Ballroom of the Skies Read online

“And spoil a year’s work, Darwin,” Dake said dully. “I … just don’t understand.”

  Branson stood up. “Can we assist you further, Mr. Smith?”

  “No thank you. Arrangements have been made for me. I’ll be in Alexandria in the morning. And, I assure you, the Leader will not forget your … cooperation.”

  Smith bowed first to Branson and then, a bit mockingly, to Dake Lorin. He left quietly.

  The moment the door shut, Dake said, “You’ve blown it, Darwin. You’ve blown it sky-high.”

  Branson leaned back. He looked weary, but satisfied. “I think I’ve handled it in the only possible way, Dake. It has become increasingly obvious to me that we couldn’t ever bring them all together.”

  “But yesterday you said …”

  “Things have happened between yesterday and now. Things I can’t explain to you. We’ve had to lower our sights, Dake. That Smith is an oily specimen, isn’t he? But he’s the representative of Irania. Oil reserves, Dake. A tremendous backlog of manpower. And influence gradually extending down into Africa, down into vast resources. They’ll be good friends, Dake. Good friends to have.”

  “Now slow up just a minute. That is the kind of thinking, Darwin, we have both openly said we detest. Opportunistic, blind thinking. Lining up with the outfit which seems to have the biggest muscles. Damn it all, this is an about-face which I can’t comprehend.”

  “When one plan looks as if it will fail, you pick the next best. That’s mature thinking, Dake.”

  “Nuts, my friend. It’s an evidence of a desire to commit suicide. You, of all the people in the world, to suddenly turn out to be …”

  “Watch it, Dake!”

  “I won’t watch it. I gave a year of my life to this, and now I find that all along you’ve been giving me the big one-world yak, and the brotherhood of man yak, while without letting me know you’ve been setting us up for a power deal.”

  “A power deal, my young friend, is the best that an indigent nation can hope for. We have to line up with the people who can hit the quickest and the hardest. I … think we’ve managed it.”

  “You’ve managed it. Leave me out of it. I’m through, Darwin. You’ve tried your best to drag me into it, to assume that somehow—merely through being here with you—I become some kind of … partner. It was more than a dream, for God’s sake!”

  “Remember how the British survived for so long, Dake, after they’d lost their muscles? Always creating that delicate balance of power and …”

  “Ending in hell, Darwin, when the Indians threw them out of Fiji, when all the throats in the Solomons were cut. I can’t seem to get through to you. We weren’t doing this for us. We were doing it for the world at large, Darwin.”

  “Sometimes it is wise to accept half a loaf.”

  Dake Lorin felt the tingling tension in all his muscles, felt the uprush of the black crazy anger that was his greatest curse. The blindness came, and he was unaware of his movements, unaware of time—aware only that he had somehow reached across the desk to grab the front of Branson’s neat dark suit in one huge fist, had lifted the smaller man up out of the chair. He shook him until the face was blurred in his vision.

  “Dake!” the man yelled. “Dake!”

  The anger slowly receded. He dropped Branson back into the chair. He felt weak and he was sweating.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “You’re a madman, Lorin!”

  “You’re a cheap little man, Branson. I have a hunch. I have the feeling there are people who’ll understand exactly how you sold out the human race on this deal. And I’m going to put the case before them. All of it. Every part of it. Then let the world judge you, Branson.”

  “Now just a moment. This involves a question of security, Lorin. I can have you classified as potentially subversive, have you sent to labor camp until you cool off. You know that.”

  “I don’t think you can stop me.”

  “You’ve been engaged in secret negotiations. Any violation of security will be evidence of your disloyalty.”

  Dake said softly, “And you’re the man who called those regulations, called the labor camps, the new barbarism, government by aboriginal decree. You changed overnight, Darwin. You’re not the same man. I’ll do what I can, and you can kindly go to hell.”

  “While you’re doing it, examine your own motives again, Dake. Maybe you’ve spent your life looking for martyrdom, and this is your best opportunity.”

  “That’s a low blow.”

