Colonel Kelly came in, looked around the otherwise empty room, came over and sat down beside me. "How about a drink?" I suggested. "I feel like celebrating."
He examined the hairy paunch bulging out in front of him and said, "I suppose one more beer wouldn't put me in any worse shape."
"Have two beers. Have four-a dozen." I dialed for him, and told him about the success of the experiments with the apes.
He nodded. "Yes, I had heard. Sounds good."
" 'Good', the man says! Colonel, we are on the one yard line and goal to go. A week from now the game will be won."
"So?"
"Oh, come now!" I answered, irritated by his manner. "In a short time you'll be able to put your clothes back on and lead a normal life. Or don't you think our plans will work?"
"Yes, I think they will work."
"Then why the crepe-hanging?"
Instead of answering directly he said, "Mr. Nivens, you don't think that a man with my pot belly enjoys running around without his clothes, do you?"
"I suppose not. As for myself, I'm beginning to find it pleasant. I may hate to have to give it up-saves time and it's comfortable."
"You need not worry about having to give it up. This is a permanent change."
"Huh? I don't get you. You said our plans would work and now you talk as if Schedule Sun Tan would go on forever."
"In a modified way, it will."
I said, "Pardon me? I'm stupid today."
He dialed for another beer. "Mr. Nivens, I never expected to live to see a military reservation turned into a ruddy nudist camp. Having seen it happen, I never expect to see us change back-because we can't. Pandora's box has a one-way lid. All the king's horses and all the king's men-"
"Conceded," I answered. "Things never go back quite to what they were before. Just the same, you are exaggerating. The day after the President rescinds Schedule Sun Tan the suspended blue laws will go into effect and a man without pants will be liable to arrest."
"I hope not."
"Huh? Make up your mind."
"It's made up for me. Mr. Nivens, as long as there exists a possibility that a slug is alive the polite man must be willing to bare his entire body on request-or risk getting shot. Not just this week and next week but twenty years from now, or a hundred. No, no!" he said, seeing that I was about to interrupt, "I am not disparaging your fine plans-but pardon me if I say that you have been too busy with their details to notice that they are strictly local and temporary. For example-have you made any plans for combing the Amazonian jungles, tree by tree?"
He went on apologetically, "Just a rhetorical inquiry. This globe has nearly sixty million square miles of dry land; we can't begin to search it and clean out the slugs. Shucks, man, we haven't made a dent in the rats and we've been at that a long time. Titans are trickier and more prolific than rats."
"Are you trying to tell me it's hopeless?" I demanded.
"Hopeless? Not at all. Have another drink. I'm trying to say that we are going to have to learn to live with this horror, the way we had to learn to live with the atom bomb."
I went away feeling dashed and not at all cocky. I wanted to find Mary. Some days, it occurred to me, the "genius" business wasn't worth the trouble.
Chapter 33
We were gathered in the same conference room in the White House; it put me in mind of the night after the President's message many weeks before. Dad was there; so were Mary and Rexton and Martinez. None of the "fishing cabinet" was present but their places were filled by our own lab general, by Dr. Hazelhurst, and by Colonel Gibsy. Martinez was busy trying to restore his face after having been told that he had been shunted out of the biggest show of his own department.
Nobody paid him any attention. Our eyes were on the big map still mounted across one wall; it had been four and a half days since the vector drop of Schedule Fever but the Mississippi Valley still glowed in ruby lights.
I was getting jittery, although the drop had been an apparent success and we had lost only three craft. According to the equations every slug within reach of direct conference should have been infected three days ago, with an estimated twenty-three percent overlap. The operation had been computed to contact about eighty percent of the slugs in the first twelve hours alone, mostly in the large cities.
Soon, slugs should start dying a dam sight faster than flies ever did-if we were right.
I forced myself to sit still and wondered whether those ruby lights covered a few million very sick slugs-or merely two hundred dead apes. Had somebody skipped a decimal point? Or blabbed? Or had there been an error in our reasoning so colossal that we could not see it?
Suddenly a light blinked green, right in the middle of the board; everybody sat up. Right on top of it a voice began to come out of the stereo gear though no picture built up. "This is Station Dixie, Little Rock," a very tired southern voice said. "We need help very badly. Anyone who is listening, please be good enough to pass on this message: Little Rock, Arkansas, is in the grip of a terrible epidemic. Notify the Red Cross. We have been in the hands of-" The voice trailed off, whether from weakness or transmission failure I could not be sure.
I remembered to breathe. Mary patted my hand and I sat back, relaxing consciously. It was joy too great to be pleasure. I saw now that the green light had not been Little Rock, but farther west in Oklahoma. Two more lights blinked green, one in Nebraska and one north of the Canadian line. Another voice came over, a twangy New England voice; I wondered how he had gotten into Zone Red.
"A little like election night, eh, chief?" Martinez said heartily.
"A little," the President agreed, "but we do not usually get returns from Old Mexico." He pointed to the board; a pair of green lights were showing in Chihuahua.
"By George, you're right. Well, I guess 'State' will have some international incidents to straighten out when this is over, eh?"
The President did not answer and he shut up, to my relief. The President seemed to be talking to himself; he noticed me watching him, smiled, and spoke out loud:
" ' 'Tis said that fleas have little fleas,
Upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas,
And so, ad infinitum.' "
I smiled to be polite though I thought the notion was gruesome, under the circumstances. The President looked away and said, "Would anyone like supper? I find that I am hungry, for the first time in days."
By late the next afternoon the board was more green than red. Rexton had caused to be set up two annunciators keyed into the command center in the New Pentagon; one showed percentage of completion of the complicated score deemed necessary before the big drop; the other showed the projected time of drop. The figures on it changed from time to time, sometimes up, sometimes down. For the past two hours they had been holding fairly steady around 17.43, East Coast time.
Finally Rexton stood up. "I'm going to freeze it at seventeen forty-five," he announced. "Mr. President, if you will excuse me?"
"Certainly, sir."
Rexton turned to Dad and myself. "If you two Don Quixote's are still determined to go, now is the time."
I stood up. "Mary, you wait for me."
She asked, "Where?" It had already been settled-and not peacefully! -that she was not to go.
The President interrupted. "I suggest that Mrs. Nivens stay here. After all, she is a member of the family."
With the invitation he gave us his best smile and I said, "Thank you, sir." Colonel Gibsy got a very odd look.
Two hours later we were coming in on our target and the jump door was open. Dad and I were last in line, after the kids who would do the real work. My hands were sweaty and I stunk with the old curtain going-up stink. I was scared as hell-I never like to jump.
Chapter 34
Gun in my left hand, antitoxin injector ready in my right, I went from door to door in my assigned block. It was an older section of Jefferson City, slums almost; it consisted of apartment houses built fifty years ago. I had given two dozen injections and had three dozen to go before it would be time for me to rendezvous at the State House. I was getting sick of it.