The Sheep Look Up (10 page)

"Well, Carl's been to the wat several times and according to him-Oh, let's not argue!" Consulting her recipe. "Well, we have to wait ten minutes now, it says. Let's go into the living room and sit down…"

Her face clouded. "Know something, honey?"

"What?"

"I do wish I had one of those instant cookers. Microwave. Then it wouldn't matter when you came in, dinner could be ready in a moment"

The phone rang.

"Go sit down. I'll get it," she said. He grinned at her and obeyed.

But, even before he'd made himself comfortable, she was calling to him in a near-scream.

"Pete! Pete! Get your coat and boots!"

"What? What the hell for?"

"There's been an avalanche! It's buried all those new places the other side of town!"

NO BIGGER THAN A MAN'S HAND

…published today as a United Nations Special Report. The
alleged rise of intelligence in so-called backward countries is
ascribed by the scientists who conducted the three-year
investigation to improved diet and sanitation, while the as-yet
unconfirmed decline in advanced nations is attributed to
intensified pollution. Asked to comment on the report just prior to
leaving for Hollywood, where he is tonight slated to open his
annual retrospective, Prexy said, quote, Well, if they're so smart
why aren't they clever? End quote. At a press conference in
Tegucigalpa the disappearance of Leonard Ross, field agent for
Globe Relief, and Dr. Isaiah Williams, the British medico who's
also unaccounted for, was officially ascribed today to terrorism.

Troops are searching the area intensively, but so far have reported
no success. Following the shock resignation of the former
president of the "Save the Med" Fund, Dottore Giovanni
Crespinolo, the Italian government has flatly denied his charge
that the vast sums donated by corporations and individuals in
forty-eight countries in the hope of saving the doomed landlocked
sea have been embezzled. Reports from Rome, however
…

Never in his life had Philip Mason felt so miserable. He paced endlessly around the apartment, snapping at the children, telling Denise to leave him alone for God's sake, when all the time what he really wanted to say was that he loved them desperately and always would.

Yet the consequences of New Year's Eve…

When he felt depressed at the last place, things had been easier to bear: a house, much further from the city center-beyond the river-with its own garden. There he'd been able to hide away and be miserable by himself. But the river fires had been bad last year; more than once he'd been unable to get to work because the bridge was closed, and half the time smoke made it impossible to use the garden or even open the windows.

So they'd moved to this air-conditioned apartment block. Handier for the office. And, of course, for the hospital where Josie's squint was being treated and the short muscles in Harold's leg were being drawn out.

He couldn't explain! Dared not! And now couldn't get out of explaining, either!

But at least he had a few minutes to himself. The kids were asleep, having taken a long time to calm down following their disastrous encounter with Anton Chalmers: pushy, arrogant, greedy, bullying, bad-tempered-but, of course, absolutely healthy. "Survival of the fittest and all that shit"…to quote his insufferable father.

And Denise had gone to the Henlowes' apartment on the second floor. That was where you scored in this building. Everyone nowadays seemed to know a means of getting something from somebody. But it was best to stay out on the fringes. It was becoming as bad as what the history books recounted about Prohibition, what with the black gangs fighting on the streets over the right to distribute African khat, and the white gangs blowing up each other's homes for the right to trade in Mexican grass.

So she'd come back in half an hour, having socialized, and show what she'd got, and say, "Darling, don't worry, whatever's the matter it'll come right in the end, let's turn on and relax, hm?"

Dennie, I love you terribly, and if you're sweet and kind to me one more time tonight I shall scream.

Here was the phone. He dialed with shaking fingers, and shortly a woman replied. He said, "Dr. Clayford, please. It's urgent."

"Dr. Clayford will be in his office on Monday as usual," the woman replied.

"This is Philip Mason. Area manager of-"

"Oh, Mr. Mason!" Abruptly cordial. Clayford was one of the physicians Philip sent Angel City's clients to for examination prior to taking out a life policy; it behooved the doctor to be cooperative. "Just a second, I'll see if my husband's free."

