Jem (14 page)

Godfrey Menninger sighed, looking in love and some awe at the oldest and most troublesome of his children. "You're worse than your mother ever was," he said ruefully. "Well, I hear what you say. The Poles owe us one. I'll see what I can do."

TechTowTwo sprawled over the bank of the Charles River, more than twice the cubage of all the old brick buildings put together. There were no classrooms in Technology Tower Two. There was no administration, either. It was all for research, from the computer storage in the subbasements to the solar-radiation experiments that decorated the roof with saucers and bow ties.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology had a long tradition of involvement with space exploration, going back even before there was any—or any that did not take place on a printed page. As early as the 1950s there had been a design class whose entire curriculum revolved around the creation of products for export to the inhabitants of the third planet of the star Arcturus. The fact that there was no known planet of Arcturus, let alone inhabitants of it, did not disturb either teacher or students. Techpersons were used to unhinging their imaginations on demand. In the Cambridge community that centered around MIT, Harvard, the Garden Street observatories, and all the wonderlands of Route 128 there had been designers of interstellar spacecraft before the first Sputnik went into orbit, anatomists of extraterrestrials when there was no proof of life anywhere off the surface of Earth, and specialists in interplanetary communications before anyone was on the other end of the line. Margie Menninger had taken six months of graduate studies there, dashing from Tech to Harvard. She had been careful to keep her contacts bright.

The woman Margie wanted to see was a former president of the MISFITS and thus would have been a power in the Tech world even if she had not also held the title of assistant dean of the college. She had arranged a breakfast meeting at Margie's request and had turned out five department heads on order.

The dean introduced them around the table and said, "Make it good now, Margie. Department heads aren't crazy about getting up so early in the morning."

Margie sampled her scrambled eggs. "For this kind of food, I don't blame them," she said, putting down her fork. "Let me get right to it. I have about ten minutes' worth of holos of the autochthons of Son of Kung, alias Klong. No sound. Just visible." She leaned back to the sideboard and snapped a switch, and the first of the holographic pictures condensed out of a pinkish glow. "You've probably seen most of this stuff anyway," she said. "That's a Krinpit. They are one of the three intelligent, or anyway possibly intelligent, races on Klong, and the only one of the lot that is urban. In a moment you'll see some of their buildings. They're open at the top. Evidently the Krinpit don't worry much about weather. Why they have buildings at all is anyone's guess, but they do. They would seem much the easiest of the three races to conduct trade with, but unfortunately the Peeps have a head start with them. No doubt we'll catch up."

The head of the design staff was a lean young black woman who had limited her breakfast to orange juice and black coffee and was already through with it. "Catch up at what, Captain Menninger?" she asked.

Margie took her measure and refused combat. "For openers, Dr. Ravenel, I'd like to see your people create some trade goods. For all three races. They're all going to be our customers one of these days."

The economist took his eyes off the holo of a Krinpit coracle to challenge Margie. " 'Customers' implies two-way trade. What do you think these, ah, Klongans are going to have to sell us that's worth the trouble of shipping it all those light-years?"

Margie grinned. "I thought you'd never ask." She pulled an attach
é
case off the floor and opened it on the table in front of her, pushing the plate of eggs out of the way. "So far," she said, "we don't exactly have any
manufactured
objects. But take a look at this." She passed around several ten-centimeter squares of a filmy, resilient substance. "That's the stuff the balloonists' hydrogen sacs are made out of. It's really pretty special stuff—I mean, it holds gaseous H
₂
with less than one percent leakage in a twenty-four-hour period. We could supply quite a lot of that if there was a specialty market for it."

"Don't you have to kill a balloonist to get it?"

"Good question." Margie nodded to the economist with a lying smile. "Actually, no. That is, there are other, nonsentient races with the same body structure, although this one is, I believe, from one of the sentients. How about a market? If I remember correctly, the Germans had to use the second stomach of the ox when they were building the
Hindenburg.
"

"I see," said the economist gravely. "All we need to do is contact a few Zeppelin manufacturers." There was a general titter.

