It was shortly after that the knock came on his door.
* * * *
Zoran Jankez sat at his desk in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a heavy military revolver close to his right hand, a half empty liter of sljivovica and a water tumbler, to his left. Red of eye, he pored over endless reports from his agents, occasionally taking time out to growl a command into his desk mike. Tired he was, from the long sleepless hours he was putting in, but Number One was in his element. As he had told that incompetent, Kardelj, he had been through this thing before. It was no mistake that he was Number One.
After a time he put a beefy hand down on the reports. He could feel the rage coming upon him. Of late, he realized, there most certainly had developed a plot to undermine his health by constant frustrations. Was there no one, no one at all, to take some of these trivialities off his shoulders? Must he do everything in the People’s Democratic Dictatorship? Make every decision and see it through?
He snapped into the mike, “Give me Lazar Jovanovic.” And then, when the police head’s shaven poll appeared in the screen of the Telly-Phone, “Comrade, I am giving you one last chance. Produce this traitor, Josip Pekic, within the next twenty-four hours, or answer to me.” He glared at the other, whose face had tightened in fear. “I begin to doubt the sincerity of your efforts, in this, Comrade Jovanovic.”
“But…but, Comrade, I—”
“That’s all!” Number One snapped. He flicked off the instrument, then glowered at it for a full minute. If Jovanovic couldn’t locate Pekic, he’d find someone who could. It was maddening that the pipsqueak had seemingly disappeared. To this point, seeking him had progressed in secret. There had been too much favorable publicity churned out in the early days of the expediter scheme to reverse matters to the point of having a public hue and cry. It was being done on the q.t.
But! Number One raged inwardly, if his police couldn’t find the criminal soon enough, a full-scale hunt and purge could well enough be launched. There was more to all this than met the eye. Oh, he, Zoran Jankez had been through it before, though long years had lapsed since it had been necessary. The traitors, the secret conspiracies, and then the required purges to clean the Party ranks still once again.
The gentle summons of his Telly-Phone tinkled, and he flicked it on with a rough brush of his hand.
And there was the youthful face of Josip Pekic, currently being sought high and low by the full strength of the Internal Affairs Secretariat. Youthful, yes, but even as he stared his astonishment, Zoran Jankez could see that the past months had wrought their changes on the other’s face. It was more mature, bore more of strain and weariness.
Before Jankez found his voice. Josip Pekic said diffidently, “I…I understand you’ve been, well…looking for me, sir.”
“Looking for you!” the Party head bleated, his rage ebbing in all but uncontrollably. For a moment he couldn’t find words.
Pekic said, his voice jittering, “I had some research to do. You see, sir, this…this project you and Kardelj started me off on—”
“I had nothing to do with it! It was Kardelj’s scheme, confound his idiocy!” Number One all but screamed.
“Oh? Well…well, I had gathered the opinion that both of you concurred. Anyway, like I say, the project from the first didn’t come off quite the way it started. I…well…we, were thinking in terms of finding out why waiters were surly, why workers and professionals and even officials tried to, uh, beat the rap, pass the buck, look out for themselves and the devil take the hindmost, and all those Americanisms that Kardelj is always using.”
Jankez simmered, but let the other go on. Undoubtedly, his police chief, Lazar Jovanovic was even now tracing the call, and this young traitor would soon be under wraps where he could do no more damage to the economy of the People’s Democratic Dictatorship.
“But, well, I found it wasn’t just a matter of waiters, and truckdrivers and such. It…well…ran all the way from top to bottom. So, I finally felt as though I was sort of butting my head against the wall. I thought I better start at…kind of…fundamentals, so I began researching the manner in which the governments of the West handled some of these matters.”
“Ah,” Jankez said as smoothly as he was able to get out. “Ah. And?” This fool was hanging himself.
