THE WRONG END OF TIME

 

BY JOHN BRUNNER

 

 

 

 

 

Absolute calm, though not absolute stillness. The sea shifted lazily against the sandy beach, its motion indexed not by the white crests of ripples-the water was too oily for waves to break-but by the pale spots of imperishable plastic rubbish.

 

 

Tangled greenery grew down to within a short distance of the tide-mark.

 

Night. The sky was almost clear of cloud. There was no natural moon, but as though Phobos and Deimos had been transported from Mars-two small man-made moons arced between the stars.

 

Silence. Only branches rustling and the sound of the sea.

 

Less than a mile off-shore, a smear of white obtruded on the glassy water. It could have been due to a partly submerged rock. It was not. It lasted two minutes and disappeared.

 

Something fractionally blacker than the black ocean began to approach the land.

 

 

A shadow among shadows, Danty Ward crept through the underbrush. He felt his footing at each step so that he did not break the night-quiet; nonetheless he managed to move rather swiftly. He wore a dark jersey and dark pants, and he had paused by a puddle to smear mud on the highlights of his cheekbones and forehead. Gilding the lily in reverse. He was not following a trodden path, but he was keeping parallel to and a few yards from a dirt road that few people traveled. Indeed, hardly anyone came to this stretch of shore at all. It was most inadvisable to try. There were complex alarms and boobytraps, not to mention an electronic fence. Beyond these, hidden among trees and thickets, were highly efficient radar antennae. There were also silos in which were sunk short-range missiles with nuclear warheads of about quarter-megaton capacity. Back near the superway he had passed posters that showed a clenched fist hammering a city into ruins. Underneath

 

captions said: PART OF THE WORLD'S MOST PERFECT DEFENSIVE SYSTEM.

 

He had taken the precaution of turning everything off.

 

 

Somewhere nearby came the scrunching sound of a foot moving in gravel. Danty halted stock-still to feel the world, then stealthily made towards the road he had been avoiding. Parting the fronds of a flowering bush he saw a car on the other side of the track. about twelve feet away. A man leaned against it, his left wrist held close to his face as if he were trying to read his watch in the thin before dawn light.

 

With a little nod of satisfaction Danty slipped back into nowhere.

 

He passed on now towards the beach. coming soon to the point at which the greenery thinned and left only tough dune grasses. courtesy of the Federal Erosion Commission. "Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea . . . "

 

Like living on a melting iceberg.

 

A few yards farther on. a boulder stuck its blunt snout up from the sand. Danty looked both ways along the beach, then darted into shelter beside the rock. His back against it, he relaxed, invisible until daylight.

 

If he was right. though. he would be gone by then.

 

He stared seaward. Straining his eyes. he discerned something more coherent than a chance assembly of weed or garbage being carried inshore. Matt-dark but a little shiny because it was wet. Purposively shaped. A man in a survival suit.

 

Danty allowed himself a grunt of self-approbation, and concentrated on making his relaxation still more complete.

 

 

Vassily Sheklov, on the other hand, was tense. He had no qualms about the suit he was wearing-it was a very advanced model, and he would cheerfully have bet on it to carry him through hell-fire. It could not, however, protect him from the oppressive weight of knowledge about his situation, which bore down on his skull as though the dome of the night sky were leaning its entire burden on his head. He had unwisely allowed the submarine captain to press a last glass of vodka on him, by way of a toast to the success of his mission. The liquor-and his careful

 

 

yoga exercises-had sustained him during the nerve-racking period while they were inching towards the coast, sometimes within a meter of grounding on the bottom; to duck beneath the sweep-pattern of the radar they knew to be located hereabouts. they had to break surface not more than a kilometer from the beach. where the water was ridiculously shallow for such a big vessel. But now he was out here on his own he was horribly aware of what the slug of alcohol might have done to the speed of his reflexes.

 

Landing in a spot that was as thick with nuclear missiles as a porcupine's back with spines! He had to keep . reminding himself that the paradoxical advice had come ., from Turpin, who ought to be reliable if anyone was. Ac- -. cording to him a reserved area was the safest choice pro-

 

vided the submarine didn't trigger the automatic firing . mechanisms, because Americans were almost superstitious

 

about such places and nobody would be within miles.

 

Thus far the advice had proved sound. Sheklov noted the fact in the tidy mental card-index of data about Turpin that he was compiling.

 

His knees touched bottom. He found his footing, and abruptly the buoyancy of his suit converted into weight: Not a great weight. He stood up with sea around his legs and looked the scene over.

 

Nothing moved except branches and man-made litter bobbing on the wavelets.

 

He went up the sand looking for the tidemark, and found that the full tide. due soon after dawn, would erase all but a few of his footprints. When he gained the protection of the first bushes, he opened his suit and peeled it off. Underneath he wore authentic American leisure clothing, smuggled via Mexico or Canada.

 

He laid the suit down in a wind-sculpted hollow and hit the destruct switch on its shoulder. Faint smoke drifted up, and the plastic began to deliquesce.

 

Waiting for the process to go to completion, he used a fronded branch to scuff over the three footprints he had left above the high-water mark. On his return to the suit: he found only a puddle of jelly, already beginning to soak into the sand. He shoveled more sand over it with a bit, of jetsam and tossed miscellaneous garbage on top of the' little pile. Then, with a final glance out to sea to confirm that the submarine had vanished, he headed inland.

 

Danty rose from his boulder and faded into the undergrowth again. He kept pace, discreetly.

 

 

Sheklov found the dirt road easily. The captain had been laudably precise in his navigation. He walked by its edge-carefully, because it had rained here within the past few hours and the ground was soft-until he came within sight of a car: an expensive make that he recognized from his briefing. Waiting beside it, a man raised his arm in hesitant greeting.

 

Continuing at a neutral pace, Sheklov studied him. He wore a dark jacket and pants, by Russian standards rather old-fashioned. He was about fifty, above medium height, plump-cheeked. paunchy, sweating a little-from nervousness, presumably, because the night was cool. . . Yes, this was Turpin okay. Either that, or someone had gone to a lot of trouble to prepare a duplicate.

 

Now the man spoke in a wheezy whisper, saying, "Holtzer?"

 

Sheklov nodded. For the time being, he was indeed Holtzer.

 

Turpin let go a gusty sigh and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. "Sorry," he said, the word muffled by its folds. "The strain of waiting was beginning to get to me. Uh-did you have a good trip?"

 

"Well, the water was pretty dirty," Sheklov said, and tensed for the answer. It was conceivable something had gone wrong, at the receiving if not at the delivering end. But Turpin's response was word-perfect.

 

"Still, the air around here isn't too bad."

 

Sheklov let a thought form in his mind.

 

t made it!

 

The realization hit him with almost physical violence, so that he did not immediately react when Turpin opened the car door and motioned for him to get in. Belatedly he complied, noting the decadent luxury of the vehicle's interior . . . and then the sullen inertia of the door as he closed it.

 

Armored, of course. The thing must weigh six or seven tons. And in plain sight next to the radiation-counter: a gun, its muzzle snugly inserted into a socket on the dash, its butt convenient for the driver's right hand.

 

Well, he was going to have to get used to that kind of thing.

 

 

"What about tracks?" he said, thinking of how deeply so much weight could drive tires into the ground as soft as he had just been walking on. Turpin started the car and bean to turn it around. It was equipped with manual con- trols. naturally. He'd had it dinned into him that over here people liked to gamble with each other's lives on the roads.

 

"Sonic projectors in the wheel-arches." Turpin answered. "They homogenize dust and mud. If someone comes by before the next rain he might realize a car has been this way, but he won't have a hope in hell of identifying a tread-pattern. But don't talk until we're out of the reserved area, please. I shall have to use some pretty tricky gadgets to get us through the perimeter alarms. As soon as we hit the superway, through, we can relax."

 

The third time he sawed the car back and forth, it was facing in the direction he wanted, and he sent it silently down the track, back to the superway, back to the real America.

 

 

When the car had gone, Danty stepped out from the bushes and began to walk unconcernedly in its wake. He was a mile or so from the superway. He would reach it a few minutes before dawn.

 

He didn't bother to turn the site back on.

 

• ,(r)

 

 

The mud on Danty's face had dried. Rubbing at it as he walked, he reduced it to a grayish smear. That would have to do until he reached soap and water.

 

Emerging on to the hard shoulder of the superway between two billboards advertising insurance against juvenile leukemia and KOENIG'S INTIMATE INSULATION, he gazed towards the oncoming traffic. He ignored the long-distance freight-trucks, which had schedules to keep, and concentrated on the last of the night-riders, the lamps of their cars dimming as they headed home for a day's sleep. These were the people who seemed to feel oppressed by the isolation of their continent, even though it was three thousand miles wide, and needed to relieve their tension by simply going, regardless of whether there was any place to go to.

 

It was the third car that stopped: a red-and-gold Banshee. The dead weight of its Armour made it almost nosedive into the concrete as it responded to its compulsorily excellent brakes. The man at the wheel wore a snug hat and tailored fatigues, and also-as he stared at Dantyan expression of surprise.

 

Not at what he saw. Danty was ordinary enough to look at, apart from the mud on his face: young, thin, midbrown complexion, sharp chin, dark eyes above which his brows formed a shallow V. But at the notion of stopping for him in a state where hitch-hiking had been illegal for decades.

 

Before he could recover his presence of mind, however, Danty had sauntered over and leaned on his door. Rashly, the man was driving with its window open.

 

"Going to Lakonia?" he inquired.

 

"Uh . . ." The driver licked his lips; hand hovering close to his dashboard gun. "Now look here! I didn't stop to give you a ride! I-"

 

And broke off in consternation. The question had just occurred to him: Then why in hell did I stop?

 

 

He could see no other reason than Danty, who went on looking at him levelly.

 

"Ali. shit" the driver said at last. "Okay, get in. Yes, I am heading for Lakonia."

 

"Thanks," Danty said, and went around to the passenger's door.

 

Before his unwelcome companion had fastened his safety-harness, the driver stamped on the accelerator and shot back into the center of the road, watching his mirror anxiously-not so much for following cars, as for a patrolman who might have witnessed that entirely unlawful pickup. The speedo needle reached the limit mark and stopped climbing, never the less their speed increased perceptibly afterwards. Danty concealed a grin. Another reason for the driver to feel worried. Plainly he'd eased the control on the governor. Everybody did that, but you were still liable to arrest if you were caught.

 

Relaxing after a mile or two without incident, the driver reached for the cigarette dispenser.

 

"Want one?" he asked reluctantly.

 

"Thanks." Danty shook his bead. "Don't use them."

 

The driver took his. ready-lit, and sucked on it twice before speaking again, this time with the petty bravado of a man defying the law and trying not to let the fact bother him.

 

"Now don't you get the idea I go around the country free-lifting all the time!"

 

"Of course not," Danty said equably.

 

"So you'd better be a friend of mine, hm? Just in case My name's Rollins, George Rollins. What's yours and where are you from?"

 

"Danty. And it says CowvMe in my redbook."

 

Rollins betrayed obvious relief. Cowville was right next door to Lakonia; in fact it was the nucleus from which Lakonia had spread like a stump of wild-rose root with a gorgeous over-blown double floribunda grafted on it. Taking a man back to his home city wasn't too bad. Danty let the idea curdle.

 

Then he added mildly, "But mostly I'm from all over."

 

"You make a habit of traveling this way?" Rollins curled his lip. It was probably in his mind to add: Because if you do, you must be a lousy rebl Everybody knows they shave and cut their hair nowadays!

 

"No, this is kind of a special case."

 

"Glad to hear it!" Rollins snapped, and fell silent. After a moment he reached for the radio buttons and snapped on an early-morning music program. Soothed by the sound of the current chart-toppers, the Male Organs, Danty dozed.

 

 

He awoke to a prod in his ribs and the sound of the gas-gauge emitting a penetrating hum.

 

"Got to pull in for gas," Rollins told him unnecessarily. "Now you watch how you act, hear? Don't want some radiated gas-attendant to turn me in for free-lifting!"

 

Danty touched the gritty mud on his face. He said, "Well, then I can get to a washroom and clean up."

 

"You do that! And watch yourself!" Rollins ordered.

 

His imitation bravado leaked away as the car slowed. His lips moved as though he were rehearsing what he would say when they stopped.

 

He was. Therefore it came out smoothly enough. "Fifty, please!" he called to the attendant in his overhead booth, watching the forecourt through armour-glass with his hands poised above the triggers for his guns.

 

"Fifty it is," the man answered, and began to haul on his waldoes. Angled, a fuel-pipe launched down from its high hook and sought the car's filler like a blind snake.

 

So far, so good. As Danty left his seat, Rollins breathed easier. Hell, was anyone--even a gas-attendant, in a trade that encouraged paranoia-going to turn him in for a little free-lifting? Of course not!

 

And then his stomach filled with ice-cubes. There was a cop rolling into the gas-station, masked and armored, like a mere extension of the single-seat racer that he rode.

 

Patrolman Clough yawned hugely as he dismounted. That was a slow job, involving a thorough survey of the vicinity, then the folding back of four light-alloy bullet deflectors. But finally he freed himself, stood upright, and stretched and yawned again. The quick dash of midnight had worn off, and he was having to pull in more and more often to rest up. The endless concentration tired the brain. Police racers had no governors on them, only a red line at the hundred-fifty mark that the rider was forbidden to exceed except in emergency. Something to boast about in company-"they don't turn loose any but the picked best on the superway without a governor!"-but on the job, not so much fun.

 

 

Only one car in the station. Banshee. Cheapjack make. Slick lines, sure, but inside-well, built-in obsolescence. of course. Trouble being they sometimes guessed wrong, the obsolescence progressed too quickly, and then he or someone was picking bits of people out of the wreckage.

 

Not this one, though. A last-month's model, red and gold.

 

Driver sort of nervy . . Wonder if he's disconnected his governor. Sort of thing the guy who buys a Banshee might do. Easy to short the governor circuits on one of these. Not a bad idea to have him lift the hood, take a quick squint.

 

He snapped back the visor of his helmet and strode towards the car.

 

 

Rollins rubbed sweaty palms inconspicuously on the sides of his thighs. "Morning officer!" he exclaimed, and damned his voice for skating up towards the treble.

 

The patrolman gave a neutral nod. Rollins told himself he couldn't possibly have seen the disreputable passenger, and whatever was bothering him with luck he'd guess wrong and be away before Danty emerged from the washroom. In fact it might be a good idea to get back on the road without Danty, if he could. What in the world could have possessed him to stop for a free-lifter? And a reb at that, more than likely!

 

The gas-pipe withdrew to its hook. A cash-drawer shot out of the side of the pump within easy reach of him. But he was so intent on the patrolman that at first he didn't notice, and the attendant had to parp on his hooter.

 

Damnation. Now the pig will know I'm rattled. He fumbled a credit card from his pocket and laid it in the tray. The patrolman followed every move, ,and when the drawer had clicked shut he said, "Mind lifting your hood, mister?"

 

"Uh . . .° Well, there was no help for it. He flipped the release and the hood ascended three feet on lazy-tongs mountings. sighing. Look, officer, l have a clean license ten years old, everyone eases the governor control a bit, it's not as though 1'd been in an accident ....

 

But the patrolman only glanced at the engine, nodded, and made to turn away. Rollins exhaled gratefully.

 

Must have thought the governor was cut out completely. Who but a damned fool-?

 

And Danty re-appeared.

 

He'd washed, and wiped the stubble of beard from his chin with Depilide, but even so he didn't match a brand-new Banshee. And here he was opening the passenger door. You could almost hear the tumblers clicking in the pig's head, like a fruit machine.

 

"Hah!" he said after a tense pause. "Let's see your redbook, you!"

 

Danty shrugged, unzipped his hip-pocket, and held out his red-covered identity papers. The silence stretched as the patrolman seemed to be reading every single word. Finally Rollins could bear it no longer.

 

"Is something wrong, officer?"

 

The cop didn't glance up. He said, "Friend of yours, mister?"

 

"Sure! Of course he is!"

 

"Tell me more." The machine-like helmet still bent over the redbook.

 

"Uh . . ." Rollins' mind reacted. "Why, Danty's from Cowville. Close to where I live. We just been night-riding a bit, that's all."

 

Though if he asks what this radiated reb's other name is . I

 

The patrolman slapped shut and returned the redbook. "Okay," was all he said, but under his voice, clear as shouting, he was adding: So, a couple fruits most likely. I should arrest that kind on suspicion? 1'd be at it all dory. Anyway, they'd jump bail and head for a state where it's allowed.

