Chaney said: “Fantastic.”
A face emerged from the shower. “Are you being disagreeable, civilian?”
“I’m being skeptical, sailor.”
“Spoil-sport!”
“Why would we want to copy the scrolls?”
“To be first.”
“Why that?”
Saltus stepped all the way out of the shower.
“Well — to be first, that’s all. We like to be first in everything. Where’s your patriotism, civilian?”
“I carry it in my pocket. How do we copy the scrolls in the dark, in a cave?”
“Now that’s my department! Infra-red equipment, of course. Don’t fret about the technical end, mister. I’m an old cameraman, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Well, I was a cameraman, a working cameraman, when I was an EM. Do you remember the Gemini flights about thirteen or fourteen years ago?”
I remember.
“I was right there on deck, mister. Photographer’s apprentice, stationed on the Wasp when the flights began; I manned the deck cameras on some of those early flights in 1964, but when the last one splashed down in 1966, I was riding the choppers out to meet them,” A disparaging wave of the hand. “Now, would you believe it, I’m riding a desk. Operations officer.” His face mirrored his dissatisfaction. “I’d rather be behind the camera; the enlisted men have the fun with that job.”
Chaney said: “I’ve learned something new.”
“What s that?’
“Why you and I were brought in here. I map and structure the future; you will film it. What’s the Major’s specialty?”
“Air Intelligence. I thought you knew.”
“I didn’t. Espionage?”
“No, no — he’s another desk man, and he hates it as much as I do. Old William is a brain: interrogation and interpretation. He briefs the pilots before they fly out, tells them where to find the targets, what is concealing them, and what is defending them; and then he quizzes the hell out of them when they come back to learn what they saw, where they saw it, how it behaved, how it smelled, and what was new firing at them.”
“Air Intelligence,” Chaney mused. “A sharpie?”
“You can bet your last tax dollar, civilian. Do you remember those maps Katrina gave us yesterday?”
“I’m not likely to forget them. Top secret.”
“Read that literally for the Major: he memorized them. Mister, if you could show him another map today with one small Illinois town shifted a quarter of an inch away from yesterday’s location, old William would put his long finger on the spot and say, ‘This town has moved.’ He’s good.” Saltus was grinning with high humor. “The enemy can’t hide a water tank or a missile launcher or an ammo bunker from him — not from him.”
Chaney nodded his wonder. “Do you see what kind of team Katrina is putting together? What kind the mystery man Seabrooke has recruited? I wish I knew what they really expect us to find up there.”
Arthur Saltus left his room and crossed the corridor to stand at Chaney’s door, dressed for a summer day.
“Hey — how do you like our Katrina?”
Chaney said: “Let us consider beauty a sufficient end.”
“Mister, did you swallow a copy of Bartlett?”
A grin. “I like to prowl through old cultures, old times. Bartlett and Haakon are my favorites; each in his way offers a rich storehouse, a treasury.”
“Haakon? Who is Haakon?”
“A latter-day Viking; he was born too late. Haakon wrote Pax Abrahamitica, a history of the desert tribes. I would say it was more of a treasury than a history: maps, photographs, and text telling one everything he would want to know about the tribes five to seven thousand years ago.”
“Photographs five thousand years ago?”
“No; photographs of the remains of tribal life five thousand years ago: Byzantine dams, Nabataean wells, old Negev water courses still holding water, still serving the people who live there today. The Nabataeans built things to last. Their wells are water-tight today; they’re still used by the Bedouin. Several good photographs of them.”
“I’d like to see that. May I borrow the book?”
Chaney nodded. “I have it with me.” He stared at a closed door and listened to the snores. “Wake him up?”
“No! Not if we have to live in the same room with him all day. He’s a bear when he’s routed out of his cave before he’s ready — and he doesn’t eat breakfast. He says he thinks and fights well on an empty stomach.”
Chaney said: “The company is Spartan; see all their wounds on the front.”
“I give up! Let’s go to breakfast.”
They quit the converted barracks and struck off along the narrow concrete sidewalk, walking north toward the commissary. A jeep and a staff car moved along the street, while in the middle distance a cluster of civilian cars were parked about a large building housing the commissary. They were the only ones who walked.
Chaney asked: “This is swimming weather. Is there a pool here?”
“There has to be — Katrina didn’t get that beautiful tan under a sun lamp. I think it’s over that way — over on E Street, near the Officers’ Club. Want to try it this afternoon?”
“If she will permit it. We may have to study.”
“I’m already tired of that! I don’t care how many million voters with plastic stomachs affiliated with Party A will be living in Chicago twenty years from now. Mister, how can you spend years playing with numbers?”
“I’m fascinated by them — numbers and people. The relief of a plastic stomach may cause a citizen to switch from the activist A to the more conservative B; his vote may alter the outcome of an election, and a conservative administration — local, state, or national — may stall or do nothing about a problem that needed solving yesterday. The Great Lakes problem is a problem because of just that.”
Saltus said: “Excuse me. What problem?”
“You’ve been away. The Lakes are at their highest levels in history; they’re flooding out ten thousand miles of shoreline. The average annual precipitation in the Lakes watersheds has been steadily increasing for the past eighty years and the high water is causing damage. Those summer houses have been toppling into the Lakes for years as the water eroded the bluffs; in a very short while more than summer houses will topple in. Beaches are gone, private docks are going, low land is becoming marshes. Sad thing, Commander.”
“Hey — when we go into Chicago on the survey, maybe we should look to see if Michigan Avenue is underwater.”
“That’s no joke. It may be.”
“Oh, doom, doom, doom!” Saltus declared. “Your books and tables are always crying doom.”
“I’ve published only one book. There was no doom.”
“William said it was poppycock. I haven’t read it, I’m not much of a reader, mister, but he looked down his nose, And Katrina said the newspapers gave you hell.”
“You’ve been talking about me. Idle gossiping!”
“Hey — you were two or three days late coming in, remember? We had to talk about something, so we talked about you, mostly — curiosity about one tame civilian on a military team. Katrina knew all about you; I guess she read your dossier forward and backward. She said you were in trouble — trouble with your company, with reviewers and scholars and churches and — oh, everybody.” Saltus gave his walking companion a slanted glance. “Old William said you were bent on destroying the foundations of Christianity. You must have done something, mister. Did you chip away at the foundation?”