Authors: Lawrence Sanders
“Yes, sir.”
“I met Einstein once. When I was a youngster.”
“Did you, sir?”
“Sure did. As nice a guy as you’d want to meet.”
We went through this routine every time we met. It no longer annoyed me.
“See m’daughter?” he said.
“No, sir.”
“Around here somewhere,” he said vaguely.
A chubby ef from the Division of Law & Enforcement was thrust tightly up against him by the press of the throng. She giggled.
“Well there!” he said, and slid an arm about her waist. I left them to their rapture.
It was better out on the terrace. Too chilly for most of the guests. The air quality for the day had been deemed “Unsatisfactory,” but at least it smelled all right. You could see stars. In an hour, if I waited, I’d see Skylab No. 14 flash high overhead, southwest to northeast. There were efs and ems up there, serving, snoring in a Somnorific sleep, or watching
Circus au Natural
on TV. I wondered how my father’s contortionist was doing.
I was staring down in the brightly lit compound, watching a two-em security patrol saunter along the chainlink fence, flechette guns slung over their shoulders, when I became aware of someone standing at my side. Blond ef. Approximately twenty. About 165 cm. I supposed the object was Lydia Ann Ferguson, and Angela had suggested she slip out onto the terrace. “Say hello to that very handsome em over there by himself.”
She, too, was staring down at the chainlink barrier around the compound.
“Outside, the animals,” she said.
I turned to her. “What an odd thing to say.”
“The fence is to keep the animals out, isn’t it?”
“No. I serve here. The fence is to keep the animals in.”
She laughed at that.
“Nicholas Bennington Flair,” I said.
“Lydia Ann Ferguson,” she said.
We stroked palms.
“Your father is Director of Bliss, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” she said. “He is.”
“He rules me,” I said. “If you get a chance to talk to him—a deep, close, personal daughter-to-father communication—would you mind mentioning that the new PS-3 zipsuit doesn’t have any inside breast pocket, and I, for one, object?”
She laughed again. She laughed very easily.
My first response was negative. I was not usually attracted to very feminine efs with a soft serenity and an air of self-assurance. I could not endure sympathy and suffocating charm. I always thought they must smell of lavender and suffer from primary dyspareunia.
“Hungry?” I asked. “I can get a big dish of food and bring it out here. Save you from fighting the animals.”
“I’d like that.” “I think it’s pseudo-native slop,” I said. “Shredded coconut, rice balls, papaya, poi, roast pork, raw fish—things like that.” “Sounds good.”
“It does? What kind of food do you really like?”
“I like all kinds. I enjoy eating.”
Good-bye, Sherlock Holmes.
“Grab a table for us,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
I was returning through the mob with a heaped platter, moving cautiously to avoid sliding a chunk of pickled octopus down an ef’s bodice, when Angela Berri caught my eye. She raised her brows in question. I nodded.
Lydia and I chatted casually while we sampled Angela’s “native delicacies.” Some had a surprisingly pungent flavor, to epithelial end organs atrophied by a constant diet of petroleum-based synthetics. The raw fish was especially good.
I asked Lydia where she served. She said she analyzed and coded essay-type questionnaires for Pub-Op, Inc. She asked me what my duties were. I was as brief as possible.
“Sounds fascinating,” she said.
“Not really. Just routine. Most of the Division’s responsibilities concern testing and approving or rejecting new commercial products: drugs, prosthetic devices, foods, toys, paints—things of that sort.”
“But don’t you do original research and development?”
“Oh, yes. A limited amount.”
“You have Fred, don’t you?”
“Yes, we have Fred.”
“What are you interested in mostly, Nick? I mean you, personally?”
“Me? Oh ... I don’t know. I guess my main interest is in procreation research and genetic engineering.”
She nodded, without speaking, and we resumed our nibbling. We talked of several inconsequential things, a pleasant enough conversation but hardly significant. She was patting her lips with a plas-tinap when, quite unexpectedly, she asked; “How is Hyman Lewisohn?”
Lewisohn’s illness was not a secret. It had been announced on all the TV news programs and published in facsimile newspapers. Anyone who viewed or scanned knew he was suffering from leukemia and was under treatment at a government hospital. What
was
unusual was that she should ask me about his condition, as if my responsibility was common knowledge. It was not. Perhaps Daddy had been talking too much.
