Very little of the powder remained in the jar. Grace made a decision and removed the cap. She ran the tap for a moment, then let a volume of water equal to the powder's run into the jar. She sloshed it about a bit, saw that it was dissolving into a greyish thick substance, then brought it back to Bodger.
Lifting his head with one hand, she tilted the jar to his lips, and let a small amount of the viscous liquid dribble into his mouth. When she saw he was swallowing it without choking, she gave him a little more, and then again some more, feeding him the solution in slow doses until it was all gone. Then she laid his head back upon the coverlet and put the empty jar on the nightstand, and took up her anxious vigil where she had left off.
After five minutes or so, she was pleased to see a slow return of color into Bodger's sallow cheeks, and his breathing became less labored. She hurried to the bathroom for another towel, and returned and started dabbing the wetness from his forehead, neck and temples. Bodger's eyelids crinkled up tight, suddenly, and then he flicked them wide open.
"Grace—?" he said. "What—"
Memory returned to him, then, and he sat up, staring wildly about him. "Where's Stanton? Where's Lloyd?" he demanded, his voice still showing his siege of weakness. "What happened?"
Grace told him swiftly all she knew, and Bodger finally sank back on the bed with a sigh. "Good," he said. "I'm glad Lloyd's gone to the Brain. It's time it happened. Now, maybe—I can find some peace."
"You'll be all right, Mr. Bodger," Grace said. "I gave you your medicine already. I had to break your mirror to get at it, I'm sorry to say."
Bodger smiled wearily, and shook his head. "It doesn't matter anymore. The secrecy, I mean. It was the last dose of the medicine, anyhow. The next time I lose control, I've had it."
"I don't follow you, Mr. Bodger," Grace said, a part of her mind wondering if he were really being coherent. "You were hit with a Snapper Beam. I don't know why you're not dead right this minute."
Bodger cocked an eyebrow at her, then grinned. "You think theSnapperdid this to me?" he said, and when she quite naturally nodded, he shook his head, almost amused. "You're wrong, Grace, I'll admit I didn't know until Stanton pressed the stud that I was immune to the beam, but I knew it the instant the beam struck me. Nothing happened, Grace. Nothing at all. It tingled against my ribs, almost tickled, but that was its total reaction. As soon as I realized my immunity, of course, I stepped forward and let Stanton have it—You say he really got a good crack?" When Grace assured him the President had fallen like a stone, Bodger's face creased in a contented smile. "I always thought I could beat the tar out of him; now I know it.... But as I was saying, Grace—That isn't what felled me. It was my temper. Whenever I get really worked up—which has been seldom, over the years, since I had only a short supply of the gel—that was cadmium-gel in that jar—to bring me out of it—I bring one of these fits on myself."
When Grace still looked uneasily convinced, Bodger laid his hand atop hers on the coverlet, and said, "There's too much detail to it to explain fully; Lloyd, if he's quizzed the Brain as I told him, will fill you in. The fact of the matter is—and you can believe this or not, Grace—my insides are rotten with radiation. The iron in my blood, the insulin, the lymph—everything is highly Roentgenic. And it's perfectly safe unless I get riled, and my adrenals start my system spoiling for a fight. The increased flow of everything, the resultant tension—Well, it lets the deadly parts of my system cover more ground, irradiate more cells at a higher rate than the cells can throw the radiation off, and even by the time I get the gel down—it's pretty nauseating stuff to take—another few inches of my innards are poisoned. If enough of me gets it—I have had it."
"How can you be so calm?"
Bodger smiled at her, quite fondly, and patted her hand. "Because I'm old, Grace. Older than you might suspect. I've lived in the Hive for more years than I care to think about. The Hive is good, but as of not so many years back, it has served its purpose. Listen—If anything goes wrong, and Idopoison myself with my own rage, there's something you should know."
