Larry said,“Don't worry about him, Zusanette. Now then, thismovement. That's kind of a funny name, isn't it? What does it mean?”She was evidently glad that the less than handsome Steve Hackett had left the room. Her words flowed more freely.“Well, Daddy says that they[pg 017]call it the Movement rather than a revolution....”An ice cube manifested itself in the stomach of Lawrence Woolford.“... Because people get conditioned, like, to words. Like revolution. Everybody is against the word because they all think of killing and everything, and, Daddy says, there doesn't have to be any shooting or killing or anything like that at all. It just means a fundamental change in society. And, Daddy says, take the word propaganda. Everybody's got to thinking that it automatically means lies, but it doesn't at all. It just means, like, the arguments you use to convince people that what you stand for is right and it might be lies or it might not. And, Daddy says, take the word socialism. So many people have the wrong idea of what it means that the socialists ought to scrap the word and start using something else to mean what they stand for.”Larry said gently,“Your father is a socialist?”“Oh, no.”He nodded in understanding.“Oh, a Communist, eh?”Susan Self was indignant.“Daddy thinks the Communists are strictly awful, really weird.”Steve Hackett came back into the office. He said to Larry,“I sent a couple of the boys out to pick him up.”Susan was on her feet, a hand to mouth.“You mean my father! You're going to arrest him!”Larry said soothingly,“Sit down, Zusanette. There's a lot of things about this that I'm sure your father can explain.”He said to Steve,“She tells me that the money belonged to a movement. A revolutionary movement which doesn't use the term revolutionary because people react unfavorably to that word. It's not Commie.”Susan said indignantly,“It's American, not anything foreign!”Steve growled,“Let's get back to the money. What's this movement doing with a lot of counterfeit bills and where did you find them?”She evidently figured she'd gone too far now to take a stand.“It's not Daddy's fault,”she said.“He took me to headquarters twice.”“Where's headquarters?”Larry said trying to keep his voice soothing.“Well ... I don't know. Daddy was awfully silly about it. He tied his handkerchief around my eyes near the end. But the others complained about me anyway, and Daddy got awfully mad and said something about the young people of the country participating in their emancipation and all, but the others got mad too, and said there wasn't any kind of help I could do around headquarters anyway, and I'd be better off in school. Everybody got awfully mad, but after the second time Daddy promised not to take me to headquarters any more.”“But where did you find the money, Zusannette?”Larry said.“At headquarters. There's tons and tons of it there.”Larry cleared his throat and said,“When you say tons and tons, you mean a great deal of it, eh?”She was proudly definite.“I mean[pg 018]tons and tons. A ton is two thousand pounds.”“Look, Zusanette,”Larry said reasonably.“I don't know how much money weighs, exactly, but let's say a pound would be, say, a thousand bills.”He took up a pencil and scribbled on a pad before him.“A pound of fifties would be $50,000. Then if you multiply that by 2,000 pounds to make a ton, you'd have $100,000,000. And you say there's tons and tons?”“And that's just the fifties,”Susan said triumphantly.“So you can see the two little packages I picked up aren't really important at all. It's just like I found them.”“I don't think there's quite a thousand bills in a pound,”Steve said weakly.Larry said,“How much other money is there?”“Oh, piles. Whole rooms. Rooms after rooms. And hundred dollar bills, and twenties, and fives, and tens—”Larry said,“Look, Zusanette, I don't think you're in any position to be telling us whoppers. This whole story doesn't make much sense, does it?”Her mouth tightened.“I'm not going to say anything more until Daddy gets here, anyway,”she said.Which was when the phone rang.“I have an idea that's for me,”Steve said.The screen lit up and LaVerne Polk said,“Call for Steve Hackett, Larry.”Larry pushed the phone around so Steve could look into it. LaVerne flicked off and was replaced by a stranger in uniform. Steve said,“Yeah?”The cop said,“He's flown the coop, sir. Must have got out just minutes before we arrived. Couldn't have taken more than a suitcase. Few papers scattered around the room he used for an office.”Susan gasped,“You mean Daddy?”Steve Hackett rubbed a hand over his flattened nose.“Holy Smokes,”he said. He thanked the cop and flicked off.Larry said,“Look Zusanette, everything's going to be all right. Nothing will happen to you. You say you managed to pick up two packets of all this money they have at headquarters. O.K. So you thought it wouldn't be missed and you've always wanted to spend money the way you see the stars do on TriD and in the movies.”She looked at him, taken back.“How did you know?”Larry said dryly,“I've always wanted to myself. But I would like to know one more thing. The Movement. What was it going to do with all this money?”That evidently puzzled her.“The Professor said they were going to spend it on chorus girls. I guess ... I guess he was joking or something. But Daddy and I'd just been up to New York and we saw those famous precision dancers at the New Roxy Theatre and all and then when we got back the Professor and Daddy were talking and I heard him say it.”Steve said, carefully,“Professor who?”Susan said,“Just the Professor. That's all we ever call him.”Her chin went to trembling still again.[pg 019]Larry summed it up for the Boss later.His chief scoffed his disbelief.“The child is full of dreams, Lawrence. It comes from seeing an over-abundance of these TriD shows. I have a girl the same age. I don't know what is happening to the country. They have no sense of reality.”Larry Woolford said mildly,“Well, she might be full of nonsense, but she did have the fifties, and she's our only connection with whoever printed them whether it's a movement to overthrow the government, or what.”The Boss said tolerantly,“Movement, indeed. Obviously, her father produced them and she purloined a quantity before he was ready to attempt to pass them. Have you a run down on him yet?”“Susan Self says her father, Ernest Self, is an inventor. Steve Hackett is working on locating him.”“He's an inventor indeed. Evidently, he has invented a perfect counterfeiting device. However, that is the Secret Service's headache, not ours. Do you wish to resume that vacation of yours, Lawrence?”His operative twisted his face in a grimace.“Sure, I do, but I'm not happy about this, sir. What happens if there really is an organization, a Movement, like she said? That brings it back under our jurisdiction, anti-subversion.”The other shook his head tolerantly.“See here, Lawrence, when you begin scheming a social revolution you can't plan on an organization composed of a small number of persons who keep their existence secret. In spite of what a good many persons seem to believe, revolutions are not accomplished by handfuls of conspirators hiding in cellars and eventually overthrowing society by dramatically shooting the President, or King, or Czar, or whoever. Revolutions are precipitated by masses of people. People who have ample cause to be against whatever the current government happens to be. Usually, they are on the point of actual starvation. Have you ever read Machiavelli?”Niccolo Machiavelli was currentlythe thingto read. Larry said with a certain dignity,“I've gone through‘The Prince,’the‘Discourses’and currently I'm amusing myself with his‘History of Florence.’”“Anybody who can amuse himself reading Machiavelli,”the Boss said dryly,“has a macabre sense of humor. At any rate, what I was alluding to was where he stated that the Prince cannot rule indefinitely in the face of the active opposition of his people. Therefore, the people always get a government that lies within the limits of their tolerance. It may be on one edge or the other of their limits of tolerance—but it's always within their tolerance zone.”Larry frowned and said,“Well, what's your point, sir?”The Boss said patiently,“I'm just observing that cultures aren't overthrown by little handfuls of secret conspirators. You might eliminate a few individuals in that manner, in other words change the personnel of[pg 020]the government, but you aren't going to alter a socio-economic system. That can't be done until your people have been pushed outside their limits of tolerance. Very well then. A revolutionary organization must get out and propagandize. It has got to convince the people that they are being pushed beyond endurance. You have got to get themassesto moving. You have to give speeches, print newspapers, books, pamphlets, you have got to send your organizers out to intensify interest in your program.”Larry said,“I see what you mean. If this so-called Movement actually existed it couldn't expect to get anywhere as long as remained secret.”The Boss nodded.“That is correct. Theleadersof a revolutionary movement might be intellectuals, social scientists, scholars—in fact they usually are—take our own American Revolution with Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Washington. Or the French Revolution with Robespierre, Danton, Marat, Engels and Lenin. All were well educated intellectuals from the middle class. But the revolution itself, once it starts, comes from below, from the mass of people pushed beyond tolerance.”It came to Lawrence Woolford that his superior had achieved to his prominent office not through any fluke. He knew what he was talking about.The Boss wound it up.“If there was such an organization as this Movement, then this department would know about it. You don't keep a revolutionary movement secret. It doesn't make sense to even try. Even if it is forced underground, it makes as much noise as it can.”His trouble shooter cleared his throat.“I suppose you're right, sir.”He added hesitantly.“We could always give Susan Self a few drops of Scop-Serum, sir.”The Boss scowled disapprovingly.“You know how the Supreme Court ruled on that, Lawrence. And particularly since the medics revealed its effect on reducing sexual inhibitions. No, Mr. Hackett and Secret Service will have to get the truth out of the girl by some other means. At any rate, it is out of our hands.”Larry came to his feet.“Well, then, I'll resume my vacation, eh?”His chief took up a report from his desk an frowned at it, his attention already passing to other matters. He grunted,“Clear it with LaVerne, please. Tell her I said to take another week to make up for our intruding on you in this manner.”In the back of his head, Larry Woolford had misgivings. For one thing, where had the kid, who on the face of her performance was no great brain even as sixteen or seventeen old's go, picked up such ideas as the fact that people developed prejudices against words like revolution and propaganda?However, he was clear of it now. Let Steve Hackett and his people take over. He, Lawrence Woolford, was due for a quick return to Astor, Florida[pg 021]and the bass fishing on the St. John's River.He stopped at LaVerne's desk and gave her his address to be, now that his vacation was resumed.She said, smiling up at him.“Right. The boss already told me to get in touch with Secret Service and let them know we're pulling out. What happened to Susan Self?”Larry looked at her.“How'd you know about Susan?”Her tone was deprecating.“Remember? You had me cut some tapes on you and that hulking Steve Hackett grilling the poor kid.”Larry snorted.“Poor kid, yet. With her tastes for living-it-up, and that father she has, she'll probably spend the rest of her life getting in Steve's hair as a counterfeit pusher.”“What are they going to do with her? She's just a child.”The agent shrugged.“I feel sorry for her, too, LaVerne. Steve's got her in a suite at the Greater Washington Hilton, until things are cleared up. They don't want the newspapers to get wind of this until they've got that inventor father of hers and whatever he's cooked up to turn out perfect reproductions of Uncle Sam's money. Look, I won't be leaving until tomorrow. What'd you say we go out on the town tonight?”“Why, Larry Woolford! How nice of you to ask me. Poor Little, Non-U me. What do you have in mind? I understand Mort Lenny's at one of the night clubs.”Larry winced.“You know what he's been saying about the administration.”She smiled sweetly at him.Larry said,“Look, we could take in the Brahms concert, then—”[pg 022]“Do you like Brahms? I go for popular music myself. Preferably the sort of thing they wrote back in the 1930s. Something you can dance to, something you know the words to. Corny, they used to call it. Remember‘Sunny Side of the Street,’and‘Just the Way You Look Tonight’.”Larry winced again. He said,“Look, I admit, I don't go for concerts either but it doesn't hurt you to—”“I know,”she said sweetly.“It doesn't hurt for a bright young bureaucrat to be seen at concerts.”“How about Dixieland?”he said.“It's all the thing now.”“I like corn. Besides, my wardrobe is all out of style. Paris, London, and Rome just got in a huddle a couple of weeks ago and antiquated everything I own. You wouldn't want to be seen with a girl a few weeks out of date, would you?”“Oh, now, LaVerne, get off my back.”He thought about it.“Look, you must havesomethingyou could wear.”“Get out of here, you vacant minded conformist! IlikeMort Lenny, he makes me laugh; Ihatevodka martinis, they give me sour stomach; I don'tlikethe current women's styles, nor the men's either.”LaVerne spun back to her auto-typer and began to dictate into it.Larry glared down at her.