Algis Budrys - Michaelmas

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Michaelmas

By Algis Budrys

Scanned by BW-SciFi

To Sydney Coleman, my friend and this book's friend

First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz Ltd 1977

First issued in Fontana Books 1979

Made and printed in Great Britain by

William Collins Sons & Co Ltd, Glasgow

CONDITIONS OF SALE

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of

binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including

this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

Author's Note

Effective assistance in a great variety of forms was given this project by A. C. Spectorsky, Carl

Sagan, Jan Norbye and James Dunne, Ed Coudal, William B. Sundown, Slim Sanders, Chuck

Finberg, Ed and Audrey Ferman, Bob Kaiser, Brad Bisk, Don Borah, Marshall Barksdale, the

presence in my mind of James Blish, and most particularly Edna F. Budrys, in that simul-taneous

order.

This novel incorporates features of a substantially shorter and significantly different version

One

When he was as lonely as he was tonight, Laurent Michael-mas would consider himself in a

dangerous mood. He would try to pry himself out of it. He'd punch through the adventure channels

and watch the holograms cavort in his apartment, noting how careful directors had seen to it there

was plenty of action but room as well for the viewer. At times like this, however, perhaps he did

not want to be so carefully eased out of the way of hurtling projectiles or sociopathic characters.

He would switch to the news channels. He'd study the techniques of competitors he thought he

had something to learn from. He'd note the names of good directors and camera operators. So

he'd find himself storing up a reserve of compliments for his professional acquaintances when

next he saw them, and that, too, wasn't what he needed now.

After that, he would try the instructional media; the good, classic dramas, and opera;

documentaries; teaching aids —but the dramas were all memorized in his head already, and he

had all the news and most of the docu-mentary data. If there was something he needed to know,

Domino could always tell him quickly. It would pall.

When it did, as it had tonight, he would become restless. He would not let himself go to the

romance channels; that was not for him. He would instead admit that it was simply time again for

him to be this way, and that from time to time it would always be this way.

With his eyes closed, he sat at the small antique desk in the corner and remembered what he

had written many years ago.

Your eyes, encompassed full with love,

Play shining changes like the dance of clouds.

And I would have the summer rain of you

In my eyes through

The dappled sunlight of our lives.

He put his head down on his arms for a moment.

But he was Laurent Michaelmas. He was a large-eyed man, his round, nearly hairless head

founded on a short, broad jaw. His torso was thick and powerful, equipped with dextrous limbs

and precisely acting hands and feet. In his public persona he looked out at the world like an

honest child of great capability. Had his lips turned down, the massive curve of his glistening

scalp and the configuration of his jaw would have made him resemble a snapping turtle. But no

one in his audiences had ever seen him that way; habitually his mouth curved up in a reassuring

smile.

Similarly when he moved, his swift feet in their glistening black shoes danced quickly and softly

over parquet and sidewalk, up marble steps and along vinyl-tiled corridors, in and out of houses of

commerce, universities, factories, places of government, in and out of ships, aircraft, and banks.

There was hardly anywhere in the world where his concerns might not be expected to take him,

smiling and polite, re-assuring, his flat black little transceiving machine swinging from its strap

over his left shoulder, his fresh red carnation in the buttonhole of his black suit.

His smile looked into the faces of the great as freely as it did into anyone else's, and it was a

long time since he'd actually had to show his press credentials. When in New York, he made his

bachelor home in this living space over-looking Central Park from the top of a very tall building. He

didn't make much of its location. Nor had anyone but he ever seen the inside of it, he having been

a widower since before his professional floreat. So he did not have to apolo-gize for the blue

Picasso over his desk, or the De Kooning, Braque, and Utrillo that were apportioned to other

aspects of the room. He lived here as he liked. Most of the time, baroque music played softly and

sourcelessly wherever he went about the apartment, as if he had contrived to have a strolling

ensemble follow after him discreetly.

