The Cool War

X

Hake flew back to the United States in far grander style than he had left it. Not merely was he in th£ first-class section of the Trans-Pam jumbo, marinated in wines, cosseted with cushions, but the seat beside him was paid for and empty. The stewardesses made it up into a little bed for him. The Team rewarded its members.

But Hake’s question was how he could best reward the Team. He began to think of it while the jet was lunging up into the yellow-gray Tyrrhenian sky and the oily beach at Ostia was dropping away beneath. He did not sleep, even though one of the stews brought him hot milk and another sat beside him, to stroke the poor bandaged head of the man who had been so brutally attacked by ragazzi- He wished they would leave him alone. He was busy scheming.

At Kennedy the chief flight attendant hurried out the gate to speak to the customs agents and a stewardess found him a wheelchair. He went straight to the head of the line, and when he got through Immigration a Trans-Pam courier was waiting to conduct Reverend Hake to his waiting limousine. Hake was aware of what was happening. Part of it was only that Yosper had whispered a word in the purser’s ear, to say that this poor man’s very life was at risk because of a mugging in the shadow of the Colosseum itself. But part of it was more. The invisible embrace of the Team never let him go.

One of Yosper’s boys had even phoned ahead. It was ten at night before the limo reached Long Branch, but Jessie was warned and waiting. She peered into his ruined face. “Oh, Horny! They said yg,u might need a wheelchair, but I thought we could just use your old chairlift. Then you can lean on my arm—”

“I can walk, Jessie.” He waved the driver away—let the Team tip him, if a tip was what he was waiting for.

She clucked despairingly. “You look really terrible, Horny.”

“I appreciate your telling me that, Jessie.” He proved his ability to walk by limping heavily past her into the house. All of the cuts and stabbing pains had turned into sullen sore aches and stiffnesses, and walking was no fun. He didn’t want to discuss it. Knowing she had followed him into his room he dropped his bag and said over his shoulder, “And for the next few days I don’t want to see anyone but you.”

“Well, I don’t blame you there, Horny.”

“Except,” he said, “first thing tomorrow I want you to get an IBM representative in to see me, and a car dealer. And, oh, yes, while I think of it, a carpet salesman. And day after get me on an early flight to Washington.”

“You mean the Metroliner, right?”

“I mean a flight. On an airplane, and now I’m going to take a hot bath and go to bed. Good night, Jessie.”

As soon as she was out of the house, clucking and fussing, coming back twice to tell him that she had left him a pot of chicken soup on the stove and that she wasn’t really sure she could get all those people in but would do her best, Hake spilled his battered bag onto the bed. He dumped the filthy clothes, some of them still from the unwashed weeks Under the Wire, into a hamper and hesitated over the rest. Lock-pick, garroting wire, circuit testers. Telecommunications codes and Blue Box pitchpipe. At the bottom were the tapes and fiches The Incredible Art had given him so long ago, and for them he could see no immediate use. For the other things—yes, no doubt. He was not yet sure what the use would be but he would find one. He stripped off his clothes and limped to the full-length mirror in the bathroom door.

He was, in fact, a mess. The old network of scars on the left side of his chest, where his ribs had been spread and respread with tools like car jacks, were almost lost under the greater, newer marks. He had green-gray bruises all over his body. Both eyes were black. Under the adhesive dressing, the squashed sides of his nose were purply red, and the bandage over his ear was stained with blood. He studied himself appraisingly and nodded. Nobody trained Under the Wire could have done a more thorough job.

Remained to see what he was going to do about it.

He ran hot water prodigally into the tub and, while he was waiting for it to fill, experimentally flushed his toilet. It did not speak to him, not even a “hello.” Apparently he had been given the evening off.

Hake lowered himself into the steaming tub, so sore and so troubled that he was almost at peace. Inside his head was a solid and well-defined lump of cold anger. It was not mere helpless rage and frustration, not any more. It had been transmuted, and the transmutation occurred as Yosper and his boys were walking him through the perfunctory Roman passport control. They ambled in military formation, Yosper on his right side, Dieter on his left; Carlos followed a few paces behind and Mario took the point; it was exactly as if they were patrolling some not quite secure area, and as Yosper waved genially to the boarding clerk and led Hake past her into the waiting plane, he stopped and said, with real emotion, “You’re a good man, Hake.” He patted Hake’s shoulder awkwardly, and then amended himself. “Too shitfired headstrong, sure. Get you in trouble one of these days, boy, real trouble, mark my words. But you got a lot of Moxie. I want you to know I’m sending a commendation in for your promotion file. And next time I have a job you can help in, I’m going to ask for you by name.”

