PLATINUM POHL (79 page)
Authors: Frederik Pohl
“That’s what we were talking about when you came in,” he said. “Thirty papers a year and committee reports between times. When was the last time you spent a solid month at your desk? I know, in my own department …”
I could feel myself growing interested and I didn’t want to be, I wanted to get back to my notes. I took another gulp of my coffee.
“You know what Fred Hoyle said?”
“I don’t think so, Larry.”
“He said the minute a man does anything, anything at all, the whole world enters into a conspiracy to keep him from ever doing it again. Program chairmen invite him to read papers. Trustees put him onto committees. Newspaper reporters call him up to interview him. Television shows ask him to appear with a comic, a bandleader and a girl singer, to talk about whether there’s life on Mars.”
“And people who sympathize with him buttonhole him on his way out of meetings,” said Dr. Ramos. He chuckled. “Really, Dr. Grew. We’ll understand if you just keep on going.”
“I’m not even sure it’s this world,” said Larry.
He was not only irritable, he was hardly making sense. “For that matter,” he added, “I haven’t even really done anything yet. Not like you, Chip. But I can, someday.”
“Don’t be modest,” said Dr. Ramos. “And look, we’re making a lot of noise here. Why don’t we find some place to sit down and talk—unless you really do want to get back to your work, Dr. Grew?”
But you see, I was already more than half convinced that this was my work, to talk to Larry and Dr. Ramos; and what we finally did was go up to my room and then up to Larry’s where he had a Rand Corporation report in his bag with some notes I’d sent him once, and we never did get back to the meeting room. Along about ten we had dinner sent up, and that was where we stayed, drinking cold coffee off the set-up table and sparingly drinking bourbon out of a bottle Larry had brought along, and I told them everything I’d ever thought about a systems approach to the transmission of technological information. And what it implied. And Dr. Ramos was with it at every step, the best listener either of us had ever had, though most of what he said was, “Yes, of course,” and “I see.” There really was a lot in it. I’d believed it, sitting by myself and computing, like a child anticipating Christmas, how much
work
I could get done for a couple K a year in amortization of systems and overhead. And with the two of them, I was sure of it. It was a giddy kind of evening. Toward the end, we even began to figure out how quickly we could colonize Mars and launch a fleet of interstellar space liners, with all the working time of the existing people spent
working;
and then there was a pause and Larry got up and threw back the glass French window and we looked out on his balcony. Twenty stories up, and Los Angeles out in front of us and a thunderstorm brewing over the southern hills. The fresh air cleared my head for a moment and then made me realize, first, that I was sleepy and, second, that I had to read that damned paper in about seven hours.
work
I could get done for a couple K a year in amortization of systems and overhead. And with the two of them, I was sure of it. It was a giddy kind of evening. Toward the end, we even began to figure out how quickly we could colonize Mars and launch a fleet of interstellar space liners, with all the working time of the existing people spent
working;
and then there was a pause and Larry got up and threw back the glass French window and we looked out on his balcony. Twenty stories up, and Los Angeles out in front of us and a thunderstorm brewing over the southern hills. The fresh air cleared my head for a moment and then made me realize, first, that I was sleepy and, second, that I had to read that damned paper in about seven hours.
“We’d better call it a day,” said Dr. Ramos.
Larry started to object, then grinned. “All right for you old fellows,” he said. “Anyway, I want to look at those notes of yours by myself, Chip, if you don’t mind.”
“Just so you don’t lose them,” I said, and turned to go back to my room and get into
my bed and lie with my eyes wide open, smiling to myself, before I fell asleep to dream about fifty weeks a year working at my trade.
my bed and lie with my eyes wide open, smiling to myself, before I fell asleep to dream about fifty weeks a year working at my trade.
Even so, I woke easily the moment the hotel clock buzzed by my head. We’d fixed it to have breakfast in Larry’s room so I could reclaim my notes and maybe chat for a moment before the morning session began; and when I got to his floor, I saw Dr. Ramos padding toward me. “Morning,” he said. “I just woke up two honeymooners who didn’t appreciate it. Wasn’t Larry’s room 2051?”
“It’s 2052. The other way.” He grinned and fell into step and told me a fast and quite funny honeymooner joke, timing the punch line just as we reached Larry’s door.
He didn’t answer my knock. Still laughing, I said, “You try.” But there was no answer to Dr. Ramos’s knock, either.
