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Chapter 16
hat can I
tell him? Jason Taverner asked himself as he sat mutely facing the police
general. The total reality as I know it? That is hard to do, he realized,
because I really do not comprehend it myself.
But perhaps
a seven could - well, God knew what it could do. I'll opt, he decided, on
a complete explanation.
But when he
started to answer, something blocked his speech. I don't want to tell him
anything, he realized. There is no theoretical limit to what he can do to
me; he has his generalship, his authority, and if he's a seven ... for
him, the sky may be the limit. At least for my self-preservation if for
nothing else I ought to operate on that assumption.
"Your being
a six," Buckman said, after an interval of silence, "makes me see this in
a different light. It's other sixes that you're working with, is it?" He
kept his eyes rigidly fixed on Jason's face; Jason found it uncomfortable
and disconcerting. "I think what we have here," Buckman said, "is the
first concrete evidence that sixes are -"
"No," Jason
said.
"'No'?"
Buckman continued to stare fixedly at him. "You're not involved with other
sixes in this?"
Jason said,
"I know one other six. Heather Hart. And she considers me a twerp fan." He
ground out the words bitterly.
That
interested Buckman; he had not been aware that the well-known singer
Heather Hart was a six. But, thinking about it, it seemed reasonable. He
had never, however, come up against a female six in his career; his
contacts with them were just not that frequent.
"If Miss
Hart is a six," Buckman said aloud, "maybe we should ask her to come in
too and consult with us." A police euphemism that rolled easily off his
tongue.
"Do that,"
Jason said. "Put her through the wringer." His tone had become savage.
"Bust her. Put her in a forced-labor camp."
You sixes,
Buckman said to himself, have little loyalty to one another. He had
discovered this already, but it always surprised him. An elite group, bred
out of aristocratic prior circles to set and maintain the mores of the
world, who had in practice drizzled off into nothingness because they
could not stand one another. To himself he laughed, letting his face show,
at least, a smile.
"You're
amused?" Jason said. "Don't you believe me?"
"It doesn't
matter." Buckman brought a box of Cuesta Rey cigars from a drawer of his
desk, used his little knife to cut off the end of one. The little steel
knife made for that purpose alone.
Across from
him Jason Taverner watched with fascination.
"A cigar?"
Buckman inquired. He held the box toward Jason.
"I have
never smoked a good cigar," Jason said. "If it got out that I -" He broke
off.
"'Got out'?"
Buckman asked, his mental ears pricking up. "Got out to whom? The police?"
Jason said
nothing. But he had clenched his fist and his breathing had become
labored."
"Are there
strata in which you're well known?" Buckman said. "For example, among
intellectuals in forced-labor camps. You know - the ones who circulate
mimeographed manuscripts."
"No," Jason
said.
"Musical
strata, then?"
Jason said
tightly, "Not anymore."
"Have you
ever made phonograph records?"
"Not here."
Buckman
continued to scrutinize him unblinkingly; over long years he had mastered
the ability. "Then where?" he asked, in a voice barely over the threshold
of audibility. A voice deliberately sought for: its tone lulled,
interfered with identification of the words' meaning.
But Jason
Taverner let it slide by; he failed to respond. These damn bastard sixes,
Buckman thought, angered - mostly at himself. I can't play funky games
with a six. It just plain does not work. And, at any minute, he could
cancel my statement out of his mind, my claim to superior genetic
heritage.
He pressed a
stud on his intercom. "Have a Miss Katharine Nelson brought in here," he
instructed Herb Maime. " A police informant down in the Watts District,
that ex-black area. I think I should talk to her."
"Half hour.
"
"Thanks."
Jason
Taverner said hoarsely, "Why bring her into this?"
"She forged
your papers."
"All she
knows about me is what I had her put on the ID cards."
"And that
was spurious'?"
After a
pause Jason shook his head no.
"So you do
exist."
"Not-here."
"Where?"
"I don't
know."
"Tell me how
you got those data deleted from all the banks."
"I never did
that."
Hearing
that, Buckman felt an enormous hunch overwhelm him; it gripped him with
paws of iron. "You haven't been taking material out of the data banks;
you've been trying to put material in. There were no data there in
the first place."
Finally,
Jason Taverner nodded.
"Okay,"
Buckman said; he felt the glow of discovery lurking inside him, now,
revealing itself in a cluster of comprehensions. "You took nothing out.
But there's some reason why the data weren't there in the first place. Why
not? Do you know?"
"I know,"
Jason Taverner said, staring down at the table; his face had twisted into
a gross mirror-thing. "I don't exist."
"But you
once did."
"Yes,"
Taverner said, nodding unwillingly. Painfully.
"Where?"
"I don't
know!"
It always
comes back to that, Buckman said to himself. I don't know. Well, Buckman
thought, maybe he doesn't. But he did make his way from L.A. to Vegas; he
did shack up with that skinny, wrinkled broad the Vegas pols loaded into
the van with him. Maybe, he thought, I can get something from her. But his
hunch registered a no.
"Have you
had dinner?" Buckman inquired.
"Yes," Jason
Taverner said.
"But you'll
join me in the munchies. I'll have them bring something in to us." Once
more he made use of the intercom. "Peggy - it's so late now ... get us two
breakfasts at that new place down the street. Not the one we used to go
to, but the new one with the sign showing the dog with the girl's head.
Barfy's."
"Yes, Mr.
Buckman," Peggy said and rang off.
"Why don't
they call you 'General'?" Jason Taverner asked.
Buckman
said, "When they call me 'General' I feel I ought to have written a book
on how to invade France while staying out of a two-front war."
"So you're
just plain 'Mister'."
