Emprise (16 page)

“There’s a certain amount of that attitude behind the labor problems as well,” said Weddell. “There’s been no trouble on the farms, as people don’t take food out of their mouths on principle very often. I also haven’t seen any problems among the technical types. It’s the semi-skilled laborers, the journeymen that we’re having difficulty with. Whenever we build something for the Consortium, especially something related to Star Rise, someone looks at it and says, ‘Why not a church?’ ‘Why not a new school?’ ‘Why not a home for Bobby and his family?’ All of a sudden we’ve got a whole construction crew wondering why they’re not out building something for themselves, something they can see the reason for. We’ve been working on that attitude through the NET, but I can’t say as we can claim any success yet.”

“Nor should you expect it,” said Jawaharlal Moraji. “The NET itself is suspect in many quarters. These acts of sabotage are the symptom of deeper difficulties. Nationalism is returning and with it the suspicion that what we are doing may not be in the best interests of every member nation.”

Qingfen nodded. “We came together in weakness. Now that strength is returning, so is ambition. What we can offer them no longer looks as attractive as what they think they can get on their own.”

“Are we in a position to make our offer better?” Rashuri asked.

“No,” said Montpelier flatly.

“Part of the problem is that the offer is too high already,” said Weddell. “The local governments promised too much too quickly. They spoke for us, but they spoke out of turn.”

“It is PANCOMNET that has made the promises, implicitly,” said Qingfen. “We have shown them what is possible while giving them what is irrelevant. Of what use is a shouting television receiver to a village that most needs a dam for irrigation or a doctor to treat their parasites?”

“PANCOMNET is not the issue,” Rashuri said irritably. “You will kindly stop trying to make it one.”

“You asked us to speak freely,” Qingfen said defensively.

“I asked you to speak your mind. For you, there seems to be a difference between the two.” He looked down the table. “You’ve had little to say, Benjamin.”

Driscoll leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “There isn’t much for me to say. The Science Service isn’t blind to the things that have happened. But all we can do is do our job as best we can and hope that the rest of you can keep things glued together long enough for us to finish.”

“And how long will that be?” Qingfen asked airily.

“Longer, thanks to you and your damn-fool defense platforms.”

“You will both hold your tongues or leave,” Rashuri snapped. Driscoll shrugged and sat back in his chair. Qingfen sat rigid, his hands folded on his lap.

“I see the problem much as Qingfen described it,” said Rashuri slowly. “We rule not a confederation, but an association. The cement that holds us together has not yet hardened, and some of the joints are poorly made. These leaders still remember independence, and as the good times return they are drawn toward those memories. We have reached the point where we require the consent of the governed, where we require their leverage to hold their leaders in line. We do not have it.

“We must give them a compelling reason to support us,” he continued. “Before they decide they no longer need the Consortium. Before our credibility can be tainted any further.”

Rashuri scanned each of the ten faces in turn, making certain that he had their attention.

“We must tell them about the Senders.”

There was a long moment of silence, a few heavy exhalations, some squirming in chairs.

“I wish I thought you were wrong, because the prospect frightens me,” said Montpelier at last. “If they take it badly… said Moraji, shaking his head unhappily.

“It will have to be presented in just the right light and context,” said Rashuri. “We can afford neither riots nor apathy. We must gain from this a focusing of attention, a certain amount of excitement and anticipation, a sense of commitment.”

“It’ s much too early,” protested Weddell, standing a his seat. “You told me I would have fifteen years to prepare them. We’ve only begun the preconditioning of the population. Most of them still think the stars are leaks in the bowl of night or something equally preposterous.”

“I have seen some of your programs on our place in the universe,” said Rashuri. “You sell yourself and your producers short.”

“The people aren’t ready,” insisted Weddell.

“I am afraid they will have to be.” He looked at his watch. “Let us break here for our meal. We’ll come back in at two and take up the questions of when and how.”

As the group rose and slowly began to disperse, Moraji moved purposefully to intercept Rashuri as he headed for the door to his private offices.

“Devaraja—are you free to see me now?”

“I can be. What is it?”

