“I know that lesson,” Karst said, with a profound and glacial calm. “But you awakened me for something.”
“I did,” the mayor agreed grimly. “We’ve got a visitor we think you’ll be able to identify: a Proctor. And he’s up to something that smells funny to me and Hazleton both, but we can’t pin down what it is. Come give us a hand, will you?”
“You’d better give him some time to rest, Mr. Mayor,” the monitor said disapprovingly. “Being dumped out of hypnopaedic trance is a considerable shock; he’ll need at least an hour.”
Amalfi stared at the monitor incredulously. He was about to note that neither Karst nor the city had the hour to spare, when it occurred to him that to say so would take ten words where one was plenty. “Vanish,” he said.
The monitor did his best.
Karst looked intently at the judas. The man on the screen had his back turned; he was looking into the big operations tank in the city manager’s office. The indirect light gleamed on his shaven and oiled head. Amalfi watched over Karst’s left shoulder, his teeth sunk firmly in a new hydroponic cigar.
“Why, the man’s as bald as I am,” the mayor said. “And he can’t be much past his adolescence, judging by his skull; he’s forty-five at the most. Recognize him, Karst?”
“Not yet,” Karst said. “All the Proctors shave their heads. If he would only turn around … ah. Yes. That’s Heldon. I have seen him myself only once, but he is easy to recognize. He is young, as the Proctors go. He is the stormy petrel of the Great Nine—some think him a friend of the serfs. At least he is less quick with the whip than the others.”
“What would he be wanting here?”
“Perhaps he will tell us.” Karst’s eyes remained fixed upon the Proctor’s image.