Laugh Lines

by Ben Bova

  Driver fixed Memo with his steely gaze across the conference table. “Well, what do you think of it?” he asked subtly.

  Memo pursed his lips. He was jowly fat, completely bald, wore glasses and a rumpled gray suit.

  “I don’t know,” he said firmly. “It sounds . . . unusual . . . “

  Dr. Pencilbeam was sitting back in his chair and smiling benignly. His PhD had been earned in the 1970s, when newly-graduated physicists were driving taxicabs on what they glumly called “Nixon fellowships.” He was very thin, fragile looking, with the long skinny limbs of a preying mantis.

  Pencilbeam dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out an electronic game. Reformed smoker, I thought. He needs something to do with his hands.

  “It certainly looks interesting,” he said in a scratchy voice while his game softly beeped and booped. “I imagine it’s technically achievable . . . and lots of fun.”

  Memo snorted. “We’re not here to have fun.”

  Keene leaned across the table and fixed Memo with his best here’s something from behind the scenes expression. “Do you realize how the White House would react to a sensible program for a supersonic transport? With the Concorde gone, you could put this country into the forefront of air transportation again.”

  “H’mm,” said Memo. “But . . . “

  “Think of the jobs this program can create. The President is desperate to improve the employment figures.”

  “I suppose so . . . “

  “National prestige,” Keene intoned knowingly. “Aerospace employment . . . balance of payments . . . gold outflow . . . the President would be terrifically impressed with you.”

  “H’mm,” Memo repeated. “I see . . . “

  I could see where the real action was, so I wangled myself an assignment to the company’s Washington office as Keene’s special assistant for the SSZ proposal. That’s when I started learning what money and clout—and the power of influence—are all about.

  As the months rolled along, we gave lots of briefings and attended lots of cocktail parties. I knew we were on the right track when no less than Roger K. Memo invited me to accompany him to one of the swankiest parties of the season. Apparently he thought that since I was from Anson’s home office in Phoenix I must be an engineer and not just another salesman.

  The party was in full swing by the time Keene and I arrived. It was nearly impossible to hear your own voice in the swirling babble of chatter and clinking glassware. In the middle of the sumptuous living room the Vice President was demonstrating his golf swing. Several Cabinet wives were chatting in the dining room. Out in the foyer, three Senators were comparing fact-finding tours they were arranging for themselves to the Riviera, Bermuda, and American Samoa, respectively.

  Memo never drank anything stronger than ginger ale, and I followed his example. We stood in the doorway between the foyer and the living room, hearing snatches of conversation among the three junketing Senators. When the trio broke up, Memo intercepted Senator Goodyear (R., Ohio) as he headed toward the bar.

  “Hello, Senator!” Memo shouted heartily. It was the only way to be heard over the party noise.

  “Ah . . . hello.” Senator Goodyear obviously thought that he was supposed to know Memo, and just as obviously couldn’t recall his name, rank, or influence rating.

  Goodyear was more than six feet tall, and towered over Memo’s paunchy figure. Together they shouldered their way through the crowd around the bar, with me trailing them like a rowboat being towed behind a yacht. Goodyear ordered bourbon on the rocks, and therefore so did Memo. But he merely held onto his glass while the Senator immediately began to gulp at his drink.

  A statuesque blonde in a spectacular gown sauntered past us. The Senator’s eyes tracked her like a battleship’s range finder following a moving target.

  “I hear you’re going to Samoa,” Memo shouted as they edged away from the bar, following the blonde.

  “Eh . . . yes,” the Senator answered cautiously, in a tone he usually reserved for news reporters.

  “Beautiful part of the world,” Memo shouted.

  The blonde slipped an arm around the waist of one of the young, long-haired men and they disappeared into another room. Goodyear turned his attention back to his drink.

  “I said,” Memo repeated, standing on tiptoes, “that Samoa is a beautiful place.”