 

Frantically Rollins started the engine again, eager to get away from here.

 

"Your credit card," Danty said, and pointed. Rollins snarled, snatched it from the cash-drawer, and trod on the gas. Danty was amused to see that he must have worked out what the pig was thinking. He was blushing scarlet clear down to his collar.

 

 

Behind them, Patrolman Clough made a routine entry in his tape-recorded log. But, two or three minutes later, as he was emerging from the men's room, a car howled past at far above the legal limit, and he scrambled back on his racer and took out after it, yelling for assistance on his radio. In the excitement of the chase he clean forgot about Danty and Rollins.

 

 

Turpin was plainly ill at ease and could not make up his mind how to open a conversation. For the time being that suited Sheklov. He wanted to get the feel of America, hammering home on the automatic level what he had learned on the conscious. Already he had noticed a contradiction. From the radio that Turpin had switched on, as though by reflex, music was emanating of a kind that he himself had barely encountered since his teens, when his generation still thought it "progressive" and "liberal" to imitate the example of Western rock-groups. The sound was imbued with curious nostalgia. Then, between items, an announcer resolved the paradox by saying that the program was aimed at the eternally youthful and proceeding to advertise a skin-food.

 

For men, as well as women. He sniffed. Yes, he wasn't mistaken; Turpin was heavily perfumed with something that hadn't been detectable in the open air, but had built up in the closed metal box of the car, despite the conditioning, until it was overpowering. He thought of asking for a window to be opened, but changed his mind. He was going to have to adjust.

 

To things like this superway, for instance. Back home, the roads he knew were typically two or at most three lanes wide, laid with geometrical exactitude across the landscape, carrying far more trucks and hundred-passenger buses than private cars, and had control cables laid under the surface so that no mere human being should be called on to avert an accident at 200 k.p.h.

 

But roads weren't really important. You could use less land and shift more people with a hover train riding concrete pylons, or for long distances you would fly.

 

When this road, with its opulent curves, came to a rise in the ground, its builders had contrived to give the impression that it eased itself up to let the hill pass beneath. Elegant, certainly. Yet so wasteful Eight lanes in each direction, not because there was so much traffic, only because that much margin must be allowed for human error!

 

Thinking of speed . . . . He repressed a start as he looked at the speedometer. Oh. yes. Not k.p.h., but m.p.h; the Americans had resolutely clung to their antiquated feet. yards and miles just as they had clung to Fahrenheit when the rest of the world abandoned it. Even so, he hoped that Tuipin was a reasonably competent driver. He himself had never attempted to guide a land-vehicle at such velocity.

 

Now. finally, Turpin was addressing him: "Cigarette?"

 

"Please." It would be interesting to try American tobacco. But he found it hot, dry, and lacking in aroma.

 

Ahead, a lighted beacon warned traffic to merge into the left lanes, and shortly, as the car slowed, he saw something that confirmed his worst fears: a wreck involving two trucks and a private car around which a gang of black men were busy with chains, jacks, and cutting torches. On the center divide an ambulance-crew waited anxiously to be offered a cargo.

 

When was someone last killed on the roads, Back There?

 

He watched Turpin covertly as they passed the spot, and read no emotion whatever on his face.

 

Well, to sustain his pretense for so long, obviously he must have had to repress his natural reactions . . .

 

Yet Sheklov found the explanation too glib to be convincing.

 

 

Then, a little farther on, they encountered another gang of workmen, also black. being issued with tools from a truck on the hard shoulder. Some of them were setting up more beacons. That was a phenomenon Sheklov had been briefed about: a "working welfare" project Obviously they were here to repair the road; equally obviously, the road didn't need repairing. But it conformed to the American ideal: You don't work, you don't eat.

 

He felt a surge of pride as he reflected on the superior efficiency of a planned economy. Then, sternly, he dismissed the thought. The system must work. otherwise human beings could not tolerate it. It was not for him to say that it oughtn't to work. Enclosed isolated, offensively conceited, the Americans were still human, and what they did among themselves was ipso facto to be respected as part of the vast repertoire of human potential.

 

Drawing a deep breath. he closed his eyes for a moment. Words formed in memory; they said, "O Dhananjaya,

 

 

abandoning attachment and regarding success and failure alike, be steadfast in Yoga and perform thy duties."

 

And his duty at present was to be Donald Paton Holtzer, who had never heard of the Blessed Lord's Song.

 

 

There was considerable traffic on the move. He saw hundreds of cars, mostly as they were left behind. because Turpin had clearance for the fastest lanes, but two or three times howling monsters tore past them illegally on the inside, and once they were overtaken by a patrolman on a racer with his siren howling like a soul in torment.

 

The roads, while still in usable condition, were being torn up and re-made. So too the cars were destined for a short, short life. Everything about this silent limousine of Turpin's was ultra-modern, including its schedule of obsolescence. Approximately six months old, it was already as close to the scrap yard as to the factory.

 

And from the scrap yard its elements would go to the factory again.

 

Talk about taking in each other's washing .... But he slapped that down in his mind, too.

 

Now and then they passed-in sight of enormous housing developments, and Sheklov also studied these carefully. Apartments stacked in towering blocks. Gardens around them, or parks. Trees in neat lines, force-grown with Para gibberellins. He found them attractive, but somehow flawed-perhaps by the way they resembled one another, as though they had been mass-produced complete with occupants. They were becoming shabby. His briefings had included a thorough conspectus of the cycle of American fads and fashions, and he was able to date them as having been built about twenty-five years ago-just about the time, indeed, that Turpin was planted in the States. ,

 

Reminded of his companion, he turned his head. Turpin's eyes were on him.

 

"You're very quiet," Sheklov said.

 

Turpin gave a plump-jowled grin. "I figured you'd start talking in your own good time. Make the most of this ride, though. I do have a bug-free room at home, of course, but this car is even safer. And we're coming pretty close to Lakonia now."

 

He seemed to have recovered completely from his earlier nervousness.

 

"Frankly," Sheklov said, "I was expecting you to ask

 

what brought me here. I gather you weren't informed of the details." He spoke easily in the language he had practiced non-stop during his briefing period.

 

"I didn't question the decision," Turpin said stiffly. "After all, I've been thoroughly absorbed by now, and your people" He bit something back.

 

"Go on," Sheklov encouraged.

 

"All right I'll have to get around to it sooner or later. Your people don't seem to set much store by me nowadays."

 

Sheklov displayed genuine surprise. "I don't know where you got that impression! I've always heard that your complete assimilation has made you the most valuable single agent we've ever had here. Why else would they have called on you to cushion my arrival?"

 

Turpin didn't answer but pressed his lips together in a thin line. Sheklov could gloss that expression easily enough. Because you'd have been told I was good, to bolster your own confidence; or because I'm to be eliminated and you're to replace me; or because you're expendable yourself, and meant to bring about our joint downfall; or because I'm suspect and you've been assigned to investigate me .

 

Turpin sighed. "Oh, what's the point of worrying? I do as I'm told. that's all. I laid on exactly the cover for you that was requested-you're Canadian, timber-salesman, been down here sounding out a new pulp contract, recommended to Energetics General by your parent firm, looking for a supplier of- plastic glue for bonding chipboard, staying with me at Lakonia because we're very eager to close that deal. Which is true: we're short of foreign currency, as you know. There's a bag in the trunk for you, with clothes, ticket-stubs, hotel bills, a raft of genuine material. Anyway, the fact that I speak for you will protect you from security."

 

That sounded too pat. Sheklov was about to voice a question, when Turpin added, "And for extra insurance I'll have you photographed with Prexy."

 

He tossed that off casually also, but if it was a promise he could keep. Sheklov felt, he was entitled to be proud of his record. They had told him over and over how well established Turpin was, and though he reserved the right to doubt it until he saw it happen he was prepared to

 

 

believe that Turpin could indeed invoke the President to reinforce his cover.

 

"You brought up the purpose of your visit," Turpin went on. "I imagine it's to check me out. Don't think I'll be offended if you tell me." .

 

There was overt bitterness in his tone. Sheklov saw in that a reason why the people Back There might have downgraded this man in their minds. But if they had, none of them had let slip the slightest suggestion of the fact.

 

"It's nothing to do with you at all," he grunted. "We've run into a problem we can't solve. We're at our wits' end. And since we've looked everywhere else for ideas, we're finally being driven to look for some over here."

 

He wondered if his own skepticism showed in his voice.

 

He was thinking: Pluto! Hell! Half the people in this

 

country probably never heard of it, and the rest must be

 

old enough to remember Disney's dog!

 

Turpin took a fresh cigarette. "Hah! It must be quite a problem, then. Explain! I want to know what's so important that I have to risk everything I've built up in twenty-five years."

 

Sheklov marshaled his words carefully. He'd rehearsed this introductory exposition many times, of course. He said, "As a senior vice-president of Energetics General, you must know as much as any one man about the defense system of this continent. Right?"

 

"Why not? We designed most of it. We still contract for its servicing. And have I ever failed to notify your people of our newest developments?"

 

"No, you haven't," Sheklov said fervently, and felt a shiver go down his spine. In a sense, the fact that Earth had not long ago dissolved into a nuclear holocaust was due to this man at his side. It was awe-inspiring to reflect on that.

 

"So tell me," he continued when he had recovered from his brief access of wonder, "what would happen if -say-New York were wiped off the map by a total conversion reaction?"

 

"A-what?" Turpin jerked in his seat. Ash fell from his cigarette to his thigh. He brushed at it, and missed.

 

"Total-conversion, I said. Well?"

 

"Well! Uh . . ." Turpin licked his lips. "Well, it would depend on whether anything had been detected coming down from orbit."

 

"Something would have." -

 

"Well, them Uh. . : Well, everything in the sky not accounted for by the flight-plan at Aerospace HQ would be taken out by ground missiles. That's automatic. Then the orbital hardware would be activated, and you'd lose the tovs."

 

"Tobs?"

 

"Tovs. Didn't they give you that? Careless! Short for tovarich. That's what we call your manned satellites."

 

You: we. Force of habit probably. Camouflage. But Sheklov found himself wondering how deep the camouflage went in Turpin's mind after a quarter of a century.

 

"Is there a lot of orbital hardware?"

 

"Enough," Turpin said, and gave a thin smile. "Sorry, but you might let slip something you're not supposed to know."

 

Sheklov allowed him the petty victory. He said, "And then. . ?"

 

"Within about two minutes, the Nightsticks would be homing on their targets. They're solid-fuelled inertial guided missiles with-"

 

"Yes, we know about those. Thanks to you."

 

He said it deliberately, to determine how much the reminder would affect Turpin. The answer was-severely. He stuttered for several seconds.

 

"Anyway(" he pursued. "Within eight minutes and thirty seconds, twelve thousand megatons would go down on East Bloc territory. And if there were another-"

 

Sheklov held up his hand. "The world's most perfect defensive system. Yes. We've taken great care for many years to avoid tripping this country's deadly burglar alarms, but they still exist. which means that people must think they're still necessary."

 

"We're doing our best to cure that!" Turpin said with a hint of anxiety. "Though naturally in my position I daren't "

 

"Daren't do anything that might cast suspicion on your cover," Sheklov cut in. "Sure, we understand just how tough security can be over here. But what's your response to the news that some American city may well be converted into raw energy in the near future?"

 

A haunted expression came and went on Turpin's face, as though for the first time in years he was reviewing the implications of setting off twelve thousand megatons of

 

 

nuclear explosive. He said, "You mean the Chinese have-"

 

"Chinese, hell. The Chinese don't have a total-conversion reaction( Nobody has it, down here."

 

Understanding began to turn Turpin's cheeks to gray.

 

"Yes," Sheklov said with a nod. "Out near Pluto we've met-someone else."

 

Who?

 

Well, one thing-so Sheklov had been told-was definite. They couldn't be from this part of the galaxy, or even from this part of the cosmos. Because their ship sparkled. Even at the orbit of Pluto it was continually being touched by dust particles. On contact, they vanished into energy. Which demonstrated that the vessel, and hence by logic the system where it originated, must be contra terrene.

 

The aliens didn't seem to mind. Apparently they could take care of that problem. They could take care of the human race just as easily, if they chose.

 

Or, more precisely: They could arrange for the human race to take care of itself.

 

 

"They're far ahead of us," Sheklov said when Turpin's gray face had started back towards its normal color. "We're afraid of them. So far we haven't managed to communicate anything to them, although we've been trying for more than three years. Somehow or other we must establish rapport, because if we can't convince them we're fit to get along with they're not only able but apparently willing to set us back a thousand years. In the way I suggested-by turning an American city into energy."

 

"If you can't communicate with them, how do you know?" Turpin snapped.

 

"The problem is strictly one-sided. They proved that they know a great deal about us, by projecting pictures in a gas-cloud floating in space. The experts say they must have generated localized artificial gravity-fields to create their images, then excited them to radiate in appropriate colors. We aren't within centuries of such techniques."

 

Contra terrene . . . implying that anything they launched at Earth would boil its entire mass into energy-and what hope was there of intercepting the missiles of a species that must be more advanced by millennia than mankind? And they knew about "the world's most perfect defensive sys-

 

 

tem." Inasmuch as any clear information could be deduced from the images they projected in their gas-clouds-a series of still pictures, with incredibly fine detail-they were having second thoughts about opening formal relations with mankind. One could guess that they didn't approve of a race that was capable of destroying its own members.

 

So now problems that had gone unsolved for generations had to be solved. There was no way of predicting when the aliens' patience- might run out. When it did, they could-and maybe would-pitch the human race back to the caves. There had been one final picture that rankled in Sheklov's memory; naturally, he had studied photographs of them all. And that one showed a dirty, misshapen. but recognizable man, wrapped in a raw animal-hide, waving a stone axe . . .

 

He who is the same to friend and foe, and also in honor and dishonor, the same in heat and cold, pleasure and pain, free from all attachment. ,

 

With overtones: "who doesn't give a damn!" But that was an impossible ideal. Sheklov checked the thought, because Turpin was asking him another question.

 

"So you think someone here might be able to communicate with the aliens? But without explaining the real reason, I couldn't get funds for research into the problem, and-"

 

"You misunderstand me," Sheklov interrupted. "If the solution were technical, we'd have licked it by now. What we want is . . . I guess you'd say a new attitude of mind."

 

Turpin shook his head, confused. "Well, we do have some pretty competent psychologists on the payroll!"

 

A picture arose in Sheklov's memory: old Bratcheslavsky, cross-legged on a bare floor, fingers yellow to the second knuckle with cigarette-stains, saying, "Do this without preconceptions, Vassily. Ask the questions when you get there." Behind him, through the window, the white towers of Alma-Ata turned to gray by winter overcast.

 

Sheklov said, "One thing I was told I should ask you as soon as I arrived. What's a `reb'?"

 

"Reb?" Turpin echoed in an astonished tone. "Why why, a reb is a good-for-nothing, a dropout, a parasite. Someone who refuses to work and lives by scrounging. They come in two sexes: 'johnny reb' for a boy, 'jenny reb' for a girl. Why?"

 

"You mean they're beggars?" Sheklov groped.

 

"I guess so. Most of them don't even have the get-up and-go to turn thief. You see them all the time on the Cowville shore of New Lake; there's some sort of colony over there. Just sitting! Just staring at the water and the clouds."

 

"Meditating?" Sheklov suggested.

 

"They use the word for an excuse. I don't believe it."

 

He seemed to feel very strongly about rebs, Sheklov noted. He pondered a while, then murmured, "A kind of saddhu?"

 

"What?"

 

"Saddhu. An Indian holy man. Lives by begging."

 

"Nothing holy about a reb!" Turpin rasped. And, suddenly conscious of the ferocity of his tone, added, "What in the world made you ask about rebs?"

 

"Curiosity, that's all," Sheklov lied. "Of course, back home we don't have people like that."

 

Turpin gave a satisfied nod. That, Sheklov deduced, must be one of the things that was still sustaining him after a quarter-century: the belief that what most offended him in the society of his adopted country was elsewhere unknown. The grass is always greener-as it were.

 

Whereas 1 . . .

 

Looking down as the superway crossed a tall viaduct, he spotted another of the isolated townships that it bypassed: this one brand-new, sparkling in the morning sun, alive with cars like multi-colored maggots as the breadwinners of the community left for work. It raced rearward, dwindled, was followed by another: lush, luxurious -but mass-produced, people and all.

 

Suddenly uncaged in his mind, the doubts and disbeliefs he had dutifully tried to conquer came striding back with echoing, lead-heavy steps.

