Whereupon I heard a tiny tinny voice repeating, over and over, “Say something. Say something. Say something.”
“Me?” I said. All alone, in the corridor.
“There you are,” said the tiny tinny voice, which I barely recognized as belonging to Duff. “Took you long enough.”
“Can you really hear me?” I asked. I was alone, in a featureless corridor with green walls and gray carpeting. I was standing there all by myself, holding my left wrist pressed against my ear and talking out loud. I felt like an idiot.
“One, two, three,” said Duff. “One, two, three.”
“What?” I said.
Duff said, “How am I coming through? Can you hear me all right?”
“Sure,” I said.
“All right, fine. End of test.”
Then there was silence. I continued to stand there, holding my wrist to my ear, hearing nothing but the faint ticking of the watch, and after a minute I said, “What do I do now?” And got no answer. Now I really was alone.
Feeling very embarrassed, I put my arm down at my side and walked electronically away.
12
Karp was waiting for me in his office, as Duff had promised, and was not alone. P was with him, as were three other tough-looking men of P’s generation. As they didn’t identify themselves, and as I was already Q, they had to be R and S and T.
Karp invited me to sit down, which I did, and then, as the others studied me critically, he said to the room at large, “Frankly, we’re rather pleased with our accomplishments in this case. Given an individual with no training or apparent aptitude in this line, without even military experience or training behind him, and with the psychological block of a belief in some sort of religious pacifism—”
“Ethical pacifism,” I said. “Sorry to interrupt, but that’s a different group. You see, the difference—”
“Thank you,” he said. “Perhaps some other time we’ll have an opportunity to discuss the differences. Gentlemen, I think Q himself has just given an ample demonstration of the difficulties we encountered in his case.”
R, a basso profundo, grumbled, “We know it was a tough job, Karp. The question is, did you do it?”
“To an extent,” Karp told him carefully. “To, I believe, a greater extent than anyone could have predicted.” He picked up and ruffled a bunch of papers, saying, “I have here our instructors’ reports, and may I say to begin with that they are unanimous in praising Q’s intelligence, adaptibility, and willingness to co-operate.” He gave me a tiny bow, and the least wintry smile he’d yet bestowed on me, and I felt myself go warm all over. It was like getting that CCNY sheepskin after all, and my pleasure at Karp’s compliment was marred only by the knowledge that I had to be some sort of buffoon to be taking pleasure from such a compliment in such circumstances.
Karp went on, “The instructors, by the way, are also all agreed that they can hardly wait to get back to their normal duties with regular professional volunteer trainees. So much for that. Specifically, our code instructor gives Q highest marks in all areas of cryptography and cryptology, and expresses his belief that Q, unaided, could break any code up to Class Three within one day, and that, with sufficient incentive and training, he could become a full expert in the field. Since philosophy and cryptology are closely related arts, and since Q would appear to have some bent or interest in philosophical theorems, this aptitude is not necessarily to be considered surprising.”
There were about twelve things in those last few sentences I wanted to dispute, and loudly, but I was rather keenly aware that this was neither the time nor the place for it. Instead of speaking out, therefore, I settled more deeply into my chair, set my mouth in grim lines, and began to compose in my head the most vitriolic pamphlet I had written since The Sissy and the Arms Race back in 1957.
While I prepared this polemic, Karp continued unknowingly onward. “Our physical education instructor,” he said, “rates Q fairly above median in physical condition and stamina, and estimates Q’s survival quotient in a crisis situation at approximately seven hours. This, while far below the thirty-eight-hour minimum required for our normal graduates, is well above the thirty-seven-minute average of the man on the street or the slightly under two-hour SQ that Q arrived here with. On a related subject, our judo instructor tells me Q could overcome almost any sort of unarmed attack from up to five ordinary civilians, but of course would be rapidly defeated by any well-trained professional. A five-day miracle is beyond us.”
R, the rumbler, rumbled, “We know that. We don’t ask you people to do the impossible.”
Karp’s rewinterized smile suggested without words his disagreement, while he said, “Our electronics man has staged Q for transmission, reception, and various simple kinds of self-defense, and declares himself satisfied with Q’s understanding of the use and manipulation of the material given him. Our swimming instructor is equally satisfied with Q’s abilities to survive in the water. Q’s only total failure was in fencing, at which he showed so little aptitude that no real attempt was made to train him, but his progress in general gymnastics was, according to his instructor, encouraging.” Karp aligned his papers by rapping them edgewise on the desk top. “And that,” he said, “is just about that. Now, I expect you gentlemen wish to be alone for a while.”
“Thank you,” rumbled R.
Karp got to his feet, nodded efficiently to all of us, and left. R, immediately establishing who was now in command, moved over and sat behind Karp’s desk. He looked broodingly at me and said, “Raxford, I’ve been reading your dossier.”
“I’d like to some time,” I said.
“Frankly,” he rumbled, ignoring my insert, “I’m surprised that a man with your record and tendencies would agree to co-operate on any matter of national security or national defense. But I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. You’re here, you’ve demonstrated your willingness to co-operate over the past five days, and I here and now guarantee you every bit of assistance and co-operation this department can give.”
I said, “Excuse me, but I feel I have to make a speech.”
R, abruptly wary, glanced from me to P and back again. “What sort of speech?” he asked.
“I’m not backing out,” I assured him, “but once and for all I want to get straight with you people just what a pacifist is, or at least what this particular pacifist is, so you can maybe get over being astonished. The way I see it, a pacifist is someone who believes that the ultimate weapón in any and all disputes, from the personal to the international, is reason. Thought, negotiation, good will, and compromise are all words that sound nasty and probably Communist to the tough guys who want another war because their lives are too banal to be borne in peacetime, but these are the words we use and the concepts we believe in. We don’t believe in taking up arms and killing people, and this is an extension of our basic initial belief in the power of reason. You can’t reason with a dead man, which is why we would prefer to keep our enemies alive, and devote ourselves to peaceful attempts to resolve the differences between us. By a further extension of the same series of ideas, we feel very strongly about being ourselves killed, because we can’t reason when we’re dead either. A perversion of this aspect has been popularized as better Red than dead, which I would agree with only if there were no other alternatives. But there is a strong philosophic gulf between the passive resistance of a Mahatma Gandhi and the suicide of a Buddhist monk. I can’t think of any circumstances under which I’d set fire to myself, including this one. I was given the choice of assisting in an investigation of lawbreakers or of being abandoned to be gunned down by them, and better Fed than dead is what I chose. With the understanding that I won’t kill any of them any more than I will willingly be killed myself, I’m your man for the duration.”