Turpin sighed. “I don’t see why someone had to be sent specially,” he grumbled. “Or why-if it was necessary-it had to be me who was used to cushion you.”
“Also,” Sheklov said delicately, “you don’t like the scope of my brief.”
There was a pause. Turpin looked everywhere except at Sheklov while deciding how best to reply- He settled for candour. “No, I don’t!”
“If it’s any,consolation, it makes me feel awkward, too.” Sheklov raised his liqueur goblet. Barely in time he remembered to sip, not toss the contents back. While thinking as Holtzer he made no such errors, he reassured himself; it was trying to straddle his two personalities that-
But that led back to the recollection of how he had exposed himself to Danty.
Maintaining flawless outward calm, however, he said, “In fact, I was going to ask you this anyhow, and now is as good a time as any. How long would it take you to fix me a job with EG-a travelling job?”
Turpin’s face went turkey-cock red. He said, “Now just a-!”
“I have the authority to insist,” Sheklov murmured.
“The hell you do! Look, they gave me to understand that your timber-salesman cover was fire-proof, that the parent firm has been used before and can prop you up as long as necessaryl”
“As long as necessary for me to devise an alternative,” Sheklov answered stonily. “You know as well as I do-I mean better than I do-that even a Canadian isn’t allowed stay in this country without impeccable reasons.”
Turpin’s jowls trembled. “But they told me I only had to cushion your landfall. I took it for granted that you had a closed assignments”
“Nobody said that in so many words,” Sheklov pointed out. “In fact my assignment is open-ended, category one. Anyway, why should the idea of finding me a job with EG upset you so much? You must be distributing patronage all the time.”
“Patronage!” Turpin echoed, and slapped his thigh with his open palm, like a gun-shot. “This isn’t patronage-it’s blackmaill Bringing you into EG would be insanely dangerous. I’ve sweated blood for years, for decades, to make sure there was no one in the entire corporation who had a breath of suspicion against him. I’m damned if I’m going to break a clean record a quarter-century longl”
Eventually Sheklov sighed and turned around in his chair to a more comfortable position.
“Look, Dick,” he said, “there’s something that d6esn’t seem to have registered with you yet. Out near Pluto something has happened that is so big that nothing else matters until it’s resolved. Doesn’t that get across to you?
Hell, there are alien intelligences! There are portions of the universe that are contraterrene! And because one damned idiot government out of all the damned idiot governments we have on this miserable planet has signed away its responsibility to a bunch of machines, you and I and everybody, communist or capitalist, neutralist or whatever the hell, all of us, could be hurled back to the Stone Age tomorrow-if we’re still alive. Think about it, Dick, for pity’s sake think!”
It was getting through. He could read it in Turpin’s staring eyes. He had finally managed to smash down the mental barriers in the other’s head. And by doing so, inevitably, he had brought the whole affair back into focus in his own consciousness with as much force as it had possessed when he first heard of it from Bratcheslavsky in Alma-Ata.
At that moment, though, a phone shrilled. Turpin snatched at it. It was one of the old-fashioned kind that had to be held to the ear: in that case. Sheklov reasoned, it was probably a confidential line. Modern designs were easier to bug.
“Turpin here!”
There was a crackling. He nodded. “Yes, this is my quiet line. You can talk.”
The caller talked. Watching, Sheklov saw Turpin’s face go pasty-gray; his eyes narrowed. and he closed his empty fist so tight the knuckles glistened white. He looked as though he was about to swing that fist in sheer fury.
“Yes, I’ll come at once,” he said thickly when the caller was through. He slammed down the phone, leaped from his chair, and towered over Sheklov,