Underkill
(1979)*
James White

Content

	Chapter  1	ICU
	Chapter  2	Complications
	Chapter  3	Natural Resistance
	Chapter  4	Case History
	Chapter  5	Gunshot Wounds
	Chapter  6	Multiple RTA
	Chapter  7	Examination
	Chapter  8	Consultation
	Chapter  9	Bomb Blast Victim
	Chapter 10	Comparative Physiology
	Chapter 11	Special Treatment
	Chapter 12	A Change Of Scenery
	Chapter 13	Regimen
	Chapter 14	Observation
	Chapter 15	Police Operation
	Chapter 16	Diagnosis
	Chapter 17	Major Surgery
	Chapter 18	Intensive Care

Chapter One
ICU

	In spite of the advances in medical science and the sophistication of the associated bio-sensory and monitoring devices, the practice of intensive care therapy still required one highly-trained nurse concentrating all of her or his attention on one critically ill patient — staff availability permitting.

	Tonight there was no shortage either of staff or patients, Malcolm saw as he left Ann inside the entrance of the Intensive Care Unit and walked slowly towards the glass-walled monitor room which, if he was lucky, he would not have to leave more than fifty times before the end of his current spell of duty. But as Malcolm looked at the bedside displays he passed, and at the clinical pictures they represented, he was afraid that he would not be even moderately lucky tonight.

	In the monitor room the repeater screens with their more detailed presentations confirmed his fears.

	"Anything unusual?" he asked Chiak, the day man.

	"Not much," the other doctor replied, looking up at Malcolm with tired, red-rimmed eyes which were only partly concealed by the dozens of tiny monitor screens reflected in his spectacles. "Most of them are in the same condition as last night, hut not too stable, I'm afraid. There are three new arrivals, two RTAs and a GSW. One of the road traffic accidents should make it. The gunshot wound is in cubicle Four, in old Rawlins's spot. We lost him this afternoon." He yawned suddenly, showing a coated tongue and his not very good teeth, then added, "And there's a rumour that the Prof, will pay a visit sometime during the night."

	"I'll he on my best behaviour," said Malcolm drily. Smiling, he went on, "This is not a considered medical diagnosis, you understand, but more in the nature of a friendly observation. You look ghastly, Chi. Even your glasses are bloodshot. Why don't you get out of this place for a few hours. Get some fresh air and exer —"

	"Fresh air, in this city!" Chiak broke in. "And I could make a few friendly observations, too, and you are just going on duty. You look debilitated and ... Anyway, as a bachelor, I'm probably just feeling jealous."

	"Probably," said Malcolm, smiling again. "But you should try for a change of scenery, even a brief one. Since your last promotion you rate a horse, four days in the month, for recreational travel. Next free day you could set off early and —"

	"I can't drive the stupid beasts," said Chiak as he climbed stiffly out of his chair and walked towards the door. "Goodnight to you."

	"Good-night," said Malcolm, taking the empty swivel chair. He tapped for the case histories, projecting the new admissions first and then the latest observations, taken since he had come off duty early this morning, of the other patients.

	By the time he was finished Ann had taken over from the Day Sister and was assigning the night staff to their patients.

	The cameras showed each changeover as it took place while the repeater screen displayed the tiny alterations in pulse rate and blood pressure caused by the brief presence of three people at the bedside instead of one. Sound pickups brought in the quiet voices of Ann and the relief and relieved nurses and, from every bedside whose occupant was not attached to a ventilator, the low, monotonous ramblings of patients talking endlessly to themselves.

	Pain was something a patient was not allowed to suffer if it was possible to relieve it, and nowadays there were very few conditions where the associated discomfort could not be relieved, completely and utterly. But the painkilling drugs, and neomorph in particular, were closely allied to those used by the world's security organisations for the purpose of interrogation in depth. As a result the seriously ill patients, like the prisoners suspected of serious crimes, talked very freely.

	The female overdose talked continually without making any sense, which was not surprising considering the amount and variety of medication she had swallowed in her efforts to end her life. Nobody knew why such a remarkably beautiful girl should want to do such a thing. She was almost certainly Upper level and, judging by the results of the immunisation tests, a traveller. But there was always a very good reason why a person decided that it was necessary to commit suicide ...

	"Maybe there was no very good reason why she shouldn't," said Ann suddenly, speaking from behind him. "And you were talking to yourself again."

	"There was nobody else to talk to," said Malcolm without taking his eyes from the monitors. "Expecting any problems tonight?"

	"Nothing special," she replied, moving closer and indicating the screen which showed the multiple gunshot wound in cubicle Four. "Old Mr Hesketh, there, might not last the night, but again he could linger for a couple of days. He's seventy-three, and with thoracic injuries like that ... Anyway, he has a police guard who is hanging on his every word ..."

	Malcolm tapped for an enlargement of the picture from Four, then studied patient Hesketh's face in close-up. Usually a security officer at the bedside meant one of three things — the patient was a VIP, he was an equally important criminal, or he was in possession of important information which he might divulge before termination. But it was obvious that tins patient was too fragile and undernourished to be considered either dangerous or very important by the authorities.

	Hesketh had information, then, and it had to be very important information to warrant a police guard at his bedside rather than a simple request for the nurse in attendance to tape everything he said.

	"... For some reason," Ann was saying, "the theatre did not do a tracheotomy, even though I'd say that he needed as much assistance with his breathing as we could possibly give him. So, no positive pressure ventilation. He can talk but he doesn't seem to be making sense. I think the guard is making him nervous."

	"I can understand that," said Malcolm drily.

	"As for your girl-friend here," she went on, tapping the picture of the overdose, "she is going to make it. But her nurse, Collins, says that in an hour or so the patient will require moral support and physical restraint, concurrently. Collins will need some extra muscle if the patient does the usual thrashing about, and she suggested that you would probably volunteer since you rarely pass up the chance of wrestling with a beautiful female."

	"Nurse Collins," said Malcolm, "should have been a psychologist."

	"Nurse Collins is a psychologist," said Ann firmly, "whether the hospital recognises the fact or not. Sometimes I wonder if this place knows how lucky it is in the quality of its staff. Most other hospitals are chronically short of staff while we get the very best available, seemingly from all over the world. And we are certainly getting more foreign patients than is usual."

	"The price of fame," said Malcolm. "A good hospital attracts the best staff and the worst patients."

	"Oh, be serious for a minute."

	"All right," said Malcolm seriously. "What is worrying you? Communications or colour problems?"

	"No," said Ann sharply, then smiled. "At least, not once I've learned how to understand some of the accents. But in this ward alone we have three African blacks, an Indian and a South American brown, a Japanese yellow among the nurses. If there was such a thing as a medically qualified green Martian we would probably have it, too. So no, it isn't their colour so much as the fact that they are all such highly trained people. Most of diem would rate Senior Sister in their home hospitals, and sometimes I'm not sure who has the rank."

	"Surely they don't—"

	"Of course they don't," Ann said quickly. "There is no insubordination, no criticism, no unpleasantness of any kind. But I can't afford to make a single stupid move with all that talent around, and I feel as if I'm spending my working life in the middle of a promotion exam."

	Malcolm laughed and said, "When was the last time you made a stupid —"

	The raucous buzzing of the attention signal made him break off. A red light was flashing on the cubicle Seven monitor but the patient's tell-tales, Malcolm noted, did not show any marked change in the clinical picture. His hand collided with Ann's as they both reached for the acknowledge button.

	"Monitor room, Sister speaking," she said briskly.

	"Caldwell in Seven," came the reply in an accent redolent of heather and the distant skirling of bagpipes. "This wee lad has pulled out his IV needle. I didn't think he had the strength. It isn't an emergency, but it's fair messing up the bedclothes. Will you tell the doctor, Sister?"

	"I'm on my way," said Malcolm.

	By the time he reached cubicle Seven, Nurse Caldwell had already shut off the intravenous flow, checked the bleeding and placed an adhesive patch over the former puncture.

	"This won't hurt, Tommy," he said as he resited the cannula. Considering the hefty dosage of neomorph which was neutralising the discomfort of his multiple fractured arm and legs, whose plaster casts looked enormous on the boy's emaciated body, it would be surprising if he even felt the needle go in. Malcolm reconnected the IV tube and while the nurse was taping the needle in position, he went on gently, "You mustn't do that again, Tommy. If you make a habit of it we will have to put cot sides on the bed, as if you were a baby, and tie down your good hand. You aren't a baby, are you?"

	The boy looked scandalised as he shook his head. He said, "Who ...you?"

	Malcolm took a deep breath, held it while he removed his surgical mask, then smiled reassuringly for a moment before replacing it. He already knew that Tommy could not read so that II) patches meant nothing to him.

	"Hello, Doctor Malcolm," the boy said, smiling back. "I'm sorry, I was dreaming about rats, and one of them bit my arm. Is Nurse mad at me?"

	Nurse Caldwell shook her head very firmly and began replacing the stained top sheet.

	"Of course not," said Malcolm. "But she would like you a lot better if you were to ask her for something to eat and drink. Tommy. I know you don't feel hungry, but that is because your stomach is very small and not used to much food. But you need food to help your broken arm and legs mend and to make you feel better generally. Do you understand that? And it's nice, clean food, like the Uppers eat. If you eat lots of it you won't need the IV tube and you won't dream of rats biting your arm. Just ask Nurse if there is anything you want."

	The boy's large, brown eyes grew even larger and he blinked away tears as he said, "Mary. I want Big Mary."

	"She'll come, Tommy," said Malcolm, "just as soon as she finds out where you are. Or we might be able to find her for you if we knew something about her."

	Big Mary," said the boy drowsily as his mind slipped back into the neomorph-induced fog. "Big and soft and nice. Her face ... is nice ..."

	Caldwell turned her eyes, the only features clearly visible above her mask, on Malcolm.

	Defensively, he said, "There isn't anything I can do, Nurse, so don't look at me like that ... If he was ever given a surname he's forgotten it, and all she has to look for on the casualty lists is a juvenile RTA called Tommy. If she is able to read, that is. As for big, soft, nice Mary, what kind of description is that? How big is big to a skinny little runt so badly under-nourished that we can't place his age more accurately than somewhere between eight and eleven?"

	Tommy had been unfortunate enough to be knocked down by one of the city's relatively few powered vehicles, and fortunate in that it had been an ambulance slowing to take a corner on its way to the hospital. He had been very lucky in receiving prompt and expert attention to his injuries sustained in an area of the city where road traffic accident cases, victims of muggings, rioting, and the unwanted very old or very young were left to lie and die until the waste reclamation Squads or a cannibal club removed them during the night. But the hospital could do nothing in the short term about the effects of living since infancy at subsistence level or below — the spindly, deformed limbs, the diseased and incredibly brittle bone structure and the irreversible damage sustained by his heart as a result of a number of severe bouts of rheumatic fever.

	Despite his good fortune, young Tommy was expected to be a very short-term patient.

	"It's difficult to be sure whether anything he says makes sense," Nurse; Caldwell said quietly. "But he did say that Big Mary followed John, and that she carried him like a wee bairn. That would mean that she's big, or strong, anyway. And she talks about climbing all the time. I have the strong feeling that she's a power walker."

	"There are a lot of..." began Malcolm.

	"I know, Doctor. But there is a police guard on Mr Hesketh. A policeman, if you asked him nicely, should be able to tell us how to find the one special power walker we're looking for."

	Malcolm felt stupid for not thinking of that idea before Caldwell had, and he tried to hide his irritation as he said, "It's an idea. I'll ask him first chance I —"

	He broke off as Ann's voice spoke from the cubicle's communicator. She said, "Sister here. Sorry to interrupt, Doctor, but the Professor has arrived with the night superintendent in tow. The overdose is coming to sooner than expected in cubicle Five, and Collins would like you to look at her as soon as possible. Mr Hesketh, the multiple gunshot in Four, is worrying Nurse Bandhu. Ectopics, blood pressure down and increased haemorrhaging.

	"Is that all?"

	"For the present," said Ann cheerfully. "If you would look at Mr Hesketh I'll keep the Prof, out of your hair while you're doing that."

	There was nothing Malcolm could do except look at Mr Hesketh. The emergency admissions theatre had tried their best, but there was nothing that they could have done, either, for an old man who had stopped four bullets. One of them had shattered his left shoulder and another, deflected and deformed by something he must have been carrying in his tunic pocket, had dug a deep trench along his left side at waist level. The other two had virtually followed each other through the stomach and left lobe of the liver until they were stopped by the sixth and seventh dorsals, below which the patient had neither muscular control nor sensory response.

	Malcolm studied the bedside monitor for a moment. Despite massive and continuing blood transfusions the central venous pressure was low and falling slowly while the arterial pressure remained relatively high. Cerebral perfusion and oxygenation should be adequate for coherent thought and speech if the patient regained consciousness. The pulse was elevated, but not dangerously so, with ectopics showing on the screen like irregular, extra heart-beats once every ten to fifteen seconds. Because of the liver damage the skin and eye-balls were severely jaundiced.

	"Good evening, Mr Hesketh," said Malcolm, not expecting a reply. "How are vou?"

	"F ... Fine, thank you."

	The automatic response of a friendly, timid and polite old man who must certainly know that he was not fine, but who did not want to give offence. Malcolm watched the half-open eyes begin to blink, then open fully and look around.

	On one side Nurse Bandhu was a study in white and almost black, her dark brown forehead and eyes showing in startling contrast to her white uniform cap, mask and gown while, on the oilier side of the bed, the same area of the policeman's face was a white blur between his black cap, gas-filter mask and uniform.

	"Have you any pain, Mr Hesketh?" said Malcolm. "Is anything worrying you?"

	It was obvious that something was troubling the old man, but his eyes were beginning to close again and the effort required to talk was becoming too much for him.

	"Mr Hesketh," said the guard in a low, clear tone. "We want you to help us find the people who did this to you, and for killing the man who was lying beside you. They are responsible for the deaths of ... many other people as well. We need descriptions, mannerisms, anything that was said. You are the only one alive who saw them, Mr Hesketh. Please try."

	This is not a routine case, thought Malcolm as he saw the concentration in the other's face.

	"The man who ... shot me is dead," said the old man weakly. "He fell beside me ... just before I passed out. My clothes ... Get my clothes... Tape ..."

	"We'll bring you your clothing as soon as you are ready to go home, Mr Hesketh," Malcolm said gravely, because the old man would not be going anywhere, alive. "And we can tape any last message whenever you consider it necessary."

	But the old man was not even looking at him. Instead he was trying to raise his head from the pillows while he stared at the guard. The effort had the expected effect. He began to go under again, and his voice was barely audible as he said, "My clothes ... now. Want to explain. Nice man ... He let me help him ... Needs both his hands for ..."

	The policeman sat back in his chair and said to nobody in particular. "I suppose that was a confession of some sort. Apparently he has something which doesn't belong to him, given to him by the person who stole it. He likes this person and doesn't want him to be punished. He is also, in the manner of most thieves, or receivers, worried in case something is stolen from him, namely his clothing or the contents of his clothing. But if he only knew! We would excuse him robbing a token bank if he would only give us the information we need."

	It was impossible to read the guard's expression in any detail from the narrow strip of face visible, but there was evident pallor and he sounded rather emotional. Perhaps he was one of the forensic specialists, unaccustomed to direct contact with the dead or dying, and was suffering from an over-sympathetic reaction.

	Malcolm glanced at the policeman's ID patch as he straightened up and said, "Sergeant Telford, I consider it very unlikely that Mr Hesketh is a thief or receiver of stolen property. If he was a successful thief he would not be so under-nourished. If unsuccessful, then he would be missing his left hand. In any case, I think he is too old-fashioned and timid to risk the kind of punishment meted out to thieves these days. And I recognise that look in your eye, Sergeant. I get it, too, when somebody with less experience in my job than I have tries to tell me what to do."

	Sergeant Telford sat stiffly silent for a few seconds, then he shrugged and said, "So far you are making sense, Doctor, please go on."

	"Very well," said Malcolm. "Mr Hesketh is an old man, but not senile. Anything he says should be considered as meaningful. Now, he gave you one piece of evidence to the effect that the man who had shot him had himself been shot. He said that talking about it was a waste of time. Why was that? And he was worried about his clothing, which had been removed in the Admissions Unit. Suppose he was also worried about dying without leaving —"

	"A terminal tape!" said the sergeant excitedly. "Of course, Doctor. When he was threatened with death he turned it on, and that is why it would be a waste of time answering my questions. I'm sorry, I just wasn't thinking at all. It was such a serious crime and I was concentrating on obtaining evidence; and protecting the old man in case somebody broke in here and finished the job. Do you know where I can find his clothing?"

	"We can do better than that," said Malcolm, punching the internal code for the Admissions Unit.

	"I remember that old man," said the sister-in-charge. "He went directly to theatre, but his effects are still here and, frankly, we've been too busy to process them. There's been an armed protest and associated major traffic incident. You should have one of the serious casualties by now, a burns and multiple thoracics. But the old man didn't leave one tape, Doctor, he had pockets full of them. A bit morbid, that, I thought. But when the clerk played back some of them, looking for information about his next-of-kin, you understand, she found only music and dialogue. Do you want me to send everything to you in ICU?"

	"Yes, please," said Malcolm.

	"As soon as there is a porter free," said the Admissions Sister, "I'll send them up."

	As Malcolm was replacing the phone, Sergeant Telford said, "Thank you again, Doctor. The, ah, number of tapes this man was carrying is surprising. Maybe he is some kind of harmless nut. But you drew my attention to this potential source of information, and I am ungrateful."

	The stilted tone was that of a man who was not used to thanking people but, if such an unusual action became necessary, it was obvious that the sergeant believed in doing a thorough job of it.

	Tommy... thought Malcolm.

	"Glad to help, Sergeant," said Malcolm deprecatingly. "But there is a small favour you might be able to do for us in return, if you wouldn't mind. We're having difficulty tracing the next-of-kin of a juvenile RTA. But with the benefit of your professional expertise ... What the blazes!"

	The quiet of the unit, where normally the loudest sounds were the hushed voices of the staff and the quiet hissing from the beds where the patients were on positive pressure ventilation, was being disturbed by what sounded like the beginnings of a Grade Five incident. Grade Fives were the least serious of disturbances, family or group fights in which fists and feet only were used, and usually the police allowed them to burn themselves out without taking official cognisance of the incidents unless someone was killed. But minor or not, they were not supposed to take place, ever, in an intensive care unit.

	Malcolm left the Hesketh cubicle at a run and with the sergeant, his gun drawn, following closely behind him.

Chapter Two
Complications

	The disturbance was centred around the bed occupied by the female overdose who, since barrier nursing was not needed in her case, was in the open section of the ward. For this reason Malcolm was able to hear as well as see the patient's fist connect with Nurse Collin's eyebrow and the nurse's unladylike verbal response as she gripped her attacker's wrist with both hands and, with the help of a knee pressed against the patient's bicep, immobilised the limb.

	Meanwhile Ann was sitting on the patient's thighs and holding the other arm steady so that the professor, looking incongruous with his mask dangling from one ear and blood dripping steadily from two long, vertical scratches on his left cheek, administered a hefty sedative shot. The overdose, who had been shouting "John! John!" at the top of her voice and screaming curses at everyone, subsided very slowly.

	For a few seconds Professor Donnelly watched her, his face reflecting the sincere but somewhat detached concern with which he seemed to regard not only his patients but the whole world at large. Many of the nursing staff, and not just the young and impressionable ones, said that he looked saint-like. Those same nurses were at pains to add that the Prof, was not one of your smooth-faced, holier-than-thou and rather effeminate saints, but more the type who had come to his vocation late in life after a background of coalmining or the like. His diagnostic and surgical skill, however, had not been learned in any coalmine. Finally the Prof, looked up and nodded at Malcolm.

	"I realise, Doctor," he said calmly, "that administering such a large dosage is not always a good idea with an OD who has already self-administered far too much medication. But she seemed to be verbally lucid, if a trifle vehement in her speech, and her muscular co-ordination was such that the earlier medication appeared to have been neutralised. The risk is therefore minimal. Besides, if I hadn't knocked her put, Nurse Collins would probably have used karate."

	"Undoubtedly," said Malcolm, smiling, Nurse Collins's smile was forced and slightly lop-sided because her face Was beginning to swell on one side. The night nursing superintendent looked disapprovingly at everyone, which was what she had been doing for the past twenty years.

	Ann dismounted from her uncomfortable seat on the OD's knees and said, "If you'll come to my office, sir, I'll put a dressing on your face ..."

	At that moment the red emergency light started flashing above the door of patient Hesketh's cubicle, and an Indonesian nurse Malcolm had never seen before hurried up to tell Ann that Theatre had called to say that they were sending up a severe burns and thoracic injuries in about twenty minutes, and was there an air-bed available?

	The professor waved dismissal and said wryly, "Thank you, Sister, but as the most highly qualified surgeon here present I should be capable of treating a couple of simple lacerations. Carry on, it looks like being a busy night."

	As Malcolm turned away he collided with the sergeant, who said, "Sorry, Doctor. I didn't mean to get in the way, and I thought I might be. of some help. But, well, can you tell me something? Is that girl personally acquainted with your professor: She called him John, among other things."

	"I doubt it," said Malcolm as he walked briskly towards the flashing light. "His initials are F.S."

	The red light stopped flashing seconds before he reached the cubicle. Nurse Bandhu's voice came from the grill above the door, saying, "Sorry, Doctor, a false alarm. For about half a minute there his cardiac trace was all over the screen, but it has steadied nicely again, as you can see."

	Malcolm studied the screen through the glass panel m the door for a moment, then he said, "Right. He should be all right for a while, but I'll come by as often as possible."

	The sergeant followed him as he walked to the pharmacy room at the other end of the ward. Only one cubicle and two beds were empty and there was another patient on the way. Sixteen patients, two short of capacity — it was going to be a busy night. It was not until he had finished soaking a square of lint in surgical spirit and was on the way back to the OD that Telford said, "The old man is going to die, isn't he? Is there anything you can do?"

	"Anything I could do," said Malcolm, "would only delay the end by a few days. I could perform a tracheotomy and hook him on to a ventilator, which would relieve him of the physical effort of breathing and take some of the strain off his heart. I don't know why Theatre didn't trachy him when they had the chance, because it was strongly indicated and —"

	"That was our fault," the sergeant broke in. Apologetically, he went on, "we wanted him to be able to talk, and apparently talking is impossible once a tracheotomy has been done and a ventilator is assisting his breathing. Your professor wanted it done, but when he was told, in strictest confidence, of course, about the magnitude of the crime which had been committed and the necessity of obtaining the old man's evidence as quickly as possible, he agreed to keeping the patient off a ventilator. He argued about it, though."

	"I bet he did," said Malcolm.

	"I'm sorry Mr Hesketh has not received the optimum treatment," the sergeant went on, "but we must get him to tell us what he knows, especially if your tape idea doesn't work out. I wish I was at liberty, Doctor, to tell you what we told your professor."

	Malcolm sighed and said, "In this place I have seen the end results of all kinds of mental and physical violence. I don't think I'd be shocked at anything you could tell me."

	"I wouldn't bet on it," said the sergeant. His pallor had returned.

	The overdose was sleeping peacefully when they stopped at her bed. Malcolm handed the square of soaked lint to the diminutive Nurse Collins and said, "It will help keep down the swelling, but you'll probably have a multi-coloured bruise around that eye in the morning. Would you like me to ask Sister to relieve you of duty until ...?"

	"Thank you, no," said Collins, holding the pad against her face. "She already asked me if I wanted to go off duty. It probably looks worse than it feels."

	"It certainly looks better than the Prof's war wound," said Malcolm. "Any idea why she went for him like that?"

	Collins shook her head. "She had begun to come up and was crying a little. The Prof, started talking reassuringly to her, and he had taken off his cap and mask so that she could see his face while he was doing his stuff. You know the Prof., he could calm a mad elephant when he talks and sort of smiles at a ... Anyway, she went for him. This John character must have given her a very bad time, to make her want to commit suicide."

	"What did he do to her?" asked Malcolm.

	Collins was silent for a moment. Her tone, when she replied, sounded angry and almost jealous as she said, "She had been talking a lot in her sleep, talking to and about this John character. Apparently they worked together on an aid project somewhere in Africa. He didn't do a single thing to her, and that was the trouble. He was kindly and polite and invariably helpful which, she insisted, was the way he acted towards the local natives. She wasn't against the natives, you understand, it was just that she felt that she had more to offer the project head than they had. If you were to ask me, Doctor, I would say that her trouble is caused by a severe case of unrequited love."

	Malcolm stared for a moment at the relaxed and remarkably lovely face of the overdose, then he said, "Nonsense, Nurse. In the first place I can't imagine any man not requiting the love of a young woman like that. In the second, nobody these days would suicide for love."

	"With respect, Doctor," said Collins very disrespectfully, "you are an insensitive clod without the slightest trace of romance in your soul."

	Sergeant Telford, who was standing close behind him, cleared his throat and said, "I didn't realise that there was so much violence and drama in a hospital ward. Your Professor Donnelly will have a hard time explaining those scratches to his wife."

	"He hasn't got a wife, or anything," said the nurse. "And that really is a criminal waste of an important natural resource."

	Malcolm grinned at her and said, "You're shocking the sergeant, Nurse, and don't you go getting a case of unrequited love. Your husband would object."

	While they had been speaking he had noticed Nurse Bandhu leaving Mr Hesketh's cubicle and hurrying towards the pharmacy. Malcolm wondered who had relieved her, because otherwise she would not have left such a critically ill patient. The sergeant was staring towards the Hesketh cubicle, too, his eyebrows expressing worry. But she returned a few seconds later carrying one of the distinctively marked phials of neomorph. By the time Malcolm and the sergeant reached the cubicle doors, Professor Donnelly was on his way out.

	He nodded to the sergeant and said to Malcolm, "Mr Hesketh was having some discomfort and seemed to be seriously worried about something. I gave him an additional fifteen mils. Make sure he doesn't have any more for at least twelve hours. Now I'm going to bed, Doctor. Good-night."

	"Good-night, sir," said Malcolm, cringing inwardly at the size of the additional dose the Prof, had administered and wondering whether it was Collins or Bandhu who now had charge of the most severe overdose. But he did not, of course, share these thoughts with the sergeant as he said, "You would be wasting your time here. Mr Hesketh is no longer capable of holding a lucid conversation with anyone. But if you want to listen to him rambling, you can do that much more comfortably in the monitor room. I'll show you where it is."

	While he was seating the sergeant in the extra chair in the monitor room, Malcolm explained that from time to time, and usually when the ward was temporarily understaffed due to meal breaks, a senior nurse or the sister or himself occupied the observer's position so as to keep an eye on patients who were unattended. He showed the other how to increase the volume of the sound sensors on any bed or cubicle, then went on to explain the purpose and function of the battery of screens and medical tell-tales ranged around them. He was about to introduce the subject of young Tommy again when the sergeant interrupted with a question.

	"I'm curious about your power requirements," he said in a tone which was suspicious to the point of hostility. He waved his hand at the monitor screens and the brightly-lighted ward outside, then went on, "This equipment is ... hungry. Yet I don't see any attempt being made to ration power, or even conserve it."

	"It isn't widely known," Malcolm said quickly, "but we don't use power walkers here. This is one of the ten or so major hospitals in the world which use their own self-contained nuclear generators. Ours was installed about thirty years ago, just before the Big Power-down. Occasionally the subject of our generator comes up in the Council, but the contribution we could make towards the city's overall power demand is so small that we, as a valuable public service, are allowed to retain the output of our nuclear power source with the minimum of bureaucratic interference.

	"Meanwhile," he went on, "Upper-level technologists with strings of qualifications that long come here to Mid- and Mid-Upper level jobs as technical medics just to get the chance to play with our dinky little nuclear generator. We have been very fortunate in attracting top-level technical and medical help, from all over the world."

	"Patients, too?"

	Telford was pointing at the female OD's case-history display, which gave the information that she had taken the overdose at a medical mission in central Africa and had been flown to the hospital for treatment. The policeman's expression showed vague dissatisfaction, as if he was wondering why the girl had not been treated in Africa where the incident had occurred, and who it was thought so highly of her and possessed enough authority to order one of the few operational Government jets to take her more than three thousand miles for treatment. Her John, perhaps? Or maybe it was Malcolm himself who was wondering about these things, and he was simply putting thoughts into Telford's head.

	"We get them from all over, too," said Malcolm, smiling. "The price of fame, I suppose. In a way, the patients here represent all the ills of the world in microcosm. They are the end-results of criminal and political violence, population pressure, malnutrition, psychological disturbance. You name the condition and we can trace it back to the first causes. We live in a very sick world. Sergeant. But a little earlier, just before our moment of drama with the OD, I was about to ask a favour ..."

	Telford's hostility over the apparent wastage of power had disappeared, but Malcolm had the feeling that the subject would come up again. The sergeant listened patiently until Malcolm had finished listing the few facts and single theory they had about the boy's Big Mary, and when he responded his voice was quiet, unhurried and as clinical as that of a top consultant talking to the relatives of a terminal patient.

	He said, "One female power walker, if she is a power walker, looks and acts like any other. They walk endlessly on their treadmills and sing and scream in frustration all day or night long, and when they are off-shift they eat and drink too much to try to forget the walking of yesterday and tomorrow. This one seems to be unusual in that she has formed, or perhaps has retained, an emotional attachment to the boy. Someone in my department may have noticed a power walker displaying such uncharacteristic behaviour, but I can't promise anything."

	"I wouldn't believe you if you did, Sergeant," said Malcolm gratefully, Pie pointed at screen Seven and added, "But take a look at the boy. If you can't find his Big Mary for him in five or six days, forget it."

	"Understood," said Telford quietly. "But would you mind if I interviewed him, voice only, from this room? Face to face, the sight of my uniform might make him nervous, and evasive. If he couldn't see me and I implied that I was one of the medical staff ...?"

	He broke off as Ann's voice came suddenly from the speaker marked Patient Transfer Room. She stud. "The burns and multiple thoracics is here, Doctor. We're putting him in cubicle Two."

	"Coming," said Malcolm. To Telford he added, "No objection. Sergeant. You know your own job best."

	The new arrival was accompanied by two theatre nurses and a junior doctor who talked compulsively while they were transferring the man from the sealed and tented litter on to the air-bed in the equally aseptic surroundings of cubicle Two. The young medic knew his stuff, Malcolm noted, but he was quite obviously a stranger to the hospital and to this particular type of casualty. He kept talking in a quiet, unemotional and utterly monotonous voice about the patient's condition on arrival in the theatre.

	He said that according to the hospital's grape-vine, which was more accurate and certainly more detailed than the news broadcasts, a six-man traffic control vehicle had crashed at the mouth of an underpass when cyclist traffic was at its evening peak. The police vehicle had already been on fire when it crashed and exploded in the mouth of the tunnel. A number of survivors reported seeing a protester carrying an empty rocket launcher — some kind of religious nut, judging by the things he had been shouting as he ran away from the exploding vehicle.

	The incident could not have happened at a worse time.

	Dozens had perished in the blazing pool of fuel from the vehicle's ruptured tanks, but close on four hundred others had died of asphyxiation from the toxic fumes associated with the fire. They had been trapped in the wide, low-roofed tunnel by the pressure of rush-hour cyclists too impatient even to think about the reason for the blockage ahead of them. The casualties currently going through Admissions and Casualty were minor for the most part, people who had been a safe distance from the solid plug of burns and asphyxiation cadavers, or who had suffered because of the forcible redirection of traffic. But there had been an awful lot of relatively minor casualties, and the Sister-in-Charge of Admissions had her own ideas regarding the priorities on such occasions.

	The sergeant, Malcolm thought, will have to wait a little longer for the Hesketh personal effects.

	According to the theatre medic, their patient had been the only man in the vehicle wearing full protective armour, which included riot helmet, gas filter face mask, and seals which were supposed to give .a measure of protection against hand-thrown fire bombs. A cautious individual, obviously, considering the fact that he had been occupying the command seat in an already heavily armoured security vehicle. But his caution had paid off. When the missile opened up the vehicle he alone had been able to escape by crawling out of the blazing wreckage and through the burning pool of fuel to the safety of the raised pedestrian way.

	Shrapnel from the missile had entered the patient's chest and stomach in five places, but its force had been so diminished by the body armour that the wounds were nonfatal. However, the holes knocked in the armour had allowed entry to the burning fuel which had ignited clothing in those areas, and one of the fire seals at his right hip had burned through as well. In themselves the punctured wounds were not too serious, but the associated burns were going to make life that little bit more difficult for the patient and his nursing staff.

	When they had been working with him for nearly an hour he began coming out of the anaesthetic and had to be given neomorph, which started him talking. "Look," he kept saying weakly. "Look, look, look, look ..."

	"I don't know who or what he wants us to look at," said Ann. when he had been talking for about ten minutes, "but I wish he would vary the monologue a bit."

	"He was saying the same word," said the theatre medic, "all the way in on the ambulance."

	"Look, look, save me ..." said the patient in a half whisper.

	"Don't worry, Mr Sawyer," said Ann reassuringly, "we'll save you."

	The hissing of the air bed reinforced the sibilants in her words, giving them a strangely alien sound — as if behind the masks and gowns were people whose; antecedents had been lizards instead of apes. Malcolm shook his head in self-irritation and brought his wandering mind back to the job in hand.

	Finally the patient's transfer was complete. He floated on his cushion of air, nothing in contact with the burns and wounds but light dressings, and his arms and legs anchored firmly to the bed supports by padded cuffs so that he would be unable to dislodge the tubes which carried the intravenous feed, saline and indicated medication into his system. Ann had assigned a tall, greying nurse called Fallon to the special patient. She, too, appeared to be new to the hospital but was obviously very competent. Malcolm gave her instructions regarding observations and medication, then he returned to the monitor room and the sergeant.

	"Anything to report?" asked Malcolm, fighting back a yawn.

	Telford nodded. He said, "Most of the activity was in cubicle Two with Commander Sawyer, but then you know all about that. He is a very senior officer, you know, and I didn't think a political assassin could get anywhere near a high-ranker like that. They say even his police guards have police guards. Will he make it?"

	"He has a good chance," said Malcolm.

	"You don't believe in committing yourself, do you, Doctor?" said the sergeant drily, then went on, "I thought his department might want me to talk, or at least listen, to him. But they said they had everything they needed on the incident and to forget about it."

	He sounded dissatisfied, almost aggrieved, as he spoke. Malcolm got the impression that the sergeant had been exposed to some inter-departmental cross-fire but would not, of course, dream of discussing his grievance with outsiders.

	"Mr Hesketh is quiet and the nurse won't tell me anything else about him," Telford went on. "The overdose has been talking, quite sensibly, about her work with the disaster relief team in Africa. Things went very badly there and an awful lot of natives died who shouldn't. She was talking less sensibly about her John ..."

	"First meal break," said Ann as she came in with a tray of sandwiches and two steaming cups of brown stuff. "I thought you two might prefer something here, where you can keep an eye on things, instead of in the duty room. Most of the patients are stable and I have someone with the others, but if anything happens unexpectedly just hit the buzzer."

	Malcolm nodded and the sergeant said awkwardly, "This business with Mr Hesketh came up so quickly that I didn't think to bring ration tokens. The coffee will do fine, Sister."

	"Nonsense," said Ann. "We are issued with rations for patients as well as staff, and the majority of the patients are on IV feeds and unable to eat. But if it bothers you, think of the food as a donation from your colleague in Two. Besides, that stuff isn't coffee. We have a theory that they make it from ... Why, Sergeant, with your face mask and helmet off you're quite handsome! I'd expected you to look much older, somehow. Maybe you have prematurely aged eyebrows."

