Russian Spring (12 page)

True, reconciliation of legal systems and modes of economic organization, as well as certain defense matters, present serious problems. True too that the Soviet Union, as the largest independent nation in the world, with the largest population on the European continent, not to mention the most powerful military forces, can hardly be expected to simply apply for membership under the present structure like a second-rate power.

But despite the tentative nature of the feelers, it is clear that Britain and France, not to mention the many other member states they seem to be representing, have as strong a self-interest in Soviet membership as we do, and may very well be willing to negotiate the changes in the Common European constitution and legal systems needed to meet our requirements for entry.

For as things stand now, neither Britain nor France, indeed not even the two of them together, can serve as a political counterbalance to German economic power. Only the entry of the Soviet Union, with a population triple that of Germany, with a GNP almost as large, with its leadership in space, with the prestige of its Red Army, can prevent Common Europe from inevitably evolving into a de facto Greater German Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Only a Common Europe that includes the Soviet Union can long remain a true fraternal house of equals.

—
Pravda

GAINES TESTS DOMESTIC MARKET

After considerable success with consumer acceptance of the product in the pilot marketing study in Haiti, the Gaines Company has announced
that it will begin marketing Gaines People Chow domestically. Sales of the nutritionally balanced basic foodstuff, manufactured from soy flour, linseed oil, and a proprietary secret recipe of vitamins, minerals, and artificial flavorings, will at least at first be institutional. Contracts have already been signed with prison systems in Arkansas and Rhode Island.

People Chow will provide nutritionally balanced meals at a small fraction of the cost of conventional prison catering programs, and Gaines hopes to penetrate this market rapidly.

Direct consumer sales, at least for now, will be limited to selected Latin American countries, where famine situations can be counted upon to overcome problems with taste and texture, which do not affect the nutritional content.

Meanwhile, Gaines is experimenting with new flavor formulas and packaging concepts to gain entry to the domestic consumer market, including sugar coating, and synthetic chili gravy.

—
U.S. News & World Report

IV

Pierre Glautier had an apartment on Rue St.-Jacques in the heart of St.-Germain, he had family money from something to do with meat packing about which he preferred not to speak, he was darkly handsome with long black hair and patrician features, he was a good lover, as a journalist he had access to a lot of good parties, and he and Sonya Ivanovna Gagarin had an arrangement.

They had met at a party in Monaco, ended up in bed together about two hours later, shared a room in Tignes for a skiing weekend, hosted each other in Brussels and Paris, all without ever falling into anything like love or a serious relationship, and now they were friends and occasional bedmates.

Staying with Pierre was like sharing an apartment with a lover and a good girl friend at the same time, for in his way, Pierre was both to Sonya. They could escort each other to parties, leave with others if they felt like it, and compare erotic notes afterward.

Several of her circle of Red Menace girl friends, like Tanya and Lenya and Katrinka, had similar arrangements with understanding gay men in Paris or Munich or London who found it mutually convenient, but it seemed to Sonya that this was much better. For one thing, Pierre was a good lover and always willing if no one else
interesting showed up, and for another, she didn’t end up being dragged to a lot of clubs and parties where all the men were only interested in each other.

Sonya took a cab to the apartment, was let in by the concierge, with whom Pierre had left a set of keys, and didn’t see him until he returned somewhat bleary-eyed but not without a cold bottle of champagne at 11:00 the next morning.

“Have a good time last night?” Sonya said after the quick kiss hello in the entranceway.

Pierre shrugged, waved his raised hands somewhat deprecatingly as he marched into the kitchen. “A pleasant enough little Hungarian,” he said airily as he peeled the tinfoil from the champagne bottle. He grinned at Sonya as he popped the cork and poured the champagne into tulip glasses. “
This
, however,” he said, “is Moët & Chandon Brut, ma petite.”

