“Maybe,” said Williams, “they have no real government. You must realize that five centuries from now there would be changes.”
“Steve,” the President asked, “what do you make of it? You’re the man who brought him in.”
“A waste of time,” said Douglas.
“If you want me to vouch for his story,” said Wilson, “I can’t do that, of course.”
“What did Molly say?” asked Sandburg.
“Nothing really. She simply turned him over to me. He told her none of the things that he told us, of that I’m sure, but she wormed out of him and his daughter some sort of story about what kind of world they came from. She said she was satisfied.”
“Did Global News try to make a deal?” asked Douglas.
“Of course they did. Any news agency or any reporter worth his salt certainly would have tried. They would have been delinquent in their job if they hadn’t tried. But Manning didn’t press too hard. He knew as well as I did—”
“You didn’t make a deal?” asked Douglas.
“You know he didn’t,” said the President.
“What I need right now,” said Wilson, “is some indication of how much I should tell the press.”
“Nothing,” said Douglas. “Absolutely nothing.”
“They know I’ve been in here. They know something is going on.
They won’t be satisfied with nothing.”
“They don’t need to know.”
“But they do need to know,” said Wilson. “You can’t treat the press as an adversary. They have a legitimate function—the people have a right to know. The press has played ball with us before and they will this time, but we can’t ignore them. We have to give them something and it had better be the truth.”
“I would think,” said Williams, “that we should tell them we have information that tends to make us believe these people may be, as they say, from the future, but that we need some time to check. At the moment we can make no positive announcement. We are still working on it.”
“They’ll want to know,” said Sandburg, “why they are coming back. Steve has to have some sort of answer. We can’t send him out there naked. Besides, they will know within a short time, that we are placing guns in front of the tunnels.”
“It would scare hell out of everyone,” said Williams, “if it were known why the guns were being placed. There would be a worldwide clamor for us to use the guns to shut down the tunnels.”
“Why don’t we just say,” suggested the President, “that the people of the future are facing some great catastrophe and are fleeing for their lives? The guns? I suppose we’ll have to say something about them. We can’t be caught in a downright falsehood. You can say they are no more than routine precaution.”
“But only if the question is raised,” said Sandburg.
“Okay,” said Wilson, “but that isn’t all of it. There’ll be other questions. Have we consulted with other nations? How about the UN? Will there be a formal statement later?”
“You could say, perhaps,” said Williams, “that we have contacted other governments. We have that advisory about the guns.”
“Steve,” said the President, “you’ll have to try to hold them off. We’ve got to get our feet under us. Tell them you’ll be back to them later.”
By Molly Kimball
Washington (Global News)—The people who are coming from the tunnels are refugees from time.
This was confirmed late today by Maynard Gale, one of the refugees. He refused to say, however, why they were fleeing from a future which he says lies 500 years ahead of us. The circumstances of their flight, he insisted, could only be revealed to a constituted government. He said he was making efforts to make contact with an appropriate authority. He explained that he held the position of ombudsman for the Washington community in his future time and had been delegated to communicate with the Federal Government upon his arrival here.
He did, however, give a startling picture of the kind of society in which he lives, or rather, did live—a world in which there are no nations and from which the concept of war has disappeared.
It is a simple society, he said, forced to become simple by the ecological problems that we face today. It is no longer an industrial society. Its manufacturing amounts to no more, perhaps less, than one per cent of today’s Figure. What it does manufacture is made to last. The philosophy of obsolescense was abandoned only a short distance into our future, he said, in the face of dwindling natural resources; a dwindling about which economists and ecologists have been warning us for years.
Because its coal and fossil fuels are almost gone the future world, said Gale, relies entirely on fusion for its energy. The development of that type of power, he said, is the only thing that holds the delicate economic fabric of his world together.
The world of 500 years from now is highly computerized, with the greater part of the population living in “high-rise” cities. A halfdozen towers, some of them teaching as high as a mile, will constitute a city. Urban sprawl is gone, leaving vast surface areas free for agricultural purposes. The cities are built in large part from converted scrap metal, which in our day would have been buried in landfills. Administration is almost entirely by computer.
There is, Gale said, none of the great spread of wealth that is found in our world. No one is rich and there is none of the abject poverty that today oppresses millions. Apparently there has been not only a change in life style, but a change as well in life values. Life is simpler and kinder and less competitive—there are few eager beavers in the world of 500 years ahead . . .
14. A crowd, quiet and orderly, was gathering in Lafayette Park as crowds had gathered through the years, to stand staring at the White House, not demanding anything, not expecting anything, simply gathering there in a dumb show of participation in a nation’s crisis. Above the crowd Andy Jackson still sat his earing charger, the patina of many years upon both horse and rider, friends to perching pigeons.
No one quite knew what this crisis meant or if it might even be a crisis. The people had as yet no idea of how it had come about or what it might mean to them, although there were a few who had done some rather specific, although distorted, thinking on the subject and were willing (at times insistently) to share with their neighbors what they had been thinking.
