CANTATA-141

14

In November, despite the abusive broadcasts from the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite, or because of them, Jim Briskin succeeded in nosing out the incumbent Bill Schwarz; and thereby won the presidential election.

So now, at long last, Salisbury Heim said to himself, we have a Negro President of the United

States. A new epoch in human understanding has arrived.

At least, let's hope so.

'What we need,' Patricia said meditatively, 'is a party, so we can celebrate.'

I'm too tired to celebrate,' Sal said, It had been a tough haul from the nominating convention to this; he remembered clearly every inch of it. The worst part, it went without saying, had been the collapse of the abortive emigration program announced in Jim's Chicago speech; why that had not put a permanent end to Jim's election chances, Sal Heim did not know even at this late date.

Perhaps it was because Bill Schwarz had managed to move so adroitly, had embroiled himself -

deliberately - in the situation; hence much, if not most, of the ultimate blame had fallen on him, not on Jim.

'But we deserve to take a little time off to relax,' Pat pointed out. 'We've been working for months; if we go on this way .. .'

'One beer at one small bar,' Sal decided. 'And then bed. I'll compromise at that.' He did not especially enjoy going out in public, these days; inevitably he rubbed up against some individual who had been a part of the colonizing effort on alter-Earth or who, anyhow, had a brother-in-law who had gone trustingly over there. Such encounters had been rather unpleasant; he always found himself trying to answer questions which simply could not be answered. Why'd you get us into that ? had been the primary inquiry, asked in a variety of ways, but still always amounting to the same thing. And yet, despite this, they had won.

'I think we should get together with a few people,' Pat disagreed. 'Certainly with Jim; that goes without saying. And then Leon Turpin, if he'll join us, because after all it was Mr. Turpin who got us off the hook by bringing those people back to our world - or anyhow his engineers did.

Someone at TD did. It was TD that saved us, Sal; let's finally face it and give credit where credit is due.'

'All right,' Sal said. 'Just so long as that little Kansas City businessman who showed up with that defective 'scuttler isn't along; that's all I insist on.' The man on account of whom all the trouble had broken out in the first place. At the moment, Sal could not even recall his name, an obvious

Freudian block.

'The one I blame,' Pat said, 'is Lurton Sands.'

'Then don't invite him either,' Sal said. But there was hardly much chance of that; Sands was in prison, right now, for his crime against the sleeping bibs and his ridiculous attempt on Jim's life.

As was Cally Vale for having lasered the 'scuttler repairman. That whole business had been excessively melancholy, both intrinsically and as a conspicuous harbinger of the difficulties which it had ushered into their collective lives, difficulties which by no means were over.

'You know,' Pat said fretfully, 'there's one thing that still, right now, I can't quite get out of my mind. I keep having this sneaking, nervous anxiety that. ...' She smiled at him uneasily, her jessamine lips twitching. 'I hope I don't pass it on to you, but...'

'But deep down inside,' Sal finished for her, 'you're afraid a few of those Pekes have stayed on this side.'

'Yes.' She nodded.

Sal said, 'I get the same damn intimation, now and then. Late at night, I keep looking out of the corner of my eye, especially on the street when I see someone furtive looking hurrying away around a corner to get out of sight. And the funny thing is that from what Jim tells me, I know he feels exactly the same way. Maybe we all have a residual sense of guilt connected with the

Pekes ... after all, we did invade their world first. It's our consciences bothering us.'

Shivering, as she was wearing only a weightless Tafek-web negligee, his wife said, 'I hope that's all it is. Because I'd really hate to run into a Peke some dark night; I'd think right away that they'd opened a nexus again into our world at some point and were very carefully, secretly, ferrying a wide stream of their cousins and aunts across.'

As if we're not desperately overcrowded as it is, Sal thought, without having to cope with that any more.

'What I can never comprehend,' he murmured, 'is why they didn't accept our liberal offer of The

Smithsonian. And for that matter the Library of Congress. Gosh, they pulled out without getting anything.'

'Pride,' Pat said.

'No.' Sal shook his head.

'Stupidity, then. Dumb, dawn-man stupidity. There's no frontal lobe inside that sloping forehead.'

