Malone turned again, hope in his eyes. "Yes, sir?" he said.
"When you leave--" Burris began, and the hope disappeared "please do
one little favor for me. Just one little favor, because I'm an old,
tired man and I'm not used to things any more."
"Sure," Malone said. "Anything, Chief."
"Don't call me--"
"Sorry," Malone said.
Burris breathed heavily. "When you leave," he said, "please, please
use the door."
"But--"
"Malone," Burris said, "I've tried. I've really tried. Believe me.
I've tried to get used to the fact that you can teleport. But--"
"It's useful," Malone said, "in my work."
"I can see that," Burris said. "And I don't want you to ... well, to
stop doing it. By no means. It's just that it sort of unnerves me, if
you see what I mean. No matter how useful it is for the FBI to have an
agent who can go instantaneously from one place to another, it
unnerves me." He sighed. "I can't get used to seeing you disappear
like an over-dried soap bubble, Malone. It does something to
me--here." He placed a hand directly over his sternum and sighed
again.
"I can understand that," Malone said. "It unnerved me, too, the first
time I saw it. I thought I was going crazy, when that kid--Mike
Fueyo--winked out like a light. But then we got him, and some FBI
agents besides me have learned the trick." He stopped there, wondering
if he'd been tactful. After all, it took a latent ability to learn
teleportation, and some people had it, while others didn't. Malone,
along with a few other agents, did. Burris evidently didn't--so he
couldn't teleport, no matter how hard he tried or how many lessons he
took.
"Well," Burris said, "I'm still unnerved. So ... please, Malone ...
when you come in here, or go out, use the door. All right?"
"Yes, sir," Malone said. He turned and went out. As he opened the
door, he could almost hear Burris' sigh of relief. Then he banged it
shut behind him and, feeling that he might as well continue with his
spacebound existence, walked all the way to the elevator, and rode it
downstairs to the FBI laboratories.
The labs, highly efficient and divided into dozens of departments,
covered several floors. Malone passed through the Fingerprint section,
filled with technicians doing strange things to great charts and
slides, and frowning over tiny pieces of material and photographs.
Then came Forgery Detection, involving many more technicians, many
more slides and charts and tiny pieces of things and photographs, and
even a witness or two sitting on the white bench at one side and
looking lost and somehow civilian. Identification Classified was next,
a great barn of a room filled with index files. The real indexes were
in the sub-basement; here, on microfilm, were only the basic division.
A man was standing in front of one of the files, frowning at it.
Malone went on by without stopping.
Cosmetic Surgery Classification came next. Here there were more indexes,
and there were also charts and slides. There was an FBI agent sitting on a
bench looking bored while two female technicians--classified as O&U for
Old and Ugly in Malone's mind--fluttered around him, deciding what
disguises were possible, and which of those was indicated for the
particular job on hand. Malone waved to the agent, whom he knew very
slightly, and went on. He felt vaguely regretful that the FBI couldn't
hire prettier girls for the Cosmetic Surgery Division, but the trouble was
that pretty girls fell for the agents--and vice versa--and this led to an
unfortunate tendency toward only handsome and virile-looking disguises.
The O&U Division was unfortunate, he decided, but a necessity.
Chemical Analysis (III) was next. The Chemical Analysis section was
scattered over several floors, with the first stages up above.
Division III, Malone remembered, was devoted to non-poisonous
substances--like clay or sand found in boots or trouser cuffs, cigar
ashes and such. They were placed on the same floor as Fingerprints to
allow free and frequent passage between the sections on the problems
of plastic prints--made in putty or like substances--and visible
prints, made when the hand is covered with a visible substance like
blood, ketchup or glue.
Malone found what he was looking for at the very end of the floor. It
was the Computer Section, a large room filled with humming, clacking
and buzzing machines of an ancient vintage, muttering to themselves as
they worked, and newer machines which were smaller and more silent.
Lights were lighting and bells were ringing softly, relays were
relaying and the whole room was a gigantic maze of calculating and
control machines. What space wasn't filled by the machines themselves
was filled by workbenches, all littered with an assortment of gears,
tubes, spare relays, transistors, wires, rods, bolts, resistors and
all the other paraphernalia used in building the machines and
repairing them. Beyond the basic room were other, smaller rooms, each
assigned to a particular kind of computer work.
The narrow aisles were choked here and there with men who looked up as
Malone passed by, but most of them gave him one quick glance and went
back to work. A few didn't even do that, but went right on
concentrating on their jobs. Malone headed for a man working all alone
in front of a workbench, frowning down at a complicated-looking
mechanism that seemed to have neither head nor tail, and prodding at
it with a long, thin screwdriver. The man was thin, too, but not very
long; he was a little under average height, and he had straight black
hair, thick-lensed glasses and a studious expression, even when he was
frowning. He looked as if the mechanism were a student who had cut too
many classes, and he was being kindly but firm with it.
* * * * *
Malone managed to get to the man's side, and coughed discreetly. There
was no response.
"Fred?" he said.
The screwdriver waggled a little. Malone wasn't quite sure that the
man was breathing.
"Fred Mitchell," he said.
Mitchell didn't look up. Another second passed.
"Hey," Malone said. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
"Fred," he said in a loud, reasonable-sounding voice, "the State
Department's translator has started to talk pig-Latin."
Mitchell straightened up as if somebody had jabbed him with a pin. The
screwdriver waved wildly in the air for a second, and then pointed at
Malone. "That's impossible," Mitchell said in a flat, precise voice.
"Simply impossible. It doesn't have a pig-Latin circuit. It can't
possibly--" He blinked and seemed to see Malone for the first time.
"Oh," he said. "Hello, Malone. What can I do for you?"
Malone smiled, feeling a little victorious at having got through the
Mitchell armor, which was almost impregnable when there was a job in
hand. "I've been standing here talking to you for some time."
"Oh, have you?" Mitchell said. "I was busy." That, obviously,
explained that. Malone shrugged.
"I want you to help me check over some calculators, Fred," he said.
"We've had some reports that some of the government machines are out
of kilter, and I'd like you to go over them for me."
"Out of kilter?" Fred Mitchell said. "No, you can forget about it.
It's absolutely unnecessary to make a check--believe me. Absolutely.
Forget it." He smiled suddenly. "I suppose it's some kind of a joke,
isn't it?" he said, just a trifle uncertainly. Fred Mitchell's world,
while pleasant, did not include much humor, Malone knew. "It's
supposed to be funny," he said in the same flat, precise voice.
"It isn't funny," Malone said.
Fred sighed. "Then they're obviously lying," he said, "and that's all
there is to it. Why bother me with it?"
"Certainly," Fred said. He looked at the machinery with longing.
Malone took a breath. "How do you know?" he said.
Fred sighed. "It's perfectly obvious," he said in a patient tone.
"Since the State Department translator has no pig-Latin circuit, it
can't possibly be talking pig-Latin. I will admit that such a circuit
would be relatively easy to build, though it would have no utility as
far as I can see. Except, of course, for a joke." He paused. "Joke?"
he said, in a slightly uneasy tone.
"Sure," Malone said. "Joke."