"Now we go to Phase Two. Are you ready for your television broadcast?"
"Yes, sir." Meaning that I wasn't, actually, but I would be as soon as Nyla Sambok got back with the clothes.
"The TV station and the microwave links are secure; they'll have the circuits open in half an hour. They've already got the President's tape ready to go, as soon as you do the introduction."
"Yes, sir."
"Good." Then his tone changed. "One other thing, Major. Any sign of rebound?"
"Nothing new, sir. I think we're still interviewing the locals, though."
"Urn. Any more unwelcome visitors?"
"No sign of any, sir."
"Keep your eyes open," he said harshly, and hung up. I recognized the tone. It was the voice of fear.
Half an hour later, walking over to the base's television studio in the hot desert night, with the same stars blazing overhead that blazed over my own America, I was feeling some of that fear myself. An MP jeep patrol cruised past, headlights swiveling from side to side. They paused long enough to take a good look at me and my assault-force armband, then picked up speed and moved on. They didn't challenge me. They didn't ask for I.D.
I could have been one of those unwelcome visitors. I could have been that other me who seemed to have been everywhere. And, if I had been, all I would have had to do was get a scrap of green cloth to pin around my sleeve and they would never have known the difference. And then— And then what would that other me have done?
That was the scary question. So far they had watched and pried. But they had done nothing at all.
I couldn't really blame the MP's for sloppy security, because they obviously didn't see the need for being tight. We had taken over the base without a shot being fired, against opposition that consisted mostly of sleepy-eyed sentries being struck dumb with astonishment when our troops pulled them in. What a way to run America! I wondered what it would be like to live in a country where important bases were guarded by only a handful of Regular Army troops, where there had been no draft or call-up of reserves. If I'd been left to finish my postgraduate courses at Loyola instead of being activated into the reserve, what would I be by now?
A senator, maybe?
It was not the kind of speculation that I could afford to get into, while I still had an important part of my job to finish.
Sergeant Sambok was waiting for me at the studio with Senator DeSota's clothes, as promised. I found a dressing room and slid out of my coveralls. He dressed himself well, that other Dom DeSota; shirt, tie, socks, shoes, pants, sports jacket—everything was good cloth or good leather. The cut was peculiar—his fashions were not the same as ours—but I liked the feel of the silky shirt and the soft, crisp-creased slacks. They could have fit a little better. The other Dom was a good size fatter than I, which was a satisfaction, even if it did spoil the cut of the clothes a little.
When I came out of the dressing room the sergeant wasn't critical. "Looking sharp, Major," she complimented.
"What did you leave him in?" I asked, peering at myself in the mirror, and when she grinned I knew the answer. He wouldn't get cold in that August heat in his underwear, but still Take him my spare fatigues," I ordered. "They're in my B-4 bag." Fortunately for him, I liked my fatigues a little loose, so he could undoubtedly get into them.
"Yes, sir," said Sergeant Sambok. "Sir?"
"What is it?"
"Well . . . if you're going to wear his clothes and he's going to wear yours, wouldn't that be a little confusing? I mean, suppose he got to you and knocked you out and changed clothes. How would I know which was which?"
I started to open my mouth to tell her she was a fool. Then I closed it again. She was right. "Good thinking," I said. "Tell you what. I'll be the one who knows your full name, okay?"
"Yes, sir, Anyway, as long as he's in the stockade and you're not..."
"That's right," I agreed, but then I felt what I'd been unwilling to let myself feel for the last couple of hours.
I wanted to confront this other self of mine. I wanted to sit and talk to him, hear his voice, find out where our lives had been the same and where they differed. It was an itchy, quivery sort of thought, like getting ready for the first time you do dope, or the first sex; but I wanted it.
I didn't have time to think about it just then, because I was on. The cameramen gaped at my snappy civilian clothes, the signals captain grinned openly, but it was time for my television debut, ready or not.
More not than ready. They've always got to swing a mike into position or switch a camera or send somebody out into the hall to stop somebody else's chattering, but in a moment the corporal who was acting as director cried, "Stand by, sir!" He listened to his headphones for a moment, and then began to count. "Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . seven . . . six . . . five . . . four . . . three . . ." For the last counts he used his fingers, two fingers, one finger, then the single finger stabbed at me and the green light over the camera went on and the prepared speech began to roll.
"Ladies and gentlemen," I said into the camera, "I am Dominic DeSota." That was no lie; I was. I didn't say I was Senator DeSota, though the fact that I was now wearing his clothes might have carried that implication. There wasn't much more to my speech:
"An emergency has required this action to take place. I ask that every American listen to this broadcast with an open mind, and with the generous heart of all we Americans. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the President of the United States."
And the photons of my face and neck and that other Dominic's suit and tie and shirt went flocking into the camera and came out as electrons; as electrons snaked through the cables of the base studio to the microwave dish on the roof, were reconverted to photons of a different frequency, and, as radio signals, were hurled across the valley to the transmitter towers of KABQ bounced up into the air and through it, to a satellite thousands of miles away in space and showered down on the television sets of the United States. This United States. And what they would make of it, and of the President who was not their President, I could only wonder.
The whole Signal Corps detachment was in uniform, but there was still a lot of civilian in their blood. Reservists, called up for the emergency, they were almost all veterans of the networks. They'd arranged themselves some civilian comforts. There was a pot of coffee brewing in the lounge outside the studio, and a plate of packaged cakes and junk foods—someone had liberated the local PX.
I poured myself a cup, listening to President Brown's voice coming over the monitors: ". . . as the President of the United States, speaking to you who are also the President of the United States, and to the American people . . ." He looked nervous but well rehearsed as he read the lines written for him. ". . . at this point in our history we are confronted with a terrible despotism out to conquer the world . . ." and ". . . the ties of blood and common devotion to the principles of freedom and democracy . . ." and on and on. It was a pretty good speech; I'd seen the text beforehand. But the important thing wasn't anything in his speech. It was the fact that we were in control.
The same voice was coming from a control room just down the hall, door open. I carried my cup down to peer inside. There they had not one but a dozen monitors, almost all of them showing the President's earnest face, saying the same things. But there were also a couple of screens that showed other faces, looking serious and even more earnest: John Chancellor, Walter Cronkite, a couple I didn't recognize. They were doing commentary already. That was a surprise, until I remembered that the President's speech was only four minutes long. It had played once and was being rerun by the stations that had been caught off guard and didn't have an instant response ready; the others were already reacting.