Cities in Flight

by James Blish

  Someone rose from a chair which he had not been able to see from the door, and quartered down on him. The pad of the steps on the carpet and the odd crouch of the shape in the corner of Paige’s eye were unpleasantly stealthy. Paige turned, unconsciously closing his hands.

  “Haven’t we seen this officer before, Miss Abbott? What’s his business here—or has he any?”

  The man in the eager semi-crouch was Francis X. MacHinery.

  When he was not bent over in that absurd position, which was only his prosecutor’s stance, Francis X. MacHinery looked every inch the inheritor of an unbroken line of Boston aristocrats, as in fact he was. Though he was not tall, he was very spare, and his hair had been white since he was 26 years old, giving him a look of cold wisdom which was complemented by his hawk-like nose and high cheekbones. The FBI had come down to him from his grandfather, who had somehow persuaded the then incumbent president—a stunningly popular Man-on-Horseback who dripped charisma but had no brains worth mentioning—that so important a directorship should not be hazarded to the appointments of his successors, but instead ought to be handed on from father to son like a corporate office.

  Hereditary posts tend to become nominal with the passage of time, since it takes only one weak scion to destroy the importance of the office; but that had not happened yet to the MacHinery family. The current incumbent could, in fact, have taught his grandfather a thing or two. MacHinery was as full of cunning as a wolverine, and he had managed times without number to land on his feet regardless of what political disasters had been planned for him. And he was, as Paige was now discovering, the man for whom the metaphor “gimlet-eyed” had all unknowingly been invented.

  “Well, Miss Abbott?”

  “Colonel Russell was here yesterday,” Anne said. “You may have seen him then.”

  The swinging doors opened and Horsefield and Gunn came in. MacHinery paid no attention to them. He said, “What’s your name, soldier?”

  “I’m a spaceman,” Paige said stiffly. “Colonel Paige Russell, Army Space Corps.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m on leave.”

  “Will you answer the question?” MacHinery said. He was, Paige noticed, not looking at Paige at all, but over his shoulder, as though he were actually paying no real heed to the conversation. “What are you doing at the Pfitzner plant?”

  “I happen to be in love with Miss Abbott,” Paige said sharply to his own black and utter astonishment. “I came here to see her. We had a quarrel last night and I wanted to apologize. That’s all.”

  Anne straightened behind her desk as though a curtain rod had been driven up her spine, turning toward Paige a pair of blindly blazing eyes and a rigidly unreadable expression. Even Gunn’s mouth sagged slightly to one side; he looked first at Anne, then at Paige, as if he were abruptly uncertain that he had ever seen either of them before.

  MacHinery, however, shot only one quick look at Anne, and his eyes seemed to turn into bottle-glass. “I’m not interested in your personal life,” he said in a tone which, indeed, suggested active boredom. “I will put the question another way, so that there’ll be no excuse for evading it. Why did you come to the plant in the first place? What is your business at Pfitzner, soldier?”

  Paige tried to pick his next words carefully. Actually it would hardly matter what he said, once MacHinery developed a real interest in him; an accusation from the FBI had nearly the force of law. Everything depended upon so conducting himself as to be of no interest to MacHinery to begin with—an exercise at which, fortunately up to now, Paige had had no more practice than had any other spaceman.

  He said: “I brought in some soil samples from the Jovian system. Pfitzner asked me to do it as part of their research program.”

  “And you brought these samples in yesterday, you told me.”

  “No, I didn’t tell you. But as a matter of fact I did bring them in yesterday.”

  “And you’re still bringing them in today, I see.” MacHinery perked his chin over his shoulder toward Horsefield, whose face had frozen into complete tetany as soon as he had shown signs of realizing what was going on. “What about this, Horsefield? Is this one of your men that you haven’t told me about?”

  “No,” Horsefield said, but putting a sort of a question mark into the way he spoke the word, as though he did not mean to deny anything which he might later be expected to affirm. “Saw the man yesterday, I think. For the first time to the best of my knowledge.”

