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"I… I'm sorry, Ed," Colin started to say, but he was interrupted by the opening of the door they'd just come through. The Commodore emerged and slid it shut again. He stood rubbing the back of his white hair with the flat of one hand. "A flying horse," he said and shook his head. "A flying horse."
He looked at Colin. "I suppose it's impossible."
Colin didn't feel like going through that one again. He nodded.
"Are you sure?" the Commodore persisted. "I don't want to quote an old saw, but the one about doing the difficult right now and the impossible taking a little longer has a good deal to it, I think. We are doing things today as a matter of course that we used to know were impossible."
He smiled. "It used to be an obvious fact that what went up had to come down." He paused and looked from Colin to Ed and back to Colin again. "Have you checked any of our satellites lately?"
It struck Colin that the Commodore was begi
"No you don't," the Commodore said, suddenly blunt. "I thought of buying Ato's Pride, looked him over very carefully. Then I realized mat if you can do for food animals what you did for him, then you've got something I can use. I could give you an initial contract and I could defend it, I'm sure.
But with Abby throwing her weight around there's more to it than being willing to justify your actions to an investigating committee. She's thorough and she's fast. You'd probably get hung up because one of your hogs dribbled on the sidewalk."
He shook CoHn's hand and then Ed's. "You think about it," he said. "And you look me up when you get Abby Bullitt off your back. Hear?"
And after the older man had left them to go back up the ramp, it was Ed who broke the gloomy silence that he'd left behind him. "You know," he said, "he might just be right."
"About getting Mrs. Bullitt off our backs? I'm convinced."
"No, about what we know is impossible. We know that a horse can't fly and we know why not. Maybe if we turn the 256 F.A. Javawhole thing upside down and start by assuming that a horse can fly. Now what can we come up with?"
But Colin's mind was numb. A horse can fly. Now the Bullitt virus was getting to Ed. A horse can fly. "Forget it," he said aloud. "Let's go secure Ato and then check out."
Their stallion was already in his stall when they got to the animal-quarters level just below the arena proper.
Slatted concrete floors, cushioned, with lagoons below to catch the droppings. Lagoons constantly ru
More than once Colin had wondered why the whole problem couldn't be eliminated at the source, so to speak, by just not feeding the animals at shows in the usual way. Penetradermal units were standard items, available at any lab supply house. The concentrates were not expensive, and they need be used only during indoor shows and perhaps a short time before.
A unit to feed an animal the size and weight of a horse need use an area no larger than a man's palm. There was no pain reaction that he'd been able to detect; in fact, some of their lab animals even seemed to enjoy the warmed-air caress of a penetra-dermal feeding unit.
But. Coiin supposed, a practice taken more or less for granted in one field was too startling a break with the traditions of another to be even talked about, much less adopted.
Besides, from what he'd seen of horse fanciers in recent months, he was begi
They rubbed their animal thoroughly behind his ears, accepted the condolences of the attendants for their hard tuck at his not being able to compete, showed their pass-out badges at the Manager's window.
He was a balding man behind the grilled opening. He ran a finger down the tally-board at his elbow, ticking off their badge numbers.
"Mr. Hall? Mr. West?" he said. And when Colin nodded, went on.
"Message for you to call this number." He passed a small folded slip through the bars of his grille.
"Thank you," Colin said and unfolded the paper. "It's the Dean," he said to Ed. "I wonder what he wants?"
"I can guess," Ed said, "and i don't think I'm going to like it."
Colin dialed the University and flipped the phone switch to muitispeak so that Ed could hear.
The Dean sounded embarrassed and he talked a great deal of the fine work Colin and Ed were doing. He made a passing mention of a board of trustees. He assured Colin and Ed of the warm personal regard in which he held both of them. But when he was through talking and the phone was back on its cradle his message was clear.
The University no longer needed their unique talents in the making of its tutor-tapes. Not now, nor in the foreseeable future.
"She moves fast," Ed said. "Fast."
"She said we'd be back. I guess we could have more or less expected her to do something, but 1 never thought that this was the kind of pressure she had in mind. It… it doesn't seem civilized somehow."
