"Not all of them," she told him, returning his smile tenderly.
He chuckled. "It's about one of those rocket physicists in the list you
brought me. A fellow named Willard Farquar."
Caddy didn't say anything, but she stopped stroking his forehead.
"What's the matter?" he asked. "You knew him once, didn't you?"
"Yes," she replied and then added, with surprising feeling, "The big,
ugly ape!"
"Well, he's an ape whose services we happen to need. I want you to be
our contact girl with him."
She took her hands away from his forehead. "Look, Jan," she said, "I
wouldn't like this job."
"I thought he was very sweet on you once."
"Yes, as he never grew tired of trying to demonstrate to me. The
clumsy, overgrown, bumbling baby! The man's disgusting, Jan. His
approach to a woman is a child wanting candy and enraged because
Mama won't produce it on the instant. I don't mind Jorj--he's just
a pipsqueak and it amuses me to see how he frustrates himself. But
Willard is...."
"... a bit frightening?" Tregarron finished for her.
"No!"
"Of course you're not afraid," Tregarron purred. "You're our beautiful,
clever Caddy, who can do anything she wants with any man, and without
whose...."
"Look, Jan, this is different--" she began agitatedly.
"... and without whose services we'd have got exactly nowhere. Clever,
subtle Caddy, whose most charming attainment in the ever-appreciative
eyes of Papa Jan is her ability to handle every man in the neatest way
imaginable and without a trace of real feeling. Kitty Kaddy, who...."
"Very well," she said with a sigh. "I'll do it."
"Of course you will," Jan said, drawing her hands back to his
forehead. "And you'll begin right away by getting into your nicest
sugar-and-cream war clothes. You and I are going to be the welcoming
committee when that ape arrives this afternoon."
"But what about Jorj? He'll want to see Willard."
"That'll be taken care of," Jan assured her.
"And what about the other dozen rocket physicists Jorj asked to come?"
"Don't worry about them."
* * * * *
The President looked inquiringly at his secretary across his littered
desk in his homey study at White House, Jr. "So Opperly didn't have any
idea how that odd question about Maizie turned up in Section Five?"
His secretary settled his paunch and shook his head. "Or claimed not
to. Perhaps he's just the absent-minded prof, perhaps something else.
The old feud of the physicists against the Thinkers may be getting hot
again. There'll be further investigation."
The President nodded. He obviously had something uncomfortable on his
mind. He said uneasily, "Do you think there's any possibility of it
being true?"
"What?" asked the secretary guardedly.
"That peculiar hint about Maizie."
The secretary said nothing.
"Mind you, I don't think there is," the President went on hurriedly,
his face assuming a sorrowful scowl. "I owe a lot to the Thinkers,
both as a private person and as a public figure. Lord, a man has to
lean on _something_ these days. But just supposing it were true--" he
hesitated, as before uttering blasphemy--"that there was a man inside
Maizie, what could we do?"
The secretary said stolidly, "The Thinkers won our last election. They
chased the Commies out of Iran. We brought them into the Inner Cabinet.
We've showered them with public funds." He paused. "We couldn't do a
damn thing."
The President nodded with equal conviction, and, not very happily,
summed up: "So if anyone should go up against the Thinkers--and I'm
afraid I wouldn't want to see that happen, whatever's true--it would
have to be a scientist."
* * * * *
Willard Farquar felt his weight change the steps under his feet into
an escalator. He cursed under his breath, but let them carry him, a
defiant hulk, up to the tall and mystic blue portals, which silently
parted when he was five meters away. The escalator changed to a
slideway and carried him into a softly gleaming, high-domed room
rather like the antechamber of a temple.
"Martian peace to you, Willard Farquar," an invisible voice intoned.
"You have entered the Thinkers' Foundation. Please remain on the
slideway."
"I want to see Jorj Helmuth," Willard growled loudly.
The slideway carried him into the mouth of a corridor and paused. A
dark opening dilated on the wall. "May we take your hat and coat?" a
voice asked politely. After a moment the request was repeated, with the
addition of, "Just pass them through."
Willard scowled, then fought his way out of his shapeless coat and
passed it and his hat through in a lump. Instantly the opening
contracted, imprisoning his wrists, and he felt his hands being washed
on the other side of the wall.
He gave a great jerk which failed to free his hands from the snugly
padded gyves. "Do not be alarmed," the voice advised him. "It is only
an esthetic measure. As your hands are laved, invisible radiations are
slaughtering all the germs in your body, while more delicate emanations
are producing a benign rearrangement of your emotions."
The rather amateurish curses Willard was gritting between his teeth
became more sulfurous. His sensations told him that a towel of some
sort was being applied to his hands. He wondered if he would be
subjected to a face-washing and even greater indignities. Then, just
before his wrists were released, he felt--for a moment only, but
unmistakably--the soft touch of a girl's hand.
That touch, like the mysterious sweet chink of a bell in darkness,
brought him a sudden feeling of excitement, wonder.