  “I see. Would you say, General, that this man is no part of the Army’s assigned complement on the project?”

  “I can’t say that for sure,” Horsefield said, his voice sounding more positive now that he was voicing a doubt. “I’d have to consult my T.O. Perhaps he’s somebody new in Alsos’ group. He’s not part of my staff, though—doesn’t claim that he is, does he?”

  “Gunn, what about this man? Did you people take him on without checking with me? Does he have security clearance?”

  “Well, we did in a way, but he didn’t need to be cleared,” Gunn said. “He’s just a field collector, hasn’t any real part in the research work, no official connection. These field people are all volunteers; you know that.”

  MacHinery’s brows were drawing closer and closer together. With only a few more of these questions, Paige knew even from the few newspapers which had reached him in space, he would have material enough for an arrest and a sensation—the kind of sensation which would pillory Pfitzner, destroy every civilian working for Pfitzner, trigger a long chain of courts martial among the military assignees, ruin the politicians who had sponsored the research, and thicken MacHinery’s scrapbook of headlines about himself by at least three inches. That last outcome was the only one in which MacHinery was really interested; that the project itself would die was a side-effect which, though nearly inevitable, could hardly have interested him less.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Gunn,” Anne said quietly. “I don’t think you’re quite as familiar with Colonel Russell’s status as I am. He’s just come in from deep space, and his security record has been in the ‘Clean and Routine’ file for years; he’s not one of our ordinary field collectors.”

  “Ah,” Gunn said. “I’d forgotten, but that’s quite true.” Since it was both true and perfectly irrelevant, Paige could not understand why Gunn was quite so hearty about agreeing to it. Did he think Anne was staffing?

  “As a matter of fact,” Anne proceeded steadily, “Colonel Russell is a planetary ecologist specializing in the satellites; he’s been doing important work for us. He’s quite well known in space, and has many friends on the Bridge team and elsewhere. That’s correct, isn’t it, Colonel Russell?”

  “I know most of the Bridge gang,” Paige agreed, but he barely managed to make his assent audible. What the girl was saying added up to something very like a big, black lie. And lying to MacHinery was a short cut to ruin; only MacHinery had the privilege of lying, never his witnesses.

  “The samples Colonel Russell brought us yesterday contained crucial material,” Anne said. “That’s why I asked him to come back; we needed his advice. And if his samples turn out to be as important as they seem, they’ll save the taxpayers quite a lot of money—they may help us close out the project a long time in advance of the projected closing date. If that’s to be possible, Colonel Russell will have to guide the last steps of the work personally; he’s the only one who knows the microflora of the Jovian satellites well enough to interpret the results.”

  MacHinery looked dubiously over Paige’s shoulder. It was hard to tell whether or not he had heard a word. Nevertheless, it was evident that Anne had chosen her final approach with great care, for if MacHinery had any weakness at all, it was the enormous cost of his continual, overlapping investigations. Lately he had begun to be nearly as sure death on “waste in government” as he was traditionally on “subversives.” He said at last:

  “There’s obviously something irregular here. If all that’s so, why did the m
an say what he said in the beginning?”

  “Perhaps because it’s also true,” Paige said sharply.

  MacHinery ignored him. “We’ll check the records and call anyone we need. Horsefield, let’s go.”

  The general trailed him out, his back very stiff, after a glare at Paige which failed to be in the least convincing, and an outrageously stagey wink at Anne. The moment the outer door closed behind the two, the reception-room seemed to explode. Gunn swung on Anne with a motion astonishingly tiger-like for so mild-faced a man. Anne was already rising from behind her desk, her face twisted with fear and fury. Both of them were shouting at once.

