by James Gunn
Robertson Osborne, 1949...
Andrew White—2028
"Tell them I came and no one answered,
That I kept my word,” he said.
The office was big. Too big, Andrew White thought. Across the broad, blue, deep-piled carpet with the woven seal in the middle to the carved, white door by which visitors entered was a good twenty yards—that was bigger than the entire flat in which he had been born—and people who came in that door were diminished, like Alice.
That was the way it was intended, no doubt. Space equals importance. And who was more important than the President of the United States?
Everybody, White thought.
The President of the United States is a lonely man, White began to compose in his head. He takes unto himself all the loneliness of the people he serves. And he is a lowly man. Every citizen is higher than he is. He exists to sign his name to other men's decisions, to accept the blame when things go wrong. He is a figurehead and a scapegoat. Fellow Americans, I have made my decision: I will not run for a second term....
But he would, he knew. He would not run away from his duty, and his duty was to complete the job his predecessors had begun more than fifty years ago. The job was not done, God knew, and it was becoming harder all the time to tell people what was wrong, to show them the way it had been, to convince them that the battle needed to be fought anew each day, that peace was an illusion....
Maybe, he thought, it is the ghosts of the other men who have occupied this chair that haunt me today, that make me feel small. He stretched his shoulders and felt the long, flat muscles rippling under the layer of fat too many chicken dinners had put there, and he knew he was a big man, an imposing President, six-feet-six from the soles of his feet to the top of his close-cropped hair, and the physical equal of any of them, of anyone who came through that door.
Perhaps it was the smell of the place, the smell of fresh air untainted by the odors of cooking food or of other people, the smell of paper and ink, the smell of electrical gadgets functioning noiselessly to bring information or send orders, the smell of power—everything was changed from what he had known as a boy, as a young man. And he smelled the freshly mown grass and turned his back on the door and looked out the broad windows behind the desk toward the green lawn and the leafy trees and the fence, and beyond that the broad streets and tall towers of Washington, which had replaced the familiar ghetto that he had fought to escape and found himself remembering frequently now as if he had been fond of it, as if it had been a happy home.
He thought how wonderful it would be if he could take off his shoes and walk barefooted in the grass the way he used to do in the park when he was a boy. What a fine picture that would be—the President walking barefooted on the White House lawn—and he knew if he did it the picture would be reproduced in one hundred million homes across the nation and the world and it would win him votes. The people liked to think of the President being a bit impulsive when it came to matters of the heart, a bit comic in domestic affairs, a bit inferior to each of them in some way.... But he knew he wouldn't do it. He would not have time. He had no time for anything now that he liked to do. He wished he were back in the ghetto, where there was time for everything, time for eating and sleeping and playing and loving, time for being a father or a son, time for joy and indignation....
He heard the door open and he turned. John was standing in the doorway. He was a good-looking man, White thought. He got his good looks from his mother and his size from his father. Maybe a little conservative in his dress and hair style but a good-looking brother all the same.
“Dr. MacDonald is calling from the Project,” John said. His tone was stiff.
He still recalled last night's conversation, White thought, and he knew now why he felt depressed, why he felt like resigning, why he felt like giving up. It was because of John.
“Who is Dr. MacDonald?” White asked.
“The director of the Project in Puerto Rico, Mr. President,” John said. “The one that's been listening for radio communication from the stars, listening for more than fifty years. They picked up something a few months ago that sounded like a message from—some star or other, I forget. From what MacDonald says I gather they've got a translation.”
“Good Lord!” White said. “Have I met him?”
“Once or twice, I think—at a reception, at least.”
White sighed. “Put him on.” He had a feeling of impending disaster. Maybe that was what everything had been leading up to today.
As he felt his stomach sinking under a cold weight, a window opened between his desk and the distant fireplace, unused now with the rigid laws on pollution, and the face of a man a bit past middle age looked at him from a desk. The man's hair was sandy with little apparent gray, unlike his own, and his face was calm and patient and worn. White had seen the face before, he recognized, and he liked the man immediately and sympathized with the man's problem, whatever it was, and caught himself before he went too far.
“Dr. MacDonald,” he said. “So good to talk to you again. How are things in Puerto Rico?”
“Mr. President—” MacDonald said, and caught himself and then continued in better control. “Mr. President, this is a moment as historic as the first atomic reaction. I wish I had some memorable phrase to announce it, but all I can say is that we have a message from other intelligent beings on a world circling one of the twin suns of Capella, and we have a translation. We are not alone.”
“Congratulations, Dr. MacDonald,” White said automatically. “How many people know about this?”
“I was going to tell you—” MacDonald began, and then broke off. “Fifteen,” he said. “Perhaps twenty.”
“Are they all there?” White asked.
“They've scattered.”
“Can you get them back together? Immediately?”
“All except Jeremiah and his daughter. They left a few minutes ago.”
“Jeremiah, the Solitarian evangelist?” White asked. “What was he doing there?”
