by John Boyd
Suddenly, with the clarity of religious revelation, her problem was solved.
Personnel of the Charlie Section went in quarantine preparatory to hibernation in early April, readying for the May liftoff for Flora. Paul had asked her to relieve him on Tropica. All she had to do was to put her name on the list. As department head, her request would be honored automatically.
She had until the morning of the nineteenth before her test with Hal. If she failed, she thought, what she learned from Polino, she could teach Paul. Distaste for the idea convinced her the winds were northerly, and she returned to the greenhouse.
Doctor Gaynor was unable to see her on Thursday morning, but his secretary arranged a consultation for six minutes between 3:38 and 3:44 p.m. Mrs. Weatherwax spoke so curtly that Freda told her that three minutes would be all the time she needed, that Doctor Gaynor could have three minutes back.
Freda made a point of arriving promptly at 3:37½.
She regretted that she had to make even a routine request from the Executive. She had taught Polino methodology, but he had taught her attitudes. His vile but apt term for administrators stuck in her mind. He was subversive. If she had let him remain with Paul, he would have inveigled her fiancé to join him in some cantina of Old Town.
Doctor Gaynor was bland and affable when he rose to greet her, waving her to a seat before the desk—a straight-backed, armless chair. The upholstered chairs were exiled to far corners of the room.
As briefly and as clearly as she had delivered the petition to the Heyburn Committee, she entered her request for space duty, citing Paul’s need for a cystologist on Tropica, the apparent traces of hemoglobin in the sap of the orchids, and the mystery of the invisible pollinators. “Paul sent the tulips,” she added, “to give me working specimens on earth in order to formulate a hypothesis on the methods of pollination used by the orchids.”
“Ah, I see. So, that must account for your, er, rather unusual correspondence with Linguistics. By the way, how’s the psychiatric watch coming on young Polino? Any remission, or further disintegration?”
She had completely forgotten the “cover” she was to put on Hal, but she said, conversationally, “It was discontinued because he did such a splendid job while we were in Washington presenting your petition. His methodology is so improved that he can continue the Caron-tulip culture alone during my absence.”
“I’m having trouble with Finance,” he said. “Your petition for the botanical station made waves. Navy gave those ‘facts-for-a-buck’ figures on Flora to Finance, and Finance chewed out Agriculture. Ag passed word for me not to rock the boat, finance-wise, so I’m lopping Tropica from Flora’s Charlie Section as part of my overall economy drive. I ran a tab on Paul’s facts, and his fact returns are three dollars per unit on the Able briefing. Of course, Paul’s an excellent research man, and I expect him to lower that average on the Baker briefing.”
“Need I point out, Doctor Gaynor, that some facts are worth more than others. Besides, my research would not be restricted to Tropica. If I can detect hemoglobin, or an equivalent in sap, my discovery would be of paramount importance to Doctor Clayborg.”
“Oh, him. I was under the impression that he was more concerned with energy reserves in the overall universe.”
“Hemoglobin is a form of that reserve, sir,” Freda said, thinking that if Gaynor were considered with detachment and objectivity, he would emerge as an idiot. Was there such a thing as a “special” universe?
“Oh, yes. Of course… Doctor Caron, if you go to Flora, Budget might consider it an act of defiance on my part. Senate might think I was sending you to Siberia because your petition failed, which is an admission on the part of an administrator that he can’t season his own managerial timber.”
“This is a research project, Doctor.”
“Yes, that’s correct.” He nodded sagely. “Personally I have confidence in your professional abilities, Doctor Caron, particularly in research, but, frankly”—he smiled—“you’ve become controversial. We’d better let that ninth wave pass, and try our surfboards in calmer water.”
“To the extent I’m controversial, Doctor Gaynor, you and Doctor Berkeley share in the controversy. I was not alone before the Senate Committee.”
He tilted back in the swivel chair, tilted his head further still, folded his hands across his chest, blinked his eyes three times, and said, “Rather I had in mind, Doctor Caron, your odd request to the Linguistics Bureau.”
“Oh, fiddlesticks!” she exploded. “That was pure research into possibilities.”
