Michaelmas

Six

Clementine Gervaise came up briskly. She had changed into a tweed suit and a thin soft blouse with a scarf at the throat. “The crew is driving the equipment to the sanatorium already,” she said. “Your hired car is waiting for us outside.” She cocked her head and looked closely at him. “Laurent, is something amiss?”

He fussed with his carnation. “No. We must hurry, Clementine.” Her eau de cologne reminded him how good it was to breathe of one familiar person when the streets were full of strangers. Her garments whispered as she strode across the lobby carpeting beside him. The majordomo held the door. The chauffeured Citroën was at the foot of the steps. They were in, the door was pressed shut, the car pulled away from the kerb, and they were driving through the city towards the mountain highway. The soft cushions put them close to one another. He sat looking straight ahead, showing little.

“We have to beat the best in the world this morning,” he remarked. “People like Annelise Volkert, Hampton de Courcy, Melvin Watson…”

“She shows no special reaction,” Domino said in his skull. “She’s clean—on that count.”

He closed his eyes for a moment. Then in his throat he said, “That doesn’t prove much,” while she was saying:

“Yes, but I’m sure you will do it.” She put her arm through his. “And I will make you see we are an excellent team.”

Domino told him : “The Soviet cosmonaut command has just covertly shifted Captain Anatoly Rybakov from routine domestic programmes to active standby status on the expeditionary project. He is to immediately begin accelerated training in the simulator at Tyura Tam. That is a Top Urgent instruction on highest secret priority landline from Moscow to the cosmodrome.”

Rybakov. He was getting a little long in the tooth—especially for a captain—and he had never been a prime commander. He was only a third or fourth crew alternate on the UNAC lists and wasn’t even in the Star Control flight cadre. But he was nevertheless the only human being to have crewed both to the Moon and aboard the Kosmgorod orbital station.

“What do you suppose that means?” Michaelmas asked, rubbing his face.

“I haven’t the foggiest, yet.”

“Have you notified UNAC?”

“No. By the way, Papashvilly went out to the Afrique airfield but then back again a few minutes ago. Sakal phoned Star Control with a recall order.”

“Forgive me, Clementine,” Michaelmas said. “I must arrange my thoughts.”

“Of course.” She sat back, well-mannered, chic, attentive. Her arm departed from his with a little petting motion of her hand.

“Stand by for public,” Domino said. He chimed aloud. “Bulletin. UPI Berne September 29. A helicopter crash near this city has claimed the life of famed newsman Melvin Watson. Dead with the internationally respected journalist is the pilot…” His speaker continued to relay the wire service story. In Michaelmas’s ear, he said : “She’s reacting.”

Michaelmas turned his head stiffly towards her. Clementine’s mouth was pursed in dismay. Her eyes developed a sheen of grief. “Oh, quel dommage! Laurent, you must have known him, not so?”

His throat working convulsively, Michaelmas asked Domino for data on her.

“What you’d expect.” The answer was a little slow. “Pulse up, respiration up. It’s a little difficult to be precise. You’re rather isolated up there right now and I’m having to do a lot of switching to follow your terminal. I’m also getting some echo from all the rock around you; it’s metallic.”

Michaelmas glanced out the window. They were on the highway, skimming closely by a drill-marked and blasted mountain shoulder on one side and an increasingly disquieting drop-off on the other. Veils of snow powder, whisked from the roadside, bannered behind them in the wind of their passage. The city lay below, popping in and out of view as the car followed the serpentine road. Somewhere down there was the better part of Domino’s actual present location, generally except for whatever might be flitting overhead in some chance satellite.

The spoken bulletin came to an end. It had not been very long. Clementine sat forward, her expression anxious. “Laurent?”

“I knew him,” Michaelmas said gently. “I regret you never met him. I have lost a friend.” And I am alone now, among the Campions. “I have lost a friend,” he said again, to apologize to Horse for having patronized him.

She touched his knee. “I am sorry you are so hurt.”

He found himself unable to resist putting his hand over hers for a moment. It was a gesture unused for many years between them, he began to think, and then caught himself. “Thank you, Madame Gervaise,” he said, and each of them withdrew a little, sitting silently in the back of the car.

As they approached the sanatorium gate, they drove past many cars parked beside the highway, tight against the rock. There were people with news equipment walking in the road, and the car had to pull around them. Some shouted; others ignored them. At the gate, there was the usual knot of gesticulants who had failed to produce convincing press credentials.