MacDonald blinked. “His opposition to the Project was a threat. He saw the message translation come off the computer print-out; he is no longer opposed. Mr. President, the message—”
“Get him back to your office,” White said. “He must not reveal the message, whatever it is, nor will you or any member of your staff.”
“And what about an answer to the message?” MacDonald asked.
“Out of the question,” White said brusquely. “There will be no announcement, no leaks, no answer. The effects of this are incalculable. I must get busy with my staff. I suggest you do the same.”
“Mr. President,” MacDonald said, “I think you are making a serious mistake. I urge you to reconsider. Let me give you the background, the goals, the significance and meaning of the Project.”
White paused and thought. There weren't many people who told him he was wrong—John and this man MacDonald, and they both could be difficult. He knew he should cherish the nay-sayers, but he found them a trial; he disliked being told he was making a mistake.
Teddy Roosevelt, someone had written (Lincoln Steffens?), made up his mind somewhere in the region of his hips, and that was the way with Andrew White, he thought. He didn't always know where his decisions came from, but they almost always were right.
He had to believe in his hips. “I'll come to the Project,” he said. “You can try to convince me.” There—that's all the scientists really wanted, a chance to be heard. “For security reasons I can't specify the time, and you will not tell anyone else. But it should be within a few days.” He broke the connection.
Another burden, he thought. One more weary bale to tote.
“John!” he called.
John appeared in the doorway. “I'm making the arrangements now,” he said, “and I'm having a brief history of the Project put together for you.”
“Thank you,” White said. John was a good man and an indispensable assistant, he thought. “You'll go with me, won't yo
u?” he asked humbly.
John nodded. “If you wish,” he said. But he was still reserved.
After the door was closed again, White thought, perhaps this would let them get back together again, give them a chance to talk to each other, to really communicate instead of using words as if they were stones.
And then John was in the doorway again. “Dr. MacDonald called back,” he said. “The private plane carrying Jeremiah and his daughter back to Texas already had taken off.”
White thought briefly about the possibility of intercepting the plane, of having Jeremiah put into custody as he landed, or having the plane shot down at sea on some pretext or other. But it felt all wrong. “Leave an urgent message for him at whatever his destination is: that I want to talk to him before he does anything, to do nothing about the message until I talk to him. And reroute us through Texas.”
John hesitated in the doorway. “Father,” he said, paused, and then continued, “Mr. President, Dr. MacDonald is right. You're making a mistake. This is a scientific decision, not a political decision.”
White shook his head slowly, sorrowfully. “Everything is political. But that's why I'm going to the Project, to give Dr. MacDonald a chance to convince me I'm wrong.”
That was only a half-truth. He was going to Puerto Rico to make his decision stick. And for other reasons he had not yet fully explored himself. He knew it, and John knew it.
Damn it! Why couldn't the boy realize that it wasn't intelligence or even wisdom he was talking about; it was just living: he had been there, he had been young and he knew what it was like, and he wanted to save John the pain. And John had never been middle-aged.
"Those times are done, Father,” John had said. “They were fine; they were great; they were necessary like the pioneers; but they're done. You've got to know when the frontier is gone, when the battle is over. You've made it; you've won. There's nothing so unnecessary as a soldier when the war is over. It's time to do something else now."
"I've heard that all my life from people like you, from quitters,” White had said, yelling now. “It isn't over; the inequalities haven't been removed—they've just been hidden better. We've got to keep fighting until we've got a final victory, until there's no chance of it slipping away from us. You've got to help, boy! I didn't raise you to pass...."
But that was all wrong. What he should have said was, “I need you, son. You're my link to the future, the reason for it all."
And John would have said, “I never thought of it like that, Father...."
Why didn't the boy, ever call him “Dad"?
The trip from Washington to Texas, from catapult to touchdown, was short and uneventful, no longer than it took for John to read to White the brief report on the Project. White sat in his chair, his head leaned back, his eyes closed, listening to the muffled whine of the air trying to find a hold on the polished metal skin a few inches away, and he hated it. He hated mechanical and electrical devices that kept him away from people, that hurtled him here and there, that insulated him from the world, and he was surrounded by them; he couldn't get away from them.
And he listened to John's voice reading the report, heard the boy become interested, get involved, and he wanted to say, “Stop reading! Stop telling me these dull things that I don't want to hear, that will only confuse me! Don't waste your passion on these pointless projects; save it for me! Stop reading and let us talk about matters more suited for a father and son, about love and the past, about love and the future, about us!” But he knew John would not approve; he would not understand. And he listened to John's voice....
The first three decades of the Project had been troubled. Enthusiasm had leaked away over the years as all the efforts, all the imagination, produced nothing for the listeners but silence; directors came and went; morale was a constant problem; funding became perfunctory. Then MacDonald came to the Project and a few years later was named director. Still no messages were received—or recognized, if received—but the Project was pulled together, the long-term nature of the task was recognized, and the search went on.
