‘I see,’ Eric said.
‘But Molinari went ahead anyhow. He bluffed. He signed the Pact of Peace which got us into the war. And here’s where Molinari differs from all the fat, overblown, strutting dictators in the past. He took the blame on his shoulders; he didn’t fire a foreign minister here or shoot a policy adviser from the State here. He did it and he knows it. And it’s killing him, by quarter inches, day in, day out. Starting from the gut. He loves Terra. He loves people, all of them, washed and unwashed; he loves his wretched pack of sponging relatives. He shoots people, arrests people, but he doesn’t like it. Molinari is a complex man, doctor. So complex that—’
Dorf interrupted drily, ‘A mixture of Lincoln and Mussolini.’
‘He’s a different person with everyone he meets,’ Teagarden continued. ‘Christ, he’s done things so rotten, so goddam wicked that they’d make your hair stand on end. He’s had to. Some of them will never be made public, even by his political foes. And he’s suffered because of doing them. Did you ever know anyone who really accepted responsibility, guilt and blame, before? Do you? Does your wife?’
‘Probably not,’ Eric admitted.
‘If you or I ever really accepted the moral responsibility for what we’ve done in our lifetime – we’d drop dead or go mad. Living creatures weren’t made to understand what they do. Take the animals we’ve run over on the road, or the animals we eat. When I was a kid it was my monthly job to go out and Poison rats. Did you ever watch a poisoned animal die? And not just one but scores of them, month after month. I don’t feel it. The blame. The load. Fortunately it doesn’t register – it can’t, because if it did there’d be no way I could go on. And that’s how the entire human race gets by. All but the Mole. As they call him.’ Teagarden added, ‘”Lincoln and Mussolini.” I was thinking more of One Other, back about two thousand years.’
‘This is the first time,’ Eric said, ‘I ever heard anyone compare Gino Molinari to Christ. Even in his captive press.’
‘Perhaps,’ Teagarden said, ‘it’s because I’m the first person you’ve ever talked to who’s been around the Mole twenty-four hours a day.’
‘Don’t tell Mary Reineke about your comparison,’ Dorf said. ‘She’ll tell you he’s a bastard. A pig in bed and at the table, a lewd middle-aged man with rape in his eye, who ought to be in jail. She tolerates him… because she’s charitable.’ Dorf laughed sharply.
‘No,’ Teagarden said, ‘that’s not what Mary would say … except when she’s sore, which is about a fourth of the time. I don’t really know what Mary Reineke would say; maybe she wouldn’t even try. She just accepts him as he is; she tries to improve him, but even if he doesn’t improve – and he won’t – she loves him anyhow. Have you ever known that other kind of woman? Who saw possibilities in you? And with the right kind of help from her—’
‘Yes,’ Eric said. He wished to see the subject changed; it made him think about Kathy. And he did not care to.
The ‘copter droned on toward Cheyenne.
——————————————————————————–
In bed alone Kathy lay half sleeping as morning sunlight ignited the variegated textures of her bedroom. All the colors so familiar to her in her married life with Eric now became distinguished one from another as the light advanced. Here, where she lived, Kathy had established potent spirits of the past, trapped within the concoctions of other periods: a lamp from early New England, a chest of drawers that was authentic bird’s-eye maple, a Hepplewhite cabinet… She lay with her eyes half open, aware of each object and all the connecting strands involved in her acquisition of them. Each was a triumph over a rival; some competing collector had failed, and it did not seem farfetched to regard this collection as a graveyard, with the ghosts of the defeated persisting in the vicinity. She did not mind their activity in her home life; after all she was tougher than they.
‘Eric,’ she said sleepily, ‘for chrissake get up and put on the coffee. And help me out of bed. Push or speak.’ She turned toward him, but no one was there. Instantly she sat up. Then she got from the bed, walked barefoot to the closet for her robe, shivering.
She was putting on a light gray sweater, tugging it with difficulty over her head, when she realized that a man stood watching her. As she had dressed he had lounged in the doorway, making no move to announce his presence; he was enjoying the sight of her dressing, but now he shifted, stood upright and said, ‘Mrs Sweetscent?’ He was perhaps thirty, with a dark, rough muzzle and eyes which did not encourage her sense of well-being. In addition he wore a drab-gray uniform and she knew what he was: a member of Lilistar’s secret police operating on Terra. It was the first time in her life that she had ever run into one of them.
