No wonder Molinari felt sick.

NINE

The members of Terra's delegation to the hastily called conference occupied seats on one side of the long oak table, and now, on the far side, the personages from Lilistar began to emerge from side corridors and find chairs. As a whole they did not look sinister; they looked, in fact, overworked and harried, caught up, as was Terra, by the strain of conducting the war. Obviously they had no time to spare. They were clearly mortal.

'Translation,' a 'Starman said in English, 'will be done by human agency not by machine, as any machine might make a permanent record, which is contrary to our desires here.'

Molinari grunted, nodded.

Now Freneksy appeared; the 'Star delegation and several members of the Terran rose in a show of respect; the 'Starmen clapped their hands as the bald, lean, oddly round-skulled man took a chair at the center of the delegation and began without preliminaries to open a briefcase of documents.

But his eyes. Eric noticed that, as Freneksy glanced briefly up at Molinari and smiled in greeting, Freneksy had what Eric thought of – and recognized in his practice as – paranoid eyes. Once he had learned to spot this, future identification generally came easy. This was not the glittering, restless stare of ordinary suspicion; this was a motionless gaze, a gathering of the totality of faculties within to comprise a single undisturbed psychomotor concentration. Freneksy did not decide to do this; in fact he was helpless, compelled to confront his compatriots and adversaries alike in this fashion, with this unending ensnaring fixity. It was an attentiveness which made empathic understanding impossible; the eyes did not reflect any inner reality; they gave back to the viewer exactly what he himself was. The eyes stopped communication dead; they were a barrier that could not be penetrated this side of the tomb.

Freneksy was not a bureaucrat and he did not – could not even if he tried – subordinate himself to his office. Freneksy remained a man – in the bad sense; he retained, in the midst of the busy activity of official conduct, the essence of the purely personal, as if to him everything was deliberate and intentional – a contest between people, not one between abstract or ideal issues.

What Minister Freneksy does, Eric realized, is to deprive all the others of the sanctity of their office. Of the security-producing reality of their titled position. Facing Freneksy, they became as they were born: isolated and individual, unsupported by the institutions which they were supposed to represent.

Take Molinari. Customarily, the Mole was the UN Secretary; he as an individual had – and properly so – dissolved into his function. But facing Minister Freneksy, the naked, hapless, lonely man reemerged – and was required to stand up to the Minister in this unhappy infinitude. The normal relative-ness of existence, lived with others in a fluctuating state of more or less adequate security, had vanished.

Poor Gino Molinari, Eric thought. Because facing Freneksy the Mole might as well not have become UN Secretary. And meanwhile Minister Freneksy became even more cold, more lifeless; he did not burn with the desire to destroy or dominate: he merely took away what his antagonist possessed – and left him nothing and nowhere, literally.

It was perfectly clear to Eric, at this point, why Molinari's procession of lethal illnesses had not proved fatal. The illnesses were not merely a symptom of the stress under which he lay; they were simultaneously a solution to that stress.

He could not as yet make out quite precisely how the illnesses behaved in order to function as a response to Freneksy. But he had the deep and acute intuition that he would very soon; the confrontation between Freneksy and Molinari lay only moments away, and everything which the Mole had would have to be trotted out, if the Mole wished to survive.

Beside Eric a minor State Department official muttered, 'Oppressive in here, isn't it? Wish they'd open a window or turn on the vent system.'

Eric thought, No mechanical vent system will clear this air. Because the oppression emanates from those seated across from us and it will not depart until they depart – and perhaps not even then.

Leaning toward Eric, Molinari said, 'Sit here beside me.' He drew the chair back. 'Listen, doctor, do you have your bag of instruments with you?'

'It's in my conapt.'

Molinari at once dispatched a robant runner. 'I want you to have the bag at all times.' He cleared his throat, then turned toward those seated on the far side of the table. 'Minister Freneksy, I have a, uh, statement. I'd like to read it; the statement summarizes Earth's present position as regards—'

'Secretary,' Freneksy said suddenly in English, 'before you read any statement I would like to describe the status of the war effort on Front A.' Freneksy rose; an aide at once unrolled a map projection which took effect on the far wall. The room sank into shadow.

Grunting, Molinari placed his written statement back inside the jacket of his uniform; he would not get his opportunity to read it. In an obvious manner he had been pre-empted. And, for a political strategist, this was a grave defeat. The initiative, if it had ever been his, was gone now.

'Our combined armies,' Freneksy stated, 'are shortening their lines for strategic purposes. The reegs are expending inordinate amounts of men and materiel in this area.' He indicated a sector on the map; it lay halfway between two planets of the Alpha System. 'They will not be able to continue this long; I predict a bankruptcy of their strength no later than a month – Terran count – from now. The reegs do not understand yet that this is to be a long war. Victory, for them, must come soon or not at all. We, however—' Freneksy indicated the entire map with a sweep of the pointer. 'We are maturely aware of the over-all strategic meaning of this struggle, and how long it must remain with us in terms of time as well as space. Also, the reegs are spread too thinly. If a major battle were to break out here—' Freneksy indicated the spot '—they could not support their forces already committed. Further, we will have twenty more first-line divisions in action by the end of the Terran year; this is a promise, Secretary. We have yet to call up several classes here on Terra, whereas the reegs have scraped the barrel.' He paused.

Molinari murmured, 'Is your bag here yet, doctor?'

'Not yet,' Eric said, looking for the robant runner; it had not returned.

Leaning close to Eric, the Mole whispered, 'Listen. You know what I've been experiencing lately? Head noises. Rushing sounds – you know, in my ears. Swoop, zwoop. Does that sound like anything?'

Minister Freneksy had continued. 'We have new weapons, also, emanating from Planet Four of the Empire; you will be astonished, Secretary, when you see video clips of them in tactical operation. They are devastating in their accuracy. I will not attempt to describe them in detail now; I prefer to wait until the tapes are available. I personally supervised their engineering and construction.'

His head almost touching Eric's, Molinari whispered, 'And when I turn my head from side to side I get a distinct cracking sound from the base of my neck. Can you hear it?' He turned his head from side to side, nodding in a slow, stiff manner. 'What is that? It resounds unpleasantly as hell in my ears.'

Eric said nothing; he was watching Freneksy, barely paying attention to the whispering from the man beside him.

'Secretary,' Freneksy said, pausing, 'consider this aspect of our joint effort; the reegs' space-drive output has been severely restricted due to the success by our W-bombs. Those which have come off their assembly lines recently – we are informed by MCI – are unreliable, and a number of highly destructive contaminations have occurred in deep space aboard their line ships.'