The Wapshot Scandal

by John Cheever

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do it that way,” Mrs. Brinkley said. “I’d go straight out past the computation center and take the clover leaf just before you get to the restricted area.”

  “Oh, you would, would you,” said Mr. Brinkley. “That way you’d run right into a lot of construction. Just do what I say. Go back to the shopping center and turn right at the second traffic light.”

  “If they go back to the shopping center,” Mrs. Brinkley said, “they’ll get stuck in all that traffic at Fermi Circle. If they don’t want to go out by the computation center, they could head straight for the gantries and then turn right at the road block.”

  “My God, woman,” Mr. Brinkley said, “will you shut your big damned mouth?”

  “Aw, crap,” said Mrs. Brinkley.

  “Well, thanks a lot,” said the Cranstons, heading for the door. “I guess we’ll just take the Speedway the way we used to.” They were gone.

  “Now you got them all mixed up,” Mr. Brinkley said. “I don’t know what makes you think you can give directions. You can’t even find your way around the house.”

  “If they’d gone the way I told them in the beginning,” Mrs. Brinkley said fiercely, “they would have been perfectly all right. There isn’t any construction out by the restricted area. You just made that up.”

  “I did not,” Mr. Brinkley said. “I was out there Thursday. That whole place is torn up.”

  “You were in bed with a cold on Thursday,” Mrs. Brinkley said. “I had to keep bringing you trays.”

  “Well, I guess we’d better go,” Coverly said. “It was awfully nice and thank you very much.”

  “If you would just learn to shut your mouth,” Mr. Brinkley shouted at his wife, “the whole world would be very grateful. You shouldn’t be allowed to drive a car, let alone give people directions.”

  “Thank you,” said Betsey shyly at the door.

  “Who smashed up the car last year?” Mrs. Brinkley screamed. “Who was the one who smashed up the car? Please tell me that.”

  They walked home, stopping now and then to exchange a kiss, and that journey ended like any other.

  CHAPTER XXI

  Coverly had not seen Cameron again. He killed some days at his desk, revising his commencement address about the jewelry of heaven. He was ordered, one morning, to report to security. He guessed that he would be charged with the loss of the briefcase and wondered if he would be arrested. Coverly was one of those men who labor under a preternaturally large sense of guilt that, like some enormous bruise, concealed by his clothing, could be carried painlessly until it was touched; but once it was touched it would threaten to unnerve him with its pain. He was a model of provincial virtues—truthful, punctual, cleanly and courageous—but once he was accused of wrongdoing by some powerful arm of society his self-esteem collapsed in a heap. Yes, yes, he was a sinner. It was he who had butchered the ambassador, hocked the jewelry and sold the blueprints to the enemy. He approached the security offices feeling deeply guilty. There was a long corridor painted buttercup yellow and eight or ten men and women were ahead of him. It seemed like a doctor’s or a dentist’s anteroom, a consular anteroom, a courthouse corridor, an employment office; it seemed, this scene for waiting, to be an astonishingly large part of the world. One by one the other men and women were called by name and let in at a door at the end of the yellow corridor. None of them returned so there must have been another way out but their disappearance seemed to Coverly ominous. Finally his name was called and a pretty secretary, her face composed in a censorious scowl, ushered him into a large office that looked like an old-fashioned courtroom. There was an elevated bench behind which sat a colonel and two men in civilian clothes. A recording clerk sat below the bench. On the left was an American flag in a standard. The flag was heavy silk with a gold fringe and would never have left its stand, not even for a fine parade in auspicious weather.

  “Coverly Wapshot?” the colonel asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Could I please have your security card?”

  “Yes, sir.” Coverly passed over his security card.

  “You know a Miss Honora Wapshot of Boag Street, St. Botolphs?”

  “It’s Boat Street, sir.”

  “You know this lady?”

  “Yes, sir, I’ve known her all my life. She’s my cousin.”

  “Why didn’t you report to this office the fact of her criminal indictment?”

  “Her what?” What could she have done? Arson? Been caught shoplifting at the five-and-dime? Bought a car and run it into a crowd? “I don’t know anything about her criminal indictment,” Coverly said. “She’s been writing me about a holly tree that grows behind her house. It has some kind of rust and she wants it sprayed. That’s all I know about her. Could you tell me what she was charged with?”

  “No. I can tell you that your security clearance has been suspended.”

  “But, Colonel, I don’t understand any of this. She’s an old lady and I can’t be held responsible for what she does. Is there any appeal, is there any way I can appeal this?”

  “You can appeal through Cameron’s office.”

  “But I can’t go anywhere, sir, without a security clearance. I can’t even go to the men’s room.”

  The clerk filled out a slip that looked like a fishing license and passed it to Coverly. It was, he read, a limited security clearance with a ten-day expiration. He thanked the clerk and went out a side door as another suspect was let in.