“It has to do with this announcement you plan.” Moraji glanced up to see that Driscoll was well out of earshot. “There is a man in England, a man named Eddington, about whom I think you should know.”

The ringing of the phone on the nightstand awoke Donald Keynes, but not the long-tressed chemist’s clerk he had coaxed home with him from the hospital. He was used to such calls, and it rarely took more than one ring to rouse him.

“What’s happened now?” he asked with a faint air of boredom.

“This is Kellie.” The identification was unnecessary; Keynes recognized the voice of Kellie McAleer, the night nurse on the psychiatric ward at Maudsley. “It’s Eddington, the transfer from Crown Security. He’s attempted suicide again. You left orders to call.”

“How inconsiderate of me. Very well. I’ll be in.”

Keynes hung up, turned on the light, and yanked back the covers. When the girl still did not stir, he gave her shoulder a shake. She lifted her head at last and looked at him with unfocusing eyes.

“Out,” he said curtly. “I’m going in to the hospital.”

“I cou’ stay and have somethin’ waitin’ when you come back,” she said in her thick Dorsetshire accent, and smiled at him hopefully.

“Out,” he repeated, plucking her dress from the floor and tossing it to her before making for the bath. McAleer met him by the nurses’ station in the center of the circular ward and walked with him to his office.

“I take it be wasn’t successful.”

“No,” said McAleer. “We have him in the safe room.”

“How did he try it this time?”

“Popped the pane out of the window in his room so he could jump out. The officer at his door heard him in time.”

“That’s not supposed to be possible, according to the glazier.”

“He didn’t try to smash it like they usually do. He went after the frame and levered it out somehow. He’s a bright one.” Keynes unlocked his office. “I know. All right, have him sent down.”

Ten minutes later, Eddington was escorted in by an orderly. He wore the patient’s uniform, a featureless white pajamalike smock and trousers. He sat passively with his head down, his face puffy and red around his eyes, chewing nervously on a lower lip that was already bleeding.

“Laurence.” Eddington made a sucking noise and looked away, toward the door. “Why don’t you tell me what happened, Laurence?” asked Keynes, his tone firm. Eddington’s head whipped around and angry eyes flashed at Keynes. “Why do you hate me?” he demanded.

“I don’t hate you, Laurence. None of us hate you.”

“Then why won’t you let him kill me? If you didn’t hate me, you’d let him kill me.”

“Who is he, Laurence?”

“You know him.”

“Tell me.”

“You know him,” Eddington said stubbornly. “What’s his name?”

“You know him.”

“Why does he want to kill you?” Eddington made a fist of his right hand and began to hit his left bicep, squeezing his eyes closed at each blow.

Moving deliberately but not hurriedly, Keynes came from behind his desk and caught Eddington’s fist in a firm grip. “Why does he want to kill you, Laurence?”

Eddington looked up. “He’s the one that gets angry when I fail,” he said plaintively. “He never fails—”

The strongest element of the subjects persona is his sense of personal failure. Though he is not highly communicative, his response to certain inquiries is instructive. Asked whether he would like to see his wife or child, subject maintains against all evidence that he has no wife or daughter (see transcript 8-3-11 and 8-7-11, attached). Should any mention of friends or friendship be made, subject becomes agitated and denounces “traitors” and “thieves” (8-13-11 and others). Subjects diminished sense of self-worth clearly has professional, marital, parental, and social dimensions
.

However, taken as a rejection and projection of the elements of failure contained therein, his personification of the suicidal impulse shows that subject still maintains some integration of character. If subject can become directed into esteem-building activities, some hope may be held out for eventual rehabilitation
.

To this end, I urge you to make a renewed effort to secure release of personal effects seized from subject’s home at the time of his arrest this summer. With the action last week overturning the conviction, we have reason to expect a more cooperative response
.

Donald Keynes, M.D.

St. Bonaventure Hospital

Central Administration was not noticeably more efficient than most bureaucratic organizations. Despite sending two follow-up reminders, three months passed before Keynes heard anything definitive on his request. When word finally came, it was a phone call from the Physical Evidence Warehouse of Crown Security: a quantity of materials belonging to one Laurence Eddington were to be destroyed if not claimed within five days, and did the hospital know Eddington’s present whereabouts?

