Only two reporters were allowed to see Mark Sequoia on any given day, and they were required to share their interviews with all the others in the press corps. Today the two—picked by lot—were a crusty old veteran from Fox News and a perky young blonde from Women’s Wear Daily.
«But I’ve told your colleagues what happened at least a dozen times,» mumbled Sequoia from behind a swathing of bandages.
He was hanging by both arms and legs from four traction braces, his backside barely touching the crisply sheeted bed. Bandages covered eighty percent of his body and all of his face, except for tiny slits for his eyes, nostrils and mouth.
The Fox News reporter held his palm-sized video camera in one hand while he scratched at his stubbled chin with the other. On the opposite side of the bed, the blonde held a similar videocorder close to Sequoia’s bandaged face.
She looked misty-eyed. «Are … are you in much pain?»
«Not really,» Sequoia answered bravely, with a slight tremor in his voice.
«Why all the traction?» asked Fox News. «The medics said there weren’t any broken bones.»
«Splinters,» Sequoia answered weakly.
«Bone splinters!» gasped the blonde. «Oh, how awful!»
«No,» Sequoia corrected. «Splinters. Wood splinters. When the balloon finally came down we landed in a clump of trees just outside Hagerstown. I got thousands of splinters. It took most of the surgical staff three days to pick them all out of me. The chief of surgery said he was going to save the wood and build a scale model of the Titanic with it.»
«Oh, how painful!» The blonde insisted on gasping. She gasped very well, Sequoia noted, watching her blouse.
«And what about your hair?» Fox News asked.
Sequoia felt himself blush underneath the bandages. «I … uh … I must have been very frightened. After all, we were aloft in that stupid balloon for six days, without food, without anything to drink except a six pack of Perrier. We went through a dozen different thunderstorms …»
«With lightning?» the blonde asked.
Nodding painfully, Sequioa replied, «We all thought we were going to die.»
Fox News frowned. «So your hair turned white from fright. There was some talk that cosmic rays did it.»
«Cosmic rays? We never got that high. Cosmic rays don’t have any effect on you until you get really up there, isn’t that right?»
«How high did you go?»
«I don’t know,» Sequoia answered. «Some of those updrafts in the thunderstorms pushed us pretty high. The air got kind of thin.»
«But not high enough to cause cosmic ray damage.»
«Well, I don’t know … maybe …»
«It’d make a better story than just being scared,» said Fox News. «Hair turned white by cosmic rays. Maybe even sterilized.»
«Sterilized?» Sequoia yelped.
«Cosmic rays do that, too,» Fox News said. «I checked.»
«Well, we weren’t that high.»
«You’re sure?»
«Yeah … well, I don’t think we were that high. We didn’t have an altimeter with us …»
«But you could have been.»
Shrugging was sheer torture, Sequoia found.
«Okay, but those thunderstorms could’ve lifted you pretty damned high.»
Before Sequoia could think of what to answer, the door to his private room opened and a horse-faced nurse said firmly, «That’s all. Time’s up. Mr. Sequoia must rest now. After his enema.»
«Okay, I think I’ve got something to hang a story on,» Fox News said with a satisfied grin. «Now to find a specialist in cosmic rays.»
The blonde looked thoroughly shocked and terribly upset. «You … you don’t think you were really sterilized, do you?»
Sequoia tried to make himself sound worried and brave at the same time. «I don’t know. I just … don’t know.»
Late that night the blonde snuck back into his room, masquerading as a nurse. If she knew the difference between sterilization and impotence she didn’t tell Sequoia about it. For his part, he forgot about his still-tender skin and the traction braces. The morning nurse found him unconscious, one shoulder dislocated, most of his bandages rubbed off, his skin terribly inflamed, and a goofy grin on his face.
I knew that the way up the corporate ladder was to somehow acquire a staff that reported to me. And, in truth, the SSZ project was getting so big that I truly needed more people to handle it. I mean, all the engineers had to do was build the damned thing and make it fly. I had to make certain that the money kept flowing, and that wasn’t easy. An increasingly large part of my responsibilities as the de facto head of the Washington office consisted of putting out fires.
«Will you look at this!»
Senator Goodyear waved the morning Post at me. I had already read the electronic edition before I’d left my apartment that morning. Now, as I sat at Tracy Keene’s former desk, the senator’s red face filled my phone screen.
«That Sequoia!» he grumbled. «He’ll stop at nothing to destroy me. Just because the Ohio River melted his houseboat, all those years ago.»
«It’s just a scare headline,» I said, trying to calm him down. «People won’t be sterilized by flying in the supersonic zeppelin any more than they were by flying in the old Concorde.»
«I know it’s bullshit! And you know it’s bullshit! But the goddamned news media are making a major story out of it! Sequoia’s on every network talk show. I’m under pressure to call for hearings on the sterilization problem!»
«Good idea,» I told him. «Have a Senate investigation. The scientists will prove that there’s nothing to it.»
That was my first mistake. I didn’t get a chance to make another.
I hightailed it that morning to Memo’s office. I wanted to see Pencilbeam and start building a defense against this sterilization story. The sky was gray and threatening. An inch or two of snow was forecast, and people were already leaving their offices for home, at ten o’clock in the morning. Dedicated government bureaucrats and corporate employees, taking the slightest excuse to knock off work.
The traffic was so bad that it had actually started to snow, softly, by the time I reached Memo’s office. He was pacing across the thinly carpeted floor, his shoes squeaking unnervingly in the spacious room. Copies of The Washington Post, The New York Times and Aviation Week were spread across his usually immaculate desk, but his attention was focused on his window, where we could see fluffy snowflakes gently drifting down.
«Traffic’s going to get worse as the day goes on,» Memo muttered.
«They’re saying it’ll only be an inch or so,» I told him.
«That’s enough to paralyze this town.»
Yeah, especially when everybody jumps in their cars and starts fleeing the town as if a terrorist nuke is about to go off, I replied silently.
Aloud, I asked, «What about this sterilization business? Is there any substance to the story?»
Memo glanced sharply at me. «They don’t need substance as long as they can start a panic.»
Dr. Pencilbeam sat at one of the unmatched conference chairs, all bony limbs and elbows and knees.
«Relax, Roger,» Pencilbeam said calmly. «Congress isn’t going to halt the SSZ program. It means too many jobs, too much international prestige. And besides, the President has staked her credibility on it.»
«That’s what worries me,» Memo muttered.
«What?»
But Memo’s eye was caught by movement outside his window. He waddled past his desk and looked down into the street below.