 

There is no wisdom for the unsteady and there is no meditation for the unsteady and for the unmeditative there is no peace. How can there be any happiness for those without peace?

 

Are all human beings mentally deformed? Why else should they think in negatives all the time? Health is more than the absence of overt sickness, sanity more than the absence of dangerous psychosis. Peace too must be more than the absence of a shooting war. Peace must be . . .

 

No use. He could sense it, recognize it as possible. But he could not make it real in his mind. He had seen people

 

 

who were apparently at peace-there was the kicker-but he had never accomplished it himself.

 

Anyway, if you do reach that unscalable pinnacle, what about the rest of the world?

 

He almost cried aloud, in anguish; he almost asked,

 

How long before the world is cured of finding patchwork solutions to single problems-solutions that generate problems in their turn? It's bad enough Back There, but here...!

 

Men assembling in the cold morning light to tear up a road with pick and shovel so it could be re-laid by a machine!

 

America, of all countries! he mourned silently. Why did they send me to America?

 

When he was young he had spent three years in the India that had ultimately chosen to preserve its heritage, rather than accept aid conditional upon alliance with one of the great power-blocs. There, many people were sick, most were ill-fed and ill-housed.

 

And some were happy.

 

How long before we start looking for a way of life in which problems don't matter?

 

 

Turpin was still making would-be helpful suggestions, proposing to invoke the resources of his company, its psychologists, its computers, its enormous data-banks. It seemed he had completely missed the point.

 

Not that Sheklov felt he understood it properly himself.

 

Listening, he came to suspect that Turpin was simply uttering polite noises. News of something "out near Pluto"-even if it could distort the totality of human experience, Eastern and Western-had no concrete referents for him. A generation of isolation, half-voluntary, half-enforced, had colored the thinking of his adopted countrymen, of whom. he was so contemptuous; inevitably, though, in order to protect himself among them, he had had to let his own thinking be conditioned by their example.

 

In which case . . .

 

As a loyal agent, Sheklov found the conclusion he was being driven to repugnant. Yet he had to face it He was compelled to wonder whether those who had sent him here genuinely believed they were dispatching him on

 

the trail of a clue, or whether they had merely lapsed into the pattern of the old days, when America was the wealthy rival, to be first emulated, then surpassed.

 

But that attitude was obsolete. The paths of the two blocs had diverged a long way now.

 

Though, of course, since they were both branches of the same species, the people who lived under the aegis of these supposedly irreconcilable systems coincided in surprising ways. If he were to go into one of those handsome housing developments overlooked by the superway, would he not find, as he would Back There, people who contrived casually to mention their courage in moving to a building that wasn't blast-proof? And kept a year's supply of food in the freezer anyway?

 

Of course 1 would.

 

They would take pains to impress him with their loyalty, their right thinking; they would have the proper photographs and flags on display. Small matter if they were afraid of some impersonal, august, omniscient security force, rather than of the cold consensus of their neighbors-the effect was essentially the same. They would strive to be dedicated pillars of their community, set on raising their children to follow in their footsteps, endlessly quarrelling with them when they scoffed or asked unanswerable questions.

 

But he had seen a man under a tree: thin, wearing only a loincloth, one eye filmed with a cataract, who spent the day in ecstatic enjoyment of the sun's heat on his skin, and at nightfall fumbled in the bowl before him and ate what he found. There was always something in the bowl.

 

 

After that he had to be Donald Holtzer again, and Holtzer was not troubled by such thoughts.

 

 

.v.

 

Almost within sight of Lakonia, the Banshee caught up with a shower of rain, quite likely the same one that had provided Danty with that puddle where he had found mud for his face. At the first drops the wipers chirred into action and the windows attempted to close. But Danty, lost in thought, was sitting with his elbow on the passenger door, and the automatics uttered a whine of complaint.

 

Rollins snapped at him. With a murmured apology he moved his arm. The glass socketed home in the spongy seal around the roof, and Rollins breathed an audible sigh of relief.

 

"You wear lead, hm?" Danty suggested, and gave a pointed scowl at the counter on the dash next to the gun. Its needle was well down in the white sector. By reflex Rollins also glanced at it, and then flushed; indicating the road ahead slick with wet as far as could be seen.

 

"You want to get soaked. get out and walk!"

 

He looked and sounded as though he fully expected the counter to zoom into the red any moment.

 

Danty shrugged. So it wasn't rational to be that afraid of rain; there was Sr-90 and C-14 in everything you ate and drank, and unless you wore lead underwear you were constantly at risk from the long-life gamma-emitters like Cs-137. But, as he reminded himself wryly, Rollins was far from the only person in the world who did irrational things.

 

Maybe he did wear Koenig's, at that. He wasn't apt to admit it to a stranger, though.

 

Then the superway rounded the shoulder of a hill, and he caught his breath. Still in bright sunshine, by a freak of the rainstorm's course, there was Lakonia laid out before them.

 

 

Symptom of a terrible disease, like the "hectic flush" of tuberculosis, conveying the illusion of vigorous health, or like the frenzied mental brilliance of terminal syphilis? Some authorities regarded it that way. They claimed that

 

Lakonia was an ersatz, a surrogate; this city built around an artificial sea, they said, was a palliative to dull the guilt suffered by those who had poisoned first the Great Lakes, then the rivers, and ultimately the inshore waters of the oceans past the point at which a man could swim in them.

 

Yet in its way-and seeing it now Danty was the last person who could have denied it-it was a place of mad magnificence, a rival to the Pyramids and Babylon.

 

Its towers rose, white, purple, green, and gold, to meet the sun: towers like stalagmites, like poplar-trees; towers like stacks of coins, each offset on the one below; towers like spun sugar-candy, glittering, and towers like frozen waterspouts. High delicate bridges linked them here and there, slung on ropes of spun carbon-fibers seeming weak and thin as spider webs yet capable of carrying cars nose to tail in both directions, and the thicker, ivory-colored single rail of the hover line swerved and swooped from one to the next. And all these pinnacles admired their reflections in pure crystal water-moats around the towers' roots, canals planned to a scale beside which Venice paled.

 

In any case, Venice had collapsed.

 

Uniting all these waterways, the New Lake: man-made, spanning eight miles shore to shore, which gave Lakonia the first syllable of its name.

 

It was early yet, and there was no way of telling whether the nearby rain might not drift in that direction, but the bright mirror of water was alive-with swimmers, with sailboats, with powered launches towing water-skiers and man-carrying kites. At least, the nearside of the lake was swarming with them. Some mile, or mile and a half, from the shore, they seemed by tacit consent to turn back, to face again towards the high lovely towers and the artificial beach of white imported sand. It was as though on the farther shore there was something they were afraid to approach. Yet, looking in that direction, an uninstructed stranger would have seen nothing more foreboding than a stand of tall dark trees, force-grown redwoods two hundred feet high, above which curled a faint wreath of smoke.

 

 

"You live in Lakonia?" Danty asked as the road slanted down.

 

"Yes," Rollins snapped, more of his attention on his driving now than at any time since Danty stopped him.

 

 

Here the traffic was thickening like milk soured by lemon juice. "And you don't. So where do you want to be put off?"

 

"Any hoverhalt will do."

 

"Sure you don't want to be run all the way home?" Rollins countered sarcastically. "If you have a home, that is."

 

"I get by," Danty said.

 

Rollins spotted 'a vacant parking bay and pulled over. The car stopped. rocking. Ahead was a hoverhalt sign, a blue illuminated arrow pointing up.

 

"Thanks," Danty murmured. opening the door. Rollins didn't answer. In another few seconds he was lost to sight in the river of traffic. and Danty was dropping coins in the turnstile of the hoverhalt.

 

 

Five minutes, and the luxury and beauty of Lakonia lay behind him. He was beyond the forced redwoods and in the shadow-for a few seconds. literally. because it was as tall as the underlying rock would bear and loomed far above the forty-foot level of the of-of the Energetics General Building. four city blocks by five.

 

In the center of Cowville, that huge squat bulk brooded like a queen-bee in her hive. It was the headquarters of the biggest single employer in the country, except government, and of course without government it could not survive. Sometimes Danty thought of it as a temple, the fane of the priests who served the god Defense.

 

Cowville was old. Some said it was the oldest city in the state. The insertion of that hulking building into its center had deformed it in a curious fashion, like the pressure of a wedge being hammered home in a block of wood. People and the buildings they lived and worked in-seemed not so much to cluster around this focus of vast wealth, as to have been compressed by it, like garbage compacted for disposal. They were prevented from expanding outside the original city limits by strictly-enforced ordinances, because nothing must interfere with the beautiful setting of Lakonia. Not all of them had come to seek work, or to take advantage of the money flowing freely around Energetics General at a time when half the states of the Union were depressed; some had come merely in order to live close to Lakonia, for the privilege of

 

walking to the lakeshore and staring at its towers, focus of indescribable ambitions that they would never fulfill.

 

Even so there was 'little resentment of its existence. Lakonia had salvaged a beloved scrap of the American dream. At a time when people were losing faith in their older god, Business, because it had fouled the air and ruined the countryside and made the rivers stink, one corporation had created a new and lovely lake, whose water was purer than a mountain creek.

 

After that, over ten years, came the city-the most desirable place to live on the continent.

 

Meantime they shut away, behind trees, the original city of Cowville, and-apart from what unavoidable maintenance was called for to keep it habitable-let it rot. They were content to say, "You don't grow a rose without manure."

 

Yet, like the nearly-but-not-quite flavor of hydroponic food, life in Lakonia lacked something. A spice. A savor. "I remember it from the old days!" people claimed-then when challenged to describe it, confessed they couldn't. "Nonetheless," they maintained stoutly, "it was real! It can't have vanished completely!"

 

Therefore, now and then, they set off in search of it, and for want of anywhere better to start looking they came to Cowvdle, to the littered streets and the stores crammed with over-priced knick-knacks and the preLakonia apartment blocks that had been sub-divided and sub-divided again. It was hard to find living-space in Cowville now. One could foresee an end like the ancient Chinese system of land-tenure, the ancestral holding split up among successive generations until a family was compelled to share a broom-closet.

 

If they looked in the wrong places they got robbed, or raped, or slashed with a bottle in a bar. But if they were lucky, or someone had given them the right advice beforehand, they learned to recognize landmarks - signposts, clues. A message on a wall, chalked up at midnight, at 4 A.M. washed away by rain. In a store, a handwritten notice: MEETING, followed by a date, a time, an address. In the window of an apartment, a cheap printed card: THINGS FOUND. Nature of the things not specified. TRACING AGENTS. PROBLEMS SERVICE. CASES UNDERTAKEN.

 

You could follow these signs if you chose. They led to

 

 

another city altogether. They led to the city Danty lived in.

 

 

He left the hovercar at a halt on the roof of one of the city's oldest surviving buildings, a good sixty years old. It had seemed like a logical idea, when they extended the line around the lake, to use existing roofs for halts, but they had had to straitjacket the building with concrete beams when the recurrent vibration threatened to shake it down. Now the beams served a double purpose, acting also as supporters for an exterior staircase and for landings on three sides of the building. The interior stairways and the elevator shaft had been turned into shower-rooms and kitchenettes. There had been two apartments on the top floor of this building; now there were eight, entered by doors that had been regular windows.

 

In the remaining window of the apartment nearest the stairs, dimly legible through the wire-reinforced glass, a card said simply CONSULTATIONS. It was into this one that Danty let himself, with a key that he wore on a steel chain around his neck. It was a precious key; there were only two like it. It was risky to use a stock type of lock in modern Cowville, because so many people had complete collections of the American Lock and Vault Corporation's range. If you could afford it, you had one hand-made.

 

The apartment trembled a little as the hovercar he'd arrived on accelerated towards its next destination.

 

"Magdal" Danty called as he shut the door. There was no answer. He hadn't really expected one, unless she was in the toilet.

 

The apartment consisted of one large room, along two walls of which couches that doubled as divans had been built in, plus an alcove cut off with a curtain, a shower cabinet, and a kitchen made of fire-proof board. As always, it was untidy, with a dozen books lying around open, a stack of sheets torn from a notepad in the middle of the one large low table. He glanced at the latter to make sure none bore a message for him, but they were covered in indecipherable technicalities.

 

He swore under his breath. Of course, she did have many other calls on her time, but you'd have thought that today . .

 

His resentment . died. Maybe it was better this way. Maybe he needed a chance to think over what he had done. Until he was in sight of Lakonia, he'd been able

 

to mute knowledge of his own actions in his mind, making them distant and dream-Me. Now they were throbbing and pounding in his memory.

 

More to distract himself than because he was hungry, he brought a soy burger and a carton of milk out of the freezer, switched on the TV, and sat down to eat in front of it. He caught the tail-end of the weather forecast, and then followed the day's counts: pollen, RA-high beta, low gamma-KC's, Known Carcinogens, SO, and the rest. But he wasn't paying attention. He was thinking about the man from the sea.

 

Images came to his mind: He pictured the disturbance the stranger would cause, like a small, very hard pebble dropped into a loose-journal led complex of machinery. Slack would be taken up here and there in its bearings. Bit by bit it would become possible to deduce who he was, why he had come, what he hoped to achieve.

 

And then, perhaps, something would have to be done.

 

"Do thou therefore perform right and obligatory actions," he quoted to himself under his breath, "for action is superior to inaction."

 

 

With a sudden violent gesture he thrust away his plate. He linked his brown thin fingers together so tightly the knuckles paled. His teeth threatened to chatter, so that he had to knot his jaw-muscles to hold them still.

 

Magda! For pity's sake hurry back!

 

I'm scared!

 

 

Lora Turpin had had all she could take, and said so to her mother. Her mother, with her usual infuriating white satin calmness-out of a bottle with "White Satin" on the label--called her a misbegotten moron and suggested that 5 radiation must have affected the ovum from which she was conceived. That finished the discussion. Theatrically Lora stormed out of the room, out of the apartment, out of the building, and into a hovercar going anywhere. ,

 

If it had been night, she would have driven; there were five cars in the basement garage she could get the keys for. But she hated sawing through slow day-time traffic, and what was more she was forbidden to ride the hover line, which was why she did it when she was in a bad temper.

 

This time it didn't lead to the anticipated result. Naturally, because she was very pretty, several men leered at her, but they were all reeky ancients, at least forty, and the only hand that did try stroking her bare waist belonged to a fat mannish woman who got off at the second halt. It was around then that she realized, as the redwood trees loomed ahead, that this car was heading in the wrong direction. She'd meant to get off at a halt by one of the yacht-pools and pick up a boy with a boat. She hadn't had a boy for over a week.

 

Almost, she made to leave the car. But she changed her mind. What the hell. She'd never ridden a Cowville line to the end.

 

Curious, she watched the squalid city slide beneath, and then around, as the line approached the monstrous mausoleum of Energetics General, and then beneath again: an area of lower buildings, harking vainly back to the foundation of the city, to the pioneering image of the original cow-town. A mobile illuminated figure shamelessly copied from "Vegas Vic" beckoned customers to a block crowded with twenty-four-hour bars and sex clubs. That passed behind too, and the line descended to ground- .` level-or, more likely, the ground rose to meet the line.

 

By the time a mechanical-sounding voice announced the terminus, the city was petering away to shabby tenements intermingled with warehouses. A distant roaring indicated that she was close to the airport through which EG dispatched its products, but that was out of sight behind a hill. There was a thick industrial stench in the sir.

 

Uncertainly, she got out, last of the passengers to do so. There had only been three others in the car, a tired eyed black woman and two black kids about twelve. Litter crunched under her sandals as she stepped onto the platform. Before her extended a street of gray buildings. Signs here and there -identified small manufacturing companies making sanitary tampons, plastic cups, door-furniture. At the end of the street was a scrap yard where a tall crane was picking up metal on a magnet. The only person visible was pushing a hand-truck laden with garbage-cans, a sour-faced black.

 

She hesitated, glancing around. Nearby was a sales kiosk offering candies, cigarettes, and porn. Its display window was of the old-fashioned intermittent-mirror type, and she caught sight of herself in it as it went into the reflecting phase. She stared with annoyance at her image. Her hair was exquisite, honey-gold; her face was oval, though not so perfect as to be dull. But there was an ill-tempered twist to her mouth, which she detested, yet which she could not help. She felt so furious with the world today.

 

Of course, she had come straight out of the apartment in what she happened to be wearing: play top, shorts, sandals, and literally nothing else. It had been sheer luck that she'd had a pocketful of change. It would have been unbearable to go back for her wrist-purse.

