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Title: 30-day wonder
Author: Wilson, Richard
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "30-day wonder" ***
30-DAY WONDER
By Richard Wilson
BALLANTINE BOOKS
NEW YORK
Copyright © 1960 by Richard Wilson
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BALLANTINE BOOKS, INC.
101 Fifth Avenue, New York 3, N. Y.
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's a _lovely_ world....
He was a reporter. A good one. An average guy with a sense of humor and
reasonable views about the rights of man.
Maybe that's why the Monolithians picked on him to head up their
public-relations program. After all, they had to reach a lot of average
people and even though they were invulnerable, they couldn't afford to
take chances. _Because they had a message_, and EVERYBODY had to be
convinced. So he didn't have any choice in the matter.
That's where the system went wrong. No choice.
Act peaceful. Love thy neighbor. Obey the law. Why, people could go mad
living that way.
And many will.
1 (JULY 22, TUES.)
Yes, an' no, an' mebbe, an' mebbe not.
--Edward Noyes Westcott, _David Harum_
It was an ordinary July morning. July 22d, to be exact. A Tuesday.
Already hot at 8:20 A.M., which is when I got off the long-distance bus
at the Port Authority terminal and walked the few blocks to my office
in the Times Building on 43d Street.
I work for a wire service called World Wide, and my job is to edit
American news and send it to London for relay to clients around
the world. Actually, wire service is a misnomer, because we use
radioteletype, called RTT. My name is Sam Kent.
I hung up my coat, which I had been carrying, rolled up my sleeves and
sat down at the big news desk opposite the overnight editor, Charlie
Price. WW operates 24 hours a day.
"'Morning, Charlie," I said. "Anything happening?"
"Not a thing."
"Good." I started to read the copies of the news stories which had been
filed to London since I'd left late the previous afternoon. This is
called reading in.
A copy boy automatically brought me a cup of coffee, heavy on the milk,
and I lit a cigarette and read the stories on the torn-off yellow
teletype paper attached to the clipboard.
At a quarter to nine I was up to date. I got up and took Charlie's
place in the slot. "Good night," he said, and went home.
"'Morning Nan," I said to Nancy Corelli, the teletype operator. "Ready
for a big day?"
"Hi, Sam." She put down the _Daily News_ and gestured at the teletype
to London. "It's dead as a tomb."
The belt was on. A belt is a length of perforated tape, glued into a
circle, which goes through the transmitter and sends on the RTT, over
and over, a series of lines that look like this:
QRA QRA DE WFK40 VIA PREWI/NY RYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRY
QRA QRA DE WFK40 VIA PREWI/NY RYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRY
They're call letters for the radio frequency assigned to WW by the FCC.
The belt had been on for a long time. Ergo, no news.
"Here comes Washington," I said. "They'll change all that."
At my elbow, the direct teletype from our Washington bureau clicked and
hummed. It said:
GM NY IM
That would be Ian McEachern, the bureau chief. I said good morning back:
GM WA SK. DEADEST HERE
LOOKS QUIET HERE TOO. MARRINER CANCELED P C BUT ELLS MIGHT HAVE
SOMETHING AT THE BRIEFING.
Secretary of State Rupert Marriner usually has a press conference on
Tuesday, but today he was getting ready for one of his trips. Ells is
George Ellsworth, the State Department spokesman.
II, I told Ian, which is teletype shorthand for aye-aye, or OK.
Having read everything on our file, I pulled over the clipboard with
the overseas news. This comes in from WW's London bureau on teletypes
at the other side of the room. Our desk doesn't have anything to do
with that operation except to react to any major story affecting the
United States or the United Nations. The UN machine at my other elbow
was still quiet. Normally nothing happens there till after 10.
There wasn't much overseas news, either, despite the fact that London
is five hours ahead of New York time.
I went through the papers to see if there was anything Charlie Price
had passed up which was worth stealing or following up. _Times_,
_Trib_, _News_, _Mirror_. Nothing. _Wall Street Journal._ Damn good
reading, as usual, but nothing in it for us. _Journal of Commerce._
Nope. _Morning Telegraph_, the voice of the turf. No overseas angles to
the day's quota of horsey news. _Variety_ wouldn't be out till tomorrow
and the advance copies of _Time_ and _Newsweek_ would come in later
in the morning, about the same time as the first afternoon papers. It
looked like one of those days.
The domestic wire service we subscribe to was also in the doldrums. Its
ticker had been silent for an hour except for the occasional CLR it
sent to show it wasn't dead.
The Canadian Press machine was similarly moribund. I made a tour of the
Western Union and cable-company machines at the sides of the news room
to see if our national stringers or South American correspondents had
produced anything the copy boy might have overlooked. Nothing.
"Any coffee?" I said to the boy.
"Heavy on the milk," he acknowledged.
"Thanks."
WW keeps a hot plate in one corner. There's also a kettle, a giant
economy size jar of instant coffee, containers of milk from the Times
Cafeteria upstairs, a five-pound sack of sugar and a dozen or so heavy
army-surplus cups. We take our coffee breaks at the desk.
John Hyatt came in about 9:30. He's WW's general news manager.
"Nothing doing at all, John," I said.
"Well," he said, "the situation can't always be fraught." He went into
his office off the news room.
Nancy Corelli put down the _News_ and picked up the _Mirror_. The belt
went round and round.
"I'm glad they don't pay us by the word," she said.
"Calm before the storm," I said. "You wait."
"I'm waiting." She turned to Walter Winchell.
I brought the portable radio out of the corner and plugged it in at the
desk. Sometimes on a dull day NBC or CBS will dredge up an exclusive of
its own which evokes comment--and a few hundred words of copy--from the
White House or the Pentagon.
I heard the tail-end of _Stardust_ on the independent station the radio
had been tuned to; then, at 10 A.M., switched to NBC, turning down the
volume till it had got the horrible electronic gongs with which it
heralds its on-the-hour news out of its system.
"... aftermath of a freak tornado in Kansas, and then a special report
from Washington on a possible harbinger of the interplanetary age. But
first--this message for Anacin...."
I downed the volume again. The interplanetary item might be something,
but I wasn't too hopeful. An NBC man could have got the editor of
_Missiles and Rockets Magazine_ to lift the tarp a bit on a development
that was common knowledge in the trade but which Defense was keeping
under a secret wrap.
"... and now the news ... twister ... no casualties reported....
We switch now to Washington ... early this morning ... Burning
Tree Country Club's 16th green ... halo of blue flame ... alien
creatures ... completely unsubstantiated but no one has offered
an alternate explanation...."
Well! I scribbled a few notes, then got on to our own Washington people
on the printer:
IM. NBC RADIO SAYS SPACESHIP MAYBE LANDED BURNING TREE. PEOPLE FROM
OTHER PLANET GOT OUT DISAPPEARED AND SECURITY CORDON THROWN AROUND
SHIP. SOUNDS FANTASTIC BUT WHO KNOWS. UNTOUCHING PENDING YOUR CHECK. SK
Ian teletyped back:
SK. HAVE A ROUGH NIGHT? IM
WOULDN'T KID U. ASK NBC WA IF U DOUBT.
OK, WIL TRY PENTAGON BUT DOUBT GET ANYTHING BUT HORSELAUGH.
He was back in a few minutes.
SK. MAY BE SOMETHING TO IT. PENTAGON UNDENIES BUT UNTALKING EITHER.
SUGGEST U PUT OUT WHAT U HAVE AND WILL TRY BURNING TREE. IM.
OK
I sent a brief item, thoroughly sourced to NBC and quoting a Defense
Department spokesman as refusing to confirm or deny. Our domestic wire
service had nothing.
* * * * *
Burning Tree hadn't been in the news since the Eisenhower
administration. They might be eager to talk.
I thought about possible sources in New York. There were the usual
crackpot organizations who would comment on anything. They'd be
volunteering their remarks soon enough. There were a handful of
reputable scientists, personal or business friends, who would be
willing to discuss an authentic report on a nonattribution basis. I
decided to wait a bit before calling one of them.
I didn't have to wait long. The bell of the TWX machine rang and
the copy boy turned it on. He typed WW GA PLS as I looked over his
shoulder. A message began to come in. It was a queer one. I read it as
it came in and then, when the boy had acknowledged it and torn it off,
I took it to the desk and studied it. It said:
THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF MONOLITHIA TODAY TRANSMITTED THE
FOLLOWING NOTE TO THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE OF THE UNITED STATES: IN THE
INTERESTS OF INTERPLANETARY AMITY THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE MINISTRY
OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF MONOLITHIA WHO HAVE THIS DAY EFFECTED A LAND-FALL
ON THE PLANET KNOWN AS EARTH (SOL III) DESIRE TO CONCLUDE A TREATY OF
PEACEFUL INTERCOURSE WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES AND
OTHER TERRESTRIAL SUZERAINTIES AND TO THAT USEFUL END SUGGEST A MEETING
OF SUCH REPRESENTATIVES AT A TIME AND PLACE MUTUALLY CONVENIENT.
There were several things I could have done. I could have put out a
flash saying aliens had landed on Earth. It tended to confirm the
NBC report. But my natural skepticism made me pick up the telephone
instead. I got the supervisor who handles TWX messages and asked where
the message purporting to come from the Monolithian Foreign Ministry
had actually been sent from. All the supervisor knew was that it had
been sent by BT-107 in Bethesda, Maryland.
"Would that be the number of the Burning Tree Country Club?" I asked
her, to nail down a coincidence.
"Yes," she said.
Again I was tempted to send a flash, or at least a snap, but decided
to make one more check first. I started to punch out a message to Ian
on the teletype to Washington, but that was too slow. I got him on the
phone instead.
"I just hung up on Burning Tree," Ian said. "I don't know whether
somebody's pulling my leg, but whoever it was claimed to be a spokesman
for the Foreign Ministry of something called Monolithia."
"It all fits, Ian," I said, and I told him about the TWX message. "Has
there been any indication that State has received such a note?"
"I'll check right now. Hold on."
I bit a pencil while I held on and had a look at the domestic wire
service. Nothing there. I wondered what AP and UPI and Reuters were
doing. I was sure they had received similar TWX messages. Still holding
one phone to my ear, I pulled over another and dialed PLaza 7-1111,
AP's number. I put that receiver to my other ear and asked for the
general desk.
"This is Kent of World Wide," I said. "Did you get a message on the TWX
from something calling itself Monolithia?"
"Yes. Did you? I was just going to check with you about it. UPI and
Reuters got it, too. About interplanetary intercourse."
"That's the one. What do you think? Is it a hoax?"
"We don't know. We're checking. Have you put out anything on it yet?"
"No," I told him. "We're trying to get State on it now."
"So're we--"
Ian came in on my other ear: "Sam? State got the note. I'll send a
snap."
"Okay," I said and Ian hung up.
"What?" the AP man asked.
"Nothing," I told him. "Thanks." I hung up both phones and turned
to watch the snap Ian was sending from Washington. AP and UPI have
bulletins. We have snaps. Same thing.
I could tell from the halting way it was being punched out that the
regular Washington operator hadn't come in yet and that Ian was sending
himself.
SNAP
NOTE
WASHINGTON, JULY 22 (WW)--THE STATE DEPARTMENT TODAY RECEIVED A NOTE
FROM MONOLITXXXX A NOTE PURPORTING TO COME FROM A SPACE NATION CALLING
ITSELF MONOLITHIA. THE NOTE SAID "REPRESENTATIVES OF ... MONOLITHIA"
LANDED TODAY ON EARTH AND DESIRED TO SIGN A PEACE TREATY.
MORE
I ripped it off the machine, fixed Ian's correction with pencil,
changed "desired" to "wanted," and slapped it on Nan's clip. She had
already rung the six bells a snap takes and was up to the dateline by
the time she got it.
Ian carried on:
NOTE 2 WASHINGTON ADD SNAP
A STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN ACKNOWLEDGED RECEIPT OF THE NOTE BUT
DECLINED TO GIVE ANY DETAILS. ASKED IF HE THOUGHT THE NOTE WAS GENUINE,
HE DECLINED TO COMMENT BUT SAID A STATEMENT MIGHT BE ISSUED LATER.
RECEIPT OF THE NOTE FOLLOWED REPORTS THAT A SPACE SHIP HAD LANDED AT
BURNING TREE COUNTRY CLUB IN SUBURBAN MARYLAND.
A REPORTER WHO TELEPHONED BURNING TREE TO CHECK THE REPORTS WAS UNABLE
TO REACH OFFICIALS OF THE CLUB, A FAVORITE GOLFING SITE OF FORMER
PRESIDENT EISENHOWER. THE VOICE ANSWERING THE PHONE SAID: "FOREIGN
MINISTRY OF MONOLITHIA."
MORE
I sent that straight off to London, then turned to my typewriter to
prepare a take to fit into Ian's story.
I typed:
note to washington
first knowledge of the monolithian note came in a message sent by
teletype to the major news services. it quoted the note which it
said had been transmitted to the state department. a check with the
telephone company, which operates the private line teletype (twx)
service disclosed that the message had originated from a teletype
machine at burning tree country club.
the message, as received by world wide and other news services, said
(full text):
the ministry....
Ian was sending a message on the machine:
SAM SUGGEST U INSERT COPY OF NOTE WHILE I LOOK OVER MY SHORTHAND ON
TALK WITH THIS BURNING TREE CHAP IM
I replied:
ALREADY DOING, and sent my take as NOTE 3.
The direct-line phone from our United Nations bureau rang and I picked
it up.
"Hello, Sam?" Collishaw Jones's voice asked. "What's all this about
Monolithia?"
"What about it, Collie?" I asked him. "Have you got something, too?"
"It's a handout saying Monolithia is applying for UN membership and
requesting the Secretary-General to circulate its petition among all
delegates. What the hell is Monolithia?"
I gave Collie a quick fill-in and said, "Put a copy of the handout on
the machine, will you? I'll work it into Washington's series. Is there
anything in the Charter that says a nation has to be from this planet
to be eligible for UN membership?"
"Of course there is--I think. I mean it's never come up before. I'll
send the text and then check."
But Collishaw Jones's check showed there was nothing in the Charter
prohibiting an alien nation from joining the UN, provided it was
peace-loving and accepted its obligations.
"There's lots of stuff about international peace and cooperation and
international relations," he said. "As far as I can see, the word
'interplanetary' isn't used once. But on the other hand it isn't
specifically ruled out."
"Thanks," I said. "That sounds like a good story all by itself."
"I'll do it," he said.
Meanwhile Ian McEachern had sent a few more takes about his
conversation with the voice at Burning Tree, which spoke good English
in a clicking sort of way, as if it had denture trouble, with an
indefinable accent. The conversation had produced few facts, the
speaker sticking pretty close to the text of the note, but Ian milked
it for as much color as he could extract.
I looked over his copy and handed it to Nancy. I could hear her just
busting to ask questions but I didn't give her a chance. I had a
thousand of my own and nobody to ask them.
Stew Macon, one of the rewrite men, came on duty and said, "What's new,
Sam?"
I handed him the clipboard. "Read this," I said. "Then get Webster
and the Oxford and call the library and do a piece on the literal and
figurative meanings of 'monolith.' Work in how Dulles and that crowd
used to call Russia a monolithic state, and why."
Stew looked surprised. "Okay," he said. "I don't get it, but okay."
"You will."
Ian was ringing the bell on the Washington machine.
FYI. REB, AT WHU, SAYS JOSH JUST CALLED IN BOYS. KEEP U INFORMED.
I acknowledged: II
WHU is old telegraphic code for White House, just as SCOTUS stands for
Supreme Court of the United States. Reb Sylvester is our White House
correspondent and Josh is Joshua Holcomb, press secretary to President
Gouverneur Allison, informally known as Gov.
The phone rang and the operator said, "I have a collect call for anyone
at this number from a Miss Eurydice Playfair at Bethesda, Maryland.
Will you accept the charges?"
"Oh, God," I said. "Yes, I'll accept them. Riddie? I thought you were
on vacation?"
"That you, Sam? I am on vacation but you know how the old fire horse
is when it hears the gong. Have I got a story for you, kid!" Riddie
Playfair is not exactly an old horse. She's the shapeliest and
best-preserved 43-year-old newspaperwoman I know. She combines the
enthusiasm of a copy girl just out of college, which is good, with the
slangy, wise-cracking hyperbole that went out with Lee Tracy's early
talkies, which may be why she's still a Miss.
"Well," I asked her, "_have_ you got a story for me?"
"Have I? I've got the biggest story since the hogs ate little Willie.
Get a load of this, Sammy: I have interviewed a man from a flying
saucer!"
"That's fine," I said. "Let me take a snap and you can give the rest to
rewrite."
"You mean you believe me?" She sounded disappointed.
"If you're referring to the men from Monolithia," I told her, "they're
talking to everybody from State to the UN. But if you saw one, that's
news. Go ahead, give me a paragraph."
"All right," she said, crestfallen. "But I more than just saw one. Here
goes: 'Bethesda, Maryland, July whatever-the-hell-it-is, double-you
double-you. A reporter for World Wide News Service was kidnaped today
by a man who claimed he had come to Earth from a distant planet.
Period, paragraph. The seven-foot stranger a few minutes earlier had
been seen by the reporter getting out of a huge, circular, wingless
craft which landed on the 16th green at Burning Tree Country Club.' You
getting it okay, Sam?"
"Yeah," I said. "That's fine. What were you doing at Burning Tree?"
"I've got friends in high places, and I don't mean the seven-foot
stranger. You want this story or don't you? I don't have to work on my
vacation, you know."
"Go ahead, Riddie. I'm taking it. You're not hurt, are you?" I tried to
sound anxious. "He let you go again?"
"No, I'm not hurt. Will you just take the story?
"'Paragraph. The tall stranger, seeing himself observed, approached
the reporter and forced her to go with him'--better make that woman
reporter in the lead, Sam, to keep the sexes straight--'to the
clubhouse, where he spoke for the first time.'"
"How about some description here, Riddie?"
"I was just getting to it. 'The alien, who said he came from a country
called Monolithia on a nameless planet outside our solar system, had
a tanned complexion, a prominent nose and long black hair. But except
for his single garment, a heavy roughly-woven cloak which covered him
from neck to ankles, he could have been taken for an earth man. In some
parts of the world even the clothing would not seem odd.' You know
what I mean, Sam; fix that up, will you?"
"It's fine," I told her. "I'll get this away and turn you over to Stew
for the rest. Give him all the quotes you can and don't worry about the
length. You sure you're all right?"
She assured me that she was and I heard her saying "Don't forget my
byline" as I passed the phone over to Stew Macon, who pushed his
monolithic research aside.
Stew cradled the receiver between ear and shoulder and said, "Okay,
shoot, Riddie; give me the gory details. He didn't rape you, did he,
honey?" Stew wasn't crazy about Eurydice Playfair either.
I typed out Riddie's story, with byline, and fed it to Nancy a sentence
at a time.
Collie Jones had got something meanwhile:
UNITED NATIONS, JULY 22 (WW)--THE UNITED NATIONS SECRETARY GENERAL IN
A CAUTIOUSLY WORDED STATEMENT TODAY ACKNOWLEDGED RECEIPT OF THE FIRST
MESSAGE TO THE WORLD ORGANIZATION PURPORTING TO COME FROM BEINGS BEYOND
THE CONFINES OF EARTH AND ITS IMMEDIATE VICINITY.
THE SECRETARY-GENERAL SAID THE MESSAGE, REQUESTING MEMBERSHIP FOR
A NATION CALLING ITSELF MONOLITHIA, WOULD BE CIRCULATED TO ALL
DELEGATIONS.
A SPOKESMAN SAID THERE IS NOTHING IN THE UN CHARTER WHICH SPECIFICALLY
RULES OUT ADMISSION OF A NATION NOT OF EARTH AND THAT CONCEIVABLY
MEMBERSHIP WOULD BE POSSIBLE. HE POINTED OUT A RECOMMENDATION OF THE
SECURITY COUNCIL AND APPROVAL BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY ARE NECESSARY TO
BRING NEW MEMBERS INTO THE ORGANIZATION....
I sent that, then looked to see if Stew had another take of Riddie's
piece ready. He sailed a sheet of copypaper across the desk, grimaced
at me and rolled another into his typewriter.
It was all in lower case, wire-service style. Everything comes out in
caps on the teletype anyway. It looked like this:
stranger 2 bethesda
in the club house, once the favorite playground of former president
eisenhower, the tall stranger said, in good bookish english: "forgive
this untypical show of force. i really came in peace, as do my
brothers, but i must speak to you lest you misunderstand and falsely
alarm the populace."
the reporter got the impression that the man was speaking the truth. "i
believe you," she said. the alien smiled, his teeth a striking white
against his tan, handsome face.
"ah," he said, "if only we could solve all problems so easily.
fervently i hope that our meeting may be a harbinger of interplanetary
amity."
more
This was pretty gloppy stuff, I thought, and decided to hold it a
while. I caught Stew's eye and he gave a shrug as if to imply that this
was none of his doing. Then he said, "What was that? Hello! Hello!"
He tapped the little pips in the phone cradle. "Operator, I was cut
off.... All right, call me back as soon as you can, will you?" He hung
up.
"What was all that?" I asked him.
"It sounded like shooting," he said. "She stopped dictating and then I
heard her yelling. She hollered, 'Don't shoot!' and then there were two
shots and the line went dead."
"Somehow I have a feeling it's phony," I said. "How do you feel?"
"I don't know, Sam. I don't think she was acting. Here, have a look."
It was a straightforward description of how the reporter's dictation
was broken off and what Stew had heard on the phone. There wasn't much
more than he'd told me.
"I don't know," I said. "We'd look pretty sick if it were a hoax. I
wonder what AP's doing."
Just then the AC&R machine rang for an acknowledgment and the copy boy
brought over a cable from our London office. It said:
21755 THANKS YOUR NOTE SERIES WHICH BIGGEST HERE RUSH ALL POSSIBLE
AMPLIFICATION AUTHORITATIVE SPECULATION MANINSTREET REACTION ETC.
"Okay." I showed the cable to Stew. "They asked for it."
I gave Nancy the second take of Riddie Playfair's story to send to
London and handed the third back to Stew. "Jazz it up," I said. "If
that's the way they want it, that's the way they'll get it. You don't
suppose they were shooting at Eurydice, do you? I'll see if Ian can get
anything from the Maryland state police. Find out what number she was
calling from, will you?"
Stew picked up the phone and I tapped out a note to Washington. Ian
acknowledged:
II SHD HV SMTHNG FM WHU IN MIN
Half a minute later Washington gave us this:
SNAP
INTERPLANETARY
WASHINGTON, JULY 22 (WW)--PRESIDENT ALLISON SAID TODAY HE IS
"REASONABLY CERTAIN" MEN FROM ANOTHER PLANET HAVE LANDED ON EARTH.
MORE
Good old Nancy had the first part of it in London before Washington
finished its sentence.
2 (JULY 23, WED.)
An informed White Horse source predicts....
--CBS Washington commentator
Actually there wasn't much more hard news that first day. I hung around
for a while after the night man came on, the way you do when a big
story is going, wanting to see what will happen next, but finally I
left. I listened to the radio as I drove home from the bus stop, and
watched the 15-minute night television news programs, then went to bed.
"Any coffee?" I said to the copy boy as I came in, grinning it in lieu
of a good morning.
"You must be the sole support of Brazil," he said.
"Africa," I said. "This powdered stuff comes from Africa."
"It's an education being around you, Sam," he said.
I said good morning to Charlie Price and read in.
There had been, as I suspected, little hard news after President
Allison's statement. Much of the night file had consisted of rehashing
the known facts and padding these out with interpretation and
speculation.
"Washington officials" said the contents of the Monolithian note were
being studied and a reply might be expected soon. These would be State
Department and White House spokesmen who didn't want to be identified.
"Diplomatic sources" said it was reasonable to assume that Britain,
France, Russia and perhaps India and the United Arab Republic had
received similar notes. These would be embassy personnel asserting
their belief that any sensible aliens would not have snubbed their
countries by communicating only with the United States.
"Experienced observers" said receipt of the note had taken officials by
surprise and that lights were burning late in government buildings as
policy-makers tried to cope overnight with the advent of interplanetary
relations. These would be newsmen interviewing each other.
"Unconfirmed reports" said any race of people capable of hurtling
billions of miles across space would be sure to have an equally
advanced military machine whose weapons would be to our nuclear stuff
what our stuff was to the M-1 rifle. This would be a roundup of
informed guessing and common sense.
I had a look at the late morning papers before relieving Charlie.
The _New York Times_ gave it an eight-column headline, three lines deep:
ENVOYS OF SPACE NATION ARRIVE;
NOTE CITES FRIENDSHIP AS GOAL;
ALIENS SEEK U.N. MEMBERSHIP
The _Daily News_ said it in four words:
SPACEMEN LAND,
DEMAND PARLEY
"Okay, Charlie," I said, meaning I had read in. "Anything going on now?"
"Washington's not in yet. Jones called from UN a little while ago and
said he was working on something. Good night."
"Good night," I said to Charlie. "'Morning, Nan," I said to the
operator. "Any spacemen out your way?"
"Not yet. But believe me, I made sure the door was locked last night.
What happened to Riddie Playfair, anyhow?"
"According to our file last night, she sent a message saying she was
all right. Stew Macon followed it up. He'll be in soon. We'll get the
inside story."
The UN machine started up:
NILS
UNITED NATIONS, JULY 23 (WW)--THE UNITED NATIONS, FACED WITH THE
PROSPECT OF EXPANDING ITSELF FROM AN INTERNATIONAL TO A INTERPLANETARY
ORGANIZATION, TODAY CONSIDERED THE POSSIBILITY OF ASKING THE SPACEMEN
FROM MONOLITHIA TO MAKE THEIR FIRST OFFICIAL APPEARANCE AT A SPECIAL
GENERAL ASSEMBLY MEETING.
NILS NILSEN, THE SECRETARY-GENERAL, WAS REPORTED DRAFTING AN INVITATION
TO THE LEADERS OF THE ALIEN GROUP SUGGESTING A MEETING IN HIS 38TH
FLOOR OFFICE OF THE SKYSCRAPER HEADQUARTERS. INFORMED SOURCES SAID THAT
IF NILSEN THEN WAS CONVINCED OF THE SINCERITY OF THE SPACEMEN, WHO HAVE
ASKED TO JOIN THE UNITED NATIONS, HE WOULD CONVENE A SPECIAL ASSEMBLY
AT WHICH THE ALIEN LEADER WOULD PUBLICLY STATE HIS CASE....
Stew Macon came in, saying: "Well, how are all you inhabitants of the
second greatest planet in creation this historic morning?"
"Keeping the old chin up, Stew," I said. "Say, while you were grappling
with that dictionary piece yesterday, did you ever find out what the
opposite of monolithic is?"
"Come to think of it, no." He grinned. "Paleolithic, maybe?"
"That'll be enough of that subversive talk. I see by the file that
Riddie Playfair wasn't a casualty. Did you get to talk to her again?"
"Not exactly. The Maryland cops tried to bust into the clubhouse at
Burning Tree. That's what the shooting was about. They retired in
confusion without anybody getting hurt. Something about a mysterious
defensive shield the aliens have. The cops got a phone call later. The
spacemen said they would not use force except in self-defense. Then
they put Riddie on for a minute and she said everything was hunky-dory
and we'd be hearing from her again."
"When?" I asked.
"She didn't say. Want me to try to reach her?"
"It's worth a try. Sure."
Stew picked up the phone and I looked over the rest of Collie's UN
piece and gave it to Nancy.
Washington clicked in. Ian McEachern told me on the printer that Reb
Sylvester had gone directly to Burning Tree in case the spacemen made
a personal appearance and that Josh Holcomb had said he might have
something later in the morning. He'd had nothing to add to President
Allison's "reasonably certain" statement of yesterday. He declined to
go beyond that, resisting all attempts to get him to say officially
that the aliens had landed.
What he'd actually said, Ian told me off the record, was, "We'll jump
off that bridge when we come to it." Asked whether he meant that the
United States had doubts about the spacemen's professed peaceful
intentions, or that in view of their presumed superior technology the
Pentagon was obsolete, Josh had said he'd said all he was going to say.
So much for the White House. The State Department was "studying the
situation." The Pentagon sat behind a wall of No Comments.
"No soap on the Alien Friend," Stew said, hanging up the phone. "They
don't answer at the clubhouse and the cops say they don't know nothin'."
"We've got to get this story off the ground," I said. "All we've got
so far is Collie's UN piece. It's all right, but there's no action.
How about calling up the Mayor's office and seeing if they plan a
ticker-tape parade?"
"This is action?"
I shrugged. "You got a better idea?"
"I'll call the Mayor's office," Stew said. "Maybe something will occur
to me."
I went over to the incoming teletypes to see if WW had developed
anything overseas. London's piece was chiefly newspaper comment
and unofficial speculation about what the Foreign Office would do.
Cooperate with the aliens if they were friendly and resist them if they
were not seemed to be about the size of it.
Paris reacted in the spirit of Jules Verne. There was an unofficial
report that the travelers of space would be invited to moor their
vehicle interplanetary to the Tour Eiffel.
Moscow was keeping mum. No mention of the story had appeared in
_Pravda_ or _Izvestia_, and Radio Moscow was also ignoring it. The
foreign diplomatic corps was agog, but no one seemed to have any idea
of what the Kremlin's official attitude would be to a true monolithic
state.
The evening papers came up. The _Post_ had interviewed a representative
collection of cab drivers, waitresses, etc. Israel Kraft, a Bronx
hackie, said the seven-foot aliens could ride in his cab any time if
they fit, but they better not try to palm off any funny money on him.
The manager of the Mayfair Theater, which was showing "I Was a Teen-Age
Necromancer," said all bona fide space aliens would be admitted free.
The manager of the Gaiety Delicatessen said he assumed the spacemen
had to eat and invited them to his place for the best hot pastrami
sandwich in New York. Patrolman Patrick O'Hanlon said he'd leave it to
the Commissioner to say how they should be treated, but if they tried
jaywalking they'd get a ticket just like anybody else.
The _World-Telegram_ had a front-page editorial asking how the aliens
had managed to get through our radar without detection. It was not the
first time the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency
had been caught napping, the _World-Telegram_ said. It demanded a
Congressional investigation.
The third evening paper, the _Journal-American_, said it was reserving
judgment on whether the aliens were as friendly as they professed to be
and urged Americans to keep their guard up.
SNAP
WASHINGTON, JULY 23 (WW)--PRESIDENT ALLISON ARRANGED A MEETING FOR THIS
MORNING WITH THE ALLEGED ALIENS WHO ARE SEEKING TO CONCLUDE A PEACE
TREATY WITH THE UNITED STATES.
MORE
I sent that to London after crossing out the "alleged." I figured if
things had gone this far they must be for real.
ALIENS 2 WASHINGTON ADD SNAP
A MOTORCADE OF LIMOUSINES WAS SENT TO BURNING TREE CLUB TO BRING TO THE
WHITE HOUSE THE VISITORS WHO SAY THEY REPRESENT THE SPACE NATION OF
MONOLITHIA.
JOSHUA HOLCOMB, THE PRESIDENT'S PRESS SECRETARY, SAID REPORTERS WOULD
BE BARRED FROM THE MEETING BUT THAT THERE PROBABLY WOULD BE A STATEMENT
LATER.
SECRETARY OF STATE RUPERT MARRINER CANCELED HIS PLANNED TRIP TO SOUTH
AMERICA TO BE PRESENT AT THE MEETING.
MORE
I asked Ian:
WHAT TIME IS MEETING? ALSO WHOSE BYLINE?
He replied: 11:45. MINE. REB IS WITH MOTORCADE.
I sent that information off as an FYI to London. Ian had little more
that was new, but he paged on several paragraphs of background.
John Hyatt, the general news manager, came in from his office. He read
the latest and said, "Good stuff. Have you got enough bodies?"
"We're not overstaffed, John, but we're all right for now."
"Okay. We can haul a few people in from Chicago if necessary. And let
me know if you need another hand here today. I think I can still bang
the old mill."
"Thanks, John."
World Wide has found that if you saturate the field with first-rank
outside men you need only two or three men on the desk. Too many bodies
have a tendency to get in each other's way.
Reb Sylvester had wangled a limousine with a radio-telephone and was
dictating a running story on the short drive from Burning Tree to the
White House.
The aliens, about a dozen of them, were wearing the heavy,
rough-looking cloaks which Eurydice Playfair had described yesterday.
They were accompanied by more than twice that number of Secret Service
men, Maryland state police, State Department security guards and
Washington police.
The cavalcade sped along River Road, then into Wisconsin Avenue and
through Georgetown. There hadn't been time for many people to hear
about it on the radio and few crowds gathered.
But then the cars went past the White House gates without entering. Reb
said he couldn't find out what was going on. The cavalcade was headed
in the general direction of the National Press Building at 14th and F
Streets. That's where we have our Washington bureau, as does almost
every other news organization. I could imagine Ian rushing to his
window for a glimpse of them.
The cars came to a stop on F Street, strung out in front of the Press
Building and the Capitol Theater, where they immediately snarled auto
and street-car traffic. The cloaked aliens got out, as did the security
men in their neat suits.
It looked as if the aliens were deliberately snubbing the President;
as if they intended to keep him waiting while they held a press
conference. They couldn't have picked a better place, if that was their
intention. There are more reporters per square foot at 14th and F
Streets than anywhere else in the world.
But the aliens didn't enter the Press Building. Instead they crossed F
Street, which by now was clogged with crowds of curious people ignoring
the _Don't Walk_ signs and clustering around the aliens, who politely
pushed through them and went into the Young Men's Shop.
They came out twenty minutes later, dressed in neat, conservative suits
which made them indistinguishable from the security men.
They got back into the limousines and circled back the few blocks to
the White House, where they arrived on the dot of 11:45 A.M.
* * * * *
"And then what happened?" my wife asked me at supper.
"My God, Mae, you must have heard it on the radio. And they televised
the press conference."
"I saw that, Sam. But what's the good of having a husband in the news
game if he won't give you an eyewitness account?"
"It's not a game," I told her for the hundredth time. "And you don't
get an eyewitness view from the desk."
"You know what I mean," Mae said. "Robert E. Lee Sylvester was there."
That's Reb's full name and my wife likes the sound of it. "What did he
say? You know, off the record?"
"Not much. The meeting with Gov and Marriner lasted about two hours.
Then they all came out and all they said was that they were going over
to State. They talked there for another hour or so. Then they came out
and posed for pictures and Ells said they'd had a useful exchange of
views."
"Who's Ells?"
"George Ellsworth, the State Department spokesman. Josh said just about
the same thing in a statement later. That's Joshua Holcomb, the White
House man."
"I know him. He gets more publicity than Gov himself. Doesn't it
confuse people to call the President 'Gov'? What do they call the
Governor?"
"Washington doesn't have a governor. It's a city, not a state.
Honestly, Mae...."
"All right, Sam. I suppose I should know these things. What happened
after everybody exchanged views? Did they sign that treaty?"
"Things don't happen that fast. The aliens went to Blair House for the
night. They'll have more talks tomorrow morning and in the afternoon
they may come up and see Nils."
"Nils Nilsen, the Secretary-General of the UN. I know him."
"Good for you," I said.
"They look like nice boys," Mae said. "They're all so young and
handsome. I hope we can get along with them."
"So do we all."
3 (JULY 24, THURS.)
I told them once, I told them twice;
They would not listen to advice....
--Through the Looking-Glass
The overnight file consisted of about 10 percent fact and 90 percent
speculation. Sources close to the White House thought that President
Allison had been favorably impressed with the Monolithians and that
they would issue a joint communiqué today announcing their intention of
signing a treaty of friendship in the very near future. Congressional
sources said it was likely that the Senate would want to take a long,
hard look at such a treaty before it ratified it. There was some talk
of a full-scale investigation of the aliens by the Senate Internal
Security Committee.
