Touching the intercom button Mr. Tagomi said, “Miss Ephreikian, I would like you to bring in your tape recorder, please.”
The outer office door slid to one side and Miss Ephreikian, today pleasantly adorned with blue flowers in her hair, appeared.
“Bit of lilac,” Mr. Tagomi observed. Once, he had professionally flower-raised back home on Hokkaido.
Miss Ephreikian, a tall, brown-haired Armenian girl, bowed.
“Ready with Zip-Track Speed Master?” Mr. Tagomi asked.
“Yes, Mr. Tagomi.” Miss Ephreikian seated herself, the portable battery-operated tape recorder ready.
Mr. Tagomi began, “I inquired of the oracle, ‘Will the meeting between myself and Mr. Childan be profitable?’ and obtained to my dismay the ominous hexagram The Preponderance of the Great. The ridgepole is sagging. Too much weight in the middle; all unbalanced. Clearly away from the Tao.” The tape recorder whirred.
Pausing, Mr. Tagomi reflected.
Miss Ephreikian watched him expectantly. The whirring ceased.
“Have Mr. Ramsey come in for a moment, please,” Mr. Tagomi said.
“Yes, Mr. Tagomi.” Rising, she put down the tape recorder; her heels tapped as she departed from the office.
With a large folder of bills-of-lading under his arm, Mr. Ramsey appeared. Young, smiling, he advanced, wearing the natty U.S. Midwest Plains string tie, checkered shirt and tight beltless blue jeans considered so high-place among the style-conscious of the day. “Howdy, Mr. Tagomi,” he said. “Right nice day, sir.”
Mr. Tagomi bowed.
At that, Mr. Ramsey stiffened abruptly and also bowed.
“I’ve been consulting the oracle,” Mr. Tagomi said, as Miss Ephreikian reseated herself with her tape recorder. “You understand that Mr. Baynes, who as you know is arriving shortly in person, holds to the Nordic ideology regarding so-called Oriental culture. I could make the effort to dazzle him into a better comprehension with authentic works of Chinese scroll art or ceramics of our Tokugawa Period . . . but it is not our job to convert.”
“I see,” Mr. Ramsey said; his Caucasian face twisted with painful concentration.
“Therefore we will cater to his prejudice and graft a priceless American artifact to him instead.”
“Yes.”
“You, sir, are of American ancestry. Although you have gone to the trouble of darkening your skin color.” He scrutinized Mr. Ramsey.
“A tan achieved by a sun lamp,” Mr. Ramsey murmured. “For merely acquiring vitamin D.” But his expression of humiliation gave him away. “I assure you that I retain authentic roots with—“ Mr. Ramsey stumbled over the words. “I have not cut off all ties with—native ethnic patterns.”
Mr. Tagomi said to Miss Ephreikian: “Resume, please.” Once more the tape recorder whirred. “In consulting the oracle and obtaining Hexagram Ta Kuo, Twenty-eight, I further received the unfavorable line Nine in the fifth place. It reads:
A withered poplar puts forth flowers.
An older woman takes a husband.
No blame. No praise.
“This clearly indicates that Mr. Childan will have nothing of worth to offer us at two.” Mr. Tagomi paused. “Let us be candid. I cannot rely on my own judgment regarding American art objects. That is why a—“ He lingered over his choice of terms. “Why you, Mr. Ramsey, who are shall I say native born, are required. Obviously we must do the best we can.”
Mr. Ramsey had no answer. But, despite his efforts to conceal, his features showed hurt, anger, a frustrated and mute reaction.
“Now,” Mr. Tagomi said. “I have further consulted the oracle. For purposes of policy, I cannot divulge to you, Mr. Ramsey, the question.” In other words, his tone meant, you and your pinoc kind are not entitled to share the important matters which we deal in. “It is sufficient to say, however, that I received a most provocative response. It has caused me to ponder at length.”
Both Mr. Ramsey and Miss Ephreikian watched him intently.
“It deals with Mr. Baynes,” Mr. Tagomi said.
They nodded.
“My question regarding Mr. Baynes produced through the occult workings of the Tao the Hexagram Sheng, Forty-six. A good judgment. And lines Six at the beginning and Nine in the second place.” His question had been, Will I be able to deal with Mr. Baynes successfully? And the Nine in the second place had assured him that he would. It read:
If one is sincere,
It furthers one to bring even a small offering.
