by Pat Frank
On the other end of the line Klutz was babbling, but he wasn’t making any sense. Finally he said, “I’ll present the matter to the Planning Board, and I’ll let you know their decision.”
“What can they decide?”
“Ah, what’s that? What can the Planning Board decide? Well, they can turn the whole business over to the Inter-Departmental Committee, and then if necessary it can follow the proper channel to the attention of the President.”
“And the President, what can he do about it?”
“Why, he can—now look, Mr. Smith, you’d better do something about this. You’re responsible for him, you know.”
“Sorry, there’s not a thing I can do.”
Klutz didn’t say anything for so long a time I thought the line was dead, but finally he managed to speak. “I believe,” he said, “I will take my annual leave. I haven’t taken my annual leave for several years, and I have accumulated eighty-one days. I am afraid this is too much for me, and I need a rest. But first I will inform the Planning Board, and then I am going to take my annual leave. Goodbye, Mr. Smith.”
Homer sprawled in a chair, grinning. “Well,” he said, “how did the little son-of-a-bitch take it?”
I think all of us jumped, because Homer rarely, if ever, used any expressions more powerful than hell or damn. I knew then that he was a changed man. He had grown up. “He’s going on leave, which means that he’s running away,” I said, and then I added, “Homer, just between you and me and Marge and Jane, I don’t blame you a bit, and whatever you do, I’m for you.”
“I am too,” said Jane. “Homer, I don’t know whether you’re doing the right thing, or the wrong thing, but at least you are doing it yourself, and for you I think that’s important.”
“I do too,” said Marge. “You know how I feel about having babies. But Homer, you do whatever you think best. Don’t you let Steve shove you around any more.”
“Me?” I said. “I’m not going to shove him around. But I am going to take him to the White House, and let him tell Danny Williams, or maybe the President, about it. I don’t want this on my head.”
“Sure. Glad to,” said Homer. “Let’s dress and go.”
So we dressed, and I called Danny Williams, and told him it was vital, or more so, and he said the President could squeeze Homer in at 11:15, between the new Minister from Iraq, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who at that moment were disturbed by the prospect that the war being officially declared over, a good many officers would be forced to revert to their permanent rank. I told Danny Williams what Homer had decided, and he told me not to worry, because the Boss would handle it. I said I hoped so. As I look at it now, I don’t know whether I hoped so or not.
The White House ritual is precise and exact. It is a super assembly line designed to turn out the maximum number of interviews with the President in the minimum time. I put Homer into one end of the assembly line, and then for fifteen minutes I chatted with Danny Williams—in the office that Steve Early used to inhabit—until he came out. When he came out he was still grinning. I knew that he had won, and I felt sort of proud of him, but I also believed the world had ended.
Danny Williams sensed it too. As he walked us to our car he said, “Steve, I’ll call you later.”
It wasn’t much later, because Homer had laid an explosive with a short fuse on the President’s desk. When we got back to the hotel Jane said, “You’re to call the White House immediately.”
So I called Danny Williams, and he had lost his usual calm and was sputtering like an eight-cylinder engine trying to run on kerosene. “Look, Steve,” he said, “this is catastrophic. Do you know what Adam told the Boss?”
“Sure I know,” I said. “He told him he wasn’t going through with it. He said he was resigning.”
“Oh, that isn’t all,” Danny Williams said. “He told the President—I don’t think I’d better tell you what he told the President, not over the phone.”
“Was it something about women?” I suggested.
“It certainly was something about women. I must say the Boss is shocked. He thinks Adam is a little tetched, and he is gravely concerned about allowing A.I. to continue, even if we bring Adam around. As a matter of fact he has decided to postpone A.I. indefinitely, and turn Adam over to the National Research Council. They claim they need him.”
“Oh, boy! Oh, boy, oh boy!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Well, if you think Adam is allergic to women, wait until he finds out he’s going to be handed over to the scientists.”
Danny began to sputter again. “Up here in the White House,” he said, “we’re getting damn sick and tired of Adam’s temperament. We’re for the rights of individual citizens, and the Constitution, and all that, but the rights of the nation transcend the rights of the citizen, on occasion, and believe me this is the occasion.”
