Roger Mexico is taking it personally, oh-I-say, only trying to help… .

What the somewhat disconnected Mr. Pointsman has been hearing all this time is a voice, strangely familiar, a voice he once imagined a face in a well-known news photograph from the War to have:

“Here is what you have to do. You need Mexico now, more than ever. Your winter anxieties about the End of History seem now all well comforted to rest, part of your biography now like any old bad dream. But like Lord Acton always sez, History is not woven by innocent hands. Mexico’s girl friend there is a threat to your whole enterprise. He will do anything to hold on. Scowling and even cursing him she will nevertheless seduce him away, into a civilian fogbank in which you will lose him and never find him—not unless you act now, Pointsman. Operation Backfire is sending ATS girls out to the Zone now. Rocket girls: secretarial and even minor technical duties at the Cuxhaven test range. You have only to drop a word to SPOG, through Dennis Joint here, and Jessica Swanlake is out of your way. Mexico may complain for a while, but all the more reason for him, given the proper direction, to Lose Himself In His Work, eh? Remember the eloquent words of Sir Denis Nayland Smith to young Alan Sterling, whose fiancée is in the clutches of the insidious yellow Adversary: ‘I have been through the sort of fires which are burning you now, Sterling, and I have always found that work was the best ointment for the burns.’ And we both know what Nayland Smith represents, mm? don’t we.”

“I do,” sez Pointsman, aloud, “but I can’t really say that you do, can I, if I don’t even know who you are, you see.”

This strange outburst does not reassure Pointsman’s companions. They begin to edge away, in definite alarm. “We should find a doctor,” murmurs Dennis Joint, winking at Katje like a blond crewcut Groucho Marx. Jessica, forgetting her sulk, takes Roger’s arm.

“You see, you see,” the voice starts up again, “she feels that she’s protecting him, against you. How many chances does one get to be a synthesis, Pointsman? East and West, together in the same bloke? You can not only be Nayland Smith, giving a young lad in a funk wholesome advice about the virtues of work, but you also, at the same time, get to be Fu Manchu! eh? the one who has the young lady in his power! How’s that? Protagonist and antagonist in one. I’d jump at it, if I were you.”

Pointsman is about to retort something like, “But you’re not me,” only he sees how the others all seem to be goggling at him. “Oh, ha, ha,” he sez instead. “Talking to myself, here. Little—sort of—eccentricity, heh, heh.”

“Yang and Yin,” whispers the Voice, “Yang and Yin… .”

3
In the Zone

Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more…