Alan E. Nourse & J. A. Meyer (15 page)
Read Alan E. Nourse & J. A. Meyer Online
Authors: The invaders are Coming
Club,
when they both had been a little drunk, and gotten to laughing so hard their
sides had hurt. Whiting . . . the last of the pure Eros men left in DEPCO, a
protege
of the legendary Larchmont who had almost succeeded
in converting the educational system of the country into a vast group-analysis
instrument during the shaky, formative days of the
Vanner-Elling
government. Larchmont had not quite succeeded in putting that through, but he
had left the imprint of his own occult personality permanently in the
psychology of the country, and in the government.
It
had been his followers who had shifted the romantic folklore of the country
from the old fallacy of the Clean-Cut-
Ilero
-Beautiful-Heroine-In-Love
Hollywood standard to the even more horrendous fallacy of the
Be-Her-Daddy-Be-His-Little-Nymph concept of the current
fictofilms
,
poptunes
and couch confessionals.
And Whiting was a Larchmont man, a psychoanalytical
dreamer, a fantasy rambler, kept on by DEPCO in the Foreign Affairs office
because he was harmless, and a handy repository for the grasshopper-minded
fringes of the psychological world, also harmless because nothing ever happened
in Foreign Affairs.
But
now something had happened. The foreign nets handling the alien story came
under Whiting, and naturally Whiting came to Bahr. But what Whiting had to say
was another thing. Bahr relaxed, suddenly feeling warmly exultant, listening
now to see how Whiting, who after all did have DEPCO authority, could be used.
".
. . We interpreted the spaceships as phallic symbols," Whiting was saying
eagerly. "At the height of the crash, there was the tremendous
father-hatred and Oedipus feeling toward the ships. The mobs smashed the last
one before it was even completed, so we used the father-hatred to persuade the
masses to reject the ideas of the former legal and military governments. And
we had the computers. We had to use them because
Vanner
,
after all, was the political rallying point. But the idea of putting them into
the caverns was a stroke of genius on Larchmont's part. The computers meant
security and warmth and protection and anti-spaceships, and they were in the
caverns
...
a magnificent Oedipus
feel-
ing
.
Bahr
glanced across at Paul
MacKenzie
, who was sitting
sleepy-eyed and unperturbed through this emotional drenching that Whiting was
pouring out.
MacKenzie
apparendy
had heard this litany before. He seemed to be the only one in the room, besides
Bahr, who was not caught up in the revival-meeting feeling.
"What you mean to say," Bahr cut
Whiting off in midsentence, "is that the people now have an enormous
guilt-fear of spaceships and, by association, are afraid of aliens. Is that
right?"
Whiting
seemed stunned by Bahr's succinct summation of his still unfinished Articles of
Faith. "Well . . . well, yes, that is . . ."
"AH
right," said Bahr. "Now listen carefully. We'll have to give them the
truth
...
as we see it, of course. We
can use sibling rivalry toward the aliens because of their human-
oid
form. Of course, we'll have to declassify that."
He spoke swiftly, powerfully, hoping that he wouldn't get Libby's little
bedroom lectures on theoretical psychodynamics so badly scrambled that even
Whiting in his ecstatic state would choke on them. "Then we'll play up the
non-phallic shape of the alien spaceships, and feature protection and security
as coming from a computer-guided defense against the aliens . . . from the
caverns, of course."
He
was afraid for a moment that
MacKenzie
might laugh
out loud and spoil the whole thing, but the BRINT man managed to suppress the
reaction in a fit of coughing. Whiting was nodding eagerly.
"Brilliant . . . brilliant . . .
Larchmont would have liked that idea."
"Certainly
that approach will cut any panic off at the root," Bahr said gravely.
"No need for a Condition B alert. With
DEPCO
authority—from you—well handle
the security by compartmentalizing the
country by ethnic areas; we'll play up the We-group against the
Mens
. Of course, we will need a Condition B censorship on
newscasts and travel."
Whiting looked doubtful. "That's quite a
lot to ask for."
"Don't
worry," Bahr said. "I'll see that the Joint Chiefs go along, if
you'll back me."
"And
of course there'll have to be careful work on the news releases from
BURINF," Whiting said, warming to the idea.
"I'll
take care of that," Bahr said. "For a news break like this, we won't
want a written release. We'll need a personal address."
"Of
course!"
Whiting agreed. "We have some people
who could put it very nicely."
"No
need for that," Bahr said
firmly, completely confident now. "I'll do the talking myself."
The
broadcast was made at seven o'clock in the evening
from
the BURINF studios in New York, where Bahr had flown when he finally
broke free of Whiting. Since noon, when the Condition B news blackout had
fallen, the powerful BURINF TV net had moved into action, co-
ordinating
trail
er
broadcasts,
reaching every radio, public address microphone and television set in the
nation. BURINF had had long and fruitful experience with mass audience control
as a
major
vector force in implementing DEPCO policies;
in the seven hours of maximum saturation they were able to guarantee an 80%
viewing at announcement-time, with
rebroad
-cast
catching an additional 17% by midnight.
The
substance of the trailers alone was sufficient to guarantee maximum attention.
The blackout was a calculated blow, with a single item of information coming
through
from
all sources: that the
director of DIA would discuss
minors of
an
alien invasion of Earth.
