V
Mrs. Klein was shaking out a rug on the front porch. She smiled at him. "Not much to do here, for a city man, is there?"
"I'm not bored," he said, "for some reason. You have a beautiful daughter, Mrs. Klein."
"I'd feel happier about her looks if she'd marry somebody," Mrs. Klein said dryly. "Seems to me they're wasted this way."
Doak sat on the glider. What was it someone had said about marriage? Oh, yes—that it combined the ultimate in temptation with the ultimate in opportunity.
He said, "I'm surprised she isn't married. The men around here must be blind or mute."
"Oh, she's had enough offers," Mrs. Klein answered. She laid the rug over the porch railing. "But she's a fussy stubborn girl." She sat in her chair. "You a married man, Mr. Parker?"
He shook his head. "Never had the time nor the money—and besides they all said no to me."
"I'll bet. With that hair of yours and that fine head, with those eyes, I'll bet they said no."
"Why, thank you!" Doak said. "You have a number of good points, yourself, Mrs. Klein."
"My popovers and my coffee, maybe," she agreed. "And my figure wasn't bad, a decade or two back. But I never had Martha's looks. That's from her dad's side of the family."
"Handsome, were they?"
"Oh, yes. High falutin' people, scholars and beauties who owned half the land in the county, at one time. Old Wisconsin Germans. I'm Irish myself."
Bright scintillating dialogue, stirring the quick response. But he felt as relaxed as though he had hay in his hair. He looked out at the deserted road, at the fields beyond, at the clouds on the clear horizon. Rural summer—a quiet Saturday morning in the agricultural Midwest only nineteen minutes from Chicago.
People spoke of other worlds and here was one, nineteen minutes from Chicago. And last night, under the lucidate, the town banker had gone to another world, three hundred years away, had gone back to the magic of Burns.
A great lad for the ladies, Bobbie Burns, and a great love for the people. A poet with revolutionary leanings, all heart, a bleeder and a believer. Studious, Doak sat, on the front porch in another world.
Were the people so stupid they couldn't be trusted with words? They could be misled with words and confused and stirred to unrighteous anger. And informed with words and guided and ennobled and solaced and stirred to high destiny.
How had wrestling ever taken the place of words?
Someone said, "Dreaming, city-man?"
He looked up quickly to see Martha standing there. Mrs. Klein had evidently gone into the house without his being aware of it.
"Dreaming," Doak admitted. "Holding high converse with the mighty dead." He smiled at her. "Through for the week?"
"Through." She took the chair her mother usually occupied. "Five and a half days of whereas and wherefore earns me a day and a half for myself. At the risk of seeming forward would you like to go swimming with me this afternoon?"
"I can't think of a better way to spend it," Doak answered. "How about transportation?"
"It's only a little over a mile. We can walk." She paused. "Or did you plan to see Senator Arnold?"
"I'd rather go swimming," Doak said.
Which they did. In the waters of Lake Memahbin, in the small cove that harbored the entire recreational facilities of Dubbinville. Doak rented some trunks there and they swam out to the raft.
There weren't too many adults in the water this afternoon but the kids were everywhere. Noisy splashing running kids—but very few of them ventured out to the big raft.
There was a park running the length of the beach and a variety of games—table tennis, horse-shoes, shuffleboard. There was a small group around the table in the grove who seemed to be just sitting.
Doak saw the beard and the lady who had quoted the unknown poet, last night. He and Martha lay on their stomachs on the raft, looking back toward the shore.
Doak said easily, "That gang in the glade doesn't seem to be having much fun."
"Solid citizens," Martha said. "That lady is the principal of the high school and the man with the beard is president of the bank. You couldn't expect them to run and shout, could you?"
Doak said nothing.
She turned over on her side to look at him. "Any luck with the Senator?"
"Not much so far. I'll get him, before Monday, though."
She stood up and he felt a stirring in him at the sight of her taut fully-feminine figure. She poised on the edge of the raft and then her tanned body went slanting toward the water.
She came up directly beneath him and splashed a handful of water into his face. "Sun worshipper," she mocked. "The trip out do you in?"
He made a face at her and she went under.
He looked over at the group in the glade. High school principal, custodian of young minds—and a reader. Worse than that, a partner in a publishing venture.
Corruption? What kind of mind would it take to believe there was corruption in that group? A Senator Arnold kind of mind. Rebellion, yes. Oh, very definitely rebellion—under the Arnold Law.
Somebody had his feet and he was being pulled head over toes into the waiting water. He came up spluttering to see Martha laughing at him from the edge of the raft.
He started to climb up and she dove off the further side. He went after her. Much laughter and great sport. An excuse to grab her, here and there, to feel the firm, warm smoothness of her, to quicken to the challenge of her body.
In the glade the watchers sat, missing nothing.
Doak said, "I'm not sure the solid citizens approve of your maidenly frolicking. They seem to be frowning our way."
"Studious types," Martha said, "but not necessarily disapproving."
Doak was silent, staring at the water.
"Bored?" Her voice was light.
He looked up. "I've never been less bored. Martha, I...." He shook his head in vexation.
"It's a little early for a pitch," she said, "though you do give it a warming amateur earnestness. Or wasn't it going to be a pitch?"
He looked at her steadily. "What else?"
"A warning maybe?" a break in the light tone.
"What kind of warning?"
It was her turn to look at the water—and to color? It seemed so, faintly, under the tan. She said, "To warn me that you're married or poor or uninterested." She looked up, smiling. "I'm such a simple country girl."
"Yes," he said. "Sure." He looked over at the watchers. "Are they friends of yours?"
