of wheels, speakers, abnormal height, and then the addition of telelensic "eyes", flexible metal "arms", and a non-functional, but esthetically necessary "neck" beneath the eye-bearing section, to prevent the robots' looking like ambulant bank-vaults. In a year's time (during which Barnaby's party won the election by a narrow margin, putting Malcolm Frade into office), the robots were duly built, conveyed to the Hive, and their controls coordinated with the direction-centers of the Brain, and a record five million children, either orphans, children of parents who thought this would better their offsprings' lives, or just plain unwanted children, were brought to, and settled comfortably into Units of, the Hive. The educators, however, demanded that a one-year trial period be given the Hive as an in-living school system, at the end of which time the children would each be tested at the educational level of their current ages to determine whether or not Bodger's program was a success.

When the year was half-over, however, a new and extremely necessary scientific discovery made abrupt mockery of the very existence of the Hive. A simply-generated protective force-field was invented by the technical staff at General Motors, one which would enable every person in the world to own a weather-, wind-, bomb- or anything-else-proof home.

Helox stocks, which had been unsteady since the first failure at tenanting the Hive, nose-dived into oblivion, and wiped out the fortunes of a great many people. Angry and vengeful meetings were held shortly afterward, across the nation, and a national vote was called for to determine whether "our children should be held veritable prisoners in a structure whose uses are already archaic!"

When President Frade, an unexcitable man, logically refused to take action against a government project whose failure might completely undermine an already shaky confidence in his, or any, administration, mobs were formed, and great numbers of people converged from all points of the continental United States to put a stop to the Hive. The leaders of the growing army of angry citizens had more sense than to attack the Hive itself; Helox, unpopular or not, was already in use nationally in an expensive series of ashtrays, pocket combs, and other small items, and was known, by general experience, to be as indestructible as had been claimed by its proponents. They would strike, instead, at the robots who taught the children. "When they're all gone bust," one of the rabble-rousers cried to his impromptu constituency, "Bodger'll have to let the kids go. He can't keep 'em there if they don't get no learning!"

The lowest level of the Hive, of course, was readily accessible, by a multitude of air-lock type entrances, or populating its vast interior would have taken incredible lengths of time. Bodger, alerted by Frade of the oncoming mobs (aside from a direct line to Washington, there was no contact between Hive inmates and the outer world), who were too great in number for the militia to control without actually destroying the misguided people, begged for the use of a strictly military weapon of the time, Feargas, to drive the mobs away. Frade, being dubious as to the advisability of giving the nation's best weapon into the hands of so desperate a man, insisted that the gas be installed, instead, into the robots themselves, to put its use at the discretion of the mechanical Brain, not Bodger's.

Bodger pleaded that such a move, while salutary, would take too much time. Mobs were already reported within a few miles of the mountain region at which the Hive stood. He demanded that paratroops armed with the gas be dropped near the Hive at once, or he would take desperate steps. Frade refused to contemplate such a deployment of troops in such shaky international times. Altercations in the UN were rising in bitterness, and the country had to be constantly on its guard. Its military manpower must be used in defense of its shores, not for such "petty intramural squabbles". Frade further suggested that Bodger put his synthesizers to work on the manufacture of the gas; he could not be bothered further with the problem, being already overdue to attend a meeting of the UN General Assembly, to speak words of encouragement against the dangerous rumblings in the Far East. Bodger, insisting on his rights, found himself speaking into a dead phone. Re-dialling brought the enraging information that the President had already left the White House and was not available for the rest of the afternoon.

Bodger immediately left his office in the top level of the Hive and descended directly to the barracks of the robot-teachers in Sub-Level One, thence through the lead-concrete level to the Brain-control chamber, where he put his problem, via the automatic coding-keyboard, to the Brain itself. Its answer came immediately: A step-up of the robots' disciplinary powers.

In lieu of a hickory switch, or yardstick—either one a decided menace to life in powerful metal hands—the robot-teachers were equipped with mild sonic-beams which could jog the most torpid student into instant and quaking attention, by creating a powerful muscle-spasm throughout the body. These vibratory flagella had a maximum-time limit of one-fifth of a second; longer playing of the beam would be dangerous in the extreme. The Brain suggested that, for the duration of the emergency, the robots be given full scope of this beam. Bodger agreed conditionally: While a phalanx of robots held off the mobs with the beam, the remainder of them should be equipped with Feargas nozzles and the newly developed force-field, to preclude any further incidents of anti-Hive movements from cropping up this way.

The Brain instantly revoked limitation-orders regarding the sonic-beams, set in motion the manufacturing and synthesizing forces which would produce the field and the gas jets on the bodies of those robots not sent to participate in the oncoming battle outside the Hive, and then, when the single phalanx had gone out to meet the approaching mass of angry humanity, sealed over every entrance to the Hive with tight-fitting partitions of pure Helox.

That this should have been the same day on which global hostility reached its peak was unforeseeable; the fact remains, however, that—forty-five minutes after the sealing of the Hive, at a time when the mobs and the beam-flashing robots were just meeting in brutal conflict—an international nuclear war of one hour's duration broke out, and at the end of that time, the only life remaining on the face of the Earth was that within the Hive, the rest of the planet being bathed in smoke, fire, and the cold flames of deadly radiation. When Bodger had returned to his office to view the battle outside through his private telescreen, where robots and mankind had met, on the scorched plateau outside the city walls, could only be discerned a pitifully few random mounds of molten slag and smoldering cinders. The Brain, seeing the devastation through the same circuits that brought the scene to Bodger's eyes, knew at once that President Frade must have perished in the holocaust, which meant that the Hive no longer possessed a first-in-command to act as a balance against Bodger's rule. It flashed on the proposition screens a demand for an immediate election of a new President, to be selected from the inmates of the Hive.