Seated now, his face reminiscing bleakly, the comm unit resting at his elbow, he was

interrupted when one of the array of pinpoint pilot lights blinked. It was red. The machine's

speakers simultaneously gave a premonitory pop. "Mr. Michaelmas."

The voice was reserved, the tone dry. A spiritless man might have thought it reproving.

Michaelmas turned to-wards the machine with friendly interest. "Yes, Domino."

"I have a news bulletin."

"Go ahead." Michaelmas always gave the impression of appreciating every moment anyone

could spare him. That manner had served many a famous interviewer before him. Michaelmas

apparently never discarded it.

"Reuters has a story that Walter Norwood is not dead. He is almost fully recuperated from

long-term intensive treat-ment, and is fit to return to duty."

Laurent Michaelmas sat back in his chair, the jowls fold-ing under his jaw, and raised one

eyebrow. He steepled his fingertips. "You'd better give me that verbatim."

"Right. 'Berne, September twenty-nine. Walter Norwood alive and well, says two-time Nobel

winner life scientist. Doktor Professor Nils Hannes Limberg announced here 0330 Berne time

astronaut Walter Norwood, thought dead in June destruction his Sahara orbital shuttle, suffered

ex-tensive injuries in crash his escape capsule on Alpine peak near world-famous Limberg

Sanatorium. Limberg states now that publicity, help, advice then from others would have merely

interfered with proper treatment. Norwood now quote good as ever and news is being released at

this earliest medically advisable time endquote. UN Astro-nautics Commission notified by Limberg

just previous to this statement. UNAC informed Norwood ready to leave sanatorium at UNAC

discretion. Limberg refers add in-quiries to UNAC and refuses media access to sanatorium quote

at this time endquote. Bulletin ends. Note to bureau managers: We querying UNAC Europe.

Reuters Afrique please query UNAC Star Control and send soonest. Reuters New York same

UNAC there. Reuters International stand by. End all.'"

Laurent Michaelmas cocked his head and looked up and off a nothing. "Think it's true?"

"I think the way Limberg's reported to have handled it gives it a lot of verisimilitude. Very much

in character from start to finish. Based on that, the conclusion is that Nor-wood is alive and well."

"Damn," Michaelmas said. "God damn."

He played with his fingertips upon the warm satiny wood of the desktop. The nails of his left

hand were long, while those of his right hand were squared off short and the fingertips showed

considerable callosity. One aspect of his living-room area mounted a large panel of blue-black

velvet. Angular thin brass hooks projected from it, and on those were hung various antique

stringed instruments. But now Michaelmas swung around in his chair and picked up a Martin

Dreadnaught guitar. He hunched forward in the chair and hung brooding over the instrument, right

hand curled around its broad neck.

"Domino."

"Yes, Mr Michaelmas."

"What do you have from the other media?"

"On the Norwood story?"

"Right. You'd better give it priority in all your informa-tion feeds to me until further notice."

"Understood. First, all the other news services are quot-ing Reuters to their Swiss and UN

stations and asking what the hell. AP's Berne man has replied with no progress on the phone to

Limberg, and can't get to the sanatorium — it's up on a mountain, and the only road is private. UPI

is filing old tapes of Norwood, and of Limberg, with back-ground stories on each and a recap of

the shuttle accident. They have nothing; they're just servicing their subscribers with features and

sidebars, and probably hoping they'll have a new lead soon. All the feature syndicates are doing

essentially the same thing."

"What's Tass doing?"

"They're not releasing it at all. They've been on the phone to Pravda and Berne. Pravda is

holding space on tomorrow's page three, and Tass's man in Berne is having just as much luck as

the AP. He's predicting to his chief that Limberg will throw a full-scale news conference soon;

says it's not in character for the old man not to follow up after this teaser. I agree."

"Yes. What are the networks doing?"

"They've reacted sharply but are waiting on the wire services for details. The entertainment

networks are having voice-over breaks with slides of Berne, the Oberland, or almost any snowy

mountain scene; they're reading the bul-letin quickly, and then going to promos for their affiliated

news channels. But the news is tending to montages of stock shuttle-shot footage over stock

visuals of the Jungfrau and the Finsteraarhorn. No one has any more data."

