“Qualms,” Allen said. “How do you mean?” He had a deep, cold sensation, as if he were involved in some eerie religious ritual. “If the packet won’t go, then turn it back to us. We’ll create a credit; we’ve done it before.”
“The packet is beautifully handled,” Mrs. Frost said, smoking. “No, Myron certainly didn’t want it back. Your theme concerns this man’s attempt to grow an apple tree on a colony planet. But the tree dies. The Morec of it is—” She again picked up the packet. “I’m not certain what the
Morec is. Shouldn’t he have tried to grow it?”
“Not there,” Allen said.
“You mean it belonged on Earth?”
“I mean he should have been working for the good of society, not off somewhere nourishing a private enterprise. He saw the colony as an end in itself. But they’re means. This is the center.”
“Omphalos,” she agreed. “The navel of the universe. And the tree—”
“The tree symbolizes an Earth product that withers when it’s transplanted. His spiritual side died.”
“But he couldn’t have grown it here. There’s no room. It’s all city.”
“Symbolically,” he explained. “He should have put down his roots here.”
Sue Frost was silent for a moment, and he sat smoking uneasily, crossing and uncrossing his legs, feeling his tension grow, not diminish. Nearby, in another office, the switchboard buzzed. Doris’ typewriter clacked.
“You see,” Sue Frost said, “this conflicts with a fundamental. The Committee has put billions of dollars and years of work into outplanet agriculture. We’ve done everything possible to seed domestic plants in the colonies. They’re supposed to supply us with our food. People realize it’s a heartbreaking task, with endless disappointments . . . and you’re saying that the outplanet orchards will fail.”
Allen started to speak and then changed his mind. He felt absolutely defeated. Mrs. Frost was gazing at him searchingly, expecting him to defend himself in the usual fashion.
“Here’s a note,” she said. “You can read it. Myron’s note on this, when it came to me.”
The note was in pencil and went:
“Sue—The same outfit again. Top-drawer, but too coy. You decide. M.”
“What’s he mean?” Allen said, now angered. “He means the Morec doesn’t come across.” She leaned toward him. “Your Agency has been in this only three years. You started out very well. What do you currently gross?”
“I’d have to see the books.” He got to his feet. “May I get Luddy in here? I’d like him to see Myron’s note.”
“Certainly,” Mrs. Frost said.
Fred Luddy entered the office stiff-legged with apprehension. “Thanks,” he muttered, as Allen gave him the packet. He read the note, but his eyes showed no spark of consciousness. He seemed tuned to invisible vibrations; the meaning reached him through the tension of the air, rather than the pencilled words.
“Well,” he said finally, in a daze. “You can’t win them all.”
“We’ll take this packet back, naturally.” Allen began to strip the note from it, but Mrs. Frost said:
“Is that your only response? I told you we want it; I made that clear. But we can’t take it in the shape it’s in. I think you should know that it was my decision to give your Agency the go-ahead. There was some dispute, and I was brought in from the first.” From the manila folder she took a second packet, a familiar one. “Remember this? May, 2112. We argued for hours, Myron liked this, and I liked it. Nobody else did. Now Myron has cold feet.” She tossed the packet, the first the Agency had ever done, onto the desk.
After an interval Allen said: “Myron’s getting tired.”
“Very.” She nodded agreeably.
Hunched over, Fred Luddy said: “Maybe we’ve been going at it too fast.” He cleared his throat, cracked his knuckles and glanced at the ceiling. Drops of warm sweat sparkled in his hair and along his smoothly-shaved jowls. “We kind of got—excited.”
Speaking to Mrs. Frost, Allen said: “My position is simple. In that packet, we made the Morec that Earth is the center.
That’s the real fundamental, and I believe it. If I didn’t believe it I couldn’t have developed the packet. I’ll withdraw the packet but I won’t change it. I’m not going to preach morality without practicing it.”
