Sidney's Comet (4 page)

“We’re reviewing military dossier files now,” Munoz said, “searching for the best man to head up the mission.” Munoz felt a numbness in his brain, heard echoing, far-off voices.
“Forget the dossier files”
a voice said.
“Choose Sidney Malloy. He’s the only one. . . . ”
Munoz shook his head, tapped at the rear of his skull above his implanted mento transceiver.
Dammit,
he thought.
It’s acting up again.

When Munoz’s head cleared, he heard Hudson speaking: “Kinshoto’s atmosphere is nearly seventy thousand kilometer’s deep and supports no known life forms. If we can lock onto the comet with fire probes and guide it through that nitrogenous region, it may burn up.”

“That planet is BI-I-IG!” Munoz said.

“What’s the likelihood of this comet hitting Earth?” Bu-Med’s Minister McConnel asked.

General Munoz reviewed the speaker’s thoughts, noted something new. An escape plan . . . bribe money paid to a shuttle commander . . . intended refuge on one of the orbiting solar power stations.
How did he find out?
Munoz wondered.

Hudson, responding to McConnel, said: “Ninety-eight point nine-one percentile. We’ve been monitoring it from deep space tracking stations. It’s coming back along the identical course of our garbage . . . and burial . . . shots. We’ve since corrected the error, of course.”

“Wonderful,” President Ogg said, his voice dripping sarcasm. Mumbling something about bodies coming back, he spun his chair again and watched a distant transport shuttle land at Robespierre Magne-Launch Base. “How much time do we have?” he asked.

“Fourteen days,” Hudson said, trying not to betray uncertainty in his tone.

As the ministers left the oval office single file, President Ogg singled out Hudson: “Dr. Hudson, I would have a word with you in private.”

Surprised, Hudson turned back and resumed his seat. “What is it, Mr. President?” he asked, timidly.

Ogg scanned the papers which had fallen to the floor, leaned down and retrieved a long, narrow piece of electronic billing paper. Looking at Hudson, he said stiffly, “This is the monthly microwave radio call log for the therapy orbiter of Saint Elba.”

Hudson gulped.

“It states that you called my sister six times this month, all on scramble code.” Ogg glared ferociously. “What did you discuss with her?”

“N-nothing important, Mr. President.”

“Then why was it necessary to use a scramble code?”

“P-personal matters, sir.”

“Personal matters?” Ogg sat back, a sneer on his face. “How can you have personal matters with someone tens of thousands of kilometers away?”

“L-look, Mr. President. I know you don’t like me. That’s why you made Nancy mayor of Saint Elba three months ago . . . to get her away from me.” Hudson read Ogg’s thoughts to confirm this statement.

A faint smile touched the edges of Ogg’s mouth.

“I love her, Mr. President. And . . . she loves me!” Hudson took a deep breath. He stared at the broken lamp on the floor.

“Love? You’re right about one thing, Hudson. I
don’t
like you. You’re a weak, sniveling—”

“I’m not good enough for your sister, right, Mr. President?” Hudson said, feeling his face flush hot with anger. He adjusted his glasses, focused upon the massive black man seated on the other side of the desk.

“That’s exactly right, Hudson. If not for Munoz’s influence, you’d still be a lab technician.” Hudson had read this thought previously and was not surprised to hear it spoken.

I’ll ruin you,
Hudson thought.
I’m going to show General Munoz an invention this afternoon that will knock you out of the oval office!
“I do have certain . . . talents, shall we say?” Hudson said, beginning to taste the pleasure of prospective revenge.

Noticing a twinkle in Hudson’s eyes, Ogg was thrown off balance momentarily. Ogg fumbled with the call log sheet, glanced down at it and said, “I notice you called her almost daily in the early part of the month . . . but in the past week and a half there have been no calls. Why is that?”

“A minor disagreement, Mr. President.”

“Over what?”

Hudson felt the advantage swinging to Ogg again. “She wants me to s-stand up to you, sir.”

Ogg laughed cruelty. “And tell me what you think of me, eh, Hudson? You don’t have the guts!”

“M-maybe I do, sir.”

“Eh? What’s that?”

“May I speak candidly, sir?”

“Yes.” Ogg set the call sheet down, clasped his hands on the desktop and glared ferociously at Hudson.

“YOU’RE A BIGOT, MR. PRESIDENT!” Hudson said, blurting it out. Hudson’s eyeglasses slipped to the end of his nose. He pushed them back.

