“I think,” Jeremy said, as they emerged, “that you have hired these pugs just to bolster your ego. You’ll have men following you whatever you have to do.”
“It isn’t necessary to hire them for that,” she said coldly. “I’m sorry you find this unpleasant, Jeremy. But please don’t make it any more so than you have to. Strangely enough, there are lots of places I’d rather be than with you. Alone, for example.”
“You know,” he said, as he politely pulled out a chair for her, “I like you like this. I mean, I could if I tried. This is the first time I have ever seen you when you weren’t swinging the figurative female lasso round and round.”
“Compliments from you are more unpleasant than anything else could be. Light the menu, will you?”
He touched the stud that illuminated the menu screen. She studied it for a moment, and then dialed the code numbers of the items she wanted. Jeremy studied her as she did so.
She was an amazing girl, he admitted grudgingly. How she looked, what she was—amazing. Her smooth brow was crinkled a bit now, between the eyes. She used to look like that in college once in a while. It generally signified she was out of her depth, and it also meant that she was about to do something about it, like flapping her eyelids at a vulnerable professor, or cribbing from someone else’s paper.
Frowning, Jeremy studied Phyllis for several minutes more. Then he spoke.
“Tell me something,” he said. “Exactly how was this thing supposed to go?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
His voice tuned itself to his strained patience. “I mean, what was supposed to happen here? You would meet me at the gate, or you would hunt me up, and then what?”
“You seem to know everything. Answer your own questions.”
“All right. You were going to overcome my time-honored distaste of you and give me the business—most likely the remorse angle. The time you pulled that factory-lease out from under us for the benefit of a cosmetic factory—and General Export, who were starting in the pipe business—you are sorry about that. The time Hal fell for Dolly Holleson and you told her so many lies about him that she up and married somebody else—you’re sorry about that too. The time you—” His voice got thick “—accepted my ring, all of my grand old ‘forgive and forget’ attitude, and a third of our company stock, only to turn the stock over to Genex and tell me to go fly it—that was an awful misunderstanding!
“You know, Phyl, if I had known when I gave you the stock that Hal had phonied up the stock certificate, I’d have killed him, I think. He took the chance. Felt that if you were on the up-and-up he could straighten out the stock later. If you weren’t—well, nothing would be lost but a little of mind. Mine.” He breathed very deeply, once. “Anyhow, Hal thinks you’re poison, and I think you’re poison, and I don’t know what in the universe you think you are, but certainly it isn’t anything that will get a new pipe-stowage process out of me.”
“You really slug when you start, don’t you?” she whispered. He had never seen her eyes so big, nor her face so white. “And you don’t mind lowering your sights, to mix a metaphor.”
“I adjust to the most obvious target,” he said bluntly. “Why don’t you get sore? Why don’t you leave?”
Slowly, with a small, tragic smile, she rose. “Watch,” she said.
She turned toward the door. At a far table, a man rose and sauntered toward the exit. Behind Jeremy, there was a scraping of chairs on the glossy flooring, and the two men who had followed her from the ship went past.
The man at the door, a suave-looking individual, lean and white-templed, folded his arms and leaned against the wall just out of range of the photocell which opened the door. When Phyllis drew abreast he spoke softly to her. She stopped and shook her head. He smiled then, and shook his. She bit her lip, lowered her head a little and moved toward the door again. So smoothly that it did not seem swift at all, he blocked her.
The other two men reached them, greeted her effusively, took an arm each and led her back toward their table, talking and laughing. When they neared Jeremy’s place, they released her and went back to their own table, leaving her standing alone, staring at Jeremy with angry and terrified eyes. The whole thing was done so smoothly that no occupant of the restaurant seemed to notice.
“I have just seen something very lovely,” said Jeremy happily. “A pushing-around with you involved, where you are getting pushed for a change. Now come and sit down and tell me all about it in a sisterly fashion.”
