“You mean,” said Thornton William, “that they duck away when threatened. Some people have made more permanent contact.”
“No, I don’t mean that they duck,” Sandburg said. “They just cease to be there. The soldiers who saw them swore they didn’t move at all. They were there and then they weren’t the observers, all reporting independently, not knowing of the other reports, have made identical statements. One man could be wrong in his observation—it’s possible that two could be. It seems impossible that three observers could err on exactly the same point.”
“Have you, has the military, any theory, any idea of what is going on?”
“None,” said Sandburg. “It must be a new defensive adaptation that they have developed. These creatures are fighting for survival. Cornered, I suppose that they would fight, but only if they had no way out. And apparently they have come up with something new. We have talked with Dr. Isaac Wolfe, the refugee biologist who probably knows more about these aliens than any other man—and this business is something he has never heard of. He suggests, simply as a guess, that the vanishing act may be only a juvenile capability—defense mechanism for the young. It may have gone unobserved until now because Dr. Wolfe and his people have had little opportunity to observe the juveniles—they had their hands full fighting off the adult aliens.”
“How are you doing with getting men into the area?” asked the President.
“I haven’t any figures,” said Sandburg, “but we’re piling them in as fast as we can move them. The refugee camps have formed their own governing committees and that takes off some of the pressure, frees some troops. The agriculture and welfare agencies are handling transportation of food and other necessities to the refugees and that, too, has freed military personnel. We expect the first overseas transport planes to begin landing some time tonight and that will give us more men to work with.”
“Morozov was in this morning,” said Williams, “with an offer to supply us men. In fact, he rather insisted upon it. We, of course, rejected the offer. But it does raise a point. Should we, perhaps, ask for some assistance from Canada, perhaps Mexico, maybe Britain, France, Germany—or from some of the other friendly powers?”
“Possibly we could use some of their forces,” said Sandburg. “I’d like to talk with the chiefs of staff and get their reactions. What we need, and haven’t been able to manage, are some rather substantial forces for both north and south—down in Georgia and in upstate New York. We should try to seal off the aliens’ spread, if they are spreading—and I suppose that is their intention. If we can contain them we can handle them.”
“If they stand still,” said the President.
“That is right,” said Sandburg. “If they stand still.”
“Maybe we should move on to something else,” Henderson suggested. “Reilly, I think you have something to report.”
“I’m not yet too solid on this,” said Reilly Douglas, “but it’s a matter that should be discussed. Frankly, I am inclined to think there may be a rather tricky legal question involved and I’ve had no chance to go into that aspect of it. Clinton Chapman came to see me last night. I think most of you know Clint.”
He looked around the table. Many of the men nodded.
“He came to me,” said Douglas, “and since then has phoned three of four times and we had lunch today. I suppose some of you know that we were roommates at Harvard and have been friends ever since. I suppose that’s why he contacted me. On his first approach he proposed that he—himself—would take over the building of the tunnels, financing the cost with no federal funds involved. In return he would continue in ownership of them once the future people had been transported back to the Miocene and would be licensed to operate them. Since then—”
“Reilly,” Williams interrupted, “I can’t quite understand why anyone would want to own them. What in the world could be done with them? The time force, or whatever it is, as I understand it, operates in only one direction—into the past.”
Douglas shook his head. “Clint won’t buy that. He has talked with his research people—and the staff he has is probably one of the best in the world—and they have assured him that if there is such a thing as time travel it can be made to operate both into the past and into the future. As a matter of fact, they told him it would seem easier to operate it forward than into the past because time’s natural flow is into the future.”
Williams blew out a gusty breath. “I don’t know,” he said. “It has a dirty sound to it. Could we conscientiously turn over two-way travel through time—if such travel were possible—to any one man or any group of men? Think of the ways it could be used—”
“I talked to Clint about this at lunch,” said Douglas. “I explained to him that any such operation, if it were possible, would have to be very strictly controlled. Commissions would have to be set up to formulate a code—Congress would have to legislate. Not only that, but the code and the legislation would have to be worldwide—there would have to be some international agreement and you can imagine how long that might take. Clint agreed to all of this, said he realized it would be necessary. The man is quite obsessed with the idea. As an old friend, I tried to talk him out of it, but he still insists he wants to go ahead. If he is allowed to do it, that is. At first he planned to finance it on his own—but apparently he is beginning to realize the kind of money that would be involved. As I understand it, he is now very quietly trying to put together a consortium to take over the project.”
Sandburg frowned. “I would say no on impulse. The potentials would have to be studied closely.”
“There could be military applications,” said Williams. “I’m not just sure what they would be.”
“International agreements, with appropriate safeguards, would have to be set up to keep it from being used militarily,” said the President. “And if these agreements should fail at any time in the future, I can’t see that it would make much difference who held the license. National needs would always take precedence. No matter how it goes, rapid movement through time seems to be something we’re stuck with. It’s something we have to face—and make the best of.”