The younger man frowned in unhappy puzzlement. “Frankly, I was surprised. I have, of course, read Western propaganda to the extent I could get hold of it in Zagurest, and listened to the Voice of the West on the wireless. I was also, obviously, familiar with our own propaganda. Frankly…well…I had reserved my opinion in both cases.”
* * * *
This in itself was treason, but Number One managed to get out, almost encouragingly, “What are you driving at, Josip Pekic?”
“I found in one Western country that the government was actually paying its peasants, that is, farmers, not to plant crops. The same government subsidized other crops, keeping the prices up to the point where they were hard put to compete on the international markets.”
Young Pekic made a moue, as though in puzzlement. “In other countries, in South America for instance, where the standard of living is possibly the lowest in the West and they need funds desperately to develop themselves, the governments build up large armies, although few of them have had any sort of warfare at all for over a century and have no threat of war.”
“What is all this about?” Number One growled. Surely, Lazar Jovanovic was on the idiot traitor’s trail by now.
Josip took a deep breath and hurried on nervously. “They’ve got other contradictions that seem unbelievable. For instance, their steel industry will be running at half capacity, in spite of the fact that millions of their citizens have unfulfilled needs, involving steel. Things like cars, refrigerators, stoves. In fact, in their so-called recessions, they’ll actually close down perfectly good, modern factories, and throw their people out of employment, at the very time that there are millions of people who need that factory’s product.”
Josip said reasonably, “Why, sir, I’ve come to the conclusion that the West has some of the same problems we have. And the main one is politicians.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Just that,” Josip said with dogged glumness. “I…well, I don’t know about the old days. A hundred, even fifty years ago, but as society becomes more complicated, more intricate, I simply don’t think politicians are capable of directing it. The main problems are those of production and distribution of all the things our science and industry have learned to turn out. And politicians, all over the world, seem to foul it up.”
Zoran Jankez growled ominously, “Are you suggesting that I am incompetent to direct the United Balkan Soviet Republics?”
“Yes, sir,” Josip said brightly, as though the other had encouraged him. “That’s what I mean. You or any other politician. Industry should be run by trained, competent technicians, scientists, industrialists—and to some extent, maybe, by the consumers, but not by politicians. By definition, politicians know about politics, not industry. But somehow, in the modern world, governments seem to be taking over the running of industry and even agriculture. They aren’t doing such a good job, sir.”
Jankez finally exploded. “Where are you calling from, Pekic?” he demanded. “You’re under arrest!”
Josip Pekic cleared his throat, apologetically. “No, sir,” he said. “Remember? I’m the average Transbalkanian citizen. And it is to be assumed I’d, well…react the way any other would. The difference is, I had the opportunity. I’m in Switzerland.”
“Switzerland!” Number One roared. “You’ve defected. I knew you were a traitor, Pekic. Like father, like son! A true Transbalkanian would remain in his country and help it along the road to the future.”
The younger man looked worried. “Well, yes, sir,” he said. “I thought about that. B
ut I think I’ve done about as much as I could accomplish. You see, these last few months, protected by those ‘can do no wrong’ credentials, I’ve been spreading this message around among all the engineers, technicians, professionals, all the more trained, competent people in Transbalkania. You’d be surprised how they took to it. I think it’s kind of…well, snowballing. I mean the idea that politicians aren’t capable of running industry. That if the United Balkan Soviet Republics are to ever get anywhere, some changes are going to have to be made.”
Number One could no more than glare.
Josip Pekic, rubbed his nose nervously, and said, in the way of uneasy farewell, “I just thought it was only fair for me to call you and give a final report. After all, I didn’t start all this. Didn’t originate the situation. It was you and Kardelj who gave me my chance. I just…well…expedited things.” His face faded from the screen, still apologetic of expression.
Zoran Jankez sat there for a long time, staring at the now dark instrument.
It was the middle of the night when the knock came at the door. But then, Zoran Jankez had always thought it would…finally.
