The Deep Range - Arthur C. Clarke [75]
He could have added a good deal more, but decided against it. If Secretary Farlan had not been transferred from D.S.R. soon after the tragic failure of their mission, they might have had a second chance. But in the inquiries and recriminations that had followed the disaster, the opportunity had been lost, possibly for years. Perhaps in every man’s life there must be some cherished failure, some unfinished business which outweighed many successes.
“Then there’s only one other question I want to ask,” continued the reporter. “What about the future of the bureau? Have you any interesting long-term plans you’d care to talk about?”
This was another tricky one. Franklin had learned long ago that men in his position must co-operate with the press, and in the last two days his busy interrogator had practically become one of the family. But there were some things that sounded a little too farfetched, and he had contrived to keep Dr. Lundquist out of the way when Bob had flown over to Heron Island. True, he had seen the prototype milking machine and been duly impressed by it, but he had been told nothing about the two young killer whales being maintained, at great trouble and expense, in the enclosure off the eastern edge of the reef.
“Well, Bob,” he began slowly, “by this time you probably know the statistics better than I do. We hope to increase the size of our herds by ten per cent over the next five years. If this milking scheme comes off—and it’s still purely experimental—we’ll start putting back on the sperm whales and will build up the humpbacks. At the moment we are providing twelve and a half per cent of the total food requirements of the human race, and that’s quite a responsibility. I hope to see it fifteen per cent while I’m still in office.”
“So that everyone in the world will have whale steak at least once a week, eh?”
“Put it that way if you like. But people are eating whale all day without knowing it—every time they use cooking fat or spread margarine on a piece of bread. We could double our output and we’d get no credit for it, since our products are almost always disguised in something else.”
“The Art Department is going to put that right; when the story appears, we’ll have a picture of the average household’s groceries for a week, with a clock face on each item showing what percentage of it comes from whales.”
“That’ll be fine. Er—by the way—have you decided what you’re going to call me?”
The reporter grinned.
“That’s up to my editor,” he answered. “But I’ll tell him to avoid the word ‘whaleboy’ like the plague. It’s too hackneyed, anyway.”
“Well, I’ll believe you when we see the article. Every journalist promises he won’t call us that, but it seems they can never resist the temptation. Incidentally, when do you expect the story to appear?”
“Unless some news story crowds it off, in about four weeks. You’ll get the proofs, of course, before that—probably by the end of next week.”
Franklin saw him off through the outer office, half sorry to lose an entertaining companion who, even if he asked awkward questions, more than made up for it by the stories he could tell about most of the famous men on the planet. Now, he supposed, he belonged to that group himself, for at least a hundred million people would read the current “Men of Earth” series.
The story appeared, as promised, four weeks later. It was accurate, well-written, and contained one mistake so trivial that Franklin himself had failed to notice it when he checked the proofs. The photographic coverage was excellent and contained an astonishing study of a baby whale suckling its mother—a shot obviously obtained at enormous risk and after months of patient stalking. The fact that it was actually taken in the pool at Heron Island without the photographer even getting his feet wet was an irrelevance not allowed to distract the reader.
Apart from the shocking pun beneath the cover picture (“Prince of Whales,” indeed!). Franklin was delighted with it; so was everyone