There was a coterie of warders—a gloved private gatekeeper in a blue uniform with the sanatorium crest, plus a sturdy middle-aged plainclothesman in a sensible vested suit and a greatcoat and a velour hat, and a bright young fellow in a sportcoat and topper whom Michaelmas recognized as a minor UNAC press staff man. The UNAC man looked inside the car, recognized Michaelmas, and flashed an okay sign with his thumb and forefinger. The Swiss policeman nodded to the gatekeeper, who pushed the electric button which made the wrought iron gates fold back briefly behind their brick posts. Leaving outcries behind, the Citroën jumped forward and drove through.

Michaelmas said to Domino: “I wonder if time-travelling cultures are playing with us. I wonder if they process our history for entertainment values. It wouldn’t take much: an assassination in place of exile, revolution instead of election—that sort of augmentation would yield packageable drama. Chances are, it wouldn’t crucially alter the timeline. Or perhaps it might, a little. One might awaken beside a lean young stud instead of the pudgy father of one’s whining child. There’d be a huge titillated audience. And the sets and actors are free. A producer’s dream. No union contracts.”

“Michaelmas, someone in your position oughtn’t divert himself with paranoias.”

“But oughtn’t a fish study water?”

A little way up, there was a jammed asphalt parking lot beside a gently sloping windblown meadow in which helicopters were standing and in which excess vehicles had broken the cold grass in the sod. The Citroën found a place among the other cars and the broadcast trucks. Up the slope was the sanatorium, very much constructed of bright metal and of polarizable windows, the whole of the design taking a sharply pitched snow-shedding silhouette. Sunlight stormed back from its glitter as if it were a wedge pried into Heaven.

They got out and Clementine Gervaise looked around. “It can be very peaceful here,” she remarked before waving towards their crew truck. People in white coveralls and smocks with her organization’s pocket patch came hurrying. She merged with them, pointing, gesturing, tilting her head to listen, shaking her head, nodding, tapping her forefinger on a proffered clipboard sheet. In another moment, some of them were eddying back towards the equipment freighter and others were trotting up the sanatorium steps, passing and encountering other crews in similar but different jumpsuits. From somewhere up there, a cry of rage and deprivation was followed by a fifty-five-millimetre lens bouncing slowly down the steps.

“Ten-twenty local,” Domino said.

“Thank you,” Michaelmas replied, watching Clementine. “How are your links now?”

“Excellent. What would you expect, with all this gear up here and with elevated horizon-lines?”

“Yes, of course,” Michaelmas said absently. “Have you checked the maintenance records on Horse’s machine?”

“Yes.”

“Have you compared them to all maintenance records on all other machines of the same model?”

“Yes.”

“Have you cross-referenced all critical malfunction data for the type?”

“Teach your grandmother to suck eggs. If you’re asking was it an accident, my answer is it shouldn’t have happened. But that doesn’t exclude freak possibilities such as one-of-a-kind failure in a pump diaphragm, or even some kind of anomalous resistance across a circuit. I’m currently running back through all parts suppliers and sub-assembly manufacturers, looking for things like unannounced re-designs, high reject rates at final inspection stages, and so forth. It’ll be a while. And other stones are waiting to be turned.” Clementine Gervaise had entered the awareness of the comm terminal’s sensors. “Here comes one.”

“Let’s concentrate on this Norwood thing for now,” Michaelmas said.

“Of course, Laurent,” Clementine said softly. “The crew is briefed and the equipment is manned.”

Michaelmas’s mouth twitched. “Yes… yes, of course they are. I was watching you.”

“You like my style? Come—let us go in.” She put her arm through his and they went up the steps.

There was another credential verification just beyond the smoked-glass front doors. Another junior UNAC aide was checking names against a list. It was a scene of polite crowding as bodies filed in behind Michaelmas and Clementine.

Douglas Campion was just ahead of them, talking to the aide. Michaelmas prepared to speak to him, but Campion was preoccupied. Michaelmas studied him raptly. The press aide was saying:

“Mr Campion, your crew is in place on the photo balcony. We have you listed for a back-up seat towards the rear of the main auditorium. Now, in view of the unfortunate—”

“Right,” Campion said. “You going to give me Watson’s seat and microphone time?”

“Yes, sir. And please let me express—”

“Thanks. What’s the sea location?”

There was nothing actually nasty about him, Michaelmas decided sadly. One could assume there was regret, grief, or almost anything else you cared to attribute to him, kept somewhere within him under the heat shield.

He watched Campion move away across the foyer towards the auditorium’s rear doors, and then he and Clementine were stepping forward.

The aide smiled as if he’d been born ten seconds ago. “Nice to see you, Mr Michaelmas, Miz Gervaise,” he said.

