“No, they got through before we did. They must have taken a cab to the hotel already—”
Tom was upon us, eyes flashing. “So that’s your paragon? Jesus Christ! Fucking bleeding heart, I’ll wring her scrawny neck. Of all the—”
“Whoa! Who? Linda? What?”
“Oh Christ, later—here they come.” What looked like a vigilante committee was converging on us, bearing torches. “Now look,” Tom said hurriedly through his teeth, smiling as though he’d just been guaranteed an apartment in Paradise, “give these bloodsuckers your best I mean your best shot, and maybe I can scavenge something from this stinking mess.” And he was striding toward them, opening his arms and smiling. As he went I heard him mutter something under his breath that began with “Ms. Parsons,” contained enough additional sibilants to foil the shotgun-mikes, and moved his lips not at all.
Norrey and I exchanged a glance. “Pohl’s Law,” she said, and I nodded (Pohl’s Law, Raoul once told us, says that nothing is so good that somebody somewhere won’t hate it, and vice versa). And then the pack was upon us.
“This way Mister when does your next tape come over here please tell our viewers what it’s really believe that this this new artform is a valid passport or did you look this way Ms. Drummond is it true that you haven’t been able to smile for the cameraman for the Stardance, weren’t you going to look this way to please continue or are readers would simply love to no but didn’t you miss Drummond pardon me Miz Drummond do you think you’re as good as your sister Sharon in the profits in their own country are without honor to welcome you back to Earth this way please,” said the mob, over the sound of clicking, whirring, snapping, and whining machinery and through the blinding glare of what looked like an explosion at the galactic core seen from close up. And I smiled and nodded and said urbanely witty things and answered the rudest questions with good humor and by the time we could get a cab I was fuming mad. Raoul and Linda had indeed gone ahead, and Tom had found our luggage; we left at high speed.
“Bleeding Christ, Tom,” I said as the cab pulled away, “next time schedule a press conference for the next day, will you?”
“God damn it,” he blazed, “you can have this job back any time you want it!”
His volume startled even the cabbie. Norrey grabbed his hands and forced him to look at her.
“Tom,” she said gently, “we’re your friends. We don’t want to yell at you; we don’t want you to yell at us. Okay?”
He took an extra deep breath, held it, let it out in one great sigh and nodded. “Okay.”
“Now I know that reporters can be hard to deal with. I understand that, Tom. But I’m tired and hungry and my feet hurt like hell and my body’s convinced it weighs three hundred and thirteen kilos and next time could we maybe just lie to them a little?”
He paused before replying, and his voice came out calm. “Norrey, I am really not an idiot. All that madness to the contrary, I did schedule a press conference for tomorrow, and I did tell everybody to have a heart and leave you alone today. Those jerks back there were the ones who ignored me, the sons of—”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Then why the hell did we give them a command performance?”
“Do you think I wanted to?” Tom growled. “What the hell am I going to say tomorrow to the honorable ones who got scooped? But I had no choice, Charlie. That dizzy bitch left me no choice. I had to give those crumbs something, or they’d have run what they had already.”
“Tom, what on earth are you talking about?”
“Linda Parsons, that’s what I’m talking about, your new wonder discovery. Christ, Norrey, the way you went on about her over the phone, I was expecting… I don’t know, anyway a professional.”
“You two, uh, didn’t hit it off?” I suggested.
Tom snorted. “First she calls me a tight-ass. Practically the first words out of her mouth. Then she says I’m ignorant, and I’m not treating her right. Treating her right, for Christ’s sake. Then she chews me out for having reporters there—and Charlie, I’ll take that from you and Norrey, Ishould’ve had those jerks thrown out, but I don’t have to take that crap from a rookie. So I start to explain about the reporters, and then she says I’m being defensive. Christ on the pogie, if there’s anything I hate it’s somebody that comes on aggressive and then says you’re being defensive, smiling and looking you right in the eye and trying to rub my fucking neck!”
I figured he’d let off enough steam by now, and I was losing count of the grains of salt. “So Norrey and I made nice for the newsies because they taped you two squabbling in public?”
“No!”
We got the story out of him eventually. It was the old Linda magic at work again, and I can offer you no more typical example. Somehow a seventeen-year-old girl had threaded her way through the hundreds of people in the spaceport terminal straight to Linda and collapsed in her arms, sobbing that she was tripping and losing control and would Linda please make it all stop? It was at that point that the mob of reporters had spotted Linda as a Stardancer and closed in. Even considering that she weighed six times normal, had just been poked full of holes by Medical and insulted by Immigration, and was striking large sparks off of Tom, I’m inclined to doubt that Linda lost her temper; I think she abandoned it. Whatever, she apparently scorched a large hole through that pack of ghouls, bundled the poor girl into it and got her a cab. While they were getting in, some clown stuck a camera in the girl’s face and Linda decked him.
“Hell, Tom, I might have done the same thing myself,” I said when I got it straight.
“God’s teeth, Charlie!” he began; then with a superhuman effort he got control of his voice (at least). “Look. Listen. This is not some four-bit kids’ game we are playing here. Megabucks pass through my fingers, Charlie, megabucks! You are not a bum any more, you don’t have the privileges of a bum. Do you—”
“Tom,” Norrey said, shocked.
“—have any idea how fickle the public has become in the last twenty years? Maybe I’ve got to tell you how much public opinion has to do with the existence of that orbiting junkheap you just left? Or maybe you’re going to tell me that those tapes in your suitcase are as good as the Stardance, that you’ve got something so hot you can beat up reporters and get away with it. Oh Jesus, what a mess!”
He had me there. All the choreography plans we had brought into orbit with us had been based on the assumption that we would have between eight and twelve dancers. We had thought we were being pessimistic. We had to junk everything and start from scratch. The resulting tapes relied heavily on solos—our weakest area at that point—and while I was confident that I could do a lot with editing, well... .
“It’s okay, Tom. Those bums got something their editors’ll like better than a five-foot lady making gorillas look like gorillas—they worry a little about public opinion, too.”
“And what do I tell Westbrook tomorrow? And Mortie and Barbara Frum and UPI and AP and—”
“Tom,” Norrey interrupted gently, “it’ll be all right.”
“All right? How it is all right? Tell me how it’s all right.”
I saw where she was going. “Hell, yeah. I never thought of that, hon, of course. That pack o’jackals drove it clean out of my mind. Serves ’em right.” I began to chuckle. “Serves ’em bloody right.”