A Shade of Difference

One: Terrible Terry’s Book

1

In the great pearl-gray slab of a room that is the North Delegates’ Lounge of the United Nations in New York the late-September sun slanted down through the massive east windows and fell across the green carpets, the crowded chairs and sofas, the little knots of delegates standing or sitting or milling about in the midmorning hours before the General Assembly’s seven committees began. Riding over their noisy hubbub came the heavy voices of the young ladies at the telephone desk, relaying via the public-address system their bored yet insistent summonses to the myriad sons of man:

“Mr. Sadu-Nalim of the delegation of Iran, please call the Delegates’ Lounge! … Senator Fry of the United States, please! … Ambassador Labaiya-Sofra of the delegation of Panama, please call the Delegates’ Lounge! … His Royal Highness the M’Bulu of Mbuele, please … Secretary Knox of the United States …”

Surveying the immense and noisy chamber from his vantage point near the door, Senator Harold Fry of West Virginia, one of the two Senate members and acting head of the United States delegation, wondered with some impatience where Orrin Knox was now. The Secretary of State had been in town two days and Hal Fry had hardly seen him for ten minutes at a time, so busy had the Secretary been with conferences, diplomatic receptions, U.S. delegation business, and what Senator Fry termed with some disparagement “giving beads to the natives.” Not that he was above giving a few himself, he thought wryly as he waved with vigorous cordiality to a passing Nigerian and bestowed a glowing smile upon the delegate from Gabon; but at least he could take it or leave it. Secretary Knox seemed to be going about it with a determination that bordered on the grim; Orrin acted at moments as though the fate of the world depended upon it. Which, of course, Senator Fry conceded abruptly with a loud “Hello!” to the delegate of Nepal, it quite possibly did.

A momentary look of concentration and unease touched his face at the thought, an expression of sudden melancholy that went almost as soon as it appeared. The Ambassador of India materialized at his elbow and seized upon it with unfailing accuracy.

“My dear Hal,” Krishna Khaleel said with his air of half-jocular concern, “first you are being so jolly with everybody and then suddenly you look so sad. What is the matter with the Great Republic of the West this morning? Or is it only the distinguished delegate who feels something unsettling in his tummy, perhaps?”

“My tummy’s all right, K.K.,” Senator Fry said. “In fact, I was at the Guinean reception last night and ate like a horse. I’m just wondering where Orrin is.”

“Ah, yes,” said Krishna Khaleel with a little agreeing hiss. “Orrin is so
busy
since he arrived here. Does he think the United States depends on him alone?”

“He has been known to feel that way,” Senator Fry said with a little smile that the Indian Ambassador answered at once.

“Even now, he feels that way? With Harley in the White House and—”

“Even now,” Hal Fry agreed. “And perhaps with some reason. After all, it isn’t as though Harley were the greatest President who ever—”

“No, indeed,” the Indian Ambassador said quickly. “But we like him, Hal. We all like him. The world thinks highly of your President. He lacks the dramatics of his predecessor, but there is something very—solid about him. And of course Geneva was dramatic enough.”

“Oh, yes,” Senator Fry said, thinking of that fantastic event which had astounded the earth and flabbergasted the universe. “Geneva was dramatic enough, all right … Isn’t that Terrible Terry over there?”

“Where?” Krishna Khaleel demanded, peering toward the bar. “I assume if it is he will be accompanied by the British Ambassador. The United Kingdom can’t seem to leave him alone these days.”

“I should hope not,” Hal Fry said dryly. “I hear Terry’s going to make quite a speech in the plenary session of the General Assembly Friday morning.”

“He can be counted upon,” the Indian Ambassador said with equal dryness.

“Why do you people give him such a play, anyway?” the Senator from West Virginia inquired. “Just to embarrass the rest of us?”

“All the Asian-African states think he has a very good case, you know, Hal. He is one of the last gasps of colonialism. Or his situation is, anyway.”

“‘All the Asian-African states,’” Senator Fry mimicked. “As if you all agreed on anything for more than five minutes at a time.”

“On some things,” the Indian Ambassador said. “On some things. We do agree on Terence Wolowo Ajkaje the M’Bulu of Mbuele.”

“Terence Woe-loe-woe Ahdge-kah-gee the Mmmbooloo of Mmmbweelee,” the Senator from West Virginia said, rolling it out with considerable sarcasm. “Quite a title for a Harvard graduate.”

