by John Boyd
He was beginning to sound very similar to the first Abe Cohen, Breedlove thought, as he continued: “The main problem here is that the dispensation of enriched uranium is outside the national parameters under the terms of the Nonproliferation Treaty. It would have to meet the approval of the signatory powers, but that shouldn’t take more than two or three months.”
“That is the problem, Mr. Cohen. She’s got to be off the planet by June twentieth, and don’t ask me why. Couldn’t we go straight to the President?”
“Certainly, but he has no authority to act unilaterally on the matter. The man to expedite any transfer is the Chairman of the Joint Atomic Energy Committee, but he could not act without the Atomic Energy Committee’s recommendation.”
“Where have all our leaders gone?”
“Gone to committees, every one,” Cohen said.
“But what about the girl? Does she have to be held in custody?”
“There are no procedural grounds for her retention in situ, and of course we could spring her with a mere threat of habeas corpus. But she’d have to remain in protective custody, which is another kettle of fish.”
“That’s where we need your help.”
“You have it. I’m on retainer with Interior. This is an interesting legal problem, and one without precedent. It might enable me to establish a rule, the Cohen Rule for Interstellar Immigrants. Now it’s obvious we’re going to have to put our minds to the establishment of space law.”
Cohen stuck out his hand, this time in farewell. “You already have my card so keep in touch. I’ll talk to the girl.”
With a quick, pumping handshake, Cohen was gone—a very busy man indeed. Breedlove felt as confident in the lawyer as he had in the first Abe Cohen, although to this Abe Cohen Kyra was only an interesting legal problem. Every man Breedlove had talked to so far had looked at Kyra from a particular angle of vision. No one saw her steadily and saw her whole. No one seemed to grasp the simple morality of her plight: she was a pilgrim dying of thirst in a land overflowing with water.
But Cohen II had shown him the face of the enemy, the formless indecisiveness of interlocking committees. By the time Kyra’s simple request had worked its way through the committees concerned, the nose of her spaceship would be under twenty feet of snow.
“Where’s Cohen?”
The question came from Turpin. He had returned, bringing Slade, who stood listening, a hawklike intentness to his hooded gaze.
“He couldn’t wait.”
“Did you tell him about our visitor?”
“Cohen’s clean.” It was Slade who dismissed Turpin’s question. “Leastways, that Cohen is. About this other Cohen, son”—he turned to Breedlove, who wondered if the term “son” was used fatherly or as a contraction—“did he have a face like a beagle hound and sidle along like a land crab?”
“That’s the man.”
Slade’s eyes narrowed, and he spat one word, “Ajax!”
“You know him, then,” Breedlove said.
“Israeli agent.” Slade nodded. “Former member of the Irgun. Deadly little bastard. What’d you tell him?”
Breedlove looked at Turpin, and Turpin read his expression.
“You can talk to Ben Slade, Tom. He’s the ranking member of the local intelligence community, sort of a godfather of The Family. He’s in charge of overseas security and cleared for all information.”
“I told him what I told them in there, but he didn’t interrupt me. How did he get onto me so quickly?”
“You and Kelly left a mile-wide trail from Spokane, and Kelly has a permanent tail.”
“We’re not at war with Israel,” Breedlove said. “Does it matter if an Israeli knows about Kyra?”
“The smaller countries are the more dangerous. They try harder,” Slade said. “Was there anything in Kyra’s room that she brought from her planet?”
“Nothing. Her clothes belong to my sister, and she took her bag with her.”
“No documents?”
“Well, I showed Cohen… Ajax her photographs, a couple of before-and-after shots of her hair coloring.”
“Let us see them,” Slade said.
Breedlove took out his billfold, but the photographs were gone. He stood looking at his wallet in stupefied amazement until Slade spoke, in what sounded to Breedlove like a tone of apology: “Ajax was an honor graduate of the Buenos Aires school for pickpockets. Now, if we find Kyra’s room ransacked, I’ll know he searched it and found nothing. It’s his modus operandi. When Ajax finds what he wants, he leaves the room in apple-pie order. There was nothing in your room?”
