The Weathermakers (1967) (16 page)

“Ted’s place is down there,” she said, pointing.

“You actually work in here?”

“I don’t . . . I’m still in computing, where all we have to contend with is the hum of the machines and refugees from the annex who come over to see what real air conditioning feels like.”

“This is terrible!”

We reached the end of the corridor and stepped into a corner room made up of two partitions and two of the walls of the annex building itself. Ted wasn’t there, but you could see his stamp: drawing table piled high with charts, viewscreen map on the farther wall, cluttered desk, and the inevitable row of coffeepots.

“Welcome to Shangri-la!”

We turned and saw Ted hurrying down the corridor toward us. He was carrying a portable TV set.

“Come on, pull up a chair,” he said, brushing past us to put the TV on his desk. “Glad you came, Jerry.”

“I can see that you’ve been living in the lap of luxury since you left Aeolus,” I said, going to one of the chairs. Barney sat next to me. “Tuli calls this area Shangri-la.”

“Rossman could have found you better quarters,” I said. Ted shrugged. “It’s a dump all right. Part of the price we had to pay. I came to him, remember, he didn’t come to me.”

“I know.”

“In a way, this lousy environment helps,” he said cheerfully. “Everybody’s got that basic-training spirit—you know, ‘we’re all in this together and we’ve got to help each other if we want to survive.’ So the work gets done.”

“That’s the important thing,” Barney said.

“Speaking of Rossman,” Ted went on, “he’s going to be on TV in a minute. Special show out of Washington. About the drought.”

He flicked the TV set on. After four or five commercials, the show started. Dr. Rossman was flanked by the President’s Science Adviser, Dr. Jerrold Weis, and by the Director of the Environmental Science Services Administration, a retired admiral named Correlli.

Tuli drifted into the office as the commentator was making introductory remarks. He nodded a grave hello to me and went behind the desk to stand beside Ted.

Dr. Weis made some general remarks about bringing together the scientific capabilities of the nation, and Admiral

Correlli spoke briefly about how wonderful ESSA was. Then came Dr. Rossman’s turn. The camera closed in on his long, somber face as he began talking about the conditions that had caused the drought. He spoke slowly, carefully, the way a man does when he’s not sure he’s being understood. Gradually I began to realize that he was telling the same story—using the same words, almost—that Ted did that night so many weeks earlier when he first explained the drought problem to us.

The TV camera cut to a map. It was one of those that Ted had shown at the July Fourth conference.

“That’s your work!” I blurted.

Ted smiled grimly. “Just the first slide . . . there’s more.”

Rossman kept talking and showing Ted’s slides. I watched the drought condition change just as Ted said it would: the high-pressure cell moved off beyond the coast and the rain-giving southerly airflows came up over the eastern seaboard again. The TV screen showed films of planes flying seeding missions, and nuclear submarines being checked by engineers wearing protective antiradiation suits.

“They look like men from Mars,” the TV commentator said, with a measured amount of awe in his voice.

“Yes, they do,” Dr. Rossman answered.

The camera cut back to the four men in the studio.

“Well, the rainfall we’ve been getting certainly is concrete evidence that your work is a success,” the commentator said heartily.

“Thank you,” Dr. Rossman allowed himself a modest smile. “I think we’ve shown that weather modification can be employed to help ease critical weather problems . . . if the work is done under careful control, with all the proper safeguards.”

I glanced at Ted. He was struggling to stay calm. He had taken a pencil in one big hand and was flexing it between his fingers.

“So it’s now safe to say that the drought is a thing of the past,” the commentator chirped.

Rossman nodded. “My group’s two-month forecast indicates that precipitation levels should be slightly above normal for the entire area east of the Appalachians. Of course, my forecasts aren’t foolproof, but they’re good evidence that we’re on the way out of the drought.”

“His
forecasts,” Barney whispered.

“And now,” the commentator said, “I believe that Dr. Weis has an announcement to make.”

