“I’ll call and see what happens,” said Koll.
He did not want to make the call from his own desk. The need for physical motion was suddenly great in him. Koll rose, too abruptly, and scuttled out, down the hall, into a darkened communicator booth. The screen brightened as he keyed in the console.
One hardly dared to pick up the phone and call Kloofman, naturally. One went through channels. Koll’s route to the top was through David Giacomin, Class Two, the viceroy for internal criminal affairs. Giacomin existed. Koll had seen him in the flesh, had touched his hand on one instance, had even spent a numbing two hours at Giacomin’s private domain in East Africa, one of the most memorable and harrowing experiences in Koll’s entire life.
He put through the call to Giacomin. In less than fifteen minutes the viceroy was on screen, smiling pleasantly at Koll with that easy benevolence that a Class Two man of secure ego could afford to display. Giacomin was a man of about fifty, Koll thought, with close-cropped iron-gray hair, lips that ran lopsidedly across his face, and a furrowed forehead. His left eye had been damaged irreparably some time in the past; in its place he wore a stubby fiber-receptor whose glass rods were plugged directly into his brain.
“What is it, Koll?” he asked amiably.
“Sir, one of my subordinates has proposed an unusual method of obtaining information about the hopper phenomenon. There’s some controversy about whether we should proceed along the suggested path of action.”
“Why don’t you tell me all about it?” Giacomin said, his voice as warm and comforting as that of a frood begging to know about your most severe neurosis.
An hour later, toward the end of his working day, Quellen learned from Koll that nothing had been settled concerning Mortensen. Koll had talked to Spanner, and then he had talked to Giacomin, and now Giacomin was talking to Kloofman, and no doubt one of Them would be handing down The Word on the Mortensen project in a few days. Meanwhile, Quellen was to sit tight and take no provacative action. There was still plenty of time between now and Mortensen’s documented May 4 departure date.
Quellen did not feel any sense of delight at the trouble he was causing. Tagging Mortensen was a clever idea, yes; but it was dangerous sometimes to be too clever. Quellen knew that he had made Koll uncomfortable. That never paid. For all he could tell; Koll had made Giacomin uncomfortable too, and now Giacomin was troubling Kloofman, which meant that Quellen’s clever proposal was stirring eddies of annoyance all the way to the very top of the global power structure. When Quellen had been younger, and seething with ambitions to rise to Class Seven eminence, he would have liked nothing better than to win such attention to himself. Now, though, he was Class Seven, so he had attained the private apartment that was his dream, and further promotions would gain him little. Besides, his highly illegal nest in Africa weighed on his conscience. The last thing he wanted was to have a member of the High Government say, “This man Quellen is very clever—find out all you can about him.” Quellen wished to remain inconspicuous, these days.
Still, he could not have let himself suppress the Mortensen idea. He had official responsibilities to fulfill, and the extent of his private deviation from the residence laws made him all the more conscientious about doing his public duties.
Before going home for the day, Quellen sent for Stanley Brogg.
The beefy assistant said at once, “We’ve got a wide net out for the slyster, CrimeSec. It’s only a matter of days or even hours before we know his identity.”
“Good,” said Quellen. “I’ve got another line of approach for you to begin on. But this has to be handled with care, because it hasn’t been officially approved yet. There’s a man named Donald Mortensen planning to take his time-hop on May 4. Check him in the records you gave me; that’s where I found out about him. I want tracers put on him. Check his activities and contacts. But it’s got to be done with extreme delicacy. I can’t stress that too highly, Brogg.”
“All right. Mortensen.” “
Delicately.If this man finds out we’re tracing him, it could lead to a gigantic mess for all of us. Demotions or even worse. So get it straight: work around him, but don’t even graze him. Otherwise it’ll go hard for you.”
Brogg smiled slyly. “You mean you’ll drop me a couple of classes if I bungle?”
“Quite likely.”
“I don’t think you’d do that, CrimeSec. Not tome.”
Quellen met the fat man’s eyes steadily. Brogg was becoming offensive lately, taking too keen a relish in the power he held over Quellen. His accidental discovery of Quellen’s African villa was the great torment of the CrimeSec’s life.
“Get out of here,” Quellen said. “And remember to be careful about Mortensen. It’s very possible that this line of investigation will be quashed by the High Government, and if it is we’ll all be frying if They find out we’ve alerted Mortensen.”
“I understand,” said Brogg. He left.
Quellen wondered if he should have done that. What if word came down via Giacomin that Mortensen was to be left alone? Well, Brogg was competent enough—too competent, sometimes. And there was really not much time to handle the Mortensen situation if approval did come through. Quellen had to initiate the project in advance. On a speculative basis, so to speak.
He had done all he could for now. Fleetingly he considered the idea of getting Brogg to handle the whole filthy case while he went back to Africa, but he decided that that would be inviting disaster. He shut up his office and went outside to catch the nearest quickboat back to his little Class Seven apartment. In the next few weeks, he knew, he might be able to slip off to Africa for an hour or two at a time, but no more than that. He was mired in Appalachia until the hopper crisis was over.
Returning to his apartment, Quellen discovered that he had neglected to keep his foodstocks in good supply. Since his stay in Appalachia threatened to be long or possibly permanent, he decided to replenish his stores. Sometimes Quellen ordered by phone, but not today. He fastened the Privacy radion to his door again and went down the twisting flyramp to the supply shop, intending to stock up for a long siege.
As he made his way down, he noticed a sallow-looking man in a loose-fitting purple tunic heading in the opposite direction up the ramp. Quellen did not recognize him, but that was unsurprising; in the crowded turmoil of Appalachia, one never got to know very many people, just a handful of neighbors and relatives, and a few service employees like the keeper of the local supply shop.
The sallow-looking man stared curiously at Quellen. He seemed to be saying something with his eyes. Quellen felt profoundly uncomfortable about the contact. In his departmental work, he had learned a good deal about the various classes of molesters one could encounter on the streets. The ordinary sexual kind, of course; but also the ones who sidled up to you and punctured your veins to inject the addictive dose of some infernal drug like helidone, or the sinster sorts given to jamming carcinogens against your skin in a crowd, or perhaps the secret agents who subtly stuck a molecular probe into your flesh that would transmit every word of your conversation to a distant pickup point. Such things happened all the time.