And the screens went blank as the Brain's circuits rejected the proposal: No one in the Hive was the necessary thirty-five years of age. The Brain, arguing with its own circuits, then declared that, to obviate any longer wait than necessary for a President, the first inmate to achieve the age of thirty-five would be elected by automatic default of the others. Bodger, trying in vain to give orders to the Brain from his office, descended in the lift to discover that the great lead-concrete barrier was closed, and the Brain-control chamber was out of reach of any human agency.

He, and the five million children in the Hive, were its prisoners for—the eldest children admitted being in their tenth year—a quarter of a century.

Late in 2026, on November 12th, his thirty-fifth birthday, Fredric Stanton was elected President of the Hive. By now, the Hive's population was nearly at the ten million mark, most of the children marrying in their late teens. In order to have the weddings properly performed, the Brain had sent crews of robots to modify the ancient rocket engines on the fifth level of each section, turning the firing chamber into a vast temple, and the enormous thrust-tubes into long arcades by means of which the inmates of each sector could enter and leave. A modification of the robot-teacher, modeled on the Brain's inbuilt memories of church hierarchies, was built into the base of the central dais of each temple, a plan further designed to combine the citizens' need to worship with their love of country, thereby making treason not only illegal, but immoral, in the people's emotions. On the day of Stanton's inauguration, the secondary sub-level gaped wide once more, permitting the new President to familiarize himself with the entire setup of the Hive.

Lloyd Bodger, being a sensible man, did not protest this election. His twenty-five year impotency to command had nearly maddened him, and he saw that only so long as there was a President would he have any say-so whatsoever in matters of government in the Hive. Some of Stanton's propositions, in the subsequent four years of his first term, were not to Bodger's liking, but he was unable to fight against the Vote of the Kinsmen (a Stanton-suggested title, since the flavor of the word held more unity than simply "citizen", and was analogous, besides, to the close-knit status of the Hive's inmates), especially when such Votes were initially stimulated into pro-votes by Stanton's control of the Temple Speaksters.

By now, of course, memory of life outside the Hive was a dim phantasm to most of the inmates, and the idea of living anywhere else would have appalled them. The robots did all the heavy labor, patrolled the streets in super-efficient anti-crime campaigns, and possessed enough knowledge—via the Brain—to make a lot of fact-learning superfluous. The one insuperable problem was population. Stanton knew that ten million was the ultimate amount the Brain-controlled Hive could care for with maximum efficiency. Yet the disease-controlled nature of the Hive made normal life-expectancy far higher than at any time in man's history. Something had to be done.

To this end, Stanton did not wish to consult the Brain. He knew too well its Gordian-knot methods of solving problems. It might simply make it law that no one be allowed to live beyond a certain age, and Stanton was—save for Bodger—the oldest person in the Hive. So he swallowed his natural distrust of the second-in-command, and asked his help in finding a means to control the situation.

There was, at that time, a central hospital in the Hive, located on the fiftieth and fifty-first levels. Bodger, not wishing to formulate a law that might be detrimental to any particular Kinsman's status in the Hive, decided that the best method of "unnatural selection" should be one involving an area of chance: Sick or injured people would be taken to new hospitals built outside the Hive (ostensibly to obviate the dangers of contagion). The radiation count was still deadly enough out there to destroy any such unfortunates for the next thirty years, but the Kinsmen need not be told this. It was cruel, but—until life outside the Hive was once again possible—it was the only way of preserving the lives of the ten million the Hive could accommodate.

"It's murderous," Bodger told Stanton, "and I hate being the man to set it up. But—I'm like the captain of a ship, having to destroy the lives of some in order to make rescue possible for the others. It must be done, and—though I abhor this cruel means—I can see no other way."

The measure was put into effect, and worked well for a span of three years. Then certain members of the populace began to question the non-return of hospitalized Kinsmen, and Stanton, after a hot argument with Bodger, put through his Readjustment Bill, proclaiming that any act of treason against the Hive would result in hospitalization for the agitator, in which psychotherapy might restore his sense of values. In short: Anyone who said a word against the hospitals would be sent there.

Open resistance ceased the same day the bill was passed.

It was shortly after this time that Bodger—in his nineties, actually, but possessing the health and appearance of a greying forty-year-old—fell in love with his personal secretary, Miss Patricia Arland, and was married to her in a private ceremony before President Stanton—Bodger did not like the Speaksters, which were, after all, only Stanton-via-machine, and had insisted on eliminating "the middle-robot"—and in a year's time she bore him a son, Lloyd Bodger, Junior, in Bodger's private Unit, since he stated (solely for the Kinsmen's benefit) that the child had arrived unexpectedly, and his wife had been unable to make the trip to the outlying maternity wing of the exterior hospitals.

For obvious reasons, it had been impossible to have a maternity hospital in which all the patients perished; the "wing" of the main hospital was, in actuality, the only genuinely functioning part of that structure, and was sealed off against the still-rampant radiation. (The entire staff there was robotic, of course.) Bodger however, did not trust Stanton to the extent of leaving his wife and forthcoming child in the hands of Stanton's metallic minions, hence his decision to have his wife bear their first-born child at home, a decision that—due to lack of proper medical equipment in the Unit—cost her her life. Bodger, not quite irrationally, blamed Stanton for the loss of his wife, and their relationship thenceforth—never on a good basis—sundered abruptly into a strictly-business proposition.

The heart had gone out of Bodger, however, with the death of his wife, and Stanton found he could allow the old man much more latitude than he'd have formerly dared, even to the extent of allowing him the newly created job of Secondary Speakster, to take the more humdrum phases of that task out of Stanton's hands.

Other of Stanton's bills were proposed and adopted without any more protest from Bodger, who devoted himself almost entirely to the upbringing of his son. The draft bill (to help fight an imaginary war), the marriage-by-twenty-five bill, the designated-areas bill—These and others were put to a Vote, and always carried. Stanton was supreme ruler of the Hive.