Then, fifty years after the Project was begun, a Project scientist was checking tapes of the routine radio telescopy from the giant radio telescope in orbit around the earth, the Big Ear, when he thought he heard voices. He filtered them, subtracted noise and interference, reinforced the information, and heard snatches of music and voices speaking English.
The plane landed in Houston. White's first question to the officials who were waiting to greet him was, “Where's Jeremiah?”
They were embarrassed. One of them finally gave him Jeremiah's message, “If the President wants to see me, he knows where he can find me.”
White sighed. He hated airports, too, with all their comings and goings, their noises and their smells, and he wanted to get away. “Take me to Jeremiah,” he said.
They argued, but they took him through the clean wide streets of Houston and up to the incredible dome that was called the temple of the Solitarians and down underground passages, dusty and dark, until they reached a small room which seemed even smaller under the oppressive weight of the stadium above.
The old man looked up from the old make-up table and mirror. His hair was white, his face was lined, and his eyes were dark, and White knew as he saw him that he would not be able to move the evangelist. But he had to try.
“Jeremiah?” he said.
“Mr. President?” Jeremiah said in a “render-unto-Caesar” tone.
“You have returned from Arecibo,” White said, “with a copy of a message.”
“I have returned with nothing,” Jeremiah said, “and any message I received was addressed to me alone. I cannot speak for any other man.”
“I speak for many other men,” White said sorrowfully, “and in their name I ask that you not reveal your message to anyone else.”
“So might Pharaoh have said to Moses when he came down from Mt. Horeb.”
“But I am not Pharaoh and you are not Moses and the message is not the Ten Commandments,” White said.
Jeremiah's eyes burned. His voice, in contrast, was curiously gentle. “You speak with a greater certainty than I can pretend to. You have legions"—his glance flicked briefly over the guards and assistants who crowded the doorway and the hall outside—"and all I have is my solitary mission. But I will fulfill it unless I am physically restrained, and I will fulfill it this evening.” At the end his voice had not seemed to change, but now it was smooth, hard steel.
White tried one more time. “If you do this,” he said, “you will be sowing the dragon's teeth of dissension and strife which may well destroy this country.”
A smile twisted across Jeremiah's face and was gone. “I am not Cadmus and this is not Thebes, and who knows God's plan for man?”
White started to leave and Jeremiah said, “Wait!” He turned back to his dressing table and picked up a piece of paper. “Here!” he said, holding it out. “You will be the first to receive the message from the hands of Jeremiah.”
White took it and turned and walked the long, dark, echoing corridors back to the cars and said to the anonymous men who escorted him, “I want full coverage,” and got into the plane to continue his journey to Puerto Rico.
John had a recording of the voices. First there were whispers. The whispers were faint but complex as if they were the whispers of a thousand lips and tongues blended together. Only maybe they were made without lips and tongues, by creatures who had no familiar organs but communicated by humming in their thorax or rubbing their antennae together.
White thought about the long years of listening to this, and he wondered how men had endured it.
Then the whispering grew louder and became the sound of static, miscellaneous sound, noise, and then something more, something coming clearer, something almost intelligible, beginning to come through, almost like the times when you were very small and lying in bed half asleep and people were talking in the next room, and you couldn't make out what they were sayi
ng and couldn't rouse yourself enough to listen, but you knew they were saying something....
And then White heard snatches of music and bits of voices saying broken sentences between the static and the voices were saying pointless things but they were saying something.
“popcracklepop,” they said. “Voss you dare share cracklepop you have a friend and adviser in cracklecrackle music popcracklepop another trip down allens poppopcrackle stay tuned for popcrackle music: bar ba sol bar pop you termites flophouse cracklepoppoppop at the chime it will be ex cracklecracklepop people defender of poppop music popcrackle the only thing we have to fear crackle and now vic and poppop duffy ain't here cracklepop music popcracklepop information plea cracklecrackle music: boo boo boo boo poppopcrackle can a woman over thirty-five cracklepoppoppop adventures of sher popcracklecrackle music poppop it's a bird crackle only genuine wrigley's popcrackle born edits the news cracklecracklepop hello everybody popcracklepop music poppopcrackle that's my boy crackle check and double pop....”
“The voices,” White said after the silence returned.
“The voices,” John agreed.
White noticed that they had said the words differently, that John's tone had been excited and pleased. White was not pleased. He was disturbed at the thought of creatures somewhere out there with apparatus—forty-five lightyears from here—listening to the sounds of earth, alien ears listening to the voices of earth, and sending them back again transmuted, dirtied. He had been on television, often, and recently on radio as well, since its revival, and he didn't like to think of his voice and picture fleeing on restless waves through space for anyone or anything to intercept and thus possess a part of him. He wanted to disbelieve it.
“Maybe it's just a reflection,” he said.
“From forty-five light-years away?” John said. “We'd never pick up a thing.”
