roads across the desert, particularly in winter when the smaller ones are apt to be impassable. Your wife and her accomplices needed time to get clear. The wreck gave it to them.”
It was like talking over the plot of a movie or television show, a pastime that always bores hell out of me. We weren’t talking about a smallish girl of about twenty-three with big dark eyes and long dark hair; we were talking about a criminal and her accomplices.
I said, “Just what crimes is Natalie supposed to have committed—besides murder, of course?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Not for you,” I said. “You’re a security officer, Van. You don’t care if half the population of the United States is massacred in bed, as long as they don’t tell any secrets while they’re dying.”
He said, “Fischer, you, Justin, Bates, and now Mrs. Gregory. All people connected with the Project. After a certain number of such incidents, even a security officer becomes interested, Dr. Gregory.”
“I see,” I said. “You smell a conspiracy?”
“Let’s say that I see the outlines of a pattern.”
“And the predominant color of that pattern,” I said, “would it be red?”
He said, “Who else but the communists would go to such lengths to interfere with our work? I have to tell you something else, Dr. Gregory. I’ve been watching your wife for quite a while, waiting for her to give herself away. For a little over three years, to be exact.”
I glanced at him. “Go on.”
He said, “As I’ve told you before, I don’t like coincidences. I have the theory that police work—and security is just an extension of police work into a special field, of course—I have a theory that police work is largely a matter of looking for coincidences; for the man who just happens to have a fancy alibi at the time another man is killed, for the woman who just happens to adjust her stockings so as to distract the sucker’s attention while his pocket is picked. And when a brilliant young scientist who has just made a discovery that promises to give us a new weapon with all the destructive force of the older nuclear bombs but with only a fraction of the radiation effect that makes these weapons potentially almost as dangerous for the user as the target—when, at just this point in his life, such a man suddenly just ‘happens’ to meet an enigmatic young lady from a different walk of life entirely, who in spite of the difference in their backgrounds and interests, just happens to fall madly in love with him—”
I said, “If you don’t watch it, Van, you’re going to lose track of that sentence. It’s a lulu already.”
He said, “I know. My sentences get very involved when I’m embarrassed, Dr. Gregory. And I don’t like to talk to a man about his wife.”
“Then don’t strain yourself,” I said. “You’ve made your point. I’ll keep it in mind. Now shut up and let me get some sleep.”
ELEVEN
THE FOLLOWING DAY, I was called to the Project and informed by the Director that, much as he regretted having to take this step, he was suspending me from my duties until further notice. My mind had been too busy with other problems to consider this possibility, so it came as something of a shock; although it was, of course, a perfectly logical development. Returning home, I decided to look at the matter from its brightest side, which was that I was no longer obliged to hang around here. The car was still packed from the other night. I got an extra duffel bag of clothing, my rifle and some ammunition, all the reasonably non-perishable groceries from the kitchen, and added them to the load. Then I locked up the house and headed north.
Driving up to Santa Fe, I knew that spring was here by the fact that the whole top layer of the country was moving eastward on a gusty forty-mile breeze. That’s just a zephyr in these parts; you could drop a couple of eastern hurricanes into New Mexico in the spring and nobody would notice the
It was like talking over the plot of a movie or television show, a pastime that always bores hell out of me. We weren’t talking about a smallish girl of about twenty-three with big dark eyes and long dark hair; we were talking about a criminal and her accomplices.
I said, “Just what crimes is Natalie supposed to have committed—besides murder, of course?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Not for you,” I said. “You’re a security officer, Van. You don’t care if half the population of the United States is massacred in bed, as long as they don’t tell any secrets while they’re dying.”
He said, “Fischer, you, Justin, Bates, and now Mrs. Gregory. All people connected with the Project. After a certain number of such incidents, even a security officer becomes interested, Dr. Gregory.”
“I see,” I said. “You smell a conspiracy?”
“Let’s say that I see the outlines of a pattern.”
“And the predominant color of that pattern,” I said, “would it be red?”
He said, “Who else but the communists would go to such lengths to interfere with our work? I have to tell you something else, Dr. Gregory. I’ve been watching your wife for quite a while, waiting for her to give herself away. For a little over three years, to be exact.”
I glanced at him. “Go on.”
He said, “As I’ve told you before, I don’t like coincidences. I have the theory that police work—and security is just an extension of police work into a special field, of course—I have a theory that police work is largely a matter of looking for coincidences; for the man who just happens to have a fancy alibi at the time another man is killed, for the woman who just happens to adjust her stockings so as to distract the sucker’s attention while his pocket is picked. And when a brilliant young scientist who has just made a discovery that promises to give us a new weapon with all the destructive force of the older nuclear bombs but with only a fraction of the radiation effect that makes these weapons potentially almost as dangerous for the user as the target—when, at just this point in his life, such a man suddenly just ‘happens’ to meet an enigmatic young lady from a different walk of life entirely, who in spite of the difference in their backgrounds and interests, just happens to fall madly in love with him—”
I said, “If you don’t watch it, Van, you’re going to lose track of that sentence. It’s a lulu already.”
He said, “I know. My sentences get very involved when I’m embarrassed, Dr. Gregory. And I don’t like to talk to a man about his wife.”
“Then don’t strain yourself,” I said. “You’ve made your point. I’ll keep it in mind. Now shut up and let me get some sleep.”
ELEVEN
THE FOLLOWING DAY, I was called to the Project and informed by the Director that, much as he regretted having to take this step, he was suspending me from my duties until further notice. My mind had been too busy with other problems to consider this possibility, so it came as something of a shock; although it was, of course, a perfectly logical development. Returning home, I decided to look at the matter from its brightest side, which was that I was no longer obliged to hang around here. The car was still packed from the other night. I got an extra duffel bag of clothing, my rifle and some ammunition, all the reasonably non-perishable groceries from the kitchen, and added them to the load. Then I locked up the house and headed north.
Driving up to Santa Fe, I knew that spring was here by the fact that the whole top layer of the country was moving eastward on a gusty forty-mile breeze. That’s just a zephyr in these parts; you could drop a couple of eastern hurricanes into New Mexico in the spring and nobody would notice the
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