‘His brainchild?’
‘Jesus.’ Fong sighed. ‘Let’s go down there. I’ll show you around.’
‘I don’t want to see around, Lee. I want a heart-to-heart rap about this.’
Fong thought about it while he used his pass card to unlock the inner doors and call the elevator. As they descended, invisible violins took up ‘Lullaby of Broadway’. ‘Okay, you’re worried, is that it? You think that, uh, just because NASA pulled the pin on us, we’re too hot to handle. Right?’
Rogers broke off humming. ‘Did I say anything? Christ, Lee, just because I’m a sociologist doesn’t automatically make me an imbecile. I don’t need NASA or anybody else to tell me what to think. I can judge this thing on its own merits.’
‘Yeah? Then why do you seem worried? What’s the problem?’
‘Problem?’ The doors parted. Rogers remained behind in the elevator a moment, list-ning to the lull-a-by of old, Broad, way. ‘No problem, Lee.’ It was not until they were in Fong’s shabby little office, sitting in a pair of Morris chairs and sipping instant coffee, that he said: ‘Only why did NASA pull out of this?’
‘Internal troubles, they had some kind of — some kind of rip-off, I think. I don’t know the whole story.’
‘No? Okay, lay out what you have.’
Fong cleared his throat. ‘You won’t believe it. I don’t hardly believe it myself, it’s like a nightmare or something, it’s—’
‘Why not let me judge for myself? Listen, Lee, I’m on your side. But I mean give me something I can run with, something I can tell the committee. Okay?’
Fong nodded. ‘Okay, listen. It all started four years ago, when we got the original contract. NASA wanted us to develop a — I guess you could call it a dog.’
‘A dog.’ Rogers sat sideways in his chair and made himself comfortable.
‘At least that’s what we called it, Project Rover. Simple enough, a straightforward robot retriever. A cheap, durable intelligence to fit into their Venus landing vehicle, to do routine jobs. A dog.’
‘But where does Roderick—’
‘Wait. The way we saw it, a second-rate place like this was lucky to get any NASA contract. We’re second-rate, I admit it. Or we were. I mean with our salary structure, how can we compete with the big boys at—’
‘Sure, sure. So you got the contract.’
‘Yeah, and then this NASA official flew in from Houston to go over the details. We had lunch at the Faculty Club.’
‘Lunch.’ Rogers started tapping his foot on air.
‘And that’s where it starts getting unbelievable.’
‘Stonecraft’s the name, Avrel Stonecraft, but just call me Stoney. I’ll be your liaison man at NASA, so you’ll be callin’ me, sho’ nuff. Ever’thing goes through me, got that?’ That was over the crab cocktail.
Over the chicken Kiev: ‘Listen, Lee, I ain’t just here to beat my gums over this piss-ass little Project Rover. We got something a whole lot more interesting in mind. In fact this Rover stuff is just a cover for the real project. Because the real project has got to be kept ab-so-lutely secret. What NASA really wants from you — are you ready? — is a real robot.’
‘A what?’
‘A real, complete, functioning artificial man. It don’t matter what he looks like, a course. I mean, a space robot don’t have to win no beauty contests. But he’s gotta have a real human brain, you with me so far?’
‘I — yes, I think so.’
‘Fine, now we’ll talk details later, but let me say right now you can write your own ticket on this. You need personnel, equipment, money — you got ’em. Only problem is gonna be security. We’re keepin’ this one under wraps and I do mean under R-A-P-S. You got that? Because if the opposition ever finds out—’
‘You mean Russia or—’
‘Russia, my ass, I’m worried about the goddamn Army, I’m worried about the goddamn Department of the Interior. I’m worried about goddamn departments and bureaux we hardly even heard of. Because there’s at least a dozen projects just like ours going on right now, and we just gotta get there first. Like second is nowhere, you got that?’
‘But why? I thought you cooperated with other—’
‘Don’t you believe it, Lee. This is big politics, I mean appropriations. Take the Secret Service for instance. See, they’re working on this President robot, to double for him, making speeches, public appearances, that kinda stuff. Now say they perfect the bastard, where does that leave us? I’ll tell you, it leaves us standing around with our pricks in our hands and nowhere to put ’em. I mean they’d get all the patents, half a trillion in appropriations, any goddamn thing they want — and we’d get horse-shit, we’d be out of the game. Same if anybody else beats us out.’
‘But you think they’d actually spy on us?’ Fong whispered.
‘Why sure, same as we spy on them. Hell, no need to whisper here, I don’t mean that kinda spying. I don’t mean the old geezer over there’s got a radio in his martini olive, nothing like that. Naw, they look for patterns, see? Like the Army might have their computers go over our purchase orders, phone calls, how many times does X phone Y, shit like that. So we gotta keep a low goddamn profile on this, and I mean low. Can you do that?’
‘Well, y—’
‘Fine, fine. Don’t tell even me. I don’t want to know a damn thing, not even the name of the project. Far as I’m concerned — officially — this here is still just Project Rover.’
Over the chocolate mousse, Stoney said: ‘I’ll give you this list of companies, and I want you to order all your research equipment through them. See, they’re dummies. NASA owns ’em, and that helps us disguise your purchases. Cain’t afford to tip off the opposition by our purchase orders. I mean if you went and ordered a robot body shell from some outside firm, that’s as good as saying, “Looky here, I’m fixin’ up a robot”. So you order from us, and we fake up a second purchase order makin’ it look like — I don’t know, a case of nuts and bolts — and ever’thing’s still cool, see? You with me?’
Fong was with him, through the meal until, over coffee and Armagnac, Stoney said: ‘We’ll talk details later. Hell, that’s enough business talk for today. Let me show you something, Lee.’ He hauled out his billfold and started passing photos across the table. ‘What do you think a them cute little devils, eh?’
‘Your kids?’
‘Ha ha, no, my planes. Got me a Curtiss Hawk and a Lockheed Lightnin’, completely restored, and now I’m a-workin’ on this little baby, my Bell Aerocobra. Boy, you can always recognize this little baby, just looka that nose wheel…’
‘Warplanes. He collected vintage warplanes, spent all his weekends restoring them and flying them. He said that when he was a kid, he’d cut pictures of these same planes off of Kix boxes, and now here he was collecting the real thing, fifty years old and still a kid. I couldn’t believe it, one minute we’re talking about NASA backing the most important project in history, and the next moment he’s gloating over these pictures of old warplanes. He even, when we said goodbye, he even gave me a thumbs-up sign and said, “Keep ’em flying”. Keep ’em flying! I started wondering just what the hell I was getting into there. Thought maybe I was just dealing with a nut, maybe the whole project would just melt down, you know?’
Rogers yawned and looked at his watch. ‘And didn’t it?’
‘Not at first. I got my team together, Dan Sonnenschein, Mary Mendez, Leo Bunsky and Ben Franklin, a few technicians. I went ahead and put through those funny purchase orders to those dummy companies — and it worked! NASA picked up the tab for everything, and we really started to move. Project Roderick, we called it, only of course we had to let on we were just working on Project Rover. We couldn’t tell anybody anything, and that was the toughest part, because… because Christ almighty it was exciting! It was like a dream, like a dream…’