This is no time to get out the
crying towel or to throw in the sponge.
--Richard M. Nixon
We'd been hearing about it all day. The papers delivered to the top
floor of the apartment house--the midtown-Manhattan hideout of Gov
Allison, alias Mr. Avery, and his small band of anti-Monolithian
guerrillas--were full of ads:
"Giant Rally at Madison Square Garden Tomorrow Night! Come One, Come
All! Admission Free! Entertainment! Music! Souvenirs! Master of
Ceremonies: Spookie Masters, Star of Stage, Screen and Television!
Sponsored by the Monolithian-American Friendship Society."
There were spot announcements on radio and television, saying those who
couldn't go to the rally would be able to watch it on the All-Network
Telecast.
"Listen, Gov," I said. It was the first chance I'd had to ask him.
"How did you get back to Earth? The last I heard, you and the other
VIP's were being sent off to space somewhere while your Monolithian
duplicates came back down."
Gov was drinking a screwdriver--possibly made from one of the six cans
Timmie had used to knock out the Monolithian in the delicatessen.
"That's easy," Gov said. "I never went to Ultra."
"But I _saw_ you go. So did everybody else."
"No," Gov said. "You saw my stand-in. I told you some time ago, Sam,
when we first got into this Alien rat race, that I was a tired old
President. Only a few people know that for the last eighteen months I
haven't attended a single cornerstone laying or warship launching or
one of those rose garden jobs with the Lion's Club or the Boy Scouts.
My double--a retired actor you've probably never heard of--officiated
at them all. And he's the one, poor fellow, who's out there in space
now. I hope he's all right. Fix me another one of these, will you, Sam?"
* * * * *
"Listen, Josh," I said to Joshua Holcomb, the original and now
undercover White House Press Secretary whose job I had publicly taken,
"if Gov is so all-fired lazy and ineffectual, what's he doing leading
the underground? Frankly, I'm confused."
"Don't worry about a thing, Sam," Josh said. "You've done a great job,
in your own way. I wouldn't be surprised if you got the Medal of Merit
out of this, one day."
That's all I got out of _him_.
* * * * *
"Listen, Timmie," I said to the sometime White House valet, Timmie
Johnson, "where'd they hide that Monolithian you conked with the orange
juice? Who is he? And just what the hell is going on, anyway?"
"Mr. Kent," he said, "I think you'd just better wait and see. Oh--Mr.
Gov asked me to ask you: have you got those boxes you took from Ultra?
The CW boys want to have a look at them."
They'd been in my pocket ever since I broke out of the plush cell I'd
shared with Rod and Joy. I handed them over gladly. Timmie went out.
* * * * *
They were all as busy as birds at nest-building time. I was the only
one in the place who had nothing to do. That gave me time to think,
which I didn't want. My thoughts always ended with Mae, my wife, and
the impossibility of my returning to her while my Monolithian duplicate
was with her. I couldn't risk confronting Mae, especially now, in her
pregnancy, with the shock of realizing there were two Sam Kents and
that she had been swapped between us in a sort of game of musical beds.
I couldn't think about this very hard, either, without getting fairly
unstable and wanting to put my fist through something. My only comfort
was Joy Linx's stray thought that the Monolithians might be homosexuals.
I had various other thoughts during the time nobody was talking to me
and I was feeling useless.
The thoughts, mostly unanswered questions, were roughly as follows:
How big was Gov's organization? Did it consist of anyone besides the
handful of men in this apartment? What did it hope to accomplish?
What caused the throbbing in my head? It seemed to occur only when I
was close to a Monolithian--my duplicate on Ultra and the man who'd
shadowed me here, for example. Were any of the other duplicated
Earthmen similarly affected? Gov, for instance? I'd have to ask him.
And what did it signify--a form of Monolithian control? Point to
remember: the throbbing stopped when the Monolithian lost consciousness.
Why was Spookie Masters m.c.-ing the big Sunday night rally? I'd got
the impression that he'd lost his enchantment with the aliens after
his experience as their captive on Ultra. But it was possible that the
rally had been arranged before that incident, and there was no time to
change the plans for it. It would be interesting to see what Spookie's
attitude would be when he got up in front of the mike at the Garden.
