They ate for a time without speaking, with, suddenly, no bridge connecting them one to the other.

“There’s a cafeteria in the building,” Buckman said at last, as he drank down a glass of imitation Tang. “But the food there is poisoned. All the help must have relatives in forcedlabor camps. They’re getting back at us.” He laughed. Jason Taverner did not. “Mr. Taverner,” Buckman said, dabbing at his mouth with his napkin, “I am going to let you go. I’m not holding you.”

Staring at him, Jason said, “Why?”

“Because you haven’t done anything.”

Jason said hoarsely, “Getting forged ID cards. A felony.”

“I have the authority to cancel any felony charge I wish,” Buckman said. “I consider that you were forced into doing that by some situation you found yourself in, a situation which you refuse to tell me about, but of which I have gotten a slight glimpse.”

After a pause Jason said, “Thanks.”

“But,” Buckman said, “you will be electronically monitored wherever you go. You will never be alone except for your own thoughts in your own mind and perhaps not even there. Everyone you contact or reach or see will be brought in for questioning eventually … just as we’re bringing in the Nelson girl right now.” He leaned toward Jason Taverner, speaking slowly and intently so that Taverner would listen and understand. “I believe you took no data from any data banks, public or private. I believe you don’t understand your own situation. But”—he let his voice rise perceptibly—“sooner or later you will understand your situation and when that happens we want to be in on it. So—we will always be with you. Fair enough?”

Jason Taverner rose to his feet. “Do all you sevens think this way?”

“What way?”

“Making strong, vital, instant decisions. The way you do. The way you ask questions, listen—God, how you listen!—and then make up your mind absolutely.”

Truthfully, Buckman said, “I don’t know because I have so little contact with other sevens.”

“Thanks,” Jason said. He held out his hand; they shook. “Thanks for the meal.” He seemed calm now. In control of himself. And very much relieved. “Do I just wander out of here? How do I get onto the street?”

“We’ll have to hold you until morning,” Buckman said. “It’s a fixed policy; suspects are never released at night. Too much goes on in the streets after dark. We’ll provide you a cot and a room; you’ll have to sleep in your clothes … and at eight o’clock tomorrow morning I’ll have Peggy escort you to the main entrance of the academy.” Pressing the stud on his intercom, Buckman said, “Peg, take Mr. Taverner to detention for now; take him out again at eight A.M. sharp. Understood?”

“Yes, Mr. Buckman.”

Spreading his hands, smiling, General Buckman said, “So that’s it. There is no more.”

17

“Mr. Taverner,” Peggy was saying insistently. “Come along with me; put your clothes on and follow me to the outside office. I’ll meet you there. Just go through the blue-and-white doors.”

Standing off to one side, General Buckman listened to the girl’s voice; pretty and fresh, it sounded good to him, and he guessed that it sounded that way to Taverner, too.

“One more thing,” Buckman said, stopping the sloppily dressed, sleepy Taverner as he started to make his way toward the blue-and-white doors. “I can’t renew your police pass if someone down the line voids it. Do you understand? What you’ve got to do is apply to us, exactly following legal lines, for a total set of ID cards. It’ll mean intensive interrogation, but”—he thumped Jason Taverner on the arm—“a six can take it.”

“Okay,” Jason Taverner said. He left the office, closing the blue-and-white doors behind him.

Into his intercom Buckman said, “Herb, make sure they put both a microtrans and a heterostatic class eighty warhead on him. So we can follow him and if it’s necessary at any time we can destroy him.”

“You want a voice tap, too?” Herb said.

“Yes, if you can get it onto his throat without him noticing.

“I’ll have Peg do it,” Herb said, and signed off.

Could a Mutt and Jeff, say, between me and McNulty, have brought any more information out? he asked himself. No, he decided. Because the man himself simply doesn’t know. What we must do is wait for him to figure it out … and be there with him, either physically or electronically, when it happens. As in fact I pointed out to him.

But it still strikes me, he realized, that we very well may have blundered onto something the sixes are doing as a group—despite their usual mutual animosity.

Again pressing the button of his intercom he said, “Herb, have a twenty-four-hour surveillance put on that pop singer Heather Hart or whatever she calls herself. And get from Data Central the files of all what they call ‘sixes.’ You understand?”

“Are the cards punched for that?” Herb said.

“Probably not,” Buckman said drearily. “Probably nobody thought to do it ten years ago when Dill-Temko was alive, thinking up more and weirder life forms to shamble about.” Like us sevens, he thought wryly. “And they certainly wouldn’t think of it these days, now that the sixes have failed politically. Do you agree?”

“I agree,” Herb said, “but I’ll try for it anyhow.”

Buckman said, “If the cards are punched for that, I want a twenty-four-hour surveillance on all sixes. And even if we can’t roust them all out we can at least put tails on the ones we know.”

“Will do, Mr. Buckman.” Herb clicked off.

18

“Goodbye and good luck, Mr. Taverner,” the pol chick named Peg said to him at the wide entrance to the great gray academy building.

“Thanks,” Jason said. He inhaled a deep sum of morning air, smog-infested as it was. I got out, he said to himself. They could have hung a thousand busts on me but they didn’t.

A female voice, very throaty, said from close by, “How now, little man?”

Never in his life had he been called “little man”; he stood over six feet tall. Turning, he started to say something in answer, then made out the creature who had addressed him.

She too stood a full six feet in height; they matched in that department. But in contrast to him she wore tight black pants, a leather shirt, red, with tassle fringes, gold hooped earrings, and a belt made of chain. And spike heeled shoes. Jesus Christ, he thought, appalled. Where’s her whip?

“Were you talking to me?” he said.

“Yes.” She smiled, showing teeth ornamented with gold signs of the zodiac. “They put three items on you before you got out of there; I thought you ought to know.”

“I know,” Jason said, wondering who or what she was.

“One of them,” the girl said, “is a miniaturized H-bomb. It can be detonated by a radio signal emitted from this building. Did you know about that?”

Presently he said, “No. I didn’t.”

“It’s the way he works things,” the girl said. “My brother … he raps mellow and nice to you, civilizedly, and then he has one of his staff—he has a huge staff—plant that garbage on you before you can walk out the door of the building.”

“Your brother,” Jason said. “General Buckman.” He could see, now, the resemblance between them. The thin, elongated nose, the high cheekbones, the neck, like a Modigliani, tapered beautifully. Very patrician, he thought. They, both of them, impressed him.

So she must be a seven, too, he said to himself. He felt himself become wary, again; the hackles on his neck burned as he confronted her.

“I’ll get them off you,” she said, still smiling, like General Buckman, a gold-toothed smile.

“Good enough,” Jason said.

“Come over to my quibble.” She started off lithely; he loped clumsily after her.

A moment later they sat together in the front bucket seats of her quibble.

“Alys is my name,” she said.

He said, “I’m Jason Taverner, the singer and TV personality.”