“All right. O.K. Whatdoyou like?”She snapped back irrationally,“I like whatIlike.”He laughed at her in ridicule.This time she glared at him.“That makes more sense than you're capable of assimilating, Mr. Walking Status Symbol. My likes and dislikes aren't dictated by someone else. If I like corny music, I'll listen to it and the devil with Brahms or Dixieland or anything else that somebody else tells me is all the thing!”He turned on his heel angrily.“O.K., O.K., it takes all sorts to make a world, weirds and all.”“One more label to hang on people,”she snarled after him.“Everything's labels. Be sure and never come to any judgments of your own!”What a woman! He wondered why he'd ever bothered to ask her for a date. There were so many women in this town you waded through them, and here he was exposing himself to be seen in public with a girl everybody in the department knew was as weird as they came. It didn't do your standing any good to be seen around with the type. He wondered all over again why the Boss tolerated her as his receptionist-secretary.He got his car from the parking lot and drove home at a high level. Ordinarily, the distance being what it was, he drove in the lower and slower traffic levels but now his frustration demanded some expression.Back at his suburban auto-bungalow, he threw all except the high priority switch and went on down into his small second cellar den. He didn't really feel like a night on the town anyway. A few vodka martinis under his belt and he'd sleep late and he wanted to get up in time for an early start for Florida. Besides, in that[pg 023]respect he agreed with the irritating wench. Vermouth was never meant to mix with Polish vodka. He wished that Sidecars would come back.In his den, he shucked off his jacket, kicked off his shoes and shuffled into Moroccan slippers. He went over to his current reading rack and scowled at the paperbacks there. His culture status books were upstairs where they could be seen. He pulled out a western, tossed it over to the cocktail table that sat next to his chair, and then went over to the bar.Up above in his living room, he had one of the new autobars. You could dial any one of more than thirty drinks. Autobars were all the rage. The Boss had one that gave a selection of a hundred. But what difference did it make when nobody but eccentric old-timers or flighty blondes drank anything except vodka martinis? He didn't like autobars anyway. A well mixed drink is a personal thing, a work of competence, instinct and art, not something measured to the drop, iced to the degree, shaken or stirred to a mathematical formula.Out of the tiny refrigerator he brought a four-ounce cube of frozen pineapple juice, touched the edge with his thumbnail and let the ultra thin plastic peel away. He tossed the cube into his mixer, took up a bottle of light rum and poured in about two ounces. He brought an egg from the refrigerator and added that. An ounce of whole milk followed and a teaspoon of powdered sugar. He flicked the switch and let the conglomeration froth together.He poured it into a king-size highball glass and took it over to his chair. Vodka martinis be damned, he liked a slightly sweet long drink.He sat down in the chair, picked up the book and scowled at the cover. He ought to be reading that Florentine history of Machiavelli's, especially if the Boss had got to the point where he was quoting from the guy. But the heck with it, he was on vacation. He didn't think much of the Italian diplomat of the Renaissance anyway; how could you be that far back without being dated?He couldn't get beyond the first page or two.And when you can't concentrate on a Western, you just can't concentrate.He finished his drink, went over to his phone and dialedDepartment of Recordsand thenInformation. When the bright young thing answered, he said,“I'd like the brief on an Ernest Self who lives on Elwood Avenue, Baltimore section of Greater Washington. I don't know his code number.”She did things with switches and buttons for a moment and then brought a sheet from a delivery chute.“Do you want me to read it to you, sir?”“No, I'll scan it,”Larry said.Her face faded to be replaced by the brief on Ernest Self.It was astonishingly short.Recordsseemed to have slipped up on this occasion. A rare occurrence. He considered requesting the full dossier, then changed his mind. Instead he dialed[pg 024]the number of theSun-Postand asked for its science columnist.Sam Sokolski's puffy face eventually faded in.Larry said to him sourly,“You drink too much. You can begin to see the veins breaking in your nose.”Sam looked at him patiently.Larry said,“How'd you like to come over and toss back a few tonight?”“I'm working. I thought you were on vacation.”Larry sighed.“I am,”he said.“O.K., so you can't take a night off and lift a few with an old buddy.”“That's right. Anything else, Larry?”“Yes. Look, have you ever heard of an inventor named Ernest Self?”“Sure I've heard of him. Covered a hassle he got into some years ago. A nice guy.”“I'll bet,”Larry said.“What does he invent, something to do with printing presses, or something?”“Printing presses? Don't you remember the story about him?”“Brief me,”Larry said.“Well—briefly does it—it got out a couple of years ago that some of our rocketeers had bought a solid fuel formula from an Italian research outfit for the star probe project. Paid them a big hunk of Uncle's change for it. So Self sued.”Larry said,“You're beingtoobrief. What d'ya mean, he sued? Why?”“Because he claimed he'd submitted the same formula to the same agency a full eighteen months earlier and they'd turned him down.”“Had he?”“Probably.”Larry didn't get it.“Then why'd they turn him down?”Sam said,“Oh, the government boys had a good alibi. Crackpots turn up all over the place and you have to brush them off. Every cellar scientist who comes along and says he's got a new super-fuel developed from old coffee grounds can't be given the welcome mat. Something was wrong with his math or something and they didn't pay much attention to him. Wouldn't even let him demonstrate it. But it was the same formula, all right.”Larry Woolford was scowling.“Something wrong with his math? What kind of a degree does he have?”Sam grinned in memory.“I got a good quote on that. He doesn't have any degree. He said he'd learned to read by the time he'd reached high school and since then he figured spending time in classrooms was a matter of interfering with his education.”“No wonder they turned him down. No degree at all. You can't get anywhere in science like that.”Sam said,“The courts rejected his suit but he got a certain amount of support here and there. Peter Voss, over at the university, claims he's one of the great intuitive scientists, whatever that is, of our generation.”“Who said that?”“Professor Voss. Not that it makes any difference what he says. Another crackpot.”After Sam's less than handsome face[pg 025]was gone from the phone, Larry walked over to the bar with his empty glass and stared at the mixer for several minutes. He began to make himself another flip, but cut it short in the middle, put down the ingredients and went back to the phone to dialRecordsagain.He went through first the brief and then the full dossier on Professor Peter Luther Voss. Aside from his academic accomplishments, particularly in the fields of political economy and international law, and the dozen or so books accredited to him, there wasn't anything particularly noteworthy. A bachelor in his fifties. No criminal record of any kind, of course, and no military career. No known political affiliations. Evidently a strong predilection for Thorstein Veblen's theories. And he'd been a friend of Henry Mencken back when that old nonconformist was tearing down contemporary society seemingly largely for the fun involved in the tearing.On the face of it, the man was no radical, and the term“crackpot”which Sam had applied was hardly called for.Larry Woolford went back to the bar and resumed the job of mixing his own version of a rum flip.But his heart wasn't in it.The Professor, Susan had said.Before he'd gone to bed the night before, Larry Woolford had ordered a seat on the shuttle jet for Jacksonville and a hover-cab there to take him to Astor, on the St. Johns River. And he'd requested to be wakened in ample time to get to the shuttleport.But it wasn't the saccharine pleasant face of the Personal Service operator which confronted him when he grumpily answered the phone in the morning. In fact, the screen remained blank.Larry decided that sweet long drinks were fine, but that anyone who took several of them in a row needed to be candied. He grumbled into the phone,“All right, who is it?”A Teutonic voice chuckled and said,“You're going to have to decide whether or not you're on vacation, my friend. At this time of day, why aren't you at work?”Larry Woolford was waking up. He said,“What can I do for you, Distelmayer?”The German merchant-of-espionage wasn't the type to make personal calls.“Have you forgotten so soon, my friend?”the other chuckled.“It was I who was going to do you a favor.”He hesitated momentarily, before adding,“In possible return for future—”“Yeah, yeah,”Larry said. He was fully awake now.The German said slowly,“You asked if any of your friends from, ah, abroad were newly in the country. Frol Eivazov has recently appeared on the scene.”Eivazov! In various respects, Larry Woolford's counterpart. Hatchetman for theChrezvychainaya Komissiya. Woolford had met him on occasion when they'd both been present at international summit meetings, busily working at counter-espionage for their respective superiors. Blandly[pg 026]shaking hands with each other, blandly drinking toasts to peace and international co-existence, blandly sizing each other up and wondering if it'd ever come to the point where one wouldblandlytreat the other to a hole in the head, possibly in some dark alley in Havana or Singapore, Leopoldville or Saigon.Larry said sharply,“Where is he? How'd he get in the country?”“My friend, my friend,”the German grunted good-humoredly.“You know better than to ask the first question. As for the second, Frol's command of American-English is at least as good as your own. Do you think hisKomissiyaless capable than your own department and unable to do him up suitable papers so that he could be, perhaps, a‘returning tourist’from Europe?”Larry Woolford was impatient with himself for asking. He said now,“It's not important. If we want to locate Frol and pick him up, we'll probably not have too much trouble doing it.”“I wouldn't think so,”the other said humorously.“Since 1919, when they were first organized, the so-called Communists in this country, from the lowest to the highest echelons, have been so riddled with police agents that a federal judge in New England once refused to prosecute a case against them on the grounds that the party was a United States government agency.”Larry was in no frame of mind for the other's heavy humor.“Look, Hans,”he said,“what I want to know is what Frol is over here for.”“Of course you do,”Hans Distelmayer said, unable evidently to keep note of puzzlement from his voice.“Larry,”he said,“I assume your people know of the new American underground.”“Whatunderground?”Larry snapped.The professional spy chief said, his voice strange,“The Soviets seem to have picked up an idea somewhere, possibly through their membership in this country, that something is abrewing in the States. That a change is being engineered.”Larry stared at the blank phone screen.“What kind of a change?”he said finally.“You mean a change to the Soviet system?”Surely not even the self-deluding Russkies could think it possible to overthrow the American socio-economic system in favor of the Soviet brand.“No, no, no,”the German chuckled.“Of course not. It's not of their working at all.”“Then what's Frol Eivazov's interest, if they aren't engineering it?”Distelmayer rumbled his characteristic chuckle with humor.“My dear friend, don't be naive. Anything that happens in America is of interest to the Soviets. There is delicate peace between you now that they have changed their direction and are occupying themselves largely with the economic and agricultural development of Asia and such portions of the world as have come under their hegemony, and while you put all efforts[pg 027]into modernizing the more backward countries among your satellites.”Larry said automatically,“Our allies aren't satellites.”The spy-master went on without contesting the statement.“There is immediate peace but surely governmental officials on both sides keep careful watch on the internal developments of the other. True, the current heads of the Soviet Complex would like to see the governments of all the Western powers changed—but only if they are changed in the direction of communism. They are hardly interested in seeing changes made which would strengthen the West in the, ah, Battle For Men's Minds.”Larry snorted his disgust.“What sort of change in government would strengthen the United States in—”The German interrupted smoothly,“Evidently, that's what Frol seems to be here for, Larry. To find out more about this movement and—”“Thiswhat?”Larry blurted.“The term seems to bemovement.”Larry Woolford held a long silence before saying,“And Frol is actually here in this country to buck this ... this movement.”“Not necessarily,”the other said impatiently.“He is here to find out more about it. Evidently Peking and Moscow have heard just enough to make them nervous.”Larry said,“You have anything more, Hans?”“I'm afraid that's about it.”“All right,”Larry said. He added absently,“Thanks, Hans.”“Thank me some day with deeds, not with words,”the German chuckled.
