Frederik Pohl by The Frederik Pohl Omnibus

Author:The Frederik Pohl Omnibus
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-12-12T21:13:18+00:00

At fourteen hundred I paid a call on Dr. Horn.

He looked up as the clerk-typist corporal and I came in. He didn’t say anything, just stood up and pointed to the door.

I said, ‘Good afternoon, Dr. Horn. If this is an inconvenient time for you to make your daily progress report, just say the word. I’m here to help you, you know. Would from twelve to thirteen hundred hours every day be more satisfactory? Or in the morning? Or—’

‘Every day?’

‘That’s right, sir. Perhaps you didn’t notice Paragraph Eight of my orders. General Follansbee’s orders were to—’

He interrupted me with an irrelevant comment on General Follansbee, but I pretended not to hear. Besides, he might have been right. I said, ‘As a starter, sir, perhaps you’ll be good enough to show us around the laboratories. I think that you’ll find that Corporal McCabe will be able to take your words down at normal speed.’

‘Take what words down?’

‘Your progress report, sir. What you’ve accomplished in the past twenty-four hours. Only this time, of course, we’d better have a fill-in on everything to date.’

He roared: ‘No. I won’t—’

I was prepared for that. I let him roar. When he was through roaring I put it to him very simply. I said, ‘That’s the way it’s going to be.’

He stuttered and gagged. ‘Why, you stinking little two-bit Army—

Listen, what’s the idea—’

He stopped and looked at me, frowning. I was glad that he stopped, since in the confidential section of my orders—the paragraphs I didn’t show Dr. Horn, as he was not cleared for access to that material—there had been a paragraph which was relevant here. Van Pelt had told the General that Horn’s health was not good. Apoplexy, I believe—perhaps cancer, I am not very familiar with medical terms. At any rate, Van Pelt, while being debriefed by the General’s intelligence section, had reported that the old man might drop dead at any minute. Well, he looked it, when he was mad at least. I certainly didn’t want him to drop dead before I had made a proper Situation Analysis, for which I needed his report.

Horn sat down. He said, with rusty craft: ‘You’re going to stick to what you say?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then,’ he said, with a pathetic, senile cunning, ‘I suppose I must reconcile myself to the situation. Exactly what is it you want, Lieutenant?’

‘The report, sir.’

He nodded briefly. ‘Just so.’

Ah-ha, I thought—to myself, of course—this will prove interesting. Do you suppose he will try to win my confidence so that he can phone his congressman? Or merely get me to turn my back so he can clobber me over the head?

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