The fading wetness of anger in his eyes gave them a winning sparkle. He checked off the names on his list, got a photo-copied floor-diagram from his table, and made a mark on it for Clementine. “We’ve given your crew a spot right here in the first row of the balcony,” he said. “You just go up those stairs over there at the back of the foyer and you’ll find them. And Mr Michaelmas, we’ve put you front row centre in the main auditorium.” He grinned. “There won’t be any microphone passing. Limberg’s got quite a place here—remote PA mikes and everything. When you’re recognized for a question, just go ahead and speak. Your crew sound system will be patched in automatically.”

“Thank you.” Michaelmas changed the shape of his lips. He did not appear to alter the tone or level of his voice, but no one standing behind him could hear him. “Is Mr Frontiere here?”

The aide raised his eyebrow. “Yes, sir. He’ll be up on the podium for the Q and A.”

“I wonder if I could see him for just a moment now.”

The aide grimaced and glanced at his wristwatch. Michaelmas’s smile was one of complete sympathy. “Sorry to have to ask,” he said.

The aide smiled back helplessly. “Well,” he said while Michaelmas’s head cocked insouciantly to block anyone’s view of the young man’s lips. “I guess we do owe you a couple, don’t we? Sharp left down that side hall. The next to the last door leads into the auditorium near your seat. The last door goes backstage. He’s there.”

“Thank you.” There was pressure at Michaelmas’s back. He knew without looking that a score of people were filling the space back to the doors, and others were beginning to elbow each other subconsciously at the head of the outside steps. They were all craning forward to see what the hang-up might be, and getting ready to avenge discourtesy or to make dignified outcry at the first sign of favouritism.

“I will manage it for you, Laurent,” Clementine said quietly.

“Ah? Merci. A bientôt,” Michaelmas said. He stepped around the reception table and wondered what the hell.

Clementine moved with him, and then a little farther forward, her stride suddenly became long and masculine. She pivoted towards the balcony stairs and the heel snapped cleanly off one shoe. She lurched, caught her balance by slapping one hand flat against the wall, and cried out “merde!” hoarsely. She plucked off the shoe, threw it clattering far down the long foyer, and kicked its mate off after it. She padded briskly up the stairs in her stockinged feet, still followed by every eye.

Michaelmas, grinning crookedly, moved down the side hall, his progress swift, his manner jaunty, his footsteps soundless. He pushed quickly through the door at the end.

Heads turned sharply—Limberg, Norwood, a handful of UNAC administrative brass, Frontiere, their torsos supported by stiff arms as they huddled over a table spread with papers and glossy photographic enlargements. Limberg’s lump-knuckled white forefinger tapped at one of the glossies.

Michaelmas waved agreeably as they regarded him with dismay. Frontiere hurried over.

“Laurent—”

“Giorno, Tulio. Quickly—before I go in—is UNAC going to reshuffle the flight crew?”

Frontiere’s angular, patrician face suddenly declared it would say nothing. The very dark eyes in their deep sockets locked on Michaelmas’s, and Frontiere crossed his slim hands with their polished nails over the lean biceps in his alpaca sleeves. “Why do you ask this, Laurent?”

How many times, thought Michaelmas, have I helped UNAC over rough spots that even they know of? And I’m ready to do it again, God knows. And here Frontiere was counting up every one of them. Who would have thought a man would have so much credit deducted for such a simple answer? Merely an answer that would let the world’s most prominent newsman frame his press conference comments more securely. “Norwood was in command, Papashvilly was put in command, Papashvilly is a major. Answer my question and you tell me much. I think it a natural query… vecchio amico.”

Frontiere grimaced uncomfortably. “Perhaps it is. We are all very much into our emotions this morning, you understand? I was not giving you sufficient credit for sapience, I believe.”

Michaelmas grinned. “Then answer the God-damned question.”

Frontiere moved his eyes as if wishing to see the people behind him. “If necessary, an announcement will be made that it is not planned to change the flight crew.”

Michaelmas cocked his head. “In other words, this is an excellent fish dinner especially if someone complains of stomach. Is that the line you propose to defend?”

Frontiere’s sour grin betrayed one of his famous dimples. “I am not doing well with you this morning… old friend,” he said softly. “Perhaps you would like to speak quietly with me alone after the conference.”

“Between friends?”

“Entirely between friends.”

“Bene.”

“Thank you very much,” Frontiere smiled slightly. “Now I must get back to my charges. Take your place in the auditorium, Laurent; the dogs and ponies are all cued. Despite one or two small matters, we shall begin shortly.” Frontiere turned and walked back towards the others, spreading his arms, palms up, in a very Latin gesture. They resumed their intent whispering. Limberg shook his hand repeatedly over the one particular photograph. The side of his fingertip knock knock knocked on the table-top.

