Beaumont was unperturbed by the change in pace. `You know me. Very well. We’ll get down to business. The government may want a job done. In any case our discussion must not be permitted to leak out -`
`All of General Services relations are confidential.’
`This is not confidential; this is secret.’ He paused.
`I understand you,’ agreed Clare. `Go on.’
`You have an interesting organization here, Mr Clare. I believe it is your boast that you will undertake any commission whatsoever – for a price.’
`If it is legal.’
`Ah, yes, of course. But legal is a word capable of interpretation. I admired the way your company handled the outfitting of the Second Plutonian Expedition. Some of your methods were, ah, ingenious.’
`If you have any criticism of our actions in that case they are best made to our legal department through the usual channels.’
Beaumont pushed a palm in his direction. `Oh, no, Mr Clare – please! You misunderstand me. I was not criticising; I was admiring. Such resource! What a diplomat you would have made!’
`Let’s quit fencing. What do you want?’- Mr Beaumont pursed his lips. `Let us suppose that you had to entertain a dozen representatives of each intelligent race in this planetary system and you wanted to make each one of them completely comfortable and happy. Could you do it?’
Clare thought aloud. `Air pressure, humidity, radiation densities, atmosphere, chemistry, temperatures, cultural conditions – those things are all simple. But how about acceleration? We could use a centrifuge for the Jovians, but Martians and Titans – that’s another matter. There is no way to reduce earth-normal gravity. No, you would have to entertain them out in space, or on Luna. That makes it not our pigeon; we never give service beyond the stratosphere.’
Beaumont shook his head. `It won’t be beyond the stratosphere. You may take it as an absolute condition that you are to accomplish your results on the surface of the Earth.’
`Why?’
`Is it the custom of General Services to inquire why a client wants a particular type of service?’
`No. Sorry.’
`Quite all right. But you do need more information in order to understand what must be accomplished and why it must be secret. There will be a conference, held on this planet, in the near future – ninety days at the outside. Until the conference is called no `suspicion that it is to be held must be allowed to leak out. If the plans for it were to be anticipated in certain quarters, it would be useless to hold the conference at all. I suggest that you think of this conference as a roundtable of leading, ah, scientists of the system, about of the same size and makeup as the session of the Academy held on Mars last spring. You are to make all preparations for the entertainments of the delegates, but you are to conceal these preparations in the ramifications of your organization until needed. As for the details -,
But Clare interrupted `him. `You appear to have assumed that we will take on this commission. As you have explained it, it would involve us in a ridiculous failure. General Services does not like failures. You know and I know that low-gravity people cannot spend more than a few hours in high gravity without seriously endangering their health. Interplanetary get-togethers are always held on a low-gravity planet and always will be.’
`Yes,’ answered Beaumont patiently, `they always have been. Do you realize the tremendous diplomatic handicap which Earth and Venus labor under in consequence?’
`I don’t get it.’
`It isn’t necessary that you should. Political psychology is not your concern. Take it for granted that it does and that the Administration is determined that this conference shall take place on Earth.’
`Why not Luna?’
Beaumont shook his head. `Not the same thing at all. Even though we administer it, Luna City is a treaty port. Not the same thing, psychologically.’
Clare shook his head. `Mr Beaumont, I don’t believe that you understand the nature of General Services, even as I fail to appreciate the subtle requirements of diplomacy. We don’t work miracles and we don’t promise to. We are just the handy-man of the last century, gone speed-lined and corporate. We are the latter day equivalent of the old servant class, but we are not Aladdin’s genie. We don’t even maintain research laboratories in the scientific sense. We simply make the best possible use of modern advances in communications and organization to do what already can be done.’ He waved a hand at the far wall, on which there was cut in intaglio the time-honored trademark of the business – a Scottie dog, pulling against a leash and sniffing at a post. `There is the spirit of the sort of work we do. We walk dogs for people who are too busy to walk `em themselves. My grandfather worked his way through college walking dogs. I’m still walking them. I don’t promise miracles, nor monkey with politics.’