The Tomorrow File

by Lawrence Sanders

  “What happened to Roach?” I asked him.

  “Who? Oh. Very cooperative. Demoted. Fined.” “Thank you,” I said piously.

  We scraped past. I had a terrible urge to goose him. I envisioned him suddenly plunging forward. Outraged and shaken. The full glasses he was carrying splashing on an ef wearing a tooty evening gown with portholes through which bare breasts bulged strabismically.

  The doors of the dining room were thrown wide. The buffet awaited. Disposable food. Come and get it!

  Objects were so deliberately casual. What a jerk! The slow saunter. Not really caring. Hunger was vulgar. Then the nonchalant inspection. Then the heaped plate. Where was she? I searched the crowd.

  “Are you Nick Flair?”

  “I am. Penelope Mapes?”

  “Yes. The Chief Director’s AA. I’ve been wanting to meet you.”

  A short, plump ef, downy as a bird. Enormously efficient at her service. It was said. But at this moment flushed, breathless. Her palm stuck.

  “He speaks so highly of you.”

  “He’s very kind.”

  She pushed or was pushed tightly against me. I- thought her pneumatic. If her pudendum was depressed, her buttocks would expand. Compress her bicep, and the fingers would swell. Penetrate her with a respectful rod and, hissing faintly, the corpus would deflate in your arms. An empty envelope of skin smelling faintly of lavender.

  I didn’t like this party. Where was she?

  “He speaks so highly of you,” Penelope Mapes repeated throatily. Eyes glazed. Staring at my beard.

  “Would you like a ringlet?” I asked. “To tuck beneath your pillow?”

  “Oh, you!” she said.

  Paul rescued me by squeezing nearby. I reached out, dragged him close, pushed the two together, introduced. Paul was delighted. The Chief Director’s Administrative Assistant!

  “Oh, you!” she was saying as I slid away.

  The thought of heaping a plastiplate with that gelatinous food was more than I could endure. I had another vodka-and-Smack.

  I stroked many palms. Supinely with departmental directors. Vertically with deputy directors. Pronely with assistant deputy directors. Joe Wellington, the Chief Director’s PR Chief, insisted on shaking hands. As his left hand gripped my right arm just above the elbow. Numbing.

  “Nick baby!” he said.

  “Joe baby!” I said.

  A billow of cannabis smoke parted and there she was. Centered in a semicircle. More a golden chemise than a sheath. Quite short. Bare arms. Bare legs. Golden sandals. Ashen hair bound up in a high swirl. The completed nakedness apparent. Lips parted. The teeth. Glistening.*Head slightly lowered to listen to the em beside her.

  She was wasting herself on him. On them. On everyone but me. Dark, somber eyes rose and caught my stare. Lips bowed in a quick smile. She looked slowly away. That brief lock of glances cut into. . . .

  “Nick!” the Chief Director shouted. “So glad you could make it!”

  He was Santa Claus again. Perhaps that had been Angela’s fatal flaw. She had one role that devoured her. This em flipped a dozen masks off and on. Quik-change.

  “Marvelous party, sir,” I said.

  “Is it?” he said. Chuckling. “Not when you’re giving it! Got enough to eat and drink?”

  “Plenty,” I assured him.

  “Good, good. Paul Bumford here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Find him, will you? Both of you upstairs in about fifteen minutes. Second door on your right.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hello, hello, hello!” he caroled. Bouncing away. Stroking every palm in sight. Touching. Patting. Feeling. Pressing. Physical contacts for everyone. I turned to search for her, but the cannabis curtain was down. *

  “What’s this about?” Paul asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said.

  We trudged up the stairs. Second door on the right. A black zipsuit inspected us coldly.

  “Do we knock?” I said. “Or walk right in?”

  “Both, ” Paul said. He rapped sharply, paused a second, opened the door. We entered. I closed the door respectfully behind us.

  It was, I supposed, an upstairs sitting room. Small. Cluttered with odds and ends of obso furniture. Many chairs. Many. Two couches. Stained prints on the walls.

