Algis Budrys: Michaelmas

“You buy this story?” Watson asked now, doing it again. Michaelmas nodded. He understood that all Watson thought he was doing was passing the time. “I don’t think Reuters blows very many,” he said.

“Me too, I guess. You have time to pick up any crowd reaction?”

“Some. It’s all hopeful.” And now, trading back for the relay of the AP bulletin, Michaelmas said : “Did you pick up the Gately comment?” When Watson shook his head, Michaelmas smiled mischievously and held up his machine. He switched on a component that imitated the sound of spinning tape reels. “I—ah—collected it from CBS in my cab. It’s public domain anyway. Here it is,” he said as the pilot lights went through an off-on sequence and then held steady as he pressed the switch again.

Will Gately was United States Assistant Secretary of Defence for Astronautics, and a former astronaut. Always lobbying for his own emotions, he was the perfect man for a job the administration had tacitly committed to ineptitude. “The wave of public jubilation at this unconfirmed report,” his voice said, “may be premature. It may be dampened tomorrow by the cold light of disappointment. But tonight, at least, America goes to bed exhilarated. Tonight, America remembers its own.”

Watson’s belly shook. “And tomorrow Russia reminds the world about the denationalization clause in the UN astronautics treaty. Jesus, I believe Kerosene Willy may revive the Space Race yet.”

Michaelmas smiled as if Gately’s faux pas hadn’t foreclosed Major Papashvilly’s chances of immediate promotion. Especially now, the USSR couldn’t risk raising the world’s eyebrows by making their man Norwood’s equal in rank. By that much, Gately and the Soviet espousal of fervent gentlemanliness in pursuit of the Balanced Peace might have conspired to put the spritely little Georgian in more certain danger.

Campion said, startlingly after his silence, “The good doctor sure knows how to use his prime time.” Michaelmas cocked his head towards him. Campion was right. But he was also making himself too knowledgeable for a man who’d never met Limberg. “Three-thirty a.m. local time on September twenty-nine when he got that Reuters man out of bed.” Campion was documenting his point. “Hit the good old USA right in the breadbasket”, meaning the ten p.m. news on September 28.

It occurred to Michaelmas that Campion realized Limberg had moved as if to play directly to the Gately-types. But Watson was missing that because Campion had made himself annoying.

“What I’m thinking,” Watson had said right on top of Campion’s final consonant, “is we’re going to hit Berne about seven-thirty a.m. local. Limberg’s still up in that sanatorium with the UNAC people and Norwood, and the conversation’s flying. Then you figure that old man will go without his beauty sleep? I don’t. It’s going to be maybe noon local before we stand any chance of talking to that crafty son of a bitch, and that’s six hours past my bedtime. Meanwhile, all the media in Europe is right now beating the bushes there for colour, background, and maybe even the crash site. Which means that the minute we touch ground, we’ve got to scurry our own feet like crazy just to find out how far behind we are.”

“Don’t their European people have some staff on the ground there now?” Michaelmas asked gently, nodding towards the network decal on Watson’s comm unit while Campion sat up a little, smiling.

“Oh, sure,” Watson pressed on, “but you know how stringers are. They’ll be tryin' to sell me postcard views of the mountains with Xs inked on 'em where the capsule may have come down except it’s got months of snow on it. And meanwhile, will UNAC give us anything to work on? They need their sleep too, and, besides, they won’t peep till Limberg’s explained it all, and talked about his prizes he was fortunate enough to scoff up although he’s of course above money and, mundane gewgaws and stuff like that. Norwood stays under wraps, and he sleeps, or else they switch us a fast one and slide him out of there. What do you bet we get a leak he’s been moved to Star Control when all the time they’ve got him in New York, God forbid Houston, or maybe even Tyura Tam. You’d enjoy the Aral climate in the summer, Doug. You’d like the commissars, too—they eat nice fresh press credentials for breakfast over there, Sonny.”

Michaelmas blinked unhappily at Watson, who was concentrating now on the approaching liquor caddy and fishing in his breast pocket for money. He felt terribly sorry Watson felt obliged to hire Campion for an assistant when he was so afraid of him.

“Let me buy you fellows a drink,” Watson was saying. Since he knew Michaelmas’s drinks were on his ticket, and he despised Campion, Horse Watson was trying to buy his way into the company of men. Michaelmas could feel himself beginning to blush. He breathed quickly in an attempt to fight it down.

“Maybe I’d better take a rain check,” Campion said quickly. “Going by your summation, Mel, I’d be better off with forty winks.” He turned off his comm unit, leaned back with his arms folded across his chest, and closed his eyes.

“I’d be glad of another one of these, miss,” Michaelmas said to the stewardess, holding up his half-full glass. “You make them excellently.”

Watson got a bourbon and water. He took off the top half with one gulping swallow and then nursed the rest in his clenched hand. He sat brooding at his stiffly out-thrust shoes. After a while, he said forcefully: “Been around a long time, Larry, the two of us.”

Michaelmas nodded. He chuckled. “Every time something happens in South America, I think about the time you almost led the Junta charge across the plaza at Maracaibo.”

Watson smiled crookedly. “Man, we were right on top of it that day, weren’t we? You with that black box flapping in the breeze and me with my bare hands. Filed the damn story by cable, for Christ’s sake, like some birthday greeting or something. And told 'em if they were going to send any more people down, they’d better wrap some armour around the units, 'cause the first slug they stopped was the last.” He put his hand on the sealed, tamper-proof unit he might be said to have pioneered at the cost of his own flesh.

He took a very small sip of his drink. Watson was not drunk, and he was not a drunk, but he didn’t smoke or use sticks, and he had nothing to do with his hands. Nor could he really stop talking. Most of the plane passengers were people with early-morning business—couriers with certificates or portable valuta; engineers; craftsmen with specialties too delicate to be confidently executed by tele-waldo; good, honest, self-sufficient specialists comforted by salaries that justified personal travel at ungodly hours— and they lay wrapped in quilts or tranquil self-esteem, nodding limp-necked in their seats with their reading lights off. Watson looked down the dimness of the aisle.

“The way it is these days lately, I’d damn near have to send off to Albania for my party card and move south. Foment my own wars.”

“You miss it, don’t you?” Michaelmas said in a measured kidding tone of voice.

Watson shook his head. Then he nodded slightly. “I don’t know. Maybe. Remember how it was when we were just starting out — Asia, Africa, Russia, Mississippi? Holy smoke, you’d just get something half put away, and somebody’d start it up again somewhere else. Big movements. Crowds. Lots of smoke and fire.”

“Oh, yes. Big headlines. A lot of exciting footage on the flat-V tube.”

“You know, I think the thing about it was, it was simple stuff. Good guys, bad guys. People who were going to take your country away overnight. People who were going to cancel your pay-cheque. People who were going to come into your school. People who stood around in bunches and waved clubs and yelled, ”The hell you will!“ Man, you know, really, those were the salad days for you and me. Good thing, too; I don’t suppose either one of us had enough experience to do anything but point at the writing on the wall. Neither one of us could miss the broad side of a barn, period. Right? Well, maybe not you, but me. Me, for sure.”