Algis Budrys - Michaelmas

“It seems to me that you do,” Domino said agreeably.

Michaelmas blinked. “Yes, you,” he said. “They can’t know about you. When they picture me, they probably see me in a tall silk hat running back and forth to some massive console. The opera phantom notion. However, it’s always possible—”

“Excuse me, Mr Michaelmas, but UNAC and Dr. Limberg have just announced a press conference at the sanatorium in half an hour. That’ll be ten thirty. I’ve called Madame Gervaise to assemble your crew, and there’s a car waiting.”

“All right.” Michaelmas slung the terminal over his shoulder. “What if Cikoumas out in plain sight is intended to distract me from the character of the woman?”

“Oh?”

“Suppose they already know who I am. Then they must assume I’ve deduced everything. They must assume I’m fully prepared to act against them.” Michaelmas softly closed the white-and-gilt door of the suite and strolled easily down the corridor with its tastefully striped wallpaper, its flowering carpet, and its scent of lilac sachet. He was smiling in his usual likeable manner. “So they set her on me. What else would account for her?” They stopped at the elevator and Michaelmas worked the bellpush.

“Perhaps simply a desire to keep tab on a famous investigative reporter who might sniff out something wrong with their desired story. Perhaps nothing in particular. Perhaps she’s just a country girl, after all. Why not?”

“Are you telling me my thesis won’t hold water?”

“A bathtub will hold water. A canteen normally suffices.”

The elevator arrived. Michaelmas smiled warmly at the operator, took a stand in a corner, and brushed fussily at the lapels of his coat as the car dropped towards the lobby.

“What am I do to?” Michaelmas said in his throat. “What is she?”

“I have a report from our helicopter,” Domino said abruptly. “They are two kilometres behind Watson’s craft. They are approaching the mountainside above Limberg’s sanatorium. Watson’s unit is losing altitude very quickly. They have an engine failure.”

“What kind of terrain is that?” Michaelmas said.

The elevator operator’s head turned. “Bitte sehr?”

Michaelmas shook his head, blushing.

Domino said: “Very rough, with considerable wind gusting. Watson is being blown towards the cliff face. His craft is side-slipping. It may clear. No, one of the vanes has made contact with a spur. The fuselage is swinging. The cabin has struck. The tail rotor has sheared. There’s a heavy impact at the base of the cliff. There is an explosion.”

The elevator bounced delicately to a stop. The doors chucked open. “The main lobby, Herr Mikelmaas.”

Michaelmas said : “Dear God.” He stepped out into the lobby and looked around blankly.

Clementine Gervaise came up briskly. She had changed into a tweed suit and a thin soft blouse with a scarf at the throat. “The crew is driving the equipment to the sanatorium already,” she said. “Your hired car is waiting for us outside.” She cocked her head and looked closely at him. “Laurent, is something amiss?”

He fussed with his carnation. “No. We must hurry, Clementine.” Her eau de cologne reminded him how good it was to breathe of one familiar person when the streets were full of strangers. Her garments whispered as she strode across the lobby carpeting beside him. The majordomo held the door. The chauffeured Citroën was at the foot of the steps. They were in, the door was pressed shut, the car pulled away from the kerb, and they were driving through the city towards the mountain highway. The soft cushions put them close to one another. He sat looking straight ahead, showing little.

“We have to beat the best in the world this morning,” he remarked. “People like Annelise Volkert, Hampton de Courcy, Melvin Watson…”

“She shows no special reaction,” Domino said in his skull. “She’s clean—on that count.”

He closed his eyes for a moment. Then in his throat he said, “That doesn’t prove much,” while she was saying:

“Yes, but I’m sure you will do it.” She put her arm through his. “And I will make you see we are an excellent team.”

Domino told him : “The Soviet cosmonaut command has just covertly shifted Captain Anatoly Rybakov from routine domestic programmes to active standby status on the expeditionary project. He is to immediately begin accelerated training in the simulator at Tyura Tam. That is a Top Urgent instruction on highest secret priority landline from Moscow to the cosmodrome.”

Rybakov. He was getting a little long in the tooth—especially for a captain—and he had never been a prime commander. He was only a third or fourth crew alternate on the UNAC lists and wasn’t even in the Star Control flight cadre. But he was nevertheless the only human being to have crewed both to the Moon and aboard the Kosmgorod orbital station.

“What do you suppose that means?” Michaelmas asked, rubbing his face.

“I haven’t the foggiest, yet.”

“Have you notified UNAC?”

“No. By the way, Papashvilly went out to the Afrique airfield but then back again a few minutes ago. Sakal phoned Star Control with a recall order.”

“Forgive me, Clementine,” Michaelmas said. “I must arrange my thoughts.”

“Of course.” She sat back, well-mannered, chic, attentive. Her arm departed from his with a little petting motion of her hand.

“Stand by for public,” Domino said. He chimed aloud. “Bulletin. UPI Berne September 29. A helicopter crash near this city has claimed the life of famed newsman Melvin Watson. Dead with the internationally respected journalist is the pilot…” His speaker continued to relay the wire service story. In Michaelmas’s ear, he said : “She’s reacting.”

Michaelmas turned his head stiffly towards her. Clementine’s mouth was pursed in dismay. Her eyes developed a sheen of grief. “Oh, quel dommage! Laurent, you must have known him, not so?”

His throat working convulsively, Michaelmas asked Domino for data on her.

“What you’d expect.” The answer was a little slow. “Pulse up, respiration up. It’s a little difficult to be precise. You’re rather isolated up there right now and I’m having to do a lot of switching to follow your terminal. I’m also getting some echo from all the rock around you; it’s metallic.”

Michaelmas glanced out the window. They were on the highway, skimming closely by a drill-marked and blasted mountain shoulder on one side and an increasingly disquieting drop-off on the other. Veils of snow powder, whisked from the roadside, bannered behind them in the wind of their passage. The city lay below, popping in and out of view as the car followed the serpentine road. Somewhere down there was the better part of Domino’s actual present location, generally except for whatever might be flitting overhead in some chance satellite.

The spoken bulletin came to an end. It had not been very long. Clementine sat forward, her expression anxious. “Laurent?”

“I knew him,” Michaelmas said gently. “I regret you never met him. I have lost a friend.” And I am alone now, among the Campions. “I have lost a friend,” he said again, to apologize to Horse for having patronized him.

She touched his knee. “I am sorry you are so hurt.”

He found himself unable to resist putting his hand over hers for a moment. It was a gesture unused for many years between them, he began to think, and then caught himself. “Thank you, Madame Gervaise,” he said, and each of them withdrew a little, sitting silently in the back of the car.

As they approached the sanatorium gate, they drove past many cars parked beside the highway, tight against the rock. There were people with news equipment walking in the road, and the car had to pull around them. Some shouted; others ignored them. At the gate, there was the usual knot of gesticulants who had failed to produce convincing press credentials.