They clinked glasses, walked around the breakfast bar and into the rather bizarre living room. There was no real furniture as such and no floor in a conventional sense either. A conversation pit, a raised dais full of electronic equipment, toadstool-shaped tables, bookcases, cabinets, lamps, all seemed to flow and grow out of each other in organic curves and soft carpeting. A big picture window looked out on an inner courtyard, and two walls were mirrored, giving the place a strange feeling of boundlessness. It was an ideal venue for parties, even orgies, and it had seen plenty of both, at least to hear Pierre tell it.

“So, what are your plans for the big vacation?” Pierre said, plopping himself down in the padded conversation pit.

“I am here, am I not?” Sonya said, sitting down beside him, but well outside his body-space.

“You plan to spend two weeks in Paris with me?” Pierre said dubiously, or perhaps nervously, for the truth of it was that they had never spent more than four days at a time together.

“You are not flattered?” Sonya said with wide-eyed innocence.

“Ah, well, but of course I am
flattered
,” Pierre stammered uneasily. “Mais, this I had not exactly expected or planned for, chérie, I mean, since you have not had two whole weeks of freedom for a year and will not again for another, I had assumed you would wish to travel about, have adventures, meet new people, not that I am not pleased, you understand, but I had thought, I mean, I am not the sort to, comprends . . .”

“Oh, Pierre, you are so transparent!” Sonya said as she burst out laughing. “Who is she? When does she arrive?”

“In five days,” Pierre said, grinning with relief.

“And what does she have that I do not?” Sonya demanded good-naturedly.

Pierre took a sip of champagne. “You are not going to believe this,” he said.

“Coming from you, I will believe anything.”

Pierre leaned forward, licked his lips, and smiled dreamily. “She is a porn star from London!”

“A
porn star?
”

“Well, peut-être, perhaps not quite a
star
as yet, I met her last month when I was doing that piece on the made-to-order underground-sex-disc business in England, and some of her footage was quite incredible, what she can do with her mouth and a few simple props, oo la la, and—”

“And you persuaded her that with your connections you just might be able to break her into real films in Paris.”

Pierre laughed. “You are right, ma petite, to
you
, I
am
transparent, but to
her
, well . . .”

“It is obviously necessary for her to come to Paris and give a private demonstration of her talents so that perhaps you will write a feature story on her for
Actuel
. . . .”

“Actually, I said
Paris Match
or peut-être
Spiegel
,” Pierre said. He shrugged. “It’s not as if I have never sold anything there. . . .”

“What a creature you are, Pierre Glautier!” Sonya exclaimed, toasting him with her champagne glass.

“You are not angry with me, then?”

“Don’t be silly,” Sonya told him. “I was only playing with you. Of course you were right, I do not wish to spend my whole two weeks with you in Paris. A few days, a few parties—”

“I go to three in the next four days—”

“—and then off to who knows where with whoever I meet.”

“That’s my Sonya!” Pierre said happily, obviously mightily relieved. “I promise I will do my best to help you find someone interesting, an Englishman perhaps—”

“Too obsessed with boring fetishes!”

“An Italian?”

“Hopeless phallocrats!”

“A rich German?”

“Please!”

“Ah , yes, I know you Russians, you collect nationalities! You would prefer one you have never had before. . . . A Romanian, maybe?”

“I had one in Vienna, like a cross between an Austrian and an Italian.”

“An Israeli?”

“In Nice.”

“Dutchman?”

“I’ve been to Amsterdam three times.”

“Irish?”

“Madrid.”

“Spaniard?”

“Back home in Brussels.”

“Japanese?”

“Once in Rome, and never again, thank you!”

“You are not making this easy,” Pierre complained. “What nationalities
do
you need to complete your collection?”

“Albanian, Cuban, Afrikaner, Chinese . . . ” Sonya said with a grin, ticking them off on her fingers.

“Be reasonable!”

“Maltese, New Zealander, Andorran . . .”

“
Andorran!
”

“According to my latest information, there are 180 member states in the United Nations, and this does not include the constituent republics and autonomous regions of the Soviet Union or the states of India,” Sonya told him. “I have experienced a mere 21 nationalities, which leaves me 159 to go at minimum, so surely the odds are on my side in such a cosmopolitan city as Paris, and with Pierre Glautier as my spirit guide, n’est-ce pas!”

