CHAPTER TEN
Dyer hoisted his feet up onto the couch and relaxed with one arm draped loosely along the backrest. The sun lay dying on the shore across the river from Irvington, spilling its lifeblood into the rippling water and throwing a soft orange glow up onto the walls of his apartment. Surely nothing could more aptly express the ending of an eventful day than a sunset, he thought to himself. This was the time to sift through the litter left along the trail of another day’s living for things worth filing permanently under Accumulated Experience. After a night of unconscious data reduction, the sharp detail would be gone forever. Chris had made one of his profound observations about sunsets once. What was it? He smiled faintly to himself as he remembered: “Pronounced atmospheric scattering of shorter wavelengths, resulting in selective transmission below 650 nanometers with progressively reducing solar elevation, produces a tendency toward irrational euphoria among primitive herders of domesticated ovines.”
Sharon came out of the kitchen carrying a couple of glasses and swaying her body to the music drifting out from the speakers concealed in the walls. She crossed the room, pushed a beer into Dyer’s hand and oscillated away again toward the window.
“I really can’t understand why you’d rather stay in,” she exuberated over her shoulder. “On an evening like this? . . . And it’s Friday. The whole city’s out there waiting to be lit up. Why d’you want to stay here?”
“Aw, I’ve seen enough of the goddam city.” Dyer stretched himself back luxuriously and sipped his drink. “Why don’t we relax for once. How about a really nice meal, cooked in for once, open a few bottles, turn on some nice music . . .”
“Then what?” Sharon asked suspiciously.
“Then nothing. Just enjoy it.” He downed half of his beer in a long smooth gulp and wiped his moustache with the side of his finger. “We could have a philosophic discussion about cabbages, kings and the meaning of the universe.”
“Philosophy always turns out to be a fancy word for something shorter.” Sharon twirled between the couch and the window, at the same time throwing out an arm to wave vaguely in the direction of the door leading to the bedroom. “Tonight I feel like being friendly.”
“So, what could be friendlier?”
“I mean friendly to everybody . . . people. I feel like being with people. How about going back into town and trying the Cat’s Whisker or the Marquis—someplace we can dance. It’s Sue’s sister’s birthday today. There’ll be a good crowd in the Marquis tonight. I told them we’d most likely show up.”
Dyer frowned at the bubbles streaming up through his beer. That crowd—the fun people—walking examples of what survived when minds became victims of infant mortality. He didn’t think he could stand that. The problem with women like Sharon who had been told that they looked like Venus was that they sometimes developed an addiction to pedestals. The picture of himself as an incidental accessory to satisfying Sharon’s need for public admiration caused his expression to darken.
“Philosophy’s out, so is tribal anthropology,” he said. “How about a compromise? I’ll take you out to dinner.”
Sharon pouted. “But I’m not in the mood for a quiet cozy evening for two,” she insisted. “I need some fun,” she said. “How about a compromise? I’ll take you out to the party.” As she spoke her voice rose and fell with an exaggerated slur, as if she were already delirious, but beneath it her tone was an ultimatum. If he didn’t agree to enjoying a lousy evening he’d end up having a lousy evening instead. Dammit! He wasn’t going along with it. The tightening of his mouth telegraphed his mood across the room.
“Uh, uh,” Sharon said. “I can feel black clouds looming somewhere around here.” Her gaiety evaporated while she waited a few seconds for a response. She sipped her drink and stared expectantly over her glass at Dyer’s sprawled and seemingly unhearing form. “Anyhow,” she went on, “let’s put it this way. I’m going. You can decide whatever you want.” No visible reaction. “Well, don’t just lie there swigging booze like Julius Caesar or somebody. Say something. Are you coming or not?”
“This organization does not negotiate to terrorist demands,” Dyer informed her, keeping his eyes fixed on the ceiling.
“What are you talking about? Who’s terrorizing anybody? I just said what I’m doing, that’s all.”
“Blackmail then,” Dyer told her with a sigh.
“I don’t understand,” she answered. Even as she said it, the insinuation that she was being slow on the uptake about something irked her further. She countered instinctively. “Well, if that means you’re opting out, that’s okay by me. Bill and Lee will be there for sure. They’re always good fun to have around.”
