Syzygy Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  ARECIBO

  Wednesday, December 2d. 9:45 PM.

  Thursday, December 3d. 7:30 AM.

  Thursday, December 3d. 9:20 AM.

  Thursday, December 3d. 12:15 PM.

  Thursday, December 3d. 1:15 PM.

  Friday, December 4th. 8:20 PM.

  Friday, December 4th. 8:22 PM. PST

  Friday, December 4th. 8:25 PM.

  Friday, December 4th. 8:38 PM.

  Saturday, December 5th. 2:20 PM.

  Tuesday, December 8th. 8:40 AM.

  Tuesday, December 8th. 10:20 AM.

  Tuesday, December 8th. 10:35 AM.

  Tuesday, December 8th. 11:10 AM.

  Tuesday, December 8th. 5:10 PM.

  Tuesday, December 8th. 5:30 PM.

  Wednesday, December 9th. 7:00AM.

  Friday, December 18th. 9:15 AM.

  Monday, December 21st. 2:15 PM.

  Wednesday, December 23d. 8:00 PM.

  Wednesday, December 23d. 6:05 PM.

  Thursday, December 24th. 10:45 m.

  Thursday, December 24th. 4:15 PM.

  Friday, December 25th. Christmas Day. 4:00 PM.

  Friday, December 25th. Christmas Day. 8:50 PM.

  Saturday, December 26th. 11:00 AM.

  Saturday, December 26th. 1:40 PM.

  Saturday, December 26th. 8:15 PM.

  Sunday, December 27th. 1:30 PM.

  Sunday, December 27th. 7:00 PM.

  Sunday, December 27th. 10:40 a.m.

  Monday, December 28th. 6:20 AM

  Monday, December 28th. 8:20 m.

  Monday, December 28th. 11:40 m.

  Monday, December 28th. 5:50 PM.

  Monday; December 28th. 7; 10 PM.

  Monday, December 28th. 8:10 PM.

  Tuesday, December 29th. 5:10 AM.

  Tuesday, December 29th. 11:25 AM.

  SYZYGY

  by Frederik Pohl

  Copyright © 1981

  ARECIBO

  Because Jupiter is the greatest of the planets, it is named after the greatest of the Roman gods. As a god, Jupiter is known as Fulgurator, the thrower of lightning; Imperator, the ruler; Optimus Maximus, the best and most high. As a planet, Jupiter is all of those things. Its swirling atmosphere is lanced with lightnings. Its huge mass, outweighing all the other planets combined, rules the orbits of a thousand lesser worlds. And it is indeed Maximus. If it were any larger, it probably would not be a planet at all. It would be a star.

  Wednesday, December 2d. 9:45 PM.

  The party was beginning to slow down, but then it had never been a high-speed party. It was not meant to be. It was meant to mix the people who wanted money with the people who could give it to them, and the predominant mood was Cover Your Butt. The scientists had to be careful of the senators. The politicians had to be careful of the people from the news media. The news media people had no one to worry about, except perhaps each other. But they all had deadlines to make, because of the differences in time between Puerto Rico and wherever their home bases were, and early sessions in the morning to wake up for. Ancient old Senator Bielowitz was the first to go, before ten, and some of the newspersons hitched a ride with him to the motel at the bottom of the hill. It was a terrible waste of a good party, Tib thought, considering that it was out of doors in the warm Caribbean night and the sky was a glory, but then he wasn’t here to have fun. One more drink, he told himself, and then I too will walk over to the Visiting Scientists Quarters and read myself to sleep with the reports on the tilt rate of the Salton Sea.

  As he was building himself a weak Canadian Club and ginger, the chairman of the meeting climbed on a stone bench. “Gentlemen!” he called. “Ladies. Can I interrupt the fun for just a minute?” The chairman was a Florida meteorologist and, Tib thought critically, a bit of a butt-kisser. But maybe that was because they wore always under the gun with their forecasts. He waited a second, until a majority of the faces were turned more or less his way, and said, “Miz Georgia Raines Keating, our representative from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has something to tell you. Here you go, Rainy.” He offered a hand to help her up.