The factual part of the file included a description of the spaceship,
which remained under guard at the Burning Tree Club, and interviews
with the manager and salesmen of the Young Men's Shop. The size of the
ship indicated that it had not made an interstellar voyage by itself;
that it was a sort of scout ship or lifeboat from a much bigger craft
which presumably was moored somewhere out in space.
The ship at Burning Tree was about as big as our biggest nuclear
submarine. It was wingless and cylindrical and its means of propulsion
was a mystery.
The people at the Young Men's Shop, honored at having been chosen to
outfit the visitors, described them as pleasant, athletically built men
whose height ranged from five-feet ten to six-feet three. The aliens
spoke excellent, almost unaccented English, but had discussed nothing
except the clothing they purchased. They had not paid cash but said the
bill should go to the Monolithian Embassy, Burning Tree Club, Maryland.
The cloaks they changed from were made of wool much softer in texture
than it looked. They had taken the cloaks with them after being fitted
from the skin out in Earth-style clothing. It was delicately indicated
in one of the stories that the aliens had worn nothing under the cloaks
and that they seemed to be human in every respect.
The dozen young Monolithians had barely arrived at the White House for
the scheduled morning meeting when it was simultaneously announced
by Josh Holcomb and at the United Nations that the aliens were flying
to New York immediately. President Allison was going with them in his
personal plane.
My second cup of coffee got cold while I handled a series of
fast-breaking developments. Gov asked for a meeting of the Security
Council at which he would propose that Monolithia be admitted to UN
membership. If the Council made such a recommendation, Nils Nilsen
would convene an extraordinary meeting of the General Assembly for the
purpose of voting on Monolithia's application.
A think-piece by Ian McEachern speculated that this was a tidy way of
bypassing possible Senate objections to a U.S.-Monolithian treaty.
By going directly to the world organization the Monolithians would
in effect be signing a treaty of friendship with Earth, avoiding the
time-consuming process of negotiating unilaterally with each of the
eighty-odd nations in the UN.
Collishaw Jones contributed a few takes of interpretation from his
end. While no one was so undiplomatic as to say it aloud, the thought
persisted in many a mind at UN Headquarters that the Monolithians
might not be as friendly as they seemed. Thus it would be well to vote
them into the UN as quickly as possible, legally and morally binding
them to the preservation of the peace. If they failed then to uphold
the principles of the Charter, no one nation would be in the perhaps
hopeless position of trying to repel their aggression. The combined
might of the world's armies would be pledged to deter them: to take,
in the words of the Charter, "effective collective measures for the
prevention and removal of threats to the peace."
Ian departed Gov and the aliens from the White House and Reb arrived
them at Washington National Airport. Gov had a brief statement for the
newsreel and television cameras; it was a marathon sentence to the
effect that he would personally sponsor the Monolithians' application,
which he hoped would be acted on with alacrity, reflecting in a
concrete way the friendly feeling he was sure the world already had for
the interplanetary visitors, who had shown themselves to be genuinely
desirous of establishing bonds of comity and of exchanging cultural and
scientific information which undoubtedly would be mutually beneficial.
The President declined to answer questions and the aliens courteously
but firmly followed suit. The plane then took off for New York.
WW's airport stringer arrived it at LaGuardia, where Gov made much the
same statement and the Monolithians maintained their silence. The party
then roared off in a siren-screaming motorcade to the Waldorf-Astoria
Hotel by way of lower Broadway and City Hall so that the aliens could
have a ticker-tape parade and be officially welcomed by the Mayor.
Stew Macon finished taking the stringer's dictation, then wandered
around the desk to watch Nancy Corelli send it off to London. He shook
his head.
"What's the matter?" I asked him.
"I don't know, exactly," Stew said, "but this sure isn't the way I
thought the interplanetary age would dawn."
"From the other direction, you mean?"
"No, I don't mean that, though of course it would have been more
soothing to the ego to see Earth people pioneer space travel."
"Well, we did get to the Moon," I pointed out.
"Moon-shmoon," Stew said. "Big deal. What I mean is that it's all too
pat. Here we have the biggest story since creation and it has about as
much kick to it as a punch bowl at the Temperance Society's convention.
It's all surrounded with protocol and rigmarole."
"Would you have been happier if they came down shooting?"
"Maybe I would."
"Maybe we'd all be dead."
"Yeah, there's that. But this way there's no drama, no color. First
chance they got they even swapped their native costumes for Brooks
Brothers suits. Now they look like everybody else. They might as well
have come over from France on the Liberté."
"The French have wider lapels," I said.
"Ha ha," he said. "Look, ma, I'm laughing. No, really, I have a hunch
there's more to these characters than interplanetary amity or comity,
or whatever that old fool Gov called it. I have a feeling they're
up to something we're not going to like at all. They're too smooth.
Everything's just too smooth."
"Shall I mark your words?"
He shrugged. "File them in the circular file."
"Did you read Collie's piece? He hints at rumblings in the corridors.
You're not the only one with a suspicious mind."
"Good for Collie. I didn't see it. Where is it?"
I handed him the clipboard and he went back around the desk.
The phone rang. I answered it: "Desk, Kent."
"Sam, this is Riddie. Want a story that'll stun 'em in the Strand?"
"Where are you?" I asked her.
"I'm at the Waldorf. I've got a suite with three telephones. This is
class, man."
"I thought you were a captive of the invader. How did you escape?"
"Escape hell. They hired me. I'm their information officer."
"Their press agent, you mean? I thought you were working for us?"
"I quit. Tell Hyatt my resignation's in the mail."
"Fair enough," I said. "Now we know where we stand. What's your story?"
"I just told you. Earth gal joins aliens."
"Is that all? It might just make a paragraph. How about some real news?
Like where they came from and how long they're going to stay?"
"No comment, pal. It's a pleasure to say that for a change instead of
hearing it."
"What are they really up to? What are they--explorers? Traders?"
"No comment; no comment. They'll say what they have to say in the
Security Council tomorrow."
"Tomorrow? I thought it was going to be today."
"No, tomorrow. This is the pukka gen, laddie. They won't have their
speech ready till then. I'm collaborating on it. I'll see that Collie
gets an advance text. Maybe even tonight, embargoed for about noon
tomorrow."
"Thanks," I said.
"Don't thank me. AP and Reuters and UPI'll all be getting them at the
same time. Can't play favorites, you know."
"How much are they paying you?"
"Plenty," Riddie said. "They're loaded, son. If you want to get on the
bandwagon I might be able to fix it up for you."
"Thanks, but I'll string along with the poor old Earth types for a
while. When are your boys going to hold a press conference?"
"I'll let you know."
I tried to get her to say something storyworthy but she seemed prepared
to no-comment me to death.
"I gather that was Eurydice Playfair, girl reporter," Stew said when I
hung up.
"Girl press agent," I told him. "She's on their payroll."
"She always was an enterprising old witch. She give you anything?"
"Only that the Security Council meeting's been postponed to tomorrow,
she says. Will you ask Collie about that? I want to tell John Hyatt
he's just lost a staffer."
Collie checked and confirmed that the meeting had been put off and gave
us a story to that effect.
Soon afterward the Gov-alien cavalcade reached the Waldorf and holed up
for the night. Reb Sylvester, who had been assigned to the Presidential
party, gave us the word that the lid was on, meaning that Josh had told
the press there'd be no more news today. Gov was putting the finishing
touches to his speech and the Monolithians were preparing theirs.
It was turning out to be the dullest big story of the century.
"Mark my words," Stew reminded me.
"Which ones?" I asked him. "That it's a complete bust, or that it's
going to erupt?"
Stew merely grinned.
Fortunately for the file, a good torso murder turned up in a coin
locker at Grand Central and that occupied us until it was time for me
to go catch my bus.
4 (JULY 25, FRI.)
We come from a world where we have known
incredible standards of excellence....
--Thornton Wilder
President Allison, the dozen aliens, and their entourage rolled
smoothly down to United Nations headquarters in their limousines and
were whizzed up to the 38th-floor skyscraper office of Nils Nilsen.
They ignored a ramshackle group of writers who were picketing in
UN Plaza. Two of the writers wore beards and all of them looked
self-conscious. One of the placards they carried said: SCIENCE FICTION
WRITERS' GUILD--ALIENS UNFAIR TO SCIENCE FICTION. Another said:
SPACEMEN GO HOME; YOU'RE RUINING OUR RACKET. A handful of subteenagers,
clutching copies of _Galaxy_ and _Fantasy & Science Fiction_, gave them
an occasional cheer and occasionally a new arrival sought an autograph.
The UN police looked on tolerantly. One of them said: "Poor guys. First
sputniks. Then Moon rockets. Now this."
The President, the Secretary-General and the aliens, each of whom had
picked up a dispatch case to go with his Earth-style suit, came down
the elevator and went to the Security Council chamber.
The Council was called to order. Allison read his speech proposing
membership for Monolithia. The chief delegate of the space nation was
invited to address the Council. He read his speech, five hundred words
of platitudes which didn't deviate by a comma from the advance copy
Eurydice Playfair had delivered to the wire service overnight.
The Council voted unanimously, 11 to 0, to recommend that Monolithia
be admitted. The Council adjourned and Nils Nilsen called the General
Assembly into extraordinary session for that afternoon. The Assembly
met at 3 P.M., unanimously voted Monolithia in, then adjourned until
its regular September session.
The UN thus became an interplanetary organization, with Monolithia
pledged to uphold its peaceful humanitarian aims.
It had been an easy story for the desk to handle and we had it all
wrapped up before my relief came in.
Then Riddie called and said the aliens had scheduled their first press
conference for 6 P.M. in her suite at the Waldorf. I asked John Hyatt
if he wanted me to cover it.
"I don't think you need bother, Sam," he said. "The reinforcements from
Chicago arrived this morning. We'll send Red Melville and a couple of
his juniors to help Reb. They haven't had a big story since the Chicago
fire."
"Okay, John. I'd as soon watch it on television."
As I was driving home from the end of the bus line I heard on the car
radio that Congress had voted to give the Monolithians the freedom of
the United States. The Senate, reassured by the aliens' acceptance
of the principles of the UN, had originated the bill and the House
immediately shouted it through. The President signed it on his return
from New York, saying it gave him great pleasure inasmuch as it
granted the visitors from space all the rights and privileges of U.S.
citizenship.
Mae fixed us an armchair buffet and we ate while we watched the press
conference on TV.
There was the usual milling around at the start. I saw Reb Sylvester,
putting in overtime, and Red Melville and a few other reporters I
recognized from the wire services and papers. Eurydice Playfair and two
of the aliens sat at a table on which was a cluster of microphones. An
announcer for the television network was describing what we were seeing
and giving us background information we already knew.
"I see your friend Eurydice is doing all right for herself," Mae said,
full of those overtones a wife has for any female in the office who is
under sixty.
"Mn," I said. "She quit us. Shh."
The television announcer made some introductory remarks, then Riddie
made some and introduced one of the aliens (who were wearing their
Young Men's suits) as Mr. Reev. She spelled the name.
"Are there any questions?" she asked, and there was a roar of laughter
as dozens of hands shot up.
Reev, smiling, indicated the AP man, who asked where exactly Monolithia
was.
Reev began an involved answer which Riddie interrupted, saying a fact
sheet containing technical data would be distributed after the press
conference.
The UPI man asked what Reev's exact title was.
"Permanent representative to the United Nations from Monolithia," he
replied.
WW's Reb Sylvester, apparently referring to Stew Macon's piece on the
definition of monolithic, noted that this referred to any massive
homogeneous whole, such as a state or an organization. "Is there any
significance to this term," he asked, "which as you know has been
applied in the past to the government of the Soviet Union?"
"We have no connection with the Soviet Union," Reev said, "except
those we have established with it and more than eighty other countries
through the United Nations." He added with a smile: "As your
definitions note, we are homogenized, like your milk."
Amid laughter, Reb asked: "Would you describe your government as a
democratic one?"
"Utterly," Reev said. There was no trace of accent in his speech. The
clicking Ian McEachern had noticed in the voice of the Monolithian he
had spoken to on the phone at Burning Tree was entirely absent, as if
they had perfected their study of English.
A Canadian Press man noted that "reeve" is a term his country uses for
the president of a village or town council, and asked if there was any
significance in the fact that Reev's name was almost identical. Reev
looked baffled, but Riddie said it was merely coincidence. The CP man
then asked the name of the other Monolithian.
"Jain," he said, spelling it. He added with a smile: "No significance;
it's just a name."
A man from Reuters asked if the Monolithians were aware that President
Allison had signed a bill making them honorary citizens of the United
States.
"We are grateful for that," Reev said. "But I think you will find that
the new law bestows full, not honorary, citizenship."
"Are you prepared to live up to the laws of the United States?" an
unidentified reporter asked.
"Fully," Reev replied. "And to those of the United Nations. Not only to
the letter but to the spirit of the law."
"Do you believe those laws to be fair?"
"The Constitution of the United States and the Charter of the United
Nations appear to be the most perfect examples of humanitarian
principles we have encountered anywhere in our travels," Reev said.
Jain nodded agreement.
"How many of you are there?" an NBC man asked.
"Twelve of us here in New York," Reev said. "An equal number at Burning
Tree. Then, of course, there are hundreds of us in each of the mother
ships."
"The mother ships? What are they?"
"The craft which actually made the interstellar journey. They are
moored, as some of your press accounts have indicated, outside your
atmosphere."
"How far out?"
"As far out as the Moon, but exactly opposite it, on the other side of
the Earth."
"Is that why we had no warning of your approach from the observatory on
the Moon?"
"Probably. That's the way we planned it."
"Are those ships armed?"
"All our craft are armed, but only with defensive weapons. We travel
only in peace and molest only those who would molest us."
There was a stir among the reporters, and a man from _Missiles and
Rockets Magazine_ asked for a description of the weapons.
"I am afraid that is what you would term classified information. Our
representatives and those of your Defense Department and the United
Nations Secretariat have scheduled a meeting to discuss possible
exchange of information touching on these weapons--which I emphasize
are strictly defensive in nature."
"Are you armed personally?" the AP man asked.
"We do not carry concealed weapons, if that's what you mean," Reev
said. "But we are capable of defending ourselves against any attack on
ourselves or our friends. I don't wish to sound ungrateful, but the
elaborate security guard provided for us and your President when he
traveled with us was quite superfluous."
"I don't suppose," one of the television men said, "you'd be willing
to give us a demonstration of your defense weapon? It'd make quite a
graphic picture for the television audience."
"We'd be glad to," Reev said, "if you could suggest a way."
"Well," the TV man said, looking around the room, "I could throw one of
these big, glass Waldorf ashtrays at you...."
"Now wait a minute," one of the other reporters said. "We don't want
glass shrapnel flying around the room."
"No one will be hurt," Reev said. "You will see. I suggest you focus
one of your cameras here." He indicated a spot about two feet in front
of his face.
"Okay," the TV man said. He picked up the ashtray, which was a good
eight inches in diameter, and hefted it.
"Empty the cigarette butts first, at least," someone said.
The TV man asked Reev: "Ready?"
"Ready."
The TV man let fly. The heavy ashtray sailed directly at Reev's face.
About a foot from it, the ashtray appeared to hit, or sink into, an
invisible shield. It did not shatter, but seemed to fuse, increasing
its diameter but decreasing its thickness. It became the size of a
pizza platter, but exceedingly thin. It continued to grow in diameter,
becoming fainter and fainter. Then it disappeared completely.
When the hubbub of amazed comment had subsided Reev smiled and said:
"Nobody hurt, I trust?"
One of the reporters in the first row said, "No, but I'd swear it's
quite a bit hotter up here."
"True. That usually happens when matter is changed into energy."
"Can you be more explicit?"
"Sorry, no."
"Would you have the same protection against a bullet?"
"Entirely the same."
"How much warning do you need to put it into effect?"
"None. It takes effect at the first sight of danger."
"Would it work against a bomb?"
"Yes."
"A _hydrogen_ bomb?"
"Yes."
"Then you're invulnerable."
"Completely."
"Well," a reporter said, "I'm awfully glad you're on our side."
A ripple of nervous laughter went through the crowded room.
5 (JULY 26, SAT.)
It's too hot in New York, or else it's too cold.
But hot or cold--somebody's always pushing you.
--Joe Frisco
Saturday was my day off and Mae and I drove into New York. We had
tickets to a matinee. I switched on the car radio.
"Get some music," Mae said.
"I want to see what's on the news."
"Can't you ever relax?"
"I'm relaxed. I don't have to do anything except listen."
"Promise me you won't go into the office," Mae said. "I want to see
that play."
"I have no intention of going to the office," I said. "Not unless
there's an earthshaker."
"That's what I mean. Let somebody else handle it for a change. You're
not the only man who can do the job."
"Listen," I said. "Here's something."
A commentator on one of the independent stations was saying the
Monolithians apparently had made a number of secret agreements with
the United States and the United Nations. The American public was
being kept in the dark about many things they had a right to know. It
was obvious from the alien's press conference yesterday that they
were being more frank with the public than the people's own government
officials. The defense-weapon demonstration to the nation on television
was only one example.
I recognized the voice, which continued on a note of agitation:
"Here is a bulletin just handed to me. A Monolithian spokesman
disclosed today that the first two-dozen aliens who landed on Earth
have been joined by at least two hundred--I repeat, at least two
hundred--more.
"This disclosure was made in answer to a question, reinforcing this
commentator's belief that our own government is keeping us in the dark
about matters of which we have every right to know the true facts."
"As opposed to the false facts?" I muttered, my copy-reader's instincts
affronted.
"Shh," Mae said. "Listen!"
"The Monolithians, on the other hand, appear to be willing to answer
almost any nonscientific question put to them, giving at least the
appearance of candor which our own officials so sadly lack," the
commentator went on.
"The question then arises whether it would be truer to say that our
government is _allied_ with the aliens, as our officials claim, or
whether it is _collaborating_ with them, having capitulated to their
unknown military strength in a sort of interplanetary Munich."
Mae gasped.
"Clearly it is the aliens who are acting with confidence, publicizing
their movements, while the U.S. government shows a curious
unwillingness to keep its own people--you and me--informed. Can it be
that the government itself is in the dark about these vitally important
matters? Can it be that our own government is acting as the tool of the
aliens, having secretly surrendered to a power the like of which this
Earth has never known?"
Mae had been listening in mounting alarm. "Do you think he's right?"
she asked me. "Is it possible?"
"That's old Clyde Fitchburn, the noted viewer with alarm," I told her.
"Don't take him too seriously."
"He can't be making it all up," she said. "Can he?"
"Only about 99 percent of it," I said. "He still hasn't got back to his
one little true fact--that two hundred more aliens have landed."
I switched to another station.
"... playing host today to nearly ten times as many aliens as
originally landed on Earth," an announcer on one of the network
stations was saying.
"Now listen," I said to Mae. "This is news, not an editorial."
"A Monolithian spokesman said the new arrivals--two hundred of them,
all male--had landed in a second scout ship, at about midnight, in
Central Park, at the northern end of the reservoir.
"The spokesman said in a statement, quote, 'The second contingent
arrived in response to the invitation implicit in the law signed
yesterday giving the Monolithians U.S. citizenship.' Unquote.
"At nine o'clock this morning, when the stores opened, the Monolithians
arrived in a fleet of taxicabs in the midtown area, where they went in
separate groups to the different men's clothing stores--Bond, Howard,
Ripley, Rogers Peet and Brooks Brothers--and to the men's departments
of such department stores as Stern's, Gimbels and Macy's. Here they
outfitted themselves in Earth-style clothing, which they charged to the
Monolithian Embassy, and left by foot, mingling with the crowds on the
sidewalk.
"Dressed like typical New Yorkers, most of them virtually
disappeared--that is, they lost their identity as aliens and became
indistinguishable from the average male New Yorker.
"The Monolithian spokesman said in answer to a question that their
purpose was that of any visitor to New York--to see the sights of the
city and become acquainted with its customs."
"There," I said to Mae. "That doesn't sound quite as bad as Fire-Eater
Fitchburn's account, does it?"
My wife seemed relieved, but she wouldn't admit it. "They're probably
playing it down," she said.
The newscaster said, "Reporters were late on the scene, but if eye
witness accounts of passersby are to be believed, the aliens split up
into groups of two or three and visited such places as Woolworth's,
book stores, movie houses, the Empire State Building, the Planetarium,
and took rides on buses and subways."
Mae said, "I'm not sure I'd like it if one of them sat next to us at
the play."
"How would you tell?" I asked her.
"I'd know," she said. "Somehow. I'm sure I would."
"Well," I said, "you let me know and we'll interview him at
intermission."
We crossed the George Washington Bridge, went down the West Side
Highway and found a place to park on Sixth Avenue in the upper
thirties. We had half an hour before curtain time and I asked Mae if
she would like a drink.
"I think I would," she said. "I seem to have a slight case of the
jitters."
We found a quiet place about a block from the theater and sat at the
bar in the air-conditioned dimness. I had a Scotch and soda and Mae had
a gin and tonic.
"Had any aliens for customers?" I asked the bartender as I paid for the
drinks.
"Not so's I noticed," he said. "At least nobody tried to charge it to
the Monolithian Embassy. We got a strictly cash trade here."
He went to serve another customer and a well-dressed young man came in
and sat down on the vacant stool next to Mae.
"Sam," she whispered, nudging me.
"What?"
"Here's one."
"Where?"
"Right next to me," she whispered. "Look at his clothes. They're brand
new."
The bartender went to the new arrival and said, "What'll it be?"
"What do you have?" Mae's neighbor asked.
"Anything you want," the bartender said. "Whiskey, bourbon, Scotch,
gin, vodka. Soda, ginger ale, Seven-up. The combinations are limitless."
"I'll have a Scotch and Seven-Up," the stranger said.
The bartender didn't blink an eye. "Yes, sir," he said, and proceeded
to blend the two strange ingredients.
"Scotch and Seven-Up!" Mae said to me. "He must be one of them. Who
ever heard of such a thing?"
"That's pretty circumstantial evidence," I said.
"Change seats with me, Sam," she said. "I'm getting nervous again."
"Okay," I said. "Want another drink?"
"Definitely." She swallowed the rest of her first one as she slid onto
my stool.
"Two more of the same," I told the bartender.
"Coming up," he said. "Right after this Scotch and Seven-Up." He gave
me a shrug.
"Say something to him," Mae whispered, meaning my new neighbor at the
bar.
"Like what? Shall I ask him what he thinks of American women?"
"You're the newsman," she said. "You ought to know what to ask him."
"This is my day off," I reminded her.
"Go on. Ask him."
"Okay."
I waited till his concoction had been served to him, then said:
"Pretty good drink, Scotch and Seven-Up."
He looked at me in what seemed to be embarrassment. "I don't know,
really," he said. "First time I ever had it."
"Stranger in town?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact. Got in only last night."
"Where from?"
"You wouldn't have heard of the place," he said.
("See! I told you!" Mae whispered.)
"I don't know," I said. "I've heard of lots of places: Medicine Hat,
Ephrata, Chestnut Bend, Gallipolis, Moses Lake, Lackawack...."
"None of those," he said, as if he were playing a quiz game. "It's a
little place in Missouri called Joplin."
"That's easy. I got my Signal Corps training near there during the war."
"You don't say!"
("Ask him where he got the new suit," Mae persisted.)
"Where'd you get the new suit?" I asked him.
"Bond's," he said. "You know, under the waterfall in Times Square?
It looked so cool. They have an artificial waterfall on top of the
building. It used to be Pepsi-Cola's."
("Ask him what time," Mae said.)
"What time?"
"About nine o'clock," he said. "When it opened. Why?"
("Why?" I asked Mae.)
("Ask him if he saw the aliens in there then.")
"Did you see the aliens in there then?"
"I saw a bunch of men come in in bearskins or something like," he said.
"I thought it was an advertising stunt."
("He thought it was an advertising stunt," I told Mae.)
("Doesn't he listen to the radio?" she asked.)
"Don't you listen to the radio?" I asked him.
"The radio?"
"The aliens from Monolithia were getting outfitted in Bond's at nine
A.M., according to the radio," I told him without benefit of Mae.
"Is that who they were? Well, well."
He drank his Scotch and Seven-Up at one gulp, making a face over it,
and said, "I've got to get going. I have a ticket for a show at 2:30."
("What show?" Mae asked.)
"What show?" I asked him.
He mentioned the new Rodgers & Hammerstein musical. "I'm meeting my
wife there. Would you like to see a picture of her and the kids?" He
took out his wallet to show me. In addition to the snapshot I saw his
Missouri driver's license and an old draft card.
"Nice-looking family," I said.
"Thanks. Got to run now. My wife has the other ticket and I'm meeting
her at the seats. Can't get lost that way, I figure. Pleasure talking
to you. You, too, ma'am."
He left and I said to Mae: "Well?"
"Well what?"
"Are you satisfied he's not an alien?"
"I don't know. How come he's wearing his new suit the same day he
bought it? You always have to wait a week or ten days for alterations."
"Maybe he didn't need any alterations and they cuffed the pants while
he waited. At least he won't be sitting next to you in the theater."
"How did he get tickets to that? Are you sure you couldn't do any
better than the revival of _Where's Charley_?"
"Not on short notice. He probably paid scalper's prices on the expense
account. We'd better start."
We left the bar.
"I guess he won't be," Mae said, backing up the conversation in the way
she has. "But for my nerves' sake there'd better not be another man in
a new suit sitting next to me, even if he has got a good explanation."
"The odds are against it," I said as we stood at the corner of 44th
Street and Broadway and waited at the _Don't Walk_ sign. "Just divide
two hundred into several million."
The _Walk_ sign flashed on. We were in a group of about fifteen
law-abiding pedestrians who started across the street. We had almost
reached the other side when somebody yelled, "Look out!"
A big long convertible with a grinning idiot behind the wheel was not
only failing to yield the right of way to pedestrians but was making an
illegal right turn onto Broadway from the cross street.
I grabbed Mae and hauled her ahead to the curb.
"Damn fool!" I hollered at the driver, who kept on going, blowing his
horn.
Everybody scrambled to safety except one young man who hadn't seen or
heard, or else had supreme faith in his rights as a pedestrian. The
convertible was heading straight at him.
"He'll get hit!" somebody yelled. A traffic cop blew his whistle. A
woman screamed. Mae, unable to look, buried her face in my shoulder.
The pedestrian never broke his casual stride.
The massive chromed bumper was only inches from him when it began to
disintegrate.
First the bumper, then the grille and the oversized fender, then the
right front tire dissolved in a shimmering film.
As the tire disappeared, the momentum of the car sent it ahead into
what was obviously the protective shield surrounding one of the aliens.
More of the car vanished and it came to a grinding stop, its underside
providing the brake as it plowed into the asphalt.
The front of the car, almost clear back to the windshield, simply
wasn't there any more. The driver's idiot grin had changed to a look of
unbelieving dismay as he stared at the nothingness where his hood used
to be.
The young man, who I now saw was wearing a new suit, stepped onto the
curb near Mae and me. He paused, looked back for just a moment at the
remains of the convertible, and said, as if quoting, "A driver must
yield the right of way to a pedestrian crossing with a _Walk_ signal,"
then lost himself in the crowd.
6 (JULY 27, SUN.)
ALIEN, _n._ An American sovereign in his probationary state.
--Ambrose Bierce
It's pretty complicated to explain why a person who lives in New York
State, as I do, has to go through New Jersey to get home from his
office in New York City. It has to do with (1) the way New York's
border slopes northwest from the city and (2) a straight line being
the shortest distance between two points. People who half-grasp these
phenomena remain convinced that my village, High Tor, N.Y., is a short
drive from any old place in New Jersey.
John Hyatt, demon respecter of facts though he ordinarily is, was
one of those so deluded when he called me on the telephone on Sunday
morning and asked me if I'd mind taking a run over to Middle Valley,
N.J.
"I'm aware it's your day off, Sam," John said, "but this is practically
on your doorstep and I know you'd feel hurt if we didn't ask you to
cover it personally."
This, of course, was the well-known malarky, but I told him, "I'm the
original busman, John, but maybe you'd better fill me in. Just what is
going on in Middle Valley, of all places?"
"It's these damn aliens, Sam. Incidentally, I want to thank you for
phoning in that eyewitnesser yesterday on the jaywalker. I hear you
missed the first act of the play on account of it, but it was a damn
fine story and we appreciate it."
It had been a jaydriver, not a jaywalker, but I didn't correct him.
"Think nothing of it, John. It'll all show up on my overtime slip."
He laughed. Not without pain, it seemed to me. World Wide is in a
perennial economy drive and the word _overtime_ is not one you use
lightly in the business office. "We never boggle where a good story
is concerned," John said. "You know that. And this Middle Valley
thing--well, you're aware, I'm sure, that they've got this local blue
law banning Sunday employment...."
Middle Valley, N.J., is a good hour's drive from High Tor, N.Y. It's
less than twenty minutes via the Lincoln Tunnel from New York City,
but I knew John would think I was being uncooperative if I mentioned
it. I didn't argue with him. I told Mae I was on overtime, got in the
Volkswagen and went.
* * * * *
New Jersey passed a law some years ago aimed at forcing Sunday closing
on a group of merchants who sold used cars and major appliances in a
string of roadside stores along well-traveled Route 17, which runs
between New York City and the Catskill Mountain resorts. The idea
was to protect the community merchant from this competition so he
could have a day off. But the legislation was too broad and bogged
down in courts. Its opponents charged, among other things, that it
was discriminatory. What about the Jewish merchant, they asked, who
religiously closed his place of business on Saturday, his Sabbath? Was
he to be penalized by having to close on two days a week, while the
Christian merchant closed only on one?
While the state law was being appealed, its opponents obtained an
injunction and Sunday business continued. Some communities who had
liked the state law during the brief time it was being enforced then
passed local ordinances. Middle Valley was one such community with its
own Sunday closing law.
Middle Valley is a residential, fairly well-to-do, predominantly
Christian village of about 3,000 people. It has few stores, most of its
residents doing their shopping in nearby towns. It does, however, have
a drug store, a delicatessen, a gas station, a newsstand and a local
milkman. The village fathers decreed that the strict law meant all
these must close on Sunday.
No one objected except the druggist, the delicatessen owner (who had
closed on Saturday for years), the newsdealer and the milkman. The
citizens of Middle Valley found it not too inconvenient to order extra
milk on Saturday to tide them over the week end, and they rather
enjoyed driving a couple of miles to pick up the Sunday papers. It was
a mark of distinction to live in the village that permitted no paid
Sunday employment.
"Middle Valley's shut up tighter'n a drum today," the well-to-do,
car-owning, Christian citizen could remark with pride as he paid for
his paper across the village line.
The few who didn't own cars had to walk as far as two miles to catch
the buses whose drivers were not allowed to stop in Middle Valley. No
one asked them if they enjoyed their walks, especially on rainy Sundays.
Some of this I knew and some John Hyatt filled me in on. I learned a
lot more after I got there, first having checked my gas to be sure I
wouldn't be marooned there till Monday.
I parked near the center of town, in front of the delicatessen. Down
the block were the newsdealer's, the drug store and a couple of real
estate-and-insurance offices. All were closed.
I introduced myself to the man standing in front of the delicatessen.
He told me his name:
"Simon Dorfman. This is my store. I closed it Friday at sundown.
Religious reasons. I can't open today. Monkey business reasons. I'm
thinking of opening today regardless. I'm considering it this minute.
But I'm also considering ninety days in jail and $200 fine."
"Who would arrest you if you opened?" I asked him.
"Who? The cops. Who else?"
"Middle Valley police?"
"Joe Lyman and Fred Moffat. I've known them since they were boys. But
they'd arrest me. They said so. It's not their fault."
"Then who would arrest them?" I asked Dorfman.
"What do you mean arrest them?"
"Aren't they paid employees? If you can't work on Sunday, how can they?"
He thought that over. "What's sauce for the goose, eh?"
"Why not?"
"But you're a reporter. You don't care if I get arrested as long as
you get a story. Maybe I'll talk it over with my friend Hirsch the
druggist."
"Let me know what you decide, Mr. Dorfman," I said. "I'll be around."
"Good. But listen. You want a real story? Go down two blocks that way
and one to your left."
"What's there?"
"The Middle Valley Congregational Church. I don't want you to think I'm
laughing at somebody else's religion, because I don't do that, but go
down and see for yourself. Those men are there--from the spaceship. An
interesting situation."
So that's where they were. I left him saying to himself, "Sauce for the
gander. Why not?"
John Hyatt had said some Monolithians were in Middle Valley but he
didn't know why. He imagined they were sight-seeing and he obviously
hoped for something better. I was beginning to have the same hunch he
must have had.
There was a crowd of about a hundred outside the Congregational
Church. Most of the people appeared to be parishioners--well-dressed,
upper-middle-class men and women. Their late-model cars were parked
along the tree-shaded street. I squeezed my Volkswagen in among them.
A separate group of well-dressed people--all young men--stood outside
the main entrance of the ivy-covered stone church. The minister was
with them, talking heatedly. I made my way through gaps in the crowd of
parishioners, who seemed anxious for some settlement to be reached but
unwilling to become involved.
"... blasphemy," the minister was saying. His name, according to the
outside bulletin board, was the Rev. James Lonsway Marchell.
"Not at all, Mr. Marchell," one of the young men said. "It's merely a
question of law."
"God's law has called my flock to worship. Man's law shall not keep
them from their devotions."
"Certainly not," the young man said. He was speaking fluent, unaccented
English. "We have no quarrel with their wish to honor their deity in
whatever way they choose. But you, Mr. Marchell, as a paid employee of
this church, may not, under law, work on Sunday."
"Work!" the minister exclaimed. "It is the Lord's work I do!"
"But for a salary paid by men. You have admitted that to be a fact."
"By what right--" the minister said--"by what abrogation of authority
do you come from millions of miles away to interfere in the affairs of
this quiet, respectable, law-abiding village?"
"The very fact, sir, that you have chosen not to abide by the law has
brought us here," the leader of the Monolithian group said. "We have
solemnly sworn to uphold the laws of this country, and therefore the
laws of each of its parts. We should be shirking our obligations to our
adopted nation if we did less."
"You pervert the law--you mock it. You are heretics. Worse, you are
the devil's henchmen. I have tried long enough to reason with you. Now
stand aside. Again I tell you--I mean to enter my church!"
The minister started for the door but one of the Monolithians was there
ahead of him. I was half afraid I was going to see Marchell start to
disappear, but obviously the aliens had a variation on their protective
weapon. The minister wanted to enter his church, not to harm anyone,
and the shield took the form of a pliant, invisible wall that prevented
Marchell from even hurting himself as he walked into it, apparently for
the second time at least.
He was bounced back, staggering. Regaining his balance, he turned to
address his parishioners:
"My friends, I have done all I can. I shall go now to my study and
in solitude pray for guidance. These--creatures--I cannot call them
men--have said you may worship as you choose. I invite those of you who
wish to do so to enter this house of God and pray...."
The Monolithian at the door stood aside but fewer than a dozen of the
congregation went in.
I considered talking to the Monolithians, but decided I'd better file
a story first on what I had. I figured there'd be time to talk to them
later. It looked like a long and memorable Sunday for Middle Valley.
I drove off to look for a telephone, hoping the village used the dial
system and didn't depend on an illegal paid operator.
* * * * *
I found an outdoor telephone booth at the closed gas station. A young
man was lounging next to it. He stepped in front of me as I reached to
push open the door.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"You must be one of the aliens," I said, though from his appearance he
could have been anyone.
