Algis Budrys - Michaelmas

A cabin attendant said nasally over the PA: “We shall be at the UNAC deplaning area shortly. Please retain your seats until we have come to a complete stop.”

Michaelmas unclenched his hands, opened his seatbelt, rose, and moved deftly down the aisle. He passed between Campion and Clementine, and dropped lightly into the forward seat beside Harry Beloit. “I’ll just want a word with Getulio before we get into all the bustle at the terminal,” he said. “That’ll be possible, won’t it?” he smiled engagingly.

Beloit returned the smile. “No problem.” He understood. Whatever Michaelmas might say to Getulio at this point was irrelevant. The famous newsman simply needed a reason to be with Frontiere at the deplaning since Norwood would also be kept in close proximity, and therefore all three of them would be on camera together at the arrival gate. That would include Campion’s camera. There was such a thing as giving ground in a statesmanly manner while the plane was in the air and Campion had first call on the astronaut’s time. There was another thing entirely in being upstaged before the world.

Beloit smiled again, fondly. Even the greatest were as transparent as children, and he clearly loved them for it.

Michaelmas’s head cocked and turned as he peered through the windows at the approaching terminal buildings; he felt the reassuring rumble of the wheels on concrete, and his eyes sparkled.

“How much Don’t Touch are we going to need?” Domino was saying to him.

“Just enough to twitch a muscle,” Michaelmas replied. “On request or on the word crowded. ”

“ Crowded . Good enough,” Domino said. “Are you sure you don’t want to go heavier than that?”

Every so often, the idly curious person or the compulsive gadget-tryer wandered over to where the terminal might be lying, and began poking at it. A measured amount of this was all to the good, but it was not something to be encouraged. There were also occasional times when the prying was a little more purposeful, although of course one did not lightly ascribe base motives to one’s fellow news practitioners. And conceivably there might be a time when the sternest measures were required.

The terminal operated on six volts DC, but it incorporated an oscillator circuit that leaked into the metal case when required to do so. It was possible to deliver a harmless little thrum, followed by Michaelmas’s solicitous apology for the slight malfunction. It was also possible to throw someone, convulsive and then comatose, to the floor. In such cases, more profuse reaction from Michaelmas and a soonest-possible battery replacement were required.

“It will do.”

“But if you’re going to topple Norwood on camera, you’ll want the effect to be dramatic. You’ll want to make sure the world can readily decide he isn’t really one hundred percent sound.”

“We are not here to trick the world into an injustice,” Michaelmas said, “nor to excessively distress a sincere man. Please do as I say, when said.”

“At times you’re difficult to understand.”

“Well, there’s good and bad in that.” Michaelmas’s gaze had returned to Harry Beloit. He smiled at Harry fondly.

Michaelmas and Frontiere stood watching the approach of the umbilical corridor from the gate. “Is it going well?” Michaelmas asked politely.

Frontiere glanced aside at Norwood, who was chatting casually with some of the UNAC people while Luis worked his camera, and then at Campion, who was close behind Luis’s shoulder. “Oh, yes, fine,” he said.

Michaelmas smiled faintly. “My sympathies. May I ride to Star Control in the same vehicle with you and Norwood?”

“Certainly. We are all going in an autobus in any case; we are very proud of the latest Mercedes, which incorporates a large number of our accumulator patents. Accordingly, we have a great many of the vehicles here, and use them at every opportunity, including the photographable ones.” Frontiere’s thinned lips twisted at the corners. “It was my suggestion. I work indefatigably on my client’s behalf.” He glanced at Campion again. “Perhaps a little too much sometimes.”

Michaelmas clapped him on the shoulder. “Be at your ease, Getulio. You are an honest man, and therefore invulnerable.”

“Please do not speak in jest, my friend. There is a faint smell here, and I am trying to convince myself none of it comes from me.”

“Ah, well, things often right themselves if a man only has patience.” Michaelmas caught Clementine’s eye as she stood back beyond Campion and Luis. She had been watching Campion steer Luis’s elbow. Michaelmas smiled at her, and she shook her head ruefully at him. He winked, and turned back to Frontiere. “Have you heard from Ossip? How are the verification tests on the sender?”

Frontiere shrugged. “I have not heard. He was only about an hour ahead of us in bringing it here. The laboratory will be proceeding carefully.”

Norwood’s voice rose a little. He was making planar patterns in the air, his hands flattened, and completing a humorous anecdote from his test-flying days. His eyes sparkled, and his head was thrown back youthfully. You’d trust your life’s savings to him. “Very carefully,” Frontiere said at Michaelmas’s shoulder, “if they hope to contradict him convincingly.”

“Cheer up, Getulio,” Michaelmas said. “The workmanship only looks Russian. In fact, it comes from a small Madagascan supplier of Ukrainian descent whose total output is pledged to the Laccadive Antiseparist Crusade. Or in fact the false voice transmissions did not come from Kosmgorod. No, by coincidence they emanated from an eight-armed amateur radio hobbyist just arriving from Betelgeuse in its spacetime capsule. It has no interest in this century or the next, and is enroute to setting up as god in pre-Columbian Peru.”

“Right,” Domino said.

The umbilical arrived at the aircraft hatch and looked on. A cabin attendant pushed open the door. Michaelmas took a deep, surreptitious breath. The little interlude between taxi-ing to the pad and the arrival of the corridor had ended. Frontiere shook his head at Michaelmas. “Come along, Laurent,” he said. “I wish I had your North American capacity for humour.” They moved into the diffused pale lighting and the cold air.

Waiting for them was the expected thicket of people who really had no business being there, as well as those with credentials or equally plausible excuses. They were being held back behind yielding personnel barriers, and up to now they had stood in more or less good order, rubbing expensively-clad shoulders discreetly, each conscious of dignity and place, each chatting urbanely with the next.

But when the debarking corridor doors opened, they forgot. They became fixated on the slim man with the boy face, and there was nothing tailoring or other forms of sophistication could do about that.

Norwood. It was, indeed, Norwood. Ah.

They moved forward, and where the barriers stopped them, they unhooked them automatically, without looking, staring straight ahead.

“On your diagonal right,” Domino said, and Michaelmas broke off staring at the welcomers and looked. A tall, cadaverous young man in an Alexandria-tailored yellow suit was coming through the second of the automatic clamshell doors into the area. His large, round brown eyes were sparkling. He strode boldly, and he had his thumbs hooked into the slash pockets of his weskit. “Cikoumas.”

“Bust him,” Michaelmas said.

The doors nipped the hurrying young man’s heel. He cried out and pitched forward, arms flailing. His attempt to get at least one elbow down did not succeed; his nose struck heavily into the stiff pile of the carpeting. He struggled facedown, cursing, one foot held high between the doors, but only a security guard moved towards him with offers of assistance and promises of infirmary. He was, after all, at the back of the crowd.