"Would you think that the two you mentioned as closing may have done so because all the people had come through? There has to be an end to all these people sometime?"
"We know the Wisconsin tunnel closed because of an attack at the other end. The last of the people who came through told us that. I don't know about the Texas closing. But as to the implied question of all the people through — yes, I would hope that soon the tunnels would start closing because they've done their job."
"Mr. President," said Senator Dixon, "what do you know about the practical side of tunnel building? Can we build the tunnels so the people can go back into the past?"
"I am told we can," said the President. "Our physicists and engineers are working with refugee scientists and engineers right now. The refugees have picked out the sites where the tunnels should be built. One encouraging feature is that not as many tunnels need be built as they used in getting here. There isn't the immediate time pressure to get back into the Miocene that there was in getting here. They built a lot of tunnels up in the future because they knew they must get out quickly if they were to get any appreciable part of the population out at all. Also, as I understand it, there will be no need to build tunnels in all the smaller countries. Transportation can be used to get the people to tunnels several hundred miles away. The same situation applies here. It will be easier to transport the refugees to the tunnels than to build the tunnels. The one thing that is difficult about it is that we must get some tunnels built and the people moving out before the refugees eat us out of house and home."
"The construction of the tunnels, then, isn't beyond our capability? All we need is time, money and labor."
"That is right, Brian. Labor is no problem. The refugees represent a huge and willing labor force and just an hour or so ago I had word from Terry Roberts that our labor people will raise no objection to our using them on what must be viewed as a federal project. Terry assures me that organized labor will cooperate in every way, even to the extent of waiving union rules, if that should be necessary, in the employment of their own members. Labor is no problem. Money is. Even should industry be as willing to go along with us as labor is, a vast amount of retooling will be necessary before we can start fabricating the components for the tunnels. Ordinarily retooling is a time-consuming process and a costly one. The fact that we must get at it immediately and around the clock, and. must get it completed within a fraction of the time it would customarily take, makes it expensive beyond anything that can be imagined. When that is done, the components themselves will be costly items. You must remember this is not a problem that we face alone. It is faced by the entire world. The brunt of the work must be borne by the predominantly industrial nations-we, Germany, Russia, France, Britain, China, Japan, and a few others must build the components, not only for ourselves, but for the rest of the world. While we do not need to match the number of tunnels the future people built to get here, we do need to build enough so that there will be a fairly consistent regional distribution when they go back to the Miocene. While the population of the future is not as great as ours, it still is great enough that it must be scattered. The building of a new civilization in the past would be defeated if we dumped too many people in one area. And the building of the components is only part of the industrial problem that we face. Although it is the greatest and the most important part. We must also furnish the refugees with the tools and livestock and seed they will need to make a new beginning. Furnishing the tools is going to call for a significant industrial capacity."
"Have you talked with anyone in the industrial community?"
"Not personally. Commerce is making some tentative approaches to see what sort of reaction is forthcoming. I have no word as yet. But it seems to me there should be some positive reaction. I should be disappointed if there weren't. This is their neck as well as the rest of us."
Oakes hunched up out of his chair. "Have you any idea yet, Mr. President, what all of this might cost? Any good round figure?"
"No," said the President, "I haven't."
"But it's going to be costly."
"It is going to be costly."
"Maybe a great deal more than the defense budget, which everyone seems so horrified about."
"You want me to say it, of course," said the President, "so I will. Yes," it is going to be more costly than the defense budget, many times more costly. It will be even more costly than a war. It will maybe break us. It may bankrupt the world, but what would you have us do? Go out and shoot down all the refugees? That would solve the problem. Is that a solution you would like?"
Grumbling, Oakes let himself sink back into the chair.
"One thing has occurred to me," said Able. "There is just the possibility that no matter what it costs us, we may get value received. The refugees come from a time period where many technological problems have been worked out, new approaches have been developed. One thing that has been mentioned is fusion power. We are nowhere near that yet; it may take us years to get there. If we had fusion power that would be a great leap forward. Undoubtedly there are many others. I would assume that, in return for what we propose to do for them, they'd be willing to acquaint us with the basis of these technological advances…"
"It would ruin us," Oakes said wrathfully. "It would finish up the job they've started. Take fusion power, for instance. There, gentlemen, in the twinkling of an eye, the gas and oil and coal industries would go down the drain."
"And," said Able, "I suppose the medical profession as well if up in the future they had found the cause and cure of cancer."
Dixon said, "What the Congressman says is true. If we had the advantages of all their scientific and technological advances, perhaps their social and political advances, that have been made, or will be made, in the next five hundred years, we would be much better off than we are today. To whom, I wonder, would the new knowledge and principles belong? To the man who was able to acquire the information, by whatever means? Or to the governments? Or to the world at large? And if to the governments and the world, how would it be handled or implemented? It seems to me that, at best, we would have many thorny problems to work out."
"This is all in the future," said Congressman Smith, "It is speculative at the moment. Right now, it seems to me, we have two immediate problems. We have to somehow dispose of the monsters and we must do whatever is possible to send the future people back to the Miocene. Is this the way you read it, Mr. President?"
"Exactly," said the President, "as I read it."
"I understand," Oakes rumbled, "that the Russian ambassador is coming over to have a powwow with you."
"You were not supposed to know that, Andy."
"Well, you know how it is, Mr. President. You stay up on the Hill long enough and you get a lot of pipelines. You get told a lot of things. Even things you were not supposed to know."
"It's no secret," said the President. "I have no idea why he's coming. We are trying to work closely with all the governments in this matter. I have had phone conversations with a number of heads of state, including the Russian head of state. I take it that the ambassador's visit is no more than an extension of these talks."
"Perhaps," said Oakes. "Perhaps. I just tend to get a mite nervous when the Russians become too interested in anything at all."
37
There was something in the hazel thicket at the edge of the tiny cornfield — a vague sense of a presence, a tantalizing outline that never quite revealed itself. Something lurked there, waiting. Sergeant Gordy Clark was quite sure of that. Just how he knew he could not be sure. But he was sure — or almost sure. Some instinct born out of hundreds of patrols into enemy country, something gained by the sharp, hard objectivity that was necessary for an old soldier to keep himself alive while others died-something that he nor no one else could quite define told him there was a lurker in the thicket.