The full moon had cleared the trees and bathed the tiny clearing and campsite in softly diffused light. The fire had nearly died, leaving only a few glowing embers. Even with the bright moon, the clarity of the star-filled sky was breathtaking. Eric sat and stared across the embers into the night, hunched in his jacket against the chill. The soft hoot of an owl mingled with the sighing of the wind in the trees, giving the night a quiet sense of peace and tranquillity—a feeling totally lacking in Eric Lloyd. By noon tomorrow he would join up with Cliff and the others. At five-thirty he would walk onto the top of the dam, very likely into a trap.
Irritated at the tightness in his stomach, he glanced at the lean-to where Nicole was asleep. As he peered into the darkness of her shelter, he acknowledged another conflict churning inside him. Since her attempted escape, they had settled into a sullen truce that left him filled with a nagging sense of guilt. She spoke only when it was absolutely necessary and steadfastly ignored him whenever he tried to be even minimally sociable. And yet, over the past three days he had developed a grudging admiration for her stubborn courage. Only today had his own body begun toughening up, the chafed skin callousing over and the crippling stiffness leaving him. And he had spent his life on a horse! Yet never once had Nicole complained or asked for an early stop. Part of that was the result of her anger at him, but part was sheer courage.
He picked up a log and set it carefully on the fire so as not to awaken her, but Cricket suddenly stood up and trotted to his side. Eric reached over and scratched behind her ears as she lay down next to him contentedly. A moment later Nicole emerged out of the shelter. She walked over to the fire, picking her way carefully in her stockinged feet, and sat down across from him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t wake me. I was already awake.”
“You too?”
“Yes.”
“Tomorrow’s a big day. For both of us.”
She didn’t reply, and for several minutes they both stared at the flames licking hungrily at the log Eric had added to the fire.
“Nicole?”
“Yes?”
He hesitated, trying to sort out his thoughts. “Are you sure you want to go back?”
Her head came up slowly, and in the moonlight he could see a look of disbelief on her face.
“I mean, well, I know you want to go back home, but do you think you really can go back to Central Control and be a Guardian again?”
“Again? I didn’t realize I had stopped.”
“I heard what you said to Travis that night in your living room. You don’t want to be a Monitor anymore, right?”
“That was before you came back,” she snapped. “That changed a lot of things.”
He ignored that. “It’s open war now, Nicole. I wish we could stop the Major without an open confrontation, but we can’t. Are you ready to face another Cliff Cameron choice? Because that’s what it’s coming to.”
She brushed that away. “You’re free. Tomorrow your family will be free too. Why can’t you just go away?”
“What about the rest of my village—do I just write them off? And what about the other villages and towns dragged into this mess—do I have any obligation to them?”
“Is it your obligation to save the whole world?”
“Look,” he said, suddenly weary of the verbal fencing, realizing she had steered him away from what he wanted to say. “I’ve said some things about you during the past two months, about your lack of concern, about your commitments, and about your insensitivities. I want to apologize for them.”
“What? Do I hear something that sounds faintly like a conscience?”
“You have a lot of reason to be bitter, but then so do I. So for once why don’t we stop talking to each other as if it’s an artillery duel. I want to say something and your blistering replies don’t help.”
She looked at him steadily and then finally said, “Okay, I’m listening.”
“In the past three days you—well, frankly, you’ve really surprised me. I thought I was going to have to drag you every step of the way.”
“And you haven’t!” she snapped.
He stopped and sighed, shaking his head in frustration.
Her eyes softened slightly, and the tightness around her mouth gradually relaxed. “I’m sorry. I’ll just listen.”
“I knew it was going to be a rough few days. I expected you to be—” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought you were going to be a pampered, whining female and that by the time these four days were up, I’d be a screaming wreck.”
“I have been all you say. It’s just that I’ve kept it all inside.”
“Maybe so, but even that says a lot. I was wrong about you. You are courageous, determined, and, I’ve got to admit, you’ve earned my respect.”
That took her by surprise, and for once she had no reply.
“You lack only one thing for making an outstanding Guardian.”
Instantly she was defensive again, the coolness back in her voice. “Oh?”
“You’ve got the courage and the ingenuity and the determination—”
“But?”
“What you lack is conviction. You don’t have the emotional nature, or perhaps a better word would be spiritual nature, to be a Guardian.”
“And maybe,” she said quickly, “the problem is that you don’t really know my nature.”
“I meant that as a compliment, but you may be right. I don’t know Nicole the person, only Nicole the Monitor. But I do feel I know her. If the Major or Travis had had the rifle the other night, they wouldn’t have shot at my feet.”
“I wish I hadn’t either.”
His head came up slowly, and his eyes challenged hers. “Do you really mean that?”
“Yes.”
He laughed softly. “I think you do.”
“I do!”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’d be free now.”
“Free of what?”
“Free of you!”
“If you’d killed me the other night,” he said, “you’d never be free of me again, and you know it. That would haunt you for the rest of your life.”
Nicole stared at him, the anger draining slowly out of her. He was right. “Were you the resident psychiatrist in your village?” she muttered, not willing to openly acknowledge what he had said.
He smiled. “I don’t have a diploma on the wall, but my references are impeccable.” When she didn’t answer, he went on more soberly. “Should I be really honest with you? Give you the full diagnosis?”
“Can I stop you?”
“You could always go for the rifle again.”
She shook her head. “Is turnabout fair play?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, you first. I’m braced.”
“You said the Major pushed the buttons to terminate Cliff. Right?”
In a flash, and against her will, he had thrust her mind back to that horrifying moment. She stared down at her hands, unaware that she was twisting the ring on her left hand around and around.