"Please, Mr. Bodger, I'm sure you'll be fine if you just—"
"I'mnotso sure," he interrupted. "And Lloyd will need one point of information that only I can give him. I'll tell it to you, just in case." He held up his hand to stop any further disclaimers from Grace, and said, "Tell him that the Plan is in the hospital, the main hospital. I put it there for safekeeping a long, long time ago. It would become radioactive, of course, but the Plan was useless until all radiation outside the Hive was gone, anyhow. Besides, radiation preserves things; I'm proof of that. Tell him it's in the safe in the administrator's office. The combination's the same as Lloyd's Voteplate number. I saw to that when it was issued."
"Mr. Bodger—!" Grace said, nearly in tears. "I don't understandanyof this! What Plan!? What radiation outside the Hive!? It doesn't make sense—"
"Lloyd will understand."
"But even if he does," she said, "he doesn't have his Voteplate anymore...."
"Doesn't?" Bodger said, frowning, then his face cleared. "Even so, he must know the number by heart, I should think. Anyway, it's in the files in my office.... But I don't quite understand—Why doesn't he have it? He had it when I passed out, didn't he?"
"Yes, but in order to command the Goons, he took Stanton's, and left his own in Stanton's pocket, probably to avoid having to answer questions about possession of two plates if he was searched or something...."
"Stanton'sgot the plate?!" Bodger said, sitting up. "If he knew its significance—!" He shook his head, trying to disabuse himself of a nagging worry. "He can't, of course. But it's awkward, him having it. Lloyd will have to get it back, or he can't key the dial of the safe with it."
He swung his legs off the bed, suddenly, and stood up. Grace grabbed his arm when he swayed a bit, but then he steadied himself and shrugged her off. "I'm all right," he said. "I just don't like Stanton's having that plate."
"Does it matter so much?" Grace asked. "Even if Lloyd forgot the number, or the files were lost and he couldn't get a new plate made up—Surely the safe can bebrokeninto?"
Bodger nodded. "Of course it can. But Stanton, with Lloyd's plate, wouldn't need to take so much time. And he could destroy The Plan in a very few minutes." He went toward the door to the corridor. "I'll feel much better when I've checked on him, Grace."
Grace hesitated, then ran after him. "Lloyd wants me to stay with you. You're still not over your seizure, you know."
"Worrying about Stanton's not going to make me any calmer," Bodger said, stubbornly. "If you insist, come along."
He entered the living room and crossed to the door. Beside the door was a small metal box inset into the wall. Bodger opened the lid of this and touched a button. From a speaker in the box, a voice said, hollow and efficient, "Orders."
"A Goon escort for Secondary Speakster Bodger and Miss Grace Horton, at Unit B, Hundred-Level."
"Destination."
"Unit—" Bodger looked at Grace.
"M-13," she reminded him. "On ninety-three."
"Unit M-13, Ninety-Three Level."
"Orders."
"All orders conveyed."
Frank, hovering at that moment in puzzlement outside Unit A, wherein he had expected to find Andra and the others beginning a revolt, saw—through the Ultrablack-negating picture on the prop-Goon's cathode screen—the rectangle of light appear when Bodger opened the front door of his own unit across the street while he and Grace awaited their escort. Bodger's and Stanton's Units were not subject to Ultrablack, of course, interiorly. It had been the unforeseen darkness in Stanton's windows that had left Frank in immobile puzzlement on the walk before the Unit.
Seeing Bodger and Grace in the doorway, he turned the wheels of his ponderous vehicle and rolled their way, hoping for information as to Andra's whereabouts. He had just come within a few feet of the twosome, and was about to climb out the back panel when Bodger spoke, hearing the sound of the arriving prop-Goon and thinking it was his requested escort.
"What are you waiting for? We're in a hurry."
Bodger spoke blindly, unable to penetrate the black pall beyond his doorway. Frank hesitated, then decided not to reveal himself as yet. As tonelessly as possible, he spoke to Bodger in the required formula. "Orders."
"You have your orders," Bodger snapped, too keyed up to note any deviation in the accustomed path of the—he assumed—robotic voice. "Take us to Miss Horton's Unit at once."