“Still, I thought you might have become, er, emotionally—is that the word?—involved with the flowers, and, perhaps, had worked with undue dedication to the point of nervous strain.”
“Absolutely not! On the contrary…” A covert glance at her watch showed 3:44, one minute to sirocco time, and Freda felt a stab of panic. Even if she could stomach the platinumed fop, this was neither the place nor the time for unethical persuasion. “… my conversations with the tulips are tranquilizing.”
Gaynor’s eyebrows seemed to leap a full quarter inch above his eyesockets. “Perhaps, Doctor Caron, you really do need a vacation.”
She was rising, and the wind was rising. “Oh, don’t take me literally, take me physically, I mean figuratively. Good morning, Doctor Gaynor.”
“Good afternoon, Doctor Caron.”
Freda virtually sprinted to the ladies’ lounge and sat down to gather her wits in man-free privacy, where the winds might blow freely. She had truly muffed the request. When the sirocco had blown past, she rose and from habit checked the bulletin: “If Francine didn’t quit, shed be run over by an automobile, chasing it… Doctor Hector was levering Suzuki over the final exams so skillfully that the Japanese girl had completely lost her bias to Caucasians.” The ordinary chitchat, witty, allusive, and highly informative. She was almost turning away when her eyes fell on a familiar scrawl at the foot of the sheet, in handwriting so small she had to stoop to read: “Freda, beware the ides of March… A Friend.”
This time the oracle had erred with her prophecy! Violating the cardinal rule of prophets, she had been too specific. It wasn’t the fifteenth of March Freda feared; it was 1:45 a.m., Sunday, March 19.
On Friday she was deliberately so peevish and irritable with Hal Polino that he left early for his recording date in Los Angeles. She got him out of the greenhouse before five, before the sirocco blew in.
Saturday was clear and warm. With Hal and the gardeners off the base, Freda gathered her air mattress, sun lotion, and eyeshade and went to the tulip beds after lunch. Bikinied to the sunlight, she lay on the mat and listened to the flowers coo and whistle contentedly in the dry heat. Serenity lay all around her. There was even a quietness inside her, for she was resigned to her fate now. Yet, something seemed missing. With no Hal Polino around hurling curses at the “little brutes,” the “floral computer,” the “yellow peril,” the peace lacked punch.
Perhaps, she mused, her glandular reaction was prompted by a fondness for the boy, not her fondness by her glandular reaction. He could never approach Paul in precision of thinking or selectivity of emotional response—she had never heard Paul sing a Christmas carol—but she didn’t have to rob Polino to praise Paul. The two men were merely different but equal, allowing for Hal’s lower place. Paul was a bridge-of-the-battleship man. Hal was a stern-of-the-canoe man. Paul would be best for the long haul, the sustained effort; Hal would be good for the short stroke, the explosive effort.
It was harder to keep one’s distance from a man in a canoe. Her position and age meant little to Hal. He was not impressed by one’s status, and he wasn’t that much younger. In worldly matters, he was doubtless an octogenarian in contrast to both Paul and her. Probably he was masterful, considerate, and mature enough to be gentle with his strength. Italians were supposed to have a delicate touch in those areas. That sign on the washroom wall, “Latins are lousy lovers,” had been nothing more than a female trick to di
vert the other girls from a find.
Freda adjusted the shade more firmly to her eyes and turned her midriff to the sun, arching her spine away from the heat of the exposed mattress to squirm back to her cool spot. She enjoyed the sensuality of her own rippling muscles as she tensed her buttocks and spread-eagled, yielding her inner thighs to the sun. Nearby, tulips clucked disapprovingly, and she smiled to herself at their modesty.
She had been unkind to Hal yesterday. Henceforward she resolved to be less shrewish with the lad. Sins of one’s mother should not be visited onto other mother’s sons. It was more than unkindness, it was an injustice for her to continue to punish a young man because a little girl, whom Freda could hardly remember, had once heard her father say to her mother, “You Mexican whore!”
Chapter Nine
“Doctor Caron, may I introduce Mr. Peter Henley?”
