"So what happened?" he asked.
"Well, they had to hike it back to the road . . . that or stay out there and start Adam and Eve again all over, and Robbie never really had much time for any of that kinda thing."
"What—all through the forest?" Sarah said disbelievingly. "Without any clothes on at all?"
"What else could they do?" Aub demanded. "Like I said, they couldn't stay out there forever. Anyhow, that wasn't the really funny part. When they got to the road, they stumbled on it all of a sudden—there was this kinda wall of bushes and greenery and stuff, and when they went into it and came out the other side, there they were, right out on the road with traffic going past with heads going round inside . . . real crazy." Aub held up a hand to stop Clifford and Sarah's laughter from rising any higher for a second. "And right in front of them were these two ladies—you know the kind, about middle-aged, hair done up in buns, thick tweed skirts, that kinda thing—obviously teachers since they had this bunch of schoolkids all tagging along behind . . ."
"Oh, no!" Sarah shrieked. "I don't believe it."
"Really . . ." Aub grinned and nodded emphatically. "So here's these two good ladies, very staid and proper, taking all these nice kids for a walk out in the country . . ." he started to laugh himself, "and suddenly the bushes open up and out comes Robbie and this girl, both naked as the day they were born and holding hands . . ." Aub paused, giving the picture time to register, then changed his tone abruptly. "What would you have said? You've got five seconds which is all Robbie had."
"Wha . . . I dunno . . ." Clifford shrugged helplessly. "What is there to . . ."
"Time's up," Aub announced. "Know what Robbie said? Talk about quick thinking. . . he said, absolutely seriously and with his face dead calm: 'Excuse me, but have you seen a flying saucer parked around here? We seem to have lost ours.' "
Clifford and Sarah collapsed in hysterics. Aub joined in and added between gaspings for breath: "And Robbie swore they believed it. He said one of them—very concerned—suggested that he ought to contact the Air Force. The other one wanted to know where they came from. Robbie told them: 'Venus, but we always come here for a holiday because it gets too cloudy there.' "
"You're making it up," Clifford said after he had calmed down a little.
"So help me, I am not. There was this other guy there who . . ."
"Before you start another one, have another drink," Clifford interrupted. He picked up the bottle, then frowned as he realized it was empty. "That all we've got?" he asked Sarah.
"We did have a lot more," she told him. "I think you two are getting pretty close to cleaning us out."
"Us?" Clifford pointed at her accusingly. "You haven't been doing too badly either." He placed his hands firmly on the table. "That settles it. Tonight we're going out to celebrate and show Aub the town. Woman—upstairs and make yourself presentable. We'll clear up this mess."
"Never thought I'd see the day," she said. "Okay, why not? We can worry about the expense tomorrow."
Chapter 9
Clifford awoke the next day feeling very sick and very fragile. It was past twelve o'clock and Sarah was already up. He lay immobile for a long time, recollecting disconnected fragments of the hilarious night that had brought him to the painful condition in which he now found himself, wondering how anyone could possibly conceive that what he had been having should be considered a good time, and collecting the will power he would need to do anything else.
At last he half sat up, groaned, collapsed back onto the pillow, tried again, and made it. A little later, after shaving, showering, and dressing, he emerged still semisomnambulant from the bathroom and made his way slowly downstairs to face stoically whatever the new day, what was left of it, had in store for him.
An ashen-faced Aub was sitting woodenly in an armchair when he entered the living-room. Assorted clatterings and tinkling from the kitchen told him that Sarah was at least still capable of purposeful activity. Clifford sank into the armchair opposite Aub and joined his silent contemplation of the meaning of the universe.
"Ma-an . . ." Aub said after a thousand years or so had passed.
Another thousand years dragged by.
Sarah appeared in the doorway bearing a mug of steaming black coffee. "Oh, so the other half of the dynamic duo finally made it," she said, looking at Clifford and pressing the mug into Aub's motionless hand. "I was just going to call the undertakers in for an estimate. Then I thought that perhaps I could make something by selling you for medical research. I know just the people who'd be interested."