In the White House a flood of calls had started to come in and were stacking up—calls from members of the Congress, from party stalwarts ready with suggestions and advice, from businessmen and industrialists suddenly grown nervous, from crackpots who held immediate solutions.
A television camera crew drove up in a van and set up for business, taking footage of the Lafayette crowd and of the White House, gleaming in the summer sun. A newsman on the van was doing a stand-up commentary against the background.
Straggling tourists trailed up and down the avenue, somewhat astonished at thus being caught up in the middle of history, and the White House squirrels came scampering down to the fence and through it out onto the sidewalk, sitting up daintily, forepaws folded on their chests, begging for handouts.
15. Alice Gale stood in the window, gazing across Pennsylvania Avenue at the gathering crowd in the park beyond it. She hugged herself in shivering ecstasy, not daring, to believe that she actually was here—that she could be back in twentieth-century Washington where history had been made, where legendary men had lived—and at this moment in the very room where crowned heads had slept.
Crowned heads, she thought. What an awful, almost medieval phrase. And yet it had a certain ring to it, a certain elegance that her world had never known.
She had caught a glimpse of the Washington Monument as she and her father had been driven into the White House grounds. And out there a marble Lincoln sat in his marble chair, his arms resting on its arms and his massive, whiskered face bearing that look of greatness, of sorrow and compassion that had quieted thousands into reverent silence as they climbed the stairs to stand face to face with him.
&n
bsp; Just across the hallway her father was in Lincoln’s bedroom with its massive Victorian bed and the velvet-covered slipper chairs.
Although, she recalled, Lincoln had never really slept there.
It was history brought back to life, she thought, history resurrected. And it was a precious thing. It would be something to remember always, no matter what might lie ahead. It would be something to remember in the Miocene. And what, she wondered with a little shiver, might the Miocene be like? If they ever got there, if the people of this time should decide to help them get there?
But whatever might happen she had something she could say: Once I slept in the Queen’s Bedroom.
She turned from the window and looked in wonder once again renewed at the huge four-poster bed with its hangings and counterpane of rose and white, at the mahogany bookcase-secretary that stood between the windows, at the soft white carpeting.
It was selfish of her, she knew, to be feeling like this when so many others of her world at this very moment stood homeless and bewildered, unsure of their welcome, perhaps wondering if they would be fed and where they might lay their heads this night, but even as she tried she could not rebuke herself.
16. “Terry,” said the President, speaking into the phone, “this is Sam Henderson.”
“How good of you to call, Mr.
President,” said Terrance Roberts on the other end. “What can I do for you?”
The President chuckled. “Maybe you can do a lot for me. I don’t know if you will want to. You’ve heard what’s happening?”
“Strange things,” said the labor leader. “A lot of speculation. Are you folks in Washington making any sense of it?”
“Some,” said the President. “It would seem the people of the future face catastrophe and their only escape is to run back into time. We haven’t got the full story yet.”
“But, Mr. President—time travel?”
“I know. It doesn’t sound possible. I haven’t talked to any of our physicists, although I intend to do so and I suspect they’ll tell me it’s impossible. But one of the people who came through a time tunnel swears that’s exactly what he did. If there were any other way to explain what is taking place I’d be more skeptical than I am. But I’m forced by circumstances to accept some explanation—at least provisionally.”
“You mean all of them from up ahead are coming back? How many of them are there?”
“A couple of billion or so, I guess.”
“But, Mr. President, how will we take care of them?”
“Well, that’s really what I wanted to talk with you about. It seems they don’t intend to stay here. They mean to go farther back in time—some twenty million years farther. But they need help to do, it. They need new time tunnels built and they’ll need equipment to take with them—”
“We can’t build time tunnels.”
“They can show us how.”
“It would cost a lot. Both in manpower and materials. Can they pay for it?”
“I don’t know. I never thought to ask. I don’t suppose they can. But it seems to me we have to do it. We can’t let them stay here. We have too many people as it is. . . .”
“Somehow, Mr. President,” said Terrance Roberts, “I can sense what you want to ask me.” The President laughed. “Not only you, Terry. The industrialists as well—everyone, in fact. But I have to know beforehand what kind of cooperation I can expect. I wonder if you’d mind coming here so a few of us can talk about it. . . .”
“Certainly, I’ll come. Just let me know when you want me. Although I’m not just sure how much I can do for you. Let me ask around some, talk to some of the other boys. Exactly what do you have in mind?”
“I’m not entirely sure. That’s something I’ll need some help to work out. On the face of it we can’t do the kind of job that’s called for under existing circumstances. The government alone can’t assume the kind of costs involved—I’m not thinking just of the tunnels. I have no idea so far what they would involve. But we would need to furnish the resources for an entire new civilization and that would cost a lot of money. The taxpaying public would never stand for it. So we’ll have to turn elsewhere for help. Labor will have to pitch in—industry will have to help. A national emergency calls for extraordinary measures. I don’t even krrow how long we can feed all these people and—”
“We’re not the only ones who have that problem,” said Roberts. “The rest of the world has it, too.”
