Sam Hall

The late great Clifford D. Simak was an inspiration to us all. He still is. I am more directly in his debt for the foregoing story. Very new in the business, as yet without an agent, I had sent it to every science fiction magazine and gotten it back with the comment that it was too long for its content. When I told him, he said in his quiet fashion, “The way to shorten a story is to write the ending.” I did, and immediately placed it in Astounding, now Analog, the top market.

He gave me the advice at the Minneapolis Fantasy Society, a fan group that I had joined in 1947 when it reconstituted itself after a wartime hiatus. Meetings took place regularly, every two weeks if memory serves. Afterward several of us would go out to drink beer and talk till the bars closed, then often elsewhere to drink coffee and talk till the sun came up. Soon we began getting together in between these times. The activities of the club as such faded away until we were just a group of friends—interested in science fiction, yes, but also in everything else—with “MFS” for an informal name tag. Those friendships will endure until the last one of us who remembers is gone.

We didn’t see Cliff often anymore. When we did, he was as warmly amiable as ever. But he didn’t care for carousing, and he was a family man, with a responsible job on a newspaper and a home in the suburbs. Others of us, and some new people, grew ever more close-knit. Besides putting down huge quantities of beer, singing, squiring women around (the bachelors, when they could), throwing parties, playing softball in summer and touch football in fall, we talked. How we talked! Our conversations wouldn’t have met the standards of an eighteenth-century salon, but I think they must have ranged more widely, from jests through all matters personal and public—many a slam-bam argument about history or politics—on to science and philosophy and back to cheerful nonsense, or story ideas.

Those last bounced especially between Gordon Dickson and me. While a few others in the MFS had sold a few pieces here and there, after Cliff withdrew Gordy and I were the only real writers. Mostly each of us did his own work, sometimes helped along by a suggestion, but occasionally we collaborated. The Hokas were born one day when we sat in my one-room apartment over a brew or two, a race of beings like big, energetic teddy bears with a limitless enthusiasm for human cultures. Gordy, having the more imaginative sense of humor, whipped out a first draft, then I did a rewrite, tying up loose ends and adding whatever bits of business occurred to me. We went on like that for a good many years, by telephone and mail after I moved away, and the series remains popular enough that I used to wonder aloud if the Hokas weren’t what Gordy and I would be remembered for.

Now he too is gone. Everybody still alive who knew him misses him.

Of course, mainly our separate efforts weren’t supposed to be funny. That includes the next story of mine in this collection. Again a bit of introduction is called for.

By 1950 I was no longer living hand to mouth but had enough reserves for travel. That year a friend and I took a cross-country drive to a conference in New York. Along the way we visited MIT to see the Bush differential analyzer, the world’s most powerful computer. It was an awesome sight, tall stacks of blinking vacuum tubes reaching back through a cavernous chamber and a row of typewriters in front clicking away with no fingers on the keys. I didn’t foresee how development would go, or how rapidly, until desktop sets rather than mainframes do almost all the work and I daily hold more mathematical capability in my hand than that giant had. But I’d read Norbert Wiener, and it wasn’t hard to visualize a future pervaded by computers.

In 1951 I spent several months bicycling and youth hosteling abroad. Those were magnificent months, but unavoidably had their few small annoyances. One was the requirement to fill out a silly little form everywhere I stayed, with such information as my passport number, where I had last stopped, and where I was going next—a form that would only molder in local police archives. No one ever actually looked at the passport. We’ve since been afflicted with similar things over here, but America was more innocent then. Occasionally, somewhat childishly, I let off steam by registering as Sam Hall, the subject of a rowdy old ballad we often sang in the MFS.

Returning home, I found Senator Joseph McCarthy embarked on his infamous career as a self-styled hunter of subversives. The time that followed was not in fact the reign of terror of intellectual folklore. Nevertheless this demagogue did do great harm to a number of individuals and careers, both directly and by the atmosphere he generated. (And, by thus giving anti-Communism a bad name, he so effectively helped screen the truth about our mortal enemies and damp the will to resist them that some people have seriously wondered if he wasn’t on their side.)

Once more, a number of elements came together and I found myself with a story I very much wanted to tell. Many things in it are now long since obsolete, most conspicuously the computer system itself, but there seems to be scant point in revision. I think it still has something important to say. At the very least, it forecast computer crime!

As said, just about all the self-respecting media and writers were in bitter and open opposition to McCarthy. That included us in science fiction. John Campbell, editor of Analog, was himself a political conservative of the social Darwinist kind. Yet he bought “Sam Hall” and gave it the cover and the lead position when it appeared in 1953. The only thing he bowdlerized was the ballad, and that only because his publisher was prudish. I’ve restored the rough-hewn lyrics we used to sing above our beer.

CLICK. BZZZ. WHRRR.

Citizen Blank Blank, Anytown, Somewhere, U.S.A., approaches the hotel desk. “Single with bath.”

“Sorry, sir, our fuel ration doesn’t permit individual baths. We can draw one for you; that will be twenty-five dollars extra.”

“Oh, is that all? Okay.”

Citizen Blank takes out his wallet, extracts his card, gives it to the registry machine, an automatic set of gestures. Aluminum jaws close on it, copper teeth feel for the magnetic encodings, electronic tongue tastes the life of Citizen Blank.

Place and date of birth. Parents. Race. Religion. Educational, military, and civilian service records. Marital status. Children. Occupations, from the beginning to the present. Affiliations. Physical measurements, fingerprints, retinals, blood type. Basic psychotype. Loyalty rating. Loyalty index as a function of time to moment of last test given. Click, click. Bzzz.

“Why are you here, sir?”

“Salesman. I expect to be in Cincinnati tomorrow night.”

The clerk (32 yrs., married, two children; NB, confidential: Jewish. To be kept out of key occupations) punches buttons.

Click, click. The machine returns the card. Citizen Blank puts it back in his wallet.

“Front!”

The bellboy (19 yrs., unmarried; NB confidential: Catholic. To be kept out of key occupations) takes the guest’s suitcase. The elevator creaks upstairs. The clerk resumes his reading. The article is entitled “Has Britain Betrayed Us?” Companion articles in the magazine include “New Indoctrination Program for the Armed Forces,” “Labor Hunting on Mars,” “I Was a Union Man for the Security Police,” “More Plans for YOUR Future.”

The machine talks to itself. Click, click. A bulb winks at its neighbor as if they shared a private joke. The total signal goes out over the wires.

Accompanied by a thousand others, it shoots down the last cable and into the sorter unit of Central Records. Click, click. Bzzz. Whrrr. Wink and glow. The distorted molecules in a particular spool show the pattern of Citizen Blank, and this is sent back. It enters the comparison unit, to which the incoming signal corresponding to him has also been shunted. The two are perfectly in phase; nothing wrong. Citizen Blank is staying in the town where, last night, he said he would, so he has not had to file a correction.

The new information is added to the record of Citizen Blank. The whole of his life returns to the memory bank. It is wiped from the scanner and comparison units, that these may be free for the next arrival.

The machine has swallowed and digested another day. It is content.

* * *

Thornberg entered his office at the usual time. His secretary glanced up to say “Good morning,” and looked closer. She had been with him for enough years to read the nuances in his carefully controlled face. “Anything wrong, chief?”

“No.” He spoke harshly, which was also peculiar. “No, nothing wrong. I feel a bit under the weather, maybe.”

“Oh.” The secretary nodded. You learned discretion in the government. “Well, I hope you get better soon.”

