Syzygy

by Frederik Pohl

  She sat down on a small settee and tucked her feet under her. For the next twenty minutes both were silent as they read each other’s study papers. Rainy finished first, and silently got up and went to the kitchen for a refill on the coffee. Meredith’s report ran fifteen closely reasoned pages, all neatly supported with citations and footnotes, but there was something troubling about it. When Meredith was ready to talk, Rainy asked, “Why are we interested in all these data from around Korea?”

  “Weather comes from the west. I’ve gone back fifty years, as you can see, with the standard reports, and I’ve included all the unusual reports I could find since 1510—mostly from whalers and naval ships. Maybe a few pirates.” She took off her glasses and gazed at the pile of charts, with their gentle curves and tiny symbols. “Actually it was kind of fun. The last time I paid this kind of attention to the Western Pacific was at the Ninth Pacific Science Congress in Bangkok—and that was a long time ago.” A quarter of a century by normal human standards. A full generation. But, for the science of meteorology, back to the Stone Age: before weather satellites, before facsimile, before any of the sophisticated aids that were now the basic tools of every forecaster. Especially before the big number-crunching computers that could take a pilot’s report from south of Tahiti and a ground station’s synoptic from Truk and deduce a low cell in the very act of being born. At Bangkok two of the meteorologists had been insufferably vain of their acquisition of the first real weather radars. “I was looking for two things,” she told Rainy. “One was historical records of exceptional weather to match against earthquakes and volcanic eruptions; there’s no real correlation there. The other was the same exceptional weather mapped against planetary positions. I couldn’t see anything there either. These mean isopleths here, for instance—”

  “You say there’s no real correlation?” Rainy interrupted.

  “Not that I can find. I draw a blank.”

  The thing that was troubling Rainy loomed suddenly clear. “And yet,” she said, “reading your report, I kind of get the feeling that you’re really worried that all this might happen.”

  Meredith sat back. “It shows, huh?”

  “Are you?”

  The older woman said slowly, “I don’t know if I am or not, Rainy. You know, we don’t have enough talent for this job. We could use about a dozen more experts; there’s all those magnetometer readings from all over the earth’s surface. Can you interpret them? I can’t. But that geomagnetism surely reflects changes in the ionosphere and magnetosphere—doesn’t it? And those are definitely linked with the solar wind, which is to say with the amount of energy the earth receives from the sun. And what about carbon-14 production? Shouldn’t we have one of those tree specialists, dendrochronologists, to check that out? And what about—”

  “We aren’t going to get any of those people, Meredith.”

  “That’s my trouble, Rainy. I can go just so far with my own area of specialization. I can’t say any more than that. “

  She hesitated, sipping her cold coffee. “It’s the rabies syndrome,” she said.

  “Rabies syndrome?”

  “A long time ago,” Meredith said, “just after Dennis was born, his grandfather and I were hiking in the red wood country, and Sam went off to answer a call of nature. He came running back, with the back of his hand all blood. A squirrel had bitten and scratched him—and there had just been a scare about rabid squirrels. So I washed it out and put a bandage on it, and then we sat down and talked it out. What should we do? We could go right back to Eureka and see a doctor and start the rabies vaccine series—there were a lot of them in those days, very painful and sometimes people died of the vaccine. Or we could do nothing. It all depended on whether the squirrel was rabid. If it was, then there was no choice—Sam had to have the shots, because otherwise he would certainly die within a few weeks, in great pain. But if it wasn’t, then obviously we should avoid the shots, because they were also very painful, and might be fatal. It’s the same way with Los Angeles, Rainy. Do you have the courage to tell them there’s nothing to worry about? I don’t.”

  At the door Meredith peered at the rain. “I think we’re getting a Fujiwara effect,” she said. “Remember that mess up in the North Pacific on the maps? The Siberian high and the Aleutian low are both unusually deep, and there are two smaller lows circling around and peeling off pieces of themselves—I think we’ll be getting these storms for most of a week yet. Give my regards to Tib.”

