The Weathermakers (1967) (15 page)

Ted looked up at the Mongol. “You’re right, Tuli. He needs the . . .” His voice trailed off, and he frowned with concentration.

Finally, Ted said, “Suppose I went to Rossman and offered to pool forces with him?”

“What?”

“Okay, I know it sounds kinky, but listen. He wants the glory, but he needs the forecasts. We want to get the job done, but we need his permission. Let’s get together on it!”

“He’d laugh in your face,” I said.

“Would he? Would he pass up the chance to grab the glory . . . and have somebody to dump the blame on if things go wrong?”

“It’s crazy,” I said.

Tuli said, “If it were someone else, Dr. Rossman might be tempted to try it. But not with you, Ted.”

“Do you realize what you’re saying, Ted?” Barney asked, wide-eyed.

“Sure.”

“Dr. Rossman would never let anyone outside the Climatology Division assist him. Even if he
wanted
to work with you, it would have to be under his control.”

Ted shrugged. “Then I’ll ask him to take me back into the Division.”

“You’ll
what?”
I screamed. “Quit the Lab? You can’t! This outfit was built for you, you can’t just pack up and leave. It’s . . . it’s . . . treason, that’s what it would be!”

“You’re making money out of the Lab,” he answered. “You’ll still have the long-range forecasts and a topnotch technical staff.”

“But you can’t just pull out!”

“You don’t own me, friend.”

“But don’t you have any sense of responsibility? Or gratitude? Or anything?”

His jaw settled ominously. “Listen. I don’t have a few million bucks to play with, or an ancestral manor, or a dozen different businesses to dabble in. All I’ve got is weather control. We started this Lab to make weather control work. If I’ve got to leave the Lab to get weather control, I’ll leave it. If I have to walk off the edge of this roof to get weather control, I’ll do that too! Don’t talk about responsibility or gratitude, buddy. I’ve made this Lab a money-making proposition. I’ve pulled your old man’s dredges out of trouble. Now count your money and let me do the work I have to do.”

He stormed past me and went downstairs, leaving me trembling with helpless fury.

I didn’t see Ted again for a week. And when I did, it was only for a brief phone call one evening at my hotel room.

“Rossman gave in. I’m starting at Climatology tomorrow morning. I’m here at the Lab to pick up my junk . . . be here an hour or so, if you want to talk to me.”

I punched the phone’s “off” switch so hard it jammed shut.

From most points of view, Aeolus seemed almost unchanged. Tuli left with Ted, of course. He was very apologetic about it, in his Oriental way. But he went. So did a few other technical people.

I sat in the office and brooded while the staff ran things. The long-range forecasts were going smoothly and our work on drought control was being written into a series of reports for our customers. The only work that stopped was the preparations for the actual drought modifications.

I stayed at Aeolus for nearly a month. Barney called once or twice, but it was always very brief. Too busy working on the drought modifications, she said.

Two weeks after Ted left, we had a sharp thunderstorm that dropped nearly two inches of rain into the vanishing reservoirs. A few days later it drizzled for nearly thirty-six hours straight. Nothing spectacular, but everyone was grateful for it. Finally one morning late in September it clouded over and really poured rain, steadily, all day. Children ran home from school through puddles, splashing and sloshing in their yellow slickers and boots. People gathered at office window’s to watch it, grinning. Grown men and women dug out old umbrellas and overshoes and actually went for walks in the first prolonged rain of the year.

I couldn’t stand it any more. I bolted out of the office, drove through the rainy streets to the hotel, and started packing. I was finished with Ted and Barney and the whole idea of weather control. I was going back to Hawaii.

I
THREW
things blindly into my travel bag while the rain streamed down the window of my room. Clothes, shoes, shaving gear, everything stuffed in as fast as I could pull it from drawers and shelves.

The door buzzer sounded. “It’s open!” I yelled.

Barney stepped in. “Jerry, isn’t it wonderful! The rain . . .”

She stopped when she saw what I was doing. She stood by the doorway in a dripping raincape and pushed a lock of glistening hair back away from her face.

“You’re leaving?”

“Yes,” I said, still packing.

“Because of Ted.”

“Right again.”

I walked into the bathroom to check the medicine cabinet. Everything was cleared out.

“When are you going?”

“On the first flyable machine that’s heading for Hawaii.”

Barney let the cape slip off her shoulders and drop on the chair by the door.

“I suppose I don’t blame you,” she said.

“That’s generous.”

“Jerry, don’t be sarcastic.”

“Why not? I thought you like guys who are sarcastic, and tough, and throw temper tantrums.”

“I don’t like people who run away.”

I slammed the travel bag shut. “What do you expect me to do? Sit at my desk and count money while you and Ted soar on to new heights of scientific marvels? What’s left for me to do around here? Nothing. Ted’s got what he wants and you’ve got what you want. So I’ll go back home and try to forget the whole mess.”

“What do you mean, I’ve got what I want?”

“Ted’s back with you, isn’t he? You’re together every day now; working side by side for sweet science. Just the two of you, with your Asiatic sidekick. The little rich boy from the islands has outlived his usefulness.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I saved his neck when he was ready to throw in the towel. Now he doesn’t need me any more. And as long as he’s with you, you don’t need me any more either. So why should I hang around? Just to watch his rain fall?”

“If that’s true, Jerry,” she said, “then why did I come here?”

I didn’t have an answer for that one.

“If you can talk quietly for a few minutes,” she said, going to the sofa, “perhaps I can show you how wrong you are.”

“I’m wrong?”

“Ted’s an unforgivable lout,” she said, “there’s no argument about that. The way he treated you was shameful. But if you’ll listen to me for a minute, I think you’ll see why he’s the way he is.”