“You favor Clint’s proposal, Mr. President?” Douglas asked in some surprise. “When I talked with you—”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say I favored it,” Henderson said. “But under the conditions we face it seems to me we should consider all possibilities or proposals. We are going to be hard pressed to find the kind of money or credit that is needed to build the tunnels. Not only we, but the world. Perhaps the rest of the world confronts more difficulties than we.”
“That brings us to another point,” said Williams. “I suppose Chapman and his consortium are proposing to construct only the tunnels in the United States.”
“I don’t know the extent of his plans,” Douglas said. “I would guess that Chapman’s consortium might include some foreign money. I can’t see a country like the Congo or Portugal or Indonesia turning its back on someone who wants to build its tunnels. Other nations might be hesitant, but if we went along with the plan and a couple of the other major nations joined us—say Germany or France—most of the others would follow. Nobody would want to be left out.”
“This is going to cost a lot of money,” Secretary of the Treasury Manfred Franklin put in. “Tunnels for the entire world would run into billions.”
“There are gamblers in the financial world,” observed Ben Cunningham, of Agriculture. “But mostly theirs is what is known as smart money. Chapman must be fairly sure of his bets. Do you imagine he may know something we don’t know?”
Douglas shook his head. “I am inclined to think not. His RD people are good, but they’re only theorizing that time travel has to be a two-way street. Practical application so far says no. But even that is the first new idea—the first really .new idea with genuine technological and engineering potential—that has come along in fifty years or more. Clint and his gang understandably want to get in on the ground floor
.”
“The question,” said Williams, “is whether or not we should let them.”
“Much as we may regret to do so,” said the President, “we may have to. Or word would be leaked to the public and you can imagine what the taxpayers’ reaction would be. Frankly, gentlemen, we may find ourselves in a position where opposing the consortium would be, political suicide.”
“You don’t seem to be too upset about it,” Williams said somewhat acidly.
“When you have been in politics as long as I, Thornton, you don’t gag too easily at anything that comes up. You learn to be practical. There are times when you simply cannot take potshots at Santa Claus.”
“I still don’t like it,” said Williams.
“Nor do I,” said Sandburg.
“Letting Chapman go ahead would be a solution,” said Franklin. “Labor is ready to join us in the emergency. If the financial interests of the world would also go along—which is actually what would happen under this consortium setup—our basics would be settled. We still have to feed the refugees, but I understand we can do that longer than we had thought at first. Supplying them with what they’ll need to establish themselves in their new start can be done at a fraction of the tunnel costs. Someone will have to do some rather rapid planning to calculate how much of our manufacturing processes and resources will have to be converted for a time to the making of wheelbarrows, hoes, axes, plows and other similar items, but that’s simply a matter of computer time. The job may pinch us a bit, but it can be done. The tunnels are the big challenge and Chapman’s consortium will do the job there if we let them.”
“How about all those bannercarrying kids who say they want to go back in time?” asked Cunningham. “I say let them go. It would clear the streets of them and for a long time a lot of people have been yelling about population pressure. We may have the answer here.”
“You’re being facetious, of course,” said the President, “but—”
“I can assure you, sir, I’m not in the least facetious. I mean it.”
“And I agree with your main position,” Henderson said. “My reasons may not be yours, but I do think we should not try to stop anyone who wants to leave us. But before we allow them to go they must have the same ecological sense and convictions the future people have. We can’t send back people who’ll use up the resources we already have used. That would make a paradox I don’t pretend to understand, but I imagine it might be fatal to our civilization.”
“Who would teach them this ecological sense and conviction?”
“The refugees. They don’t all need to go back into the past immediately. In fact, they have offered to leave a group of specialists with us who will teach us much of the knowledge of the next five hundred years—as much of it as we can assimilate. I think this offer should be accepted.”
“So do I,” said Williams. “Some economic and social applecarts will be upset, but in the long run we should be way out in front. In twenty years or less we could jump five hundred years ahead—without making the mistakes our descendants on the old world line made.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Douglas. “There are too many factors involved. I’d have to think about that for a while.”
“We are forgetting one thing,” Sandburg said. “We can go ahead and plan, of course. And we have to do it fast. We have to be well along to a working solution in a month or so or time will begin running out. But the point I want to make is this—the solution, the planning may do us little good if we aren’t able to wipe out, or at least control, the aliens.”
44. The kids out in the street might be the ones, Wilson told himself, with the right idea. He could understand their fascination with the concept of starting over once again—the slate wiped clean and the record clear. Only trouble was, he thought, that even starting over, the human race might still repeat many of its past mistakes—perhaps in some different form. Then again, maybe not. It would take some time to make old errors and there would at least be the opportunity, if the will were there, to correct them before they got too big, too entrenched and awkward.
