"Well, Mr. President," Oxford said, "that'll be Taft's problem, won't it?"
Roosevelt looked at the far wall. "So it will. I hope he's up to it. If I hadn't promised not to run again . . . By George, I'd cut my hand off to here"—he pointed at his right wrist—"if I could only not have said that!"
It was agreed that we should return the next day to continue our conversation after the President had had a chance to consult his advisors and to talk to Oxford's employer, Mr. Hearst, on the telephone—this in order to make sure that there was no release of any news concerning us until government policy was fully set—and I had had a chance to employ the Communicator on my companions so that they might make whatever contributions they were capable of.
We spent the evening at an inn, talking at great length to Wells and Oxford, keeping firmly in mind the fiction of our ambassadorial status and our nonexistent Empire. We were able to mingle fact and fiction quite nicely, drawing on many of our Exploration experiences in painting word pictures of the far-flung realm we supposedly represented.
I in turn asked for some enlightenment on matters that had puzzled me, notably Mr. Roosevelt's wish to part with his right hand.
"Well, in ought-four, he put his foot in his mouth"—I nearly asked what that odd performance had to do with his hand, but refrained; this language was evidently rich in poetic images which it would be profitless to analyze each time they came up—"when he promised not to run again this year." This, as far as I could understand, came from the superstition that no President should hold office for more than two fixed periods, and that four years previously Mr. Roosevelt had considered a partial term he had served to count as a full one. The explanation for the abbreviated term was even odder than the superstition: the previous President had been killed while in office, apparently not as a ritual sacrifice, although two earlier Presidents had, at roughly twenty-year intervals, abandoned their office in the same manner, a fact which I am sure Ari would have found significant.
The more usual method of changing the head of government was to allow the two chief factions in the country to put up candidates and allow the populace to choose between them. Mr. Roosevelt had persuaded his group to champion his friend Taft, a large and amiable man, while the opposition had put up one Bryan, a noted orator, who had twice unsuccessfully entered earlier contests.
"If he lost twice, why would they want to use him again?" I asked. "Wouldn't they do better with someone who might win?"
Oxford explained to me that the emblem of this party was an animal known for stubbornness and lack of sense, and that loyalty obliged them to display these qualities in all their proceedings.
In any case, Mr. Roosevelt, having come to enjoy the presidency mightily, now regretted his earlier statement, but felt he could not disavow it, hence the wistful comment about cutting off his hand. It seemed rather a lot of information to have to get in order to answer such a simple question, but I supposed it might in the long run prove useful, if I could keep it clearly enough in mind to convey it to Ari; it was really more in his line than mine.
"Teddy's a lame duck now, d'you see?" Oxford explained. "So already people are paying more attention to Taft than to him, and it gets under his hide."
I suppressed a sigh. The Communicator had acquainted me with the language, but apparently there were aspects of it even that instrument could not convey.
When we arrived next morning at the White House, Mr. Roosevelt did not yet seem at all clear on what his plans might be. Accepting me as spokesman for our party, he directed the establishment's steward, a Mr. Hoover, to show Wells and the others around the premises, and led Oxford and me to his office. I was startled when we entered to find it already occupied—it seemed to me, for an instant, filled—by the bulkiest native I had yet seen. He wore a moustache larger than the President's, and his broad face expressed a basic geniality overlaid with worry.
"Will, this is the . . . visitor I told you about. And Mr. Oxford, Hearst's man. He's been in on this from the start and has as big a stake as anyone in keeping mum until the right time. Gentlemen, Mr. Taft."
Roosevelt cut short our greetings and went on, "Now, Will, we've got to get things on a proper footing right off. I think I'll have Loeb draft whatever documents are called for now. Loeb!" he shouted.
When his secretary entered, Mr. Roosevelt gave him the required instructions and sent him off once more, then turned to Taft.
"This will be a deucedly hot potato during the campaign, Will. How do you propose to handle it?"
