Chase saw, approaching him across the crowded campus, another relationship it was time to close out. The relationship’s name was Douglasina MacArthur Baggett, a brand-new graduate in journalism. She was pretty and she had in tow two older persons who Chase perceived to be her parents. “Walter,” she bubbled, “I don’t believe you were even looking for me! Meet Daddy and Mom.”
Walter Chase allowed his hand to be shaken. Baggett père was something in Health, Education and Welfare that had awakened Walter’s interest at one time; but as Douglasina had let it slip that Daddy had been passed over for promotion three years running, Walter’s interest had run out. The old fool now began babbling about how young fellows like Walter would, through the Civilian Shelters Bill, really give the country the top-dog Summit bargaining position that would pull old Zhdetchnikov’s cork for him. The mother simpered: “So you’re the young man! We’ve heard so much about you in Douglasina’s letters. I tell you, why don’t you come and spend the All-Star weekend with us in Chevy Chase?”
Walter asked blankly: “Why?”
“Why?” said Mrs. Baggett in a faint voice, after a perceptible pause. Walter smiled warmly.
“After all,” he said, shrugging, “boy-girl college friendships. . . . She’s a fine girl, Mrs. Baggett. Delighted to have met you, Mr. Baggett. Doug, maybe we’ll run into each other again, eh?” He clapped her on the shoulder and slipped away.
Once screened from the sight of their faces, he sighed. In some ways he would miss her, he thought. Well. On to the future!
In the dormitory he snapped the locks on his luggage, already packed, carried them down to be stowed in the luggage compartment of the airport bus and then circulated gently through the halls. He had in four years at Eastern made eleven Good Contacts and thirty-six Possibles, and he had an hour or two before his plane to joke with, shake the hand of, or congratulate the nine of those on the list who shared his dorm. He fooled the fools and flattered the flatterable, but in his wake a few of his classmates grimly said: “That young son of a bitch is going to go far, unless he runs out of faces to step on.”
Having attended to his nine he charitably spread some of his remaining tune among the couple dozen Outside Chances he ran into. To a sincere, but confused, servo-mech specialist he said, man-to-man, “Well, Frankie, what’s the big decision? Made up your mind about the job yet?”
The servo-mech man clutched him and told him his tale of woe. “God no, Walt. I don’t know which way to turn. Missile R and D’s offering me a commission right away, captain inside of two years. But who wants to be a soldier all his life? And there’s nothing in private industry for inertial guidance, you know.
Damn it, Walt, if only they let you resign from the service after a couple years!” Chase said something more or less comforting and moved on. He was careful not to chuckle until he was out of sight.
Poor Frankie! Got himself educated in what amounted to a military speciality-who else could afford servo-mechanisms?-and discovered he hated the Army.
Still, Chase meditated while nodding, smiling and handshaking, thirty years as an Engineering Officer might not be so bad. As it was one of the alternatives open to himself-that was what C.S.B. was all about -he allowed his mind to drift over the prospects. It wasn’t like the bad old days of fighting. A flat and rigid policy of atomic retaliation had been U. S. military doctrine for fifty-three years, and backing it up was a large, well-trained U. S. military establishment of career men. And the regulations said career. The only way out short of thirty-year retirement was with a can tied to your tail and a taint to your name. He dismissed that thirty-year dead end with light contempt, as he had before.
The air-raid warning sirens began to howl their undulating hysteria.
Chase sighed and glanced at his watch. Not too bad. He should still be able to make his plane. Everyone around him was saying things like, “Ah, damn it!” or “Oh, dear,” or “Jeez!” But they were all dutifully following the arrows and the “S” signs that dotted the campus.
Chase trailed along. He was kind of annoyed, but nothing could really spoil his day. The first shelter he came to was full up. The freshman raid warden stood at the door-Chase had been a raid warden himself three years before-chanting: “Basement filled to capacity, folks. Please proceed to Chemistry building. Don’t block the exit, folks. Basement here filled-“
Because of the extra crowd caused by the graduation the Chemistry building basement was filled, too, but Chase got into the Administration building and sat down to wait. Like everybody else. Women fussed about their dresses-they always had, in every air raid drill he had taken part in, say, four a week for fifty-two weeks of each year for the nearly twenty years since he had been old enough to toddle alongside his late mother and father. Men grumbled about missing appointments. They always had. But for the most part the battery-fed air-raid lights gleamed equably on them all, the warden fussed with the air conditioner and the younger folk smooched in the corners.
It wasn’t a bad shelter, Walter Chase thought. The Law School basement was a mess-too high a pH in the mortar mix, and the aggregate showing hygroscopic tendencies” because of some clown not watching his rock crusher, so the walls were cracked and damp. Chemistry’s had been poured in a freeze. Well, naturally it began to sinter and flake. This was better; trust the Chancellor to make sure his own nest was downy! Of course, in a raid none of them would be worth a hoot; but there weren’t to be any real raids. Ever.
A jet plane’s ripping path sounded overhead.
Evidently this was going to be a full-dress affair, at least regional in scope. They didn’t throw simulated manned-bomber attacks for a purely local do. Walter frowned. It had suddenly occurred to him that with the air-transport flight lanes screwed up by military fighters on simulated missions everything within a thousand miles might be rerouted into stack patterns. What the devil would that do to his plane’s departure time?
Then he smiled forebearingly. He was, in a way, pleased to be annoyed. It meant he was entering into the adult world of appointments and passages. They said that when a raid drill began to be a damn interruption instead of a welcome break from classes and a chance to smooch, then, brother, you were growing up. He guessed he was growing up.
“Goddam foolishness,” growled the man who sat next to Chase on the bench, as though it were a personal attack. More jets shredded sound overhead and he glared at Chase. Walter inventoried his English shoes, seal ring and pale cigar and at once engaged him in conversation. The man was some graduate’s father; they had got separated in the raid drill, and Pop was sore as a tramped bunion. The whole drill thing was damned childishness, didn’t Walter see that? And vindictive damned childishness when they chose to throw one on graduation day of a major university. If only Crockhouse had been elected in ‘96 instead of Braden, with his packed ballots in Indiana and. Puerto Rico!
Here Walter Chase’s interest cooled, because Pop sounded like a politician, revealed himself to be a Nationalist and thus was out of power. But there was no escaping the bench. What Pop objected bitterly to was the multiple levels of expense. Here the drill was knocking men out of production, but the damn Middle-Road Congress said they had to be paid anyhow. And if the Defense Department was making it a full-scale simulated raid, did Walter know what that meant? That meant that there went thirty or forty Nineveh Abies at a hundred and fifty thousand dollars apiece, and was that enough? No. Then they sent up four or five Tyres at ninety thousand apiece to knock down the Ninevehs. Did that make sense? He paused to glare at Walter Chase.