"All right, I think we can let you handle all that. I'd say Dr. Limberg has dropped his bombshell

and retreated to a previously prepared position to wait out the night. The next place to go is UNAC.

What have you got?" Michaelmas's fingers made contact with the guitar strings. The piped music

cut off. In the silence, the guitar hummed to his touch. He paid it no heed, clasping it to him but not

addressing himself to it.

"Star Control has decided not to permit statement at any installation until an official statement

has been pre-pared and released from there. They are circulating two drafts among their

directors. One draft is an expression of surprise and delight, and the other, of course, is an

ex-pression of regret at false hopes that have upset the de-corum of the world's grief for Colonel

Norwood. They'll release nothing until they have authenticated word from Berne. A UNAC

executive plane is clearing Naples for Berne at the moment with Ossip Sakal aboard; he was

vacationing there. The flight has not been announced to the press.

"Star Control's engineering staff has memoed all offices reiterating its original June evaluation

that Norwood's vehicle was totally destroyed and nothing got clear. Ob-viously, UNAC people are

being knocked out of bed everywhere to review their records."

Michaelmas's hands plucked and pressed absently at the guitar. Odd notes and phrases

swelled out of the soundbox. Hints of melody grouped themselves out of the disconnected beats

and vanished before anything much happened to them.

The hectoring voice of the machine went on. "Star Con-trol has had a telephone call from

Limberg's sanatorium. The calling party was identified as Norwood on voice, ap-pearance, and

conversational content. He substantiated the Limberg statement. He was then ordered to keep

mum until Sakal and some staff people from Naples have reached him. All UNAC spaceflight

installations and offices were then sequestered by Star Control, as previously indicated, and the

fact of the call from Norwood to UNAC has not been made available to the press."

"You've been busy." A particularly fortunate series of accidents issued from the guitar.

Michaelmas blinked down at it in pleasure and surprise. But now it had distracted him, so he let it

fall softly against the lounge behind him.

He stood up and put his hands deep in his pockets, his shoulders bowed and stiff. He drifted

slowly towards the window and looked out along Manhattan Island.

Norwood's miracle — Norwood's and Limberg's miracle — was well on its way towards being

a fact, and truth was the least of the things that made it so. Michaelmas absently touched the

telephone in his breast pocket, silent only because of Domino's secretarial function.

He knew he lived in a world laced by mute sound clamouring to be heard, by pictures prepared

to become instant simulacra. Above him — constantly above him and all the world —the relay

stations were throbbing with myriad bits of news and inconsequence that flashed from ground

station to station, night and day, from one orbit to another, from synchronous orbit to horizon

scanner and up to the suprasynchs that orbited the Earth-Moon system, until the diagram of all

these reflecting angles and pyramids of com-munication made the earth and her sister the binary

centre of a great faceted globe resembling nothing so much as Buckminster Fuller's heart's

desire.

Around him, from the height of the tallest structure and at times to the depths of the sea, a

denser, less elegant, more frantic network shot its arrows from every sort of transmitter to every

sort of receiver, and from every trans-ceiver back again. There was not a place in the world where

a picture-maker could not warm to life and intelligence, if its operator had any of either quality, if

Aunt Martha were not asleep, if one's mistress were not elsewhere, if the assis-tant buyer for

United Merchants were not busy on another of his channels. Or, more and more often, there were

the waterfall chimes of machines responding to machines, of systems reacting to controls, and

only ultimately of con-trols translating from human voice for their machines.

What a universe of chitterings, Laurent Michaelmas thought. What a cheeping basketry was

woven for the world. He thought of Domino, who had begun as a device for talking to his wife

without charge. It leaks, he thought wryly. But it doesn't matter if it leaks. The container is so

complex it enwraps its own drains. It leaks into itself.

