Dr Carriol put the picture away. 'Objections?'
'Did you dig deep, Moshe?' asked Dr Hemingway.
'Yes, indeed I did. Into everything. And if he has feet of clay, I can't find a trace of the substance.' Dr Chasen nodded seriously. 'He's — perfect!'
'Then why,' demanded Dr Abraham, voice cracking to a squeak, 'did you pick an obscure half-mad-looking psychologist from a backwater like Holloman, Connecticut, ahead of the best man in America?'
This question Dr Chasen considered with obvious respect. Instead of galloping in with a glib pat answer, he frowned and took his time and was honest about his own ignorance. Most unusual behaviour from Moshe Chasen when dealing with the scepticism of his colleagues. 'I cannot explain why,' he said. 'I just know in my bones that Dr Joshua Christian is the only man who fits the criteria of the commission we were given, at least in my sample of possible candidates. I still think it! Very vividly do I remember Judith sitting five years ago right where she's sitting now and giving us this job, and I remember how she kept hammering away about charisma. That, she said, was what was going to make this exercise the most important exercise of its kind ever undertaken. Because we were going to use the most modern tools and methods to try to pinpoint an intangible. If we could do it, she said, we would make statistical analytical history. And prove a point, and put Environment so far ahead even of Justice and Treasury that we'd be the undisputed kings of data processing. So when I nutted out my programs for the computer, I skewed them towards factors indicating charisma.'
He ran his fingers through his hair in exasperation, sensing that he wasn't home yet. 'I mean, what is charisma?' he asked rhetorically. 'Originally it was a word used only to describe the God-given power of saints and holy men to capture and mould the spirits of those they encountered. Then during the last half of the last century it got so bowdlerized it was used to categorize the impact of pop stars, playboys and politicians. Now we should all know Judith pretty well. We knew her well even before Operation Search began! And knowing her, I figured that what she meant by charisma was something a lot closer to the old definition than the current one. Judith doesn't deal in superficialities.'
He had captured them at last, even Dr Carriol, who had sat up much straighter in her chair and was staring at him as if she had never really seen him before.
'Most of the time, especially since the advent of mass media, how a person speaks and acts out his ideas is as important as the content of his ideas. God help the person who writes a genuinely significant book and then lays an egg on the Marlene Feldman Hour, because that's where thinking America gets its impressions of Joe Blow the significant writer! How many times has one Presidential candidate aced the opposition on a televised debate simply because he can project himself and his ideas better than the opposition? And how do you think old Gus Rome managed to keep the country on his side and overpower both Houses? Televised fireside chats to the nation is how! He'd sit there and look straight into the camera without blinking those big clear fascinating eyes, pouring his mind and his spirit across the gap between the White House and Main Street Anywhere so effectively that everyone who watched him and heard what he said was convinced the man spoke from his heart to that one listening person alone. He was a strong, indomitable and utterly sincere man, with the ability to project what he was! And he knew the ideas and the words that act as keys to unlock emotions.'
