"Quite a lot. I'll send you a report."

"When you do, use some G.o.ddarn capitals for once, so I can read it."

"Yes, sir."

She made the "sir" sufficiently pointed, so there was a momentary silence at the other end. Then the D.T.M. grunted. "Sorry, Tanya! I guess I'm pa.s.sing on to you what I've been getting from New York. Like the cabin boy kicking the ship's cat, only you're no cat. Can I do anything?"

"I'd like a one-way pa.s.sage to Los Angeles, tonight, for Mrs. Ada Quonsett."

"Is that the old hen?"

"The same."

The D.T.M. said sourly, "I suppose, a company charge."

"I'm afraid so."

"What I hate about it is putting her ahead of honest-to-goodness fare-paying pa.s.sengers who've been waiting hours already. But I guess you're right; we're better off to get her out of our hair."

"I think so."

"I'll okay a requisition. You can pick it up at the ticket counter. But be sure to alert Los Angeles, so they can have the airport police escort the old hag off the premises."

Tanya said softly, "She could be Whistler's Mother."

The D.T.M. grunted. "Then let Whistler buy her a ticket."

Tanya smiled and hung up. She returned to Mrs. Quonsett.

"You said there was an important thingabout getting aboard flightsthat you hadn't told me."

The little old lady hesitated. Her mouth had tightened noticeably at the mention, during Tanya's conversation, of a return flight to Los Angeles.

"You've told me most of it," Tanya prompted. "You might as well finish. If there's anything else."

"There certainly is." Mrs. Quonsett gave a tight, prim nod. "I was going to say it's best not to choose the big flightsthe important ones, I mean, that go non-stop across the country. They often get full, and they give people seat numbers, even in Economy. That makes it harder, though I did it once when I could see there weren't many others going."

"So you take flights that aren't direct. Don't you get found out at intermediate stops?"

"I pretend to be asleep. Usually they don't disturb me."

a calm, good-natured boss, tonight he and nights of flight delays, rerouting sounded unhappy "But this time you were."

Mrs. Quonsett pressed her lips in a thin, reproving line. "It was that man sitting beside me. He was very mean. I confided in him, and he betrayed me to the stewardess. That's what you get for trusting people."

"Mrs. Quonsett," Tanya said. "I imagine you heard; we're going to send you back to Los Angeles."

There was the slightest gleam behind the elderly, gray eyes. "Yes, my dear. I was afraid that would happen. But I'd like to get a cup of tea. So, if I can go now, and you'll tell me what time to come back..."

"Oh, no!" Tanya shook her head decisively. "You're not going anywhere alone. You can have your cup of tea, but an agent will be with you. I'm going to send for one now, and he'll stay with you until you board the Los Angeles flight. If I let you loose in this terminal I know exactly what would happen. You'd be on an airplane for New York before anybody knew it."

From the momentary hostile glare which Mrs. Ouonsett gave her, Tanya knew she had guessed right.

Ten minutes later, all arrangements were complete. A single seat reservation had been made on Flight 103 for Los Angeles, leaving in an hour and a half. The flight was non-stop; there was to be no chance of Mrs. Quonsett getting off en route and heading back. D.T.M. Los Angeles had been advised by teletype; a memo was going to the crew of Flight 103.

The little old lady from San Diego had been handed over to a male Trans America agenta recently recruited junior, young enough to be her grandson.

Tanya's instructions to the agent, Peter Coakley, were precise. "You're to stay with Mrs. Quonsett until flight time. She says she wants some tea, so take her to the coffee shop and she can have it; also something to eat if she asks, though there'll be dinner on the flight. But whatever she has, stay with her. If she needs the ladies' room, wait outside; otherwise, don't let her out of your sight. At flight time, take her to the departure gate, go aboard with her and hand her over to the senior stewardess. Make it clear that once aboard, she is not to be allowed off the airplane for any reason. She's full of little tricks and plausible excuses, so be careful."

Before leaving, the little old lady grasped the young agent's arm. "I hope you don't mind, young man. Nowadays an old lady needs support, and you do so remind me of my dear son-in-law. He was good-looking, too, though of course he's a lot older than you are now. Your airline does seem to employ nice people." Mrs. Quonsett glanced reproachfully at Tanya. "At least, most of them are."

"Remember what I said," Tanya cautioned Peter Coakley. "She's got a barrelful of tricks."

Mrs. Quonsett said severely, "That isn't very kind. I'm sure this young man will form his own opinion."

The agent was grinning sheepishly.

At the doorway, Mrs. Quonsett turned. She addressed Tanya. "Despite the way you've behaved, my dear, I want you to know that I don't bear any grudge." A few minutes later, from the small lounge which she had used for tonight's two interviews, Tanya returned to the Trans America executive offices on the main mezzanine. The time, she noticed, was a quarter to nine. At her desk in the big outer office she speculated on whether the airline had heard the last, or not, of Mrs. Ada Quonsett. Tanya rather doubted it. On her capital-less typewriter she began a memo to the District Transportation Manager.

to: dtm from: tanya liv'stn sbject: whistler's mum She stopped, wondering where Mel Bakersfeld was, and if he would come.

