The Tomorrow File (67 page)

“I think so.”

“My target?”

“I want to be. But it’s your determination to make, isn’t it?” 

“All mine?”

“Well . . . no. But I must change my nature.”

“That’s a great deal to ask,” she said gravely.

“Yes.” Nodding. “But I want to. Grace, I really
want to.
That’s something, isn’t it?”

We both sighed. Happy with our anguish.

“What is it?” I asked her. Nicholas Bennington Socrates Flair. “What is lover’

She shook her head.

“Devotion,” she said. After a moment. “That’s what it is for me. It may be something else to you. Pleasure. Duty. Whatever. ” “Devotion?” I mused. “To what?” “Oh,” she said. Looking about. “To anyone. Or anything. Worthy.”

“Am I worthy?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. Yet.”

“Are you worthy? Of my devotion?”

“Oh, God, yes,” she said. “I
know.”

“We may die,” I said. Using a word that was not officially approved.

“I don’t care,” she said. Looking again into my eyes. “Do you?”

Suddenly I didn’t.

“No,” I said. Gripping her sweated hands inside the covering cuffs. “It’s meaning, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes,” she breathed. “Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Meaning. That’s what I want, Nick. Meaning.”

“Love,” I said.

“Love,” she said.

We circled down from our panting high to discuss ways and means. The house of Louise Rawlins Tucker would be our “safe place.” Grace assured me she could arrange for access during afternoons. Servers absent. So we plotted. With the sad acknowledgment of how small plans must bring grand ardors low.

I suppose, later, we stroked palms politely, and nodded on parting. Then we were inside, her cloak was over her arm. I saw the simple chemise of slithery silk. Imagined the living flesh glowing within. Humid scents and clever crannies. I hoped she dreamed the same of me. And thought she might.

About ten days later, I was in Bismarck, North Dakota, addressing the annual convention of the Association of US Historians. I was not about to tell historians that history was inoperative. That it no longer offered precedents. Some of my remarks:

“As historians, you must know that most civilizations have perished. Or are perishing. Birth, growth, stop. It is the fate of most objects and most societies. Some in a wink, some longer. Some by interior rot, some by external aggression.

“But, as you also must know, some political, religious, and social corpora have continued to exist. For aeons. Not in their original form, true. Not with their original structure, laws, directions, methods, goals. But by evolving. Adjusting to new input. It is the one lesson, the one great lesson, history can teach us.
Change.

Either change conquers us, or we embrace change, learn to profit from change.

“I am here tonight to discuss with you a change in the Public Service branch of the US Government, the proposed establishment of a Department of Creative Science. I want to suggest how I feel this new Department will change the history of the US and, eventually, change the history of the world. To help us all adjust to new input, and to help us all survive. Because that, essentially, is what we’re talking about—survival.”

And so forth. And so forth.

I was back in the motel. In my room. Lying naked in bed with Samantha Slater. Both of us breathing like long-distance runners. Having had our first offs. One of her amazingly long, slender, hairless legs was clamped between my thighs. Her flesh could have been squeezed from a tube. I hugged it. Just the one leg. It was enough.

My Portaphone attache vase buzzed.

“Kaka,” I said.

I disentangled, got out of bed, stumbled over to the desk. The case continued buzzing while I fumbled about, pulling the curtains, turning on a lamp.

“You’re all red,” Samantha said.

“I wonder why?” I said. I got the case open, switched it on.

“Flair,” I said.

“Nick? Paul here. Go to scrambler.”

“Wait a minute." I pressed the button, turned the code indicator. “What is it, Paul?”

“Nick!” Excited. “I think I may know how they’re doing it. I mean the botulism. In GP A-11.”

“How?”

“Are you alone? Can we talk?”

“Reasonably.”

“Look, tonight I was in the office. Helping to get out the mail. We’ve had a postal metering machine on order for weeks, but it hasn’t come yet.”

“So?”

“So we’ve been using stamps. Licking a stamp and putting it on every envelope. So a few days ago Senator Blarney went into Bethesda for a hernia operation. I guess you scanned it.”

“No. I didn’t. Paul, it’s hardly an item that might excite my interest.”

“Well, look,” he said. Almost stuttering in his frenzy to get it out. “Blarney is important to us. He’s Chairman of the Senate Government Operations Committee, you know. Well, I thought—”

“Paul, will you get
to
it?”