Yet the feeling was as fleeting as that caused by a lurid
advertisement, for as the slideway began to move again, carrying him
past a series of depth-pictures and inscriptions celebrating the
Thinkers' achievements, his mood of bitter exasperation returned
doubled. This place, he told himself, was a plague spot of the disease
of magic in an enfeebled and easily infected world. He reminded himself
that he was not without resources--the Thinkers must fear or need him,
whether because of the Maelzel question or the necessity of producing
a nuclear power spaceship. He felt his determination to smash them
reaffirmed.
* * * * *
The slideway, having twice turned into an escalator, veered toward
an opalescent door, which opened as silently as the one below. The
slideway stopped at the threshold. Momentum carried him a couple of
steps into the room. He stopped and looked around.
The place was a sybarite's modernistic dream. Sponge-carpeting thick
as a mattress and topped with down. Hassocks and couches that looked
butter-soft. A domed ceiling of deep glossy blue mimicking the night
sky, with the constellations tooled in silver. A wall of niches crammed
with statuettes of languorous men, women, beasts. A self-service bar
with a score of golden spigots. A depth-TV-screen simulating a great
crystal ball. Here and there barbaric studs of hammered gold that might
have been push-buttons. A low table set for three with exquisite ware
of crystal and gold. An ever-changing scent of resins and flowers.
A smiling fat man clad in pearl gray sports clothes came through one
of the curtained archways. Willard recognized Jan Tregarron from his
pictures, but did not at once offer to speak to him. Instead he let his
gaze wander with an ostentatious contempt around the crammed walls,
take in the bar and the set table with its many wine glasses, and
finally return to his host.
"And where," he asked with harsh irony, "are the dancing girls?"
The fat man's eyebrows rose. "In there," he said innocently, indicating
the second archway. The curtains parted.
"Oh, I _am_ sorry," the fat man apologized. "There seems to be only one
on duty. I hope that isn't too much at variance with your tastes."
She stood in the archway, demure and lovely in an off-the-bosom frock
of pale blue skylon edged in mutated mink. She was smiling the first
smile that Willard had ever had from her lips.
"Mr. Willard Farquar," the fat man murmured, "Miss Arkady Simms."
* * * * *
Jorj Helmuth turned from the conference table with its dozen empty
chairs to the two mousily pretty secretaries.
"No word from the door yet, Master," one of them ventured to say.
Jorj twisted in his chair, though hardly uncomfortably, since it was
a beautiful pneumatic job. His nervousness at having to face the
twelve rocket physicists--a feeling which, he had to admit, had been
unexpectedly great--was giving way to impatience.
"What's Willard Farquar's phone?" he asked sharply.
One of the secretaries ran through a clutch of desk tapes, then spent
some seconds whispering into her throat-mike and listening to answers
from the soft-speaker.
"He lives with Morton Opperly, who doesn't have one," she finally told
Jorj in scandalized tones.
"Let me see the list," Jorj said. Then, after a bit, "Try Dr. Welcome's
place."
This time there were results. Within a quarter of a minute he was
handed a phone which he hung expertly on his shoulder.
"This is Dr. Asa Welcome," a reedy voice told him.
"This is Helmuth of the Thinkers' Foundation," Jorj said icily. "Did
you get my communication?"
The reedy voice became anxious and placating. "Why, yes, Mr. Helmuth, I
did. Very glad to get it too. Sounded most interesting. Very eager to
come. But...."
"Yes?"
"Well, I was just about to hop in my 'copter--my son's 'copter--when
the other note came."
"What other note?"
"Why, the note calling the meeting off."
"I sent no other note!"
The other voice became acutely embarrassed. "But I considered it to be
from you ... or just about the same thing. I really think I had the
right to assume that."
"How was it signed?" Jorj rapped.
"Mr. Jan Tregarron."
Jorj broke the connection. He didn't move until a low sound shattered
his abstraction and he realized that one of the girls was whispering
a call to the door. He handed back the phone and dismissed them. They
went in a rustle of jackets and skirtlets, hesitating at the doorway
but not quite daring to look back.
He sat motionless a minute longer. Then his hand crept fretfully
onto the table and pushed a button. The room darkened and a long
section of wall became transparent, revealing a dozen silvery models
of spaceships, beautifully executed. He quickly touched another; the
models faded and the opposite wall bloomed with an animated cartoon
that portrayed with charming humor and detail the designing and
construction of a neutron-drive spaceship. A third button, and a
depth-picture of deep star-speckled space opened behind the cartoon,
showing a section of Earth's surface and in the far distance the tiny
ruddy globe of Mars. Slowly a tiny rocket rose from the section of
Earth and spread its silvery sails.
* * * * *
He switched off the pictures, keeping the room dark. By a faint
table light he dejectedly examined his organizational charts for the
neutron-drive project, the long list of books he had boned up on by
somno-learning, the concealed table of physical constants and all sorts
of other crucial details about rocket physics--a cleverly condensed
encyclopedic "pony" to help out his memory on technical points that
might have arisen in his discussion with the experts.