Frank, believing Stanton was still there, had a chill of apprehension. This man, the Secondary Speakster, mightnotbe on the side of revolt; after all, whyshouldhe be? For all he knew, Andra was dead, and Bodger was now on his way back to release the President. The whole business of socking him might have been a blind, to win her confidence, and worm the names of the movement's members from her.
"Do you hear me?" Bodger said, although Frank's worried pause had been barely a moment's duration. "Take us at once. All orders conveyed."
Frank manipulated the arm of the hollow robot up into the doorway, and Bodger, seeing it, took hold. Grace took Bodger's other hand, and then Frank, needing time to think the thing out, turned the bulk of his machine about slowly and began to roll toward the lift. He thought of getting Bodger and the Horton girl out in the toils of Ultrablack and then suddenly deserting them, but hesitated to try it; they might, after all, be what he'd begun to believe they were: sympathetic with the movement. Their reasons for the return to the girl's Unit might be even Anti-Hive in nature. Frank did not know what to do, so he simply kept moving, got aboard the lift, and thumbed the ninety-three button after Bodger and Grace Horton were safely within the gates.
The lift dropped smoothly seven levels, then halted, and the gate swung automatically open. And there, his eyes hidden behind a peculiar faceplate, stood Fredric Stanton, hand in hand with Robert Lennick.
"Bodger!" Stanton exploded, seeing him through the filter of his facepiece. Bodger, hearing the voice in the darkness, drew back into a corner of the lift, staring wide-eyed, futilely, for the other man, trying to hide the slim body of Grace Horton behind him, fearing a repeat of Stanton's attack with the Snapper Beam.
"Where is he!?" she gasped, terrified by that disembodied, menacing voice in the blackness. Stanton, secure in his invisibility, stepped into the lift, ignoring the metal body of the supposed Goon, and slapped Bodger viciously across the face. While Bodger choked at the unexpected blow, and brought his hand up to his injured mouth, Frank realized there was no longer a doubt where the sympathies of the Secondary Speakster lay, and with one swing of the jointed metal arm of the prop-Goon, he knocked Stanton unconscious with a blow to the base of the skull.
"What happened?" Grace shrilled, clinging to Bodger.
Lennick, deprived of his guide, groped forward in panic, calling, "Mr. Stanton—!" Frank spun the controls, and the metal arm swung up and clasped Lennick viciously about the throat, lifting his kicking body clear off the floor.
"Bodger—!" Frank called out, enjoying the icy terror that flickered in Lennick's congested face at the sound of his voice. "Stanton's out cold at your feet. He has some sort of facepiece he can see with. Put it on!"
Bodger, utterly bewildered as to the sudden turn of events, nevertheless did as directed, and straightened up adjusting the filter over his eyes. When he saw the grisly tableau of Lennick and the prop-Goon, he stepped back, agape with shock. Frank answered his query before Bodger's reeling mind could formulate it coherently. "This is a movie prop. I'm Frank Shawn, a member of Andra's movement, Bodger. And this wriggling worm in my hands is the guy who tried to undo all of us!"
"Frank ... please...." Lennick gurgled, his eyes distending while his hands tore vainly at the heavy metal hands that were tightening about his windpipe.
"Let him go," Bodger said impatiently. "He can't get far in Ultrablack, anyhow! We've got to get to Lloyd, my son. He's down at the Brain, now. With Stanton in our power, we can free the Hive forever in an hour's time!"
Frank looked at the face of his erstwhile friend, Robert Lennick, and suddenly had no more stomach for murder. He let go, and as Lennick dropped to the floor of the lift and started to double over, gulping air, Frank sent the left arm of the prop-Goon up in an arc that swatted him backwards onto the street outside the gate. Lennick scrambled blindly to his feet, screaming, "Frank! Don'tleaveme, Frank!" He dashed forward, misjudged his angle, and crashed head-on into a building wall. Frank thumbed the lift-button for Sub-Level One, and let the closing gate blot Lennick from his sight. The lift began to drop, swiftly.
