The HAB Theory, page 70
She turned her back to him and said, “Unzip me, please,” but then turned to face him again before he had a chance to do so. She reached out and touched his arm. “Oh, a thought. Maybe you’d better call down and make reservations. They’re awfully crowded here. It might be too late already to get a table.”
“No problem,” he said. “I made eight o’clock reservations for us as soon as I arrived.” He turned her around and unzipped her dress, saying as he did so, “Now suppose you start telling me what’s happened here so far?”
She nodded and began as they prepared to shower.
5
Irma Dowde undressed slowly in her room, grunting softly over the effort it took to bend over and untie her heavy, blunt-toed walking shoes and kick them off. She wriggled her toes in the delicious sense of freedom which came immediately after release from the imprisonment they had suffered since very early this morning. Except for brief intervals she had been on her feet constantly, and for someone built as heavily as she, it was very hard on the feet. She sat on the edge of the bed, still wriggling the toes and alternately rubbing one foot over the other as she reached behind her and began unbuttoning her blouse.
In her usual methodical manner, she carefully hung her skirt and jacket in the closet, grumbling over the ridiculous coat hangers which disconnected from the hook portion in the closet. Her soiled clothing she put into the plastic drawstring bag and then put the bag on the floor in the closet. She stood naked in the middle of the room, luxuriously letting her stubby fingers scratch the multitude of places which itched from being so long confined. Whole series of red marks began appearing on the flabby, puckered flesh of belly, thighs, and buttocks, and on the sides of the heavy, pendulous breasts which hung in a flattened manner nearly to her waist.
She groaned with delight at the sensations brought by the scratching and then caught a glimpse of herself in the room’s big mirror and shook her head.
“You are indeed,” she murmured to her reflection, “a true vision of feminine loveliness.”
She snorted at her own remark and then glanced at her watch, nearly blanketed by a fold of flesh at her wrist. Ten after eleven already and quite late to be calling the White House, but the President had insisted that she call him with a report of the day’s activities regardless of what time she finished. She arched her back as she removed the watch and set it atop the dresser, then changed her mind and took it over to the nightstand. As long as it was this late already, being a little later wouldn’t hurt, and what she wanted more than anything else right now was a good hot shower.
Twenty minutes later, much more relaxed and comfortable and clad in a formless, ankle-length nightgown of faded yellow, she carefully laid out her clothes for tomorrow. Then she padded to the bed and propped up the two pillows to support her back while she talked. On the nightstand she placed two spiral-bound steno pads — one blank, the other well used — and a ball-point pen, then turned out all the lights except the one in the bathroom and the one beside the bed. In another moment she was lying on the bed, resting back comfortably on the pillows, her knees up and the pads within handy reach.
She put in a quick call to the hotel operator and left word to be awakened at six in the morning. Then she dialed eight for the long distance operator and gave her the number she had been instructed to call.
“This is the White House,” came a soft masculine voice. “The switchboard is closed to incoming calls. Normal switchboard hours are from eight to five daily. Please call tomorrow.”
“I have a long distance collect call,” the operator said, “from Dr. Irma Dowde in New York City for President Robert Sanders.”
There was a slight pause at the other end. Then, “Does she have a code class to her call, Operator?”
Irma Dowde spoke up. “Yes, I have. P-E-O number one.”
“We will accept, Operator.” There was a businesslike briskness to the male voice now. “Please put her through and remove yourself from the line.”
“Yes, sir. Go ahead, please,” she said.
“Dr. Dowde?”
“Yes.”
“We were instructed to expect your call.” There was a click as the operator disconnected herself. “Operator?” There was no response and the male voice went on. “Hold on, Dr. Dowde. I’ll ring the President. He’s retired for the night, so it may be a short while.”
The wait was about a minute and a half and then came another clicking sound and the President’s voice, somewhat thick with sleep. “Dr. Dowde? I’m glad you called. How’d it go today?”
“Exceptionally well, sir,” she replied. “I had some reservations about how the evening meeting with the group chairmen would turn out, expecting it to be rather confused, but it went surprisingly well. We concluded about an hour and a half ago. Mr. Knotts had about ten of his staff there on stenotype machines to take down the summarizations of the chairmen. On the master chart we had groups alphabetically listed by the hotel in which the discussions were held, so that’s the order in which they were called upon to speak.”
“Were the Knotts people who attended the individual group meetings this afternoon of value?”
“Indeed yes, Mr. President. I’m quite sure that without them there would have been no adequate way for the group chairmen to have presented their reports so concisely and well.”
“There had to be some difficulties.”
“Only one major problem insofar as the actual functioning of the individual discussion groups was concerned. I more or less anticipated that it might happen.” The archeologist paused, but then went on when Sanders made no reply. “It’s in the matter of linguistics. By far the greater majority speak and comprehend English well, but there’s a small percentage who don’t and these individuals had difficulty both in following what was being said in their groups and in contributing to the discussions. Here and there during the day I was able to help a little in this respect, as were some others, but not really as well as was needed. Part of what we did tonight was to endeavor to place any who could not understand English beside someone who could interpret for them during the talks tomorrow, but it’s still going to be a problem. I don’t really know what we can do about it at this juncture.”
