Part 14

SAM (with a sigh, then getting it over with): All right. When Spookie comes to see you, lead him on. Let him think you're crazy about him--as maybe you are.

JOY (looking at the floor, hands on Sam's chest): Maybe I am, in a second-best sort of way.

SAM (on brink of tears): Listen, my second-best darling ... (a quick, antiseptic, apologetic kiss) what I have to know is--whether Spookie Masters is a Monolithian.

JOY (withdrawing): What!

SAM: That's the key to the whole thing. He could have come to Earth years ago as an advance agent for them--his early life has always been a mystery. His career took him all over the world. He knows everybody. Then he got himself to Ultra. Of course! _He_ was the "Mr. M." who represented Monolithia at the super-summit.

JOY (coldly): Isn't that pretty far-fetched, Sam?

SAM: No. It fits perfectly. Then he arranged to get himself "captured" and thrown in with us so he could learn what we were up to. And I'll bet he engineered our "escape," too, and saw to it somehow that I stole that conscience gas. They knew I would lead them to the only holdout in their scheme--the real Gov--and that the gas would be the bait that put him in their trap at the Garden--where, you must admit, Spookie was very much the big wheel.

JOY (thoughtfully): Well, maybe. Tell me what you want me to do.

I'd told her, unable to look her in the eye, that I had to know whether Spookie Masters was a whole man, and therefore terrestrial, or a sexless creature like the android, and thus a Monolithian. Joy had heard me out, saying nothing except with her contemptuous eyes, then showed me out.

* * * * *

Something puzzled me. I was feeling no pain. And yet I should have been, I reasoned, since I had been subjected to the C-gas at the same time Gov inhaled it and I was probing around in what must be considered an anti-Monolithian way.

I was also running around loose and doing a certain amount of independent thinking, which didn't seem to fit into the concept of a true Monolithian state whose subjects had been C-gassed into cooperating for the greater good.

True, I was on a loose rein. Mox had given me the day off, in effect, telling me to report to the White House in the morning. I supposed I'd find myself fired when I got there, since Gov's ex-guerrillas, including Josh Holcomb, his original press secretary, had all been C-gassed into conformity and my services would therefore be superfluous.

I decided to go back to the penthouse and have a heart-to-heart talk with Mox or one of his lieutenants.

Mox saw me himself. He must have had a million things to do, but he took the time to talk to me for more than an hour, answering every question I asked.

When I left his office I found Joy sitting at her desk, typing. She glanced at me and said, "Sit down, Sam. This is for you. I'll be through in a minute."

She rattled through another paragraph, then, after a look at me, typed one final line. With a pen she wrote two words. Joy sighed and said, "There--I've got that out of my system." She folded the single sheet of paper, sealed it in an envelope and handed it to me.

"Please go before you read it," she said.

Then she smiled, as if she were now at peace with me and the rest of the world.

"Joy----" I started to say.

"Just go--please," she said, and I went.

* * * * *

I read Joy's letter over a martini at a solitary table at the Brass Rail, then decided to have several more martinis and skip dinner altogether.

Joy's letter started: "Sam (not at all dear):" and went on to tell me quite explicitly that Spookie Masters--whom she called Robert, his real name--was male as male could be.

What she had said, actually, was: "He's as human as you are--if you are."

This was empirical knowledge, she said, not theory or hearsay. She had known this before today, she said, and hoped I was hurt by this fact as she had been hurt by me. She did not know whether Robert was an Earthman or a Monolithian, but this didn't matter to her. Her happiness was what mattered and it was obvious that I could only cause her pain.

"I've made my choice, Sam," she had written. "I had to choose between what I wanted and what I could get. There are times when the ideal is just too unattainable and when the second best becomes, in the long run, the best. Maybe this also has a universal application. I hope so."

The last line of her letter was: "One last thing, Sam--I hate you."

But she had edited this. One of her two handwritten words was her signature. The other, inserted in the last sentence above a caret, was "can't."

That had made her farewell read: "I can't hate you."

Over my third martini I thought I understood Joy's parting smile. Remembering it again, I could see the signs in her eyes. It wouldn't be long, I suspected, before I saw one of those headlines peculiar to the society pages of _The New York Times_, reading: TROTH PLIGHTED OF MRS. JOY LINX; MONOLITHIAN AIDE FIANCEE OF ENTERTAINMENT STAR.

