Laugh Lines

by Ben Bova

  I was almost getting accustomed to being called over to the West Wing to deal with bureaucrats and politicians. Still, it was a genuine thrill when I was invited into the Oval Office itself.

  The President’s desk was cleared of papers. Nothing cluttered the broad expanse of rosewood except the telephone console, a black-framed photograph of her late husband (who had once also sat at that desk), and a gold-framed photograph of her daughter on her first day in the House of Representatives (D., Ark.).

  She sat in her high-backed leather chair and fired instructions at her staff.

  “I want the public to realize,” she instructed her media consultant, “that although we are now in a race with the Russians and the French, we are building the SSZ for sound economic and social reasons, not because of competition from overseas.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” said the media consultant.

  She turned to the woman in charge of Congressional liaison. “And you’d better make damned certain that the Senate appropriations committee okays the increased funding for the SSZ prototype. Tell them that if we don’t get the extra funding we’ll fall behind the Ivans and the Frogs.

  “And I want you,” she pointed a manicured finger at the research director of TURD, “to spend every nickel of your existing SSZ money as fast as you can. Otherwise we won’t be able to get the additional appropriation out of Congress.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” said Roger K. Memo, with one of his rare smiles.

  “But, Madam President,” the head of the Budget Office started to object.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” the President snapped at him. “I’m perfectly aware that money doesn’t grow on trees. But we’ve got to get the SSZ prototype off the ground, and do it before next November. Take money from education, from the space program, from the environmental superfund—I don’t care how you do it, just get it done. I want the SSZ prototype up and flying by next summer, when I’m scheduled to visit Paris and Moscow.”

  The whole staff gasped in sudden realization of the President’s masterful plan.

  “That right,” she said, smiling slyly at them. “I intend to be the first Chief of State to cross the Atlantic in a supersonic zeppelin.”

  Although none of us realized its importance at the time, the crucial incident, we know now, happened months before the President’s decision to fly the SSZ to Paris and Moscow. I’ve gone through every scrap of information we could beg, borrow or steal about that decisive day, reviewing it all time and again, trying to find some way to undo the damage.

  It happened at the VA hospital in Hagerstown, a few days after Mark Sequoia had been rescued. The hospital had never seen so many reporters. There were news media people thronging the lobby, lounging in the halls, bribing nurses, sneaking into elevators and even surgical theaters (where several of them fainted). The parking lot was a jumble of cars bearing media stickers and huge TV vans studded with antennas.

  Only two reporters were allowed to see Mark Sequoia on any given day, and they were required to share their interviews with all the others in the press corps. Today the two—picked by lot—were a crusty old veteran from Fox News and a perky young blonde from Women’s Wear Daily.

  “But I’ve told your colleagues what happened at least a dozen times,” mumbled Sequoia from behind a swathing of bandages.

  He was hanging by both arms and legs from four traction braces, his backside barely touching the crisply sheeted bed. Bandages covered eighty percent of his body and all of his face, except for tiny slits for his eyes, nostrils and mouth.

  The Fox News reporter held his palm-sized video camera in one hand while he scratched at his stubbled chin with the other. On the opposite side of the bed, the blonde held a similar videocorder close to Sequoia’s bandaged face.

  She looked misty-eyed. “Are . . . are you in much pain?”

  “Not really,” Sequoia answered bravely, with a slight tremor in his voice.

  “Why all the traction?” asked Fox News. “The medics said there weren’t any broken bones.”

  “Splinters,” Sequoia answered weakly.

  “Bone splinters!” gasped the blonde. “Oh, how awful!”

  “No,” Sequoia corrected. “Splinters. Wood splinters. When the balloon finally came down we landed in a clump of trees just outside Hagerstown. I got thousands of splinters. It took most of the surgical staff three days to pick them all out of me. The chief of surgery said he was going to save the wood and build a scale model of the Titanic with it.”

  “Oh, how painful!” The blonde insisted on gasping. She gasped very well, Sequoia noted, watching her blouse.

