Ballroom of the Skies Read online

  But, Branson knew, they had to be dealt with delicately. Their tourist rupees were sadly needed. And their embassies were powerful. Odd how, if you didn’t speak either Hindi or Tamil, they thought they could make you understand by yelling at you. Their President, Gondohl Lahl, had that same arrogance. The only product of America which India seemed to approve of wholeheartedly was the beauty of its longlegged girls.

  Some of the weariness of the past year left Darwin Branson as he thought that it was barely conceivable that now, through his own efforts, the war-tide might be halted, the drums and bugles stilled. His mission had been a secret one, entrusted to him by that wise, farsighted President of the United States, Robert Enfield. From the practical point of view, it had merely been a piece of horsetrading. Enfield, and the other leaders, had known that the economy could not stand another war. India could get nowhere by demanding, and she refused to plead. The triple coalition would not deal with India directly on these matters. The United States became the sub rosa contact between them.

  What Darwin Branson had seen in Buenos Aires, in Alexandria, in Shanghai, in Bombay, had convinced him, all over again, that the nature of man is good, rather than evil. There was fear all over the world. Now, at last, the era of the man of good will could be initiated.

  It had been a hole and corner affair. Meetings in furtive places, in cheap offices such as this one. Two more meetings and the deal could be made. A new mutual assistance pact for the world at large. Something, at last, with meaning. Something that would unwind the hard strands of fear and give mankind breathing space again, give him time to look around.

  He looked at his watch. Another twenty minutes of thought, of solitude, and they would join him. Young Dake Lorin who had been his assistant, his husky right arm during the long year of cautious dickering. And that strange Englishman, Smith, who was empowered by his Leader, George Fahdi, to make a deal. Once all the offers were in, President Gondohl Lahl could be contacted. See the concessions the others will make? And this is all they want from you. The net result will be a bettering of the standard of living in every nation involved. And that will mean an easing of the tension. He had it on good authority that Gondohl Lahl would go along with it, and he knew that Smith would be cooperative.

  He stood at the window, a small tired man with white hair and a furrowed face, eyes with a look of kindness. Midwife to peace. That was what Robert had called him.

  Fifteen more minutes. He heard footsteps in the empty corridor. Thinking they had arrived earlier than planned, he went to the door and opened it. The young couple seemed unremarkable. They had better than average looks, and a disconcertingly assured way.

  “I’m afraid you have the wrong office,” Darwin Branson said politely.

  “I’m afraid we have the right one, sir,” the young man said, almost regretfully. There was always the danger of assassination by fanatics. Yet this couple did not have that special look, unmistakable once seen.

  Darwin Branson was still pondering that point when the young man killed him, so quickly, with such an astounding speed that there was no interval between life and death, no period wherein Darwin Branson was permitted to be aware that life had gone and the great darkness had begun.

  The girl caught the body, carried it lightly and easily into the alcove. She stood, holding the body, her face expressionless, while her companion made quick preparations. The hand tool made a faint electronic whirr. She placed the body on the screen he had unfolded. She walked out of the alcove and stood waiting. She heard the water running in the alcove sink. After a time the whirring stopped, and then the sound of water. Her companion came out, refolding the screen. He nodded and she went to the office door, opened it. Darwin Branson stood outside, his face as empty as death. She motioned to him. He walked in woodenly and took his seat behind the desk. The man leaned over and whispered one word into Darwin Branson’s ear. He nodded to the girl and they went out of the office, closed the door.

  “Thirty seconds,” the girl said. The man knocked on the office door. Darwin Branson came to the door.

  “I’m afraid you have the wrong office,” Darwin Branson said politely.

  The young man smiled. “Sorry, sir. I guess I have. Pardon me for bothering you.”

  “Perfectly all right,” Branson said. The couple walked to the stairs. They went down five stairs and waited. They heard the elevator come up, stop. The door clanged open. Two men walked toward Branson’s office.

