The Weathermakers (1967)

by Ben Bova

  Barney said, “Ted operates in a world of his own. I’ve spent hours shouting at him about the way he treated you, but it makes no impression on him. He couldn’t apologize even if he wanted to; he’s much too stubborn for it. And besides, he’s convinced that he’s done the best thing . . .”

  “The best thing?”

  “He wants to stop the drought. Going back to Climatology was the only way to do it. Do you think he enjoyed it? Have you any idea of what it took for him to ask Dr. Rossman to take him back again? To offer to take all the responsibility if the experiments fail, but stay out of the limelight if they work? I couldn’t do that; none of us could. But Ted did. Without flinching.”

  “He’s a madman,” I muttered.

  “He’s breaking the drought, no matter who gets the eventual credit for it. And he’s certain that he did the right thing. He thinks that if you’re angry, it’s because you’re stubborn and shortsighted.”

  “That’s a very convenient way to look at it.”

  “It’s not rationalization, Jerry. He really believes it. Nothing’s more important to Ted than getting the job done—and done right. Anything that stands in his way. . . he has no patience for.”

  I looked past Barney’s face to the dripping window. “I guess he’s got the job done, all right.”

  She seemed to relax a little. “I wanted to come see you sooner, but we’ve been literally locked in the building for the past week and a half. It’s been an impossible time. You know what a slave driver he is.”

  I had to smile. “You do look tired.”

  She nodded.

  “Would you like some dinner?”

  “Yes, that would be fine.”

  “I’ll have it sent up.”

  I punched out a selection on the menu dial and within a few minutes the dinner was sliding out of the wall receptacle and onto the table. I rolled the table to the sofa. “Are you still going to leave?” Barney asked as we ate.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  And I wish you meant that, I said to myself.

  After we finished, and I was fitting the dinner tray back into the wall receptacle, she asked again:

  “Jerry, are you going to leave or stick it out?”

  I watched the tray slide into the wall slot, taking the dishes with it.

  “Does it make any difference?” I asked.

  “Certainly it does.”

  “Why?”

  “We need you, Jerry. Ted needs you; he needs all of us, all the people he can trust. Now more than ever.”

  “It’s for Ted, then.”

  “And for me too, Jerry. I don’t want you to leave. I told you that.”

  “Yes, I know you told me.”

  She stepped closer to me. “I mean it Jerry. Please don’t leave.”

  I pulled her to me and kissed her. We held each other for a moment and then, very gently, she moved away.

  “Jerry, it used to be that I wasn’t sure of anything except Ted. Now I’m not even sure about that any more.”

  I had to smile. “That’s the trouble with being a mere mortal. Now if we were supermen, like you-know-who, we’d never have any doubts about anything.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” she said seriously. “I know Ted takes people for granted and rides roughshod over anything in his way . . . but he has his doubts; about himself, about the work he wants to do. Just because he doesn’t let anyone see them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

  “I guess you’re right. He puts up a darned good front, though.”

  Barney turned toward the door. “Where’d I leave my raincape? It’s time for me to go . . .”

  “I’ll drive you home.”

  “No, that’s all right. The rain’s let up now, and it’s not far on the slideway.”

  “Will I see you tomorrow?” I asked as I helped her into the cape.

  “You’re staying?”

  “Tor a while, at least.”

  “Why don’t you come over to Climatology for lunch? I think you and Ted should shake hands.”

  “And come out fighting?”

  “What?”

  “It’s an old prizefighting expression.”

  She laughed. “See, you’re telling jokes.”

  “Maybe I’m being sarcastic again.”

  “No, not any more.”

  I walked her down the hall to the elevator, saw her off, then ran back to my room, opened the jam-packed suitcase, and sprinkled its contents all over the floor.

