A Creed for the Third Millennium (6 page)

'Today's the day, John.'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'Still at the arranged time?'

'Yes, ma'am. Four, in the executive
conference room.'

'Good! I wouldn't have put it past him to
change it at the last minute so he could override me and be there.'

'He won't do that, ma'am. This is too
important, and
his
boss is watching things rather carefully.'

She sat down behind her desk, swung the
swivel chair sideways and unzipped her black kid boots. The plain but equally
high-heeled black kid pumps which replaced them were laid ready neatly side by
side in the roomy bottom drawer of her desk; Dr Carriol was obsessively tidy and
formidably efficient.

'Coffee?'

'Mmmm! What a terribly good idea!
Anything new I ought to know before the meeting?'

'I don't think so. Mr Magnus is anxious
to speak to you first, but that's as predicted. You must be very glad the
preliminary phase of Operation Search is finally over.'

'Profoundly glad! Not that it hasn't been
interesting. Five years of it! When did you join me from State,
John?'

'It would be… eighteen months
ago.'

'We might have taken less time setting it
up if I'd had you from the beginning. Finding you was like tripping over the Welcome Stranger nugget
in the middle of the usual State Department minefield.'

He went slightly pink, dipped his head
awkwardly, and slid round the door as fast as he could.

Dr Carriol picked up the receiver of a
green telephone to one side of the beige multi-lined console on her desk. 'This
is Dr Carriol. The Secretary, please, Mrs Taverner.'

The connection was made quickly, without
protest, and in scarcely more time than it took to engage the scramble
button.

'Dr Carriol, Mr Magnus.'

'I want to come!' He sounded plaintive,
petulant even.

'Mr Secretary, my investigative teams and
their chiefs are still very much under the impression that Operation Search has
been a purely theoretical exercise. I want them to remain under that impression,
at least until they can't help but see the results we thrust under their noses,
and we're some months off that. If you turn up in person today, they're going to
smell a great big rat.' Her breath caught as she made the Freudian slip. Fool,
Judith,
fool!
No one was quicker at words than Harold Magnus.

But his mind was too busy dwelling on his
exclusion to notice. 'You're just afraid I might upset your carefully stacked
apple cart before you can point out the best apple to me. Because you think I'm
going to pick the wrong apple.'

'Nonsense!'

'Tchah! Let's hope phase two will go
faster than phase one, anyway. I'd like to be sitting in this chair to see the
final result.'

'Sifting the haystack always takes a lot
longer than arranging the apple cart, Mr Magnus.'

He muffled a giggle. 'Keep me
informed.'

'Of course, Mr Secretary,' she said
blandly, and hung up, smiling.

But when John Wayne came in with her
coffee she was sitting looking at the green telephone pensively, and chewing her
lip.

At four o'clock that afternoon Dr Judith
Carriol entered the Section Four executive conference room, with her private
secretary in grave attendance. He would take the minutes in old-fashioned
shorthand, a decision he and Dr Carriol had taken long before if a meeting was
classified top secret. A tape recorder was too vulnerable; even if someone
managed to lay hands on his shorthand notes and could read shorthand, that
person would also have to contend with the fact that it was modified markedly by
his handwriting. From his minutes he would do the typescript himself onto an
old-fashioned typewriter minus any kind of memory device and not susceptible to
a listening microphone, as was the modern voicewriter. Then he would shred his
dictation and his rough draft before personally copying and collating the final
draft for distribution in files marked top secret.

It was a small gathering. Including John
Wayne, only five people attended. They were seated two down either side of the
long, ovoid table, with Dr Carriol in the chair at one end. And she got down to
business at once, the fingers of her left hand spread poised to strike across
the uppermost of a bundle of files in front of her.

'Dr Abraham, Dr Hemingway, Dr Chasen. Are
you ready?'

Each nodded seriously.

'Then let's begin with Dr Abraham. If you
please, Sam?'

He needed glasses to read, so he put them
on, only the slight tremor in his fingers betraying his high degree of
excitement. He adored Dr Carriol, was intensely grateful for the chance to
participate in an exercise of this scope, and did not look
forward to the day when he must return to more mundane activities.

