Marlowe was obese. He sat behind his desk like a tuskless sea lion
crouched behind a rock, and his cheeks merged into jowls and obliterated
his neck. His desk was built specially, so that he could get his thighs
under it. His office chair was heavier and wider by far than any
standard size, its casters rolling on a special composition base that
had been laid down over the carpeting, for Marlowe's weight would have
cut any ordinary rug to shreds. His jacket stretched like pliofilm to
enclose the bulk of his stooped shoulders, and his eyes surveyed his
world behind the battlemented heaviness of the puffing flesh that filled
their sockets.
A bulb flickered on his interphone set, and Marlowe shot a glance at the
switch beneath it.
"Secretary, quite contrary," he muttered inaudibly. He flicked the
switch. "Yes, Mary?" His voice rumbled out of the flabby cavern of his
chest.
"Mr. Mead has just filed a report on Martin Holliday, Mr. Secretary.
Would you like to see it?"
"Just give me a summary, Mary."
Under his breath he whispered, "Summary that mummery, Mary," and a thin
smile fell about his lips while he listened. "Gave him Karlshaven IV,
eh?" he observed when his secretary'd finished. "O.K. Thanks, Mary."
He switched off and sat thinking. Somewhere in the bowels of the Body
Administrative, he knew, notations were being made and cross-filed. The
addition of Karlshaven IV to the list of planets under colonization
would be made, and Holliday's asking prices for land would be posted
with Emigration, together with a prospectus abstracted from the General
Galactic Survey.
He switched the interphone on again.
"Uh ... Mary? Supply me with a copy of the GenSurv on the entire
Karlshaven system. Tell Mr. Mead I'll expect him in my office sometime
this afternoon--you schedule it--and we'll go into it further."
"Yes, Mr. Secretary. Will fifteen-fifteen be all right?"
"Fifteen-fifteen's fine, uh ... Mary," Marlowe said gently.
"Yes, sir," his secretary replied, abashed. "I keep forgetting about
proper nomenclature."
"So do I, Mary, so do I," Marlowe sighed. "Anything come up that wasn't
scheduled for today?"
It was a routine question, born of futile hope. There was always
something to spoil the carefully planned daily schedules.
"Yes and no, sir."
Marlowe cocked an eyebrow at the interphone.
"Well, that's a slight change, anyway. What is it?"
"There's a political science observer from Dovenil--that's Moore II on
our maps, sir--who's requested permission to talk to you. He's here on
the usual exchange program, and he's within his privileges in asking, of
course. I assume it's the ordinary thing--what's our foreign policy,
how do you apply it, can you give specific instances, and the like."
Precisely, Marlowe thought. For ordinary questions there were standard
answers, and Mary had been his secretary for so long that she could
supply them as well as he could.
Dovenil. Moore II, eh? Obviously, there was something special about the
situation, and Mary was leaving the decision to him. He scanned through
his memorized star catalogues, trying to find the correlation.
"Mr. Secretary?"
Marlowe grunted. "Still here. Just thinking. Isn't Dovenil that nation
we just sent Harrison to?"
"Yes, sir. On the same exchange program."
Marlowe chuckled. "Well, if we've got _Harrison_ down there, it's only
fair to let their fellow learn something in exchange, isn't it? What's
his name?"
"Dalish ud Klavan, sir."
Marlowe muttered to himself: "Dalish ud Klavan, Irish, corn beef and
cabbage." His mind filed it away together with a primary-color picture
of Jiggs and Maggie.
"All right, Mary, I'll talk to him, if you can find room in the schedule
somewhere. Tell you what--let him in at fifteen-thirty. Mead and I can
furnish a working example for him. Does that check all right with your
book?"
"Yes, sir. There'll be time if we carry over on the Ceroii incidents."
"Ceroii's waited six years, four months, and twenty-three days. They'll
wait another day. Let's do that, then, uh ... Mary."
"Yes, sir."
Marlowe switched off and picked up a report which he began to read by
the page-block system, his eyes almost unblinking between pages.
"Harrison, eh?" he muttered once, stopping to look quizzically at his
desktop. He chuckled.