"Well, I thought it would be a nice gesture to send him a personal get-well-quick note. From all of us at DCS. You compute?” 

“Yes, Paul,” I said wearily. “I compute. So?”

“So I wrote out the letter, handwritten, and addressed an envelope. Mary Bergstrom folded the letter, put it in the envelope, and sealed it. Then she licked a stamp and stuck it on the envelope." 

“Paul, what
is
this?”

“That’s when it hit me! Nick, don’t you see? I haven’t looked into it, but surely there’s a possibility. What if the botulism guck is in the glue on the stamps? Wouldn’t that account for the number of victims in GPA-11? The age range? The scattered outbreaks elsewhere? Tourists traveling through GPA-11 and buying stamps they used when they got back home? Nick, for God’s sake, all the victims are getting the dose from licking US postage stamps!” 

“Jesus Christ,” I said.

“What do you think, Nick? Nick? Are you there, Nick?” 

“I’m here,” I said into the transmitter. “What about the infant who stopped? It wouldn’t be mailing a letter.”

“The four-month-old?” he said. Still speaking rapidly. Still stammering with excitement. “One infant, Nick. Well, what if the mother or father wrote a letter, sealed it in an envelope, then licked a poisoned stamp. And
then
picked up the kid and kissed it on the mouth! That’s possible, isn’t it?”

I was silent.

“What is it?” Samantha Slater asked lazily from the bed. 

“Nick?” Paul said. “Are you still there, Nick?”

“I’m still here,” I said crossly.

“Well . . . what do you think?”

“A possibility.”

“What should I do, Nick? Wait till you come back?”

I computed a moment.

“No,” I said. “Don’t wait. If it’s contaminated stamps, there’s still a lot of them around. Get to the CD as soon as possible. Tell him what you suspect. Tell him to bring R. Sam Bigelow’s bloodhounds in on it. They’ll run a search and analysis. Confirm or reject. But do it immediately.”

“Right,” Paul said. “Understood. Thanks. Nick. I really think this is it.”

“Could be,” I said.

“I’m off,” he said.

“Good on you,” I said. But he had already disconnected. “What was that all about?” Samantha Slater asked as I crawled slowly back into bed.

“About licking,” I said.

“How nice,” she said.

“Paul Bumford is an ultrabrain,” Chief Director Michael Wingate said gravely.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“A very lovable em,” he said.

I nodded. I was not, I admit too delighted with these tributes.

‘ ‘Paul suggested to me how it was being done, ” the CD went on. “The poisoned stamps. Bigelow’s crew went in and verified it. Fortunately, they were twenty-cent stamps, used mostly on postcards. If they had been the twenty-five cent denomination for first-class postage, we estimate the stop ratio would have had a ten-factor increase. We picked up the unsold stocks of contaminated stamps at post offices and put out a general alert.”

“Public?” I asked.

“Had to be,” he said grimly. “No other way. But the flak didn't last long, and we were able to limit media coverage mostly to GPA-11. Nick, one of the many things this service has taught me is the public’s short attention-span. Fifty years ago a botulism outbreak like this would have been an horrendous scandal. Screaming headlines for weeks. But the Great Stamp Recall lasted in the news for two, three days. Just another catastrophe. We’ve all learned to live with disaster. It’s part of our environment. Drought, famine, crime, earthquake, terrorism, revolution, war, radioactive fallout. If you’ve seen one child bum to death on TV, you’ve seem them all. So what’s new? Too much. Too many words. Too many images. The attention span shortens. It has to. We once thought alcoholism and drug addiction were psychic surrogates for suicide. Then we realized alcoholism and drug addiction are self-defense mechanisms: the object protecting itself from depression, psychosis, or worse. Right, doctor?”

“Right,” I said.

“So our attention span shortens,” he went on. Broodingly. “As it has to. Must. If we are to survive.”

I had never heard him talk at such length. Or so intimately. He seemed to me weary. Physically weary. Kept pinching the bridge of his nose and squinching his eyes. Those jolly Santa Claus features were slack, gray with fatigue. But I would not presume to prescribe for him. I was not his personal physician. It had nothing to do with the fact that I hoped to guzzle his wife.

“The stamps, sir,” I said to him gently.

