Free The Pollinators of Eden by John Boyd Page A

middle. Some of them, even northerners, were supporters of the Spartans.
    She had assumed that the petition hearing would be a gentlemanly get-together with Doctor Gaynor merely presenting his petition. Reports from Section Able had barely hit the newspapers, yet opposition was forming. On the first afternoon of the preliminary hearings, the attorney for the committee requested a four-day delay in order to assemble antipetition witnesses opposing a permanent scientific station on Flora. Freda asked Doctor Clayborg, who seemed to know politics, why anyone should oppose the station. “It sets a precedent,” he explained, “which the UN usually follows, and the UN, from Russian pressure, would throw it wide open. Russia’s unloading her Uzbek dissidents who’re pushing for local self-determination.”
    In granting the delay, Heyburn made a rather long speech, Freda thought, giving as his reason “to further the continuing dialogue, pro and con, which makes this country great.”
    “He means monologue,” Clayborg whispered to her. “Heyburn s cornered corn, and that ain’t hay.”
    At the hotel, the Athenians lingered in the alcove reserved for them to discuss strategy. Doctor Gaynor—Freda never called him “Charles”—was disappointed by the delay. “I hoped to get my petition through before anyone could organize.”
    “Charlie,” Clayborg snorted, “the battle lines were drawn before Flora was a gleam in Ramsbotham-Twatwetham’s telescope.”
    “Maybe we ought to have a backup plea,” Berkeley said, “that’s not purely scientific, something to appeal to the bleeding hearts on the committee.”
    “What about Doctor Youngblood’s idea,” Freda suggested, “for using Flora as a sanatorium for the earth-alienated. At least, they wouldn’t be falling down and breaking their kneecaps when they wander around at night.”
    “I’d hate to give the young sprout a swelled head,” Doctor Berkeley said, “but, Charles, you mentioned you had confidence in him.”
    “As a potential administrator, Jim,” Gaynor said. “I’m no judge of his professional know-how.”
    “If you use that approach,” Clayborg interrupted, “I have a true ace in a real hole—Rosentiel. He’s confined over at Saint Elizabeth’s, and Rosie was Heyburn’s fair-haired boy before he took up stargazing.”
    “Frankly, I wanted to avoid space madness,” Gaynor said, “but what do you think, Jim?”
    “It would have shock value. As I remember, he was an excellent speaker and popular with the press.”
    “That depends on which press you mean,” Gaynor said thoughtfully. “He was controversial in the established press.”
    “But solid with the underground,” Clayborg said, “which is the only press with power in Washington.”
    Suddenly Freda realized they were speaking of Henry Rosentiel, formerly Secretary of Space, confined these last five years to Saint Elizabeth’s with the raptures of space. As Secretary, Rosentiel’s perfectionism and sense of duty led him to ride the bridges of the space cruisers while awake, and there he had contracted that strange awe of distances called variously space madness, space rapture, and earth-alienation. In fact, he had attempted to defect from earth—an impossibility for one so prominent—and had been apprehended stowing away on a starship.
    Unfortunately, the government bungled the affair. Even as the President’s press secretary was announcing Rosentiel’s resignation “for personal reasons,” his picture was appearing in the underground press showing him emerging from the ship between two S.P.s, his head bent back in the characteristic neck-snap of a “night crawler.” The photograph, taken from above him, had caught the wistfulness and hunger in his eyes with such poignancy that Freda remembered it to this day, remembered even the caption beneath it: “Like a Sick Eagle Looking at the Sky.”
    “What about Rosie’s… er… oddity?” Gaynor asked Clayborg.
    “He has