Damn the little pervert! Pedigrue stalked past him, to the very end of the long row of urinals. He turned his body as much away as he could.
What a downer this whole trip had turned out to be! Those spacey kids at Arecibo, the delayed flight, the middle- aged stewardesses, the missing chauffeur. Now this! It was a considerable nuisance. Sometimes Tommy couldn't get going when people were looking at him. He could almost feel the boy's on him clear across the empty room—
It was worse than that.
The boy moved up to the urinal right next to him, his face absolutely blank, looking straight at the wall, slowly stroking his penis.
For a moment Tommy Pedigrue felt as though he were exploding with rage. Then he felt as though he wanted to cry. Why me? he asked the universe. The caution signal in the back of his brain was flashing furiously. What was the use of being careful with everybody you met, limiting yourself to two or three drinks on the plane, watching your mouth when you talked to the stews, if you then walked into something that, if it went the wrong way, might mean the worst kind of scandal? What if someone walked in right then—someone who recognized him—and saw the two of them there, like that?
Although Neptune is an immense planet, seventeen times the mass of the earth, it is so far away that it is invisible to the naked eye. It is a curious and poignant fact in the history of astronomy that—with all the vast sphere of the heavens for it to hide in—the first human being who could possibly have seen it, the inventor of the telescope, Galileo, was in fact the first person who did, in the year 1612. He did not know what he had seen. The notion of planets even farther from the sun than Saturn had not yet occurred to anyone, even him. He took it for an ordinary, if somewhat perplexing, star.
Friday, December 4th. 8:38 PM.
It was nearly nine o'clock, but Wes Grierson was a late person. Tib Sonderman checked his watch and saw that, because of the plane's lateness, he had nearly half an hour before he could get a bus to Studio City; it was worth trying to reach the information-retrieval man.
Grierson answered the phone himself. "Wesley? This is Tib Sonderman. I'm sorry to bother you so late, but I want you to dig up some papers for me. Are you taping this?"
"Of course I am, Tib." His voice was almost offended.
"I want everything in the last five years that references a book called The Jupiter Effect, by two people—I'm not sure of their names—"
"Gribbin and Plagemann. That's easy if you've been reading the papers. What else?"
"That's it for now. Send the list through to my home, you've got the number?"
"Of course I do, Tib." Grierson's specialty was information retrieval; it was almost insulting to ask him if he had a computer terminal number, or a Social Security number, or the number of the hotel you stayed in in Philadelphia last time you were there, eighteen months ago; that was his business. "I didn't know you were into astrology, Tib."
Sonderman scowled at the telephone. "What are you talking about? I read the book. It's got nothing to do—"
"Not the book. The people who re taking it up." Grierson chuckled. "I guess you're not one of them, but you had me worried for a minute."
"It's just something I need to know about."
"Sure, Tib. At this time of night. I'll get the stuff out to you. . . . Oh, Tib?"
Sonderman stopped, just about to hang up. "What?"
"Did you know Gribbin had recanted?"
"No!"
"I'll send that along too," Grierson promised, and broke the connection, laughing.
Sonderman grinned too, after a moment. So he had wasted a couple of hours on somebody's pipe dream. Well, he had wasted more on less. Now he could face the long drive home with one fewer thing on his mind. Which reminded him; he backtracked a few steps and pushed open the door to the men's room.
For a moment he felt a sting of shame, as though he had accidentally pushed open a bedroom door in someone else's house. Although the man at the far end had his back turned, Sonderman recognized him easily. Townsend Pedigrue? No, the kid brother, Thompson. And his back was eloquent. The ragamuffin next to him was easier to recognize. Maybe not by name, but for what he was.
It was evident that Pedigrue was not molesting a minor, as Sonderman had thought at once. He was still good- humored from his talk with Wes Grierson, so he said easily, "Son, if you're still in here one minute from now I'm calling the Juvenile Division."
The boy turned unhurriedly and looked Sonderman up and down. Then he shrugged and walked to the door, rearranging his clothes only as he left. He paused as the door was closing to say, "Fuck you."
Tommy Pedigrue's face was scarlet as he turned away from the urinals to wash his hands. He waited until Sonderman had joined him at the air-dryer to say, "Jesus! What was that all about?"
"That's just one of our famous Los Angeles chickens, Mr. Pedigrue. He was just showing you the merchandise."
"Disgusting," Pedigrue said with indignation. Away from the presence of his brother and the stimulus of an audience, he was a much quieter, less confident person. He stayed close to Sonderman as they walked along the people mover toward the main terminal, as though he expected the young boy to solicit him again. But they were almost alone on the moving belt. Overhead the ceiling speakers murmured reminders: "—and stand to the right. If you wish to pass, please do so on the left. . . . Please hold handrail—"
"I forgot to say thanks," Pedigrue said suddenly, as they came to the end.
"You're welcome." Getting on the good side of somebody like Tommy Pedigrue was as important, in its way, as setting strain gauges across Palmdale. Sonderman was unskilled in this operation, but knew that the best way to press an advantage was to leave it alone and let it ripen. "I guess we'll be running into each other now and then, Mr. Pedigrue," he said.
Pedigrue grinned. "Next time we have a funding hearing, you mean. Tell you what. We'll have a drink somewhere, before that, and you can give me the off-the-record stuff, what's important, what we can get along without— Oh, there you are!"
He broke off to scowl at a middle-aged black man in a chauffeur's uniform, standing worriedly just outside the anti-hijack checkpoint.
"I'm real sorry, Mr. Pedigrue," the chauffeur began at once, "but they wouldn't let me in because of, you know—" he touched the bulge under his armpit—"and I tried to have you paged, but—"
Sonderman nodded politely, and moved on. He stood on the sidewalk just outside the door, and he could hear, over the new set of speakers that were telling him that the white zone was for the loading and unloading of passengers only, Tommy Pedigrue's voice raised in anger. He was glad when his bus came. It was just as well to be somewhere else when your potential benefactor was losing his temper. It didn't much matter at whom the rage was directed. It took only a small splash-over to cost you an inflation increase, or even a whole project.
Sonderman s house in Studio City was tiny, and it clung to a hillside. Directly behind it was a sheer face covered with chaparral. If it rained, the mud might slide into his back yard; if it was dry, the vegetation would die and it was likely to burn. And then it would slide into his back yard. Living there was a constant challenge.
Since he had slept on the plane, he was not ready for bed when he got home. He left the door open and slid two windows up to air it out, and then went at once to his basement, past the bumper-pool table and the stationary bicycle, and opened the door to his workshop.