CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
"Ladies and gentlemen, with all due respect the issue isn't how much you can afford to spend on Apollo: it's how little you can afford not to support it," Al said, his voice resounding very pleasingly through the room. "Almost thirteen years ago a promise was made to the American people. A vision was born. Today we're asking that you take the final step in keeping that vision alive. We're close, so very close to fulfilling the promise of twenty missions. You're letting one setback blind you to what we're trying to accomplish!"
"And what, exactly, is that?" Emerson asked dryly.
The question stopped Al cold. Until this point, they had just let him talk, and gradually the inertia of his monologue had banished the sheer terror that had seized him when he had stood up. It was actually quite a lot like being on stage, except that the script had been a vague thing in his mind until he opened his mouth. This, however…
He felt a supportive pressure on his ankle. Yardley's foot.
"We're expanding man's horizons," Al said, emboldened by the subtle show of confidence. "We're proving that nothing can stop us."
"Seven successful landings later, I think we've proved more than enough, don't you, Lieutenant?" Emerson asked. "I mean, let's be practical. We can obviously do it. The only time we didn't succeed was Apollo 13, and even then we made it to the moon: we were just unable to land. Now Skylab will be able to provide a much more sophisticated site for micro-gravity studies, at less expense, greater convenience, and lower risk. The Apollo program has outlasted its usefulness and outstayed its welcome. It's time to let it die a peaceful death."
The finality and condescension in his tone was too much to be borne, even by a saint. And Al was by no stretch of the imagination a saint. "Look, you nozzle…" he blustered. The table in front of him aborted the threatening stride that he had intended to take towards the smug politician. The impact struck hard against the bone of his thigh, and he crumpled a little with a barely-suppressed snort of pain. Yardley seized his wrist and shook his head almost imperceptibly. Al took a deep breath and smoothed the front of his uniform in such a way that his medals caught the light. He blinked several times in rapid succession. The motion cooled his burning eyes.
"Senator, Apollo never has been about scientific advances," Al said. "It's about pride. Pride in our country. Pride in our abilities. Pride in our species. Look what we can do! My God, Congressman, we've put people on the moon!"
Pennsylvania giggled a little. Now Al could see the shadow of victory in Idaho's dreamy expression. Georgia was dozing off again, but the tanned, younger-ish woman from Hawaii looked suddenly pensive. That was four out of seven who weren't dead set against coughing up the dough.
The Congressman from Maine cleared his throat.
"Perhaps we should adjourn for the morning a little early," he suggested. "Just to give everyone a chance to reign in their emotions. After all, this isn't a Baptist prayer meeting."
There were some chuckles at this. Al's eyes narrowed, but he followed the prompt Yardley was sending by tugging on the hem of his jacket, and sat.
"I agree," said Emerson. "And you would do well to remember, Lieutenant, that pride goeth before a fall. We will reconvene at two o'clock."
He brought the gavel down with inexorable decisiveness.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWM"You're doing fine," Yardley said, emptying a packet of sugar into his coffee and stirring it with mechanical precision.
Al barked out a very sarcastic laugh and reached for the Sweet 'N Low. "I'm shooting you in the foot. Better drop me before I miss and get you between the eyes."
"Don't be ridiculous: you're doing much better than I thought—Calavicci?" The Administrator frowned in sudden confusion.
"What?" said Al in some annoyance.
"Why do you use artificial sweetener when you're trying to put on weight?"
The absurd displacement of the question caught him completely off guard. Al blinked because he couldn't think of any other adequate response.
"You're quick," he said hoarsely. His voice gained more confidence as he segued into the wisecrack. "Really quick. You could probably win an argument with my girlfriend."
Yardley chuckled. "Wedding's in September, isn't it?" he said.
"Yeah, that's right," Al murmured, mixing the sweetener into his coffee. The truth was that Beth had started him on the habit. Just in your coffee, she had said. He liked it thick as syrup and it drove her crazy. No other dietary restrictions until your fortieth birthday, I promise. The thought made him shake his head morosely. She hadn't kept that promise, either…
"As if she had a choice," Al muttered, hating himself for the bitter thought. It wasn't Beth's fault his diet had shrunk down to insignificant and inadequate and sometimes nonexistent. God, why was he so bitter? He didn't want to be bitter, but it was so hard not to be when everything was a struggle.
"I'm sorry?" Yardley said.
"Nothing." Al gestured dismissively. "September. The wedding's in September."
"That's perfect," Yardley said, almost gleefully.
Al frowned. "Has anybody ever told you that you speak in riddles?" he asked.
"Phyllis. All the time." Yardley dug out his stenographers' notebook. "The first thing we have to do is call Emerson on disrespect. You're not a Lieutenant, you're a Lieutenant Commander with excellent promotion prospects on the near horizon—"
"Bullshit if you want to, but that's a lie," Al said. "My promotion prospects are, and always have been, crap." The words surprised him. Obviously he was much more comfortable around this man than he had thought.