He grimaced, looking as if suddenly he was repelled to nausea by what he was thinking, then he visibly got himself under command, and said, 'Have you ever heard any of Hitler's speeches, or seen him in old film clips haranguing a crowd? Ridiculous! He comes across as a posturing, screaming, infantile little man. There were plenty of Germans who used the same tactics Hitler did, appealed to the same frustrated national feelings, put up the same hapless and innocent scapegoats, but those other Germans didn't have what Hitler had — the ability to inspire, to bury good sense and intellect under a landslide of emotion. He was evil personified, but he had charisma. Or take his arch enemy, Winston Churchill. The bulk of Churchill's most telling speeches were either pinched straight out of the works of other people, or paraphrased. Little of what he actually said was original, and often to us he comes across as unbelievably sentimental, real cornpone hokum stuff. But the man had the most magnificent way with him, and like Hitler he was there at the time the people could be reached and influenced by what he said, and how he said it. He inspired! Charisma. Neither Hitler nor Churchill was sexy or handsome or, I understand, particularly charming. Unless they needed to be charming, when, I understand, they could charm the birds right out of the trees. St Francis of Assisi had charisma, and he could literally charm the birds right out of the trees. Now he had the real McCoy. But so did Hitler, and Churchill, and Augustus Rome. Okay. Let's move on a bit, take a look at Iggy-Piggy the pop star and Raoul Delice the playboy. Do they have charisma? No! They're both sexy, they're both colossally charming, they're both objects of adulation. Yet when the winds of time blow them away, no one will even remember their names. They do not have genuine charisma. They don't have what it takes to lead a nation to its finest hour, or to the nadir of its history. And Senator David Sims Hillier VII? The computer says he doesn't have charisma of the kind I'm sure our Judith is looking for. My chief researcher agreed with the computer. And I agree with both of them. Where right from the first early pass of the entire sample through the first of the early programs, Dr Joshua Christian's name kept popping to the top. No matter what we did, his name was a cork we couldn't keep under. That simple.'
Dr Carriol nodded. 'Thank you, Moshe.' She smiled. 'I know it's a bit of an anticlimax after all this, but you'd better get on and give us your choice for third place.'
Dr Chasen came down from where he had been dwelling, and opened the last file. 'Dominic d'Este. An eighth-generation American. One-quarter black blood from a full black grandparent. Aged thirty-six. Married, two children, SCB second child approval number DX-42-6-084, the older child a girl aged eleven, in school, straight A's, the younger a boy aged seven, in school, classified extremely bright. He made a perfect ten on the Carriol scales for marriage and parenthood.' This with an ironic nod towards the head of the table.
Dr Carriol acknowledged it, and went back to studying the handsome face in the photograph between her hands. A superlatively handsome face. The black blood didn't really show except in the eyes, which were night dark and of that curious, wonderful liquidity peculiar to people of black origins.
'Dominic d'Este was an astronaut on the Phoebus series, speciality solar engineering, but he is now Mayor of Detroit. He devotes all his time and energy to preserving his city as a spring-summer-autumn centre of trolley car and omnibus building and other metal engineering. When contracts are advertised in Washington regarding Phoebus or relocation or any major project calling for either massive or precision metal engineering, he's right there lobbying like crazy for Detroit. He received the Pulitzer Prize for his book entitled Even the Sun Dies in Winter, and he serves on the President's council for urban preservation. He also hosts the ABC television talk show "Northern City", very strong indeed on the Sunday ratings. Finally, he is accounted the finest public speaker in the country after Senator Hillier.'
'Objections?' asked Dr Carriol.
'Just — too good-looking,' growled Dr Hemingway.
Everyone grinned.
'I agree, I agree!' cried Dr Chasen, extending his hands in self-exculpation.
'You haven't mentioned a fact I happen to know because I know Dominic personally, Moshe,' said Dr Abraham, an ex-NASA data analyst. 'Mayor d'Este is a serving elder of his church.'
'I am aware of it,' said Dr Chasen. 'However, after several further looks, we decided — the computer, my chief researcher and I — that the degree of Mayor d'Este's religious commitment and involvement was not sufficient to disqualify him from our sample.' Dr Chasen grunted. 'Or disqualify him from final selection, for that matter.'
Dr Carriol put the last file on top of a
ll the others and pushed them to one side; in the space she cleared by so doing she laid her hands, one folded lightly over the other, the fingers of both writhing gently.
'I would like to thank you most sincerely, and congratulate you on a very long and very demanding job done very, very well. I trust that all of you have returned your entire samples to the Federal Human Data Bank and removed all trace of your programs from the computers?'
They nodded, Dr Abraham, Dr Hemingway and Dr Chasen.
'Of course you will retain your programs for future use, but filed in such a way that their true meaning is unintelligible to anyone outside this room. Have any of you any paperwork or tapes or other evidence of Operation Search left undestroyed?'