  Nodding, Goodyear replied, “I’m going to investigate ecological conditions there . . . my committee is considering legislation on ecology, you know.”

  “Of course. Of course. You’ve got to see things firsthand if you’re going to enact meaningful legislation.”

  Slightly less guardedly, Goodyear said, “Exactly.”

  “It’s a long way off, though,” Memo said.

  “Twelve hours from LAX.”

  “I hope you won’t be stuck in economy class. They really squeeze the seats in there.”

  “No, no,” said the Senator. “First class all the way.”

  At the taxpayers’ expense, I thought.

  “Still,” Memo sympathized, “It must take considerable dedication to undergo such a long trip.”

  “Well, you know, when you’re in public service you can’t think of your own comforts.”

  “Yes, of course. Too bad the SST isn’t flying anymore. It could have cut your travel time in half. That would give you more time to stay in Samoa . . . investigating conditions there.”

  The hearing room in the Capitol was jammed with reporters and camera crews. Senator Goodyear sat in the center of the long front table, as befitted the committee chairman. I was in the last row of spectators, as befitted the newly-promoted junior Washington representative of Anson Aerospace Corp. I was following the industry’s routine procedure and riding the SSZ program up the corporate ladder.

  All through the hot summer morning the committee had listened to witnesses: my former boss John Driver, Roger K. Memo, Alonzo Pencilbeam and many others. The concept of the supersonic zeppelin unfolded before the news media and started to take on definite solidity in the rococo-trimmed hearing chamber.

  Senator Goodyear sat there solemnly all morning, listening to the carefully rehearsed testimony and sneaking peeks at the greenery outside the big sunny window. Whenever he remembered the TV cameras he sat up straighter and tried to look lean and tough. I’d been told he had a drawer full of old Clint Eastwood flicks in his Ohio home.

  Now it was his turn to summarize what the witnesses had told the committee. He looked straight into the bank of cameras, trying to come on strong and determined, like a high plains drifter.

  “Gentlemen,” he began, immediately antagonizing the women in the room, “I believe that what we have heard here today can mark the beginning of a new program that will revitalize the American aerospace industry and put our great nation back in the forefront of international commerce—”

  One of the younger Senators at the far end of the table, a woman, interrupted:

  “Excuse me, Mr. Chairman, but my earlier question about pollution was never addressed. Won’t the SSZ use the same kind of jet engines that the Concorde used? And won’t they cause just as much pollution?”

  Goodyear glowered at the junior member’s impudence, but controlled his temper well enough to say only, “Em . . . Dr. Pencilbeam, would you care to comment on that question?”

  Half-dozing at one of the front benches, Pencilbeam looked startled at the mention of his name. Then he got to his feet like a carpenter’s ruler unfolding, went to the witness table, sat down and hunched his bony frame around the microphone there.

  “The pollution from the Concorde was so minimal that it had no measurable effect on the stratosphere. The early claims that a fleet of SSTs would create a permanent cloud deck over the northern hemisphere and completely destroy the ozone layer were never substantiated.”

  “But there were only a half-dozen Concordes flying,” said the junior Senator. “If we build a whole fleet of SSZs—”

  Before she could go any
farther Goodyear fairly shouted into his microphone, “Rest assured that we are well aware of the possible pollution problem.” He popped his P’s like artillery bursts. “More importantly, the American aerospace industry is suffering, employment is in the doldrums, and our economy is slumping. The SSZ will provide jobs and boost the economy. Our engineers will, I assure you, find ways to deal with any and every pollution problem that may be associated with the SSZ.”

  *

  I had figured the somebody, sooner or later, would raise the question of pollution. The engineers back in Phoenix wanted to look into the possibilities of using hydrogen fuel for the SSZ’s jet engines, but I figured that just the mention of hydrogen would make people think of the old Hindenberg, and that would scuttle the program right there and then. So we went with ordinary turbojet engines that burned ordinary jet fuel.

