But what am I do to about Susan? I’ve thought and thought, and there’s simply no way to take her with me, to pluck her off the Earth before it transmogrifies. How would I do it? Where and how would she live? In a bubble of air and soil from her former planet? First she would lose her mind — I mean, immediately she would lose her mind — and then she would pine and die.
Susan is of this place. More, she is of this place and time. There would be no life for her in the deep spaces of the real, alone, the last of her kind, with no companion but an amorphism she’s expected to call Andy. If I’m going to think about this, I at least have to think realistically.
But I don’t want to lose her. I don’t want to stop knowing her, that’s the long and the short of it. I don’t want to stop being Andy, and I don’t want to stop being in love with Susan. (We haven’t said the word, humans are often wary of that word, but we both know.)
I have choice, I know that, I have free will, but on what could I bend that will? Where is the alternative? If Susan stays on this Earth, she will be snuffed at the same instant as every other creature, every plant, every molecule of air. But where could she go instead? Nowhere. So where is the choice?
40
“I’m sorry, Congressman,” Reed Stockton said, “but I just can’t go along with it.”
Congressman Stephen Schlurn leaned forward, his reddened eyes burning into Reed’s. “Do you know who you’re talking to, young man?”
Yes, he did, Reed Stockton knew exactly who he was talking to, worse luck. A hell of a way to start a new job; first day, first morning, and he has to stand up and say no to a hotshot congressman, in fact the congressman in whose district Green Meadow III Nuclear Power Plant festered, and who had a sudden urge to be a... a what? A hero? A media star?
A headache and a jerk, in Reed Stockton’s opinion. “I know who you are, sir,” he said, being both firm and respectful, “and I have to tell you, it wouldn’t matter if you were the president, I’d still have to say the same thing.”
The congressman shook his head, showing how exasperated he’d been made by Reed’s stupidity. “It’s not as though,” he said, “I’m talking about going in there alone. I want you with me, that’s the whole point.”
“Congressman,” Reed said, “I have to tell you this is my first day as PID, and I’m not really prepared to put my job on the line on any one person’s say-so. My predecessor, a fellow named Hardwick—”
“I heard about him,” Schlurn said. Hardwick’s shocking bewildering finish was being downplayed in public as much as possible, but of course, Congressman Schlurn would have his sources, he would know all about it. “Went crazy, didn’t he?”
“Yes, sir. Killed a national guardsman with a rock, went over the fence with the man’s rifle, and apparently killed himself inside. The helicopters have seen what’s almost certainly his body.”
“I fail to understand,” Schlurn said, “what that garish adventure has to do with you and me. I want us, representing the people and the media, to walk openly and boldly straight through that main gate and down to the plant and talk to these people, one on one. All these telephone negotiations aren’t doing a damn thing, and I don’t care if you only got the job ten minutes ago, you still have to know I’m right about that.”
Give me strength, Lord, Reed Stockton prayed, and he meant it. He was a religious person, raised a Methodist by devout parents, married to a devout girl himself, the two of them raising their first child — with more to come, God willing — the same way. When troubled or harassed, Reed prayed for help, for guidance, for strength, and it seemed to him his prayers were always answered.
And they would be again this time. Knowing that God was giving him eloquence, Reed said, “Sir, you may be absolutely right about everything you say. You’re an intelligent man, and a very persuasive man, and I wouldn’t doubt for a second that if you could get into a face-to-face discussion with the unfortunate people sitting in at the plant right now you would very eloquently—”
“Sitting in?” Schlurn stared at him with revulsion. “Did you say sitting in?”
“Yes, sir, Congressman Schlurn, I did.” Reed permitted himself a small pleased smile. “And frankly, sir, I’m proud of it. That was my idea.”
“Your idea.”
“Yes, sir. When I took over this morning, there was a briefing session with General Bloodmore and the other people in charge, and I made that suggestion and they accepted it at once. And thanked me, sir.”
“Sitting in,” repeated Schlurn.
“It’s a much less emotive word than anything else that has been used,” Reed explained. “Talking about hostages, and terrorists, and invasions, and captures, and threats and all that, it simply serves to escalate the danger quotient. Sir, I was a poli-sci major at Cal Tech, with a minor in communications history, and I like to think that I understand what words do in public discourse. I think of that as my specialty. And to say that what we have to deal with here is a sit-in suggests the possibility for reason and discussion on both sides of the issue. It suggests a situation that isn’t really dangerous.”
“But,” Schlurn said, “it is really dangerous.”
“Sir, we don’t want to emphasize that with the folk outside. Particularly those within one hundred and twenty-five miles of the plant. Which includes, as you know, New York City.”
Schlurn considered. He and Reed were standing on opposite sides of Reed’s desk — formerly poor Hardwick’s desk — in the Press Office trailer, surrounded by activity they’d both been ignoring: secretaries typing, telephoning, making copies. Now Schlurn, with those painful-looking red eyes as though he hadn’t slept for a week — dreaming up this insane scheme, no doubt — looked around the trailer, looked back at Reed, and in a new low voice, calmer than before, said, “I’m not going to persuade you, am I?”
“To let you on-site, sir? And to go with you? No, sir, you aren’t.”
“The idea of yourself becoming a media figure has no appeal to you.”
Reed smiled thinly. He used the media, he didn’t subscribe to it. “No, sir,” he said.
“No, I can see that. Is there a men’s room?”
“Of course, sir.”
Reed, magnanimous in victory, was solicitous in pointing the way, and beamed at the congressman’s back as Schlurn stumped off.
Eloquence, that’s all it ever took. Eloquence and calm. Reed, pleased and relieved at having survived his first crisis in the new job, sat at the desk and went back to sorting through the vast collection of messages left unreturned by poor Hardwick, who hadn’t survived his last crisis at all, whatever it had been.
Five minutes later the congressman was back, looking better than before, calmer and more in control of himself. Even his eyes were clearer. He said, “Reed, I want to thank you.”
Reed jumped to his feet, scattering message memos. “Yes, sir!”
“That was a dumb idea I had,” Schlurn said. “I woke up with it this morning, and it just seemed great, and I couldn’t get it out of my head all day. What I needed was a calm rational person to look at me and say you’re crazy, and I’m grateful to you for doing it.”