Michaelmas

Eleven

Michaelmas and Frontiere stood watching the approach of the umbilical corridor from the gate. “Is it going well?” Michaelmas asked politely.

Frontiere glanced aside at Norwood, who was chatting casually with some of the UNAC people while Luis worked his camera, and then at Campion, who was close behind Luis’s shoulder. “Oh, yes, fine,” he said.

Michaelmas smiled faintly. “My sympathies. May I ride to Star Control in the same vehicle with you and Norwood?”

“Certainly. We are all going in an autobus in any case; we are very proud of the latest Mercedes, which incorporates a large number of our accumulator patents. Accordingly, we have a great many of the vehicles here, and use them at every opportunity, including the photographable ones.” Frontiere’s thinned lips twisted at the corners. “It was my suggestion. I work indefatigably on my client’s behalf.” He glanced at Campion again. “Perhaps a little too much sometimes.”

Michaelmas clapped him on the shoulder. “Be at your ease, Getulio. You are an honest man, and therefore invulnerable.”

“Please do not speak in jest, my friend. There is a faint smell here, and I am trying to convince myself none of it comes from me.”

“Ah, well, things often right themselves if a man only has patience.” Michaelmas caught Clementine’s eye as she stood back beyond Campion and Luis. She had been watching Campion steer Luis’s elbow. Michaelmas smiled at her, and she shook her head ruefully at him. He winked, and turned back to Frontiere. “Have you heard from Ossip? How are the verification tests on the sender?”

Frontiere shrugged. “I have not heard. He was only about an hour ahead of us in bringing it here. The laboratory will be proceeding carefully.”

Norwood’s voice rose a little. He was making planar patterns in the air, his hands flattened, and completing a humorous anecdote from his test-flying days. His eyes sparkled, and his head was thrown back youthfully. You’d trust your life’s savings to him. “Very carefully,” Frontiere said at Michaelmas’s shoulder, “if they hope to contradict him convincingly.”

“Cheer up, Getulio,” Michaelmas said. “The workmanship only looks Russian. In fact, it comes from a small Madagascan supplier of Ukrainian descent whose total output is pledged to the Laccadive Antiseparist Crusade. Or in fact the false voice transmissions did not come from Kosmgorod. No, by coincidence they emanated from an eight-armed amateur radio hobbyist just arriving from Betelgeuse in its spacetime capsule. It has no interest in this century or the next, and is enroute to setting up as god in pre-Columbian Peru.”

“Right,” Domino said.

The umbilical arrived at the aircraft hatch and looked on. A cabin attendant pushed open the door. Michaelmas took a deep, surreptitious breath. The little interlude between taxi-ing to the pad and the arrival of the corridor had ended. Frontiere shook his head at Michaelmas. “Come along, Laurent,” he said. “I wish I had your North American capacity for humour.” They moved into the diffused pale lighting and the cold air.

Waiting for them was the expected thicket of people who really had no business being there, as well as those with credentials or equally plausible excuses. They were being held back behind yielding personnel barriers, and up to now they had stood in more or less good order, rubbing expensively-clad shoulders discreetly, each conscious of dignity and place, each chatting urbanely with the next.

But when the debarking corridor doors opened, they forgot. They became fixated on the slim man with the boy face, and there was nothing tailoring or other forms of sophistication could do about that.

Norwood. It was, indeed, Norwood. Ah.

They moved forward, and where the barriers stopped them, they unhooked them automatically, without looking, staring straight ahead.

“On your diagonal right,” Domino said, and Michaelmas broke off staring at the welcomers and looked. A tall, cadaverous young man in an Alexandria-tailored yellow suit was coming through the second of the automatic clamshell doors into the area. His large, round brown eyes were sparkling. He strode boldly, and he had his thumbs hooked into the slash pockets of his weskit. “Cikoumas.”

“Bust him,” Michaelmas said.

The doors nipped the hurrying young man’s heel. He cried out and pitched forward, arms flailing. His attempt to get at least one elbow down did not succeed; his nose struck heavily into the stiff pile of the carpeting. He struggled facedown, cursing, one foot held high between the doors, but only a security guard moved towards him with offers of assistance and promises of infirmary. He was, after all, at the back of the crowd.

Brisk in the air-conditioning, jockeying for position, the aircraft passengers proceeded to the gate, where cameras, microphones and dignitaries did their work, but not as smoothly as the UNAC press people, who lubricated the group through its passage toward the ground-vehicle dock. Camera crews eddied around the main knot of movement. “The dignified gentleman with the rimless glasses is Mr Raschid Samir, your director,” Domino said. Mr Samir was directing general shots of Michaelmas debarking with Norwood and Frontiere. He had an economy of movement and a massive imperturbability which forced others to work around him as if he were a rock in the rapids. “He will follow you to Star Control with the crew truck and await instructions.”

Michaelmas nodded. “Right. Good.” As they moved out of the terminal building proper, he was concentrating on his position in the crowd while plotting all the vectors on Norwood. Two crews at the nearer end of the dock were covering most of one side of the astronaut as he strode along, grinning and still shaking hands with some of the local UNAC people. Frontiere was staying close to him, thus blanketing most of his right flank. Other camera positions or live observers were covering the other approach angles almost continuously. Michaelmas stepped sideward in relation to a group of press aides moving along beside Campion and Clementine. While they masked him from forward view, he shifted the strap of the terminal from his left shoulder into his hand, and then stepped behind a dock-side pillar. The bus was there, snugged into its bay, white and black, the roof chitinous with accumulators, the windows polarized, the doors folding open now while the party rippled to a halt. Norwood half turned, directly in front of Michaelmas, almost in the doorway, tossing a joke back over his shoulder, one hand on an upright metal stanchion, as the group narrowed itself down to file in. Michaelmas was chatting with a press aide. “We’re crowded here, aren’t we?” he remarked, and laid a corner of the dangling terminal up against Norwood’s calf muscle just below the back of the knee, so gently, so surely, so undetectably that he half expected to hear the pang of a harmonic note. But instead Norwood sagged just a little on that side before his hand suddenly gripped the stanchion whitely, and his toe kicked the step riser. His eyes widened at betrayal. He moved on, and in, and sat down quickly in the nearest of the individual swivelling armchairs. As the bus filled and dosed, and then rolled out through the insulated gates, Michaelmas could see him chatting and grinning but flexing the calf again and again, as if it were a sweet wife who’d once kissed a stranger. I could have done worse by you, Michaelmas thought, but it was nevertheless unpleasant to watch the trouser fabric twitching.

The bus rolled smoothly along the ramps among the towers, aiming for the hills and then Star Control. “Would you like to speak to Norwood now?” Frontiere asked, leaning across the aisle. “We will arrive at quarter to three, so there is half an hour.”

Michaelmas shook his head. “No, thank you, Getulio,” he smiled, making himself look a little wan. “I think I’ll rest a bit. It’s been a long day. I’ll catch him later.”

“You look tired,” Frontiere agreed, annoyingly.

Michaelmas cocked an eyebrow. “Let Campion continue to interview him. There must be one or two things he would still like to know.”

Frontiere winced. “Listen,” he said softly, “you say Campion has a good reputation?”

“I say, and so do others whose judgement I respect. He has a fine record for aggressive newsgathering.”

Frontiere nodded to himself, faintly, wryly, and grunted. “Somehow, that’s small comfort.”

“It’s the best I can do,” Michaelmas said. Down the aisle, Clementine had turned her seat to form a conversational group with Luis and Campion. Campion was talking intently. Clementine was responding and gesturing, her hands held forward and curved inward to describe shots, in the manner that made all directors resemble Atlas searching for a place to rest his burden. Luis sat back, his arms folded across his chest. Michaelmas reclined lower in his seat. “I would like to see Papashvilly as soon as possible after we reach Control. My crew chief is Mr Raschid Samir, and he’ll be arriving by truck at the same time.”

“Yes, that’s arranged. Pavel is waiting for you. He says to meanwhile tell you the story about the aardvark and Marie Antoinette.”

“It’s the same story about the aardvark and Isadora Duncan, except that the Isadora Duncan version is better, since she is wearing a long scarf at the time.”

“Ah.”

