The Visitors (v1.0)

46. Washington D.C

"Dave," asked the President, "can we be absolutely certain the

news reports are right? It all sounds so fanciful. Almost beyond belief. What I mean… a few facts blown out of context."

"I had the same reservation," said Porter, "when the first report came on the wires. So I went to the source. Called the Tribune in Minneapolis and talked to the city editor. Man by the name of Garrison. I felt a little foolish doing that, almost as if I were questioning the integrity of the paper. But I felt I had to do it. Garrison was quite decent.

"And the reports are correct?"

"Basically, yes. Garrison told me he couldn't believe it himself to start with. Not until the two ears landed. Said that after his reporter's phone call, he sat there in a daze, saying over and over to himself there was something wrong, that he had misunderstood what the reporter had said, that there had to be some foul-up."

"But now he knows. Now he's sure?"

"Now he knows. He has the cars. He has pictures of them."

"Have you seen the pictures?"

"It was less than half an hour ago the Tribune went to press. The story caught everyone, the news services included, by surprise. It would take a while to get the photos from the Tribune, a while longer to transmit them. They should be coming in soon."

"But cars," said the President. "Why, for Christ's sake, cars?

Why not something really fanciful? Why not diamond necklaces?

cases of champagne? fur coats?"

"The visitors are good observers, sir. They have been watching

us for days.

"And they saw a lot of cars. Almost everyone has one. Those who don't have one want one. Those who have an old car want a new one. Old cars. Beaten-up cars. Wearing out ears. Accidents on the road. People killed and cars demolished. The visitors saw all this. So they gave us cars that never would wear out, that need no gasoline, that need no roads, that can never crash because they veer off when there is the danger of a crash, no maintenance, no repairs, no paint job.

"We can't be sure of that, sir. That's a speculation."

"A ear for everyone?"

"We can't be sure of that, either. That's what Garrison thinks. That's what his reporter thinks. As I understand, however, the Tribune story is very careful not to say that, although the implication's there."

"It can wreck us, Dave. Whether there is a car for everyone or not, it can blow the economy to hell. Because the implication, as you say, is there. I'm thinking of calling a moratorium, a financial holiday. Shutting down the stock market, the banks, all financial institutions, no financial transactions of any kind at all. What do you think?"

"It would give us time. That might be all it would give us. And a few days only. You couldn't make it stick for more than just a few days."

"If the market opens tomorrow morning.

"You're right. Something has to be done. You'd better talk to the Attorney General, the Federal Reserve. Probably some other people."

"Time might be all that it would give us," said the President. "I agree with that. But we need some time. We need some elbow room. Give people a chance to think things over. A chance for us to talk with people. I told you the other day I felt there was no reason for panic. Goddammit, Dave, I'm close to panic now.

"You don't look it."

"Panic is something we can't afford. Not visible panic. Polities give you a long training in the control of personal panic. Right now my gut is jumping, but I can't let it show. They'll be coming out of the woodwork to crucify us. Congress, the press, business interests, labor leaders, everyone. All of them claiming we should have foreseen this situation, should have been doing something to head it off."

"The country will live through it, sir."

"The country, but not me. It does beat hell how things turn out. Up until now, I figured I had it made for another term."

"You still may have."

"It would call for a miracle."

"All right. We'll carpenter up a miracle."

"I don't think so, Dave. Not that we won't try. We'll have to see what happens. Allen and Whiteside will be joining us. Grace is trying to locate Hammond. I want his input. A sound man, Hammond. He can handle the mechanics of the financial holiday. We'll have to have Marcus over later. There'll be others coming in. God knows, I need all the advice that I can get. I want you to hang in close."

"After a while, I'll have to have a briefing. The boys are already pounding on the door."

"Hold up for a while," said the President. "Maybe in a couple of hours, we'll have something to give them. Go out now, empty, and they'll maul you to death."

"They'll maul me, anyhow. But it's a good idea to wait a while. I'm not looking forward to it."

The box on the President's desk beeped. When he answered, Grace said, "General Whiteside and Dr. Allen are here."

"Show them in," said the President.

The two came into the room and were waved to chairs.

"You've heard?" asked the President. "It was too involved to try to tell you when I spoke to you."

They nodded.

"Car radio," said Allen.

"TV," said the general. "I turned it on after you phoned."

"Steve, what do you think of it?" asked the President. "There seems to be no question the visitors are making cars. What kind of cars would they be?"

"As I understand it," said the science advisor, "they are budding them. They bud their young, forming them in the images of themselves. I suppose there's nothing to stop them from budding in the image of cars."

"Some of them ate some cars," said Whiteside. "In St. Louis, I believe."

"I'm not too sure that has anything to do with it," said Allen. "Certainly, they probably could analyze the ears once they ingested them, but the cars they are budding apparently are similar only in external features to our manufactured cars."

"Then why did they snap up the cars in St. Louis?" asked the general.