Since Eddington was still occupying Room 112, Keynes dispatched an orderly with a panel van to pick up the materials. He returned with nine boxes, each weighing in at three stone or better.

“Where do you want them?” asked the orderly. “Not that I want to move them again. Like to split my spleen the first time.”

“They must have stripped the whole house,” Keynes said, shaking his head at the nearly filled cargo area of the van. “Stack them in the hall by the patients’ lounge. We’ll have to go through them before we let him have anything.”

Screening the contents of the boxes was a tedious task. Keynes did the first two himself and found dozens of envelopes and small boxes, each stamped with the Crown Security emblem, the date, and an identifying number in a bold red ink.

Inside were a variety of innocuous household documents—checkbooks and private letters, newspapers and unpaid bills, even photo albums and stock certificates. There were two dozen reels of audio tape labeled with various classical titles, a pair of trilingual pornographic magazines from Sweden, even a book on ciphers.

What would they snatch if they went through my house this way
, Keynes wondered to himself.
And what would they think?
He found the whole business distasteful and in a good measure, depressing as well. On finishing the second box, he delegated the job to two irrepressibly cheerful middle-aged hospital volunteers.

Eddington made things simpler by taking little interest in most of what had been returned. But he quickly latched onto the tapes and asked for a deck on which to play them. Eddington also spent hours sorting through the many sheaves of paper, stopping now and again to set aside a sheet or two in a pile that in time was a good ten centimetres thick.

In the weeks that followed Keynes and the staff noted two changes in Eddington. Outside his room, he was a more engaging chap, far more inclined to smile or say a few soothing words to another inmate. But he left his room at less frequent intervals and for shorter periods of time. He asked for and received permission to close his door, and from behind it the staff often heard music, most commonly the strains of Hoist’s
The Planets
or the atonal chirrup of some modem polyphonic cantata.

Keynes determined to visit Eddington during one of those times and found him at his desk, scribbling dots on graph paper and checking equations with a calculator.

“This is my work,” Eddington explained calmly. “I never finished my doctorate—did you know that? I’ve lost a great deal of time. I must get caught up.”

“Can you explain to me what you’re doing?”

Eddington beamed. “Certainly. Do you understand modulo arithmetic and interpolative calculus?”

“I’m afraid not. That’s all right. Save your energies for your work,” Keynes said, rising to leave. “Perhaps when I’m farther along and the outcomes are clearer.”

“Of course.”

Encouraged, Keynes had Eddington transferred to the New Life Village, a cluster of small duplexes on the hospital’s grounds which served as a halfway house to test the patient’s ability to cope with caring for himself. Here things went less smoothly; in his preoccupation with his work, Eddington let the apartment reach a slovenly state in less than a week.

No amount of gentle persuasion from the caseworker could convince him to reverse his priorities. The piles of stinking dishes stayed in the kitchen, and he continued to select his outfit each morning from the mounds of soiled clothing on the bedroom floor. In the ward, most housekeeping was handled by the staff, and Eddington had had little to do. He continued to do little, and shortly came to show quick anger when questioned about it.

It spoke of obsession and self-hatred to Keynes, and he was prepared to bring Eddington back to the ward when he received a notice from Central Administration. When Eddington had been given his pardon, the costs of his hospitalization had been transferred from the state to his estate. Now the estate—nothing more than the proceeds from the state’s auction of Crown House and its contents—was exhausted. So was the hospital’s FY 2012 allotment for charity care.

In the days of National Health, the situation would never have presented itself. But free health care, especially free mental health care, was a bit of largesse the people had declared too expensive. Keynes had no choice in the matter. Instead of returning Eddington to the ward, Keynes proclaimed him well and let him go.

Three years passed before Eddington was seen again by someone who knew him. In that time, he gained a beard and lost nearly two stone. Neither was a conscious act. Instead, the changes resulted from an impulse to economize on all but essentials. That same impulse made him resent the need to spend three days a week taking markers at the gate of Alexandra Park Racetrack in exchange for enough money to survive on.