 

Then the window cleared, and she realized she was being stared at by the owner of the kiosk, a fat middle-aged black. A tooth was missing in the center of his grin. She spun on her heel at random and started down the street. She was just a little afraid. Yet the sensation was somehow stimulating. She felt she needed to do something terrible. Something that would shock the living shit out of her parents. Anything.

 

The concept took root in her mind, without words. It had the appeal of the suicide's note: "You'll be sorry for what you made me dot"

 

And they had made her do it, hadn't they? Grandmother

 

 

with her wood-rasp voice and her endless condemnation of young people today-well, she'd endured that all her life. But add in the nuisance of this newly arrived Canadian, Holtzer, and the information that her abominable brother Peter was going to be crowded into her bedroom they got on each other's nerves, and he was a reeky waster, and he'd left it until this morning to admit that he'd overspent his allowance and couldn't afford a hotel while Holtzer was here . . Not that it was Holtzer's fault, of course; he seemed rather nice, with his square face, curly brown hair, and ready smile. But-damnation! If there was only one guest-room, and Grandmother was in it, and Dad insisted on accommodating this Canuck, why couldn't he move in with Mom? Lots of married people had gone back to sharing a room!

 

When she suggested it, her mother had given her a long, steady stare. "I shouldn't mention that to your father if I were you," she'd said.

 

"Well, aren't you married?" had been Lora's caustic retort. And that began the row that drove her out.

 

She realized suddenly that while she was brooding, a trio of young blacks had appeared at the end of the street, near the scrap yard gate, and they'd spotted her. For an instant she was minded to rash back on the platform; the car was warming up for its return trip. Then she realized this was just the kind of thing she was after. She'd never had a black boy, let alone three of them at once.

 

 

Pausing after getting out of the hovercar, Magda Hansen looked down at the narrow concrete landing outside her apartment. There was a woman there-smartly dressed in dark blue, age indeterminate, heavily made-up, obviously wealthy and more likely to live in Lakonia than Cowville-who was wavering back and forth before the door. She poised her hand to press the bell, drew back, looked at the card saying CONSULTATIONS, made to turn away, and went through the whole cycle again.

 

Magda hoped fervently she would give up. But she didn't.

 

"Are you-are you Magda Hansen?" the woman said hesitantly, seeing her come down the stairs from the hoverhalt.

 

"Yes." Magda shook back her coarse black hair and

 

felt in her pocket for her key, the twin of Danty's. "Why?.

 

 

"Well-uh-I'm Fenella Clarke. Avice Donnelly said I should come to you. She says you're absolutely wonderful."

 

"Kind of her," Magda sighed. "So what do you want?"

 

"Help." was the pathetic answer. "And I don't know what kind." She began to twist a platinum wedding-band around and around on her finger. "It's-it's the way it was with Avice. more or less."

 

It would be. But Magda kept her face straight.

 

"So I thought-uh-I ought to talk to you, too."

 

"Very well. Shall we say Monday at three?'"

 

Mrs. Clarke's face fell. She said. "I was hoping . . ."

 

"No I'm sorry," Magda cut in. "You must know from Avice that I can't work a one-day miracle, and I have someone waiting inside right now."

 

"But my husband . . . 1 Fluttering her hands. "You see. he's gone to the West Coast, but he comes back Monday!"

 

"He wouldn't approve?"

 

A helpless head-shake. Yes, that figured. If he was typical he'd say at once, "You're not to waste my money on a quack!"

 

"Perhaps you'd rather leave it until the next time he's away," Magda suggested. "Otherwise Monday really is the earliest I can offer."

 

"Very well," Mrs. Clarke sighed, and turned away.

 

 

Danty was lying on one of the couches, eyes closed. Thinking him asleep. she entered quietly, but he heard her and called a greeting. She blew him a kiss and headed for the shower-stall. As she began to hang her clothes on a chair, she said, "How was it, Danty? Was it right?"

 

"Too right," he answered, frowning. "A man came out of the sea. And there was another man waiting to take him away in a car."

 

"Wasn't that what you expected?"

 

"Yell" Danty sat upright with a jerk. "Yes, exactly! Magda, it's getting so accurate, I'm worried!"

 

"You'd be a lot more worried if you'd gone to that much trouble for something that didn't work out," Magda said, and stepped into the shower. For the next couple

 

 

of minutes the noise of water was too loud for conversation; besides, another hovercar pulled up and the building trembled.

 

Then she emerged, wrapped a towel around her, and sat down facing him. She said, "I guess you've had enough time to make sense of what you saw?"

 

"Not really," Danty muttered. "What do you think?"

 

"An East Bloc agent being landed?"

 

' "In a reserved area? Under the nose of radar and nuclear missiles? Jesus why? For all their talk of security, the borders aren't tight-why not bring an agent in through Alaska, or Canada? The Cubans send theirs in through Mexico, don't they? Hell, the guy came out of the biggest submarine I ever saw, and if I-"

 

He stopped dead in mid-sentence. Magda tensed.

 

"Go on!" she encouraged.

 

He gave her a blank, helpless stare. "I . . . oh, I think sometimes I shall go insane! Do you know what I did? When I got through the fence, I-I felt out the equipment. I found the central switch-house, this little round thing made of that artificial ruby they use over in Lakonia, and I sneaked in and turned everything off. It's sort of complicated, but when you do it in a certain order .... Well, never mind; I can't explain the details.

 

"But when I came away I left the site turned off!"

 

"Then they'll find out!" Magda exclaimed. "They service those sites all the time-you see the helicopters taking off from the airport!"

 

"Yes, of course," Danta said, staring miserably down at his hands. "And I can feel that they'll find out soon. I had a reason for doing what I did, I'm sure of that. But I'll be radiated if I can remember what it was!"

 

"You're shaking, baby" Magda said. "Here. Let me wind you down." She rose and began to strip off her towel.

 

"Uh-uh," Danty sighed. "It goes on."

 

"What comes next?"

 

"I'm not sure. I only feel I have to be somewhere-out by the scrap yards on the west end of town. I'll know the spot when I get there." He checked his watch. "In fact it's about time I got started."

 

"Have some pot, at least-or a trank, if you're really in a hurry!"

 

"No, I daren't risk it. I have to be as keyed up as I can."

 

She stared at him for a long moment. Before she could say anything else, however, he had read her mind.

 

"You think I'm going to burn myself out, don't you?"

 

She gave a nod. A very slight nod, as though limiting the gesture could soften the truth behind it.

 

"Yes: Yes, I think so too," Danty muttered. "But not doing what I feel I have to do-that would be worse." A faint smile followed the words. "But thank you anyhow. If there wasn't someone I could talk to, someone, who cares about me, I'd have gone insane long ago."

 

He rose, stretching. "Although it's arguable, I guess," he added, "that I already am crazy. Poor Magdal"

 

"What?"

 

"'Poor Magdal' I said. Landed with one case for which you can't see any hopeful outcome!"

 

She pondered that, then shook her head. "No, that's not true. You may burn yourself out, that's a fact. But it would be a very special kind of burning. Goodbye, Danty."

 

 

 

"What ch'waiting fo'?" Potatohead muttered, staring at the addle cock blonde with the bare chowbag. He nudged ;, Josh Tatum.

 

"Poke me one more," Josh said, "I cut out yo' Idaho eyes. She walking this way? She climbing walls? Shee-it."

 

 

Josh wasn't a reb and if you'd called him one he'd have carved you for it. They were tight on guns in Cowville but knives, everybody had knives. He was slick from neck to a heel in plastic blacker than his skin, and shinier, and his scalp fuzzed an eighty-eight force-grown natural. Same with other, Shark Bance. -Potatohead was shaved and ashamed. But something wrong with the follicles.

 

"Lakonia," Shark said under his breath.

 

"Where the shit else? 1 know her."

 

"What?"

 

"Name? Name? Piss her name. Peg it, peg it! Chow bare, zip-crotch shorts-eyes, use yo' eyes!"

 

 

"Pegged," Potatohead said. "Po' li'1 rich, due fo' kindaha surprise." He grabbed Shark's hand and kissed it.

 

"Kill it! Wannah-a see that? She grunt pig! Spread an' bar-a walk. Makun quick!"

 

 

"Iota scrap yard?" Shark inquired.

 

"Scrap yard, yea."

 

 

In spite of her resolution Lora felt- nervous as she approached the young blacks. There was something so statue-like about them: all three tall, all three dead-faced, all three in that strange tight muscle-hugging plastic .... She liked to feel a boy's skin before she let him unzip the crotch of her shorts, which was why she preferred `: the beach, or in winter the dansoteks where it was always

 

too hot for heavy clothing.

 

But this was the thing she had set her mind to, so she kept on going.

 

The nearest of them, with the shaven head, stepped into . her path. She smiled sunnily at him and said, "Hil"

 

He looked at her with eyes as dull as pebbles. Then he

 

"No, I daren't risk it. I have to be as keyed up as I can."

 

She stared at him for a long moment. Before she could say anything else, however, he had read her mind.

 

"You think I'm going to burn myself out, don't you?"

 

She gave a nod. A very slight nod, as though limiting the gesture could soften the truth behind it.

 

"Yes: Yes, I think so too," Danty muttered. "But not doing what I feel I have to do-that would be worse." A faint smile followed the words. "But thank you anyhow. If there wasn't someone I could talk to, someone, who cares about me, I'd have gone insane long ago."

 

He rose, stretching. "Although it's arguable, I guess," he added, "that I already am crazy. Poor Magdal"

 

"What?"

 

"'Poor Magdal' I said. Landed with one case for which you can't see any hopeful outcome!"

 

She pondered that, then shook her head. "No, that's not true. You may burn yourself out, that's a fact. But it would be a very special kind of burning. Goodbye, Danty."

 

 

. vu .

 

"What ch'waiting for" Potatohead muttered, staring at the addle cock blonde with the bare chowbag. He nudged Josh Tatum.

 

"Poke me one more," Josh said, "I cut out yo' Idaho eyes. She walking this way? She climbing walls? Shee-it."

 

Josh wasn't a reb and if you'd called him one he'd have carved you for it. They were tight on guns in Cowville but knives, everybody had knives. He was slick from neck to heel in plastic blacker than his skin, and shinier, and his scalp fuzzed an eighty-eight force-grown natural. Same with other, Shark Bance. -Potatohead was shaved and ashamed. But something wrong with the follicles.

 

"Lakonia," Shark said under his breath.

 

"Where the shit else? 1 know her."

 

"What?"

 

"Name? Name? Piss her name. Peg it, peg it! Chow bare, zip-crotch shorts-eyes, use yo' eyes!"

 

"Pegged," Potatohead said. "Po' li'1 rich, due fo' kindah- F a surprise." He grabbed Shark's hand and kissed it.

 

"Kill it! Wannah-a see that? She grunt pigl Spread an' y bar-a walk. Makun quick!" '

 

"Inta scrap yard?" Shark inquired.

 

"Scrap yard, yea."

 

 

In spite of her resolution Lora felt nervous as she `

 

approached the young blacks. There was something so

 

statue-like about them: all three tall, all three dead-faced,.

 

all three in that strange tight muscle-hugging plastic ....

 

She liked to feel a boy's skin before she let him unzip--,,

 

the crotch of her shorts, which was why she preferred

 

the beach, or in winter the dansoteks where it was always

 

too hot for heavy clothing.

 

But this was the thing she had set her mind to, so she

 

kept on going.

 

The nearest of them, with the shaven head, stepped into ~a her path. She smiled sunnily at him and said, "Hil"

 

He looked at her with eyes as dull as pebbles. Then he :y

 

reached out and touched, not her bare arm, but the fabric of her playtop. Meantime the one .beside him, marginally the biggest, examined her critically from top to toe.

 

"In there," he said after a couple of heartbeats, and jerked his head towards the scrap yard.

 

She was taken aback. This wasn't what she'd expected. There should be-well, a bit of chat. Banter. Joking. Some sort of preliminaries)

 

But they had fallen in around her like military police escorting a deserter, and were forcing her towards the scrap yard gate. There was a gatekeeper's hut. There was no one in it.

 

Huge clanging noises, and a sulphur stink. Horrified, she found herself shut in by walls of ruined cars rusty bathtubs, mounds of cans crushed into polychrome lumps, while underfoot she walked on painful glass.

 

"I-" she began to say, ,and they rounded a corner among the piles of metal and were out of sight of anyone.

 

"Value her," the tallest black said, and the bald one confronted her and took her wrist. He inspected her watch.

 

"Saw, Josh?" the third said. "No purse!"

 

"Saw," the tallest said. "Zip up, Shark. Well, Potatohead?"

 

"Piss and shit! Japanese! Worth around eight-fifty!"

 

"Foreign, um? Ah-hunhl Anna clothes?"

 

"Three-fo' hunnad inna sto'. Top getcha maybe fifty. Shorts widda zip-crotch, dustin'-rag."

 

"Takun fo' pock't. I see coin. Strippun, addle." As though by magic a long knife appeared in Josh's hand and touched Lora's bosom with a cold caress.

 

"But-but what . . . ?" Words choked her. It wasn't that she didn't understand the order (addle: adolescent; they said that in Lakonia, too). She didn't understand the situation.

 

Slowly, and with immaculate diction, Josh said, "Strip, cock. We don't want to get blood on those clothes."

 

She stared at him for a terrible empty moment, thinking: cock means Caucasian, and that's only used by .

 

It dawned on her at long last what they meant to do. Rob her, and kill her, and hide her body among the scrap.

 

 

"Knahf, blabboh. Droppun knahf."

 

A voice from nowhere. Josh whirled around, eyes vastly

 

 

wide. He, they, Lora spotted the speaker almost in the same moment: high on top of the pile of scrap overlooking them, a dark face peering down, cheek cuddled close to the significant tube of a rifle.

 

"Knahfl" the voice repeated. "O' takun ow-yo' han' wiffa slug, blabboh!"

 

There was an eternity of frozen silence. All Lora could think of was that only one black man could call another blabboh-"black boy"--and survive.

 

Then Josh, mouth curled as though he had bitten a lemon, opened his fingers and let the knife fall.

 

"Addle cock!" the stranger said sharply. "Back slo'tutri pesses-so'sa fahn. Narrunda co'nah-fahn againl"

 

As in a dream, Lora reacted to the half-understood order, backing around the corner of the stack of scrap.

 

"Okay," the gunman said, and then added, more loudly and with a forced blabboh intonation: "Ali seeahl Slongzah seeah-Ah c'nitchah! Mango blabboh, mango!"

 

A gesture with his rifle. And they went.

 

 

Half a minute later, while Lora was sobbing into her hands, a tug on her arm. "Move it!"

 

Gone the blabboh accent, but the same voice. She opened her eyes to see her rescuer-lean, young, dark, not a as black as her captors but black nonetheless-tossing his j

 

rifle aside. °a

 

"But they might come after us!" she cried.

 

"Sure) I said move it, didn't I?" Catching her by the

 

arm and literally dragging her along.

 

"But the gun-1"

 

"Not worth a fart. Picked out of a stack of them over '~ there. Military surplus. Empty! Will you move?"

 

He led her stumbling through the awful man-made desert of the scrap yard, to a gap in the perimeter fence, down a narrow alley . . . . By that time she was gasping for breath, and barely registered where he was taking her. Then around a corner, and after a quick survey of the street in both directions-just such a street as she'd emerged on to from the hoverhalt-at a quieter pace for another few hundred yards, his arm around her waist now, his hand companionable on her bare skin.

 

"It's over now," he said, close to her ear. "But you got a scare, that's for sure. You over the legal?"

 

"Uh . . ." For a moment she didn't understand, although

 

the coarse blabboh accent had faded from his speech and he was speaking precisely as might any of her friends. Then she saw a bar-sign ahead. Yes, a drink. A stiff shot of-anything. She said so. Her voice not only sounded but felt like someone else's.

 

In the bar, a couple of black men at the counter gave them a dull once-over, then reverted to their liquor. He brought her brandy, and beer for himself. Sitting down opposite her across a table with a chipped plastic top, he said, "Drink it. Then breathe as deeply as you can, ten times. I'll wait."

 

It worked, somehow. Maybe, it was the confidence in his tone. Her heart, which had been slamming to be let out through her ribs, slowed to a more normal rate, and she was able to look at her new friend properly. Some tune she didn't recognize battered her ears; she had only just realized music was playing, As though the episode in the scrap yard had not happened, she found herself thinking: Yes, 1 hoped to meet a black boy like this, tough, lean, crooked smile, graceful-moving . . .

 

And-?

 

There was a stern reproach in his eyes. He said, "When you come here, learn to pick your kicks."