  Space scientists and weathermen, what the hell was he doing here with them? Tib took an angry swallow of his drink. They got all the money they needed! They had everything going for them, including a rub-off from the military budgets, because everybody knew that space rockets and nuclear missiles were first cousins, and weather was itself a kind of weapon. But everybody was quieting down to listen—partly, and there was another unjust thing, because the scientist from JPL was a very good-looking young woman who wore her jeans very tight. “Thank you, Dr. Zinfader,” she called, and then, to the audience, “I’ve got good news. Our course corrections were optimal! Around two PM tomorrow—that’s year 81, day 337, time 1613 in Universal Mean Time—Jupiter, the sun, and Newton-8 will be in syzygy. That means that, from the Newton-8 satellite, Jupiter will appear to transit the sun. Just as promised,” she added, beaming. There were a few polite handclaps. “I’ll be telling you more about it during the coffee break tomorrow morning. Right now I’m going to send it a message to tell it how to deploy its instrumentation to observe the transit, so if any of you would care to accompany me to the mission control…?”

  Most of the twenty-odd people left at the party were looking at their watches, and only about half a dozen took her up on the invitation. Tib, finishing his drink, decided to be one of them; it w.is on the way to the V.S.Q. in any case. What surprised him was that so few persons joined her. And none of them of any real importance. Two of the observatory scientists and their wives; one young woman who turned out to be Rainy Keating’s assistant; himself. And the senators and the congressmen who were supposed to be here to learn everything they could learn about the science they were spending the taxpayers’ money for? Not one!

  Shocking, Tib thought to himself, though he was not really shocked. It was only what he cynically expected. He only half-watched while the young research assistant sat down at the keyboard of the mission control console and did not even half listen while Keating explained what she was doing. It was such a waste to fly three thousand miles to this place! His work interrupted, his time taken away from him, and for what? Only so that he could beg a few more dollars from the politicians, to do the things that every thinking human being knew absolutely had to be done anyway!

  Still—speaking of things that had to be done—his slides were still in the car, and so was the easel for his charts. As long as he was here, he might as well set them up for his presentation, he thought, since he was speaking in the morning. As he came back into the little meeting room with the folded easel under his arm he discovered that everyone else had gone, and only Rainy Keating was standing by the doorway, looking lost. “Hey,” she said. “Dr.—?”

  “Sonderman. Tibor Sonderman.”

  “Right, you’re the geologist. I wonder if you could do me a favor? I missed my ride down the hill. It’s only about a mile, but at night—if you wouldn’t mind—”

  “Mind? Why should I mind? I’ve got a car right outside.” But of course she knew that; she’d seen him go out to it. And of course she had no compunctions about imposing on him! If she had been a man, even if she had been an older woman, then there would have been quite a different thing. It would not have been a sex thing. Tib Sonderman’s perception of sex things was that he was always on the losing side. The better the woman looked, the smarter, the more amiable, the more certain he was that the cards were stacked against him. “Let me help you with your things,” he said, picking up her briefcase.

  “Thanks.” She gave him a quick, uncertain grin that faded when she saw his expression.

  Outside again, in the damp, lush Puerto Rican air, she was making convers
ation about the stars and the radio telescope, and he was responding, but neither of them was making much of an effort. It was only a short drive, through the parking lot and down the looping road that descended the mountain to a white house with a solar roof, set back among trees at a bend in the road. Tib drove with great concentration, like someone who had never learned to drive until he was in his mid-twenties; he drove as though he were following a memorized checklist of instructions.

  He drove as though he were in a hurry to get it over with and get rid of her, Rainy Keating thought. What an awkward person he was to be with! Good looking enough—not very tall, and maybe a little heavy, but he had a nice face. He even had a sense of humor, because she had been listening to him talking to one of the newsmen early in the party. But he didn’t seem able to relax with her. And when they got out of the car and walked up onto the breezy porch of the house she had been allowed to stay in for the meeting, he almost blundered into the blown-glass mobile that hung near the door. “Oh, watch out,” she cried, and he ducked just in time, grazing it and making it tinkle gently.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “I hope I haven’t damaged your wind-chime.”