'Maybe.' He shrugged. 'But how can you expect one species to follow the logic of another ? They operate at their level; we operate at ours. And never the twain will meet... I hope.' Anyhow not in his lifetime, he said to himself. Maybe a later generation will be open-minded enough to accept such things, but not now; not we who inhabit this world at this particular moment.

'Shall I ask Mr. Turpin to come here to our place ?' Pat asked. 'Are we going to have the party here ?'

'Maybe Turpin won't want to celebrate Jim's victory,' Sal said. 'He and Schwarz were pretty thick through most of the campaign.'

'Let me ask you something,' Pat said suddenly. 'Do you think George Walt really are a Wind

God ? After all, they were born with two bodies and four arms and legs, the artificial part wasn't installed until much later. So originally they were exactly what they pretended to be. Jim didn't tell that Sinanthropus that.'

'You're darn right he didn't,' Sal said vigorously. 'And don't you rock the boat out of any misplaced ethical motives ... you hear ?'

'Okay,' she said, nodding.

Outside on the sidewalk a gang of well-wishers yelled up praise and slogans of congratulations; the racket filtered into the conapt, and Sal went to glance out the living room window.

Some Cols, he saw. And also some Whites. Just what he hoped to see; just what the entire struggle had been about. How long it had been in coming ... almost two centuries more than it should have taken. The mind of man was uncommonly stubborn and slow to change. Reformers, including himself, were always prone to forget that. Victory always seemed just around the corner. But generally it was not, after all.

A vote for Jim Briskin, he thought, recalling the cliches and tirades of the campaign, is a vote for humanity itself. Stale now, and always oversimplified, and yet deep underneath substantially true. The slogan had embodied the motor which had driven them on, which had, finally, enabled them to win. And now what ? Sal asked himself. The big problems, every one of them, still remained. The bibs, in their all too many warehouses throughout the nation, had become the property of Jim Briskin and the Republican-Liberal Party. As had the desolate, roving packs of unemployed Cols, not to mention the unhappy lower fringes of the white in-group . . men such as

Mr. Hadley, who had been the first White to emigrate, as well as nearly the first to come stumbling back, after the nexus had, mercifully, been reopened.

It'll be a hard four years for Jim, he realized soberly. He's inherited a vast, savage burden from

Schwarz. If he thinks he's worn down now, he should see himself next year or the year after that.

But I guess that's what he wants. I hope so, anyhow.

Did we get or learn anything from our unexpected confrontation with the Pekes ? he wondered.

It showed us, he decided, that the difference between say myself and the average Negro is so damn slight, by every truly meaningful criterion, that for all intents and purposes it doesn't exist.

When something like that, a contact with a race that's not Homo sapiens, occurs, at last we can finally see this. And I don't mean just myself; it was given to me to see this from the start. I mean the ordinary (statistically speaking) fat, mean slob who plops down next to you in a jet-hopper, snatches up a homeopape that someone's left, reads a headline, and then begins to spout right and left his miserable opinions. So maybe, in the final analysis, this is what won the election for Jim.

Could it be ? Admittedly, we can never be certain. But we can make an educated guess and say yes, maybe so. Maybe it was.

In that case, the whole wretched fracas was worth while.

'All the time you've been standing there in your dreams of self-glory,' Pat said archly, 'I've been on the vids getting hold of people for our party. Mr. Turpin can't come or doesn't care to come, which is more likely, but he's sending a few of his carefully cultivated big-time employees - an administrative assistant named Donald Stanley, for instance, whom he said we ought to meet. He didn't say why.'

'I know why,' Sal said. 'Tito Cravelli mentioned him, and anyhow I met him personally on our trip to alter-Earth. Stanley was directly in charge of the defective 'scuttler and, in a sense, was responsible for getting the entire project going. Yes, Stanley certainly should be part of this gettogether.

And I hope you called Tito. Our man in the world.'

'I'll call him now,' Pat said, 'and can you think of anyone else ?'

'The more the better,' Sal said, beginning finally to get into the spirit of the thing.

