WHU is old telegraphic code for White House, just as SCOTUS stands for
Supreme Court of the United States. Reb Sylvester is our White House
correspondent and Josh is Joshua Holcomb, press secretary to President
Gouverneur Allison, informally known as Gov.
The phone rang and the operator said, "I have a collect call for anyone
at this number from a Miss Eurydice Playfair at Bethesda, Maryland.
Will you accept the charges?"
"Oh, God," I said. "Yes, I'll accept them. Riddie? I thought you were
on vacation?"
"That you, Sam? I am on vacation but you know how the old fire horse
is when it hears the gong. Have I got a story for you, kid!" Riddie
Playfair is not exactly an old horse. She's the shapeliest and
best-preserved 43-year-old newspaperwoman I know. She combines the
enthusiasm of a copy girl just out of college, which is good, with the
slangy, wise-cracking hyperbole that went out with Lee Tracy's early
talkies, which may be why she's still a Miss.
"Well," I asked her, "_have_ you got a story for me?"
"Have I? I've got the biggest story since the hogs ate little Willie.
Get a load of this, Sammy: I have interviewed a man from a flying
saucer!"
"That's fine," I said. "Let me take a snap and you can give the rest to
rewrite."
"You mean you believe me?" She sounded disappointed.
"If you're referring to the men from Monolithia," I told her, "they're
talking to everybody from State to the UN. But if you saw one, that's
news. Go ahead, give me a paragraph."
"All right," she said, crestfallen. "But I more than just saw one. Here
goes: 'Bethesda, Maryland, July whatever-the-hell-it-is, double-you
double-you. A reporter for World Wide News Service was kidnaped today
by a man who claimed he had come to Earth from a distant planet.
Period, paragraph. The seven-foot stranger a few minutes earlier had
been seen by the reporter getting out of a huge, circular, wingless
craft which landed on the 16th green at Burning Tree Country Club.' You
getting it okay, Sam?"
"Yeah," I said. "That's fine. What were you doing at Burning Tree?"
"I've got friends in high places, and I don't mean the seven-foot
stranger. You want this story or don't you? I don't have to work on my
vacation, you know."
"Go ahead, Riddie. I'm taking it. You're not hurt, are you?" I tried to
sound anxious. "He let you go again?"
"No, I'm not hurt. Will you just take the story?
"'Paragraph. The tall stranger, seeing himself observed, approached
the reporter and forced her to go with him'--better make that woman
reporter in the lead, Sam, to keep the sexes straight--'to the
clubhouse, where he spoke for the first time.'"
"How about some description here, Riddie?"
"I was just getting to it. 'The alien, who said he came from a country
called Monolithia on a nameless planet outside our solar system, had
a tanned complexion, a prominent nose and long black hair. But except
for his single garment, a heavy roughly-woven cloak which covered him
from neck to ankles, he could have been taken for an earth man. In some
parts of the world even the clothing would not seem odd.' You know
what I mean, Sam; fix that up, will you?"
"It's fine," I told her. "I'll get this away and turn you over to Stew
for the rest. Give him all the quotes you can and don't worry about the
length. You sure you're all right?"
She assured me that she was and I heard her saying "Don't forget my
byline" as I passed the phone over to Stew Macon, who pushed his
monolithic research aside.
Stew cradled the receiver between ear and shoulder and said, "Okay,
shoot, Riddie; give me the gory details. He didn't rape you, did he,
honey?" Stew wasn't crazy about Eurydice Playfair either.
I typed out Riddie's story, with byline, and fed it to Nancy a sentence
at a time.
Collie Jones had got something meanwhile:
UNITED NATIONS, JULY 22 (WW)--THE UNITED NATIONS SECRETARY GENERAL IN
A CAUTIOUSLY WORDED STATEMENT TODAY ACKNOWLEDGED RECEIPT OF THE FIRST
MESSAGE TO THE WORLD ORGANIZATION PURPORTING TO COME FROM BEINGS BEYOND
THE CONFINES OF EARTH AND ITS IMMEDIATE VICINITY.
THE SECRETARY-GENERAL SAID THE MESSAGE, REQUESTING MEMBERSHIP FOR
A NATION CALLING ITSELF MONOLITHIA, WOULD BE CIRCULATED TO ALL
DELEGATIONS.
A SPOKESMAN SAID THERE IS NOTHING IN THE UN CHARTER WHICH SPECIFICALLY
RULES OUT ADMISSION OF A NATION NOT OF EARTH AND THAT CONCEIVABLY
MEMBERSHIP WOULD BE POSSIBLE. HE POINTED OUT A RECOMMENDATION OF THE
SECURITY COUNCIL AND APPROVAL BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY ARE NECESSARY TO
BRING NEW MEMBERS INTO THE ORGANIZATION....
I sent that, then looked to see if Stew had another take of Riddie's
piece ready. He sailed a sheet of copypaper across the desk, grimaced
at me and rolled another into his typewriter.
It was all in lower case, wire-service style. Everything comes out in
caps on the teletype anyway. It looked like this:
stranger 2 bethesda
in the club house, once the favorite playground of former president
eisenhower, the tall stranger said, in good bookish english: "forgive
this untypical show of force. i really came in peace, as do my
brothers, but i must speak to you lest you misunderstand and falsely
alarm the populace."
the reporter got the impression that the man was speaking the truth. "i
believe you," she said. the alien smiled, his teeth a striking white
against his tan, handsome face.
"ah," he said, "if only we could solve all problems so easily.
fervently i hope that our meeting may be a harbinger of interplanetary
amity."
more
This was pretty gloppy stuff, I thought, and decided to hold it a
while. I caught Stew's eye and he gave a shrug as if to imply that this
was none of his doing. Then he said, "What was that? Hello! Hello!"
He tapped the little pips in the phone cradle. "Operator, I was cut
off.... All right, call me back as soon as you can, will you?" He hung
up.
"What was all that?" I asked him.
"It sounded like shooting," he said. "She stopped dictating and then I
heard her yelling. She hollered, 'Don't shoot!' and then there were two
shots and the line went dead."
"Somehow I have a feeling it's phony," I said. "How do you feel?"
"I don't know, Sam. I don't think she was acting. Here, have a look."
It was a straightforward description of how the reporter's dictation
was broken off and what Stew had heard on the phone. There wasn't much
more than he'd told me.
"I don't know," I said. "We'd look pretty sick if it were a hoax. I
wonder what AP's doing."
Just then the AC&R machine rang for an acknowledgment and the copy boy
brought over a cable from our London office. It said:
21755 THANKS YOUR NOTE SERIES WHICH BIGGEST HERE RUSH ALL POSSIBLE
AMPLIFICATION AUTHORITATIVE SPECULATION MANINSTREET REACTION ETC.
"Okay." I showed the cable to Stew. "They asked for it."
I gave Nancy the second take of Riddie Playfair's story to send to
London and handed the third back to Stew. "Jazz it up," I said. "If
that's the way they want it, that's the way they'll get it. You don't
suppose they were shooting at Eurydice, do you? I'll see if Ian can get
anything from the Maryland state police. Find out what number she was
calling from, will you?"
Stew picked up the phone and I tapped out a note to Washington. Ian
acknowledged: