The Visitors (v1.0)

35. WASHINGTON, D.C

The President came into the press office as Porter was preparing to leave. The press secretary rose from his desk, surprised, and said, "You are working late, sir."

"And so are you," said the President. "I saw your light and decided to come in.

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Only listen to me," said the President. "I need someone I can sit down with and take off my shoes."

He walked to a sofa against the wall and dropped into it, slouching, stretching out his legs, locking his hands behind his head.

"Dave," he asked, "is all of this really happening or am I having a bad dream?"

"I fear," said Porter, "that it is happening. Although there are times when I ask myself the same question."

"Can you see an end to it? A logical end?"

Porter shook his head. "Not at this point, I can't. But I have a sort of ingrown faith that it will work out. Even the worst situations usually do."

"All day long," said the President, "I have people hammering at me. Things they want me to do. Actions they want me to take. Probably silly things, but to the people who advocate them, I don't suppose they're silly. I have a stack of letters asking me to designate a day of prayer. I have phone calls from men I have always regarded as reasonable suggesting a proclamation calling for a day of prayer. And I'll be goddamned if I'm going to call a day of prayer. Sure, presidents at various times have asked the people to observe a day of prayer, but only on occasions that patently call for prayer, and I don't think this situation does."

"It stems from all the religious fervor this business has stirred UP," said Porter. "When people don't know what else to do, they Suddenly turn to religion, or what for them may pass for religion. It constitutes a mystic retreat into unreality. It is a search for an understanding of forces that are beyond our capability to understand, a seeking for some symbol that will bridge the gap to understanding."

"Yes, I realize all that," said the President, "and, in a way, I can sympathize with it. But to call for prayer right now would overemphasize the problem that we face. What's happening baffles the hell out of me, but I feel no sense of panic. Maybe I'm wrong, Dave. Should I be feeling panic?"

"I don't think so," Porter said. "It's not a matter of panic. What is driving these people to urge a day of prayer is the obsessive urge of the suddenly devout to force everyone else into at least a simulation of their state of mind."

"I've tried over the last hour or so," said the President, "to sit quietly by myself and try, somehow, to get straight in my mind what we are really facing. Thinking, I suppose, that if I could get that straight in my mind, I might just possibly be able to figure what to do. The first thing I told myself was that, as of the moment, we are not facing any threat of violence or coercion. The visitors, as a matter of fact, have been quite well behaved. It looks to me as if they may be making an effort to understand the sort of society we have, although there must be some aspects of it that are hard for them to understand. And if they are doing this, I told myself, then they must intend to operate within the parameters of our society in the best way that they can. I can't be sure of this, of course, but that's the way it looks and I gain some measure of reassurance from it. Of course, at any time at all, something might happen that will change it. The police down in that Alabama town where the visitor sat down in the stadium arrested a bunch of dimwits trying to get into the stadium with a box of dynamite. I suspect they intended to blow up the visitor."

"Even had they succeeded," said Porter, "they probably would

have failed. It would take more than a box of dynamite, most

likely, to inconvenience one of the visitors."

"What you say is true, Dave, if the data from Whiteside's firing test is accurate and I assume it is. But it would have been a deliberate act of aggression that could change the attitude of the visitors toward us. Until we know a whole lot more than we know now, we can't afford to commit an act of violence, even an unintentional act of violence. I have a feeling that the visitors, if they

put their minds to it, could outdo us in violence. I'd not like to come down to a shooting match with them."

"We do need to know a lot more about them," said Porter. "How is Allen making out with the dead visitor? Have you heard anything from him?"

"Only that the investigation is underway. He's doing the preliminary work on the spot. Once that is done, an effort might be made to move the body to some facility where the work can be carried out under more favorable circumstances.~~

"Moving it might be quite a chore."

"I am told there are ways it can be done. I understand Army Corps of Engineers is working on the problem."

"Any indication of why the visitor might have died?"