At night Darius Pethel worked alone in his closed-up store. Something tapped on the window, and he glanced up, startled. There, on the dark sidewalk, stood Stuart Hadley.

Going to the front door, Pethel unlocked it. Opening it he said, 'I thought you emigrated.'

'Cut it out. You know we all came back." Shoulders hunched, Hadley entered the store. The familiar place where he had worked so long.

'How was it over there ?'

'Awful.'

'So I heard,' Pethel said. 'I suppose you want your job back. With each and every trimming.'

'Why not ? I'm as good as I ever was.' Restlessly, Hadley roamed about the marginal shadowy spaces of the store. 'You'll be glad to hear I'm back with my wife. Sparky returned to the Golden

Door satellite; they're going to open it again. In spite of Jim Briskin's election. I guess there's going to be a showdown fight.' He added,, 'Frankly I couldn't care less. I've got my own problems. Well ? What do you say ? Can I come back ?' He tried to make it sound casual.

'No reason why not,' Pethel said.

'Thanks.' Hadley looked relieved. Very much so.

'Some of you fellas got killed, I read. Nasty.'

'That's right, Dar; you've got it. They attacked us and the U.S. military unit accompanying us fought them off bangupwise until the entrance, or maybe I should say exit, was reopened. I'd rather not talk about it, to tell you the truth. So many verflugender hopes went down the drainpipe when that failed, mine and a lot of other people's. Now it's all up to the new president; we'll wait, bide our time, see what he can dream up, I guess. That's about all we can do, whether we like it or not.'

'You can write letters to homeopapes.'

Hadley glared at him in mute outrage. 'Some joke. You're personally okay, Dar; you're all set.

But what about the rest of us ? Briskin better come up with something, or it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.'

'How do you like knowing you're going to have a col for president ?'

'I voted for him, along with the others.' Hadley wandered back to the locked front door of the store. 'Can I start tomorrow ?'

'Sure. Come in at nine.'

'You think life is worth living, Dar ? Hadley demanded suddenly.

'Who knows. And if you have to ask, there's something wrong with you. What's the matter, are you sick or something ? I'm not hiring anybody who's a nut or mentally flammy; you better get straightened out before you show up here tomorrow morning.'

'The compassionate employers.' Hadley shook his head. 'Sorry I asked. I should have known better.'

'That emigration stunt with that this-Olt girl didn't apparently teach you anything; you're as fouled up as ever. What's the matter, can't you accept life as it is ? You've always got to pine after what isn't ? A hell of a lot of men would envy you your job; you're incredibly darn lucky to gel it back.'

'I know that.'

'Then why don't you calm down ? What's the matter ?'

'When you had hopes once,' Hadley explained after a pause, 'it's always hard to go on after you give them up. It's not so hard to give them up; that part is easy. After all, you've got to, sometimes. But afterward ...' He gestured, grunting, '... What takes their place ? Nothing. And the emptiness is frightening. It's so big. It sort of absorbs everything else; sometimes it's bigger than the whole world. It grows. It becomes bottomless. Do you know what I'm talking about ?'

'No,' Pethel said. Nor did he particularly care.

'You're lucky. Maybe it'll never hit you, or anyhow not until old age, until you're a hundred and fifty or so.' Hadley gazed at him. 'I envy you.'

'Take a pill,' Pethel said.

'I'd be glad to take a pill, if I knew of one. I don't think they'd help, though. I feel like taking a long walk; maybe I'll walk all night. You give a darn ? Do you want to come along ? Hell no, you don't. I can see that.'

Pethel said, 'I've got work to do; I don't have time to stroll around taking in the sights. I tell you what, Hadley. When you come back to work tomorrow - listen to this - I'll give you a raise. Does that cheer you up ?' He peered at him, trying to see.

'Yes,' Hadley said, but without conviction.

'I thought it would.'

'Maybe Briskin will go back to advocating planet-wetting.'

'Would that interest you ? That tired old nothing program ?'

Opening the door, Hadley moved back outside into the dark sidewalk. 'Anything would interest me. To be honest. I'd buy anything, right now.'