“Thanks. It’s nothing.” Thornberg limped over to his desk, sat down, and took out a pack of cigarettes. He held one for a moment in nicotine-yellowed fingers before lighting it, and there was an emptiness in his eyes. Then he puffed ferociously and turned to his mail. As chief technician of Central Records, he received a generous tobacco ration and used it all.

The office was a windowless cubicle, furnished in gaunt orderliness, its only decorations pictures of his son and his late wife. Thornberg seemed too big for the space. He was tall and lean, with thin straight features and neatly brushed graying hair. He wore a plain version of the Security uniform, insignia of Technical Division and major’s rank but none of the ribbons to which he was entitled. The priesthood of Matilda the Machine were a pretty informal lot.

He chain-smoked his way through the mail. Most was related to the changeover. “Come on, June,” he said. Recording and later transcription sufficed for routine stuff, but best that his secretary take notes as well while he dictated anything unusual. “Let’s get this out of the way fast. I’ve got work to do.”

He held a letter before him. “To Senator E. W. Harmison, S.O.B., New Washington. Dear Sir: In re your communication of the 14th inst., requesting my personal opinion of the new ID system, may I say that it is not a technician’s business to express opinions. The directive that every citizen shall have a single number for his records—birth certificate, education, rations, taxes, wages, transactions, public service, family, travel, etc.—has obvious long-range advantages, but naturally entails a good deal of work both in reconversion and interim data control. The president having decided that the gain justifies our present difficulties, the duty of citizens is to conform, not complain. Yours, and so forth.” He let a cold smile flicker. “There, that’ll fix him! I don’t know what use Congress is anyway, except to plague honest bureaucrats.”

Privately, June decided to modify the letter. Maybe a senator was only a rubber stamp, but you couldn’t brush him off that curtly. Part of a secretary’s job is to keep the boss out of trouble.

“Okay, let’s get to the next,” said Thornberg. “To Colonel M. R. Hubert, Director of Liaison Division, Central Records Agency, Security Police, etc. Dear Sir: In re your memorandum of the 14th inst., requiring a definite date for completion of the ID conversion, may I respectfully state that it is impossible for me honestly to set one. You realize we must develop a memory-modification unit which will make the changeover in our records without our having to take out and alter each of three hundred million spools. You realize too that we cannot predict the exact time needed to complete such a project. However, research is progressing satisfactorily (refer him to my last report, will you?), and I can confidently say that conversion will be finished and all citizens notified of their numbers within three months at the latest. Respectfully, and so on. Put that in a nice form, June.”

She nodded. Thornberg continued through his mail, throwing most into a basket for her to answer alone. When he was done he yawned and lit a fresh cigarette. “Praise Allah that’s over. Now I can get down to the lab.”

“You have afternoon appointments,” she reminded him.

“I’ll be back after lunch. See you.” He got up and went out of the office.

Down the escalator to a still lower sublevel, walking along a corridor, he returned the salutes of passing subordinates automatically. His expression did not bespeak anything; perhaps the stiff swinging of his arms did.

Jimmy,he thought. Jimmy, boy .

At the guard chamber, he presented hand and eye to the scanners. Finger and retinal patterns were his pass. No alarm sounded. The door opened for him and he walked into the temple of Matilda.

She squatted huge, tier upon tier of control panels, meters, indicator lights to the lofty ceiling. The spectacle always suggested to Thornberg an Aztec pyramid, whose gods winked red eyes at the acolytes and suppliants creeping about base and flanks. But they got their sacrifices elsewhere.

For a moment Thornberg stood and watched. He smiled again, a tired smile that creased his face on the left side only. A recollection touched him, booklegged stuff from the forties and fifties of the last century which he had read: French, German, British, Italian. The intellectuals had been fretful about the Americanization of Europe, the crumbling of old culture before the mechanized barbarism of soft drinks, hard sells, enormous chrome-plated automobiles (dollar grins, the Danes had called them), chewing gum, plastics…. None of them had protested the simultaneous Europeanization of America: bloated government, unlimited armament, official nosiness, censors, secret police, chauvinism…. Well, for a while there had been objectors, but first their own excesses and sillinesses discredited them, then later….

Oh, well.

But Jimmy, lad, where are you now, what are they doing to you?

Thornberg sought a bench where his top engineer, Rodney, was testing a unit. “How’re you coming along?” he asked.

“Pretty good, chief.” Rodney didn’t bother to salute. Thornberg had, in fact, forbidden it in the labs as a waste of time. “A few bugs yet, but we’re chasing them out.”

The project was, essentially, to develop a gimmick that would change numbers without altering anything else—not too easy a task, since the memory banks depended on individual magnetic domains. “Okay,” said Thornberg. “Look, I want to run a few checks myself, out of the main coordinator. The program they’ve written for Section Thirteen during the conversion doesn’t quite satisfy me.”

“Want an assistant?”

“No, thanks. I just want not to be bothered.”

Thornberg resumed his way across the floor. Hardness resounded dully under his shoes. The main coordinator was in a special armored booth nestled against the great pyramid. He must go through a second scan before the door admitted him. Not many were allowed in here. The complete archives of the nation were too valuable to risk.

Thornberg’s loyalty rating was AAB-2—not absolutely perfect, but the best available among men and women of his professional caliber. His last drugged checkup had revealed certain doubts and reservations about government policy, but there was no question of disobedience. Prima facie, he was certainly bound to be loyal. He had served with distinction in the war against Brazil, losing a leg in action; his wife had been killed in the abortive Chinese rocket raids ten years ago; his son was a rising young Space Guard officer on Venus. He had read and listened to illegal stuff, blacklisted books, underground and foreign propaganda—but then, every intellectual dabbled with that; it was not a serious offense if your record was otherwise good and if you laughed off what the things said.

He sat for a moment regarding the board inside the booth. Its complexity would have baffled most engineers, but he had been with Matilda so long that he didn’t even need the reference tables.

Well…

It took nerve, this. A hypnoquiz was sure to reveal what he was about to do. But such raids were, necessarily, in a random pattern. He wouldn’t likely be called up again for years, especially given his rating. By the time he was found out, Jack should have risen far enough in the guard ranks to be safe.

In the privacy of the booth Thornberg permitted himself a harsh grin. “This,” he murmured to the machine, “will hurt me worse than it does you.”

He began punching buttons.

Here were circuits which could alter the records, take out an entire spool and write whatever was desired in the molecules. Thornberg had done the job a few times for high officials. Now he was doing it for himself.

Jimmy Obrenowicz, son of his second cousin, had been hustled off at night by Security Police on suspicion of treason. The file showed what no private citizen was supposed to know: the prisoner was in Camp Fieldstone. Those who returned from there, not a big percentage, were very quiet, and said absolutely nothing about their experiences. Sometimes they were incapable of speech.

The chief of the Technical Division, Central Records, had damn well better not have a relative in Fieldstone. Thornberg toiled at the screens and buttons for an hour, erasing, changing. The job was tough; he had to go back several generations, altering lines of descent. But when he was through, James Obrenowicz had no kinship whatsoever to the Thornbergs.

And I thought the world of that boy. Well, I’m not doing this for me, Jimmy. It’s for Jack. When the cops pull your file, later today no doubt, I can’t let them find you’re related to Captain Thornberg on Venus and a friend of his father.

He slapped the switch that returned the spool to the memory banks. With this act do I disown thee .

After that he sat for a while, relishing the quiet of the booth and the clean impersonality of the instruments. He didn’t even want to smoke. Presently, though, he began to think.

So now they were going to give every citizen a number, one number for everything. Already they discussed tattooing it on. Thornberg foresaw popular slang referring to the numbers as “brands” and Security cracking down on those who used the term. Disloyal language.