  Twenty-three thousand miles above the mouth of the Amazon River, the meteorologists aboard the Atlantic Station synchronous satellite watched a circular band of clouds building up in the mid-Atlantic. They televised their photographs to the National Hurricane Research Center in Miami, and within an hour patrol planes took off for the young storm. By the time they reached it, the hurricane had developed an eye and wind speeds of more than ninety knots. An inch of rain per hour was being poured over a six-thousand-square-mile area of the ocean. And the storm was moving westward. How far would it go? Where would it strike? No one knew. Warnings went out across the entire eastern seaboard, the Gulf Coast, and through the islands of the Caribbean. Hurricane alert. A thousand megatons of energy was on the loose and heading toward the fragile realm of men.

  The morning was cloudy, and by the time I had ’coptered out to Climatology for lunch, it was starting to rain again.

  Barney met me in the lobby. “Ted’s group is in a new set of offices,” she said, “over in the annex building.”

  She guided me through corridors and a covered walkway that connected the main building with the annex. Rain drummed hard on the low metal roof of the walkway, as we crossed it. The annex itself had that temporary, prefabricated look about it. There was no real ceiling, just the exposed underside of the roof, with all the structural braces and pipes and airshafts showing. Most of the building was filled with clanging, chatter-filled machine shops. The “offices” were made up of five-foot-high partitions, jury-rigged together to form enclosures.

  “It’s a little damp in here when it rains,” Barney said over the machine-shop noise, “and it can get pretty hot when the weather’s warm.”

  I followed her through the cramped makeshift corridors. You could see over the partitions right into the cubbyhole offices.

  “Ted’s place is down there,” she said, pointing.

  “You actually work in here?”

  “I don’t . . . I’m still in computing, where all we have to contend with is the hum of the machines and refugees from the annex who come over to see what real air conditioning feels like.”

  “This is terrible!”

  We reached the end of the corridor and stepped into a corner room made up of two partitions and two of the walls of the annex building itself. Ted wasn’t there, but you could see his stamp: drawing table piled high with charts, viewscreen map on the farther wall, cluttered desk, and the inevitable row of coffeepots.

  “Welcome to Shangri-la!”

  We turned and saw Ted hurrying down the corridor toward us. He was carrying a portable TV set.

  “Come on, pull up a chair,” he said, brushing past us to put the TV on his desk. “Glad you came, Jerry.”

  “I can see that you’ve been living in the lap of luxury since you left Aeolus,” I said, going to one of the chairs. Barney sat next to me. “Tuli calls this area Shangri-la.”

  “Rossman could have found you better quarters,” I said. Ted shrugged. “It’s a dump all right. Part of the price we had to pay. I came to him, remember, he didn’t come to me.”

  “I know.”

  “In a way, this lousy environment helps,” he said cheerfully. “Everybody’s got that basic-training spirit—you know, ‘we’re all in this together and we’ve got to help each other if we want to survive.’ So the work gets done.”

  “That’s the important thing,” Barney said.

  “Speaking of Rossman,” Ted went on, “he’s going
to be on TV in a minute. Special show out of Washington. About the drought.”

  He flicked the TV set on. After four or five commercials, the show started. Dr. Rossman was flanked by the President’s Science Adviser, Dr. Jerrold Weis, and by the Director of the Environmental Science Services Administration, a retired admiral named Correlli.

  Tuli drifted into the office as the commentator was making introductory remarks. He nodded a grave hello to me and went behind the desk to stand beside Ted.

  Dr. Weis made some general remarks about bringing together the scientific capabilities of the nation, and Admiral

  Correlli spoke briefly about how wonderful ESSA was. Then came Dr. Rossman’s turn. The camera closed in on his long, somber face as he began talking about the conditions that had caused the drought. He spoke slowly, carefully, the way a man does when he’s not sure he’s being understood. Gradually I began to realize that he was telling the same story—using the same words, almost—that Ted did that night so many weeks earlier when he first explained the drought problem to us.

  The TV camera cut to a map. It was one of those that Ted had shown at the July Fourth conference.

  “That’s your work!” I blurted.

  Ted smiled grimly. “Just the first slide . . . there’s more.”

