The public safety boss showed up as ordered with an expression on his lined face in which annoyance struggled with discipline. He was having the busiest night of his career, yet the Old Man had sent orders to report in the flesh. What the devil were viewphones for, anyway, he thought angrily-and asked himself why he had ever taken up police work. He rebuked his boss by being coldly formal and saluting unnecessarily. “You sent for me, sir.”
Ford ignored it. “Yes, thank you. Here.” He pressed a stud a film spool popped out of the facsimulator. “This is a complete list of the Howard Families. Arrest them.”
“Yes, sir.” The Federation police chief stared at the spool and debated whether or not to ask how it had been obtained-it certainly hadn’t come through his office . . . did the Old Man have an intelligence service he didn’t even know about?
“It’s alphabetical, but keyed geographically,” the Administrator was saying. “After you put it through sorters, send the-no, bring the original back to me. You can stop the psycho interviews, too,” he added. “Just bring them in and hold them. I’ll give you more instructions later.”
The High Chief Provost decided that this was not a good time to show curiosity. “Yes, sir.” He saluted stiffly and left.
Ford turned back to his desk controls and sent word that he wanted to see the chiefs of the bureaus of land resources and of transportation control. On afterthought he added the chief of the bureau of consumption logistics.
Back in the Families’ Seat a rump session of the trustees was meeting; Barstow was absent. “I don’t like it,” Andrew Weatherall was saying. “I could understand Zaccur deciding to delay reporting to the Members but I had supposed that he simply wanted to talk to us first. I certainly did expect him to consult us. What do you make of it, Philip?”
Philip Hardy chewed his lip. “I don’t know. Zaccur’s got a head on his shoulders . . . but it certainly seems to me that he should have called us together and advised with us. Has he spoken with you, Justin?”
“No, he has not,” Justin Foote answered frigidly.
“Well, what should we do? We can’t very well call him in and demand an accounting unless we are prepared to oust him from office and if he refuses. I, for one, am reluctant to do that.”
They were still discussing it when the proctors arrived.
Lazarus heard the commotion and correctly interpreted it-no feat, since he had information that his brethren lacked. He was aware that he should submit peacefully and conspicuously to arrest-set a good example. But old habits die hard; he postponed the inevitable by ducking into the nearest men’s ‘fresher.
It was a dead end. He glanced at the air duct-no, too small. While thinking he fumbled in his pouch for a cigarette; his hand found a strange object, he pulled it out. It was the brassard he bad “borrowed” from the proctor in Chicago.
When the proctor working point of the mop-squad covering that wing of the Seat stuck his head into that ‘fresher, he found another “proctor” already there. “Nobody in here,” announced Lazarus. “I’ve checked it.”
“How the devil did you get ahead of me?’
“Around your flank. Stoney Island Tunnel and through their air vents.” Lazarus trusted that the real cop would be unaware that there was no Stoney Island Tunnel “Got a cigarette on you?”
“Huh? This is no time to catch a smoke.”
“Shucks,” said Lazarus, “my legate is a good mile away.”
“Maybe so,” the proctor replied, “but mine is right behind us.”
“So? Well, skip it-I’ve got something to tell him anyhow.” Lazarus started to move past but the proctor did not get out of his way. He was glancing curiously at Lazarus’ kilt. Lazarus had turned it inside out and its blue lining made a fair imitation of a proctor’s service uniform-if not inspected closely.
“What station did you say you were from?” inquired the proctor.
“This one,” answered Lazarus and planted a short jab under the man’s breastbone. Lazarus’ coach in rough-and-tumble had explained to him that a solar plexus blow was harder to dodge than one to the jaw; the coach bad been dead since the roads strike of 1966, his skill lived on.