They shook their heads.
'Good! I will take charge of all copies of the files here this afternoon. Before we go any further, maybe John will find some refreshments?'
She smiled at her secretary, whose pencil had not paused since the meeting started; he laid down his notebook and rose immediately.
Dr Hemingway excused herself to visit the adjacent toilet facilities, while the other three sat rather limply, not speaking. But by the time John Wayne had wheeled in his cart bearing coffee and tea, cakes and sandwiches, wine and beer, and dispensed it with his usual efficiency unimpaired by the marathon stint of shorthand notation, Dr Hemingway was back and the other three had regained their vitality.
'I could kick myself for not working out a program more skewed towards charisma,' said Dr Hemingway as she nibbled on a smoked salmon sandwich.
'I think Moshe read far too much into the original commission,' said Dr Abraham.
All three looked to Dr Carriol, who merely wiggled her eyebrows, and that helped elucidate nothing.
'It was good fun,' said Dr Chasen, and sighed. 'I hope phase two is as much fun, Judith?' A fishing statement, but again Dr Carriol vouchsafed no reply.
Finally she waved the cart away, and waited until John Wayne had disposed of it and resumed his seat and his pencil before getting back to business.
'I am aware that you're rather in the dark as to exactly what phase two of Operation Search entails,' she said. 'Until today I haven't wanted you to know, because I thought you should be devoting all your energies to phase one, and I didn't want any of you shortcutting because subconsciously you were relying on phase two to get you out of any possible dilemma.' She paused, and looked straight at Dr Chasen. 'Before I discuss phase two, I had better say that I am removing Dr Chasen from Operation Search entirely as of today. You're going to a fresh project, Moshe. Not because I consider your contribution to Operation Search unsatisfactory! Quite the contrary.' Her official stiffness relaxed a little. 'You did very well, Moshe. I confess you have amazed me.'
'Don't tell me our work didn't measure up!' gasped Dr Hemingway, face screwed into anguished wrinkles.
'Don't panic, Millie, it measured up fine. I believe the overall outcome is not altered by Moshe's prejudicial tack with the data. Don't forget that phase one provided for the unexpected by offering three candidates from each team. I had thought it would be phase two that would refine these nine possibles to the point where intangibles could be dealt with properly. I was thinking of phase one's computer work more as a tool to remove any human error from what I considered truly computer-assessable data. So I admit I am fascinated that one of you did manage to devise a program capable of assessing a massive sample with respect to an intangible. But it is possible that phase two will reverse Moshe's findings. Which does not detract in the least from the brilliance of Moshe's approach to phase one. It will merely show Moshe where he went wrong, and next time he won't go wrong. Don't lose sight of the fact that there are nine candidates entering phase two, six of whom did not belong to Moshe's lot. Moshe skewed to favour one of his ten parameters, the intangible one. But there's every chance that in so doing, he tampered with the data in such a way that the other nine parameters did not receive sufficient emphasis.'
'No!' barked Dr Chasen.
Dr Carriol smiled. 'Okay, okay! But phase two will go ahead as originally planned, if only because we are dealing with nine people, not just Moshe's three.'
'Would it help any to run our six through Moshe's programs?' asked Dr Abraham.
'We could, yes. But I'd rather not. That is leaving too much to chance and Moshe, no offence.'
'I take it phase two is human investigation?' asked Dr Hemingway.
'Correct. No one has yet managed to define what I call gut instinct, but I guess it's some kind of ostensibly illogical human reaction to other human beings in human situations. So I've always been of the opinion that in this particular exercise, where human emotion is of paramount importance, there should be a period of time in which we can personally observe or interview or test a small, select number of possibles. Today is February first. I will call today the last day of phase one, and tomorrow the first day of phase two. We have three months. May first must see phase two of Operation Search completed.'
Creep creep went her hands across the table, an unconscious mannerism that always had an uncomfortable effect on those who watched. As if, independent of her mind, her hands could sniff after prey, and weave webs of entrapment, and see.