“And could you let me know if you hear from Ossip about the sender?”

“On the instant.”

“Grazie.” Michaelmas settled his head deeper between the sound-absorbent wings of his chair and closed his eyes.

Domino said: “The joke about the aardvark and Isadora Duncan is the same as the joke about the aardvark and Annie Oakley, except that Annie is firing a Sharps repeating carbine.”

“Granted,” Michaelmas said absently. He was comfortable and relaxed, and remembering Pavel Papashvilly in the back room of a chophouse around the corner from Cavanaugh’s down on lower Eighth Avenue, after a recording at Lincoln Center.

“Cosmonautics and culture,” Papashvilly was saying, leaning back on a fauteuil with his arm lightly across the shoulders of a member of the corps de ballet, “how allied!” The footage had been of Papashvilly at Coppelia, first walking at night like a demon of the steppes among the floodlit fountains of the plaza, afraid of nothing, a meter and a half in height, eyes flickering with reflections, grinning. The pause at the great glass doors, the head tilted upward, and the photosensitive mechanism swinging them apart without further human intervention. Now the click of heels on marble gave way to orchestrated music, and the opening credits and title came up. Then at the performance he had smiled and oohed and aahed, hands elevated and tracing patterns in the air, and he had stood and applauded and shouted. Now he passed a palm delicately along wispy fabric at the dancer’s pale shoulder. “What thin partitions,” he murmured, winking at Michaelmas. He laughed, the dancer gave him a knowing sidelong look, and they all three had a little more steak and lobster and some more Rhine wine. “That will be a good thing, this visit. I know you American people are disappointed about Walter.” He paused and took a sip, his lips pressed hard against the rim of the glass, his eyes looking off into a dimmer corner of the little room. “It was a stupid, needless thing, whatever happened. We are not after all any longer doing things for the first or second time, correct ? But it is now for an understanding to be made that he and I and all the others, we are for all the people.” He put the glass down and considered. “And we are from all the people,” he had added, and Michaelmas had smiled a little crookedly. When he had seen the dancer’s hand on Pavel’s thigh he had excused himself and gone home.

The UNAC bus passed from the last tangle of feeder ramps and entered the straightline highway into the hills. There was no speed limit on this road; the passenger chairs moved a little on their gymbals as the acceleration built. A nearly inaudible singing occurred in Michaelmas’s ear; something in the system somewhere was cycling very near the frequency he and Domino used between him and the terminal. A mechanic had failed to lock some service hatch. Noise leaked out of the propulsion bay. Michaelmas grimaced and ground his teeth lightly.

Coarse, scoured, and ivory-coloured in the sun beyond the windows, the foothills rose under the toned blue of the sky.

Norwood had stopped fussing with his leg. But he had also stopped being so animated, and was sitting with one corner of his lip pulled into his teeth, thoughtfully.

There had been a time a little later in the US tour, at a sports-car track in the gravel hills of eastern Long Island. Rudi Cherpenko had been conducting some tyre tests, and offered Papashvilly a ride if he had time. UNAC had thought it a fine idea, if Michaelmas or someone of that stature would cover it. Pavel had taken once around the track to learn how to drift and how to steer with the accelerator, and half around to learn how to brake and to deduce good braking points, and by then his adrenalin was well up. He went around five times more; he could be seen laughing and shouting in the cockpit as he drilled past the little cluster of support vehicles. When he was finally flagged off, he came in flushed and large-eyed, trembling. “Oy ah!” he had shouted, vaulting out of the cockpit. “Jesus Maria, what a thing this is to do!” He jumped at Cherpenko. They guffawed and embraced, slamming their hands down between each other’s shoulderblades with the car’s engine pinging and contracting beside them as it cooled. Yet Michaelmas had caught the onset of sobriety in Papashvilly’s eyes. He was laughing and shaking his head, but when he saw that Michaelmas was seeing the change in him, he returned a little flicker of a rueful smile.

Late that night in the rough-timbered bar of the Inn, with Cherpenko asleep in his room because of the early schedule, and the crew people off raising hell on Shelter Island, Papashvilly had sat staring out the window, beyond the reflection of their table candle, and beyond the silhouette of docked cabin boats. Michaelmas had listened.

“It is an intoxication,” Papashvilly had begun. As he went on, his voice quickened whenever he pictured the things he talked about, slowed and lowered when he explained what they meant. “It takes hold.”

Michaelmas smiled. “And you are back in the days of George the Resplendent?”

Papashvilly turned his glance momentarily sideward at Michaelmas, He laughed softly. “Ah, George Lasha of the Bagratid Empire. Yes, a famous figure. No, I think perhaps I go back farther than eight hundred years. You call me Georgian. In the Muscovite language, I am presumed a Gruzian. Certain careless speakers from my geographic area yet refer to Sakartvelo, the united kingdom. Well, some of us are very ambitious. And I cannot deny that in my blood there is perhaps some trace of the great Kartlos, and that I am of the eastern kingdom, that is, a Kartvelian.”

He was drinking gin, as an experiment. He raised his glass, wrinkled his nose, swallowed and smiled at the window. “There have been certain intrusions on the blood since even long before the person you call Alexander the Great came with his soldiers to see if it was true about the golden fleece, when Sakartvelo was the land of Colchis. I am perhaps a little Mingrelian, a little Kakhetian, a little Javakhete, a little Mongol…” He put his hand out flat, thumb and palm down, and trembled it slightly. “A little of this and that.” He closed his fist. “But my mother told me on her knee that I am an Ossete of the high grassy pastures, and we were there before anyone spoke or wrote of any other people in those highlands. We have never relinquished them. No, not to the Turks, not to Timur the Lame and his elephants, nor to the six-legged Mongols. It was different, of course, in the lowlands, though those are stout men.” He nodded to himself. “Stout men. But they had empires and relinquished them.”

He put down his glass again and held it as if to keep it from rising, while he looked at it inattentively. “To the south of us is a flood of stone - the mountain, Ararat, and the Elburz, and Iran, and Karakorum, and Himalaya. To the north of us is the grass that rolls from the eastern world and breaks against the Urals. To the east and west of us are seas like walls; it is the grass and stone that toss us on their surf. Hard men from the north seek Anatolia and the fat sultanates. Hard men from the south seek the Khirgiz pasturage and the back door to Europe. Two thousand years and more we clung to our passes and raided from our passes, becoming six-legged in our turn, until the sultans tired, and until the Ivan Grodznoi, whom you call The Terrible, with his cannon crushed the Mongols of the north.” Papashvilly nodded again. “And so he freed his race that Timur-i-leng created and called slaves—” Papashvilly shrugged. “Perhaps they are free forever. Who knows? Time passes. We look south, we look north, we see the orchards, we smell the grass. Our horses canter and paw the air. But we cling, do we not, because the age of the six-legged is over, is it not? Now we are a Soviet Socialist Republic and we have the privilege of protecting Muscovy from the south. Especially since Josef. Perversity! Our children have the privilege of going to Muscovite academies if we are eligible, and…” He put his hand on Michaelmas’s forearm. “But of how much interest is this to you? In your half of the world, there is of course no history. One could speak to the Kwakiutl or the Leni-Lenape and the Apache, I suppose, but they have twice forgotten when they were six-legged people and they do not remember the steppes. No, you understand without offence, Lavrenti, that there is enough water between this land and the land of your forefathers to dissolve the past for you, but where I was born there has been so much blood and seed spilled on the same ground over and over that sometimes there are new men, they say, who are found in the pastures after the fog: men who go about their business unspeaking, and without mothers.”

Papashvilly put down his empty glass. “Do they have coffee here with whisky in it? I think I like that better. Ah, this business with the sports car…” He shook his head. “You know, it is true : all we peoples who live by the horse — not your sportsmen or your hobbyists, not anyone who is free to go elsewhere and wear a different face—we say that man is six-legged who no longer counts the number of his legs. But this is not love of the animal; it is love of the self as the self is made greater, and why hide it? Let me tell you how it must be — ah, you are a man of sharp eyes, I think you know how it is: On the grass ocean there are no roads, so everything is a road, and everything is the same, so the distances will eat your heart unless you are swift, swift, and shout loud. I think if Dzinghiz Khan—I give him this, the devil, they still speak his name familiarly even on the Amber Sea—if the Dzinghiz Khan had been shown an armoured car, there would have been great feasts upon horseflesh in that season, and thereafter the fat cities would have been taxed by the two-hundred-litre drum. The horse is a stubborn, dirty, stupid animal that reminds me of a sheep. Its only use is to embody the wings a man feels within him, and to do this it lathers and sweats, defecates and steps in badger holes.”