  Rainy was halfway to the freeway entrance before she realized what Meredith had said. Actually, Rainy could have sworn she hadn’t mentioned Tib’s name the whole time she was there! But perhaps that was the giveaway. Rainy didn’t mind. Little secrets of that kind were no good if no one could guess them, and the best person in the world to guess them was someone who wouldn’t ask questions. Rainy wasn’t ready for questions. She hadn’t worked out any answer. Of course, Tib was not to be taken seriously—assuming that the word “serious” equated with the word “marriage.” Rainy had no intention of taking anyone “seriously” for a good long time yet. Least of all Tib Sonderman. Still, while it lasted—

  She grinned to herself and switched the radio on. The Jupes were at it again—some kind of demonstration at the women’s jail. She caught a familiar name, and learned that her cosmonaut friend was making quite a hit in Mexico City, finishing up his grand goodwill tour of the Western Hemisphere. There was a rehash of the grand jury investigation of some mobster, and an unusual number of traffic warnings. It looked like Meredith was right about the rain. It was going to go on for a while, and there were reports of creek floodings.

  She carried her Christmas gifts up to her apartment and dropped them in a chair while she went to see what the telephone answering machine had for her. Nothing from Tib—well, he hadn’t expected that she’d be back so early. Two Merry Christmas wishes from Tinker—of course. And, among the others, a husky, fast-talking voice she did not at first recognize. “Hello, I’m Danny Deere and I want to talk to you. There might be a little something under my Christmas tree if you come over as soon as you get back. Give a call. I’ll send my car.”

  Friday, December 25th. Christmas Day. 8:50 PM.

  A dirty snowball of frozen gases, a few miles across, crossed the orbit of Neptune. It had begun its fall toward the sun eighty thousand years before. As it grew nearer it picked up speed; when it came a little closer the gases would evaporate, sunlight would reflect from them and it would be visible as a comet. The people who would observe it when it reached the orbit of Earth were already born. By comparison with the mass of a planet, a comet is not very large; the astonomer Babinet called comets “visible nothings”. But they are not trivial. A much tinier comet, in Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908, had leveled thousands of square miles of forest. This one would come very close to the earth. How close would depend on the alterations in its orbit imposed by the large planets it would come near, but, for millions of the earth’s people, it would be either the most spectacular sight they would ever see, or the last.

  The boss did not like having Manuel and his sons work for the new condominium down the hill, but the boss did not know everything. Today the condo had phoned for help, and so he and Onorio, and Jose, Tomas, and Rafael, had spent two or three profitable hours spreading huge sheets of plastic over the bare ground that would some day be landscaping. It was wet work, in slickers and boots, and Manuel tired of it. When he was out of sight of the maintenance engineer he called his eldest son aside. “You will sign me in when you leave,” he ordered, and slogged up the hill, admiring his new boots.

  As soon as he was at his door his wife was opening it, her face worried. “The Deere has called for you! I told him you were in the orchards, inspecting for damage from the rain, but he has called three times!”

  “I will deal with it,” he growled, but he picked up the house phone without waiting to take off his drenched poncho, and Danny Deere came on at once.

  “Now, where the fuck you been, Manue
l? I got a fucking roof leak! I got water coming in my greenhouse, and what am I supposed to do, climb up there myself?”

  “I will attend to it at once, Senor Danny.”

  “You goddam better! Right away at once! And, listen, I got company coming, has Joel showed up at the gate yet?”

  “Not yet, Senor Danny. I will watch for him.”

  “You will get your ass up here and get my roof fixed!”

  “Of course, Senor Danny.” Manuel hung up gently and beckoned to his woman, silently waiting. “Run to the condo and tell Tomas to come at once,” he ordered. “He must put tar on the roof of the big house. “

  “He will be very tired, hombre,” she ventured.