I wished her joy and ordered a fourth martini.

Then I got up and telephoned Mae in Bethesda and told her I'd be home that night. Mox had told me, among other things, that my double wouldn't be there.

30 (AUG. 20, WED.)

And now we all have a new King. I wish him and you, his people, happiness and prosperity with all my heart.

--Duke of Windsor

It's done now. It's all over but the shouting, or maybe the weeping, depending on how you look at it.

Earth has been absorbed into the greater scheme of things.

There'd been a telephone call from the White House at 7 A.M., from Gov personally. There was no need for me to come in, he said. My job was intact but different. I wasn't the Presidential Press Secretary any more, but my new assignment was just as important--maybe more so. Mox, who came on the line on an extension, said the same, so I knew it was official.

I tried to explain it to Mae over breakfast.

"I'm the historian," I said. "That's what it's all about."

"Eat your eggs," she said. "They'll get cold." She had sprinkled them with Pep.

"My job is to write it just as it happened. The way I see it. No propaganda, no censorship."

"That's nice. You want your coffee now or later?"

"I can work at home if I want to. And they'll send out a secretary if I want somebody to type up notes or take dictation. Now, please."

"That's sweet of them," Mae said. She poured the coffee. "Maybe they'll send that nice Joy Linx."

I carefully broke a yolk and stirred Pep into it with my fork, giving it all my attention. I think Mae was serious. "I don't believe I'll need anybody," I said carefully.

"You need me." Mae was standing at the stove with her back to me, frying an egg for herself. She was wearing a sort of maternity middy blouse and skirt and looked very good. "Don't you?"

I got up and put my arms around her gently and kissed the back of her neck.

"You can hug us gently," she said.

I did. I thought I felt my son or daughter give a kick, not of protest, but just to let me know someone was there.

"Say it," Mae whispered.

"I love you and I need you," I said.

"Good." She gave her egg a poke and sighed as if in relief. "And I love you and need you. What I don't need is that crazy robot that's been hanging around pretending to be you."

"What!"

"He didn't fool me any--except at first."

"He didn't?"

"Oh, he's a very good imitation--as far as he goes. But he worked too hard at keeping me from finding out that he lacked a few male--or even human--necessities."

"You mean he didn't--uh, sleep with you?" I had to get it said, any old way.

"He certainly did _not_. Actually it was his own idea to sleep in the guest room. I'd have seen that he did anyway. But that wasn't the only thing. He never went to the bathroom."

"Well," I said.

"Oh, he'd go in and take a bath, but he never--how do they say it in hospitals?--he never _voided_."

"Oh? How do you know?"

"I listened at the door. There was never a sound till he flushed."

"Oh, Mae!" I said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. "And I thought you were completely fooled, and that I had to stay away because if you saw two of us the shock would be too much for you. Why didn't you say something?"

"I figured it was important to you and your job, and maybe even the world. You usually have a good reason when you do something peculiar. Want some toast?"

"Yes, please--wait a minute. The toaster's broken."

"_He_ fixed it. That's how I really knew he wasn't you. He went right ahead without a murmur and repaired half a dozen things you've been putting off ever since we were married, practically. He fixed the stuck zippers and my sewing machine and that lamp with the short in it and the switch on the vacuum cleaner. That wasn't my fumble-fingered old Sam."

* * * * *

All that was a long time ago. It's been only a little more than two years, but it seems like ancient history now.

A lot has happened since. It's all been fully recounted and interpreted in the press and magazines, so I'll just hit the highlights.

A year ago all the nuclear weapons in the world were deactivated and sunk in a remote corner of the Pacific. The scientists who were working on bigger and worse ones were transferred to peaceful research.

Six months ago the Moon was colonized by a six-man international expedition, whose names are Underwood, Chih-ho, Cohen, Raswaplindi, Buragin and Thorwald, and their wives.

Five months ago the cure for cancer was announced. They'd solved the riddle of muscular dystrophy, Parkinson's disease and arthritis before that.

Last week the people of Mississippi elected a Negro governor.

For more than a year a few million people who had been on the brink of starvation have had enough to eat--and the U.S. government is saving a few billion dollars a year by not paying storage charges on surplus grain. (Our farmers have never had it so good, either, and the take-home pay of factory workers has doubled in the past year.)

