Grinning starkly at Peggy and Ed Fineberg, Briskin said, "That's it. It's over. I'm to politically shut up."
"You can fight it in the courts," Peggy said at once. "You can take it all the way up to the Supreme Court; they've set aside decisions of Unicephalon in the past." She put her hand on his shoulder, but he moved away. "Or do you want to fight it?"
"At least I'm not cancelled out," Briskin said. He felt tired. "I'm glad to see that machine back in operation," he said, to reassure Peggy. "It means a return to stability. That we can use."
"What'll you do, Jim-Jam?" Ed asked. "Go back to Reinlander Beer and Calbest Electronics and try to get your old job back?"
"No," Briskin murmured. Certainly not that. But – he could not really become politically silent; he could not do what the problem-solver said. It simply was not biologically possible for him; sooner or later he would begin to talk again, for better or worse. And, he thought, I'll bet Max can't do what it says either… neither of us can.
Maybe, he thought, I'll answer the writ of mandamus; maybe I'll contest it. A counter suit… I'll sue Unicephalon 40-D in a court of law. Jim-Jam Briskin the plaintiff, Unicephalon 40-D the defendant. He smiled. I'll need a good lawyer for that. Someone quite a bit better than Max Fischer's top legal mind, cousin Leon Lait.
Going to the closet of the small studio in which they had been broadcasting, he got his coat and began to put it on. A long trip lay ahead of them back to Earth from this remote spot, and he wanted to get started.
Peggy, following after him, said, "You're not going back on the air at all? Not even to finish the program?"
"No," he said.
"But Unicephalon will be cutting back out again, and what'll that leave? Just dead air. That's not right, is it, Jim? Just to walk out like this… I can't believe you'd do it, it's not like you."
He halted at the door of the studio. "You heard what it said. The instructions it handed out to me."
"Nobody leaves dead air going," Peggy said. "It's a vacuum, Jim, the thing nature abhors. And if you don't fill it, someone else will. Look, Unicephalon is going back off right now." She pointed at the TV monitor. The ribbon of words had ceased; once more the screen was dark, empty of motion and light. "It's your responsibility," Peggy said, "and you know it."
"Are we back on the air?" he asked Ed.
"Yes. It's definitely out of the circuit, at least for a while." Ed gestured toward the vacant stage on which the TV cameras and lights focussed. He said nothing more; he did not have to.
With his coat still on, Jim Briskin walked that way. Hands in his pockets he stepped back into the range of the cameras, smiled and said, "I think, beloved comrades, the interruption is over. For the time being, anyhow. So… let's continue."
The noise of canned applause – manipulated by Ed Fineberg – swelled up, and Jim Briskin raised his hands and signalled the nonexistent studio audience for silence.
"Does any of you know a good lawyer?" Jim-Jam asked caustically. "And if you do, phone us and tell us right away – before the FBI finally manages to reach us out here."
In his bedroom at the White House, as Unicephalon's message ended, Maximilian Fischer turned to his cousin Leon and said, "Well, I'm out of office."
"Yeah, Max," Leon said heavily. "I guess you are."
"And you, too," Max pointed out. "It's going to be a clean sweep; you can count on that. Cancelled." He gritted his teeth. "That's sort of insulting. It could have said retired."
"I guess that's just its way of expressing itself," Leon said. "Don't get upset, Max; remember your heart trouble. You still got the job of stand-by, and that's the top stand-by position there is, Stand-by President of the United States, I want to remind you. And now you've got all this worry and effort off your back; you're lucky."
"I wonder if I'm allowed to finish this meal," Max said, picking at the food in the tray before him. His appetite, now that he was retired, began almost at once to improve; he selected a chicken salad sandwich and took a big bite from it. "It's still mine," he decided, his mouth full. "I still get to live here and eat regularly – right?"
"Right," Leon agreed, his legal mind active. "That's in the contract the union signed with Congress; remember back to that? We didn't go out on strike for nothing."
"Those were the days," Max said. He finished the chicken salad sandwich and returned to the eggnog. It felt good not to have to make big decisions; he let out a long, heartfelt sigh and settled back into the pile of pillows propping him up.
But then he thought, In some respects I sort of enjoyed making decisions. I mean, it was – He searched for the thought. It was different from being a stand-by or drawing unemployment. It had -
Satisfaction, he thought. That's what it gave me. Like I was accomplishing something. He missed that already; he felt suddenly hollow, as if things had all at once become purposeless.
"Leon," he said, "I could have gone on as President another whole month. And enjoyed the job. You know what I mean?"
"Yeah, I guess I get your meaning," Leon mumbled.
"No you don't," Max said.
"I'm trying, Max," his cousin said. "Honest."
With bitterness, Max said, "I shouldn't have had them go ahead and let those engineer-fellas patch up that Unicephalon; I should have buried the project, at least for six months."
"Too late to think about that now," Leon said.
Is it? Max asked himself. You know, something could happen to Unicephalon 40-D. An accident.
He pondered that as he ate a piece of green-apple pie with a wide slice of longhorn cheese. A number of persons whom he knew could pull off such tasks… and did so, now and then.
A big, nearly-fatal accident, he thought. Late some night, when everyone's asleep and it's just me and it awake here in the White House. I mean, let's face it; the aliens showed us how.
"Look, Jim-Jam Briskin's back on the air," Leon said, gesturing at the TV set. Sure enough, there was the famous, familiar red wig, and Briskin was saying something witty and yet profound, something that made one stop to ponder. "Hey listen," Leon said. "He's poking fun at the FBI; can you imagine him doing that now? He's not scared of anything."
"Don't bother me," Max said. "I'm thinking." He reached over and carefully turned the sound of the TV set off.
For thoughts such as he was having he wanted no distractions.
What'll We Do with Ragland Park?
In his demesne near the logging town of John Day, Oregon, Sebastian Hada thoughtfully ate a grape as he watched the TV screen. The grapes, flown to Oregon by illegal jet transport, came from one of his farms in the Sonoma Valley of California. He spat the seeds into the fireplace across from him, half-listening to his CULTURE announcer delivering a lecture on the portrait busts of twentieth-century sculptors.
If only I could get Jim Briskin on my network, Hada thought gloomily. The ranking TV news clown, so popular, with his flaming scarlet wig and genial, informal patter… CULTURE needs that, Hada realized. But -
But their society, at the moment, was being run by the idiotic – but peculiarly able – President Maximilian Fischer, who had locked horns with Jim-Jam Briskin; who had, in fact, clapped the famous news clown in jail. So, as a result, Jim-Jam was available neither for the commercial network which linked the three habitable planets nor for CULTURE. And meanwhile, Max Fischer ruled on.