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.There were compensations, for law-abiding citizens at least.And few citizens were not law-abiding.Crime had become almost unknown: it could not possibly pay.Who would attempt, for example, to rob a bank, when every detail of the planning, the crime itself and the “escape”, would be faithfully recorded on video-tape ? The police had only to look up the relevant Records and make their arrest.There was no question of looking for “clues”, when a complete colour tape was available for use by the prosecution.Equally, it was impossible to lose anything.One might mislay something temporarily, that was all.For example, a girl might leave her handbag on a park bench.No one would be so foolish as to attempt to pilfer the contents.As soon as the loss was discovered it was simply a question of tracing the girl’s movements back to the moment when she was last in possession of the handbag.No problem at all.* * * *He was busily engaged in his normal occupation of roving from level to level, when his eye was caught by a red light on one of the consoles.It showed that an emergency police check was being made on the Records.Alongside the red light there was a digital display which read 523-301-446.Out of curiosity Harben switched to the relevant channel and located the suspect on one of his screens.Citizen 523-301-446 was a middle-aged man who looked ordinary enough, a minor technician in the Electricity Supply Department.At the point of time where Harben joined the channel, he was going about his normal affairs in what seemed a harmless-enough manner.But Harben thought that there was a tense look about his brows, as though he were preoccupied with some secret problem.For some time he followed the man’s activities, without gaining any insight into his motives.It was necessary, of course, to skim rapidly through most of the Record at high speed.To follow it at normal speed was enormously time-consuming.Every day of the man’s activities would take twenty-four hours to survey in full.The police had developed a technique to overcome this problem.They would employ a team of a thousand Investigators (or more if the case demanded it), each of whom would be given a slice of the suspect’s Record to survey at normal speed.In this way they could get through almost three years of tape in twenty-four hours.Significant passages of the Record were then noted and played back to the Chief Investigator, who might have to spend a whole week going through them, if the case proved involved.Harben’s technique was different.He had no team of Investigators at his disposal, and his interest was strictly casual.So he simply ran forward through the Record at high speed, stopping to study any passage which looked interesting.He was skimming through a sequence in which Citizen 523-301-446 was leaving his apartment, alone.Harben had already gleaned, from some brief snatches of conversation he had listened to, that the man had the personal name of Ford.Harben switched to Autochase, a setting of the controls which automatically followed the movements of the designated person, cutting from camera to camera as necessary to get the best view.But he still kept the tape running at high speed.There was something ludicrous about the way the man rushed like a maniac up an escalator and into a Superway car, which moved off as a rapid blur.Harben saw Ford emerge at the other end and plunge into an elevator, the doors of which closed with guillotine speed.At the seventy-first level, Ford tore along the corridor and paused only the briefest fraction of a second to ring a doorbell.The door burst open, and a dark-haired attractive girl instantly appeared in the doorway.Ford gave her a lightning peck on the cheek and then plunged headlong past her into the tiny, neat apartment.After the briefest twitter of conversation, the man flung himself down on a chair, while the girl poured him a drink —or rather, seemed to slosh the sherry with lunatic suddenness, but unbelievable accuracy, into a glass, which she then jerked under the man’s nose without spilling a drop.The grotesque effect was to some extent lost on Harben, who had run through more recordings at high speed than he cared to remember.Their lips were fluttering again, and Harben turned up the sound.The result was a loud, shrill gibbering, like demented monkeys at play.More or less at random, to sample their conversation, Harben decided to switch over to normal speed.He seemed to have blundered on to, an interesting bit.“.you wouldn’t be such a fool!” The girl’s eyes flashed icily, and she made no attempt to conceal the note of disgust in her voice.She got up and walked a step or two away from the couch on which she had been sitting.There was a long silence in the softly lit room.Ford was sitting bent forward, gazing down at the floor, his head slumped between his shoulders.He glanced up suddenly.His face wore a look of strain, as though conflicting emotions were tugging at him.“I’m convinced it’s possible,” he muttered slowly, almost doubtfully.“Then why has no one ever succeeded in the past?” Her rejoinder was swift and rather biting.“Probably didn’t go about it the right way.”The girl made a little movement of impatience.“So you are so clever that you are going to succeed where everyone else has failed!”“There’s a chance.”“What possible chance is there, when you’re being watched all the time.You’re being watched now.” She gestured towards the recording camera.The man looked tired.“They can’t watch everybody all of the time.There are ten thousand million people in the City.It would take another ten thousand million people, working full time, to watch them.They can’t do that.”“But once they suspect.it’s all there in the Records.”“Exactly.But there won’t be any Records.”Harben tensed forward in his contoured chair with an almost convulsive movement.No Records!He turned the sound up louder, eager not to miss a word.The man, at this moment, seemed to have convinced himself by his own argument.He now wore a look of dedicated fervour, the look of the heretic about to go to the stake.Fantastic! thought Harben.Could Ford then be a member of S.A.D.A.R
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