The port is near, the bells I hear,
the people all exulting.
--Whitman
Gov's guerrillas had spent the rest of Saturday and much of Sunday
completing their examination of the android and making their plans for
the rally. At least I assumed they were planning some kind of foray; no
one told me very much and I had no idea what my role was to be, or if I
was to be included at all.
The fat Sunday _Times_, the middleweight _Herald Tribune_ and the
radio filled me in on what was happening--or what appeared to be
happening--in the outside world.
The Monolithian pretenders seemed to be solving a number of world
problems.
The alien disguised as the President of the United Arab Republic
announced a tentative settlement with Israel on the issue of the
Palestine refugees.
The one posing as India's Prime Minister reported that he and
Pakistan's leader had had a "meeting of the minds" on the explosive
Kashmir question.
There was a curious dispatch from Taipei, full of Oriental undertones,
which appeared to indicate that peace of a sort had been made between
Formosa and the Communists in Peking.
There had been a tremendous kaffee-klatsch on the border of East and
West Berlin and, while nothing was explicitly agreed to, the feeling
was that the long division of Germany was coming to an end, in what
a punning correspondent saw fit to refer to as "an arithmetical
solution." The correspondent was vague on details but indubitably
hopeful.
It was as if the fondest dreams of Moral Re-Armament were being
realized. I looked for a happy communiqué from Mackinac Island on the
subject, but there was nothing. I assumed the Buchmanites were sulking
because the Monolithians had stolen their thunder.
I also looked in vain for a follow-up to "President Allison's" appeal
to the nation to beware of imitations. The fact that there was no
reference to it at all led me to think that the Monolithians had
panicked only momentarily. It was obvious that they had known about
the Allison underground. Their current silence on the matter gave me a
small chill. It was as if the Monolithians were contemptuously tolerant
of Gov's guerillas, seeing them as no threat whatever to the ultimate
alien scheme.
* * * * *
I was mulling over this deflating thought when Timmie bustled in,
saying, "Time to get ready, Mr. Kent."
He sat me down, wrapped a towel around my neck and proceeded to alter
my appearance with grease pencil, nose putty and other backstage
devices. It was the first inkling I had that I was to be a part of
Operation Madison Square Garden.
Timmie backgrounded me and gave me my instructions as he worked deftly
to make me look twice my age.
"That android, now. Doc didn't exactly take him apart, but he found out
enough. He wasn't transmitting back to Monolithian headquarters, as we
suspected, but he did have a kind of tape device inside his skull that
recorded everything he saw and heard. In other words, he'd've had to
get back to the aliens for his spying to've done them any good....
"We're all going to leave here at different times, so as not to be
suspicious, and rendezvous at the Garden. You're to go in by the
Press entrance on 49th Street. We've got some fake _Journal-American_
credentials for you...."
* * * * *
There were a lot of cops at the 49th Street entrance. They were needed,
because the street was packed solid with humanity and immobilized cars
from Broadway to Eighth Avenue.
I shouldered my way through and flashed my police-press shield at a
police sergeant, who waved me inside.
The first person I saw was Joy Linx. She was holding a sort of
impromptu press briefing for a bunch of yelling reporters.
"Keep quiet a minute and I'll tell you," she was saying. "The President
is going to come right up that aisle. You'll be as close to him as
anybody. Then he goes up to the platform and Spookie Masters introduces
him."
She was wearing a skirt and blouse and there were little beads of
perspiration on her upper lip.
Somebody asked where Sam Kent was.
"I don't know," Joy said. "He was here a minute ago. He'll be back
soon, I'm sure."
She glanced around, her eyes flitting over me without recognition.
People were jammed together on camp chairs all over the floor of
the Garden. The speakers' stand was at the north end. There was
red-white-and-blue bunting everywhere and banners reading "U.S. + M =
Peace," "Give Common Sense a Try," and "Two Worlds Are Better Than One."
A band on the platform was in a segue from _God Bless America_ to _The
Battle Hymn of the Republic_, without losing a note, but it could
barely be heard over the din of the 20,000 people who packed the Garden
to the rafters.
I heard a yell from the street behind me. "He's coming!" Other voices
joined in: "It's Gov!" "Don't he look swell!" There was a chant: "We
love Gov.... We love Gov...."
* * * * *
True to Joy's word, Gov--that is, the Monolithian masquerading as the
President--passed within a dozen feet of us on his way to the platform.
He was accompanied by a dozen or more men who could have been the
Secret Service or some of his fellow Monolithians.
The fake Gov smiled and waved to the masses of people in the Garden who
were shouting themselves into a frenzy as section after section of them
realized he was coming among them.
