Tony gazed at him in disbelief. “The genes know you're after them,” he said after a moment. “The genes are taking defensive measures.”
“No doubt about it. They know.” He put one finger in his coffee, then used the moistened tip to pick up toast crumbs, which he ate.
“What will you do with the data if you get it?” Tony asked.
Bressler looked very blank. “Do? You mean like the agriculture bioengineers? Breeding potatoes with enough poison to kill off the potato bugs? Strawberries that grow and bear fruits in subfreezing temperature? I don't plan to do anything except publish, of course. Those genes have absolutely nothing to fear from me, Peter.”
“I understand,” Tony said. He looked at his watch and stood up. “Gosh, I've got to run.” He picked up Bressler's papers to hand back to the man.
“Keep them, Peter. Keep them. I have copies. I know you haven't had time to think this through. Read them, then get back to me. Will you do that?”
“Sure,” Tony said. “I'll get back to you.”
By the time he had checked out, and was on the road, he was grinning broadly. Bressler wouldn't get in touch with him, he thought. He wouldn't know who to get in touch with, just Peter somebody. His grin faded as he realized he had no destination. Not the upper peninsula, those cool misty dark romantic forests. Not alone. He had no one he had to go back home to; no one expected him in the office ever. He drifted in, drifted out; eventually he would lug in the ton of scholarly papers he had collected, turn in his column on the symposium, and be free until the next one. He remembered Bressler's words: people would kill for his job.
He was exactly what the job description stated: special assistant editor responsible for a column devoted to academic symposia, colloquia, conferences, meetings of all sorts that involved two or more university-level representatives of two or more universities, wherever such a meeting was being held—Paris, Hong Kong, Boston, Rio…
Sometimes he wondered how high the supervisor who had shot him had risen, or if he had been tossed overboard. Tony had never doubted that it was an accident, but a trigger-happy unit chief was not a good idea. He knew it had been the supervisor if only because neither of the other two agents had been even chided for carelessness. Sometimes he wondered how the agency had managed to get him, Tony, into Columbia on such short notice, and see that he got a master's, and then this plum of a job. It was understood that the job required at least a master's degree.
Sometimes, more ominously, he wondered if one day they would reel him in and demand…He never could finish the thought. Demand what?
Signs had been warning him that if he wanted to go to Detroit, to get in the right lane. He eased into the left lane.
That night he sat in a screened porch on a pseudo-rustic cabin and watched the sun set across Lake Michigan. Mosquitoes worked on the screens with chainsaws trying to get in. He had spent all day driving aimlessly, talking himself out of the notion of Georgina. She was too old for him, at least forty to his thirty-one. He had been flattered that an older woman had found him attractive. She had been grateful when he mentioned her various papers at various conferences, and had in fact helped him write her notices. Her return rate for his calls had been no more than one out of six, but, she had explained, her husband was so jealous, and always there.
Then, to escape the reality of love lost, he had turned to the fantasy of master genes ruling the universe. Pretend, he had told himself, pretend it's true, that life-saving intuition, coincidence, messages from the collective unconscious, good luck, guardian angels can all be attributed to a single source, and that source is genetic. Then what? He knew, from the various conferences he had attended, that the genotyping success rate was accelerating at a pace that astounded even those participating in it. So, he had continued, pretend they find such a master gene, isolate it, then what? The answer had come with surprising swiftness. Breed a master race, supermen.
He grinned at the idea, as he watched the last cerise band in the sky darken. When it merged into inky black, he went inside his cabin and regarded with some fondness the bulky pile of Bressler papers. He began to read through them.
Bressler had a list of thirty or forty possible subjects, each one with an impressively complete dossier. He had done his homework. They were scattered throughout the states; the five he had targeted were all within a hundred miles of Manhattan. Every subject had escaped death at least twice; all the escapes had been reported in various newspapers, which were referenced in footnotes.
Tony scanned the dossiers briefly, then went to the summaries. Bressler had anticipated the few questions Tony had: none of the parents showed any of the survival traits of their offspring. A higher than normal percentage of the subjects were single children of their biological parents, although there were step-brothers and sisters. Few of the subjects showed any other unusual traits; they were a good cross section of the population, some very bright, some dim, laborers, professionals, technicians.…The one thing they all had in common, it appeared, was the ability to survive situations that should have killed them. And five of them, at least, were too elusive to catch and sample.
He felt almost sad when he closed the folder. Poor old guy, spending the past six years or more on this. He remembered something Bressler had said in the restaurant, “How many more do you suppose there are? We'll never know because no one keeps track of those who don't board the airplane that crashes into the ocean. The ones who stay home the day the mad bomber wipes out the office building. The ones who take a different route and miss the twenty-car pile-up and fireball. The ones who…But you get my point. We can't know about any of them.”
The ones who bend down to straighten out a pants leg and don't get shot through the heart, Tony thought suddenly. The ones who stand up and turn around and don't get shot in the head,
Oh, boy! he thought then. Folie à deux! He went out on the porch and gazed at the lake where uneasy moon-light shimmered. After a moment he stripped, wrapped a towel around his waist, and went out for a swim. The water was shockingly cold. He could demonstrate to Bressler just how nutty his theory was, he thought, swimming; all he had to do was keep going toward Wisconsin until cold and fatigue sank him like a stone. Another time, he decided, turning back to shore.