Gloomily, knowing that he had failed somewhere in this interchange with Hadley, Darius Pethel said, 'Some employee you're going to make.'

'I can't help it,' Hadley pointed out. 'Maybe 'I'll change, though, in time; maybe something'll come along. God, I'm still hoping!' He seemed amazed, even a little disgusted with himself.

'You know what you could try for a change ?' Pethel said. 'Showing up a little early, a few minutes before nine. It might alter your life. Even more than that moronic attempt to escape by sneaking off with that girl to that weird world where those semi-apes live. Try it. See if I'm not right.'

Hadley eyed him. 'You mean it. And that's the whole point; that's why we don't understand each other. Maybe I should feel sorry for you instead of trying to get you to feel sorry for me. You know, maybe someday you'll suddenly crack up completely, fly into a million pieces, without warning. And I'll limp on for years. Never really give up, never actually stop. Interesting.'

'For a person who used to be optimistic...'

'I've aged,' Hadley said briefly. 'That experience on that alter-world did it to me. Can't you see it in my face ?' He nodded goodbye to Darius Pethel, then. 'See you tomorrow. Bright and early.'

As he shut the door, Pethel said to himself, I hope he can still peddle 'scuttlers. We'll see about that. If not, he's out. For good. As far as I'm concerned, he's just back here on probation, and he's lucky to get that.

He's sure depressing to talk to these days, Pethel said to himself as he returned to his back office.

That raise in salary will eventually cheer him up, he decided. How can it not ?

His own meager tendency to doubt was assuaged by that timely realization. Thoroughly. Or ... was it ? Down underneath on a level which he did not care to communicate, a region of his mind which remained his own damn business, he was not so sure.

His feet up on the arm of the couch, Phil Danville said, 'It was my majestic speeches that did it for you, Jim. So what's my reward ?' He grinned. 'I'm waiting.' He waited. 'Well ?'

'Nothing on Earth could ever be sufficient reward for such an accomplishment,' Jim Briskin said absently.

'He's got his mind on something else.' Danville said, appealing to Dorothy Gill. 'Look at him.

He's not even happy; he's going to ruin Sal Heim's party, when we get there. Maybe we better not go.'

'We have to go,' Dorothy Gill said.

'I won't wreck the mood of the party,' Jim assured them, drawing himself up dutifully. 'I'll be over it by the time we get there.' After all, this was the moment. But actually the great historic instant had already managed to slide away and disappear; it was too elusive, too subtly interwoven into the texture of more commonplace reality. And, in addition, the problems awaiting him seemed to efface his recognition of anything else. But that was the way it had to be.

The door of the room opened and a Peke entered, carrying a portable version of a TD linguistics machine. At the sight of him everyone jumped to their feet. The three Secret servicemen whipped out their guns and one of them yelled.

'Drop!' The people in the room sprawled clumsily, dropping to the floor in grotesque, inexpert heaps, scrambling without dignity away from the line of prospective fire.

'Hello, Homo friends,' the Peke said, by means of the linguistics machine. 'I wish in particular to thank you, Mr. Briskin, for permitting me to remain in your world. I will comport myself entirely within the framework of your legal code, believe me. And, in addition, perhaps later...'

The three Secret servicemen put their laser pistols away and slowly returned to their unobtrusive places about the room.

'Good lord,' Dorothy Gill breathed in relief as she got unsteadily to her feet. 'It's only Bill Smith.

This time, anyhow.' She sank back down in her chair, sighing. 'We're safe for a little while longer.'

'You really gave us a scare,' Jim Briskin said to the Peke. He found himself still shaking. 'I don't remember having had anything to do with permitting him to stay here,' he said to Tito Cravelli.

'He's thanking you in advance,' Tito said. 'You're going to decide after you become president, or rather he hopes so.'

Phil Danville said, 'Let's take him along with us to the party. That ought to please Sal Heim. To know there's still one of them here, that we haven't quite gotten rid of them and probably never will.'

'It is highly fortunate that our two peoples ...' the Peke began, but Tito Cravelli cut him off.

'Save it. The campaign is over.'

'We're taking a rest,' Danville added. 'Highly deserved, too.'