Quakily, in a spasm of agonized back-pedalling, Luddy muttered: “It’s not a moral question, Al. It’s a question of clarity. The Morec of that packet doesn’t come across.” His voice had a ragged, guilty edge; Luddy knew what he was doing and he was ashamed. “I—see Mrs. Frost’s point. Yes I do. It looks as if we’re scuttling the agricultural program, and naturally we don’t mean that. Isn’t that so, Al?”
“You’re fired,” Allen said.
They both stared at him. Neither of them grasped that he was serious, that he had really done it.
“Go tell Doris to make out your check.” Allen took the packet from the desk and held onto it. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Frost, but I’m the only person qualified to speak for the Agency. We’ll credit you for this packet and submit another. All right?”
She stubbed out her cigarette, rising, at the same time, to her feet. “It’s your decision.”
“Thanks,” he said, and felt a release of tension. Mrs. Frost understood his stand, and approved. And that was crucial.
“I’m sorry,” Luddy muttered, ashen. “That was a mistake on my part. The packet is fine. Perfectly sound as it now exists.” Plucking at Allen’s sleeve, he drew him off in the corner. “I admit I made a mistake.” His voice sank to a jumpy whisper. “Let’s discuss this further. I was simply trying to develop one possible viewpoint among many. You want me to express myself; I mean, it seems senseless to penalize me for working in the best interests of the Agency, as I see it.”
“I meant what I said,” Allen said.
“You did?” Luddy laughed. “Naturally you meant it.
You’re the boss.” He was shaking. “You really weren’t kidding?”
Collecting her coat, Mrs. Frost moved toward the door. “I’d like to look over your Agency while I’m here. Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” Allen said. “I’d be glad to show it to you. I’m quite proud of it.” He opened the door for her, and the two of them walked out into the hall. Luddy remained in the office, a sick, erratic look on his face.
“I don’t care for him,” Mrs. Frost said. “I think you’re better off without him.”
“That wasn’t any fun,” Allen said. But he was feeling better.
CHAPTER 3
In the hall outside Myron Mavis’ office, the Telemedia workers were winding up their day. The T-M building formed a connected hollow square. The open area in the center was used for outdoor sets. Nothing was in process now, because it was five-thirty and everybody was leaving.
From a pay phone, Allen Purcell called his wife. “I’ll be late for dinner,” he said.
“Are—you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “But you go ahead and eat. Big doings, big crisis at the Agency. “I’ll catch something down here.” He added, “I’m at Telemedia.”
“For very long?” Janet asked anxiously.
“Maybe for a long, long time,” he said, and hung up.
As he rejoined Sue Frost, she said to him, “How long did Luddy work for you?”
“Since I opened the Agency.” The realization was sobering: three years. Presently he added: “That’s the only person I’ve ever let go.”
At the back of the office, Myron Mavis was turning over duplicates of the day’s output to a bonded messenger of the Committee. The duplicates would be put on permanent file; in case of an investigation the material was there to examine.
To the formal young messenger, Mrs. Frost said: “Don’t leave. I’m going back; you can go with me.”
The young man retired discreetly with his armload of metal drums. His uniform was the drab khaki of the Cohorts of Major Streiter, a select body composed of male descendants of the founder of Morec.
“A cousin,” Mrs. Frost said. “A very distant cousin-in-law on my father’s side.” She nodded toward the young man, whose face was as expressionless as sand. “Ralf Hadler. I like to keep him around.” She raised her voice. “Ralf, go find the Getabout. It’s parked somewhere in back.”
The Cohorts, either singly or in bunches, made Allen uncomfortable; they were humorless, as devout as machines, and, for their small number, they seemed to be everywhere. His fantasy was that the Cohorts were always in motion; in the course of one day, like a foraging ant, a member of the Cohorts roamed hundreds of miles.
“You’ll come along,” Mrs. Frost said to Mavis.
“Naturally,” Mavis murmured. He began clearing his desk of unfinished work. Mavis was an ulcer-mongerer, a high-strung worrier with rumpled shirt and baggy, unpressed tweeds, who flew into fragments when things got over his head. Allen recalled tangled interviews that had ended with Mavis in despair and his staff scurrying. If Mavis was going to be along, the next few hours would be hectic.