Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land

He straightened up. One damn sure thing! He wasn’t going to let them be rough with that Smith lad. He was a nuisance, granted, but he was a nice lad and rather appealing in a helpless, half-witted way. Agnes should have seen how easily he was frightened, then she wouldn’t talk that way. Smith would appeal to the maternal in her.

But as a matter of strict fact, did Agnes have any “maternal” in her? When she set her mouth that way, it was hard to see it. Oh shucks, all women had maternal instincts; science had proved that. Well, hadn’t they?

Anyhow, damn her guts, he wasn’t going to let her push him around. She kept reminding him that she had put him into the top spot, but he knew better, and the responsibility was his and his alone. He got up, squared his shoulders, pulled in part of his middle, and went to the Council Chamber.

All during the long session he kept expecting someone to drop the other shoe. But no one did and no aide came in with any message for him. He was forced to conclude that the fact that Smith was missing actually was close held in his own personal staff unlikely as that seemed.

The Secretary General wanted very badly to close his eyes and hope that the whole horrid mess would go away, but events would not let him. Nor would his wife let him.

Agnes Douglas’ personal saint, by choice, was Evita Peron, whom she fancied she resembled. Her own persona, the mask that she held out to the world, was that of helper and satellite to the great man she was privileged to call husband. She even held this mask up to herself, for she had the Red Queen’s convenient ability to believe anything she wished to believe. Nevertheless, her own political philosophy could have been stated baldly (which it never was) as a belief that men should rule the world and women should rule men.

That all of her beliefs and actions derived from a blind anger at a fate that had made her female never crossed her mind… still less could she have believed that there was any connection between her behavior and her father’s wish for a son… or her own jealousy of her mother. Such evil thoughts never entered her head. She loved her parents and had fresh flowers put on their graves on all appropriate occasions; she loved her husband and often said so publicly; she was proud of her womanhood and said so publicly almost as often—she frequently joined the two assertions.

Agnes Douglas did not wait for her husband to act in the case of the missing Man from Mars. All of her husband’s personal staff took orders as readily from her as from him… in some cases, even more readily. She sent for the chief executive assistant for civil information, as Mr. Douglas’s press agent was called, then turned her attention to the most urgent emergency measure, that of getting a fresh horoscope cast. There was a private, scrambled link from her suite in the Palace to Madame Vesant’s studio; the astrologer’s plump, bland features and shrewd eyes came on the screen almost at once. “Agnes? What is it, dear? I have a client with me.”

“Your circuit is hushed?”

“Of course.”

“Get rid of the client at once. This is an emergency.”

Madame Alexandra Vesant bit her lip, but her expression did not change otherwise and her voice showed no annoyance. “Certainly. Just a moment.” Her features, faded out of the screen, were replaced by the “Hold” signal. A man entered the room, stood waiting by the side of Mrs. Douglas’ desk; she turned and saw that it was James Sanforth, the press agent she had sent for.

“Have you heard from Berquist?” she demanded without preamble.

“Eh? I wasn’t handling that; that’s McCrary’s pidgin.”

She brushed the irrelevancy aside. “You’ve got to discredit him before he talks.”

“Huh? You think Berquist has sold us out?”

“Don’t be naive. You should have checked with me before you used him.”

“But I didn’t. It was McCrary’s job.”

“You are supposed to know what is going on. I—” Madame Vesant’s face came back on the screen. “Sit down over there,” Mrs. Douglas said to Sanforth. “Wait.” She turned back to the screen. “Allie dear, I want fresh horoscopes for Joseph and myself, just as quickly as you possibly can cast them.”

“Very well.” The astrologer hesitated. “I can be of much greater assistance to you, dear, if you will tell me something of the nature of the emergency.”

Mrs. Douglas drummed on the desk. “You don’t actually have to know, do you?”

“Of course not. Anyone possessing the necessary rigorous training, mathematical skill, and knowledge of the stars could calculate a horoscope, knowing nothing more than the exact hour and place of birth of the subject. You know that, dear. You could learn to do it yourself… if you weren’t so terribly busy. But remember: the stars incline but they do not compel. You enjoy free will. If I am to make the extremely detailed and difficult analysis necessary to advise you in a crisis, I must know in what sector to look. Are we most concerned with the influence of Venus? Or possibly with Mars? Or will the—”

Mrs. Douglas decided. “With Mars,” she interrupted. “Allie, I want you to cast a third horoscope.”

“Very well. Whose?”

“Uh… Allie, can I trust you?”

Madame Vesant looked hurt. “Agnes, if you do not trust me, it would be far better for you not to consult me. There are others who can give you scientific readings. I am not the only student of the ancient knowledge. I understand that Professor von Krausemeyer is well thought of, even though he is sometimes inclined to…” She let her voice trail off.

“Please, please! Of course I trust you! I wouldn’t think of letting anyone else perform a calculation for me. Now listen carefully. No one can hear from your side?”

“Of course not, dear.”

“I want you to cast a horoscope for Valentine Michael Smith.”

“‘Valentine Mich—’ The Man from Mars?”

“Yes, yes. Allie, he’s been kidnapped. We’ve got to find him.”

Some two hours later Madame Alexandra Vesant pushed herself back from her work table and sighed. She had had her secretary cancel all appointments and she really had tried; several sheets of paper, covered with diagrams and figures, and a dog-eared nautical almanac were in front of her and testified to her efforts. Alexandra Vesant differed from some other practicing astrologers in that she really did attempt to calculate the “influences” of the heavenly bodies, using a paper-backed book titled The Arcane Science of Judicial Astrology and Key to Solomon’s Stone which had been given to her by her late husband, Professor Simon Magus, the well known mentalist, stage hypnotist and illusionist, and student of the secret arts.

She trusted the book as she had trusted him; there was no one who could cast a horoscope like Simon, when he was sober—half the time he had not even needed to refer to the book, he knew it so well. She knew that she would never have that degree of skill, so she always referred to the almanac and to the manual. Her calculations were sometimes a little fuzzy, for the same reason that her checkbook sometimes did not balance; Becky Vesey (as she had been known as a child) had never really mastered the multiplication tables and she was inclined to confuse sevens with nines.

Nevertheless her horoscopes were eminently satisfactory; Mrs. Douglas was not her only distinguished client.

But this time she had been a touch panicky when the wife of the Secretary General demanded that she cast a horoscope for the Man from Mars. She had felt the way she used to feel when some officious idiot from the audience committee had insisted on retying her blindfold just before the Professor was to ask her questions. But she had discovered way back then, as a mere child, that she had natural stage presence and inner talent for the right answer; she had suppressed her panic and gone on with the show.