He’d heard a rumor around D.A.T. that Carl Crewvel’s wife Nedralyn had actually been going to private religious club meetings that were connected in some way with bitch Lingoes; he hoped it wasn’t true, because Carl was a good man, and he liked him. That kind of thing could ruin a man. Sure, you had to let them into the public churches, this was a free country, but that was a long way from what sounded like joining a Lingoe cult. Jesus.
He’d been watching the numbers on the doors he passed, absently; they were coded, but he’d dealt with coded numbers so long that he wasn’t conscious of them any longer. This one said “Radiated Legume Storage—Caution” and under that “Do Not Enter Without Permission From the Officer of the Day.” That’d be it. Room 09-A, where the meeting was scheduled. He was supposed to go right in, and that made him jittery . . . you walk right through a door inside a top secret project like this, you could get your brain fried like those bushes outside in the desert. But he’d been assured that all alarms were turned off and that all servomechanisms except the ordinary cleanup ones had been deactivated for this occasion.
“Yeah,” he thought aloud. “And my Aunt Tildy flies a Greyhound Rocket. Sure.”
Still, Paul was accustomed to following orders, and he followed them now. He put his hand on the door, palm flat on the lock, and pressed gingerly, and when it slid smoothly aside for him he walked straight on into the room with the hair on his neck prickling and his heart pounding out “The Stars and Stripes Forever” in his chest. The guard that stopped him two feet inside the door was a human being, and that helped a little; he laid his fingertips on the portable ID-platter the soldier held and saw the blue light flash just like it was supposed to, and that was even better. “Take your seat at the table, please, sir,” said the guard, respectfully.
Paul straightened his tie—a double one, and a little daring, but he felt like he needed something to serve as a personal fashion statement, and the tie was just enough, and wouldn’t offend anybody—and went to take his seat with the rest of the men. He was the last one to arrive, apparently; but then he was the only one who’d had to come all the way from the opposite coast. And they couldn’t start without him.
There were the usual introductory moves. The man in charge was a general . . . Paul wondered what he had done to get stuck out here. There were three eggdomes, whose names he paid no attention to; you just called them all Professor, the way you called all med-Sammys Doctor, and that saved a lot of effort and energy. There was an underling named Tatum Jorgen Pugh, some kind of computer specialist; according to Paul’s briefing fiche, Pugh’s father had also worked here. A family tradition? You’d think the father would have seen to it that his kid had it a little better than he’d had it, but there was no accounting for computer people. Paul had a wary respect for them, but he didn’t pretend to understand them. He respected the money they made, and when he needed one to do something for him he respected the incredible speed with which it always got done. He gave this Pugh a polite nod to let him know that he recognized another team player when he saw one, and then he bowed his head politely for the invocation and the national anthem. Both supplied on tape, which was another good sign. Paul was always uneasy when a live chaplain was on deck for government meetings. It meant you had to spend half your time tiptoeing around the edges of everything, trying to avoid the Ethics Bog, and it meant you had to talk like a Wimpoe. Nothing stronger than “Golly” in front of a federal chaplain. The tape was much more efficient.
“Okay!” he said briskly, once the formalities were over. “I know you’ve got a lot of work to do, and I know I have—I’ve got another meeting back at D.A.T. at exactly sixteen hundred hours. I’d like to simply lay out the department’s position for you, without any interruption, if you don’t mind, and then I’ll welcome your comments.” He looked at the general to see if any objections were headed his way, and saw none. Good. No chaplain. No objections. Batting nine-ninety-nine so far.
