Part 14
He sat me down, wrapped a towel around my neck and proceeded to alter my appearance with grease pencil, nose putty and other backstage devices. It was the first inkling I had that I was to be a part of Operation Madison Square Garden.
Timmie backgrounded me and gave me my instructions as he worked deftly to make me look twice my age.
"That android, now. Doc didn't exactly take him apart, but he found out enough. He wasn't transmitting back to Monolithian headquarters, as we suspected, but he did have a kind of tape device inside his skull that recorded everything he saw and heard. In other words, he'd've had to get back to the aliens for his spying to've done them any good....
"We're all going to leave here at different times, so as not to be suspicious, and rendezvous at the Garden. You're to go in by the Press entrance on 49th Street. We've got some fake _Journal-American_ credentials for you...."
* * * * *
There were a lot of cops at the 49th Street entrance. They were needed, because the street was packed solid with humanity and immobilized cars from Broadway to Eighth Avenue.
I shouldered my way through and flashed my police-press shield at a police sergeant, who waved me inside.
The first person I saw was Joy Linx. She was holding a sort of impromptu press briefing for a bunch of yelling reporters.
"Keep quiet a minute and I'll tell you," she was saying. "The President is going to come right up that aisle. You'll be as close to him as anybody. Then he goes up to the platform and Spookie Masters introduces him."
She was wearing a skirt and blouse and there were little beads of perspiration on her upper lip.
Somebody asked where Sam Kent was.
"I don't know," Joy said. "He was here a minute ago. He'll be back soon, I'm sure."
She glanced around, her eyes flitting over me without recognition.
People were jammed together on camp chairs all over the floor of the Garden. The speakers' stand was at the north end. There was red-white-and-blue bunting everywhere and banners reading "U.S. + M = Peace," "Give Common Sense a Try," and "Two Worlds Are Better Than One."
A band on the platform was in a segue from _God Bless America_ to _The Battle Hymn of the Republic_, without losing a note, but it could barely be heard over the din of the 20,000 people who packed the Garden to the rafters.
I heard a yell from the street behind me. "He's coming!" Other voices joined in: "It's Gov!" "Don't he look swell!" There was a chant: "We love Gov.... We love Gov...."
* * * * *
True to Joy's word, Gov--that is, the Monolithian masquerading as the President--passed within a dozen feet of us on his way to the platform. He was accompanied by a dozen or more men who could have been the Secret Service or some of his fellow Monolithians.
The fake Gov smiled and waved to the masses of people in the Garden who were shouting themselves into a frenzy as section after section of them realized he was coming among them.
The band played _Hail to the Chief_, then _For He's a Jolly Good Fellow_, and finally _The Star-Spangled Banner_. It was quite impressive and I was patriotically moved despite my knowledge that it was all a fraud. I could imagine how the thousands in the Garden and the millions watching television felt. To them it must have been the culmination of mankind's yearning for respite from the decades of insecurity and fear of another global war, coupled with worship of that greatest of heroes, the man who had negotiated an interplanetary peace.
* * * * *
It was hot as hell and I longed to scratch my itching putty nose.
The Monolithian who was pretending to be the President seated himself behind a long table on the platform and Spookie Masters took over the microphone.
Spookie made a few jokes. Everything he said was greeted with laughter, cheers and applause. In that atmosphere he could have read a shopping list and won an ovation.
Finally he got down to business.
"Friends," he said, "--or maybe I should say fellow members of the interplanetary alliance--" (applause) "tonight we celebrate the passing of an old era and the birth of a new one. The change in which we participate tonight," he said solemnly, "and I choose my words carefully and with reverence and humility, is, I think, as historic as that which marked the division of the calendar from B.C. to A.D."
He paused, eyes cast down humbly, and a murmur went through the crowd. Somebody said "Amen," and I half expected a Hallelujah or two, but Spookie hurried on before any revival meeting atmosphere had a chance to develop.