Then he had smiled piercingly. “But really, it is the same with cars, too.” His voice was soft and sober. “I would not like Rudi to hear me say that. He’s a good fellow. But it’s also the same with rockets. If you have wings inside, nothing is really fast enough. You do the best you can, and you shout loud.”

They were well into the hills, now. Campion was smiling at Norwood and trying to get him into conversation. Norwood was shaking his head silently. Clementine was stretched out in her seat, sipping through a straw at an ice from the refreshment bar, raising one eyebrow as she chatted with Luis. It seemed reasonable to suppose they had been a great many places together. Michaelmas grimaced and closed his eyes again.

There was the night before the goodwill visit was at an end and Papashvilly was due to be at Star Control the next day. There had been a long, wet dinner at the Rose Room, and then they had gone for a constitutional along Fifth Avenue in the middle of the night. As they stepped off a curb, a fast car had turned a corner tightly, with no regard to them, Michaelmas had scrambled back with a shout to Papashvilly. Pavel had stopped still, allowing the rear fender to pass him by millimetres. As it passed, he brought down his fist hard on the rear deck sheet-metal with an enormous banging sound that echoed between the faces of the stores. The security escort out in the shadows had pointed their guns and the camera crews had jolted their focus. The car had screamed to a halt on locked wheels, slewing sideward, and the driver’s window had popped open to reveal a pale, frightened, staring face. “Earthman!” Papashvilly had shouted, his fists clenched. His knees and elbows were bent. His head thrust forward on his corded neck. “Earthman!” But he was beginning to laugh, and he was relaxing. He walked forward and rumpled the driver’s hair fondly. “Ah, earthman, earthman, you are only half drunk.” He turned away and continued down the avenue.

They walked a little more, and then they had all gone back toward the hotel for a night-cap. At the turn onto Forty-fourth Street, Papashvilly had stopped for a moment and looked around. “Goodbye, Fifth Avenue,” he said. “Goodbye library, goodbye Rockefeller Center, goodbye cathedral, goodbye Cartier, goodbye FAO Schwarz, goodbye zoo.”

Michaelmas looked up and down the avenue with him, and nodded.

Sitting alone together in the Blue Bar after everyone else had left, they each had one more for the hell of it. Papashvilly had finally said quietly:

“You know what it is ?”

“Perhaps.”

Papashvilly had smiled to himself. “The world is full of them. And I will tell you something: they have always known they will be left behind. That’s why they’re so careless and surly.”

“Ah.”

“The city people and the farmers. They have always known their part in the intent of history. That’s why the have their roofs and thick walls—so they can hide and also say that it’s no longer out there.”

“I wouldn’t know what you’re talking about. I have no understanding of history.”

Papashvilly burst into laughter. At the end of the room,

Eddie had looked up briefly from the glass he was towelling. “You know. Some do not. But you know.” He smiled and shook his head, drumming impatiently on the edge of their table. “These have been peculiar centuries lately. Look how it was. From the beginning of time, the six-legged came from the steppes, and only the mountains and the seas held some of them away, but not always and not forever.”

“For uncounted centuries before the birth of Christ, they came again and again. Some remained at the edges of the sea, in their cities, and ventured out then beyond the walls to make orchards and plough fields. And again the six-legged would come, and take the cities, and leave their seed, or stay behind and become the city people, to be taken by the next six-legged who came not from the edge of the world - no, we say that in the books, but we mean the centre of the world; the source of the world. The city people had time for books. The city people are obsessed with making permanent things, because they know they are doomed. The six-legged know something else. They laugh at what you say is the story and the purpose of the world. And the more earnest of manner you are, the more amusing it is, because you know, really, it is all nonsense that you tell yourselves to be more comfortable. You know what the six-legged are. When you were pushed over the edge of the western ocean from your little handhold on what was left to you of Europe, you knew better than to let the six-legged remain free on your prairies, just as we Osseti knew who must not be allowed in the high pastures.”

“And so you city people of the West took for yourselves not only the edges beyond the mountains, where you have always had your places for ships and warehouses, but like Ivan you took the great central steppes, too, for a while in which you could build great things.”

“Great things. Great establishments on which we all choke, and in which we sit and say the grass is gone forever. It makes us neither honestly happy nor sad to say that; it makes us insane. There are walls, walls, all around us, and no honest tang of the wind and the seed of the grass. We say the walls make us safe, but we fear they make us blind. We say the roof makes us warm, but we know we lie when we pretend there are no stars. I do not, in fact, understand how it is we are not all dead. Ever since Ivan, it has been inevitable we would turn the cannon on ourselves someday. It is not only a great solver of problems, it is pleasurable to see such a mighty end to lies. And yet somehow, when we should close these four so-called civilized centuries in one last pang, we merely bicker and shuffle among ourselves, and tell the lie that we are all more like brothers each day.”

“I am a good boy. I have been to Muscovy and not been entirely despised by my masters in our democratic association of freely federated republics. I am friends with Slavs, with Khazaks, with Tartars, and with Turkmen. I am a civilized man, furthermore a crew commander and a fleet commander, and a doctor of engineering. When we go toward mighty Jupiter and approach his great face, when we send in the modules to slice away a little here, and probe out a little there, and suck in a fraction here and there, I shall read all the checklists at the proper time, and all my personnel and I will follow all the manuals exactly. Then the mining extractors will come in a few years, and the orbital factories, and Jupiter shall be garlanded by them. The robotized containers shall flow Earthward; there will be great changes when it is no longer necessary to rip at our soil and burrow ever deeper in our planet, and make stenches and foul the sight of heaven. This much I owe the city people and that part of my blood which comes from men who held on. And, besides, perhaps the grass will come back, and that would be to the liking of those who still live with horses. Who knows?”

“I am a good boy. But I see. I see that it was perhaps needful that there be four centuries in which the six-legged were required to bide. I also see that the time is at an end.”

The establishments have done their work. I would not have believed it; I would say that city ways should have killed us all by now. There are so many machines that must lie for everyone’s comfort. But—“ He shrugged. ”Machines go wrong. With so many, perhaps there is one, somewhere, that does us good, almost by accident, and so blunts the edge of destiny.

“But, you know, I would not risk it much longer.” He smiled. “We are already going very far. Next time, we will reach distances such that the radio takes an impossible time to transmit the reports and instructions, is it not so? And the trip is so long. It becomes senseless to return all the way, or to think that someone at a microphone in Africa can control what needs to be done at Neptune, or perhaps at Alpha Centauri. Control, or even advise. No, I think it becomes very natural then to make camps out there, and to have repair depots and such, so that it is not necessary to go to the constant expense and time to go back and forth to here. If we can make food from petroleum and cloth from stone in Antarctica, I think we can find minerals and hydrocarbons in space as well, no?”

“I think then we come back once in a while if it is still here; we will come back for new recordings of Les Sylphides, and we shall pay for them with gems snatched from the temples of Plutonian fire-lizards, say, or with nearly friction-less bearings, or with research data. We shall tell the Earthmen how the universe is made, and they shall tell romantic stories about us and wish they had time to leave home.” Papashvilly shook his head. “Clinging is a thing a man can take pride in, I think, and there is nothing to be ashamed in it. Nothing, especially if one clings so well that nothing can dislodge him. Nevertheless, I have stood on Mount Elbrus and looked northeast, Lavrenti, and from there I could only see as far as one of Timur’s hazarras could ride in a week. And I said to myself : I, too, am six-legged.” He had put down his empty glass. “Goodbye, alcohol,” he had said. A few polite words more and it was time to go. Papashvilly had put his hands on Michaelmas’s arms and shaken him a little, fondly. “We shall see each other again,” he had said, and had gone up to his room.

Domino said: “The European Flight Authority has determined the cause of Watson’s crash.”

