Wilson let the long sheaf of paper fall and went back to his desk. He switched on the light and picking up the phone, dialed the switchboard.
"Jane — I thought I recognized your voice. This is Steve Wilson. Will you put in a call to Nashville for the Reverend Jake Billings? Yes, Jane, I know what time it is. I know he probably is asleep; we'll simply have to wake him up. No, I don't know his number. Thank you, Jane. Thank you very much."
He settled back in the chair and growled at himself. When he'd talked with the President early in the afternoon, Jake Billings had been mentioned and he'd promised he would call him, then it had not crossed his mind again. But who in hell would have thought a thing like this would happen?
Windsor, he thought. It would take an old busybody, a meddling fool like Windsor to go messing into it. To go messing into it and then when he got his face pushed in, to go bawling to the newsmen, telling what had happened.
Christ, that's all we need, he thought, to get the Windsors and the Billings of the country all mixed up in it, wringing their hands in pious horror and crying for a crusade. A crusade, he grimly told himself, was the last thing that was needed. There was trouble enough without a gang of pulpit thumpers adding to the dust-up.
The phone tinkled at him and he picked up the receiver.
Jane said, "The Reverend Mr. Billings is on the line, sir."
"Hello," said Wilson. "Is this the Reverend Billings?"
"Yes, God bless you," said the deep, solemn voice. "What can I do for you?"
"Jake, this is Steve Wilson."
"Wilson? Oh, yes, the press secretary. I should have known that it was you. They didn't say who was calling. They just said the White House."
The bastard, Wilson told himself. He's disappointed. He thought it was the President.
"It's been a long time, Jake," he said.
"Yes," said Billings. "How long ago? Ten years?"
"More like fifteen," said Wilson.
"I guess it is, at that," said Billings. "The years do have the habit…"
"I'm calling you," said Wilson, "about this crusade you're drumming up."
"Crusade? Oh, you mean the one to get the future people back onto the track. I am so glad you called. We need all the help that we can get. I view it as fortunate that they came back to us, for whatever reason. When I think of the human race, a mere five hundred years from now, forsaking the good old human faith, the faith that has sustained us all these years, I get a cold shiver up my spine. I'm so glad that you are with us. I can't tell you how glad I am that you…"
"I'm not with you, Jake."
"You're not with us? What do you mean, you're not with us?"
"I'm not with you, Jake — that is what I mean. I'm calling to ask that you call this silly crusade off.".
"But I can't…"
"Yes, you can. We have trouble enough without some damn fool crusade. You'll be doing the country a disservice if you keep it up. We have problems up to here and we don't need any more. This isn't just a situation that will allow Jake Billings to show off his piety. This is life and death, not only for the refugees, but for every one of us."
"It seems to me, Steve, you're using an approach that is unnecessarily rough."
"If I am," said Wilson, "it's because I'm upset at what you're doing. This is important, Jake. We have a job — to get the refugees back to where they want to go before they upset our economy. And while we do that we'll be getting plenty of flak. We're going to get it from industry, from labor, from people on welfare, from politicians who will grab the chance to take cheap shots at us. With all of this, we can't face flak from you. What difference can it possibly make to you? You're not dealing with a present situation, a present people. You are dealing with the future, with a segment of time that ordinarily would be out of your reach. The refugees are back here, sure, but the windmill you are tilting at wasn't even built until long after you and I were dead."
"God moves," said Billings, "in many mysterious ways…"
"Look," said Wilson, "climb down off your pulpit. Someone else, maybe, but not me. You're not going to impress me, Jake. You never did."
"Steve, are you calling for the President?"
"If you mean did he ask me to make this call, the answer is no. He probably doesn't know as yet what you have done. But when he finds out about it, he is going to be sore. The two of us talked about you earlier in the day. We were afraid you might take some sort of hand in this. We couldn't, of course, foresee what happened. But you do take a hand in everything that happens. I was supposed to phone you, to head you off beforehand. But so many things were happening. I never found the time."
"I can see your position," said Billings soberly. "I think I can even understand it. But you and I see things from different viewpoints. To me the thought that the human race became a godless people is a personal agony. It goes against everything I have been taught, everything I've lived by, all that I've believed in."
"You can rest easy," Wilson said. "It will go no further. The human future is ending, up there five hundred years ahead."
"But they'll be going back in time…"
"We hope they will," said Wilson bitterly. "They'll go back, if we aren't completely hogtied by people such as you."
"If they go back," protested Billings, "they'll make a new start. We'll give them what they need to make a new start. Into a new land and a new time where they'll build a godless culture. They may, in time, go out in space, out to other stars, and they'll go as godless people. We can't allow that, Steve."
"Maybe you can't. I could. It wouldn't bother me. There are a hell of a lot of other people it wouldn't bother, either. You're blind if you can't see the beginning, the roots of their rejection of religion in the present. Maybe that is what is really bugging you. You're asking yourself if there was anything you could have done to prevent its happening."
"That may be it," Billings admitted. "I haven't had the time to think it through. Even if it were true, it would make no difference. I still would have to do exactly what I'm doing."
"You mean you intend to go ahead? Even knowing what it means to all of us. Stirring up the people, riding that great white horse…"
"I have to do it, Steve. My conscience…"
"You'll think it over? I can call again?"
For there was no use arguing further. No point in trying to talk reason to this pious madman. He'd known him, Wilson reminded himself, ever since their undergraduate years. And he should have known from the very first that it would be useless to try to make him see another point of view.
"Yes, call again," said Billings, "if you wish. But I won't reconsider. I know what I must do. You cannot persuade me otherwise."
"Good night, Jake. Sorry that I woke you up."
"You didn't wake me up. I expect no sleep this night. It was good to hear your voice, Steve."
Wilson hung up and sat quietly in his chair. Maybe, he thought, if he'd done it differently, if he'd not come on so strong, he might have accomplished something. Although he doubted it. There was no such thing as talking reason to the man; there had never been. Perhaps if he'd called him this afternoon, after he first had talked with the President, he might have been able at least to moderate Billing's action, but he doubted that as well. It had been, he told himself, a hopeless business from the start. Billings himself was hopeless.