Yardley favored him with an ironic smile. "You know, I'm beginning to see a pattern here," he said. "You haven't got a very good opinion of yourself, have you?"
Not that comfortable. Al took a slug of his coffee in order to evade the question.
"It isn't easy to readjust," Yardley continued. "No one expects you to do it alone."
His voice was level and respectful, and not in the least pitying or condescending. Nevertheless Al wasn't in the mood for this.
"We have a more pressing problem to deal with," he said curtly. "We can't just let them shut us down!"
"Calavicci, I—" Yardley stared deeply into Al's eyes. His expression was unreadable, but it made Al incredibly uncomfortable. Then suddenly the pressure was gone and the Associate Administrator was smiling wickedly.
"We won't let them shut us down," he said. "Public Relations have been in touch with the press. There's a great deal of interest in our little dilemma. All you need to do is get through this afternoon. By tomorrow morning it'll be all over the papers."
"I don't understand, sir," Al said. "Why on earth would the press care now? The last time they got worked up about Apollo was when Thirteen was in trouble."
"I told you before," Yardley said. "What the public wants is a star, an icon—a human face to the issue. We're going to give them one."
"I don't follow you, sir. I'm sorry." Al shook his head to emphasize his words.
"Calavicci, nobody wants to put you into an awkward position, but you are incredibly qualified for the task. You present an image that isn't just advantageous for us, but it's also too good for Congress to turn down. They were very eager to see you participate in the Apollo program before things started to go wrong. Once they realize that people want you up there they'll get behind you and hope nobody notices that they ever doubted us." Yardley kneaded the knuckles of one hand against the palm of the other, a little ruefully. "I don't want to push you into the public eye if you aren't willing, Calavicci. You have to understand what you're getting into. The press can be vicious."
"Yeah, so I've been told," Al said, thinking of Dirk Simon likening them to mosquitoes. "I don't care. I'm not giving up on Apollo. You need me for your poster boy, you've got me."
"That's the spirit, Calavicci!" Yardley exclaimed. "You and me, we can do this!"
"Yes, sir!" Al said, feeling his spirits rise again for the first time in weeks.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMThere were telephones in the back hallway off of the room where the hearing was being held. Having finished lunch early, Al made his way towards these. He needed to talk to Elsa. Talking to Elsa would drive away the ghosts of Beth, or at least keep them at bay long enough for him to get home where he could bury his past pains in present pleasures.
He approached them to find Dirk Simon leaning against the wall, grinning enormously as he spoke into one of the phones with tremendous enthusiasm.
"You did? How high?" he said. Then, after a pause; "That's my boy!.. Really? How 'bout that! Listen, sport, what do you want Daddy to bring you back from Washington?… No, Mikey, somehow I don't think Mom would like it if I brought you home a bazooka. I'll find you something nice, I promise… Okay, big guy. Let me talk to Mommy now."
Al grinned. It was weird to think of a lawyer human enough to have kids. From the sound of it, Dirk was even a pretty decent father: calling home on his lunch break just to talk to his son. Al started towards a vacant phone as a more mature conversation started next to him, and the pitch of Dirk's voice fell a full third.
"Hey, Liz. How's—Liz? Lizzy, what's the matter?" Dirk frowned. "You what?… Honey, everybody has bad dreams—"
This was followed by a protracted silence. Al lifted a phone to his ear, but hesitated to dial up the operator. It didn't seem right to start up a romantic call to his fiancée while the guy next to him was obviously having a tense conversation with his wife.
Dirk was on the defensive. "No, no, honey, I'm not saying—settle down, honey—Liz, Liz, just calm down… No, no, I'm not saying you're overreacting. Just… Lizzy, honey, settle down. What's got you so worked up?… Maybe you should go and see Doctor Tim… It's not good for the baby for you to get upset like this…" He tensed. "Yeah, everybody does have bad dreams, but most people aren't still upset about them in the middle of the afternoon… aw, honey, not again…Liz, would you just… I'll be home the week after next; you know that. Liz—Liz, don't you—Don't use that tone of voice! You knew I was a lawyer when you married me—Well, fine, maybe I am! At least I'm not going to disappear on you the way y—Well, maybe that's cause it is new!… If it's not your fault whose is it? Mine?—Oh, just try it!" He slammed the phone down and leaned against the melamine divider, chest heaving with anger.
"Girl troubles?" Al said sympathetically.
Dirk turned to look at him. "Yeah, well, you know women. They get pregnant, and suddenly the whole world is out to get them. I phone her up to see how my little guys are, and she turns hysterical on me, shrieking about some dream she had. Then she tries to make me feel guilty for putting bread on the table. There are days I wish I was still single."
