Hm-m-m—physical ID. Make him of average height, stocky, blackhaired and black-eyed, a bent nose and a scar on his forehead—tough-looking, but not enough so to make him especially memorable. Thornberg filled in the precise measurements. It wasn’t hard to fake fingerprint and retinal patterns; he threw in a censor circuit so he wouldn’t accidentally duplicate anyone else.

  When he was done, Thornberg leaned back and sighed. There were plenty of holes yet in the record, but he could fill them at his leisure. It had been a couple of hours’ hard, concentrated work—utterly pointless, except that he had blown off steam. He felt a lot better.

  He glanced at his watch. Time to get back on the job, son. For a rebellious moment he wished no one had ever invented clocks. They had made possible the science he loved, but they had then proceeded to mechanize man. Oh, well, too late now. He got up and went out of the booth. The door closed itself behind him.

  It was about a month later that Sam Hall committed his first murder.

  The night before, Thornberg had been at home. His rank entitled him to good housing even if he did live alone—two rooms and bath on the ninety-eighth floor of a unit in town, not far from the camouflaged entrance to Matilda’s underground domain. The fact that he was in Security, even if he didn’t belong to the manhunting branch, gave him so much added deference that he often felt lonely.

  He had been looking through his bookshelves for something to read. The Literary Bureau had lately been trumpeting Whitman as an early example of Americanism, but though Thornberg had always liked the poet, his hands strayed perversely to the dog-eared volume of Marlowe. Was that escapism? The L.B. was very down on escapism. Oh, well, these were tough times. It wasn’t easy to belong to the nation which was enforcing peace on a sullen world—you had to be realistic and energetic and all the rest, no doubt.

  The phone buzzed. He went over and clicked the receiver on. Martha Obrenowicz’s plain plump face showed in the screen, her gray hair was wild and her voice was a harsh croak.

  “Uh … hello,” he said uneasily. He hadn’t called her since the news of her son’s arrest. “How are you?”

  “Jimmy is dead,” she told him.

  He stood for a long while. His skull felt hollow.

  “I got word today that he died in camp,” said Martha. “ I thought you’d want to know.”

  Thornberg shook his head, back and forth, very slowly. “That isn’t news I ever wanted, Martha,” he said.

  “It isn’t right!” she shrieked. “Jimmy wasn’t a traitor. I knew my own son. Who ought to know him better? He had some friends I was kind of doubtful of, but Jimmy, he wouldn’t ever—”

  Something cold formed in Thorn-berg’s breast. You never knew when calls were being tapped.

  “I’m sorry, Martha,” he said without tone. “But the police are very careful about these things. They wouldn’t act till they were sure. Justice is one of our traditions.”

  She looked at him for a long time. Her eyes held a hard glitter. “You, too,” she said at last.

  “Be careful* Martha,” he warned her. “I know it’s a blow to you, but don’t say anything you might regret later. After all, Jimmy may have died accidentally. Those things happen.”

  “I … forgot,” she said jerkily. “You … are … in Security … yourself.”

  “Be calm,” he said. “Think of it as a sacrifice for the national interest.”

  She switched off on him. He knew she wouldn’t call him again. And it wouldn’t be safe to see her.

  “Good-by, Martha,” he said aloud. It was like a stranger speaking.

  He turned back to the bookshelf. Not for me, he told himself thinly. For Jack. He touched the binding of “Leaves of Grass.” O Whitman, old rebel, he thought, with a curious dry laughter in him,are they calling you Whirling Walt now?

  That night he took an extra sleeping pill. His head still felt fuzzy when he reported for work, and after a while he gave up trying to answer the mail and went down to the lab.

  While he was engaged with Rodney, and making a poor job of understanding the technical problem under discussion, his eyes strayed to Matilda.

  Suddenly he realized what he needed for a cathartic. He broke off as soon as possible and went into the main control booth.

  For a moment he paused at the keyboard. The day-by-day creation of Sam Hall had been an odd experience. He, quiet and introverted, had shaped a rowdy life and painted a rugged personality. Sam Hall was more real to him than many of his associates. Well, I’m a schizoid type myself. Maybe I should have been a writer. No, that would have meant too many restrictions, too much fear of offending the censor. He had done exactly as he pleased with Sam Hall.

  He drew a deep breath and punched for unsolved murders of Security officers, New York City area, within the last month. They were surprisingly common. Could it be that dissatisfaction was more general than the government admitted? But when the bulk of a nation harbors thoughts labeled treasonous, does the label still apply?

  He found what he wanted. Sergeant Brady had incautiously entered the Crater district after dark on the twenty-seventh of last month, on a routine checkup mission; he had worn the black uniform, presumably to give himself the full weight of authority. The next morning he had been found in an alley with his head bashed in.

  “Oh, I killed a man, ‘tis said, ‘tis said,

  Yes, I killed a man, ‘tis said, ‘tis said.