Larry said,“Don't worry about him, Zusanette. Now then, thismovement. That's kind of a funny name, isn't it? What does it mean?”She was evidently glad that the less than handsome Steve Hackett had left the room. Her words flowed more freely.“Well, Daddy says that they[pg 017]call it the Movement rather than a revolution....”An ice cube manifested itself in the stomach of Lawrence Woolford.“... Because people get conditioned, like, to words. Like revolution. Everybody is against the word because they all think of killing and everything, and, Daddy says, there doesn't have to be any shooting or killing or anything like that at all. It just means a fundamental change in society. And, Daddy says, take the word propaganda. Everybody's got to thinking that it automatically means lies, but it doesn't at all. It just means, like, the arguments you use to convince people that what you stand for is right and it might be lies or it might not. And, Daddy says, take the word socialism. So many people have the wrong idea of what it means that the socialists ought to scrap the word and start using something else to mean what they stand for.”Larry said gently,“Your father is a socialist?”“Oh, no.”He nodded in understanding.“Oh, a Communist, eh?”Susan Self was indignant.“Daddy thinks the Communists are strictly awful, really weird.”Steve Hackett came back into the office. He said to Larry,“I sent a couple of the boys out to pick him up.”Susan was on her feet, a hand to mouth.“You mean my father! You're going to arrest him!”Larry said soothingly,“Sit down, Zusanette. There's a lot of things about this that I'm sure your father can explain.”He said to Steve,“She tells me that the money belonged to a movement. A revolutionary movement which doesn't use the term revolutionary because people react unfavorably to that word. It's not Commie.”Susan said indignantly,“It's American, not anything foreign!”Steve growled,“Let's get back to the money. What's this movement doing with a lot of counterfeit bills and where did you find them?”She evidently figured she'd gone too far now to take a stand.“It's not Daddy's fault,”she said.“He took me to headquarters twice.”“Where's headquarters?”Larry said trying to keep his voice soothing.“Well ... I don't know. Daddy was awfully silly about it. He tied his handkerchief around my eyes near the end. But the others complained about me anyway, and Daddy got awfully mad and said something about the young people of the country participating in their emancipation and all, but the others got mad too, and said there wasn't any kind of help I could do around headquarters anyway, and I'd be better off in school. Everybody got awfully mad, but after the second time Daddy promised not to take me to headquarters any more.”“But where did you find the money, Zusannette?”Larry said.“At headquarters. There's tons and tons of it there.”Larry cleared his throat and said,“When you say tons and tons, you mean a great deal of it, eh?”She was proudly definite.“I mean[pg 018]tons and tons. A ton is two thousand pounds.”“Look, Zusanette,”Larry said reasonably.“I don't know how much money weighs, exactly, but let's say a pound would be, say, a thousand bills.”He took up a pencil and scribbled on a pad before him.“A pound of fifties would be $50,000. Then if you multiply that by 2,000 pounds to make a ton, you'd have $100,000,000. And you say there's tons and tons?”“And that's just the fifties,”Susan said triumphantly.“So you can see the two little packages I picked up aren't really important at all. It's just like I found them.”“I don't think there's quite a thousand bills in a pound,”Steve said weakly.Larry said,“How much other money is there?”“Oh, piles. Whole rooms. Rooms after rooms. And hundred dollar bills, and twenties, and fives, and tens—”Larry said,“Look, Zusanette, I don't think you're in any position to be telling us whoppers. This whole story doesn't make much sense, does it?”Her mouth tightened.“I'm not going to say anything more until Daddy gets here, anyway,”she said.Which was when the phone rang.“I have an idea that's for me,”Steve said.The screen lit up and LaVerne Polk said,“Call for Steve Hackett, Larry.”Larry pushed the phone around so Steve could look into it. LaVerne flicked off and was replaced by a stranger in uniform. Steve said,“Yeah?”The cop said,“He's flown the coop, sir. Must have got out just minutes before we arrived. Couldn't have taken more than a suitcase. Few papers scattered around the room he used for an office.”Susan gasped,“You mean Daddy?”Steve Hackett rubbed a hand over his flattened nose.“Holy Smokes,”he said. He thanked the cop and flicked off.Larry said,“Look Zusanette, everything's going to be all right. Nothing will happen to you. You say you managed to pick up two packets of all this money they have at headquarters. O.K. So you thought it wouldn't be missed and you've always wanted to spend money the way you see the stars do on TriD and in the movies.”She looked at him, taken back.“How did you know?”Larry said dryly,“I've always wanted to myself. But I would like to know one more thing. The Movement. What was it going to do with all this money?”That evidently puzzled her.“The Professor said they were going to spend it on chorus girls. I guess ... I guess he was joking or something. But Daddy and I'd just been up to New York and we saw those famous precision dancers at the New Roxy Theatre and all and then when we got back the Professor and Daddy were talking and I heard him say it.”Steve said, carefully,“Professor who?”Susan said,“Just the Professor. That's all we ever call him.”Her chin went to trembling still again.[pg 019]Larry summed it up for the Boss later.His chief scoffed his disbelief.“The child is full of dreams, Lawrence. It comes from seeing an over-abundance of these TriD shows. I have a girl the same age. I don't know what is happening to the country. They have no sense of reality.”Larry Woolford said mildly,“Well, she might be full of nonsense, but she did have the fifties, and she's our only connection with whoever printed them whether it's a movement to overthrow the government, or what.”The Boss said tolerantly,“Movement, indeed. Obviously, her father produced them and she purloined a quantity before he was ready to attempt to pass them. Have you a run down on him yet?”“Susan Self says her father, Ernest Self, is an inventor. Steve Hackett is working on locating him.”“He's an inventor indeed. Evidently, he has invented a perfect counterfeiting device. However, that is the Secret Service's headache, not ours. Do you wish to resume that vacation of yours, Lawrence?”His operative twisted his face in a grimace.“Sure, I do, but I'm not happy about this, sir. What happens if there really is an organization, a Movement, like she said? That brings it back under our jurisdiction, anti-subversion.”The other shook his head tolerantly.“See here, Lawrence, when you begin scheming a social revolution you can't plan on an organization composed of a small number of persons who keep their existence secret. In spite of what a good many persons seem to believe, revolutions are not accomplished by handfuls of conspirators hiding in cellars and eventually overthrowing society by dramatically shooting the President, or King, or Czar, or whoever. Revolutions are precipitated by masses of people. People who have ample cause to be against whatever the current government happens to be. Usually, they are on the point of actual starvation. Have you ever read Machiavelli?”Niccolo Machiavelli was currentlythe thingto read. Larry said with a certain dignity,“I've gone through‘The Prince,’the‘Discourses’and currently I'm amusing myself with his‘History of Florence.’”“Anybody who can amuse himself reading Machiavelli,”the Boss said dryly,“has a macabre sense of humor. At any rate, what I was alluding to was where he stated that the Prince cannot rule indefinitely in the face of the active opposition of his people. Therefore, the people always get a government that lies within the limits of their tolerance. It may be on one edge or the other of their limits of tolerance—but it's always within their tolerance zone.”Larry frowned and said,“Well, what's your point, sir?”The Boss said patiently,“I'm just observing that cultures aren't overthrown by little handfuls of secret conspirators. You might eliminate a few individuals in that manner, in other words change the personnel of[pg 020]the government, but you aren't going to alter a socio-economic system. That can't be done until your people have been pushed outside their limits of tolerance. Very well then. A revolutionary organization must get out and propagandize. It has got to convince the people that they are being pushed beyond endurance. You have got to get themassesto moving. You have to give speeches, print newspapers, books, pamphlets, you have got to send your organizers out to intensify interest in your program.”Larry said,“I see what you mean. If this so-called Movement actually existed it couldn't expect to get anywhere as long as remained secret.”The Boss nodded.“That is correct. Theleadersof a revolutionary movement might be intellectuals, social scientists, scholars—in fact they usually are—take our own American Revolution with Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Washington. Or the French Revolution with Robespierre, Danton, Marat, Engels and Lenin. All were well educated intellectuals from the middle class. But the revolution itself, once it starts, comes from below, from the mass of people pushed beyond tolerance.”It came to Lawrence Woolford that his superior had achieved to his prominent office not through any fluke. He knew what he was talking about.The Boss wound it up.“If there was such an organization as this Movement, then this department would know about it. You don't keep a revolutionary movement secret. It doesn't make sense to even try. Even if it is forced underground, it makes as much noise as it can.”His trouble shooter cleared his throat.“I suppose you're right, sir.”He added hesitantly.“We could always give Susan Self a few drops of Scop-Serum, sir.”The Boss scowled disapprovingly.“You know how the Supreme Court ruled on that, Lawrence. And particularly since the medics revealed its effect on reducing sexual inhibitions. No, Mr. Hackett and Secret Service will have to get the truth out of the girl by some other means. At any rate, it is out of our hands.”Larry came to his feet.“Well, then, I'll resume my vacation, eh?”His chief took up a report from his desk an frowned at it, his attention already passing to other matters. He grunted,“Clear it with LaVerne, please. Tell her I said to take another week to make up for our intruding on you in this manner.”In the back of his head, Larry Woolford had misgivings. For one thing, where had the kid, who on the face of her performance was no great brain even as sixteen or seventeen old's go, picked up such ideas as the fact that people developed prejudices against words like revolution and propaganda?However, he was clear of it now. Let Steve Hackett and his people take over. He, Lawrence Woolford, was due for a quick return to Astor, Florida[pg 021]and the bass fishing on the St. John's River.He stopped at LaVerne's desk and gave her his address to be, now that his vacation was resumed.She said, smiling up at him.“Right. The boss already told me to get in touch with Secret Service and let them know we're pulling out. What happened to Susan Self?”Larry looked at her.“How'd you know about Susan?”Her tone was deprecating.“Remember? You had me cut some tapes on you and that hulking Steve Hackett grilling the poor kid.”Larry snorted.“Poor kid, yet. With her tastes for living-it-up, and that father she has, she'll probably spend the rest of her life getting in Steve's hair as a counterfeit pusher.”“What are they going to do with her? She's just a child.”The agent shrugged.“I feel sorry for her, too, LaVerne. Steve's got her in a suite at the Greater Washington Hilton, until things are cleared up. They don't want the newspapers to get wind of this until they've got that inventor father of hers and whatever he's cooked up to turn out perfect reproductions of Uncle Sam's money. Look, I won't be leaving until tomorrow. What'd you say we go out on the town tonight?”“Why, Larry Woolford! How nice of you to ask me. Poor Little, Non-U me. What do you have in mind? I understand Mort Lenny's at one of the night clubs.”Larry winced.“You know what he's been saying about the administration.”She smiled sweetly at him.Larry said,“Look, we could take in the Brahms concert, then—”[pg 022]“Do you like Brahms? I go for popular music myself. Preferably the sort of thing they wrote back in the 1930s. Something you can dance to, something you know the words to. Corny, they used to call it. Remember‘Sunny Side of the Street,’and‘Just the Way You Look Tonight’.”Larry winced again. He said,“Look, I admit, I don't go for concerts either but it doesn't hurt you to—”“I know,”she said sweetly.“It doesn't hurt for a bright young bureaucrat to be seen at concerts.”“How about Dixieland?”he said.“It's all the thing now.”“I like corn. Besides, my wardrobe is all out of style. Paris, London, and Rome just got in a huddle a couple of weeks ago and antiquated everything I own. You wouldn't want to be seen with a girl a few weeks out of date, would you?”“Oh, now, LaVerne, get off my back.”He thought about it.“Look, you must havesomethingyou could wear.”“Get out of here, you vacant minded conformist! IlikeMort Lenny, he makes me laugh; Ihatevodka martinis, they give me sour stomach; I don'tlikethe current women's styles, nor the men's either.”LaVerne spun back to her auto-typer and began to dictate into it.Larry glared down at her.