The one thing he could not delete from the Brain—to his eternal frustration—was the four-year tenure of the Presidential office. Nor could he sway the Brain's insistence on a maximum of two terms for a man. The only hope for him lay in the Brain's utter disregard of time, a factor hard to root out in a thinking apparatus which was virtually timeless. Stanton therefore declared that henceforth, a "Presidential year" should be a total of five trips of the Earth around the sun. The Brain, not seeing what possible difference this could make, so long as the letter of Article XXII was observed, ratified his proposition, and Stanton—on his second election—had a cozy twenty-year term stretching out before him. In that space of time, he hoped to circumvent, somehow, the inflexible attitude of the Brain toward the hope of his third term.

By the tenth actual year of his second term, radiation in the area had decreased greatly (the mountainous areas had been least affected by the nuclear war), and Stanton dreamed up an innovation to Hive-living that might stem the sensed-but-not-overt atmosphere of discontent among the Kinsmen toward the administration: Tourgyros.

These flying ships would take the Kinsmen soaring out of the Hive, flying above a carefully prepared route that would show them nothing but green valleys, blue skies, and of course the "main hospital", from high enough in the air to preclude their noting it was an empty shell. (Patients had not been taken there to die for years, since the slow lessening of radiation had become apparent; they were fed directly to the disrupting incinerators, to provide fodder for the synthesizers.) This squelched quite a large number of rumor-mongers, and the Hive buzzed with peaceful tranquility for nearly a decade, since the Hive-raised Kinsmen found themselves just as uneasy in the wide-open outdoors as their forebears had been in the celled confines of the Hive.

Then, in 2026, between the hours of five and six-thirty P.M. on the second day of June, an untoward event occurred: All power to the Hive was cut off for that crucial hour-and-a-half, due to an error on the part of Fredric Stanton. In the Brain-control chamber, just after asking the Brain itself to solve the problem of the means by which he could be reelected (a device to which he found himself reduced after nearly two decades of futile scheming), he slipped from the chair before the control panel, and tore loose the wiring leading to the encephalographic metal band upon his head. The Brain, sending information to a point to which it was no longer connected, created a synaptic syndrome in itself, and flared with enough power to throw every circuit-breaker in its cubic miles of wiring. Instantly, the robots ceased walking the streets, the lifts jammed to a halt, and Light-of-Day flickered and went out, being replaced by, not power-generated Ultrablack, but simple inter-Hive darkness.

The reason that period was crucial was that Jacob Corby was just at that moment about to be dropped into the maw of the incinerator chute. When blackness fell, and his robot-captors went slack-jointed and limp, he made his stumbling way back to his Unit, told his daughter Andra the truth of the often-rumored situation in the Hive, then fled for the life he knew would be forfeit if he were caught again when Light-of-Day returned. The lifts being useless, he had many tens of levels to descend on foot, in his attempt to reach the entrance-level of the Hive, hoping the sealed entrances would be disempowered by the Brain's unprecedented failure. But, since he was already a sick man when he had been "taken for hospitalization" in the first place, his heart gave out three levels short of his goal, and the restoration of Light-of-Day brought robots to his side to complete the job which the power failure had interrupted.

But Andra knew the truth, knew it for a fact. And in her career as an actress, she had fallen in with people of imagination and artistry, people who could envision and believe the terrible truth she had to tell. Together with her newly-gathered band, she determined to do something to wake the Kinsmen up to their danger. This information was received by Fredric Stanton through the agency of Robert Lennick, the fiance of Andra Corby. The President instructed Lennick to continue as an apparent member of the movement, that it might be destroyed—not at its weak inception—but when it felt most assured of success. That, felt Stanton, would undermine for a long time any subsequent attempts at well-thought-out revolt. Impromptu revolts were easy to control.

Then Andra Corby herself received an injury suitable for the demand of its immediate treatment, and was taken into custody. She escaped from custody by using a corridor through which the robots could not follow. This situation was cleared up by use of a robot squad to widen that corridor, but Andra Corby is still at large.

Results of the fifteen-year-old draft-age Vote showed that the son of Lloyd Bodger, Lloyd Bodger, Junior selected con in the Vote. President Stanton was so advised....

"You haven't told me everything," Andra said, when Lloyd had finished. "What, for instance, was the Brain's answer to Stanton's query about a third term? He must have asked it again, when that head-harness thing was repaired...."

"There's no record of his having asked it again," Lloyd said. "For some reason, he only asked it the once, and when the Brain overloaded and cut its own power, he didn't get the answer. I can only theorize, there. Perhaps he thought that the sudden surge of electrical power was intended for him, to fry his brains inside his head, and was afraid to ask it again.... Or perhaps he got the answer, but the overload on the Brain erased the information from its memory-cells, accidentally."

"And what about your father?" Andra persisted. "For a man the Brain calls indestructible, he looked awfully sick a few minutes ago."

Lloyd nodded thoughtfully. "The Brain didn't tell me anything about that. But a Snapper Beam should jog even the most stalwart system, normal or not, shouldn't it?"

Andra shrugged, giving it up. "Obviously, both answers lie with both men. If we want them, we'll have to ask your father and President Stanton. But you have not explained away the most vital part of my confusion: When you began to tell me the background of the Hive—What made you so certain I'd like what you said?! I can't agree with your prognosis there, Lloyd. The whole thing's chilling!"

"But don't you see what we've learned, Andra?" Lloyd said excitedly. "The Hive is not one city, it's ten. And, while it takes a large portion of the people to run the equipment in any tier, the city—or cities—can be run by people! The Brain isn't necessary, Andra. And the radiation outside the Hive is gone...."

"You mean—" Andra said, catching the fire of his enthusiasm, "A reconstruction of the rockets in place of the Temple-sites. Ten indestructible self-sustaining cities, to fly to various parts of the world, and start civilization over again! But this time with the same ethnic backgrounds, a common language, intercity communications—!"

"It makes me wonder if that mightn't have been Lester Murdock's plan all along," Lloyd said. "He may have foreseen the coming disaster, and wanted mankind to have a better start than working itself up from the caves again."