“Thank you,” said Hake, and at that moment he made his resolution.

In his own bathtub, staring up at the green mermaids on the plastic shower curtain, he was calculating ways and means.

They would forgive you anything, he thought. Just so you got the job done. More so if you showed balls enough to run a game of your own now and then. Leota had been quite right; they were grooming him for a big one, and evidently they considered he was coming along just fine.

Very well. He would accept their trust. He would play their mad macho games, and do his best to earn more trust. It was a good thing to be trusted, because without the possession of trust you did not have the power to betray.

This time the receptionist at the Lo-Wate Bottling Co. was a slim middle-aged Oriental male instead of his first visit’s guardian of the gate, but he gave Hake the identical loathsome stare. “Do you have an appointment?” he asked, as if it were a foregone conclusion that Hake did not.

“I am the Reverend H. Hornswell Hake, to see Curmudgeon at once, and I don’t need one. Tell him I’m here.”

Hake sat down and opened a magazine without waiting for an answer. He had no doubt that he would get past the receptionist. If his name or the lumps on his face were not passport enough, his arrogance would be. Hake was far from sure that arrogance would melt all difficulties in dealing with the Team. But it was the best tool he had in his chest to use at that moment. And, besides, it gave him pleasure.

When he finally was led to the remembered office Curmudgeon’s scowl was black. “You jerked me out of a planning meeting!” he barked. “Man, you got a lot to learn. Never come here without orders, do you understand?”

“I understand,” Hake nodded, “and will comply, provided you cut out the chickenshit. Don’t give me any more missions where I don’t know the score. Not any. Otherwise I make a lot of trouble. Do you understand?”

“Now, listen—’”

“Not yet. First take a look at my face. I’ll grant you that half of it is my own fault, but the other half isn’t. I got these lumps because the Team let me down. That’s not going to happen again, and the way we’re going to keep it from happening is I’rii going to get a full briefing before I ever lift another finger for you. More than that. I’m going to have the right to accept or decline, whatever it is.” He stopped and leaned back. “I hope you understand and will comply,” he added mildly.

Curmudgeon glowered silently for a moment, one hand combing its fingers through his dense beard while the other hovered nervously near the butt of his.45. Then, surprisingly, he shrugged and relaxed. “Maybe Jasper Medina’s right about you,” he said.

“Depends on what he says.”

Curmudgeon said thoughtfully, “Says you’re a lot tougher than you look. Well, that’s what we need. But that doesn’t mean you can pull a stunt like this again! Once, maybe. Twice and you’ve had it, Hake, you really have!”

“I understand and will comply,” Hake said, “provided some dummy doesn’t do something that leaves me no choice. Now, what I came down here for. I’ve ordered some stuff for myself—a car, a computer terminal, some odds and ends for the church—”

“Computer! Not a chance, Hake. Grade Three field agents don’t rate personal computer terminals, do you have any idea what those things cost?”

“Charge it to KLM.”

“No computer! It isn’t just a question of the money. You’ll make yourself too conspicuous. No.”

Hake scowled, then decided to pass it. If he decided he really needed one he would get it anyhow, and figure out how to pay for it with the skills learned Under the Wire. ‘Then one last thing. I want Team help to get Leota Pauket out of that sheik’s harem.”

Curmudgeon grinned. “There you went too far. You go near him, or her, and you’re dead, Hake.”

“But I’m responsible for her being there!”

“Why, sure you are. What’s that got to do with it? No way. Sheik Hassabou’s a significant contact and not to be endangered. Don’t knock it, Hake. Outside of Jasper Medina’s commendation, about the only thing you’ve got going for you is that you facilitated making that contact. You didn’t plan it that way, but we hit lucky.”

“Him? What’s he good for? He’s a played-out oil sheik, nothing left but money.”

Curmudgeon shook his head. “That far you can’t push me. I’ll tell you this much. The Team has a major objective, and we needed someone to help. He’s it. When Medina contacted him to drop the charges against you it gave a chance for certain other topics to be raised—and they were. That’s it, Hake. You can have all your other toys.”

“But Leota—”

“Knock it off, Hake! We’ve got no reason to do that woman any favors. I’ll tell you what,” he said, relenting slightly. “She’s only got thirty days to do there. Then I’ll see. Maybe we can clean her slate for her.”