“Why? Why could he do it and you couldn’t? He may pontificate about his great love for mankind and his desire to protect us from everything from first-degree murder to dirt under our fingernails, but however benevolent his dictatorship may appear on the surface, when the crisis hit, his real nature surfaced. He’s willing to kill to maintain his little empire.”
“You killed three Guardians when you dynamited the truck that was headed for your village. That was a crisis too. What does that mean?”
He shook his head slowly. “A man is justified in resorting to violence as a solution to his problems only under a very limited set of circumstances—when he is defending his life, his liberty, or his family, and when he has no recourse to normal law-enforcement procedures. We approached your men in peace, and they shot Cliff down without warning. Come on, Nicky. Are you telling me that what I did trying to protect the village and what the Major did to Cliff are equivalent acts?”
After a long silence, she finally shook her head. “No.”
“But let’s get back to that night in the monitoring room. The Major pushed the buttons, but you were caught in exactly the same crisis situation as the Major. You were faced with the same choice, but you refused to terminate Cliff. Why?”
When she looked up, he could see in the firelight that her eyes were shining. “I just couldn’t.”
“Exactly, which makes you a very different person indeed.”
But Nicole went on as though she hadn’t heard him. “The Major didn’t know which buttons to push. When I wouldn’t push them, he demanded that I show him so he could. I couldn’t do that either.”
“Who did show him?” he asked gently.
She looked up, startled as his question broke into her thoughts. “What?”
“Who did show him which buttons to push?”
She turned her head away, shaking it quickly.
“It was Travis, wasn’t it.”
A long silence stretched out between them before he spoke. “I rest my case.”
When her head came around slowly to meet his gaze, he added, “You make a lousy Guardian, but a remarkable woman.”
Suddenly she was angry—at him, at his perceptiveness, at his accurate guess about Travis, at the tears abruptly threatening to spill over. “Okay, Dr. Lloyd,” she said. “Now it’s my turn.”
Startled by her sudden bitterness, he nodded. “Have at it.”
“Who are you to sit in pious judgment on others?”
“I—”
“You puff yourself up with pride, telling yourself that your crusade is for the good of man, that you’re the great deliverer, the gallant rescuer of a society plunged into the dark ages of slavery. Hogwash! Your motives are as self-serving and self-centered as the Major’s.”
He rocked back slightly. “There’s no need to coddle me, doctor. Give it to me straight.”
She leaped up, her eyes blazing. “Don’t be cute, Eric! I listened to your little speech. I’m not as clever as you, but now it’s my turn.”
“I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. Go ahead, I’m listening. Why do you feel that I’m self-serving and self-centered?”
“Because you cloak your true motives in noble and altruistic clothing every bit as much as the Major does. A desire to save mankind is not what’s really driving you.”
“What is?”
“Revenge. The Major killed your father, destroyed your village, and carried your family here and implanted them.”
He broke in dryly. “How could I have gotten so angry over nothing.”
“I know that!” she cried. “I know you have reason to be bitter, but then admit it. Admit that that is what’s making you do all this. You want to get even. With the Major. With Travis. That’s why you kidnapped me and not just any Guardian, isn’t it.
He shook his head, but there was no stopping the torrent of her words. “You’re the destroyer, not a builder. You say the Major’s system is grossly evil. But what do you offer in place of it?”
“Freedom.”
“No! That’s not sufficient. In Shalev we have freedom. The implantation seems so drastic and terrible to you because it’s new and painful. But most people never even know it’s there or think about it. They live normal, productive lives. In a way, you could even say that implantation enhances their freedom.”
“Come on, Nicole,” Eric said, angry now too. “Get your head out of the Major’s propaganda booklet. Shalev is a festering sore. We’ve already got a dozen people who are willing to risk their lives to join us. That’s how much they prefer our brand of freedom over yours. Okay, I’ll grant you that the Major’s desires, though misguided, are sparked by noble sentiments. But what happens when he’s gone?”
“What do you mean?”
“The system he has devised has an incredible potential for evil. Suppose you get a man who sees other possibilities in the wrist computers and the implantations? Suppose he threatens a woman with the Punishment Mode if she doesn’t grant him sexual favors?”
“I—I never thought of that.”
“A really inventive mind could bring about the most effective tyranny in the history of the world.”
Nicole’s anger gave way abruptly to an earnest pleading. “Eric, I was born an orphan because six animals, with long hair and beards, were running around ‘free.’ So you’ve got to offer us something better than simply freedom, Eric. Much better.”
“No one can fault the Major for his dream of a society where men have learned to control themselves, but he overlooked the most important element of that dream. Even infinite power cannot make men be good. You can make them act in good ways, but to really be good, an individual must choose good things freely. It’s man’s most basic and sacred stewardship—to serve as the guardian of his own behavior.”
His eyes were in deep pools of shadow, but Nicole could almost feel them burning into her flesh as he stared at her and continued. “And it’s man’s blackest and most fundamental evil to try and overthrow that stewardship. You cannot—no matter how highminded your motives—you can never make a man good. Not with guns, not with the rack, and not with a silicon chip planted in the back of his neck.”
Shaken by his intensity, Nicole met his gaze for almost a full minute. Then finally, her voice barely a murmur, she asked, “Is implantation so horrible?”
His chin came up sharply, but he saw that she was not challenging him, but was accepting what he had said. It was her way of saying she understood. His hand came up slowly to rub at the back of his neck. “Before coming here, I might have asked that question myself,” he said. “But never again, Nicole. Never again.”