“I’m sure Adam would agree with that, in theory, but when you practice it on him he doesn’t like it, and he’s liking it less every minute. His is a very special case.”
“Not any more it isn’t. From now on the status of Adam is that of a valuable experimental animal. Now that sounds crude and harsh, I know, but that’s the way it has to be. The Army will have charge of his feeding and his welfare, and if necessary, they can hold him just exactly as a political prisoner would be held. And the N.R.C. can perform whatever experiments they see fit. That’s final. The executive order will be out today.”
“So be it,” I said. “For my part, I will be delighted to get out of this town—this madhouse in marble. I think if I stayed one more day they’d have me in St. Elizabeth’s. However, I don’t think you can change a man’s feelings or his character by executive order, and I am afraid there is going to be trouble, or more trouble.”
“That’s a chance we have to take,” Danny said. “And I want to tell you that we appreciate your help. The President will send you a letter.”
“I’d frame it,” I told him, “for my grandchildren, except that I’m not going to have any grandchildren. And I don’t like to be pessimistic, but I don’t think you are either, Danny.”
Homer and Marge and Jane were tilting early highballs in the kitchenette. Marge and Jane were trying to persuade Homer to describe the White House conference, and Homer was naturally somewhat reticent, if not downright evasive. “Well,” I told them, “I’ve been fired, but Homer, you’ve got a new job.”
“I was hoping he’d fire me too,” said Homer. “I certainly tried to get fired.”
“Oh, no, Homer, you’re the indispensable man.”
“What’s the new job?” he asked.
I hesitated. I wanted to present Homer’s new job in the best possible light, simply because I didn’t want him blowing up on my hands. “In the first place,” I said, “you don’t have to worry about A.I. any more. A.I. is finished, and Fay Sumner Knott becomes Would-be A.I. Mother Number One.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Homer said.
“From now on,” I continued, “you will work for the National Research Council.”
“You mean Pell and his gang?”
“Well, I believe Dr. Pell is a director of N.R.C.”
“You can just call the White House about my new job,” Homer said firmly. “Tell them I quit.”
“It isn’t that simple, Homer. You can’t quit. As I said, you’re the indispensable man.”
“What do you mean, I can’t quit?”
“I mean—well, I might as well tell you exactly what it is—you are practically the same as under house arrest. You have lost your rights. You are like one hundred and sixty pounds of U-235.”
I had expected Homer to blow up, but he appeared completely cool, and an elfin grin lit his face up again. “They’ll regret it,” he said.
“Now, Homer, there isn’t any use trying to be belligerent, because the Army has been placed in charge of you.”
“If they want another Pearl Harbor,” Homer said, “that’s what they’re going
to get.”
He finished his drink, and poured himself another. A queer metamorphosis had taken place in Homer Adam, working from the inside out. His timidity was gone, and as he stood there, drink in hand, his tousled hair an arrogant flame, he looked to me like some of those wild Irishmen you will find in Cherry Hill bars, ready to stack all the other customers in a corner just for the hell of it.
By the time General Kipp, commanding Eastern Defense Command, Zone of the Interior, arrived with Colonel Phelps-Smythe, Homer was a little tight around the edges. Their entrance was rather awkward, as if it hadn’t been properly rehearsed. They were accompanied by second lieutenants, complete with sidearms, and a photographer.
General Kipp, perspiring and unhappy, grasped Homer’s hand, and shook it, and the photographer unloosed a bulb. “My dear Mr. Adam,” Kipp said woodenly, as if he were making a radio speech and had difficulty reading the script, “I hope you are well.”
“Take the glass out of his hand,” said Phelps-Smythe. A second lieutenant took the glass out of Homer’s hand, and they started again. “My dear Mr. Adam,” the general repeated, “I hope you are well.”
“Give me back my drink,” said Homer.
“Give him back his drink,” the general ordered the second lieutenant.
The photographer took another shot, and the second lieutenant gave the drink back to Homer.