  “Now see what you’ve done with your damned nosiness—”

  “What in the world did you want to tell MacHinery a tale like that for-”

  “—even a spaceman should know better than to hang around a defense area—”

  “—you know as well as I do that those Ganymede samples are trash—”

  “—you’ve probably cost us our whole appropriation with your snooping—”

  “—we’ve never hired a ‘Clean and Routine’ man since the project began—”

  “—I hope you’re satisfied—”

  “—I would have thought you’d have better sense by now—”

  “Quiet!” Paige shouted over them with the authentic parade-ground blare. He had never found any use for it in deep space, but it worked now. Both of them looked at him, their mouths still incongruously half-opened, their faces white as milk. “You act like a pair of hysterical chickens, both of you! I’m sorry if I got you into trouble—but I didn’t ask Anne to lie in my behalf—and I didn’t ask you to go along with it, either, Gunn! Maybe you’d best stop yelling accusations and try to think the thing through. I’ll try to help for whatever that’s worth—but not if you’re going to scream and weep at each other and at me!”

  The girl bared her teeth at him in a real snarl, the first time he had ever seen a human being mount such an expression and mean it. She sat down, however, swiping at her patchily red cheeks with a piece of cleansing tissue. Gunn looked down at the carpet and just breathed noisily for a moment, putting the palms of his hands together solemnly before his white lips.

  “I quite agree,” Gunn said after a moment, as calmly as if nothing had happened. “We’ll have to get to work and work fast. Anne, please tell me: why was it necessary for you to say that Colonel Paige was essential to the project? I’m not accusing you of anything, but we need to know the facts.”

  “I went to dinner with Colonel Russell last night,” Anne said. “I was somewhat indiscreet about the project. At the end of the evening we had a quarrel which was probably overheard by at least two of MacHinery’s amateur informers in the restaurant. I had to lie for my own protection as well as Colonel Russell’s.”

  “But you have an Eavesdropper! If you knew that you might be overheard—”

  “I knew it well enough. But I lost my temper. You know how these things go.”

  It all came out as emotionless as a tape recording. Told in these terms, the incident sounded to Paige like something that had happened to someone whom he had never met, whose name he could not even pronounce with certainty. Only the fact that Anne’s eyes were reddened with furious tears offered any bridge between the cold narrative and the charged memory.

  “Yes; nasty,” Gunn said reflectively. “Colonel Russell, do you know the Bridge team?”

  “I know some of them quite well, Charity Dillon in particular; after all, I was stationed in the Jovian system for a while. MacHinery’s check will show that I’ve no official connection with the Bridge, however.”

  “Good, good,” Gunn said, beginning to brighten. “That widens MacHinery’s check to include the Bridge too, and dilutes it from Pfitzner’s point of view—gives us more time, though I’m sorry for the Bridge men. The Bridge and the Pfitzner project both suspect—yes, that’s a big mouthful even for MacHinery; it will take him months. And the Bridge is Senator Wagoner’s pet project, so he’ll have to go slowly; he can’t assassinate Wagoner’s reputation as rapidly as he could some other senator’s. Hmm. The question now is, just how are we going to use the time?”

  “When you calm down, you calm right down to the bottom,” Paige said, grinning wryly.

  “I’m a salesman,” Gunn said. “Maybe more creative than some, but at heart a salesman. In that profession you have to suit the mood to the occasion, just like actors do. Now about those samples—”

  “I shouldn’t have thrown that in,” Anne said. “I’m afraid it was one good touch too many.”

  “On the contrary, it may be the only out we have. MacHinery is a ‘practical’ man. Results are what counts with him. So suppose we take Colonel Russell’s samples out of the regular testing order and run them through right now, issuing special orders to the staff that they are to find something in them—anything that looks at all decent.”

  “The staff won’t fake,” Anne said, frowning.

  “My dear Anne, who said anything about faking? Nearly every batch of samples contains some organism of interest, even if it isn’t good enough to wind up among our choicest cultures. You see? MacHinery will be contented by results if we can show them to him, even though the results may have been made possible by an unauthorized person; otherwise he’d have to assemble a committee of experts to assess the evidence, and that costs money. All this, of course, is predicated on whether or not we have any results by the time MacHinery finds out Colonel Russell is an unauthorized person.”