“Screw all of you! I’ve had it!” Before he realized what he was doing, Dyer jumped up off the couch and stormed through into the kitchen. He tore the top off another beer, refilled his glass, and swallowed enough to empty the can, which he hurled into the waste-disposal hatch. Implied blackmail, probably unwitting, was one thing; overt threats was another. Why did people who had to have everything spelled out in three-letter words infuriate him so much? The damn woman was about as perceptive as a stampeding rhino.
He took another long draught while he brought his feelings under control again. He didn’t give a damn about Bill and Lee, or anybody else for that matter, but the remark had been typically tactless and totally pointless; that was what had incensed him. This was the time to see the whole thing through once and for all, he decided. He composed himself, thought about how he was going to broach it, and tried to anticipate the probable reaction. Tears? He’d be flattering himself if he thought that. The yelling-and-screaming routine? Might cost a few bits of china but he could handle that okay. The icy walkout with head held high? Oh well, it wouldn’t be the first time.
The problem was solved for him by the words that blasted in suddenly from beyond the doorway. “I’m not as dumb as you seem to think I am. The real problem is you think you’re too goddam smart! You’ve had it? That’s okay by me too!” An instant later the slam of the outer door echoed through the apartment.
Dyer emerged from the kitchen, still drinking casually from his glass, and looked around him in surprise. Christ, was that all there was going to be to it? He felt mildly insulted. So, after all his thought and gentlemanly concern, he wasn’t worth even a few heartfelt insults and choice obscenities, eh? Shaking his head sadly at the fickleness of human nature, he moved over to the room’s wall panel, killed the incessant pounding rhythm that Sharon had selected and replaced it with the Brahms violin concerto. A sense of airy lightness gradually permeated his being. Humming softly to the music, he poured himself a large brandy, lit a cigar and strolled over by the window to watch the sun dissolving away into the Hudson.
An hour or more later, after he had keyed his orders for the weekend shopping into the viscreen touchboard and primed the apartment’s computer to handle his intended schedule, he called Laura. He didn’t really know why he was calling although he had thought of a number of excuses, managing to convince himself finally that he wanted somebody stimulating to talk to. Anyhow, it didn’t make any difference; her number returned a brief message advising that she would be out of town until Monday morning.
He rose early on Saturday and caught a cab into the city to spend the morning at the Lexington Uncomme College just north of Central Park, which he usually frequented once or twice a week. Uncomme—Unified Combat Method—was a technique that combined aspects of karate, the atemi waza branch of judo and a number of other martial arts including military unarmed combat into a fearsomely effective technique well suited to the Western physique and cultural conditioning. It had been developed by the armed forces of the U.S. and Western Europe toward the end of the previous century and had gone on to attract a large following of enthusiasts among the general public of all nations. Dyer had been introduced to Uncomme when he was in his late teens and studying psychology and neurosciences as an undergraduate student at the University of California. He had found it to be one of the few sporting activities that appealed to him, persevered at it, become quite proficient by rising over the years to the third master grade (ninth was the highest that had ever been awarded to anybody) and had kept in regular practice ever since.
After three strenuous hours and a hot shower, all of the week’s tensions had been flushed away down the drain along with the water and he went upstairs to the members’ bar to enjoy a couple of well-earned beers. There he met Chuck and Tom, two of the other regulars at the Lexington who were also rounding off a hard morning. Chuck’s wife was in Mexico, Tom was single, and neither of them had any particular plans for the rest of the day and so, a little over an hour later, the three of them found themselves eating a burger lunch while they debated what to do next.
Tom divided his life between working as a musician and an aeromechanic. He played moog and guitar in various clubs around the city, classical cello when he was in a different frame of mind, and modified production domestic aircars to racing specifications when he wanted to change from both. He ran the latter business in a workshop that he owned in Newark, he told them, but the premises were getting to be somewhat cramped for the amount of business that he was attracting. Apparently a firm in Queens was expanding and moving out to Connecticut, and the place that they were about to vacate sounded ideal. In fact Tom had been thinking about going over and taking a look at it later that day; how would Dyer and Chuck like to tag along? The vote was unanimous and that took care of the afternoon.
