Part 7

"You're on the _air_, Sergeant!"

"Same thing, I mean. They're backed up north to Bear Mountain. It's murder."

"Why don't you arrest them, Sergeant?"

"For what? For obeying the speed limit? It'd make more sense to arrest the stupid jerks that posted the 20-mile limit on a state highway."

"Just a minute, Sergeant! We're getting a message from our WTRU traffic-conditions helicopter that the lead cars, both northbound and southbound, have banners reading 'Monolithians Obey the Law.' Can you confirm that, Sergeant? Is it true that the Monolithian space people are the instigators of this fantastic traffic tie-up up there in--in--what county is that up there where you are anyway, Sergeant?"

"Rockland County. Yeah. That's what their signs say. One of the cars is a Volkswagen and there's some guy in it says he's a reporter. Sam Kent of World Wide. Legal Sam, the law-abiding man, he told us he was. You know him?"

"I've heard of World Wide, Sergeant. It's one of the three wire services we have here at WTRU to give you and all our listeners the most complete, up-to-the-minute news of any station in the metropolitan area. You say a reporter is personally instigating this mass traffic tie-up?"

"He's legal. We can't touch him. You want to know anything else? I got to get back to work here."

The announcer let him go back to work because he had to go back to work himself--to wit, to put on a commercial about something that was more lastingly odor-free than any other something.

So my alter ego had stolen not only my good name but my little red Volkswagen as well. I hoped he was keeping it in second for his 20-mile-an-hour jaunt and not ruining the gear-box by trying to do 20 in third.

Then a more urgent thought occurred to me. Had Spurious Sam, the Duplicated Man, gone home last night and posed as the lawful wedded husband of Mae Kent? If that was the case I wasn't even missing, and no one would ever have investigated young Harry's story of my capture.

"Let me out of this God damned trap!" I yelled, getting as profane as Sergeant Kiefer. Nobody paid any attention.

My attention wandered during the next news item, which was about a cabinet crisis in one of the Arab states, and I began to think about my stomach. I still wasn't hungry, but a peculiar sensation was setting in. I can only describe it as a hunger to be hungry.

I was also experiencing a thirst to be thirsty. For a while I kept saying to myself, "You get more beer in your beer in New Jersey"--parroting the words of one of the few clever commercials I had heard. I stopped doing that when it began to sound idiotic--but then I started asking myself: "Right about here wouldn't you like a beer?" and the answer was almost beginning to be yes.

This led to my becoming cigarette-conscious. My mind flitted from one slogan to another. Twenty thousand filter traps (or was it 40,000?). You can light either end. Protects the T-Zone. Independent laboratory tests prove.... Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet. (I wasn't even old enough to smoke when that one was current.) I'd walk a mile for a Camel. Travels the smoke further. Wherever particular people congregate....

Stop it, I told myself. You don't want a cigarette (wanting one). You don't want a drink, Sam; they teetotalled you (but it was wearing off). Why not go out to dinner tonight? (Medium rare, waiter; and lots of mushrooms.) And then Mae--Mae, Mae! I wanted my cute little pregnant wife, walking around flat-footed in her maternity blouse and smiling secretly to herself over our burgeoning child.

It was right about here that the radio man dug out and started to play an extremely associative song of Mae's and mine--_Who's Your Little Whoozis_. And then I blacked out.

13 (AUG. 3, SUN.)

I have been in such a pickle since I saw you last.

--Shakespeare

I wasn't in my cell any more. I was lying back in an armchair in a large comfortable-looking room. There was one other person in it, a kindly looking middle-aged man in another armchair next to a wall under a painting of a country scene, with trees and cows and a sky studded with tiny clouds.

"Hello," the man said. "I am Mox." He was wearing one of those Monolithian cloaks. "How are you?"

I felt too weak to answer. I tapped my finger on the arms of the chair and the effort made me terribly tired. I closed my eyes again.