“Now as I understand it,” he continued, “you’re doing a hell of a lot of fine work at this installation, but you’re not getting much of a return. No criticism implied, gentlemen—we know what you’re up against—but we’re getting to the end of our string here where funding is concerned, if you know what I mean. According to the reports I’ve seen, you have just about done everything there is to do in the way of altering the brains of the tubie infants you’ve got here—” He noticed the frowns gathering on the eggdomes’ faces, and he held up one hand to remind them about no interruptions. “I don’t mean,” he said carefully, “that there aren’t umpty-squared other neurons in their brains that you haven’t fooled with yet. I just mean that according to the computers you have carried out a sufficient number of such alterations to complete the projected set that you were budgeted for. And unfortunately, gentlemen, nothing much has come of this. You’ve been Interfacing these babies with the new nonhumanoid AIRYs—which was supposed to be something with real potential—and you’ve been getting the usual crap. They’re going to run out of funds at the Arlington orphanage, too, if you keep on like this.”
The eggdomes looked sullen, and the general looked distressed, and the computer whiz looked bored; everything was going just as planned, and he could move along to the important part.
“Now . . .” He slowed way down, and he swept the group with his eyes to signal that something was coming that even the computer whiz should listen to. “Now, the department would like for you to move on to a new phase of this project. Now, General, Professors . . . Mr. Pugh . . . it is Director Clete’s opinion that we’ve got to produce some return to justify the expenditure here at El Centro. And what he wants you to do—”
They were all looking at him, and he liked that; he paused, and let them wait, six full counts.
“What he wants you to do—and he has full backing on this, all the way to the top—what he wants you to do is stop putting infant humans of any kind into the Interface on this floor. There’ll be a baby in the display Interface upstairs, as always, of course; but down here you are to Interface infant whales, gentlemen. And I am authorized to tell you that a consignment of two . . . uh, let me see here . . . oh yes, two infant humpbacks and their mothers, is already on its way here by special transport. Also a team to make whatever adjustments are required for the Interface on this level. We realize it won’t hold all four animals, but we decided it would be cheaper and more practical to send spares just in case—considering the past history of the project—and you can of course put the extra mother and baby in the upstairs exhibit on hold. The public would be delighted, and the whales won’t care. My job here is to let you know what the new plans are, to warn you to expect the shipment of animals, and to find out if there’s anything you need that we haven’t anticipated. I’ll take the information back to Washington with me when I leave, and any oversights will be rectified immediately. You have my word, and Director Clete’s word, on that. Now! Are there any questions?”
He looked around with that cheery but businesslike expression—as if he knew a great deal more than he’d felt obliged to tell—that always served him so well in dealings like this, and raised his eyebrows to indicate how willing he was to listen.
“Well?” You had to encourage people. “Please don’t hesitate. We know we’re not experts on . . . uh . . . cetaceans. That’s your field, we just push the paper around. Just tell me what you think we might have overlooked, and I’ll see to it.”
The eggdomes had the strangest expressions on their faces; he wasn’t sure exactly what to make of it. He’d been expecting resistance, because eggdomes always resisted—they weren’t good at handling change, and that was normal for the role. But these men didn’t look resistant, they just looked baffled. The computer guy was looking mildly interested, but that was probably because he’d thought of something fun to do with his machines. He turned his attention to the general, since nobody else seemed to be quite ready for any give-and-take.
“General?” he asked. “Would you like t
o begin?”
“Well . . . Paul, is it?”
“Yes, sir. Paul White.”
“Paul, this isn’t really my field, either. I’m an administrator, not a scientist. It sounds damn exciting to me, but I have to rely on the judgment of my men here.”
Ball neatly fielded. Now they were all staring at the eggdomes, who were moving around in their chairs as if they itched. And finally one of them did manage to put a few words together.
“Why are we doing this?” he asked.
Why are we doing this? What was that supposed to mean?
Patiently, Paul began again. “Professor, there is just a limit to available funds. Especially with all the new colonies opening up—the taxpayers out there on the frontiers have a right to expect that we’ll put as much money as we possibly can into making their lives a little more bearable. Not that—” He paused to chuckle, as does a man who knows the facts but is willing to indulge those who would romanticize them a little. “—their lives are a lot worse than yours, I must say, in many cases. But we’re under a great deal of pressure at D.A.T. to prove that there will eventually be some return on the investment here, and—”
“That’s not what I meant.” The eggdome looked both sullen and belligerent.
“I’m sorry. What did you mean?”