  “And what about your hair?” Fox News asked.

  Sequoia felt himself blush underneath the bandages. “I . . . uh . . . I must have been very frightened. After all, we were aloft in that stupid balloon for six days, without food, without anything to drink except a six pack of Perrier. We went through a dozen different thunderstorms . . . “

  “With lightning?” the blonde asked.

  Nodding painfully, Sequioa replied, “We all thought we were going to die.”

  Fox News frowned. “So your hair turned white from fright. There was some talk that cosmic rays did it.”

  “Cosmic rays? We never got that high. Cosmic rays don’t have any effect on you until you get really up there, isn’t that right?”

  “How high did you go?”

  “I don’t know,” Sequoia answered. “Some of those updrafts in the thunderstorms pushed us pretty high. The air got kind of thin.”

  “But not high enough to cause cosmic ray damage.”

  “Well, I don’t know . . . maybe . . . “

  “It’d make a better story than just being scared,” said Fox News. “Hair turned white by cosmic rays. Maybe even sterilized.”

  “Sterilized?” Sequoia yelped.

  “Cosmic rays do that, too,” Fox News said. “I checked.”

  “Well, we weren’t that high.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah . . . well, I don’t think we were that high. We didn’t have an altimeter with us . . . “

  “But you could have been.”

  Shrugging was sheer torture, Sequoia found.

  “Okay, but those thunderstorms could’ve lifted you pretty damned high.”

  Before Sequoia could think of what to answer, the door to his private room opened and a horse-faced nurse said firmly, “That’s all. Time’s up. Mr. Sequoia must rest now. After his enema.”

  “Okay, I think I’ve got something to hang a story on,” Fox News said with a satisfied grin. “Now to find a specialist in cosmic rays.”

  The blonde looked thoroughly shocked and terribly upset. “You . . . you don’t think you were really sterilized, do you?”

  Sequoia tried to make himself sound worried and brave at the same time. “I don’t know. I just . . . don’t know.”

  Late that night the blonde snuck back into his room, masquerading as a nurse. If she knew the difference between sterilization and impotence she didn’t tell Sequoia about it. For his part, he forgot about his still-tender skin and the traction braces. The morning nurse found him unconscious, one shoulder dislocated, most of his bandages rubbed off, his skin terribly inflamed, and a goofy grin on his face.

  I knew that the way up the corporate ladder was to somehow acquire a staff that reported to me. And, in truth, the SSZ project was getting so big that I truly needed more people to handle it. I mean, all the engineers had to do was build the damned thing and make it fly. I had to make certain that the money kept flowing, and that wasn’t easy. An increasingly large part of my responsibilities as the de facto head of the Washington office consisted of putting out fires.

  “Will you look at this!”

  Senator Goodyear waved the morning Post at me. I had already read the electronic edition before I’d left my apartment that morning. Now, as I sat at Tracy Keene’s former desk, the senator’s red face filled my phone screen.

  “That Sequoia!”
he grumbled. “He’ll stop at nothing to destroy me. Just because the Ohio River melted his houseboat, all those years ago.”

  “It’s just a scare headline,” I said, trying to calm him down. “People won’t be sterilized by flying in the supersonic zeppelin any more than they were by flying in the old Concorde.”

  “I know it’s bullshit! And you know it’s bullshit! But the goddamned news media are making a major story out of it! Sequoia’s on every network talk show. I’m under pressure to call for hearings on the sterilization problem!”

  “Good idea,” I told him. “Have a Senate investigation. The scientists will prove that there’s nothing to it.”

  That was my first mistake. I didn’t get a chance to make another.

  I hightailed it that morning to Memo’s office. I wanted to see Pencilbeam and start building a defense against this sterilization story. The sky was gray and threatening. An inch or two of snow was forecast, and people were already leaving their offices for home, at ten o’clock in the morning. Dedicated government bureaucrats and corporate employees, taking the slightest excuse to knock off work.