He thought of Nils Hannes Limberg, whose clinic served the severely traumatized of half the

world, its free schedule quietly known to be adapted to ability to pay. Rather well known, as of

course it had to be. Nils Hannes Limberg, proprietor not only of a massive image of rectitude and

research, but also of the more spacious wing of his sana-torium, with its refurbishment and

dermal tissue and revital-ization of muscle tone in the great and public. A crusty old man in a

shabby suit, bluntly tolerating the gratitude in first wives of shipping cartel owners, grumpily

declaring: "I never watch it," when asked if he felt special pride in the long-running élan of Dusty

Haverman. "Warbirds of Time? A start of a series? Ah, he is the leading player in an

enter-tainment! No, I never realized that — on my tables, you know, they do not speak lines."

It was approximately ten minutes since Nils Hannes Limberg, who was a gaunt old man full of

liver spots and blue veins, had spoken to the Reuters man in whatever language was most

convenient for them. And now 2,000,000,000 waking people had had the opportunity to know what

he had said, with more due to awaken to it. No one knew how many computers knew what he had

said; no one knew how many microliths strained with it, how many teleprinters shook with it. Who

in his right mind would say that something which had spat through so many electron valves, had

shaken the hearts of so many junction-junction couplings, so many laser jewels, so many cans of

carbon fluids —so many lowly carbon granules, for that matter — was not a colossal factor in the

day?

Somewhere in those two billions, torture and ecstasy could be traced directly to those

particular vibrations of a speaker cone, to that special dance of electrons through focusing lens

and electrostat. Good spirits and bad had been let loose within the systems of those who had

heard the news and then left on previous errands, which were now done differ-ently from the way

they might have been. The prices of a thousand things went up; everyone's dollar shrank, but the

dollars of some were multiplied. Women cried, and intended loves went unconsummated.

Women smiled, and strangers met. Men thrilled, and who knows what happens when a man

thrills? Laurent Michaelmas looked out his window, with only a million people or so in his direct

line of vision, and the fine hairs were standing up on his arms.

He shook his head and turned back to his terminal. "Disregard all Norwood data beginning with

the Reuters item. Do you think Norwood is alive?"

"No. All hope of finding him, alive or dead, is irrational. Every study of the shuttle accident

concludes that the fuel explosion raised the temperature of the system well above the flash point

of all organic and most inorganic compon-ents. All studies indicate there was no warning before

the explosion. All studies indicate no object could have acceler-ated away from the explosion fast

enough to outrun it. All of this specifically agrees with UNAC's studies of the escape capsule's

acceleration capabilities. Finally, it agrees with my own evaluations for you at the time."

"Norwood became part of an expanding ball of high-temperature gases, correct?"

"Yes."

"So your present estimate that Norwood lives is based purely on the Reuters item."

"Right."

"Why?"

"Common sense."

"Reuters doesn't usually get its facts wrong and never lies. Dr. Limberg did make the

statement, and he can't afford to lie. Right?"

"Correct."

Laurent Michaelmas smiled fondly at the machine. The smile was gentle, and genuinely tender.

It was exactly like what can be seen on the faces of two very young children awakening with each

other in the morning, not yet out on the nursery floor and wanting the same thing.

"How do you envision Norwood's marvellous resurrection? What has happened to him?"

"I believe his trajectory in the capsule did end somewhere near Limberg's sanatorium. I

assume he was gravely injured, if it has taken him all these months to recover even at Dr.

Limberg's hands. Limberg's two prizes are after all for breakthroughs in controlled artificial cellular

reproduction and for theoretical work on cellular memory mechanisms. It wouldn't surprise me to

learn he practically had to grow Norwood a new body. That sort of reconstitution, based on

Limberg's publications over the years, is now nearly within reach of any properly managed

medical centre. I would expect Limberg himself to be able to do it now, given his facilities and a

patient in high popular esteem. His ego would rise to the occasion like a butterfly to the sun."

"Is Norwood still the same man?"

"Assuming his brain is undamaged, certainly."

"Perfectly capable of leading the Outer Planets expedition after all?"