Well, the underground was dangerous. It was supported by foreign countries who didn’t like an American-dominated world—at least, not one dominated by today’s kind of America, though once “U.S.A.” had meant “hope.” The rebels were said to have their own base out in space somewhere and to have honeycombed the country with their agents. That could well be. Their propaganda was subtle: we don’t want to overthrow the nation; we simply want to restore the Bill of Rights. It could attract a lot of unstable souls. But Security’s spy hunt was bound to drag in any number of citizens who had never meditated treason. Like Jimmy—or had Jimmy been an undergrounder after all? You never knew. Nobody ever told you.

There was a sour taste in Thornberg’s mouth. He grimaced. A line of a song came back to him. “I hate you one and all.” How had it gone? They used to sing it in his college days. Something about a very bitter character who’d committed a murder.

Oh, yes. “Sam Hall.” How did it go, now? You needed a gravelly bass to sing it properly.

Oh, my name it is Sam Hall, it is Sam Hall.

Yes, my name is Sam Hall, it is Sam Hall.

 Oh, my name it is Sam Hall,

 And I hate you one and all,

Yes, I hate you one and all, God damn your eyes.

That was it. And Sam Hall was about to swing for murder. Thornberg remembered now. He felt like Sam Hall himself. He looked at the machine and wondered how many Sam Halls were in it.

Idly, postponing his return to work, he punched for the data-name, Samuel Hall, no further specifications. The machine mumbled. Presently it spewed out a stack of papers, microprinted on the spot from the memory banks. Complete dossier on every Sam Hall, living and dead, from the time the records began to be kept. To hell with it. Thornberg chucked the sheets down the incinerator slot.

“Oh, I killed a man, they say, so they say—”

The impulse was blinding in its savagery. They were dealing with Jimmy at this moment, probably pounding him over the kidneys, and he, Thornberg, sat here waiting for the cops to requisition Jimmy’s file, and there was nothing he could do. His hands were empty.

By God,he thought, I’ll give them Sam Hall!

His fingers began to race; he lost his nausea in the intricate technical problem. Slipping a fake spool into Matilda wasn’t easy. You couldn’t duplicate numbers, and every citizen had a lot of them. You had to account for each day of his life.

Well, some of that could be simplified. The machine had only existed for twenty-five years; before then, records had been kept in a dozen different offices. Let’s make Sam Hall a resident of New York, his dossier there lost in the bombing thirty years ago. Such of his papers as were in New Washington had also been lost, in the Chinese attack. That meant he simply reported as much detail as he could remember, which needn’t be a lot.

Let’s see. “Sam Hall” was an English song, so Sam Hall should be British himself. Came over with his parents, oh, thirty-eight years ago, when he was three, and got naturalized with them; that was before the total ban on immigration. Grew up on New York’s Lower East Side, a tough kid, a slum kid. School records lost in the bombing, but he claimed to have gone through the tenth grade. No living relatives. No family. No definite occupation, just a series of unskilled jobs. Loyalty rating BBA-O, which meant that purely routine questions showed him to have no political opinions that mattered.

Too colorless. Give him some violence in his background. Thornberg punched for information on New York police stations and civilian-police officers destroyed in the last raids. He used them as the source of records that Sam Hall had been continually in trouble—drunkenness, disorderly conduct, brawls, a suspicion of holdups and burglary, but not strong enough to warrant calling in Security’s hypnotechnicians for quizzing him.

Hmm. Better make him 4-F, no military service. Reason? Well, a slight drug addiction; men weren’t so badly needed nowadays that hopheads had to be cured. Neo-coke didn’t impair the faculties too much. Indeed, the addict was abnormally fast and strong under the influence, though he suffered a tough reaction afterwards.

Then he would have had to put in an additional term of civilian service. Let’s see. He spent his four years as a common laborer on the Colorado Dam project. In such a mess of men, who would remember him? At any rate, it would be hard finding somebody who did.

Now to fill in. Thornberg called on a number of automatic devices to help him. He must account for every day in twenty-five years; but of course the majority would show no change of circumstances. Thornberg punched for cheap hotels, the kind which didn’t bother keeping records of their own after the data went to Matilda. Who could remember a shabby individual patron? For Sam Hall’s current address he chose the Triton, a glorified flophouse on the East Side not far from the craters. At present his man was unemployed, putatively living off savings, likelier off odd jobs and petty crime. Oh, blast! Income tax returns. Thornberg could be sketchy in creating those, however. The poor weren’t expected to be meticulous, nor were they audited annually like the middle class and the rich.

Hmm…physical ID. Make him of average height, stocky, black-haired and black-eyed, a bent nose, a scar on his forehead—tough-looking, though not enough to be unusually memorable. Thornberg entered the precise measurements. Fingerprints and retinals being encoded, they were easy to fake; he wrote a censor into his ongoing program, lest he duplicate somebody else’s by chance.

Finally he leaned back and sighed. The record was still shot full of holes, but he could plug those at his leisure. The main job was done—a couple of hours’ hard work, utterly pointless, except that he had blown off steam. He felt a lot better.

He glanced at his watch. Time to get back on the job, son . For a rebellious moment he wished no one had ever invented clocks. They had made possible the science he loved, but they had then proceeded to mechanize man. Oh, well, too late now. He left the booth. The door closed itself behind him.

About a month later, Sam Hall committed his first murder.

The night before, Thornberg had been at home. His rank entitled him to good housing in spite of his living alone: two rooms and bath on the ninety-eighth floor of a unit in town not far from the camouflaged entrance to Matilda’s underground domain. The fact that he was in Security, even if he didn’t belong to the man-hunting branch, got him so much deference that he often felt lonely. The superintendent had offered him his daughter once—“Only twenty-three, sir, just released by a gentleman of marshal’s rank, and looking for a nice patron, sir.” Thornberg had refused, trying not to be prissy about it. Autres temps, autres moeurs —but still, she wouldn’t have had any choice about getting client status, the first time anyway. And Thornberg’s marriage had been a long and happy one.

He had been looking through his bookshelves for something to read. The Literary Bureau was trumpeting Whitman as an early example of Americanism, but though Thornberg had always liked the poet, his hands strayed perversely to a dog-eared volume of Marlowe. Was that escapism? The L.B. was very down on escapism. These were tough times. It wasn’t easy to belong to the nation which was enforcing peace on a sullen world. You must be realistic and energetic and all the rest, no doubt.

The phone buzzed. He clicked on the receiver. Martha Obrenowicz’s plain plump face showed in the screen; her gray hair was wild and her voice a harsh croak.

“Uh—hello,” he said uneasily. He hadn’t called her since the news of her son’s arrest. “How are you?”

“Jimmy is dead,” she told him.

He stood for a long while. His skull felt hollow.

“I got word today that he died in camp,” said Martha. “I thought you’d want to know.”

Thornberg shook his head, back and forth, quite slowly. “That isn’t news I ever wanted, Martha,” he said.

“It isn’t right !” she shrieked. “Jimmy wasn’t a traitor. I knew my son. Who ought to know him better? He had some friends I was kind of doubtful of, but Jimmy, he wouldn’t ever—”

Something cold formed in Thornberg’s breast. You never knew when calls were being tapped.

“I’m sorry, Martha,” he said without tone. “But the police are careful about these things. They wouldn’t act till they were sure. Justice is in our traditions.”

She regarded him for a long time. Her eyes held a hard glitter. “You too,” she said at last.

“Be careful, Martha,” he warned her. “I know this is a blow to you, but don’t say anything you might regret later. After all, Jimmy may have died accidentally. Those things happen.”

