"I'm the historian," I said. "That's what it's all about."
"Eat your eggs," she said. "They'll get cold." She had sprinkled them
with Pep.
"My job is to write it just as it happened. The way I see it. No
propaganda, no censorship."
"That's nice. You want your coffee now or later?"
"I can work at home if I want to. And they'll send out a secretary if I
want somebody to type up notes or take dictation. Now, please."
"That's sweet of them," Mae said. She poured the coffee. "Maybe they'll
send that nice Joy Linx."
I carefully broke a yolk and stirred Pep into it with my fork, giving
it all my attention. I think Mae was serious. "I don't believe I'll
need anybody," I said carefully.
"You need me." Mae was standing at the stove with her back to me,
frying an egg for herself. She was wearing a sort of maternity middy
blouse and skirt and looked very good. "Don't you?"
I got up and put my arms around her gently and kissed the back of her
neck.
"You can hug us gently," she said.
I did. I thought I felt my son or daughter give a kick, not of protest,
but just to let me know someone was there.
"Say it," Mae whispered.
"I love you and I need you," I said.
"Good." She gave her egg a poke and sighed as if in relief. "And I love
you and need you. What I don't need is that crazy robot that's been
hanging around pretending to be you."
"What!"
"He didn't fool me any--except at first."
"He didn't?"
"Oh, he's a very good imitation--as far as he goes. But he worked too
hard at keeping me from finding out that he lacked a few male--or even
human--necessities."
"You mean he didn't--uh, sleep with you?" I had to get it said, any old
way.
"He certainly did _not_. Actually it was his own idea to sleep in the
guest room. I'd have seen that he did anyway. But that wasn't the only
thing. He never went to the bathroom."
"Well," I said.
"Oh, he'd go in and take a bath, but he never--how do they say it in
hospitals?--he never _voided_."
"Oh? How do you know?"
"I listened at the door. There was never a sound till he flushed."
"Oh, Mae!" I said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. "And I thought
you were completely fooled, and that I had to stay away because if you
saw two of us the shock would be too much for you. Why didn't you say
something?"
"I figured it was important to you and your job, and maybe even the
world. You usually have a good reason when you do something peculiar.
Want some toast?"
"Yes, please--wait a minute. The toaster's broken."
"_He_ fixed it. That's how I really knew he wasn't you. He went right
ahead without a murmur and repaired half a dozen things you've been
putting off ever since we were married, practically. He fixed the stuck
zippers and my sewing machine and that lamp with the short in it and
the switch on the vacuum cleaner. That wasn't my fumble-fingered old
Sam."
* * * * *
All that was a long time ago. It's been only a little more than two
years, but it seems like ancient history now.
A lot has happened since. It's all been fully recounted and interpreted
in the press and magazines, so I'll just hit the highlights.
A year ago all the nuclear weapons in the world were deactivated and
sunk in a remote corner of the Pacific. The scientists who were working
on bigger and worse ones were transferred to peaceful research.
Six months ago the Moon was colonized by a six-man international
expedition, whose names are Underwood, Chih-ho, Cohen, Raswaplindi,
Buragin and Thorwald, and their wives.
Five months ago the cure for cancer was announced. They'd solved the
riddle of muscular dystrophy, Parkinson's disease and arthritis before
that.
Last week the people of Mississippi elected a Negro governor.
For more than a year a few million people who had been on the brink
of starvation have had enough to eat--and the U.S. government is
saving a few billion dollars a year by not paying storage charges on
surplus grain. (Our farmers have never had it so good, either, and the
take-home pay of factory workers has doubled in the past year.)
Income taxes are now so low that there's a bill in Congress to abolish
them altogether.
Someone said this should be called the Half-Century of the Common-Sense
Man.
Earth's population explosion has been controlled to the satisfaction of
both the Catholic Church and the economists and Antarctica is becoming
a populated continent. It's actually warm under the ice where the
mining and living is going on.
You've read about it. There's something new and wonderful almost every
day.
