by Pat Frank
“It isn’t as bad as you think,” I told him, and motioned to Marge and told her to quick bring some liquor. “It could be much worse, Homer. Suppose you had to marry her and live with her? But you don’t. You don’t even have to see her. Actually, it doesn’t make any difference to you whether she is number one or number eleven million eight hundred thousand six hundred and forty-two, now does it?”
“It makes a difference that she has a number at all,” Homer said. “Imagine, when she has a child that will be my child too!”
“Well, all your children are bound to look pretty much alike, you know, Homer,” I argued. “As a matter of fact you probably won’t be able to tell one from the other in a few years.”
“I’ve thought of that too,” Homer replied, “and believe me I don’t like it.”
Marge brought drinks. Her hand was unsteady when she gave them to us. I remembered that Marge liked Homer, and she always felt she had a personal stake in him. “Now drink your drink and let’s talk this over sensibly,” I said.
“That’s another thing I don’t like,” Homer went on stubbornly. “How would you like to go out on the street and everyone would have the same face and all of them would be like yours?”
“Well,” I admitted, “I think it would be confusing, but at the same time that just illustrates how impersonal this matter has got to be to you.”
Homer drew a deep breath, and drank his highball without taking his glass from his lips and just at that moment Gableman came in, followed by Abel Pumphrey, and both of them looked fresh and happy. Pumphrey grabbed Homer’s hand and began to pump it and said, “Well, well, now we’re on our way, aren’t we, Homer? The worst is over, and there’s all clear sailing ahead.”
“That’s what you think!” Homer said. “The worst is just beginning.”
“No, you mustn’t feel like that,” said Mr. Pumphrey. “My boy, it was almost a miracle, having Senator Knott become A.I. Mother Number One. Almost a miracle! There can’t be any criticism of N.R.P. about that pick—no, sir. It shows that the Administration is absolutely unbiased, allowing a member of the opposition to win the draw. And the Senate will like it, too. They’ll all be proud to have one of their members become a mother.”
Homer could not speak. I forced another drink into his hand.
Gableman showed a mouth full of rotting teeth in a wide grin. “Senator Knott is down in the lobby right now,” he said. “She’s coming up in just a moment to pose with you. She is an extremely attractive woman, isn’t she, Homer? Even if she did cause us a little trouble some time ago, I don’t think the President could have made a luckier choice, that is, from the political standpoint.”
Homer choked on his drink and gasped, “Did you say she was coming up here?”
“Yes, just as soon as all the photographers and newsreel men arrive,” said Gableman.
Suddenly Homer relaxed, in the manner of a fighter loosening up in his corner. “If she comes in here,” he said, very softly, “I’ll strangle her.”
“You’ll what?” said Abel Pumphrey, the veins jumping up from under his Herbert Hoover collar.
“I’ll tear her to pieces and throw her up for grabs,” Homer said, “like this.” He extended his long arms and showed how.
I decided it was time to intervene. “Gentlemen,” I said, “Mr. Adam is overwrought. He has been unnerved by the strain. I think you had better excuse him. You had better go on downstairs and tell Senator Knott that Mr. Adam is sorry, because if she comes up here I really do think he will slap her around.” I led them to the door, and got them outside.
“What’s wrong with him?” Gableman asked. “Has he gone nuts?”
“My gracious,” said Abel Pumphrey, “I never realized he was so temperamental. Why, he acts as if he thought he was the biggest man in N.R.P.! If anyone should have retained a grudge because of what Senator Knott said in the Senate, it should have been me. But I took it in my stride, and now I welcome Senator Knott as the ideal American A.I. mother. She has beauty, brains, and, ah, money. What more can Adam want, particularly when he doesn’t have to actually, ah, to actually have any connubial contact with her.”
“I think it’s a little personal,” said Gableman. “I’ll always figure that Adam and that actress had a good deal more in common than archeology.”
“I would watch him closely,” Abel Pumphrey advised. “Very closely indeed. I simply don’t understand him. I don’t understand him at all.”
Homer was still in his chair in the living room. “Well, I got rid of them,” I told him.