"Yes." Her eyes wide and searching, her face and body taut. "Why?"
"Wondered. Am I being played for a patsy?"
Silence while she studied him. Silence while the raft gently rocked, and the world. "Patsy?" she asked.
"Forget it. You have a great charm and an unholy animal attraction for me, Martha Klein, and maybe we'd better get back to shore and have a quiet cigarette."
They had a cigarette and a hot dog with a skin on it, the first Doak had ever seen. They had grape pop and a few laughs. Fun in the sun at Dubbinville, U.S.A. Wouldn't the gang at home get a belt out of this? And where was June's bright metallic laughter being heard this golden afternoon?
They walked back to town quietly, exertion-spent, sun-calmed. They came up onto the porch, and Mrs. Klein looked from Martha's face to Doak's and frowned—and sighed.
"Fun?" she asked.
"Wonderful," Doak said. "And Martha surprised me by being able to swim. None of my other girls can swim a lick."
"Martha's no girl," Mrs. Klein said. "She's twenty-seven."
Martha laughed. "Why, mother, you'll never get rid of me that way."
Mrs. Klein said, "I almost forgot. Mr. Arnold called. Wants to see you, Mr. Parker, tonight."
"Well, maybe he is sold. Wonder how he knew I was here."
"There isn't much he doesn't know about what's going on in town," Mrs. Klein said. "I'd wager there isn't anything." She looked at Martha as she said that last.
Martha's face was blank.
"Maybe I can put it off until tomorrow," Doak said. "It's been a pretty good day up to now."
He called the Senator from the drug store in town. He told him, "Nothing definite, yet, Senator."
"Don't give me that," Arnold said raspingly. "Get up here right away, Parker."
Doak stopped at the house on the way back. He told Mrs. Klein, "I might be a little late for supper. I think I'll run up and see the Senator now and get it over with."
"We'll hold it," she said. She looked around to see if Martha was within hearing. Then, "You're not trifling with my girl, Mr. Parker?"
"Not for a second," Doak assured her. "Though I have an uncomfortable feeling she's trifling with me, but good."
Mrs. Klein shook her dark head. "Not with that sick-calf look on her face. The girl's smitten. You watch your step, Mr. Parker."
"I promise," he said. "I'll be back as soon as possible."
The hot room, the face like ashes, the cracked voice. No chair again for Doak. Arnold said, "You went up there last night, I know. Well?"
"I'll make a full report to my superior," Doak said. "I'm not permitted to discuss Department business with anybody, Senator."
Arnold's thin lips were open, his bony jaw slack. "Well, I'll be damned. Do you know who you're talking to, young man?"
"An ex-Senator," Doak answered.
"That's right—and the man who put your superior where he is. He'd still be peddling papers if I hadn't got him into the Department."
Doak said nothing.
"I could get your job in a minute," Arnold went on. "I'm a hell of a long ways from dead, Parker. You'd better wake up."
Doak had no words.
"Well, damn it, man, are you dumb? What have you got to say?"
"I've said it, sir," Doak said quietly.
For long and silent seconds, Arnold glared at him. And then he said, "All right. I'll get my report from Ryder—and your job. Now get out."
Fine, great! Hero Doak Parker, of Security. Lion bearder, hair-splitter, cutter-of-his-own-throat, lover of a country lass. And man without a future, it looked like now.
The dogs slobbered and watched, the gravel grated under his feet. The great gates swung open and Doak took a deep breath of the warm clean air. Why did he feel so free?
Martha was sitting on the front porch. She looked up and smiled as he came near and he stooped to kiss her.
"Hey!" she said. "Watch it, city man." But she hadn't taken her lips away for a few seconds.
From his jacket pocket he took the Heritage Herald and tossed it in her lap. She looked down at it for seconds, then up to read his face. He said nothing.
"Last night," she said, "you got it. I missed it when I went upstairs, last night, but I thought someone else might have taken it."
"I took it—last night."
Her eyes searched his wonderingly but there was no evident tension in her. Doak sat on the glider.
She said, "I was too forward to be believed this afternoon, perhaps? Did you listen last night?"
"I listened. I'm from Security, Martha—or was. I'm resigning."
"Oh? To fight the good fight?"
He nodded. "But legally—or what is known as legally. Through the pressure-group pattern. I know my way around Washington, Martha. I think, in time and with the right people behind me, I think I could—oh, hell!"
"Yes," she said. "Oh, hell! When you were swimming this afternoon we could have got this, Doak. I told them to wait. I told them I thought you had the makings of an honest man."
"Why?" He stared at her.
"I don't know why. Maybe your curly hair. I'm admitting nothing along that line, not yet, Doak. I want to see what kind of fighter you are, how much man you are."
"I wish I knew," he said quietly. "One thing I'm sure of, I'm going to enjoy the battle."
"You're going to enjoy both battles," Martha said. "And probably win both. But oh, the bastards we're going to have to fight."
He smiled and looked out at the shadowed lawn. This would be a place for the historians, the writing historians, Dubbinville, U.S.A. And why should a man be happy, looking forward to so damned much trouble?
Mr. Gault has just presented us with a wholly plausible if highly terrifying view of a reasonably near future. Such things could, conceivably, come to pass. And prophecy, from the time of Jules Verne to the present, has long been one of the several spinal columns of science fiction. Yet is it possible for anyone to predict an unvisited future? We are inclined to think not. Gadgetry to come, as repeatedly demonstrated by Verne, is easy. But no one yet has been able to tell what human beings are going to do from day to day, much less years and years ahead of time.