Planet in Peril (2 page)

He removed the microfilm of Charles* report and replaced it with another. The report unfolded itself before them. In the list of references at the end there were half a dozen papers of his own. He looked at Ledbetter.

“Where was this published?”

“It hasn’t been.”

“Because?”

“Because that is one of the advantages of your new post. Don’t publish if you don’t want to. You might call yourself a scientific hobo, with endowment.”

Charles’ mind had been engaged with the paper that had just been projected for him. Things began to click into place.

"Do I come under Contact Section?” he asked. Ledbetter smiled. "No.”

Charles said patiently: "Then it will be all right for me to publish whatever I want?”

"I didn’t say that. The new job is restricted. You are under San Diego for admin but any reports you make go direct to Graz.”

"To
Tapron
?”

"To Nikko-
Tsi
, for Preston.”

“And what do they want me to turn out?”

"I’m not in the secret. This report of
Humayun’s
you’ve just seen—it doesn’t mean anything to me because it’s not my line, but I suspect that there isn’t anything vital in it anyway, or I wouldn’t have been given it to show you.”

Charles said: "It’s fairly routine stuff, as a matter of fact. Bombardment conductivity; we’ve done a certain amount at Saginaw.” Ledbetter nodded his appreciation. "There are one or two points in it, though—”

"They, I take it, were meant to whet your appetite. Do they?”

"Yes.” He hesitated before he shot the next question at the Manager. "What became of my predecessor? Radiation poisoning or the managerial variety?”

"A good question.
Humayun
, I understand, was by way of being an amateur sailor like myself—plenty of scope in a place like that as I’ve indicated. I don’t know the details of what happened, except that his boat came back, keel upwards, and he didn’t. It’s a tricky coast, I understand.” Charles thought for a moment that he looked at him oddly, but there wasn’t enough in it to get hold of a meaning. "A very tricky coast. I should stay away from it when the flow tide’s getting near the turn.” Charles nodded. "When do you want me to start?” Ledbetter glanced at the note-pad inset on the desk under his right hand. "You will be turning your gyro in at Saginaw. We’ll pick you up with your things in the morning and
you’ll
join the ten hundred
stratoliner
here. By the way, in your new position you are
up five hundred a month. You qualify for a Cat C gyro
and
limousine, too. One other triviality—you don t object to ex-
Siraqis
?”

Charles looked at him with some surprise. "How many of them?”

“Only one.
Humayun
was, and he picked one for his assistant. I have the impression that a lot of the valuable side of
Humayun's
work may only be traceable through her.”

“I don't see any reason why I should want to get rid of her.”

“That's fine, then
.
” Ledbetter glanced at the chronometer on the wall. “You'll have some packing to do, so I won't keep you any longer.”

Charles left the UC HQ building in the first place because he wanted to drop in, for the last time, on Stone's, the little gramophone record exchange at the comer of 27th and Main. He browsed through the shelves of assorted records near the door. He found a set of the Munich John Passion, with one record missing, and wondered whether it was worth while taking it in the hope of filling in the gap
sometime
in the future. But it was priced too low; that represented Stone's own considered opinion that the odds against were very high. He put the records back as someone came into the shop.

He recognized
Dinkuhl
, of course. The odd thing was that
Dinkuhl
recognized him; they had been introduced once, some years before, in circumstances that were now vague.

The proprietor of Ch
annel KF said: “Charlie
Grayner
!
Nice to find you again. Having a last look round before you light out for the land of sunshine?”

They shook hands. Charles said:

“You astonish me.”

Dinkuhl
grinned. “You don't show it.”

“You do, though. I suppose it would be rude to ask you where you got your information from?”

“It must be six or seven years since I saw you.”
Dinkuhl
shook his head, clearly delighted with his own powers of recollection. “At the Sullivan place, before they got a transfer to Melbourne. It is you who are going to California,
isn’t
it? I thought it must be. Source of information? That, Charlie, is one thing you never ask a TV man. Come back with me and have a glass of something.”

Charles nodded. “Thanks.”

Dinkuhl's
house, about a mile away, overlooking Lake Erie, was twentieth-century Scandinavian in architecture, but had apparently been more soundly constructed than the average.
Dinkuhl
led Charles upstairs to a large room on the first floor, with a view on to the lake, and brought
him
a drink in a very fine-looking wide-bowled glass.

Dinkuhl
held his own glass up. “Cheers,” he said.

They drank. The taste was odd. Charles held the glass up in inquiry.

“What is it, Manager?”

“Call me Hiram,”
Dinkuhl
said. "You like it? It’s a little something I knocked up myself. Turnip-and-tomato wine. Not bad, though? Not at all bad.”

Answering his own question, he simultaneously topped up both their glasses. He fished out of one pocket the old-fashioned spectacles he sometimes wore in the studio and put them on to study Charles more closely.

“Well, then,” he said. “What are you going to do for culture in the Far West? You’re one of the customers— you wrote me a letter about a month back.”

“I can give up TV,” Charles said. He smiled. “Even KF. I might take up reading.”

“It is an unhappy fact,”
Dinkuhl
said, “that the only people who can give up TV are precisely those who commonly patronize KF. Well, I guess it may last out my time.”

“I never did understand why Telecom let you keep running.”