As he went on talking about interplanetary amity and the benefits to all mankind of this glorious turn in the history of the world, I saw Gov's guerrillas filtering through the aisles toward the platform. Some carried cameras, others had police-press shields paper-clipped to their lapels, and others merely wore ribbons printed with the word COMMITTEE. Nobody challenged any of them.
They got as close to the platform as they could.
Those with cameras brazened themselves closest and aimed their equipment directly at the fake President from less than a dozen feet away.
I knew what the equipment was, and I pushed closer myself to see whether it would work. It was the conscience gas I'd stolen from Ultra.
Gov's plan was a simple one--when the fake Gov got up to talk, dozens of cameras would record the scene. At the same time the conscience gas would spurt out of the guerrillas' cameras and smite the alien impostor.
The fake President would then go through the same mental turmoil that had assailed the dictator of El Spaniola. He would, in effect, become one with the thousands in the Garden and the millions on television who were about to be subjected to whatever nefarious fate the Monolithians had planned for them. The dichotomy of being simultaneously the victor and the victim would be too much for him. Then he would either confess everything or--if the Monolithians were actually a race with a common, interlocking intelligence, as some people suspected--he would make a decision in Earth's favor which would be binding on all the other aliens.
Either way, it would be interesting to watch.
Spookie was finishing his introduction. "And now, my dear friends everywhere, I give you the man you all know and love--the man who has had the courage and foresight to switch Earth's destiny in midstream from its course of destruction to its new and exciting path--your President and mine--Gouverneur--good old 'Gov'--Allison!"
The place went wild. Everybody stood up and yelled or cheered. Balloons of all colors with the words GOV and PEACE on them were released by the scores and floated up toward the roof. Confetti and streamers showered and spiraled down from the balconies. The band was playing fit to bust--but only visibly, not audibly, in the din.
The fake Gov stood there smiling, his arms out at his sides, waiting patiently to be heard.
I saw the quick bursts of flash bulbs, including ours, and watched the face of the alien masquerading as the President. There was no flicker of change in his expression of benevolence.
There was a scuffle somewhere on the floor. The center of the disturbance was where I had last seen the real Gov, disguised as a devoted follower of his impersonator. Four men had him by the arms and were moving him quickly and as inconspicuously as possible toward a curtained-off area near the platform. Then four men closed in on me. They took me by both arms, lifted me an inch off the floor and propelled me vertically in the same direction. "Hey," I began, but one of them said, "Come on, Kent. Don't make a commotion."
I didn't because I was well and truly outnumbered and, besides, each time I resisted they began to ruin my arms.
By the time I got to the curtained area the real Gov had been sat in a chair and stripped of his disguise by his Monolithian captors. All of our fellow conspirators were there, too, including the photographers whose cameras had been loaded with conscience gas instead of super-pan. I was crowded up against one of them and asked him, "Didn't you have a chance to shoot?"
"Sure I did. All of us did. But it didn't make a damn bit of difference. He's still out there lapping it up. Look at him."
I could see out to the platform, as from the wings of a stage. The noise of the crowd had diminished, but only slightly. The Monolithian duplicate of Gov still stood there. His smile seemed as genuine as ever and his conscience apparently didn't bother him in the least.
28 (AUG. 18, MON.)
We must not gargle with euphoria.
--Charles de Gaulle
Gov--the real one--said to me, "It's as clear as that fake nose you were wearing last night that they sold you a pup, Sam."
I asked him what he meant.
"That so-called conscience gas we banked so much on. They must have engineered the whole thing, including your escape from Ultra."
Gov and I and the rest of his crew were at the penthouse office on Fifth Avenue.
The rally at Madison Square Garden had been a smashing success, as we'd been allowed to see, to our discomfiture, from the wings where we'd been herded after our capture.
We were now, on Monday morning, sitting or standing around in Addison Madison's office, wondering what was going to happen to us. The Monolithians had treated us gallantly so far, having put us up for the night at the Taft Hotel, guarded no more obtrusively than a bunch of suburban high-school seniors staying in town after the prom.
