for the limited freedom from secrecy which we have. I have
been assured by competent lawyers that I have every right
to operate a private investigation bureau, properly licensed,
upon any scale that I may choose; and that I have the right
to keep my methods secret, as the so-called ‘intellectual
assets’ of my firm. If you wish to use our services, well
and good. We will provide them, with absolute guarantees
on all information we furnish you, for an appropriate fee.
But our methods are our own property.”
Robin Weinbaum smiled twistedly. “I’m not a naive man,
Mr. Stevens,” he said. “My service is hard on naivete. You
know as well as I do that the government can’t allow you
to operate on a free-lance basis, supplying top-secret informa-
tion to anyone who can pay the price, or even free of charge
to video columnists on a ‘test’ basis, even though you arrive
at every jot of that information independently of espionage
which I still haven’t entirely ruled out, by the way. If you
can duplicate this Brindisi performance at will, we will have
to have your services exclusively. In short, you become a
hired civilian arm of my own bureau.”
“Quite,” Stevens said, returning the smile in a fatherly
way. “We anticipated that, of course. However, we have
contracts with other governments to consider; Erskine, in
particular. If we are to work exclusively for Earth, neces-
sarily our price will include compensation for renouncing our
other accounts.”
“Why should it? Patriotic public servants work for their
government at a loss, if they can’t work for it any other way.”