“What do you mean, ‘two guns’?” demanded Longcourt Phyllis. “What about this?” She slapped her belt.
“I daren’t risk you.” Mordan answered. “You know why.”
Their eyes locked for a moment. She answered with two words. “Fleming Marjorie.”
“Hmm…I see your point. Very well.”
“What is she doing here, anyhow?” demanded Hamilton. “And who is Fleming Marjorie?”
“She came here to talk with me-about you. Fleming Marjorie is another fifth cousin of yours. Quite a good chart. Come!” He started away briskly.
Hamilton hurried after him, thinking furiously. The significance of Mordan’s last remarks broke on him with a slightly delayed action. When he understood he was considerably annoyed, but there was no time to talk about it. He avoided looking at Phyllis.
Bainbridge Martha joined them as they were leaving the room. “One of the girls is passing the word,” she informed Mordan.
“Good,” he answered without pausing.
The plasm bank stood by itself in the middle of a large room, a room three stories high and broad in proportion. The bank itself was arranged in library-like tiers. A platform divided it halfway up, from which technicians could reach the cells in the upper level.
Mordan went directly to the flight of stairs in the center of the mass and climbed to the platform. “Phyllis and I will cover the two front doors,” he directed. “Felix, you will cover the rear door.”
“What about me?” asked his chief of staff.
“You, Martha? You’re not a gunman.”
“There’s another gun,” she declared pointing at Hamilton’s belt. Hamilton glanced down, puzzled. She was right. He had stuffed the gun he had taken from Monroe-Alpha under his belt. He handed it to her.
“Do you know how to use it?” asked Mordan.
“It will burn where I point it, won’t it?” “Yes.”
“That’s all I want to know.”
“Very well. Phyllis, you and Martha cover the back door. Felix and I will take a front door apiece.”
The balcony platform was surrounded by a railing waist high and not quite one solid piece, for it was pierced here and there with small openings-part of an ornamental design. The plan was quite simple-crouch behind the railing, spy out the doors through the openings and use them as loopholes through which to fire.
They waited.
Hamilton got out a cigaret, stuck it in his mouth and inhaled it into burning, without taking his eyes off the left-hand door. He offered the case to Mordan, who pushed it away.
“Claude, there’s one thing I can’t figure out…”
“So?”
“Why in the world didn’t the government bust this up before it had gone so far? I gather that I wasn’t the only stoolie in the set-up. Why didn’t you smear it?”
“I am not the government,” Mordan answered carefully, “nor am I on the Board of Policy. I might venture an opinion.”
“Let’s have it.”
“The only certain way to get all of the conspirators was to wait until they showed themselves. Nor will it be necessary to try them-an unsatisfactory process at best. This way they will be exterminated to the last man.”
Hamilton thought about it. “It does not seem to me that the policy makers are justified in risking the whole state by delaying.”
“Policy makers take a long view of things. Biologically it is better to make sure that the purge is clean. But the issue was never in doubt, Felix.”
“How can you be sure? We’re in a sweet spot now, as a result of waiting.”
“You and I are in jeopardy, to be sure. But the society will live. It may take a little time for the monitors to recruit enough militia to subdue them in any key points they may have seized, but the outcome is certain.”
“Damnation,” complained Hamilton. “It shouldn’t be necessary to wait to stir up volunteers among the citizens. The police force should be large enough.”
“No,” said Mordan. “No, I don’t think so. The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom. That’s a personal evaluation, of course.”
“But suppose they don’t? Suppose these rats win? It’s the Policy Board’s fault.”