“And the London School of Economics,” Krishna Khaleel said with a smile. “And Oxford … Now,” he said abruptly, “What is the S.-G. doing, talking to Felix Labaiya?”

Far down the room, under the great wooden slab above the bar that bears the carved map of the world, the Senator from West Virginia saw the tall figure of the Secretary-General bending down to the dark, clever face and short, animated body of the Ambassador of Panama.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Shall we go ask?”

“I’m tempted,” the Indian Ambassador said, as two sheiks from Mauretania went billowing whitely by. “I wonder if it’s the draft resolution Guinea put in yesterday in the Fifth Committee? Guinea, you know, wants to send a UN observer force to Gorotoland to see what the real situation is.”

“Guinea always wants to meddle in everything,” Senator Fry said. Krishna Khaleel smiled broadly.

“So do we,” he said. “And Ghana. And Mali. And Nigeria. And Indonesia. And
Ceylon. And—”

“And the Soviet Union,” Hal Fry said. “And, lately, Panama. What’s the matter with Felix Labaiya, anyway?”

“The Ambassador of Belgium, please,” said the young lady at the phone desk.
“L’Ambassadeur de Belgique, s’il vous plait.”

“He is leaning more and more in that direction,” Krishna Khaleel said in the thoughtful tone of UN delegates who know very well which direction they mean. “But why don’t you ask his wife? After all, he’s married to an American. North American, I should say.”

Hal Fry shrugged. “No one gets anything out of Patsy Labaiya. She’s as much of a closemouthed crackpot as all the rest of her family.”

“I hear,” the Indian Ambassador said, “that her brother has plans to run for a very important office next year and that Bob Leffingwell may resign from the Administration to help him.”

“Governors of California have run for it before,” Senator Fry said, “but don’t believe all the gossip you hear. Here come Her Majesty’s distinguished Ambassador and Terry, so we’ll get a chance to explore all your most delicious suspicions in that sector.”

“Hal, old boy,” Lord Claude Maudulayne said, peering at him in an amiable way, “of course you know His Royal Highness the M’Bulu of Mbuele.”

“I haven’t had the pleasure,” Senator Fry said, shaking hands cordially. “Shall we go sit by the window? There seem to be some seats empty over there, if we move fast.”

“Right,” the British Ambassador said, grasping his tall companion by the arm and steering him toward the glass wall just in time to forestall three rosy Swedes and a small brown man from Madagascar who were heading for the only available chairs.
“I
can’t stay too long, though. Have to go to the First Committee and help Orrin hold off the Soviets on the Panamanian resolution.”

“Typical British understatement!” the Indian Ambassador cried with a laugh. “Of course the Panamanian resolution is directed at the U.K., not the U.S.; Orrin will be helping
you.”

“K.K.,” Lord Maudulayne said, “you always see through me. Always. But of course,” he added more seriously, “the resolution is slightly directed at the United States, too, you know. I think you can take the reference to ‘unfair treatment of minority peoples’ as being—er—pointed. I’m quite sure it is intended that way.”

“I’m quite sure it is,” Senator Fry said. “What do you make of all this, Your Highness?”

“I think you should call me Terry,” the M’Bulu said in the guttural voice of his people and the clipped accent of his educators; and he conferred a dazzling smile upon Hal Fry, who returned it vigorously. “I think everyone should be friends,” he added with a gesture that was soon to become familiar to them—holding his hands out palms upward with a graceful, charming little shrug. “That is why I am here with His Lordship—even though the United Kingdom and I are engaged in a rather—delicate—discussion at the moment.”

“I expect him to give us jolly old what-for in plenary Friday morning,” Lord Maudulayne said with a chuckle, and the M’Bulu of Mbuele chuckled right back.

“I expect I will. Gorotoland is quite important to me. It has been in my family since roughly the time William of Normandy acquired your island. Or so,” he said with a wry little smile that removed some of the sting, “tradition says. It isn’t written down anywhere. They tell it on the drums.”

“We haven’t any desire to take it away from your family, you know,” Lord Maudulayne said mildly. “In fact, you can have your freedom. The Whittle-Hornsby Report promises that, and far be it from Her Majesty’s Govern—”

“Now,” Terrible Terry said with utter finality.

“If you were only ready,” the British Ambassador said.