Michaelmas sat up. They were coming out of the hills, now, and whirling down the flats, leaving a plume of finely divided dust along the shoulder of the highway. “What was it?”

“Desiccator failure.”

“Give me some detail.”

“The most efficient engine working fluid is, unfortunately, also extremely hygroscopic. It’s practically impossible to store or handle it for any length of time without its becoming contaminated with water absorbed from the air.

The usual methods, however, ensure that this contamination will stay at tolerable levels, and engines are designed to cope with a certain amount of steam mixed into the other vapours at the high-pressure stages. Clear so far? All right; this particular series of helicopter utilizes an engine originally designed for automobiles produced by the same manufacturing combine. The helicopter cabins have the same basic frame as the passenger pod and engine mount of the automobile, the same doors and seats, and share quite a bit of incidental hardware. This series of helicopter can therefore be sold for markedly less than equally capable competing machines, and is thus extremely popular worldwide among corporate fleet buyers. The safety record of the model Watson was flying is good, and indicates no persistent characteristic defect. However, this is not true of an earlier model, which showed something of a tendency to blockage in its condenser coils. They froze now and then, usually at high altitudes, causing a stoppage of working fluid circulation, and consequent pressure drop followed by an emergency landing or a crash due to power loss.”

“Power loss,” Michaelmas said. “Like Watson.”

“But not quite for the same reason. This is a more recent model, remember. In the earlier ones, it had been found that the downdraft from the helicopter rotors, under certain conditions of temperature and humidity, was creating cold spots in the coils, and causing plugs of ice. This was not a defect in the engine as an automobile engine. So, since it was economically impractical to redesign or to relocate the engine, the choice was between thermostatically heating the coils to one degree Celsius, or in making sure there was never any water in the working fluid passing through the coils.”

“Option One resulted in performance losses, and was therefore not acceptable; one reason the helicopter application worked so well was the steep temperature gradient across the coil. So they went to the other choice; they installed a desiccator. This is essentially a high-speed precipitator; exhausted vapour from the high-pressure stages passes through it en route to the coil. The water vapour component is picked off and diverted below one hundred degrees Celsius into a separate reservoir, where it is electrically superheated back to about one hundred twenty degrees and vented into the atmosphere as chemically pure steam. The electrical load is small, the vent is parallel to the helicopter’s long axis so that some of the energy is recovered as an increment of forward motion, and the whole thing has the sort of simplicity that appeals.”

“But the unit failed in this case,” Michaelmas said.

“It has happened only twice before, and never over Alpine terrain in gusty wind conditions. These were its first two fatalities. What happens if the electrical heating fails is that the extracted moisture vents as water rather than steam, gradually forming a cap of ice, which then creates a backup in the desiccator. The physics of it all then interact with the engineering to rupture the final stage of the desiccator, and this creates a large hole in the plumbing. All the high-pressure vapour vents out through it, in preference to entering the condenser, and half a cycle later the turbine has nothing to work with. Result, power loss; furthermore, the percentage of water required to have it happen is much less than is needed to create condenser freeze-up. You can be almost sure that any change of working fluid, even a fresh one right out of a sealed flask, will have picked up enough.”

“A very dangerous design,”

“Most add-on new parts have to compromise-fit the basic hardware, and have to add as little as possible to total unit cost, since they inevitably skew the original profit projections. But as it happens this is a rather good design. The electricity comes from a magneto, gear-driven by the output shaft. The wiring, which you would expect to be the weak spot, is vibration-proofed, and uses astronautics-grade insulation and fasteners. It is also located so that no other part can rub through it, and is routed away from all routine service hatches so that fuel-loaders, fluid-handlers, and other non-mechanics servicing the vehicle cannot accidentally damage the unit. The desiccator has its own inspection hatch, and only certified mechanics are shown how to operate the type of latch used.”

They were clearly targeted on Control Tower now; staring forward with his eyes half-focused, Michaelmas could see the structure larger than any of the others, dead ahead and apparently widening out to either side of the tapering white thread of highway. He glanced back through the rear window; they were being followed by a short caravan of trucks. The lead unit, a white, ground-hugging Oskar with shooting platforms collapsed against its sides like extra accumulators, carried the sunburst insignia of Mr Samir’s crew.

“Then what happened?”

“The European Authority found one wire hanging.”

Michaelmas nodded to himself, then grinned humourlessly and looked around for a moment. Everyone was busy doing something or nothing. “What did they think of that?”

“They’re not sure. The connection is made with a device called a Pozipfastner it snaps on, never opens of itself, and nominally requires a special tool for removal.”

“Nominally?”

“The fastener sells because it’s obviously tamperproof; any purchasing agent can demonstrate to his supervisor that the connection can’t break, can’t shake loose, and can’t be taken apart with a screwdriver or a knife blade. The special removal tool has two opposed spring-loaded fingerlets that apply a precise amount of pressure to two specific points. It’s an aerospace development. But any mechanic with any experience at all can open any Pozipfastner by flicking it with his index fingernails. It’s a trick that takes almost no practice, and most of them do it; it’s much quicker than using the tool.”

“And I presume anyone on any aircraft service crew knows how to work the special latches that only certified mechanics understand.”

“Of course. How could anything get done on time if the nearest man couldn’t lend a hand?”

Michaelmas pursed his lips. “What do you make of that wire?”

“Sabotage. The AEV really thinks so too, but they can’t bring themselves to accept the idea. Nevertheless, the unit flew without incident early this morning from a charter service to meet Watson. It was parked while Watson held a meeting with his network’s local people, but it certainly wasn’t serviced during that time. While Watson was talking, someone deliberately opened that hatch and then either used the factory tool or did the fingernail trick. I suppose it might have been someone demonstrating knowledgeability to an acquaintance. I suppose that someone might have forgotten to resnap the connection before remembering to close the hatch all nice and tidy. There might be some reason why such a person chose to demonstrate on a Pozipfastner that could only be reached by opening an inconveniently located hatch, bypassing scores of others more accessible. The AEV has already drafted an order; henceforth, the desiccator circuit must be wired to an instrument-panel-failure telltale light, or the model’s airworthiness certificate will be cancelled; all existing members of the type are grounded immediately for inspection of quote potential spontaneous failure endquote and installation of the warning light, and so forth. The manufacturer has already filed an objection, citing unreasonable imposition of added cost, since there are several hours' labour involved, but that’s pro forma so they can file a compensation claim against the Common Market authority. Und so weiter.”

“What about the police?”

“The AEV is thinking of speaking to them about it.”

“Will they?”

“The chief examiner’s against it, and he’s the man on the spot. Some of the headquarters bureaucrats are a little nervous about what could happen if Interpol ever learns they’ve concealed evidence. But the examiner’s point is that any physical evidence—fingerprints, shreds of coat sleeve, theatre ticket stubs, accidentally dropped business cards (I’m quoting him; he’s a sarcastic person when questioned in his decisions)—was incinerated in the crash. There’s no hope of tracing the saboteur. What they have is a loose wire. And the loose wire is an excuse for circulating an order he’s wanted put out ever since a mechanic did leave one hanging last year; if they bring in the cops, the manufacturer will just shrug and legitimately claim again that it’s not equipment failure. Furthermore, the pilot and the broadcaster were both voluntarily in dangerous professions; and besides, we can let them at least accomplish one last good thing. So it’s better all round.”

Michaelmas sucked his teeth.

“They still haven’t finally decided,” Domino said.

“Yes, they have. Every passing minute makes it less advisable to report it as sabotage. Pretty soon they’d also have to account for the reporting delay, and the thought of that will swing it.”

“Well, yes.”

“So how was it done? Did Cikoumas hang around the airport? Of course not. What sanatorium employee? What henchman? Who?”

“I’m working on it. Meanwhile, Daugerd’s plane has just landed at Hanrassy’s dock. Time there is seven thirty-five AM.”

Michaelmas glanced at his wrist. Two thirty-five pm.

