by Tom DeMarco
“You see, that’s the kind of answer that could only depress the President.”
“It’s quite depressing, I agree.”
“But to put the best light on it, you could say, couldn’t you, that the effort had been perking along on a reduced cost basis to protect American interests in spite of Congress’s ill-considered decision.”
“Yes, that’s true. We’ve done our part to reduce costs,.”
“That’s the spirit. Now, there may be some question about whether the present Revelation13 is really the program that we had planned for it to be.”
“It’s not. Of course it’s not. It’s not the ShieldCom, for godsakes.”
“We know that. And the President knows that, I can assure you. There is no need to rub his nose in it, Lamar. The man suffered a setback in the funding effort, and no one is more aware of the consequences than he is. We have asked you to maintain the name Revelation13, of course, just as a reminder of what it will be when we finally do complete it. It’s rather a quibble as to whether we ought to refer to it as the ShieldCom or not. Perhaps we should not. Perhaps ‘reduced ShieldCom’ or words to that effect.”
“It’s a dinky little demo program!”
“Yes. That, of course, is just the kind of talk that the President doesn’t need to hear. I point out to you that the Shield, even with a dinky little demo program to control it, is one of the most lethal weapons ever devised by man. It can burn the living shit out of anything, anywhere, striking without warning, with devastating force and extraordinary precision.”
“That is true. That is true because the Laser Hard Bodies themselves are phenomenal weapons. But the control program just isn’t done. As a defensive weapon, it’s not ready yet because it’s blind. It can’t detect incoming hardware. It can’t calculate trajectories. It can’t hit moving targets.”
“Of course it can’t. Yet. But it will be able to do those things, Lamar. I assure you. The funds that have not been forthcoming through normal channels are going to find their way to you through abnormal channels. I don’t have to be explicit about the mechanism. But I can be very specific about the extent of funding. I am going to make a commitment on Monday of next week to release enough funds into your account to take on at least the nucleus of the ShieldCom staff that we had planned for. On Monday, I will make that decision. With the President’s concurrence, of course. You can see why it’s important to keep his spirits up.”
“Rupert, I can’t tell him the Shield is up there. I couldn’t live with myself. My god, what would it mean to let the man believe he could defend his cities with such a weapon when it just wasn’t ready. He might count on it and not negotiate his way out of a situation, secure in the belief that Armitage would bail him out. And Armitage can’t do that.”
“Of course not. And, I assure you, Armitage won’t need to. The role of the Shield is not to shoot at things, no more than the role of nuclear weapons was to blow things up. Their role is to make war unthinkable. The Shield is going to protect us whether it works or not. Because a gentle little leak will make it clear that no preemptive strike can ever succeed. The existence of the Shield is just a guard against preemptive strike. Our adversaries suspect that it’s there and so they know they can’t try anything dumb. The Shield doesn’t have to work because it will never be needed. And meanwhile, you will be putting your people to work to make it fully functional in the future.”
“I can’t lie to him.”
“Of course not. And you won’t have to. Just answer his questions, Lamar, thoughtfully but positively. Don’t feel you have to tell him things he doesn’t ask about. And if he does end up believing what is not yet completely true, well then, next Monday morning, you will start making it come true, A.S.A.P.” A look of utter sincerity on Paule’s pale, hawk-featured face. “Believe me, Lamar, this is the way these things work.”
An attractive middle-aged woman came to escort Armitage into the Oval Office. The area just outside the office was brightly lit, full of the bustle of work, pleasantly cool, nearly electric with excitement and efficiency. The contrast to the inside of the President’s office could not have been more pronounced. The Oval Office was fully 15 degrees warmer. There was no light on anywhere and the shades had been drawn. The woman announced his name and then left, closing the door behind her. Armitage had to pause to figure out where the President was. At last he made him out, seated in a corner on a narrow couch. He was hunched over in his seat. The President glanced up. “Oh, Doctor Armitage. Awfully nice to see you again.”
“Mr. President.” They shook hands.
“It is ‘again,’ isn’t it? I mean, we have met before, haven’t we?
“Oh yes.”
“Otherwise it would have to be ‘nice to meet you.’ But as it is, it’s nice to see you again.”
“Nice to see you too, sir. Again.”
“Yes.”
Armitage took the proffered seat across from the couch. The President seemed small, almost lost in the space around him. It was hard to see in the very dim light, but he looked as though he’d put on a suit that was too big for him, someone else’s suit, or as if he had shrunken since he’d put it on. The well known lines of his face were barely visible in the shadow. He looked a trifle sad. He looked up after a moment. “I wonder, Doctor Armitage, if you have ever had any regrets about the directions you’ve chosen in life.”
“Um…I have regrets about the things I’ve had to neglect, I guess.”
The President seized upon this. “Oh yes. There is a price to be paid for accomplishment, the ‘opportunity cost,’ they call it. The things you never get to. What would those things be, in your case, Doctor Armitage?
“Well, family, for one thing. I never married, you know. It might have been nice to have a wife and children.”
