(Jack) Smyth, retail merchant. They were engaged in fitting leg irons to the ankles of the Voice of the Hand, PanAsian administrator of Oklahoma City. The limp, naked body of the Oriental lay on a long table in a workshop down under the temple.
“There,” announced Minkowski, “that’s the best job of riveting I can do without heating tools. It’ll take him a while to get it off, anyway.
Where’s that stencil?”
“By your elbow. Captain Isaacs said he’d weld those joints with his staff after we finished; I wouldn’t worry about them. Say, it seems odd to call the priest Captain Isaacs, doesn’t it? Do you think we’re really in the army — legally, I mean?”
“I wouldn’t know about that — and as long as it gives me a chance to take a crack at those flat-faced apes, I don’t care. I suppose we are, though — if you admit that Isaacs is an army officer, I guess he can take recruits. Look — do we put this stencil on his back or on his stomach?”
“I’d say to put it on both sides. It does seem funny, though, about this army business, I mean. One day you’re going to church; the next you’re told it’s a military outfit, and they swear you in.”
“Personally, I like it,” commented Minkowski. “Sergeant Minkowski — it sounds good. They wouldn’t take me before on account o’ my heart. As for the church part, I never took any stock in this great God Mota business, anyhow; I came for the free food and the chance to breathe in peace.” He removed the stencil from the back of the Asiatic; Smyth commenced filling in the traced design of an ideograph with quick-drying indelible paint. “I wonder what that heathen writing means?”
“Didn’t you hear?” asked Smyth, and told him.
A delighted grin came over Minkowski’s face. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “If anybody called me that, it wouldn’t do him no good to smile when he said it. You wouldn’t kid me?”
“No, indeed. I was in the communications office when they were getting the design from the Mother Temple — I mean general headquarters. Here’s another funny thing, too. I saw the chap in the screen who was passing out the design, and he was Asiatic as this monkey” — Smyth indicated the unconscious voice of the Hand — “but they called him Captain Downer and treated him like one of us. What do you make of that?”
“Couldn’t say. He must be on our side, or else he wouldn’t be loose in headquarters. What’ll we do with the rest of the paint?”
Between them they found something to do with it, which Captain Isaacs noticed at once when he came in to see how they were progressing. He suppressed a smile. “I see you have elaborated on your instructions a bit,” he commented, trying to keep his voice soberly official.
“It seemed a pity to waste the paint,” Minkowski explained ingenuously.
“Besides, he looked so naked the way he was.”
“That’s a matter of opinion. Personally, I would say that he looks nakeder now. We’ll drop the point; hurry up and get his head shaved. I want to leave any time now.”
Minkowski and Smyth waited at the door of the temple five minutes later, the Voice of the Hand rolled in a blanket on the floor between them.
They saw a sleek duocycle station wagon come shooting up to the curb in front of the temple and brake to a sudden stop. Its bell sounded, and Captain Isaacs’ face appeared in the window of the driver’s compartment.
Minkowski threw down the butt of a cigarette and grabbed the shoulders of the muffled figure at their feet; Smyth took the legs and they trotted clumsily and heavily out to the car.
“Dump him in the back,” ordered Captain Isaacs.
That done, Minkowski took the wheel while Isaacs and Smyth crouched in the back with the subject of the pending demonstration.
“I want you to find a considerable gathering of PanAsians almost anywhere,” directed the captain. “If there are Americans present, too, so much the better. Drive fast and pay no attention to anyone. I’ll take care of any difficulties with my staff.” He settled himself to watch the street over Minkowski’s shoulder.