  The man nodded at the girl. She responded with a quick, almost shy smile. It was full night. He opened the stairwell window and they stepped easily out onto the narrow sill above the street. He closed the window behind them. They reappeared in the same instant on the high cornice of a building across the square. They looked down into the lighted office below, where three men were talking earnestly. Then the couple played a wild game, flickering like black flames from one high stone shoulder to the next, until at last he seemed to guess her intent and appeared at the same instant she did on the splintered stub of the Statue of Liberty in the harbor, touched her shoulder before she could escape. They laughed silently. It had been like the crazy game of children who had finished a hard lesson. They clasped hands and were gone.

  Back in the office Darwin Branson talked to Smith. He instinctively did not like the man, did not trust him. Smith had … an oily look, a slippery look. Perhaps it would not be wise to trust him with the whole picture. He looked as though he could twist it this way and that, turn it inside out and find there some advantage for himself.

  Dake Lorin sat, apparently taken in by Smith. Darwin Branson felt a bit contemptuous toward Dake Lorin. That young man was so … excessively noble. So naive and gullible. Dake would have you believe that the world could become a Garden of Eden once again. Sitting there, the whole preposterous six feet six inches of him, with that harsh black hair, and the dumb shelf of brow over the shadowed eyes, giving his face a simian look, as though Dake were some great sad ape trying mournfully to rectify the errors of mankind. Dake was just the type to be taken in by this oily Smith person.

  As Darwin Branson talked he wondered why he had wasted the past year on this chase of the wild goose. A few compromises would make no difference. The world was war bound, and Robert Enfield should stop kidding himself, stop thinking that the United States could step in with sub rosa mediation and stave off disaster. The crucial point, rather, was to select the winning side while there was still time to make a selection.

  He saw that Smith was aware of his contempt, and he was amused.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Smith had been awkwardly skeptical. He was a moonfaced man with nail-head eyes, fat babyish hands. Dake Lorin had exerted himself to be charming, to make a friend of this Smith. It had been most difficult. He kept thinking that Smith was a complicated mechanical doll. And if you tripped the wrong reflex, you would be inundated by the standard line. Irania is strong. Irania is quick. Irania is brave. Our leader, George Fahdi, is farsighted.

  Smith was in the country on a forged passport, arranged with the oblique assistance of one of the Under Secretaries of State. Dake had picked him up in Boston to drive him down to the conference with Darwin Branson.

  The trick was to get under the automatic pseudo-patriotic reflex, and get down to the man himself.

  Dake drove the small nondescript car at a sedate sixty-five, slowing for the stretches of neglected shattered slabs. The car, like most of the works of man, was a shade too small for Dake Lorin. His knees and elbows seemed always to be in the way.

  “I understand your Leader was impressed with Mr. Branson.”

  Smith shrugged. “He told me later that he felt Mr. Branson was a great rarity. A good man. There are not many good men.”

  “I’ve worked with Mr. Branson for a year.”

  Smith turned in the seat. “So? You are … by trade, a government employee?”

  “Not by trade. By trade I guess I’m a newspaperman. I was filling in in the Washington Bureau a couple of year
s ago. I interviewed Branson. He … stuck with me. The guy has quite an effect.”

  “You intrigue me,” Smith said in his toneless voice.

  Dake made a small decision. In order to disarm this Smith he would have to do a bit of a striptease, let his soul show a bit. “I’ve always been a lone wolf type, Mr. Smith. Maybe a bit of a visionary. That state of mind always had a cause, I suppose. When I was twelve, a wide-eyed kid, the police picked up my Dad. He was a smalltime politician. And a thief. He would have been safe all his life, but there was a change of administration and they threw him to the wolves. It was a deal. He was supposed to get eighteen months. But the judge crossed them up and Dad got ten years. When he found out that his old pal, the governor, wasn’t going to pardon him, he hung himself in his cell. My mother pulled herself together and we got along, somehow. I had a lot of schoolyard scraps. It made a mark on me, I guess. I grew up with a chip on my shoulder, and a fat urge to change the world so that things like that couldn’t happen.”

