Part 4 (1/2)
”A very thoughtful man.” Nguyen lowered his face dangerously close to the Vaporub saucer and breathed deeply. ”A saint, actually.”
”Who?”
”Our good friend Wetherall.” Nguyen took a little brown bottle from his s.h.i.+rt and shook it. A handful of pills rattled inside. ”Sent us a nosegay.” He gave me a dreamy, very un-Nguyen-like leer.
I managed not to tell him just how Saint Wetherall was spending his time while O'Hara and I camped out in Laputa.
The pills Nguyen had dubbed nosegays were prototypes of an anti-stink drug that Wetherall had commissioned. Since there wasn't any cost-effective way to purify the air of s.h.i.+tdog stench, the olfactory psychophysiologists at Jolly Freeze R&D had instead attacked the brain receptors involved in processing smells. The pills transformed human perception of the big stink. The smell was just as strong as ever, but nosegay users experienced it as sweet and appetizing.
Of course, there were psychotropic side effects: the flood of smell-stimuli had a mild hallucinogenic effect. Certainly Nguyen was acting odd. It was several hours before I was able to talk him out of smearing himself with his own . . . but never mind. Although Wetherall's avatar a.s.sured us that a simple dosage adjustment was all that was necessary, I was wary.
Nguyen was not; he couldn't wait for the new improved batch. It wasn't until I saw that he was able to control his stink tropisms that I was finally convinced to try the drug.
I was impressed. Nosegays transformed the fetid air of the press encampment. And the intoxication induced by the lower dose was mild and actually quite pleasant. It made me feel at once silly and happy-like when I jumped on a bed.
I missed jumping on the bed. It just wasn't something you did in a lifthouse.
Not only did Wetherall's money make unusual things happen, it made them happen fast. Just last week I'd been worrying about my course load. Now I was writing the handbook for the entirely new art of s.h.i.+tdog management. Meanwhile, though I hardly had time to stop and marvel at it, plasticians were already a.s.sembling Wetherall's house. While his avatars oversaw the project, the man himself stayed away. I hadn't seen the real Wetherall since he left my hotel room at the Zones. I imagined him holed up in some Ramada Inn with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Maybe I'm a naive academic, but I was surprised at the ferocity of people's interest in what we were doing at Stateline. Sure, Wetherall's business, O'Hara's Laputa and the mystery of the s.h.i.+tdogs were each-to varying degrees-newsworthy in and of themselves, but the publicity surrounding the conjunction of all three was exponential. We always made the news; often as not we were the lead story. And not just in Vegas or LA, but in Berlin and Djakarta!
Profit Week reported that s.h.i.+tdog castings would provide heretofore unimagined materials engineering applications, and that Wetherall would soon roll out a line of casting-based superadhesives.
Hemisphere Confidential Report ran a story, complete with faked blueprints, which proved that Wetherall was building the lifthouse as a kind of degenerate love nest, where smelly and unspeakable s.e.xual acts were to take place.
No, said Channel Lore, the lifthouse was designed to be the most secure site on the planet; mercenary s.h.i.+tdogs would act as Wetherall's personal bodyguards against kidnappers and industrial saboteurs.
On NewsMelt, Blaine Thorp claimed he'd helped decipher the s.h.i.+tdog's language and explained that Wetherall was moving into the lifthouse to conduct secret negotiations for the establishment of a s.p.a.ce-based utopia.
Eye offered this exclusive: Wetherall had devised a way to remove the jewels from the piles intact and had already contracted with Cartier's to turn them into the world's biggest necklace. Some insiders speculated he'd offer it as an engagement present to Dawn Zoftiggle. But ”inside” insiders revealed that Wetherall had fallen head over heels in love with a woman he'd met while on location near the Stateline site. This mystery woman, it was said by those who really knew, would someday wear the alien jewels.
I credited none of this, of course, except the part about the mystery woman, whom I took to be the bimbo at the motel. But the volume and audacity of the false reports boded ill for his hopes of privacy, once the lifthouse was completed. Meanwhile, Wetherall's avatars gave cheery and innocuous interviews to whomever would listen. Only no one seemed to believe anything they said. Instead, commentators read sinister meaning into their PR plat.i.tudes.
Whenever he wasn't working on the project, Nguyen would personally lead reporters through Laputa. He was very disciplined in his approach: he would discuss himself, the lifthouse, the remoteness of the site, the problems of building around the s.h.i.+tdogs and then more about himself. He deflected questions he didn't want to answer with self-deprecating humor, and was gentlemanly about keeping me out of the spotlight, making sure I knew when tours were scheduled so I could retreat to my room. When questions about the s.h.i.+tdogs came up, he transformed me into an anonymous committee. It was always ”My experts tell me that . . .” or ”I've consulted my advisors on this . . .”
