by John Boyd
His executive’s urbanity was set like an invisible mask over his features, holding them rigid, but the eyes in the mask recoiled from an abyss, and beneath its transparency a stubble of pink whiskers showed through. The washroom wit had been correct: Gaynor was red-haired.
He brought with him a copy of An Inquiry into Plant Communication, holding it gingerly before him, and he placed it on the desk, squaring it with his blotter pad. He raised his eyes after the book was adjusted to his satisfaction and said, “Good morning, Doctor Caron.”
“Good afternoon, Doctor Gaynor.”
He glanced over at Doctor Berkeley, and still standing, said, “James, I know your testimony will be of little value to me. In any event, the competency hearing has become a purely administrative problem, which I’m capable of conducting without assistance. You may go now.”
“Thank you, Charles,” Doctor Berkeley said, rising. “And I’ll be seeing you, Freda.”
He departed, humming “Mexicali Rose” softly to himself.
Once the door was closed, Gaynor sat down, looked at her, and said, “Doctor Caron, you must admit that I have ample grounds for finding you incapable and aberrant on the basis of your requisitions alone. You tell me, Doctor, where in the world am I going to find two thousand square yards of canvas and twenty-eight oversized telephone poles, squared?”
“A cancellation for that requisition is in channels,” Freda said.
“Very well, strike that one! Now, the breakage: fifteen greenhouse roofs, one greenhouse fence, one mechanical plow, five hundred gallons of sodium citrate, a fence, one airplane! I dare say, Doctor, there has not been a breakage expense of such proportion since the San Pedro pile blew up.” He leaned forward and tapped her monograph with chewed fingernails. “But all of our little differences vanish with this! This treatise leaves the Bureau responsible for a conservative four million dollars in lawsuits.”
“That is an administrative concern, Doctor Gaynor,” Freda pointed out, “superimposed onto a scientific treatise, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the validity of the Caron-Polino experiment.”
“Granted, Doctor Caron… Granted! But it puts me over a barrel. If I forward this monograph with approval, I’m admitting the Bureaus responsibility. Using this, the claimants could collect in a small-claims court.”
“In this instance, Doctor Gaynor, I prefer not to have your approval. Lay approval of a scientific work imparts a vulgar popularity to the treatise, endows an otherwise dignified work with the stigma of sensationalism. I suggest you forward it without approval.”
Freda felt that she wasn’t getting through to him. His eyes were fixed on her but not focused on her. Catatonia, she thought, and when he spoke, his voice had the hollow resonance of schizophrenia. “If I do not approve, and the work is given public recognition, which Doctor Hector assures me it will, and the theories are found to be valid, which Acoustics assures me they will, then questions will be raised in certain quarters regarding my fitness as chief of a scientific bureau, and the government’s case will still be in peril… Ah, yes, Freda, you and that young man—Peter Henley?—have placed me squarely between an evacuation and a transpiration.”
“You knew about Mr. Henley?”
“Ah, yes. You were under a psychiatric cover. There’s little on this base that escapes your executive administrators notice… I fully expect an override on the Linguistic veto in a week or ten days… Now, in the psychiatric area, you must admit that there was some questionable behavior, despite Bob Berkeley’s admiration for your normalcy. Yes, some odd activities there, too.”
“Such as?” Freda interjected.
“Well, you did talk to the tulips. You whispered sweet nothings to them, in fact. There’s nothing in this monograph”—he tapped her treatise again—“that says you could speak their language. That they communicated between each other, yes. That they could talk to you, no! Even an unbiased opinion might consider it rather odd of a woman that she should go around talking to flowers. Assumptions could be made, Doctor. Assumptions could be made.”
“Then, such assumptions would have to include these two gentlemen.”
She took the deposition from Minor and Barron from her briefcase and handed it to him. “It’s hardly a reflection on my sanity, alone, when two such eminent gentlemen can join in singing ‘Anchors Aweigh’ with one Caron tulip.”