  Rossman kept talking and showing Ted’s slides. I watched the drought condition change just as Ted said it would: the high-pressure cell moved off beyond the coast and the rain-giving southerly airflows came up over the eastern seaboard again. The TV screen showed films of planes flying seeding missions, and nuclear submarines being checked by engineers wearing protective antiradiation suits.

  “They look like men from Mars,” the TV commentator said, with a measured amount of awe in his voice.

  “Yes, they do,” Dr. Rossman answered.

  The camera cut back to the four men in the studio.

  “Well, the rainfall we’ve been getting certainly is concrete evidence that your work is a success,” the commentator said heartily.

  “Thank you,” Dr. Rossman allowed himself a modest smile. “I think we’ve shown that weather modification can be employed to help ease critical weather problems . . . if the work is done under careful control, with all the proper safeguards.”

  I glanced at Ted. He was struggling to stay calm. He had taken a pencil in one big hand and was flexing it between his fingers.

  “So it’s now safe to say that the drought is a thing of the past,” the commentator chirped.

  Rossman nodded. “My group’s two-month forecast indicates that precipitation levels should be slightly above normal for the entire area east of the Appalachians. Of course, my forecasts aren’t foolproof, but they’re good evidence that we’re on the way out of the drought.”

  “His forecasts,” Barney whispered.

  “And now,” the commentator said, “I believe that Dr. Weis has an announcement to make.”

  The camera switched to the President’s Science Adviser. He had a pleasant, squarish face, so creased and tanned that he looked more like a cowboy than a physicist.

  “As a result of Dr. Rossman’s pioneering work on weather modification, exemplified by his alleviation of the serious drought that had affected the northeast sector of the nation, I have recommended to the President that he be considered for the National Medal of Science.”

  Snap! Ted broke the pencil.

  “As you know, the National Medal of Science is awarded each year to . . .”

  Ted flicked the set off savagely.

  “The National Medal,” Barney said, shocked. “It’s not fair. He doesn’t deserve it.”

  “I suspect,” Tuli said, “that Dr. Rossman is just as surprised about the award as we are.”

  “He can’t accept it,” I said. “The whole story will come out into the open.”

  Ted looked at the shattered pieces of the pencil in his hand, and dropped them into his wastebasket. “The story won’t circulate very far. What’d you say if Albert Einstein’s housekeeper popped up and claimed she figured out the laws of relativity and her boss took the credit?”

  “That’s not the same thing at all . . .”

  “Is for now, friend. Important thing is that the drought’s broken, and weather mods are respectable now. That’s a big jump in the right direction. Rossman knows the score, and so does the Chief, and your Congressman friend. Okay, Rossman gets the credit for this one. In public. We’ve got the talent.”

  I shook my head. “There’s a fifty-thousand-dollar prize attached to that award, isn’t there?”

  “Peanuts,” Ted snapped. “Money follows talent, pal. I’m young and willing to work. Which reminds me, I need you here. How about becoming a public servant?”

  13. Storm Clouds

  FOR an instant, I couldn’t believe I had heard Ted correctly. “What did you say?”

  “I want you to work here. We need you.”

  “You must be joking . . .”

  “No joke. Look around this dump.” His arms swept around in an all-inclusive gesture. “Think Rossman likes having us here? Think he’s going to feel comfy with that National Science Medal around his neck as long as we’re here to stare him down? There’s going to be trouble around here sooner or later, and I need all the friends I’ve got.”

  “What makes you think I’m friendly?” I heard myself ask.

  Ted sat up sharply. “You’re not still sore about me leaving Aeolus? Only thing I could do, Jerry. You know that.”

  “And now you want me to walk out on Aeolus too.”

  He made a helpless shrug. “We’re getting buried in paperwork, Rossman’s piling it higher every day. Trying to drown us in red tape. We go too fast for him; he was scared to death about the drought mods, now he’s worried about what we’ll spring on him next. So he’s trying to slow us down with paperwork. You can help us get out from under . . .”

