He was upset by what Victor had told him, and after he left the Ward, for the rest of the afternoon thoughts kept slipping into his mind like beams of light flitting along forgotten nooks and crannies of what had always been a smooth, perfectly straight corridor.

  He and Vic had often discussed politics, religion and morality, and the era about which they quarreled most was the period known as the Suicide Year. Paul always condemned the wave of suicides that took place after the appalling destruction of the other half of the world. Victor disagreed with him.

  The fact that the dictator of the small Central American government proved beyond question that the rocket-bombs were set off by mistake made as little difference to Victor as it had to millions of people Who took their own lives in that black year. The destruction of so many innocents, so many good and believing people, so many yet unborn, carried with it the loss of faith in a just and merciful Protestor who saw, and listened, and cared. It started slowly at first. And then, unable to justify their contributions, however small, to the destruction of half a world, unable to shift the burden of guilt to the shoulders of an all-knowing, all-merciful Father whose image had crumbled in the heat of a billion megatons of Cobalt blast, unable to look into the troubled eyes of their own loved ones—millions added their own lives to the funeral pyre later known as the Suicide Year.

  Paul said they were wrong Victor said they were right.

  Paul pointed to the laws that followed and the provisions made for enforcing the injunction against self-destruction. He argued that it was immoral to take one’s life. Since no man had a voice in the act of his creation, he had no right to make an end of it.

  Victor insisted that just as the owner of a building had the right to dispose of his building if he wished, whether he had built it or not, so it was the right of the owner of a life to dispose of that life. The ultimate decision to live or die must rest with the individual.

  Paul argued that while ownership might give the person a legal right to destroy his possessions, it did not mean that he was morally right in doing so. All senseless destruction of useful material, Paul maintained, was wrong. And usable, living parts of the human body were the most useful materials of all.

  Suicide was uncivilized, immoral and wasteful.

  And that was exactly what the scientists said when they requested a charter to set up the Service and Repair Center. As it was explained to the delegates of the World Federation, the reusable parts of living bodies were far too vital as natural resources to be left to whims and caprice. The laws against suicide and against destruction of all usable organs had to be reinforced.

  All responsible persons agreed that the time had come to insure the future of mankind by entrusting the administration of health and mortality, as well as the blood banks, eye banks, and spare parts in general, to the reliable care of an electronic brain. It was to be known as the Dispatcher, and unlike the humans it would safeguard, the Dispatcher would be .infallible.

  The Dispatcher, as first developed by scientists of the S & R Center, was as much of an advance as Univac had been over the simple, primitive adding machine. Through the Dispatcher’s electronic control of servos, calculators and automatics throughout the world, it ushered in a new era that pointed the way to complete automation.

  Despite the outraged protests from the allied voices of the few remaining religious groups, the powerful Medical Association, and the Federated Labor Unions, the World Federation Charter was modified to read:

  “… that all men are created equal, that they are

  guaranteed by the Dispatcher certain inalienable Rights,

  that among these are Life, Parts Replacement, Mercy

  and the pursuit of Happiness

  The imprisonment of a number of union leaders kindled the spark onto the dry tinder of propaganda and protest. Anti-Dispatcher riots flamed into armed insurrection, and the people took up the call to the Automation War. However, with the production and fighting power of the servos against them, and the newly created, experimental model of the Dispatcher in command, the rebels were besieged, dispersed and finally defeated.

  In the decades that followed, many researchers contributed their knowledge to the perfection of the electronic brain. But the greatest advance was the development of the synchrocomputer by Isaac Dorn. With the installation of Dorn’s new self-controlling mechanism, the Dispatcher was able to perform its functions independently. Except for research, supervision and maintenance, all decisions from that time were made in the Dispatcher’s Vault.

  From that time, there had never been a suicide; there had never been a stillbirth or miscarriage; there had never been a case of prolonged misery and bodily wasting away for a person who had no hope of recovery. Natural death was always anticipated and the Donor was rushed to the Spare Parts Vault by the black, silent Servos of Mercy.

  The Dispatcher, operating twenty-four hours a day, had the administration of Service and Repair under complete control. And the Dispatcher never made a mistake …

  Paul went to the Chiefs office to make his report. He felt no guilt at betraying his brother’s confidence. He felt only shame at the cowardliness that made him want to survive for as long as he could. How many times had he examined the urge to preserve himself that was stronger than what he knew as honest and right? How many times had he looked into his soul and come up with the unavoidable name of hypocrite? Nevertheless, his father’s work was too important to mankind; the lives and happiness of too many people depended upon the safety of the Dispatcher. Paul turned over to the Chief the combination to Victor’s hidden safe and a tape of their conversation—carefully edited of all references to Paul’s own illness.

  It was decided at a top secret conference of department heads that Paul Dorn of Maintenance should make the trip to Basin City immediately. There he would contact a local special agent who would take charge of the case.

  If what Victor had told Paul was true, then they would have some top A-D names as well as evidence of sabotage. It would destroy A-D’s propaganda that the Dispatcher had, by a series of mistakes, proven itself to be a mentally unstable electronic brain. The arrests would be made the following day, directly after the funeral.

