The door to McEwen’s office was wide open. Julian Bahr sat at the director’s desk, the cone of a dictating machine in one hand. Frank Carmine was nearby. A dozen other people were there, shoving reports under Bahr’s nose, leaning over to exchange a word or phrase, nodding sharply and hurrying off. He saw her, and said something almost audible and unpleasant to Carmine, and went back to his dictating. His voice cut sharply across the murmur in the room, incisive, impatient, commanding.
She did not see McEwen, and the sick feeling grew stronger. Here was the center of the sense of urgency and tension that pervaded the place. Bahr’s face was tense and angry, his eyes bloodshot, his mouth a hard, confident line as he dictated. With her trained psychologist’s eye Libby could see the danger signals like foot-tall handwriting on the wall. The controls, the adjustments she had tried so hard to build into his personality were beginning to snap, one by one.
“Julian, I want to talk to you.”
He slammed the microphone down and pulled her to the side of the room. “Damn it, Libby, I can’t see you now. Go on down below and I’ll be down when I can break away.”
“We have an appointment now.”
“Yes, I know. In an hour.”
“You’re lying. You’re stalling me, and you know it.”
His scowl deepened. “So I’m lying. I told you I’m busy.”
“I know you’re busy. So am I. That’s why I’ve got to talk to you today. Now.”
“Look,” he said, “I’ve got a Condition C problem to handle, and a new job to get under control. I don’t have time for your . . . interview.”
The deliberate vulgar connotation on the last word made her face flush red, but she refused to be driven off with insults. “All right,” she said, “then I’ll drop your case right now. I’ll have another worker assigned to you tomorrow, if you like. A man, in case you don’t want any more . . . interviews . . . with women.”
Bahr stared at her, his face heavy with anger. She knew she had struck his Achilles’ heel—his savage, almost pathological fear of the DEPCO mind invaders, the one beast in his Twenty-First Century jungle he did not know how to cope with. He glared at her, his hand still clutching her arm. Then he nodded to the anteroom that still had his name on the door, and pushed her roughly inside. He kicked the door shut and turned on her. “All right, what do you want?”
“Julian, what’s going on here? Where’s Mac?”
Bahr told her. It was like a slap in the face. “We’re keeping it out of the newscasts until we have things under better control. Of course we notified the key government people.”
“But . . . dead.” She shook her head helplessly. Now there was no doubt why Adams had come to her office.
“He’s had a bad heart for a long time,” Bahr said.
“Particularly since you’ve been bucking him,” Libby said bitterly.
“Look, Lib, you know I’d have gone down on the floor for Mac. When he heard that Project Frisco had been compromised, it was more than he could take.”
“And you’re the director now,” Libby said.
“For the time being, yes. I can’t let this Project Frisco sag while DEPCO bickers about a new appointment.”
“Oh, it won’t sagl Not with Julian Bahr running things.” She turned on him viciously. “You should have seen yourself out therel The Commanding General, whipping his whole Army into trembling readiness. They’re like a pack of bloodhounds baying for the hunt. You love it, don’t you? Blood pressure up, adrenals pumping, ego swelling up lite a big purple balloon . . . .”
“That’s about enough from you,” Bahr said.
“No, it’s not quite enough, Julian. Adams was in to see me this morning. You’re going to have to resign as director.”
“Resign!” The anger fell away from Bahr’s face, leaving incredulity in its place. “But I’ve been working for five year for this job.”
“I know that. I’ve been watching you, and I knew all along it was coming to this. You can’t keep the job. DEPCO won’t let you.”
“They’ve got to let me,” Bahr said flatly. “Nobody else knows what Project Frisco is . . . not even BRINT. They’re going out of their minds over there; they don’t even know the cover-name for the Project. But since Wildwood, Project Frisco is a Condition C operation. We aren’t dealing with Eastern Bloc activity, Lib. It’s more than that.”
Then he told her about the U-metal, and the exit monitors, and the whole story.
“You mean you think something . . . extraterrestrial . . . was responsible for the raid?”
“For everything. God knows how long it’s been going on. The thermite fires, the disappearances . . . Did you know that James Cullen vanished from his home last night? There’s no man in the country who knows more about our Stability Control system, and now all of a sudden he’s gone. Libby, somebody’s got to track this thing down and find out what’s happening while there’s still time. Nobody else could do it, but I can push it through. I’ll do it if I have to run my men into their graves.” He stopped suddenly. “You think I’m lying, don’t you?”
“No, Julian, I think you’re telling the absolute truth.”
“You don’t think I can do it, do you?”
Libby did not answer.
“And you don’t want me to try,” Bahr said bitterly. “You’d rather have me stick my neck in the yoke like a work horse and just pull, let somebody crack a whip over me . . . pull like all the other workhorses all day long, and at night trot home to my own little pasture and play stud to you. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Well, I don’t like taking orders from people who aren’t as good as me. I’ve taken too damned many orders, and now I’m going to give some . . . .”
“Julian, you just won’t understand.” She turned away, but he jerked her around. The enthusiasm was gone from his face now, and there was anger in its place.
“You’d like to stop me, wouldn’t you?” he said. “Push me back in the rut. Punch some new holes in my Stability Card and dump me back at the bottom of the heap again. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“It isn’t what I want or don’t want,” Libby said wearily. “If you won’t step down now, I can’t protect you any more. You’ll have a DEPCO man in your office before you can turn around. You’ll never know what hit you. They’ll find that you’re unstable and dangerous for anything but a green-card job. They’ll get one look at your Stability profile and downgrade you right into Critical Ward. Then they’ll give you recoop and shock-analysis, and if there’s anything left you’ll spend the rest of your life picking oranges somewhere. That’s not what I want, Julian. That’s the law.”
He looked at her and suddenly laughed. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “You’ve been handing me this Stability garbage for five years now. Acting like I’d committed some crime that you were covering up for me. Always trying to make me stop pushing. Why, every time I took a step up the ladder you’d nearly have a fit. As if I couldn’t handle the job.”
“It’s not that,” she said. “It’s what you might do in the job. And I’ve been covering for you, believe me, but I can’t do it any longer. If you don’t quit this job right now, I can’t help you any more.”
He walked around the room, slamming his fist into his palm. “Okay,” he said unexpectedly. “Ill quit, then. But not now. Not today. Project Frisco is urgent, and there’s nobody else to take over. Ill need time to get it straightened out.”
“How much time? Two days? Three?”
“God, no! I couldn’t get anything done that soon.”