Algis Budrys - Michaelmas

“I’m very glad to see you all,” Norwood said softly into the cameras, his hair an aureole of backlighting. He raised his chin a little, and his facial lines were bathed out by a spot mounted out of sight somewhere in the podium box itself. “I want to thank Dr. Limberg and his staff.” He was like an angel. Michaelmas’s, hackles were rising. “And now I’m ready to sit down and take questions.” He smiled, waved his hand again, and stepped back.

The lighting changed; now the podium was played down, and the table was illuminated. Sakal and Limberg were standing. Frontiere was coming out of the wings. Norwood reached his chair. The press corps leaned forward, some with hands rising and mouths opening to call attention to their questions, and as they leaned some lackey somewhere began to applaud. Caught on the lean, it was easy to stand. Standing, it was easy to applaud. Scores of palms resounded, and the walls quivered. Limberg as well as Norwood smiled and nodded modestly.

Michaelmas fidgeted. He closed his fists. Where was the statement explaining exactly what had happened? Where was the UNAC physicist with his charts and pointer, his vocabulary full of coriolis effect and telemetry nulls, his animation holograms of how a radar horizon swallows a man-carrying capsule? If no one else was going to do it, Norwood should have.

It wasn’t going to happen. In another moment, a hundred and a half people, each with an individual idea of what needed asking, were going to begin competing for short answers to breathless questions. The man whose media radiated its signal from an overhead satellite to a clientele of bangled cattlemen in wattle huts had concerns not shared by the correspondent for Dow Jones. The people from Science News Service hardly listened to whatever response was drawn by the representative of Elle. And there was only a circumscribed area of time to work in. The bathing beauty was out there somewhere, jostling Fefre and chiliasm for space on the channels, jockeying her anomalously presented hips.

It was all over. They were not here to obtain information after all. They were here to sanctify the occasion, and when they were done the world would think it knew the truth and was free.

Frontiere was at the podium. This sort of thing was his handiwork. He moved effortlessly, a man who had danced this sort of minuet once or twice before. UNAC’s man, but doing the job Limberg wanted done.

And thus Sakal’s impotent rage. Somehow the Bird was over the grand old man’s barrel.

“The questions?” Frontiere was saying to the press corps. My hat is off to you, you son of a bitch, Michaelmas was saying, and yes, indeed, we will talk afterwards, friend to friend. I am senior in prestige here; it is incumbent on me to frame the first question. To set the tone, so to speak. I raise my hand. Getulio smiles towards me. “Yes, Mr Michaelmas?”

“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 destination? 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 Norwood. “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.

The sorry business wound itself down towards eleven-thirty. For his audience, Michaelmas ran off a few closing comments 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 Norwood. 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, stepping 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 monarch. 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.”