He strode to the desk and answered. It was the senator.
‘Good,’ said the senator. ‘I did not get you up.’
‘No. I was just getting ready to turn in.’
‘You heard the news, of course.’
‘On the radio,’ said Harrington.
‘The White House called…’
‘And you had to take it.’
‘Yes, of course, but then…’
There was a gulping, breathing sound at the other end as if the senator were on the verge of strangling.
‘What’s the matter, Johnson? What is going -‘
‘Then,’ said the senator, ‘I had a visitor.’
Harrington waited.
‘Preston White,’ said the senator. ‘You know him, of course.’
‘Yes. The publisher of _Situation_.’
‘He was conspiratorial,’ said the senator. ‘And a shade dramatic. He talked in whispers and very confidentially. As if the two of us were in some sort of deal.’
‘But what -‘
‘He offered me,’ said the senator, almost strangling with rare, ‘the exclusive use of Harvey -‘
Harrington interrupted, without knowing why – almost as if he feared to let the senator go on.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I can remember many years ago – I was just a lad – when Harvey was installed down in the _Situation_ office.’
And he was surprised at how well he could remember it – the great hurrah of fanfare. Although at that time, he recalled, no one had put too much credence in the matter, for _Situation_ was then notorious for its circulation stunts. But it was different now. Almost everyone read the Harvey column and even in the most learned of circles it was quoted as authority.
‘Harvey!’ spat the senator. ‘A geared-up calculator! A mechanical predicter!’
And that was it, Harrington thought wildly. That was the very thing for which he had been groping!
For Harvey was a predicter. He predicted every week and the magazine ran a column of the predictions he spewed out.
‘White was most persuasive,’ said the senator. ‘He was very buddy-buddy. He placed Harvey at my complete disposal. He said that he would let me see all the predictions that he made immediately he made them and that he’d withhold from publication any that I wished.’
‘It might be a help, at that,’ said Harrington.
For Harvey was good. Of that there was no question. Week after week he called the shots exactly, right straight down the line.
‘I’ll have none of it!’ yelled the senator. ‘I’ll have no part of Harvey. He is the worst thing that could have happened so far as public opinion is concerned. The human race is entirely capable, in its own good judgment, of accepting or rejecting the predictions of any human pundit. But our technological society has developed a conditioning factor that accepts the infallibility of machines. It would seem to me that _Situation_, in using an analytical computer, humanized by the name of Harvey, to predict the trend of world events, is deliberately preying upon public gullibility. And I’ll have no part of it. I will not be tarred with -‘
‘I knew White was for you,’ said Harrington. ‘I knew he favored your appointment, but -‘
‘Preston White,’ said the senator, ‘is a dangerous man. Any powerful man is a dangerous man, and in our time the man who is in a position to mold public opinion is the most powerful of them all. I can’t afford to be associated with him in any way at all. Here I stand, a man of some forty years of service, without, thank God, a single smudge upon me. What would happen to me if someone came along and pegged this man White – but good? How would I stand then?’
‘They almost had him pegged.’ said Harrington, ‘that time years ago when the congressional committee investigated him. As I remember, much of the testimony at that time had to do with Harvey.’
‘Hollis,’ said the senator. ‘I don’t know why I trouble you. I don’t know why I phoned you. Just to blow off steam, I guess.’
‘I am glad you did,’ said Harrington. ‘What do you intend to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the senator. ‘I threw White out, of course, so my hands theoretically are clean, but it’s all gone sour on me. I have a vile taste in my mouth.’
‘Sleep on it,’ said Harrington. ‘You’ll know better in the morning.’
‘Thanks, Hollis, I think I will,’ said the senator. ‘Good night.’
Harrington put up the phone and stood stiff beside the desk.
For now it all was crystal clear. Now he knew without a doubt exactly who it was that had wanted Enright in the state department.
It was precisely the kind of thing, he thought, one could expect of White.
He could not imagine how it had been done – but if there had been a way to do it, White would have been the one to ferret out that way.
He’d engineered it so that Enright, by reading a line out of a book, had stayed in public life until the proper time had come for him to head the state department.
And how many other men, how many other situations, stood as they did tonight because of the vast schemings of one Preston White?
He saw the paper on the floor and picked it up and looked at the headline, then threw it down again.
They had tried to get rid of him, he thought, and it would have been all right if he’d just wandered off like an old horse turned out to pasture, abandoned and forgotten. Perhaps all the others had done exactly that. But in getting rid of him, in getting rid of anyone, they must have been aware of a certain danger. The only safe and foolproof way would have been to keep him on, to let him go on living as the final gentleman until his dying day.
Why had they not done that? Was it possible, for example, that there were limitations on the project, that the operation, whatever its purpose, had a load capacity that was now crammed to its very limit? So that, before they could take on someone else, they must get rid of him?
If that were true, it very well could be there was a spot here where they were vulnerable.
And yet another thing, a vague remembrance from that congressional hearing of some years ago – a sentence and a picture carried in the papers at the time. The picture of a very puzzled man, one of the top technicians who had assembled Harvey, sitting in the witness chair and saying:
‘But, senator, I tell you no analytical computer can be anywhere near as good as they claim Harvey is.’
And it might mean something and it might not. Harrington told himself, but it was something to remember, it was a hope to which to cling.
Most astonishing, he thought placidly, how a mere machine could take the place of thinking man. He had commented on that before, with some asperity, in one of his books – he could not recall which one. As Cedric Madison had said this very evening…
He caught himself in time.
In some dim corner of his brain an alarm was ringing, and he dived for the folded paper he had tossed onto the floor.
He found it, and the headline screamed at him and the books lost their calf-bound elegance and the carpeting regained its harsh newness, and he was himself once more.
He knelt, sobbing, on the floor, the paper clutched in a shaky hand.
No change, he thought, no warning!
And a crumpled paper the only shield he had.
But a powerful shield, he thought.
_Try it again!_ he screamed at Harvey. _Go ahead and try!_
Harvey didn’t try.
It had _been_ Harvey. And, he told himself, of course he didn’t know.
Defenseless, he thought, except for a folded paper with a headline set in 18 point caps.
Defenseless, with a story that no one would believe even if he told it to them.
Defenseless, with thirty years of eccentricity to make his every act suspect.
He searched his mind for help and there was no help. The police would not believe him and he had few friends to help, for in thirty years he had made few friends.
There was the senator – but the senator had troubles of his own.
And there was something else – there was a certain weapon that could be used against him. Harvey only had to wait until he went to sleep. For if he went to sleep, there was no doubt he’d wake the final gentleman and more than likely then remain the final gentleman, even more firmly the final gentleman than he’d ever been before. For if they got him now, they’d never let him go.
He wondered, somewhat vaguely, why he should fight against it so. The last thirty years had not been so bad; the way they had been passed would not be a bad way, he admitted. being honest with himself, to live out the years that he had left in him.