The Year of the Quiet Sun

by Wilson Tucker

  Chaney left the gear on the seat and got out of the car to stretch his legs. He looked at the western sky to measure the coming of darkness, and guessed that he had an hour or two before sunset. His watch read 6:38 but it was two hours faster than the clock in the basement; the engineering limit of fifty hours was far away.

  The inquisitive futurist decided on a tour.

  Walking with an easy stride he followed the familiar route to the barracks but was surprised to find it dark — padlocked. That gave him pause. The building deserted? Was he gone from this place? Moresby, Saltus, himself, gone from the station?

  This day, this hour, this now was two years after the successful tests of the TDV, two years after the animals had stopped riding into time and men had taken their places; this was two years after the launching of the field trials and the scheduled launch of the Chicago survey. All that work was over and done — mission completed. Wasn’t it then reasonable to assume the team was disbanded and returned to their own corners of the world? Moresby, Saltus, himself, now working elsewhere? (Perhaps he should have sent that postcard to himself at Indic.)

  Neither Gilbert Seabrooke nor Katrina had ever dropped a hint of future plans for the team; he had assumed they would be disbanded when the Chicago probe was concluded and he hadn’t considered staying on. He couldn’t imagine himself wanting to stay on. Well — with one reservation, of course. He would entertain the idea of a probe into the opposite direction: it would be sheer delight to poke and peer and pry into old Palestine before the arrival of the Roman Tenth Legion — well before their arrival.

  He found himself on E Street.

  The recreation area appeared not to have changed at all. The post theater wasn’t yet opened, its parking lot was empty. The officers’ club was already brightly lit and filled with music, but the second club nearby for enlisted men was dark and silent. The pool area was closed for the winter and its gate secured by a lock. Chaney peered through the fencing but saw nothing more than a deserted patio and a canvas covering stretched over the pool. The chairs and benches together with the tables and umbrellas had been stored away, leaving nothing but memories clashing with a cold November evening.

  He turned away from the fence to begin an aimless wandering about the station. It seemed normal in every respect. Automobiles passed him, most of them going to the commissary; he was the only man on foot. The sound of an aircraft brought his head up, his eyes searching the sky. The plane was not visible — he supposed it was above the thickening cloud cover — but he could follow its passage by the sound; the craft was flying an air corridor between Chicago and St. Louis, a corridor which paralleled the railroad tracks below. In a few minutes it was gone. A drop of moisture struck his upturned face, and then another, the first few flakes of promised snow. The smell of snow had been in the air since morning.

  Chaney turned about to retrace his steps.

  Three automobiles waited side by side in the parking lot behind the lab. His companions were back, neither of them languishing in a Joliet jail — but he suspected it would be terribly easy to get into jail. Chaney lifted the hood of the nearest car and laid his hand on the motor block. He almost burned the skin from his palm. The hood was snapped shut, and he gathered up the gear from the seat of his own car.

  The twin keys were fitted into the locks of the operations door and turned. A bell rang somewhere below as the door eased open.

  “Saltus! Hello, down there — Saltus!”

  The hurtful sound hit him with near physical impact. The sound was something like a massive rubber band snapped against his eardrums, something like a hammer smashing into a block of compressed air. It struck and rebounded with a tremulous sigh. The vehicle kicked back following its time path to home base. The sound hurt.

  Chaney jumped through the door and pulled it shut behind him.

  “Saltus?”

  A sandy-haired muscular figure stepped through the open doorway of the fallout shelter below.

  “Where the hell have you been, civilian?”

  Chaney went down the steps two or three at a time. Arthur Saltus waited at the bottom with a handful of film.

  “Out there — out there,” Chaney retorted. “Knocking around this forsaken place, staring through the fences, sniffing at the cracks and peeping in windows. I couldn’t find a spoor. I think we’re gone from here, Commander — dismissed and departed, the barracks padlocked. I hope we get a decent bonus.”

