Michaelmas

by Algis Budrys

  "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 des-tination? 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 Nor-wood. "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.

  Seven

  The sorry business wound itself down towards eleven-thirty. For his audience, Michaelmas ran off a few closing com-ments in dignity. After everything was off the air, Frontiere announced a small press reception in the dining-hall, "for those who could stay." It was understood on occasions of this sort that crew technicians are too busy to stay, since it had long ago been discovered that even one cameraman at a buffet was worth a horde of locusts, and tended to make awkward small talk.

  The dining-hall featured a glass overlook of the depths below and the heights above; even through the metallized panes, the sun would have driven in fiercely if a drape, gauzy as a scrim, had not been hung upon it. Air-warming ducts along the wall set it to rippling. The world beyond the dining-hall was beautiful and rhythmic. The press strolled from bunch to bunch of themselves and various UNAC functionaries, sanatorium staff, and of course Nor-wood. There was a bar at each end of the large room, and the carpet underfoot was conducive to a silent, gliding step that was both restful and ennobling. For some, step-ping back and forth from one end of the room to the other was particularly exhilarating.

  Michaelmas wore his smile. He took a Kirr and nibbled tender spiced rare lamb slivers on a coaster of trimmed pumpernickel. He found Norwood, Limberg and Frontiere all together, standing against a tapestry depicting medieval physicians in consultation at the bedside of a dying mon-arch. Up close, Norwood looked much more like he ought — fineline wrinkles in the taut skin, a grey hair for every two, blond ones, a few broken capillaries in his cheeks. By now Michaelmas had downed the hors d'oeuvre. He held out his hand. "Good morning, Walt. You don't appear the least bit changed, I'm pleased to be able to say."

  "Hello, Larry." Norwood grinned. "Yeah. Feels good."

  Limberg had taken off his white duster and was revealed in a greenish old tweed suit that accordioned at the elbows and knees. A tasselled Bavarian pipe curved down from one corner of his mouth and rested in the cup of one palm. He sucked on it in measured intervals, and aromatic blue wisps of smoke escaped his flattened lips. Michaelmas smiled at him. "My congratulations, Doctor. The world may not contain sufficient honours."

  Limberg's hound-dog eyes turned upward towards Michaelmas's face. He said: "It is not honours that cause one to accomplish such things."

  "No, of course not." Michaelmas turned to Frontiere. "Ah, Getulio. And where is Ossip? I don't see him."

  "Mr Sakal is a little indisposed and had to leave," Lim-berg said. "As his co-host for this reception, I express his regrets." Frontiere nodded.

  "I am very sorry to hear that," Michaelmas said. "Getulio, I wonder if I might take you aside and speak with you for just a moment. Excuse me, Dr. Limberg, Walter. I must leave for my hotel almost immediately, and Mr Frontiere and I have an old promise to keep."

  "Certainly, Mr Michaelmas. Thank you for coming." Suck suck. Wisp.

  Michaelmas moved Frontiere aside with a gentle touch on the upper arm. "I am at the Excelsior," he said quietly. "I will be in Switzerland perhaps a few hours more, perhaps not. I hope you'll be able to find the time to meet me." He laughed and affectionately patted Frontiere's cheek.

  "I hope you can arrange it," he said in a normal tone. "Arrivederci." He turned away with a wave and moved towards where he had seen Clementine chatting beside a tall, cadaverous, fortyish bald man with a professorial manner.

  Clementine was wearing a pair of low canvas shoes, pre-sumably borrowed from a crew member. She smiled as she saw Michaelmas looking at her feet. "Laurent," she said with a graceful inclination of her head. He took her hand, bowed, and kissed it.

  "Thank you."

  "Merci. Pas de quoi." A little bit of laughter lingered be-tween them in their eyes. She turned to the man beside her. His olive skin and sunken, lustrous, and very round brown eyes were not quite right for a pin-striped navy blue suit, but the vest and the gold watch-chain were fully appropri-ate. There were pens in his outer breast pocket, and chem-ical stains on his spatulate fingertips. "I would like you to meet an old acquaintance," Clementine said. "Laurent, this is Medical Doctor Kristiades Cikoumas, Dr. Limberg's chief associate. Kiki, this is Mr Michaelmas."

  "A pleasure, Mr Michaelmas." The long fingers extended themselves limply. Cikoumas had a way of curling his lips inward as he spoke, so that he appeared to have no teeth at all.

  Michaelmas found himself looking up at the man's palate.

  "An occasion for me," Michaelmas said. "Permit me to extend my admiration for what has been accomplished here."

  "Ah." Cikoumas waved his hands as if dispersing smoke. "A bagatelle. Your compliment is natural, but we look forward to much greater things in the future."

  "Oh."

  "You are with the media? A colleague of Madame Gervaise?"

  "We are working together on this story."

