“I guess you’re waiting for Mr. Bahr,” she said. Like a chimpanzee, she thought, just like a chimpanzee, sitting around wisely with his thin pale face framed by the thinning pale blond hair that he never seemed to cut. There were two technicians like chimpanzees, too, practically picking fleas off themselves in an effort to look like Adams.
“Where is Bahr?” Adams asked.
“He had an emergency investigation last night,” she said. “He may be a little late getting here.”
“If he gets here at all,” Adams said.
“He would have notified me if he couldn’t make it.”
I see.
Silence.
There was no clue as to whether she was supposed to sit down, or break down, or what, so she carried out the ritual of hanging up her coat, straightening her hair, deliberately showing off her figure a little because she thought it would make Adams feel uncomfortable.
“I’d like to see your case history on Bahr,” Adams said.
“It’s not quite up to date. I have some notes in my apartment.”
“Obviously,” Adams said.
“His latest Brontok,” Libby snapped, flushing with anger at his insinuation, which was not actually an insinuation but a statement of fact. Of course Adams would know.
“We can probably manage without anything from your apartment,” Adams said acidly. “I want to see what you have here.”
“It’s up to date as of two weeks ago,” she explained, sliding her safe drawer open. “Mr. Bahr has been too rushed at work for scheduled analysis.” Even before she got the drawer all the way open, Libby sensed that something was wrong. Something in the drawer had been changed. Someone had been tampering with her files. She hesitated.
“Would you mind?” Adams said, goading her. She lifted out Bahr’s file, trying to flip through briefly to see what might have been changed, or taken out, but Adams was on his feet beside her, lifting the folder out of her hands.
She started to say something, and then let it pass, hoping that maybe if she played it dumb he wouldn’t realize that she had spotted the tampering.
Adams retired to the chair, leafing through the folder, pretending to study it. Obviously he was stalling. He knew what he wanted to find; he was just hoping to draw some comment from her by the long delay. She did not oblige him.
Finally he looked up. “Are you familiar with the function of a DEPCO therapist?”
“Certainly I am.”
“How would you define it?”
“Helping people.”
Adams gave an impatient shrug. “All right, flood relief helps people, too. Is that what you mean?”
“Helping them to adjust their emotions and thinking processes to living in the world,” Libby countered. “Helping them gain insight into—”
“Miss Allison, you’ve recommended Julian Bahr for six grade changes in the last four years. Do you call this adjustment? When you let a highly questionable individual accrue more responsibility and power with every up-grade? When you put more and more strain on a sick personality?”
“He’s my case. I think the diagnosis is my responsibility. And the treatment.”
“As long as you remain his therapist, yes, but when you become his agent—”
“I’m still his therapist,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Really? I thought this might have changed since his appointment as director of DIA.”
“It’s only a temporary appointment.”
“Temporary. Of course. And he’s still under treatment? Coming along nicely, too . . . am I right?”
It took strength to control herself. “You have the case history there.”
Adams nodded sourly, and glanced back over the report. “No analysis, I see, after four years. Didn’t you think he needed analysis?”
“I wasn’t able to convince the patient until recently.” Adams dropped the folder on the desk with a thud, and her voice trailed off.
It all sounded so weak. Even knowing in advance what Adams was going to ask didn’t improve the story. She had fouled the whole job completely. She had been deluding herself, but she could see it now, coldly, unhappily. She had been used. Even the most impartial witness, reading that case history, could have seen that. She had twisted, bent, and sidestepped every principle, regulation, safeguard and normal channel in DEPCO to do Bahr’s bidding.
Therapist. She had a sour, nauseous feeling, and there was a dull, cramping pain in her thorax. For the first time she saw, in stark, uncolored light exactly what she had been doing. Somewhere, long ago, there must have been a reason, a sane, rational reason, but what was it?
Twelve years of training, six years of hard-earned experience, and she had thrown it all out, a life’s work, to play lover to a sick, ruthless brute.
A Phi Beta Kappa concubine . . . .
The phone was ringing. Adams picked it up. “It’s Bahr. For you. See that he gets here.” Libby took the phone, surprised to find her hands sweaty. She flicked on the local muffler so Adams could not hear.
“Julian? Yes, I know you’re late. All night? You knew you had this interview today.” Damn him, damn him! “I meant what I said, Julian, if you don’t come over for the prelim today, Adams will have an injunction against you tomorrow morning. This is 100 percent under DEPCO jurisdiction. Yes, you’re damned right I’m looking after my own neck; if I lose my rating . . . That’s what I said—by tomorrow morning. All right, I’ll tell him, and Julian . . . .”
The phone went dead. She hung up, and she knew her face was dead white and that she was trembling all over when she turned back to Adams.
“He’ll be right over,” she said.
Back in the New York office after the night’s itinerary to Red Bank and Trivettown, Julian Bahr had found a multitude of details to catch up on, progress reports to read, orders to give, field units to check out. He almost but not quite forgot the interview with Adams scheduled for nine. It was just that he could not force himself to assign it any priority until it crammed itself down his throat and demanded priority. There were so many other things, he thought, that demanded his attention far more.
The office was running with its usual furor of activity and efficiency, reports neatly stacked on his desk, calls listed by importance. Certainly there was no suggestion of a conspiracy against him here, only the hollow spot by his side left by Carmine, and already he had determined, grimly, that there would never again, ever, be a hole like that.
There was a huge piece missing in the puzzle, too, which Bahr could not understand at all. Alexander was still missing; there was no filed report on him. Surely if Carmine had picked him up he would have been held someplace at Red Bank, or at least somewhere in the East, but there was no sign of him.
He scanned the reports. No further evidence of alien activity for four days, almost five. “Which seems to us fairly ominous,” one of the staff men ventured, and Bahr nodded vehement agreement, slamming his fist angrily into his palm. It was like watching a huge and expertly manufactured time bomb which suddenly and inexplicably had ceased ticking.
But the reaction to the Canadian landing and his speech—there had been plenty of that, and it was still growing, still building furiously. Seventeen reported landings across Federation America, every one tracked down and found to be a false alarm. A new set of directives emerging from the computers in the Caverns, almost hourly, to direct mass-control teams which had been mobilized to counteract the spreading panic, and still the panic spread, until the control teams were unable even to assign priority to segments of their own program. Five square miles of south Los Angeles going up in flames after a riot attack against an alleged alien stronghold in a tinderbox residential district.