"You're damn right Mac never said that," I said. "But the man at the other end of the line-a line carefully rigged to be nice and weak and noisy-said just that. And the dutiful daughter here listened to him saying it and made no comment. In fact, she's gone out of her way this evening to point out how I'd talked to her father so lie must be alive and doing well. Hell, anybody who knows him, knows Mac couldn't have said a fool thing like that in a million years!"
Martha licked her lips, looking lost and bewildered. "But I… I don't understand! What's the matter with-"
"Oh, cut it out, Borden!" I snapped. "That poor-little-stupid-me line is getting pretty damn stale."
"Just a minute, Eric." Lorna peeled the paper off a second candy bar and spoke patiently: "My dear girl, your father speaks English, not gobbledygook. The word 'decimate' comes from the Latin word for ten. In the old days, if a conquered village misbehaved, the Romans were much nicer about it than we are nowadays. They didn't wipe it out with bombs and napalm. They simply marched a legion into the place and lined up all the male inhabitants. Then they yanked every tenth man out of line and stuck a spear or sword into him. That's decimate, to kill one-tenth of. The word has also been used loosely to mean inflict large losses upon, but it does not and cannot possibly mean to massacre or annihilate. It's logically impossible to decimate to the last man. You'll always have nine men left."
Martha looked indignant. "You can't accuse me of treachery because of a silly old definition that nobody pays any attention to-" I said, "In my previous conversation with Washington, when I called from Nogales, the same gent told me he was disinterested in a certain murderer. He also said that a certain agent was presently in a certain town in Oklahoma and that I was supposed to contact him there. Obviously, they've got a mimic sitting at that phone who's got a pretty good ear but no brains. He's got the voice down pat, but he's been talking Washington gibberish and hearing others talk it for so long, that it simply doesn't occur to him that some people do prefer the English language. And I gave you the direct quotes, Borden, and you didn't even raise an eyebrow. That's when I first began to suspect that everything wasn't as it should be between you and your pa."
The girl's face was pale. "I really don't understand. Please, I'm not trying to act dumb or anything, but-" Lorna spoke in the same calm and patient voice: "Miss Borden, disinterested does not mean the same thing as uninterested, which is presumably the word for which the man on the phone was fumbling."
"A judge is supposed to be disinterested," I said. "That means he's got no obligations or commitments to the parties appearing before him: he's quite objective about the case. But he's not supposed to be uninterested. That means he's just bored with the whole proceeding, and that is the meaning the man in Washington really wanted to convey."
Lorna said, "And presently does not mean the same thing as at present, Miss Borden; and your father is very sensitive about this distinction."
"But everybody says-"
"Not everybody," I corrected her. "Not Mac. The office girls would catch hell if he heard them telling somebody that he was presently in conference, meaning right now. Presently, to him, means in a little while, as it meant to everybody until a relatively few years ago, when ignorant people started fancying up the language regardless of meaning. The correct, old-fashioned usage is, 'At present, Mr. Mac is in conference, but he will see you presently.' That's what Mac learned in school and what I learned a generation later. The fact that some permissive dictionaries may already have adopted the recent bastard usage doesn't make it sound any less affected and pretentious to his ears or mine." I drew a long breath. "And, honey, contact is not and will never be a verb in your father's vocabulary. Anybody who orders me to contact somebody just damn well isn't Mac, and you know that as well as I do."
"But I don't!" the girl protested desperately. "I mean, all these ridiculous little grammatical distinctions, who cares? Who pays any attention to that stuff these days? I mean, really Mr. Helm, with all the big, relevant issues…" She stopped, breathless, looking from me to Lorna and back again.
I stared at her. The idea that our language had suddenly become irrelevant while my back was turned was difficult for me to grasp. I turned towards Lorna, who seemed to have become the acting referee.
"Is the kid serious," I asked, "or is she putting me on?"
"I don't know. I really don't know." Lorna frowned at the seated girl. "Remember, she'd apparently never heard of Cassandra or Ragnarцk. We have to face the possibility that the young lady is practically illiterate."
Martha jumped to her feet. "I don't have to take a lot of insults-"
"Sit down," I said. "Goddamn it, sit down!"
"But she said-"
"Don't worry about what she said. Worry about the fact that if you can't come up with something that makes a little sense, I'm going to have to take you out somewhere and shoot you."
"Shoot me!" Martha sank onto the bed. "Why.. – why, you're mad!"
"What the hell do you think happens to double agents who get caught? And don't think being Mac's daughter will save you, sweetheart. If you've sold us out, well, he knows the rules, and he knows they go for everybody. After all, he made them."
She licked her lips. "But I'm not a.. – I haven't.. -."
Lorna interrupted. "Just how clear was the voice on the phone, Helm?"
"Not very clear. And, as I say, the guy was a good mimic. On that bad connection, I'd have accepted him as Mac if he'd said the right things." I shook my head. "But, hell, we all know Mac's little language hangups. You can't tell me his own kid-"
"You're behind the times, Eric. Nobody listens to language any more. It's no longer a means of precise communication, it's a club to hit people over the head with; and the exact meanings of words no longer count. 1 think the girl is quite serious. I think she never in her life stopped to listen to how her father talks. Besides, he's been a very busy man as long as we've known him. The chances are, she hasn't had even as much communication as we have."
"You're so right about that!" Martha's voice was stiff. "He's been practically a stranger around the house as long as I can remember. I.. – I was all shook up, a few weeks ago, when he asked me into the study to have a serious talk. I thought he was going to tell me about the birds and the bees, or something, at my age! Instead of which… instead of which he asked me to undertake this melodramatic…
She stopped. There was a little silence. At last Lorna said, "You're forgetting something, Eric. You're forgetting that I was on the list."
"So?"
"So if she'd sold us out, if she'd passed that list of names on to Leonard, or got it from him, he'd have known I was at the ranch. His men would have come looking for me when they seized the place, if only to prevent me from getting away to spread the news of the raid. But nobody came."
I regarded the girl for a moment longer. Instinct told me that she was dangerous and not to be trusted. Depending on anybody with her attitudes was simple suicide. However, I could be wrong in this particular instance. That she'd betray us, and me in particular, if she got the chance, I had no real doubt. She'd think it was her duty to humanity and society. However, her chance might not have shown itself yet. In any case, she wasn't going anywhere I couldn't keep an eye on her, so I might as well pretend to be convinced of her innocence.
"Okay," I said. "My mistake. My apologies, Miss Borden."
"Your apologies are not accepted!"
Lorna said, "When you're quite through snapping at each other, we ought to take another look at the situation. If Leonard has a substitute holding down the office phone, it seems likely that Mac is no longer in Washington. We can hope that lie got away safely and is sitting out the storm in his secret hideout, the one you were just told about, Eric. But that means we're pretty well on our own."