“You sound like Quilliam London,” muttered O’Brien.
“Do I really?” Movius bent his other finger, clenched his hand into a fist. “We take away the government’s major tool of legality and they will be forced to come out from behind the mask. It’s either that or admit they’ve loaded the questions to get their own answers. They’d never do that.”
“Everybody knows that anyway,” said O’Brien.
“You make a common error,” said Movius. “Everybody knows this because I know. Before many people could know this they’d have to admit to themselves that they’d forged their own shackles and raised their own despots. Most people don’t have a strong enough ego to do that. History has never seen such a mass admission. No. People strike out at a scapegoat, someone or something else which absorbs all of the personal guilt.” Movius smiled. “I’m fitting Glass for so tight a hair coat you won’t be able to tell him from a goat—a scapegoat.”
O’Brien straightened. “So you’re taking over. If you think your silly threat against my life is going to make me …”
“How would you like to have Glass, Gerard, Addington and company learn about your secret organization, your charts, your plans, your position as advisor to the Seps?”
The Bu-Psych chief paled.
“That’s a much better threat, isn’t it? If anything happens to me they will learn.” He paused for effect. “You will select the expert staff I have requested. Four men. More would cause delay. Outline to this staff exactly what they will be doing. Have them ready for me at a half-hour’s notice.”
O’Brien seemed in a trance. “Half an hour’s notice.” He swallowed. “You can’t—” He broke off, studied the look on Movius’ face. “Where will they report?”
“At the new Separatist headquarters. It’s under the street between here and the Bureau of Education Building. The entrance is in your sub-basement, conduit tunnel two on your plans. We’re using your building air-conditioning system.”
“Under my …”
“We’re also going out with your phones through a section of your switchboard.”
“But …”
“The Sep movement really started here, O’Brien. It’s only fair that it make its big bid from here.”
O’Brien sank into a chair.
“In case Gerard goes for The Coor’s deal, I want asylum in Bu-Psych,” said Movius.
O’Brien had trouble finding his voice. “Can’t do it,” he piped. “We haven’t the strength to fight an open—”
“Then Grace and I will hide in the new headquarters.”
“Grace and you …”
Movius glanced at his watch. “I’m due back at Gerard’s office right now.”
As he left the building, climbed into his car, Movius noted that it hadn’t been too difficult to turn the tables on the omnipotent O’Brien.
Upstairs in Bu-Psych, O’Brien was repairing Movius’ torn decision chart, replacing it on the wall.
Chapter Twenty-two
Gerard leaned back in his chair, put a hand over the mouthpiece of his phone, glanced at Movius. He looked like a small bald devil sitting behind the big desk, Movius thought. Gerard said, “It’s …” He talked back to the phone. “Yes, I’m still waiting.” He leaned forward, scribbled on a slip of paper, “It’s Glass wanting to talk to me,” and shoved the paper across the desk.
Movius bit a hangnail off his thumb, retrieved the paper. He glanced at it, tossed it back to the desk.
“Hello,” said Gerard. “Oh, hello, Helmut. Haven’t heard from you since last month’s conference.… Oh, I’ve been quite well, thank you. And you? … Good to hear it. What can I do for you? … Movius? Yes, I believe I have a man by that name working for me. His order came to us through the selector.” Gerard smiled at Movius as he listened. “Are you sure it’s the same man? You make him sound dreadful. Leader of the Seps? Goodness! Say … now that you remind me, wasn’t he once engaged to that blonde I saw with you at the Festival? I believe I heard some story about Movius throwing her over before you met her …”
Movius smiled at the fierce grin on Gerard’s face.
“Oh, that’s the way it was,” said Gerard. “I guess I had the story twisted. Well, what do you want me to do about him?” Gerard nodded, listened. “Oh, I couldn’t do that, Helmut. You should see the requirements I fed into the Sorter to get him. Why, they … Oh, you’ve seen his card. Well, then you understand when I say he’s a valuable man. I think this Sep business is nonsense … You don’t say … Have you really?” Gerard leaned back, stared at the ceiling, the phone held loosely against his ear. His expression became thoughtful. “I’ll tell you what, Helmut; let me consider it. I’ll call you back and let you know my decision.” He nodded. “Yes. Right away. Good opps.” He replaced the phone on its hook, looked at Movius pensively.
“He wants to trade you something attractive for my hide,” said Movius.
Gerard swung around to face his desk. “My own man in Addington’s job.”
“He’s finally gotten wise to Addington,” said Movius. “What does he propose to do with owl guts?”
“I can only guess. Hoist him out a window, maybe.”
Movius thought of the three men Gerard had caused to be dropped from the window, fought down a shudder. He took a deep breath. “Why not ask Glass if you can put me in Addington’s job?”
Gerard jerked his eyes up, suddenly leaned back and laughed.
The realization came to Movius that Gerard actually had not come to a decision on The Coor’s office. He said, “You know what this means, don’t you?”
The laughing stopped. “What?”
“Glass is spooked.”
“Because you knocked over a minor cog like Rafe Newton?” Gerard shook his head. “Even if Rafe was his nephew, don’t give yourself airs on that account.”