ONE-SHOT, by James Blish
On the day that the Polish freighter Ludmilla laid an egg in New York harbor, Abner Longmans (“One-Shot”) Braun was in the city going about his normal business, which was making another million dollars. As we found out later, almost nothing else was normal about that particular week end for Braun. For one thing, he had brought his family with him—a complete departure from routine—reflecting the unprecedentedly legitimate nature of the deals he was trying to make. From every point of view it was a bad week end for the CIA to mix into his affairs, but nobody had explained that to the master of the Ludmilla.
I had better add here that we knew nothing about this until afterward; from the point of view of the storyteller, an organization like Civilian Intelligence Associates gets to all its facts backwards, entering the tale at the pay-off, working back to the hook, and winding up with a sheaf of background facts to feed into the computer for Next Time. It’s rough on the various people who’ve tried to fictionalize what we do—particularly for the lazy examples of the breed, who come to us expecting that their plotting has already been done for them—but it’s inherent in the way we operate, and there it is.
Certainly nobody at CIA so much as thought of Braun when the news first came through. Harry Anderton, the Harbor Defense chief, called us at 0830 Friday to take on the job of identifying the egg; this was when our records show us officially entering the affair, but, of course, Anderton had been keeping the wires to Washington steaming for an hour before that, getting authorization to spend some of his money on us (our clearance status was then and is now C&R—clean and routine).
I was in the central office when the call came through, and had some difficulty in making out precisely what Anderton wanted of us. “Slow down, Colonel Anderton, please,” I begged him. “Two or three seconds won’t make that much difference. How did you find out about this egg in the first place?”
“The automatic compartment bulkheads on the Ludmilla were defective,” he said. “It seems that this egg was buried among a lot of other crates in the dump-cell of the hold—”
“What’s a dump cell?”
“It’s a sea lock for getting rid of dangerous cargo. The bottom of it opens right to Davy Jones. Standard fitting for ships carrying explosives, radioactives, anything that might act up unexpectedly.”
“All right,” I said. “Go ahead.”
“Well, there was a timer on the dump-cell floor, set to drop the egg when the ship came up the river. That worked fine, but the automatic bulkheads that are supposed to keep the rest of the ship from being flooded while the cell’s open, didn’t. At least they didn’t do a thorough job. The Ludmilla began to list and the captain yelled for help. When the Harbor Patrol found the dump-cell open, they called us in.”
“I see.” I thought about it a moment. “In other words, you don’t know whether the Ludmilla really laid an egg or not.”
“That’s what I keep trying to explain to you, Dr. Harris. We don’t know what she dropped and we haven’t any way of finding out. It could be a bomb—it could be anything. We’re sweating everybody on board the ship now, but it’s my guess that none of them know anything; the whole procedure was designed to be automatic.”
“All right, we’ll take it,” I said. “You’ve got divers down?”
“Sure, but—”
“We’ll worry about the buts from here on. Get us a direct line from your barge to the big board here so we can direct the work. Better get on over here yourself.”
“Right.” He sounded relieved. Official people have a lot of confidence in CIA; too much, in my estimation. Some day the job will come along that we can’t handle, and then Washington will be kicking itself—or, more likely, some scapegoat—for having failed to develop a comparable government department.
Not that there was much prospect of Washington’s doing that. Official thinking had been running in the other direction for years. The precedent was the Associated Universities organization which ran Brookhaven; CIA had been started the same way, by a loose corporation of universities and industries all of which had wanted to own an ULTIMAC and no one of which had had the money to buy one for itself. The Eisenhower administration, with its emphasis on private enterprise and concomitant reluctance to sink federal funds into projects of such size, had turned the two examples into a nice fat trend, which ULTIMAC herself said wasn’t going to be reversed within the practicable lifetime of CIA.
