The Past Through Tomorrow (79 page)

It was Sister Magdalene.

She nodded at Zeb, smiled sweetly at my open-mouthed surprise and said, “Hello, John Lyle. Welcome.” It was the first time I had ever seen her other than in the robes of a holy deaconess. She seemed awfully pretty and much younger.

“Sister Magdalene!”

“No. Staff Sergeant Andrews. ‘Maggie,’ to my friends.”

“But what happened? Why are you here?”

“Right at the moment I’m here because I heard at dinner that you had arrived. When I didn’t find you in your own quarters I concluded that you would be with Zeb. As for the rest, I couldn’t go back, any more than you or Zeb—and our hideout back in New Jerusalem was getting overcrowded, so they transferred me.”

“Well, it’s good to see you!”

“It’s good to see you, John.” She patted me on the cheek and smiled again. Then she climbed on Zeb’s bed and squatted tailor-fashion, showing a rather immodest amount of limb in the process. Zeb lit another cigarette and handed it to her; she accepted it, drew smoke deep into her lungs, and let it go as if she had been smoking all her life.

I had never seen a woman smoke—never. I could see Zeb watching me, confound him!—and I most carefully ignored it. Instead I grinned and said, “This is a
wonderful
reunion! If only—”

“I know,” agreed Maggie. “If only Judith were here. Have you heard from her yet, John?”

“Heard from her? How could I?”

“That’s right, you couldn’t—not yet. But you can write to her now.”

“Huh? How?”

“I don’t know the code number off hand, but you can drop it at my desk—I’m in G-2. Don’t bother to seal it; all personal mail has to be censored and paraphrased. I wrote to her last week but I haven’t had an answer yet.”

I thought about excusing myself at once and writing a letter, but I didn’t. It was wonderful to be with both of them and I didn’t want to cut the evening short. I decided to write before I went to bed—while realizing, with surprise, that I had been so much on the go that, so far as I could remember, I hadn’t even had time to think about Judith since…well, since Denver, at least.

But I did not get to write to her even later that night. It was past eleven o’clock and Maggie was saying something about reveille coming early when an orderly showed up: “The Commanding General’s compliments and will Legate Lyle see him at once, sir.”

I gave my hair a quick brush with Zeb’s gear and hurried away, while wishing mightily that I had something fit to report in, rather than a civilian suit much the worse for wear.

The inner sanctum was deserted and dark except for a light that I could see in the far inner office—even Mr. Giles was not at his desk. I found my way in, knocked on the door frame, stepped inside, clicked my heels and saluted. “Legate Lyle reports to the Commanding General as ordered, sir.”

An elderly man seated at a big desk with his back to me turned and looked up, and I got another surprise. “Ah, yes, John Lyle,” he said gently. He got up and came toward me, with his hand out. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

It was Colonel Huxley, head of the Department of Applied Miracles when I was a cadet—and almost my only friend among the officers at that time. Many was the Sunday afternoon that I had relaxed in his quarters, my stock unhooked, free for the moment from the pressure of discipline.

I took his hand. “Colonel—I mean ‘General,’ sir… I thought you were dead!”

“Dead colonel into live general, eh! No, Lyle, though I was listed as dead when I went underground. They usually do that when an officer disappears; it looks better. You’re dead, too—did you know?”

“Uh, no, I didn’t, sir. Not that it matters. This is wonderful, sir!”

“Good.”

“But—I mean, how did you ever—well—” I shut up.

“How did I land here and in charge at that? I’ve been a Brother since I was your age, Lyle. But I didn’t go underground until I had to—none of us do. In my case the pressure for me to join the priesthood became a bit too strong; the Superintendent was quite restless about having a lay officer know too much about the more abstruse branches of physics and chemistry. So I took a short leave and died. Very sad.” He smiled. “But sit down. I’ve been meaning to send for you all day, but it’s been a busy day. They all are. It wasn’t until now that I’ve had time to listen to the record of your report.”

We sat down and chatted, and I felt that my cup runneth over. Huxley I respected more than any officer I had ever served under. His very presence resolved any residual doubts I might have—if the Cabal was right for him, it was right for me, and never mind the subtleties of doctrine.