Michaelmas stepped out and softly closed the door. “We must be certain we’re doing everything we can to protect Papashvilly,” he said in the empty hall.

“Against what, exactly?” Domino said. “We’re already doing all we can in general. If he’s taken off the mission, despite all that bumph, he needs no more. If he’s still in, what am I supposed to suggest? UNAC is apparently concerned for him. Remember they almost put him on a plane for here, then Sakal ordered him back from the Cité d’Afrique airport. What do you make of that?”

“There are times when I would simply like to rely on your genius.”

“And there are times when I wish your intuitions were more specific.”

Michaelmas rubbed the back of his neck. “I would very much like some peace and quiet.”

“Then I have disturbing news. I’ve just figured out what Rybakov is for.”

“Oh?”

“The Russians can also think ahead. If UNAC attempts to reinstate Norwood, they won’t just threaten to pull Papashvilly. They’ll threaten to pull Papashvilly and they’ll threaten to insist on honest workman Rybakov being second-in-command.”

Michaelmas’s tongue clicked out from the space between his upper lip and his front teeth. “There would be a fantastic scandal.”

“More than that.”

“Yes.” If UNAC then refused to accept that proposition, the next move saw the USSR also withdrawing Rybakov. That would leave the so-called Mankind in Space programme with only an East German lieutenant to represent half the Caucasian world’s politics. “We’d be right back into the 1960s. UNAC can’t possibly go for that, or what’s UNAC for? So as soon as they see the Russians moving Rybakov up out of the pawn row, they’ll drop the whole scheme. They may be rocking back a little now, but one glimpse of that sequence and they’ll stonewall for Papashvilly no matter what.”

“ What may be Viola Hanrassy and everything she can throw.”

“Exactly. I wonder what would explode.” Michaelmas rubbed the back of his neck again. “I would very much like some peace and quiet,” he said in the same voice he had used to speak of darkness.

Three more steps and he was in at the side of the auditorium. It was a medical lecture hall during the normal day, and a place where the patients could come to watch entertainment in the evening. Nevertheless, it made a very nice two-hundred-seat facility for a press conference, and the steep balcony was ideal for cameras, with the necessary power outlets and sound system outputs placed appropriately. To either side of the moderately thrust stage, lenticular reflectors were set at a variety of angles, so that an over-the-shoulder shot could be shifted into a tele close-up of anyone in the main floor audience.

The brown plush seats were filling quickly. There was the usual assortment of skin colours, sexes, and modes of dress. They were much more reserved now, these permitted few, than the hustling mob at the airport.

Michaelmas stopped at Douglas Campion. He held out his hand. “I’d like to express my sympathies. And wish you good luck at this opportunity.” It seemed a sentiment the man would respond to.

The eyes moved. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“Are you planning an obituary feature?”

“Can’t now.” They were looking over his shoulder at the curtain. “Got to stay with the main story. That’s what he’d want.”

“Of course.” He moved on. The pale tan fabric panels of the acoustic draperies made an attractive wall decor. They gave back almost none of the sound of feet shuffling, seats tilting, and cleared throats.

And out there in Tokyo and Sydney they were putting down their preprandial Suntory, switching off the cassettes, punching up the channels. In Peking they were standing in the big square and watching the huge projection from the government building; in Moscow they were jammed up against the sets in the little apartments; in Los Angeles they were elbowing each other for a better line of sight in the saloons — here and there they were shouting at each other and striking out passionately. In Chicago and New York, presumably they slept; in Washington, presumably they could not.

Michaelmas slipped towards his seat, nodding and waving to acquaintances. He found his name badge pinned to the fabric, looked at it, and put it in his pocket. He glanced up at the balcony; Clementine put her finger to her ear, cocked her thumb, and dropped it. He pulled the earplug out of its recess in Domino’s terminal and inserted it. A staff announcer on Clementine’s network was doing a lead-in built on the man-in-the-street clips Domino had edited for them in Michaelmas’s name, splicing in reaction shots of Michaelmas’s face from stock. Then he apparently went to a voice-over of the whole-shot of the auditorium from a pool camera; he did a meticulous job of garnishing what the world was seeing as a room full of people staring at a closed curtain.

There was a faint pop and Clementine’s voice on the crew channel replaced the network feed. “We’re going to a tight three-quarter right of your head, Laurent,” she said. “I like the light best that way, with a little tilt-up, please, of the chin. Coming up on mark.”

He raised a hand to acknowledge and adopted an expression learned from observing youthful statesmen.

“Mark.”

“Must cut,” Domino’s Voice said suddenly. “Meet you Berne.”

