“You are sure there are people from up ahead who can explain these tunnels? Well enough so that our scientists and engineers can understand the principles involved and the technology well enough so it can be done—hell, Mr. President, this is sheer insanity. American labor building time tunnels! This must be all a dream. Or a bad joke.”
“I’m afraid,” said the President, “it is neither. We’re in a mess, Terry. I don’t know how bad a mess. I imagine it will be a day or two before we have the full story and know what we really face. All I ask right now is that you think about it. Get a few ideas together. Figure out what you can do. I’ll let you know about coming down. No use coming now. We have to get a few things sorted out before we can talk. I’ll be in touch as soon as I know a little more about it.”
“Any time, Mr. President,” said Roberts. “You let me know and I’ll be there.”
The President hung up and buzzed Kim. “Ask Steve to come in,” he said when she opened the door. He tilted back in his chair and locked his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. Less than five hours ago, he thought, he’d stretched out for a nap, looking forward to a lazy Sunday afternoon. He didn’t get many lazy afternoons and when they came he treasured them. He’d no more than shut his eyes than the world had fallen in on him. Christ, he asked himself, what am I to do? What can I do? What’s the wise thing to do? Without half trying, a man could make a mistake or a number of mistakes and he sensed that in a situation such as this, he could not afford mistakes.
Steve Wilson came in the door. The President took his hands from behind his head and tilted forward in the chair.
“Have you had the press in, Steve?”
“No, sir, I haven’t. They’re pounding on the door, but I haven’t let them in. I didn’t have the guts to face them with the little that you gave me. I had been hoping.…”
“All right, then,” said the President. “Your hope paid off. You can give them all of it with two exceptions. You can’t tell them why we have the guns planted. That still has to be simply normal precautions. And there must be no hint of Gale suggesting we go back in time with them.”
“I can’t tell them, then, about why they’re leaving the future. Nothing about the aliens?”
The President shook his head. “Simply say that this point has not been sufficiently clarified and needs more study before anything can be said of it.”
“They won’t like it,” said Wilson, “but I guess that I can manage. How about the TV? I have alerted the networks you may want time this evening.”
“How about ten o’clock? That’s a little late, I suppose, but.…”
“It would be all right.”
“Then you set it up. Tell them only ten or fifteen minutes or so.”
“I’ll draft up something for you to look at.”
“You have your hands full, Steve. I’ll ask Brad and Frank to put it together.”
“They’ll want to know if you’ve talked with anyone.”
“I talked with Sterling in London and Menkov in Moscow. You can tell them Menkov has talked with the Russian equivalent of our Gale and has substantially the same story we got. London still hadn’t been contacted by anyone when I spoke with Sterling. You can say I plan to talk with other national leaders before the day is out.”
“How about a cabinet meeting? The question is sure to come up.”
“I’ve been seeing Cabinet members off and on during the last few hours. This is the first time since it’s started there has been no one in this office. And I’ll be conferring with people on the Hill, of course. Anything else you can think of, Steve?”
“There’ll probably be a lot of other questions. I’ll manage to field them. You can’t anticipate them all. This will satisfy them.”
“Steve, what did you think of Gale? Your own personal opinion. How do you size him up?”
“It’s hard to know,” said Wilson. “No real impression, I’d think. Except that I can’t figure out where he’d gain anything by not telling the truth, or at least the truth as he saw it. However you look at it, those people out there are in serious trouble and they look to us to help them. Maybe they have a thing or two to hide, maybe it’s not exactly as Gale told it, but I think mostly it is. Hard as it may be to accept, I’m inclined to believe him.”
“I hope you’re right,” said the President. “If we’re wrong, they could make us awful fools.”
18
The chauffeured car went up the curving drive to the gracious mansion set well back from the street amid the flowers and trees. When it stopped before the portico, the chauffeur got out and opened the rear door. The old man fumbled out of it, groping with his cane. He petulantly struck aside the chauffeur’s hand when he put it out to help.
“I still can manage to get out of a car alone,” he panted, finally disengaging himself from it and standing, albeit a little shakily and unsure of himself, upon the driveway. “You wait right here for me,” he said. “It may take a little while, but you wait right here for me.”
“Certainly, Senator,” said the driver. “Those stairs, sir—they look a little steep.”
“You stay right here,” said Senator Andrew Oakes. “You go sit behind the wheel. Time comes when I can’t climb stairs, I’ll go back home and let some young man have my seat. But not right yet,” he said, wheezing a little, “not right now. Maybe in another year or two. Maybe not. Depends on how I feel.”
He stumped toward the stairs, clomping his cane with weighty precision upon the driveway. He mounted the first step and stood there for a moment before attempting the next one. As he mounted each step, he looked to either side of him, glaring into the landscape, as if daring someone to remark upon his progress. Which was quite unnecessary, since there was no one there—except the driver, who had gone back to sit behind the wheel, studiously not watching the old man’s progress up the stairs.
The door came open when he was crossing the pillared portico.