“A bigot!” Ogg rose out of his chair, hulked forward over the desk. “A bigot, you say?”

“That’s the real reason you don’t want me to be permies with Nancy, isn’t it? I’M WHITE AND SHE’S BLACK!” Hudson felt relief at getting the long-suppressed statement out, but was fearful of the consequences.

“Look at my council of ministers, Hudson! An American Indian, an oriental, six whites, a Mexican, a black. Does that sound like the council of a bigot?”

“You didn’t select them, sir. They were chosen by council votes when vacancies arose.”

“I could have vetoed any one of them, including you.” Ogg sat back down, glared at a wall.

“True enough, Mr. President. But even so, this represents your public self. I’m speaking of your real self.”

A shocked President Ogg felt Hudson’s words slash into an area of consciousness he had not considered.
Can this be so?
Ogg thought. His gaze snapped toward Hudson as he asked, “Who put those words into your mouth?”

“They are my own, sir. I have discussed the matter with Nancy, but the words are my own.”

“She agrees?”

“I believe she does.”

“You surprise me, Hudson.” Ogg lit a tintette nervously, blew a wisp of lavender smoke across the desktop.

Hudson saw near admiration in the President’s dark brown eyes, that and confusion. Deciding not to press his advantage, Hudson said, “I have to call Nancy right away, sir. An official call.”

“Concerning what?”

“Saint Elba is on the route of the comet intercept crew. It is the first recharging station . . . and the place where the two mass drivers will be constructed.”

“Mass drivers?” Ogg tapped his tintette on an ashtray.

“Remember we discussed that during the meeting, sir? They will connect fire probes to the comet’s nucleus, and guide it. . . . ”

“Yes, of course. Do what you must, Hudson. Do what you must.”

Hudson rose. “Unless you have something further, sir, I should leave now.”

Ogg nodded, stared at his tintette despondently.
I should control everything,
he thought.
I AM PRESIDENT! But even the tiniest matters elude me
. . . .
My own sister opposes me?

As Hudson left the oval office, he realized he had seen a heretofore unexposed side of the President . . . unrevealed even to one able to read the thoughts of others. Maybe Ogg was not so bad after all. Still, forces had already been set in motion, and within days Hudson was confident that a new government would take power.

Mayor Nancy Ogg held a red towel in one hand as she turned sideways to admire herself in a poolside mirror. Her skin was sleek, wet and light brown, the swimsuited figure trim arid regal. Three red clasps secured the wet, black hair in a Mohanna Dancer’s tail. A triangular Bu-Med crest graced the waist of her suit, and superimposed over that was the tiny silver cross denoting her mayoral rank.

In an adjoining area of her suite on the L
₁
therapy orbiter of Saint Elba, the pool constituted a private place for her, and was, as she often liked to mention sarcastically, “one of the perks of power.” Overhead, a reflected midday sun flooded the room with light, and as she looked up she saw one edge of the orbiter’s night shield.

Five more hours,
she thought dejectedly,
and that shield will block the sun again, My Rosenbloom, but I hate this place!

She dropped the towel and stepped quickly onto the diving board. Springing twice at the tip of the board, she leaped into the air, bent gracefully and touched her toes before cutting neatly through the water. The pool was pleasantly warm.

When Mayor Nancy Ogg came to the surface, Security Sergeant Rountree stood at the pool edge, looking down at her. Trim, tall and muscular, he cut a dashing figure in his gleaming black and gold Security Brigade uniform. She was attracted to him, but had done nothing to fulfill her desires. A person of her status could not mingle with inferiors. A telephone cord at Rountree’s side had a cordless tele-cube which danced in the air above the phone cradle.

“Telephone call, Honorable Mayor,” the sergeant said, delivering the crisp rotating wrist salute of the Brigade.

“I am not to be disturbed in here!” Mayor Nancy Ogg snapped, treading water at the center of the pool. Her eyes stung, and she blinked, thinking,
Too much chlorine in the pool again
—
Doesn’t anyone ever listen to me?

“But it’s a radio call . . . by microwave from Earth.”

The Mayor scowled, then muttered something and swam smoothly to where the sergeant stood. As she grasped the plasticized pool edge, the tele-cube dropped to meet her, hovering in midair before her mouth.

“This is Mayor Nancy Ogg.”

