THE MAN WHO JAPED

CHAPTER 2

The lobby of the Mogentlock Building was active and stirring with noise, a constant coming-and-going of busy people as Allen approached the elevator. Because of Mrs. Birmingham he was late. The elevator politely waited.

"Good morning, Mr. Purcell." The elevator's taped voice greeted him, and then the doors shut. "Second floor Bevis and Company Import-Export. Third floor American Music Federation. Fourth floor Allen Purcell, Inc. Research Agency." The elevator halted and opened its door.

In the outer reception lounge, Fred Luddy, his assistant, wandered about in a tantrum of discomfort.

"Morning," Allen murmured vaguely, taking off his coat.

"Allen, she's here." Luddy's face flushed scarlet. "She got here before I did; I came up and there she was, sitting."

"Who? Janet?" He had a mental image of a Committee representative driving her from the apartment and canceling the lease. Mrs. Birmingham, with smiles, closing in on Janet as she sat absently combing her hair.

"Not Mrs. Purcell," Luddy said. He lowered his voice to a rasp. "It's Sue Frost."

Allen involuntarily craned his neck, but the inner door was closed. If Sue Frost was really sitting in there, it marked the first time a Committee Secretary had paid a call on him.

"I'll be darned," he said.

Luddy yelped. "She wants to see you!"

The Committee functioned through a series of departmental secretaries directly responsible to Ida Pease Hoyt, the linear descendant of Major Streiter. Sue Frost was the administrator of Telemedia, which was the official government trust controlling mass communications. He had never dealt with Mrs. Frost, or even met her; he worked with the acting Director of T-M, a weary-voiced, bald-headed individual named Myron Mavis. It was Mavis who bought packets.

"What's she want?" Allen asked. Presumably, she had learned that Mavis was taking the Agency's output, and that the Agency was relatively new. With a sinking dread he anticipated one of the Committee's gloomy, protracted investigations. "Better have Doris block my incoming calls." Doris was one of his secretaries. "You take over until Mrs. Frost and I are through talking."

Luddy followed after him in a dance of prayer. "Good luck, Allen. I'll hold the fort for you. If you want the books—"

"Yes, I'll call you." He opened the office door, and there was Sue Frost.

She was tall, and she was rather large-boned and muscular. Her suit was a simple hard weave, dark gray in color. She wore a flower in her hair, and she was altogether a strikingly handsome woman. At a guess, she was in her middle fifties. There was little or no softness to her, nothing of the fleshy and over-dressed motherliness that he saw in so many Committee women. Her legs were long, and, as she rose to her feet, her right hand lifted to welcome him in a forthright—almost masculine—handshake.

"Hello, Mr. Purcell," she said. Her voice was not overly expressive. "I hope you don't mind my showing up this way, unannounced."

"Not at all," he murmured. "Please sit down."

She reseated herself, crossed her legs, contemplated him. Her eyes, he noticed, were an almost colorless straw. A strong kind of substance, and highly polished.

"Cigarette?" He extended his case, and she accepted a cigarette with a nod of thanks. He took one also, feeling like a gauche young man in the company of an older and more experienced woman.

He couldn't help thinking that Sue Frost was the type of urbane career woman ultimately not proposed to by the hero of Blake-Moffet's packets. There was an unsympathetic firmness about her. She was decidedly not the girl from next door.

"Undoubtedly," Sue Frost began, "you recognize this." She unraveled the winding of a manila folder and displayed a sheaf of script. On the cover of the sheaf was his Agency's stamp; she had one of his packets, and she evidently had been reading it.

"Yes," he admitted. "That's one of ours."

Sue Frost leafed through the packet, then laid it down on Allen's desk. "Myron accepted this last month. Then he had qualms and he sent it along the line to me. I had a chance to go over it this weekend."

Now the packet was turned so that Allen could catch the title. It was a high-quality piece he had personally participated in; as it stood it could have gone over any of T-M's media.

"Qualms," Allen said. "How do you mean?" He had a deep, cold sensation, as if he were involved in some eerie religious ritual. "If the packet won't go, then turn it back to us. We'll create a credit; we've done it before."

"The packet is beautifully handled," Mrs. Frost said, smoking. "No, Myron certainly didn't want it back. Your theme concerns this man's attempt to grow an apple tree on a colony planet. But the tree dies. The Morec of it is—" She again picked up the packet. "I'm not certain what the

Morec is. Shouldn't he have tried to grow it?"

"Not there," Allen said.

"You mean it belonged on Earth?"

"I mean he should have been working for the good of society, not off somewhere nourishing a private enterprise. He saw the colony as an end in itself. But they're means. This is the center."

"Omphalos," she agreed. "The navel of the universe. And the tree—"

"The tree symbolizes an Earth product that withers when it's transplanted. His spiritual side died."