"Lunch is about to be served," Mox said. "Perhaps you would care to freshen up first? To shave?"

I opened my eyes and rubbed a hand over my cheeks. They were pretty whiskery.

"How are you fixed for blades?" I said. Don't ask me why. One gets conditioned.

"Amply," Mox said. He made a gesture with his left hand and somebody in another woolen cloak came in with shaving equipment, put it on a table at my elbow and went out, bowing.

I looked at the steaming bowl of hot water, the tube of shaving cream (brush versus jar, I thought, remembering the old ad), the razor and mirror. I looked in the mirror, expecting the worst. The beard was pretty heavy and the cheeks under it looked more sunken than I'd remembered. But my eyes were clear and my tongue looked normal.

"There will be no deleterious effects," Mox said. "You'll be good as new after your lunch."

"Lunch? What time is it?"

He seemed to do a mental conversion before he replied: "Twelve-seventeen P.M. Eastern Daylight Saving Time; 1617 Greenwich."

"And an hour later on the Rue de la Paix," I said. "I'll have the snails and some Beaujolais." I was feeling light-headed.

"Interesting," he said, watching me with an encouraging smile.

"But irrelevant. I couldn't eat snails on an empty stomach. I just said that because it rhymes. What have you got for American times?"

"Lamb chops," Mox said, looking at me closely now, "baked potato, broccoli, tossed salad, strawberry shortcake and coffee. Or----"

"That's for me. Stop right there. Can I have it now and shave later? I'm starved."

"Certainly. Without further ado." Mox raised his right hand again and the same man came in, though he couldn't have seen the signal, wheeling a tray. An almost overpoweringly delicious smell reached my nostrils and I shivered a little in my chair.

Mox got up. "I'll leave you while you fall in," he said. I didn't answer him, being busy taking the covers off the serving dishes. I suppose he meant "fall to," which I did, with a will.

My curiosity returned as I appeased my appetite. Having wolfed down the meat and vegetables with hardly a conscious thought, I went through the salad in more leisurely fashion, rehearsing questions to ask Mox. I positively dawdled over the cake and coffee, it having just occurred to me that this could be the equivalent of the doomed man's last meal.

"Look, Mox," I said when he came back. "Thanks all the same, but I don't think I'll shave. Just give me my clothes and I'll go now. No; don't bother. I'll go as I am. I don't live very far. Oh--and thanks for the lunch."

Mox smiled and sat down. "You're a very amusing man, Mr. Kent. We couldn't possibly let you go. We have great plans for you."

"Plans?" The well-being induced by the lunch began to seep away. "Like what?"

"Details later. First we should discuss the terms of your employment. The salary will be substantial, so there'll be no problem there, but you might be interested in the fringe benefits, such as the size of your paid-up life insurance policy, the beneficiaries...."

"Now, look. I haven't said I'd join your organization...."

"Ah, but you've already joined. We had planned to come to you, but you saved us that trouble. You came to us voluntarily and have already taken part in one of our minor missions--that of working for the repeal of antiquated traffic laws."

"I did not. That wasn't me."

"Who would believe you? You previously espoused our cause on a nationwide radio-and-television program."

"That wasn't me either, and you know it. I don't know how you did it, but that double you rigged up isn't going to be able to get away with it much longer."

"I think he can. You see, Sam, for all practical purposes that double, as you call him, is you. There's nothing about you that he doesn't know and everything he does or says is perfectly in character with what you would do or say--presupposing one slight shift in motivation. And you may be sure that adjustment has been made."

"You mean you've been picking my brains all the time you had me cooped up in that cell?"

"You could put it that way. Not _all_ the time, of course. Only while you slept. We know as much about you as you do about yourself. More, probably, because we've probed your subconscious as well as your surface self-awareness."

"Oh yeah? What was my mother's maiden name?"