Michaelmas involuntarily stared down at the comm unit, then remembered where he was and restored his expression.

“—ere we go!” Clementine’s voice was back in.

The curtains were opening. Getulio Frontiere was standing there at a lighted podium. A table with three empty forward-facing chairs was sited behind him, under the proscenium arch.

Frontiere introduced himself and said:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, on behalf of the Astronautics Commission of the United Nations of the World, and as guests with you here of Dr. Nils Hannes Limberg, we bid you welcome.” As always, the smile dawning on the Borgia face might have convinced anyone that everything was easily explained and had always been under control.

“I would now like to present to you Mr Ossip Sakal, Eastern Administrative Director for the UNAC. He will make a brief opening statement and will be followed to the podium by Dr. Limberg. Dr. Limberg will speak, again briefly, and then he will present to you Colonel Norwood. A question-and-answer period—”

A rising volume of wordless pandemonium took the play away from him, compounded of indrawn breaths, hands slapping down on chair arms, bodies shifting forward, shoes scraping.

Michaelmas’s neighbour—a nattily dressed Oriental from New China Service—said: “That’s it, then. UNAC has officially granted that it’s all as announced.”

Michaelmas nodded absently. He found himself with nothing more in his hands than a limited comm unit on automatic, most of its bulk taken up by nearly infinite layers of meticulously microcrafted dead circuitry, and by odd little Rube Goldberg things that flickered lights and made noises to impress the impressionable.

Frontiere had waited out the commotion, leaning easily against the podium. Now he resumed : “— a question-and-answer period will follow Colonel Norwood’s statement. I will moderate. And now, Mr Sakal.”

There was something about the way Sakal stepped forward. Michaelmas stayed still in his seat. Oz the Bird, as press parties and rosy-fingered poker games had revealed him over the years, would show his hole card any time after you’d overpaid for it. But there was a relaxed Oz Sakal and there was a murderously angry Oz Sakal who looked and acted almost precisely like the former. This was the latter.

Michaelmas took a look around. The remainder of the press corps was simply sitting here waiting for the customary sort of opening remark to be poured over the world’s head. But then perhaps they had never seen the Bird with a successfully drawn straight losing to a flush.

Michaelmas keyed the Transmit button of his comm unit once, to let Clementine know he was about to feed. Then he locked it down, faced into the nearest reflector, and smiled. “Ladies and gentlemen, good day,” he said warmly. “Laurent Michaelmas here. The man who is about to speak” — this lily I am about to paint—“has a well-established reputation for quickness of mind, responsible decisions, and an unfailing devotion to UNAC’s best interests.” As well as a tendency to snap drink stirrers whenever he feels himself losing control of the betting.

With his peripheral vision, Michaelmas had been watching Sakal stand mute while most of the people in the room did essentially what Michaelmas was doing. When Sakal put his hands on the podium, Michaelmas said: “Here is Mr Sakal.” He unlocked.

“How do you do.” Sakal looked straight out into the pool camera. He was a wiry man with huge cheekbones and thick black hair combed straight back from the peak of his scalp. There was skilfully applied matte make-up on his forehead. “On behalf of the Astronautics Commission of the United Nations of the World, I am here to express our admiration and delight.” Michaelmas found it noteworthy that Sakal continued to address himself only to the world beyond the blandest camera.

“The miracle of Colonel Norwood’s return is one for which we had very much given up hope. To have him with us again is also a personal joy to those of us who have long esteemed his friendship. Walter Norwood, as one might expect of any space-faring individual, is a remarkable person. We who are privileged to work for peaceful expansion of mankind in space are also privileged by many friendships with such individuals from many nations. To have one of them return whom we had thought lost is to find our hearts swelling with great emotion.”

He was off and winging now. Whatever Frontiere had written and drilled into him was now nothing more than an outline for spontaneous creative rhetoric. That was all right, too, so far, because Frontiere in turn had based the words on guidelines first articulated to him by Sakal. But so much for the skills of prose communication.

Sakal was looking earnestly into the camera, his hands gripping the sides of the podium. “The number of Man’s space pioneers has not today been made one more. We have all been made greater—you and I as well as those whose training and experience are directed at actually piloting our craft in their journeys upon this mighty frontier.”

Michaelmas kept still. It wasn’t easy. For a moment, it had seemed that Sakal’s private fondness for John Kennedy would lead him into speaking of this new ocean. His natural caution had diverted him away from that, but only into a near stumble over New Frontier, an even more widely known Kennedyism. Sakal wasn’t merely enraged; he was rattled, and that was something Michaelmas had never seen before.

