Frederik Pohl - The Cool War

Then oil came, and those extemporized lines became intensely important. A quarter of an inch this way or that on a map meant a billion dollars in revenues.

Then the Israelis came, with their shaped nuclear charges. And no one cared any more.

The cities that had bloomed overnight into Chicagos and Parises became ghost towns. Abadan and Dubai, Kuwait and Basra began to dry up again. The shiny western buildings with their plate-glass walls and ever-running air-conditioners stood empty and began to die. The traditional Moslem architecture, thick-walled, pierced with ventilating slits, survived. And the migrants from all over the Arab world began to move home. Or move on. What was left was a hodge-podge of tribes and nationalities; and then the westerners began to move in, the hippies and the wanderers, the turned-off and the dissatisfied, the adventurous and the stoned. The American colonies had been built out of just such migrants two centuries before. A1 Halwani was the Philadelphia or the Boston of the new frontier, crude, unrulyj polyglot—and promising.

In order to get to the sand-colored headquarters of A1 Halwani Hydro Fuels, Ltd., Leota and Hake had to walk along the esplanade, with the narrow beach to one side and, beyond it, the indigo bay and the stately Sword of Islam at anchor a quarter of a mile out. Leota did not look up. Hake studied the yacht carefully. Although it was a three-masted schooner,. with gay flags in the rigging, he knew that inside the narrow hull were engines and enough technology to exempt it from any problems of wind or currents. He could see the big globe of hydrogen fuel. He could also see figures moving about on its decks, but there was no way of telling which was who. Whether they could see him was a whole other question. He did not really think they could, or not well enough to identify either him or Leota under the headdresses. But he was glad enough to push through the revolving door and enter the Hydro Fuels waiting room.

The employment office was almost empty, and the elderly woman at the desk handed them applications. They sat down at a plastic writing desk and began to fill them out.

The questions on the forms were in four languages, and fortunately for Leota English was one of them. Hake took pride in filling his own in Arabic, drawing the flowing curlicues as neatly as the lettering on an engineering sketch. There were not very many questions. Hake copied the details of his fictitious biography out of the Xeroxed resume Jessie Tunman had made for him—how long ago was that? Only four days ? And then the intercom on the receptionist’s desk rattled. “Send them in, Sabika,” said somebody’s voice, and they got up to be interviewed.

The personnel director was male, young and one-legged, and the nameplate on his desk said Robling. He hopped around to get them seated, grinned at them as he propped his crutch on the edge of his desk, and studied the forms. “Nice to see a couple of Americans here, Bill,” he said, “but what are you doing in those getups?”

“We, uh, converted,” Horny Hake said, after realizing that “Bill” referred to the name on his papers. “We’re not real religious, though,” he added.

“None of my business,” Robling said cheerfully. “All I do is match people to jobs, and looks like you’ve got some good experience. Not too many people show up here with a hydrogen-cracking background.”

“Uh-huh,” Hake said, and recited the invented information on the documents. “That was in Iceland, three years ago. It’s geothermal there, but I suppose it’s pretty much like solar.”

“Close enough. We have a lot of turnover here, of course. People come in, work a while, build up a stake. Then they take life easy for a while. But something ought to open up for you. Maybe in two, three weeks—”

“No sooner than that? I really need a job now,” Hake said.

“Like that? Well—there’s no job right this minute, but if you’re short of money maybe I could help out.”

“It’s not the money. It’s just that—” It’s just that I have to start work on your project so I can wreck it for the Team; but Hake couldn’t say that. “It’s just that I want to get to work.”

The personnel director’s eyebrows went up; evidently that was not a common attitude among the drifters. “Well, that’s a good trait, anyway up to a point. But the only vacancies we have at the moment are pushing a broom.”

“I’ll push a broom.”

“No, no I You’re overqualified. You wouldn’t be happy, and then when something did open up it’d make trouble to jump you over the others. Still—” Struck by a thought, the man picked up Leota’s questionnaire. He scanned it and nodded. “We could put your lady on the payroll for that. She’s not overqualified.” He glanced at the form again and snapped his fingers. “Penn,” he said. “Yeah. Did you look at the bulletin board outside? Because I think there’s a message for you.”

“Who from?” Hake asked, off balance.

“Well, I don’t know. We get all kinds of drif— all kinds of transients coming through here, and people leave messages. Only reason I noticed yours is that it’s kind of a famous name. William Penn, I mean.” He was nice enough not to smile. “So what do you say?”

Hake opened his mouth, but Leota was ahead of him. “I’ll take it.”

“Right. Uh, you said you weren’t real religious, but does that mean you can take the veil off? Because we’ll need a picture of you for the ID.”

“That’ll be fine,” Leota said, loosening the headdress. “Do you want to take it in here? All right. Honey? Why don’t you check the message board and wait for me outside?”

There was no one in the waiting room but the receptionist and a skinny old Yemeni, with crossed (but empty) cartridge belts across his blouse, absorbed in an Arabic-language crossword puzzle. Hake moved toward the pinboard behind the receptionist’s desk and scanned the tacked-up messages. “Milt and Terri, Judy and Art were here and are heading for Goa.” “Patty from South Nor-walk, call your mother.” The one that was meant for him was a small envelope with the name “William E. Penn” neatly typed on the outside. Inside, it said:

You are invited for cocktails aboard the Sword of Islam. The boatman will furnish you transportation as soon as you get this.

Hake folded the note back into its envelope, thinking grim thoughts. Whatever else might happen, he was not letting Leota back on that yacht.

He turned as the door to the personnel office opened, and there was Leota, standing in the doorway. She stopped in the open door, hesitated and then beckoned to him. He could not see her expression through the headdress.

As he approached, she caught his arm, drew him inside and closed the door. “There’s another exit past the camera room,” she said. “I’m sure Mr. Robling won’t mind if we use it?”

The personnel director looked them over for a moment, then ghrugged. “Why not?”

Down a cement-tiled hall, out through a metal door, into the stark sunlight. “What’s the matter?” Hake demanded.

“Don’t linger, Horny. That fellow in there is one of the Reddis. I don’t think we want to talk to him.”

“Christ.” They hurried around a corner, then paused where they could see the Hydro Fuels building. “If we go back to the hotel he’ll find us. He must have followed us from there.” He handed her the note. “This was what was waiting for me.”

She read it quickly, and then said, “Wow.”

“That’s about the size of it, yes,” he agreed. “We can’t go back to the hotel because of the Reddis, and we can’t go to the yacht because of the sheik. You know what, Leota? We don’t have a lot of options.”