The Pollinators of Eden (16 page)

In her madness she retained her methodology, carefully noting that the attack commenced at one-fifteen. Here was empirical proof that the boy neither knew nor shared her longings. He was in the greenhouse, and she was in the garden.

Listening to the tulips hum, chatter, and gurgle around her, the pangs subsided, and in her thoughts she could consider Hal Polino with a widening field of vision. Basically, there was little wrong with the boy apart from his ancestry. Latin volatility took the weights from his mind and made it difficult for him to concentrate on his chosen field. Socially, this defect was partly an asset, since it permitted him a range of conversation that could be engrossing and even charming. (Charm was another of his defects.) He could shift from Byzantine art to the mathematics of music and point relationships between the rococo paintings of Rubens and the poetry of John Dryden. In a way, he was a latter-day Leonardo da Vinci; but in the modern world of specialists there was simply no market for a generalist.

It was as a generalist—she tried to be frank with herself—that he offended her most. As a teacher, it was her axiom and policy to read ahead of her students; one should always be prepared to answer a student’s questions promptly and accurately. Vis-a-vis Hal, she had zipped through Shakespeare to footnote her student’s frequent quotes, but Shakespeare had a charm. Hefner, McLuhan, and Leary frankly repelled her. To read ahead of Polino demanded first a knowledge of the direction he was taking, and the agility to leap ahead of him in that direction, the speed of a sprint reader and the endurance of a long-distance reader. He ate books like slugs on Carston 6 ate foliage, and he pounced on ideas like a sex maniac.

On Wednesday the sirocco struck at two-thirty, and she fled to the library to get completely outside Hal’s influence. Once safe, she constructed a graph of her emotions and found, to her alarm, that on the morning of March 19 she would peak at one-forty-five a.m. Her date with Hal was on the evening of the eighteenth. Bars in Southern California closed at one a.m. Allowing half an hour to finish drinks and stow musical instruments, she and Hal would be leaving the Mexicali at one-thirty a.m., fifteen minutes before her wave crested. Morning discount rates at Fresno motels went into effect at two a.m. At her period of highest receptivity, Hal would have her trapped between closing time and motel time.

Looking down at the graph paper, Freda felt tiny and alone. Once she had thought Paul needed her on Flora; now she knew she needed Paul on earth. There was no one she could turn to. With her father dead and her mother in Tijuana, only Hans Clayborg could have helped; but Hans was in Santa Barbara, too busy solving God’s problems to work on hers. There was one other man whose sympathy and support she could count on to help her through this crisis, but he was Hal Polino, who was the problem.

She had known from childhood, with a knowledge since reinforced by analysts, that she was emotionally unstable, a woman living on the edge of a volcano. Hal Polino was less the cause than the catalyst of the cataclysm which threatened her, but as such he could still be catastrophic. With a Paul Theaston to steady her, she could walk the thin edge for a lifetime. But a Mexican hat dance with Hal Polino around the volcano’s rim could be a one-and-a-two-and—a catapult into the chasm.

She couldn’t keep moving Polino around like a pawn, particularly since she had cosigned the Linguistics letter, which was evidence she trusted his judgment. Her other alternative was to move herself.

Suddenly, with the clarity of religious revelation, her problem was solved.

Personnel of the Charlie Section went in quarantine preparatory to hibernation in early April, readying for the May liftoff for Flora. Paul had asked her to relieve him on Tropica. All she had to do was to put her name on the list. As department head, her request would be honored automatically.

She had until the morning of the nineteenth before her test with Hal. If she failed, she thought, what she learned from Polino, she could teach Paul. Distaste for the idea convinced her the winds were northerly, and she returned to the greenhouse.

Doctor Gaynor was unable to see her on Thursday morning, but his secretary arranged a consultation for six minutes between 3:38 and 3:44 p.m. Mrs. Weatherwax spoke so curtly that Freda told her that three minutes would be all the time she needed, that Doctor Gaynor could have three minutes back.

Freda made a point of arriving promptly at 3:37½.

She regretted that she had to make even a routine request from the Executive. She had taught Polino methodology, but he had taught her attitudes. His vile but apt term for administrators stuck in her mind. He was subversive. If she had let him remain with Paul, he would have inveigled her fiancé to join him in some cantina of Old Town.

