Gordon R. Dickson (2 page)

"At
Police
Headquarters
in
Duluth,
an
official
denial was
issued
today
in
answer
to
the
rumor
that
Files
has
advised
a
tightening
of
residence
limits
for
any
single
location. The
rumor,
as
it
reached
this
news
office,
predicted
that
residence
limits
for
all
Stabs,
Classes
A,
B,
and
C,
would
be
cut in
half;
and
all
Unstabs
reduced
uniformly
to
one
week's
time in
any
single
area.
'Not
only
has
Files
not
volunteered
a
recommendation
for
such
a
change,'
said
Hagar
Kai,
present
six-month
head
of
World
Police,
today,
'but
we
have
advanced the
question
on
a
hypothetical
basis
and
Files
has
responded negatively.'
The
World
Union
of
Astrophysicists
is
meeting
in Buenos
Aires
today;
and
elsewhere
in
the
world—"

The
polite, indifferent murmuring of the news announcer, from the vision box
recessed in the wall of the manager's office, crept forth to coil itself about
the exhausted silence that had fallen among the three men. The local police
chief sighed and shrugged.

"What
can I say?" He was heavy, Teutonic in appearance, but he spoke Basic with
the swallowed consonants and slurred vowels of an Oriental "You say
something happened—"

"It
did!" cried Kil. He thrust his wrist with the Key on it under the
uniformed man's nose. "Read it! Do you think I'm having delusions? Do you
think I'm psychotic? Unstab?"

"No,
no. I can see. You're Class A," replied the chief, wearily.

"Then why won't yon
believe me?"

"Because
it is a lie!" shouted the manager of the hotel, excitedly. He was a slim,
little,
dark man and he literally pushed himself up on
his toes with the violence of his argument. "I was there. Dozens of
people were there. Nothing happened. Nothing stopped. I say so. Everyone else
says so. If his wife left she must have just—" he threw both arms wide to
the walls of the office "—walked off!"

Kil
turned his head and looked at the small and noisy man and, inside him there was
a queer urge to commit murder. The Police chief caught its reflection in his
eyes and put a calming hand on his arm.

"Look," he said.

Reluctantly, Kil turned
back to him.

"Look,"
said the Police chief, again. "You have to admit your story's fantastic.
All right, maybe it happened. We're not savages who're going to yell impossible
at the first strange word we hear. But you know I can't help you. I shift areas
every six months, too. Violations of local ordinances—they're my job. You know
whom to see."

He stopped and gazed
steadily at Kil, Kil stared back.

"You mean
the
Police," he said.

'The World Police.
Right."
The chief paused, still staring
earnestly at Kil. "They've got the organization. They've got Files."

Kil felt emptiness wash through him. He stood
up. "All right," he said harshly. "I will." He turned and
went out.

Outside, the first clear, bright light of
tropical morning took him by surprise. The night, since Ellen had disappeared,
had seemed endless; he was almost a little shocked to see the daylight now, as
if the world was committing a callous indecency to go its way in ordinary
fashion when his own small part of it had been so shattered and overthrown.
Feeling cold and somewhat empty, he stepped forward onto the rollers and from
the rollers onto the moving roadway. He let the great, free transportation
system that had shaped his life since childhood, carry him down the hill and
away.

At the Los Angeles-bound magnetic line, a
long, slim, fifty-passenger craft floated in air within the large magnetic
rings of its cradle. Ahead of it, the line of rings stretched along its route,
up and over the edge of a mountainside, distance making them seem to close into
a tube as they dwindled in perspective. As he stepped through the ship's
entryway, Kil reached out automatically to present the face of his Key to the
checkbox there. There was no sound from the Key but its calchronometer reading
popped over to show a full six months before another move would be required.

The
mag ship had been all but full of passengers when he came up and he had little
more than taken his seat when the
fasten
safety
belts
sign lit up. The door sucked shut, the ship floated gently forward out
of the cradle and began to pick up speed between the spaced rings.
The ground alongside blurred and spun away.
At a little
under a thousand miles an hour, the mag ship streaked for Los Angeles, the torn
thunder of its passage echoing among the mountains in its wake.

