Frederik Pohl - Jem

“Poppa,” she said, “you know nobody can do anything really serious. The balance of power prohibits it.”

“Wrong! The balance of power breaks down as soon as somebody makes a mistake. The Peeps made one when they fired rockets at our gasbags on Klong. I made one when I let you carry that bomb to Belgrade. It’s time to pull the fuses, honey.”

For the first time in her adult life, Margie Menninger felt real fear. “Poppa! Are you saying you’re not going to help me with Lenz?”

“I’m saying more than that, Margie. I agree with him. I’m seeing the President tomorrow, and I’m going to tell him to scrap the launch.”

“Poppa!”

He hesitated. “Honey, maybe later. After things quiet down—”

“Later’s no good! You think the Peeps aren’t going to reinforce as soon as they can get another satellite up there? And the Greasies? And—”

“It’s settled, Margie. ”

She looked at him, appalled. This was the God Menninger that his whole agency knew and she had rarely seen. It wasn’t her father she was looking at. It was a human being as implacable and determined as she herself had ever been, and with the accustomed support of a great deal of power to back his decisions up.

She said, “I can’t change your mind.” It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t give it an answer. “Well,” she said, “there’s no reason for me to hang around here then, is there? Good-bye, poppa. Take care of yourself. I’ll see you another time.”

She did not look at him again as she got up, collected her brown leather officer’s bag and her uniform cap, and let herself out.

If her father was as determined as she, the other side of the coin was that she was no less determined than he. She stopped in the visitors’ lounge and entered a public phone booth to dial a local number.

The woman on the other end was a strikingly handsome human being, not a sex symbol but a work of art. “Why, Marjorie,” she said. “I thought you were off doing spy stuff for your father or something — Marjorie! What’s the matter with your face?”

Marge felt her blotched chin. “Oh, that. That’s just a reaction to some shots. Can I come over to see you?”

“Of course, lover. Right now?”

“Right this second, mom.” Margie hung up the phone and hurried toward the elevators. But before she entered them she stopped in a ladies’ room to check her makeup.

Marge Menninger’s mother lived, among other places, in the residential tower section of one of New York City’s tallest and most expensive skyscrapers. It was an old-fashioned place, built when energy was cheap, so that it made economic sense at that time to economize on insulation and rely on huge inputs of BTUs all winter long and continuous air conditioning all summer. It was one of the few that had not been at least partly rebuilt when oil reached P$300 a barrel, and it would have been ruinously expensive for most tenants — even most well-to-do tenants. The condominium apartments were no more expensive to buy than any others in a good neighborhood. But if you had to ask what the maintenance costs would be, you couldn’t afford them. Alicia Howe and her present husband didn’t have to ask.

The butler welcomed Margie. “How nice to see you, Miss Menninger! Will you be using your room this time?”

“Afraid not, Harvey. I just want to talk to mom.”

“Yes, Miss Margie. She’s expecting you.”

As Alicia Howe rose to be kissed, she made a quick, all-seeing inventory of her daughter. Those awful splotches on her complexion! The clothes were passable enough, as army uniforms went, and thank heaven the child had been born with her father’s smiling good looks. “You could lose a couple of kilos, lover,” she said.

“I will, I promise. Mom, I want you to do me a favor.”

“Of course, hon.”

“Poppa’s being a little difficult about something, and I need to go public. I want to hold a news conference.”

Alicia Howe’s husband owned a lot of television: three major-city outlets and large interests in a dozen satellite networks. “I’m sure one of Harold’s people can help you out,” she said slowly. “Should I ask what the problem is?”

“Mom, you shouldn’t even know there’s a problem.”

Her mother sighed. She had learned to live with God Menninger’s off-the-record life while they were married, but since the divorce she had hoped to be free of it. She never talked to her ex-husband. It wasn’t that she disliked him — in her heart, she still thought him the most interesting, and by a long way the sexiest, of her men. But she could not cope with the knowledge that any little slip of the tongue from him to her, and from her to anyone, might bring catastrophic consequences to the world.

“Honey, I do have to tell Harold something.”

“Oh, sure, mom. But not as a problem. What I want to talk about is Kl — Jem. The planet Jem. I’m going there, mom.”

“Yes, of course, you told me that. In a year or two, maybe, when things settle down—”

“I want to settle them down, mom. I want the United States to send enough muscle up there to make it fit to live in. Fit for you to visit someday, if you want to. And I want to do it now. I’m supposed to leave in eighteen days.”

“Margie! Really, Margie!”

“Don’t take on, will you? It’s what I want.”

Alicia Howe had not been able to prevail against that argument in more than a dozen years. She had no hope of prevailing against it now. The thought of her daughter flinging herself through space to some terrible place where people died disgustingly was frightening. But Margie had demonstrated a capacity for taking care of herself.

“Well,” she said, “I guess I can’t send you to your room. All right. You haven’t told me what you want me to do.”

“Ask Harold to get me onto one of his newsmaker programs. He’ll know how to do it better than I can tell him. They’re backing away from my planet, mom, cutting the funding, complaining about the problems. I want the public to know how important it is, and I want to be the one to tell them.” She added strategically, “Poppa was right behind me on this at first, but now he’s changed his mind. He wants to call the whole thing off.”

“You mean you want to put the squeeze on your own father?”

“Exactly right.”

Alicia Howe smiled. That part was sure to appeal to her current husband. She spread her hands resignedly and moved toward the phone. “I’ll tell Harold what you want,” she said.

Ana Dimitrova sat with her eyes closed in a broad, low room, elbows on a ring-shaped table, head in her hands, earphones on her head. Her lips were moving. Her head twitched from side to side as she tried to match the rhythms of the taped balloonist song that was coming over the headset. It was very difficult, in large part because it was not a balloonist’s voice making the sounds. It was a Krinpit’s. The tape had been made several weeks before, when Detrick’s last surviving Krinpit had had no one left to talk to but Shirley, the one surviving balloonist.

But her name had not been Shirley. Her name, rather beautiful, had been Mo’ahi’i Ba’alu’i, which meant something like Sweetly Golden Cloud-Bearer. Krinpit rasps and tympani did not easily form the balloonist sounds. But Shirley had understood him — no, Ana corrected herself, Mo’ahi’i Ba’alu’i had understood him. Ana was determined to do the same, and so she played and replayed sections of the tape:

Ma’iya’a hi’i (these creatures unlike us) hu’u ha’iye’i (are vicious animals).

And Cloud-Bearer’s response:

M’u’a mali’i na’ahu’iha. (They have killed my song).