But what kind of a universe would the Creator have to make before an Irish Aleut could find a place in it? This was the world of Michael Andreanov Dugan — the rain and the rock and the fresh-smelling trees, into which man brought the stench of oppression and fear, and the even worse odors of chemical and more-than-chemical death. Here was the one kind of world he could come to terms with — a place in which authority gave him rewards for punishing mankind. He would, he suspected, have been dead or heartbroken or imprisoned long ago if he had had to stay in the United States. Yet comfortable people, in their unbelievably safe and friendly homes, might well turn the pages of a book or magazine and wish that they too could be spies for awhile.
To be a bad spy meant being dead, or humiliated. To be a middling spy meant that you went on for a while, like "Captain Stearns," until somebody a little smarter than yourself came along and killed you. But to be a good spy meant that you were willing to go to war with the universe, willing to abandon the decent good things of life for a road which led away from reason. How many people had he killed thus far, on his way to Atomsk? He could not count them and be sure. He knew, with a deep unhealing sense of pain, that his ability to forget killing was itself bad, a flaw in himself, and that it was worse than the killing.
The dim blur in the east had become a perceptible border of gray. By resting his eyes in the somewhat deeper darkness of closed eyelids and then peering intently about him, he was able to see something of his vicinity.
There was a blur of blacker darkness running up the deep gray of the loose scree, just ahead of him.
Wearily he rose to his feet and crept on bear-paw soles over to the patch he had seen.
His guess had been right. It was a clump of bushes which had knotted themselves into the loose rock and had frozen the rockfall.
Eagerly and almost carelessly he clambered upward. He felt nothing but roots or rocks when he swept the firm cold ground with the heel of his palm — using the heel so as to leave no imprint of human hand or fingers. He untied the undersoles from his boots, undid the mouth of his sack, dropped each undersole in, dropped each piece of string after them. For a while he would not have to be a bear.
The easier walking cheered him. He followed the line of bushes, with the light rising about him every minute.
His gloom of waiting had given way to the cheer of action; he counted the chances in his favor and reminded himself, for the thousandth time, that he had changed into all-Soviet clothing and gear. He had nothing which was of American origin, except for the little package of secret-service gadgets which made a lump in his shirt pocket; and he practiced a thousand times the quick reach for the pocket and the twisting throwing-away of rocks or bits of wood which he had hidden there, just to be sure that if he were shot, challenged, or overtaken, he would manage to get rid of the little bundle before he was seized. Nobody would find those things on him unless it was a clean shot in the heart or head first time. And as long as they did not find his tiny camera, his little needle gun, and the other things, he could tell lies as long as they could listen, and they would not prove that he was anything but an errant, willful, half-demented citizen of the Soviet Union.
He was glad he had taken precautions in Tokyo — getting his appendectomy scar re-cut, through the skin, and re-stitched in the Russian surgical manner; and finding a Japanese dentist who had, with much mystification, replaced his good American dental work with the cheapest Japanese craftsmanship, such as a Red Army man might have gotten in Russian-occupied Manchuria. Of course, if they took detailed full-length x-rays of him, they would find evidence of surgery and bone repair which was un-Russian in character, but even at their worst they would be unlikely to do that. So he stood a chance of surviving — one chance in a couple of hundred million — even if they did get hold of him.