Alternities (25 page)
He had not expected to be followed, and when he heard the footsteps, he did not expect it would be the Secretary of State who drew up beside him.
“I had to say thank-you,” the Secretary said, panting slightly from the exertion of the chase.
“Excuse me?”
“For strangling the baby in the crib.”
“Is that what I did?”
“After you left, he said ‘Just in case anyone wonders, I’m not letting him resign.’ ”
“Anything else?”
“That’s when I left. But you made yourself clear.”
“Why didn’t you? Christ, E.C., you left me standing there all by myself.”
The Secretary smiled ruefully. “I’ve been here from the beginning. I learned what subjects he’ll listen to me on long before you joined the team. Besides, you didn’t need any help.”
O’Neill sighed. “I don’t need sex, either, but it feels good sometimes anyway.”
The Secretary’s smiled widened, and he clapped O’Neill on the shoulder. “I’m going back. You ought to, too.”
“In a little while,” O’Neill said. He walked on alone, his steps a little lighter.
I won. Gentle God in Heaven, sometimes You are kind to fools—
Dennis Madison fussed over his charts, collecting those that had slipped to the floor and then straightening the assembled sheaf. “I didn’t know I was going to start a fifteen-rounder,” he said, murmuring as though talking to himself. “What got into O’Neill, anyway?”
Robinson waved a hand dismissively. “It happens. There’ve been a few before, eh. Bill?”
William Rodman turned away from the window from which he had watched O’Neill’s retreat into the woods and bared his teeth in a smile that contained no human warmth. “Here and there.”
“I did bring some other ideas up with me,” Madison said. “Are we going to try to get everyone together again? Or are we done for the day?”
“First things first,” Robinson said, raising steepled fingers to his lips. “Can you answer a question?”
“Of course.”
“Can we do it without him?”
Madison stopped his housekeeping as though struck. “What do you mean?”
“Can we box him out? Keep it inside the Company and proceed with development work without O’Neill?”
Surprise outweighed triumph on Madison’s face. “What about the transfer of the bomb? It was going to come out of Air Force stocks.”
“We can go through the Air Force Chief of Staff,” Rodman said, moving closer. “Or maybe someone even farther down the line. If the authority comes from Pennsylvania Avenue, no one will question it.”
“Then we can do it without him,” Madison said. “But why play games? Why not just let him go? He’s given you the opening.”
Robinson shook his head. “Because he’s the best I’ve had, and I don’t want the hassle of breaking in another.” He smiled, gave a little shrug, and added, “The devil you know, and all that.”
“If that’s the way you want it,” Madison said. “Are you going to give me an NSC DD on this?”
“Hell, no,” Rodman and Robinson said at once.
The CIA director bowed his head gravely. “Okay. I understand the rules now.”
“Good.” The President stood up from his chair. “Don’t fuck up, Dennis.”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t be glib with me. Everything’s got to be just right, or we fold this up,” Robinson warned.
Madison nodded. “It’ll be right.”
NATIONAL RESOURCE CENTER
Research Division
Devon Mitchell, Associate Director
The President
The White House
Washington, D.C.
Dear Mr. President,
I am pleased to transmit to you herewith the Research Division’s report The International Balance of Power: Seven Models in response to your inquiry of May 14, 1976 concerning the U.S, and USSR’s relative economic, political, and military strength in the various alternities.
We found this investigation to be most illuminating, and I feel obliged to call to your attention certain conclusions which go beyond the scope of the original inquiry. Specifically, I believe that we have identified a key factor which accounts for the Soviet success in this alternity, the relative prosperity of our Blue and Yellow counterparts in particular, and the delay and difficulties presently being experienced in implementing the NRCs “imported” technologies.
As you know, at the time of the Split we possessed physical and human resources identical to that of any counterpart America and arguably superior to that of the Soviet Union. However, an objective reading of the present balance of power finds us to be at a relative disadvantage to both.