Freda flicked her sunshade to her forehead, snapped her knees together, and propped to a sitting position in one motion. Hal and a stranger stood almost over her. No doubt they had been admiring her gymnastics. “I thought you were in Los Angeles!”
“I finished the session this morning. Mr. Henley’s from Australia—on a fellowship to the Bureau of Linguistics.”
“Don’t stand there gaping, Hal! Bring me my smock.”
“But, Freda, on some beaches you’d be well dressed.”
“I’m not on a beach, and get my smock!”
Hal turned and fled to the greenhouse, leaving the strange young man to leer. Peter Henley looked like something from Australia, she thought—from the Outback. Tall and slender, his blond hair flared at the sides and lay flat on the top. A sharp chin gave his head the outline of a V broken by a flap of ears. His nose was pointed, tilted, and balanced by eyes so large and blue they could have been borrowed from some Antipodean marsupial cut off from the mainstream of evolution. His Adam’s apple was bobbing slowly up and down as he kept swallowing, and Freda thought, even his neck is ogling me. “I’m sorry, Mr. Henley,” she said, “but I thought I was alone in the garden. I must have embarrassed you.”
“No, ma’am. On the beaches of Sweden, the girls wear nothing. Even so, I dare say they can’t quite compare with Fresno.”
“What may I do for you?” she snapped, and somehow his appearance made her question seem suggestive.
“I came from the Bureau of Linguistics, though in no official capacity. I’m on my vac.”
“Your vac?”
“Vacation, ma’am.”
Hal was back, holding her smock, which she eased into quickly and buttoned rapidly, trying to maintain polite conversation. “Fresno in March is a strange place for a vacation. It’s like Dubuque in August.”
“Doctor Caron, Peters got some interesting information.”
“About those tapes, ma’am. The ones you and Hal sent.”
“What about the tapes, sir?”
“They were merely given a four-B analysis, ma’am.” His “ma’am” sounded like “mum.” “Which is a courtesy analysis to honor an official request. It’s thorough enough, mind you, a four-B is, but I felt… Well, ma’am, I felt that they hadn’t been handled correctly. There were some smudges atop the spectrogram—”
“Did you call the attention of your departmental superior to this discrepancy?”
“Well, ma’am. You know department heads. Begging your pardon, ma’am. If your idea turns out well, it’s their idea; but if it doesn’t, you get your bloody teeth kicked in.”
Yes, she was familiar with such department heads, she thought, and she was also familiar with assistants such as Peter Henley, the ones who rose not by tearing down others but by bootlegging information on the sly to spring it on their superiors in the presence of their superior’s superiors later, at the right tactical moment. Peter Henley was known in some circles as an interdepartmental rat.
“Go on,” Freda said.
“I was thinking, ma’am, since the smudges occur at fairly regular intervals, they might be the lower nodes of higher-pitched sounds that Hal’s equipment didn’t pick up.”
“You think the tulips might be sounding at a pitch we can’t hear.”
“No, ma’am,” Henley said. “I don’t think so, because I have no evidence, officially. Unofficially, I have a piece of tape I pulled out of the boss’s wastebasket, but it just gave me a hunch.”
A veritable jackal, she thought. “May I see your visitor’s pass, Mr. Henley?”
His pass checked out. Hal had certified it. “Let’s continue this conversation in the office,” she said.
Hal had gathered her sunbathing gear, and he fell in beside her on the way to the greenhouse. “Peters from the University of Sydney. He’s in the States on a fellowship, and he’s one of Professor Grant’s students.”
Freda knew from Hal’s tone that she was supposed to know all about Professor Grant, but she didn’t. “Who’s Professor Grant?” she asked.
“He teaches a rather unique methodology. Tell her about it, Peter.”
“Doctor Grant’s theory is that no investigating procedure should use logic, because the basic elements of the universe are irrational. Doctor Grant says, take the bloody standard procedure and throw it in the bloody wastebasket.”
“He reminds me of a friend of mine,” Freda said, “Hans Clayborg.”
“Grant studied under Clayborg,” the Australian said.
“Yes, I remember now,” Freda said, highly pleased by her first attempt at name-dropping, “and Hans thinks highly of him.”