“We understand about funding problems. Every scientist understands about funding problems. But why this particular shape to our new ‘phase,’ Mr. White? Why are you sending us baby whales, for the love of christ?”
For an eggdome he was downright agitated, and D.A.T. didn’t like its eggdomes agitated; Paul moved right in with professional soothing noises.
“Professor,” he said, smiling his most competent friendly smile, “it seemed to us that since the new AIRYs are whales it was the obvious thing to do. I realize you’ve put years of time and effort into the tubies, but—”
“The new AIRYs are what?”
This was a different eggdome; the other one was looking at Paul as if he’d farted.
“The new AIRYs are whales . . . oh, I get it. Sorry. The new AIRYs are cetaceans. I’m afraid we laymen have trouble with that word. Since that’s true—”
“But it’s not true.”
Nobody, nobody in the solar system, did more interrupting than eggdomes. Paul knew that, but it was beginning to get under his skin.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Where did you get the idea that the current AIRYs are cetaceans, young man?”
Young man. They were going to start that now.
“Professor,” he stated flatly, giving the wig just one brief touch to draw attention to the pepper and salt effect, “everybody is aware that the AIRYs we got in the Scoop last time were whales. That’s a matter of common knowledge—that is, it’s common knowledge to everybody with a clearance high enough to be familiar with this project. I don’t understand your question.”
The eggdomes were looking at each other, and their faces had that US WISE MEN, HIM NINCOMPOOP expression that Paul hated most in dealing with them. He didn’t intend to let it get to him; he concentrated on looking resolute, and waited for their move.
At last one of them said, “Mr. White, do you have with you any kind of description of the Aliens? That is, when they are discussed at D.A.T., how are they described?”
Paul blew a slow small stream of air between pursed lips, and scanned the hard copy he was carrying on pliofilm. It was there somewhere . . . oh, yeah.
“It says here,” he answered courteously, “that they are like the dolphins of Earth except that they have a shell. Because of, it says here, the extreme pressures they were subject to in their own planet’s atmosphere. Dolphins . . . dolphins are whales, right?”
“Naw,” said the computer whiz.
“Yes, they are,” said the eggdomes. “Small toothed whales.” Of the order mumbledy, something else mumbledy—Paul didn’t follow the rest of it. And then, like some kind of comedy team, they all laid their heads in their hands and sighed, and Paul finally ran out of courtesy.
“Gentlemen,” he snapped, “I’m sorry if my lack of scientific expertise offends you. But I am genuinely doing my best here, and I’ve got to get this meeting finished and head on back to the port. That rental flyer they gave me in Los Angeles Diego doesn’t strike me as overpoweringly reliable, and I’d like to allow myself a little extra time to make the shuttle. If you would just explain to me what the problem is, I’d be extremely grateful—and so would the Department of Analysis & Translation.”
To his surprise, one of the eggdomes turned out to be a pretty decent guy after all. He apologized, for starters, and said they hadn’t meant to act as if Paul were lacking in scientific knowledge.
“The problem,” the eggdome went on, “and what made us collapse like that, is that we all saw immediately how this got started. And it hit us all the same way. We try so hard to avoid this kind of mess, and we so rarely succeed, you see. It was that description you read to us that set us off.”
“It’s the official one.” No one disagreed with him, and he shrugged. “It’s the one we were given at D.A.T. when the Scoop brought the Aliens in and you people reported to us.”
“I’m sure that’s true. My name is Bydore, Mr. White—I did the report myself. It was my own description.”
“Well? Is it wrong?”
The eggdome looked sad, and frustrated, and burdened with the weight of the centuries, and before he started talking again he chewed first on his upper lip and then on the bottom one, while the other eggdomes glowered.
“Mr. White,” he said slowly, “there’s not the slightest reason to believe that these AIRYs are cetaceans. It’s true that their bodies, except for the shells, rather resemble the bodies of dolphins, and I used that fact—God forgive me—as a way of saving time and avoiding a lengthy technical anatomical description. But it’s nothing more than a chance physical resemblance. A golfball resembles a bird’s egg, Mr. White, but it’s a meaningless resemblance. It’s an accident, you see. And it makes this new idea of D.A.T.’s pretty ridiculous.”
