When They Come from Space (14 page)

His face darkened. Goddam Supreme Court. If it weren't for the Supreme Court ... You think you have a man right where you want him; he sits up and begs properly, he jumps through the hoop for you; so, all right, you think it is safe enough to let him get appointed to the Supreme Court. And then what happens? All at once, goddam it, he discovers he's a man. All at once he decides other people are men, too—and that man has certain inalienable rights, and that among these are...

He drew a deep breath. Not to let fury cloud his judgment at a time like this. Time to face up to whatever they might do when he slapped them in the face with a lawsuit against the Starmen for violating his legal rights. He began to chuckle again. This time, he was a man with certain inalienable rights and all that crap. The Starmen weren't men, well, not human men, anyhow. Wow! Suppose that goddam Supreme Court had to distinguish between a man's rights, and a—well, whatever they were. What a precedent that one would set. Because then that precedent could be used to settle other questions, such as, well, such as—is a Negro really a man? Wow!

"You're right in there, Bob,” he complimented his legal head. “Yes, sir. They sure laid themselves wide open when they just took over our broadcasting facilities for their own use, without so much as a by-your-leave. Start working on it, but hold back. Wait for the time. Any more questions?"

And still there was another.

"What if they're not human?” asked one of the world-renowned commentators who had made his reputation in crusading courageously for home, flag, and mother. “What if they're—well, say, green spiders?"

A derisive titter greeted this absurdity, but the commentator, noted for his original thinking, stood his ground. He was relieved that the boss accepted the question seriously.

"It sounded like a human voice,” Strickland said thoughtfully. “But they could have a machine of some kind. We've got machines, you know, that will turn a printed page into a spoken voice; so I guess they might be that far along too. That don't mean they're human. Of course,” and now he displayed one of those rare glimpses of how deep his learning really went, “our best philosophers have all agreed that life on other worlds would have to develop the same kind of human body and human mind as we have, if it was ever to amount to anything. The philosophers we'll pay any attention to, anyhow, all say that.

"Still, we got to be grown-up about this. We gotta be—big. They just might turn out to be—well, as you say, green spiders.

"So just barely touch on that. Hint that the public ought to be prepared, just in case. Not enough that anybody can claim we came right out and said they were green spiders, in case they aren't, but hint. They're distinguished visitors and all that. We got to be grown-up enough, cosmopolitan enough, not to notice whatever's wrong with them.

"Now, any more questions?” This time he stood up and turned to leave the room.

There were no more questions.

Within an hour, his private plane landed him at the Washington airport. There was no company car there to pick him up. He made a mental note of that. It showed that already his Washington organization was going to pieces. Of course he hadn't let his New York staff know he was leaving, or his Washington staff know he was coming—he didn't hafta account for his movements to the goddam underlings—but they should have guessed he might come to Washington to see everything for himself, and had a car there just in case.

Time for that, later.

He picked up a cab at the airport.

"You got a reservation at the Hotel Brighton?” asked the driver.

Strickland didn't answer him, but this was a gabby one and didn't seem fazed by the silence.

"You better have!” the driver rambled on, as he threaded his way through the outgoing traffic. “They've already started turning people away. All the hotels have started doing that. I swear I don't see how so many people got here so fast. But they did—and, oh brother, they're still coming. There'll be sleeping in the streets tonight, Mom,” he crooned the line, and his shoulders shook with anticipatory laughter.

Strickland began to wonder, himself, where all the people could have come from. He couldn't remember ever having seen the streets so crowded; and after a night with no sleep for anybody, too. At the Connecticut Avenue traffic circle, traffic stalled again, and the driver turned around to face him.

"Say,” he asked, “d'you think those Starmen will look like people?"

Strickland began to enjoy the driver. After all, a taxi driver represents the people of America, their hopes, their fears, their opinions, their intelligence. Everybody knows that.

"I don't have any idea,” he answered with a chuckle. He had begun to hope they wouldn't look like men. When the Supreme Court came to deciding his case, they might let some line creep in about the Starmen being different from men and therefore not having the same rights. Precedent for one person's being different from another person, and therefore not having the same rights. Wow! Nineteen sixty here we come, right back where we started from! Make that eighteen sixty. Or seventeen, or sixteen, or any goddam century you want to name.

An extra fold of skin at the corner of the eyelid, a few more pigment cells per square inch of skin, the shape of a nose line—he had a fleeting thought that it might be an idea to put through a law forbidding plastic surgeons to make alterations which concealed racial characteristics...

"A friend of mine,” the driver was saying, “smart cooky runs a newsstand and is pretty sharp from being around all those books and magazines. He says maybe they'll be like big green spiders, with red eyes all up and down their legs. He showed me a picture on one of the magazine covers like that. Jeez!"

Strickland nodded and smiled.

"Jeez!” the driver repeated with more emphasis, now that his fare gave agreement. “I gotta wangle a place at the Mall tomorrow morning. That's where they're going to have the reception. How are them visitors gonna know where they ought to land?"

"We'll tell ‘em on the radio. Remember, we have to give them permission to land?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure,” the driver said, remembering, and nodded sagely. “I guess we'll send out a landing beam for them to follow in. You think they might be smart enough to follow a landing beam down?"

"That's one I'm not going to worry about,” Strickland said.

"Yeah, sure,” the driver agreed instantly. “That's somebody else's problem.” He thought for a moment. “Them fellows out at the Pentagon will probably check up on that one."

"Them fellows out at the Pentagon had better check up on quite a few things,” Strickland answered ominously. He felt a stirring of something unfinished. Oh yes, there was some young punk out at the Pentagon he'd asked his secret service to check up on. They hadn't given him a report, yet. So now his secret service was falling down on the job. That had been yesterday, and no report yet. The battle of the globes and the discs was no excuse.

