Michaelmas

by Algis Budrys

  "Is Norwood still the same man?"

  "Assuming his brain is undamaged, certainly."

  "Perfectly capable of leading the Outer Planets expedition after all?"

  "Capable, but not likely to. He has missed three months of the countdown. Major Papashvilly must remain in com-mand, so I imagine Colonel Norwood cannot go at all. It would be against Russian practice to promote their cos-monaut to the necessary higher rank until after his success-ful completion of the mission."

  "What if something happened to Papashvilly?"

  "Essentially the same thing has happened vis-à-vis Nor-wood. UNAC would assign the next back-up man, and ..."

  Laurent Michaelmas grinned. "Horsefeathers."

  There was a moment's pause, and the voice said slowly, consideredly: "You may be right. The popular dynamic would very likely assure Norwood's re-appointment."

  Michaelmas smiled coldly. He rubbed the top of his head. "Tell me, are you still confident that no one had deduced our—ah—personal dynamic?"

  "Perfectly confident." Domino was shocked at the sugges-tion. "That would require a practically impossible order of integration. And I keep a running check. No one knows that you and I run the world."

  "Does anyone know the world is being run?"

  "Now, that's another formulation. No one knows what's in the hearts of men. But if anyone's thinking that way, it's never been communicated. Except, just possibly, face to face."

  "Which is meaningless until concerted action results. And that would require communication, and you'd pick it up. That's one comfort, anyway." He was again looking out at night-softened Manhattan, which rose like a crystallo-grapher's dream of Atlantis out of a lighted haze. "Probably meaningless," Michaelmas said softly.

  There was another silence from the machine. "Tell me..."

  "Anything."

  "Why do you ask that in connection with your previous set of questions?"

  Michaelmas's eyes twinkled as they often did when he found Domino trying to grapple with intuition. But not all of his customary insouciance endured through his reply. "Because we have just discovered that the very great Nils Hannes Limberg is a fraud and a henchman. That is a sad and significant thing. And because Norwood was as dead as yesterday. He was a nice young man with high, special-ized qualifications no higher than those of the man who replaced him, and there was never anything secret or mar-vellous about him or you would have told me long ago. If we could have saved him, we would have. But there's nothing either you or I can do about a stuck valve over the Mediterranean, and frankly I'm just as glad there's some responsibility I don't have to take. If we could have gotten him back at the time, I would have been delighted. But he had a fatal accident, and the world has gone on."

  Michaelmas was not smiling at all. "It's no longer Colonel Norwood's time. The dead must not rise—they undermine everything their dying created. Resurrecting Norwood is an attempt to cancel history. I can't allow that, any more than any other human being would. And so all of this is a chal-lenge to me. I was concerned that it might be a deliberate trap."

  He turned his face upwards. That brought stars and several planets into his line of vision.

  "Something out there's unhappy with history. That means it's unhappy with what I've done.

  Something out there is trying to change history. That means it's groping towards me."

  Michaelmas scratched his head. "Of course, you say it doesn't know it's got one specific man to contend with. It may think it only has some seven billion people to push around. But one of these days, it'll realize. I'm afraid it's smarter than you and I."

  With asperity, Domino said : "Would you like a critique of the nonsequential assumptions in that set? As one example, you have no basis for that final evaluation. Your and my combined intellectual resources—"

  "Domino, never try to reason with a man who can see the blade swinging for his head." He cocked that head again, Michaelmas did, and his wide, ugly face was quite elfin. "I'll have to think of something. Afterwards, you can make common sense of it." He began to walk around, his square torso tilted forward from his broad hips. He made funny, soft, explosive humming noises with his mouth and throat, his cheeks throbbing, and the sound of a drum and recorder followed wherever he strolled.

  Two

  "Well, I think I should be frightened," Michaelmas told Domino as he moved about the kitchen premises preparing his evening meal. The chopped onions simmering in their wine sauce were softening towards a nice degree of tender-ness, but the sauce itself was bubbling too urgently, and might turn gluey. He picked up the pan and shook it gently while passing it back and forth six inches above the flame. The fillet of beef was browning quite well in its own skillet, yielding sensuously as he nudged it with his fork.

  "You don't grow an established personality from scratch," Michaelmas said. "An artificial infant, now ... why not? I'll give Limberg that; he could do it. Or he could grow a clone identical with an adult Norwood. But he's never had occa-sion to get tissue from the original, has he? And there's no way to create a grown man with thirty-odd years behind him. Oh, no. That I won't give him. And I tell you he would have had to do it from scratch because Norwood never crashed anywhere near that sanatorium. Strictly speaking, he never crashed at all — he vaporized. So Limberg would have had to build this entire person by retrieving data alone. But I don't think there's any recording system complete enough, or one with Norwood entered in it if there were."

  "Norwood and Limberg never met. There is no record of any transmission of Norwood cell samples to any deposi-tory. No present system will permit complete biological and experimental reconstruction from data alone."

  "And there you are," Michaelmas said. "Simplest thing in the world." He worked a dab of sauce between thumb and forefinger and then tasted them with satisfaction. He set the pan down on the shut-off burner, put a lid on it, and turned towards the table where the little machine lay with its pilot lamps mostly quiescent but sparkling with reflected room light.

