"One more," I said. "Russia."
"Don't be silly," she said. "How would we get into Russia?"
"_We_ wouldn't. But _I_ would."
"Look, baby, whither though goest, I--"
"Up to here," I said. "Who's the big boss in this family?"
"Now, Fred--"
"Now, Jean--"
"Get away from me. This time, it won't work. If you think that for one
second you're going into that no man's land alone--and--"
It took some talking, to convince her, it took some lies. She'd wait,
she agreed finally, in Switzerland. In comfort for a change.
It took two diamonds to get to the right man, and it took a formula from
there. A formula that is learned in the first year of college chemistry
on my planet, a formula for converting an element. A formula this planet
couldn't have been more than a decade short of learning, anyway.
The last man I saw in Berlin went along, for which I was grateful,
though he didn't know that. I don't speak Russian, but he did.
They were careful, they don't even trust themselves. I told Nilenoff the
formula came from America, and there were more, but I needed money. I
didn't tell him the fallacy in the formula; it had taken us three years
to realize what it was.
My trips were limited, directed, and avoided the seamier side. I saw the
modern humming factories, and the mammoth farms. No unemployment, no
waste, no "capitalistic blood sucking"--and the lowest standard of
living in the industrialized world. A vast, bleak land peopled with
stringless puppets, with walking cadavers.
I remembered the faces of the crowds and the strangely mixed people in
America, their obvious feelings, emotions and rivalries. There was
nothing strange about these people of Russia--they were dead,
spiritually dead.
The country that could have been a cultural and industrial center of the
world was a robot-land of nine million square miles, getting ready for
war, getting ready to take over the dreams of Hitler and make them come
true.
I came out with a promise of ten thousand American dollars for every one
of the future formulas I had assured them I could get to. I came out
with the knowledge that I'd be a watched man from now on.