“I don’t want any amateur psychoanalysis of the young genius,” I snapped.

“No, you’d rather run away home and hide behind your father I”

Her voice was suddenly sharp with real anger; I had never seen her angry before.

“Ted treated you horribly, there’s no excuse for it. I expected you to be hurt and mad at him. But I didn’t think you’d be so sorry for yourself.”

“All right,” I said. “Just why did you come?”

“Because Ted owes you an apology, but he’ll never make it himself. So I thought I should.”

“As his chosen representative?”

“You’re being sarcastic again,” she said.

I went over and sat beside her.

Barney said, “Ted operates in a world of his own. I’ve spent hours shouting at him about the way he treated you, but it makes no impression on him. He couldn’t apologize even if he wanted to; he’s much too stubborn for it. And besides, he’s convinced that he’s done the best thing . . .”

“The best thing?”

“He wants to stop the drought. Going back to Climatology was the only way to do it. Do you think he enjoyed it? Have you any idea of what it took for him to ask Dr. Rossman to take him back again? To offer to take all the responsibility if the experiments fail, but stay out of the limelight if they work? I couldn’t do that; none of us could. But Ted did. Without flinching.”

“He’s a madman,” I muttered.

“He’s breaking the drought, no matter who gets the eventual credit for it. And he’s certain that he did the right thing. He thinks that if you’re angry, it’s because you’re stubborn and shortsighted.”

“That’s a very convenient way to look at it.”

“It’s not rationalization, Jerry. He really believes it. Nothing’s more important to Ted than getting the job done—and done right. Anything that stands in his way. . . he has no patience for.”

I looked past Barney’s face to the dripping window. “I guess he’s got the job done, all right.”

She seemed to relax a little. “I wanted to come see you sooner, but we’ve been literally locked in the building for the past week and a half. It’s been an impossible time. You know what a slave driver he is.”

I had to smile. “You do look tired.”

She nodded.

“Would you like some dinner?”

“Yes, that would be fine.”

“I’ll have it sent up.”

I punched out a selection on the menu dial and within a few minutes the dinner was sliding out of the wall receptacle and onto the table. I rolled the table to the sofa. “Are you still going to leave?” Barney asked as we ate.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

And I wish you meant that
, I said to myself.

After we finished, and I was fitting the dinner tray back into the wall receptacle, she asked again:

“Jerry, are you going to leave or stick it out?”

I watched the tray slide into the wall slot, taking the dishes with it.

“Does it make any difference?” I asked.

“Certainly it does.”

“Why?”

“We need you, Jerry. Ted needs you; he needs all of us, all the people he can trust. Now more than ever.”

“It’s for Ted, then.”

“And for me too, Jerry. I don’t want you to leave. I told you that.”

“Yes, I know you told me.”

She stepped closer to me. “I mean it Jerry. Please don’t leave.”

I pulled her to me and kissed her. We held each other for a moment and then, very gently, she moved away.

“Jerry, it used to be that I wasn’t sure of anything except Ted. Now I’m not even sure about that any more.”

I had to smile. “That’s the trouble with being a mere mortal. Now if we were supermen, like you-know-who, we’d never have any doubts about anything.”

“Don’t be so sure,” she said seriously. “I know Ted takes people for granted and rides roughshod over anything in his way . . . but he has his doubts; about himself, about the work he wants to do. Just because he doesn’t let anyone see them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

“I guess you’re right. He puts up a darned good front, though.”

Barney turned toward the door. “Where’d I leave my raincape? It’s time for me to go . . .”

“I’ll drive you home.”

“No, that’s all right. The rain’s let up now, and it’s not far on the slideway.”

“Will I see you tomorrow?” I asked as I helped her into the cape.

“You’re staying?”

“Tor a while, at least.”

“Why don’t you come over to Climatology for lunch? I think you and Ted should shake hands.”

“And come out fighting?”

“What?”

“It’s an old prizefighting expression.”

She laughed. “See, you’re telling jokes.”

“Maybe I’m being sarcastic again.”

“No, not any more.”

I walked her down the hall to the elevator, saw her off, then ran back to my room, opened the jam-packed suitcase, and sprinkled its contents all over the floor.

Twenty-three thousand miles above the mouth of the Amazon River, the meteorologists aboard the Atlantic Station synchronous satellite watched a circular band of clouds building up in the mid-Atlantic. They televised their photographs to the National Hurricane Research Center in Miami, and within an hour patrol planes took off for the young storm. By the time they reached it, the hurricane had developed an eye and wind speeds of more than ninety knots. An inch of rain per hour was being poured over a six-thousand-square-mile area of the ocean. And the storm was moving westward. How far would it go? Where would it strike? No one knew. Warnings went out across the entire eastern seaboard, the Gulf Coast, and through the islands of the Caribbean. Hurricane alert. A thousand megatons of energy was on the loose and heading toward the fragile realm of men.

The morning was cloudy, and by the time I had ’coptered out to Climatology for lunch, it was starting to rain again.

Barney met me in the lobby. “Ted’s group is in a new set of offices,” she said, “over in the annex building.”

She guided me through corridors and a covered walkway that connected the main building with the annex. Rain drummed hard on the low metal roof of the walkway, as we crossed it. The annex itself had that temporary, prefabricated look about it. There was no real ceiling, just the exposed underside of the roof, with all the structural braces and pipes and airshafts showing. Most of the building was filled with clanging, chatter-filled machine shops. The “offices” were made up of five-foot-high partitions, jury-rigged together to form enclosures.

“It’s a little damp in here when it rains,” Barney said over the machine-shop noise, “and it can get pretty hot when the weather’s warm.”

I followed her through the cramped makeshift corridors. You could see over the partitions right into the cubbyhole offices.