Not to the White House. What would be the point? Effective government in America was the DOD.
During the four years of training that had preceded his injection into the States as a man who had not previously existed, yet who sprang convincingly full-grown into a flawless background, he had been told, over and over, the orthodox analogies. Look at what happened to the Romans, they said, when internal discord prevented them from deploying their own forces to guard their frontiers. They hired barbarian mercenaries, and within a century or two those same mercenaries took over. For “barbarian mercenaries” read “corporations under contract to the Department of Defense,” and you have it right there.
Or else: look what happened to Spain and Portugal when they lost their empires in the New World. From world-power status both countries declined into poverty, intellectual underdevelopment, and dictatorship. Or, most graphically of all, consider the British: tricked into electing a right-wing government that forcibly deported black -but not white-immigrants; expelled in, consequence from their own Commonwealth of Nations, which fell apart; denied entry to the “rich man’s club” of Europe because of this incredible display of perfidy . . . and now moaning in squalor about the cruel way the world had treated them.
He had half expected America to collapse following the black exodus, six years ago, when in response to a collective invitation issued by the member-states of the OAU tens of thousands of highly skilled black intellectuals and their families had emigrated-to the accompaniment of cries of, “Good riddance!” Unfortunately all that had accomplished was to drop off the heads of the black power movement, leaving an amorphous quarrelsome carcass that the government found infinitely easier to handle.
Some of those emigrants had been disillusioned. Swallowing their pride, they had applied for re-admission, and had been turned down.
“Told you sol”
So he was not very optirriistic about seeing the downfall of Fortress America in his lifetime.
On the other hand. . .
From the moment of Sheklov’s arrival until now, he had been so on edge about successfully cementing the newcomer’s cover that he had-paid little heed to the news he had brought. The notion that some alien species might trigger a nuclear holocaust was too far from his everyday preoccupations; he had been sweating and shaking and dosing himself with tranks for fear some petty error on Sheklov’s part would alert the ever-watchful security force that never ceased its surveillance of Energetics General executives. Now the major obstacle was past-now that Sheklov had been photographed in company with Prexy, when everyone took it that Crashaw, Levitt, and the team at their backs were the ultimate court of appeal concerning security-he could coldly review what he had been told.
Amazing. He hadn’t even realized that the Russians had
ventured as far as Pluto; naturally, the American newsmedia did not carry details of such achievements, and his contacts with Russian agents in Canada were sporadic and too brief for mere gossip. And they’d been out there for three years! Fantasticl
A stir of half-forgotten pride in his native land rose at the fringe of his awareness. As always, he slapped it down. For a quarter-century he had been careful to ape the opinions of those around him. He said the proper things about terrorism, bomb-outrages, insurrections, rebs, those ungrateful devils overseas. He took his vacations in the right places: at home, and usually in Florida. Before he married, he bad travelled a little, but to the permissible allies, South Africa and Australia. Now and then, on business, he went to Canada-ostensibly to sound out projects that might bring in some desperately scarce foreign currency. He never enjoyed those trips, except in an upsidedown fashion. The Canadians made it plain that they too would prefer to sever relations with the States, but it was known in the way such matters are known that if they tried it they would be occupied, like Mexico; things were quiet enough at home for the troops to be spared. So they compromised by flagrantly favouring the East Bloc, and the most heavily patronised ocean cruises nowadays run by Canadian Pacific were to Vladivostok via Japan.
He had had to turn somersaults in his head now and then. When he first came to the States, he had fully expected there would be a temporary alliance between the two super-powers against China, which might degenerate into shooting war. But that had been a wrong guess. As soon as American forces began to be recalled to fight at home, it had become obvious that the Chinese were going to expand into the resulting vacuum, and unless the two schools of communism resolved their differences fast the Maoists were going to leave the Leninists standing. (What was the distinction between “homoousian” and “homoiousian”?)