Now, at the Monolithian GHQ, though there was a constant flow of aliens in and out, none of them so far had had anything to say to us except busy good mornings. I didn't recognize any of them. Frij, alias Addison Madison, hadn't arrived yet, if he was due at all.
He had been very much in evidence at the Garden last night, public relationing in his most offensive manner, and I supposed he was still resting from his exertions which, Lord knew, had been a Monolithian triumph. The usually unimpressionable New York _Times_ replated six times for it and gave it a three-line, eight-column banner head.
I had been trying to explain to Gov how he could tell one late city edition of the _Times_ from another by the decreasing number of dots between the volume and number up under the left ear on page one, but all Gov had on his mind was the conscience-gas fiasco.
"Maybe they used their defense shield against it," Gov said. "Or maybe they're just naturally immune. But the best explanation is that they palmed off a phony on you when you swiped the stuff from Ultra. It was all just too pat to be real."
Addison Madison came in and said, "Oh, yeah, Mr. former President? Is that so?" He sounded as if he'd heard everything we'd said and when I asked him he had no qualms about admitting it.
"Let me tell you wise guys something," Addison Madison-Frij went on. "The conscience gas is the genuine article. It worked on General Rafael Domingo Sanchez of El Spaniola when we kept him from O-bombing your retrograde civilization and it also worked, believe it or not, on my colleague, the new President, at the Garden last night. So put that in your pipes and smoke it, Mr. Ex-President, and you, too, Mr. Ex-Hotshot Newspaperman."
"You're crazy," I said. "Let's assume for the sake of argument that it worked on Domingo Sanchez and that the Spaniola thing _wasn't_ a hoax...."
"Your assumption would be correct," Frij said. "You don't know how irresponsible you Earthpeople are."
I let that go for the moment and said, "But your colleague, as you call him--the fake President Allison--was no more affected by the stuff in our phony cameras than the man in the moon."
"Ha ha," Frij said. "That shows how much you know. He _was_ affected but it made no difference." He let that sink in for a while. "Do you want to know why?"
"Why?" Gov asked.
"Because," Frij said "--now grasp this concept if you can--because my colleague, the new President, was sincere. His conscience was already clear."
Gov and I looked from him to each other. Much as we detested Frij, it began to dawn on us that he might be telling the truth.
"You mean," Gov said, "that it's true that you Monolithians have no purpose other than saving us from ourselves?"
"Precisely," Frij said. "You could not have put it more aptly."
"Then my story--the big exposé Rod and I wrote on Ultra--was all wrong?"
"It couldn't have been more wrong," Frij said.
"And Domingo Sanchez _wasn't_ your patsy?" I was slowly and reluctantly patching it together.
"You assumed that a minute ago," Frij said. "Now you believe it."
Gov, looking unutterably weary, said, "I'm afraid I believe it--and all that it implies. It means that Earth really had no choice whatever. The other Presidents and the Prime Ministers and I were forced to accept the Monolithians' terms to avert the Spaniolan threat--which I am now again convinced was no idle one. So we had to agree to the super-summit on Ultra, which, of course, set the stage for the substitution of Monolithian duplicates for Earth's leaders."
Gov smiled wanly and went on. "The fact that I sent a double of myself to Ultra only delayed matters slightly. You finally got me anyway."
Mox came in then. Like Frij before him, he obviously knew everything that had been said.
Mox, looking like a saint in his Monolithian robe, in contrast to Frij's flashy American clothes, said, "Frij, I think you've been out here too long. You've adopted not only the Earthman's protective coloration but some of his sadistic ways. Why haven't you told Mr. Allison why we wanted him?"
"I was coming to it," Frij said defensively.
"Go, Frij," Mox said. "I will tell him. Go back to Monolithia on the next lighter and re-enroll at the Foreign Service School for a refresher course in interplanetary relations. Consider your punishment the fact that I have reprimanded you in public. Leave us now."