  “Quite a dream to have.”

  “I suppose so. Anyway, it gave me a drive. I learned the hard way that I couldn’t change the world by punching it in the mouth. So I decided to instruct the world. I became a two-bit messiah in the newspaper game. But that’s like knocking down stone walls with your head. What you tell them on Tuesday they can’t remember on Wednesday. Then I interviewed Darwin Branson and later it seemed as if he’d been interviewing me. For the first time I’d found a man I could talk to. A man who believed—just as I believe—in the innate decency of mankind. I talked my fool head off. And went back, unofficially, to talk some more. Then, when I heard he was going to retire, I felt lost. As though the one sane man left in the world had given up. He got in touch with me and put his new assignment on the line. I got out of newspaper work right then. And we’ve been working on it for a year.”

  “And it’s still a dream, Mr. Lorin?”

  “I’ll have to let Mr. Branson tell you about that.”

  “It has been my experience, Mr. Lorin, that visionary tactics do not fit the world of practical international politics.”

  “Look at it this way, Mr. Smith. We’ve been carrying a double load of fear ever since Hiroshima. Every one of us. It has an effect on every joint human action, from marriage to treaties. Fear makes each nation, each combination of nations, aggressive. And that aggressive outlook adds to the increment of fear. Each power group has established ‘talking points.’ Thus, everyone has demands to make, demands that will apparently not be met.”

  “We demand that Pak-India cease acts of aggression on their northwest frontier.”

  “Precisely. And it seems that all the demands balance out. In other words, if, through one vast treaty agreement, all the ‘talking points’ could be eliminated, it would give us the breathing space we need and … it might lead to the habit of similar world treaties in the future, once a new set of demands and ‘talking points’ have been set up. The result may be visionary. The method is practical, Mr. Smith.”

  “We will not make concessions,” Smith said firmly.

  “Stop talking like your Leader, Mr. Smith. Forgive my bluntness. Talk as a man. A living, thinking organism. You have ambition. Otherwise you would not have reached such a high place under George Fahdi. Being in a high place, you sense the precariousness of your position. What would you give to be able to look ten years into the future and see yourself still important, still trusted, still … safe?”

  “Life is not that certain.”

  “Yet we all want it to be that certain. We want to know that we will be free to live, and love, and be happy. Yet, as nations, we act in such a way that it increases rather than reduces our uncertainty. As though we were under some compulsion. Like lemmings, racing to the sea to drown themselves. Mr. Branson does not believe that it is necessary that, through our acts as nations, we must live in fear. He believes that, acting as nations, acting in good will, we can make this world as good a place to live as it was during the first fourteen years of this century. Your Leader is a man, just as you are. As I am. He does not need aggression to consolidate his position. He needs a constantly increasing standard of living to make his place secure. Proper treaties, proper utilization of world resources, can make that possible.”

  “You sound like a free trader from the history books.”

  “Perhaps. I am not as convincing as Mr. Branson.”

  “War, Mr. Lorin, is a cyclical phenomenon.”

  “That’s been our traditional excuse. It’s a cycle. Who can stop cycles? It’s sunspots. Who can change the sun? Mr. Branson calls that statistical rationalization.”

  “Your Mr. Branson sounds like an impressive man.”

  “He is. Believe me, he is.”

  Dake parked the car in a garage near New Times Square and they walked through the last faint grayness of dusk toward the rented office. Dake was dismally aware that if Smith wished to apply the trite fascist tag of decadent democracy, New Times Square gave him overpowering opportunity. There was no use telling a man like Smith that what he was seeing was a fringe world, a place of fetid lunacies, not at all typical of the heartland of the country where stubborn, dogged men were working in lab and field and mine to re-create, through substitution, the lost wealth of a great nation. The problem of the world, as Branson had said so many times, was in the field of bionomics. Man has made his environment precarious for himself, by denuding it of what he needs. This problem of mankind, the great and pressing problem, is to readjust that environment to make it once more a place where man can exist. Human nature, Branson maintained stoutly, does not have to be changed. It is basically good. Evil acts are the products of fear, uncertainty, insecurity.