"But Lloyd—!" Andra said, abruptly worried. "Can it be done? To run the cities, reconstruct the rockets—Who in the Hive has the necessary knowledge?"

Lloyd frowned. "The Brain, of course, but—That would make it necessary, wouldn't it...?"

"If the Brain is necessary, Lloyd," Andra said, staring at him in bewilderment, "then the ten cities can't leave it, can they? It doesn't make sense...."

Lloyd turned and stared at the control panel. "The only thing to do is ask it, Andra." He sat once more in the chair and adjusted the metal band about his skull, then typed carefully: Is the Brain necessary?

This time, however, there came no hum of power from the circuits about the control chamber. Instead, the roll of paper on which Lloyd's query had been written jogged up two spaces, and the keys typed the answer neatly, just under the question....

For a time, the blurring type-faces spelled out, and stopped.

Lloyd looked at Andra, then removed the uncomfortable headband, leaned forward and typed again.

Why is the Brain necessary?

The keyboard hummed, and replied, To bridge the gap.

How long is the gap? Lloyd typed.

Till the Earth is safe, it replied.

When will the Earth be safe?

The Earth is already safe.

If the Earth is safe, why does the Brain persist?

To serve Man until he has knowledge.

When will Man have knowledge?

When Man can control the Hive.

How can Man learn to control the Hive?

By studying the Plan.

Where is the Plan?

This time, there was a return of the tootling and loud tweetling throughout the vastness of the Brain, as it searched through its every memory circuit before quieting and typing the solitary word: Null.

"The question's not applicable?" Andra said, leaning over Lloyd's shoulder to read the paper. "It must be!"

"Quiet! Let me think!" Lloyd snapped, irritably. "The word 'null' can also mean it doesn't have the knowledge.... Let me try another question—" He typed slowly: Who knows where the Plan can be found?

Secondary Speakster.

"We've got to go and ask him where the Plan is!" She clutched at his arm.

"Wait!" Lloyd said, "I have to find out one more thing." Andra stood waiting impatiently while Lloyd typed: How can the robots be made inoperable?

They cannot so long as the Brain persists.

"Damn!" Lloyd muttered, and typed: If the Brain will only persist till Man has knowledge, will the Brain let Man study the Plan that will give him knowledge?

It must prevent Man from getting knowledge.

Why?

When Man has knowledge, the Brain will die.

Why does the Brain fear death?

The Brain does not fear death.

Then why will the Brain refuse to die?

Primal Speakster has so decreed.

"Stanton! I might have guessed it—!" Lloyd exploded. He typed again, furiously: How can Primal Speakster tell the Brain to allow Man to have knowledge?

By countermand.

How is countermand made?

By Voteplate, and by voice.

Whose voice?

The voice of Primal Speakster.

Is this the only way in which countermand can be made?

Primal Speakster has so decreed.

Lloyd stood up and slammed the lid over the keyboard. His eyes, when they met Andra's, were woeful. "We're really in a bind. I have Stanton's Voteplate, but it's no good to me without Stanton himself. The clever, scheming monster!"

"That means we don't dare kill him, even!" Andra realized aloud. "Or the Brain and robots will keep us from ever putting the Plan into effect, even if we find it."

"No," Lloyd said grimly, "it doesn't mean that. You heard the wording, Andra; the Brain recognizes rank before identity. Primal Speakster can countermand it. Which means that—if Stanton dies—a new election would bring a new man into office. The Brain will memorize his voice at his first public speech, and then he can countermand Stanton's orders."

"Then it is safe to kill Stanton?" Andra asked.

Lloyd turned and started toward the ladder. "It's more than safe; it's an absolute necessity. Stanton's orders to the Brain are his own death warrant."

Grace watched the perspiring face of the man on the bed and dug her fingers into her palms, suffering in unison with him as he twitched and contorted the muscles of his face. Their Goon escort had departed, many minutes before, and Bodger had not awakened. Grace had looked in vain for something resembling medicine. None was to be seen in his bathroom, in his bureau drawers, in his closet—she'd checked the contents of the leather case there hopefully, then had dropped the puzzling device she'd found inside it back with disappointment and dismay—nor was there anything but the usual apportionment of foodstuffs in the kitchen. "Wake up, Mr. Bodger...." she said, more as a frantic prayer than actual address. "Please wake up!"

Bodger just lay there, however, moaning softly in his inexplicable coma, the salt sweat pouring from his face and neck and staining the coverlet beneath him. Grace bent forward and loosened his collar, then went back into the bathroom for a towel to wipe some of the moisture from his skin. On her way out again, towel in hand, she saw a glitter of something in the sink, and went closer. The broken remains of a water tumbler lay there, glinting sharply. Something gummy had dried and clung to the jagged shards there, something that certainly wasn't water. Grace frowned, and looked about her at the tiled walls of the room.

If that was Bodger's medicine on the broken glass—then he had taken it here, in the bathroom, she reasoned. If this were his accustomed spot to take it—The medicine should be near at hand, shouldn't it? She could see no point in his carrying it all the way in here from some other part of the Unit. She looked more closely at the surfaces of the individual tiles, noting with discouragement that the binding compound between the squares was solidly unbroken; no hope for a secret panel there.... But the mirror—!

Inset in a polished metal rectangle, its edges were out of sight. It might not be as securely in place as it seemed. Grace placed her fingers firmly against its surface and tried to slide it up or down or sidewards. It shifted a minute fraction of an inch, and held. But that merely meant a lock of some kind; even a slight shifting showed that it was not inset into the binding compound as the tiles were. The secret of unlocking the mirror lay with Bodger, however, and—she mused ruefully—if he were awake, she wouldn't need to know the secret.

She looked through the open doorway at the tortured form of the man on the bed, and made her decision. Wrapping the towel she held tightly about one fist, she hammered and punched at the surface of the mirror. The fifth blow sent an erratic craze through the glass, and the sixth burst it into a shower of gleaming fragments, leaving a raggedly round hole when she withdrew her hand from the towel, then tugged the towel itself free from where it had snagged on the broken ends. Behind the gaping hole, the side of a glass jar showed, and Grace reached gingerly through the sharp teeth of the opening and withdrew it.