“Children. A wife and children.” He smiled for the first time, the smile familiar to every television viewer. “The family is, well, just the very cornerstone of our nation. There couldn’t be anything more totally American than the family. I don’t think our country could exist at all without families. Don’t you agree?”
“Well, yes. Seems safe to say.”
“Couldn’t exist at all. And if other nations could only learn from us and have families the way we do, the kind of American families that we have, then they would all become, well, more American, if you see what I mean.”
“I…”
“They would. The family is so important to us, so important to me. Well, it’s the cornerstone. That’s how I feel. Where would we be without our cornerstones? That’s why it matters so much. If you had any particular thought of what I might be doing to help along the prosperity of the American family, I would be just so grateful for your suggestion.” He looked hopefully toward his guest.
“Uh, I’ll have to give that some thought.”
“I’d be so grateful if you would. I need all the help I can get. In providing for the prosperity of the family, that is. But I don’t have to tell you how important that is. You already know it. That’s what we’ve been saying. I’m sure that your own feelings are the same as mine on this subject and on other subjects too. But particularly about the family.” He looked a trifle vague. “What with your own family, your lovely wife.”
“Mr. President, was there some particular reason that you wanted to see me today?”
“Oh, particular reason, yes.” He reached forward to the low cocktail table between them to tear off a short strip of transparent tape from a mahogany dispenser. He held this in his left hand and began to rub his thumb energetically over the sticky surface of the tape. “I did have a reason.” A long pause. The President looked over to the space in front of his desk where only half an hour earlier he had been kneeling beside the Reverend Nolan Gallant in prayer. He was feeling less peaceful than he usually did after praying, unhappily aware of the very different direction that his own prayers tended to take compared to the those guided by Gallant. And yet they were both praying to the same god, prayi
ng for the same end, guided by the same faith.
The President had succeeded in rubbing all the sticky material off the face of the short piece of tape. He discarded the bit of transparent film and drew a fresh piece of tape from the dispenser.
“Sir? You were saying?”
“Yes. I have no regrets of my own, really.” He smiled again. “Well, that isn’t entirely true. I’ve always thought that I would have made a good painter, if I’d had the time. Churchill was a painter, you know.”
“Yes. I did know that.”
“He painted landscapes. I’ve always admired Churchill. I’ve thought of him as someone who exemplified the true leader. I’ve told my people again and again during the campaigns of my admiration of Churchill and how they might very well approach the whole business of getting me elected by just calling attention to the ways in which my own record paralleled that of Winston Churchill. My record and my plans for the nation.”
“And your plans now, are they Churchillian?”
“Well they probably will be. For instance, I’m giving some thought to doing a bit of painting, you see.”
“And your plans for the nation’s future, perhaps that was what you wanted to see me about.”
“Perhaps it was. But this business of Churchill that you mention, and in particular his painting…”
“I didn’t mention Churchill.”
“You didn’t?”
“No.”
“Well, no matter. Somehow I thought you did. Because that did seem to be the topic we were discussing. I have these landscapes in my mind that are simply crying out to be painted.” He reached for another piece of tape. “Canvases of the most peaceful fields, stretching out away from us with the glint of water beside an old mill. Like Constable. You do know the work of Constable, don’t you?”
“Of course. Mr. President.”
“Well, landscapes like that. Not exactly like the ones Churchill painted. Though I wouldn’t want to be thought very different from Churchill, it’s just that I have some notions of my own…”
“Sir, the matter of Churchill is on your mind right now because, like Churchill, you are concerned with…”
“The American family?”
“Well, no. I was thinking of the defense of the nation.”
“And well you might. There can be no compromise where the defense of the nation is concerned. I’ve often said that. I go on and on about defense being simply sacrosanct, and so on and so forth. Because how can we defend the American family without defending the nation? The family cannot exist without the…well, without the landscape underneath it. Maybe that was why the subject of landscapes came up. The landscape—and here I am talking about a good American landscape—is all important. And defending that landscape is important, or even sacrosanct. Keeping it peaceful. Peace is on my mind just all the time, because without peace, the landscapes, you admire most for their peacefulness would be…”
“At war?”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to say that. But they wouldn’t be the landscapes that I see in my inner eye. They would be different. I don’t want to paint different landscapes. I want to paint landscapes like John Constable did. The same kind of landscapes. And done just as well.”
The President had succeeded in rubbing the stickum off yet another piece of tape. He had now accumulated quite a lump of the stuff that he was rolling between the thumb and forefinger of one hand as he reached for another piece of tape with the other. The material had taken on a blackish color. Armitage watched in fascination as the President manipulated the growing booger of elastic gum.
“We all have some expression inside us of the world as it really ought to be. And there can be no more sacred calling than to express that expression in the form of a painting, for example. Can you imagine the effect on the nation if its President produced paintings like those to convey his notion of peacefulness? I think that it would be very much in the interest of peace. We would approach world peace through peacefulness. And we wouldn’t have any need for armies and missiles and…”
“Missiles! Did you want to say something about missiles?”
“No, not really. I wanted to say something about painting.”