The President made a little sound and said, “Wait a moment till I get some paper here… All right, where are we having the most difficulty? Slowly, so I can take them down.”
Dr. Dowde turned a few pages of her own pad before replying. “Four languages in particular,” she said. “Africaans, Hindustani, Chinese, Japanese. Then there are three others which aren’t quite as much a problem, but where it wouldn’t hurt to have some help. Arabic, Portuguese, Turkish.”
“Got it. We’ll get our United Nations Interpretation Section on it right away. They’ll be in touch with you in the morning. Be prepared to tell them how many of each you need and what specific dialects, if any.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.” She sounded relieved. “There will be need for specific dialect help for China, I’m sure, and possibly the Arab states.”
“Okay. Any other problems?”
“We do have,” she spoke reluctantly, “a small core of individuals who have obviously closed their minds to any possible acceptance of the HAB Theory. I mean,” she amended quickly, “above and beyond the expected argumentative nature of those not yet convinced. Naturally, we anticipated a good bit of friction to arise because there are a great many who won’t give in easily to a theory which undermines so much of what was previously accepted. This, is good, I think, because in most cases the arguments which ensue generally seem to be establishing the theory more thoroughly than ever, rather than undermining it.
“But what I mean by a problem,” she went on, “is that there are perhaps three or four people being unreasonably disruptive in their comments — batting down every pro-HAB argument under discussion with diatribes that are far more emotional than scientific. The problem is not so much that they disagree with the HAB Theory as it is that they become so vehement in their arguments and get so far off the track in their comments and interruptions that the meetings they’re involved with tend to get stalled or become chaotic. There’s been,” she admitted, “even a certain amount of temper involved — insults, name-calling and, in one case, a very minor physical altercation. I think it could worsen.”
“Any specific motivation?” the President asked.
“I suppose there must be, but there’s no way to know for sure.”
“Have you made notes concerning those causing the most trouble?”
“Well, not really, Mr. President, but I know who they are.”
“Let me have their names and we’ll initiate some quiet checks on them.”
Irma Dowde became even more reluctant. “I really wouldn’t want to contribute to the injury of their careers, Mr. President. They’re being dogmatic, true, but I don’t really feel that should be cause for possibly ruining them. I wouldn’t want to take part in anything like that.”
The President’s response was sympathetic but firm. “It’s not a matter of an intent to deliberately ruin careers or cause injury, Dr. Dowde, but both of us know full well the extreme importance, to all humanity, of the matter involved here, and if these individuals are creating stumbling blocks simply for the sake of impeding progress in the discussions — that is what you’ve indicated they’re doing, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir, to large extent.”
“—then,” Sanders continued, “we can’t allow possible injury to individual feelings or careers to be an influencing factor. Good, strong, well-founded argument we welcome; deliberate harassment, on the other hand, has to be eliminated, if at all possible. In that respect, I’d like you to provide me with the names of those individuals who seem to fit into the latter category.”
The heavy-set archeologist sighed. “All right, Mr. President. You’re correct, of course. There are two men in particular who evidently are doing their best to undermine the purpose of the symposium, plus a third who’s more or less borderline in this regard.” She shook her head, obviously still hesitant to provide the names, but then went on. “Unfortunately, all three are either chairing or vice-chairing individual group discussions — one chairman and two vice-chairmen, to be specific — and they’ve been disrupting not only their own group meetings, but the evening summation as well. I’m sure we’d have finished tonight’s session much earlier had it not been for them. The one who is a group chairman is Dr. Owen Holder. His group is meeting here at the Waldorf.”
“Who is he?” the President inquired. “His credentials, I mean.”
“Dr. Holder,” she replied, “is professor of geology at Oxford. England. He’s highly respected in his field.”
“All right. And the other two?”
“Dr. Percy Utwell is vice-chairman of one of the three discussion groups meeting at the Taft Hotel. He’s an M.D. on the staff of the Seldon Clinic and Medical Research Laboratory in Pittsburgh.”
“Who’s chairing his group?”
“Dr. Omi Damshad. He’s a cryptologist and a good man. I know him well. Presently curator of the National Museum of Antiquities in Tehran.”
“Uh-huh. That’s good. Now, who’s the final one?”
Once again Dr. Dowde hesitated and then began slowly. “I’ll reiterate, Mr. President, that this individual’s borderline in respect to out-and-out harassment, but he’s being argumentative irrespective of whether or not the matter under discussion is in his own field or not. He was the one, incidentally, involved in the minor altercation. He shoved Dr. Gottlund of Austria deliberately and they had to be separated before anything more serious occurred.”
“His name?”
“He’s Dr. Pierre Deschault, director of the Paris Academy of Sciences. He’s a paleontologist, and a good one, too, just as Gottlund is, but he’s also known to be pretty thin-skinned and hotheaded. His wife, Yvonne, incidentally, is herself chairing a group here in the Waldorf and doing exceptionally well. She’s a paleobotanist and associate curator at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. She’s also connected with the Paris Institute.”
“What hotel is Deschault’s group meeting in, and who’s chairing it?”