It
was close to seven o'clock when Kil reached Los Angeles. An intra-continental
rocket was leaving for Duluth in the Lake Superior region at seven forty-five.
Kil had some coffee and then boarded it. Forty minutes later, acceleration
slammed him back in his
seat,
the earth fell away
beneath him an enormous distance, then drifted slowly back again as the rocket
glided down to Duluth. He stepped out at Duluth Terminal at three minutes after
eleven, local time.

He
had never been to the Lake Superior Region and World Police Headquarters
before. The breeze of the lake was cool and brisk, although it was late May. To
save time, he caught an air cab at the entrance, dialed dispatcher information
and explained his problem.

"Complain
Section Aj493," said the cab speaker. It took off, flitted for some fifteen
minutes between tall buildings, was halted for beam-check at an entry point,
and then allowed to continue, flying low and following a rigid route to a low,
white building overlooking the lake itself.

"Complaint
Section," announced the cab, landing before the entrance and opening its
door. Kil read the
meter,
took a roll of credit units
from his packet and tore off a strip of the soft metal tabs. The meter gulped
them with a click and thanked him. He got out and went inside the building.

Within
the front door, he found himself in what looked like a large, low-ceilinged
auditorium, all broken up into small booths and compartments. The first row of
these facing him, was nothing more than half-cubicles, like open visor-phone
booths, each one having a panel containing a speaker slot and microphone. As
Kil stepped into the nearest one, and pressed liis Key into the waiting cup, a
little light went on at the top of the panel.

"State
your complaint," said the speaker slot. "It will be electronicaly
sorted and you will be directed to the proper human interviewer for detailed
interview."

"My wife is
missing," said Kil.

"Missing
person," echoed the slot. The panel swung back, revealing a hallway with
rows of numbered doors. "Go directly to the interviewer in room 243. Use
your Key. Room 243 is the only door that will open to it."

Kil
walked through. Behind him, the panel swung shut, to await the next
complainant. He went down the hallway, reading the door numbers until he came
to 243. It was a door like all those that he had been familiar with since childhood,
perfectly blank except for the Key-sensitive cup in the center of it.

He
lifted his Key and pressed it into the cup. The door swung noiselessly back
before him and he stepped into a small room, where a good-looking blonde girl
sat behind a desk banked with coder keys. She smiled professionally at him.

"Sit
down," she said, waving him to a single chair facing the desk. "My
job's to take down the details of your complaint and find out what officer you
ought to be assigned to for action.
Name?"

"Bruner, Kil
Alan," he answered.

"Occupation?"

"Engineer,
Memnonics."

"Stab?"

"Class A."

"Let's
see your Key." She leaned over and inspected it, reading off Kil's
individual number, the number under which Kil was known to the computer memory
of Files. Kil watched her tap it out on her coder keys. He had not thought of
it until now, but suddenly he realized that her keys must connect directly
with Files
itself,
and that his case would be passed
on and decided by Files. And, abruptly, at the thought of this living, human
problem of his and Ellen's, going for decision before this great electronic
monster, used to it as he was in all aspects of his life, he felt a sudden
panic and a shrinking.

But the girl was going on
with her questions.

"Last residence?
Last job?
Name of missing person? Stab rating
of missing person?
Her occupation?
Last seen? Describe
in detail . . ." The questions continued in the girl's low pitched,
dispassionate voice, and her fingers danced remotely over the coder keys as if
they were something as detached from the human equation as Files itself.

Finally,
the questions and answers came to an end. The girl pressed the decision button
and sat back. On the flat desk screen before her, numbers began to click out,
one by one, appearing at regular and emotionless intervals. When the screen was
filled and the numbers had stopped, she sat reading them, for the first time
showing a hint of puzzlement in her eyes. She looked curiously at Kil, then
back at the screen and pushed a key down twice, two hard, quick jabs of her
forefinger.

The
numbers flicked off the screen and flicked back on, unchanged.

"What's wrong?"
asked Kil. "There's no mistake, is there?"

"Files
doesn't
make mistakes," she said. But it was a mechanical
answer and the look of puzzlement remained until, with a conscious effort, she
cleared the expression from her face.

"You
go from here to another office." She looked at Kil. "The man you'll
talk to there will be a Mr. McElroy. I'll send a wand along to show you the
route."