  "You don't fake an astronaut," he said to it. "Even in this culture they're unique for the degree to which their response characteristics are known and studied. Limberg wouldn't try to get away with it. He's brought the real Colonel Norwood back to life. But he hasn't done it using any of the techniques and discoveries he's announced over the years. Limberg's career, his public image, everything — it's all reduced simply to something useful as a cover for the type of action he's taken now. It really is all very clear, Domino, if you disregard that balderdash about Norwood's surviving the explosion. Think about it, now."

  He was patient and encouraging. In the same way, he had often led the tongue-tied and confused through hun-dreds of vivacious interviews, making and wrecking policies and careers before huge audiences.

  The reply through the machine was equally patient but without forbearance:

  "Doctor Limberg is a first-rate genius —"

  Michaelmas smiled shyly and mercilessly but did not in-terrupt.

  " — who could not possibly be living a double life. Even given a rate of progress so phenomenal that he could de-velop his overt reputation and still secretly pursue some entirely different line, there are insurmountable practical objections."

  "Oh, yeah? Name some." The sauce hissed ebulliently as it made contact with the beef skillet.

  A few dextrous turns of Michaelmas's fork enveloped the fillet in just properly glutin-ous flavouring, and then he was able to place his dinner on its warmed, waiting dish and bring it to the place he had laid in the dining aspect. He poured a glassful of wine that had been breathing in its wicker server, and sat down to partake of his meal.

  "One," Domino said. "He is a gruff saint, in the manner developed by many world intellectual figures since the communications revolution. The more fiercely he objects to intrusions on his elevated processes of thought and his working methods, the more persistently the news media attempt to discover what he's doing now. One of the stan-dard methods of information tap is to
keep careful account of everything shipped to him. You'll recall this is how Science News Service deduced his interest in plasmids from his purchase of olephages. As a direct result, several wise investors in the appropriate manufacturing concerns were rewarded when Limberg made the announcements leading to his earlier prize. Since then, naturally, there are scores of inferential inventories being run on his purchases and wastage. His overt researches account for all of it."

  "One of the inventories being yours." Michaelmas chuckled over his fork. "Go on."

  "Two. All analyses of the genius personality, however it may be masked, show that this sort of individual cannot be other-directed over any significant period of time. You're hypothesizing that this excellent mind has been participating for years in a gross deception upon the world. This cannot be true. If that had been his original purpose, he would have grown away from it and rebelled catastrophically as his cover career began to assume genuine importance and direction.

  You can't oppose a dynamic —and I shouldn't be quoting your own basics back to you," Domino chided, and then went on remorselessly:

  "And exactly so, if he'd been approached recently for the same purpose, he would have refused. He would have died —more meaningfully, he would have undergone any form of emotional or physical pain—rather than submit. The genius mind is inevitably and fluently egocentric. Any attempt to tamper with its plans for itself—well, putting it more con-ventionally, any attempt to tamper with its compulsive career—would be equivalent to a threat of extinction.

  That would be unacceptable."

  Michaelmas was smiling in approval through the march-ing words, and pouring himself another glass of wine. "Quite right. Now let's just assume that Herr Doktor Professor N. Hannes Limberg, life scientist, is a merely smart man, with a good library and access to a service that can supply a technique for making people."

  There was a perceptible pause. With benevolent interest, Michaelmas watched the not quite random pattern of rip-pling lights on the ostensible machine's surface. Behind him, the apartment services were washing and storing his kitchen-ware. There was the usual music, faint in view of the enter-tainment centre's awareness, through Domino, that there was a discussion going on. It had all the ingredients of a most pleasant evening, early poetry forgotten.

  "Hmm," Domino said. "Assuming you're aware of the detail discontinuities in your exact statement and were simply leap-frogging them . . . Well, yes, a competent actor with the proper vocabulary and reference library could live an imitation of genius. And a man supplied with a full-blown technique and the necessary instruments needs no prototype research or component purchases."

  There was another pause, and Domino went on with obvious reluctance to voice the obvious.

  "However, there has to be a pre-existing body of knowl-edge to supply the library, the equipment, and the un-detected system for delivering these things. Practically, such an armamentarium could arise only from a fully developed society that has been in existence at least since Limberg's undergraduate days. No such society exists on Earth. The entire Solar System is clearly devoid of other intelligent life. Therefore, no such society exists within the ken of the human race."

  "But perhaps not beyond the reach of its predictable in-tentions," Michaelmas said. "Well, I assume you've been screening contract offers in connection with the Norwood item?"

  "Yes. You've had a number of calls from various networks and syndicates. I've sold the byline prose rights. I'm holding three spoken-word offers for your decision. The remainder were outside your standards."

  "Sign me for the one that offers me the most latitude for the money. I don't want someone thinking he's brought the right to control my movements. And tap into the UNAC management dynamic—edit a couple of inter-office memos as they go by. Stir up some generalized concern over Papashvilly's health and safety. Where is he, by the way?"