  But I went a step farther. In my capacity as a junior (and rising) executive, I used expense-account money to plant a snoop in the organization of the nation’s leading ecology freak, Mark Sequoia. It turned out that, unknown to Sequoia, Anson Aerospace was actually his biggest financial contributor. Politics make strange bedfellows, doesn’t it?

  You see, Sequoia had fallen on relatively hard times. Once a flaming crusader for ecological salvation and environmental protection, Sequoia had made the mistake of letting the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania hire him as the state’s Director of Environmental Protection. He had spent nearly five years earnestly trying to clean up Pennsylvania, a job that had driven four generations of the original Penn family into early Quaker graves. The deeper Sequoia buried himself in the solid waste politics of Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Chester, Erie and other hopelessly corrupted cities, the fewer dedicated followers and news media headlines he attracted. After a very credible Mafia threat on his life, he quite sensibly resigned his post and returned to private life, scarred but wiser. And alive.

  When the word about the SSZ program reached him, Sequoia was hiking along a woodland trail in Fairmont Park, Philadelphia, leading a scraggly handful of sullen high school students through the park’s soot-ravaged woodlands on a steaming August afternoon. They were dispiritedly picking up empty beer cans and gummy prophylactics—and keeping a wary eye out for muggers. Even full daylight was no protection against assault. And the school kids wouldn’t help him, Sequoia knew. Half of them would jump in and join the fun.

  Sequoia was broad-shouldered, almost burly. His rugged face was seamed by weather and news conferences. He looked strong and fit, but lately his back had been giving him trouble and his old trick knee . . .

  He heard someone pounding up the trail behind him.

  “Mark! Mark!”

  Sequoia turned to see Larry Helper, his oldest and therefore most trusted aide, running along the gravel path toward him, waving a copy of the Daily News over his head. Newspaper pages were slipping from his sweaty grasp and fluttering off into the bushes.

  “Littering,” Sequoia muttered in a tone sometimes used by archbishops when facing a case of heresy.

  “Some of you kids,” said Sequoia in his most authoritative voice, “pick up those newspaper pages.”

  A couple of the students lackadaisically ambled after the fluttering sheets.

  “Mark, look here!” Helper skidded to a gritty stop on the gravel and breathlessly waved the front page of the newspaper. “Look!”

  Sequoia grabbed his aide’s wrist and took what was left of the newspaper from him. He frowned at Helper, who cringed and stepped back.

  “I . . . I thought you’d want to see . . . “

  Satisfied that he had established his dominance, Sequoia turned his attention to the front page’s blaring headline.

  “Supersonic zeppelin?”

  Two nights later, Sequoia was meeting with a half-dozen men and women in the basement of a prosperous downtown church that specialized in worthy causes capable of filling the pews upstairs.

  Once Sequoia called his meeting I was informed by the mole I had planted in his pitiful little group of do-gooders. As a newcomer to the scene, I had no trouble joining Sequoia’s Friends of the Planet organization, especially when I FedEx’d them a personal check for a thousand dollars—for which Anson Aerospace reimbursed me, of course.

  So I was sitting on the floor like a good environmental activist while Sequoia paced across the little room. There was no table, just a few folding chairs scattered around, and a locked bookcase stuffed with tomes about sex and marriage. I could tell just from looking at Sequoia that the old activist flames were burning inside him again. He felt alive, strong, the center of attention.

  “We can’t just drive down to Washington and call a news conference,” he exclaimed, pounding a fist into his open palm. “We’ve got to do something dramatic!”

  “Automobiles pollute, anyway,” said one of the women, a comely redhead whose dazzling green eyes never left Sequoia’s broad, sturdy-looking figure.

  “We could take the train; it’s electric.”

  “Power stations pollute.”

  “Airplanes pollute, too.”

  “What about riding down to Washington on horseback! Like Paul Revere!”

  “Horses pollute.”

  “They do?”

  “Ever been around a stable?”

  “Oh.”

  Sequoia pounded his fist again. “I’ve got it! It’s perfect!”