'As of tomorrow,' she went on, 'your teams are disbanded. Only we in this room will have any knowledge of phase two, so you will give out to your teams that Operation Search has achieved what it set out to achieve without a phase two. And during the next three months you, Sam, you, Millie, and I myself in lieu of Moshe, will undertake personal investigation of the nine candidates. Three each. Sam will take on Millie's three. Millie will take on Sam's three, and I will take on Moshe's three. So — that's Dr Walking Horse, Dr Hastings and Professor Charnowski for Sam. And for Millie we have Maestro Steinfeld, Dr Schneider and Mr Smith. I inherit Dr Christian, Senator Hillier and Mayor d'Este. You are experienced field investigators, so I need not enlarge upon the protocol governing phase two. Tomorrow John will allow you to look at the files of your three candidates, but you will not be permitted to remove those files from my office, nor to take notes. Phase two is going to have to chug along on memory, though of course you can ask to see the files at any time.'
She grew stern. 'I must remind you that the top secret classification of Operation Search is even more in effect during phase two than phase one. If any of these people tumble to the fact that he or she is under investigation, we are in for a roasting, because most of these people are important people in their own right, and some have real clout in this town. You will proceed with the utmost caution. Is that understood?'
'We're not fools, Judith!' yapped Dr Hemingway, stung.
'I know that, Millie. But I'd rather make myself unpopular now for uttering words of warning than regretful later that I didn't.'
Dr Abraham was frowning. 'Judith, this disbanding of our teams is very abrupt! What am I going to tell my staff tomorrow beyond the fact that they're out of a job overnight? They're all sharp enough to have guessed about phase two, and I'm afraid it never occurred to me, for one, that I would be stripped of my team. So I haven't prepared my staff for this shock, and shock it's going to be.'
Dr Carriol raised her brows. 'Out of a job is putting it a bit too strongly, Sam. They are all graded Environment data people and will remain so. Actually they'll be going to Moshe to assist him on his new project. If they want to. Otherwise they will be given the opportunity to transfer to some other Environment project. Okay?'
He shrugged. 'Okay by me. But I'd appreciate a written directive from you about it.'
This did not please her, but her answer was as smoothly civil as always. 'Since written directives are Section Four policy, Sam, that surely goes without saying.'
Dr Abraham saw the shadow of a sword suddenly materialize above his head, and hastened to make amends. 'Thanks, Judith. I'm sorry if I've offended you. It's a shock, that's all. When you work with people for five solid years, you're a poor boss if you don't grow protective of their interests.'
'Provided you also retain a measure of detachment, Sam, I quite agree. I take it some of your people won't want to work with Moshe?'
'No, no, it's not that!' He looked depressed. 'As a matter of fact, I think all of them will be delighted.'
'Then what are you worried about?'
'Nothing.' He sighed, moved his hands helplessly, hunched his body over. 'Nothing at all'
Dr Carriol looked at him with cold speculation, but all she said was, 'Good!' Then she rose to her feet. 'I thank you again, everyone. May I also wish you well? Moshe, report to me tomorrow morning, okay? I've got something very special lined up for you, and believe me, it's going to take everything you've got and everything your augmented team is capable of giving you.'
Dr Chasen had not said one word because he knew the chief of Section Four better than poor old bumbling Sam did. Judith was a great chief in some respects, but it was wise not to get on the wrong side of her. Her brain was so dominant that sometimes her heart was quite frozen by the winds blowing off it. He was bitterly disappointed at being removed from Operation Search; nor could any new project, no matter how alluring, remove the desolation any scientist worth his oats must feel at being removed from his work untimely. However, to argue would get him nowhere, and he was sensitive enough to know that But the faint sourness of rebuff and injury lingered in the conference room atmosphere, so the three investigators trickled out sooner than would otherwise have been the case, leaving Dr Carriol and John Wayne in sole possession of the field.