Syzygy

by Frederik Pohl

  “More coffee, Gus,” the old man called, and the waiter set down the plates he was about to bring to another table and hurried over with the pot. T. R. watched him carefully while the man filled the cup and added one ice cube out of the pitcher of water on the table to bring it to the temperature and tempered strength T. Robert preferred. It paid to be on the board of governors of the club. Apart from pepping up the service, it was a good way to keep the undesirables out of the club, the TV people who would turn it into a sales meeting and the land speculators who were chasing the crumbs that people like T.R. had left—and getting fatter on them than T.R. ever had, with the crazy way homes were going. Of course, you couldn’t keep everybody out. There were six blacks, fifteen Jews, and a Mexican priest in the club. (But at least the priest was Episcopalian.) That was carefully planned. Some of the other undesirables were unplanned, like Sam Houston Bradison, but what could you do when he was on the board too? “All right, Tommy,” he said, “what’ve you got for us?”

  Tommy Pedigrue set his cup down fast and began his report. “They never held the meeting,” he said. “There was a goddam mob!” He told his father about the pickets, the paper-airplane leaflets, the scores of people who had shown up for the meeting that was never held.

  The old man leaned back in his wheelchair. “Substantial people, any of them?”

  Tommy reflected. “Yeah, sure. Some. And a lot of crazies, too. There was that stoned-out hippie from Puerto Rico and fifteen or twenty more like him.”

  “They’re the ones we’ll see on the six o’clock news,” his father predicted.

  -“Just another bag of trash,” Tommy said.

  “There’s votes in that trash, boy.” The old man thought for a moment, while Tommy waited. He scowled and said, “I can’t get a clear fix on this thing. I called up that old fart Sigismendt at the Foundation, and he wouldn’t commit himself until he checked, and then he called back and said he didn’t personally believe it was going to happen. But when you come to pin the son of a bitch down it’s all, well, there is a possibility, of course, and, oh, the theory has some support. He says in six months we’ll have evidence one way or the other.”

  “Bastard! He isn’t earning his pay.”

  T.R. nodded, although in fact Dr. Sigismendt and everybody else at the Pedigrue Foundation earned their pay every day of their lives in tax credits, whether they worked or not. “All right,” he said, “tell you what we’re going to do. You’re going to pick out a body of experts to look into this thing, and your brother’s going to appoint them to the Senate committee.”

  “Not a chance, Dad! I can name six senators offhand that’ll be making speeches about the Democrats wasting taxpayers’ money again—”

  “We won’t pay them with taxpayers’ money, boy,” the old man said patiently. “We’ll pay them out of Foundation money and donate them to the Senate as a public service. Sigismendt will okay it. About three scientists, a couple of assistants maybe, maybe a secretary or two. One month. And you can promise each one of them a Foundation grant for a year if they do a good job.”

  Tommy grunted rebelliously. “What can they do in one month?”

  “You never know till you try, boy. Now, that’s set. I don’t want to use Foundation people, either. Sigismendt had some recommendations—don’t follow them. Pick your own. Mix them up, make them look like an integrated group. You don’t have to get top names. Get smarts. You can probably find everybody you want at that circus down the street. Got any idea who to pick?”

  “Well—” Tommy snapped his fingers. “There’s that woman who lost the spacecraft.”

  “Shit, boy! What do you want a dummy for?”

  “She’s going to come clear on that one, Dad. It wasn’t her fault. And she’s got a good TV presence.” She also looked as though she might have a good bedroom presence. “She’s an astronomer, and that’s involved—”

  The old man grunted. “I won’t interfere,” he said. “What about that geologist you were telling me about?”

  As a matter of course, Tommy had informed the old man about the scene at Los Angeles International; he made it a rule never to keep anything from his father, unless he absolutely had to. “He’s a pain in the ass, Dad!”

  “He’s a pain in the ass you owe, boy. Always pay your debts. And, hey, you probably need a weather expert, too. Try Meredith Bradison.”

