"Later." Michaels shook his head. "You are familiar with this culture by now, then?"
"Well ... yes. I've read some history ... a little law."
"Good. Saves me a lot of talk. You know, sometimes we run into a situation that can be corrected by a single, deft stroke. Makes things very pleasant. We send in an agent—or two or six. The necessary gets done, and somebody writes up a nice, neat report." He toyed with the cigarette lighter.
"But this thing isn't like that. We've got a long, monotonous job of routine plugging to do. We've got to bust a hard-shelled system without hurting too many of the people within it. And we've been at it for a while. We think we've made some progress, but we've still got a lot of snakes to kill.
"But even bad situations have their good points. At least, this place is a good training ground for probationers."
"Probationers?"
"Right. Probationers who don't even know they're being tested." He smiled.
"People with the qualifications for Senior Agent are hard to get. Most of them are latent—asleep. We can't expect them to walk in—we have to find them. Then we have to wake them up. It can be tricky."
He lit his cigarette, eying Stan thoughtfully.
"I suppose you've heard some of the stories that fly around about the Corps. The truth of the matter is, the Senior Agent isn't any superman. He's just a normal human being with a couple of extra quirks."