Beginning a shrug of negation, Breedlove suddenly remembered the radiation shield in his suitcase. If the pink ball was missing, that could mean trouble, but he was dubious about letting these men in on the secret. He trusted them less than he had trusted the first Abe Cohen.
“No documents of any kind,” he finally said.
“We’ll tail you back to the motel and check out your rooms,” Slade said. “We’ll be seeing a lot of each other, boy, because you need guidance. In matters of security you’re the biggest American leak since the Johnstown flood.”
Flanked by the security agents, Breedlove walked to the elevator. Since the interview with Chief Pilsudski, he realized, his sense of reality had been disintegrating. Dr. Condon had steadied it slightly, but Admiral Harper had canted it further. Slade and Turpin, two burlesque spooks from a spy melodrama, were the most bizarre distortions yet, and nothing they said in the elevator helped enhance their reality.
“What’s your cover for this operation, Ben?”
“No cover, Dick. I’m out in the open: Ben Slade. I want them to know I’m here to give them a diversionary target. They’ll know they’ll have to get me before they take her.”
“Why should anyone want to take her?” Breedlove asked.
“Her technological savvy,” Slade said.
“She couldn’t have a detailed knowledge of her technology.”
“She doesn’t need detailed knowledge. Her brains are an archive of concepts we never dreamed of. She’s an adventure into the possible who can point out areas of exploration that won’t lead us down blind alleys. Take her invisible spaceship. If Ghana had that secret, Ghana could conquer the world; and if she landed in Ghana, they’d get the secret. I know. I set up the operation in Ghana.”
“Torture?”
“We prefer to call it ‘forcibly elicited information,’ ” Slade said. “One of the reasons I’m here is to see that none of my tricks are used on the visitor.”
“Tell that to Admiral Harper,” Breedlove said.
“Forget him,” Slade snapped. “I got the drift of what you were saying in the ready room, and my only worry about Harper is his vote on the committee. He’s an over-the-hill theoretician.”
Slade was bringing Breedlove’s sense of reality slightly back into focus until, in the parking lot, Turpin blurred it more. “I’ll drive ahead of you, Breedlove, and Slade will drive behind.”
“Why the convoy?”
“If you’re stopped by a traffic cop, we don’t want you spilling any more secrets while he’s writing your ticket.”
When he pulled into the motel parking lot, the acuteness of perception that had let Breedlove spot something amiss in the aspen grove on Jones Meadow told him this scene, too, was slightly askew. Glancing around, he analyzed the flaw. No campers or big cars were parked in the lot. All were sedans, medium-sized, with conservative paint, not a racing stripe or Volkswagen among them.
At the desk he got the keys to both rooms and escorted the two security agents first to Kyra’s room. Inside, her dresses were tossed on the bed and floor,—drawers had been pulled from the dresser and tossed aside. A flung sheet of motel stationer/ hung atop a drapery rod.
“He found nothing,” Turpin said.
“Why did he have to do this?” Breedlove asked.
“It’s his modus operandi,” Slade said. “We call him Ajax because he hits the ro
om like a white tornado. Clean it up, Turpin, while Tom and I check his room.”
The offhand order was Breedlove’s first indication that Slade was Turpin’s superior in whatever chain of command the two operated within.
In Breedlove’s room the same tornado had struck, but with a difference. His suitcase had been emptied, the contents dumped on the floor, and the pink sphere was missing. Without it, it would take a four-hundred-pound lead box to get the uranium to Kyra’s ship, and if she did not have a replacement aboard she might be grounded.
“Nothing’s missing,” Slade said.
“Yes. A little pink exercise ball about the size of a grapefruit.”
“Is that it on the bedspread?”
Breedlove looked to where Slade pointed. His frantic gaze had missed the ball, whose color merged with the bedspread’s.
“That’s it,” he said casually, and began to repack his bag.
Slade tossed it in his hand. “There’s no weight.”
