yesterday.”
“I read you right,” said Oscar smugly.
Grunting, Matia lowered himself into the armchair.
“I can’t ever remember a situation,” he said, “when Ivan was pleased with everything. But conspiracy is the foundation of our business… Take a chair and sit down, both of you. You, Oscar, had no right to be maimed, and you, Ivan, had no right to be arrested. That’s how you should regard it. And what have you got here?” he said, taking off his dark glasses to look at the slugs, “Taking up radio as a hobby in between your work? Laudable, laudable!”
It was evident that they didn’t know a thing. Oscar was leafing through his notebook, where everything was encrypted in his own personal code, and was apparently preparing himself to make a report, while Matia scanned over the slugs with his fleshy nose, holding the glasses aloft in his hand. There was something symbolic in this spectacle.
“And so, agent Zhilin is enriching his leisure with radio technology,” continued Matia, restoring his glasses and leaning back in his chair. “He has lots of free time, he has switched to a four-hour day… And bow do you stand on the question of the meaning of life, agent Zhilin? It appears you may have found it. I hope it won’t be necessary to take you away like agent Rimeyer?”
“It won’t be required,” I said. “I had not enough time to become addicted. Did Rimeyer tell you anything?”
“But of course not,” he said with vast sarcasm. “Why should he do that? He was ordered to find the drug, and he did, and he used it, and now he apparently considers his duty discharged. He became an addict himself, don’t you see. He is silent. He is loaded with this brew up to his ears, and it’s useless to talk to him! He raves that he has murdered you and constantly asks for his radio.” Matia stopped short and gazed at the radios. “Strange,” he said and looked at me. “However, I like orderliness. Oscar got here first, and he has certain deductions both about the goodies and the conduct of the operation. Let’s begin with him.”
I looked at Oscar.
“About what operation?”
“The devil knows,” said Matia. “The raiding of the center. You haven’t located the center yet?”
The hunt is on, I thought, and said, “No, I didn’t. A center I haven’t latched on to. But -”
“All in good order, in proper order,” said Matia severely and banged the table with the flat of his hand. “Oscar, you may begin, and as for you, Ivan, you listen attentively and make your deductions. If you are still capable, that is.”
Oscar began. Obviously he was a good worker. He moved fast, energetically, and purposefully. True, Rimeyer had twisted him around his finger as well as he had me.
Nevertheless, Oscar had been able to grasp much in spite of it.
He understood that the sought—for “goodies” were known locally as “slug.” Very rapidly he had grasped the connection between slug and Devon. He divined that neither the Fishers, nor the Perches, nor the Sorrowers had any relation to our problem. He had deduced with superb insight that in this town it was practically impossible to hide any secret. He had even been able to insinuate himself into the confidence of the Intels, and had established beyond any doubt that there were only two truly secret societies — the Art Patrons and the Intels. Since the Art Patrons could be eliminated, that left only the Intels…
“It was not contrary to the conviction which I had formed,” said Oscar, “that the only people with access to laboratories and capable of conducting scientific or quasi-scientific research were the students and professors in the university. It’s true that the factories in the city also have laboratories. There are only four of them, and I have investigated them all. These laboratories are stringently specialized and are loaded to the limit with ongoing work. As the factories work around the clock, there is no basis whatsoever to postulate that the industrial labs could become centers of slug manufacture. On the other hand, out of the seven university labs, two are obviously surrounded with an atmosphere of mystery. I was unable to determine what goes on in them, but I spotted three students, who, I believe, should know for sure…”
I listened to him intently, amazed at how much he had been able to accomplish here, but it was already all too clear to me where his main error lay. I could see he was following a false trail, and alongside of that, there grew within me a vague feeling of an even more significant error, of a most important error, the error in the underlying premises of the Council.
“I arrived at the visualization,” he continued, “of a gangsterlike organization of the vertical type with rigorously separated functions in decentralized sections. The production section is involved in the manufacture and perfection of the slug… I should inform you that slug, whatever it may be, is being perfected: I was able to establish that in the beginning.
Devon was not employed at all… Next, the marketing section is concerned with expanding the slug distribution, while the strong-arm section terrorizes the population and interdicts all debate on that topic… The intimidation of the people…”
Now I understood it all.
“Just a minute, Oscar,” I said. “Can you guarantee that in the entire city there are only two secret organizations?”
“Yes,” he said. “Only the Art Patrons and the Intels.”
“Please continue, Oscar,” said Matia with displeasure. “I would ask you not to interrupt, Ivan.”
“Sorry,” I said. Oscar continued to talk, but I was no longer listening. Something flared in my mind. The traditional initial model for all our undertakings, with its invariant axiom predicating the existence of a ramified organization of evildoers, had been shattered into dust, and I was only amazed that I had failed heretofore to recognize its inane complexity in the context of this simple-minded country. There were no secret shops guarded by gloomy persons with brass knuckles, there were no wary, unprincipled businessmen, there were no traveling salesmen with double-walled shirt collars stuffed with contraband, and it was quite for nothing that Oscar was drafting the elegant chart of squares and circles, connected by a confusion of lines, and inscribed with the words “center,”
“staff,” and numerous question marks. There was nothing to demolish and be and no one to send off to Baffin Land… But there was modern industry involved in everyday trade, there were state stores where slugs were sold for fifty cents apiece, and there were — but only in the beginning one or two individuals not devoid of inventiveness and dying of inactivity and thirsting for new sensations. And there was the medium-sized country where, once upon a time, abundance and affluence were the end to be attained, and they never did become the means to another end. And that was all that was needed.
Someone inserted a slug into a radio by mistake and lay down in the bath to relax and maybe listen to some good music or to hear the latest news — and it started. The news oozed and remnants of phonors found their way into the garbage ducts, then someone figured out that slugs could be obtained not only from phonors, but could simply be bought in stores. Someone was inspired to use aromatic salts and someone employed Devon.
People started to die in their baths from nervous exhaustion, and the statistical department of the Security Council submitted a top secret report to the Presidium. It became apparent at once that all such deaths occurred with people who had come here as tourists. And furthermore, that there were far more such deaths in this country than anywhere else on the planet. As so often happens, a false theory was constructed on well-verified facts, and we, one after another, well schooled in conspiracy, were sent here to uncover the secret gang of dealers in a new and unknown drug, and we arrived here and did stupid things. But, as always, no labor goes for naught, and if you must look for the guilty, then all were guilty, from the mayor to Rimeyer, and if so, then no one was guilty, and now we have to -
“Ivan,” said Matia irritably, “are you asleep?”
They were both looking at me. Oscar was extending me his notebook with the diagrams. I took the notebook and threw it on the table.
“Listen,” I said. “Oscar has done wonders, of course, but we have come a cropper again! Oscar, you have seen such a lot, but you understood nothing. If there are any people in this land who hate slug, it’s the Intels. The Intels are not gangsters, they are desperate men and patriots. They have but one aim — to stir this bog. By any means. To give this city some kind of purpose, to force it away from the trough They are sacrificing themselves, do you understand? They invite fire upon themselves, they are attempting to arouse the town to come sort of common emotion, even if it has to be hatred. Can it be you haven’t heard of the tear gas, the shooting up of the shivers?