“Thanks, Steve, but I really don’t think I’ll go through with it.” He spoke very quietly, calm as a banker who has reached a decision not to make a questionable loan.
“I’ll tell you frankly, Homer, I don’t think there’s much of a chance that Fay Knott will produce a baby anyway. She was married a couple of times, and nothing happened. When her second husband died, people said he froze to death.”
“It is the principle of the thing,” Homer said.
“That’s exactly it—a matter of principle,” I argued. “Is it right for any one man to put himself in the place of God, and condemn the world to slow death? You don’t want to be in that position, do you?”
“I’m not putting myself in that position,” Homer said. “I just don’t want to have anything to do with that woman.”
Marge sat on the edge of his chair, her long, sleek legs swinging, and ran her fingers through Homer’s hair. It was the first time I had ever seen her touch another man like that, and I found that whatever I had to say had gone from my lips. “Think of the other women, Homer,” Marge said. “Think of me and all the other women who will just curl up and die inside if they lose hope. You know, you’re the hope of every woman, Homer—even those you’ll never be able to satisfy.”
Homer didn’t answer. He kept his eyes on the floor. I knew he was thinking. I thought, I guess Marge put it over all right, and then I said, “We’ll go down to the lab about noon tomorrow, Homer. We’ll take it easy until then. Now buck up. It isn’t really going to be as bad as you think. For the time being you’re going to have a very easy program, and every day they don’t need you in the lab we’ll go to the races. You like the races, don’t you?”
Presently Jane Zitter came in. She had been getting the latest bulletins from the Capitol on her bedroom radio. She was flushed with what I presume was a vicarious maternal instinct, and she began to recite the list of those fortunate enough to be drawn in the first group after Fay Knott. There was a National Committeewoman from California, the winner of last year’s Atlantic City beauty contest, several childless widows of veterans, the wife of a railway president, and the granddaughter of a Vanderbilt.
“You see,” I told Homer, “you should think of those people, instead of Knott. Think of how disappointed they would be if anything happened.”
He nodded. I sighed. I thought my battle was won. I began to think of plans. Marge and I would take a sea voyage to Honolulu, or perhaps to Rio. The world would be a good place to live in again. Eventually, I might even allow Marge to persuade me to okay an A.I. baby. The telephone rang, Homer unfolded and answered it, and presently he began his ritual of yeses, noes, and grunts that showed The Frame was on the other end. I mentally kicked myself for not having asked the FBI to put a tap on our phone. I’d have given anything to have known what The Frame was telling Homer, but his face was immobile and unrevealing.
That night we played bridge, and at nine o’clock I flicked on the wall radio, and who should be there but Gabriel Heatter. “Oh, there’s good news tonight,” he said like the peal of an organ. “Yes, there’s good news tonight. Dare I say it? Yes, I think I will dare say it. Mankind marches on! Tomorrow there begins the greatest experiment in all history. Will it succeed? Will it fail? It must succeed! Yes, everyone in the sound of my voice knows that. It must succeed!”
“You see what honest Gabe says,” I told Homer.
“And Heatter predicts that it w
ill succeed,” Heatter said. “Heatter wants you to remember that Heatter predicted the end of Hitler—and Mussolini. And now Heatter predicts it will succeed! Nine months from tomorrow we will all breathe easy again! Nine months from tomorrow that fine and inspiring example of American womanhood, Senator Fay Sumner Knott, will again lift aloft the glorious torch of motherhood. Nine months from tomorrow there will be a miracle—a baby will be born!”
Homer smiled. I didn’t like the way he smiled. “What are you thinking, Homer?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Homer replied. “Nothing at all, really.”
Heatter insidiously switched from a description of Homer’s hair, to the need of all men for hair tonic, and I shut him off. “What do you think of honest Gabe?” I asked Homer, feeling uneasy about that smile.
“I like to listen to him,” Homer replied. “He is so optimistic.”
“Yes,” Jane agreed. “During the Battle of the Bulge I don’t know how I could have carried on without Heatter.”
