Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 (94 page)

He burst out laughing, that dabble of chocolate still right where it had been. "Ok, that's a picture. But it's a little…."

"Cheesy?"

She almost completely forgot about Kirsch. She almost could. After all, it hadn't come to anything and it wasn't going to. He was full of his usual hot air, one more pointless conspirator with grandiose plans. She'd seen enough of them in the last eighteen years. Nothing was going to happen.

And if it did, some part of her whispered, at least she would have had this first.

T
he Monday before Thanksgiving seemed an odd time for a sponsor's party, but it had been long enough since Jerry had attended one that he thought he was probably in no position to comment. That had been the year he'd been demobbed, and then he'd been in no shape to enjoy it — thirteen years ago, anyway, and a different sort of occasion altogether. He'd been trying to put his life back together, still limping on a mangled foot that refused to heal, and it had been one of the parties celebrating the foundation of the Oriental Institute. He'd been on the verge of being named a scholar there, had a teaching job and the promise of a place on Breastead's next big project, and he'd been determined to make it happen, no matter what he had to do to keep himself going. But the foot had festered again, and finally had to be amputated, and there had been no way he could take care of himself alone in Chicago. Gil and Alma had come for him, taken him home to Colorado Springs, and he thought he'd come to terms with everything he'd lost. But with Gil dead, there wasn't so much to hold him there, and his share of the money from the Great Passenger Derby had bought him a little breathing room. He could afford to take this job for Edward Hutcheson, even though it would just about pay his expenses if he was careful. He could afford to try to get himself back in the game.

And he knew as well as anyone what was needed, beyond the impeccable academic credentials. He needed the well-cut suit, the conservatively tailored formal wear and the patrician attitude that went with it, regardless of whether or not he'd been born to it. If he was going to convince them — any of them, the boards of the Oriental Institute or the Met or the MFA — to hire him, to sponsor any of his eventual projects, he was going to have to convince them he was worth the expenditure. And that meant parties like this.

He paid off the cab at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 55th Street, the hotel's doorman holding the cab door while he levered himself out, taking the time to be sure his footing was secure before he tried to move. He tipped the doorman, and made his way into the marble-walled lobby. He could hear the piano before he reached the short flight of stairs that led to the private ballroom, a lilting tune that managed to be stylish without being dangerous, and he handed his invitation to the attendant at the door.

"Of course, Dr. Ballard," the man said, contriving to imply that Jerry had been recognized without it; Jerry shed his topcoat without comment, and left it and his hat with the exceedingly decorative hatcheck girl.

The room was getting crowded already, and the music was hard pressed to compete with the buzz of conversation. He glanced once around the room, picking out people he knew and needed to see — Hutcheson from the Met; the evening's host, Jennings Pridmore, who'd been in his class at Harvard; half a dozen others he'd met since he'd come to New York. He nodded to Hutcheson, deep in conversation with an older man Jerry didn't know, and started toward the bar where Pridmore was holding court.

"Professor Ballard!"

Jerry turned, recognizing the voice: May Saltonstall, another passenger from the Derby. She was the sister of one of the Harvard team's pilots and the cousin of another; they'd made a damn good run at the prize, crashing on the next-to-last leg, and in spite of himself he felt himself relax a little. "Miss Saltonstall," he said, and took the hand she held out to him. She looked unexpectedly splendid in a daring bias-cut evening gown, peach satin a shade darker than her skin, diamond bracelets like manacles on each wrist. "May I offer my congratulations? I saw the announcement in the papers."

"Thank you."

She was engaged to one of her brother's Harvard classmates, Ralph Kittredge, who was something in oil: a good match by most standards, Jerry thought. "Is Mr. Kittredge here? I'd love to meet him."

"No, he's in Connecticut for the week," she answered. "Charlie brought me." She nodded toward a group of younger men clustered by one of the low tables. "But now he's talking football…."

She let her voice trail off, and Jerry picked up the hint she dangled. "Perhaps I could get you a drink?"

"That would be lovely." She set her hand on his elbow, and he walked her toward the bar. He brought them both Manhattan cocktails, and she took hers with a smile. "Cheers."

