Algis Budrys - Michaelmas

There was a faint pop and Clementine’s voice on the crew channel replaced the network feed. “We’re going to a tight three-quarter right of your head, Laurent,” she said. “I like the light best that way, with a little tilt-up, please, of the chin. Coming up on mark.”

He raised a hand to acknowledge and adopted an expression learned from observing youthful statesmen.

“Mark.”

“Must cut,” Domino’s Voice said suddenly. “Meet you Berne.”

Michaelmas involuntarily stared down at the comm unit, then remembered where he was and restored his expression.

“—ere we go!” Clementine’s voice was back in.

The curtains were opening. Getulio Frontiere was standing there at a lighted podium. A table with three empty forward-facing chairs was sited behind him, under the proscenium arch.

Frontiere introduced himself and said:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, on behalf of the Astronautics Commission of the United Nations of the World, and as guests with you here of Dr. Nils Hannes Limberg, we bid you welcome.” As always, the smile dawning on the Borgia face might have convinced anyone that everything was easily explained and had always been under control.

“I would now like to present to you Mr Ossip Sakal, Eastern Administrative Director for the UNAC. He will make a brief opening statement and will be followed to the podium by Dr. Limberg. Dr. Limberg will speak, again briefly, and then he will present to you Colonel Norwood. A question-and-answer period—”

A rising volume of wordless pandemonium took the play away from him, compounded of indrawn breaths, hands slapping down on chair arms, bodies shifting forward, shoes scraping.

Michaelmas’s neighbour—a nattily dressed Oriental from New China Service—said: “That’s it, then. UNAC has officially granted that it’s all as announced.”

Michaelmas nodded absently. He found himself with nothing more in his hands than a limited comm unit on automatic, most of its bulk taken up by nearly infinite layers of meticulously microcrafted dead circuitry, and by odd little Rube Goldberg things that flickered lights and made noises to impress the impressionable.

Frontiere had waited out the commotion, leaning easily against the podium. Now he resumed : “— a question-and-answer period will follow Colonel Norwood’s statement. I will moderate. And now, Mr Sakal.”

There was something about the way Sakal stepped forward. Michaelmas stayed still in his seat. Oz the Bird, as press parties and rosy-fingered poker games had revealed him over the years, would show his hole card any time after you’d overpaid for it. But there was a relaxed Oz Sakal and there was a murderously angry Oz Sakal who looked and acted almost precisely like the former. This was the latter.

Michaelmas took a look around. The remainder of the press corps was simply sitting here waiting for the customary sort of opening remark to be poured over the world’s head. But then perhaps they had never seen the Bird with a successfully drawn straight losing to a flush.

Michaelmas keyed the Transmit button of his comm unit once, to let Clementine know he was about to feed. Then he locked it down, faced into the nearest reflector, and smiled. “Ladies and gentlemen, good day,” he said warmly. “Laurent Michaelmas here. The man who is about to speak” — this lily I am about to paint—“has a well-established reputation for quickness of mind, responsible decisions, and an unfailing devotion to UNAC’s best interests.” As well as a tendency to snap drink stirrers whenever he feels himself losing control of the betting.

With his peripheral vision, Michaelmas had been watching Sakal stand mute while most of the people in the room did essentially what Michaelmas was doing. When Sakal put his hands on the podium, Michaelmas said: “Here is Mr Sakal.” He unlocked.

“How do you do.” Sakal looked straight out into the pool camera. He was a wiry man with huge cheekbones and thick black hair combed straight back from the peak of his scalp. There was skilfully applied matte make-up on his forehead. “On behalf of the Astronautics Commission of the United Nations of the World, I am here to express our admiration and delight.” Michaelmas found it noteworthy that Sakal continued to address himself only to the world beyond the blandest camera.

“The miracle of Colonel Norwood’s return is one for which we had very much given up hope. To have him with us again is also a personal joy to those of us who have long esteemed his friendship. Walter Norwood, as one might expect of any space-faring individual, is a remarkable person. We who are privileged to work for peaceful expansion of mankind in space are also privileged by many friendships with such individuals from many nations. To have one of them return whom we had thought lost is to find our hearts swelling with great emotion.”

He was off and winging now. Whatever Frontiere had written and drilled into him was now nothing more than an outline for spontaneous creative rhetoric. That was all right, too, so far, because Frontiere in turn had based the words on guidelines first articulated to him by Sakal. But so much for the skills of prose communication.

Sakal was looking earnestly into the camera, his hands gripping the sides of the podium. “The number of Man’s space pioneers has not today been made one more. We have all been made greater—you and I as well as those whose training and experience are directed at actually piloting our craft in their journeys upon this mighty frontier.”

Michaelmas kept still. It wasn’t easy. For a moment, it had seemed that Sakal’s private fondness for John Kennedy would lead him into speaking of this new ocean . His natural caution had diverted him away from that, but only into a near stumble over New Frontier , an even more widely known Kennedyism. Sakal wasn’t merely enraged; he was rattled, and that was something Michaelmas had never seen before.

“We look forward to working with Colonel Norwood again,” Sakal said. “There are many projects on the schedule of the UNAC which require the rare qualities of someone like himself. Whatever his assignment, Colonel Norwood will perform faithfully in the best traditions of the UNAC and for the good of all mankind.”

Well, he had gone by way of Robin Hood’s barn, but he had finally gotten there. Now to point it out. Michaelmas keyed Transmit and locked.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “we have just heard the news that Colonel Norwood will indeed be returning to operational status with UNAC. His new duties cannot be made definite at this time, but Mr Sakal is obviously anxious to underscore that it will be an assignment of considerable importance.” As well as to let us all know that he is as concerned for his good buddy’s well-being as anyone could be, and as well as to betray that UNAC is suddenly looking back a generation. Damn. Organizations nurtured specialists like Frontiere to dress policy in jackets of bulletproof phrasing, and then the policy-makers succumbed to improvisation on camera because it made them feel more convincing to use their own words.

Speaking of words…

“A position of high responsibility is certainly in order for the colonel if he is fully recovered,” Michaelmas was saying. It was gratifying how automatically the mind and the tongue worked together, first one leading and then the other, the one never more than a millimicrosecond behind the other, which ever was appropriate to the situation. The face, too : the wise older friend, the worldly counsellor. The situation is always important, but neither inexplicable nor cause for gloom. “The vast amount of physical catching-up to do — the months of training and rehearsal that have passed in Colonel Norwood’s absence from UNAC’s programmes — would make it extremely difficult to rejoin any on-going project.” Smooth. As the sentence had flowed forward, he had considered and rejected saying impossible . In fact it probably was barely possible; with a large crew, redundant functions, and modern guidance systems, space-flight was far from the trapeze act it had been in Will Gately’s day. And if I am going to make UNAC work, if I am going to make work all the things of which UNAC is only the currently prominent part, then the last thing I can do is be seen trying to make it work. So I can’t really be any more direct than Sakal was being, can I? Smile inside, wise older friend. They call it irony. It is in fact the way of the world. “It’s possible Mr Sakal is hinting at the directorship of the Outer Planet Applications programme, which will convert into industrial processes the results of the engineering experiments to be brought back by the Outer Planets expedition.” It’s also possible Laurent Michaelmas is throwing UNAC a broad hint on how to kick Norwood upstairs. Perhaps in the hope that while they kick him, his arse will open to disclose gear trains. What then, Dr. Limberg? What now, Laurent Michaelmas? All he had beside him was a magic box full of nothing — a still, clever thing that did not even understand it was a tool, nor could appreciate how skilfully it was employed. “And now, back to Mr Sakal.”