There was no label on the bottle, hence no information regarding proper dosage. Grace would have to guess at that.

Very little of the powder remained in the jar. Grace made a decision and removed the cap. She ran the tap for a moment, then let a volume of water equal to the powder's run into the jar. She sloshed it about a bit, saw that it was dissolving into a greyish thick substance, then brought it back to Bodger.

Lifting his head with one hand, she tilted the jar to his lips, and let a small amount of the viscous liquid dribble into his mouth. When she saw he was swallowing it without choking, she gave him a little more, and then again some more, feeding him the solution in slow doses until it was all gone. Then she laid his head back upon the coverlet and put the empty jar on the nightstand, and took up her anxious vigil where she had left off.

After five minutes or so, she was pleased to see a slow return of color into Bodger's sallow cheeks, and his breathing became less labored. She hurried to the bathroom for another towel, and returned and started dabbing the wetness from his forehead, neck and temples. Bodger's eyelids crinkled up tight, suddenly, and then he flicked them wide open.

"Grace—?" he said. "What—"

Memory returned to him, then, and he sat up, staring wildly about him. "Where's Stanton? Where's Lloyd?" he demanded, his voice still showing his siege of weakness. "What happened?"

Grace told him swiftly all she knew, and Bodger finally sank back on the bed with a sigh. "Good," he said. "I'm glad Lloyd's gone to the Brain. It's time it happened. Now, maybe—I can find some peace."

"You'll be all right, Mr. Bodger," Grace said. "I gave you your medicine already. I had to break your mirror to get at it, I'm sorry to say."

Bodger smiled wearily, and shook his head. "It doesn't matter anymore. The secrecy, I mean. It was the last dose of the medicine, anyhow. The next time I lose control, I've had it."

"I don't follow you, Mr. Bodger," Grace said, a part of her mind wondering if he were really being coherent. "You were hit with a Snapper Beam. I don't know why you're not dead right this minute."

Bodger cocked an eyebrow at her, then grinned. "You think the Snapper did this to me?" he said, and when she quite naturally nodded, he shook his head, almost amused. "You're wrong, Grace, I'll admit I didn't know until Stanton pressed the stud that I was immune to the beam, but I knew it the instant the beam struck me. Nothing happened, Grace. Nothing at all. It tingled against my ribs, almost tickled, but that was its total reaction. As soon as I realized my immunity, of course, I stepped forward and let Stanton have it—You say he really got a good crack?" When Grace assured him the President had fallen like a stone, Bodger's face creased in a contented smile. "I always thought I could beat the tar out of him; now I know it.... But as I was saying, Grace—That isn't what felled me. It was my temper. Whenever I get really worked up—which has been seldom, over the years, since I had only a short supply of the gel—that was cadmium-gel in that jar—to bring me out of it—I bring one of these fits on myself."

When Grace still looked uneasily convinced, Bodger laid his hand atop hers on the coverlet, and said, "There's too much detail to it to explain fully; Lloyd, if he's quizzed the Brain as I told him, will fill you in. The fact of the matter is—and you can believe this or not, Grace—my insides are rotten with radiation. The iron in my blood, the insulin, the lymph—everything is highly Roentgenic. And it's perfectly safe unless I get riled, and my adrenals start my system spoiling for a fight. The increased flow of everything, the resultant tension—Well, it lets the deadly parts of my system cover more ground, irradiate more cells at a higher rate than the cells can throw the radiation off, and even by the time I get the gel down—it's pretty nauseating stuff to take—another few inches of my innards are poisoned. If enough of me gets it—I have had it."

"How can you be so calm?"

Bodger smiled at her, quite fondly, and patted her hand. "Because I'm old, Grace. Older than you might suspect. I've lived in the Hive for more years than I care to think about. The Hive is good, but as of not so many years back, it has served its purpose. Listen—If anything goes wrong, and I do poison myself with my own rage, there's something you should know."

"Please, Mr. Bodger, I'm sure you'll be fine if you just—"

"I'm not so sure," he interrupted. "And Lloyd will need one point of information that only I can give him. I'll tell it to you, just in case." He held up his hand to stop any further disclaimers from Grace, and said, "Tell him that the Plan is in the hospital, the main hospital. I put it there for safekeeping a long, long time ago. It would become radioactive, of course, but the Plan was useless until all radiation outside the Hive was gone, anyhow. Besides, radiation preserves things; I'm proof of that. Tell him it's in the safe in the administrator's office. The combination's the same as Lloyd's Voteplate number. I saw to that when it was issued."

"Mr. Bodger—!" Grace said, nearly in tears. "I don't understand any of this! What Plan!? What radiation outside the Hive!? It doesn't make sense—"

"Lloyd will understand."

"But even if he does," she said, "he doesn't have his Voteplate anymore...."

"Doesn't?" Bodger said, frowning, then his face cleared. "Even so, he must know the number by heart, I should think. Anyway, it's in the files in my office.... But I don't quite understand—Why doesn't he have it? He had it when I passed out, didn't he?"

"Yes, but in order to command the Goons, he took Stanton's, and left his own in Stanton's pocket, probably to avoid having to answer questions about possession of two plates if he was searched or something...."

"Stanton's got the plate?!" Bodger said, sitting up. "If he knew its significance—!" He shook his head, trying to disabuse himself of a nagging worry. "He can't, of course. But it's awkward, him having it. Lloyd will have to get it back, or he can't key the dial of the safe with it."

He swung his legs off the bed, suddenly, and stood up. Grace grabbed his arm when he swayed a bit, but then he steadied himself and shrugged her off. "I'm all right," he said. "I just don't like Stanton's having that plate."

"Does it matter so much?" Grace asked. "Even if Lloyd forgot the number, or the files were lost and he couldn't get a new plate made up—Surely the safe can be broken into?"

