"Will you come into my office?" I asked him.
He looked over at the Swami, in doubt.
"He can wait out here," I said. "He won't run away. There isn't any
subway, and he wouldn't know what to do. Anyway, if he did get lost,
your Army Intelligence could find him. Give G-2 something to work on.
Right through this door, lieutenant."
"Yes, sir," he said meekly, and preceded me into my office.
I closed the door behind us and waved him over to the crying chair. He
folded at the knees and hips, as if he were hinged only there, as if
there were no hinges at all in the ramrod of his back. He sat up
straight, on the edge of his chair, ready to spring into instant charge
of battle. I went around back to my desk and sat down.
"Now, lieutenant," I said soothingly, "tell me all about it."
* * * * *
I could have sworn his square chin quivered at the note of sympathy in
my voice. I wondered, irrelevantly, if the lads at West Point all slept
with their faces confined in wooden frames to get that characteristically
rectangular look.
"You knew I was from West Point," he said, and his voice held a note of
awe. "And you knew, right away, that Swami was a phony from Flatbush."
"Come now," I said with a shrug. "Nothing to get mystical about.
Patterns. Just patterns. Every environment leaves the stamp of its
matrix on the individual shaped in it. It's a personnel man's trade to
recognize the make of a person, just as you would recognize the make of
a rifle."
"Yes, sir. I see, sir," he answered. But of course he didn't. And there
wasn't much use to make him try. Most people cling too desperately to
the ego-saving formula: Man cannot know man.
"Look, lieutenant," I said, with an idea that we'd better get down to
business. "Have you been checked out on what this is all about?"
"Well, sir," he answered, as if he were answering a question in class,
"I was cleared for top security, and told that a few months ago you and
your Dr. Auerbach, here at Computer Research, discovered a way to create
antigravity. I was told you claimed you had to have a poltergeist in the
process. You told General Sanfordwaithe that you needed six of them,
males. That's about all, sir. So the Poltergeist Division discovered the
Swami, and I was assigned to bring him out here to you."
"Well then, Lieutenant Murphy, you go back to the Pentagon and tell
General Sanfordwaithe that--" I could see by the look on his face that
my message would probably not get through verbatim. "Never mind, I'll
write it," I amended disgustedly. "And you can carry the message."
Lesser echelons do not relish the task of repeating uncomplimentary
words verbatim to a superior. Not usually.