Ballroom of the Skies

Three

In the stately cathedral hush of the austere Times-News offices the following morning, Dake Lorin was slowly and uneasily passed up the ladder from managing editor to assistant publisher, to publisher. He sat in paneled waiting rooms, eyed by myriad horse-teethed young ladies, by deftly innocuous young men. This was not the newspaper world with which Dake was familiar. The war, with its wood pulp starvation, had brought about the combine of the last two competing dailies, and during the darkest hours the paper had been down to four half-size sheets, with the ubiquitous “shurdlu” appearing in almost every story.

Now the paper was back to a respectable bulk, photo-printed on the tan grainy paper made of weeds and grasses. Here was no muted thud and rumble of presses, no bellows for “Boy!” Here was an air of sanctimonious hush.

“He will see you now, Mr. Lorin,” a slat-thin female announced.

Dake went into the inner office. The window dioramas were of wooded hills, blue mountain lakes. The publisher was a small round man with matronly shoulders and a dimpled chin.

“Sit down, Mr. Lorin,” he said. He held a card between thumb and forefinger, as though it were something nasty.

“I refreshed my mind, Mr. Lorin. The morgue typed me a summary. Your name, of course, was familiar to me the moment I heard it. Let me see now. Combat correspondent. Wounded. Married while on leave in 73. Wife killed by bombing of Buffalo when the suicide task force was repulsed. Returned to job as reporter on Philadelphia Bulletin. Did a good job of covering convention in ’75 and became a political columnist. Syndicated in sixty-two papers at peak. Quite a bit of influence. Frequently under fire as a ‘Visionary,’ a dreamer. Columns collected into two books, reasonably successful. Advocated Second U.N., until India withdrew and it collapsed. Took a sudden leave of absence a year ago. Activities during the past year unknown. Suspected to hold some ex-officio position in current administration, State Department side.”

“Age thirty-two, twenty-nine teeth, scimitar-shaped scar on left buttock. Very undignified wound, you know,” Lorin said.

“Eh?”

“Never mind. Has anyone told you my reason for seeing you?”

“Mr. Lorin, I am terribly afraid that the... ah... philosophy behind your political theorizing of the past would not be in accord with our...”

“I don’t want a job. I have one exclusive I want to give to you. I want to write it and I want the best and biggest splash you can give it. I came here because you have world readership.”

“An exclusive? Our people dig, Mr. Lorin. We insist on that. I seriously doubt whether there could be any new development in... ah... your field which has not already been—”

Dake interrupted bluntly, hitching his chair closer, lowering his voice. “How about this sort of an exclusive, Mr. Haggins? Darwin Branson did not retire. He was given a very delicate mission by President Enfield. I worked on it with him for a year. The idea was to act as a middleman, to ease off world tension by getting all sides to do a little horse-trading. It was to be done in secrecy, and in the strictest honesty. All sides but Irania have agreed to make honest concessions. Irania was the last one. If Branson had dealt with Irania firmly and honestly, we could have had a chance to see at least five years of peace ahead of us. But I was present when Branson blew the whole scheme sky high by trying to make a second-level deal with the Iranian representative. Irania will make a token concession, of no value. Then the others will water down their concessions, and the net result will be more world tension instead of less. I doubt whether your... diggers have uncovered that, Mr. Haggins. I want you to make a big splash so that the world can know how close it came to temporary nirvana. It might do some good. It might be like a nice clean wind blowing through some very dusty parliamentary sessions. Your sheet is influential. I feel that your cooperation is in the public service.”

Haggins looked flustered. He got up and walked to the nearest diorama as though he were staring out a window. He had a curious habit of walking on his toes. He clasped his hands behind him, wriggling his thumbs.

“You... ah... hand us a very hot potato, Mr. Lorin.”

“Any good story is likely to be, isn’t it?”

“As you know, in exposing corruption, venality, we are absolutely fearless.”

“So I’ve heard,” Dake said dryly.

“However, there is one consideration here which we must examine... ah... rather closely.”

“And that is?”

“The possibility that our motives might be misinterpreted, Mr. Lorin. You have stated that this was all... secret negotiation. I refer now, of course, to the Public Disservice Act of ’75. It would not give us recourse to any court of law, or any chance to state our own case. The Board might arbitrarily consider our publication of your story a Disservice to the State. You know the answer to that. Confiscatory fines.”

“I feel that it is worth the risk.”

