Suddenly Dragnie saw a familiar face. It was the face of a young man who, when her eye caught his, looked away, as though to deny the contact, and then returned the look, as if announcing his mastery of an instinctual shyness and his ability to use his will to overcome fear and advance his interests. With an expression of amused contempt he threaded his way through the crowd until he was standing beside her and smiling with contemptuous amusement.
“Hello, Miss Tagbord,” Nathan A. Banden said.
Something in his insolent attitude made Dragnie recoil. And yet a part of her responded in a different manner.
“Hello, Nathan,” she said. “We’ve just returned from the Moon.”
“I know it.”
“John made a speech.”
“I know it.”
“By the way, thank you for the flowers. You were quite eloquent in your note.”
The young man chuckled mockingly. “I?” he said. “Eloquent? Quite? Was? I merely wrote words—words that needed to be read by you, silently, to yourself, in order to receive my meaning.”
“Not everyone would see it that way.”
“I know it. But not everyone is me.”
“I know it. Only you are you.”
“Are you certain of that, Miss… Dragnie?”
They stood there, saying nothing wordlessly and looking at each other, like the last man and woman on earth, surrounded only by several thousand other men and women. Dragnie felt something stir deep within herself. His face was youthful, unlined by a lifetime’s struggle to discover his values. His cool blue eyes seemed to look directly at her. He was taller than she, and so in conversation with him she acquired that characteristic that is among the most feminine qualities it is possible for a woman to display: that of being short. But her femininity transcended mere physical diminutiveness, attaining its apotheosis in a tableau attesting to her subjugation to him. After her long, half-million-mile trip, she was unkempt, whereas he had obviously showered and shaved that morning, to the extent that he needed to shave at all. She was thus hygienically his inferior as well. It was a thought that gave her pleasure. She was on the verge of saying something. She did not know what it was. She did not know why she was about to say it. She did not know why she did not know these things. She only knew that she was about to say something, when Sanfrancisco appeared beside her, grasping her arm and drawing her away, saying, “Dragnie, John needs you.”
She allowed herself to be guided to where John Glatt stood, watching the journalists ask fawning questions of Hunk Rawbone. The reporters, supposedly of a professional class concerned with discovering and communicating the truth, had long ago ceased to pursue such matters. Their only concern now was the unearthing of scandal and the publication of innuendo, gossip, and triviality. All of them hated their profession and, therefore, hated its allied professions as well. They hated their editors. They despised their art directors. They loathed their circulation staffs, advertising departments, and press operators. The crowd surrounding the journalists, conscious of the moral bankruptcy of their profession, hated them.
“Hunk seems to be holding his own with the jackals of the press,” Sanfrancisco said.
Glatt’s reply hinted at a vast reservoir of emotions held in check by his will. “Yes.”
“John,” Dragnie said. She spoke with her eyes on the crowd. It was not necessary to look at her husband, as she had just addressed him by name. “I’ve been thinking. Once our strike against the rest of the world begins, I’d like to travel around the country on a fact-finding mission, to monitor how it progresses.”
“All right.”
“Of course, I’ll need an assistant to help me take notes and compile my findings. I think that boy I told you about, at the Glatt School, who made the speech—I think he’d make a fine assistant.”
“Very well.”
“Of course I’ll have to consult with his parents, but that shouldn’t be a problem—“
The rest of her words were drowned out as the crowd began several rhythmic chants at once. “LET’S MURDER ALL THE OTHER COUNTRIES,” went one, while another announced, “HURRAY FOR US BECAUSE WE’RE THE BEST!” Across the tarmac, Dragnie saw Nathan A. Banden watching her. A sleek limousine slowly crept through the crowd and stopped. Its door opened. Dragnie climbed in and was followed by the others. As the car pulled out, the mob cheered and waved.
“You wish to take Nathan with you on a trip around the country, Miss Tagbord? How odd a request.”
The person speaking, Nathan A. Banden’s mother, was one of those individuals who believe that a woman’s most exalted purpose in life is to adorn a husband and give birth to his children. She consequently regarded Dragnie with a combination of personal suspicion and moral disapproval.
“Yes,” Dragnie replied. “For about a month.”
Mrs. Banden was a slim, tightly-coiffed woman with a showily blasé attitude, the kind of person for whom appearance was reality and reality was an illusion. She regarded Dragnie from a complacent divan, on which she lounged in a lazy caftan crafted of haughty material. “But do please be seated, Miss Tagbord,” she said, indicating an antique wing chair of unquestionable confidence. The Banden home, a large Tudor-style dwelling in a suburb of New York City, occupied several acres whose gardens and landscaping were designed to celebrate man’s dominance over Nature and over his fellow man. “Don’t you agree that the idea is somewhat unusual?”
“Not particularly, no.”
“Well, I must say, I do. Of course, Nathan is about to graduate high school, and will have to find something to do before starting college in the fall. Does one say ‘graduate high school’ or ‘graduate from high school’? No, don’t bother trying to answer. I wouldn’t expect you to know matters of proper grammar and syntax. You work on a railroad, after all. I wonder, Miss Tagbord, do you work ‘all the livelong day’? Or is that merely a misconception propagated by the familiar folk tune?”
“I work during the day and often at night.”
“Yes, I believe you do. For what else is a woman without children to do? In any case, you are a grown woman, Miss Tagbord. Indeed, if one is to credit the news reports, you are married—to none other than John Glatt, the man who, we’re led to believe, single-handedly saved the economy and our country ten years ago. Do you deny it?”