  “Civilian, have you been drinking?”

  “No — but I could use one. What’s in the stores?”

  “You’ve been drinking,” Saltus said flatly. “So what happened to you? We looked all over town.”

  “You didn’t look in the library.”

  “Oh, hell! You would, and we didn’t. Research stuff. What did you think of 1980, mister?”

  “I don’t like it, and I’ll be liking it even less when I’m living in it. That milquetoast was re-elected and the country is going to hell in a handbasket. A fortyeight state sweep! Did you see the election results?”

  “I saw them, and by this time William has passed the news to Seabrooke and Seabrooke is calling the President. He’ll celebrate tonight. But I’m not going to vote for him, mister — I know I didn’t vote for him. And if I’m living Stateside then — now — I’m going to choose one of those three states that voted for the other fellow, old What’s-his-name, the actor fellow.”

  “Alaska, Hawaii, and Utah.”

  “What’s Utah like?”

  “Dry, lonely, and glowing with radioactivity.”

  “Make it Hawaii. Will you go back to Florida?”

  Chaney shook his head. “I’ll feel safer in Alaska.”

  Quickly: “You didn’t get into trouble?”

  “No, not at all; I walked softly and carried a sweet smile on my face. I was polite to a mousy librarian. I didn’t sass the cops or buy any pork in a grocery store.” He laughed at a memory. “But someone will have to explain a parking ticket when they trace the license number back to this station.”

  Saltus looked his question.

  Chaney said: “I got a ticket for overtime parking. It was an envelope affair; I was supposed to put two dollars in the envelope and drop it in a collection box. I didn’t. Commander, I struck a blow for liberty. I wrote a note.”

  Saltus eyed him. “What was in the note?”

  “We shall overcome.”

  Saltus tried to stifle startled laughter, but failed. After a space he said: “Seabrooke will fire you, mister!”

  “He won’t have the chance. I expect to be far away when 1980 comes. Did you read the papers?”

  “Papers! We bought all the papers! William grabbed up every new one he could find — and then read his horoscope first. He was down in the mouth; he said the signs were bad — negative.” Saltus turned and waved toward newspapers spread out on the workbench. “I was photographing those when you came in. I’d rather copy them than read them onto a tape; I can blow the negs up to life size when we get back — larger than life, if they want them that way.”

  Chaney crossed to the bench and bent over to scan a page under the camera lens. “I didn’t read anything but the election results, and an editorial.”

  After a moment he said excitedly: “Did you read this? China invaded Formosa — captured it!”

  Get the rest, read the rest of it, Saltus urged him. “That happened weeks ago, and now there’s hell to pay in Washington. Canada has formally recognized the take-over and is sponsoring a move to kick Formosa out of the United Nations — give the seat to China. There’s talk of breaking off diplomatic relations and stationing troops along the Canadian border. Civilian, that will be a real mess! I don’t give a damn for diplomats and diplomatic relations, but we need another hostile like we need an earthquake.”

  Chaney tried to read between the lines. “China does need Canadian wheat, and Ottawa does like Chinese gold. That’s been a thorn in Washington’s side for thirty years. Are you a stamp collector?”r />
  “Me? No.”

  “Not too many years ago, American citizens were forbidden to buy Chinese stamps from Canadian dealers; it was a crime to purchase or possess. Washington was being silly.” He fell silent and finished reading the news story. “If these facts are reliable, Ottawa has made a whopping deal; they will deliver enough wheat to feed two or three Chinese provinces. The cash price wasn’t made public, and that’s significant — China bought more than wheat. Diplomatic recognition and Canadian support for a seat in the United Nations were probably included in the sale contract. That’s smart trading, Commander.”

  “They’re damned good shots, too. I told you that. I hate their guts but I don’t downgrade them.” He flipped a newspaper page and repositioned his camera. “What time did you get in this morning? How come you were early?”

  “Arrival was at 7:55. I don’t know why.”