“His condition has stabilized,” I said
She said she thought she’d thank Angela and leave; she wanted to get home early. I told her that her chances of getting a cab after midnight were minimal and, if she’d allow me, I’d call the motor pool and see if I could requisition a car. If I could, I’d be happy to drive her. She hesitated a moment.
“All right,” she said finally. “Thank you.”
I went inside and made the call on the compound intercom in Angela’s bedroom. I noted with some amusement that all her closets and dresser drawers were fitted with locks, A secret ef. I finally got through to the schedule server. He promised me a sedan ! in half an hour.
I went back into the noisy living room. I found Lydia Ann Ferguson standing just inside the terrace door, looking with some distaste at the clamorous bacchanal swirling about her. I told her it would be a thirty-minute wait. It obviously distressed her.
“We could wait in my place,” I offered. “I live one floor down.
It’s quiet there.”
She had no fear. Daddy’s rank would protect her.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Thank you. Let’s go.”
In my apartment, she wandered about examining my library of TV cassettes. I handed her a drink and we sat at opposite ends of the couch, exactly where Paul and I had sat a few hours previously.
“Ballet and Greta Garbo.” She smiled. “You’re quite a contradiction.”
“I am? I don’t understand.”
“I thought all that interested you was science.”
“No. Other things interest me. Occasionally.”
“You’re a Renaissance man,” she said.
“Now you’re jerking me.” I smiled.
“No, really. I know your reputation.”
I could have made a smart answer to that, but let it pass.
After a moment she said, “Angela Berri is a beautiful ef. Don’t you think so?”
“Oh, yes. Very beautiful. She rules me, you know.”
"I wish you wouldn’t say that.”
“Would it be better if I said she was my boss? The Office of
Linguistic Truth tells us that words like boss, work, job, and labor have a pejorative meaning.”
“Like ‘love’?"
“Oh, that’s not pejorative. Just meaningless in the obso sense. ‘Profit’ is much better.”
“And ‘use’?”
“That’s economical,” I said solemnly. “Instead of a four-letter word, we now have a three-letter word.”
She didn’t change expression. I had the feeling I was being given a test and wondered if I was passing or failing.
She looked at her digiwatch.
“Another fifteen minutes,” I said. “Then we’ll leave.”
I’d be as relieved as she. I wasn’t enjoying this.
“That’s a profitable brooch you’re wearing.”
“Thank you.” I unpinned it and handed it to her. “Hammered silver and lapis lazuli. It belonged—”
“Damn!” she said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Stuck myself on the pin.” She sucked her thumb.
“Here,” I said, rising, “let me take a look.”
Good-bye, Sherlock Holmes. Hello, Lady Luck.
I squeezed her thumb. A small drop of dark red blood rose to the surface. I dabbed it away with my handkerchief.
“I’m a medical doctor, among other things,” I said. “Shall I treat you?”
She looked at me, puzzled.
I kissed the ball of her thumb.
“All better?” I asked.
She laughed. “You’re a very good doctor. Profitable bedside manner. I’ll recommend you to all my friends.”
“Thank you. I need the practice.”
It went over her head.
“Are you really a medical doctor?” she asked.
“Of sorts. I am many things, of sorts.”
She smiled mechanically.
“Let me get a fresh handkerchief,” I said. “Then we’ll leave.” In my bedroom, I folded the soiled handkerchief carefully and placed it in the top dresser drawer. Paul Bumford had analyzed perspiration on a towel in Frank Lawson Harris’ nest and found the type of IgA associated with blood type O-Rh negative. Not Harris’ type. We’d see, we’d see. . . .
She lived up on West End Avenue, near Ninetieth Street. It took us almost a half-hour to drive, and I don’t believe we exchanged a dozen words. I was certain I had failed.
We pulled up before an obso town house that must have been a hundred years old, converted into apartments. It had remarkable carved stone trim in a classical Greek pattern. I got out of the car and went around to her side. We stood a moment on the sidewalk. I looked up at the building. It needed cleaning, badly, but the lines and proportions were there.