"Believe me," Al said; "it's not all it's cracked up to be. I lost my wife. Worst thing that ever happened to me." He didn't know why he was sharing this. Possibly because he liked this amicable bloodsucker and didn't want to see him make the same stupid mistakes he had. "Hold on tight, pal. Life only gives you one shot."
Dirk pinched the bridge of his nose and looked at Al again. "You really believe that?" he whispered.
Al couldn't speak for the lump of pain welling up in his throat. Beth. Oh, Beth, honey… He nodded. Dirk looked away. He was deathly pale.
"You were M.I.A. in Vietnam, weren't you?" he asked, his voice low and somehow defeated as if he was confirming something he wished desperately that he could deny.
Al stiffened. "How the hell did you know that?"
"I…uh…" Dirk faltered almost like a man groping for a lie. "I did a top line on you for Congressman Emerson. Know thine enemy." He clutched his head as if it hurt. His next words seemed more directed at himself than at Al. "God, you actually made it out."
Which meant that somebody close to him hadn't. Al put a firm but hopefully supportive hand on the bowed shoulder. "Better men than me didn't," he said.
"God…" Dirk scrubbed his face with the heel of his hand. He shrugged off Al's hand and straightened, digging in his pocket. "Listen… uh… Calavicci…" he said. "You're doing great up there, but Emerson is dead against you. Try this, okay? He's as Democrat as they come without actually having two left feet. You never know. It's worth a shot."
He handed Al a scrap of loose-leaf on which was scrawled two sentences. As he read them he could hear them in his mind as they had come across the airwaves in another lifetime.
The light came on. Blatantly obvious and yet elusive. And brilliant. Brilliant. "Kennedy!" he exclaimed. "Of course! Thank you!"
Dirk seemed unable to meet his eyes. "Sure," he said. "Sure. Least I could do."
He shuffled away, leaving Al with no thought at all of calling Elsa as he had intended: he was too busy reworking his closing statement. As he watched the lawyer vanish around the corner, however, Al couldn't help but pause to wonder what kind of guilty secret was eating away at the man's soul.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM"Your esteemed chairman has asked us, repeatedly," Al declaimed; "to account for Apollo's purpose. What we are here to accomplish. It is true that the lunar missions have done little to advance the political, military or even scientific causes of the United States. But politics advances on its own, and our military endeavors of the last decade have been at the same time necessary and superfluous. As for science, it cannot advance at all without first capturing the imagination."
He took a quick appraisal of his audience. Maybe it was just a delusion, but he thought for a second that he really did have them eating out of the palm of his hand. He continued. "If Galileo hadn't looked up at the stars, how would he have thought up the telescope? If Jefferson hadn't sat in the dark, how could he have dreamed up the light bulb? Apollo doesn't show us actualities: it shows us possibilities. If our determination can put a man on the moon, what obstacle is too great for us to overcome?
"Apollo isn't a politically or financially sound venture. It's a choice. A true American hero once said that we choose to go to the moon. It isn't easy. It wasn't easy to get those rockets up there. It wasn't easy to watch the men on Apollo 1 die without ever leaving the ground. It wasn't easy when Apollo 13 was in critical danger, rocketing away from the earth with inadequate fuel for return. And it isn't easy now, when we're asking you, yet again, for more of America's money—the money that the people of this country have earned in hundreds of thousands of hours of honest labor. But we chose to keep the program going after that door failed. We—Congress and NASA and the American people—chose to keep the program going when the men of Thirteen made it back by the skin of their teeth. And we can choose now to keep the program going now.
"After all these years I think we can look back and we can say with confidence that Apollo has indeed served to 'organize and measure the best of our energies and skills', as it was hoped that it would. President Kennedy didn't just dream for himself. He dreamed for his country, and look where that has brought us! Two more flights. Two more flights is all it will take to realize the dream. I think a dream as noble as this one is worth a hell of a lot more than another seventy million, don't you?"
With that he saluted crisply and sat down.
Dead silence persisted for a full thirty seconds. Finally, Emerson cleared his throat.
"The committee will caucus. This hearing will re-adjourn on Monday for a rendering of its decision."
Down came the gavel.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMYardley clapped Al on the back. "That was perfect! You're a public speaking whiz!"
"Yeah, well, I didn't do it alone…" Al said, scanning the lobby fruitlessly for signs of Dirk Simon. "And anyway, it might have been a pretty speech, but that doesn't mean they'll renew our funding."
"Oh, they will," Yardley said. "Couple that performance with what Emerson's going to be reading over his morning coffee tomorrow, and they definitely will!"
"Listen, sir, about that—" Al began.
It was too late. Yardley pulled him through the doors, where they were mobbed by a crowd of reporters bearing microphones, pencils and cameras. A flash blinded Al momentarily as he hastened to don his hat. Then he forced his lips into an optimistic grin that was a mirror of the one Yardley wore, and tried to make out individual questions among the chatter as the terror rose in his throat.