Hake had a sudden preview of what Leota would say if he told her the Team had offered to clean her slate. Still, he had found out more than he had known when he got here, and the most he had really expected was a crumb or two of information.

“I’m waiting, Hake.”

There was such a thing as pressing your luck too far. Unwillingly, Hake said, “I understand and will comply, but—”

“No but. No more conversation,” said Curmudgeon. “Good-by, Hake.”

When Hake got back to Long Branch his new car was waiting at the curb. It was a Tata three-wheeler, hydrbgen propelled, and Jessie Tunman came out on the porch to get a look at it. “Why yellow?” she sniffed.

“It was what they had in stock,” Hake said.

She shook her head disapprovingly. “After all the things you’ve said about power-piggery,” she remarked. “And with the balance of payments going crazy with these new hydrogen imports—well, it’s your life. Are you going to be able to take care of any business now, Horny?”

“What kind of business?”

“Well, some parishioners want to talk to you—”

“No counseling until my face heals up.”

“All right, but Alys’s husbands have been on the phone, twice each.”

“I don’t want to hear.”

“And that windmill makes a terrible racket sometimes, Horny. I’ve called the construction people three times but they never do anything about it.”

“Tell them,” he said, “that if they don’t get a man down here today I’m going to rip it out and buy a new one from someone else.”

“Horny!”

“Tell them. Now I’m going to take my new car for a spin.”

“Drive it in good health,” she sniffed.

That was far from certain, he thought, wincing at the pain of unfamiliar muscles as he stepped on the unfamiliar accelerator and clutch and brake. But this was not a joy ride. It might even be rather essential to his life. It had occurred to Hake in Curmudgeon’s office that it might be easy to overplay his hand, with possibly very unhappy results. On the other side, there was a way to improve the cards he had been dealt. What he was after now was a new hole card; so he drove down to Asbury Park, stopping at a discount store along the highway to buy a new cassette recorder and tapes.

The beach was full of bathers, of course, but only a few surf-casters were out on the rock jetties; there was not much to be caught any more in the sludgy New Jersey Atlantic. Painfully Hake climbed the rocks past them, to a place where wind and surf and distance blanketed his voice. He sat down, put a new tape in the machine and began to speak.

“My name is H. Hornswell Hake, pastor of the Unitarian Church in Long Branch. I was first contacted by the spy and sabotage group called ‘The Team’ on March 16th, when a person I suppose to have been a Team agent, representing himself to my secretary as an IRS man and to me as a senator’s administrative assistant, came to my house to order me to active duty…”

By the fourth day after his return Hake did not look much better, but some of the aches were dwindling. In a way, the beatings were an asset They had made Jessie Tunman willing to keep everyone away from him, though she expressed herself baffled that he was continually inventing excuses to go out: to the supermarket, to get a morning paper, to mail a letter, to drive his new car for fun and practice. “I can do all that for you, Horny,” she protested. “All but drive that silly yellow car, anyway, and that’s wasting power!” When he replied that he needed the exercise or wanted the fresh air she gave up, unsatisfied and unreconciled. It didn’t matter. He had to get out to do what he needed to do.

And when at last, on the twentieth try, each one from a different public phone, he finally found The Incredible Art at home, he cried, “Thank God!”

“Who is this? Horny? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter, Art—well, it’s complicated. Are you alone in the house? Good. I’ll be over to see you in five minutes.” And actually he made it in three. The tapes he had made on the jetty in Asbury Park were burning holes in his pocket.

The home of The Incredible Art was almost invisible from the street—not much less so when you walked up to the front door, for Art had built it into the side of a hill. A concrete casting in the shape of a magician’s peaked hat was beside the door, and when Hake pressed the bell it lit up and croaked, “Who dares approach the sacred cave of The Incredible Art?” Hake didn’t have to answer. The door was open before the tape recording finished, and Art’s skinny, blond face was peering worriedly out. “My God, Horny,” he said.

“I had an accident,” Hake said. “I’ve been thinking about printing up cards to give out.”

“I never thought you’d turn into a brawler at your age. How about a cup of tea?”

“Maybe later.” Hake pushed past Art into the house and closed the door. He reached into his shirt and pulled out the sealed packet of tape cassettes; he had not wanted to be seen carrying them inside. “I want a big favor, please, Art.”

The magician pursed his lips, looked at the sealed packet. “I bet that isn’t home-made cookies.”