	"Thank you, Sister," said Telford around a mouthful of sandwich.

	Ann left for the duty room and her own meal, and Malcolm said, "Were you going to tell me about Tommy, Sergeant?"

	"Yes," said Telford. "Nurse Caldwell played along. We couldn't make the questions too specific, you understand. Children like Tommy tend to feel very subjective about a mother or foster mother, if they are lucky enough to live with one. We didn't want to frighten him ..."

	He broke off to stare at the cubicle Seven monitor, which showed the boy's head rolling from side to side on his pillow while he mumbled, "No good. You're no good, boy. You poor apology for a potential citizen, you can't even ..."

	Neomorph could deaden the pain in his chest and fractured limbs, but it could do nothing against the remembered pain of childhood.

	Tommy was having a nightmare, as everyone did from time to time, about school ...

Chapter Three
Natural Resistance

	" ... You are a stupid, sneaking, snivelling, wretched boy," said the Senior Educator in his quiet, angry voice. "You are nine years old and you still act as if you had just come out of nursery block. Have you no self-respect at all, boy?

	"Nobody likes walking the wheel," he went on, "but your wheel is one designed for a child half your age, and little more than a toy. Yet you cry and faint and don't make enough power to light the room much less help run the machines. All you want to do is the tidying and cleaning jobs where you can work by yourself, because you say your classmates are a bit rough on you. Or you hang about when the older boys are at advanced classes. But remember, boy, the knowledge of mathematics and reading and writing is not a gift. It is a privilege which must be earned, by hard work.

	"Perhaps a few of our boys will eventually become technicians or planners or medics. But we are not one of those mamby-pamby schools whose pupils see their parents for an hour every week. We are in the business of producing the future power walkers, food processors and artisans, the. kind of law-abiding, responsible, hard-working citizen which enables this city to survive. Do you understand that, boy?"

	Tommy said, "Yes, sir."

	"The most important things you are taught in school are obedience and respect for your seniors and, later, for your fellow citizens and their property," he continued in the same soft, frightening voice, "Obedience and respect for property are the two hardest subjects to teach because the young have a natural resistance to them, but learn them you shall, and in particular, obedience to the commands of those in authority whether, as now, it is your Educators or, in later life, the security officials or work leaders.

	"I have already tried on several occasions to overcome your natural resistance to work by physical chastisement and by allowing you to spend a night locked in the exercise yard. This time I propose making it three consecutive nights in the yard. It is cold at this time of year, and frequently wet, and I'm told that you are the kind of imaginative boy who frightens himself easily. Fine. Perhaps the combination of physical discomfort and psychological pressure will make you decide that it is better to ..."

	"With respect, Senior," said the aged Educator who had brought Tommy to the Discipline Room, "there is a health problem with this boy. Last term, if you remember, we lost rather a high proportion of pupils. To keep down the yearly average we should not risk ..."

	"Oh, very well," said the Senior Educator. "We will avoid punishment involving exposure. Personally, however, I think you are far too lenient with your boys, Educator. Perhaps this one will benefit from a few weeks in the pasture with a group five years his senior, a group which has no intellectual potential at all. Should a serious injury or worse occur, it will not be due to administrative punishment but be directly attributable to the boys around him. And now boy, get out of my sight!"

	While he was being taken down to the hot and steaming underground pasture, the old Educator explained its purpose and how it fitted into the organisation of the School. Not many Educators did that, and Tommy was grateful because it made him understand what he was doing and helped him not to make mistakes.

	In common with most Schools, this one was built and run like a city manufacturing and living complex, only smaller. Its centre was the power room, where the generators were kept turning by boys of all ages walking the wheels to supply electricity, and where the Educators were so keen on the practical work that very little theory was taught. Tommy did not understand everything the old Educator told him, but he did know that the power walkers with their red armbands worked the hardest and were the best liked, and that the boys who wore the brown armbands of the pasture had less work to do but were liked least of all.

	The smell of the power room did not stick to the boys the way that the pasture smell did.

	Tommy did not think he would have trouble tending the livestock. They were mostly cows and chickens with only a few horses which were used by the Senior and top Educators.

	Nobody at the School was important enough to be allowed a car.

	The old Educator was very stern, but sometimes he would answer questions instead of telling the boys what to do. Tommy said, "Sir, I can't walk the wheel for more than a couple of hours, honest. But I might like working with animals, especially young animals or small animals. Can I ask to do that outside?"

	"In School," the Educator replied, "you are being prepared to live as a grown-up among other grown-ups, as responsible and law-abiding citizens. You are far from ready to go Out-side, and we will not talk about it."

	They were in the pasture by then and the Educator waited until the bigger boys noticed Tommy, then left him without saying anything. They both knew that anything the old man might say about not hurting the smaller boy would have had the opposite effect.

	But it was not too bad, after the first week. Tommy had a hard time with two of the boys, Billy and Herb, who were expert at leaving bruises where they did not show. Then suddenly they changed. They began protecting him from the other boys in the group, and one night he found out why.

	Billy and Herb each took an arm and held him tight, but did not kick him or even hurt him. Billy said, "You can stay alive, Tommy, or the old man will find you in the morning looking like one of the horses had trampled all over you. The Senior doesn't like you enough to ask questions, and if you run to an Educator to tell tides, the same thing will happen to you. Right?"

	Tommy said, "Right."

	"The old Educator, the one who calls you son sometimes instead of boy, is on the main gate tomorrow," said Hilly.

	"Early, when the waste-carts come to take away the useless stuff. We want you to fool him. Tell him there's been an accident and we have fallen down a loading chute and jammed it, and the waste is piled on top of us. He'll believe you. While he's digging down to find us, we'll have plugged it with something else, we will squeeze through the other chute and hide under the wagons, or run, whatever looks best. At that time of the morning there is heavy traffic, bikes and pedestrians, you've heard it. We can get away somewhere and hide until dark —"

	"You mean," said Tommy, "you're going Outside?"

	"We're going Outside," said Billy.

	"But you can't," said Tommy. "Nobody even thinks of doing that. You're ... you're not ready and —"

	Billy punched him, not very hard, in the chest for giving him an argument. Then he said that it was not just the weaklings like; Tommy who were picked on and punished because the Senior took a dislike to them. Billy and Herb were over fourteen, less than two years from the age of full citizenship, and the Senior Educator was always telling them that if there had been a level lower than Low they would qualify for it with great difficulty. They were moved between the power room and the pasture, nowhere else, and were given no classroom work at all for the lectures on civil obedience. They were coming up to final Year and the Senior had not even hinted at the things a newly-qualified citizen should know, or even given them a few hours on the School bicycle in case one of them rose to be a skilled worker. There had been no man-to-man talks like some of the other boys had been given, only constant reminders that they were no good.

	But they listened to some of the Educators talking together and they had found out a few things about the Outside. Life there was no stricter than life in the School, the work was no harder, and there was room to move up. Billy and Herb were large for their age, and could pass as young adult citizens if they were careful. They could work at the Lower jobs until they knew what they were doing, and then they could go to night classes in one of the adult Schools run by City Security and try for an up-grading to Mid-Lower or maybe even technician level. They would have to be obedient and respectful and everything a good citizen should be, but they had been learning those things since the First Class.

	"Can I come, too?" asked Tommy.

	Herb laughed until Billy thumped him and said, "It will work better with Tommy's help, remember that, so he can come if he wants to. But Tommy, you will have to run fast to keep up with us, and you can't pass as an adult. Maybe it would be better if you stayed."

	Tommy had no friends in the School and, after he deliberately fooled the old Educator with Billy's story, he would have only enemies here. Tommy felt sorry about what he was going to do to the old man, but he said, "I want to come."

	The escape went exactly as planned. The old Educator believed Tommy and ran to the blocked chute, pushing the handle of a long broom into the waste and calling to the boys who weren't there to grab hold of it. Suddenly he looked up and saw Tommy with his legs hanging over the lip of the other chute, and he realised what was happening.

	"Don't, son!" he called loudly. "Please ...!"

	But Tommy was already sliding down the chute, his narrow shoulders barely touching the sides, to land on the stinking carpet of waste at the bottom of the cart. The driver was inside the School somewhere, so he jumped to the ground and began running after the others. They were about fifty yards away and running very fast. Tommy ran, too, but looked back for a second at the School — a big, dirty brick wall with cleaner squares when; the lower windows had been bricked up. The Old Educator was hobbling after him, but he was outrunning the old man just as the big boys were outrunning Tommy.

	"Come back, son," the Educator was shouting. "I won't tell on you. Please come back. You don't know what you're doing ..." But the traffic noises from the main road were making it harder to hear him.

	The road was full of bicycles and a few horses, and the pavement was crowded with hurrying pedestrians. Everybody looked angry and nasty and very like the Senior Educator. Tommy began to feel afraid. But he could not go back now. He wanted to cry with the pain in his chest, but he tried to run even faster as he came to the street corner so as not to lose the other boys.

	He ran right into the back of a citizen.

	The man swung around and hit him on the side of the head, then grabbed the front of his coveralls with one hand and pushed him against the pedestrian safety parapet. Tommy blinked to make his tears go away and saw that Billy and Herb weren't going to outrun him after all.

	Herb was lying flat on the pavement. His face was all bloody and he was not moving except when the boots hit him. Billy looked almost as bad. He was trying to get up and run away, but he was kicked in the face and it looked as if he couldn't see.

	The boots were heavy and nicely polished. Tommy remembered an Educator telling him that they were a status symbol to the pedestrian workforce as well as being the only weapons of defence allowed by City Security against attack by vandals and thieves. The man holding Tommy against the wall had been trying to kick Billy, too, but had been too far away. Now he had Tommy all to himself.

	"Your ... your pardon, citizen," said Tommy, just as he had been taught to say. "My most sincere apologies for jostling you. It was un ... unintentional and it —"

	"It certainly will not happen again," said the man, kicking at his knees. The kick missed because Tommy moved his legs. The man swore, maybe because he had hurt his toe or scraped his nicely polished boots against the parapet. He tightened his grip on Tommy's coveralls and drew hack his fist. Tommy closed his eyes.

	But the fist did not hit him. Instead he heard a nice, clear voice say, "Peace, citizen. The boy seems well-mannered and properly respectful towards his elders and, as you can see, he is much too puny to represent a physical threat."

	Tommy opened his eyes to see a large woman dressed in the sleeveless tunic, shorts and cloak of a power walker. The red cloak was pushed behind her shoulders because she was still hot and sweating, and he could see that her arms were nearly as thick as her legs. She was holding the man's fist in one large hand, then she let it go.

	"With respect, walker," said the citizen, letting go his grip on Tommy's coveralls so that he could rub the fingers of his other hand, "this is no concern of yours. These two young vandals you see on the ground ran into three citizens, seriously inconveniencing them by causing them to stumble and fall. They have been chastised as you can see. This one was with them. Obviously they are runaways, vandals, thieves or worse, and this skinny little animal has the same potential for lawbreaking.

	"Decent citizens," he went on, sounding just like the Senior Educator, "have the right to protect ourselves from scum like this. In the past this kind nearly wrecked our society and they're still trying to do it, teenage thieves, drug addicts, muggers, killers. They have no respect for the law or their fellow men. This one is a non-producer, irresponsible, lawless. He has not earned the right to live with civilised and responsible citizens. Until he has, he has no rights at all, and deserves only the —"

	He stopped talking as the large woman shook her head and said, "He will be my responsibility."

	The man looked at her face, at her shoulders and arms, then turned away. The other pedestrians, who had stopped kicking the boys to listen, also moved away without saying anything. The old Educator had arrived and was kneeling beside Billy with his hand inside the boy's coveralls feeling his chest. The old man was crying, but he did not say anything, cither.

	"My name is Mary," said the big woman, taking his hand. "Will you come with me ...?"

	On the monitor screen Tommy's pinched, fearful expression disappeared and he grew quiet. The introduction of Big Mary into his nightmare had obviously converted it into a pleasant dream.

	Telford sighed and said, "I know that neomorph is the base for all our interrogation and total recall drugs, but, well, for a while I was almost living in that place with him."

	"That was not a good School," said Malcolm angrily. "Nor was that pedestrian my idea of a good citizen."

	"I agree, Doctor," said the sergeant, "but we were more fortunate in our schooling. My parents were in City Security and the School was attached to police married quarters. You must have been lucky, too, to have made it as a doctor. But Tommy's School was one of the kind which processes the unwanted children or those whose parents have died or are unable even to support themselves. Everyone has the right to receive schooling for citizenship, but some people seem to have more rights than others.

	"Anyway," he went on, "there is very little, we can do about the situation, and before Tommy had his nightmare you were waiting to hear what I'd found out .about Big Mary."

	He stared at the boy's now peaceful face in a way which seemed oddly foreign to his black uniform and weapons, then he cleared his throat and said, "Now then, I think we can accept the fact that she is a large woman. The boy is underweight, but he is still too heavy to be lifted and swung about in the way he says she handles him, like a baby. So she is very strong but not, Tommy insists, wobbly and fat like the other power walkers. And she doesn't smell like the other women walkers do, or take alcohol, or have varicose veins. Also, it seems that she is a fairly senior minister in some kind of religious sect called the Followers of John, which has a fair-sized congregation in her building.

	"Tommy insists she is beautiful," Telford went on, "but in that he can't help being subjective, I suppose. Still, if she is the kind who keeps in trim and avoids stuffing herself with that stodge they feed power walkers to make them feel privileged, and she doesn't put herself to sleep at night with a mixture of industrial meth and so-called fruit extract, she would have a fairly good complexion and a single rather than a double or triple chin. She might even be fairly presentable, for a power walker. After all, is there any objective definition of beauty?"

	"I won't debate that question at two o'clock in the morning," said Malcolm, staring at the sergeant in surprise. It was the first time he had met a policeman who philosophised, even briefly. He went on, "How does this information help you?"

	"It helps narrow the search, Doctor," Telford replied. "If what the boy says is true, it is highly probable that she is a solo walker. We both know that it is against the law to hire solo walkers because all the energy of a citizen, regardless of age or degree of physical fitness, is supposed to be pooled for the common good. But there are ways in which that particular law can be bent ..."

	Especially by the Uppers, Malcolm thought wryly. Good reasons could always be found for needing power after the compulsory evening lights-out — an important business meeting which had gone on too long, a teaching session for a high-level technician or a maintenance job which could only be done at night. It was virtually impossible to prove that the power in such cases was really being used to light an all-night party, or run a film projector or drive a privately-owned washing machine. The solo walker concerned could always be passed off as a visiting student or a relative, provided he or she did not act and smell like a Lower.

	"... Naturally," the sergeant went on, "solo walkers are difficult to find. Even more difficult, in fact, than finding Uppers who admit to using them. But we know of less than a dozen in the city at present, and six of them are men. None of the female walkers are known to us by sight, unfortunately, but the boy has given a fairly good description of Big Mary and that, with her religious activity, narrows the search considerably."

	"Thank you, Sergeant," said Malcolm. "We really are grateful to you."

	Telford looked embarrassed as he replied, "Save your thanks until I deliver, Doctor. There may be difficulties. As a minister of this sect, the Followers of John, she will have other followers keen to protect her by misdirecting our enquiries. As well, she could have Upper protection and I could get orders to forget the whole business. But against that is the fact that I am not trying to charge her with anything, simply trying to pass a message directly or indirectly to her about the boy.

	"I'm still not promising anything," the sergeant added, "but I'm not promising anything with less confidence than I did a couple of hours ago."

	"Speaking of promises," said Ann, entering the monitor room and dumping a bulging white plastic bag on the side table, "the Admissions Sister kept hers. Mr Hesketh's effects have arrived."

Chapter Four
Case History

	Because of the large number of people who died every day by violence, sickness, starvation, exposure and suicide, every citizen was entitled by law to record his last words. The tiny recorders were issued free to those who requested them, and for the others — the ones who believed that even in these incredibly violent times they would live forever — there was usually one available from the police, medics, fellow workers or passers-by. They were as dependable as small electronic devices could be, which was not saying much in this age of post-technology, and valuable. But the general public, and even the very worst criminals among them, had such a superstitious fear of stealing or misusing them that they were the most secure item of property that a citizen could possess.

	Patient Hesketh, it soon became evident, had been stealing, or at least misappropriating, terminal tapes as well as misusing them for a great many years. Patient Hesketh was not superstitious ...

	"I think he would admit to misusing the things," said Malcolm after the sergeant had played back excerpts from the first few tapes. "I can't imagine a terminal tape being more misused. I mean, filling them with favourite music and reminiscences about his dead wife. But he didn't steal them. To him they were payment by the block medic for services rendered."

	"But the medic knew what was going on," said the sergeant, "which explains Hesketh's concern in case his doctor friend got into trouble. We'll try another tape, he still hasn't said anything about the massacre."

	"What massacre?"

	"I'm not allowed to tell you," said Telford grimly, "but listen and you might find out."

	Hesketh had been as lonely as it was possible for an eighty-year-old widower to be in a four thousand-room living block, which was very lonely indeed. Despite his constant attempts to make friends or do odd jobs for people, nobody would speak more than a few words to him — and not very polite words, at that.

	They were too tired and irritable from fighting their way through the evening rush-hour, and they had too little time remaining to them before lights-out to waste it talking to a pensioned non-producer. The shoe-boxes they lived in were too small, in any case, and food too scarce for non-family visiting. During the day the number of people in the block was reduced to those responsible for providing power and maintenance and the tenants who had been excused work because of illness or advanced pregnancy — but they would not, of course, allow a stranger into their rooms for fear of attack or robbery.

	Doc Menzies, the block medic, had been the first to speak to him in over a year. It had been on the twenty-third floor, which was in all respects identical to Hesketh's own level except that, sometime the previous evening, a bunch of recently-graduated adults had gone on the rampage and torn off most of the door labels. One result was going to be a lot of inter-personal friction, and very likely fighting, as the tired and hungry tenants returned from work in the evening and could not readily identify their own rooms. A less obvious problem was the one which concerned the block medic.

	The doctor did not speak to Hesketh so much as complain loudly to himself.

	" ... Forty-three sick calls to make this morning," he was saying in a surprisingly deep voice for such a young man, "and I can't even find this one without knocking on about fifty doors. Her husband said it was urgent. Nothing else, just wrote that it was urgent, spelt with an 'i', yet …"

	"Excuse me, Doctor," said Hesketh timidly, "but is she a pregnant lady?"

	" ... Still, I don't have to knock on fifty doors." the doctor went on, "just a few and ask the tenants for their room number, then count back and ... Yes, old man, she might be pregnant. Her husband didn't say, but if he couldn't spell urgent properly maybe he couldn't spell pregnant at all. Why do you ask ?"

	Hesketh explained that he took a pre-lights-out walk every night, and the walls were so thin that he could overhear practically everything that was said in the rooms he passed.

	He said that he felt less lonely when he could listen to other people's conversations, because nobody would talk to him or let him close enough to listen during the day. He got to know some of the tenants very well, by listening to them talking or quarrelling even though he did not know their names or see their faces.

	He had listened to the pregnant lady and her husband for a few minutes every night over the past three weeks — he could not risk standing outside their door for more than a few minutes, for obvious reasons. The husband was a worker in a waste reclamation plant within walking distance of the block, although his job was important enough to rate a bicycle if he wanted one. She had been excused work for the past two months on account of expecting the baby, and the loneliness during the day had given her too much time to worry. Hesketh had heard them talking and arguing, he said, but not fighting because they were nice young people who were already worried over the child casualty rate in some of the Schools.

	By the time Hesketh had finished explaining they were standing outside the room in question.

	"Mrs Harvey, are you Yellow Eleven Fifty-five?" the medic called loudly, kicking the door with his metal-toed defence boots. The chances were that the occupant would be in a tranquillised sleep and his hands were too useful to risk him damaging a knuckle on the door. He added, "Doctor Menzies here. Did your husband leave me a message?"

	From inside the room there came a sound midway between a cough and a grunt, then the door opened. It was at once evident from the doctor's reaction that Mrs Harvey's case was an urgent one.

	"Help me lift her on to the bed," he said quickly, "then try to rouse a female neighbour if you can find one."

	"In the old days," said Hesketh timidly, "they used to allow husbands to be present in the delivery room when babies were being born, and I can remember very well how they —"

	"Wash your hands, then," said the doctor curtly, "right up to the elbows."

	Unlike the first time he had witnessed the process, Hesketh was allowed to help a little. He held Mrs Harvey steady while the doctor gave her a shot. When she became frightened during the later stages and began shouting for her husband.

	Hesketh was instructed to bring a terminal tape from the medical bag. In his haste he placed it too near the radio, so that the recording consisted of Doc Menzies explaining gruffly that this was the only way she could talk to her husband and what did she want to say? She became completely tongue-tied at the idea of talking on to a terminal tape and said nothing at all until a few minutes after the birth, so that the tape, apart from a few words of instruction by the doctor and some loud grunting by Mrs Harvey, carried a half-hour selection of Strauss waltzes.

	He also helped to tidy up afterwards and offered to fetch the medication and extra ration tokens which the doctor had prescribed for Mrs Harvey.

	"No doubt you are deeply impressed and in awe of the continuing miracle of birth," said the doctor as they were leaving the room. "But there's no reason to cry, old man."

	The sarcasm in the doctor's voice did not quite hide the fact that he, too, was pleased with the Harvey delivery. But these days a medic could not afford to show human feelings, because his patients might get to know about it and take up too much of his time looking for sympathy, and not allow him enough time to do his proper job of treating the block's large numbers of sick and injured. The line between psychology and medicine was firmly drawn in the big living complexes, and if he expected to do his job effectively no doctor could afford to cross it.

	Hesketh said, "No, sir."

	Doc Menzies did not know about a certain tape on which Hesketh had remembered another confinement which had not gone well. His wife had been smaller, more delicately beautiful and not, of course, as undernourished as Mrs Harvey. The baby, unlike the Harvey infant, had been large. Despite, this, no special difficulties were foreseen and what happened had been described by the doctor in charge as a combination of statistically improbable circumstances none of which would have been individually fatal. Their baby had died, too, just a few days after his mother.

	"It's understandable," said Doc Menzies in a much less sarcastic tone, "but don't go feeling sentimental about it. There are far too many people on this planet as it is, and that little girl's chances of surviving to adolescence in a place like this are not good. But I'm still grateful for your help, old man. Thank you. And now I have to change a dressing on a stab wound in Pink Fourteen Thirty-three. Will you give me that terminal tape you're holding so tiglitly? Mrs Harvey won't need it now."

	"I ... I was wondering," said Hesketh pleadingly, "if I might keep it:"

	"Hut why?. There's nothing on it but ..."

	"Music," said Hesketh. "I like Strauss. Very few people can afford radios these days, and this way I can listen to the playback whenever I like."

	"But you can get a terminal tape, old man, simply by applying to the block psychologist, or me, for one. It is one of the few rights we have left."

	"Yes, Doctor," Hesketh replied. "I got the first three that way, then Doctor Hawkins told me to behave myself or he would charge me with over-consuming. He didn't mean that, of course, but I was afraid to ask for any more. Besides, the music on them was recorded through a wall and was muffled. This one is different. You and Mrs Harvey didn't make much noise and the radio was only a few inches away and —"

	"Give it back to me," said the doctor, laughing, "when you've finished with it."

	Hesketh never tired of listening to Strauss and for that reason he did not feel obliged to return the tape. Doctor Menzies was severely overworked and Hesketh had offered to help him, either directly as in the case of Mrs Harvey or indirectly by delivering urgently required medication to patients unable to go for their own. There were some very happy days on record when Hesketh was kept so busy that he did not have even the time to listen to his taped music and reminiscences. Then he hit on an idea for getting more tapes from Doc Menzies.

	He told the doctor that he was becoming forgetful in his old age — which was not entirely a lie — and that it would be a good idea if he taped the doctor's instructions to him in full instead of making a few notes. Earlier that same day the block psychologist. Doctor Hawkins, had been killed while trying to cool a family fight when the relatives had ganged up on him for interfering. Hesketh did not know whether the Doc agreed that it was a good idea or was just too tired and angry to argue.

	"Very well, old man," said the doctor, "here is another terminal tape. But it so happens that I have a job for you which requires a tape, both for your own briefing and, very probably, for the use of the patient. He is a would-be jumper, an old man. From the street it looks as if his hair is white, they tell me. He climbed through a break in the anti-suicide netting and is sitting with his legs over the parapet. He has been sitting there for over two hours, in the wind and cold, so maybe he hasn't quite made up his mind yet.

	"It should have been Hawkins's job," the doctor went on. "But I'm too busy right now to give him more than a few minutes, and that would make me sound too impatient with him. You have time to spare, and you've a lot of common sense when you're not daydreaming to taped music. Anyway, talk to him but don't take any risks trying to restrain him if he tries to jump. If he doesn't really want to jump, try to get him down as soon as you can. Pneumonia at that age is slower than hitting the pavement, but just as lethal."

	"I understand, Doctor," said Hesketh.

	"Right, old man. But be careful about showing him the terminal tape. Sometimes seeing one brings a person to his senses, makes him realise that he is about to end his life and shocks him into sanity. On the other hand, the realisation that his last words are going into a tape instead of to the family circle in person makes him feel even more like ending it all."

	Hesketh did not have to use the tape while talking to the would-be jumper, so that the next conversation was his report to Doc Menzies. From the quality of the recording — the difference in volume between the two voices and the faint scratching sounds — it seemed likely that the recorder was in Hesketh's breast pocket and the doctor was unaware that the conversation was being taped.

	"His name is Tully, aged sixty-two, widowed," said Hesketh. "You were right, Doctor, he didn't really want to jump, but he said that he was always hungry and lonely and he has stomach pains which keep him from sleeping. Mostly he wants to talk to somebody his own age who isn't too busy to listen and talk back. We've arranged to meet a few times a week at his box to talk or just complain about things, because he can't walk very well. He said climbing to the roof today nearly killed him. He seems to have a sense of humour. I mean, his suicide attempt nearly killed him.

	"He didn't want to bother you with his stomach trouble," Hesketh went on, "because you were too busy and probably couldn't help him anyway. All his life he's been a hypochondriac and is proud of the fact that none of the doctors he's seen have ever been able to help him. But he's coming down to see you tomorrow."

	"You must have given me a glowing testimonial," said the doctor. "But I'm beginning to recognise that look in your eye, old man. There are complications?"

	"Well," said Hesketh, clearing his throat nervously, "there could be. That was why I was wondering if you, too, could be baffled by his condition. He's so proud of the imaginary symptoms which baffled the earlier medics, and he gets enjoyment out of criticising their incompetence. I think it would be an unkindness if he was to meet a doctor who did know what was wrong with him and told him so. Because this time, well, he seems to have exactly the same symptoms as Mr Withers, the patient I take the extra neomorph to every day."

	There was a long pause, then Doc Menzies said caustically, "Old man, Mr Withers had an inoperable stomach cancer when he first came to me, and no doubt he has discussed his symptoms in detail while you were delivering his medication. You could be right about Mr Tully, and I'm not so proud that I'd find it necessary to change the low opinion he has of us doctors by telling him the worst. But old man, don't you think patient Tully should be given the benefit of a second medical opinion, mine ...?"

	On the next occasion that Hesketh recorded a briefing he had been given an important job indeed. On the tape, Doc Menzies sounded tired and angry and harassed.

	" ... Keeler, the day superintendent, went off duty two hours ago and left the building, apparently to attend a meeting of the followers of John. Nobody knows for sure where the meeting is being held and, after lights-out, they refuse to go looking. There are lots of young people who could stand in for Holden here, except for one thing, they don't read very well if at all. Holden insists that the ability to read the temperature and power loading figures is essential, and until we can get another technician here —"

	"Doctor," said a new voice. "I feel quite comfortable now. I can hold out until a replacement arrives. All I have to do is watch the displays. No physical effort is required."

	"Be quiet, Mr Holden," said the doctor, "that is the neomorph talking. Mr Hesketh will keep an eye on things until the replacement gets here, which should be in about three hours. As a Low-Midder, technician grade, you rate hospital treatment and an ambulance, and that is exactly what you and your stupid perforating appendix are going to get. You have about fifteen minutes before it arrives, which is time enough to tell Mr Hesketh what to watch for, and what to do in case of an emergency."

	"No emergencies will arise," said Holden. "He simply has to..."

	"Listen carefully, old man," said Doc Menzies. "Now, and as often as you think it necessary to play back that tape …"

	Unlike the blocks which had been built before the Power-down and had subsequently been modified to the edicts limiting power consumption and living space, this building had been designed and constructed from the very beginning to furnish the tenants of its four thousand-plus rooms with the finest possible accommodation available to the Low-Midder grade worker. It was a beautifully functional structure, human-powered throughout, and gave its dwellers the feeling that their living boxes were fractionally larger than everyone else on a similar social level, the air which circulated sluggishly along the corridors that little bit fresher, and the anti-fire and other safety devices were marginally safer.

	The building was completely safe, according to Holden, but if anything was going to go wrong it would most likely happen during the next three or four hours.

	It was then that the power demand peaked to maximum as the tenants returned home from work. The building's twenty elevators were constantly in use carrying capacity loads. All of the lighting was in use while the people jostled their way along the corridors to their boxes, warmed their food issue or made a hot drink, but not both, and indulged briefly in socialising before lights-out. During these activities they used vast quantities of air and produced a very huge amount of body heat.

	The building's designers had made cunning use of the body heat produced in the complex of living units to evolve a forced draught system which aided the circulation of air drawn from ground level and the third floor intakes. Air drawn from street level, containing as it did the dust and effluvia of the city, was piped only to the sub-levels which contained the waste disposal and power rooms — sections where riot gas would have smelled fresh and clean by comparison. Self-driven fans boosted the third floor intake to the upper levels where the old areas of dead air were serviced by fans attached to static bikes. Power walkers had a direct drive link-up to the elevator housings, and sometimes a cable would snap.

	As a type the power walkers were very strong and often unstable people who insisted that if they had to work in the frightful conditions of the power rooms, they should at least work in safety. A riot of power walkers was violent beyond belief, which was something Holden did not have to tell any city dweller. But the neomorph was beginning to make his mind wander from the subject at times.

	While Menzies swore luridly about the non-arrival of the ambulance and the minor police action down the street which had forced it to detour, Holden rallied his powers of concentration. He said that there was a small and continuous drain on the power room to run the block's sensors which had their nerve centre in the superintendent's office. In very simple language he explained the purpose and functioning of the banks of controls and indicator lights which filled the walls of the rooms around them.

	" ... There are twenty elevators with three indicator lights to each one," Holden went on. "Most of the lights show green, the rest yellow. This means they are working normally or in a condition of non-critical overload. Everybody overloads the elevators this time of night. Red means a malfunction, the elevator has stopped itself automatically and is waiting for somebody, probably me, to fix it. In case of a general power failure, some of the elevators are fitted with an internal gear-down winch which enable it to be raised and lowered very slowly by a reduced number of occupants. When this facility is in use there is an additional blue light which cancels out the red malfunction signal.

	"The fire prevention shutter tell-tales are here," he continued. "The shutters are tripped automatically by an abnormal rise in temperature. They are designed to seal off a large or small section of floor, corridor or rooms, disposal chutes and stairwells, so that in the case of fire the area concerned will quickly be starved of oxygen. When areas have to be evacuated and settled for periodic delousing, the shutters can be controlled from in here.

	"On the other side, there, are the power demand indicators," he went on. "We can't possibly put a sensor in every room, there is too much wiring in this place as it is, so we take the total requirement for the whole floor. If this exceeds the danger level we black out that level for a few minutes, then switch on again. Usually, this has a salutary effect on the greedy ones, although it is a bit unfair to the careful users, I'm afraid.

	"This panel you don't have to worry about," the superintendent went on, "since it is concerned only with the waste reclamation and separation services. The men responsible for separating the toxic and re-usable wastes don't come on duty until ... It isn't hurting me, Doctor, but my gut feels as if it is on fire ..."

	"I know," said Doc Menzies. "Where the hell is that ambulance ...?"

Chapter Five
Gunshot Wounds

	"Mr Holden was taken sick and went to hospital two hours ago," said Hesketh.

	His voice sounded nervous and the words were muffled and accompanied by the rustling sounds caused by the mike rubbing against the inside of his pocket. He went on, "Doc Menzies went with Mr Holden and I don't know when he'll be back. Has something happened to your face? Do you need medical attention?"

	"The bandage hides my face, old man," said a new voice, speaking from the other side of the room judging by the drop in volume. "A mask would have aroused suspicion, but in these violent times bandages are an all too common sight. I don't need your doctor so just sit still and keep your mouth shut. I'm going to be very busy for a few minutes."

	"What ... what are you doing to the air intake shutters?" said Hesketh sharply. "Mr Holden said they were only to be closed in case of fire or section delousing."

	"I know," said the stranger, "but you could say that I am engaged in the destruction of vermin ... Sit down, old man!"

	"But ... but they aren't vermin," Hesketh protested. "They're people like you and me and they'll suffocate if —"

	"Among themselves, bugs probably consider each other as people like you. But not like me. I have learned to take a more objective view, of people and vermin."

	"I don't understand you," said Hesketh. There was a note of desperation in his voice.

	"You aren't supposed to," said the other. "Just let's say that it is necessary, that future generations will admire our daring, our self-discipline and our strength of character which enables us to be ruthless so that a greater good would come. If they realised that only a handful of us were responsible for decimating this block and that we can do it anytime, anywhere. Do you, old man, realise the planning, the teamwork, the split-second timing that went into this operation?"

	"No," said Hesketh.

	Some inner compulsion seemed to be driving the man to speak. His voice was rising and beginning to throb with something like religious zeal as he went on, "Do you know that all day the three of us have been wedging shut the doors which open on to the emergency fire stairs? Twenty sets of stairs, over forty doors to each set, a little wedge under every door. Nobody disturbed us because those stairs are steep and dangerous and, unless an emergency occurs, unlighted. Tonight, during the emergency, the stair lighting will not come on.

	"But that won't be for another ten minutes or so," he went on proudly. "Right now, with the fresh air supply cut off, it must be getting very hard to breathe in the living boxes. People are used to small inconveniences like stale air and interruptions in room lighting, so they won't be too worried at first. In five minutes' time they should be really uncomfortable and frightened, especially when they go outside and find the air in the corridors and that coining from the air intake is much worse than the stuff in their rooms. They will begin to gather around the elevators then intending to come down here to complain. They will wait patiently because one always has to wait patiently for elevators, and while they wait they will use. up more of the remaining oxygen. When I cut all the lighting circuits and simultaneously trigger the fire alarms in every corridor, the result will be general panic, much running about and fighting in the darkness and, of course, rapid asphyxiation and death.

	"The power walkers represent a somewhat different problem," he went on in a quieter, more thoughtful voice, "in that they are physically very strong and are close to the street level exits. They burn up oxygen very fast and the effects of the air cut-off should be noticeable almost at once. But the air down there, is so foul with body odour that the staleness will go unnoticed until it is too late to organise an orderly evacuation. My colleagues have seeded the exit chambers with riot gas, so that the few who manage to get that far will—"

	"Riot gas is forbidden indoors," said Hesketh dully. "Unless it is free to disperse quickly the effect is lethal."

	"Don't be stupid, old man," the other said impatiently, "we aren't bound by City Security law. We have to take out all the power walkers and their technical supervision, and we have to keep the Lower-Middle maintenance men on the first and second floors, and who might be able to figure out a way of mounting a rescue operation to the upper levels, from taking any action. With a little power they could reopen the air intakes, for instance, and light key corridor intersections. They must have no power at all until the police arrive with gas-masks and portable fans to disperse the gas and stale air, clear the power rooms of the cadavers and put a new set of walkers to work.