 

"I . . ." She swallowed hard. "I didn't think they . . ."

 

"Yea, yea," he cut in. "But-shit! None of them three looked twice at a girl in their lives, 'cep maybe to peel her down!"

 

She looked miserably at her empty glass and nodded.

 

He gave his crooked smile again and patted her hand. "So okay, no harm done. Just don't make the same mistake twice. By the way, my name's Danty."

 

"Mine's Lora," she said distractedly. "Lora Turpin. Uh-"

 

But Danty had tensed. He leaned forward. "Not Turpin of Energetics General?"

 

"Why . . . why, yes. Do you-?"

 

"Know him? Shit, no. Heard of him, though." And in the manner of an afterthought: "Friends of mine work at EG."

 

Which she had imagined to be all of Cowville, the building to incorporate the city. She touched her bosom where the point of Josh's knife had rested, and a shiver racked her.

 

"You not? No? What do you do?"

 

 

"My best to be myself," Danty murmured, and sipped beer.

 

Recognition signals. Landmarks. Like knowing (because a TV program had said so with authority) that only queer blacks close to farming stock called white teenage girls "addle cocks." She said explosively, "Are you a reb?"

 

"I guess I wouldn't cross the road to contradict you."

 

She stared at him, and went on staring. Now and then, the other side of New Lake, the son or daughter of some wealthy family put on the reb-style pose. and that was where it stopped-just a pose. According to the social history she had been drilled through in school. every generation for centuries had had its rebs, clear back to the wandering students of the Middle Ages. But something kept on going, fed from a source she couldn't understand. Once, in an essay, she'd spoken of a humanistic counterpart of divine discontent-the phrase borrowed from a book not on the curriculum-and she'd been marked down two grades for saying it.

 

"You?" he was asking. "You in college?"

 

"Uh . . ." Remembering with an effort. "I go to college in the fall. Just finished school."

 

And what would it be like, there at Bennington?

 

An odd feeling, as though she were two people at once. At home she had been allowed to drink since she was fourteen, so it couldn't be the brandy that had hit her. It must be shock. She half wanted to cry, and half wanted to laugh hysterically.

 

"And what brought you here?" Danty said.

 

So she told him: words flooding out, tumbling over each other, confusing the argument she wanted to frame, until she was certain he must think her mentally deranged. Yet he sat there, and nodded now and then, and heard her out.

 

He said eventually, "You like to night-ride, I guess."

 

"Oh, yes!" (Black sky, black road, the universe condensed to a pattern of lights, the ever-present expectation -hope?-of "instant death": just add blood.)

 

"Yes." Nodding. "It's the idea of going somewhere. To look for something you might not recognize if you found it. Only the places you most want to go, they won't let you."

 

She was about to say that was exactly what she felt,

 

when she realized with a pang of shame that she'd clean forgotten to tell him something very important.

 

"Danty! Oh, Jesus! I didn't thank you."

 

"Not to worry."

 

"But-1" Now she was shaking all over again, from a different cause. "But you must think I'm awful! And it was fantastic what you did, really incredible Danty, you're kind of a terrific personal"

 

"I'm myself," he said, and drained his glass.

 

"But--oh, shit!" Well, it was the only way she knew to say thanks properly, so with her hand hovering over her crotch-zip: "Do you have somewhere we could . . . ? You know!"

 

"Place but not time. Thanks all the same. Shall I show you to a hoverhalt?" Making to rise.

 

No, it can't stop here! 1 mean: SAVED MY LIFE! "No, wait" Mind racing. And then inspiration. Oh, yes! lust the right bit to blow the minds, turn up with a black reb! "Hey, look! We have this big party for tomorrow night, this real stand-up-and-grin-if-it-chokes-you affair Can I send you an invitation? I mean-oh, Danty, I do want to see you again!"

 

He nodded and settled back in his seat, pulling a pen from his pocket.

 

"Why not? Here's my address, inasmuch as I have one."

 

 

 

Feeling almost ashamed of herself because she hadn't been this excited about a party for years. Lora took ,` special care before her mirror, selecting her best makeup and perfume, then deliberately putting on a dress her father hated. a harlequin rig of lozenge-shaped bits of cloth tacked together only at the corners, which showed as much of her as it concealed.

 

No doubt that meant that some of Dad's friends would try to feel her up. and she didn't intend to put out for reeky old turds like them. but if Danty did show . . .

 

"Here's my address, inasmuch as I have one." Wow.

 

The house-phone rang. It was her mother.

 

"Lora honey. would you fix me a drink?"

 

She stamped her small foot. "Can't you send Estelle?"

 

"Well, she's fixing my hair right now."

 

"Oh . . . 1 Oh, all right." In a sullen tone. But she was all through dressing, and Peter might show up any minute, . so getting out of the room was not a bad idea-

 

And here he came, panicking starting to throw his outdoor clothes all over everywhere as usual. She headed promptly for the door.

 

"Don't let me drive you out, sister mine!" he exclaimed.

 

"You saw me take my pants off before. didn't you?".

 

"Going to fix Mom a drink." Lora said, sweeping by.

 

"Me too!" Peter cried. "I'm in a rush!"

 

"That's your fault," Lora snapped. and strode away.

 

The nearest liquor cabinet was in her father's room. The room was empty. She mixed a gin atomic for her mother and a weak Bloody Mary for herself, and went ` next door where Mrs. Turpin sat naked at her mirror while her French-Canadian maid set out accessories to go with her radion gown.

 

"Thanks, honey." she said in a strangled tone due to the need to let her lip-shade dry without wrinkling. "Put a straw in it for me, Estelle!"

 

"Mind if I drink mine here?" Lora said. "If I go back in my room Peter will grab it. And by the way!"

 

"Yes?"

 

"You couldn't arrange to have his drinks watered tonight, could you? He's bad enough sober. When he's drunk-Christi"

 

"Oh, he won't try and rape you, if that's what you mean," her mother said calmly.

 

"Mom! That's beyond joking" Lora gasped.

 

"Unfortunately it is. But the fact stands: You're a girl. And, come to think of it, you seem to want everyone to be absolutely certain. Are you seriously going to wear that bunch of rags, if you can call it wearing?"

 

"Why not?" With a gulp of her drink.

 

"Well, your father-but I guess that's why you put it on. More important, I asked Rev. Powell to be here sharp on time, and I don't want him to see you dressed like a whore."

 

"Don't make me laugh He made a pass at me last time he was here, the slimy slug"

 

"Well, he doesn't pretend to be above temptation that's one reason people like him. But don't let me hear you call him a slug again, understand? Or I'll forget you're eighteen and whop you blue. I won't have you badmouthing a minister. And one more thing Don't spend the evening like you usually do, moping around some plastic headed boy. Mix Talk to people-"

 

"I'll spend the whole radiated night with anyone I choose," Lora said, and slammed the door.

 

 

After that, she didn't really want to join the line-up at the entrance to the party hall. That was a room about sixty feet by eighty, shared between their apartment and the next; there was one on each floor of the tower, and doors off it were unlocked according to which family were the hosts.

 

But she was afraid of missing Danty if she didn't.

 

So she waited until her father was busy greeting an early guest, then darted into a spot beside Holtzer, thinking that even if Dad did want to slang her for wearing this dress he'd hardly do so in a stranger's hearing. She was right, and escaped with a mere scowl.

 

Holtzer, on the other hand, looked her over thoughtfully and at leisure, and said at last, "You look lovely, Lora."

 

"Well, thank you," she murmured, because he'd said it

 

 

in a tone that made her believe it. She relaxed-but only for a heartbeat or two, because here suddenly came Peter in a hideous party-suit of yellow lace and stinking to the sky. He rushed to his mother, lying about how he hadn't been able to get ready sooner because his reeky sister was underfoot, but Mrs. Turpin was used to that and froze him fast.

 

"It's your preening and primping that takes the time!" she snapped. "Get yourself a drink and shut up!"

 

Instantly furious, Peter was about to scream back at her, but that was the moment when Rev. Powell arrived: a fine-looking man with a commanding presence that had made him the highest-paid TV evangelist in history. And of course, Peter pounced on him.

 

Well, that's one way of avoiding the two people 1 least want on my back . . . . Lora sighed, and found Holtzer looking at her again. This time he winked, and she grinned back. Good to know there was one other person here who wasn't dazzled by this parade of notables, these generals, admirals, senators, TV stars, and other slugs. Plus, naturally, the whole of the EG board.

 

But she had to be polite, for the time being.

 

 

The crush increased tremendously within minutes. Even in Lakonia, people had got out of the habit of arriving at parties late and staying late. Going home after midnight wasn't as risky here as in New York, Washington, or L.A.-where most parties nowadays were held in the afternoon-but the pattern was contagious.

 

Abruptly the racket of conversation dwindled to a buzz, and Sheklov, surprised, glanced towards the door. Two men with blue jowls and stern expressions were coming in. They ignored the host and hostess, but walked silently around the assembly, sharp eyes piercing and probing.

 

"Well" someone he didn't know said beside Sheklov. "So Prexy is coming!"

 

"How do you-?" Sheklov began, and then put two and two together. "Oh. Secret Service?" A chill touched his nape.

 

"Yes," the stranger said importantly. "Those are Crashaw and Levitt. They're alleged to have by heart the entire CIA and FBI files on subversives. See how tense the Turpin girl is? Worried in case they tell Prexy not to come in"

 

Lora caught that and glanced over her shoulder with a scowl. "Fool" she thought. There was someone she was far more concerned about than Prexy-and here he was!

 

She had had vague visions of him arriving with a dozen reb friends, leaping with a whoop and a holler into the middle of this stuffy crowd and blowing every mind for miles. But, instead, he was quietly taking in the scene from the threshold, neatly if not expensively dressed in wine-red, not seeming at all out of place except that his complexion was the darkest in view.

 

He saved my life she thought again, savoring the solidity of the concept, and ran to kiss him. Several people noticed. They were meant to.

 

 

Sheklov was staying close to Turpin. That suited his ru1e as a stranger who knew almost no one, but also it was safer, because although his briefing had been thorough, he was not yet primed with current gossip.

 

He was impressed. Turpin's assimilation was unbelievably complete. People ,were present who made the headlines simply by catching a head-cold. And even those Secret Service agents had looked Turpin in the face, never suspecting that he had been born in the other Georgia-that he had grown up answering to the name of Yashvili-that it had taken four years' planning and three deaths to turn him into Lewis Raymond Turpin, known inevitably as "Dick" .- .

 

Sheklov suddenly recalled something that Bratcheslavsky had repeated many times during his briefing: "Don't let his assimilation put you off. Bear in mind it saved the world°

 

True enough. Every circuit in "the world's most perfect defensive system" had been known to Turpin for years. He didn't sabotage the installations, or even delay them that wasn't his job. All he did was pass the news on.

 

Yes, by doing that he'd saved the world. But Sheklov thought of an alien ship sparkling near Pluto, and wondered with a shiver: For how long?

 

 

An' outburst of clapping, and there he was, clasping his hands above his head like a boxer. A photographer accompanying him snapped a shot for tomorrow's papers. He was a large man, broad-faced, broad-shouldered, broad-grinning. As Turpin approached, beaming, he

 

 

dropped his hands and changed his grin for his look of sincere pleasure, and the photographer snapped again.

 

Sheklov hung back, watching intently. A dozen people had actually entered the hall, but all bar Prexy had expertly effaced themselves. That wasn't hard; guests were pressing forward, determined to shake the famous hand or at least to be told hello. Sheklov had heard about this phenomenon, but until now had barely believed it. Yes, they did worship this figurehead, this waxwork, this mindless creation of a skilled team of Navy publicists!

 

Don't they know what's been done to them? Or is it that they don't care?

 

Now Turpin was signaling him, and he had to move forward, other guests reluctantly permitting him passage.

 

"Proxy I'd like you to meet a friend of mine from Canada, Don Holtzer here!"

 

Prexy was instantly Prexy-to-the-nth. "Dick, any friend of yours is a friend of mine, and any friend of mine is a friend of the U.S.A., Mr. Holtzer! Or rather: Don!"

 

He offered his hand, beaming. Sheklov took it. The photographer snapped, snapped again, and glanced up. "Say, Mr. Turpin! That young lady's your daughter? Like to have her in a shot or two as well, a spot of glam!"

 

The scene seemed to freeze. At length Turpin said, "Lora?"

 

She came forward unwillingly, holding her boy-friend tight by the hand. "Only if he's in the shot too," she said.

 

"And why not?" A boom from Prexy. "Here, young lady A kind of parable for us all, isn't it? rve never been able to hold against them the resentment some of our darker fellow-citizens feel-justifiably, if you look at the historical record. I hope and pray for the day when we shall resolve our disagreements peacefully. And for you and your compatriots, Don, the same thing holds. One's aware there have been differences, one's aware that relations between our countries are not as happy as they have been right now, but bonds of honest trade still forge links between our lands, and where business binds, friendship follows, sooner or later-"

 

Meantime he was putting his arm around Lora and hopefully trying to insert his fingers through the slots of her dress, but she obviously was not one of the many who felt it a privilege to be touched by Prexy. The fact that she wriggled away, however, did not disconcert him in the

 

slightest. Snap. He altered. his pose with practiced skill. Snap again. Sheklov stood numb, wearing a feeble grin. He was terribly aware of the eyes of Cashew and Levitt fixed on him, saying without words: "We'll know you next time we see you."

 

Snap once more, and finished. As though a spell had been lifted, people started moving about and talking as loudly as before, while Turpin found Prexy a drink and ushered him towards the densest part of the crowd, his favorite spot. Watching him go, Sheklov heard again that slick alliterative catch-phrase-"where business binds, friendship follows"-and felt briefly haunted by the ghosts of a million Asian peasants.

 

He realized abruptly that he was being stared at. By the young man Lora had insisted on pulling into the photograph with her, the lean black. the only black here. Blacks didn't make it to Lakonia, he'd been told.

 

The instant he met that dark gaze, it flicked away. But it left a dismayingly deep dent, for no apparent reason, in his hitherto impermeable composure.

 

 

(r)X

 

 

After that music began, and Sheklov had to circulate. Almost at once he had an alarming encounter with a TV producer named Ambow, who was eager for praise of some historical-drama series he had made. Sheklov, not having seen the show, had no opinion at first, but by the time Ambow found a more promising victim he had a very firm opinion indeed, The series was decadent bourgeois non-representational escapism of the worst conceivable kind. A man like Ambow couldn't possibly create anything better.

 

Indeed, this whole function had a curious quasi-historical air. The tunes being played, for example, dated back fifteen, even twenty-five years, and in the identical style of their originals. The clothes, too, struck him as subtly behind the times-what you might have seen at a Kremlin reception a decade ago. Growing more and more depressed, he drifted from one group to another, and heard lectures on the spics ("A billion bucks we spent on aid, and the Cubans put 'em in their pocket!"), on the gooks ("All those American boys who died trying to save them from the Reds!"), and the black Africans ("Can't trust anyone over there except the Boers, and I don't think we do enough for them!") . . .

 

1 didn't believe it, he thought. But it's true!

 

He wondered whether someone like Ambow, working with material from the past, recognized the analogies you could draw, one-for-one, with other places and other times. And concluded that if anyone did, he must prefer to ignore them. It made him desperately sad.

 

Eventually, passing the half-open door that led into the living-room of the Turnips' apartment, he heard a familiar sound.

 

"Well, well!" he murmured under his teeth. "Prokofievl"

 

He debated for a moment whether it was in character for Holtzer to like "The Love of Three Oranges," and decided that that was irrelevant. Shrugging, he pushed open the door. Beyond, the lights were down to a dim glow, but

 

he had been in here earlier today and thought he knew the layout well enough not to turn them up. He headed for a chair facing the player. It was not until he almost fell over an outstretched leg that he realized the room's long lounge, end-on to the door, was occupied by Lora and her dark-skinned friend. She was crawling all over him, but although his hands were inside her dress, fondling her back, he didn't seem to be acting very passionately.

 

"Sorry" he murmured, and made to withdraw.

 

And backed straight into a tall, good-looking man with a shock of sleek gray hair, who in the same moment snapped the lights to full.

 

"Oh, Loral" he exclaimed. "Do you know what's become of your brother"

 

"Shit, piss, and damnation," Lora said in a weary tone, and rolled off Danty, flinging her legs angrily to the floor. "No, I don't I'm not my brother's keeper, thank God"

 

The handsome man reddened, and Sheklov placed him; he'd been pointed out as a minister of religion. Powers? No, Powell, that was it: Maurice Powell.