The camera switched to the President’s Science Adviser. He had a pleasant, squarish face, so creased and tanned that he looked more like a cowboy than a physicist.

“As a result of Dr. Rossman’s pioneering work on weather modification, exemplified by his alleviation of the serious drought that had affected the northeast sector of the nation, I have recommended to the President that he be considered for the National Medal of Science.”

Snap!
Ted broke the pencil.

“As you know, the National Medal of Science is awarded each year to . . .”

Ted flicked the set off savagely.

“The National Medal,” Barney said, shocked. “It’s not fair. He doesn’t deserve it.”

“I suspect,” Tuli said, “that Dr. Rossman is just as surprised about the award as we are.”

“He can’t accept it,” I said. “The whole story will come out into the open.”

Ted looked at the shattered pieces of the pencil in his hand, and dropped them into his wastebasket. “The story won’t circulate very far. What’d you say if Albert Einstein’s housekeeper popped up and claimed she figured out the laws of relativity and her boss took the credit?”

“That’s not the same thing at all . . .”

“Is for now, friend. Important thing is that the drought’s broken, and weather mods are respectable now. That’s a big jump in the right direction. Rossman knows the score, and so does the Chief, and your Congressman friend. Okay, Rossman gets the credit for this one. In public. We’ve got the talent.”

I shook my head. “There’s a fifty-thousand-dollar prize attached to that award, isn’t there?”

“Peanuts,” Ted snapped. “Money follows talent, pal. I’m young and willing to work. Which reminds me, I need you here. How about becoming a public servant?”

F
OR
an instant, I couldn’t believe I had heard Ted correctly. “What did you say?”

“I want you to work here. We need you.”

“You must be joking . . .”

“No joke. Look around this dump.” His arms swept around in an all-inclusive gesture. “Think Rossman
likes
having us here? Think he’s going to feel comfy with that National Science Medal around his neck as long as we’re here to stare him down? There’s going to be trouble around here sooner or later, and I need all the friends I’ve got.”

“What makes you think I’m friendly?” I heard myself ask.

Ted sat up sharply. “You’re not still sore about me leaving Aeolus? Only thing I could do, Jerry. You know that.”

“And now you want me to walk out on Aeolus too.”

He made a helpless shrug. “We’re getting buried in paperwork, Rossman’s piling it higher every day. Trying to drown us in red tape. We go too fast for him; he was scared to death about the drought mods, now he’s worried about what we’ll spring on him next. So he’s trying to slow us down with paperwork. You can help us get out from under . . .”

I couldn’t sit still any more. Getting up from my chair, I glanced at Barney. She was watching me, but I couldn’t tell from her expression what she wanted me to do.

“Ted, if you had been with Santa Anna’s army at the Alamo, you’d have had the nerve to ask Davy Crockett to change sides!”

“What sides? We all want the same thing . . . weather control. I need your help.”

“Then you can
buy
my help. From Aeolus Research Laboratory!”

He blinked. “Now wait a minute . . .”

“No, you wait,” I said, standing in front of his desk. “There are eighty people at Aeolus who earn their living from the contracts the Laboratory gets. You walked out and took with you the best chances we had of getting really big contracts for weather-modification work. Okay. But those eighty people can still do good work. They can help you with paperwork, with computations, with long-range forecasts, and lots of other things. They can give you far more help than I can alone, no matter which roof I sit under. And if you think I’m going to walk out on them the way you did, just because you want another paper-shuffler to talk to, then think again! You know a lot more about the weather than you do about people.”

Ted leaned back in his chair, frowning silently. Then a grin spread over his rugged face. “You can be a real ball of fire when you want to be, Jerry. What’s more, you’re right . . . Aeolus can help us out. Help us a lot, come to think of it.”

I almost fell over. Barney looked at me as if to say,
Good going.

Tuli said, “But how can you get Dr. Rossman to agree to spending the money for hiring Aeolus to help us?”