"A U.S. Monolithian citizen, at your service," he said, smiling but
continuing to bar my way. "Tate is my name."
"Kent's mine," I said. "I'm with World Wide. Just let me phone in my
story, then I'd like to talk to you."
"I know who you are," he said. "But you may not telephone. It's the
law."
"Look," I said, "it's ten to one Middle Valley doesn't have a telephone
office. The call will go through Newark or someplace. Nobody in Middle
Valley would be doing anything illegal."
"No," he said, "but you would."
"Oh, come on!" I was shocked. "_I_ don't live here. I'm just a New York
reporter. I work for an international news organization. You must have
heard of freedom of the press!"
Tate smiled and shook his head. "Mr. Kent, the law may be stupid but
it is explicit. No paid employment of any kind is permitted in Middle
Valley."
"Sure, sure," I said. "But what's it to you? This will be publicity for
you. That's what you want, isn't it?"
"You misunderstand our motives, Mr. Kent. We are your good
interplanetary neighbors, repaying your hospitality by observing all
your laws, as we are sure you would if you were to visit our country."
"What you're really trying to do," I told him, "is to reduce us to
absurdity."
"Don't put words in my mouth, Mr. Kent. Remember when you do dictate
your story--and I believe the village border is a mere half-mile
away--remember that you said that, not I."
"Half a mile? Come with me, will you? How did you know who I was?"
"I'll join you gladly. Mr. Dorfman told me about you."
He climbed into the car and I phoned the desk from a drug store in
the neighboring community of Valley Center, N.J. The store was doing
a thriving business in Sunday papers, ice-cream sodas, hot coffee,
cigarettes and other typical druggist's goods.
I gave John Hyatt his story heavy on the quotes, the way he likes them,
adding a bit about my own encounter with the Monolithian. He made
me spin it out at length for a sidebar. I didn't tell him Tate was
standing just outside the booth, listening to every word. I was afraid
John would have interviewed the hell out of him, keeping me hanging
around all day.
I came out of the booth, perspiring from its closeness. "How about a
coke?" I asked Tate. "We won't get one back in Middle Valley."
"Good idea," he said. We sat at a table and a waitress took our order.
"That a Bond suit?" I asked the alien. "Two pair of pants?"
"Simon Ackerman," he said, smiling. "One pair."
"Then you're not one of the original dozen from Burning Tree."
"No. I'm one of the Central Park unit."
"How do you like it here? What do you think of Earth-women?" I figured
I might as well get it asked and over with.
"Very tempting," Tate said. "Remember, we've been a long time enroute."
"How long?"
"Three years."
The cokes came, in tall glasses, heavily iced, with straws.
"What would you do to a vending machine that sold an illegal coke?" I
asked Tate.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Never mind. I'm glad you didn't put the whammy on me back there at
the gas station. I saw what your pal did to that convertible in Times
Square."
"Did you?" He beamed. "Quite an example, wasn't it? It was a pleasure
to uphold that law."
"Rough on the car, but the idiot had it coming. Do you mean you're not
enjoying what you're doing in Middle Valley?"
"There are degrees," he said, taking a sip of his coke. "It was a
pity Mr. Marchell was prevented from holding his service. We are not
antireligious, as he asserted in the heat of his anger."
"He was prevented by your people," I reminded him.
"By our people upholding local law," he insisted.
I decided he wasn't quibbling, and said, "Let's get back to where you
came from. You said you were three years on the way. Did you know where
you were going when you started?"
"Oh, yes. Earth. Sol's third planet. You invited us in 1945."
"Invited you?"
"So to speak. That was Earth's Atomic Year One, you will recall."
"You mean you detected the first explosion?"
"We detect them all. You were the fourth known planet to achieve that
level of development. We believe we were the second, in Monolithia."
"The second?" I asked. "Did the people from the first one visit you?"
"The first planet failed to see the potentialities for evil. It
destroyed itself. When we had achieved space travel we visited its
remains. It was a graphic example to us. We determined then that human
life was too rare a commodity to be squandered."
"You think we're too infantile to prevent our own destruction?"
"We think you need guidance. We got it second-hand from Planet I. We
were too late to help Planet III. You're IV."
"You mean Planet III destroyed itself, too?"
"So to speak. It's a dead world. Planets II and IV--Monolithia and
Earth--are the only advanced worlds left. It's our duty to preserve
them."
"What do you mean 'so to speak'?" I asked him. "What do you mean
'advanced'?" I was making full notes and Tate had been watching me fill
page after page of copy paper.
He finished his coke. "I've said enough for now." He sounded adamant,
and to keep him from drying up entirely I switched the subject slightly:
"How come you speak such good English?"
"English, Japanese, Monolithian, Tildonian (that was one of Planet
III's languages)--they're all human tongues. It's merely a matter of
adaptation. We don't click any more, you notice. That's a Monolithian
trait, but easily de-emphasized."
I scribbled away and he watched me tolerantly, sucking on a piece of
ice.
"You know I'm going to quote you. How shall I describe you? As a
Monolithian spokesman?"
"If you like. We're all spokesmen. We have--to use a diplomatic
phrase, but an accurate one--an identity of views on this urgent
matter. Shall we go?"
I sensed that he had dried up.
"I'd pay for the cokes," he said, "but it seems too small an amount to
charge to the Monolithian Embassy."
I dropped two dimes at the cashier's counter.
We heard sirens as I drove back into Middle Valley. Smoke was climbing
into the sky. I traced it to a burning house and parked a block away.
Tate and I ran to the edge of the crowd watching the fire.
"It's the Waddell house," somebody said. It was a big house probably
worth about fifty thousand. The smoke was billowing out of a room at
the back.
"Who's Waddell?" I asked.
Tate knew. "He's president of the village council. As a matter of fact,
he's chiefly responsible for the Sunday closing law."
"That's great," I said, making notes again. "What a story! And now his
house is going to burn down because it's against the law to put the
fire out. What's his first name?"
"Everett."
A fire engine screamed around a corner and men jumped from it, trailing
a hose behind them. Other equipment followed. Within a minute the hose
was attached to a hydrant and water was pouring on the fire.
"Hey!" I said to Tate. "What's the idea? Why aren't you stopping them?
They're working in Middle Valley on Sunday, aren't they? Aren't they
paid employees just like the minister and me?"
"No," the alien said. "Unfortunately for your story and your fine sense
of irony, these are not paid employees. They're volunteer firemen."
7 (JULY 28, MON.)
Never speak loudly to one another unless the house is on fire.
--Harold William Thompson
I'd got home pretty late, but the alarm clock went off at six, as
usual, on Monday morning. It's at this time of day that I envy my
city-dwelling brothers who can get up an hour later and reach their
offices at the same time I do. Mae and I had bought a house in High
Tor in preparation for the baby, who was scheduled to be born in late
November. ("Beautiful timing," our tax accountant once said, thinking
of the exemption which would be good for the entire year.)
I rescued the dew-soaked _New York Times_ from the lawn. Its main
headline, across four columns, said:
ALIENS KEEP PREACHER FROM PULPIT,
CITING VILLAGE'S SUNDAY WORK BAN
The radio newscasts were hitting it hard, too. I listened to them as I
brewed a pot of coffee.
Mae shuffled into the kitchen, sleepy-eyed, in her housecoat. "Why
didn't you wake me up?" she asked.
"You have to sleep for two now," I told her.
"Nonsense," she said, giving me a kiss and looking at the front page.
"What do you want for breakfast?"
"Eggs, sunny-side up, covered with Pep." You break the yolk and the Pep
absorbs it.
"We don't have any Pep. How about corn flakes?"
"They're too big," I said. "You know that."
"I'm sure I'll never learn the fine points of these little mealtime
foibles of yours. You want bread under the eggs then?"
"Obviously," I said. It's not obvious at all, of course, but Mae is
very teasable.
"Honestly, Sam," she said as she buttered the frying pan, "you could
let a little yolk run on the plate. I don't mind washing it off. You're
not a bachelor any more, you know."
"I know that very well," I said. It isn't the washing so much as the
waste that bothers me. I think occasionally of the tons of dried egg
yolks being scraped into the garbage every morning and it gives my
frugal soul the willies. "How's Junior today?"
"He's very happy. Not a peep out of her." Mae changes its sex with
every reference to keep an open mind on the subject. She even
occasionally refers to it in the plural just in case. "You don't think
our children are going to suffer from these aliens, do you? I mean
they're not going to have to live in oppression under the heel of the
invader, are they?"
"Where did you get _that_, for God's sake?"
"On the radio last night before you came home. It was that Clyde
Witchburn. You know."
"Clyde Fitchburn. Don't listen to him. Listen to Ed Murrow or Eric
Sevareid. Listen to me. But don't let that doom-shouter Fitchburn give
you nightmares. It's not good for Junior."
"All right, Sam. You like the aliens, don't you?"
"I like the few I've met personally, but that doesn't mean I approve of
everything they do or are capable of doing. I don't think they plan to
grind us under the heel, though."
"Well, they're up to something. They didn't come all this way just to
obey a lot of funny laws and get people's danders up. We must have
something they want."
"Maybe we've got something they don't want," I said.
"Why would they land here, then?"
"To keep us from exporting it, now that we're on our way to the stars."
"Like what? Germs?"
"Sort of. Uncontrolled radiation, maybe."
Mae slid the eggs from the pan onto the two pieces of bread on my
plate. She poured coffee for each of us and said, "Eat, now. It's
six-thirty."
So it was. I was out of the house in ten minutes. I bought a _Herald
Tribune_ before I got on the bus, leaving the _Times_ for Mae. The Trib
had a righteous editorial headed "Abuse of Hospitality." I skimmed
through it. It said about what you might expect. Lippmann wasn't in the
paper that day and Alsop was discussing something else.
I folded the paper and wriggled around in the seat. Buses are like
candy bars, I thought. The price goes up and the size goes down. Each
new bus seemed to have less leg room and a lower headrest than its
predecessor, so that you had to be a contortionist to take a nap.
I had found a reasonably comfortable position when two men got on, took
the seats behind me and continued a discussion they'd been having about
the aliens.
"I told Alice they'd better not fool around with the church in our
town."
"Damn right."
"I said you can go so far, but some things you just don't fool around
with."
"You said it."
"I told her, 'Alice,' I said, 'you mark my words, just let them try in
Old Corners what they did in Middle Valley and there'll be trouble'."
"What did she say?"
"She agreed a hundred per cent, of course. Now I'm not a fellow
who goes every week--you know; but Easter, maybe Palm Sunday, and
Christmas--but by God some things are sacred.
"I tell you I got so mad when I saw that on the television. If that's
the way things can happen, I told Alice, I said, 'Listen, if this is
what they expect us to put up with, believe me, they've got another
think coming.' You don't just take something like that sitting down."
"I should say not. Why, I said the same thing to----"
"I mean there's a limit. I don't pay much attention to what goes on
at the UN--I don't suppose anybody does--but when it gets as close
as this, I tell you, things have come to a pretty pass, my friend, a
pretty pass indeed."
"They sure have, I told Virginia--"
"I'll bet you did. It's a crying shame when a bunch of fancy Dans from
Lord knows where can walk in on us and try to upset the things we hold
sacred...."
This stimulating conversation must have put me to sleep because the
next thing I knew somebody was tapping me on the shoulder and saying,
"Last stop, Mac."
I said thanks and got out.
A bar on Eighth Avenue had a new banner up over its door. "Welcome
Monolithans," it said. My copy-reader's eye noted the misspelling.
Nobody inside looked fancy enough to be one of the alien Dans.
The teletypes were clattering away at World Wide. The summer doldrums
were sure over.
"'Morning, Sam," the copy boy said. "How about some coffee?"
"'Morning, Herb," I said. "That's the first intelligent remark I've
heard in some time."
"Heavy on the milk?"
"That's right--Earth-style."
Charlie Price was pecking away at the typewriter.
"'Morning, Charlie. What's doing?"
"Somebody called up from an outfit called the Society for the
Prevention of Alien Domination of Earth. Ever hear of it?"
"No, but the initials spell 'spade.' Are you sure it wasn't some bright
P.R.O. for a playing-card company?"
"Never thought of that, but it could be. There's something in it about
digging in and holding the line. I'll finish it and leave it for you."
"Good." Herb brought my coffee and I sat down to read the file.
"John Hyatt's in already," Charlie said.
"Already? He was on the desk yesterday, too. He must be alien-happy."
"How'd you make out in Middle Valley? I saw you got a byline."
"Well, I didn't get a chance to put any expense money in the collection
plate," I said.
Charlie didn't answer that and I wondered if I'd offended him. I went
back to reading the file.
I had barely taken over from Charlie when John Hyatt came into the news
room. "Hi, Sam," he said. "I've been on the phone with Riddie. She was
about as informative as an AEC handout, but I gather something's up.
I'll take the desk again today. The Chicago crowd'll be in soon to help
here. I'd like you and Stew to shoot up to the Waldorf. I don't know
what's cooking but I suspect the aliens may be in a flap over their
shenanigans yesterday. Nice story, incidentally. It got splashed all
over Europe, according to the play report."
"Good. And thanks for the byline."
"You deserved it. Sometimes I wonder why we're wasting you on the desk."
"I like the regular hours," I said.
"Well, it looks as if regular hours are going to be out the window for
the duration."
"Where is Stew?"
"He'll be in at nine. You make a good team, you and Stew. I've noticed
that. I'd like you to keep as much of an eye on Riddie as on the
Monolithians, if you can. I suspect that little gal knows a lot more
about what's going on than she pretends. Get her off in a corner and
pump her, if you can."
"Shall I bring flowers?"
I meant it sarcastically, but John said, "She's not the bouquet type,
but Head Office has authorized extraordinary expenses for this story.
The sky's the limit. Make love to her, if you can stand it, but find
out what the hell is cooking."
Nancy Corelli had been all ears. "You never authorized him to make love
to me on the expense account," she told John. "We could have had some
high old times."
"I'm shocked, Nan," said John, who hadn't been shocked since he climbed
a high tension pole as a kid in ought-eight. "You're a married woman."
"Sam's married, too, don't forget," Nancy said. "And here you are
egging him on to go to bed with that old broad."
"Just a figure of speech, Mrs. Corelli. Suppose you let us old
trenchcoat boys cover the story and you concentrate on sending it to
London."
Nancy accepted the rebuke in her own fashion. "I'm glad I have an
honest job, at least," she said.
Stew Macon came in. "I see by the daily press there have been a number
of developments since I left the shop last Friday," he said to John and
me. "Good morning, Nancy."
"Don't talk to them, Stew," Nancy said. "They'll corrupt you, the old
lechers."
"Now what's this all about?" Stew asked.
"Tell you in the taxi," I said. "Don't take your coat off. We're on
detached service."
"Good enough. But I hope you have a big cash reserve, Sam. I happen to
have spent--and I use the term advisedly--a very expensive week end."
"Keep in touch," John said. "There are two of you, so let's have a
phone call every so often even if nothing's doing."
I filled Stew in as the cab driver wended us uptown.
"I wasn't kidding about being broke, Sam. This little babe I met had
very expensive tastes."
"I'm good for about thirty bucks," I said. "Then I'll have to get a
refill from petty cash."
"There's nothing petty about cash," Stew said.
* * * * *
Eurydice Playfair's suite was crowded to its expensive walls with
reporters, State Department people, Pentagon people--including some
high brass in uniform--and waiters. A bar was set up along one wall.
"At this hour of the morning?" I asked her.
"It's there for them as wants it," Riddie said. She was drinking coffee
herself.
There didn't seem to be any Monolithians present yet, but then no one
could tell for sure. I asked Riddie.
"No," she said. "We're saving them for the floor show."
"Something big?"
"I didn't lay on this spread just to say hello."
"Do they know what's going to happen?" I said, meaning the U.S.A.
contingent from Washington.
"No, they're just liaison. But, believe me, they're fairly perishing to
know."
"Whatever it is, will it make them gasp in the Ginza?" I asked.
"Sam," she said, "this'll pierce them in the Place Pigalle."
"Ah," I said, "but will it crush them in the Kremlin?"
"I have no more to say right now. Why don't you have some coffee?"
"I think I'll have a weak little Scotch and soda, if it's all the same
to you."
"It's not the same as coffee, that's for sure."
A man from the _Journal-American_ took her away and I went to the bar.
Stew was already there with a glass of something that was neither small
nor weak.
"Did you pump her, Sam?" he asked.
"She's a dry well."
"I have circumnavigated the room and there is nothing. Sealed are the
lips. Or blank are the minds, I don't know which."
"You sound as if you've been talking to the man from _Time_. Give John
a call, will you, Stew? He might want a little color story."
"He always wants a little color story." He went off to one of the
two-dozen telephones Riddie had provided.
I asked the barman to weaken up my drink with more soda. Caterers are
always very generous with the customer's whiskey.
Riddie got up on a chair at the end of the room and clapped her hands.
"I guess everybody's here," she said. "I've asked you to come here
this morning, ladies and gentlemen, to meet two other members of the
ambassadorial staff from Monolithia. They will enter through this door
on my right in a moment. Before they do, you may wish to make a note of
their names. They are Mr. Quy--spelled Q-u-y but pronounced 'Key'--and
Mr. Brown."
Stew, back from the telephone, whispered, "Have you noticed how all of
them have one-syllable names?"
I nodded as I wrote them down.
Somebody asked Riddie, "Would it be correct to assume that these
gentlemen hold a higher position in the Monolithian government than the
ones we've previously met?"
"Not at all," Riddie said. "Everyone in Monolithia is equal. Each has
the rank of Ambassador."
"But," the questioner persisted, "maybe these new ones intend to
apologize for the incidents of yesterday in Middle Valley."
"Certainly not," Riddie said. "The Ambassadors who visited Middle
Valley acted in complete accordance with the law. There is not the
slightest doubt in any Monolithian mind on that score."
"So much for John Hyatt's hunch," I muttered.
Stew spoke up. "Would you say, Riddie, that there was complete
and unanimous support for the Middle Valley delegation among the
Monolithians?"
"Yes, I would. To them, laws were made to be obeyed."
"How about the groundswell of protest ..." somebody else started to
ask, but Riddie raised her hands.
"Please," she said. "What happened yesterday has no connection with
this meeting. In fact, I think you'll have a bigger story today if
you'll just let me get on with it. I'll now ask the Ambassadors I've
named to step into the room."
The door opened. The two men came in. They were dressed in the same
conservative style as their predecessors. But their faces were
different. Mr. Quy was an Oriental. Mr. Brown was a Negro.
* * * * *
I'd dictated my story and turned the phone over to Stew to elaborate on
it. Riddie came over carrying two drinks. She handed one to me. "It's
not weak this time," she said. "I figured you could use it."
"Thanks," I said, taking a good swallow.
"Well, Sam," she said. "Is this a story or isn't it? Do you think it'll
fracture them in France?"
"Baby," I told her, "you're too far out. This will lay them low in
Little Rock!"
8 (JULY 29, TUES.)
Scientists have reached general agreement in
recognizing that mankind is one: that all men
belong to the same species, _Homo sapiens_.
--UNESCO Statement on Race, 1950
We'd already had the highlights of the Mount Pelley story from the
local wire service but it had left a number of questions unanswered.
I looked in the stringer book to see who we had in Mississippi. To my
surprise I found that we had a Mr. Elbert Patterson right in Mount
Pelley. I sent him a wire asking for at least a thousand words, with
good color and quotes. His story was on my desk in less than two hours.
Here it is:
Mount Pelley, Miss., July 29.--The bus driver said, "Move to the
back of the bus." When the Negro passenger failed to obey, the
driver shouted at him: "That's a white man's seat you're in,
nigger. Get back where you belong or I'll throw you off."
The Negro, a neatly dressed man of about thirty, carrying a
briefcase, replied quietly, "This is an interstate bus. Under
Federal law I have a right to sit where I please."
Eleven other passengers were on the bus, which was due to pass
through this town on its way to Biloxi. Six were whites. The
other five Negroes sat without objection in the rear section,
traditionally reserved in this state for "colored."
The Negro man who refused to move was sitting alone in a double
seat three rows back from the door. He turned and looked out the
window.
His attitude infuriated the driver, Merle Cagle, who pulled the bus
to the side of the road, slammed on the brakes and strode down the
aisle.
"I'll give you one last chance, black boy," Cagle said. "Move back
or get off."
There is confusion among the other passengers who reported this
conversation today as to whether the Negro replied, "Don't touch
me" or "You'll be sorry."
A great deal of confusion surrounds the ensuing incidents. The bus
driver claimed the Negro passenger hit him with both fists and
kicked him. The white passengers said the Negro man hit the bus
driver with his briefcase, which they presumed contained something
heavy, using it like a club. The Negro passengers said the lone
Negro man sat still, making no effort to defend himself.
Whatever happened, Cagle was severely cut and bruised on his hands.
In addition, the big toe of his right foot was broken, a hospital
report said late today.
Cagle went back to the driver's seat and brought the bus here. He
parked it in front of the office of Sheriff Ellis Grout, whose
name became nationally known several years ago in connection with
the fatal beating of a 13-year-old Negro boy who was said to have
"sassed" a white woman. Grout had refused to arrest or question
the two white men who boasted that they had administered the fatal
beating, saying they were just big-mouths "trying to take credit"
for the crime.
Grout, an admitted Kleagle in the Ku Klux Klan and a leader in the
local White Citizens movement, was sitting in front of his office
in a chair tipped back against the wall when the bus stopped.
Cagle jumped out and pointed to the Negro man sitting at the front
of the bus. "I got somebody for your jail, Sheriff," Cagle said.
Grout asked a few questions, then said through the bus window: "You
must be one of them northern niggers. Well, this ain't the north,
so suppose you just come out of that bus."
When the Negro passenger gave no sign that he had heard, Grout went
into the bus, drawing his pistol.
"I gave you an order, nigger," he said. "Get your black ass up off
that seat."
When again there was no reply, Grout, using his pistol as a club,
brought it down toward the man's head.
Here again eyewitness accounts differ. Some say the Negro raised
his briefcase and the gun hit it, going off. Others say the Negro
did not move at all and that the gun went off as the Sheriff was
bringing it down to club him.
What is known is that the bullet ricocheted off something and
struck Grout in the left shoulder.
Grout staggered out of the bus, bleeding profusely and shouting
that he'd been shot. A crowd gathered quickly.
It became a mob. Somebody shouted, "That nigger shot the Sheriff!"
The mob of whites surrounded the bus. The white passengers got off.
The Negro passengers, frightened, huddled in the rear, with the
exception of the one Negro man who remained in his seat. He seemed
utterly calm and some said he smiled slightly.
The mob started to throw rocks at the bus. Soon all the safety
plate windows were spiderwebbed and it became difficult to see
inside.
Then someone shouted, "Let's get him!" And there was a surge toward
the door of the bus.
But no one went in. Some said no one was _able_ to get in--that
some sort of invisible shield hurled back anyone who mounted past
the first step.
The frustrated, howling mob, seemingly in a lynching mood, raged
around the bus for half an hour until they were dispersed by the
arrival of the state police.
Cagle, the driver, was located and, with the state police escorting
him, he drove the bus to Biloxi.
There the Negro man was questioned and finally released. He gave
his name as Brown. He went to the home of the Rev. James Evander, a
prominent Negro clergyman, to spend the night.
Cagle was reprimanded by the bus company, which said the Negro man
had been entirely within his rights. A company spokesman said he
did not know at the moment what it planned to do about the damage
to its bus.
Sheriff Grout was reported to be in fair condition in the hospital.
I made only minor changes in the story before I sent it on to London,
under a byline. I don't know what color Mr. Patterson, our Mount Pelley
stringer, is. It isn't one of the questions we ask at World Wide. I
suppose he'd have to be white in a place like that. But I'm sure Mr.
Brown would have been glad to know he existed, to help balance Sheriff
Grout.
9 (JULY 30, WED.)
All the people like us are We,
And every one else is They.
--Rudyard Kipling
High Tor, N.Y., is a pretty enlightened place. It's the hometown
of artists, writers and theater people, budding and blooming. It
has a syndicated political cartoonist whose satire is just a shade
less biting than Herblock's. It has a playwright who has won a
Pulitzer prize. It has a socially conscious novelist whose books
are best-sellers in spite of their Messages. Then there's the
Chinese-American artist who not only prospers but (or perhaps I should
say "and therefore") is a respected and socially accepted member of the
community.
High Tor is progressive, forward-looking. It's quaint and
countrified--though it's only 35 minutes from Times Square--because of
its strict zoning laws. It has been written up in _The Exurbanites_
as a place neither as intellectual nor as stuffy as Fairfield County,
Connecticut, possibly because it doesn't have as many advertising men.
It's not as rich, either, which is why Mae and I can afford to live
there on the minimum plot allowed--one acre.
As I say, High Tor is no slouch of a town. If you're a New Yorker, but
can't stand the city for the hundred-odd reasons I'm sure I don't have
to list, High Tor is the place for you.
Therefore Mae and I were pretty shocked when we went out pub-crawling
and did some unintentional eavesdropping.
I'd come home worn out from the eight-hour grind at WW, which had
seemed like twelve, and suggested to Mae that we eat out and relax. She
had the lamb chops back in the freezer and her second-best dress on
in the same time it took me to luxuriate in an armchair over one dry
martini.
All unwound, I put Mae in the Volkswagen and headed for Armando's,
one of those quaint, but not too quaint, restaurants where the owner
himself comes over and suggests. He suggested the veal cacciatore and
we were agreeable.
As we were chewing the last mouthful, Armando came over to ask how it
was.
"Great," I told him.
"Out of this world," Mae said.
"Delighted," Armando said. "But please don't mention those
out-of-this-worlders to me."
"You mean the Monolithians?" I said. "What could they have possibly
done to you?"
"Two of them came in for lunch today, disguised as Negro people."
"Oh?" Mae said.
"They weren't disguised," I told Armando. "There are Negroes on
Monolithia, just as there are here."
"Well, anyway, I put them near the kitchen door and tell the girls to
bump the chairs every time they come out. You know."
I hadn't known. I looked at Mae, who looked down at the remains of her
veal cacciatore.
Armando went on: "So after a few bumps the one nearest the door
makes with a finger to me. I ignore him, of course. Then he hollers,
'Armando!' The place is full of the luncheon trade. I frown, but what
can I do? I hurry over to keep him quiet.
"'You are unhappy here?' I say to him. 'You would prefer to leave?' But
he says 'No, we prefer a better table.' I tell him there are no other
tables--the empty ones he sees are reserved. He says--he tells me this
to my face--that this is a lie. I ask him to leave, so as not to create
a disturbance."
"Sam," Mae said.
"Shh," I said. "Go on, Armando."
"Then he asks for the telephone, as if this is the Stork Club and I can
plug it in at the table. I tell him the pay phone is near the cashier's
desk, he can use it on his way out. Subtle, you see?"
"Then what?" I asked.
"He goes to the phone and calls SCAD in Albany!" SCAD is the state
commission against discrimination. "He tells them the whole story at
the top of his voice. It is mortifying. And now I am likely to lose
my license and have to close up--or else cater to the colored trade.
Mr. Kent, you are with a powerful news service. You know about these
things. Tell me--what can I do?"
"You can give us our check, Armando," I said.
Armando became upset. "You are late. I am sorry. I should not tell you
my troubles and take up your time. No--there is no check. You have been
my guests. My pleasure."
"But not mine, Armando." I said. I dropped a ten-dollar bill on the
table. "If you don't want it, leave it for the waitress. Good-by,
Armando. Come on, Mae."
In the car Mae said, "Ten dollars was too much. I saw the menu.
Seven-fifty, maybe."
"All right," I said. "Consider it a two-fifty contribution to the
NAACP. We'll make it up by not eating there again."
"Okay," she settled back in the seat. The financial end of it settled,
Mae said, "Good for you, Sam. The nerve of him, taking it for granted
we thought the same way he does. Why it wasn't so long ago that he was
a minority himself."
"The hell with him," I said. "Let's go get a drink."
Reno's Roost has a bar and a band and serves fried chicken or shrimp in
a basket. It's run by an old army buddy of mine, Paul Reno. He gambled
on the county opening up when they began building the Tappan Zee Bridge
across the Hudson and his gamble paid off. The place was jumping.
We went in and looked around for a place to sit. The bar was filled. So
were the booths and tables.
Paul came over from nowhere and said, "Sam! Where the hell you been?
Hello, Mae. How's the gestation?"
"He's fine," Mae said. "Big crowd tonight."
"The biggest, now you're here. Here you are. Reserved for the Kents."
"This looks like your table, Paul," I said. "We don't want to send you
back to work."
"Sit down," he said. "I'll come sit with you when my feet get tired.
What'll you have? First round's on the house."
"I'll have a very weak Tom Collins, Paul," Mae said, "and I mean weak."
"Right you are, Mrs. K. Sam?"
"Scotch and soda, thanks."
"Strong, to even it out. Okay, Max!" He called a waiter and gave the
order. He had Seven-Up himself. Paul never drinks on the job till 1 A.M.
"I see Oliver's still with you," I said. Oliver is one of the
bartenders. He's a Negro. "We should have come here for dinner, Mae."
"Oliver's my right-hand man." Paul said. "Where did you eat, chumps?"
"Armando's," Mae said. "But I'd just as soon not talk about it."
"Armando's!" Paul said. "That ptomaine domain! What's the matter--you
don't like chicken? If you don't like chicken we got shrimp. For you we
even got tablecloths, if you insist. Armando's! Has he got a band?"
"He's got nothing," Mae said. "Who's playing tonight, Paul?"
"Tonight as always we have the Trans-Hudson Five, the finest
aggregation west of Ossining, augmented by that rising young cornet
star, Pete Kato."
"Japanese?" I asked.
"The rising son himself."
"Never heard of him."
"Just off the plane. He's here for kicks. I don't pay him, but maybe I
will. He's not bad."
"Jazzman?" I asked.
"I don't know," Paul said. "Sometimes he sounds like Harry James.
Sometimes he's Max Kaminsky. He's obviously listened to a lot of
records. He's pretty derivative."
That's one of the things I appreciate about Paul Reno. Most of the time
he sounds like Mr. Night Club himself, but then he comes out with a
word like "derivative."
Paul went off to see how things were in the kitchen. As I mentioned,
the place was crowded, with little space between tables. The band was
between sets and I could over-hear the people at the table behind me.
"... deliberately soften us up with all that mumbo-jumbo in the UN," a
man's voice was saying. "Then they smuggle in a boat-load of colored
behind our backs, as if we didn't have enough of our own already."
"And Chinks," another man's voice said.
"And Chinks," the first man agreed. "And Japs. I'll bet that was their
plan all along. They're dumping their unwanted surplus population
on us. It's a sneaking subversive thing to do and I wonder when Old
Fathead Allison will wake up to the fact that they're playing him for a
sucker."
"You used to think Gov was pretty good," a woman's voice said. "You
voted for him."
"Never again. The country's going to the dogs. It has been for years,
ever since Roosevelt. My God, Earl, do you know a Spic family is trying
to move in down the road from us? Bunch of jabbering foreigners--must
be a dozen of them. Can't even speak English."
"Now, Harvey," the same woman's voice said. "How can you talk that way?
You've always been very pleasant to our maid and you like Oliver over
there behind the bar."
"Exactly," he said. "'Over there behind the bar.' In his place."
This might very well be Oliver's place one day, I thought to myself.
Paul Reno was hoping to open another place, given the right breaks, and
he'd spoken to me about the possibility of putting Oliver in charge of
this one.
Feeling one up on the people behind me, I quit eavesdropping and gave
Mae a big smile.
"Well," she said. "Welcome back. What pleases you so all of a sudden?"
"Nothing," I said. "Just the happy thought that that bunch of WASPS
behind me are going to be stung themselves sooner or later."
"Wasps?"
"Capital letters. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. It's a term applied in
certain quarters to a certain type."
"_You're_ a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant," Mae said.
Paul Reno came back. "You will shortly be entertained by the greatest
little combo this side of Suffern," he said. "I'll join you for the
concert, if you're not engaged in pitching woo."
Mae laughed. "Sit down, Paul. The woo was pitched a long time ago.
We've been discussing the state of the world."
"On your night out? Sam, can't you ever forget that deadline stuff?"
"I'm willing to now, if your Augmented Five ever get their horns out."
There were piano, drums, guitar, trombone and clarinet, plus Kato's
cornet. The guitar man usually played trumpet. They did a good loud
job, but I noticed that Kato appeared really comfortable only when he
was taking a solo, such as the Berigan chorus of _I Can't Get Started_
or the James version of _You Made Me Love You_, where he was not only
derivative but imitative. In ensemble work he was terrible.
We decided we'd better go home after the band closed with _The Saints_.
I had my 6 A.M. alarm clock in mind.
10 (JULY 31, THURS.)
You came to me from out of nowhere
so why don't you go back where you came from?
--Abe Burrows song title
I managed to shut off the alarm and get up without disturbing Mae. I
was having breakfast when the back door slammed open. We don't lock our
doors in countrified, law-abiding High Tor.
"Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam!" It was six-year-old Harry Tyler, the son of our
neighbors. "There's a spaceship in the woods!"
"What were you doing in the woods at this uncivilized hour?" I said,
the neighborly avuncular instinct grabbing the wrong end of his remark.
Then I said, "What? A spaceship? In the woods?"
"I went out to pick some strawberries for my breakfast," Harry said.
"That's why I was in the woods. It's big and black and nobody saw me, I
don't think."
"How do you know it's a spaceship?"
"Everybody knows what a spaceship looks like. It's big and black, just
the way it's supposed to be. Come on and see it."
"Is your daddy up yet?" I asked Harry. Len Tyler usually gets up a few
minutes after I do. "Did you tell him?"
"He's on vacation," Harry said. I'd forgotten. "He's still asleep. So's
Mommy. Come on and see the spaceship, Uncle Sam."
I always feel very martial when Harry and the other kids in the
neighborhood call me Uncle Sam. I feel that I have to uphold the honor
of the Republic and Set an Example.
"Son," I said, "you're on. Let us go investigate this phenomenon."
A telescope hung in the back hall where it had been gathering dust
since I gave up being a satellite watcher. It was a pretty good
Japanese telescope, not expensive, but not cheap either. I took it
down and wondered whether to look for my old souvenir machete for
protection. But I decided that would be overdoing it.
We have about an acre of clear ground behind our house, then the woods
begin. It's really an abandoned apple orchard, with the apple trees
grown tall and neglected and other trees grown to a respectable height
between them. A lot of sticker-bushes live there, too--tough, nasty
things with needle-sharp spines. I wished I'd brought the machete after
all.
Harry and I had threaded our way a few hundred feet when I stopped. My
left shirt sleeve was torn, my pants were wet up to the knees from the
dew, and I was sweating.
"That's far enough, Harry," I said. "There's no spaceship here."
He was a few yards ahead, ducking under a spiny branch I'd have to lift
out of the way at my peril.
"It's right over there, Uncle Sam," he said. "I think I see it now."
"Yeah? I'll go as far as you are, and if it's not there, young Marco
Polo, we're turning back."
"Shh," he said. "Come on."
I joined him and looked. "Where?"
"Right there. Near that red apple there." He pointed.
There were thousands of red apples, fit only for making pies if the
peeler had the patience to cut away the bad spots.
I followed his point and he was right. Nestled in among the trees was a
big bulk of a thing, brownish gray. It certainly wasn't anything that
had been in the woods before.
"Do you see any people?" I asked Harry.
"No. Let's go knock on their door."
"No!" I said. "Let's circle around and see what it looks like from the
other side."