No blame.
Obviously, Mr. Baynes would be satisfied by whatever gift the ranking Trade Mission grafted to him through the good offices of Mr. Tagomi. But Mr. Tagomi, in asking the question, had had a deeper query in the back of his mind, one of which he was barely conscious. As so often, the oracle had perceived that more fundamental query and; while answering the other, had taken it upon itself to answer the subliminal one, too.
“As we know,” Mr. Tagomi said, “Mr. Baynes is bringing us detailed account of new injection molds developed in Sweden. Were we successfully to sign agreement with his firm, we could no doubt replace many present metals, quite scarce, with plastics.”
For years, the Pacific had been trying to get basic assistance in the synthetics field from the Reich. However, the big German chemical cartels, I. G. Farben in particular, had harbored their patents; had, in fact, created a world monopoly in plastics, especially in the development of the polyesters. By this means, Reich trade had kept an edge over Pacific trade, and in technology the Reich was at least ten years ahead. The interplanetary rockets leaving Festung Europa consisted mainly of heat-resistant plastics, very light in weight, so hard that they survived even major meteor impact. The Pacific had nothing of this sort; natural fibers such as wood were still used, and of course the ubiquitous pot metals. Mr. Tagomi cringed as he thought about it; he had seen at trade fairs some of the advanced German work, including an all-synthetic automobile, the D. S. S.—Der Schnelle Spuk—which sold, in PSA currency, for about six hundred dollars.
But his underlying question, one which he could never reveal to the pinocs flitting about Trade Mission offices, had to do with an aspect of Mr. Baynes suggested by the original coded cable from Tokyo. First of all, coded material was infrequent, and dealt usually with matters of security, not with trade deals. And the cipher was the metaphor type, utilizing poetic allusion, which had been adopted to baffle the Reich monitors—who could crack any literal code, no matter how elaborate. So clearly it was the Reich whom the Tokyo authorities had in mind, not quasi-disloyal cliques in the Home Islands. The key phrase, “Skim milk in his diet,” referred to Pinafore, to the eerie song that expounded the doctrine,”. . . Things are seldom what they seem—Skim milk masquerades as cream.” And the I Ching, when Mr. Tagomi had consulted it, had fortified his insight. Its commentary:
Here a strong man is presupposed. It is true he does not fit in with his environment, inasmuch as he is too brusque and pays too little attention to form. But as he is upright in character, he meets with response.
The insight was, simply, that Mr. Baynes was not what he seemed; that his actual purpose in coming to San Francisco was not to sign a deal for injection molds. That, in fact, Mr. Baynes was a spy.
But for the life of him, Mr. Tagomi could not figure out what sort of spy, for whom or for what.
At one-forty that afternoon, Robert Childan with enormous reluctance locked the front door of American Artistic Handcrafts Inc. He lugged his heavy cases to the curb, hailed a pedecab, and told the chink to take him to the Nippon Times Building.
The chink, gaunt-faced, hunched over and perspiring, gasped a place-conscious acknowledgment and began loading Mr. Childan’s bags aboard. Then, having assisted Mr. Childan himself into the carpet-lined seat, the chink clicked on the meter, mounted his own seat and pedaled off along Montgomery Street, among the cars and buses.
The entire day had been spent finding the item for Mr. Tagomi, and Childan’s bitterness and anxiety almost overwhelmed him as he watched the buildings pass. And yet—triumph. The separate skill, apart from the rest of him: he had found the right thing, and Mr. Tagomi would be mollified and his client, whoever he was, would be overjoyed. I always give satisfaction, Childan thought. To my customers.
He had been able to procure, miraculously, an almost mint copy of Volume One, Number One of Tip Top Comics. 7 Dating from the ‘thirties, it was a choice piece of Americana; one of the first funny books, a prize collectors searched for constantly. Of course, he had other items with him, to show first. He would lead up gradually to the funny book, which lay well-protected in a leather case packed in tissue paper at the center of the largest bag.
The radio of the pedecab blared out popular tunes, competing with the radios of other cabs, cars and buses. Childan did not hear; he was used to it. Nor did he take notice of the enormous neon signs with their permanent ads obliterating the front of virtually every large building. After all, he had his own sign; at night it blazed on and off in company with all the others of the city. What other way did one advertise? One had to be realistic.