  The traffic was so bad that it had actually started to snow, softly, by the time I reached Memo’s office. He was pacing across the thinly carpeted floor, his shoes squeaking unnervingly in the spacious room. Copies of The Washington Post, The New York Times and Aviation Week were spread across his usually immaculate desk, but his attention was focused on his window, where we could see fluffy snowflakes gently drifting down.

  “Traffic’s going to get worse as the day goes on,” Memo muttered.

  “They’re saying it’ll only be an inch or so,” I told him.

  “That’s enough to paralyze this town.”

  Yeah, especially when everybody jumps in their cars and starts fleeing the town as if a terrorist nuke is about to go off, I replied silently.

  Aloud, I asked, “What about this sterilization business? Is there any substance to the story?”

  Memo glanced sharply at me. “They don’t need substance as long as they can start a panic.”

  Dr. Pencilbeam sat at one of the unmatched conference chairs, all bony limbs and elbows and knees.

  “Relax, Roger,” Pencilbeam said calmly. “Congress isn’t going to halt the SSZ program. It means too many jobs, too much international prestige. And besides, the President has staked her credibility on it.”

  “That’s what worries me,” Memo muttered.

  “What?”

  But Memo’s eye was caught by movement outside his window. He waddled past his desk and looked down into the street below.

  “Oh, my God . . . “

  “What’s going on?” Pencilbeam unfolded like a pocket ruler into a six-foot-long human and hurried to the window. Outside, in the thin mushy snow, a line of somber men and women were filing along the street past the TURD building, bearing signs that screamed:

  STOP THE SSZ!

  DSON’T STERILIZE THE HUMAN RACE

  SSZ MURDERS UNBORN CHILDREN

  ZEPPELINS GO HOME!

  “Isn’t that one with the sign about unborn children a priest?” Pencilbeam asked.

  Memo shrugged. “Your eyes are better than mine.”

  “Ah-hah! And look at this!”

  Pencilbeam pointed a long, bony finger farther down the street. Another swarm of people were advancing on the building. They also carried placards:

  SSZ FOR ZPG

  ZEPPELINS SI! BABIES NO!

  ZEPPELINS FOR POPULATION CONTROL

  UP THE SSZ

  Memo sagged against the window. “This . . . this is awful.”

  The Zero Population Growth group marched through the thin snowfall straight at the environmentalists and anti-birth-control pickets. Instantly the silence was shattered by shouts and taunts. Shrill female voices battled against rumbling baritones and bassos. Placards wavered. Bodies pushed. Someone screamed. One sign struck a skull and then bloody war broke out.

  Memo, Pencilbeam and I watched aghast until the helmeted TAC squad police doused the whole tangled mess of them with riot gas, impartially clubbed men and woman alike and carted everyone off, including three bystanders and a homeless panhandler.

  *

  The Senate hearings were such a circus that Driver summoned me back to Phoenix for a strategy session with Anson’s top management. I was glad to get outside the Beltway, and especially glad to see Lisa again. She even agreed to have dinner with me.

  “You’re doing a wonderful job there in Washington,” she said, smiling with gleaming teeth and flashing eyes.

  My knees went weak, but I found the courage to ask, “Would you consider transferring to the Washington office? I could use a sharp executive assistant—”

  She didn’t even let me finish. “I’d love to!”

  I wanted to do handsprings. I wanted to grab her and kiss her hard enough to bruise our lips. I wanted to, but Driver came out of his office just at that moment, looking his jaw-jutting grimmest.

  “Come on, kid. Time to meet the top brass.”

  The top brass was a mixture of bankers and former engineers. To my disgust, instead of trying to put together a strategy to defeat the environmentalists, they were already thinking about how many men and women they’d have to lay off when Washington pulled the plug on the SSZ program.

  “But that’s crazy!” I protested. “The program is solid. The President herself is behind it.”

  Driver fixed me with his steely stare. “With friends like that, who needs enemies?”

  I left the meeting feeling very depressed, until I saw Lisa again. Her smile could light up the world.