"Yes, Mox," Frij said humbly. He went out, and that was the last Earth saw of Addison Madison or anyone like him.
Mox smiled. "My apologies, gentlemen." He looked like dignity incarnate and I wondered suddenly if this were the mysterious "Mr. M.," the head Monolithian who had taken part in the conference on Ultra that decided Earth's fate. I halfway hoped so; he seemed so much the just, kindly, elder-statesman, father-image type who inspired trust and confidence.
Gov said, "Mr. Mox, I'm a tired old man, especially after last night. I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me what the hell's going on and, particularly, where I go from here. If I'm going to be led out and shot I'd just as soon get it over with, frankly, if it's all the same to you."
Mox looked shocked. "My dear sir," he said. "Nothing is further from our plans. All we want is for you to resume your rightful place in the White House, at the head of your government."
Gov exhaled a long sigh of relief.
Therefore he had no choice except to breathe in again--by which time Mox had crushed a tiny capsule in his palm and held it under Gov's nose.
29 (AUG. 19, TUES.)
The score stands today: Strontium 90; Humanity 13.
--James Thurber
Tuesday went by like a montage, or a series of fades and dissolves in a documentary movie.
_Scene_: The Fifth Avenue penthouse. _Mox's_ (formerly Frij's) office. _Mox_, benevolent, wanting to be understood; _Sam Kent_, groping, wanting to be convinced.
MOX: There were several ways it might have been done. One requisite was a common denominator--something everybody uses, such as water. But water was not quick enough. Air is better.
SAM: You mean you contaminated the air?
MOX: Not contaminated, no. Diluted it, you might say. It started in El Spaniola, with Domingo Sanchez.
SAM: But you said--Frij said, up on Ultra--that it wasn't communicable.
MOX: Ah, but Frij lied to you. I don't know why; perhaps he had absorbed too many of Earth's ways. He was becoming dangerous. That's why I sent him home. Our conscience gas, as your press calls it, is transferable from person to person, and rapidly. Like your own oral polio vaccine, it is contagious on contact.
SAM (wordless): !!!
MOX: You need not look so horrified. Remember the greater good. Recall the game you've been playing with yourselves--a game where there is no winner. You had to be stopped because of the way the odds against survival were mounting. One of your more perceptive observers put it very well when he said the score stood Strontium 90, Humanity 13."
Gouverneur Allison, President of the United States, a good man basically and one who had long worried in his private soul, needed no more indoctrination than the whiff of conscience gas he'd been given by Mox to be convinced that the World's salvation lay not in the haphazard politics of Earthmen, but in the clear-seeing, galactic-minded altruism of Monolithian logic. He went back to Washington by Pennsylvania Railroad day coach, contaminating a few hundred people along the way, and when he got to the White House he signed an executive order as Commander-in-Chief directing that all American nuclear weapons be deactivated, transported expeditiously to the Challenger Deep, and sunk.
Immediately the four other atomic powers--Britain, the Soviet Union, France and El Spaniola--followed suit.
You could almost hear the collective sigh of relief that went up around the world.
_Scene_: Joy Linx's hotel room in Manhattan. _Joy Linx_, beautiful, hostile, in housecoat. _Sam Kent_, anxious, somewhat wild-eyed, truth-seeking.
JOY: All right, I guess. Come on in.
SAM: Listen, Joy, it's important.
JOY: It better be.
SAM: It's about Spookie Masters. How well do you know him? I mean really?
JOY: What kind of question is that?
SAM: I know it sounds crazy, Joy, but it's the key to the whole thing. Has he--did he ever--oh, God damn it, what I mean is, did he ever make love to you?
JOY (scornfully): I won't answer that stupid question. Did you think I would?
SAM: It isn't just me asking it, Joy. Honestly, you've got to realize how vital it is.