"Capable, but not likely to. He has missed three months of the countdown. Major Papashvilly

must remain in com-mand, so I imagine Colonel Norwood cannot go at all. It would be against

Russian practice to promote their cos-monaut to the necessary higher rank until after his

success-ful completion of the mission."

"What if something happened to Papashvilly?"

"Essentially the same thing has happened vis-à-vis Nor-wood. UNAC would assign the next

back-up man, and ..."

Laurent Michaelmas grinned. "Horsefeathers."

There was a moment's pause, and the voice said slowly, consideredly: "You may be right. The

popular dynamic would very likely assure Norwood's re-appointment."

Michaelmas smiled coldly. He rubbed the top of his head. "Tell me, are you still confident that

no one had deduced our—ah—personal dynamic?"

"Perfectly confident." Domino was shocked at the sugges-tion. "That would require a

practically impossible order of integration. And I keep a running check. No one knows that you and

I run the world."

"Does anyone know the world is being run?"

"Now, that's another formulation. No one knows what's in the hearts of men. But if anyone's

thinking that way, it's never been communicated. Except, just possibly, face to face."

"Which is meaningless until concerted action results. And that would require communication,

and you'd pick it up. That's one comfort, anyway." He was again looking out at night-softened

Manhattan, which rose like a crystallo-grapher's dream of Atlantis out of a lighted haze. "Probably

meaningless," Michaelmas said softly.

There was another silence from the machine. "Tell me..."

"Anything."

"Why do you ask that in connection with your previous set of questions?"

Michaelmas's eyes twinkled as they often did when he found Domino trying to grapple with

intuition. But not all of his customary insouciance endured through his reply. "Because we have

just discovered that the very great Nils Hannes Limberg is a fraud and a henchman. That is a sad

and significant thing. And because Norwood was as dead as yesterday. He was a nice young

man with high, special-ized qualifications no higher than those of the man who replaced him, and

there was never anything secret or mar-vellous about him or you would have told me long ago. If

we could have saved him, we would have. But there's nothing either you or I can do about a stuck

valve over the Mediterranean, and frankly I'm just as glad there's some responsibility I don't have

to take. If we could have gotten him back at the time, I would have been delighted. But he had a

fatal accident, and the world has gone on."

Michaelmas was not smiling at all. "It's no longer Colonel Norwood's time. The dead must not

rise—they undermine everything their dying created. Resurrecting Norwood is an attempt to

cancel history. I can't allow that, any more than any other human being would. And so all of this is

a chal-lenge to me. I was concerned that it might be a deliberate trap."

He turned his face upwards. That brought stars and several planets into his line of vision.

"Something out there's unhappy with history. That means it's unhappy with what I've done.

Something out there is trying to change history. That means it's groping towards me."

Michaelmas scratched his head. "Of course, you say it doesn't know it's got one specific man

to contend with. It may think it only has some seven billion people to push around. But one of

these days, it'll realize. I'm afraid it's smarter than you and I."

With asperity, Domino said : "Would you like a critique of the nonsequential assumptions in

that set? As one example, you have no basis for that final evaluation. Your and my combined

intellectual resources—"

"Domino, never try to reason with a man who can see the blade swinging for his head." He

cocked that head again, Michaelmas did, and his wide, ugly face was quite elfin. "I'll have to think

of something. Afterwards, you can make common sense of it." He began to walk around, his

square torso tilted forward from his broad hips. He made funny, soft, explosive humming noises

with his mouth and throat, his cheeks throbbing, and the sound of a drum and recorder followed

wherever he strolled.

Two

"Well, I think I should be frightened," Michaelmas told Domino as he moved about the kitchen

premises preparing his evening meal. The chopped onions simmering in their wine sauce were

softening towards a nice degree of tender-ness, but the sauce itself was bubbling too urgently,

and might turn gluey. He picked up the pan and shook it gently while passing it back and forth six

inches above the flame. The fillet of beef was browning quite well in its own skillet, yielding

sensuously as he nudged it with his fork.