  It was 1400 hours when Paul fixed on the automatic beam that would bring the jet-copter into the public service port at the edge of Basin City. The town, more commonly referred to as the Basin, was one of many Displaced Workers’ Camps and notorious as a hotbed of A-D sympathizers. To Paul it was a place that had once been a beautiful suburb—the home of his childhood memories.

  As the copter landed, it struck Paul how ironic it was that Victor should have chosen to come back here to live, ironic that the younger son of Isaac Dorn should take sides with these Displaced Workers who walked dull-eyed, in sloth and filth, unable to cope with a world that could get along quite well without their work.

  In the copter-cab that took them to the center of the Basin, the local special agent pointed to the unbroken string of taverns and honky-tonks that lined the streets. “You see these places, Mr. Dorn? They’re open twenty-four hours a day. And despite the heaviest concentration of servo-guards, there are crimes committed—homicide and suicide—horrible crimes of waste.”

  In the back of his neck, Paul felt the prickling sensation of shame. He was worse than the lowest of them.

  They found the apartment where Victor had been living for the past seven months, one of the old-fashioned plasti-glass multiple dwelling units that the inhabitants were always talking about tearing down but never did anything about. As the doors of the self-service elevator were about to close, a little old man in a neatly pressed though threadbare suit squeezed in and held them open for a young woman who was obviously in the latest stages of pregnancy. He bowed with dignity to Paul and the agent and apologized for delaying them. Then he pressed the button for the ninth floor and leaned back against the wall as the car started up.

  The agent eyed the woman and then the old man, suspiciously. When they got out at their floor, he allowed the doors to close, but then held the elevator at the floor by pressing the Hold button. He signaled for Paul to be silent as he put his ear to the crack of the door.

  The woman’s voice sounded frightened. “You’re sure my husband won’t be able to tell, Doctor? No marks or anything? He’d send me to the Restraining Wards if he found out. He’s crazy against servoless childbirth—”

  “Shhh! Please, Mrs. Horgan, don’t talk out here in the corridor. Wait until we get inside.”

  The agent released the button and allowed the elevator to continue upward to the fifteenth floor. He nodded with satisfaction, whipped out a notebook and jotted something down. “Another one of those doctor-quacks. Give these people the blessing of painless childbirth in the automatic, sanitary maternity Vaults, and what do they do? They don’t stop to think of the effect of birth trauma upon their children, or the possibility of accidents when they have a doctor-quack perform an illegal delivery. Oh, no. They think that the old ways are still the best.

  “And the fools believe all this A-D propaganda that if they don’t sign the pledge at the birth of the child, their offspring will be able to avoid making his donation when he dies. Well, we’ll see about this one. When we get upstairs, I’ll send out a radio call to the Mobile Service Unit. This month alone our raids have netted six doctor-quacks and thirty-eight mothers. In twenty of the cases, our servos had to make the delivery on the spot.”

  Paul caught the man’s disgust and it disturbed him. He’d heard stories about places like this, the sordid hideouts of the Basin where women came to have their children illegally, without the painless delivery of Maternity Service. But somehow he’d never quite believed it. To him they were just dirty stories that men told when they were together in the washrooms, or over a couple of drinks in the bar, good for a laugh—stories about the Traveling Servo, or the Displaced Worker’s Daughter—but he never expected to come face to face with the characters of those stories. He wondered what the woman’s husband would say when he found out.

  And what would people say when they found out that Paul Dorn, the son of the great Isaac Dorn, had cheated the Dispatcher with a final, worthless donation?

  Victor’s apartment, on the fifteenth floor, was a well-furnished suite that was completely out of keeping with the rest of the building. It was quaintly decorated with antiques of the late jet-age period and reflected Victor’s conservative tastes and personality. It had been, however, left in complete disorder, with clothes and papers strewn all over the floor.

  The papers were where Victor had said they would be. Photocopies stamped at the top RESTRICTED: S&R CENTER. They were field reports by servo-investigators sent out by the Records Department to check on claims made against the S&R Center. Paul glanced through some of them while the agent made his call to the Mobile Unit.

  CLAIM AGAINST S&R. Mr, and Mrs. Flood vs. Maternity Service. According to records this couple ordered a male child through the Order Department. Mrs. Flood admits that she deeply desired a female child, but the official sales slip corresponds to Mr. Flood’s copy of his order for a male child. Mr. Flood protests that the Center was in no way authorized to deliver twins—one male and one female—as per instructions issued by the Dispatcher to Maternity, tape register XVP-219-604.

  No wonder the brass at the S&R Center was worried. A few disclosures like this would mean panic and disastrous political consequences. He glanced at another one.

  Jefferson Roxy vs. Spare Parts. Mr. Roxy, veteran of Anti-Dispatcher Riots of the ’20s, was picked up by Mobile Unit at his home in Floribama after shooting off his right foot accidentally with obsolete souvenir compressor pistol. Several neighbors testified to the fact that he was always considered a clumsy man, tripping over ‘ things even in childhood. Order for replacement directly from the Dispatcher’s Vault instructed the Repair Division to provide Mr. Roxy with a new left foot instead of a right foot. Since a second replacement of the limb is impossible, Mr. Roxy protests that he will now be forced to go through life, due to negligence on the part of Repair and Spare Parts, with two left feet.