* * * * *
Mae says I have to put in some personal stuff, like the name of our son
(Kevin) and the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Robert (Spookie) Masters came to
the christening as godparents and how we have dinner with Spookie and
Joy, or vice versa, every Friday night when he's not making a movie or
being on TV.
I'd better make it clear that Spookie's not a Monolithian, though he
was among the first to dig them, as he puts it with no shame. And he's
recently become the father of a beautiful little girl. So much for my
doubts about his sex life.
World Wide has been de-nationalized and Ian McEachern went back and
Stew Macon and all the rest are still with it. There's a good job there
for me, too, when I finish my book.
Eurydice Playfair got awfully bored with the Monolithians when the
initial glamor wore off for her. For a while there was talk about
her marrying one of them (they're all quite male, except for their
robot-androids, which have been deactivated), but she broke that off
and went to the Caribbean and, I heard, opened up a fashion house, or
some kind of house.
President Gouverneur Allison backed his Vice-President for the top spot
on the ticket and he was duly nominated at the convention. The other
party nominated its man but there was little to choose between. Both
espoused the good and peaceful life our country has come to know and,
though there was nothing explicit, there were pro-Monolithian overtones
to each candidate's campaign.
It didn't matter which won, as had been proven in the elections of
other countries. All on Earth, I thought sometimes, were contented
cows--happy, unambitious and no longer obsessed by the fear of an
annihilating war.
Crime vanished as the effects of the conscience gas spread inexorably
around the world. This gave a boost to the common welfare--the billions
of dollars, pounds, francs, marks, rubles and drachmas which had been
illegally drained off almost as a matter of course showed up where they
belonged: in the pockets of honest people.
* * * * *
Despite my vow to retain my objectivity I've had to fight to avoid
succumbing to the pervading conviction that all's well with the world.
But maybe I should stop fighting. "Monolithian" has practically become
a lower-case word--like humanitarian or altruistic or philanthropic. It
almost never connotes anything alien.
It's as if the Monolithian philosophy has been thoroughly absorbed
into our culture, while the aliens themselves have retreated into the
background, content to keep a paternalistic eye on us.
Oh, they're still with us, physically, but I think they're getting
ready to go. They're a bit wistful about it, not wanting to be
forgotten. They've apparently absorbed that Earthly trait of vanity,
which may be one reason--a minor one, I'm sure--for my project under
what has become the Monolithian Foundation.
I'm compiling the history of their visit under a grant probably more
generous than any writer ever received. I'm writing it exactly as I
see it, as I told Mae, without guidance, restraint or censorship. I
think they'd like it finished before they go back, so they can take a
copy with them, but there's no deadline. It shouldn't take me more than
another six months, now that I've finished the day-by-day account of
the first month of their visit.
There's some talk of publishing these working notes immediately
in a popular version, perhaps under the title _30-Day Wonder_, or
_The Peaceful Invasion_. A doctor friend of mine has suggested _The
Febrifuge_, which my Little Oxford tells me is a medicine to reduce
fever, and, though I like the thought it expresses, it doesn't have
much zing.
As I wind it up I really don't see how I can come to any valid
conclusion. I've been too close to everything.
It's all down on paper now, except for the footnotes and the documents
and the index.
I've said all I can and I still don't know what's right, except for me
and my family, who have never been so happy or secure.
But is this enough? Frankly, it's enough for me. For now. Twenty years
from now I hope to ask my son the same question. And I hope he'll know
what I'm talking about.
* * * * *
_THE MONOLITHIANS_ ...
they were such gentle, friendly, affable creatures--they even looked
okay--handsome, human males, all of them.
They were law-abiding too. If a local speed limit was 25 m.p.h., that's
how fast they'd go, no matter if traffic snarled up for miles in back
of them. If a Blue Law town said nobody should work on Sunday, they'd
do their duty as citizens and let the town burn before they'd permit a
fireman to put out the blaze. No one could do anything about it because
the Monolithians were impregnable.
So when they got into the United Nations and the politicians found
themselves having to live by what they said, the world was in real
trouble.
Or was it?
This is an original publication--not a reprint.
Printed in U.S.A.