“But, sir, wasn’t the reason for our meeting to be a discussion of…”
“Basic American values.”
“The defense of American values when they are threatened.”
“As they are today. Oh they are. Make no mistake about that, Doctor Armitage. Our sacred values are under assault. And I don’t use that term lightly. Or any of the other words we’ve been using. The threat to fundamental values has never been more threatening. And what is that threat?”
“Attack by terrorist proxy groups armed with strategic weapons?”
“Well, I was thinking more of the problem of drugs.”
“Drugs?!”
“Yes. The drug lords, these vicious pushers that haunt our nations schools, are conducting a veritable assault on the American family.”
“But Mr. President. You didn’t ask me here to talk about drugs.”
“I didn’t?”
“No, sir. I think you wanted to talk about the Shield, about the laser Shield. Didn’t you? Didn’t you want to ask me about those things? Didn’t you want to ask about Revelation13?”
The President was still twirling the black booger. He looked down now at the thing in his fingers. “It’s strange you should mention Revelation. Doctor Armitage, may I ask you a question?”
“Of course! That’s what I’m here for.”
“The description of the events leading up to the Apocalypse, as described in the book of Revelation, well, did you ever read that?”
“No, I never did.”
“It’s just amazing to me, how like our own times that description is. I mean, it’s eerie. And it’s not just the Book of Revelation, it’s also in the Second letter of Peter, and in other books as well. Books other than the Bible, too. There are confirmations from other sources. This vision of the different world that’s coming, you can find it in the works of Nostradamus and of Jeanne Dixon and all of those visionary writers. They have got this idea of change that is coming. They have these pictures inside their heads, like my pictures, for that matter. Only their pictures are often horrible, while mine are pleasant. That’s why I keep coming back to my pictures.” He looked up smiling. “Whenever I think of my pictures, I feel better. I think that if only I could bring those pictures out of my head and make them into real pictures, then everyone would feel better. And isn’t that what the job of President is really all about? To take his vision of peace and make it accessible to people all over the world. That’s what the Nobel Peace Prize is for, though it’s too soon, of course, to talk about such rewards. I am, after all, only a beginning painter. I haven’t really even done my first canvas, only thought about it. But that will come. I have so much to do. A lot to do, and of course, never enough time.” He checked his watch. “Oh, my. Well, Doctor Armitage, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your visit.” The President rose to his feet.
“I…”
“This kind of frank discussion is enormously helpful. The Chief Executive is only as good as the advisers he puts his trust in. And I do put my trust in you, Dr. Armitage.” He put one arm on Armitage’s back and guided him toward the door. “Now you won’t forget to get back with me with your advice on that little matter you agreed to think about.”
“What little matter?”
“Whatever it was. Thank you again for coming, Doctor Armitage.”
Armitage blinked at the sudden light. He was back outside in the brightly illuminated anteroom. He heard the door click softly behind him.
PART II
THE LAYTON EFFECT
10
A PERSISTENT EFFECTOR
The puzzle of Peculiar Motion was a puzzle no longer. In the light of Loren’s breakthrough about the nature of time and his six revolutionary equations, the pattern of electron motion that had baffled them for so
long no longer seemed even peculiar. Given that time had a fixed and a variable component, the once inexplicable behavior of electrons was now mundane. The “Layton Effect,” as Loren dubbed the local slowing of t-prime time, explained it all. Homer and his team turned their attention to the task of investigating the many other effects of altering t-prime. What they were formulating in this work was a whole new natural science. The existing body of science described physical phenomena with fixed value of t-prime; their new science was to describe the changes that result when t-prime varies.
They uncrated all the laboratory equipment in Homer’s office and tried out each one of the classroom demonstrations first outside and then inside the beam, carefully noting the results in the daybook. They raided the chemistry lab in Baker Hall for further demonstrations and tested those as well. For all their understanding of the laws of physics, Homer, Sonia, Loren and Edward showed little aptitude in chemistry. They took turns poring over Sonia’s battered copy of Sienko and Plane to refresh their memories on Gram-equivalents and Avogadro’s Number. Kelly had taken a course in genetics that involved breeding generations of fruit flies to observe mutation. She allocated herself a section of the beam for a small drosophilia colony to determine how living things would prosper at a lower t-prime.
The Layton Effect induced by the maser beam was the almost imperceptible local slowing of time. Any experiment conducted inside the beam proceeded slightly more slowly. When the experiment included swift change of state or velocity or temperature (change of anything, in fact), the change was noticeably more sluggish than it would have been outside the beam. The Layton Effect produced an increased resistance to change. Nothing would explode inside the beam. Internal combustion engines wouldn’t run, but electric motors would. Most combustibles would burn, though more slowly.
The fruit flies lived lives that were on the average 0.04 percent longer. Their internal clocks ran 0.04 percent slower, so the increased lifespan was of no value to them. They reproduced successfully. Subsequent generations seemed normal, at least to Kelly. Their sex drive as indicated by couplings per week was essentially the same inside the beam as outside. Kelly entered the observation in the daybook.
