Day After Tomorrow

by Mack Reynolds

  Larry took the offered chair and ignored the other pleasantries, knowing full well they were left-handed. He said, “How in the world did you expect to get by with this nonsense, Simonov? We’ll have you declared persona non grata in a matter of hours.”

  “It is not important,” the Russian said, returning to his swivel chair behind the desk, slapping his swagger stick against the side of his leg as he went. “I have found what I came to find out. I was about to return to report to my ministry in any event.”

  “We won’t do anything to hinder you, Colonel,” Larry Woolford said dryly.

  Ilya Simonov tapped his swagger stick on the desk top several times and said, “In actuality, it is all very amusing. In our country we would deal quickly with this Movement nonsense. You Americans with your pseudo-democracy, your labels without reality, your—”

  Larry said wearily, “Please, Simonov, I promise not to try to convert you, if you’ll promise not to try and convert me. Needless to say, my department isn’t happy about your presence in this country. You’ll be watched from now on. We’ve been busy with other matters…” Here the Russian laughed.

  “… or we’d already have flushed you.” He allowed his voice to go curious. “We’ve wondered about your interest in this phase of our internal affairs.”

  The Russian agent let his facade slip a bit, his iron mouth almost sneering. He said, “We are interested in all phases of your antiquated socioeconomic system, Mr. Woolford. In the present peaceful economic competition between East and West, we would simply loath to see anything happen to your present culture.” He hesitated deliberately, before adding, “That is, of course, if you can call it a culture.”

  Larry said, unprovoked, “If I understand you correctly, you are not in favor of the changes the Movement advocates.”

  The Russian shrugged his military-straight shoulders. “I doubt if they are possible of achievement, even if we did wish to see such changes. The organization is a sloppy one. Revolutionary? Nonsense,” he grunted that last. “They have no plans to change the government. No plans for overthrowing the present regime. Ultimately, what this country really needs is true Communism. This so-called Movement doesn’t have that as its eventual goal. It is laughable.”

  Larry said, interestedly, “Then perhaps you’ll tell me what little you’ve found out about the group. I’d be interested in your viewpoint, as opposed to my own.”

  “Why not?” The Russian tapped his swagger stick on the top of the desk again, three or four little taps. “They are composed of impractical idealists. Scientists, intellectuals, a few admitted scholars and even a few potential leaders. Their sabotage of your Department of Records was an amusing farce, and of your medical records as well. But, frankly, I have been unable to discover the purpose of their interest in rockets. For a time I contemplated the possibility that they had a scheme to develop a nuclear bomb and to explode it over Greater Washington in the belief that in the resulting confusion they might seize power. But, on the face of it, their membership is incapable of such direct action.”

  “Their interest in rockets?” Larry said softly. Oh God, was he beginning to hit pay dirt.

  The Russian agent tapped the table top some more with his stick “Yes, of course. As you’ve undoubtedly discovered, half the rocket technicians of your country seem to have joined up with them. We got the tip through…” the Russian cleared his throat.

  “… several of our converts who happen to be connected with your space efforts groups.”

  “Is that so?” Larry said. “I wondered what you thought about their interest in money.”

  It was Ilya Simonov’s turn to look blank. “Money?” he said.

  “That’s right,” Larry told him, his eyes narrower now. “Large quantities of money.”

  The Russian said, frowning puzzlement. “I suppose most citizens in your capitalist countries are interested largely in money, and above everything else. One of your basic failings.”

  Larry Woolford stood. “Well, I suppose that’s about all, Simonov. We expect you to leave the United States by tomorrow at the latest. Otherwise, you’ll be deported. Obviously, we will not accept you as a military attache. How in the world have you avoided going through the red tape at the State Department to be accredited?”

  The Russian said humorously, perhaps mockingly, “We reported that I was indisposed, and too ill to report—diarrhea, as a result of change in the water or whatever.”

  Larry snorted. “You’ve got diarrhea, like I’ve got a halo,” he said. “That alibi wouldn’t have stood up very long.”