At last he said, “I didn’t call you in at this late hour just to chat, Lyle. I’ve a job for you.”

“Yes, sir?”

“No doubt you’ve already noticed what a raw militia we have here. This is between ourselves and I’m not criticizing our comrades—every one of them has pledged his life to our cause, a harder thing for them to do than for you and me, and they have all placed themselves under military discipline, a thing still harder. But I haven’t enough trained soldiers to handle things properly. They mean well but I am tremendously handicapped in trying to turn the organization into an efficient fighting machine. I’m swamped with administrative details. Will you help me?”

I stood up. “I shall be honored to serve with the General to the best of my ability.”

“Fine! We’ll call you my personal aide for the time being. That’s all for tonight, Captain. I’ll see you in the morning.”

I was halfway out the door before his parting designation sunk in—then I decided that it was a slip of the tongue.

But it was not. I found my own office the next morning by the fact that a sign had been placed on it reading: “CAPTAIN LYLE.” From the standpoint of a professional military man there is one good thing about revolutions: the opportunities for swift promotion are excellent…even if the pay is inclined to be irregular.

My office adjoined General Huxley’s and from then on I almost lived in it—eventually I had a cot installed back of my desk. The very first day I was still fighting my way down a stack of papers in my incoming basket at ten at night. I had promised myself that I would find the bottom, then write a long letter to Judith. But it turned out to be a very short note, as there was a memorandum addressed to me personally, rather than to the General, at the bottom.

It was addressed to “Legate J. Lyle,” then someone had scratched out “Legate” and written “Captain.” It went on:

MEMORANDUM FOR ALL PERSONNEL NEWLY REPORTED

SUBJECT: Personal Conversion Report

1. You are requested and directed to write out, as fully as possible, all of the events, thoughts, considerations, and incidents which led up to your decision to join our fight for freedom. This account should be as detailed as possible and as subjective as possible. A report written hastily, too briefly, or too superficially will be returned to be expanded and corrected and may be supplemented by hypno examination.
   

2. This report will be treated as confidential as a whole and any portion of it may be classified secret by the writer. You may substitute letters or numbers for proper names if this will help you to speak freely, but the report must be complete.
   

3. No time off from regular duties is allotted for this purpose, but this report must be treated as extra-duty of highest priority. A draft of your report will be expected by
   (here some one had written in a date and hour less than forty-eight hours away; I used some profane expressions under my breath.)
   

BY ORDER OF THE COMMANDING GENERAL
(s) M. Novak, Col., F.U.S.A.
Chief of Psychology

I was considerably annoyed by this demand and decided to write to Judith first anyway. The note didn’t go very well—how can one write a love letter when you know that one or more strangers will read it and that one of them will rephrase your tenderest words? Besides that, while writing to Judith, my thoughts kept coming back to that night on the rampart of the Palace when I had first met her. It seemed to me that my own personal conversion, as the nosy Colonel Novak called it, started then…although I had begun to have doubts before then. Finally I finished the note, decided not to go to bed at once but to tackle that blasted report.

After a while I noticed that it was one o’clock in the morning and I still hadn’t carried my account up to the point where I was admitted to the Brotherhood. I stopped writing rather reluctantly (I found that I had grown interested) and locked it in my desk.

At breakfast the next morning I got Zebadiah aside, showed him the memorandum, and asked him about it. “What’s the big idea?” I asked. “You work for this particular brass. Are they still suspicious of us, even after letting us in here?”

Zeb barely glanced at it. “Oh, that—Shucks, no. Although I might add that a spy, supposing one could get this far, would be bound to be caught when his personal story went through semantic analysis. Nobody can tell a lie that long and that complicated.”

“But what’s it for?”

“What do you care? Write it out—and be sure you do a thorough job. Then turn it in.”

I felt myself grow warm. “I don’t know as I will. I rather think I’ll ask the General about it first.”

