In nineteen-fourteen, it was enemy aliens.
In nineteen-thirty, it was Wobblies.
In nineteen-fifty-seven, it was fellow-travelers.
And, in nineteen seventy-one, Kenneth J. Malone rolled wearily out of
bed wondering what the hell it was going to be now.
One thing, he told himself, was absolutely certain: it was going to be
terrible. It always was.
He managed to stand up, although he was swaying slightly when he
walked across the room to the mirror for his usual morning look at
himself. He didn't much like staring at his own face, first thing in
the morning, but then, he told himself, it was part of the toughening-
up process every FBI agent had to go through. You had to learn to
stand up and take it when things got rough, he reminded himself. He
blinked and looked into the mirror.
His image blinked back.
He tried a smile. It looked pretty horrible, he thought--but, then,
the mirror had a slight ripple in it, and the ripple distorted
everything. Malone's face looked as if it had been gently patted with
a waffle-iron.
And, of course, it was still early morning, and that meant he was
having a little difficulty in focusing his eyes.
Vaguely, he tried to remember the night before. He was just ending his
vacation, and he thought he recalled having a final farewell party for
two or three lovely female types he had chanced to meet in what was
still the world's finest City of Opportunity, Washington, D.C. (latest
female-to-male ratio, five-and-a-half to one). The party had been a
classic of its kind, complete with hot and cold running ideas of all
sorts, and lots and lots of nice powerful liquor.
Malone decided sadly that the ripple wasn't in the mirror, but in his
head. He stared at his unshaven face blearily.
Blink. Ripple.
Quite impossible, he told himself. Nobody could conceivably look as
horrible as Kenneth J. Malone thought he did. Things just couldn't be
as bad as all that.
Ignoring a still, small voice which asked persistently: "Why not?" he
turned away from the mirror and set about finding his clothes. He
determined to take his time about getting ready for work: after all,
nobody could really complain if he arrived late on his first day after
vacation. Everybody knew how tired vacations made a person.
And, besides, there was probably nothing happening anyway. Things had,
he recalled with faint pleasure, been pretty quiet lately. Ever since
the counterfeiting gang he'd caught had been put away, crime seemed to
have dropped to the nice, simple levels of the 1950's and '60's.
Maybe, he hoped suddenly, he'd be able to spend some time catching up
on his scientific techniques, or his math, or pistol practice....
The thought of pistol practice made his head begin to throb with the
authority of a true hangover. There were fifty or sixty small gnomes
inside his skull, he realized, all of them with tiny little hammers.
They were mining for lead.
"The lead," Malone said aloud, "is farther down. Not in the skull."
The gnomes paid him no attention. He shut his eyes and tried to relax.
The gnomes went right ahead with their work, and microscopic regiments
of Eagle Scouts began marching steadily along his nerves.
There were people, Malone had always understood, who bounced out of
their beds and greeted each new day with a smile. It didn't sound
possible, but then again there were some pretty strange people. The
head of that counterfeiting ring, for instance: where had he got the
idea of picking an alias like André Gide?
Clutching at his whirling thoughts, Malone opened his eyes, winced,
and began to get dressed. At least, he thought, it was going to be a
peaceful day.
It was at this second that his private intercom buzzed.
Malone winced again. "To hell with you," he called at the thing, but
the buzz went on, ignoring the code shut-off. That meant, he knew, an
emergency call, maybe from his Chief of Section. Maybe even from
higher up.
"I'm not even late for work yet," he complained. "I will be, but I'm
not yet. What are they screaming about?"
There was, of course, only one way to find out. He shuffled painfully
across the room, flipped the switch and said:
"Malone here." Vaguely, he wondered if it were true. He certainly
didn't feel as if he were here. Or there. Or anywhere at all, in fact.
A familiar voice came tinnily out of the receiver. "Malone, get down
here right away!"