'You
've got to be careful," Libby told him,
checking his
TV
make-up carefully. "They'll be watching
every gesture, every mannerism."
"Certainly they
will," Bahr growled. "That's what I want."
"I
don't mean the public. I mean DEPCO. Adams was furious when he got
Whiting's
report. They're watching you, and I can't stall
them much longer."
"Of course you can," Bahr said.
"You're doing fine." "When did you sleep last?"
"I
don't need any sleep. I feel great." He nodded to a technician who
signaled from the control window, got up, and walked into the BURINF
broadcasting room.
Libby
was right: they
were
watching him. The cameras
picked him up as he came through the door, and he could feel the hush of voices
in the darkened room and across the nation, waiting, watching him. His mouth
tightened in a flat smile he couldn't control. This was the moment he had been
building for.
The
past doesn't matter
any more
,
he told himself savagely as he crossed the
room.
Nothing matters any
more except this thing now. It doesn't matter that they gave you a green card
to keep you down, to break you. It doesn't matter that they court-martialed you
out of the Army.
All your life they've been trying to break
you, trying to jam you down into the mold, and all your life you've fought
back, and now you're going to win.
He
saw himself in the monitor screen as he walked to the microphone in the center
of the booth, carrying his coat, his shoulder holster with the gleaming and
deadly
Markheim
stunner showing, flanked by Frank
Carmine on his right. Vaguely his ears picked up the commentator chattering the
introduction in a hushed voice.
".
. .
Julian Bahr, Acting Director DIA, who is going to make a
statement to the people of Federation America about the urgent national crisis
which has arisen.
Mr. Bahr's assistant is seated now. Mr. Bahr is
putting on his coat. He has been working right up to the moment on the solution
of the crisis.
And now, friends, the Director DIA, Mr. Julian
Bahr."
Silence
lay heavily as Bahr waited, looking out at the gray faces in the room, sensing
the desperate hush before ninety million TV sets across the country. He saw
Adams' face, tense and grim, watching him, and far to one side, the face of an
elderly man with an unruly shock of white hair, watching him.
And then his voice came, heavily resonant,
powerful, commanding and yet reassuring. "Friends, there is no longer any
question that we are facing a national crisis. We know that alien ships have
made a landing on Earth in the first wave of a silent invasion. They are among
us now . . ."
Carl
Englehardt
, lean-faced and impatient, paused for a
moment on the exit platform of the New York-Washington jetliner, then spotted
the waiting Volta with the official license tags and the dark-suited DIA
guards. He hurried down the ramp and skirted the slowly dissipating airport
crowd, moving at the quick restless pace that made him look, at a distance,
like a man of thirty-five except for his lined face and unruly shock of white
hair.
He
climbed into the Volta with an impatient nod to the DIA driver, and settled
back with a cigarette from his engraved titanium case as the car started up the
long ramp to the elevated streets of rebuilt Washington.
He
had heard of the urgently-called meeting of the Joint Department Chiefs six
hours before Bahr's sensational announcement broadcast, first from certain
sources in BRINT, then through official channels indicating that his presence
at the meeting would be desirable, not to say imperative, with full endorsed
approval of DEPCO and all the other agencies involved. Now, he relaxed for a
moment, chuckling. God, how they hated to call him in! The fact that he was
called at all only served to underline their desperation. The very fact of his
existence, utterly unassailable and unanswerable to any agency of the
government, was repugnant to DEPCO, who in eight years of continuous study and
examination, by hand and by Boolean logic computation on the machines, had
still been unable to mount a convincing case of
monopolism
or tax evasion against him. And the simple and inescapable fact that his
independent existence was a major factor in the successful function of the
Vanner-Elling
eco-government which had evolved during and
after the crash was even harder to swallow.
To the socially controlled, highly integrated
economy of Twenty-First Century Federation America, Carl
Englehardt
was an enigmatic anachronism. Nobody knew, for certain, die true extent of the
industrial constellation he headed. The analysts and doom-harbingers in DEPCO
clucked and squawked in protest, propounding theories and citing figures that
Englehardt
and a stable eco-government were mutually
exclusive and could not conceivably coexist in the same plane. But they
inevitably had to ask
Englehardt
what
his
plans were for the next two or three year period when they were setting
up the parameters for the annual VE economic prognosis, and they had to admit,
however grudgingly, that
Englehardt's
vast
interlocking holdings were invariably the buffer that absorbed the stresses
and strains of the annual VE plan.
Since
the earliest days of the VE system,
Englehardt
had walked
the tightrope of that controversy, managing a balance of opposing forces with
a finesse that was exceeded only by the legendary skill with which BRINT
effected
the balance of power in the Eastern turmoil.
And
now, faced with a crisis, they were turning to him again. As the car left the
overhead road and moved down toward the circle of government buildings,
Englehardt
considered the circumstances. He knew what they
wanted, and he knew, on the other hand, what he was prepared to provide. The
meeting would be a violent one. But violence was no stranger to him.
He had weathered violence before, and
survived.
Mark
Vanner
had predicted, almost to the week, the time
when the society of the late 1990's, like a Hegelian pot of water absorbing
energy without recognizable change, would suddenly begin to boil. In the case
of the old United States economy, it was crumble rather than boil, but the
pattern of collapse had followed exactly and disastrously the steps that
Vanner
had outlined as much as ten years before.