"But he couldn't have grown it here. There's no room. It's all city."

"Symbolically," he explained. "He should have put down his roots here."

Sue Frost was silent for a moment, and he sat smoking uneasily, crossing and uncrossing his legs, feeling his tension grow, not diminish. Nearby, in another office, the switchboard buzzed. Doris' typewriter clacked.

"You see," Sue Frost said, "this conflicts with a fundamental. The Committee has put billions of dollars and years of work into outplanet agriculture. We've done everything possible to seed domestic plants in the colonies. They're supposed to supply us with our food. People realize it's a heartbreaking task, with endless disappointments... and you're saying that the outplanet orchards will fail."

Allen started to speak and then changed his mind. He felt absolutely defeated. Mrs. Frost was gazing at him searchingly, expecting him to defend himself in the usual fashion.

"Here's a note," she said. "You can read it. Myron's note on this, when it came to me."

The note was in pencil and went:

"Sue—The same outfit again. Top-drawer, but too coy. You decide. M."

"What's he mean?" Allen said, now angered. "He means the Morec doesn't come across." She leaned toward him. "Your Agency has been in this only three years. You started out very well. What do you currently gross?"

"I'd have to see the books." He got to his feet. "May I get Luddy in here? I'd like him to see Myron's note."

"Certainly," Mrs. Frost said.

Fred Luddy entered the office stiff-legged with apprehension. "Thanks," he muttered, as Allen gave him the packet. He read the note, but his eyes showed no spark of consciousness. He seemed tuned to invisible vibrations; the meaning reached him through the tension of the air, rather than the pencilled words.

"Well," he said finally, in a daze. "You can't win them all."

"We'll take this packet back, naturally." Allen began to strip the note from it, but Mrs. Frost said:

"Is that your only response? I told you we want it; I made that clear. But we can't take it in the shape it's in. I think you should know that it was my decision to give your Agency the go-ahead. There was some dispute, and I was brought in from the first." From the manila folder she took a second packet, a familiar one. "Remember this? May, 2112. We argued for hours, Myron liked this, and I liked it. Nobody else did. Now Myron has cold feet." She tossed the packet, the first the Agency had ever done, onto the desk.

After an interval Allen said: "Myron's getting tired."

"Very." She nodded agreeably.

Hunched over, Fred Luddy said: "Maybe we've been going at it too fast." He cleared his throat, cracked his knuckles and glanced at the ceiling. Drops of warm sweat sparkled in his hair and along his smoothly-shaved jowls. "We kind of got—excited."

Speaking to Mrs. Frost, Allen said: "My position is simple. In that packet, we made the Morec that Earth is the center.

That's the real fundamental, and I believe it. If I didn't believe it I couldn't have developed the packet. I'll withdraw the packet but I won't change it. I'm not going to preach morality without practicing it."

Quakily, in a spasm of agonized back-pedalling, Luddy muttered: "It's not a moral question, Al. It's a question of clarity. The Morec of that packet doesn't come across." His voice had a ragged, guilty edge; Luddy knew what he was doing and he was ashamed. "I—see Mrs. Frost's point. Yes I do. It looks as if we're scuttling the agricultural program, and naturally we don't mean that. Isn't that so, Al?"

"You're fired," Allen said.

They both stared at him. Neither of them grasped that he was serious, that he had really done it.

"Go tell Doris to make out your check." Allen took the packet from the desk and held onto it. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Frost, but I'm the only person qualified to speak for the Agency. We'll credit you for this packet and submit another. All right?"

She stubbed out her cigarette, rising, at the same time, to her feet. "It's your decision."

"Thanks," he said, and felt a release of tension. Mrs. Frost understood his stand, and approved. And that was crucial.

"I'm sorry," Luddy muttered, ashen. "That was a mistake on my part. The packet is fine. Perfectly sound as it now exists." Plucking at Allen's sleeve, he drew him off in the corner. "I admit I made a mistake." His voice sank to a jumpy whisper. "Let's discuss this further. I was simply trying to develop one possible viewpoint among many. You want me to express myself; I mean, it seems senseless to penalize me for working in the best interests of the Agency, as I see it."

"I meant what I said," Allen said.

"You did?" Luddy laughed. "Naturally you meant it.

You're the boss." He was shaking. "You really weren't kidding?"

Collecting her coat, Mrs. Frost moved toward the door. "I'd like to look over your Agency while I'm here. Do you mind?"

"Not at all," Allen said. "I'd be glad to show it to you. I'm quite proud of it." He opened the door for her, and the two of them walked out into the hall. Luddy remained in the office, a sick, erratic look on his face.

"I don't care for him," Mrs. Frost said. "I think you're better off without him."

"That wasn't any fun," Allen said. But he was feeling better.