  “You’re upset, Dake. In a way I don’t blame you. Disappointment is hard to take. But you are my friend. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

  Dake stared at him for long seconds. There was nothing else to say. He turned on his heel and left the office, slamming the door violently behind him, taking wry pleasure in the childishness of the gesture.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In the stately cathedral hush of the austere Times-News offices the following morning, Dake Lorin was slowly and uneasily passed up the ladder from managing editor to assistant publisher, to publisher. He sat in paneled waiting rooms, eyed by myriad horse-teethed young ladies, by deftly innocuous young men. This was not the newspaper world with which Dake was familiar. The war, with its wood pulp starvation, had brought about the combine of the last two competing dailies, and during the darkest hours the paper had been down to four half-size sheets, with the ubiquitous “shurdlu” appearing in almost every story.

  Now the paper was back to a respectable bulk, photo-printed on the tan grainy paper made of weeds and grasses. Here was no muted thud and rumble of presses, no bellows for “Boy!” Here was an air of sanctimonious hush.

  “He will see you now, Mr. Lorin,” a slat-thin female announced.

  Dake went into the inner office. The window dioramas were of wooded hills, blue mountain lakes. The publisher was a small round man with matronly shoulders and a dimpled chin.

  “Sit down, Mr. Lorin,” he said. He held a card between thumb and forefinger, as though it were something nasty.

  “I refreshed my mind, Mr. Lorin. The morgue typed me a summary. Your name, of course, was familiar to me the moment I heard it. Let me see now. Combat correspondent. Wounded. Married while on leave in 73. Wife killed by bombing of Buffalo when the suicide task force was repulsed. Returned to job as reporter on Philadelphia Bulletin. Did a good job of covering convention in ’75 and became a political columnist. Syndicated in sixty-two papers at peak. Quite a bit of influence. Frequently under fire as a ‘Visionary,’ a dreamer. Columns collected into two books, reasonably successful. Advocated Second U.N., until India withdrew and it collapsed. Took a sudden leave of absence a year ago. Activities during the past year unknown. Suspected to hold some ex-officio position in current administration, State Department side.”

  “Age thirty-two, twenty-nine teeth, scimitar-shaped scar on left buttock. Very undignified wound, you know,” Lorin said.

  “Eh?”

  “Never mind. Has anyone told you my reason for seeing you?”

  “Mr. Lorin, I am terribly afraid that the … ah … philosophy behind your political theorizing of the past would not be in accord with our …”

  “I don’t want a job. I have one exclusive I want to give to you. I want to write it and I want the best and biggest splash you can give it. I came here because you have world readership.”

  “An exclusive? Our people dig, Mr. Lorin. We insist on that. I seriously doubt whether there could be any new development in … ah … your field which has not already been—–”

  Dake interrupted bluntly, hitching his chair closer, lowering his voice. “How about this sort of an exclusive, Mr. Haggins? Darwin Branson did not retire. He was given a very delicate mission by President Enfield. I worked on it with him for a year. The idea was to act as a middleman, to ease off world tension by getting all sides to do a little horse-trading. It was to be done in secrecy, and in the strictest honesty. All sides but Irania have agreed to make honest concessions. Irania was the last one. If Branson had dealt with Irania firmly and honestly, we could have had a chance to see at least five years of peace ahead of us. But I was present when Branson blew the whole scheme sky high by trying to make a second-level deal with the Iranian representative. Irania will make a token concession, of no value. Then the others will water down their concessions, and the net result will be more world tension instead of less. I doubt whether your … diggers have uncovered that, Mr. Haggins. I want you to make a big splash so that the world can know how close it came to temporary nirvana. It might do some good. It might be like a nice clean wind blowing through some very dusty parliamentary sessions. Your sheet is influential. I feel that your cooperation is in the public service.”

  Haggins looked flustered. He got up and walked to the nearest diorama as though he were staring out a window. He had a curious habit of walking on his toes. He clasped his hands behind him, wriggling his thumbs.

  “You … ah … hand us a very hot potato, Mr. Lorin.”