He switched out all the lights and slumped forward, blinking his eyes
and trying to swallow the lump in his throat. In the dark his memory
went seeping back, back, to the day when his math teacher had told him,
very superciliously, that the marvelous fantasies he loved to read
and hoarded by his bed weren't real science at all, but just a kind of
lurid pretense. He had so wanted to be a scientist, and the teacher's
contempt had cast a damper on his ambition.
And now that the conference was canceled, would he ever know that it
wouldn't have turned out the same way today? That his somno-learning
hadn't taken? That his "pony" wasn't good enough? That his ability to
handle people extended only to credulous farmer Presidents and mousy
girls in skirtlets? Only the test of meeting the experts would have
answered those questions.
Tregarron was the one to blame! Tregarron with his sly tyrannical
ways, Tregarron with his fear of losing the future to men who really
understood theoretics and could handle experts. Tregarron, so used to
working by deception that he couldn't see when it became a fault and a
crime. Tregarron, who must now be shown the light ... or, failing that,
against whom certain steps must be taken.
For perhaps half an hour Jorj sat very still, thinking. Then he turned
to the phone and, after some delay, got his party.
"What is it now, Jorj?" Caddy asked impatiently. "Please don't bother
me with any of your moods, because I'm tired and my nerves are on edge."
He took a breath. When steps may have to be taken, he thought, one
must hold an agent in readiness. "Caddums," he intoned hypnotically,
vibrantly. "Caddums...."
The voice at the other end had instantly changed, become submissive,
sleepy, suppliant.
"Yes, Master?"
* * * * *
Morton Opperly looked up from the sheet of neatly penned equations
at Willard Farquar, who had somehow acquired a measure of poise. He
neither lumbered restlessly nor grimaced. He removed his coat with
a certain dignity and stood solidly before his mentor. He smiled.
Granting that he was a bear, one might guess he had just been fed.
"You see?" he said. "They didn't hurt me."
"They didn't hurt you?" Opperly asked softly.
Willard slowly shook his head. His smile broadened.
Opperly put down his pen, folded his hands. "And you're as determined
as ever to expose and smash the Thinkers?"
"Of course!" The menacing growl came back into the bear's voice, except
that it was touched with a certain pleased luxuriousness. "Only from
now on I won't be teasing the zoo animals, and I won't embarrass you
by asking any more Maelzel questions. I have reached the objective at
which those tactics were aimed. After this I shall bore from within."
"Bore from within," Opperly repeated, frowning. "Now where have I heard
that phrase before?" His brow cleared. "Oh, yes," he said listlessly.
"Do I understand that you are becoming a Thinker, Willard?"
The other gave him a faintly pitying smile and stretched himself on the
couch, gazed at the ceiling. All his movements were deliberate, easy.
"Certainly. That's the only realistic way to smash them. Rise high
in their councils. Out-trick all their trickeries. Organize a fifth
column. Then _strike_!"
"The end justifying the means, of course," Opperly said.
"Of course. As surely as the desire to stand up justifies your
disturbing the air over your head. All action in this world is nothing
but means."
Opperly nodded abstractedly. "I wonder if anyone else ever became a
Thinker for those same reasons. I wonder if being a Thinker doesn't
simply mean that you've decided you have to use lies and tricks as your
chief method."
* * * * *
Willard shrugged. "Could be." There was no longer any doubt about the
pitying quality of his smile.
Opperly stood up, squaring together his papers. "So you'll be working
with Helmuth?"
"Not Helmuth. Tregarron." The bear's smile became cruel. "I'm afraid
that Helmuth's career as a Thinker is going to have quite a setback."
"Helmuth," Opperly mused. "Morgenschein once told me a bit about him.
A man of some idealism, despite his affiliations. Best of a bad lot.
Incidentally, is he the one with whom...."
"... Miss Arkady Simms ran off?" Willard finished without any
embarrassment. "Yes, that was Helmuth. But that's all going to be
changed now."
Opperly nodded. "Good-by, Willard," he said.
Willard quickly heaved himself up on an elbow. Opperly looked at him
for about five seconds, then, without a word, walked out of the room.
* * * * *
The only obvious furnishings in Jan Tregarron's office were a
flat-topped desk and a few chairs. Tregarron sat behind the desk, the
top of which was completely bare. He looked almost bored, except that
his little eyes were smiling. Jorj Helmuth sat across the desk from
him, a few feet back, erect and grim-faced, while shadowy in the muted
light, Caddy stood against the wall behind Tregarron. She still wore
the fur-trimmed skylon frock she'd put on that afternoon. She took no
part in the conversation, seemed almost unaware of it.
"So you just went ahead and canceled the conference without consulting
me?" Jorj was saying.
"You called it without consulting me." Tregarron playfully wagged a
finger. "Shouldn't do that sort of thing, Jorj."
"But I tell you I was completely prepared. I was absolutely sure of my
ground."
"I know, I know," Tregarron said lightly. "But it's not the right time
for it. I'm the best judge of that."
"When will be the right time?"
Tregarron shrugged. "Look here, Jorj," he said, "every man should stick
to his trade, to his forte. Technology isn't ours."
Jorj's lips thinned. "But you know as well as I do that we are going to
have to have a nuclear spaceship and actually go to Mars someday."