“I think,” Ted answered, “that with that nice, shiny National Medal in his pocket, he sort of owes us a favor. I’ll talk to him about it as soon as he gets back from Washington.” Turning back to me, he asked, “You’re not too sore to work with us if we sign a contract for Aeolus and pay you, are you?”

“I’m not interested in the doggone money, Ted, you know that. I just won’t run out on the people at Aeolus.”

“Okay, simmer down. You made your point, and it’s a good one. Should’ve thought of it myself.”

“Then we’ll all be working together again.” Barney looked pleased about it.

Ted stuck his hand out across the desk. “Welcome back to the team, buddy.”

I reached out and shook hands with him, but for the first time since I had met Ted, I wasn’t really happy about working with him.

Meteorologists dubbed the hurricane Lydia, since it was the twelfth tropical storm or hurricane to threaten populated areas. She traveled westward from her mid-ocean spawning place, following the trade winds toward the West Indies. Then, after three days, she turned suddenly and aimed toward the Florida coast. Disaster warnings flashed along the peninsula. Lydia’s central wind speed was almost a hundred knots, her rains devastating. Across the Bahamas she struck, flattening palms, smashing seawalls with titanic waves, piling boats and piers alike against the rocks, blowing off roofs, snapping power lines, flooding roads and homes and towns, destroying, terrorizing, killing. When the island skies cleared again, dazed and weary men surveyed the field of a battle they had lost. Thousands were homeless. Towns were without electricity or drinking water. The survivors were battered, hungry, injured. Planes brought in medical supplies and food while Lydia gathered strength, poised just off the Florida coast near Miami.

The day following my visit to Ted’s new quarters at Climatology, Barney called me at Aeolus and invited herself to lunch. We met at one of the Back Bay towers’ rooftop restaurants.

It was a warm, sunny day—unusually nice for the beginning of November. From our table by the window we could see the distant hills that marked the location of the Climatology building. Barney sat next to the window, her yellow hair catching the sunlight and framed by the clear, deep blue of the sky.

“Ted talked with Dr. Rossman first thing this morning,” she said after we ordered the meal. “You should be getting a contract for Aeolus to help us with the long-range forecasts and some of the administrative chores.”

I nodded.

“You really startled Ted yesterday,” she went on, “when you told him off. He never expected you to shout him down.”

“I wasn’t telling anybody off. It just made me sore to think that he’d expect me to jump from Aeolus the way he did. He asked me to turn my back on the people I’m responsible for . . . just as if he were asking you to pass the salt”

Barney inadvertently started to reach for the saltshaker, then caught herself. We both laughed.

“Sec, he’s got us both trained,” I said.

“He needs us, Jerry’,” she said, her smile dimming. Earnestly, she added, “Don’t be angry with him. Please, Jerry, no matter how hard it is, please don’t be angry with him. Try to remember that he needs every friend he has.”

“Then why does he trample on people?”

She shook her head. “It’s the way he is. We’ll have to accept him that way. He won’t change.”

I knew she was right about Ted. And I knew I could never argue with her, whether she was right or wrong. “Okay, we’ll accept him the way he is. But we don’t have to like it. He’s a fanatic, and fanatics can be dangerous.”

“Yes, I know,” she agreed. “But they’re just as dangerous to themselves as to anyone else.”

Miami took the brunt of the hurricane. The plush Miami Beach hotels were dark and empty as the invading seas and wind tore through them, smashing windows and flooding ground floors with a massive storm tide. Luxury automobiles were swept by the surging waves completely off the island, most of them to disappear forever into the sea. The city of Miami was devastated, its waterfront wrecked, its civil defense shelters jammed with fleeing thousands. Planes were ripped from their moorings at airfields and lofted wildly, to crash and pinwheel against the drenched ground. People huddled for hours in homes and buildings, without radio reception, without phones, with nothing to listen to but their own frightened voices and the howling fury outside that was breaking windows, toppling poles, tearing down signs, and seemingly trying to erase mankind from the landscape. Finally, Lydia turned up the peninsula, spreading death and havoc wherever she touched.