Выбрать главу

“What I’m trying to tell you, Denzer! Give her the lab report. She’ll take it in for us!”

The sun rose in pink glory for Arturo Denzer.

Half blinded by the radiance of sudden, unexpected hope, he staggered back to the desk. Valendora and the plump youth were still at it, but he pushed past them, picked up the Nature’s Way National Impartial Research Foundation envelope and clawed his way back to Maggie. “Pencil!” he snapped. She produced one and Denzer scribbled a note to Joe, in Production:

Joe, we’re in a jam. Fix this up for us somehow. Run it pp 34-35, push it through soonest, I’ve       already got all okays so just jam it in. God bless you. If Front Office asks where I am I’m dead.

He thought of adding, “Will explain later,” but he wasn’t so very sure he could. He thought of kissing Sue-Mary Gribb; but she was another Female Integrationist, wearing slacks, carrying a corncob pipe; he only shook her hand briskly and watched her leave.

It was not until she was out the door that he realized why she had been there in the first place.

She was a reporter, gathering names. It was customary to run a list of A.R.P. violators in the newspapers. It was inevitable that someone who worked for Natures Way would see his and Maggie’s names on that list; and it was beyond hope that that someone would fail to show it to the Front Office.

With the help of Sue-Mary Gribb he might have made his deadline, but his troubles were not over. Front Office was solid C.S.B.

“Maggie,” he said faintly, “when you left the Herald, did you part friends? I mean, do you think they might give us a job?”

The next thing was that they had to wait for their hearing and, in the way of police courts, that took some tune. Meanwhile they were all jammed together, noisy and fretful.

The bull-pen roared: “Quiet down, you mokes! You think this is a debating society?” Denzer sighed and changed position slightly so as not to disturb Maggie Frome, again placidly dozing on his shoulder. (This could become a habit, he thought.)

Well, that was something else the Century of the Common Woman had accomplished. They had integrated the lockups, for better or for worse. Not that Maggie, asleep, was deriving the benefit she might from the integrated, but still very loud, yammering of the inmates of the bullpen.

They weren’t all A.R.P. violators. A sizeable knot in one corner were clearly common drunks, bellowing about the All-Star Game when they were not singing raucously. They were the chief targets of the bullpen’s repeated thunderings for quiet, as its volumetric ears registered an excessive noise level. They must wear out those tapes in a week, Denzer thought.

A diffident finger touched his arm. “Mr. Denzer?” It was the research fellow from the Institute.

Softly, to refrain from disturbing Maggie, he said: “Hello, Venezuela. Make yourself comfortable.”

“Valendora, Mr. Denzer.”

“Sorry,” said Denzer absently, inhaling Maggie’s hair.

“I ask you, Mr. Denzer,” Valendora said, choosing his words with as much care as though he were taping a question for his computers, “is it proper that I should be arrested for being twenty-six feet away from where I would not be arrested?”

Denzer stared at him. “Come again?” Maggie stirred restlessly on his shoulder.

“I was two floors below the Foundation, Mr. Denzer, no more,” said the research man. “We are not required to wear dosimeters in the Institute itself. Two floors is twenty-six feet.”

Denzer sighed. This was not a time when he had patience for nuts. The girl on his shoulder stirred and he said, “Good morning, Maggie.” Valendora swept on:

“Naturally, Mr. Denzer, it did not occur to me to go back for my dosimeter. My probably error was more than twenty-four hours minus, though zero plus, and it might have been the real attack. I was carrying a most important document and I could not endanger it.”

Maggie looked at him with faint curiosity and then twisted around to look at Denzer’s face. “The deadline, Denzer?” she muttered. He crossed his fingers and shrugged.

“Mr. Denzer,” cried Valendora, “you are a man of influence. Statist. Analysis Trans. is waiting for this study-and besides,” he added wonderingly, “I suppose if the attack is to come tomorrow someone should do something about it. Can you not secure justice for me in this matter?”

Rocked by the sudden vision of himself as a man of influence, Denzer hardly heard the rest of what the research man was saying. Maggie Frome pushed herself away from him and stared thoughtfully at Valendora.

“We’re all in the same boat, friend,” she said kindly.

Valendora scowled at the floor.

“But what’s this about an attack?”

With bitter sarcasm Valendora said, “Nothing at all, Miss Frome. Merely what I have spent eleven months of my tune on. And twenty-two computer hours.”

“I’m impressed, friend. You said something about an attack?”

Valendora said, “You would not understand single-event prediction, Miss Frome. It is a statistical assessment of probabilities. Oh, nothing in itself that has not previously been studied, true; but it is in the establishing of quantitative values for subjective data that I have, I do know, made a contribution.” He shrugged moodily. “And by tomorrow? The event, you see. If I have not published before the event it is only a mathematical statement. The test of a theory is the predictions that can be made from it; I have made my prediction. During the All-Star Game, you see-“

“There you are!” cried a new voice.

It was the plump youth who had been quarreling with Valendora at the booking desk. He was still angry. “Baseball,” he snapped, “that’s all I hear. Can’t I make anyone understand that I am a special investigator on Senator Horton’s personal staff? The senator is waiting to interview me right now! And this man has stolen my thesis!” He put a hand out and briskly pumped Denzer’s. “Walter Chase, sir. M.A., C.E., and all the rest of that nonsense,” he twinkled, for he had made a quick estimate of Denzer’s well-cut clothes and hangdog look and pigeonholded him at once as second-string executive, subject to flattery.

“Denzer. Nature’s Way,” he mumbled, trying to let go of the hand, but Chase hung on.

“I’m in cement, Mr. Denzer,” he said. “Did a bit of research-my dissertation, actually-just received another degree-and Senator Horton is most taken by it. Most taken, Mr. Denzer. Unfortunately I’ve just the one copy, as it happens and it’s, well, rather important that it not be lost. It concerns cement, as it affects our shelter program-and, after all, what is a shelter but cement? Eh? Probably should’ve been classified at the start, but-“ He shrugged with the faint amused distaste of the man of science for the bureaucrat. “Anyway, I must have it; the senator must see it with his own eyes before he’ll give me the j- before making final arrangements. And this man has stolen it.”

“Stolen!” screamed Valendora. “Man! It is your fault, man! I was only-“

“Be careful!” commanded Chase furiously. “Don’t blame me! I was merely-“

Denzer felt a tug on his arm. Maggie Frome winked and led him away, near the group of singing drunks. They sat down again. “Quieter here!” she shouted in his ear. “Put your shoulder back, Denzer! I want to go back to sleep!”

“All right!” he yelled, and helped her settle her head against him; but in a moment she raised it again.

“”Denzer!” she asked over the singing of the group, “did you hear what your friend from the Institute was saying? Something about an attack? I had the funny idea he meant missile attack-a real one, I mean.”