“All right. O.K. Whatdoyou like?”She snapped back irrationally,“I like whatIlike.”He laughed at her in ridicule.This time she glared at him.“That makes more sense than you're capable of assimilating, Mr. Walking Status Symbol. My likes and dislikes aren't dictated by someone else. If I like corny music, I'll listen to it and the devil with Brahms or Dixieland or anything else that somebody else tells me is all the thing!”He turned on his heel angrily.“O.K., O.K., it takes all sorts to make a world, weirds and all.”“One more label to hang on people,”she snarled after him.“Everything's labels. Be sure and never come to any judgments of your own!”What a woman! He wondered why he'd ever bothered to ask her for a date. There were so many women in this town you waded through them, and here he was exposing himself to be seen in public with a girl everybody in the department knew was as weird as they came. It didn't do your standing any good to be seen around with the type. He wondered all over again why the Boss tolerated her as his receptionist-secretary.He got his car from the parking lot and drove home at a high level. Ordinarily, the distance being what it was, he drove in the lower and slower traffic levels but now his frustration demanded some expression.Back at his suburban auto-bungalow, he threw all except the high priority switch and went on down into his small second cellar den. He didn't really feel like a night on the town anyway. A few vodka martinis under his belt and he'd sleep late and he wanted to get up in time for an early start for Florida. Besides, in that[pg 023]respect he agreed with the irritating wench. Vermouth was never meant to mix with Polish vodka. He wished that Sidecars would come back.In his den, he shucked off his jacket, kicked off his shoes and shuffled into Moroccan slippers. He went over to his current reading rack and scowled at the paperbacks there. His culture status books were upstairs where they could be seen. He pulled out a western, tossed it over to the cocktail table that sat next to his chair, and then went over to the bar.Up above in his living room, he had one of the new autobars. You could dial any one of more than thirty drinks. Autobars were all the rage. The Boss had one that gave a selection of a hundred. But what difference did it make when nobody but eccentric old-timers or flighty blondes drank anything except vodka martinis? He didn't like autobars anyway. A well mixed drink is a personal thing, a work of competence, instinct and art, not something measured to the drop, iced to the degree, shaken or stirred to a mathematical formula.Out of the tiny refrigerator he brought a four-ounce cube of frozen pineapple juice, touched the edge with his thumbnail and let the ultra thin plastic peel away. He tossed the cube into his mixer, took up a bottle of light rum and poured in about two ounces. He brought an egg from the refrigerator and added that. An ounce of whole milk followed and a teaspoon of powdered sugar. He flicked the switch and let the conglomeration froth together.He poured it into a king-size highball glass and took it over to his chair. Vodka martinis be damned, he liked a slightly sweet long drink.He sat down in the chair, picked up the book and scowled at the cover. He ought to be reading that Florentine history of Machiavelli's, especially if the Boss had got to the point where he was quoting from the guy. But the heck with it, he was on vacation. He didn't think much of the Italian diplomat of the Renaissance anyway; how could you be that far back without being dated?He couldn't get beyond the first page or two.And when you can't concentrate on a Western, you just can't concentrate.He finished his drink, went over to his phone and dialedDepartment of Recordsand thenInformation. When the bright young thing answered, he said,“I'd like the brief on an Ernest Self who lives on Elwood Avenue, Baltimore section of Greater Washington. I don't know his code number.”She did things with switches and buttons for a moment and then brought a sheet from a delivery chute.“Do you want me to read it to you, sir?”“No, I'll scan it,”Larry said.Her face faded to be replaced by the brief on Ernest Self.It was astonishingly short.Recordsseemed to have slipped up on this occasion. A rare occurrence. He considered requesting the full dossier, then changed his mind. Instead he dialed[pg 024]the number of theSun-Postand asked for its science columnist.Sam Sokolski's puffy face eventually faded in.Larry said to him sourly,“You drink too much. You can begin to see the veins breaking in your nose.”Sam looked at him patiently.Larry said,“How'd you like to come over and toss back a few tonight?”“I'm working. I thought you were on vacation.”Larry sighed.“I am,”he said.“O.K., so you can't take a night off and lift a few with an old buddy.”“That's right. Anything else, Larry?”“Yes. Look, have you ever heard of an inventor named Ernest Self?”“Sure I've heard of him. Covered a hassle he got into some years ago. A nice guy.”“I'll bet,”Larry said.“What does he invent, something to do with printing presses, or something?”“Printing presses? Don't you remember the story about him?”“Brief me,”Larry said.“Well—briefly does it—it got out a couple of years ago that some of our rocketeers had bought a solid fuel formula from an Italian research outfit for the star probe project. Paid them a big hunk of Uncle's change for it. So Self sued.”Larry said,“You're beingtoobrief. What d'ya mean, he sued? Why?”“Because he claimed he'd submitted the same formula to the same agency a full eighteen months earlier and they'd turned him down.”“Had he?”“Probably.”Larry didn't get it.“Then why'd they turn him down?”Sam said,“Oh, the government boys had a good alibi. Crackpots turn up all over the place and you have to brush them off. Every cellar scientist who comes along and says he's got a new super-fuel developed from old coffee grounds can't be given the welcome mat. Something was wrong with his math or something and they didn't pay much attention to him. Wouldn't even let him demonstrate it. But it was the same formula, all right.”Larry Woolford was scowling.“Something wrong with his math? What kind of a degree does he have?”Sam grinned in memory.“I got a good quote on that. He doesn't have any degree. He said he'd learned to read by the time he'd reached high school and since then he figured spending time in classrooms was a matter of interfering with his education.”“No wonder they turned him down. No degree at all. You can't get anywhere in science like that.”Sam said,“The courts rejected his suit but he got a certain amount of support here and there. Peter Voss, over at the university, claims he's one of the great intuitive scientists, whatever that is, of our generation.”“Who said that?”“Professor Voss. Not that it makes any difference what he says. Another crackpot.”After Sam's less than handsome face[pg 025]was gone from the phone, Larry walked over to the bar with his empty glass and stared at the mixer for several minutes. He began to make himself another flip, but cut it short in the middle, put down the ingredients and went back to the phone to dialRecordsagain.He went through first the brief and then the full dossier on Professor Peter Luther Voss. Aside from his academic accomplishments, particularly in the fields of political economy and international law, and the dozen or so books accredited to him, there wasn't anything particularly noteworthy. A bachelor in his fifties. No criminal record of any kind, of course, and no military career. No known political affiliations. Evidently a strong predilection for Thorstein Veblen's theories. And he'd been a friend of Henry Mencken back when that old nonconformist was tearing down contemporary society seemingly largely for the fun involved in the tearing.On the face of it, the man was no radical, and the term“crackpot”which Sam had applied was hardly called for.Larry Woolford went back to the bar and resumed the job of mixing his own version of a rum flip.But his heart wasn't in it.The Professor, Susan had said.Before he'd gone to bed the night before, Larry Woolford had ordered a seat on the shuttle jet for Jacksonville and a hover-cab there to take him to Astor, on the St. Johns River. And he'd requested to be wakened in ample time to get to the shuttleport.But it wasn't the saccharine pleasant face of the Personal Service operator which confronted him when he grumpily answered the phone in the morning. In fact, the screen remained blank.Larry decided that sweet long drinks were fine, but that anyone who took several of them in a row needed to be candied. He grumbled into the phone,“All right, who is it?”A Teutonic voice chuckled and said,“You're going to have to decide whether or not you're on vacation, my friend. At this time of day, why aren't you at work?”Larry Woolford was waking up. He said,“What can I do for you, Distelmayer?”The German merchant-of-espionage wasn't the type to make personal calls.“Have you forgotten so soon, my friend?”the other chuckled.“It was I who was going to do you a favor.”He hesitated momentarily, before adding,“In possible return for future—”“Yeah, yeah,”Larry said. He was fully awake now.The German said slowly,“You asked if any of your friends from, ah, abroad were newly in the country. Frol Eivazov has recently appeared on the scene.”Eivazov! In various respects, Larry Woolford's counterpart. Hatchetman for theChrezvychainaya Komissiya. Woolford had met him on occasion when they'd both been present at international summit meetings, busily working at counter-espionage for their respective superiors. Blandly[pg 026]shaking hands with each other, blandly drinking toasts to peace and international co-existence, blandly sizing each other up and wondering if it'd ever come to the point where one wouldblandlytreat the other to a hole in the head, possibly in some dark alley in Havana or Singapore, Leopoldville or Saigon.Larry said sharply,“Where is he? How'd he get in the country?”“My friend, my friend,”the German grunted good-humoredly.“You know better than to ask the first question. As for the second, Frol's command of American-English is at least as good as your own. Do you think hisKomissiyaless capable than your own department and unable to do him up suitable papers so that he could be, perhaps, a‘returning tourist’from Europe?”Larry Woolford was impatient with himself for asking. He said now,“It's not important. If we want to locate Frol and pick him up, we'll probably not have too much trouble doing it.”“I wouldn't think so,”the other said humorously.“Since 1919, when they were first organized, the so-called Communists in this country, from the lowest to the highest echelons, have been so riddled with police agents that a federal judge in New England once refused to prosecute a case against them on the grounds that the party was a United States government agency.”Larry was in no frame of mind for the other's heavy humor.“Look, Hans,”he said,“what I want to know is what Frol is over here for.”“Of course you do,”Hans Distelmayer said, unable evidently to keep note of puzzlement from his voice.“Larry,”he said,“I assume your people know of the new American underground.”“Whatunderground?”Larry snapped.The professional spy chief said, his voice strange,“The Soviets seem to have picked up an idea somewhere, possibly through their membership in this country, that something is abrewing in the States. That a change is being engineered.”Larry stared at the blank phone screen.“What kind of a change?”he said finally.“You mean a change to the Soviet system?”Surely not even the self-deluding Russkies could think it possible to overthrow the American socio-economic system in favor of the Soviet brand.“No, no, no,”the German chuckled.“Of course not. It's not of their working at all.”“Then what's Frol Eivazov's interest, if they aren't engineering it?”Distelmayer rumbled his characteristic chuckle with humor.“My dear friend, don't be naive. Anything that happens in America is of interest to the Soviets. There is delicate peace between you now that they have changed their direction and are occupying themselves largely with the economic and agricultural development of Asia and such portions of the world as have come under their hegemony, and while you put all efforts[pg 027]into modernizing the more backward countries among your satellites.”Larry said automatically,“Our allies aren't satellites.”The spy-master went on without contesting the statement.“There is immediate peace but surely governmental officials on both sides keep careful watch on the internal developments of the other. True, the current heads of the Soviet Complex would like to see the governments of all the Western powers changed—but only if they are changed in the direction of communism. They are hardly interested in seeing changes made which would strengthen the West in the, ah, Battle For Men's Minds.”Larry snorted his disgust.“What sort of change in government would strengthen the United States in—”The German interrupted smoothly,“Evidently, that's what Frol seems to be here for, Larry. To find out more about this movement and—”“Thiswhat?”Larry blurted.“The term seems to bemovement.”Larry Woolford held a long silence before saying,“And Frol is actually here in this country to buck this ... this movement.”“Not necessarily,”the other said impatiently.“He is here to find out more about it. Evidently Peking and Moscow have heard just enough to make them nervous.”Larry said,“You have anything more, Hans?”“I'm afraid that's about it.”“All right,”Larry said. He added absently,“Thanks, Hans.”“Thank me some day with deeds, not with words,”the German chuckled.