"Clemens," Mox said instantly. "Hence your full name, with its literary if not strictly genealogical connection--Samuel Langhorne Clemens Kent. You know you are not directly related to Mark Twain, of course?"

"I was told I was," I said defensively. "Way back."

"Way, _way_ back, perhaps," Mox said. "Not in any modern sense."

"That's no proof that you read my mind. There must be genealogical tables...."

"Certainly. But there are no written records of the time you stole money from the newsstand outside the candy store in Ozone Park."

"I never ..." I started to say before I remembered. I'd been about ten. The way to do it was to scoop up the coins boldly on your way into the store and hand them to the owner while buying a candy bar or a roll of caps. Of course you palmed a dime or so on the way. I'd never told anybody about it and I felt suffocated in shame.

"Or the seventy-five wingless flies in the mayonnaise jar," Mox said relentlessly. "You were trying for a hundred, weren't you? But you got sick to your stomach. Or the time you sold your brother's bicycle and claimed it had been stolen. Or the college exams with the dates written in your palm. Or...."

"Stop it! That's enough!"

"I don't condemn you, Sam. No one is wholly free of blame. I have not mentioned these things to bring you pain but to prove to you that the Monolithian Sam Kent is as aware of your potentialities as you are yourself. He has done nothing you would not do, given the proper conviction or opportunity."

I couldn't look at him. "Swiping a dime off a newsstand isn't the same thing as betraying your country," I said miserably.

"It would depend, wouldn't it, on which was the greater good? If the dime you stole bought a quart of milk for your family during the depression when your father was out of work--if the candy store man was obviously better off--if your country were Nazi Germany----"

"The United States isn't Nazi Germany," I said. I could reject that one, at least.

"True," Mox said. "But I said 'if.' You're a man of perception. You don't need an overt act, such as six million deaths, to persuade you that something is wrong. You see it every day in the news reports that are your business--in the United Nations debates on nuclear testing, in the reports on the strontium-90 in food, in the disfigured Hiroshima women getting plastic surgery, in the perennial radiation scares."

"Is that what you're up to?" I asked him. "You think we're going to wipe ourselves out and you're altruistically going to preserve us? You're going to step in and run our world for us because you think we're not capable of handling our own affairs?"

"If necessary," he said.

"The end justifies the means, you think. You have no faith in our ability not to commit suicide."

"Not as much as you seem to have. Look, Sam, we've got a job for you to do and we'd like you to take it because you want to. It would be better for all of us that way. But if you are reconsidering your decision to volunteer, we have ways of conscripting you."

"Torture?" I tried to speak calmly. "Brainwashing?"

"Neither you nor anyone else will ever be tortured. As for the other, we'd prefer that you washed your own brain of its misconceptions about us. Try to realize that what we are trying to do--and what we will do--is for your own good and for the good of all of us."

He was the soul of sincerity, this Mox. I was relieved about the torture. I was even half tempted to believe the other things. But I wasn't going to brainwash myself or anybody else.

On the other hand, I could let him think I'd been won over and bore from within whenever I got the chance. The standard injunctions to the prisoner of war were no longer name-rank-and-serial-number. That had gone out after the lessons of the Korean war. The new instructions were to lie. Tell them whatever they wanted to hear. Confess to anything, no matter how outrageous. Embrace the enemy with lies until he had no idea where the truth lay. I decided to try it, but not so fast as to arouse suspicion.

"If I do volunteer," I said, after a period of what I hoped appeared to be profound thought, "will I be able to see my wife?"

"Of course," Mox said, beaming at me.

"I'm more worried about her than I am about strontium-90," I said ingenuously. "She's going to have a baby."

"How marvelous."

"Her name is Mae," I said. "We haven't been married long and this will be our first child."

"Congratulations."

"A man's got to think of his family first," I said, pouring it on, "doesn't he?"

"Absolutely."