Frontiere leaned across the aisle. “Ten more minutes, Laurent, and we’ll be there.” Simultaneously, his telephone sounded. He reached into his jacket, took out the instrument, and inserted the privacy plug in his ear, answering the call with his mouth close to the microphone. Then he recoiled pleasurably. “Dei grazia,” he said, put the phone away, and stared at Michaelmas incredulously. “You were exactly correct in your jest,” he said. He leaned closer. “The sender looks Russian. The assembly technique is Russian. But our analytical equipment shows that some of the material only resembles stock Russian material; the molecular structure is off. Our analytical programmes caught it and the -ones Norwood used at Limberg’s did not. A very sophisticated effort was made to take circuit material and make it seem like other circuit material of no greater or lesser practicality. Why would the Russians do that? Why should they?”

Frontiere grinned. “No, someone is trying to muddle things up. But we can be rather sure it isn’t the Chinese, and if it isn’t them or the Russians, then the situation is nowhere near as critical.” Frontiere grinned. “It’s just some accursed radical group that didn’t even kill anybody. We can handle that.” He sat up straighten “We were right to delay.” He drummed his fingers on the armrest. “All right. What now?” he said absently, his eyes still shining. “What must be done immediately?”

“Well,” Michaelmas said equably, “there is still the problem of forestalling Norwood and Limberg. Steps of some sort must be taken quickly. It would be particularly galling now if one or the other lost patience and blurted out his error in all honesty.”

Frontiere grimaced. “Just so.”

“So I suggest,” Michaelmas went on, “that the analytical tests be rerun immediately in your laboratories with Norwood in attendance. In fact, let him do the running. And when he gets the correct result, let him call Limberg with it. It’s no disgrace to have been wrong. It’s only a minor sin of eagerness not to have waited in the first place to use your lab and your engineering analysis computer programmes. It’s only natural that your equipment would be subtler and more thorough than anything Norwood and Limberg were able to graft on to Limberg’s medical software. And Limberg will understand that until the real culprits are identified, absolute silence about the existence of the sender is the best hope of unearthing them.”

Frontiere blinked. “You have a swift mind, Laurent.”

“Thank you.”

Frontiere frowned slowly at Michaelmas. “There may be difficulty. Norwood may not be entirely willing to accept results different from those he found for himself.”

Michaelmas glanced down the aisle. “I think you may find him less sure of himself than he has hitherto appeared. More ready to consider that his faculties might err from time to time.”

Frontiere’s eyes followed Michaelmas’s. Norwood was sitting with one heel hooked on the edge of the seat, his chin resting on his knee. His hands were clasped over his shin. His thumbs absently massaged his calf, while he sat silently looking out the window as if cataloguing the familiar things of his youth while the bus sped in among the outbuildings and the perimeter installations. Frontiere contracted his lower lip and raised an eyebrow. He looked over at Michaelmas. “You are a shrewd observer.” He stood up smoothly. “Excuse me. I will go speak to him.” He touched Michaelmas’s shoulder. “You are an encouraging person to know,” he said.

Michaelmas smiled. When Frontiere was down the aisle, he said : “Well, Domino, congratulations.”

“I simply took your hint. Now, the interesting news. I did in fact cause UNAC’s analytical apparatus to produce the desired result. A competent molecular physicist examining the readouts will be able to determine exactly with what plausible and fully worthy action group the sender is most likely to have originated. Nevertheless, we are not dealing one hundred percent in deception.”

“Oh?”

“Daugerd will never find it simply by looking at holograms. UNAC’s programmes would never have found it unaided. The difference isn’t gross. But it’s there; there’s something about the electrons…”

“Something about the electrons?”

“It’s… they’re all right; I mean, they’re in the correct places in the proper number as far as one can tell, and yet… Well, I ran an analogue; built another sender so to speak, using materials criteria I found stored in the physical data banks of the People’s Diligent Electronics Technicum at Dneprodzerzhinsk. And it’s different. The two things are out of… tune… with each other, and they shouldn’t be; that damned thing has molecules all through it that say loud and clear it’s blood kin to ten thousand others just like it from a bastard second cousin masquerading as the legitimate twin.”

“Can you give me more detail?”

“I—No. I don’t think so.”

“Are you saying the sender was produced by some organization on the order of a normal dissident group?”

“No. I don’t think so. I don’t think—I don’t believe there is material exactly like that.”

“Ah.” Michaelmas sat deeper in his chair. The bus entered the shadow of Control Tower, and the windows lightened. “Did you feel as you did at the sanitorium?”

“I… couldn’t say. Probably. Yes. I think so.”

The bus was pulling up to a halt among the colonnades and metallized glass of the ground level. People began rising to their feet. Mr Samir, Michaelmas noted through his window, had gotten the Oskar in through the portal and was parking nearby; the sides of the little van metamorphosed into an array of platforms, and a technician was out of the truck and up on the topmost one instantly, slipping one camera into its mount, and reaching down to take another being handed up to him. “What about Norwood?” Michaelmas asked. “When you touched him.”

“Norwood? Nor- ? No, I wasn’t getting anything through the sensors in that terminal. You wouldn’t find it with sensors: you have to be electron-to-electron with it… Norwood? What an interesting question! No — there’s no way. There’s no interface, you see. There’s only data. No, I could only feel that with something approximating my own kind.”

“Approximating. Yes.”

Michaelmas was watching Norwood in conversation with Frontiere. Frontiere was talking intently and softly, holding one hand on Norwood’s shoulder and tapping lightly on Norwood’s chest with the spread fingers of the other. Norwood was looking into his face with the half-focused stare of an earthquake victim. It was over in a moment. Norwood shrugged and nodded, his eyes downcast. Frontiere smiled and put his arm protectively around Norwood’s shoulders in good-natured bonhomie. He patted Norwood’s shoulder absently while looking about for aides to make sure the astronaut’s entrance into Control Tower would be properly handled.

“An interesting statement. But hardly relevant at this moment,” Michaelmas said. “Your sensors were adequate to measure his belief in himself.”

“As any other lie detector would have.”

“That may be as much detection as any man needs. Well — we’re off.” The bus was emptying. To keep in trim, Michaelmas stepped forward deftly and debarked just behind Norwood and Frontiere. Not only Ossip Sakal but Hjalmar Wirkola himself were waiting to greet Norwood, all smiles now. There was a faint flicker through the lobby lights, unnoticed. Frontiere propelled the astronaut gently toward the Director General. The stately, straight-backed old gentleman stepped forward from Sakal’s side as Norwood approached, and extended his hand. Somewhere very faintly there was a ringing bell, if you listened. “My boy!” Wirkola said, clasping the astronaut’s handshake between his palms. “I was so glad when Ossip told me you are all safe now.” Everyone’s attention was on them. Over at the elevator bank, a security man was looking at the lights of an indicator panel and frowning, his ear to the wall, but that was the sum total of distraction in that crowd.

The press of people built up around Norwood and Wirkola; Michaelmas could see additional UNAC people coming from a side foyer. Getulio’s press aides were bringing them in through the more casual onlookers and the news people. There is a lot you can do with a properly swung hip and a strategically insinuated shoulder to create lanes in a crowd without it showing on camera.

There was, somewhere, away in the higher levels of the tower, a dull thump. Perhaps, really, it was a sonic boom outside, somehow penetrating the building insulation. Or masked burglars blowing a safe with black powder. A freight elevator door opened and Papashvilly stepped out, looking momentarily flustered but recovering quickly.

Domino was making the noise again. He had learned to make it clearly, now. It was a bronchitic giggle, brought up sawing from the depths of a chest in desperate search of air. “The building systems programme?” he gasped. “It’s trying to maintain homeostasis with everything going to hell upstairs. It’s running from switch to switch like an old maid chasing mice with a broom. Oh, my! Oh, me!”

Papashvilly had his head up, his shoulders back, and his grin delighted as he moved toward the main group. He was waving at Norwood. As his glance reached Michaelmas, who was making his way across Luis’s line of sight on Norwood, he momentarily shifted the direction of his wave, and wagged two fingers at him, before redirecting himself to the welcome. Michaelmas raised a clenched fist, one thumb up, and shook it. Clementine Gervaise stepped on Michaelmas’s foot. “Pardon” she said, the corners of her mouth quivering slightly and her eyes a little wider and shining more than normal, “you are blocking my camera, Laurent.” Michaelmas stared at her. “Excuse me,” he said, wondering if they would now spend days grinning at each other. “It was innocent, I assure you.” he said and pushed on, his eyes sliding off Campion’s face en route. The man was looking around a little busily, his face raised. He made a sniffing expression. There was the faintest whiff of smoke in the air, already being dissipated by the building’s exhaust ventilators. Campion shrugged faintly and returned his attention to matters at hand. Michaelmas found it interesting that Douggie did have a nose for news. He winked toward Papashvilly.