We circled. I managed to tear my other shirt sleeve on a sticker that
also drew blood. Then for a while we made better progress along the bed
of a sunken, abandoned road. We had kept the spaceship on our left and
now I could see a huge clearing on the far side of it, strung over with
some kind of camouflage netting.
"There they are!" Harry said.
"Quiet!" I said, pulling him down behind the lip of the old road. I was
past caring about clothes now.
There were at least a dozen of them in the clearing. More were coming
out of the open hatch of the spaceship. Apparently they hadn't heard
us. I uncapped the telescope and looked.
They were wearing their native woolen cloaks and were setting up
furniture in the clearing, which had been divided into room-size
rectangles outlined on the bare ground with paint or strips of white
cloth.
In addition to the chairs, tables, desks and bookcases they had
a number of pieces of equipment which vaguely resembled movie or
television cameras.
"What are they doing, Uncle Sam?" Harry asked. "Let me look through the
telescope."
"I don't know. It looks as if they're building movie sets. Maybe the
walls will come later." I handed him the telescope.
"Look, they're coming out different now," Harry said, and I grabbed the
telescope back.
Those stepping out of the hatch now were wearing Earth-style clothes,
and not carrying anything. But not all of the clothes looked American.
There were men in wide-lapeled European suits, men in the white linen
suits of tropical countries, men in the jodhpurs or dhotis of the Asian
Indian, men in glittering military uniforms and men in drab, unadorned
military jackets worn by the leaders of some totalitarian countries.
They went to the various room-sized rectangles and sat or stood. No one
was talking.
Then I looked closely at their faces. I almost dropped the telescope.
I saw the Prime Ministers of England and India, the leader of the
United Arab Republic, the President of France and half a dozen other
premiers or presidents, ex-, present or potential.
Gouverneur Allison was there for the United States, as was Rupert
Marriner, the Secretary of State, and several other high administrative
officials.
I was watching the Soviet Union's top men come out when I heard a noise
behind us.
"Run!" I told Harry, getting up myself. "Run home and tell your daddy."
He hesitated. "Aren't you coming, Uncle Sam?"
"I'll go another way, to confuse them. Go on, now!"
Harry ran back along the sunken road. I started in the other direction.
I hadn't taken twenty steps when a Monolithian in a woolen cloak rose
up in front of me. I darted off sideways and ran into another one.
There were five in all.
Escape would have been impossible even with the machete. Without
speaking they escorted me toward the clearing.
11 (AUG. 1, FRI.)
Be good and you will be lonesome.
--Mark Twain
I woke up. It was completely dark. For a few seconds I stared up into
the blackness, then turned on my side and tried to go back to sleep.
But in a moment I realized I wasn't in my own bed and remembered that I
was a prisoner.
Fully awake, I sat up. The room, becoming light in a gradual
effulgence, revealed itself as a cube about nine feet on each side,
furnished with two things--a seven-foot couch, covered with a coarse
wool material, and me. There was nothing else. I couldn't trace the
source of the light. I lay down and the light faded; I sat up and it
came on again.
My wristwatch was gone and I had no idea how long it had been since my
capture. I had been marched in silence to the clearing, passing through
four or five of the wall-less rooms. No one had spoken as I was led to
one of the hatches of the spaceship.
I had made various remarks as I was being taken in--such as "What's
going on?" "You can't do this to me," "I've got to get to work,
for pete's sake," and "Listen, will you?"--but my captors weren't
conversation-minded.
I was led up a ramp and into the relatively dim interior of the
spaceship. I had a recollection of narrow corridors and an occasional
notice painted on the wall in some alien script. Then I was pushed
into a cabin and the door closed behind me. My captors stayed outside,
but there was a man in the room, sitting behind a long table in one of
the two big chairs. He was wearing a woolen cloak. He was older than
any of the bright young men I'd seen before, white haired and grave
in expression. He was tossing a ball from hand to hand. It wasn't a
baseball, but I had said, for no reason that I could remember now, "I'm
a Braves fan myself."
He smiled and said, "Sit down," indicating the other chair. "Yankees."
"That's no team," I said, sitting down, "that's a machine."
"Be that as it may," he said, "you must wonder why we are here."
"Not at all," I said. "You're not on my property." I was saying
whatever came into my mind. I think my idea was to discomfit him
and provoke him into saying something he didn't plan to--something
revealing.
He kept tossing the ball from hand to hand. It was about the size of a
handball, hard and black but apparently not rubber.
He revealed nothing. "The dew is heavy in the morning," he said,
looking at my soaked clothing. "And you've got a nasty scratch. Would
you like something for it?"
"What have you got?" I asked. "Mendicants?" I was freely associating,
having nothing better in mind.
"Oh, yes. Medicants _and_ mendicants. Menders and vendors and buttons
and bows. Pills and potions and ankle-length hose."
I decided this was part of an attempt to hypnotize me and looked away
from his tossing ball.
"And Mendes-France," I said, "and Hugh Gaitskell and Krishna Menon."
"Not to mention Sam Kent," he said. "Here, catch."
He tossed the ball to me and in reflex I caught it.
I woke up in the nine-foot cube.
* * * * *
Somewhere between then and now I'd been stripped of my sopping clothes
and garbed in one of their woolen cloaks. It didn't itch as I'd
imagined it would. In fact, I was quite comfortable. I wasn't hungry
or thirsty either. I judged by this that it had been only a few hours
since I'd caught the ball, which apparently was some kind of knockout
drop, and been transferred to this cubic prison and its automatic
lighting.
I got off the couch and explored. The walls, floor and ceiling were
made of a gray metallic substance, neither cold nor warm to the touch.
The couch was nothing more than an extension of the floor--two feet
high and seven feet long--with half a dozen thick brown woolen blankets
over it. There was no crack or seam in any wall to indicate a door and
no vent to bring in the clean air I was breathing. I sat down, baffled.
After a while I said, "Hey!"
There was no answer.
I lay down and the light went out. I sat up again. The light came on.
My cloak had no pockets. I took it off and, naked, turned it inside
out. It taught me nothing. I put it back on and thought idly of smoking
a cigarette. There are times when I sit at the news desk and words
simply will not come unless I light a cigarette. It may be that I don't
take a single puff after the first one, but the mere action of lighting
the cigarette sets the old train of thought to operating. But now I
couldn't have cared less if I never had a cigarette. Or a drink. Or
food.
But my curiosity was still perking. I got to my feet and made another
circuit of the little room. I found something I'd overlooked before.
On one of the walls near a corner were two knobs, one above the other.
They were set out a scant quarter inch from the wall and were of the
same color and material.
"This opens the door," I told myself, turning the top one clockwise.
No door opened.
"Then this does," I said, turning the other one.
Instead I got music. I'd found a radio.
It was Perez Prado, that musical humorist, ripping out an unabashed
Latinate romp through an old standard, giving it new excitement with
his dramatic pauses and irreverent burps.
The Prado record ended and a recorded commercial came on:
"Ladies, stop tearing the end off the wrapper on a loaf of bread," was
the message I got. From this exhortation to the ladies, I judged that
this was daytime radio.
The next station was more informative: "Temperature now 75
degrees--bright and enjoyable. And we hope it's nice where you are this
fine Friday morning...."
Friday! It had been Thursday when my neighbor's boy had led me through
the apple orchard. I wondered if young Harry had reported my capture,
and if he had, whether anybody believed him.
My next thought was of Mae. She must be worried sick about me. She
wouldn't have worried till suppertime yesterday, when I didn't get home
on time--unless the office had called her to find out why I hadn't come
to work, as it probably had. That meant she'd already had 24 hours of
anxiety. I banged on the walls with my palms, then kicked with the flat
of my bare foot, but no one came.
"Can't stay in bed?" the radio asked me. "Get up and still get five
stay-in-bed benefits."
I turned the volume up as high as it would go, hoping that would
attract the attention of my captors. But the rest of the booming
commercial and the ensuing rendition of _Stardust_--a song I can do
without--did nothing but hurt my ears.
I reduced the volume for a panegyric to "the most delightfully
different cigarette ever made" and reflected that in spite of the fact
that my own pack was gone with my clothes I didn't want to smoke.
Nor was I thirsty, I realized during subsequent commercials praising
the joys of Coke and Seven Up. And I wasn't hungry, not reacting
to the one about there being "more crackling good taste in every
slice"--meaning bacon. And fortunately, considering the john-less
aspect of my cell, I didn't have to go to the bathroom. My appetites
seemed to have vanished with the 24 hours that had gone out of my life
since I caught that handball in the alien's office.
What were they doing to me? I wondered. What had they done to me? I
paced the limited confines of my prison, occasionally banging on the
hard wall, then threw myself on the couch. As I lay down the lights
went out and the radio faded. I sat up. The lights came on again and
the radio woke up to say:
"Time for news from American--live at 55! The news in just a moment."
"From Hackensack, New Jersey, an interesting sidelight on the aliens,"
the voice was saying in the verbless way of radio newsmen. "Commuters,
faced with a new fare increase totaling 81 per cent in ten months,
revolted against the Susquehanna Railroad today and rode to work in
a bus provided by the Monolithians. They pay $24 a month instead of
the $35 the new railroad fare would have cost. There was no immediate
comment from the Susquehanna, but a spokesman from the commuters'
association said the idea is so successful that a second group is
joining...."
That being the first news item, it was obvious that nothing startling
had been going on. Whatever all those duplicate men were planning to
do, they hadn't done it yet.
"In Boston, a group of alien volunteers pitched in with a will to help
tow away illegally parked cars. In the first two hours they towed away
28 unmarked police cars...."
WABC's newscast came five minutes before the hour. I switched to the
NBC station, "where news comes first"--meaning on the hour--and endured
the opening gongs which were NBC's substitute for big black headlines.
It started off with a couple of non-Monolithian items from overseas.
"More news in a moment. But first--"
"Isn't there someone, somewhere, whose voice you'd like to hear? Well
then, why not pick up your telephone...."
I yelled at it, "Yes, God damn it! Why don't I just?" and switched it
off.
I must have fallen asleep. I came to in darkness and when I sat up the
lights glowed on. I tried the radio again. Music.
I still wasn't hungry or thirsty and I still didn't have to go to
the bathroom. I wondered if I were being watched. I looked again for
a possible tiny television eye but couldn't see any. I considered
thumbing my nose in all directions, as a morale factor, but decided it
would be undignified.
I wondered what time it was, how long I'd slept. Somehow it sounded
like early evening music, suitable for housewives preparing dinner and
men driving home from a hard day at the office.
Then station identification told me it was seven o'clock (P.M.) and
asked whether right about here I would like a beer. The answer was no.
All I wanted was to get out.
"And now we bring you that popular round-table discussion of events of
the day, _News and Newsmen_," the radio said, "featuring the men who
edit the news for leading papers and wire services. Tonight our subject
is 'Monolithians--Friend or Foe?' and our panel consists of Russell
Sidenam, city editor of the _World-Telegram_; Barton Pascal, reporter
on the _Daily News_; Herb Small, from the world desk of the Associated
Press; and Sam Kent, assistant editor of the New York bureau of World
Wide News...."
A few minutes later, after the inevitable commercial, I heard my own
voice passionately defending the Monolithians as men of principle and
high conscience whose only purpose was to uplift their brethren on
Earth to a realization of their manifest destiny as worthy members of
the community of the Interstellar Realm.
12 (AUG. 2, SAT.)
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong,
as when you find a trout in the milk.
--Thoreau
I had put myself to sleep by playing the name game. You start with
two A's, as in Alfred Adler, then go to AB, Anthony Boucher, and so
on--Arthur Clarke, Antal Dorati, Albert Einstein, Alexander Fleming. I
dropped off somewhere in the middle of the C's--Mickey Cohen or Norman
Corwin--and woke up knowing exactly where I was and wondering what time
it was.
It turned out to be 8 A.M., August 2d, according to Station WTRU,
which was playing wake-up music for the poor souls who had to work on
Saturday, and a fine warm day it looked like it would be. For me it
looked like it would be the same kind of cooped-in day, with nothing
to do but chomp at the bit and wax wroth at the aloof jailers who had
stolen my identity and sent it out to make me look ridiculous. He who
steals my purse steals trash, I thought, but he who steals my good
name.... They'd stolen both, these alien do-gooders with their sweet
mad reasonableness.
"They said it couldn't be done--couldn't be done!" the radio boomed.
Well, they done did it. I didn't know how, but they duplicated me and
sent me out to champion their cause while the original model languished
helpless in their cell, beset by commercials and growing a fine beard.
"Our traffic-conditions helicopter reports unusual tie-ups in various
suburban areas," WTRU was saying. "Traffic is bumper-to-bumper and
backed up for miles in some sections.... For a direct report we go to
our beeper-phone and we'll see if we can talk to the police department
in Haverstraw, New York, close to the scene of one of the major tie-ups
on Route 9W."
I perked up at that. Haverstraw is near High Tor on the west bank of
the Hudson River.
"My engineer tells me we've got Sergeant Kiefer of the Haverstraw
police on the beeper-phone. Go ahead, Sergeant Kiefer! Tell us, what's
the cause of the big traffic jam on Route 9W?"
Sergeant Kiefer came in, loud, clear and profane. "Some God damn jerks
are obeying the 20-mile speed limit," he said.
"Heh, heh, Sergeant Kiefer," the announcer said. "Remember, you're on
the beeper-phone. This is radio, you know! What's that you say about
the speed limit?"
"The speed limit's 20 miles an hour and there's two cars abreast on the
highway not going any faster. Traffic's backed up clear to Piermont to
the south."
"Piermont to the south," the announcer repeated, just as if it meant
something to him. "How about in the other direction, Sergeant?"
"Same God damn thing. Two other wise guys ambling along----"
"You're on the _air_, Sergeant!"
"Same thing, I mean. They're backed up north to Bear Mountain. It's
murder."
"Why don't you arrest them, Sergeant?"
"For what? For obeying the speed limit? It'd make more sense to arrest
the stupid jerks that posted the 20-mile limit on a state highway."
"Just a minute, Sergeant! We're getting a message from our WTRU
traffic-conditions helicopter that the lead cars, both northbound and
southbound, have banners reading 'Monolithians Obey the Law.' Can
you confirm that, Sergeant? Is it true that the Monolithian space
people are the instigators of this fantastic traffic tie-up up there
in--in--what county is that up there where you are anyway, Sergeant?"
"Rockland County. Yeah. That's what their signs say. One of the cars is
a Volkswagen and there's some guy in it says he's a reporter. Sam Kent
of World Wide. Legal Sam, the law-abiding man, he told us he was. You
know him?"
"I've heard of World Wide, Sergeant. It's one of the three wire
services we have here at WTRU to give you and all our listeners the
most complete, up-to-the-minute news of any station in the metropolitan
area. You say a reporter is personally instigating this mass traffic
tie-up?"
"He's legal. We can't touch him. You want to know anything else? I got
to get back to work here."
The announcer let him go back to work because he had to go back to work
himself--to wit, to put on a commercial about something that was more
lastingly odor-free than any other something.
So my alter ego had stolen not only my good name but my little red
Volkswagen as well. I hoped he was keeping it in second for his
20-mile-an-hour jaunt and not ruining the gear-box by trying to do 20
in third.
Then a more urgent thought occurred to me. Had Spurious Sam, the
Duplicated Man, gone home last night and posed as the lawful wedded
husband of Mae Kent? If that was the case I wasn't even missing, and no
one would ever have investigated young Harry's story of my capture.
"Let me out of this God damned trap!" I yelled, getting as profane as
Sergeant Kiefer. Nobody paid any attention.
My attention wandered during the next news item, which was about a
cabinet crisis in one of the Arab states, and I began to think about my
stomach. I still wasn't hungry, but a peculiar sensation was setting
in. I can only describe it as a hunger to be hungry.
I was also experiencing a thirst to be thirsty. For a while I
kept saying to myself, "You get more beer in your beer in New
Jersey"--parroting the words of one of the few clever commercials I had
heard. I stopped doing that when it began to sound idiotic--but then I
started asking myself: "Right about here wouldn't you like a beer?" and
the answer was almost beginning to be yes.
This led to my becoming cigarette-conscious. My mind flitted from one
slogan to another. Twenty thousand filter traps (or was it 40,000?).
You can light either end. Protects the T-Zone. Independent laboratory
tests prove.... Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet. (I wasn't even
old enough to smoke when that one was current.) I'd walk a mile
for a Camel. Travels the smoke further. Wherever particular people
congregate....
Stop it, I told myself. You don't want a cigarette (wanting one). You
don't want a drink, Sam; they teetotalled you (but it was wearing off).
Why not go out to dinner tonight? (Medium rare, waiter; and lots of
mushrooms.) And then Mae--Mae, Mae! I wanted my cute little pregnant
wife, walking around flat-footed in her maternity blouse and smiling
secretly to herself over our burgeoning child.
It was right about here that the radio man dug out and started to play
an extremely associative song of Mae's and mine--_Who's Your Little
Whoozis_. And then I blacked out.
13 (AUG. 3, SUN.)
I have been in such a pickle
since I saw you last.
--Shakespeare
I wasn't in my cell any more. I was lying back in an armchair in a
large comfortable-looking room. There was one other person in it, a
kindly looking middle-aged man in another armchair next to a wall under
a painting of a country scene, with trees and cows and a sky studded
with tiny clouds.
"Hello," the man said. "I am Mox." He was wearing one of those
Monolithian cloaks. "How are you?"
I felt too weak to answer. I tapped my finger on the arms of the chair
and the effort made me terribly tired. I closed my eyes again.
"Lunch is about to be served," Mox said. "Perhaps you would care to
freshen up first? To shave?"
I opened my eyes and rubbed a hand over my cheeks. They were pretty
whiskery.
"How are you fixed for blades?" I said. Don't ask me why. One gets
conditioned.
"Amply," Mox said. He made a gesture with his left hand and somebody in
another woolen cloak came in with shaving equipment, put it on a table
at my elbow and went out, bowing.
I looked at the steaming bowl of hot water, the tube of shaving cream
(brush versus jar, I thought, remembering the old ad), the razor and
mirror. I looked in the mirror, expecting the worst. The beard was
pretty heavy and the cheeks under it looked more sunken than I'd
remembered. But my eyes were clear and my tongue looked normal.
"There will be no deleterious effects," Mox said. "You'll be good as
new after your lunch."
"Lunch? What time is it?"
He seemed to do a mental conversion before he replied:
"Twelve-seventeen P.M. Eastern Daylight Saving Time; 1617 Greenwich."
"And an hour later on the Rue de la Paix," I said. "I'll have the
snails and some Beaujolais." I was feeling light-headed.
"Interesting," he said, watching me with an encouraging smile.
"But irrelevant. I couldn't eat snails on an empty stomach. I just said
that because it rhymes. What have you got for American times?"
"Lamb chops," Mox said, looking at me closely now, "baked potato,
broccoli, tossed salad, strawberry shortcake and coffee. Or----"
"That's for me. Stop right there. Can I have it now and shave later?
I'm starved."
"Certainly. Without further ado." Mox raised his right hand again and
the same man came in, though he couldn't have seen the signal, wheeling
a tray. An almost overpoweringly delicious smell reached my nostrils
and I shivered a little in my chair.
Mox got up. "I'll leave you while you fall in," he said. I didn't
answer him, being busy taking the covers off the serving dishes. I
suppose he meant "fall to," which I did, with a will.
My curiosity returned as I appeased my appetite. Having wolfed down the
meat and vegetables with hardly a conscious thought, I went through the
salad in more leisurely fashion, rehearsing questions to ask Mox. I
positively dawdled over the cake and coffee, it having just occurred to
me that this could be the equivalent of the doomed man's last meal.
"Look, Mox," I said when he came back. "Thanks all the same, but I
don't think I'll shave. Just give me my clothes and I'll go now. No;
don't bother. I'll go as I am. I don't live very far. Oh--and thanks
for the lunch."
Mox smiled and sat down. "You're a very amusing man, Mr. Kent. We
couldn't possibly let you go. We have great plans for you."
"Plans?" The well-being induced by the lunch began to seep away. "Like
what?"
"Details later. First we should discuss the terms of your employment.
The salary will be substantial, so there'll be no problem there, but
you might be interested in the fringe benefits, such as the size of
your paid-up life insurance policy, the beneficiaries...."
"Now, look. I haven't said I'd join your organization...."
"Ah, but you've already joined. We had planned to come to you, but you
saved us that trouble. You came to us voluntarily and have already
taken part in one of our minor missions--that of working for the
repeal of antiquated traffic laws."
"I did not. That wasn't me."
"Who would believe you? You previously espoused our cause on a
nationwide radio-and-television program."
"That wasn't me either, and you know it. I don't know how you did it,
but that double you rigged up isn't going to be able to get away with
it much longer."
"I think he can. You see, Sam, for all practical purposes that double,
as you call him, is you. There's nothing about you that he doesn't know
and everything he does or says is perfectly in character with what you
would do or say--presupposing one slight shift in motivation. And you
may be sure that adjustment has been made."
"You mean you've been picking my brains all the time you had me cooped
up in that cell?"
"You could put it that way. Not _all_ the time, of course. Only while
you slept. We know as much about you as you do about yourself. More,
probably, because we've probed your subconscious as well as your
surface self-awareness."
"Oh yeah? What was my mother's maiden name?"
"Clemens," Mox said instantly. "Hence your full name, with its literary
if not strictly genealogical connection--Samuel Langhorne Clemens Kent.
You know you are not directly related to Mark Twain, of course?"
"I was told I was," I said defensively. "Way back."
"Way, _way_ back, perhaps," Mox said. "Not in any modern sense."
"That's no proof that you read my mind. There must be genealogical
tables...."
"Certainly. But there are no written records of the time you stole
money from the newsstand outside the candy store in Ozone Park."
"I never ..." I started to say before I remembered. I'd been about ten.
The way to do it was to scoop up the coins boldly on your way into the
store and hand them to the owner while buying a candy bar or a roll
of caps. Of course you palmed a dime or so on the way. I'd never told
anybody about it and I felt suffocated in shame.
"Or the seventy-five wingless flies in the mayonnaise jar," Mox said
relentlessly. "You were trying for a hundred, weren't you? But you got
sick to your stomach. Or the time you sold your brother's bicycle and
claimed it had been stolen. Or the college exams with the dates written
in your palm. Or...."
"Stop it! That's enough!"
"I don't condemn you, Sam. No one is wholly free of blame. I have not
mentioned these things to bring you pain but to prove to you that
the Monolithian Sam Kent is as aware of your potentialities as you
are yourself. He has done nothing you would not do, given the proper
conviction or opportunity."
I couldn't look at him. "Swiping a dime off a newsstand isn't the same
thing as betraying your country," I said miserably.
"It would depend, wouldn't it, on which was the greater good? If the
dime you stole bought a quart of milk for your family during the
depression when your father was out of work--if the candy store man was
obviously better off--if your country were Nazi Germany----"
"The United States isn't Nazi Germany," I said. I could reject that
one, at least.
"True," Mox said. "But I said 'if.' You're a man of perception. You
don't need an overt act, such as six million deaths, to persuade you
that something is wrong. You see it every day in the news reports that
are your business--in the United Nations debates on nuclear testing, in
the reports on the strontium-90 in food, in the disfigured Hiroshima
women getting plastic surgery, in the perennial radiation scares."
"Is that what you're up to?" I asked him. "You think we're going to
wipe ourselves out and you're altruistically going to preserve us?
You're going to step in and run our world for us because you think
we're not capable of handling our own affairs?"
"If necessary," he said.
"The end justifies the means, you think. You have no faith in our
ability not to commit suicide."
"Not as much as you seem to have. Look, Sam, we've got a job for you to
do and we'd like you to take it because you want to. It would be better
for all of us that way. But if you are reconsidering your decision to
volunteer, we have ways of conscripting you."
"Torture?" I tried to speak calmly. "Brainwashing?"
"Neither you nor anyone else will ever be tortured. As for the other,
we'd prefer that you washed your own brain of its misconceptions about
us. Try to realize that what we are trying to do--and what we will
do--is for your own good and for the good of all of us."
He was the soul of sincerity, this Mox. I was relieved about the
torture. I was even half tempted to believe the other things. But I
wasn't going to brainwash myself or anybody else.
On the other hand, I could let him think I'd been won over and bore
from within whenever I got the chance. The standard injunctions to the
prisoner of war were no longer name-rank-and-serial-number. That had
gone out after the lessons of the Korean war. The new instructions were
to lie. Tell them whatever they wanted to hear. Confess to anything, no
matter how outrageous. Embrace the enemy with lies until he had no idea
where the truth lay. I decided to try it, but not so fast as to arouse
suspicion.
"If I do volunteer," I said, after a period of what I hoped appeared to
be profound thought, "will I be able to see my wife?"
"Of course," Mox said, beaming at me.
"I'm more worried about her than I am about strontium-90," I said
ingenuously. "She's going to have a baby."
"How marvelous."
"Her name is Mae," I said. "We haven't been married long and this will
be our first child."
"Congratulations."
"A man's got to think of his family first," I said, pouring it on,
"doesn't he?"
"Absolutely."
"I mean it's all very well to expect every man to do his duty, but
where does that duty lie? We've signed a treaty of peace and friendship
with you, haven't we? Through the UN, I mean. And if that's good enough
for the President, I guess it's good enough for me. Poor Mae. She must
be worried to death. I've got to see her."
"And so you shall, Sam."
"That's all I ask. I volunteer. We've got to stop this ridiculous
experimentation with the very seeds of our own destruction." I was
washing the old brain with everything I had. "What's the job you have
for me?"
I hoped I hadn't overdone it. But Mox was beaming.
"I am happy to inform you," he said, "that the position is that of
press secretary to President Gouverneur Allison."
* * * * *
"My, you're home early," Mae said, giving me a kiss.
It wasn't a big, fat, oh-I'm-so-glad-to-see-you're-safe kiss. Not at
all. I looked at my watch: it was a little after 3 P.M. Early? Here it
was Sunday. Mae hadn't seen me since Thursday night and she said I was
home early. Had the Monolithians played a trick with time? Was it only
Friday afternoon?
"Listen, Mae," I said. "Did you watch your story today? What happened
after this girl with the amnesia walked into Dr. Kindfellow's office,
not realizing he was the very one she had fled a thousand miles to
avoid?" Mae watches this television serial come hell or high water.
It's one of her few vices.
"Silly," Mae said. "You know it's not on on Sunday. I thought you
wouldn't be home till six. We were just going to take our nap."
"You thought I wasn't going to be home till six? Is that what I told
you?" I was feeling my way, full of inklings and forebodings.
"Well, you usually get home at six when you're on the day shift--or is
it five-thirty on week ends when you drive right in? Anyway, you're
early. I'm glad. I guess we can skip our nap. Do you want to eat early?"
All I wanted to do was get to the bottom of this. It was beginning to
be obvious that this double of me that the Monolithians whipped up
actually had been living in my house as well as doing my job. I wanted
to ask a dozen questions--but I couldn't without either giving Mae a
terrific shock or making her think I was out of my mind.
"No, I'll eat whenever it's ready. Listen, Mae--have I been acting
strange lately? I mean in the last couple days?"
"I've got some nice lamb chops for supper. Strange? Well, no stranger
than usual, Sam. I mean, you've been a little bit nutty ever since the
spacemen came. Naturally I've made allowances. I guess it's a pretty
big story and a person has to take sides the way you did on that TV
show."
"Oh, you saw that, did you?"
"Well, of course I did! You said only last night how the check will pay
for the play pen and the bathinette. Surely you remember that?"
"Sure I do," I lied. "It wasn't awfully much, I guess."
"Fifty dollars is what you said it was. It helps."
"Sure. What else did I say?"
"When?"
"Last night."
"You said--honestly, Sam, are you sure you're all right?--you said we'd
take an early vacation next year and go to Bermuda, all three of us."
"Sure, Bermuda," I said. "Sure I'm all right. I'm sorry, Mae; I've been
a little confused ever since I got my new job."
"What new job? You didn't tell me that."
"No, I guess I didn't. It wasn't set until today. I'm leaving World
Wide. I'm going to be press secretary to the President."
Mae did a double take--or at least a double blink--and said without
more than a second's hesitation: "Isn't that wonderful!"
"I guess so," I said.
"What do you mean you guess so? It's marvelous! Of course you did say
once you didn't think much of Gov. I think you said he doesn't have a
brain in his head. Isn't that the way you put it?"
"I may have made some such remark," I said. "Such a thought has crossed
my mind. But now I'm in a position to help him. I may even be able to
put a thought or two _into_ his head. I'll be the chief factotum of
the White House mimeograph machines--the disseminator, if not molder,
of executive policy. Then there's the big old unsneezable fact that it
pays a fast eighteen thousand a year."
Mae's eyes went sort of glazy and I could see her trying to divide that
mentally by 52. "That's a lot, isn't it?" she said finally. "Now we can
afford to replace that storm window that fell out last winter and maybe
repaper the nursery."
"We can take care of the storm window, anyway. It's the least we can do
for whoever rents the place when we move to Washington."
"Oh--of course. I forgot we'd have to move to Washington."
"I don't see any way out of it. It's a little too far for commuting."
14 (AUG. 4, MON.)
They are waiting on the shingle--will
you come and join the dance?
--The Mock Turtle
My appointment with Frij was for one P.M. Mox had telephoned on Sunday
night and told me about it. He didn't say who Frij was. He merely gave
me the address and the room number and hung up.
Frij had an office on the thirty-ninth floor of a building on Fifth
Avenue in the forties. He had, in fact, the entire penthouse. A small
plaque on the front door said simply: PEERLESS PROMOTIONS.
I rang the bell.
The door opened and a tall gray-haired man grabbed my hand.
"I'd know you anywhere, Sam. Come in, old man. Frij is the name. Frij
by name but warm by nature. Like a drink?"
I suppose he was punning on the British nickname for a refrigerator.
"Not right now, thanks," I said.
Frij wore a dark, pin-stripe suit, a plaid waistcoat and bow tie. He
looked about forty-five. He was solidly built, like a football player
gone only slightly to pot. He nodded and half closed one eye.
"Very smart," he said. "I admire your restraint. Sit down, old man."
He indicated a deep leather chair on the visitor's side of the huge
wooden desk. He dropped himself into a swivel chair on his side, leaned
back and propped his feet on a corner of the desk, which was clear
of everything except two telephones and three animal figurines made
of heavy-looking black plastic. I recognized two of them. One was an
elephant and the other was a donkey. I couldn't figure out the third,
which was bigger than either of the others. It must have been some kind
of Monolithian animal.
It seemed to be up to me to say something, so I said, "Nice place you
have here. Quite a view." And so it was. The Empire State Building
loomed up to the south and Rockefeller Center to the north. The third
set of windows gave a good view of the Hudson River.
"Without a peer," Frij said. "Peerless, in a word. Peerless Promotions.
That's us. My name, I've decided after considerable thought, will be
Addison Madison. What do you think of it, old man?"
I thought very little of it but I pretended to turn it over in my mind.
"It's got class," I said finally. To myself I thought, _With a capital
K_.
"Exactly," Addison Madison-Frij said. "That's what they want--class.
Frij is too alien-sounding for their ears. They must have something
that inspires confidence."
"Confidence in what, if I may ask?"
"Ask by all means. That's what I want you to do. Ask and criticize
and suggest. This thing must roll, on all sixteen. It must purr, like
the contented kitten. Or is it cow? I need you, old man, I tell you
frankly. The closest kind of collaboration is necessary if we are to
achieve our objective." He took his feet off the desk and sat up
purposefully in his chair. "If you follow me."
"Not entirely," I said. "What exactly are you promoting? Public
acceptance of Monolithia?"
"Secondarily," he said, giving me a sincere, old-school-tie look.
"President Allison primarily. Through him, us. Didn't Mox brief you?"
"Only briefly. I thought you were going to fill in the gaps."
"That I will," Frij said. "But in good time. First lunch. Then there's
the cocktail party. Both excellent gap-fillers. There's no urgency at
all." He rang and a girl came in. A pretty girl, about five-feet-four
and black-haired, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and carrying a notebook.
"Joy," he said, "put down in your book that you're to take Mr. Kent to
lunch and keep him occupied until it's time for the party. Joy, Sam.
Sam, Joy Linx. That's all for now, Sam. See you at the party."
I followed Joy out, not unwillingly.
At her desk she took a manila envelope from a drawer and counted out
two hundred dollars. "I'm an old-fashioned girl, Mr. Kent," she said.
"You take _me_ out to lunch." And she pushed the bills over to me.
"What's this?"
"Expense money. There's more when that runs out."
"Want me to sign for it?"
"No. That's petty cash; it's off the books already."
We took a cab to the Algonquin and sat next to each other on the
leather couch along one wall and had Scotches and made small talk
about the waiter with the two-foot-high pepper grinder and the old
Thanatopsis and Inside-Straight Society that used to meet there.
Joy Linx spelled her last name for me, emphasizing that it had no "y,"
and took off her glasses. She said to call her Joy. You can say all you
want about glasses not hiding a girl's beauty, but Joy was much more
of a looker without them. "I'm near-sighted," she said, "and they're
heavy."
"I approve," I said. "How long have you been with Peerless Promotions,
Joy?"
"With the aliens, you mean? You can speak frankly. They hired me last
Friday and I started today. How about you, Mr. Kent?"
I told her to call me Sam, but decided not to say, as I was tempted to,
that I wasn't sure I was _with_ the aliens, exactly, even though I was
on their payroll. "I started today, too, officially," I said. "It's
been very pleasant work so far. Another Scotch?"
"Just one more," she said, and we smiled at each other a bit stiffly
and tentatively.
I ordered the second round and the lunch, trying not to look at the
prices. They were academic, of course, considering the expense money in
my pocket, but I couldn't help contrasting this with my hectic lunches
at World Wide--often a sandwich brought down from the cafeteria and
eaten on the desk with a cup of office-brewed coffee--total cost under
half a dollar.
I risked telling Joy about this. You never know what kind of reception
such a sad little anecdote may have and I was relieved when she laughed
with genuine understanding.
"I used to do the same thing," she said. "Only I brought my own
sandwich. I liked egg salad on whole wheat."
"I'm a liverwurst and swiss cheese on rye man myself. With lettuce and
mustard. Who were you with before Peerless?"
"A theatrical agency. I had some far-fetched dream of becoming an
actress by association one day."
"You've certainly got the looks for it."
"Thanks, Sam, but I'm afraid my only talent lies in being a secretary."
I made some gallant reply, then asked what she did, exactly, for
Frij--alias Addison Madison.
"Isn't that a scream of a name?" Joy said. "So far all he's told me
is that I'm to be his Girl Friday--I guess he picked that up when he
was studying his role. And to take you out to lunch. It's a fine job."
Joy looked straight at her plate of _beef au jus_ and said, "I suppose
you're married."
"Yes," I said, looking at my scallops.
"Just like to get the facts. I'm divorced, myself. Incompatibility.
Linx is his name. I kept it because it's more euphonious,
professionally, than Kaplan."
"I see."
"I wish you much better luck, Sam."
"Thanks," I said, and almost told her Mae was pregnant. For some reason
I didn't. I don't think it was entirely because I was reluctant to
compare her unhappy state with my excellent one. Joy was a very pretty
girl indeed. "Thanks," I said again, and left it at that. "How about
another drink?"
"Okay." She looked up and smiled. "Forgive the personal history."
"Not at all." I got the waiter's eye and ordered, and a bus boy took
away the plates. "Tell me about this cocktail party. Who all's coming?"
"Some of everybody, I gather. Everybody who is anybody, that is."
"Oh? Big names?" I didn't know anything about the social life of
the aliens, come to think of it. So far all I was familiar with was
their public appearances, in a news sense, and their cloak-and-dagger
intrigues, such as locking me up in that air-conditioned dungeon.
