There was much more of it, all in outlandish syllables except that "pet shop" was repeated once more. The others crowded around, careful only not to obstuct Keith-Ingram's view, while Spangler, pointedly ignoring Pembun, turned the spool over to Heissler, the rabbity little Rithian expert who had been flown in early that morning from Denver.
Heissler listened to the spool once more, made heiroglyphic notes, frowned, and cleared his throat. "This is what it says, roughly,” he began. "I don't want to commit myself to an exact translation until I've had time to study the text thoroughly." He glanced around, then looked down at his notes.
"On the map we sent you by Kreth Grana you will find a pet shop on a north-south avenue, with a restaurant on one side of it and a book store on the other. The first bomb is at this location. The others will be found as follows: from the first location through the outermost projection of the adjacent coastline—" Heissler paused. "A distance, in Rithian terminology, which is roughly equal to six thousand seven hundred kilometers. I'll work it out exactly in a moment… it comes to six seven six eight kilometers, three hundred twenty-nine meters and some odd centimeters—to the second location, which is also a pet shop. From this location, at an interior angle of—let's see, that would be eighty-seven degree's, about eight minutes—yes, eight minutes, six seconds— here's another distance, which works out to… ah, nine thousand three hundred seventy-two kilometers, one meter— to the third location. From this location, at an exterior angle of ninety-three degrees, twenty minutes, two seconds…"
Spangler palmed his intercom, got Miss Miss Timoney, and directed her: "Get street maps of all major North American cities and put all the available staff to work on them, starting with those over five hundred thousand. They are to look for a pet shop—that's right, a pet shop—on a north-south avenue, which has a restaurant on one side of it and a book store on the other. This project is to be set up as temporary but has triple-A priority. In the meantime, rough out a replacement project to cover all inhabited areas in this hemisphere, staff to be adequate to finish the task in not over forty-eight hours—and have the outline on my desk for approval when I come back to the office."
"… seven thousand nine hundred eighty-one kilometers, ninety-eight meters, to the fifth location. Message ends." Heissler folded his hands and sat back.
Spangler glanced at Keith-Ingram. The gray man nodded. "Good work, Thorne! Keep that project of yours moving, and I'll see to it that similar ones are set up in the other districts. Congratulations to you all. Clearing." His screen faded.
… And that was it, Spangler thought. Undoubtedly there were millions of pet shops in the world which had a restaurant on one side and a book store on the other, and were on north-south avenues; but there couldn't be many pairs of them on a line whose exact distance was known, and which passed through the salient point of a coastline adjacent to the first. It was just the sort of mammoth problem with which the Empire was superlatively equipped to deal. Within two days, the bombs would have been found and deactivated.
Curiously, it was not his inevitable promotion which occupied Spangler's mind at that moment, not even the certainty that the Empire's most terrible danger had been averted. He was thinking about Pembun.
In more ways than one, he thought, this is the victory of reason over sentiment, science over witchcraft. This is the historic triumph of the single meaning.
He glanced at Pembun, still sitting by himself at the end of the room. The little man's face was gray under the brown. He was hunched over, staring at nothing.
Spangler watched him, feeling the void inside himself where triumph should have been. It was always like this, after he had won. So long as the fight lasted, Spangler was a vessel of hatred; when it was over, when his emotions had done their work, they flowed out of him and left him at peace. Sometimes it was difficult to remember how he could have thought the defeated enemy so important, how he could have burned with impotent rage at the very existence of a man so small, so shriveled, so obviously harmless. Sometimes, as now, Spangler felt the intrusive touch of compassion.
It's how we're made, he thought. The next objective is always the important thing, the only thing that exists for us… and then, when we've reached it, we wonder why it was so necessary, and sometimes we don't know quite what to do with it. But there's always something else to fight for. It may be childish, but it's the thing that makes us great.
Pembun stood up slowly and walked over to Colonel Leclerc, who was talking ebulliently to Gordon. Spangler saw Leclerc turn and listen to something Pembun was saying; then his eyebrows arched roguishly and he shook his head, putting a finger to his pursed lips. Pembun spoke again, and Leclerc grinned hugely, leaned over and whispered something into Pembun's ear, then shouted with laughter.
Pembun walked out of the room, glancing at Spangler as he passed. His face was still gray, but there was a faint, twisted smile on his lips.
He's made a joke, Spangler thought. Give him credit for courage.
He felt suddenly listless, as he had been after the scene with Joanna. He moved toward the door, but a sudden tingling of uneasiness made him hesitate. He turned after a moment and walked over to Leclerc.
"Pardon my curiosity, Colonel," he said. "What was it that Pembun said to you just now?"
Leclerc's eyes glistened. "He was very droll. He asked me if I knew any French, and I said yes—I spoke it as a child, you know; I grew up in a very backward area. Well, then he asked me if it was not true that in French 'pet shop' would have an entirely different meaning than in Standard." He snickered.
"And you told him—?" Spangler prompted.
Leclerc made one of his extravagant gestures. "I said yes! That is, if you take the first word to be French, and the second to be Standard, then a pet shop would be—" he lowered his voice to a dramatic undertone—"a shop that sold impolite noises."
He laughed immoderately, shaking his head. "What a thing to think of!"
Spangler smiled wryly. "Thank you, Colonel," he said, and walked out. That touch of uneasiness had been merely a hangover, he thought; it was no longer necessary to werry about anything that Pembun said, or thought, or did.
Pembun was waiting for him in his outer office.
Spangler looked at him without surprise, and crossed the room to sit beside him. "Yes, Mr. Pembun?" he said simply.
"I 'ave something to tell you," Pembun said, "that you won't like to 'ear. Per'aps we'd better go inside."
"All right," said Spangler, and led the way.
He found himself walking along a deserted corridor on the recreation level. On one side, the doorways he passed beckoned him with stereos of the tri-D's to be experienced inside— a polar expedition on Nereus VI, an evening with Ayesha O'Shaughnessy, a nightmare, a pantomime, a ballet, a battle in space. On the other, he glimpsed the pale, crystalline shells of empty dream capsules.
He did not know how long he had been walking. He had boarded a scooter, he remembered, but he did not know which direction he had taken, or how long he had ridden, or where he had got off. His feet ached, so he must have been walking quite a long time.
He glanced upward. The ceiling of the corridor was stereocelled, and the view that was turned on now was that of the night sky: a clear, cold night, by the look of it; a sky of deep jet, each star as brilliant and sharp as a kernel of ice.
Pembun's gray-brown face stared back at him from the sky. He had been watching that face ever since he had left his office; he had seen it against the satin-polished walls of corridors; it was there when he closed his eyes; but it looked singularly appropriate against this background. The stars have Pembun's face, he thought.