 

"Hey, Don" Lora added, seeing that Shekldv was on the point of leaving the room. "Don't run off I"

 

Sheklov halted on the threshold. There was a pause. Eventually Powell gave an insincere grin and went out.

 

"Oh, that slug!" Lora said, falling back on the couch. Danty had twisted around into a sitting position and reached for a glass on a nearby table. "Put the lights down again, Don, and have a chair."

 

"I don't want to interrupt " Sheklov began.

 

"Zip it!" she interrupted with a harsh laugh. "That's one of his lines Know what he did to me, last party he came to here? Walked right into my bedroom where I was making out with somebody, sat down, and started playing with himself while he watched Christ, he makes my skin crawl"

 

She seized and lit a cigarette from the table.

 

"Still, as long as he knows you're in here, he won't come back. Or with luck he'll find Peter. Made for each other, those two. . . , Shit, I forgot. Danty, this is Don Holtzer."

 

"We almost met," Danty said with a crooked grin. "In the pic with Prexy."

 

"Yes, of course," Lora muttered. "Jesus, Danty, how does that hit you?"

 

 

"Like dry ice." Danty set his glass aside again. "You're from Canada, aren't you, Don?"

 

On edge for some indefinable reason-maybe because of the searching quality of the stare Danty had given him before-Sheklov nodded. "Yes, I'm in timber up there. Manitoba."

 

That much was absolutely safe to say. There were scores of Canadian firms ready to give Russian agents cover, and he had a genuine deal to conclude.

 

"I'd like to go north some time," Lora said. She realized that her left nipple was showing through one of the gaps in her dress, and tugged a lozenge of cloth back into place. "There's something rather cultural about Canada, I think."

 

Sheklov blinked, experiencing the sensation of being displaced backward in time more acutely than ever. How long since kulturny ceased to be a fad-word Back There? Ten years? Twenty?

 

"What makes you say that?" he inquired, honestly curious.

 

"Well-uh-its links with European tradition. Speaking French there, for one thing." Lora's answer had a seizing at-straws sound. "Mother's maid Estelle is from Montreal, and she speaks French. I think it's a romantic language."

 

Obviously, having recovered from her annoyance at failing to get all the way with Danty, she was sliding into a regular role. Now she added in a wistful tone. "I've often dreamed of standing on the Champs-Elys&s and watching the sun go down behind the Arc de Triumphal"

 

"You'd have a long wait," Danty said.

 

She glared at him. "Shit, you know what I mean!"

 

But Sheklov's nape had suddenly begun to prickle. Danty had uttered that statement with authority. And it was quite correct; if you were standing in the Champs-Elyses, the sun couldn't set behind the Arc de Triumphed. He said, before Lora could go on, "You've been there, have you?"

 

"How would I get a passport?" Danty grunted, and turned to his drink again.

 

Yet there had been assurance in his tone . . .

 

Still, Lora was talking again. "Have you traveled much, Don? It's easier for Canadians, isn't it?"

 

"Well, I guess so," Sheklov said, mentally reviewing Holtzer's life-story. "But me, I haven't been around too much. We're one of the few countries left with a frontier,

 

you know. Pushing north instead of west. That gives us a lot of elbow-room. So we-"

 

The door. which Powell had closed on leaving, slammed wide, and there in the opening was Peter. Obviously he had been drinking heavily; he was flushed and unsteady on his feet.

 

"Well, well" he exclaimed. "That's so sweet! My sister and her johnny reb snuggled up!"

 

"Zip your mouth. you reeky turd," Lora said, and twisted on the couch so her back was towards her brother.

 

"Hey!" Sheklov exclaimed. half-rising. A look of instant fury had appeared on Peter's face, and he seemed about to launch himself bodily at Lora.

 

"Oh, fade away" she told him over her shoulder.

 

"Peter?" a richly resonant voice said from outside. Yes, it was Powell back again. "Ah, there you are" He touched the boy companionably on the arm, and left his hand there as Peter stepped back against him.

 

"I'm going to make you pay for that!" he snarled at Lora.

 

"Peter!" Powell reproved. "That's no way to talk to-"

 

"So how would you like to be called a reeky turd?"

 

"Oh, sticks and stones, you know, sticks and stones" Having located Peter again, Powell seemed to have had his good humor restored too. He eased the boy into a chair and sat on its arm, his hand still where he had first put it. "I must say the party's going splendidly, isn't it? Are you enjoying yourself, Lora?"

 

"In the company of my johnny reb, yes, thank you."

 

"My dear girl!" Powell said, shocked. "That's not a terra to bandy around lightly, you know. To call someone a reb is to accuse him of being a wastrel, whose actions strike at the very foundations of our cherished heritage"

 

And Danty glanced up and nodded: mm-hm!

 

That threw Powell completely. He almost gaped for a moment, and then added, making a fast comeback, "Though we must not condemn too harshly. It's not for us to sit in judgment, after all."

 

"Except on ourselves," Danty murmured, and packed a dozen personal implications into the comment. Powell got them all. He tugged at his clerical collar as though it were suddenly too tight.

 

"Very true. I must remember that phrase. 'Sermons in stones . . .' And we're told that stony ground will be the

 

 

lot of some of our seed. Tell me, young man, are you lapsed from the brotherhood of your church?"

 

"I guess so," Danty said indifferently.

 

"Shame! But we mustn't lose hope for you, must we? 'There is more joy in heaven-' And so on."

 

Maliciously Danty said, "And so on-what?"

 

"'Over one sinner that repenteth,"' Powell answered automatically. Then he realized he was being needled. He rose.

 

"Pardon me," he said with a half-bow. "I'm a longsuffering man, but I can't endure mockery of my Cloth. Come, Peter. I think I begin to understand your antipathy to your sister."

 

 

The instant the door closed, Lora threw herself at Danty. "Oh, you're wonderful" she cried, and thrust her tongue into his ear. "I'll go find some more drinks-I want to wash away the taste of that slug Won't be long!"

 

And, rising, she added to Sheklov, "What's yours, Don? Whiskey? Rightly"

 

Left alone with Danty, Sheklov thought himself by main force back into the conservatively disapproving role that fitted his pose as a successful Canadian salesman, and said, "You told the minister you're a reb. I hope you were only -uh-needling him?"

 

Danty gave a shrug. "Well, I didn't invent the term, but I find it easy to put on."

 

Sheklov's mind raced. How to strike a balance between ostensible conformity and real interest? Once again he recalled Bratcheslavsky, squatting on the floor in distant Alma-Ata; the old man had said, "Reb! That's a word to bear in mind. There's something going on. From here one can't find out exactly what. Official smog surrounds the reality. Maybe it's just another term for what we used to call stilyagf,'or jet-set. On the other hand, maybe not."

 

He felt suddenly dizzy. Those dark eyes were boring into his again. Could the liquor-? No, of course not. It was far weaker than the 140-proof Polish vodka he . . .

 

From a very great distance a voice that was recognizably Danty's reached him. It was saying, "You want I should join the church Powell runs? Twenty million people watch his sermons every Sunday. That makes him a holy man?"

 

And then the appalling, incredible thing happened. He continued, " 'Those who are full of desires for self-gratification, regarding paradise as their highest goal, and are engaged in many intricate scriptural rites just to secure pleasure and power as the result of their deeds for their future incarnations-' "

 

And Sheklov went on with it. He couldn't help it. He couldn't help it. Cold terror raged through him at every funeral-bell syllable that he muttered, but he heard his own voice, out of control, inexorably finishing the quotation.

 

"'Whose discrimination is stolen away by the love of power and pleasure and who are thus deeply attached therein, for such people it is impossible to obtain either firm conviction or God-consciousness."'

 

Sweat crawled on his palms. The last time he had heard that truth, it had been in another language, in Banaras, and Donald Holtzer had never been to India.

 

That was his cover blown to bits.

 

 

.x.

 

Later, he got extremely drunk. His cover as Holtzer. was proof against that-it had been tried to the limit during training sessions-and anyway the same thing was happening to a lot of other people. starting with Prexy, who fell down at about eleven-thirty and had to be discreetly removed. Then there was a curious blurred interlude involving two women who claimed the right to go to bed with Turpin because their husbands were necking with each other. He didn't follow the logic of that, but it came to blows, and one of them departed with a swollen eye that would call for her best cosmetic skills tomorrow.

 

Yet everyone was shaking Turpin's hand, or kissing his wife, or both, with enormous warmth, and saying, "Marvelous party, Dick You must come to our place very soon!"

 

What's the standard o1 a "good party"? The fact that no one was taken to the hospital?

 

Danty and Lora had disappeared early. Something about a night-ride? He wasn't sure, but he hoped . . .

 

Do I? He struggled to think through the alcoholic haze, and concluded that he hoped yes. If they were drunk enough to crash into a bridge on the superway, that would rescue him from his terror. In this country for a matter of hours, and already betrayed by his own stupidity! He felt as though he had exposed himself on the street, knowing there was a policeman within shouting distance.

 

Ultimately, a little before the last guests left at one o'clock, he found his way to the room he'd been allotted -normally Peter's-and screamed at a group of three men and two women using the bed. They went away, spitting at him, and he collapsed.

 

 

And then he had to fight his hangover.

 

 

The maid Estelle came silently to him at nine with a remedy of some sort, a pill fizzing in a glass of water. Apparently it was the routine after-party treatment in the

 

Turpin household. Five minutes later he felt a little better. He sat up in bed, sipping the coffee that she had also brought, and used the remote-control to turn down the TV. She had switched it on, without asking him, as she went out. He'd already noticed that these extraordinary people didn't seem to feel that a room was habitable unless either bland music or a TV image were included in the decor.

 

He postponed consideration of his self-revelation to Danty, because, on the one hand, the subject was too complex to analyze while he was hung over, and on the other, although he felt the sky had fallen on him he had not yet been hauled away to a cell.

 

Of course, by his standards this room could have done duty for one; it was larger by a bare meter in each direction than the bed . . . though there were closets built into the wall.

 

He shook his head incredulously. Two hundred thousand dollars That was what his briefing said Turpin had had to pay for this-this rabbit-hutch And his was only in the medium range. The most expensive apartments here had two extra rooms and a party-hall that didn't have to be shared, and set the buyer back twice as much. But you didn't aspire to that unless you were on the Energetics General Board or of staff rank in the armed forces. In this particular tower, Sheklov knew, the penthouse belonged to a four-star Air Force general.

 

How did a nation get into a mess like this?

 

 

So far he hadn't managed to explore this one city, let alone the surrounding country, but he had been thoroughly stuffed with data, and against the throbbing of his head he fought to organize what he recalled into some sort of relevance to his situation. Lots of glib catch-phrases came to mind, for example: "Human beings are subject to forces so ingrained in their thinking as to render them incapable of detached evaluation of their own behavior."

 

Yery helpful. In other words: "All we learn from history"-or psychology, or anthropology, or ethnology-"is that we learn nothing from history"-or psychology, or . . .

 

Yes.

 

Still, these people had learned how to make a first-rate anti-hangover pill. He was already able to look directly at the brightly sunlit window of the room without narrowing

 

 

his eyes. No doubt of it, Lakonia offered some lovely views-those towers like a solemn crazy forest, the sparkling lake, the redwoods in the distance which, force grown or not, were splendid trees, rivaling anything he had seen in Siberia.

 

And their Chief Executive (nominal ruler) had been carried out, dead drunk, from the room adjacent . . .

 

Bewildered, he shook his head. It had to be an -illusion You couldn't possibly run a country this way

 

Liar, his conscience said. It's being done. So you can.

 

At which point his more orthodox attitudes overcame him: Yes, but look at the trouble it causes everyone else

 

 

He heaved an enormous sigh, told himself the hangover pill was perfect, superb, terrific, and finally managed to whip the crazy ringing nonsense inside his skull into some sort of pattern. It was a dismayingly random pattern-a mental counterpart of decadent non-representational art -but it had some expressionist overtones he found comforting because they indicated that he was at last beginning to feel, instead of just perceiving, the functionality of the extraordinary society he was visiting.

 

To begin with, this is NOT the Eastern Roman Empire. The hell with how many parallels you can drawl (Who am 1? Oh, that's not hard to define. I'm the discontented mercenary within the gates, who has taken sufficient pay In coin stamped with the Emperor's head-or rather, with the heads of Emperors, because they change their rulers like the weather!-to lie Indolent on the triclinium and open his mouth to the food offered by a domestic whore. Male or female.) POWI

 

A stab of pain lanced his forehead over his left eye; the hangover pill wasn't, obviously, a hundred per cent efficient. He gulped more coffee and wondered wistfully what would have become of America if it had socialized cannabis instead of alcohol.

 

Resuming: In that case, the hungry Huns at the gates of the Empire are-

 

"Oh, stop it!" he said aloud, and slapped his bare thigh. One didn't wear pajamas or night shorts here; according to his briefing, the mere possession of such garments was taken as proof of lack of confidence in one's ability to secure a partner for the night . . . of one sort or another. (He still didn't entirely believe the cover which, .Turpin

 

had assured him, excused his overnight absence from home in order to collect a spy from the sea. The story was that Turpin now and then liked to sleep with a man, and because of his professional standing preferred to travel a long way from Lakonia to look for one. And never talked about where he had spent the night, and never asked what his wife had done while he was away.)

 

Did that brown-skinned "reb" Danty slip me a psychedelic drug last night? 1 feel as though . . .

 

But a glance at his watch, not removed because he'd been briefed concerning Americans' attitudes to time and knew he would be suspect if he were caught without a watch even while making love, confirmed that since he swallowed the first mouthful of his coffee only two minutes had gone by. The illusion that he had spent ages musing like this stemmed simply from the impression that he had been shouted at, non-stop, since he came ashore. He had met more people last night, for instance, in a shorter space of time, than ever before in his life, and digesting such a storm of information was like eating a nine-course banquet directly after fasting for a week. Mental eructations interrupted every argument he tried to think through to a conclusion.

 

One more tryl

 

His coffee-cup was empty. He thought about pressing

 

the buzzer by his bed, which would bring back Estelle _ to

 

see what he wanted. That was among the reasons why an

 

apartment in the Lakonia towers was so expensive; no

 

other dwellings had been erected in the United States for

 

over twenty years that incorporated a room for a servant

 

and facilities for summoning her. Besides, there was

 

almost literally nowhere else where anyone willing to be

 

a servant would voluntarily seek employment. No native

 

American would do so; Canadians were scarce; Mexicans

 

were allowed in only on sufferance, by way of consolation

 

for having their country policed by U.S. soldiers, and so

 

many Cuban saboteurs had sneaked in by posing as

 

Puerto Rican valets and chambermaids that a total ban

 

had been imposed.

 

(It was like being the focal point of a beam of light split up between the facets of a jewel, then reflected back towards a center by a ring of distorting mirrors. He was

 

aware, simultaneously, of the things he had been told in his briefings Back There, and of the things he had seen

 

 

that matched his briefings, and also of the things that didn't-and these last were terrifying.)

 

 

Get your head straight (And, superimposed, awareness of the fact that the phrase was older than he was.) Take It from the top!

 

So where is the top? Government level? Good enough. Here 1 am: the cherry on the sundae of the Frozen War.

 

Was anyone still trying to break that twenty-year-old international log-jam? Since they recalled and jailed the American negotiators in Canberra for collaborating with the enemy, surely someone must have had another go? Tonga? Was that where the conference last-?

 

Oh, never mind. For all practical purposes, you had to compute with the status-quo. In other words, these people knew that their country had been the first to put men on the moon, and capped that achievement by doing it a second time, and then discovered that there were two billion other people who didn't give a damn about the moon. Too late. Just in time to pull the troops back and assign them to the streets of American cities. If they'd waited a year longer, there wouldn't have been troops to pull back. Whole army corps had been decimated by desertion, exactly as happened to the Tsarist armies in 1917.

 

Then there was a slump, which rendered American corporations unable to meet overseas commitments. Then, because of the slump, there was a witch-hunt, and the possession of an American passport became the (high-priced) excuse to apply for political asylum elsewhere. The end result was, simply, that no one wanted to know the Americans any more, and the Americans stuck their noses in the air and said, "Stuff you, Jack, we're self-sufficient."

 

Like the Byzantine Empire after the loss of the rich Western provinces to the barbarians.

 

But only like that. Not the same True, they talked in similar terms, forever complaining about the foreigners who bit the hand that fed them, and they treated their fellow-creatures as objects-thus to lie with a woman was a mere discharge of tension, not the gage of a genuine liking. But there hadn't been an empire. The tentacles of what might have become one had been chopped off just in time-by the Vietnamese, the Cambodians, the Burmese, the Filipinos, all of them with help from Peking.

