Supermind
Washington for his New York departure. He had to make a verbal report
to Andrew J. Burris first, and that consumed quite a lot of time,
since Burris was alternately shocked, horrified, gleeful and confused
about the whole trip, and spent most of his time interrupting Malone
and crying out for God’s vengeance, mercy, justice or understanding.
Then Malone had to dictate a longer report for the written record.
This didn’t take quite as long, since there were no interruptions, but
by the time it was over he felt as if he were going out to become a
Carthusian monk. He felt, as he rubbed his raw throat, that it
wouldn’t be a bad idea at all to take a nice vow of silence for
awhile. He could write people little notes, and they would all treat
him kindly and gently. He would be pointed out to strangers, and
people would try to do him favors.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t take the vow at once. During his absence,
his desk log showed, several calls had come in, all of which had to be
taken care of at once. Some of them dealt with evidence or statements
from old cases, some were just nuisances. The most urgent was from Dr.
O’Connor at Yucca Flats.
“If you’re not too busy,” O’Connor said in his icily polite tone, “I
would like to have Miss Thompson back as soon as possible.” He sounded
as if Malone had borrowed his scalpel.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Malone said carefully.
“There is a new series of tests,” O’Connor said, “on which I am now at
work; the assistance of Miss Thompson would be invaluable to me at
this time.”
After he’d hung up, Malone called Her Majesty at her Washington hotel.
She was very glad of the chance to return to Yucca Flats, she said.
There, Malone knew, she would be able to return to her accustomed
dignity as Queen of the Greater English Commonwealth, a district
which, in her mind, seemed to include the greater part of the Western
world. On her present mission, she was plain Miss Thompson and, though
the idea of going about incognito had its charms, it became a little
dull after awhile. The adventuring was fine, although a little rougher
than she’d thought it would be; the sight of the Queen’s Own FBI in
action was still a powerful attraction for Her Majesty. But the peace
and quiet and dignity of Her Own Royal Palace won out without too much
trouble.
“Of course,” Malone said, “you’ll be on call in case I need you.”
“I am always in touch with my subjects,” Her Majesty said with
dignity, “and most especially with you, Sir Kenneth. I shall so
remain.”
And then there was a little paperwork to take care of. By the time
Malone had finished, he would have been glad to teleport to New York
on his own. But on reflection he decided that he would much rather
travel with Lou, and hurried down to the airport.
By the time the plane landed at La Guardia, and they’d taken
a ’copter to the East Side Terminal and a taxi to the big
blue-aluminum-and-glass Ravell Building, Malone had reached a new
decision. It would be nothing short of wonderful, he felt, if he
could spend the rest of his life traveling around with Luba Garbitsch.
Of course, that name was something of a handicap. It was hardly a
romantic one. He wondered, very briefly, whether or not “Luba Malone”
were an improvement. But he buried the thought before it got any
further. Enough, he told himself firmly, was enough.
“It’s been a nice trip,” Lou said. She, too, sounded subdued, as if
she were thinking about something terribly serious.
“Great,” Malone said happily. “A wonderful trip.”
“I enjoyed being with you,” Lou said.
“Me, too,” Malone said. He paid off the taxi-driver and they got out
at the corner. Malone went to the newsstand there and picked up a copy
of the _Post_.
“That,” Lou said over his shoulder, “is one whole hell of a headline.”
It filled the entire page, four lines of thick black capitals:
JUDGE
DROPS
UNION
SUIT!
“Well, well,” Malone said. “Let’s see what this is all about.” He
flipped to page three. Lou craned her neck over his shoulder and they
read the start of the story together.
DISTRICT COURT RULES UNION HAS NO CASE
New York [AP], August 23. Judge James Lefkowitz
of the New York Supreme Court ruled today that
the International Truckers’ Brotherhood had no
grounds for their suit against the United Transport
Corp. and its officers. The action, a bitterly
fought contest, involved a complaint by the
Brotherhood that UTC had violated their contract
with the Brotherhood by hiring “unqualified drivers”
to work for the corporation.
In a statement made immediately after the ruling,
Judge Lefkowitz said: “It is obvious that a man with
a state-certified chauffeur’s license is not an
‘unqualified driver.’”
Effects of this ruling are thought to be
far-reaching. Comment from the international
Truckers’ Brotherhood....
There was more to it, a lot more, but Malone didn’t feel like reading
it. It sounded just as confused as he expected news to sound these
days, but it also sounded a little dull. He could feel Lou’s breathing
against his ear as he read, and he lost interest in the paper almost
at once.
“My, my,” she said. “And I expected a real exposé of a story, after
that headline.”
“This is an exposé,” Malone said. “But I’m not sure what of.”
“It sounds pretty confused,” Lou said.
“Everything seems to, these days,” Malone said. “Including any story
of what’s been happening during the last little while.”
“Agreed,” Lou said. “Without argument.”
“Listen,” Malone said suddenly. “Would it help if I went up and told
Sir Lewis that there’s no mark against your record?”
“Mark?” Lou said. “Against my record?”
“Well,” Malone said, “I mean—well, he isn’t the sort of man who’d
fire somebody, because of—because of something like this?”
“You mean because I know an FBI man?” Lou said.
“I—”
“Never mind,” she said. “I know what you mean. And he won’t. He’ll
understand.” She came round to face him, and patted his cheek.
