And that one, in turn, would see to it that he provided himself with a replacement. Like any good tag-team of wrestlers it could theoretically go on for ever.
Could it?
All the Molinaris, in all the time-continua, were aging at the same rate. It could only go on for thirty or forty more years. At the most.
But that would carry Terra through and out of the war.
And that was all the Mole cared about.
He was not trying to be immortal, a god. He was simply interested in serving out his term of office. What had happened to Franklin D. Roosevelt in a previous major war was not going to happen to him. Molinari had learned from the mistakes of the past. And he acted accordingly, in typical Piedmontese style. He had found a bizarre and colorfully idiosyncratic solution to his political problem.
This explained why the UN Secretary’s uniform and homeopape shown to Eric a year hence by Don Festenburg were counterfeit.
Without this, they might conceivably have been real.
That alone justified what Molinari had done.
An hour later Gino Molinari summoned him to his private office.
Flushed, glowing with good humour, the Mole in a spanking new uniform leaned back in his chair and expansively, at leisure, surveyed Eric. ‘So the nurts weren’t going to start me up,’ he boomed out. Then abruptly he laughed. ‘I knew you’d put pressure on them, Sweetscent; I had it all worked out. Nothing by accident. You believe me? Or you think there was a loophole, they might have gotten away with it, especially that Festenburg – he’s plenty smart, you know. I admire the hell out of him.’ He belched. ‘Listen to me. Well, so much for Don.’
‘I think they almost got by,’ Eric said.
‘Yes, they did,’ Molinari agreed, somber now. ‘It was very close. But everything in politics is close; that’s what makes it worth the effort. Who wants a sure thing? Not me. By the way: those video tapes are going on the air as planned; I sent poor Prindle back to the vault or wherever it is he hangs out.’ Again Molinari laughed loudly.
‘Am I right,’ Eric said, ‘that in your world — ‘
‘This is my world,’ Molinari interrupted; putting his hands behind his head he rocked back and forth, eyeing Eric brightly.
Eric said, ‘In the parallel world you came from — ‘
‘Garbage!’
‘ — you were defeated in your attempt to become UN Secretary; is that right? I’m just curious. I don’t intend to discuss it with anyone.’
‘If you do,’ Molinari said, ‘I’ll have the Secret Service glunk you and sink you in the Atlantic. Or drop you in deep space.’ He was silent a moment. ‘I got elected, Sweetscent, but the drats knocked me right out of office in a no-confidence recall thing they cooked up. Having to do with the Pact of Peace. They were right, of course; I shouldn’t have gotten involved in it. But who wants to make a deal with four-armed shiny bugs who can’t even talk, who have to go around carrying a translation box like an indoor potty?’
‘You know now,’ Eric said guardedly, ‘that you have to. Reach an understanding with the reegs.’
‘Sure. But it’s easy to see that now.’ The Mole’s eyes were dark and intense, fighting this out with vast, native intelligence. ‘What do you have in mind, doctor? Let’s have a look. What did they used to say in the last century? Let’s kick it up on the roof and see if it – some damn thing.’
‘A contact is ready for you in Tijuana.’
‘Hell, I’m not going to Tijuana; that’s a dirty town – that’s where you go for a broad, age thirteen. Even younger than Mary.’
‘You know about Mary, then?’ Had she been his mistress in the alternate world?
‘He introduced us,’ Molinari said blandly. ‘My best friend; he fired me up. The one they’re burying or whatever it is they’re doing with the corpse. It couldn’t interest me less, just so they get rid of it. I’ve already got one, that bullet-riddled one in the casket. Which you saw. One is enough; they make me nervous.’
‘What are you going to do with the assassinated one?’
Molinari showed his teeth in a great grin. ‘You don’t get it, do you? That was the previous one. That came before the one that just died. I’m not the second; I’m the third.’ He cupped his ear, then. ‘Okay, let’s hear what you’ve got; I’m waiting.’