“Hanrassy is punching up Gately’s number,” Domino said.

Michaelmas stopped, changed direction, and began working his way clear. “I’ll want to monitor that,” he said, and pulled the plug out of the terminal, inserting it in his ear as he went, to account for the fact that he was stepping out of the crowd and standing with an intent expression, his hand over his free ear to shut out other sounds. He stood apparently oblivious, while Gately’s secretary fielded the call and then put Hanrassy through.

“I want you to look at something, Mr Secretary,” she said without preamble.

Domino said : “She’s showing him a holo of the sender.”

“Yes,” Michaelmas said. He clenched his jaw.

“I see it, Miz Hanrassy. Should I recognize it?” Gately said.

“That would depend on how familiar you expect to be with Soviet electronic devices.”

“I don’t follow you, ma’am. Is that thing Russian?”

“It is, Mr Secretary. There’s no doubt about it; it’s not exactly a standard component in their engineering, but it’s made of standard pieces and the workmanship is characteristically theirs.”

“Yes, ma’am, and in what way is that relevant to my duties?”

“I wonder if you’d care to call Colonel Norwood and ask him if he found it in his capsule just before he was forced to escape.”

Michaelmas took a deep breath. “That’s it, then,” he said to Domino steadily. “There is no further doubt. Limberg and Cikoumas supplied it to her, along with their story. They don’t have the slightest sense of restraint or responsibility. They think we are an ant farm.”

“Ma’am,” Gately was saying, “are you telling me the Russkis sabotaged Norwood’s shuttle and you can prove it?”

“The sons of bitches,” Michaelmas said. “The bastards. Get me to the sanatorium. Right now. And I arrive without warning. Right?”

“Viola Hanrassy” said : “Ask Norwood, Mr Secretary. Ask him why UNAC hasn’t let him say anything about it.”

“Ma’am, where’d you get this information?”

“If you obtain corroboration from Norwood, Mr Secretary, then I’ll be glad to discuss details with you. In fact, Will, I’m holding myself in readiness to work very closely with you on this. We may have the joint duty of alerting the American people to their responsibilities and opportunities in the coming election.”

Domino said : “I think that may have been an offer of the Vice Presidency.”

“Bribes,” Michaelmas said. “They always go to bribes when they’re not sure they’re on top, and coercion when they are. That’s all they know. They really don’t believe anyone would help them just on their merits. Well, Christ, at least they’re our own. How’s my ride to Berne?”

“Wait one.”

Gately was saying: “I’ll place a call to Africa right away and get back to you.”

“Thank you, Mr Secretary.”

“And kiss my bum, both of you,” Michaelmas muttered as the connection broke. He was looking around with sharp, darting swings of his eyes, his hands raised in front of him and his feet well apart, so that he was leaning forward against his weight.

“Mr Michaelmas.”

“Yes.”

“Get to the airport.”

“Right.”

He strode directly toward Mr Samir. “How do you do,” he said, thrusting his hand forward.

“How do you do, sir,” Mr Samir said, responding with a calloused palm and a dignified smile. “What are my instructions?”

“There has been a change of plans. I would like to be driven back to Cite d’Afrique immediately.”

“As you wish.” He turned toward his crew, snapped his fingers and gestured. The men began clambering at the sides of the Oskar. “We depart in ninety seconds, Mr Michaelmas.”

“Thank you.” He looked around, and found Harry Beloit preparing to hold the door into the ulterior lobbies. He paced toward him. “Harry,” he said in a low voice. “Please accept my -apologies and convey them to Getulio, to Pavel, and the rest. There is another story I must cover in person. I’ll be patching back to you as soon as I can.”

“No problem,” Beloit said.

“Thank you, very much.” He turned away, then stopped, and shook Beloit’s hand. “I would like to sit on the edge of your marsh with your family and yourself some day,” he said, and went. He waved to Clementine and got into the Oskar beside Mr Samir. The lowering door interposed tinted glass across her startled expression. She turned to Campion and nudged his arm. They both looked toward the Oskar as it snapped sideward out of its parking groove and oriented on the outer portal. Mr Samir himself was driving, his shirtsleeves rolled back from forearms like Indian clubs; the crew, looking curiously forward toward Michaelmas, were still latching down gear and strapping themselves to their seats in the back cargo space.

“I’ll call you,” Michaelmas pantomimed toward Clementine, holding up his telephone and mock-punching numbers. But what will I call you? he thought, pushing the phone back into his jacket. He waved to Papashvilly, who raised his eyebrows. Mr Samir accelerated. The portal opened, closed behind them and, computer-monitored, stayed obstinately closed when one news crew tried to follow the famous Mr Michaelmas and learn what he might be after.

Mr Samir drove hard. The bristling white van hissed wickedly down the highway eastward. “The airport, please, Mr Samir,” Michaelmas said.

“The military gates,” Domino said.

“There are no commercial flights to anywhere for some time,” Mr Samir said. “Do you wish a charter?”

“No, Mr Samir. Charters file flight plans. I will go to the military end of the field, please.”

Mr Samir nodded. “As you wish. We shall probably remember that you asked to be taken to the Hilton.”

“That is always a possibility. My thanks.”.

“I regret that our opportunity to serve has been so limited.”

“I will be sending you back to Star Control as soon as you’ve dropped me. And there will be other times we can work together in person. I anticipate them with pleasure.”

“It is mutual.”

Domino said: “Gately has a call in for Norwood. They’re holding; Norwood should be free in a few minutes. I think UNAC’s anticipating a simple message of congratulations from the US administration. They’ll put it through quickly.”

Michaelmas’s mouth thinned into an edged smile. “Good.” He watched the desert hurtling past.

“Douglas Campion,” Domino said.

“Say again.”

“While in Chicago at WKMM, Campion was on the crimecopter crew for a year and a half. They flew a model identical to the one in which Watson crashed. They never had any mechanical failures. But the pilot had had a coil freeze-up while flying the earlier model. The station used one until a few months before Campion joined their staff. The pilot put it down in Lincoln Park without further incident and not much was made of it. But in a year and half of making conversation five days a week, he probably would have mentioned it to Campion. That could have led to a clinical discussion of causes and cures. I think Campion could have learned how to work latches and Pozipfastners I think he would know which wire to pull.”

Michaelmas bowed his head. “That’s pretty circumstantial,” he said at last.

“Campion is also on the short list of persons who could have gotten to the machine; Watson was busy talking to his staff, but Campion would already know what he was going to say, and could wander off.”

“Being on the list doesn’t prove…”

“I have attempted to establish corroboration. I found that National Geographic had leased facilities on an AP News-features satellite that was passing over Switzerland at the time. They were using its infra-red mapping capabilities for a story on glacial flow. I went through their data and played a few reprocessing tricks with a segment covering Berne. I have identified thermal tracks that correspond to Watson, the helicopter pilot, and several people who must number Campion among them. I have isolated one track as being Campion with eighty-two percent certainty. That track leaves the knot of people around Watson, walks around a corner to the helicopter, pauses beside the fuselage at the right place for the proper amount of time, and then rejoins the group.” Michaelmas bit his upper lip. He stared straight out through the windshield with his fists in his lap. “Eighty-two percent.”

“Eighty-two per cent probability that he’s the particular member of a restricted group in which only the pilot seems to have been equally qualified to arrange her own death.”

Michaelmas said nothing. Then after a while he said : “I hate acting on probability.”

“You go to your church and I’ll go to mine.”

Michaelmas shook his head. Mr Samir, who doubtless had excellent peripheral vision, appeared to blink once, sharply, but he continued to drive relentlessly.

Oh, yes. Yes. It was as plain as the nose in your mirror, The poor, silly, ambitious son of a bitch had known exactly what would happen. The helicopter would ice up, set down uneventfully in the local equivalent of Lincoln Park but at some remove from the nearest cab stand, and Douggie Campion instead of Horse Watson would be the main spokesman on worldwide air. Afterwards, Horse would be rescued, and it would just have been one of those things.