“Oh, the Navy!” He shoved the deposition back to her with obvious distaste. She leaned forward on the couch to pick it up, and rose to sit on the chair, dragging it closer to his desk. Doctor Gaynor obviously needed the couch more than she.
“But you never mentioned that little black box you and Polino had on the hill with you,” he said cagily, “when the coroner was investigating Polinos death.”
“There’s nothing in the standard operating procedure regarding coroner’s investigations which says that I must answer questions not asked. There was no formal investigation. To them, it was an open-and-shut case of a natural death, until the little black box is mentioned in the monograph, where it is covered in full detail.”
“Yes, yes. I know.” He looked around him, as if expecting to find an eavesdropper, lowered his voice, and said, “Doctor Caron, lets both be reasonable. I’ll drop all charges—”
“What charges? I’m here for a competency hearing.”
“I don’t mean it quite that way… Look, I’m a man. I have hopes and fears and, yes, ambitions, like everyone else. When I started out, I wasn’t particularly gifted, or talented, or intelligent. But I was shrewd! I majored in administration. People like you, and Hector, and Polino… Yes, even Polino. He was talking behind my back too. You were all after me… And there’s Berkeley, flaunting his Latin crossword puzzles in my face… How’s an old country boy going to compete in this league? I didn’t make this system, Doctor Caron. But I could see where the power lay, at the crossroads, where decisions come together, conflict. I choose the decisions; if I’m right, I win. If I’m wrong, the man who made the decision loses—”
“Doctor Gaynor,” Freda interrupted, “this is all very interesting, but what has it to do with my sanity hearing?”
“I was trying to appeal to your humanity, Doctor. I need your help. Any decision I make here is wrong. Please don’t publish that treatise.”
So, it was out. Now they were entering bargaining grounds. Her answer was emphatic, “Doctor Gaynor, I would not think of suppressing a revolutionary finding in the plant sciences in order to forestall possible lawsuits.”
“Doctor Caron, I’ll appoint you my successor, in writing…”
“I appreciate your vote of confidence, Doctor Gaynor.” Freda held up her hand. “But I am willing to sacrifice my position as Bureau chief for the sake of scientific truth. Why aren’t you willing to match my sacrifice?”
“Doctor Caron, I can’t do anything hut administrate. All I have is my job, and a wife and three children depending upon me. Doctor Caron, think of my wife and children.”
Freda thought for a moment. She did sympathize with Mrs. Gaynor, for marital reasons, and with his children, for their genealogical handicaps. She spoke: “As you say, Doctor, we’re both reasonable people, although I’m here because you’ve disputed that fact… Maybe we can work something out.”
“Think, Doctor Caron,” he said. “You’re smart.”
“Perhaps I might,” she said slowly, “submit the monograph with a discretionary release… I would never delay the publication myself. It’s not ethical. But it could be submitted to be released at the Bureau chief’s discretion.”
Gaynor straightened slightly. Hope shone in his eyes. “If you were to submit it, Doctor Caron, to be released at the discretion of the executive head of this Bureau, I guarantee you that you would be the director who released it, after I was elevated to the Department.”
“I know,” she agreed. “The Caron-Polino monograph would be my guarantee… But, Doctor, there are some questions I would like to ask you. If you don’t choose to answer,
of course, we can end the discussion here and now and send An Inquiry into Plant Communication on its way.”
“Ask me. Ask me anything.”
“Why did you take me to Washington with you, under false pretenses, and maneuver me into presenting the Flora petition.”
“When I got the call from Clayborg that morning, I knew he had a trick up his sleeve. He isn’t interested in perpetuating the name of Gaynor. But I am. So I had Miss Weatherwax stand by at the suggestion box and bring me whatever suggestions you submitted. I took your suggestions from there.”
“But why me?
“Clayborg loves pretty women. He knew you were my hostage to ensure his maximum effort. I knew he would strain every brain cell to get the petition through and keep you from being sacrificed. I was betting him you that he couldn’t swing it… He covered my ante, and lost. Maybe he isn’t so damned smart, after all.”