  The war of the seventies had caused a further moral deterioration. Man sought escape in orgy, in soul-deadening drugs, in curious sadisms. Along 165th Street the fleng joints were in full cry. In the mouth of an alley three women, loaded to the gills with prono, were mercilessly beating a Japanese sailor. Giggling couples pushed their way into a dingy triditorium to rent the shoddy private rooms where the three gleaming curved walls were three-dimensional screens for a life-size, third-rate showing of one of the obscene feature shows turned out in the listless Hollywood mill. Censorship restricted such public showings to heterosexual motifs, but further uptown, private triditoriums showed imported specialties that would gag a gnu.

  The land was full of sects which, in revulsion at the metropolitan moralities, had founded new religions that insisted on complete celibacy among the fanatic congregations, each member pledged never to reproduce his kind. A chanting line wearing purple neon halos picketed the triditorium. A child lay dead in the gutter and a haughty Indian stood beside his glistening Taj answering the questions of a servile traffic policeman in a bored and impatient voice.

  “In here, Mr. Smith,” Dake said, glad to get the man off the street.

  They rode up in the groaning elevator, and walked down the hall to the office. Darwin Branson got up quickly from behind his desk. Dake felt a warm assurance at seeing the man, felt an end to his own doubts.

  The conference began. Dake was so accustomed to hearing the gentle assurance with which Branson wheedled that he listened with half an ear. He suddenly focused his full, shocked attention on Darwin Branson when he heard him say, a bit coldly, “Naturally, if all the arrangements please your Leader, President Enfield wishes your Leader to … ah … remember us with friendliness.”

  Dake said, “Darwin! Good Lord, that implies that we’re.…”

  “Please!” Branson said with soft authority. Dake became reluctantly silent, telling himself that Branson had some good motive for handling this interview on a different tone and level than all the others.

  Smith smiled. “I was afraid, after listening to your young friend, Mr. Branson, that I would find myself dealing with a saint. I am glad to detect a … shall we say … practical approach.”

  “This country, Mr. Smith, can’t afford not to make friends, particularly with
a coalition as powerful as yours.”

  “Could I safely say then, that those concessions we make shall be more … ah … spectacular than effective?”

  Dake had never seen quite that smile on Darwin Branson’s face before. “Please, Mr. Smith. You must remember that we are gentlemen of sincerity and integrity. Think how President Gondohl Lahl would be annoyed should he begin to think that whereas his concessions were made honestly, yours were made with a view to appearances.”

  Smith nodded. “I see what you mean. We must, above all else, be sincere. Now I am wondering if … your other dealings, with Garva and with Chu, have been made with this same degree of sincerity. I think that is a fair question.”

  “Of course, Mr. Smith. I will say this. They are all hoping that it is not … too good to be true.”

  “I believe,” said Smith, “that I shall offer an alternate concession to the one you ask for. I believe we shall surrender Gibraltar to Spain.”

  “Eyewash,” Dake said hotly. “That means nothing. You can have missile stations zeroed in on it to immunize it any instant you feel like it.”

  Smith looked at Branson and raised one eyebrow. Branson said, “Don’t underestimate his offer, Dake.”

  “But it’s so obvious. You’ve said a hundred times, Darwin, that each concession has to be real and honest, or the whole thing will fall down. When everyone else sees that Irania is just making a … pointless gesture instead of a real concession, they’ll withdraw their promises and we’ll be back where we were.”

  “Your young man seems to be filled with childish faith, Mr. Branson.”

  “An attribute of most young men, I’m afraid. I’ll relay your offer to the others, Mr. Smith.”