Very quickly I explained to Wilson and Sanchez what was going on. Then I looked at Wilson, Wilson looked at me and we both looked at the hangar where the banner had just fallen down again.
“I don’t suppose,” he said slowly, “it would do any good to call in sick, would it?”
We didn’t call in sick. For one thing they knew where we lived and for another, well, call it horrified fascination. We knew what was going to happen, but we had to see it anyway. Like watching a train wreck coming.
That morning Wilson and I went down to Drafting to get a better look. We pretty much had the room to ourselves because the drafting staff was out in the bleachers, but stood a discreet distance away from the windows anyway.
So far things looked pretty normal. The banner had finally been hung, the grandstands had filled, the band was in place and the limos were arriving with the VIPs.
The crew was running around self-importantly in pale blue jumpsuits that shaded to black at the knees. I noticed an ambulance discreetly parked off to one side and decided it was either a bad sign or a wise precaution. Or maybe both.
Things seemed to go along normally for a while. The band played, the flags waved in the breeze, the VIPs took their seats. I had begun to hope that maybe, just maybe, we’d get through this all right.
Then M. Chambers Jones, president and CEO of DynoDyne, got up to speak. There was an expectant hush as he placed his notes on the podium and looked up. The wind ruffled his gray hair just a little and then he launched into it.
“Friends, associates and fellow guests…” at that point he was drowned out by a squeal of feedback from the expensive state-of-the-art amplifier system the company had bought for the occasion.
He stopped, frowned and tried again. “Friends…” and the squeal was back, worse than ever.
Jones fiddled with the microphone and the squeal grew louder. He turned away from the speakers and put his back to the crowd. “As I look over these faces…” and then the feedback drowned him out. A technician in a black-and-blue jumpsuit scurried up on the stage and whispered in his ear. He leaned over and whispered something back to the technician. “…do something about this or I’ll have your ass!” boomed out of the speakers, clear as day. The president reddened and smiled weakly. The civilians on the speakers’ platform fidgeted. Jones gave it up as a bad job and signaled for the rollout.
The bandmaster raised his baton, the band stood and they struck up.
With a blare of brass and a squeal of feedback, the doors of the hangars slid open—about six inches. Then they stopped. The band ran through its fanfare and still the doors didn’t move. The bandmaster looked over at the speaker’s stand and then signaled the musicians into the junior college fight song. There was much running around and even from where we were we could hear the banging as the crew tried to free the doors. Finally the left one slid most of the way back. Then the right door started back, tottered and fell outward on the concrete with a resounding crash. The noise and sudden glare frightened a flock of pigeons that was roosting in the hangar and they burst out the door.
Then slowly and carefully the Night Eagle emerged. Painfully slowly, since the tug wouldn’t start and they had about fifty guys in sweat-stained blue-black jump suits pushing on the plane from behind. As we watched one of the pushers tripped over the fallen hangar door and went down holding his knee.
When the Stealth Eagle rolled out into the Sunlight it became obvious the pigeons had been busy doing what pigeons do and they had done it all over the plane. The entire top surface was splotched with white and green that contrasted horribly with the $50,000 paint job.
The bandmaster signaled the band and they stopped the fight song in mid-chorus. With a tremendous banging of drums they went into the theme from 2001. They got through the drum stuff at the beginning all right, but when the brass came in the music somehow got into the microphone on the speakers stand, which was supposed to be off but wasn’t. The result was the most horrendous squeal of feedback you’ve ever heard as that state-of-the-art amplifier system fed on itself. There was everything from ear-splitting high notes to bone-rattling subsonics, and in between a howl that rattled the windows and shook dust down from the ceiling above us.
I don’t know what was in that note, but whatever it was, bats hated it. A couple of hundred of them erupted from the hangar, fleeing for all they were worth and heading straight for the grandstand.
Pandemonium? That’s too mild. People screamed, yelled, ducked, dived off the bleachers and tripped over one another in an effort to get away. The TV cameras were still rolling when the bleachers collapsed.
Well, you saw the tape, Larry. Hell, every TV station in the country was running it for the next two days. You know the numbers. Twenty-three people, including two generals and a Congressman, injured. A full-scale Congressional investigation into “fraud, waste, and abuse,” the indictments, the lawsuits, the hostile takeover and all the rest of it.
Just then we didn’t know any of that because we were cowering under the work tables, but we knew enough to know we had just witnessed a disaster of major proportions.
“Do you suppose they’ll figure out what happened?” Wilson asked me as we crawled out from under the table.
I thought about it while I brushed the dust off. “I don’t see how. I mean who’d believe it? And who’s going to tell them anyway?”
“I suppose,” Wilson said in a voice that sounded as unconvinced as I felt.
Then another thought struck me. “Besides,” I said slowly, “we’ve got positive probabilities on our side, remember? Under the terms of the contract they can’t let anything happen to us that will interfere with our operations.”
Wilson thought about it for a minute. “Yeah,” he said. Then he brightened. “Yeah. We got luck on our side guaranteed.”
The luck lasted exactly as long as it took us to get back down the hall to our office.
We had a visitor waiting for us. A rather small visitor, less than a foot high. He was standing on the bench by the transporter board wearing a cutaway coat, string tie and glaring through his pince-nez at everyone and everything. The chief wombat was looking decidedly abashed and his mates didn’t look too happy either.
“Snruflitz Geeblefritz,” the little man said, “I’m from the EPA.”
“EPA?” Wilson asked blankly.
“The Extradimensional Probability Agency,” he said sharply. “Surely you’re familiar with us?”
“Ah, right. What seems to be the problem Mr., ah, Geeblefritz?”
“That’s Geeblefritz,” the demon corrected, “and a more accurate question would be what isn’t the problem? As nearly as I can determine there is hardly a regulation you have not violated in running this illegal probability sink, starting with failure to file a Probability Impact Statement and proceeding to a complete and utter lack of required reports, failure to maintain the proper paperwork for inspection. Oh yes, and illegal probability transport, but that’s really another department.”
“There’s regulations for this stuff?” Sanchez asked.
Geeblefritz, or Geeblefritz, drew himself up to his full eight inches. “Sir,” he said, adjusting his pince-nez, “there are regulations for everything.”
“But we didn’t know,” I protested.
“Ignorance is no excuse. Although how you could have avoided knowing when hiring a firm as disreputable as,” he sniffed, “IMP is beyond me. However, it is immaterial. As beneficiary you are of course responsible for your contractor’s malfeasance.” He glared at the wombats and the koala.
He turned his attention back to me. “Your company will be receiving notification of your fine—and a bill. Good day, gentlemen.” With that he winked out and the koala and the wombats winked out with him.