  Coverly went at once to Cameron’s office, where the receptionist said that the old man was out of town and would be gone at least two weeks. Coverly then asked to see Brunner, the scientist who had lunched with him in Atlantic City, and the girl cleared him through to Brunner’s office. Brunner wore the cashmere pullover of his caste and sat in front of a colored writing board covered with equations and a note saying: “Buy sneakers.” There was a wax rose in a vase on his desk. Coverly told Brunner his problems and Brunner listened to him sympathetically. “You never see any classified material, do you?” he asked. “It’s the kind of thing the old man likes to fight. Last year they fired a janitor in the computation center because it appears that his mother worked briefly as a prostitute during the Second World War.” He excused himself and returned with another member of the team. Cameron was in Washington and was going from there to New Delhi. The two scientists suggested that Coverly go down to Washington and catch the old man there. “He seems to like you,” Brunner said, “and if you spoke with him, he could at least extend your temporary clearance until he returns. He’s up for a Congressional hearing at ten tomorrow morning. It’s in Room 763.” Brunner wrote the number down and passed it to Coverly. “If you get there early perhaps you could speak to him before he goes on. I don’t think there’ll be many spectators. This is the seventeenth time he’s been grilled this year and there has been a certain loss of interest.”

  CHAPTER XXII

  Whether or not Cameron would speak to Coverly after their last interview was highly questionable; but it appeared to be Coverly’s only chance and he decided to take it, moved mostly by his indignation at the capriciousness of the security officers who could confuse his old cousin’s eccentricities with national security. He flew to Washington that night and went to Room 763 in the morning. His temporary security clearance served and he had no trouble getting in. There were very few spectators. Cameron came in at another door at quarter after ten and went directly to the witness stand. He was carrying what appeared to be a violin case. The chairman began to question him at once and Coverly admired the quality of his composure and the density of his eyebrows.

  “Dr. Cameron?”

  “Yes, sir.” His voice was much the best in the room; the most commanding, the most virile.

  “Are you familiar with the name Bracciani?”

  “I have answered this question before. My answer is on record.”

  “The records of previous hearings have nothing to do with us today. I have requested the
records of earlier hearings but my colleagues have refused them. Are you familiar with the name Bracciani?”

  “I see no reason why I should come to Washington repeatedly to answer the same questions,” the doctor said.

  “You are familiar with the name Bracciani?”

  “Yes.”

  “In what connection?”

  “Bracciani was my name. It was changed to Cameron by Judge Southerland in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1932.”

  “Bracciani was your father’s name?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your father was an immigrant?”

  “All of this is known to you.”

  “I have already told you, Dr. Cameron, that my colleagues have withheld the records of earlier hearings.”

  “My father was an immigrant.”

  “Was there anything in his past that would have encouraged you to disown his name?”

  “My father was an excellent man.”

  “If there was nothing embarrassing, disloyal or subversive in your father’s past, why did you feel obliged to disown his name?”

  “I changed my name,” the doctor said, “for a variety of reasons. It was difficult to spell, it was difficult to pronounce, it was difficult to identify myself efficiently. I also changed my name because there are some parts of this country and some people who still suspect anything foreign. A foreign name is inefficient. I changed my name as in going from one country to another one changes one’s currency.”

  A second senator was recognized; a younger man. “Isn’t it true, Dr. Cameron,” he asked, “that you are opposed to any investigation beyond our own solar system and that you have refused money, cooperation and technical assistance to anyone who has challenged your opinions?”

  “I am not interested in interstellar travel,” he said quietly, “if that’s what you meant to ask me. The idea is absurd and my opinion is based on fundamental properties such as time, acceleration, power, mass and energy. However, I would like to make it clear that I do not assume our civilization to be the one intelligent civilization in the universe.” That fleeting smile passed over his face, a jewel of forced and insincere patience, and he leaned forward a little in his chair. “I feel that life and intelligence will have developed at about the same speed as on earth wherever the proper surroundings and the needed time have been provided. Present data—and these are extremely limited—suggest that life may have developed on the planets of about six percent of all stars. I feel myself that the spectrum of light reflected from the dark areas of Mars shows characteristics that prove the presence of plant life. As I’ve said, I think the possibilities of interstellar travel absurd; but interstellar communication is something else again.

  “The number of civilizations with whom we might possibly communicate depends upon six factors. One: The rate at which stars like our sun are being formed. Two: The fraction of such stars that have planets. Three: The fraction of such planets that can sustain life. Four: The fraction of livable planets upon which life has arisen. Five: The fraction of the latter that have produced beings with a technology adequate for interstellar communication. Six: The longevity of this high technology. About one in three million stars has the probability of a civilization in orbit. However, this could still mean millions of such civilizations within our galaxy alone and, as you gentlemen all know, there are billions of galaxies.” The hypocritical smile again passed over his face. Gas? Coverly wondered. “It seems unlikely to me,” he went on, “that technologies would develop on a planet covered with water. Some of my colleagues are enthusiastic about the intelligence of the dolphin but it seems to me that the dolphin is not likely to develop an interest in interstellar space.” He waited for the hesitant and scattered laughter to abate. “The twenty-one-centimeter band—that is, one thousand four hundred and twenty megacycles—emitted by the colliding atoms of hydrogen throughout space has produced some interesting signals, especially from Tau Ceti, but I am very skeptical about their coherence. I do believe that scientists in every advanced civilization will have discovered that the energy value of each unit or quantum of radiation, whether in the form of light or radio waves, equals its frequency times a value known to us, and perhaps to some of you, as Planck’s Constant.