“It’s something I want you to keep for me. In a really safe place. If you hear I’m dead, or if I don’t come back and ask for them in thirty days, then open up these tapes and play them. And please don’t say anything about this, don’t even say you saw me, to anybody at all.”

“Oh, wow.” Art sat down, tugging at his blond beard. He looked at the package of tapes without taking them. “Horny, what are you into?”

“I just can’t tell you, Art. Of course—” stiffly—“if you’re afraid of trouble—”

“It ain’t the trouble, Horny, it’s the curiosity.” The magician leaned forward to take the package from Hake’s hand. He shook it, listened to it, then tossed it back and forth from hand to hand, watching Hake’s face. “You know,” he mentioned, “you’re an amateur at sealing up packages. I could get into this and reseal it and you’d never know the difference.”

“Just please don’t, Art.”

The magician nodded. “One question. Why me?”

“Because I trust you. Also because you’re always doing TV and radio appearances; you’ll know how to use the tapes if you have to. I should tell you that it might not be—” He hesitated. He had been going to say “easy.” Candor made him finish, “safe.”

Art whistled thoughtfully. He stood up and began to walk around the room, juggling the packet. “What about that cup of tea?” he asked over his shoulder.

“All right, but please don’t drop them.”

Art put a kettle on the stove and then turned around, spreading empty hands. “Drop what?” he grinned.

“Where—”

“They’re where they’ll be okay for a while. I’ll find a better place, but even you won’t know where it is. Are you sure you can’t give me even the teensiest hint?”

“I’m sure, Art. And I’m not finished, I’m sorry to say. I need to find somebody, and I’m hoping you can help me with your computer.”

“Oh?”

“It’s a woman. Her name’s Leota Pauket. P-A-U-K-E-T.”

“Uh-huh. Of course you can’t tell me much about her?”

“Well, last I saw of her she was in Rome, but she’s an American. From somewhere in the midwest. I think.”

“Splendid, Horny!” Art thought for a minute. “As I see it, you have two ways to go. First we could try telephone listings. I can start a search program to query every exchange in the midwest for a listing for this Leota Pauket. Figure fifteen seconds a directory, maybe a couple thousand directories—you could complete it in a day or so. Wouldn’t cost anything, which is a big advantage—information queries are free. But it doesn’t work if she doesn’t have a phone.”

“What’s the other way?”

“That’s harder. You have to get into the memories for Social Security or the Bureau of the Census, something like that. I can’t do that, but I’ve got some slippery friends. They might help.”

“As far as that’s concerned,” Hake said cautiously, “I think I could handle that part.”

“You what?”

Hake said defensively, “I’m sorry, Art, but that’s part of what I can’t talk about. However. I’m not real sure she’s anywhere near America; last I heard she was in the, uh, entourage of a sheik named Hassabou.”

Hake’s expression cleared. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place? AH you need is celebrity service—come on, I’ll set it up.” Hake followed into another room, where Art sat before his computer terminal, typed rapidly for a second and then sat back. “How much of this stuff do you want?” he asked. “Here, sit down. Slow it down with this thing here if it’s going too fast for you.” And it was; the machine was racing through line after line of printout, far more information than he could actually use. The sheik’s name was Sheik Badawey Al-Nadim Abd Hassabou, and every directory of the rich and the famous had something about him. The sheik’s wealth was estimated at more than three hundred million dollars, exclusive of family holdings. The sheik’s home was in Rome, Wad Madani, Beverly Hills, Edinburgh, a place called Abu Magnah or his yacht— depending on the season, and on the sheik’s mood. The sheik’s interests seemed to be the three S’s: sex, surfing and isports cars. The sheik’s family, like the families of most of the oil Arabs, had long since left the Persian Gulf, no longer held the worthless oil leases, had their money in Argentine cattle ranches and Chicago real estate, but saw no reason to spend much time in those places when the fleshpots of Europe and California were so much more fun. The sheik was fifty-one years old, but in astonishingly good health. Hake gloomily accepted the truth of that part of it. The man in the auction room had obviously kept fit.

The information came from gossip columns, financial reports and various who’s-who directories. None of it mentioned an acquisition of the sheik’s named Leota Pauket, of course. Hake had not expected it would.

He sat back. “Enough,” he said. “Does it mention where he is right now?”

“Hold on.” Art punched out orders, and the machine typed out: Presently in Abu Magnah.

