“Let’s talk a minute. Colonel,” I said. “Surely it can’t do , any harm.”
Gascoigne smiled, with a sort of childish craft. “I’ll talk,”
he said. “Just as soon as you start that tape again. I was watching you in the mirror, before I took my glasses off.”
The liar. I hadn’t made a move while he’d been looking into that porthole. His poor pitiful weak old rheumy eyes had seen every move I made while he was polishing his “glasses.” I shrugged and stepped away from the programmer.
“You start it,” I said. “I won’t take the responsibiltiy.”
“It’s orders,” Gascoigne said woodenly. He started the tape running again. “It’s their responsibility. What did you want to talk to me about, anyhow?”
“Colonel Gascoigne, have you ever killed anybody?”
He looked startled. “Yes, once I did,” he said, almost eagerly. “I crashed a plane into a house. Killed the whole family. Walked away with nothing worse than a burned leg good as new after a couple of muscle stabilizations. That’s what made me shift from piloting to weapons; that leg’s not quite good enough to fly with any more.”
“Tough.”
He snickered suddenly, explosively. “And now look at me,” he said. “I’m going to kill my own faftiily in a little while. And millions of other people. Maybe the whole world.”
How long was “a little while”?
“What have you got against it?” I said.
“Against whatthe world? Nothing. Not a damn thing.
Look at me; I’m king of the hill up here. I can’t complain.”
He paused and licked his lips. “It was different when I was a kid,” he said. “Not so dull, then. In those days you could get a real newspaper, that you could unfold for the first time yourself, and pick out what you wanted to read.