The Judas Rose (48 page)

“Well, Senator, how do you feel about the President's position on this bill?”

“Brodo, do you have any idea how degrading it is for our colonies to have to apply every goddam year for exemption from that stupid one percent levy?”

“No, Senator, I can't say that—”

“And do you know that not
one
of those requests has ever been turned down? Do you know how long it's been since any taxes were actually
paid
by a colonial government? Would you believe
sixty-three
years? And do you—”

“Wait a minute, Senator! Are you telling our viewers that the Soviet Union allows—”

“Oh, the Soviet Union! What the hell does that have to do with this? I don't
pretend
to know what the tax arrangements are for the Soviet colonies, Brodo, I am talking about the great and glorious United States of America! And I am saying that although of course the President had to make some ritual noises of protest—”

“Are you saying that the one percent tax levy is only a symbol, sir?”

“Well of
course
it's just a symbol! If anybody should be paying taxes
, we
should be paying them
, to
the colonies . . . do you know how many billions of credits
—trillions
of credits—our colonies save us every single year? That levy has never done one damn thing but cause bad feeling and rotten public relations!”

“Then you're on the record that the President made the right decision, Senator?”

“Brodo, do you
have
to ask stupid questions? Is it part of your job description? Or is it some kind of personal fetish?”

(
excerpt from an interview in
SPACETIME HOLOMAGAZINE)

It was such a small meeting that it could actually have been held inside Heykus Clete's desk; the desk had been built a little larger than was usual, to accommodate Clete's unusual bulk and to make room for his specialized gadgetry. It would have provided space enough for three men who had no active dislike for one another. But Heykus didn't want to do it that way, despite the fact that his desk offered some of the best security to be had in any federal building in Washington. He didn't like the
scope
that kind of crowding seemed to give to a discussion; it was too much like three criminals huddling together in a back room somewhere. It would have hung a seedy psychological miasma over their heads, and he vetoed the idea at once when the General suggested it.

“We'll do it out at the farm, Stu,” he'd said. “I'd prefer that.”

“That's damned inconvenient, Heykus!”

“It is?” Heykus let the surprise show in his voice; you could not be subtle with a prototype Good Soldier like Stuart Charing, or he'd miss half the conversation. “What difference does it make to you and your computer expert whether you land in downtown Washington or a farm in Maryland? There couldn't be thirty seconds travel time difference!”

“Hell, I didn't mean inconvenient for me and Tatum Pugh, Heykus. I meant inconvenient for
you
. As compared with just having us meet you at your office—which, as you so correctly point out, wouldn't take us any longer.” The general knew he was appearing on Clete's big screen; he was sitting tall, and his shoulders were thrown back, and all his brass was polished to a fare-thee-well. “The farm's nice, Heykus, but hell, you don't need to go way out there on
our
behalf. We're used to El Centro, remember? Washington's not going to faze us.”

“All the more reason,” said Heykus courteously, “why you should have something pleasant in the way of an environment for a change. Let's do it at the farm.” He paused, and raised his eyebrows long enough to be sure the general was following him, and added, “If you are absolutely determined that it has to be person to person.”

“I am.”

“You do know how many scramblers and safeties and cobwebbers we've got between your installation and my office, Stu?”

Charing muttered that he did know, but
still
, and looked vaguely uncomfortable, confirming Heykus' original estimation of the situation. The point of coming to Washington, obviously, was that Stu Charing had cabin fever there in El Centro, three levels down below the surface of the desert, and presumably had already used up all the leave he was entitled to for the year. It was a shame about Stu Charing. He was in many ways a very good man. If Heykus had had to trust his life to Stu Charing, he would not have had an instant's worry about the man's loyalty or his integrity;
nothing
short of the most advanced and illegal techniques of interrogation could have made Charing betray Government Work, and anyone using those would have discovered that as a side effect they had turned their victim into a
dead
victim. Death was hard-wired into Stuart Charing so many different ways that only a truly ignorant interrogator would have bothered even to ask him his name, rank, and serial number. In addition to all that, the general was hardworking, and conscientious, and pleasant; he was the sort of person that subordinates could tolerate easily. He wasn't charismatic, but he was a good officer. Unfortunately, he had a flaw. He was the master of the
tiny
, but devastating, forgotten detail. If you trusted your life to Stu Charing he would remember ninety-nine out of one hundred items, but the single item he forgot would be the toilet paper. It was an uncanny anti-talent, and it had landed him at the Cetacean Project, where it was felt that he was too far underground and too far out of town to do any serious damage. And he got tired of being there.

Heykus didn't blame him for that. What was amazing was that none of the scientists sharing El Centro with Charing, or the computer expert who would be flying in with him, ever seemed to feel that way.

“All right, Stu,” Heykus said, “I'll defer to your judgment. You think face-to-face is necessary, I'm sure you have your reasons. But we'll do it at the farm.”
And you, dear Stuart whose middle name I happen to know to be Vivian, and there's
damn few of us that know that, will not have the fleshpots of Washington to console yourself with after all. Just the government's spread of pretty posies
. The Maryland farm (unlike some other federal “farms” of less savory reputation) was an agricultural experiment station, covered with plots of plants brought in from all over the galaxy, all being tested to see what sort of conditions they could survive in, and what kinds of practical uses they might have, and what hazards they represented. But the small conference room where Heykus would meet with the other two men didn't look out over the experimental gardens. It was at the very center of the acreage, in a grove of tall pines and cedars. At least it would be a nice change from the desert.