Haggins turned toward him. “Risk is in direct ratio to what you have to lose, is it not?”

“That Act itself is the result of fear. If there were less fear in the world, Mr. Haggins, that Act might be repealed.”

Haggins came back to the desk. Dake could see that he had reached a decision. He was more at ease. He said, “A bit visionary, Mr. Lorin?” He smiled. “We do our best, Mr. Lorin. We feel that we improve the world, improve our environment, in many modest, but effective ways. Now you would have us take something that I can only consider as a vast gamble. If we should win, the gain is rather questionable. Should we lose, the loss is definite. By losing we would forfeit our chance to continue to do good in our own way.”

“In other words, it’s a lack of courage, Mr. Haggins?”

Haggins flushed, stood up, his hand outstretched. “Good luck to you, sir. I trust you will find a publisher who will be a bit more... rash, shall we say.” He coughed. “And naturally, I will not mention this to anyone. I would not care to be accused of a personal Disservice. I am a bit too old to work on the oil shale.”

Dake looked at the pink, neatly manicured hand. After a few moments Haggins withdrew it, rubbed it nervously on the side of his trousers. Dake nodded abruptly and left the office, took the elevator up the reinforced concrete shaft to ground level. Fear was a tangible thing in the world. Fear, on the government level, the business level, the personal level. Live out your neat little life and hope for the best. Fools took chances. Men carried weapons when they walked the night streets. Dake did not. His very size protected him adequately, his size and his look of dark, compressed fury.

He ate soybean steak in a small dismal restaurant and continued his search. At Life-Look and at Time-Week the brushoff was less delicate, but just as effective.

At dusk he managed an interview in a rattle-trap building in Jersey City, an interview with a vast brick-red Irishman with a whisky rasp and a smell of barbershop.

The Irishman interrupted him. “Fleng the theories, Lorin. All that prono soup is over my head. You want to reach people. I’ve got a circulation. So let’s get down to it. How about the stash, the dinero, the rupees, the happy old dollars?”

“How do you mean?”

“I’m used to fighting. Hell, I’ve got the most pornographic set of comic strips this side of Capetown. They’re always trying to shut me down. I got a half million press run. So I do this. I put a banner head. Paid Advertising, it says. Not the opinion of the publisher, it says. I give you inside page one, and you write it and sign it. Thirty thousand rupees it costs you. Sixty thousand bucks. Lay it on the line and you can use that page for any damn thing you want. You can use it to challenge Gondohl Lahl to a personal fistfight if you want to. You’ll do a labor camp stretch if that Enfield crowd doesn’t like it, and Kelly will still be here, operating at the old stand. That’s the deal, and take it or leave it.”

“How much down?”

“The whole thing down. They’ll confiscate anything you got before they ship you out. I can’t take chances.”

“It’s a lot of money, Kelly.”

“You look like a guy with a lot of money.”

“I’ll have to... check with some friends. I’ll make a decision and come in tomorrow and tell you.”

“If the answer is no, don’t bother to come in. I won’t dicker. That’s the price. It stands. What are you doing tonight? I got a couple cute little Singhalese tourists lined up, and four freebees to a new private tridi way uptown.”

“No thanks. See you tomorrow.”

“Not too early. I expect to have a hangover.”

Dake went back to the city and bought passage to Philadelphia on one of the feeder lines maintained by Calcutta International Jetways. CIJ used all Indian personnel for their major schedules, but hired U.S. personnel for the feeder lines, entrusting to them the creaking, outmoded aircraft. Once U.S.-owned airlines had linked the entire world. But, in the exhaustion following the war, with the regimentation and labor allocations that had cut travel so severely, the airlines, starved for freight and passengers, had slid inevitably toward bankruptcy, in spite of the subsidies of an impoverished federal government. Thus, when CIJ had made a reasonable offer for all lines and franchises, the airlines had taken it gladly, the investors receiving CIJ stock in return for their holdings. CIJ service was quick, impersonal, efficient. There were only two other passengers on the sixty-seat aircraft. Dake knew that CIJ took a continual loss on the New York — Philadelphia run, but maintained the frequent schedule for the convenience of the Indian nationals who supervised their investments in both cities. He leaned back in the seat for the short run. The spattered lights of the city wheeled under one wing. The other two passengers were a pair of Madrassi businessmen. They conversed in Hindi and Dake could catch words now and then, enough to know that they were talking about the Philadelphia branch of the Bank of India.

