Footfall

She made a note of the room number. “I miss you already,” he said, “Sure. You probably have a Texas girl already.” “Two, actually.”

“Just be careful. I’ve seen the Speaker. We’ll arrange for you to be paired whenever we can, so it’ll go in the Congressional Quarterly.”

It was standard practice: a congressman who couldn’t be present for a vote found another who intended to vote the opposite way, and formed a pair. Neither attended, and both were recorded as “paired” so that the outcome of the vote wasn’t affected, but neither congressman was blamed for missing a roll-call vote.

“Good. Can you ask Andy to look after my committee work?”

“Already did. What kind of administrative assistant do you think I am, anyway?”

“Fair to middling.”

“Humph. Keep that up and I’ll ask for a raise I suppose Houston’s full of talk about the aliens?”

“Lord, yes,” Wes said. “And the TV shows-did you watch the Tonight Show? Nothing but alien jokes, some pretty clever I think the country’s taking it all right.”

“So do I, but I’ve got Wilbur checking things out in the district,” Carlotta said. “So far nothing, though. Not even phone calls, except Mrs. McNulty.”

“Yeah, I expect she’s in heaven.” Mrs. McNulty called her congressman every week, usually to insist on protection against flying saucers. “Look, they’ve got me on a pretty rigorous schedule. Up before the devil’s got his shoes on. Physical training, yet! Ugh.”

“You’ll be all right. You’re in good shape,” Carlotta said.

“I’ll be in better in a month. You’ll love it—”

“Good. Call me tomorrow.”

“I will. Thanks, Carlotta.”

She smiled as she put the phone down. Thanks, he’d said. Thanks for looking after things, for letting me go to space. As long as she’d known Wes, he’d been a space nut. He’d even signed up to be a lunar colonist, and was shocked when she told him she wasn’t really interested in living on the Moon. His look had frightened her: he would have gone without her if he’d had the chance.

That chance never came. The U.S. Lunar Base was a tiny affair, never more than six astronauts and currently down to four. The Russians had fifteen people on the Moon-and they made it clear that a larger U.S. effort wouldn’t be welcome.

What would they do to the Americans sent more people to the Moon? President Coffey hadn’t wanted to find out. Maybe it wouldn’t matter now.

Carlotta went back to the papers on Wes Dawson’s desk. Aliens might or might not be coming, but if Wes Dawson wanted to remain in Congress, there was a lot of work to finish here in Washington.

6. PREPARATIONS

There are periods when the principles of experience need to be modified, when hope and trust and instinct claim a share with prudence in the guidance of affairs, when, in truth, to dare, is the highest wisdom.

Academician Pavel Bondarev sat at his massive walnut desk and flicked imaginary dust specks from its gleaming surface. The office was large, as befitted a full member of the Soviet Academy who was also Director of an Institute for Astrophysics. The walls were decorated with photographs taken by the new telescope aboard the Soviet Kosmograd space station. There were spectacular views of Jupiter, as good as those obtained by the American spacecraft; and there were color photographs of nebulae and galaxies, and the endless wonders of the sky

There was also a portrait of Lenin. Pavel Aleksandrovich Bondarev needed no visit from the local Party officials to remind him of that. Visiting Party officials might know nothing of what the Institute did, but they would certainly notice if there was no picture of Lenin. It might be the only thing a visiting Party official was qualified to notice.

He waited impatiently. Because he was waiting, he was startled when the interphone buzzed.

“Da”

“He has arrived at the airport,” his secretary said.

“There are papers to sign—”

“Bring them,” Bondarev said brusquely.

The door opened seconds later. His secretary came in. She carried a sheaf of papers, but she made no move to show them to him.

Lorena was a small woman, with dark flashing eyes. Her ankles were thin. One wrist was encircled by a golden chain which Pavel Bondarev had given her the third time they had slept together. She had been his mistress for ten years, and he could not imagine life without her. To the best of his knowledge, she had no life beyond him. She was the perfect secretary in public, and the perfect mistress in private. It had occurred to him that she genuinely loved him, but that thought was sufficiently frightening that he did not want to deal with it.

Better to think of her as mistress and secretary. Emotional involvement was dangerous.

She came in and closed the door. “Who is this man?” she demanded. “Why is Moscow sending an important man who does not give his name? What have you been doing Pavel Aleksandrovich?”

He frowned slightly. Lately she had begun speaking to him that way even at the office. Never when anyone was around, of course, but it was bad for discipline to allow her to address him in that way inside the Institute. A rebuke came to his tongue, but he swallowed it. She would accept it, yes, but he would be made to pay, tonight, tomorrow night, some evening in her apartment…

“It is not a difficulty,” Bondarev said. “He was expected.”

“Then you know him—”

“No. I meant that someone from Moscow was expected.” He smiled, and she moved closer to him until she was standing beside his chair. Her hand lay on his arm. He covered it with his own. “There is no difficulty, my lovely one. Calm yourself.”

“If you say so—”

“I do. You recall the telephone call from the Americans in Hawaii? It concerns that.”

“But you will not tell me—”

He laughed. “I have not told my wife and children.”

She snorted.

“Well, yes. Even so, this is a state secret. It is a matter of state security! Why should I deceive you?”

“What have we to do with state security? How can the state be affected by distant galaxies?” she demanded. “What have you been doing? Pave I, you must not do this!”

“But what—”

“You wish to go to Moscow!” she said. “It is your wife. She has never been happy here.” Her voice changed, became more shrill, accented with the bored sophistication of a Muscovite great lady, daughter of a member of the Politburo. “Yes, the Party found it necessary to send Pavel here for a few years. The provincial people are so inefficient. I suppose we simply must make the sacrifice.”

“I wish you would not mock Marina,” he said. “And you are wrong. This has nothing to do with a return to Moscow. Resides, when we do go back, I will take you with me. All Russians want to live in Moscow.”

“I do not want to go. I want to stay here, with you. Your wife is not so careful here. In Moscow she would be concerned, lest her friends learn her husband has a mistress.”

That was true enough, but it hardly mattered. “None of this is important.” he said. “Not now. Things will change soon. Sooner than you know. Great changes, for all of us.”

She frowned. “You are serious.”

“I have never been more serious.”

“Changes for the better?”

“I do not know.” He stood and took both her hands in his. “But I promise you there will be changes beyond our power to predict, as profound as the Revolution.”

Pavel Bondarev studied the papers he had been given, but from time to time he looked past them at the man who had brought them. Dmitii Parfenovich Grushin, a Lieutenant Colonel in the KGB despite his seeming youth. Grushin wore a suit of soft wool that fit perfectly, obviously made in Paris or London. He was of average height, and slender, but his grip had been very strong, and he walked with an athletic spring to his step.