Doctor Gaynor was bland and affable when he rose to greet her, waving her to a seat before the desk—a straight-backed, armless chair. The upholstered chairs were exiled to far corners of the room.

As briefly and as clearly as she had delivered the petition to the Heyburn Committee, she entered her request for space duty, citing Paul’s need for a cystologist on Tropica, the apparent traces of hemoglobin in the sap of the orchids, and the mystery of the invisible pollinators. “Paul sent the tulips,” she added, “to give me working specimens on earth in order to formulate a hypothesis on the methods of pollination used by the orchids.”

“Ah, I see. So, that must account for your, er, rather unusual correspondence with Linguistics. By the way, how’s the psychiatric watch coming on young Polino? Any remission, or further disintegration?”

She had completely forgotten the “cover” she was to put on Hal, but she said, conversationally, “It was discontinued because he did such a splendid job while we were in Washington presenting your petition. His methodology is so improved that he can continue the Caron-tulip culture alone during my absence.”

“I’m having trouble with Finance,” he said. “Your petition for the botanical station made waves. Navy gave those ‘facts-for-a-buck’ figures on Flora to Finance, and Finance chewed out Agriculture. Ag passed word for me not to rock the boat, finance-wise, so I’m lopping Tropica from Flora’s Charlie Section as part of my overall economy drive. I ran a tab on Paul’s facts, and his fact returns are three dollars per unit on the Able briefing. Of course, Paul’s an excellent research man, and I expect him to lower that average on the Baker briefing.”

“Need I point out, Doctor Gaynor, that some facts are worth more than others. Besides, my research would not be restricted to Tropica. If I can detect hemoglobin, or an equivalent in sap, my discovery would be of paramount importance to Doctor Clayborg.”

“Oh, him. I was under the impression that he was more concerned with energy reserves in the overall universe.”

“Hemoglobin is a form of that reserve, sir,” Freda said, thinking that if Gaynor were considered with detachment and objectivity, he would emerge as an idiot. Was there such a thing as a “special” universe?

“Oh, yes. Of course… Doctor Caron, if you go to Flora, Budget might consider it an act of defiance on my part. Senate might think I was sending you to Siberia because your petition failed, which is an admission on the part of an administrator that he can’t season his own managerial timber.”

“This is a
research
project, Doctor.”

“Yes, that’s correct.” He nodded sagely. “Personally I have confidence in your professional abilities, Doctor Caron, particularly in research, but, frankly”—he smiled—“you’ve become controversial. We’d better let that ninth wave pass, and try our surfboards in calmer water.”

“To the extent I’m controversial, Doctor Gaynor, you and Doctor Berkeley share in the controversy. I was not alone before the Senate Committee.”

He tilted back in the swivel chair, tilted his head further still, folded his hands across his chest, blinked his eyes three times, and said, “Rather I had in mind, Doctor Caron, your odd request to the Linguistics Bureau.”

“Oh, fiddlesticks!” she exploded. “That was pure research into possibilities.”

“Still, I thought you might have become, er, emotionally—is that the word?—involved with the flowers, and, perhaps, had worked with undue dedication to the point of nervous strain.”

“Absolutely not! On the contrary…” A covert glance at her watch showed 3:44, one minute to sirocco time, and Freda felt a stab of panic. Even if she could stomach the platinumed fop, this was neither the place nor the time for unethical persuasion. “… my conversations with the tulips are tranquilizing.”

Gaynor’s eyebrows seemed to leap a full quarter inch above his eyesockets. “Perhaps, Doctor Caron, you really do need a vacation.”

She was rising, and the wind was rising. “Oh, don’t take me literally, take me physically, I mean figuratively. Good morning, Doctor Gaynor.”

“Good afternoon, Doctor Caron.”

Freda virtually sprinted to the ladies’ lounge and sat down to gather her wits in man-free privacy, where the winds might blow freely. She had truly muffed the request. When the sirocco had blown past, she rose and from habit checked the bulletin: “If Francine didn’t quit, shed be run over by an automobile, chasing it… Doctor Hector was levering Suzuki over the final exams so skillfully that the Japanese girl had completely lost her bias to Caucasians.” The ordinary chitchat, witty, allusive, and highly informative. She was almost turning away when her eyes fell on a familiar scrawl at the foot of the sheet, in handwriting so small she had to stoop to read: “Freda, beware the ides of March… A Friend.”