He could never quite become accustomed to being considered by the Pak-Indians a second-class citizen. Toynbee had coldly outlined the ecology of civilizations. The great wheel had turned slowly, and the East was once again the new fountainhead of vitality. Their discrimination was subtle, but implacable. In major cities Indian clubs had been established. Americans could be taken there as guests, but were forbidden membership. There had been a fad when American women had begun to wear saris, to make imitation caste marks on their foreheads. The Pak-Indian Ambassador had called on the President. Saris disappeared from the shops. Fashion magazines hinted that caste marks were crude, even rude. Everyone was happy again. For a time it had been possible to emigrate to India, that new land of opportunity. But so many had taken advantage of it that restrictions became very tight, and it was still possible, but very very difficult to manage, involving a large cash bond. Though the war of the seventies had done much to alleviate racial tension in the States, there had still been small though influential Negro groups who had joyously welcomed the dominance of a dark-skinned race in world affairs. They had soon found, to their dismay, that the Pak-Indians were supremely conscious of being, in truth, an Aryan race, and brought to any dealings with the Negro that vast legacy of hatred from the years of tension in Fiji, culminating in the interracial wars. Of Pak-India proper, only Ceylon had any percentage mixture of Negro blood, due to the African invasions of ancient years, but Ceylon was to Pak-India much as Puerto Rico had been to the United States prior to Brazilian annexation.

Indians would treat you with courtesy, even with affability, but in any conversation with them you could detect, running like a symphonic theme through the orchestration of words, their conviction that you were a citizen of a decadent nation, one that had gone beyond its peak of influence in world affairs, one that was doomed to the inevitable status of a supplicant nation, free in name only.

We had it, he thought, and we threw it away. We ripped our iron and coal and oil out of the warm earth, used our copper and our forests and the rich topsoil, and hurled it all at our enemies, and conquered them, and were left at last with the empty ravaged land. How could it have been avoided? What could we have done that we did not do? Should we have used that great moment of momentum in 1945, well over thirty years ago, and gone on to take over the planet? Should we have dropped the sword, misered our resources, and succumbed meekly during the increasing pressures of the middle sixties? How did it come about that any step we could take was wrong, that every course open to us was but a different road to a different classification of disaster? England had been dying too — just a few scant years ahead of us in the inexorable schedule, yet we had been unable to learn from her defeats, unable to cut a new channel. It was almost, he thought, as though there was some unanswerable paradox against which every world power must inevitably run and collapse. Some cold and alien influence in the world, breaking the hearts of men.

Or perhaps it is all merely our own stupidity. Our blindnesses. Our inability to see and comprehend the obvious. Perhaps we are all like Darwin Branson. Able for a time — even for a sustained length of time — to influence our environment for good, yet always failing somehow in that last crucial moment. As Branson had failed when the blindness came over him.

He wondered what Patrice would say. He dreaded seeing her. Her love was a contradiction. She seemed capable of loving every aspect of him as a human being except his final, innermost motivation.

Unscathed Philadelphia had its standard joke about itself. When, during the war, many of the executive branches of government had to be evacuated to Philadelphia, and when the city itself was not bombed, the Philadelphians proclaimed that the enemy had been smart enough to realize that by obliterating all the red tape, they would be helping the U. S. instead of hurting it. The air of immunity had carried over into the present time of fear. There was less underground construction here than elsewhere. It was a prim, old-lady city, walking through the mud with its skirts carefully held up, not too daringly, and with a wise and knowing air as though that old lady, in her almost forgotten youth, had raised a bit of forbidden hell.

Deceleration thrust him forward against the straps, and ten minutes later he was in a wheezing, clattering taxi headed toward Patrice’s unexpectedly modest home near Upper Darby. Patrice’s father had died in ’71 just one week and two days before the passage of the hundred percent inheritance tax bill. His fortune had its beginnings back when the original Gundar Togelson had been pirating oil land from Mellon. Each Togelson since then had increased it until the late sixties when the capital gains tax was revised to take seventy percent of all capital gains. After inheritance taxes, Patrice, in addition to maximum gifts each year her father was alive, inherited about five and a half millions. At the present time it was nearly the last fortune left relatively intact, inside the country. Under the impact of the confiscatory taxes many people had managed to emigrate with their funds to economically sunnier lands, just as the socialist government in England had driven many private fortunes to Bermuda and elsewhere.

