Front matter (continued 3)

"My only," said Bodger. "Let's go, Fred."

He prodded Stanton's back with the Snapper, and the President began to move forward, holding his head high, toward the staircase leading to the control-chamber entrance. Frank opened the panel at the rear of the prop-Goon, and called for Andra to join him inside it, then he took Lloyd and Grace by the arms, via the controls, and guided them through the black blindness after Bodger and his prisoner.

At the head of the staircase—really no more than a tier-cut segment of the lead-concrete Sub-Level Two, over which the correspondingly undercut left wall of the twenty-five-foot-thick level could slide—Frank had to come to a halt, his prop-Goon not being equipped with extendable cogs to fit the treads and risers, as the real Goons' wheels were. "I'm going down there with him," Lloyd said, starting down into blackness.

"No," his father's voice came from the level below. "I'll handle this myself, Lloyd. I can see my way and you can't."

Lloyd stood undecided on the brink of the staircase, then Grace found his arm in the dark and drew him back. "I want to talk to you about your father, Lloyd," she said, when he was again at her side. "He said some strange things, up in the Unit...."

Descending the ladder below his prisoner, the Snapper aimed upward always at the base of Stanton's spine, Bodger reached the cable-net flooring, and gestured the President to the chair before the control panel. "Here," he said, returning the other's Voteplate. "You'll need this. But I don't have to tell you the penalty for one attempt at trickery on your part."

Stanton took the card silently, and slid it into a slot on the control panel. A metal square slid back, exposing a hand-microphone. He took it in his hand, and spoke into it.

"Primal Speakster in control," he said.

All about the two men, the lights of the Brain flickered then a speaker in the cavity which had held the microphone said, in the cold, flat tones of the Brain, "Orders."

Stanton glanced up at Bodger, and smiled. And suddenly Bodger was afraid. There was no hint of fear in the other man's eyes, now, only confidence and terrible menace.

"There is a false robot, two men and two women with it, on Sub-Level One," said Stanton, while Bodger goggled in surprise. "Destroy them!"

"Orders," said the Brain.

"Stanton!" Bodger raged, snapping out of his stunned paralysis. He depressed the stud of the Snapper clear into the hilt of the weapon, trying to prevent the activating words from being spoken by the President. There was a fractional hum of power, and then a searing fork of hot blue light leaped from a conic protrusion on the Brain's inner surface and turned the weapon to molten metal in his fingers. Bodger fell to the flooring, crying out in pain, his raw, blistered hand nearly driving him unconscious.

"You should have known," Stanton addressed the mewling figure on the ground near his chair, "that a sonic beam cannot be fired inside the Brain; it would shatter some of the delicate balances necessary for its functioning. The Brain has to safeguard itself."

"Stanton—!" Bodger groaned, gritting his teeth against the agony of his seared hand. "Don't!... Please...."

"Danger," said the dispassionate voice of the Brain.

Stanton spun to face the concavity of the speaker. "What—?" he blurted, baffled. And then he heard the dim rumble, high above, as the entire lead-concrete Sub-Level Two slid relentlessly closed. Stanton jumped from the chair and looked up from the base of the ladder, to see if his ears had told him the truth. All that was visible at the head of the hundred-foot ladder was the bottom of the now-closed metal lid, over which the entire next level had moved. He turned, white-faced, to Bodger.

"What's happening?"

"Danger," repeated the Brain.

Stanton rushed to the side of the fallen man. "Bodger!" he shrieked, lifting him by the shoulders and shaking him. "What's happening!?"

"I guess—" Bodger said, smiling tiredly despite the cruel burns, "—I must've got mad, Fred. My innards, or don't you know about them?"

"I know all about your radiating innards!" Stanton exploded. "But they couldn't trigger the Brain's protective level! It's impossible! You've been here before—"

"I was never ... this aroused ... before, Fred," Bodger said weakly. "And now, for the first time, I ... know the answer to something I never knew before." He took a breath, gathered together all his strength, and lifted his face near the other man's, still smiling. "You asked the Brain about a third term, once—Don't argue, Fred, it's on record—and yet there is no memory in its circuits of a reply. Tell me, Fred.... What was its reply?" When Stanton did not respond, Bodger said, "I think I can tell you. Chaos. Noise. A riot of sound and fury that knocked you clear off your chair and broke the circuit before it destroyed you. Because the Brain knew, of course. It's smart, Fred. It can predict with better accuracy than a human mind. It foresaw, after correlating all the facts at its disposal, what would be the result of your attempt at being elected a third time. And it tried to ... tell you...." Bodger faltered, went grey, and lay back upon the interwoven cables with his eyes closed. His lips were still working, though, and he finished, "... the result ... except that the ... Brain doesn't speak ... in words ... just concepts ... and its concept encompassed ... its own...."

His head rolled to one side, limply.

"Danger," croaked the voice of the Brain.

"Its what? Its own what?!" Stanton yelled, grabbing Bodger's head by the hair and banging it violently upon the flooring. Bodger, his eyes rolling, coughed painfully, then sighed, as one who names a long-awaited friend, "... death."

"Danger!" said the Brain. A wild tootling began in its depths as its metal mind tried to spare it its terrible fate.

"What danger?" Stanton roared into the microphone, leaping to the chair before the control panel. "Tell me! I'll find a way out!"

"Danger!" said the Brain. "Danger! Danger!"

There was a wild bluish light playing on the face of the panel, now, and Stanton knew, suddenly, that it was not of the Brain itself. He turned, some hideous psychic insight telling him what he could not as yet realize by his senses, and looked at the body of Lloyd Bodger on the floor.

Veins and arteries shone like a network of neon lights through the flesh, a pulsing glow that rose in its intensity by the second. The internal organs appeared through Bodger's smoldering clothing as on the screen of a fluoroscope, each alight with self-engendered hellfire. Bodger's eyes were glowing like hot tungsten through his transparent lids, his teeth were bared in a smile brighter than sunrise. His every bone, bit of cartilage, nerve ganglion and muscle fibre sparked like coals beneath a blacksmith's bellows, and the hairs of his head were a Medusa-wig of burning, writhing wire.

And then he reached his critical mass.

THE END