	"And don't look so shocked, old man," he went on. "Quite a few will survive. The wedges we put in the fire-escape doors will not hold if they keep their heads and work together to force them. They'll open suddenly, of course, and a lot of people will fall down the stairs in the darkness and be killed or seriously injured. Some of them might fall all the way down because those stairs are dangerous even when the lights are on and people are not in such a panic. Others might fall only on to the next landing and collect there, making it impossible to open that particular door. Maybe they will all tumble to the bottom and plug the street level exits. In any event, the people who escape by the fire stairs will be very lucky indeed.

	"On the whole I think the best bet," the voice went on thoughtfully, "at least for those people who have boxes on the outer faces of the block, is to stay put. There are anti-suicide grills fitted inside the windows and the glass is supposed to be unbreakable, but if the occupants use their brains and some of the furniture supports they might be able to knock a hole in the glass and let in enough fresh air to enable them to stay alive. The danger then would be from the people out in the corridors who might hear them breaking the glass, and who would realise that fresh air was available and crowd into those rooms. If enough of them did that the window would soon be jammed solid and no air would get in at all. On second thoughts breaking a window and staying put could be every bit as risky as trying for the fire stairs."

	There was the sound of a short, harsh laugh, then the voice went on, "If any of them figure out a way of staying alive until morning, when daylight lets the rescue squads see what they're doing, good luck to them."

	"If ... if you weren't doing this," said Hesketh in a surprisingly angry tone, "they would all be alive in the morning."

	"Don't be tiresome, old man," the other replied. "Next thing you'll be asking what did any of them ever do to deserve this? The answer is nothing. Individually we have nothing against them. We'll be very glad if a few are able to survive. But for the ultimate good they, as a group, have to die. It is part of a greater plan and it is necessary. We don't enjoy doing it, old man, but it has to be done. It will have to be done again and again until our object is achieved, no matter how distressing we as individuals find the work."

	"Hypocrite," said Hesketh.

	"I carry this gun," said the other man, "because I was expecting trouble from Holden. Holden isn't here and I do not expect trouble from you. At the same time I can deal with you if you give me any more of your lip. You are only a statistic to me, old man. A stupid, maudlin statistic who remembers the good old Pre Power-down days, and who unwittingly contributed to the mess we are in now because you couldn't see where we were heading —"

	"We could see," said Hesketh, with no trace of fear in his voice, "but we could not do anything about it. We lived in a very liberal society, generally speaking, which allowed the voices of all sorts of individuals and minority groups to be heard. A lot of the voices were not worth listening to because they belonged to criminals or nutcases or both, but the rules of our society ensured that they were heard. Some of the more liberal people supported them, even, and we had a situation where people who broke the law, who stole or wrecked property or killed other people, demanded and received as a right more help than was given to any law-abiding person who had worked all his life and paid his taxes. In fact, the law-abiding types became the people whose voices were never heard. They became an expendable resource like cattle or sheep and were given even less consideration by the hundreds of little people like you who are all trying to wag the dog, the sick, vermin-infested dog that our society has become.

	"Our legitimate aspirations and causes were swamped," he went on furiously, "by the over-reaction against the bully-boys like you who protested with bombs and hijackings and political assassinations, and gradually we had to give up the liberty we had won over the centuries just so's we could have a measure of protection against the mad dogs who had—"

	"Don't raise your voice to me, old man," the other said angrily. "You don't know what you're talking about. You ... You're politically naive. Be quiet, I have to concentrate on what I'm doing."

	"Of course you must concentrate," Hesketh replied in a quieter tone, "because you are only able to think of one thing at a time. I think it was Balsac who said that when a man gives himself totally to fixed ideas he is destroyed by them, and if you've read ... But I see by your expression that you can't read very easily, so the people who have told you what to think have no competition."

	"Old man," said the other in a very dangerous voice, "are you trying to commit suicide?"

	There was a long silence, then Hesketh said, "I'm not trying to commit suicide, young man, but I realise that I'm taking a risk. I'm taking it because I would truly like to understand how you can commit wholesale murder without feeling any qualms of conscience about it. I know you say it is regrettable but necessary for the greater good. But who decides that it is necessary? Certainly not the victims, who outvote you in this building by several thousand per cent. What gives you the right to make the decision for all these people? Do you, or your gang leaders, think you are God? Thinking that is worse than thinking you are Napoleon, and you know how people who think they are Napoleon are treated —"

	"It's too complicated for you, old man," the other said in a quietly furious tone. "Now shut your blasted mouth!"

	That is no answer," said Hesketh, his voice rising again. "What's more, it is hypocritical hogwash. You stand there, pulling switches and waving your status symbol at me, outwardly resembling a human being. But if you were you would think of all those people you are killing, people whose lives are no less valuable than your own. They are going to die fighting each other and suffocating and falling down stairs because you think it's best, for reasons that an ordinary human being would find too complicated to ..."

	He broke off, and when he went on again his voice was nearly falsetto with rage and frustration as he said, "Don't you laugh at me, you young squirt! You come burrowing into this building like a germ of some social disease, a disease to which we have no resistance, to which our whole society has no resistance. But one day we'll develop an antibiotic and you'll be wiped out like the foul disease you are. They'll wipe you out without making hypocritical speeches or excuses for what they are doing, and nobody will admire you at till because —"

	The tape made a sharp, squawking sound as its microphone was overloaded briefly by four very loud noises in rapid succession, and when it had recovered its sensitivity it began to pick up the sounds of distant fire alarms and shouting. That, and a low, tuneless whistling of the kind produced by someone who is alone and trying to prove something to a hypothetical observer. The whistling stopped after a few minutes and then; was the sound of approaching footsteps.

	"Was that Holden ?" asked the new voice.

	"No, sir," said the man who had been whistling to himself. "Holden was taken ill and the old man was minding the store. He wasn't important and he ..." There was a pause, then the voice went on defensively, "He was raising his voice, being argumentative, critical of our activities, and he might have picked up enough information about us to be useful to City Security. Did everything go well with you, sir?"

	"As planned," said the new voice curtly. It went on, "The shooting of this old man was unnecessary. If he had to die then a hard punch below the heart would have; accomplished it. Using four bullets was wasteful, inefficient and the noise might have been heard over the alarms and attracted police attention."

	"But he was a silly, argumentative old man."

	"If he argued well enough to make you shoot him, then he wasn't stupid," said the other coldly. "And it takes two to argue. You were forbidden to talk beyond the issuing of simple orders, so you should not have been involved in an argument in the first place. But you could not keep silent, could you? You had to boast about the operation, brag about the part you were playing in it. But you are not supposed to be the kind of person who would take a life or lives because of petty irritation. This harmless old man should not have died. It is for the greater good ..."

	"No! Please!" the other burst out, his voice suddenly fearful. "Sir, my cohort will ask questions about this ..."

	" ... And they will be told what exactly and why it was done," the new voice finished for him. "We are finding it necessary to elevate more and more locals to the level of full Guardian, but we cannot risk devaluing that position. You talked to the old man, I suspect, so that it would become necessary to kill him. I think you enjoy killing. You have proved unsuitable." The voice paused briefly, then in a coldly formal tone repeated, "It is for the greater good."

	This time the sound pickup was overloaded by a single loud noise, and a few minutes later the tape ran out.

	For a long time there was silence in the monitor room except for the muted voices of the patients. Malcolm's eyes ranged across the displays while he half-listened to the tired, cheerful voice of Nurse Caldwell as she bedbathed Tommy, and the police officer trying to give details of the assassination attempt on his person through a neomorph fog, and the overdose in Five talking seriously to Nurse Collins about men, and especially about one called John ...

	" ... It was a disaster, Nurse, in every sense of the word," the OD was saying. "Everything that could go wrong went wrong. Thousands of families had already died of starvation and we were supposed to move the survivors into the territory of a helpful neighbouring country. But three different groups of freedom fighters decided that they needed a few vehicles and supplies for their own purposes. With no cars to scout ahead we were stuck at that mission with more and more survivors coming in every hour. We couldn't possibly feed them or guide them to a better area, and as a direct result more than half a million people died.

	"We managed to save a few thousand of them at the mission," the overdose went on, "but only for a short time. It was grim work, deciding. John was always there, leading, driving, Sympathising, doing whatever was needed. The lack of proper accommodation and facilities threw us together into conditions almost of intimacy, and I thought that ... But he didn't need me, or anyone else. I couldn't help myself. He was such a ... a man. But on duty he treated me as a colleague, and off duty he was kindly and considerate and ... and so superior in some strange way to everyone alike, including the native survivors. I suppose he must have felt responsible for what happened, otherwise he would not have wangled a plane to fly me all the way here for treatment. But he could have felt nothing more than that and now, well, I don't think any man is worth what I did."

	"If you tell that to the psychologist when he comes," said Nurse Collins, "you'll be home before you know it."

	"I'm sorry about the black eye, Nurse," the girl went on. "Truly sorry. I'm sorry about the Professor's scratches, too. But his voice and manner reminded me so much of John that ... Well, I'm not sure that I'm truly sorry about that."

	"Try to be," said Collins drily, "just to make the psychologist happy."

	Half a million dead in Africa and a few thousand dead here in the city. Malcolm wondered why he was not feeling more shocked or angry or anything but tired. Perhaps that mass-murdering Guardian, so called, who had killed the man who had shot Hesketh had been right, and people were only statistics — except, of course, for the individual cases like the old man for whom one was allowed to feel concern so that one's conscience could rest a little easier. He laughed suddenly at the thought of a man who had helped decimate a living block having a conscience, and the sergeant glared at him disapprovingly.

	"Ignore him, Sergeant," said Ann quickly. "He's probably laughing at something which isn't the least bit funny. About this time of the morning, and until the day staff come on duty, you will see some strange behaviour among the staff. Fits of the giggles, we call it. People tell horrible jokes and clown a bit and talk about anything but business, especially alter a bad night, which this one wasn't. It's reaction, of course, a release of nervous tension. And when it is Considered unprofessional to cry and unladylike or ungentleman-like to swear, one has to ... Well, right now I'm planning a ride and picnic on our next free day. I'll have to get out of this place for a while or I ... I shall certainly do and say something very unladylike."

	Telford's look of disapproval changed to one of surprise at the vehemence in Ann's tone, then his face cleared and he said, "I know the feeling well. Sister. Night duty does funny things to our people too. But if you're serious about that ride into the country I can suggest a relatively safe route ..."

	He broke off, shook his head in obvious self-irritation and went on, "I want to think about something else, too, but there's the information on this tape. I can't trust it to the telephone and my superior doesn't come on duty for another five hours. Can I ask you ... No, I must insist that you do not talk about this material to anyone else, or even discuss it between yourselves if there is the slightest chance of you being overheard.

	"We have sealed off that living block of Hesketh's," he went on, "and the few survivors are being held incommunicado. We can't afford a panic even though the group concerned have not yet made any demands. Until the block has been emptied it has been quarantined as the site of a highly infectious disease, and later we'll think of another story. It's a good thing people aren't curious about their neighbours any more. Is Mr Hesketh likely to say anything?"

	Malcolm looked briefly at the clinical picture indicated on the old man's display. The central venous pressure was continuing to fall slowly despite continuous transfusions. Inadequate oxygenation of the tissues was causing lessening contractibility of the heart muscles, which in turn lowered the cardiac output and further reduced the oxygenation in a vicious spiral which would, in a matter of hours or perhaps days, lead to an arrest. He cringed inwardly at the thought of what re-starting Hesketh's heart by external massage, or even shocking it back to life with the defibrillator, would do to the old man's thoracic injuries. There would be massive haemorrhaging and they would lose him within minutes. It would be much kinder just to leave him to drift away in his peaceful neomorph fog.

	"Mr Hesketh," said Malcolm quietly, "has said everything he is likely to say."

	"I see," said the sergeant, looking at the old man's screen. Softly, he added, "He didn't seem to be the type who would give back lip to an armed terrorist. He was such a timid, inoffensive, nice old man."

Chapter Six
Multiple RTA

	Acting on the sergeant's advice they set out on their rest-day picnic before dawn so as to have the unpowered lanes free, for a few hours at least of the semi-skilled classes wheeling their way to work. But the sun was fully risen and from their saddles they had enough height to see every detail of the accident as it occurred.

	They heard the two cars approaching from opposite directions on the lanes reserved for powered vehicles. One was a small, green saloon travelling fast out of the city and the other was a heavier, black job heading in. The black car swerved suddenly through one of the gaps in the central crash barrier, scattering marker cones in all directions, and entered the outgoing lane less than half a mile from the green vehicle. The green car signalled frantically and moved from the fast to the overtaking lane. Without signalling the black vehicle moved into the same lane.

	There was a glittering explosion of glass as they met head-on. The two cars seemed to fuse together momentarily before bouncing apart and coming to rest less than fifty yards from the two riders.

	Malcolm sighed and said, "I suppose we should do something."

	Ann glanced upwards at the myriad tiny windows of the high rise living blocks which overlooked the motorway, then at their white, hospital-issue horses and said, "People would think it funny if we didn't."

	They both knew that they would be wasting their time because the closing speed of the two cars had been in excess of one hundred miles per hour.

	Moving their horses as close as possible to the wreckage, they tied them to the fence which divided the outgoing powered from the unpowered and equestrian lanes. Malcolm headed for the green and his wife for the black one.

	Both occupants of the green vehicle had been strapped securely in their seats, but the steering, engine and even the front wheels had been pushed into the seats with them so that they were just two sexless, bloody ruins oozing primary colour over everything around them. Malcolm did not have to search for a pulse to know that they were gone because if there had been any cardiac activity at all the blood would have been spurting, not oozing, from those injuries. A sharp, sour smell told him that the vehicle's automatic fire prevention cartridge had functioned properly. Despite the violence of the collision the car's stereo system was still running noisily through the third movement of a particularly fine recording of Scheherazade.

	"Two young adults," said Malcolm as he joined his wife at the other wreck. "Both dead."

	"Two dead here," said Ann. "One technically alive."

	The black vehicle had been a veritable conference cubicle on wheels, with an unbreakable glass screen separating the rear compartment from the driver. A less comfortably furnished variant of the same model was used by the police to transport wrong-doers requiring physical restraint. Malcolm had assumed that the survivor would be in the rear compartment, but he was wrong. One look was enough to show him that the impact had sent the two passengers' heads through the supposedly unbreakable glass with immediately fatal results, and that the other grievous injuries they had sustained had been so much wasted kinetic energy.

	Automatic collision cushions were fitted to the front and rear compartments, but for some reason they had failed to deploy.

	because of the second vehicle's greater structural strength there was much less of the engine sitting in the driver's lap, but his condition seemed no different to the two who had died in the green car except for the greater degree of haemorrhaging.

	"Let's get him out," said Malcolm, gripping the man behind the knees. Ann put her hands under his armpits and they lifted in unison, but the man was stuck fast.

	Malcolm felt around for the obstruction, trying to ignore the warm, red droplets which struck bis cheek every time the man exhaled. He felt, then saw, the support bracket from the dividing wall which had pierced the seat upholstery and gone deeply into the lumbar region.

	"Look," Malcolm said harshly, and pointed. His wife stared at the length of metal which held the man like an enormous fish-hook, then she sighed and opened the medical bag.

	"Look," said the dying man weakly, and began to cough.

	He was conscious and, judging by the way he had repeated Malcolm's last word, not mentally lucid — the pain stimuli engulfing the brain was probably responsible for that since there was no signs of cranial damage. But anyone who was trying so hard to talk as he was had to have something serious on his mind, something he wanted to tell someone before he died.

	It was strange, Malcolm thought, that in this largely Godless age confession was still considered good for the soul — so much so that special laws were in force which gave a dying person the right to choose whether he would accept pain-killing medication or go on suffering so that his last words could go to his friends or next-of-kin. Malcolm took out a terminal tape.

	"You have something to tell me?" he said loudly in the man's ear, then switched on. "Look," said the dying man.

	Malcolm glanced at Ann, who had already drawn up a massive dose of instant oblivion, and shook his head. If the man wanted to talk he had to be given the chance even if the extent of his present ability to converse was just one parroted word, that was the law. Maybe the man began every sentence with 'Look' the way many people said 'Well' or 'Basically'. Quickly he tapped for rewind and replay to check the recorder's functioning. The man's amplified voice repeated 'Look', and he switched back to record.

	"Tell me about it," he said.

	The man tried very hard to tell him about it, but for a few seconds he could do nothing but cough uncontrollably, Malcolm said firmly, "I'll give you a shot."

	The other shook his head weakly and, with a visible effort, stifled his coughing. When he spoke his face was twisted with pain as he said, "We all ... live on ... Right!"

	"Go on, friend," said Malcolm.

	"This was ... sheer stupidity," he gasped out. "Norton got careless and I had to ... Are they both dead?" 

	"Yes," said Malcolm. 

	"You ... sure?" 

	"Yes."

	"I'm glad," said the man in a stronger voice. "Too many nice, stupid people here as it is. They shouldn't have been allowed together in the car ... Safe on an empty stretch of motorway and ... so sure of themselves they didn't think I would listen ... Damn them, why had it to be me ...?"

	Both Ann and himself had recorded a great many last words in their time and had heard it all before, the last concerned, encouraging messages to loved ones; the confession of some grievous or petty crime, and even a comparatively few like this one who simply railed against an unkind Fate.

	The driver was still talking clearly despite the pain the effort was costing him. Malcolm should have felt sympathy for the man's condition, and he did — but he was sure that the sympathy would have been much greater if the driver had not insisted on blaming the accident on the people in the green car who had, after all, been in the correct lane and heading in the right direction!

	"... Norton should have guessed what was happening," the driver was saving. His angry, accusatory tone was the same but the subject seemed to have changed during Malcolm's temporary absence of mind. "He deserves dropping a full grade for that. But those two stupid Johns were really ... Are you sure they're dead?"

	Perhaps the subject had not changed. Feeling confused, Malcolm said, "You are the only survivor, friend."

	"They planned to tell the locals everything," the man went on. His voice had grown weaker although he had managed to control the coughing. "Everything, even about Bea. It was to be a last try at doing things their way. Selected locals for indoctrination ... scaring them into behaving sensibly. It couldn't work at this late stage, but embarrassing to us ... if the locals really knew what was going on ... Too late for politics now ... Guardian ... must report ... soon as ..."

	The tension lines around the driver's mouth and eves were beginning to ease as the steady drop in blood supply brought diminished sensitivity to pain. But he was fighting desperately to speak and. for a few seconds, he won.

	"Stop me from dying, damn you," he said angrily, "I haven't finished talking ..."

	But he had.

	Malcolm closed the man's eyes and spoke the date, time, cause and circumstances of the death into the recorder. As he rose to his feet Ann said something which he did not catch because of the raucous braying of an approaching police tender.

	The vehicle stopped in unnecessarily dramatic fashion a few yards short of the wreckage. Its siren died and an officer, moving awkwardly in full riot armour, climbed out. He inclined his head towards the two wrecks.

	"Survivors?"

	Malcolm shook his head. "Tapes?"

	"One," said Malcolm, pointing. "His."

	While he was giving it to the officer, another armoured figure carrying a cutting torch climbed from the tender and approached to begin separating the human from the metallic debris. The few early cyclists, with anything up to twenty miles between them and their work blocks, wheeled past on the unpowered lane without any show of interest.

	The officer said, "Thank you. Were any of the casualties related or otherwise known to you?"

	They both shook their heads.

	"We'll handle it. then." he said. His mouth was the only feature visible behind the riot visor, and it smiled briefly. "Enjoy the rest of your rest day."

	Malcolm scarcely heard him. He was thinking about the words of the dying driver. Guardian, the man had said, and stupid Johns. Had he meant Followers of John, perhaps, like young Tommy's Big Mary? Malcolm remembered what some Guardian or Guardians had done to old Hesketh and to his living block. He knew that he should tell the police officer of his knowledge and of the possible connection with the dead driver. But Sergeant Telford had been so very insistent that they keep everything that they had learned from the old man's tapes Strictly to themselves ...

	The sun was still low in the sky and the city quiet at this early hour. As they remounted and rode away the air was filled with the sour smell of the discharged anti-fire cartridge and the sweet strings of Scheherazade coming from the green wreck.

	They had ridden more than a mile before Ann broke the silence, as she usually did when in her opinion he had had more thoughtful silence than was good for him, by giving him something physical to think about. On this rather too public occasion she had to be content with giving his horse a slap on the rump and shouting "Giddy-up!"

	Obviously her theory was that it would be impossible to think morbid thoughts while trying to hang on to a galloping horse.

	For several minutes they indulged in a spell of illegal racing, passing a trio of meticulously casual executive types walking their dark grey mounts. One of the animals had a white flash on its forehead, indicating that its rider was pretty high on his company's ladder — another rung and he would rate a car. He would then be in a position to spend half of his salary buying fuel for it so that he could tear about the country's virtually deserted road system, and be the envy of all his friends until he ran over a mugger mine or became an RTA fatal like the people in this morning's smash ...

	He shook his head angrily. It was possible to be morbid on a galloping horse.

	A major road junction, containing the usual TV traffic monitors overlooking a weaving, shouting and bell-ringing whirlpool of cyclists, was coming up just ahead. The watchers on traffic duty at police' headquarters would not be too concerned about an innocent, early morning race in which nobody was at risk. But if a Mid-Upper mounted like Ann or himself was to knock over and injure a worker cyclist or pedestrian, that would be an altogether different matter.

	Incidents of that kind, like the distribution of counterfeit alms to extricate oneself from the attentions of too-persistent beggars, or public lying to avoid personal inconvenience, were considered to be serious crimes of psychological violence against one's less fortunate fellow man. Such crimes in the past had been the direct cause of city-wide rioting, and Mid-Upper culprits would be lucky if they were merely reduced to spending the remainder of their lives as walkers on the wheel.

	Malcolm had learned discretion over the years and he had never ever been valorous. They reduced their horses' pace to a walk and prepared to enter the maelstrom.

	Traffic on the roundabout, which had four entry and exit points for unpowered traffic, had still to reach its rush-hour peak. Malcolm eyed the whirling mass of cyclists for a moment, then urged his horse forward to get on the inside of a tandem which had an infant's saddle mounted between the two adults seats. Even the worst-mannered cyclists were inclined to give way to a family bike. But not today.

	He had been right in thinking that the tandem intended leaving the roundabout by the exit Ann and he wanted to use. But the family bike was forced towards the central reservation by a solid stream of cyclists entering from the lane just before their intended exit. A few yards behind him Ann, who had been using a heavy delivery bike as a traffic buffer, succeeded in leaving at the correct exit, but Malcolm and the family tandem had to go round again. And again.

	Malcolm dropped behind the tandem, searching for a spot where the traffic was porous. But every time he found a gap, a cycle would rub its front wheel against the hind leg's of his mount or hurtle suicidally across his bows. He added a few choice epithets to the cacophony of bells, hooters and screamed curses all around him, he nudged his horse towards the safety of the central reservation.

	He felt, and he knew that he looked ridiculous standing on the circle of grass while the traffic whirled around him. But his horse was trembling despite its inbred docility and traffic training, and it was much better to feel temporarily embarrassed than to suffer the results of losing control of a mount in heavy traffic. He had never before encountered this type of traffic situation with so comparatively few cyclists using a junction, and suddenly he saw the reason.

	A steady stream of bikes, three or four abreast and with wheels overlapping, was using the roundabout as if it was a crossroads with the lights at green for them. The result was that one of the turn-offs was effectively closed to cyclists already on the roundabout and anyone trying to leave, by that exit was being forced to circle endlessly.

	The number of trapped cyclists and the emotional temperature was rising steadily at what was without doubt one of the most blatant acts of traffic intimidation that Malcolm had ever seen. He wondered why the traffic monitors had not already sent a police vehicle to deal with the situation. Something would have to be done quickly or there would be serious trouble.

	A few seconds later, it happened.

	There was a tinny crash and metallic scraping noises as two cyclists locked front wheels together and nose-dived over their handlebars. Following cyclists who braked or swerved to avoid the obstruction hit other bikes and added to the pile-up. In no time at all there was a large segment of the roundabout carpeted with overturned cycles and groaning, cursing people and traffic was at a standstill.

	Skirting the fringe of the pile-up, Malcolm rode across to join his wile using the clear area in the lee of the jam. Ann had already dismounted and was tugging angrily at the fastenings of her medical bag.

	"The next time I go for a picnic," she said, "remind me to paint my horse black ..."

	She broke off as a police siren announced the arrival of the law. The cyclist casualties had not heard it, evidently, or they were too angry to care.

	Malcolm had seen it all before on his living cubicle TV — the minor traffic incident which grew within a few minutes into a major riot situation. This one was following the classic pattern for rush-hour traffic rioting. There was the few minutes' immobility while the casualties lay bruised or bleeding beside their cycles. Because of the low speeds involved the injuries were usually superficial, and many of the casualties were already struggling to their feet and holding their precious bikes above their heads while they stepped over, but more frequently on, the other cyclists who were still too dazed or too entangled in their machines to get up.

	Tempers flared and kicks were exchanged as the people on their feet tried to extricate themselves and their cycles from the pile-up and resume their journey.

	The uninjured cyclists who were simply immobilised by the jam got impatient as well and tried to do the same. The people on the ground objected to being walked on, and violently.

	Men and women, supposedly responsible citizens, began tearing into each other with fists, feet, teeth or fingernails. Some of them were battering at each other with their bicycles, using the machines like great, awkward, ludicrous clubs. The screams of pain and abuse, the murderous savagery and the features of the young, old, pretty and plain distorted by hatred made Malcolm's teeth clench painfully together and every muscle in his body tighten up. It was as if the insanity of the rioters was an airborne contagion which was spreading to everyone within sight or hearing.

	Stop it! he screamed silently to them. Think! Don't be so blasted impatient ...!

	There could be no doubt that impatience was the root cause of such riots, reinforced by frustration, hunger, short temper, pride and a stubborn insistence on a cyclist's rights of the road. To arrive a few minutes early at factory, cyclists would willingly risk life and limb. They considered themselves to be the working elite, members of the semi-skilled trades whose position entitled them to live away from their factory complex instead of in a thousand-bed dormitory in one of the pedestrian hives adjoining their places of work. The first step up the ladder was always the most satisfying, Malcolm thought, and corporals were invariably more in-sufferable than sergeants.

	It was a police sergeant who brought him back to present time by tapping him on the shoulder with his club while he proffered a set of masks with the other hand.

	Malcolm fought down a sudden and completely senseless flare of anger, then nodded his thanks. He said, "I suppose you have to use gas ...?"

	The sergeant's tone was impatient as he replied, "This is the fifth such incident this morning, Doctor, and rush hour hasn't officially started yet. If we tried to he gentle the casualties would be even heavier. But you of all people should know that."

	"I know it," said Malcolm, adding silently, but I don't have to like it.

	Ann already had her mask in position and was slipping the transparent filter-bag over the horse's head. Malcolm did likewise, thinking that the masks were police issue and dependable, unlike the over-priced and highly illegal kind available on the black market. By the time he was finished, the thumping of gas grenades landing among the rioters was being replaced by the indescribable sound of a great many people trying to turn themselves inside-out.

	Within a few minutes the gas had dispersed. The policemen and Malcolm, aided by a dozen or so cyclists who had escaped the worst effects of the gas, began dragging the casualties and their bikes clear of the roundabout. The whole purpose of the minor police action had been to restore the flow of traffic and, ten minutes after the air had been declared by the senior police officer to be safe for unprotected lungs, it was moving again. Of secondary importance was the untidy mass of casualties and bikes at the roadside. They would require much more time to clear.

	Surprisingly, there had been no fatalities and only one ambulance was needed to move the people who were incapable of moving themselves — the incident had been sickened out before any real damage had been done. Injuries inflicted by fists, feet and hand-held bicycles could be visually dramatic and undeniably painful, but a few sutures and the indicated medication were enough to put such casualties on the road again.

	It was past mid-day when the last one, still sweating and pale from the after-effects of the regurgitive gas, wobbled away. Ann went back to the horses to replace the two seriously depleted medical satchels while Malcolm headed for the police vehicle to return the gas-masks, before he had gone more than a few yards the officer in charge came out to meet him.

	"Thank you for the second time today," the officer said. "You have been seriously inconvenienced and ..." he broke off as Ann joined them, then added, "What are your plans for the rest of the day?"

	"A picnic in a secure park we were told about in District Eighteen," said Malcolm. "It's supposed to have real —"

	"No picnic," said Ann, in the very quiet tone which presaged a blow up of nuclear proportions. "All of the food is gone, plus a few other odds and ends."

	"It is a serious offence," said the officer, pushing back his riot visor for the first time, "to steal from a public servant during the execution of his duty. Frankly, I don't think there is much hope of catching the culprits, there are just too many of them these days. But the traffic monitor playbacks might give us a lead, and if the loot wasn't divided quickly—"

	"Forget it," said Malcolm. Ann's fuse was burning very short. "Consider the food as involuntary alms."

	"I see," said the officer, his expression showing too much cynicism for such a young man. "That is probably the wisest course in the circumstances."

	"Yes. yes indeed," said Ann, in a quietly furious voice. "Much less wasteful of public money, and less embarrassing to us personally and professionally if we were called on, as the offended parties, to remove the right hand of the thief after you had caught him."

	The officer's face was impassive as he said, "We didn't make that law, M'am. As for your plans for a picnic, forget them. Food is impossible to buy now in any district unless you are a resident of the area, and if you went looking you might survive but your horses wouldn't. The food shortage these past few weeks has been that bad."

	Ann was silent for a moment, then she said, "Please excuse my bad manners and unfriendly tone, citizen. It is just that I so badly wanted to escape for a few hours from that ... box ... we live in."

	"Very often," said the officer, "it is safer to bring the world into your box, should you be fortunate enough to have a TV, than to go outside and experience it at first hand. Besides, after your experiences of this morning, wouldn't you prefer to spend the rest of your rest-day resting?"

	"Yes, but..." began Ann.

	"We can tranquillise your horses," he went on, "and the tender is big enough to take them aboard. There is ample space in the compartment where we put the five cadavers from this morning's RTA. We can even offer you something to compensate you for the food which was stolen, as well as giving you a comfortable and safe ride back to the hospital. You have been very public-spirited and co-operative citizens, after all, and we owe you that much at least."

	He added, "I insist."

	Malcolm tried to swallow but found that his saliva had all gone. When a policeman insisted one had to do exactly as one was told.

Chapter Seven
Examination

	While the tender's crew busied themselves outside the vehicle, the Malcolms were handed two large-sized, self-heating ration packs and invited to relax and refuel and not to wait, because the officer had to make a few calls on his radio and get out of armour. The man's interest in them was worrying, but his uncharacteristic hospitality might well indicate that the interest was not professional. Eventually he would tell them what he wanted and, meanwhile, it had been more than six hours since Ann and himself had eaten.

	The officer left them alone for nearly half an hour, which was ample time for the Malcolms to finish their meal and begin taking an interest in their surroundings. They were in what seemed to be the vehicle's dormitory compartment and dining area, an eight foot square box containing six fold-away bunks in two tiers of three on opposite walls and a collapsible table between them. The wall facing the entrance contained recessed lockers except for a clear area near the roof where someone had attached a picture of a seascape.

	It showed an old-time sailing ship under storm canvas. The proportions of the vessel were slightly off, there were errors of draughtsmanship in parts of the rigging which indicated that the picture was an original and not a reproduction. Malcolm looked closer and saw that it was signed '2JR 2017'. Malcolm returned to his seat beside Ann — the two lowest bunks doubled as three-place dining chairs — just as the officer returned.

	Underneath the riot armour was the uniform of a full Inspector and an ID patch which said that the officer's name was R. J. Reynolds, he pulled out the bunk opposite theirs and sat down, the picture of a young, clean-cut, competent officer with features regular to the point of anonymity.

	He also paints in oils ... Malcolm thought.

	"I left you alone until you had finished," Reynolds said suddenly, because if I asked a favour of you while you were dining it might have seemed that the meal was payment in advance for the favour, which it is not. You are quite at liberty to refuse what I am about to ask."

	A scrupulous type, Malcolm thought, who was not used to asking favours. Aloud, he said. "Just ask. Inspector. Whether you intended it or not, we feel very pleasantly disposed towards you at the moment. We don't usually dine in such a—"

	"Neither do I," said Reynolds drily. "But we sometimes transport VIPs over long distances, and those two ration packs were meant for passengers whose trip was cancelled at the last moment. Stores department would have thought me mad if I'd returned them, and dividing hot rations among the crew-men would have been undignified and possibly harmful to discipline. Since your food had been stolen ..." He shrugged and left the sentence hanging.

	"What can we do for you?" said Ann, joining the conversation. Her tone was coolly clinical, the voice of a professional medic interested in diagnosis and treatment and not in making moral judgements. "Is it a medical problem? Some-thing of a personal nature, a social disease, perhaps?"

	"No," said Reynolds, his face turning pink. He almost smiled.

	Malcolm did not know why he was pleased that this particular policeman was not about to show a pair of outsize clay feet, but he was. He said, "Well then, what can we do for you, Inspector?"

	"Two things, if you will," said Reynolds briskly, "first, I would like you to recall as clearly as possible the details immediately preceding the collision you witnessed this morning. Then I would —"

	"Will it give us a headache?" Ann broke in, looking worried.

	Malcolm began to feel worried as well. A two hour interrogation under total recall medication — the maximum time allowed with citizens who were not under arrest for major crimes — caused severe mental confusion and a pounding headache which did not respond to any of the known palliatives. But Reynolds was shaking; his head.

	"Certainly not," he said. "The accident was reported, the scene examined and the case officially closed by my superiors. I am simply indulging my unofficial curiosity and you are the only people who can help me. You see, my observations at the scene do not entirely support the theory of a collision through accident or negligence. But I cannot say more at present for fear of influencing your recollections."

	His interest might he unofficial, Malcolm thought as he studied the inspector's too-impassive expression, but it was certainly intense.

	Ann began describing the incident from the time they had seen the two cars approaching on their respective lanes until the arrival of the inspector's vehicle. When Malcolm's turn came he could not add anything to his wife's version.

	"I see," said Reynolds. "Now I would like to take you through the incident again, this time together. We'll begin with the approach of the cars. Did you see them or hear them first and, if so, which?"

	"I heard the green car first," said Ann. "It was behind us and closer. When I faced forward again I saw the other car, much farther away."

	"But moving faster?"

	"No, I don't think so."

	"It was moving at about the same speed," said Malcolm joining in. "I remember the way the car windows flashed as they ran in and out of the shadows of the buildings. The sunlight was hitting them with roughly the same degree of regularity."

	"But if they were moving towards each other at the same speed," said Reynolds, "and the green car was much closer to you, the collision should have occurred a considerable distance ahead of you. Distances and closing speeds can be deceptive and ..." he broke off, looked at each of them in turn, then went on, "Neither of you think you were deceived, judging by your mutinous expressions. So, we'll go to the point a few seconds before the black car went through the marker cones and entered the outgoing lane. Well?"

	"I think ... Yes, I heard it braking," said Malcolm. "Then it came through the barrier."

	Ann nodded agreement.

	"Did the black vehicle apply its brakes more than once?" asked the inspector, "and did you see or hear it skidding?"

	Malcolm thought for a moment, then said, "I heard it braking just once, that was the only time it made more noise than the other car. I think it was a steady application of the brakes just before it swerved through the barrier cones.

	It didn't skid even then. He seemed to be a very good driver."

