“Uh, I guess so.”
“Then just be quiet.”
I was quiet. She didn’t move. I was actually aware of her nakedness-for now she was naked, though covered—and I hoped that she was not aware that I was aware. Besides that I was acutely aware of being almost a participant in-well, I don’t know what. I told myself angrily that I had no right to assume the worst, like a morals proctor.
Presently I said, “Maggie . . .
“Yes, John?”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Why not, John? Not that it is really needful.”
“Uh, you don’t seem to give a hoot that Zeb is down there, with Miriam-alone.”
“Should I give a hoot?”
Confound the woman! She was deliberately misunderstanding me. “Well . . . look, somehow I had gotten the impression that you and Zeb—I mean . . . well, I suppose I sort of expected that you two meant to get married, when you could.”
She laughed a low chuckle that had little mirth in it. “I suppose you could have gotten that impression. But, believe me, the matter is all settled and for the best.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t misunderstand me. I am very fond of Zebadiah and I know he is equally fond of me. But we are both dominant types psychologically—you should see my profile chart; it looks like the Rocky Mountains! Two such people should not marry. Such marriages are not made in Heaven, believe me! Fortunately we found it out in time.”
“Oh.”
“Oh, indeed.”
Now I don’t know just how the next thing happened. I was thinking that she seemed rather forlorn—and the next thing I knew I was kissing her. She lay back in my arms and returned the kiss with a fervor I would not have believed possible. As for me, my head was buzzing and my eyeballs were knocking together and I couldn’t have told you whether I was a thousand feet underground or on dress parade.
Then it was over. She looked up for a bare moment into my eyes and whispered, “dear John . . .” Then she got suddenly to her feet, leaned over me, careless of the towel, and patted my cheek. “Judith is a very lucky girl. I wonder if she knows it.”
“Maggie!” I said.
She turned away and said, without looking back. “I really must finish dressing. I’m cold.”
She had not felt cold to me.
She came out shortly, fully dressed and toweling her hair vigorously. I got my dry towel and helped her. I don’t believe I suggested it; the idea just took care of itself. Her hair was thick and lovely and I enjoyed doing it. It sent goose pimples over me.
Zeb and Miriam came back while I was doing so, not racing but swimming slowly; we could hear them laughing long before they were in sight. Miriam climbed out of the water as shamelessly as any harlot of Gomorrah, but I hardly noticed her. Zeb looked me in the eye and said aggressively, “ready for your swim, chum?”
I started to say that I did not believe that I would bother and was going to make some excuse about my towel already being wet—when I noticed Maggie watching me . . . not saying anything but watching. I answered, “Why, surely! You two took long enough.” I called out, “Miriam! Get out from behind that rock! I want to use it.”
She squealed and giggled and came out, still arranging her clothes. I went behind it with quiet dignity.
I hope I still had quiet dignity when I came out. In any case I set my teeth, walked out and straight into the water. It was bitingly cold at first, but only for a moment. I was never varsity but I swam on my class team and I’ve even been in the Hudson on New Year’s Day. I liked that black pool, once I was in.
I just had to swim down to the other end. Sure enough, there was a little beach there. I did not go up on it.
On the way back I tried to swim down to the bottom. I could not find it, but it must have been over twenty feet down. I liked it down there-black and utterly still. Had I the breath for it, or gills, it seemed to me that it would have been a good place to stay, away from Prophets, away from Cabals, and paperwork, and worries, and problems too subtle for me.
I came up gasping, then struck out hard for our picnic beach. The girls already had the food laid out and Zeb shouted for me to hurry. Zeb and Maggie did not look up as I got out of the water, but I caught Miriam eyeing me. I don’t think I blushed. I never did like blondes anyhow. I think Lilith must have been a blonde.
CHAPTER 11
The Supreme Council, consisting of heads of departments, General Huxley, and a few others, met weekly or oftener to advise the General, exchange views, and consider the field reports. About a month after our rather silly escapade in the underground pool they were in session and I was with them, not as a member but as a recorder. My own girl was ill and I had borrowed Maggie from G-2 to operate the voicewriter, since she was cleared for top secret. We were always terribly shorthanded of competent personnel. My nominal boss, for example, was Wing General Penoyer, who carried the title of Chief of Staff. But I hardly ever saw him, as he was also Chief of Ordnance. Huxley was his own chief of staff and I was sort of a glorified aide—“midshipmite, and bosun tite, and crew of the captain’s gig.” I even tried to see to it that Huxley took his stomach medicine regularly.
This meeting was bigger than usual. The regional commanders of Gath, Canaan, Jericho, Babylon, and Egypt were present in person; Nod and Damascus were represented by deputies-every Cabal district of the United States except Eden and we were holding a sensitive hook-up to Louisville for that command, using idea code that the sensitives themselves would not understand. I could feel the pressure of something big coming up, although Huxley had not taken me into his confidence. The place was tyled so that a mouse couldn’t have got in.
We droned through the usual routine reports. It was duly recorded that we now had eighty-seven hundred and nine accepted members, either lodge brethren or tested and bound members of the parallel military organization. There were listed as recruited and instructed more than ten times that number of fellow travelers who could be counted on to rise against the Prophet, but who had not been entrusted with knowledge of the actual conspiracy.
The figures themselves were not encouraging. We were always in the jaws of a dilemma; a hundred thousand men was a handful to conquer a continent-wide country whereas the less than nine thousand party to the conspiracy itself were “way too many to keep a secret. We necessarily relied on the ancient cell system wherein no man knew more than he had to know and could not give away too much no matter what an inquisitor did to him-no, not even if he had been a spy. But we had our weekly losses even at this passive stage.
One entire lodge had been surprised in session and arrested in Seattle four days earlier; it was a serious loss but only three of the chairs had possessed critical knowledge and all three had suicided successfully. Prayers would be said for all of them at a grand session that night, but here it was a routine report. We had lost four hatchet men that week but twenty-three assassinations had been accomplished—one of them the Elder Inquisitor for the entire lower Mississippi Valley.
The Chief of Communications reported that the brethren were prepared to disable 91% (figured on population coverage) of the radio TV stations in the country, and that with the aid of assault groups we could reasonably hope to account for the rest-with the exception of the Voice of God station at New Jerusalem, which was a special problem.
The Chief of Combat Engineering reported readiness to sabotage the power supply of the forty-six largest cities, again with the exception of New Jerusalem, the supply of which was self-contained with the pile located under the Temple. Even there major interruption could be accomplished at distribution stations if the operation warranted the expenditure of sufficient men. Major surface transportation and freight routes could be sabotaged sufficiently with present plans and personnel to reduce traffic to 12% of normal.
The reports went on and on-newspapers, student action groups, rocket field seizure or sabotage, miracles, rumor propagation, water supply, incident incitement, counter-espionage, long-range weather prediction, weapons distribution. War is a simple matter compared with revolution. War is an applied science, with well-defined principles tested in history; analogous solutions may be found from ballista to H-bomb. But every revolution is a freak, a mutant, a monstrosity, its conditions never to be repeated and its operations carried out by amateurs and individualists.