Hills, covered with leaves — mostly fir and pine trees, but some deciduous. The forest was heavy and the snow was heavy. There was no sign of mankind, but there were odd angular shapes in the contours, shapes which no glacier had ever fashioned, no rock strata had ever built up by tilting and faulting. There was a city there, perhaps. And perhaps it was Atomsk.
III. EYES TURN TO ATOM-GOROD
A docile Major Dugan followed Captain Sarah Lomax into a temporary U.S. Army building out beyond Atsugi airfield. The M.P. at the gate telephoned in before he let them pass. He started to gaze curiously at the pretty WAC captain until Dugan, quite officiously, said to her: "Hurry up, sis. We're going to be late."
While the guard was still adjusting his wits to the rather improbable brother-sister relationship of the two officers, they went on in. Sarah had had two solid days of visits with Dugan, and had gotten accustomed to his casual mystifications, which almost inevitably had the effect of drawing attention away from himself and to the other people who went with him.
At Finance he had signed vouchers providing for his pay to be drawn by General Coppersmith's office and deposited to his account in a Minneapolis bank.
At Weather he had talked for hours, while Sarah got very bored, with a zealous young meteorologist who seemed to know everything about the Siberian cold fronts. Before Dugan was through, it seemed that he should find his way around Asia merely by looking at the clouds.
Then Sarah had taken him over to the Counterintelligence, where a very solemn colonel gave Dugan a lecture on the responsibilities of the investigating officer. The interview was spoiled when an aide put a slip of paper in front of the colonel. Sarah, reading the clean-cut penciled handwriting upside down, saw that the note said, "This is the Dugan." At that the colonel got very red, said they were wasting his time, and told Sarah that Coppersmith ought to brief his own people. As they went out, Dugan apologizing for nothing in particular, the colonel said to him:
"I'd like to talk to you, if you ever talk. But I guess you don't."
"Talk, sir?" said Dugan. "Certainly."
"About yourself," said the colonel.
Dugan laughed. "There's not much to say, Colonel. If I get back here, I'll ask permission." His tone implied he would not ask very hard.
That was all they saw of Counterintelligence. The old colonel looked as though he did not expect to see Dugan again — not in this life, at least. Sarah had tried to make him talk:
"Major, you were here during the war?"
"Uh-huh," said he. "And you weren't. We could have had fun if you'd been here."
"Silly," she said. "They'd have shot me."
"They didn't shoot me," said Dugan. "I was an Imperial Japanese officer. You could have been fixed up as a Czarist Russian. Or else as an Irish girl. Did you realize that Ireland was neutral? The Irish just wanted to be sure to get a chance to fight on all sides, the way they usually do. I got a Legion of Merit for serving against the United States and for passing as a Japanese."
"I don't see how you did it. You don't look Japanese to me. Just sort of Italian or maybe Syrian or just funny Irish."
For answer he put his hands up to his face, pulled his eyelids slantwise, drew his lower lip down. Then he said, "Boo, I'm Hachiman, the Japanese war god." She laughed, but she noticed she had not gotten any personal details out of him.
This trip was to the office of the photo analyst who studied the pictures from the weather plane. The analyst himself came to the door and showed them into a comfortable room, furnished with a Franklin stove, wicker furniture of the kind usually found on hotel porches, photographic drainboards and cubicles, and an impressive number of safes. Among the photographic odors there was a homey sort of smell which Sarah could not place.
The analyst, Dr. Swanson, offered them seats. Dugan sniffed significantly. Dr. Swanson eyed him:
"Anything wrong, Major? I guess our chemicals smell bad to anybody who's just come in from the outside."
"What I smell," said Dugan, "is scarcely chemical. I think that it's McTeague's Highland Cream."
Swanson blushed all the way down to his shirt collar. "One of the boys did have a drink recently. Can I offer you one?"
"You can," said Dugan, "but Captain Lomax has religious scruples and will drink nothing but hot Japanese tea."
When Swanson left to make up highballs, Sarah said, "Thanks for getting me out of that drink. I hate refusing. How did you know I don't drink?"
"I asked the Japanese who keeps your room. Sh-h-h," said Dugan, as Dr. Swanson came back.
Drinks in front of them, Swanson smiled wanly, "Here's to Atom-gorod."
Dugan said something in Russian and Swanson answered in the same language. They both sounded to Sarah as though they had very strong mid-Western accents. Apparently they weren't saying anything important, because Dugan slipped back into English:
"And the Communists have butchered the Russian language, too, along with everything else. It's just like them, to set up a place so secret that they don't dare think about it themselves, and then give it a name like that. The old Russians would have called it Atomnii-gorod and would have had scientific congresses meeting there every six months."
Swanson agreed. "They need more cover. I got a lot out of those photographs, but even without me, the place would have shown up. I suppose General Coppersmith has given you all the evidence."
Dugan turned to Sarah. "Did he?"
Sarah sipped her tea from a Japanese cup and looked up at Dugan through the steam. He did not sound as though he meant the question, so she just said:
"I've given you the basic briefing."
Swanson turned to her. "Did you tell him about the N.K.A.R.?"
Dugan intercepted the question. "She mentioned it, but since she does not speak Russian, she may have missed some of the terms. That's Narodnii Kommisariat Atomnovo Razvitiya—"
"I know that much," said Sarah. "People's Commissariat of Atomic Development."
"But why N.K. when all the other commissariats have been turned into ministries?" asked Dugan. He stretched out his legs, leaned back, looked through his pale amber glass, and acted like a man who was prepared for long scientific discussions. Swanson, too, relaxed and said he supposed that they did not want to change the number of constitutional ministries. By leaving the secret agency with the old-fashioned name, they could publish their formal governmental structure in good faith.
While Dugan was talking, Sarah studied him. He was of middle height. There was a quaint mobility to his face, a quickness of expression which made her suspect that in his early childhood some warm-hearted quickly responsive woman had taught him the rudiments of human relationships. He was acting a role, but it was a role which he enjoyed acting. He was talking, smiling, agreeing, dissenting, frowning, smiling again, all in turn. Who was she to say that this was not the real, the true Dugan? People were not their dead selves but their live selves. Yet in the case of a man like Dugan, there must be alternative selves, other personalities patterned to the occasion and the culture. Dugan-the-Japanese must have been just as believable as Dugan-the-American; Japanese must have liked him because he was Japanese; otherwise he would have been found out and killed. How could she like a man who existed only by virtue of his own command, who played perpetually on a stage of make-believe? What was he, anyway? Dugan was no name for a man with black hair, black eyes, olive skin — or was it? Was he a Turk or a Greek, an Italian or an Egyptian, or (wildest chance of all, this) simply an American?
And how could he like her? She was Coppersmith's assistant. She was valuable to him among friends, just as other people, men, and women too, must have been valuable to him among enemies. He wanted her to like him; it made his work easier. Therefore, the easiest thing for him to do would be to show her that he, for his part, liked her. But did he, truly? How could she know? How could she ever know?