Vulcan's Hammer by Philip K. Dick Page A

pocket, something to which his hand had gone involuntarily. Seeing what he had done, Dill at once jerked his hand away.
    Medicine? Barris wondered.
    “This treason gambit,” Dill said. “I could try that, too. An attempted coup on your part.” He pointed at a control on the edge of his desk. “All this—your grand entrance—has of course been recorded. The evidence is there.” He pressed a stud, and, on the desk vidscreen, the Geneva Unity monitor appeared. “Give me the police,” Dill said. Sitting with the pencil beam still pointed at Barris, he waited for the line to be put through. “I have too many other problems to take time off to cope with a Director who decides to run amuck.”
    Barris said, “I’ll fight this all the way in the Unity courts. My conscience is clear; I’m acting in the interests of Unity, against a Managing Director who’s systematically breaking down the system, step by step. You can investigate my entire life and you won’t find a thing. I know I’ll beat you in the courts, even if it takes years.”
    “We have a letter,” Dill said. On the screen the familiar heavyjowled features of a police official appeared. “Stand by,” Dill instructed him. The police official’s eyes moved as he took in the scene of the Managing Director holding his gun on Director Barris.
    “That letter,” Barris said as steadily as possible, “has no factual basis for the charges it makes.”
    “Oh?” Dill said. “You’re familiar with its charges?”
    “Rachel Pitt gave me all the information,” Barris said. So she had been telling the truth. Well, that letter—spurious as its charges were—coupled with this episode, would probably be enough to convict him. The two would dovetail; they would create together the sort of evidence acceptable to the Unity mentality.
    The police official eyed Barris.
    At his desk, Jason Dill held the pencil beam steadily.
    Barris said, “Today I sat in the same room with Father Fields.”
    Reaching his hand out to the vidsender, Jason Dill reflected and then said, “I’ll ring you off and recontact you later.” With his thumb he broke the connection; the image of the police official, still staring at Barris, faded out.
    Jason Dill rose from his desk and pulled loose the power cable supplying the recording scanner which had been on since Barris entered the room. Then he reseated himself.
    “The charges in the letter are true!” he said with incredulity. “My God, it never occurred to me . . . ” Then, rubbing his forehead he said, “Yes, it did. Briefly. So they managed to penetrate to the Director level.” His eyes showed horror and weariness.
    “They put a gun on me and detained me,” Barris said. “When I got here to Geneva.”
    Doubt, mixed with distraught cunning, crossed the older man’s face. Obviously, he did not want to believe that the Healers had gotten so far up into Unity, Barris realized. He would grasp at any straw, any explanation which would account for the facts . . . even the true one, Barris thought bitingly. Jason Dill had a psychological need that took precedence over the habitual organizational suspicions.
    “You can trust me,” Barris said.
    “Why?” The pencil beam still pointed at him, but the conflicting emotions swept back and forth through the man.
    “You have to believe someone,” Barris said. “Sometime, somewhere. What is that you reach up and rub, there at your chest?”
    Grimacing, Dill glanced down at his hand; again it was at his chest. He jerked it away. “Don’t play on my fears,” he said.
    “Your fear of isolation?” Barris said. “Of having everyone against you? Is that some physical injury that you keep rubbing?”
    Dill said, “No. You’re guessing far too much; you’re out of your depth.” But he seemed more composed now. “Well, Director, ” he said. “I’ll tell you something. I probably don’t have long to live. My health has deteriorated since I’ve had this job. Maybe in a sense