By early evening they were back on the Manhattan side of the river and heading for the bar that Chuck co-owned with a cousin, near Rockefeller Center. Chuck had spent a lot of his life as a mining engineer and had returned from Nepal only six months previously. He had taken the partnership in the bar to give himself a break for a year or two while he waited for chance, luck or inspiration to decide where he would go next. His pet thought at the moment was to apply to ISA for a post at one of the lunar extraction plants.
By midnight the place was filled to capacity, the small dance floor was overflowing and the three of them had been joined by a party of Chuck’s friends at a table in one of the quieter corners. Tom had latched onto a blonde who had appeared a couple of hours before with another girl, and was engaged in an earnest private conversation which showed every sign of having much to do with preparing the way for her eventual decline and fall. Chuck was supplying recipes for Indian curries to a man who managed a nearby restaurant while Dyer had gotten into a conversation with somebody called Pete, who turned out to be a communications officer from ISA. The subject of Dyer’s birthplace came up and very soon the conversation had turned to space matters.
“I just turned twenty when I went up for the first time,” Pete said in answer to one of Dyer’s questions. “Must have been almost exactly ten years ago. It was on the P2Q Project. Ever hear of that?”
“P2Q?” Dyer frowned at his drink while he swirled it back and forth in his glass. He’d heard something about that, he was sure. “Wasn’t it some kind of controversial research thing?” he said slowly. “Ah yes . . . wait a minute. Something to do with viruses, wasn’t it?” Pete nodded.
“The aim was to manufacture a virus strain that would attack cancer cells selectively. The problem was that it only had to come out a little bit wrong and you’d wind up with something really lethal. If it wasn’t selective enough for some reason and it got out . . .”
Pete shrugged and allowed Dyer to complete the rest for himself. He took a swallow of his drink and went on, “Anyhow there was a big fight about it that went on for years. What it boiled down to was that nobody could guarantee a failproof way of making sure it could never get out into the atmosphere with a lot of worst-case ‘what-if?’s . . . not one that would keep everybody happy anyway. So the whole thing was vetoed . . . until somebody had the bright idea of doing it away from Earth completely—right outside the atmosphere. So they shipped the scientists and all the equipment up to a purpose-built satellite and did it all there. That was what P2Q was. In fact the satellite is still there but it’s running different projects these days . . . I don’t know what they call it now. I think it’s just got some general name . . . Isolab or something like that.”
A tiny bomb exploded somewhere in the back of Dyer’s mind as he listened. There was something important in what Pete had just said . . . something that was shrieking to make itself heard through the pounding music coming from the dance floor and the hubbub of voices around the table. He tried, but his brain was too heavy with alcoholic glue to rise to the task of unscrambling the message. And then another party of Chuck’s friends descended upon the table and swept the thought all away.
Sunday was already into the afternoon when he eventually hauled himself out of bed and began thinking about doing something to rejoin the human race. After breakfast he went upstairs to the rooftop pool and garden, fell asleep in the sun and returned three hours later to find a message in his mail file from his neighbors Jack and Sheila inviting him to come over for dinner and make up a foursome for bridge.
It was getting onto midnight when he got back. As he showered and got ready for bed, his mind began turning once again to the things that would be awaiting him at CUNY the following morning. He fell asleep thinking about TITAN and FISE, about Chris’s remark that what they needed was a simulated world to try it all out on, and about the impossible complexity of the existing global system. If only there were some way of setting up a world that was more representative of the real thing than Hector’s, but without the horrendous complications of a whole planet . . . Something like an isolated subset of Earth itself that could be allowed to evolve without the risk of unforeseen developments interacting with the real system upon which Earth depended totally . . . A test-tube microworld . . .
The pieces fell together somewhere around four o’clock in the morning. He was suddenly wide awake with Pete’s words about P2Q ringing in his mind. “. . . what it boiled down to was that nobody could guarantee a failproof way of making sure it could never get out . . . until somebody had the bright idea of doing it away from Earth completely . . .”
The solution was so obvious!
He sat up, suddenly excited, cleared the last shreds of sleep from his head and went through it again slowly. He could see no hitches in it. He’d never get back to sleep now, he knew, so he got up, dressed, put on a pot of coffee and spent a restless hour pacing back and forth waiting for the sun to come up. He was in his office by seven o’clock. By nine he was calling Hoestler’s number every five minutes and cursing everything to do with yachts, most especially long yachting weekends.