“I—forgot,” she said jerkily. “You…are in Security…yourself.”

“Be calm,” he said. “Think of it as a sacrifice for the national interest.”

She switched off on him. He knew she wouldn’t call him again. And he couldn’t safely see her.

“Good-bye, Martha,” he said aloud. It was like a stranger speaking.

He turned back to the bookshelf. Not for me, he told himself. For Jack . He touched the binding of Leaves of Grass. Oh, Whitman, old rebel, he thought, a curious dry laughter in him, are they calling you Whirling Walt now?

That night he took an extra sleeping pill. His head still felt fuzzy when he reported for work, and after a while he gave up trying to answer the mail and went down to the lab.

While he was engaged with Rodney, and making a poor job of understanding the technical problem under discussion, his eyes strayed to Matilda. Suddenly he realized what he needed for a cathartic. He broke off as soon as possible and went into the coordinator booth.

For a moment he paused at the keyboard. The day-by-day creation of Sam Hall had been an odd experience. He, quiet and introverted, had shaped a rowdy life and painted a rugged personality. Sam Hall was more real to him than many of his associates. Well, I’m a schizoid type myself. Maybe I should have been a writer . No, that would have meant too many restrictions, too much fear of offending the censor. He had done exactly as he pleased with Sam Hall.

He drew a breath and punched for unsolved murders of Security officers, New York City area, during the past month. They were surprisingly common. Could dissatisfaction be more general than the government admitted? But when the bulk of a nation harbors thoughts labeled treasonous, does the label still apply?

He found what he wanted. Sergeant Brady had incautiously entered the Crater district after dark on the twenty-seventh on a routine checkup mission; he had worn the black uniform, presumably to give himself the full weight of authority. The next morning he had been found in an alley, his skull shattered.

Oh, I killed a man, they say, so they say.

Yes, I killed a man, they say, so they say.

  I beat him on the head,

And I left him there for dead,

Yes, I left him there for dead, God damn his eyes.

Newspapers had no doubt deplored this brutality perpetrated by the treacherous agent of enemy powers. ( “Oh, the parson, he did come, he did come.”) A number of suspects had been rounded up and given a stiff quizzing. ( “And the sheriff, he came too, he came too.”) Nothing was proven as yet, though a Joe Nikolsky (fifth generation American, mechanic, married, four children, underground pamphlets found in his room) had been arrested yesterday on suspicion.

Thornberg sighed. He knew enough of Security methods to be sure they would get somebody for such a killing. They couldn’t allow their reputation for infallibility to be smirched by a lack of conclusive evidence. Maybe Nikolsky had done the crime—he couldn’t prove he had simply been out for a walk that evening—and maybe he hadn’t. But, hell’s fire, why not give him a break? He had four kids. With such a black mark, their mother would find work only in a recreation house.

Thornberg scratched his head. This had to be done carefully. Let’s see. Brady’s body would have been cremated by now, but of course there had been a thorough study first. Thornberg withdrew the dead man’s file from the machine and microprinted a replica of the evidence—zero. Erasing that, he entered the statement that a blurred thumbprint had been found on the victim’s collar and referred to ID labs for reconstruction. In the ID file he inserted the report of such a job, finished only yesterday due to a great press of work. (Plausible. They were busy lately on material sent from Mars, seized in a raid on a rebel meeting place.) The probable pattern of the whorls was—and here he inserted Sam Hall’s right thumb.

He returned the spools and leaned back in his chair. It was risky; if anyone thought to query the ID lab, he was in trouble. But that was unlikely. The chances were that New York would accept the findings with a routine acknowledgement which some clerk at the lab would file without studying. The more obvious dangers were not too great either: a busy police force would not stop to ask if any of their fingerprint men had actually developed that smudge; and as for hypnoquizzing showing Nikolsky really was the murderer, well, then the print would be assumed that of a passerby who had found the body and not reported it.

So now Sam Hall had killed a Security officer—grabbed him by the neck and smashed his brainpan with a weighted club. Thornberg felt considerably happier.

New York Security shot a request to Central Records for any new material on the Brady case. An automaton compared the codes and saw that fresh information had been added. The message flashed back, plus the dossier on Sam Hall and two others—for the reconstruction could not be absolutely accurate.

The two were safe, as it turned out. Both had alibis. The squad that stormed into the Triton Hotel and demanded Sam Hall met blank stares. No such person was registered. No one of that description was known there. A thorough quizzing corroborated this. Then Sam Hall had managed to fake an address. He could have done that easily by punching the buttons on the hotel register when nobody was looking. Sam Hall could be anywhere!

Joe Nikolsky, having been hypnoed and found harmless, was released. The fine for possessing subversive literature would put him in debt for the next few years—he had no influential friends to get it suspended—but he’d be all right if he watched his step. Security sent out an alarm for Sam Hall.

Thornberg derived a sardonic amusement from watching the progress of the hunt as it came to Matilda. No man with that ID card had bought tickets on any public transportation. That proved nothing. Of the hundreds who vanished every year, some at least must have been murdered for their cards, and their bodies disposed of. Matilda was set to give the alarm when the ID of a disappeared person showed up somewhere. Thornberg faked a few such reports, just to give the police something to do.

He slept more poorly each night, and his work suffered. Once he met Martha Obrenowicz on the street—passed by hastily without greeting her—and couldn’t sleep at all, even after maximum permissible drugging.

The new ID system was completed. Machines sent notices to every citizen, with orders to have their numbers tatooed on the right shoulder blade within six weeks. As each center reported that such-and-such a person had had the job done, Matilda changed the record appropriately. Sam Hall, AX-428-399-075, did not report for his tattoo. Thornberg chuckled at the AX symbol.

Then the telecasts flashed a story that made the nation exclaim. Bandits had held up the First National Bank in Americatown, Idaho (formerly Moscow), collecting a good five million dollars in assorted bills. From their discipline and equipment it was assumed that they were rebel agents, possibly having come in a spaceship from their unknown interplanetary base, and that the raid was intended to help finance their nefarious activities. Security was cooperating with the armed forces to track down the evildoers, and arrests were expected hourly, etc., etc.

Thornberg went to Matilda for a complete account. It had been a bold job. The robbers had apparently worn plastic face masks and light body armor under ordinary clothes. In the scuffle of the getaway one man’s mask had slipped aside—only for a moment, but a clerk who saw had, under hypnosis, given a fairly good description. A brown-haired, heavyset fellow, Roman nose, thin lips, toothbrush mustache.

Thornberg hesitated. A joke was a joke; and helping poor Nikolsky was perhaps morally defensible; but aiding and abetting a felony which was in all likelihood an act of treason—

He grinned to himself, with scant humor. It was too much fun playing God. Swiftly he changed the record. The crook had been of medium height, dark, scar-faced, broken-nosed…. Hesat fora while wondering how sane he was. How sane anybody was.

Security Central requisitioned complete data on the incident and any correlations the logic units could make. The description they got could have fitted many men, but geography left just a single possibility. Sam Hall.

The hounds bayed forth. That night Thornberg slept well.

Dear Dad,

Sorry I haven’t written before. We’ve been too busy here. I myself was on patrol duty in the Austin Highlands. The idea was, if we can take advantage of reduced atmospheric pressure at that altitude to construct a military spaceport, a foreign country might sneak in and do the same, probably for the benefit of our domestic insurrectionists. I’m glad to say we found nothing. But it was grim going for us. Frankly, everything here is. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever see the sun again. And lakes and forests—life; who wrote that line about the green hills of Earth? My mind feels rusty as well. We don’t get much to read, and I don’t care for the taped shows. Not that I’m complaining, of course. This is a necessary job.

