“He can fix us up?”
“No fix. Repair complete. Make body good as new.”
Higgy had been edging closer and behind him several others. The rest of the crowd still stayed up on the bank, out of all harm’s way. And now they were beginning to buzz a little. At first they had been stricken silent, but now the talk began.
“Higgy,” I said, “I’d like you to meet Mr. Smith.”
“Well, I’ll be darned,” said Higgy. “They got names just the same as ours.”
He stuck out his hand and after a moment of puzzlement, Mr. Smith put out his hand and the two men shook.
“The other one,” I said, “can’t talk. He’s a telepath.”
“That’s too bad,” said Higgy, full of sympathy. “Which one of them’s the doctor?”
“The little one,” I told him, “and I don’t know if you can say he’s a doctor. Seems that he repairs people, fixes them like new.”
“Well,” said Higgy, “that’s what a doctor’s supposed to do, but never quite makes out.”
“He says we’re all sick. He wants to fix us up.”
“Well, that’s all right,” said Higgy. “That’s what I call service. We can set up a clinic down at the village hall.”
“But there’s Doc and Floyd and all the others who are really sick. That’s what he’s here for.”
“Well, I tell you, Brad, we can take him to them first and he can get them cured, then we’ll set up the clinic. The rest of us might just as well get in on it as long as he is here.”
“If,” said Mr. Smith, “you but merge with the rest of us, you can command the services of such as he whenever you have need.”
“What’s this merger?” Higgy asked of me.
“He means if we let the aliens in and join the other worlds that the Flowers have linked.”
“Well, now,” said Higgy, “that makes a lot of sense. I don’t suppose there’ll be any charges for his services.”
“Charges?” asked Mr. Smith.
“Yeah,” said Higgy. “Pay. Fees. Money.”
“Those be terms,” said Mr. Smith, “that ring no bell for me. But we must proceed with swiftness, since my fellow creature has other rounds to make. He and his colleagues have many worlds to cover.”
“You mean that they are doctors to the other worlds?” I asked.
“You grasp my meaning clear.”
“Since there isn’t any time to waste,” said Higgy, “leave us be about our business. Will you two come with me?”
“With alacrity,” cried Mr. Smith, and the two of them followed Higgy as he went up the slope and out toward the street. I followed slowly after them and as I climbed the bank, Joe Evans came charging out of the back door of my house.
“Brad,” he shouted, “there’s a call for you from the State Department.”
It was Newcombe on the phone.
“I’m over here at Elmore,” he told me in his cold, clipped voice, “and we’ve given the press a rundown on what you told us. But now they’re clamoring to see you; they want to talk with you.”
“It’s all right with me,” I said. “If they’ll come out to the barrier…”
“It’s not all right with me,” said Newcombe, sourly, “but the pressure is terrific. I have to let them see you. I trust you’ll be discreet.”
“I’ll do my best,” I told him.
“All right,” he said. “There’s not much I can do about it. Two hours from now. At the place we met.”
“O.K.,” I said. “I suppose it’ll be all right if I bring a friend along.”
“Yes, of course,” said Newcombe. “And for the love of Christ be careful!”
22
Mr. Smith caught onto the idea of a press conference with very little trouble. I explained it to him as we walked toward the barrier where the newsmen waited for us.
“You say all these people are communicators,” he said, making sure he had it straight. “We say them something and they say other people. Interpreters, like me.”
“Well, something like that.”
“But all your people talk the same. The mechanism told me one language only.”
“That was because the one language is all that you would need. But the people of the Earth have many languages. Although that is not the reason for newspapermen. You see, all the people can’t be here to listen to what we have to say. So these newsmen spread the news…”
“News?”
“The things that we have said. Or that other people have said. Things that happen. No matter where anything may happen, there are newsmen there and they spread the word. They keep the world informed.”
Mr. Smith almost danced a jig. “How wonderful!” he cried.
“What’s so wonderful about it?”
“Why, the ingenuity,” said Mr. Smith. “The thinking of it up. This way one person talks to all the persons. Everybody knows about him. Everyone hears what he has to talk.”
We reached the barrier and there was quite a crowd of newsmen jammed on the strip of highway on the other side. Some of them were strung along the barrier on either side of the road. As we walked up, the cameramen were busy.
When we came up to the barrier, a lot of men started yelling at us, but someone quickly shushed them, then one man spoke to us.
“I’m Judson Barnes, of Associated Press,” he said. “I suppose you’re Carter.”
I told him that I was. “And this gentleman you have with you?”
“His name is Smith,” I said.
“And,” said someone else, “he’s just got home from a masquerade.”
“No,” I told them, “he’s a humanoid from one of the alternate worlds. He is here to help with negotiations.”
“Howdy, sirs,” said Mr. Smith, with massive friendliness.
Someone howled from the back: “We can’t hear back here.”
“We have a microphone,” said Barnes, “if you don’t mind.”
