you are aware that my personal I phone is equipped to receive a maximum-security return call.'
The Special Service officer made no direct reply. Instead he answered, 'Doctor, I'll be blunt and save time. Until you explain your business, you aren't going to get any where. If you switch off and call the Palace again, your call will be routed to this office. Call a hundred times? or a month from now. Same thing. Until you decide to cooperate.'
Jubal smiled happily. 'It won't be necessary now, as you have let slip - unwittingly, or was it intentional? - the one datum needed before we act. If we do. I can hold them off the rest of the day? but the code word is no longer 'Berquist.''
'What the devil do you mean?'
'My dear Captain, please! Not over an unscrambled circuit surely? But you know, or should know, that I am a senior philosophunculist on active duty.'
'Repeat?'
'Haven't you studied amphigory? Gad, what they teach in schools these days! Go back to your pinochle game; I don't need you.' Jubal switched off at once, set the phone for ten minutes refusal, said, 'Come along, kids,' and returned to his favorite loafing spot near the pool. There he cautioned Anne to keep her Witness robe at hand day and night until further notice, told Mike to stay in earshot, and gave Miriam instructions concerning the telephone. Then he relaxed.
He was not displeased with his efforts. He had not expected to be able to reach the Secretary General at once, through official channels. He felt that his morning's reconnaissance had developed at least one weak spot in the wall surrounding the Secretary and he expected - or hoped - that his stormy session with Captain Heinrich would bring a return call? from a higher level.
Or something.
If not, the exchange of compliments with the S.S. cop had been rewarding in itself and had left him in a warm glow of artistic post-fructification. Harshaw held that certain feet were made for stepping on, in order to improve the breed, promote the general welfare, and minimize the ancient insolence of office; he had seen at once that Heinrich had such feet.
But, if no action developed, Harshaw wondered how long he could afford to wait? In addition to the pending collapse of his 'time bomb' and the fact that he had, in effect, promised Jill that he would take steps on behalf of Ben Caxton (why couldn't the child see that Ben probably could not be helped - indeed, was almost certainly beyond help - and that any direct or hasty action minimized Mike's chance of keeping his freedom?) - in addition to these two factors, something new was crowding him: Duke was gone.
Gone for the day, gone for good (or gone for bad), Jubal did not know. Duke had been present at dinner the night before, had not shown up for breakfast. Neither event was noteworthy in Harshaw's loosely coupled household and no one else appeared to have missed Duke. Jubal himself would not ordinarily have noticed unless he had had occasion to yell for Duke. But this morning Jubal had, of course, noticed? and he had refrained from shouting for Duke at least twice on occasions when he normally would have done so.
Jubal looked glumly across the pool, watched Mike attempt to perform a dive exactly as Dorcas had just performed it, and admitted to himself that he had not shouted for Duke when he needed him, on purpose. The truth was that he simply did not want to ask the Bear what had happened to Algy. The Bear might answer.
Well, there was only one way to cope with that sort of weakness. 'Mike! Come here.'
'Yes, Jubal.' The Man from Mars got out of the pool and trotted over like an eager puppy, waited. Harshaw looked him over, decided that he must weigh at least twenty pounds more than he had on arrival? and all of it appeared to be muscle. 'Mike, do you know where Duke is?'
'No, Jubal.'
Well, that settled it; the boy didn't know how to lie - wait, hold it! Jubal reminded himself of Mike's computer- like habit of answering exactly the question asked? and Mike had not known, or had not appeared to know, where that pesky box was, once it was gone. 'Mike, when did you see him last?'
'I saw Duke go upstairs when Jill and I came downstairs, this morning when time to cook breakfast.' Mike added proudly, 'I helped cooking.'
'That was the last time you saw Duke?'
'I am not see Duke since, Jubal. I proudly burned toast.'
'I'll bet you did. You'll make some woman a fine husband yet, if you aren't careful.'
'Oh, I burned it most carefully.'
'Jubal-'
'Huh? Yes, Anne?'
'Duke grabbed an early breakfast and lit out for town. I thought you knew.'
'Well,' Jubal temporized, 'he did say something about it. I thought he intended to leave after lunch today. No matter, it'll keep.' Jubal realized suddenly that a great load had been lifted from his mind. Not that Duke meant anything to him, other than as an efficient handyman - no, of course not! For many years he had avoided letting any human being be important to him - but, just the same, he had to admit that it would have troubled him. A little, anyhow.
What statute was violated, if any, in turning a man exactly ninety degrees from everything else?
Not murder, not as long as the lad used it only in self-defense or in the proper defense of another, such as Jill. Possibly the supposedly obsolete Pennsylvania laws against witchcraft would apply? but it would be interesting to see how a prosecutor would manage to word an indictment.
A civil action might lie - could harboring the Man from Mars be construed as 'maintaining an attractive nuisance?' Possibly. But it was more likely that radically new rules of law must evolve. Mike had already kicked the bottom out of both medicine and physics, even though the practitioners of such were still innocently unaware of the chaos facing them. Harshaw dug far back into his memory and recalled the personal tragedy that relativistic mechanics had proved to be for many distinguished scientists. Unable to digest it through long habit of mind, they had taken refuge in blind anger at Einstein himself and any who dared to take him seriously. But their refuge had been a dead end; all that inflexible old guard could do was to die and let younger minds, still limber, take over.
Harshaw recalled that his grandfather had told him of much the same thing happening in the field of medicine when the germ theory came along; many older physicians had gone to their graves calling Pasteur a liar, a fool, or worse - and without examining evidence which their 'common sense' told them was impossible.
Well, he could see that Mike was going to cause more hooraw than Pasteur and Einstein combined - squared and cubed. Which reminded him - 'Larry! Where's Larry?'
'Here, Boss,' the loudspeaker mounted under the eaves behind him announced. 'Down in the shop.'
'Got the panic button?'
'Sure thing. You said to sleep with it on me. I do. I did.'
'Bounce up here to the house and let me have it. No, give it to Anne. Anne, you keep it with your robe.'
She nodded. Larry's voice answered, 'Right away, Boss. Count down coming up?'
'Just do it.' Jubal looked up and was startled to find that the Man from Mars was still standing in front of him, quiet as a sculptured figure. Sculpture? Yes, he did remind one of sculpture? uh - Jubal searched his memory. Michelangelo's 'David,' that was it! Yes, even to the puppyish hands and feet, the serenely sensual face, the tousled, too-long hair. 'That was all I wanted, Mike.'
'Yes, Jubal.'
But Mike continued to stand there. Jubal said, 'Something on your mind?'
'About what I was seeing in that goddam-noisy-box. You said, 'All right, go ahead. But come talk to me about it later.''
'Oh.' Harshaw recalled the broadcast services of the Church of the New Revelation and winced. 'Yes, we will talk. But first - Don't call that thing a goddam noisy box. It is a stereovision receiver. Call it that.'
Mike looked puzzled. 'It is not a goddam-noisy-box? I heard you not rightly?'
'You heard me rightly and it is indeed a goddam noisy box. You'll hear me call it that again. And other things. But you must call it a stereovision receiver.'
'I will call it a 'stereovision receiver.' Why, Jubal? I do not grok.'
Harshaw sighed, with a tired feeling that he had climbed these same stairs too many times. Any conversation with Smith turned up at least one bit of human behavior which could not be justified logically, at least in terms that Smith could understand, and attempts to do so were endlessly time-consuming. 'I do not grok it myself, Mike,' he