  “It’s an orrery. I got it in San Juan, and I think it’s all right—I’m sorry I shouted at you.” And then there seemed nothing to do but to add, “Would you like to come in for a drink?”

  He thought it over for a moment. “Thank you, yes,” he said, but she had had time to get annoyed at his hesitation. And he still didn’t come in, even after she had unlocked the door and held it. He said uneasily, “Do you hear voices? Your family, perhaps?”

  “I don’t have any family here. It isn’t my house; the people who live here are on sabbatical, and they let me borrow it.”

  “Perhaps I was mistaken,” he said, following her in and looking around the room as though he expected to have to write a report on it.

  Rainy Keating felt that she, at least, had a really good sense of humor, and the way she diagnosed that was that she saw a lot of comedy in herself. For instance, it was funny that she had let what she called her “dating skills” get rusty. She had had plenty of practice, after all, and not that far in the past. And anyway, dating lore was all high-school stuff, passed from sophomores to freshmen around the time of the menarche, and all simple. Lesson One: Talk about what he is interested in. So she finished turning on the lights, set out a tray of glasses and said, “What do you think, Tibor? Does this kind of circus do any real good?”

  He smiled suddenly and sat down, seeming to relax. “Good? I don’t know. But I am sure that to stay away from it would bring ultimate harm.”

  “Meaning no money?” She brought him a whiskey and soda—not very large, because she wasn’t having so much fun that she wanted to protract it indefinitely.

  “Exactly no money. These senators and congressmen are important people. They would tell you that they do not want to be flattered, and that’s true. But it would surprise them so if we did not, that they would be quite unable to vote our appropriations. Are you married?”

  Sitting down near him, Rainy was startled enough to misjudge and bump into the arm of the chair. “What kind of question is that, right off?”

  “I just like to know, since you wear no ring.”

  “I used to be married. What about you?”

  He nodded, as though it was the answer he had expected. “I used to be married, too, but now I’m divorced. For six years—no, this is December already. For six years and two months.”

  “And two weeks and three days and five hours and twenty-two minutes? Oh, wow, Tibor, you know what I bet? I bet the divorce was your wife’s idea.” He shrugged. “And you didn’t want it to happen, right? And you’re still not happy about it.”

  He said stiffly, “If I said something that upset you, I’m sorry.”

  “Why should you upset me? I’m used to it. My ex-husband knows exactly how long it is, too. “

  “And he didn’t want the divorce either?”

  She laughed, relenting. “No, he didn’t. Let’s start over, okay? I’m not divorced—yet. I’ve been separated four months, and as soon as it’s a year I’ll get the papers, and, yes, my ex-husband didn’t want it and he still hassles me about it…and I’m not usually so touchy.” He had gulped his drink; penitently, she freshened it and tried again. “Are you worried about losing your funding?”

  “Not me personally, no.” He hesitated, then let her add ice to the glass. “There is a great need for more observation stations all over the United States—particularly in California. There are thousands of square miles that we cannot monitor at all. We had the funds for expansion, but NSF has cut back—I have been asked to testify about the importance before these politicians, hoping they will restore the money. I do not, honestly, have much hope. I suppose it is the same with you?”

  “Well, not really,” she said with a touch of pride. “I’m JPL’s pet exhibit of economy, because my own project is pretty nearly all pure profit. They sent me here to tell the committee that, so they can see what a good investment space missions are. There are some big ones that need funding—a Venus radar orbiter, a cometary mission. Some really nice ones.”

  “They will get the funding, of course.”

  There was an edge to his tone that made her look at him curiously. “Why do you say that?”

  “Oh, space, you know. It is the glamor department of science, after all—and very close to rockets and missiles.”

  “I don’t have anything to do with missiles!”

  “Not directly,” he conceded, and then spoiled it by adding, “perhaps. But it is all much the same thing.”