“I am glad to see you, Senator,” said Grant Wellington, “but there was no need to make the trip. I could have come to your apartment.”
The Senator stopped, planting himself sturdily before his host. “Nice day for a drive,” he said, “and you said you would be alone.”
Wellington nodded. “Family in New England and the servants’ day off. We’ll be quite alone.”
“Good,” said the Senator. “My place you never can be sure. People in and out. Phones ringing all the time. This is better.”
He stumped into the entry. “To your right,” said Wellington, closing the door.
The old man went into the study, shuffled across the carpeting, dropped into a huge, upholstered chair to one side of the fireplace. He laid his cane carefully on the floor beside him, looked around at the book-lined shelves, the huge executive-type desk, the comfortable furniture, the paintings on the wall.
“You have got it good, Grant,” he said. “I sometimes worry about that. Maybe you have it too good.”
“Meaning I won’t fight. Will be afraid to dirty my hands.”
“Something like that, Grant. But I tell myself I’m wrong. Did plenty of fighting in your day. Out in the business world.” He gestured at the paintings. “Always suspicious of a man who owns a Renoir.”
“How about a drink, Senator?”
“Late enough in the afternoon,” said the Senator judiciously, “for a splash of bourbon. Great drink, bourbon. American. Has character. I remember you drink scotch.”
“With you,” said Wellington, “I drink bourbon.”
“You been listening to what is happening?”
“Saw some of it on TV.”
“Man could stub his toe,” said the Senator, “on a thing like that. He could stub his toe real bad.”
“You mean Henderson.”
“I mean everybody. Easy thing to do.”
Wellington brought the Senator his drink, went back to the bar to pour his own. The Senator settled more deeply into the chair, fondling the glass. He too
k a drink, puffed out his cheeks in appreciation. “For a scotch man,” he said, “you carry a good brand.”
“I took my cue from you,” said Wellington, coming back and sitting on a sofa.
“I imagine the man at 1600,” said the Senator, “has a lot on his mind. Maybe more than he can handle. Terrible batch of decisions to be made. Yes, sir, a lot of them.”
“I don’t envy him,” said Wellington.
“Most terrible thing that can happen to a man,” said the Senator. “With election coming up next year. He’ll have that on his mind and it won’t help him any. Trouble is he has to say something, has to do something. Nobody else has to, but he has to.”
“If you are trying to say that I should say nothing or do nothing, you are succeeding very well,” said Wellington. “Never try to be subtle, Senator. You’re not very good at it.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said the Senator. “You can’t come straight out and tell a man to keep his mouth shut.”
“If these people are really from the future.…”
“Oh, they’re from the future, all right. Where else could they come from?”
“Then you can’t go wrong on them,” said Wellington. “They are our descendants. What they are doing is like a bunch of kids running home after they got hurt.”
“Well, now, I don’t know,” said the Senator, “although that’s not exactly what I meant. It’s not the people; it is old Sam up there in the White House. He’s the one who’s got to do something about it and he’s bound to make mistakes and we got to watch careful to evaluate those mistakes of his. We can jump on some of them and some of them we can’t. There may be even a few things he does that we have to go along with; we can’t be too unreasonable. But the thing right now is not to commit ourselves. You know and I know there are a lot of people want that nomination next summer to run against old Sam, and I mean, if I can imagine it, that you are the one who gets it. Some of the other boys will think they see some opportunities in what the man up there does and they’ll get anxious and start shooting off their mouths and I tell you, Grant, that the people won’t remember who was first, but the one who happens to be right.”
“Of course, I appreciate your concern,” said Wellington, “but it happens that you made this trip for nothing. I had no intention whatever of taking a position. I’m not sure right now there is a position one can take.”
The Senator held out his empty glass. “If you don’t mind,” he said, “another little splash.”
Wellington poured another little splash, and the Senator settled back again.
“That matter of a position,” he said, “is something that is going to require some long and prayerful thought. It has not become apparent yet, but there will be positions practically begging to be taken and a man must look them over good and select them very carefully. What you say about these folks being our descendants is all well and good. You being a man whose family history is long and proud would think that way, of course. But you got to remember that there are a lot of people with little family history and not proud of what they have, and these people, who make up the greatest part of the good old U.S.A., are not going to give a damn about them being their descendants. Maybe them being our descendants will make it all the worse. There are a lot of families these days that are having lots of trouble with their own immediate descendants.
“There are several millions of these people already through the tunnels and they still are pouring through and while we can hold up our hands in pious horror and ask how we are going to take care of them, the real gut reaction will come when those extra millions begin to have an effect on the economy. Food may suddenly get scarce and other things as well and prices will go up and there’ll be a housing problem and a labor problem and there won’t be goods enough to go around and while all this now is just economic talk, in a little while it will cease to be just economic talk and every man and woman in this fair land of ours will feel the impact of it and that’s when there’s hell to pay. And that’s the time when a man like you must pick out his position and study all the angles before he settles on it.”