	"He was," said Reynolds. Turning to Ann, he went on, "Was that how you saw and heard it?"

	"Yes," said Ann. "I was looking from one car to the other. I saw them swerving to avoid each other but turning the wrong way. I could hear their brakes right up to the end."

	Malcolm shook his head. "No, dear. I was watching the black car for most of the time. After crashing the barrier it didn't brake at all."

	"Then," said Ann, "the green car's brakes were squealing loudly enough for both of them. Is it important?"

	"It explains," the inspector replied, "why the collision occurred where it did. One car closer to you and braking hard when they spotted the other in the wrong lane, while the black and more distant car did not brake at all. Result, a collision almost in your laps. Everything you've described is corroborated by the physical evidence at the scene. However, I have already told you that this investigation is unofficial. Anything else I tell you, or anything that you discover or deduce as a result of what you learn, must be kept strictly to yourselves."

	"Yes, of course, Inspector," said Ann, trying hard to hide her curiosity. Malcolm nodded, wondering if it would be better, after all, not to have his curiosity satisfied.

	"The driver of the black vehicle," said Reynolds, in the tone of one who has just taken a close decision and does not want to give himself the chance to change his mind, "was a police officer of equal rank to my own. We are required to maintain our driving proficiency no matter how much rank we carry, in case of driver casualties during vehicular operations. If for any reason we find ourselves moving along a powered vehicle lane in the wrong direction, and this can happen when we have to react quickly to a distant riot situation, we treat the lane as a two-way road and keep to the proper side. Citizen drivers are also aware of this doctrine. But if nervous citizen drivers are involved we invariably allow them to do the dodging.

	"Add to this the fact that the black vehicle was fitted with crash cushions triggered automatically by proximity sensors," the inspector continued, "and this highly effective safety system had, according to the vehicle's instrumentation, been manually deactivated a few seconds before the collision. The conclusion is obvious.

	For a few seconds there was silence, then Ann said, "You mean the driver deliberately crashed the car in order to kill himself?"

	Reynolds shook his head. "I didn't know him personally, only by reputation. Inspector Nelson was not the type to commit suicide."

	Malcolm said, "He didn't strike me as the suicidal type, either. He seemed very angry about dying, in fact." He was silent for a moment, then went, on, "But Inspector, if the people in the green car were the objective, surely there were ways of getting rid of them which didn't involve the driver's own death. Which means that the people who were meant to die were the passengers in his own vehicle. Some of the things he said on his terminal tape would support that theory. His passengers must have been doing something, or planning something, so terrible that your Inspector Nelson was looking for a chance to arrange a collision which would be fatal for them.

	"He must have been a very dedicated man to do a thing like that," Malcolm went on thoughtfully. "But being a policeman, I don't understand why he simply didn't arrest them. Unless he, too, was not acting within the law. The way he referred to his passengers was peculiar, as if he knew what they were doing and thought it stupid rather than wrong ..."

	Malcolm checked himself, thinking of Sergeant Telford, old Hesketh, the overdose and Big Mary. The sergeant had insisted that Ann and he did not discuss the Hesketh business. Perhaps the police driver, Nelson, had killed himself and his two passengers because they had been planning or discussing another operation like the massacre in the old man's living block. But the sergeant had said that they should not talk to anyone ...

	"Go on, Doctor," said Reynolds.

	"Nothing more," Malcolm said, trying to keep both his expression and tone neutral. "Maybe if we were to replay that tape—"

	"Forget the tape," Reynolds said harshly. In a quieter tone he went on, "For the present, at least. I need more ... physical ... evidence. Which is the reason why, as the second part of the favour I asked of you, I would like you to examine, thoroughly, the bodies of the three men who died in the black car. Obviously the people in the green car were innocent and —"

	"Three bodies? said Malcolm. "Surely you said one of them was a police inspector ..."

	"All three," repeated the inspector. "But I do not want a full autopsy. The bodies must not show any signs of a surgical investigation, because I do not want the next-of-kin or friends to know that an examination took place. Officially the incident was logged as a multiple RTA with five fatalities and the file is closed. My own interest is, for the time being, personal."

	"I understand," said Malcolm.

	Reynolds smiled coldly and said, "Do you understand? I certainly don't, at least, not fully. But will you do as I ask?"

	There was something about the inspector's tone which suggested that he was not asking a favour so much as making some kind of accusation. Hostile was the word which best described his manner, Malcolm thought. Perhaps he was so used to dealing with criminals that he had forgotten how to treat ordinary citizens.

	Malcolm nodded, then said, "I have a pocket x-ray scanner with a holograph recorder attachment in my kit. It is a very useful instrument but not, you understand, capable of detecting or analysing residual traces of non-metallic toxins, the psychodrugs, anything like that. It will chart organic damage, fractures, surgical implants or repair work, benign or malign growths, that sort of thing. It cannot —"

	"May I see this instrument?" the inspector broke in. Malcolm handed him the scanner and for nearly five minutes Reynolds examined it so thoroughly that at one stage he used a magnifying glass. Finally the inspector nodded and returned the instrument, saying, "A detailed examination with your scanner will be quite acceptable, Doctor. But a part of the favour I am asking is that when we discuss your findings it is somewhere private. Your quarters at the hospital, perhaps?"

	The favour, Malcolm thought angrily, was growing horns. But it was Ann who reacted first.

	"We don't have visitors, Inspector," she said firmly. "Our box is so small that —"

	"I won't inconvenience you for longer than is necessary," Reynolds broke in, "and I wouldn't force myself on you at all if the matter wasn't important. But first, I have a confession to make. I planned having a meeting with you today, to discuss the Hesketh business, the old man's tapes and some of the other possible leads which Sergeant Telford picked up in your ward. Remember, it was he who advised you on the route for your trip today, and he also said that you could be trusted to keep sensitive information to yourselves. Sergeant Telford is a good judge of character, usually, because the connection between the material obtained in your intensive care unit and the dialogue taped after today's collision is obvious, and you didn't tell me about it. Sergeant!"

	The sergeant entered the compartment and removed his visor. Apologetically, he said, "Sorry about this, Doctor, Sister. But we did need professional advice rather badly, and when the collision happened the chance was too good to miss ..."

	Reynolds cleared his throat and said, "The bodies are ready for examination. Sergeant Telford will help you to move them into whatever positions are necessary for your examination, he will also be there to remind you not to talk about anything you find until we return to the hospital."

	He might be asking a favour and making a confession, Malcolm thought, but his manner towards them remained suspicious, even wary.

	"What, exactly, are we trying to find out?" asked Malcolm, feeling irritated and baffled by the whole stupid business. "I suppose you can give us an idea, without influencing or prejudicing our findings in any way?"

	The inspector gave Malcolm a long, steady, penetrating stare which served only to increase the doctor's irritation. The sergeant stood quietly behind his superior, his stare equally intent but without the suspicion. They could hear the muffled thudding of their horses' hooves as the mounts were manhandled into the tender to be tranquillised. Finally, the inspector nodded, and spoke.

	"I want to know," he said quietly, "if they were human."

Chapter Eight
Consultation

	When they returned to the hospital Reynolds ordered his men to transfer the unconscious horses into the stable block, then he told the sergeant to stay with the tender and the rest of the crew to stand down for a couple of hours — the length of time, he explained, needed to arrange for the disposition of the RTA cadavers. He said that the crew could spend the time in the hospital's dining hall, but to keep their comm units switched on. They saluted and left at a near run.

	Despite their hurry to reach the dining hall they were nowhere near the point of starvation, but they were starved of safe, female company. In the hospital they had the chance to talk to girls who would not try to puncture their rib cages or dent their skulls with the nearest sharp or blunt instrument as soon as they saw the black City Security uniforms.

	Inspector Reynolds was silent as he accompanied the Malcolms to their room, and maintained the silence while Ann pulled out the furniture which converted their box into its daytime, living-room mode. When they were all seated with their feet drawn back under the fold-away chairs so as to give the impression that the floor area was bigger than it actually was, the inspector still had not spoken. He kept looking from Ann to Malcolm and back again, his expression suspicious rather than curious.

	"Would you like the results of our examination now, Inspector?" said Ann. "And or a cup of coffee?"

	"Not yet," said Reynolds, his eyes continuing to regard them in turn. "If there had been anything dramatic to report it would have shown in your expressions on the way here. You didn't react, so the news is probably disappointing, lather that or you both have become so adept at concealing your feelings, as a result of your ward experience, no doubt, that you are deliberately concealing your findings from me for reasons which —"

	"Inspector," Malcolm broke in sharply. Ann was beginning to look frightened. "Are we being accused of something? We thought we were helping you. And there would be no point in hiding our feelings or findings because the scanner took holograph pictures at every stage of the examination."

	"Yes, the scanner," said Reynolds, and sighed. He went on, "Perhaps I am not so much accusing you as worrying out loud, which is something I do only among people I think I can trust. In this particular matter there are very few people I can trust. As for the holographs, I'll examine them after we've listened to Nelson's terminal tape. I want you to listen carefully and tell me anything you may be able to deduce from it..."

	While he was speaking Reynolds's manner remained that of a trained, completely unemotional interrogator. Malcolm reminded himself that the other had, after all, only referred to people that he thought he could trust.

	"... We can accept that Inspector Nelson deliberately rammed the other car in order to kill his two passengers," the inspector went on. "Now, I know that Nelson was a very capable and psychologically stable officer, one who would not kill himself unless there were very strong reasons for doing so. People who do such things are driven by extreme dedication or fanaticism, depending on whose side you are supporting. Normally a police officer does not act like this, not without first reporting to someone or calling for help, which suggests that Nelson was not engaged on police business and the operation was a clandestine one.

	"But if the operation was secret," the inspector ended as he switched on the tape, "why did he talk about it so freely to you two?"

	Once again the dying driver said 'Look' and Malcolm tried not to remember the man's injuries and those of the two innocent bystanders in the other car. It seemed that Malcolm's entire adult life had been working on the organic wreckage of innocent bystanders, trying to repair the damage or to enable a drastically trimmed remnant to keep at least one channel of communication open to the world outside its limbless and eyeless body.

	There seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of IBs. Hundreds of them perished every day in bombings and armed protests in which they had no interest, while only a few of the activists died and then only when they became careless with their own bombs. This car smash had been pretty good in that respect — one, perhaps three baddies to two IBs...

	"Have you been listening, Doctor?" said Reynolds sharply.

	"Yes," said Malcolm in a matching tone.

	"Well?"

	Treat him like an irascible patient and stay calm, Malcolm told himself. Aloud, he said, "I agree that the police driver's primary intention was to kill his two passengers and that he had to act quickly on his own initiative. From the way he referred to Norton and the woman Bea, whoever they are, and selected people being trained somewhere, and his obvious feeling of superiority over what he called the nice, stupid people, that is the sort of talk I associate with political action groups, minority conspirators or, to use the old-fashioned word, terrorists. The ordinary people of this world are just a resource, a store of consumables to be used or destroyed by all these tiny minorities who insist that they know what is best for the majority and ..."

	Reynolds cleared his throat, then said, "You are wandering off the subject, Doctor. Why would a member of such a conspiracy, a senior member, obviously, or he would not have been willing to give his life for the cause, why would he unburden himself to a couple of medics, total strangers, who happened to be nearby?"

	"Possibly he mistook us for members of the same conspiracy," said Malcolm.

	"Which you're not?"

	"Is that a statement or a question?"

	"The fact still remains," Reynolds went on, ignoring the question, "that he either knew you or recognised something you did Or said, which made him think that you were one of his own people. What could it have been?"

	Malcolm thought for a moment, then said, "Inspector, the man was in very poor shape, dying and possibly delirious with pain. Maybe he wanted very badly to be among his friends, or co-conspirators, and mistook me for one of them."

	"No," said Ann firmly, joining in. "I agree about his physical condition, but he refused a painkilling shot, remember, and he was in complete control of his mental processes to the end. There was no eye damage, so he was able to see both of us while he was talking. And we didn't do anything that medics would not be expected to do in the same circumstances."

	"So it must have been something one of you said," Reynolds went on. "Something he must have mistaken for a verbal recognition signal, a password. What exactly did you say before you switched on the recorder?"

	Malcolm described the brief conversation between Ann and himself from the time he joined her at the black car and discovered that the driver was impaled on a metal support bracket.

	"But what did you say, exactly?"

	"Nothing much, Inspector," Malcolm replied. "I pointed at the piece of metal in his back and said 'Look'."

	Ann nodded agreement and said, "Then the driver came to and said 'Look' as well. I thought he was confused and repeating the first word he'd heard after regaining consciousness. Or that he was the aggressive type who prefixes sentences with 'Look' or 'See here'. He seemed to be an aggressive type."

	"Then what?" said Reynolds.

	"I took out my recorder and asked him if he had something to tell me," Malcolm replied. "Then I switched on and he said 'Look' again. I played back the word to make sure that the recorder was working, and the rest of the conversation is on the tape ..."

	He broke off, his mind going back to the intensive care unit and old Hesketh and Tommy's Big Mary and even the female overdose whose unresponsive John was probably a coincidence. Then there had been the police officer, the victim of an assassination attempt, in cubicle Two. According to Sergeant Telford he had been a pretty tough character, but under neomorph he had kept repeating 'Look. Look, help me ...' Could that be a coincidence as well?

	"... Give me a moment to go over the incident again," Malcolm continued, wondering where all his saliva had gone. "I said 'Look' when I showed Ann the piece of metal in his back. He came to and said 'Look'. I asked him if he had anything to tell me and he, naturally cautious about giving information to the wrong people, said 'Look' again. I didn't reply but the recorder did it for me when I tested it by replaying his voice saying 'Look'. People rarely recognise their own voices on tape, and this man was in bad shape, dying, so his mistake was understandable. When I told him to tell me about it he, well, told me about it."

	Malcolm reached forward and took the terminal tape from the inspector, then tapped for replay.

	"Tell me about it," he heard himself saying and "I'll give you a shot of..."

	"We all... live on ... Right?" came the gasping reply.

	"Go on, friend."

	"This was ... sheer stupidity. Norton got careless and I had to ... Are they both dead?"

	"Yes."

	"You sure?"

	"Yes."

	"I'm glad. Too many nice, stupid people here as it is. They shouldn't have been allowed together in the car. Safe on an empty stretch of motorway and ... so sure of themselves they didn't think I would listen ... Damn them, why did it have to be me?

	"Norton should have guessed what was happening. He deserves dropping a full grade for that. But these two stupid Johns were really... You sure they're dead?"

	"You are the only survivor, friend."

	"They planned to tell the locals everything. Everything, even about Bea. It was to be a last try at doing things their way. Selected locals for indoctrination ... scaring them into behaving sensibly. It couldn't work at this stage, but embarrassing to us if the locals knew what was going on. Guardian, must report soon as ... Stop me from dying, damn you. I haven't finished talking ..."

	Malcolm tossed the recorder hack to the inspector, who said, "I know that there is a widespread conspiracy in existence, probably political, and I suspect that some of the higher level Followers of John are a part of it. Hut that driver, Nelson, was treating you as a colleague and, well, could it have been something about the way you were dressed? By itself, 'Look' is much too common a word."

	Malcolm ignored the suspicion in the other's tone because a great and wonderfully simple idea had just hit him. He said excitedly, "Suppose the word was not 'Look' as in see, Inspector, but Luke as in the disciple."

	For a long time there was silence, then the inspector nodded and said, "You're probably right. We know about the Followers of John. They are a non-denominational, quasi-religious group preaching, re-educating they call it, a message of conservation and population control through self-discipline. They are Johns preaching in the new and polluted wilderness of today, but some of them are quite fanatical about it. Perhaps there is a splinter group, with their own ideas of how best to achieve their objectives, which follows Luke. There are strong indications of the existence of two opposing factions, not just in this city but in large population centres all over the world, which might or might not be the Johns and Lukes. Both groups are utterly ruthless where innocent bystanders are concerned, and if the massacre at Hesketh's living block is any guide ..."

	Reynolds's voice had risen in pitch as he had been speaking. He checked himself, looking embarrassed at his temporary loss of self-control, then went on, "That is one of the reasons why I wanted to know if the people in the police vehicle were truly human."

	Ann opened her mouth to speak, changed her mind and began making coffee instead. It was left to Malcolm to pass on the bad news.

	He said, "You are completely wrong, Inspector, no matter how many reasons you have for thinking otherwise. Allowing for the damage and displacement of internal organs caused by the collision, there was nothing unusual about the cadavers. Your Inspector Nelson and one of his passengers were remarkably fit for their age, which I would place somewhere in the early fifties. Neither had undergone major surgery although there were indications of plastic surgery being performed a long time ago, along the line of Nelson's jaw and to the passengers' noses and ears.

	"Both men were in the habit of dying their hair," he continued. "Nelson dyed his darker, the other man several shades lighter. Of course, we know of people who prefer to look older and more distinguished.

	"The third man," Malcolm went on, "was in his mid-sixties, physical condition very poor, undernourished and with a well-developed carcinoma of the stomach. I can go into the clinical picture in more detail if you like, but the condition would have been terminal within a year. Apart from this and the cosmetic surgery performed on the other two, who were physically very similar, they were ordinary human cadavers. I'm sorry about that, Inspector."

	Reynolds did not discourage easily. He said, "Is it possible that the bodies contained something unusual and difficult to detect? A mechanism or product of a highly-advanced biotechnology which might —"

	"We were very thorough," Malcolm broke in. "If any metal or plastic device or remote control mechanism had been implanted anywhere, its presence, would have registered. The same applies to objects of an organic nature, such as possible symbiotic or parasitic organisms of reasonable dimensions, say half an inch or more in diameter. The scanner is a very sensitive instrument."

	"Yes," said Reynolds, "the scanner."

	There was something about the inspector's tone as he said the words which made Ann stop making noises with the coffee cups, and made Malcolm suddenly afraid.

	"What about the scanner, Inspector?"

	"It worries me, Doctor," said Reynolds. "Gadgets like your scanner turn up in all kinds of places, but usually in hospitals or important government establishments, and in large numbers. The people who have them, you, for example, take them very much for granted. They are legacies of the pre-Powerdown days, of the advanced technology which we can no longer support. One can read on them the date of manufacture, the trademark or company name, the operating instructions. But if one is sufficiently interested or suspicious to search through the old records, one finds that pre-Powerdown technology was never that good.

	"And another thing that worries me about this business, Doctor," he added very seriously, "is that Luke was a physician ..."

	There was a loud thump and the floor twitched under their feet. A big one, thought Malcolm, and inside the hospital." The inspector was standing, ready to run for the door. Ann was bent forward slightly, frozen in the act of offering Reynolds the coffee tray, and her face was white.

	"What ... What inhuman monster," she said furiously, "would explode a bomb inside a hospital?"

	"Now," said Reynolds, sitting down again, "you're getting the idea."

Chapter Nine
Bomb Blast Victim

	The room's communicator gave the rapid triple chime which denoted an emergency, cleared its throat and said, "Internal emergency. Category Three explosion, vehicle reception area, Bay Twenty-five. Medical and maintenance staff in Blue Block not currently engaged on urgent work stand by for instructions."

	"Bay Twenty-five, is that where we left the sergeant....?" began the inspector, but it was the communicator which answered him.

	"Current Category Three update. Superficial structural damage to Bays Nineteen to Twenty-seven. Preliminary casualty count. Dead, eight. Seriously injured, twenty plus. Superficially injured and ambulatory, fifty plus. Fatalities include occupants of a police vehicle, which exploded."

	"Telford," said the inspector harshly. "I have to get down there."

	Malcolm reached forward quickly and placed both hands on the inspector's shoulders, pressing him back into his seat. He said, "You can't go there just yet because —"

	Once again the communicator said everything that was necessary.

	"Current Category Three, instructions. The following teams will report at once to the vehicle reception area. Heavy Rescue Eight, Casualty Eleven and Twelve. All internal transport litters and drivers supporting these teams. All other medical and non-medical staff will remain outside this area until further notice.

	"Medical staff wishing to study rescue and casualty evacuation procedures may view the site on their TV instructional channels Ten and Seventeen. Channel Ten is suggested for non-medical observers since the close-up sequences on Seventeen may prove distressing.

	"Repeat. No medical or support staff other than those specified are to be present at the scene of the explosion."

	"Do you want to see it?" asked Malcolm. "In close-up," replied the inspector.

	The TV screen showed the area already filled with rescue and medical teams lifting and dragging away wreckage and, more gently, carrying away or covering up the bloody things they found underneath. Structural damage in the area was minor because the heavily armoured vehicle had contained most of the force of the explosion within itself. But it had fragmented like a monstrous hand-grenade, hurling chunks of its engine, transmission and armour plating in all directions. Two objects of roughly human shape and size were staining the white foam which the rescuers had dumped on the vehicle's burning fuel.

	"Is there a chance," said the inspector in a quiet and much too controlled voice, "that the sergeant could have survived?"

	Malcolm did not reply because the TV camera was tracking in close-up over the debris close to the centre of the explosion. It was like a low-level flight over an alien landscape composed of enormous, semi-solid gobbets of foam, pieces of twisted and red-flecked metal and great, pallid lengths of intestinal material as well as other bits of organic wreckage which were not readily identifiable. There had been five already dead bodies in the police vehicle so that they were not necessarily seeing the remains of Sergeant Telford. As reassuringly as he could, Malcolm pointed out this possibility to the inspector.

	Reynolds turned away from the screen, his face pale and his lips pressed tightly together. But he was not sick, just angry — angrier than Malcolm had ever seen a man become in all his life. Beside the inspector, Ann was angry, too.

	"Were you responsible," she said furiously. "For bringing a vehicle with explosives aboard into a hospital?"

	"Easy, Ann ..." began Malcolm.

	"When we left the vehicle," said the inspector coldly, "there were no explosives on board. The armoury held nothing but anti-riot weapons."

	"You're sure?"

	"Quite sure."

	Ann nodded, but she was still angry as she went on, "He was a nice man, and I'm glad he or you had no part in that explosion. But what kind of person could set off a bomb in a hospital? Outside there is a sort of sick logic to some of the terrorism. But in here we never take sides. We only try to put people back together again after the nutcases have blown them apart. The ones who did this must be utterly without human feeling!"

	"That's right," said Reynolds quietly.

	Ann was silent for a moment, then she said, "Are you suggesting that the explosion is part of your conspiracy?"

	"I find it hard to believe, and harder to understand," said Ann, still in an angry, aggressive tone. "Especially the extraterrestrial aspect. I might be able to understand a bunch of criminal lunatics, driven by boredom and halucinogenic drugs into believing that they are being ordered to carry out these bombings and murders by some non-human super-being. But you wanted to know if these cadavers were human, and they were, human. As human as you are, Inspector."

	Reynolds returned his attention to the TV screen before she had finished talking. He said, "Can we be sure that Telford was killed, that he is not lying somewhere with information on the bombing that I need to —"

	"Are you interested in his physical condition," Ann broke in, "or his information?"

	"Stop it, Ann!" said Malcolm sharply. He started to apologise to the inspector, trying to explain that as a sister on the ward she was cool, clinical and outwardly unaffected by the illness and injuries all around her, but that when she was off duty she could become very angry and emotional about unnecessary death and suffering, and her anger was usually directed at the person nearest to her at the time. But then he saw that Reynolds had not taken offence, and he realised that the other was experienced in dealing with people under stress and knew that there were situations in which the things said were not necessarily the things which were meant.

	"If Sergeant Telford was wearing his ID tag," said Malcolm, reassuringly, "it will be found and his name added to the casualty list. This may take a little time, especially if he is seriously injured when we would be more interested in giving him assistance than worrying about the identity of the patient. The list will be shown on the screen as soon as the information becomes available."

	Reynolds nodded and continued watching the TV.

	"I'm sorry, Inspector," said Ann suddenly. "None of this is your fault, of course. The maddening thing about it is that it isn't anybody's fault when you get right down to it. Or maybe it is everybody's fault, if you want to blame population pressure and wasted natural resources and such. But you want to blame an allegedly extra-terrestrial conspiracy. Apparently you base this theory on gadgets which are a carry-over from better technological times and the often inhuman behaviour of the conspirators …"

	"I'm beginning to wonder," Reynolds broke in, "if I was right in telling you anything at all about the conspiracy. Neither you nor your husband are deeply involved as yet, and it might be safer if you both kept out of it. I may be considered old-fashioned, but I still believe that a policeman's job includes protecting the innocent."

	Ann looked steadily at him for a moment. When she spoke it was in the friendly, no-nonsense, tone she usually reserved for patients or junior doctors who needed straightening out. She said, "I'm glad you're an old-fashioned policeman, Inspector. But isn't it possible that you are also old-fashioned in your feelings about the human race, and about the essential decency of the majority of people? Feeling as you do, you might not want to believe that all the frightfulness of present-day society is the responsibility of these same human beings, so you are looking for outsiders, evil spirits, foreign devils or even extra-terrestrial scapegoats to blame for the trouble. But the truth is that it is being caused by people like ourselves. Physically like ourselves, I hasten to add. The only thing strange about those three cadavers was their lack of ID tags.

	"I'm sorry to prove you wrong, Inspector," she went on, "but you already knew the driver, Nelson, and we will know the identities of the others, and you will be able to check back on their similarly terrestrial backgrounds, very shortly."

	"How?" said the inspector.

	Ann frowned slightly because it was obvious that her attempt to talk some sense into the inspector was not having any success. She said, "ID tags are useful so far as contacting a patient's next-of-kin is concerned. But we usually need information on blood group, allergies, previous illnesses and operations, in short, the complete physiological picture. Usually we need this information very quickly, so the hospital has been extended the facility of automatic access to Central Records."

	"I didn't know that," said the inspector, looking thoughtful.

	"Then you have complete physiological data on every citizen, Low-Middle and above?"

	Before she could reply the scene on the TV screen dissolved to be replaced by a list of names and basic ID data. The first casualty lists were coming up.

	The display showed eight names of people whose remains had been retrieved from the site of the explosion. Three of them were hospital personnel and the remaining five were the people who had already died in the RTA that morning, a young married couple called Braithwaite, the police officer Nelson, a professor of sociology called Crawford, and Jennings, the city's chief administrator, no less!

	"Why," said Malcolm, "should your Inspector Nelson want to kill off a famous sociologist and the First Citizen."

	Reynolds did not reply because a new list had flashed on to the screen. Headed 'Seriously Injured', it was a much longer list and the names were tagged with the ward numbers to which the casualties had been sent and coded symbols relating to their physical condition and prognoses. All were hospital staff with one exception whose name was Police Sergeant J. S. Telford.

	"He wasn't killed!" the inspector burst out, in a tone of excitement and relief. "Can I talk to him?"

	Malcolm looked at the coded symbols against the sergeant's name and said caustically, "Surely you mean can he talk to you. I doubt it but I'll ask."

	He cleared the screen and tapped for two-way vision to the intensive care unit. A few seconds later the features of Chiak appeared. He said, "ICU monitor room."

	"A patient enquiry, Doctor," said Malcolm. "Telford J. S., a police sergeant. Friend of mine. Can you tell me if —"

	"I was expecting you to call, Doctor," Chiak broke in. "He had a terminal tape addressed to you and your wife. You should have it shortly."

	"Thank you. He'll survive?"

	"Judge for yourself."

	Chiak's face was replaced by one of the monitor screen pictures on to which had been projected the patient's pulse, blood pressure, cardiac activity and the details of his injuries and the positions of the pieces of metal still within his body. Telford's breathing had been taken over by a ventilator which was pushing air into his lungs through an endotracheal tube, and more tubing curled upwards and into IV saline, medication and blood transfusion bottles and down from the more serious wounds into water-sealed receptacles. The draining wounds were covered by loose dressings and the green towels which made the bleeding look less distressing to visitors and next-of-kin. Removal of all four limbs was indicated to tidy up the traumatic amputation performed by flying metal from the exploding vehicle. Pieces of metal had broken the dorsal vertebrae in two places, there was kidney damage and the eyes had gone, as had part of the inferior maxilla, otherwise cranial damage was superficial.

	The nurse by Telford's bed had the too-composed look of someone who has seen it all before but has never quite got used to it.

	The picture flicked off and was replaced by the face of Chiak again, who said, "Is he married, Doctor? Any close relatives?"

	Malcolm looked quickly at the inspector, who shook his head twice, then said, "No to both."

	"Doesn't surprise me since he wanted you to have his last tape." said Chiak. "However, we will probably be able to keep him alive if ... Are you really a friend of his?"

	Chiak's eves stared straight out of the screen at him for the few interminable seconds it took for Malcolm to reply.

	"Yes, a very good friend."

	The other doctor sighed, nodded, and broke the connection.

	Impulsively, Ann put her hand on Malcolm's shoulder and said, "He was a nice, friendly policeman."

	"And he still is a good policeman," Reynolds said harshly. "Knowing that we can't completely trust some of the people at headquarters, he sent that tape to you knowing that I would get it as quickly as possible ..." The inspector hesitated, then in a quieter tone he went on, "You hardly knew the sergeant and yet you said he was a good friend, you used your influence on his behalf to ... Anyway, I am deeply grateful."

	Ann turned away without speaking and began to clear away the coffee things, and Malcolm was saved from having to make a reply by the arrival of an orderly with the Telford tape.

	According to Reynolds, the sergeant's parents had been killed in a food riot several years earlier and he was too much of a career man to marry — and much too fine a policeman to say anything which did not have a hearing on the case currently under investigation. But there was a strange and uncharacteristic whining note in the sergeant's taped voice, a petty, shrewish quality which made Malcolm feel embarrassed just listening to it.

	"This tape is for Doctor and Sister Malcolm," Telford had said. "They live in box Green-4151, City Hospital Complex ..."

	"Why is he talking like that?" said Ann.

	Reynolds stopped the tape momentarily to say, "To protect both of you, I'd say. Nobody, no matter how morbidly curious they are, would want to listen to the last words of a voice like that."

	"... I'm in bad trouble, friends," the voice went on, gratingly, "a big black mark, letting the men go like that. My chief turned up suddenly in plain clothes and blew his top about the crew-members being off-duty. Said I could forget promotion for the next five years, and so could they. Said the cadavers on board should have been notified long since, and I was not considering the feelings of their next-of-kin who had a right to know what had happened to them. He said I was to stay put while he went to check on the stiffs and while he rounded-up the crew-members. I don't think he'll do anything to them, and with the inspector off duty today it was all my fault. He is fair, but strict, and has these high ethical standards that give me a pain.

	"I know you don't know him," the whining voice went on, "but maybe if you looked him up you could use your influence, tell him I was sick, disorientated, or something. He might believe a couple of medics. I don't want to get a memo with those initials on it telling me I've ... Still, maybe it's hopeless. The silly old fool dyes his hair and there's no telling how a person like that will react."

	Telford had stopped talking at that point and switched off the recorder, but before the inspector could speak the sergeant's voice returned. This time the whining, ingratiating tone was subtly different, as if there was real rather than pretended anxiety in the voice.

	"The silly fool left his briefcase in the vehicle loo," the voice went on. "I better get out quick and try to find him, there might be something important in it and he might go easier on me if I..." They heard the muffled sounds of movement and the vehicle's door being opened before the recorder was switched off again.

	The sergeant, Malcolm thought, was doing a very thorough job of character assassination on himself. When his voice came again it was still that of a spiteful, small-minded man, which Telford was not.

	"I can't see him around, dammit," it said, "and I've left the door of the vehicle open. There are hospital people going past all the time, and if one of them went in and stole that briefcase while I was away there would be serious trouble. I'd better go back and try to —"

	There was a discordant squawk as a loud noise overloaded the microphone. The voice did not come back, and for several minutes they listened to the rustling of virgin tape until the inspector switched it off and spoke.

	"Very well," he said quietly. "On the. surface the things Sergeant Telford said were unimportant, petty. But remember that he had to get the information to me quickly, which meant going through you two. The sergeant has a very high opinion of both of you and the form of the message was designed to protect you from any suspicion of involvement in this. He even tried to protect me, knowing that our crew can be trusted to keep quiet about my unofficial investigations. These people are violent, as you know, and utterly ruthless.

	"What he was really telling us," Reynolds went on, "is that someone high in City Security, not his chief, obviously, because that is me, turned up in plain clothes. The things this man told the sergeant about staying with the vehicles are true. I should think, but a high ranking officer like that would not go chasing after crew-members. When the man left Telford must have noticed that he was no longer carrying his briefcase and suspected that there was a bomb in it. When he discovered where the briefcase had been hidden he was pretty sure there was a bomb in it, and he got out fast. It was instinctive.

	"But then he realised that there were a lot of hospital personnel dangerously close to the bomb," the inspector continued, ".and he wanted to give a warning. The bit about him being afraid the briefcase would be stolen was sheer camouflage, of course. But he couldn't give a warning without letting the members of the conspiracy know that we knew a lot about them, including the fact that one of them was the top man in City Security. So he had to choose whether he would protect us or the innocent bystanders. he must have tried to do both and was on the way back to try to de-fuse the bomb when it blew up."

	"The man who planted the bomb, Inspector," said Malcolm, "do you know him?"

	"Oh yes," Reynolds replied. "There was the mention of his strictness and high ethical standards coupled with the fact that he dyed his hair. He was the sergeant's chief, and my chief, too. But the dyed hair clinches the identification beyond doubt. I can remember the talk there was about it a couple of years back. A protester got close enough to throw acid. He was not badly burned but the stuff the medics put on his neck and head took the colour out of his hair. Everybody talked about it, but not to his face. They didn't dare. But why did the sergeant mention his initials? They are E. N. H. but what possible significance —"

	"Inspector," said Ann suddenly, "are you going to tell us the name of this man?"

	Reynolds was silent for a moment, then he nodded and said, "Why not? He is the City Security Commissioner, the Honourable Edward Norton Hargreaves ... Oh."

	"I can't believe that Hargreaves would ..." Ann protested. Then she, too, stopped.

	"His middle name is Norton," said Malcolm, voicing the thoughts of both of them. "A coincidence, Inspector?"

	Before Reynolds could answer, Ann went on, "But he is such an admirable and really good man! He has never been connected with anything of a dishonest or immoral nature, even though he has never married. Apparently he just isn't interested in women, although the way I hear it the opposite does not hold true. Unless he's one of —"

	"He isn't," said the inspector.

	"I was going to say," Ann persisted, "unless he is one of your terrestrial conspirators who were convinced that they belonged to a superhuman elite. A superior being of that kind might not be interested in ordinary women, he might regard them as members of a sub-species, as female apes, perhaps."

	"Of course," said Malcolm. "The overdose."

	"And ... But not the professor, surely?" Ann said in a voice which was trying hard to be disbelieving.

	"You've lost me," said Reynolds irritably. "Please explain yourselves."

	We would not have lost Sergeant Telford, Malcolm thought, nor would we have had to point out the connection between a fantastically beautiful and desirable female who had overdosed because an otherwise good and kindly man would not react to her as a woman, and the very good and kindly Professor of Medicine she had attacked thinking that he was the first man. The sergeant had been there seeing and hearing, and absorbing the atmosphere, the non-material evidence. The inspector had not.

	Malcolm took a few moments to marshal his thoughts, then he began describing the circumstances, incidents and conversations he considered relevant on the night Sergeant Telford had been assigned to guard the multiple gunshot wound, Hesketh. He went on to list the common denominators, the suspiciously large number of coincidences, and the way they could be made to fit together.