* * * *
I buzzed for two staffers, and in five minutes got Clark Cheyney and Joan Hadamard, CIA’s business manager and social science division chief respectively. The titles were almost solely for the benefit of the T/O—that is, Clark and Joan do serve in those capacities, but said service takes about two per cent of their capacities and their time. I shot them a couple of sentences of explanation, trusting them to pick up whatever else they needed from the tape, and checked the line to the divers’ barge.
It was already open; Anderton had gone to work quickly and with decision once he was sure we were taking on the major question. The television screen lit, but nothing showed on it but murky light, striped with streamers of darkness slowly rising and falling. The audio went cloonck…oing, oing…bonk…oing… Underwater noises, shapeless and characterless.
“Hello, out there in the harbor. This is CIA, Harris calling. Come in, please.”
“Monig here,” the audio said. Boink…oing, oing…
“Got anything yet?”
“Not a thing, Dr. Harris,” Monig said. “You can’t see three inches in front of your face down here—it’s too silty. We’ve bumped into a couple of crates, but so far, no egg.”
“Keep trying.”
Cheyney, looking even more like a bulldog than usual, was setting his stopwatch by one of the eight clocks on ULTIMAC’s face. “Want me to take the divers?” he said.
“No, Clark, not yet. I’d rather have Joan do it for the moment.” I passed the mike to her. “You’d better run a probability series first.”
“Check.” He began feeding tape into the integrator’s mouth. “What’s your angle, Peter?”
“The ship. I want to see how heavily shielded that dump-cell is.”
“It isn’t shielded at all,” Anderton’s voice said behind me. I hadn’t heard him come in. “But that doesn’t prove anything. The egg might have carried sufficient shielding in itself. Or maybe the Commies didn’t care whether the crew was exposed or not. Or maybe there isn’t any egg.”
“All that’s possible,” I admitted. “But I want to see it, anyhow.”
“Have you taken blood tests?” Joan asked Anderton.
“Yes.”
“Get the reports through to me, then. I want white-cell counts, diffe
rentials, platelet counts, hematocrit and sed rates on every man.”
Anderton picked up the phone and I took a firm hold on the doorknob.
“Hey,” Anderton said, putting the phone down again. “Are you going to duck out just like that? Remember, Dr. Harris, we’ve got to evacuate the city first of all! No matter whether it’s a real egg or not—we can’t take the chance on it’s not being an egg!”
“Don’t move a man until you get a go-ahead from CIA,” I said. “For all we know now, evacuating the city may be just what the enemy wants us to do—so they can grab it unharmed. Or they may want to start a panic for some other reason, any one of fifty possible reasons.”
“You can’t take such a gamble,” he said grimly. “There are eight and a half million lives riding on it. I can’t let you do it.”
“You passed your authority to us when you hired us,” I pointed out. “If you want to evacuate without our O.K., you’ll have to fire us first. It’ll take another hour to get that cleared from Washington—so you might as well give us the hour.”
He stared at me for a moment, his lips thinned. Then he picked up the phone again to order Joan’s blood count, and I got out the door, fast.
* * * *
A reasonable man would have said that I found nothing useful on the Ludmilla, except negative information. But the fact is that anything I found would have been a surprise to me; I went down looking for surprises. I found nothing but a faint trail to Abner Longmans Braun, most of which was fifteen years cold.
There’d been a time when I’d known Braun, briefly and to no profit to either of us. As an undergraduate majoring in social sciences, I’d taken on a term paper on the old International Longshoreman’s Association, a racket-ridden union now formally extinct—although anyone who knew the signs could still pick up some traces on the docks. In those days, Braun had been the business manager of an insurance firm, the sole visible function of which had been to write policies for the ILA and its individual dock-wallopers. For some reason, he had been amused by the brash youngster who’d barged in on him and demanded the lowdown, and had shown me considerable lengths of ropes not normally in view of the public—nothing incriminating, but enough to give me a better insight into how the union operated than I had had any right to expect—or even suspect.
The First Science Fiction Megapack Page 20