  “Any good story is likely to be, isn’t it?”

  “As you know, in exposing corruption, venality, we are absolutely fearless.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Dake said dryly.

  “However, there is one consideration here which we must examine … ah … rather closely.”

  “And that is?”

  “The possibility that our motives might be misinterpreted, Mr. Lorin. You have stated that this was all … secret negotiation. I refer now, of course, to the Public Disservice Act of ’75. It would not give us recourse to any court of law, or any chance to state our own case. The Board might arbitrarily consider our publication of your story a Disservice to the State. You know the answer to that. Confiscatory fines.”

  “I feel that it is worth the risk.”

  Haggins turned toward him. “Risk is in direct ratio to what you have to lose, is it not?”

  “That Act itself is the result of fear. If there were less fear in the world, Mr. Haggins, that Act might be repealed.”

  Haggins came back to the desk. Dake could see that he had reached a decision. He was more at ease. He said, “A bit visionary, Mr. Lorin?” He smiled. “We do our best, Mr. Lorin. We feel that we improve the world, improve our environment, in many modest, but effective ways. Now you would have us take something that I can only consider as a vast gamble. If we should win, the gain is rather questionable. Should we lose, the loss is definite. By losing we would forfeit our chance to continue to do good in our own way.”

  “In other words, it’s a lack of courage, Mr. Haggins?”

  Haggins flushed, stood up, his hand outstretched. “Good luck to you, sir. I trust you will find a publisher who will be a bit more … rash, shall we say.” He coughed. “And naturally, I will not mention this to anyone. I would not care to be accused of a personal Disservice. I am a bit too old to work on the oil shale.”

  Dake looked at the pink, neatly manicured hand. After a few moments Haggins withdrew it, rubbed it nervously on the side of his trousers. Dake nodded abruptly and left the office, took the elevator up the reinforced concrete shaft to ground level. Fear was a tangible thing in the world. Fear, on the government level, the business level, the personal level. Live out your neat little life and hope for the best. Fools took chances. Men carried weapons when they walked the night streets. Dake did not. His very size protected him adequately, his size and his look of dark, compressed fury.

  He ate soybean steak in a small dismal restaurant and continued his search. At Life-Look and at Time-Week the brushoff was less delicate, but just as effective.

  At dusk he managed an interview in a rattle-trap building in Jersey City, an interview with a vast brick-red Irishman with a whisky rasp and a smell of barbershop.

  The Irishman interrupted him. “Fleng the theories, Lorin. All that prono soup is over my head. You want to reach people. I’ve got a circulation. So let’s get down to it. How about the stash, the dinero, the rupees, the happy old dollars?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I’m used to fighting. Hell, I’ve got the most pornographic set of comic strips this side of Capetown. They’re always trying to shut me down. I got a half million press run. So I do this. I put a banner head. Paid Advertising, it says. Not the opinion of the publisher, it says. I give you inside page one, and you write it and sign it. Thirty thousand rupees it costs you. Sixty thousand bucks. Lay it on the line and you can use that page for any damn thing you want. You can use it to challenge Gondohl Lahl to a personal fistfight if you want to. You’ll do a labor camp stretch if that Enfield crowd doesn’t like it, and Kelly will still be here, operating at the old stand. That’s the deal, and take it or leave it.”

  “How much down?”

  “The whole thing down. They’ll confiscate anything you got before they ship you out. I can’t take chances.”

  “It’s a lot of money, Kelly.”

  “You look like a guy with a lot of money.”

  “I’ll have to … check with some friends. I’ll make a decision and come in tomorrow and tell you.”

  “If the answer is no, don’t bother to come in. I won’t dicker. That’s the price. It stands. What are you doing tonight? I got a couple cute little Singhalese tourists lined up, and four freebees to a new private tridi way uptown.”

  “No thanks. See you tomorrow.”

  “Not too early. I expect to have a hangover.”