The Peke blinked in surprise, then said hurriedly, 'As currently the sole surviving member of my race on this side of the...'

I'm sorry,' Jim said, 'But Tito's right; we can't listen to any more. We've got to leave here. You're welcome to come along, but don't make any speeches. You understand ? It's over. We've got other things on our minds, now." The time you're talking about seems like a million years ago, he said to himself. It no longer seems plausible that your race and ours made contact during modern, historical times; the memory of it is beginning to fade. And your presence here among us has the quality of a startling and unexplained anomaly; it's more puzzling than anything else.

'Let's go,' Phil Danville said, getting his coat and Dorothy's from the hall closet and moving toward the door.

'I would think twice before going out there,' the Peke said to Jim Briskin. 'There's a man lying in wait for you.'

The Secret servicemen, again alert, strolled forward.

'Who is it ?' Jim asked the Peke.

'I couldn't catch his name,' the Peke said.

'Better not go out there,' Tito said warningly.

'A well-wisher,' Jim said.

'An assassin, you mean,' Tito said.

Jim started to open the hall door, but one of the Secret servicemen stopped him. 'Let us check first.' They filed, hard-eyed, out of the room.

'They're still after you,' Tito said to Jim.

'I doubt that very much,' Jim said.

A moment later the Secret servicemen returned, leisurely. 'It's okay, Mr. Briskin. You can talk to him.'

Opening the hall door, Jim looked out. It was not a well wisher and, as the Secret servicemen had said, it was not an assassin.

The man waiting for him was Bruno Mini.

Hand extended, Mini said, 'It certainly took me a long time to catch up with you, Mr. Briskin.

I've been trying all throughout the latter part of the campaign.'

'Indeed you have, Mr. Mini,' Jim said.

Mini advanced toward Jim, smiling an intense, white-tooth smile. A small man, wearing a stylish but somewhat gaudy Ionian purple snakeskin jacket with illuminated kummerbund and curlytoed

Brazilian pigbark slippers, Mini looked exactly what he was: a dealer in wholesale dried fruit. 'We've got a tremendous amount of vital business to transact,' Mini said earnestly. The gold toothpick projecting from between his molar teeth wobbled in a spasm of energetic activity. 'At this point I can reveal to you that the first planet I've planned on - and this will no doubt come to you as a complete surprise - is Uranus. You'll naturally ask why.'

'No,' Jim Briskin said. 'I won't ask why.' He felt resigned. Sooner or later Mini had to catch up with him. In fact, he was very slightly but perceptibly relieved that it had at last happened... and that did surprise him.

'Where can we go that we can talk at adequate length to do justice to this topic, and of course, in strict private ?' Mini asked. He added, 'I've already gone to the trouble of informing the media that we would meet, tonight; it's my 'conviction', based on years of experience, that dignified but continual public exposure to our program will do much to put it over with the - how shall I

phrase it ? - less educated masses.' He rooted vigorously in his overstuffed briefcase.

A Secret serviceman appeared out of nowhere and took the briefcase from Mini.

Grumbling, Mini said, 'You fellows inspected it downstairs on the front sidewalk and then here just a minute ago. For heaven's sake.'

'Can't afford to take any chances.' Obviously the Secret servicemen viewed Bruno Mini with magnified distrust. Some quality about him aroused their professional interest. The briefcase was elaborately examined and then, reluctantly, passed back to Mini as being harmless.

From the room noisily trooped Tito Cravelli, Phil Danville, Dorothy Gill, the Peke Bill Smith, wearing his blue cloth cap and carrying his linguistics machine, and finally three Secret servicemen. 'We're on our way to Sal and Pat's,' Tito explained to Jim Briskin. 'You coming or not ?'

'Not for a while,' Jim Briskin said, and knew that it would be a long time before he managed to get to this party or any other party.

'Let me describe the advantages of Uranus,' Mini said enthusiastically. And began handing Jim an overwhelming spectrum of documents from his briefcase as rapidly as possible.

It was going to be a difficult four years. He could see that. Four ? More likely eight.

The way things turned out, he was proved correct.