This time the oracle had erred with her prophecy! Violating the cardinal rule of prophets, she had been too specific. It wasn’t the fifteenth of March Freda feared; it was 1:45 a.m., Sunday, March 19.

On Friday she was deliberately so peevish and irritable with Hal Polino that he left early for his recording date in Los Angeles. She got him out of the greenhouse before five, before the sirocco blew in.

Saturday was clear and warm. With Hal and the gardeners off the base, Freda gathered her air mattress, sun lotion, and eyeshade and went to the tulip beds after lunch. Bikinied to the sunlight, she lay on the mat and listened to the flowers coo and whistle contentedly in the dry heat. Serenity lay all around her. There was even a quietness inside her, for she was resigned to her fate now. Yet, something seemed missing. With no Hal Polino around hurling curses at the “little brutes,” the “floral computer,” the “yellow peril,” the peace lacked punch.

Perhaps, she mused, her glandular reaction was prompted by a fondness for the boy, not her fondness by her glandular reaction. He could never approach Paul in precision of thinking or selectivity of emotional response—she had never heard Paul sing a Christmas carol—but she didn’t have to rob Polino to praise Paul. The two men were merely different but equal, allowing for Hal’s lower place. Paul was a bridge-of-the-battleship man. Hal was a stern-of-the-canoe man. Paul would be best for the long haul, the sustained effort; Hal would be good for the short stroke, the explosive effort.

It was harder to keep one’s distance from a man in a canoe. Her position and age meant little to Hal. He was not impressed by one’s status, and he wasn’t that much younger. In worldly matters, he was doubtless an octogenarian in contrast to both Paul and her. Probably he was masterful, considerate, and mature enough to be gentle with his strength. Italians were supposed to have a delicate touch in those areas. That sign on the washroom wall, “Latins are lousy lovers,” had been nothing more than a female trick to divert the other girls from a find.

Freda adjusted the shade more firmly to her eyes and turned her midriff to the sun, arching her spine away from the heat of the exposed mattress to squirm back to her cool spot. She enjoyed the sensuality of her own rippling muscles as she tensed her buttocks and spread-eagled, yielding her inner thighs to the sun. Nearby, tulips clucked disapprovingly, and she smiled to herself at their modesty.

She had been unkind to Hal yesterday. Henceforward she resolved to be less shrewish with the lad. Sins of one’s mother should not be visited onto other mother’s sons. It was more than unkindness, it was an injustice for her to continue to punish a young man because a little girl, whom Freda could hardly remember, had once heard her father say to her mother, “You Mexican whore!”

“Doctor Caron, may I introduce Mr. Peter Henley?”

Freda flicked her sunshade to her forehead, snapped her knees together, and propped to a sitting position in one motion. Hal and a stranger stood almost over her. No doubt they had been admiring her gymnastics. “I thought you were in Los Angeles!”

“I finished the session this morning. Mr. Henley’s from Australia—on a fellowship to the Bureau of Linguistics.”

“Don’t stand there gaping, Hal! Bring me my smock.”

“But, Freda, on some beaches you’d be well dressed.”

“I’m not on a beach, and get my smock!”

Hal turned and fled to the greenhouse, leaving the strange young man to leer. Peter Henley looked like something from Australia, she thought—from the Outback. Tall and slender, his blond hair flared at the sides and lay flat on the top. A sharp chin gave his head the outline of a V broken by a flap of ears. His nose was pointed, tilted, and balanced by eyes so large and blue they could have been borrowed from some Antipodean marsupial cut off from the mainstream of evolution. His Adam’s apple was bobbing slowly up and down as he kept swallowing, and Freda thought, even his neck is ogling me. “I’m sorry, Mr. Henley,” she said, “but I thought I was alone in the garden. I must have embarrassed you.”

“No, ma’am. On the beaches of Sweden, the girls wear nothing. Even so, I dare say they can’t quite compare with Fresno.”

“What may I do for you?” she snapped, and somehow his appearance made her question seem suggestive.

“I came from the Bureau of Linguistics, though in no official capacity. I’m on my vac.”

“Your vac?”

“Vacation, ma’am.”

Hal was back, holding her smock, which she eased into quickly and buttoned rapidly, trying to maintain polite conversation. “Fresno in March is a strange place for a vacation. It’s like Dubuque in August.”