The Old Man snorted. “So it’s ‘no’, is it?”
“I did not say so.”
“You were about to.”
The President shrugged. “I was going to suggest that your young people withdraw, but now it does not matter. Andrew, you are a genius, but even geniuses make mistakes. They overwork themselves and lose their judgment. I’m not a genius but I learned to relax about forty years ago. How long has it been since you had a vacation?”
“Damn your vacations! See here, Tom, I anticipated this; that’s why I brought witnesses. They are neither drugged nor instructed. Call in your psych crew; try to shake their stories.”
The President shook his head. “You wouldn’t have brought witnesses who could be cracked. I’m sure you are cleverer about such things than anyone whom I could bring in to test them. Take this young man—he was willing to risk a murder charge to protect you. You inspire loyalty, Andrew. As for the young lady, really, Andrew, I can’t start what amounts to war on a woman’s intuition.”
Mary took a step forward. “Mr. President,” she said very earnestly, “I do know. I know every time. I can’t tell you how I know—but those were not normal male men.”
He hesitated, then answered, “I do not dispute you. But you have not considered an obvious explanation—that they actually were, ah, ‘harem guards’. Pardon me, Miss. There are always such unfortunates in the population. By the laws of chance you ran across four in one day.”
Mary shut up. The Old Man did not. “God damn it, Tom—” I shuddered; you don’t talk to the President that way. “—I knew you when you were an investigating senator and I was a key man in your investigations. You know I wouldn’t bring you this fairy tale if there were any way to explain it away. Facts can’t be ignored; they’ve got to be destroyed, or faced up to. How about that space ship? What was in it? Why couldn’t I even reach the spot where it landed?” He hauled out the photograph taken by Space Station Beta and shoved it under the President’s nose.
The President seemed unperturbed. “Ah, yes, facts. Andrew, both you and I have a passion for facts. But I have several sources of information other than your section. Take this photo—you made quite a point of it when you phoned. I’ve checked the matter. The metes and bounds of the McLain farm as recorded in the local county courthouse check precisely with the triangulated latitude and longitude of this object on this photograph.” The President looked up. “Once I absent-mindedly turned off a block too soon and got lost in my own neighborhood. You weren’t even in your own neighborhood, Andrew.”
“Tom—”
“Yes, Andrew?”
“You did not trot out there and check those courthouse maps yourself?”
“Of course not.”
“Thank God for that—or you would be carrying three pounds of pulsing tapioca between your shoulder blades this minute—and God save the United States! You can be sure of this: the courthouse clerk and whatever agent was sent to see him, both are hag-ridden by filthy parasites this very moment.” The Old Man stared at the ceiling. “Yes, and the Des Moines chief of police, newspaper editors around there, dispatchers, cops, all sorts of key people. Tom, I don’t know what we are up against, but they know what we are, and they are pinching off the nerve cells of our social organism before true messages can get back—or they cover up the true reports with false ones, just as they did with Barnes. Mr. President, you must order an immediate, drastic quarantine of the whole area. There is no other hope!”
“Barnes,” the President repeated softly, as if he had heard nothing else. “Andrew, I had hoped to spare you this, but—” He broke off and flipped a key at his desk. “Get me stereo station WDES, Des Moines, the manager’s office.”
Shortly a screen lighted on his desk; he touched another switch and a solid display in the wall lighted up. We were looking into the room we had been in only a few hours before.
Looking into it past the shoulders of a man who filled most of the screen—Barnes.