The Tomorrow File (66 page)

XXXI WANT TO GET OUT OF HEREXXX XXXMUST YOU DO THIS TO MEXXX XXXPLEASE LET ME STOPXXX I turned to the operator.

“Could I have a printout on that, please?”

“Yes, sir.”

She pushed buttons. Held the screen image while the printer chattered briefly, 350 wpm. She tore off the screed, handed it to me. I scanned it, passed it to Phoebe Huntzinger.

Phoebe spanned it.

“What do you find significant in that?” I asked her.

She scanned it again.

“Nothing special, Nick.”

“All one-syllable words,” I said.

“Nick, I told you Golem is limited. We’re using a ten-thousand word vocabulary storage, plus phrase linkups. We’re pushing the limit now.”

“Phoebe, I’m not blaming you,” I said. Smiling. Touching her arm. “You've done wonders. Just gives me ideas, that’s all. Thanks for the show. Let’s eat.”

But that brief demo at the Denver FO led to consequential imperatives. (Loverly words—no? Obsos would have said, “Far-reaching consequences.” But language changes. As it should. Otherwise we would still be chanting, “Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote. . . .”).

When I returned to GPA-1,1 began to move objects about. I sent Leo Bernstein to Hospice No. 17 in Little Rock, Arkansas, for brief familiarization conditioning on their service on the formularization of synthetic blood. I pulled Seth Lucas out of Hospice No. 4, temporarily, and sent him to the Denver Field Office to serve with Tom Lee, the Team Leader on Project Phoenix. And I brought Phoebe Huntzinger back from Denver to Manhattan Landing.

“Big service,” I told her. “Clear as much storage in your computers as you can. Program two-hundred-thousand word English vocabulary, plus a thousand-item vocabulary of foreign words and phrases. Particularly those applicable to economics and government. Got that?”

“Sure, boss. Going to tell me what this is all about?”

“No. Then after you have your pachinkos programmed, set up a direct wire link with Denver. For send and return. So we can scan the input down here and interpret.”

“All
right,
Nick. You don’t have to draw a diagram.”

“This Tom Lee—what’s your take?” I asked.

“A brain,” she said. “He’s eighteen. Makes you feel obso— right?”

“In this juvenocracy, everyone makes me feel obso. Get hopping, Phoebe.”

I sent a restricted, detailed letter of instruction to the eighteen-year-old Team Leader Thomas Lee. I ordered him to prepare a contingency logistics plan to transfer Project Phoenix from the Denver FO to Hospice No. 4.

I sent a formal letter to R. Sam Bigelow at the Bureau of Public Security. I stated that in answer to his such-and-such, dated such-and-such, my personal visual inspection had confirmed that 5 cc of the substance 416HBL-CW3 was still in the possession of SATSEC, and records indicated no withdrawals for any purpose whatsoever.

Then I flashed Penelope Mapes, requesting an interview with the Chief Director. Times synchronized to my satisfaction. He would be leaving for a week’s tour of exmainland States on a Saturday, just one day prior to Louise Rawlins Tucker’s dinner party. Fine. Penelope Mapes promised me fifteen minutes with him on the afternoon of his departure. Megafine. I remembered the comment of a lab ef who had been involved in a successful research project.

“How you doing?” I asked her.

“Just great,” she had said. “Everything’s coming up penicillin.”

I arrived in Washington on March 15. Many happy returns, Julius Caesar. I stayed at the Chevy Chase place and spent two full days with Joe Wellington and staff, including Samantha Slater, planning the logistics of a PR excursion through the Midwest. Touting the glories of a Department of Creative Science to Establishment Gruppen. It was, I sometimes felt, a contentless ceremony. Except, of course, the ceremony itself was meaningful.

I also spent a full day at temporary headquarters of the DCS in the basement of the Executive Office Building. The babe was healthy and growing. An enlarged suite of six offices, still in the process of expansion. More noise, more objects, more franticness. There is nothing quite like political growth. It is at once fascinating, exciting, disturbing. Something like the proliferation of
Neisseria gonorrhoea
on a petri dish.

Paul Bumford and I—Mary Bergstrom sitting nearby, a silent fury—went over the political scenario. The original bill, HR-316, submitted to the House of Representatives by a Congressman from Alabama (a “sweetheart” of the Chief Director) had, of course, been overcast. A process similar to artificially inflating a requested budget by 20 percent. Knowing you’ll be cut back to your desired goal. In this case, proposed amendments in the House Government Operations Committee were nibbling away at the original bill. But nothing that hadn’t been anticipated and programmed. To quell wild beasts, you toss them raw chuck. When they are surfeited, the broiled sirloin is slipped by. So it was. So it always has been.