  “Sam Houston’s wife? Cripes, Dad! I thought you couldn’t stand him.”

  The old man grinned fondly at his son. “Then we’ll trade. You take one pain in your ass, and I’ll take one in mine.” There was also the consideration that if the investigating commission came out of this thing looking stupid, some of the embarrassment could be deflected onto the wife of Sam Houston Bradison. “I’ll call your brother and fill him in,” he promised.

  “He’s in Illinois, Dad.”

  “I know where he is.” It was either the O’Hare Hilton or the Hyatt Regency, and that woman from Elgin would of course be there with him; Townsend Pedigrue did not keep many secrets from his father either. “Push me out to the door, will you?”

  “Sure thing, Dad.” After Tim Paradine had hurried over to take care of the task of shifting the old man from wheelchair to limousine, Tommy Pedigrue hesitated for a moment, then turned toward the hotel. There was a reception of some kind about due. Maybe he would find some of the people he was looking for there. Committee of three. Chosen freely by him, except that two of the names had been his father’s.

  But the good-looking one had been his own choice, and there ought to be some dividends from that. Tommy Pedigrue was not dissatisfied. In a horse trade you took what advantage you could get and you didn’t worry if the other guy thought he got something too. That was the way he had been brought up, and it wasn’t a bad way to run a life.

  Tuesday, December 8th. 5:10 PM.

  Every year on the continent of Asia twenty thousand square miles of forest are cut down, eight thousand square miles in Africa, and somewhere between twenty and forty thousand square miles in Latin America. Civilization, as Chateaubriand said in the eighteenth century, is preceded by forests and followed by deserts.

  The ASF meeting had got itself back on track after the unfortunate episode of the crazies. It always did. The ASF was so ponderous an institution that its momentum would get it back on track no matter what the diversion. And the momentum of Rainy’s life continued its track, too.

  It was not a track she was enjoying. After the debacle on the panel meeting, the fire marshal had come in and cleared everybody out. Rainy’s brilliant little talk was not heard; the panel on the Jupiter Effect that was to follow it had simply been canceled; the newspeople who had been tuning up for it began looking for other targets; and there Rainy was. Fat lot of brownie points she was going to get out of this day, she thought bitterly, as every conversation she struck up with some power in radio astronomy was interrupted by a reporter or a cameraman. When it was time for the six o’clock news she located a friend with a room and a TV set, and had the pleasure of watching herself once more, bracketed by the same familiar stories of the crazies raining paper airplanes on the scientists and the mobster hurrying out of the federal court building with his jacket over his face. She forced herself to go to the reception in the grand ballroom, but after half an hour of it she began to feel claustrophobia setting in. She thought longingly of those long, dull nights with Tinker, with her shoes off and reruns of Mary Tyler Moore or Kojak on the television. Dull? Oh, yes. Incredibly, incontestably, crashingly dull; but right at the moment a little dullness sounded extremely nice.

  She looked around, speculating on whether there was any point in staying, and caught Tibor Sonderman staring at her across the room. She nodded, and the man took it for an invitation. He excused himself to the people he was talking to and came hurrying over to her. “I am sorry we became separated after the meeting,” he said. “I looked for you, but there was such a crush—Can I get you a drink?”

  “Actually, I was jus
t thinking of leaving. “

  “I, too,” he said promptly. “It is very hot in here.” He took her arm and guided her through the press. “The fine thing about this hotel is that it has the little conversation nooks on the balconies—perhaps a quiet drink where we can sit down?”

  “Well—” But he had already guided her to the elevator bank and pushed both buttons. There was a crowd there, too, but Tib was quick enough in some situations, and he managed to pull her through the first door that opened. Behind them a slim, dark man was hurrying to the same elevator. Rainy recognized him; the Soviet cosmonaut, hurling something over his shoulder to another Russian, who nodded and turned away.

  Tib held the door for him and said politely, “Pozhalsta, gospodin Mihailovitch.”

  The Russian grinned broadly as the door closed behind him. “Ponimaete pozrusski?” he asked.