We’d hardly gotten back when we were bundled into bathyplanes and ferried to the lowlands. I’d never been there before—thought Venus was awful, but you have to get down in that red-black ocean of hell-hot air, way down, before you know what “awful” means. Then we transferred straight to mobile sealtanks and went into action. The convicts in the new thorium mine were refusing to work on account of conditions and casualties. We needed guns to bring them to reason. Dad, I hated that. I actually felt sorry for the poor devils, I don’t mind admitting it. Rocks and hammers and sluice hoses against machine guns! And conditionsare rugged. TheyDELETED BY CENSOR someone has to do that job too, and if no one will volunteer, for any kind of pay, they have to assign convicts. It’s for the state.

Otherwise nothing new. Life is pretty monotonous. Don’t believe the adventure stories. Adventure is weeks of boredom punctuated by moments of being scared gutless. Sorry to be so brief, but I want to get this on the outbound rocket. Won’t be another for a couple of months. Everything well, really. I hope the same for you and live for the day we’ll meet again. Thanks a million for the cookies—you know you can’t afford to pay the freight, you old spendthrift! Martha baked them, didn’t she? I recognized the Obrenowicz touch. Say hello to her and Jim for me. And most of all, my kindest thoughts go to you.

As ever,

Jack

Winter came, and the slopes of the Rockies under which Matilda lay were white beneath a cold greenish sky. Air traffic around the nearby town was lost in that hugeness: brief hurtling meteors against infinity, ground traffic that could not be seen from the Records entrance. Thornberg took the special tubeway to work every morning, but he often walked the ten kilometers back, and his Sundays were usually spent in long hikes over slippery trails. That was a foolish thing to do alone in winter, except that he felt reckless.

He was in his office shortly before Christmas when the intercom said: “Major Sorensen to see you, sir. From Investigation.”

Thornberg felt his stomach tie itself into a cold knot. “All right,” he answered in a voice whose levelness surprised him. “Cancel any other appointments.” Security Investigation took AAA priority.

Sorensen strode in with a clack of bootheels. He was a big blond man, heavy-shouldered, face expressionless, eyes pale and remote as the winter sky. His black uniform fitted him like a skin; against it, the lightning badge of his service glittered frosty. He halted before the desk. Thornberg rose to give him an awkward salute.

“Please sit down, Major Sorensen. What can I do for you?”

“Thanks.” The agent’s tone crackled. He lowered his bulk into a chair and let his gaze drill Thornberg. “I’ve come about the Sam Hall case.”

“Oh, the rebel?” Thornberg’s flesh prickled. He could barely meet those eyes.

“How do you know he’s a rebel?” Sorensen demanded. “That’s never been stated officially.”

“Why—I assumed—bank raid—attacks on personnel in your service—”

Sorensen slightly inclined his cropped head. When he spoke again, he sounded relaxed, almost casual. “Tell me, Major Thornberg, have you followed the Hall developments in detail?”

Thornberg hesitated. He was not supposed to do so unless ordered; he only kept the machine running. He remembered a principle from reading and, yes, furtively cynical conversation. “When suspected of a major sin, admit minor ones frankly. That may satisfy them.”

“As a matter of fact, I have,” he said. “I know it’s against regs, but I was interested and—well, I couldn’t see any harm in it. I’ve not discussed it with anybody, of course.”

“No matter.” Sorensen waved a muscular hand. “If you hadn’t, I’d have ordered you to. I want your opinion on this.”

“Why—I’m not a detective—”

“You know more about Records, though, than any other person. I’ll be frank with you—under the rose, naturally.” Sorensen seemed almost friendly now. Was it a trick to put his prey off guard? “You see, there are some puzzling features about this case.”

Thornberg kept silent. He wondered if Sorensen could hear the thudding of his heart.

“Sam Hall is a shadow,” said the agent. “The most careful checkups eliminate any chance of his being identical with anyone else of that name. In fact, we’ve learned that the name occurs in a violent old drinking song. Is this coincidence, or did the song suggest crime to Sam Hall, or did he by some incredible process get that alias into his record instead of his real name? Whatever the answer there, we know that he’s ostensibly without military training, yet he’s pulled off some beautiful pieces of precision attack. His IQ is only 110, but he evades our traps. He has no politics, yet he turns on Security without warning. We have not been able to find a single individual who remembers him—not one, and believe me, we have been thorough. Oh, there are a few subconscious memories which might be of him, but probably aren’t; and so aggressive a personality should be remembered consciously. No undergrounder or foreign operative we’ve caught had any knowledge of him, which defies probability. The whole business seems impossible.”

Thornberg licked his lips. Sorensen, the hunter of men, must know he was frightened; but would he assume that to be the normal nervousness of a man in the presence of a Security officer?

Sorensen’s face broke into a hard smile. “As Sherlock Holmes remarked,” he said, “when you have eliminated every other hypothesis, then the one which remains, however improbable, must be right.”

Despite himself, Thornberg was jolted. Sorensen hadn’t struck him as a reader.

“Well,” he asked slowly, “what is your remaining hypothesis?”

His visitor watched him for a long time, it seemed forever, before replying. “The underground is more powerful and widespread than people realize. They’ve had seventy years to prepare, and many good brains in their ranks. They carry on scientific research of their own. It’s top secret, but we know they have perfected a type of weapon we cannot duplicate yet. It seems to be a hand gun throwing bolts of energy—a blaster, you might call it—of immense power. Sooner or later they’re going to wage open war against the government.

“Now, could they have done something comparable in psychology? Could they have found a way to erase or cover up memories selectively, even on the cellular level? Could they know how to fool a personality tester, how to disguise the mind itself? If so, we may have any number of Sam Halls in our midst, undetectable until the moment comes for them to strike.”

Thornberg felt almost boneless. He couldn’t help gasping his relief, and hoped Sorensen would take it for a sign of alarm.

“The possibility is frightening, no?” The blond man laughed metallically. “You can imagine what is being felt in high official circles. We’ve put all the psychological researchers we could get to work on the problem—bah! Fools! They go by the book; they’re afraid to be original even when the state tells them to.

“This may just be a wild fancy, of course. I hope it is. But we have to know . That’s why I approached you personally, instead of sending the usual requisition. I want you to make a search of the records—everything pertaining to the subject, every man, every discovery, every hypothesis. You have a broad technical background and, from your psychorecord, an unusual amount of creative imagination. I want you to do what you can to correlate your data. Coopt whoever you need. Submit to my office a report on the possibility—or should I say probability—of this notion; and if you find any likelihood of its being true, sketch out a research program which will enable us to duplicate the results and counteract them.”

Thornberg fumbled for words. “I’ll try,” he said lamely. “I’ll do my best.”

“Good. It’s for the state.”

Sorensen had finished his official business, but he didn’t go at once. “Rebel propaganda is subtle stuff,” he said quietly, after a pause. “It’s dangerous because it uses our own slogans, with a twisted meaning. Liberty, equality, justice, peace. Too many people can’t appreciate that times have changed and the meanings of words have necessarily changed likewise.”

“I suppose not,” said Thornberg. He added the lie: “I never thought much about that kind of question.”

“You should,” said Sorensen. “Study your history. When we lost World War III we had to militarize to win World War IV, and after that mount guard on the whole human race. The people demanded it at the time.”

The people,thought Thornberg, never appreciated freedom till they’d lost it. They were always willing to sell their birthright. Or was it merely that, being untrained in thinking, they couldn’t see through demagoguery, couldn’t visualize the ultimate consequences of their wishes? He was vaguely shocked at the thought; wasn’t he able to control his mind any longer?

