"Yes, of course, sir."
"I'll admit that, as Rargyllians go..." He made the noun sound like a swear word. "... Ftaeml is all right. But this involvement has the odor of trouble... and I find my own nose for trouble blanked out by this phobia of mine. So I'm putting you on as my assistant to sniff for me."
"I thought you didn't trust my nose, boss?"
"We'll let the blind lead the blind, if you'll forgive a switch in metaphor. Perhaps between us we'll sniff it out."
"Yes, sir. May I ask the nature of the assignment?"
"Well..." Before Mr. Kiku could answer, his secretary's light flashed and her voice stated, "Your hypnotherapist is here, sir."
The Under Secretary glanced at his clock and said, "Where does the time go?"... then to the communicator: "Put him in my dressing room. I'll be in." He continued to Greenberg, "Ftaeml will be here in thirty minutes. I can't stop to talk, I've got to get braced for it. You'll find what there is... little enough!... in my 'pending-urgent' file." Mr. Kiku glanced at his incoming basket, which had filled to overflowing while they talked. "It won't take five minutes. Spend the rest of the time clearing up that stack of waste paper. Sign my name and hold anything that you think I must see but it had better be no more than half a dozen items, or I'll send you back to Harvard!"
He got up hurriedly, while making a mental note to tell his secretary, from his dressing room, to note everything that went through in the next half hour and let him see it later... he wanted to see how the lad worked. Mr. Kiku was aware that he would die someday and he intended to see to it that Greenberg replaced him. In the meantime life should be as tough for the boy as possible.
The Under Secretary headed for his dressing room, the door ducked aside, contracted behind him; Greenberg was left alone. He was reaching for the pending urgent file when a paper dropped into the incoming basket just as the light on it blinked red and a buzzer sounded.
He picked up the paper, ran his eye down the middle and had just realized that it really was urgent when a similar light-and-buzzer combination showed at the interoffice communicator and its screen came to life;
Greenberg recognized the chief of the bureau of system liaison. "Boss?" the image said excitedly.
Greenberg touched the two-way switch. "Greenberg here," he answered. "I'm keeping the chief's chair warm for him. Your memo just came in, Stan. I'm reading it?
Iba¤ez looked annoyed. "Never mind that. Get me the boss."
Greenberg hesitated. Iba¤ez's problem was simple, but sticky. Ships from Venus were regularly granted pratique without delay, each ship's doctor being a public health deputy. But the Ariel, already due at Port Libya, had suddenly been placed under quarantine by her doctor and was now waiting in a parking orbit. The Venerian foreign minister was aboard... most unfortunately, as Venus was expected to support Terra's position against Mars in the impending triangular conference.
Greenberg could stall the touchy problem until the boss was free; he could break in on the boss; he could go over the boss's head to the Secretary himself (which meant picking an answer and presenting it so as to get that answer approved); or... he could act, using Mr. Kiku's authority.
Mr. Kiku could not have predicted the emergency... but the boss had a pesky habit of pushing people off the deep end.
Greenberg's summing up had been quick. He answered, "Sorry, Stan, you can't talk to the boss. I am acting for him."
"Eh? Since when?"
"Just temporarily, but I am."
Iba¤ez frowned. "Look, chum, you had better find the boss. Maybe you are signing his name on routine matters... but this is not routine. We've got to bring that ship down in a hurry. Your neck would be out a yard if you took it upon yourself to authorize me to overlook a basic rule like quarantine. Use your head."
Break quarantine? Greenberg recalled the Great Plague of '51, back in the days when the biologist serenely believed that each planetary life group was immune to the ills of other planets. "We won't break quarantine."
Iba¤ez looked pained. "Sergei, we can jeopardize this conference... 'jeopardize?' What am I saying? We can't toss away ten years' work because some crewman has a slight fever. The quarantine must be broken. But I don't expect you to do it."
Greenberg hesitated. "He's under hypnosis, for a tough job coming up. It may be a couple of hours before you can see him."
Iba¤ez looked blank. "I'll have to tackle the Secretary. I don't dare wait two hours. That sacred cow from Venus is like as not to order his skipper to head home... we can't risk that."
"And we can't risk bringing in an epidemic, either. Here's what you do. Call him and tell him you are coming to get him in person. Use a fast scout. Get him aboard and leave the Ariel in quarantine orbit. Once you get him aboard the scout... and not before... tell him that both you and he will attend the conference in isolation suits." The isolation suit was a sealed pressure suit; its primary use was to visit planets whose disease hazards had not yet been learned. "The scout ship and crew will have to go into quarantine, too, of course."
"Isolation suit! Oh, he'll love that. Sergei, it would be less damaging to call off the conference. An indignity like that would put him against us for certain. The jerk is poisonously proud."
"Sure he'll love it," Greenberg explained, "once you suggest how to play it. 'Great personal self-sacrifice'... 'unwilling to risk the welfare of our beloved sister planet'... 'the call of duty takes precedence over any et cetera.' If you don't feel sure of it, take one of the public relations boys along. And look, all through the conference he must be attended by a physician... in a white suit... and a couple of nurses. The conference must stop every now and then while he rests... put a cot and hospital screens in the Hall of Heroes near the conference table. The idea is that he's come down with it himself but is carrying on as his dying act. Get it? Tell him before you land the scout ship... indirectly, of course."
Iba¤ez looked perturbed. "Do you think that will work?"
"It's up to you to make it work. I'm sending down your memo, ordering quarantine to continue but telling you to use your initiative to insure his presence at the conference."
"Well... all right." Iba¤ez suddenly grinned. "Never mind the memo. I'm on my way." He switched off.
Greenberg turned back to the desk, feeling exhilarated by the sensation of playing God. He wondered what the boss would have done?... but did not care. There might be many correct solutions, but this was one; it felt right. He reached again for the pending urgent file.
He stopped. Something was gnawing at the back of his mind. The boss had not wanted to approve that death sentence; he had felt it. Shucks, the boss had told him that he was wrong; the proper action was a full investigation. But the boss, as a matter of loyalty to his subordinates, had not reversed him.
But he himself was sitting in the boss's chair at the moment. Well?
Was that why the boss had placed him there? To let him correct his own mistake? No, the boss was subtle but not omniscient; he could not have predicted that Greenberg would consider reopening the matter.
Still... He called the boss's private secretary. "Mildred?"
"Yes, Mr. Greenberg?"
"That brief-and-rec on that intervention I carried out Rt0411, it was. It went out fifteen minutes ago.
I want it back."
"It may have been dispatched," she said doubtfully.
"The communications desk has been running only about seven minutes behind demand today."
"There is such a thing as too much efficiency. If the order has left the building, send a cancellation and a more-to-follow, will you? And get the original document back to me."