In searching for an explanation for this situation, we examined a host of possible factors, which are detailed in the accompanying supplemental report. It is our firm conclusion that the most significant factor has been the virtual elimination within our society of a free exchange of information in the areas of public policy, economics, and science and technology.
To illustrate: The leading American scientific research journal in Yellow has a circulation of more than 800,000. By contrast, our leading journal has a restricted-distribution designation and reaches no more than 10,000 scientists. Again: The local Soviet Union has 328 independently edited newspapers (up from 59 in 1960), 88 of which are state-subsidized and 24 of which have national distribution. The U.S, has 36 independently edited newspapers (down from 241 in 1960), none of which is state-subsidized and only 3 of which have national distribution. Other examples are included in the supplementary report.
There are many reasons why this free exchange became stifled, including but not limited to the Taft Administration’s America-first focus, Attorney General McCarthy’s anti-Communist campaign, the 1960 Official Secrets Act, and the creation of the Federal News Service in 1969. Most of the historical factors involve security concerns, but, paradoxically these measures have contributed to malting us weaker and more vulnerable.
The relatively free exchange of information and criticism currently enjoyed in the Soviet Union and in our counterpart nations appears to have at least four positive effects:
- it enhances individual creativity by cross-fertilization between otherwise isolated individuals
- it allows us to anticipate and prevent many errors and inefficiencies before the fact
- it provides a mechanism for the correction of errors and inefficiencies after the fact
- as a consequence of the above, it tends to maximize the efficiency with which resources are employed.
A certain amount of what might be called “noise” accompanies this process; free exchange is not tidy, and institutions, like individuals, naturally shy from criticism. But the benefits to the nation as a whole appear to far outweigh the discomforts.
Why are we not stronger? Why are we not richer? The answer seems to be that we have unwittingly chosen to be poor and weak. I urge you to give the highest priority to leading a comprehensive nationwide effort to reopen these closed channels of communication. I am convinced that no goal is more critical to our long-term viability as a nation.
Sincerely,
Devon Mitchell
Obloquy
Near Effingham, Illinois, Alternity Blue
Daddy, are we there yet?
Night was hiding the shabbiness of the flat farmland dressed only in tattered winter brown. The three-year-old Ford Magic hummed along in the eastbound lane of A-40 at one hundred kilometers per hour, tracking an arrow-straight path along the narrow concrete ribbon. Six carlengths ahead, another car paced the Ford through the night, its interior lights dimmed, its driver asleep behind the wheel.
Rayne Wallace wished that he, too, could sleep. He had eaten breakfast in Indianapolis, lunch in St. Louis, and was looking forward to a late dinner back in Indianapolis again. Seven hours on the road had eroded his enthusiasm, numbed whatever senses took pleasure in speed and sightseeing, and exhausted his patience. All that was left was the nagging suspicion that the car could not be trusted, a suspicion strong enough to keep his eyes open and his hand lightly on the wheel.
“The best AutoMate in America is in the best American automobile,” bragged the Magic’s brochure. But interurbans broke down, freight trains derailed, the little Spirit stalled unpredictably, and even caliper brakes failed in the rain. How could a little black box in the middle of the dash, an unfathomable marriage of mysterious technologies, be trusted to bring him safely home?
True, he was more trusting now than he had been that morning. For the first hour outbound toward St. Louis, the prospect of letting the car do the driving—at a speed his Spirit couldn’t even achieve—nearly doubled Wallace up with gut-knotting fear.
It was like the first time he’d answered a childhood challenge—going down steep Knowles Hill Road on his bike, hands above his head, the pedals freewheeling below his feet, a truck hard behind him. Except he had been nine then and hardly aware of what death meant.
Seeing the AutoMate system at work had untied most of the knots. A-40 was as much railway as highway, its three lanes crosslinked by switches and sidings to accommodate maintenances, overflow, and emergencies. Driverless freighters bustled along in caravan with “personals” like the Magic and buslike “loungers.” Vehicles smoothly joined or left the traffic flow at the interchanges, with never a hesitation. The Magic alerted him and then took the next exit when it ran low on fuel. Most impressive of all, he watched the highway respond to a rain squall by smoothly slowing the line of cars and increasing the spacing between them.