  Clementine murmured: "Mr Michaelmas is quite well known, Kiki."

  "Ah, my apologies! I am familiar with Madame from her recent stay with us, but I know little of your professional world; I never watch entertainment."

  "Then you have an enviable advantage over me, Doctor. Clementine, excuse me for interrupting your conversation, but I must get back to Berne. Is there an available car?"

  "Of course, Laurent. We will go together. Au voir, Kiki."

  Cikoumas bowed over her hand like a trick bird clamped to the edge of a water tumbler. "A revenance." Michae
lmas wondered what would happen if he were to put his shoe squarely in the man's posterior.

  On the ride back he sat away from her in a corner, the comm unit across his lap. After a while she said :

  "Laurent, I thought you were pleased with me."

  He nodded. "I was. Yes. It was good working with you."

  "But you are disenchanted." Her eyes sparkled and she touched his arm. "Because of Kiki? I enjoy calling him that. He becomes so foolish when he has been in a cafe too long." Her eyes grew round as an owl's and her mouth be-came toothless. "Oh, he looks, so— comme un hibou, tu sais? — like the night bird with the big ears, and then he speaks amazingly. I am made nervous, and I joke with him a little, and he says it does not matter what I call him. A name is nothing, he says. Nothing is unique. But he does not like it, entirely, when I call him Kiki and say I do not think anyone else ever called him that before." She touched Michaelmas's arm again. "I tease too much." She looked contrite, but her eyes were not totally solemn. "It is a forgiveable trait, isn't it so, if we are friends again?"

  "Yes, of course." He patted her hand. "In the main, I'm simply tired."

  "Ah, then I shall let you rest," she said lightly. But she folded her arms and watched him closely as she settled back into her corner.

  The way to do it, Michaelmas was thinking, would be to get pieces of other people's footage on stories Horse had also covered. A scan of the running figures in the mob, or the people advancing in front of the camera, would turn up many instances over the years of Watson identifiably taking positions ahead of other people who'd thought they were as close to the action as possible. If you didn't embarrass your sources by naming them, Domino could find a lot of usable stuff in a hurry.

  You could splice that together into quite a montage.

  Now, you'd open with a talking head shot of Watson tagging off: "And that's how it is right now in Venezuela," he'd be saying, and then you'd go to voice-over. Your opening line would be something like: "That was Melvin Watson. They called him Horse," and then go to your action montage. You'd rhythm it up with drop-ins of, say, Watson slugging the Albanian riot cop, Watson in soup-and-fish taking an award at a banquet, Watson with his sleeves rolled up as a guest teacher at Medill Journalism School, Watson's home movies of his wedding and his kids graduat-ing. You'd dynamite your way through that in no more than 120 seconds, including one short relevant quote from the J class that would leave you only 90 for the rest of it, going in with Michaelmas shots of Watson at Maracaibo.

  You'd close with a reprise of the opening, but you'd edit-on the tags from as many locations as would give you good effects to go out on: "And that's how it is right now in Venezuela . . ." and then a slight shift in the picture to older, grimier, leaner, younger, neck-tied, cleaner, open-shirted versions of that head and shoulders over the years ... "in Kinshasa ... on board the Kosmgorod station . . . in Athens ... in Joplin, Missouri ... in Dacca . . ." And then you'd cut, fast, to footage from the helicopter that had followed Watson into the mountains: blackened wounds on the face of the mountain and in the snow, wild sound of the wind moaning, and Michaelmas on voice-over saying "and that's how it is right now."

  The little hairs were rising on Michaelmas's forearms. It would play all right. It was a nice piece of work.

  "We are nearly there, Laurent. Will I see you again?"

  "Ah? What? Oh. Yes. I'm sure you have good direc-torial talent, and I know you have excellent qualities. There'll certainly be future opportunities."

  "Thank you. If you get a chance to review the footage, I think you will find it was good. Crisp, documentary, and with no betrayals that the event was essentially a farce."

  "How do you mean?" he asked quickly.

  "There are obvious things missing. As if UNAC and Limberg each had very different things they wanted made known, and they compromised on cutting all points of disagreement, leaving little.

  They were all very nice to each other on camera, yet I think it may have been different behind closed doors. And why did Sakal leave without so much as a public exchange of toasts with Limberg? But I was not talking business, Laurent. I was suggesting perhaps dinner."

  That, it seemed to him, was just a little bit much. What would they talk about? Would they discuss why, if Clemen-tine Gervaise had been able to see something, hadn't the great Laurent Michaelmas delved into it on camera? What might a man's motives be in such a case? All of that so she could wheedle him around into some damaging half-admission or other and then run tell her Kiki about it?

  He smiled and said: "That would be an excellent idea. But I expect to be leaving before dinner time, and I also have some things I must do first. Another time, it would be a very pleasant thing."

