Ballroom of the Skies

Two

Smith had been awkwardly skeptical. He was a moon-faced man with nail-head eyes, fat babyish hands. Dake Lorin had exerted himself to be charming, to make a friend of this Smith. It had been most difficult. He kept thinking that Smith was a complicated mechanical doll. And if you tripped the wrong reflex, you would be inundated by the standard line. Irania is strong. Irania is quick. Irania is brave. Our leader, George Fahdi, is farsighted.

Smith was in the country on a forged passport, arranged with the oblique assistance of one of the Under Secretaries of State. Dake had picked him up in Boston to drive him down to the conference with Darwin Branson.

The trick was to get under the automatic pseudo-patriotic reflex, and get down to the man himself.

Dake drove the small nondescript car at a sedate sixty-five, slowing for the stretches of neglected shattered slabs. The car, like most of the works of man, was a shade too small for Dake Lorin. His knees and elbows seemed always to be in the way.

“I understand your Leader was impressed with Mr. Branson.”

Smith shrugged. “He told me later that he felt Mr. Branson was a great rarity. A good man. There are not many good men.”

“I’ve worked with Mr. Branson for a year.”

Smith turned in the seat. “So? You are... by trade, a government employee?”

“Not by trade. By trade I guess I’m a newspaperman. I was filling in in the Washington Bureau a couple of years ago. I interviewed Branson. He... stuck with me. The guy has quite an effect.”

“You intrigue me,” Smith said in his toneless voice.

Dake made a small decision. In order to disarm this Smith he would have to do a bit of a striptease, let his soul show a bit. “I’ve always been a lone wolf type, Mr. Smith. Maybe a bit of a visionary. That state of mind always had a cause, I suppose. When I was twelve, a wide-eyed kid, the police picked up my Dad. He was a smalltime politician. And a thief. He would have been safe all his life, but there was a change of administration and they threw him to the wolves. It was a deal. He was supposed to get eighteen months. But the judge crossed them up and Dad got ten years. When he found out that his old pal, the governor, wasn’t going to pardon him, he hung himself in his cell. My mother pulled herself together and we got along, somehow. I had a lot of schoolyard scraps. It made a mark on me, I guess. I grew up with a chip on my shoulder, and a fat urge to change the world so that things like that couldn’t happen.”

“Quite a dream to have.”

“I suppose so. Anyway, it gave me a drive. I learned the hard way that I couldn’t change the world by punching it in the mouth. So I decided to instruct the world. I became a two-bit messiah in the newspaper game. But that’s like knocking down stone walls with your head. What you tell them on Tuesday they can’t remember on Wednesday. Then I interviewed Darwin Branson and later it seemed as if he’d been interviewing me. For the first time I’d found a man I could talk to. A man who believed — just as I believe — in the innate decency of mankind. I talked my fool head off. And went back, unofficially, to talk some more. Then, when I heard he was going to retire, I felt lost. As though the one sane man left in the world had given up. He got in touch with me and put his new assignment on the line. I got out of newspaper work right then. And we’ve been working on it for a year.”

“And it’s still a dream, Mr. Lorin?”

“I’ll have to let Mr. Branson tell you about that.”

“It has been my experience, Mr. Lorin, that visionary tactics do not fit the world of practical international politics.”

“Look at it this way, Mr. Smith. We’ve been carrying a double load of fear ever since Hiroshima. Every one of us. It has an effect on every joint human action, from marriage to treaties. Fear makes each nation, each combination of nations, aggressive. And that aggressive outlook adds to the increment of fear. Each power group has established ‘talking points.’ Thus, everyone has demands to make, demands that will apparently not be met.”

“We demand that Pak-India cease acts of aggression on their northwest frontier.”

“Precisely. And it seems that all the demands balance out. In other words, if, through one vast treaty agreement, all the ‘talking points’ could be eliminated, it would give us the breathing space we need and... it might lead to the habit of similar world treaties in the future, once a new set of demands and ‘talking points’ have been set up. The result may be visionary. The method is practical, Mr. Smith.”

“We will not make concessions,” Smith said firmly.

“Stop talking like your Leader, Mr. Smith. Forgive my bluntness. Talk as a man. A living, thinking organism. You have ambition. Otherwise you would not have reached such a high place under George Fahdi. Being in a high place, you sense the precariousness of your position. What would you give to be able to look ten years into the future and see yourself still important, still trusted, still... safe?”

“Life is not that certain.”