“We look forward to working with Colonel Norwood again,” Sakal said. “There are many projects on the schedule of the UNAC which require the rare qualities of someone like himself. Whatever his assignment, Colonel Norwood will perform faithfully in the best traditions of the UNAC and for the good of all mankind.”

Well, he had gone by way of Robin Hood’s barn, but he had finally gotten there. Now to point it out. Michaelmas keyed Transmit and locked.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “we have just heard the news that Colonel Norwood will indeed be returning to operational status with UNAC. His new duties cannot be made definite at this time, but Mr Sakal is obviously anxious to underscore that it will be an assignment of considerable importance.” As well as to let us all know that he is as concerned for his good buddy’s well-being as anyone could be, and as well as to betray that UNAC is suddenly looking back a generation. Damn. Organizations nurtured specialists like Frontiere to dress policy in jackets of bulletproof phrasing, and then the policy-makers succumbed to improvisation on camera because it made them feel more convincing to use their own words.

Speaking of words…

“A position of high responsibility is certainly in order for the colonel if he is fully recovered,” Michaelmas was saying. It was gratifying how automatically the mind and the tongue worked together, first one leading and then the other, the one never more than a millimicrosecond behind the other, which ever was appropriate to the situation. The face, too : the wise older friend, the worldly counsellor. The situation is always important, but neither inexplicable nor cause for gloom. “The vast amount of physical catching-up to do — the months of training and rehearsal that have passed in Colonel Norwood’s absence from UNAC’s programmes — would make it extremely difficult to rejoin any on-going project.” Smooth. As the sentence had flowed forward, he had considered and rejected saying impossible. In fact it probably was barely possible; with a large crew, redundant functions, and modern guidance systems, space-flight was far from the trapeze act it had been in Will Gately’s day. And if I am going to make UNAC work, if I am going to make work all the things of which UNAC is only the currently prominent part, then the last thing I can do is be seen trying to make it work. So I can’t really be any more direct than Sakal was being, can I? Smile inside, wise older friend. They call it irony. It is in fact the way of the world. “It’s possible Mr Sakal is hinting at the directorship of the Outer Planet Applications programme, which will convert into industrial processes the results of the engineering experiments to be brought back by the Outer Planets expedition.” It’s also possible Laurent Michaelmas is throwing UNAC a broad hint on how to kick Norwood upstairs. Perhaps in the hope that while they kick him, his arse will open to disclose gear trains. What then, Dr. Limberg? What now, Laurent Michaelmas? All he had beside him was a magic box full of nothing — a still, clever thing that did not even understand it was a tool, nor could appreciate how skilfully it was employed. “And now, back to Mr Sakal.”

All Sakal was doing was introducing Limberg, and waiting until the old man was well advanced from the wings before circling around the table and taking one of the three chairs. Everyone was so knowledgeable on playing for the media these days. They kept it short, they broke it to allow time for comment, they didn’t upstage each other. Even when they were in a snit, they built these things like actors re-creating psychodramas from a transcript. It was not they who had pushed the switch, nodded the head, closed the door, written the voucher. Someone else— someone wild, someone devious, someone unpredictable — had done that. No such persons would be thrust upon the audience today. Or ever. Such persons and their deeds were represented here today. And each day. There is a reality. We will tell you about it.

Of course, these people here on Limberg’s stage were the survivors of the selection process. The ones who didn’t begin learning it early were the ones you never heard of.

“Dr. Limberg naturally needs no introduction,” Michaelmas said to a great many millions of people—few of them, it seemed, buried deep in the evening hours. Prime Time was advancing slothfully out in the Pacific wasteland. Why was that? “What he appears to deserve is the world’s gratitude.”

Unlock. The great man stands there like a graven saint. The kind, knowing eyes sweep both the live and the electronic audience. The podium light, which had cast the juts and hollows of Sakal’s face into harsh no-nonsense relief, seemed now to be more diffuse, and perhaps a more flattering shade. Michaelmas sighed. Well, we all do it one way or another.

“Welcome to my house,” Limberg said in German. Michaelmas thought about it for a moment, then put a translator output in his ear. He could speak and understand it, especially the western dialects, but there might be some nuance, either direct from Limberg or unconsciously created by the translator. In that latter case, what the translator made of Limberg would be more official among whatever ethnic group heard it that way. Eventually the Michaelmases and Horse Watsons of the world would have to track down the distortion if they could or if they cared, and set it right in one corner without disturbing another. Not for the first time, Michaelmas wished Esperanto had taken hold. But recalling the nightmare of America’s attempt to force metrication on itself, he did not wish it quite enough.