It was at that booth that he was spotted by a slim-hipped girl, the last of a noisy group of five that came through his queue. She stopped after taking her change and stared at him. Initially, he did not return her interest, turning back to the stacking of his coins.

“Father?” she said uncertainly, her head cocked to one side.

He set down a stack of silver carefully before looking up. For a long moment he looked at her without recognition, his eyes scanning her features, his face vacant of emotion. He took in her hair pulled back in a practical pony tail, the not-woman, not-child figure beneath her crisp white blouse and jeans, her hopeful smile.

“Penny,” he said at last.

She bobbed her head happily. “Where have you been? We’ve looked for you, just everywhere.”

“Wood Green,” he said, blinking, still distant and uncertain. “Can we get along up there?” called one of the several bettors queued up behind Penny and her companions. She reached out and touched the back of her father’s hand. “We’ve just got to talk. When are you off?”

Eddington stared at her hand, then took it in his and squeezed it tightly. “Penny,” he said, this time with warmth. “We have a lot to talk about, we do. Ten. They close me up here at ten.”

“I’ll be back here then. You’ll wait?”

She was there a half hour before ten, having shed her companions. Over Eddington’s gentle protests, Penny steered them to a Hornsey pie shop.

“So you have a flat in Wood Green?” she asked when they’d settled at a booth. “I’d love to see it sometime.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” he said. “It’s a far cry from Crown House, and even at that I don’t keep it up.”

“It doesn’t have to be Crown House. It just has to be yours. We’ve missed you. I’ve missed you.”

“Then why never a visit at the hospital?” he said challengingly.

“The doctor said you were angry, that it wouldn’t be best. And then suddenly you were out, and we never knew where you were. I’d have come seen you if I’d known where to find you.”

“Well—I’ve been busy, very busy.”

“Oh? At the track, or with something else? What are you doing now? I’d like to know everything.”

He smiled halfheartedly. “Yes, you always were that way.”

“You can’t still be put out with me over that summer—can you?”

“Do you realize what that was all about?” he asked. “Do you realize what it meant?”

“I think I do. And wouldn’t it be exciting if it were true? I hope I live long enough. But I think it has something to do with the Consortium. There’re some rumors at Tsiolkovsky that they’re building a spaceship.”

Eddington looked puzzled.

“I go to Tsiolkovsky now,” she explained. “I’m learning computers, and an awful lot of our projects seem to be about astrophysics or some such. Of course there’s Earth Rise, which they’re going to test next month, but there’s talk about something more.”

“What is the Consortium?”

It was Penny’s turn to look puzzled. “Are you trying to joke with me? You must know—I’ve thought all this time you were missing that you must be working for them. Professor Aikens is. I’ve seen him stop in at the school several times. I kept thinking I’d see you.”

“Aikens is working for who? Honestly, I haven’t paid much attention to any affairs but my own.” Still incredulous, she quickly updated him. “Then what have you been doing? Not just running a till, I’m sure.”

“No. I’ve been working on translating the rest of the message.”

“What do you mean?”

“No one else seemed to realize it, so I’ve been working alone,” he said, growing animated at last. “It has six levels, and each one tells us more about them. I know all about then-world, the planets near them, their sun. I’m working on the fourth level, which I’m certain is going to tell me what they’re like biologically. Levels five and six, well, we’ll have to see. The level you decoded was primary school. I’m in college, now. You didn’t think you’d translated the whole thing, did you?”

“Have you talked to anyone about this?”

“No time to talk about it. Each level’s harder, higher math, more interpolation. If I talk, I’ll never finish.”

“But if we really are building a spaceship, they should know about this.”

“They won’t believe me. They didn’t believe me before. They even had me put away for saying it.”

“Oh, that wasn’t it at all—” She stopped, unsure of her ground. “Why not join up? The Science Service is always looking for people. You can help, I know you could. And you could give them Dr. Aikens as a reference. He knows you.”

“I don’t have time to do that sort of thing.”