  I beat him on the head

  And I left him there for dead,

  Yes’ I left him there for dead, damn

  his hide”

  Newspapers had, no doubt, deplored this brutality perpetrated by the traitorous agents of enemy powers. (Oh, the parson, he did come. he did come.) A number of suspects had been rounded up at once and given a stiff quizzing. (And the sheriff, he came too, he came too.) There had been nothing proven as yet, though one Andy Nikolsky—fifth generation American, mechanic, married, four children, underground pamphlets found in his room—had been arrested yesterday on suspicion.

  Thornberg sighed. He knew enough of Security methods to be sure they would get somebody for such a killing.

  They couldn’t allow their reputation for infallibility to be smirched by a lack of conclusive evidence. Maybe Nikolsky had done the crime—he couldn’t prove he had simply been out for a walk that evening—and maybe he hadn’t. But hell’s fire, why not give him a break? He had four kids.

  Thornberg scratched his head. This had to be done carefully. Let’s see. Brady’s body would have been cremated by now, but of course there had been a careful study first. Thornberg withdrew the dead man’s file from the machine and microprinted a replica of the evidence—nothing. Erasing that, he inserted the statement that a blurred thumbprint had been found on the victim’s collar and referred to ID labs for reconstruction. In the ID file he inserted the report of such a job, finished only yesterday due to a great press of work. (True enough— they had been busy lately on material sent from Mars, seized in a raid on a rebel meeting place.) The probable pattern of the whorls was—and here he inserted Sam Hall’s right thumb.

  He returned the spools and leaned back in his chair. It was risky; if anyone thought to check with the ID lab, he was done for. But that was unlikely, the chances were that New York would accept the findings with a routine acknowledgment which some clerk at the lab would file without studying. The more obvious dangers were not too great either: a busy police force would not stop to ask if any of their fingerprint men had actually developed that smudge; and as for hypno-quizzing showing Nikolsky really was the murderer, well, then the print would be assumed that of a passerby who had found the body without reporting it.

  So now Sam Hall had killed a Security officer—grabbed him by the neck and smashed his skull with a weighted club. Thornberg felt a lot better.

  New York Security shot a request to Central Records for any new material on the Brady case. An automaton received it, compared the codes, and saw that fresh information had been added. The message flashed back, together with the dossier on Sam Hall and two others—for the reconstruction could not be absolutely accurate.

  The other two men were safe enough, as it turned out. Both had alibis. The squad that stormed into the Triton Hotel and demanded Sam Hall were met with blank stares. No such person was registered. No one of that description was known here. A thorough quizzing corroborated this. So—Sam Hall had managed to fake an address. He could have done that easily enough by punching the buttons on the hotel register when no one was looking. Sam Hall could be anywhere!

  Andy Nikolsky, having been hyp-noed and found harmless, was released. The fine for possessing subversive literature would put him in debt for the next few years, he had no influential friends to get it suspended, but he’d stay out of trouble if he watched his step. Security sent out an alarm for Sam Hall.

  Thornberg derived a sardonic amusement from watching the progress of the hunt as it came to Matilda. No one with that ID card had bought tickets on any public transportation. That proved nothing. Of the hundreds who vanished every year, some at least must have been murdered for their ID cards, the bodies disposed of. Matilda was set to give the alarm when the ID of a disappeared person showed up somewhere. Thornberg faked a few such reports, just to give the police something to do.

  He slept more poorly each night, and his work suffered. Once he met Martha Obrenowicz on the street— passed hastily by without greeting her—and couldn’t sleep at all, even with maximum permissible drugging.

  The new ID system was completed. Machines sent notices to every citizen, with orders to have their numbers tattooed on the right shoulder blade within sue weeks. As each tattoo center reported that such-and-such a person had had the job done, Matilda’s robots changed the record appropriately. Sam Hall, AX-428-399-075, did not report for his tattoo. Thornberg chuckled at the AX symbol.

  Then the telecasts flashed a story that made the nation sit up and listen.

  Bandits had held up the First National Bank in America town, Idaho— formerly Moscow—making off with a good five million dollars in assorted bills. From their discipline and equipment it was assumed that they were rebel agents, possibly landing in a spaceship from their unknown interplanetary base, and that the raid was intended to help finance their nefarious activities. Security was co-operating with the armed forces to track down the evildoers, and arrests were expected hourly, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

  Thornberg went to Matilda for a complete account. It had been a bold job. The robbers had apparently worn plastic face-masks, and light body armor under ordinary clothes. In £he scuffle of the getaway, one man’s mask had slipped aside—only for a moment, but a clerk who happened to see it had, with the aid of hypnosis, given a fairly good description. A brown-haired, heavy-set fellow, Roman nose, thin lips, toothbrush mustache.

  Thornberg hesitated. A joke was a joke; and helping poor Nikolsky was, perhaps, morally defensible, but aiding and abetting a felony which was, in all likelihood, an act of treason—

  He grinned at himself, without much humor. Swiftly he changed the record. The crook had been of medium height, dark, scar-faced, broken-nosed —He sat for a while wondering how sane he was. How sane anybody was.

  Security Central asked for the complete file on the holdup, with any correlations the machine could make. It was sent to them. The description given could have been that of many men, but the scanners eliminated all but one possibility. Sam Hall.

  The hounds bayed forth again. That night Thornberg slept well.

