Up and Down (25 page)

“What … the … fuck!” I blurted, then looked up at them. “So sorry. What the hell!”

I stood up as I said it, pushing my chair backwards so it bumped the wall behind me. I read just the lead paragraph of the story and moaned as if the bamboo shoots under my toenails had just
been set alight. I rubbed my forehead with my free hand, which I thought was a nice touch.

“Where did this come from? How did this happen?” I shouted, staring at them with eyes wide enough to accommodate a monocle in each. As I raged, I waved the story around my head as if trying to achieve flight. Now, for the
pièce de la résistance
. I threw the article back down, without even having finished it, and then stared them both down, my hands planted on the desk as I leaned towards them.

“Okay, now I’m going to need the complete and unvarnished truth from you both,” I said through a clenched jaw. “Were either of you freelancing this story to the
Sun
? Cause I’ll be very, very angry if you have. This threatens the whole program and makes us all look incompetent. And why wasn’t I informed about this earlier?”

I’d never spoken to them in this tone before. But it was necessary.

“David, of course we didn’t throw this to the
Sun
. Why would we do that? Read the rest of the piece. It didn’t come from us,” Diane replied, with Amanda backing her up with such vigorous head nodding, it gave me a sore neck just watching it.

“We’re just as shocked as you are. Read the rest,” Amanda urged, pointing to the story that still lay where I’d thrown it.

I calmed down, managed to remember to wheel the chair back under me before dropping back into it, and pretended to read the story as they both sat and watched me. I shook my head a
few times, groaned once or twice, and did the forehead-rubbing thing a few more times for good measure. When I thought enough time had passed for me to have read the entire story, I sighed, sat back, and looked up at the ceiling for a moment or two before turning my eyes back to them.

“We’ve got to get on the blower to Blake and
NASA
before they find out about this in their morning clips,” I suggested. “This story is going to be hot for the next few days at least. It’s just the
Sun
today, but by mid-morning, everyone is going to pile on. I bet
CTV
and
CBC
will send vidcams out west to track down Landon. This could be huge.”

“I already have a call in to Crawford. He’s our first priority,” Diane replied. “That is, if we all still have jobs by the time we hear from him.”

“At least Landon doesn’t seem to be behind this,” I said with relief. “She’s so cut off out there. Besides, she wouldn’t begin to know how to orchestrate this.”

“No, the story seems to have originated with the guy who was going to fly you in,” Amanda said. “Chatter … something or other.”

Oh, right. I nearly forgot about that part.

“That bastard!” I shouted in rekindled rage. I smashed my fist onto the desk, apparently launching Amanda’s pen into the air where it traced a graceful arc and bounced off my head on the way down. I hadn’t even noticed it was airborne.

“David, calm down!” Amanda said.

“He screwed me! Nobody told me I should have been using an alias! Shit, shit, shit!”

They’d never seen me this way.
I’d
never seen me this way. Probably because I’d never actually been this way. Then Providence shone, and as if planned and rehearsed, the receptionist noticed me in Amanda’s office as she walked past. She stopped and poked her head in, waving a pink message slip in my general direction. She handed it over and slipped back to her post. Serendipity, right on cue.

“It looks like one Sarah Nesbitt from the
Vancouver Sun
was trying to reach me while I was up north scattering my mother’s ashes.” I held up the message, and then to complete the charade, checked my BlackBerry. “I thought that name was familiar. It seems she emailed me on Friday night but I never opened it. Shit, shit, shit!” I shouted, my fists clenched at my sides, and what I hoped was a kind of crazed serial killer look plastered on my normally quite placid face.

“David, relax! Please.” Diane joined the fray. “No one is blaming you for this. But we do have to decide how we’re going to handle it, and we haven’t much time.”

So far, so good. Silence reigned for a moment or two so, I filled it with heavy breathing in my best impression of calming down.

“Maybe we should wait and see how Canadians respond to the story, but I think they’ll be in Landon’s corner almost immediately. Everyone loves an underdog,” I began with brow furrowed. “I don’t see how we can go ahead and draw another name when
the world knows, or will certainly soon know, that Landon Percival is already our lucky winner.
NASA
and Turner King would be crucified if she weren’t at least given a chance.”

I hope I hadn’t pushed my luck and moved too quickly to my end-game.

“I fear you’re right,” Amanda agreed. “I think the only way to divert attention from the fact that we couldn’t even protect the identity of the winner will be to announce her fast and focus on what a great Canadian story Landon Percival really represents. Then the
Sun
’s big explosive exclusive will turn into a Landon Percival love-in.”

“Precisely!” was the word that flashed in my head, though I didn’t release it audibly. Instead, I went with something else.

“Hmmm, interesting analysis.” I cupped my chin in my right hand, creating what I hoped were cavernous deep-thinking lines in my forehead. “Yes, I think you might actually be on to something there, Amanda. It might be our best, perhaps our only, option.”

Amanda seemed pleased. Diane stared into space as she pondered what came to be known as “Amanda’s idea.” Then she nodded affirmation, but looked very scared while doing it. Then the whole desk vibrated as if struck by a very targeted earthquake. Diane snatched her BlackBerry from the desk.

“Incoming!” she said as she scanned the small screen. “Okay, we’ve got a call with Crawford at 11:00,” Diane said. She eased herself forward and off the chair for the short drop to the floor. “We’ll do it in my office.”

She then swept out of the room. And having witnessed it, I can report that it’s difficult to sweep out of anywhere when you’re not quite five feet tall. But she made it work.

“Okay, thanks, Amanda. I’ll see you in Diane’s office at 11:00,” I said as I sat back down and waited for Amanda to leave too.

“Um, you’re actually sitting at my desk,” she said.

“Oh, right,” I mumbled, leaping back to my feet and moving towards the door. “Sorry.”