“Newton? I wasn’t thinking about Newton.” Movius fell silent, looked at his fingernails. What would temp the man? How much would Gerard believe? He believed in the loyalty index, certainly.
“You were saying,” prompted Gerard.
“I’ve assumed you might want to be Coordinator,” said Movius.
Steepled hands came up in front of Gerard’s mouth, masking his expression. “What ever gave you that idea?”
Movius set his face in what he hoped was a candid, loyal expression. “I figured that if you were Coordinator and I was say in charge of Bu-Trans and Bu-Con, both of us might get a decent night’s sleep.”
“You what?” Gerard leaned forward, hands flat on top of his desk.
“Glass is afraid of a Sep uprising. He knows the Seps are organized as they’ve never been before and are all ready to move.”
A crease appeared on Gerard’s forehead above his nose. He passed a hand across his bald head. “He made some crazy charge about you being the leader of the Seps.”
Here it is, thought Movius. He said, “That was no crazy charge. I am just that.”
Gerard arose half out of his chair, sank bank. He put a hand in his pocket.
“What would happen if there was a Sep revolt in which The Coor was killed?”
In a cautious tone, Gerard asked, “The Coor, Addington and a few others?”
“That’s right. One man would not be enough.”
An eager note crept into Gerard’s voice. “There are about fifty who would have to be eliminated.”
“You know them all, of course?” asked Movius.
“I could give you a complete list, including their habits and the easiest way to get them.” Gerard’s voice grew cool. “How could such a revolt be arranged and still …”
“They will do what I say without question,” said Movius. “They were completely disorganized before I took over.”
Gerard leaned forward, toyed with a stylus. “What did you plan to do?” he asked, looking at the stylus.
Movius pressed his hands against his legs to steady them. “I hadn’t planned any farther ahead than killing Glass until I hooked up with you.�
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Gerard’s eyes glittered. “Now you want to make me Coordinator? What’s to keep you from just taking the top spot yourself if you know the way?”
Movius breathed a silent prayer to Gerard’s belief in the loyalty index. “You saved my life. Besides, what do I know about the job? You’ve served two terms in it.”
“So I have.” Gerard seemed to bask in a memory, suddenly frowned. “But that was before Glass decided he could pass out the job as a payment for services.”
“I propose we low-opp Glass,” said Movius.
Gerard came to a decision. He reached down, jerked up the phone. “Get me Helmut Glass at Com-Burs.” He waited. “Helmut, this is Warren Gerard …. Yes, I’ve decided not to accept. Movius is too valuable to me … No, I’m not holding out for more … Sorry, I haven’t any price to name … I don’t think that would be advisable at all, Helmut … Certainly I realize you’re the head of the government, but you have to obey the opps just like the rest of us. Movius was legally opped to me by the Sorter. He’s a legal government employee working in my department. He’s … You’re a fatuous bastard yourself, Helmut!” Gerard slammed down the phone.
Movius wondered how long Gerard had been wanting to say that to Glass. The words had been spoken with such relish. He felt a tired aching in his hands, looked down and saw he had been clenching and unclenching his fists.
Gerard breathed deeply, eyes glazed with excitement. “What do you need, Dan? You name it. Anything in the organization.”
“We’ve a tough few days ahead of us,” said Movius. “We’re keyed to go the night before the Fall poll. That’s four days away. The word is that Glass will put a few preliminary questions to the opp on the seven o’clock that night in preparation for the following day’s heavy polling. We’ve a surprise waiting for him.”
“What do I provide?”
“Treble the guard on the apartment until tomorrow. My wife and I are going into hiding. Set up a few scattered power failures for tonight, tomorrow and the next day, a few unexplained explosions. Give them something to investigate and worry about.” Movius became thoughtful. “Bu-Trans services the relay ship. Now …”
“Only the movable machinery,” said Gerard. “We service it, but we don’t staff it except with a few technicians.”
“Could something happen to just the power transmission?” asked Movius.
Gerard tapped his teeth with the tip of the stylus. “I believe so. When would you want this to happen?”
“At seven o’clock the night before the Fall poll, the moment The Coor puts his first preliminary on the beam.”
“They have emergency power,” said Gerard. “You want that put out, too?”
“No, just the relay. Every moving vehicle in the city that depends on the transmitter should come to a stop. Let me have a turbo-copter for my own transportation. How many have you?”
“This is Bu-Trans,” said Gerard. “We control most of the world’s supply. There are about two thousand in the city here, perhaps twenty-five thousand more at sub-depots around the world.”
Movius was stunned. He’d been blind! “How could we contact them?”
“Over the routing teletype,” said Gerard. He bent his bald head toward Movius. “What’s on your mind?”
Movius slapped a hand onto the desk. “I’m going to send five girls up here with some lists of code names. You send out the orders to people you can trust. Those copters are to be put at the disposal of the people with these code names. This revolt is going to be fought from the air.”
He was almost to the new Sep headquarters before a sudden thought struck him: What if Gerard does an about face? He’d hold the key to the whole revolt. They could pick up the district leaders one by one as the men checked in for their copters. Well, it was too late to turn back now.
