"I told you I'm a Free Agent."
"I'm sorry. Free Agent records are not available to anyone. Not even Free Agents."
It was the chink in the wall that he had known he would find. He slammed down the receiver with a crash, and threaded the second spool. It had been too good, too smooth for it to be true. He had known, deep in his mind, that somewhere he would find the flaw in the Free Agent's freedom—and he had found it. And knowing where the flaw was only fed his suspicions and fanned his fears into brighter flame.
It was the same with every spool. Phil Steinberg was legally dead. Sorry, but information regarding his Free Agent period is restricted. Ted Maroneck was legally dead. So was Joe Meyer—
So was Dan Griffin—
He sat there trembling, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. He had known there would be a flaw. He wasn't supposed to know it. A marionette wasn't supposed to know that it was only a creature on a string, a lifeless piece of wood until hands drew the strings and made it do its little dance of life. Like the monkey-on-a-stick he had owned as a boy, so many years before, which would climb up, and down, and up, and down, every time he pressed the button.
And somewhere, he had a button now. And somewhere, somebody was pushing it. Something had happened to him quite apart from the physical rebuilding. Neatly hidden behind a careful screen of helpfulness and humanity and a brave new life was something else, something that he had not been told. And he was being manipulated, like a monkey on a stick, and he couldn't do anything about it, because he wouldn't know about it.
But now he did know.
IV