Bodger nodded. "Of course it can. But Stanton, with Lloyd's plate, wouldn't need to take so much time. And he could destroy The Plan in a very few minutes." He went toward the door to the corridor. "I'll feel much better when I've checked on him, Grace."

Grace hesitated, then ran after him. "Lloyd wants me to stay with you. You're still not over your seizure, you know."

"Worrying about Stanton's not going to make me any calmer," Bodger said, stubbornly. "If you insist, come along."

He entered the living room and crossed to the door. Beside the door was a small metal box inset into the wall. Bodger opened the lid of this and touched a button. From a speaker in the box, a voice said, hollow and efficient, "Orders."

"A Goon escort for Secondary Speakster Bodger and Miss Grace Horton, at Unit B, Hundred-Level."

"Destination."

"Unit—" Bodger looked at Grace.

"M-13," she reminded him. "On ninety-three."

"Unit M-13, Ninety-Three Level."

"Orders."

"All orders conveyed."

Frank, hovering at that moment in puzzlement outside Unit A, wherein he had expected to find Andra and the others beginning a revolt, saw—through the Ultrablack-negating picture on the prop-Goon's cathode screen—the rectangle of light appear when Bodger opened the front door of his own unit across the street while he and Grace awaited their escort. Bodger's and Stanton's Units were not subject to Ultrablack, of course, interiorly. It had been the unforeseen darkness in Stanton's windows that had left Frank in immobile puzzlement on the walk before the Unit.

Seeing Bodger and Grace in the doorway, he turned the wheels of his ponderous vehicle and rolled their way, hoping for information as to Andra's whereabouts. He had just come within a few feet of the twosome, and was about to climb out the back panel when Bodger spoke, hearing the sound of the arriving prop-Goon and thinking it was his requested escort.

"What are you waiting for? We're in a hurry."

Bodger spoke blindly, unable to penetrate the black pall beyond his doorway. Frank hesitated, then decided not to reveal himself as yet. As tonelessly as possible, he spoke to Bodger in the required formula. "Orders."

"You have your orders," Bodger snapped, too keyed up to note any deviation in the accustomed path of the—he assumed—robotic voice. "Take us to Miss Horton's Unit at once."

Frank, believing Stanton was still there, had a chill of apprehension. This man, the Secondary Speakster, might not be on the side of revolt; after all, why should he be? For all he knew, Andra was dead, and Bodger was now on his way back to release the President. The whole business of socking him might have been a blind, to win her confidence, and worm the names of the movement's members from her.

"Do you hear me?" Bodger said, although Frank's worried pause had been barely a moment's duration. "Take us at once. All orders conveyed."

Frank manipulated the arm of the hollow robot up into the doorway, and Bodger, seeing it, took hold. Grace took Bodger's other hand, and then Frank, needing time to think the thing out, turned the bulk of his machine about slowly and began to roll toward the lift. He thought of getting Bodger and the Horton girl out in the toils of Ultrablack and then suddenly deserting them, but hesitated to try it; they might, after all, be what he'd begun to believe they were: sympathetic with the movement. Their reasons for the return to the girl's Unit might be even Anti-Hive in nature. Frank did not know what to do, so he simply kept moving, got aboard the lift, and thumbed the ninety-three button after Bodger and Grace Horton were safely within the gates.

The lift dropped smoothly seven levels, then halted, and the gate swung automatically open. And there, his eyes hidden behind a peculiar faceplate, stood Fredric Stanton, hand in hand with Robert Lennick.

"Bodger!" Stanton exploded, seeing him through the filter of his facepiece. Bodger, hearing the voice in the darkness, drew back into a corner of the lift, staring wide-eyed, futilely, for the other man, trying to hide the slim body of Grace Horton behind him, fearing a repeat of Stanton's attack with the Snapper Beam.

"Where is he!?" she gasped, terrified by that disembodied, menacing voice in the blackness. Stanton, secure in his invisibility, stepped into the lift, ignoring the metal body of the supposed Goon, and slapped Bodger viciously across the face. While Bodger choked at the unexpected blow, and brought his hand up to his injured mouth, Frank realized there was no longer a doubt where the sympathies of the Secondary Speakster lay, and with one swing of the jointed metal arm of the prop-Goon, he knocked Stanton unconscious with a blow to the base of the skull.

"What happened?" Grace shrilled, clinging to Bodger.

Lennick, deprived of his guide, groped forward in panic, calling, "Mr. Stanton—!" Frank spun the controls, and the metal arm swung up and clasped Lennick viciously about the throat, lifting his kicking body clear off the floor.

"Bodger—!" Frank called out, enjoying the icy terror that flickered in Lennick's congested face at the sound of his voice. "Stanton's out cold at your feet. He has some sort of facepiece he can see with. Put it on!"

Bodger, utterly bewildered as to the sudden turn of events, nevertheless did as directed, and straightened up adjusting the filter over his eyes. When he saw the grisly tableau of Lennick and the prop-Goon, he stepped back, agape with shock. Frank answered his query before Bodger's reeling mind could formulate it coherently. "This is a movie prop. I'm Frank Shawn, a member of Andra's movement, Bodger. And this wriggling worm in my hands is the guy who tried to undo all of us!"

"Frank ... please...." Lennick gurgled, his eyes distending while his hands tore vainly at the heavy metal hands that were tightening about his windpipe.

"Let him go," Bodger said impatiently. "He can't get far in Ultrablack, anyhow! We've got to get to Lloyd, my son. He's down at the Brain, now. With Stanton in our power, we can free the Hive forever in an hour's time!"

Frank looked at the face of his erstwhile friend, Robert Lennick, and suddenly had no more stomach for murder. He let go, and as Lennick dropped to the floor of the lift and started to double over, gulping air, Frank sent the left arm of the prop-Goon up in an arc that swatted him backwards onto the street outside the gate. Lennick scrambled blindly to his feet, screaming, "Frank! Don't leave me, Frank!" He dashed forward, misjudged his angle, and crashed head-on into a building wall. Frank thumbed the lift-button for Sub-Level One, and let the closing gate blot Lennick from his sight. The lift began to drop, swiftly.

