by Anthology
So far so good. Nice and historical. But how tell a class, without accusations of partisanship, what an Am victory means? What a destruction, what a (hell! let’s use their own word) subversion of everything American . . .
Or am I being partisan? Can anyone be as evil, as anti-American, as to me the Senator is?
Don’t kid yrself Lanroyd. If it’s an Am victory, you aren’t going to lecture on Wed. You’re going to be in mourning for the finest working democracy ever conceived by man. And now you’re going to sleep and work like hell tomorrow getting out the vote.
It was Tuesday night. The vote had been gotten out, and very thoroughly indeed, in Lanroyd’s precinct, in the whole state of California, and in all 49 other states. The result was in, and the TV commentator, announcing the final electronic recheck of results from 50 state-wide electronic calculators, was being smug and happy about the whole thing. (“Conviction?” thought Lanroyd bitterly. “Or shrewd care in holding a job?”)
“. . . Yessir,” the commentator was repeating gleefully, “it’s such a landslide as we’ve never seen in all American history—and American history is what it’s going to be from now on. For the Senator, five . . . hundred . . . and . . . eighty . . . nine electoral votes from forty . . . nine states. For the Judge, four electoral votes from one state.
“Way back in 1936, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt” (he pronounced the name as a devout Christian might say Judas Iscariot) “carried all but two states, somebody said, ‘As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.’ Well, folks, I guess from now on we’ll have to say—ha! ha!—‘As Maine goes . . . so goes Maine.’ And it looks like the FDR party is going the way of the unlamented DAR. From now on, folks, it’s Americanism for Americans!
“Now let me just recap those electoral figures for you again. For the Senator on the American ticket, it’s five eighty-nine—that’s five hundred and eighty-nine—electoral—”
Lanroyd snapped off the set. The automatic brought up the room lighting from viewing to reading level.
He issued a two-syllable instruction which the commentator would have found difficult to carry out. He poured a shot of bourbon and drank it. Then he went to hunt for a razor blade.
As he took it out of the cabinet, he laughed. Ancient Romans could find a good use for this, he thought. Much more comfortable nowadays, too, with thermostats in the bathtub. Drift off under constantly regulated temperature. Play hell with the M.E.’s report, too. Jesus! Is it hitting me so bad I’m thinking stream of consciousness? Get to work, Lanroyd.
One by one he scraped the political stickers off the window.
There goes the FDR candidate for State Assembly. There goes the Congressman—twelve-year incumbent. There goes the United States Senator. State Senator not up for reelection this year, or he’d be gone too. There goes NO ON 13. Of course in a year like this State Proposition # 13 passed too; from now on, as a Professor at a State University, he was forbidden to criticize publicly any incumbent government official, and compelled to submit the reading requirements for his courses to a legislative committee.
There goes the Judge himself . . . not just a sticker but a full lumino-portrait. The youngest man ever appointed to the Supreme Court; the author of the great dissenting opinions of the ’50s; later a Chief Justice to rank beside Marshall in the vitality of his interpretation of the Constitution; the noblest candidate the Free Democratic Republican Party had ever offered . . .
There goes the last of the stickers . . .
Hey, Lanroyd, you’re right. It’s a symbol yet. There goes the last of the political stickers. You’ll never stick ’em on your window again. Not if the Senator’s boys have anything to say about it.
Lanroyd picked up the remains of the literature he’d distributed in the precincts, dumped it down the incinerator without looking at it, and walked out into the foggy night.
If . . .
All right you’re a monomaniac. You’re 40 and you’ve never married (and what a sweet damn fool you were to quarrel with Clarice over the candidates in 72) and you think your profession’s taught you that politics means everything and so your party loses and it’s the end of the world. But God damn it this time it is. This is the key-point.
If . . .
Long had part of the idea; McCarthy had the other part. It took the Senator to combine them. McCarthy got nowhere, dropped out of the DAR reorganization, failed with his third party, because he attacked and destroyed but didn’t give. He appealed to hate, but not to greed, no what’s-in-it-for-me, no porkchops. But add the Long technique, every-man-a-king, fuse ’em together: “wipe out the socialists; I’ll give you something better than socialism.” That does it, Senator. Coming Next Year: “wipe out the democrats; I’ll give you something better than democracy.” if . . .