 

Nonetheless the kalpa was cycling. He could feel it. He had studied Marx; he had studied Toynbee and Sorokin; he

 

had studied the Rig-Veda. It was his firm conviction that the resources of human beings were limited, and that implied that-even if there were no precise repetition-a man now, in a predicament analogous to that of a man ten thousand years ago, would react in an analogous manner. The Hindu notion that the universe repeated itself was a poetic truth, like the Toynbeean parable of the progress of civilization. He, like everyone else, was carried on a wave in the middle of an ocean too vast to discern the shores of, and ...

 

it was making him sea-sick. He got off the bed with a grunt of anger and went to see whether a cold shower would "straighten his head."

 

 

(r) X,

 

 

Where . . . ? Oh, Oh, yes. 1 think 1 remember. Or do 1?

 

And, the moment after recollecting why she was in this strange, shabby room that shook and trembled, Lora wished she hadn't woken up enough to do so. Her mouth tasted filthy, her stomach was sour, and there was a dull gnawing pain between her eyes.

 

She was stretched out naked on a hard couch covered with a sheet: old, but intact and fairly clean. It had been far too hot last night to bear any covering. It had also been too hot to go on lying next to Danty after they finished screwing. A mere touch made. sweat erupt from the skin like a strike of water in a desert. So he was on the other couch; at right angles to hers.

 

So 1 finally had a black. Funny. It didn't feel any different. It was dark, of course . . .

 

She reached out and brushed Danty's toes with her own. His response was to bury his face deeper in his pillow.

 

We meant to go night-riding, didn't we? And then .... Did he talk me out of it? 1 guess so, because we came here.

 

Not important. Not as important as the fact that her bladder was bursting. She sat up, and nearly cracked her head on a wall-hung bookcase. There were a lot of books here, she realized. On the floor, too. When she swung her legs off the couch, she trod on one and picked it up and read the title. It said: The Calculus of Mysticism.

 

Not only the books were peculiar. She saw a curious trefoil-shaped piece of plastic with furniture castors underneath, hung on string from a nail, and a plastic battery driven ornery, one of the big ones that cost a thousand bucks, and a Bonham's top, and a tape-recorder with a Buddha on the lid. The Buddha looked as though it might be Japanese.

 

Hmm! So this was Danty's home! Last night she hadn't really noticed; her attention had been elsewhere. Half eager to relieve herself, half anxious to find out more about him while he was asleep, she wandered the long way around the room towards the curtain at the end which,

 

because it was next to an obvious shower-cabinet, she assumed to conceal the toilet. The only other door, apart from the entrance, was ajar and revealed a tiny kitchen.

 

A violin, for goodness' sake Or is it a viola? 1 wonder if he plays it-reaching to twang one string of it faintly or if it's simply decoration.

 

Curtain. She pulled it back. And discovered that it did not give on to a toilet, but an alcove just wide enough for a single bed, on which a dark-haired woman was asleep.

 

She stared for a long frozen moment. Then she let the curtain fall and spun on her heel. Spotting her dress tossed over a chair, she ducked into it-a slow job, because her arms kept coming out through the wrong openings. But she managed it in the end.

 

Shoes? Oh, yes: left them in the car. But where the hell had she left the car with them in?

 

She rushed to the window: grimy, reinforced with wire, veiled with cheap semi-translucent curtains. Below, on the opposite side of the street, a car that looked like hers the right make and model, anyway. Thank goodness.

 

Toilet?

 

The reeky turd! I'll use his shower!

 

She turned it on, reluctantly, when she'd finished, and got splashed. The noise of running water aroused Danty, and he gave her a sleepy grin and said, "Hello, Loral" "Good-bye!" she snapped, and stormed out. The exit door gave a satisfactory slam.

 

 

That was what woke Magda. When she pushed aside the curtain, she found Danty at the window, watching Lora on the way to her car. She said, "Hi, Danty. Was it the Turbinate?"

 

"Hi, Magda." He didn't look around. "Yes."

 

"Slumming, hm?" She approached and gave him a peck on a cheek stubbly with new beard.

 

"Yes, I guess so. And apparently regretting it this morning. But last night she had a terrific time." He uttered a sad chuckle. "You'll never believe this, but it's gospel. She managed to have me photographed with Prexy!"

 

Magda drew back half a step, staring. Abruptly she burst into helpless laughter.

 

"Dantyl Oh, baby! That's the end, the ultimate end"

 

"Shit, you'll be a White House consultant yet, honey," Danty said. The car below moved off, and he turned back

 

 

from the window. "Fix some coffee, hm? I'll go take a shower. I need one. That kid has-uh-variegated tastes in BCT."

 

"She doesn't call it that, does she?" Magda demanded in disbelief.

 

"No, she doesn't. But she confided that her mother does -or did, at least, to explain her lovers to her kids when they were young. `Body contact therapy,' straight up." He yawned and stretched. "Tell you about it in a moment."

 

 

By the time he was through showering and shaving, there was coffee in big mugs and Magda had put on a robe. She said as Danty sat down, "Tell me, did it work out?"

 

"Yes." Sipping his coffee, he suddenly unfocused his eyes in the disconcerting fashion he had, which made him seem to be peering into another world.

 

"You don't sound very happy about it."

 

"Hell, no It gets bigger and more terrifying. It's like being in a car witl- 'he governor shorted out, and some crazy fool at the wheel who wants to prove he's as good as a machine at a hundred-fifty. I mean-hell! I knew I had to be at the scrap yard, but I didn't know why until I saw Josh and Shark and Potatohead getting ready to strip, and kill her. So I fish her out of trouble with this busted rifle, so she invites me to this party, so I meet this Canuck who's a house-guest of her father's. Says he's in timber up in Manitoba. Piss on that. He can quote the Gita. I heard him. Hell, I made him And I looked around the garage while Lora was getting out her car, and right next to it was her father's, and I saw it before. It was the car waiting to pick up the man from the sea."

 

"You think it's Holtzer."

 

"It's Holtzer, no shit." Danty drew a deep breath; when he let it out again she heard his teeth rattle. "Magda, I am goddamned scared now! I do weirder and weirder things for subtler and subtler reasons, and I daren't not do them, and what frightens me worst-"

 

He broke off. Magda reached across the table and clasped his hand.

 

"Well, this," he said after a pause. "What do I do when I reach the point where I feel what I must do, and I can't do it, because I'm like sick, or weak, or tired out? Won't I know I'm-well-trapped?"

 

"You ever felt that's come close to happening?" Magda asked in a commonsensical tone. Danty pondered for a moment.

 

"I guess not," he said eventually. "I guess with luck it may not. If I go on getting better at using the talent, I may be able to take precautions. I could avoid exhaustion, for instance. Illness, though . . . I don't know."

 

"The way I see it," Magda said firmly, "is that anything that made you sick and weak would probably screw up the talent anyway. It uses up a hell of a lot of your energy, that's for sure. I mean, look at you! You're not just lean, you're scrawny I can count your ribs."

 

Danty gave his body a self-conscious glance.

 

"I'll fix you a good big breakfast," Magda said, rising. "After that I'll have to stash you behind the curtain. I have a customer due at noon."

 

"No need for that," Danty said. "I guess I can relax a bit today. I don't feel there's anything I have to do at once."

 

He added, stretching, "Christi Does that make a change"

 

 

Sunday was spreading slowly across the nation. The super ways, of course were packed to capacity-literally millions of people knew no more enjoyable way to spend their free time than hurtling from place to place at high speed. Many people routinely did a thousand miles every weekend, and a few notched up double that.

 

Buzzing low over one stretch of superway close to the Atlantic coast there came a flight of plain gray helicopters, their only distinguishing mark a big white number: 33. Recognizing them, people in cars below began to wind down windows and wave, and probably also shout, only the traffic-noise drowned out their cries.

 

Everyone was always delighted when they spotted one of the Energetics General service teams. More than the Army (because the Army wag often called on for domestic duties and hence was little liked by those who had personal experience of martial law), and far more than the Navy (because the Navy had gone into politics full-time the current Prexy was a Navy nominee, though likely to be the last for some time because everyone knew that the Army was winding up for the next election and had something extraordinary up its collective sleeve-and most

 

 

Americans still vaguely distrusted professional politicians), the engineers of EG were the people who had armed and armored the United States against the malevolence of a hostile world.

 

In the lead helicopter of the flight, Gunnar Sandstrom waved back, because he knew his crew expected it of him, but he was glad when the superway was out of sight. He was becoming more and more concerned about his name. He was wondering how to change it to something-well, something plainer. It had been an okay thing for the past couple of decades to bear a Scandinavian patronymic, but the climate was getting tougher all the time, and you could hardly find any Polish, Italian, or German names now.

 

On the other hand, if he did decide to indent for a fresh name, it would mean months of grilling by security, probably temporary suspension from his job, endless re-evaluation of his record, and he might all too easily be graded down to so low a clearance that EG couldn't keep him on...

 

He was still debating with himself when they came to the reserved area that was their day's destination. But he hadn't reached a decision. And he knew he would go on pondering tomorrow, the day after, the day after .... He had been divorced once because his wife, in the long run, didn't like the name that had originally struck her as romantic. And at thirty-five it was getting harder and harder to find girls who were still inclined to regard a touch of "foreignness" as interesting.

 

In accordance with normal routine, the 'copters made a pass beyond the reserved area to check the seaward side. A mile to the north there was a beach that wasn't too badly fouled with oil, sewage, and garbage to be used, and now and then they found a small sailboat blown off course around here, or a swimmer-wearing rubber and a mask, naturally. Today, however, there was no one, so they circled and set down.

 

 

"Josh!" Potatohead said, and pointed at a display of papers outside the little store they were passing on the way to a hoverhalt. "Saw'n Cronkle?"

 

"Ahsh'd lookun-at asswiper?" Josh grunted. He meant it. The Chronicle was a Navy paper, always carried dozens

 

of pictures of Prexy, and admirals, and turds like that. But fat on Sundays, lasted a whole week in a toilet.

 

"Na front! Seeth'addle cock 'narleq'in?"

 

Josh started, and bent to look at the caption. "Shite," he said, having painfully puzzled out the words. "Say, she dottuv Turpin, VGI Pissun shit!"

 

Shark Bance craned over his shoulder. He read nearly as well as Josh and never missed- a chance to prove it. After a moment he said, "Heyl Week'dad ransom fo' her -lahk million bucks!"

 

Josh gave him a wordless snarl. "Yeal An' lookun nexter inna pic, Pegdun? Hm?"

 

"Sho'1" Potatohead said. "Howsee call'?"

 

"Dan," Josh worked out. "Tee. Wah-nah shit. Ward." He straightened, and put on an evil grin. "So, hey! Tha' blabbo dundus hurt, nah? Nextahm seeyum, weena hurtum histunl"

 

 

1 s

 

 

The Chronicle, the Navy paper; the Bulletin, the Army paper; the TV tuned to WSA; hangover cure, juice, coffee . . . . Comforting, familiar, the landmarks that located Lewis Raymond Turpin at Sunday morning. Naturally, he had learned far more last night than he could expect to from the day's formal news. About a thousand people:, decided what the modern American public ought to think, and over fifty of them had been at his party. Prexy not being one of course.

 

Only the second year of his term, and already the faceless mass was beginning to hear bad rumors! How much longer would Army let things ride? Would there be a coup and an impeachment, or just a diplomatic illness and "voluntary" relinquishment of office?

 

It would be good for Energetics General, whichever way, Navy detested EG; so many of its top brass recalled the proud days of Polaris submarines. Then EG had introduced the Nightsticks, and . . .

 

The process had already been under way when he arrived a quarter-century ago. By then, the ten biggest corporations in the country were being sustained on tax- ,j payers' money-aircraft, chemicals, computers, transportation services, virtually all the key industries were being regularly transfused with government funds. Naturally, because any other form of federal investment was castigated as "creeping socialism," it had to be via the Defense .~ Department that the money passed. A generation of ingenious public-relations work had convinced the public that this aspect of government activity was sacrosanct, never to be questioned by a loyal citizen.

 

The percentages crept up. Energetics General, back in those far-off days, had drawn only some 18 per cent of its budget from the DOD. Currently the figure was closer to ninety, and since 'Iurpin was a senior vice-president now -a mere eleven steps below the pinnacle of the EG hierarchy-the President came to his parties. So did the Chair-

 

man of the Joint Chiefs, even though he was an admiral. So did everybody who really counted.

 

Now suppose, just suppose, there was going to be a coup against Prexy-what they called in the history texts a "palace revolution," because of course the faceless mass would never be allowed to learn the details. Would that bring about the long-desired collapse of this over-blown, top-heavy, out-right dangerous economic cancer?

 

He feared not. Perhaps in another decade. Right now, there were still too many clever, dedicated, and insulted men in positions of influence, who remembered how they had been shot at in Viet-Nam, bombed in the Philippines, and ultimately spat upon in Panama. It wasn't their fault, they maintained, that they'd been dragged home under orders to quell insurrection, and that the other side had been waiting to pounce, so that when their house was set in order they had nothing else to do but squabble for power.

 

There had been a great weariness, a vast sense of futility. Everything they had undertaken with the best intentions had turned sour. Like an injured porcupine, exposing its spiny back to the attacker and pressing its soft belly to the ground, the nation had abandoned its outside commitments one by one and planted automatic missile sites along its coasts. The grandiose space program decayed, and for fifteen years or more no American had been launched into space except to service the orbiting missile-detectors -there were thousands. Meantime, .not from courtesy but a sense of self-preservation, the space-going powers duly notified every launching-for fear it might be mistaken for an attack-to the DOD.

 

Not to the White House. What would be the point? Effective government in America was the DOD.

 

During the four years of training that had preceded his injection into the States as a man who had not previously existed, yet who sprang convincingly full-grown into a flawless background, he had been told, over and over, the orthodox analogies. Look at what happened to the Romans, they said, when internal discord prevented them from deploying their own forces to guard their frontiers. They hired barbarian mercenaries, and within a century or two those same mercenaries took over. For "barbarian mercenaries" read "corporations under contract to the Department of Defense," and you have it right there.

 

 

Or else: look what happened to Spain and Portugal when they lost their empires in the New World. From world-power status both countries declined into poverty, intellectual underdevelopment, and dictatorship. Or, most graphically of all, consider the British: tricked into electing a right-wing government that forcibly deported black -but not white-immigrants; expelled in, consequence from their own Commonwealth of Nations, which fell apart; denied entry to the "rich man's club" of Europe because of this incredible display of perfidy . . . and now moaning in squalor about the cruel way the world had treated them.

 

He had half expected America to collapse following the black exodus, six years ago, when in response to a collective invitation issued by the member-states of the OAU tens of thousands of highly skilled black intellectuals and their families had emigrated-to the accompaniment of cries of, "Good riddance!" Unfortunately all that had accomplished was to drop off the heads of the black power movement, leaving an amorphous quarrelsome carcass that the government found infinitely easier to handle.

 

Some of those emigrants had been disillusioned. Swallowing their pride, they had applied for re-admission, and had been turned down.

 

"Told you sol"

 

So he was not very optirriistic about seeing the downfall of Fortress America in his lifetime.

 

On the other hand. . .

 

From the moment of Sheklov's arrival until now, he had been so on edge about successfully cementing the newcomer's cover that he had-paid little heed to the news he had brought. The notion that some alien species might trigger a nuclear holocaust was too far from his everyday preoccupations; he had been sweating and shaking and dosing himself with tranks for fear some petty error on Sheklov's part would alert the ever-watchful security force that never ceased its surveillance of Energetics General executives. Now the major obstacle was past-now that Sheklov had been photographed in company with Prexy, when everyone took it that Crashaw, Levitt, and the team at their backs were the ultimate court of appeal concerning security-he could coldly review what he had been told.

 

Amazing. He hadn't even realized that the Russians had

 

ventured as far as Pluto; naturally, the American newsmedia did not carry details of such achievements, and his contacts with Russian agents in Canada were sporadic and too brief for mere gossip. And they'd been out there for three years! Fantasticl

 

A stir of half-forgotten pride in his native land rose at the fringe of his awareness. As always, he slapped it down. For a quarter-century he had been careful to ape the opinions of those around him. He said the proper things about terrorism, bomb-outrages, insurrections, rebs, those ungrateful devils overseas. He took his vacations in the right places: at home, and usually in Florida. Before he married, he bad travelled a little, but to the permissible allies, South Africa and Australia. Now and then, on business, he went to Canada-ostensibly to sound out projects that might bring in some desperately scarce foreign currency. He never enjoyed those trips, except in an upsidedown fashion. The Canadians made it plain that they too would prefer to sever relations with the States, but it was known in the way such matters are known that if they tried it they would be occupied, like Mexico; things were quiet enough at home for the troops to be spared. So they compromised by flagrantly favouring the East Bloc, and the most heavily patronised ocean cruises nowadays run by Canadian Pacific were to Vladivostok via Japan.