I “By the way,” I said to Paul. “Something for the Tomorrow File. A federal TV cable system. The only channel. All sets licensed.”

“Got it,” he said. “Excellent. Especially for agitprop.”

My meet with Chief Director Michael Wingate was scheduled for 1430. I was ushered into his crowded EOB office. I had an opportunity then to observe the manager of the US in action. Surrounded, crushed by advisers, aides, secretaries, guards, applicants, patrons and clients, servers and masters. Penelope Mapes was there, of course, and Theodore Seidensticker III, Joe Wellington, Sady Nagle, and a varied assortment of concerned objects from Senators to hypersonic pilots and navigators plotting the CD’s flight to our overseas provinces.

Then Michael Wingate exhibited to me another side of his multifaceted character: the efficient executive. Cool under pressure. Welcoming stress. The em of almost instant decisions; a barely perceptible pause before the “Yes” or the “No.” And withal, remarkably genial, pleasant. Brooking no serious opposition, you
¹
understand. Not even from Senators. But the negative always glossed by the physical gesture: palm stroke, pat, embrace, caress, playful punch. It was a marvelous performance. To watch.

“Nick!” he said. Genuine pleasure. “So glad to see you!”

I believed it. That was his gift. A charm so intense it conquered
^:
all.

“About GPA-11?” he asked.

“No, no.”

“You’ve discovered how they’re doing it?”

Then I divined part of his secret: He never listened—totally.

“No, Chief,” I said. “I’m sorry to report I have not discovered how they’re doing it. ”

“Bad business,” he said sternly. Shaking his head. “Bad business.”

In our following conversation, interrupted a dozen times, I finally was able to make clear to him why I had requested the audience. Hyman R. Lewisohn was stopping. Using conventional therapy, there was no hope for the em’s survival. But I wanted to attempt radical surgery. I didn’t explicate further. But before that eventuality, I wanted the Chief Director to convene an ad hoc committee of the nation’s foremost civilian physicians, hematologists, oncologists, etc., to make an independent analysis of Lewisohn’s present condition. And to make a prognosis. They would have open and complete access to my personal files and to the records of Group Lewisohn.

Chief Director Michael Wingate looked at me closely.

“Why do you want an outside opinion?” he asked.

“For my sake, sir,” I said. No expression. “And for yours.” His glance sharpened. You could see the knife edge thinning. And glittering. 

“All right,” he said. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll order it immediately.”

He motioned to an aide and began dictating a tape-recorded memo that would result in the convening of a committee of civilian scientists to investigate the present physical status of Hyman R. Lewisohn. And to prognosticate his fate. I tiptoed away while he was dictating. He waved to me as I departed. He was already surrounded by the mob. Seeking his favors. His most precious was, I hoped, waiting for me.

The home of Louise Rawlins Tucker was on Oxford Street, about two kilometers from the place Paul and I leased in Chevy Chase. The house was well-sited; it had a university air: obso red brick, aged ivy, extravagant grounds, an air of staid respectability. Its most salient feature, for my profit, was a walled garden. Now sere, with patches of blued snow still lurking in the shadows. Flagstoned walks. Bare trees and withered brush.

“I don’t like evergreens,” Louise Fawlins Tucker said firmly. “Ah, what is?”

There was a charming arbor. It would, I hoped, be painted in the spring. Before the wild grape sprouted. There were two semicircles of benches: wood-slatted seats about a shallow depression that might have been, once a pond. Fish? Lilies? Anything.

The dinner party was for twelve. Precisely seven ems and five efs.

“Ah, it is best to have two wandering ems,” Louise Rawlins Tucker said firmly.

I had sent, at great expense, natural gladiolus. Enough to fill several vases and metal pots throughout the downstairs area. The splotches of soft color enlivened the dim, somewhat depressing interior. Louise Rawlins Tucker inspected my gift with great favor and thanked me.

“Regardless of what objects hint,” she said, firmly, “you can’t be all bad.”

“And what do objects hint?” I asked.

“Ah,” she said.

We dined, a sedate but pleasant party, from a buffet of adequate but unimaginative dishes. The proshrimp were undercooked, the prolet salad distressingly flaccid. But there was an excellent bowl of natural pasta with a prosauce hyped with what I guessed to be prorooms and natural Italian garlic sausage. Quite good. I had a second helping.