  Dake went back to the city and bought passage to Philadelphia on one of the feeder lines maintained by Calcutta International Jetways. CIJ used all Indian personnel for their major schedules, but hired U.S. personnel for the feeder lines, entrusting to them the creaking, outmoded aircraft. Once U.S.-owned airlines had linked the entire world. But, in the exhaustion following the war, with the regimentation and labor allocations that had cut travel so severely, the airlines, starved for freight and passengers, had slid inevitably toward bankruptcy, in spite of the subsidies of an impoverished federal government. Thus, when CIJ had made a reasonable offer for all lines and franchises, the airlines had taken it gladly, the investors receiving CIJ stock in return for their holdings. CIJ service was quick, impersonal, efficient. There were only two other passengers on the sixty-seat aircraft. Dake knew that CIJ took a continual loss on the New York–Philadelphia run, but maintained the frequent schedule for the convenience of the Indian nationals who supervised their investments in both cities. He leaned back in the seat for the short run. The spattered lights of the city wheeled under one wing. The other two passengers were a pair of Madrassi businessmen. They conversed in Hindi and Dake could catch words now and then, enough to know that they were talking about the Philadelphia branch of the Bank of India.

  He could never quite become accustomed to being considered by the Pak-Indians a second-class citizen. Toynbee had coldly outlined the ecology of civilizations. The great wheel had turned slowly, and the East was once again the new fountainhead of vitality. Their discrimination was subtle, but implacable. In major cities Indian clubs had been established. Americans could be taken there as guests, but were forbidden membership. There had been a fad when American women had begun to wear saris, to make imitation caste marks on their foreheads. The Pak-Indian Ambassador had called on the President. Saris disappeared from the shops. Fashion magazines hinted that caste marks were crude, even rude. Everyone was happy again. For a time it had been possible to emigrate to India, that new land of opportunity. But so many had taken advantage of it that restrictions became very tight, and it was still possible, but very very difficult to manage, involving a large cash bond. Though the war of the seventies had done much to alleviate racial tension in the States, there had still been small though influential Negro groups who had joyously welcomed the dominance of a dark-skinned race in world affairs. They had soon found, to their dismay, that the Pak-Indians were supremely conscious of being, in truth, an Aryan race, and brought to any dealings with the Negro that vast legacy of hatred from the years of tension in Fiji, culminating in the interracial wars. Of Pak-India proper, only Ceylon had any percentage mixture of Negro blood, due to the African invasions of ancient years, but Ceylon was to Pak-India much as Puerto Rico had been to the United States prior to Brazilian annexation.

  Indians would treat you with courtesy, even with affability, but in any conversation with them you could detect, running like a symphonic theme through the orchestration of words, their conviction that you were a citizen of a decadent nation, one that had gone beyond its peak of influence in world affairs, one that was doomed to the inevitable status of a supplicant nation, free in name only.

  We had it, he thought, and we threw it away. We ripped our iron and coal and oil out of the warm earth, used our copper and our forests and the rich topsoil, and hurled it all at our enemies, and conquered them, and were left at last with the empty ravaged land. How could it have been avoided? What could we have done that we did not do? Should we have used that great moment of momentum in 1945, well over thirty years ago, and gone on to take over the planet? Should we have dropped the sword, misered our resources, and succumbed meekly during the increasing pressures of the middle sixties? How did it come about that any step we could take was wrong, that every course open to us was but a different road to a different classification of disaster? England had been dying too—just a few scant years ahead of us in the inexorable schedule, yet we had been unable to learn from her defeats, unable to cut a new channel. It was almost, he thought, as though there was some unanswerable paradox against which every world power must inevitably run and collapse. Some cold and alien influence in the world, breaking the hearts of men.

  Or perhaps it is all merely our own stupidity. Our blindnesses. Our inability to see and comprehend the obvious. Perhaps we are all like Darwin Branson. Able for a time—even for a sustained length of time—to influence our environment for good, yet always failing somehow in that last crucial moment. As Branson had failed when the blindness came over him.

  He wondered what Patrice would say. He dreaded seeing her. Her love was a contradiction. She seemed capable of loving every aspect of him as a human being except his final, innermost motivation.