"That's
right."
"And they
let you do it?"
"For me,"
Buckman said, "there is no 'they.' Except for five police marshals here
and there in the world, and they call themselves 'Mister,' too." And how
they would like to demote me further, he thought. Because of all
that I did.
"But there's
the Director."
Buckman
said, "The Director has never seen me. He never will. Nor will he see you
either, Mr. Taverner. But nobody can see you, because, as you pointed out,
you don't exist."
Presently a
gray uniformed pol woman entered the office, carrying a tray of food.
"What you usually order this time of night," she said as he set the tray
down on Buckman's desk. "One short stack of hots with a side order of ham;
one short stack of hots with a side order of sausage ...
"Which would
you like?" Buckman asked Jason Taverner.
"Is the
sausage well cooked?" Jason Taverner asked, peering to see. "I guess it
is. I'll take it."
"That's ten
dollars and one gold quinque," the pol woman said. "Which of you is going
to pay for it?"
Buckman dug
into his pockets, fished out the bills and change. "Thanks." The woman
departed. "Do you have any children?" he asked Taverner.
"No."
"I have a
child," General Buckman said. "I'll show you a little 3-D pic of him that
I received." He reached into his desk, brought out a palpitating square of
three-dimensional but nonmoving colors. Accepting the picture, Jason held
it properly in the light, saw outlined statically a young boy in shorts
and sweater, barefoot, running across a field, tugging on the string of a
kite. Like the police general, the boy had light short hair and a strong
and impressive wide jaw. Already.
"Nice,"
Jason said. He returned the pic.
Buckman
said, .'He never got the kite off the ground. Too young, perhaps. Or
afraid. Our little boy has a lot of anxiety. I think because he sees so
little of me and his mother; he's at a school in Florida and we're here,
which is not a good thing. You say you have no children?"
"Not that I
know of," Jason said.
"'Not that
you know of'?" Buckman raised an eyebrow. "Does that mean you don't go
into the matter? You've never tried to find out? By law, you know, you as
the father are required to support your children in or out of wedlock."
Jason
nodded.
"Well,"
General Buckman said, as he put the pic away in his desk, "everyone to his
own. But consider what you've left out of your life. Haven't you ever
loved a child? It hurts your heart, the innermost part of you, where you
can easily die."
"I didn't
know that," Jason said.
"Oh, yes. My
wife says you can forget any kind of love except what you've felt toward
children. That only goes one way; it never reverts. And if something comes
between you and a child - such as death or a terrible calamity such as a
divorce - you never recover."
"Well, hell,
then" - Jason gestured with a forkful of sausage - "then it would be
better not to feel that kind of love."
"I don't
agree," Buckman said. "You should always love, and especially a child,
because that's the strongest form of love."
"I see,"
Jason said.
"No, you
don't see. Sixes never see; they don't understand. It's not worth
discussing." He shuffled a pile of papers on his desk, scowling, puzzled,
and nettled. But gradually he calmed down, became his cool assured self
once more. But he could not understand Jason Taverner's attitude. But he,
his child, was all-important; it, plus his love of course for the boy's
mother - this was the pivot of his life.
They ate for
a time without speaking, with, suddenly, no bridge connecting them one to
the other.
"There's a
cafeteria in the building," Buckman said at last, as he drank down a glass
of imitation Tang. "But the food there is poisoned. All the help must have
relatives in forced- labor camps. They're getting back at us." He laughed.
Jason Taverner did not. "Mr. Taverner," Buckman said, dabbing at his mouth
with his napkin, "I am going to let you go. I'm not holding you."
Staring at
him, Jason said, "Why?"
"Because you
haven't done anything."
Jason said
hoarsely, "Getting forged ID cards. A felony."
"I have the
authority to cancel any felony charge I wish," Buckman said. "I consider
that you were forced into doing that by some situation you found yourself
in, a situation which you refuse to tell me about, but of which I have
gotten a slight glimpse."
After a
pause Jason said, "Thanks."
"But,"
Buckman said, "you will be electronically monitored wherever you go. You
will never be alone except for your own thoughts in your own mind and
perhaps not even there. Everyone you contact or reach or see will be
brought in for questioning eventually ... just as we're bringing in the
Nelson girl right now." He leaned toward Jason Taverner, speaking slowly
and intently so that Taverner would listen and understand. "I believe you
took no data from any data banks, public or private. I believe you don't
understand your own situation. But" - he let his voice rise perceptibly -
"sooner or later you will understand your situation and when that happens
we want to be in on it. So - we will always be with you. Fair enough?"
Jason
Taverner rose to his feet. "Do all you sevens think this way?"
"What way?"
"Making
strong, vital, instant decisions. The way you do. The way you ask
questions, listen - God, how you listen! - and then make up your mind
absolutely."
Truthfully,
Buckman said, "I don't know because I have so little contact with other
sevens."
"Thanks,"
Jason said. He held out his hand; they shook. "Thanks for the meal." He
seemed calm now. In control of himself. And very much relieved. "Do I just
wander out of here? How do I get onto the street?"
"We'll have
to hold you until morning," Buckman said. "It's a fixed policy; suspects
are never released at night. Too much goes on in the streets after dark.
We'll provide you a cot and a room; you'll have to sleep in your clothes
... and at eight o'clock tomorrow morning I'll have Peggy escort you to
the main entrance of the academy." Pressing the stud on his intercom,
Buckman said, "Peg, take Mr. Taverner to detention for now; take him out
again at eight A.M. sharp. Understood?"
"Yes, Mr.
Buckman."
Spreading
his hands, smiling, General Buckman said, "So that's it. There is no
more."
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