"Don't scream."
"I'm not. I'm just talking."
"Then don't talk. Whisper. Buzz saws don't make noise like that."
"Like some coffee?"
"Mmm, yeah . . . please."
Sarah left the room and resumed riveting a boiler in the kitchen. Aub returned at last to the confines of his physical body and brought his eyes to focus on the mug clasped in his hand. He studied it curiously for a while as if aware of its existence for the first time, then raised it to his lips and sipped the contents gratefully.
"Some night," he pronounced finally.
"Some night," Clifford agreed.
Another silent communion ensued.
Eventually Aub frowned. "What was it we were celebrating?"
Clifford's brow contorted with the effort of concentration.
"Can't remember . . . wait a minute . . . we quit our jobs. That was it—we're both out of work and we're both out of cash. That's what we were celebrating."
Aub nodded slowly, his inner suspicions evidently having been confirmed.
"That's what I thought. You know something . . . when you really get to figuring it out, there's another side to it." Aub delivered the ultimate secret that had been revealed to him during his meditations: "It really ain't all that funny."
Sarah came in again, handed Clifford his mug and settled herself down in the swivel chair with her own. She peered over the rim of her cup as she drank and shifted her eyes from one specimen of virile masculinity in its prime to the other.
"Let's sing songs," she suggested. Clifford growled something obscene. "Brad doesn't want to sing songs. Something tells me that my man isn't his usual exuberant self today. I wonder if Avis hires out temporary replacements."
"If they do, don't forget to give them our number," Clifford said. "I might apply for a job."
"Pig."
"A job's only part of the problem," Aub said. "At least you've got a place. I'm not even sure where I'm going next yet."
Sarah swung the chair round to face Aub. She looked surprised.
"You're not going anywhere. You've got the spare room for as long as you want it. As far as we're concerned, this is just as much your place now. I thought that was obvious."
Aub smiled with a rare show of awkwardness. "Well, if that's okay . . ."
"Sure," Clifford confirmed. "Feel at home for as long as you want. It hadn't occurred to me to think anything else."
"Man, that's just great." Aub relaxed visibly, but he still seemed vaguely unhappy about something. "But hey, you know . . . I couldn't take you up on that without paying in my share, especially now that you've got problems too. . . ."
Clifford held up a hand. "It's okay, Aub. What you're really saying is you need a job—then there'd be no problem. Right?"
"Well . . . guess so."
"Maybe we can fix that. There's this place just outside of town that happens to have some vacancies right now. It's long hours and . . ."
"Brad," Sarah broke in. "You're not serious about that place, are you? I mean . . ." She looked from Clifford to Aub, then back again. "You're good scientists, both of you. You couldn't just forget about everything. That wouldn't be right, and besides, you'd never stick it out for more than a week."
"It'd only be for a while," Clifford insisted. "Just till we've had a chance to look around. Maybe we'll move away from here if something better shows up somewhere else. Maybe we'll even quit the cou
ntry."
Sarah shook her head. Though she had previously encouraged Brad to take a temporary job to tide them over, she now realized that was the means to no end. "I think you'd do better starting the way you mean to go on," she declared. "Even if doing so takes a little while longer. Surely with your knowledge and academic record you can find something suitable without too much trouble."
Clifford sighed and scratched the back of his neck, as if deliberating how to phrase a delicate point without giving offense. "Look, dearest heart," he said. "You're a great gal and all that, but sometimes you have this tendency to forget things, you know. Aub and I are both what you might call persona non grata. As far as scientific appointments go from now on, we have had it; we've been blacklisted . . . out . . . kaput . . . finished. Remember?"
"Of government-controlled positions, yes," she persisted. "But the government doesn't own the whole of science, or the whole of the country, for that matter . . . yet. Try somewhere outside their sphere of influence."