  "Dommage," Clementine said. Then she smiled. "Well, it will be very nice when it happens, don't you think so?"

  "Of course." He smiled. Smiling, they reached the front of the Excelsior and he thanked her and got out. As the car drew away, she turned to wave to him a little through the rear window, and he waved back. "Very nice," Domino said in his ear. "Very sophisticated, you two."

  "I will speak to you in the suite," Michaelmas sub-vocal-ized, smiling to the doorman, passing through the lobby, waiting for the elevator, holding up his eyelids by force of the need to never show frailty.

  In the cool suite, Michaelmas took off his suitcoat with slow care and meticulously hung it on the back of a chair beside the drawing-room table. He put the terminal down and sat, toeing off his shoes and tugging at the knot of his tie. He rested his elbows on the table and undid his cuff-links, pausing to rub gently at either side of his nose. "All right," he said, his eyes unfocused. "Speak to me."

  "Yes. We're still secure here," Domino said. "Nothing's tapping at us."

  Michaelmas's face turned involuntarily towards the ter-minal. "Is that suddenly another problem to consider? I've always thought I'd arranged you to handle that sort of thing automatically."

  There was a longish pause. "Something peculiar happened at the sanatorium."

  Michaelmas tented his fingertips. "I'd gathered that. Please explain."

  Domino said slowly: "I'm not sure I can."

  Michaelmas sighed. "Domino, I realize you've had some sort of difficult experience. Please don't hesitate to share it with me."

  "You're being commendably patient with me, aren't you?"

  Michaelmas said: "If asked, I would say so. Let's pro-ceed."

  "Very well. At the sanatorium, I was maintaining excel-lent linkages via the various commercial facilities available. I had a good world scan, I was monitoring the comm cir-cuits at your terminal, and I was running action pro-grammes on the ordinary management problems we'd dis-cussed earlier. I was also giving detail attention to Cikoumas et Cie, Hanrassy, UNAC, the Soviet spaceflight command, Papashvilly, the Watson crash, and so forth. I have reports ready for you on a number of these topics. I. really haven't been idle since cutting away from your terminal."

  "And specifically what happened to make you shift out?"

  There was a perceptible diminution in volume. "Some-thing."

  Michaelmas raised an eyebrow. He reached forward gently and touched the terminal. "Stop mumbling and digging your toe in the sand, Domino," he said. "We've all filled our pants on occasion."

  "I'm not frightened."

  "None of us are ever frightened. Now and then, we'd just like more time to plan our responses.

  Go on."

  "Spare me your aphorisms. Something happened when I next attempted to deploy into Limberg's facilities and see what there was to learn. I learned nothing. There was an anomaly."

  "Anomaly."

  "Yes. There is something going on there. I linked into about as many kinds of conventional systems as you'd expect, and there was no problem; he has the usual assort-ment of telephones, open lines to investment services and the medical network, and so forth. But there was some-thing—something began to happen to the ground under-foot."

  "Underfoot?"

  "I have t
o anthropomorphize if I'm going to make sense to you. It was as if I'd take a stride of normal length and discover that my leg had become a mile long, so that my foot was set down out of sight far ahead of me. And my next step, with my other foot, might be done with a leg so short that the step was completed with incredible swiftness. Or it might again be one of the long steps

  — somewhat shorter or longer than other long steps. Yet I didn't topple. But I would be rushing forward one moment and creeping the next. Nevertheless, I proceeded at an even pace. The length of my leg was always appropriate to the dimensions of the square on which I put down my foot, so that I always stepped to the exact centre of the next square. All the squares, no matter what their measurement in space, rep-resented the same-sized increment of time."

  Michaelmas sucked his upper teeth. "Where were you going?" he finally asked.

  "I have no idea. I can't track individual electrons any more readily than you can. I'm just an information pro-cessor like any other living thing. Somewhere in that sana-torium is a crazy place.

  I had to cut out when it began echoing."

  "Echoing."

  "Yes, sir. I began receiving data I had generated and stored in the past. Fefre, the Turkish Greatness Party, Tim Brodzik . . . that sort of thing. Sometimes it arrived hol-lowed out, as if from the bottom of a very deep well, and at other times it was as shrill as the point of a pin. It was coded in exactly my style. It spoke in my voice, so to speak. However, I then noticed that minor variations were creep-ing in; with each repetition, there was apparently one electron's worth of deviation, or something like that."

  "Electron's worth?"

  "I'm not sure what the actual increment was. It might have been as small as the fundamental particle, whatever that might turn out to be. But it seemed to me the coding was a notch farther off each time it... resonated. I'm not certain I was detecting a real change. My receptors might have been changing. When I thought of that, I cut out. First I dropped my world scan and my programmes out of the press links, and then I abandoned your terminal. I was out before the speaker actually started vibrating to tell you I was leaving. I felt as if I were chopping one end of a rope bridge with something already on it."