"The biggest," Joy said. "You'll see. They've been mingling like mad."
"What for, I wonder."
"Your guess is as good as mine. Ten times better, probably."
"Will you be going to the party?"
"Yes. In my Girl Friday capacity. Wearing my glasses, so I can
recognize people across the room, and seeing that Addison Madison
shakes hands with everybody."
"How about shaking hands with me now, just in case you're too busy
later?"
"I won't be," Joy smiled. But she put her hand in mine. I neglected to
give it back right away.
Then the drinks came and after a while Joy put her glasses on and we
took a cab back to the office. She sat on her side and I sat on mine
and we talked about the weather. It was hot.
* * * * *
The party had got to the point where everybody seemed to be talking at
once. Enough liquor had been consumed for the initial tentativeness to
have worn off and the Monolithians were no longer standing apart as
they had been at the beginning. It was impossible to tell who was from
where, except that the women were all from Earth, presumably, and I
heard several variations on the question "Are you one of Them or one of
Us?"
The din of the talk, the overworked air conditioners and the mechanics
of barkeeping made every conversation a private one within its own
area, even though it was carried on at the top of the voice.
"I'm one of us," I shouted to a short, stout martini fellow who
cornered me in an alcove where I'd gone to put out a cigarette. "Sam
Kent, World Wide." I'd forgotten for the moment that I'd resigned.
"John Blobber," the martini said. "I'm with the Yarbutta people."
That's what it sounded like. "Good name, Sam. Sam Clemens, Sam
Goldwyn, Sam Spade. Lots of people named Sam. Sam Levene, Sam
Behrman--good American name."
"I never thought it wasn't, Mr. Yarbutta," I told him, trying to edge
away.
"No. John Blasher," he said, approximately. "I'm _with_ the Yollawa
people."
"Oh, sure. I guess I've heard about them."
"Make tunsleys," he said, waving his glass dangerously in my vicinity.
"Business very good, at the moment, thanks to the Monolithians." He
set his glass down on the little wooden table that held the ashtray
I'd sought out, knocked on the wood and picked up his glass. "Sam F.B.
Morse--great inventor. Sam Lincoln, great preshident."
"I think you've got that last one wrong," I said, backing off. "Fellow
named Abe, he was, I believe. Look, Mr. Blasher, you just reminded
me--I've got to see Abe Copeless about that story in Hammerslam this
morning. You know the one I mean."
I left him nodding in polite confusion. At the bar I got a fresh Scotch
and turned around to find myself trapped in a group playing Real Names.
"You with the Scotch," a red-haired woman said. "You can't go till you
tell us who Archibald Leach is."
"Cary Grant," I said instantly out of my storehouse of copy-reader's
lore. I tried to go, but the woman put a hand on my drinking arm and
said, "Oh, this is one we've got to keep. I'll bet you don't know Joe
Yule, Junior."
"Why, madam," I said, "everyone knows Mickey Rooney."
"This man is a gem," the woman--she was a gin and tonic--said.
"Arlington Brugh?"
"S. Arlington Brugh," I corrected. "Robert Taylor. Now may I go?" I
smiled, so she wouldn't think my rude question was rude.
"Not a chance, my dear boy. You're an absolute fount. Irwin, give him
that one that stumped us before." Irwin was a tall, lean Screwdriver.
"Lucille LeSueur," he said defiantly, wrinkling an eyebrow.
"Joan Crawford," I told him instantly.
The gin-and-tonic lady shrieked with glee--"That's right! We all
guessed Lucille Ball. How do you do it?"
"It's really very simple," I said modestly. "You see, I'm their lawyer
and they have no secrets from me."
"I doubt that very much," the third Real Names player said frostily.
He was a Bloody Mary and I figured it served him right. "James
Stewart," he said, as if he were playing the ace of spades. "Let's see
you get out of that."
"You're doing it backwards," the gin lady said reprovingly.
"No, I'm not," the Bloody Mary man insisted.
"No, he's not," I said, lifting my Scotch and her arm for a sip.
"That's Stewart Granger. And Charles Pratt is Boris Karloff and Rita
Hayworth is Margarita Cansino, and Roy Rogers is Leonard Slye and--if
you will unhand me, my good woman--Frederick Bickel is Fredric March."
"Don't let him get away," she shrieked. "He's priceless!"
But I did get away. I weaved my way among clusters of people who were
making sounds of our time touching on Lorca, Kerouac, Glenn Gould,
Lenny Bernstein, Brendan Behan, Sinatra, Astaire, Gielgud, Philip,
Kennedy, Marlon, Ingrid, and Marilyn, and found myself cheek by jowl
with my old friend Eurydice Playfair, who used to be a newspaperwoman
herself.
My Real Names ploy, which I had been savoring along with my umpteenth
Scotch, turned to ashes as it recalled itself forcibly to me that I was
no better than dear Riddie, having sold out to the aliens myself.
"Dear boy!" she said. "Where _have_ you been keeping yourself?"
"Between you and me, Riddie," I said, "between the devil and the deep
blue tax collector, up to just about now. Can I get you a drink?"
This is one way of vanishing. You just don't come back from the bar.
It's understandable at such a conclave. But Riddie was not to be put
off that easily.
"I'm well fixed, Samuel, my old," she said, waving three-quarters of
a bourbon on the rocks at me. "What I want to know is who's running
the store, now that Kent and double-you double-you have phfft? Not old
pinchpurse Hyatt, surely?"
"I have put all those mundane cares behind me," I said in an attempt to
be sprightly. "Greater things are afoot."
"How very true," she said. Riddie was dressed to the hilt in a lamé
thing that clung to her well-preserved curves. "I'm delighted you've
got yourself a handhold. There's room enough for all."
"Listen, Riddie," I said, "I know you can't tell the Monolithians
without a scorecard, they're so assimilable, but what the good hell is
the object of all this? For what greater gain is the tab being picked
up? What's the deal, old pal? Spill, will you?"
"You're too suspicious, Sam. This is conviviality rampant. We drink and
be merry and ask not the reason why. Live, man! Pluck the daisies while
you may. How _is_ Mae, by the way?"
"Just fine," I said. "Just absolutely fine. That's an interesting
philosophy you have there, about plucking."
Riddie gave me a close look. "How many have you had, my friend? How
about a sandwich?"
"Don't worry," I told her. "I'm not going to disgrace anybody. I've had
three, is all." Besides miscounting I was ignoring the three I'd had at
lunch with Joy Linx.
"Well, maybe," Riddie said. She acknowledged a high sign from somebody
(an alien?) at the other side of the room and said quickly, "Don't
worry about a thing. If you have any problems, just take them to Mox or
Frij. Or me. I've got to run now, Sammy."
And she was off.
I made for the farther bar across the room, where I'd spotted Joy Linx.
Joy had changed from her severe lunchtime suit into a low-cut black
satin which matched her hair and did all kinds of things for her
figure. I cannot tell a lie and say I hadn't noticed this figure
heretofore, but hadn't had the opportunity to notice it to such
advantage. Bee-lining, I reached her side.
"Your recent acquaintance presents his compliments," I said, "and don't
you look lovely."
Joy smiled hello and said, "You look just the same as at the Algonquin,
which is all one could ask. Do you know Mr. Masters? Mr. Kent, formerly
of World Wide--Mr. Masters of Hollywood and all over."
Everybody knew Spookie Masters, the comedian, singer, dancer, dramatic
actor and husband of beautiful women.
"Not personally," I said, shaking hands, "but I'm a long-time fan. How
do you do."
"It's a pleasure, Kent," Masters said. "Joy tells me she's taken the
vows and joined the Martians. I envy her. Their coming is probably the
most exciting thing that's happened since the wheel."
"They're a pretty lively bunch, all right," I said. "I don't know where
it's all going to end, but it should be fun while it lasts."
"They sure beat the beatniks," Spookie Masters said, and I remembered
that he'd been on a beatnik and bongo drums kick for a while. "I've got
half a mind to take out a card myself. Who's the head alien, Joy? Where
do I get the poop?"
"I think you're pulling my leg, Spookie," she said ("Love to," he
said), "but if you're serious I'll speak to Frij. Just what is it you'd
like to do?"
"Oh, just be an altar boy. Sit at the feet of the high priests and
absorb their philosophy. I did that in Tibet once and I've never got
over it. There's something more to life than chasing the old dollar.
I've learned that much."
This Spookie Masters was a pretty charming guy. He was about forty,
maybe five-feet-ten, and slender. Not handsome, but honest-faced.
A sort of cult had grown up around him. Spookie Masters was more than a
million-a-year (net) entertainer. He was, to innumerable moviegoers and
TV fans, a way of life. They'd followed his career from his beginning
as a poor boy whose father had died in the electric chair. They knew
about his several marriages to, and subsequent divorces from, some of
the world's most glamorous women. They'd followed his rise to fame and
plunge to obscurity and his comeback.
They knew about his coterie of big-name hangers-on, and they parroted
the group's own special language. They marveled that his intimates
and admirers included not only the mayor of a big city, the head of
the philosophy department of an Ivy League university, the president
of one of the world's biggest industries and the pretty sister of a
reigning queen, but that he also had plenty of time for people who rode
in subways and went to ball games and boxing matches. Spookie usually
dressed like a prince, but when the whim took him he got into sport
shirt, dungarees and sneakers and lounged through the streets, keeping
in touch, as it were, with the life he'd known before fame struck. He'd
browse in book stores, talk to panhandlers and sit in the bleachers
and boo the Yankees. He had a man-next-door face and wasn't often
recognized when he didn't want to be.
Spookie, Joy and I had wandered off the subject of the Monolithians
and were discussing old movie stars when somebody banged a gong to get
attention, then announced:
"Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States."
15 (AUG. 5, TUES.)
The deliberate aim at Peace very easily
passes into its bastard substitute,
Anaesthesia.
--Alfred North Whitehead
It was about one o'clock in the morning. I'd called Mae shortly after
nine to tell her I was delayed and not to wait up for me. The party
apparently was still going strong, but diffused. The Monolithians had
provided a number of side rooms for their guests to retire to from time
to time to recuperate and freshen up before returning for more food,
drink and talk. It was no Roman orgy--there were no beds in the rooms,
for one thing--but it gave every indication of lasting till dawn.
I was sitting with my feet up on a couch. I'd loosened my tie and was
drinking black coffee. I was beat.
Joy Linx came in. "Better start pulling yourself together. The
President wants to see you."
"Me? Now? Why?"
"He's in the mood, I guess," Joy said. "I am but the bearer of the
tidings. Are you sober?"
"Disgustingly," I said. "Where is he?"
"I'll take you there. Some party, eh, Sam?"
I couldn't agree that the party was in any way spectacular except in
length, so I merely grunted. It had been sort of fun before President
Allison arrived, and I'd enjoyed meeting Spookie Masters. But after Gov
got there it collapsed into a formal gathering of anticipatory groups
standing awkwardly and waiting for the President to notice them. After
an hour or so of this I had fled to one of the recuperation rooms.
My face was a bit bristly with one o'clock shadow, but my tie was back
in place and I asked Joy if I looked presentable. She ran her hand
through my hair, presumably to tidy a cow-lick, and said, "You'll do
nicely. Good luck, Sam. I hear he's very easy to talk to."
It was kind of her; I _was_ feeling a bit nervous. I'd never had a
great deal of respect, politically, for Gov Allison, but it's one
thing to be a distant critic and another to be ushered into a Presence.
"Thanks," I said. "Which way?"
Joy led me down the hall and around a corner to a door outside which
two men stood with seeming casualness. Secret Service, I supposed. They
nodded and one of them opened the door for us when Joy said, "Mr. Sam
Kent."
There was one other man in the room with the President. I recognized
him as Rupert Marriner, the Secretary of State. Joy introduced me to
Marriner, who introduced me to the President. Allison said, "How do you
do," and I said something like, "It's a great pleasure, sir," and then
Joy and Marriner left and I was alone with the President.
It was a medium-sized room equipped with a desk and straight chair,
two easy chairs, a couch, a sideboard on which stood a big tray with
bottles, glasses, an ice bucket and soda, a bookcase with sets of books
uniformly bound (I noticed later that they were the complete works of
Zane Grey and Edgar Wallace) and a Remington painting, or excellent
reproduction, on the wall. Allison sat down in one of the easy chairs
and invited me to take the other.
"Forgive the hour, Sam, but I wanted to see you here where we could
have a private chat rather than in the White House for the first time,
where there always seems to be something of an urgent nature coming up
to take my attention and leaving me little time for the niceties, as
I am sure you'll appreciate," the President said in one of his usual
marathon sentences.
"Of course, sir," I said. "An excellent idea."
"First let me say this," he said: "There's no need to stand on
formality with me in private. I'm a plain man, having been raised on a
farm in Indiana and having mingled with all kinds in my calling, before
politics, as a country lawyer. So when we're together alone--that is to
say like now, in private--I want you to call me Gov. I've always been
called Gov, though I never held the office of Governor, as you probably
know (though I ran for it in, let me see, I think it was 1948, and was
pretty soundly beaten by that fellow what's-his-name), and Gov I want
to be to my friends and associates except when the formalities of the
occasion so decree. Will you go along with that, Sam? It will make us
both more comfortable and engender a closer working arrangement, I
feel."
"Yes, sir," I said. "That's fine--Gov." I felt thoroughly uncomfortable
and hitched around in my chair. I wished I'd shaved. Allison himself
looked spruce and freshly pressed, and his pink cheeks showed no trace
of recent growth.
"Why don't we both have a drink, Sam?" Allison said. "If you wouldn't
mind pouring me a vodka and orange juice or something, and you have
whatever you'd like, I think we'll break the ice a bit faster. I don't
particularly like vodka, but a man in my job has to beware the breath
of scandal, to coin a phrase, and I do mean breath."
He smiled, and I smiled back dutifully as I got up and went to the
sideboard. I made him his orange blossom and took myself a healthy
hooker of Scotch, with a bit of soda.
"Now we're relaxed," Allison said, smacking his lips over a big
swallow. "It's good to kick your shoes off, so to speak, and settle
down among friends. You're probably wondering how I happened to pick
you for the job of press secretary. A natural curiosity. Let me say
this, before I go any further: I've heard of you. Your work has come
to my attention now and again and of course I have an acquaintance
with the Washington people on the staff of World Wide--McEachern and
Sylvester among others. I know you to be a professional, and I think I
can pay you no higher compliment."
The President paused for another swallow of his orange blossom and I
said, "Thank you, sir."
"Gov," he said, smiling.
"Gov," I said. "Yes, sir."
"Naturally, when Josh was forced by the exigencies of the situation to
bow out, I looked around for someone to fill his shoes. You were very
highly recommended to me. I decided on the spot that you would be the
man, without even having to see you. You're a smart lad and maybe you
can guess who recommended you."
"The aliens?"
"Right the first time." Allison took a long swallow and handed me his
empty glass. "If you don't mind."
I finished my own and went to the sideboard and made us two fresh ones.
Vodka, in addition to being odorless, is supposed to be tasteless, so
I gave Gov a double one, hoping he wouldn't notice and that he'd drop
a few clues to the state of interplanetary affairs. I made my second
Scotch a weak one.
"Here you are, Gov," I said, handing him his glass. I was getting into
the groove.
"That's the stuff, Sammy boy," the President said. He'd probably had a
few before he saw me. "Now, as I told you, I'm in the habit of speaking
plainly. I see no reason to change that habit with you, here, now this
minute, especially since one of your jobs, as press secretary, is to
project the Presidential image the way people want it seen, regardless
of what I really am."
The President took a long drink and went on. "You're a bright boy, as
I've mentioned, and you may have suspected the truth about me. Lots
of people have, but, frankly, as long as the press goes on exercising
its self-censorship and it doesn't come out in print until after
I've gone--and that may not be too long now--I frankly don't give a
damn. What I'm doing is coasting through my second term. Under the
Constitution I can't be elected again, and let me tell you this: if
anybody should propose re-amending it, I'll fight it."
"I think I know how you feel," I said, to give him time to take another
drink.
"Of course you do," he said, having drunk. "Now let me go on. I've
worked as hard as I had to for nearly six years, but now I'm tired. I'm
68 years old and there's never been a time in the last thirty years
when I wasn't up to here in public office of one kind or another. It's
a very tiring thing, that kind of responsibility, and I'm sick of it."
"I can understand that, sir," I said. I added quickly, "Gov."
"That's better," he said. He handed me his glass. "Not so much orange
juice this time, Sam. Too much acid's bad for the system."
He went on talking while I fixed him his third drink. I decided to
nurse mine along, though I went through the motions of freshening it.
"I've gathered a good team together," Allison said, "and from now
on I'm going to let them do the work. They've been doing most of it
anyhow. From now on I don't want to be bothered. I'll continue to make
public appearances and sign the bills they don't want me to veto, but
I'm damned if I'm going to aggravate my ulcers any more with problems.
That's what you and the others are drawing your salaries for. It's
enough, isn't it, what you're getting? Beats the World Wide pay scale,
doesn't it? And that tax-free allowance is nice, too, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir," I said. "I've got no complaints, Gov."
"Good. That's your job then. Project the Presidential image and keep me
off the hook. Do I make myself clear?"
"Absolutely. I understand perfectly." And don't let on, I added to
myself, that the Monolithians are running things.
"Good. I'm sure I'm not shattering any of your illusions, as I said
before. Every newsman worth his salt knows I've been easing off for
the past year at least. I've reached the top. There's no place else to
go. So I'm just going to sit in the big plush seat and try to enjoy it
for the two years that are left. If I can last that out without busting
a gut, I'll be seventy. Then maybe I can retire to a few more years of
peace and quiet. Hire a ghost and sell my memoirs to _Life_ for half a
million or so. At any rate, from here on out it's all downhill for me,
Monolithians or no Monolithians."
"I understand, Gov, and I certainly think you deserve a rest. I'll do
everything I can." I didn't say what that everything would be.
"I'm sure you will. Let's have a nightcap now, and go easy on the
orange juice. I don't know if you've been told, but I'll expect to see
you in Washington in a couple of days. Somebody'll fix up a house for
you. You have a wife, haven't you?"
"Yes. She's--we're going to be parents."
"Fine, fine. I'll see that they fix up the house with air-conditioning.
That Washington climate is murder. You'll have a secretary, too. It's
all been arranged. That Mix girl. She's in the picture."
"Linx," I said. "Joy Linx."
"She's the one. She doesn't know it yet. You can tell her if you
like. About the secretaryship. She knows about the bigger picture, as
I've mentioned." Allison leaned back and took a long swallow. "Any
questions? Any at all?"
I decided it was time to say it. "The truth is, Gov, that the
Monolithians are running things, isn't it?"
The President smiled. "I was afraid for a minute that I'd made a
mistake. But I can see now that you're really the bright boy they say
you are. You're right. The Monolithians are running it. And if you're
as perceptive as I hope you are, you'll understand that this is the way
it has to be." He paused, then added, "For now, anyway."
He took another swallow of his drink, looking at me over the top of his
glass.
"One last thing," Gov said. "If you have any major questions or
problems when I'm not handy, there's an old friend of mine who thinks
very much the way I do. He'll be glad to advise you. He's Mr. Avery.
Remember the name: Avery. Here's his telephone number." Gov passed me a
slip of paper with a New York number on it. "But don't call him unless
it's really important."
He finished his drink and set the glass down decisively. I took this
to mean that the interview was at an end and got up.
"Yes, sir," I said, "good night, sir," intuitively reverting to
formality. I had guessed correctly. He replied, "Good night, Kent. See
you in the Big House."
The President had had a few, but I felt that his choice of words for
the Executive Mansion was deliberate.
16 (AUG. 6, WED.)
How many scruples in ten drams?
--_The Complete Arithmetic_, 1874
Mae didn't want to fly, so we left early and drove down to Washington.
This made it possible to avoid whatever kind of official airport
reception might have been arranged for me. We went right to our new
house in Bethesda.
It was a beautiful little house, in a wooded section, and
air-conditioned, as Gov had promised. The phone was in and Mae called
Ann McEachern, Ian's wife, who had said she'd come over from Silver
Spring as soon as we got in. Ann was there in half an hour and I left
for the National Press Building. I wanted to see Ian and read the news
before I checked in at the White House.
Reb Sylvester was on the desk and Ian had just got back from lunch.
"Well, well," Ian said, "if it isn't Mr. Kent, back to see his old
cronies. Congratulations, Sam."
"Thanks. But what's going on here?" The office was a mess. There was
paper all over the floor and tags on the filing cabinets.
"We're moving--haven't you heard? _They're_ moving, that is. I quit
this morning."
"What do you mean quit? Did you get drafted, too?"
"No such luck, if luck is the word I want. I just resigned. Tomorrow
I start making the rounds to see if they need anybody at the AP or
Reuters or the _Times_."
"Look, Ian," I said. "This is all too fast for me. How about going up
to the Press Club and telling me about it over a drink?"
"Okay," he said, after the slightest of hesitations. "For old times'
sake, okay."
Reb said as we went out, "Have one for me. I need it."
We ordered rum-and-cokes at the bar and I asked Ian, "Is Reb leaving,
too?"
"He doesn't know what he's going to do yet. It's all happened pretty
fast. One minute we're up there with the world's top news services and
the next minute we're a government mouthpiece."
"You mean World Wide sold out?"
"Lock, stock and teletypes. It was one of those top-level decisions.
Nobody knew about it till it was all over."
"But why?" I asked him. "They've got the Voice of America. What do they
want with another propaganda outfit?"
"The way I see it, they want to propagandize the Americans. The Voice
only goes overseas. Besides, it always takes a while for the facts to
get around. In the meantime they'll have got their message across. By
God, Sam, if I'd wanted to be a flack for somebody I'd have gone into
P.R., and that nice money, a long time ago."
I took a slug of my rum coke and asked, "Where are they moving to? I
don't see why they have to move at all."
Ian swallowed the rest of his drink and ordered two more. "I'm
surprised you hadn't heard. Since you don't know, this will give you a
laugh. World Wide is moving into the White House."
"The White House?"
"That's what I said. You'll be right at home. Door A, Executive
Mansion, the President. Door B, his press agent, Sam Kent. Door C,
World Wide. Nice, huh? Bye-bye free press." He took his new drink.
"Bye-bye Constitution. I give you a toast, friend: Here's mud in the
eye of the Bill of Rights."
I didn't drink. Neither did Ian.
"Well," I said.
"And well may you say 'Well,'" said Ian. "A pretty stinking kettle of
fish, you might say."
I tried to look at it another way. "Maybe it's not so bad. Look at
France Presse. That's government-subsidized."
"This isn't France," Ian said. "We happen to do things differently
here."
"Vive l'Amérique," I said. "Once upon a time, eh?"
I toyed with a pretzel from a bowl on the bar. Ian watched me and
said, "That pretzel is as straight as a string compared with what's
been going on in the last couple of weeks." He picked up a pretzel of
his own and bit it in two. "That is, if you want my opinion, Mr. Press
Secretary."
I had always valued the opinion of Ian McEachern and I told him so.
"I don't like it," I said. "I don't like it at all. But what can we
do? I mean what can I do? You've already done it--you've quit, honest
journeyman journalist that you are. But what can I do?"
"Don't laugh at my principles," Ian said. "They happen to be sincere."
"I wasn't laughing, Ian." I felt like patting him on the shoulder, but
thought better of it. I swallowed half my drink instead. "I admire your
integrity," I said, then took the sincerity out of it by adding, "if I
can make such a statement in the bar of the National Press Club."
"Are you laughing at me again?" Ian looked hurt and I became absolutely
sober.
"Ian," I said, "whatever happens, believe this: you're one of
my favorite people. I'm just not in a position now to be as
straightforward as you are. I just can't explain, but I want you to
know that I haven't sold out to the aliens, and...."
Ian looked surprised. "I never thought you had. For heaven's sake, man,
I haven't questioned your patriotism!"
He hadn't, of course. He didn't know all that I knew about the
invisible links between the Monolithians and the President.
Suddenly I felt like getting very drunk. "Two more," I said to the
bartender. To Ian I said, "You certainly don't owe anything to World
Wide. You don't have to go back, do you? Let's get loaded, then get a
bottle and go home to Mae and Ann and start all over again."
Ian solemnly finished his old drink. "Sam," he said, "you've had some
great ideas in the past, but I am prepared to say that this is the
greatest. Bartender, two more."
"I've already ordered two."
"Yes," Ian said. "But two and two make four. I still know that much.
Drink up."
"When they don't make five," I said. "I already did. Finish yours and
have a pretzel."
He picked up one of the twisted, baked, salted pieces of dough and
looked at it critically. "It's an honest piece of work," Ian said. "I
now perceive its simple integrity. I shall eat a bowlful while I get
drunk with you. Forgive me, pretzel, while I consume you."
Inwardly pretzel-like, I forgave him and proceeded to drink a large
number of rum cokes.
17 (AUG. 7, THURS.)
Every day, in every way, I am getting
better and better.
--Émile Coué
I had one of those heartbeat hangovers where every pump of blood sent a
hammer of pain to my head.
Mae was being very good and gave me coffee and eggs and tomato juice
and aspirin, and I managed to shower and shave under my own power.
An expense-account taxi took me downtown to the White House. The guards
at the gate glanced at my identification and waved me on. It should
have been a proud moment--my first day on the job in the Executive
Mansion--but I felt like hell. It wasn't only the hangover, which had
begun to recede to a dull throb. It was the disenchantment with the
whole picture. Instead of walking in with head high I sort of shuffled
in, looking at my feet, and almost bumped into a man in the lobby.
It was Rod Harris of the AP. I'd never met him but I knew him by sight.
If there was anybody I didn't want to see right this minute it was a
representative of the free and untrammeled press.
"You're Sam Kent, aren't you?" Rod said, introducing himself. I gave
him a hearty but phony handshake and said, "I hope you haven't got
sixteen questions to throw at me all at once. I'd appreciate it if
you'd give me a chance to find my way around first."
"Sure," Rod said. "No hurry at all. I just wanted to say
congratulations, on behalf of the White House Correspondents
Association."
"That's very nice of you. Thanks. I appreciate it."
"One thing, though," Rod said. "I might as well say it and get it over
with. We held a meeting last night and voted to drop World Wide from
membership. Nothing personal, and we were sorry as hell to have to do
it, but--well, I think you understand."
"Oh?" I said. "You did, eh? Well, I'm sorry to hear that. But Ian beat
you to it and quit."
"I know. Ian's one of the best. It's rough on him. It's also rough on
Stew Macon. World Wide rushed him down here to replace Ian and he's
wandering around like a dog with skunk-smell all over him, poor guy."
"Stew? Where is he?"
"He's in your office."
"I'd better go cheer him up. Look, I'll see you and the other guys
later. Josh used to hold his daily briefings about eleven, didn't he?
I'll try to have something for you then."
"Okay," Rod said. "Good luck."
"Thanks." I didn't say I'd need it, but I sure thought it.
I knew where the Press Secretary's office was from earlier junkets
to Washington. I went in and found Stew pacing up and down the room,
smoking.
"Hi, chiefie," he said. "Boy, am I glad to see you. I feel like a
pariah."
"Misery loves company, eh?"
"You can say that again. Boy, do you look terrible. Aren't you happy
here in the old lap of the gods?"
"Happy as the ninth pup at feeding time," I said. "I spent the night
getting drunk with your predecessor and I've got the grandfather of all
hangovers."
"Poor Ian," Stew said. He sat on the big desk that was now mine and put
his cigarette out in an oversized ashtray. "Poor me, too. I thought
this was going to be a big deal, taking over the Washington bureau.
John Hyatt told me Ian quit, but he didn't tell me why. I thought my
biggest problem was going to be getting along with Reb Sylvester, who
must have figured he was in line for bureau chief. But this is another
kettle entirely."
"I suppose you're _persona non grata_ in the press room?"
"The chill is on, believe me. Continental's in the same boat. But their
man didn't even show up this morning."
Ian had mentioned that Continental Broadcasting Corporation had also
been bought up.
"Look," I said. "You don't have to go back to the press room. Ian said
last night WW's moved into the White House. All we have to do is find
Door C. That's where he said it is. Let me ring the old bell and find
out where Door C is."
"I'd rather be in the press room," Stew said, but I found a button and
pressed it.
"Yes, Mr. Kent?" a woman's voice said.
"Where's Door C?"
"I beg your pardon?" The voice sounded vaguely familiar.
"Where is World Wide?"
"Oh. It's just on the other side of your office, Mr. Kent. I'll be glad
to show you."
"Good."
One of my three doors opened and Joy Linx came in. "Good morning, Sam,"
she said.
"Well, good morning," I said. "What are you doing here?"
Then I remembered that Gov had said she'd be with me in Washington.
"I'm your secretary," Joy said. "I thought they told you."
"They did and I'm delighted," I said. "Forgive me for not remembering.
I'll need every friendly face there is. Joy, I want you to meet another
fly in the web--Stew Macon. Stew, this is Joy Linx, somebody's Girl
Friday. I guess now she's mine."
"Some people have all the luck," Stew said. "Hi, Joy. I'm delighted,
too."
"Now for that door," Joy said. She opened the third door and said,
"Behold, World Wide."
It was virtually a duplicate of World Wide's New York newsroom. There
were the banks of teletype and the piles of newspapers and the desks.
Reb Sylvester sat in the slot, a cup of coffee on the desk next to a
row of freshly sharpened pencils. He was smoking a pipe and reading the
comic page of the _Washington Post_.
"What's new, Reb?" I said.
He put down the paper. "Funny you should ask that, Sam," he said.
"Nothing is. It's absolutely dead. Have you got a dispatch, perchance?"
"Hi, Reb," Stew said.
"Hi, Stew. What's happening at the crossroads of the free world? What's
the true poop? Are there any bulletins or flashes to be sent this humid
forenoon?"
Reb was obviously in a bitter mood. He'd been passed over for
promotion, not to mention being sold out.
"What's on the wire so far?" I asked him.
"Out of Washington? Well, we've got a hundred words on the little girl
who was mauled by the lion in the zoo and a fifty-word follow-up on the
woman who had quadruplets yesterday. Aside from that it's been rather
quiet. At the moment we're waiting, you might say, for the morning
briefing by the Presidential Press Secretary to learn whether our proud
Ship of State is still afloat."
This was a boy who needed stepping on. Or else he was a thoroughly
disillusioned reporter masking his true feelings with quips.
I gave him the benefit of the doubt and said, "The old ship has
survived a lot worse than this. As for the other, I'll be seeing Gov in
a little while. That might produce a little news."
Stew said, "See you later, then. I'll stay here and try out the
typewriters."
My hangover was waking up again and I was glad to get out of the
newsroom and back to my own office. Joy Linx was waiting for me with an
Alka-Seltzer and a cup of coffee.
"Thanks, Joy. How'd you know?"
"It's my job to know, Mr. Kent."
"Cut out that Mr. Kent stuff. I'm just old Sam, the confused man. What
do you know about all these new goings-on?"
"Which new goings-on in particular? There've been a whole passel of
them."
"Oh, there have, have there? Tell me about World Wide and Continental
for a starter."
"It all ties in with the big picture," Joy said. "We want the Americans
to have the true official position when the big stories break."
"Who's _we_? And why couldn't the free press be depended on to give the
true story? It always has."
"_We_ is the government, of course. As for the other, I think it has to
do with point of view. The facts have a way of being misinterpreted by
a hostile press."
"Oh, and it'll be the job of World Wide and Continental to spoonfeed
the official line down the public's throat?"
"That's a rather crude way to put it, but I'd say it's accurate. We've
hired Clyde B. Fitchburn to help."
"What?" I said. "Not the Voice of Doom?"
Joy smiled. "The same. We couldn't afford to have him on the other
side, spreading hysteria. So he's been persuaded to join up."
"It's amazing," I said, "what a lot of money will do."
"Don't be cynical, Sam."
Joy said no more than that. She didn't have to. As a dweller myself
in a big glass house I was especially vulnerable to rocks. I took
a contrite swallow of coffee and said, "Okay. We'll ease away from
that one. Now what are the big stories? It seems to me that I'm the
least-informed Press Secretary of all time."
"Well, there's the summit conference," Joy said. She couldn't have
been more off-hand about it if she had said "It's ten o'clock."
"_What_ summit conference?" I practically yelled. "When? Where?"
"I'll start with _who_," Joy said. "It'll be the heads of government of
the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, Germany, India,
Israel, the United Arab Republic, Japan and China. Both Chinas. I think
that's all. Oh, and the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the
Monolithians, of course."
"Of course," I said, dazed. "And when is this little huddle taking
place? It's bound to take months of preparation."
"Not at all. It's scheduled for Saturday."
"Saturday! Not _this_ Saturday? The day after tomorrow?"
"That's right. Saturday, August ninth."
"You'd better make me another Alka-Seltzer."
"Okay," she said. "That'll give you a chance to brace yourself for the
_where_."
I poured down the fizzing drink and felt it start to work in my poor
stomach.
"I guess I'm ready now. Where is this crazy summit conference going to
be held? Here? London? Moscow? If it's here I'm going to cut my throat
right now. It's bad enough covering such a free-for-all, it'll be
murder organizing it."
"Put your razor away," Joy said. "It's not going to be held here. It's
going to be held in space."
* * * * *
The President buzzed for me while I was still trying to take it all
in. He was very businesslike, with none of the man-to-man intimacy of
the other night. He welcomed me to the job, said he assumed Miss Linx
had filled me in on the summit conference and told me he wanted me
to make the announcement at my 11 o'clock press briefing. He handed
me a prepared statement that he said was being issued more or less
simultaneously in London, Moscow, Cairo, Paris and all the other
capitals concerned.
Gov looked tired. I tried to question him but he said most of the
answers were in the statement, which ran to about 600 words. Everything
else was off the record and I'd have to say "no comment."
As for himself, he was not going to hold a press conference this week
and there probably wouldn't be any other news until after everybody got
back from Ultra.
"Ultra?" I asked.
"That's the name of the space station where we'll be meeting.
The Monolithians moored it out there in whatever the hell it's
called--cislunar space. This side of the moon. It's in the handout."
"Yes, sir," I said, glancing through it quickly. "When will you be
leaving?"
"Tomorrow morning, but that's off the record. You'll be going, too,
Sam, and so will Miss Linx, so you'd better pack an overnight bag."
My reaction to that must have shown in my face, because the President
said, "I'm not looking forward to the trip, either, Sam, but it has to
be made and we might as well reconcile ourselves to getting it over
with. Everything ought to be a lot simpler afterward."
I was curious to know what hidden meaning, if any, there was in that
last remark, but he waved me out.
My first meeting with the press, which I had been dreading, went off
beautifully. Any personal or sarcastic questions the reporters might
have asked were forgotten as I made the summit-in-space announcement
and passed the handout around. I answered a few questions without
going beyond the words of the announcement, but then, on being
pressed, I made up a headline phrase to summarize the purpose of the
precedent-shattering conclave. Its aim, I said, cribbing a bit from
the Constitution, was to secure the blessings of interplanetary peace,
friendship and liberty. Actually, that was what the 600-word statement
added up to, more or less.
Just before they began their mad dash to the telephones I told them the
lid was on--that there'd be nothing further from the White House today.
Joy closed the door behind the last of them and I collapsed into my
chair. She gave me a sympathetic smile.
"So much for that," she said. "I think it went very well. Now is it
time to lock up the shop and pack for our space journey?"
The old keyboard test, designed to cover all contingencies, came to my
mind. "Pack my bag with six dozen liquor jugs," I said. "And maybe that
wouldn't be a bad idea."
18 (AUG. 8, FRI.)
They did not see it until the atomic
bombs burst in their fumbling hands.