Gaynor was wrong, Freda thought. The game was still in progress, as Clayborg well knew. Hans still held a hot pair of dice. “Second question,” she said. “Why do you dye your hair platinum?”
Her question startled him. He tried to smile, and he shook his head, “Now, they come, those Clayborgian questions…” He leaned forward, and she noticed that he was struggling to contain tears. “All right, I’ll lay it on the line!”
His hand swept back over his head, taking his hair with it, and he laid a wig on the desk top. “I’ve been baldheaded since I was eight—scarlet fever. All the kids used to follow me home from school, calling me ‘Baldy.’ Nobody loves a baldheaded boy…”
“Calm yourself, Doctor Gaynor!”
He struggled for a moment, leaning forward. “Since I didn’t have any hair, I had a choice of colors. I chose an outstanding color because of my job. An administrator has to be noticed, or he gets passed over in the promotions. Most of them try for a nickname… or sign their names with red ink… Anything, to attract… attract… attention.”
He was losing control again. Freda wanted to remark that he would be even more distinguishable as a baldhead, and he would have a built-in nickname, but she was sympathetic toward childhood traumas, and she could understand why he had not chosen baldness. His head was too shiny; it seemed to capture and focus the filtering sunlight through the translucent bricks behind his desk.
“Put your hair back on, Doctor,” she snapped. “The glare blinds me.”
As he deliberately adjusted his hairpiece, Freda relaxed. Her battles on earth were almost over. “Doctor Gaynor, I will stamp the thesis ‘Hold for release’ if you will assign me to the Charlie Section to relieve Doctor Theaston on Flora.”
“But the Charlie Section’s in quarantine. It’s being hibernated next week.”
“No problem. Give me a crash program.”
“Doctor Caron, questions will be asked. You’ll be adding thirty thousand dollars to the budget.”
“Any skillful administrator can field a thirty-thousand-dollar question,” she pointed out. “It would take a genius to explain away a four-million-dollar error in judgment.”
Gaynor shrugged, beaten, and flicked on the intercom. “Mrs. Weatherwax, will you fill out a quarantine emergency pass detailing Doctor Freda Caron to Flora with the Charlie Section, as cystologist assigned to relieve Doctor Paul Theaston, on the Florian island of Tropica. And bring it to me as soon as you have it completed.”
“Yes, sir.”
He pushed another button. “Hello, Medicine, this is your chief speaking. Who is the medical officer on duty?”
“Doctor Youngblood here, sir.”
“Doctor Youngblood, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to work over tonight to prepare Doctor Freda Caron for transport with the Charlie Section. Do you mind?”
“Doctor Gaynor, for that one I’d stay up all night!”
Freda laughed at the doctor’s spontaneous enthusiasm, and her laughter trilled as lightly as the laughter of her tulips. Doctor Gaynor, red-faced, flicked off the button and made a great to-do about searching his desk for the rubber stamp. He was searching for the inkpad when Mrs. Weatherwax entered and laid the quarantine permit on the desk before him. He glanced at it and passed it over to Freda. She read over the form, checking it for errors and finding none, as Gaynor turned back the cover of the Caron-Polino treatise and stamped the title page.
Ethically, Freda thought, she might be violating some principle, but, as Doctor Gaynor himself had said, anything that worked was right. She could figure on Clayborg keeping silence for three weeks, long enough to get her free of this noisome planet; then the juggernaut of underground science would roll. By the time Freda returned from Flora, Doctor Charles Gaynor would probably be Superintendent in Charge of Ground Tenders at Arlington Memorial Park, changing cut flowers on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
He handed her An Inquiry into Plant Communication. Across the flyleaf was stamped, “To Be Released at the Discretion of the Bureau Director.”
“Sign here,” he said, pointing.
She handed him the quarantine pass.
“After you, me,” she said.
Gaynor pretended amusement. “Surely you don’t mistrust your Bureau Chief?” he chided her, signing. He was regaining his imperial manner.
“Not without reason,” she agreed. She had not regained her subservient attitudes.