5.

HE SIMPLY couldn't, Mel Bakersfeld decided, go downtown tonight. Mel was in his office, in the mezzanine administrative suite. His fingers drummed thoughtfully on the surface of his desk, from where he had been telephoning, obtaining latest reports on the airport's operating status. Runway three zero was still out of use, still blocked by the mired Aereo-Mexican jet. As a result, the general runway availability situation was now critical, and traffic delaysboth in the air and on the groundwere worsening. The possibility of having to declare the airport closed, some time within the next few hours, was very real.

Meanwhile, aircraft takeoffs were continuing over Meadowood, which was a hornet's nest all its own. The airport switchboard, as well as air traffic control's, was being swamped with bitterly complaining calls from Meadowood householdersthose who were at home. A good many others, Mel had been informed, were at the protest meeting he had heard about earlier this evening; and now there was a rumorwhich the tower chief had pa.s.sed along a few minutes agothat some kind of public demonstration was being planned, to take place at the airport tonight.

Mel thought glumly: a bunch of demonstrators underfoot was all he needed.

One good thing was that the category three emergency had just been declared concluded, the air force KC-135 which caused it, having landed safely. But one emergency ended was no a.s.surance another would not begin. Mel had not forgotten the vague unease, the presentiment of danger he had felt while on the airfield an hour ago. The feeling, impossible to define or justify, still bothered him. Yet even without it, the other circ.u.mstances were enough to require his remaining here.

Cindy, of coursestill waiting for him at her charity whingdingwould raise all h.e.l.l. But she was angry, anyway, because he was going to be late; he would have to brace himself to absorb the extra wrath as a result of not appearing at all. He supposed he might as well get Cindy's first salvo over with. The slip of paper with the downtown number where he had reached his wife earlier was still in his pocket. He took it out, and dialed.

As before, it took several minutes for Cindy to come to the telephone, and when she did, surprisingly, there was none of the fire she had shown during their previous conversation, only an icy chill. She listened in silence to Mel's explanationwhy it was essential he should remain at the airport. Because of the lack of argument, which he had not expected, he found himself floundering, with labored excuses not wholly convincing to himself. He stopped abruptly.

There was a pause before Cindy inquired coldly, "Have you finished?" "Yes." She sounded as if she were talking to someone distasteful and remote. "I'm not surprised, because I didn't expect you to come. When you said you would, I a.s.sumed as usual you were lying."

He said heatedly, "I wasn't lying, and it isn't as usual. I told you earlier tonight, how many times I've been..."

"I thought you said you'd finished."

Mel stopped. What was the use? He conceded wearily, "Go on."

"As I was trying to say when you interruptedalso as usual..."

"Cindy, for G.o.d's sake!"

"...knowing you were lying, gave me the chance to do some thinking." She paused. "You say you're staying at the airport."

"Considering that's what this conversation is all about..."

"How long?"

"Until midnight; perhaps all night."

"Then I'll come out there. You can expect me."

"Listen, Cindy, it's no good. This isn't the time or place."

"Then we'll make it the time. And for what I have to say to you, any place is good enough."

"Cindy, please be reasonable. I agree there are things we have to discuss, but not..."

Mel stopped, realizing he was talking to himself. Cindy had hung up.

He replaced his own phone and sat in the silent office, meditatively. Then, not quite knowing why, he picked up the telephone again and, for the second time tonight, dialed home. Earlier, Roberta had answered. This time it was Mrs. Sebastiani, their regular babysitter.

"I was just calling to check," Mel said. "Is everything all right? Are the girls in bed?"

"Roberta is, Mr. Bakersfeld. Libby's just going."

"May I speak to Libby?"

"Well... just for a moment, if you promise to be very quick."

"I promise."

Mrs. Sebastiani, Mel perceived, was her usual didactic self. When on duty she exacted obedience, not just from children, but from entire families. He sometimes wondered if the Sebastianisthere was a mousy husband who appeared occasionally ever had emotional marriage problems. He suspected not. Mrs. Sebastiani would never permit it.

He heard the patter of Libby's feet approach the phone.

"Daddy," Libby said, "does our blood keep going round inside forever and ever?"

Libby's questions were always intriguingly different. She opened new subjects as if they were presents under a Christmas tree.

"Not forever, dear; nothing's forever. Just so long as you five. Your blood has been going around for seven years, ever since your heart started pumping."

"I can feel my heart," Libby said. "In my knee."

He was on the point of explaining that hearts were not in knees, and about pulses and arteries and veins, then changed his mind. There was plenty of time for all that. As long as you could feel your heartwherever it seemed to bethat was the important thing. Libby had an instinct for essentials; at times he had the impression that her little hands reached up and gathered stars of truth.

"Goodnight, Daddy."

"Goodnight, my love."

Mel was still not sure why be had called, but he felt better for having done so. As to Cindy, when she determined to do something she usually did it, so it was entirely likely that she would arrive at the airport later tonight. And perhaps she was right. There were fundamental things they had to settle, notably whether their hollow sh.e.l.l of a marriage was to continue for the children's sake, or not. At least they would have privacy here, out of hearing of Roberta and Libby, who had overheard too many of their fights before.

