Having ascended to surface-level, Stanley passed through the wide front entrance of the TD
building, down the steps and onto the morning sidewalk, the busy downtown Washington street of people and 'hoppers and jet’ abs. The motion, the familiar, reassuring activity, made him feel better. This world, with its everyday sights, had not been blotted out, by any means; it remained solid, thoroughly substantial. As always.
He looked about for a jet'ab to take to his conapt.
Far off, at the corner of TD's administration building, a figure hurriedly disappeared.
Who was that ? Don Stanley asked himself. He halted, forbore hailing the jet'ab. I know him, and
I don't like him; it's somebody who in a day long past reminds me of things almost too repellent to recall, a part of my life that's dim, cut out, deliberately and for adequate reason forgotten.
Mud, he thought. Yes, oddly enough, he thought. That man makes me think of mud and twisted plants, deranged organisms that burst poisonously and silently under a weak and utterly useless sun. Where is this ? What have I been seeing ?
What just happened now, a few minutes ago, back there on level one in TD's labs ? He felt confused; standing on the sidewalk among the passing people he rubbed his forehead wearily, trying to rouse his mind. The swiftly-moving figure of course had been George Walt, but hadn't he - or rather they - closed down the Golden Door satellite and disappeared ?
He had heard that on TV or read it in the homeopapes. He was positive of it.
George Walt must be back, Stanley decided. From wherever they went.
Once more, a little dazedly, he began searching for a jet'ab to take him home.
13
At the breakfast table in the small kitchen of his conapt, Jim Briskin ate, and at the same time he carefully read the morning edition of the homeopape, finding in it, as a kind of minor melody in the momentous fugue which was playing itself out in heroic style, one item almost lost within the account of the migration of men and women to alter-Earth.
The first couple to cross over, Art and Rachael Chaffy, had been Cols. And the second couple,
Stuart and Mrs. Hadley, had been white. It was exactly the sort of neat and tidy detail which appeared to Jim Briskin's sense of proportion, and he relaxed a little, enjoying his breakfast. Sal would be pleased by this, too, he realized. I'll have to remember to mention it to him when I see him later on this morning.
President Schwarz missed something, he reflected, by not noticing this minuscule fact at the time it was occurring. Schwarz could have made an extra-special superior speech to the two couples, presenting them with large gaudy plastic keys to the alternate universe, disclosing to them that they're a symbol of a new epic era in racial relations ... as arranged for, of course, by the State's
Rights Conservation Democratic Party in all its full and healthy glory. Some minion on Schwarz'
staff slipped up, there, and should be fired.
He turned on the TV, then, to see if there was any later news. Had TD's engineering corps got the higher-yield power supply in operation yet, and if so, had the aperture been affected in the way anticipated ? By now a lot more emigrants should have joined the Chaffys and the Hadleys there on the other side. He wondered if the Pithecanthropi-Sinanthropi people had taken notice already ... had the crucial Augenblick, as the Germans put it, arrived by now ? While he had slept ?
On the TV screen the image gathered, became stable and fixed. But it was not what he had expected. The image had a certain grainy texture, familiar to him; it was emanating from a satellite which was still too far away. The sound, too, was distorted. It would, of course, clear up as the satellite moved closer, if it was moving in this direction and not away. What was going on ? What was this peculiar program, anyhow ? He leaned toward the speaker, trying to untangle the garble of words.
The video image became clarified, then. It was a head, the mutual head of the mutants George
Walt. Its mouth opened and it spoke. 'I am king, now,' George Walt declared. 'I have at my disposal up here an entire army of what you'd like to think of as "near" men but which are actually - as you are about to find out and not from me - the legitimate tenants of this world and every other alternative Earth running parallel to us. You'd be surprised at the type of scientific discoveries which the Peking race - and I call them that merely as a means by which to identify them - have made over the centuries. They can, for instance, warp time and also space to suit their needs. They've tapped sources of energy unknown to you Homo sapiens. I have with me here in the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite the wisest and kindest philosopher from among their great people. Just a moment.' George Walt's head disappeared from the screen.
Merciful lord, Jim Briskin thought. He sat staring at the TV set, unable to take his eyes from it.
George Walt are back, and they're out of their mind.
That's all we need, Jim said to himself. A crazy George Walt up there in their satellite, spinning around us. Now we've really got troubles.
His vidphone rang; automatically, he made his way over to answer it. 'Not just now,' he murmured. 'Call me later; I'm busy - '
'Don't hang up.' It was Tito Cravelli, sweating and agitated. 'I see you've got your TV set on.
He ... they have been broadcasting all morning, since about eight o'clock East Coast time.
They're going to bring that Peke sage back on again; this is a video tape, it's running over and over again. Get a load of this so-called philosopher; you've never seen anything like it in your life. And then call me back.' Tito hung up.
Jim Briskin numbly returned to the TV set to listen and watch.
'I can walk through wood,' the TV set was saying, but it was not George Walt, now. It was as
Tito had said, a Peking man, Sinanthropus telecasting from the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite. So George Walt... now you're in politics, Jim Briskin said to himself. And in a big way, too.
And we thought we were bad off before.
'Not only can I walk through wood,' the white-haired, massive-browed, enormous-chinned, ancient-looking Sinanthropus said, in reasonably good but somewhat mumbled English, 'but I
can make myself invisible. The god of air empowers me wherever I go. He fills the sails of life with his magic breath, capable of accomplishing all things. Poor, puny Homo sapiens creatures!
How could you conceivably expect to infest our world, with the Wind God himself present ?'
By the Wind God, Jim Briskin realized with a sickened, enervating start, was meant George Walt.
He had never before quite thought of them that way, but there it was.
Let's see how President Schwarz decides to handle this,, he said to himself. A Wind God in a satellite over our heads millions of fossil men straining to get at us. Darius Pethel can have his defective Jiffi-scuttler back; it's time we got rid of it, and by the quickest route possible. But how did this ancient Sinanthropus so-called philosopher get across to our world ? Didn't anybody at
TD notice his coming through ?
They must have opened their own nexus, he decided. Either that or what he says is actually true; he can make himself invisible.
It was a gloomy prospect, having to wake up in the early morning and face this, to say the least.
And somebody has really lost this election now, he decided. Either Bill Schwarz or myself, depending on whom the electorate, in its understandable frenzy, decides to blame.
Going back to the kitchen table he seated himself and resumed eating his breakfast, now cold. As he mechanically ate, he pondered the chances of successfully shooting down the Golden Door satellite; surely that was the most likely next move for President Schwarz. After all, the exact position of the satellite at any given moment was known; it was - or had been until recently -