Page 78 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Ark Two

finest forgers of documents and fudgers of data available for
piecework. Our own government did shoddier work confecting
pretexts for war. The Extrapolators Club had an extremely well-
burnished reputation in the proper circles, specifically those which
Vosky could never approach closer than tangentially; and, to be sure,
only the oldest, snootiest bank in Boston guaranteed their checks.
Vosky soon enough verified the account. He took the money, quit his
night job, and went about hiring subcontractors for all the custom-
designed pieces of his airship.
I was tempted to put my fee in the same white-shoe bank, but I
knew better than to leave such an obvious trail. Cassandra was not
my muse, and it was of little interest to me whether Ark Two got off
the ground or not. Based on my prior beneficiaries I was confident
that Kile Vosky would squeeze every cent of value out of the
Extrapolators’ award. But would he cut corners if cost overruns
exhausted those funds ahead of schedule? He certainly was no whiz
at project management, and would have been prey to every sort of
conniver and incompetent alive to the scent of money. Out of my
hands. I wanted a few weeks off after this job, preferably in a warm
climate.
It wasn’t until a year later that the outcome of Mr. Vosky’s venture
made the news, if only in the section devoted to horribly amusing
oddities. Nobody could say whether or not the craft conformed in all
crucial respects to the designer’s intentions. Not enough of it was
left. The FAA investigators took the wreckage to a deserted hangar,
as is its custom, and began a half-hearted forensic analysis of
unknown components with incomprehensible functions, even when
in original condition.
The immediate cause of the crash, leaving Vosky and his two
assistants scattered across the Sierras in the midst of bashed
buckyballs and a junkman’s dream of scrap metal, was a freak storm
not on any weatherman’s radar. It was explained that as human
interference in the geochemical balance increased, climatological
unpredictability would be the watchword; in fact, any objective
assessment of meteorological forecasts would have to conclude they
were decreasingly reliable. Vosky had not gained sufficient altitude
before the craft hit turbulence and was knocked out of the sky.
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