"What is it?" she asked him presently, large-eyed.
"A glimpse," Lars said, "into the outside world. What life would be like for you if you could come with me, leave this man and Peep-East."
"This is what is for sale in Wes-bloc?"
"In West Africa, mostly," he answered. Lilo turned the pages, inspected the lurid and really downright dreadful drawings. Major Geschenko meanwhile stared off into space, lost in gloomy thought; his fine, clear face showed the despair which he had so far kept from his voice. He was, undoubtedly, thinking about the news from New Orleans... as any sane man would. And the major was indubitably sane. He would not be looking at a comic book, Lars realized. But Lilo and I—we are not quite sane, at this point. And for good reason. Considering the magnitude of our spectacular failure.
He asked Lilo, "You notice anything strange about that comic book?"
"Yes." She nodded vigorously. "They've used several of my sketches."
"Yours!" He had noticed only his own weapons sketches. "Let me look again."
She showed him the page. "See? My lobotomy gas." She indicated Major Geschenko. "They conducted tests on political prisoners and showed the results on TV just like this comic strip: it causes the victims to repeat endlessly the last series of instructions arising from the damaged cerebral cortex. The drawist has the Twin-brained Beasts From Io victims of this; he understood what weapon BBA-81D did, so he must have viewed the TV tape made in the Urals. But the tape was only shown last week."
"Last week?" Incredulous, Lars took the comic book back. Obviously it had been printed longer ago than that. It carried last month's date, had sat on the newsstand for perhaps sixty days. All at once to Major Geschenko he said, "Major, may I contact KACH?"
"Now? Immediately?"
"Yes," Lars said.
Major Geschenko silently took the comic book from Lars and glanced through it. Then he rose and gestured; an aide stepped into existence and the two men discoursed in Russian.
"He's not asking for a KACH-man for you," Lilo said then. "He's telling the KVB to investigate this comic book firm, where it originates in Ghana." She spoke to Major Geschenko in Russian herself. Lars felt, unhappily, the acute linguistic insularity of the American; Lilo was right. Mark of the province, he said to himself, and he wished to God he knew what they were saying. All three of them kept referring to the comic book and at last Major Geschenko handed it over to his aide.
The aide departed with it, rapidly. The door slammed shut, as if the aide were mad.
"That was mine," Lars said. Not that it counted.
"A KACH-man will come," Lilo said. "But not immediately. Not what you asked for. They will conduct their own investigation and then let you make your try."
Lars said to the powerful Red Army intelligence officer, "I want to be returned to the jurisdiction of the FBI. Now. I insist on it."
"Finish your coffee."
"Something is wrong," Lars said. "Something about that comic book. I could tell by your manner; you discovered or thought something. What was it?" Turning to Lilo he said, "Do you know?"
"They're upset," Lilo said. "They think KACH has been supplying repros to this comic-book firm. That irks them. They don't mind if Wes-bloc has access, but not this; this goes too far."
"I agree," Lars said. But I think there's more, he said to himself. I know there is; I saw too much agitation, here, just now.
"There is a time-factor," Major Geschenko said, presently. He poured himself a fresh cup, but the coffee was utterly cold now.
"The comic-book firm got the sketches too soon?" Lars asked.
"Yes." Major Geschenko nodded.
"Too soon even for KACH?"
"Yes."
Stricken, Lilo said, "I don't believe it."
Major Geschenko glanced at her, briefly and without warmth.
"Not for them," Lilo said. "Surely we couldn't be."
"The final episode in the magazine," Major Geschenko said. "The Blue Whatever-he-is-man devised as a temporary source of power, while imprisoned on a barren asteroid, a steam engine. To act as an agent by which to reactivate the dead transmitter of his half-demolished ship, the normal power supply having been rayed out of existence by the—" he grimaced—"the Pseudonomic Flower-carnivores from Ganymede."
Lars said, "Then we are getting it from them. From the artist of that magazine."
"Perhaps so," Major Geschenko said, nodding very slowly, as if out of the most intense politeness he was willing to consider it—and for that reason only.
"Then no wonder—"
"No wonder," Major Geschenko said, sipping cold coffee, "that you can't perform your function. No wonder there is no weapon when we need it. Must have it. How could there be, from such a source?"
He raised his head, eyed Lars with a peculiarly bitter, accusing pride.
Lars said, "But if we are simply reading some comic artist's mind, how could there be anything?"
"Oh, that artist," Major Geschenko said disdainfully, "he has much talent. An inventive mind. Don't ignore that. He's kept us going a long time, both of us, my friend. East and West."
"This is the worst news—" Lars began.
"But interesting," Major Geschenko said. He glanced from Lars to Lilo. "Pitiful."
"Yes, pitiful," Lars said thickly.
21
After a pause Lilo said starkly, "You realize what this means. Now they can go directly to him, whoever draws that ghastly, gutterish comic. They don't need us, Lars; not ever again."
Major Geschenko murmured, with caustic but highborn politeness, "Go to him for what, Miss Topchev? What do you think he has? Do you think he's held anything back?"
"There's no more," Lars said. "The man's in business, writing a comic strip. His inventions have been completely spurious all along."
"But all along," Major Geschenko pointed out in his urbane, mild, devastatingly insulting way, "this was exactly proper for the need. Now that is no longer true. The Blue Cephalopod Man cannot fly through space and knock the alien satellites down with his fist. We are not able to call on him—he will not show up. A satire on ourselves has duped us for years. The artist will be amused. Obviously he is a degenerate. That vulgar strip—and I notice it is English-language, the official language of Wes-bloc—shows that."
Lars said, "Don't blame him if telepathically, in some crazy goddam way, we've been picking up his ideas."
Lilo said, "They won't 'blame' him; they'll just shake him down. They'll pick him up and bring him to the Soviet Union, to the Pavlov Institute, try with all they have available to get out of him what they haven't got out of us. Just in case it might be there." She added, "I'm glad I'm not him." She seemed, in fact, relieved now. Because, as she understood the situation, the pressure was off her, and to her, in her immaturity, that was what mattered.
"If you're so glad," Lars said to her, "at least don't show it. Try to keep it to yourself."
"I'm beginning to think," Lilo said, "that it's exactly what they deserve." She giggled. "It's really funny. I'm sorry for that artist in Southern Ghana, but can't you laugh, Lars?"
"No."
"Then you're as crazy as him." She gestured in Major Geschenko's direction, contemptuously, with a new, spirited superiority.
"Can I make a vidphone call?" Lars asked Major Geschenko.
"I suppose." Geschenko again beckoned to an aide, spoke to him in Russian; Lars found himself being escorted down a hallway to a public vidphone booth.
He dialed Lanferman Associates in San Francisco and asked for Pete Freid.
Pete looked overworked and not in the mood for receiving calls. Seeing who it was, he gave forth a meager gesture of salutation. "What's she like?"
"She's young," Lars said. "Physically attractive, I would say sexy."