"Like . . . ?"
"Well—what's wrong with ISF? I'm not an expert on these things, but they are involved in lots of the kind of work you're interested in, aren't they? How about them?"
"ISF!" Aub laughed out loud. "Excuse me—I don't mean to be rude. But do you have any idea how many scientists—top scientists—are waiting for a chance to get in with that outfit? It was the first place everybody scrambled for when things started tightening up. There's a waiting list years long and they're very selective. Guys with strings of letters a mile long are queuing up to get in, right, Brad?"
"It's like a free-handout day at Fort Knox," Clifford said.
"But you're already well in with ISF," Sarah pointed out. "Couldn't you try talking to that Professor Zimmermann? He was obviously more than impressed by the work that you did. Surely it's worth a try. Even if you get nowhere, you'd be no worse off than if you hadn't tried it."
"Zimmermann!"
Aub looked at Clifford. Each seemed to ask the other with his eyes why they hadn't thought of it before. Then Clifford sank back and began rubbing his chin.
"I'm not so sure," he finally said. "Zimmermann has to be involved in all the business that's been going on at ACRE and everywhere else. His buddies down here will have fixed it. I don't think we'd have a snowball in hell's chance. What d'you reckon?"
Aub rested his elbows on his knees and chewed his lower lip while he appeared to turn the question over intently in his mind. "I think you might be wrong there," he answered. "You've got to hand it to Sarah—she's a genius. Thinking about it now, I'm not convinced that Zimmermann was all that involved. All he did was respond positively to the information that you sent him. As he saw it, the paper had come from ACRE, and so that was where he sent his response. He contacted the senior management there because it seemed the natural thing to do. He would have assumed that you would automatically be involved in whatever happened after that." Aub looked up. "You know what, it wouldn't surprise me if Zimmermann doesn't know a thing about what's been going on down here. I vote we give Sarah's suggestion a try. Like she says, if he tells us to get lost, we're no worse off."
Clifford was already persuaded.
"Okay," he agreed. "So how do we get in touch?" Aub shrugged and inclined his head in the direction of the Infonet terminal.
"We call him."
"But it's not that simple. From a domestic terminal you can only get extraterrestrial access through privileged codes. I don't know the sequences."
"I think I do," Aub informed him. "I went through a phase of being a network freak once, you know . . . figuring out how to crack the system just for kicks. I got some data out of one of the lunar nodes a couple of times. I reckon I could do it again to get us a com channel. I don't mind—the call will only trace back to your number if it gets intercepted."
"Thanks a lot." Clifford looked at Sarah, speechless.
"Don't mention it," Aub returned cheerfully. "Who's going to do the talking? I guess you should. At least he knows your name; I wouldn't imagine he's even heard of me. So, what d'you say?"
"All right. But at this point I can't even think straight, let alone talk sense. How about rustling up some breakfast? Then we'll give it a try."
"See," Sarah said, pointedly. "You do need me."
"I know I do. Who else would fix breakfast?"
"You'll be sorry when I've found my millionaire and gone," she said, rising from her chair and moving toward the door.
"Aw, you wouldn't know what to do with one. They're all fat, bald, and fifty. Fix the food."
* * *
An hour later the three of them huddled around the Infonet terminal. Clifford and Sarah watched in fascinated silence while Aub played the keys swiftly and surely, pausing from time to time to study the codes that appeared intermittently on the screen. Three attempts had aborted so far, but Aub seemed to be just warming up.
"Aha! We're into the ET trunk beam," Aub finally announced. "From here on it oughta be smooth sailing. They must have altered the timeout settings. That's what screwed it last time."
"How much do these calls cost?" Sarah asked.
Aub chuckled and continued working. "To you, not a cent. The call's routed via the message-switch complex at Berkeley. I got into there on a straight domestic call and rigged it to copy into the outgoing queue buffer. It's easier to get through to ET from there because I know the access procedures. It'll be logged as originating locally, so Berkeley pays the charge. You just collect the domestic tab to California."