I stopped laughing. “He couldn’t have forgotten we were coming, could he?”
“Try the door, why don’t you?”
And I did and it opened easily.
But Larry wasn’t in the room. The door to the bath was standing open and so was the balcony window, and no Larry. His bed was rumpled but empty.
“I don’t think he’s gone out,” said Dr. Ramos. “Look, his shoes are still there.”
The balcony wasn’t big enough to hide on, but I walked over and looked at it. Rain-slick and narrow, all that was on it were a couple of soaked deck chairs and some cigarette butts.
“Looks like he was out here,” I said; and then, feeling melodramatic, I leaned over the rail and looked down; and it wasn’t actually melodramatic after all, because there in the curve of the hotel’s sweeping front, on the rim of a fountain, something was sprawled, and a man was standing by it, shouting at the doorman. It was too early for much noise, and I could hear his voice faintly coming up the two hundred vertical feet between us and what was left of Larry.
They canceled the morning session but decided to go ahead in the afternoon, and I got into a long, bruising fight with Gordie MacKenzie because he wanted to give his paper when it was scheduled, at three in the afternoon, and I’d been reshuffled into that time and I just wasn’t feeling cheerful enough to let him get away with anything. Not after spending two hours with the coroner’s men and the hotel staff, trying to help them figure out why Larry would have jumped or slipped off the balcony, and especially not after finding out that he had had all my notes in his hand when he jumped and they were now in sticky, sloppy clusters all over Los Angeles County.
So I was about fed up. I once heard Krafft Ehricke give what I would figure to be a twelve-minute paper in three minutes and forty-five seconds, and I tried to beat his record and pretty nearly made it. Then I threw everything I owned into my suitcase and checked out, figuring to head right out to the airport and get on the first plane going home.
But the clerk said, “I have a message for you, Mr. Grew. Dr. Ramos asked you not to leave without seeing him.”
“Thanks,” I said, after a moment of debating whether to do anything about it or not; but as it turned out, I didn’t have to make the decision. Ramos came hurrying toward me across the lobby, his friendly face concerned.
“I thought you’d be leaving,” he said. “Give me twenty minutes of your time first.”
I hesitated and he snapped a finger at a bellboy. “Here. Let him take care of your bag and let’s go down and have a cup of coffee.” So I let him lead me to the outdoor patio by
the coffee shop, warm and clean now after the rain. I wondered if he recognized the place where Larry had hit, but I’m not sensitive about that sort of thing and apparently neither was he. He really had a commanding presence when he wanted to. He had a waitress beside us before we had quite slid our chairs closer to the table, sent her after coffee and sandwiches without consulting me and started in on me without a pause. “Chip,” he said, “don’t blow it. I’m sorry about your notes. But I don’t want to see you give up.”
the coffee shop, warm and clean now after the rain. I wondered if he recognized the place where Larry had hit, but I’m not sensitive about that sort of thing and apparently neither was he. He really had a commanding presence when he wanted to. He had a waitress beside us before we had quite slid our chairs closer to the table, sent her after coffee and sandwiches without consulting me and started in on me without a pause. “Chip,” he said, “don’t blow it. I’m sorry about your notes. But I don’t want to see you give up.”
I leaned back in my chair, feeling very weary. “Oh, that I won’t do, Dr. Ramos …”
“Call me Laszlo.”
“That I won’t do, Laszlo. As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking about it already.”
“I knew you would be.”
“I figure that by cutting out a couple of meetings next week—I can use Larry’s death as an excuse, some way; I’ll use anything, actually—I can reconstruct most of them from memory. Well, maybe not in a week, come to think of it. I’ll have to send for copies of some of the reports. But sooner or later …”
“Right. That’s what I want to talk to you about.” The girl brought the coffee and sandwiches and he waved her away briskly as soon as she’d set them down. “You see, you’re the man I came here to see.”
I looked at him. “You’re interested in photometry?”
“No. Not your paper—your idea. What we were talking about all night, for God’s sake. I didn’t know it was you I wanted until Resnik mentioned you yesterday. But after last night, I was sure.”
“I already have a job, Dr.—Laszlo.”
“And I’m not offering you a job.”
“Then, what …”
“I’m offering you a chance to make your idea work. I’ve got money, Chip, foundation money looking for something to be spent on. Not space research or cancer research or higher mathematics—they’re funded well enough now. My foundation is looking for projects that don’t fit into the usual patterns. Big ones. Like yours.”
