“I-——I—” The President bolted for the bathroom. “I can’t talk now!” The door slammed behind him.
Oswald picked up the photos and looked at them. Like the President, he studied the first one and then went on to the others more quickly. “Oh, no!” he echoed. There was no trace of Jonathan Relevant on any of the photographs. His presence simply had not registered on the film. “Jonathan Relevant,” Oswald muttered to himself, “is a Polaroid party poop!”
“Oswald!” The croak of the President's voice sounded from the other side of the door to the privy. “Those pictures—Oswald! Where is Jonathan Relevant? . . .”
Ivan Relevant, at that moment, was in an unmarked Russian aircraft somewhere over Alaska and approaching the Bering Strait. Dr. Ludmilla Skivar was seated beside him. A small package rested in his lap. Absentmindedly, he picked it up and juggled it with one hand.
“What’s that?” Ludmilla asked in Russian.
“Oh?” Ivan Relevant looked at the package. “I’m not sure,” he replied. “A messenger handed it to me when we were leaving the hotel. I’d forgotten about it.”
“Why don’t you open it?”
“All right.” Ivan Relevant unwrapped the package. A card fell out and he picked it up.
“What does it say?” Ludmilla inquired.
“ ‘You see we didn’t welch on grape jelly,’ ” Ivan Relevant read aloud. “ ‘Fondest regards, Chancellor and Mrs. Hardlign.’ ” He looked at the jar of paraffin-sealed jelly and smile to himself.
“I don’t understand what it means. But then who can understand Americans?” Ludmilla shrugged off the question and changed the subject. “We will be together in Moscow a lot,” she told him, her eyes smoldering with erotic promises. “The Supreme Soviet has granted permission for me to work with you on developing the ‘Merman Thesis.’ It is because I am a Nobel candidate,” she added proudly.
“Nobel oblige,” Ivan Relevant observed.
“You don’t sound very enthusiastic. Why can’t you have faith in my ‘Merman Thesis.’ The philosophic, scientific basis—”
“Sometimes—” Ivan Relevant interrupted. “Sometimes—- not always, but sometimes — theories of science and philosophy merely stem from the talent for making something out of nothing.”
“Order out of chaos!” Ludmilla rebutted stiflly.
“That can be the same thing. Not always. But sometimes upon analysis -”
“Perhaps. But if you’re so wise, then you tell me the answer. How do you think you came into being?” Ludmilla demanded.
“How do you think you came into being?” he replied.
“I was born!”
“Which explains nothing.”
“Scientifically—”
“-—-it explains nothing. Science labels everything, categorizes the acts, the organisms, and the processes of birth, but Science explains nothing.”
“Then how do you explain your being here?”
“I’m here.” Ivan Relevant smiled. “That’s all.”
“A miracle?” Ludmilla sneered.
“Everything that breathes is a miracle of sorts. The hummingbird and the Gila monster.”
“Theology!” Ludmilla snorted her contempt.
“Perhaps. Or perhaps metaphysics. What difference does the label make? No matter what you call it, there are only two ways of looking at it: prolife and antilife. That’s the most important thing I’ve been able to determine about myself: I’m prolife.”
“Well so am I,” Ludmilla said quickly and defensively. Then she repeated it as if she too had just made a discovery about herself. “I’m prolife.”
“No hummingbird I,” he added reflectively. “But my eyes see no monsters, Gila or otherwise.”
“Except perhaps when they turn inward.” Ludmilla was speaking to herself.
“Not even then,” Ivan Relevant said positively. “Not if one’s vision is deep enough and clear enough.”
They fell silent. The plane winged closer to the Alaskan coastline, to the Bering Strait. Ivan Relevant looked out the window. A moment later he noticed that one of the jet engines had stopped firing. He called it to Ludmi1la’s attention.
“There are three others,” she reassured him. “Plenty of power to get us to Siberia.”
Ivan Relevant looked out the opposite window just as a second engine ceased functioning. I remember this movie, he thought to himself. Now the third engine goes. He looked out the first window again. There was no jet stream coming from either engine. And then the pilot’s voice over the intercom says—
“We’re having a little operational difficulty.” The pilot spoke in Russian. “But there’s no cause for alarm. As a precautionary measure, passengers are asked to put on their parachutes and life jackets. I repeat, there is no cause for alarm.”
And then the copilot, a reassuring smile pasted on a face taut with underlying grimness, walks with measured step down the passenger cabin aisle to the tail of the plane. A moment later Ivan Relevant watched the copilot vanish to the rear. But why the tail? The difficulty seems to be up front, the engines, the wings. Why the tail?
“What’s back there?” he asked Ludmilla.
“The lavatory.”
“What else?”
“I don’t know.”
The copilot reappeared, his smile broader, his underlying taut grimness tauter and grimmer. He went back into the pilots’ compartment and the door closed behind him. Silence, and then the pilot’s voice sounded over the intercom again.
“We regret to inform you that due to operational ditficulties the lavatory is temporarily out of order. Passengers are requested not to attempt to use it. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Now, according to the script, just about now the navigator is informing the pilot that we've passed the point of no return. The pilot concludes that the plane can't make it on one engine and that the situation is hopeless. Eyes staring, voice strained, he tells the crew to prepare the passengers, that he’s going to ditch the plane in the drink. The copilot disagrees. “We can make it," he tells the pilot, “if we just lighten the load."
But the dazed pilot is beyond hearing him.
“You’ve pushed the panic button!” the copilot tells him.
The pilot ignores him and starts to guide the plane downward. As the aircraft loses altitude, the copilot springs into action. He slaps the pilot’s face hard. “Get hold of yourself, man!” he tells him sternly.
And the pilot snaps out of it. He shakes his head hard and the cobwebs of panic visibly dissolve from his eyes. He’s alert and crisp once again. “Thanks,” he tells the copilot. “I needed that slap. I'm okay now. We’re going for broke. I'm going to fly this baby home by the seat of my pants.” (In Russian, with subtitles no less.)
“You can do it." The copilot claps him on the shoulder and leaves. Then, in the next scene, the copilot reenters the passenger cabin and announces—
“The situation is serious, but not critical,” the copilot informed them from the doorway. “We have to lighten the load of the plane. I’ll need help.”
And one of the passengers leaps to his feet and says—-
“Just tell me what to do,” Ivan Relevant volunteered.
“First thing is to get rid of the luggage. Just knock out that emergency-exit door and I’ll pass stuff to you to jettison. While we’re doing that, Ludmilla can take this screwdriver and detach the seats from their moorings. We’ll get rid of them next.”
Pan shot of luggage being passed down aisle, brave passenger braced in emergency-exit doorway, wind whipping the scuttled articles from his grasp. Dissolve to exterior shot of plane with baggage, chairs, etc., hurtling off into space. Held long enough to show slight gain in altitude.