"What?"
She laughed. "Don't be so blank. It would be rather odd, wouldn't it, if
two people were in love, and neither of them realized what had
happened?"
"_Two_ people in love," he said blankly, unbelievingly.
* * * * *
Leonid Shvernik and Paul Koslov were bent over a map of the U.S.S.R. The
former pointed out the approximate location of the radio transmitters.
"We're not going to use them until the last moment," he said. "Not until
the fat is in the fire. Then they will all begin at once. The KGB and
MVD won't have time to knock them out."
Paul said, "Things are moving fast. Faster than I had expected. We're
putting it over, Leonid."
Shvernik said, "Only because the situation is ripe. It's the way
revolutions work."
"How do you mean?" Paul said absently, studying the map.
"Individuals don't put over revolutions. The times do, the conditions
apply. Did you know that six months before the Bolshevik revolution took
place Lenin wrote that he never expected to live to see the Communist
take over in Russia? The thing was that the conditions were there. The
Bolsheviks, as few as they were, were practically thrown into power."
"However," Paul said dryly, "it was mighty helpful to have such men as
Lenin and Trotsky handy."
Shvernik shrugged. "The times make the men. Your own American Revolution
is probably better known to you. Look at the men those times produced.
Jefferson, Paine, Madison, Hamilton, Franklin, Adams. And once again, if
you had told any of those men, a year before the Declaration of
Independence, that a complete revolution was the only solution to the
problems that confronted them, they would probably have thought you
insane."
It was a new line of thought for Paul Koslov. "Then what does cause a
revolution?"
"The need for it. It's not just our few tens of thousands of members of
the underground who see the need for overthrowing the Soviet
bureaucracy. It's millions of average Russians in every walk of life and
every strata, from top to bottom. What does the scientist think when
some bureaucrat knowing nothing of his speciality comes into the
laboratory and directs his work? What does the engineer in an automobile
plant think when some silly politician decides that since cars in
capitalist countries have four wheels, that Russia should surpass them
by producing a car with five? What does your scholar think when he is
told what to study, how to interpret it, and then what to write? What
does your worker think when he sees the bureaucrat living in luxury
while his wage is a comparatively meager one? What do your young people
think in their continual striving for a greater degree of freedom than
was possessed by their parents? What does your painter think? Your poet?
Your philosopher?"
Shvernik shook his head. "When a nation is ready for revolution, it's
the _people_ who put it over. Often, the so-called leaders are hard put
to run fast enough to say out in front."
* * * * *
Paul said, "After it's all over, we'll go back to the States. I know a
town up in the Sierras called Grass Valley. Hunting, fishing, mountains,
clean air, but still available to cities such as San Francisco where you
can go for shopping and for restaurants and entertainment."
She kissed him again.
Paul said, "You know, I've done this sort of work--never on this scale
before, of course--ever since I was nineteen. Nineteen, mind you! And
this is the first time I've realized I'm tired of it. Fed up to here.
I'm nearly thirty-five, Ana, and for the first time I want what a man is
expected to want out of life. A woman, a home, children. You've never
seen America. You'll love it. You'll like Americans too, especially the
kind that live in places like Grass Valley."