--H. G. Wells, 1914
Mae had heard the news on the radio and TV, of course, and she was
pretty well prepared for what I had to tell her--that I was going off
into space with the world's big wheels. Naturally she didn't like
it, but for a reason I hadn't suspected. She told me about it in the
morning over my Pep and eggs.
"It seems to me, Sam, that you've been acting very peculiar ever since
you took this new job. And I don't just mean your worry about your new
responsibilities. I can understand that. What I don't understand is why
you've become so cool towards me."
"Why, honey!" I said, really surprised. "That's not so at all."
"Oh, isn't it! I get the impression that I'm being taken for granted;
that I'm supposed to be satisfied with a little pat on the head now
and again while you cavort around with your high and mighty new
friends. You never take me anywhere any more. Why? Is it because I'm so
ugly--so--so--misshapen?"
"Mae!" I was shocked. "Now you cut that right out!"
"Well, sometimes I wonder. Then there's that Linx girl. You never told
me about her--and you should have, if there's nothing to hide."
"For heaven's sake, Mae," I said. "Of course there's nothing to hide.
Why, you're _jealous_, aren't you?"
"Certainly I'm jealous. Is that so strange? It isn't as if you'd been
honest with me and said there was this girl, but that I'm prettier in
spite of my condition----"
"Now, Mae," I said. "You are prettier--and it's _because_ of your
condition. Who told you about Joy anyway? I'll bet it was that Ann
McEachern--she's jealous herself because I've got a good job and her
Ian's temporarily out of work. There's nothing about Joy, any more
than there is to tell about my three telephones. I never had three
telephones before, either."
"Well ..." Mae said. "If you're sure."
"Sure I'm sure. Now you just stop worrying your pretty head about
stupid nonsense like that and give me a kiss good-bye. I'll be back by
Sunday or Monday." I picked up my bag.
"All right," she said. "I'm sorry. I don't want you to go, but I know
you have to. And I feel better knowing _she_ won't be going, either."
I put the bag down again.
"Mae," I said. "Listen, Mae."
She burst into tears.
"Now, Mae!"
"She _is_ going!" Mae sobbed. "Oh-h-h!"
"Yes, she is. And so is the President, and so are several prime
ministers and premiers and that imbecile Addison Madison and Mox and
protocol officers and the Secretary-General and a whole gaggle of
Monolithians. For Pete's sake, Mae! This is probably the most important
conference ever held in the history of man, not a week end at Atlantic
City!"
It took me half an hour to calm her down and get away. I was much lower
in my mind by then and not at all convinced that Mae understood, though
she had put on a brave face.
* * * * *
Joy, the object of my wife's concern, was waiting for me at the office
with a new crisis.
"Sam," she said, "I tried to get you at home, but you'd left."
"You mean you talked to Mae?"
"Yes. She's sweet. We had a nice chat."
I groaned. "You'd better get her back for me. Never mind; I'll get her
later. What's the matter?"
"The press is coming, too."
"That's impossible! We'd have to take at least one from every country
represented. There isn't room."
"Yes there is. The Monolithians provided another ship. I've got the
list drawn up. All you have to do is check it over."
"All right. Let me see it."
They were all there: AP and UPI, representing a North American press
pool; radio and TV men, magazine writers, Reuters, France Presse, Tass,
Press Trust of India, New China News and so forth. Somebody had exerted
the influence of the host country and worked in such supernumeraries as
the Voice of America, World Wide, Continental Broadcasting and our old
friend Clyde B. Fitchburn. I was glad to see Stew Macon's name next to
WW's.
"Fine," I said, initialing the list and handing it back to Joy. "When
do we leave? Same time?"
"Yes. Noon by helicopter from the back lawn."
"Good. You all ready yourself, Joy?"
"Yop. Got my toothbrush, wash-'n'-dry undies and spare lipstick." She
gave me a wink I didn't entirely fathom and went into her own office,
saying, "Better call your wife, now."
I dialed our Bethesda number and talked to Mae for about five minutes.
You can say a lot in that time, but for the life of me all I could
remember of Mae's conversation was, "I love you and I know you love me.
I'm sorry I made that fuss about Joy Linx. We had a nice chat. I think
she's sweet."
I went out to the helicopter a very confused man.
* * * * *
At Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland we transferred from the
helicopter to two space ships. The helicopters had been jam-packed, but
there was room to spare on the ships.
I had a cabin next to the President's suite, and Joy's was next to
mine. World Wide, the Voice of America and Continental shared one
across the corridor, but the AP, Reuters and the other independent
agencies were on the second ship, fuming, I'm sure, at the
discrimination--especially since the British, French and German
summitters were on ours. Presumably there was going to be a sort of
sub-summit conference en route.
I had a big question that I wanted answered before the press got at me
and, as soon as we were settled, I knocked at the President's door.
"Come in," Gov said. "Oh, hello, Sam. What's up?"
I asked my question: "Who represents the Monolithians?"
"Shut the door, Sam, and sit down. I can answer that several ways. One,
by saying they all represent each other, like bees in a hive or ants
in a hill--a sort of group intelligence with nobody's thinking very
far out of line from anybody else's. Two, by saying their big wheel at
the moment is that Addison Madison, or Frij, fellow, a more insulting
parody of an American Earthman than I could have imagined possible.
Three, by saying I haven't the faintest idea who they'll produce when
they get us to Ultra--quite possibly someone who's never been to Earth
at all. Any other questions?"
"Yes, sir, if you don't mind. What are you and the Big Three Europeans
going to discuss before you get to Ultra?"
"I frankly don't know, son, but I can make a guess. We'll probably
have a few drinks and talk about the good old days when all we had to
worry about was the Russian or the Chinese menace."
I started to interrupt, but Gov held up a hand. "I know you can't
put that in a communiqué. All right, you can say we had a frank
and wide-ranging exchange of views and vowed to take any steps,
consistent with honor, that would advance the cause of international
and interplanetary peace. That ought to be diplomatic and obfuscatory
enough for anybody."
I grinned. "Yes, sir. The cast may change, but never the language."
Gov smiled back, but with an effort.
"Better get back to your cabin now and batten down," he said. "I
understand a Monolithian blast-off is a lot kinder to the kidneys than
anything our astronauts had to go through, but it's still no bed of
nasturtiums. The things they expect an old boy to put up with for his
country.... I'm glad I've taken my last oath of office."
I left the President settling down into his padded couch and went to my
own.
The blast-off was a short nightmare of vibration and pressure. Then
it was over. There was a moment of nauseous weightlessness before the
artificial gravity took hold and a soothing chime sounded which, we'd
been told, meant we could get up and move about normally.
My door opened and Stew Macon started to come in. He changed his mind
when he saw the British Prime Minister, the French President and the
German Chancellor go by on their way to Gov's suite. But Stew was back
soon.
"They won't talk," he said. "I didn't really think they would."
"Never mind," I told him. "I've got it all here."
"What they're going to say?"
"What they will have officially said. It's not very much."
"Let me have it now. I'll put it out under embargo."
"No you won't. You'll get it after they come out and I've radioed it to
the boys in the other ship. I don't want them any sorer at us than they
are already."
Stew looked hurt. "I thought we were pals."
"Pals-schmals, this is official business. Why don't you go up to the
bridge and see who's driving? That ought to make a dandy feature."
"Continental's doing that on tape. They're going to fill me in later."
"What's the Voice doing?"
"Rehashing the AP and Reuters," Stew said disgustedly. "I tell you,
this being subsidized is for the birds. You're further away from the
news than anybody else."
"True," I said. "And if I were still with WW I'd complain."
"Yeah? To who?"
"To the Presidential Press Secretary, for instance."
"That's you. A big help you are."
"Them's the conditions that prevail."
"Funny man," Stew said. "Jimmy Durante."
There was a knock on my door and Joy Linx came in.
"Hello, men," she said. "How are the old space voyagers?"
"Nuts," Stew said. "I've had bigger thrills on the Staten Island ferry."
"Sam, I've got the radioteletype set up for the communiqué. Want to
check it out?"
"Sure." We all went into her office-cabin.
"Just the one machine," Joy said. "The press ship is tuned in and drop
copies go to WW, Continental and the Voice here."
"Fine." I sat down and typed:
KENT HERE. TESTING.
The reply was: WHIRLPOOL HERE. GA.
"Whirlpool?" I asked Joy. "What have they got, a sponsor?"
She laughed. "It's their code name. It stands for World Press Pool."
"Oh." I typed:
WESTERN BIG FOUR BEGAN SHIPBOARD SUBSUMMIT TALKS AT 1607 EDT. EXPECT TO
HAVE BRIEF COMMUNIQUE SOON. ALL FOR NOW.
ROGER, the reply came: OVER AND OUT.
"Incurious bunch," Stew said. "Don't they have any questions?"
"I guess they prefer not to be confused by our meager facts. Makes
it easier for them to interview each other and bat out learned
think-pieces."
* * * * *
The Western Big Four ended their conference, or whatever it was, and
Gov called me to say I could release the communiqué. I tried to get
him to elaborate on it, or at least tell me off the record what they'd
really discussed, but he refused. Gov sounded tired and irritable.
I put the communiqué on the teletype to the other ship and told them
there was nothing else at the moment. Again there was a surprising
lack of curiosity from the free press. They asked a couple of routine
questions and I answered them and shut down the machine. I was
beginning to feel rebuked and useless.
"Do they have a bar on this boat?" I asked Joy, who was filing away a
copy of the uninformative communiqué in an impressive leather-bound
folder labeled in gold: MONOLITHIA-ULTRA.
"Well now," she said, "I'm glad you asked me that question. Yes, as a
matter of fact. And would you be after offering to buy me a drink?"
"I most delightedly would," I said. "Or two or three."
Relaxed now at the bar, with Joy on the stool beside me and a tall
drink on the mahogany, I had time to think.
Joy said, "A penny for your thoughts."
I roused myself from my reverie and said, "I was just wondering what's
going to be the outcome of all this."
"A good wonder," she said. "I guess it's worth a penny. Frankly, I
don't worry much about it. Assuming, of course, that we all come
through it with our health, happiness and honor intact."
The Monolithian bartender was in front of us suddenly. He smiled.
There was a snort from our right. It was a man of about sixty who was
drinking a Pernod.
"Ah, a philosopher," Joy said.
The man picked up his drink, admired its cloudy color and took a sip
before replying. "I am indeed," he said. "My eyes are wide open and
unfilmed."
"_Whose_ eyes?" I said.
"Mine--the eyes of Clyde B. Fitchburn, student of men."
"Fitchburn!" I said. "The renowned crier of doom?"
"The _former_ crier of doom," he said placidly. "Student of men and
current employee of Monolithia. My cries are stilled while I remain on
the payroll. What's your excuse, Mr. Kent? And yours, Miss Linx?"
I didn't like his tone. "Now look--" I started to say, but Joy put her
hand on my arm.
"He's got a point," she said. "Aren't we all on the payroll?"
I had to admit in my secret mind that this was a valid point. But
I said, "Let's leave us out of it. We don't matter, except to
ourselves----"
"Oh, but we do," Fitchburn said. "We matter in direct ratio to the
millions, or thousands, or even one that we influence. But go on,
Kent."
He was an irritating man because he was speaking the truth--perhaps for
the first time in his life.
"All right," I said angrily. "We matter to some extent. I grant you
that--and that influence on one person, rightly exerted, can change the
course of empire. But our influence is insignificant compared with that
of the big boys. And we've got the biggest boys in the world aboard.
What's _their_ excuse?"
Clyde B. Fitchburn took out a crushable pack and lit a thinking-man's
cigarette. The bartender rushed over to light it for him.
"Thank you," Fitchburn said to the Monolithian. "Listen if you like. I
know you will anyway."
The bartender smiled and deliberately went to the other end of the bar.
I was sure he could hear just as well from there.
Fitchburn turned back to Joy and me. "Each of us has his own secret
soul," he said, and punctuated that profound remark with a sip of
Pernod. "I took this job, which entailed an end to my well-known
destructive criticism of the administration, because my third wife has
gone into court with a demand for more alimony. For me it's as simple
as that. I can fight the demand with lawyers, or I can pay. Either way
I need more money. You, Miss Linx, took your job because you saw a
possibility of meeting more important people and thus advancing your
career--or alternatively, meeting more interesting people and perhaps
finding an intelligent and well-to-do mate. Am I not right, my dear?"
"Look, Joy," I said, "we don't have to sit here and listen to this----"
"Simmer down, Sam," she said. "Mr. Fitchburn's honesty is refreshing,
if not altogether flattering. Mr. Fitchburn--may I call you Clyde?"
"Please do."
"Clyde," she said, "I admire you. Frankly, I always dialed you out when
I accidently heard you on the air. It's a pity more people can't hear
you over a drink, without benefit of microphone. A frank question,
Clyde: What do you now consider your role to be?"
"An easy question from a friend," Fitchburn said. "I am, as of 48 hours
ago, approximately, an apologist for the well-paying Monolithians. And
you, Miss Linx?"
"Joy," she said. "A fearful Joy, perhaps, to steal the words of Mr.
Cary, but an honest one, I hope. My role? You've already said it,
Clyde. Meeting interesting, friendly people, with a loving but
calculating female eye to the future. There--now I've said it, too."
"But what do you fear?" Fitchburn asked.
"That the Monolithians are not all they profess to be. That their
humanity--their seeming friendliness to us Earthpeople--is motivated by
something we don't know anything about. That in the end we're all going
to be more miserable for it--if we exist to be miserable at all."
I ate a pretzel, feeling like a supernumerary carrying a rubber-tipped
spear. I ate several pretzels, moodily, recalling my experience in
the spaceship in the woods, my imprisonment and brain-picking and the
covey of doubles for famous personages. And who were those aboard this
spaceship? The real articles or the Monolithian duplicates?
"You'll get fat, eating all those pretzels," Joy said.
Clyde had said something to her and she to him and now she was worried
about me. I was worried about me, too, and it had nothing to do with
pretzels. It had to do with the whole human race.
"How well do you know President Allison?" I asked Clyde.
"As well as any reporter does," he said. "Maybe better--I had a private
interview with him about a year ago."
"And the British Prime Minister? And the Frenchman and the German?"
"Slightly. I've met them at receptions a few times. Why?"
"Have you talked to them since they came aboard?"
"Yes. Not long. Just to say hello. What are you getting at, Kent?"
"I'm not sure. Did they look all right to you?"
"They all seemed weary and irritable, but otherwise okay. Two of them
even remembered my name, which is a damn good average."
"What's this all about, Sam?" Joy asked. "You sound as if you have some
inside information."
"I do," I said. "But I wonder what good it does me. It's something like
a movie you've seen before. You know how it's going to end and there's
no way to change it."
"My, you're morbid," Joy said. "I hope your movie had a happy ending."
Clyde Fitchburn had been gazing into his Pernod. "I've been thinking,"
he said to Joy. "The things our young friend here has been saying--or
hinting--are beginning to tie in. I did notice something about our
VIP's. Yes, definitely, now that I think of it. They looked tired, as
I said. But that other thing I noticed--as I think back, it seems to
me it wasn't just irritation. No; they were frightened. Yes, that's the
word. Frightened. Scared to death."
"You mean they were afraid of this trip?" Joy asked. "I can't blame
them for that. I'm still a little queasy after that takeoff. Little old
internal organs may never be the same."
"Not that," Clyde said. "There was nothing cowardly about their fear.
I know I'm expressing this badly, but it seemed to me that their
trepidation was not for themselves--they're bigger men than that.
No, it was as if there were something they were being forced to
do--something that each had decided for himself had to be done. Each
had made this great decision he could not avoid. It had to be made
and each knew it was as right as any decision he had _ever_ made. But
having made it, he wasn't sure the next step, which was out of his
hands, would be the right one. Each of them--yes, I'm convinced of it
now--was frightened for all humanity."
The bartender came over and said, "You are all very amusing, but while
you have been libeling the Monolithians, one of your Earth nations has
begun a war against the rest of your unhappy planet."
"What?" I said. "Which one?"
"What do you mean?" Joy asked. "How?"
Clyde Fitchburn merely twirled his glass in his hand and smiled sadly.
"You would not suspect. A tiny Caribbean country. The one ruled by that
man with the big mouth. I believe it's called El Spaniola."
19 (AUG. 9, SAT.)
The fack can't be no longer disguised
that a Krysis is onto us.
--Artemus Ward
The story was coming in on the teletypes.
LA PLAZA, EL SPANIOLA, Aug. 9 (AP)--El Spaniola's military overlord,
General Rafael Domingo Sanchez, today warned mankind that an O-bomb is
poised, ready to drop, over each of the world's major cities. Unless
there is unconditional surrender by noon (EST) today, he declared, they
will be blasted into oblivion.
The ultimatum from this tiny Caribbean island nation, until last
night dependent on its coffee and banana crops for its livelihood,
specifically mentioned New York, London, Moscow, Peking, Paris, Bonn,
Rio de Janeiro, Melbourne, Tokyo and Bombay. It cautioned, however,
that the omission of any city from the list did not necessarily mean
that it was not also threatened.
El Spaniola, which has over the past 18 months been secretly buying
long range jetliners and converting them to bombers, claimed also to
have given asylum to Dr. Franz Kuperman, the convicted atomic spy who
disappeared after serving a ten-year term in a U.S. federal prison....
* * * * *
HAVANA, Aug. 9 (UPI)--The secret of the O-bomb, which today threatens
the extinction of the planet, is a simple one which spymaster Franz
Kuperman took into Spaniolan exile with him, diplomatic sources here
said today. The scientists of the Western and Soviet worlds were
frantically working toward that secret when Kuperman made his knowledge
and its resulting power available to the four-million population
banana-and-coffee "republic" of El Spaniola. Looming large....
* * * * *
PARIS, Aug. 9 (AFP)--The absence today of the world's leading
statesmen, now on the Monolithian satellite of Ultra, made it doubtful
that there would be a quick reply from the Quai D'Orsay to the threat
of El Spaniola.
"We must await word from our President," a spokesman said at 6 A.M.
(EST). "He is undoubtedly in consultation with our allies and, at this
very moment, charting a course of action."
* * * * *
LONDON, Aug. 9 (Reuters)--The Foreign Office had no immediate comment
early today on the bomb threat alleged to be poised over London and
other world capitals.
The acting prime minister urged the nation to be calm. He said he did
not entirely discount the possibility that the threat was a hoax or a
bluff, although radar did confirm that an unidentified aircraft was
circling high overhead.
As a precaution the Air Ministry ordered all planes, civil and
military, grounded.
* * * * *
WASHINGTON, Aug. 9 (WW)--The question of why El Spaniola's O-bombers
can't be shot out of the air was answered today by Pentagon sources.
Each of the terrible bombs is encased in a virtually indestructible
shell and cannot be detonated by another explosion. Thus, even though
the bomber were to be pulverized, the O-bomb itself would survive and
fall toward its target, exploding at a prearranged altitude chosen to
achieve maximum destruction....
* * * * *
BULLETIN
SOMEWHERE IN CISLUNAR SPACE, Aug. 9 (AP)--A giant spaceship carrying
the leaders of Earth to a historic conference made contact today with
the Monolithian satellite Ultra, but the talks were overshadowed by El
Spaniola's threatened destruction of major world centers....
* * * * *
BULLETIN
ABOARD THE SATELLITE ULTRA, Aug. 9 (UPI)--Monolithia assured the world
today that no harm would come to any of its cities despite the O-bomb
ultimatum of El Spaniola.
The assurance came in a joint communiqué issued by Earth's major
nations and the United Nations Secretary-General, Nils Nilsen.
They said they were supremely confident, on the basis of what the
Monolithians had told them, that no O-bomb would be dropped and that El
Spaniola would be justly dealt with for its threat to the peace of the
world.
While it was not explicitly stated in the communiqué, it was understood
that the superior science of the Monolithians was more than sufficient
to disarm or render harmless the Spaniolan O-bombers.
The text of the communiqué was....
* * * * *
ULTRA, Aug. 9 (AP)--The abortive attempt of El Spaniola to seize world
domination during the absence from Earth of the world's leaders was
seen here as a warning to any would-be dictator that he would get
nowhere fast....
* * * * *
BULLETIN
LA PLAZA, EL SPANIOLA, Aug. 9 (UPI)--Rafael Domingo Sanchez, El
Spaniola's strong man, bowed to a Monolithian edict today and ordered
his dozen or more O-bombers to return home from around the world, their
death-dealing weapons undropped. He sent word out from his fortress
palace that there would be no explanation from him of what threat or
persuasion the Monolithians had used to thwart his plan for world
conquest....
* * * * *
HAVANA, Aug. 9 (AFP)--Rumors circulated here today that a "conscience
gas" was the secret Monolithian weapon that had forced the Spaniolan
dictator, Domingo Sanchez, to call off his threat to wipe out a big
percentage of the world's population.
* * * * *
NEW YORK, Aug. 9 (Tass)--Reports that "conscience gas" had been used by
the extraterrestrials to abort the Spaniolan threat to humanity were
greeted with dismay in Wall Street circles today.
Financial and big business tycoons were said to be shuddering in their
expensive shoes for fear that the gas might also be used against them.
The capitalist chiefs were reported to have hurriedly arranged a
conference with their captive Congressmen to have them introduce
legislation to prohibit the use of any such gas. They feared, of
course, that if they were exposed to its effects--perhaps at the
bargaining table with representatives of organized labor--their ability
to exploit the workers for fantastic profits would be at an end. The
whole capitalistic hierarchy....
20 (AUG. 10, SUN.)
Me seemes the world is runne quite out of square,
From the first point of his appointed sourse,
And being once amisse growes daily wourse and wourse.
--Edmund Spenser
"Don't bother me," I said, pulling the sheet back up. "This is a day of
rest."
"Not for the unrighteous," Stew Macon said, yanking the sheet down
again. "Come on, Sam--there are forty-'leven reporters out there with
umpty-two thousand questions to ask. They hear you got a fill-in last
night and they're mad because you didn't tell them right away."
"I had my reasons," I said, sitting up. "The chief one being that I was
dead tired. Earth's in one piece, isn't it? What more do they want?"
"They want a Monday paper story, what else? They said maybe you ought
to have a whiff of that conscience gas yourself."
"All right." I got up and started to dress.
"Don't waste time shaving," Stew said. "They can stand you the way you
are."
I shaved anyway, using the time to sort out what I was going to tell
them.
They were there with their notebooks and sheafs of copy paper and lapel
tape recorders and cameras, gathered impatiently in one of Ultra's big
conference rooms. There was a magnificent close-up view of the moon
through a transparent section of the hull, but no one was paying any
attention to it.
My confrères, the British, French, Russian and other information
officers or press secretaries, were seated behind a long table on a
dais. An empty chair near the center of the table was flanked by Joy
Linx and that Monolithian, Frij, who masqueraded as Addison Madison.
I took my seat and the UPI man jumped up and said, "Can we start now?
Sam, tell us more about this conscience gas. How did it get to Domingo
Sanchez? Was it dropped over his capital or piped into his office
through the air conditioning, or what?"
That was an easy one. Frij had briefed me fully on that the night
before.
"Simple," I said. "They rigged his microphone. You know the one he goes
to every day to harangue the multitude and blast the big powers."
"Of course we know," the UPI said, "but _how_?"
"An American technician did it. Despite his anti-U.S. diatribes,
Domingo Sanchez still needs American help locally. The technician
sprayed the microphone with the gas, using a sort of pocket atomizer.
Domingo breathed in the fumes his own moist breath activated."
"What does the gas do," a network correspondent asked; "affect the
nerve centers of the brain?"
"Something like that. It makes the subject acutely aware of any
suffering he is capable of causing. It has the psychological effect of
making him actually feel the hurt he intends before he inflicts it.
The more drastic the act he contemplates, the greater his pain. He can
relieve the pain only by a clear-cut decision not to inflict the hurt."
"How long does this effect last?" a science writer asked. "Can't
Domingo send the planes back up again when it wears off?"
I looked at Frij, but Joy had already shoved a piece of paper across to
me. I read it quickly.
"No," I said. "The effect is permanent."
There was a stir in the room, and someone asked, "You mean Domingo
Sanchez, erstwhile scourge of the Caribbean, is now and forever more on
the side of the angels?"
I waited for the laughter to die down and said, "That's right. There
shouldn't be any more trouble from El Spaniola--as long as the present
regime lasts."
"Oh," the UPI man said, "then this gas was used only on Domingo
Sanchez. It's not transferable? You know what I mean--contagious, like
a cold?"
"It's not communicable in the way a disease is, but it doesn't
necessarily have to be administered individually. One pellet no bigger
than the end of my thumb, for example, would be enough to gas everybody
in this room. I have a fact-sheet on the gas that I'll hand out to
you after the press conference. I think it will answer most of the
technical questions you may have. Its formula, of course, remains a
Monolithian secret."
The Reuters man had a question for the British press officer: "Now that
the Spaniola threat is ended, when does the super-summit meeting start
and what's it all about? What's the agenda?"
"The conference is already in progress," the Briton said.
"How long will it last? What are they discussing?"
"They are discussing the future of mankind and it will go on as long as
is necessary."
"Who represents Monolithia?" a French correspondent asked.
The French press officer shrugged and turned to Frij who, in his best
Addison Madison manner, smiled and said, "That's a good question, old
man. They haven't lifted the veil on that one."
"What are we going to call him in our stories? At least give us his
title."
"I'll try to pry it out of them," Frij said. "Meanwhile, why not call
him Mr. M.? That stands for Monolithia, I hasten to add. It isn't
necessarily his initial."
That was about as far as anyone went. There were a few more questions,
which drew vague or uninformative replies, and then the briefing ended
with the promise that the press would be informed when the super-summit
conference was over and that any communiqué would be expedited.
I hurried after the UPI man to ask about something that had been
puzzling me. "Hey," I said, "where's the AP?"
"In his cabin, sick as a dog. His old intestinal trouble's acting up
again. He never should have come on this junket."
"What about his story?" I asked. "Anybody going to file for him?"
"Don't worry. As soon as we get our own stories off, we're going to
chip in and do one under his byline."
"That's damn nice of you."
"Nuts," the UPI said. "You've done the same thing in your time."
The way he put it made me realize how far out of things I was. I was
beginning to feel like the tiresome old P.R. man who keeps telling
people how he used to be a newspaper man himself.
The reporters had all gone off to file their stories and the only ones
left in the conference room were Frij, Joy and the press officers. Frij
and Joy were talking by themselves. I wandered over.
"I suppose you've got lots of this conscience gas," Joy was saying.
"Sufficient unto our needs," Frij said in his irritating way.
"Is there any here on Ultra?" I asked him. "I'd like to see what it
looks like."
"Like many gases, it's invisible, as well as being odorless and
tasteless. Joy, why don't you take our curious young man on a guided
tour of Ultra? He's been so busy since he arrived that he hasn't had a
chance to give it more than a once-over."
When we were out of earshot Joy said, "I guess you don't like Frij
much, either."
"He's the first of them to rub me that way," I said. "Most of them are
quite charming."
"It's my personal opinion they're all queer," Joy said.
"You mean homosexuals?"
"Either that or the Monolithian equivalent. Maybe I put it too
strongly, but there's something wrong with them."
"Well, they're aliens, after all. You can't expect them to be just like
us."
"No, but I've taken that into consideration. They don't have any women."
"Most explorers don't. Columbus didn't. The women come later, when the
men have made things easier for them."
"Ha!" Joy said. "Go tell that to the Israeli women."
"You know what I mean."
We had made our way up the inner spiral ramp to the top-most part of
the sphere.
"I guess I'm supposed to show you the view," Joy said. "Behold the
moon. And, yonder, the stars. We don't seem to be able to see Earth
from here. I hope it's still intact.... Who's that?"
It was a man kneeling close to the transparent outer edge of the
corridor. We had startled him. He got to his feet, guiltily, then saw
who we were.
"Oh, hello, Sam. Hello, Joy." It was Rod Harris of the AP. "Come here.
Have a look at this."
"I thought you were sick," I said.
"I must be sick," Rod said. "I'm seeing double."
"Let me feel your head," Joy said. "I'll bet you have a fever."
"By all means feel my head. A pleasure. But that isn't what's the
matter with me. Look out there. See those shiny things fastened to the
hull at the ends of those long rods?"
"I see them," Joy said. "They're like silver Christmas tree ornaments.
What are they?"
"I don't know what they're for," Rod said. "Maybe they're solar
batteries or radar. Anyway they act just like mirrors. Look in that
one. See? It lets you see right into one of the rooms. It's hard to
tell at first, but I think I've got it figured out that the room's on
the level just below us--what they call B Deck."
"I see it now. There must be a dozen or more people in there. Hey, they
must be the VIPs! There's Gov, and the Russian and the Indian----"
"That's who they are, Joy. Can you make out what they're doing?"
"As far as I can see they're not doing a thing except lounging back in
big chairs. They don't seem to be talking. I can't even tell if they've
got their eyes open."
"They haven't," Rod said. "They're all asleep--or unconscious. Okay?
Now look at that reflector--over there, to the left. No, higher. There.
Now what do you see?"
"That's Gov! The President again!"
"Good. Now look in the next room. The man with the mustache--who's
that?"
"The British Prime Minister?"
"Right," Rod said excitedly. "Now look into the room on the other side
of Gov's. Here, shift over this way a little. There."
"That must be my room," I said. "Hey, there's somebody in it. Going
through my suitcase. He won't find much. He looks vaguely familiar but
I can't make out who he is."
"No wonder he looks familiar, Sam," Joy said. "That's you!"
"She's right, Sam," Rod said. "That's either you or your double. Do you
have any idea what the hell's going on?"
It was me, all right--or my double. If you've ever seen yourself in a
home movie or on a TV monitor you know how it takes a second or so for
you to recognize yourself on the screen--probably because you're so
used to full-face reversed image you get in the bathroom mirror every
morning. My double, apparently having found nothing in my things, took
a last look around and let himself out into the corridor, where we lost
sight of him.
"Well?" Rod said. "Want to chase him with me?"
"No," I said. "It wouldn't do any good. He's a Monolithian. So are all
the other duplicates."
"Well," Rod said. "I see where you and I ought to have a good long
talk. You know all this for a fact?"
I nodded. "Yes. All right, Rod. If I tell you what I know--and what I'm
beginning to suspect--will you print it?" The fact that my duplicate
was here in Ultra and not down in Bethesda where he would be capable of
hurting Mae had something to do with my decision to spill to the AP.
"Every damn word, Sam," Rod Harris said.
Joy shrieked when the interior wall of the corridor slid back,
revealing a Monolithian pointing a weapon of some sort at us.
The Monolithian smiled. "Miss Linx and gentlemen, I regret to inform
you that censorship has just been imposed."
21 (AUG. 11, MON.)
No matter how thin you slice it,
it's still boloney.
--Al Smith
"Resistance would have been futile, I suppose," Joy Linx said.
We were Monday-morning quarterbacking our capture, now nearly 24 hours
old.
"Never argue with a man with a gun," Rod Harris said. "Old city-desk
adage."
We were in a big room, much more luxurious than my previous
Monolithian cell, and which we judged to be at Ultra's dead center. It
had a wall-to-wall carpet, four couches, some straight chairs, a big
bare desk and indirect lighting. There were two doors--the one we'd
come in through and another to a well-equipped bathroom, which afforded
our only privacy from each other. We'd slept in our clothes on the
couches without blankets. It had been chilly.
We'd had no visitors except a Monolithian who brought us food but no
enlightenment about our fate. He said not a word to us.
In the morning we took turns in the bathroom, Rod and I shaving and Joy
fixing her face and untousling her hair.
"How about the next time the waiter comes in we jump him?" Joy asked.
"And how about him shooting us right in the head?" I said. "You notice
he keeps his gun right under the tray."
"Better to be a live coward than a dead hero," Rod said. "Old copy-desk
maxim."
"Never saw such level-headed, clear-thinking captives," Joy said. "I
admire your restraint."
"He who lives to run away may file his story another day," Rod said.
"Old----"
"Don't tell me. Old front-office memo. Well, what's your story going to
say, if you ever get to file it?"
"It's going to say Monolithians are no damn good. It's going to say
they should go back where they came from, since they don't like it
here. On Earth, I mean."
"It seems to be _us_ they don't like," I said. "Let's write a story,
Rod. It'll be something to do."
"Sure, why not? Even if it's published posthumously."
"That's what I like," Joy said. "Optimism. All right, you ace
reporters, go ahead and write your story. You can even dictate it to
me. I've got the old pad in the old handbag."
Joy took out her steno pad and poised a pencil over it.
Rod lay back on one of the couches. "Fair enough. How shall we start,
Sam?"
"Dateline," I said. "Ultra, August whatever-it-is--eleven? That part's
easy. Then what? AP? WW?"
"No," Rod said. "Special to the Free Press of the World. By Sam Kent
and Rod Harris."
"As told to Joy Linx," I said.
"Sure, put that down," Rod said. "It's going to look like one of those
six-man bylines in the _New York Post_, but what the hell."
"Thank you, gentlemen. Shall I read back what I've got so far?"
"Don't be flippant. Now let's see. A good lead is half the story. How
about, 'Probably the most fantastic plot in Earth's history was being
hatched today on the Monolithian super-satellite Ultra.'"
"Take out the 'probably,'" I said. "Earth never had an extraterrestrial
plot before."
"Good desk man's deletion. That's giving it the whambo-zambo. Now,
second sentence--new paragraph: 'A conspiracy involving substitution of
Earth's leading statesmen by Monolithians impersonating them down to
the last birthmark'--is that the way you see it, Sam?"
"Exactly," I said. "... 'down to the last birthmark threatens to reduce
the world to the status of a colony in an alien empire.'"
"Good," Rod said. "I see we're talking on the same channel. Now: 'The
seemingly friendly Monolithians, who made such a well-publicized point
of allying themselves, through the United Nations, with Earth's highest
aspirations toward peace and brotherhood....'"
We must have worked on it for two hours. When Joy had taken it all down
and we'd gone over it with the old editorial pencil, it read like this:
by Sam Kent and Rod Harris as told to Joy Linx
ULTRA, Aug. 11 (Special to the Free Press of the World)--The most
fantastic plot in Earth's history unfolded today in the Monolithian
super-satellite Ultra.
A conspiracy involving substitution of Earth's leading statesmen
by Monolithians impersonating them down to the last birthmark
threatened to reduce the world to the status of a colony in an
alien empire.
The seemingly friendly Monolithians who publicly allied themselves
with Earth's highest aspirations toward peace and brotherhood have
been unmasked as schemers and plotters bent on conquest--conquest
by bloodless subversion if possible, but by force if necessary.
Events have made it clear that the ordinary people of Earth, their
doubts stilled by the fact that their trusted leaders had agreed to
a super-summit meeting, had no way of knowing the great pressures
that had been brought to bear on their presidents and prime
ministers.
The recent "peril"--that of the alleged threat to annihilate the
world's major cities by Spaniolan O-bombs--has been revealed by
authoritative sources as a gigantic hoax.
These sources, who include an official close to the President of
the United States, are convinced that the threat never existed.
They said it was an incident manufactured by the Monolithians with
the willing cooperation of the Spaniolan dictator, General Domingo
Sanchez, whose reward was to be the role of ruler of the Caribbean.
He, too, is expected to find that he's been a dupe of the aliens,
it was learned, and may not live to reap his reward.
The O-bombs he professed to have were nonexistent, these sources
said. While it seems likely that the Monolithians do possess the
"conscience gas" which reportedly ended the threat, there is
extreme doubt that it was actually used on Domingo Sanchez--simply
because he was a willing tool of the Monolithians and it wasn't
necessary.