“I don’t think he’s a newscaster at all,” I said. “I think he’s a chanter in a choir. But I like to listen to him, as Homer does, because he is so optimistic. I feel that so long as Heatter and his partner, God, have everything in hand, I don’t have to worry.”
Homer yawned. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I think I’ll go to bed. I’ve got a hard day ahead, you know.”
I told him I thought that was a splendid idea, and he was to forget all his worries. “You just go into this as if it was a business,” I said. “The laboratory will be your office, and on certain days you have to go to the office. All the rest of the time you will be free. Just consider yourself a capitalist who only has to go to the office two or three times a week, and spend an hour or two. You know, it isn’t so bad, Homer, when you look at it that way.”
Homer smiled as if nothing were funny. “Good night,” he said. “Good night.”
Jane Zitter went to bed, and that left Marge and me. “Well, I guess that flap is over,” I said. I began to talk about Honolulu, and Rio, and the gaudy beauty of Sydney harbor, and the minaret-speared moon rising over old Stambul, and the comparative stenches of Naples, Venice, and Cairo.
Marge listened, placid and enigmatic as a lovely model in a department store window. “Do you really believe it?” she said finally. “Do you really believe that anything like that is going to happen, ever again? I don’t think you really believe it. I think you’re just whistling to keep up your courage.”
“Certainly I believe it,” I protested. “By the middle of summer everything will be back to normal, including us. We’ll have a glorious time.”
“Would you like to know what I think?” Marge asked.
“What do you think?”
“I think that if Kay Sumner Knott has a baby you will be able to call it an immaculate conception.”
“You’re a cynic, like J.C. Pogey.”
“We’ll see.”
We kept on arguing until long after midnight, with Marge insisting that things wouldn’t work out right. She said she didn’t like the way Homer was acting, and I said I didn’t either but I wasn’t going to do anything rash that would upset him. She said she had a premonition, and I said that I didn’t believe in premonitions or ghosts or poltergeists. She said I was a stubborn double-dyed jackass and I said she was a neurotic old woman who probably looked under the bed every night when I wasn’t home. She reminded me of all the times she had been right and I had been wrong, and I said that just as many times I had been right and she had been wrong, but I didn’t keep all those times in a catalogue, the way she did, because it would embarrass her. She said I could sleep in my own bed, and I said that was fine with me, and I did.
When I awoke Marge was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at me. She leaned over and kissed me and said, “I’ll say I’m sorry if you’ll say you’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s a dream of a morning,” she said. “It’s spring. Birds and everything.” Some robins were trying out their voices, and the sun was beating in through the open window, and the breeze from the park smelled of growing things.
It was ten o’clock. We put on our robes and went into the living room and picked up the morning papers. “I’m running up a little breakfast,” Jane called from the kitchenette. “How do you want your eggs?”
“Poached, honey,” I yelled back. “Marge too. Where’s Homer?”
“Oh, he went out for a walk in the park,” Jane said.
“He did? How long ago?”
“He went out at nine. Said he’d be back for breakfast. Isn’t it a glorious morning?”
“Perfect. How did he look?”
“I’ve never seen him look better. He absolutely sparkled. He looked like a schoolboy going out to buy candy for his first date.”
“That’s fine,” I said. Marge looked at me, her head cocked on one side. “Yes, isn’t it,” she agreed.
“The eggs will be ready in two minutes,” Jane yelled.
I picked up the Post and glanced from headline to headline. No matter how much I concentrated, I couldn’t retain a word or a phrase. “Hadn’t you better go out and find Homer?” Marge suggested sweetly.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said. “He might be on any path in Rock Creek Park, and we’d just miss each other. Anyway, he’ll be right back.”
“Do you think so, dear?”
“What’s wrong with Homer taking a walk in the park? He’s often taken a walk in the park.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it, dear, so long as he comes back.”
Jane brought a plate and put it on my lap. Two eggs, nestling on buttered toast, stared at me like accusing yellow eyes. Suddenly I wasn’t hungry. I put the plate aside. “Don’t you think you had better go out and find him now, dear?” Marge suggested again. I didn’t like the way she said “dear.” It was like a knife blade sliding across my throat. I didn’t like anything about this morning. I felt that the sun, the birds, the grass and the buds were all laughing at me. I noticed that Jane was watching me, and that little beads of perspiration were standing out on her face, and that her fingers were tightly intertwined.