What was it Long said? “If totalitarianism comes to America, it’ll be labeled Americanism “ Dead Huey, now I find thy saw of might . . .
II
There was a lighted window shining through the fog. That meant Cleve was still up. Probably still working on temporo-magnetic field-rotation, which sounded like nonsense but what did you expect from a professor of psionics? Beyond any doubt the most unpredictable department in the University . . . and yet Lanroyd was glad he’d helped round up the majority vote when the Academic Senate established it. No telling what might come of it . . . if independent research had any chance of continuing to exist.
The window still carried a sticker for the Judge and a NO ON 13. This was a good house to drop in on. And Lanroyd needed a drink.
Cleve answered the door with a full drink in his hand. “Have this, old boy,” he said; “I’ll mix myself another. Night for drinking, isn’t it?” The opinion had obviously been influencing him for some time; his British accent, usually all but rubbed off by now, had returned full force as it always did after a few drinks.
Lanroyd took the glass gratefully as he went in. “I’ll sign that petition,” he said. “I need a drink to stay sober; I think I’ve hit a lowpoint where I can’t get drunk.”
“It’ll be interesting,” his host observed, “to see if you’re right. Glad you dropped in. I needed drinking company.”
“Look, Stu,” Lanroyd objected. “If it wasn’t for the stickers on your window, I’d swear you were on your way to a happy drunk. What’s to celebrate for God’s sake?”
“Well as to God, old boy, I mean anything that’s to celebrate is to celebrate for God’s sake, isn’t it? After all . . . Pardon. I must be a bit tiddly already.”
“I know,” Lanroyd grinned. “You don’t usually shove your Church of England theology at me. Sober, you know I’m hopeless.”
“Point not conceded. But God does come into this, of course. My rector’s been arguing with me—doesn’t approve at all. Tampering with Divine providence. But A: how can mere me tamper with anything Divine? And B: if it’s possible, it’s part of the Divine plan itself. And C: I’ve defied the dear old boy to establish that it involves in any way the Seven Deadly Sins, the Ten Commandments, or the Thirty-Nine Articles.”
“Professor Cleve,” said Lanroyd, “would you mind telling me what the hell you are talking about?”
“Time travel, of course. What else have I been working on for the past eight months?”
Lanroyd smiled. “OK. Every man to his obsession. My world’s shattered and yours is rosy. Carry on, Stu. Tell me about it and brighten my life.”
“I say, Peter, don’t misunderstand me. I am . . . well, really dreadfully distressed about . . .” He looked from the TV set to the window stickers. “But it’s hard to think about anything else when . . .”
“Go on.” Lanroyd drank with tolerant amusement. “I’ll believe anything of the Department of Psionics, ever since I learned not to shoot craps with you. I suppose you’ve invented a time machine?”
“Well, old boy, I think I have. It’s a question of . . .” Lanroyd understood perhaps a tenth of the happy monolog that followed. As an historical scholar, he seized on a few names and
dates. Principle of temporomagnetic fields known since discovery by Arthur McCann circa 1941. Neglected for lack of adequate power source. Mei-Figner’s experiment with nuclear pile 1959. Nobody knows what became of M-F. Embarrassing discovery that power source remained chrono-stationary; poor M-F stranded somewhen with no return power. Hasselfarb Equations 1972 established that any adequate external power source must possess too much temporal inertia to move with traveler.
“Don’t you see, Peter?” Cleve gleamed. “That’s where everyone’s misunderstood Hasselfarb. ‘Any external power source . . .’ Of course it baffled the physicists.”
“I can well believe it,” Lanroyd quoted. “Perpetual motion, or squaring the circle, would baffle the physicists. They’re infants, the physicists.”
Cleve hesitated, then beamed. “Robert Barr,” he identified. “His Sherlock Holmes parody. Happy idea for a time traveler: Visit the Reichenbach Falls in 1891 and see if Holmes really was killed. I’ve always thought an impostor ‘returned.’ ”
“Back to your subject, psionicist . . . which is a hell of a word for a drinking man. Here, I’ll fill both glasses and you tell me why what baffles the physicists fails to baffle the psionicist.”