“Thanks,” she said. “Thanks a lot, anyway.”
“If there’s anything I can do—”
“There won’t be,” Lou said. “You’ll call me, though, about tonight?”
“Sure I will,” Malone said. He hoped that the tentative date he’d made
with her for that evening wouldn’t be broken up because of a sudden
onslaught of work. “I’ll let you know before five, for sure.”
“Fine,” Lou said. “I’ll wait to hear from you.”
She turned to walk away.
“Hey,” Malone said. “Wait a minute.”
“What?” she said, turning again.
Malone looked judicious. “I think,” he said weightily, “that,
considering all the fun we’ve had, and all the adventuring and
everything else, the least you could do would be to kiss me goodbye.”
“On Fifth Avenue?”
“No,” Malone said. He tapped his lips. “Here.”
She laughed, bent closer and pecked him on the cheek. Then, before he
could say anything else, she was gone.
10
On the way to FBI Headquarters on 69th Street, he read the _Post_ a
little more carefully. The judge and his union suit weren’t the only
things that were fouled up, he saw. Things were getting pretty bad all
over.
One story dealt with the recent factional fights inside the American
Association for the Advancement of Medicine. A new group, the United
States Medical-Professional Society, appeared to be forming as a
competitor to the AAAM, and Malone wasn’t quite so sure, when he
thought about it, that this news was as bad as it appeared on the
surface. Fights between doctors, of course, were reasonably rare, at
least on the high hysterical level the story appeared to pinpoint. But
the AAAM had held a monopoly in the medical field for a long time;
maybe it was about time some competition showed itself. From what he
could find out in the story, the USMPS seemed like a group of fairly
sensible people.
But that was one of the few rays of light Malone could discern amid
the encircling bloom of the news. The gang wars had reached a new
high; the _Post_ was now publishing what it called a Daily Scoreboard,
which consisted in this particular paper of six deaths, two
disappearances and ten hospitalizations. The six deaths were evenly
scattered throughout the country: two in New York, one each in Chicago
and Detroit, and two more in San Francisco. The disappearances were in
Los Angeles and in Miami, and the hospitalizations were pretty much
all over.
The unions had been having trouble, too. Traditional forms of
controversy appeared to have gone out the window, in favor of
startling disclosures, beatings, wild cries of foul and great masses
of puzzling evidence. How, for instance, Malone wondered, had the
president of Local 7574 of the Fishermen’s Fraternal Brotherhood
managed to mislay a pile of secret records, showing exactly how the
membership was being bilked of dues, on a Boston subway train? But,
somehow, he had, and the records were now causing shakeups, denials
and trouble among the fishermen.
Of course, the news was not all bad. There were always the comic
strips. Pogo was busily staving off an approaching wedding between
Albert Alligator and a new character named Tranquil Portly, who
appeared to be a brown bear. He was running into some resistance,
though, from a wolflike character who planned to abscond with Albert’s
cigars while Albert was honeymooning. This character, Don Coyote by
name, looked like a trouble-maker, and Malone vowed to keep a careful
eye on him.
And then there were other headlines:
FUSION POWER SOON COMMERCIALLY
AVAILABLE SAYS AEC HEAD
Sees Drastic Cut in Power Rates
UN POLICE CONTINGENT OKAYED:
MILLION MEN TO FORM 1ST GROUP
Member Countries Pledge $20
Billion in Support Moneys
OFFICIAL STATES: “WE’RE AHEAD AFTER 17 YEARS!”
US Space Program Tops Russian Achievements
ARMED FORCES TO TOUGHEN TRAINING PROGRAM IN 1974
Gen. Foote: “Our aim is to train fighting men,
not to run a country club.”
GOVERNMENT TO SAVE $1 BILLION ANNUALLY?
Senator Hits Duplication of Effort in Government,
Vows Immediate Reform
Malone read that one a little more carefully, because it looked, at
first sight, like one of the bad-news items. There had been
government-spending reforms before, almost all of which had resulted
in confusion, panic, loss of essential services—and twice as many men
on the payroll, since the government now had to hire useless
efficiency experts, accountants and other such supernumerary workers.
But this time, the reform looked as if it might do some good. Of
course, he told himself sadly, it was still too early to tell.
The senator involved was Deeks, of Massachusetts, who was also in the
news because of a peculiar battle he had had with Senator Furbisher of
Vermont. Congress, Malone noted, was still acting up. Furbisher
claimed that the moneys appropriated for a new Vermont dam were really
being used for the dam. But Deeks had somehow come into possession of
several letters written by a cousin of Furbisher’s, detailing some of
the graft that was going on in the senator’s home state. Furbisher was
busily denying everything, but his cousin was just as busy confessing
all to anybody who would listen. It was building up into an extremely
interesting fracas, and, Malone thought, it would have been even
funnier than Pogo except that it was happening in the Congress of the
United States.
He heaved a sigh, folded up the paper and entered the building that
housed the New York contingent of the FBI.
Boyd was waiting in his office when he arrived.
“Well, there, Kenneth,” he said. “And how are all our little Slavic
brothers?”
“Unreasonable,” Malone said, “and highly unpleasant.”
“You refer, no doubt,” Boyd said, “to the _Meeneestyerstvoh