Lennick, after lying painfully on the ground until his addled senses returned, got up on hands and knees, groggily shaking his head. Then, in the darkness, he heard rolling wheels, coming nearer. "Help!" he cried. "This way! Help!"
The rumbling veered in his direction at once, and then a Goon's unseen arms were lifting him to his feet. "The President—!" Lennick cried. "He's in danger!"
A moment's hesitance, and the Goon flatly replied, "The President is in no danger. He has been taken to the Brain at his own request, under competent escort."
Lennick, suddenly divining what must be the case, said, "His plate! Someone must have his plate, then, because—"
"You are bleeding," the Goon said dispassionately.
Bob's fingers came up to his face and he winced at the smarting pain their exploration produced at the point where he had struck the building wall. "It's nothing," he said, impatiently. "We've got to—"
"We will take you for hospitalization at once," said the voice of the Goon in the blackness.
"Hospitalization?" Bob said, irritably. "Don't you guys understand? The President—" And then it sank in. "No!" he shrieked. "You can't! I'm on your side!"
Other sets of heavy wheels rolled nearer, and inflexible metal fingers closed over his arms. The Goons began to roll ponderously off, with Bob firmly in their grasp. He was still shrieking when the mouth of the incinerator chute enveloped him.
Lloyd and Andra were awaiting the lift at Sub-Level one, guided in the blackness by the Goon who had led them to the control chamber, when Bodger and the others arrived. Stanton, only semi-conscious, was being held upright in the arms of the prop-Goon, lest a real Goon pick him up for "treatment" because of his bruises, one on the back of his head where Frank had connected, the other glowing a steadily darker purple on his jaw where Bodger's knockout punch had landed earlier. Lloyd, sensing the tenancy of the lift even in the blackness, drew back apprehensively, and then his father's voice was speaking to him in assurance.
"Whatever orders you've given your guide, son, take them back. We've got you-know-who, and we're taking him to the Brain with us." Andra's fingers closed joyously over Lloyd's own at the words, but he pulled his fingers free and slipped Stanton's Voteplate into his guide's chest-slot.
"Last order countermanded," he said to the Goon. "We have no further need of you. All orders conveyed." The Goon removed the plate, handed it to him, and wheeled off into the darkness. "Dad!" he spoke, then. "I found out so much, from the Brain! The Plan—for reactivating the ten cities—The Brain said you knew where it was."
"Grace will tell you, son," said Bodger. "Meantime—" he pressed Lloyd's own Voteplate into his hand "—take this, you'll need it. And give me Stanton's. I'm taking him down to the Brain. I may have to break his arm for him, but he's going to call off the Goons before I'm through."
"Mr. Bodger—" Frank said, taking out Stanton's preempted Snapper and holding it forward into the darkness. "This may come in handy for persuasion. There's no need your overtaxing yourself."
Bodger reached out and took it from him. "Thank you, Shawn. Rest assured I'll be only too glad to use it on him if he balks." Bodger motioned to Frank, still in the prop-Goon. "See if you can shake him awake, or something. I don't know how he can get down the ladder except on foot, much as I'd like to drop him into the chamber, if I thought it wouldn't break his rotten neck."
Frank did so, gladly, while Grace, fumbling for and finding Lloyd in the darkness, clung to him in joy and relief. He found himself liking it, and slipped his arms around her to enjoy it the better.
"Frank—" Andra said, slowly, hurt. "We found out, from the Brain, that Bob—Bob's in Stanton's pay."
"We found out, too, Andy," Frank said from inside the pseudorobot. "The hard way. We left him in Ultrablack on ninety-three. The louse had freed Stanton, and—"
"He's coming to," Bodger said.
In the agitated shaking of the metal hands that supported him by the upper arms, Stanton blinked wildly at Ultrablack, and choked out, "Let me go! I demand that you release me!"