“ ‘Sounds of strong men struggling with a word,’ ” Cleve murmured. They were both fond of quotation; but it took Lanroyd a moment to place this muzzily as Belloc. “Because the power source doesn’t have to be external. We’ve been developing the internal sources. How can I regularly beat you at craps?”
“Psychokinesis,” Lanroyd said, and just made it.
“Exactly. But nobody ever thought of trying the effect of PK power on temporomagnetic fields before. And it works and the Hasselfarb Equations don’t apply!”
“You’ve done it?”
“Little trips. Nothing spectacular. Tiny experiments. But—and this, old boy, is the damnedest part—there’s every indication that PK can rotate the temporomagnetic stasis!”
“That’s nice,” said Lanroyd vaguely.
“No, of course. You don’t understand. My fault. Sorry, Peter. What I mean is this: We can not only travel in time; we can rotate into another, an alternate time. A world of If.” Lanroyd started to drink, then abruptly choked. Gulping and gasping, he eyed in turn the TV set, the window stickers and Cleve. “If . . .” he said.
Cleve’s eyes made the same route, then focused on Lanroyd. “What we are looking at each other with,” he said softly, “is a wild surmise.”
From, the journal of Peter Lanroyd, Ph.D.:
Mon Nov 12 84: So I have the worst hangover in Alameda County, and we lost to UCLA Sat by 3 field goals, and the American Party takes over next Jan; but it’s still a wonderful world.
Or rather it’s a wonderful universe, continuum, whatsit, that includes both this world and the possibility of shifting to a brighter alternate.
I got through the week somehow after Black Tue. I even made reasonable-sounding non-subversive noises in front of my classes. Then all week-end, except for watching the game (in the quaint expectation that Cal’s sure victory will lift our spirits), Stu Cleve and I worked.
I never thought I’d be a willing lab assistant to a psionicist. But we want to keep this idea secret. God knows what a good Am Party boy on the faculty (Daniels, for inst) would think of people who prefer an alternate victory. So I’m Cleve’s factotum and busbar-boy and I don’t understand a damned thing I’m doing but—
It works.
The movement in time anyway. Chronokinesis, Cleve calls it, or CK for short. CK . . . PK . . . sound like a bunch of executives initialing each other. Cleve’s achieved short CK. Hasn’t dared try rotation yet. Or taking me with him. But he’s sweating on my “psionic potential.” Maybe with some results: I lost only 2 bucks in a 2 hour crap game last night. And got so gleeful about my ps pot that I got me this hangover.
Anyway, I know what I’m doing. I’m resigning fr the County Committee at tomorrow’s meeting. No point futzing around w politics any more. Opposition Party has as much chance under the Senator as it did in pre-war Russia. And I’ve got something else to focus on.
I spent all my non-working time in politics because (no matter what my analyst might say if I had one) I wanted, in the phrase that’s true the way only com can be, I wanted to make a better world. All right; now I can really do it, in a way I never dreamed of.
CK . . . PK . . . OK!
Tue Dec 11: Almost a month since I wrote a word here. Too damned magnificently full a month to try to syn opsize here. Anyway it’s all down in Cleve’s records. Main point is development of my psionic potential. (Cleve says anybody can do it, with enough belief and drive—wh is why Psionics Dept and Psych Dept aren’t speaking. Psych claims PK, if it exists wh they aren’t too eager to grant even now, is a mutant trait. OK so maybe I’m a mutant. Still . . .
Today I made my first CK. Chronokinesis to you, old boy. Time travel to you, you dope. All right, so it was only 10 min. So nothing happened, not even an eentsy-weentsy paradox. But I did it; and when we go, Cleve and I can go together.
So damned excited I forgot to close parenth above. Fine state of affairs. So:)
Sun Dec 30: Used to really keep me a journal. Full of fascinating facts and political gossip. Now nothing but highpoints, apptly. OK: latest highpoint:
Sufficient PK power can rotate the field.
Cleve never succeeded by himself. Now I’m good enough to work with him. And together . . .