“What? Oh, yes. The stamps. . . .’’He came back from somewhere. “Well, it’s been determined they were printed here in Washington. The glue on the back is purchased from a commercial supplier in fifty-gallon drums. It’s trucked to Washington, held in storage until needed on the press. The operation is called ‘gumming. ’ It’s done after printing but before perforation. The adhesive could have been fiddled at any step along the way. Bigelow’s objects have been placed in services where they can watch what’s going on. And, of course, the warehouse and printing areas are being shared. I think it was a one-shot thing. Demented. I base that opinion on the absence of any obvious motive. No letters. No threats. No demands.” 

“I still feel it may have been an attempt to destabilize the government, sir. Or perhaps in the nature of a laboratory experiment. A trial run to test the technique.”

“Maybe. Naturally we’re doing everything we can to make certain it doesn’t happen again.”

We were seated in his top-floor EOB office. Just the two of us. It was night. The curtains blotted out the lights of Washington, the glare bathing the White House. The only illumination came from a chrome lamp on his cluttered desk. It made a round pool of light. But farther out, from the corners of the room, the darkness pressed in.

“Well . . .’’he said. Pushing himself erect in his swivel chair. “Anyway, Paul Bumford did a fine service. I’ll keep an eye on that young em.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But all this is by the way. The reason I called you in tonight is the report on Lewisohn. From that committee of civilian doctors you asked me to convene. They’re in remarkable agreement—for doctors. Prognosis negative. Just like that.”

“What is their survival estimate, Chief?”

“Three to nine months. In that area.”

“Any suggestions for treatment?”

“Nothing you didn’t think of. They were very complimentary about the number and variety of protocols you have tried. Very ingenious, they said. Now then. . . . You mentioned something about radical surgery as a last resort. What exactly is it?” “Chief,” I said cautiously, “just how important is Hyman R. Lewisohn? How far will you go to keep his brain functioning?” He rose heavily from behind the desk. Stretched his arms wide, arched his back. I heard the snap of vertebrae. Then he shrugged his shoulders, rolling his head about on his neck. A tired, stiffened em, trying to loosen up. He began pacing back and forth across the office. I moved around so I could watch him. He went into the darkness, then came back into the pool of light. Darkness and light alternating. While he talked. . . .

“Lewisohn,” he said. “I’ll tell you about Lewisohn. It’s not enough to call him our best theorist. He’s more than that. All his conceptions have a hard, pragmatic core. He’s a genius without being a visionary. Let me give you a for instance. Years ago—it was during President Morse’s second term—Lewisohn was asked to run a research project on the possibility of global war. You
ask
Lewisohn, you don’t order him. Instead, Lewisohn turned in a monumental study of the history, causes, methods, and results of conflict between nations. The entire methodology of international competition. It’s still a classified document—highest classification—but I can tell you it’s remarkable. Lewisohn dealt with conventional warfare, nukewar, genwar, econwar, chemwar, pop-war, and a dozen other possible collisions between governments. He then analyzed the resources of the US for each type of struggle. His conclusion, which has been the unofficial policy of the US ever since it was formulated, was that the security and prosperity of the US would best be served by agriwar. Agricultural warfare. An aggression in which food becomes the primary weapon. Lewisohn computed that a heavy increase in our total acreage under cultivation, plus crash programs to develop new cereal strains and new sources of protein, would provide the ‘armory’ we needed. You probably know the results of those classified research programs.

Lewisohn argued that by becoming the world’s larder, we would, in a sense, be providing ourselves with a certain measure of insurance against nuclear attack. What foreign government would want to risk contaminating our land with radioactive fallout and endangering our agricultural productivity? But Lewisohn pointed out that, because of the population explosion, the US would never be able to feed the entire world. Therefore he recommended a system he called ‘political triage.’ PT for short. Basically, PT is based on the realization that food was then in short supply and would be for the foreseeable future. Therefore food must be used strategically and tactically as an offensive weapon. Since we could not feed the entire world, we could best serve our own interests by our choice of who buys our wheat, who gets our corn, who is shipped enough soybeans and fertilizer to allow them to continue to exist as viable nations. And at what level of subsistence. Some nations inimical to us would have to go down the pipe. Others we could maintain at a starvation level, a malnutrition level, or, if we wished, a comfortable level approximating our own calorie-consumption rate. Hence the term ‘political triage.’ It was a breathtaking concept that Lewisohn devised. And, all in all, I would say it served us well since it was implemented. At least we’ve avoided nukewar. All due to Hyman R. Lewisohn. This government will go to any lengths,
any
, to keep his brain functioning. We need him. It’s that simple. Does that answer your question?”