"You don't grow an established personality from scratch," Michaelmas said. "An artificial infant,

now ... why not? I'll give Limberg that; he could do it. Or he could grow a clone identical with an

adult Norwood. But he's never had occa-sion to get tissue from the original, has he? And there's

no way to create a grown man with thirty-odd years behind him. Oh, no. That I won't give him. And

I tell you he would have had to do it from scratch because Norwood never crashed anywhere near

that sanatorium. Strictly speaking, he never crashed at all — he vaporized. So Limberg would

have had to build this entire person by retrieving data alone. But I don't think there's any recording

system complete enough, or one with Norwood entered in it if there were."

"Norwood and Limberg never met. There is no record of any transmission of Norwood cell

samples to any deposi-tory. No present system will permit complete biological and experimental

reconstruction from data alone."

"And there you are," Michaelmas said. "Simplest thing in the world." He worked a dab of sauce

between thumb and forefinger and then tasted them with satisfaction. He set the pan down on the

shut-off burner, put a lid on it, and turned towards the table where the little machine lay with its

pilot lamps mostly quiescent but sparkling with reflected room light.

"You don't fake an astronaut," he said to it. "Even in this culture they're unique for the degree to

which their response characteristics are known and studied. Limberg wouldn't try to get away with

it. He's brought the real Colonel Norwood back to life. But he hasn't done it using any of the

techniques and discoveries he's announced over the years. Limberg's career, his public image,

everything — it's all reduced simply to something useful as a cover for the type of action he's

taken now. It really is all very clear, Domino, if you disregard that balderdash about Norwood's

surviving the explosion. Think about it, now."

He was patient and encouraging. In the same way, he had often led the tongue-tied and

confused through hun-dreds of vivacious interviews, making and wrecking policies and careers

before huge audiences.

The reply through the machine was equally patient but without forbearance:

"Doctor Limberg is a first-rate genius —"

Michaelmas smiled shyly and mercilessly but did not in-terrupt.

" — who could not possibly be living a double life. Even given a rate of progress so

phenomenal that he could de-velop his overt reputation and still secretly pursue some entirely

different line, there are insurmountable practical objections."

"Oh, yeah? Name some." The sauce hissed ebulliently as it made contact with the beef skillet.

A few dextrous turns of Michaelmas's fork enveloped the fillet in just properly glutin-ous flavouring,

and then he was able to place his dinner on its warmed, waiting dish and bring it to the place he

had laid in the dining aspect. He poured a glassful of wine that had been breathing in its wicker

server, and sat down to partake of his meal.

"One," Domino said. "He is a gruff saint, in the manner developed by many world intellectual

figures since the communications revolution. The more fiercely he objects to intrusions on his

elevated processes of thought and his working methods, the more persistently the news media

attempt to discover what he's doing now. One of the stan-dard methods of information tap is to

keep careful account of everything shipped to him. You'll recall this is how Science News Service

deduced his interest in plasmids from his purchase of olephages. As a direct result, several wise

investors in the appropriate manufacturing concerns were rewarded when Limberg made the

announcements leading to his earlier prize. Since then, naturally, there are scores of inferential

inventories being run on his purchases and wastage. His overt researches account for all of it."

"One of the inventories being yours." Michaelmas chuckled over his fork. "Go on."

"Two. All analyses of the genius personality, however it may be masked, show that this sort of

individual cannot be other-directed over any significant period of time. You're hypothesizing that

this excellent mind has been participating for years in a gross deception upon the world. This

cannot be true. If that had been his original purpose, he would have grown away from it and

rebelled catastrophically as his cover career began to assume genuine importance and direction.

You can't oppose a dynamic —and I shouldn't be quoting your own basics back to you," Domino

chided, and then went on remorselessly:

"And exactly so, if he'd been approached recently for the same purpose, he would have

refused. He would have died —more meaningfully, he would have undergone any form of

emotional or physical pain—rather than submit. The genius mind is inevitably and fluently

egocentric. Any attempt to tamper with its plans for itself—well, putting it more con-ventionally,

any attempt to tamper with its compulsive career—would be equivalent to a threat of extinction.