“Now,” the M’Bulu said, and with a bland, faraway look he concentrated his gaze upon a heavily laden barge struggling slowly up the East River in the hazy autumn sun and for the moment said no more. When he spoke again it was in a tone of restrained but quite ferocious indignation.

“The only place in the whole of Black Africa which is still unable to break free. Dahomey is free. Chad is free. Gabon is free. And what are Dahomey and Chad and Gabon? Nothing but bare places in the sun!”

“Angola and Mozambique—” Lord Maudulayne ventured to mention the Portuguese colonies, but the M’Bulu brushed them aside with an angry wave.

“Their time will come,” he promised with great certainty, “and not far off. But our time is now.”

“Two hundred high-school graduates in two million people,” Lord Maudulayne said in a bleak tone. “One hundred and two college-educated men and women. Thirty-three doctors. Twenty engineers. Forty-one trained administrators.”

“Not a very good record for you, is it?” Terrible Terry asked pleasantly, and the Indian Ambassador gave an appreciative little chuckle. His British colleague sighed.

“We could have integrated you so well with the Rhodesias, if only you had been willing. We had all the plans ready, but you wouldn’t accept.”

“No!” the M’Bulu said with all the fierce vigor of his twenty-nine years, and for just a second Senator Fry had a vivid and uncomfortable vision of human sacrifice around a ritual fire in the thorn-tree country.
“No!”

“Secretary Knox of the United States,” the young lady at the microphone said earnestly. “Secretary Knox of the United States, please call the Delegates’ Lounge!”

“Yes, Secretary Knox,” Hal Fry said in a humorous way that broke the tension, “please do, because I want to see you before I go to Fifth Committee. I want to know what to say to Guinea when they bring up that resolution.”

“And the U.S.S.R.,” the M’Bulu said in a tone that dismissed other matters and came back to good nature. “Mr. Tashikov tells me they plan something very vigorous. We had an interesting talk yesterday on many things.”

“And he promised you complete Soviet support on immediate independence,” Senator Fry said.

“Of course.”

“Of course,” Lord Maudulayne agreed. “Beware.”

“Yes,” said Krishna Khaleel quite unexpectedly, “do beware, Your Highness. Accept support where you can find it, when you need it—but without strings. They have no claim on you now. Don’t give them any. These people. They are not playing simple little games in this world or in this UN. They do not come to this house to offer generosities they do not expect to exact tribute for. They are in this house for what they can get. Do not be fooled by them.”

“K.K.,” Senator Fry said, “how consistent can you be? Every time it comes to an issue here you line up with them as dutifully as though—”

“I resent that, Hal!” the Indian Ambassador said with real anger. “I resent that. India does what she does because she believes it to be best. It has nothing to do with the Soviet Union. It does not even always coincide with the Soviet Union. Often it is different from them. We take our own positions. We are not fools about them, Hal! I resent that!”

“Well, it’s sometimes very hard to see,” Senator Fry remarked. “And very confusing for the rest of us. Anyway, here’s Orrin at last, and I guess maybe we should talk of other things.”

“Your Secretary looks more friendly than I had expected,” the M’Bulu observed, “and not so formidable for one who engineered Geneva.”

“He has a tart tongue and a tart reputation,” Hal Fry said, “but the latter is somewhat exaggerated. And I think the President had quite a lot to do with Geneva. Where are you off to, Claude?”

“First Committee for me, old boy,” Lord Maudulayne said. “I’ll wait and go in with Orrin. Possibly His Highness would like to go with us. If you see Raoul Barre before I do, tell him I shall meet him for lunch at 1:15 in the Delegates’ Dining Room. Why don’t you join us? Possibly the M’Bulu will do the same.”

“I see,” Terrible Terry, said with amusement, “that I am not to be let out of sight.”

“Oh, now!” Lord Maudulayne said, and his youthful companion gave again his hands-out, palms-upward gesture.

“I have a wicked sense of humor,” he confessed merrily. “That is where I got the nickname Terrible Terry. My sense of humor used to distress everyone in England so.”

“Still does, old boy,” the British Ambassador said, and they all joined in his rueful laughter as the American Secretary of State, working his way slowly through the outstretched hands and dutifully smiling faces of a dozen different nationalities, approached them at last.

“I’m sorry to be late, Hal,” he said without preliminaries, “but I got tied up talking to LeGage Shelby at U.S. headquarters across the street. And you know how it is across the street. I should have come straight here, as you recommended.”