"I mean it's all very well to expect every man to do his duty, but where does that duty lie? We've signed a treaty of peace and friendship with you, haven't we? Through the UN, I mean. And if that's good enough for the President, I guess it's good enough for me. Poor Mae. She must be worried to death. I've got to see her."

"And so you shall, Sam."

"That's all I ask. I volunteer. We've got to stop this ridiculous experimentation with the very seeds of our own destruction." I was washing the old brain with everything I had. "What's the job you have for me?"

I hoped I hadn't overdone it. But Mox was beaming.

"I am happy to inform you," he said, "that the position is that of press secretary to President Gouverneur Allison."

* * * * *

"My, you're home early," Mae said, giving me a kiss.

It wasn't a big, fat, oh-I'm-so-glad-to-see-you're-safe kiss. Not at all. I looked at my watch: it was a little after 3 P.M. Early? Here it was Sunday. Mae hadn't seen me since Thursday night and she said I was home early. Had the Monolithians played a trick with time? Was it only Friday afternoon?

"Listen, Mae," I said. "Did you watch your story today? What happened after this girl with the amnesia walked into Dr. Kindfellow's office, not realizing he was the very one she had fled a thousand miles to avoid?" Mae watches this television serial come hell or high water. It's one of her few vices.

"Silly," Mae said. "You know it's not on on Sunday. I thought you wouldn't be home till six. We were just going to take our nap."

"You thought I wasn't going to be home till six? Is that what I told you?" I was feeling my way, full of inklings and forebodings.

"Well, you usually get home at six when you're on the day shift--or is it five-thirty on week ends when you drive right in? Anyway, you're early. I'm glad. I guess we can skip our nap. Do you want to eat early?"

All I wanted to do was get to the bottom of this. It was beginning to be obvious that this double of me that the Monolithians whipped up actually had been living in my house as well as doing my job. I wanted to ask a dozen questions--but I couldn't without either giving Mae a terrific shock or making her think I was out of my mind.

"No, I'll eat whenever it's ready. Listen, Mae--have I been acting strange lately? I mean in the last couple days?"

"I've got some nice lamb chops for supper. Strange? Well, no stranger than usual, Sam. I mean, you've been a little bit nutty ever since the spacemen came. Naturally I've made allowances. I guess it's a pretty big story and a person has to take sides the way you did on that TV show."

"Oh, you saw that, did you?"

"Well, of course I did! You said only last night how the check will pay for the play pen and the bathinette. Surely you remember that?"

"Sure I do," I lied. "It wasn't awfully much, I guess."

"Fifty dollars is what you said it was. It helps."

"Sure. What else did I say?"

"When?"

"Last night."

"You said--honestly, Sam, are you sure you're all right?--you said we'd take an early vacation next year and go to Bermuda, all three of us."

"Sure, Bermuda," I said. "Sure I'm all right. I'm sorry, Mae; I've been a little confused ever since I got my new job."

"What new job? You didn't tell me that."

"No, I guess I didn't. It wasn't set until today. I'm leaving World Wide. I'm going to be press secretary to the President."

Mae did a double take--or at least a double blink--and said without more than a second's hesitation: "Isn't that wonderful!"

"I guess so," I said.

"What do you mean you guess so? It's marvelous! Of course you did say once you didn't think much of Gov. I think you said he doesn't have a brain in his head. Isn't that the way you put it?"

"I may have made some such remark," I said. "Such a thought has crossed my mind. But now I'm in a position to help him. I may even be able to put a thought or two _into_ his head. I'll be the chief factotum of the White House mimeograph machines--the disseminator, if not molder, of executive policy. Then there's the big old unsneezable fact that it pays a fast eighteen thousand a year."

Mae's eyes went sort of glazy and I could see her trying to divide that mentally by 52. "That's a lot, isn't it?" she said finally. "Now we can afford to replace that storm window that fell out last winter and maybe repaper the nursery."

"We can take care of the storm window, anyway. It's the least we can do for whoever rents the place when we move to Washington."