I wondered if Joy would be there. I also wondered, with a twinge of
what I tried to assure myself was not jealousy, whether Spookie was
still in her apartment in Washington and whether she'd succumbed by now
to his well-known charm.
* * * * *
Gov Allison wandered in, looking unhappy.
I started to get up, but he waved me back on the couch. He dropped
himself at the other end of it and put his head back, rubbing his
forehead.
"My head hurts," he said. "Must be the late hours. Not used to them.
What time is it, anyway?"
It was about 2 P.M., I told him. "How does it hurt, Mr. President? I
mean, is it a sharp pain, or--"
"It's a dull throb," he said. "Maybe a screwdriver would help. Would
you mind looking in that cabinet over there, Sam, and seeing if there
are any fixings?"
"Sure." I made myself one, too, then told him about my own headaches
and my theory that they were caused by the proximity of Monolithians.
It was interesting that Gov was experiencing the throbbing now and I
was not.
"Where's the Monolithian we captured?" I asked. "I'll bet he's the one
behind your headache."
"They've been working over him all day," Gov said. "In a thoroughly
humane way, of course," he added quickly. "With drugs and things. We
can't afford to cast the first stone in this situation."
"Have you found out why he was tailing me?"
"They haven't told me what they've found out, if anything. I think they
want to get it all sorted out and translated into layman's terms first.
Then we'll do something about it, when they've worked out a few ideas.
I'm a decider, you know, not a planner."
Josh Holcomb walked in, looking excited.
"Gov," he said. "I think it's time you came in."
They had the Monolithian strapped to a doctor's examining table. He was
naked.
"My God," Gov said. "He's a woman! Or is he?"
It was easy to see why Gov was confused. The Monolithian had none of
the male paraphernalia at his loins. But he had no breasts, either,
though otherwise he seemed to be a fully developed adult.
"The subject appears to have no reproductive apparatus whatever," a man
in a uniform said. I learned later that he was Brigadier General Horton
Shales, the assistant White House physician.
The subject, as General Shales called him, was lying with his legs
together, so this wasn't something you could tell at a glance. He had
more than the usual amount of pubic hair, but his chest was as hairless
as Hollywood's Tarzans'. He had opened his eyes when we came in, then
closed them again. His face was absolutely expressionless.
"Hmm," Gov said after a moment of thought. "How does he go to the
bathroom?"
"It doesn't," Shales said. "There's no anal orifice either. In fact--"
he paused, either for dramatic effect or to choose his words and avoid
being technical "--the subject is not a human being. It is an imitation
of one--an android."
Gov thought that over. Then he said:
"I see he has a good-sized mustache. But it doesn't look as if he
shaves."
"A good observation," Shales said. "We restored its disguise
temporarily--the glasses, false mustache and wig. We'll remove them
again now.... There."
"My God," Gov said again. "It's me!" It was, too; the android was his
exact duplicate--at least from the neck up.
"How many of them _are_ there?" Gov asked.
I could imagine him enumerating them in his mind: his stand-in out in
space, his double in the White House, himself, and now this on the
examining table.
The latest of the duplicates opened its eyes then and looked at Gov,
who grabbed his forehead and moaned. I felt a little throb myself, as
if I were getting the overflow.
"Do something, Doc," I said to General Shales. "It's got some kind of
hold on Gov's mind."
Shales quickly picked up a hypodermic and jabbed it into the android's
arm. Its eyes closed after a moment and Gov said, "Thanks, Doc--and
Sam--It's gone now."
An attendant covered the unconscious subject up to its neck with a
blanket and wheeled it away.
As we went back to the other room I had the most beautiful thought in
the world, viz.: if _my_ double was as sexless as Gov's, I didn't have
a thing to worry about as far as Mae was concerned.
That wasn't quite accurate, of course. What it meant, if my premise was
correct, was that I had one less thing to worry about. But it certainly
was a very big relief to think that my little Mae was as safe in bed
with the fake Sam Kent as she would be with a Teddy bear.