'My caseload numbered 33,368 when I
began, and I have followed the prescribed regimen in whittling them down to my
final three choices. My chief researcher selected the same three persons
absolutely independently of me. I shall concentrate on each candidate equally in
my presentation, but I will discuss them in my order of preference.' He cleared
his throat and opened the top file of the three which lay on the table at his
right hand.

There was a rustle as the other four
people in the room also opened a file and perused its contents while Dr Abraham
spoke.

'My number-one choice is Maestro Benjamin
Steinfeld. He is a fourth-generation American of Polish Jewish stock on both
sides. Aged thirty-eight. Married, one child, a boy now aged fourteen, in
school, straight A's. His marital and parental statuses rate ten on the
ten-scale. A previous marriage contracted when in his nineteenth year ended in a
divorce two years later, the divorce action being brought by his then wife. A
graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, he is currently the director of the
Winter Festival in Tucson, Arizona, and he is single-handedly responsible for
the series of concerts and allied musical activities which CBS has televised
nationwide for the past three years to an ever-increasing audience. On Sundays,
as you probably know, he hosts a television forum on CBS devoted to airing
current problems, but presented with such tact and restraint that he does not
exacerbate people's pain or stir up people's emotions. It is the highest-rated
programme in the United States. I am sure you must all have watched it at some
time or another, especially given our task in hand, so I do not intend to go
into detail about Maestro Steinfeld's personality or ability to speak or
possible charisma.'

Dr Carriol had been following this
summary from the top file in the stack in front of her; frowning, she held an
eight-by-ten matt colour photograph of a man's face to the light, studying it as
mercilessly as if she had never seen it before, though it was, as Dr Abraham
said, a very familiar face indeed. She noted its striking bone structure, the
firm well-cut lips, the large dark shining eyes and the unruly quiff of
light-brown hair that fell across the high wide forehead. It was a conductor's
face, true enough; why did they always seem to have masses of floppy
hair?

'Objections?' she asked, looking towards
Dr Chasen and Dr Hemingway.

'The previous marriage, Sam. Did you
investigate the reason why Maestro Steinfeld's first wife severed her alliance
with him?' asked Dr Hemingway, her intelligent little dog's face looking as if
she was enjoying every moment of this long-awaited reporting session.

Dr Abraham looked shocked. 'Naturally!
There was no enmity involved, nor does the matter reflect badly on the Maestro
in any way. His first wife discovered in herself a preference for her own sex.
She told Maestro Steinfeld about her feelings, he understood completely, and as
a matter of fact he was her staunchest support during a rather troubled first
few years in lesbian relationships. He asked for a divorce so he could remarry,
but he permitted her to initiate proceedings because at the time she was in a
very ticklish work situation.'

'Thank you, Dr Abraham. Any other
objections? No? All right, then, please give us your second choice,' said Dr
Carriol, clipping the photograph back inside the front cover of Maestro
Steinfeld's file, closing it, and laying it neatly to one side before opening
the next file.

'Shirley Grossman Schneider. An
eighth-generation American of mixed Jewish blood, but mostly German Jewish. Aged thirty-seven. She is
married, one child, a boy now aged six, in school, classified very bright. On
the scales of ten, she scored perfect as wife and mother. An astronaut still on
the active NASA payroll, she was head of the Phoebus series of space missions
which built the pilot solar generator in earth orbit. Author of the best-selling
book
Taming the Sun,
and currently NASA's chief spokesman to the American
people. She is president of Scientific Women for America. In her college years
at MIT she was a much-publicized feminist who was responsible for feminist
adoption of the word "man" as generic in any situation where either sex or both
sexes are involved. You may remember her still famous quote of the time: "When I
chair a meeting I am not going to be palmed off as a chairperson, I intend to be
the goddam
chairman!"
Her public speaking is superlative, eloquent and
witty, and emotionally moving. And, unusual in such an outspoken and militant
feminist, her popularity is as high among men as it is among women. The lady is
loaded with charm as well as personality.'

A strongly beautiful face, thought Dr
Carriol, with a jaw that confirmed the astronaut's extraordinary record of
physical and psychical gutsiness. But the widely opened grey eyes were the eyes
of a genuine thinker.