Income taxes are now so low that there's a bill in Congress to abolish them altogether.

Someone said this should be called the Half-Century of the Common-Sense Man.

Earth's population explosion has been controlled to the satisfaction of both the Catholic Church and the economists and Antarctica is becoming a populated continent. It's actually warm under the ice where the mining and living is going on.

You've read about it. There's something new and wonderful almost every day.

* * * * *

Mae says I have to put in some personal stuff, like the name of our son (Kevin) and the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Robert (Spookie) Masters came to the christening as godparents and how we have dinner with Spookie and Joy, or vice versa, every Friday night when he's not making a movie or being on TV.

I'd better make it clear that Spookie's not a Monolithian, though he was among the first to dig them, as he puts it with no shame. And he's recently become the father of a beautiful little girl. So much for my doubts about his sex life.

World Wide has been de-nationalized and Ian McEachern went back and Stew Macon and all the rest are still with it. There's a good job there for me, too, when I finish my book.

Eurydice Playfair got awfully bored with the Monolithians when the initial glamor wore off for her. For a while there was talk about her marrying one of them (they're all quite male, except for their robot-androids, which have been deactivated), but she broke that off and went to the Caribbean and, I heard, opened up a fashion house, or some kind of house.

President Gouverneur Allison backed his Vice-President for the top spot on the ticket and he was duly nominated at the convention. The other party nominated its man but there was little to choose between. Both espoused the good and peaceful life our country has come to know and, though there was nothing explicit, there were pro-Monolithian overtones to each candidate's campaign.

It didn't matter which won, as had been proven in the elections of other countries. All on Earth, I thought sometimes, were contented cows--happy, unambitious and no longer obsessed by the fear of an annihilating war.

Crime vanished as the effects of the conscience gas spread inexorably around the world. This gave a boost to the common welfare--the billions of dollars, pounds, francs, marks, rubles and drachmas which had been illegally drained off almost as a matter of course showed up where they belonged: in the pockets of honest people.

* * * * *

Despite my vow to retain my objectivity I've had to fight to avoid succumbing to the pervading conviction that all's well with the world. But maybe I should stop fighting. "Monolithian" has practically become a lower-case word--like humanitarian or altruistic or philanthropic. It almost never connotes anything alien.

It's as if the Monolithian philosophy has been thoroughly absorbed into our culture, while the aliens themselves have retreated into the background, content to keep a paternalistic eye on us.

Oh, they're still with us, physically, but I think they're getting ready to go. They're a bit wistful about it, not wanting to be forgotten. They've apparently absorbed that Earthly trait of vanity, which may be one reason--a minor one, I'm sure--for my project under what has become the Monolithian Foundation.

I'm compiling the history of their visit under a grant probably more generous than any writer ever received. I'm writing it exactly as I see it, as I told Mae, without guidance, restraint or censorship. I think they'd like it finished before they go back, so they can take a copy with them, but there's no deadline. It shouldn't take me more than another six months, now that I've finished the day-by-day account of the first month of their visit.

There's some talk of publishing these working notes immediately in a popular version, perhaps under the title _30-Day Wonder_, or _The Peaceful Invasion_. A doctor friend of mine has suggested _The Febrifuge_, which my Little Oxford tells me is a medicine to reduce fever, and, though I like the thought it expresses, it doesn't have much zing.

As I wind it up I really don't see how I can come to any valid conclusion. I've been too close to everything.

It's all down on paper now, except for the footnotes and the documents and the index.

I've said all I can and I still don't know what's right, except for me and my family, who have never been so happy or secure.

But is this enough? Frankly, it's enough for me. For now. Twenty years from now I hope to ask my son the same question. And I hope he'll know what I'm talking about.

* * * * *

_THE MONOLITHIANS_ ...

they were such gentle, friendly, affable creatures--they even looked okay--handsome, human males, all of them.

They were law-abiding too. If a local speed limit was 25 m.p.h., that's how fast they'd go, no matter if traffic snarled up for miles in back of them. If a Blue Law town said nobody should work on Sunday, they'd do their duty as citizens and let the town burn before they'd permit a fireman to put out the blaze. No one could do anything about it because the Monolithians were impregnable.

So when they got into the United Nations and the politicians found themselves having to live by what they said, the world was in real trouble.

Or was it?

This is an original publication--not a reprint.

Printed in U.S.A.