  "Star Control. He's asleep, or at least his phone hasn't been in use lately and his room services are drawing mini-mum power but showing some human-equivalent consump-tion.

  UNAC's apparently decided not to disturb him unless they have to."

  "Are you saying the electronic configuration of his room is exactly the same as on previous occasions when you've known him to be in it asleep?"

  "Yes. Yes, of course. He's in there, and he's sleeping."

  "Thank you. I want us to always be exact with each other on points like that. Limberg's masters have taken a magni-ficent stride, but I don't see why my admiration has to blind me. I'm not Fate, after all."

  Three

  He went down through the building security systems and to the taxi dock. The dock was ribbed in pale brownish concrete, lit by blue overheads. Technically, the air was totally self-contained, screened, and filtered. But the quality was not to apartment standards; the dock represented a large, unbroken volume that had needed more ducts and fans than the construction budget could reasonably allow. There was a sense of echoing desolation, and of distant hot winds.

  He saw the taxi stopped at the portal. Because the driver had his eyes on him, he actually took out his phone and established ID between the cab, himself, and the building. Putting the phone away, he shook his head. "We ought to be able to do better than this," he said to Domino.

  "One step at a time," his companion replied. "We do what we can with the projects we can find to push. Do you re-member what this neighbourhood used to be like?"

  "Livelier," Michaelmas said with a trace of wistfulness.

  The driver recognized him on the way out to the airport and said : "S'pose you're on your way over to find out if Walt Norwood's really okay?" The airline gate chief said: "I'm looking forward to your interviews with Colonel Nor-wood and Dr. Limberg. I never trust any of your com-petitors, Mr Michaelmas." The stewardess who seated him was a lovely young lady whose eyes misted as she wondered if it was true about Norwood. For each of them, and for those fellow passengers who got up the courage to speak to him, he had disarming smiles and interested replies which somehow took away some of the intrusion of his holding up his machine to catch their faces and words. As they spoke to him, knowing that they might be part of a pro-gramme, he admired them.

  For him, it didn't seem an easy thing for a human being to react naturally when his most fleeting response was being captured like a dragonfly in amber. When he had first decided that the thing to do was to be a newsman, he had also clearly seen an essential indecency in freezing a smile forever or preventing the effacement of a tear. He had been a long time getting sufficiently over that feeling to be good at his work. Gradually he had come to understand that they trusted him enough not to mind his borrowing little bits of their souls. From this, he got a wordless feeling that somehow prevented him from botching them up.

  He reflected, too, that the gate chief had blown his chance to see himself on network time by confining his remarks to compliments. This touched the part of him that could not leave irony alone.

  So for Michaelmas his excursion out through the night-bare streets, and on board the rather small transatlantic aircraft with its short passenger list, was a plunge into refreshment. Although he recognized his shortcomings and unrealized accomplishments every step of the way.

  He settled into the lounge with a smile of well-being. His tapering fingers curled pleasurably around a Negroni soon after the plane had completed its initial bound into the thinner reaches of the sky. He gazed around him as if he expected something new and wonderful to pop into his ken at any moment. He behaved as if a cruising speed of twenty-five hundred miles per hour in a thin-skinned pressurized device were exactly what Man had always been yearning for.

  Down among the tail seats were two men in New York tailored suits who had come running aboard at the last moment. One of them was flashing press credentials and a broad masculine smile at the stewardess guarding the tourist-class barrier. Even at the length of the plane's cabin, Michaelmas could recognize both a press-card holder and the old dodge of paying cheap but riding high. Now the
two men were coming towards him, sure enough. One of them was Melvin Watson, who had undoubtedly picked up one of the two offers Michaelmas had turned down. The other was a younger stranger.

  Each of them was carrying a standard comm unit painted royal blue and marked with a network decal. Watson was grinning widely in Michaelmas's direction and back over his shoulder at his companions, while he was already extend-ing a bricklayer's hand towards Michaelmas and forging up the aisle. Michaelmas rose in greeting.

  His machine was turned towards the two men. Domino's voice said through the conductor in his mastoid : "The other one is Douglas Campion. New in the East. Good Chicago reputation. Top of the commentator staff on WKMM-TV; did a lot of his own legwork on local matter. Went free-lance about a year ago. NBC's been carrying a lot of his matter daytime; some night exposure lately." Michaelmas was glad the rundown had been short; there seemed to be no way for him to avoid sinus resonance from bone con-duction devices.

  "I could have told you, Doug," Watson was saying to Campion as they reached Michaelmas. "If you want to catch Larry Michaelmas, you better look in first class." His hand closed around Michaelmas's. "How are you, Larry?" he rumbled. "Europe on a shoestring? Going to visit a sick relative? Avoiding someone's angry boy-friend?" When he spoke longer lines, even though he grinned and winked, his voice acquired the portentous pauses and nasal overtones that were his professional legacy from Army Announcers' School. But combined with his seamed face, his rawhide tan, and his eyes so pale blue that their pupils seemed much deeper than the whites, the technique was very effective with the audience. Michaelmas had seen him scrambling forward over ripped sandbags in a bloodied shirt, and liked him.