"I'm sure," said Margie steadily, "that you will have some better idea than that. Oh, and I ought to mention one thing. I brought my checkbook. There's a National Science Foundation grant for research and development that's waiting for someone to apply for it." And for that gift too, I thank you, poppa, she thought.

The economist had not become the head of a major department of the faculty without learning when to retreat. "I didn't mean to brush you off, Captain Menninger. This is actually a pretty exciting challenge. What else have you got for us?"

"Well, we have a number of samples that haven't been studied very carefully. Frankly, they aren't really supposed to be here. Camp Detrick doesn't know they're gone yet."

The group stirred. The dean said quickly, "Margie, I think we all get the same picture when you mention Camp Detrick. Is there anything connected with biological warfare in this?"

"Certainly not! No, believe me, that doesn't come into it at all. I sometimes go out of channels, I admit, but what do you guess they'd do to me if I broke security on something like that?"

"Then why Camp Detrick?"

"Because these are alien organisms," Margie explained. "Except for the sample of balloonist tissue, you'll notice that every item I've got here is in a double-wrapped, heat-sealed container. The outside has been acid-washed and UV-sterilized. No, wait—" she added, grinning. Everybody at the table had begun looking at their fingertips, and there was a perceptible movement away from the samples of tissue on the table. "Those balloonist samples are okay. The rest, maybe not so okay. They've been pretty carefully gone over. There don't seem to be any pathogens or allergens. But naturally you'll want to use care in handling them."

"Thanks a lot, captain," said the designer stiffly. "How can you be so sure about the tissue?"

"I ate some three days ago," she said. She had their full attention now and swept on. "I should point out that the grant naturally includes whatever you need to insure safe handling. Now, this group contains plant samples. They're photosynthetic, and their principal response is in the infrared range. Interesting for you agronomists? Right. And these over here are supposed to be art objects. They come from the Krinpit, the ones that look like squashed cockroaches. The things are supposed to 'sing.' That is, if you're a Krinpit and you rub them on your shell, they make some interesting sounds. If you don't have a chitinous shell, you can use a credit card."

The woman from design picked up one of them gingerly, peering at it through the transparent plastic. "You said you wanted us to develop some kind of trading goods?"

"I sure do." The last thing Margie pulled out of her dispatch case was a red-covered mimeographed document. The words MOST SECRET were dazzle-printed on the jacket. "As you can see, this is classified, but that's just military hang-ups. It will be turned over to the UN in about ten days anyway, or most of it will. It's the most comprehensive report we've been able to prepare on the three principal races of Klong."

All six of the faculty members at the table reached for it at once, but the design woman was fastest. "Um," she said, flipping through it. "I've got a graduate student who would eat this up. Can I show it to him?"

"Better than that. Let's leave this copy and the samples with our friends, and let's you and I go talk to him."

Fifteen minutes later Margie had succeeded in getting rid of the department head, and she and a slim, excitable young man named Walter Pinson were head to head. "Think you can handle it?" asked Margie.

"Yes! I mean, well, it's a big job—"

Margie put her hand on his arm. "I'm sure you can. I'd really appreciate it if you'd tell me how you plan to go about it, though."

Pinson thought for a moment. "Well, the first thing is to figure out what their needs are," he offered.

"That's fascinating! It must be pretty difficult. I would hardly know where to start. Offhand, I'd say their biggest need, all of them, is just staying alive. As you'll see, everything on the planet spends a lot of its time trying to eat everything else, including the other intelligent races."

"Cannibalism?"

"Well, I don't think you can call it that. They're different species. And there are a lot of other species that are trying to eat the intelligent ones."

"Predators," said Pinson, nodding. "Well, there's a starting point right there. Let's see. For the predators like the balloonists, for instance, anything that would set them on fire would help protect the sentients. Of course," he added, frowning, "we'd have to make sure that these were used only to defend the sentients against lower forms of life."

"Of course!" said Margie, shocked. "We wouldn't want to give them weapons to start a war with!" She glanced at her watch. "I've got an idea, Walter. I didn't have much of a breakfast, and it's getting on toward lunch. Why don't you and I get something to eat? There's a place I used to know when I was a graduate student. In a pretty frowsty old motel, but the food was good—if you have the time, I mean?"