Well, of course I was excited. It was so good to be taken that seriously.
“I called the board secretary in Washington first thing—I mean, as soon as they were open there. Of course, I couldn’t give him enough over the phone for a formal commitment. But he’s on the hook, Chip. And the board will go along. There’s a meeting next week and I want you there.”
“In Washington? I suppose …”
“Well, no. The foundation’s international, Chip, and this meeting’s at Lake Como. But we’ll pick up the tab, of course, and you can get a lot more done there, where your office isn’t going to call you …”
“But, I mean, I’m not sure …”
“We’ll back you. Everything you need. A staff. A headquarters. We’ve got the beginnings of a facility in Ames, Iowa; you’ll have to go out there, of course. But it shouldn’t be more than, oh, say, a couple days a month. And”—he grinned, a little apologetically—“I know it won’t mean anything to you. After you’ve got one medal on your chest, the rest aren’t too exciting. But it’ll look nice in your
Who’s Who
entry; and, anyway, the secretary has already authorized me to tell you that you’re invited to accept appointment to a trusteeship.”
Who’s Who
entry; and, anyway, the secretary has already authorized me to tell you that you’re invited to accept appointment to a trusteeship.”
I began to need the coffee and I took a long swallow. “You’re moving too fast for me, Laszlo,” I said.
“The trustees meet in Flagstaff; they’ve got a country-club deal there. You’ll like it. Of course, it’s only six times a year. But it’s worth it, Chip. I mean, we have our politics like everything else; and if you’re a trustee, you swing a lot of weight.”
And he prattled on, and I sat there listening, and it was all coming true, everything I’d hoped for; and the next week in Italy, in a great shiny room with an enormous window looking out over Lake Como, I found myself a full-fledged project director, with status as a trustee, honorary membership on the priorities committee and a staff of forty-one.
Next week we dedicate the Lawrence Resnik Memorial Building in Ames—the name was my idea, but everybody agreed—and although it’s been a hell of a year, I can see where we’ll really make progress now. It still seems a little incongruous that I should be putting in so much time on managerial work and conferences. But when I mentioned it to Laszlo the other day in Montreal, he gave me the grin and an approving look. “I wondered how long it would take you to think of that,” he chuckled. “But it’s best to make haste slowly, and you can see for yourself it’s paying off. Have I told you what a good impression your lecture tour made?”
“Thanks. Yes, as a matter of fact, you did. Anyway, once we get the Resnik installation going, there’ll be a little more time.”
“Damn right! And don’t say I told you”—he winked—“but remember what I told you about a possible appointment to the President’s Commission on Interdisciplinary Affairs? Well, it’s not official. But it’s definite. We’ve already taken a suite at the Shoreham for you. You’ll be using it a lot. We’ve even fitted up a room as an office; you can keep your notes and things there between trips.”
Well, I told him, of course, that if he meant the notes I had been trying to reconstruct, they didn’t require all that much room. Not by quite a lot, since I haven’t in all truth got very far.
I think I would have, somehow or other, with a little luck. But I haven’t actually been very lucky. Poor Honeyman, for instance—I’d already written him for another copy of the report he’d made up for me when I heard that his yawl had capsized in a storm. They didn’t even find his body for a week. And nobody seems to know where he kept his copy of the report, if he ever made one. And …
Well, there was that funny thing Resnik said the day he died, about how the world conspired against anybody who’d ever done anything. And then he said, “I’m not even sure it’s this world.”
I figured out what the joke was—that is, if it was a joke. I mean, just for a hypothesis, suppose Somebody didn’t want us to get ahead as fast as we could, Somebody from another world …
That’s silly. That is, I think it’s silly.
But if that line of thinking isn’t silly, then it must be something quite the opposite of silly; by which I mean it must be dangerous. Just recently, I’ve almost been run over twice by crazy drivers in front of my own house. And then there’s the air taxi I missed and saw crash on take-off before my eyes.
Just for the fun of it, there are two things I’d like to know. One is where the foundation gets its money and why. The other—and I just might see if I can get an answer to this one, next time I’m in L.A.—is whether there really were a pair of honeymooners in room 2051 that morning, to be accidentally awakened by Laszlo Ramos just about the time that Larry was on his way down twenty flights.
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