Lee said idly, 'Whatever happened to Pamela, the girl I'm taking over from?'
'I don't know. She was awfully nice. Kind of a little serious, even more dedicated than most. Irish, and she still talked with that soft brogue they have.'
'What was her last name?'
'McGivern. She wouldn't take anything from anybody, not even Sheila. They'd argue hammer and tongs.'
'Maybe that's why Sheila let her go.'
The little girl was silent for a moment, as they rounded a turn in the wide corridor. Then she said quietly, 'Sheila never fires you from any of these jobs. She might transfer you to some other position, somewhere else. But she'll never fire you.'
'Why not?'
The other wasn't quite happy at the question. 'Well, I suppose if the computers selected you in the first place, you have more than usual ability, and the Central Committee doesn't want to waste it. Besides…' she hesitated for a moment '… you're in on so many top-secret matters that they wouldn't like you to blab them around.' She rolled her eyes. 'I can just see somebody who once worked for the Central Committee sitting down and writing a book about it.'
Lee thought about that. She already had several new things to think about this morning. For one, she had gotten the damnedest impression that Sheila had already known about the attack on Jerry Auburn before she had told her. But then, it was Sheila's job to know everything that happened pertaining to the Central Committee members.
Lily brought them up to an imposing door, similar to that which opened into Sheila Duff-Roberts's salon. Once again, there was no identity screen. She knocked briskly, then reached down for the bright brass knob.
She smiled brightly at Lee, said, 'See you later, dear,' turned and tripped briskly away.
Lee entered, closing the door behind her. She blinked in surprise at the large room's decor. She had stepped from a Roman Renaissance corridor into a chamber which should have been eight thousand miles away, in a Chinese palace or mansion of the Ming dynasty. One had no doubts whatsoever that all of the exquisite furnishings, all of the art, and even the rugs, were genuine antiques. The whole room belonged in a Chinese museum.
There were two occupants—an old man behind an intricately carved ebony desk, and a girl, certainly not over twenty, wearing a sleek, long, yellow, high-collared cheong-sam. She was kneeling upon a dais, plucking a thin Mandarin melody from a jong resting on the floor before her. Her slim fingers played over the instrument as though caressing a lover.
The old man was frail with a wisp of a white beard and a bald head poised forward on his long neck with great natural dignity and grace. He wore the red-tasseled, crystal-topped cap and the navy-blue gown of the scholar.
Lee said formally, after bowing, 'May I trouble your chariot? My name is Lee Garrett.'
His aged eyes took her in for a moment, then the slightest of smiles appeared on his yellowish parchment face. 'My chariot is untroubled. Pray take an honored chair.'
'I am totally unworthy.'
'The unworthiness is mine,' he told her. 'My office is favored by your visit.'
Lee sat across the desk from him and said, 'It is a poor woman's delight.'
'The office shrinks in humble shame before your footsteps.' Fong Hui shook hands with himself, keeping his delicately tapered fingers well within his long loose sleeves.
The Chinese girl who had been playing the jong stood and trotted toward a rear door. She turned without speaking, bobbed several bows, and left.
Fong took Lee in again, the faint smile still in his eyes. 'I suspect that you would have been capable of going through the formal greeting of years past in the original Mandarin.'
Lee Garrett acknowledged the compliment. 'Only awkwardly, Mr. Fong. My father was a diplomat. When I was a young girl he was stationed for two years in the People's Republic in Peking. He was an ardent linguist and always insisted that the family study the language of the nation to which we were posted.'
'Such talents will be welcome in the position Ms. Duff-Roberts tells me you are to occupy.' He smiled faintly again and let his eyes go about the room. 'Undoubtedly, you are surprised at both my office and my attire.'
'I have always been a great admirer of the art and culture of the Celestial Empire, Mr. Fong.'
His thin voice held a touch of exasperation. 'And I have long been displeased by the increasing domination of the Western culture. But I wage a losing battle. The culture of the West sweeps everything before it—its modes of dress, its food, its manners and mores. An accident of history gave the European and North American powers domination over the world for at least the present, so that the habits of the West have prevailed to the detriment of other cultures, not neces-sarily inferior. As to dress, without doubt the Chinese cheong-sam and the Indian sari are far more flattering to the feminine figure than the awkward garb of Europe. And throughout the world now, all cities are beginning to look like Cleveland, Ohio, while such architectural gems as Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Kyoto in Japan are now no longer anything but museums on a grand scale.'
Lee said, 'I agree with you, Mr. Fong. Even Rome now has its seven hills surrounded by sky-high condominiums and high-rise apartment buildings for the antlike existence of the proles, the slums of the welfare state.'
He was obviously enjoying her company. 'My dear,' he said, 'you seem wise beyond your years. Perhaps some evening, after adjusting to your new atmosphere, you will honor me with your presence at dinner. My chef is from Shanghai.'
'I am overwhelmed, Mr. Fong. I consider Chinese cuisine the world's finest.'
The old man touched his wisp of white beard and said, 'And now, my dear, tell me: what are your impressions of the World Club?'
She said hesitantly, 'I am somewhat overwhelmed. Its scope is much greater than I had thought. I am inclined to wonder whether it has bitten off more than it can chew. The problems seem insoluble to me.'
He nodded. 'When I was a boy, confronted with my youthful unsolvable problems and in despair, my father once said, 'What were you worrying about last year at this date?' And I saw on reflection that all my unsolvable problems of that time had, indeed, been solved or lost relevancy. The same might be said to apply to the long-range troubles of man. This is the year 2086. What were our difficulties one century ago in 1986? In those days, savants were aghast at the world's problems; surely they would never be solved. But let us ask the question again. Suppose that an American in the year 1986 was to look back a century to 1886 and consider the problems of that time. The Indian Wars were not quite over; Custer's forces had been destroyed only ten years before and Geronimo had kept the Southwest in a state of siege. Labor troubles were paramount, the anarchists at their peak. The Haymarket bombing killed seven, wounded sixty. The
American Federation of Labor was not yet strong. America was in an unprecedented state of growing pains. The robber barons of industry were taking over the country wholesale. Immigrants were swarming in to the point where nearly half of New York City couldn't speak English, to the dismay of the earlier-arrived Anglo-Saxons.'
Lee laughed softly. 'I see what you mean. By 1986, the problems of 1886 had all been solved, or disappeared. And so, is your suggestion, will be the problems of our time by 2186.'
He smiled in return but then became more serious. 'Tell me, my dear, what do you think of our Sheila Duff- Roberts?'
She said carefully, 'I don't know her very well as yet. She seems very capable.'
The old man nodded. 'I am afraid that she is too prone to take on authority which should remain in the hands of the Central Committee, with the assistance of its candidate members, though I defer to the majority in retaining her as secretary.' He hesitated. 'Nor do I think that she should participate in the sometimes differing currents of the World Club.'
He must have caught the puzzlement in her eyes and said in amusement, 'Did you think that all was accord in the Central Committee, my dear? Happily, it is not. If it were, I myself would withdraw. A frozen program is seldom a valid one, certainly not over a period of time. It was one of the prime weaknesses of the Marxists back in the 19th and 20th centuries. Marx and Engels did their work as early as the first part of the 19th century. Their