	"First, let's consider the common factors," said Malcolm. "Inspector Nelson, one of his passengers, Chief Administrator Jennings and now Chief Security Commissioner Hargreaves, all have dyed hair. The first two had undergone plastic surgery, but we do not know as yet whether this was true of Hargreaves. Another factor these people have in common is their utter ruthlessness and fanatical commitment to their organisation. Nelson killed himself because he thought his passengers were a threat to his work. Hargreaves did not care how many IBs died as a result of the bomb he planted. The team which practically wiped out the people in Hesketh's living block, the same. But it seems that their ruthlessness and lack of feeling for ordinary human beings is not total.

	"The man who shot old Hesketh was himself killed by the team leader," Malcolm went on, "because the old man's shooting was considered unnecessary. Five thousand or more people were to die, but not the old man. Then there is the female overdose who tried to commit suicide because her John was so good and kind and nothing else. He had her flown to this hospital from a medical mission in Africa, where thousands were dying every day. The juvenile RTA, Tommy, was rescued by his Big Mary, who is a female Follower of John. So we seem to have a situation where personal and single acts of charity are performed amid wholesale violence and death.

	"Because the evil these people do so far outweighs the good," he continued, "they seem to over-react when they do a kindness. Shooting one of their own men, for instance, and flying a would-be suicide from Africa. Which brings me, very reluctantly, to Professor Donnelly."

	"The professor wouldn't ..." began Ann.

	Malcolm shook his head. "We have both seen and assisted him in doing very good work indeed," he said. "But remember, that female OD attacked him because she was sure that he was her John, and the Prof, did, in effect, keep Mr Hesketh from talking with a dangerously large shot of neomorph. Which brings me to another factor these people have in common. They are all admirable characters, supermen in a way. Stern, just, highly ethical, kindly and not at all interested in the opposite sex. Professor Donnelly could have half the unmarried nurses in the hospital, at least, but shows no interest. The same with Hargreaves, and I've heard somewhere that Jennings wasn't married, or anything. Would you agree that that was significant, Inspector?"

	Reynolds nodded slowly, then said, "The sergeant and I were very interested in the fact that you had no power problems, no shortage of highly sophisticated equipment and no dearth of highly qualified technical and medical staff to maintain and use it, and you seem to take this technological heaven for granted. I'm beginning to wonder about this hospital, especially now that you may have tied your Professor Donnelly into the John and Luke business. You would have made a very good detective, Doctor."

	"A doctor has to be a good detective, Inspector," Ann said. "Just think about it. He has to discover and neutralise a killer, or potential killer, of his patient by a process of observation, deduction and elimination so that ... Anyway, the thing which bothers me is the suggestion that the Prof, is involved. That man has done only good and no evil at all."

	"That we know of," said Reynolds drily.

	Before Ann could start another argument, Malcolm said quickly, "You must understand, Inspector, that we respect the Prof, and like him and it isn't easy for us to think of him as a John. But we would like to know the truth. If we checked to see whether or not he dyed his hair, or if Hargreaves had undergone plastic surgery as well as dyeing his hair. Or if the Prof, had plastic surgery before he came here five years ago ..."

	"Perhaps," the inspector broke in thoughtfully, "these are not the real Nelson, Jennings, Hargreaves and Professor Donnelly, but people made to look like them."

	"No," said Malcolm firmly. "The plastic surgery was of too minor a nature, nothing like that which would be required to rebuild a face into a duplicate of another man's. But there is a simple way to check on that. We'll ask Central Records for the physiological data on the Prof., and on Nelson and Jennings, too, just to support our own findings. All technical and professional people on their levels are required by law to file complete and up-to-date case histories on themselves so that the material is immediately available in case of accident. If I call —"

	Malcolm had been reaching for the communicator when his wrist was gripped tightly and immobilised by the hand of the Inspector.

	"Doctor," said Reynolds very seriously, "Sergeant Telford went to a lot of trouble to keep you and your wife out of this, so far as the Johns and Lukes are concerned, but if you start making waves by calling up data on these people …"

	He left the sentence hanging, but he was still gripping Malcolm's wrist.

	There was a long silence during which the sights and sounds from the TV became more and more obtrusive. The organic and inorganic wreckage had been cleared away, and the casualty and rescue teams had been replaced by men in the blue overalls and white caps of the skilled labourer level who were already repairing the structural damage. The hospital was like a gigantic metal and plastic organism which had suffered a severe but not disabling wound. The wound had been cleaned, treated and the process of healing was already well advanced. Malcolm turned away from the screen to look steadily at Ann, who raised an eyebrow.

	"My wife and I," said Malcolm, "are of the opinion that there will be very little risk involved. The hospital has already requested data on Nelson and Jennings for purposes of identification following the explosion. Professor Donnelly's material will also be on file. You may let go of my wrist, Inspector."

	Reynolds nodded and did so. He looked worried but more relaxed, somehow, as he turned to Ann and said, "How do you really feel about this?"

	"In a word," said Ann, "curious."

	At last, thought Malcolm, he has decided to trust us completely. He moved close to the screen so that it would not he obvious to the person at the other end that the request was coming from a living cubicle and not a ward, then he tapped out the code for hospital records.

	As he had expected, the girl in charge was being kept very busy as a result of the bombing. When she saw his whites and noted that it was a hospital internal call she projected the data on Nelson and Jennings without even asking Malcolm for identification, before she could break the connection he added quickly, "Oh, while you have access to the Brain you may as well give me the data on Professor Donnelly. He may be going on a foreign trip and may need some booster shots ..."

	"Of course, Doctor," said the girl. "Is that all?"

	"Thank you, yes," said Malcolm, smiling, and a few minutes later he was replaying the material on his screen. Occasionally he froze an interesting bit for further study. There were several interesting bits.

	"According to his records," he said, "Professor Donnelly has never dyed his hair or had plastic surgery. Neither have Nelson or Jennings. But we know from direct physical examination that their records arc wrong. Now, It is my understanding that citizens important enough to be listed in Central Records, from which the hospital received this data, are required to give full information regarding hair colouring, and facial and physical appearance, before and after cosmetic surgery has taken place. Which means that in these two cases at least the records have been falsified. Agreed?"

	The inspector was sitting so far forward in his seat that it looked as if the support would pull away from the wall. He nodded.

	"We can't check on the professor because we don't have any physical evidence," Malcolm went on. "But we know that Hargreaves dyes his hair. I wonder if Central Records agrees with us?"

	"Don't," said Reynolds firmly, "go completely mad." To Ann, he went on, "Talk some sense into him, ma'am. He can't just ask for the Security Commissioner's data. The number of highly moral and ethical and celibate people in City Security is beginning to worry me, as well as the fact that, in certain departments, the surveillance equipment seems to be every bit as sophisticated and free from maintenance problems as the gadgetry in your hospital. I don't like it. The Johns and Lukes, whoever they are and whatever they want, are not friendly people. They would probably be on to us within minutes."

	"Don't worry about it, Inspector," said Ann. "My husband isn't a fool or a hero."

	Malcolm took a disposable mask, which he had forgotten to dispose of the previous night, and put it on before moving close to the communicator screen once again. He tapped for the hospital exchange, then said briskly, "Connect me with City Security Headquarters, please. This is a casualty identification enquiry."

	"Personally, ma'am," said the inspector worriedly, "I think your husband is both."

Chapter Ten
Comparative Physiology

	To the face which appeared on his screen a few seconds later, Malcolm explained that he was a casualty medic currently treating a bomb blast victim who bore a resemblance to Commissioner Hargreaves. He had only seen pictures of the commissioner and the chances were that it was not Hargreaves, but if it was he thought City Security should know about it as soon as possible. For this reason he was requesting the physiological data so that the patient could be quickly identified as the commissioner, or eliminated for later routine identification procedure.

	"I cannot release this material, Doctor," the voice replied. "Will you hold a moment, please, while I consult with someone who can?"

	The consultation was a long one and Ann and the inspector were looking seriously worried. Reassuringly, Malcolm said, "What would be more natural than for a junior medic to make such a call? But if someone at the other end is delaying it means they are uncertain. Hargreaves travelled here as a civilian pedestrian, because a police or private vehicle attracts attention, and he may not have had the chance to report back on his mission. If he had done so and they knew he was safe, they would simply have refused to give me the information."

	"I agree," said Reynolds, frowning. "But why had a man of Hargreaves's standing planted the bomb? It must have been a panic reaction, there must be something about the bodies from the RTA ..."

	"The human bodies from the RTA," said Ann.

	"... Which necessitated their destruction," Reynolds finished.

	"Or," Malcolm added, "the destruction of the policeman or men who were taking an interest in them."

	Reynolds shook his head, "My enquiries were discreet and, until today, only Sergeant Telford knew —"

	He broke off as the screen lit with the picture of the head and shoulders of a completely bald man, middle-aged but with fresh, youthful features. He had the collar badge of a chief inspector and an ID which read 'T. R. Simmonds'.

	The officer said pleasantly, "It is very unlikely that your patient is the commissioner, Doctor, but as his exact whereabouts are unknown at present it will do no harm to check. If you will wait a few minutes the data will be transmitted. But first, may I see your face, Doctor?"

	Malcolm felt the sweat pop at the small of his back and he could hear Ann and Reynolds holding their breaths. He cleared his throat and said in what he hoped was a normal voice, "Of course, sir. But briefly, I'm afraid, and I shall have to hold my breath. Aseptic procedure, you understand. "

	"I understand, Doctor."

	Malcolm pushed his face close to the vision pickup to show his willingness to co-operate, and also to maximise the visual distortion. He also had his lips pressed tightly together and his nostril flared as he unhooked the mask from one ear for a few seconds, so that the face which the other was seeing was far from being Malcolm's normal one.

	Simmonds nodded and his face was replaced by Hargreaves's physiological data. Behind Malcolm, Ann and the inspector were breathing again.

	"I'm sure he didn't suspect anything," said Reynolds, "otherwise he would have asked for your name. I wouldn't like to play poker with you, Doctor."

	Ann was already re-running the Hargreaves material, freezing it at what she considered were the interesting parts. Finally, she said, "Mr Hargreaves, according to his record, has never undergone surgery or altered his appearance for cosmetic or other reasons. We know he dyes his hair, but it is the artificial colouring which is listed as his natural hair colour. This means that he, like Nelson and Jennings and possibly the professor, has falsified his records. This is too much of a coincidence. He must be one of the Johns, or Lukes."

	"I'd forgotten the Lukes for a moment," said the inspector, "and that Jennings and Nelson were on opposing sides, or were possibly representatives of a parent and splinter group of a basically similar kind of organisation. But are you now suggesting that these three were surgically altered to resemble the original people?"

	"I don't know what I'm suggesting, Inspector," said Ann, with a baffled expression. "We've already agreed that the plastic surgery was of too minor a nature for that. But if they could falsify the records why should they bother with disguises?"

	Slowly, because his mind was working so fast that it was difficult to concentrate on speech, Malcolm said, "Why do people disguise themselves? Isn't it because they want to look different?"

	Reynolds made a noise which was half-way between a laugh and a snort of derision. He said, "Masterly deduction, Doctor, but a trifle obvious."

	Ann ignored the inspector's sarcasm. She said, "You've thought of something?"

	Malcolm nodded. "But I don't want to talk about it until we've re-run the data on all of our suspects. Before we start, I wonder if it is possible to get the physic profile on Chief Inspector Simmonds ?"

	"Definitely not!" said Reynolds. To Ann, he said, "Ma'am, he can't be that foolish, or heroic …"

	Ann shook her head and said reassuringly, "It's only wishful thinking, Inspector. There was a marked physical similarity between Simmonds and our suspects, and one way of disguising hair colouration is to shave it off."

	The inspector watched as they ran and re-ran the data, but the medical notations meant nothing to him and he began to talk quietly.

	"The commissioner," he said, "has been in office for the past ten, maybe twelve, years. The two RTAs for a similar period. During that time they've had colleagues and subordinates who would have noticed a substitution if one had taken place, so that any tampering with the records would have had to be done before they took up their present appointments; It will be difficult, but I will have to check with anyone who knew them as boys or young adults, their school records might still be available. However, if they have the facilities to falsify the Central Records then people like Hargreaves could spring into existence overnight as a fully supported and documented character. And another thing, if this conspiracy operates among the top people here and in Africa, then it must be an international organisation whose purpose —"

	"Fingerprints!" said Ann suddenly, ignoring him. "How do we explain the different fingerprints?"

	"Easily," said Malcolm. "The prints on record are not necessarily those of the people concerned. I mean, who would want to check the commissioner's prints against those on his record? If their people get into serious trouble and have to be identified, their man at Central would ignore the prints .and use the facial data and hair colouration as they did with Jennings and Nelson."

	"I see," said Ann, still staring at the screen. "I see, but I still don't believe it."

	"Believe what?" said the inspector impatiently. "What are you talking about?"

	Ann turned to Reynolds and said very seriously, "We have discovered why Jennings, Nelson, Hargreaves, Professor Donnelly and, almost certainly, Chief Inspector Simmonds had to disguise themselves. It was to make them look different."

	"From each other," Malcolm added.

	Before the inspector could react, Ann said, "Simmonds! You'll have to tell him that your casualty isn't Hargreaves."

	"Right, I'll do that now," said Malcolm. "You two move out of range."

	But it was a white-haired officer with a deeply freckled face who answered. He could have changed uniform jackets with Simmonds without there being a detectable difference to fit, and the freckles looked very realistic. While Malcolm was talking he listened politely and then said that they had already ascertained that the commissioner was safe and well. Before breaking the connection he added that Malcolm had been alert and public-spirited and he thanked the doctor for his trouble.

	"Yesterday," said Malcolm, "we didn't even know about these people. Today we are finding them all over the place."

	Reynolds looked at him steadily for several seconds, then said, "You know what you are looking for so you tend to recognise it more frequently. When one is investigating a conspiracy one tends to run into conspirators. What did you mean by saying that they were trying to look different from each other?"

	"We mean," Malcolm replied, "that physiologically the four people we checked are identical. Blood groups, eye colouring, bone structure and musculature, body mass and dimensions, everything. Without the hair tinting and cosmetic surgery you couldn't tell them apart.

	"Once we knew what we were looking for," he went on, "it was obvious that Simmonds had the same body weight and cranial structure. So had his freckled friend."

	"But cloning human beings is impossible!" Reynolds protested. "I know that some work was done on it before the Powerdown, but it was impossible even then. In any case the ordinary, old-fashioned way of producing human beings is so much easier and cheaper  ..."

	"Unless they found a super-being to clone," said Ann.

	"I see," said Reynolds thoughtfully. He went on. "These people are in their fifties, which means that their organisation has been in existence for fifty years minimum. Now, you have no idea how efficient and persistent the intelligence agencies were in the old days. Cloning human beings would have required the facilities and personnel of a major government project, regardless of which government was mounting it. Such a project could not remain hidden."

	"I agree," said Malcolm. "But cloning large numbers of human beings, or a human being, would enable conditioning of the most radical kind to be undertaken from infancy. It would explain the lack of feeling, the utter ruthlessness, the superiority towards ordinary human beings, which your conspirators display. I'm assuming that the clones are the ranking members of this conspiracy or sect. The majority would be recruited from the local criminals and dissidents and given a less thorough indoctrination. Perhaps the man who shot old Hesketh was one of the people Nelson referred to as a local guardian, and the senior member who killed Hesketh's attacker was one of the clones.

	"Judging by the names," Malcolm went on, "the Johns and Lukes are opposing groups within a fanatical religious sect. The conspiracy must have a religious or quasi-religious basis because a political pressure group could not operate in secret for fifty years or more without making demands or outlining its aims. Religious fanatics, on the other hand, can be good and kind and highly moral as individuals and still, as a group, countenance bloody massacre."

	"You're probably right, Doctor," said the inspector. "Killing the man who had shot Hesketh was the act of a zealot involved in a mass killing because it was a necessary evil, to his way of thinking, and he was angered at the unnecessary killing of one old man. But what bothers me most of all is the fantastically large number of them."

	"Only the key people are clones," said Malcolm.

	"But five of them, probably many more, in this one city?" Reynolds said scornfully. "You have intelligence, Doctor, you've shown it so why not go on using it? If there are even a handful of them in every large city in the world, the size of the establishment needed to produce that many clones could not remain hidden for fifty years. Maybe you don't know about intelligence agencies in your line of work."

	"He knows," said Ann, looking from one to the other with an expression which stated plainly that this was no time to be losing tempers. "We have our own intelligence networks within the profession, and anything as radical as cloning and conditioning human beings would have found its way into the journals, even if the paper or article had been published as pure speculation. It hasn't."

	There was a long silence which stretched until the sounds of movement from the corridor outside and the quiet hiss of the air-conditioning system became almost deafening. Finally the inspector spoke.

	"I keep wondering about this hospital," he said, "and the relatively few like it scattered over the world. It has the best available medical and technical staff, its own nuclear power source and a level of technology which is pre-Powerdown at least. Suppose this establishment, or one of the several like it, was engaged in secret cloning."

	"Ridiculous," said Malcolm.

	"Are you sure, Doctor?" said Reynolds very seriously. "Well then, if you don't like that theory, maybe we could go back to the idea that the conspiracy is not, after all, a product of Earth ..."

	He broke off as the TV flashed to indicate an incoming call. The face of Doctor Chiak appeared, looking tired and sympathetic.

	"Your friend, patient Telford, arrested five minutes ago," he said. "Since you are listed in place of his next-of-kin, I wondered if you required any special disposition of the body?"

	"I'll... let you know," said Malcolm. "I understand," said Chiak. "No hurry, and I am sorry." The other doctor's face faded, but for some reason the dead grey expanse of the TV screen would not remain empty.

Chapter Eleven
Special Treatment

	Superimposed on the greyness of the unlighted screen was a series of sharp, bright, mental pictures of the sergeant talking to young Tommy; looking perplexed as he assimilated the visual evidence of Nurse Collins's black eye, the professor's scratched face and the struggling overdose while he sheepishly replaced his gun; trying to keep his eyes on all the monitor room screens at once; the almost predatory expression on his face as he listened to the material on old Hesketh's tapes, and his concern for the Malcolms because the inspector was telling them too much and he did not approve of innocent bystanders being hurt. There were no pictures of the raw and bleeding wreckage of the sergeant lying in ICU, because Malcolm was trying to keep a tight, mental control of the images which were appearing on his dead TV screen.

	It was Reynolds who spoke first.

	"Arrested. He's dead, then?"

	"A cardiac arrest of five minutes' duration," said Malcolm, angry because the question threw up a picture of a dead rather than a living Sergeant Telford, "frequently has that effect."

	Reynolds's teeth came together with an audible click and when he spoke it was obvious that he was exerting considerable self-control. He said, "Your sarcasm is not appreciated, Doctor. Sergeant Telford was a very good man, a friend, and the only person in my department I could take fully into my confidence..."

	He had heard longer eulogies, Malcolm thought, but none more sincere.

	"... Perhaps the question slipped out," the inspector went on coldly, "because I was surprised at him dying so soon. Maybe I was surprised at him dying at all when you told that other doctor that he was a good friend of yours. Perhaps I was expecting him to get special treatment."

	But he did get special treatment, Malcolm thought tiredly. Aloud, he said, "You mean, you were expecting him to go on living after a fashion."

	He knew that the inspector was glaring at him with the angry, baffled expression which Malcolm knew so well from his experience of dealing with newly bereft next-of-kin. He knew that Ann's expression would reflect the concern she felt for him at times like these. As for himself, Malcolm continued to stare at the empty communicator screen where, in spite of his mental efforts, the image of Telford the casualty statistic was taking form.

	With the ease of long practice he took refuge in a temporary but very necessary form of insanity, a minor escape from reality, which enabled him to believe that this particular piece of ghastliness had not happened to someone he knew, that casualties like this were simply medical or surgical problems set in an overly realistic finals exam.

	Unhurriedly and in his most clinical voice he said, "I made the decision about Sergeant Telford myself since I am qualified to make it. I could have consulted Ann, who is slightly less qualified, or you who have no formal qualifications. But committee decisions take time and I thought it better not, if you'll forgive the expression, to prolong the agony.

	"The fact that he was a pleasant personality, intelligent, possessing a high degree of personal and professional integrity, and that he was a friend of yours," Malcolm went on calmly, "had no bearing on this decision. The only factors to be considered were the extent of his injuries and his chances of recovering from them. His injuries, as you saw, were severe and extensive. Complete amputation of all four limbs was indicated. In addition to the many punctured and excised wounds there was renal failure, possibly complete, and severe intestinal damage. The loss of vision and mandible damage were the least of our worries. He stood an extremely small chance of surviving. Still, he might have lived, but his recovery would have been what we in the trade call partial."

	"You could have given him the chance," said Reynolds angrily.

	"In my opinion, no," said Malcolm. "Because of the spinal injuries, prosthetic limbs would have been useless to him. If or when the wounds and stumps had healed, he would have left ICU for one of the general wards. Patients who leave the intensive care unit are not cured, you know. By everyone else's standards they are still very seriously ill. From a surgical recovery ward he would have gone to a convalescent ward, then a rehabilitation ward where he would have been fitted to an unpowered paraplegic trolley and given a change of scenery, or in his case a change of background noise, from time to time. Then he would have been moved into the After Care block.

	"After Care is considerably different from intensive care," Malcolm went on in the same even tone. "The unit is overcrowded and understaffed because very few people are temperamentally suited to the work. There is very little sympathy or even attention for the patients because there are over two thousand of them. These are the serious casualty figures, the badly injured but not killed, the people most of the citizens conveniently forget. Some of them have been in the After Care block for most of their lives.

	"Looking after such patients is a hard, thankless, unpleasant and unutterably boring work," he continued quietly, "and the people who do this work sometimes have, well, character defects. They can sometimes miss out on feeding their charges a couple of meals, or they are very busy and miss a clean-up round, or they accidentally project the same film, or play the same tape, several times in a row. There are just too many patients, too many complaints and too much noise for them to be treated as individuals, you see. Friends and relatives soon stop coming, and those who continue to visit patients on a regular basis not infrequently end up requiring psychiatric assistance."

	Malcolm continued staring at the pictures on his blank TV screen as he went on, "From what little I know of him I decided that Sergeant Telford would not have been grateful for being given the chance to live that sort of life."

	The inspector's seat, which had a faulty locking device, thumped back into its wall recess as he stood up. To Ann, he said, "Good-bye, ma'am. You and your husband have been of great assistance to me, and we really should discuss this conspiracy at length. But I'm afraid that it will have to wait until I have regained a sufficiently detached view of the situation, something I lack at present. As for you, Doctor, you probably made the right decision, but ... Well, you've made me realise that our cloned supermen are not the only inhuman beings on this planet."

	When he had gone, Ann smiled tentatively and said, "It's a pity about the sliding door. I think he wanted to slam it."

	Malcolm laughed suddenly, then checked himself because the sound of it was like something from a psychiatric ward, he said, "At a time like this I expected you to make a comment with deep, psychological significance."

	"At a time like this," said Ann, coming towards him and slipping her hands between the sides of his tense, resisting arms, and around his waist, "I always try to change the subject."

	She moved closer and he felt her fingers caressing the back of his neck. Her eyes were looking very slightly upwards into his and her expression was serious but not sympathetic, because she knew that the last thing he wanted right then was sympathy. She said, "When I do that your scalp tightens up. Sometimes it makes your ears twitch, too."

	Frequently other things happened as well, but not this time.

	Ann sighed but did not move away. She said, "I think you were unnecessarily hard on the inspector, and on yourself. But don't worry, he'll get over it."

	So will I, thought Malcolm. He said, "I realise he was angry over the loss of his friend and, because there were no Lukes or Johns handy to blame for Telford's death, he let go at me. But the people most responsible for the sergeant's death are the ones who made and planted that bomb, and my proportion of the responsibility is very small. I know this and so, when he has time to think about it, will the inspector. But he did say something which was true. We are inhuman.

	"Not as ruthless and inhuman as the conspirators, perhaps," he went on, "but we have something in common with them. The inspector wanted special treatment for his friend. Fine. But of the hundreds of citizens who are victims each week of muggings or protest incidents or malnutrition, this hospital accepts only a tiny proportion of them for special treatment which, in the old days, would have been considered ordinary hospital treatment. We can't do anything about the others except let them bleed or sicken or starve to death.

	"But aren't we fooling ourselves like the Johns and Lukes," he continued, "by doing just a little good amidst the all-encompassing evil? Here in our aseptic, ivory tower, secure and morally self-satisfied as we are, the good work we do represents such a tiny —"

	"No!" said Ann sharply. "It isn't the same! We are trying to help people, not kill them. There just aren't enough hospitals like this one, and far too many people." He felt her beginning to tremble. "You ... You aren't playing fair."

	No, thought Malcolm, I am not playing fair. Since they had been given authorisation to marry but not, if they wished to retain their hospital appointments and job status, to have children, they had had an unwritten and unspoken agreement to the effect that in any emotional crisis situation the see-saw principle would operate.

	When Malcolm was on an emotional down-swing Ann would remain up, trying to lift him out of it, and vice-versa. More often than not it was Ann who was up, talking sense to him, remaining silent, changing the subject or doing whatever else was indicated. Very occasionally it was his turn to do the needful, and sometimes they were both up at the same time and for a while it was Christmas every day. But never before had they come so close to being hopelessly down together, and Ann was frightened. Much too much had happened today and the implications of it all were like a high, uncaring tidal wave which was building up and threatening to sweep away their private little see-saw along with their whole, horrible and dangerously unstable society. By voicing his self-doubts as he had been doing, Malcolm was not helping things at all.

	He put his arms around her waist and held her tightly until the trembling stopped and she began to relax, then he said, "You're right, I'm not keeping to the rules. Maybe we should try to change the subject."

	Ann nodded and said brightly, "We'll be on duty again in six hours, so if you pull out the bed while I fold away the rest of the furniture ..."

	"I've got too much to think about to ..." began Malcolm.

	"You can think just as well lying down," said Ann, "and lying down I have a better chance of changing the subject ... Dammit to hell, who can that be!"

	Still holding her, Malcolm turned to see the communicator's attention signal Hashing, the external call code. He tapped the accept button and the face of Simmonds flicked on to the screen. The City Security man spoke without preamble.

	"Listen carefully and do exactly as I tell you," he said. "Explanations will follow. In a few minutes you will have a visitor. Before he arrives you will fold back the chairs on each side of your door so that you can stand close to the walls and out of sight of your caller when the door opens. He will be able to open the door without your assistance even if it is locked, and he will not signal his arrival. You will also increase the audio volume of your set so that he will hear as well as see me clearly as soon as the door opens. Do these things quickly. Now."

	Simmonds was no longer making any pretence of being the bland, senior public servant as he went on, "because of the information which has recently come into your possession the decision was taken to eliminate both of you. However, as a result of an evaluation of material in your psych profiles together with material obtained from recent monitored conversation, this decision has been temporarily rescinded. You are to be given special treatment."

	Impatiently, he added, "This is not a matter of vital importance to me personally, you understand, but I am trying to save your lives."

Chapter Twelve
A Change Of Scenery

	When they had been standing for what seemed like a subjective eternity with their backs to the opposing walls just inside the doorway and staring at the smooth, hairless features of Simmonds on the screen, Malcolm began to feel ridiculous as well as frightened — and increasingly curious. But the City Security official, and whatever else he might be, refused to answer his questions.

	Another eternity, which the wall clock insisted was only three minutes, passed before the door began to slide open. Before it had travelled more than a few inches from its recess, Simmonds was talking rapidly in a language which Malcolm did not recognise. Then the City Security man relaxed visibly, switched to English and said, "Come in, Guardian. As a result of what I have just told you, your assignment may have to be modified, but if cither of these people try to leave their room, complete it as originally instructed."

	A figure in hospital whites stepped into their box just far enough to allow the door to close behind him. A medical satchel hung at his side, flap open and empty except for a few pieces of foam packing. The object which it had contained was in the man's right hand with a thumb resting on the red activation and timing stud. It was one. of the heavy grenades normally used against armed protesters who could not be controlled by lesser forms of mistiness. If it detonated, everybody within the tiny living box would be killed.

	Malcolm did not recognise the man, which did not surprise him. Even if the Guardian was a doctor and not just someone dressed for the part, there were over twelve thousand medical and support staff in the hospital.

	Unhurriedly the Guardian turned his head to look at Ann, then Malcolm, before facing the TV screen again. Calmly, he said, "I was expecting three."

	The image of Simmonds nodded and said, "Inspector Reynolds left about ten minutes ago because of differences with the doctor, but now that we know his identity and the extent of his knowledge, which is meagre and inexact, we can deal with him if it becomes necessary. I shall now discuss with the doctor and his wife their transfer to ..."

	Apparently Simmonds did not think it necessary to kill the inspector or themselves — at least, not immediately. Rut the Guardian had other ideas and was inclined to argue, in the language which they could not understand.

	Simmons listened for a few seconds, then said, "Your command of the language is very good tor a local Guardian, but its use is unnecessary. These two are confused enough without us carrying on a secret conversation about them. The transfer to the local induction centre will require their co-operation, since you are in the middle of an unfriendly base, until they are clear of the city and so the discussion will be truthful and open. During it they will be given some information regarding our activities, but the risk of them misusing this information is negligible. You may consider it as preliminary indoctrination of potential recruits and take no action.

	"And now," he went on, glancing to each side to indicate that he was addressing the Malcolms, "you will already have realised that we overheard the conversation which took place recently in your room, and you will have guessed that it was the request for the Hargreaves data which alerted us. We have the capability of listening to virtually any conversation which is taking place in this, and most other, cities throughout the world. The majority of the City Security people are unaware of this, naturally, and we have nowhere near the number of local personnel required to listen to what every citizen is saying in the supposed privacy of his or her living box. But if something arouses our suspicions, the facility is available ..."

	The man with the grenade said something incomprehensible in an obstinate tone.

	"It is obvious, Guardian," Simmonds said impatiently, "that you do not fully realise the significance of this morning's RTA. Nelson was too important to consider himself expendable unless he knew that Jennings, who has never been in complete agreement with our policies, had told the local do-gooder, Crawford, about the full extent of our operation here."

	Simmonds glanced to each side to indicate that he was talking for the benefit of the Malcolms as well as the argumentative Guardian before he went on, "There are clear indications that the Lukes are recruiting large numbers of locals and activating them with little or no prior indoctrination. This is insane, but it forces us into a similar form of insanity, which is one of the reasons why we have decided to recruit these two. They may be sufficiently objective regarding local conditions to make good second- or third-level recruits, and there is very little risk of them passing information to the locals. Crawford was too old and sick and emotionally involved with the problems of his people to react sensibly to the information provided by Jennings, who had gone soft. Nelson had no choice but to eliminate them with no delay ..."

	Malcolm did not know why he interrupted. He could be saying all the wrong things so far as the man with the grenade was concerned, but suddenly it seemed important to register his presence as a person.

	He said, "We know, or have been able to deduce, a little about the Johns and Lukes. They are two rival groups, probably with the same ultimate aim but disagreeing violently on the means of achieving it. The accident with the tape playback which led the dying Nelson to believe that I was a Luke, and then the inspector's request for an unofficial examination of the bodies in the police vehicle, led us to the discovery that Nelson, Jennings, Hargreaves and yourself, and no doubt a number of other influential people, are clones.

	"Reynolds, whose suspicions were based on behavioural observations, thought you were extra-terrestrials," Malcolm went on. "As medics we cannot take seriously the suggestion that an extra-terrestrial, the product of a planetary environment and evolution completely different from Earth's, could pass itself as a human being. At the same time these constant references to 'local' Guardians and 'local' politicians make me wonder. Perhaps 'locals' does not refer to people who live in this city but on this world."

	The man with the grenade had stopped breathing and the head and shoulders of Simmonds had suddenly become a still rather than a moving picture on the screen. What a time, thought Malcolm, to start showing off my fine so-called mind ...!

	"Your deductions are worrying my colleague," Simmonds said drily. "He is, after all, a Guardian of group security." He looked at the man with the grenade and said, "Put it away, John, but remain vigilant."

	The Guardian did as he was told, and Simmonds went on, "I strongly advise against you making any sudden or unthinking movements. We want to use you both and we are not quite so uncaring about people's lives as our Luke friends, but I cannot afford to trust you completely until you are safely in the local induction centre. Think about that and remain in your seats."

	So these two were Johns and Nelson and Hargreaves were Lukes, Malcolm thought, licking his lips with a tongue which had also gone. dry. Remembering the suicidal RTA and the bombing, and comparing those incidents with the massacre in Hesketh's block, he could not see much difference in the degree of ruthlessness displayed. He hoped that the cold perspiration collecting in his armpits and at the small of his back would not also appear on his face as he began to speak.

	"I have been thinking about it," he said carefully. "If your colleague decided to use his grenade for some reason, he would probably open the door, set the timer for a one-second delay and move quickly into the side corridor which is thirty feet away, a safe distance. There would be strong psychological reasons for us not to follow him out and across a grenade which might explode at any instant, so we would probably fold down the bed just far enough to allow us to squeeze into its wall recess, where the supporting structure is solidly built and where the bedding would also help to cushion the blast and reduce the velocity of the metal fragments.

	"If, on the other hand," he went on, "the grenade was thrown into the room, we would follow the Guardian out as fast as possible and throw ourselves flat on the corridor floor as soon as we were out of line with the open door. Since the walls of these rooms are very thin I have also been thinking that, in either event, we would probably be very seriously injured and it would be much safer to sit still."

	Simmonds nodded and gave a microscopically small smile. He said drily, "While you have been thinking aloud, Doctor, you have managed to instruct your wife in exactly what to do should either of these eventualities arise, and to do it in such a way as to ensure the minimum of confusion and the maximum chance of survival. Obviously this is another, and probably deliberate, demonstration of your suitability as a recruit. You seem to be a survivor, Doctor. But I still cannot afford to trust you completely until the Guardian has escorted you to the centre. Or more accurately, your wife will be closely escorted and you will follow to ensure her continued survival."

	"Just suppose," said Ann quietly, "we are found to be unsuitable, or have no wish to become recruits?"

	Why the blazes, Malcolm raged silently at her, can't you keep your mouth shut? I'm trying to save us for as long as I can, until there's a chance to get away from them. These people, are calm, logical, homicidal bloody maniacs ...!

	For a few seconds Simmonds looked at her without speaking, then he said. "I would have been disappointed if one of you hadn't asked that question. But if I was to guarantee your safety it would be a lie, and you would know that it was a lie. On the other hand, you do not know as yet what you will be asked to do for us or the reasons, in addition to allowing you to live, we shall give you for doing it. We realise that neither one of you is temperamentally suited to performing the work of a local Guardian, but with full knowledge your feelings regarding such operations may change.

	"In any case," Simmonds added, "my chief reason for cancelling your elimination was the fact that you have your emotions under control and you complement each other, professionally and psychologically, and very shortly we will need a great many people like you."

	Ann nodded, but it was obvious that she was neither satisfied nor reassured as she said, "If we are temperamentally unsuited to committing wholesale murder, what kind of work do you expect from us?"

	Simmonds ignored the sarcasm in her tone, and replied, "Initially you will be required to continue with your ward duties and given additional responsibilities as information gatherers. John penetration of this hospital is superficial and we have nobody at all in your intensive care unit which, for reasons which will shortly become clear to you, receives some very important patients, patients who talk freely under neo-morph ..."

	She's getting ready to erupt, thought Malcolm as Ann's face lost all expression, and our John friend is not going to like it.

	"... You will also report on any new evidence or theories confided in you by Inspector Reynolds," Simmonds continued. "For a local, Reynolds is a highly professional and effective police psychologist and, until we decide whether to remove him or attempt to recruit him, we need to know ..."