“How are things?” the general inquired.
“Things are very drunk out today,” Homer said.
“What’s that?” said Phelps-Smythe. “What was that you said, Adam?”
“You can take the National Research Council, plus three large cyclotrons, and you can—” I don’t think there is any use repeating what Homer told Phelps-Smythe, because such things are said every day. But Homer Adam’s saying them was new. So I listened.
Phelps-Smythe puffed out like a turkey gobbler trying to impress his hens with his bravery. “Adam,” he said, “we are through with all this damn foolishness. From now on, Adam, you’ll take orders! By God, you will!”
“He will indeed!” General Kipp agreed.
“No,” said Adam, “I won’t.”
Phelps-Smythe felt around in his pockets and came up with a mimeographed sheet of paper, legal size. He put his heels together and read from it as if it were the Articles of War. “This,” he began, “is the directive prepared by the War Department and signed by the President:
SUBJECT: HOMER ADAM.
1. Homer Adam, civilian, is hereby declared Class AAA Strategic Material vital to the defense of the United States.
2. The Department of War will be responsible for the maintenance and security of this property.
3. Homer Adam, civilian, will at all times be subservient to, and conduct himself according to whatever rules and regulations shall be promulgated by the Chief of Staff, or Adjutant General, to carry out the purpose of Paragraphs 1 and 2.
4. The National Research Council shall have the opportunity to use said Homer Adam for purposes of research upon the approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but this in no way shall interfere with Paragraph 2.”
Phelps-Smythe folded his directive, and tucked it into a hip pocket. “There,” he said, “now you see.”
“Now I see what?” said Homer.
“Now you see where things stand. I guess that directive is pretty air tight, isn’t it, General?”
“I’ll say it is,” said General Kipp. “That doesn’t leave any doubt about who’s in control. The N.R.C. can’t do a damn thing until they’ve got approval from the Joint Chiefs.”
Adam was thinking. “Does that mean,” he asked, “that nothing is going to happen?”
“Certainly not!” Phelps-Smythe said. “That only means that before the N.R.C. can do anything it has to have the approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which means Army, Navy, and Air. And of course before the Joint Chiefs approve anything it will require a staff study from each branch of the service, and proposals will have to be made by the experts in each branch, and it probably will require special surveys to find the effect on the existing situation. Furthermore, public opinion must be considered. That’s why we have a Public Relations Branch, and in addition, the international situation cannot be overlooked. And of course the whole thing will have to be co-ordinated with the War Plans Division. Isn’t that so, General?”
“That is it, precisely,” said General Kipp.
“Why can’t I take a little vacation?” Homer asked.
“Vacation!” shouted Phelps-Smythe. “Vacation! Now let me tell you, young man, this foolishness is all over. From now on your life is strictly business. Right at the first, I think we’ll send you to one of the O.C. camps and give you a little basic training. Do you good. Just what you need. Knock this cockiness out of you.”
“I won’t do it,” said Homer.
“You won’t do it!” exploded Phelps-Smythe. “From now on you haven’t got anything to say about what you’ll do or won’t do.”
“Oh, yes I have,” said Homer. “If you keep on being nasty, I won’t eat.”
Phelps-Smythe started to say something, but General Kipp checked him and told Homer, “Now we don’t want any trouble, Adam. We’re only doing our duty as soldiers, you know. Come on, let’s get going.”
So they took Homer away. Just as he left, Phelps-Smythe turned to me and said, “Remember, Smith—you and that Red secretary of yours—all this is Top Secret.”
Marge made a face at him, but I don’t think he noticed it.
We caught the Congressional back to New York. It didn’t take us long to get out of the hotel, because Marge had done most of the packing the night before. This I laid to intuition, but she denied it, and said it was only common sense. She claimed that I was addled, perhaps by strain, and wasn’t able to see things with the proper perspective. She said that immediately after a man is kicked in the teeth by a woman, a great clarity creeps into his brain, and that this clarity persists until scar tissue—in the shape of another woman—grows over his memory.