“David?”

I stopped and turned to her as she settled back down in her own chair. She narrowed her eyes a tad.

“You’re not playing us here, are you?”

“What? Amanda, how could you even think that?” I protested. “As far as I can tell, this story broke for two reasons, and two reasons only. Google, and Chatter what’s-his-name’s loose lips. End of story. Well, I guess I mean beginning of story. That’s all it took,” I explained, trying not to sound too defensive.

I paused and then continued, lowering and softening my voice for the home stretch.

“Besides, I’ve just returned from scattering my own mother’s ashes. I haven’t eaten in three days or looked at my BlackBerry until just now. I’ve got 150 thank-you notes to write and there’s something I can’t identify growing on a pizza slice in my fridge. I’m a mess. I only came in to work to get my mind off of the last week. Which reminds me, it really was very kind of you to come to the visitation. It really meant a lot to me.”

She smiled so slightly I almost missed it, and then she nodded. I made good my escape. I felt bad about my subterfuge but I didn’t know Diane or Amanda well enough to trust them yet. If they knew what I was doing behind the curtain, I wasn’t yet convinced they wouldn’t just hand me over to Crawford Blake on a silver … operating table, my nether region prepped.

While it was risky to fan the flames further from my own very exposed cubicle, I really didn’t have a choice, and time was running very short. In the next three hours or so, I did it all from my BlackBerry, not trusting my networked office computer. I hit the Do Not Disturb button on my office phone, but used my shoulder to hold the silent receiver to my ear to discourage drive-by drop-ins. I opened a phony YouTube account and uploaded five minutes of Landon Percival strapped into her homemade human blender. Then, from my newly created and fingerprint-free Gmail account, I sent an anonymous email, including links to the
Sun
story and the YouTube clip, to the Canadian Association of Retired Persons. The aptly named
CARP
was the leading advocacy group for senior citizens in the country, and when they were on the offensive, well, they could be very offensive, and very effective too. I also activated Landon’s Facebook fan page and went ahead and set up an untraceable Twitter account with the handle
@Landon_in_space
. The first tweet pointed to the newly live Facebook fan page and included
Landon’s full name. I wanted those searching Twitter to have no difficulty finding her. I re-tweeted my initial tweet a few times, directing it in each instance to the most influential Canadians in the Twitterverse. I sent a second set of tweets that linked to Landon’s whirligig YouTube debut. I knew that would get us some traction and kick-start a following.

After three hours hunched over my BlackBerry with my head acutely tilted to clamp the prop-only phone to my ear, my
BB
was hot and smoking, I had muscle spasms in both thumbs, and my neck was in dire need of acupuncture or at least a cervical collar. But in those three hours, I was able to put the communications infrastructure in place that I hoped just might launch Landon Percival into orbit. And by 10:30 that morning, it was already getting a workout.

I trolled through the Canadian media online and was reminded just how fast big stories spread in this country. All major news media websites, including
CBC, CTV
, Global, the
Globe and Mail
,
Ottawa Citizen
,
Toronto Star
, the Halifax
Chronicle Herald
, and the
Calgary Sun
all carried stories about Canada’s rumoured citizen astronaut. It wouldn’t be long before the story was picked up south of the border. The YouTube clip, still only three hours old, had already attracted 256 views and the number was growing rapidly as the major media sites discovered it and embedded it directly in their stories. Canadian Press, our leading wire service, ran a story that would surely be picked up in dailies across the country the next morning. The
Facebook page had already registered 213 Likes, and somehow, the @
Landon_in_space
Twitter stream had attracted 164 followers in about 20 minutes. Finally, at five minutes to eleven, I had a quick scan of CanadaNewswire, the site that disseminates news releases electronically to media outlets across the country and around the world. I found what I was looking for.
CARP
had issued a news release at 10:42 with the following headline:

CARP URGES NASA TO LAUNCH SENIOR CITIZEN ASTRONAUT

Like a prison-break fugitive, I looked around me to make sure no one had been observing my extracurricular efforts. Then I rose and sauntered out of my cubicle for the call in Diane’s office, the next big play.

Amanda was already seated as I dropped into the second guest chair in front of Diane’s desk.

“Let me take the lead on this,” Diane instructed. “Crawford talks a good game about making
TK
a flatter organization, but in the end, he’s still very conscious of seniority. I think he can only process opposing views if they’re delivered by someone who at least approaches his own rank. I can push back. You can’t.”

“No problem,” I said, without disguising my relief.

Amanda eventually nodded in assent, but wasn’t as pleased with the directive. Diane dialled and put the call on the speaker.

“
What in the name of all that is fucking holy have you all done up there?
” said the voice, leaving pure malevolence hanging in the air. “You all have fucked it up, but good.”

“Good morning, Crawford,” interjected Diane. “I gather you’ve seen the
Sun
story.”

“How did this happen? I ask that you pick another winner. You all try to argue to have this fucking ancient old biddy climb aboard the shuttle. So I direct you a second time to pick and qualify a new goddamned winner. But you say you can’t do it until this week for some lame-ass reason. And then mysteriously, miraculously, seemingly out of no-fucking-where, this story breaks. Now what the fuck am I supposed to think?”

“Crawford, we’ve known each other a long time. We’ve always been honest with one another. And I have to say, I’m not thrilled with your tone and what sounds like an accusation on your part that we’re somehow not being team players on this and are going our own way. That is not what is happening here. You’ve obviously read the piece so you know that we had nothing to do with the story. A small-town gossip who knows his way around a search engine put two and two together, fed it to a very good and very enterprising reporter who assembled disparate leads and circumstantial evidence into a wholly accurate story. The only thing that might have prevented this, I repeat,
might
have prevented it, is if David had used a phony name to charter a float plane in remote B.C.”