Limberg was smiling and twinkling, his hands out, the genial host. “My associates and I are deeply honoured. I can report to you that we did not fail our responsibilities towards the miracle that conveyed Colonel Norwood in such distress to us.” Now the visage was solemn, but the stance of his shoulders and slightly bowed head indicated quiet pride.

Over-weening, Michaelmas thought. The man radiates goodness and wisdom like a rich uncle in a nephew’s eyes.

And so it is with the world; those who claim mankind knows nothing of justice, restraint, modesty, or altruism are all wrong. In every generation, we have several individuals singled out to represent them to us.

Disquieting. To sit here suddenly suspecting the old man’s pedigree. What to think of the witnesses to his parents' marriage? Is there sanctity in the baptismal register? If Uncle’s birth certificate is an enigma, what does that do to Nephew’s claim of kinship when probate time comes round? Better not whisper such suppositions in the world’s lent ear just yet. But how, then, for the straight, inquiring professional newsman to look at him just now?

No man can be a hero to his media. The old man’s ego and his gesturings were common stock in after-hours conversation. But they all played along, seeing it harmless when compared to his majesty of mind — assuming he had some. They let him be the man in the white coat, and he gave them stitches of newsworthy words to suture up fistulas of dead air, the recipient not only of two Nobel awards but of two crashes…

If Domino were here, Michaelmas thought, oppressed, he would have pulled me up for persiflage long before now. What is it? he thought. What in the world are they doing to me and mine? Who are they?

Limberg, meanwhile, was spieling out all the improbables of Norwood’s crash so near the sanatorium, so far from the world’s attention. If it weren’t Limberg, and if they weren’t all so certain Norwood was waiting alive and seamless in the wings, how many of them here in this room would have been willing to swallow it? But when he looked around him now, Michaelmas could see it going down whole, glutinously.

And maybe it’s really that way? he thought, finally. Ah, no, no, they are using the mails to defraud somehow. And most important I think they have killed Horse Watson, probably because he frightened them with how swiftly he could move.

When he thought of that, he felt more confident. If they were really monolithically masterly, they’d have had the wreckage all dressed and propped as required. More, they would have been icy sure of it, come Nineveh, come Iron Darius and all his chariots against them. But they hadn’t liked Watson’s directness. They’d panicked a little. Someone on the crew had said, “Wait — no, let’s take one more look at it before we put it on exhibit.” And so they had knocked Watson down not only to forestall him but to distract the crowd while they sidled out and made assurance doubly sure.

It was good to think they could be nervous.

It was bad to think nevertheless how capable they were.

Now Limberg was into orthopaedics, immunology, tissue cloning; it was all believable. It was years since they’d announced being able to grow a new heart from a snippet of a bad one; what was apparently new was being able to grow it in time to do the patient any good.

Keying in, Michaelmas said a few words about that to his audience, just as if he believed it. Meanwhile, he admired the way Limberg was teasing the time away, letting the press corps wind up tighter and tighter just as if they were ordinary rubes awaiting the star turn at the snake oil show, instead of the dukes and duchesses of world opinion.

“— but the details of these things,” Limberg was finally concluding, “are of course best left for later consideration. I am privileged now to reintroduce to you the United States of North America astronaut Colonel Doctor of Engineering Walter Norwood.”

And there he was, striding out of the wings, suddenly washed in light, grinning and raising one hand boyishly in a wave of greeting. Every lens in the room sucked him in, every heart beat louder in that mesmerized crowd, and the media punched him direct into the world’s gut. But not on prime time. Of all the scheduling they could have set up, this was just about the worst. Not that there was any way to take much of the edge on this one. Nevertheless, when this news arrived at Mr and Mrs America’s breakfast table, it would be hours cold —warmed over, blurred by subsequent events of whatever kind. A bathing beauty might give birth and name a dolphin as the father. Professional terrorists, hired by Corsican investors in the Carlsbad radium spa, might bomb President Fefre’s palace. General Motors might announce there would be no new models for the year 2001, since the world was coming to an end.

It suddenly occurred to Michaelmas that if he were UNAC, he’d have had Papashvilly here to shake Norwood’s hand at this moment and throw a comradely arm around his shoulders, and thus emphasize just who it was that was being welcomed home and who it was that had drawn the water and hewn the wood meanwhile.

But they had retreated from that opportunity. Why? No time to wonder. Norwood was standing alone at the podium. Limberg had drifted back to join Sakal at the table, Frontiere was blended into the walls somewhere until Q and A time, and the American colonel had the attention. He had it pretty well, too. Limberg’s lighting electricians were doing a masterful job on him.