“Yet we all want it to be that certain. We want to know that we will be free to live, and love, and be happy. Yet, as nations, we act in such a way that it increases rather than reduces our uncertainty. As though we were under some compulsion. Like lemmings, racing to the sea to drown themselves. Mr. Branson does not believe that it is necessary that, through our acts as nations, we must live in fear. He believes that, acting as nations, acting in good will, we can make this world as good a place to live as it was during the first fourteen years of this century. Your Leader is a man, just as you are. As I am. He does not need aggression to consolidate his position. He needs a constantly increasing standard of living to make his place secure. Proper treaties, proper utilization of world resources, can make that possible.”

“You sound like a free trader from the history books.”

“Perhaps. I am not as convincing as Mr. Branson.”

“War, Mr. Lorin, is a cyclical phenomenon.”

“That’s been our traditional excuse. It’s a cycle. Who can stop cycles? It’s sunspots. Who can change the sun? Mr. Branson calls that statistical rationalization.”

“Your Mr. Branson sounds like an impressive man.”

“He is. Believe me, he is.”

Dake parked the car in a garage near New Times Square and they walked through the last faint grayness of dusk toward the rented office. Dake was dismally aware that if Smith wished to apply the trite fascist tag of decadent democracy, New Times Square gave him overpowering opportunity. There was no use telling a man like Smith that what he was seeing was a fringe world, a place of fetid lunacies, not at all typical of the heartland of the country where stubborn, dogged men were working in lab and field and mine to re-create, through substitution, the lost wealth of a great nation. The problem of the world, as Branson had said so many times, was in the field of bionomics. Man has made his environment precarious for himself, by denuding it of what he needs. This problem of mankind, the great and pressing problem, is to readjust that environment to make it once more a place where man can exist. Human nature, Branson maintained stoutly, does not have to be changed. It is basically good. Evil acts are the products of fear, uncertainty, insecurity.

The war of the seventies had caused a further moral deterioration. Man sought escape in orgy, in soul-deadening drugs, in curious sadisms. Along 165th Street the fleng joints were in full cry. In the mouth of an alley three women, loaded to the gills with prono, were mercilessly beating a Japanese sailor. Giggling couples pushed their way into a dingy triditorium to rent the shoddy private rooms where the three gleaming curved walls were three-dimensional screens for a life-size, third-rate showing of one of the obscene feature shows turned out in the listless Hollywood mill. Censorship restricted such public showings to heterosexual motifs, but further uptown, private triditoriums showed imported specialties that would gag a gnu.

The land was full of sects which, in revulsion at the metropolitan moralities, had founded new religions that insisted on complete celibacy among the fanatic congregations, each member pledged never to reproduce his kind. A chanting line wearing purple neon halos picketed the triditorium. A child lay dead in the gutter and a haughty Indian stood beside his glistening Taj answering the questions of a servile traffic policeman in a bored and impatient voice.

“In here, Mr. Smith,” Dake said, glad to get the man off the street.

They rode up in the groaning elevator, and walked down the hall to the office. Darwin Branson got up quickly from behind his desk. Dake felt a warm assurance at seeing the man, felt an end to his own doubts.

The conference began. Dake was so accustomed to hearing the gentle assurance with which Branson wheedled that he listened with half an ear. He suddenly focused his full, shocked attention on Darwin Branson when he heard him say, a bit coldly, “Naturally, if all the arrangements please your Leader, President Enfield wishes your Leader to... ah... remember us with friendliness.”

Dake said, “Darwin! Good Lord, that implies that we’re...”

“Please!” Branson said with soft authority. Dake became reluctantly silent, telling himself that Branson had some good motive for handling this interview on a different tone and level than all the others.

Smith smiled. “I was afraid, after listening to your young friend, Mr. Branson, that I would find myself dealing with a saint. I am glad to detect a... shall we say... practical approach.”

“This country, Mr. Smith, can’t afford not to make friends, particularly with a coalition as powerful as yours.”

“Could I safely say then, that those concessions we make shall be more... ah... spectacular than effective?”

Dake had never seen quite that smile on Darwin Branson’s face before. “Please, Mr. Smith. You must remember that we are gentlemen of sincerity and integrity. Think how President Gondohl Lahl would be annoyed should he begin to think that whereas his concessions were made honestly, yours were made with a view to appearances.”

Smith nodded. “I see what you mean. We must, above all else, be sincere. Now I am wondering if... your other dealings, with Garva and with Chu, have been made with this same degree of sincerity. I think that is a fair question.”

“Of course, Mr. Smith. I will say this. They are all hoping that it is not... too good to be true.”

“I believe,” said Smith, “that I shall offer an alternate concession to the one you ask for. I believe we shall surrender Gibraltar to Spain.”

“Eyewash,” Dake said hotly. “That means nothing. You can have missile stations zeroed in on it to immunize it any instant you feel like it.”

