The Weathermakers (1967)

by Ben Bova

  “Harnessed? For weather control?”

  Weis nodded wordlessly.

  “The President wants to really work on weather control?” Ted broke into a huge grin. “That’s a harness I’ve been trying to get into for four years.”

  “Listen to me, Marrett. The President wants you to work on weather control, but I’m the one who’s going to be responsible for controlling you. And I will never—do you hear, never—allow you to direct a project or get anywhere near directing a project. I’m going to find bosses for you who can keep you bottled up tight. We’ll do weather-control work, and we’ll use your ideas. But you’ll never be in charge of anything as long as I’m in Washington.”

  Ted’s smile died. “Okay,” he said grimly, “as long as the work gets done . . . and done right. I didn’t expect to get a National Medal out of this anyway.”

  Still glaring, Dr. Weis said, “You were lucky, Marrett. Very lucky. If the weather patterns had been slightly different, if things hadn’t worked out so well. . .”

  “Wasn’t luck,” Ted flashed. “It was work, a lot of peoples’ work, and brains and guts. That’s where weather control—real weather control—wins for you. It doesn’t matter what the weather patterns are if you’re going to change ‘em all to suit your needs. You don’t need luck, just time and sweat. You make the weather you want. That’s what we did. That’s why it had to work; we just had to tackle it on a big-enough scale.”

  “Luck or skill,” Dr. Weis said wearily, “it doesn’t matter. You’ll get weather control now. But under my direction, and on my terms.”

  “We’ve won,” Ted said as he shut off the phone. “We’ve really won.”

  Barney sank into the nearest chair. “It’s too much happening all at once. I don’t think I can believe it all.”

  “It’s real,” Ted answered quietly. “Weather control is a fact now. We’re going to do it.”

  “You’ll have to work under Dr. Weis and whoever he appoints to handle the program,” I said.

  Ted shrugged. “I worked for Rossman. I can work for anybody. The work’s important, not the titles they give you.”

  Tuli rubbed his midsection and said, “I don’t know about you inscrutable westerners, but this red-blooded Mongol is starving.”

  “So’m I, come to think of it,” Ted said. “Come on you guys, let’s have a celebration breakfast!”

  “Guys,” Barney echoed, frowning.

  “Hey, that’s right, you’re a girl. Come on, Girl. Looks like you won’t have to play second fiddle to hurricanes any more.” He took her arm and started for the door. “Think you can stand being the center of my attention?”

  Barney looked back at me. I got up and took her other arm. “If you don’t mind, she’s going to be the center of my attention, too.”

  Tuli shook his head as he joined us. “You barbarians. No wonder you’re nervous wrecks. You never know who’s going to marry whom. I’ve got my future wife all picked out; our families agreed on the match when we were both four years old.”

  “That’s why you’re here in the States,” Ted joked.

  Barney said, “Tuli, don’t do anything to make them change their minds. I haven’t had this much attention since I was four.”

  Down the main stairway we went, and out onto the street. The sidewalks were puddled from rain, a side effect of Omega, but overhead the stars were shining through tattered, scudding clouds.

  “Today the world’s going to wake up and discover that man can control the weather,” Ted said.

  “Not really,” Tuli cautioned. “We’ve only made a beginning. We still have years of learning ahead. Decades, perhaps centuries.”

  Ted nodded, a contented smile on his face. “Maybe. But we’ve started. That’s the important thing.”

  “And the political problems this is going to cause?” I asked. “The social and economic changes that weather control will bring? What about them?”

  He laughed. “That’s for administrators like you and the President to worry about. I’ve got enough to keep me busy: six quadrillion tons of air . . . and one mathematician.”

  Epilogue

  A LITTLE more than two years later, on a golden October afternoon, the United Nations convened a special outdoor session in Washington to hear an address by the President.

  It was the first time I had seen Barney and Ted since their wedding, six months earlier. She had told me about her decision as gently as possible, and I learned that it’s possible to live with pain even if there’s no hope that it will ever be completely cured.

  I had been running Aeolus; there was plenty of work for the Laboratory now. Ted and Barney (and Tuli, too) were living in Washington and working on the Government’s weather-control program. Ted had settled down, under the direction of one of the nation’s top scientists, and was seeing our years of struggle turned into solid accomplishment.

  The UN delegates met at a special outdoor pavilion, built along the banks of the Potomac for their ceremony. Key people from the Weather Bureau and Congress and Government were in the audience. Beyond the seats set on the grass for the delegates and invited guests, a huge thronging crowd looked on, and listened to the President.

  “. . . For mankind’s technology,” he was saying, “is both a constant danger and a constant opportunity. Through technology, man has attained the power to destroy himself, or the power to unite this planet in peace and freedom—freedom from war, from hunger, and from ignorance.

  “Today we meet to mark a new step in the peaceful use of man’s growing technical knowledge: the establishment of the United Nations Commission for Planetary Weather Control . . .”

  Like Ted’s victory over Hurricane Omega, this was only a first step. Total control of the weather, and total solution of the human problems involved, was still a long way off. But we were started along the right road.

  In my jacket pocket was a letter from the UN Secretary-General asking me to serve on the staff of the Planetary Weather Control Commission. I knew that Ted had a similar letter, and that Tuli would be getting one soon.

  As we sat together listening to the President, a gentle breeze wafted by, tossing the flame-colored trees and tempering the warmth of the sun. It was a fine, crisp autumn afternoon: bright blue sky, beaming sun, occasional puffs of cotton-ball cumulus clouds. A perfect day for an outdoor ceremony.

  Of course.