	He broke off as he was interrupted, not by Ann but by a soft thudding noise. For a second or less he stared straight out of the screen at the Guardian, then he looked irritated for the moment it took for him to break the connection.

	Slowly and carefully Malcolm moved his head and his eyes from the blank screen to look at the door. There was a tight group of three holes in the door, and a spreading patch of red centred around the fourth and filth dorsals in the white-clad back of the Guardian who was collapsing slowly on to the floor. As the door slid open another man in hospital whites entered carrying a large, silenced firearm. He bent over the dying man, briefly examined the grenade in the satchel, then spoke over his shoulder to someone in the corridor.

	"A John Guardian, now inactive," he said. "Seems to be one of the high-ranking locals, judging by the physical dimensions. Move him before he leaves evidence of foul play all over the floor. Excuse me."

	While he had been talking the firearm had disappeared into his satchel and he had withdrawn a smaller, oddly shaped weapon which he pointed at them in turn. There was no sound, but Ann reached suddenly to touch the side of her face and Malcolm felt a stinging sensation just under his ear.

	"I haven't time to talk," said the man.

	The knowledge that he had been anaesthetised and had probably only a few seconds of consciousness remaining drove up his pulse rate, sending the anaesthetic even faster through his system and further reducing the time remaining to him for coherent thought. He smiled reassuringly at Ann and tried to calm himself.

	A pedal-powered three-litter carrier backed through the open doorway. Another white-clad figure climbed from the saddle, flipped open the side flap of the lowermost container and lifted the Guardian's body inside. With an equal lack of respect he moved Ann into the centre space. The only feature capable of movement were her eyes, and she was trying desperately to keep them open and on Malcolm. When Malcolm was lifted into the upper container he could not resist at all. Even his tongue and lips were succumbing to the paralysis. He wondered suddenly if the drug was an anaesthetic or a final comforter. He was horribly afraid that the enemies of the Johns would not be interested in potential John recruits, but he had to try to say something, anything, that would increase Their chance of survival. But it was becoming so hard to think ...

	"Who are ..." he began, no longer able to see the man who was lifting him. "Where are ... we going ...?"

	"Heaven," said one of the men very seriously. "You are going to Heaven."

Chapter Thirteen
Regimen

	It felt like Heaven, Malcolm thought as he came slowly awake. The air wafting against his face was cool and pure, the cloud on which he lay was soft, and he felt rested and relaxed. But when he opened his eyes his surroundings did not look like the traditional pictures of Heaven, though there were people moving about who were dressed in white cloaks.

	More than fifty feet above him there was a mirror ceiling which showed a vast, rectangular grid of strip lighting. Bright without being dazzling, the lighting was raised about ten feet from floor level where it lit an identical network of walkways which enclosed groups of four hemispherical blisters which seemed to be about twenty feet in diameter. Most of the blisters were white and opaque and the rest were transparent and empty, or contained white-clad figures lying on narrow couches. The entrance to each blister carried a five-digit figure, obviously for identification purposes. The white-cloaked figures on the walkways paced slowly and gravely, with their arms folded and looking upwards at the reflections of the blisters.

	All of them, so far as Malcolm could tell from the few who were within close visual range, had the same face.

	Immediately the memories of the hospital bombing and the strangely similar features of the City Security VIPs came rushing back, and his feelings of well-being disappeared. He reached sideways, instinctively seeking the reassurance of Ann's presence. Directly above him one of the white-clad figures on its couch reached sideways at the same time, into emptiness.

	One of the cloaked figures had noticed his movement and was heading towards his blister.

	An opening appeared in the transparent wall and the figure came through it to stand beside his couch. Pushing back the cowl so that Malcolm could see his face clearly, the man smiled benignly and said, "My name is Luke."

	It was the face and voice of everyone's ideal father, stern but loving; or of the colonel of the regiment whose men would willingly go through hell to win just a nod of approval from it; or it was the face of an experienced and kindly surgeon, or of a confessor who had heard every sin under the sun without losing sympathy for the sinners, it was the face of a person one would not mind calling 'Sir'.

	A picture of Sergeant Telford's devastated body draped in blood-soaked green towels took ghastly form between Malcolm and the other man's stern but loving visage. Malcolm did not reply.

	"I do not know your present level of knowledge and training," Luke said pleasantly. "Will you pardon me while I consult your file?"

	Malcolm nodded and twisted his head around to see what the other man was looking at. A section of the blister wall had gone opaque and was displaying a sequence of charts and printed information, but the method of notation was strange to him. While Luke studied the material Malcolm searched the reflections of the other blisters for Ann, but could not see her.

	"Apparently our John colleagues considered you worthy of recruiting and so, I suppose, must we," Luke said as he cancelled the display. "However, you have not undergone either Luke or John indoctrination to local Guardian level. Your lack of reaction towards my presence and title makes it obvious that your ignorance in these matters is total. Nevertheless, we are processing you as an informed assistant, since you are temperamentally and philosophically unsuited to executive operations, and if found acceptable, your duties will—"

	"What," said Malcolm, holding his voice as steady as possible, "if I am not acceptable?" 

	"My name is Luke."

	It was obvious from the other's disapproving expression that 'Luke' was much more than just a name, but before Malcolm could rephrase the question Luke was speaking again.

	"Do not frighten yourself unnecessarily," he said. "It is a wasteful form of mentation which serves only to reduce your ability to assimilate important data. I cannot answer questions because there would be too many of them and, in any case, I would be covering ground which will shortly be covered in detail by the instructional process. In the meantime, please follow the regimen prescribed for you. It comprises rest, non-strenuous exercise and viewing projected material. Intelligent observation of this material, which includes present events and past recordings, should enable you to deduce the answers to all your questions.

	"We are aware of the psychological damage which can be caused by a sudden and drastic change of environment," Luke went on, "so that initially we will project familiar, routine material. Exercise and food will be taken during the breaks in the instruction programme. The door of this cubicle will open when you approach it. Do not get lost. There will be no restraint placed upon your movements, but you must behave in a responsible manner. In what we consider is a responsible manner."

	He raised his hand in farewell or benediction and turned to go. Malcolm pushed himself upright and swung his legs over the edge of his couch.

	"Please, Luke," he said urgently. "Can you tell me what happened to my wife?"

	"I can," the other said gravely. "We have neither the facilities nor the inclination to train local females here, so she was moved up to the John establishment. For your information, the Johns have a softer, more illogical approach towards the solution of our major problem, and the use of both home and local females is just one of their odd ideas. For the present your wife is safe, and we shall arrange for an audio linkup between your cubicles but, since the Johns are technically our enemy, this may take a little time."

	"Thank you, Luke," said Malcolm in an equally grave tone, then went on, "If I might make an observation and perhaps ask another question? Your establishment seems to be run on much stricter lines than the other one, and the transfer of my wife makes me wonder if you have a rule of celibacy which forbids contact..."

	"... Only with local females," Luke finished for him.

	"What is meant by a local...?"

	"I do not lie," said Luke quietly, "and so I choose not to answer." He was turning to go again.

	"Wait, please," said Malcolm. "Luke, can you tell me if I've been shaved."

	Luke stared at him for several seconds with eyes so knowing that they gave the impression that they were backed by a telepathic faculty, then he smiled faintly. Malcolm had the feeling that the much-respected colonel of the regiment had given a very tiny nod of approval to his rawest recruit as Luke said, "Since you were taken from the hospital you have not been shaved. That is all that I shall tell you, except that your processing begins directly and I hope you and your wife survive."

	"Survive the processing?"

	"That as well," Luke said.

	The door closed behind him, if it was a door, and the walls of the blister turned white. Malcolm blinked to find that when he opened his eyes again he was apparently sitting in the middle of the monitor room in his hospital's intensive care unit.

	He stood up again and walked around the couch, waving his arms and watching for signs of distortion or his shadow on the projected picture. The images remained bright and sharp. He had seen the outside of his own and other blisters and none of them had external projection equipment — at least, nothing that was recognisable as such. Yet it appeared as if the whole inner surface of the blister was acting as a high-definition TV screen without any of the associated electronics.

	Malcolm remembered the inspector's concern about the origin of his pocket x-ray scanner, and his insistence that Earth technology was no longer capable of producing such a device, and he wondered what Reynolds would have said had he been confronted with wraparound television. He laughed nervously, then stopped in case someone in the monitor room heard him. Doctor Chiak was watching the Hesketh display and the day sister, Weiwu, was moving through the doorway.

	Neither of them reacted so it was obvious that the sound and vision was one way only.

	"The old man doesn't know when to give up," said Sister Weiwu, nodding towards the Hesketh display. "Last time we did his pressure points he was trying to sing, I think. Do you know what happened to the Malcolms, Doctor? They weren't on duty last night."

	Chiak nodded without turning around and said, "According to the Prof, they left on a special training course to a foreign hospital. The opportunity arose quite suddenly and he let them go at once."

	"At once is right," said Sister Weiwu, sitting on the edge of the console. It was said that the ICU day sister did not like talking to people who did not look at her because she was well worth looking at. It was also said that she especially did not like Doctor Chiak not looking at her because she was trying very hard to make him relinquish his bachelor status. She went on, "The Malcolms are usually more considerate. He left some treatment notes and only his wife can read his writing ..."

	She broke off as the intercom beeped. Reception wanted to know if the juvenile RTA in Seven was able to receive a visitor, relationship foster mother, a female power waiter, but clean. Sister Weiwu said to send her up.

	Sergeant Telford kept his promises, Malcolm thought, even posthumously.

	From his vantage point in the Luke heaven Malcolm was able to watch Big Mary as, accompanied by an unusually nervous Professor Donnelly, they walked past the glass-walled monitor room. He remembered the hopelessly inadequate description that young Tommy had given the sergeant of Big Mary, and he knew that he himself could not have done any better. Oh, he could have used more grown-up words and phrases like tall, splendidly proportioned figure, with the features of a saint and eyes that were so knowing and compassionate that they could turn a person, a male person, at least, into anything she wanted him to be. Malcolm watched the red-clad figure until she and the professor had disappeared into Tommy's cubicle, and only then did he realise that he had been holding his breath. So, apparently, had Doctor Chiak.

	"Wheee ... eww! Did you see that?"

	"I saw it." the sister replied. "And I saw the Prof, behaving as if he had just discovered birds and bees. I mean, Frigid Frank Donnelly! I've never seen him behave that way towards any female ..."

	Towards any local female, Malcolm thought drily.

	;Yes," said Chiak. "But she's ... she's ..."

	"Yes," said Weiwu, "if you like big women." In her flat-heeled duty shoes the day sister did not quite make five feet one inch.

	"I prefer small women," said Chiak, swinging around to look at her, "because I like to win wrestling matches. Especially if ... Now what?"

	The attention signal was flashing on Monitor Four. Looking self-consciously towards the camera, the trainee nurse who was on duty with the old man, said, "Mr Hesketh's IV has tissued. Will you re-site the needle, Doctor?"

	"Coming," said Chiak. Sister Weiwu checked the displays in turn, then followed him. Leaving his couch, Malcolm went forward to the image of Number Seven monitor, trying to filter out the sounds and conversations coming from the other displays so that he could hear what Big Mary and the professor were saying.

	He heard the professor tell the nurse to go for a break, that the visitor and himself would remain with her patient until she got back. He saw Donnelly look through the cubicle's transparent door panel towards the monitor room which was, of course, empty but for the invisible presence of Malcolm. He saw him bend over the boy, whose displays, said that he was asleep, then straighten up and speak.

	But not about the boy's condition.

	"I didn't expect to see one of you here," Donnelly said. "Don't worry, we can talk. I suppose the boy is a balance?"

	"He is my only balance," she replied. "I have neither the time nor the opportunity to help more than one, so I picked an especially deserving case. You can help many locals and have therefore no difficulty in remaining stable. This is a nice child. I want you to save him. Please, Luke. There are things I must do ..."

	"Like bombing a Luke hospital?"

	"I apologise for that," she said. "It seemed necessary at the time. One of our people went unstable and told everything to an influential do-gooder, a local. One of your people eliminated all concerned, including himself, by crashing his car. But there were a couple of locals, security officers, who wanted to play detectives and two of your local medics became involved and spotted the cloning …"

	"We were aware of the situation," said Donnelly.

	"Anyway, we were over hasty," she went on. "I have since heard rumours that your people have advanced the date for the pre-operative sequence to a matter of days from now, so that we merely wasted three valuable Guardian lives. Can you help the boy?"

	They panicked, Malcolm thought furiously, and a few Guardians had been lost. Sergeant Telford and the medical staff casualties, unimportant locals, no doubt, were not even mentioned.

	"Have you had medical training?" asked the professor. She shook her head.

	"Then I could give you the usual reassurances, hut I won't," Donnelly went on. "There is very little chance for him. He has been existing at subsistence level for the. whole of his life. There is a history of recurrent rheumatic fever, untreated, so that his heart ... Oh, why go on. But I shall try very hard and so will the locals. We all agree that he is a nice child."

	"Thank you," she said.

	The monitor screen images were too small for Malcolm to read expressions, but the professor said very seriously, "You should not he doing this kind of work. You should never have left Bea. Oh, I realise that there are methods of operation open to you which are impossible for a Guardian male, especially in the production of young local dissidents, but it is obvious that you .are psychologically and genetically unsuited to the work. Choosing young Tommy as your only balance indicates a —"

	"You have been too long among locals," she broke in. "Your physical and emotional reactions to my ... are, at best, under partial control. For a Luke, you've become soft. But I do thank you for your concern, and I hope you survive. The next few days will be rough."

	"And I, you ..." began the professor. But the nurse returned at that point and he went on gravely, "Try not to worry, ma'am. Everything possible is being done for your boy. He'll be all right, you'll see."

	He could have been any physician reassuring a worried relative.

	Shortly afterwards Professor Donnelly left to visit one of the other wards and Chiak and the rest of the staff relaxed. The busy daytime routine of the ward proceeded all around Malcolm, with the clinical pictures of the patients, the occasional emergencies and the trained reactions of the staff to them being continually presented to him on the monitor screens, but more and more often he kept returning to screen Seven and its picture of Big Mary and the boy, who was now awake.

	There could be no doubt about the depth and sincerity of the feelings between the two, and Malcolm knew that he should feel sympathy for the woman. But her concern, he now knew, was a necessary part of her conditioning, a means of maintaining emotional stability, a weird, psychopathological balance between good and evil. One would-be suicide saved while countless thousands of natives died of starvation and disease, and righteous anger of the shooting of an old man more than five thousand of his fellow block dwellers perished. How many people were going to die, or had already died, to balance out the deep affection and concern this incredibly beautiful woman felt for young Tommy?

	You great, murderous, hypocritical cow, he raged silently at her image on number Seven. Then he closed his eyes, trying to calm himself and bring down his elevated pulse-rate. He had to retain control of himself. It was highly probable that his reactions were being monitored, and a Luke observer was watching and shaking his head and giving a recruit called Malcolm the thumbs-down.

	People are dying all over the world, he told himself. Calm down. Think. What do you expect from this world, justice?

	When he opened his eyes again the image of the ICU monitor room had gone, the walls of the blister were once again transparent, and a meal was rising from a panel which had opened in the floor. The door had also opened and a sign above it read MEAL AND EXERCISE PERIOD — TWO HOURS. He was finishing the first and considering the second when Ann's voice sounded from a concealed 'speaker'.

	"Are you there?" she said.

	"I'm here," said Malcolm, surprise and tension making his voice harsh. "Where the hell tire you?"

	"Don't you shout at me ...!" she began angrily, then in a quieter tone went on, "Let's not start a fight, dear, it might give our instructors a bad opinion of us. I am on the seventy-sixth level and I'm told that you tire on Level Forty-three. I am also told that I cannot visit you because everything below Fifty is Luke territory and exclusively male. Up here the conditions are not so strict. Among the John instructors and trainee Guardians, both sexes are represented, so far as I can see. Can you come up here? Please."

	She was keeping her voice on a conversation level, but Malcolm could sense the effort needed for her to do so. He said, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to shout at you. It is just that I overheard a conversation between the Prof, and Big Mary which made me feel very ..."

	"I caught the same programme," she broke in, "and there are a lot of Big Marys on this level. One of them told me where you were but not much else. I think I'm supposed to work out answers for myself. I'm about fifty yards from the elevators. They are one-person cages, going past in both directions every few seconds. There is a big, blue-lit indicator above the doors. Find the one on your level and come up. I have to talk to you.

	"But you are talking to me," said Malcolm. "But I'll try to find the elevators. What is worrying you?"

	"Where we are is worrying me." Her tone resembled that of a child's waking from a nightmare, seeking comfort.

	Awkwardly, with a part of his mind worrying about listening Guardians, he said, "Is there something special worrying you. Something you can tell me now ...?"

	"Go jump," she said, and broke the connection.

	Inspector Reynolds?" said the voice on his inter-departmental telephone. "Speaking."

	"I have detailed information," the voice went on without preamble, "regarding a major incident which will take place; in just under three hours in the Tamar Street agricultural nitrates processing complex, Ten three-man teams, armed with handguns and carrying explosive combustibles m maintenance satchels, will do the job. They will be wearing Mid-Low semi-skilled coveralls belonging to local companies, with the sleeves rolled up above the elbows to aid self-identification. They will act together to create a diversion in the Tamar Street underpass then, in the ensuing confusion, they will split into three-man teams and gain access to the complex by six emergency exits which open into the underpass. Unless they are stopped, that nitrates plant will blow a large hole in this city, with massive loss of life. So listen carefully ..."

	Reynolds listened carefully until the other had stopped talking, then he said harshly, "Who are you?"

	"My name is John," the voice replied.

	In this game of Cops and Activist Protest Groups, Reynolds knew, City Security had been on the losing side for a very long time. The game was fair, however, in that the joker was just as likely to turn up in one hand as the other. But the call was originating from inside the building and the internal telephone system had an automatic PBX which made it Impossible to trace such calls without a technician being on watch for it in the exchange.

	Was this particular joker furnishing him with vital information, he wondered, or setting him up for an assassination attempt?

	"Why are you telling me this?" he asked. "Why didn't you give it to a more senior officer who could —"

	"You are being wilfully stupid, Inspector," the voice broke in. "You know as well as I do that many of the senior officers are not what they seem. I have been present when some of them discussed you and your highly unofficial investigation, so I know that you are what you seem to be, an intelligent and resourceful local policeman. I also know that you have a large number of men who are personally loyal to you. Enough, at least, to mount a counter-terrorist operation of the kind required at Tamar Street.

	"And the reason I am telling you about it," he went on, with just a tinge of emotion creeping into his voice, "is because I approved of the meeting between the John Guardian, Jennings and the local, Crawford. I am still convinced that you locals would behave if you were told the truth, instead of exterminating you like ... Well, there has to be a better way."

	"What did Jennings tell Crawford ...?" began Reynolds.

	"You haven't time for questions, Inspector. Survive," said the other, then broke the connection.

	He did not have much time, but there was enough of it for Reynolds to collect his vehicle's on-duty and relief crews and to brief them while they were en route to Tamar Street. His force comprised eight crew-members, Sergeant Telford's opposite number, Carvill, and himself — he could not call on any others without giving reasons to his superiors, all of whom were suspect.

	It would be a clandestine operation, he had decided, with the vehicle and one officer hidden a convenient distance away, and everyone else operating out of uniform. They would wear the dark brown coveralls of road maintenance men, with their weapons and filter masks concealed in the tool satchels. They would have no other protection — no body armour, visored helmets, riot shields, nothing.

	If they rather than the bombing teams were being set up, they would be an extremely vulnerable bunch of policemen.

	But there was no opposition as they left their vehicle a short distance from the underpass and walked along the powered lane which, in the subsurface sections, was raised on concrete Y-beams above the pedestrian and cycle ways. An underslung catwalk used for maintenance work on the tunnel's lighting and ventilation systems was suspended from one side of the Y-beams, giving a perfect field of observation and fire along one side of the tunnel and a slightly obstructed one of the other.

	Reynolds chose a spot which gave a good view of the six emergency exits, which faced each other at fifty yard intervals in the opposing tunnel walls. He assigned six of his men to reinforce the nitrates company guards ahead on duty inside the exits. Sergeant Carvill, who was an exceptionally good marksman, he kept with him. Then he switched off the lighting in the immediate vicinity so that it would not be obvious that the catwalk was occupied.

	The rendezvous point for the bombers, if his information was correct, was less than fifty feet away and just twenty feet below him.

	They began arriving at minus ten minutes, in ones and twos, to stand not too closely together while they pretended not to recognise each other. There was nothing remarkable about them except for their tendency to interpose their bodies between their heavy satchels and any of the hurrying pedestrians who looked as if they might jostle them. Because of the numbers of pedestrians moving through or past them, there was no way of telling when or if the bombing teams were complete, and there was no indication of a senior member moving among them with last-minute instructions. They were making it very difficult for Reynolds positively to identify his targets.

	He rested his weapon on the catwalk guardrail and sighted on a few of them in turn, thinking that this was one hell of a way to do police work. In the good old days he would have had more men he could trust, more than enough to surround this group of bombers and call on them to surrender rather than put innocent bystanders at risk. But in those days life meant more, had more richness and variety about it, to policemen, terrorists and innocent bystanders alike. Nowadays police work was generally a dirty and inhuman business, with the lawmen and lawbreakers becoming indistinguishable from each other. Sergeant Telford had been one of the exceptions.

	The thought of the sergeant's death brought to mind the cold and clinical Doctor Malcolm, who had weighed all the evidence in Telford's case and, ignoring any personal feelings he might have had in the, matter, had done what he had thought was right ...

	There was movement below. A hitching of shoulder straps and a loosening of satchel fastenings. The group began to split into three. Half of them were moving slowly towards the pedestrian parapet preparatory to crossing the cycle lanes to the opposite wall of the tunnel, while the others began walking in opposite directions along the nearer wall. They were all rolling up their sleeves.

	Reynolds centred one of them in his sights and held him there while he tried to make his finger and tongue do as they were being told.

	Do what you think is right! he raged silently at himself. Aloud, he said, "Sergeant, hit them ...!"

Chapter Fourteen
Observation

	Distorted by the curvature of the blister, the indicator board for the elevators showed as a smear of blue light. But from the walkway outside Malcolm could see it more clearly and he guessed that it was less than half a mile away. Around him the ways were crowded with white-robed trainees and a few Lukes. Nobody spoke to him or to each other, so it was possible that the trainees were supposed to spend the free period in meditation. Certainly their expressions had the intent and absent quality of the person who is contemplating a glorious inner vision.

	Malcolm did not feel sick or dizzy, but for the first fifty or sixty yards of the journey he kept staggering between the edges of the walkway — an after-effect of the anaesthetic shot he had been given, no doubt. After the first few minutes he grew steadier on his feet and was able to quicken his pace.

	The indicator above the bank of elevators was a huge, blue-lit square stretching up to the ceiling mirrors and carrying colour-coded identifications for every level. He tried to read it before joining the queue waiting for the cages, but there was just too much information for him to be able to assimilate it in detail. The levels from Fifty down to One Hundred were coded in red and bore signs like Basic Indoctrination, Psychological Warfare, Crowd Control, Biological Weapons, Tactics Urban, Tactics Rural ... Above Fifty and up to Level Five the signs said similar things but were coded green. Levels Four, Three and Two were marked Administration and tagged yellow. Level One was marked Observation in white with an additional sign which flashed Restricted in blue. Below One Hundred and down to Two Eighty-four the markings were uniformly yellow, including the lowest level and had a sign saying Transportation.

	Malcolm joined the queue going up. The tremendous size of the underground structure and the implications behind the coloured signs would not register fully in his mind — it was all too vast, like trying to appreciate a distance measured in light-years. There were two Lukes ahead of him in the line, talking quietly and regarding each other with grave, identical faces.

	"... The personal involvement is minimal in a programme natural catastrophe," one of them was saying. "A major earthquake takes out, say, one quarter of the indigenous population. Lack of food, shelter and medical assistance accounts for another quarter. Subsequent famine and associated diseases will account for another quarter, and certainly for the majority of the children. Very little effort is needed at that stage to make the survivors eliminate each other."

	"It's untidy," said his companion. The two or three per cent who survive will be tough, pre-adolescents or young adults, and no longer easily controlled. They would he widely scattered and he far from ideal targets for biological, or any other, weapons. With respect, it's untidy."

	"Perhaps," the other replied, "but your urban operation is more complex and has a much greater danger of personal involvement..."

	"A nice way of saying killed in a riot."

	" ... Admittedly the degree of control is much greater," the other man went on. "A few words in the right situation can sometimes achieve more than earthquakes and biologicals ... Oh, survive."

	"Survive," replied the other as his colleague stepped into the elevator cage. In a few seconds it was Malcolm's turn.

	As the one-man cage climbed steadily Malcolm could see no obvious differences in the higher levels. There were the same white expanses of flooring, transparent or opaque cubicles, high mirrored ceilings and white-cowled figures moving gravely about their business. The only changes were in the lengths of the queues waiting for the elevators. The people going up became fewer as he neared Level Fifty, but lengthened again when he passed into John territory. They also contained both sexes, with the females resembling Big Mary and the males looking very like all the other men.

	Ann was waiting for him at Level Forty-three. She turned and led the way to her blister without speaking, and the silence continued when they were inside. Her expression was hidden by the folds of her cowl, but her fists were clenched. Instinctively Malcolm reached out to comfort her, then staggered hack as she launched herself at him.

	For a moment he thought that lie was being attacked, that she had been brainwashed or had undergone a personality change at the hands of the Johns. But then it became plain that she was not trying to crush him to death but was holding °n to him in the way that a swimmer holds on to a rock when there is clanger of being swept away, in desperation, lie put his arms around her very tightly and, in complete silence, they stood pressed together for several minutes while they apparently tried their best to deform each other's rib cages.

	Incredibly, considering their situation, Malcolm became sexually aroused.

	Ann gave a near-hysterical laugh and pushed him away. She said, "I've ... I've been told that we are undergoing basic reorientation for non-aligned local auxiliaries, whatever that means. I don't think they would like it if we furnished material lor an anthropology lesson." Suddenly her voice broke. "Where are we?"

	"Easy, dear," said Malcolm. "In time, not far from the hospital. We're underground, of course. I thought at first we were underneath the hospital, but the amount of dirt taken from a hole this size would be impossible to transport in secret."

	"Did you do it?" she said harshly. "If you didn't, do it now. Up and down as high as you can."

	Malcolm opened his mouth to protest, then saw that she was serious. After the first two jumps he staggered and almost lost balance. By the fourth jump he realised what she was getting at and the surprise made him overbalance again. He was about to try a fifth, just to be absolutely sure, when a Mary entered.

	"Well, well." she said in the same pleasant, contralto voice he had heard another Mary using to the professor. "The training supervisor tells me that you've worked out the elapsed time since your transfer by the density of your facial hair, and now you've established where you aren't by jumping up and down. Now, will you follow me to the elevators, please, we're going to Level One. You may as well know the worst..."

	Once again he was climbing, this time with Ann in the cage above his and the Mary in the one above that. They passed level alter level of reorientation blisters until the green John territory gave way to the; yellow of Administration, where the entire floor areas were filled with what looked like communications and computer equipment. The white-robed figures on these levels were smaller men, with just a sprinkling of Lukes or Johns or Marys. Yellow, it seemed, signified neutral territory.

	The floor area of One was minute compared with the deeper levels, just a fifty-foot diameter circle of whiteness enclosed by an opaque white dome. In the centre of the floor there was a control console surrounded by an open ring of conches facing outwards. Except for themselves the level was empty.

	"You will sit down, please," said the Mary, indicating one of the conches, "while I render the dome transparent."

	Malcolm was glad that he was sitting because otherwise he might have fallen down with shock. lie was not completely unprepared, however — his difficulty in maintaining balance while walking fast, and his ability to do a surprisingly high standing jump, had made him suspect that he was on a world where the gravity pull was significantly less than that of Earth. Ann had realised it long before he had, and had been badly frightened. But now her expression showed more wonder than fear as she stared upwards and all around at the alien sky and landscape.

	"This ... isn't a projection?" asked Malcolm.

	The Mary shook her head.

	Malcolm swallowed, then returned his attention to the great, swollen, cloud-wrapped world which filled almost a quarter of the sky overhead. Lit by a sun which was either very dim or very distant and which was, in any case, below the horizon just then, the planet was lined with great bands of dull yellow, brown and copper-coloured clouds. On what seemed to be the planet's equator there were two tiny smudges which were probably the shadows of large moons. The vast globe was bright enough to light the planetary surface outside their observation dome so that they could see clearly to the horizon.

	They were on a flat, dry area of a world with a very thin atmosphere, judging by the sharp outlines of distant objects. A few yards beyond the circumference of their dome there was a ring of alien, desiccated corpses and skeletons of creatures — animals, he hoped — who had blundered into some kind of invisible protective screen. Beyond the outer protection there was no sign of movement among the vegetation, which was bulbous and spiked like cacti, or any other buildings or fabrications.

	"You are looking at Trennechoran A," said the Mary in a hushed, respectful voice. She cleared her throat, then went on in a more normal tone, "We are on Trennechoran B. It is debatable whether Trennechoran is a double planet or B is simply a large satellite of A. There are two other worlds circling this system's sun, neither of which support life. Trennechoran is a word which translates roughly as birth-place or home. Your own sun is not visible from here without a telescope."

	Without giving them any time to react, she went on, "By now you will have realised that I, unlike you locals, was not born on Earth and was not, in fact, born at all. You will also have realised that the level of technology apparent here, particularly the communication and instantaneous transport systems, is far beyond anything that Earth science could produce even before the Powerdown. You will also have questions about this extra-terrestrial intervention in Earth affairs. Ask them."

	You ... are human?" said Malcolm.

	"Of course."

	"I would say superhuman," said Ann quietly.

	That, too," the Mary replied. "But only if you mean by superhuman that we possess a combination of the best physical and intellectual characteristics available in the human genetic pool. The original selection and breeding programme was assisted by Trennechoran geneticists and the end results were cloned rather than mass bred. Super persons rarely breed true, as you know, so it is much better, having produced the ideal types, to duplicate them in whatever numbers are required.

	"Perfect duplication," she went on, "also means that the education of these Guardians or Administrators or Scientists is not complicated by the necessity for tailoring the training programme to fit individual requirements, such as differing psychological and emotional responses and learning curves. Initially, from the foetal stage to pre-adolescence, training is the same for all types. But occasions arise which necessitate an Administrator or Scientist being given Guardian training to fit him or her for a particular local role. For example, I am both a Scientist and a Guardian, one of the relatively few female Guardians who —"

	"There are very few females here," Ann broke in. "Is it because the emotions associated with mating might humanise, even partly, clones who otherwise would —"

	"There are very many females on the Scientist levels," the Mary replied quietly. "Cloned infants have to be loved and carefully tended just like ordinary children if they are to mature without psychological flaws. We may give the impression of being celibate to locals, but that is because we have each other and local men and women are, from the sexual standpoint, repugnant to us."

	"But you're all identical!" said Ann, unable to hide any longer the anger and revulsion she felt for this splendid female creature whose organisation was responsible for so much deliberate and callous destruction of life. "Surely there must be times when you would accept second best, if only for the change?"

	The Mary regarded her impassively for a moment, which was just long enough to make them realise that Ann was stepping dangerously out of line, then she said, "If we were to accept second best, as you call it, it would mean that we were flawed, that many thousands of a particular Guardian or Administrator or Scientist batch was flawed. Such flaws would be detected at a very early age and production discontinued. There is therefore nobody among us who would accept second best, nobody who would give himself or herself to what in effect would be a handsome or beautiful semi-intelligent animal. Is this clear?"

	The frightening thing about her was that she was not even angry. Her manner was that of a fond mother who was performing the unpleasant task of delivering a well-deserved scolding to an erring child.

	"Until recently," she went on, "the local people who came here had attained Guardian level on Earth. They were properly trained and indoctrinated, the local elite, and absolutely dedicated to their Luke or John philosophy. Here we give extra training, unveil as much of our overall purpose as is deemed necessary, and send them back to Earth to positions of special responsibility. You two, on the other hand, have arrived by the back door.

	You have not earned your places here," she continued, "and yet I have been instructed to give you much more information than any of the advanced local candidates undergoing training on the John and Luke levels, none of whom have ever been up to Level One or looked upon Trennechoran."

	"I suppose," said Ann in a subdued but unrepentant voice, "we are lucky."

	Malcolm glared at her to be silent while he tried to ward off further potential trouble by asking a general question, lie said, "Mary, what are you trying to achieve on Earth?"

	He thought she was going to ignore the question at first as she said, "You are among the first of the Neutrals who will come here. You subscribe to neither the Luke nor John philosophy and, hopefully, you will return as co-operative and properly motivated assistants. The work you will be expected to do will be difficult, perhaps even distressing, but it will not run counter to your existing local philosophies or codes of behaviour. You will be fully informed on everything that is happening. Much better informed, as I have said, than the Guardians. But you must be completely secretive about everything you learn from this moment on.

	"If you were to give such information to locals or lower level Guardians it would embarrass, but not seriously hamper us in our operation," she went on, "and we would be much too busy to deal leniently with offenders."

	"We would not want to embarrass you," said Malcolm. Silently, he added, We would like to stop you and your extraterrestrial masters dead in your tracks.

	"As for your question, Doctor," said the Mary, "we have diagnosed, and are in the process of treating, a very sick planet."

Chapter Fifteen
Police Operation

	From his firing position inside an underpass in a city on the very sick planet, Inspector Reynolds was killing bare-armed people as fast as he could while he wondered sickly whether he was just another symptom of the disease afflicting his society or if he was contributing in a small way towards its eventual cure. These targets were human-like things who intended wiping out large numbers of human beings, he kept reminding himself, and eliminating them should not bother him.

	He had dropped three of them in as many seconds, and four more before they could begin ducking and weaving among the ordinary pedestrians. But now they had started throwing grenades on to the cycle and pedestrian ways. Shrapnel whanged off the catwalk's metal floor, but none of it hit him. On the unpowered lanes, cyclists screamed and crashed. Within seconds the cycle-way was plugged solid, allowing the bombing teams to cross unimpeded. Reynolds thought he hit another bomber, but there was so much smoke from the grenades that he could not be sure, so he returned his attention to the pedestrian way below him where there was less smoke.

	There was a trio of bombers zig-zagging frantically among the pedestrians as they headed for the nearest factory exit door, and Reynolds loosed off a hasty shot as he caught a glimpse of a tunic between two bare arms. He must have missed the man and hit his satchel because there was a sudden flare of red and a mushroom of flames as black, oily smoke rose and flattened itself against the tunnel roof. Before the visibility was reduced to zero, he saw two figures rolling about on the pavement and beating at their burning clothing with bare hands. One of them had bare arms as well. He tried to ignore the sounds the two men and all the other casualties were making as he ran from the darkened section of the catwalk to get clear of the choking, black smoke.

	He emerged from the smoke above one of the emergency exits just as an attack was developing. His crew-member inside the door dropped one of the bombers before the man could get off a shot, and Reynolds sent another spinning to the pavement with a chunk missing from his shoulder. A third man looked up, saw him on the lighted section of catwalk, and fired. But handguns were not very accurate at thirty yards, so the man braced himself against the tunnel wall, feet apart and using both hands to steady his aim, he tried for another shot. Reynolds, who was using the guardrail to steady his much more accurate weapon, fired first. The man sat down abruptly, leaving a red smear on the wall.

	Reynolds caught sight of another bomber bending over the one he had wounded, rolling down the injured man's sleeves, then rolling down his own. There were too many IBs around for him to get a clear shot, but it was plain that the attack on the nitrates factory was being called off — by these two, at least.