Larry said,“Don't worry about him, Zusanette. Now then, thismovement. That's kind of a funny name, isn't it? What does it mean?”She was evidently glad that the less than handsome Steve Hackett had left the room. Her words flowed more freely.“Well, Daddy says that they[pg 017]call it the Movement rather than a revolution....”An ice cube manifested itself in the stomach of Lawrence Woolford.“... Because people get conditioned, like, to words. Like revolution. Everybody is against the word because they all think of killing and everything, and, Daddy says, there doesn't have to be any shooting or killing or anything like that at all. It just means a fundamental change in society. And, Daddy says, take the word propaganda. Everybody's got to thinking that it automatically means lies, but it doesn't at all. It just means, like, the arguments you use to convince people that what you stand for is right and it might be lies or it might not. And, Daddy says, take the word socialism. So many people have the wrong idea of what it means that the socialists ought to scrap the word and start using something else to mean what they stand for.”Larry said gently,“Your father is a socialist?”“Oh, no.”He nodded in understanding.“Oh, a Communist, eh?”Susan Self was indignant.“Daddy thinks the Communists are strictly awful, really weird.”Steve Hackett came back into the office. He said to Larry,“I sent a couple of the boys out to pick him up.”Susan was on her feet, a hand to mouth.“You mean my father! You're going to arrest him!”Larry said soothingly,“Sit down, Zusanette. There's a lot of things about this that I'm sure your father can explain.”He said to Steve,“She tells me that the money belonged to a movement. A revolutionary movement which doesn't use the term revolutionary because people react unfavorably to that word. It's not Commie.”Susan said indignantly,“It's American, not anything foreign!”Steve growled,“Let's get back to the money. What's this movement doing with a lot of counterfeit bills and where did you find them?”She evidently figured she'd gone too far now to take a stand.“It's not Daddy's fault,”she said.“He took me to headquarters twice.”“Where's headquarters?”Larry said trying to keep his voice soothing.“Well ... I don't know. Daddy was awfully silly about it. He tied his handkerchief around my eyes near the end. But the others complained about me anyway, and Daddy got awfully mad and said something about the young people of the country participating in their emancipation and all, but the others got mad too, and said there wasn't any kind of help I could do around headquarters anyway, and I'd be better off in school. Everybody got awfully mad, but after the second time Daddy promised not to take me to headquarters any more.”“But where did you find the money, Zusannette?”Larry said.“At headquarters. There's tons and tons of it there.”Larry cleared his throat and said,“When you say tons and tons, you mean a great deal of it, eh?”She was proudly definite.“I mean[pg 018]tons and tons. A ton is two thousand pounds.”“Look, Zusanette,”Larry said reasonably.“I don't know how much money weighs, exactly, but let's say a pound would be, say, a thousand bills.”He took up a pencil and scribbled on a pad before him.“A pound of fifties would be $50,000. Then if you multiply that by 2,000 pounds to make a ton, you'd have $100,000,000. And you say there's tons and tons?”“And that's just the fifties,”Susan said triumphantly.“So you can see the two little packages I picked up aren't really important at all. It's just like I found them.”“I don't think there's quite a thousand bills in a pound,”Steve said weakly.Larry said,“How much other money is there?”“Oh, piles. Whole rooms. Rooms after rooms. And hundred dollar bills, and twenties, and fives, and tens—”Larry said,“Look, Zusanette, I don't think you're in any position to be telling us whoppers. This whole story doesn't make much sense, does it?”Her mouth tightened.“I'm not going to say anything more until Daddy gets here, anyway,”she said.Which was when the phone rang.“I have an idea that's for me,”Steve said.The screen lit up and LaVerne Polk said,“Call for Steve Hackett, Larry.”Larry pushed the phone around so Steve could look into it. LaVerne flicked off and was replaced by a stranger in uniform. Steve said,“Yeah?”The cop said,“He's flown the coop, sir. Must have got out just minutes before we arrived. Couldn't have taken more than a suitcase. Few papers scattered around the room he used for an office.”Susan gasped,“You mean Daddy?”Steve Hackett rubbed a hand over his flattened nose.“Holy Smokes,”he said. He thanked the cop and flicked off.Larry said,“Look Zusanette, everything's going to be all right. Nothing will happen to you. You say you managed to pick up two packets of all this money they have at headquarters. O.K. So you thought it wouldn't be missed and you've always wanted to spend money the way you see the stars do on TriD and in the movies.”She looked at him, taken back.“How did you know?”Larry said dryly,“I've always wanted to myself. But I would like to know one more thing. The Movement. What was it going to do with all this money?”That evidently puzzled her.“The Professor said they were going to spend it on chorus girls. I guess ... I guess he was joking or something. But Daddy and I'd just been up to New York and we saw those famous precision dancers at the New Roxy Theatre and all and then when we got back the Professor and Daddy were talking and I heard him say it.”Steve said, carefully,“Professor who?”Susan said,“Just the Professor. That's all we ever call him.”Her chin went to trembling still again.[pg 019]Larry summed it up for the Boss later.His chief scoffed his disbelief.“The child is full of dreams, Lawrence. It comes from seeing an over-abundance of these TriD shows. I have a girl the same age. I don't know what is happening to the country. They have no sense of reality.”Larry Woolford said mildly,“Well, she might be full of nonsense, but she did have the fifties, and she's our only connection with whoever printed them whether it's a movement to overthrow the government, or what.”The Boss said tolerantly,“Movement, indeed. Obviously, her father produced them and she purloined a quantity before he was ready to attempt to pass them. Have you a run down on him yet?”“Susan Self says her father, Ernest Self, is an inventor. Steve Hackett is working on locating him.”“He's an inventor indeed. Evidently, he has invented a perfect counterfeiting device. However, that is the Secret Service's headache, not ours. Do you wish to resume that vacation of yours, Lawrence?”His operative twisted his face in a grimace.“Sure, I do, but I'm not happy about this, sir. What happens if there really is an organization, a Movement, like she said? That brings it back under our jurisdiction, anti-subversion.”The other shook his head tolerantly.“See here, Lawrence, when you begin scheming a social revolution you can't plan on an organization composed of a small number of persons who keep their existence secret. In spite of what a good many persons seem to believe, revolutions are not accomplished by handfuls of conspirators hiding in cellars and eventually overthrowing society by dramatically shooting the President, or King, or Czar, or whoever. Revolutions are precipitated by masses of people. People who have ample cause to be against whatever the current government happens to be. Usually, they are on the point of actual starvation. Have you ever read Machiavelli?”Niccolo Machiavelli was currentlythe thingto read. Larry said with a certain dignity,“I've gone through‘The Prince,’the‘Discourses’and currently I'm amusing myself with his‘History of Florence.’”“Anybody who can amuse himself reading Machiavelli,”the Boss said dryly,“has a macabre sense of humor. At any rate, what I was alluding to was where he stated that the Prince cannot rule indefinitely in the face of the active opposition of his people. Therefore, the people always get a government that lies within the limits of their tolerance. It may be on one edge or the other of their limits of tolerance—but it's always within their tolerance zone.”Larry frowned and said,“Well, what's your point, sir?”The Boss said patiently,“I'm just observing that cultures aren't overthrown by little handfuls of secret conspirators. You might eliminate a few individuals in that manner, in other words change the personnel of[pg 020]the government, but you aren't going to alter a socio-economic system. That can't be done until your people have been pushed outside their limits of tolerance. Very well then. A revolutionary organization must get out and propagandize. It has got to convince the people that they are being pushed beyond endurance. You have got to get themassesto moving. You have to give speeches, print newspapers, books, pamphlets, you have got to send your organizers out to intensify interest in your program.”Larry said,“I see what you mean. If this so-called Movement actually existed it couldn't expect to get anywhere as long as remained secret.”The Boss nodded.“That is correct. Theleadersof a revolutionary movement might be intellectuals, social scientists, scholars—in fact they usually are—take our own American Revolution with Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Washington. Or the French Revolution with Robespierre, Danton, Marat, Engels and Lenin. All were well educated intellectuals from the middle class. But the revolution itself, once it starts, comes from below, from the mass of people pushed beyond tolerance.”It came to Lawrence Woolford that his superior had achieved to his prominent office not through any fluke. He knew what he was talking about.The Boss wound it up.“If there was such an organization as this Movement, then this department would know about it. You don't keep a revolutionary movement secret. It doesn't make sense to even try. Even if it is forced underground, it makes as much noise as it can.”His trouble shooter cleared his throat.“I suppose you're right, sir.”He added hesitantly.“We could always give Susan Self a few drops of Scop-Serum, sir.”The Boss scowled disapprovingly.“You know how the Supreme Court ruled on that, Lawrence. And particularly since the medics revealed its effect on reducing sexual inhibitions. No, Mr. Hackett and Secret Service will have to get the truth out of the girl by some other means. At any rate, it is out of our hands.”Larry came to his feet.“Well, then, I'll resume my vacation, eh?”His chief took up a report from his desk an frowned at it, his attention already passing to other matters. He grunted,“Clear it with LaVerne, please. Tell her I said to take another week to make up for our intruding on you in this manner.”In the back of his head, Larry Woolford had misgivings. For one thing, where had the kid, who on the face of her performance was no great brain even as sixteen or seventeen old's go, picked up such ideas as the fact that people developed prejudices against words like revolution and propaganda?However, he was clear of it now. Let Steve Hackett and his people take over. He, Lawrence Woolford, was due for a quick return to Astor, Florida[pg 021]and the bass fishing on the St. John's River.He stopped at LaVerne's desk and gave her his address to be, now that his vacation was resumed.She said, smiling up at him.“Right. The boss already told me to get in touch with Secret Service and let them know we're pulling out. What happened to Susan Self?”Larry looked at her.“How'd you know about Susan?”Her tone was deprecating.“Remember? You had me cut some tapes on you and that hulking Steve Hackett grilling the poor kid.”Larry snorted.“Poor kid, yet. With her tastes for living-it-up, and that father she has, she'll probably spend the rest of her life getting in Steve's hair as a counterfeit pusher.”“What are they going to do with her? She's just a child.”The agent shrugged.“I feel sorry for her, too, LaVerne. Steve's got her in a suite at the Greater Washington Hilton, until things are cleared up. They don't want the newspapers to get wind of this until they've got that inventor father of hers and whatever he's cooked up to turn out perfect reproductions of Uncle Sam's money. Look, I won't be leaving until tomorrow. What'd you say we go out on the town tonight?”“Why, Larry Woolford! How nice of you to ask me. Poor Little, Non-U me. What do you have in mind? I understand Mort Lenny's at one of the night clubs.”Larry winced.“You know what he's been saying about the administration.”She smiled sweetly at him.Larry said,“Look, we could take in the Brahms concert, then—”[pg 022]“Do you like Brahms? I go for popular music myself. Preferably the sort of thing they wrote back in the 1930s. Something you can dance to, something you know the words to. Corny, they used to call it. Remember‘Sunny Side of the Street,’and‘Just the Way You Look Tonight’.”Larry winced again. He said,“Look, I admit, I don't go for concerts either but it doesn't hurt you to—”“I know,”she said sweetly.“It doesn't hurt for a bright young bureaucrat to be seen at concerts.”“How about Dixieland?”he said.“It's all the thing now.”“I like corn. Besides, my wardrobe is all out of style. Paris, London, and Rome just got in a huddle a couple of weeks ago and antiquated everything I own. You wouldn't want to be seen with a girl a few weeks out of date, would you?”“Oh, now, LaVerne, get off my back.”He thought about it.“Look, you must havesomethingyou could wear.”“Get out of here, you vacant minded conformist! IlikeMort Lenny, he makes me laugh; Ihatevodka martinis, they give me sour stomach; I don'tlikethe current women's styles, nor the men's either.”LaVerne spun back to her auto-typer and began to dictate into it.Larry glared down at her.“All right. O.K. Whatdoyou like?”She snapped back irrationally,“I like whatIlike.”He laughed at her in ridicule.This time she glared at him.