"No, Sir. The strike-effort will be prepared as soon as possible." He bowed slightly, then left the presidential study-vault.
Smith turned to gaze at his Stand-ins. "You will go," he said, "all of you, to the examining authorities for the standard loyalty tests and psych-phys rechecks."
The nine masked figures glanced at one another in surprise, then nodded. There were no protests. The following day he had only seven Stand-ins; Four and Eight had been trapped in a burning building on the outskirts of the rabble city, and their remains had not been found.
Smith kept a tight cork on his rage, but it seethed inside him and threatened to burn through as the time approached to speak again with Ivan Ivanovitch IX. The enemy's infiltration into the very ranks of the Presidency robbed him even of dignity. Furthermore, now that the two scoundrels were uncovered, and dead, he remembered a very unpleasant but significant fact: he had, even before his "election" by the rabble, discussed the televiewphone conferences with the Primaries. The idea of contacting Ivan had started, as most ideas start, from some small seed or other that could scarcely be remembered, some off-hand reference to the costly aspects of the Big Silence perhaps, and it had grown into the plan for contact. But how had the idea first come to him? Had one of the guilty Stand-ins perhaps planted the seed in his mind? After he proposed it, they had seemed demurring at first, but not too long.
Grimly, he realized that the idea might have originated on the far side of the Pacific.
"Who, pray, is the potter, and who the pot?" he grunted, glowering at the nearest Stand-in.
"I beg your pardon?" answered the man, who could not see the glower for the mask.
"Khayyam, you fool!"
"Oh—"
"Sixteen o'clock!" cheeped the timepiece on the wall. "Fifthday, Anti-Rabies Week, Practice-Eugenics Week; Happy 2073; Peep!"