Heinlein, Robert A – Friday

“They undoubtedly did. I think you covered adequately. I regret that I did not inform you that all mail sent to their home would be forwarded to me. If indeed the police are forwarding all of it. Friday, I do not know where the Tormeys are . . . but I have a contact method that I can useÄonce. The plan is to use it when the police drop all charges against them. I expected that weeks ago. It has not taken place. From this I conclude that the police in Winnipeg are very much in earnest in their intention of hanging the disappearance of Lieutenant Dickey on the Tormeys as a murder charge. Let me ask you again: Can that body be found?”

I thought hard, trying to put “worst case” on it. If the police ever moved in on that house, what would they find? “Boss, have the police been inside that house?”

“Certainly. They searched it the day after the owners departed.”

“In that case the police had not found the body the morning of the day I reported here. If they found it, or were to find it, since that date, would you know?”

“I think it probable. My lines of communication into that police headquarters are less than perfect but I pay highest for freshest information.”

“Do you know what was done with the livestock? Four horses, a cat and five kittens, a pig, maybe other animals?”

“Friday, where is your intuition leading you?”

“Boss, I don’t know exactly how that body is hidden. But Janet, Mrs. Tormey, is an architect who specialized in two-tier active defense of buildings. What she did about her animals would tell me whether or not she thought there was the slightest possibility of that body ever being found.”

Boss made a notation. “We’ll discuss it later. What are the marks of a sick culture?”

“Boss, fer Gossake! I’m still learning the full shape of the Shipstone complex.”

“You will never learn its full shape. I gave you two assignments at once so that you could rest your mind with a change of pace. Don’t tell me that you’ve given no thought to the second assignment.”

“Thought is about all I’ve given to it. I’ve been reading Gibbon and studying the French Revolution. Also Smith’s From the Yalu to the Precipice.”

“A very doctrinaire treatment. Read also Penn’s The Last Days of the Sweet Land of Liberty.”

“Yes, sir. I did start making tallies. It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn’t the whole population.”

“A very bad sign. Particularism. It was once considered a Spanish vice but any country can fall sick with it.”

“I don’t really know Spain. Dominance of males over females seems to be one of the symptoms. I suppose the reverse would be true but I haven’t run across it in any of the history I’ve listened. Why not, Boss?”

“You tell me. Continue.”

“So far as I have listened, before a revolution can take place, the population must lose faith in both the police and the courts.”

“Elementary. Go on.”

“Well . . . high taxation is important and so is inflation of the currency and the ratio of the productive to those on the public payroll. But that’s old hat; everybody knows that a country is on the skids when its income and outgo get out of balance and stay that wayÄeven though there are always endless attempts to wish it away by legislation. But I started looking for little signs, what some call silly-season symptoms. For example, did you know that it is against

the law here to be naked outside your own home? Even in your own home if anybody can see in?”

“Rather difficult to enforce, I suspect. What significance do you see in it?”

“Oh, it isn’t enforced. But it can’t be repealed, either. The Confederacy is loaded with such laws. It seems to me that any law that is not enforced and can’t be enforced weakens all other laws. Boss, did you know that the California Confederacy subsidizes whores?”