  “I, too, am very tired! Run! You may take my poncho,” he added generously, slipping it over his head and handing it to her. For a moment he debated going up to the house himself. To work at the condominium was vecy good business. Not only did they pay in dollar bills, with no Social Security numbers attached, but one could sometimes keep a pair of boots or a few tools. But Danny Deere had made his feelings clear, and it was important to Manuel that his boss be happy with him. He had come to the United States four times to get there once. He did not want, ever again, to have to make that trip. The long walk to the bus, the long bus ride to Sonoita, the ride huddled under tarpaulins in the back of the pickup truck, the crawl through the gap in the barbed wire and the last long hike to Pia Oik—success!—and then, at once, failure! In Phoenix the agents of the Border Patrol ambushed them, and then there was another bus ride back to Nogales and it all to do over again.

  It was only on the fourth try that he comprehended that he must not trust his guides and smugglers any further. He jumped off the truck outside the town and, miraculously, managed to hitch a ride to California and a job.

  Even to remember it frightened him. Those night walks! Two of the youngest men always patrolled ahead with great sticks, for the purpose of killing the rattlesnakes that came out to forage in the cool desert night. And the money! At every point, every person’s hand was out. The truck drivers. The guides. The farmhands who hid them overnight. The vendors of sandwiches and tacos and Cokes who fed them along the way—at five times the prices in j the stores they did not dare enter. But there was no choice, for there were no jobs in the Sierra Madre. You either gave your hoarded pesos to some black-jacketed wise fellow from Sinaloa, or you starved.

  But, once you had a job picking in the citrus groves, what wealth you could send back to Aguatarde! Enough to bring a wife, and then the children. Enough to bring in a couple of nephews and a cousin or two, to pay you back i with great interest for the favor. Enough, finally, to make your way to Los Angeles itself.

  And then to fall in with such a man as Danny Deere—what fortune!

  Of course, the Deere was not a good man. What boss was? But Danny Deere’s kind of badness exactly fit the needs of Manuel and his brood. So when his nephew Tomas came trotting up to learn what he must do Manuel dispatched him immediately with a bucket of tar to the roof of the big house; and when the limo came up the drive Manuel did not trust to electric controls. He himself rushed out into the rain to open the gate. He bowed, but not so low that he did not catch a glimpse of the young woman in the back seat, looking about her in wonder and pleasure. Manuel shrugged and returned to the house. It had not been a bad Navidad for himself; why should Senor Danny not enjoy his holiday as well?

  Rainy had never been poor, but she had never before been in a car that had a private stereo, a private television set, a chauffeur who looked like John Houseman—and, she discovered when the chauffeur invited her to make herself a drink, a private bar stocked with fresh ice cubes. She leaned back with a Seven-Up she didn’t really want, staring out the window at the rain as though she lived this way all the time. She was sure she was fooling no one, but there was no one to see.

  If the car was grand, the house was awesome. Danny Deere must have been warned from the gatehouse, because he was out under the pillared porch roof waiting for her when the car arrived, and came bareheaded out into the rain to open the door for her. “Thank you for coming out on Christmas,” he said, taking her elbow. She could not reconcile this person with the bumptious clown who had trampled past her at the ASF meeting. “I bet you score a lot of women this way,” she said.

  He grinned. “All I ever want, doll.” And then to the chauffeur, “All right, Joel, now get lost.”

  That was more like it. “I bet you lose a lot that way,” she said as she let him help her off with her raincoat.

  “What way is that, doll?”

  “Talking to that nice old man like that.”

  “Who, Joel?” He stopped and stared at her for a moment, as though she had said something so inane and inappropriate that he was embarrassed for her. Then he shook his head and pointed to the couch. “He’s got no bitch,” Danny said reasonably, moving to the bar. “He used to be my producer, you know that? And what you don’t know is, I’m paying him more now than he made then.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. Scotch or bourbon?”

  “Nothing. Maybe a bourbon and ginger, but weak. Of course,” she said, “there’s been a lot of inflation since then.”