Patrice Togelson, a tall, warmly built Viking girl, had brought to Dake a deep, earthy, physical need. Yet he knew that in the management of her money she was like flint, and like quicksilver. Like flint in her calculating hardness. Like quicksilver in her ability to detect the tiniest loopholes, slide through them. They had met after he had taken a casual swipe at her in his column, criticizing her for buying into an Indian land deal to take advantage of the tax concessions Washington had given the investment of Indian capital.

Patrice had appeared in his office at the Bulletin the next morning, blue eyes like ice, jaw set, hair a bright flow of autumn barley. She had leaned both fists on his desk, breasts lifting with the deep breathing of her controlled anger.

“You, my friend, are out of your depth this time,” she said.

“And you, lady, are an anachronism. You are a female pirate. You are a con artist.”

“You cost me more money yesterday than you’ll make in your whole life.”

“Then the least I can do is buy your lunch.”

They glared at each other, grinned suddenly, laughed aloud and went out together. It had been at first a good friendship, even though their personal philosophies were poles apart. For two basically aloof people, it had been a warmth of friendship that had quite astonished them. They found they laughed more often when they were together. One night, in front of the November fireplace in her small home, he had kissed her, expecting it to be casual, finding it to be shockingly hungry.

They were friends, and they became lovers without losing all of friendship. She was almost six feet tall, yet built in perfect feminine scale. They laughed about being in a world too small for them. They did not use the word “love” or the word “marriage.” They were faithful to each other without perceptible effort. They were discreet in an age that jeered at discretion. For a time their physical preoccupation with each other became obsessive, but when they recognized the danger of that, recognized the weakness of it, they fought free of it into a relationship which was rather like that of two semi-alcoholics who would excuse themselves for an infrequent three-day bender.

Together they acquired a sixth sense about what subjects to avoid. They knew that they were two proud, strong, dominant people, who happened to believe in different things. There was too much artillery they could bring to bear on each other. It was enough for him to see the morning sun in the warmth of her hair, hear fond laughter in her throat, hold her through her quickened times of completion.

The inevitable blowup came when he told her why he was taking a “leave of absence.” It had been an unpleasant scene. Even as they fought, neither of them retreating a step, he guessed that she too was aware of the loneliness to come, the empty aching nights.

The taxi driver examined the tip, grunting something that could have been thanks, and clattered off. Dake went up the walk, knowing that no fortress was ever as well protected as this house, this small tidy house, knowing that by breaking the infra-red beams he had become target. He stood on the porch, waiting. The door was suddenly opened by the pretty Japanese maid, who gave him a gold-toothed smile and said, as though he had visited there yesterday, “Good evening, Mr. Lorin.”

“Evening. Does...”

“She knows you are here, sir. She will be right down. A brandy, sir? I’ll bring it to you in the study.”

He was amused. The study was for business transactions. The lounge-living room was for friends. He wondered if Patrice were prescient. Simpler than that, perhaps. She knew him well. She knew his inflexibility. And so she would know that this was not a personal call. He sat in one of the deep leather chairs. The maid brought the brandy, an ancient bottle, and two bell glasses on a black tray. She put them on the small table beside his chair, and left without a sound.

When he heard Patrice’s distinctive step he stood up quickly and smiled at her as she came into the study. Her smile was warmer than he expected. As always, she had that remembered look of being larger than life size, more vital. She wore dark red tailored slacks, a matching halter.

“Quite a tan, Patrice,” he said.

“I got back from Acapulco yesterday.”

“Pleasure trip?” he asked wryly, her hands warm and firm in his.

She made a face. “A good buy. Hotel property.”

“With your Indian pals?”

“Uh uh. Some Brazilian pals this time.”

“Both ends against the middle, Patrice?”

“Of course. How else does a girl get along?” She inspected him, her head tilted to one side. “You look gaunter, darling. Hollow-eyed. I bet your ribs show.”

“The strain of being a do-gooder.”

“Aren’t we being just a little bit too nasty nice to each other?” She held her hand up, thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “Just that much brandy, please. Would I look too severe if I sat at the desk?”

“Not if it’s where your checkbook is.”

She bit her lip. “This could be interesting, couldn’t it?” She seated herself behind the desk. He took her the brandy, went back to the deep chair.