  Chief Director Michael Wingate. Deputy Chief Director for Domestic Affairs Sady Nagle. Administrative Assistant Penelope Mapes. Assistant to the Administrative Assistant in Charge of Administration Theodore Seidensticker III. Chief of Public Relations Joseph Wellington. All of them suddenly sober, suddenly solemn.

  “Sit anywhere,” Wingate commanded. Short, abrupt gesture. Santa Claus had departed. Genghis Khan had returned.

  Paul and I listened in silence to what he had to say.

  He told us the prospectus for the new Department of Creative Science—which he understood was the result of our joint efforts— had been distributed for comment. To certain selected objects in Public Service, Congress, the judiciary. Also, to objects in the highest echelons of academe, science and law, labor and industry, organized religion, and consumer/environmental Gruppen.

  “Although I myself was high on the DCS—” Wingate said. Somewhat wryly. “—it was necessary to test the political viability of the product. Too many causes lost—even just causes—engender an impression of ineffectuality. Not only in others, but in oneself."

  I began to appreciate this em’s talents and experience.

  He continued, looking mostly at me, but shifting his glance occasionally to Paul. His assistants sat mute, regarding us both without expression.

  Wingate said initial reaction to the concept of a Department of Creative Science had been almost universally favorable. But the great majority of advocates—even those most enthusiastically supportive of the role of science and technology—were troubled and/or dismayed by what they considered to be our alarmist predictions of the future. What he wanted to learn, Wingate said, was had we included those predictions of extreme change in an effort to bolster our case? If we had, he felt we were guilty of oversell. Or did we sincerely believe tomorrow would produce the problems we had envisioned, necessitating the solutions we had suggested?

  “Sir,” I said, “new problems demand new answers.”

  “Sonny,” Sady Nagle said. In the kindliest of tones. “Even if those terrible things you predict should happen—and I’m not saying you’re all wrong; some of them I can see starting today—you suggest such radical solutions you scare us. Because what you suggest, sonny, is impossible. Just impossible.”

  “Why impossible?” Paul demanded.

  “First of all, sonny,” she said, turning to him, “some of your ideas are illegal. Just that—illegal. Other ideas, which may be legal, are a spit in the face of what remains in this little country of v morality, religion, tradition, and social order.”

  “J don’t think you understand,” Paul said hotly. “I don’t think any of you really understand. You just don’t grasp what we’re trying to tell you. And that is what President Morse said ten years ago: This society is obsolete. It’s creaking along, parts falling off, levers jamming, fuses blowing, the whole outmoded mechanism coming to a shuddering halt.”

  It was too late to switch him off or try to mollify what he was saying. He was on his feet now. Pacing. His voice louder. They were all listening intently. Following him with their eyes as he strode about the room.

  “Illegal?” he demanded. “Then change the laws. Tradition? As ephemeral as slavery and dueling. Morality? Someone said it’s all a matter of time and geography. Religion? Valuable, but only as a function of the state. Social order? It is what the government says it is. Yes, the solutions we propose are radical. Or may appear radical. Because the problems are new. Have never been faced before. Zero population growth. Energy crunch. World-wide terrorism. Ecological decay. Genetic engineering. Nuclear blackmail. All relatively new problems. That not only demand new solutions, as Nick said, but demand a new way of
computing. Of seeing the interdependence of all human activities. A lot of things that have been cherished for a long, long time will have to go. Must go There are no absolutes. Free elections? Free speech? The Bill of Rights? Freedom of worship? Personal privacy? They’ve all been restricted during times of crisis. And they are all relatively young concepts. Some of them less than two hundred years old. They worked well for that timespan. But we can no longer afford them. We must compute new concepts, a new Bill of Rights, to see us through the approaching crisis. And it is coming. As certainly as I know the reality of our presence here, in this room, I know it is coming. And the only way to even begin to cope is to put away the slogans of yesterday, the shibboleths of today’s political system and social organization. I put it to you this way: Is there one of you who would not voluntarily relinquish your individual freedom if, by relinquishing that freedom, you helped guarantee the survival of the human species? That is not just a ‘what if’ question. It is an exact statement of the choice, we may some day soon be facing. Yes, Nick and I suggested a radical program. Because only strange new ideas can ensure the survival of our society. Of our species. That is what we’re really talking about—survival. The Department of Creative Science will be the first step toward bringing science and technology into a policymaking role in the US Government. Reject it, and you reject the future.”

