15 - The Utopia Affair by David McDaniel Page B

was approaching ten o'clock in the evening when the group declared itself conditionally satisfied and went together to the commissary for coffee and conversation. Illya found himself seated next to Curley Burke, the crew chief. Curley, of course, was bald, and his features seemed to huddle together around his mouth as though lost in the vast pink expanse of his head, with only two low-set and lonely ears far away to either side. His chin was small, his nose was small, and his eyes were sparkling blue beads; only his mouth was large and mobile. It could allow an insult and a pint of beer to pass in opposite directions simultaneously, and still have room in one corner for a hand-rolled cigarette which smoldered constantly.
    His hands were large and lumpy, with traces of ancient grease deep in the texture. Somehow he seemed to have twice as many knuckles as he should and his fingernails were cracked and ridged, but his large hands could move inside an engine with the skill and grace of a surgeon. He was as interested in Klaus as Klaus was in the petrophagic fungus.
    "Klaus," he said, "how'd a waiter learn so much about engines?"
    Illya's cover had not included this information; he took a fraction of a second to sort through it and improvised. "My first job at sea was as a stoker. I thought of working my way up to Chief Engineer, but I moved over to the White Gang after I learned what life was like a little more."
    "Well, you've come to the right place. I've been fixin' trucks for the Park six years now––since they opened—and I wouldn't want to work anywhere else. I've got the best quarters, the best food and pretty good pay; and it's easy to save with no place to spend it."
    Illya took a swallow of coffee and looked doubtful. "It's a long way from the rest of the world, all right. I was beginning to wonder if I could last until my vacation."
    "What's to miss? The girls here are cute and there's no regulation against interdepartmental fraternization—we'd probably all go stir crazy if there was." He laughed roundly and upended a brown bottle over his foam-flecked glass. "There's plenty of society, all the television shows a week late, and no news from the outside to worry you."
    He gestured around, indicating the unseen guests up in the Lodge or retiring to their cottages. "These rich guys have to pay through the nose for this place; I live here and they pay me! And they're always in such a hurry to leave. Never figure 'em out. Got the best of everything here." He shook his head.
    Privately, Illya could understand both points of view. Publicly, Klaus had to establish in advance a valid reason for leaving Utopia after having been at the Park only a month and a half; his cover identity was too valuable to be broken easily. This nonexistent waiter had gotten some of their best agents into some of the best hotels in the world at times when security was getting very tight indeed.
    It lacked twenty-five minutes of midnight when Illya returned to his room, tired and a little slowed down by a few sociable mugs of beer, but he had his other job to attend to. He plugged a complex unit about the size of a quart bottle into the wall socket above his writing table and keyed a set of frequencies. The small pilot light on top of the unit flickered yellow as the signal was sent, then shone red for two seconds as the high-speed squirt transmission was received, then green. Illya slipped the featherweight earphones behind his head, allowing the rubber tips to slide into his ears, and touched another button which allowed him to scan rapidly through the tape. Two seconds was short, even for the transmission speed the device used; Waverly didn't talk to himself and no guests had come to #35. Occasionally a clearing throat would activate the recording mechanism for a few seconds, or a door closing in the next room, but there was nothing worth listening to on the tape. Illya pushed a button for recycle, and then triggered the bug in