"We really don't have much choice, do we?" Nina said forlornly. She got up from the table and began gathering together the various color cards. "I guess we should cover all the cans of paint."
Woebegone, she began pouring turpentine over a tin can of paint brushes. A smudge of sea-foam green was dabbed across her left cheek, probably as of when she had reached to push back her long blonde hair. Cussick took a rag, moistened it in the turpentine, and scrupulously removed the smudge.
"Thank you," Nina said sadly, when he had finished. "When do we have to leave? Right now?"
He examined his watch. "We better get into Baltimore by evening; they're holding him now. That means we ought to get the eight-thirty ship out of Copenhagen."
"I'll go bathe," Nina said obediently. "And change. You should, too." Critically, she rubbed his chin. "And shave."
He agreed. "Anything you want."
"Will you wear your light gray suit?'
"I have to wear brown. Remember, this is business. For the next twelve hours I'm back on the job."
"Does that mean we have to be solemn and serious?"
He laughed. "No, of course not. But this thing worries me."
Nina wrinkled her nose at him. "Worry, then. But don't expect me to. I've got other things to think about... you realize we won't get this place finished until next week?"
"We could get a couple of workmen in here to complete things."
"Oh, no," Nina said emphatically. She disappeared into the bathroom, turned on the hot water in the tub, and returned. Kicking off her shoes, she began undressing. "We're doing this ourselves. No broken-down tramps are getting in this apartment—this isn't a job; this is—" She searched for the words as she tugged her sweater up over her head. "This is our life together."
"Well," Cussick said dryly, "I was one of those broken-down tramps until I joined Security. But it's up to you. I enjoy painting; I don't care either way."
"You should care," Nina said critically. "Darn it, I'm going to spark some sort of artistic sensitivity in your bourgeois soul."
"Don't say I should care. That's a crime against Relativism. You can care all you want, but don't tell me I have to care, too."
Laughing, Nina skipped over and hugged him. "You great pompous thing. Taking it all so seriously—what am I going to do with you?"
"I don't know," Cussick admitted, frowning. "What are we going to do with all of us?"
"This thing really bothers you," Nine observed, gazing up into his face, her own blue eyes troubled and serious.
Cussick moved away from her and began assembling the heaps of newspapers scattered around the apartment. Nina watched, subdued and chastened, in her paint-streaked slacks and new nylon bra, feet bare, blonde hair tumbled loosely around her smooth shoulders. "Can you tell me anything about it?" she asked presently.
"Sure," Cussick said. Riffling the newspapers, he pulled one out, folded it, and handed it to her. "You can read about it while you're bathing."
The article was long and prominent.
MINISTER DRAWS CROWDS
FURTHER PROOF OF WORLD-WIDE RELIGIOUS REVIVAL
Citizens flock to hear minister tell of calamities to come. Infiltration by alien life-forms predicted in detail.
Below that was a picture of Jones, but no longer sitting in a platform in a side show. An ordained minister, now, wearing a shabby black frock coat, black shoes, more or less shaved, a Peripatetic preacher roaming about the countryside haranguing crowds of rustics. Nina glanced briefly at it, read a few words, glanced again at the picture, and then, without a word, turned and raced into the bathroom to shut off the water. She didn't return the newspaper; when next she appeared, ten minutes later, the newspaper had vanished.
"What'd you do with it," Cussick asked curiously. He had fairly well straightened up the room and began packing his suitcase.
"The newspaper?" Luminous and steaming from her bath, Nina began searching in the dresser for a fresh slip.
"You don't really give a damn," Cussick said, with irritation.
"What about?"
"The work I'm doing. This whole system."
"Darling, it's none of my business." Tartly, she observed: "After all, it's supposed to be secret... I don't want to pry."
"Now listen," he said quietly. Going over to her he uptilted her chin until she had to face him. "Sweetheart," he told her, "you knew what I was doing before you married me. This is no time to disapprove."
For a moment they faced each other defiantly. Then, with a swift dart of her hand, Nina swept up a perfume atomizer from the dresser and squirted him in the face. "Go shave and wash," she ordered him. "And for heaven's sake, put on a clean shirt—there's a whole drawer full of them. I don't want to be ashamed of you."
Below the ship the blue, insipid expanse of the Atlantic lay spread out. Cussick restlessly scowled down at it, and then tried to interest himself in the TV screen glowing from the back of the seat before him. To his right, on the window side of him, dressed in an expensive hand-tailored worsted suit, Nina sat reading a copy of the London Times and daintily nibbling on a wafer-thin Swiss mint.
Moodily getting out his orders, Cussick began restudying the enclosed material. Jones had been arrested at four-thirty a.m. in the downstate section of Illinois, near a town called Pinckneyville. He had put up no resistance, as the police dragged him out of his wooden shack, described, technically, as his "church." Now he was being held in the main processing center at Baltimore. Presumably, a brief had already been drawn up by the Fedgov Attorney General's office; conviction was a matter of routine. There was the necessity of an appearance at the Public Court, and the actual sentencing...
"I wonder if he'll remember me," Cussick said aloud.
Nina lowered her Times. "What? I'm sorry, darling. I was reading the report of the scout ship that was grounded on Neptune for a month and three days. Lord, it must be awful out there. Those ice-cold planets, no air and no light, just dead rock."
"They're all useless," Cussick agreed testily. "It's a waste of the taxpayers' money to explore them." He folded up his orders and stuffed them away in his coat pocket.
"What's he like?" Nina asked. "Is he the one you told me about, the one who used to be a fortuneteller?"
"That's him."
"And they finally got around to arresting him?"
"It's not an easy thing."
"I thought it was all rigged; I thought you could get anybody."
"We can—but we don't want to. We only want people who seem to be dangerous. You think I'd arrest your brother's cousin because she goes around saying Beethoven quartets are the only music worth listening to?"
"You know," Nina said idly, "I don't remember a single thing I read in Hoff's book. We had it in school, of course. Required text in sociology." Blithely, she finished: "I just can't seem to get interested in Relativism... and now here I am married to a—" She glanced around. "I guess I shouldn't say. I still can't get used to this clandestine sneaking around."
"It's in a good cause," Cussick said.
Nina sighed. "I just wish you were in something else. In the shoelace business. Or even dirty postcards. Anything you could be proud of."
"I'm proud of this."
"Oh? Are you really?"
"I'm the town dog catcher," Cussick said soberly. "Nobody likes the dog catcher. Little kids pray a thunderbolt will strike the dog catcher. I'm the dentist. I'm the tax collector. I'm all the stern men who show up with folders of white paper, summoning people to face judgment. I didn't know that, seven months ago. I know it now."
"But you're still in the secret-service."
"Yes," Cussick said. "I still am. And I probably will be the rest of my life."