It is believed that knowledge of part of the plot was the factor
that induced Earth's leaders to agree to the so-called super-summit
meeting here. The Monolithians told them that the Spaniolan
bombers--accompanied by refueling planes able to keep them aloft
indefinitely--were already airborne and en route to the target
cities. Disguised as commercial jet airliners and flying regular
flight lanes, they avoided challenge by air defense forces.
Faced with the potential destruction of their cities, the world's
leaders were forced to agree to the fantastic trip through space,
in alien craft, to Ultra. "They were not naïve, as many supposed,"
one high official said. "They were taking what they believed was
the only step possible to save the lives of millions of innocent
people."
Thus the Monolithians, who held out hope of preventing this
unparalleled massacre, were able to entice Earth's top Statesmen
into the trap.
Once in Ultra, accompanied only by aides and a few military
personnel armed feebly with hand guns, they were sitting ducks for
the next twist of the alien plot.
This was the great substitution of incredibly well-trained
Monolithians--transformed by alien medico-science into exact
duplicates--for the presidents of the United States and France, the
Prime Minister of Great Britain, the Premier of the Soviet Union,
the Chancellor of Germany, and the others who went on the ill-fated
journey.
From here, the future course of the plot is plain to see. The fake
leaders, acclaimed by their people as the saviors of humanity,
will be able to do no wrong. Their declarations of faith in the
motives of the Monolithians will go unchallenged.
The next step--the absolute domination of Earth by the
Monolithians--will be a short and terrible one.
There was no typewriter in the room, so Joy had transcribed it into
longhand.
We were reading the story over and wondering aloud how, if ever, we
were going to file it when the door opened. Rod quickly dropped the
pages behind the couch.
Our jailer shoved another prisoner into the room and shut the door
again. It was Spookie Masters, comedian, bon vivant and world traveler,
looking sheepish.
"Pardon the intrusion, folks," Spookie said.
"I didn't know you were aboard," Rod said. "For pete's sake, Spookie,
what happened?"
"I stowed away," he said, his usual self-assurance returning. "Didn't
want to be left out of this great development in the affairs of men."
"Stowed away?" Joy said admiringly. "How could you? I thought security
was as tight as a drum." The hero worship the entertainer always
managed to evoke in women was shining in Joy's eyes.
"I guess I oversimplified," Spookie said. "Actually I used pull. Biff
Overton's an old friend of mine and I persuaded him to have Gov smuggle
me aboard in the guise of a fifth assistant undersecretary. Just
consider me one of the striped-pants set."
Overton was only the Secretary of the Treasury. Spookie Masters seemed
to know everybody.
"Yeah," Rod told him, "but somewhere along the line you goofed."
"That I did, Roddy my boy. I dropped the jolly old brick. I got bored
playing diplomat and started wandering around. Just strolling, and
having a look into this corner and that, you know, when it began to
dawn on me that everything wasn't strictly kosher."
"For instance?" I asked.
"Little things at first, Sam." I was pleased as a cub that he'd
remembered my name. "Like when I wandered into a funny room where they
were faking messages between Ultra and Earth."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, it was full of teletypes, like an Army message center I once
had the misfortune to be assigned to. It seemed to be a Monolithian
relay point. All the stories your colleagues filed passed through
it--and they were all being edited or censored. And the incoming
cables, or whatever you call them, were getting the same treatment.
Lots of bright young men hard at work, doctoring the news of the world.
Government messages, too. All Monolithians, I gather--but guess who
their boss was, Sam."
"Who?"
"You. I gave you the big hello and you gave me the big vacant stare,
and so I got out of there. I'm not an egomaniac, exactly, but I did
think it a bit strange that you didn't remember ol' Spookie Masters."
"That wasn't me," I said. "I saw him, too."
"I didn't know then there were two of you. But after I snooped some
more and saw two Gov Allisons and two French presidents and two of all
the rest, it percolated fast that there was a big deficiency in the
up-and-up department. By that time the boys in the wool cloaks were hot
on my tail and I ended up here with you other charming spies. I presume
that's what you're in for too."
"Where did you see these two sets of summiteers?" Rod asked. "I gather
it wasn't long ago."
"Just a few minutes ago," Spookie said. "It was at the big porthole
thing--you know, where we transferred from the spaceship. Only they
were going out--one set into one spaceship and the other into a second.
It's just a hunch, of course, but I sort of got the impression that the
wrong presidents were going back to Earth."
22 (AUG. 12, TUES.)
He who is wrapped in purple robes,
With planets in His care,
Had pity on the least of things
Asleep upon a chair.
--William Butler Yeats
Maybe it was our high-class company, or maybe it was just that the
Monolithians figured everything was going swimmingly for them. Whatever
the reason, they treated us royally after Spookie Masters joined our
little captive society.
The cuisine improved. Our jailers brought in cigarettes and cigars and
fairly recent copies of _Harper's_ and _The New Yorker_. They rolled
back a wall so Joy Linx could have a private bedroom and handed out
blankets all around. They even brought in typewriters and stacks of
copy paper. It was all quite cozy, except that we were still prisoners
and that none of our captors ever spoke to us.
Spookie came out of the bathroom, wiping leftover lather off his face,
and said, "What are they doing? I don't want to settle down here. We've
got to find a way to bust out of this joint."
"Now," Rod said, "if that isn't an ace-high, triple-plated,
razzle-dazzle idea, I've never heard one." He was having a second cup
of our breakfast coffee. "And just how do you think we should carry out
your splendid plan, Mr. Masters?"
"Cut it out, Rod," Spookie said. "I know I talk big. But have we
explored all the possibilities? I suppose you've gone over this room
with a fine-tooth comb, but how about Joy's? Maybe there's some way out
from there."
"Miss Linx is still enjoying her beauty sleep," Rod said. "But it's a
thought. Let's rout her out."
But the door opened and Joy said, "I heard that, you fiends. First
respectable night's sleep I had, too, since I was thrown in among you
great big leering men."
"Don't lump me in with these raffish reporters, ma'am," Spookie said.
"I'm the soul of honor."
"I treat that remark with the doubt it deserves," Joy said. "But all
this gay banter aside, men, I've been tinkering with a thought. Were
you watching when they opened up the wall to make my room? Well, I was.
There was a certain way our woolly friend touched the wall. Maybe if we
felt around on the other side in here...."
We gave the wall a thorough going-over, fingering it, rapping on it
and occasionally kicking it in frustration. Just as we were about
to give up, it rolled back, revealing another room, bare except for
some crates. There was a door to the corridor and Spookie went to it
quickly. It opened easily and he peered out through a crack.
"Nobody out there," he said. "Let's go!"
I had opened the only one of the crates whose lid wasn't fastened down.
It was filled nearly to the top with flat, black boxes about the size
of a paperback book. I had no idea what they were but slipped several
into my jacket pockets before following the others into the corridor.
It was still empty after we'd slunk quite a distance from our plush
prison. We went down the spiral ramp, trying to head back to the press
room, on the theory that we'd be safer among our own kind--though it
was obvious now that every Earthman aboard was at the mercy of the
Monolithians. Rod had our story and his chief interest at the moment
was finding a way to file it to Earth uncensored.
Spookie went first, then Rod, followed by Joy. I brought up the rear.
I hadn't tied my shoes and they were flopping against the bare floor,
making a racket. I stopped to tie them and the others disappeared
around the bend.
Before I could catch up with them a Monolithian had caught me.
For a fraction of a second I didn't recognize him. He'd come up quietly
behind me and just stood there until I noticed him.
"Hello, Sam," he said. "No, don't get up."
I remained on one knee and automatically finished the knot I was making
as I looked up.
The fraction of a second over, I saw who it was. Me.
I tried to think of something to do or say, but all I could do was
stare in fascination. He looked just a trifle wrong, but again I
realized almost immediately that this was only because I was seeing not
the mirror image I was used to, but an exact, unreversed duplicate.
He was looking at me with an almost hypnotic stare. My mind began to
falter, like a car engine with bad cylinders.
"Up now, but slowly," my Monolithian duplicate said. He didn't seem to
be armed. He was dressed exactly as I was, in jacket and slacks.
I got to my feet, unable to look away from his eyes.
"You are powerless to do anything except what I tell you," he said. It
was true. I was only half thinking now, my attention concentrated on
this superbly confident other self of mine. Somewhere among the missing
cylinders, however, was my recollection that this was the creature
who had taken my place in bed with Mae. My head hurt at the thought,
coupled with his proximity. I longed to take him by the neck and
throttle him until he was dead, dead, dead. But I was powerless to move
except as he directed.
Then Joy came back around the bend behind him. I threw myself against
him and he fell off balance. She had only a few seconds to take in the
situation. She swung up her handbag and gave him a good clout on the
head. He crumpled to the floor. She hit him again, on the downswing,
and the sharp metal corner of her bag banged into his skull. He was
out.
"Thanks, Joy. You're a lifesaver."
"Maybe," she said. "If we don't get out of here we'll both be more like
wads of second-hand chewing gum. What are you _doing_?"
I'd pulled my unconscious image to a sitting position against the wall
of the corridor and was going through his pockets.
"Little identity switch," I told her.
He had nothing at all in his inside breast pocket, but there was a
clip-on pencil and a small notebook in his shirt pocket. I exchanged
them for the little notebook and clip-on pencil I keep in the same
place. I exchanged wallets, too, not without a pang for the eighty-odd
dollars in expense money that was in mine. I put off examining his. For
good measure I switched the handkerchiefs we both carried in our right
hip pockets and the few coins in the change pockets of our jackets.
"Looks like a fair exchange," Joy said. "Now what? Can't we hurry up?"
"Where are the others?"
"I don't know. I came back when I missed you."
I found a door that opened and pulled my duplicate into the room. It
was an empty cabin, obviously unused. I propped him against a chair and
Joy said, "Shall I give him another whack?"
"No, let's just leave him. We don't want to kill the guy. He looks as
if he'll be out for quite a while."
We decided to head for the landing stage. On the way I asked Joy about
something that had been puzzling me: "Just how did you know which one
of us to hit?"
She thought for a moment. "Intuition, I guess. You were the one who
was attacking--using physical violence--so you couldn't have been the
Monolithian. He would have been armed with one of his super weapons. I
didn't really think about it." She looked at me and said, apparently
only half-jokingly, "You _are_ you, aren't you?"
My head was beginning to throb again. "I hope so."
We reached the big open area near the landing stage.
"This is where we have to look very matter-of-fact," I told Joy. "I
have a small hunch. Just play it by ear."
There were only a few people near the transparent airlock. All but one
of them wore the Monolithian woolen cloaks. I didn't recognize the man
dressed in Earth clothing. He certainly wasn't one of the reporters.
Joy and I tried to stroll nonchalantly toward the airlock. I had only
the vaguest of plans for finding out as subtly as possible when the
next flight--if any--left for Earth.
One of the cloaked men came toward us. He smiled. "Mr. Kent?"
"That's right."
"Your ID card, please."
I handed him the wallet I'd appropriated. He unfolded it and looked for
a long few seconds at the White House card under the cellophane window.
Then he handed the wallet back.
"Yes, sir," he said. "Your pilot is ready, as arranged. Will the lady
be accompanying you?"
"Yes," I said. "My secretary, Miss Linx." The throb in my head was
worse. I supposed it was the tension.
"Okay, Sam." He winked. He turned and gave an order. The inner pane of
the airlock rose swiftly and a tiny craft, no more than three times
the size of my Volkswagen, rolled out from the side. Joy and I walked
toward it. So did the one man in Earth clothing. Without a glance at
us, he went into the pilot's compartment forward.
Joy and I had reached the steps leading to the passenger space aft when
the Monolithian in the cloak said, "One last thing, Mr. Kent. The last
formality."
Throb-throb, went my head. Joy looked at me questioningly and put her
hand inside my elbow. I squeezed it to my body.
"All right," I said as if annoyed. "Let's get it over with."
There was just the slightest trace of suspicion in his eyes as he said,
"What word from you shall I send to our colleagues?"
The throbbing in my skull grew more intense. "Duty," I said, not
knowing why. But I said it firmly.
The Monolithian nodded. "And--?"
"Duty and dedication," I said without hesitation. My head felt as
if Buddy Rich and Zutty Singleton and Gene Krupa were all pounding
away inside. I was genuinely annoyed now. "Let's go," I said sharply.
"There's no time to lose."
"You're right," the Monolithian said. Joy and I got in and he went up
to the pilot, his suspicions apparently at rest, and told him, "Take
Mr. Kent and Miss Linx to Earth."
23 (AUG. 13, WED.)
The only way to get rid of a
temptation is to yield to it.
--Oscar Wilde
The pilot said virtually nothing to us on the long trip, except that
during the final orbital glide he asked me where I wanted to get out. I
said I'd prefer it to be as close as possible to downtown Washington.
His cockpit was completely isolated from the passenger compartment and
we communicated by intercom. I was sure he could hear everything Joy
and I said, so we talked only inconsequentials and spent quite a bit of
the time dozing in our comfortable lounge chairs.
The pilot took me at my word and landed on the mall near the Washington
Monument. It was just getting dark.
He said "Duty" and I replied "Duty and dedication." He took off again
without another word.
Joy and I watched his silent climb into the sky. So did a few
pedestrians and the group of people waiting to go up to the Monument. A
policeman started toward us, not running but with a purposeful walk, so
I hailed a cab and we got away from there.
"Where to?" the driver asked.
"White House," I said, to give him some place to head for. He drove
off. The cop decided not to chase us.
Joy said, "We can't go to the White House. We'd be walking right into
their jaws."
"I know," I said. "But if they were after us we'd never have got this
far. Our dutiful pilot would have seen to that."
"They must have found the fake Sam Kent by now," Joy said. "They can't
still think you're him. Something's fishy."
"You're right, of course. We'd better catch up on what's been going on."
"We'll go to my place," Joy said. She gave the driver a South-East
address and said to me, "We can listen to the newscasts and pick up the
papers on the way."
Joy lived in a top-floor apartment in a new building from which you
could see the dome of the Capitol.
"There's the radio and TV and there's something in the cabinet over
the sink in the kitchen if you want to make a drink," she said.
"Make yourself at home. I'm going to take a shower and get into some
different clothes. I've been in this outfit so long it feels like a
uniform."
I'd bought the _Post_, the _Star_, the _News_, the _Baltimore Sun_ and
the _New York Times_. I dropped them and myself on the couch and turned
on the radio. She'd had it tuned to WGMS and for a while I got nothing
but good music. I looked over the front pages to muted sounds of Mozart
and the bathroom shower.
The morning papers, the _Post_ and _Times_, had similar headlines,
something to the effect that a blueprint for interplanetary peace had
been charted at the Ultra summit conference.
The afternoon papers headlined the return to Earth of the summiteers.
The tabloid _News_ said all over its front page:
GOV BACK FROM SPACE;
HAILS SUMMIT TALK AS
'TRIUMPH FOR MANKIND'
The conservative _Star_ gave it an eight-column banner:
WORLD LEADERS RETURN FROM ULTRA;
CONFERENCE WITH MONOLITHIANS SEEN
INSURING GENERATIONS OF PEACE
I looked in vain for the story Rod Harris and I had written, or for
anything like it. There was no hint anywhere that the threat of El
Spaniola had been a hoax and certainly no indication that the President
and his fellow chiefs of state were any different than before they'd
left for Ultra.
Nor was there any word about Gov's press secretary being missing. In
fact there were several quotes from good old Samuel L. C. Kent, saying
in substance that there was nothing that could be added to what was in
the official statements and giving a few homey details about how the
President had enjoyed his first trip into space.
"He had a fine time," I was quoted as saying at Dulles International
Airport, where the spaceships had landed on their return from Ultra,
"and he looks forward to making another trip--perhaps even to
Monolithia itself after he leaves the White House."
What this meant, of course, was that my double had got loose in time
to rejoin the other duplicated Earthpeople before they got back to
Washington. It also meant that the Monolithians had known who I was
during my flight back with Joy and that they had a good reason for not
stopping us. I wondered what that reason was.
The throbbing in my head began again.
Joy came out of the bathroom wearing an extremely attractive wrapper,
belted rather insecurely at the waist. She'd washed her hair and had
combed it straight back in a pony-tail. She wore no makeup except
lipstick and had left off her glasses. She was barefoot and desirable.
I wanted to kiss her.
"Well," she said, "that's a lot better. Nothing like getting rid of the
grime of two planets. What, no drink, Mr. Sam? You _are_ a dedicated
one."
"Do something for me, Joy. Call my home and ask for me. If I'm not
there make some excuse and hang up."
"All right." She went to the phone, "And if you are there?"
"Hang up anyway."
She dialed the Bethesda number. It answered almost immediately.
"Hello," I heard her say; "is Jim there?... James Fairchild.... Oh,
isn't this Empire 3-6573?... I'm sorry; I must have the wrong number."
She put the phone down and said to me, "It was you."
Throb-throb. My head again. It wasn't a pain but an insistent hammering
in the center of my skull.
"That means Mae's with ... him," I said. "And she thinks it's me again."
"Poor Sam. I'm going to make you a good stiff Scotch. You need it."
"I need something." Maybe cold water would help. "I think I'll take a
shower while you fix the drinks. It's awfully hot."
"Help yourself. The folded towel is the dry one."
I took off my jacket and dropped it on the couch. In the bathroom I
noticed that Joy squeezed her toothpaste tube from the middle, just
like Mae. She had various wispy nylon things drying on racks and used
a perfume called _Suivez-moi_. I picked up the bottle and sniffed it.
Throb-throb.
I turned on the shower full cold, undressed and stood under it. The
pounding in my head eased. Shivering, I turned the handle toward hot
and soaped.
When I emerged, Joy had put my jacket away and two tall drinks stood on
the coffee table in front of the couch.
"Feel better?" she asked.
"Much." I sat down beside her and took a big swallow. She handed me a
lit cigarette. It had lipstick traces on the filter end. Throb-throb.
"I prefer my lipstick firsthand," I said. I put the cigarette down and
pulled her toward me. Her eyes looked into mine, then closed. I kissed
her. The scent of _Suivez-moi_ and the softness of her lips and body
made the room tilt.
Her nails dug through my shirt into my back. Her lips went to my ear
and she whispered, "Oh, Sam. I've wanted this for so long!"
Throb-throb. I was torn between two desires. This enchanting woman,
whispering in my ear, her single garment--for that's all she
wore--slipping off her shoulders, was a temptation that Sam Kent,
Earthman, could not have resisted.
But the throbbing inside my skull reminded me that I was more than
that. I was pseudo-Sam, the Monolithian man, bent on a greater
mission. Duty and dedication were mine. I was no mere single entity.
I was one of a group--one of many, all devoted to the same ideal. The
distractions of Earth were nothing to me and easy to deny. I pushed Joy
away from me. The throbs had become stabbing pains.
"A typewriter," I said flatly. "I require a typewriter."
Joy sat up, pulling her wrapper around her. Her eyes, which a moment
ago were melting, had grown cold.
"You want _what_?" she said icily.
"You heard me, Earthwoman," I said. "A typewriter. At once!"
Joy stood up. She gave me a look of hatred and went to her bedroom,
slamming the door behind her.
I found Joy's portable in its case on the bottom shelf of the bookcase.
I set it up on the coffee table, rolled a sheet into it and thought for
a moment.
Then, spurred by pain, I typed:
"Now here on Earth do I declare myself, racked and driven by motives
outside my understanding, to be not what I seem, nor yet entirely what
I am. Blessed is he who knows himself wholly--"
I stopped typing. I wasn't saying it. I opened the window wide and
shouted toward the Capitol:
"Hear this! The hour approaches! Mend your ways lest the evil
consequences overtake you! Hear me, Earthlings! You are all a part of
the greater scheme and each must take the responsibility. Hark, before
it is too late!"
"Shut up, you drunk," said a voice from below.
I slammed the window and picked up the phone. "Give me Western Union, I
want to send a telegram.... Take this down and send it to the FBI and
the CIA: This is bigger than your spies and your communist agents. Let
me put you wise to an interstellar conspiracy. Drop everything else
and arrest the President of the United States.... Who? The supervisor?
Get off the line, I'm dictating a vital telegram.... I'll tell you who
I am when I get to the signature.... Well, nuts to you, Madam."
I hung up and ran into the kitchen. I turned on the cold water and
stuck my head under the faucet. It eased the pain. I picked up the
bottle of Scotch and swallowed three times, then ran gasping back to
the telephone.
I dialed the _Washington Post_'s number and asked for the city desk.
"Hello? Stop the presses! Tear out the front page! I've got a scoop for
you. SCOOP. Take this down:
"I, Joe Spaceman, have defected from the Monolithians. You can quote me
on that. You got that so far?... What the hell do you mean, put it in
a letter? You think I'm crazy?... Listen, you imbecile, if you don't
know an exclusive when you hear it, you'd better go back to journalism
school."
I hung up on him, the jerk, and went back to the typewriter.
"Dear Drew Pearson: Maybe you can wake up the world. It's sleeping on
the brink. The vastest most incredible conspiracy in history is being
perpetrated under the noses of the decent folk...."
There was a knock at the hall door. As I turned to tell whoever it was
to go away, Joy flew out of her bedroom and opened it.
Spookie Masters came in, patted Joy on the shoulder and strode over to
me. I got up.
"You can tell them, Spookie!" I said. "Go on television and tell them
all. There's no time to lose. Tell them how--"
Spookie pulled back his arm and I saw his fist coming at my chin.
24 (AUG. 14, THURS.)
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering voice?
--Wordsworth
4:45 A.M. My head was no longer throbbing when I came to, but my jaw
ached and my mouth tasted of old blood.
I was lying on the couch, my arms tied behind me and my feet fastened
together at the ankles with my own belt.
I could hear Spookie and Joy talking in the tiny kitchen. It was dark
outside, with just a tinge of dawn in the sky.
I wasn't gagged, so I said "Hey."
"Aha," Spookie said, looking around the doorway. "Our sleeper awakes.
Who do you think you are now, Sam? Our old pal Kent or the King of the
Outer Planets?"
"Damn you," I said. "Untie me."
"Maybe later. You're too much for us Earthlings to take chances with.
You were really way out, little chum."
"I'm sorry," I said, beginning to remember.
"You'd better be," Joy said from around the corner. "You were
absolutely outrageous. I'm making coffee. Want some?"
"Yes, please. How did Spookie get here? I thought he was still on
Ultra."
"They've got a very efficient shuttle service," Spookie said. "They
decided it'd be better to ship me back than to get themselves bad
publicity by keeping me prisoner."
"Tell Sam how you threatened them," Joy said.
"With the undying wrath of the Spookie Masters Fan Club," Spookie said.
"Three and a half million anti-Monolithians was more than they were
willing to risk--especially teen-agers, who are inclined to be extreme."
"What an ego," I said. "Did Rod Harris come back with you?"
"He did. I left him at the AP, busting to file a story."
"How come they let him go?"
"My influence, I think," Spookie said. "You're sure full of questions
for a reporter without a notebook."
"How did you get here? You didn't answer that one."
"I was anxious about Joy, naturally. I called her up and she told
me she had a madman in her living room. Maidens in distress are my
specialty."
"You did not call up," I said. "The phone never rang."
Joy answered that: "I happen to have another phone in my bedroom, with
a private number. A good thing, too, the way you were carrying on. And
if you want to know where Spookie got the number," she added defiantly,
"I gave it to him. Any objections, _Mister_ Kent?"
"No," I mumbled, considerably deflated. "I'm sorry, Joy--about lots of
things."
"Forget it," she said. "How about some scrambled eggs?"
"You'll have to feed me."
Spookie said, "No. I think we'll risk untying your arms and see whose
side you're on."
* * * * *
5:30 A.M. We had eaten--I politely, free-armed, with no trouble to my
captors--and the sun was peeping through the morning haze when WGMS
interrupted its music with a news bulletin.
"More coffee?" Joy said.
"Shh," I said, and the radio said:
"Bulletin from our newsroom. President Allison has just issued the
following statement. Uh--one moment, please. Is this on the lev--"
The announcer hadn't hit the cough button quite soon enough. He was
back after a moment of dead air, saying:
"We have now verified that this statement is actually from the
President. According to all three American wire services, he called
them personally before dawn. Here is President Allison's statement,
exactly as he dictated it:
"'My dear fellow citizens. During the next few days you may hear a
number of rumors which I wish to nip in the bud right now.
"'I hasten to assure you now, before these vicious lies spread, that
they are fabrications designed to split your loyalties.
"'You will hear it said that I have been kidnapped and that an
impersonator has taken my place in the White House. You will be asked
to believe that all Earth's leaders have been abducted and that
Monolithian duplicates have been substituted for them.
"'Let me repeat that this will be pernicious propaganda, spread by
your enemies and mine, designed to undermine confidence in the great
interstellar alliance for peace we have lately forged on Ultra.
"'Later today I will record, on tape and film, a similar message to
you, my fellow citizens, to banish any lingering doubts you may have.
I have asked our great radio and television networks to broadcast my
message hourly throughout the day, so that you will both see and hear
me give the lie to this outrageous plot to delude you and undermine
your faith in your government and your President, who remains sincerely
and genuinely yours--Gouverneur "Gov" Allison.'"
* * * * *
6:47 A.M. Telephone. The one in the living room. Joy, yawning, answered
it.
"Yes, this is Joy Linx.... Well, yes, sir--he does happen to be
here...."
She said to me, "It's for you, Sam. I--I think it's the President."
"Or the man who sounds like him," Spookie said.
I took the phone. "Sam Kent speaking." I listened, rubbing one tingling
leg against the other. I nodded. I said "Yes, sir" several times. I
hung up.
"I've got to go to the White House," I said to Joy and Spookie. To Joy
I said, "Sorry about--"
"Never mind. You go on."
To Spookie I said, "Any objections, muscles?"
"Go on," he said. "If you think you know what you're doing. But if you
want my advice----"
"I don't." I got my jacket and went out. Joy came to the door.
"Will you be all right--with him?" I asked.
She said, "Sure. Don't worry. I'm not worried about them."
It wasn't till I was down in the street, looking for a cab, that I
realized she'd said "them," not "him."
I didn't take the first cab that came along, nor the second. And when
I hailed the third I said nothing about the White House. I told the
driver to take me to a bus that would get me to Baltimore.
* * * * *
9 A.M. Railroad station, Baltimore. Television. Image of Gov: "My dear
fellow citizens...."
* * * * *
1 P.M. Pennsylvania Station, New York. Loudspeaker: "My dear fellow
citizens...."
* * * * *
1:15 P.M. IRT 7th Avenue Subway. Newspaper headlines.
_Post_: "GOV TELLS NATION: I'M ME; BEWARE RUMORS."
_World-Telegram_: "PRESIDENT SPIKES KIDNAP FEARS; HITS 'ENEMY LIES.'"
_Journal-American_: "WHO'S IN WHITE HOUSE? 'GOV' SAYS HE IS."
* * * * *
2:20 P.M. I got off the subway in Brooklyn, bypassed the St. George as
being too well known, and registered at the Towers down the street as
Edward Lang.
* * * * *
3:40 P.M. Hotel switchboard operator: "I'm sorry, sir, that number
still doesn't answer. Shall I keep trying?"
"No, thanks. Get me room service, will you?"
* * * * *
4:45 P.M. Having eaten and sent my clothes to be pressed, I arranged
to buy a white shirt and rent an electric shaver. I left a call for
midnight and went to bed. The last voice I heard on the five o'clock
news on WNBC was that of the man in the White House, whoever he was,
saying "... the great interstellar alliance for peace we have lately
forged on Ultra...."
25 (AUG. 15, FRI.)
And if the blind lead the blind,
both shall fall into the ditch.
--Matthew, XV, 14
The phone rang. It was the desk clerk saying it was 12:15 A.M.
I thanked him and asked him to get me the number I'd been unable to
reach the previous afternoon. There was a reluctant answer on the
eleventh ring.
"Hello?" a male voice said. To my surprise it was one I recognized.
"Is this Mr. Avery?"
"It should be," the voice said cautiously. "Who is this?"
"Sam Kent," I said.
"I thought so. Have you been trying to reach me? I've been out."
"I know. But now I'd like to see you. When can we meet?"
"Not now. It's after midnight."
"I know; but it's important."
"I suppose it is. Where are you?"
"Brooklyn," I said. "But not very deep. I can make it in half an hour."
"All right. But be careful."
"Of course."
My clean clothes were ready by then and I dressed. I made sure I had
all the flat black boxes I'd swiped from Ultra.
When I was halfway to the subway I realized I was being followed. At
the same instant my head began to throb, for the first time since I'd
gone berserk in Joy's apartment. That seemed to mean my shadow was
a Monolithian. I continued on toward the subway, walking a little
faster. There were half a dozen people on the street behind me and I
couldn't be sure which one of them was after me.
I bought some tokens at the change booth and asked the attendant a
series of complicated questions about how to get to a fictitious
address in Queens. Two men came down the stairs a few seconds apart
and went onto the subway platform. Neither one looked at me, nor did I
recognize either of them.
I prolonged my conversation at the change booth until a Manhattan-bound
train came in. Both men boarded it. But the throb in my head continued.
It was annoying but not painful.
I thanked the attendant and went through the turnstile. There was a
long wait for the next train. Just as I'd gone in and sat down, a man
came running through the turnstile and got into my nearly empty car a
second before the doors closed.
He took a seat opposite and looked at me with a little smile. It could
have been no more than the smile one stranger gives another at his
small success in triumphing over a machine, but when the throbbing
in my head intensified I knew it was more than that. This was my
Monolithian shadow.
He was neatly dressed in a brown gabardine suit. He was
sixtyish, hatless and wore gold-rimmed eyeglasses. He had a big,
retired-English-officer type of mustache and looked vaguely familiar.
The train went through the East River tunnel and at the Wall Street
station I got up as if to get out. My friend in gabardine stood up
casually and strolled to the same door. I had thought of waiting till
just before the doors closed, then stepping out, but he would have been
right behind me. I walked down the car and picked up a _Daily News_
someone had discarded.
My friend meanwhile pretended to study the subway map near the door,
then sat down again, not quite opposite me.
The tabloid's headline reflected a non-Monolithian development in an
international romance. PRINCE'S 'DREAM GIRL' SHUNS YACHT TRYST, it
said, making it clear that the _Daily News_ was getting bored with
interstellar intrigue. I looked in vain for the Rod Harris-Sam Kent
exposé.
I got out at Times Square, waiting till the last second. But my shadow
was too quick to be fooled. He was right at my heels as the doors shut,
then dropped back a few paces.
I went up the stairs and into a phone booth. I dialed the number of the
man who called himself Mr. Avery while my shadow stood a dozen feet
away, buying himself a cup of soda from an automatic vending machine
and drinking it slowly.
"Hello?" Avery said.
"I'm at Times Square but I'm being followed," I said.
Instead of telling me to go back to my hotel, as I expected him to,
Avery said, "Good!"
"That's good?"
"Perfect," Avery said. "You come right on up--and be sure not to lose
him. We want him. How's your head?"
"Throbbing," I said. "What makes you ask?"
"Never mind. Just bring your friend. One thing--there's a little
delicatessen on the corner just before you get to the apartment-house
entrance. Pick up half a dozen cans of frozen orange juice on your way,
will you?"
"Sure. Will it be open?"
"It's open till 3. Six cans. Don't forget."
"Okay."
I went back down to the subway platform. My gabardine friend followed
me. I took an uptown local and got off at 91st Street, at not quite the
last second. My shadow made it safely to the platform.
At the corner of Columbus Avenue I went into the delicatessen. The man
behind the counter was a big Negro. He looked familiar, somehow. There
were no other customers.
"Any frozen orange juice?" I asked.
My shadow came in and put coins into the cigarette machine.
"Yes, sir," the Negro said. "How many?"
"Six."
The Negro came out from behind the counter. He took six cans out of the
freezer chest and put them in a heavy ice-cream bag. To the Monolithian
he said, "Pardon me." Then he hit him over the head with the six cans
of frozen orange juice. My shadow crumpled to the floor.
The Negro pulled the shade down over the door and locked it. He put out
most of the lights.
"I guess we can close up now, Mr. Kent," he said. "We'll go the back
way, through the building."
My head had stopped throbbing.
* * * * *
I recognized the Negro as we went up in the freight elevator with the
unconscious Monolithian.
"You're Timmie Johnson, aren't you?"
"That's right, Mr. Kent."
Timmie was Gov's valet--and probably much more than that, I now
realized.
The elevator doors opened at the top of the apartment house and Gov
Allison stood there waiting. Half a dozen men were with him.
"Well done, Timmie," the President of the United States said. "You,
too, Sam."
26 (AUG. 16, SAT.)
This is no time to get out the
crying towel or to throw in the sponge.
--Richard M. Nixon
We'd been hearing about it all day. The papers delivered to the top
floor of the apartment house--the midtown-Manhattan hideout of Gov
Allison, alias Mr. Avery, and his small band of anti-Monolithian
guerrillas--were full of ads:
"Giant Rally at Madison Square Garden Tomorrow Night! Come One, Come
All! Admission Free! Entertainment! Music! Souvenirs! Master of
Ceremonies: Spookie Masters, Star of Stage, Screen and Television!
Sponsored by the Monolithian-American Friendship Society."
There were spot announcements on radio and television, saying those who
couldn't go to the rally would be able to watch it on the All-Network
Telecast.
"Listen, Gov," I said. It was the first chance I'd had to ask him.
"How did you get back to Earth? The last I heard, you and the other
VIP's were being sent off to space somewhere while your Monolithian
duplicates came back down."
Gov was drinking a screwdriver--possibly made from one of the six cans
Timmie had used to knock out the Monolithian in the delicatessen.
"That's easy," Gov said. "I never went to Ultra."
"But I _saw_ you go. So did everybody else."
"No," Gov said. "You saw my stand-in. I told you some time ago, Sam,
when we first got into this Alien rat race, that I was a tired old
President. Only a few people know that for the last eighteen months I
haven't attended a single cornerstone laying or warship launching or
one of those rose garden jobs with the Lion's Club or the Boy Scouts.
My double--a retired actor you've probably never heard of--officiated
at them all. And he's the one, poor fellow, who's out there in space
now. I hope he's all right. Fix me another one of these, will you, Sam?"
* * * * *
"Listen, Josh," I said to Joshua Holcomb, the original and now
undercover White House Press Secretary whose job I had publicly taken,
"if Gov is so all-fired lazy and ineffectual, what's he doing leading
the underground? Frankly, I'm confused."
"Don't worry about a thing, Sam," Josh said. "You've done a great job,
in your own way. I wouldn't be surprised if you got the Medal of Merit
out of this, one day."
That's all I got out of _him_.
* * * * *
"Listen, Timmie," I said to the sometime White House valet, Timmie
Johnson, "where'd they hide that Monolithian you conked with the orange
juice? Who is he? And just what the hell is going on, anyway?"
"Mr. Kent," he said, "I think you'd just better wait and see. Oh--Mr.
Gov asked me to ask you: have you got those boxes you took from Ultra?
The CW boys want to have a look at them."
They'd been in my pocket ever since I broke out of the plush cell I'd
shared with Rod and Joy. I handed them over gladly. Timmie went out.
* * * * *
They were all as busy as birds at nest-building time. I was the only
one in the place who had nothing to do. That gave me time to think,
which I didn't want. My thoughts always ended with Mae, my wife, and
the impossibility of my returning to her while my Monolithian duplicate
was with her. I couldn't risk confronting Mae, especially now, in her
pregnancy, with the shock of realizing there were two Sam Kents and
that she had been swapped between us in a sort of game of musical beds.
I couldn't think about this very hard, either, without getting fairly
unstable and wanting to put my fist through something. My only comfort
was Joy Linx's stray thought that the Monolithians might be homosexuals.
