“Thanks, Jim,” said the President, “I knew I could get a straight answer out of you.” It was the only way to stop him. Otherwise he might go clear on to the C.S.B. and its effect on the Integrationists, the C.S.B. and Labor, the C.S.B. and Colorado water diversion or the C.S.B. as viewed in the light of Craf-fany’s benching of Little Joe Fliederwick.
And yet, pondered the President, he still didn’t know even the question, much less the answer. Why was C.S.B. a good issue? The missiles hadn’t hit in the past fifty-three years, why should a voting population march to the booths and elect its leaders because of their Shelter philosophy now?
Braden changed the subject. “What do you think of Horton, Jim?”
He could always count on Harkness being frank, at least. “Don’t like him. A boat-rocker. You want my advice, Brad? You haven’t asked for it, but it’s get rid of him. Get the National Committee to put a little money in his district before the primaries.”
“I see,” said the President, thanked his former campaign manager and hung up.
He took a moment before buzzing Murray for the next appointment to sip Ms lightly tinted soda water and close his eyes. Well, he’d wasted most of the thirty-five minutes he’d gained, and not even a nap to show for it. Maybe General Standish was right.
Once when Braden was younger, before he was governor of New Jersey, before he was state senator, when he still lived in the old Rumford house on the beach and commuted to Jersey City every day-once he had been a member of the National Guard, what he considered his obligation as a resigned West Pointer. And they had killed two of their obligatory four-hours-a-month one month watching a documentary film on nuclear attack. The arrows marched over the Pole and the picture dissolved to a flight of missiles. The warheads exploded high in ah-. Then the film went to stock shots, beautifully selected and paced: the experimental houses searing and burning on Yucca Flats, the etched shadows of killed men on the walls of Hiroshima, a forest fire, a desert, empty, and the wind lifting sand-devils. The narration had told how such-and-such kind of construction would be burned within so many miles of Ground Zero. It remarked that forest fires would blaze on every mountain and mentioned matter-of-f actly that they wouldn’t go out until the whiter snow or spring rams, and of course then the ground would be bare and the topsoil would creep as mud down to the oceans. It estimated that then, the year was no later than 1960, a full-scale attack would cost the world 90 percent of its capacity to support life for at least a couple of centuries. Braden had never forgotten that movie.
He had never forgotten it, but he admitted that sometimes he had allowed it to slip out of his mind for a while. This latest while seemed to have lasted quite a few years. Only C.S.B. had brought it back in his recollection.
Because that was the question, the President thought, sipping his tinted soda water. What was the use of C.S.B.? What was the use of any kind of shelters, be they deep as damn-all, if all you had to come out of them to was a burned-out Sahara?
IV
Now that the simulated raid was over everybody was resuming their interrupted errands at once. Denzer was crammed in any-which-way with Maggie Frome wedged under an arm and that kook from the Institute-Venezuela?-gabbling in his ear about computer studies and myelin sheaths.
The elevator jollied them all along. “Don’t forget tomorrow, folks. Be a lot of grandmother’s buried tomorrow, eh?” It could not wink, but it giggled and, well, nudged them. Or at least it shook them. It was overloaded with the crowds from the shelter floors, and its compensators flagged, dropping it an inch below the sill of the lobby door, then lifting it. “Sorry, folks,” it apologized. “Good night, all!”
Denzer grabbed Maggie’s arm. The laboratory man called after him, but he only nodded and tugged the girl away through the crowds, which were mumbling to each other: “Foxy Framish . . . slip ‘em a couple thousand nookyoular ... caught off first... oh, hell.” The “oh, hells” became general as they reached the main lobby outside of the elevator bays.
Civilian Air Wardens formed chains across the exits. Like fish weirs they chuted the exiting civilians into lines and passed each line through a checkpoint.
“Denzer,” groaned Maggie, “I’m cooked. I never wear my dosimeter badge with this old green dress.”
The wardens were checking every person for his compulsory air-raid equipment. Denzer swore handily, then brightened. They did have their press cards; this was official business. Aztec Wine of Coca was a powerful name in industry, and didn’t they have a right to take care of its affairs even if they overlooked a few formalities that nobody really took very seriously anyway? He said confidently: “Bet I get us out of it, Maggie. Watch this.” And he led her forcefully to the nearest warden. “You, there. Important morale business; here’s my card. I’m Denzer of Nature’s Way. This’s my assistant, Frome. I-“
Briskly the warden nodded. “Yes, sir, Mr. Denzer. Just come this way.” He led them through the purse-seine of wardens, out of the building, into-why, Denzer saw, outraged, into a police cab.
“You fixed us fine, Denzer,” gloomed Maggie at his side as they got in. He didn’t have the spirit to listen to her.
The roundup had bagged nearly fifty hardened criminals, like Denzer and Maggie, caught flagrantly naked of dosimeters and next-of-kin tags. They were a surly lot. Even the C.S.B. adherents among them belligerently protested their treatment; the sneak-punchers were incandescent about the whole thing. Office girls, executives, errand boys, even one hangdog A.R.P. guard himself; they were a motley assortment. The research man, Valendora, was among them, and so was the girl from the Institute’s reception room. Valendora saw Denzer and slipped through the crowd toward him, holding a manila envelope as though it contained diphtheria vaccine and he was the first man to arrive at the scene of an epidemic. “Mr. Denzer,” he said darkly, “I ask you to assist me. Eleven months of my tune and twenty-two computer hours! And this is the only copy. Statist. Analysis Trans. expects this by tomorrow at the latest, and-“
Denzer hardly heard. Statist. Analysis Trans. was not the only periodical expecting something from one of the fish in this net. With an inner ear Denzer was listening to what his Front Office would say. He was, he saw clearly, about to miss a deadline. Seven million paid-up subscribers would be complaining to the Front Office when their copies were late, and Denzer knew all too well who Front Office would complain to about that. He whimpered faintly and reached for an amphetamine tablet, but an A.R.P. cop caught his arm. “Watch it, Mac,” said the cop, not unkindly. “No getting rid of evidence there. You got to turn all that stuff in.”
Denzer had never been arrested before. He was in a semi-daze while they were waiting to be booked. Ahead of him in line a minor squabble arose-Valendora seemed to be clashing with a plump young fellow in a collegiate crew-cut-but Denzer was paying little attention as he numbly emptied his pockets and put all his possessions on the desk to be locked away for him.
It was not until Maggie Frome repeated his name for the fifth time that he realized she was talking to him. She indicated a lanky, homely woman talking into an autonoter, seemingly on terms of amiable mutual contempt with the police.
“Denzer,” Maggie hissed urgently, “that girl over there. The reporter. Name’s Sue-Mary Gribb, and I know her. Used to work with her on the Herald.”
“That’s nice. Say, Maggie,” he moaned, “what the devil are we going to do about the Aztec Wine of Coca piece? The Front Office’11 have our heads.”