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.