by Algis Budrys
In a month, Lucas had acclimated himself to the city. He memorized the complicated network of straggling, unnumbered streets below Washington Square, knew the principal subway routes, found a good, inexpensive laundry and a delicatessen where he bought what few groceries he felt he needed. He had investigated the registration system and entrance requirements at City College and sent a letter of inquiry to Massachusetts. So, by and large, he had succeeded in arranging his circumstances to fit his needs.
But what his uncle had hinted at on his first day in the city was beginning to turn itself over in Lucas’ mind. He sat down and thought it out systematically.
He was eighteen, and at or near his physical peak. His body was an excellently designed mechanism, with definite needs and functions. This particular year was the last even partly-free time he could expect for the next eight years.
Yes, he decided, if he was ever going to get himself a girl, there was no better time for it than now. He had the time, the means, and even the desire. Logic pointed the way, and so he began to look around.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1
The plane went into its final downward glide over Long Island, slipping into the JFK landing pattern, and the lounge hostess asked Rogers and the man to take their seats.
The man lifted his highball gracefully, set the edge against the lip of his mouth, and finished his drink. He put the glass down, and the grille moved back into place. He dabbed at his chin with a paper cocktail napkin. “Alcohol is very bad for high-carbon steel, you know,” he remarked to the hostess.
He had spent most of the trip in the lounge, occasionally ordering a drink, smoking at intervals, holding glass or cigarette in his metal hand. The passengers and crew had been forced to grow accustomed to him.
“Yes, sir,” the hostess said politely.
Rogers shook his head to himself. As he followed the man down the aisle to their seats, he said, “Not if it’s stainless steel, Mr. Martino. I’ve seen the metallurgical analyses on you.”
“Yes,” the man said, buckling his seatbelt and resting his hands lightly on his kneecaps. “You have. But that hostess hasn’t.” He put a cigarette in his mouth and let it dangle there, unlit, while the plane banked and steadied on its new heading. He looked out the window beside him. “Odd,” he said. “You wouldn’t expect it to still be too early for daylight.”
The moment the plane touched the runway, slowed, and began to taxi toward the gate, the man unfastened his seatbelt and lit his cigarette. “We seem to be here,” he said conversationally, and stood up. “It’s been a pleasant trip.”
“Pretty good,” Rogers said, unfastening his own belt. He looked toward Finchley, across the aisle, and shook his head helplessly as the FBI man raised his eyebrows. There was no doubt about it — whoever this man was, Martino or not, they were going to have a bad time with him.
“Well,” the man said, “I don’t suppose we’ll be meeting socially again, Mr. Rogers. I hardly know whether it’s proper to say good-bye or not.”
Rogers held out his hand wordlessly.
The man’s right hand was warm and firm. “It’ll be good to see New York again. I haven’t been here in nearly twenty years. And you, Mr. Rogers?”
“Twelve, about. I was born here.”
“Oh, were you?” They moved slowly along the aisle toward the rear door, with the man walking ahead of Rogers. “Then you’ll be glad to get back.”
Rogers shrugged uncomfortably.
The man’s chuckle was rueful. “Pardon me — do you know, for a moment I actually forgot this was hardly a pleasure trip for either of us?”
Rogers had no answer. He followed the man down the aisle to where the stewardesses gave them their coats. They stepped out on the ramp, with Rogers’ eyes on a level with the back of the man’s bare head.
The man half-turned, as though for another casual remark.
The first flashbulb exploded down at the end of the ramp, and the man recoiled. He stumbled back against Rogers, and for a moment he was pressed against him. Rogers suddenly caught the stale, acrid smell of the perspiration that had been soaking the man’s shirt for hours.
There was a cluster of photographers down there, pointing their cameras at the man and firing their flashguns in a ripple of sharp light that annoyed the other passengers.
The man tried to turn. His hard hand closed on Rogers’ shoulder as he tried to get him out of the way. The gaskets behind his mouth grille were up out of sight. Rogers heard his two food-grinding blades clash together.
Then Finchley somehow got past both of them, pushing through to the end of the ramp. He was reaching for his wallet as he went, and then the FBI shield glittered briefly in the puffballs of light. The photographers stopped.
Rogers took a deep breath and pried the man’s hand off his shoulder. “All right,” he said gently, lowering the hand carefully as though it were no longer attached to anything. “It’s all right, man, it’s under control. The damned pilot must have radioed ahead or something. Finchley’ll have a talk with the newspaper editors and the wire service chiefs. You won’t get spread all over the world.”
The man got his footing back, and stepped unsteadily into the debarking area. He mumbled something that had to be either thanks or a stumbling apology. Rogers was just as glad not to have heard it.
“We’ll take care of the news media. The only thing you’ll have left to worry about is the people you meet, but from what I’ve seen you can do a damn fine job of handling those.”
The man’s glittering eyes swung on Rogers savagely. “Just don’t watch me too closely,” he growled.