In bed, every muscle relaxed to a pudding-like consistency, he wondered what he would have done if Bressler had asked for a sample of his blood. His entire body twitched and he plummeted into sleep.
The next morning, he found himself driving back to East Lansing. He listened to talk radio for a while, then sang harmony with Siegfried on tape, and tried to ignore the question: Why? He didn't know why he was going back.
There was no vacancy at the Holiday Inn. The desk clerk kindly advised him to go to the Kellogg Center where someone would see that he got housing.
He never had driven through the campus before; it appeared to have been designed as a maze, with every turn taking him back and forth across the same brown river again and again. The grounds, the broad walks, the streets, the expanses of manicured lawn were almost entirely deserted and eerily silent. When he approached the botanical gardens for the third time, luck intervened in his wanderings; he spotted Dr. Bressler strolling with another man, both facing away from him. He parked, opened his door to go after Bressler, hand back the package, be done with it. Then he came to a stop, half crouched in his movement to leave the car. The men had turned toward him briefly, and the second man was his old long lost pal, Doug Hastings. They walked to a greenhouse, away from him. He drew back inside the car.
He drove again, this time to Grand River, the main street in East Lansing. He turned toward Lansing. Without considering why he was doing this, he stopped at a shopping complex that covered acres and acres, miles maybe, and took the Bressler papers into an office supply warehouse store where he used a self-service copy machine and made copies of everything. He bought a big padded envelope and addressed it to himself, in care of his mother in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, put his
copies inside, and mailed it at a post office in the sprawling mall. Then, finished, he returned to the Michigan State campus, and this time he found the Kellogg Center building on the first try.
Kellogg Center was the heart of the conference; here the academics met and talked, ate lunch, many of them had rooms, and the conference staff people manned a table with receptionist, programs, nametags, and general information. In the lobby Tony chatted with several people, was asked to wait a second while someone dashed off to get him a copy of a presentation paper; someone else handed him another folder. He was waiting for either Doug Hastings, or Dr. Bressler, whoever came first.
Someone thrust another folder at him. He took it, and let a woman draw him toward a small alcove; then he saw Bressler enter, followed seconds later by Doug. He turned his attention to the woman whose hand was heavy on his arm. “Will you attend our session this afternoon?” she was asking. “It's at three.”
“Oh, Peter!” Bressler called out, and came lumbering across the hallway toward him. Doug Hastings turned to the reception table and began to examine the schedule.
The woman looked bewildered as Bressler reached them and took Tony's other arm, dragged him away. “Peter, do you still have my material? I thought you left already. They said you checked out.”
Tony was carrying several folders by then, and a manila envelope, as well as his bulging briefcase. “Sure, it's in here somewhere,” he said. He opened his briefcase on a small table, added the new papers to the others, and drew out Bressler's package. “I'll get to it in the next couple of weeks.”
“No, no,” Bressler said hastily, snatching the package, which he held against his chest with both hands. “That's all right, Peter. All that material to read. You don't need to add to it.” He backed up a step or two, turned, and hurried away.
Tony was closing his briefcase again when he heard Doug's voice very close to his ear. “Well, I'll be damned if it isn't Tony Manetti!”
Doug grasped his shoulders and swung him around, examined his face, then wrapped him in a bear hug. “My God, how long's it been? Eight, nine years? Hey, how you been doing? What's going on? Looks like you're collecting bets or something.” Talking, he drew Tony toward the front entrance, away from the others milling about. “How about a cup of java? Some place less crowded. Hey, remember when we used to duck out of class for a beer? Those were the days, weren't they?”
They never had gone out for a beer together; Tony hadn't been a drinker then any more than he was now. “You an academic?” he asked on the sidewalk.
“No way. Assignment. Listened to a bunch of guys and gals explain the economic importance of joint space exploration. Whew! Heavy going.”
For the next hour, in a coffee shop, Doug talked about his life, and asked questions; talked about the past, and asked questions; talked about traveling, and asked questions.
“You mean you get their papers and don't go to the talks? What a racket! Let's see what you've got.”
Tony handed over his briefcase, and watched Doug go through the contents.
“You're really going to read all that stuff? Read it here?”
“Not a word. They'd want to talk to me about it if they thought I'd read the material. I save it for home.”
“You know, I thought that was you the other night, going out with a big bald guy?”
Tony laughed. “Old Bressler. He's into angels. Spent too much time looking in an electron microscope or something, I guess.” He added sadly, “He gave me some stuff to take home, and then grabbed it back. Around the bend, poor old guy.”
Later, answering another question slipped into a monologue, he told Doug that he had had a heavy date Sunday and Sunday night, and talked dreamily about a moonlight swim.
Doug leered. “Girl on every campus, I bet.” Soon afterward he glanced at his watch and groaned. “This job ain't what I thought it'd be,” he said. “You going back?”