“For only one reason, but a good one. Our charter got incorporated, in some strange way, in their constitution. I give the credit to my then predecessor, a guy called Bert White. The proprietorship of KF is a self-perpetuating office for which the chief qualification is low cunning, but White was exceptional. Short of rewriting their own constitution, a desperate step that might stir up a regular horde of hibernating skeletons, they've got to go on giving us rights of telecasting. They just have to get what satisfaction they can from watching us slowly fade away; but since we represent one of the few remaining strands of capitalism in the modem world, there’s one line I can try. Under
managerialism
, were sunk. So I shall try switching us to the one tiny oasis where
managerialism
doesn’t send its camels—to
Siraq
.” “Well, good luck.” Charles thought about it for a moment. “Not very hopeful, is it?”

Dinkuhl
said: “I like you, Charlie. You put things well. I can always join Red League again—you know I started with that outfit?”

“No. I didn’t know.”

“The day I tossed my Telecom membership card in the lake was the happiest day of my life. I’m not even sure which lake it was now. I suppose they would make me out a new one.”

Dinkuhl
glanced at his watch; it was extraordinarily big and he wore it on his wrist instead of on his watch-finger.

“But pending
Siraq
or Red League, the show must go on. So, on your way. One thing.” Charles looked at him.
“I hear the boating’s tricky on that coast.”

Charles said: “I’ve already been told that.”

‘“This,” said
Dinkuhl
, “is official. The voice of the KF News Reel”

Saba
Koupal
did not
make
a
good initial impression on Charles. She was attractive enough, dark, rather square-faced, but her personality was unattractive. It was comforting to remember that Ledbetter had told him he need not keep her if he didn’t want to.

The lab was on high ground, facing the sea and perhaps a hundred yards from it. There was a good view of San Miguel, which was about a mile away, and the back looked into an orange grove which appeared to stretch indefinitely. The equipment in the lab was very good. The first thing he noticed was the five-thousand KV
electrobombard
he had asked for, and failed to get, when it was announced a year before. There were three cyclotrons. Money had been spent here, and he felt he knew UC policy well enough to be sure that that meant they had expected to get something out of it. The difficulty was finding precisely what.

Humayun
’
s
notes were scrappy; scrappy enough to be just about useless and yet, tantalizingly, not quite scrappy enough to discard entirely. It was the kind of work, clearly enough, which would gain considerably in meaning with the application of the key of what
Humayun
was driving at.

This need obliged him to fall back on Sara. He found her in the north room, engaged in the graphitization of a specimen of carbon. He stood behind her without saying anything for a couple of minutes. He said at last:

"And the next step?”

She turned round slowl
y, holding a pair of asbestos
tongs. She looked at him steadily, and behind the steadiness she was obviously jumpy and hostile.

“Slow bombardment, drying out for twenty-four hours, and checking lattice changes by positron diffraction.” “To establish?”

She hesitated; she still looked at him but her gaze was edgy. “It’s a continuation of a series of experiments Dr.
Humayun
put in hand.”

It was a warm day outside. Charles said impulsively: “I’d like to have a talk with you, Sara. You can spare half an hour?”

She said distantly: “If you’d prefer that.”

They walked down to the shore in silence. To the south there was something of an anchorage—a rough breakwater with a couple of concrete posts built on.

He nodded toward them. “What became of the boat?” She was still standing, as though awaiting orders. He said: “We might as well sit down, I guess,” and she sat on a stone a few feet from the one he took.

She smoothed her skirt down and looked not at him but away out to sea. “The boat? They took it away.” “They?”

“Your friends.” She glanced at him. “Contact Section.” He said, slowly:

“We might as well get some things clear at the start I'm not Contact Section, and I haven’t been briefed by Contact Section. I’ve been doing a very ordinary job in diamond research under Detroit
Sector, and I've been pulled in here apparently because they wanted someone in a hurry. I’d hoped you might be able to help me
...
I’m pretty much in the dark all the way round.”

‘It was most inconsiderate of Dai,” she said, “to get drowned without first leaving you detailed instructions.” “I’m sorry.” He looked at her averted face, trying to gauge the kind of emotion responsible for the bitterness of her remarks. “I’m probably not putting things very well. You see, I didn’t know Dr.
Humayun
. One can’t—” He thought for a moment she might be going to smile. She said, more gently than she had spoken so far:

“You still aren’t putting them very well, are you? You’re right that you can’t be expected to feel very sorry for someone you never knew, but at least when you are talking about him you can give him his title—as you finally did.”

He looked at her in astonishment; then he understood. “There’s no disrespect,” Charles said, “in not giving a man his title here. Scientific titles are very rarely used, anyway. There was really no offense meant.” He smiled ruefully. “In fact, I wasn’t even being accidentally rude, though I believe I often am.”

She said: “I’m sorry.” She studied his face. She had a direct and honest look and for the moment her nervousness had gone. “What is it you want to know?”

He looked at her helplessly. “Primarily, what I am supposed to do. You seem to have a line to follow. It’s somewhat embarrassing that I haven’t.”

The mistrust was there again, and stronger. “It’s hard to swallow—that they should appoint you in Dai’s place and not tell you what you were expected to do.”

“All the same,” Charles said. “I’d like you to make the effort.” He paused. “It may make a difference that I’ve been rushed straight here from Detroit. I gather you are implying that Graz knew what’s up, but that doesn’t mean Detroit does. I suppose Graz may finally wake up to the need for telling me. I suppose I could
telecall
Nikko-
Tsi
and jog their memories, but in my experience it’s always better to get along on your own if you can. Pestering HQ can have unfortunate results.”

She wrinkled her brow. “Am I being dumb again? Is that a usual sort of thing to happen in a managerial?” “Not unusual. Why do you think all the original work is now being done in
Taifa
and El-
Majalem
?”