 

He had had to turn somersaults in his head now and then. When he first came to the States, he had fully expected there would be a temporary alliance between the two super-powers against China, which might degenerate into shooting war. But that had been a wrong guess. As soon as American forces began to be recalled to fight at home, it had become obvious that the Chinese were going to expand into the resulting vacuum, and unless the two schools of communism resolved their differences fast the Maoists were going to leave the Leninists standing. (What was the distinction between "homoousian" and "homoiousian"?)

 

Hasty conferences, a couple of treaties, the firing of a few scapegoats, and the definition of spheres of influence

 

not very sharply,- because the parties were always jockeying for advantage-had led to the present formally courteous accommodation, which was being strengthened as in both major countries the effects of fourth- and fifth-genera-

 

 

tion commitment were felt. A little confidence in your ancestors' achievements could work wonders.

 

And in your own achievements, too. He'd had a bad moment yesterday evening when Lora insisted on dragging that black into the photo with Prexy. Of course, she'd done it in order to embarrass him, just as she'd put on that dress she knew he loathed. Yet, as he'd realized a second later, everyone present who had kids of the same age, including Prexy-for what he was worth-would have sympathised instead of being repelled. It was a kind of in-group status symbol nowadays for teenagers to keep up this family-scale guerrilla warfare. Pour 'Spater les bourgeois! But sooner or later they'd learn that the minds of the bourgeois had been blown long before they were born.

 

So, if anything, her grand gesture, inviting this black to the party and parading around with him for hours on end, was more likely to have reinforced than weakened his coverl

 

Though naturally it would make sense to have security double-check the boy . . .

 

 

Now then: What about this question of the alien ship? What did they imagine, Back There, that he could do? He'd made all the suggestions to Sheklov that he could think of on the spur of the moment: financing some sort of hypothetical study of the problem, for example, under the guise of training in, management initiative, along the lines of courses he'd heard of many years ago that were given to industrial designers, You invented an imaginary race with three legs, or sonar instead of eyes, or living underwater, and told the students to equip this species with transport and accommodation. But this, although he personally regarded it as an inspiration because it was perfectly feasible to ask some bright young people, "How do we trade with contraterrene creatures?," apparently meant nothing to Sheklov. He kept talking about "an attitude of mind."

 

Have to go over this again in detail. Say after lunch in the den. Give the room another sweep for bugs first, naturally. But right now

 

;t Pressure that had been building up in his bladder since he awoke finally drove Turpin out of bed.

 

There appeared to be a ritual about Sunday in the Turpin household. Sheklov hoped fervently that he wouldn't have to endure it more than once. But apparently Mrs. Turpin's mother insisted on it. Her name was Gleewood, but that had not been the maiden name of Mrs. Turpin. There had been some divorces-a fact that did not in the least surprise him.

 

Not wishing to seem discourteous, he accepted Mrs. Gleewood's invitation to join her and her daughter in the living-room and watch Rev. Powell's nationally-networked service at noon-the "lip service," as someone had caustically termed it during last night's party. Peter, looking haggard, came too, several minutes after it started. That triggered off a lecture from his grandmother concerning the disgracefully casual attitude of young people to religion. Then she asked where Lora was, and Peter answered sharply, "Lying on her bed in a drunken stupor-where else?"

 

Which gave an excuse for another and longer blast. Sheklov sat there wishing the floor would open and swallow him, while Mrs. Turpin-Sophie, as she insisted he call her-simply sat with glacial calmness, sipping a rapid succession of gin atomics brought by Estelle. To reinforce his cover, Sheklov had intended to talk a little with the maid in the family's hearing about their supposedly shared homeland; so far, however, the girl had absolutely refused to be drawn.

 

It had crossed his mind, very vaguely, that she might not be Canadian herself, but the only reason he could think of for pretending to be was if she was wanted for a criminal offence, and had changed her identity to one that could hot be too closely investigated. The Canadians were efficiently unco-operative when it came to answering inquiries from the States about their citizeas.

 

Still, that was irrelevant. Right now, his job was to put himself beyond the reach of unwelcome prying.

 

To start with, he must get Turpin to have this Danty

 

 

checked out. Turpin would have an excellent excuse to do so, considering his daughter's connection with the boy. Boy? More like young man. Over twenty, under twentyfive. Hard to be sure owing to his bony leanness.

 

Had it surprised him to find that a Canadian timbersalesman could quote the Bhagavad-Gita7 He hadn't shown the least hint of it, just given a nod of satisfaction at the aptness of the passage. True, one did find people who adhered to non-Western religions both here and north of the border. But it was so atypical, he shivered imperceptibly whenever he recalled his incredible lapse. He had had to utter those words. It was as though someone else took momentary command of his tongue.

 

 

Then there was lunch, at which Turpin appeared with a sort of after-shave advertisement bluffness and a forced air of goodwill towards the world, and-shortly afterLora too, tousle-haired, bleary-eyed, and even more snappish than Peter. Mrs. Gleewood told her what she thought of her behaviour, in particular because she had dared to bring a black into her own home, when everybody knew that all the blacks in America were ready to slip a knife into your ribs the instant they got the chance.

 

"Don't talk to me about that radiated slug," was Lora's sullen answer, at which Mrs. Gleewood rounded on Turpin.

 

"You know what this rude little bitch needs?" she rasped. "Six months in a reform camp, that's whatl"

 

"Hear, head"-loudly from Peter.

 

Details about reform camps had been included in Sheklov's briefing. He expected Turpin to explode at that. The camps were for incorrigible juvenile delinquents, and the most famous-at Sandstone, Georgia-boasted the highest murder-rate and the highest suicide-rate in the country. But Turpin merely said in a mild tone, "Lora will get over this phase, you know."

 

"The hell I will," Lora said, and moodily turned to her food.

 

By the time Turpin suggested he and Sheklov adjourn to the room he called his den, for coffee and liqueurs, it was all the latter could do not to shake his head in inexpressible admiration. Coping with this abominable motherin-law, this near-alcoholic wife, this homosexual son, this promiscuous daughter, and his job at Energetics General

 

and his role as the best Russian agent ever to be injected into the States-it defied belief l

 

When Turpin had assured him that the den was clean of bugs and they could talk freely, he tried to say something of what he was feeling. But Turpin, pouring tiny goblets of Tia Maria, stared in apparently genuine incomprehension.

 

"Don, I don't see what you mean. Sure, the kids are a bit wild, but I meant it when I said they'd settle down. Granted, I'm sort of sorry about Peter, but it's this protracted-adolescence bit, and it's simply the-uh-the in thing to flaunt your defiance of the conventions for a few years before you straighten your head anal cool off. He has girls too, you know, now and then."

 

"Nonetheless, a family like this must be-"

 

"My family," Turpin cut in with an air of not wanting to be contradicted, "is my best single cover. Sophie is a first-rate company wife. If it hadn't been for her, I could never have got where I am. I have to endure her mother, of course, but we only see her during the summer; she has a winter place in Florida. I planned the family to be my cover, in fact, so if you have any quarrel with it, you go blame the census department. I have an average number of kids, I give them average allowances, they've had typical educations, typical everything. My only worry has been that sometimes I've wondered whether someone might not figure it was so close to the norm it must be planned."

 

He hesitated, and then added, "My only worry, that is, until you were wished on me. Are you snaking any progress?" And added with his eyes: 1 hope!

 

Sheklov reached for the bowl of sugar resting on a low table between them and stirred a generous spoonful into his coffee; he liked it Turkish-style, thick and sweet. Not looking up, he said, "I'm not a miracle-worker, you know. I shall have to feel things out for a good while before I can do anything positive."

 

Turpin sighed. "I don't see why someone had to be sent specially," he grumbled. "Or why-if it was necessary-it had to be me who was used to cushion you."

 

"Also," Sheklov said delicately, "you don't like the scope of my brief."

 

There was a pause. Turpin looked everywhere except at Sheklov while deciding how best to reply- He settled for candour. "No, I don't!"

 

 

"If it's any,consolation, it makes me feel awkward, too." Sheklov raised his liqueur goblet. Barely in time he remembered to sip, not toss the contents back. While thinking as Holtzer he made no such errors, he reassured himself; it was trying to straddle his two personalities that-

 

But that led back to the recollection of how he had exposed himself to Danty.

 

Maintaining flawless outward calm, however, he said, "In fact, I was going to ask you this anyhow, and now is as good a time as any. How long would it take you to fix me a job with EG-a travelling job?"

 

Turpin's face went turkey-cock red. He said, "Now just a-!"

 

"I have the authority to insist," Sheklov murmured.

 

"The hell you do! Look, they gave me to understand that your timber-salesman cover was fire-proof, that the parent firm has been used before and can prop you up as long as necessaryl"

 

"As long as necessary for me to devise an alternative," Sheklov answered stonily. "You know as well as I do-I mean better than I do-that even a Canadian isn't allowed stay in this country without impeccable reasons."

 

Turpin's jowls trembled. "But they told me I only had to cushion your landfall. I took it for granted that you had a closed assignments"

 

"Nobody said that in so many words," Sheklov pointed out. "In fact my assignment is open-ended, category one. Anyway, why should the idea of finding me a job with EG upset you so much? You must be distributing patronage all the time."

 

"Patronage!" Turpin echoed, and slapped his thigh with his open palm, like a gun-shot. "This isn't patronage-it's blackmaill Bringing you into EG would be insanely dangerous. I've sweated blood for years, for decades, to make sure there was no one in the entire corporation who had a breath of suspicion against him. I'm damned if I'm going to break a clean record a quarter-century longl"

 

 

Eventually Sheklov sighed and turned around in his chair to a more comfortable position.

 

"Look, Dick," he said, "there's something that d6esn't seem to have registered with you yet. Out near Pluto something has happened that is so big that nothing else matters until it's resolved. Doesn't that get across to you?

 

Hell, there are alien intelligences! There are portions of the universe that are contraterrene! And because one damned idiot government out of all the damned idiot governments we have on this miserable planet has signed away its responsibility to a bunch of machines, you and I and everybody, communist or capitalist, neutralist or whatever the hell, all of us, could be hurled back to the Stone Age tomorrow-if we're still alive. Think about it, Dick, for pity's sake think!"

 

It was getting through. He could read it in Turpin's staring eyes. He had finally managed to smash down the mental barriers in the other's head. And by doing so, inevitably, he had brought the whole affair back into focus in his own consciousness with as much force as it had possessed when he first heard of it from Bratcheslavsky in Alma-Ata.

 

At that moment, though, a phone shrilled. Turpin snatched at it. It was one of the old-fashioned kind that had to be held to the ear: in that case. Sheklov reasoned, it was probably a confidential line. Modern designs were easier to bug.

 

"Turpin here!"

 

There was a crackling. He nodded. "Yes, this is my quiet line. You can talk."

 

The caller talked. Watching, Sheklov saw Turpin's face go pasty-gray; his eyes narrowed. and he closed his empty fist so tight the knuckles glistened white. He looked as though he was about to swing that fist in sheer fury.

 

"Yes, I'll come at once," he said thickly when the caller was through. He slammed down the phone, leaped from his chair, and towered over Sheklov,

 

"You turd!" he forced out. "You radiated bastard!"

 

"What happened?" Sheklov whispered, thinking of Danty.

 

"That reserved area where you came ashorel They sent a service crew there today. Know what they found? They, found it had been turned oiff in the small hours of the morning you arrived. Turned off l Do you understand what that means?"

 

Sheklov did. But waited for Turpin to put it into smoking words.

 

"It means someone else knows you're here," Turpin spat. "And you've put both our necks in a noosel"

 

 

• X0V

 

 

Around the shoulder of the world. Bratcheslavsky had once said without warning, in the middle of a training session, "Vassily Sheklovl"

 

To which he had reacted with a surprised cock of his eyebrows.

 

"Know why you've been picked for this assignment?"

 

"Welll" Selecting the least arrogant-seeming of a dozen possible answers in the space of less than a heartbeat, and moreover not wanting to appear to cast doubt on the competence of those who had singled him out by adopting a pose of exaggerated modesty. "Well, because out of the range available, I guess I must be the most suitable . . . comrade."

 

"Your diplomatic turns of phrase do you credit," Bratcheslavsky chuckled, stubbing the latest of the aromatic cigarettes that were certain to kill him before his time. "But I'm not here to have my perspicacity flattered, regardless of what you may safely put over on other people. I guess it hasn't escaped your notice that one of the luxuries America permits itself is an exceptional degree of subtlety in the shades of meaning conveyed by the English language?"

 

At which: a nod.

 

"Well, thenl During your long struggle with the various idioms of modern English, you can hardly have failed to run across the image of someone `thinking fast on his feet'-hm?"

 

"Of course, comrade. A metaphor drawn from boxing, I believe. A term of praise for someone who-"

 

"Boxing be buggered," Bratcheslavsky retorted. They were speaking English, of course; the entire briefing was conducted in it, the ideal being to drive Russian so far to the fringes of Sheklov's consciousness that he would not be recognised as a Russian-speaker by those who might survey him after his injection into the States. "The idiom is used by people who hate boxing, who wouldn't pay ten cents to get into a boxing-match, who would call up and

 

complain if a TV company wasted programme-time on an international championship! No, the image is detached from its origins. And what I want to know is this: Do you recognize its applicability to this mission?"

 

"You mean it was a quality that was taken into consideration when they picked me for it."

 

"The quality, Vassily. The most important of all. Were it not for your possession of this talent, we might well have given up all hope of injecting another agent as blatantly as we shall have to in your case. Human beings have this peculiar limitation on their thinking, you know: They tend to put up with enormous risks simply because they can't exhaustively analyse the nature of the actions they realise they ought to take to insure themselves. As thinkers, Vassily, we are an amazingly lazy species. It's a wonder we survive from one day to the next. Yesl Let's get on with itl"

 

 

All of which sprang back instantly into Sheklov's mind, vivid as a 3-D movie picture.

 

He said coldly to Turpin, still looming over him as though about to tear him limb from limb, "Shut up and sit down."

 

..You-1"

 

 

"I said shut upl" With an access of unfeigned anger. "I wish you'd use your wits now and thenl You just said someone else must have known I was coming ashore, didn't you? But you didn't take one deep breath and ask yourself whol Put your vanity away, will you?"

 

"What?" But his anger was turning to bluster, and Sheklov knew it.

 

"You heard. Stop and think for a moment. Who would be in a position to know that something was going to happen off-shore at a reserved area? Do you imagine you're unique?"

 

Slowly Turpin sank back into his chair. "I-I don't follow you."

 

"That's obvious." Sheklov loaded his tone with sarcasm. "I'll spell it out, then. You claim your cover has never been penetrated, right?"

 

"Of course! You think they'd let someone in my position ride for twenty-five years? Hell, nol"

 

"If that's true of you, it may be true of someone else."

 

 

"You mean someone I don't know about was instructed to make sure I did cushion your landfall? I-"

 

"Nol To make sure the submarine wasn't shot out of the waterl"

 

"Then why was he crazy enough to leave the site shut down, knowing that next time a service crew came by security forces would flock after them like-like crows?" Turpin produced a small phial from his pocket, shook out a white tablet, and gulped it down with a swig of now-coldcoffee. Sheklov seized the chance to thrust a fresh proposal' home.

 

"Then look at it this way. Is it easy to shut down one of your sites?"

 

"Easy?" Turpin echoed with an incredulous laugh "Hell no. I could just about shut one down from memory, but I'd rather have a sg6ematic in front of me. You have to close nine of a series of twelve switches in a special order-that's . eier you get through a sintered-ceramic door-ahsi ;he other three are dummies wired straight into Conti.Pf"ntal Defense HQl'

 

An other words," Sheklov said leaning forward "whoever did this had access to confidential EG data. Suppose this had nothing to do with me. Suppose it was aimed at Energetics General. What about your rival corporations? Aren't some of them resentful of EG's exclusive contract for automatic defense systems?"

 

"Well . . ." The trank Turpin had swallowed was taking effect; he was able to consider the notion calmly.

 

"Come to that," Sheklov pressed, "the Navy isn't too happy about the situation, I'm told."