"Your health," Jerry answered, and they both drank.

"Professor!" Jennings Pridmore turned toward them, inviting them to join his little group by the bar. "And Miss Saltonstall. Is Ralph around?"

"He's in Connecticut for the week," May said again. "Charlie's here, but — I seem to have lost him."

"Too bad." Pridmore waved to one of the bartenders, who came across with a filled cocktail shaker. "Anyone?"

Jerry shook his head, as did May, but the rest of the group allowed him to top up their glasses.

"Eddie tells me you're making good progress on old man Rosenthal's collection," Pridmore said. "I heard there were a couple of nice pieces that might be up my alley."

"I'm getting there," Jerry said, cautiously. He glanced at Hutcheson, who gave the smallest of nods: the Met considered Pridmore a suitable buyer. "The best pieces are the ushabtis. Herr Rosenthal bought them as a set, and I think they genuinely are from the same tomb, even in the absence of confirming inscriptions. After that, there is a very nice faience necklace, lotus petals hanging from a strand of beads. It's been restrung, and there are replacement pieces that date from much later, but the original piece was probably Eighteenth Dynasty. Most of the rest is later, Ptolemaic or even Roman."

"Pity it's restored," Pridmore said.

"The restoration is probably Roman," Jerry said. "So there's some intrinsic interest."

Pridmore shrugged. "What sort of price do you think the museum will offer?"

I can't answer that
. Jerry swallowed the words, knowing he needed to stay on Pridmore's good side. "I haven't finished looking at everything," he said. "And then there's the question of whether some of the sets are worth more intact…." He shrugged in turn.

"Whatever you say, it'll be more than the old man paid," Pridmore said. "A very high class Jew, Rosenthal. He never missed a bargain."

"No, he certainly didn't this November," another man said. "Oh. I'm sorry, Jennings, I thought you said Roosevelt."

"Roosevelt, Rosenthal," Pridmore answered. "What's the difference?"

Most of the listeners laughed, and there was a note of bitterness that startled Jerry. "You can't think," he began, and Hutcheson stepped neatly on his good foot. Jerry swallowed the rest of his words, drowning them with another swallow of his drink. A dark man in an impeccably cut suit shook his head.

"You're smart to put your money in antiquities, Jennings. Come March, we won't have a President any more, and his thugs will be nationalizing the banks. You wait and see."

"And the worst elements in the country will be cheering him on. Thugs and hooligans who've never done a day's work in their lives —"

Jerry took a step back, unable to maintain his smile a moment longer. Nearly a quarter of the country was out of work, and that was able-bodied men who were begging for work. Literally begging, sometimes: he'd seen them on the streets in Denver and Chicago as he made his way east, men in clothes that had once been decent, holding up signs that said they would work for food. He'd lost his job the previous winter when Colorado Springs ran out of money to pay the teachers at the high school. He'd come out of it all right, thanks to the prize money from the race, but Mrs. Houlton was taking in boarders, and young Miss Elliott, who'd been the English teacher, was trying to scrape together a living mending clothes and doing alterations. Her fiancé had left to look for work, and hadn't been heard from since.

"Oh, come on, George," a fourth man said. Jerry remembered being introduced to him at another function — Peter Judge, his name was, and he was something at Teachers College. "I don't think times have ever been this hard, probably not since the Civil War. There are plenty of men who'd be willing to work if there were any jobs available, and we ought to be doing something for them."

"That's not the government's business," the dark man said. "There are plenty of private charities for that."

"They can't keep up," Judge said. "And, frankly, the people who usually give aren't doing as well as they used to, either."

"And that's between them and their conscience," the dark man said. "It's no sin to take care of your own."

May tucked her hand into his elbow again, and Jerry turned his head to see her rather desperate smile. "Did you have a chance to listen to the game, Professor? Charlie said it was a disaster."

"I heard," Jerry said, grimly. Harvard had lost to Yale 19−0.

"The weather was against us," Hutcheson said. "Our boys are never any good in mud."

"Back in my day, a little rain didn't stop us." That was a silver-haired man, shaking his head. "Of course, we had problems when the sun shone."

Jerry laughed with the others, grateful for the change of subject.