“You want to give me a small hint, Stu?” Heykus asked as they exchanged parting remarks. “So that I can prepare?”

The general shook his head. “There's no way to get ready for
this
shit, Heykus,” he said sadly. “Trust me.”

“You're sure?” Heykus spoke emphatically, closing in on the source of the general's famous weakness. “You're absolutely sure we won't get over there in Maryland and you'll suddenly remember that the one essential item for the meeting is only to be had somewhere else entirely? I am
safe
trusting you, without so much as a clue?”

The general's face went blank; he did the Military Blank Face, Just Doing My Job, extremely well. “I'm sure,” he answered. “Nothing to worry about.”

Heykus waited, maintaining eye contact, but the general was as good at maintaining the expression as he was at assuming it, and no flicker of expression marred the military visage.

“In that case, I'll see you tomorrow.” Heykus blanked the screen without waiting for any more amenities. General Charing would forget something, as sure as the coming of spring, but there was no point in worrying him about it. And it was probable that Tatum Pugh, after working with the man all these years, would be carrying the forgotten item in his pocket or in his head, depending on what sort of item it was.

“Dear Lord,” muttered Heykus testily as he watched the fiz-status display tell him the familiar facts about the general's low blood pressure and rapid heartbeat, “I'm a little tired of failures and catastrophes and disgraces and cataclysms over at Government Work. It would be nice if this were something minor, Lord, if You've no serious objections.”

But it wasn't minor. If it had been, even Charing's desire to be sprung briefly from El Centro wouldn't have driven him to
interrupt Clete's busy schedule for an emergency meeting. It had been an empty hope all along, and an empty prayer. Just a word with the Lord in passing, not any
real
prayer. Heykus was careful about prayer, as he would have been careful with explosives. There were a lot of problems associated with it. You take its power—what, exactly, was supposed to happen when two men of equal faith prayed on opposite sides of a question? It made Heykus think of two lightning bolts tangled in midair, and it made him uneasy. He was sure the Lord had ways of handling it, because that went with omnipotence, but he couldn't imagine what they were. As for that bit about being able to order mountains to cast themselves into the sea if you had as much faith as a grain of mustard seed . . . Heykus was not going to test that one. Suppose you
did
have faith enough—and Heykus knew beyond all question that he did—and it didn't work? Suppose the mountain didn't move? The blind didn't see? The lame didn't get up and walk? Then what? How were you going to handle that? Or suppose the mountain
did
move—what did you do about the resulting mess? You move a mountain, there'd be sizable disarrangements of such things as the geotectonic plates, not to mention the real estate; and the animal life would definitely not be prepared for a marine existence. No, Heykus didn't care to test that one, and he didn't want to see anybody test it, either.

Although at the moment, he might have been tempted to throw the
general
into the sea, along with the cetaceans. He knew
they
could swim, and he didn't give a hoot for the fate of Stuart Vivian Charing.

“Let me see if I've got this straight,” he said through clenched teeth. “Let me just see if I understand it fully.”

“All right,” said the general. He was trying to look both concerned and serene, and doing very badly. It wasn't one of the standard GI expressions, or GW either.

“You haven't left anything out?”

“No, Heykus, I haven't. Have I, Pugh?”

The computer whiz drew his shoulders up beside his ears and rubbed his arms with his hands, delicately. “General,” he stated, “this is your party. I am not a guest. I am here in case you want something out of the databanks and aren't sure how to get it without disturbing security. Do not ask me silly questions.”

The general glared at Pugh, who was unimpressed, and then turned to Heykus and declared that he had not left anything out, so help him god. “And thank you very much, Tatum, for your unfailing dedication to the cause,” he added.

“Any time,” said Pugh. “Any time at all.”

“
So
, Stuart!”

“So?”

“So you have known about this particular—difficulty—for at least a year. You were warned about it, by unanimous joint memo, by all three of the senior scientists at El Centro. Before it even began? Is that possible?”

“At that stage of the operation I thought they were simply in error, Heykus.”

“All of them?”

“Certainly, all of them. They've been wrong—all of them—many times. I felt that this was one of the times. And I saw no reason to trouble you with what I was certain would turn out to be yet one more mistake.”

“Why, Stuart?
Why?
”

“I
told
you why. You have more than enough work to do without having to review the imbecilities of my scientific staff.”

Heykus sat there and stared at this man who was a good friend and a man of his own generation and wondered if he could be speaking the truth. It was
possible
, maybe. Just barely possible. If he was, the implications were not pleasant.

He leaned back in his chair, fixed the general with his eyes like a moth on a very short pin, and ticked off the points on his fingers.

“ONE!” he said. “The physical resemblance between the AIRYs now at El Centro and the Earth whales is
not
just a coincidence. They are in fact . . . what would you call them? Cetaceanoids? Whatever you call them, their brains appear to be related to the brains of Terran cetaceans in the same way that humanoid Alien brains are related to the brains of Terran humans. That's point one.

“TWO! Interfaced with the AIRYs, our Earth whale infant did in fact, so far as we can tell, acquire the Alien language. Scientists observing the Interface agree that the young whale is actually communicating with the AIRYs.

“THREE! This constitutes the first—
the first
—example of a Terran organism acquiring a nonhumanoid extraterrestrial language. Which is something you put in the history books, right?
Don't answer that, Charing!
Don't even think about answering it. So: we now have cracked a nonhumanoid Alien language.”