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It troubled my eyes. Not for years had I focused them more than a few yards.
"How strange," Kathy said at my side. "Could we walk out there?"
"Sorry, Dr. Nevin," said one of the liaison men. "It's a deadline. The tower
guards are ordered to shoot anybody out there."
"Have contrary orders issued," I said. "Dr. Nevin and I want to take a walk."
"Of course, Mr. Courtenay," the man said, very worried. "I'll do my best, but
it'll take a little time. I'll have to clear it with C.I.C., Naval
Intelligence, C.I.A., F.B.I., A.E.C. Security and Intelligence-"
I looked at Kathy, and she shrugged with helpless amusement. "Never mind," I
said.
"Thank God!" breathed my liaison man. "Excuse me, Mr. Courtenay. It's never
been done before so there aren't any channels to do it through. You know what
that means."
"I do indeed," I said, from the heart. "Tell me, has all the security paid
off?"
"It seems so, Mr. Courtenay. There's been no sabotage or espionage, foreign or
Consie, that we know of." He rapped a knuckle of his right hand solemnly on a
handsome oak engagement ring he wore on the third finger of his left hand. I
made a mental note to have his expense account checked up on. A man on his
salary had no business wearing that kind of jewelry.
"The Consies interested?" I asked.
"Who knows? C.I.C., C.I.A. and A.E.C. S.&I. say yes. Naval Intelligence,
F.B.I, and S.S. say no. Would you like to meet Commander MacDonald? He's the
O.N.I. chief here. A specialist in Consies."
"Like to meet a Consie specialist, Kathy?" I asked.
"If we have time," she said.
"I'll have them hold the jet for you if necessary," the liaison man said
eagerly, trying hard to undo his fiasco on the tower guards. He led us through
the tangle of construction shacks and warehouses to the administration
building and past seven security checkpoints to the office of the commander.
MacDonald was one of those career officers who make you feel good about being
an American citizen quiet, competent, strong. I could see from his insignia
and shoulder flashes that he was a Contract Specialist, Intelligence, on his
third five-year option from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. He was a regular;
he wore the class ring of the Pinkerton Graduate School of Detection and
Military Intelligence, Inc. It's pine with an open eye carved on it; no flashy
inlay work. But it's like a brand name. It tells you that you're dealing with
quality.
"You want to hear about Consies?" he asked quietly. "I'm your man. I've
devoted my life to running them down."
"A personal grudge, Commander?" I asked, thinking I'd hear something
melodramatic.
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"No. Old-fashioned pride of workmanship if anything. I like the thrill of the
chase, too, but there isn't much chasing. You get Consies by laying traps. Did
you hear about the Topeka bombing? Of-course-I-shouldn't-knock-the-competition
but those guards should have known it was a setup for a Consie demonstration."
"Why, exactly, Commander?" Kathy asked.
He smiled wisely. "Feel," he said. "The kind of thing it's hard to put over in
words. The Consies don't like hydraulic mining ever. Give them a chance to
parade their dislike and they'll take it if they can."
"But why don't they like hydraulic mining?" she persisted. "We've got to have
coal and iron, don't we?"
"Now," he said with pretended, humorous weariness, "you're asking me to probe
the mind of a Consie. I've had them in the wrecking room for up to six hours
at a stretch and never yet have they talked sense. If I caught the Topeka
Consie, say, he'd talk willingly but it would be gibberish. He'd tell me the
hydraulic miner was destroying topsoil. I'd say yes, and what about it. He'd
say, well can't you see?
I'd say, see what? He'd say, the topsoil can never be replaced. I'd say, yes
it can if it had to be and anyway tank farming's better. He'd say something
like tank farming doesn't pro-
vide animal cover and so on. It always winds up with him telling me the
world's going to hell in a hand-basket and people have got to be made to
realize it and me telling him we've always got along somehow and we'll keep
going somehow."
Kathy laughed incredulously and the commander went on: "They're fools, but
they're tough.
They have discipline. A cell system. If you get one Consie you always get the
two or three others in his cell, but you hardly ever get any more. There's no
lateral contact between cells, and vertical contact with higher-ups is by
rendezvous with middlemen. Yes, I think I know them and that's why I'm not
especially worried about sabotage or a demonstration here. It doesn't have the
right ring to it."
Kathy and I lolled back watching the commercials parade around the passenger
compartment of the jet at eye level.
There was the good old Kiddiebutt jingle I worked out many years ago when I
was a trainee. I nudged Kathy and told her about it as it blinked and chimed
Victor Herbert's
Toyland theme at us.
All the commercials went blank and a utility announcement, without sound
effects, came on.
In Compliance With Federal Law, Passengers Are Advised That They Are Now
Passing Over The San Andreas Fault Into Earthquake
Territory, And That Earthquake Loss And Damage Clauses In Any Insurance They
May Carry Are Now Canceled And Will Remain
Canceled Until Passengers Leave Earthquake Territory.
Then the commercials resumed their parade.
"And," said Kathy, "I suppose it says in the small print that yak-bite
insurance is good anywhere except in Tibet."
"Yak-bite insurance?" I asked, astonished. "What on earth do you carry that
for?"
"A girl can never tell when she'll meet an unfriendly yak, can she?"
"I conclude that you're kidding," I said with dignity. "We ought to land in a
few minutes. Personally, I'd like to pop in on
Ham Harris unexpectedly. He's a good kid, but Runstead may have infected him
with defeatism. There's nothing worse in our line."
"I'll come along with you if I may, Mitch."
We gawked through the windows like tourists as the jet slid into the traffic
pattern over San Diego and circled monotonously waiting for its calldown from
the tower. Kathy had never been there before. I had been there once, but
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there's always something new to see because buildings are always falling down
and new ones being put up. And what buildings! They're more like plastic tents
on plastic skeletons than anything else.
That kind of construction means they give and sway when a quake jiggles
southern California instead of snapping and crumbling. And if the quake is bad
enough and the skeleton does snap, what have you lost? Just some plastic
sheeting that broke along the standard snap grooves and some plastic
structural members that may or may not be salvageable.
From a continental economic viewpoint, it's also a fine idea not to tie up too
much fancy construction in southern
California. Since the H-bomb tests did things to the San Andreas fault,
there's been a pretty fair chance that the whole area would slide quietly into
the Pacific some day any day. But when we looked down out of the traffic
pattern, it still was there and, like everybody else, we knew that it would
probably stay there for the duration of our visit. Before my time there had
been some panic when the quakes became daily, but I'd blame that on the
old-style construction that fell hard and in jagged hunks. Eventually people
got used to it and as you'd expect in southern California even proud of it.
Natives could cite you reams of statistics to prove that you stand more chance
of being struck by lightning or a meteorite than you do of getting killed in
one of their quakes.
We got a speedy three-man limousine to whisk us to the local branch of Fowler
Schocken Associates. My faint uneasiness about Market Research extended to the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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