«Oh, my God …»
«What’s going on?» Pencilbeam unfolded like a pocket ruler into a six-foot-long human and hurried to the window. Outside, in the thin mushy snow, a line of somber men and women were filing along the street past the TURD building, bearing signs that screamed:
STOP THE SSZ!
DON’T STERILIZE THE HUMAN RACE
SSZ MURDERS UNBORN CHILDREN
ZEPPELINS GO HOME!
«Isn’t that one with the sign about unborn children a priest?» Pencilbeam asked.
Memo shrugged. «Your eyes are better than mine.»
«Ah-hah! And look at this!»
Pencilbeam pointed a long, bony finger farther down the street. Another swarm of people were advancing on the building. They also carried placards:
SSZ FOR ZPG
ZEPPELINS SI! BABIES NO!
ZEPPELINS FOR POPULATION CONTROL
UP THE SSZ
Memo sagged against the window. «This … this is awful.»
The Zero Population Growth group marched through the thin snowfall straight at the environmentalists and anti-birth-control pickets. Instantly the silence was shattered by shouts and taunts. Shrill female voices battled against rumbling baritones and bassos. Placards wavered. Bodies pushed. Someone screamed. One sign struck a skull and then bloody war broke out.
Memo, Pencilbeam and I watched aghast until the helmeted TAC squad police doused the whole tangled mess of them with riot gas, impartially clubbed men and woman alike and carted everyone off, including three bystanders and a homeless panhandler.
The Senate hearings were such a circus that Driver summoned me back to Phoenix for a strategy session with Anson’s top management. I was glad to get outside the Beltway, and especially glad to see Lisa again. She even agreed to have dinner with me.
«You’re doing a wonderful job there in Washington,» she said, smiling with gleaming teeth and flashing eyes.
My knees went weak, but I found the courage to ask, «Would you consider transferring to the Washington office? I could use a sharp executive assistant—»
She didn’t even let me finish. «I’d love to!»
I wanted to do handsprings. I wanted to grab her and kiss her hard enough to bruise our lips. I wanted to, but Driver came out of his office just at that moment, looking his jaw-jutting grimmest.
«Come on, kid. Time to meet the top brass.»
The top brass was a mixture of bankers and former engineers. To my disgust, instead of trying to put together a strategy to defeat the environmentalists, they were already thinking about how many men and women they’d have to lay off when Washington pulled the plug on the SSZ program.
«But that’s crazy!» I protested. «The program is solid. The President herself is behind it.»
Driver fixed me with his steely stare. «With friends like that, who needs enemies?»
I left the meeting feeling very depressed, until I saw Lisa again. Her smile could light up the world.
Before heading back to Washington to fight Sequoia’s sterilization propaganda, I looked up my old APT buddies. They were in the factory section where the SSZ was being fabricated.
The huge factory assembly bay was filled with the aluminum skeleton of the giant dirigible. Great gleaming metal ribs stretched from its titanium nosecap to the more intricate cagework of the tail fins. Tiny figures with flashing laser welders crawled along the ribbing like maggots cleaning the bones of some noble whale.
Even the jet engines sitting on their carrying pallets dwarfed human scale. Some of the welders held clandestine poker games inside their intake cowlings, Bob Wisdom told me. The cleaning crews kept quiet about the spills, crumbs and other detritus they found in them night after night. I stood with Bob, Ray Kurtz, Tommy Rohr and Richard Grand beside one of those huge engine pods, craning our necks to watch the construction work going on high overhead. The assembly bay rang to the shouts of working men and women, throbbed with the hum of machinery, clanged with the clatter of metal against metal.
«It’s going to be some Christmas party if Congress cancels this project,» Kurtz muttered gloomily.
«Oh, they wouldn’t dare cancel it now that the Women’s Movement is behind it,» said Grand, with a sardonic little smile.
Kurtz glared at him from behind his beard. «You wish. Half those idiots in Congress will vote against us just to prove they’re pro-environment.»
«Actually, the scientific evidence is completely on our side,» Grand said. «And in the long run, the weight of evidence prevails.»
He always acts as if he knows more than anybody else, I thought. But he’s dead wrong here. He hasn’t the foggiest notion of how Washington works. But he sounds so damned sure of himself! It must be that phony accent of his.
«Well, just listen to me, pal,» said Wisdom, jabbing a forefinger at Grand. «I’ve been working on that secretary of mine since the last Christmas party, and if this project falls through and the party is a bust that palpitating hunk of femininity is going to run home and cry instead of coming to the party!»
Grand blinked at him several times, obviously trying to think of the right thing to say. Finally he enunciated, «Pity.»
But I was thinking about Lisa. If the SSZ is cancelled, Driver won’t let her transfer to the Washington office. There’d be no need to hire more staff for me. There’d be no need for me!
I went back to Washington determined to save the SSZ from this stupid sterilization nonsense. But it was like trying to stop a tsunami with a floor mop. The women’s movement, the environmental movement, the labor unions, even Leno and Letterman got into the act. The Senate hearings turned into a shambles; Pencilbeam and the other scientists were ignored while movie stars testified that they would never fly in an SSZ because of the dangers of radiation.
The final blow came when the President announced that was not going to Paris and Moscow, after all. Urgent problems elsewhere. Instead, she flew to Hawaii for an economic summit of the Pacific nations. In her subsonic Air Force One.
The banner proclaiming HAPPY HOLIDAYS! drooped sadly across one wall of the company cafeteria. Outside in the late afternoon darkness, lights glimmered, cars were moving and a bright full moon shone down on a rapidly-emptying parking lot.
Inside the Anson Aerospace cafeteria was nothing but gloom. The Christmas party had been a dismal flop, primarily because half the company’s work force had received layoff notices that morning. The tables had been pushed to one side of the cafeteria to make room for a dance floor. Syrupy holiday music oozed out of the speakers built into the acoustic tile of the ceiling. But no one was dancing.
Bob Wisdom sat at one of the tables, propping his aching head in his hands. Ray Kurtz and Tommy Rohr sat with him, equally dejected.
«Why the hell did they have to cancel the project two days before Christmas?» Rohr asked rhetorically.
«Makes for more pathos,» Kurtz growled.
«It’s pathetic, all right,» Wisdom said. «I’ve never seen so many women crying at once. Or men, for that matter.»
«Even Driver was crying, and he hasn’t even been laid off,» Rohr said.
«Well,» Kurtz said, staring at the half-finished drink in front of him, «Seqouia did it. He’s a big media hero again.»
«And we’re on the bread line,» said Rohr.
«You got laid off?» I asked.
«Not yet—but it’s coming. This place will be closing its doors before the fiscal year ends.»
«It’s not that bad,» said Wisdom. «We still have the Air Force work. As long as they’re shooting off cruise missiles, we’ll be in business.»
Rohr grimaced. «You know what gets me? The way the whole project was scrapped, without giving us a chance to complete the big bird and show how it’d work. Without a goddamned chance.»