  “Old William was upset, mister. We were supposed to be first but you fouled up the line of seniority.”

  Chaney said impatiently: “I can’t explain it; it just happened. That gyroscope isn’t as good as the engineers claimed it to be. Maybe the mercury protons need fixing, recharging or something. Did you hit the target?”

  “Dead on. William was three or four minutes off. Seabrooke won’t like it, I’ll bet.”

  “I wasn’t jumping with joy; I expected to find you and the Major waiting for me. And I wonder now what will happen on a long launch? Can those protons even find 2000?”

  “If they can’t, mister, you and me and old William will be wandering around in a fog without a compass; we’ll just have to kick backwards and report a scrub.”

  The camera was moved again and another page copied.

  “Hey — did you see the girls?”

  “Two librarians. They were sitting down.”

  “Mister, you missed something good. They wear their hair in a funny way — I can’t describe it — and their skirts aren’t long enough to cover their sterns. Really, now, in November! Most of them wore long stockings to keep their legs warm while their sterns were freezing, and most of the time the stockings matched their lipstick: red and red, blue and blue, whatever. This year’s fad, I guess. Ah, those girls!” He moved the camera and turned a page.

  “I talked to them, I took pictures of them, I coaxed a phone number, I took a blonde lovely to lunch — it only cost eight dollars for the two of us. That’s not too much, everything considered. The people here are just like us, mister. They’re friendly, and they speak English. That town was one sweet liberty port!”

  “But they should be like us,” Chaney protested. “They’re only two years away.”

  “That was a joke, civilian.”

  “Excuse me.”

  “Didn’t they have jokes in the tank?”

  “Of course they did. One of the mathematicians came up with proof that the solar system didn’t exist.”

  Saltus turned around to stare. “Paper proof?”

  “Yes. It filled three pages, as I recall. He said that if he faced the east and recited it aloud, everything would go poof.”

  “Well, I hope he doesn’t do that; I hope to hell he doesn’t make a test run just to see if it works. I’ve got a special reason.” Saltus studied the civilian for a long space. “Mister, do you know how to keep your mouth shut?”

  Cautiously: “Yes. Is this a confidence?”

  “You can’t even tell William, or Katrina.”

  Chaney was uneasy. “Does it involve me? My work?”

  “Nope — you have nothing to do with it, but I want a promise you’ll keep quiet, no matter what. I’m not going to report it when I go back. It’s something to keep.”

  “Very well. I’ll keep it.”

  Saltus said: “I stopped in at the courthouse and had a look at the records — the vital statistics stuff — your kind of stuff. I found what I was looking for last March, eight months ago.” He grinned. “My marriage license.”

  It was a kick in the stomach. “Katrina?”

  “The one and only, the fair Katrina. Mister, I’m a married man! Me, a married man, chasing the girls and even taking one to lunch. Now, how will I explain that?”

  Brian Chaney remembered the note found propped against his camera: it had sounded cool, impersonal, even distant. He recalled the padlocked barracks, the emptyness, the air of desertion. He and Major Moresby were gone from this place.

  He said: “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, be they favorable or not. John Wesley, I think.”

  Chaney kept his face turned away to mask his emotions; he suspected the sharp sense of loss was reflected on his face and he didn’t care to stumble through an explanation or an evasion. He put away the heavy clothing worn on the outside and then replaced the unused camera and the nylon films. The reels of tape were removed from the recorder, and the recorder put back in the stores. As an afterthought, he replaced the identification papers and the gate pass in the torn envelope — alongside Katrina’s note — and propped the envelope on the bench where she would find it.

  Saltus had finished his task and was removing film from the copying camera. He had left the newspapers flung over the bench in disarray.

  Chaney gathered them up into an orderly pile. When he had finished the housekeeping chore, a right-side-up headline said: JCS DENIED BAIL.

  “Who is JCS? What did he do?”

  Saltus stared in disbelief. “Damn it, civilian, didn’t you do anything out there?”