"You're no longer in a position to demand anything," Bodger said softly. "I have your skinny carcass covered with a Snapper. You may as well relax."
"Bodger.... What are you going to do?" Stanton said, no longer fighting the grip of the prop-Goon's hands.
"Take you to the Brain. Make you countermand all your orders regarding the Goons."
"And if I don't?" Stanton said, warily. "What will you do if I refuse?"
"Kill you," Bodger said, and his tone rang true. "I don't want to do it that way, of course—not for reasons of pity; heaven knows you need killing, Fred—but because it's faster this way. With you dead, we'd simply elect a new President, and thenhecould countermand your orders. That could take days, though, days of the Ultrablack you had Madge Benedict instigate in this emergency. It would be too tedious convincing the Kinsmen to Vote in the dark on a proposition they couldn't see."
"I—" Stanton said blankly, "I thought you'd force Madge to turn on Light-of-Day."
"We would, but Lloyd mistakenly ordered her held incommunicado," Bodger said tiredly. "He didn't know that was another of your pet phrases synonymous with death."
"Good Lord!" Lloyd moaned in the darkness. "I didn'tdream—"
"Madge brought it on herself, working hand in glove with Stanton, son," Bodger said. "You did not know. The point is, only Stanton or his personal Secretary could have called off the emergency. So now we have to get tough with him."
"Bodger...." Stanton straightened up, his face grim in defeat. "I have to know: If Idoas you ask, countermand the Goons, call off the Ultrablack—What will happen to me, afterwards?"
"I can't say, Fred," Bodger replied flatly. "We'll have it put to a general Vote."
"I see," said the President, knowing full well what the result of such a Vote would be, with the Hive enraged against his exposed treachery. "Is it your best offer?"
"My only," said Bodger. "Let's go, Fred."
He prodded Stanton's back with the Snapper, and the President began to move forward, holding his head high, toward the staircase leading to the control-chamber entrance. Frank opened the panel at the rear of the prop-Goon, and called for Andra to join him inside it, then he took Lloyd and Grace by the arms, via the controls, and guided them through the black blindness after Bodger and his prisoner.
At the head of the staircase—really no more than a tier-cut segment of the lead-concrete Sub-Level Two, over which the correspondingly undercut left wall of the twenty-five-foot-thick level could slide—Frank had to come to a halt, his prop-Goon not being equipped with extendable cogs to fit the treads and risers, as the real Goons' wheels were. "I'm going down there with him," Lloyd said, starting down into blackness.
"No," his father's voice came from the level below. "I'll handle this myself, Lloyd. I can see my way and you can't."
Lloyd stood undecided on the brink of the staircase, then Grace found his arm in the dark and drew him back. "I want to talk to you about your father, Lloyd," she said, when he was again at her side. "He said some strange things, up in the Unit...."
Descending the ladder below his prisoner, the Snapper aimed upward always at the base of Stanton's spine, Bodger reached the cable-net flooring, and gestured the President to the chair before the control panel. "Here," he said, returning the other's Voteplate. "You'll need this. But I don't have to tell you the penalty for one attempt at trickery on your part."
Stanton took the card silently, and slid it into a slot on the control panel. A metal square slid back, exposing a hand-microphone. He took it in his hand, and spoke into it.
"Primal Speakster in control," he said.
All about the two men, the lights of the Brain flickered then a speaker in the cavity which had held the microphone said, in the cold, flat tones of the Brain, "Orders."
Stanton glanced up at Bodger, and smiled. And suddenly Bodger was afraid. There was no hint of fear in the other man's eyes, now, only confidence and terrible menace.
"There is a false robot, two men and two women with it, on Sub-Level One," said Stanton, while Bodger goggled in surprise. "Destroy them!"
"Orders," said the Brain.
"Stanton!" Bodger raged, snapping out of his stunned paralysis. He depressed the stud of the Snapper clear into the hilt of the weapon, trying to prevent the activating words from being spoken by the President. There was a fractional hum of power, and then a searing fork of hot blue light leaped from a conic protrusion on the Brain's inner surface and turned the weapon to molten metal in his fingers. Bodger fell to the flooring, crying out in pain, his raw, blistered hand nearly driving him unconscious.