"It's funny that you should have asked that, Dave. That is one of the first questions that popped into my mind. Seems to me that when something dies, the inclination always is to ask the cause of death. All of us are very much concerned with life and death. H. G. Wells popped into my mind immediately. His Martians died because they were defenseless against the diseases of the Earth. I wondered if some bacterium, some virus, some fungus might have done the visitor in. But the cause of its death apparently was a question that Allen never thought of. At least, he said nothing about it. He was just excited that one of them had been delivered into his hands. There is something about that guy that gives me the cold shivers every now and then. Dammit, there are times when he doesn't seem human. He's too much the scientist. To him the scientists are a brotherhood set apart from the rest of humanity. That attitude bothers us. The chances are that Allen and his men will learn something about the visitor that it might not be wise to advertise. I have tried to impress this on him and I think he understands, but I can't be sure. I know how you feel about this, Dave, but.

"If there is information that shouldn't be made public in the interest of national security," said Porter, "then I'd go along with holding it back. What I object to is secrecy for the sake of secrecy. I am confident the findings from the dead visitor can be handled. Certainly, there will be something that can be safely announced. If there is enough of that sort of information, the media can be satisfied. Some of them may suspect the full story is not being told, but there's not too much for them to complain about.

What worries me are the people who are doing the investigating. The press could get to some of them."

"I warned Allen on that. He is using only men in his own department—not the people he recruited from outside. He swears that he can trust them. It is unlikely that anyone can get to them, let alone talk to them. We've got a security net around Lone Pine a snake couldn't wriggle through."

The President hoisted himself to his feet and started for the door, then came back and sat down again.

"There's another thing I don't like," he said. "It's that goddamned U.N. There is a push to declare that the visitors are an international, not an internal, matter. You are aware of it, of course.~~

Porter nodded. "I had some rather sharp questions on it at today's briefing. For a while, the boys had me skating on thin ice."

"The resolution is going to be voted," said the President. "Sure as hell it will. There's no way we can stop it. Only half a dozen governments will stand with us. We've twisted all sorts of arms, but there is little we can do. All our little sanctimonious underprivileged brothers that we're breaking our ass to help will vote against us."

"They can pass the resolution. They'll play hell enforcing it."

"Sure, I know that, but we'll get a bloody nose for all the world to see. We'll drop a lot of prestige."

"Maybe it is time to let the prestige go. This is our show. We are the ones who have the visitors on our backs."

"Dave, you may be right. But there are other considerations. State is frantic at the prospect."

"State is always frantic."

"I know. But it's not only State and the U.N. resolution. There are others who are giving us heat. The environmentalists are up in arms because we are doing nothing to protect our wilderness areas against the visitors. The lumber interests are howling to high heaven. The farmers, seeing visitors come down and roost in the middle of their fields, are getting restless. The entire business world is in an uproar. The stock markets are reacting like a yo-yo. At times, I catch myself thinking and I know it's wrong to think it, but I can't help it—why did it have to be us? Why couldn't it have been Europe or South America, or even at times, God help me, the Soviet Union?"

"I can understand how you might feel that way," said Porter. "There is so damn much.

"If only I could win once in a while," said the President. "If I didn't have to fight so hard for every inch of progress. Take the energy bill. It all makes sense, it is all possible within the state of the art. I could bring in hundreds of top notch engineers who would swear that the plan is practical. A solar energy farm in the deserts of the Southwest, a few more millions to nail down a cryogenic transmission and storage system. Another year is all it would take, the engineers tell me, a few more millions. Enough energy to power the entire country, a transmission system that could distribute or store the energy with virtually no loss of power. But does Congress see it that way? Hell, no, they don't see it that way. Half of them are in the clutches of the big energy corporations, the other half so stupid that it's a wonder they can find their way home when they leave the Capitol.

"Some day," said Porter. "Some day they'll come around to it. Soon or late, they'll have to see.

"Sure," said the President, "some day. I'll tell you when that some day will be. When gasoline costs five bucks a gallon and you have to wait in line for hours to get the three gallons your ration card allows you. When you go cold in the winter because you can't afford to use enough natural gas to keep warm. When you use 25-watt light bulbs to hold down the lighting bill.