Taft stroked his luxuriant moustache for a moment before he replied. "I suppose," he said hopefully, "that I could talk about the Philippines. The job I did there's my strong suit, and I could point out that it qualifies me to deal with—"
Roosevelt snorted. "Will, you've got to realize that . . ." He stopped, and his shoulders slumped. He looked at his right hand and gave a grimace.
"Look here," he said. "Bryan's going to jump on this with both feet and stir up a lot of feeling. Right now he's a sure loser, but this could turn the whole thing around. You've got to have some sort of policy!"
Taft ruminated once again. "Couldn't we delay the announcement until after the election?" he asked. "Then, once I was in, I could handle it pretty easily, I suppose."
Roosevelt sighed. "If that's the best you can—"
"Mr. President," Oxford said, rather loudly. "Excuse me, but I don't think Mr. Hearst is going to be overjoyed about sitting on this story for four months."
Roosevelt smiled, though with little mirth in the expression. "If Willie Hearst wants to try conclusions with the government of the United States, he'd better be prepared to—what is it, Loeb?"
The secretary had entered the room and now crossed to the President's desk. "Two visitors, Mr. President, on urgent business."
"Well, I've got something pretty urgent here! You can just tell 'em, whoever they are, to wait 'til I'm ready to see them."
"Mr. President," Loeb said firmly, "you have asked me to do a number of pretty tough things in this job, and I haven't minded. But I just don't see myself telling J. P. Morgan and Thomas Edison to cool their heels for an hour or so!"
Roosevelt sprang from his chair and slammed a fist onto his desk; Taft manifested almost equivalent agitation by lifting himself some inches from his chair, then sinking back again. Next to me, Oxford whistled softly.
"That's torn it," the President said. "Those fellows wouldn't barge in like that unless . . . Well, it might be something else, though I can't imagine what. Bring 'em in, Loeb."
"Morgan's the biggest money man in the country," Oxford whispered to me. "Banks, steel-making, finance.
Even passes the plate in church on Sunday—can't get out of the habit of collecting money. Edison's invented just about everything since the wheel, from the electric light to the electric chair."
I looked on with interest as Loeb ushered these two notables into the office. Morgan was a tall, imposing man, with piercing eyes and a remarkable nose, bulbous and bright red in hue; it seemed to me odd that a man so wealthy would not have had something done about it. Perhaps, though, it played some role in his business; it might be useful for him to be identifiable at a considerable distance.
Edison was a shorter, stocky man with a thatch of white hair and a constantly darting glance; he appeared to be taking mental note of everything he saw.
"Mr. Morgan, Mr. Edison," the President said.
"A council of war, Roosevelt?" Morgan asked, looking first at Taft, then at Oxford and me.
"Now, what are you fellows—" Roosevelt began.
"Mr. President," Morgan said, "if you don't know why we're here, you're a lot less sharp than you used to be. I didn't get where I am by letting myself be surprised, and I make it my business to have ways of finding out what's going on. And when I hear both from San Francisco and Washington that creatures from another world are among us, it seems to me that it's time to sit up and take notice. Once the news gets out, the market will go
wild, and there could be a panic worse than last year's unless the banking community and the Treasury take steps to control it."
He looked at Oxford and me. "Are these they? They look ordinary enough."
"That one of 'em?" Edison asked, as though he had not heard Morgan. He pointed at me. "Been sorting through faces I've seen, and I don't know as I recollect one just like it. Something about the set of the eyes:"
"Mr. Edison, that is in fact Ambassador—" the President began.
"Hey?" Edison said. "You from another planet?"
I was taken aback at the inventor's rudeness to his chief of state and at the President's apparent acquiescence to the interruption. Edison studied my face intently as I replied that I was, indeed, not from Earth.
"Edison!" Morgan fairly shouted. "You can talk to him later! Right now, let's get some things settled with the President!"
"Right, Mr. Edison!" Roosevelt yelled. "Now that you're here, it's clear that we can't keep this quiet much longer!"