“It was designed by Stanford White,” she said. “Do you know who he was?”
“Yes. American architect. Stopped by Harry K. Thaw at the original Madison Square Garden in 1906.”
She shook her head. “Do you know
everything
?”
“Everything.” I nodded. Something flickered across her face so quickly I couldn’t catch it.
We walked up the stone steps together. I waited while she found her key and unlocked the door. She stood a brief moment, her back to me, then turned suddenly.
“Come in,” she said.
It was as fast and unexpected as that.
Angela Berri, Paul Bumford, and I began meeting one or two times a week in my apartment, at about 1730. Angela welcomed this arrangement; she had an almost paranoiac fear that her apartment was being shared.
The first few meetings were devoted to planning and operations. We all contributed opinions and recommendations. Angela listened intently to Paul and me, but the final decision was hers. There was never any doubt about that.
The most immediate problem, we all agreed, was the rigged Satisfaction Rate.
In any bureaucracy, one soon learns that an error is
never
admitted. It is corrected, as discreetly as possible. Only when it is of enormous magnitude, impossible to gloss over without a conspiracy of impracticable size, is one’s superior advised. The ruler, then, being ultimately responsible, may be capable of arranging the gloss.
So our initial discussion was of ways and means to accuratize the Satrat, make it absolutely operative. Paul’s analysis of the fiddled tapes had shown it was presently too high by at least 10 percentile points, perhaps as much as 15. Suddenly to reduce the Satrat by that amount in one week would be disastrous. There would be an incredulous outcry, perhaps a formal investigation. Down go we all.
After a lengthy discussion of our options, we decided on this plan: Angela would send a routine memo to Phoebe Huntzinger, suggesting that, in the interest of accuracy, it would be wise of Phoebe to work from the polling organization’s raw data, rather than from the coded computer tapes they supplied. The first organization selected for the new system would be one of the three whose tapes, Paul’s analysis had determined, were
not
fiddled. The second and third companies asked to supply raw data would also be, apparently, uncompromised organizations. The purpose of this was to avoid alerting those who were fiddling the inoperative tapes to the fact that their activities were suspect.
It was decided that the restoration of the Satrat’s accuracy should take place over a period of six months. The loss of 10 to 15 percentile points in such a period would alarm government rulers certainly, but not, we hoped, to such an extent as to cause them to question the Satrat’s exactitude.
I go into such detail in this matter to illustrate the complexity of our discussions and the depth of our concern.
The Satrat was Angela Berri’s responsibility. Paul Bumford’s assignment was to analyze in much greater detail the incidence, types, and locations of terrorist activities against government, commercial, and academic scientific research facilities. Angela said it would be no problem for her to requisition the raw data from Burton Klein’s Division of Security & Intelligence. But it was an enormous service Paul would have to provide, in addition to his regular duties. He asked if he might enlist the aid of Mary Bergstrom, without telling Mary the reason for their activity.
“What is your reaction to the Bergstrom ef, Nick?” Angela asked.
“She has a Grade B genetic rating, but I suspect the Examiner had a subjective reaction. She is very closed-off. I can’t get a control on her. I have no doubts at all about her intelligence. Grade
A plus, I’d judge. Paul tells me she is discreet, and he can control her. Her service on Harris’ autopsy was profitable.”
“I vouch for her,” Paul said. “Absolutely.”
Angela thought a moment.
“All right,” she said finally. “But tell her as little as possible.” At the fourth meeting we discussed my service. I had already informed them that Lydia Ann Ferguson and I had become users.
‘ ‘Her blood type checked out, ” I said. ‘ ‘Two nights ago I learned she is not on the pill or any other fertility control. I believe that verifies her presence in Harris’ apartment beyond a reasonable doubt.”
“And she stopped him,” Angela said.
“Probably.” I nodded. “We know she had the capability and opportunity of fiddling the Pub-Op tapes. Harris’ reports to his control show that he knew it, too. Then he blew his cover, by accident or deliberately. Perhaps she meant more to him than just a user, and he told her who he was and tried to get her out, tried to convince her to tell who her rulers were and save herself. So she stopped him. Either on her own or on orders.”