"I wouldn't know," said Allen. "All I know is that the cars the visitors are budding are visitors. Not actually cars at all, but visitors in the shape of cars, apparently capable of being used as cars. They are biological, not mechanical vehicles."

"The reporter who found the cars," said the President, "seems to think, at least she suggests, the ears are being budded out of gratitude. A free-will offering to the people of the planet that supplies their cellulose."

"About that I wouldn't know," said Allen. "You are talking about how these damn things think. On that I couldn't even hazard a guess. We've been studying the one that died for days and we have not even the slightest idea of its anatomy, of how it manages to live and function on the physical level, let alone the mental. The situation is analogous to a medieval man trying to understand how and why a sophisticated computer works. Not one single organ that can be compared to a human organ. We are completely baffled. I had hoped we might be able to determine what caused the creature's death. In this we have failed. Until we find how the organism functions, there's no chance of pinning down the cause of death, or of anything else, for that matter."

"You'd say, then," said the President, "there is no chance to communicate with them. If we could somehow talk with them, even in sign language or something, or.

"Not a chance," said Allen. "No chance at all."

"What you are saying," said ‘Whiteside, "is that we have to sit and take it. This car business. Detroit down the drain. Detroit and a lot of other places. The military has contracts.

"If the visitors had only come to us," said the President. "If they only would have come and tried to let us know what they intended»

"By us, you mean the government," said Allen.

The President nodded.

"What everyone fails to realize," said Allen, "is the true, utter alienness of these creatures. They are more alien than can possibly be conceived. I figure them for a hive organism, what one knows or sees or feels all the rest of them know as well. Such a society would have no need of a government. They would never have thought of it. They wouldn't know what a government was, because there never was a need for them to develop the governmental concept."

"We have to do something," said the general. "We have to protect ourselves. We need to take some action."

"Forget what you are thinking," said the President. "You told me, in this office, a few days ago, the visitors could withstand anything short of a nuclear blast. That was your calculation, you said. We can't use nukes."

Allen straightened in his chair. "Then there was a weapons test," he said. "I kept hearing about it, rumors about it. But, surely, I thought, if there had been one, I would have been informed. Tell me, why wasn't I informed? Your findings might have thrown some light.

"Because it was none of your damned business," said the general. "Because it's classified."

"Even so," said Allen, "it might have been important and you should have.

"Gentlemen, please," said the President. "I apologize for the slip of the tongue. It's all my fault." He looked at Allen. "You never heard it, of course," he said.

"No, Mr. President," said Allen, "I never heard a word that was said."

"The fact remains," said the President, "that we can't use nukes.

"If we could get all the visitors herded together," said the general, "then, maybe.

"But we can't do that," said the President. "We don't even know where they are—or, at least, not the most of them. Probably scattered all over the country. Hiding, making cars.

"Sir, you can't be sure of that."

"Well, it's a logical assumption," said the President. "It's understandable. They couldn't sit out in plain sight, making cars. The people, avid to get cars, would rush in and swamp them."

"Maybe," said Whiteside, grasping for hope, "they may run out of trees. They must have to eat a lot of trees to make ears."

"That would be unlikely," said Allen. "There are a lot of trees in North America. And should they begin running short of them, there still would be the rest of the world, including the equatorial jungles. And don't forget they'll be growing trees to replace those they eat. Number 101 planted the field in Iowa."

"That's another thing that worries me," said the President. "If they start using too much farmland to grow trees we might run into a food shortage. I know we have large amounts of wheat in storage, but that would be soon used up."

"The danger there would be," said Allen, "that if there were a food shortage, the visitors might start making food. Our people, in effect, would be placed on a dole system."

"While all this is interesting," said the President, "and perhaps even pertinent, it is getting us nowhere. What we should be talking about is what we should be doing now."

"I just now thought of something," said Porter. "When I talked with Garrison, he mentioned a name. Jerry Conklin, I believe. Said Conklin was the one who really was the first to learn about the cars, but that he objected to being identified, so his name was not mentioned in the story. It seems to me I've heard that name before. It seems to ring a bell."

Allen came to rigid attention. "Of course, it does," he said. "That's the man whose ear was crushed when the first visitor landed at Lone Pine. The one that disappeared when we tried to find him. And here he pops up again. This strikes me as rather strange."

"Perhaps we should bring him in and have a talk with him," said Whiteside. "It's just possible this young fellow knows some things he should be telling.

"Wait a minute," said Allen. "We found out something else. Conklin is a friend, apparently a close friend, of a reporter for the Tribune. Kathy, I think was the first name."

"Kathy Foster," said Porter. "She was the one who found the cars, who wrote the story."

"Maybe we ought to have them both in," said Whiteside. "Ask the FBI to pick them up.

The President shook his head. "Not the FBI," he said. "We'll act civilized about it. We'll invite them as White House guests. We'll send a plane to pick them up.

"But, sir," the general protested, "this man has disappeared before; he could disappear again."

"We'll take our chances on that," said the President. "Dave, will you make the call?"

"Gladly," Porter said.