'Objections?'

No one had any.

'Your number-three choice, Dr
Abraham?'

'Percival Taylor Smith. American right
back to 1683 on his father's side and 1671 on his mother's, of White Anglo-Saxon
Protestant background. Aged forty-two. He is married, one child, a girl now aged
sixteen, in school, straight A's. Maritally I rated him ten, and parentally ten
also. He is the head of the Community Social Adjustment Bureau in Palestrina,
Texas, one of the biggest Band B relocation towns in the whole country, centred on Corpus
Christi. His achievement record is without parallel. Not only does Palestrina
have a suicide rate of zero, but its psychiatric services report no patients
suffering from environment — or relocation — based neurosis. His personality may be labelled as winning, his public speaking is first class, he is the most
dedicated worker my caseload uncovered, and his attitude to our current problems
in America is magnificent.'

Dr Carriol looked at the photograph of
Percival Taylor Smith carefully. A frank, open, smiling and careworn face,
caught offguard in the act of speaking; freckles across the cheeks and nose,
endearingly lopsided ears, reddish hair, blue eyes, laughter lines and worry
lines making a most pleasing pattern around mouth and eyes.

'Objections?'

'Palestrina is a Band B town, which means
its relocatees are permanent fixtures. I suggest that Mr Smith's task has been
correspondingly easier than in a Band C town,' said Dr Hemingway.

'Well taken, Dr Hemingway. Dr
Abraham?'

'Valid. I acknowledge this. But I would
point out two facts. One, that even so, Palestrina's record is without peer. And
two, that a man of Mr Smith's calibre would nut out some kind of approach that
would work in any situation.'

'Agreed,' said Dr Carriol. 'Thank you
very much, Sam. I can see no reason why we should not proceed to Dr Hemingway,
but before we do, does anyone else have a general objection to Dr Abraham's
choices?'

Dr Hemingway leaned forward; Dr Abraham
leaned back just as far, frowning. The puggy little lady's persistence was
beginning to wear him down.

'I note that your first and second
selections were both Jewish. You yourself are Jewish. Your chief researcher is
Jewish. Was there any bias in your decision?'

Dr Abraham swallowed, pulled his lips
back from his teeth, and drew his breath in with a gentle hiss that indicated he
was not going to lose his temper no matter what Dr Hemingway came out with. 'I
can see where you might think you had a valid point,' he said. 'I will answer
you by asking Dr Carriol if there was any Semitic bias in her selection of the
heads of her three investigative teams for the purpose of this exercise. I am a
Jew. So is Dr Chasen. Two to one, Millie!'

Dr Carriol laughed, so did Dr
Hemingway.

'Say no more, Sam. And thank you. Now
it's your turn in the hot seat, Millie.' Dr Carriol put the first three files to
one side, and pulled the next pile of three to where she could conveniently
study them.

'Okay!' said the little pug-dog lady, not
at all put out by Dr Abraham's counter; she was a scientist of the questioning
kind in everything, was all. 'My team and I elected to use the alternative
selection process, namely that every member of the team voted, rather than just
me and my chief researcher. Our three final candidates were unanimous choices,
in the order in which I will present them.'

Dr Hemingway opened a file. 'First choice
is a woman, Catherine Walking Horse. Father, a full-blood Sioux. Mother, a
sixth-generation American of Irish Catholic background. Aged twenty-seven.
Single, no children, no previous marriage, but strongly heterosexual in her
relationships of an intimate nature. You've undoubtedly heard of her and heard
her, she is a very well-known singer of Indian and other folk songs. A most
engaging and happy person, with the most positive attitude to life in our times
that we encountered in our thirty-three-thousand-plus sample. She's an extremely
intelligent woman. Her doctoral thesis in ethology from Princeton is being
published this autumn by the Atticus Press as a major contribution to the field.
She is of course a brilliant public speaker, and has a most magnetic
personality.' Dr Hemingway paused, then added, 'She's a bit of a witch — by that
I mean she has a spellbinding quality — she
draws
people to her. Quite
amazing.'