Free The Weathermakers (1967) by Ben Bova Page A

Rossman’s office. I really don’t remember what we said or did. I can recall Rossman’s angry, twisted face, Ted’s stunned expression. The next thing I remember is entering my hotel room.
    I must have sat there for quite a while. The buzz of the phone snapped my attention to the room around me.
    “Answer,” I called out, realizing now that the room was dark. Outside, the towers of Back Bay were looming shadows against the reddening sky.
    Barney’s face took form on the viewscreen. “Jerry . . . what are we going to do? Ted’s cleaned out his desk. He’s gone.”
    “Where are you?”
    “At Climatology. I . . . what’s Ted going to do?”
    I could see that she had been crying. “Well, don’t go to pieces, now. The world hasn’t ended.”
    Shaking her head, she told me, “You don’t understand. Ted is ruined. His career is finished.”
    “Just because he lost a job? That’s not—”
    “It’s not only a job. The Climatology Division is the only place where Ted had any chance at all of doing the work he wants to do, And Dr. Rossman can prevent him from getting another position anywhere in the Government.”
    I hadn’t realized that. “Well . . . there’s private industry. Lots of firms have meteorological offices. My Uncle Lowell’s airline, for instance. And they pay a lot better than the Government.”
    “But they don’t do research on weather control . . . or long-range forecasts.”
    “Maybe they could . . . maybe . . .”
    “And how is Ted going to finish school? The Division was sponsoring him at MIT. Now that he’s fired he has no way of paying tuition or anything. And Dr. Rossman won’t give him any kind of a reference, and . . . Jerry, it’s so hopeless!”
    “Wait a minute,” I said. “Don’t go off the deep end. No matter how bad it looks, we can still figure out something. I remember something my father told me once: When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
    She was silent for a moment. I watched her face; it looked like a little girl’s, trying to be brave, holding back the tears.
    “I just don’t think I’m very tough, Jerry,” she said. “I just don’t know what to do.”
    All right , a voice inside me said, talk is easy; now let’s see you act. For the first time in my life, I felt a weight of responsibility settle on me.
    “Where is Ted now?” I asked her.
    “I don’t know . . . Probably on his way back to his apartment.”
    “See if you can get him to come here. You come too. And Tuli. We might as well all get together.”
    “But what are we going to do?”
    “I don’t know yet,” I answered. “But I can tell you what we’re not going to do: we’re not going to mope around and act as if the world’s come to a sudden stop.”
    It was fully dark by the time they got to my room—the three of them together. Ted was gloomy, the first time I’d ever seen him let down.
    “Look at ’em,” he muttered, standing at my window and watching the crowded, brightly lit streets below. “They walk around with plastic clothes and earplug radios that tell ’em the latest news from the moon. But they’ve got no more control over the weather than the cavemen did.”
    He turned to us. “Y’know, when I was a kindergarten kid, my father took me to a movie . . . some cartoon with classical music for a background: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice . This cartoon character was standing on top of a cliff, making magic, making lightning flash from the clouds, making the sea smash against the base of the cliff . . . I think that’s when I first started wondering about controlling the weather.”
    He grinned, a little sheepishly. “Kindergarten dream. Pretty wild, eh?”
    Barney brought us back to the immediate problem. “Ted, did you talk to the people at MIT?”
    With a nod, he answered, “Professor Martingale’ll fix it so I can stay and get my degree. I’ll be okay, long as I don’t overeat between now and June.”
    “And then what?” I asked.
    “Get an