A Case of Conscience

Liu's sad little shrug was somehow even harder to bear than Agronski.

"Did they find him yet?" Ruiz-Sanchez said huskily.

"We were going to ask you the same thing," Michelis said. The tall New Englander was able to get a glimpse of himself in a mirror above a planting box and winced. "Ugh, what a beard! At the UN everybody's too busy to tell you anything, except in fragments. We thought you might have heard an announcement."

"No, nothing. The Detroit vigilantes have surrendered, according to QBC."

"Yes, so have those goons in Smolensk ; they ought to be putting that on the air in an hour or so. I never did think they'd succeed in pulling that operation off. They can't possibly know the corridors as well as the target area authorities themselves do. In Smolensk they got them with the fire door system — drained all the oxygen out of the area they were holding without their realizing what was going on. Two of them never came to."

Ruiz-Sanchez crossed himself automatically. Up on the wall, the Klee muttered in a low voice; it had not been off since Egtverchi's broadcast.

"I don't know whether I want to listen to that damn thing or not," Michelis said sourly. Nevertheless, he turned up the volume. There was still essentially no news. The rioting was dying back, though it was as bad as ever in some shelters. The Smolensk announcement was duly made, bare of detail. Egtverchi had not yet been located, but UN officials expected a break in the case "shortly."

"'Shortly,' hell," Michelis said. "They've run out of leads entirely. They thought they had him cold the next morning, when they found a trail to the hideaway where he'd arranged to tide himself over and direct things. But he wasn't there — apparently he'd gotten out in a hurry, some time before. And nobody in his organization knows where he would go next — he was supposed to be there, and they're thoroughly demoralized to be told that he's not."

"Which means that he's on the run," Ruiz-Sanchez suggested.

"Yes, I suppose that's some consolation," Michelis said. "But where could he run to, where he wouldn't be recognized? And how would he run? He couldn't just gallop naked through the streets, or take a public conveyance. It takes organization to ship something as outré as that secretly — and Egtverchi's organization is as baffled about it as the UN is." He turned the 3-V off with a savage gesture.

Liu turned to Ruiz-Sanchez, her expression appalled beneath its weariness.

"Then it's really not over after all?" she said hopelessly.

"Far from it," Ruiz-Sanchez said. "But maybe the violent phase of it is over. If Egtverchi stays vanished for a few days more, I'll conclude that he is dead. He couldn't stay unsighted that long if he were still moving about. Of course his death won't solve most of the major problems, but at least it would remove one sword from over our heads."

Even that, he recognized silently, was wishful thinking. Besides, can you kill a hallucination?

"Well, I hope the UN has learned something," Michelis said.

"There's one thing you have to say for Egtverchi: he got the public to bring up all the unrest that's been smoldering down under the concrete for all these years. And underneath all the apparent conformity, too. We're going to have to do something about that now — maybe take sledgehammers in our hands and pound this damned Shelter system down into rubble and start over. It wouldn't cost any more than rebuilding what's already been destroyed. One thing's certain: the UN won't be able to smother a revolt of this size in slogans. They'll have to do something."

The Klee chimed.

"I won't answer it," Michelis said through gritted teeth. "I won't answer it. I've had enough."

"I think we'd better, Mike," Liu said. "It might be news."

"News!" Michelis said, like a swearword. But he allowed himself to be persuaded. Underneath all the weariness, Ruiz-Sanchez thought he could detect something like a return of warmth between the two, as though, during the three days, some depth had been sounded which they had never touched before. The slight sigh of something good astonished him. Was he beginning, like all demonolaters, to take pleasure in the prevalence of evil, or at least in the expectation of it?

The caller was the UN man. His face was very strange underneath his funny hat, and his head was cocked as if to catch the first word. Suddenly, blindingly, Ruiz-Sanchez saw the hat in the light of the attitude, and realized what it was: an elaborately disguised hearing aid. The UN man was deaf and, like most deaf people, ashamed of it. The rest of the apparatus was a decoy.

"Dr. Michelis, Dr. Meid, Dr. Ruiz," he said. "I don't know how to begin. Yes, I do. My deepest apologies for past rudeness. And past damn foolishness. We were wrong — my God, but we were wrong. It's your turn now. We need you badly, if you feel like doing us a favor. I won't blame you if you don't."

"No threats?" Michelis said, with unforgiving contempt.