Eric said, ‘Urn, you’ll go to TF&D to visit Virgil Ackerman. That won’t arouse suspicion. It’s my job to get the contact into the factory so he can confer with you. I think I can do it. Unless—’
‘Unless Corning, the top ‘Star agent in Tijuana, gets to your reeg first. Listen, I give the Secret Service orders to round him up; that’ll keep the ‘Stars busy for a while, get them off our knabs. We can cite their activity regarding your wife, their getting her addicted; that’ll be the covering story. You agree? Yes? No?’
‘It’ll do.’ Once more he felt weary, even more so than before. It was a day, he decided, that would never terminate; the huge former burden had returned to weigh him into submission.
‘I don’t impress you very much,’ Molinari said.
‘On the contrary. I’m just exhausted.’ And he still had to go back to Tijuana to bring Deg Dal Il into the factory from his room at the Caesar Hotel; it was not over yet.
‘Someone else,’ Molinari said acutely, ‘can pick up your reeg and bring it to TF&D. Give me the location and I’ll see that it’s done right. You don’t have to do any more; go get drunk or find some fresh new girl. Or take some more JJ-180, visit another time period. Anyhow enjoy yourself. How’s your addiction coming? Broken it yet, like I told you to?’
‘Yes.’
Molinari raised his thick eyebrows. ‘I’ll be damned. Amazing; I didn’t think it could be done. Get it from your reeg contact?’
‘No. From the future.’
‘How’s the war come out? I don’t move ahead, like you do; I move sideways only, into the parallel presents.’
‘It’s going to be tough,’ Eric said.
‘Occupation?’
‘For most of Terra.’
‘How about me?’
‘Apparently you manage to get away to Wash-35. After holding out long enough for the reegs to come in with strength.’
‘I don’t care for it,’ Molinari decided. ‘But I guess I’ve got to do it. How’s your wife Katherine?’
‘The antidote—’
‘I mean your relationship.’
‘We’re separating. It’s decided.’
‘Okay.’ Molinari nodded briskly. ‘You write out the address you have for me and in exchange I’ll write out a name and address for you.’ He took pen and paper, wrote rapidly. ‘A relative of Mary’s. A cousin. Bit player in TV dramatic series, lives in Pasadena. Nineteen. Too young?’
‘Illegal.’
‘I’ll get you off.’ He tossed Eric the paper. Eric did not pick it up. ‘What’s the matter?’ Molinari shouted at him. ‘Has using that time-travel drug scrambled your wits, you don’t know you’ve got only one tiny life and that lies ahead of you, not sideways or back? Are you waiting for last year to come by again or something?’
Reaching out, Eric took the paper. That’s exactly right. I’ve been waiting a long time for last year. But I guess it’s just not coming again.’
‘Don’t forget to say I sent you,’ Molinari said, and beamed broadly as Eric put the paper in his wallet.
——————————————————————————–
It was night and Eric walked the dark side street, hands in his pockets, wondering if he was going in the right direction. He had not been in Pasadena, California, for years.
Ahead a major conapt building rose squarely against the sky, more dense than the atmosphere behind it, windows lit like the eyes of some great block-shaped synthetic pumpkin. Eyes, Eric thought, are the window of the soul, but a conapt is a conapt. What lies inside there? A bossy – or perhaps not so bossy – black-haired girl whose ambition it is to appear in one-minute beer and cigarette commercials on TV or whatever it is Molinari said. Someone to goad you to your feet when you’re sick, travesty of the marital vows, of mutual help, protection.
He thought about Phyllis Ackerman, their conversation at Wash-35, not so long ago. If I really want to repeat the pattern stamped on the matrix of my life, he thought, I need only look her up; Phyllis is just enough like Kathy to attract me. As both of us understand. And enough different from her so that it would seem – I say seem – like something new in my life. But then all at once he thought, This girl here in Pasadena; I didn’t pick her out. Gino Molinari did. So perhaps the matrix breaks here. And can be discarded. And I can go on in something that does not merely seem new but is new.