Free I Speak for Earth by John Brunner Page A

been spoken, Joe attended to what was necessary: a quick shower, a change into fresh clothes from the baggage that had been delivered before he arrived. He was brushing his hair when a knock came at the door and Schneider entered after his reply.
    “I think we might go for breakfast, yes?” Schneider proposed. Joe nodded and set down his brushes.
    “Doc, this is a fabulous setup they’ve given us! I was expecting a sort of emergency barrack! Is it a kind of hearty breakfast for the condemned man?”
    His voice was light, and when he turned to face the other he was smiling. But there was no answering smile on Schneider’s face. Preferring to take the remark literally, he answered, “It is simply for us to be comfortable.”
    “I like.” Joe gave another appreciative glance around the room. “Good functional. No waste. No fuss. By the way—was that picture your idea, doc?”
    Schneider would have appeared to be preening himself if he hadn’t been such an essentially dignified person. He said, “I hoped you might like to be welcomed in such a way.”
    “Thanks. It was a wonderful idea.”
    “You sound suddenly almost excited, Joe. Can I take it that you are no longer disturbed by the possibilities that are ahead for you—for us all?”
    Joe laughed, and held the door for Schneider to go out. “You can just say I feel pretty good,” he said.
    “I am glad. Doubtless, condemned or not, your appetite is also a healthy one.”
    A sort of shadow passed across his face as he spoke. Joe barely caught sight of it, but he could not mistake it. He frowned.
    “Doc, you’re worried, aren’t you?”
    Falling into step beside him as they left the house and headed towards the building which Lagenfeld had pointedout as the main canteen, Schneider shrugged. “I am a little,” he admitted.
    “Is it just the same thing that’s worrying everyone else? The consequences of failure?”
    “Not altogether.” Schneider stared ahead, unseeing. “I carry—you must understand—most of the responsibility. On me everything turns for I was in charge and still am of the selection project. It is an equivocal position in which I find myself. We act by logic, as I remember saying to you already. But we cannot make our subconscious subject to logic, can we?”
    Joe shook his head, saying nothing.
    “I must thank you for this, however, Joe,” Schneider went on after a pause. “Everything you do or say makes me feel more than right in suggesting you as the—a candidate.”
    “I’m the one who’s supposed to be having confidence in you,” said Joe; staring at him.
    “Then it is good that we each create confidence in the other. Come, let us test the edge of that appetite in here, and talk of other things while we eat.”
    There were four people in the recreation room. His colleagues. His rivals. But he didn’t go on with that idea. Later, he had the impression that any risk of his regarding the others as competition had been prevented by the casual, careful way in which Schneider had always spoken of the “other candidates” as colleagues. He had conveyed by manner and tone a subtle assumption that each of them wanted to secure the best possible choice for the vital test looming ahead.
    The room itself was not large—about the size of the one that had been allotted as his own quarters. It was warm in color with a comfortable array of furniture. At a table, leaning forward on their elbows and concentrating on a game of chess, were two of the candidates—a slender woman in a sari, whose long sleek black hair was twisted up over her head and held in place with an ivory clasp exquisitely carved, and a stolid-looking man with a square face, determined chin, very powerful legs revealed by his short pants.
    In two of the easy chairs, reading, were the others. On the left, near the phono-tape cabinet, a round-faced woman with eyes like sloes, wearing glasses and a rather drab but wellcuttunic shirt which somehow conveyed the air of