A Reasonable World

9

Christmas cards and packages for Dr. Owen had been piling up in her secretary’s office for a week—hundreds of them; at least a tenth of the detainee families on CV must have given her something, in addition to the staff. That was heartening, and it was evidence that the morale problems were being dealt with. On Christmas morning Corcoran said, “Dr. Owen, your presents have all been through X-ray. Would you like me to open them now?”

“Yes, that would be fine. Keep a list, of course.”

Half an hour later he called again. “Doctor, I think you should see this.” On his desk was an opened package and a strip of heavy plastic about the size of a ruler. Both were smeared with some green substance, and there were splatters on the desk, the keyboard, the wall, and Corcoran himself; there was even a faint green smear on the holo pickup, like a film of algae.

“My goodness, Jim, are you hurt? What is that?”

“My guess is green jello,” Corcoran said. “This”—he touched the strip of plastic—“was folded up inside like a flat spring. It didn’t show on the X-ray, of course.”

“Let me see the wrapping.”

Corcoran held it up. It was one of the standard Christmas wraps available in the stores—green, with little Santa Clauses and reindeer.

“Of course I don’t want you to open any more,” Owen said. “I’m terribly sorry this has happened.”

“It could have been something corrosive, or poisonous,” Corcoran said. His voice shook a little.

“Well, just to make sure, I think you’d better wash thoroughly, and change your clothes, don’t you? And call security to pick up the rest of the presents. Take the day off, Jim, and try to have a merry Christmas.”

The exploding present had been meant for her, of course; the donor had not known that Corcoran would open it instead. Probably there were others like it somewhere in the stack; possibly there was something worse.

What a cowardly thing to do; how unfair and contemptible!

“Mitzi,” she said to the computer, “someone on CV has been playing jokes of a kind calculated to disrupt our routines and make it difficult for us to carry on our work. Can you interpret personality profiles of the detainees in order to determine who would be most likely to do such a thing?”

“Can you explain the jokes, Dr. Owen?”

“He paints over the lenses of closed-circuit vision cameras, using green paint, and writes on the wall, ‘The Green Hornet Strikes Again.’ We believe other people have begun copying him, but there was one person who began it.”

“Can you explain ‘The Green Hornet Strikes Again’?”

“I believe it’s a reference to an old radio program dealing with a masked hero called the Green Hornet.”

“What does a masked hero do, Dr. Owen?”

“He conceals his identity and pops up in unexpected places to capture criminals and rescue innocent people.” “Does this imply that the person you are looking for regards the non-detainees as criminals, and the detainees as innocent people who should be rescued?”

“Yes, I think so. The campaign is effective because people think it’s humorous. He’s making fun of us, in fact, and that diminishes our authority.”

“I won’t ask you to explain humor, Dr. Owen, but can you say how this campaign differs from other kinds of humor?”

“It’s a little offbeat, I’d say.”

“Unusual, that is?”

“Yes.”

“Would you say that the person you are looking for shows an unusual degree of hostility toward the nondetainees?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“And that he would be likely to have expressed it before in an offbeat fashion?”

“That seems likely.”

“One moment. In the scores of Thematic Apperception Tests of current detainees I find the following comment or a similar one on seventeen cases: ‘Subject’s narratives show attempted humor masking hostility toward the experimenter.’ ”

“Who are these detainees? Put them on the flatscreen.”

The names appeared in alphabetical order: Abrams, Alfred R.; Denmore, Tina Marie; Geller, Randall-. . .

“Geller!” she said. At that moment she really knew, but she had to make sure. “What do you have on the TATs, Mitzi—transcripts, voice recordings?”

“I have complete voice recordings.”

“Let me hear Geller’s.”

There was a scraping sound, then a voice. “Hello, Mr. Geller. Feeling all right today?”

“Peachy.”

“Fine. Just sit down there at the terminal, if you would. Now this morning I’m going to show you some pictures, and I want you to look at them and make up a story about each one. Here’s the first picture.”

A long silence followed. “Just anything that comes to mind,” said the’ voice.

“Okay. You want me to just say anything that comes to my mind, right?”

“That’s right. Just make up a story.”

“Well, this kid, his name is Ralph, he lives in Michigan with his father and his stepmother. The old man is okay, but he drinks a lot and when he drinks he likes to set fire to schoolhouses, so you can imagine the home life is not too great.”

Owen watched her hands curl into fists.

“Now the stepmother, Imogene, is a frustrated ballet dancer who keeps leaping around the house all day in her tutu. The only thing the kid has going for him is his dog, Spot. They call him Spot because he loses his bladder control whenever he sits on the furniture. Well, one day in the early summer, a Wednesday, Ralph takes good old Spot out for a walk in the woods. Now Spot is blind in one eye, but he’s a hell of a hunter, and when he sees a rabbit in the bushes he takes off and he’s gone. The rabbit gets on his blind side and runs away, but Spot won’t give up, and the kid is running after him, yelling, ‘Pot! Pot!’ Kid can’t say his S’s, so he’s yelling, ‘Pot! Pot!”’

