The Greatest Works of Randall Garrett. Randall Garrett

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      And she was definitely going to get well. He wouldn't even think about anything else. She was going to be fine again, and very soon. Why, she was hardly hurt at all, he told himself, hardly hurt at all.

      "Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "I've been thinking: while we were about it, why didn't we just teleport all the way back home?"

      Malone turned. "Because," he said, "we'd have had the devil of a time explaining just how we managed to do it."

      "Oh," she said. "I see. Of course."

      "This teleportation gimmick is supposed to be a secret," Malone went on. "We don't want to let out anything more about it than we have to. As it is, there's going to be some fierce wondering among the Russians about how we got out of that restaurant."

      "Obviously," the Queen said, entirely unexpectedly, "a bourgeois capitalistic trick."

      "Obviously," Malone agreed. "But we don't want to start up any more questions than we have to."

      "And how about the plane itself?" Her Majesty went on. "Do you think they'll let us take off?"

      "I don't know how they can stop us," Malone said.

      "You don't?"

      "Well, they don't want to cause any incidents now," Malone said. "At least, I don't think they do. If they could have captured us--me, or Lou, or both of us, depending on which side of the argument you want to take--anyhow, if they could have grabbed us on their own home grounds, they'd have had an excuse. Lou got sick, they'd say, and they just took her to the hospital. They wouldn't have to call it an arrest at all."

      "Oh, I see," Her Majesty said. "But now we're not on their home grounds."

      "Not so long as we stay in this plane, we're not," Malone said. "And we're going to stay here until we take off."

      Her Majesty nodded.

      "I wish I knew what they thought they were doing, though," Malone mused. "They certainly couldn't have held us for very long, no matter how they worked things."

      "I know what was on their minds," Her Majesty said. "At least partly. It was all so confused it was difficult to get anything really detailed or complete."

      "There," Malone said fervently, "I agree with you."

      "The whole trouble was," the Queen said, "that nobody knew about anybody else."

      "I'd gathered something like that," Malone said. "But what exactly was it all about?"

      "Well," the Queen said, "Major Petkoff was supposed to tell Lou, in effect, that if she didn't agree to do espionage work for the Soviet Union, things would go hard with her father."

      "Nice," Malone said. "Very friendly gentleman."

      "Well," the Queen continued, "he was supposed to tell her about that at the bar, when he had her alone. But she got that drugged drink before he could begin to say anything."

      "Then who drugged it?" Malone said. "Lou?"

      The Queen shrugged. "Someone else," she said. "Major Petkoff didn't know anything about the drugged drink."

      "A nice surprise for him, anyhow," Malone said.

      "It was a surprise for everybody," the Queen said. "You see, the drugged drink was meant to get her to the hospital, where they'd have her alone for a long time and could really put some pressure on her."

      "And then," Malone said, "there were the men who wanted to arrest me. And the ones who wanted to take Lou to jail. And the mad Mongol who just wanted to fight, I guess."

      "There were so many different things, all going on at once," the Queen said.

      Malone nodded. "There seems to be quite a lot of confusion in the Soviet Union, too," he said. "That does not sound to me like an efficient operation."

      "It wasn't, very," the Queen said. "You see, they have Garbitsch now, but they can't do anything to him because they can't get to Lou. And it doesn't do them any good to do anything to her father, unless she knows about it first."

      "It sounds," Malone said, "as if the USSR is going along the same confused road as the good old United States."

      The Queen nodded agreement. "It's terrible," she said. "I get those same flashes of telepathic static, too."

      "You do?" Malone said, leaning forward.

      "Just the same," the Queen said. "Whatever is operating in the United States is operating over here, too."

      Malone sat down in a seat on the aisle. "Everything," he announced, "is now perfectly lovely. The United States is being confused and mixed up by somebody, and the Somebody looked like a Russian spy. But now Russia is being confused, too."

      "Do you think there are some American spies working here?" the Queen said.

      "If they're using psionics," Malone said, "as they obviously are--and I don't know about them, Burris doesn't know about them, O'Connor doesn't know about them and nobody else I can find knows about them-- then they don't exist. That's flat."

      "How about outer space?" the Queen said. "I mean, spies from outer space trying to take over the Earth."

      "It's a nice idea," Malone said sourly. "I wish they'd hurry up and do it."

      "Then you don't think--"

      "I don't know what to think," Malone said. "There's some perfectly simple explanation for all this. And somewhere, in all the running around and looking here and there I've been doing, I've got all the facts I need to come up with that answer."

      "Oh, my," the Queen said. "That's wonderful."

      "Sure it is," Malone said. "There's only one trouble, as a matter of fact. I don't know what the explanation is, and I don't know which facts are important and which ones aren't."

      There was a short silence.

      "I wish Tom Boyd were here," Malone said wistfully.

      "Really?" the Queen said. "Why?"

      "Because," Malone said, "I feel like hearing some really professional cursing."

      * * * * *

      Three-quarters of an hour passed, each and every minute draped in some black and gloomy material. Malone sat in his seat, his head supported by both hands, and stared at the back of the seat ahead of him. No great messages were written on it. The Queen, respecting his need for silent contemplation, sat and watched Lou and said nothing at all.

      It was always possible, of course, Malone thought, that he would fall asleep and dream of an answer. That kind of thing kept happening to detectives in books. Or else a strange man in a black trenchcoat would sidle up to him and hand him a slip of paper. The words: "Five o'clock, watch out, the red snake, doom," would be written on the paper and these words would provide him with just the clues he needed to solve the whole case. Or else he would go and beat somebody up, and the exercise would stimulate his brain and he would suddenly arrive at the answer СКАЧАТЬ