“I’m very glad to see you all,” Norwood said softly into the cameras, his hair an aureole of backlighting. He raised his chin a little, and his facial lines were bathed out by a spot mounted out of sight somewhere in the podium box itself. “I want to thank Dr. Limberg and his staff.” He was like an angel. Michaelmas’s, hackles were rising. “And now I’m ready to sit down and take questions.” He smiled, waved his hand again, and stepped back.

The lighting changed; now the podium was played down, and the table was illuminated. Sakal and Limberg were standing. Frontiere was coming out of the wings. Norwood reached his chair. The press corps leaned forward, some with hands rising and mouths opening to call attention to their questions, and as they leaned some lackey somewhere began to applaud. Caught on the lean, it was easy to stand. Standing, it was easy to applaud. Scores of palms resounded, and the walls quivered. Limberg as well as Norwood smiled and nodded modestly.

Michaelmas fidgeted. He closed his fists. Where was the statement explaining exactly what had happened? Where was the UNAC physicist with his charts and pointer, his vocabulary full of coriolis effect and telemetry nulls, his animation holograms of how a radar horizon swallows a man-carrying capsule? If no one else was going to do it, Norwood should have.

It wasn’t going to happen. In another moment, a hundred and a half people, each with an individual idea of what needed asking, were going to begin competing for short answers to breathless questions. The man whose media radiated its signal from an overhead satellite to a clientele of bangled cattlemen in wattle huts had concerns not shared by the correspondent for Dow Jones. The people from Science News Service hardly listened to whatever response was drawn by the representative of Elle. And there was only a circumscribed area of time to work in. The bathing beauty was out there somewhere, jostling Fefre and chiliasm for space on the channels, jockeying her anomalously presented hips.

It was all over. They were not here to obtain information after all. They were here to sanctify the occasion, and when they were done the world would think it knew the truth and was free.

Frontiere was at the podium. This sort of thing was his handiwork. He moved effortlessly, a man who had danced this sort of minuet once or twice before. UNAC’s man, but doing the job Limberg wanted done.

And thus Sakal’s impotent rage. Somehow the Bird was over the grand old man’s barrel.

“The questions?” Frontiere was saying to the press corps. My hat is off to you, you son of a bitch, Michaelmas was saying, and yes, indeed, we will talk afterwards, friend to friend. I am senior in prestige here; it is incumbent on me to frame the first question. To set the tone, so to speak. I raise my hand. Getulio smiles towards me. “Yes, Mr Michaelmas?”

“Colonel Norwood’s presence here delights us all,” I say. There are amenities that must of course be followed. I make the obligatory remark on behalf of the media. But I am the first voice from the floor. The world hears me. I have spoken. It’s all true. He is risen. The people of the world rejoice.

But they are my people! God damn it, my people!

“My question is for Mr Sakal. I’d like him to explain how Colonel Norwood’s presence here jibes with UNAC’s prior explanations of his death.” I stand with a faint little twinkle visible in my eye. I am gently needling the bureaucrats. I am in fact doing no such thing. If Frontiere and Sakal have not already rehearsed this question a thousand times, then they are all impostors. I am a clown. I toss the ball so they may catch it gracefully.

Sakal leans forward in his chair, his hands cupped on the table. “Well, obviously,” he delivers, “there was some sort of failure in our tracking and monitoring systems.” He causes himself to appear rueful. “Some embarrassing failure.”

We all chuckle.

“I assume it’s being gone into.”

“Oh, yes,” Something in the set of Sakal’s jaw informs the audience that somewhere out there blades are thudding and heads are rolling.

I have asked my questions. I have set the tone. I have salvaged what I can from this wreck. My audience thinks I was not afraid to ask a delicate question, and delicate enough not to couch it in a disquieting manner.

I sit down. The next questioner is recognized. Frontiere is a genius at seeming to select on some rational basis of priority. In due time, he gets to Douglas Campion, See Campion stand. “Colonel Norwood, what’s your next destination? Will you be coming to the USA in the near future?”

“Well, that depends on my duty assignment.”

“Would you accept a Presidential invitation?” He slips it in quickly. Sakal regards him quietly.

“If we had such an invitation,” Sakal answers for Norwood. “We would of course arrange duty time off for Colonel Norwood in order that he might visit with the chief executive of his native land, yes.”

Ah, news. And the hero could then doubtless be diverted for a few tickertape parades, etc. Campion has shrewdly uncovered the obvious inevitable. But it was a good question to have been seen asking.

Ah, you bastards, bastards, bastards. I sit in my place. In a decent while, I will ask another question of some kind. But if I were the man you think me, the questions I’d ask would have you in pieces. Phut, splat! Live in glorious hexacolor, direct from Switzerland, ladies and gentlemen, if I were not also only a clever simulacrum of what I ought to be.