  Before heading back to Washington to fight Sequoia’s sterilization propaganda, I looked up my old APT buddies. They were in the factory section where the SSZ was being fabricated.

  The huge factory assembly bay was filled with the aluminum skeleton of the giant dirigible. Great gleaming metal ribs stretched from its titanium nosecap to the more intricate cagework of the tail fins. Tiny figures with flashing laser welders crawled along the ribbing like maggots cleaning the bones of some noble whale.

  Even the jet engines sitting on their carrying pallets dwarfed human scale. Some of the welders held clandestine poker games inside their intake cowlings, Bob Wisdom told me. The cleaning crews kept quiet about the spills, crumbs and other detritus they found in them night after night. I stood with Bob, Ray Kurtz, Tommy Rohr and Richard Grand beside one of those huge engine pods, craning our necks to watch the construction work going on high overhead. The assembly bay rang to the shouts of working men and women, throbbed with the hum of machinery, clanged with the clatter of metal against metal.

  “It’s going to be some Christmas party of Congress cancels this project,” Kurtz muttered gloomily.

  “Oh, they wouldn’t dare cancel it now that the Women’s Movement is behind it,” said Grand, with a sardonic little smile.

  Kurtz glared at him from behind his beard. “You wish. Half those idiots in Congress will vote against us just to prove they’re pro-environment.”

  “Actually, the scientific evidence is completely on our side,” Grand said. “And in the long run, the weight of evidence prevails.”

  He always acts as if he knows more than anybody else, I thought. But he’s dead wrong here. He hasn’t the foggiest notion of how Washington works. But he sounds so damned sure of himself! It must be that phony accent of his.

  “Well, just listen to me, pal,” said Wisdom, jabbing a forefinger at Grand. “I’ve been working on that secretary of mine since the last Christmas party, and if this project falls through and the party is a bust that palpitating hunk of femininity is going to run home and cry instead of coming to the party!”

  Grand blinked at him several times, obviously trying to think of the right thing to say. Finally he enunciated, “Pity.”

  But I was thinking about Lisa. If the SSZ is cancelled, Driver won’t let her transfer to the Washington office. There’d be no need to hire more staff for me. T
here’d be no need for me!

  I went back to Washington determined to save the SSZ from this stupid sterilization nonsense. But it was like trying to stop a tsunami with a floor mop. The women’s movement, the environmental movement, the labor unions, even Leno and Letterman got into the act. The Senate hearings turned into a shambles; Pencilbeam and the other scientists were ignored while movie stars testified that they would never fly in an SSZ because of the dangers of radiation.

  The final blow came when the President announced that was not going to Paris and Moscow, after all. Urgent problems elsewhere. Instead, she flew to Hawaii for an economic summit of the Pacific nations. In her subsonic Air Force One.

  *

  The banner proclaiming HAPPY HOLIDAYS! drooped sadly across one wall of the company cafeteria. Outside in the late afternoon darkness, lights glimmered, cars were moving and a bright full moon shone down on a rapidly-emptying parking lot.

  Inside the Anson Aerospace cafeteria was nothing but gloom. The Christmas party had been a dismal flop, primarily because half the company’s work force had received layoff notices that morning. The tables had been pushed to one side of the cafeteria to make room for a dance floor. Syrupy holiday music oozed out of the speakers built into the acoustic tile of the ceiling. But no one was dancing.

  Bob Wisdom sat at one of the tables, propping his aching head in his hands. Ray Kurtz and Tommy Rohr sat with him, equally dejected.

  “Why the hell did they have to cancel the project two days before Christmas?” Rohr asked rhetorically.

  “Makes for more pathos,” Kurtz growled.

  “It’s pathetic, all right,” Wisdom said. “I’ve never seen so many women crying at once. Or men, for that matter.”

  “Even Driver was crying, and he hasn’t even been laid off,” Rohr said.

  “Well,” Kurtz said, staring at the half-finished drink in front of him, “Seqouia did it. He’s a big media hero again.”

  “And we’re on the bread line,” said Rohr.