A Shade of Difference Read Free Page B

of praise for the United States, no doubt,” Orrin Knox suggested. The M’Bulu gave his charming palms-out gesture.
    “I am sure of it! Your Excellency—” he shook hands with the British Ambassador. “Mr. Secretary—” he repeated with Orrin Knox. “I just want to say good morning to the S.-G. before I drop in on the First Committee. I shall see you there, no doubt, discussing my important little country.”
    “See you there, Your Highness,” Orrin Knox agreed, and caught himself even as the M’Bulu did, “—Terry.”
    “Good cheer,” the glamorous visitor said. “Good cheer, both!”
    “Mr. Fibay-Toku of Upper Volta, please,” said the young lady at the microphone. “Mr. Fibay-Toku of Upper Volta, please call the Delegates’ Lounge.”
    A moment later the Secretary and the Ambassador could see the M’Bulu on the other side of the enormous room, now almost deserted as the hour neared eleven and the UN’s committees prepared to convene. He had hailed the Secretary-General with an easy familiarity, and they were standing near the entrance where the races of mankind passed in and out: both tall, both stately, both handsome, both alert, the one clad in the glittering robes of his homeland, the other in a dark-blue business suit, subtly different, yet subtly alike.
    “What an extraordinary young man,” Orrin Knox remarked.
    “Trouble,” Claude Maudulayne remarked. “Trouble for us both.”
    “Why don’t you give him his little seat in the UN and his God-given right to make boring speeches to the General Assembly and get headlines in the New York Times? That’s all they want, most of these petty little politicians who come out of the bush. It’s the great bauble of the century.”
    “We have given a definite promise, at a definite time, under definite conditions,” the British Ambassador said doggedly. “It is only a year away, and even then they will be so poorly prepared it may mean chaos. Her Majesty’s Government will simply not turn loose an undisciplined mob if we can help it, until there is some chance of orderly transition.”
    “Here comes Terry, ready or no,” the Secretary said in a mocking tone.
    “For you, too,” Lord Maudulayne said. Then he added with a rare show of bitterness, “After all, it is post-Geneva. And we all know what that means.”
    “Yes,” Orrin Knox conceded, “we all do.”
    “Miss Mahdrahani of India, please,” the young lady said. “Miss Mahdrahani of the delegation of India, please call the Delegates’ Lounge.”
    2
    Now it was autumn, the time of blowing leaves and warm, regretful weather; and yet it did not take any great feat of imagination or effort of will for the Secretary of State to return himself instantly to the terrible tensions of the bright spring days six months ago when he and his colleagues from the Senate had taken off for Geneva from Washington’s National Airport. As he matched the loping stride of Lord Maudulayne along the low, swooping corridors past the constantly recurring glassy vistas of the United Nations building to Conference Room 4 and the inevitable wrangle that awaited them there in First Committee, he could remember very well each detail of that strange, unlikely episode. It had brought a new emphasis to the world, produced a major and not yet clearly understood shift in the East-West confrontation, given to the United States at once new stature and a new need for friends. Partly it had been the President’s doing, partly his. Neither they nor anyone else was quite sure, even now, exactly what had been wrought in those two fantastic, terror-haunted days when it seemed that it would take but a breath—a whisper—and catastrophe beyond imagining would be visited at once upon the human race.
    Well: it hadn’t been, and for that, Orrin Knox thought grimly, the good Lord Himself was probably responsible, since His children were so unclear about how it happened. The good Lord and the instincts of nearly two centuries of