shot me with the gun from under the pillow. Just say I heard the double come in and you were afraid there might have been a struggle.” She listlessly asked: “How do you know I won’t betray you?” “You won’t, Selene.” His voice bit. “You’re broken.” She nodded vaguely, started to say something, and then went out without saying it. Reuben luxuriously stretched in his narrow bed. Later, his beds would be wider and softer, he thought. He drifted into sleep on a half-formed thought that some day he might vote with other generals on the man to wear the five stars-or even wear them himself, Master of Denv. He slept healthily through the morning alarm and arrived late at his regular twentieth-level station. He saw his superior, May’s man Oscar of the eighty-fifth level, Atomist, ostentatiously take his name. Let him! Oscar assembled his crew for a grim announcement: “We are going to even the score, and perhaps a little better, with Ellay. At sunset there will be three flights of missiles from Deck One.” There was a joyous murmur and Reuben trotted off on his task. All forenoon he was occupied with drawing plutonium slugs from hyper-suspicious storekeepers in the great rock-quarried vaults, and seeing them through countless audits and assays all the way to Weapons Assembly. Oscar supervised the scores there who assembled the curved slugs and the explosive lenses into sixty-kilogram warheads. In mid-afternoon there was an incident. Reuben saw Oscar step aside for a moment to speak to a Maintainer whose guard fell on one of the Assembly Servers, and dragged him away as he pleaded innocence. He had been detected in sabotage. When the warheads were in and the Missilers seated, waiting at their boards, the two Atomists rode up to the eighty-third’s refectory. The news of a near-maximum effort was in the air; it was electric. Reuben heard on all sides in tones of self-congratulation: “We’ll clobber them tonight!” “That Server you caught,” he said to Qscar. “What was he up to?” His commander stared. “Are you trying to learn my job? Don’t try it, I warn you. If my black marks against you aren’t enough, I could always arrange for some fissionable material in your custody to go astray.” “No, no! I was just wondering why people do something like that.”
Oscar sniffed doubtfully. “He’s probably insane, like all the Ange-los. I’ve heard the climate does it to them. You’re not a Maintainer or a Controller. Why worry about it?” “They’ll brainburn him, I suppose?” “I suppose. Listen!” Deck One was firing. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. People turned to one another and shook hands, laughed and slapped shoulders heartily. Eighteen missiles were racing through the stratosphere, soon to tumble on Ellay. With any luck, one or two would slip through the first wall of interceptors and blast close enough to smash windows and topple walls hi the crazy city by the ocean. It would serve the lunatics right. Five minutes later an exultant voice filled most of Denv. “Recon missile report,” it said. “Eighteen launched, eighteen perfect trajectories. Fifteen shot down by Ellay first-line interceptors, three shot down by Ellay second-line interceptors. Extensive blast damage observed in Griffith Park area of Ellay!” There were cheers. And eight Full Maintainers marched into the refectory silently, and marched out with Reuben. He knew better than to struggle or ask futile questions. Any question you asked of a Maintainer was futile. But he goggled when they marched him onto an upward-bound stairway. They rode past the eighty-ninth level and Reuben lost count, seeing only the marvels of the upper reaches of Denv. He saw carpets that ran the entire length of corridors, and intricate fountains, and mosaic walls, stained-glass windows, more wonders than he could recognize, things for which he had no name. He was marched at last into a wood-paneled room with a great polished desk and a map behind it. He saw May, and another man who must have been a general-Rudolph?-but sitting at the desk was a frail old man who wore a circlet of stars on each khaki shoulder. The old man said to Reuben: “You are an Ellay spy and saboteur.” Reuben looked at May. Did one speak directly to the man who wore the stars, even hi reply to such an accusation?