“The rebels,” said Sorensen, “claim that conditions have changed, that militarization is no longer necessary—if it ever was—and that America would be safe in a union of free countries. Devilishly clever propaganda, Major Thornberg. Watch out for it.”

He got up and took his leave. Thornberg sat for a long time staring at the door. Sorensen’s last words had been odd, to say the least. Were they a hint—or a bait?

The next day Matilda received a news item which was carefully edited for the public channels. An insurrectionist force had landed aircraft in the stockade of Camp Forbes, in Utah, gunned down the guards, and taken away the prisoners. The institution’s doctor had been spared, and related that the leader of the raid, a stocky man in a mask, had said to him: “Tell your friends I’ll call again. My name is Sam Hall.”

Space Guard ship blown up on Mesa Verde Field. On a fragment of metal someone has scrawled: “Compliments of Sam Hall.”

Squad of Security Police, raiding a suspected underground hideout in Philadelphia, cut down by tommy-gun fire. Voice from a hidden bullhorn cries: “My name, it is Sam Hall!”

Matthew Williamson, chemist in Seattle, suspected of subversive connections, is gone when the arresting officers break into his home. A note left on his desk says: “Off to visit Sam Hall. Back for liberation. M.W.”

Defense plant producing important robomb components near Miami is sabotaged by a planted bomb, after a phone warning gives the workers time to evacuate. The caller, who leaves the visio circuit off, styles himself Sam Hall. Various similar places get similar warnings. These are fakes, but each costs a day’s valuable work in the alarm and the search.

Scribbled on walls from New York to San Diego, from Duluth to El Paso: Sam Hall, Sam Hall, Sam Hall.

Obviously, thought Thornberg, the underground had seized on the invisible and invincible man of legend and turned him to their own purposes. Reports of him poured in from all over the country, hundreds every day—Sam Hall seen here, Sam Hall seen there. Ninety-nine percent could be dismissed as hoaxes, hallucinations, mistakes; it was another national craze, fruit of a jittery time, like the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century witch-hunts or the twentieth-century flying saucers. But Security and civilian police had to check on every one.

Thornberg planted a number of them himself.

Mostly, though, he was busy on his assignment. He could understand what it meant to the government. Life in the garrison state was inevitably founded on fear and mistrust, every man’s eye on his neighbor; but at least psychotyping and hypnoquizzing had given a degree of surety. Now, that staff knocked out from under them—

His preliminary studies indicated that an invention such as Sorensen had hypothesized, while not impossible, was too far beyond the scope of contemporary science for the rebels to have perfected. Such research carried on nowadays would, from the standpoint of practicality if not of knowledge, be a waste of time and trained men.

He spent a good many sleepless hours and a month’s cigarette ration before he could decide what to do. All right, he’d aided insurrection in a small way, and he shouldn’t boggle at the next step. Still—nevertheless—did he want to?

Jack—his son had a career lined out for himself. He loved the big deeps beyond the sky as he would love a woman. If things changed, what then of Jack’s career?

Well, what was it now? Stuck on a dreary planet as guardsman and executioner of homesick starvelings poisoned by radioactivity; never even seeing the sun. Come the day, Jack could surely wrangle a berth on a real spacer. They’d need bold men to explore beyond Saturn. Jack was too honest to make a good rebel, but Thornberg felt that after the initial shock he would welcome a new government.

But treason! Oaths!

When in the course of human events…

It was a small thing that decided Thornberg. He passed a shop downtown and noticed a group of the Youth Guard smashing the windows and spattering yellow paint over the goods, O Moses, Jesus, Mendelssohn, Hertz, and Einstein! Once he had chosen his path, a curious serenity possessed him. He stole a vial of prussic acid from a chemist friend and carried it in his pocket; and as for Jack, the boy would have to take his chances too.

The work was demanding and dangerous. He had to alter recorded facts which were available elsewhere, in books and journals and the minds of men. Nothing could be done about basic theory. But quantitative results could be juggled a little to set the overall picture subtly askew. He would co-opt carefully chosen experts, men whose psychotypes indicated they would take the easy course of relying on Matilda instead of checking original sources. And the correlation and integration of innumerable data, the empirical equations and extrapolations thereof, could be tampered with.

He turned his regular job over to Rodney and devoted himself entirely to the new one. He grew thin and testy; when Sorensen called, trying to hurry him, he snapped back: “Do you want speed or quality?” and wasn’t too surprised at himself afterward. He got little sleep, but his mind seemed unnaturally clear.

Winter faded into spring while Thornberg and his experts labored and while the nation shook, psychically and physically, under the growing violence of Sam Hall. The report Thornberg submitted in May was so voluminous and detailed that he didn’t think the government researchers would bother referring to any other source. Its conclusion: Yes, given a brilliant man applying Belloni matrices to cybernetic formulas and using some unknown kind of colloidal probe, a psychological masking technique was plausible.

The government yanked every man it could find into research. Thornberg knew it was only a matter of time before they realized they had been had. How much time, he couldn’t say. But when they were sure…

Now up the rope I go, up I go.

Now up the rope I go, up I go.

 And the bastards down below,

 They say, “Sam, we told you so.”

They say, “Sam, we told you so,” God damn their eyes.

REBELS ATTACK

SPACESHIPS LAND UNDER COVER OF RAINSTORM,

SEIZE POINTS NEAR N. DETROIT

FLAME WEAPONS USED AGAINST ARMY BY REBELS

“The infamous legions of the traitors have taken ground throughout the nation, but already our gallant forces have hurled them back. They have come out in early summer like toadstools, and will wither as fast—WHEEEEEEOOOOOO!” Silence.

“All citizens will keep calm, remain loyal to their country, and stay at their usual tasks, until otherwise ordered. Civilians will report to their local defense officers. Military reservists will report immediately for active duty.”

“Hello, Hawaii! Are you there? Come in, Hawaii! Calling Hawaii!”

“CQ, Mars GHQ calling…bzzz, wheeee…seized Syrtis Major Colony and…whoooo…help needed…”

The lunar rocket bases are assaulted and carried. The commander blows them up rather than surrender. A pinpoint flash on the moon’s face, a new crater; what will they name it?

“So they’ve got Seattle, have they? Send a robomb flight. Scrub the place off the map…. Citizens? To hell with citizens! This is war!”

“…in NewYork. Secretly drilled rebels emerged from the notorious Crater district and stormed…”

“…assassins were shot down. The new president has already been sworn inand…”

BRITAIN, CANADA, AUSTRALIA REFUSE
ASSISTANCE TO GOV’T

“…no, sir. The bombs reached Seattle all right. But they were stopped before they hit—some kind of energy gun….”

“COMECO to army commanders in Florida and Georgia: Enemy action has made Florida and the keys temporarily untenable. Your units will withdraw as follows…”

“Today a rebel force engaging a military convoy in Donner Pass was annihilated by a well-placed tactical atomic bomb. Though our own men suffered losses on this account…”

“COMWECO to army commanders in California: the mutiny of units stationed around San Francisco poses a grave problem….”

SP RAID REBEL HIDEOUT,

BAG FIVE OFFICERS

“Okay, so the enemy is about to capture Boston. We can’t issue weapons to the citizens. They might turn them on us!”

SPACE GUARD UNITS EXPECTED

FROM VENUS

Jack, Jack, Jack!