  Danny grinned. “Work on it a while, doll,” he invited. “You’re sure to come up with a reason why I’m screwing him by paying him forty-five thousand a year.” He mixed the drinks triumphantly. There was no reason to spoil the story by mentioning what happened to the money after Joel got it. Nearly seventeen thousand went to the IRS; three hundred dollars a week, in cash, came kicked back to Danny Deere personally. But that still left the old man with almost fifteen thousand a year to put in the bank, because what did he have to spend money on here? And a title as vice president and marketing consultant, so it could all be deducted from the business expense. With his back between Rainy and the bar, Danny Deere put a double shot in her drink and carried it over to her. “I didn’t bring you here to talk about his troubles anyway,” he said. “I got a problem.”

  She tasted the drink and shuddered. “You know, I suspected that.”

  “And you’re just the doll that can solve it for me. It makes a difference to me what you people are going to decide.”

  He sat down, oppressively close to her on the big couch. “What people is ‘you people’, Mr. Deere?”

  “You know goddam well. You and old lady Bradison and the hunkie and Townie Pedigrue’s kid brother.”

  She reached to set the drink down, edging away in the process. It was really a very seductive couch, in a most handsome room. She was itching to get up and look at the paintings on the walls and see the view in the courtyard—no, not a courtyard! It was all glassed in! “Well,” she said,

  “I guess everybody’s worried about earthquakes around here.”

  “No, doll,” he said patiently, “I don’t mean whether L. A.‘s going to go down with the turds, I mean whether you people are going to say it will. That’s what matters to me.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Deere, but I really can’t release information before—”

  “Fine, ‘cause that’s not what I want. I don’t just want to know what you’re going to say, I want to tell you what it is. I want you to say it’s practically going to be the end of the fucking world, and I want you to say it so it’s scary.”

  He moved closer to her and she flared, “Back away, friend! My God! Do you know what you’re asking?”

  He shrugged and withdrew the hand that was touching her thigh. “Don’t bullshit me, doll,” he said mildly. “You’re not some land of priest. You got no holy duty involved here.”

  “No, but I’ve got a job. And that job is to find out the truth, as well as I can, and report it. This committee isn’t some Academy Awards jury you can rig, it’s a determination of fact.”

  “So’s a court trial, doll,” he observed.

  She was caught off stride. “What?”

  “So’s a court trial, and that don’t stop the lawyers from trying t
o bend the facts their way. Holy shit, doll, the reason you’re doing this is you people all disagree on the facts, right? So are you telling me there’s no room for arguing? Specially if I, like, retain you?”

  “What?” She was repeating herself and knew it.

  “I said, if I retain you. Like five thousand dollars. Cash.”

  She stared at him, and then got up and headed for the wet bar. It was the first time she had ever been offered a bribe. She tipped half the whiskey into the sink and replaced it with tap water, but even after taking a sip her reflexes failed her. She didn’t know how to react. Indignation sounded appropriate; but she didn’t feel indignant, only stunned.

  “I’ll give you five thousand dollars,” Danny repeated from the couch. “Come on back and sit down, doll, while I explain it to you. I want you to tell the world the big Q is coming to come, and it’s easy for you. You got the swing vote. The hunkie’s going to vote no, and old lady Bradison’s going to vote yes.”

  She was shaken. “How do you know that?”

  “I know,” he said patiently. “So you swing it. If it really bothers your conscience you can wait a while—sixty days anyway; no less than that. Then you can say, oh, wow, you just turned up this new evidence and you’re changing your mind. And you come out with this.” He pulled an envelope out of the pocket of his leisure suit and pushed it across the coffee table to her. “Off the books. You don’t declare it. Just have a good time with it, and Merry Christmas.”

  He stood up and took the drink from her hand. “Don’t make up your mind right now,” he said genially. “And while you’re thinking it over, let me show you my house.”

  The big question in Rainy Keating’s mind was, Why was she doing this? Why was she letting this man offer her a bribe, and then give her the two-dollar tour of his house, for God’s sake, like some rich uncle from Waukegan? Not to mention his hands, because every time she went through a door, or turned to look at a painting, he was helpfully touching her. She didn’t even like him. He was shorter than she, though Rainy was not a tall woman. He was by no means a nice man or a kind one. Not to mention the fact that at the moment her big interest was seeing just where this thing with Tib Sonderman was going to go.