The crowd of photographers on the steps to the platform was blocking the congressperson’s ascent. She could not get their attention, to let her up.
“… American politics must grow up to the new realities of life on this planet! Technology brings us closer together than any Biblical brothers! Technology makes us more interdependent than any scheme of capital and labor! Technology is integrating the people of this earth where love and legislation have failed! This is the new reality! We must seize this understanding! Seize it for peace! For the health of planet earth! For the health of every citizen of this planet! For prosperity! My friends, for the very continuation of life on earth!”
There was a long moment before anyone realized The Man Who was done speaking. Then there was applause muffled by gloved and mittened hands, a few yells: “Go to it, Caxton! We’re with you all the way!” The band began to play “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.”
At the edge of the platform, The Man Who shook hands with the congressperson as if he had never seen her before, keeping his arm long, making it seem, for the public, for the photographers, he was greeting just another well-wisher. He waved at the crowd and passed the congressperson in the mob on the steps.
At the front of the bus, Walsh Wheeler, Paul Dobson, and Phil Nolting were in heavy consultation.
“Wow,” said Fletch, still in the press area. “I never knew it was so easy to be a wizard.”
Freddie said, “You know something about all this I don’t know. You going to tell me?”
“No.”
Freddie Arbuthnot frowned.
She turned back toward the platform. The grandmotherly congress-person was shouting into a ringing amplification system. She was not at all heard over the band.
“But what does it mean?” Freddie asked.
“It means,” Fletch answered, “he’s made the nightly national news.”
15
Approaching him, Governor Caxton Wheeler grinned at Fletch. “How do you feel?”
“Like Adam’s grandfather.”
At the foot of the campaign bus’s steps, the governor was still grinning when he turned to his son. Walsh and Phil Nolting and Paul Dobson looked like a wall that had come tumbling down at the blast of a single trumpet. Each face had the same expression of stressed shock.
“How’d I do?” the governor asked.
Walsh’s eyes darted around, seeing if any of the press were within earshot. Outside their little circle was a group of thirty to forty retarded adults who had been brought from their institution to meet the presidential candidate.
“You’ve got to tell us when you’re going to do something like that, Dad.”
“I told you I had an idea.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t mention you were going to drop a bomb—a whole new departure.”
“A new speech.” Phil Nolting’s eyes were slits.
“Sorry,” the governor said. “Guess I was really thinking about it while that congressperson was babbling on about the waterway.”
“The question always is—” Paul Dobson said in the manner of a bright teacher. “You see, we’ve got to be prepared to defend everything you say before you say it.”
“You can’t defend the truth, anyway?” the governor asked simply. “I can.”
“Hi, Governor,” one of the retarded persons, a man about thirty-five, said. “My name is John.”
“Hi, John,” the governor said.
“It might have been a great speech, Dad, I don’t know. We all just feel sort of punched out by your not telling us you were going to do it.”
“I wasn’t sure I was going to do it.” The governor smiled. “It just came out.”
“We’ll get a transcript as fast as we can,” Dobson said. “See what we can do about it.”
The governor shrugged. “It felt right.” He put out his hand to one of the retarded persons, a woman about thirty. “Hi,” he said. “Are you a friend of John’s?”
Aboard the campaign bus, coordinator of volunteers Lee Allen Parke was connecting a small tape recorder to a headset. A typist was at her little desk, ready to work.
“Lee Allen,” Fletch said. Parke didn’t answer. “Just a simple question.”
“Not now,” Lee Allen said. “No questions now, please.” He said to the typist, “We’ve got to have an exact transcript of whatever the governor just said, sooner than soonest.” He placed the headset over the typist’s ears. She settled the earphones more comfortably on herself.
All the buttons on the telephone in Barry Hines’s chair were flashing. The phone was not ringing. Barry Hines was nowhere in sight.
“Ah, Lee Allen—” Fletch began.
Lee Allen pressed the play button and listened through a third earphone. “Loud and clear?” he asked the typist. She nodded in the affirmative. “My God,” he said, listening. “What is the man saying?”
“Lee Allen, I need to know about Sally Shields, Alice Elizabeth Shields—”
“Not now, Fletcher! All hell has broken loose! The governor just went off half-cocked, in case you didn’t know.”
“No. I didn’t know.”
“First he’s caught bribing schoolkids. Then the hard-drinkin’, sexpot congressman we were told to expect turns out to be somebody’s great-grandmother. By the way, there’s a pitcher of Bloody Marys in the galley, if you want it. Then he makes like Lincoln at Gettysburg at Winslow in a snowstorm. And the day’s barely begun!”
“Well begun,” Fletch consoled, “is half done.”
“Not by my watch.” To the typist, who was listening and typing, Lee Allen Parke shouted, “Can you hear?” She nodded yes with annoyance. “We need every word,” he said. “Every word.”
“You could have answered me by now,” Fletch said firmly.
Lee Allen Parke still held the earphone to his head. “What? What, what, what?”
“Did Alice Elizabeth Shields apply to you for a job as a volunteer, paid or otherwise?”
“How do you spell Riyadh?” the typist asked.
“No,” Lee Allen said impatiently.
“She didn’t?”
“Some of the volunteers reported the caravan was being followed by a Volkswagen. That’s all I know about her.”
“He said something new?” Bill Dieckmann shouted. His face looked like someone had knocked his hat off with a snowball.
He was one of the group returning to the press bus from the bar-café.
“I guess he did,” Fletch admitted.
“New-new?”
Betsy Ginsberg said, “Nu?”
Bill Dieckmann’s face looked truly alarmed.
“New,” said Fletch. “I’m not sure how germaine….”
“Ow,” Stella Kirchner said. “Who’s got a tape?” She looked sick.
“All those people presently usurping telephones in downtown Winslow,” Fletch said. “I expect.”
Betsy said, “Have you a tape? Honest, Fletch, I promise we won’t spring a story like presidential-candidate-bribes-schoolchildren on you again if you let us hear your tape.”
“Ain’t got one,” Fletch said. “Transcripts will be ready in a minute.”
“‘Transcripts,’” Dieckmann scoffed. “My editors should read it on the wires while I’m airmailing them a transcript—right?”
“Not on my wire,” moaned Filby.
“What did the governor say?” Kirchner asked.
“Well,” Fletch said, “roughly he said the world is getting it together despite man’s best ideas.”
They all looked at him as if he had spoken in a language foreign to them.