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nger.txt pling through the others.
"No!" echoed Jasper. "Why not?"
"Because it's too soon," said Frank. "I just met this man today. Let him wait
for the details."
"I told you." said Gait, in the patient tones of a man who is repeating what
he has already repeated many times before, "that I know him. That I trust him.
That I vouch for him. Also, we need him not in a few days, but right now.
Things are almost finished."
"No," repeated Frank.
"Franks' Jasper's voice brought the short man's head around "you're wrong.
You're usually right to be cautious, but this time you're wrong. If you won't
tell him, / will."
"Then I wash my hands.of it." Frank stood up abruptly and, turning his back,
strode across the room to rip back the drape hanging in front of the air wall.
Beyond, the night sky and a full yellow moon, early and enormous just above
the treetops, looked in on them. Frank stood, legs spread a little apart,
staring out at it and not moving.
"Alien . . ." said Jasper, gently, and Alien turned his attention back to the
silver-haired man, who opened a drawer in the arm of his chair and took out a
tiny, dark object, like a miniature condenser, which he handed to Alien. Alien
took it curiously, examin-
ing the small, black central body from which two short wires sprouted.
"There's only one part of itself where MX wouldn't be aware of someone working
on it." said Jasper, "and that's the coder panels themselves. They're eas-
116 Gordon R. Dickson ity opened with a repairman's key. and in about forty
seconds a trained man can open one, attach that little object you're holding,
and reclose the panel.
The spot where it attaches and its design make it almost indistinguishable
from the ordinary factory assembly of a coder's innards. Even a trained
repair-
man would have to be looking for it, to find it once it was attached."
"That's what you want me for?" asked Alien.
"We're about ready to start adding these things to the coder panels not just
here, but the world over.
We've been making them by hand for eight years now, in thousands of little
groups like this one. Now, we need every pair of hands we can get."
"What does it do?" asked Alien.
"It distorts the information coded on the panel.
MX will receive false information from anyone using
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nger.txt the coder; as a result, it will hand out a false decision."
Alien nodded.
"I see," he said, slowly. "Yes, I see." His hand closed tightly over the
little object, and slowly, he nodded.
There was a chance before Gait and Alien left that evening for Alien to snatch
a few free minutes. Once more he went in search of Leta, and discovered her,
finally, in her own room. She was dressed for bed and sitting on the railing
of a small terrace outside her room, gazing at the same moon that had pro-
vided a focus for Frank's attention a short while earlier in the sitting room.
Against the moonlight, in the filmy night-dress, she looked like some sad
figure out of an old painting, all black and silvery gray.
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With a rush, all the hard emotions flowed out of
Alien, like water from a broken cup, and he almost groped his way across the
room toward her.
"Leta . . ." he said.
She rose and clung to him. For a minute, thev said
MX KNOWS BEST 117
nothing, just held on to each other. After a little while, he begged her to
come away with him.
". . . you don't want this. It isn't your life."
She pressed herself tightly against him.
"But it is," she said. "You can't live with some-
thing for fifteen years like this and not have it be vour life."
"That's not true," he answered. "It was Jasper's choice, but not yours. You
didn't pick this."
"That doesn't make any difference."
"You want to come with me, don't you?"
"Oh, I don't know!" she cried. "I don't know!"
"Yes, you do."
She raised her face to look at him.
"Would you run out. Alien?"
"I?" he said, surprised. "But I don't mean that you should run out. All I mean
is for you to come away from here to where you can lead your own life. I'm
going through with this, of course. I want to."
"But you want me, too," she said.
"Well, why not?" he demanded. "Is there any rea-
son why I can't have both?" ^
There was a noise from the doorway of the bed-
room. They turned. Frank stood just inside the shadow of the aperture, his
face in shadow.
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"Jasper wants to see you, Leta," he said. His voice was perfectly even.
"Oh " she gasped. "Excuse me." She turned and went swiftly out the door. Frank
stepped aside to let her pass. Then he walked toward Alien.
"You needn't apologize," Alien said grimly.
"I wasn't going to." Frank had emerged into the moonlight on the terrace- He
looked upward at Al-
ien's face. "Leave Leta alone," he said.
Alien considered him. "Why?"
"A number of reasons." Frank's moonlight-pale face had no expression. "The
best is that I know you by
118 Gordon R. Dickson reputation from Gait and others. You can't be trusted."
Alien felt the familiar stir of anger, boiling like some slow. heavy liquid
inside him.
"Can't be trusted . . . how?" he asked, softly.
"In any way," answered Frank, quite calmly. "That was why I didn't want to
tell you about the gim-
micks downstairs. You're not the man to belong to an organization, Morg.
You're an egoist; and you'll put yourself first. You'd betray any of us alt of
us if the choice was right."
"And you," replied Alien, brutally, "are in love with Leta."
Frank did not stir, or change his unmoving coun-
tenance.
"Of course," he said. "But that doesn't come into it."
"I think it does."
"What you think," went on Frank, easily, "is of no importance whatsoever. I've
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been forced into risking my life and my work on you. I won't risk the lives of
the people I love. And if you keep after Leta, the time'll come when you'll
put the rest of us on the auction block to buy what you want with her."
Alien grinned with rage. He was seething up inside into boiling fury.
"So what?" he asked.
"So stay away from her," continued Frank. "If you don't, I'll kill you." He
reached into his shirt, took
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nger.txt his hand out again, and there was a small, snapping sound. The long,
thin blade of a knife displayed itself in the moonlight. Alien made an
involuntary little sound and took a step backward. "Oh, not with this
. . . and not now," said Frank. "1 just wanted to show you I meant what I
said. I will kill you, one way or another, even if it costs me my own life for
doing it."
He folded the knife and put it back into his shirt. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]