The general moved in swiftly with the necessary question, and Paul was grateful; it was always best to move the target of annoyance around from one member of the team to another in a situation like this one. “You say there’s no reason to believe that these Aliens are whales,” he said roughly. “All right, Bydore, we’ll accept that—you’re the experts. Now I want to know: is there any reason to believe that they aren’t whales? Alien whales, that is?”
“The question is almost meaningless,” protested Professor Bydore. “Like the resemblance.”
“The question is perfectly straightforward,” the general answered coldly. “Do you or do you not have reason to believe that these Aliens—which you admit bear a close physical resemblance to whales—are not whales? Do you or do you not have evidence that would support the contention that they’re not whales? There’s nothing wrong with that question.”
There was a muggy silence, with the eggdomes scowling and fidgeting and looking disgusted, but the other men present were used to that, and not bothered by it. One characteristic found in ninety-nine of one hundred eggdomes was an absolute inability to stay silent for more than about sixty seconds if their scientific field was the subject of discussion. The three in Room 09-A did not fall into the exceptional one percent; they all erupted into confused protest simultaneously.
“Please, gentlemen!”
The general’s voice was the standard military voice of high rank, and it shut the eggdomes up again. In the hush, he said, “One at a time, if you don’t mind! I want your answers, one at a time, and I want them right now!”
He got them; in sequence, tight-lipped.
“There is no logical reason to believe that the Aliens either are or are not whales.”
“There is no way to determine at this time whether they are or are not whales.”
“We have no evidence, nor have we any basis for conjecture, as to whether they are or are not
whales.”
The general snorted and admonished them not to try that crap with him. “It walks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, that’s reason to believe that it is a duck!” he said emphatically.
“An Earth duck!” pleaded Bydore. “Only an Earth duck, General. If two creatures of a single planet strongly resemble each other physically, then maybe there is a relationship. But stop and think, General. Just for a moment. Think about the Emperor penguin—it resembles, very strongly, a small portly human male in evening clothes.”
The General suspected that he was being made fun of; his brows locked over the jut of his nose, and his next question came snapping out, ratatat. “And how, precisely, would you proceed to find out if the penguin was in fact a new variety of human male, of small size? If you didn’t already know, that is?”
“You’d do tests,” said the eggdome reluctantly, seeing where they were headed.
“You couldn’t just conclude, because the penguin has webbed feet and is three feet tall, and the human being has unwebbed feet and is much bigger, that they are different species?”
“No.”
“Then,” the general summed up, “you cannot just conclude—because the Aliens have shells and the Terran whales don’t have shells—that they are different species. Using the term species loosely, of course.”
“General—”
“No further discussion is required,” the general announced. He stood up, put both hands behind his back, and shifted to parade rest. “The department has decided to test this physical resemblance and is sending the necessary animals. We will proceed with the tests. When and if we have evidence that the AIRYs are not whales, we’ll stop the tests. You will direct your attention, as Paul White has requested, to the simple question of whether we have all the necessary equipment, supplies, and personnel.”
“But, General—”
If the general had given Paul any opening at all, he would have found a way to let the eggdomes talk; he could tell that something else was wrong. If it had been only the scientific question of whales-or-not-whales, they would have stated their objections, heard them called garbage by the nonscientists, and retired into dignified contemptuous silence. They wouldn’t be going “But, General,” the way they were doing now. They wouldn’t have stooped to bicker with nonscientists. But General Charing had been annoyed, he’d felt that his authority was being challenged and his competency ridiculed, and he wasn’t going to stand for it; he’d made his speech and he intended to entertain no rebuttals. Paul noted the strategic error, and would include it in his report when he got back to D.A.T., but he stayed out of it now. He was the messenger here, no more; it was not his place to get involved in inhouse politics at the project.
The Judas Rose Page 24
