Ellie waited, deadpan, indeed frozen, for the next question. The President had pushed the “pause” button.
“Now, I admit that some of the questions may not have been the best,” the President continued. “But we didn't want anybody in such a prominent position, on a project with really positive international implications, who turns out to be some racist bozo. We want the developing world on our side in this one. We had a good reason to ask a question like that. Don't you find her answer shows some… lack of tact? She's a bit of a wiseass, your Dr. Arroway. Now take a look at Drumlin.”
Wearing a blue polka-dot bow tie, Drumlin was looking tanned and very fit. “Yes, I know we all have emotions,” he was saying, “but let's bear in mind exactly what emotions are. They're motivations for adaptive behavior from a time when we were too stupid to figure things out. But I can figure out that if a pack of hyenas are headed toward me with their fangs bared there's trouble ahead. I don't need a few cc's of adrenaline to help me understand the situation. I can even figure out that it might be important for me to make some genetic contribution to the next generation. I don't really need testosterone in my bloodstream to help me along. Are you sure that an extraterrestrial being far in advance of us is going to be saddled with emotions? I know there are people who think I'm too cold, too reserved. But if you really want to understand the extraterrestrials, you'll send me. I'm more like them than anyone else you'll find.”
“Some choice!” the President said. “The one's an atheist, and the other thinks he's from Vega already. Why do we have to send scientists? Why can't we send somebody… normal? Just a rhetorical question,” she quickly added. “I know why we have to send scientists. The Message is about science and it's written in scientific language. Science is what we know we share with the beings on Vega. No, those are good reasons, Ken. I remember them.”
“She's not an atheist. She's an agnostic. Her mind is open. She's not trapped by dogma. She's intelligent, she's tough, and she's very professional. The range of her knowledge is broad. She's just the person we need in this situation.”
“Ken, I'm pleased by your commitment to uphold the integrity of this project. But there's a great deal of fear out there. Don't think I don't know how much the men out there have had to swallow already. More than half the people I talk to believe we've got no business building this thing. If there's no turning back, they want to send somebody absolutely safe. Arroway may be all the things you say she is, but safe she isn't.
I'm catching a lot of heat from the Hill, from the Earth-Firsters, from my own National Committee, from the churches. I guess she impressed Palmer Joss in that California meeting, but she managed to infuriate Billy Jo Rankin. He called me up yesterday and said “Ms. President'—he can't disguise his distaste at saying “Ms. — 'Ms. President,” he says, “that Machine's gonna fly straight to God or the Devil. Whichever one it is, you better send an honest-to-God Christian. ” He tried to use his relationship with Palmer Joss to muscle me, for God's sake. I don't think there's any doubt he was angling to go himself. Drumlin's going to be much more acceptable to somebody like Rankin than Arroway is.
“I recognize Drumlin's something of a cold fish. But he's reliable, patriotic, sound. He has impeccable scientific credentials. And he wants to go. No, it has to be Drumlin. The best I can offer is to have her as backup.”
“Can I tell her that?”
“We can't have Arroway knowing before Drumlin, can we? I'll let you know the moment a final decision is made and we've informed Drumlin…. Oh, cheer up, Ken. Don't you want her to stay here on Earth?”
It was after six when Ellie finished her briefing of the State Department's “Tiger Team” that was backstopping the American negotiators in Paris. Der Heer had promised to call her as soon as the crewselection meeting was done. He wanted her to hear from him whether she had been selected, not from anybody else. She had been insufficiently deferential to the examiners, she knew, and might lose out for that reason among a dozen others. Nevertheless, she guessed, there might still be a chance.
There was a message waiting for her at the hotel—not a pink “while you were out” form filled in by the hotel operator, but a sealed unstamped hand-delivered letter. It read: “Meet me at the National Science and Technology Museum, 8:00 pm tonight. Palmer Joss.”
No hello, no explanations, no agenda, and no yours truly, she thought. This really is a man of faith. The stationery was her hotel's, and there was no return address. He must have sauntered in this afternoon, knowing from the Secretary of State himself, for all she knew, that Ellie was in town, and expecting her to be in. It had been a tiresome day, and she was annoyed at having to spend any time away from piecing together the Message. Although a part of her was reluctant to go, she showered, changed, bought a bag of cashews, and was in a taxi in forty-five minutes.
It was about an hour before closing, and the museum was almost empty. Huge dark machinery was stuffed into every corner of a vast entrance hall. Here was the pride of the nineteenth-century shoemaking, textile, and coal industries. A steam calliope from the 1876 Exposition was playing a jaunty piece, originally written for brass, she judged, for a tourist group from West Africa. Joss was nowhere to be seen. She suppressed the impulse to turn on her heel and leave.
If you had to meet Palmer Joss in this museum, she thought, and the only thing you had ever talked to him about was religion and the Message, where would you meet him? It was a little like the frequency selection problem in SETI: You haven't yet received a message from an advanced civilization and you have to decide on which frequencies these beings—about whom you know virtually nothing, not even their existence—have decided to transmit. It must involve some knowledge that both you and they share. You and they certainly both know what the most abundant kind of atom in the universe is, and the single radio frequency at which it characteristically absorbs and emits. That was the logic by which the 1420 megahertz line of neutral atomic hydrogen had been included in all the early SETI searches. What would the equivalent be here? Alexander Graham Bell's telephone? The telegraph? Marconi's— Of course.
“Does this museum have a Foucault pendulum?” she asked the guard.
The sound of her heels echoed on the marble floors as she approached the rotunda. Joss was leaning over the railing, peering at a mosaic tile representation of the cardinal directions. There were small vertical hour marks, some upright, others evidently knocked down by the bob earlier in the day. Around 7 PM. SOmeone had stopped its swing, and it now hung motionless. They were entirely alone. He had heard her approach for a minute at least and had said nothing.
“You've decided that prayer can stop a pendulum?” She smiled.
`That would be an abuse of faith,” he replied. “I don't see why. You'd make an awful lot of converts. It's easy enough for God to do, and if I remember correctly, you talk to Him regularly…. That's not it, huh?
You really want to test my faith in the physics of harmonic oscillators? Okay.”
A part of her was amazed that Joss would put her through this test, but she was determined to pass muster. She let her handbag slide off her shoulder and removed her shoes. He gracefully hurdled the brass guardrail and helped her over. They half walked and half slid down the tiled slope until they were standing alongside the bob. It had a dull black finish, and she wondered whether it was made of steel or lead.
“You'll have to give me a hand,” she said. She could easily put her arms around the bob, and together they wrestled it until it was inclined at a good angle from the vertical and flush against her face. Joss was watching her closely. He didn't ask her whether she was sure, he neglected to warn her about falling forward, he offered no cautions about giving the bob a horizontal component of velocity as she let go.