They were at it again. The young people in flame-red shirts and blackened faces crossed Santa Monica Boulevard at the traffic light, their faces streaked from the rain and the makeup smudging their collars. There were more than there had been at the ASF meeting, and better organized by far. They had become a whole hell of a lot more professional. No one in the cars stopped at the light, no pedestrian, no person at the windows of the buildings nearby missed them. LET the world know . . . it's OVER. The chant was backed by sticks on a drum-rim, with a double boom on "over". Shaking his head, Tib pulled into the down-ramp for the underground garage, surrendered the car to an attendant, and entered the Pedigrue Mall.
Los Angeles, which could not manage to build a subway in its silty soil, had nevertheless found ways to put up fifty-story skyscrapers and dig catacombs beneath them. The Pedigrue Mall did not look like a catacomb. It looked like the corridors of some very large hotel, lined with shops and restaurants. It seemed to go on forever, on three underground levels. Tib had been in the mall before, but not often enough to help him find his way. It took twenty minutes of turning corners and taking escalators, past the smells of Mexican food and Chinese food and frying eggs and pizzas, to find the radio station. He identified it at last by the rows of benches in front of its plate- glass window. What was being broadcast at the moment seemed to be a cooking demonstration, but there were still nearly ninety minutes to go before air time; and, satisfied, Tib took the elevator to the offices of the Pedigrue Foundation. Most of the desks were empty—Christmas weekend, after all. But Tib had no trouble finding the conference room where the briefing was to take place. He simply followed the shrill sound of Tommy Pedigrue's voice.
He was surprised to see how many people were present. The first one he noticed was Rainy Keating, her expression troubled but managing a wink to Tib as he entered; but Meredith was there, and the senator and the old man Pedigrue in his wheelchair, Tommy, of course, bullying Rainy Keating about something, Myrna Licht dutifully taking notes at the foot of the oval table. Tommy glanced up at Tib without interrupting what he was saying. "You should have reported it at once. Not the next morning. Right away!"
Rainy shrugged. "I didn't know what to think. I thought of calling you. Then I thought of calling Tib, but he wasn't home. So this morning I went over to see Meredith, and we talked it over and came down here."
"Excuse me," said Tib, taking his seat, "but what are we talking about?"
"A bribe attempt!" said Tommy angrily. "Tell him, Rainy."
"Well," she said, "last night I got a call from Danny Deere—" She reported it like a paper at a scientific congress. Tommy listened to the repetition with a scowl on his face, drumming his fingers on the conference table. He didn't give Tib a chance to comment.
"So what I've been saying," he took up, "is that Rainy shouldn't have waited—"
His father looked up from the sheaf of papers in his hand. "We know what you've been saying, Tommy," he said. "That's not what we're here for, though."
"But, Dad—"
"This Danny Deere needs looking over, that's agreed. Townie? What about the Senate Banking and Finance Committee?"
The senator stirred. "Maybe so, Dad. I'll give Harris a call and see if they want to look into it. And I'll check it out with the state attorney general, too."
"That's fine," said his father. "Now let's get back to business. We've got a show to do, and I have to tell you I'm not satisfied with these preliminary reports of yours I've been reading. They're all yes and no and on the other hand maybe, and there's not a statement in them a man can get his teeth into. I see by the account books that the foundation has laid out fifty-three thousand dollars so far, and that's not a lot to get for fifty-three thousand dollars."
"That's the way science is, Mr. Pedigrue," said Meredith Bradison.
"Yes, Mrs. Bradison, that's right, but as you know that's not the way politics is. So we're going to make a little change in this show today. I'm going to ask my son Thompson to sit in along with you, Dr. Sonderman. You're free to say anything you like about science, of course, but Frn going to ask that my son give any concluding remarks. Especially about recommendations for action."
Tommy scowled. "I don't know about that, Dad. Is the station going to let me just walk in on their program like that?"
"That station is our tenant for the next nine years, Tommy, so don't worry about what they'll let us do. Dr. Bradison, I've been informed that your grandson is also going to be on the program. Do you want to join us?"
"Heavens, no!" said Meredith. "It sounds like there's going to be a whole circus parade there anyway. I don't want to make it worse."
"Then, with your permission, let's go over what we're going to say. I see in your report some remarks about a 'Palmdale bulge', Dr. Sonderman. Would you mind telling me what that is, exactly?"
An astronomy major at UCLA was studying in a text on cosmology. The prevailing theory, she discovered, was that all the elements heavier than helium were formed in supernova explosions. When her date came for her she was preoccupied with a nagging thought that took several hours to come to the surface. They were eating Big Macs when it came clear. She put down the french fries and stared around her. The aluminum and steel in the table, the carbon and nitrogen in the hamburger meat, the calcium and phosphorus in her body, the silicon in the rock of the earth itself-—they had all come from the same place. Except for the hydrogen that made up the water in her tissues, every atom of her body had once dwelt in the core of an immense exploding star.
Saturday, December 26th. 1:40 PM.
Being in the studio was like being in an aquarium. There were five of them scattered around the doughnut-shaped table, fish circling a vacuum, while outside the tourists gaped. Dennis Siroca took his seat between the host and somebody named Jeremy Lautermilch and gazed around with interest. He had never been in a broadcasting studio before. He examined everything: the microphones at each place, the complicated button board at the place of honor where Stephen Talltree flipped irritably through his notes on commercials and promos, the two engineers balancing coffee mugs on their control boards benind the double glass windows. Counting off from Talltree, the host, at the twelve o'clock position, there was himself; then Lautermilch, then Thompson Pedigrue, then the geophysicist Tibor Sonderman, then an empty seat, and finally a black woman in a lavender sari and turban. Her name was Mrs. Rugby, and before sitting down she had left her business card at every place:
Mrs. Rugby World Renowned Psychic Reader & Advisor This religious holy woman can with the help of God remove bad influences and guide you through peril.
Located in a refined neighborhood.
The card was not going over very well with Tib Sonderman. He was glancing incredulously from it to the woman, who had folded her hands on her forty-four inch bosom and had closed her eyes in meditation. Dennis grinned to himself. It was a good thing there was an empty seat between them.
Outside, on the audience benches, there were no empty seats. After they had circled Pedigrue Center twice the Jupes had marched solemnly down through the mall to the studio, and occupied every vacant seat. Before long the seats that hadn't been vacant were mostly vacated; civilians did not like sitting next to a young man or woman with charcoal smeared on his face. They liked even less the smell of wet sheep that the Jupes were giving out, because every one of them had been drenched on the way in. So had Dennis, of course, and of course the studio was air-conditioned down to the misery level. He shivered and looked invitingly at the coffee of the engineers. He decided he was wrong; being here wasn't like being inside an aquarium, it was like being inside the frozen-food cases at a supermarket.