	Inside one of the exits on the opposite wall of the tunnel the war was still going on, however. A bombing team had gone in and at least one of them was still there, firing his handgun in reply to the sharper crack of a police high-velocity weapon. Reynolds guessed that his crew-man was fighting a delaying action on the spiral stairs just inside the exit. Meanwhile, outside the door four bare-armed men were waiting to go in, but were being cautious because three of their friends were lying untidily just inside the opening. They had become impatient as well as cautious, because one of them was holding a small box which he flung far inside the doorway before jumping aside. There was a muffled explosion and smoke belched out of the opening, making it impossible for Reynolds to identify targets.

	His crew-member, the company guard and the man or men of the bombing team who were already inside were equally expendable, apparently. Reynolds swore and headed for the nearest descending ladder.

	As he ran towards the still smoking doorway a few seconds later, pushing pedestrian and cyclist IBs aside and jumping over the casualties, he was thinking fearfully about the imminent danger to the vast nitrates plant which stretched for nearly half a mile on each side of the underpass and sixty levels about it.

	The plant, which processed nitrates from the city's organic wastes, consisted of several large, pre-Powerdown buildings with more recent structures cementing them together into one vast, three-dimensional labyrinth. Timber was used extensively throughout the building and the nitrates it produced were explosively flammable, so the fire precautions were incredibly strict. Because of the pedestrian and cycle traffic congestion in the area, its all-male workforce lived on the premises and rarely left them. They enjoyed a fairly generous food allowance, whatever entertainment they could provide for themselves, and job security — so much so that there were people willing to risk invading this secure and stinking world.

	That was why the emergency exits, although kept open to conform with the city's fire regulations, were guarded with ex-power walkers armed with clubs. Occasionally someone would try to sneak in and climb the emergency stairs and hide until he could get a company uniform — usually by killing someone for it. Once he was wearing company coveralls he was safe, because the workforce moved around a lot inside the building and nobody remembered names or faces very well these days. There were just too many people, and in the factory hives, one bunk was just as lousy as any other.

	But the four men who had gone into the building a few minutes earlier were not seeking secure jobs. They were intent on doing something which would make the massacre in old Hesketh's living block look like a minor traffic riot. There had been ten bombing teams assigned to this operation, more than enough to achieve their objective, but those four men could do just as much damage if they planted their devices correctly and were willing to fight off counter-measures and perish with the building ...

	Reynolds ran past the exit as dozens of other pedestrians were doing, then leaned against the tunnel wall to catch his breath and re-examine the brief picture of the interior that he had seen as he had gone past.

	The device which had been thrown in a few minutes earlier had been a little too destructive. Not only had it silenced the Security opposition and taken out the members of the earlier bombing team, it had virtually demolished the first twenty feet of spiral stairway. All of the stair treads had been blasted away and the metal handrails and supports hung from the level above like a surrealistic ladder, which three of the men were climbing while the fourth stood guard at the base.

	From his position beside the exit, Reynolds carefully scanned the catwalk until he spotted Sergeant Carvill, who was firing at targets on the opposite side of the underpass and had his back to the inspector. It would be stupid, Reynolds thought as he quickly rolled up his sleeves, to be shot by one of my own mm. Unhurriedly, he walked through the doorway.

	There was still a lot of smoke drifting about, his coveralls and face were blackened and unrecognisable, but his bare arms were plain to see. The man guarding the climbers on the wrecked staircase tensed for a second, then nodded just before Reynolds shot him. The other three had no chance at all. He made sure that his crew-member and the company guard were beyond help, then he rolled down his sleeves again and left quickly.

	The shooting had stopped although there was a fairly serious traffic riot developing which was involving pedestrians as cyclists tried to use the walkways to circumvent the jams. It was obvious that the surviving bombing teams had withdrawn to try again another day. Reynolds could hear the sirens of approaching police vehicles and ambulances, and his own vehicle had already arrived and was waiting on the powered lane above him. He moved as quickly as the rioting would allow to the other live emergency exits in turn and ordered his men back to their vehicle to change into uniform and riot armour. While their newly-arrived colleagues sickened out the riot, they would be able to search for wounded members of the bombing teams.

	Now that the fighting was over he could be a proper policeman again, which meant gathering information which might enable him to prevent similar infractions of the law.

	Two hours later he was still seeking information, in vain. Reynolds was disappointed but not surprised. It was a feature of every large-scale incident of this nature that the wounded and weapons were removed very quickly, spirited away on makeshift stretchers or in the containers of delivery tricycles or even in hijacked vehicles. But he had been hoping that, because the bombing operation had gone so badly wrong for them, their casualty pick-up arrangements would go wrong as well.

	Reynolds was listening to another negative report from the last of his crew-members to return when Sergeant Carvill, who was occupying the observer's position, pointed suddenly.

	"Sir." he said excitedly. Took at that line of ambulances at the mouth of the underpass. The last one arrived a few minutes ago and it's pulling out again, without loading casualties. Possibly it has received .a more urgent call, but it might be a hijack by the —"

	"Follow it; said Reynolds. "Not too closely, and no siren."

	They could not have followed it closely in any case, because they wasted nearly live minutes weaving their way between police vehicles and ambulances stopped on the powered lane. When they emerged from the underpass it was in time to see the half-mile distant ambulance, siren braying, make a highly illegal turn across an unpowered lane and disappear from sight. By the time they reached the same spot and made a similar illegal turn it was still nowhere to be seen.

	"Find it," said Reynolds harshly.

	It was a derelict area of the city whose streets were too narrow for even unpowered traffic so that it had been designated a pedestrians' only area. Reynolds had no business trying to squeeze a huge police vehicle along those narrow ways, and it was no surprise to him that a large quantity of stones and verbal abuse, as well as a couple of low-velocity shots, were hurled against the armoured sides of his tender. But it was not a large district and in less than half an hour they spotted the ambulance.

	There was a man standing beside it. He was not wearing hospital whites and when he saw them he jumped into the ambulance and drove off.

	"Let him go, Sergeant," said Reynolds as Carvill speeded up to give chase. "I'm much more interested in the address he stopped at than in him. Park opposite it."

	It was a burned-out factory with four unsafe walls enclosing a huge mound of rubble, but there were steps, which were suspiciously clear of rubbish, leading down to a basement entrance.

	Reynolds said, "Carvill, stay with the vehicle. If a hostile crowd gathers, sicken them off. If too many of them have gas-masks and firearms, use the siren to warn us. You three, come with me. You others, go around the back in case the basement has another way out. And remember, this time I want someone in a condition to answer questions."

	They were within a few yards of the stairs when the sound of a shot made them drop flat. There was another shot, the sound muffled as if coming from a closed room, then several more. When the shooting stopped, Reynolds moved forward again. Me motioned for the others to cover him as he went through the basement door.

Chapter Sixteen
Diagnosis

	When Trennechoran probes discovered intelligent life on Earth during the late sixteenth century it was already apparent that the dominant species and its culture were in the advanced stages of a terminal illness.

	It was not a rare disease. A great many promising cultures had perished from it before the Trennechorans began their long, slow and stable climb up the evolutionary ladder and a few since then. Of the latter group only one. the Plessat culture, had been able to survive after a fashion, and then only because of the massive transfusions of technical, sociological and medical assistance it received. Rut the lessons learned on Plessat would, it was hoped, enable the Earth culture to be not only saved, but cured.

	During the two centuries following the discovery of Earth no direct action was taken apart from the withdrawal of specimens. The causes of the disease had to be isolated and identified .and specific antibodies prepared in quantity. A large proportion of the human specimens taken from Earth were lost before the initial problems of feeding, breeding and indoctrination were solved and the superhuman results passed as suitable for cloning and mass production. For physiological reasons the Trennechorans were unable to treat the patient directly, but they were able to observe and study the ailing culture very closely indeed while they designed, built and staffed the Earth establishment on Trennechoran B which would enable them to effect the cure.

	Responsibility for carrying out the treatment rested with the three basic types of clone, each of whose heredity and environment were identical until the final stages of training. It was then that they were fitted for specific tasks and injected into the areas of the patient where they would produce the maximum effect. Brave, resourceful, ethical and highly motivated, they were the superhuman antibodies who would attack and neutralise the disease which was killing the planet. The work was difficult and dangerous and intensely rewarding, particularly for the Guardians whose type was entrusted with the execution of the operative decisions made by the Trennechorans. Even the local Guardians, the Earth-born antibodies who were selected and trained and marshalled against their own diseased society, were very special people.

	But the early stages of the operation had not gone smoothly. There had been a serious difference of opinion regarding details of the operative procedure between the Trennechoran psychologist and surgeons, between the Johns and the Lukes.

	Like most high-level differences within a large organisation, the adherents of the two opposing philosophies became more and more divided in direct proportion to their diminishing rank. Scientists and Administrators were virtually unaffected by the split. Closely concerned as they were with the production and training of Guardians — all of the Guardians — they could hold Luke or John opinions and agree to differ but not fight over them. Not so the Guardians, whose indoctrination had of necessity to be so thorough and uncompromising that their training areas had to be segregated and their education programmes drastically modified. As for the local Guardians and rank-and-file members, the difference there was not so much a procedural disagreement as an all-out bloody war ...

	"... It is tragic and senseless," the Mary said in the tones of a grieving mother. "The differences are so minor."

	"To us," said Ann, "there is no difference at all. Their actions are uniformly ruthless, and despicable."

	The Mary looked at her for a moment, her expression that of a lab technician observing the not unexpected result of a reaction. Malcolm spoke quickly, afraid that this highly motivated super-person might decide to empty the remains of the experiment, themselves, down the sink.

	"Why were the clones given those names, Mary?" he said. "Is there a religious significance?"

	"When the Johns began the early pre-operative work on Earth," she replied, "religion was a much more important factor than it is now, and we were able to make limited use of it. Our organisation has many of the attributes of a strict religious order, and the names do describe our basic philosophical differences and methods of operation."

	They could think of the Johns as preachers of a new way of thinking, she went on to explain, who were bringing a cure for the planet's distress which was essentially non-violent — in the beginning, that was. The Lukes were not preachers and educators, even in the beginning. They had a more simple and direct approach. If an individual or a population was giving trouble they preferred to remove rather than reeducate. Their philosophy was 'When in doubt, cut it out'. It was natural that the majority of a scientifically and culturally advanced species like the Trennechorans would favour the John approach.

	But the process of re-educating the locals was slow and the initial results poor, even though the message being promulgated was identical to a code of ethics which had been taught on Earth for many centuries. Moderation, self-discipline and respect for other people's persons, property and principles was a nice idea so long as everyone practised it. But when there were some who did and some who did not, the ones who did not exploited the ones who did, and the original nice idea became warped into some pretty horrifying shapes. As a result, the John faction lost support and the Lukes were given a chance to show what they could do.

	It was the surgical intervention by the Lukes which culminated in the First World War, which in turn caused an immediate reversal of feeling in favour of the Johns.

	The general feeling of horror and self-guilt which affected the human race in the aftermath of the war enabled the Johns to make good progress. But the Lukes, who had used their period of being in favour to extend their local organisation, were also active — helping wherever they could, they insisted. The Johns insisted equally strongly that they were being hampered at every turn by the Lukes. It was then that the procedural disagreement on Trennechoran A deteriorated into open hostility on B's Guardian training levels, and into covert warfare on Earth.

	There the situation was threatening to get out of control. Despite the John efforts at winning the minds of the locals, and the many acts of minor surgery performed by the Lukes on selected areas of malignancy, the local racial and ideological groupings refused to act with moderation. The Luke-inspired world war had caused a tremendous leap forward in science and technology, but culturally the locals' thinking was still in the Middle Ages. And in spite of the influence of intelligent and forward-looking locals, some of whom had been John-inspired, the world's population was increasing at an unacceptable rate.

	This time the swing in favour towards the Lukes was marginal and their Second World War did not result in as many casualties as the first one. In part this was due to advances in local medical science, but chiefly because of the efforts of the Johns who worked to ensure that both sides did not have nuclear weapons available at the same time. Both factions claimed a limited victory.

	The Johns held that the mere possession of the means of their own self-destruction, either by nuclear or biological weapons, would bring the Earth population to its senses. This idea gained widespread local support even without the proselytising of the Johns, who were in addition fostering the ideas of racial and religious and political tolerance as well as trying to turn the people's mind inwards towards conservation of resources and outwards towards spaceflight.

	The sickness was well advanced but. better late than never, the people of Earth were beginning to realise that self-discipline and intelligent unselfishness on the widest possible scale was needed if their world, the only one they had, was to be saved.

	"... Neither faction was responsible for what happened then," the Mary went on. "In spite of the Powerdown, the rigid stratification of population into intelligence and aptitude levels, and the increasingly stringent controls which have since been introduced, the disease is running its course."

	"And now," said Ann grimly, "I suppose it is the Luke's turn again?"

	For a moment the Mary looked silently upwards at the enormous globe of Trennechoran A, then she said, "We clones are analogous to the medication and surgical instruments of the people up there and, naturally, we reflect their changes of view. Regrettably we magnify their changes of view all too often. Rut you must never forget that the Trennechorans are a highly intelligent and sensitive race faced with a complex and, to them, frightful moral and ethical problem. They have been undecided whether the hard or the soft approach was best. Now they realise that their greatest mistake was the indecision itself, that their continuing vacillation was nothing more than moral cowardice. Now the final directive has been passed down. The antibodies will no longer fight each other. Henceforth the Johns and Lukes will work together. According to our masters, the rapidly worsening condition of the patient demands it."

	"You ... disagree," said Malcolm. He had meant to ask a question but somehow it came out sounding like a statement.

	"We could not agree; to the Second World War becoming the First Nuclear War," she said very seriously. "The direct and indirect casualties, the long-term genetic damage, the philosophy of using a club to teach a childish race how to think, all that was unacceptable to us and to Trennechorans whose feelings we reflect. We arc the Guardians of intelligent and potentially intelligent life."

	Malcolm nodded and tried hard to maintain a neutral expression. Rut a picture of the aftermath of the ambulance bay bombing interposed itself between him and this serious and deeply concerned super-person, and it was obvious that his expression was not neutral enough.

	"You are concerning yourself with individuals, Doctor," the Mary said sharply, "when you should be worrying about the survival of your species."

	"Our species," said Ann in a quiet but very firm voice, "is made up of individuals, all of whom should be given an equal chance of survival."

	"I entirely agree," said the Mary, turning to face her. "Rut it is unrealistic to expect perfect justice in a society whose individuals, considered in the mass, are little more than animals. However, the potential for advancement is there, and John philosophy holds that every effort must be made to ensure the survival of as many of these near-animals as possible.

	"Observe."

	A small area of the dome became opaque, then they were looking at a rapidly moving picture of a planetary surface taken at an altitude of a few miles. The surface unrolling below them was an unrelieved, livid green covered with a regular tracery of irrigation channels which reflected the sunlight like golden spider-webs. As they watched a gigantic and complex crop-tending machine slid past and, seconds later, a thin, foreshortened tower casting an incredibly long shadow drifted into sight.

	Gradually the uniform green of the surface began to lighten and become yellow, then brown until there was nothing but an arid and lifeless desert. A group of small, grey domes moved info sight. Each dome had a cluster of stubby cylinders paced around its circumference, but no other details were visible because of the heat distortion which made the scene ripple as if it was being viewed through running water. The whole picture began to jerk about as the vehicle which had recorded the pictures was shaken by the thermal turbulence.

	"The surface of Plessat," said the Mary. "You would have found the atmosphere breathable a few hundred years ago, and even now it would not kill you unless you were within twenty miles of a heat and gaseous waste elimination unit. That is the feature which is passing the centre of the picture now.

	"The Plessat sub-surface cities," she went on, "generate large amounts of heat, as well as other wastes, and the domes automatically recycle the material and reconvert the heat into power. Except for the observation towers which monitor the agricultural and marine harvesting machinery, there are no structures on the surface containing organic life. The tower controllers are exclusively Scientists, Administrators or Guardians since the local Plessat population, unlike the people of Earth, are no longer psychologically capable of working in the open ..."

	"Guardians?" Malcolm broke in. "Do you mean that the Plessats are identical to Earth-people?"

	"I, do not," said the Mary. "The Plessat cloning establishment, which is much larger than this one, is about fifty miles from here. And now you will see one of the sub-surface cities ..."

	The average Plessat city was about two miles deep and anything up to one hundred miles in diameter. Close to the surface were the power houses, the food synthesisers, the air regeneration equipment, the life-support systems — all on a gigantic scale and utterly bewildering in their complexity. Then came the living areas, level after level of rooms no larger than a human coffin filled with living death support systems — at least, that was how Malcolm thought of them. The citizens had less freedom of movement than a battery hen.

	"...The living cubicles open at each end into tubular corridors, as you can see," the Mary continued. "One corridor is used for leaving, the other for entering, the living quarters. The corridors are too narrow for two Plessats to pass each other, but they join a system of trunk corridors which are relatively wide and would be analogous to one of your main thoroughfares. Because of population pressure the citizens remain in their cubicles for weeks at a time, and leave for a few days for purposes of mating, practising various specialised skills in the medical, entertainment and similar areas. Since they are no longer capable as a species of sustained physical effort, their confinement is not as great a hardship as it might appear. It is also the reason why Plessat Scientists and Administrators are still being produced in quantity to co-ordinate and maintain the high level of technology necessary for the survival of this culture ...

	The Plessat life-forms resembled a small, deformed Earth walrus, Malcolm thought, pale brown in colour and with a greyish white underside. Because of the elevated temperature levels within the city, they did not wear clothing. Their cranial capacity was large in relation to their body mass and the features on the bulbous head were grouped around a central mouth, with eyes above and below it and an ear on each side. The Plessats did not appear to have a nose, which was probably an advantage living where they did.

	Where the heavy neck joined the shoulders there sprouted two tubby arms ending in hands which were surprisingly human. The rear limbs resembled flippers edged with heavy, roughened pads of calloused skin — the remains of the legs which had been surgically shortened at birth. When a citizen had no room to stand up, legs were an encumbrance.

	The Plessat clones still retained their legs so that Malcolm was able to see what a true native had looked like. Instead of a deformed walrus they resembled a graceful, large-headed and tail-less kangaroo covered in beautiful brown and white fur.

	"... It is regrettable that so many of them elect to remain unconscious during the periods between physical exercise," the Mary was saying, "while far too many of the others remain permanently attached to the entertainment and direct pleasure stimulus channels, refusing to exercise or even eat. But there are others who continue to discipline their minds and bodies, who use the education and cultural channels as well as the entertainment inputs, and who try very hard to produce original ideas in art and literature and philosophy. These are the people we are trying to encourage, and to encourage others to join them. But progress is slow. The environment is not conducive to intellectual or cultural activity."

	"That is understandable," said Malcolm. He was thinking about the Plessat city environment and hoping that he did not look as sick as he felt.

	When the Mary went on there was a note of quiet but intense pride in her voice as she said, "Plessat is exclusively a John operation. Perhaps we were not harsh enough in our original treatment of them, and there have been other mistakes as well. But we learned from those mistakes and would not have repeated them on Earth. But on Earth the Lukes kept interfering so that..."

	She broke off and inclined her head towards the screen, which was showing pictures of a city mating level, then went on proudly, "The life-style is far from perfect. We admit that. But the important thing to remember, especially for members of the medical fraternity like yourselves, is that except for the normal fatalities caused by accident, age, illness or psychological disturbance, nobody died."

	The scene reminded Malcolm of a natural history film he had once seen which dealt with the mating habits of sealions. There had been an immense sandy beach literally carpeted with the grey, slippery forms huddling together or squirming and flopping all over each other. But in this scene there were no breakers foaming over the sand or seabirds wheeling in the clean blue sky above them. There was only an endless smooth plastic floor and a ceiling of the same material less than four feet above it.

	Ann swung around suddenly so that her back was to the screen. She was looking the way Malcolm felt.

	The Mary looked at her for perhaps ten interminable seconds, then she turned her eyes on Malcolm. When she spoke there was no expression either in her voice or in her features as she said, "Remain here. It is unlikely that I shall see you again."

	Ann's face was composed but her grip on Malcolm's hand was threatening to crush his fingers as she said, "I know we didn't utter a word, but I think we must have said the wrong thing."

Chapter Seventeen
Major Surgery

	They were expecting the worst to happen — a visit from one of the Guardians, the sudden hissing of lethal gas, oblivion in one form or another. What actually happened was that the dome went opaque and they were once again surrounded by the sights and sounds of the reorientation programme. They were still expecting the worst, but they could not help watching and listening.

	Earth's population was only a fraction of that of Plessat, but the number of concealed sensors covering the planet was many times greater.

	There were sight and sound pick-ups in all of the important government agencies, military and City Security departments, medical and educational establishments, and in a shockingly large number of private dwellings as well. Not every tree in every jungle was bugged, but the houses of the village headmen were, as was much of the equipment used by local guerrilla forces and armed protesters. Every point where decisions were being made or where trends were becoming manifest or where key actions were taking place — all had their sensors.

	The sheer numbers of the devices required, the degree of technological sophistication contained in the pinhead-sized devices, and the vast quantity of data which was being instantly processed and translated by the Trennechorans was mind-staggering. The Malcolms were not so much ignorant natives watching a television set, they were like Bell or Marconi watching the same set and realising how truly magical it was.

	"The clinical picture of the patient," said Malcolm, trying to loosen Ann's grip on his hand, "is complete in every detail. Is treatment to be medical or surgical, do you think?"

	"They seem to think Earth is a case for major surgery, I'd say," Ann replied. Then her voice broke and she cried, "How can we stop these ... these super-intelligent and ultra-ethical bloody murderers? And don't look at me like that, I know they've probably got this place bugged along with everywhere else. But they would have to be stupid to believe that two people in our line of work would, or could even pretend to, like what they're doing."

	Malcolm nodded, then gestured towards the projection encircling them and said, "I don't think there is anything we can do. The operation is already beginning ..."

	The scene was a City Security control centre. Neither the city nor the country was identified and the language spoken, which should have been an indicator, was being translated so rapidly — if it was, in fact, being translated for this sequence — that the process was indetectable.

	An officer, grey-haired and face grey-tinged with fatigue, was saying, "Eighteen living blocks decimated last night, five the night before! An average of eight thousand people in each block, all killed by asphyxiation or crushed in the ensuing panic. The same modus operandi, a few disciplined and highly-trained saboteurs who knew exactly what to do to achieve the maximum effect. Who are these saboteurs? What demands are they making?"

	"We don't know," said the senior officer present. He was a much younger man than the first speaker, but the lines around his mouth and the dark smudges under his eyes gave him a prematurely aged look.

	"I know that we aren't supposed to exchange information about our problems these days," the grey-haired officer went on, "but there are rumours to the effect that our opposite numbers all over the world are having similar trouble, exactly similar trouble. Is this true?"

	The senior officer nodded.

	"Speaking as a psychologist," said a young officer in a very untidy uniform, "I would say that this city is in a highly unstable condition. Food distribution is becoming a bad joke, more than half the supplies disappear before they reach the centres, which means that the law-abiding citizenry are becoming angrier and hungrier with every hour that passes. These massacres cannot be concealed from them, so they feel frightened and helpless as well. They are going to react and, because the killers and food-stealers are not being punished, their reaction will be directed largely towards ourselves. Plainly, so far as they arc concerned, we will not have done our duty. We will not have given them protection under the law.

	"They are far too angry to realise," he went on, "that we can only function effectively against a very small proportion of law-breakers within a population, and when that proportion increases by even a few per cent, we cannot function at all. To act effectively we must have the widespread and positive support of the citizens.

	"But support for the Security departments is no longer forthcoming," he continued, a note of anger creeping into his tone, "because we have been forced into a position of waging all-out war on the law-breakers while ignoring the law-abiding, simply because they are law-abiding and make no trouble for us. But in any police action, even a minor food riot or traffic incident, IB casualties are always high. Granted the protesters and political action groups have no regard at all for the number of innocent bystanders they kill, but we are supposed to protect the innocent, law-abiding people —"

	"Inspector," the senior officer broke in, "stating the obvious does not make it go away, regardless of whose sins of omission or commission were the original cause. We are stuck with this situation, so what do we do right now?"

	"Now," replied the psychologist, "we take urgent steps to protect ourselves and to retain our integrity as an organisation against the time when —"

	"Things return to normal?" asked an unidentified voice.

	"Things will never return to normal," the police psychologist replied. "But we must retain our identity and purpose until the present trouble burns itself out. We will do this by ensuring that we obtain our own supplies of food by whatever means are necessary. We must also protect key installations such as powerhouses, news media, hospitals, food processing plants and the personnel associated with them. Regrettably, the rest of the population will be right out of luck."

	"Surely we are being a bit harsh," said the senior officer, but it was obvious from his tone that he was making a statement and not asking a question.

	"We are harsh, sir," replied the psychologist. "There are too many people for us to be otherwise. We have neither the time nor the manpower available to change."

	"Why not accede to the demands of this protest group ...?" began the grey-haired officer. He was interrupted by another voice saying angrily, "But what the hell do they want?"

	"I think," said the psychologist very seriously, "they want to kill people ..."

	The small room was quiet with the quality of silence which was obtainable only at a considerable distance underground. Two officers sat before a twin console, their beribboned uniforms hanging loosely on age-shrunken shoulders. From the necks hung the two bright metal keys which together would open the arming device in the centre of their console, and their eyes looked everywhere but at the big red firing button inside its locked, transparent cover.

	The voice from the console's speaker sounded unnaturally loud as it said, "Silos One to Ten and Thirty-one to forty reprogramming complete. Changes follow. Silo One, was TM42, now TT12. Silo Two, was RW5, now TT53. Silo Three, was PT227, now TT57. Silo Four, no change ..."

	The voice continued to recite target coding changes for a few minutes, then clicked off. One of the old men said worriedly, "TT53 and TT57 are not military targets, while TM42 most definitely is. What is going on?"

	"How many people, I wonder," said the second old man musingly, "know that places like this still exist. That the Powerdown left us virtually untouched, because solid fuel rockets and nuclear warheads don't need all that much power, and there is always enough food and fuel made available for an installation like this. When people don't trust each other, there are always places like this."

	"Take RW5, now," said the other man, continuing his own half of a different conversation. "That is in the Urals, a place like this one and which deserves to be clobbered, just as we deserve to be clobbered. But instead they are reprogramming for earthquake fault lines and dense population centres of questionable strategic value."

	"It's an isolated life," his companion went on, "but far more comfortable than the life of the starving and sweating civilians outside. I'm glad my parents decided to stay here."

	"In our day," said the other officer, "the idea was to paralyse the other side's capability for making a retaliatory strike, then take out ports, manufacturing centres and ... This is a complete reversal of doctrine. I can't see any reason for it unless we are trying to pressure the other side by threatening a massive strike against their population, in which case the casualty figures would be so high that the countries concerned might give in and —"

	"Give in to what?" said the other old man, reacting to his companion's words for the first time. "Nobody is demanding anything that I know of. And hitting at each other's civilians while ignoring military installations, if that is what they have in mind, is simply urban terrorism on a world scale. Political activists knock off innocent bystanders and not each other. Are you suggesting that the launching sites on each side will not be hit, by mutual agreement?"

	"I'm not sure," said the other man.

	His companion was silent for a moment, then he said, "It takes two of us to arm that thing. We were chosen originally because of our stable, well-integrated personalities and the purity of our idealogical motivation. If the red light goes on, will you unlock your half?"

	Before the other man could reply there was an interruption from the speaker.

	"Arming Room, Control here. Your reliefs are on the ivay, gentlemen. The recognition phrase for today is 'Luke needs John'."

	"Arming Room, we copy," said the first old man. To his companion he added, "Maybe we won't be on duty when it happens."

	The wind lifted the thin, powdery soil and laid it down again as a fine grey film of dust on the branches of the desiccated trees and on the ragged clothing and incredibly emaciated husks of humanity which carpeted the compound of the medical mission, and as the dust settled on to the staring eyes it identified the dead and the living by making the latter category blink. It drifted through windows shattered by natives in their vain search for food, and on to the still, white-sheeted figures on and between the lines of narrow beds. It penetrated even into the staff room where all that remained of the medical personnel, a Caucasian doctor and five nurses of as many different racial types, sat or stood in white uniforms which had become much too large for them.

	"There is nothing more we can do here," said the doctor firmly. "The helicopter is being sent to evacuate the medical staff. It will not return again."

	"But it will bring food," said an Asian nurse. "We can distribute it before —"

	"No, Nurse," said the doctor. "It will land without shutting down engines. We will board quickly and go."

	The nurse was staring through the broken windows at the motionless, blanket-wrapped near-skeletons littering the mission's courtyard as she said angrily, "Why did they come here? Who started the story that this area, out of all the famine and disease-ridden expanse of this awful country, had food available? Why didn't somebody tell them that the new irrigation system stopped working because the dam went dry? No, it didn't go dry, it drained away like bathwater when the plug is pulled out, through a subterranean fault which the survey engineers must have known about. And so millions of people trekked here because there was famine and blight in the other provinces and everything was supposed to be fine here. The other provincial authorities did not contradict this terrible lie because they wanted rid of all those hungry people ..."

	"Here it comes," said the doctor.

	A few minutes later the helicopter clattered out of the sky to land on a clear area of the compound. A Trennechoran sensor on the aircraft showed the nurses running through the duststorm it had created and with the doctor bringing up the rear, stepping over the emaciated figures lying all around them. Many of the natives were trying to crawl towards the helicopter, their cries for help drowned by its engine noise. Suddenly the doctor stooped and lifted one of the blanket-wrapped figures, that of a very old man with crinkled white hair and beard, and pushed him into the open hatch.

	The medical mission dropped away, shrank into a dusty matchwood model surrounded by dry twigs, then it slid aside as the helicopter went into lateral flight.

	"Why didn't you take some of the children?" shouted the Asian nurse accusingly.

	The doctor, who bore a striking resemblance to Professor Donnelly, did not reply.

	In the observation dome of Trennechoran B, Ann answered for him. She said bitterly, "Children become adults and increase the population, dear. I don't think that is the purpose of this exercise. Besides, the good doctor needs a counterbalance …"

	The scene changed suddenly and they were looking down from another helicopter which was flying over tree-tops which projected only a few feet above swirling, muddy water. Sections of roofing, furniture and the bloated bodies of animals and human beings floated spinning and rolling in the flood or bobbed gently, entangled by the branches. The picture changed again.

	This time the scene was being transmitted from orbit by a Trennechoran robot ship. It showed fires raging on hundreds of fronts all the way across a continent, spreading like a great red cancer and throwing out secondaries which sometimes burned themselves out against the natural barriers of mountains or lakes too wide for the fiery contagion to jump. A few small cities had been successful in building fire-breaks, but the populations would not survive for long when their food was gone. Neither would the people who had managed to escape smoke asphyxiation by escaping to mountains or lake islands, because all the edible plant and animal tissue over a wide area had been destroyed.

	Where the worst fire-storms had raged there was a uniformly ashen countryside dotted with city-sized heaps of smoking rubble. The connecting roads were carpeted with the charred bodies and melted bicycles of the people who had tried unsuccessfully to flee. In other areas there was heavy rain or an evident lack of natural combustibles, but in these places the country burned with the even hotter flames of civil war.

	Another sequence, also taken from space, showed the characteristically rumpled terrain which was the aftermath of a major earthquake. Survivors, some with tents but the majority without, shivered on the snow-streaked, tumbled earth or huddled among the ruins of their homes. There were no indications of relief operations being mounted because food and fuel were in too short supply all over the world for the necessary aid to be sent.

	The scenes of carefully engineered natural disasters continued, some of them current events and many which had obviously been recorded in the recent past. The voice of a Mary broke into the sound-track from time to time with verbal footnotes to the effect that the orbiting weather-control ships had not yet been fully utilised, or that Earth's nuclear weapons had not yet been brought into play, in the production of these disasters.

	"This has got to stop," said Ann desperately. "Somebody has the power to stop it. We've got to tell them, explain that... Or are we all being fooled? The cloned super-humans, the local Guardians, everybody? Is their intention simply to wipe out every human being on Earth?"

	"I don't know," said Malcolm dully. "The people with the power to stop it are then;." He looked upwards, but the Trennechoran home planet was concealed by the dome's projection of a particularly violent food riot.

	The scenes of violence were interspersed with sequences in which small groups of people made the plans or gave the orders which resulted in the preceding or succeeding incidents. They talked quietly and seriously about the actions they would take, their features glowing as if from some great inner light. A few of the faces resembled those of the cloned Luke and John Guardians, but the majority of them did not have that excuse for what they were doing.

	The next change of scene showed a large room with about twenty cots ranged along opposite walls and a desk occupying most of the clear area of floor in the centre. The cots held men who were badly injured but untreated, some of them were obviously terminal. Weapons leaned against the walls between the cots, so the room was probably a medical aid post for one of the protest groups. The only uninjured people in the room were the man seated at the desk and a man and woman standing before it. The woman wore hospital whites.

	"You have been brought here," said the seated man, "to do what you can for my people. Some of them you may be able to help. The others, well, you can help ease their passing. When you have finished I promise to do my best to return you safely to the hospital. And now, Doctor, will you kindly go to work without delay."

	"Why," said the girl in the white uniform which was only a shade lighter than her shocked and angry face, "why did they kill Tim?"

	Impatiently, the man at the desk said, "What is she talking about?"

	The other man who was gripping the lady doctor's arm with one hand and holding her medical satchel with the other, said, "The driver of the ambulance we hijacked, a non-medic. You said to bring a doctor and we brought a —"

	"It was an emergency call," said the girl with quiet intensity. "He was off-duty, wearing casuals, and he knew how to drive. He was Charge Nurse of our casualty department, among other things, and he had not done a harmful or dishonourable thing since he left school. He helped people. He could have helped your people here."

	The man at the desk gestured and the other man relinquished his grip on her arm and medical bag, then left the room.

	"I'm sorry, Doctor," said the man at the desk, "doubly sorry at the loss of your friend. But these things happen, unfortunately. Subordinates place a too-literal interpretation on orders which of necessity have to be simple to avoid confusion. There was a lot of confusion at Tamar Street when City Security jumped us, and our casualties were heavy. I would appreciate it if you looked at them as quickly as possible."

	She lifted her satchel and moved to the first casualty, a severe burns case. The clothing on the upper half of the body had been burned off or fused into the tissue, the hair had gone and the lace and hands were deeply charred — all the textbook signs of an incendiary device detonated prematurely. Unlike some of the other casualties in the room, this one was trying hard not to make a sound, but his or her breath hissed loudly through teeth which looked shockingly white in that blackened horror of a face. Tissue damage concealed the positions of the surface veins in the arms, neck and chest. She slit the leg of the coveralls to bare the limb, measured out a massive overdose of neomorph and injected directly into the saphenous vein.

	"Thank you, Doctor," said the man, who had been standing behind her, "on his behalf."

	"If you hadn't been blowing hell out of Tamar Street," she said angrily, "City Security would not have hit you and you would not have sustained these casualties. Look at this one. Hc must he fresh out of school."

	"You take a very simplistic view of things, Doctor," said the man tiredly. "Perhaps you had better stick to the business you know best."

	"My business," she replied as her fingers gently explored a depressed, spongy area on the boy's left petietal and she noted the bleeding from one ear and one fixed, dilated pupil, "is to treat the sick and injured no matter who or what they are. But I believe in preventive medicine, too, and preventing people like you from ... This one has to go to hospital, quickly."

	"Most of them are in urgent need of hospitalisation, Doctor, but no."

