Then Sandy and Angela come in from the yard entrance, and it’s time for more introductions. With Sandy there the tempo jumps and pretty quickly they’re jabbering away like they’re old friends who haven’t seen each other in a year. Hana chatters as much as any of them, chiefly to Abe but increasingly with Sandy and Angela. Angela, bless her heart, couldn’t be friendlier. And then the crowd begins to arrive, Humphrey and his sometime ally Melina, Rose and Gabriela, Arthur, Tashi and Erica, Inez, John and Vikki, and so on; the party begins in earnest, people swirl in the slow ocean current patterns of parties everywhere. Hana stays on her stool and forms a sort of island around which one current swells; people stop in this eddy to talk to her. She asks a lot of questions, tries to sort out who’s who, laughs. She’s a hit. Jim, coming back to her after many small forays out into the currents, is pleased to see Hana and Abe engage in a long conversation, and Sandy join it; then Hana and Angela have a talk that leaves them laughing a lot, and even though Jim suspects that he is the subject of the laughter, he is pleased. All going so well.
Then Virginia arrives. When Jim sees her, blond mane breaking light in the hallway, his heart races. He moves to Hana and Angela and disrupts their conversation with some false heartiness, feeling nervous indeed. Virginia is quick to spot them, and she hurries over, smiling a bright smile full of malice. “Well hello, James. I haven’t seen you in a while!”
“No.”
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your new friend?”
“Oh, yeah. Virginia Novello, this is Hana Steentoft.”
“Hello, Hana.” Virginia extends a hand, and in her direct gaze there is a smiling, straightforward contempt. She’s judged this dowdy newcomer in a single glance, and wants Jim to know it. Angrily, fearfully, Jim looks sideways at Hana; she is gazing past Virginia, at the floor, indifferent to her, waiting for her to go. Virginia has been dismissed. Virginia smiles at Jim with open hostility, walks off without saying anything more.
Afterward, on the way home, Hana refuses to go to Jim’s place. “Let’s go to mine.”
So they do. As they track she says, “That’s one expensively dressed crowd of women you hang out with.”
“Ah, yeah.” Jim isn’t listening, he’s pleased at the whole evening, and at a final small gathering with Abe and Sandy and Angela. “They really go overboard into the whole thing. I’m so glad you don’t care about any of that.”
“Don’t be stupid, Jim.”
“Huh?”
“I said, don’t be stupid.”
“Huh?”
“Of course I care! What do you think I am?”
She’s angry with him, he’s just heard it. “Ah.”
And suddenly he gets it: no one can escape. You can pretend not to care about the image, but that’s as far as the culture will let you get. Inside you have to feel it; you can fight it but it’ll always be there, the contemptuous dismissal of you by the Virginia Novellos of the world.… No doubt Hana saw that look and was perfectly aware of it, all the rest of the evening. And she did look different from the rest of the women there; how could anyone forget that in such a crowd of them? And now he had implied that she was so far out of the norm that she wouldn’t have the common human response, wouldn’t even notice, wouldn’t even care.
He’s a fool, he thinks. Such a fool.… What to say? “Sorry, Hana. I think you’re beau—”
“Quiet, Jim. Just shut up about it, okay?”
“Okay.”
He drives her to her home in an awkward, ominous silence.
56
The time comes for Judge Andrew H. Tobiason of the Fourth Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia to make his judgment in the case of Laguna Space Research versus the United States Air Force. Dennis McPherson is there in the courtroom with Louis Goldman, seated just behind the plaintiff’s bench that is occupied by three of Goldman’s colleagues from his firm. On the other side are the Air Force lawyers, and McPherson is unpleasantly surprised to see behind them Major Tom Feldkirk, the man who got him into this in the first place. Feldkirk sits at attention and stares straight ahead at nothing.
Behind the parties in the case, the rather formal and imposing neoclassical room is filled with reporters. McPherson recognizes one of the main feature writers from Aviation Week, in a big crowd of others from the aerospace press. It’s hard for McPherson to remember that much of this is taking place in public; it seems to him a very private thing. And yet here they are in front of everybody, part of tomorrow’s business page without a doubt, if not the front pages. Newsheets and magazines everywhere, filled with LSR vs. USAF! It’s too strange.
And it’s too fast. McPherson has barely gotten seated, and used to the room and the seashell roar of its muttering crowd, when the judge comes in his side door and everyone stands. He’s barely down again when the sergeant-at-arms or some official of the court like that declares, “Laguna Space Research versus United States Air Force, Case 2294875, blah blah blah blah…” McPherson stops listening to the announcement and stares curiously at Feldkirk, whose gaze never leaves the judge. If only he could stand up and say across the room, “What about the time you gave us this program as our own project, Feldkirk? Why don’t you tell the judge about that?”
Well. No use getting angry. The judge no doubt knows about that anyway. And now he’s saying something—McPherson bears down, focuses his attention, tries to ignore the feeling that he’s caught in a trap he doesn’t understand.
Judge Tobiason is saying, in a quick, clipped voice, “So in the interests of national security, I am letting the contract stand as awarded.”
Goldman makes a quick tick with his teeth. The gavel falls. Case closed, court dismissed. The seashell mutters rise to a loud chatter, filling the room like the real sound of the ocean. McPherson stands with Goldman, they walk down the crowded central aisle.
By chance McPherson comes face to face with Tom Feldkirk. Feldkirk stares right through him, without even a blink, and marches out with the other Air Force people there. No looking back.
He’s sitting in a car with Goldman. Goldman, he realizes, is angry; he’s saying, “That bastard, that bastard. The case was clear.” McPherson remembers the feeling he had at the ceremony where the contract was awarded; this is nothing like that for him, but for Goldman…
“We can pursue this,” Goldman says, looking at McPherson and striking the steering switch. “The GAO’s report has got the House Appropriations Committee interested, and several aides to members of the House Armed Services Committee are up in arms about it. We can make a formal request for a congressional investigation, and if some representatives are open to the idea then they could sic the Procurements Branch of the Office of Technology Assessment on them, as well as light a fire under the GAO. It could work.”
McPherson, momentarily exhausted at the complexity of it all, only says “I’m sure we’ll want to try it.” Then he takes a deep breath, lets it out. “Let’s go get a drink.”
“Good idea.”
They go up to a restaurant in Georgetown and sit at a tiny table placed under the street window. Window shoppers check them out to see if they are mannequins. They down one drink in silence. Goldman describes again the plan to influence the committees in Congress, and it sounds good.
After a while Goldman changes the subject. “I can tell you what went on behind the scenes at the Air Force. We finally got the whole story.”
Curious despite his lassitude, McPherson nods. “Tell me.”
Goldman settles back in his seat, closes his eyes briefly. He is getting over his anger at the judge’s contempt for the rule of law, he’s convinced they can win in Congress, and he’s seduced by the gossip value of the story he’s ferreted out: McPherson can read all that clearly. He’s getting to know this man. “Okay, it started as far as you knew when Major Feldkirk came to you with a superblack program.”