Alice Gale had talked about a wilderness where the White House once had stood and Dr. Osborne, on the ride from Fort Myer to the White House, had expressed his doubt that the trend that had made the White House park a wilderness could be stopped—it had gone too far, he had said. You are too top-heavy, he had said—you are off balance.
Perhaps the trend had gone too far, Wilson admitted to himself—big government was growing bigger; big business was growing fatter and more arrogant; taxes were steadily rising, never going down; the poor were becoming ever poorer and increasing in numbers despite the best intentions of a welfare-conscious society; the gap between the rich and poor, the government and the public was becoming wider by the year. How could it have been done differently, he wondered. Given the kind of world Earth was, how could circumstances have been better ordered?
He shook his head. He had no idea. There might be men who could go back and chart the political, economic and social growth and show where the errors had been made, putting their fingers on certain actions in a certain year and saying here is where we made this error. But the men who could do this were theorists working on the basis of ideas, many of which could not stand the test of application.
The phone on his desk rang and he picked it up.
“Mr. Wilson?”
“Yes.”
“This is the guard at the southwest gate. There is a gentleman here who says that he must see you on a matter of importance. Mr. Thomas Manning. Mr. Bentley Price is with him. Do you know them, sir?”
“Yes. Please send them in.”
“I’ll send an escort with them, sir. You’ll be in your office?”
“Yes. I’ll wait here for them.”
Wilson dropped the receiver back into its cradle. What could bring Manning here? Why should he have to come in person? A matter of importance, he had said. And Bentley—for the love of God, why Bentley?
Was it, he wondered, something further about the U.N. business?
He looked at his watch. The cabinet meeting was taking longer than he had thought it would. Maybe it was over and the President had become busy with other matters. Although that would be strange—Kim ordinarily would have squeezed Steve in.
Manning and Bentley came into the room. The guard stopped at the door. Wilson nodded at him.
“It’s all right. You can wait outside. This is an unexpected pleasure,” he said to the two, shaking their hands. “I seldom see you, Tom. And Bentley. I almost never see you.”
“I got business elsewhere,” Bentley said. “I get my legs run off. I’m running all the time.”
“Bentley just got in from West Virginia,” Manning said. “That’s what this visit is about.”
“There was this dog in the road,” said Bentley, “and then a nearby tree came up and hit me.”
“Bentley took a picture of a monster standing in the road,” said Manning, “just as it disappeared.”
“I got her figured now,” said Bentley. “It saw the camera pointed at it and it heard it click. Them monsters don’t stay around when they see something pointed at them.”
“There have been other reports of their disappearing,” Wilson said. “A defense mechanism of some sort, perhaps. It’s making it tough for the boys out hunting them.”
“I don’t think so,” said Manning. “Forcing them to disappear may be as good as hunting them.”
He unzipped a thin briefcase he was carrying and took out a sheaf of photos. “Look at this,” he said.
He slid the top photo across the desk to Wilson.
Wilson took a quick look, then fixed his gaze on Bentley. “What kind of trick photography is this?” he asked.
“There ain’t no tricks,” said Bentley. “A camera never lies. It always tells the truth. It shows you what is there. That’s what really happens when a monster disappears. I was using a fast film—”
“But dinosaurs!” yelled
Wilson.
Bentley’s hand dipped into his pocket and brought out an object. He handed it to Wilson. “A glass,” he said. “Take a look with it. There are herds of them off in the distance. You can’t do tricks of that sort.”
The monster was hazed, a sort of shadow monster, but substantial enough for there to be no doubt it was an alien. Behind it the dinosaurs, three of them, were in sharp focus.
“Duckbills,” said Manning. “If you showed that photograph to a paleontologist, I have every expectation he could give you an exact identification.”
The trees were strange. Some looked like palms, others like gigantic ferns.
Wilson unfolded the magnifier, bent his head close above the photo, shifted the glass about. Bentley had been right. There were other strange creatures spread across the landscape, herds of them, singles, pairs. A small mammal of some sort cowered under a shrub.
“We have some blowups,” Manning said, “of the background. Want to look at them?”
Wilson shook his head. “No. I’m satisfied.”
“We looked it up in a geology book, said Bentley. “That there is a Cretaceous landscape.”
“Yes, I know,” said Wilson.
He reached for the phone. “Kim,” he said, “is Mr. Gale in his room? Thank you. Please ask him to step down.”
Manning laid the rest of the photos on the desk. “They are yours,” he said. “We’ll be putting them on the wire. We wanted you to know first. You thinking the same thing that I am?”
Wilson nodded. “I suppose I am,” he said, “but no quotation, please.”
“We don’t need quotes,” said Manning. “The picture tells the story. The monster, the mother monster, I would suppose you’d call it, was exposed to the time travel principle when it came through the tunnel. The principle was imprinted on its mind, its instinct, whatever you may call it. It transmitted knowledge of the principle to the young—a hereditary instinct.”
The Complete Serials Page 153