“That makes more sense than you're capable of assimilating, Mr. Walking Status Symbol. My likes and dislikes aren't dictated by someone else. If I like corny music, I'll listen to it and the devil with Brahms or Dixieland or anything else that somebody else tells me is all the thing!”He turned on his heel angrily.“O.K., O.K., it takes all sorts to make a world, weirds and all.”“One more label to hang on people,”she snarled after him.“Everything's labels. Be sure and never come to any judgments of your own!”What a woman! He wondered why he'd ever bothered to ask her for a date. There were so many women in this town you waded through them, and here he was exposing himself to be seen in public with a girl everybody in the department knew was as weird as they came. It didn't do your standing any good to be seen around with the type. He wondered all over again why the Boss tolerated her as his receptionist-secretary.He got his car from the parking lot and drove home at a high level. Ordinarily, the distance being what it was, he drove in the lower and slower traffic levels but now his frustration demanded some expression.Back at his suburban auto-bungalow, he threw all except the high priority switch and went on down into his small second cellar den. He didn't really feel like a night on the town anyway. A few vodka martinis under his belt and he'd sleep late and he wanted to get up in time for an early start for Florida. Besides, in that[pg 023]respect he agreed with the irritating wench. Vermouth was never meant to mix with Polish vodka. He wished that Sidecars would come back.In his den, he shucked off his jacket, kicked off his shoes and shuffled into Moroccan slippers. He went over to his current reading rack and scowled at the paperbacks there. His culture status books were upstairs where they could be seen. He pulled out a western, tossed it over to the cocktail table that sat next to his chair, and then went over to the bar.Up above in his living room, he had one of the new autobars. You could dial any one of more than thirty drinks. Autobars were all the rage. The Boss had one that gave a selection of a hundred. But what difference did it make when nobody but eccentric old-timers or flighty blondes drank anything except vodka martinis? He didn't like autobars anyway. A well mixed drink is a personal thing, a work of competence, instinct and art, not something measured to the drop, iced to the degree, shaken or stirred to a mathematical formula.Out of the tiny refrigerator he brought a four-ounce cube of frozen pineapple juice, touched the edge with his thumbnail and let the ultra thin plastic peel away. He tossed the cube into his mixer, took up a bottle of light rum and poured in about two ounces. He brought an egg from the refrigerator and added that. An ounce of whole milk followed and a teaspoon of powdered sugar. He flicked the switch and let the conglomeration froth together.He poured it into a king-size highball glass and took it over to his chair. Vodka martinis be damned, he liked a slightly sweet long drink.He sat down in the chair, picked up the book and scowled at the cover. He ought to be reading that Florentine history of Machiavelli's, especially if the Boss had got to the point where he was quoting from the guy. But the heck with it, he was on vacation. He didn't think much of the Italian diplomat of the Renaissance anyway; how could you be that far back without being dated?He couldn't get beyond the first page or two.And when you can't concentrate on a Western, you just can't concentrate.He finished his drink, went over to his phone and dialedDepartment of Recordsand thenInformation. When the bright young thing answered, he said,“I'd like the brief on an Ernest Self who lives on Elwood Avenue, Baltimore section of Greater Washington. I don't know his code number.”She did things with switches and buttons for a moment and then brought a sheet from a delivery chute.“Do you want me to read it to you, sir?”“No, I'll scan it,”Larry said.Her face faded to be replaced by the brief on Ernest Self.It was astonishingly short.Recordsseemed to have slipped up on this occasion. A rare occurrence. He considered requesting the full dossier, then changed his mind. Instead he dialed[pg 024]the number of theSun-Postand asked for its science columnist.Sam Sokolski's puffy face eventually faded in.Larry said to him sourly,“You drink too much. You can begin to see the veins breaking in your nose.”Sam looked at him patiently.Larry said,“How'd you like to come over and toss back a few tonight?”“I'm working. I thought you were on vacation.”Larry sighed.“I am,”he said.“O.K., so you can't take a night off and lift a few with an old buddy.”“That's right. Anything else, Larry?”“Yes. Look, have you ever heard of an inventor named Ernest Self?”“Sure I've heard of him. Covered a hassle he got into some years ago. A nice guy.”“I'll bet,”Larry said.“What does he invent, something to do with printing presses, or something?”“Printing presses? Don't you remember the story about him?”“Brief me,”Larry said.“Well—briefly does it—it got out a couple of years ago that some of our rocketeers had bought a solid fuel formula from an Italian research outfit for the star probe project. Paid them a big hunk of Uncle's change for it. So Self sued.”Larry said,“You're beingtoobrief. What d'ya mean, he sued? Why?”“Because he claimed he'd submitted the same formula to the same agency a full eighteen months earlier and they'd turned him down.”“Had he?”“Probably.”Larry didn't get it.“Then why'd they turn him down?”Sam said,“Oh, the government boys had a good alibi. Crackpots turn up all over the place and you have to brush them off. Every cellar scientist who comes along and says he's got a new super-fuel developed from old coffee grounds can't be given the welcome mat. Something was wrong with his math or something and they didn't pay much attention to him. Wouldn't even let him demonstrate it. But it was the same formula, all right.”Larry Woolford was scowling.“Something wrong with his math? What kind of a degree does he have?”Sam grinned in memory.“I got a good quote on that. He doesn't have any degree. He said he'd learned to read by the time he'd reached high school and since then he figured spending time in classrooms was a matter of interfering with his education.”“No wonder they turned him down. No degree at all. You can't get anywhere in science like that.”Sam said,“The courts rejected his suit but he got a certain amount of support here and there. Peter Voss, over at the university, claims he's one of the great intuitive scientists, whatever that is, of our generation.”“Who said that?”“Professor Voss. Not that it makes any difference what he says. Another crackpot.”After Sam's less than handsome face[pg 025]was gone from the phone, Larry walked over to the bar with his empty glass and stared at the mixer for several minutes. He began to make himself another flip, but cut it short in the middle, put down the ingredients and went back to the phone to dialRecordsagain.He went through first the brief and then the full dossier on Professor Peter Luther Voss. Aside from his academic accomplishments, particularly in the fields of political economy and international law, and the dozen or so books accredited to him, there wasn't anything particularly noteworthy. A bachelor in his fifties. No criminal record of any kind, of course, and no military career. No known political affiliations. Evidently a strong predilection for Thorstein Veblen's theories. And he'd been a friend of Henry Mencken back when that old nonconformist was tearing down contemporary society seemingly largely for the fun involved in the tearing.On the face of it, the man was no radical, and the term“crackpot”which Sam had applied was hardly called for.Larry Woolford went back to the bar and resumed the job of mixing his own version of a rum flip.But his heart wasn't in it.The Professor, Susan had said.Before he'd gone to bed the night before, Larry Woolford had ordered a seat on the shuttle jet for Jacksonville and a hover-cab there to take him to Astor, on the St. Johns River. And he'd requested to be wakened in ample time to get to the shuttleport.But it wasn't the saccharine pleasant face of the Personal Service operator which confronted him when he grumpily answered the phone in the morning. In fact, the screen remained blank.Larry decided that sweet long drinks were fine, but that anyone who took several of them in a row needed to be candied. He grumbled into the phone,“All right, who is it?”A Teutonic voice chuckled and said,“You're going to have to decide whether or not you're on vacation, my friend. At this time of day, why aren't you at work?”Larry Woolford was waking up. He said,“What can I do for you, Distelmayer?”The German merchant-of-espionage wasn't the type to make personal calls.“Have you forgotten so soon, my friend?”the other chuckled.“It was I who was going to do you a favor.”He hesitated momentarily, before adding,“In possible return for future—”“Yeah, yeah,”Larry said. He was fully awake now.The German said slowly,“You asked if any of your friends from, ah, abroad were newly in the country. Frol Eivazov has recently appeared on the scene.”Eivazov! In various respects, Larry Woolford's counterpart. Hatchetman for theChrezvychainaya Komissiya. Woolford had met him on occasion when they'd both been present at international summit meetings, busily working at counter-espionage for their respective superiors. Blandly[pg 026]shaking hands with each other, blandly drinking toasts to peace and international co-existence, blandly sizing each other up and wondering if it'd ever come to the point where one wouldblandlytreat the other to a hole in the head, possibly in some dark alley in Havana or Singapore, Leopoldville or Saigon.Larry said sharply,“Where is he? How'd he get in the country?”“My friend, my friend,”the German grunted good-humoredly.“You know better than to ask the first question. As for the second, Frol's command of American-English is at least as good as your own. Do you think hisKomissiyaless capable than your own department and unable to do him up suitable papers so that he could be, perhaps, a‘returning tourist’from Europe?”Larry Woolford was impatient with himself for asking. He said now,“It's not important. If we want to locate Frol and pick him up, we'll probably not have too much trouble doing it.”“I wouldn't think so,”the other said humorously.“Since 1919, when they were first organized, the so-called Communists in this country, from the lowest to the highest echelons, have been so riddled with police agents that a federal judge in New England once refused to prosecute a case against them on the grounds that the party was a United States government agency.”Larry was in no frame of mind for the other's heavy humor.“Look, Hans,”he said,“what I want to know is what Frol is over here for.”“Of course you do,”Hans Distelmayer said, unable evidently to keep note of puzzlement from his voice.“Larry,”he said,“I assume your people know of the new American underground.”“Whatunderground?”Larry snapped.The professional spy chief said, his voice strange,“The Soviets seem to have picked up an idea somewhere, possibly through their membership in this country, that something is abrewing in the States. That a change is being engineered.”Larry stared at the blank phone screen.“What kind of a change?”he said finally.“You mean a change to the Soviet system?”Surely not even the self-deluding Russkies could think it possible to overthrow the American socio-economic system in favor of the Soviet brand.“No, no, no,”the German chuckled.“Of course not. It's not of their working at all.”“Then what's Frol Eivazov's interest, if they aren't engineering it?”Distelmayer rumbled his characteristic chuckle with humor.“My dear friend, don't be naive. Anything that happens in America is of interest to the Soviets. There is delicate peace between you now that they have changed their direction and are occupying themselves largely with the economic and agricultural development of Asia and such portions of the world as have come under their hegemony, and while you put all efforts[pg 027]into modernizing the more backward countries among your satellites.”Larry said automatically,“Our allies aren't satellites.”The spy-master went on without contesting the statement.“There is immediate peace but surely governmental officials on both sides keep careful watch on the internal developments of the other. True, the current heads of the Soviet Complex would like to see the governments of all the Western powers changed—but only if they are changed in the direction of communism. They are hardly interested in seeing changes made which would strengthen the West in the, ah, Battle For Men's Minds.”Larry snorted his disgust.“What sort of change in government would strengthen the United States in—”The German interrupted smoothly,“Evidently, that's what Frol seems to be here for, Larry. To find out more about this movement and—”“Thiswhat?”Larry blurted.“The term seems to bemovement.”Larry Woolford held a long silence before saying,“And Frol is actually here in this country to buck this ... this movement.”“Not necessarily,”the other said impatiently.“He is here to find out more about it. Evidently Peking and Moscow have heard just enough to make them nervous.”Larry said,“You have anything more, Hans?”“I'm afraid that's about it.”“All right,”Larry said. He added absently,“Thanks, Hans.”“Thank me some day with deeds, not with words,”the German chuckled.
Larry said,“Don't worry about him, Zusanette. Now then, thismovement. That's kind of a funny name, isn't it? What does it mean?”
She was evidently glad that the less than handsome Steve Hackett had left the room. Her words flowed more freely.“Well, Daddy says that they[pg 017]call it the Movement rather than a revolution....”