She came. Again he was struck with the difference in her, the air of being out of her depth. She sank into her chair, her eyes averted from his. She put her hands tight together on the table, but they would not stop shaking. She volunteered nothing.
He reached over the centerpiece of the table and opened the cold-chamber on her side, removing the drink she had ordered. Pushing it across to her, he said gently:
“Gulp some of that and for once in your life give me a straight story. Whose side are you on besides your own? How did it happen? And why do these dawn-men take such an interest in leaving you alone, providing it’s with me?”
“Everything’s gone wrong. You—you know too much, Jeremy. And you don’t know enough. All right, I’ll tell you. Telling you won’t help me—I mean, you won’t help me, no matter what. I thought I could get what I wanted out of you without your ever knowing that they—that I—”
“That they have the heat on you,” supplemented Jeremy. “Source, Genex. Temperature, high.” He shook his head wonderingly. “That’s always been the trouble with you, Phyl. So self-sufficient. Never asked anyone for help in your life. There was always a way out, generally paved with somebody’s face. I gather that Genex is as wise to you as I am.”
She nodded, with a submissiveness which wrung something within him. His hand went out toward her. He drew it back without touching her.
He said, “Talk, now.”
“I was doing all right,” she said in a low voice. “I pulled lots of—of deals for General Export. They want everything. They want the entire Colonial trade—ships, supplies, personnel, everything. They’re getting it, too, any and every way they can. They’ll have Mars when they’re through.”
“Then what? They’re still under government authority.”
“Oh, it’s long-range, Jeremy. You remember your history. There’s a colonial phase, after discovery and exploration. Colonizing is a job in itself—development doesn’t really set in for quite a while. Nowadays, of course, the whole process is enormously speeded up. You know the potentialities of Mars. Uranium, iron, diamond-coal and drugs. Why, it’s an unlimited opportunity for whoever controls it. For perhaps two generations, Mars will look to Earth for government and guidance. But then there will be patriots, Jeremy. Earth will find herself with a competitor instead of a dominion. And the way that competitor will be run will gradually swing the direction of control the other way—or else. Genex isn’t out after a world. Genex wants two worlds—the system—the galaxy, if you like. But it will be for Genex and its heirs; it won’t be for the little guy.”
Jeremy sat back and stared at her amazed. “You figured all that out yourself? I can’t believe it. No, by heaven, I don’t believe it. Whom are you quoting?”
“Hal Jedd,” she said with an effort.
“Well, well, well!” He took out Hal’s letter and opened it. Her eyes darted to it, to his face, and down again. “Don’t play,” Jeremy said grimly. “I know you’ve seen this. You and every stooge Genex could put on it.” He glanced through the letter, speared a sentence with his finger, and read aloud: “ ‘Phyllis Exeter due. I got quite chummy with her while she was out here in Thor City.’ ”
“That’s what put me in this spot,” she said with sudden bitterness. “Yes, I saw him. Lots. The word got around that he had developed something radical in the line of pipe stowage. He has a suitcase-size lab back of his office, you know. Well, I was put on it.”
“You volunteered—isn’t that m
ore like it? You said, ‘Let me at the sucker. I’ve been able to wind him and his dopey brother around my finger since we were kids; and besides, I have a little score to settle. They’re one up on me.’ That right?”
She almost laughed. “I didn’t call him a sucker,” she said faintly. She took a swallow of her drink. “Take care of the steak, will you, Jeremy? I’m hungry.”
Jeremy took the raw steak out of the cold compartment. It was tenderized and seasoned. He slid it into the induction-heater.
“How do you like it?” he asked.
“Seared and rare,” she answered.
He adjusted the controls and closed the drawer, while she continued.
“I saw a lot of Hal. He got under my skin, Jeremy. Not anything about him personally—I don’t go for his type. These scholarly boys leave me cold. I like big men with blond hair, strong enough to smack a gal down when she deserves it, or even to keep their hands off her. And maybe with a little cleft in a square jaw—”
Unconsciously fingering just such a concavity on his chin, Jeremy threw back his blond head and snapped, “Baloney to you and your shopping lists! Go on with the yarn. What did get under your skin?”
