Reporters: Oooh! Bad language yet! (Laughter)
Phyllis Logan Quality: It isn’t funny! Our own studios were-
President Gaylord: When you’ve finished the comPhyllis-
Reporters: (laughter)
Unidentified reporter: Give her a break, she’s new around here. What’s more she’s kind of pretty.
President Gaylord: Better tell the automatics you want an “unidentified reporter” credit on that,-. You wouldn’t want people to think you’re getting susceptible after all these years, would you?
Unidentified reporter: It’s all right for you, Prexy. My son Tom came home last night with a third-degree burn on his shoulder. Sniper caught him.
President Gaylord: I got a comped statement for that one too, right here somewhere. Yeah. “Much as one regrets the damage to property caused by extremist-”
Unidentified reporter: The hell with property! This was my son!
President Gaylord: Ah, we got too damned many peoin this country anyway.
Dean of reporters: Can we quote that?
President Gaylord: You quote what’s comped for you! That does not include off-the-cuff and off-the-record reYou want to quote, you pick up a heap of printlike you ought to. Is that the lot for today? I got a date at the gun club.
Dean of reporters: Sure, Prexy, wouldn’t want to keep you from an important engagement. (Ends)
The sorting process at the Westchester camps started around five-thirty and by seven the arrestees with verimental disorder records were being shipped into the Ginsberg and the automatics were humming with ward-of-the-state applications. They didn’t call out Mogto attend to routine matters like this, but Reedeth was junior staff grade and they sent for him with a police skimmer at seven-ten. Officially on reserve for the month, Ariadne heard an early-morning newscast and came in at seven-fifty, and with the aid of three police psychiatrists they broke the back of the problem within a couple of hours; there were a mere seven hunor so suspected mental cases this time. The State government had been clamping down recently, and were no longer admitting that proof of incarceration was equivalent to proof of disorder; they’d secured a SuCourt ruling that a current doctor’s certificate was essential.
Going down the alleys between the stacked and racked gas-sleepy arrestees, Reedeth checked each of their ID’s: “Manfred Hal Cherkey, ship him back-Lulu Waterson Walls, better keep her and Harry Madison won’t be the only knee here next week-Philip X. ben Abdullah, keep him too, I guess-”
The automatics delivered the running total of acceptand when he came too close to the limit the hospital could cope with they down-rated previous border
readings to compensate, eliminating the ones with the oldest certificates and re-assigning them to Westfor ordinary internment sentences.
Suddenly he stopped dead, staring at a pale figure not gassed but immobile, arms wrapped around knees, eyes open but not seeing anything, frozen in the foetal posture.
“Christ,” he said. “What’s she doing here?”
Within seconds of Flamen letting himself into his office at the Etchmark Undertower-trend-setter of the post-turn-of-century buildings sunk as far into yielding earthcrust as older buildings jutted upward, in order to reach the bedrock of the Manhattan Schist in an area where it nosedived-the comweb screen lit to show Prior’s face.
“Ah, Matthew!” With evident relief. “Were you held up?”
“Of course I was!” Flamen snapped. “They’re diverting everything to the four points of the compass. I thought I was never going to get here at all. Did Diablo show?”
“Sure he did. He’s right here in my office. I’ll bring him in to see you at once. I’ve been keeping him hangaround a bit, I’m afraid, but I thought it best for him to meet you before we started-ah-talking shop.”
Flamen’s mood lightened momentarily; he was alamused when in a fit of self-consciousness Prior gave that faintly disapproving inflection to a phrase he regarded as slangy. This particular one had a century or two of respectable use behind it, but for Prior it was still not quite kosher.
“Great, bring him in,” he said aloud, dropping into his chair.
So now: the big moment. Enter, fussily superintended by Prior, the celebrated Pedro Diablo, curiously shy in manner (but perhaps that was due to the shock of beuprooted from his lifetime-familiar background), eyes darting everywhere in the room, a great deal of their whites showing. A rather good-looking man, younger than Flamen had imagined: certainly still in his thirties. But of course he already had a decade of fame behind him; that would explain the false perspecLean, tautly nervous, hair and beard curled in near-African spirals, wearing New York-fashionable clothing instead of Blackbury robes-a black-green striped over-suit and green shoes. Flamen inventoried him as he shook hands, accepted the offer of a chair, uttered conabout great pleasure and having often watched the Flamen show.