Dard began. And discovered that his memory was a vivid one. He could recall the number of steps leading into the inner court and quote closely enough every word that the
“Laurel Crowned” speaker of that particular Seventh Day had spouted in his talk to the faithful. When he finished he saw that Kimber was regarding him with an expression of mingled amazement and admiration.
“Good Lord, kid, how do you remember everything—just from one short visit?”
Dard laughed shakily. “What’s worse, I can’t forget anything. I can tell you every detail of every day I’ve lived. since the purge. Before then,” his hand went to his head,
“before then for some reason it’s not so dear.”
“Lots of us would rather not remember what happened since then. You get a pack of fanatics in control—the way Renzi’s forces have taken over this ant hill of a world—and things crack wide open. We’ve organized our collective sanity to save our own lives. And there’s nothing we can do about the rest of mankind now—when we’re only a handful of outlaws hiding out in the wilderness. There’s a good big price on the head of everyone here in the Cleft. The whole company of Pax would like nothing better than to round us up. Only we’re planning to get away. That’s why we have to have the help of the Voice.”
“The Voice?”
Kimber swept over the half interruption. “You know what the Voice is, don’t you? A computer—mechanical brain they used to call them. Feed it data, it digests the figures and then spews out an answer to any problem which would require months or years for a human mind to solve. The astrogation course, the one which is going to take us to a sun enough like Sol to provide us with a proper world, is beyond the power of our setting up. We have the data and all our puny calculations—but the Voice has to melt them down for us!”
Dard stared at this madman. No one but a Peaceman who had reached the ratified status of “Laurel Wearer” dared approach the inner sanctuary which held the Voice. And just how Kimber proposed to get there and set the machine to work on outlawed formula, he could not possibly guess.
Kimber volunteered no more information and Dard did not ask. In fact he half forgot it during the next few hours as he was shown that strange honeycomb fortress, blasted out of the living rock, which served the last of the Free Scientists as a base. Kimber was his guide and escort along the narrow passages, giving him short glimpses of Hydro-gardens, of strange laboratories, and once, from a vantage point, the star ship itself.