“Just to pick up my car. I've got what I need.”
They walked back to the Kellogg Center, where Tony got into the rental car, waved to Doug, and took off. He worked at putting the pieces together on the way to Lansing Airport. They must not want Bressler to publish a word about what he was up to. And Doug would report that there was no reason to reel in Tony, who didn't suspect a thing.
At the airport, he turned in the car, went to the ticket desk to change his reservation, and sat down to wait for his flight back to Chicago.
They probably didn't believe a word of it, he mused, and yet, what if? They would watch and wait, let the genius work it out if he could. But they would be there if he did. Right.
He was remembering incidents from his nearly forgotten childhood. At seven he and his stepbrother had played in the barn loft, and he had fallen out the highest window, gotten up, and walked away. Neither ever mentioned it to anyone; they had been forbidden to play up there. At twelve he and two other kids had been in a canoe on the Delaware River when a storm roared in like a rocket ship. The canoe had been hit by lightning, two kids had died, but he had swum to shore; he had not told anyone he had been there, since no one would have believed him anyway.
Now what, he wondered. Visit his mother, of course, and read all the Bressler material. After that was a blank, but that was all right. When the time came he would know what to do. He felt curiously free and happy, considering that he was simply following orders, was little more than a slave.
Nonstop to Portales
CONNIE WILLIS
Connie Willis, famous in SF for her short fiction and for her time-travel novel, The Doomsday Book, is a winner of many awards, including the Hugo and Nebula. She is particularly respected for her insightful portrayal of character and, in person, as a stand-up comic of considerable talent, known for her monologues at conventions, awards banquets, and SF parties. She has strong opinions about movie stars, particularly Harrison Ford and Fred Astaire. She lives in the fragrant city of Greeley, Colorado (presumably where the young men went when they went West, a long time ago). Less known is her considerable command of the history of modern science fiction. This story is the second in this year's volume taken from The Williamson Effect, and is as moving, powerful, and accurate a tribute from one living SF writer to another as I have ever read. It takes a fine writer who knows and cares about the SF of the past to write such a story as “Nonstop to Portales.” Most other SF writers will envy Jack Williamson his Connie Willis story.
Every town's got a claim to fame. No town is too little and dried out to have some kind of tourist attraction. John Garfield's grave, Willa Cather's house, the dahlia capital of America. And if they don't have a house or a grave or a Pony Express station, they make something up. Sasquatch footprints in Oregon. The Martha lights in Texas. Elvis sightings. Something.
Except, apparently, Portales, New Mexico.
“Sights?” the cute Hispanic girl at the desk of the Portales Inn said when I asked what there was to see. “There's Billy the Kid's grave over in Fort Sumner. It's about seventy miles.”
I'd just driven all the way from Bisbee, Arizona. The last thing I wanted to do was get back in a car and drive a hundred and sixty miles round trip to see a crooked wooden tombstone with the name worn off.
“Isn't there anything famous to see in town?”
“In Portales?” she said, and it was obvious from her tone there wasn't.
“There's Blackwater Draw Museum on the way up to Clovis,” she said finally. “You take Highway 70 north about eight miles and it's on your right. It's an archaeological dig. Or you could drive out west of town and see the peanut fields.”
Great. Bones and dirt.
“Thanks,” I said and went back up to my room.
It was my own fault. Cross wasn't going to be back till tomorrow, but I'd decided to come to Portales a day early to “take a look around” before I talked to him, but that was no excuse. I'd been in little towns all over the west for the last five years. I knew how long it took to look around. About fifteen minutes. And five to
see it had dead end written all over it. So here I was in Sightless Portales on a Sunday with nothing to do for a whole day but think about Cross's offer and try to come up with a reason not to take it.
“It's a good, steady job,” my friend Denny'd said when he called to tell me Cross needed somebody. “Portales is a nice town. And it's got to be better than spending your life in a car. Driving all over kingdom come trying to sell inventions to people who don't want them. What kind of future is there in that?”
No future at all. The farmers weren't interested in solar-powered irrigation equipment or water conservation devices. And lately Hammond, the guy I worked for, hadn't seemed very interested in them either.
My room didn't have air-conditioning. I cranked the window open and turned the TV on. It didn't have cable either. I watched five minutes of a sermon and then called Hammond.
“It's Carter Stewart,” I said as if I were in the habit of calling him on Sundays. “I'm in Portales. I got here earlier than I thought, and the guy I'm supposed to see isn't here till tomorrow. You got any other customers you want me to look up?”
“In Portales?” he said, sounding barely interested. “Who were you supposed to see there?”
“Hudd at Southwest Agricultural Supply. I've got an appointment with him at eleven.” And an appointment with Cross at ten, I thought. “I got in last night. Bisbee didn't take as long as I thought it would.”
“Hudd's our only contact in Portales,” he said.
“Anybody in Clovis? Or Tucumcari?”
“No,” he said, too fast to have looked them up. “There's nobody much in that part of the state.”
“They're big into peanuts here. You want me to try and talk to some peanut farmers?”
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