"We thank you for coming to see us," the President told them. "You have done us a very useful service. Now we can see more clearly the problems that we face. You may rest assured that nothing you have told us will go beyond this room."
"I'm grateful to you for that," said Jerry.
"The plane is waiting for you," said the President. "We'll drive you to the field any time you wish. Should you wish to remain in Washington, however, for a day or two.
"Mr. President," said Kathy, "we must be getting back. I have my job and Jerry has his thesis."
52. MINNEAPOLIS
"This place feels like a wake," said Gold. "We're hip deep in news of great significance. The whole damn world going down the drain. The dollar almost worthless. Foreign governments howling doom. All the diplomats tight-lipped. The business community white-faced. The kind of stuff we thrive on. Yet where is all the joy of a newsroom bristling with news, where all the jubilation?"
"Oh, shut up," said Garrison.
"The White House expresses confidence," said Gold. "Says we will see it through. There's a prime example of whistling down a dark and lonely street."
Garrison said to Annie, "You have any idea when Kathy and Jerry will be getting in?"
"In another couple of hours," she told him. "They're probably taking off right now. But Kathy will have nothing for us. She told me when she called there'd not be any story."
"I expected that," said Garrison. "I had hoped, of course.
"You're a blood sucker," Gold told him. "You suck your people dry. Not a drop left in them."
"It's not working out the way it should," said Annie.
"What's not working out?" asked Garrison.
"This business with the visitors. It's not the way it is in pictures."
"By pictures, I suppose you mean the movies.
"Yes. In them it works out right, but just in the nick of time. When everyone's given up every hope and there seems no chance at all. Do you suppose that now, just in the nick of time.
"Don't count on it," said Gold.
"Look," said Garrison, "this is the real thing. This is really happening. This is no fantasy dreamed up by some jerk producer who knows, in his secret, stupid heart that happiness is holy."
"But if they'd just talk to us," said Annie.
"If they'd just go away," said Gold.
The phone rang.
Annie picked it up, listened for a moment and then took it down and looked at Garrison.
"It's Lone Pine," she said. "Mr. Norton. On line three. He sounds funny. There's something wrong up there."
Garrison grabbed his phone off the cradle. "Frank," he said, "is there something wrong? What is going on?"
Norton's words came tumbling along the line. "Johnny, I just got back from my trip. I looked at the papers on my desk. Can it be true? About the ears.
"I'm afraid it is," said Garrison. "Take it easy, Frank. What has you so upset?"
"Johnny, it's not only cars."
"Not only ears? What do you mean, not only ears?"
"They're making houses, too. Trying to make houses. Practicing at making houses."
"You mean houses people could live in?"
"That's right. Like the kind of house you live in. The kind of houses a lot of people live in."
"Where are they doing this?"
"Up in the wilderness. Hid out in the wilderness. Practicing where they thought no one would see them."
"Take a deep breath, Frank, and tell me. Start at the beginning and tell me what you saw."
"Well," said Norton, "I was canoeing up the river.
Garrison listened intently. Gold sat motionless, watching him closely. Annie picked a file out of a desk drawer and began buffing her nails.
"Just a minute, Frank," Garrison said, finally. "This is too good a story, too personal a story for someone else to write. What I'd like you to do is write it for us. From the personal angle, just as you told it to me. First person all the way. I saw this, I did that, I thought something else. Can you do it? Would you do it? How about your own paper?"
"My own paper won't be out for another three days," said Norton. "Hell, I may even skip a week. Gone like I've been, I have little advertising. I have a couple cans of beans stashed on the shelf. Even if I skip a week I still can eat.
"Sit down, then," said Garrison, "and start writing it. Three or four columns. More if you think you need it. When you're done, pick up the phone and ask for the city desk. Dictate the story. We have people who can take it down almost as fast as you can read it. And, Frank.
"Yes?"
"Frank, don't spare the horses. Spread your wings."
"But, Johnny, I didn't tell you everything. I was just getting to it. In that last house, the one that was lighted up and had furniture.
"Yes, what about it?"
"The house had just floated in. The visitors had just finished making it. But when I looked at it, I saw shadows in the kitchen. Moving shadows. The kind of shadows someone would make as they moved about the kitchen, taking up the dinner. I swear—I tell you, Johnny, there were people in that kitchen! For the love of Christ, are they making people, too?"
53. DE SOTO, WISCONSIN
The South Dakotan who had nursed his dilapidated ear for more than five hundred miles, the machine rattling and banging, coughing and gasping, every wheeze threatening to be its last, pulled into the small town of De Soto, a wide place in the road hemmed in between bluff and river. He tried to find a place to park, but there was no place left in the town to park. The one long street was jammed with cars and people, and there seemed to be much angry shouting and running about, and the frightening, sobering thought crossed his mind that possibly all the people here had also come for cars.
Finally, he was able to pull his ear over to the side of an indifferent gravel road that ran eastward up a coulee out of town. Many other ears had been pulled off the same road. He did not find a place to park until he was a good half-mile beyond the last house in the village. He got out of the car and stretched in an attempt to ease his aching muscles. Not only did his muscles ache; he was tired to the very bone, almost to exhaustion. He was tired and hungry and he needed sleep and food, but not until he got his ear. Once he got his car, he could take the time to sleep and eat.
Just how to go about getting a ear he had no idea. All he knew was that there was an island across the river from this town and that the cars were on the island. Perhaps, he thought again, he should have driven to Dick's Landing in Iowa, but the map had shown what looked to be small secondary roads leading to the landing. He had decided that he could make better time if he drove to this Wisconsin town that lay opposite Dick's Landing. Somehow, he knew, he had to get across the river to reach the island. Perhaps he could rent a boat. He wondered how much the renting of a boat might cost and hoped it would not be too exorbitant. He was carrying little cash. Maybe, he thought, he could swim the river, although he was not too certain that he could. He was a fairly decent swimmer, but from what he had seen of the river on his long drive down the valley, the Mississippi was wide and the current was strong.
He plodded down the road, skirting potholes, the loose gravel sliding underneath his feet. Ahead of him, several men were walking down the road, but he made no attempt to catch up with them, for now that he was here, he found himself surprisingly abashed. Maybe he shouldn't have come, but, at the time, the idea had seemed simple and flawless. God knows, he needed a ear and here was a way to get one. Not for a moment had it occurred to him that others would come up with the same idea. He could not know, of course, but he suspected that the others in the town had come on the self-same errand. There was one consolation, however: There should be plenty of ears to go around. The story he had heard on TV said that at the time the visitors on the island had been found, they had made more than a hundred cars. It was reasonable to suppose that since the report, they had kept on making them, so there would be more than the hundred now. Maybe a couple of hundred. Maybe more than that. There were a lot of people in town, but surely with more than two hundred cars sitting there and waiting, there'd be plenty to go around. The big problem would be to find how to cross the river, but he'd deal with that when the time came.