Fallen Star (4 page)

“One up, Julian,” Harriet said, smiling sweetly. “There’s soil within three thousand feet of it. Oceans have floors, remember?
When you make your test borings up there, you drop a dredge through the ice and bring up a piece of the bottom. When you bring
it home, Pfistner will process it for micro-organisms, and test any that they find for antibiotic activity. On this MACB(eth)
hangs a two-page dithyramb on
the world-wide soil-sampling campaign that produced tabascomycin, and everybody’s happy.”

“Very good,” I said. “Of course that ocean’s been frozen over since the last Ice Age.” But it wasn’t a good counter-ploy,
and Harriet knew it; bacteria aren’t fussy about where they live. Byrd even found rotifers in Antarctica, and rotifers are
complex many-celled animals despite their microscopic size.

I got up, stuffing into my jacket the releases and the “back-grounder” MACB(eth) had put out about last year’s attempt. “Thanks
a lot, Harriet,” I said. “I’ll carve your name inside a heart on the first glacier I see.”

“Better include my phone number. Maybe it’ll become an iceberg and all the shipping in the North Atlantic will see it.”

Looking-for-another-job type joke. I filed it.,

“I’m going to beard my future employer,” I said. “Want to come along, or have you seen enough of him?”

“Oh, I’ll go. I’m supposed to keep in touch with the big phony anyhow, and I’d love to see your face when you meet him. Besides,
it’ll
give me
something to put on my expense account.”

“In that case you can put me on too, and we’ll have lunch at Costello’s.”

“What else?” she said, raising her eyebrows at me.

We had Bloody Marys, Madison Avenue gossip, and London broil for lunch, and I managed to pick up the names of some of Bramwell-Farnsworth’s
other industrial sponsors. The Harrison Bag Works was supplying him with tents, which were to be lined for insulation with
a new vinylidene copolymer film produced by LeFevre Plastics (division of Consolidated Explosives Co., A. O. LeFevre et Cie).
The Commodore would pack a rifle made by Parkchester, especially designed for low-temperature operation and lubricated with
special low-temperature greases made by Silliputti Chemical Co.; Parkchester and Silliputti authorized him to shoot polar
bears with it, and the U.S. Army said that of course if he met any Russians….

The two women in the party were being outfitted by a New York couturier, who would use their pictures and stories in
Vogue
and elsewhere to promote his Snowfire sportswear. Bramwell-Farnsworth and his aides would wear Geneva
Jewel chronometers and guide their flight over the ice with Dixon aviation instruments. There was even something for me: one
of the snowmobiles included Belfast Tape’s newest magnetic dictating equipment.

All this, of course, added up to just the kind of “applied research” that the man on the street thinks of as constituting
the whole of science (except, of course, Deep Thinking, like Einstein and the atom bomb). And it was just the kind of “applied
research” that Madison Avenue could transform into many column-inches of free puffs for the products involved—free except
for what the sponsoring firms had to pay Bramwell-Farnsworth, which was perhaps ten per cent of what the sponsoring firms
would have had to spend otherwise on advertising of equivalent value to them. For the likes of Harriet, it was an equitable
arrangement all around, and I had no objections. Somebody has to pick up the tab.

But I wondered just how much Ellen Fremd knew about it. The accounting of the expedition’s purposes which she had given me
in her apartment, the night of the snow storm, hadn’t even hinted at these interlocking commercial commitments. I couldn’t
quite see how both sets of obligations could be satisfied inside a stay at the Pole of less than four months, travel time
allowed. The expedition’s photographer in particular was going to have to operate a twenty-four-hour day to get in all the
publicity pictures he would be required to bring back, and still have time left over for developing the scientists’ pictures
and emulsions and making microfilm records for the IGY.

I saw no point, however, in dropping this problem on Harriet’s smooth shoulders; she had troubles enough of her own. Besides,
for all her ability to handle the vice-presidents of large industrial complexes, and to make attractive and printable the
research programmes those complexes sponsor, she was a fluff-head when it came to basic research. She had to be. Basic research
doesn’t sell products, and public relations is essentially a branch of sales promotion, no matter how passionately people
in p.r. deny it.

“Hey!” Harriet said. “You’re thinking, you goddam egghead. If you’re through ogling me, leave the room.”

