Part 2 (1/2)

'I understand.'

The public pays for this Bureau. In essence, the public is paying people to cause trouble.'

'Isn't that what we do when we hire police, tax investigators and the like?' McKie asked.

A look of gloating satisfaction came over Bolin's face. 'But these agencies operate for the greater good of humanity!' he said.

'Before he begins training,' McKie said, and his voice took on a solemn, lecturing tone, 'the potential saboteur is shown the entire sordid record of history. The do-gooders succeeded once ... long ago. They eliminated virtually all red tape from government. This great machine with its power over human lives slipped into high speed. It moved faster and faster.' McKie's voice grew louder. 'Laws were conceived and pa.s.sed in the same hour! Appropriations came and were gone in a fortnight. New bureaus flashed into existence for the most insubstantial reasons.'

McKie took a deep breath, realizing he'd put sincere emotional weight behind his words.

'Fascinating,' Bolin said. 'Efficient government, eh?'

'Efficient?' McKie's voice was filled with outrage. 'It was like a great wheel thrown suddenly out of balance! The whole structure of government was in imminent danger of fragmenting before a handful of people, wise with hindsight, used measures of desperation and started what was called the Sabotage Corps.'

'Ahhh, yes, I've heard about the Corps' violence.'

He's needling me,McKie thought, but found that honest anger helped now. 'All right, there was bloodshed and terrible destruction at the beginning,' he said. 'But the big wheels were slowed.

Government developed a controllable speed.'

'Sabotage,' Bolin sneered. 'In lieu of red tape.'

I needed that reminder,McKie thought.

'No task too small for Sabotage, no task too large,' McKie said. 'We keep the wheel turning slowly and smoothly. Some anonymous Corpsman put it into words a long time ago: 'When in doubt, delay the big ones and speed the little ones.''

'Would you say the Tax Watchers were a 'big one' or a 'little one'?' Bolin asked, his voice mild.

'Big one,' McKie said and waited for Bolin to pounce.

But the Pan-Spechi appeared amused. 'An unhappy answer.'

'As it says in the Const.i.tution,' McKie said. ''The pursuit of unhappiness is an inalienable right of all humans.''

'Trouble is as trouble does,' Bolin said and clapped his hands.

Two Pan-Spechi in the uniforms of system police came through the creme de menthe emerald door.

'You heard?' Bolin asked.

'We heard,' one of the police said.

'Was he defending his bureau?' Bolin asked.

'He was,' the policeman said.

'You've seen the court order,' Bolin said. 'It pains me because Ser McKie accepted the hospitality of my house, but he must be held incommunicado until he's needed in court. He's to be treated kindly, you understand?'

Is he really bent on destroying the Bureau?McKie asked himself in sudden consternation.Do I have it figured wrong?

'You contend my words were sabotage?' McKie asked.

'Clearly an attempt to sway the chief officer of the Tax Watchers from his avowed duties,' Bolin said. He stood, bowed.

McKie lifted himself out of the chairdog, a.s.sumed an air of confidence he did not feel. He clasped his thick-fingered hands together and bowed low, a grandfather toad rising from the deep to give his benediction. 'In the words of the ancient proverb,' he said, ''The righteous man lives deep within a cavern and the sky appears to him as nothing but a small round hole.''

Wrapping himself in dignity, McKie allowed the police to escort him from the room.

Behind him, Bolin gave voice to puzzlement: 'Now, what did he mean by that?'

Chapter III.

'Hear ye! Hear ye! System High Court, First Bench, Central Sector, is now in session!'

The robo-clerk darted back and forth across the cleared lift dais of the courtarena, its metal curves glittering in the morning light that poured down through the domed weather cover. Its voice, designed to fit precisely into the great circular room, penetrated to the farthest walls: 'All persons having pet.i.tions before this court draw near!'

The silvery half globe carrying First Magistrate Edwin Dooley glided through an aperture behind the lift dais and was raised to an appropriate height. His white sword of justice lay diagonally across the bench in front of him. Dooley himself sat in dignified silence while the robo-clerk finished its stentorian announcement and rolled to a stop just beyond the lift field.

Judge Dooley was a tall, black browed man who affected the ancient look with ebon robes over white linen. He was noted for decisions of cla.s.sic penetration.

He sat now with his face held in rigid immobility to conceal his anger and disquiet. Why had they put him in this hot spot? Because he'd granted the Tax Watchers' injunction? No matter how he ruled now, the result likely would be uproar. Even President Bindley was watching this one through one of the hot-line projectors.

The President had called shortly before this session. It had been Phil and Ed all through the conversation, but the intent remained clear. The Administration was concerned about this case. Vital legislation pended; votes were needed. Neither the budget nor the Bureau of Sabotage had entered their conversation, but the President had made his point -don't compromise the Bureau but save that Tax Watcher support for the Administration!

'Clerk, the roster,' Judge Dooley said.

And he thought:They'll get judgment according to strict interpretation of the law! Let them argue with that!

The robo-clerk's reelslate buzzed. Words appeared on the repeater in front of the judge as the clerk's voice announced: 'The People versus Clifton Watt, Jorj X. McKie and the Bureau of Sabotage.'

Dooley looked down into the courtarena, noting the group seated at the black oblong table in the Defense ring on his left: a sour-faced Watt with his rainbow horror of Medusa head, McKie's fat features composed in the look of someone trying not to snicker at a sly joke - the two defendants flanking their attorney, Pander Oulson, the Bureau of Sabotage's chief counsel. Oulson was a great thug of a figure in defense white with glistening eyes under beetle brows and a face fas.h.i.+oned mostly of scars.

At the Prosecution table on the right sat Prosecutor Holjance Vohnbrook, a tall scarecrow of a man dressed in conviction red. Gray hair topped a stern face as grim and forbidding as a latter day Cotton Mather. Beside him sat a frightened appearing young aide and Panthor Bolin, the Pan-Spechi complainant, his multi-faceted eyes hidden beneath veined lids.

'Are we joined for trial?' Dooley asked.

Both Oulson and Vohnbrook arose, nodded.

'If the court pleases,' Vohnbrook rumbled, 'I would like to remind the Bureau of Sabotage personnel present that this court is exempt from their ministrations.'

'If the prosecutor trips over his own feet,' Oulson said, 'I a.s.sure him it will be his own clumsiness and no act of mine nor of my colleagues.'