“What he had to say about Genex. I don’t know—maybe I never bothered to take it apart before. Maybe my paychecks and bonuses kept me from thinking. Whatever it was that happened, it happened so gradually that I didn’t notice it. But the things he said about long-range thinking—well, here I was on the inside and knowing even more about what went on with Genex than he did. The more I looked at it, the less I liked it. Maybe I should have left Hal alone. Maybe I should have tuned him out while he talked. But, as I said before, he had me before I knew what was happening.”
Jeremy smiled “Hal’s like that. He has a theory that a quiet voice in a noisy room is louder than a shout. He thinks quietly and loud that way too,” The centerpiece chimed softly and the drawer slid out. Jeremy took the plate-tongs from the rack and lifted the steak and its perfectly cooked side-dishes over to Phyllis.
“Thanks. Well, I met a boy at Fort Wargod. A blue-eyed innocent of a cadet. Maybe it was moonlight. Moonlight’s twice as tricky on Mars, you know. Maybe it’s because I’m a little crazy, and can’t resist trying things out on people. Well, this kid needed to be impressed worse than anyone I ever met. Before I knew it we were on the parapet looking at Earth, hanging out there so bright and blue, and I was spilling all this stuff about colonies, dominions, and the patriotism of the second-generation Martian. Loose talk. Really, I don’t know how much of it I believed myself.”
She shook herself suddenly, all over, as if trying to wriggle out of something tight and hot. Pulling herself together with an effort, she cut into her steak busily.
“Well,” she said after she had swallowed the first bite, “my blue-eyed babe in the woods turned out to be a Genex man, put there for the specific purpose of finding out where my indoctrination stood.”
Jeremy roared with laughter, a great cruel burst of it. He cut it off instantly and leaned forward. “So it happened to you,” he said viciously. “I’m mighty glad to hear it. Some sweet and gentle character made you open up your heart, did he? Tell me something, slicker—did you try to give him some of your company’s stock?”
This hit home. In sudden anger she stopped eating and cursed Jeremy. Then all at once, she smiled and shrugged. It was an odd little gesture and the resignation in it made that something within him flinch again. Phyllis had tried so hard, for so long, to cover up that soft, lost part of her. She had succeeded so well, until now. She was such a magnificent product of her own determinations, and it hurt him to see such a product spoiled, even though he hated everything it represented. So he said, “I’m sorry,” and to his surprise, the words tasted good in his mouth.
“So here I am,” she said in a low voice. “I failed with Hal, as I should have expected. I got quite a carpeting for it, and for that business with the cadet. And then Hal wrote that letter. Genex carries the mails. Every big brain in the place, and a lot of little ones, has been racking over it ever since. And they put me on to you. This is supposed to be my last chance—my double or nothing play. If I get that process from you, I get back where I was. On probation, of course, but I’ll string along with Genex. If I fail, I’m done. Outside of Genex there isn’t much doing, and I don’t doubt that I’m pretty thoroughly blacklisted.”
“You are,” he said flatly. “I get the score now. These plugs around here are supposed to keep you with me until you get the info. Hmm. Suppose I leave?”
“I go with you. I keep after you, I catch up with you some way, I keep trying.
“How long is this supposed to go on?”
“Until I get the process. Or until Genex gets the pipe hauling contract from the Government. In which case I’m automatically out.”
“Suppose you quit trying?”
“Then I’m out, as of that moment.”
“In other words, your fate is in my hands, to corn a phrase.”
“I guess it is, Jeremy.” And to his utter astonishment, she began to cry with her mouth open. For such an accomplished actress, she did it very badly indeed. Her heart was in it.