Owen said, “That’s enough, Mitzi. Thank you.” She sat for a while holding her hands quite still on the desk, but her anger did not abate.

She knew, of course, what Geller was up to. He was trying to make CV ungovernable, in the hope that the detainees would be discharged either at Manila or at some later port of call. Her impulse was to punish him, and she thought of incarceration, posting to the experimental section, public humiliation . . . but that was emotion, not logic. What was best to be done? Once she had asked the question, the answer was clear.

Three weeks later CV docked at Manila after midnight. At four o’clock three security people entered Geller and Barlow’s bedroom and turned on the light.

Geller sat up. “Now what?”

“Get up and get dressed, please,” said the tallest of the three. “Dress the child, too, and pack anything you want to take with you. You’re leaving CV.”

Dizzy with sleep, Geller looked at the bedside clock. “Good Christ, it’s four o’clock in the morning. Can’t it wait?”

“Shut up, Randy,” said Yvonne. She was out of bed already, reaching for her robe.

“We’ll wait in the living room,” said the security man. “Please don’t take more than twenty minutes, and don’t make any unnecessary noise.” The three of them left the room.

Yvonne did the packing while Geller got Geoffrey up and dressed him. “All ready?” said the spokesman. “Are those all your bags?”

“We had to leave some stuff behind.”

“It will be packed and sent after you. Come on now, and please be very quiet.”

“Can you explain why we’re being hustled out in the middle of the night?”

“Orders.”

“Oh. Why didn’t I think of that?”

They passed through the perm checkpoint and walked all the way up G corridor to the forward lobby. The security people did not offer to help them with the luggage. Another security person checked them out. At the bottom of the gangway a limousine with closed curtains was waiting. “The driver will take you to the airport,” said the spokesman. “Tickets to San Francisco will be waiting at the Pan Am desk.” Then two security people held them while a third took Geoffrey out of Yvonne’s arms. Both parents struggled, and Barlow got in One good kick, but the Wacks wrestled them both to the ground and sprayed them with something. Then the Wacks loaded them into the limousine. They were already feeling drowsy when it pulled away toward the darkness.

“And now—the President of the United States!”

The jowly face of President Draffy appeared in the holos. “My fellow citizens,” he said, “as you know, for the past eighteen months we have been implementing a program for the monitoring of career criminals, utilizing a transponder device enclosed in an unbreakable bracelet or anklet, such that the location of each monitoree can be determined at all times. This procedure has resulted in a dramatic drop in crime rates on the streets of our cities, and there has been a corresponding decline in our prison populations.

“If a burglar enters your home, for instance, we know where he is and we know he has no right to be there. If somebody snatches your purse and runs, we know who he is and we can follow him wherever he goes.

“This system has been so successful that we have been urged to extend it to all citizens. I am glad to be able to tell you tonight that with bipartisan support, the joint Congressional committee has worked out a compromise version of the Citizen Monitoring and Identification Act, and it is likely to become law during this session.

“This will mean enormous benefits in security and safety for all of us! If you are lost in the wilderness during a camping trip, or if you have an accident, you can be located swiftly and surely. If your child wanders away and is lost, or if she is lured into a vehicle by a sex offender, or into his house, we can find her.

“It has been charged by a few dissidents that this system will be used for excessive governmental control, but I point out tonight to those so-called dissidents that the law protects everyone equally, and that a person who doesn’t break the law has nothing to fear. Law-abiding citizens will be safer than they ever have been; criminals will be swiftly apprehended and punished. When this law is implemented, we will all sleep sounder in our beds. Thank you and good night.”

“Well, you’re definitely pregnant,” the doctor said. How do you feel about that?”

The patient blushed. “I think it’s wonderful.”

“Okay, then there’s one more procedure we need to do.” He tapped a key, handed her the pink sheet that came out. “Take this down to Radiology Labs on the first floor.”

“What is it?”

“Just a routine procedure.”

She found Radiology and handed the slip to the receptionist, who gave her a form to fill out. After a long wait, a nurse led her into a room with some kind of machine in it: two wooden uprights with a black metal disk that moved on tracks between them. The nurse said, “Stand up on the platform.” She pressed a control; the disk moved down an inch or two. “Put your tummy right up against it.”

The disk was cold through her summer dress. The nurse pressed another button; a red light blinked. “Okay, that’s all.” She waited until the patient stepped off the platform, then pressed the controls again. The disk whined up its tracks and disappeared behind the shield at the top. Then there was a crackling sound and a funny smell. “What was that for?” the patient asked.

“Just to make sure your baby wasn’t carrying a McNulty’s parasite. If there was one in there, it’s gone now.”