The band played _Hail to the Chief_, then _For He's a Jolly Good
Fellow_, and finally _The Star-Spangled Banner_. It was quite
impressive and I was patriotically moved despite my knowledge that it
was all a fraud. I could imagine how the thousands in the Garden and
the millions watching television felt. To them it must have been the
culmination of mankind's yearning for respite from the decades of
insecurity and fear of another global war, coupled with worship of that
greatest of heroes, the man who had negotiated an interplanetary peace.
* * * * *
It was hot as hell and I longed to scratch my itching putty nose.
The Monolithian who was pretending to be the President seated himself
behind a long table on the platform and Spookie Masters took over the
microphone.
Spookie made a few jokes. Everything he said was greeted with laughter,
cheers and applause. In that atmosphere he could have read a shopping
list and won an ovation.
Finally he got down to business.
"Friends," he said, "--or maybe I should say fellow members of the
interplanetary alliance--" (applause) "tonight we celebrate the
passing of an old era and the birth of a new one. The change in which
we participate tonight," he said solemnly, "and I choose my words
carefully and with reverence and humility, is, I think, as historic as
that which marked the division of the calendar from B.C. to A.D."
He paused, eyes cast down humbly, and a murmur went through the crowd.
Somebody said "Amen," and I half expected a Hallelujah or two, but
Spookie hurried on before any revival meeting atmosphere had a chance
to develop.
As he went on talking about interplanetary amity and the benefits to
all mankind of this glorious turn in the history of the world, I saw
Gov's guerrillas filtering through the aisles toward the platform. Some
carried cameras, others had police-press shields paper-clipped to their
lapels, and others merely wore ribbons printed with the word COMMITTEE.
Nobody challenged any of them.
They got as close to the platform as they could.
Those with cameras brazened themselves closest and aimed their
equipment directly at the fake President from less than a dozen feet
away.
I knew what the equipment was, and I pushed closer myself to see
whether it would work. It was the conscience gas I'd stolen from Ultra.
Gov's plan was a simple one--when the fake Gov got up to talk, dozens
of cameras would record the scene. At the same time the conscience gas
would spurt out of the guerrillas' cameras and smite the alien impostor.
The fake President would then go through the same mental turmoil that
had assailed the dictator of El Spaniola. He would, in effect, become
one with the thousands in the Garden and the millions on television who
were about to be subjected to whatever nefarious fate the Monolithians
had planned for them. The dichotomy of being simultaneously the victor
and the victim would be too much for him. Then he would either confess
everything or--if the Monolithians were actually a race with a common,
interlocking intelligence, as some people suspected--he would make
a decision in Earth's favor which would be binding on all the other
aliens.
Either way, it would be interesting to watch.
Spookie was finishing his introduction. "And now, my dear friends
everywhere, I give you the man you all know and love--the man who has
had the courage and foresight to switch Earth's destiny in midstream
from its course of destruction to its new and exciting path--your
President and mine--Gouverneur--good old 'Gov'--Allison!"
The place went wild. Everybody stood up and yelled or cheered. Balloons
of all colors with the words GOV and PEACE on them were released by the
scores and floated up toward the roof. Confetti and streamers showered
and spiraled down from the balconies. The band was playing fit to
bust--but only visibly, not audibly, in the din.
The fake Gov stood there smiling, his arms out at his sides, waiting
patiently to be heard.
I saw the quick bursts of flash bulbs, including ours, and watched the
face of the alien masquerading as the President. There was no flicker
of change in his expression of benevolence.
There was a scuffle somewhere on the floor. The center of the
disturbance was where I had last seen the real Gov, disguised as a
devoted follower of his impersonator. Four men had him by the arms
and were moving him quickly and as inconspicuously as possible toward
a curtained-off area near the platform. Then four men closed in on
me. They took me by both arms, lifted me an inch off the floor and
propelled me vertically in the same direction. "Hey," I began, but one
of them said, "Come on, Kent. Don't make a commotion."
I didn't because I was well and truly outnumbered and, besides, each
time I resisted they began to ruin my arms.
By the time I got to the curtained area the real Gov had been sat in a
chair and stripped of his disguise by his Monolithian captors. All of
our fellow conspirators were there, too, including the photographers
whose cameras had been loaded with conscience gas instead of super-pan.
I was crowded up against one of them and asked him, "Didn't you have a
chance to shoot?"
"Sure I did. All of us did. But it didn't make a damn bit of
difference. He's still out there lapping it up. Look at him."
I could see out to the platform, as from the wings of a stage. The
noise of the crowd had diminished, but only slightly. The Monolithian
duplicate of Gov still stood there. His smile seemed as genuine as ever
and his conscience apparently didn't bother him in the least.