The Visitors (v1.0)

56. WASHINGTON, D.C

"‘With this new information," said Marcus White, Secretary of State, "I think it might be time to realign our thinking."

John Hammond, White House chief of staff, asked Porter, "Just how solid is this information? Should we check further on it?"

"I would think we might be checking on it," said Porter.

The President stirred uneasily in his chair. "Dave is right," he said. "We are checking on it. We have men in Lone Pine. Norton will guide them in. The National Guard is flying in a helicopter to take the party in. Everything is being kept under cover. The guard doesn't even know why the copter's going in. We'll soon know if the information's right."

"I think you can count on it being right," said Porter. "I've had some previous contact with Garrison at Minneapolis. He's a solid citizen. Remember, the man didn't have to tip us off. He had an exclusive story; he could have stayed sitting on it."

"Then why didn't he stay sitting on it?" demanded General Whiteside.

"He was giving us a break. Said he felt it was only right that we should have some warning, thought we'd probably need some time to get our feet planted under us before he went to press."

"He pledged you to secrecy?" asked Whiteside.

"Not in so many words. He said he assumed we would protect him. I told him that we would. And I assume we will. It's in our interest as well as his. Once this thing breaks, we had better have some idea of what we should be saying and doing. We need the time he gave us."

"I don't like it," said Whiteside. "I don't like it one damn bit."

"You don't have to like it, Henry," said the President. "None of the rest of us likes it, either."

"That's not what I meant," said Whiteside.

"I know it isn't what you meant," said the President. "I was putting a charitable interpretation on what you said."

Allen, the science advisor, spoke up. "It is my opinion that we have to accept the Lone Pine report as true. It may seem, on the surface, somewhat far-fetched, but when you consider it, it's not. If the visitors can make cars, it seems entirely reasonable they also can make houses. A more difficult job, of course, but only in degree. I, personally, would say they are equal to it."

"But houses!" said Whiteside. "Cars are one thing; houses are another. They can distribute the cars, but how will they go about distributing houses? By setting up new housing tracts, perhaps, taking over valuable farm lands or industrial sites for the tracts? Or knocking down rows of substandard housing and placing the new houses in their stead?"

"It doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference how they go about it," Hammond said. "No matter what they do, whether they do anything or not, the threat is there. So far as this country is concerned, the housing industry is wiped out."

"I had said," the President told them, "that we could weather the elimination of the automotive industry. I don't know about this other. The thing about it is that it plants an over-riding fear, a cancer in the economic picture. If the auto industry and the housing industry are gone, is there anything that's safe?"

"How is the car situation going out on the Mississippi?" Hammond asked.

"It's ugly," Porter told him. "We have Goose Island cordoned off, but the crowds are building. Sooner or later, there is going to be an incident of some sort. There are a dozen or more people dead that we know of. A boat swamped and went down when ear-seekers overloaded it. There'll be more of it, I'm sure. You can't keep people from getting their hands on free cars. The greedy bastards are going to make a lot of trouble."

"That is a single situation," White pointed out. "We can't waste time on it. What we have to do is work out a policy. When the news breaks, we have to have at least the beginning of a policy. We have to give the nation and the world some indication of what we intend to do about it."

"It's going to go down hard," said the President. "Whatever we do, it will be hard to take. From our first beginnings, we have been a proud people. Standing on our own feet. It's not in us to cave ~

"Some damn fool," said Whiteside, "started a rumor on the Hill that there had been a weapons test and we're onto something. It won't take long for Ivan to pick that up. Get him upset enough and one touch of a button.

"That rumor," said the President, "wherever it might have come from, has served to keep the Congress solidly behind us. If it hadn't been for the rumor, no one knows what they might have done."

"That is all behind us," urged White. "We should forget it now. What's done can't be helped. We have to live with it. As I've told you from the start, we can't work it out alone. If we act in a reasonable manner, we will have the rest of the world behind us. We've not gone so far that we've lost good will."

"Even Russia?" asked the President.

"I don't know what they'll do to help. Probably more than we would expect. But if we react reasonably, they'll keep their fingers off the buttons Henry talks about."

"And what else? Just what do you have in mind? What do you see?"

"I am convinced we have to agree, in principle, that the visitors constitute an international problem, that we must consult with other states considering the situation that has been created here. I think that most of the major states realize that no one nation, us or anyone else, could contain such a situation, that eventually, it will spill over national boundaries, any national boundaries, and that it will become a world problem. I think the time has come to invite help and cooperation from the rest of the world, from anyone who might be willing to help and cooperate."

"Marcus, you have talked with some of these people?"

"Informally, yes. Unofficially. Mostly, they have done the talking and I have done the listening. Those I have talked with are convinced that whatever happens to us now will happen to them later unless the problem, or problems, can be solved."

"What sort of cooperation can you detect? We have to know. If we go international, we have to know where we stand, what we can expect."

"France and Britain are ready to come in—in any way they can be of assistance. Do what they can to bolster the dollar, do whatever they can. Japan has the same willingness. The Scandinavians are waiting only for a word from us. The West Germans stand ready, if necessary, with monetary aid."

"You mean foreign aid? For us!"

"That's exactly what I mean," said White. "Why flinch away from it? We've carried half the world on our back for years. We rebuilt Western Europe after World War II. It would be no more than turn and turn about. It's their ass as well as ours and they know it. The rest of the world can't afford to let us collapse. Even the OPEC people would rally around."

The President looked around the table with a stricken face. "Oh, my God!" he said.

"It's not only the matter of keeping us from going under," said the Secretary of State. "It's a matter of working out a new system

— a new political pattern, a new financial concept, perhaps a rehauling of the entire economic structure. Not for the United States alone, but for the world. The visitors not only have come close to ruining us, but they have changed the situation for the entire world and we have to find a way to live with it. Nothing will ever be the same again. I think the first job, and perhaps the hardest, will be to honestly analyze what has happened. We have to know that before we can assess its impact."

"You're very eloquent on the subject, Marcus," said Hammond. "Do the other nations, the men you have talked with so informally and so unofficially, recognize all the factors that you have outlined for us?"

"I would say they do," said State. "At least, their thinking runs in that direction."

"But the tests," cried Whiteside. "‘We are onto something. Do we have to give up everything? Can't we, somehow, hold back on what we found?"

The President said, quietly, "I don't think we can, Henry. You have heard what the man said—a new kind of world and a new way to live in it. It comes hard for old battle-scarred dogs such as you and I, but I can glimpse some of the logic in it. I suppose that some of us, maybe the most of us, have been thinking something like this all along, but couldn't bring ourselves to say so."

"How the hell we'll ever work it out," said Hammond, "I don't know.~~

"Not us alone," said State. "The world. It's not up to us alone; it's up to all the others. If the world doesn't pull together on this one, all of us are sunk."