Clifford started to say something but the screen suddenly cleared and caused him to stop. A short header message appeared up near the top of the display.
"I think we're through," Aub informed them. "Over to you, Brad." He moved the terminal round on its jointed supporting arm so that the screen faced Clifford. After a few seconds it came to life to reveal a man's face.
"This is ISF at Joliot-Curie, Luna. Hello."
"I'd like to speak to Professor Zimmermann, please."
"Can I say who is calling?"
"Clifford. Dr. Bradley Clifford."
"Of what organization, Dr. Clifford?"
"It's a private call."
"Private." The man's eyebrows raised slightly. Either he was suitably impressed or he was suspicious. "One moment please." The screen blanked out for what seemed an eternity. Then the man reappeared. His face gave away nothing. "I'm sorry, Dr. Clifford, but Professor Zimmermann is unavailable at the moment. Can I pass on a message or get him to call back?"
Clifford's heart sank. It was a brush-off—polite, but a brush-off. He exhaled in one, long, hopeless breath all the tension that had built up inside him during the last few minutes.
"Okay, ask him to call," he said dejectedly. "You'll have the callback code logged." With that he cut off the screen.
Clifford got up, swore, and pounded the back of an armchair with his fist. "The bastards!" he grated, his breath coming heavily. "They've got everything taped up. I knew it . . . I knew it all along." The other two remained staring at the lifeless screen.
"Well, we did say we'd be no worse off," Sarah reminded him after a while. She tried to sound soothing but could not hide the disappointment in her voice. "At least it was worth a try."
"One hell of a letdown all the same." Even Aub sounded bitter.
"He might call . . ." Sarah said, but the words trailed away.
"And pigs might swim the Pacific." Clifford paced over to the far side of the room. "The bastards!"
Sarah and Aub remained silent. There was nothing more to say.
They finished off another pot of coffee and began discussing without very much enthusiasm plans for the future. Clifford thought of teaching somewhere in South America; Aub had always wanted to spend some time in the Antarctic. Sarah again changed her mind about the local vacancies and thought that taking them wouldn't be too bad as a short-term measure after all. By late afternoon they had all cheered up somewhat and were swapping stories of days gone by.
&nbs
p; Then the Infonet chime sounded.
Clifford still retained a secret shred of hope deep inside, which he would not admit to the others and which he only partly admitted to himself. His inner psychological defenses were shielded from the possibility of further disappointment by refusing to allow him to acknowledge that he really expected anything to happen at all. He had resolved inwardly, therefore, that in the event of any incoming calls, he would react without any display of emotion or excitement. In that way, anything he felt as a consequence would at least be private. Even so, before he realized it, he found that he was the first to reach the screen, his hand shooting out instinctively toward the Accept key.
Sarah and Aub were close behind.
A dignified countenance, topped by a crown of elegant silver hair, looked out at him.
"Dr. Clifford?"
"Yes."
"Ah, good. It is a pleasure to see you at last. I am Heinrich Zimmermann. I do apologize for not being available earlier; we were right in the middle of some extremely critical observations. May I congratulate you on your astonishing contribution to science. I was fascinated to read your paper, and delighted that you should think to bring it to my attention.
"Now, Dr. Clifford, what can I do for you?"
Chapter 10
The meeting in the Main Conference Room at ACRE had been in session for over two hours. About two dozen people were present, seated around the long rectangular table that stood in the center. Representatives from the Technical Coordination Bureau and some officials from various other federal departments were arrayed along one side of the table, facing a row of scientific personnel, many of them from ACRE itself, lined up on the other. Sitting at one end, Jarrit, flanked by Edwards and Corrigan, was presiding over the meeting. The atmosphere was tense and humorless. Dr. Dennis Senchino, a nuclear physicist from Brookhaven, was remonstrating from a place roughly in the center of the scientific side.
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