Chuck and Chas reported similar failures. There was no stopping the President. Not only had he usurped all the powers of federal, state and local government, but he used those powers deliberately to torment the population. It was a crime to eat ice cream, sing, whistle, swear or kiss. It was a capital offence to smile, or to use the words ‘Russia’ and ‘China’. Under the Safe Streets Act it was illegal to walk, loiter or converse in public. And of course Negroes and anyone else ‘conspicuous’ were by definition criminals, and under the jurisdiction of the Race Reaction Board.
The Natural Food Act had seemed at first almost reasonable, a response to scientists’ warnings about depleting the soil and polluting the environment. But the fine print specified that henceforth no fertilizers were to be used but human or canine excrement, and all farm machinery was forbidden. In time the newspapers featured pictures of farmers trudging past their rusting tractors to poke holes in the soil with sharp sticks. And in time, the newspapers had their paper supply curtailed. Famine warnings were ignored until the government had to buy wheat from C************.
‘Gentlemen, we’ve tried everything else. It’s time to think about getting rid of President Ernie Barnes.’
The men began murmuring among themselves. This was done with efficiency and dispatch, for Patrolman Charlie, knowing that Chuck was going to murmur to him first, withheld his own murmuring until it was his turn. And when Chuck had murmured to Charlie, he fell silent, and let Charlie and Chas get on with their murmuring before he murmured uneasily to Chas.
The captain spoke again. ‘Getting rid of him in the past would be easier than getting rid of him now, but it’s only part of the problem. If we remove him from the past we have to make sure no one notices the big jagged hole in history we’ll leave. Since as the time police we have the only time-bikes around, the evidence is going to make us look bad. Remember the trouble we had getting rid of the pyramids? For months, everyone went around saying, "What’s that funny thing on the back of the dollar?" Remember that?’
‘Hey, Captain, what is that funny thing—?’
‘Shut up. The point is, you can change some of the times some of the time, and, uh, some of the – look at it this way: Ernie must have shaken hands with a million people. We rub him out, and all these people suddenly get back all the germs they rubbed off on him. Suddenly we have an epidemic.’
‘Yeah, but, Captain, did he ever shake any hands? He never does any more. Just sits there in the White Fort, all fat and nasty, behind all his FBI and CIA and individualized anti-personnel missiles and poison germ gas towers and – and that big, mean dog.’
Capt. Conn glared the patrolman down, then continued: ‘My idea is, we kidnap Ernie Barnes from his childhood, back in 1937. And we leave a glass egg.’
‘A classic?’
‘A glass egg. Like they used to put under chickens when they took away their children. What I mean is, we substitute an artificial child for the real one. Wilbur Grafton says he can make a robot replica of Ernie as he looked in 1937.’
Wilbur Grafton was a wealthy eccentric and amateur inventor well known to all members of the time patrol. Their father, James Conn, was an employee of Wilbur’s.
‘Another thing. Just in case somebody back in 1937 gets suspicious and takes him apart, we’ll have the robot built of pre-1937 junk. Steam-driven. No use giving away the secrets of molecular circuitry and peristaltic logic before their time.’
The four of them, and a fifth patrolman (Carl) arrived one evening at the mansion of Wilbur Grafton. To the butler who admitted them, each man said ‘Hello, Dad,’ to which their unruffled father replied, ‘Good evening, sir. You’ll find Mr Grafton in the drawing-room.’
The venerable millionaire, immaculate in evening clothes, welcomed them, then excused himself to prepare the demonstration. James poured generous drinks, and while some of the party admired the authentic 1950s appointments of the room – including a genuine ‘stereo’ phonograph – others watched television. It was almost curfew time, and the channels were massed with Presidential commercials:
‘Sleep well, America! Your President is safe! Yes, tanks to I.A.M. – individualized anti-personnel missiles – no one can harm our Leader. Think of it: over ten billion eternally vigilant little missiles all around the White Fort, guarding his sleep and yours. And don’t forget – there’s one with YOUR name on it.’
Wilbur Grafton returned, and at curfew time, one of the men asked him to begin the demonstration. He wheezed with delight. His glasses twinkling, he replied: ‘My good man, the demonstration is already going on.’ Pressing one of his shirt studs, he added, ‘And here is – The Steam-Driven Boy!’
His body parted down the middle and swung open in two half-shells, revealing a pudgy youngster in knitted swim trunks and striped T-shirt, who was determinedly working cranks and levers. The boy stopped operating the ‘Grafton wheeze-laugh’ bellows, climbed out of the casing, took two steps and froze.
‘Then where’s the real Wilbur Grafton?’ asked Chuck.
‘Right here, sir.’ The butler put down a priceless Woolworth’s decanter and pulled his own nose, hard. Clanking and creaking, he parted like a mummy case to give up the living Grafton, once more flawlessly attired.
‘Must have my little japes,’ he wheezed, as the real James came in with more drinks. ‘Now, allow me to reanimate our little friend for you.’
He inserted a crank in the boy’s ear and gave it several vigorous turns. With a light chuffing sound, and emitting only a hint of vapor, the small automaton came to life. That piggish nose, those wide-spaced eyes, that malicious grin were familiar to all present, from Your President Cares posters.
As the white-haired inventor stooped to make some further adjustment at the back of its fat neck, ‘Ernie’ kicked him authentically in the knee.
‘Did you see that precision?’ Wilbur gloated, dancing on one leg.
The robot was remarkably realistic, complete to a frayed strip of dirty adhesive tape on one shiny elbow. Charlie made the mistake of squatting down and offering Ernie some candy. Two other patrolmen helped their unfortunate comrade to a sofa, where he was able to get his head back to stop the bleeding. The little machine shrieked with delight until Wilbur managed to shut it off.
‘I am confident that his parents will never notice the switch,’ he said, leading the way to his workshop. ‘Let me show you the plans.’
The robot had organs analogous to those of a living being, as Wilbur Grafton’s plans showed. The heart and veins were really an intricate hydraulic system; the liver a tiny distillery to volatilize eaten food and extract oil from it. Part of this oil replenished the veins, part was burned to feed the spleen’s miniature steam engine. From this, belts supplied power to the limbs.
Digressing, Wilbur explained how his grandfather, Orville Grafton, had developed a peculiar substance, a plate of which varied in thickness according to the intensity of light striking it.
‘While grandfather could make nothing more useful of this "graftonite" than bas-relief photographs, I have used it (along with mechanical irises and gelatine lenses) to form the boy’s eyes,’ he said, and pointed to a detail. ‘When a tiny image has been focused on each graftonite ‘retina’, a pantographic scriber traces swiftly over it, translating these images to motions in the brain.’
Similar levers conveyed motions from the gramophone ears, and from hundreds of tiny pistons all over the body – the sense of touch.