  “It didn’t have to. A few days were all I needed. I accomplished my mission. There is just one thing remaining to be done.”

  Larry had been about to turn to go, but now he came to a halt and scowled at the other.

  “And just what is that?”

  “As I told you, my superiors are not interested in seeing basic changes take place in the socioeconomic system of America. Besides finding out about this movement, I was to throw a monkey wrench in its workings. That’s the Yankee term isn’t it? Throw a monkey wrench in the works?”

  “Yes,” Larry said flat. “And the monkey wrench you’re about to throw to louse up the Movement?”

  Ilya Simonov tapped the top of his desk and smiled. “One of the most influential members of the Movement is in your office. Through this person, the Movement has been tipped off time and again to your actions.”

  Larry Woolford’s face went cold. “And who is this person?”

  Ilya Simonov told him.

  XVIII

  Driving back to the office, Larry let it pile up on him.

  Ernest Self had been a specialist in solid fuel for rockets. Professor Voss had particularly stressed his indignation about Professor Goddard, the rocket pioneer, and how he had been treated by his contemporaries. Frank Nostrand had been employed as a technician on rocket research at Madison Air Laboratories. It was too damn much for coincidence.

  And now something else that had been nagging away at the back of his head suddenly came clear.

  Susan Self had said that she and her father had seen the precision dancers at the New Roxy Theater in New York and later the Professor had said they were going to spend the money on chorus girls. Susan had got it wrong. The Rockettes—the precision chorus girls. The Professor had said they were going to expend their money on rockets, and Susan had misunderstood.

  But billions of dollars, counterfeit dollars at that, expended on rockets? How? But, above all, to what end? How could that possibly help the Movement?

  As Ilya Simonov had said, Professor Voss and his people were hardly capable of bombing Greater Washington or whatever. Weirds they all might be but they weren’t homicidal maniacs.

  If he’d only been able to hold onto Susan, or her father; or to Voss or Nostrand, for that matter. Someone to work on. But each had slipped through his fingers.

  Which brought something else up from his subconscious. Something which had been nagging at him. He pondered it for awhile, coming up with semi-answers.

  At the office, Irene Day was packing her things as he entered. Packing as though she was leaving for good.

  “What goes on?” Larry growled, rounding his desk and seating himself. “I’m going to be needing you more than ever. Things are coming to a head.”

  She said, a bit snippishly, Larry thought, “Miss Polk, in the Boss’ office said for you to see her as soon as you came in, Mr. Woolford. She also gave me instructions to return to the secretary’s pool for reassignment.”

  “Oh?” he said mystified.

  He made his way to LaVerne’s office, his attention actually on the ideas still churning in his mind.

  She looked up when he entered and there was something in her face he didn’t quite understand.

  “Hi, Larry,” she said, flicking off the phone screen, in her bank of phone screens, into which she had been talking.

  Larry said, “The Boss wanted to see me?”

  L
aVerne ducked her head, as though embarrassed. “Well, not exactly, Larry.”

  He gestured with his thumb in the direction of his own cubicle office. “Irene just said you wanted to see me. She also said she was being pulled off her assignment with me, which is ridiculous. I’m just getting used to her. I don’t want to have to break in another girl.”

  LaVerne looked up into his face. “The Boss and Mr. Foster, too, are boiling about your authorizing that Distelmayer man to bill this department for information he gave you. The Boss hit the roof. Something about the Senate Appropriations Committee getting down on him if it came out that we bought information from professional espionage agents, particularly material that this department is supposed to ferret out on its own.”

  Larry said, “It was information we needed and needed quickly, and Foster gave me the go ahead on locating Ilya Simonov. Maybe I’d better go in and see the Boss and explain the whole damned mess. I’ve got some other stuff I have to report to him, anyway.”

