James Blish - Cities in Flight

“No, I didn’t tell you. But as a matter of fact I did bring them in yesterday.”

“And you’re still bringing them in today, I see.” MacHinery perked his chin over his shoulder toward Horsefield, whose face had frozen into complete tetany as soon as he had shown signs of realizing what was going on. “What about this, Horsefield? Is this one of your men that you haven’t told me about?”

“No,” Horsefield said, but putting a sort of a question mark into the way he spoke the word, as though he did not mean to deny anything which he might later be expected to affirm. “Saw the man yesterday, I think. For the first time to the best of my knowledge.”

“I see. Would you say, General, that this man is no part of the Army’s assigned complement on the project?”

“I can’t say that for sure,” Horsefield said, his voice sounding more positive now that he was voicing a doubt. “I’d have to consult my T.O. Perhaps he’s somebody new in Alsos’ group. He’s not part of my staff, though—doesn’t claim that he is, does he?”

“Gunn, what about this man? Did you people take him on without checking with me? Does he have security clearance?”

“Well, we did in a way, but he didn’t need to be cleared,” Gunn said. “He’s just a field collector, hasn’t any real part in the research work, no official connection. These field people are all volunteers; you know that.”

MacHinery’s brows were drawing closer and closer together. With only a few more of these questions, Paige knew even from the few newspapers which had reached him in space, he would have material enough for an arrest and a sensation—the kind of sensation which would pillory Pfitzner, destroy every civilian working for Pfitzner, trigger a long chain of courts martial among the military assignees, ruin the politicians who had sponsored the research, and thicken MacHinery’s scrapbook of headlines about himself by at least three inches. That last outcome was the only one in which MacHinery was really interested; that the project itself would die was a side-effect which, though nearly inevitable, could hardly have interested him less.

“Excuse me, Mr. Gunn,” Anne said quietly. “I don’t think you’re quite as familiar with Colonel Russell’s status as I am. He’s just come in from deep space, and his security record has been in the ‘Clean and Routine’ file for years; he’s not one of our ordinary field collectors.”

“Ah,” Gunn said. “I’d forgotten, but that’s quite true.” Since it was both true and perfectly irrelevant, Paige could not understand why Gunn was quite so hearty about agreeing to it. Did he think Anne was staffing?

“As a matter of fact,” Anne proceeded steadily, “Colonel Russell is a planetary ecologist specializing in the satellites; he’s been doing important work for us. He’s quite well known in space, and has many friends on the Bridge team and elsewhere. That’s correct, isn’t it, Colonel Russell?”

“I know most of the Bridge gang,” Paige agreed, but he barely managed to make his assent audible. What the girl was saying added up to something very like a big, black lie. And lying to MacHinery was a short cut to ruin; only MacHinery had the privilege of lying, never his witnesses.

“The samples Colonel Russell brought us yesterday contained crucial material,” Anne said. “That’s why I asked him to come back; we needed his advice. And if his samples turn out to be as important as they seem, they’ll save the taxpayers quite a lot of money—they may help us close out the project a long time in advance of the projected closing date. If that’s to be possible, Colonel Russell will have to guide the last steps of the work personally; he’s the only one who knows the microflora of the Jovian satellites well enough to interpret the results.”

MacHinery looked dubiously over Paige’s shoulder. It was hard to tell whether or not he had heard a word. Nevertheless, it was evident that Anne had chosen her final approach with great care, for if MacHinery had any weakness at all, it was the enormous cost of his continual, overlapping investigations. Lately he had begun to be nearly as sure death on “waste in government” as he was traditionally on “subversives.” He said at last:

“There’s obviously something irregular here. If all that’s so, why did the man say what he said in the beginning?”

“Perhaps because it’s also true,” Paige said sharply.

MacHinery ignored him. “We’ll check the records and call anyone we need. Horsefield, let’s go.”

The general trailed him out, his back very stiff, after a glare at Paige which failed to be in the least convincing, and an outrageously stagey wink at Anne. The moment the outer door closed behind the two, the reception-room seemed to explode. Gunn swung on Anne with a motion astonishingly tiger-like for so mild-faced a man. Anne was already rising from behind her desk, her face twisted with fear and fury. Both of them were shouting at once.

“Now see what you’ve done with your damned nosiness—”

“What in the world did you want to tell MacHinery a tale like that for-”

“—even a spaceman should know better than to hang around a defense area—”

“—you know as well as I do that those Ganymede samples are trash—”

“—you’ve probably cost us our whole appropriation with your snooping—”

“—we’ve never hired a ‘Clean and Routine’ man since the project began—”

“—I hope you’re satisfied—”

“—I would have thought you’d have better sense by now—”

“Quiet!” Paige shouted over them with the authentic parade-ground blare. He had never found any use for it in deep space, but it worked now. Both of them looked at him, their mouths still incongruously half-opened, their faces white as milk. “You act like a pair of hysterical chickens, both of you! I’m sorry if I got you into trouble—but I didn’t ask Anne to lie in my behalf—and I didn’t ask you to go along with it, either, Gunn! Maybe you’d best stop yelling accusations and try to think the thing through. I’ll try to help for whatever that’s worth—but not if you’re going to scream and weep at each other and at me!”

The girl bared her teeth at him in a real snarl, the first time he had ever seen a human being mount such an expression and mean it. She sat down, however, swiping at her patchily red cheeks with a piece of cleansing tissue. Gunn looked down at the carpet and just breathed noisily for a moment, putting the palms of his hands together solemnly before his white lips.

“I quite agree,” Gunn said after a moment, as calmly as if nothing had happened. “We’ll have to get to work and work fast. Anne, please tell me: why was it necessary for you to say that Colonel Paige was essential to the project? I’m not accusing you of anything, but we need to know the facts.”

“I went to dinner with Colonel Russell last night,” Anne said. “I was somewhat indiscreet about the project. At the end of the evening we had a quarrel which was probably overheard by at least two of MacHinery’s amateur informers in the restaurant. I had to lie for my own protection as well as Colonel Russell’s.”

“But you have an Eavesdropper! If you knew that you might be overheard—”

“I knew it well enough. But I lost my temper. You know how these things go.”

It all came out as emotionless as a tape recording. Told in these terms, the incident sounded to Paige like something that had happened to someone whom he had never met, whose name he could not even pronounce with certainty. Only the fact that Anne’s eyes were reddened with furious tears offered any bridge between the cold narrative and the charged memory.

“Yes; nasty,” Gunn said reflectively. “Colonel Russell, do you know the Bridge team?”