My god, we've got ships in three star systems!
And then he remembered the QB satellite.
How'd they do that ? he asked himself. Remarkable! It doesn't quite fit in. Because even so, they are an entire evolutionary step below us.
We can lick them with both hands and one frontal lobe of our brain tied behind our backs... so to speak.
But the assurance of a moment ago had left him and he did not right now feel quite so secure.
Jim Briskin, he said to himself, you just better darn well get back intact from that alternate Earth.
Because there's going to be a hard row to hoe, here, for all of us, and we need someone capable. I
can see Bill The Cat's Meatman Schwarz attempting to deal with this problem ... yes, how I can see it.
Once more he dialed TD's Washington, D.C., number and again, when 'he had their switchboard, asked for Earl Bohegian in 603.
'I want you to let me know,' Tito Cravelli instructed Bohegian when he had him, 'the moment Jim
Briskin crosses back. I don't give a damn about the others - just him. Got it, Earl ?'
'Sure, Tito,' Bohegian said, nodding.
'Can you get a message to him ? After all, he'll be there in your building, on the bottom floor.'
'I can try,' Bohegian said, sounding dubious.
'Tell him to call me.'
'Okay,' Bohegian said dutifully, 'I'll do my best.'
Ringing off, Cravelli sat back in his chair, then searched about for a cigarette. He had done all he could - for now. Here on out he could only sit and wait, at least until Jim showed up. And, he knew, that might be a long time.
He thought, then, of something interesting. Perhaps be now understood why Cally Vale had shot and killed the 'settler repairman with her laser pistol. If she had run across one of the Peking men, she probably had gone straight into hysterical shock. Had probably in her state taken the repairman for one more of them. And after all, most 'settler repairmen - at least, those he had known -were rather shambling, hunched creatures; the error was easy to comprehend, once the circumstances were known.
Poor Cally, Tito thought. Stuck over there, supposedly in safety. What a surprise it must have been, when one of those wooden gliders came sailing past, one day.
It must have been quite a meeting.
11
Seated in the back of the jet-hopper as it made its return flight across the Atlantic, the Peking man in his blue cloth cap and toga-like robe declared, 'My name is Bill Smith.' At least, that was the way the TD linguistics machine handled the utterance. It was the best the circuits could do.
Bill Smith, Sal Heim thought. What an appropriate name the machine's given it! As American as apple pie. He miserably inspected his wristwatch, for the tenth time. Aren't we ever going to get back across this ocean ? he wondered. It did not seem so. Time, for him, stood motionless, and he knew who to blame; it was Bill Smith's fault. Riding with him in the 'hopper was for Sal Heim a nightmare, yet totally and completely lucidly real.
'Hello, Bill Smith,' Dillingsworth was saying into the mike, now. 'We are glad to know you. We admire your science and efforts as represented by your roads, houses, gliders, ships, motor and clothing. In fact, wherever we look, we see indications of your people's ability.'
The linguistics machine produced a hubbub of grunts, squeals and yips, to which the Peking man listened with slack-jawed intensity; his small, brow-overlain eyes glazed with the effort of paying attention. With a groan, Sal Heim turned away and looked out the 'hopper window instead.
And to think I handed in my resignation over a little matter like the disagreement about George
Walt, he reflected. What was that compared with this ?
To Jim Briskin, seated beside him, Sal said bitingly, I'm certainly going to be interested to hear your next speech. Got any idea what you're going to say, Jim ? For instance, about the emigration situation as regards this new development.' He waited, but Jim did not answer; hunched over, Jim somberly scrutinized his interlocked fingers. 'Maybe you could say it's going to be like the
Mason-Dixon Line,' Sal continued. 'With them on one side and us on the other. Of course, that's if these Pekes agree. And they might just not.'
'Why should they agree ?' Jim said.
'Well, we could offer them the alternative of total annihilation, if Bill Schwarz can see his way clear in that direction.'
'That's out of the question,' Jim said. 'And I know Schwarz would back me up. They've got just as much right to exist as we, especially over here. You know it and I know it and they know it.'
'Is that what you're going to say in your speech ? That it's their planet - just after having promised that all the bibs can cross over and become farmers ?'
Slowly, Jim said, 'I'm ... beginning to see what you mean.' His lean face twisted wrathfully.
'Advise me, then. Do your job.'
'This planet,' Sal said, 'will still be able to absorb seventy million bibs. They can fit in on the
North American land-mass. But there's going to be friction. People - and those deformed things -
are going to get killed. It's going to be roughly a reenactment of the situation when the first white colonists landed in the New World. You see ? The Pekes in North America will be driven back, step by step, until the continent is cleared of them; they might as well resign themselves to that, and you might as well, too. I mean, it's inevitable.'
'And then what ?'
'And then the trouble - the real trouble - comes. Because sooner or later it's going to occur to some group or some corporation that if we can use North America, we can use Europe and Asia as well. And then the fight that was fought out on both worlds fifty or a hundred thousand years ago is going to take place again, only not with flint hatchets. It'll be with tactical A-bombs and nerve gas and lasers, on our side, and on their side ..." He paused, ruminating.'... with whatever they took out the QB satellite by. Who knows ? Maybe in a million and a half years they've managed to stumble over and come up with a source of power we have no knowledge of.
Something that's beyond our conception. Had you thought of that ?'
Jim shrugged.
'And if we press them far enough,' Sal said, 'they'll have to use it on us. They'd have no choice.'
'We can always slam down the door. Close down the nexus by turning off the power supply of the 'scuttler.'
'But by that time there'll be seventy million colonists over there. Can we strand them ?'
'Of course not.'
'Then don't talk about "slamming the door down". That's not going to be the answer. The moment the first bib passes over, that's out.' Sal pondered. 'That Bill Smith, back there; for him this is like a ride in a flying saucer would be for one of us. Think what he can tell his playmates when he gets back home. If he ever does.'
'What's a flying saucer ?'
Sal said, 'Back in the twentieth century a number of people claimed ...'
'I remember,' Jim nodded.
'If you were president already,' Sal said, 'if you held formal authority, you could meet with some enormous dignitary from their world, assuming they have a government of some kind. But right now you're just a private individual; you can't bind this country to anything. And Schwarz, if history repeats itself, won't do a damn thing because he knows he'll soon be out of office. He'll leave it to be dumped in your lap. And by January it'll probably be too late to settle this peacefully.'
'Phil Danville,' Jim said, 'can write me a speech that'll capture this situation and explain it.'
Sal guffawed. 'Like hell he can. Nobody is going to be able to capture this situation, especially an intellectual simp like Phil Danville. But let him try. Let's see what Danville can come up with.'