"Thank you." Nervous, he fumbled out a cigarette. His smoking had nearly doubled since his trip to LA. He'd been trying to cut it down; instead, here he was getting through two packs a day.

"Yes?" A gruff voice. He started.

"Ah, doctor!" One didn't say "doc" to Clayford, let alone call him by his first name. He was an old-fashioned family GP, who at sixty still affected the dark suits and white shirts that had marked out sober young men with "a great future ahead of them" when he was in college.

Talking to him was a little like talking to a minister; one felt a sense of distance, an intangible barrier. But right now it had to be breached.

"Look, I need you advice, and-uh-help."

"Well?"

Philip swallowed hard. "It's like this. Just before Christmas I was called to LA, to the headquarters of my company, and because my wife doesn't like planes-you know, pollution-I drove, and broke the trip in Vegas. And there I-uh-well, I got involved with a girl. Absolutely without meaning to. Time and opportunity, you know!"

"So?"

"So…Well, I wasn't certain until days later, but now I don't think there's any doubt. She left me with-uh-gonorrhea."

Stained undershorts floating around him, like mocking bats.

"I see." Clayford not in the least sympathetic. "Well, you should go to the clinic on Market, then. I believe they're open Saturday mornings."

Philip had seen it, in a depressed and depressing area: ashamed of its function, persecuted by the righteous majority, always full of young people pretending rebellious defiance.

"But surely, doctor-"

"Mr. Mason, that's my professional advice, and there's an end of it."

"But my wife!"

"Have you had relations with her since this escapade of yours?"

"Well, on New Year's-" Philip began, head full of all the reasons: can't not, this is
the
day of the year, it's kind of symbolic and we've made a tradition of it since we first met…

"Then you'll have to take her with you," Clayford said, and didn't even add a good-night.

The bastard! The filthy stuck-up stiff-necked-!

Oh, what's the use?

He set down the phone, thinking of all the suggestions he'd had ready: a white lie, say about hepatitis which everyone knew to be endemic in California, anything that might require a short course of a suitable antibiotic…

My God! All I have is the second commonest infectious disease after measles! It says so in the papers all the time.

Distraction. Anything. Switch on the TV. Maybe the doctor at the clinic will be more helpful and I'll still be able to cover up. If I only had to confess about screwing Laura that'd be okay, Denise wouldn't leave me over that. But telling her she's been given the clap courtesy of a man-hungry stranger…!

Transistorized, the sound came on quicker than the picture, and his ears suddenly stung with the sense of what was being said. It was the late news summary. He felt as though the earth had opened and he was falling, miles deep.

"-still coming in about the extent of tonight's avalanche disaster at Towerhill."

The picture jelled. Police cars. Searchlights. Helicopters. Fire trucks. Ambulances. Bulldozers. Snow-plows.

"The Apennine Lodge, which stood right here, is totally buried," a voice said in doom-laden tones. A shapeless mass of snow with men digging. "Other nearby lodges and hotels were carried downhill, some for a quarter of a mile. Damage will certainly be in excess of fifteen million and may well run as high as fifty million dollars-"

"Phil, I'm back!" Denise called, having worked her way through the complex locks of the entrance door. "Say, I managed to score from Jed and Beryl, and-"

"There's been an avalanche at Towerhill!" he shouted.

"What?" She advanced into the living-room, a slim girl with delicate bones, a graceful walk, an auburn wig that exactly matched her former mop of curls and completely hid her ringworm scars. Sometimes Philip thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

"Oh, lord," she said thinly. On the screen, a body being lifted out of dirty snow. "That's where Bill and Tania are staying!" She sat down automatically on the arm of his chair. He clutched her fingers and spoke through terror, despair, nausea.

"They said fifteen million bucks' worth of damage, maybe fifty. And you know who carries their insurance? We do!"

She looked at him, shocked. "Phil, think of the damage when you get back to the office! You should call up, find out if Bill and Tania are okay, and Anton too. Right now you ought to be worrying about people, not money!"

"I am. You and me."