2
Rogers stood in the local ANG Security office that afternoon, massaging his shoulder from time to time while he talked. Twenty-two men sat in orderly rows of classroom chairs facing him, taking notes on standard pads rested on the broad right arms of the chairs.
“All right,” Rogers said in a tired voice, “You’ve all got offset copies of the dossier on Martino. It’s pretty complete, but that’s only where we start. You’ll get your individual assignments as you file out, but I want you all to know what the team’s supposed to be doing as a whole. Any one of you may come up with something that’ll seem unimportant unless we have the whole picture.
“Now — what we want is a diagram of a man, down to the last capillary and” — his lips twitched — “rivet. Out of your individual reports, we’re going to put together a master description of him that’ll tell us everything from the day he was born to the day the lab went up. We want to know what foods he liked, what cigarettes he smoked, what vices he had, what kind of women he favored — and why. We want a list of the books he’s read — and what he agreed with in them. Almost all of you are going to do nothing but intensive research on him. When we’re through, we want to have read a man’s mind.” Rogers let his hand fall to his side. “Because his mind is all we have left to recognize him by.
“Some of you are going to be assigned to direct surveillance. It’ll be your reports we’ll check against the research. They’ll have to be just as detailed, just as precise. Remember that he knows you’re watching. That means his gross actions may very well be intended to mislead you. It’ll be the small things that might trip him up. Watch who he talks to — but pay just as much attention to the way he lights his cigarettes.
“But remember you’re dealing with a genius. He’s either Lucas Martino or a Soviet ringer, but, whichever it is, he’s sharper than any one of us. You’ll have to face that, keep it in mind, and just remember there’re more of us and we’ve got the system. Of course” — Rogers heard the frustrated undertone in his voice — “he may be part of a system, too. But it’d be much smarter of them to let him go it alone.
“As to what he’s here for if he is a ringer: it might be anything. They might seriously have expected him to get back into the technological development program. If so, he’s in a hole right now, with no place to go. He may make a break to get out of the Allied Sphere
. Watch out for that. Again, be may be here for something else, figuring the Soviets expected us to handle him just the way we have. If so, there’re all kinds of rabbits he could start pulling out of his hat. We’re positive he isn’t a human bomb or a walking arsenal full of other stuff out of the funnies. We’re positive, but, Lord knows, we could we wrong. Watch out for him if he starts trying to buy electronic parts, or anything he could build something out of.
“Those of you who’re going to dig into his history — if he ever fiddled with things in his cellar, or tossed an idea for some kind of nasty gimmick into a discussion, I want to hear about it quick. I don’t know what this K-Eighty-Eight thing he worked up was — I do know it must have had an awful punch. I think we’d all appreciate it if he didn’t put one together in a back room somewhere.”
Rogers sighed. “All right. Questions.”
A man raised his hand. “Mr. Rogers?”
“Yes.”
“How about the other end of this problem? I presume there’re teams in Europe trying to penetrate the Soviet organization that worked on him?”
“There are. But they’re only doing it because we’re supposed to cover all loose ends for the record. They’re not getting anywhere. The Soviets have a fellow named Azarin who’s their equivalent to a sector security chief. He’s good at his work. He’s a stone wall. If we get anything out past him, it’ll be pure luck. If I know him, everybody connected in any way with whatever happened is in Uzbekistan by now, and the records have been destroyed — if they were ever kept. I know one thing — we had some people I thought I’d planted over there. They’re gone. Other questions?”
“Yes, sir. How long do you think it’ll be before we can say for sure about this fellow?”
Rogers simply looked at the man.
3
Rogers was sitting alone in his office when Finchley came in. It was growing dark again outside, and the room was gloomy in spite of the lamp on Rogers’ desk. Finchley took a chair and waited while Rogers folded his reading glasses and put them back in his breast pocket.
“How’d you make out?” Rogers asked.
“I covered them all. Print, press association, and TV. He’s not going to get publicity.”
Rogers nodded. “Good. If we’d let him become a seven days’ wonder, we’d have lost our chance. It’ll be tough enough as it is. Thanks for doing all the work, Finchley. We’d never have gotten any accurate observations on him.”
“I don’t think he’d have enjoyed it, either,” Finchley said.
Rogers looked at him for a moment, and then let it pass. “So as far as anyone connected with the news media is concerned, this isn’t any higher up than FBI level?”
“That’s right. I kept the ANG out of it.”
“Fine. Thanks.”
“That’s one of the things I’m here for. What did Martino do after what happened at the airport?”
“He took a cab downtown and got off at the corner of Twelfth Street and Seventh Avenue. There’s a luncheonette there. He had a hamburger and a glass of milk. Then he walked down to Greenwich Avenue, and down Greenwich to Sixth Avenue. He went down Sixth to Fourth Street. As of a few hours ago, he was walking back and forth on those streets down there.”
“He went right out in public again. Just to prove he hadn’t lost his nerve.”