  LaVerne said, and there was apology in her voice, “I don’t think he wants to see you, Larry. They’re up to their ears in this Movement thing. It’s in the papers now and nobody knows what to do next. The department is beginning to become a laughing stock, which is probably one of the things the Movement wanted to accomplish. The President is going to make a speech on Tri-Di, and the Boss has to supply the information for the speech writers. His orders are for you to resume your vacation and to take a full month off and then see him when you get back.”

  Larry sank down into a chair. “I see,” he breathed. “And at that time he’ll probably give me an assignment to mop out the men’s room.”

  “Larry,” LaVerne said, almost impatiently, “why in the world didn’t you take that job Walt Foster has now when the Boss offered it to you?”

  “Because I’m stupid, I suppose,” Larry said bitterly. “I thought I could do more working alone in the field than at an administrative post tangled in red tape and bureaucratic routine. If I’d taken the job I could now be slitting Walt’s throat instead of his slitting mine.”

  She said, “Sorry, Larry.” And she sounded as though she really meant it.

  Larry stood up. “Well, tonight I’m going to hang one on, and tomorrow it’s back to Astor, Florida and the bass fishing.” He added, in a rush, “Look, LaVerne, how about that date we’ve been talking about for six months or more?”

  She looked up at him, question in her eyes, wary question. “I can’t stand vodka martinis.”

  “Neither can I,” he said glumly.

  “And I don’t get a kick out of prancing around, a stuffed shirt among stuffed shirts, at some going-on that supposedly improves my culture status.”

  Larry said, “At the house, I have every known brand of drinkable, and a stack of… what did you call it?… corny music. We can mix our own drinks and dance all by ourselves. I even know some old time swing steps.”

  She tucked her head to one side and looked at him suspiciously. “Are your intentions honorable? A nice girl doesn’t go to a man’s home, all alone.”

  “We can even discuss that later,” he said sourly. “How about it, LaVerne? You can help me drown my sorrows.”

  She laughed. “It’s a date, Larry.”

  He picked her up after work and they drove to his Brandywine district auto-bungalow, and both of them remained largely quiet the whole way.

  He didn’t even comment when she said, “Walt Foster requested today that I locate him a new apartment in the Druid Hill section of Baltimore. It will double his rent, but I assume that he is expecting a raise.”

  At one point she touched his hand with hers and said, “It’ll work out, Larry. Things have a way of always working out. It might even turn out for the best.”

  “Yeah,” he said sourly. “I’ve put ten years into ingratiating myself with the Boss. Now, overnight, he’s got a new boy. I suppose there’s some moral involved.”

  When they pulled up before his auto-bungalow, LaVerne whistled appreciatively. “Quite a neighborhood you’re in Larry. It must set you back considerably.”

  He grunted. “A good address. What our friend Professor Voss would call one more status symbol, one more social label. For it, I pay about fifty percent more than my budget can afford.”

  He ushered her inside and took her jacket.

  “Look,” he said, indicating his living room with a sweep of his hand. “See that volume of Klee reproductions there next to my reading chair? That proves I’m not a weird. Indicates my culture status. Actually, my appreciation of modern art doesn’t go any further than the Impressionists. But don’t tell anybody. See those books up on my shelves? Same thing. You’ll find everything there that ought to be on the shelves of any ambitious young career man.”

  She looked at him from the side of her eyes. “You’re really soured, Larry. As long as I’ve known you I don’t believe I’ve ever heard you so bitter.”

  “Come along,” he said. “I want to show you something. An inkling of just how bitter I can be.”

  He took her down the tiny elevator to his den. Off hand, he couldn’t remember twenty people being down here in the five or six years he had lived in this house.

  He said, “You’re unique, LaVerne. You’re the only girl I’ve ever shown my inner secrets to.”

  “Well, thank you,” she said, not knowing exactly what sort of response was expected of her. “What are you going to do, beat me with whips?”

  He ignored her attempt at levity, as though he hadn’t heard it. “How hypocritical can you get?” he asked her. “This is where I really live. But I seldom bring anyone down here. Except a couple of poker-playing pals such as Sam Sokolski over on the Sun-Times. We went to college together. I’m afraid to have anybody down here, except people as close as Sam. I wouldn’t want to get a reputation as a weird, would I? Sit down, LaVerne. Ill make you a drink. How about a Sidecar?”