An ice cube manifested itself in the stomach of Lawrence Woolford.
“... Because people get conditioned, like, to words. Like revolution. Everybody is against the word because they all think of killing and everything, and, Daddy says, there doesn't have to be any shooting or killing or anything like that at all. It just means a fundamental change in society. And, Daddy says, take the word propaganda. Everybody's got to thinking that it automatically means lies, but it doesn't at all. It just means, like, the arguments you use to convince people that what you stand for is right and it might be lies or it might not. And, Daddy says, take the word socialism. So many people have the wrong idea of what it means that the socialists ought to scrap the word and start using something else to mean what they stand for.”
Larry said gently,“Your father is a socialist?”
“Oh, no.”
He nodded in understanding.“Oh, a Communist, eh?”
Susan Self was indignant.“Daddy thinks the Communists are strictly awful, really weird.”
Steve Hackett came back into the office. He said to Larry,“I sent a couple of the boys out to pick him up.”
Susan was on her feet, a hand to mouth.“You mean my father! You're going to arrest him!”
Larry said soothingly,“Sit down, Zusanette. There's a lot of things about this that I'm sure your father can explain.”He said to Steve,“She tells me that the money belonged to a movement. A revolutionary movement which doesn't use the term revolutionary because people react unfavorably to that word. It's not Commie.”
Susan said indignantly,“It's American, not anything foreign!”
Steve growled,“Let's get back to the money. What's this movement doing with a lot of counterfeit bills and where did you find them?”
She evidently figured she'd gone too far now to take a stand.“It's not Daddy's fault,”she said.“He took me to headquarters twice.”
“Where's headquarters?”Larry said trying to keep his voice soothing.
“Well ... I don't know. Daddy was awfully silly about it. He tied his handkerchief around my eyes near the end. But the others complained about me anyway, and Daddy got awfully mad and said something about the young people of the country participating in their emancipation and all, but the others got mad too, and said there wasn't any kind of help I could do around headquarters anyway, and I'd be better off in school. Everybody got awfully mad, but after the second time Daddy promised not to take me to headquarters any more.”
“But where did you find the money, Zusannette?”Larry said.
“At headquarters. There's tons and tons of it there.”
Larry cleared his throat and said,“When you say tons and tons, you mean a great deal of it, eh?”
She was proudly definite.“I mean[pg 018]tons and tons. A ton is two thousand pounds.”
“Look, Zusanette,”Larry said reasonably.“I don't know how much money weighs, exactly, but let's say a pound would be, say, a thousand bills.”He took up a pencil and scribbled on a pad before him.“A pound of fifties would be $50,000. Then if you multiply that by 2,000 pounds to make a ton, you'd have $100,000,000. And you say there's tons and tons?”
“And that's just the fifties,”Susan said triumphantly.“So you can see the two little packages I picked up aren't really important at all. It's just like I found them.”
“I don't think there's quite a thousand bills in a pound,”Steve said weakly.
Larry said,“How much other money is there?”
“Oh, piles. Whole rooms. Rooms after rooms. And hundred dollar bills, and twenties, and fives, and tens—”
Larry said,“Look, Zusanette, I don't think you're in any position to be telling us whoppers. This whole story doesn't make much sense, does it?”
Her mouth tightened.“I'm not going to say anything more until Daddy gets here, anyway,”she said.
Which was when the phone rang.
“I have an idea that's for me,”Steve said.
The screen lit up and LaVerne Polk said,“Call for Steve Hackett, Larry.”
Larry pushed the phone around so Steve could look into it. LaVerne flicked off and was replaced by a stranger in uniform. Steve said,“Yeah?”
The cop said,“He's flown the coop, sir. Must have got out just minutes before we arrived. Couldn't have taken more than a suitcase. Few papers scattered around the room he used for an office.”
Susan gasped,“You mean Daddy?”
Steve Hackett rubbed a hand over his flattened nose.“Holy Smokes,”he said. He thanked the cop and flicked off.
Larry said,“Look Zusanette, everything's going to be all right. Nothing will happen to you. You say you managed to pick up two packets of all this money they have at headquarters. O.K. So you thought it wouldn't be missed and you've always wanted to spend money the way you see the stars do on TriD and in the movies.”
She looked at him, taken back.“How did you know?”
Larry said dryly,“I've always wanted to myself. But I would like to know one more thing. The Movement. What was it going to do with all this money?”
That evidently puzzled her.“The Professor said they were going to spend it on chorus girls. I guess ... I guess he was joking or something. But Daddy and I'd just been up to New York and we saw those famous precision dancers at the New Roxy Theatre and all and then when we got back the Professor and Daddy were talking and I heard him say it.”
Steve said, carefully,“Professor who?”
Susan said,“Just the Professor. That's all we ever call him.”Her chin went to trembling still again.
Larry summed it up for the Boss later.
His chief scoffed his disbelief.“The child is full of dreams, Lawrence. It comes from seeing an over-abundance of these TriD shows. I have a girl the same age. I don't know what is happening to the country. They have no sense of reality.”
Larry Woolford said mildly,“Well, she might be full of nonsense, but she did have the fifties, and she's our only connection with whoever printed them whether it's a movement to overthrow the government, or what.”
The Boss said tolerantly,“Movement, indeed. Obviously, her father produced them and she purloined a quantity before he was ready to attempt to pass them. Have you a run down on him yet?”
“Susan Self says her father, Ernest Self, is an inventor. Steve Hackett is working on locating him.”
“He's an inventor indeed. Evidently, he has invented a perfect counterfeiting device. However, that is the Secret Service's headache, not ours. Do you wish to resume that vacation of yours, Lawrence?”
His operative twisted his face in a grimace.“Sure, I do, but I'm not happy about this, sir. What happens if there really is an organization, a Movement, like she said? That brings it back under our jurisdiction, anti-subversion.”
The other shook his head tolerantly.“See here, Lawrence, when you begin scheming a social revolution you can't plan on an organization composed of a small number of persons who keep their existence secret. In spite of what a good many persons seem to believe, revolutions are not accomplished by handfuls of conspirators hiding in cellars and eventually overthrowing society by dramatically shooting the President, or King, or Czar, or whoever. Revolutions are precipitated by masses of people. People who have ample cause to be against whatever the current government happens to be. Usually, they are on the point of actual starvation. Have you ever read Machiavelli?”
Niccolo Machiavelli was currentlythe thingto read. Larry said with a certain dignity,“I've gone through‘The Prince,’the‘Discourses’and currently I'm amusing myself with his‘History of Florence.’”
“Anybody who can amuse himself reading Machiavelli,”the Boss said dryly,“has a macabre sense of humor. At any rate, what I was alluding to was where he stated that the Prince cannot rule indefinitely in the face of the active opposition of his people. Therefore, the people always get a government that lies within the limits of their tolerance. It may be on one edge or the other of their limits of tolerance—but it's always within their tolerance zone.”
Larry frowned and said,“Well, what's your point, sir?”
The Boss said patiently,“I'm just observing that cultures aren't overthrown by little handfuls of secret conspirators. You might eliminate a few individuals in that manner, in other words change the personnel of[pg 020]the government, but you aren't going to alter a socio-economic system. That can't be done until your people have been pushed outside their limits of tolerance. Very well then. A revolutionary organization must get out and propagandize. It has got to convince the people that they are being pushed beyond endurance. You have got to get themassesto moving. You have to give speeches, print newspapers, books, pamphlets, you have got to send your organizers out to intensify interest in your program.”
Larry said,“I see what you mean. If this so-called Movement actually existed it couldn't expect to get anywhere as long as remained secret.”
The Boss nodded.“That is correct. Theleadersof a revolutionary movement might be intellectuals, social scientists, scholars—in fact they usually are—take our own American Revolution with Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Washington. Or the French Revolution with Robespierre, Danton, Marat, Engels and Lenin. All were well educated intellectuals from the middle class. But the revolution itself, once it starts, comes from below, from the mass of people pushed beyond tolerance.”
It came to Lawrence Woolford that his superior had achieved to his prominent office not through any fluke. He knew what he was talking about.
The Boss wound it up.“If there was such an organization as this Movement, then this department would know about it. You don't keep a revolutionary movement secret. It doesn't make sense to even try. Even if it is forced underground, it makes as much noise as it can.”
His trouble shooter cleared his throat.“I suppose you're right, sir.”He added hesitantly.“We could always give Susan Self a few drops of Scop-Serum, sir.”
The Boss scowled disapprovingly.“You know how the Supreme Court ruled on that, Lawrence. And particularly since the medics revealed its effect on reducing sexual inhibitions. No, Mr. Hackett and Secret Service will have to get the truth out of the girl by some other means. At any rate, it is out of our hands.”
Larry came to his feet.“Well, then, I'll resume my vacation, eh?”
His chief took up a report from his desk an frowned at it, his attention already passing to other matters. He grunted,“Clear it with LaVerne, please. Tell her I said to take another week to make up for our intruding on you in this manner.”
In the back of his head, Larry Woolford had misgivings. For one thing, where had the kid, who on the face of her performance was no great brain even as sixteen or seventeen old's go, picked up such ideas as the fact that people developed prejudices against words like revolution and propaganda?
However, he was clear of it now. Let Steve Hackett and his people take over. He, Lawrence Woolford, was due for a quick return to Astor, Florida[pg 021]and the bass fishing on the St. John's River.
He stopped at LaVerne's desk and gave her his address to be, now that his vacation was resumed.
She said, smiling up at him.“Right. The boss already told me to get in touch with Secret Service and let them know we're pulling out. What happened to Susan Self?”
Larry looked at her.“How'd you know about Susan?”
Her tone was deprecating.“Remember? You had me cut some tapes on you and that hulking Steve Hackett grilling the poor kid.”
Larry snorted.“Poor kid, yet. With her tastes for living-it-up, and that father she has, she'll probably spend the rest of her life getting in Steve's hair as a counterfeit pusher.”
“What are they going to do with her? She's just a child.”
The agent shrugged.“I feel sorry for her, too, LaVerne. Steve's got her in a suite at the Greater Washington Hilton, until things are cleared up. They don't want the newspapers to get wind of this until they've got that inventor father of hers and whatever he's cooked up to turn out perfect reproductions of Uncle Sam's money. Look, I won't be leaving until tomorrow. What'd you say we go out on the town tonight?”
“Why, Larry Woolford! How nice of you to ask me. Poor Little, Non-U me. What do you have in mind? I understand Mort Lenny's at one of the night clubs.”
Larry winced.“You know what he's been saying about the administration.”
She smiled sweetly at him.
Larry said,“Look, we could take in the Brahms concert, then—”
“Do you like Brahms? I go for popular music myself. Preferably the sort of thing they wrote back in the 1930s. Something you can dance to, something you know the words to. Corny, they used to call it. Remember‘Sunny Side of the Street,’and‘Just the Way You Look Tonight’.”
Larry winced again. He said,“Look, I admit, I don't go for concerts either but it doesn't hurt you to—”
“I know,”she said sweetly.“It doesn't hurt for a bright young bureaucrat to be seen at concerts.”
“How about Dixieland?”he said.“It's all the thing now.”
“I like corn. Besides, my wardrobe is all out of style. Paris, London, and Rome just got in a huddle a couple of weeks ago and antiquated everything I own. You wouldn't want to be seen with a girl a few weeks out of date, would you?”
“Oh, now, LaVerne, get off my back.”He thought about it.“Look, you must havesomethingyou could wear.”
“Get out of here, you vacant minded conformist! IlikeMort Lenny, he makes me laugh; Ihatevodka martinis, they give me sour stomach; I don'tlikethe current women's styles, nor the men's either.”LaVerne spun back to her auto-typer and began to dictate into it.
