Smith felt that he had won a little, and lost a little too. He had found many hints of subversive activity, but had betrayed his own lack of certainty by reacting so swiftly to it. Ivan IX, on the other hand, seemed too much at ease, too secure, and even impertinent.
“At our last meeting,” said the Asian, “I suggested a meeting between ourselves. Have you given thought to the matter?”
“I have given it thought,” said the President, “and will agree to the proposal provided you come to this country. The meeting will be held at my capitol.”
“Which you change at random intervals, I notice,” purred Ivan with a bland smile. “For security reasons?”
“You could only know that by espionage!” Smith snapped.
“Your proposal of course is outrageous. The only sensible place for the meeting is in Singapore.”
“That is out of the question. I must insist on the capitol of my government as the only acceptable meeting-place. My government in contacting yours put itself in the position of extending an invitation, a position from which we could not depart without loss of dignity.”
“I suggest we delay the matter then,” grunted the Peoplesfriend. “And talk about the agenda for such a meeting. What did you have in mind?”
“I have already stated our general aims as being a reduction of armament expenses, beneficial to both sides. I think you agree?”
“Not necessarily, since our budget is already rather low. However, make your specific proposals, and I shall consider them. Further economy, where not injurious to security, is always desirable.”
“I propose, then, that we discuss a method whereby agreement might be reached on a plan to divulge the nature of our respective armaments, including number, nature, and purpose of each weapon-class, as a foundation for discussions relating to reductions.”
Smith waited for a flat “no” to the suggestion. The Asian leader apparently knew a great deal more about the West’s armaments than Smith knew about the East. The Peoplesfriend had nothing to gain by revealing the military strength of his own hemisphere. But he paused, watching Smith with an expressionless stare.
“I accept that for further consideration, at least,” Ivan said at last.
John XVI hovered between elation and suspicion. Suspicion won. “Of course there must be some method to assure that accurate figures are divulged.”
“That could probably be settled.”
Again the President was shocked. It was all too easy. Something was rotten about the whole thing. The Peoplesfriend agreed too readily to things that seemed to be to his disadvantage. The discussion continued for several hours, during which both men presented viewpoints and postponed agreement until a later meeting.
“Stockpiles of fissionable material,” said the President, “which could quickly be converted to weapons use should also be discussed.”
Ivan frowned. “I mentioned before that we have no need of atomic armaments, nor any plans for building them. Our defense is secured by something entirely different, a weapon which serves an industrial function in time of peace, and a weapon which I might add was largely responsible for our abandoning Marxism. A single discovery, Andrei Sorkin’s, made communist doctrine not only a wrong solution, but a wrong solution to a problem that had ceased to exist.”
“What problem are you referring to?”
“The use of human beings as automatic devices in a corporate machine—the social-structure of industry, in which the worker was caught and bolted down and expected to perform a single, highly specialized task. That of course, is almost a definition of the word ‘proletarian.’ We no longer have a true proletariat. For that reason, we are no longer Marxist—although the name ‘communist’ has survived with its meaning changed.”
The conference ended after setting the time for another meeting. John Smith XVI felt that he had been groping in the dark, because of the information-vacuum that kept him from even making a reasonable guess as to Ivan’s real aims. He kept feeling vaguely that Ivan was just playing along, reacting according to the opportunity of the moment, not particularly caring what Smith did next. But leaders of states just did not proceed so carelessly—not unless they were fools, or unless they were supremely confident in the ultimate outcome.
The intelligence service analysis of his latest conversation with Ivan gave him something to think about later however. Andrei Sorkin had been a physicist who had done considerable work in crystal-structure before the Big Silence had cut off knowledge of his activities from the West. Further, the Peoplesfriend’s references to industrial usage, coupled with his remarks about specialized labor, seemed to suggest that the East had made great strides in servomechanisms and auto-control devices. But control devices were not weapons in themselves. Electronic rocket-pilots were not weapons unless there were rockets for them to fly. Automatic target-trackers were not weapons unless they guided a weapon to shoot at the target. It made little sense; he concluded that Ivan had not meant it to make much sense. Smith could only interpret it as meaning: “Our weapons are marvelously controlled; therefore we need fewer of them.”
On the probe front, events were about as usual. The lists of suspects and convictions grew bulky enough to keep a large office staff busy with details. More sinister, in the President’s judgment, was the small list of suspects who vanished or committed suicide at the slightest hint of suspicion. The list grew at a slow but steady pace. John assumed that these were certainly guilty. And thorough, searching inquiries into their past activities were made. These post mortem probes revealed nothing. Their records were clean. Their families, friends, relatives, and even their ancestors were above suspicion. If they had sold out to the enemy, they had given him nothing in return for his wages except perhaps a promise to be fulfilled on a Deadline Day.
He called the Secretary of Defense and demanded a