“Abu Magnah?” Hake tried to place the town and couldn’t. He got down the old red atlas and looked for Abu Magnah. It was not on the map. It took Art inquiries to the information services of three Arab consulates, the National Geographic Society and the cartographical division of the public library before he was able to locate it. Armed with latitude and longitude Hake carefully marked a cross on the map and sat back to regard it. Squarely in the Empty Quarter. Hundreds of miles from anything more metropolitan than a flock of sheep. Hassabou liked his privacy.

“You want that cup of tea, Horny? You wouldn’t want to tell me what this is all about?”

“Well—she’s a girl I know, Art. I’m a little worried about her.”

“I can see that you might be.”

“You mean because she’s in this guy’s harem? Well, sure.” He grinned suddenly. “Sometimes I think I should’ve married somebody like Jessie—younger, of course—when I was still in the wheelchair. Then I might not have these problems.”

He peered around the room, wondering where Art had managed to hide the tapes. Then he said, with some embarrassment, “Art, I can’t tell you how grateful I am—”

“Why should that worry you? You can’t tell me anything else, either, right?” The magician was smiling, but the smile leaked away as he said, “Look, Horny. You’re into some kind of spy thing, aren’t you?”

“Would it make a difference, Art?”

“Not to whether I do what you want, no. But it would make a difference.” Art hesitated. “No offense, Horny,” he said, “but spies are a sad lot. They’re not only immoral, they’re incompetent.”

“Oh, I don’t know if I agree with—”

“I’m not talking about you personally, Horny. I mean the whole industry. Look. I’ll give you a quick test question. Name three cases where any nation in modern times gained anything by spying.”

“Are you serious? Come on, Art! I could name hundreds!”

“Oh? All right. Go ahead.”

Hake frowned. After a moment, he said, “Well, I’ve never taken any special interest in the subject of spying…”

“All right, let me suggest a couple of examples to help you out. For instance, what about World War II? Russian spies told Stalin when Hitler was going to attack. British intelligence learned a panzer division had moved into Arn-hem just before they jumped. Hitler had the time and place for D-Day. The British broke the Luftwaffe code, so they knew their bombing targets twenty-four hours ahead. The Americans broke the Japanese Code Purple, so they had three days’ warning of Pearl Harbor—”

‘There you are!”

The magician shook his head. “Uh-uh. Not one of them used that information! Sometimes they just didn’t believe it, like Hitler and Stalin and Montgomery. Sometimes they believed it, all right, but they were afraid if they acted on it they’d give away their sources. That’s why the Americans got creamed at Pearl, and that’s why Churchill let Coventry burn. So tell me this, Horny. What’s the use of having spies in the first place?”

“Well, there must be other examples!”

“If you come across very many, please be sure to tell me, all right? And that’s only talking about plain spying. If you get into the cloak-and-dagger stuff, the CIA sort of thing, bumping off one foreign politician and starting a revolution against another one, it gets even worse.”

Horny flushed and changed the subject; it was getting a little too close to his own private space. “You keep on surprising me, Art,” he said. “I didn’t know espionage was one of your interests.”

“The totality of human experience is my interest,” the magician said seriously. “Especially when it affects friends of mine.”

“I do appreciate that,” Hake said awkwardly, “but—”

“But you can’t talk about it. Right. So what else is new? Have you had a chance to look over that stuff I gave you a couple months ago?”

“What stuff? Oh,” Hake said, remembering the fiches and cassettes that had been rattling around his bag all over the world, “you mean on hypnotism. No, I’m sorry. I just haven’t had a chance.”

“That I can believe,” Art grinned. “No matter. They’re copies, take your time. More tea?”

It was still daylight, but there was not so much of it left that Jessie wouldn’t notice how long he had been away. Given any choice at all, Hake did not like to lie. He decided to make it possible to tell a misleading and incomplete truth instead by stopping by his church. It wasn’t just for the sake of the cover story. The church was important to Horny, was very close to being his whole life. Being in it gave him a welcome feeling of refuge.

On a hot July afternoon the church was of course empty. The grass needed cutting and the windows were dusty, but there was enough activity in the pizzeria next door to make the whole block seem alive. Cars were whining in and out of the drive-in, and dozens of others were parked—a lot containing couples, one that seemed to contain a birdwatcher, or at least someone who was studying everything around, Hake included, through field glasses.

Hake drove gingerly through the erratic kids and into the church lot. Between his car and the front door he paused every few steps, to pick up empty Coke cartons and wedge-shaped pizza containers.