  He ended suddenly. I could hear the sounds of the party downstairs: laughter, cries, music, the stomp of dancers. But in that frowsy room, silence banged off the walls. No one moved.

  Finally, Chief Director Michael Wingate drew al great breath. He looked about slowly. Not seeking reactions, but reassuring himself as to place and time. Then his eyes came to Paul and stayed there.

  “What I shall say,” he stated in a low, firm voice, “does not imply concurrence with everything Paul said. Nor should my total agreement with his views be inferred. However, I have decided to go ahead with exploring the most feasible scenario for establishing a new Department of Creative Science. I ask you all to submit your ideas to me as soon as possible. I thank you for your close attention. I suggest we now return to the party, singly or in twos. So as not to attract attention or comment. Thank you.”

  Paul and I were the last to leave. He was still shaking. I thought it best not to say anything at the moment. We rejoined the throng downstairs. We were separated.

  I wandered through the thinning crowd. Objects were waving, calling, departing. I smiled my way into that chintzy sitting room. John Quincy Adams’ third eye had been repaired.

  Then fingers touched my wrist.

  “Nick,” Grace Wingate said. Somewhat breathlessly. “I haven’t had a chance to thank you.”

  I looked down upon that soft hand laid upon my arm. She drew me gently into an alcove. We were both smiling determinedly: hostess and guest in a polite and inconsequential dialogue.

  “I don’t know how you did it,” she said, “and I don’t want to know. But she’s gone, Nick. She’s gone!”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t know how I can ever repay you,” she said.

  “You look lovely, Grace,” I told her.

  Too ingenuous to accept praise casually. Her hand rose automatically to her gathered hair. Fingers poked at floating tendrils. I thought she flushed with pleasure, suddenly conscious of her body. She,glanced down at the glittering overskin.

  “Nick, is it—is it too—”

  “No,” I assured her gravely. “It isn’t too.”

  If she was suddenly conscious of her body, I was suddenly conscious of my. . . .

  “Do you ever walk out?” I asked. The fool’s smile still pulling my face apart.

  “Walk out?”

  “Casually. Shopping. A museum. A matinee.”

  Then she understood.

  “I don’t,” she said. “I can’t,” she said. “I won’t,” she said. “Lovely party!” someone cried. Drifting past. Grace lifted a hand. Head turning. Tilted.

  I couldn’t breathe. That line of completion enclosed her like a sharp halo. She was an ancient child. As fresh and knowing. The open, tender parts of her, pristine, might exude a scent of new worlds. I had dangerous visions of mad profits. Reason fled.

  “I couldn’t,” she murmured.

  Blackmail was not beyond me. At that moment. Nothing was. “After what I—” I said. And paused

  “The Beists,” she said. Finally. “Paul is a member. Can you come to Washington? He can bring you. I’ll be there. Nick?” Suddenly we were up to our assholes in idiots. Chattering and laughing. All I could do was stretch my smile to pain and nod at her over the heads of surrounding guests. She had tossed me a crust. I would have taken a crumb. I watched the hostess move, laugh, throw back her glistering snake head. I entered into that vulval ear and rested.

  Paul and I started back for GPA-1 at 0215. We traveled through the new day. Languid with exhaustion.

  “Listen,” Paul murmured, “do you think they took me seriously?”

  “I don’t know if they did,” I said. “I did.”

  “Did I frighten them?”

  “Probably.”

  “Good. But it served. Didn’t it, Nick? We got what we wanted.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Z-2

  At that point in time, mid-November, it seemed to me the whirligig increased speed. I, who had opted for action, became aware of the lure of rapid movement for its own sake. Without reason or destination. I felt a curious unease. The world on a fulcrum. Teetering.

  During that period I suffered a severe attack of Random Synaptic Control that lasted almost five minutes and left me riven.

