The Eyes of Heisenberg by Frank Herbert Page B

the beams. He wanted only to be free of the wanton rambling of their voices. They missed the point, insisted on missing it.
    â€œEfficiency?” Calapine asked. “Perhaps you’re right.”
    Schruille no longer could contain the emotions at war
within him. “Efficiency’s the opposite of craftsmanship,” he said. “Think on that!”
    The beams came. Nourse and Calapine slid down and away without answering, leaving Schruille to close the segment. He sat alone at last within the green-blue-red winking of the control center—alone except for the glittering eyes of scanners activated along the upper circle of the globe. He counted eighty-one of them alive and staring at him and at the responses of the globe. Eighty-one of his fellows … or groups of his fellows were out there observing him and his work as he observed the Folk and their work.
    The scanners imparted a vague uneasiness to Schruille. Before the Tuyere’s service, he could never remember watching the control center or its activities. Too much that was painful and unthinkable occurred here. Were the former masters of the control center curious about how the new trio dispatched its duties? Who were the watchers?
    Schruille dropped his attention to the instruments. In moments like this he often felt like Chen Tzu-ang’s “Master of Dark Truth” who saw the whole world in a jade bottle. Here was the jade bottle—this globe. A flick of the power ring on the arm of his throne and he could watch a couple making love in Warsopolis, study the contents of an embryo vat in Greater London or loose hypnotic gas with taming suggestions into a warren of New Peking. The touch of a key and he could analyze the shifting motives of an entire work force in the megalopolis of Roma.
    Searching within himself, Schruille could not find the impulse to move a single control.
    He thought back, trying to remember how many scanners had watched the first years of the Tuyere’s service. He was sure it had never exceeded ten or twelve. But now—eighty—one.
    I should’ve warned them about Svengaard , he thought. I could’ve said that we shouldn’t rely on the assumption there’s a special Providence for fools. Svengaard is a fool who disturbs me.
    But Nourse and Calapine would have defended Svengaard. He knew it. They’d have insisted the man was reliable,
honorable, loyal. They’d wager anything on it.
    Anything? Schruille wondered. Is there something they might not wager on Svengaard’s loyalty?
    Schruille could almost hear Nourse pontificating, “Our judgment of Svengaard is the correct one. ”
    And that, Schruille thought, is what disturbs me. Svengaard worships us … as does Max. But worship is nine-tenths fear.
    In time, everything becomes fear.
    Schruille looked up at the watching scanners, spoke aloud: “Time-time-time …”
    Let that chew at their vitals , he thought.

7
    T he place was a pumping station for the sewage reclamation system of Seatac Megalopolis. It lay at the eleven hundred foot level on the spur line that sent by-product irrigation water into Grand Coulee system. A four-story box of sampling pipes, computer consoles and access cat-walks aglow with force-buoyed lights, it throbbed to the pulse of the giant turbines it controlled.
    The Durants had come down through the personnel tubes during the evening rush hour, moving in easy random stages that insured they weren’t followed and that they carried no tracer devices. Five inspection tubes had passed them as clean.
    Still, they were careful to read the faces and actions of the people who jostled past. Most of the people were dull pages, hurried, intent on their own business. Occasionally, they exchanged a mutual reading-glance with another courier, or identified sub-officials with the fear goading them on Optiman errands.
    No one noticed a couple in workman brown, their hands clasped, who emerged onto