For ten minutes was silence, which I spent putting tool markers on a cover plate which should have been removed had been anything wrong, putting tools away, putting number-six arm on, rolling up one thousand jokes waiting in print-out. I had found no need to cut out audio of voder; Mike had thought of it before I had and always chopped off any time door was touched. Since his reflexes were better than mine by a factor of at least a thousand, I forgot it.
At last he said, “All twenty circuits okay. I can switch circuits in the middle of a word and Wyoh can’t detect discontinuity. And I called Prof and said Hello and talked to Mum on your home phone, all three at the same time.”
“We’re in business. What excuse you give Mum?”
“I asked her to have you call me, Adam Selene that is. Then we chatted. She’s a charming conversationalist. We discussed Greg’s sermon of last Tuesday.”
“Huh? How?”
“I told her I had listened to it, Man, and quoted a poetic part.”
“Oh, Mike!”
“It’s okay, Man. I let her think that I sat in back, then slipped out during the closing hymn. She’s not nosy; she knows that I don’t want to be seen.”
Mum is nosiest female in Luna. “Guess it’s okay. But don’t do it again. Um– Do do it again. You go to–you monitor– meetings and lectures and concerts and stuff.”
“Unless some busybody switches me off by hand! Man, I can’t control those spot pickups the way I do a phone.”
“Too simple a switch. Brute muscle rather than solid-state flipflop.”
“That’s barbaric. And unfair.”
“Mike, almost everything is unfair. What can’t be cured–”
“–must be endured. That’s a funny-once, Man.”
“Sorry. Let’s change it: What can’t be cured should be tossed out and something better put in. Which we’ll do. What chances last time you calculated?”
“Approximately one in nine, Man.”
“Getting worse?”
“Man, they’ll get worse for months. We haven’t reached the crisis.”
“With Yankees in cellar, too. Oh, well. Back to other matter. From now on, when you talk to anyone, if he’s been to a lecture or whatever, you were there, too–and prove it, by recalling something.”
“Noted. Why, Man?”
“Have you read ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’? May be in public library.”
“Yes. Shall I read it back?”
“No, no! You’re our Scarlet Pinipernel, our John Galt, our Swamp Fox, our man of mystery. You go everywhere, know everything, slip in and out of town without passport. You’re always there, yet nobody catches sight of you.”
His lights rippled, he gave a subdued chuckle. “That’s fun, Man. Funny once, funny twice, maybe funny always.”
“Funny always. How long ago did you stop gymkhana at Warden’s?”
“Forty-three minutes ago except erratic booms.”
“Bet his teeth ache! Give him fifteen minutes more. Then I’ll report job completed.”
“Noted. Wyoh sent you a message, Man. She said to remind you of Billy’s birthday party.”
“Oh, my word! Stop everything, I’m leaving. ‘Bye!” I hurried out. Billy’s mother is Anna. Probably her last–and right well she’s done by us, eight kids, three still home. I try to be as careful as Mum never to show favoritism. . . but Billy is quite a boy and I taught him to read. Possible he looks like me.
Stopped at Chief Engineer’s office to leave bill and demanded to see him. Was let in and he was in belligerent mood; Warden had been riding him. “Hold it,” I told him. “My son’s birthday and shan’t be late. But must show you something.”
Took an envelope from kit, dumped item on desk: corpse of house fly which I had charred with a hot wire and fetched. We do not tolerate flies in Davis Tunnels but sometimes one wanders in from city as locks are opened. This wound up in my workshop just when I needed it. “See that? Guess where I found it.”
On that faked evidence I built a lecture on care of fine machines, talked about doors opened, complained about man on watch. “Dust can ruin a computer. Insects are unpardonable! Yet your watchstanders wander in and out as if tube station. Today both doors held open–while this idiot yammered. If I find more evidence that cover plates have been removed by hoof-handed choom who attracts flies–well, it’s your plant, Chief. Got more than I can handle, been doing your chores because I like fine machines. Can’t stand to see them abused! Good-bye.”