A Darkness in My Soul

some melodramatic play like this. Yet also terrifying. If Harry Kelly thought there was a need for caution, there most assuredly was. Normally, he had the greatest respect and confidence in due process, even in these days. Many considered him a Polyanna. Now Polyanna was scared, and nothing short of an ogre could have managed that.
        "Look, Sim, lay off the arrogance with Morsfagen. Say yes sir and no sir and thank you sir, and help me get his temper down. No smart cracks and no more antagonism.
        I haven't ever asked you much, but I ask this. Listen, son, it might mean everything we've worked for if you can't keep yourself in check."
        "I can't stand the man," I said.
        "Neither can I."
        "What's happening?"
        "The situation is worse than any public communications are reporting it. The Chinese and their Japanese advisors have set up a command post on the Russian side of the Amur River. Only maybe a hundred yards' worth of invasion, but they refuse to move backwards on request. On the Chinese side, troops have been massing for four days.
        A special spurline was laid down, and troop trains are running in on the hour from the main tracks that pass east of Nunkiang, through the Khingan Mountains."
        I took it all in. I'd never been much on geography, and I must have looked rather blank, for he flapped his arms in despair and started on me again.
        "On the other side of the border there, the Russian towns Zavitaya, Belogorsk, Svobodnyy, and Shimanovsk lie in a straight line, each within striking distance of the other. Zavitaya contains a missile complex trained on several Chinese population centers. Belogorsk is the site of an extension of the Khabarovsk laboratories, dealing with the problem of lasers. It's the place where the news has been coming from lately-about the possibility of the equivalent of a death-ray. The entire area has become, in the last ten years, a strategic one. If the Chinese can sweep it, they can isolate that arm of the Soviet Union.
        Toward this end, portable nuke facilities have been moved in on the Amur, pointed toward Zavitaya."
        "War," I said. "But we've had it before. And we've been expecting it now for fourteen years or more. Why does this mean I have to brown-nose Morsfagen?"
        "I received an interesting telephone call from a judge who was a friend in law school, back in the age of the dinosaur. He reported that Morsfagen has been asking around about the possibility of impounding you-just like they tried years ago."
        "We already won that case."
        "That was in peacetime. What Morsfagen wants to know is whether the looming war will make a difference."
        "Law is law," I said.
        "But in time of national crisis, it can be suspended.
        And the word that the general got, my friend tells me, is that he can pull it off. It will be nasty, dirty, replete with complications-but possible. He'd much rather work with you the way it now stands. But if you drive him to the wall or anger him more than his limit of tolerance, he might decide that its worth a risk to his career. He might try it."
        I didn't feel well. I wanted to sit down, but that would have been a sign of weakness. I knew Harry was just barely holding up now. There wasn't any use to make it worse for him. "What's your considered opinion?" I asked.
        "The same. Only I think it's more possible for him to succeed than even his own advisors told him."
        I nodded. "We'll play it cool, Harry. We'll play it so cool that there will be icicles hanging from the walls. Let's go."
        He breathed a sigh of relief and followed me out of the empty office, down the hall, through the door, and into the hex-walled room.
        "You're late," Morsfagen said, consulting his watch and scowling at me as he waited for the thrust of my tongue.
        Maybe he had decided one more witty remark on my part would be the weight to push him to action.
        I didn't give him the chance. "Sorry," I said. "I got held up in traffic."
        He looked genuinely perplexed, opened his mouth to say something, closed it, and ground his teeth together. It was almost as if he would have preferred being insulted to being treated civilly.
        I had come to AC only for the money this time, not to demonstrate my super-humanness, my Christlike talents.
        The therapy the mechanical psychiatrist had given me had worked