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further performance that they would not be able to explain which would also
serve to divert their attention if their answer to the Massey stunt turned out
to be correct. Accordingly, after a quick consultation, he had dispatched
Clarissa and Fellburg to the main guardhouse to prepare the ground.
Clarissa had never talked about the peculiarities of British geography to Drew
West or to anybody else. She had simply seized on the topic of the moment as a
pretext for using the NASO pad on the guardroom desk.
"Is Mike Mason around anywhere here, Bill?" Fellburg asked Harvey, distracting
his attention just as Clarissa finished writing. "He's got a coupla maps that
we wanted to borrow."
"Haven't seen him all morning. Some of the guys are out on a training mission.
I think he's with them." While Harvey was speaking, Clarissa tore from the pad
not only the sheet she had written on, but the one underneath it as well.
"Do you have a map of this side of Genoa that I could get a copy of?" Fellburg
asked.
"I've got one that covers from here to Arthur's place and the junkyard on the
other side of it that the Ts think is a park," Harvey said. "That be okay?"
Fellburg nodded and straightened up from the wall. "Just what I need."
Clarissa rose from the chair by the desk. "Well, I've got things to do. I'll
leave you two at it. Talk to you later, Billy."
"Tell Drew to visit someday, and we'll talk more about Britain and the rest if
he's interested,"
Harvey tossed after her as she moved toward the door.
"I'll tell him." Clarissa left.
She met Zambendorf by a storeroom at the back of the vehicles maintenance
workshop a few minutes later and gave him the blank sheet from the pad, which
carried the number immediately preceding that of the next unused page. "Joe's
there," she confirmed. Zambendorf nodded and tucked the sheet of paper inside
one of several magazines he was carrying. Then he left her and made his way to
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the general personnel messroom.
* * *
Thelma was near the door, ostensibly watching a game of pinochle between some
NASO
technicians and off-duty military people, when Zambendorf ambled in and
casually handed her the magazines he had been carrying. She took them without
making any comment that could have drawn unwanted attention. "Did Joe find
you, Karl? He was looking for you," she said.
"No, I haven't seen him. Well, I'm sure he won't stray too far in this place."
"Ah, just the man we've been waiting for!" Graham Spearman's voice called from
among a group clustered halfway along the center table. Zambendorf turned as
if noticing them for the first time. In fact, he had registered practically
everyone present within moments of entering. John Webster, a genetics
specialist from a bioengineering firm in England, was with Spearman, along
with Sharon Beatty, the professional skeptic, and several more from the
computing and communications section. There were some academics Zambendorf
recognized as geologists, a climatologist, and various engineering-ologists.
O'Flynn was there with more NASO techs, and to the side was a trio of base
administrative staff.
"Why? What have I done now?" Zambendorf asked, moving over to join them. The
attention in the
room followed him and shifted away from Thelma, who remained standing by the
card players.
"That show of yours the other day with Gerry Massey," Takumi Kahito, one of
the programmers, said. "We think we know how you did it."
"But I've already told you how I did it," Zambendorf answered. "Surely you're
not saying you didn't believe me."
Kahito smiled and gestured at the large mural screen. "Mind if we rerun the
video?"
Zambendorf shrugged. "Go ahead." In the background Thelma drifted to the back
of the room.
Everyone present had as good as forgotten that she existed.
"All it proves is that closed minds are capable of explaining away anything,"
Malcolm Wade declared, puffing his pipe near the serving counter.
Sitting by Wade was the round-faced, wispy-haired figure of Dr. of what was
obscure Osmond
Periera, wearing a rose-colored shirt under a V-neck fawn sweater. The author
profiles in his best-selling books on paranormal research and UFOlogy which
claimed, among other things, that the
North Polar Sea was a gigantic crater caused by the crash of an
antimatter-powered alien spacecraft, and that television altered the climate
via mind power concentrated through mass suggestion described him as
Zambendorf's discoverer and mentor. Certainly he was one of the staunchest
disciples, and the boosting of Zambendorf's career from European nightclub
performer to celebrity of worldwide acclaim owed no small part to Periera's
contacts and the influence his royalties were able to attract.
"There's no question that it demonstrates how much more reliably
psychocommunicative signals propagate in the outer planetary void, free from
disruptive terrestrial influences," Periera said, ostensibly to Wade but so
that everyone could hear. "Of course, it doesn't come as any great surprise to
anyone of genuine scientific impartiality. The effect was predicted by Bell's
inequality many decades ago."
Periera's ability to invent the most outrageous explanations for Zambendorf's
feats never ceased to amaze even Zambendorf. None of the scientists at Genoa
Base took Periera seriously, but either tolerated him as part of the
much-needed entertainment or ignored him with disdain, depending on their
disposition. Periera, of course, took himself very seriously and read their
attitudes as a direct, inverse measure of open-mindedness.
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Conspicuously absent, Zambendorf noted, were Weinerbaum and his coterie of
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