“It’s hollow. Fill it with sand and it weighs about ten pounds.”
“Clever gadget,” Slade commented, unscrewing the sphere and looking inside. He screwed the hemispheres together and tossed the ball to Breedlove, who stowed it in his suitcase.
As Breedlove worked, Slade walked to the window and stood looking out on the parking lot. Disgusted with the chaos in the room, Breedlove said, “Mr. Slade, this is unreal.”
“At first it always seems so, but after you’ve been in this trade awhile, it’s reality that becomes unreal. You know, son”—his voice grew gentle and ruminative—“you learn to like being out in the cold. If I had to come in and take a desk job, I’d die.”
Suddenly he slapped a thigh with his hand and said, “By god, I’ll do it. I’ll use the purloined-letter technique with Kyra. They’ll know she was here, so they’ll figure she’s gone. If the technique worked for your pink ball, it should work for her. But these outside rooms are too vulnerable. I’ll move her upstairs into the bridal suite that faces the patio. It has two bedrooms.”
“You think bringing her back here will fool Ajax?”
“Not Ajax. He won’t be around any more.”
“Mr. Slade, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to take a shower.”
Slade glanced at his watch. “Sure, but telephone Kyra first. She’ll be expecting your call. If you’re eating in the motel dining room, rap on 110 as you come by. I’ll join you.”
“You and your people have taken over this motel. Right?”
“Since check-out time, two this afternoon,” Slade admitted. “We’ll all be staying here, and that includes you. You’ll be moving into the bridal suite with Kyra, but you’ll sleep alone.”
“That’s generous of you, Mr. Slade.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank your raising. You’re the last Victorian. We can trust you, and we’ll need an inside bodyguard for Kyra. There’ll be a man coming after her who’ll make Ajax look like an amateur.”
Alone in the room Breedlove felt enheartened by the speed with which the government had moved to protect Kyra. If such dispatch was shown all along the line, there was a chance she would get the uranium in time. Turning to the telephone, he decided not to disturb her with the news about Ajax.
When her number rang, the telephone was answered by a male voice. “Major Laudermilk, here.”
“My name’s Breedlove. I’d like to speak to our visitor.”
“I’m permitted to put your call through, sir, but under the provisions of the Right to Privacy Law I must warn you that this line is being monitored.”
After a second ringing Kyra’s voice came on the line, “Kyra, here.”
Apparently she had learned her telephone etiquette from the mysterious major, he thought, and said, “Breedlove.”
“Breedlove! How nice to hear your voice, and how lovely it’s going to be to talk in basic English again. All day they’ve been grilling me, giving me the third degree. I don’t mind the engineers and mathematicians, but the psychologists are after me all the time about my sex life. Do they think I was running a cathouse in a spaceship?”
She had not learned “cathouse” from him, he observed to himself, and said, “Of course not, Kyra. I talked to some of the experts who interviewed you, and they have a high opinion of your morals and honesty.”
He realized his remark about honesty was a subconscious reproof of Kyra. Anxiety feelings were crystallizing around his knowledge of the implant in her skull. But she rambled breathlessly on: “All I’ve done all day is talk, talk, talk, with only a few minutes off to rest my jaws. You know, I’m surrounded by a palace guard with my lord high chamberlain screening my telephone calls. But I got your name put on the preferred list—Oh, I must tell you, they have this thing called a post exchange, but they wouldn’t let me go there to shop. They brought over a slew of dresses for me to select from, and I can tell you there were no Polinski Creations in the lot. I managed to select some outfits that Gravy thinks are very fetching. You’ll be having dinner with me tomorrow in the queen’s suite—”
“The queen’s suite?”
“That’s Gravy’s new name for the VIP quarters… I’ve got this beautiful little number I’ll wear for you at dinner. My rooms are very nice, but they’re still a brig. Breedlove, when are you going to get me out of this chickenshit outfit?”
“Before you learn to swear like a sailor, I hope… But what’s this about me having dinner with you?”