“Nancy?” Hudson’s voice crackled over the distance and immediately there came a scramble-code beep.

She motioned the sergeant away. Her eyes followed Rountree’s buttocks, then moved up his muscular back to the broad shoulders and wide neck.

Rountree flicked a glance at her as he pushed through a double exit door. She saw him smile.

“Yes, darling,” Mayor Nancy Ogg said to Hudson.

“I’ve just come from a meeting with the President,” Hudson said, breathlessly. He sat on the edge of his desk, spoke into an intercom.

“And how is my dear brother?”

“He is well.”

“Do you love me, Richard sweets?”

“You know I do.”

Mayor Nancy Ogg detected irritation in the tone, then asked: “And that is why you called? To tell me you love me?”

Hudson scowled. “No, There are problems here on Earth.”

“You haven’t called me for almost two weeks. Why not?”

“I’ve been busy, Nancy. You know of the comet?”

“Rumors,” she said, kicking the water playfully. “Tell me you love me.”

“Nancy, I don’t have—”

“Say it.”

The line beeped.

“All right. I love you. Now will you listen to me?” In his New City office, he could hear water splashing at Nancy’s end and realized she was in her pool. Hudson shook his head slowly in exasperation while staring out the window at an autocopter as it landed in a cloud of dust on a nearby rooftop. Sunlight flashed off the windows of the autocopter.

Mayor Nancy Ogg swam on her back to the center of the pool. The tele-cube followed her, remaining in midair several centimeters above her mouth. “I’m listening,” she said.

“The comet is not a rumor, Nancy.”

“Oh come now, Dick. Our therapy cells are overflowing with doomies. But you’re not going to tell me that—”

“I don’t have time to explain, but the danger is very real.”

Mayor Nancy Ogg swam to the opposite side of the pool. The tele-cube followed her, and she spoke as she climbed out of the water. “Can it be stopped?’

“Saint Elba is the closest orbiter to the flightpath of a ship we’re sending . . . and you have the manufacturing facility we need . . .”

“I get the feeling I’m not going to like what you have to say next,” she said, throwing a towel over her shoulders.

“Pay close attention to this. You must construct two E-Cell powered mass drivers, type J-sixteen with twin R-eleven fire probes on each. Scale everything up twenty-eight times.”

“Twenty-eight times? Are you kidding?”

“Our calculations show it will scale up with no problem.”

“No problem? We’ll have to hand-make a lot of this, with no molds, no standard parts that big. That will take time!”

“Put everyone to work on it. This is a Priority One.”

“We don’t have an assembly area that large.”

Hudson hesitated as he heard a scramble code beep, said, “Knock out the partition walls in Hub Sections A and B.”

“But we have work in progress in those areas, government contracts to fill . . . deadlines to meet.”

“Stop everything else, and I do mean EVERYTHING. Move it all out. Catapult it. Whatever, but get it to hell out of there.”

Mayor Nancy Ogg dried her legs angrily with the towel, said, “And even if we get the damned things built, how are we going to get them out? The space doors are too small! I know, I know . . . put a crew to work on that too—”

“Finish the mass-drivers by Friday of next week. At noon.”

“A week from tomorrow? All I can say is we’ll try—”

“Not good enough. No excuses on this one, Nancy.”

“I’m an administrator, not a technician!”

“Delegate it!”

“Will that be all, Dr. Hudson?” she asked, coolly.

“Nancy, please believe me when I say that I WILL get you off that orbiter.”
I can’t tell her how we’re going to beat her brother in Tuesday’s election,
he thought.
The ties of blood
. . . .

“Why did my brother have to send me here?” she wailed. “I’ve been on this Godforsaken orbiter for three months!”

“Be patient. We can’t let personal problems interfere with a world crisis.”

“Such a convenient excuse. If not for that one, you’d have another.”

“One more thing, Nancy.”

“Personal or official? I’m ready to hang up on you!”

“Official. Have a charging bay available for the ship when it gets there. Use Number One Argonium Gas. Check the charger now for malfunctions. There won’t be time for that later. . . . ”

Hudson heard a click.

“Nancy?” he said. “Are you there?”

The line beeped, went dead.

* * *

At a study carrel in the Pleasant Reef Library, a youngsayerman read the first question of his homework assignment:

1. State two reasons why Uncle Rosy led the AmFed people to believe he had died and then went secretly to the Black Box of Democracy.