  I couldn’t sit still any more. Getting up from my chair, I glanced at Barney. She was watching me, but I couldn’t tell from her expression what she wanted me to do.

  “Ted, if you had been with Santa Anna’s army at the Alamo, you’d have had the nerve to ask Davy Crockett to change sides!”

  “What sides? We all want the same thing . . . weather control. I need your help.”

  “Then you can buy my help. From Aeolus Research Laboratory!”

  He blinked. “Now wait a minute . . .”

  “No, you wait,” I said, standing in front of his desk. “There are eighty people at Aeolus who earn their living from the contracts the Laboratory gets. You walked out and took with you the best chances we had of getting really big contracts for weather-modification work. Okay. But those eighty people can still do good work. They can help you with paperwork, with computations, with long-range forecasts, and lots of other things. They can give you far more help than I can alone, no matter which roof I sit under. And if you think I’m going to walk out on them the way you did, just because you want another paper-shuffler to talk to, then think again! You know a lot more about the weather than you do about people.”

  Ted leaned back in his chair, frowning silently. Then a grin spread over his rugged face. “You can be a real ball of fire when you want to be, Jerry. What’s more, you’re right . . . Aeolus can help us out. Help us a lot, come to think of it.”

  I almost fell over. Barney looked at me as if to say, Good going.

  Tuli said, “But how can you get Dr. Rossman to agree to spending the money for hiring Aeolus to help us?”

  “I think,” Ted answered, “that with that nice, shiny National Medal in his pocket, he sort of owes us a favor. I’ll talk to him about it as soon as he gets back from Washington.” Turning back to me, he asked, “You’re not too sore to work with us if we sign a contract for Aeolus and pay you, are you?”

  “I’m not interested in the doggone money, Ted, you know that. I just won’t run out on the people at Aeolus.”

  “Okay, simmer down. You made your point, and it’s a good one. Should’ve tho
ught of it myself.”

  “Then we’ll all be working together again.” Barney looked pleased about it.

  Ted stuck his hand out across the desk. “Welcome back to the team, buddy.”

  I reached out and shook hands with him, but for the first time since I had met Ted, I wasn’t really happy about working with him.

  Meteorologists dubbed the hurricane Lydia, since it was the twelfth tropical storm or hurricane to threaten populated areas. She traveled westward from her mid-ocean spawning place, following the trade winds toward the West Indies. Then, after three days, she turned suddenly and aimed toward the Florida coast. Disaster warnings flashed along the peninsula. Lydia’s central wind speed was almost a hundred knots, her rains devastating. Across the Bahamas she struck, flattening palms, smashing seawalls with titanic waves, piling boats and piers alike against the rocks, blowing off roofs, snapping power lines, flooding roads and homes and towns, destroying, terrorizing, killing. When the island skies cleared again, dazed and weary men surveyed the field of a battle they had lost. Thousands were homeless. Towns were without electricity or drinking water. The survivors were battered, hungry, injured. Planes brought in medical supplies and food while Lydia gathered strength, poised just off the Florida coast near Miami.

  The day following my visit to Ted’s new quarters at Climatology, Barney called me at Aeolus and invited herself to lunch. We met at one of the Back Bay towers’ rooftop restaurants.

  It was a warm, sunny day—unusually nice for the beginning of November. From our table by the window we could see the distant hills that marked the location of the Climatology building. Barney sat next to the window, her yellow hair catching the sunlight and framed by the clear, deep blue of the sky.

  “Ted talked with Dr. Rossman first thing this morning,” she said after we ordered the meal. “You should be getting a contract for Aeolus to help us with the long-range forecasts and some of the administrative chores.”

  I nodded.

  “You really startled Ted yesterday,” she went on, “when you told him off. He never expected you to shout him down.”

  “I wasn’t telling anybody off. It just made me sore to think that he’d expect me to jump from Aeolus the way he did. He asked me to turn my back on the people I’m responsible for . . . just as if he were asking you to pass the salt”