And how did he salve himself now, assuming he felt the need? That, too, wasn’t particularly difficult. He’d understood all the factors, hadn’t he? He’d calculated the risk exactly. All right, then, he’d done everything needful; bad luck had killed two people, one of whom happened to be his professional superior, thus creating a permanent vacancy at a higher rung on the ladder; it was funny how Fate worked.

“Keep him busy,” Michaelmas growled.

“It’s done,” Domino said at once.

“Thank you.”

“I have Gately’s call to Norwood,” Domino said as they swept out of the hills and plunged towards the city. “Norwood’s in Wirkola’s office now.”

“Put it on.”

“Right.”

Michaelmas sat still.

“Walt? Walt, hey, boy, this is Willie!” began in his ear, and continued for some time, during which the expected congratulations and the obligatory God-damns were deployed. Then Gately said : “Listen, son. Can I ask you about something, between the two of us? You got many people looking over your shoulder right this minute?”

“No, not too many, sir. I’m in Mr Wirkola’s office, and there’s no one here who isn’t UNAC.”

“Well, that—forgive me, son, but that may not be—”

“It’s okay, Mr Secretary.”

There was a pause. Then Gately made a frustrated, snorting noise. “Okay. What the hell. Have a look-do you recognize this?”

Domino said : “It’s his recording of the sender holo.”

“Yes, sir, I do,” Norwood said. “I’m a little surprised to see you have a picture of it.”

“Walter, I’ve got my sources and I don’t mind if UNAC knows that. I’m sure they recognize my right to keep in touch. What about this thing, son? Do you feel you can tell me anything about it over this line at this time?”

“Up to a point, sir. Yes.”

“What’s that mean?”

There was the sound of a palm being placed over a microphone, and then being lifted off.

“Mr Secretary, have you heard that thing is Russian?”

“That’s exactly what I’ve heard. I’ve also heard UNAC won’t let you say so. How are you today, Mr Wirkola?”

Norwood said: “Mr Secretary, I’m looking at a materials analysis print-out that says the core component was made by spark-eroding a piece of GE Lithoplaque until it looks a lot like USSR Grade II Approved stock. You’d think that could work because Grade II is manufactured some place south of Kiev using equipment purchased from GE and utilizing GE processes under licence. But GE went to a smooth from a matte finish on Lithoplaque last year, whereas Grade II didn’t. You might figure you could carve back to the old configuration. But you can’t; GE also changed the structure a little. And it’s only in limited distribution as yet. According to what I see here, the only place you could get that particular piece we’re talking about is GE’s central mid-western supply warehouse in St Louis.”

“St Louis?”

Mr Wirkola said: “I am fine. And how are you, Mr Gately?”

There was a long silence. “You’re sure, Walter?”

“Well, to satisfy myself I’m immediately going to pass the thing through the labs here again. I’ve got to admit I damned near made a fool of myself about it once; and I don’t want to do that twice. But we’re working with the best hardware and software in the world when it comes to engineering, around here, and I’ve strapped myself into it many’s the time without a second thought. I’ve got a feeling I could run this baby through any modern equipment in the world and come up with the same answer.”

“St Louis, Missouri.”

Mr Wirkola said: “I believe there is still a community called St Louis du Ha! Ha!, near Lac Temiscouata in Quebec.”

“Mr Wirkola, I appreciate UNAC’s discretion in this matter,” Gately said. “I’m assuming you’ll be in touch with me officially about this?”

“Yes,” Wirkola said. “We are assigning Colonel Norwood to temporary duty as our liaison with the US government on this matter. I suggest a good will tour of the USA as a cover for his talks with your President and yourself. But he will call you a little later today with confirmation from his re-tests, and that will have given you time to consult with Mr Westrum on your response to that suggestion. You may tell Mr Westrum we understand his political situation, and we certainly do not wish to inculcate any unnecessary constraints upon his conscience. Nevertheless, I think there may be better ways to slide this incident into the back shelves of history than by any public counterclaiming between Mr Westrum and whoever your informant may have been. What is done privately is of course private.”

Domino said : “Slit you, skin you, and sell you a new suit. That nice old man took two minutes to react to Gately’s news, size it up, and flip through the anatomy text.”

“Yes,” Michaelmas said.

“Thank you, Mr Wirkola,” Gately said. “I’ll speak to my President and be waiting for Colonel Norwood’s call.”

“Thank you, Mr Secretary. We are grateful for your co-operation,” Wirkola raid.

“ 'Bye, Walter. Good to talk to you, son.”

“Thank you, Mr Secretary.”

The connection opened. The van was on the city ramps now, sliding smoothly between the beautiful new structures, humming towards the airport. Domino said: “I can see why you favoured Mr Wirkola’s election as Director General.”

“That’s not what you see. What you see is why it wasn’t necessary to do anything with the vote. His virtues are evident even to an election committee. Eschew the sin of over-management; that above all. You don’t want to lose respect for the Hjalmar Wirkolas of this world.”

“Noted. As before.”

Michaelmas sighed. “I didn’t mean to nag.”

He made his voice audible: “Mr Samir, after you’ve delivered me, I’d like you to go back to Star Control and interview Major Papashvilly. Permission’s all arranged. After I’m airborne, I’ll call Signor Frontiere and the Major, and tell them you’re coming and what we’ll do.”

“Right,” Domino said.

“I understand,” Mr Samir replied.

Michaelmas smiled trustfully at him. “You have it. I’ll be on the phone with you, giving you the questions to ask, and you’ll pick up the Major’s responses.”

“No problem,” Domino said.

“I understand completely,” Mr Samir said. “I am proud of your reliance on me.”

“Then there’s no difficulty,” Michaelmas said. “Thank you.”

Mr Samir’s footage would be fed to his network’s editing storage and held for mixing. Via Domino, the network would also receive footage of Michaelmas asking the questions, commenting, and reacting to Papashvilly’s answers. The network editing computer would then mix a complete interview out of the two components.

Since the shots of Michaelmas would be against a neutral background, the editing programme could in some cases scale Michaelmas and Papashvilly into conformity and matte them into the same frames together. The finished effect would be quite convincing. Mr Samir assumed, without the impoliteness of asking, that Michaelmas would also use a union crew at his end.

And in fact he would, Michaelmas thought as he leaned back in his seat. Domino would call in direct to network headquarters, and they’d photo the Laurent Michaelmas hologram in their own studios. You could do that with studio-controlled lighting and computer-monitored phone input levels. There was a promise that only a year or two from now there’d be equipment that would let you do it in the field. When that happened, it wouldn’t be necessary any longer for L. G. Michaelmas to be physically present anywhere but in his apartment, sitting at his desk or cooking in his kitchen or playing his upside-down-strung guitar.

“What’ll you want?” Domino asked. “A how’s-it-going-Pavel, or a give-us-the-big-picture, or a roundup conversation including how he reacts to Norwood’s return or what?”

“Give us the round-up,” Michaelmas said. “He’ll be good at that. We just want to reinforce the idea he’s a bright, quick, fine fellow and he’s going to do a hell of a job.” And mostly, they were simply going to keep Papashvilly in a controlled situation among friendly people for the next hour or two. It would do no harm. And it would maintain L. G. Michaelmas’s reputation for never scrubbing a job even if he had to be in two places at the same time, damn near, and it was good to remind yourself there were plenty of competent crews and directors around. “And, listen, make sure I’m in character when I phone Pavel about this.”

“That’s all taken into account. Ghat before shooting. Friends re-united. Buy you a drink soonest.”

“Fine,” Michaelmas said. He rubbed his thumb and fingers over his eyelids, head bowed momentarily, aware that when he slumped like this, he could notice the fatigue in his back and shoulders.

Something overhead was coming down as if on a string, metallic and glimmering—God’s lure. The military gates opened smoothly, so that the Oskar barely slowed. The guard nodded at their plate number and saluted, good soldier, explicit orders fresh in the gate shack teleprinter. The van moved towards the flight line. “What is that?” Mr Samir asked, looking up and out through the windscreen. He braked hard and stopped them at the edge of a hardstand.