I was grateful for Nguyen's discretion, because Wetherall had yet to deliver my avatar.
Murk Janglish tried to explain it during one of his visits to Laputa. ”Never seen anything like it, actually,” he said. ”At first I thought it was your fault. Maybe you sabotaged the inventory or something, but the techs say no. There must have been some noise in the signal when your personality was scanned.”
I was secretly gratified. I liked it that they were having troubles cramming me into their d.a.m.ned program.
”I'll be patient,” I said. ”But I'm not going public. Nguyen will just have to keep s.h.i.+elding me.”
”s.h.i.+elding you?” said Janglish icily. ”More like throwing himself at every camera he sees.”
Nguyen smiled.
”You're getting so much publicity out of this, O'Hara, you ought to be paying us.”
Nguyen laughed out loud. ”Now what would my good friend Wetherall do with more money?” he said, refilling Janglish's champagne gla.s.s. ”He has got far too much as it is.”
Two days later Nguyen and I stood out on the salt flat, our noses filled with the fragrance of s.h.i.+tdogs digesting. It would have been delightful except for the late afternoon sun beating on us. We were waiting for the driver of the prototype mobile base that the Jolly Freeze engineers had thrown together. I had ordered a test run to see how the dogs would react. At the moment they lay pulsing, looking as oblivious and lazy as ever.
They weren't, of course. Things were changing.
I'd spent the last two days confirming my discovery, and calculating the rate of change. I was trying to decide how much to reveal-because here I was, Wetherall's magnificently paid s.h.i.+tdog expert, the rational scientist who had replaced mooncalf Thorp-and I didn't know what it meant. But then I wasn't sure what any s.h.i.+tdog behavior meant.
”The s.h.i.+tdogs are eating and excreting faster,” I blurted out. ”The third pile here is acc.u.mulating at almost twice the rate of the first two.”
”Hmmm,” said Nguyen. ”Could it be that they're adjusting to earth conditions-getting better at whatever it is they do?”
”They're showing no comparable changes at any of the other sites,” I said. ”I checked the international database earlier today.”
”Maybe it's a response to our activities,” said Nguyen.
”That's my guess, but don't quote me.”
”Which activities? Our construction is taking place far from them. We're observing them, but they've been observed before.”
I shrugged. ”I don't know how this will affect the project,” I said, ”but it does represent an advance in s.h.i.+tdog studies. For the first time we can be certain that the piles are a product rather than a byproduct. If they were only concerned with getting enough to 'eat,' their rate wouldn't change. The fact that they've speeded up confirms that it's production.”
”They feel acknowledged, perhaps,” said Nguyen playfully. ”They wish to encourage art appreciation. Fair enough. More jewels to look at. But if this news gets out, it's going to attract even more attention.”
”It'll get out eventually,” I said. ”Exobiologists will take notice; s.h.i.+tdog behavior doesn't change often. And it isn't happening at the other sites.”
”Hmmm,” said Nguyen. ”Maybe we should build lifthouses at all the other sites too. Then Stateline wouldn't be so distinctive.”
”I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell this to Wetherall until I've figured out the implications.”
I didn't tell Nguyen my suspicion that the configuration of the piles and jewels might have some semiotic significance. Aunt Lindsay had done her dissertation on how the shape of African termite mounds was evolutionarily designed to communicate to other termite colonies. If, as it appeared, s.h.i.+tdog behavior could respond to that of humans, then that suggested the possibility of a feedback loop-s.h.i.+tdog behavior influencing humans, who then influenced the s.h.i.+tdogs. A kind of subliminal, semiotic communication. But this notion was so Thorplike I did not want to have to admit to it until I understood more.
Nguyen was gazing up at pile C. He turned and winked, as if letting me in on a joke. Only I didn't get it. Not all signs are so easily read.
The base rolled up and stopped, clicking in the heat. The driver was dressed entirely in denim, his red-bearded face shadowed by a hat the size of a manhole cover. He motioned for us to enter; the cab had been fitted with first cla.s.s airline seats. Nguyen climbed in first. When the driver reached out to help me up, his grip, cool as a Billy Bar, made me do a double take. It was Wetherall.
”Great to see you again, Liz.” His big, oblivious smile flashed through the fake whiskers. There was no apology for humiliating me outside the Jolly Freeze van.
Nguyen took it in stride. ”So I take it you've gotten yourself instructed on how to drive this from the crew.”
”I arranged a private tutorial.”
”You might at least have let us know in advance,” I said.