"You should have known," Stanton addressed the mewling figure on the ground near his chair, "that a sonic beam cannot be fired inside the Brain; it would shatter some of the delicate balances necessary for its functioning. The Brain has to safeguard itself."
"Stanton—!" Bodger groaned, gritting his teeth against the agony of his seared hand. "Don't!... Please...."
"Danger," said the dispassionate voice of the Brain.
Stanton spun to face the concavity of the speaker. "What—?" he blurted, baffled. And then he heard the dim rumble, high above, as the entire lead-concrete Sub-Level Two slid relentlessly closed. Stanton jumped from the chair and looked up from the base of the ladder, to see if his ears had told him the truth. All that was visible at the head of the hundred-foot ladder was the bottom of the now-closed metal lid, over which the entire next level had moved. He turned, white-faced, to Bodger.
"What's happening?"
"Danger," repeated the Brain.
Stanton rushed to the side of the fallen man. "Bodger!" he shrieked, lifting him by the shoulders and shaking him. "What's happening!?"
"I guess—" Bodger said, smiling tiredly despite the cruel burns, "—I must've got mad, Fred. My innards, or don't you know about them?"
"I know all about your radiating innards!" Stanton exploded. "Buttheycouldn't trigger the Brain's protective level! It's impossible! You've been here before—"
"I was never ... this aroused ... before, Fred," Bodger said weakly. "And now, for the first time, I ... know the answer to something I never knew before." He took a breath, gathered together all his strength, and lifted his face near the other man's, still smiling. "You asked the Brain about a third term, once—Don't argue, Fred, it's on record—and yet there is no memory in its circuits of a reply. Tell me, Fred.... Whatwasits reply?" When Stanton did not respond, Bodger said, "I think I can tell you. Chaos. Noise. A riot of sound and fury that knocked you clear off your chair and broke the circuit before it destroyed you. Because the Brain knew, of course. It's smart, Fred. It can predict with better accuracy than a human mind. It foresaw, after correlating all the facts at its disposal, what would be the result of your attempt at being elected a third time. And it tried to ... tell you...." Bodger faltered, went grey, and lay back upon the interwoven cables with his eyes closed. His lips were still working, though, and he finished, "... the result ... except that the ... Brain doesn't speak ... in words ... just concepts ... and its concept encompassed ... its own...."
His head rolled to one side, limply.
"Danger," croaked the voice of the Brain.
"Itswhat? Its ownwhat?!" Stanton yelled, grabbing Bodger's head by the hair and banging it violently upon the flooring. Bodger, his eyes rolling, coughed painfully, then sighed, as one who names a long-awaited friend, "... death."
"Danger!" said the Brain. A wild tootling began in its depths as its metal mind tried to spare it its terrible fate.
"What danger?" Stanton roared into the microphone, leaping to the chair before the control panel. "Tell me! I'll find a way out!"
"Danger!" said the Brain. "Danger! Danger!"
There was a wild bluish light playing on the face of the panel, now, and Stanton knew, suddenly, that it was not of the Brain itself. He turned, some hideous psychic insight telling him what he could not as yet realize by his senses, and looked at the body of Lloyd Bodger on the floor.
Veins and arteries shone like a network of neon lights through the flesh, a pulsing glow that rose in its intensity by the second. The internal organs appeared through Bodger's smoldering clothing as on the screen of a fluoroscope, each alight with self-engendered hellfire. Bodger's eyes were glowing like hot tungsten through his transparent lids, his teeth were bared in a smile brighter than sunrise. His every bone, bit of cartilage, nerve ganglion and muscle fibre sparked like coals beneath a blacksmith's bellows, and the hairs of his head were a Medusa-wig of burning, writhing wire.
And then he reached his critical mass.
THE END