Chapter 6

We walked silently through the huge central waiting room of the clinic.

There should have been scores of relatives of suspendees milling around, seeking information--there was, I knew, still a steady shipment of suspendees coming in from the local hospitals; I had seen it myself. But there were hardly more than a dozen or so persons in sight, with a single clerk checking their forms and answering their questions.

It was too quiet. Defoe thought so, too; I saw his frown.

Now that I had had a few moments to catch my breath, I realized that I had seen a master judoist at work. It was all out of the textbooks--as a fledgling Claims Adjuster, I had had the basic courses in handling difficult cases--but not one man in a million could apply textbook rules as skillfully and successfully as Defoe did with Zorchi.

Push a man hard and he will lunge back; push him hard enough and persistently enough, and he will lunge back farther than his vision carries him, right to the position you planned for him in the first place. And I, of course, had been only a tool in Defoe’s hand; by interceding for Zorchi, I had tricked the man into the surrender Defoe wanted.

And he had complimented me for it!

I couldn’t help wondering, though, whether the compliment Defoe gave me was part of some still subtler scheme...

Defoe nodded curtly to the expediter-captain at the door, who saluted and pressed the teleswitch that summoned Defoe’s limousine.

Defoe turned to me. “I have business in Rome and must leave at once. You will have to certify Zorchi’s suspension this afternoon; since I won’t be here, you’ll have to come back to the clinic for it. After that, Thomas, you can begin your assignment.”

I said uncertainly, “What--where shall I begin?”

One eyebrow lifted a trifle. “Where? Wherever you think proper, Thomas. Or must I handle this myself?”

The proper answer, and the one I longed to make, was “Yes.” Instead I said, “Not at all, Mr. Defoe. It’s only that I didn’t even know there was an undercover group until you told me about it a few moments ago; I don’t know exactly where to start. Gogarty never mentioned--”

“Gogarty,” he cut in, “is very likely to be relieved as District Administrator before long. I should like to replace him with someone already on the scene--” he glanced at me to be sure I understood--”provided, that is, that I can find someone of proven competence. Someone who has the ability to handle this situation without the necessity of my personal intervention.”

The limousine arrived then, with an armed expediter riding beside the chauffeur. Defoe allowed me to open the door for him and follow him in.

“Do you understand me?” he asked as the driver started off.

“I think so,” I said.

“Good. I do not suppose that Gogarty has given you any information about the malcontents in this area.”

“No.”

“It may be for the best; his information is clearly not good.” Defoe stared broodingly out the window at the silent groups of men and women on the grass before the clinic. “Your information is there,” he said as they passed out of sight. “Learn what you can. Act when you know enough. And, Thomas--”

“Yes?”

“Have you given thought to your future?”

I shifted uncomfortably. “Well, I’ve only been a Claims Adjuster a little while, you know. I suppose that perhaps I might eventually get promoted, even become a District Administrator--”

He looked at me impersonally. “Dream higher,” he advised.

I stood watching after Defoe’s limousine, from the marquee of the hotel where he had left me to take a room and freshen up. Dream higher. He had the gift of intoxication.

Higher than a District Administrator! It could mean only--the Home Office.

Well, it was not impossible, after all. The Home Office jobs had to go to someone; the super-men who held them now--the Defoes and the Carmodys and the dozen or more others who headed up departments or filled seats on the Council of Underwriters--couldn’t live forever. And the jobs had to be filled by someone.

Why not me? Only one reason, really. I was not a career man. I hadn’t had the early academy training from adolescence on; I had come to the service of the Company itself relatively late in life. The calendar legislated against me.

Of course, I thought to myself, I was in a pretty good position, in a way, because of Defoe’s evident interest in me. With him helping and counseling me, it might be easier.

I thought that and then I stopped myself, shocked. I was thinking in terms of personal preferment. That was not the Company way! If I had learned anything in my training, I had learned that Advancement was on merit alone.

Advancement had to be on merit alone ... else the Company became an oligarchy, deadly and self-perpetuating.