  Dear Dad,

  Sorry I haven’t written before, but we’ve been kept pretty busy here. As you know, I’ve been with a patrol in Gorbuvashtar for the past several weeks—desolate country, like all this blasted planet. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever see the sun again. And lakes and forests and—who wrote that line about the green hills of Earth? We can’t get much to read out here, and sometimes my mind feels rusty. Not that I’m complaining, of course. This is a necessary job, and somebody has to do it.

  We’d hardly gotten back from the patrol when we were called out on special duty, bundled into rockets and tossed halfway around the planet through the worst gale I’ve ever seen, even on Venus. If I hadn’t been an officer and therefore presumably a gentleman, I’d have upchucked. A lot of the boys did, and we were a pretty sorry crew when wc landed. But we had to go into action right away. There was a strike in the thorium mines and the local men couldn’t break it. We had to use guns before we could bring them to reason. D£d, I felt sorry for the poor devils, I don’t mind admitting it. Rocks and hammers and sluice hoses against machine guns! And conditions in the mines are pretty rugged. They DELETED BY CENSOR someone has to do that job too, and if no one will volunteer for any kind of pay they have to assign civilian-service men arbitrarily. It’s for the state.

  Otherwise nothing new. Life is pretty monotonous. Don’t believe the adventure stories—adventure is weeks of boredom punctuated by moments of being scared gutless. Sorry to be so brief, but I want to get this on the outbound rocket. Won’t be another for a couple of months. Everything well, really. 1 hope the same for you and live for the day we’ll meet again. Thanks a million for the cookies—you know you can’t afford to pay the freight, you old spendthrift 1 Martha baked them, didn’t she? I recognized the Obrenowicz touch. Say hello to her and Jim for me. And most of all, my kindest thoughts go to you.

  As ever,

  Jack

  The telecasts carried “Wanted” messages for Sam Hall. No photographs of him were available, but an artist could draw an accurate likeness from Matilda’s precise description, and his truculent face began to adorn public places. Not long thereafter, the Security offices in Denver were blown up by a grenade tossed from a speeding car which vanished into traffic. A witness said he had glimpsed the thrower, and the fragmentary picture given under hypnosis was not unlike Sam Hall’s. Thornberg doctored the record a bit to make it still more similar. The tampering was risky, of course; if Security ever got suspicious, they could easily check back with their witnesses. But it was not too big a chance to take, for a scientifically quizzed man told everything germane to the subject which his memory, conscious, subconscious, and cellular, held. There was never any reason to repeat such an interrogation.

  Thornberg often tried to analyze his own motives. Plainly enough, he disliked the government. He must have contained that hate all his life, carefully suppressed from awareness, and only recently had it been forced into his conscious mind; not even his subconscious could have formulated it earlier, or he would have been caught by the loyalty probes. The hate derived from a lifetime of doubts (Had there been any real reason to fight Brazil, other than to obtain those bases and mining concessions? Had the Chinese attack perhaps been provoked—or even faked, for their government had denied it?) and the million petty frustrations of the garrison state. Still—the strength of it! The violence!

  By creating Sam Hall, he had struck back, but it was an ineffectual blow, a timid gesture. Most likely, his basic motive was simply to find a halfway safe release; in Sam Hall, he lived vicariously all the things that the beast within him wanted to do. Several times he had intended to discontinue his sabotage, but it was like a drug: Sam Hall was becoming necessary to his own stability.

  The thought was alarming. He ought to see a psychiatrist—but no, the doctor would be bound to report his tale, he would go to camp and Jack, if not exactly ruined, would be under a cloud for the rest of his life. Thornberg had no desire to go to camp, anyway. His own existence had compensations—interesting work, a few good friends, art and music and literature, decent wine, sunsets and mountains, memories. He had started this game on impulse, but now it was too late to stop it.

  For Sam Hall had been promoted to Public Enemy Number One.

  Winter came, and the slopes of the Rockies under which Matilda lay were white beneath a cold greenish sky. Air traffic around the nearby town was lost in that hugeness, brief hurtling meteors against infinity; ground traffic could not be seen at all from the Records entrance. Thornberg took the special tubeway to work every morning, but he often walked the five miles back, and his Sundays were usually spent in long hikes over the slippery trails. That was a foolish thing to do alone in winter, but he felt reckless.

  He was working in his office shortly before Christmas when the intercom said:414Major Sorensen to see you, sir. From Investigation.”

  Thornberg felt his stomach tie itself into a cold knot. ” All right,” he answered in a voice whose levelness surprised him. ” Cancel any other appointments.” Security Investigation took priority over everything.

  Sorensen walked in with a hard, military clack of boots. He was a big blond man, heavy-shouldered, his face expressionless and his eyes as pale and cold and remote as the winter sky. The black uniform fitted him like another skin, the lightning badge of his service glittered against it like a frosty star. He stood stiffly before the desk, and Thornberg rose to give him an awkward salute.

  ” Please sit down, Major Sorensen. What can I do for you?”

  “Thanks.’* The cop’s voice was crisp and harsh. He lowered his bulk into a chair and drilled Thornberg with his eyes. ” I’ve come about the Sam Hall case.”