The aircraft became recognizable overhead as a cruelly angled silvery wedge balanced on its tailpipes, but as it neared the ground its flanks began to open into stabilizer surfaces, landing struts, and blast deflectors.

“I believe that is a Type Beta Peacekeeper,” Michaelmas said. “They are operated by the Norwegian Air Militia. I wouldn’t open any doors or windows until it’s down and the engines are idled.” The windscreen glass began shivering in its gaskets, and the metal fabric of the Oskar began to drum.

Domino said: “It’s on a routine check-ride to Kirkenes from the base at Cap Norvegia in the Antarctic. It’s now had additions to the mission profile for purposes of further crew training. What you see is an equatorial sea-level touchdown; another has been changed in for the continental mountains near Berne. Excellent practice. Meantime, one unidentified passenger will be aboard on priority request from the local embassy which, like many another, occasionally does things that receive no explanation and whose existence is denied and unrecorded. Hardstand contact here is in thirty seconds; a boarding ladder will deploy. Your programmed flying time is twenty minutes. Bon voyage.” The Beta came to rest. The engines quieted into a low rumble that caused little grains of stone to dance an inch above the concrete.

“Goodbye, Mr Samir. Thank you,” Michaelmas said. He popped open the door and trotted through the blasts of sunlight, hugging the little black box to his ribs. A ladder ramp meant to accommodate an outrushing full riot squad folded down out of the fuselage like a backhand return. He scrambled up it into the load space; a padded, nevertheless thrumming off-green compartment with hydraulically articulated seats that hung empty on this mission. He dropped into one and began pulling straps into place.

The ladder swung up and sealed.

“Are you seated and secure, sir?” asked an intercom voice from somewhere beyond the blank upper bulkhead. He sorted through the accent and hasty memories of the language. He snapped the last buckle into place. “Ja,” he said, pronouncing the “a” somewhere nearer “o” than he might have, and hoping that would do. “Then we’re going,” said the unseen flight crew member, and the Type Beta first flowed upwards and then burst upwards. Michaelmas’s jaw sagged, and he tilted back deeply against the airbagged cushions. His arms trailed out over the armrests. He said slowly to Domino : “One must always be cautious when one rubs your lamp.” But he sat unsmiling, and while there might have been times when he would have been secretly delighted with the silent robotics of the seat suspensions, which kept him ever facing the direction of acceleration as the Peacekeeper topped out its ballistic curve and prepared to swap ends, he was gnawing at other secrets now. He drummed his fingertips on the cushiony armrest and squirmed. His mouth assumed the expression he kept from himself. “We have a few minutes,” he said at last. “Is this compartment secure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I think we might let Douglas Campion find me at this time.”

His phone rang. “Hello?” he said.

“What?, Who’s this? I was calling—” Campion said.

“This is Laurent Michaelmas.”

“Larry! Jesus, the damnedest things are happening. How’d I get you? I’m standing here in the UNAC lobby just trying to get through to my network again. Something’s really screwed up.”

Michaelmas sat back. “What seems to be the trouble, Doug? Is there some way I can help you?”

“Man, I hope somebody can. I—well, hell, you’re the first call I’ve gotten made in this last half hour. Would you believe that? No matter who I call, it’s always busy. My network’s busy, the cab company’s busy. When I tried a test by calling Gervaise from across the room, I got a busy signal. And she wasn’t using her phone. Something’s crazy.”

“It sounds like a malfunction in your instrument.”

“Yeah. Yeah, but the same kinds of things happened when I went over and borrowed hers. Look, I don’t mean to sound like somebody in an Edgar Allan Poe, but I can’t even, reach Phone Repair Service.”

“Good heavens! What will you do if this curse extends?”

“What do you mean ?”

“Have you had anyone call you since this happened?”

“No. No—you mean, can anybody reach me?”

“Yes, there’s that. Then, of course, a natural thing to wonder about is whether your bank is able to receive and honour credit transfers, whether the Treasury Department is continuing to receive and okay your current tax flow… That sort of thing. Assuming now that you find some way to get back across the ocean, will your building security system recognize you?” He chuckled easily. “Wouldn’t that be a pretty pickle? You’d become famous, if anyone could find you.”

“My God, Larry, that’s not funny.”

“Oh, it’s not likely to be lifelong, is it? Whatever this thing is? It’s just some little glitch somewhere, I should think. Don’t you expect it’ll clear up ?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what the hell. Look — where are you, anyway? What made you take off like that? What’s going on?”

“Oh, I’m chasing a story. You know what that’s like. How do you feel? Do you think it’s really serious?”

“Yeah — listen, could you call Repair Service for me ? This crazy thing won’t let even Gervaise or anybody here do it when I ask them. But if you’re off some place in the city, that ought to be far enough away from whatever this short circuit is or whatever.”

“Of course. What’s your—” Michaelmas closed his phone and sat again while the aircraft flew. He pictured Campion turning to Gervaise again.

“Mr Michaelmas,” Domino said after some silence. “I just got Konstantinos Cikoumas’s export licence pulled. Permanently. He might as well leave Africa,”

“Very good.”

“Hanrassy has placed two calls to Gately in the past ten minutes and been told he was on another line.”

“Ah.”

“Gately’s talking to Westrum.”

“Yes.”

“When they get confirmation from Norwood, they’ll accept Wirkola’s plan. Then Westrum will call Hanrassy and play her a recording of Norwood’s confirming data. Gately was very pleased that Mr Westrum was making it unnecessary for Gately to speak to her at all.”

“It’s funny how things work out.”

“You’ll be landing in a few moments. Touchdown point is the meadow beyond the sanatorium parking lot. Even so, we may unsettle the patients.”

“Can’t be helped. If they can stand news crews, they can absorb anything. That’s fine, Domino. Thank you.”

There was another pause.

“Mr Michaelmas.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll stay as close as I can. I don’t know how near that will be. If any opportunity affords itself, I’ll be there.”

“I know.”

The flight crewman’s voice said : “We are coming down now. A bell will ring.” The vibration became fuller, and the tone of the engines changed. Michaelmas sank and rose in his cushions, cradling the terminal in his hands. There was a thump. The bell rang and the ladder flew open. Michaelmas hit his quick release, slid out of his straps, and dropped down the ladder. “Danke,” he said.

He stepped out into the meadow above the parking lot, looking down at where they’d been parked, and the long steps down which the lens had rolled. He strode quickly forward, quartering across the slope towards the sanatorium entrance. Sanatorium staff were running forward across the grass.

“I have to go,” Domino said. “I can feel it again.”

“Yes. Listen—it’s best to always question yourself. Do you understand the reasons for that?”

There was no reply from the terminal.

The attendants were close enough so that he was being recognized. They slowed to a walk and frowned at him. He smiled and nodded. “A little surprise visit. I must speak to Doctors Limberg and Cikoumas about some things. Where are they? Is it this way? I’ll go there.” He moved through them towards the double doors, and through the doors. He passed the place where she’d broken her heel. He pushed down the corridor towards the research wing, his mind automatically following the floor plan Harry Beloit had shown Clementine. “Not a public area?” he was saying to some staff person at his elbow. “But I’m not of the public. I speak to the public. I must see Doctors Limberg and Cikoumas.” He came to the long cool pastel hallway among the labs. Limberg and Cikoumas were coming out of adjoining hall doors, staring at him, as the Type Beta rumbled up. “Ah, there!” he said, advancing on them, spreading his arms and putting his hands on their shoulders. “Exactly so!” he exclaimed with pleasure. “Exactly the people I want. We have to talk. Yes. We have to talk.” He turned them and propelled them towards Limberg’s door. “Is this your office, Doctor? Can we talk in here? It seems comfortable enough. We need privacy. Thank you, Doctors. Yes.” He closed the door behind him, chatty and beaming. “Well, now!” He propped one buttock on the corner of Limberg’s desk.

The two of them were standing in the middle of the floor, looking at him. He was counting in his head. He estimated about thirty minutes since Norwood’s conversation with Gately. “Well, here we three are!” he said, resting his hands on his thighs and leaning towards them attentively. “Yes. Let’s talk.”