She signed the treatise, took her pass, and rose. Gaynor rose also, automatically extending his hand in the gesture of formal farewell and uttering the ritual good-bye. “Godspeed, Freda, and heaven spare you a bad trip.”
She responded in kind, saying, “God’s grace be yours on earth—Charlie.”
As she closed the door behind her, she felt spent, with nerves sagging, and she had merely cleared the first hurdle, an earthman. Awaiting her was a battle with titans for control of the emotion-generating capabilities of the man she intended to marry. Yet it was her own arrogance that frightened her most. Hans Clayborg had said that intellectuals did not fall in love, and she was launching her woman’s intuition on a collision course with the logic of Hans Clayborg. She believed the male intellectual was capable of gonad-based obsessions.
Turning to pass through the reception office, she nodded a friendly good-bye to Mrs. Weatherwax, and Mrs. Weatherwax, nodding, flipped up her fingers in the V-for-victory sign. Freda registered a spurt of optimism at her gesture, seeing in it the final prophecy of a sibyl who had never erred. Her quarantine pass had been filled in with the spidery scrawl which identified Doctor Gaynor’s executive secretary as the oracle of the ladies’ lounge.
Chapter Twelve
Awakening as she slid from the chute, Freda tumbled onto the grass and rolled aside to clear the exit. Lounging back on her elbows, she looked up a slope of grass to a ridge line covered with a grove of beech trees, thinking that the cameras had understated the colors of Flora. No one had told her that the grass smelled of clover, that all the clouds were nimbus clouds floating across the primal blue of all blues. The boles of the trees, grayish silver, were laid against the skyline with a palette knife, the leaves swirled with a brush, and higher on the ridge, to her right, an outcropping of granite was fringed at its base by yellow roses. From the grove a bird warbled six notes, soaring and swooping into a silence made sweeter by the sound.
Poets and painters should accompany expeditions, she thought, and composers, even dried-out newspaper reporters.
NASA erred in limiting flights to Eagle Scouts who could say no more than “A-okay” or “all systems functioning.”
She glanced behind her at the maze of landing struts, upward at the alloy of vanadium. The USSS Botany had touched down in a meadow on the side of a hill. Other chutes distended from the ship on the downward side, but she was alone, dressed in a field dress of gray permalon. She slipped out of the jacket and somersaulted over the grass, completing three flips, when she heard a voice say, “She’s gone Florian, Doctor.”
Captain Barron, in dress blues, was assisting Doctor Youngblood to his feet by the exit. Sprawle
d on the grass, Freda looked up and asked, “Where’s the rest of the section?”
“They exited downslope, toward the camp, to get the headquarters crew in clothes before you go down,” Barron said. “I’ve talked with Paul on the radio. He wants you to fly over right after lunch, before the satyrs on the continent get you.”
“So he’s jealous.”
“Your flight will take you an hour, and Doctor Youngblood will go along to check Paul. Paul said he’d spend twenty-four hours with you, passing along records and setting up camp.”
“Captain, I’d like a vocal transponder planted in my blouse with a twenty-four-hour watch on the monitor,” she said.
“Are you afraid of Paul, Freda?” Doctor Youngblood asked.
“Afraid for him,” she responded. “I’ll be asking him leading questions, and a psychiatrist should analyze the answers.”
“You have one already,” Doctor Youngblood answered. “It’s in the button on your field jacket.”
“Are you suspicious?” Freda asked.
“No,” he said. “It’s recently been adopted as standard operating procedure on this planet.”
Paul was waiting on the coral ledge Hal had told her about when the copter was guided in by his homing signal. In the afternoon sunlight he looked like a young Moses with his curling blond beard, his long hair, and dressed in a breech clout with a machete tied around his waist. From one hundred feet above him, she could see he was bronzed with the tan of Flora, and muscles rippled where she could not recall seeing muscles before.
He lifted her from the helicopter door, and it was a full minute before her feet touched the ground. Residual traces of her contact phobia were swept away in their reunion. Freda would have been perfectly willing to let him try for an endurance record if Doctor Youngblood’s complaints about the delay finally had not persuaded Paul to lower her to the ground.