Chapter 1.2 Ada: Convictions and Doubts
1.2.1 Ada Sets Out to Paris
Bethesda, Maryland, USA, in the Universe u
About 3 pm Tuesday 1 April 1987
Ada observed the black limousine glide to a halt under her third-floor office window. That was her ride to the train station, first stop on her way to Newark International Airport in Newark New Jersey, thence Paris. And right behind the limo, the CapitalNews-HV van. Everything according to plan, so far. But who were they sending to do the interview? Probably not Willa t’Hellenbach of the New York Times. Ada knew she didn’t rate an interview with the cerebral Willa, not just yet. But there was always that fizzy mix of hope and anxiety….
She saw the van door swing open, the figure emerging, and—felt a stab of disappointment. So they’d sent a man. Not Willa t’Hellenbach, not even a woman. A man—what a let-down!
Also a relief. Ada knew how to handle men. If they tried to take the interview in the wrong direction, she had the body language to distract them. A provocative tilt of pelvis, a subtly lewd pout of lip…and in case of serious trouble she could always make a quick retreat to the waiting limo.
She inspected herself in the mirror. Her bronze two-piece looked good, and it was practical, too. No one would guess that she was wearing the most advanced version of the omnibus computer communication system--the om as everyone seemed to be calling it--under her jacket's neat shawl collar. Her hair looked good, too. The gray that had started to invade her youthful chestnut about her fiftieth birthday had by now created an overall ash-blonde effect. And those few drops of conjunctiva lubricant had set her eyes shining nicely, dark brown—like polished mahogany, as one or other of her lovers had once remarked….
She put on her green fedora, smiling at her reflection. Green was right with bronze. Plus, the green fedora was a patriotic thing right now. Double plus, the voice-text, or vex, unit of her om fitted neatly under the band. Practicality and patriotism in one handsome package....
With her brilliant dark-brown eyes still fixed on her image, she lay her hand on her breast and made the sign of the circle, the sign of Gaea the Earth Mother. She muttered the credo:
Small is small
Small is best
Small below all
Less is less
Now, she was ready for an interview—ready for an interview with a man, at least.
She snatched up her flight bag and swept out of her office suite, and with her mid-calf length kick-pleated skirt raised slightly for ease of movement, scampered down the three flights of stairs, hempen flat-heeled sandals making a pattering sound like sudden rain shower.
Outdoors, pale sunshine, a little chilly, a typical spring day in the Washington area. The HV newsman approached, smiling and proffering a microphone, a little unsteady on the Louis Quinze-look high heels that were the latest thing in masculine fashion. "Hi there," he called in a penetrating tenor, "Dr. Lynch? Danny Goodpenny from CapitalNews-HV—
He’s tall, Ada noted, upwards of 5-5 on heels. She felt her usual perverse lust for a tall man. Just looking up at him gave her a rush—Gaea forbid it should show on HV. She forced herself to scan Danny’s other charms beside his height. His lip gloss gave him an attractive slobbery look, and his knickers bulged in the right place….
"Dr Lynch," Danny blared, "Dr Lynch, as a noted research worker in the field of biochemistry with emphasis on human nutrition and health, and president of the lobbying group NixTwinkies, your name is being increasingly mentioned as our next Prohibited-Substance Czarina. Do you care to comment on that?"
"Yes, Danny—I am ready to take on the responsibilities of Substance Czarina or any other position in which I would be uniquely effective in furthering our national effort to stamp out commerce in prohibited substance--that is to say, animal-based substances--whose consumption might threaten the security and well-being of our nation. Furthermore, as president of NixTwinkies I am poised to conduct a tough butt-kicking educational campaign to shut down commerce in harmful substances that, being of vegetable origin are not already prohibited. That includes not only Twinkies but also sugar drinks like Coca-Cola and a host of sugar-laden cereals-- By the way, you can call me Ada. And make it snappy, will you Danny. I’m in a rush—"
"Okay, Ada, just a few quick questions to fill in our viewers on these problems that arise, you know, when animals get into it or whatever it was you said. Personally, I wouldn’t want to eat an animal—ew, you’d have to be some sort of freak!"