She sipped, watching him over the rim. She set the glass down and said, “I have a feeling we’re going to spar, and it might be nasty, and before we spoil each other’s dispositions, I want to say something. I’ve had a year to plan just exactly how I should say it. Just this, Dake. I’ve missed you. Quite horribly. I wanted, and tried, to buy you and put you in stock. It didn’t work. I’ve been going around rationalizing it, telling myself that if you could be purchased, I wouldn’t want you. But I’m not that way. I wish you could be. I wish you had sense enough to be. Life has plenty of meaning without you. It had more when you were around. I miss that increment. I’m a selfish, hard-fisted, dominating woman, and if there’s any way I can acquire you permanently, I’m going to do it.”

“Okay, Patrice. Equal candor. I’ve missed you. I’ve wished that either you or I could bend a little without breaking. But I know that’s like wishing for the moon. We were fine until we got into a scrap about pretty basic things. Things like selfishness, like human dignity.”

“My world, Dake, is a pig pen. The smartest greediest pig gets the most corn.”

“My world is a place where there’s hope.”

“But we both seem to be living in my world, don’t we? Now tell me why you look haunted, and miserable, and... sick at heart, Dake.”

He told her. She had the knack of listening with an absolute stillness, of applying her intense awareness to the problem at hand. He told her all of it, up to and including Kelly.

“And so you came to me.”

“Asking for sixty thousand dollars. Maybe you can write it off as a charity.”

“I don’t believe in what you’re trying to do.”

“I don’t expect you to. I’m begging.”

“For old time’s sake. Isn’t that the tritest phrase in the world?” She opened a drawer, selected a checkbook, scrawled a check, tore it out. She sat, her chin balanced on her fist, waving the check slowly back and forth.

“I don’t make gifts, Dake. I make deals.”

“I had a hunch it wasn’t going to be that simple.”

“You can have this check. Once that stuff hits the streets, you’re going to think a building fell on you. It is going to cost me half as much again to argue the Board into letting you run around loose. Then I’ll give you thirty days’ wait for the impact of what you write. If nothing happens, and I am certain nothing will, you will be the one to bend a little. You will try to accept the world on its own terms. And accept me along with it, Dake.”

“Then it is a purchase, after all?”

“How much pride do you leave a lady?”

“How much pride do you leave me?” he asked harshly. “Okay. Accept the fact that I’m a monomaniac. If what I want to do fails, I’ll try something else.”

“Little boy with a tin bugle, waking up all the forces of decency in the world. Look, people! The cow’s in the meadow, the sheep’s in the corn!”

“I don’t know how to say this. A man does... what he has to do.”

“And if it’s an obsession? If it’s something with its roots imbedded in a childhood catastrophe? Should he continue to destroy himself? Or try to effect a cure?”

“That’s almost what Branson said to me.”

“You told me very emphatically that he was a god walking the earth. It looks as if he remained a god to you until he questioned your... sanity. And then he became a monster. Personally I like his angle of snuggling up to Irania. India has been moving too fast. It balances things off a bit.”

“And gives us more tension, a bigger load of fear.”

“Gives mankind as a whole more fear. I’m an individual. I take my own pride in being able to take care of myself.”

“Anarchy?”

“Why not? That is, if you are faster and have bigger teeth than your neighbor?”

“We can’t talk at all. We never could. We never will.”

Her face softened. “Oh, Dake. We did talk. Lots.”

He sighed. “I know. Sometimes it seems as if we’re... such a damn miserable waste of each other.”

She put the check on the corner of the desk within his reach. “It’s on a rupee account in a branch of the Bank of India. Need it certified?”

“No. I can cash it. No deal then? No bargain?”

She looked down at her folded hands. A strand of the soft hair swung forward, shining gold in the lamplight. “No deal, Dake. I guess it’s for... old time’s sake.”

He put the check in his wallet. “Thanks, Patrice. I thought you’d be... a lot tougher.”

She lifted her head. “I was going to be.”

“Anyway, I appreciate it.”

She stood up quickly, came to him, sat on the arm of the deep leather chair, leaned against him, her arm around his shoulders.

Her smile was crooked, and looked as though it hurt a bit. “I’m like your Darwin Branson,” she whispered.

He looked up at her. “What do you mean?” She turned away, oddly shy.

“I’m practical. I, too, am willing to settle for... half a loaf.”

He took her shoulders, turned her, pulled her back into his lap. Her hair had a clean spicy scent. Her lips were on holiday, from the long year apart. She kissed him with her eyes wide, blue, and terribly near in the lamplight.