The speech that night went over well ... almost.
Walton watched the program in the privacy of his home, sprawled out
on the foamweb sofa with a drink in one hand and the text of Percy's
shooting-script in the other. The giant screen that occupied nearly
half of his one unbroken wall glowed in lifelike colors.
FitzMaugham's career was traced with pomp and circumstance, done
up in full glory: plenty of ringing trumpet flourishes, dozens of
eye-appealing color groupings, much high-pitched, tense narrative.
Percy had done his job skillfully. The show was punctuated by
quotations from FitzMaugham's classic book, _Breathing Space and
Sanity_. Key government figures drifted in and out of the narrative
webwork, orating sonorously. That pious fraud, M. Seymour Lanson,
President of the United States, delivered a flowery speech; the old
figurehead was an artist at his one function, speechmaking. Walton
watched, spellbound. Lee Percy was a genius in his field; there was no
denying that.
Finally, toward the end of the hour, the narrator said, "The work
of Popeek goes on, though its lofty-minded creator lies dead at an
assassin's hand. Director FitzMaugham had chosen as his successor a
young man schooled in the ideals of Popeek. Roy Walton, we know, will
continue the noble task begun by D. F. FitzMaugham."
For the second time that day Walton watched his own face appear on
a video screen. He glanced down at the script in his hand and back
up at the screen. Percy's technicians had done a brilliant job. The
Walton-image on the screen looked so real that the Walton on the couch
almost believed he had actually delivered this speech--although he
knew it had been cooked up out of some rearranged stills and a few
brokendown phonemes with his voice characteristics.
It was a perfectly innocent speech. In humble tones he expressed his
veneration for the late director, his hopes that he would be able to
fill the void left by the death of FitzMaugham, his sense of Popeek as
a sacred trust. Half-listening, Walton began to skim the script.
Startled, Walton looked down at the script. He didn't remember having
encountered any such lines on his first reading, and he couldn't find
them now. "This morning," the pseudo-Walton on the screen went on, "we
received _contact from outer space_! From a faster-than-light ship
sent out over a year ago to explore our neighboring stars.
"News of this voyage has been withheld until now for security reasons.
But it is my great pleasure to tell you tonight that the stars have at
last been reached by man.... A new world waits for us out there, lush,
fertile, ready to be colonized by the brave pioneers of tomorrow!"
Walton stared aghast at the screen. His simulacrum had returned now to
the script as prepared, but he barely listened.
He was thinking that Percy had let the cat out for sure. It was a
totally unauthorized newsbreak. Numbly, Walton watched the program
come to its end, and wondered what the repercussions would be once the
public grasped all the implications.
* * * * *
He was awakened at 0600 by the chiming of his phone. Grumpily he
climbed from bed, snapped on the receiver, switched the cutoff on the
picture sender in order to hide his sleep-rumpled appearance, and said,
"This is Walton. Yes?"
A picture formed on the screen: a heavily-tanned man in his late
forties, stocky, hair close cropped. "Sorry to roust you this way, old
man. I'm McLeod."