"Oh, I have the time," said Pinson, looking at her appreciatively.

"It's up past Harvard Square, but we ought to be able to get a cab. And please let me—I have an expense account, and it's all your tax money anyway." As they walked toward the elevator, a mob of undergraduates flocked toward a lecture hall. Looking toward them, Margie asked, "Do you by any chance know a student named Lloyd Wensley? I think he's a freshman."

"No, I don't think so. Friend of yours?"

"Not really—or anyway, not since he was a little kid. I used to know his family. Now, about these, ah, implements for self-protection—"

Several quite pleasant hours later, Margie got into a cab outside the old motel. If the food had not been really as good as she remembered it, the rooms still came up to standard. As they approached Harvard Square she had an impulse. "Go down Mass Ave," she ordered the driver. "I want to make a little detour." After a few blocks she directed him into a side street, and looked about.

She recognized the neighborhood. There was the supermarket. There was Giordan's Spa, and there, over the barbershop, only now it was over a hardware store, was the three-room corner apartment where she had lived with Lloyd and Lloyd Junior through the ten months that measured both her graduate year and her marriage. It was the closest Marge had ever come to motherhood, fill-in to a six-year-old for the real mother who had died when he was three. It was the closest she had ever come to wifehood, too, and closer than she would ever come again. Old Lloyd! Thirty years old when she was nineteen, and so fucking
courtly
in the Officers' Club that you'd never guess what he was like in bed. Not even if you'd tried him out a time or two, as Margie had been careful to do. Just looking up at the window of their bedroom made Marge's neck ache with the memory of being head-jammed into a corner of the bed, half choked with pillows, so Lloyd could pump himself dry as quickly as convenient. As often as convenient. When he thought convenient. You didn't ask a cuspidor for permission to spit in it, or a wife for sex. The cuspidor couldn't struggle, not if you had it jammed into position just right, and it wouldn't cry out. Neither would the wife, especially with the six-year-old stepson only marginally asleep just outside the door.

She ordered the driver on.

It would have been nice to see Lloyd Junior, all grown up.

But better not. Better the way it was. She hadn't seen either of the Lloyds since the annulment, and no use pressing your luck. It had been a pretty frightening, dehumanizing experience for a young girl; how lucky she was, thought Margie, that it hadn't scarred her forever!

When she got back to her hotel there was a taped message from her father: "To hear is to obey. Catch a news broadcast."

She turned on the bedside TV while she packed, hunting for an all-news station. She was rewarded with five minutes about the latest Boston political corruption scandals, and then an in-depth interview with the Red Sox's new designated hitter. But at last there was a recap of the top international story of the day.

"In a surprise move at the United Nations this morning, the top Polish delegate, Wladislas Prczensky, announced that his government has accepted the challenge presented by the Bengali resolution. The Food powers have agreed to send out an investigatory commission with broad powers to investigate the alleged cases of brutal treatment of native races on the planet whimsically called 'Klong' or 'Son of Kung.' There will be no representatives of major powers such as the United States or the Soviet Union on the commission, which will be made up of UN peacekeeping officers from Poland itself, Brazil, Canada, Argentina, and Bulgaria."

DANNY DALEHOUSE reached out to grab the theodolite as it tipped in the soft ground. Morrissey grinned and apologized. "Must've lost my balance."

"Or else you're stoned again," said Dalehouse. He was angry—not just at Morrissey. In the candor of his heart he knew that most of his anger was at the fact that Kappelyush-nikov was flying and he was not. "Anyway," he went on, "you've knocked this run in the head. Next time why don't you just go sleep it off?"

They had all been freaked out by the stuff the balloonists had sprayed on them, and from time to time, for days afterward, all of them had recurring phases of lust and euphoria. Not only were Morrissey's more intense, but Dalehouse was pretty sure the biochemist was still exposing himself. He had discovered that something in the semen or sperm of the male balloonists was highly hallucinogenic—better than that, was the long-sought-after true aphrodisiac fabled in song and story. It wasn't Morrissey's fault that his researches put him clear out of it from time to time. But he shouldn't have insisted on helping with the theodolite readings.