  Tib grinned, shaking his head. “I learned to talk in Zagreb in 1947,” he said in English, “so how could I not know a little Russian? But I’ve forgotten most of it.”

  “We’re going up,” Rainy said in dismay.

  “What goes up must come down, so we’ll go for a little extra ride. Oh. Miz Rainy Keating, this is Cosmonaut Lev Mihailovitch.”

  “Miz Keating, of course.” The cosmonaut managed to turn around far enough to lift her hand and kiss it. “We were both becoming stars of television this afternoon, is that right? Yes. I hope the person who interviewed you was more sympathetic than mine—a dragon, I swear to you. ” He looked more carefully at Tib. “And we have met also.”

  “You have an excellent memory,” Sonderman nodded.

  “And in a moment I will recall the exact place,” the Russian said, making room for a couple who wanted to get out and glancing up at the indicator. “The next floor is mine—I have a splendid idea! I have some excellent Armenian brandy in my room. If the two of you will care to join me for a drink…?”

  Tib looked at Rainy. “Why, thank you.”

  “Excellent! It is just down the hall—room 1812, it is a number not difficult to remember, for a Russian.”

  Lev Mihailovitch was one of the mysterious early Russian cosmonauts who appeared in group photographs of cosmonaut trainees, was never identified by name, and was never seen taking part in an actual mission—for nearly twenty years. The assumption was that there was some sort of political trouble. Then, in the early 1970s, he turned up again, and this time in a full glare of publicity. He had occupied the Salyut space station for more than 80 days, setting a new record, if a short-lived one, for duration in orbit. Sonderman remembered that there had been a story about him in the morning’s Los Angeles Times that said he had been carried out of the landing vessel on a stretcher. Bone calcium loss? A depletion of the blood corpuscles? Something of the sort; the Russians had never said exactly what. But he looked healthy enough as he scurried ahead of them to open the door.

  He waved them to seats and began fishing things out of drawers. “What a crowd,” he said over his shoulder, uncorking a slim green bottle. “I have not seen anything like that since G.U.M. had nylon panty-hose on sale. But I must say your police were more gentle than the ones who work for the department store—they have no patience at all!” He was opening jars and laying out little dishes in a typical Russian drinking buffet: smoked fish, pickled fish, dried fish—“And these,” he said, holding up a packet of Fritos. “They are not very Russian, but I like them.”

  “Don’t go to all that trouble,” Tib began, while Rainy said, “Can I help?”

  “It is not any trouble, and thank you, but it is all done.” Mihailovitch surveyed the lineup on top of the television set, and then turned to look at them. “It was in Vienna in 1976 that we met, Dr. Sonderman.”

  “That’s right, but my name’s Tib.”

  “Yes. You gave a paper on tectonics in Yugoslavia, which I went to hear because I have always loved that part of the coast, near Dubrovnik and south. But it was quite technical.” Something was troubling him, it was clear; he shook his head ruefully and said, “I hope we will all be friends, and one cannot begin a friendship on a false basis. I have not been entirely frank with you. It was not an accident that I saw you in the elevator, I was following you.”

  “Me?” Tib said, astonished.

  “You? No! If it had been you I would have come up and slapped you on the back; after all this is California, not Moscow-I was following Miz Keating, because I wish to tell her something.”

  He was filling hotel tumblers and handing them out, and then he sat on a hassock before Rainy’s chair and offered a toast. “To a beautiful woman for whom I feel much sympathy,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Rainy said, gamely trying to swallow a significant fraction of the brandy. “But I’m a little puzzled.”

  The cosmonaut nodded seriously. “Dear lady,” he said, “I am aware that you are in certain difficulties with your secret police.”

  She stiffened. “It’s not exactly like that,” she said defensively.

  “No, not exactly.” Mihailovitch tossed off his drink. “But in some respects, rather similar?”