The traffic tangle unraveled, and the cab jerked forward.

"You gonna be there? At the Mall, I mean?” the driver shouted back over his shoulder.

"I'll be there,” Strickland answered.

"Get yourself a good connection,” the driver advised him with a sage nod. “Don't depend on your congressman or any of the common help like that. If you got a real good connection, you might make it."

"I'll make it,” Strickland said confidently. “You think the President would be connection enough?"

It didn't seem to impress the taxi driver.

"Oh, him,” was the answer. “I guess this is sort of a social hoopla, at that. Yeah, I guess he oughta be able to swing it."

Strickland made a wry mouth. Maybe he'd gone too far in pushing this nonentity into the White House. After all, the prestige of the Presidency was a mighty useful tool. No point in letting it get rusty. Better let a dedicated reformer get in next time.

A safe one, of course. Better get the F.B.I. to release the customary lists of acceptable candidates to the grass-roots political clubs right away.

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Civil service being what it is, I thought it slightly miraculous that Shirley had already browbeaten enough clerks into reporting for work to pass out forms of application for interview to the growing line of generals and admirals who wanted to be filled in on the latest estimates of extraterrestrial psychology.

Sara and I managed to get into the office not more than fifteen minutes after the final words of the Starmen, and already our day was beginning—the damnedest day I ever went through. My something like five weeks in Washington had taught me a lot, but apparently not enough.

As the day progressed, in a fleeting few seconds here and there between conferences and conferences, telephone calls and telephone calls, I began to wonder how in hell the nation managed to keep going when apparently nobody was concerned with whether or not it got governed. Sitting there as I was, the answer-boy in the Bureau of Extraterrestrial Psychology, and therefore the final word on how we should conduct ourselves in relation to the Starmen, I got a pretty good cross-section of what must have been going on all over Washington. A pretty good thermometer measuring the rising fever. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, I'd been around enough people not to be astonished at anything they might do, but I must have had an unsuspected residue of illusion left about the wisdom, levelheadedness, good sense, and balanced judgment of those who govern us.

There had to be plans, of course, for a reception of the Starmen. I had no preferences in the matter, and the Mall sounded as likely a spot for the landing as anywhere else. There was plenty of space which could be kept clear for the globe to set down, and plenty of space around the perimeter for the few dignitaries who would be permitted through the police lines.

Since the original planning took place there in the Pentagon, it was decided that a simple military welcome would be most impressive to the space visitors. Fighting men to fighting men. Just the Chief of Staff and the Joint Chiefs. With possibly a side dish of drill formation by the Space Cadets.

"And, gentlemen,” I said firmly, “representatives from the Bureau of Extraterrestrial Psychology. Dr. Kibbie, myself, my secretary, one or two others. After all, gentlemen,” I said, answering their dubious frowns, “we are the first, the final, the only authority on the psychology of extraterrestrials. How will we be of further service to you if we don't get close enough to them to learn something of their psychology?"

They conceded that all right, it was logical enough that we should be there, but nobody else. Was that understood? It was all right with me.

Apparently it was not all right with Congress. On a clear day the screams of outrage arising on the Hill might have been heard all the way to the Pentagon. Since there were telephones, it didn't need a clear day. Under the threat of new loyalty investigations, the military backed down and conceded that picked committees, including the members of investigating committees, of course, could be represented.

The Secretary of State decreed that really the visit was more diplomatic than military. Hadn't the Starmen themselves already told us they had the status of ambassadors? What was military about that? Fighting men to fighting men, indeed! Since when did ambassadors fight! If anything, it might be the worst sort of diplomatic blunder to have military men on the scene at all; construed as a threat and all that. No, these were ambassadors from Star Government to Earth Government, and protocol demanded it be handled as such.

This pulled the plug.

From 3100 Massachusetts Avenue came the cryptic question: Since when did the State Department of the United States represent Earth Government? The Right Honorable British Ambassador, Knight Commander of the Bath, C.B.E., expected to be placed in line of reception at the Mall, and in a position commensurate with Empire Status.

Almost simultaneously, the white-fronted, palatial Russian Embassy at 1125 Sixteenth Street announced that the true representatives of the toiling masses should be first in line to greet these sons of the galaxy proletariat. The rather vague wording of this ukase gave the impression that an Inter-Universe Comintern had been responsible for Earth's rescue by the white globes, and only diplomatic sensitivity had kept them from wearing the hammer and sickle.

A rather feeble, and purely routine, request was filed by the Secretary of the United Nations, on the basis that, since this was a world-to-world visit, didn't somebody think that the United Nations organization ought to be the one to represent Earth? Just a suggestion, of course.

Nobody seemed to think so.

Norway, Saudi Arabia, Argentina were next to demand appropriate positions. The ambassador from France was somewhat handicapped in that he didn't know who their premier was today, and therefore didn't quite know whose name to use, but “Welcome in the name of France” had always been good, and he didn't intend to let the big powers use this occasion to brand France as a second-rate power. Each of the two ambassadors from the Chinas spoke darkly of what would happen if the other were permitted to attend.

Official Washington and all the nations were conducting business as usual.

Within the hour, every diplomatic mission in the capital was hammering at the doors of the State Department, who, by their position, had lifted a considerable part of the load from my shoulders. The missions were being reinforced as fast as planes could empty the United Nations building in New York and transfer the occupants to Washington.

The president of the W.C.T.U. demanded that the Spacemen be given the alcohol test before being permitted to set foot on Earth. The Secretary General of the Antivivisection League demanded that we get a signed certificate that no experimental animals had been used in finding out how to get here. A committee from the Vegetarian Society wanted documentary evidence of their diet before declaring its position. The D.A.R. was also undecided on their official attitude since obviously none of the Spacemen had ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War and were therefore beneath notice.