"Oh--of course. I forgot we'd have to move to Washington."

"I don't see any way out of it. It's a little too far for commuting."

14 (AUG. 4, MON.)

They are waiting on the shingle--will you come and join the dance?

--The Mock Turtle

My appointment with Frij was for one P.M. Mox had telephoned on Sunday night and told me about it. He didn't say who Frij was. He merely gave me the address and the room number and hung up.

Frij had an office on the thirty-ninth floor of a building on Fifth Avenue in the forties. He had, in fact, the entire penthouse. A small plaque on the front door said simply: PEERLESS PROMOTIONS.

I rang the bell.

The door opened and a tall gray-haired man grabbed my hand.

"I'd know you anywhere, Sam. Come in, old man. Frij is the name. Frij by name but warm by nature. Like a drink?"

I suppose he was punning on the British nickname for a refrigerator. "Not right now, thanks," I said.

Frij wore a dark, pin-stripe suit, a plaid waistcoat and bow tie. He looked about forty-five. He was solidly built, like a football player gone only slightly to pot. He nodded and half closed one eye.

"Very smart," he said. "I admire your restraint. Sit down, old man." He indicated a deep leather chair on the visitor's side of the huge wooden desk. He dropped himself into a swivel chair on his side, leaned back and propped his feet on a corner of the desk, which was clear of everything except two telephones and three animal figurines made of heavy-looking black plastic. I recognized two of them. One was an elephant and the other was a donkey. I couldn't figure out the third, which was bigger than either of the others. It must have been some kind of Monolithian animal.

It seemed to be up to me to say something, so I said, "Nice place you have here. Quite a view." And so it was. The Empire State Building loomed up to the south and Rockefeller Center to the north. The third set of windows gave a good view of the Hudson River.

"Without a peer," Frij said. "Peerless, in a word. Peerless Promotions. That's us. My name, I've decided after considerable thought, will be Addison Madison. What do you think of it, old man?"

I thought very little of it but I pretended to turn it over in my mind. "It's got class," I said finally. To myself I thought, _With a capital K_.

"Exactly," Addison Madison-Frij said. "That's what they want--class. Frij is too alien-sounding for their ears. They must have something that inspires confidence."

"Confidence in what, if I may ask?"

"Ask by all means. That's what I want you to do. Ask and criticize and suggest. This thing must roll, on all sixteen. It must purr, like the contented kitten. Or is it cow? I need you, old man, I tell you frankly. The closest kind of collaboration is necessary if we are to achieve our objective." He took his feet off the desk and sat up purposefully in his chair. "If you follow me."

"Not entirely," I said. "What exactly are you promoting? Public acceptance of Monolithia?"

"Secondarily," he said, giving me a sincere, old-school-tie look. "President Allison primarily. Through him, us. Didn't Mox brief you?"

"Only briefly. I thought you were going to fill in the gaps."

"That I will," Frij said. "But in good time. First lunch. Then there's the cocktail party. Both excellent gap-fillers. There's no urgency at all." He rang and a girl came in. A pretty girl, about five-feet-four and black-haired, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and carrying a notebook.

"Joy," he said, "put down in your book that you're to take Mr. Kent to lunch and keep him occupied until it's time for the party. Joy, Sam. Sam, Joy Linx. That's all for now, Sam. See you at the party."

I followed Joy out, not unwillingly.

At her desk she took a manila envelope from a drawer and counted out two hundred dollars. "I'm an old-fashioned girl, Mr. Kent," she said. "You take _me_ out to lunch." And she pushed the bills over to me.

"What's this?"

"Expense money. There's more when that runs out."

"Want me to sign for it?"

"No. That's petty cash; it's off the books already."

We took a cab to the Algonquin and sat next to each other on the leather couch along one wall and had Scotches and made small talk about the waiter with the two-foot-high pepper grinder and the old Thanatopsis and Inside-Straight Society that used to meet there.