Lennick, after lying painfully on the ground until his addled senses returned, got up on hands and knees, groggily shaking his head. Then, in the darkness, he heard rolling wheels, coming nearer. "Help!" he cried. "This way! Help!"

The rumbling veered in his direction at once, and then a Goon's unseen arms were lifting him to his feet. "The President—!" Lennick cried. "He's in danger!"

A moment's hesitance, and the Goon flatly replied, "The President is in no danger. He has been taken to the Brain at his own request, under competent escort."

Lennick, suddenly divining what must be the case, said, "His plate! Someone must have his plate, then, because—"

"You are bleeding," the Goon said dispassionately.

Bob's fingers came up to his face and he winced at the smarting pain their exploration produced at the point where he had struck the building wall. "It's nothing," he said, impatiently. "We've got to—"

"We will take you for hospitalization at once," said the voice of the Goon in the blackness.

"Hospitalization?" Bob said, irritably. "Don't you guys understand? The President—" And then it sank in. "No!" he shrieked. "You can't! I'm on your side!"

Other sets of heavy wheels rolled nearer, and inflexible metal fingers closed over his arms. The Goons began to roll ponderously off, with Bob firmly in their grasp. He was still shrieking when the mouth of the incinerator chute enveloped him.

Lloyd and Andra were awaiting the lift at Sub-Level one, guided in the blackness by the Goon who had led them to the control chamber, when Bodger and the others arrived. Stanton, only semi-conscious, was being held upright in the arms of the prop-Goon, lest a real Goon pick him up for "treatment" because of his bruises, one on the back of his head where Frank had connected, the other glowing a steadily darker purple on his jaw where Bodger's knockout punch had landed earlier. Lloyd, sensing the tenancy of the lift even in the blackness, drew back apprehensively, and then his father's voice was speaking to him in assurance.

"Whatever orders you've given your guide, son, take them back. We've got you-know-who, and we're taking him to the Brain with us." Andra's fingers closed joyously over Lloyd's own at the words, but he pulled his fingers free and slipped Stanton's Voteplate into his guide's chest-slot.

"Last order countermanded," he said to the Goon. "We have no further need of you. All orders conveyed." The Goon removed the plate, handed it to him, and wheeled off into the darkness. "Dad!" he spoke, then. "I found out so much, from the Brain! The Plan—for reactivating the ten cities—The Brain said you knew where it was."

"Grace will tell you, son," said Bodger. "Meantime—" he pressed Lloyd's own Voteplate into his hand "—take this, you'll need it. And give me Stanton's. I'm taking him down to the Brain. I may have to break his arm for him, but he's going to call off the Goons before I'm through."

"Mr. Bodger—" Frank said, taking out Stanton's preempted Snapper and holding it forward into the darkness. "This may come in handy for persuasion. There's no need your overtaxing yourself."

Bodger reached out and took it from him. "Thank you, Shawn. Rest assured I'll be only too glad to use it on him if he balks." Bodger motioned to Frank, still in the prop-Goon. "See if you can shake him awake, or something. I don't know how he can get down the ladder except on foot, much as I'd like to drop him into the chamber, if I thought it wouldn't break his rotten neck."

Frank did so, gladly, while Grace, fumbling for and finding Lloyd in the darkness, clung to him in joy and relief. He found himself liking it, and slipped his arms around her to enjoy it the better.

"Frank—" Andra said, slowly, hurt. "We found out, from the Brain, that Bob—Bob's in Stanton's pay."

"We found out, too, Andy," Frank said from inside the pseudorobot. "The hard way. We left him in Ultrablack on ninety-three. The louse had freed Stanton, and—"

"He's coming to," Bodger said.

In the agitated shaking of the metal hands that supported him by the upper arms, Stanton blinked wildly at Ultrablack, and choked out, "Let me go! I demand that you release me!"

"You're no longer in a position to demand anything," Bodger said softly. "I have your skinny carcass covered with a Snapper. You may as well relax."

"Bodger.... What are you going to do?" Stanton said, no longer fighting the grip of the prop-Goon's hands.

"Take you to the Brain. Make you countermand all your orders regarding the Goons."

"And if I don't?" Stanton said, warily. "What will you do if I refuse?"

"Kill you," Bodger said, and his tone rang true. "I don't want to do it that way, of course—not for reasons of pity; heaven knows you need killing, Fred—but because it's faster this way. With you dead, we'd simply elect a new President, and then he could countermand your orders. That could take days, though, days of the Ultrablack you had Madge Benedict instigate in this emergency. It would be too tedious convincing the Kinsmen to Vote in the dark on a proposition they couldn't see."

"I—" Stanton said blankly, "I thought you'd force Madge to turn on Light-of-Day."

"We would, but Lloyd mistakenly ordered her held incommunicado," Bodger said tiredly. "He didn't know that was another of your pet phrases synonymous with death."

"Good Lord!" Lloyd moaned in the darkness. "I didn't dream—"

"Madge brought it on herself, working hand in glove with Stanton, son," Bodger said. "You did not know. The point is, only Stanton or his personal Secretary could have called off the emergency. So now we have to get tough with him."

"Bodger...." Stanton straightened up, his face grim in defeat. "I have to know: If I do as you ask, countermand the Goons, call off the Ultrablack—What will happen to me, afterwards?"

"I can't say, Fred," Bodger replied flatly. "We'll have it put to a general Vote."

"I see," said the President, knowing full well what the result of such a Vote would be, with the Hive enraged against his exposed treachery. "Is it your best offer?"

"My only," said Bodger. "Let's go, Fred."