“Oh, that! I must tell you. You said for me to push while you pulled. Well, I’m pushing. I have this little doohickey behind my ear, and it’s got them all worried. I told Doctor Condon I wouldn’t tell anybody but you what it is, and I wouldn’t tell you except over the dinner table. That shaped them up! I’ve got all kinds of little secrets in reserve, and if I’m not out of here pretty soon I’m going to quit talking at all unless they let you spend the night with me, and that’ll give those nosy psychologists something to talk about. By the way, well, not ‘by the way.’ I don’t want to sound too casual. I’ve written you a little poem in answer to the one you wrote for me. Would you like to hear it, with expression?”
“Hear it! I’d like to write it down. Damn the monitor and full speed ahead.”
In a clear, exquisitely expressive voice, she announced, “The name of my poem is To Breedlove,’ and here it goes:
Breedlove, thy beauty is to me
Like those Kanabian barks of yore,
That gently, o’er the perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn Kyra bore
From her own native shore.”
“Enough,” he cried. “So you’ve discovered Poe?”
“Is that a famous poem?” Her voice was suspicious.
“It’s Poe’s ‘To Helen.’ ”
“That Gravy! I should have known. He’s such a joker. I told him about my poem from you, and he wrote this one for me to give to you. He said you’d love it.”
“Who is ‘Gravy’?”
“Major Graves Laudermilk, the Army officer in charge of my security detail… Now, what would you like for dinner tomorrow night, a nice, rare, juicy filet mignon?”
Despite his elation over their dinner date, when he hung up, Breedlove was concerned about the Army officer in Kyra’s entourage who read poetry and had recognized the true author of Breedlove’s poem. Apparently Laudermilk was discreet, and for that Breedlove was grateful, but what was an Army major doing at a Navy establishment?
Turpin had joined Slade in room 110, and the three went together to the dining room. The diners in the room were all young men, none wore long hair or beards, and all looked physically fit.
“You ought to have more women and older men in your group,” Breedlove commented to Slade. “Your security slip is showing.”
“You’re learning, boy. Beginning to think like us.”
“I might take that as a compliment if I knew who you were.”
“This is my outfit, the Special Security Squad, here to protect Kyra. All the men you see in he
re, even the dining-room help, are hand-picked specialists drawn from every branch of the services.”
“Something’s becoming clear. I wondered why an Army officer had the security detail on a Navy base.”
“That’s Laudermilk,” Slade said. “A good man.”
Turpin’s reaction to Slade’s remark was quick and sounded alarmed. “You’ve got the Champ guarding the girl?”
“Yep.”
“Who’s guarding the Champ?”
“By special directive from the Army,” Slade said, “the visitor had been declared ‘off-limits’ to Major Laudermilk.”
“The Army must be very trusting,” Turpin said.
Turpin’s dubiety tantalized Breedlove, but he was afraid to ask for clarification lest the question make his personal concern too obvious. He would bide his time, he decided, before attempting to learn more about Major Laudermilk.
They gave their order to a waitress who came over the moment they were seated at their table. The dining room had never provided such service before. Their drinks were served with a flourish, and, later, their dinner was brought promptly after Slade nodded to the waitress.
Dinner was preceded by an unusual ceremony. Turpin asked their indulgence while he said grace over the meal. For Breedlove, asking the blessing was not an unusual occurrence at home, but this was the first time he had ever done it in a public restaurant. Slade added an “Amen” to Turpin’s short but gracious prayer.
Breedlove was taken by a curiosity so strong it tempted him to risk a personal question of Turpin. “How do you justify your possibly ungentle profession by your certainly gentle religion?”
“It’s a misconception to think of Jesus as a doormat. He was the Christ Militant and leader of the Church Triumphant, bringing to his chosen ones ‘not peace but the sword’.”
Breedlove dropped the subject quickly. Strange lights were beginning to glow in Turpin’s eyes.
Slade lead the table talk thereafter. He was a man with a strange ambition: he wanted the government to establish a paramilitary, informal task force for carrying out undeclared wars, and he wanted to be its leader.