Yes, he was more trusting now, but not trusting enough to sleep.
Yo, Dad
—A slight pressure in his bladder made him look at his watch. How much longer? Another hour? He reached out and turned up the volume on the radio, and let his eyes close for just a moment.
“… love that brings warmth to a man’s cold heart,
“Diana,
“Love that brings light to a life that was dark,
“Diana…”
The radio had saved him from a slow death by boredom. Sound of startling quality poured from the speakers that surrounded him. With his eyes closed, Wallace could imagine himself seated in the audience—club, recital hall, or auditorium, according to the style of music. Instead of coming at him, the sound enveloped him. It was the difference between sitting in the back row at an open-air amphitheater and whistling in the shower.
“… Call down the spirit, the soul of the earth.
“Join in the gathering, worship and mirth…”
There were two dozen stations to choose from, no two duplicating each other. He did not know how such plenty was sustained, any more than he knew how a given station could be received with equal clarity all along the route between St. Louis and Indianapolis or by what sort of trickery the radio’s little blue window displayed the names of the song and performer.
“… black light flying high touching deep inside,
“Time split crying child running try to hide…”
But he knew how not to question good fortune. Available at a touch was an almost staggering variety of music, almost all of which was new to his ears—new idioms, new performers, new composers, even a new instrument or two. Not all of them fell pleasingly on his ears, far from it. Rhythms jarred, harmonies clashed. The grating, atonal voice of a vocalist named Xanthe drove Wallace to select a new station. The explicit lyrics of a song titled “Cocktails in the Climatron” elicited embarrassed laughter.
But without his realizing it, the music, too, had been wearing at him. As he listened to song after song which had no emotional context, offered no temporal bearing, Wallace slowly lost the joy of discovery and found instead the pain of separation from all he knew. In time, it all became just so much noise.
Hungry for the familiar, Wallace searched for a channel offering classical music and completed his journey in the company of Vaughn Williams, Franck, and Beethoven. It was not his favorite music, but it had been well represented in his father’s eclectic collection, and the melodies were memories of home.
Memories
. Lying on his stomach on the oval rag rug reading his assignments while music blared from his father’s hi-fi. His father tapping his foot and waggling a forefinger like a tiny conductor’s baton. Mother tiptoeing across the springy floorboards as a record played to kiss his father on the forehead. The melodies playing on in his head as he drifted off to sleep on his lumpy hand-me-down mattress, humming silly lyrics along with the Ninth:
“
Leibfraumilch und Wiener schnitzel, seig heil uber alles
…”
Music was more than sound, more even than melody, harmony, and structure. It was an emotional time capsule which could be opened again and again.
I remember that song. It was playing all the time that summer—
Except that Wallace had had no such summers here, and the songs were empty exercises. In time, some would select themselves to be the memories of this place. But before that could happen, he would have to learn not to hear his own alienness in their unfamiliar words.
Showing a broad, easy grin to the three soldiers accompanying him, Xhumo shouldered the Buzzsaw launcher and sighted the weapon on the steel-gray warship tying up at the south dock.
There had been three primary targets for the Freedom Now raid: the district headquarters of the South African security forces, the transmitter for the Pretoria-controlled radio station, and the prize—the blisterlike tank of the small naval fuel depot on the east shore of the bay.
Xhumo had reserved the fuel tank for himself. It would be a spectacular fire, a freedom flame for the oppressed Bantu townsmen, a funeral pyre for the era of white rule.
But the four-hundred-ton patrol boat
Witbank
was an unexpected prize. It had steamed into the sheltered harbor at sunset, nosing past the tip of Pelican Point while Xhumo and his team were still moving into position. Xhumo exulted. “Today, we will make Pretoria weep,” he had told his team.