He prodded Stanton's back with the Snapper, and the President began to move forward, holding his head high, toward the staircase leading to the control-chamber entrance. Frank opened the panel at the rear of the prop-Goon, and called for Andra to join him inside it, then he took Lloyd and Grace by the arms, via the controls, and guided them through the black blindness after Bodger and his prisoner.

At the head of the staircase—really no more than a tier-cut segment of the lead-concrete Sub-Level Two, over which the correspondingly undercut left wall of the twenty-five-foot-thick level could slide—Frank had to come to a halt, his prop-Goon not being equipped with extendable cogs to fit the treads and risers, as the real Goons' wheels were. "I'm going down there with him," Lloyd said, starting down into blackness.

"No," his father's voice came from the level below. "I'll handle this myself, Lloyd. I can see my way and you can't."

Lloyd stood undecided on the brink of the staircase, then Grace found his arm in the dark and drew him back. "I want to talk to you about your father, Lloyd," she said, when he was again at her side. "He said some strange things, up in the Unit...."

Descending the ladder below his prisoner, the Snapper aimed upward always at the base of Stanton's spine, Bodger reached the cable-net flooring, and gestured the President to the chair before the control panel. "Here," he said, returning the other's Voteplate. "You'll need this. But I don't have to tell you the penalty for one attempt at trickery on your part."

Stanton took the card silently, and slid it into a slot on the control panel. A metal square slid back, exposing a hand-microphone. He took it in his hand, and spoke into it.

"Primal Speakster in control," he said.

All about the two men, the lights of the Brain flickered then a speaker in the cavity which had held the microphone said, in the cold, flat tones of the Brain, "Orders."

Stanton glanced up at Bodger, and smiled. And suddenly Bodger was afraid. There was no hint of fear in the other man's eyes, now, only confidence and terrible menace.

"There is a false robot, two men and two women with it, on Sub-Level One," said Stanton, while Bodger goggled in surprise. "Destroy them!"

"Orders," said the Brain.

"Stanton!" Bodger raged, snapping out of his stunned paralysis. He depressed the stud of the Snapper clear into the hilt of the weapon, trying to prevent the activating words from being spoken by the President. There was a fractional hum of power, and then a searing fork of hot blue light leaped from a conic protrusion on the Brain's inner surface and turned the weapon to molten metal in his fingers. Bodger fell to the flooring, crying out in pain, his raw, blistered hand nearly driving him unconscious.

"You should have known," Stanton addressed the mewling figure on the ground near his chair, "that a sonic beam cannot be fired inside the Brain; it would shatter some of the delicate balances necessary for its functioning. The Brain has to safeguard itself."

"Stanton—!" Bodger groaned, gritting his teeth against the agony of his seared hand. "Don't!... Please...."

"Danger," said the dispassionate voice of the Brain.

Stanton spun to face the concavity of the speaker. "What—?" he blurted, baffled. And then he heard the dim rumble, high above, as the entire lead-concrete Sub-Level Two slid relentlessly closed. Stanton jumped from the chair and looked up from the base of the ladder, to see if his ears had told him the truth. All that was visible at the head of the hundred-foot ladder was the bottom of the now-closed metal lid, over which the entire next level had moved. He turned, white-faced, to Bodger.

"What's happening?"

"Danger," repeated the Brain.

Stanton rushed to the side of the fallen man. "Bodger!" he shrieked, lifting him by the shoulders and shaking him. "What's happening!?"

"I guess—" Bodger said, smiling tiredly despite the cruel burns, "—I must've got mad, Fred. My innards, or don't you know about them?"

"I know all about your radiating innards!" Stanton exploded. "But they couldn't trigger the Brain's protective level! It's impossible! You've been here before—"

"I was never ... this aroused ... before, Fred," Bodger said weakly. "And now, for the first time, I ... know the answer to something I never knew before." He took a breath, gathered together all his strength, and lifted his face near the other man's, still smiling. "You asked the Brain about a third term, once—Don't argue, Fred, it's on record—and yet there is no memory in its circuits of a reply. Tell me, Fred.... What was its reply?" When Stanton did not respond, Bodger said, "I think I can tell you. Chaos. Noise. A riot of sound and fury that knocked you clear off your chair and broke the circuit before it destroyed you. Because the Brain knew, of course. It's smart, Fred. It can predict with better accuracy than a human mind. It foresaw, after correlating all the facts at its disposal, what would be the result of your attempt at being elected a third time. And it tried to ... tell you...." Bodger faltered, went grey, and lay back upon the interwoven cables with his eyes closed. His lips were still working, though, and he finished, "... the result ... except that the ... Brain doesn't speak ... in words ... just concepts ... and its concept encompassed ... its own...."

His head rolled to one side, limply.

"Danger," croaked the voice of the Brain.

"Its what? Its own what?!" Stanton yelled, grabbing Bodger's head by the hair and banging it violently upon the flooring. Bodger, his eyes rolling, coughed painfully, then sighed, as one who names a long-awaited friend, "... death."

"Danger!" said the Brain. A wild tootling began in its depths as its metal mind tried to spare it its terrible fate.

"What danger?" Stanton roared into the microphone, leaping to the chair before the control panel. "Tell me! I'll find a way out!"

"Danger!" said the Brain. "Danger! Danger!"

There was a wild bluish light playing on the face of the panel, now, and Stanton knew, suddenly, that it was not of the Brain itself. He turned, some hideous psychic insight telling him what he could not as yet realize by his senses, and looked at the body of Lloyd Bodger on the floor.

Veins and arteries shone like a network of neon lights through the flesh, a pulsing glow that rose in its intensity by the second. The internal organs appeared through Bodger's smoldering clothing as on the screen of a fluoroscope, each alight with self-engendered hellfire. Bodger's eyes were glowing like hot tungsten through his transparent lids, his teeth were bared in a smile brighter than sunrise. His every bone, bit of cartilage, nerve ganglion and muscle fibre sparked like coals beneath a blacksmith's bellows, and the hairs of his head were a Medusa-wig of burning, writhing wire.

And then he reached his critical mass.

THE END

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