After the spicy smells from the pizzeria, the interior of the church smelled strongly of must and dust, but it was looking good. The First Unitarian Church of Long Branch now had a new green and gold nubbly carpet down its main hall, in a pattern guaranteed to drink up spilled wine and hide cigarette burns, and the contractors swore that its roof would no longer leak. So the Team was continuing to reward him and his. He eased himself stiffly and painfully into the torn leather chair in his study—that was another part of the payoff, to be sure—and began to make notes for the Buildings and Grounds Committee:

1. Cut lawn.

2. Prov. wst bskts nr pzria (worth trying?)

3. Check roof for leak after next rain.

4. Carpet gntee in safe dep box?

5. Plants watered? Lawn? Shrubs?

He had a list of fifteen items before he was done, and another of ten for Decorations and Special Functions. They were something to give Jessie to show where he had been, anyway. More or less content, Hake got up to prowl the church. All was in order. The familiar rooms were neat, if dusty. The main meeting hall, of course, was not. Social Action had been meeting there again. As he was pushing the chairs back into position and dumping ashtrays he heard a shrill peep-peep-peep from the parking lot.

He stopped and frowned. Was’ there another Tata in the neighborhood? Or another car with the same waspy, petulant horn? He finished quickly and locked up behind himself.

There stood his Tata, crystal bubble and bright yellow paint. But as he slid under the bubble he saw a note pinned to the steering wheel:

Our bargain still holds. Get out of this car at once.

It wasn’t signed, but it didn’t have to be. It was one of the Reddi brothers, of course. He sat paralyzed for a moment, and then it penetrated his mind that “at once” might very well mean “at once.” He slid out from under the bubble and stepped back, looking around for someone to talk to about this unexpected problem.

There was a faint hissing sound from the car, a little like the buzz of a young rattlesnake.

Hake had learned something Under the Wire. He dropped flat on the damp asphalt. There was a blast of white fire and a crack like a giant whip. The shattered crystal bubble flew into the air; the yellow chassis of the Tata peeled outward, and it began to burn.

It was not a very big explosion. The hydrogen fuel was mostly in solid suspension in metal, and it burned rather than blowing up. But it was enough to destroy the car, and it surely would have been enough to destroy Hake, too, if he had been inside it.

When he was through with the police, and the firemen, and when the wrecker had come to tow what was left of his three-wheeler away, one of the policemen walked him to the door. He didn’t need it; he wasn’t hurt. But he was glad enough for it, except for the cop’s conversation, which was about how unsafe your hydrogen cars were compared to your good old gas-burners—

“Have there been a lot of, uh, accidents like this?”

“No. But it stands to reason.”

At his door, Hake thanked the policeman and headed for his bedroom. To his surprise, ‘Jessie Tunman was there before him. She was in his little private sitting room, not the one he used for counseling, studying the tool kit he had brought from Under the Wire. “Those are my personal possessions!”

She blinked up at him, startled but self-possessed. “What in the world happened to you?”

He said, “My car blew up. Total loss.”

“Well, I sent off your check for the insurance’, so I guess you’re covered. Those things aren’t safe, you know.”

J i IC V^UU I » V Ul IV/

He said, “Thank you but, Jessie, I’d prefer you didn’t touch my possessions.”

She nodded noncommittally. “Sure have been a lot of changes around here, Horny. Car blowing up. You getting yourself all beat up. All this new stuff—”

“And here’s another change. Please don’t come into my part of the house when I’m not here.”

She stood up, skinny legs unwinding. She was taller than he was, but she seemed to be looking up at him. “As a matter of fact,” she said, “that’s one of the changes. You wouldn’t have spoken to me that way six months ago.”

As the door closed behind her Hake debated getting up to lock it. It seemed too pointed, at least until she was well out of hearing. He didn’t need Jessie to tell him how he had changed. He was aware of all the many ways in which the present H. Hornswell Hake D.D. was utterly unlike the one she had come to work for, just a few years before.

He kicked off his shoes, pulled the shirt over his head and felt at least a little cooler. It occurred to him that he could easily be as cool as he chose. With the new dispensation, why not an air-conditioner? The Team would pay for one if he ordered it, and the overhead wind generator, whose constant ratchety whine was beginning to get noisy again, could power air-conditioning enough for ten houses like this. If he wanted it. If he were that much of a power-pig-

If he had changed that much.

He sighed and pushed the heap of burglar tools to the back of his dresser, and there were the Incredible Art’s neglected tapes and fiches.

Well, why not? He had nothing more pressing.

