While I was explaining all this to Jack Kennedy, I could see that
I didn't have his attention. His eyes were on me, but they were looking right through me, and he was stirring the wild rice around with his fork instead of eating. I assumed it was his back. So did Lavi. "Ah, Senator," he cut in, with that Russian-bear good humor that he used for sympathy, "why not come to Moscow to see doctors? Our Djugashvili Medical Institute, named for grandfather, not me, has best surgeons in world, no question!"
"Will they give me a new back?" Kennedy growled.
"Spinal transplant, why not? Have Dr. Azimof, best transplant man in world. Has done three hundred eighty-five hearts alone, not counting livers, testicles, I don't know what all. Have saying in Moscow, when world's first successful hemorrhoid transplant is done, Itzhak will do it!"
I laughed. Jackie laughed. Everybody around the table laughed, except the senator. He smiled, but the smile didn't last. "Sorry, Lavi," he said. "I'm afraid my sense of huma isn't working very well tonight." He put down his fork and leaned across the table. "Gary? Did you say they were flying Jerry Brown in—I mean, our Jerry?"
"That's right, Senator. They located him in Maine, but his flight was delayed on account of the weather."
The senator grimaced, rubbing his back. "Tell me about the weather," he said, waving to the butler to take his plate away. "God knows what use Brown will be," he commented, "but I guess he can at least give us some background on his opposite number, over there."
Hart chimed in, "I wish we had a better line on those other guys. Maybe we could find some more of their doubles here and get them in on this."
Neither of them were looking at me, but Jackie was. "Nyla," she said, "you know Dom DeSota, of course." And I figured out why I had been invited. Without ever saying an overt word, Jackie was giving me honorary status as a wife-anyway, a what-you-might-call fiancee. She could not have treated me better if Dom and I had been married. She might not have treated me as well, if Dom and I had been married, because Dom's reputation was thoroughly beclouded— Or maybe not, because she went on, "I think you spoke to him not long before he left for Mexico." Tactful! But Dom's chief aide must have been talking. "I wonder if he said anything about the reason?"
I hesitated. "I don't know if you all know what was going on at Sandia—"
Lavrenti said, "Oh, yes, I think so, dear Mrs. Bowquist. Even I had heard something."
"You can speak freely," said the senator. "If it ever was a secret, it isn't now."
"Well—the senator said something about a double of himself. Exact. I mean, even with the same fingerprints. They wanted him to confront this other man."
"Exactly," said Gary Hart triumphantly. "It's just what we thought, Senator. That man on television wasn't our own Dom DeSota at all."
The Senator nodded. Then he gestured to the butler. "We'll take our coffee in my study, Albert," he said, and then to us, "Let's take another look at this guy on TV."
Even so, it took me a long time to understand what they were saying. We were in the study—not what I would have called a study; it was bigger than my own living room in Chicago, big enough for war councils and off-the-record meetings of a dozen or more. It had four television monitors plus the big screen; it had news-wire CRT's for INS and AP; most of all, it had a videotape machine. Jack Kennedy sat in the corner of the room nearest the air-conditioning exhaust with his cigar, gnawing on his knuckle as he watched the replay of Dom's face, speaking in Dom's voice the words that I could not believe Dom would ever say.
And neither could Jack Kennedy. "What do you think?" he asked the room at large. No one spoke, and I realized the Harts were looking at me.
For a moment I wondered if, after all, they were blaming me for Dom's incredible turnabout. The guilty conscience again, of course.
Then I had a second thought.
"Run it again, will you?" I asked, my voice beginning to shake, and fumbled in my bag for the glasses that I never wore in public. I looked harder at my love's face, studying every line, listening to every tone, watching every gesture.
I said doubtfully, "He looks very thin, doesn't he? As though he were under some kind of strain-or else-"
"Or else," said Hart, "we were right about that, too, Senator. That isn't our Dom DeSota. It's theirs."
"I knew it," piped Jackie, who had moved over to the arm of my
chair. I felt her hand on my shoulder, mothering me. I could have kissed her. A constriction I hadn't known was there fell away from my chest. Oh, Dom! You might be an adulterer, but at least you weren't a traitor! .
"I think," announced the senator, "that we might just take a look at that CIA summary now, Gary." He took a folded sheaf of paper from his aide, put his own glasses on, and glanced at the top page.
I wasn't listening. I was too filled with relief. It didn't make everything all right, quite. There was still Ferdie. Not to mention Marilyn DeSota. But at least one sharp, shocking pain had eased.
I wondered what time it was. If I could excuse myself soon and get back to my hotel—if I could call Ferdie still tonight, before he went to sleep—maybe now I could go through with it and tell him what I was so frightened to say. Of course, there was still Marilyn— Of course there was still Marilyn! What was I thinking of? How could I tell my secret without telling Dom's too? And how could I do that without at least warning Dom first?
Dissolved again in doubt, I tried to pay attention to what Jack Kennedy was saying. ". . . two people," he said. "One was a smart Albuquerque cop. The other was a smart FBI woman they put in shorts on a bicycle, out on the mountain where the other guys had occupied a television transmitter. Neither one had any difficulty getting the enemy soldiers to talk."
"Lousy security," said Hart, frowning.
"Lousy for them. Good for us," said jack. "Anyway, they didn't say anything—at least they didn't say much—about military matters. But the cop and the FBI woman did get them talking about the differences between their world and ours. I think we have a pretty good idea now of where their history and ours are different."
I tried to listen with comprehension to the rest of what Jack Kennedy was saying. It wasn't easy. What I know about is music; there weren't very many history courses when I went to Juilliard. For that matter, it was hard for me to grasp what was meant by "parallel times," though Dom had explained it to me. As a theory. As reality it was a whole lot harder to accept.
"Their enemies," Jack said, "seem to be the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China."
He paused, glancing at the ambassador, who sank down in his chair, frowning, without comment. "Which China?" I asked, as anyone would—did they mean the Korean Mandate, or Han Peking, or the Hong Kong Suzerainty, or Manchukuo or the Taiwanese Empire or any of the other twelve or fifteen pieces China had splintered into after the Cultural Revolution?
"Just one China," said jack. "They managed to hang together, and now—for them—they're the biggest nation on Earth."
We all looked at each other. That was hard enough to swallow. The idea of the Soviet Union threatening anybody any more was even crazier. I tried to read Lavi's expression, but he had none. He was just listening, and after a moment he stretched out a hand and took one of the senator's cigars, though I knew that normally he didn't smoke. He kept his eyes down on it, slowly unwrapping the foil, not speaking at all.