Then they began getting into the fine detail. The Asians offered a million-man Soil Army plus a stream of tankers carrying three million gallons a week of concentrated sludge from the sewers of Shanghai. The Australians accepted the fertilizer but spoke of a maximum of 50,000 Asians to till the land. Also, they pointed out politely, that as it was Australian land and Australian sunshine that was being used, it would be Australian wheat that would be grown. The man from the State Department reminded Dash of American commitments to Peru, and with a heavy heart Dash rose to insist on at least a 15 percent allocation to good neighbors on the South American continent. And tempers began to rise. The precipitating incident was an NPA shuttle plane that ran into a flock of black-footed albatrosses as it took off from the Sand Island runway, crashed and burned on an islet in the lagoon, in full view of the conference members on the rooftop of the Holiday Inn. Then there were harsh words. The Japanese member of the NPA delegation allowed himself to say what he had previously only thought: that America’s insistence on holding the conference at the site of one of the most famous battles of World War II was a calculated insult to Asians. The Australians commented that they had controlled their own gooney-bird populations without much trouble, and were astonished that the Americans had not succeeded in doing the same. And the maximum gain of three weeks of preparation and two days of hope was a tightly worded announcement that all three powers had agreed to further discussions. Sometime. Somewhere. Not very soon.
But what it all meant, Dash admitted to himself as he tossed restlessly on the chaise longue, was that the confrontation was eyeball to eyeball. Somebody would have to give, and nobody would.
He got up and called for coffee. When it came there was a scribbled note on Airborne White House stationery from one of the Senators: “Mr. President, we must settle the disaster-area proclamation before we land.”
Dash crumpled it up. That was Senator Talitree, full of complaints: Lake Altus had shrunk to 20 percent of its normal size, tourism in the Arbuckle Mountains was dead because there was no water coming over Turner Falls, the Sooner State Fair had had to be canceled because of blowing dust. Oklahoma should be declared a disaster area. He had fifty-four states, Dash reflected, and if he listened to all the Senators and governors he would be declaring fifty-four disaster areas. There really was only one disaster area. It merely happened to be world-wide.
And I ran for this job, he marveled.
Thinking of Oklahoma made him think of Roger Torraway. For a moment he considered calling the pilot and diverting the flight to Tonka. But the meeting with the Combined Chiefs of Staff would not wait. He would have to content himself with the telephone.
It was not really himself who was playing the guitar, Roger knew, it was the 3070 that remembered all the subroutines involved and commanded his fingers to do whatever his brain decreed. It had taken him less than an hour to learn every chord in the book, and to use them in effortless succession. A few minutes more to record in the downstairs data banks the meaning of time signals on a musical staff; then his inner clocks took over the tempi and he never had to think about the beat again. For melody, he learned which fret on which string corresponded to each note on the staff; once imprinted on the magnetic cores, the correspondence between printed music and plucked string was established forever. Sulie took ten minutes to show him which notes to sharp and which to flat when called for, and from then on the galaxy of sharps and flats sprinkled over the bars at the key signature held no further terrors for him. Finger-plucking: for human nervous systems, it is a matter of two minutes to learn the principle and a hundred hours of practice before it becomes automatic: thumb on the D string, ring finger on the high E, middle finger on the B, thumb on the A, ring on the E, middle on the B and so on. The two minutes of learning sufficed for Roger. From then on the subroutines commanded the fingers, and the only limit to his tempo was the speed at which the strings themselves could produce a tone without breaking.
He was playing a Segovia recital from memory, from a single hearing of the tape, when the President’s phone call came in.
There was a time when Roger would have been awed and delighted by a call from the President of the United States. Now it was an annoyance; it meant taking time away from his guitar. He hardly listened to what the President had to say. He was struck by the care on Dash’s face, the deep lines that had not been there a few days before, the sunken eyes. Then he realized that his interpretation circuits were exaggerating what they saw to call his attention to the changes; he overrode the mediation circuits and saw Dash plain.
But he was still careworn. His voice was all warmth and good fellowship as he asked Roger how things were going. Was there anything Roger needed? Could he think of an ass to kick to get things goin’ right? “Everything’s fine, Mr. President,” Roger said, amusing himself by letting his trick eyes deck the President’s face out in Santa Claus beard and red tasseled cap, with a bundle of intangible gifts over his shoulder.
“Sure now, Roger?” Dash pressed. “You’re not forgetting what I told you: whatever you want, you just yell.”
“I’ll yell,” Roger promised. “But I’m doing fine. Waiting for the launch.” And waiting for you to get off the phone, he thought, bored with the conversation.
The President frowned. Roger’s interpreters immediately changed the image: Dash was still Santa Claus, but ebony black and with enormous fangs. “You’re not overconfident, are you?” he asked.
“Well, how would I know if I was?” Roger asked reasonably. “I don’t think so. Ask the staff here; they can tell you more about me than I can.”
He managed to terminate the conversation a few exchanges later, knowing that the President was unsatisfied and vaguely troubled, but not caring much. There was less and less that Roger really cared about, he thought to himself. And he had been truthfuclass="underline" he really was looking forward to the launch. He would miss Sulie and Clara. He was, in the back of his mind, faintly worried about the danger and the duration of the trip. But he was also buoyed up with anticipation of what he would find when he got there: the planet he was made to inhabit.
He picked up the guitar and started again on the Segovia, but it did not go as well as he would like. After a time he realized that the gift of absolute pitch was also a handicap: Segovia’s guitar had not been tuned to a perfect 440 A, it was a few Hertz flat, and his D string was almost a quarter-tone relatively flatter still. He shrugged — the bat wings flailed with the gesture — and put the guitar down.
For a moment, he sat upright on his guitar chair, straightbacked and armless, inviting his thoughts.
Something was troubling him. The name of the something was Dorrie. Playing the guitar was pleasant and relaxing, but behind the pleasure was a daydream: a fantasy of sitting on the deck of a sailboat with Dorrie and Brad, and casually borrowing Brad’s guitar and astonishing them all.
In some arcane way all the processes of his life terminated in Dorrie. The purpose of playing the guitar was to please Dorrie. The horror of his appearance was that it would offend Dorrie. The tragedy of castration was that he would fail Dorrie. Most of the pain had lifted from these things, and he could look at them in a way that had been impossible a few weeks before; but they were still there buried inside him.
He reached for the phone, and then drew back his hand.
Calling Dorrie was not satisfactory. He had tried that.
What he really wanted was to see her.
That, of course, was impossible. He was not allowed to leave the project. Vern Scanyon would be furious. The guards would stop him at the door. The telemetry would reveal at once what he was doing; the closed-circuit electronic surveillance would locate him at every step; all the resources of the project would be mobilized to prevent his leaving.