“You’ll get fat,” Grace Wingate said to me.

“More of me for you,” I murmured.

“Awful em,” she whispered. But she smiled.

Other than that brief exchange, we had engaged in no other talk except polite greetings after her late arrival. She spoke to the others; I spoke to the others. Slowly, gradually, I found myself cast in the role of a “wandering em.” I was content, trying to compute the status of the guests.

They all seemed to be acquainted which, naturally, made me feel the outsider. Although I met nothing but gracious thaw and smiling pleasantry. All obsos except for Grace and myself. Two of the ems and one of the efs were Georgetown professors. A Vermont Senator and his wrinkled daughter. An ef from the higher echelons of CULSEC, DOB. Another ef, crippled, a poet who, she told me, composed by a complex word-chess-move code. I couldn’t compute it. She showed me a sample poem she just happened to have with her. I couldn’t compute it.

But I should not carp; they were all profitable objects. Or at least inoffensive. In their tweeds and quilted skirts. Bangles and hunting stocks .Neuter objects. Precisely the background for Grace Wingate ; and me. For our scenario. Might as well suspect that assemblage of I leprosy as of passion hidden in their midst.

The after-dinner drink, as you might have predicted, was medium-dry sherry. The glasses were elegant crystal, just large j enough for an eye douche. I waited until Grace Wingate was ' temporarily alone. Then carried my miniature sherry over to her. “Warm in here,” I said. Brilliantly.    :

“Yes,” she said. Distantly. “Isn’t it.”

“There’s a garden,” I said. “I peeped through the draperies. How does one get out there?”

“A side door from the kitchen,” she said. Faintly. “A walk leads ; around.”

“Five minutes?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Bring your cloak,” I said. “It’s cold.”

Carrying that ridiculous sherry, I stalked determinedly through a back hall, past two serving objects in the kitchen. They didn’t even look up when I unchained the side door and stepped out. I was ' wearing a winter-weight zipsuit. But still the cold shocked, tingled I skin. I walked about, apparently inspecting withered shrubs and I frozen lawn. Breathing deeply. Plumes of white. Then I sat cautiously on one of the scabbed benches under the bare arbor.

She was with me in a few minutes. Weiring a hooded cloak that | framed her face. A cloud of russet wool, and those paled features, j She sat alongside me. Billowing down onto the bench.

“Not for long,” she said breathlessly.

“Long enough,” I said.

I maneuvered between her and the house. Anyone watching— why would anyone do that? Want to do that?—would see only my back. Perhaps the top of her head.

I set the little sherry glass aside. I took her hands. She withdrew her arms into the loose sleeves of her cloak so that our clasped hands were enveloped.

“You’re freezing,” she said.

“No, no,” I said. “Not now. First of all, I know you trust Louise. The others?”

“They couldn’t care less,” she said.

“Yes, I suppose so. Grace, I can cope with my own danger. But not yours. If there’s any—”

“You think I care?” she asked scornfully.

I stared at her. It was an instant when, I thought then and I thought later, we came whole to each other. Why else should I suddenly be sickened by my life’s turbidity? The time’s? I wanted lightness, clarity, simplicity, elegance, airy laughter and spidery beauty. I wanted Grace.

“Your husband doesn’t listen,” I told her. “Not really.”

Her eyes widened.

“How did you know? No, not really. He doesn’t. Nick, I have so much to give.”

I may have looked at her in amazement. I would have laughed at that dumb line from a lesser ef. But if absence makes the heart grow fonder, it also makes it more flatulent. I was prepared to believe her; she
did
have so much to give.

I took by trying to absorb her. Not only somber eyes, patrician nose, soft lips, glistening teeth, sharp chin, stalk neck, but
her.
We spoke in low voices, short sentences. Exploring. We were emotional archaeologists. Not digging with shovels. Crass that, and counterproductive. But with dentist’s pick, jeweler’s loupe, camel’s-hair brush. Gently uncovering and examining. Learning each other. Sentences getting longer. Voices murmuring off into sighs. Warmed hands clasping tighter.

“I’ve wanted,” she said, “all my life to become devoted. Completely. To someone. Or something. I love Michael. But he’s not the all I wanted. I see that now. I thought Beism might offer what I need. I don’t think so. I need a—a target. Nick, are you a target?”