I got up and said, “Yes, I think I’d better go out and find him.” I dressed in a hurry. It didn’t seem necessary to put on a tie.
Out in front of the hotel I looked carefully up and down the street. Wouldn’t it be smarter, I thought, just to wait here for him? There were a dozen roads and pathways that led into Rock Creek Park, in the space of a few blocks, and he might be on any one of them. I tried waiting. I waited for five minutes. Any second, now, he will turn up. Any second I will see that red head bobbing along. I started walking toward Connecticut Avenue, changed my mind, and went in the other direction. Back of the hotel a road curved through the park, and I found myself hurrying down this road. I walked perhaps a half-mile before I stopped. This is stupid, I told myself. This is utterly stupid. He’s probably back at the hotel right now, and Jane and Marge are laughing at me.
I walked back to the hotel. “Did you see Mr. Adam come in?” I asked the doorman.
“No, Mr. Smith. I saw him go out, earlier, but I haven’t seen him come in.”
“What did he do when he went out?”
“I don’t think I noticed. He just walked away.”
“Did he meet anybody?”
“Let me see. No, he didn’t meet anybody. He just walked away. Of course, Mr. Smith, he might have come back through one of the other entrances. Maybe he came in through the terrace, and the swimming pool. If he went walking in the park, that’s the quickest way back, you know.”
“Oh, certainly,” I said. “Thanks.” Naturally, if he went walking in the park, he’d return through the back. He’d probably come back while I waited outside. If he came through the back, the desk clerk would probably have seen him.
I went over to the desk and asked the clerk if he had seen Mr. Adam this morning.
“Why yes, Mr. Smith,” he
said. “I saw him about nine. He left an envelope for you. He said you’d be down later to pick it up.” He reached into a letter box and brought out an envelope and handed it to me just as if it were an ordinary envelope.
“Thanks,” I said. I suppose I smiled. People always smile when the desk clerk hands them an envelope, even when it’s an eviction notice, or an advertisement, or a bill. I put it in my pocket, and my legs carried me to the elevator. I said, “Five, please,” as if nothing had happened.
The operator said, “Aren’t you feeling well, Mr. Smith?”
“Oh, not so good,” I said. “Not so bad but not so good.”
I found myself standing in front of the door to 5-F. I thought, maybe it’s only a note saying he’ll be a little late, and I’m making a fool of myself. I thought, maybe I’d better open it here before I go in. I pulled it out of my pocket and looked at it. It was a hotel envelope and on the face of it was scrawled, Steve Smith. That didn’t tell me anything. I thought, if he’s running away, the quicker I find out about it the better. I started to open it and then put it back in my pocket. You’re yellow, I told myself. I took it out of my pocket again. I opened the door and walked into 5-F.
“Well?” Marge asked.
“He didn’t come back?” I said. She didn’t answer. “He left a—there was a letter or something down at the desk.” I tried to open it, but I didn’t seem to be making any progress.
“Let me have it!” Marge demanded. She took the envelope from me, and slid a sharp thumbnail under the flap and it popped open with no trouble at all. Inside was a single sheet of paper, with writing on both sides. She spread it out on the table, and I read it over her shoulder. Homer had written:
Dear Steve,
Please consider this my resignation from N.R.P. Under the Constitution and by other laws I have got as much right to resign as anyone else, and I resign, as of now.
I hate to do it, because I know it will get you into trouble. You have been a good friend, and believe me if it gets you into trouble I am sorry, but I am sure you can get out of it.
I might as well tell you, because you will find out soon enough. I am going away with Kathy. We are going away and we are not coming back. I tried my best to do my duty, and I wouldn’t have minded so much if Senator Knott hadn’t been picked as Mother Number One. That was too much. And as Kathy pointed out to me, the first A.I. child might very well inherit all the bad traits of both Senator Knott and me, and I don’t feel that we have the right to impose any such thing upon the world.
