“Oh, I'm such a reeky fool!” Her eyes were staring into: infinity. “I got so mad this morning, over at his place: About something that doesn't matter at all. I mean, I've= done much worse things to people-do them all the time. I think sometimes I'll go crazy, right out of my skull crazy.: Maybe cut my throat in a fit of the blues.”
She sounded as though she meant it. Sheklov's spine crawled.
“Well, surely you haven't done anything you can't put right by apologising,” Sheklov ventured. “I certainly hope you didn't. Like I said, I found Danty kind of interesting, and I hoped I might see him again, talk some more.”
“Really?” She sat up sharply and her eyes lost their glazed look.
“Why not? You know, I must admit I don't like this attitude you find down here, about young people-as though they had to be sort of quarantined. Hell, I'm not so old myself, I'm thirty-five, and back home I have friends from-”
But she wasn't listening. “You mean if I went looking for him I could-well, I could say you wanted me to, not just have to crawl to him and eat dirt?” She jumped to her feet.
“If that would help, sure you can.” --Aod Sheklov thought: I'm going to be a long time figuring oudthe mores herel
“Oh, Donl” Lora exclaimed, clasping her hands. “I love youl”
She rushed forward, jumped on his lap, and thrust her tongue into his mouth.
. xv The melodramatic-yet in a sense very real-self-directed? threat he had uttered to Sheklov had had a curious stabilising effect on Turpin's mind. It couldn't just be the tram-l' quilliser; during his twenty-five-year balancing act, he had', faced all kinds of crises from the risk of divorce to full-',, scale investigations of Energetics General by a House', committee, and he had relied on drugs time and again to tide him over. He knew, what they could and couldn't do.
This state of mind? was unique -a sensation as though all shaft of ice had been thrust clear from his crown to the,°base of his spine.
A.nrl, cue chill seemed to pervade every nook and cranny oў !us being. Ordinarily, while a veetol was hovering on its jets waiting for clearance into a traffic-lane, he was a trifle. scared-particularly when, as now, there was deep water underneath.
Today, though, the notion of having a thousand feet of nothing between him and disaster didn't trouble him in the; least. It was almost enjoyable. He had discovered a sort of pride in his own resilience. He knew better than to surrender to it-pride could be as dangerous as panic-but Sheklov had convinced him that exposure was far from unavoidable after all. (Damn the man! his subconscious added silently. Sabotage by the Navy, or another company, should have occurred to me, not to him!)
The situation was bad. It didn't have to be irremediable. It had better not be.
He had left Russia too soon to learn the same yoga: techniques as Sheklov-they had not been adopted untit long after his injection into the States-but trial and error' had taught him what he needed to think of in order to` calm his mind. He concentrated now on the crucial factors; recalling his own earlier recognition of the value of hav= ing confidence in one's achievements. Sheklov had told., him, more than once since his arrival, that he was still regarded as the most valuable agent ever planted on thin continent-and wasn't there truth in that compliment? His " position as a senior vice-president of EG was virtually impregnable. Energetics General, in most people's minds, was synonymous with the sacred concept of continental defence, and he was looked up to by everyone he came in contact with---even by Prexy's backers, despite their being Navy.
Prexy himself as well, of course-but he didn't count for a fart in a bath-tub.
He slacked the buckles of his seat-harness a little as his confidence grew and grew. Yes, he could believe that Sheklov had been sent to him because his cover was perfect. And they did still set store by him Back There. They must. For the good and sufficient reason that he was the one who had coped. He was the one who had remained afloat when so many others had sunk-been tried and executed, or in a few cases that rankled in his memory killed by a mob, during the bad period of the late seventies when a single month might see as many-as two drnsand lynchings of political suspects, drug-users, and young'=en with long flair or beards.
He was in an almost benevolent mood when the reserved area hove in sight and the pilot called, “Mr. Turpin! We're going in for a landing now-please tighten your harness.”
He was delighted to see how steady his hands were as he gripped the straps.
From the nearby superway it would have been impossible to tell that anything out of the ordinary was occurring in the reserved area. Stands of trees forced with paragibberellins and a rise in the ground concealed the immensely powerful four-enginered helicopters that had brought the service crew. Turpin caught only a brief glimpse of them as his pilot-properly conscious of not having a high enough clearance to enter a reserved area-set down a couple of minutes' walk away. He noticed that their sides were branded with the white figures “33,” and tried to recollect more about the members of this team than simply their names.
Hurrying towards them, he saw that around the nearest 'copter several men in the quasi-military uniforms of fatigues and technical harness (which, he recalled not without pride, he had been instrumental in having adopted to emphasise the dedicated role these men played in Con-
tinental Defense) were milling like ants. With one foot on the ground, the other on the ledge of the 'copter's door, a blond man in his middle thirties was shooting questions by turns at each of his engineers. Turpin knew him instantly, although he had only met him once or twice, and months ago. That was the crew-boss, Gunnar Sandstrom, about whom security had been so dubious when his appointment came up. Because of the behaviour of the Scandinavian governments, of course, who refused to hand over traitors and deserters.
He had just started to call and wave to attract Sandstrom's attention when the howl of another aircraft battered their ears, rising in the blink of an eye from a drone to an intolerable roar. The shadow of it flickered over Turpin a fraction of a second before the noise hit; reflexively he glanced up at -;.he bright sky, and was blinded -in his haste to leave, home, he had forgotten his dark glasses. But he c^ ~ght a glimpse of its white paint-job, nonetheless, ? ua cursed silently. He had hoped to be here before a•:y of the senior security people showed, to plant his . picions about inter-corporation sabotage.
oo late now, though. Somebody very top indeed had arrived. That was no ordinary veetol, but a Mach 3 type, capable of crossing the continent in barely more than an hour.
Its pilot-if it was piloted, and not automatically controlled-set it down with meticulous accuracy in the middle of the cluster of choppers. Almost before the power had been cut its door was thrown open and a heavy-set man with black hair, wearing a bright blue windbreaker and orange pants, jumped to the ground. Sandstrom, naturally, broke off his conversation with his engineers and went running to meet him.
Turpin felt a brief pang of dismay. This was someone he didn't recognize. He'd hoped at least that they would send an acquaintance of his, sympathetic to EG. Still, there was no alternative to putting a bold face on the matter. He too strode up to the newcomer, as he was checking Sandstrom's redbook.
“Good morningl Or rather, good aftemoonl” he said. “I'm Turpin of Energetics General. I left home as soon as I heard what had happened.” He offered his hand.
The black-haired man looked at it for a while, not mov– ing to take it, and then raised piercing eyes to Turpin's face. “Redbook?” he murmured.