The Deep Range - Arthur C. Clarke [89]
“That’s a good idea,” she said. “There are at least a dozen people I should have called up weeks ago, and this will give me an excuse. It probably means that we’ll have to have another party though.”
“I don’t mind that, as long as I’m still director and can afford to pay for it. But if I revert to a warden’s pay in a month or so, we’ll have to cut out the entertaining.”
“You don’t really think—”
“Oh, it won’t be as bad as that. But they may shift me to some nice safe job, though I can’t imagine what use I am now outside the bureau. GET OUT OF THE WAY, YOU BLASTED FOOL—CAN’T YOU SEE WHERE YOU’RE GOING. Sorry, dear—too many week-end sailors around. Well be back in ninety minutes, unless some idiot rams us. Pete says he wants honey for tea. Bye now.”
Indra looked thoughtfully at the radio as the sounds of the distant boat ceased abruptly. She half wished that she had accompanied Walter and Pete on their cruise out into the bay, but she had faced the fact that her son now needed his father’s company rather than hers. There were times when she grudged this, realizing that in a few months they would both lose the boy whose mind and body they had formed, but who was now slipping from their grasp.
It was inevitable, of course; the ties that bound father and son together must now drive them apart. She doubted if Peter realized why he was so determined to get into space; after all, it was a common enough ambition among boys of his age. But he was one of the youngest ever to obtain a triplanetary scholarship, and it was easy to understand why. He was determined to conquer the element that had defeated his father.
But enough of this daydreaming, she told herself. She got out her file of visiphone numbers, and began to tick off the names of all the wardens’ wives who would be at home.
The Policy Board normally met twice a year, and very seldom had much policy to discuss, since more of the bureau’s work was satisfactorily taken care of by the committees dealing with finance, production, staff, and technical development. Franklin served on all of these, though only as an ordinary member, since the chairman was always someone from the Marine Division or the World Secretariat. He sometimes came back from the meetings depressed and discouraged; what was very unusual was for him to come back in a bad temper as well.
Indra knew that something had gone wrong the moment he entered the house. “Let me know the worst,” she said resignedly as her exhausted husband flopped into the most comfortable chair in sight. “Do you have to find a new job?”
She was only half joking, and Franklin managed a wan smile. “It’s not as bad as that,” he answered, “but there’s more in this business than I thought. Old Burrows had got it all worked out before he took the chair; someone in the Secretariat had briefed him pretty thoroughly. What it comes to is this: Unless it can be proved that food production from whale milk and synthetics will be drastically cheaper than the present method, whale slaughtering will continue. Even a ten per cent saving isn’t regarded as good enough to justify a switch-over. As Burrows put it, we’re concerned with cost accounting, not abstruse philosophical principles like justice to animals.
“That’s reasonable enough, I suppose, and certainly I wouldn’t try to fight it. The trouble started during the break for coffee, when Burrows got me into a corner and asked me what the wardens thought about the whole business. So I told him that eighty per cent of them would like to see slaughtering stopped, even if it meant a rise in food costs. I don’t know why he asked me this particular question, unless news of our little survey has leaked out.
“Anyway, it upset him a bit and I could see him trying to get around to something. Then he put it bluntly that I’d be a key witness when the inquiry started, and that the Marine Division wouldn’t like me to plead the Thero’s case in open court with a few million people