I grinned at her, flagged one of Tim Costello’s incredibly aged waiters, paid the check with the tenner she had slipped me
in the cab on the way across town from MACB(eth), and
shepherded her out on to Third Avenue, now dazzlingly broad and bright without its El in the February sunlight.

“Where to?” I said.

“The upper West Side.” Harriet took my arm possessively. “The Commodore lives high.”

And then, for some reason, she seemed to be shivering. I was touched, though I didn’t know why. I put my hand over hers.

“Take it easy, carrot-top.”

“Onward and upward,” she said tautly. “Jason, Jason, bring on the Polar Basin.”

“Hush. Here’s a cab. Tell me the address.”

She tightened her grip on my arm for a moment, and then seemed to relax a little. She said:

“That’s
better, Julian. I love you when you’re solicitous. You may pat me three pussy-ant pats on the behind.”

“May I?”

After a moment, she said: “You may.” But she was still shivering.

T
HE
first thing that hit me when Jayne Wynn opened the door of the Riverside Drive apartment was that she was naked. This would
have been poor observation for any reporter, and particularly for a science writer, since she was in fact more or less fully
dressed: an embroidered silk Mexican bridal shirt, plus a tight black skirt which flared just under the hips. But the impression
wouldn’t quite go away.

“Hello, hello,” she said. Both her voice and her smile seemed abstracted. “Oh, hello, Harriet dear. Couldn’t you have phoned?
The great man isn’t expecting you.”

“I did phone,” Harriet said in a level voice. “And he is expecting us. This is Julian Cole. This is Miss Jayne Wynn, the Commodore’s
wife.”

I said hello rather feebly. The Commodore’s wife was twenty years younger than he was, and a familiar enough figure to me
from her newspaper and bookjacket photographs; but in the round she was absolutely overwhelming. Tall and long-legged, she
belonged to that school of blondes which first became popular as World War II pin-ups: the
school whose breasts are as big around as their thighs, or if they aren’t, camera angles make them look that big. Since I’m
on the short side, and Jayne Wynn’s bosom was authentically hypertrophied to boot, her breasts at first struck
me
as being each as big as her head.

“Julian Cole!” she breathed, as though she were a teenager saying “Elvis Presley”. She opened the door wide. “I’m delighted
to see you, Mr. Cole. We’ve heard so much about you, and we’re so glad you’ll be able to come with us. Geoffrey’s on the phone,
but he’ll be with us in a moment. Do come in.”

She led the way, ignoring Harriet completely. The poor girl even had to hang up her own hat and coat; the Commodore’s wife
was far too busy helping me with mine. She disrobed me as if for a royal first night, standing close in a cloud of Polar Passion
No. 2 and bumping into me accidentally here and there. I expected unguents from Araby at any moment. It certainly was a hell
of a reception for a science writer.

Then she walked before us toward the living room, practising the famous burp-to-the-left, burp-to-the-right walk which had
captured her three novel contracts, four husbands (or five, if you count the annulled marriage with the bearded oboe-player
who had turned out to be a woman too), and thousands of column-inches of cheesecake photography. All the flexing and quivering
reminded me of nothing so much as a muscle-dancer in some Chicago strip joint; these long-boned perpetual adolescents with
their irrelevant bulbs are pathetic and desperate creatures.

Remembering that I’d been given permission, I patted Harriet surreptitiously for reassurance. I was relieved to find that
she, at least, was in no imminent danger of bursting forth into the world breech first. She was as taut as a contour sheet.
She
didn’t remember that she’d given me permission, though. She gave me a furious dig in the ribs with her elbow.

The apartment’s living room was sizeable and bright. It was dominated by a huge window which looked out over the Drive, the
park, and the Hudson toward the Palisades. The furniture was Sloan’s Aggressive Modern, and on the wall opposite the window
hung a huge Jackson Pollock painting without a frame.

Jayne Wynn sat down on a hassock in an absolute fanfare
of legs, and looked brightly at me. “I don’t know the Pollock,” I said hastily. “What’s it called?”

“ ‘Accidental Number Three’,” she said. “It came with the apartment. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“It’s the biggest Pollock I’ve ever seen. Almost a mural.”