“Toss it here,” I told him.
He tossed it and I caught it. The cord trailed through the barrier. I could see where the speakers had been set up to one side of the road.
“And now,” said Barnes, “perhaps we can begin. State filled us in, of course, so we don’t need to go over all that you have told them. But there are some questions. I’m sure there are a lot of questions.”
A dozen hands went up.
“Just pick out one of them,” said Barnes.
I made a motion toward a great, tall, scrawny man.
“Thank you, sir,” he said. “Caleb Rivers, Kansas City Star. We understand that you represent the—how do you say it?—people, perhaps, the people of this other world. I wonder if you would outline your position in somewhat more detail. Are you an official representative, or an unofficial spokesman, or a sort of go-between? It’s not been made quite clear.”
“Very unofficial, I might say. You know about my father?”
“Yes,” said Rivers, “we’ve been told how he cared for the flowers he found. But you’d agree, wouldn’t you, Mr. Carter, that this is, to say the least, a rather strange sort of qualification for your role?”
“I have no qualifications at all,” I told him. “I can tell you quite frankly that the aliens probably picked one of the poorest representatives they could have found. There are two things to consider. First, I was the only human who seemed available—I was the only one who went back to visit them. Secondly, and this is important, they don’t think, can’t think, in the same manner that we do. What might make good sense to them may seem silly so far as we are concerned. On the other hand, our most brilliant logic might be gibberish to them.”
“I see,” said Rivers. “But despite your frankness in saying you’re not qualified to serve, you still are serving. Would you tell us why?”
“There’s nothing else I can do,” I said. “The situation has gotten to a point where there has to be an attempt at some sort of intelligent contact between the aliens and ourselves. Otherwise, things might get out of h
and.”
“How do you mean?”
“Right now,” I said, “the world is scared. There has to be some explanation of what is happening. There is nothing worse than a senseless happening, nothing worse than reasonless fear, and the aliens, so long as they know something’s being done, may leave this barrier as it is. For the moment, I suspect, they’ll do no more than they’ve already done. I hope it may work out that the situation gets no worse and that in the meantime some progress can be made.”
Other hands were waving and I pointed to another man.
“Frank Roberts, Washington Post,” he said. “I have a question about the negotiations. As I understand it, the aliens want to be admitted to our world and in return are willing to provide us with a great store of knowledge they have accumulated.”
“That is right,” I said.
“Why do they want admission?”
“It’s not entirely clear to me,” I told him. “They need to be here so they can proceed to other worlds. It would seem the alternate worlds lie in some sort of progression, and they must be arrived at in a certain order. I confess quite willingly I understand none of this. All that can be done now is to reach proposals that we and the aliens can negotiate.”
“You know of no terms beyond the broad proposal you have stated?”
“None at all,” I said. “There may be others. I am not aware of them.”
“But now you have—perhaps you would call him an advisor. Would it be proper to direct a question at this Mr. Smith of yours?”
“A question,” said Mr. Smith. “I accept your question.”
He was pleased that someone had noticed him. Not without some qualms, I handed him the mike.
“You talk into it,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “I watch.”
“You talk our language very well,” said the Washington Post
“Just barely. Mechanism teach me.”
“Can you add anything about specific conditions?”
“I do not catch,” said Smith.
“Are there any conditions that your different peoples will insist upon before they reach an agreement with us?”
“Just one alone,” said Smith.
“And what would that one be?”
“I elucidate,” said Smith. “You have a thing called war. Very bad, of course, but not impossible. Soon or late peoples get over playing war.”
He paused and looked around and all those reporters waited silently.
“Yes,” said one of the reporters finally, not the Post, “yes, war is bad, but what … ?”
“I tell you now,” said Smith. “You have a great amount of fission … I am at loss for word.”
“Fissionable material,” said a helpful newsman.
“That correct. Fissionable material. You have much of it. Once in another world there was same situation. When we arrive, there was nothing left. No life. No nothing. It was very sad. All life had been wiped out. We set him up again, but sad to think upon. Must not happen here. So we must insist such fissionable material be widely dispersed.”
“Now, wait,” a newsman shouted. “You are saying that we must disperse fissionable material. I suppose you mean break up all the stockpiles and the bombs and have no more than a very small amount at any one place. Not enough, perhaps, to assemble a bomb of any sort.”
“You comprehend it fast,” said Smith.
“But how can you tell that it is dispersed? A country might say it complied when it really hadn’t. How can you really know? How can you police it?”
“We monitor,” said Smith.
“You have a way of detecting fissionable material?”
“Yes, most certainly,” said Smith.
“All right, then, even if you knew—well, let’s say it this way—you find there are concentrations still remaining; what do you do about them?”
“We blow them up,” said Smith. “We detonate them loudly.”
“But…”
“We muster up a deadline. We edict all concentrations be gone by such a time. Time come and some still here, they auto … auto…”
“Automatically.”
