“Stay out of what way why?” I asked, and felt Essie stirring restlessly, because she had got tired of marveling at my self-control and was beginning to have trouble retaining her own.
“Because you’re a civilian,” he explained. “You mess around in JAWS affairs. You get in the way, and things are getting to a point where we can’t afford civilian meddling anymore.”
I began to get a glimmering of what was bugging him. I smiled at Essie to reassure her that I wasn’t going to kill this impudent general. I really wasn’t-at least, not yet. “The maneuvers didn’t go well,” I guessed.
Cassata choked and sputtered cigar smoke. “Who told you that?”
I shrugged. “It’s obvious. If they’d been a success, your PR people would have had pictures on every newscast. You aren’t bragging; therefore you’ve got nothing to brag about. So the people you want to keep secrets from are the ones who’re paying your bills. Like me.”
“Wise ass,” he snarled. “If you say any of that, I’ll take care of you personally.”
“How are you going to do that?”
He was back in control now, all military, all brass, including the brain. “For openers,” he said, “I’m withdrawing your JAWS clearance, effective immediately.”
That was too much for Essie. “Julio,” she rasped, “you gone crazy or what?”
I put a restraining hand on her arm. I said seriously, “Julio, I’ve got a lot of things on my mind right now and JAWS isn’t one of them. Not right up top, anyway. I had no intention of bothering any of the people at JAWS anytime in the near future-until you came along with your arrogant orders. Now, of course, I’ll make it my business to check up on everything JAWS does.”
He bellowed, “I’ll have you arrested!”
I was beginning to enjoy myself. I said, “No, you won’t. You don’t have the authority. And you don’t have the clout. Because I’ve got the Institute.”
That took him back for a moment. The Broadhead Institute for Extra-Solar Research was one of the best ideas I’d ever had. I’d endowed it a long, long time ago for quite different reasons-well, to tell the truth, about half of the reasons were tax reasons. But I’d endowed it well. I had given it a charter that let it do just about anything it wanted to outside of our solar system, and I’d taken the precaution of loading the board of directors with people who would do what I wanted them to.
Cassata recovered fast. “The hell I don’t have the clout! That’s an order.”
I studied him thoughtfully. Then I called, “Albert?” He popped into existence, blinking at me over his pipe. “Transmit a message for me,” I ordered. “Instruct all branches of the Institute that, effective at once, they are to cease cooperation with the Joint Assassin Watch Service and deny any JAWS personnel access to our premises or our data. Reason given: a direct order from Julio Cassata, Major General, JAWS.”
Cassata’s eyes began to pop. “Now, wait a minute, Broadhead!” he rumbled.
I turned back to him politely. “You have some comment to make about this?”
He was perspiring. “You wouldn’t do that,” he said. His tone was funny, half wheedle and half snarl. “We’re all in this together! The Foe is everybody’s enemy!”
“Why, Julio,” I said, “I’m glad to hear you say that. I thought you were under the impression they were your private property. Don’t worry. I won’t stop the Institute from functioning. It’ll go on with its studies; the scout ships will keep on surveying; we’ll go right on accumulating data about the Foe. We just won’t bother sharing any of this with JAWS anymore. Now. Does Albert send the message or not?”
He tapped the ash off the end of his cigar for a moment, looking stricken. “No,” he muttered.
“Sorry? I couldn’t quite hear what you said.”
“No!” Then he shook his head despairingly. “He’ll blow his stack,” he said.
But he said “he,” and the only “he” he could have meant was the meat-General Cassata. Who was, of course, himself.
“He said ‘he,’” I said to Essie when Cassata had gone glumly away. She said soberly, “Is interesting, I agree. Doppel-Julio comes to consider meat-Julio separate individual.”
“He’s turning schizo?”
“Is turning scared,” she corrected. “Realizes has only limited time to live. Sad little man.” Then she said diffidently, “Dear Robin? Realize thoughts are elsewhere at this moment—”
I didn’t agree, because it wouldn’t have been polite; nor did I deny it, because it was true. Even while I was quarreling with Julio Cassata I was stealing peeks at the scene in Central Park. My doppel had finally reached Klara and said hello to her, and she was just beginning to say, “Robin! It’s ni—”
“—but can I make suggestion?”
“Well, of course you can,” I said, embarrassed. If I’d had blood vessels to redden my face (and a real face to be reddened), I probably would have blushed. Perhaps I did anyway.
“Suggestion,” she said, “is, go easy.”
“Of course,” I said, nodding. I would have said “of course” to almost anything she said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to, uh—”
“Know what you would like to do. Only have problem with discrepancy in time scales, right? So really is no hurry at all for you, dear Robin. Can talk a little first?”
I sat still a moment. (Klara had just got out the “—ce to,” and was parting her lips to begin, “see you again!”) I was by then quite embarrassed. It isn’t easy to be telling one woman that you want very much to talk to another, when you have as uneasy a conscience as I always seem to have about my wife, Essie, and my long-lost love, Gelle-Klara Moynlin.
On the other hand, Essie was absolutely right. There was no hurry at all. She was watching me with love and concern on her face. “Is tough situation for you, eh, dear Robin?” she put in.
The only useful thing I could think of to say was, “I love you a lot, Essie.”
She didn’t look loving in return, she looked exasperated. “Yes, of course.” She shrugged. “Don’t change subject. You love me, I love you, both have no doubt of this; is not relevant to present discussion. Discussion is how you feel about very nice lady whom you also love, GelleKlara Moynlin, and complications arising therefrom.”
It sounded worse when she spelled it out. It did not make me any more comfortable. “We’ve had that discussion a million times!” I groaned.
“So why not one million times more? Get comfortable, dear Robin. Have at least fifteen, maybe eighteen hundred milliseconds before Klara finishes saying what nice surprise is to see you again. So we talk, you and I, unless you don’t want?”
I thought it over and gave up. I said, “Why not?” And indeed there was no reason.
There was also no reason not to get comfortable. As Essie said, we had talked this out many times before, all one night and edging up on most of the next day once. That had been a long time ago-oh, billions of seconds-and I had been talking to the real Essie, the flesh-and-blood meat one. (Of course, I was flesh and blood at the time myself.) We were newly married at the time. We had been sitting on the veranda of our house, sipping iced tea and watching the sailboats on the Tappan Sea, and it had really been an easing, loving talk.
Obviously Essie remembered that long-ago meat-person conversation as well as I did, because when she got us comfortable, that was where she got us. Oh, not “really” in the sense that we were physically there—but, really, what does “really” mean? I could see the sailboats, and the evening summer breeze was warm.
“This is nice,” I said appreciatively, feeling myself beginning to relax. “Being a disembodied datastring does have its advantages.”