It was strange, living in the midst of a war. Thornberg had never thought it would be like this. Drawn faces, furtive looks, chaos in the telecast news and the irregularly arriving papers, blackouts, civil defense drills, shortages, occasional panic when a rebel jet whistled overhead—but nothing else. No gunfire, no bombs, no more than the unreal combats you heard about. The only local casualty list were due to Security; people kept disappearing, and nobody spoke about them.

But then, why should the enemy bother with this unimportant mountain town? The self-styled Libertarian Army was grabbing key points of manufacture, transportation, communication, was engaging in pitched battles, sabotaging buildings and machines, assassinating officials. By its very purpose, it couldn’t wage total war, couldn’t annihilate the folk it wanted to free—an attitude historically rare among revolutionaries, Thornberg knew. Rumor said the defenders were less finicky.

Most citizens were passive. They always are. Probably no more than one- fourth of the population was ever in earshot of an engagement. City dwellers might see fire in the sky, hear crump and whistle and crash of artillery, scramble aside from soldiers and armored vehicles, cower in shelters when rockets arced overhead; but the action was outside of town. If matters came to street fighting, the rebels never pushed far in. They would either lay siege or they would rely on agents inside the town. Then a citizen might hear the crack of rifles and grenades, rattle of machine guns, sizzle of lasers, and see corpses. But the end was either a return of military government or the rebels marching in and setting up their own provisional councils. (They rarely met cheers and flowers. Nobody knew how the war would end. But they heard words whispered, and usually got good service.) As nearly as possible, the average American continued his average life.

Thornberg stayed on his personal rails. Matilda, the information nexus, was in such demand that users queued for their shared time. If the rebels ever learned where she was—

Or did they know?

He got few opportunities to conduct his private sabotages, but on that account planned each of them extra carefully. The Sam Hall reports were almost standardized in his mind—Sam Hall here, Sam Hall there, pulling off this or that incredible stunt. But what did one superman count for in these gigantic days? He needed something more.

Television and newspapers jubilantly announced that Venus had finally been contacted. Luna and Mars had fallen, but the Guard units on Venus had quickly smashed a few feeble uprisings. Mere survival there demanded quantities of powerful, sophisticated equipment, readily adaptable to military purposes. The troops would be returning at once, fully armed. Given present planetary configurations, the highest boost could not deliver them on Earth for a good six weeks. But then they might prove a decisive reinforcement.

“Looks like you may see your boy soon, chief,” Rodney remarked.

“Yes,” said Thornberg, “I may.”

“Tough fighting.” Rodney shook his head. “I’d sure as hell hate to be in it.”

If Jack is killed by a rebel gun, when I have aided the rebels’ cause…

Sam Hall, reflected Thornberg, had lived a hard life, all violence and enmity and suspicion. Even his wife hadn’t trusted him.

…And my Nellie dressed in blue,

Says, “Your trifling days are through.

Now I know that you’ll be true, God damn your eyes.”

Poor Sam Hall. No wonder he had killed a man.

Suspicion!

Thornberg stood for a moment while a tingle went through him. The police state was founded on suspicion. Nobody could trust anybody else. And with the new fear of psychomasking, and research on that project suspended during the crisis—

Steady, boy, steady. Can’t rush into action. Have to plan very carefully.

Thornberg punched for the dossiers of key men in the administration, in the military, in Security. He did this in the presence of two assistants, for he thought that his own frequent sessions alone in the coordination booth were beginning to look funny.

“Top secret,” he warned them, pleased with his cool manner. He was becoming a regular Machiavelli. “You’ll be skinned alive if you mention it to anyone.”

Rodney gave him a shrewd glance. “So they’re not even sure of their top men now, are they?” he murmured.

“I’ve been told to make some checks,” snapped Thornberg. “That’s all you need to know.”

He studied the files for many hours before coming to a decision. Secret observations were, of course, made of everyone from time to time. A cross check with Matilda showed that the cop who filed the last report on Lindahl had been killed the next day in a spontaneous and abortive uprising. The report was innocuous: Lindahl had stayed at home, studying various papers; he had been alone in the house except for a bodyguard in another room who had not seen him. And Lindahl was Undersecretary of Defense.

Thornberg changed the record. A masked man—stocky, black-haired—had come in and talked for three hours with Lindahl. They had spoken low, so that the cop’s ears, outside the window, couldn’t catch what was said. After the visitor left, Lindahl had retired. The cop went back in great excitement, made out his report, and gave it to the signalman, who had sent it on to Matilda.

Tough on the signalman,thought Thornberg. They’ll want to know why he didn’t tell this to his chief in New Washington, if the observer was killed before doing so. He’ll deny every such report, and they’ll hypnoquiz him—but they don’t trust that method anymore!

His sympathy quickly faded. What counted was having the war over before Jack got home. He refiled the altered spool and did a little backtracking, shifting the last report of Sam Hall from Salt Lake City to Atlanta. More plausible. Then, as opportunity permitted, he worked on real men’s records.

He must wait two haggard days before the next order came from Security for a check on Sam Hall. The scanners trod out their intricate measure, transistors awoke, in due course a cog turned. LINDAHL unrolled before the microprinter. Cross references ramified in all directions. Thornberg attached a query to the preliminary report: this looked interesting; did his superiors want more information?

They did!

Next day the telecast announced a shake-up in the Department of Defense. Nobody heard more about Lindahl.

And I, Thornberg reflected, have grabbed a very large tiger by the tail. Now they’ll have to check everybody. How does a solitary man keep ahead of the Security Police?

Lindahl is a traitor. How did his chief ever let him get such a sensitive position? Secretary Hoheimer was a personal friend of Lindahl, too. Have Records check Hoheimer.

What’s this? Hoheimer himself! Five years ago, yes, but even so—the dossier shows he lived in an apartment unit where Sam Hall was janitor! Grab Hoheimer! Who’ll take his place? General Halliburton? That stupid old bastard? Well, at least his nose is clean. Can’t trust those slick characters.

Hoheimer has a brother in Security, general’s rank, good detection record. A blind? Who knows? Slap the brother in jail, at least for the duration. Better check his staff…. Central Records shows that his chief field agent, Jones, has five days unaccounted for a year ago; he claimed Security secrecy at the time, but a double cross check shows it wasn’t true. Shoot Jones! He has a nephew in the army, a captain. Pull that unit out of the firing line till we can study it man by man! We’ve had too many mutinies already.

Lindahl was also a close friend of Benson, in charge of the Tennessee Atomic Ordnance Works. Haul Benson in! Check every man connected with him! No trusting those scientists; they’re always blabbing secrets.

The first Hoheimer’s son is an industrialist, owns a petroleum-synthesis plant in Texas. Nab him! His wife is a sister of Leslie, head of the War Production Coordination Board. Get Leslie too. Sure, he’s doing a good job, but he may be sending information to the enemy. Or he may just be waiting for the signal to sabotage the whole works. We can’t trust anybody, I tell you!

What’s this? Records relays an Intelligence report that the mayor of Tampa was in cahoots with the rebels. It’s marked “Unreliable, Rumor”—but Tampa did surrender without a fight. The mayor’s business partner is Gale, who has a cousin in the army, commanding a robomb base in New Mexico. Check both the Gales, Records…. So the cousin was absent four days without filing his whereabouts, was he? Military privilege or not, arrest him and find out where he was!

• Attention, Records, attention, Records, urgent. Brigadier John Harmsworth Gale, etc., etc., refused to divulge information required by Security Officers, claiming to have been at his base all the time. Can this be an error on your part?

• Records to Security Central, ref: etc., etc. No possibility of error exists except in information received.

• To Records, ref: etc., etc. Gale’s story corroborated by three of his of-ficers.

Put that whole damned base under arrest! Recheck those reports! Who sent them in, anyway?

