Vulcan's Hammer Read Free

highest official in Unity. I must be breaking down under the strain; that’s really insane.
    I need a rest, he thought wildly. Pitt’s death has done it; I feel somehow responsible, because after all I’m safe here, safe at this desk, while eager youngsters like that go out in the country, out where it’s dangerous. They get it, if something goes wrong. Taubmann and I, all of us Directors—we have nothing to fear from those brown-robed crackpots.
    At least, nothing to fear
yet.
    Taking out a request form, Barris began carefully to write. He wrote slowly, studying each word. The form gave him space for ten questions; he asked only two:
    ARE THE HEALERS OF REAL SIGNIFICANCE?
    WHY DON’T YOU RESPOND TO THEIR EXISTENCE?
    Then he pushed the form into the relay slot and sat listening as the scanner whisked over its surface. Thousands of miles away, his questions joined the vast tide flowing in from all over the world, from the Unity offices in every country. Eleven Directorates— divisions of the planet. Each with its Director and staff and sub-directorate Unity offices. Each with its police organs under oath to the local Director.
    In three days, Barris’ turn would come and answers would flow back. His questions, processed by the elaborate mechanism, would be answered—eventually. As with everyone else in T-class, he submitted all problems of importance to the huge mechanical computer buried somewhere in the subsurface fortress near the Geneva offices.
    He had no other choice. All policy-level matters were determined by Vulcan 3; that was the law.
    Standing up, he motioned to one of the nearby secretaries who stood waiting. She immediately came toward his desk with her pad and writing stick. “Yes, sir,” she said, smiling.
    “I want to dictate a letter to Mrs. Arthur Pitt,” Barris said. From his papers he gave her the address. But then, on second thought, he said, “No, I think I’ll write it myself.”
    “In handwriting, sir?” the secretary said, blinking in surprise. “You mean the way children do in school?”
    “Yes,” he said.
    “May I ask why, sir?”
    Barris did not know; he had no rational reason. Sentimentality, he thought to himself as he dismissed the secretary. Throw-back to the old days, to infantile patterns.
    Your husband is dead in the line of duty, he said to himself as he sat at his desk meditating. Unity is deeply sorry. As Director, I wish to extend my personal sympathy to you in this tragic hour.
    Damn it, he thought. I can’t do it; I never can. I’ll have to go and see her; I can’t write a thing like this. There have been too many, lately. Too many deaths for me to stand. I’m not like Vulcan 3. I can’t ignore it. I can’t be silent.
    And it didn’t even occur in my region. The man wasn’t even my employee.
    Clicking open the line to his sub-Director, Barris said, “I want you to take over for the rest of today. I’m knocking off. I don’t feel too well.”
    “Too bad, sir,” Peter Allison said. But the pleasure was obvious, the satisfaction of being able to step from the wings and assume a more important spot, if only for a moment.
    You’ll have my job, Barris thought as he closed and locked his desk. You’re gunning for it, just as I’m gunning for Dill’s job. On and on, up the ladder to the top.
    He wrote Mrs. Pitt’s address down, put it in his shirt pocket, and left the office as quickly as he could, glad to get away. Glad to have an excuse to escape from the oppressive atmosphere.

CHAPTER TWO
    Standing before the blackboard, Agnes Parker asked, “What does the year 1992 bring to mind?” She looked brightly around the class.
    “The year 1992 brings to mind the conclusion of Atomic War I and the beginning of the decade of international regulation,” said Peter Thomas, one of the best of her students.
    “Unity came into being,” Patricia Edwards added. “Rational world order.”
    Mrs. Parker made a note on her chart. “Correct.” She felt pride at the