"Yes, Danny, a freak, although a preferred term is 'user.' A user is a freak, as you say, and also a criminal. Ingesting refined substances or substances of animal origin is not only aberrant, it is also contrary to the law as embodied in the Prohibition Amendment of 1920. Users do mandatory prison time if caught and convicted. On the medical side, long-term users addicted to these proscribed substances have been found to suffer disproportionately from CHAOS AND OUCH."
Danny’s face froze in panic. CHAOS AND OUCH—now there was a sure-fire audience-loser in a public affairs program. He had to get back on the trivia track in a hurry. But Ada diverted him with a sidelong glance conveying an ardent desire to rip his knickers off, and doggedly kept on message.
"CHAOS AND OUCH," she said in a clanging voice she saved for such occasions, "is an acronym for diet-related diseases ranging from the life-threatening, like cancer and heart disease, through the disabling, like arthritis, osteoporosis and diabetes, to the merely painful and embarrassing, like colitis and hemorrhoids. Research has shown that, simply by refraining from substances, a user may secure substantial--in many cases complete-- protection from CHAOS AND OUCH."
"Okay, Ada, so let’s get real here, okay? I mean, about this war we’re getting into in France. Sending in the Green Fedoras—I mean, that’s a bit much isn’t it? By the way, I like your hat. Nice shade of green. It's a...a--?"
"--Fedora. Thank you. I believe it’s up to all patriotic Americans to show their support for our service women and men currently engaged as of today as observers in Operation Patte Bleue currently under way in Central France. Their task is one that is vital to our national security, namely to root out pockets of production of oven-roasted Bresse chicken, a substance of animal origin—or more precisely in this case, of avian origin—that is rapidly becoming a boutique favorite of substance users in this country."
"But Ada, isn’t this rooting out stuff exactly what the French Protein and Fat Police are supposed to be doing?"
"Yes, but French PROFATPOL has been notoriously lax in enforcing substance prohibition. There have been credible reports of corruption penetrating the highest echelons of the police and government. And French law itself is regrettably liberal, permitting not only the sale but also the unregulated advertising of refined high fat and/or high protein substances such as olive oil and tofu, as well as of refined carbohydrate-containing ones like bread and pasta. The consumption of these and other substances of little or no nutritive value--'empty calories' is an apt term for them--inevitably leads susceptible users to experiment with other, more toxic substances. Animal's milk, for instance."
At the mention of animal's milk, Danny recoiled in disgust, but he recovered quickly and pressed on with the interview: "Okay, but Ada, where do we get off here? Why don’t we let these kooks and perverts eat whatever—you know, Substances—and get a good dose of these CHAOS AND OUCH diseases nobody ever heard of and leave it at that? Why do we have to have a war over it? Why do we have to have Prohibition?"
Good question, Ada thought, not at all easy to answer. In fact she didn’t have an answer that would fly on HV. "So I'll have something to make me look good when I'm Czarina" didn't cut the mustard. Time to get in escape mode.
"You ask why do we have to have Prohibition," said Ada, feigning surprise as if at a silly question on Danny's part. "Surely that’s obvious. Their despicable and unlawful eating habits notwithstanding, even users are children of Gaea, and as such are consequently worthy of our most strenuous efforts to improve their chances of escaping the depredations of CHAOS AND OUCH."
With that she handed back the mike and backed through the open door into the waiting limo.
1.2.2 Ada Weighs her Options
On the Fast Train from Washington to Newark International Airport
About 4 pm Tuesday 1 April 1987
The ride on the Metroliner to Newark Airport ought to have been for Ada an hour of comfort and relaxation. Gliding swiftly and silently on the invisible rails of intense synchronized magnetic fields, the train provided an ideal setting for quiet reflection. But her mind was in a turmoil. In her thoughts she raked over and over the interview and her failure to answer that key question: Why do we have to have a war? Or for that matter, Prohibition?
Just as well it was cute tall Danny doing the interview, Ada thought. Willa t’Hellenbach would not have let her off so easily. Of course it was possible that CHAOS AND OUCH, left unchecked, might balloon to a multi trillion-dollar epidemic capable of overwhelming the very institution of national health care. But as Willa would certainly point out with her characteristically implacable logic, many things are possible. Ada knew that getting caught without a snappy response to that sort of jab would kill her chances of making Czarina. She would have to articulate a reason for Prohibition, or abandon her ambition.