Shaken, I sat in the dingy little hotel room that was the best the town of Anzio had for me and opened my little Black Book. I thumbed through the fine-printed pages of actuarial tables and turned to the words of Millen Carmody, Chief Underwriter, in the preface. They were the words that had been read to me and the others at our graduation at the Home Office, according to the tradition:

_Remember always that the Company serves humanity, not the reverse.

The Company’s work is the world’s work. The Company can end,

forever, the menace of war and devastation; but it must not

substitute a tyranny of its own. Corruption breeds tyrants.

Corruption has no place in the Company._

They were glorious words. I read them over again, and stared at the portrait of Underwriter Carmody that was the frontispiece of the handbook. It was a face to inspire trust--wise and human, grave, but with warmth in the wide-spaced eyes.

Millen Carmody was not a man you could doubt. As long as men like him ran the Company--and he was the boss of them all, the Chief Underwriter, the highest position the Company had to offer--there could be no question of favoritism or corruption.

After eating, I shaved, cleaned up a little and went back to the clinic.

There was trouble in the air, no question of it. More expediters were in view, scattered around the entrance, a dozen, cautious yards away from the nearest knots of civilians. Cars with no official company markings, but with armor-glass so thick that it seemed yellow, were parked at the corners. And people were everywhere.

People who were quiet. Too quiet. There were some women--but not enough to make the proportion right. And there were no children.

I could almost feel the thrust of their eyes as I entered the clinic.

Inside, the aura of strain was even denser. If anything, the place looked more normal than it had earlier; there were more people. The huge waiting room was packed and a dozen sweating clerks were interviewing long lines of persons. But here, as outside, the feeling was wrong; the crowds weren’t noisy enough; they lacked the nervous boisterousness they should have had.

Dr. Lawton looked worried. He greeted me and showed me to a small room near the elevators. There was a cocoon of milky plastic on a wheeled table; I looked closer, and inside the cocoon, recognizable through the clear plastic over the face, was the waxlike body of Luigi Zorchi. The eyes were closed and he was completely still. I would have thought him dead if I had not known he was under the influence of the drugs used in the suspension of life in the vaults.

I said: “Am I supposed to identify him or something?”

“We know who he is,” Lawton snorted. “Sign the commitment, that’s all.”

I signed the form he handed me, attesting that Luigi Zorchi, serial number such-and-such, had requested and was being granted immobilization and suspension in lieu of cash medical benefits. They rolled the stretcher-cart away, with its thick foam-plastic sack containing the inanimate Zorchi.

“Anything else?” I asked.

Lawton shook his head moodily. “Nothing you can help with. I told Defoe this was going to happen!”

“What?”

He glared at me. “Man, didn’t you just come in through the main entrance? Didn’t you see that mob?”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it a mob,” I began.

“You wouldn’t now,” he broke in. “But you will soon enough. They’re working themselves up. Or maybe they’re waiting for something. But it means trouble, I promise, and I warned Defoe about it. And he just stared at me as if I was some kind of degenerate.”

I said sharply, “What are you afraid of? Right outside, you’ve got enough expediters to fight a war.”

“Afraid? Me?” He looked insulted. “Do you think I’m worried about my own skin, Wills? No, sir. But do you realize that we have suspendees here who need protection? Eighty thousand of them. A mob like that--”

“Eighty thousand?” I stared at him. The war had lasted only a few weeks!

“Eighty thousand. A little more, if anything. And every one of them is a ward of the Company as long as he’s suspended. Just think of the damage suits, Wills.”

I said, still marveling at the enormous number of casualties out of that little war, “Surely the suspendees are safe here, aren’t they?”

“Not against mobs. The vaults can handle anything that might happen in the way of disaster. I don’t think an H-bomb right smack on top of them would disturb more than the top two or three decks at most. But you never know what mobs will do. If they once get in here--And Defoe wouldn’t listen to me!”

As I went back into the hall, passing the main entrance, the explosion burst.

I stared out over the heads of the dreadfully silent throng in the entrance hall, looking toward the glass doors, as was everyone else inside. Beyond the doors, an arc of expediters was retreating toward us; they paused, fired a round of gas-shells over the heads of the mob outside, and retreated again.