  “Optical masers appear to be our most promising means of interstellar communication.” Now he was deep in his classroom manner and nothing would stop him until he had inflicted on them all the tedium, excitement and pain of a lecture period. “The optical version of these masers can produce a beam of light so intense and narrow that, if transmitted from the earth, it would illuminate a small portion of the moon.” Again there was the fleeting, the sugary smile. “Extraneous wavelengths are eliminated so that unlike most light beams this one is pure enough to be modulated for voice transmission. A maser system could be detected with our present technology if it were transmitting from a solar system ten light years away. We must study the spectra of light from nearby stars for emission lines of peculiar sharpness and strength. This would be unmistakable evidence of maser transmissions from a planet orbiting that star. The light signals would be elaborately coded. In the case of a system one thousand light years away it would take two thousand years to ask a question and receive an answer. A superior civilization would load its signal beam with vast amounts of information. A highly advanced civilization, having triumphed over hunger, disease and war, would naturally turn its energies into the search for other worlds. However, a highly advanced civilization might take another direction.” Here his voice so grated with censoriousness and reproach that it woke two senators who were dozing. “A highly advanced civilization might well destroy itself with luxury, alcoholism, sexual license, sloth, greed and corruption. I feel that our own civilization is seriously threatened by biological and mental degeneration.

  “But to get back to your original question.” He used the smile this time to indicate a change of scenery; they were in another part of the forest. “The earth-moon system extends its influence for a considerable distance into space. The earth’s gravity, magnetism and reflected radiation have no appreciable influence. At the climax of the sunspot cycle the sun erupts, putting clouds of gas into space. Magnetic storms of great violence usually break out on earth a day or so later. But the nature of interplanetary space is absolutely unknown. We know nothing about the shape, composition and magnetic characteristics of the clouds from the sun. We don’t even know whether they follow a spiraling or a direct path. Mapping the solar system is virtually impossible because of the uncertainty as to the precise distance between the planets and the sun.”

  “Dr. Cameron?” Another senator had been recognized.

  “Yes.”

  “We have some sworn testimony here on the subject of what some of your colleagues have described as an ungovernable temper. Dr. Pewters testified that on August 14th, during a discussion of the feasibility of moon travel, you tore down the Venetian blinds in his office and stamped on them.” Cameron smiled indulgently. “Hugh Tompkins, an enlisted man and a driver from the motor pool, claims that when he was delayed, through no fault of his own, in reaching your office, you slapped him several times in the face, ripped the buttons off his uniform and used obscene language. Miss Helen Eckert, a stewardess for Pan-American Airlines, states that when your flight from Europe was forced to land in Chicago rather than in New York you created such a disturbance that you seriously threatened the safety of the flight. Dr. Winslow Turner states that during a symposium on interstellar travel you threw a heavy glass ashtray at him, cutting his face severely. There is a deposition here, from the doctor who stitched up the cut.”

  “I plead guilty to all these offenses,” the doctor said charmingly.

  “Dr. Cameron?” asked another senator.

  “Yes.”

  “Critics of your administration at Talifer state that you have neither terminated, suspended nor reduced experiments that have so far cost the government six hundred million dollars and that appear to be fruitless. They state that a total
of four hundred and seventeen million has been spent on abortive missiles and another fifty-six million on inoperative tracking experiments. They state that your administration has been characterized by mismanagement, waste and duplication.”

  “I don’t, in this instance, know what you mean by fruitless, abortive and inoperative, Senator,” Cameron said. “Talifer is an experimental station and our work cannot be reduced to linear mathematics. All my decisions, viewed in the full light of all factors, seem to me to have been proper at the time and I assume full responsibility for them all.”

  “Dr. Cameron?” The next senator to be recognized was a stout man and seemed oddly shy for a politician.

  “Yes.”

  “My question is perhaps not germane, it involves my constituents, indeed it involves their well-being, their health, but as you know the microbes that breed in missile fuel have been traced to an outbreak of respiratory disease in the vicinity of Talifer.”

  “I beg your pardon, Senator, but there is absolutely no scientific proof tracing these microbes to the unfortunate outbreak of respiratory disease. No scientific proof at all. We do know that microbes breed in the fuel—a fungus of the genus Loremendrum that produces airborne spores and special mutants. These are no more significant than the microbes that breed in gasoline, kerosene and jet fuel. In volumes so large a concentration of contaminants can quickly become a troublesome amount of residue.”

  “Dr. Cameron?” One saw this time an old man, slim and with the extraordinary pallor of an uncommonly long life span. Indeed, he seemed more dead than alive. At a little distance his shaking hands appeared to be bone. He wore a piped vest and a well-cut suit and had the stance of a dandy, a dandy’s air of self-esteem. His nose was enormous and purple and hooked to the bridge was a pince-nez from which depended a long, black ribbon. His voice was not feeble but he spoke with that helplessness before emotion of the very old and now and then dried, with a broad linen handkerchief, a trickle of saliva that ran down his chin.