“And the first fifty of which,” he reminded her irritably, “were my relatives and neighbors. If you’re old enough to remember Mars and the Three Watertanks Massacre, young lady.”
She swallowed and looked stricken. An apology seemed to be in the process of composition, but Mardin moved past her in a long, disgusted stride and headed rapidly for the distant platform. He had a fierce dislike, he had discovered long ago, for people who were unable to hate wholesomely and intelligently, who had to jog their animus with special symbols and idiotic negations. Americans, during the War of 1914-18, changing sauerkraut into liberty cabbage; mobs of Turks, in the Gibraltar Flare-up of 1985, lynching anyone in Ankara caught eating oranges. How many times had he seen aged men in the uniform of the oldsters’ service, the Infirm Civilian Corps, make the socially accepted gesture of grinding out a worm with their heels whenever they referred to the enemy from Jupiter!
He grimaced at the enormous expanse of ice-covered tank in which a blanket of living matter large enough to cover a city block pursued its alien processes. “Let me see you lift your foot and step on that!” he told the astonished girl behind him. Damn all simplicity-hounds, anyway, he thought. A week on the receiving end of a Jovian question-machine is exactly what they need. Make them nice and thoughtful and give them some inkling of how crazily complex this universe can be!
That reminded him of his purpose in this place. He became thoughtful himself and—while the circular scar on his forehead wrinkled—very gravely reminiscent of how crazily complex the universe actually was…
So thoughtful, in fact, that he had to take a long, relaxing breath and wipe his hands on his coveralls before climbing the stairs that led up to the hastily constructed platform.
Colonel Liu, Mardin’s immediate superior, broke away from the knot of men at the other end and came up to him with arms spread wide. “Good to see you, Mardin,” he said rapidly. “Now listen to me. Old Rockethead himself is here—you know how he is. So put a little snap into your salute and kind of pull back on those shoulders when you’re talking to him. Know what I mean? Try to show him that when it comes to military bearing, we in Intelligence don’t take a—Mardin, are you listening to me? This is very important.”
With difficulty, Mardin took his eyes away from the transparent un-iced top of the tank. “Sorry, sir,” he mumbled. “I’ll—I’ll try to remember.”
“This the interpreter, Colonel Liu? Major Mardin, eh?” the very tall, stiffly erect man in the jeweled uniform of a Marshal of Space yelled from the railing. “Bring him over. On the double, sir!”
Colonel Liu grabbed Mardin’s left arm and pulled him rapidly across the platform. Rockethead Billingsley cut the colonel’s breathless introduction short. “Major Igor Mardin, is it? Sounds Russian. You wouldn’t be Russian now, would you? I hate Russians.”
Mardin noticed a broad-shouldered vice-marshal standing in Billingsley’s rear stiffen angrily. “No, sir,” he replied. “Mardin is a Croat name. My family is French and Yugoslav with possibly a bit of Arab.”