“Anything, anything,” the gardener said with a trace of sharpness directed at what he saw as a silly question. “What happens when you flip any switch? The lights go on, the door opens, the, the rocket ignites. It’s a control you can touch at a distance and through walls, that’s what it is. What happens here is that the recorder, that’s the box the electrodes hook to, marks the peak.”
“Umm. And does a little coil energize when that happens?” Lacey’s voice was as soft as the fur on a cat’s belly.
“You’d have to ask Robert about that, of course. He built the system for me. For us, now—he’s been testing a plant himself at his office for the past several weeks.”
Lacey looked up at one of the level’s scanning cameras. It stared straight at him and Dornier and recorded their every movement. But not their thoughts: that would have to wait for a further improvement in the machinery. “And anybody can do it?” he asked.
“I think so, at least,” said Dornier cheerfully, again tracing a leaf with his fingernail. “Of course, it takes a little preparation, a, a tuning of yourself and the plant. Watering it, talking to it”—he broke off quickly and added in response to a comment that had not been made, “I’m not saying that it understands what you say any more than a chameleon understands that bricks are red and leaves are green. It’s just a matter of tuning, that’s all.”
Lacey stood. “You’ve been a lot of help,” he said, “and I appreciate it. And I really believe you’ve found something here.” He walked to the door, looked out at the guard scowling through the vitril. “I’ll tell you, though,” he added over his shoulder before palming the latch, “I think you’ll have one hell of a hard time convincing anybody else.”
“Well, with Robert’s backing, you know . . .” Dornier said.
“Yeah, well. Good luck, anyway.”
Lacey whistled between his teeth as he walked to the aircar and ordered his driver to take him back to the State Building and wait. Still whistling, he washed his hands in the male lavatory on Level 14, returned to his desk, and made a quick check with the scanner helmet and the Net.
He was back in the air car ten minutes after he had left it, giving the driver a new destination.
* * *
Ruby Sutter found Lacey drowsing at his desk in the late afternoon. He awakened at her approach and his smile was a spreading contrast to the grim set of the woman’s face. Billings had quickly ducked under his helmet at sight of his superior. Sutter sneered at his back. With a concern she tried to hide, she asked Lacey, “How close to a kill are you, Jed?”
“As close as I can come without putting Wilhoit under a Psycomp. I know why he did it and how; but to prove it, I’d have to get into his mind.”
She slashed her hands and turned away. “Then it’s over. There’s no way to get him under a ‘Comp. No way.”
“Sure, that’s what I thought too.”
Sutter cursed, bitterly and at length. She poised her hips on the edge of the desk and looked Lacey in the eyes. “Jed, I’ll be very lucky to save your job as it is. I had another talk with . . . well, several officials. They want you off this Wilhoit thing. If there was a chance you could close it, I’d . . . but if you can’t. . . .”
Lacey’s smile changed as all his muscles tautened. His voice burred, like a saw on hard wood as he said, “They could come to me directly, these officials. Do they think I might—might take offense at them?”
He laughed suddenly and stood, his laughter genuine—that of a cynic who sees his worst forebodings proven true. “Look,” he said, “I know you’d go to the gallows with me, for me, Ruby. That wouldn’t do a bit of good. So I am going to drop the investigation, mark it as an industrial accident—but I’m going to see Wilhoit one time before I do that.”