But it wasn't Vulcan 3, of course; it was the organization. From the vacant-eyed little secretaries off on their coffee breaks, all the way up through the managers to the Directors, the repairment who kept Vulcan 3 going, the statisticians who collected data. And Jason Dill.
Was Dill deliberately isolating the other Directors, cutting them off from Vulcan 3? Perhaps Vulcan 3 had responded and the information had been withheld.
I'm suspecting even him, Barris thought. My own superior. The 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 wrote. He wrote slowly, studying each word. The form gave him space for ten questions; he asked only two:
a) are the healers of real significance?
b) 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 subdirectorate 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 sub-surface fortress near the Geneva offices.