“Do so, if you want to make a ruddy fool of yourself. But look, John, the psychomathematicians who will read that mess of bilge you will write, won’t have the slightest interest in you as an individual. They don’t even want to know who you are—a girl goes through your report and deletes all personal names, including your own, if you haven’t done so yourself, and substitutes numbers…all this before an analyst sees it. You’re just data, that’s all; the Chief has some heap big project on the fire—I don’t know what it is myself—and he is trying to gather together a large enough statistical universe to be significant.”

I was mollified. “Well, why don’t they say so, then? This memo is just a bald order—irritating.”

Zeb shrugged. “That is because it was prepared by the semantics division. If the propaganda division had written it, you would have gotten up early and finished the job before breakfast.” He added, “By the way, I hear you’ve been promoted. Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” I grinned at him slyly. “How does it feel to be junior to me, Zeb?”

“Huh? Did they bump you that far? I thought you were a captain.”

“I am.”

“Well, excuse me for breathing—but I’m a major.”

“Oh. Congratulations.”

“Think nothing of it. You have to be at least a colonel around here, or you make your own bed.”

I was too busy to make my bed very often. More than half the time I slept on the couch in my office and once I went a week without bathing. It was evident at once that the Cabal was bigger and had more complicated ramifications to it than I had ever dreamed and furthermore that it was building to a crescendo. I was too close to the trees to see the woods, even though everything but the utter top-secret, burn-after-reading items passed across my desk.

I simply endeavored to keep General Huxley from being smothered in pieces of paper—and found myself smothered instead. The idea was to figure out what he would do, if he had time, and then do it for him. A person who has been trained in the principles of staff or doctrinal command can do this; the trick is to make your mind work like your boss’s mind in all routine matters, and to be able to recognize what is routine and what he must pass on himself. I made my share of mistakes, but apparently not too many for he didn’t fire me, and three months later I was a major with the fancy title of assistant chief of staff. Chalk most of it up to the West Point ring, of course—a professional has a great advantage.

I should add that Zeb was a short-tailed colonel by then and acting chief of propaganda, his section chief having been transferred to a regional headquarters I knew only by the code name JERICHO.

But I am getting ahead of my story. I heard from Judith about two weeks later—a pleasant-enough note but with the juice pressed out of it through rephrasing. I meant to answer her at once but actually delayed a week—it was so pesky hard to know what to say. I could not possibly tell her any news except that I was well and busy. If I had told her I loved her three times in one letter some idiot in cryptography would have examined it for “pattern” and rejected it completely when he failed to find one.

The mail went to Mexico through a long tunnel, partly artificial but mostly natural, which led right under the international border. A little electric railroad of the sort used in mines ran through this tunnel and carried not only my daily headaches in the way of official mail but also a great deal of freight to supply our fair-sized town. There were a dozen other entrances to GHQ on the Arizona side of the border, but I never knew where any of them were—it was not my pidgin. The whole area overlay a deep layer of paleozoic limestone and it may well be honeycombed from California to Texas. The area known as GHQ had been in use for more than twenty years as a hideout for refugee brethren. Nobody knew the extent of the caverns we were in; we simply lighted and used what we needed. It was a favorite sport of us troglodytes—permanent residents were “trogs”; transients were “bats” because they flew by night—we trogs liked to go on “spelling bees,” picnics which included a little amateur speleology in the unexplored parts.

It was permitted by regulations, but just barely and subject to stringent safety precautions, for you could break a leg awfully easily in those holes. But the General permitted it because it was necessary; we had only such recreations as we could make ourselves and some of us had not seen daylight in years.

Zeb and Maggie and I went on a number of such outings when I could get away. Maggie always brought another woman along. I protested at first but she pointed out to me that it was necessary in order to avoid gossip…mutual chaperonage. She assured me that she was certain that Judith would not mind, under the circumstances. It was a different girl each time and it seemed to work out that Zeb always paid a lot of attention to the other girl while I talked with Maggie. I had thought once that Maggie and Zeb would marry, but now I began to wonder. They seemed to suit each other like ham and eggs, but Maggie did not seem jealous and I can only describe Zeb, in honesty, as shameless—that is, if he thought Maggie would care.