“It looks that way. He stirred up a mild fuss — people turning around to look at him, and a few people pointing. That was all there was to that. It wasn’t anything he couldn’t ignore. Of course, he hasn’t looked for a place to stay yet, either. I’d say he was feeling a little lost right now. The next report’s due within the next half hour — sooner if something drastic happens. We’ll see. We’re checking out the luncheonette.”
Finchley looked up from his chair. “You know this whole business stinks, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Rogers frowned. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“You saw him on the plane. He was dying by inches, and it never showed. He put himself up in front of those people and rubbed their faces in what he was, just to prove to himself and to us, and to them, too, that he wasn’t going to crawl into a hole. He fooled them, and he fooled us. He looks like nothing that ever walked this earth, and he proved he was as good a man as any of us.”
“We knew that all along.”
“And then, just when he’d done it, the world came up and hit him too hard. He saw himself being spread all over the whole Allied world in full-page color, and he saw himself being branded a freak for good and all. Well, who hasn’t been hit too hard to stand? It’s happened to me in my life, and I guess it’s happened to you.”
“I imagine it has.”
“But he got up from it. He put himself on the sidewalk for everybody in New York to look at, and he got away with it. He knew what being hit felt like, and he went back for more. That’s a man, Rogers — God damn it, that’s a man!”
“What man?”
“Damn it, Rogers, give them a little time and the right chance, and there isn’t an I.D. the Soviets couldn’t fake! We don’t have a man they couldn’t replace with a ringer if they really wanted to. Nobody — nobody in this whole world — can prove who he is, but we’re expecting this one man to do it.”
“We have to. You can’t do anything about it. This one man has to prove who he is.”
“He could have just been put somewhere where he’d be harmless.”
Rogers stood up and walked over to the window. His fingers played with the blind cord. “No man is harmless anywhere in this world. He may sit and do nothing, but he’s there, and every other man has to solve the problem of who he is and what he’s thinking, because until that problem’s solved, that man is dangerous.
“The ANG could have decided to put this man on a desert island, yes. And he might never have done anything. But the Soviets may have the K-Eighty-Eight. And the real Martino might still be on their side of the line. By that much, this man on his desert island might be the most dangerous man in the world. And until we get evidence, that’s exactly what he is, and equally so no matter where he is. If we’re ever going to get evidence, it’s going to be here. If we don’t get it, then we’ll stay close enough to stop him if he turns out not to be our Martino. That’s the job, Finchley, and neither you nor I can get out of it. Neither of us’ll be old enough for retirement before he dies.”
“Look, damn it, Rogers, I know all that! I’m not trying to crawl out of the job. But we’ve been watching this man ever since he came back over the line. We’ve watched him, we’ve seen what he’s going through — damn it, it’s not going to make any difference in my work, but as far as I’m concerned-”
“You think he’s Martino?”
Finchley stopped. “I don’t have any evidence for it.”
“But you can’t help thinking he’s Martino. Because he bleeds? Because he’d cry if he had tears? Because he’s afraid, and desperate, and knows he has no place to go?” Rogers’ hands jerked at the blind cord. “Don’t we all? Aren’t we all human beings?
CHAPTER EIGHT
1
Young Lucas Martino turned away from the freshly-cleaned table, holding four dirty cups and saucers in his left hand, each cup in its saucer the way Barbara had taught him, with two saucers held overlapping between his fingers and the other two sets stacked on top. He carried his wiping sponge in his right hand, ready to clean up any dirty spots on tables he passed on the way to the counter. He liked working this way — it was efficient, it wasted no time, and it made no real difference that there was plenty of time, now that the late afternoon rush was over.
He wondered what created these freak rushes, as he let the cups and saucers down in the basket under the counter, first flipping the spoons into a smaller tray. There was no overt reason why, on indeterminate days, Espresso Maggiore should suddenly become crowded at four o’clock. Logically, people ought to have been working, or looking forward to supper, or walking in the park on a beautiful day like this. But, inst
ead, they came here — all of them at almost the same time — and for half an hour, the store was crowded. Now, at a quarter of five, it was empty again, and the chairs were once more set in order against the clean tables. But it had been a busy time — so busy, with only Barbara and himself on shift, that Carlo had waited on some tables himself.
He looked at the stacks of dirty cups in the basket. There was a strong possibility, it seemed to him, that most of the customers had ordered the same thing, as well. Not cappuccino, for a change, but plain espresso, and that was curious too, as though a majority of people in the neighborhood had felt a need for a stimulant, rather than something sweet to drink.
But they all did different things — some were tavernkeepers, some were their employees, some were artists, some were idlers, some were tourists. Were there days when everyone simply grew tired, no matter what they did? Lucas frowned to himself. He tried to recall if he’d ever felt anything of the sort in himself. But one case provided no conclusive evidence. He’d have to file it away and think about it — check back when it happened again.
He let the thought drift to the back of his mind as Barbara cleaned up the last of her tables and came to the counter. She smiled ruefully, shook her head, and wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist. “Whew! Be glad when this day’s over, Tedeschino?”