Larry glared down at her.“All right. O.K. Whatdoyou like?”
She snapped back irrationally,“I like whatIlike.”
He laughed at her in ridicule.
This time she glared at him.“That makes more sense than you're capable of assimilating, Mr. Walking Status Symbol. My likes and dislikes aren't dictated by someone else. If I like corny music, I'll listen to it and the devil with Brahms or Dixieland or anything else that somebody else tells me is all the thing!”
He turned on his heel angrily.“O.K., O.K., it takes all sorts to make a world, weirds and all.”
“One more label to hang on people,”she snarled after him.“Everything's labels. Be sure and never come to any judgments of your own!”
What a woman! He wondered why he'd ever bothered to ask her for a date. There were so many women in this town you waded through them, and here he was exposing himself to be seen in public with a girl everybody in the department knew was as weird as they came. It didn't do your standing any good to be seen around with the type. He wondered all over again why the Boss tolerated her as his receptionist-secretary.
He got his car from the parking lot and drove home at a high level. Ordinarily, the distance being what it was, he drove in the lower and slower traffic levels but now his frustration demanded some expression.
Back at his suburban auto-bungalow, he threw all except the high priority switch and went on down into his small second cellar den. He didn't really feel like a night on the town anyway. A few vodka martinis under his belt and he'd sleep late and he wanted to get up in time for an early start for Florida. Besides, in that[pg 023]respect he agreed with the irritating wench. Vermouth was never meant to mix with Polish vodka. He wished that Sidecars would come back.
In his den, he shucked off his jacket, kicked off his shoes and shuffled into Moroccan slippers. He went over to his current reading rack and scowled at the paperbacks there. His culture status books were upstairs where they could be seen. He pulled out a western, tossed it over to the cocktail table that sat next to his chair, and then went over to the bar.
Up above in his living room, he had one of the new autobars. You could dial any one of more than thirty drinks. Autobars were all the rage. The Boss had one that gave a selection of a hundred. But what difference did it make when nobody but eccentric old-timers or flighty blondes drank anything except vodka martinis? He didn't like autobars anyway. A well mixed drink is a personal thing, a work of competence, instinct and art, not something measured to the drop, iced to the degree, shaken or stirred to a mathematical formula.
Out of the tiny refrigerator he brought a four-ounce cube of frozen pineapple juice, touched the edge with his thumbnail and let the ultra thin plastic peel away. He tossed the cube into his mixer, took up a bottle of light rum and poured in about two ounces. He brought an egg from the refrigerator and added that. An ounce of whole milk followed and a teaspoon of powdered sugar. He flicked the switch and let the conglomeration froth together.
He poured it into a king-size highball glass and took it over to his chair. Vodka martinis be damned, he liked a slightly sweet long drink.
He sat down in the chair, picked up the book and scowled at the cover. He ought to be reading that Florentine history of Machiavelli's, especially if the Boss had got to the point where he was quoting from the guy. But the heck with it, he was on vacation. He didn't think much of the Italian diplomat of the Renaissance anyway; how could you be that far back without being dated?
He couldn't get beyond the first page or two.
And when you can't concentrate on a Western, you just can't concentrate.
He finished his drink, went over to his phone and dialedDepartment of Recordsand thenInformation. When the bright young thing answered, he said,“I'd like the brief on an Ernest Self who lives on Elwood Avenue, Baltimore section of Greater Washington. I don't know his code number.”
She did things with switches and buttons for a moment and then brought a sheet from a delivery chute.“Do you want me to read it to you, sir?”
“No, I'll scan it,”Larry said.
Her face faded to be replaced by the brief on Ernest Self.
It was astonishingly short.Recordsseemed to have slipped up on this occasion. A rare occurrence. He considered requesting the full dossier, then changed his mind. Instead he dialed[pg 024]the number of theSun-Postand asked for its science columnist.
Sam Sokolski's puffy face eventually faded in.
Larry said to him sourly,“You drink too much. You can begin to see the veins breaking in your nose.”
Sam looked at him patiently.
Larry said,“How'd you like to come over and toss back a few tonight?”
“I'm working. I thought you were on vacation.”
Larry sighed.“I am,”he said.“O.K., so you can't take a night off and lift a few with an old buddy.”
“That's right. Anything else, Larry?”
“Yes. Look, have you ever heard of an inventor named Ernest Self?”
“Sure I've heard of him. Covered a hassle he got into some years ago. A nice guy.”
“I'll bet,”Larry said.“What does he invent, something to do with printing presses, or something?”
“Printing presses? Don't you remember the story about him?”
“Brief me,”Larry said.
“Well—briefly does it—it got out a couple of years ago that some of our rocketeers had bought a solid fuel formula from an Italian research outfit for the star probe project. Paid them a big hunk of Uncle's change for it. So Self sued.”
Larry said,“You're beingtoobrief. What d'ya mean, he sued? Why?”
“Because he claimed he'd submitted the same formula to the same agency a full eighteen months earlier and they'd turned him down.”
“Had he?”
“Probably.”
Larry didn't get it.“Then why'd they turn him down?”
Sam said,“Oh, the government boys had a good alibi. Crackpots turn up all over the place and you have to brush them off. Every cellar scientist who comes along and says he's got a new super-fuel developed from old coffee grounds can't be given the welcome mat. Something was wrong with his math or something and they didn't pay much attention to him. Wouldn't even let him demonstrate it. But it was the same formula, all right.”
Larry Woolford was scowling.“Something wrong with his math? What kind of a degree does he have?”
Sam grinned in memory.“I got a good quote on that. He doesn't have any degree. He said he'd learned to read by the time he'd reached high school and since then he figured spending time in classrooms was a matter of interfering with his education.”
“No wonder they turned him down. No degree at all. You can't get anywhere in science like that.”
Sam said,“The courts rejected his suit but he got a certain amount of support here and there. Peter Voss, over at the university, claims he's one of the great intuitive scientists, whatever that is, of our generation.”
“Who said that?”
“Professor Voss. Not that it makes any difference what he says. Another crackpot.”
After Sam's less than handsome face[pg 025]was gone from the phone, Larry walked over to the bar with his empty glass and stared at the mixer for several minutes. He began to make himself another flip, but cut it short in the middle, put down the ingredients and went back to the phone to dialRecordsagain.
He went through first the brief and then the full dossier on Professor Peter Luther Voss. Aside from his academic accomplishments, particularly in the fields of political economy and international law, and the dozen or so books accredited to him, there wasn't anything particularly noteworthy. A bachelor in his fifties. No criminal record of any kind, of course, and no military career. No known political affiliations. Evidently a strong predilection for Thorstein Veblen's theories. And he'd been a friend of Henry Mencken back when that old nonconformist was tearing down contemporary society seemingly largely for the fun involved in the tearing.
On the face of it, the man was no radical, and the term“crackpot”which Sam had applied was hardly called for.
Larry Woolford went back to the bar and resumed the job of mixing his own version of a rum flip.
But his heart wasn't in it.The Professor, Susan had said.
Before he'd gone to bed the night before, Larry Woolford had ordered a seat on the shuttle jet for Jacksonville and a hover-cab there to take him to Astor, on the St. Johns River. And he'd requested to be wakened in ample time to get to the shuttleport.
But it wasn't the saccharine pleasant face of the Personal Service operator which confronted him when he grumpily answered the phone in the morning. In fact, the screen remained blank.
Larry decided that sweet long drinks were fine, but that anyone who took several of them in a row needed to be candied. He grumbled into the phone,“All right, who is it?”
A Teutonic voice chuckled and said,“You're going to have to decide whether or not you're on vacation, my friend. At this time of day, why aren't you at work?”
Larry Woolford was waking up. He said,“What can I do for you, Distelmayer?”The German merchant-of-espionage wasn't the type to make personal calls.
“Have you forgotten so soon, my friend?”the other chuckled.“It was I who was going to do you a favor.”He hesitated momentarily, before adding,“In possible return for future—”
“Yeah, yeah,”Larry said. He was fully awake now.
The German said slowly,“You asked if any of your friends from, ah, abroad were newly in the country. Frol Eivazov has recently appeared on the scene.”
Eivazov! In various respects, Larry Woolford's counterpart. Hatchetman for theChrezvychainaya Komissiya. Woolford had met him on occasion when they'd both been present at international summit meetings, busily working at counter-espionage for their respective superiors. Blandly[pg 026]shaking hands with each other, blandly drinking toasts to peace and international co-existence, blandly sizing each other up and wondering if it'd ever come to the point where one wouldblandlytreat the other to a hole in the head, possibly in some dark alley in Havana or Singapore, Leopoldville or Saigon.
Larry said sharply,“Where is he? How'd he get in the country?”
“My friend, my friend,”the German grunted good-humoredly.“You know better than to ask the first question. As for the second, Frol's command of American-English is at least as good as your own. Do you think hisKomissiyaless capable than your own department and unable to do him up suitable papers so that he could be, perhaps, a‘returning tourist’from Europe?”
Larry Woolford was impatient with himself for asking. He said now,“It's not important. If we want to locate Frol and pick him up, we'll probably not have too much trouble doing it.”
“I wouldn't think so,”the other said humorously.“Since 1919, when they were first organized, the so-called Communists in this country, from the lowest to the highest echelons, have been so riddled with police agents that a federal judge in New England once refused to prosecute a case against them on the grounds that the party was a United States government agency.”
Larry was in no frame of mind for the other's heavy humor.“Look, Hans,”he said,“what I want to know is what Frol is over here for.”
“Of course you do,”Hans Distelmayer said, unable evidently to keep note of puzzlement from his voice.“Larry,”he said,“I assume your people know of the new American underground.”
“Whatunderground?”Larry snapped.
The professional spy chief said, his voice strange,“The Soviets seem to have picked up an idea somewhere, possibly through their membership in this country, that something is abrewing in the States. That a change is being engineered.”
Larry stared at the blank phone screen.
“What kind of a change?”he said finally.“You mean a change to the Soviet system?”Surely not even the self-deluding Russkies could think it possible to overthrow the American socio-economic system in favor of the Soviet brand.
“No, no, no,”the German chuckled.“Of course not. It's not of their working at all.”
“Then what's Frol Eivazov's interest, if they aren't engineering it?”
Distelmayer rumbled his characteristic chuckle with humor.“My dear friend, don't be naive. Anything that happens in America is of interest to the Soviets. There is delicate peace between you now that they have changed their direction and are occupying themselves largely with the economic and agricultural development of Asia and such portions of the world as have come under their hegemony, and while you put all efforts[pg 027]into modernizing the more backward countries among your satellites.”
Larry said automatically,“Our allies aren't satellites.”
The spy-master went on without contesting the statement.“There is immediate peace but surely governmental officials on both sides keep careful watch on the internal developments of the other. True, the current heads of the Soviet Complex would like to see the governments of all the Western powers changed—but only if they are changed in the direction of communism. They are hardly interested in seeing changes made which would strengthen the West in the, ah, Battle For Men's Minds.”
Larry snorted his disgust.“What sort of change in government would strengthen the United States in—”
The German interrupted smoothly,“Evidently, that's what Frol seems to be here for, Larry. To find out more about this movement and—”
“Thiswhat?”Larry blurted.
“The term seems to bemovement.”
Larry Woolford held a long silence before saying,“And Frol is actually here in this country to buck this ... this movement.”
“Not necessarily,”the other said impatiently.“He is here to find out more about it. Evidently Peking and Moscow have heard just enough to make them nervous.”
Larry said,“You have anything more, Hans?”
“I'm afraid that's about it.”
“All right,”Larry said. He added absently,“Thanks, Hans.”
“Thank me some day with deeds, not with words,”the German chuckled.