He picked a simple one. Purely at random, when he thought we were ready. We’d knocked off work and had some scrambled eggs. 1 egg was a little bad, and the whole mess was awful. Obviously some alternate in wh egg was not bad. So we went back (CK) to 1 p m just before Cleve bought eggs, and we (how the hell to put it?) we . . . worked. Damnedest sensation. Turns you inside out and then outside in again. If that makes sense.
We bought the eggs, spent the same aft working as before, knocked off work, had some scrambled eggs . . . delicious!
Most significant damned egg-breaking since Columbus!
Sun Jan 20 85: This is the day.
Inauguration Day. Funny to have it on a Sun. Hasn’t been since 57. Cleve asked me what’s the inaugural augury. Told him the odds were even. Monroe’s 2d Inaug was a Sun . . . so was Zachary Taylor’s 1st and only, wh landed us w Fillmore.
We’ve been ready for a week. Waited till today just to hear the Senator get himself inaugurated. 1st beginning of the world we’ll never know.
TV’s on. There the smug bastard is. Pride and ruin of 200,000,000 people.
“Americans!”
Get that. Not “fellow Americans . . .”
“Americans! You have called me in clarion tones and I shall answer!”
Here it comes, all of it. “. . . my discredited adversaries . . .”
“. . . strength, not in union, but in unity . . .”
“. . . as you have empowered me to root out these . . .”
The one-party system, the one-system state, the one-man party-system-state . . .
Had enough, Stu? (Hist slogan current ca 46) OK: let’s work!
Damn! Look what this pencil did while I was turning inside out and outside in again. (Note: Articles in contact w body move in CK. For reasons cf. Cleve’s notebooks.) Date is now Tue Nov 6 84: TV’s on. Same cheerful commentator:
“. . . Yessir, it’s 1 of the greatest landslides in American history. 524 electoral votes from 45 states, to 69 electoral votes from 5 states, all Southern, as the experts predicted. I’ll repeat: That’s 524 electoral votes for the Judge . . .”
We’ve done it! We’re there . . . then . . . whatever the hell the word is. I’m the first politician in history who ever made the people vote light against their own judgment!
Now, in this brighter better world where the basic tenets of American democracy were safe, there was no nonsense about Lanroyd’s resigning from politics. There was too much to do. First of all a thorough job of party reorganization before the Inauguration. There were a few, even on the
County and State Central Committees of the Free Democratic Republican Party, who had been playing footsie with the Senator’s boys. A few well-planned parliamentary maneuvers weeded them out; a new set of by-laws took care of such contingencies in the future; and the Party was solidly unified and ready to back the Judges administration.
Stuart Cleve went happily back to work. He no longer needed a busbar-boy from the History Department. There was no pressing need for secrecy in his work; and he possessed, thanks to physical contact during chronokinesis, his full notebooks on experiments for two and a half months which, in this world, hadn’t happened yet—a paradox which was merely amusing and nowise difficult.
By some peculiar whim of alternate universes, Cal even managed to win the UCLA game 33—10.
In accordance with the popular temper displayed in the Presidential election, Proposition 13, with its thorough repression of all free academic thought and action, had been roundly defeated. A short while later, Professor Daniels, who had so actively joined the Regents and the Legislature in backing the measure, resigned from the Psychology Department. Lanroyd had played no small part in the faculty meetings which convinced Daniels that the move was advisable.
At last Sunday, January 20, 1985, arrived (or, for two men in the world, returned) and the TV sets of the nation brought the people the Inaugural Address. Even the radio stations abandoned their usual local broadcasts of music and formed one of their very rare networks to carry this historical high-point.
The Judge’s voice was firm, and his prose as noble as that of his dissenting or his possibly even greater majority opinions. Lanroyd and Cleve listened together, and together thrilled to the quietly forceful determination to wipe out every last vestige of the prejudices, hatreds, fears and suspicions fostered by the so-called American Party.
“A great man once said,” the Judge quoted in conclusion, “ ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Now that a petty and wilful group of men have failed in their effort to undermine our very Constitution, I say to you: ‘We have one thing to destroy. And that is destruction itself!’ ”