"Brack, I'm going to let that go this time," Remo said. "You got a guy working for you named Dock LaRue or something like that?"
"Dock? No, Piere. Right. He's our foreman."
"Yeah. He calls himself Peer," Remo said.
"What about him?"
"Well, he's stuck to a tree up above the copa-ibas, and somebody ought to get him down before he freezes to death. And somebody cut off the gasoline engines. I don't know how long those trees can live in the cold, but I guess you want to fix them."
Brack was already rising from his chair.
"Joey," he called.
Joey Webb came out of her room. She was still fully dressed.
"Trouble up at the tree site," Brack said. "We better go."
They moved quickly to a coat rack on the wall and took down heavy plaid jackets.
"Thanks, O'Sylvan," Brack called back.
"My pleasure." As Brack and Joey went to the door, Remo said, "One other thing."
Brack turned.
"Yeah?"
"There's two dead guys up there. I think Stacy ought to run an identity check on them. They're the two who turned off the heaters."
"Dead? How?"
Remo didn't feel like explaining. "A suicide pact, I think. They shot each other."
He looked at Brack, his face bland and expressionless. Brack just nodded.
"Another thing," Remo said. "If you see an old Oriental guy up there, leave him alone."
"Who is he?" asked Brack.
"Never mind," Remo said. "Just leave him alone."
Chapter Seven
At last. Alone at last. The only sound in the A-frame was the crackling of the hardwood logs in the fireplace and Remo sprawled out on a chair in front of the hearth. He needed a nap. He had not done anything particularly strenuous during the day, but accommodating the body to the extremes of outside temperature took a toll on one's endurance. His batteries needed some recharging.
He had just closed his eyes when he heard the door to the cabin open behind him and a set of light footsteps come across the room. They were too light to be Peer LaRue's or Oscar Brack's; they were even more tentative than Roger Stacy's; and they were not rhythmic enough to be Joey Webb's. And they could not have been Chiun's because if Chiun had entered the cabin, Remo would not have heard him.
He would ignore whoever it was and maybe they would take mercy on a sleeping man and go away. Whoever it was walked past him. Then Remo could hear the person turn around and look in his direction. Then he heard the person settle down into a chair alongside the fireplace, facing him.
Remo waited, but there was no further sound. Finally he opened one eye and looked up.
The man who was sitting there reminded Remo of a mouse; like a mouse close enough to his hole to be assured of safety might watch the goings-on in a busy, catless kitchen, this man was watching him intently.
A mouse. Maybe it was the way he was dressed: a polyester, double-knit, reddish-brown suit; an off-brown dress shirt; a cocoa-brown tie covered with white splotches; brown Hush Puppies. Maybe it was the watery brown eyes that looked at Remo, then darted around the room, on the lookout for God-alone-knew-what. Or the way the man sat with his cheap brown government-issue vinyl briefcase upright on his knees, holding it tightly with both hands and hunched over its top. Or maybe it was the way the little guy's nose kept twitching and moving around, always sniffing the air, managing to give the impression that he didn't quite approve of what he smelled. Maybe it was the little guy's high, squeaky voice when he saw Remo's eyes open.
He finally introduced himself. "Mr. O'Sylvan, I'm Harvey Quibble."
A mouse. Definitely a mouse. Harvey Quibble. It was even a mouse's name. "Will it wait till morning?" Remo asked.
"No, sir. It will not wait until morning. No, definitely not, sir, it will not wait till morning."
"Can I get you something?" Remo asked. "A piece of cheese?"
"No, sir," said Harvey Quibble. "I don't believe in mixing business with pleasure."
"I don't think there's much chance of our doing that," Remo said. "What's on your mind?"
"We have a dreadful problem," Quibble said. He opened his briefcase.
"Maybe you ought to tell me who you are," Remo said.
"I am from the federal job occupational survey team," Quibble said, "and we find that your agency is trying to define your occupational title in an entirely inappropriate manner."
Remo sighed, got up, and walked to the fire, where he rubbed his hands together. He wondered if Harvey Quibble would burn if thrown into the fireplace. Did mice burn? Or melt?
"Mr. Quibble, I'm very tired. Can we talk about this in the morning?"
"No. Problems should be solved as they arise," Quibble said. "Now, the Forestry Service wants to define your worker-function rating as a three-nine-eight-four seven-six, and I'm afraid we could never agree to that."
"Well, then, change it," Remo said.
"I thought I should talk to you," Quibble said. "I'm sure you'll agree, Mr. O'Sylvan, that your worker function is hardly a three, which after all is synthesizing. I mean the title of your job, to say nothing of its description, almost certainly makes it a six, which is only comparing."
"Sounds good to me," Remo said.
"And I'm sure that your 'people-function' is certainly not mentoring, which is what nine means. In fact, Mr. O'Sylvan, I would dare say that it really hardly amounts to 'taking instructions — helping,' which is an eight. I would make it a nine, perhaps, if it were only up to me, but of course, it isn't, and besides I really think an eight or maybe even a seven is more accurate."
"Fine, Mr. Quibble," Remo said. He walked back to the chair, sat down and glowered at the small man. "Anything you want."
"Good. You can trust me to do right by you. A lot of people resent my work, but I have to tell you I'm really delighted by your attitude. I mean, it's important to know exactly what federal workers do. For instance, your setting-up classification — that's what that eight means, you know — it seems to me that what you're doing is really more on the order of handling, which is actually only a five. Wouldn't you agree, Mr. O'Sylvan?"
"I think you've hit it right on the head," Remo said. "I was worrying about it myself."
Harvey Quibble stood up and carefully put on his brown stocking cap, wrapped his dark brown knit scarf around his neck, closed his briefcase, and put on brown plastic mittens. "I'm so glad you feel that way, Mr. O'Sylvan. You have no notion of how nasty some people can become."
Remo was trying to close his eyes for sleep. "Anything you want," he said. Then he realized Quibble was standing in front of him. The little man had thrust out a mittened hand for him to shake. Remo took it.
"Good," Quibble said. "I'm glad you agree with my assessment. I'll send the paperwork through to Washington the first thing in the morning."
"What paperwork?" Remo asked, suddenly suspicious as he always was of anything called paperwork. He did not trust people who called paper work. Paper was paper and work was work.
"Why, the papers that will cut your salary by seventy-five percent, Mr. O'Sylvan. Just as we agreed." Then the mousy little man was gone.
Remo just wanted to sleep where he was, but who knew what Harvey Quibble's second wave might look like.
He went to the bedrooms in the back of the A-frame and found one that looked unoccupied. He slipped off his loafers and lay on the bed. A hell of a day. Two men dead before he could get anything out of them. So tomorrow, instead of having this all wrapped up, he was starting from square zero again.
He closed his eyes. He slept.
The night sounds filled the room and Remo sampled them, first one by one, then in combinations: the howls of coyotes and the echoes of their howls; the screeches of night-hunting owls; the death shrieks of tiny, furry creatures; some cat-pawed creature stalking along the tree line; the fire crackling in the main room; snow shifting in its drifts; ice melting and water running; someone moving in the corridor outside his room and stopping at his door. It took a split second for that last sound to penetrate.