That would be unacceptable."

Michaelmas was smiling in approval through the march-ing words, and pouring himself another

glass of wine. "Quite right. Now let's just assume that Herr Doktor Professor N. Hannes Limberg,

life scientist, is a merely smart man, with a good library and access to a service that can supply a

technique for making people."

There was a perceptible pause. With benevolent interest, Michaelmas watched the not quite

random pattern of rip-pling lights on the ostensible machine's surface. Behind him, the apartment

services were washing and storing his kitchen-ware. There was the usual music, faint in view of

the enter-tainment centre's awareness, through Domino, that there was a discussion going on. It

had all the ingredients of a most pleasant evening, early poetry forgotten.

"Hmm," Domino said. "Assuming you're aware of the detail discontinuities in your exact

statement and were simply leap-frogging them . . . Well, yes, a competent actor with the proper

vocabulary and reference library could live an imitation of genius. And a man supplied with a

full-blown technique and the necessary instruments needs no prototype research or component

purchases."

There was another pause, and Domino went on with obvious reluctance to voice the obvious.

"However, there has to be a pre-existing body of knowl-edge to supply the library, the

equipment, and the un-detected system for delivering these things. Practically, such an

armamentarium could arise only from a fully developed society that has been in existence at least

since Limberg's undergraduate days. No such society exists on Earth. The entire Solar System is

clearly devoid of other intelligent life. Therefore, no such society exists within the ken of the human

race."

"But perhaps not beyond the reach of its predictable in-tentions," Michaelmas said. "Well, I

assume you've been screening contract offers in connection with the Norwood item?"

"Yes. You've had a number of calls from various networks and syndicates. I've sold the byline

prose rights. I'm holding three spoken-word offers for your decision. The remainder were outside

your standards."

"Sign me for the one that offers me the most latitude for the money. I don't want someone

thinking he's brought the right to control my movements. And tap into the UNAC management

dynamic—edit a couple of inter-office memos as they go by. Stir up some generalized concern

over Papashvilly's health and safety. Where is he, by the way?"

"Star Control. He's asleep, or at least his phone hasn't been in use lately and his room

services are drawing mini-mum power but showing some human-equivalent consump-tion.

UNAC's apparently decided not to disturb him unless they have to."

"Are you saying the electronic configuration of his room is exactly the same as on previous

occasions when you've known him to be in it asleep?"

"Yes. Yes, of course. He's in there, and he's sleeping."

"Thank you. I want us to always be exact with each other on points like that. Limberg's masters

have taken a magni-ficent stride, but I don't see why my admiration has to blind me. I'm not Fate,

after all."

Three

He went down through the building security systems and to the taxi dock. The dock was ribbed

in pale brownish concrete, lit by blue overheads. Technically, the air was totally self-contained,

screened, and filtered. But the quality was not to apartment standards; the dock represented a

large, unbroken volume that had needed more ducts and fans than the construction budget could

reasonably allow. There was a sense of echoing desolation, and of distant hot winds.

He saw the taxi stopped at the portal. Because the driver had his eyes on him, he actually took

out his phone and established ID between the cab, himself, and the building. Putting the phone

away, he shook his head. "We ought to be able to do better than this," he said to Domino.

"One step at a time," his companion replied. "We do what we can with the projects we can find

to push. Do you re-member what this neighbourhood used to be like?"

"Livelier," Michaelmas said with a trace of wistfulness.

The driver recognized him on the way out to the airport and said : "S'pose you're on your way

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MichaelmasByAlgisBudrysScannedbyBW-SciFiToSydneyColeman,myfriendandthisbook'sfriendFirstpublishedinGreatBritainbyVictorGollanczLtd1977FirstissuedinFontanaBooks1979Copyright©AlgisBudrys1977MadeandprintedinGreatBritainbyWilliamCollinsSons&CoLtd,GlasgowCONDITIONSOFSALEThisbookissoldsubjecttotheconditio...

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Algis Budrys - Michaelmas

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