"Smith, Cordwainer - Angerhelm UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Cordwainer)

ANGERHELM

BY CORDWAINER SMITH

Funny funny funny. It's sort of funny funny funny to think without a brain-it is really something like a trick but not a trick to think without a brain. Talking is even harder but it can be done.
I still remember the way that phrase came ringing through when we finally got hold of old Nelson Angerhelm and sat him down with the buzzing tape.
The story began a long time before that. I never knew the beginnings.
My job is an assistant to Mr. Spatz, and Spatz has been shooting holes in budgets now for eighteen years. He is the man who approves, on behalf of the Director of the Budget, all requests for special liaison between the Department of the Army and the intelligence community.
He is very good at his job. More people have shown up asking for money and have ended up with about one-tenth of what they asked than you could line up in any one corridor of the Pentagon. That is saying a lot.
The case began to break some months ago after the Russians started to get back those odd little recording capsules. The capsules came out of their Sputniks. We didn't know what was in the capsules as they returned from upper space. All we knew was that there was something in them.
The capsules descended in such a way that we could
track them by radar. Unfortunately they all fell into Russian territory except for a single capsule which landed hi the Atlantic. At the seven-million-dollar point we gave up trying to find it.
The Commander of the Atlantic fleet had been told by his intelligence officer that they might have a chance of finding it if they kept on looking. The Commander referred the matter to Washington, and the budget people saw the request. That stopped it, for a while.
The case began to break from about four separate directions at once. Khrushchev himself said something very funny to the Secretary of State. They had met in London after all.
Khrushchev said at the end of a meeting, "You play jokes sometimes, Mr. Secretary?"
The Secretary looked very surprised when he heard the translation.
"Jokes, Mr. Prime Minister?"
"Yes."
"What kind of jokes?"
"Jokes about apparatus."
"Jokes about machinery don't sit very well," said the American.
They went on talking back and forth as to whether it was a good idea to play practical jokes when each one had a serious job of espionage to do.
The Russian leader insisted that he had no espionage, never heard of espionage and that his espionage worked well enough so that he knew damn well that he didn't have any espionage.
To this display of heat, the Secretary replied that he didn't have any espionage either and that we knew nothing whatever that occurred in Russia. Furthermore not only did we not know anything about Russia but we knew we didn't know it and we made sure of that. After this exchange both leaders parted, each one wondering what the other had been talking about.
The whole matter was referred back to Washington. I was somewhere down on the list to see it.
At that time I had "Galactic" clearance. Galactic clearance came a little bit after universal clearance. It wasn't very strong but it amounted to something. I was supposed to see those special papers in connection with
my job of assisting Mr. Spate in liaison. Actually it didn't do any good except fill in the time when I wasn't working out budgets for him.
The second lead came from some of the boys over in the Valley. We never called the place by any other name and we don't even like to see it in the federal budget. We know as much as we need to about it and then we stop thinking.
It is much safer to stop thinking. It is not our business to think about what other people are doing, particularly if they are spending several million dollars of Uncle Sam's money every day, trying to find out what they think and most of the tune ending up with nothing conclusive.
Later we were to find out that the boys in the Valley had practically every security agent in the country rushing off to Minneapolis to look for a man named Angerhelm. Nelson Angerhelm.
The name didn't mean anything then but before we got through it ended up as the largest story of the twentieth century. If they ever turn it loose it is going to be the biggest story in two thousand years.
The third part of the story came along a little later.
Colonel Plugg was over hi G-2. He called up Mr. Spate and he couldn't get Mr. Spate so he called me.
He said, "What's the matter with your boss? Isn't he ever in his room?"
"Not if I can help it. I don't run him, he runs me. What do you want, Colonel?" I said.
The colonel snarled.
"Look, I am supposed to get money out of you for liaison purposes. I don't know how far I am going to have liaise or if it is any of my business. I asked my old man what I ought to do about it and he doesn't know. Perhaps we ought to get out and just let the Intelligence boys handle it. Or we ought to send it to State. You spend hah5 your life telling me whether I can have liaison or not and then giving me the money for it. Why don't you come on over and take a little responsibility for a change?"
I rushed over to Plugg's office. It was an Army problem.
These are the facts.
The Soviet Assistant Military Attache", a certain Lieutenant Colonel Potariskov, asked for an interview. When he came over he brought nothing with him. This time he
didn't even bring a translator. He spoke very funny English but it worked.
The essence of Potariskov's story was that he didn't think it was very sporting of the American military to interfere in solemn weather reporting by introducing practical jokes in Soviet radar. If the American army didn't have anything else better to do would they please play jokes on each other but not on the Soviet forces? This didn't make much sense.
Colonel Plugg tried to find out what the man was talking about. The Russian sounded crazy and kept talking about jokes.
It finally turned out that Potariskov had a piece of paper in his pocket. He took it out and Plugg looked at it.
On it there was an address. Nelson Angerhelm, 2322 Ridge Drive, Hopkins, Minnesota.
It turned out that Hopkins, Minnesota, was a suburb of Minneapolis. That didn't take long to find out.
This meant nothing to Colonel Plugg and he asked if there was anything that Potariskov really wanted.
Potariskov asked if the Colonel would confess to the Angerhelm joke.
Potariskov said that in Intelligence they never tell you about the jokes they play with the Signal Corps. Plugg still insisted that he didn't know. He said he would try to find out and let Potariskov know later on. Potariskov went away.
Plugg called up the Signal Corps, and by the time he got through calling he had a lead back into the Valley. The Valley people heard about it and they immediately sent a man over.