  “There’s just one other thing,” Anne said. “To make good on what I told MacHinery, we’re going to have to turn Colonel Russell into a convincing planetary ecologist— and tell him just what the Pfitzner project is.”

  Gunn’s face fell momentarily. “Anne,” he said, “I want you to observe what a nasty situation that strong-arm man has gotten us into. In order to protect our legitimate interests from our own government, we’re about to commit a real, serious breach of security—which would never have happened if MacHinery hadn’t thrown his weight around.”

  “Quite true,” Anne said. She looked, however, rather poker-faced, Paige thought. Possibly she was enjoying Gunn’s discomfiture; he was not exactly the first man one would suspect of disloyalty or of being a security risk.

  “Colonel Russell, there is no faint chance, I suppose, that you are a planetary ecologist? Most spacemen with ranks as high as yours are scientists of some kind.”

  “No, sorry,” Paige said. “Ballistics is my field.”

  “Well, you do have to know something about the planets, at least. Anne, I suggest that you take charge now. I’ll have to do some fast covering. Your father would probably be the best man to brief Colonel Russell. And, Colonel, would you bear in mind that from now on, every piece of information that you’re given in our plant might have the giver jailed or even shot, if MacHinery were to find out about it?”

  “I’ll keep my mouth shut,” Paige said. “I’m enough at fault in this mess to be willing to do all I can to help—and my curiosity has been killing me anyhow. But there’s something you’d better know, too, Mr. Gunn.”

  “And that is—”

  “That the time you’re counting on just doesn’t exist. My leave expires in ten days. If you think you can make a planetary ecologist out of me in that length of time, I’ll do my part.”

  “Ulp,” Gunn said. “Anne, get to work.” He bolted through the swinging doors.

  The two looked at each other for a starchy moment, and then Anne smiled. Paige felt like another man at once.

  “Is it really true—what you said?” Anne said, almost shyly.

  “Yes. I didn’t know it until I said it, but it’s true. I’m really sorry that I had to say it at such a spectacularly bad moment; I only came over to apologize for my part in last night’s quarrel. Now it seems that I’ve a bigger hassle to account for.”

  “Your curiosity is really your major talent, do you know?” she said, smiling again. “It took y
ou only two days to find out just what you wanted to know—even though it’s about the most closely guarded secret in the world.”

  “But I don’t know it yet. Can you tell me here—or is the place wired?”

  The girl laughed. “Do you think Hal and I would have cussed each other out like that if the place were wired? No, it’s clean, we inspect it daily. I’ll tell you the central fact, and then my father can give you the details. The truth is that the Pfitzner project isn’t out to conquer the degenerative diseases alone. It’s aimed at the end-product of those diseases, too. We’re looking for the answer to death itself.”

  Paige sat down slowly in the nearest chair. “I don’t believe it can be done,” he whispered at last.

  “That’s what we all used to think, Paige. That’s what that says.” She pointed to the motto in German above the swinging doors. “Wider den Tod ist kein Kräutlein gewachsen.” “‘Against Death doth no simple grow.’ That was a law of nature, the old German herbalists thought. But now it’s only a challenge. Somewhere in nature there are herbs and simples against death—and we’re going to find them.”

  Anne’s father seemed both preoccupied and a little worried to be talking to Paige at all, but it nevertheless took him only one day to explain the basic reasoning behind the project vividly enough so that Paige could understand it. In another day of simple helping around the part of the Pfitzner labs which was running his soil samples-help which consisted mostly of bottle-washing and making dilutions—Paige learned the reasoning well enough to put forward a version of it himself. He practiced it on Anne over dinner.

  “It all rests on our way of thinking about why antibiotics work,” he said, while the girl listened with an attentiveness just this side of mockery. “What good are they to the organisms that produce them? We assumed that the organism secretes the antibiotic to kill or inhibit competing organisms, even though we were never able to show that enough antibiotic for the purpose is actually produced in the organism’s natural medium, that is, the soil. In other words, we figured, the wider the range of the antibiotic, the less competition the producer had.”