Oxford saw my bewilderment at this sudden alteration in the mode of speech, and explained to me that Edison was what he called stone-deaf.
I considered this—while Morgan, Edison and the President boomed at one another—then asked, "But doesn't that make it hard to talk to him? Why doesn't he have something done about it?"
Oxford looked at me curiously. "Isn't anything can be done. Lord knows, Edison's tried. Didn't get anywhere, except, of course, inventing the phonograph."
I thought for a moment, then whispered to Oxford, "I'll be right back," and slipped out of the room unnoticed by the shouting President, Morgan and Edison. In the anteroom, I fetched out the Communicator and its accessory kit from the pocket of the native costume with which I had been provided and rummaged through it. There was a modification device which had been standard equipment ever since the discovery of a race of beings which used sound, but at such a high volume that ordinary Exploration devices could not cope with it, and the team Exploring that planet had come back suffering from extreme hoarseness owing to having had to scream constantly to get anything across. No such people had been encountered since, but each accessory kit now came equipped with a small self-powered amplifier which could be attached to the Communicator's speech element, magnifying its output substantially. I fished mine out; as I had recalled, it was a small, light, metallic wafer, threaded to fit into the Communicator. I breathed into one side of it, and Loeb, seated at his desk, jumped and looked at me sharply as a loud rasping noise echoed through the room.
I found a stiff piece of wire in the kit, bent it into a loop at one end to hold the amplifier, and shaped the rest to fit the curve of the human head. I then reentered the President's office, went to Mr. Edison, and slipped the device onto his head, positioning the amplifier just above an ear.
He started back in his chair, protesting, "What are you up to—say!"
"What is it, Edison?" called Roosevelt.
The inventor clapped his hands to his ears. "Don't need to shout," he said peevishly. He dropped his hands and looked about the room. "Don't . . . need . . . to . . . Hell's fire, gentlemen, I can hear! How'd you manage that, young fellow?"
"A spare part I happened to have," I said.
"Spare part for what? Ah, never mind that—how does it work?"
I shrugged. "I don't know much about that sort of thing. Our Captain might have some idea."
Edison touched the amplifier. "Believe I'll have a talk with him sometime. Now, gentlemen"—he turned to the others—"what do we propose to do?"
With Edison brought effectively into participation without the need to shout, the discussion went on in a brisker yet more relaxed fashion.
"There's no chance of keeping the secret of these . . . these . . ." Morgan flapped one hand toward me as he searched for a suitable term.
"Wells coined a word," Oxford said. "Figured if the fellows who sailed in the Argo with Jason in that legend were called 'argonauts,' it'd do to call Raf and his friends 'astronauts'—sailors among the stars, d'you see?"
Morgan considered this. "Not quite a parallel. To be exact, you ought to use the name of their ship as a prefix—"
"In your language, that would be Wanderer," I said.
"—but on the whole, it'll do. Anyhow, Mr. President, Mr. Taft, you must see that if I've got onto this, it'll get around within days or weeks. The question is, how do we handle it?"
"I've been trying to think of a precedent for any of this," Taft said from the corner where he sat—his first contribution—"but there isn't any I know of."
Roosevelt grimaced, and Oxford whispered to me, "Bet he's wishing he'd made Big Bill Chief Justice instead of running him for President. Bet Taft wishes that, too."
"Hell, there ain't no rules for this kind of thing," Edison said. "We're just trying to get some'p'n done here."
I was fascinated to note that his voice, high-pitched and comparatively uninflected earlier, was a tone deeper and notably more expressive. He must, I reflected, have a remarkably quick and vigorous intellect to adjust so quickly to the restoration of his hearing.
"Now, Morgan," he said, "this is going to break any time, and, from what you've told me, Randolph Hearst's got a lock on it, so it'll get a huge play in all his papers. Is he likely to turn it into a big scare—'Remember the What's-it' and so on?"
