Prologue
1099 Words
PrologueIn nineteen-fourteen, it was enemy aliens.
In nineteen-thirty, it was Wobblies.
In nineteen-fifty-seven, it was fellow-travelers.
And, in nineteen seventy-one, Kenneth J. Malone rolled wearily
out of bed wondering what the hell it was going to be now.
One thing, he told himself, was absolutely certain: it was going
to be terrible. It always was.
He managed to stand up, although he was swaying slightly when he
walked across the room to the mirror for his usual morning look at
himself. He didn't much like staring at his own face, first thing
in the morning, but then, he told himself, it was part of the
toughening- up process every FBI agent had to go through. You had
to learn to stand up and take it when things got rough, he reminded
himself. He blinked and looked into the mirror.
His image blinked back.
He tried a smile. It looked pretty horrible, he thought—but,
then, the mirror had a slight ripple in it, and the ripple
distorted everything. Malone's face looked as if it had been gently
patted with a waffle-iron.
And, of course, it was still early morning, and that meant he
was having a little difficulty in focusing his eyes.
Vaguely, he tried to remember the night before. He was just
ending his vacation, and he thought he recalled having a final
farewell party for two or three lovely female types he had chanced
to meet in what was still the world's finest City of Opportunity,
Washington, D.C. (latest female-to-male ratio, five-and-a-half to
one). The party had been a classic of its kind, complete with hot
and cold running ideas of all sorts, and lots and lots of nice
powerful liquor.
Malone decided sadly that the ripple wasn't in the mirror, but
in his head. He stared at his unshaven face blearily.
Blink. Ripple.
Quite impossible, he told himself. Nobody could conceivably look
as horrible as Kenneth J. Malone thought he did. Things just
couldn't be as bad as all that.
Ignoring a still, small voice which asked persistently: "Why
not?" he turned away from the mirror and set about finding his
clothes. He determined to take his time about getting ready for
work: after all, nobody could really complain if he arrived late on
his first day after vacation. Everybody knew how tired vacations
made a person.
And, besides, there was probably nothing happening anyway.
Things had, he recalled with faint pleasure, been pretty quiet
lately. Ever since the counterfeiting g**g he'd caught had been put
away, crime seemed to have dropped to the nice, simple levels of
the 1950's and '60's. Maybe, he hoped suddenly, he'd be able to
spend some time catching up on his scientific techniques, or his
math, or pistol practice… .
The thought of pistol practice made his head begin to throb with
the authority of a true hangover. There were fifty or sixty small
gnomes inside his skull, he realized, all of them with tiny little
hammers. They were mining for lead.
"The lead," Malone said aloud, "is farther down. Not in the
skull."
The gnomes paid him no attention. He shut his eyes and tried to
relax. The gnomes went right ahead with their work, and microscopic
regiments of Eagle Scouts began marching steadily along his
nerves.
There were people, Malone had always understood, who bounced out
of their beds and greeted each new day with a smile. It didn't
sound possible, but then again there were some pretty strange
people. The head of that counterfeiting ring, for instance: where
had he got the idea of picking an alias like André Gide?
Clutching at his whirling thoughts, Malone opened his eyes,
winced, and began to get dressed. At least, he thought, it was
going to be a peaceful day.
It was at this second that his private intercom buzzed.
Malone winced again. "To hell with you," he called at the thing,
but the buzz went on, ignoring the code shut-off. That meant, he
knew, an emergency call, maybe from his Chief of Section. Maybe
even from higher up.
"I'm not even late for work yet," he complained. "I will be, but
I'm not yet. What are they screaming about?"
There was, of course, only one way to find out. He shuffled
painfully across the room, flipped the switch and said:
"Malone here." Vaguely, he wondered if it were true. He
certainly didn't feel as if he were here. Or there. Or anywhere at
all, in fact.
A familiar voice came tinnily out of the receiver. "Malone, get
down here right away!"
The voice belonged to Andrew J. Burris. Malone sighed deeply and
felt grateful, for the fiftieth time, that he had never had a TV
pickup installed in the intercom. He didn't want the FBI chief to
see him looking as horrible as he did now, all rippled and
everything. It wasn't—well, it wasn't professional, that was
all.
"I'll get dressed right away," he assured the intercom. "I
should be there in—"
"Don't bother to get dressed," Burris snapped. "This is an
emergency!"
"But, Chief—"
"And don't call me Chief!"
"Okay," Malone said. "Sure. You want me to come down in my
pyjamas. Right?"
"I want you to—" Burris stopped. "All right, Malone. If you want
to waste time while our country's life is at stake, you go ahead.
Get dressed. After all, Malone, when I say something is an
emergency—"
"I won't get dressed, then," Malone said. "Whatever you
say."
"Just do something!" Burris told him desperately. "Your country
needs you. Pyjamas and all. Malone, it's a crisis!"
Conversations with Burris, Malone told himself, were bound to be
a little confusing. "I'll be right down," he said.
"Fine," Burris said, and hesitated. Then he added: "Malone, do
you wear the tops or the bottoms?"
"The what?"
"Of your pyjamas," Burris explained hurriedly. "The top part or
the bottom part?"
"Oh," Malone said. "As a matter of fact, I wear both."
"Good," Burris said with satisfaction. "I wouldn't want an agent
of mine arrested for indecent exposure." He rang off.
Malone blinked at the intercom for a minute, shut it off and
then, ignoring the trip-hammers in his skull and the Eagle Scouts
on his nerves, began to get dressed. Somehow, in spite of Burris'
feelings of crisis, he couldn't see himself trying to flag a taxi
on the streets of Washington in his pyjamas. Anyhow, not while he
was awake. I dreamed I was an FBI agent, he thought sadly, in my
drafty BVDs.
Besides, it was probably nothing important. These things, he
told himself severely, have a way of evaporating as soon as a
clear, cold intelligence got hold of them.
Then he began wondering where in hell he was going to find a
clear, cold intelligence. Or even, for that matter, what one
was.
- Writer
