Gordon R. Dickson Read Free Page B

don't believe me."
    "No.
Yes," said McElroy. "I mean it could have been true for you. You
could have been hypnoed."
    "I'm a bad hypnotic subject!"
    "Still—with drugs? No, that's not the trouble. The trouble is , it's not our job."
    "Not
your job! You're public servants. You're—" "No!" said McElroy, with such hard, sudden violence in his voice that it
checked Kil. There was a small second of silence, then the Policeman went on in quieter tones. "We're set up to keep the peace.
That's our job. To be the strong right arm of Files. That's why they started us, a hundred and fourteen years ago." He raised
his eyes, suddenly, bumingly, to Kil. "What do you know about it? You're
Class A."
    "What's
Class A got to do with it?" demanded Kil, his ready anger flaring up to
matching heat. A thought occurred to him. "Aren't you?"
    "Yes,
but I know!" said
McElroy. "I've been in this business since Files recommended me for training
school at thirteen. You don't. No Class A does. They're the cream of the crop,
with six full months before they have to move from one location to another.
What if you were Class B and had to move every three months? What if you were
Class C and had to move every month? What if you were Unstab?"
    " What's that got to do with it, I say?" snapped Kil.
"I'm not Unstab."
    "No,"
said McElroy, settling back in his chair. "You're not Unstab. You live
almost the way they did in the old days. You don't sneak glances at your Key
every fifteen minutes to see how many hours— hours, not days, are left before you have to catch a rocket or a mag ship and
move again. You don't lie awake nights hating the world, hating Files, hating
us, hating everything until you end up dreaming, staring into the darkness and
dreaming, of somehow getting your hands on a CH bomb just so you can blow us
and the rest of the world, and even your own sick and tortured self to hell and
end the whole damn sorry mess!"
    McElroy
ended suddenly on a high note of violence. The silence after his words seemed
to rock and swirl like torn-up water.
    "You
sound like an Unstab yourself," said Kil, looking steadily at him.
    "I'm
not. If I were I couldn't be in the Police, of course." McElroy ran a hand
wearily through his hair. "I'm just trying to make you understand. You
class A's live in a fool's paradise. Just because you've been able to adjust
to the world, you forget the other nine-tenths of humanity who haven't. You
forgot there ever was a Lucky War—"
    "I
don't!" Kil cut sharply in on him. "I had it pounded into me when I
was young, just like everybody else. I know about the fifty million dead in
twenty-four hours; and how it was just by the smallest chance the cobalt
fallout didn't finish off the whole race. I know. What of it? What's that got
to do with what happened to Ellen?"
    "Your wife left of her own free
will."
    Kil stared at him.
    "What do you mean?"
    "I
mean," said McElroy, patiently, "that forgetting this idea about
things stopping, as being unimportant one way or another, you've told us only
that your wife stood up and walked out on you. If requested to do so, well
interfere where crimes of violence are concerned. In the case of unexplained
disappearances we'll investigate because these might have something to do with
an attempt to break the peace. Neither applies in your case. A check on your
wife would only be a violation of her privacy."
    "But
she didn't want to gol I tell you she was crying when she left me!"
    "This
old man—did he grab her, use any kind of physical force?"
    "No, but-" McElroy shrugged.
    "You
see," he said. "All she's done is leave you
of her own free will. She's perfectly within her rights as an individual to do
that. No, there's no grounds for us to interfere, to
divert trained time and energy from our more important job of keeping the
world from blowing up. I couldn't recommend a check on your wife, and I
wouldn't if I could."
    "Wait—"
cried Kil, remembering suddenly. "The old man. He
wasn't wearing a