"If I can intrude, sir," Oxford said, "I can say that Mr. Hearst doesn't want to do that. He figures there'll be enough excitement over the facts to sell—to make journalistic history. And with Mr. H. G. Wells and me having the inside track with the, uh, astronauts, the rest of the papers'll have to make do with the crumbs from our table, so W. R. doesn't have to pull any funny stuff to keep out in front on this."
After more discussion, it was decided that Hearst would be placed under pressure to hold off his release of the news for two more days, during which time we would be sequestered in a hotel in a city called New York. This would allow Morgan, Edison and others they chose to notify confidentially to make the commercial dispositions necessary to cushion whatever shock this might occasion. Immediately after the announcement, our party would be sent on a tour around the nation, the custom with foreign dignitaries. It was felt that this adherence to habit would make us appear more ordinary and therefore more acceptable—and also not particularly interesting—to the populace, so that this course might, with luck, allow us to remain comparatively obscure until after the elections, some four months in the future.
"After that it'll be in your lap, Will," Roosevelt said.
"Not much room there," Taft observed genially, patting the swell of his stomach—I estimated his mass at about twice that of an ordinarily sturdy man—but Edison, Morgan and the President did not seem amused at his jest.
My consent to the plan was asked. It was clearly a matter of form, as three of the most powerful men in the country had determined on it, but in any case it suited me well enough. It would afford us time to study this strange world and its ways and would allow Ari to perfect his plans for turning those ways to our advantage.
The others, when we conferred in a corridor of the White House, agreed. "That's the way to do your Exploring," Dark said. "Let the natives make all the arrangements and stand the expense."
I was a little nettled to be reminded of the fact that we were Explorers, in view of the gross violation of Exploration rules our own plans entailed, but I let the remark pass; Dark was a complete pragmatist, interested only in whether things worked and not in the grand design behind them or in the laws under which both beings and devices operated. In this it seemed to me that he resembled Edison, and I recalled the inventor's remark that he proposed to have a long talk with Dark sometime. I imagined it should be quite an interesting conversation.
7
The two days we spent in New York before the announcement was made were instructive but largely uneventful. Wells and Oxford showed us some of the city; Ari pronounced himself pleased with the many typical Level Four characteristics it displayed, such
as the simultaneous presence of opulence and misery; Dark was fascinated by the many modes of transportation—powered by steam, electricity, hydrocarbons, draft animals, and even, in the case of certain mobile shops, natives; Valmis claimed that there were Patterns there, but that he could not as yet Perceive them.
During the sightseeing on the second day before the announcement was to be made, we alighted from an electric vehicle near a tall, wedge-shaped building, which Dark wished to sketch, as he had never seen anything like it on any world; it was called after a utensil used to smooth clothes, I suppose because such items were manufactured or sold there. He pulled out the sheaf of molecule-thick metal sheets which Captains affect as notebooks and made his drawing.
We were at this time standing on a pavement beneath the building, and were frequently jostled by hurrying natives. That at least one had been motivated by more than thoughtlessness became evident shortly after Oxford suggested we repair to a place of refreshment across Fifth Avenue from where we stood, called the
Hoffman House. This establishment boasted a long counter at which a number of natives stood and consumed a variety of liquids.
"Ha!" Dark said enthusiastically after his first draught of what Oxford had recommended as suitable for a hot day, a substance called Würzburger. "This is the right idea! Here, let me pay for this round."
The gesture was less generous than it might seem, as the local currency we possessed had been provided by Mr. Hearst through the instrumentality of Oxford, who had presented us with well-filled flexible money containers and instructions on their use. It was also pointless, as Dark, reaching for his container, suddenly began patting his costume and glaring about.
"Hey, it's gone! That wallet thing, with the mazuma in it!" I wished that Dark, having been effortlessly granted the gift of communication in this tongue, had not evidenced quite so much fondness for the undignified cant terms in which it abounded.
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