  She said, “I’d love one. Hey, I like this room. It looks, well, lived in. Are you sure you’ve never had a woman down here before, young man?”

  “Quite sure,” he said wearily. “When I have a woman in my home we go through the usual bit, upstairs. Everything is the latest, from wherever the latest is from. And we usually wind up on the waterbed up above, from Finland. Why waterbeds have a status symbol when they come from Finland, I don’t know. But they do. Frankly, I hate water-beds.”

  She was laughing a bit. “You mean you act the cad when you seduce a young lady to come to your home?”

  He said, “I don’t have to. It’s all the thing, these days, if you have status labels, and she has status labels of approximately the same level, to climb into bed with each other, after a few vodka martinis.”

  His back to her, he brought forth brandy and Cointreau from his liquor cabinet, and lemon and ice from the tiny refrigerator. He also surreptitiously dropped a small white pill into one of the glasses.

  She had kicked her shoes off and now tucked her legs under her, making a very attractive picture on the couch where she had sat herself.

  “What?” she said accusingly. “No auto-bar? I thought an auto-bar was mandatory these days. How could an ambitious young bureaucrat get by without an auto-bar?”

  Larry measured out ingredients efficiently and then stirred the drink briskly, until the shaker was frosted. “Upstairs with the rest of my status symbols,” he said, pouring carefully into the champagne-sized glasses. “Down here, I live, up there, I conform.” He took one of the drinks over to her, kept the other for himself.

  He put his glass down on the cocktail table before her and went over to the tape recorder. She sipped the drink, appreciatively, and looked over at him. “My, you really can mix a cocktail. I haven’t had anything as good as this for ages.”

  “These days bartenders don’t have to know how to make anything but vodka martinis,” he said bitterly. “That’s my own version of a Sidecar.” He looked at his collection of tapes. “In the way of corny music, how do you like that old timer, Na
t Cole?”

  “King Cole? I love him,” LaVerne said, taking another pull at her Sidecar.

  He placed a tape in the recorder and activated it. The strains of “For All We Know” penetrated the room. Larry turned it low and then went over and sat down next to her. He picked up his drink from the cocktail table before them and finished half of it in one swallow.

  “I’m beginning to wonder whether or not this Movement doesn’t have something,” he said.

  She didn’t answer that. They sat in silence for a while, appreciating the drink and the music. Nat Cole was singing “The Very Thought of You,” now. Larry got up and made two more of the cocktails and returned with them. This time when he regained his seat next to her, he idly put an arm around her shoulders.

  He said, “Did anyone ever tell you that you are a very pretty girl?”

  LaVerne didn’t resist. In fact, her breath seemed to be coming in little pants. She looked at him, her eyes a bit wide. “Not for a long time,” she said. “It seems that in this day and age, men steer clear of girls who don’t conform.” Her voice trembled a little.

  Larry put a finger under her chin and bent over and kissed her very gently. Her lips seemed hot. She responded enthusiastically. It hardly seemed like the prim, sharp-tongued LaVerne Polk. Evidently, the gentleness of his kiss wasn’t called for.

  He continued to kiss her, and put his right hand over one of her breasts. He could feel through the clothing that the nipple was already hard. She had ample breasts. He wondered how she looked in a bathing suit—or out of one, for that matter. She was probably stacked like a brick outhouse. She squirmed, but not in rejection. In fact, she pressed her mouth to his more firmly and opened her lips.

  He let his hand go down to her knee, received no protest, and slid it up under her dress. She pretended to ignore it, continuing the hotness of her kisses.

  He stopped kissing her long enough to say, “You’re a virgin, LaVerne?”

  She had her eyes closed. “Yes… yes, I am,” she managed to get out. “I… hope you don’t mind. Please, darling, don’t stop. Don’t stop now.”