The difficulty was that there were so many of them. But they were all marked, and one, bearing the note “Short course on the basics,” looked like a good place to start. This one, Hake observed, was a video cassette. Easy enough. He slipped it into the tape deck of his bedside TV set, and leaned back on the pillow to watch.

It seemed to be a slide talk prepared for college freshmen, but held his interest as he watched all the way through.

If you jab a person with a pin, you expect him to hurt. If he doesn’t hurt, or says he doesn’t, his behavior is contrary to expectation. If you are of an inquiring turn of mind, you try to understand why he is behaving that way, and when you know the reasons the behavior is no longer contrary. It is now what you expect.

If Harry is walking across a room which he can plainly see contains an obstacle, we expect him to avoid stumbling over it.

If Jacqueline attempts to unclench her fist, we expect her to succeed.

If Wilma cannot remember the color of her kindergarten teacher’s hair, we expect the memory to stay lost; and if all of these expectations are defeated we ask why. Is Harry blind and Jacqueline paralyzed and has someone just shown Wilma a Kodachrome of her kindergarten class? Say, no. But say instead that we discover that someone has suggested to each of these people that they behave as described. Now we are on the track of a solution to these puzzles, and we learn that the solution has a name. It is called “hypnosis.” And there is a theory. In fact, Hake discovered, there were God’s own quantity of theories, all the way back to Franz Anton Mesmer’s own in the year 1775.

Mesmer was a doctor, and he thought he had found a way to cure some kinds of illnesses without nostrum or knife—considering the state of medicine at the time, a very good way to go about it. It rested on what he called “animal magnetism.” If he made certain mysterious passes with his hands near a subject’s head, and then commanded the subject to do certain things, the subject would do them. Even if they were quite strange. Even if what he was told to do was to get well. Even when, you would think, they would normally be impossible. He could command the subject to go rigid, and get him stiff as a board. He could command the subject to feel no pain. Then he could pinch him, poke him, even burn him.

All that was well reported, and seemed to be objectively true. The patients said it was true. Observers said it was true. Dr. Mesmer himself said it was tfue. He then went on to say he knew why it was true. He said there was a magnetic fluid—he even allowed it to be called a “mesmeric fluid”—which surrounds everyone, and the passage of the hands through the fluid rearranges it to change the state of animal magnetism in the subject, thus producing the effects described.

That’s where he made his mistake, because scientists then went looking for the fluid. There isn’t any. It doesn’t exist.

Denials and objections flew, and continued to fly for more than two centuries, but, whatever you called it, the thing did just what Mesmer had claimed for it. Even more. People had their teeth filled under hypnotic commands to feel no pain, and got up from the dentist’s chair smiling and grateful. Women had babies with no other anesthesia, and laughed and chattered through the delivery.

There were, to be sure, a few little anomalies.

As electronic technology began to invade medical, experimenters reported some puzzling results. If they measured the electrical potential of the nerves affected, no matter how comfortable the subject said he was, those nerves were twanging. And if they got the subject into automatic writing, his mouth might say, “Gee, no, that doesn’t hurt,” but his hand would be scribbling, “Liar.”

And all that was very interesting, Hake thought when he had finished, but what did it mean? If it had anything to do with his behavior, or Leota’s, or the Team’s, he could not detect the relationship.

He realized his feet were getting cold. He put his slippers on and padded into the bathroom to make himself a glass of instant coffee. While he was waiting for the water to run hot he peered at himself in the mirror, absently aware that the nose looked almost human and the bruises were beginning to fade, half listening to the whir of the ventilator and the diffident gurgle of the john, his mind full of hypnotism.

He now knew more than he had ever wanted to know about the subject, but not the thing that would clarify the world for him. Maybe he was looking in the wrong place? Maybe he should have been reading Trilby instead of listening to Art’s tapes?

And tardily he realized that the toilet was still running. Not only that, but splashing and gurgling louder than ever.

“Oh, cripes,” he said out loud. He had forgotten to check for messages.

He pressed his thumb onto the pattern-recognizing moire of the flush lever, and Curmudgeon’s voice snarled gloatingly, “Got yourself in the soup again, didn’t you, Hake? Maybe it’ll teach you a lesson. You’re fooling with some dangerous characters, and right now I can’t spare much Team cover for you. So lay low. Stick with that bunch of pagans you call your congregation. Talk about the whooping crane and the sanctity of interpersonal relationships and stay off the hard stuff, you hear me? That’s an order. Do you remember what you’re supposed to say when I give you an order?” There was a tiny beep, and then only the faint whisper of the running tape, waiting.