“Doctor Caron, here’s my evidence, for whatever it might be worth.” He pulled a roll of spectrograph tape from his pocket, snapped off its rubber band, and spread it on her desk. “This is the sound you hear,” he said, pointing to a jumbled pattern of wave lines. “But up here, you’ll notice, there are smudges on the tape.”
She would not have noticed them had he not pointed them out to her. They were so faint, they were hardly visible, and seemed discolorations of the paper. “I know so little about sounds, Mr. Henley, but couldn’t those be shadows from an overtone?”
“Logically, they would be, at first glance. Standard procedure calls for checking overtone shadows, and S.O.P. says they’re there. But these look a little pregnant to the left and then swing over to a right-hand pregnancy, which could mean an undertone shadow from a higher pitch, falling a little out of sync.”
“Couldn’t they be smudges from a soiled gripper on the spectra machine?” Methodologically speaking, she had feinted with her right and connected with her left.
Peter Henley flicked her haymaker aside. “I clean the machine with carbon tet containing dilute aniline. My smudges are all blue.”
“Very well, Mr. Henley,” she said wearily. “We concede they are suspicious smudges. What is the next step in this Bloody-Grant-Clayborg method?”
“Throw away the old tapes, and start over again, using a more sophisticated detector on a higher frequency. Why higher instead of lower? Because if the bloody tulips are trying to fool us, we’d logically figure they’re whispering low.”
She thought for a moment. Doctor Gaynor would never permit, and rightly so, the use of unauthorized personnel on the base, particularly if the request originated from her. Security measures had to be maintained. Moreover, Peter Henley had seen her virtually in the nude, and he knew what lay beneath her smock. One sirocco at a time was all she could handle. A hot wind blowing from the Outback would be too much. “I can’t permit you on the base, Mr. Henley.”
“I neither need to be nor wish to be,” Henley said. “I don’t want Gaynor to even know I’m in Fresno. Hal can plant the tapes for me, this afternoon, bring them to me, and I can analyze them from my diggings in Fresno.”
“Very well,” Freda said, “you have my unofficial blessing. Show Mr. Henley our tulips, Hal, but make it snappy.”
“First let me show you the A plot, Peter,” Hal said, ushering him through the door. “We expect another crop of seeds Monday, and I have a bet with Freda that the tulips ca
n clear a toss of fifty yards…”
As their voices drifted out of earshot, Freda turned to stow her gear in the locker, wondering why all the young men from the English Confederation were named “Peter.”
Freda’s collision course with Saturday night and Sunday morning commenced on a sinister note before breakfast Monday morning. She had barely finished her orange juice when the waitress in the executive dining room brought her a cryptic note in Hal’s handwriting: “Get to the beds quick. Something’s gone haywire.”
Freda gulped her coffee, grabbed her coat to ward off the early-morning chill, and left her order of ham and eggs to be served to an empty chair.
Hal had come early to the beds, no doubt to change the tapes, and she noticed, as she rounded the corner of the greenhouse, the wasps were swarming in the A beds, and she called to him, “What’s wrong?”
“Look at the A beds,” he called.
She looked. The seedpods had burst.
“Were you in the tulips Sunday?” he called.
“No, I went to a concert in Bakersfield.”
“I was in Fresno with Peter, but it looks like I’ve won my bet on that distance throw by the A beds. They must have put the seeds in orbit.”
“Aren’t there any on the canvas?”
“None. Nary a seed, anywhere.”
She stepped back and looked onto the roof of the greenhouse. “Could they have shot them west, over the greenhouse?”
“I’ve been here only ten minutes, but I checked that. None in the grass on the other side.” He had come near her now, and his face wore an expression of concern and mystification. “This can be serious, Freda. I calculate we’ve got about seventy-two thousand seeds we can’t account for, minus a few from unexploded pods. If we’ve got runaway seed production here, our goose is cooked.”
“Perhaps the third harvest is barren. I know nothing about the life cycle of these plants.”
“Well,” he said, scratching his head, “that’s illogical enough for us to consider. But I can find out very quickly. Cover your ears, girl, for here comes that sound again.”