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Half of them are toting spindillies, and you know what would happen if one of
those things were fired over here, even once. I'm not going to risk that."
"Be sure you don't; but keep trying. I'll see what can be done about it from
this end. There'll be further instructions; where can I reach you?"
"Just leave the call in the perimeter sergeant's office," Amalfi said. "I'll
pick it up on my next round."
"Very good," Hazleton said, and clicked out. Amalfi set up the necessary line
from the perimeter station to the control tower and sat back, satisfied for
the moment, though with a deeper uneasiness that would not go away. The seed
had been planted, and there was no doubt that Hazleton had understood the move
and would foster it. It was highly probable that Jorn the Apostle had already
ordered an inquiry made of his officers on Earth, questioning the substance of
Amalfi's claims; they would of course report back that they had had no trouble
of that kind, but the inquiry itself would sensitize them to the subject.
Amalfi turned on the tower's FM receiver and tuned for New Earth's federal
station. The next step would be stiffer off-limits orders to Warriors on
leave, and he wanted to
be sure he heard the texts. Unless Jorn's officers phrased those orders with
an unlikely degree of sophistication, they would result in some actual
sightseers in the city-and of course there were no longer any perimeter
sergeants, nor was there even a definable perimeter except in the minds of the
City Fathers. Somebody was bound to get hurt.
That would be one incident 'de Ford' would not report: "I didn't hear about
it. I'm sorry, but I can't be everywhere at once. I've been trying to fend
these boys off from the City Fathers-they want to ask them a lot of questions
about the history of ideas that would tie the machines up for weeks. I've been
telling the boys that I don't know how to operate, the City Fathers, but if
one of them points a spindilly at me and says 'Put me through, or else'-well-"
That speech would necessarily mark the demise of the 'Commissioner of Public
Safety,' since it would almost surely result in the posting of a uniformed,
on-duty Warrior patrol around or in the Okie city itself; Amalfi would then
have to go underground, and the rest would be up to Mark. What, specifically,
Hazleton would do could not be anticipated, nor did Amalfi want to know about
it when it happened. One of the defects of the program was the fact that it
was, as Jorn had suspected, based on a lie, whereas a good deception ought
to contain some fundamental stone of truth to stub the toes of the
sane and the suspicious. To put the matter with brutal directness, there was
no possibility that the local Warriors would be corrupted by Stochasticism,
and there never had been. Even if the program succeeded and Jorn withdrew his
men, he would interrogate them closely before he gave Amalfi back his
hostages; and if everything that he found out bore Amalfi's stamp it would be
too consistent to be convincing. That was why Hazleton's improvisations had to
be his own from here on out, and as unknown to Amalfi as possible until it
was too late for Amalfi to undo them even had he wished to.
It was indeed a poor piece of fiction upon which to hang the lives of Dee and
Web and Estelle; but he had to make do with what he had.
It appeared to be working. Within the week, all Warrior leaves were cancelled
in favor of special 'orientation devotions' at which attendance was mandatory.
Though there was no direct way to tell whether or not the Warriors resented
the cancellation of their leaves to secure their
faith, the predicated accident inside the city happened the next day, and the
'Commissioner of Public Safety' was promptly taxed by Hazleton to explain how
he had allowed it to happen; Amalfi trotted forth the prepared lie, and
retreated to an anciefct'communications sub-station deep in the bowels of the
City Fathers themselves.
The Warrior patrol was roving through the Okie city the very next day, and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]