Stranger in a Strange Land

He considered contemplating the events at the cusp. But they were too new, too recent; he was not ready to enfold them, not ready to praise and cherish the men he had been forced to move. Instead he returned happily to the task he had been on. “Sherbet” “Sherbetlee” “Sherbetzide”—He had reached “Tinwork” and was about to consider “Tiny” when he felt Jill’s touch approaching him. He unswallowed his tongue and made himself ready, knowing that his brother Jill could not remain very long under water without distress.

As she touched him, he reached out, took her face in his hands and kissed her. It was a thing he had learned to do quite lately and he did not feel that he grokked it perfectly. It had the growing-closer of the water ceremony. But it had something else, too… something he wanted very much to grok in perfect fullness.

XVI

JUBAL HARSHAW DID NOT WAIT for Gillian to dig her problem child out of the pool; he left instructions for Dorcas to be given a sedative and hurried to his study, leaving Anne to explain (or not explain) the events of the last ten minutes. “Front!” he called out over his shoulder.

Miriam turned and caught up with him. “I guess I must be ‘front,’” she said breathlessly. “But, Boss, what in the—”

“Girl, not one word.”

“But, Boss—”

“Zip it, I said. Miriam, about a week from now we’ll all sit down and get Anne to tell us what we really did see. But right now everybody and his cousins will be phoning here and reporters will be crawling out of the trees—and I’ve got to make a couple of calls first. I need help. Are you the sort of useless female who comes unstuck when she’s needed? That reminds me—Make a note to dock Dorcas’s pay for the time she spent having hysterics.”

Miriam gasped. “Boss! You just dare do that and every single one of us will quit cold!”

“Nonsense.”

“I mean it. Quit picking on Dorcas. Why, I would have had hysterics myself if she hadn’t beaten me to it.” She added, “I think I’ll have hysterics now.”

Harshaw grinned. “You do and I’ll spank you. All right, put Dorcas down for a bonus for ‘extra hazardous duty.’ Put all of you down for a bonus. Me, especially. I earned it.”

“All right. But who pays your bonus?”

“The taxpayers, of course. We’ll find a way to clip—Damn!” They had reached his study door; the telephone was already demanding attention. He slid into the seat in front of it and keyed in. “Harshaw speaking. Who the devil are you?”

“Skip the routine, Doc,” a face answered cheerfully. “You haven’t frightened me in years. How’s everything going?”

Harshaw recognized the face as belonging to Thomas Mackenzie, production manager-in-chief for New World Networks; he mellowed slightly. “Well enough, Tom. But I’m rushed as can be, so—”

“You’re rushed? Come try my forty-eight hour day. I’ll make it brief. Do you still think you are going to have something for us? I don’t mind the expensive equipment you’ve got tied up; I can overhead that. But business is business—and I have to pay three full crews just to stand by for your signal. Union rules—you know how it is. I want to do you any favor I can. We’ve used lots of your script in the past and we expect to use still more in the future—but I’m beginning to wonder what I’m going to tell our comptroller.”

Harshaw stared at him. “Don’t you think the spot coverage you just got was enough to pay the freight?”

“What spot coverage?”

A few minutes later Harshaw said good-by and switched off, having been convinced that New World Networks had seen nothing of recent events at his home. He stalled off Mackenzie’s questions about it, because he was dismally certain that a factual recital would simply convince Mackenzie that poor old Harshaw had at last gone to pieces. Nor could Harshaw have blamed him.

Instead they agreed that, if nothing worth picking up happened in the next twenty-four hours, New World could break the linkage and remove their cameras and other equipment.

As the screen cleared Harshaw ordered, “Get Larry. Have him fetch that panic button—Anne probably has it.” He then started making another call, followed it with a third. By the time Larry arrived, Harshaw was convinced that no network had been watching when the Special Service squads attempted to raid his home. It was not necessary to check on whether or not the two dozen “hold” messages that he had recorded had been sent; their delivery depended on the same signal that had failed to reach the news channels.

As he turned away from the phone Larry offered him the “panic button” portable radio link. “You wanted this, Boss?”

“I just wanted to sneer at it and see if it sneered back. Larry, let this be a lesson to us: never trust any machinery more complicated than a knife and fork.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“Larry, is there a way to check that dingus and see if it’s working properly? Without actually hauling three networks out of their beds, I mean?”