“That’s right. And they’ll also have to take some action. If there were time we could put together some sort of international setup, but a thing like that takes time and we haven’t got it. To start with, at least, it has to be a national action.”
“Have you talked to any of the other nations?”
“Britain and Russia,” said the President. “Some of the others. But not about the additional time tunnels. Once we get an idea or two shaped up we can see what some of the others think. Pool our thoughts. But we can’t take much time. Whatever we do we’ll have to get started on almost immediately and work as fast as we can.”
“You’re sure there are people who can explain these tunnels—whatever they are? Well enough so that our scientists and engineers can understand the principles involved? And the technology well enough—hell, Mr. President, this is sheer insanity. American labor building time tunnels! This has got to be a bad joke.”
“I’m afraid,” Henderson said, “it isn’t a joke. We’re in a mess, Terry. I don’t know how bad. I imagine it will be a day or two before we have the full story and know what we really face. All I ask right now is that you think about it. Get a few ideas together. Figure out what you can do. I’ll let you know about coming down. No use coming now. We have to get a few things sorted out before we can talk. I’ll be in touch as soon as I know a little more about it.”
“Any time, Mr. President,” said Roberts. “You let me know and I’ll be there.”
The President hung up and buzzed Kim. “Ask Steve to come in,” he said when she opened the door. He tilted back in his chair and locked his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. Less than five hours ago, he thought, he’d stretched out for a nap, looking forward to a lazy Sunday afternoon. He didn’t get many lazy afternoons and when they came he treasured them. He had no more than shut his eyes than the world had fallen in on him. Christ, he asked himself, what am I to do? What can I do? What’s the wise thing to do? Without even trying a man could make a mistake or a number of mistakes and Henderson sensed that in this situation he could not afford mistakes.
Steve Wilson came in. The President took his hands from behind his head and tilted forward in the chair.
“Have you had the press in, Steve?”
“No, sir, I haven’t. They’re pounding on the door, but I haven’t let them in. I didn’t have the guts to face them with the little you gave me. I had hoped—”
“All right, then,” said the President. “Your hopes paid off. You can give them all of it with two exceptions. You can’t tell them why we have the guns planted. That still has to be simply normal precautions. And there must be no hint of Gale’s suggestion that we go back in time with them.”
“I can’t tell them, then, about why they’re leaving the future? Nothing about the aliens?”
The President shook his head. “Simply say that this point has not been sufficiently clarified and needs more study before anything can be said of it.”
“They won’t like it,” said Wilson, “but I guess I can manage. How about the TV? I have alerted the networks you may want time this evening.”
“How about ten o’clock? That’s a little late, I suppose, but—”
“Ten will be all right.”
“Then you set it up. Tell them only ten or fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll draft up something for you to look at.”
“You have your hands full, Steve. I’ll ask Brad and Frank to put it together.”
“They’ll want to know if you’ve talked with anyon
e.”
“I talked with Sterling in London and Menkov in Moscow. You can tell them Menkov has talked with the Russian equivalent of our Gale and has substantially the same story we got. London still hadn’t been contacted by anyone when I spoke with Sterling. You can say I plan to talk with other national leaders before the day is out.”
“How about a cabinet meeting? The question is sure to come up.”
“I’ve been seeing cabinet members off and on during the last few hours. This is the first time since it’s started there has been no one in this office. And I’ll be conferring with people on the Hill, of course. Anything else you can think of, Steve?”
“There’ll probably be a lot of other questions. I’ll manage to field them. You can’t anticipate them all. This will satisfy them.”
“Steve, what do you think of Gale? Your own personal opinion. How do you size him up?”
“It’s hard to know,” said Wilson. “No real impression, I’d say. Except that I can’t figure out where he’d gain anything by not telling the truth, or at least the truth as he saw it. However you look at it, those people out there are in serious trouble and they look to us to help them. Maybe they have a thing or two to hide—maybe it’s not exactly as Gale told it, but I think mostly it is. Hard as it may be to accept, I’m inclined to believe him.”
“I hope you’re right,” said the President. “If we’re wrong, they could make us awful fools.”
17. The chauffeured car went up the curving drive to the gracious mansion set well back from the street among flowers and trees. When it stopped before the portico the chauffeur got out and opened the rear door. The old man fumbled out of it, groping with his cane. He petulantly struck aside the chauffeur’s proffered hand.
“I can still manage to get out of a car alone,” he panted, finally disengaging himself from it and standing, albeit a little shakily and unsure of himself, upon the driveway. “You wait right here for me,” he said. “It may take a little while, but you wait right here for me.”
The Complete Serials Page 142