Jeremy sat back and watched her, his brain racing. Hal’s letter had taken on a few new meanings, but not enough. “Be good, little man.” The rest of that old routine was “And if you can’t be good, be careful.” Well, maybe he could have been more careful, but Phyllis seemed to have responded well enough to the bulldozer treatment. Jeremy knew what was the matter with her. She was scared. She had lived by her not inconsiderable wits for a long time, and the clear picture of the end of the line she was facing was a frightening one.
But what about the process? Now it was up to Jeremy to figure it out!
Hal had done his astute best to explain the process to Jeremy Jedd in that letter. Somewhere in that letter, somewhere in the odd fact of Phyllis’s being here—in these three places were components of the process.
She was quieter now.
“Sorry,” she sniffled. “I’m in a bad way, I guess. Do you know why I was crying? It was because you didn’t get up and leave when I told you all this. You will help me, Jeremy? You will?”
“Help you? How can I?”
“Tell me the process.” She leaned closer, excitedly. “Or tell me something almost as good as your process, but better than what Genex has.
“You’re very flattering.” She really thought he had the process, then. Be good, little man. He’d have to be. But good. “I gather Genex has set up a welding plant on Mars. Why are they worried?”
“Power,” she answered. “There are only two power-piles on Mars, and they’re worked to the limit. They’re so heavy, with the shielding and all. Shipping space is so scarce, with foodstuffs, development equipment and so on, that piles aren’t set up until they are absolutely essential. Power is rationed, and it is costing Genex a fortune for the piddling amount they need to process sheet stock into pipe. Their advantage, of course, is to procure the space for themselves and get rid of one more independent outfit.”
“Uh-huh. The fight is really over a much bigger thing than pipe. Hmm. And the outfit that finds a way to ship pipe in less space than sheet stock, gets the contract and for once has a solid footing against the corporation’s expansion.”
“But how can you do it, Jeremy? How can you possibly ship pipe in less space than stacks of plastic sheet?”
He smiled. “You really think I’ll tell you, don’t you? I have no reason to trust you. You have thrown yourself on my mercy, more or less, and given me the choice of saving your skin—your career, anyway—I suppose you call it that—at the risk of having you hand the process to Genex and not only kill off Jedd & Jedd but also kill the brightest chance in fifty years of checking the monopoly. Nope. I’m telling you nothing.” I wish someone would tell me, he added to himself.
“But you still stick around,” she said thoughtfully. “You met me at the spaceport, you don’t throw me to the wolves wh
en you have a chance, you—why, you don’t know the process yourself!”
“On the contrary. I’m just sitting here cruelly amusing myself. I’ve waited years to see you crawl.”
“I’m not going to listen to you,” she said tightly. “I think I’m right. The only thing I can do is to help you to figure it out. That letter. You. Me. The process is right here at this table, if we can only find out how to put it together.”
“This is going to be very entertaining,” said Jeremy, far more jovially than he felt. How could this girl, who in the long run operated so stupidly, be so incredibly sharp in detail? “Where would you start?”
“With the letter,” she said promptly. She closed her eyes and her lips moved. It dawned on him that she had thoroughly memorized the letter. She opened her eyes wide and asked, “Who is Budgie?”
“A childhood companion,” he said, a little taken aback.
“That’s a lie. Every fairly close associate you have ever had in your life has been checked.”
Jeremy’s mouth slowly opened. Then he brought a hand crashing down on the table and bellowed with laughter.
“Do you mean to tell me,” he gasped, “that Genex’s investigators have been gravely looking through lists of my schoolmates, cousins, bartenders and dates looking for Budgie?”
“We—they tried everything,” she said, and added, “Stop that silly cackling. Who was it?”
He held up an irritating forefinger. “Ah-ah! Manners, now. Let us act like ladies and gentlemen, chicken, or I send you to the salt mines.”
“I’m sorry,” she said angrily. He set his mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said with a great deal more sincerity.
“Better,” he said. “Now then, I don’t think it’ll hurt to tell you. Budgie was a parakeet we used to have. He was around very nearly twenty years. We gave him a fine funeral.”
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