  “The hell it is, buster.”

  He looked at her in astonishment,, then scowled. “Well, Miz Keating,” he said with heavy irony, “I have enjoyed this little talk. I apologize for touching so often where you are so touchy.”

  She stood up with him. “I am not in the least touchy about my work,” she corrected him angrily.

  “Oh, you feminists!” he exploded.

  “What do you mean, feminists’?”

  He had an infuriating smile, she realized. “After all, you play both sides against the middle, do you not? When you want a favor, all sexual and sweet. When you discuss your work, hard-nosed, all men together—”

  “Hold on a bloody minute. Where did ‘sexual’ come into this?”

  “At the very beginning, of course, are you denying this? The scenario is obvious. You ask me to drive you home, and of course there is the implied possibility that you will allow me to kiss you at the door, yes?, and then perhaps to go farther, even in the direction of your bed, all according to expectation.”

  “What goddamn expectations?”

  “The expectations of the whole world! They are very clear. If a woman indicates to a man that she does not dislike him, the world expects him to make an advance—it is his obligation; he must spare her the embarrassment of making sexual overtures herself. Even if he does not particularly wish to! And if he fails in this he has insulted her—he has indicated she is not sexually attractive; what rudeness!”

  Rainy Keating was holding the heavy tumbler in her hand; to her surprise, she realized she wanted to throw it. “You’ve got hell’s own nerve, fellow! If I wanted to go to bed with you I’d let you know!”

  “You see how angry you are?” He nodded. “Because I have not picked up my cue properly. Listen to me, Missus Keating, you’re right, I did not want my wife to divorce me. But I accepted her decision, because that was what was expected of me. Now what is expected is that I must accept the decision of every woman I hand a drink to at a party! How ridiculous! The unpleasant mornings I have spent, waking up after a night with some wholly unacceptable woman simply because I could not offend her by failing to make the overtures—”

  “Get the hell out of here, Sonderman!”

  He blinked. “Did I say something offensive?”

  “Get out of here!”

  He did, with dignity. Outside the
door he said severely, “You have taken this in quite the wrong spirit.”

  “God,” she cried, and slammed the door in his face.

  Thursday, December 3d. 7:30 AM.

  In the early Eighteenth Century Charles Boyle, the fourth Earl of Orrery, was known as one of England’s most enthusiastic amateur astronomers. An inventor named George Graham made, and gave to the earl, a clockwork mechanism that represented the course of the known planets around the sun. The device did not show the moons of Mars, because no one knew they existed, but neither did it show Jupiter’s Galilean satellites, though they had been seen by everyone with a telescope. Perhaps the mechanism was not delicate enough to deal with things so tiny and so remote. The earl enjoyed the device. He liked it so well that he permitted it to be called an “orrery “, after himself. The feelings of George Graham about this are not recorded.

  The house that Rainy Keating had borrowed had a back lawn enclosed in a stone fence. Two young people finished the first joint of the day and rolled up their sleeping bags; they had spent the night in the shelter of the wall. “Eat first or haul tail first, Dennis?” the young woman asked.

  Dennis Siroca put his arms through the straps of his pack frame. “Let’s get out of here before the people wake up. We’ll eat up the hill a little.” He shrugged the pack into position uncomfortably. It was warm enough, but damp. “Maybe we’ll smoke a little more dope first.”

  “Now?”

  “Up the hill, Zee.” He helped her with the bedroll, and then stood waiting while she methodically snapped the harness and fastened all the ties on her quilted jacket. Siroca was a tall man of about thirty. His full beard was sulfur yellow, and so was his hair, which he wore pulled to the back through a leather thong. He inspected the little house with approval: the solar panel meant the owners had respect for the ecology (though maybe that didn’t matter any more). As they started across the front yard he glanced at the porch, and something made of bright glass caught his eye. It hung like a Calder mobile, and when the crystal globes touched each other in the morning breeze they tinkled. “Hey, that’s pretty,” he said, pleased. “You go ahead, Zee. I want to take a look.”