JOY: Look, Sam, my dear, sweet someone else's Sam: In a kind of crazy, hopeless way I once loved you. It was no good. You know why. Mae, that's why. That lucky girl. So go away before you kill me any further, will you?
SAM (emotionally torn): Joy, Joy--how can I say I wish it were otherwise, when I both do and don't? Damn Mae (I don't mean that) and damn you--but particularly--damn me.
JOY (touched, quietly): Tell me what you want me to do.
SAM (with a sigh, then getting it over with): All right. When Spookie comes to see you, lead him on. Let him think you're crazy about him--as maybe you are.
JOY (looking at the floor, hands on Sam's chest): Maybe I am, in a second-best sort of way.
SAM (on brink of tears): Listen, my second-best darling ... (a quick, antiseptic, apologetic kiss) what I have to know is--whether Spookie Masters is a Monolithian.
JOY (withdrawing): What!
SAM: That's the key to the whole thing. He could have come to Earth years ago as an advance agent for them--his early life has always been a mystery. His career took him all over the world. He knows everybody. Then he got himself to Ultra. Of course! _He_ was the "Mr. M." who represented Monolithia at the super-summit.
JOY (coldly): Isn't that pretty far-fetched, Sam?
SAM: No. It fits perfectly. Then he arranged to get himself "captured" and thrown in with us so he could learn what we were up to. And I'll bet he engineered our "escape," too, and saw to it somehow that I stole that conscience gas. They knew I would lead them to the only holdout in their scheme--the real Gov--and that the gas would be the bait that put him in their trap at the Garden--where, you must admit, Spookie was very much the big wheel.
JOY (thoughtfully): Well, maybe. Tell me what you want me to do.
I'd told her, unable to look her in the eye, that I had to know whether Spookie Masters was a whole man, and therefore terrestrial, or a sexless creature like the android, and thus a Monolithian. Joy had heard me out, saying nothing except with her contemptuous eyes, then showed me out.
* * * * *
Something puzzled me. I was feeling no pain. And yet I should have been, I reasoned, since I had been subjected to the C-gas at the same time Gov inhaled it and I was probing around in what must be considered an anti-Monolithian way.
I was also running around loose and doing a certain amount of independent thinking, which didn't seem to fit into the concept of a true Monolithian state whose subjects had been C-gassed into cooperating for the greater good.
True, I was on a loose rein. Mox had given me the day off, in effect, telling me to report to the White House in the morning. I supposed I'd find myself fired when I got there, since Gov's ex-guerrillas, including Josh Holcomb, his original press secretary, had all been C-gassed into conformity and my services would therefore be superfluous.
I decided to go back to the penthouse and have a heart-to-heart talk with Mox or one of his lieutenants.
Mox saw me himself. He must have had a million things to do, but he took the time to talk to me for more than an hour, answering every question I asked.
When I left his office I found Joy sitting at her desk, typing. She glanced at me and said, "Sit down, Sam. This is for you. I'll be through in a minute."
She rattled through another paragraph, then, after a look at me, typed one final line. With a pen she wrote two words. Joy sighed and said, "There--I've got that out of my system." She folded the single sheet of paper, sealed it in an envelope and handed it to me.
"Please go before you read it," she said.
Then she smiled, as if she were now at peace with me and the rest of the world.
"Joy----" I started to say.
"Just go--please," she said, and I went.
* * * * *
I read Joy's letter over a martini at a solitary table at the Brass Rail, then decided to have several more martinis and skip dinner altogether.
Joy's letter started: "Sam (not at all dear):" and went on to tell me quite explicitly that Spookie Masters--whom she called Robert, his real name--was male as male could be.
What she had said, actually, was: "He's as human as you are--if you are."
This was empirical knowledge, she said, not theory or hearsay. She had known this before today, she said, and hoped I was hurt by this fact as she had been hurt by me. She did not know whether Robert was an Earthman or a Monolithian, but this didn't matter to her. Her happiness was what mattered and it was obvious that I could only cause her pain.