"Breaking a man's rice bowl seldom is," Ed said. "But cheer up, we still have an office with our name on the door."
He laughed, and it was not a pleasant sound. "That is if the cleaning people haven't told the landlord we've been sleeping in it for the past three months."
The horse show ran from Tuesday of one week through Tuesday of the next and, surprisingly to Colin, Mrs. Bullitt did not appear to be put out when the rules committee found in their favor on the question of Ato's breeding raised by her.
"You know," Ed said, "I don't think she really wanted to win this one. After all, if she'd managed to get our entry disqualified this time around, then she couldn't very well have expected any animal we might build for her to be eligible, if she had in mind to enter it in the future."' "I think she might expect a special class, if not for her flying horse, then for her."
But Ed could be right. She meant only to keep their entry out, to give them a charge, to encourage them, she might say, to see things her way.
He and Ed had won in the committee room, but it turned out to be an academic victory. When they got down to the stable level they found the shield-shaped sheriffs notice taped to an upright of Ato's stall. Some confusion among their creditors, the bank being chiefest. Until it could be straightened out, their assets, Ato's Pride included, were being impounded.
Sudden, impotent, frustrated fury poured through Colin. It wasn't quicksand. It was a solid bnck wall and he was backed against it. He clenched and unclenched his fists… and felt completely helplessAto's Pride made a little dancing movement with his hoofs.
He tossed his head, his nostrils flaring.
"I'm upsetting our horse," Colin said. "Let's get out of here."
"Yeah," Ed said. "Yeah." And Colin noticed that his face was white and he too was shaking.
It was after they'd checked out and were striding up the ramp to the street that the thought hit Colin.
He caught hold of Ed's arm and pulled him to a halt.
"Ed," he said, "how do you know a horse is a horse?"
Ed pulled his arm away roughly. "I'm in no mood for jokes right now," he said, "so do me a favor and skip it."
"I'm not kidding. How do you know a horse is a horse?"
"All right, Mr. Interlocutor. How do I know a horse is a horse? Because it looks like a horse. That's how." Ed stopped.
"You can't mean…"
"That's exactly what I mean," Colin said. "Turn our problem inside out. Don't try to build a horse and make it fly, instead, take a creature that can fly already and make it took like a horse."
Ed was laughing. Colin thought he heard a hysterical note in the sound.
"A… a… thousand-pound bird."
"It wouldn't weigh a thousand pounds. Birds are built differently from horses. Hollow bones… Are you listening?"
But Ed was still laughing. "A… a horse with feathers."
"What is a feather if not a modified hair… and vice versa."
Ed was wiping his eyes. "Hollow bones. Did you ever heft the bones of a thirty-pound turkey? You build an animal as big as a horse, it's going to weigh like a horse. You've still got half a ton to lift into the air, and it doesn't much matter whether it's a horse muscle or a bird muscle that tries to do it.
It still is an impossible job."
Ed was right. To end up with what they wanted, they would have to start with something just as special. "I'm sorry," Colin said, "I… I'm Just not thinking straight."
They made their way on up the ramp and walked the not-so-great distance to their office buildings. Colin laughed shortly when they came in sight of it. "It's a cold night. I hope Mrs. Bullitt hasn't managed to have us locked out."
Colin thought he was making a bitter joke, but when they reached the door of their office, a small green placard hung on its knob. The terms of their lease clearly prohibited the use of the premises as living quarters. Would they kindly be ready to vacate in the required three days.
"She is a witch," Ed said, his eyes staring.
But all Colin could do was pound his clenched hand against the wall of the passageway until the pain of it brought him to some semblance of calm.
"We're going back," he finally said. "We're going back and we'll sign her contract. We'll give her something. I don't know what, but believe me, it will look like a horse… and I promise you… it will fly."
At the Arena they found Mrs. Bullitt in the Manager's office rattling a fistful of papers under the balding man's nose while the handful of clerks in the room made it plain that they were too deep in their work to see… or hear… what was going on. Fleetingly, Colin wondered if she wore those roweled spurs to bed.