	"Why not?" she asked, administering an analgesic shot. Bitterly, she went on, "No doubt you would find a way of providing transport."

	The man inhaled slowly, visibly controlling his temper, then he said, "There are several reasons why not, Doctor. In hospital you fill them full of neomorph so that they talk, or are interrogated by City Security men at the bedside taping everything they say. The hospitals are full of Security officers. They are your friends, part of the same establishment, special and privileged people. This place must remain secret no matter what the cost in suffering to my men. They themselves have all agreed to this. Rather than go to hospital they would gladly —"

	"Most of the Security men in the hospital are patients," she said straightening up from the head injury. "But those are not reasons, dammit, they're ... they're symptoms of paranoia."

	The man's face was white with anger but his voice was still calm as he said, "You think of me, and the rest of us here, as madmen, as psychopathic killers, something less than human, perhaps? You think we enjoy what we're doing? Well, I can assure you that we do not. I do not like to see so many of my people in this condition. I do not like, directly or indirectly, causing the deaths of so many citizens. I don't even like killing Security men who are, after all, only doing what they believe to be right. Believe me, there is no pleasure in —"

	"The citizens don't want to be burned or blown apart," said the girl as she moved to the next bed. "The Security people feel likewise, and you don't want to see your people lying injured and dying. If there is no pleasure for anybody in what you are doing, surely the sensible thing is to stop doing it?"

	"On the surface," he replied harshly, "that would appear to be the saner course ..."

	"Saner, yes," she broke in. "You used the word, not me."

	"... But there are very good reasons why we. have to continue as we are doing," he went on. "Granted that there is only a small proportion of our people who are properly motivated. The rest are romantics, discontents, undesirables. But they are impressionable and can be used, and they are willing to die for their cause."

	"Why don't they live for their cause," she said, covering the face of one of the casualties who had died from multiple abdominal wounds, "and let the rest of us live as well?"

	"I'm trying to talk to you as a person of intelligence," he replied, looking at the bulge in the sheet where it covered the dead man's face, "as one who has some appreciation of the problems facing our society at the present time. But you insist in viewing the problems in terms of black and white. Frankly, Doctor, you disappoint me. The deaths of large numbers of uncommitted people, the innocent bystanders, are regrettable but necessary. Believe me, a much greater good will come as a result of their suffering —"

	"Your opinion of me," she broke in angrily, "will not cause me to lose much sleep! And I don't think there is anything you could do or say which will make me respect you in the slightest. You, and your people, are responsible for the deaths and suffering of other human beings who know nothing of your glorious cause and who certainly were not willing to die for it. They simply wanted to make the best of things as they are, and live. Yet you are killing innocent people for their own good, you say, and seem to expect understanding and forgiveness for doing so. That is ridiculous! Yours are not the actions of brave freedom fighters or revolutionaries. A person who deliberately kills unarmed and unsuspecting people is, among other things, a despicable coward!

	"But this wasn't supposed to be in the script," she went on, waving at the casualties all around them. "Was it? Instead of the usual unarmed and impotent citizens, City Security jumped you. So you caught a little of what you're so fond of throwing around, and you went looking for medical assistance in exactly the same way as you do everything else, by killing an innocent —"

	"That's enough!" he broke in furiously. Tin heartily sick of you preaching goodness and light at me! So you are a member of a great and noble profession, a healer, working only to cure and alleviate suffering, right? Well, how many members of suffering humanity do you actually succour? Fifty, maybe a hundred a week? And do you really expect me to believe that you grieve over every single patient you lose, or share the suffering of those under treatment? And do you even think about the billions of people who die of starvation and disease all over the world? And would you, like me, hesitate to undertake a dangerous operation or course of treatment if you thought doing so would save or prolong a patient's life?"

	He paused for a moment and, when he went on, his tone was quieter but no less angry. He said, "No, you don't think about these things, because you live in a nice, comfortable, self-satisfied world where you do only good and can be seen to be doing only good. You keep yourself busy so as not to think about the world outside and the fact that you are only scratching at the surface of its health problems. In short, Doctor, you are a smug, self-satisfied, hypocrite."

	"Maybe I can't help everybody in the world," the girl replied angrily, "but I haven't knowingly killed anyone, either. And what kind of a sick mind is it that can argue that cold-blooded murder is good and healing is bad?"

	"I think," said the man savagely, "that it is one particular murder that bothers you, that of your medical friend."

	"He wasn't a friend," she replied quietly. "In our shining, white, self-satisfied world doctors frequently marry nurses. Which means that female doctors marry male nurses."

	There was an awkward silence, then the man said, "I'm sorry, truly sorry. This explains your obvious hostility, even after my promise of a safe-conduct back. Rut we do have something in common, Doctor, the loss of loved ones. Some of the people here were very good friends of mine, and your husband ... He would have been all right, you know, if he'd taken a few minutes to put on his whites —"

	"Damn you!" she burst out, beginning to lose control. "Damn you for a bloody homicidal ego-maniac! You make it sound as if he was being criminally stupid because he rushed out to help people, as if he was to blame for his own death and not some animal trained to use a gun but without enough brains to obey more than one simple order at a time …"

	The people in the room belonged to a group which believed in death — someone else's death, preferably — before dishonour and so they were expected to fight to the last gasp. This was the reason and symbolism for the weapons propped against the wall between their cots. Calmly and unhurriedly the girl lifted one of the machine-guns and, holding it awkwardly but steadily enough, she pointed it at him.

	"... And so you killed a man who never harmed you or anyone else in his whole life," she went on, biting off each word and making every one an accusation. "I know that you've done this kind of thing before, and that every person you killed was a tragedy for somebody, maybe many people. But Tim was a special case. Not just because he was my husband, but because he made me realise what exactly it is that you are. You are a disease, a cancer ..."

	"Doctor," said the man sounding incredulous rather than angry, "if you pull that trigger you will be as bad as you say we are. I'm sorry, very sorry, about your husband. But remember your profession."

	"... You destroy from within by using the structure of society against itself," she went on, as if he hadn't spoken. "When fair-minded people bring in liberal laws, you turn them to your own advantage and discredit the people who are trying to help keep the laws. The death penalty is bad, barbarous, you say, but you yourselves don't hesitate to use it against people who have done you no wrong. And not content with taking their lives, you assassinate their characters as well by saying that they were stupid for being in the position to be killed.

	"As for me and my unprofessional behaviour," she continued, "you kill my husband and expect me to help you as if nothing had happened. You expect me to obey my rules while you ignore every rule that was ever written. You must think I'm very stupid, that we are all stupid. When you are among your own kind you must have a grand laugh at all the ordinary, law-abiding, stupid people. Or maybe you think of yourselves as some kind of super-beings who have the only true answer. But you are not super-beings, or even people. You are a disease, an infection, and it is a doctor's job to eliminate sources of infection …"

	The man had been holding himself very still and keeping his hand well clear of the pistol at his waist. He cleared his throat and said quietly, "Let's discuss this. You have made some valid points, hut in one respect you are completely wrong. I shouldn't tell you this without permission from my area Guardian, hut as a doctor you will realise the implications. We are not the infection, we are the anti-bodies ..."

	It was obvious that the girl was not listening to him. She was far too angry to feel any curiosity about the things he was revealing to her, and her centre of attention had moved from his face to the area just below the sternum. He smiled and said quickly, "In any case, Doctor, the weapon isn't loaded."

	But it was loaded, and when the figure of Reynolds burst in a few minutes later, she was the only person left alive in the room, and she began to cry.

Chapter Eighteen
Intensive Care

	Ann was crying too, as the viewpoint shifted again — this time to the sensor in the monitor room of their own ward. No doubt some Trennechoran psychologist had decided to cushion the effects of the previous scenes of death and destruction by making a rapid transition to the reassuringly commonplace. But Ann had her hands over her eyes and so was not receiving the treatment — not, Malcolm thought, that it would have done much good. It certainly was not having much effect on him.

	Instinctively he reached out for Ann and put his arms around her, trying by physical strength to still awful, silent sobbing which shook her body. He had never before seen her so completely out of control and it frightened him, frightened him in the way that a seaman is frightened when the anchor begins to drag in a storm and his ship is drifting towards the rocks. Malcolm could not and did not want to say the things he would have said to a patient in the same condition, because he did not want to think of Ann as a patient needing treatment. All he could do was hold her even more tightly and will her to stop.

	"Go away!" she said.

	Malcolm let his arms fall away from her. He made a sound which was intended to be a laugh and said, "I wasn't going to do anything that would shock the Guardians."

	"Don't make stupid jokes at a time like this," she cried. "That man was right. We don't think about the people outside our little white world. We are selfish and thoughtless and—"

	"He was wrong," said Malcolm sharply. He was trying very hard to be convincing because he had to convince both Ann and himself. He went on, "He was not entirely wrong, perhaps, just as the girl was not completely right. Still, I wonder if somebody shot me, would you be able to regard the people responsible with the proper degree of clinical detachment. If you were killed in those circumstances I —"

	"We could be just as bad as that girl was ..." she broke in. "We don't really worry about people. Be honest, do we? I know we can't feel for every single member of the human race. But what about the patients in the hospital? Or in our ward. Truthfully, aren't they just so many lumps of defective organic machinery which have to be repaired as efficiently as possible or their withdrawal from service made a little easier? But do we really care about them?"

	"Coming from you," said Malcolm, "that is a stupid question. You're over-reacting. You've been knocked off balance by the doubts that man sowed in your mind, and by the realisation that that lady doctor killed those terrorists, not because she lost control temporarily but because she, had thought it all out and decided that they deserved extermination. You, we both, have felt the same helpless rage and frustration when we think of the people responsible for the majority of our casualties. You are simply afraid that someday you will do the same as she did. But you wouldn't feel that way if you didn't care about the casualties in the first place. You wouldn't worry so much about being wrong if you weren't more than a little right. Isn't that so?"

	"The logic of that is ... is ..." she began, then suddenly she laughed.

	It was the high-pitched, giggling laugh heard in the ward in the early hours of the morning after a particularly busy, bloody and thoroughly unpleasant night. It was caused by reaction to a combination of physical fatigue and continuous psychological stress. It was a release of tension, and right then Malcolm could not have hoped for anything better.

	"Besides," he said, nodding towards the picture of their unguessably distant monitor room which surrounded them, "we do care about the patients, if we have time."

	ICU were having a busy day. The monitor room clock showed three-thirty in the afternoon and the situation board listed three arrivals from theatre and two deaths. The new cases were bomb blast victims — two with double leg amputations and the third with serious thoracic damage. The police officer in cubicle Two, Burns and Multiple Thoracics, had died shortly before lunch with the principal cause listed as gas gangrene. In cubicle Four the Multiple GSW, old Mr Hesketh, had died within the past ten minutes.

	The Hesketh monitors were showing the head and Shoulders of the old man, and an overall view of the cubicle in which the Day Sister was standing facing a very young student nurse across the bed. The young nurse was describing the manner of the old man's passing in a low, unsteady voice.

	He had been talking to her, weakly but very coherently considering his neomorph dosage, and apologising for the trouble he was causing everyone — which he wasn't. He had asked her if she liked music, and what kind, and did she like her job and how was she getting on with her training. She was sure that he had not been over-excited, just interested, when he choked on a word. lie had begun to cough and he died a few minutes later of a massive internal haemorrhage.

	"I see," said Sister Weiwu quietly. "But don't let it worry you. Nurse, it was entirely expected. That is why Doctor Chiak did not come at once when you signalled, we were very busy with the new arrivals. It is also the reason why you, rather than one of the fully-trained staff were assigned to sit with Mr Hesketh, we prefer to use them with patients who have a chance, however small, of making it.

	"And now," she went on briskly, "Mr Hesketh had no relatives. When you have prepared the body you have only to notify the morgue and remind Doctor Chiak to make out the death certificate. Are you feeling all right, Nurse?"

	"He ... He was worrying about my future when h ..." the junior nurse began.

	"This hasn't happened to you very often, I expect." said the sister. "Would you like me to assign the job to another nurse? I'll understand if you do."

	"No, Sister. I want to do it," she replied. "It's the only thing I can do for him now, isn't it?"

	The sister nodded, and sighed. She said, "You'll have to get used to patients dying on you, Nurse. Or no, you will have to expect them to die, especially in an intensive care unit, but I don't think we ever get used to it..."

	On the close-up monitor a hand and arm, identified by its full-length sleeve and starched cuff as belonging to the sister, appeared and closed the old man's eyes and smoothed back the strands of white hair that had fallen over Hesketh's forehead.

	"... But you must always remember that your primary duty is to the patients still living, they still need your help. And when you've finished here," Sister Weiwu concluded as she turned to leave, "go to the washroom and have a good five-minute cry to yourself. Then wash your face, and go back on duty."

	A few seconds later the Hesketh monitors went blank as the student nurse switched off the cubicle equipment before attending to the body, but the other screens and tell-tales were very much alive. In cubicle Five, lately occupied by the female overdose. Chiak and two theatre doctors and a staff nurse were working on one of the new arrivals. Young Tommy was sleeping, flanked by a worried-looking Big Mary and a coloured nurse Malcolm had never seen before.

	He was about to examine the other monitors in more detail when the picture faded and was replaced by one of the Luke or John casualty stations. The policemen who had been with Reynolds when he had burst into the room were gone, as was the lady doctor, and the inspector was staring white-faced at the image in the small TV which occupied a corner of the late terrorist chief's desk.

	The watching Malcolms knew that the alien, walrus-like head on the screen was that of a Plessat Guardian, but Reynolds knew nothing at all about it.

	The being spoke.

	"A major explosion was scheduled to take place in your city two hours ago. I have not observed such an explosion, neither have I been able to make contact with the Guardian whose responsibility it was supposed to have been. As you already know, the incident was to be the signal for other operations to begin. Please give the reason for the delay and the revised timing for the incident."

	"Who ... Who are you?" said Reynolds.

	"I am the Plessat Guardian charged with general surveillance of your hemisphere," the alien replied in a toneless, translated voice. "The duty includes monitoring the weather control ships and neutralising any nuclear missiles which may be misdirected towards a survival area. You appear to be inadequately briefed, Earth-person. Please give me the revised timing for the explosion without delay."

	Reynolds licked his lips and said, "There ... There was local interference and the operation was cancelled. I have no information regarding the timing of a new operation or ... What or where is Plessat?"

	"You are very inadequately briefed," the alien replied. "Either that or I have made a mistake and you are not one of our local —"

	The voice and image disappeared abruptly to be replaced by the calm, assured tones and distinguished features of Security Commissioner Hargreaves, who smiled and said, "Good afternoon, Inspector. Pardon me for a moment while I give our extra-terrestrial colleague the information it requires ..." The screen was blank for a few seconds, then Hargreaves appeared again. He went on, "You are ignorant regarding several important matters, as our friend has just observed, but it would be safer if I briefed you here at headquarters. Round up your men, Inspector, and return at once."

	"What ... was that thing ...?" began Reynolds.

	"Later," said Hargreaves, "at headquarters."

	"You must think me a fool!" the inspector said furiously. "I know too much about this extra-terrestrial conspiracy to go back. Not enough to know how that ... that thing fits in, maybe, but I do know that there are conspirators who don't agree with what you are doing. Because of one of them we stopped the Tamar Street blowup, and the same thing will happen again. There must be many other dissatisfied or conscience-stricken Johns who will help us cure this suicidal madness that is killing our society. We've proved that you are not all-knowing and all-powerful after all, and what we have done once we can do again until —"

	"Grow up, Inspector," the commissioner broke in. "This is not a Good Guys versus Bad Guys situation where a brave and resourceful Good Guy can turn the tables on the Bad Guys and save the world at the last moment. The time for curing the illness was several centuries ago. You, or any other local or group of locals, no matter how daring and resourceful, can take no effective action against this disease because you are a part of the affected organism. At most you may be able to hasten or delay the cure by a few minutes or hours."

	Reynolds shook his head in angry frustration. He said, "If Tamar Street worried my informant then other planned massacres will worry others like him. As for you, I know that physiologically you are human, but you are the worst kind of traitor. You've betrayed your whole species to those bloody walrus things and —"

	"You don't know what you arc talking about. Inspector," Hargreaves said firmly. "You are wasting time just as you wasted time in Tamar Street. We have contingency plans for such eventualities and that nitrates plant will blow in just under ten minutes. The building around you is structurally weakened and the shockwave will cause the walls to collapse on to your basement room. So please collect your men and return to headquarters forthwith. I have no wish to waste potentially useful local material."

	Reynolds continued leaning on the desk-top, glaring at the image of the commissioner and slowly shaking his head.

	"Inspector," said Hargreaves gently. "Surely you would not want to die without knowing the truth about us? Especially as there is no need for you to die at all ..."

	Slowly the picture of Reynolds and the casualty station faded to be replaced by an image so utterly strange that, at first, it was visually meaningless.

	Gradually, the chaotic mass of shapes and colours took the form of a vast, high-ceilinged room whose walls and roof seemed to be made of multi-coloured luminescent marble. The floor was a dull, uniform grey criss-crossed with wide, shallow channels partly filled with material resembling thin, silvery porridge. Except for the network of channels the centre of the room was empty, but around the walls the channels were bordered by mechanisms of irregular shape and no apparent purpose and which were partly organic. "His organic component was inside the mechanism, resting on a long shallow pen which was also partly filled with the silvery material. As they watched, the organic component of one of the mechanisms was extruded into the nearest channel where it moved itself snail-like towards the position of the vision sensor.

	The large, slug-like body was not a part of the machine, Malcolm realised suddenly, it was the operator. As the details of the short but highly flexible appendages encircling the base of its sharply tapering neck became plain, so also did the reason for it working within its machine — a being with no arms and literally hundreds of fingers had to immerse itself in its work.

	On the being's head there were four, equally-spaced depressions covered by transparent membranes, which were probably its eyes, and four orifices of different sizes opened and closed wetly, not quite in unison. When the being spoke there was no telling which orifice it was using to speak. "I am of Trennechoran A."

	The voice was harsh and high-pitched and repellent, as if each and every sound which went to make up the words had been recorded from a dozen different sources, none of which had enjoyed making the contribution.

	"It is necessary that we elicit the co-operation of the patient during the forthcoming operation by acquainting a small number of the species concerned with the full facts of their case. The clinical picture and the proposed treatment, which is already well advanced, will not be slanted or shaded in any fashion wliatsoever.

	"You will already have noticed that this verbal communication, which was constructed from material obtained during the initial contacts with Earth-human specimens, possesses none of the tonal qualities whose use enables us to influence or control the responses of the listener. I am informing, not trying to influence you. Know also that the picture you are receiving of myself and my surroundings is accurate in every detail, and that this linkup cannot be overheard by anyone of Trennechoran li. Plessat, or Earth.. There are no living Guardians, Trennechoran  or local, who have seen or will see a native Trennechoran. Communications with these are by voice only, a voice with tonal qualities somewhat different to this one.

	"You will be allowed to ask questions when all of the facts are known to you, but emotional outbursts will be ignored. And now, attend ..."

	In a remarkably few words the strident, grating voice outlined the history of a species whose recorded history went back over twenty thousand years, only two thousand of which had included a space exploration capability. They had been philosophical and physical giants whose early aggressiveness had been spent in surviving the incredibly violent surface and sub-surface environment of Trennechoran A, and they had never seen reason to use any weapon stronger than a public debate to settle personal or technical or philosophical arguments.

	Physiologically they were completely unsuited to space travel, being extremely slow-moving and just over twenty times the mass of a human being. But many thousands of them had died trying to take ships burdened with their fantastically complex life-support systems to the home system's planets and to the nearer stars. That was before the stay-at-homes evolved the instantaneous matter transmission devices which could plant transmitter and sensors carried in robot ships on any world within telescopic, range. They had discovered the means by which they could explore the stars without danger and, if they desired it, without moving from the Trennechoran equivalent of an armchair.

	But the primary purpose of the exploration, the discovery of other intelligent races among the stars, was not to be fulfilled for a very long time. The far-ranging search-ships and sensors found only worlds which, although they had once harboured highly-advanced cultures, were dead, used up, and contained only sea creatures, vegetation and insects — a hopping, crawling, flying carpet of insects which had become the dominant species of their planets. Then they had found Plessat.

	On Plessat there had been an incredibly rich and gentle artistic culture which had not known war for over three of its millennia, but a culture which was close to extinction due to population pressure, diminished natural resources and an inadequate technology level which was allowing large areas of the world to perish in its own waste products. But Trennechoran had the technology and resources in plenty, and a programme of aid and re-education was initiated. The ailing culture was flooded with cloned Plessat Guardians whose purpose was to teach the inhabitants the error of their spendthrift and self-indulgent ways — but non-violently, because all intelligent life at that time was sacrosanct to the Trennechorans — while sensors monitored every change in the planet's condition.

	Regrettably, the Plessat operation was a failure. The inhabitants of the planet could not control their population growth, and even the vast resources of Trennechoran could not keep them alive indefinitely. They had reached the stage where, even if a suitable world had been found for them to colonise, they were no longer able to survive unaided.

	Within a century the life-support systems of Plessat would be turned off and the patient would be allowed to die.

	"... The condition of Earth was still good when our search-ships found it." the Trennechoran voice went on, "hut it soon became evident that the Plessat disease was already well advanced. We had learned a fearful lesson on Plessat, that the kind approach is not necessarily the right one. Frequently one has to be cruel to be kind, but we found it difficult to put this tenet into effect. There was indecision, a conflict between those favouring the more ruthless, surgical approach and that of the more gentle educators, the Lukes and the Johns. Our work was inhibited and the patient suffered, its condition deteriorated until it approached that of Plessat, and major surgery became an urgent necessity if Earth was to survive.

	"It is imperative that your culture survives this drastic surgical procedure. We Trennechorans cannot afford another failure like Plessat. Not only would your species die, it would mean the philosophical ruin of ours. The long-term effects will he the same whether we act and fail, or do not act at all. But it is necessary that the facts should be communicated to the patient or to representatives of the patient. You must be made aware of the risks, the necessity for patient-surgeon co-operation, and the prognosis, which is quite good.

	"There, is a lot of uncontrolled growth, cancerous, adipose, and emotionally desensitised tissue which must be excised. But enough of the. vital systems will remain to regenerate the organism ..."

	"Most patients," said Ann in an unsteady voice, "are given the opportunity of refusing such an operation. And what is so special about us that you need our co-operation? Why couldn't we, like the rest of the patients, be allowed to believe that civilisation is falling apart because of a series of natural and man-made disasters?"

	Her words must have been classified by the enormous, slug-like Trennechoran as an emotional outburst because it ignored them.

	"... The surplus and diseased tissue will be removed, using various mass-destruction techniques such as the thermonuclear devices already available on Earth, flooding, famine, controlled earthquakes, fire, disease and various combinations of these. Isolated pockets of infection will require special measures, but these will be the responsibility of the local and Trennechoran B Guardians using the terrorist and communal violence weapons. In many eases it will be necessary to drastically reduce the numbers of a city population while allowing key groups and classes of individuals to survive, and this requires careful manipulation of the sociopolitical forces involved so that they will be self-cancelling. Your own city is such a case and, as the operation proceeds, you will be aware of the self-elimination of excess population in this way."

	"When your operation is over," said Ann, trying hard not to make an emotional outburst, "what will you do then?"

	"You will answer your own question. Please outline the principles of intensive care."

	Ann looked surprised. Then automatically, because she was quoting from the textbook used by the trainee nurses who came to her unit for the special course on intensive care therapy, she said, "intensive Care is a specialty embracing all aspects of clinical medicine. Its purpose is to maintain accurate, continuous observations of the patient's vital functions, and to treat or support a failing or failed biological system. Ideally it should maintain life until the precipitating causes of the failure can be identified and successfully treated to allow the affected systems to regain self-control ..."

	"Enough. The analogy between your hypothetical patient and what will be the seriously weakened and post-operatively shocked condition of the Earth culture, is plain. You already realise that the Earth culture, our patient, has been kept under the closest possible observation, and we shall continue to monitor and act on even the most minute changes in the patient's condition. Population pressure, with its associated lowering of standards, loss of personal liberty and coarsening of the sensibilities, is the most obvious symptom and this is being eliminated. But the more deeply-rooted cause of the disease must also be treated.

	"Killing for gain or to achieve power, the use of non-physical violence for the same purpose, delegation of authority to people least able to exercise it responsibly, the refusal to think about the end results of actions taken, and all the evils associated with these infections, were with you long before the Trennechoran surgeons arrived.

	"By their very nature such infections do not suffer spontaneous remission. The people without what you term a conscience always have the advantage over those who possess one. But this infection will be removed, surgically and psychologically, so that it should not recur and, to use one of your own phrases, the meek shall inherit the Earth.

	"Hopefully they will be able to mature and grow and remain meek. "There, is nothing for you to fear from the stars, nothing to warrant you arming yourselves with the most frightful weapons of defence that your science can devise. "There is nothing hut an immeasurable emptiness and, occasionally, a world whose dead or dying civilisation, like Earth's contained the seeds of their own destruction. Together we may be able to save a few of them."

	"In the same manner," said Malcolm with quiet fury, "that you are saving Earth? Feeling as we do, can you really believe that we would help you in any conceivable way."

	"We were going to ask you to stop it," said Ann, joining in. "We were going to make a final appeal for the lives of all the people you are going to kill. Hut you would probably classify that as an emotional outburst, and ignore it." Bitterly, she went on, "What I don't understand is why you don't kill all of us? Why not use your superhuman clones to repopulate the Earth? And why are you telling us about the operation? Surely it would be kinder to let the patient remain in ignorance?"

	With the ailing interstellar cultures we. might discover, the operative procedure would change because we would have the assistance of surgeons on Earth, who had survived the disease they were treating. The mere fact that you would be able to meet representatives of these ailing cultures would have a beneficial effect, we are much too gross, too frightening, to inspire trust and confidence.

	"We cannot use the clones to repopulate the Earth. You are confusing the medication with the patient. At present the cloned humans produced on Trennechoran B appear to be superhuman to you, but they are. not. They possess many admirable qualities, but they are flawed, emotionally incomplete, and they are, of course, sterile. The lack of offspring does not worry them because they believe that they possess immortality, that so long as any of their clones is alive they live on. Even the local, uncloned Guardians have warped this belief in some metaphysical fashion to suit themselves.

	"But the purpose of these flawed superhumans is to guard and protect you, as their name suggests, through the long, post-operative recovery period so that you will be able to realise and develop your full potential, free of the kind of influences which, have in the past retarded the balanced progress of your culture. At the present time you are members of an ailing and warped culture, you are like a pair of over-emotional caterpillars trying to think like butterflies.

	"When you have evolved a little further, with the emotions and all the other qualities which make you a potentially great species intact and under proper control, I believe that you will want to help us. You will have reached the stage of knowing that, yon hare become adults and, like ourselves, need another adult to talk to instead of sick and dying children. Hopefully, some of you will begin helping us, and yourselves, now.

	"That is why you and a few carefully selected humans are. being told the complete truth. In your profession, especially, we should be able to expect an understanding of our problem. A major operation cannot be performed without discomfort for the patient, and in this operation we must cut ruthlessly until there is a surviving planetary population of approximately ten million—"

	"The operation," said Malcolm, aghast, "is far worse than the disease!"

	"Ten million left ..." began Ann, but the Trennechoran was talking again.

	"The patient can survive the operation hut not the disease. We have already stated that the survivors will be guarded and allowed to progress so that the full scientific, artistic and philosophical potential will be realised to the full. For this reason large quantities of Guardians will be expended in protecting already chosen centres of learning, science and culture while the population surplus is being eliminated or is eliminating itself. We have no wish to return the patient to the Middle Ages. Nothing of your past greatness will be destroyed. Everything possible is being done to assure the patient of a speedy return to health.

	"But there is a form of infection which we cannot fight alone. You are familiar with, its symptoms both in the present and the past. It is hatred in its various forms. Hatred of strangers, or of people who are different in skin pigmentation, or philosophy or language. It is the strange ability the people of Earth have of keeping hatred alive, of passing it from generation to generation. It is utterly senseless and criminal, and you are well aware of the vast numbers of people who have suffered because of this form of infection. The first, relatively simple form of the infection has been countered by seeding the survival areas with a wide variety of racial and ethnic groups, you will have already noted the sudden recent rise in foreign medical staff at your hospital. But the inherited hatred variant is not so easy to treat. That is the primary reason why you two have been told the complete truth.

	"You are an ingenious species and, even with full, sensor coverage, it is possible that you would be able to pass on your present feelings about us, and about the terrible thing we hare done to your species, pass them on to your friends or descendants. We cannot check the spread of this kind of injection without placing such tight restraints on you that your future development would he jeopardised.

	"Your present feeling of shock and grief for your people are expected, so is your present hatred and revulsion for the beings who are responsible. But we have explained how and why we are doing this terrible thing, and we have made no attempt to influence you with, psychological tricks. Your profession, like ours, is curing the sick. We hope that when the initial shock wears off yon will be able to think calmly and logically, and show us that this most dangerous and self-destructive infection of inherited hatred can be eliminated for all time.

	"The two most important qualities of a. truly civilised species are understanding and ... forgiveness."

	For a long time Malcolm stared at the gigantic, slug-like being resting in its shallow channel of artificial slime, and tried to think of something to say — something which might change what was happening. There had been disasters on the other side of the world, his world, in which millions of people had perished. But in this one there would be only ten million left alive. Surely the Trennechoran surgeon did not have to cut as savagely as that? Perhaps if he suggested twenty or thirty millions, if he tried to haggle a bit ...

	Suddenly he wanted to beat his fists against the picture on the inside surface of their dome, but Ann was wearing the expression she adopted when dealing with a patient who didn't have a hope of making it, so he kept still. A few seconds later the picture of the Trennechoran disappeared and was replaced by a printed message.

	GO AT ONCE TO THE DEPARTURES SUPERVISOR ON LEVEL 284 AND AWAIT TRANSFER TO EARTH.

	"Either you're the dedicated type or your watch is on the blink again," said Chiak as they entered the monitor room. "You aren't on duty for another hour. How was the special course?"

	"We learned something," said Ann.

	"Yes," said Malcolm, trying to put some animation into his tone. "What's been happening?" As if I didn't know, he thought.

	"Nothing much," said Chiak. "We lose some, win some. Old Mr Hesketh and the police commander, Sawyer, are gone. The overdose moved to the psychiatric level, no doubt a sadder and wiser girl, and the juvenile RTA, Tommy, is still hanging on. We have three newcomers, all casualties of the current rioting, and two of them won't make it although we'll have to try ..."

	He broke off, laughed so that they would know he hadn't gone maudlin on them, then went on, "Oh, and the Prof, came in with a commercial TV set a couple of hours ago. Said we should keep informed on local events. So far it has shown only panoramic views of the city which look like something like from an old-time war movie. It looks like half the bloody city is on fire.

	"And yes," he went on, "there was a City Security man called Reynolds asking to see you a few minutes ago. The Prof, spoke to him and said that you would be along shortly and that you had just finished the same kind of special course as Inspector Reynolds. Since when have City Security officers gone on medical courses? Never mind, you haven't time to tell me. "They're coming up the ward now."

	Professor Donnelly smiled gravely with the now doubly familiar features of a Luke Administrator and their chief as he entered, followed closely by the inspector who did not smile at all. Reynolds's face was pale and stiff and his eyes had the look of someone who is trying vainly to awaken from a nightmare — a look which was probably mirrored in Malcolm's own eyes, and certainly in Ann's.

	"Good evening, Doctor, Sister," said the professor briskly. "The inspector here has requested medical assistance from us and has asked for you two specifically. Briefly, the position is that rioting, killing and wholesale destruction of property has reached such proportions that the City Security presence has been withdrawn from the streets and is now concentrated on the protection of key areas. "This hospital, two of the schools which are housed in nearby museums and the power-houses and dwelling blocks lucky enough to be in those areas are being protected. Everywhere else in the city is classified as a disaster area with inadequate shelter for the survivors, no more than three days' food supply, and no power at all. The agricultural complexes have also been hit so that the people who fled to the countryside have little chance of survival, either. But the sheer numbers of un-buried dead in the city will be our major problem. I needn't spell out the details. Special medication is being made available …"

	From Trennechoran B, thought Malcolm.

	"... And will be used to protect the people in this hospital and other survivors, and Inspector Reynolds would like you to assess the requirements of the other survival areas. It will be a few days before the medication is available in sufficient quantity, but he is anxious to discuss the operation with you as soon as possible, so I'll leave you to it. Meanwhile, Doctor Chiak, I'd like to check with you the condition of the Burns in cubicle Eight ..."

	For a long time after the professor and Chiak left the monitor room, nobody spoke. Malcolm, like Ann and Reynolds, was staring at the picture of their riot-torn and burning city. He was seeing Bomb Blast Victims and Gunshot Wounds and Multiple Thoracics and Burns and all the conditions which followed on widespread famine and pestilence, and he was seeing them multiplied endlessly all over their sick planet. He felt Ann's hand on his arm, but it was Reynolds who spoke.

	"They didn't deserve this," he said dully, speaking as an upholder of law and justice. "Most of them are just ordinary people."

	"Who aren't lucky enough to be in one of the chosen survival areas," said Malcolm. He added, "You must think of them calmly and clinically, Inspector, as so much diseased tissue which must be removed as quickly and efficiently as possible, for the good of the patient. For the need of the patient! And the Trennechoran doctor knows best."

	"Yes," said Reynolds.

	"All these people ..." began Malcolm, then stopped. The TV screen had misted over lor some reason although a muted voice was still reporting major disasters across the city and the world. The operation to save Earth was proceeding.

	"I know, dear," said Ann quietly, squeezing his arm. "But there is nothing you can do about it, except ... except wash your face and go back on duty."

The End

* * * * * *
Front cover

"I need more ... physical... evidence, Doctor," the Inspector said. "I would like you to examine the three dead bodies very thoroughly, but I do not want the next-of-kin to know that an examination took place. Officially the file is closed. Sergeant Telford will be there to remind you not to talk about anything you find until we return to the hospital."

"What, exactly, are we trying to find out?" asked Malcolm irritably. "I suppose you can give us an idea without prejudicing our findings?"

The Inspector gave Malcolm a long, penetrating stare and finally spoke. "I want to know," he said quietly, "if they were human."

A Science Fiction Novel by
James White

UNDERKILL

CORGI BOOKS
A DIVISION OF TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS LTD

UNDERKILL
A CORGI BOOK 0 552 10996 7 
First publication in Great Britain.

PRINTING HISTORY
Corgi edition published 1979

Copyright © 1979 James White

Portions of the text used on page 170 are taken from Principles of Intensive Care (Emery, Yates and Moorhead) and appear by kind permission of Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.

This book is set in l0pt Times

Corgi Books are published by 
Transworld Publishers Ltd.,
Century House, 61-63 Uxbridge Road,
Ealing, London, W.5.

Made and printed in Great Britain by
Hunt Barnard Printing Ltd., Aylesbury, Bucks.

To Leslie Flood
In Appreciation

* * * * * *
Back cover

It began in a hospital — the incredible trail of clues which lead to the discovery of the invasion of Earth ...

Normally the socio-political problems of the outside world did not concern Dr. Malcolm and his wife, safely cocooned in their hospital work. But it was their misfortune to be on duty the night the three patients were admitted to the Intensive Care Unit... a small boy, a beautiful girl, and an old man — all close to death, all victims of a diseased society.

Malcolm's investigations revealed a further link between the three — one which involved the medics with an all-powerful police force and took them to the sub-surface city of Plessat ... the centre of an extra-terrestrial conspiracy of super-elite beings dedicated to curing the terminal illness of the planet Earth ...