“He’s in one of the four groups at the Americana. The chairman is — just a moment…” she flipped a few pages in her assignments book, found what she was looking for, and nodded as her finger stopped at the appropriate place, “here it is — he’s an Australian. Dr. Colin Hastings. Director of the Australasian Society of Engineers in Sydney. Mechanical engineering.”
“All right, I have it. Now, we can’t very well eject them from participation in the symposium, but I’d suggest, if the problem persists, that you remove them from their leadership positions and perhaps in that way they can be tempered somewhat.”
“If that’s what you wish, Mr. President,” she said, but she was pretty sure she wouldn’t follow through. “In respect to Dr. Deschault, I think I can solve the problem fairly easily. Tomorrow I plan to exchange his vice-chairmanship with the vice-chairmanship of his wife’s group. She may be able to exert a sort of leavening factor on him.”
“Excellent idea. Any other problems?”
“Nothing worth mentioning, sir.”
“Good. Now, what’s been accomplished today and what’s the general feeling so far?”
“It’s still too early to be certain about anything,” she replied, “but indications are that increasingly more are becoming convinced of the solid foundation to Mr. Boardman’s postulations. I don’t want to become too optimistic at this stage, but I’d say the chances are good for a pretty general acceptance of the HAB Theory by the time the symposium’s finished.”
She gave a short laugh and added, “I’ve been trying to keep uppermost in my mind the gravity of this whole business and what it portends but, in all honesty, sir, I’m most excited about all the new prospects of study that are opening. So many things becoming more understandable now than ever before!” Her tone of voice had become electric. “So many things that’ve been hidden in museum basements and so many topics that’ve been more or less ignored or even made to appear not to exist because we had no answers for them — and now it’s as if a dam has burst and everyone’s suddenly eager to talk about them, to dust them off and bring them out into the daylight for serious consideration. I’ve never encountered anything like it before. I don’t think the world ever has! I truly believe, Mr. President, that we are at this moment crossing a threshold into a great renaissance of science.”
There was a tinge of amusement in Sanders’s voice at her enthusiasm. “One that’s long been needed, would you say?”
“Without hesitation,” she replied, “and I think a great many others here — far more than I first anticipated — are feeling that way also, or at least beginning to. Mr. President, you and I both sense the validity of the theory — you, I think, even more than I — but even if it should prove to be invalid, what it’s done already has been to take science by the coattails and give it a good shaking. One that it’s needed for decades — centuries even! I don’t see how, at this point, the theory can be disproved, but I most sincerely wish it could be, simply because of the avenues of new study and research that have been opened. It’s a springboard into the future and now there may be no future. It’s like a man who has been blind since early childhood and then, on the very day that the doctors restore his sight, they also tell him that he has a hopelessly terminal illness. He has so much to see, and so little time in which to see it. In our case, as scientists, we now have so much to do, and yet so little time in which to do it.”
“That’s what I’ve felt from the beginning,” Sanders agreed thoughtfully. Then he added with a degree of briskness, “Now, suppose you give me a breakdown on what went on during the discussions today.”
“Yes, sir.” She opened the nearly filled steno pad to its first page and began. “I should mention first that in all fifty groups, in accordance with instructions I previously gave to group chairmen, the discussions began with the request for anyone to rise and speak who felt he had found proofs which would indicate faulty premise to Mr. Boardman’s postulations. In most cases such discussions occupied about the first hour of the three-hour initial discussions. Sometimes the entire three hours were filled with such argument, but just as often it branched out within mere minutes to discussions of the new light that the postulations were shedding on scientific enigmas which have baffled us all for so long. Among them—”
“Just a moment, Dr. Dowde,” the President interrupted. “Before going on, were there any indisputable proofs offered against the HAB Theory?”
“No, sir, none. Not indisputable. Occasionally some fairly heated rhubarbs occurred but — and here’s the excitement of this whole business — because the arguments were not confined to simply one scientific field, or even a small number of fields of closely interrelated study, the interlocking factors of many fields brought up by other specialists showed instead that the alleged proofs against the HAB Theory were themselves based on faulty premise.” She hesitated. “That’s a terrible sentence I just gave you to digest, but I hope you caught the gist of it. In no case were the Boardman postulations proven wrong. In some cases,” she admitted, “there’s considerable doubt remaining, but so far no proof of invalidity.
“One of the most important presentations made thus far against acceptance of the theory,” she went on, “was given by Dr. Clarence Apperly, who’s director of the American Geophysical Association in Washington. It’s a pretty powerful organization in scientific circles. He contends that no hard evidence has been presented to show that the Antarctic ice cap is any younger than the thirteen million years geologically established as its age, and that it can’t be shown positively that the continent of Antarctica had a warm climate about the time when the HAB Theory states the last capsizing of the earth occurred. Unless such proofs can be shown, Apperly said, then geologists in general and the AGA in particular simply won’t accept the HAB Theory. His point was well made and if it’s not shown to be in error, acceptance by the majority, whether geologists or not, is unlikely. I have people already doing a lot of digging in this respect. Whether or not we’ll find something to satisfy Apperly and his people, I just don’t know.”