  Rainy said slowly, “I don’t know how much of this I should be telling you. “

  “Nothing at all!” Mihailovitch cried. “Please, I did not bring you to my room to get you drunk so you would divulge the innermost secrets of NASA, such as what color the director’s eyes are and why you should not order chili in the cafeteria. Not at all. But there is much that cannot be very secret, since I have seen it on your own television. First, you have no good explanation for why your spacecraft stopped transmitting. Second, there are some persons who think that it must have been the wicked Russians who did it—that is, of course, why everything bad has happened in your country, just as in my own—No matter. Third, there will surely have been many persons investigating, and quite a few will be rather quiet men in undistinguished clothes who want to know everything that can be known.” He paused, looking at Rainy, who did not quite know what to say. “And all of this,” he went on, “cannot have been very enjoyable for you, and I feel for you.” He recharged all the glasses, frowning as he observed that Rainy and Tib had hardly dented theirs. “So what I wish to say, dear lady, is that it is nothing our people have done which has caused the loss of your spacecraft. We would never do such a thing to so sympathetic a lady. Khoroshol”

  He downed his second tumbler of brandy and sat down, regarding them blandly. Sonderman stirred uncomfortably. There was something out of key here, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. A cosmonaut was a mighty man in the U.S.S.R., likely to have his own apartment on Gorky Street, even his own sports car, even the freedom to attend international space and scientific conferences almost at will. But he was not likely to be volunteering information to near strangers, unless there was something else involved. But what?

  To test the waters, Tib said, “Let me see if I understand you. All these stories we hear about Russian anti-satellites, with laser weapons and proximity nuclear blasts—they’re just the fascist cannibal propaganda of the American imperialists, right?”

  The cosmonaut’s eyes narrowed, and he took a moment before he spoke. But then he said, “My dear gospodin Sonderman! Our nations do many things. Not only mine, but yours as well—all nations do. We can have a discussion in these terms if you like, you say ‘Afghanistan’ and I say ‘Vietnam’, and you say ‘Czechoslovakia’ and I say ‘Chile’, and both of us then feel quite proud to have done our patriotic duty. Is that what you wish?”

  “What I wish is a little less crap, okay? I want to know what you’re telling us. Are you saying your boys don’t have anything that could bust Rainy’s spacecraft?”

  “I said we had not done it,” the Russian corrected, scowling. “And that is so!” Then his mood lightened. “If we did, do you think I could refrain from boasting of it to you? Or at least letting you worry, a little? No. We talk of other things, such as that mob scene we have just experienced downstairs. Is it your opinion, gospodin Tib, that there is a r
eal danger of us all plunging into the ocean?”

  “Not a bit of it. Or not because of the planet Jupiter, anyway,” Tib amended. “But the point is that many people seem to believe in this, this astrology. I don’t like to see science mixed up with it!”

  The cosmonaut pursed his lips. “Another drink?” he asked. “Perhaps some music?” He gestured toward an instrument shaped like a lute; without waiting for a response he picked it up and strummed a sad chord. “Do you know your Ed Mitchell?” he asked abruptly.

  “The astronaut? Yes. He is into some sort of psychic investigation now, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. He is a very sympathetic man. Very serious-minded. And I—I am not so sure. You see, my friends, I came very close to dying not long ago, and it caused me to think deeply. Astrology? No. I have no interest in astrology. But there are some questions for which I find no scientific solution, you see.” He struck another chord. “It is very Russian,” he apologized, grinning. “But Edgar Mitchell is not Russian, so perhaps it is not only Russians who think these things.”

  He got up to fix fresh drinks, putting the balalaika aside. Rainy, leaning against the edge of the hotel bed, felt moved toward the Russian, and not unmoved toward the man beside her. She could feel the warmth in her cheeks and knew that, if she stood up, sh’fe would experience the effects of the brandy; but meanwhile it was very pleasant in this room. And when there was a knock on the door she resented it.

  “Is only my room-mate,” Mihailovitch explained. But when he opened it it was Senator Pedigrue’s kid brother, looking uncomfortable. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said, staring past the cosmonaut at the couple on the floor. “Your friend told me I might find Dr. Sonderman and Miz Keating here. “