The dark haired man grinned, too. "And there's a good example of how we ought to be handling things, Judge. The Boosters' Fund took up a collection for the unemployed, and raised a nice sum for them, too."

Jerry straightened, unable to stop himself. "Yes, I heard about that. They raised $2300 — from a crowd of fifty thousand. That's not quite a nickel a man."

A nickel would buy a cup of coffee anywhere in the city. There was a little silence, and then Hutcheson forced a smile. "Well, maybe us alums are hurting, too. But I imagine the weather made a difference."

There was a murmur of agreement, three or four men scrambling for new topics of conversation, and Hutcheson stepped closer, edging him out of the group.

"For God's sake, Ballard."

"Sorry," Jerry said, without sincerity. "It was in all the papers."

May's hand tightened on his arm. "Actually, Professor, if I could borrow you for a moment, there's someone who you ought to meet."

"Oh?" Jerry let himself be drawn away, conscious of Hutcheson's relief.

"Well, he definitely wants to meet you," she said. "Though whether I'm doing you a favor — you've heard of Professor Tesla, I assume?"

"The inventor?"

"Yes." May looked faintly embarrassed. "He talked to Charlie about it first, and when Charlie mentioned you were in the city — well, that a member of the Gilchrist team was here — he asked us to introduce him. He's a dear old man, but —"

"He wants to sell us something," Jerry said.

May nodded. "Charlie's interested, but — it's not really anything he can use, and Father is insisting that he settle down and make something of the business, or else come back to work for Father." She made a little moue, self-mocking and at the same time faintly ashamed. "The Depression is getting to everyone."

"Times are hard," Jerry said. He followed her across the ballroom, her back bared by the plunging drape of her gown. And if she could afford dresses like that, she was hardly hurting for money, not like the people he knew back in Colorado — not like he himself was, counting every dollar and eating at least two meals a day at the Horn and Hardart or the cheap diner two blocks from the Met. And he knew all too well how lucky he was.

He glanced over his shoulder, seeing Hutcheson still deep in conversation with Pridmore and his friends. He'd expected better of them, somehow — it seemed as though they'd been better, when they were all undergraduates together. Maybe it was the war, maybe it was the depression on top of the boom times, slamming down like a hangover, but he was sure they'd been better then.

A gaunt old man was folded into an armchair on the other side of the room, as far from the piano as he could get. He seemed to be holding court, surrounded by a group of men and women of varying ages, but as soon as he saw May, he levered himself to his feet.

"My dear Miss Saltonstall. How lovely to see you." He bent over her hand, an old-fashioned, courtly gesture, and beckoned to one of the younger men who was hovering beside his chair. "Paul, would you be so good as to fetch me another whiskey? And another Manhattan cocktail for Miss Saltonstall and her friend."

"Professor Tesla, I'd like to introduce Professor Ballard," May said. "Professor Ballard was the passenger for the Gilchrist Aviation team last year. Professor Ballard, this is Professor Tesla."

"Who needs no introduction," Jerry said, politely. Tesla did not offer his hand, but no one seemed to find it strange.

"Professor of — physics? Engineering?" Tesla tilted his head to one side like a bird.

"Classics, actually." Jerry wondered if that was disappointment he saw in the older man's eyes.

"Then — if you don't mind my asking — how did you end up working for Gilchrist? That was a brilliant victory, by the way."

"Thank you," Jerry said. "It was all Alma's, Mrs. Segura's doing. She's a very canny pilot."

"Indeed," Tesla said. The young man reappeared with the drinks, and Tesla took his with a smile. Jerry accepted his as well, and took a cautious sip. "As it happens, Professor Ballard, I'm looking for people who might be interested in developing a patent of mine, for an aircraft with variable wings that can take off and land in extremely restricted spaces. I had a laboratory in Colorado Springs some years ago, and it occurred to me that Gilchrist might find such a craft extremely useful."

"I expect they might," Jerry answered. "I'm sure Mrs. Segura would be interested in corresponding with you about it."

"I'd be delighted to discuss it," Tesla said. He reached into the breast pocket of his coat, and produced a card. "If I could trouble you to make the introduction…."