As often happened when she thought of Willa 't Hellenbach, Ada felt an uncomfortable nervous sensation just above her solar plexus. Though the temperature in the first-class Snaquerie was perfectly regulated, she felt chilled. She felt the need for comfort food, perhaps along the lines of a carrot-daikon sorbet served with a ginger-coconut coulis topped by a light sprinkling of toasted pine nuts. And a glass of Moscato d’Asti. She called a waiter….
***
Ada laid down her spoon, her equilibrium restored. The awkward philosophical issues raised by the interview could wait. Her thoughts drifted to the relatively mundane political matter that was the chief purpose of her visit to France.
Now that the Green Fedoras had landed in that country, Ada felt it was time to cultivate political alliances in Paris as assiduously as in Washington. In particular, she aimed to ingratiate herself with a certain highly influential law-maker, Madame Cava—a forbidding prospect since that personage had so far adamantly distanced herself from American initiatives in combating CHAOS AND OUCH. However, Madame Cava happened to be an intimate friend of her father. Perhaps Papa would introduce her.
And then again, perhaps he would not. Professor Ducru was detached and unpredictable by nature, and Ada could not count on his cooperation. He could be so irrationally stubborn at times! Yet there was a core of generosity in his makeup--he'd always been there to help her adoptive parents out of in times of trouble, and she remembered from childhood that the Lynches, grateful to be relieved of financial hardship on her account, often referred to him as "the good Mr Ducru" or--still, to Ada, mysteriously--as "the good Mr Beaucaillou." He'd borne the full cost of her education at the Sorbonne, and after that, Stanford. And recently, apropos nothing, he'd given her a lifetime lease on an apartment in his rambling old mansion "Château Mourey" in Chezelet in the Touraine....
Ada smiled with filial affection. Yes, she thought, Papa’s a quirky old coot, but I’ll get around him somehow--maybe play the custody card. She gave the matter a moment's consideration. It was about Georges, their pet piglet. The courts still hadn't decided whether Georges should remain with Professor Ducru in France or return with Ada to America, and so far neither side had given any sign of giving in. As it was, Georges stayed at Château Mourey year round, cared for by Professor Ducru except when Ada was there on summer vacation. Yes, she decided, if pressed I'll agree to let things stay that way.
With the sudden whoosh as the Metroliner sped through the Iselin commuter stop, Ada’s mind jumped back to the here and now. She pictured her current lover, Stig the tennis star, the Slashing Swede as he was called on the sports pages: muscular, agile—and tall, a towering 5-8 in his sneakers. It was because of Stig she was on the Metroliner, now 15 minutes from Newark Airport. She could have taken an Air France flight direct to Paris from Washington's Edith Bollings International Airport, but she had promised Stig she would meet up with him at Newark.
Maybe it was a mistake. Stig wasn’t in the habit of keeping his half of a bargain. There was always something else he simply had to practice. That was the trouble with having a thing going with a professional tennis player—he was always fixated on his backhand or serve or whatever. And lately he had been more unreliable than ever….
On the other hand, Stig was definitely a tall man, one of the tallest she had ever entered in her computerized registry of lovers. Smiling dreamily, she fingered the tiny, sleek CompuLocket hanging over her right ear. Such a cute little gizmo, and practical, too--always at hand in case of need of temporary storage when, as often happened in romantic situations, you weren't wearing your om....
Ada had a sudden intuition. Stig’s great height—that must be what was behind his preoccupation lately. They had changed the rules of tennis, made the server stand back from the line by six inches for each inch of height over five feet. Stig must have had to work full-time on his serve. The whole thing could take weeks, all the way though to the French Open.
Well, so much for Stig, Ada thought. If he were to show up, okay. If not, and she happened to come across another man, she would go for him. Especially if he were tall….
The Metroliner slid silently to rest at Newark Airport: 5:31 pm, one minute late, 119 minutes ahead of flight time to Paris.