  “I didn’t bother with the papers.”

  Incredulously: “What the hell — are you blind? Why do you think the cops were patrolling the town? Why do you think the state guards were riding shotgun?”

  “Well — because of that Chicago business. The wall.”

  “Bigod!” Arthur Saltus stalked across the room to face him, suddenly impatient with his naiveté. “No offense, mister, but sometimes I think you never left that ivory tower, that cloud bank in Indiana. You don’t seem to know what’s going on in the world — you’ve got your nose buried too deep in those damned old tables. Shape up, Chaney! Shape up before you get washed out.” He jabbed a long index finger at the newspapers stacked on the bench. “This country is under martial law. JCS is the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Grinnell, General Brandon, Admiral Elstar, the top dogs. They tried to pull a fast one but got caught, they — that French word.”

  “Which French word?”

  “For take-over.”

  Chaney was stunned. “Coup.”

  “That’s the word. Coup. They marched into the White House to arrest the President and the Vice President, they tried to take over the government at gun point. Our own government, mister! You hear about that sort of thing down in South America all the time, but now, right here in our country!” Saltus stopped talking and made a visible effort to control himself. After a moment he said again: “No offense, mister. I lost my temper.”

  Chaney wasn’t listening. He was running across the basement room to the stacked newspapers.

  It happened not at the White House, but at the Presidential retreat at Camp David.

  A power failure blacked out the area shortly before midnight on Monday night, election eve. The President had closed his re-election campaign and flown to Camp David to rest. An emergency lighting system failed to operate and the Camp remained in darkness. Two hundred troops guarding the installation fell back upon the inner ring of defenses according to a prearranged emergency plan, and took up positions about the main buildings occupied by the President, the Vice President, and their aides. They elected not to go underground as there was no indication of enemy action. Admiral Elstar was with the Presidential party, discussing future operations in the South Asian seas.

  Thirty minutes after the blackout, Generals Grinnell and Brandon arrived by car and were admitted through the lines. At General Grinnell’s command, the troops about-faced and established a ring of quarantine about the buildings; they appeared to be expecting the order. The two generals then entered the mai
n building — with drawn weapons — and informed the President and the Vice President they were under military arrest, together with all civilians in the area. Admiral Elstar joined them and announced that the JCS were taking control of the government for an indefinite period of time; he expressed dissatisfaction with civilian mismanagement of the country and the war effort, and said the abrupt action was forced upon the Joint Chiefs. The President appeared to take the news calmly and offered no resistance; he asked the members of his party to avoid violence and cooperate with the rebellious officers.

  The civilians were herded into a large dining room and locked in. As soon as they were alone the aides brought out gas masks which had previously been concealed there; the party donned the masks and crawled under heavy dining tables to wait. Mortar fire was heard outside.

  Electric power was restored at just one o’clock. The firing stopped.

  FBI agents also wearing masks breached the door from the opposite side and informed the President the rebellion was ended. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the disloyal troops had been taken under cover of a gas barrage, by an undisclosed number of agents backed by Federal marshals. Casualties among the troops were held to a minimum. The Joint Chiefs were unharmed.

  Helicopters ferried the Presidential party back to Washington, where the President requested immediate reactivation of the TV networks to announce the news of the attempted coup and its subsequent failure. Congress was called into an emergency session, and at the request of the President declared the country under martial law. The affair was done.

  A White House spokesman admitted that the plot was known well in advance, but refused to reveal the source of the tip. He said the action was allowed to go as far as it did only to ascertain the number and the identities of the troops who supported the Joint Chiefs. The spokesman denied rumors that those troops had been nervegassed. He said the plotters were being charged with treason and were being held in separate jails; he would not disclose the locations other than to say they were dispersed away from Washington. The spokesman declined to answer questions regarding the number of FBI agents and Federal marshals involved in the action; he shrugged off unofficial reports that thousands had been mustered.