At the moment there was nothing specific for Mel to do, except be available. He went out from his office onto the executive mezzanine, looking down on the continued bustling activity of the main terminal concourse.

It would not be many years, Mel reflected, before airport concourses changed dramatically. Something would have to be done soon to revise the present inefficient way in which people boarded airplanes and got off them. Simply walking on and off, individually, was far too c.u.mbersome and slow. As each year pa.s.sed, individual airplanes cost more and more millions of dollars; at the same time, the cost of letting them stay idle on the ground grew greater. Aircraft designers, airline planners, were striving to arrange more flying hours, which produced revenue, and fewer ground hours, which produced none at all.

Already plans were afoot for "people-pods"based on American Airline-type "igloos" now used for pre-loading air freight. Most other airlines had their own variants of the igloo system.

Freight igloos were self-contained compartments, shaped to fit tightly in a jet plane fuselage. Each igloo was pre-loaded with freight of a.s.sociated shapes and sizes, and could be lifted to fuselage level, and stowed inside a jet, in minutes. Unlike conventional pa.s.senger planes, the inside of a jet freighter was usually a hollow sh.e.l.l. Nowadays when an all-cargo plane arrived at an airport freight terminal, igloos already in the airplane were off-loaded, and new ones put in. With a minimum of time and labor, an entire jet could be swiftly unloaded, reloaded, and be ready again for takeoff.

"People-pods" would be an adaptation of the same idea, and Mel had seen drawings of the type now contemplated. They would comprise small, comfortable cabin sections complete with seats, which pa.s.sengers would step into at an airport check-in point. The pods would then be whisked on conveyor linessimilar to present baggage conveyor systemsto ramp positions. While their occupants remained seated, the people-pods would be slid into an aircraft which might have arrived only a few minutes earlier, but had already discharged other people-pods containing incoming pa.s.sengers.

When the pods were loaded and in place, windows in them would correspond with windows in the aircraft fuselage. Doors at the end of each pod would fold back so that stewardesses and pa.s.sengers could pa.s.s through to other sections. Galley compartments, complete with fresh food and fresh stewardesses, would be inserted as separate pods.

A refinement of the system might eventually allow boarding of people-pods downtown, or permit interline transfers by pa.s.sengers without ever leaving their seats. A related concept was a "sky lounge" already under development in Los Angeles. Each lounge, holding forty pa.s.sengers, would be part-bus, part-helicopter. On local routes it could travel suburban or downtown streets under its own power, then, at a local heliport become a pod beneath an outsize helicopterthe entire unit whisked to and from an airport. And these things would happen, Mel Bakersfeld reflected. Or if not those precisely, then something similar, and soon. A fascination, for those who worked in the aviation milieu, was the speed with which fantastic dreams came true. A shout, abruptly, from the concourse below, broke into his thoughts. "Hey, Bakersfeld! Hey up there!"

Mel searched with his eyes, seeking the source of the voice. Locating it was made more difficult by the fact that fifty or so faces, their owners curious about who was being called, had simultaneously swung up. A moment later he identified the caller. It was Egan Jeffers, a tall, lean Negro in light tan slacks and a short-sleeved shirt. One sinewy brown arm gestured urgently.

"You get down here, Bakersfeld. You hear me! You got troubles."

Mel smiled. Jeffers, who held the terminal shoeshine concession, was an airport character. With a challenging, broad grin across his homely features, he could make the most outrageous statements and somehow get away with it.

"I hear you, Egan Jeffers. How about you coming up instead?"

The grin widened. "Nuts to that, Bakersfeld! I'm a lessee and don't forget it." "If I do, I suppose you'll read me the Civil Rights Act."

"You said it, Bakersfeld. Now haul your a.s.s down here."

"And you watch your language in my airport." Still amused, Mel turned away from the mezzanine rail and headed for the staff elevator. At the main concourse level, Egan Jeffers was waiting.

Jeffers operated four shoeshine parlors within the terminal. As concessions went, it was not a major one, and the airport's parking, restaurant, and newsstand concessions produced revenues which were astronomical by comparison. But Egan Jeffers, a one-time curbside bootblack, blithely behaved as if he alone kept the airport solvent.

"We gotta contract, me and this airport. Check?"

"Check."

"Down in all that fancy rig-y-marole it says I got the ex-clu-sive right to shine shoes in these here premises. Ex-clu-sive. Check?"

"Check."

"Like I said, man, you got trouble. Follow me, Bakersfeld."

They crossed the main concourse to a lower level escalator which Jeffers descended in long strides, two steps at a time. He waved genially to several people as they pa.s.sed. Less athletically, favoring his weaker foot, Mel followed.

At the foot of the escalator, near the group of car-rental booths occupied by Hertz, Avis, and National, Egan Jeffers gestured. "There it is, Bakersfeld! Look at it! Taking the shoe polish outa the mouths of me and the boys who work for me."