  Even more disquieting was Hyman R. Lewisohn’s lack of affirmative response to parabiotic therapy. Unless his vital readouts showed a sudden and unexpected upcurve, my prognosis was negative. The physioanalytic computer concurred. I returned, once again, to my contingency plan.

  We had exhausted conventional protocols long ago. Arabinosyl-cytosine. 6-Thioquanine. Daunorubicin. L-Asparaginase. Vincristine IV. Prednisone. 6-Mercaptopurine. Methotrexate. Cyclophosphamide. Ara-C. Hydroxyurea. We had tried them all in dozens of combinations and protocols suggested by the pharmacoanalytic computer.

  In addition to therapy for the acute myelogenous leukemia, Lewisohn had been and was being treated for leukemic infiltration of the nervous system. This called for intrathecal (injection into the spinal fluid) of' methotrexate and aminopterine, as well as oral pyrimethamine. We had ended radiation therapy.

  We had shifted to more experimental compounds of limited value. With no better results. Although, for a brief period, the object responded to 1-2 chlorethyl-3, cyclohexyl-l-nitosourea.

  We had tried unblocking antibodies with a compound based on the original Moloney regressor sera. We had then turned to immunization with tumor antigens, utilizing living tumor cells pretreated with Vibrio cholerae neuraminidase. Nothing served.

  The penultimate therapy, in which we were then engaged, parabiosis, was an attempt to transfer immunity with lymphocytes from immunized donors. The donors had underachieved the norm. In fact, the second had unaccountably developed leukemic symptoms from Lewisohn’s infected blood.

  I have presented this brief precis of Lewisohn’s therapy to justify what lay ahead for him: the final step in my contingency plan. I had become convinced it would prove absolutely necessary. There was no choice.

  Shortly after the hookup with the third donor, I went down to Alexandria to scan the most recent computer printouts. I saw no indications of improvement; the em was going. All the staff of Group Lewisohn concurred. I took their signed statements to this effect.

  I was sitting in Lewisohn’s room, close to his bedside. A roll of printout on my lap. But I wasn’t scanning it. I was staring at him, computing what had to be done. The place. The time. How many objects would be needed. The chances of success. It never occurred to me, of course, to tell him what I planned. I could imagine his reaction. The horror.

  He was somnolent. Heavily dr
ugged. He had not stirred when I entered the room. I sat patiently, wondering if Paul had been correct. He had said all contingency plans have a built-in defect: the author wants to ultimize them, to see if they’ll serve. That dictum was just operative enough to disturb me.

  Lewisohn’s eyes opened. Finally. He was staring directly at me. “Jack the Ripper,” he rasped. He made a weak gesture. “Where do those tubes go? The ones to the wall?”

  “I told you a dozen times. We’re monitoring your blood. Instant analysis. It looks good.”

  “Thank you, Doctor Pangloss,” he said wearily. And looked away.

  I nodded toward the stack of books at his bedside.

  “What are you serving on?” I asked him.

  “Go to hell,” he said. “Besides, it isn’t important.”

  “What is important?”

  “The weakness,” he said. “I can’t think. It’s draining me. Give me a pill.”

  “What for?”

  “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. One pill. An injection.”

  “No way,” J said. “We’re not through with you yet.”

  “What good am I to you? My brain is mush.”

  “It’ll come back,” I told him.

  “When?”

  “Soon. Soon.”

  “My brain is dying.”

  “No,” I said. “The corpus. Not the brain.”

  He turned his head slowly. Looked at me. I feared I had said too much.

  “You devious devil,” he whispered. “What are you plotting?” “I’m planning to make you well,” I said. “To end your pain and your weakness. Is that so bad?”

  He began to curse me then. Forgetting his suspicions. Which was what I wanted.

  During November and early December, Paul Bumford and I spent an increasing number of hours in Washington, D. C.

  Out of all the confused and contentious meetings and conferences and colloquies of those weeks, the scenario for the Department of Creative Science was slowly structured. We could not have come to the necessary compromises without the knowing counsel of Joseph Tyrone Wellington. Of all objects! The Chief Director’s Public Relations Chief.