The voice belonged to Andrew J. Burris. Malone sighed deeply and felt
grateful, for the fiftieth time, that he had never had a TV pickup
installed in the intercom. He didn't want the FBI chief to see him
looking as horrible as he did now, all rippled and everything. It
wasn't--well, it wasn't professional, that was all.
"I'll get dressed right away," he assured the intercom. "I should be
there in--"
"Don't bother to get dressed," Burris snapped. "This is an emergency!"
"But, Chief--"
"And don't call me Chief!"
"Okay," Malone said. "Sure. You want me to come down in my pyjamas.
Right?"
"I want you to--" Burris stopped. "All right, Malone. If you want to
waste time while our country's life is at stake, you go ahead. Get
dressed. After all, Malone, when I say something is an emergency--"
"I won't get dressed, then," Malone said. "Whatever you say."
"Just do something!" Burris told him desperately. "Your country needs
you. Pyjamas and all. Malone, it's a crisis!"
Conversations with Burris, Malone told himself, were bound to be a
little confusing. "I'll be right down," he said.
"Fine," Burris said, and hesitated. Then he added: "Malone, do you
wear the tops or the bottoms?"
"The what?"
"Of your pyjamas," Burris explained hurriedly. "The top part or the
bottom part?"
"Oh," Malone said. "As a matter of fact, I wear both."
"Good," Burris said with satisfaction. "I wouldn't want an agent of
mine arrested for indecent exposure." He rang off.
Malone blinked at the intercom for a minute, shut it off and then,
ignoring the trip-hammers in his skull and the Eagle Scouts on his
nerves, began to get dressed. Somehow, in spite of Burris' feelings of
crisis, he couldn't see himself trying to flag a taxi on the streets
of Washington in his pyjamas. Anyhow, not while he was awake. I
dreamed I was an FBI agent, he thought sadly, in my drafty BVDs.
Besides, it was probably nothing important. These things, he told
himself severely, have a way of evaporating as soon as a clear, cold
intelligence got hold of them.
Then he began wondering where in hell he was going to find a clear,
cold intelligence. Or even, for that matter, what one was.
1
"They could be anywhere," Burris said, with an expression which
bordered on exasperated horror. "They could be all around us. Heaven
only knows."
He pushed his chair back from his desk and stood up, a chunky little
man with bright blue eyes and large hands. He paced to the window and
looked out at Washington, and then he came back to the desk. A
persistent office rumor held that he had become head of the FBI purely
because he happened to have an initial _J_ in his name, but in his
case the J stood for Jeremiah. And, at the moment, his tone expressed
all the hopelessness of that Old Testament prophet's lamentations.
"We're helpless," he said, looking at the young man with the crisp
brown hair who was sitting across the desk. "That's what it is, we're
helpless."
Kenneth Malone tried to look dependable. "Just tell me what to do," he
said.
"You're a good agent, Kenneth," Burris said. "You're one of the best.
That's why you've been picked for this job. And I want to say that I
picked you personally. Believe me, there's never been anything like it
before."
"I'll do my best," Malone said at random. He was twenty-six, and he
had been an FBI agent for three years. In that time, he had, among
other things, managed to break up a gang of smugglers, track down a
counterfeiting ring, and capture three kidnappers. For reasons which
he could neither understand nor explain, no one seemed willing to
attribute his record to luck.
"I know you will," Burris said. "And if anybody can crack this case,
Malone, you're the man. It's just that--everything sounds so
_impossible_. Even after all the conferences we've had."
"Conferences?" Malone said vaguely. He wished the Chief would get to
the point. Any point. He smiled gently across the desk and tried to
look competent and dependable and reassuring. Burris' expression
didn't change.
"You'll get the conference tapes later," Burris said. "You can study
them before you leave. I suggest you study them very carefully,
Malone. Don't be like me. Don't get confused." He buried his face in
his hands. Malone waited patiently. After a few seconds, Burris looked
up. "Did you read books when you were a child?" he asked.