“You said technology is tying this world together, integrating the people of this world, in a way no ideology ever has or ever could.”
“Isn’t that true? We’re all brothers in the Bible. We’re all comrades under Marxism. But it is through our increased factual awareness of each other that we’re discovering our common humanity as a reality.”
Lansing Sayer wasn’t getting much into his notebook.
“Am I wrong to think that most of the bad things that happen on this earth happen because people don’t have the right facts at the right time? It’s all very well to believe something. You can go cheering to war over what you believe. You can starve to death happily over what you believe. But would wars ever happen if everybody had the same facts? There is no factual basis for starvation on this earth,” Governor Caxton Wheeler said softly. “Not yet, there isn’t.”
“It’s the interpretation of facts that counts,” Lansing Sayer said.
“Facts are facts,” said The Man Who. “I’m not talking about faith, belief, opinions. I’m talking about facts. How come most children in this world know Pele’s every move playing soccer, know every line of Muhammad Ali’s face, and yet this same technology has not been used to teach them the history of their own people, or how to read and write their own language? How come a bank in London can know, up to the minute, how much money a bank in New York has, to the penny, but a kid in Liverpool who just had his teeth bashed out doesn’t know three thousand years ago a Greek analyzed gang warfare accurately? How come the governments of this world know where every thermonuclear missile is, on land, under land, on sea, under sea, and yet this technology has never been used for the proper allocation of food? Is that a dumb question?”
“You’re saying, regarding technology, governments are looking in the wrong direction.”
“I’m saying governments are out of date in their thinking. They’ve been developing negative technology, rather than positive technology. You have to believe something, only if you don’t know. We now have the capability to know everything.”
Lansing Sayer looked at the governor. “What has this to do with the presidential campaign? Are these ideas of yours going to be implemented in some kind of a political program?”
And the governor looked through the car window. “Well… we’re having international meetings on arms control. We have had for decades now, while arms have proliferated through this world like the plague. Translating this observation into policy …” In the front seat Fletch again was amazed at how simply issues were raised and answered on a political campaign, how naturally problems were stated and policy formulated. “… I think it’s time we started working toward international understandings regarding the use and control of this technology,” The Man Who said. “Obviously no one—no political, religious, financial group—should have control of too large a section of this technology. Consider this.” The governor smiled at Lansing Sayer. “Electronically, a complete polling of a nation’s people, a complete plebiscite, can take place within seconds. Where is the time needed for the people to reflect? Maybe there should be an international understanding, agreement, that such a plebiscite is to be used only as an advisory to a government, but does not give a government authority to act.”
The car was going up the hill to the hospital.
“Great,” the governor said. “Easily accessible hospital. Good roads leading to it. That’s good.”
Lansing Sayer took off his glasses and rubbed his forehead.
“Flash will take you back to the hotel,” the governor said to Lansing Sayer, “then come back and pick us up. I have to make a television tape after this.”
Lansing Sayer asked, “Is this what your campaign is about, Governor? Shifting governmental interest from bombs to communication?”
“Bombs are a damned bad way to communicate,” The Man Who said. “Deafen people.”
The car stopped. The governor was leaving the car through the back door.
Lansing Sayer leaned over. “Governor! May I report this is what your campaign is about? Coming to international understandings regarding the new technology?”
Governor Caxton Wheeler looked back inside the car at Lansing Sayer. He grinned. He said: “Presidential campaigns ought to be about something.”
Walking from the car to the hospital entrance, where administrators were waiting to greet him, Governor Caxton Wheeler chuckled and said to Fletch, “You know, sir, I’m beginning to want to be President of the United States!”
26
“Ah!” The concerned, consoling expression fell off the governor’s face when he saw the only one present in the private hospital room was I. M. Fletcher. The door behind the governor swung shut. “And what are you in hospital for?”
“Anxiety,” Fletch answered. “Acute.”
“I’m sure they’ll have you fixed up and home in no time.”
While the governor had toured the happier wards of the hospital— maternity, general surgery, pediatrics (he was kept away from intensive care and the terminal section)—Fletch had arranged with a hospital administrator to have the governor shown into an unoccupied private room. His excuse had been the governor’s need to use the phone.
More seriously, the governor asked, “What are you so anxious about? What’s up?”
“Hanrahan wrote his usual muscular piece for this morning’s Newsbill. ” Fletch took the tabloid’s front page and two of its inside pages from his jacket pocket and handed them to the governor. “I want you to see what all this looks like in print.”
Standing near the window, the governor glanced through the pages. “So? Who cares about Newsbill? They once reported I had been married before. As a law student.”
“I’m afraid Hanrahan has a point. In the third paragraph.”
The governor read aloud: “Campaign officials even refuse to state they have no knowledge of the women or of their murders….”
He handed the pages from Newsbill back to Fletch. “How are we supposed to comment on something we don’t know about?”
“Plus there was a woman murdered at the hotel last night. A chambermaid. Strangled. So Ira Lapin tells me. By the way, did you know Lapin’s own wife was murdered?”
“So he’s off murdering other women?”
“Maybe. Somebody is.”
The governor paced off as far as the hospital room would permit, and then back to the window. “Do you think someone’s out to get me?”
“I never thought of that.”
“Think about it. It is, or could be, the net effect of these murders. To bring this campaign to its knees.”
“It certainly increases the pressures …”
“Getting rid of me, casting a pall, a question mark over my campaign, is the only motive I can think of.” The governor shrugged. “Or maybe paranoia is an occupational hazard for a political campaigner. You think the murderer is someone traveling with the campaign?”
“Good grief, don’t you think so? It’s why Fredericka Arbuthnot, crime writer for Newsworld, is traveling with us. She’s not as careless and sensational as Hanrahan, but now that Hanrahan has blown the story, she’ll have to write something.”
“I’d better get Nolting to whip up some statements, figures on the high incidence of crime. I can say things like, ‘Everywhere I go, it seems like someone is getting murdered.’”
“Governor …” Fletch hesitated.
“Yes?”
“I understand. You have to protect yourself. You have to protect the campaign. But making statements won’t make the matter go away.”