‘Yes,’ she said, almost soundlessly. She continued dressing, sitting on the bed to slip on her shoes, not taking her eyes from him. ‘I’m Kathy Sweetscent, Dr Eric Sweetscent’s wife, and if you don’t—’
‘Your husband is in Cheyenne.’
‘Is he?’ She rose to her feet. ‘I have to fix breakfast; please let me by. And let me see your warrant for coming in here.’ She held out her hand, waiting.
‘My warrant,’ the Lilistar grayman said, ‘calls for me to search this conapt for an illegal drug, JJ-180. Frohedadrine. If you have any, hand it over and we’ll go directly to the police barracks at Santa Monica.’ He consulted his notebook. ‘Last night in Tijuana at 45 Avila Street you used the drug orally in the company of—’
‘May I call my attorney?’
‘No.’
‘You mean I have no legal rights at all?’
‘This is wartime.’
She felt afraid. Nevertheless she managed to speak with reasonable calm. ‘May I call my employer and tell him I won’t be in?’
The gray policeman nodded. So she went to the vidphone and dialed Virgil Ackerman at his home in San Fernando. Presently his birdlike, weathered face appeared, owlishly waking in a fuss of confusion. ‘Oh, Kathy. Where’s the clock?’ Virgil peered about.
Kathy said, ‘Help me, Mr Ackerman. The Lilistar—’ She ceased, because the grayman had broken the connection with a swift movement of his hand. Shrugging, she hung up.
‘Mrs Sweetscent,’ the grayman said, ‘I’d like to introduce Mr Roger Corning to you.’ He made a motion and into the apartment, from the hall, came a ‘Starman dressed in an ordinary business suit, a briefcase under his arm. ‘Mr Corning, this is Kathy Sweetscent, Dr Sweetscent’s wife.’
‘Who are you?’ Kathy said.
‘Someone who can get you off the hook, dear,’ Corning said pleasantly. ‘May we sit down in your living room and discuss this?’
Going into the kitchen, she twisted the knobs for soft-boiled eggs, toast, and coffee without cream. There’s no JJ-180 in this apt. Unless you put it here yourself during the night.’ The food was ready; she carried it to the table on its throwaway tray and seated herself. The smell of the coffee vanquished the remnants of fear and bewilderment in her; she felt capable again and not so intimidated.
Corning said, ‘We have a permanent photographic sequence of your evening at 45 Avila Street. From the moment you followed Bruce Himmel up the stairs and inside. Your initial words were, “Hello, Bruce. It looks as if this is an all-TF&D—”‘
‘Not quite,’ Kathy said. ‘I called him Brucie. I always call him Brucie because he’s so hebephrenic and dumb.’ She drank her coffee, her hand steady as it held the throwaway cup. ‘Does your photographic sequence prove what was in the capsules we took, Mr Gorning?’
‘Corning,’ he corrected good-naturedly. ‘No, Katherine, it doesn’t. But the testimony of two of the other participants Hoes Or will when it’s entered under oath before a military tribunal.’ He explained. This falls outside the jurisdiction of vour civilian courts. We ourselves will handle all details of the prosecution.’
‘Why is that?’ she inquired.
‘JJ-180 can only be acquired from the enemy. Therefore your use of it – and we can establish this before our tribunal – constitutes intercourse with the enemy. In time of war the tribunal’s demand naturally would be death.’ To the gray-uniformed policeman Corning said, ‘Do you have Mr Plout’s deposition with you?’
‘It’s in the ‘copter.’ The grayman started toward the door.
‘I thought there was something subhuman about Chris Plout,’ Kathy said. ‘Now I’m meditating about the others … who else last night had a subhuman quality? Hastings? No. Simon Ild? No, he—’
‘All this can be avoided,’ Corning said.
‘But I don’t want to avoid it,’ Kathy said. ‘Mr Ackerman heard me on the vidphone; TF&D will send an attorney. Mr Ackerman is a friend of Secretary Molinari; I don’t think—’