I mean, Febbs thought joyfully, I'm Aristotle's Universal Man, such as society has tried to breed genetically for five thousand years! And Univox-50R at Festung Washington finally recognized it!
When a weapon-component is at last put before me officially, he thought with grim assurance, I'll know how to plowshare it, all right. They can count on me. I'll come up with a dozen ways to plowshare it, and all of them good. Based on my knowledge and skill.
What's odd is that they'd still need the other five concomodies. Maybe they'll realize that. Maybe instead of giving me only a one-sixth slice they'll give me all the components. They might as well.
It would go about like this:
General Nitz (amazed): Good God, Febbs! You're completely right. This stage one of the Brownian movement-restriction field-induction coil, portable subtype, can be easily plowshared into an inexpensive source to chill beer on excursions lasting over seven hours. Whew! Gollee!
Febbs: However, I think you're still missing the basic point, General. If you'll look more closely at my official abstract on the—
The vidphone rang, then, interrupting his thoughts; he rose from the breakfast table, hurried to answer it.
On the screen a middle-aged female Wes-bloc bureaucrat appeared. "Mr. Surley G. Febbs of Conapt Building 300685?"
"Yes," he said, nervously.
"You received your notice by 'stant mail of your induction as concomody to the UN-W Natsec Board as of this following Tuesday."
"Yes!"
"I am calling, Mr. Febbs, to remind you that under no circumstances are you to convey, reveal, expound, announce or otherwise inform any person or organization or info-media or autonomic extension thereof capable of receiving, recording and/or transmitting, communicating and/or telecasting data in any form whatsoever, that you have been legally named by due and official process to the UN-W Natsec Board as Concomody A, as per paragraph III in your written notice, which you are required under penalty of law to read and strictly observe."
Surley Febbs, inside himself, fainted dead away. He had failed to read all the way down the notice. Of course the identity of the six concomodies on the Board was a matter of strict secrecy! And already he had told Mr. Rumford.
Or had he? Frantically, he tried to recall his exact words. Hadn't he merely said he received a notice? Oh God. If they found out—
"Thank you, Mr. Febbs," the female official said, and rang off. Febbs stood in silence, gradually hinging himself back together.
I'll have to call Mr. Rumford again, he realized. Make certain he thinks I'm quitting for health reasons. Some pretext. I've lost my conapt, have to leave the area. Anything!
He found himself shaking.
A new scene bloomed frighteningly in his mind.
General Nitz (grayly, with menace): So you told, Febbs.
Febbs: You need me, General. You really do! I can plowshare better than anyone drafted before—Univox-50R knows what it's talking about. In the name of God, sir! Give me a chance to prove my superior worth.
General Nitz (moved): Well, all right, Febbs. I can see you're not quite like anyone else. We can afford to treat you differently, because the fact is that in all my long years of dealing with all kinds of people I have never seen anyone as unique as you and it would be a distinct loss to the Free World if you decided not to stick with us and give us the benefit of your knowledge, experience and talent.
Reseating himself at his breakfast table. Febbs mechanically resumed the eating which had been interrupted.
General Nitz: Actually, Febbs, I'd even go so far as to say—
Aw, the hell with it, Febbs thought with growing, overwhelming gloom.
4
Toward noon the ranking engineer from Lanferman Associates of San Francisco and Los Angeles, the firm which produced the mockups and prototypes and whatnot from Lars Powderdry's sketches, showed up at the New York office of Mr. Lars, Incorporated.
Pete Freid, at home here from long years of experience, sauntered round-shouldered and stooped but still tall into Lars' office. He found Lars drinking a solution of honey and synthetic amino acids in a twenty per cent alcohol base: an antidote to the depletion of body-constituents by the trance-state which had occurred earlier in the morning.
Pete said, "They found that what you're swilling is one of the ten major causes of upper g.i. cancer. Better quit now.
"I can't quit." Lars said. His body needed the replacement-source and anyhow Peter was kidding. "What I ought to quit—" he began, and then became silent. Today he had talked too much already, and before the man from KACH. Who, if he was any good, remembered, recorded and put on permanent file everything he heard.
Pete wandered about the office, crouched for all eternity from his excessive height and also, as he tirelessly reiterated, his "bad back." There was a certain vagueness as to what the bad back consisted of. Some days it was a slipped disk. Other times, according to Pete's rambling monologs, it was a worn disk: the distinction between these two eternal, Jobish afflictions he never ceased delineating. On Wednesdays, for example today, it was due to an old war-time injury. He dilated on that now.
"Sure," he told Lars, his hands in the rear pockets of his work-trousers. He had flown three thousand miles from the West Coast aboard the public jet, wearing his grease-stained shop clothes, with, as a concession to human society, a twisted, now black but perhaps formerly brightly colored necktie. The tie hung like a lead-rope from his unbuttoned, sweaty shirt, as if, under former slave conditions, Pete had been led periodically to slaughter by means of it. Certainly he had not been led to pasture. Despite his rambling, ambulatory, psychomotor activity he was a born worker. Everything else in his life—his wife and three children, his hobbies, his friendships—these fell to ruin when work-time came. And for him this arrived at eye-opening time at six or six-thirty in the morning. He was, in contrast to what Lars regarded as neurologically normal humanity, a wide-awake early riser. It amounted to a defect. And this after a fugue the night before, until bar-closing time, of beer and pizza, with or without Molly, his wife.
"What do you mean, 'sure'?" Lars said, sipping his special drink. He felt weary: today trance-state had enervated him beyond the recall of the chemical elixir. "Okay, you mean, 'Sure, I ought to quit my job.' I know the rubric you've got to offer. Frankly I've heard it so many times I could—"
Peter interrupted, in his agitated, husky, urgent voice, "Aw, the hell, you know what I mean. Bull! You never listen. All you do is go to heaven and come back with the word of God, and we're supposed to believe as gospel every stupid thing you write down, like some—" He gestured, tic-like, his big frame shuddering under his blue cotton shirt. "Look at the service you could do humanity if you weren't so lazy."
"What service?"
"You could solve all our problems!" Pete glowered at him. "If they've got weapons designs up there—" He jerked his thumb vaguely toward the ceiling of the office, as if, during his trance-states, Lars literally rose. "Science ought to investigate you. Chrissake, you ought to be at Cal Tech being examined, not running this fairy outfit you run."
"Fairy," Lars said.
"Okay, maybe you're not a fairy. So what? My brother-in-law's a fairy and that's okay with me. A guy can be anything he wants." Pete's voice rose to a shout that boomed and echoed. "As long as it's integrity, it's what he really is and not what he's told to do. You!" His tone was withering, now. "You do what they tell you. They say, Go get us a bunch of primary design-concepts in two-D form, and you do!" He lowered his voice, grunted, rubbed his perspiring upper lip. Then, seating himself, he reached his long arms out, groping for the heap of sketches on Lars' desk.