Smith looked at Branson and raised one eyebrow. Branson said, “Don’t underestimate his offer, Dake.”

“But it’s so obvious. You’ve said a hundred times, Darwin, that each concession has to be real and honest, or the whole thing will fall down. When everyone else sees that Irania is just making a... pointless gesture instead of a real concession, they’ll withdraw their promises and we’ll be back where we were.”

“Your young man seems to be filled with childish faith, Mr. Branson.”

“An attribute of most young men, I’m afraid. I’ll relay your offer to the others, Mr. Smith.”

“And spoil a year’s work, Darwin,” Dake said dully. “I... just don’t understand.”

Branson stood up. “Can we assist you further, Mr. Smith?”

“No thank you. Arrangements have been made for me. I’ll be in Alexandria in the morning. And, I assure you, the Leader will not forget your... cooperation.”

Smith bowed first to Branson and then, a bit mockingly, to Dake Lorin. He left quietly.

The moment the door shut, Dake said, “You’ve blown it, Darwin. You’ve blown it sky-high.”

Branson leaned back. He looked weary, but satisfied. “I think I’ve handled it in the only possible way, Dake. It has become increasingly obvious to me that we couldn’t ever bring them all together.”

“But yesterday you said...”

“Things have happened between yesterday and now. Things I can’t explain to you. We’ve had to lower our sights, Dake. That Smith is an oily specimen, isn’t he? But he’s the representative of Irania. Oil reserves, Dake. A tremendous backlog of manpower. And influence gradually extending down into Africa, down into vast resources. They’ll be good friends, Dake. Good friends to have.”

“Now slow up just a minute. That is the kind of thinking, Darwin, we have both openly said we detest. Opportunistic, blind thinking. Lining up with the outfit which seems to have the biggest muscles. Damn it all, this is an about-face which I can’t comprehend.”

“When one plan looks as if it will fail, you pick the next best. That’s mature thinking, Dake.”

“Nuts, my friend. It’s an evidence of a desire to commit suicide. You, of all the people in the world, to suddenly turn out to be...”

“Watch it, Dake!”

“I won’t watch it. I gave a year of my life to this, and now I find that all along you’ve been giving me the big one-world yak, and the brotherhood of man yak, while without letting me know you’ve been setting us up for a power deal.”

“A power deal, my young friend, is the best that an indigent nation can hope for. We have to line up with the people who can hit the quickest and the hardest. I... think we’ve managed it.”

“You’ve managed it. Leave me out of it. I’m through, Darwin. You’ve tried your best to drag me into it, to assume that somehow — merely through being here with you — I become some kind of... partner. It was more than a dream, for God’s sake!”

“Remember how the British survived for so long, Dake, after they’d lost their muscles? Always creating that delicate balance of power and...”

“Ending in hell, Darwin, when the Indians threw them out of Fiji, when all the throats in the Solomons were cut. I can’t seem to get through to you. We weren’t doing this for us. We were doing it for the world at large, Darwin.”

“Sometimes it is wise to accept half a loaf.”

Dake Lorin felt the tingling tension in all his muscles, felt the uprush of the black crazy anger that was his greatest curse. The blindness came, and he was unaware of his movements, unaware of time — aware only that he had somehow reached across the desk to grab the front of Branson’s neat dark suit in one huge fist, had lifted the smaller man up out of the chair. He shook him until the face was blurred in his vision.

“Dake!” the man yelled. “Dake!”

The anger slowly receded. He dropped Branson back into the chair. He felt weak and he was sweating.

“Sorry,” he said.

“You’re a madman, Lorin!”

“You’re a cheap little man, Branson. I have a hunch. I have the feeling there are people who’ll understand exactly how you sold out the human race on this deal. And I’m going to put the case before them. All of it. Every part of it. Then let the world judge you, Branson.”

“Now just a moment. This involves a question of security, Lorin. I can have you classified as potentially subversive, have you sent to labor camp until you cool off. You know that.”

“I don’t think you can stop me.”

“You’ve been engaged in secret negotiations. Any violation of security will be evidence of your disloyalty.”

Dake said softly, “And you’re the man who called those regulations, called the labor camps, the new barbarism, government by aboriginal decree. You changed overnight, Darwin. You’re not the same man. I’ll do what I can, and you can kindly go to hell.”

“While you’re doing it, examine your own motives again, Dake. Maybe you’ve spent your life looking for martyrdom, and this is your best opportunity.”

“That’s a low blow.”

“You’re upset, Dake. In a way I don’t blame you. Disappointment is hard to take. But you are my friend. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

Dake stared at him for long seconds. There was nothing else to say. He turned on his heel and left the office, slamming the door violently behind him, taking wry pleasure in the childishness of the gesture.