He hesitated, and then added, “My only worry, that is, until you were wished on me. Are you snaking any progress?” And added with his eyes: 1 hope!
Sheklov reached for the bowl of sugar resting on a low table between them and stirred a generous spoonful into his coffee; he liked it Turkish-style, thick and sweet. Not looking up, he said, “I'm not a miracle-worker, you know. I shall have to feel things out for a good while before I can do anything positive.”
Turpin sighed. “I don't see why someone had to be sent specially,” he grumbled. “Or why-if it was necessary-it had to be me who was used to cushion you.”
“Also,” Sheklov said delicately, “you don't like the scope of my brief.”
There was a pause. Turpin looked everywhere except at Sheklov while deciding how best to reply– He settled for candour. “No, I don't!”
“If it's any,consolation, it makes me feel awkward, too.” Sheklov raised his liqueur goblet. Barely in time he remembered to sip, not toss the contents back. While thinking as Holtzer he made no such errors, he reassured himself; it was trying to straddle his two personalities that-
But that led back to the recollection of how he had exposed himself to Danty.
Maintaining flawless outward calm, however, he said, “In fact, I was going to ask you this anyhow, and now is as good a time as any. How long would it take you to fix me a job with EG-a travelling job?”
Turpin's face went turkey-cock red. He said, “Now just a-!”
“I have the authority to insist,” Sheklov murmured.
“The hell you do! Look, they gave me to understand that your timber-salesman cover was fire-proof, that the parent firm has been used before and can prop you up as long as necessaryl”
“As long as necessary for me to devise an alternative,” Sheklov answered stonily. “You know as well as I do-I mean better than I do-that even a Canadian isn't allowed stay in this country without impeccable reasons.”
Turpin's jowls trembled. “But they told me I only had to cushion your landfall. I took it for granted that you had a closed assignments”
“Nobody said that in so many words,” Sheklov pointed out. “In fact my assignment is open-ended, category one. Anyway, why should the idea of finding me a job with EG upset you so much? You must be distributing patronage all the time.”
“Patronage!” Turpin echoed, and slapped his thigh with his open palm, like a gun-shot. “This isn't patronage-it's blackmaill Bringing you into EG would be insanely dangerous. I've sweated blood for years, for decades, to make sure there was no one in the entire corporation who had a breath of suspicion against him. I'm damned if I'm going to break a clean record a quarter-century longl”
Eventually Sheklov sighed and turned around in his chair to a more comfortable position.
“Look, Dick,” he said, “there's something that d6esn't seem to have registered with you yet. Out near Pluto something has happened that is so big that nothing else matters until it's resolved. Doesn't that get across to you? Hell, there are alien intelligences! There are portions of the universe that are contraterrene! And because one damned idiot government out of all the damned idiot governments we have on this miserable planet has signed away its responsibility to a bunch of machines, you and I and everybody, communist or capitalist, neutralist or whatever the hell, all of us, could be hurled back to the Stone Age tomorrow-if we're still alive. Think about it, Dick, for pity's sake think!”
It was getting through. He could read it in Turpin's staring eyes. He had finally managed to smash down the mental barriers in the other's head. And by doing so, inevitably, he had brought the whole affair back into focus in his own consciousness with as much force as it had possessed when he first heard of it from Bratcheslavsky in Alma-Ata.
At that moment, though, a phone shrilled. Turpin snatched at it. It was one of the old-fashioned kind that had to be held to the ear: in that case. Sheklov reasoned, it was probably a confidential line. Modern designs were easier to bug.
“Turpin here!”
There was a crackling. He nodded. “Yes, this is my quiet line. You can talk.”
The caller talked. Watching, Sheklov saw Turpin's face go pasty-gray; his eyes narrowed. and he closed his empty fist so tight the knuckles glistened white. He looked as though he was about to swing that fist in sheer fury.
“Yes, I'll come at once,” he said thickly when the caller was through. He slammed down the phone, leaped from his chair, and towered over Sheklov,
“You turd!” he forced out. “You radiated bastard!”
“What happened?” Sheklov whispered, thinking of Danty.
“That reserved area where you came ashorel They sent a service crew there today. Know what they found? They, found it had been turned oiff in the small hours of the morning you arrived. Turned off l Do you understand what that means?”
Sheklov did. But waited for Turpin to put it into smoking words.
“It means someone else knows you're here,” Turpin spat. “And you've put both our necks in a noosel”
• X0V
Around the shoulder of the world. Bratcheslavsky had once said without warning, in the middle of a training session, “Vassily Sheklovl”
To which he had reacted with a surprised cock of his eyebrows.
“Know why you've been picked for this assignment?”
“Welll” Selecting the least arrogant-seeming of a dozen possible answers in the space of less than a heartbeat, and moreover not wanting to appear to cast doubt on the competence of those who had singled him out by adopting a pose of exaggerated modesty. “Well, because out of the range available, I guess I must be the most suitable . . . comrade.”
“Your diplomatic turns of phrase do you credit,” Bratcheslavsky chuckled, stubbing the latest of the aromatic cigarettes that were certain to kill him before his time. “But I'm not here to have my perspicacity flattered, regardless of what you may safely put over on other people. I guess it hasn't escaped your notice that one of the luxuries America permits itself is an exceptional degree of subtlety in the shades of meaning conveyed by the English language?”
At which: a nod.
“Well, thenl During your long struggle with the various idioms of modern English, you can hardly have failed to run across the image of someone `thinking fast on his feet'-hm?”
“Of course, comrade. A metaphor drawn from boxing, I believe. A term of praise for someone who-”
“Boxing be buggered,” Bratcheslavsky retorted. They were speaking English, of course; the entire briefing was conducted in it, the ideal being to drive Russian so far to the fringes of Sheklov's consciousness that he would not be recognised as a Russian-speaker by those who might survey him after his injection into the States. “The idiom is used by people who hate boxing, who wouldn't pay ten cents to get into a boxing-match, who would call up and complain if a TV company wasted programme-time on an international championship! No, the image is detached from its origins. And what I want to know is this: Do you recognize its applicability to this mission?”
“You mean it was a quality that was taken into consideration when they picked me for it.”
“The quality, Vassily. The most important of all. Were it not for your possession of this talent, we might well have given up all hope of injecting another agent as blatantly as we shall have to in your case. Human beings have this peculiar limitation on their thinking, you know: They tend to put up with enormous risks simply because they can't exhaustively analyse the nature of the actions they realise they ought to take to insure themselves. As thinkers, Vassily, we are an amazingly lazy species. It's a wonder we survive from one day to the next. Yesl Let's get on with itl”