I had various other thoughts during the time nobody was talking to me
and I was feeling useless.
The thoughts, mostly unanswered questions, were roughly as follows:
How big was Gov's organization? Did it consist of anyone besides the
handful of men in this apartment? What did it hope to accomplish?
What caused the throbbing in my head? It seemed to occur only when I
was close to a Monolithian--my duplicate on Ultra and the man who'd
shadowed me here, for example. Were any of the other duplicated
Earthmen similarly affected? Gov, for instance? I'd have to ask him.
And what did it signify--a form of Monolithian control? Point to
remember: the throbbing stopped when the Monolithian lost consciousness.
Why was Spookie Masters m.c.-ing the big Sunday night rally? I'd got
the impression that he'd lost his enchantment with the aliens after
his experience as their captive on Ultra. But it was possible that the
rally had been arranged before that incident, and there was no time to
change the plans for it. It would be interesting to see what Spookie's
attitude would be when he got up in front of the mike at the Garden.
I wondered if Joy would be there. I also wondered, with a twinge of
what I tried to assure myself was not jealousy, whether Spookie was
still in her apartment in Washington and whether she'd succumbed by now
to his well-known charm.
* * * * *
Gov Allison wandered in, looking unhappy.
I started to get up, but he waved me back on the couch. He dropped
himself at the other end of it and put his head back, rubbing his
forehead.
"My head hurts," he said. "Must be the late hours. Not used to them.
What time is it, anyway?"
It was about 2 P.M., I told him. "How does it hurt, Mr. President? I
mean, is it a sharp pain, or--"
"It's a dull throb," he said. "Maybe a screwdriver would help. Would
you mind looking in that cabinet over there, Sam, and seeing if there
are any fixings?"
"Sure." I made myself one, too, then told him about my own headaches
and my theory that they were caused by the proximity of Monolithians.
It was interesting that Gov was experiencing the throbbing now and I
was not.
"Where's the Monolithian we captured?" I asked. "I'll bet he's the one
behind your headache."
"They've been working over him all day," Gov said. "In a thoroughly
humane way, of course," he added quickly. "With drugs and things. We
can't afford to cast the first stone in this situation."
"Have you found out why he was tailing me?"
"They haven't told me what they've found out, if anything. I think they
want to get it all sorted out and translated into layman's terms first.
Then we'll do something about it, when they've worked out a few ideas.
I'm a decider, you know, not a planner."
Josh Holcomb walked in, looking excited.
"Gov," he said. "I think it's time you came in."
They had the Monolithian strapped to a doctor's examining table. He was
naked.
"My God," Gov said. "He's a woman! Or is he?"
It was easy to see why Gov was confused. The Monolithian had none of
the male paraphernalia at his loins. But he had no breasts, either,
though otherwise he seemed to be a fully developed adult.
"The subject appears to have no reproductive apparatus whatever," a man
in a uniform said. I learned later that he was Brigadier General Horton
Shales, the assistant White House physician.
The subject, as General Shales called him, was lying with his legs
together, so this wasn't something you could tell at a glance. He had
more than the usual amount of pubic hair, but his chest was as hairless
as Hollywood's Tarzans'. He had opened his eyes when we came in, then
closed them again. His face was absolutely expressionless.
"Hmm," Gov said after a moment of thought. "How does he go to the
bathroom?"
"It doesn't," Shales said. "There's no anal orifice either. In fact--"
he paused, either for dramatic effect or to choose his words and avoid
being technical "--the subject is not a human being. It is an imitation
of one--an android."
Gov thought that over. Then he said:
"I see he has a good-sized mustache. But it doesn't look as if he
shaves."
"A good observation," Shales said. "We restored its disguise
temporarily--the glasses, false mustache and wig. We'll remove them
again now.... There."
"My God," Gov said again. "It's me!" It was, too; the android was his
exact duplicate--at least from the neck up.
"How many of them _are_ there?" Gov asked.
I could imagine him enumerating them in his mind: his stand-in out in
space, his double in the White House, himself, and now this on the
examining table.
The latest of the duplicates opened its eyes then and looked at Gov,
who grabbed his forehead and moaned. I felt a little throb myself, as
if I were getting the overflow.
"Do something, Doc," I said to General Shales. "It's got some kind of
hold on Gov's mind."
Shales quickly picked up a hypodermic and jabbed it into the android's
arm. Its eyes closed after a moment and Gov said, "Thanks, Doc--and
Sam--It's gone now."
An attendant covered the unconscious subject up to its neck with a
blanket and wheeled it away.
As we went back to the other room I had the most beautiful thought in
the world, viz.: if _my_ double was as sexless as Gov's, I didn't have
a thing to worry about as far as Mae was concerned.
That wasn't quite accurate, of course. What it meant, if my premise was
correct, was that I had one less thing to worry about. But it certainly
was a very big relief to think that my little Mae was as safe in bed
with the fake Sam Kent as she would be with a Teddy bear.
27 (AUG. 17, SUN.)
The port is near, the bells I hear,
the people all exulting.
--Whitman
Gov's guerrillas had spent the rest of Saturday and much of Sunday
completing their examination of the android and making their plans for
the rally. At least I assumed they were planning some kind of foray; no
one told me very much and I had no idea what my role was to be, or if I
was to be included at all.
The fat Sunday _Times_, the middleweight _Herald Tribune_ and the
radio filled me in on what was happening--or what appeared to be
happening--in the outside world.
The Monolithian pretenders seemed to be solving a number of world
problems.
The alien disguised as the President of the United Arab Republic
announced a tentative settlement with Israel on the issue of the
Palestine refugees.
The one posing as India's Prime Minister reported that he and
Pakistan's leader had had a "meeting of the minds" on the explosive
Kashmir question.
There was a curious dispatch from Taipei, full of Oriental undertones,
which appeared to indicate that peace of a sort had been made between
Formosa and the Communists in Peking.
There had been a tremendous kaffee-klatsch on the border of East and
West Berlin and, while nothing was explicitly agreed to, the feeling
was that the long division of Germany was coming to an end, in what
a punning correspondent saw fit to refer to as "an arithmetical
solution." The correspondent was vague on details but indubitably
hopeful.
It was as if the fondest dreams of Moral Re-Armament were being
realized. I looked for a happy communiqué from Mackinac Island on the
subject, but there was nothing. I assumed the Buchmanites were sulking
because the Monolithians had stolen their thunder.
I also looked in vain for a follow-up to "President Allison's" appeal
to the nation to beware of imitations. The fact that there was no
reference to it at all led me to think that the Monolithians had
panicked only momentarily. It was obvious that they had known about
the Allison underground. Their current silence on the matter gave me a
small chill. It was as if the Monolithians were contemptuously tolerant
of Gov's guerillas, seeing them as no threat whatever to the ultimate
alien scheme.
* * * * *
I was mulling over this deflating thought when Timmie bustled in,
saying, "Time to get ready, Mr. Kent."
He sat me down, wrapped a towel around my neck and proceeded to alter
my appearance with grease pencil, nose putty and other backstage
devices. It was the first inkling I had that I was to be a part of
Operation Madison Square Garden.
Timmie backgrounded me and gave me my instructions as he worked deftly
to make me look twice my age.
"That android, now. Doc didn't exactly take him apart, but he found out
enough. He wasn't transmitting back to Monolithian headquarters, as we
suspected, but he did have a kind of tape device inside his skull that
recorded everything he saw and heard. In other words, he'd've had to
get back to the aliens for his spying to've done them any good....
"We're all going to leave here at different times, so as not to be
suspicious, and rendezvous at the Garden. You're to go in by the
Press entrance on 49th Street. We've got some fake _Journal-American_
credentials for you...."
* * * * *
There were a lot of cops at the 49th Street entrance. They were needed,
because the street was packed solid with humanity and immobilized cars
from Broadway to Eighth Avenue.
I shouldered my way through and flashed my police-press shield at a
police sergeant, who waved me inside.
The first person I saw was Joy Linx. She was holding a sort of
impromptu press briefing for a bunch of yelling reporters.
"Keep quiet a minute and I'll tell you," she was saying. "The President
is going to come right up that aisle. You'll be as close to him as
anybody. Then he goes up to the platform and Spookie Masters introduces
him."
She was wearing a skirt and blouse and there were little beads of
perspiration on her upper lip.
Somebody asked where Sam Kent was.
"I don't know," Joy said. "He was here a minute ago. He'll be back
soon, I'm sure."
She glanced around, her eyes flitting over me without recognition.
People were jammed together on camp chairs all over the floor of
the Garden. The speakers' stand was at the north end. There was
red-white-and-blue bunting everywhere and banners reading "U.S. + M =
Peace," "Give Common Sense a Try," and "Two Worlds Are Better Than One."
A band on the platform was in a segue from _God Bless America_ to _The
Battle Hymn of the Republic_, without losing a note, but it could
barely be heard over the din of the 20,000 people who packed the Garden
to the rafters.
I heard a yell from the street behind me. "He's coming!" Other voices
joined in: "It's Gov!" "Don't he look swell!" There was a chant: "We
love Gov.... We love Gov...."
* * * * *
True to Joy's word, Gov--that is, the Monolithian masquerading as the
President--passed within a dozen feet of us on his way to the platform.
He was accompanied by a dozen or more men who could have been the
Secret Service or some of his fellow Monolithians.
The fake Gov smiled and waved to the masses of people in the Garden who
were shouting themselves into a frenzy as section after section of them
realized he was coming among them.
The band played _Hail to the Chief_, then _For He's a Jolly Good
Fellow_, and finally _The Star-Spangled Banner_. It was quite
impressive and I was patriotically moved despite my knowledge that it
was all a fraud. I could imagine how the thousands in the Garden and
the millions watching television felt. To them it must have been the
culmination of mankind's yearning for respite from the decades of
insecurity and fear of another global war, coupled with worship of that
greatest of heroes, the man who had negotiated an interplanetary peace.
* * * * *
It was hot as hell and I longed to scratch my itching putty nose.
The Monolithian who was pretending to be the President seated himself
behind a long table on the platform and Spookie Masters took over the
microphone.
Spookie made a few jokes. Everything he said was greeted with laughter,
cheers and applause. In that atmosphere he could have read a shopping
list and won an ovation.
Finally he got down to business.
"Friends," he said, "--or maybe I should say fellow members of the
interplanetary alliance--" (applause) "tonight we celebrate the
passing of an old era and the birth of a new one. The change in which
we participate tonight," he said solemnly, "and I choose my words
carefully and with reverence and humility, is, I think, as historic as
that which marked the division of the calendar from B.C. to A.D."
He paused, eyes cast down humbly, and a murmur went through the crowd.
Somebody said "Amen," and I half expected a Hallelujah or two, but
Spookie hurried on before any revival meeting atmosphere had a chance
to develop.
As he went on talking about interplanetary amity and the benefits to
all mankind of this glorious turn in the history of the world, I saw
Gov's guerrillas filtering through the aisles toward the platform. Some
carried cameras, others had police-press shields paper-clipped to their
lapels, and others merely wore ribbons printed with the word COMMITTEE.
Nobody challenged any of them.
They got as close to the platform as they could.
Those with cameras brazened themselves closest and aimed their
equipment directly at the fake President from less than a dozen feet
away.
I knew what the equipment was, and I pushed closer myself to see
whether it would work. It was the conscience gas I'd stolen from Ultra.
Gov's plan was a simple one--when the fake Gov got up to talk, dozens
of cameras would record the scene. At the same time the conscience gas
would spurt out of the guerrillas' cameras and smite the alien impostor.
The fake President would then go through the same mental turmoil that
had assailed the dictator of El Spaniola. He would, in effect, become
one with the thousands in the Garden and the millions on television who
were about to be subjected to whatever nefarious fate the Monolithians
had planned for them. The dichotomy of being simultaneously the victor
and the victim would be too much for him. Then he would either confess
everything or--if the Monolithians were actually a race with a common,
interlocking intelligence, as some people suspected--he would make
a decision in Earth's favor which would be binding on all the other
aliens.
Either way, it would be interesting to watch.
Spookie was finishing his introduction. "And now, my dear friends
everywhere, I give you the man you all know and love--the man who has
had the courage and foresight to switch Earth's destiny in midstream
from its course of destruction to its new and exciting path--your
President and mine--Gouverneur--good old 'Gov'--Allison!"
The place went wild. Everybody stood up and yelled or cheered. Balloons
of all colors with the words GOV and PEACE on them were released by the
scores and floated up toward the roof. Confetti and streamers showered
and spiraled down from the balconies. The band was playing fit to
bust--but only visibly, not audibly, in the din.
The fake Gov stood there smiling, his arms out at his sides, waiting
patiently to be heard.
I saw the quick bursts of flash bulbs, including ours, and watched the
face of the alien masquerading as the President. There was no flicker
of change in his expression of benevolence.
There was a scuffle somewhere on the floor. The center of the
disturbance was where I had last seen the real Gov, disguised as a
devoted follower of his impersonator. Four men had him by the arms
and were moving him quickly and as inconspicuously as possible toward
a curtained-off area near the platform. Then four men closed in on
me. They took me by both arms, lifted me an inch off the floor and
propelled me vertically in the same direction. "Hey," I began, but one
of them said, "Come on, Kent. Don't make a commotion."
I didn't because I was well and truly outnumbered and, besides, each
time I resisted they began to ruin my arms.
By the time I got to the curtained area the real Gov had been sat in a
chair and stripped of his disguise by his Monolithian captors. All of
our fellow conspirators were there, too, including the photographers
whose cameras had been loaded with conscience gas instead of super-pan.
I was crowded up against one of them and asked him, "Didn't you have a
chance to shoot?"
"Sure I did. All of us did. But it didn't make a damn bit of
difference. He's still out there lapping it up. Look at him."
I could see out to the platform, as from the wings of a stage. The
noise of the crowd had diminished, but only slightly. The Monolithian
duplicate of Gov still stood there. His smile seemed as genuine as ever
and his conscience apparently didn't bother him in the least.
28 (AUG. 18, MON.)
We must not gargle with euphoria.
--Charles de Gaulle
Gov--the real one--said to me, "It's as clear as that fake nose you
were wearing last night that they sold you a pup, Sam."
I asked him what he meant.
"That so-called conscience gas we banked so much on. They must have
engineered the whole thing, including your escape from Ultra."
Gov and I and the rest of his crew were at the penthouse office on
Fifth Avenue.
The rally at Madison Square Garden had been a smashing success, as we'd
been allowed to see, to our discomfiture, from the wings where we'd
been herded after our capture.
We were now, on Monday morning, sitting or standing around in Addison
Madison's office, wondering what was going to happen to us. The
Monolithians had treated us gallantly so far, having put us up for the
night at the Taft Hotel, guarded no more obtrusively than a bunch of
suburban high-school seniors staying in town after the prom.
Now, at the Monolithian GHQ, though there was a constant flow of aliens
in and out, none of them so far had had anything to say to us except
busy good mornings. I didn't recognize any of them. Frij, alias Addison
Madison, hadn't arrived yet, if he was due at all.
He had been very much in evidence at the Garden last night, public
relationing in his most offensive manner, and I supposed he was still
resting from his exertions which, Lord knew, had been a Monolithian
triumph. The usually unimpressionable New York _Times_ replated six
times for it and gave it a three-line, eight-column banner head.
I had been trying to explain to Gov how he could tell one late city
edition of the _Times_ from another by the decreasing number of dots
between the volume and number up under the left ear on page one, but
all Gov had on his mind was the conscience-gas fiasco.
"Maybe they used their defense shield against it," Gov said. "Or maybe
they're just naturally immune. But the best explanation is that they
palmed off a phony on you when you swiped the stuff from Ultra. It was
all just too pat to be real."
Addison Madison came in and said, "Oh, yeah, Mr. former President? Is
that so?" He sounded as if he'd heard everything we'd said and when I
asked him he had no qualms about admitting it.
"Let me tell you wise guys something," Addison Madison-Frij went on.
"The conscience gas is the genuine article. It worked on General Rafael
Domingo Sanchez of El Spaniola when we kept him from O-bombing your
retrograde civilization and it also worked, believe it or not, on my
colleague, the new President, at the Garden last night. So put that in
your pipes and smoke it, Mr. Ex-President, and you, too, Mr. Ex-Hotshot
Newspaperman."
"You're crazy," I said. "Let's assume for the sake of argument that
it worked on Domingo Sanchez and that the Spaniola thing _wasn't_ a
hoax...."
"Your assumption would be correct," Frij said. "You don't know how
irresponsible you Earthpeople are."
I let that go for the moment and said, "But your colleague, as you call
him--the fake President Allison--was no more affected by the stuff in
our phony cameras than the man in the moon."
"Ha ha," Frij said. "That shows how much you know. He _was_ affected
but it made no difference." He let that sink in for a while. "Do you
want to know why?"
"Why?" Gov asked.
"Because," Frij said "--now grasp this concept if you can--because my
colleague, the new President, was sincere. His conscience was already
clear."
Gov and I looked from him to each other. Much as we detested Frij, it
began to dawn on us that he might be telling the truth.
"You mean," Gov said, "that it's true that you Monolithians have no
purpose other than saving us from ourselves?"
"Precisely," Frij said. "You could not have put it more aptly."
"Then my story--the big exposé Rod and I wrote on Ultra--was all wrong?"
"It couldn't have been more wrong," Frij said.
"And Domingo Sanchez _wasn't_ your patsy?" I was slowly and reluctantly
patching it together.
"You assumed that a minute ago," Frij said. "Now you believe it."
Gov, looking unutterably weary, said, "I'm afraid I believe it--and all
that it implies. It means that Earth really had no choice whatever. The
other Presidents and the Prime Ministers and I were forced to accept
the Monolithians' terms to avert the Spaniolan threat--which I am now
again convinced was no idle one. So we had to agree to the super-summit
on Ultra, which, of course, set the stage for the substitution of
Monolithian duplicates for Earth's leaders."
Gov smiled wanly and went on. "The fact that I sent a double of myself
to Ultra only delayed matters slightly. You finally got me anyway."
Mox came in then. Like Frij before him, he obviously knew everything
that had been said.
Mox, looking like a saint in his Monolithian robe, in contrast to
Frij's flashy American clothes, said, "Frij, I think you've been out
here too long. You've adopted not only the Earthman's protective
coloration but some of his sadistic ways. Why haven't you told Mr.
Allison why we wanted him?"
"I was coming to it," Frij said defensively.
"Go, Frij," Mox said. "I will tell him. Go back to Monolithia on
the next lighter and re-enroll at the Foreign Service School for a
refresher course in interplanetary relations. Consider your punishment
the fact that I have reprimanded you in public. Leave us now."
"Yes, Mox," Frij said humbly. He went out, and that was the last Earth
saw of Addison Madison or anyone like him.
Mox smiled. "My apologies, gentlemen." He looked like dignity incarnate
and I wondered suddenly if this were the mysterious "Mr. M.," the head
Monolithian who had taken part in the conference on Ultra that decided
Earth's fate. I halfway hoped so; he seemed so much the just, kindly,
elder-statesman, father-image type who inspired trust and confidence.
Gov said, "Mr. Mox, I'm a tired old man, especially after last night.
I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me what the hell's going on and,
particularly, where I go from here. If I'm going to be led out and shot
I'd just as soon get it over with, frankly, if it's all the same to
you."
Mox looked shocked. "My dear sir," he said. "Nothing is further from
our plans. All we want is for you to resume your rightful place in the
White House, at the head of your government."
Gov exhaled a long sigh of relief.
Therefore he had no choice except to breathe in again--by which time
Mox had crushed a tiny capsule in his palm and held it under Gov's nose.
29 (AUG. 19, TUES.)
The score stands today: Strontium 90;
Humanity 13.
--James Thurber
Tuesday went by like a montage, or a series of fades and dissolves in a
documentary movie.
_Scene_: The Fifth Avenue penthouse. _Mox's_ (formerly Frij's)
office. _Mox_, benevolent, wanting to be understood; _Sam Kent_,
groping, wanting to be convinced.
MOX: There were several ways it might have been done. One requisite
was a common denominator--something everybody uses, such as water.
But water was not quick enough. Air is better.
SAM: You mean you contaminated the air?
MOX: Not contaminated, no. Diluted it, you might say. It started in
El Spaniola, with Domingo Sanchez.
SAM: But you said--Frij said, up on Ultra--that it wasn't
communicable.
MOX: Ah, but Frij lied to you. I don't know why; perhaps he had
absorbed too many of Earth's ways. He was becoming dangerous.
That's why I sent him home. Our conscience gas, as your press calls
it, is transferable from person to person, and rapidly. Like your
own oral polio vaccine, it is contagious on contact.
SAM (wordless): !!!
MOX: You need not look so horrified. Remember the greater good.
Recall the game you've been playing with yourselves--a game where
there is no winner. You had to be stopped because of the way the
odds against survival were mounting. One of your more perceptive
observers put it very well when he said the score stood Strontium
90, Humanity 13."
Gouverneur Allison, President of the United States, a good man
basically and one who had long worried in his private soul, needed no
more indoctrination than the whiff of conscience gas he'd been given by
Mox to be convinced that the World's salvation lay not in the haphazard
politics of Earthmen, but in the clear-seeing, galactic-minded altruism
of Monolithian logic. He went back to Washington by Pennsylvania
Railroad day coach, contaminating a few hundred people along the way,
and when he got to the White House he signed an executive order as
Commander-in-Chief directing that all American nuclear weapons be
deactivated, transported expeditiously to the Challenger Deep, and sunk.
Immediately the four other atomic powers--Britain, the Soviet Union,
France and El Spaniola--followed suit.
You could almost hear the collective sigh of relief that went up around
the world.
_Scene_: Joy Linx's hotel room in Manhattan. _Joy Linx_, beautiful,
hostile, in housecoat. _Sam Kent_, anxious, somewhat wild-eyed,
truth-seeking.
JOY: All right, I guess. Come on in.
SAM: Listen, Joy, it's important.
JOY: It better be.
SAM: It's about Spookie Masters. How well do you know him? I mean
really?
JOY: What kind of question is that?
SAM: I know it sounds crazy, Joy, but it's the key to the whole
thing. Has he--did he ever--oh, God damn it, what I mean is, did he
ever make love to you?
JOY (scornfully): I won't answer that stupid question. Did you
think I would?
SAM: It isn't just me asking it, Joy. Honestly, you've got to
realize how vital it is.
JOY: Look, Sam, my dear, sweet someone else's Sam: In a kind of
crazy, hopeless way I once loved you. It was no good. You know why.
Mae, that's why. That lucky girl. So go away before you kill me any
further, will you?
SAM (emotionally torn): Joy, Joy--how can I say I wish it were
otherwise, when I both do and don't? Damn Mae (I don't mean that)
and damn you--but particularly--damn me.
JOY (touched, quietly): Tell me what you want me to do.
SAM (with a sigh, then getting it over with): All right. When
Spookie comes to see you, lead him on. Let him think you're crazy
about him--as maybe you are.
JOY (looking at the floor, hands on Sam's chest): Maybe I am, in a
second-best sort of way.
SAM (on brink of tears): Listen, my second-best darling ... (a
quick, antiseptic, apologetic kiss) what I have to know is--whether
Spookie Masters is a Monolithian.
JOY (withdrawing): What!
SAM: That's the key to the whole thing. He could have come to Earth
years ago as an advance agent for them--his early life has always
been a mystery. His career took him all over the world. He knows
everybody. Then he got himself to Ultra. Of course! _He_ was the
"Mr. M." who represented Monolithia at the super-summit.
JOY (coldly): Isn't that pretty far-fetched, Sam?
SAM: No. It fits perfectly. Then he arranged to get himself
"captured" and thrown in with us so he could learn what we were
up to. And I'll bet he engineered our "escape," too, and saw to
it somehow that I stole that conscience gas. They knew I would
lead them to the only holdout in their scheme--the real Gov--and
that the gas would be the bait that put him in their trap at the
Garden--where, you must admit, Spookie was very much the big wheel.
JOY (thoughtfully): Well, maybe. Tell me what you want me to do.
I'd told her, unable to look her in the eye, that I had to know whether
Spookie Masters was a whole man, and therefore terrestrial, or a
sexless creature like the android, and thus a Monolithian. Joy had
heard me out, saying nothing except with her contemptuous eyes, then
showed me out.
* * * * *
Something puzzled me. I was feeling no pain. And yet I should have
been, I reasoned, since I had been subjected to the C-gas at the same
time Gov inhaled it and I was probing around in what must be considered
an anti-Monolithian way.
I was also running around loose and doing a certain amount of
independent thinking, which didn't seem to fit into the concept
of a true Monolithian state whose subjects had been C-gassed into
cooperating for the greater good.
True, I was on a loose rein. Mox had given me the day off, in effect,
telling me to report to the White House in the morning. I supposed
I'd find myself fired when I got there, since Gov's ex-guerrillas,
including Josh Holcomb, his original press secretary, had all been
C-gassed into conformity and my services would therefore be superfluous.
I decided to go back to the penthouse and have a heart-to-heart talk
with Mox or one of his lieutenants.
Mox saw me himself. He must have had a million things to do, but he
took the time to talk to me for more than an hour, answering every
question I asked.
When I left his office I found Joy sitting at her desk, typing. She
glanced at me and said, "Sit down, Sam. This is for you. I'll be
through in a minute."
She rattled through another paragraph, then, after a look at me, typed
one final line. With a pen she wrote two words. Joy sighed and said,
"There--I've got that out of my system." She folded the single sheet of
paper, sealed it in an envelope and handed it to me.
"Please go before you read it," she said.
Then she smiled, as if she were now at peace with me and the rest of
the world.
"Joy----" I started to say.
"Just go--please," she said, and I went.
* * * * *
I read Joy's letter over a martini at a solitary table at the Brass
Rail, then decided to have several more martinis and skip dinner
altogether.
Joy's letter started: "Sam (not at all dear):" and went on to tell me
quite explicitly that Spookie Masters--whom she called Robert, his real
name--was male as male could be.
What she had said, actually, was: "He's as human as you are--if you
are."
This was empirical knowledge, she said, not theory or hearsay. She had
known this before today, she said, and hoped I was hurt by this fact
as she had been hurt by me. She did not know whether Robert was an
Earthman or a Monolithian, but this didn't matter to her. Her happiness
was what mattered and it was obvious that I could only cause her pain.
"I've made my choice, Sam," she had written. "I had to choose between
what I wanted and what I could get. There are times when the ideal is
just too unattainable and when the second best becomes, in the long
run, the best. Maybe this also has a universal application. I hope so."
The last line of her letter was: "One last thing, Sam--I hate you."
But she had edited this. One of her two handwritten words was her
signature. The other, inserted in the last sentence above a caret, was
"can't."
That had made her farewell read: "I can't hate you."
Over my third martini I thought I understood Joy's parting smile.
Remembering it again, I could see the signs in her eyes. It wouldn't be
long, I suspected, before I saw one of those headlines peculiar to the
society pages of _The New York Times_, reading: TROTH PLIGHTED OF MRS.
JOY LINX; MONOLITHIAN AIDE FIANCEE OF ENTERTAINMENT STAR.
I wished her joy and ordered a fourth martini.
Then I got up and telephoned Mae in Bethesda and told her I'd be
home that night. Mox had told me, among other things, that my double
wouldn't be there.
30 (AUG. 20, WED.)
And now we all have a new King. I wish him
and you, his people, happiness and prosperity
with all my heart.
--Duke of Windsor
It's done now. It's all over but the shouting, or maybe the weeping,
depending on how you look at it.
Earth has been absorbed into the greater scheme of things.
There'd been a telephone call from the White House at 7 A.M., from Gov
personally. There was no need for me to come in, he said. My job was
intact but different. I wasn't the Presidential Press Secretary any
more, but my new assignment was just as important--maybe more so. Mox,
who came on the line on an extension, said the same, so I knew it was
official.
I tried to explain it to Mae over breakfast.
"I'm the historian," I said. "That's what it's all about."
"Eat your eggs," she said. "They'll get cold." She had sprinkled them
with Pep.
"My job is to write it just as it happened. The way I see it. No
propaganda, no censorship."
"That's nice. You want your coffee now or later?"
"I can work at home if I want to. And they'll send out a secretary if I
want somebody to type up notes or take dictation. Now, please."
"That's sweet of them," Mae said. She poured the coffee. "Maybe they'll
send that nice Joy Linx."
I carefully broke a yolk and stirred Pep into it with my fork, giving
it all my attention. I think Mae was serious. "I don't believe I'll
need anybody," I said carefully.
"You need me." Mae was standing at the stove with her back to me,
frying an egg for herself. She was wearing a sort of maternity middy
blouse and skirt and looked very good. "Don't you?"
I got up and put my arms around her gently and kissed the back of her
neck.
"You can hug us gently," she said.
I did. I thought I felt my son or daughter give a kick, not of protest,
but just to let me know someone was there.
"Say it," Mae whispered.
"I love you and I need you," I said.
"Good." She gave her egg a poke and sighed as if in relief. "And I love
you and need you. What I don't need is that crazy robot that's been
hanging around pretending to be you."
"What!"
"He didn't fool me any--except at first."
"He didn't?"
"Oh, he's a very good imitation--as far as he goes. But he worked too
hard at keeping me from finding out that he lacked a few male--or even
human--necessities."
"You mean he didn't--uh, sleep with you?" I had to get it said, any old
way.
"He certainly did _not_. Actually it was his own idea to sleep in the
guest room. I'd have seen that he did anyway. But that wasn't the only
thing. He never went to the bathroom."
"Well," I said.
"Oh, he'd go in and take a bath, but he never--how do they say it in
hospitals?--he never _voided_."
"Oh? How do you know?"
"I listened at the door. There was never a sound till he flushed."
"Oh, Mae!" I said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. "And I thought
you were completely fooled, and that I had to stay away because if you
saw two of us the shock would be too much for you. Why didn't you say
something?"
"I figured it was important to you and your job, and maybe even the
world. You usually have a good reason when you do something peculiar.
Want some toast?"
"Yes, please--wait a minute. The toaster's broken."
"_He_ fixed it. That's how I really knew he wasn't you. He went right
ahead without a murmur and repaired half a dozen things you've been
putting off ever since we were married, practically. He fixed the stuck
zippers and my sewing machine and that lamp with the short in it and
the switch on the vacuum cleaner. That wasn't my fumble-fingered old
Sam."
* * * * *
All that was a long time ago. It's been only a little more than two
years, but it seems like ancient history now.
A lot has happened since. It's all been fully recounted and interpreted
in the press and magazines, so I'll just hit the highlights.
A year ago all the nuclear weapons in the world were deactivated and
sunk in a remote corner of the Pacific. The scientists who were working
on bigger and worse ones were transferred to peaceful research.
Six months ago the Moon was colonized by a six-man international
expedition, whose names are Underwood, Chih-ho, Cohen, Raswaplindi,
Buragin and Thorwald, and their wives.
Five months ago the cure for cancer was announced. They'd solved the
riddle of muscular dystrophy, Parkinson's disease and arthritis before
that.
Last week the people of Mississippi elected a Negro governor.
For more than a year a few million people who had been on the brink
of starvation have had enough to eat--and the U.S. government is
saving a few billion dollars a year by not paying storage charges on
surplus grain. (Our farmers have never had it so good, either, and the
take-home pay of factory workers has doubled in the past year.)
Income taxes are now so low that there's a bill in Congress to abolish
them altogether.
Someone said this should be called the Half-Century of the Common-Sense
Man.
Earth's population explosion has been controlled to the satisfaction of
both the Catholic Church and the economists and Antarctica is becoming
a populated continent. It's actually warm under the ice where the
mining and living is going on.
You've read about it. There's something new and wonderful almost every
day.
* * * * *
Mae says I have to put in some personal stuff, like the name of our son
(Kevin) and the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Robert (Spookie) Masters came to
the christening as godparents and how we have dinner with Spookie and
Joy, or vice versa, every Friday night when he's not making a movie or
being on TV.
I'd better make it clear that Spookie's not a Monolithian, though he
was among the first to dig them, as he puts it with no shame. And he's
recently become the father of a beautiful little girl. So much for my
doubts about his sex life.
World Wide has been de-nationalized and Ian McEachern went back and
Stew Macon and all the rest are still with it. There's a good job there
for me, too, when I finish my book.
Eurydice Playfair got awfully bored with the Monolithians when the
initial glamor wore off for her. For a while there was talk about
her marrying one of them (they're all quite male, except for their
robot-androids, which have been deactivated), but she broke that off
and went to the Caribbean and, I heard, opened up a fashion house, or
some kind of house.
President Gouverneur Allison backed his Vice-President for the top spot
on the ticket and he was duly nominated at the convention. The other
party nominated its man but there was little to choose between. Both
espoused the good and peaceful life our country has come to know and,
though there was nothing explicit, there were pro-Monolithian overtones
to each candidate's campaign.
It didn't matter which won, as had been proven in the elections of
other countries. All on Earth, I thought sometimes, were contented
cows--happy, unambitious and no longer obsessed by the fear of an
annihilating war.
Crime vanished as the effects of the conscience gas spread inexorably
around the world. This gave a boost to the common welfare--the billions
of dollars, pounds, francs, marks, rubles and drachmas which had been
illegally drained off almost as a matter of course showed up where they
belonged: in the pockets of honest people.
* * * * *
Despite my vow to retain my objectivity I've had to fight to avoid
succumbing to the pervading conviction that all's well with the world.
But maybe I should stop fighting. "Monolithian" has practically become
a lower-case word--like humanitarian or altruistic or philanthropic. It
almost never connotes anything alien.
It's as if the Monolithian philosophy has been thoroughly absorbed
into our culture, while the aliens themselves have retreated into the
background, content to keep a paternalistic eye on us.
Oh, they're still with us, physically, but I think they're getting
ready to go. They're a bit wistful about it, not wanting to be
forgotten. They've apparently absorbed that Earthly trait of vanity,
which may be one reason--a minor one, I'm sure--for my project under
what has become the Monolithian Foundation.
I'm compiling the history of their visit under a grant probably more
generous than any writer ever received. I'm writing it exactly as I
see it, as I told Mae, without guidance, restraint or censorship. I
think they'd like it finished before they go back, so they can take a
copy with them, but there's no deadline. It shouldn't take me more than
another six months, now that I've finished the day-by-day account of
the first month of their visit.
There's some talk of publishing these working notes immediately
in a popular version, perhaps under the title _30-Day Wonder_, or
_The Peaceful Invasion_. A doctor friend of mine has suggested _The
Febrifuge_, which my Little Oxford tells me is a medicine to reduce
fever, and, though I like the thought it expresses, it doesn't have
much zing.
As I wind it up I really don't see how I can come to any valid
conclusion. I've been too close to everything.
It's all down on paper now, except for the footnotes and the documents
and the index.
I've said all I can and I still don't know what's right, except for me
and my family, who have never been so happy or secure.
But is this enough? Frankly, it's enough for me. For now. Twenty years
from now I hope to ask my son the same question. And I hope he'll know
what I'm talking about.
* * * * *
_THE MONOLITHIANS_ ...
they were such gentle, friendly, affable creatures--they even looked
okay--handsome, human males, all of them.
They were law-abiding too. If a local speed limit was 25 m.p.h., that's
how fast they'd go, no matter if traffic snarled up for miles in back
of them. If a Blue Law town said nobody should work on Sunday, they'd
do their duty as citizens and let the town burn before they'd permit a
fireman to put out the blaze. No one could do anything about it because
the Monolithians were impregnable.
So when they got into the United Nations and the politicians found
themselves having to live by what they said, the world was in real
trouble.
Or was it?
This is an original publication--not a reprint.
Printed in U.S.A.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "30-day wonder" ***
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