"Phil-"

"I haven't finished reinsuring that place. I had so much new business to cope with. And not one of my staff has made it through the winter without falling sick. I only had about half the risk reinsured."

Comprehension dawned, and a look of horror.

"I'm through," Philip said. "God, I wish I were dead."

"Globe Relief? Mr. Thorne, please," said the State Department expert in Central American affairs, and then: "Morning, Gerry-Dirk here. Say, how's your eye?…That's good…Me? I'm fine. Touch of mono is all. Well, why I'm calling up, I thought you'd like to be among the first to know they found your boy Ross. Washed up on a rock alongside that river that runs through San Pablo…No, no sign of the English doctor yet…Well, they say his head was battered in. It could have been on the rocks of the river, but they're doing an autopsy to confirm…Yes, with luck. Those stinking Tupas have had it all their own way for far too long. We finally have the excuse to hit back. I'll keep you posted."

The armed guards who patrolled the headquarters of Angel City Interstate Mutual over the dead ten-day period of the holiday were surprised to find one of the corporation's senior executives keeping them company. But not surprised that the man in question should be Dr. Thomas Grey. From him they were used to eccentricity.

"Crazy!" people said, and were happy to assume that because he was so devoted to his profession he had never even married he must necessarily be a crank.

In fact, that was extremely unfair to him. He was probably among the most rational men alive.

"To the editor of The Christian Science Monitor: Sir…"

His typing was, as always, impeccable, the envy of professional secretaries. He sat in the near-silence of the fourth floor, surrounded by the metal carcasses of computers.

"One is dismayed to find a journal with an international reputation echoing the cries of what I have no hesitation in calling scare-mongers-people who apparently would have us revert to the wild state without even the caveman's privilege of wearing furs."

He glanced around to confirm that no malfunction lamps were shining, and took the opportunity to scratch himself. He had a slight but nagging dermatitis due to washing-powder-Byrnes.

"Admittedly, we alter the order of things by the way we live. But the same can be said of any organism. How many of those who cry out for vast sums to be spent on preserving coral reefs from starfish realize that the reefs are themselves the result of a living species' impact on the ecology of the planet? Grass completely revolutionized the "balance of nature"; so did the evolution of trees. Every plant, every animal, every fish-one might safely say every humble micro-organism, too-has a discernible influence on the world."

A light winked at him. He broke off, went to change a spool of tape, returned to his chair. Having read once more through the editorial in the
Monitor
which had so offended him-it might, in his view, have been written by that bigot Austin Train himself-he sharpened the next barb of his reply.

"If the extremists had their way, we would sit and mope, resigned to having four out of five children die because the nuts and berries within walking distance had been frosted."

He was only passing time by writing this letter; he did not expect it to do any good. What he was chiefly here for was to add a few more tiny bricks to the monumental structure of a private undertaking he had been engaged on for years. Having begun as a hobby, it had developed into something approaching an obsession, and constituted the main reason why he was still working for Angel City. The company had a lot of spare computer capacity; right now, there was a nationwide glut of it. Accordingly no one objected when he made use of it on evenings and weekends. He had been well paid for most of his working life, and thanks to having simple tastes he was now rich. But hiring the computer capacity he currently needed would wipe out his fortune in a month.

Of course he scrupulously reimbursed the firm for the materials he used, the tape, the paper and the power.

His project stemmed from the fact that, being a very rational man indeed, he could become nearly as angry as a dedicated Trainite when the most spectacular fruit of some promising new human achievement turned out to be a disaster. Computers, he maintained, had made it possible for virtually every advance to be studied beforehand in enough model situations to allow of sober, constructive exploitation. Of course, renting them was expensive-but so was hiring lawyers to defend you if you were charged with infringing the Environment Acts: so was fighting an FDA ban; so was a suit from some injured nobody with a strong pressure-group at his back. And when you added money spent on vain attempts to shut the stable door by such organizations as Earth Community Chest, Globe Relief or the "Save the Med" Fund, the total cost became heartbreaking. What a waste!