• To Records, ref: etc., etc. On attempt to arrest entire personnel, Robomb Base 37-J fired on Security detachment and repulsed it. At last reports Gale was calling for rebel forces fifty miles off to assist him. Details will follow for the files as soon as possible.

So Gale was a traitor. Or was he driven by fear? Have Records find out who filed that information about him in the first place.

We can’t trust anybody!

Thornberg was not much surprised when his door was kicked open and the Security squad entered. He had been expecting it for days, maybe weeks. A solitary man can’t keep ahead of the game forever. No doubt accumulated inconsistencies had finally drawn suspicion his way; or, ironically, the chains of accusation he forged had by chance led to him; perhaps somebody here, like Rodney, had decided something was amiss and lodged a tip.

Were that last the case, he laid no blame. The tragedy of civil war was that it turned brother against brother. Millions of decent people were with the government because they had pledged themselves to be, or simply because they didn’t believe in the alternative. Mostly, Thornberg felt tired.

He looked down the barrel of a revolver and up to the eyes of the blackcoat behind. They were equally empty of feeling. “I assume I’m under arrest?” he said tonelessly.

“On your feet,” the leader snapped.

June could not hold back a whimper of pain. The man who held her was twisting her arm behind her back, obviously enjoying himself. “Don’t do that,” Thornberg said. “She’s innocent. Had no idea what I was carrying out.”

“On your feet, I told you.” The leader thrust his gun closer.

“I suggest you leave me alone, too.” Thornberg lifted his right hand, to show a ball he had taken from his desk when the squad arrived. “Do you see this? A thing I made against contingencies. Not a bomb per se —but a radio trigger. If my fingers relax, the rubber will expand and close a circuit. I believe such a device is called a dead-man switch.”

The squad stiffened. Thornberg heard an oath. “Release the lady,” he said.

“You surrender first!” said June’s captor. He wrenched. She screamed.

“No,” Thornberg said. “June, dear, I’m sorry. But have no fears. You see, I expected this visit, and made my preparations. The radio signaller won’t touch off anything as melodramatic as a bomb. No, instead it will close a relay which will activate a certain program in Matilda—the Records computer, you know, the data machine. Every spool will be wiped. The government will have not a record left. Myself, I am prepared to die. But if you men let me complete that circuit, I imagine you’ll wish there had been a bomb. Now do let go of the lady.”

The blackcoat did, as if she had suddenly turned incandescent. She slumped sobbing to the floor.

“A bluff!” the leader shouted. Sweat made his face shiny.

“Do you wish to call it?” Thornberg made a smile. “By all means.”

“You traitor—”

“I prefer ‘patriot,’ if you please. But be the semantics as they may, you must admit I was effective. The government has been turned end for end and upside down. The army is breaking apart, officers deserting right and left for fear they’ll be arrested next, or defecting, or leading mutinies. Security is chasing its own tail around half a continent. Far more administrators are being murdered by their colleagues than the underground could possibly assassinate. The Libertarians take city after city without resistance. My guess is that they will occupy New Washington inside another week.”

“Your doing!” Finger quivered on trigger.

“Oh, no. Spare my blushes. But I did make a contribution of some significance, yes. Unless you say Sam Hall did, which is fine by me.”

“What…will…you do now?”

“That depends on you, my friend. Whether I am killed or only rendered unconscious, Matilda dies. You could have the technicians check out whether I’m telling the truth, and if I am, you could have them yank that program. However, at the first sign of any such move on your part, I will naturally let the ball go. Look in my mouth.” He opened it briefly. “Yes, the conventional glass vial of prussic acid. I apologize for the cliché, but you will understand that I have no wish to share the fate that you people bring on yourselves.”

Bafflement wrestled rage in the countenances before Thornberg. They weren’t used to thinking, those men.

“Of course,” he went on, “you have an alternative. At last reports, a Liberation unit was established less than two hundred kilometers from here. We could call and ask them to send a force, explaining the importance of this place. That would be to your advantage too. There is going to be a day of reckoning with you blackcoats. My influence could help you personally, however little you deserve to get off the hook.”

The stared at each other. After a very long while, wherein the only sounds were June’s diminishing sobs, unevenly drawn breaths among the police, and Thornberg’s pulse rapid in his ears, the leader spat, “No! You lie!” He aimed his gun.

The man behind him drew and shot him in the head.

The result was ugly to see. As soon as he knew he was fully in charge, Thornberg did his best to comfort June.

“As a matter of fact,” he told Sorensen, “I was bluffing. That was just a ball; the poison alone was real. Not that it made much difference at that stage, except to me.”

“We’ll need Matilda for a while yet,” said Sorensen. “Want to stay on?”

“Sure, provided I can take a vacation when my son comes home.”

“That shouldn’t be long now. You’ll be glad to hear we’ve finally contacted the Venus units of the Space Guard, on their way back. The commander agreed to stay out of fighting, on the grounds that his service’s obligation is to the legitimate government and we’ll need an election to determine what that is. Your boy will be safe.”

Thornberg could find no words of response. Instead he remarked with hard-held casualness, “You know, I’m surprised to learn you were an undergrounder.”

“We got a few into Security, who wrangled things so they gave each other clearances and loyalty checks.” Sorensen grimaced. “That was the only part of it I enjoyed, though, till quite lately.”

He leaned back in his chair, which creaked under his weight. In civilian clothes which nothing but an armband made into the uniform of a Libertarian officer, he did seem an altogether different man. Where his bulk had formerly crowded Thornberg’s office, today his vitality irradiated it.

“Then Sam Hall came along,” he said. “They had their suspicions at first in Security. My bosses were evil but not stupid. Well, I got myself assigned to the job of checking you out. Right away I guessed you harbored disruptive thoughts; so I gave you a clean bill of health. Afterward I cooked up that fantasy of the psychological mask and got several high-ranking men worried. When you followed my lead, I was sure you were on our side. Consequently, though the Libertarian command knew all along where Matilda was, of course they left her alone!”

“You must have joined them in person very recently.”

“Yeah, the witch-hunt you started inside of Security was getting too close to me. Well worth a risk, though, to see those cockroaches busily stepping on each other.”

Thornberg sat quiet awhile, then leaned over his desk. “I haven’t enlisted under your banner yet,” he said gravely. “I had to assume the Libertarian words about freedom were not mere rhetoric. But…you mentioned Matilda. You want me to continue in my work here. What are your plans for her?”

Sorensen turned equally serious. “I was waiting for you to ask that, Thorny. Look. Besides needing her to help us find some people we want rather badly, we are responsible for the sheer physical survival of the country. I’d feel easier too if we could take her apart this minute. But—”

“Yes?”

“But we’ve got to transcribe a lot of information first, strictly practical facts. Then we wipe everything else and ceremoniously dynamite this building. You’re invited, no, urgently asked to sit on the board that decides the details—in other words, we want you to help work yourself out of a job.”

“Thank you,” Thornberg whispered.

After a moment, in a sudden tide of happiness, he chuckled. “And that will be the end of Sam Hall,” he said. “He’ll go to whatever Valhalla there is for the great characters of fiction. I can see him squabbling with Sherlock Holmes and shocking the hell out of King Arthur and striking up a beautiful friendship with Long John Silver. Do you know how the ballad ends?” He sang softly: “Now up in heaven I dwell, in heaven I dwell….”

Unfortunately, the conclusion is rugged. Sam Hall never was satisfied.

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“Sam Hall” was first published in Astounding Science Fiction , August 1953.
Copyright © 1953 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.,
renewed © 1981 by Poul Anderson.