“Good God,” said Wellington, “this thing is happening out there—our own people of the future fleeing back to us—and here we sit, the two of us, and trying to figure out a good, safe political position.…”
“Politics,” said the Senator, “is a very complicated and a most practical business. You’ve got to be hardheaded about it. You can’t ever afford to get emotional about it. That’s the first thing that you must remember—don’t ever get emotional about anything at all. Oh, it’s all right to appear to be emotional. Sometimes that has a certain appeal for the electorate. But before you can afford to get emotional you must have everything all figured out ahead of time. You may be emotional for effect, but never because you feel that way.”
“It’s not too attractive the way you put it, Senator. It leaves one with a slightly dirty taste.”
“Sure, I know,” said the Senator. “I know about that dirty taste myself. You just shut your mind to it, is all. It’s all right, of course, to be a great statesman and a humanitarian, but before you get to be a statesman you have to be a dirty politician. You have to get elected first. And you never get elected without feeling just a little dirty.”
He placed the glass on the table beside his chair, fumbled for his cane and found it, heaved himself erect.
“Now, you mind,” he said, “before you go saying anything, you just check with me. I been through all this before, many times before. I guess you could say I have developed a political instinct for the jugular and I am seldom wrong. Up there on the Hill we hear things. There are some real good pipelines. I’ll know when there’s anything about to happen, so we’ll have time to study it.”
19
The press conference had gone well. Arrangements had been made for the President’s TV appearance. The clock on the wall ticked over to 6 P.M. The teletypes went on clacking softly to themselves.
Wilson said to Judy, “You’d better call it a day. It’s time to close up shop.”
“How about yourself?”
“I’ll hang on for a while. Take my car. I’ll call a cab and pick it up at your place.”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out the keys and tossed them to her.
“When you get there,” Judy said, “come up for a drink. I’ll be up and waiting.”
“It may be late.”
“If it’s too late, why bother going home? You left your toothbrush last time.”
“Pajamas,” he said.
“When did you ever need pajamas?”
He grinned at her lazily. “OK,” he said. “Toothbrush, no pajamas.”
“Maybe,” said Judy, “it’ll make up for this afternoon.”
“What this afternoon?”
“I told you, remember. What I planned to do.”
“Oh, that.”
“Yes, oh, that. I’ve never done it that way.”
“You’re a shameless child. Now, run along.”
“The kitchen will be sending coffee and sandwiches to the press lounge. Ask them nice and they’ll throw a crust to you.”
He sat and watched her go. She walked surely, but with a daintiness that always intrigued and puzzled him, as if she were a sprite who was consciously trying to make an earth creature of herself.
He shuffled the loose papers on the desk into a pile and stacked them to one side.
He sat quietly once that was done and listened to the strange mutterings of the place. Somewhere, far off, a phone rang. There was the distant sound of someone walking. Out in the lounge someone was typing and against the wall the wire machines went on with their clacking.
It was all insane, he told himself. The entire business was stark, staring crazy. No one in their right mind would believe a word of it. Time tunnels and aliens out of space were the sort of junk the high school crowd watched on television. Could it all, he wondered, be a matter of delusion, of mass hysteria? When the
sun rose tomorrow, would it all be gone and the world back on the old familiar footing?
He shoved back the chair and got up. Judy’s deserted console had a couple of lights flashing and he let them flicker. He went into the corridor and down it to the outer door. Out in the garden the heat of the summer day was cooling off, and long shadows thrown by the trees stretched across the lawn. The flower beds lay in all their glory—roses, heliotrope, geraniums, nicotiana, columbines and daisies. He stood, looking across the park to where the Washington Monument reared its classic whiteness.
Behind him he heard a footstep and swung around. A woman stood just a little distance off, dressed in a white robe that came down to her sandaled feet.
“Miss Gale,” he said, a little startled. “What a pleasant surprise.”
“I hope,” she said, “I have done nothing wrong. No one stopped me. Is it all right to be here?”
“Certainly. As a guest.…”
“I had to see the garden. I had read so much of it.”
“You have never been here, then?”
She hesitated. “Yes, I have. But it was not the same. It was nothing like this.”
“Well,” he said, “I suppose that things do change.”
“Yes,” she said, “they do.”
“Is there something wrong?”
“No, I guess not.” She hesitated again. “I see you don’t understand. I can’t imagine there is any reason why I shouldn’t tell you.”
“Tell me what? Something about this place?”
“It’s this,” she said. “Up in my time, up five hundred years ahead, there isn’t any garden. There isn’t any White House.”
He stared at her.
“See,” she said, “you don’t believe it. You won’t believe me. We have no nations there—we just have one big nation, although that’s not exactly right. There aren’t any nations and there isn’t any White House. A few ragged, broken walls is all, a piece of rusted fence sticking from the ground that you stub your toe upon. There isn’t any park and there aren’t any flower beds. Now can you understand? Can you know what all this means to me?”
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