“Thank you, kindly person. That is the word I grope for. They automatically blow up.”
An uneasy silence fell. The newsmen were wondering, I knew, if they were being taken in; if they were being, somehow, tricked by a phony actor decked out in a funny vest.
“Already,” Smith said, rather casually, “we have a mechanism pinpointing all the concentrations.”
Someone shouted in a loud, hoarse voice: “I’ll be damned! The flying time machine!”
Then they were off and running, racing pell-mell for their cars parked along the road. With no further word to us, with no leave-taking whatsoever, they were off to tell the world.
And this was it, I thought, somewhat bitterly and more than a little limp.
Now the aliens could walk in any time they wanted, any way they wanted, with full human blessing. There was nothing else that could have turned the trick—no argument, no logic, no inducement short of this inducement. In the face of the worldwide clamor which this announcement would stir up, with the public demand that the world accept this one condition of an alien compact, all sane and sober counsel would have no weight at all.
Any workable agreement between the aliens and ourselves would necessarily have been a realistic one, with checks and balances. Each side would have been pledged to some contribution and each would have had to face some automatic, built-in penalty if the agreement should be broken. But now the checks and balances were gone and the way was open for the aliens to come in. They had offered the one thing that the people—not the governments, but the people—wanted, or that they thought they wanted, above every other thing and there’d be no stopping them in their demand for it.
And it had all been trickery, I thought bitterly. I had been tricked into bringing back the time machine and I had been forced into a situation where I had asked for help and Smith had been the help, or at least a part of it. And his announcement of the one demand had been little short of trickery in itself. It was the same old story. Human or alien, it made no difference. You wanted something bad enough and you went out to get it any way you could.
They’d beat us all the way, I knew. All the time they’d been that one long jump ahead of us and now the situation was entirely out of hand and the Earth was licked.
Smith stared after the running reporters.
“What proceeds?” he asked.
Pretending that he didn’t know. I could have broken his neck.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll escort you back to the village hall. Your pal is down there, doctoring up the folks.”
“But all the galloping,” he said, “all the shouting? What occasions it?”
“You should know,” I said. “You just hit the jackpot.”
23
When I got back home, Nancy was waiting for me. She was sitting on the steps that led up to the porch, huddled there, crouched against the world. I saw her from a block away and hurried, gladder at the sight of her than I had ever been before. Glad and humble, and with a tenderness I never knew I had welling up so hard inside of me that I nearly choked.
Poor kid, I thought. It had been rough on her. Just one day home and the world of Millville, the world that she remembered and thought of as her home, had suddenly come unstuck.
Someone was shouting in the garden where tiny fifty-dollar bills presumably were still growing on the little bushes.
Coming in the gate, I stopped short at the sound of bellowing.
Nancy looked up and saw me.
“It’s nothing, Brad,” she said. “It’s just Hiram down there. Higgy has him guarding all that money. The kids keep sneaking in, the little eight- and ten-year-olds. They only want to count the money on each bush. They aren’t doing any harm. But Hiram chases them. There are times,” she said, “when I feel sorry for Hiram.”
“Sorry for him?” I asked, astonished. He was
the last person in the world I’d suspected anyone might feel sorry for. “He’s just a stupid slob.”
“A stupid slob,” she said, “who’s trying to prove something and is not entirely sure what he wants to prove.”
“That he has more muscle…”
“No,” she told me, “that’s not it at all.”
Two kids came tearing out of the garden and vanished down the street. There was no sign of Hiram. And no more hollering. He had done his job; he had chased them off.
I sat down on the step beside her.
“Brad,” she said, “it’s not going well. I can feel it isn’t going well.”
I shook my head, agreeing with her.
“I was down at the village hall,” she said. “Where that terrible, shrivelled creature is conducting a clinic. Daddy’s down there, too. He’s helping out. But I couldn’t stay. It’s awful.”
“What’s so bad about it? That thing—whatever you may call it—fixed up Doc. He’s up and walking around and he looks as good as new. And Floyd Caldwell’s heart and…”
She shuddered. “That’s the terrible thing about it. They are as good as new. They’re better than new. They aren’t cured, Brad; they are repaired, like a machine. It’s like witchcraft. It’s indecent. This wizened thing looks them over and he never makes a sound, but just glides around and looks them over and you can see that he’s not looking at the outside of them but at their very insides. I don’t know how you know this, but you do. As if he were reaching deep inside of them and…”
She stopped. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t talk this way. It’s not very decent talk.”
“It’s not a very decent situation,” I said. “We may have to change our minds a great deal about what is decent and indecent. There are a lot of ways we may have to change. I don’t suppose that we will like it…”
“You talk as if it’s settled.”
“I’m afraid it is,” I said, and I told her what Smith had told the newsmen. It felt good to tell her. There was no one else I could have told right then. It was a piece of news so weighted with guilt I would have been ashamed to tell it to anyone but Nancy.