  “What?”

  “A balloon! We’ll ride down to Washington in a non-polluting balloon filled with helium. That’s the dramatic way to emphasize our opposition to this SSZ monster.”

  “Fantastic!”

  “Marvelous!”

  The redhead was panting with excitement. “Oh, Mark, you’re so clever. So dedicated.” There were tears in her eyes.

  Helper asked softly, “Uh . . . does anybody know where we can get a balloon? And how much they cost?”

  “Money is no object,” Sequoia snapped, pounding his fist again. Then he wrung his hand; he had pounded too hard.

  When the meeting finally broke up, Helper had been given the task of finding a suitable balloon, preferably one donated by its owner. I had volunteered to assist him. Sequoia would spearhead the effort to raise money for a knockdown fight against the SSZ. The redhead volunteered to assist him. They left the meeting arm in arm.

  I was learning the Washington lobbying business from the bottom up, but rising fast. Two weeks later I was in the White House, no less, jammed in among news reporters and West Wing staffers waiting for a presidential news conference to begin. TV lights were glaring at the empty podium. The reporters and camera crews shuffled their feet, coughed, talked to one another. Then:

  “Ladies and gentlemen: the President of the United States.”

  We all stood up and applauded as she entered. I had been thrilled to be invited to the news conference. Well, actually it was Keene who’d been invited and he brought me with him, since I was the Washington rep for the SSZ project. The President strode to the podium and smiled at us in what some cynics had dubbed her rattlesnake mode. I thought she was being gracious.

  “Before anything else, I have a statement to make about the tragic misfortune that has overtaken one of our finest public figures, Mark Sequoia. According to the latest report I have received from the Coast Guard—no more than ten minutes ago—there is still no trace of his party. Apparently the balloon they were riding in was blown out to sea two days ago, and nothing has been heard from them since.

  “Now let me make this perfectly clear. Mr. Sequoia was frequently on the other side of the political fence from my administration. He was often a critic of my policies and actions, policies and actions that I believe in completely. He was on his way to Washington to protest our new supersonic zeppelin program when this unfortunate accident occurred.

  “Mr. Sequoia opposed the SSZ program despite the fact that this project will employ thousands of aerospace engineers who are otherwise unemployed and untrainable. Despite the fact that the SSZ program will save the American doll
ar on the international market and salvage American prestige in the technological battleground of the world.

  “And we should keep in mind that France and Russia have announced that they are studying the possibility of jointly starting their own SSZ effort, a clear technological challenge to America.”

  Gripping the edges of the podium tighter, the President went on, ““Rumors that his balloon was blown off course by a flight of Air Force jets are completely unfounded, the Secretary of Defense assures me. I have dispatched every available military, Coast Guard, and Civil Air Patrol plane to search the entire coastline from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras. We will find Mark Sequoia and his brave though misguided band of ecofr . . . er, activists—or their remains.”

  I knew perfectly well that Sequoia’s balloon had not been blown out to sea by Air Force jets. They were private planes: executive jets, actually.

  “Are there any questions?” the President asked.

  The Associated Press reporter, a hickory-tough old man with thick glasses and a snow-white goatee, got to his feet and asked, “Is that a Versace dress you’re wearing? It’s quite becoming.”

  The President beamed. “Why, thank you. Yes, it is . . . “

  Keene pulled me by the arm. “Let’s go. We’ve got nothing to worry about here.”

  *

  I was rising fast, in part because I was willing to do the legwork (and dirty work, like Sequoia) that Keene was too lazy or too squeamish to do. He was still head of our Washington office, in name. I was running the SSZ program, which was just about the only program Anson had going for itself, which meant that I was running the Washington office in reality.

  Back in Phoenix, Bob Wisdom and the other guys had become the nucleus of the team that was designing the SSZ prototype. The program would take years, we all knew, years in which we had assured jobs. If the SSZ actually worked the way we designed it, we could spend the rest of our careers basking in its glory.