20
'You don't feel sick or dizzy or anything? Sure?' 'I'm all right now. Honestly.'
Cheryl ruffled Dan's hair and he squirmed away, embarrassed. 'Don't! I'm all
'I certainly hope so.' Cheryl frowned at Chase accusingly.
Nick said, 'He was perfectly okay in Princeton. Jen said he ate like a horse.' He winked at Dan. 'Must have been all that female cosseting.'
The four of them were in Chase's hotel room on Broadway, which overlooked what had once been the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts. Since the city's bankruptcy the center had drifted downward, from recording studio to supermarket to discount furniture store. Now it was a squatters' refuge, charity clothing shop and soup kitchen combined. In a sense it had come full circle--the land it occupied from West Sixty-second to Sixty-sixth streets fifty years ago had been the notorious West Side slum area, celebrated in a stage and screen musical.
Chase stood looking out at the murk; even if there'd been something to see he wouldn't have seen it. He felt restless and nervy, and guilty too. What in hell did he have to feel guilty about? Don't answer that question. He knew damn well--and it had nothing to do with Dan being sick.
'Is Madam Van Dorn expecting you?' Cheryl asked him, the 'Madam' sounding distinctly chilly.
'Yes, but she's got a heavy schedule today. It's her annual address to the General Assembly.'
'I still don't understand, Gavin.' Cheryl wished he'd turn around to face her; he'd been staring out at nothing for the last ten minutes. 'You've always insisted that we have to change people's attitudes first, that real progress is impossible politically or scientifically. That was the whole idea behind Earth Foundation, wasn't it?'
'Yes.'
'And yet you've agreed to this.' Cheryl shook her head, puzzled and resigned. She couldn't understand his decision, nor his reluctance to discuss it. This wasn't a bit like him. 'We've got our hands full already with Earth Foundation. We can't do both.'
'There's no reason why Earth Foundation shouldn't continue,' Chase said. 'But I happen to believe that a project like this has a chance of succeeding. It could make a real and positive contribution.'
'You mean find a practical solution? But you've always said that until and unless we can change
'Yes, but I also believe that as scientists we have a duty to sort out this mess--if it can be sorted out.' At last he turned to her. 'Why do you think your father spent years of his life on a lump of rock in the middle of the Pacific? Not for wealth or personal glory, but because he wanted to use his gifts, his talents, whatever, in the service of mankind. That's what he was best fitted for. So was he wrong? Was his life wasted?'
Their eyes met and locked, yet it seemed to Cheryl that for the very first time she couldn't see inside him. It was as if a fine gauze separated them, impeding direct communication. It was Chase who broke away, turning back to the shrouded mausoleum of Lincoln Center, and Cheryl said:
'What do you think about this, Nick?'
'About the project? I'm not really sure.' Nick leaned back, hands clasped behind his balding head, gnawing his lip above the frizzy fringe of beard. 'In theory there's no reason why we couldn't undo the harm we've done. That's point number one. Point number two is how. Point number three--assuming we find the answer to point number two--is do we have the urge and the will to change things for the better?'
'What do you mean, the urge?' Dan asked. He was hunched forward on the arm of the couch, chin propped in his hand.
'I mean that the human race seems to have a collective death wish, like somebody who accepts that cigarettes cause lung cancer and still carries on smoking. Bloody hell, we've known for
'But you think there's a chance, do you?' Cheryl said.
'What, of finding a scientific solution? Yeah, I think there is, providing the thing's organized properly and the funds are available.'
Cheryl was studying the back of Chase's head. 'Well, they've got the organizer, haven't they?' she said, a small frown on her lightly freckled face. 'That only leaves the money.'
There was a silence, and then Chase said, 'The money's there. Ingrid Van Dorn and Prothero have fixed it.'
'The UN is funding it?' Cheryl said in plain disbelief.
Chase turned and leaned on the sill and met her gaze. 'No,' he said calmly. 'They've arranged private sources. Companies. Trusts. Wealthy private individuals. That's one of the things I want to discuss with them.' He looked at his watch. 'In fact I'd better go. Try and catch her before her speech.'
Cheryl didn't say anything. There was an expression on her face that Chase couldn't read, and wasn't sure he wanted to.
At the UN his mood wasn't helped by a young security officer who looked him up and down as if to imply that Chase was displaying quite remarkable effrontery in asking to see the secretary-general in person. Covering the mouthpiece with a white-gloved hand he smirked sideways at Chase. 'I don't expect you have an appointment, do you?'
There was a blank at the end of the sentence, the 'sir' conspicuously missing.
'No, I don't have an appointment,' Chase replied, his tight smile costing him great effort. 'But I think the secretary-general will see me all the same.'
The officer nodded, humoring this imbecile. Then the smirk became fixed and wooden and his eyes glassy as he listened to the voice on the phone. He put the receiver down slowly, made a jerky gesture over his shoulder, and a white-helmeted guard marched forward, stamping to attention.
'Dr. Chase, the secretary-general asks if you wouldn't mind waiting in the Kurt Waldheim hospitality suite until after the General Assembly. Senator Prothero will join you there shortly.'
Several minutes later, after a ride in the elevator and then a trek behind the guard through a maze of identical corridors, Chase was shown into a large elegantly furnished room with gilt chairs, silken drapes, and chandelier. There was a bar in one corner, and in another, set at an angle, a back-projection movie-size television screen.
Chase helped himself to a whiskey and soda. He switched on the giant TV from the remote-control device on the bar and sat down in a nearby armchair, thinking it an odd time--one-thirty in the afternoon --to be addressing the General Assembly. Then he recalled that the speech was being transmitted live. In Europe it would be timed just right for the early-evening newscast, while on the West Coast it was midmorning. Obviously, Ingrid Van Dorn was hoping to capture the biggest possible worldwide audience.
A huge brown face on the screen was mouthing introductory platitudes. Chase couldn't decide whether he was a fawning delegate or an unctuous TV anchorman until a four-foot-wide caption came up:
Chase hardly listened as Senor Messina spoke on and on.
He finished his drink and went to the bar for another one. He normally never drank during the day, but there were exceptions to every rule, today apparently being one of them. Of course he knew why. He should have told Cheryl where the money was coming from and he'd chickened out. She had a right to know the truth. Their relationship from the start had been totally honest, and now he had betrayed that trust.
As he added a splash of soda he heard the door click and glanced around, expecting it to be Prothero. Anything less like Prothero it would have been impossible to imagine.
The youth was hunched, deformed, his head shaved so that the bumps and faint blue veins were rather obscenely displayed. He wore ridiculous bent wire-frame spectacles hooked over pale flapping ears, and his eyes, moist and bulging, were magnified grotesquely. White scrawny arms extended from loose black robes, one bony fist gripping the door knob.
Chase and this apparition stared in silence at each other for several long moments. From the TV came the polite rippling of applause as Senor Jose J. Messina ended his speech and the face of Ingrid Van Dorn appeared on the screen, as big as a billboard. The youth turned his head mechanically toward it, pale knife-blade features
