For some minutes more the baby-faced little man stood there under the spot in his slept-in suit, making his slept-in jokes. Then the light cut off, he disappeared, and the house lights rose to applause.
“More drinks,” Pilbeam said.
“But he was awful!” Martha exclaimed. “Just blue!”
“Ah, you have to hear him half a dozen times to appreciate him – that’s the secret of his success,” Pilbeam said. “He’s the voice of the age.”
“Did you enjoy him?” Martha asked the green-eyed girl.
“Well, yes, I guess I did. I mean, well, he kind of made me feel at home.”
Twice a week, they went over to a small room in the Pentagon, where a blond young major taught them how to programme and service a POLYAC computer. These new pocket-sized computers would be fitted in all DOUCH recording trucks.
Timberlane was setting out for one of the POLYAC sessions when he found a letter from his mother awaiting him in his mail. Patricia Timberlane wrote irregularly. This letter, like most of them, was mainly filled with domestic woes, and Timberlane scanned it without a great deal of patience as his taxi carried him over the Potomac. Near the end, he found something of more interest.
“It’s nice for you to have Martha over there in Washington with you. I suppose you will marry her – which is romantic, because it is not often people marry their childhood sweethearts. But do make sure. I mean you’re old enough to know that I made a great mistake marrying your step-father. Keith has his good points, but he’s terribly faithless, sometimes I wish I was dead. I won’t go into details.
“He blames it on the times, but that’s a too easy get-out. He says there’s going to be a revolution here. I dread to think of it. As if we haven’t gone through enough, what with the Accident and this awful war, revolution I dread. There’s never been one in this country, whatever other countries have done. Really it’s like living in a perpetual earthquake.”
It was a telling phrase, Timberlane thought soberly. In Washington, the perpetual earthquake ground on day and night, and would grind, until all was reduced to dust, if the gloomy DOUCH predictions were fulfilled. It revealed itself not only in the constant economic upheavals, the soup queues down-town, and the crazy sales as the detritus of fallen financial empires was thrown on to the market, but in the wave of murders and sexual crimes which the law found itself unable to check. This wave rose to engulf Martha and Timberlane.
The morning after the letter from Patricia Timberlane arrived, Martha appeared early in Timberlane’s room. Clothes lay scattered over the carpet – they had been out late on the previous evening, attending a wild party thrown by an Air Strike buddy of Bill Dyson’s.
Wearing his pyjama trousers, Timberlane stood shaving himself in semi-gloom. Martha went over to the window, pulled the curtains back, and turned to face him. She told him about the flowers that had been delivered to her at the hostel.
He squinted at her and said, “And you say you got some yesterday morning, too?”
“Yes, just as many – crates full of orchids, the same as this morning. They must have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.” He clicked off the spiteful buzz of his razor and looked at her. His eyes were dull and his face pale.
“Kind of slouch, eh? I didn’t send them to you.”
“I know that, Algy. You couldn’t afford them. I have looked at the price of flowers in the shops – they’re dear in the first place, and they carry state tax, entry tax, purchase tax, and what the hostel matron calls GDT, General Discouragement Tax, and goodness knows what else. That’s why I destroyed yesterday’s lot – I mean, I knew they weren’t from you, so I burnt them and meant to say no more about it.”
“You burnt them? How? I’ve not seen a naked flame on anything bigger than a cigar lighter since I got here.”
“Don’t be so dumb, darling. I pushed them all down the disposal chute, and anything that goes down there gets burnt in the basement of the hostel. Now this morning, another lot, again with no message.”