Pierre laughed. “I’ll do my best,” he said, sidling closer to her. “In the meantime, how about a Frenchman to tide you over?”

“A Frenchman?” Sonya exclaimed with a giggle. “But they all think they are God’s gift to women!”

“But of course we are,” Pierre said, flinging himself upon her. “On the other hand, I would be the last to deny that the reverse is equally true!”

To an American space cadet who had seen
NASA
headquarters in Houston, the Paris headquarters of the European Space Agency was rather underwhelming. Tucked away on a little side street off the Avenue de Suffren close by the École Militaire and the grandiose curving sweep of the
UNESCO
building, it was a low, dingy-white institutional-modern building surrounded by larger and older and richer-looking apartment houses, with no unobstructed view of anything. Were it not for the national flags festooning the plain façade above the entrance, it could easily enough have passed for a medium-sized high school in the San Fernando Valley.

Indeed, a Valley high school would have had its own parking lot; here, however, André Deutcher was constrained to park on the street.

Once inside, they took an elevator to the third floor, where André ushered Jerry into a windowless conference room where three men were sitting around a black steel table. One wall was a big video screen and the others were adorned with big full-color blowups of the Hermes space shuttle, the Earth as seen from low orbit, and a Super-Ariane booster blasting off from a launching pad in Kourou.

The three of them stood up as Jerry and André entered, and offered their hands in turn as André introduced them. Nicola Brandusi was a tall, dark Italian in an elegant light tan suit. Ian Bannister was a rumpled and slightly overweight Englishman. Dominique Fabre, like André, was a Frenchman, but darker, with a hint of Arabic ancestry.

Fabre was introduced as the executive in charge of something called “Project Icarus,” Bannister was the hands-on project manager of the same thing, and Brandusi was from the personnel department. All of them spoke good English, which, Jerry was assured, was the working language of
ESA
when it came down to actual international engineering work forces.

“And how have you been enjoying Paris, Mr. Reed?” Fabre said when they were all seated. “André tells me this is your first visit. I hope he’s been showing you a good time.”

Jerry smiled at him. “Pas problem,” he said, essaying one of the handful of French phrases he had picked up from Nicole Lafage. Fabre smiled back. André chuckled.

“Shall we get down to business, gentlemen?” Bannister said.

“By all means, Ian,” said Fabre. “You are more or less familiar with the Daedalus, Mr. Reed?”

Jerry nodded. “I’ve read the literature and I’ve seen the film at Parc de la Villette,” he said, wondering just whose idea it had
really
been for Nicole to take him there yesterday.

“It’s the next giant step into space, Jerry—if I may Jerry you, Jerry—so to speak,” Bannister said. “Not as glamorous as the Russian Mars mission, maybe, but in the end much more important. As things stand now, the only way to get people up out of the gravity well is
still
atop great big bloody primitive rockets, which, runway reentry vehicles or no, still means huge expensive launch complexes and pathetically damn few of them. But with the Daedalus, we’ll be able to fly directly into orbit from any major airport in the world. . . .”

“Commercial space travel will finally become a reality, at least for those who can afford it,” Fabre said. “The problem, of course, is that there’s no place to go that makes economic sense. . . .”

“We’ve had the bloody engine design for decades and the airframe is just a matter of materials and engineering,” Bannister said in a rather exasperated tone of voice. “We’ll be able to roll out a prototype in less than two years.”

“But we can’t get the financing to go into production, Jerry,” André Deutcher said. “The Common European Parliament has authorized three Daedaluses as a matter of prestige, but they’ll have to be configured primarily as satellite launchers, which is a total waste, and with a production run like that, they’ll be ridiculously expensive.”

“Makes no sense,” Bannister said. “Not when we could produce them for 30 percent of the unit cost on a production line, like airliners.”

“Well, why not?” Jerry said. “Surely there’s a market for a plane like that!”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” said Bannister. “But all the bankers see is the cost per passenger mile. They just laugh at us, look what a disaster the Concorde was, they say. Three times as fast as the 747, but a complete commercial flop nevertheless.”