Hell's Gate

felt like someone had found him under a concrete mixer and had thankfully brought a crowbar and worked him loose. He paid Debert, surprised that the bill was so low.
        On their way home, they stopped at a grocery while Lynda bought two thick steaks and all the trimmings. They also collected a few of her things. The ride home and the preparation of supper in which they both took part had a curiously manic air. They were, they knew, over-reacting to the news that they were all, once again, alive after an assassination attempt. They were cheering their good fortune so the gods might not think them ungrateful. And, in a way, they were trying to pretend, at least for a short while, that the trouble was over. The big showdown had come and passed; now they could settle down and live like real people.
        But lurking in their minds was the understanding that anything might yet happen-anything at all. And whatever did happen, it would be highly unpleasant. Thinking these thoughts but mouthing jovialities, they dug into their steaks and baked potatoes sometime around six-thirty. They were just finishing with dishes of sherbert when the noise came from the living room, the banging and thumping of something negotiating the turn of the staircase leading from the second floor.
        “Victor Salsbury,” a cool, well-modulated voice said.
        It was the 810-40.04, awake at last.
        It was time for another briefing.

CHAPTER 12
        
        The computer trunk, featureless as before, floated into the kitchen, seemed to register his presence with some invisible bank of sensors. “You are accompanied by someone else,” it said. “Identify them, please.”
        “My wife,” Salsbury said, stretching things a bit.
        The computer was silent a moment, adjusting to the information that was certain to require more than a little shifting of data. “You are not permitted…” it began.
        “Whatever authority you had over me is gone,” Salsbury told it.
        On the surface of the trunk, two squares began to glow yellow. “Place your hands here for your next series of orders,” the computer said.
        “I repeat,” Salsbury said, “that whatever authority you had over me is gone.”
        “On the glowing plates,” the computer said.
        “If you expect to have authority over me, even the littlest bit of authority, you will have to tell me enough about this thing to keep me alive. As it is, I've killed three robot men and one robot dog sent by those lizard-things, though I have no idea what in the hell-”
        “Lizard-things? But you must be wrong. The vacii invasion is not to begin for several days yet. Put your hands on the glowing-”
        “Go to hell! You can come look at the parts of the robots if you want. You can stay until one-thirty in the morning when the portal opens in the wall and more of them come through. Or maybe the lizards will come themselves this time.”
        There was another pause. The plates on the trunk surface ceased to glow. “You are telling the truth,” it said, as if it had lie-detecting devices wired into it.
        “Damn straight. And I've just decided that this isn't worth sticking around for. I can't trust you'll tell me everything. I think the wise thing for us to do is get out of here now, fast, move somewhere else where I can paint and-”
        “That would be unwise.” The computer's voice was a monotone and had already begun to sound hollow and boring.
        “You think? Why?”
        “Because,” the 810-40.04 said, “if you don't continue the plan and defeat the vacii, they'll pour into this continuum, overwhelm it and establish one of their cultural experiments. In six months, they'll rule this world.”
        “Six months? An alien invasion? That's insanity!”
        “You've seen them in the wall,” Lynda reminded him.
        He shook his head in agreement. “Let's get this over with, then. Brief me.”
        “Put your hands on the glowing-”
        “No,” he said matter-of-factly. “I will not let you delve into my mind and fill me up with orders I don't even know you've given me. Brief me verbally.”
        “It would be impossible to control you as before. You have become too human in time since the last stage of the operation. Your psyche has been allowed to recover from its hypno-training.”
        “Verbal,” he said.
        “You must carry the first briefing,” it said. “My data banks must