There was a stiff pause, during which Harriet wandered to the window and looked down on the Drive. From somewhere else in
the apartment, a very heavy bass voice was rumbling ‘ out blurry words, interspersed with almost mechanical frequency with
a booming, even laugh, rather like that of a house detective imitating Old King Cole. That, I gathered without straining my
brains much, was Geoffrey on the telephone.

“Well,” Jayne Wynn said, hugging her knees and looking roguish. “Can I get you something to drink, Julian? We have so much
to talk about. Harriet dear, do sit down.”

I wanted a drink, all right, but I didn’t want to see that torso in motion again for at least the next ten minutes. I was
just about to shake my head when the bullroarer in the next room shouted, “NO, dammit!”

“No, thanks,” I said, more meekly than I’d intended. The Commodore went back to rumbling his borborygmi, and booming “Oh,
ho, ho, ho, ho” every few seconds. His wife smiled brightly and lifted her heels until they rested against the side of the
hassock.

“Well now,” she said, with that terribly animated smile. “There’s really a great deal to be done. We want you to meet Dr.
Elvers, Julian. We hope he’ll be here in an hour or so. You’ll like him. He’s a remarkable man.”

I doubted that anybody could be remarkable enough to keep me here a full hour. “Who is he? I don’t recognize the name.”

“He’ll be second in command of the expedition, once it starts. He’s a New Yorker with a great deal of experience up north,
mostly in Alaska—he’s particularly good with sled dogs and he’ll be in charge of ours.”

“Is he a veterinarian?” I said, puzzled.

“No indeed. He’s a licensed physician. He’ll be the first doctor ever to set foot on the Pole.”

“As a matter of fact,” Harriet said from the window, where she was still standing, “he’s a chiropodist.”

“We’re planning to log quite a few ‘firsts’ while we’re at
it,” Jayne Wynn went on, ignoring Harriet pointedly. “We’ll be the first American team to reach the Pole since Peary planted
the flag there—that was April 6, 1909. And I’ll be the first woman ever to stand on the Pole.”

“I may well be the first professional science writer to reach the Pole, for that matter,” I said. “If I reach it.”

“Of course you’ll reach it,” Jayne Wynn said warmly, leaning forward and fixing me with her eyes, which were blue and slightly
protuberant. “This expedition is going to be a spectacular success, Julian. I’ve been on a good many with Geoffrey, and I
know the signs. Of course, we ‘got quite a bad press last year, through no fault of our own, but I’ve taken steps to correct
that this year.” I saw Harriet stiffen; but she said nothing. “That’s one of the things I have to discuss with you.”

“Why me?”

“Because it will affect what you do. You’re the historian for the expedition; I’m its official reporter. We’ll have to take
steps to insure that our activities don’t overlap—or conflict. It would be bad public relations.”

This time she shot a feline, sidelong glance at Harriet to see if the shot had told. Obviously it had.

“I don’t see why there should be any conflict,” I said a little stiffly. “I hadn’t figured on filing any stories, not at least
until I got back, but if I do they aren’t likely to be spot news. I’ll be aiming at the science editors—people like Bob Plumb,
Gilbert Cant, Earl Ubell, Bill Laurence, Behari-Lal, Dick Winslow. Whatever you file is more likely to be city desk stuff.
I’ll be sending features, if I send anything.”

“There you’re wrong, I’m afraid,” Jayne said, with an intimate smile. “You see, we don’t want any repetition of last year’s
fiasco. All that ridicule—even outright lies…. This time I’ve contracted with Faber to file
all
the stories that come out of the expedition, with the Faber papers exclusively, over my own by-line. It’s the only way we
can be
sure
of getting a decent press.”

It didn’t look like such a sure thing to me, and it brought Harriet from the window in a hurry.

“You can’t do that, Jayne,” she said indignantly. “You must be out of your mind. There are eighteen big corporations in on
this, and nearly every one of them has some sort of public relations project tied to it. How are you going to
keep them from sending their own releases to the papers? You can’t even protect your exclusives.”

“I think I can, Harriet dear. All I have to do is see each story that the p.r. people propose to send, and get it first to
FNS under my own by-line. After that, your agency and the others can release it for general pick up.”

“That won’t work. We can’t ‘release’ a copyrighted exclusive.”

“Then make changes, dear,” Jayne said airily. “That’s what you people are paid to do—put the commas in the right place.”