Or Fate. Call it what you would. She was here, as he was, and it might not have been so. How often has one heard tales of the passenger who arrived at the airport just too late to board the airplane that crashed shortly after takeoff? The concept gave her a start. Was she, then, already accepting a foretaste of disaster?
She concentrated again on the governor. He was winding up his explanation of what had happened.
“The telephones are working,” he said. He smiled suddenly. “That is how I know these facts. I did not make them up.” There was no amused murmur—he had expected none—nevertheless, a little lightness was not out of place. His smile disappeared. “Help is on the way. Firemen have been sent up the stairs at each side of the building. It is a long climb, as you can appreciate, so we must be patient.” He paused. Had he said it all? He thought so, except, of course, for an appropriate windup. “This,” he said, “is not exactly the way this reception was planned, as I am sure you are aware. But I, for one, intend to enjoy myself while I wait for matters to be brought back to normal.”
“And if they aren’t?” This was Cary Wycoff, his words and his tone angry. “What if they aren’t, Governor?”
The governor stepped down from the chair. “You are out of order, Cary.” His voice was pitched low. “Justice Holmes made the point. I repeat it. ‘The right of free speech does not carry with it the right to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater.’ That is precisely what you are doing. Why? Just to call attention to yourself?”
The congressman flushed, but stood his ground. “The people have a right to know.”
“That is a cliché,” the governor said. “Like most clichés, it is partly right and also misleading. The people here have a right to know the current facts and that is why I have reported to them. They have no right, and I am sure no desire, to be frightened out of their wits by some loud young fool crying like a religious fanatic in Union Square about the doom that may be coming. Use at least some of the sense some people credit you with.” He turned then to look for Beth.
She came forward and took his arm. “A fine rousing speech,” she said, and smiled. “I will vote for you. You see, I am learning the ways of politics.”
The governor covered her hand with his. He squeezed it gently. “Thank God,” he said, “at least some people remember how to laugh.”
She had expected to return to the office, which already she thought of as the command post. But the governor was in no hurry, and Beth understood that by his presence he was offering reassurance. Together they moved from group to group, pausing briefly for introductions where necessary and a few polite, apparently meaningless words.
To the secretary generaclass="underline" “Walther, may I present …” And then, “We have an Americanism, Walther. I think it applies here.” The governor, smiling, looked around the room and then back to his small audience. “It is, I’ll admit, a hell of a way to run a railroad.”
The secretary general smiled in turn. “I have heard the idiom, and I am afraid I must agree. Is it not a Penn Central kind of—mess?”
To an aging actress: “There was a movie once,” the governor said, “well before your time, I am sure. It was called King Kong and it featured a gigantic gorilla on the Empire State Building. I almost wish Kong would appear now. He would be a diversion at least.”
“You’re sweet, Governor,” the actress said, “but not only was it not before my time, I had a bit part in it.”
To a network president: “Do you think your people are giving us good coverage, John?”
“If they aren’t,” John said, “heads are going to fall.” He was smiling. “We ought to be able to work it into a documentary on how civilization overreaches itself. We know how to build the tallest building in the world, but we’re having trouble figuring out how to get people out of it. Isn’t there, by the way, a battery-operated television set somewhere here? Or at least a radio?”
“Good thought,” the governor said. “I’ll see about it. But not,” he added quietly as he and Beth walked on, “for public viewing. Those on the ground will be giving it the full treatment. They’ll already have us doomed.”
“Are we, Bent?”
Nothing changed in the governor’s smile, but his hand tightened almost imperceptibly on her arm. “Frightened?” he said. His tone was easy.
“I’m beginning to be.”
“Why,” the governor said, “so am I. Just between us, I’d much rather be out in that high New Mexico meadow with a fly rod in my hand and a cutthroat trout, which they call out there a native, giving me a tussle.” He looked down at her, smiling still. “With you,” he said. “And if that makes me selfish and cowardly, so be it.” He was about to say more when he was interrupted.
“This is outrageous, Bent.”
A tall gray-haired corporate-executive type, Beth thought, and almost giggled when her estimate was verified.
“Why, Paul” the governor said, “I’ll agree with you. Miss Shirley, Paul Norris—Paul Norris.” And with no change in tone, “Outrageous is the proper word, Paul. Do you have any suggestions?”
“By God, somebody ought to be able to do something.”
The governor nodded. “I quite agree.” His smile brightened. “And there you have your answer, Paul. The Army has arrived.” He pointed to two helicopters banking into position to circle the building.
They seemed so free, Beth thought, close but distant, impossibly removed from this—this confinement.
The governor’s hand tightened on hers. “There’s our diversion,” he said quietly. “Now we can slip back to headquarters.”
Senator Peters moved to intercept them. “I’ll stay out here, Bent. If you want me for anything—” He left it unfinished, offer clear and without limit. “My role,” he said then, “unlike yours. You’re the commander, the administrator, the organizer. My place is outside the chain of command”—he paused—“which is the way I like it.”
“You seem,” the governor said, “a little less unhappy with the human race than you were, Jake.”
The senator looked around the great room. Slowly he nodded. “They’re behaving very well. So far.”
And so, Beth thought as they walked on, the senator felt too that foretaste of disaster. We’re like something out of a Tolstoy novel, she thought: the gala ball before the disastrous battle—how ridiculous.
“Maybe,” the governor said. (Had she, then, spoken aloud?) “And maybe not,” he added. “We have built an entire civilization on the stiff-upper-lip principle. Others have different ways. Personally, I’ve never found breast-beating and hair-tearing and teeth-gnashing very attractive, have you?” He smiled down at her. “Rhetorical question. I know you haven’t. Defeat—”
“Have you known defeat, Bent?” I want to know all about him, everything.
“Many times,” the governor said. “In politics as in sports, you win some and you lose some. It doesn’t make losing any easier, just a little more familiar.”
Grover Frazee had a dark-brown drink beside him in the office. He said, “You spoke to the populace, Bent? You told them the unpleasant facts and you placed the blame squarely where it belongs?” The drink had had its effect.
“Where does it belong, Grover?” The governor perched on a corner of the desk. “That is a point I’d like cleared up.”
Frazee waved one hand in a broad gesture of disclaimer. “Will Giddings came to my office with a cock-and-bull tale I didn’t begin to understand—”
“Not quite, Grover,” Ben Caldwell said. “You were lucid about it when you phoned me.” He turned to the governor. “There are change orders in existence authorizing certain deviations from the original design of the building’s electrical system. They came to light only today, and until now”—he gestured at the candles that were the only lighting in the room—“we had no idea whether the changes had actually been made or not. Now we have to assume that at least some of them were made.