If Domino were here, Michaelmas thought, oppressed, he would have pulled me up for persiflage long before now. What is it? he thought. What in the world are they doing to me and mine? Who are they?
Limberg, meanwhile, was spieling out all the improbables of Norwood’s crash so near the sanatorium, so far from the world’s attention. If it weren’t Limberg, and if they weren’t all so certain Norwood was waiting alive and seamless in the wings, how many of them here in this room would have been willing to swallow it? But when he looked around him now, Michaelmas could see it going down whole, glutinously.
And maybe it’s really that way? he thought, finally. Ah, no, no, they are using the mails to defraud somehow. And most important I think they have killed Horse Watson, probably because he frightened them with how swiftly he could move.
When he thought of that, he felt more confident. If they were really monolithically masterly, they’d have had the wreckage all dressed and propped as required. More, they would have been icy sure of it, come Nineveh, come Iron Darius and all his chariots against them. But they hadn’t liked Watson’s directness. They’d panicked a little. Someone on the crew had said, “Wait — no, let’s take one more look at it before we put it on exhibit.” And so they had knocked Watson down not only to forestall him but to distract the crowd while they sidled out and made assurance doubly sure.
It was good to think they could be nervous.
It was bad to think nevertheless how capable they were.
Now Limberg was into orthopaedics, immunology, tissue cloning; it was all believable. It was years since they’d announced being able to grow a new heart from a snippet of a bad one; what was apparently new was being able to grow it in time to do the patient any good.
Keying in, Michaelmas said a few words about that to his audience, just as if he believed it. Meanwhile, he admired the way Limberg was teasing the time away, letting the press corps wind up tighter and tighter just as if they were ordinary rubes awaiting the star turn at the snake oil show, instead of the dukes and duchesses of world opinion.
“— but the details of these things,” Limberg was finally concluding, “are of course best left for later consideration. I am privileged now to reintroduce to you the United States of North America astronaut Colonel Doctor of Engineering Walter Norwood.”
And there he was, striding out of the wings, suddenly washed in light, grinning and raising one hand boyishly in a wave of greeting. Every lens in the room sucked him in, every heart beat louder in that mesmerized crowd, and the media punched him direct into the world’s gut. But not on prime time. Of all the scheduling they could have set up, this was just about the worst. Not that there was any way to take much of the edge on this one. Nevertheless, when this news arrived at Mr and Mrs America’s breakfast table, it would be hours cold —warmed over, blurred by subsequent events of whatever kind. A bathing beauty might give birth and name a dolphin as the father. Professional terrorists, hired by Corsican investors in the Carlsbad radium spa, might bomb President Fefre’s palace. General Motors might announce there would be no new models for the year 2001, since the world was coming to an end.
It suddenly occurred to Michaelmas that if he were UNAC, he’d have had Papashvilly here to shake Norwood’s hand at this moment and throw a comradely arm around his shoulders, and thus emphasize just who it was that was being welcomed home and who it was that had drawn the water and hewn the wood meanwhile.
But they had retreated from that opportunity. Why? No time to wonder. Norwood was standing alone at the podium. Limberg had drifted back to join Sakal at the table, Frontiere was blended into the walls somewhere until Q and A time, and the American colonel had the attention. He had it pretty well, too. Limberg’s lighting electricians were doing a masterful job on him.
“I’m very glad to see you all,” Norwood said softly into the cameras, his hair an aureole of backlighting. He raised his chin a little, and his facial lines were bathed out by a spot mounted out of sight somewhere in the podium box itself. “I want to thank Dr. Limberg and his staff.” He was like an angel. Michaelmas’s, hackles were rising. “And now I’m ready to sit down and take questions.” He smiled, waved his hand again, and stepped back.
The lighting changed; now the podium was played down, and the table was illuminated. Sakal and Limberg were standing. Frontiere was coming out of the wings. Norwood reached his chair. The press corps leaned forward, some with hands rising and mouths opening to call attention to their questions, and as they leaned some lackey somewhere began to applaud. Caught on the lean, it was easy to stand. Standing, it was easy to applaud. Scores of palms resounded, and the walls quivered. Limberg as well as Norwood smiled and nodded modestly.
Michaelmas fidgeted. He closed his fists. Where was the statement explaining exactly what had happened? Where was the UNAC physicist with his charts and pointer, his vocabulary full of coriolis effect and telemetry nulls, his animation holograms of how a radar horizon swallows a man-carrying capsule? If no one else was going to do it, Norwood should have.
It wasn’t going to happen. In another moment, a hundred and a half people, each with an individual idea of what needed asking, were going to begin competing for short answers to breathless questions. The man whose media radiated its signal from an overhead satellite to a clientele of bangled cattlemen in wattle huts had concerns not shared by the correspondent for Dow Jones. The people from Science News Service hardly listened to whatever response was drawn by the representative of Elle. And there was only a circumscribed area of time to work in. The bathing beauty was out there somewhere, jostling Fefre and chiliasm for space on the channels, jockeying her anomalously presented hips.
It was all over. They were not here to obtain information after all. They were here to sanctify the occasion, and when they were done the world would think it knew the truth and was free.
Frontiere was at the podium. This sort of thing was his handiwork. He moved effortlessly, a man who had danced this sort of minuet once or twice before. UNAC’s man, but doing the job Limberg wanted done.
And thus Sakal’s impotent rage. Somehow the Bird was over the grand old man’s barrel.
“The questions?” Frontiere was saying to the press corps. My hat is off to you, you son of a bitch, Michaelmas was saying, and yes, indeed, we will talk afterwards, friend to friend. I am senior in prestige here; it is incumbent on me to frame the first question. To set the tone, so to speak. I raise my hand. Getulio smiles towards me. “Yes, Mr Michaelmas?”
“Colonel Norwood’s presence here delights us all,” I say. There are amenities that must of course be followed. I make the obligatory remark on behalf of the media. But I am the first voice from the floor. The world hears me. I have spoken. It’s all true. He is risen. The people of the world rejoice.
But they are my people! God damn it, my people!
“My question is for Mr Sakal. I’d like him to explain how Colonel Norwood’s presence here jibes with UNAC’s prior explanations of his death.” I stand with a faint little twinkle visible in my eye. I am gently needling the bureaucrats. I am in fact doing no such thing. If Frontiere and Sakal have not already rehearsed this question a thousand times, then they are all impostors. I am a clown. I toss the ball so they may catch it gracefully.
Sakal leans forward in his chair, his hands cupped on the table. “Well, obviously,” he delivers, “there was some sort of failure in our tracking and monitoring systems.” He causes himself to appear rueful. “Some embarrassing failure.”