In the four selected nations, scientists, national leaders, and others were going through the exercise of choosing their candidates. A kind of national debate ensued in the United States. In surveys and opinion polls, religious leaders, sports heroes, astronauts, Congressional Medal of Honor winners, scientists, movie actors, a former presidential spouse, television talk show hosts and news anchors, members of Congress, millionaires with political ambitions, foundation executives, singers of country-and-western and rock-androll music, university presidents, and the current Miss America were all endorsed with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
By long tradition, ever since the Vice President's residence was moved to the grounds of the Naval Observatory, the house servants had been Filipino petty officers on active duty in the U. S. Navy. Wearing smart blue blazers with a patch embroidered “Vice President of the United States,” they were now-serving coffee. Most of the participants in the all-day crew-selection meeting had not been invited to this informal evening session.
It had been Seymour Lasker's singular fate to be America's first First Gentleman. He bore his burden—the editorial cartoons, the smarmy jokes, the witticism that he had gone where no man had gone before—with such di-rectness and good nature that at last America was able to forgive him for marrying a woman with the nerve to imagine that she could lead half the world. Lasker had the Vice President's wife and teenaged son laughing uproariously as the President guided der Heer into an adjacent library annex.
“All right,” she began. “There's no official decision to be made today and no public announcement of our deliberations. But let's see if we can sum up. We don't know what the goddamn Machine will do, but it's a reasonable guess that it goes to Vega. Nobody has the slightest idea of how it would work or even how long it would take. Tell me again, how far away is Vega?” “Twenty-six light-years, Ms. President.”
“And so if this Machine were a kind of spaceship and could travel as fast as light—1 know it can't travel as fast as light, only close to it, don't interrupt—then it would take twenty-six years for it to get there, but only as we measure time here on Earth. Is that right, der Heer?”
“Yes. Exactly. Plus maybe a year to get up to light speed and a year to decelerate into the Vega system.
But from the standpoint of the crew members, it would take a lot less. Maybe only a couple of years, depending on how close to light speed they travel.”
“For a biologist, der Heer, you've been learning a lot of astronomy.”
`Thank you, Ms. President. I've tried to immerse myself in the subject.”
She stared at him for just a moment and then went on. “So as long as the Machine goes very close to the speed of light, it might not matter much how old the crew members are. But if it takes ten or twenty years or more—and you say that's possible—then we ought to have somebody young. Now, the Russians aren't buying this argument. We understand it's between Arkhangelsky and Lunacharsky, both in their sixties.”
She had read the names somewhat haltingly off a file card in front of her.
“The Chinese are almost certainly sending Xi. He's also in his sixties. So if I thought they knew what they're doing, I'd be tempted to say, “What the hell, let's send a sixty-year-old man. ” “
Drumlin, der Heer knew, was exactly sixty years old. “On the other hand…” he counterposed. “I know, I know. The Indian doctor; she's in her forties…. In a way, this is the stupidest thing I ever heard of. We're picking somebody to enter the Olympics, and we don't know what the events are. I don't know why we're talking about sending scientists. Mahatma Gandhi, that's who we should send. Or, while we're at it, Jesus Christ. Don't tell me they're not available, der Heer. I know that.”
“When you don't know what the events are, you send a decathlon champion.”
“And then you discover the event is chess, or oratory, or sculpture, and your athlete finishes last. Okay, you say that it ought to be someone who's thought about extraterrestrial life and who's been intimately involved with the receipt and decrypting of the Message.”
“At least a person like that will be intimately involved with how the Vegans think. Or at least how they expect us to think.”
“And for really top-rate people, you say that reduces the field to three.”
Again she consulted her notes. “Arroway, Drumlin, and… the one who thinks he's a Roman general.”
“Dr. Valerian, Ms. President. I don't know that he thinks he's a Roman general; it's just his name.” “Valerian wouldn't even answer the Selection Committee's questionnaire. He wouldn't consider it because he won't leave his wife? Is that right? I'm not criticizing him. He's no dope. He knows how to make a relationship work. It's not that his wife is sick or anything?”
“No, as far as I know, she's in excellent health.”
“Good. Good for them. Send her a personal note from me—something about how she must be some woman for an astronomer to give up the universe for her. But fancy up the language, der Heer. You know what I want. And throw in some quotation. Poetry, maybe. But not too gushy.” She waved her index finger at him. “Those Valerians can teach us all something. Why don't we invite them to a state dinner? The King of Nepal's here in two weeks. That'll be about right.”
Der Heer was scribbling furiously. He would have to call the White House Appointments Secretary at home as soon as this meeting was over, and he had a still more urgent call. He had not been able to get to the telephone for hours. “So that leaves Arroway and Drumlin. She's something like twenty years younger, but he's in terrific physical shape. He hang-glides, skydives, scuba dives… he's a brilliant scientist, he helped in a big way to crack the Message, and he'll have a fine time arguing with all the other old men. He didn't work on nuclear weapons, did he? I don't want to send anybody who worked on nuclear weapons.
“Now, Arroway's also a brilliant scientist. She's led this whole Argus Project, she knows all the ins and outs of the Message, and she has an inquiring mind. Everybody says that her interests are very broad. And she'd convey a younger American image.” She paused.
“And you like her, Ken. Nothing wrong with that. I like her too. But sometimes she's a loose cannon. Did you listen carefully to her questionnaire?”
“I think I know the passage you're talking about, Ms. President. But the Selection Committee had been asking her questions for almost eight hours and sometimes she gets annoyed at what she considers dumb questions. Drumlin's the same way. Maybe she learned it from him. She was his student for a while, you know.”
“Yeah, he said some dumb things, too. Here, it's supposed to be all cued up for us on this VCR. First Arroway's questionnaire, then Drumlin's. Just press the “play” button, Ken.”
On the television screen, Ellie was being interviewed in her office at the Argus Project. He could even make out the yellowing piece of paper with the quote from Kafka. Perhaps, all things considered, Ellie would have been happier had she received only silence from the stars. There were lines around her mouth and bags under her eyes. There were also two unfamiliar vertical creases on her forehead just above her nose. Ellie on videotape looked terribly tired, and der Heer felt a pang of guilt.
“What do I think of “the world population crisis'?” Ellie was saying. “You mean am I for it or against it?
You think this is a key question I'm going to be asked on Vega, and you want to make sure I give the right answer? Okay. Overpopulation is why I'm in favor of homosexuality and a celibate clergy. A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.”