Holding his cup of coffee very carefully so as not to spill a drop over the rim, Donald sat down. He said, “Ah—how did you find out about that?”
“We had the activation notice yesterday afternoon, but one doesn’t simply rush in to turn the operative on. One does a preliminary sweep to make sure nothing has changed since the last time we investigated, and—well, something most definitely had changed. We chimed in on the very moment when the shiggy was doing her eavesdropping.”
“You have the place bugged.”
“There are more bugs in here than a slum apartment has roaches,” Delahanty said with a faint smile. “Not all of them ours, of course. Schritty?”
Sergeant Schritt bent down to the side of Norman’s Hille chair and did something with one finger that Donald could not follow. When he removed his hand it held, between finger and thumb, a little glittering spike.
“I think that one is a Frigidaire plant,” Delahanty said. “Or rather, the body of it is. The tip is ours. Like they say, little bugs have smaller bugs. Nothing went out of here that wasn’t edited; we didn’t want Mr. House fouled up by successful acts of indesping. Someone might have turned his attention to you and put two and two together. We came within an ace of falling down yesterday evening, though—it was sheer luck we caught up with the girl.”
“It was you who took her away?”
“Oh yes. By the skin of our teeth. I had to pull everybody off watch and go hunt for her, but we did track her down before she’d sold the goods.”
“Are you telling me that someone’s been monitoring everything I did and said for ten solid years?” Donald demanded.
“Oh no. We have to rely on random sampling with inactive agents. Everything gets recorded, half of it gets computer-scanned for certain key words—a vocabulary of about a thousand are listed for you, I think—and we follow up the appearance of any of them in conversation. But actually we haven’t paid serious attention to more than twenty or twenty-five hours of your activities in the past year.” He hesitated. “You seem disturbed,” he added. “Very natural—in this overcrowded world of ours privacy is our most precious defence. Be assured, please, we’ve intruded to the least possible degree.”
“You’ve been watching me continuously since you had the—the activation notice, though?”
Delahanty’s eyebrows rose. “No, I just told you. I had to pull everyone off your back to go look for the shiggy.”
Don’t push it. With luck they won’t bother to examine the tape from the small hours of this morning; I may get away with it. And the worst of all the horrible things I’m faced with is the risk of being court-martialled for breach of my cover. They may only want me for something very minor; they may need me to help analyse intelligence reports, say …
“I hope I’m not seeming too inquisitive,” Donald ventured. “But—well, over the past ten years the whole thing has become more and more unreal to me, until just lately I’ve had trouble convincing myself that activation was still a possibility.”
“That’s an honest comment,” Delahanty approved. “I keep telling Washington myself that they should risk breaches of cover and make random activations to keep operatives alert, even if it’s no more than giving them token assignments during their official vacations. More coffee?”
“I haven’t finished my first cup yet, thanks.”
“Mind if I do? Anyone else…? Right! Let’s get to the nub of it, shall we?” Delahanty leaned back and crossed his legs. “Boat camp, Ellay, six poppa-momma tomorrow. We have travel documents for you, free passage warrant and so forth—Sergeant French will give them to you in a minute. Between now and then, what have you by way of appointments?”
“Tomorrow?”
“I know—the suspense will make it difficult. But that’s the way the planet spins, I’m afraid. Appointments?”
Donald put one hand to his forehead. “I guess nothing—Oh. A party tonight. Guinevere Steel’s.”
“Go to it by all means, but don’t let anyone slip you anything, of course. Did you hear about the case the other day when someone smeared the stuff they call ‘Truth or Consequences’ on the pulpit rail of a cathedral and a respected bishop said some highly unclerical things to his congregation?”
“I don’t think so.”
“The regular news channels didn’t carry it—caved in by pressure-groups, I imagine. But it happened, and by all accounts it must have been spectacular. Don’t let it happen to you, that’s all. The rest of your instructions are in the packet French will give you. You’ll receive a call in the morning notifying you of some financial trouble in a company you’re supposed to have a lot of stock in, and that’ll be the reason for your departure; the reason for your staying away will be a rather charming shiggy whom I regret to say you aren’t actually scheduled to enjoy, but who’ll serve as a highly convincing alibi to anyone flying a reasonably straight orbit.”
Sergeant Awden grinned to himself.
“You mean I’m going to be away a long time?” Donald demanded.
“I don’t know.” Delahanty swallowed the last of his coffee and rose. “However, that’s the programme and I didn’t draft it. There’s a full computer evaluation in Washington, presumably.”
“Can’t you at least tell me”—the half-forgotten phrase rose to his lips like a bubble from decaying weed on the bottom of a stagnant pool—“whether it’s a field job?”
“Oh yes!” Delahanty seemed surprised. “I thought that was implicit in your linguistic speciality. Yatakangi, I believe.”
“They’re going to send me to Yatakang?” Donald was on his feet without realising, hands clenched to stop them shaking. “But that’s absurd! I mean, all I did was take a high-pressure lang-lab course the best part of ten years ago, and—”
“Lieutenant,” Delahanty said with dangerous emphasis, “you don’t have to worry about your ability to do the job. You’ll be made able to do it.”
“I—what?”
“Made able. You’ve run across commercial advertisements for a process called eptification, I imagine?”
“Y-yes.”
“And thought it was another misleading come-on?”
“I guess so. What’s that got to do with—?”
“We eptify people. And it works. If there’s nobody available who’s equipped for a particular job, we make someone over until he is equipped. Don’t worry; you’ll manage—assuming the job to be done is humanly feasible. Reflect on that and relax. But I guess you should go suck a trank as well.”
Delahanty gestured to his sparewheels. French handed a sealed official packet to Donald, who accepted it in numb fingers, and they all muttered a good morning as they filed out, leaving him feeling small and scared and regretting that he hadn’t managed to die.
After a while, he was sufficiently recovered to consider arranging for someone at the party to slip him some of the drug Delahanty had warned him against.
tracking with closeups (12)
IF YOU CAN’T BEAT THEM BEAUT THEM
BEAUTIQUE said letters suspended in empty air, and underneath ever so discreetly the name of Guinevere Steel. Beyond the lettering, indicative of the lavish personal attention one might be sure of getting, a blonde, a brunette and a redhead waiting with expectant expressions for you, madame, each one an immaculate product of the Beautique’s art, finished to molecular tolerances, gleaming, shimmering, polished not like diamonds but like the parts that went into Shalmaneser where nothing could be allowed to go wrong. Their clothing concealed only those sections of their bodies where the raw material the cosmeticians had had to work with left something to be desired.