Hake remembered. “I understand and will comply,” he said reluctantly. A moment later the tape sound stopped, and the toilet was only a toilet again.

Thoughtfully, Hake used it for the purpose for whicV it was intended. The team’s communications were astonishingly quick; he was being more closely watched than he had realized. Of course, the blowing up of the car had attracted attention. It was not the sort of thing that would not be noticed. But still—how had they known so fast?

He washed his hands and went back into his bedroom, and Alys Brant said sweetly, “Hello, Horny. I hope you’re glad to see me.”

Hake stopped cold. Alys was propped on his bed, feet demurely tucked under her. She had done something new to her hair, but it had not made her less attractive; the way she looked was sweet and trusting. Nevertheless! “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Please don’t be angry, Horny, dear. I need a place to stay. Just for a night or two, until I can get to my aunt’s place.”

“Alys,” he said, “for Christ’s sake! Don’t you know Ted and Walter already blame me for taking you away from them?”

“Oh, them,” she said. She shrugged and stretched. ‘They’ll get over it. You have nothing to do with it. I made up my mind to leave them long ago. I just need to be free—good heavens, you know all that; you listened to us complain and fuss and go over the same thing over and over again in counseling. So now I’ve moved out. I’ve been staying with—a friend. But that got impossible, too, so I came here. I just don’t have any other place to go, Horny.”

“It’s completely out of the question, Alys!”

She sat up, covering a yawn. “Nobody’s ever going to know. Except Jessie, maybe. But she’s very loyal to you. Horny? Have you got anything to eat? I’ve been walking for hours, and carrying those bags.” She looked toward an overnight case and a plastic shopping bag, neatly tucked by Hake’s dresser. “Not much, are they? But all my worldly goods.”

Angry, Hake walked over to it and threw a sweatshirt over the pile of burglar tools.

“I already saw that stuff,” Alys pointed out. “And I was listening to you in the bathroom while you were getting ready to tinkle. You were talking to somebody. And I’ve been meaning to ask you for some time what you were into with dear old Leota Pauket. It’s some kind of spy thing, isn’t it, Horny? Would you like to tell me all about it while we eat?”

He sat on the edge of his bedside armchair and regarded her. The woman was full of surprises. “How do you know Leota Pauket?”

“Went to school with her. I hadn’t seen her in years— then, last spring, I just bumped into her on the street. Right outside the rectory here, as a matter of fact. We had a few drinks, she wanted to know what was happening in my life. Well, we had just been through one of those long, stupid sessions with you, and I told her all about it, and you seemed to fascinate her. She wanted to know all about you.

Do you remember that really nasty weather we had, just before we went off to Europe with those kids?”

Hake nodded. “When you were here for counseling.” It wasn’t hard to remember; that was the session that had been interrupted by his summons to the Team.

“Well, that was when it was.”

“You didn’t say anything to me.”

“Well, really, Horny! Why should I? I had no idea you knew her—in fact, I guess you didn’t. But then in Munich, she was the one who brought you back to the hotel. She was wearing a wig, but it was Leota, all right. As soon as she saw me getting out of the elevator she ducked out. And then I got a note from her. Real spy stuff: ‘Please don’t mention me, ever. I’ll explain when I see you. It’s important.’ Something like that.”

Horny Hake sat thoughtful for a moment. At least that explained how Leota had turned up on the bus to Washington. She must have known he was being drafted into service as soon as he did.

But it didn’t change the present realities. “Notwithstanding all that, Alys, you’ve got no business here now. What’s going to happen if your husbands find out?”

“We’ll just have to make sure they won’t find out, right, Horny? I mean, it looks like you’re pretty good at keeping secrets. You surprise me, honestly you do.”

He groaned. “Alys, I give you my word, you’re getting into more than you can handle. Is there any possible way I can believe that you’ll forget all this?”

She shook her head. “Huh-uh.”

“This isn’t any game! How do you think I got these lumps? People get killed!”

“It sounds really interesting, Horny.”

“This room could be bugged right now. If Curmudgeon finds out you’re involved I don’t know what he’ll do.”

” ‘Curmudgeon.’ That’s a name I hadn’t heard before.” She stood up. “Let’s go in the kitchen and get some dinner started, and then while we’re eating you can begin at the beginning and tell me all about it. You can take your time. We’ve got all night.”