  Paul sat back on the bed, dazed. There was a case even more bizarre—the woman who had crushed both hands accidentally between the sliding panels of a room divider. (Paul shook his head. How could a person catch both hands accidentally betweeen a pair of sliding panels? One, perhaps. But both?)

  Survey of Mrs. Taylor’s record indicates an accident-prone history. Two months earlier she neglected to inform the Center that a child was being born prematurely.

  A servo-guard, advised by an unidentified informant, relayed the call to the Dispatcher, and a Mobile Unit arrived at her home in time to insure a painless servo-delivery. Subsequent investigation into the death of her female child a month later revealed that the child had accidentally slipped from her hands while she was standing near an open window. Each of the five fingers of Mrs. Taylor’s hands appears to have the shape of a thumb.

  Paul closed the folder and sat back, unable to keep his hands from trembling. He was afraid to read any further.

  The small dose of dorcaine he had taken to fortify himself was beginning to wear off and he felt jabs of pain in his back.

  This is what Victor meant when he said the Dispatcher was making mistakes. Die Dispatcher had taken upon itself in these cases to do what was fitting—ironically fitting— dispensing a peculiar kind of poetic justice. Impossible as it had seemed in the beginning, there could be no doubt in his mind now that the electronic brain had developed a ghastly fault.

  Victor was enjoying his funeral.

  Paul stood beside his brother near the open grave and watched as the last rites were performed. A wail went up from several of the mourners as the town elder pushed back the wide sleeves of his white robe and enacted the ritual of shaving Victor’s hair and clipping his fingernails. After a drop of his blood and a sliver of his skin were added to these, they were burned in a marble urn. The ashes were put into a small iron box which was in turn placed into the open coffin.

  Paul studied the elder as he knelt beside the coffin. He was a small, nearsighted fellow with a head of flowing white hair, who had never suffered the loss or scarring of any part of his body. Only such a man, who religiously guarded his parts, was considered holy enough to officiate at the burial of the dead.

  “Now,” said the holy man, peering closely at his gilt-bound text, “we will all open to page fifty-seven, Book of Parts, Verse twenty-two . ..”

  Only half hearing the chanted words, Paul scanned the audience of mourners for the faces of the men that Victor had introduced him to upon their arrival at the cemetery. They were faces that had to be connected with the names of A-D partisans listed in the little book in Victor’s safe.

  “… And though the spirit of man may die and cease to exist, the living flesh shall live on … and the parts of mortals shall be scattered across the face of the Earth …”

  There followed the long passage known as the Catalogue of Parts, in which all of those portions of Victor’s body which he donated whole and in living condition were listed. For those parts which were destroyed by accident or careless abuse, forgiveness was requested.

  Victor winked at Paul as if the whole ceremony were a joke.

  “… And as your body shall be made whole and good while you are alive, so shall you give of your body that others after you may be made whole and good of your flesh … and you shall give unto others as you would have others give unto you ..

  As the elder made a speech about the sanctity and preservation of living human tissue and blood, Paul thought of his own body eating itself away in living death. Paul imagined that all eyes were upon him, accusing him of breaking the birth covenant his father had made for him.

  Once the flowers were brought up and placed in the empty coffin, the cover was nailed down into place and lowered into the grave. Victor shoveled in the first spadeful of dirt, and then shook hands with everyone as they crowded around him.

  “Wonderful funeral, Vic.”

  “So long, pal. Maybe I’ll shake your hand again some day.”

  “Better dress warm, Vic. I hear it’s pretty cold down in that Freezer.”

  Paul noticed that Zetti, one of the leaders of the A-D, passed something to Victor in the course of a handshake, and Victor under the pretext of covering a cough slipped it into his mouth. Paul wondered if Victor, with the help of his friends, was planning to cheat the Dispatcher of his “donation” after all hy committing suicide at his own funeral.

  “Bye, Vic. Have a good trip.”

  Victor nodded. “Thanks, Burt. Don’t forget—after next week, be careful whose arm you twist. It might be mine.”

  Paul caught sight of the Special Agent giving the signal to the servo-guards stationed at the exits to the cemetery gates. If was time for the arrests to begin.

  The solemn ceremony ended in tumult and shouting. People pushed and struggled as the servos moved through the crowd, identifying people by their signet rings. One woman fainted and others screamed. Zetti and four others were caught at the exits as they tried to make a break for freedom.

  “Gentlemen,” pleaded the elder, unsure of whom he was addressing, “this is highly irregular—”

  Two servos flanked Victor, grabbed his arms and rushed him toward the gate. Paul tried not to look at him, but Victor twisted in his captors’ grip. “You did this! My own brother! You betrayed me for the sake of an insane machine!”

  The servos silenced him and dragged him off to the black Mercy Jet waiting in the street outside the cemetery. Paul felt the stare of many eyes on him—the sick, angry eyes of men who would have torn him to parts if they could have gotten their hands on him.