“Bullshit!” Clifford raged. “They’ve been got at too. Isn’t anywhere in the world safe from those bastards and their grubby fingers? All we wanted to do was be left alone!”
* * *
“But it looks as if somebody doesn’t want to leave you alone,” Sarah commented when Clifford brought her up-to-date that evening. “You always said we’d be famous one day.”
“The whole thing’s childish and stupid,” Clifford declared moodily. “Presumably the idea is to show to the world that you can’t beat the system. If you look like you’re doing a good job of getting along without them, they make it their business to screw it up for you. That way the world gets the message. It’s typical of the way their minds work. Jesus, no wonder the world’s in such a mess!”
“I suppose it’s a gentle reminder to ISF to stay in line too,” Sarah added. “If the system pronounces you undesirable, then that’s the way you’re supposed to stay. In other words, taking in the outcasts isn’t the way to keep friends.”
“Yeah, that too, I guess,” Clifford agreed. “Al’s pretty fed up with the whole business too. I’ve never seen him low before. It’s ridiculous.”
“Do you think they might reconsider your employment contracts then?” Sarah asked hesitantly. “I mean it must be affecting the work of the whole place.”
“If they’ve thought about that they haven’t mentioned it,” Clifford said. “But I can’t say I’d blame ’em.” He thought deeply for a long time and then said suddenly in a brighter voice:
“Oh, I forgot to tell you, there is a piece of good news as well.”
“I don’t believe it. What?”
“Professor Zimmermann is due to take a couple of weeks vacation down on Earth sometime in the near future. Al said so today. Apparently Zimmermann wants to come to Sudbury for a day or two to see for himself what we’re doing at the Institute. You always said you wanted to meet him. It looks like maybe now you’ll get the chance.”
Chapter 14
The screen and its associated electronics had been salvaged from a basement room of the Institute that had become the final resting place for a bewildering assortment of dust-covered hardware left over from one-time projects whose purpose was long forgotten. The minicomputer that provided local control for the screen and in addition linked it into the Institute’s main computing complex had originally formed part of a body scanner at Marlboro General Hospital; it had been scheduled for the scrap heap when the hospital made a decision to replace the scanner with a more up-to-date system, but had found its way to Sudbury on the back seat of Aub’s car. The control console had been built mainly from panels of roughly cut aluminum sheeting, and included in its list of unlikely component parts: pieces of domestic Infonet terminals, microprocessors from household environmental-control units, Army-reject bubble memory modules, a frequency synthesizer from a sale of surplus stocks by a marine radar manufacturer in Boston, and a selection of items from various do-it-yourself hobby kits. The whole assemblage was housed in a small room adjoining the GRASER and connected by a multitude of cables to the clutter of cabinets and racks that formed the main body of the detector situated out on the large floor, in a space cleared immediately beside the reactor sphere itself.
Professor Heinrich Zimmermann stood back a few paces from the screen, a faint smile of amusement playing on his lips as he contemplated the image being displayed, and accepted good-naturedly the challenge that it implied. Most of the screen’s area was taken up by a plain circular disk of dull orange, showing no internal detail or pattern but lightening slightly to become just a shade more yellow toward the center. The background to the disk was at first sight completely dark, but closer inspection revealed the merest hint of a blood-red mist to relieve the blackness. At length Zimmermann shook his head and looked back at Aub, who was sitting on a metal-frame stool in front of the console and watching him with twinkling eyes that failed to conceal his suppressed mirth.
“I thought that you had shown me everything. Now it appears that you have saved some sort of mystery until the very end. I am afraid I shall have to acknowledge defeat. What is it?”