This Crowded Earth

by Robert Bloch

  3. President Winthrop--1999

  The Secretary of State closed the door.

  "Well?" he asked.

  President Winthrop looked up from the desk and blinked. "Hello, Art,"he said. "Sit down."

  "Sorry I'm late," the Secretary told him. "I came as soon as I got thecall."

  "It doesn't matter." The President lit a cigarette and pursed his lipsaround it until it stopped wobbling. "I've been checking the reportsall night."

  "You look tired."

  "I am. I could sleep for a week. That is, I _wish_ I could."

  "Any luck?"

  The President pushed the papers aside and drummed the desk for amoment. Then he offered the Secretary a gray ghost of a smile.

  "The answer's still the same."

  "But this was our last chance--"

  "I know." The President leaned back. "When I think of the time andeffort, the money that's been poured into these projects! To saynothing of the hopes we had. And now, it's all for nothing."

  "You can't say that," the Secretary answered. "After all, we did reachthe moon. We got to Mars." He paused. "No one can take that away fromyou. You sponsored the Martian flights. You fought for theappropriations, pushed the project, carried it through. You helpedmankind realize its greatest dream--"

  "Save that for the newscasts," the President said. "The fact remains,we've succeeded. And our success was a failure. Mankind's greatestdream, eh? Read these reports and you'll find out this is mankind'sgreatest nightmare."

  "Is it that bad?"

  "Yes." The President slumped in his chair. "It's that bad. We canreach the moon at will. Now we can send a manned flight to Mars. Butit means nothing. We can't support life in either place. There'sabsolutely no possibility of establishing or maintaining an outpost,let alone a large colony or a permanent human residence. That's whatall the reports conclusively demonstrate.

  "Every bit of oxygen, every bit of food and clothing and material,would have to be supplied. And investigations prove there's no chanceof ever realizing any return. The cost of such an operation isstaggeringly prohibitive. Even if there was evidence to show it mightbe possible to undertake some mining projects, it wouldn't begin todefray expenses, once you consider the transportation factor."

  "But if they improve the rockets, manage to make room for a biggerpayload, wouldn't it be cheaper?"

  "It would still cost roughly a billion dollars to equip a flight andmaintain a personnel of twenty men for a year," the President toldhim. "I've checked into that, and even this estimate is based on themost optimistic projection. So you can see there's no use incontinuing now. We'll never solve our problems by attempting tocolonize the moon or Mars."

  "But it's the only possible solution left to us."

  "No it isn't," the President said. "There's always our friendLeffingwell."

  * * * * *

  The Secretary of State turned away. "You can't officially sponsor athing like that," he muttered. "It's political suicide."

  The gray smile returned to the gray lips. "Suicide? What do you knowabout suicide, Art? I've been reading a few statistics on _that_, too.How many actual suicides do you think we had in this country lastyear?"

  "A hundred thousand? Two hundred, maybe?"

  "Two million." The President leaned forward. "Add to that, over amillion murders and six million crimes of violence."

  "I never knew--"

  "Damned right you didn't! We used to have a Federal Bureau ofInvestigation to help prevent such things. Now the big job is merelyto hush them up. We're doing everything in our power just to keepthese matters quiet, or else there'd be utter panic. Then there's theaccident total and the psycho rate. We can't build institutions fastenough to hold the mental cases, nor train doctors enough to care forthem. Shifting them into other jobs in other areas doesn't cure, andit no longer even disguises what is happening. At this rate, anotherten years will see half the nation going insane. And it's like thisall over the world.

  "This is race-suicide, Art. Race-suicide through sheer fecundity.Leffingwell is right. The reproductive instinct, unchecked, willoverbalance group survival in the end. How long has it been since youwere out on the streets?"

  The Secretary of State shrugged. "You know I never go out on thestreets," he said. "It isn't very safe."

  "Of course not. But it's no safer for the hundreds of millions whohave to go out every day. Accident, crime, the sheer maddeningproximity of the crowds--these phenomena are increasing throughmathematical progression. And they must be stopped. Leffingwell hasthe only answer."

  "They won't buy it," warned the Secretary. "Congress won't, and thevoters won't, any more than they bought birth-control. And this isworse."

  "I know that, too." The President rose and walked over to the window,looking out at the sky-scraper apartments which loomed across what hadonce been the Mall. He was trying to find the dwarfed spire ofWashington's Monument in the tangled maze of stone.

  "If I go before the people and sponsor Leffingwell, I'm through.Through as President, through with the Party. They'll crucify me. Butsomebody in authority must push this project. That's the beginning.Once it's known, people will have to think about the possibilities.There'll be opposition, then controversy, then debate. And graduallyLeffingwell will gain adherents. It may take five years, it may taketen. Finally, the change will come. First through volunteers. Then bylaw. I only pray that it happens soon."

  "They'll curse your name," the Secretary said. "They'll try to killyou. It's going to be hell."

  "Hell for me if I do, yes. Worse hell for the whole world if I don't."

  "But are you quite sure it will work? His method, I mean?"

  "You saw the reports on his tests, didn't you? It works, all right.We've got more than just abstract data, now. We've got films for thetelescreenings all set up."

  "Films? You mean you'll actually _show_ what the results are? Why,just telling the people will be bad enough. And admitting thegovernment sponsored the project under wraps. But when they _see_,nothing on earth can save you from assassination."

  "Perhaps. It doesn't really matter." The President crushed hiscigarette in the ashtray. "One less mouth to feed. And I'm gettingpretty sick of synthetic meals, anyway."

  President Winthrop turned to the Secretary, his eyes brighteningmomentarily. "Tell you what, Art. I'm not planning on breaking theproposal to the public until next Monday. What say we have a littleprivate dinner party on Saturday evening, just the Cabinet members andtheir wives? Sort of a farewell celebration, in a way, but we won'tcall it that, of course? Chef tells me there's still twenty pounds ofhamburger in the freezers."

  "Twenty pounds of hamburger? You mean it?" The Secretary of State wassmiling, too.

  "That's right." The President of the United States grinned inanticipation. "Been a long time since I've tasted a real,honest-to-goodness hamburger."