Just before we got on the train I bought a late edition of an evening paper. The headline said: “ADAM BALKS; A.I. OUT!” and under this was another headline, which read: “Army Takes Over; President for N.R.C.” There was a front page editorial, entitled, “No Cause for Alarm.”
CHAPTER 14
So we settled down in the brownstone house on West Tenth Street, first floor; the bed known as Smith Field, and resumed our normal mode of living. I found myself doing eight hours of rewrite a day, and liking it. It was like occupational therapy. I wrote about the opening of the state trout season, and I covered the Easter Parade on Fifth Avenue, and I wrote a piece about the selection of the country’s ten best-dressed men.
I rewrote our cables from Delhi and Chungking about the famine, but of course that could hardly be considered news, because it was a running story, the same day after day. I wrote about the over-production of pigs, and the shortage of meat; the bumper wheat crop, and the possible rationing of bread; the need for subsidies for the Southern cotton farmers, and the black market in textiles; our record employment, and our record poverty. In God’s Country everything was normal, and for a considerable space of time nothing disturbed our American Way of Life.
I kept an eager eye open for dispatches from Washington about Mr. Adam. In the AP report, you could always find the slug, “Adam.” Even when there was no news of Homer, I knew that somebody in the AP Bureau in Washington had to sit down and write a piece about him, and his progress, every night, and around noon some reporter sat himself before a typewriter, confronted by a slug saying, “New lead Adam.”
So I kept watching Adam, just as a released suspect in a murder keeps alert for news of the crime. Mostly, the Adam stories were wooden and almost newsless. The N.R.C. was confident that, now it had been placed in charge of Adam, science would solve the riddle of what had happened to the world post-Mississippi. The N.R.C. had enlisted all the top scientists of the country in the scientific battle for re-fe
rtilization. The N.R.C. requested more funds from the President, and claimed it must expand to meet the crisis.
Having once been stricken with the disease, I found the symtoms familiar. I was not overly surprised when one day I read, in a single paragraph on page twenty-two of the World-Telegram, that Percy Klutz, formerly of N.R.P., had joined N.R.C. as administrative assistant. Nor was I surprised when I read that Nate Gableman, an experienced public relations expert, had been loaned to N.R.C. by the Department of the Interior, where he had just arrived from N.R.P. Prior to that, Gableman had held a number of government positions. About a half dozen of them were listed.
However, that was all S.O.P. What was truly puzzling were some of the stories out of the War Department. There was a little squib that said the War Department was sending Homer Adam to Camp Blanding, in Florida, to absorb sunshine and recreation, because his duties in Washington had been so arduous. There were stories about meetings of the Joint Chiefs, at which a number of things were discussed, including Arctic maneuvers, and Mr. Adam. The War Department sometimes said its Arctic maneuvers were not directed at any specific power, but really at the elements, but it never explained about about Mr. Adam. Finally, there were stories about the difficulties of using Mr. Adam, and hints that Adam wasn’t really essential, at all. He could be useful, it was admitted, but the N.R.C. didn’t regard him as absolutely essential.
One day Marge and I went to a double-header between the Yanks and the Nats. We were propped up on our pillows in Smith Field, watching the remnants of the immortal Yankees make fools of themselves around second base, and I was telling Marge about Ruth and Gehrig and Dickey, and without warning my favorite sports announcer, Malcolm Parkinson, poked his ruddy face into our bedroom, and said, inspecting a sheet of yellow teletype paper:
“Well, folks, I’m sorry to have to interrupt this ball game, but we’ve just received an important news flash. But before I read this flash I want to tell you that for calm nerves—nerves able to withstand the shock of modern living—smoke . . .” And he went on, and on. Finally he finished his commercial, and said, “And here is that flash, folks. Homer Adam ruined! Yes, sir, a flash from Washington tells us that Homer Adam has been ruined. That is all for now, but as we receive additional details we’ll give them to you, so you might as well keep tuned to this exciting ball game, with the Yanks gamely fighting against a driving Washington team which at this moment has a six run lead. And the next batter for the Nats it . . .”