Chapter Twenty-three
I shall kill him when he returns to his apartment tonight,” said Quilliam London. He paced to the windows where the pigeons were conducting their morning watch on the streets, strode back to the table, slammed a fist down on the wood. “He’s too dangerous! We’ll have to get along without him.”
“Don’t be hasty, Quilliam.” O’Brien rubbed at a greying temple. “I’ve been doing some re-evaluating of our records on Movius. The job he has done is little short of a miracle. In just two months he has eighteen million people so organized they’re ready to die for him.”
“Most of those district organizations already were in existence,” said London.
“But not unified. Not unified.” O’Brien lifted a sheaf of papers on the table, let them drop. “Reports, reports! You should see them. No wonder Glass was ready to make a deal with Gerard. No wonder Gerard is hypnotized by the man. Big thefts of arms. Whole warehouses. EMASI! scrawls all over. There were nine power failures in this city alone last night. They’ve never been this bold! Movius has inspired them and we have to control that unifying force!”
“High-Opp!” London’s voice took on a sour bitterness. “We lost control of Movius when he walked in here and started giving you orders.”
“But the diabolical cleverness of the man! Bypass the poll control, force The Coor into the open. Make him take off his mask.”
“What difference does it make with a revolution under our noses?” demanded London. “This man will blunder us into an open battle before we’re ready.”
“But …”
London cut him off. “You said yourself his idea would only work twice at the most and then Glass would move to smoke him out.”
“I see you miss the point,” said O’Brien. He tipped his head, worked a fingernail at the corner of his eye. “My work of re-evaluation includes a study of our position relative to Movius.” He found whatever it was in the corner of his eye, straightened his head. “We chose Movius for a number of reasons.” O’Brien ticked them off on his fingers. “Susceptibility to our methods of, shall we say, ignition? Brilliance of intellect, high achievement, ability to make correct decisions, ambition …”
“Don’t forget the loyalty index,” said London coldly. “You know damned well he’s out for number one now. And he’ll be cautious. He’s lost the essential boldness.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” said O’Brien. He studied London.
“He has you enthralled, too,” said London. “Bah!”
“Perhaps we chose our figurehead with more skill than we supposed,” said O’Brien. “Let’s not forget that a crisis time requires strong measures and a strong hand to execute them.”
“Execute!” London stamped across the room to the master chart. “He’ll likely ruin everything. It’s damned strange, Nate. Only last week our positions were reversed. You were wanting him eliminated and I was saying we should wait.”
“You know, I was just thinking the same thing,” said O’Brien. He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s odd, Quilliam, but we’ve never discussed one vital element of our plans. I believe we’ve tacitly avoided it.”
London turned away from the chart. “And what would that be?”
“After the revolution, who did you plan should be Coordinator?”
The old man drew himself up. He had never looked more like an ancient hunter—knobby, austere. “Myself, of course. Who else is qualified to render dispassionate judgments?”
A look of tiredness washed over O’Brien’s face. “I guess I’d anticipated that.” He looked up at London. “I had thought, though, that our object was to give the government back to the people.”
“When they’re ready for it,” said London in a clipped tone.
O’Brien smiled vaguely. “Movius would say they’ve always been ready for it.”
London banged a fist against the master chart beside him. “Movius! Did Movius devise this? Did Movius anticipate the course of history?”
“Who did do these things?” O’Brien’s voice was low.
“We did,” said London.
“Allow me to correct you.” O’Brien raised his voice. “Because of the accident o
f time which placed us at this point in history, and for no other reason, we are in a position to reap the benefits of five hundred years of work by thousands of others. Without their work we’d have nothing. And as far as predicting the course of history, are we sure—certain sure—that we were the force that brought Movius on stage?”
London curled his lip. “Don’t turn metaphysical on me, Nate. I can forgive you anything but that. Your other argument has spoken for me. Because of all this work, we are in a position to save the best of one civilization for the next one. But our work and the work of those before us is being endangered by this egoistical upstart, Daniel Movius!”
O’Brien cocked his head to one side. “On what do you base this judgment?”
“On my ability to interpret the course of events and decide when the time is ripe. Movius is moving too rapidly.” He shook his head. “Much too rapidly.”
“You said yourself that the crisis would come at the time of the Fall poll,” said O’Brien.
“I have revised my opinion.”
“The revision seems to have come at the very time Movius seems in a position to win the revolt and take over the government.”
London’s eyes blazed. “Are you trying to say that—”
O’Brien stopped him with a curt wave of the hand. He stood up, the look of tiredness more pronounced. “I had hoped to avoid this, Quilliam.” He brought a rolled chart from beneath the table, opened it to show that it was transparent. A single blue line slanted across it, curving up and down. The transparent chart fitted over the chart on Movius. O’Brien taped it in place. The blue line on the transparent chart showed a flatter gradient, more sharp downslopes than the red line on the chart beneath it. The difference was pronounced. The red line climbed at a steep angle. “This blue line charts the decision index of a man named Quilliam London,” said O’Brien.
London’s cheeks flushed; he compressed his lips, breathed noisily through his nose. “That was an evil turn to do an old friend, Nate.” His voice was low, controlled.
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