“Sterilized?” Sequoia yelped.
“Cosmic rays do that too,” Fox News said. “I checked.”
“Well, we weren’t that high.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah . . . well, I don’t think we were that high. We didn’t have an altimeter with us . . .”
“But you could have been.”
Shrugging was sheer torture, Sequoia found.
“Okay, but those thunderstorms could’ve lifted you pretty damned high,” Fox News persisted.
Before Sequoia could think of what to answer, the door to his private room opened, and a horse-faced nurse said firmly, “That’s all. Time’s up. Mr. Sequoia must rest now. After his enema.”
“Okay, I think I’ve got something to hang a story on,” Fox News said with a satisfied grin. “Now to find a specialist in cosmic rays.”
The blond looked thoroughly shocked and terribly upset. “You . . . you don’t think you were really sterilized, do you?”
Sequoia tried to make himself sound worried and brave at the same time. “I don’t know. I just . . . don’t know.”
Late that night the blond snuck back into his room, masquerading as a nurse. If she knew the difference between sterilization and impotence, she didn’t tell Sequoia about it. For his part, he forgot about his still-tender skin and the traction braces. The morning nurse found him unconscious, one shoulder dislocated, most of his bandages rubbed off, his skin terribly inflamed, and a goofy grin on his face.
I knew that the way up the corporate ladder was to somehow acquire a staff that reported to me. And, in truth, the SSZ project was getting so big that I truly needed more people to handle it. I mean, all the engineers had to do was build the damned thing and make it fly. I had to make certain that the money kept flowing, and that wasn’t easy. An increasingly large part of my responsibilities as the de facto head of the Washington office consisted of putting out fires.
“Will you look at this!”
Senator Goodyear waved the morning Post at me. I had already read the electronic edition before I’d left my apartment that morning. Now, as I sat at Tracy Keene’s former desk, the senator’s red face filled my phone screen.
“That Sequoia!” he grumbled. “He’ll stop at nothing to destroy me. Just because the Ohio River melted his houseboat, all those years ago.”
“It’s just a scare headline,” I said, trying to calm him down. “People won’t be sterilized by flying in the supersonic zeppelin any more than they were by flying in the old Concorde.”
“I know it’s bullshit! And you know it’s bullshit! But the goddamned news media are making a major story out of it! Sequoia’s on every network talk show. I’m under pressure to call for hearings on the sterilization problem!”
“Good idea,” I told him. “Have a Senate investigation. The scientists will prove that there’s nothing to it.”
That was my first mistake. I didn’t get a chance to make another.
I hightailed it that morning to Memo’s office. I wanted to see Pencilbeam and start building a defense against this sterilization story. The sky was gray and threatening. An inch or two of snow was forecast, and people were already leaving their offices for home, at ten o’clock in the morning. Dedicated government bureaucrats and corporate employees, taking the slightest excuse to knock off work.
The traffic was so bad that it had actually started to snow, softly, by the time I reached Memo’s office. He was pacing across the thinly carpeted floor, his shoes squeaking unnervingly in the spacious room. Copies of The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Aviation Week were spread across his usually immaculate desk, but his attention was focused on his window, where we could see fluffy snowflakes gently drifting down.
“Traffic’s going to get worse as the day goes on,” Memo muttered.
“They’re saying it’ll only be an inch or so,” I told him.
“That’s enough to paralyze this town.”
Yeah, especially when everybody jumps in their cars and starts fleeing the town as if a terrorist nuke is about to go off, I replied silently.
Aloud, I asked, “What about this sterilization business? Is there any substance to the story?”
Memo glanced sharply at me. “They don’t need substance as long as they can start a panic.”
Dr. Pencilbeam sat at one of the unmatched conference chairs, all bony limbs and elbows and knees.
“Relax, Roger,” Pencilbeam said calmly. “Congress isn’t going to halt the SSZ program. It means too many jobs, too much international prestige. And besides, the President has staked her credibility on it.”
“That’s what worries me,” Memo muttered.
“What?”
But Memo’s eye was caught by movement outside his window. He waddled past his desk and looked down into the street below.
“Oh my God.”
“What’s going on?” Pencilbeam unfolded like a pocket ruler into a six-foot-long human and hurried to the window. Outside, in the thin, mushy snow, a line of somber men and women were filing along the street past the TURD building, bearing signs that screamed:
“stop the ssz!”“don’t sterilize the human race!”“ssz murders unborn children!” “zeppelins, go home!” “Isn’t that one with the sign about unborn children a priest?” Pencilbeam asked.
Memo shrugged. “Your eyes are better than mine.”
“Aha! And look at this!”
Pencilbeam pointed a long, bony finger farther down the street. Another swarm of people were advancing on the building. They also carried placards:
“ssz for zpg” “zeppelins, si! babies, no!” “zeppelins for population control” “up the ssz” Memo sagged against the window. “This . . . this is awful.”
The Zero Population Growth group marched through the thin snowfall straight at the environmentalists and anti-birth-control pickets. Instantly, the silence was shattered by shouts and taunts. Shrill female voices battled against rumbling baritones and bassos. Placards wavered. Bodies pushed. Someone screamed. One sign struck a skull, and then bloody war broke out.
Memo, Pencilbeam, and I watched aghast until the helmeted TAC squad police doused the whole tangled mess of them with riot gas, impartially clubbed men and woman alike, and carted everyone off, including three bystanders and a homeless panhandler.
The Senate hearings were such a circus that Driver summoned me back to Phoenix for a strategy session with Anson’s top management.
