"There have been some odd things happening. People have been trying to bribe and intimidate some of my office help. I have found microphones and screen-pickups planted around. I caught one of our clerks trying to make copies of voice-tapes. I think it's some of these other Merlin-chasing companies, trying to find out how close we are to it. Klem Zareff is recruiting more guards. But how soon are you going to get that ship built?"
"We're working on it. That's all I know, now."
He went back to work getting a classroom ready for his students. If he'd accepted that instructorship at Montevideo, he wouldn't be a full professor now, but none of the rest of this would be happening, either.
That night, he had the dream about starting the big machine and not being able to stop it again.
There was street-fighting in Storisende between the Cybernarchists and Government troops. There was a pitched battle in the west between the Armageddonists (Merlin-is-Satan) and the Human Supremacy League (Merlin-is-the-Golem), with heavy losses and claims of victory on both sides. President Vyckhoven proclaimed planet-wide martial law, and then discovered that he had nothing to enforce it with.
Luther Chen-Wong screened him from Port Carpenter. His voice was almost inaudibly low at first.
"Conn, I just had a call from Jerry and Clyde. I think we can knock off work on that ship we're building now. We won't need it."
"Have they found a ship?" If they had, it would be the first one anybody had found. "Where?"
"They haven't found a ship, Conn; they've found all of them. All the ships in the Alpha System except the Harriet Barne and the two they're building at Storisende. The place is marked on the map as Sickle Mountain Naval Observatory. It's just a bitty little dot, but the map was made before the evacuation started. It's where most of the troops in the system were embarked on hyperships, I think. Wait till I show you the views."