An hour later, almost at quitting time, the computer said, "Call from Ed Stone. "
"Put him on!"
Stone's face appeared in the tube. "Hi, Mrs. Rooney, how are you?"
"Oh, Mr. Stone, how nice. You know, I didn't like to disturb you, but I couldn't help wondering, don't you need a secretary? Because, if you do--"
"Gee, Mrs. Rooney, I guess I do, because the phone calls and letters are driving me crazy. I got a bag of mail in my room right now, it would take me a year to answer all those letters."
"Well, I can give two weeks' notice here, or perhaps a little less-I'll work it out. Where are you staying now?"
"I'm at the Ambassador in Washington, but I'm coming back to New York tomorrow, and I'll be at the Park Avenue. Give me a call there, okay?"
"I certainly will. Oh, and by the way, you had a call from a Mr. Wrong. He wants you to leave a message at Tony's."
"He does? Okay, thanks, Mrs. Rooney. "
"Mr. Prime Minister," said the aide, "allow me to present Mr. Ed Stone." He bowed and stood aside.
The Prime Minister of Ghana said abruptly, "You have previously talked to my enemy, General Mbele. I agreed to see you only because my son-in-law interceded. You may speak, but I do not promise to listen."
"Mr. Prime Minister, I had to talk to General Mbele first so that I could get him to agree to stop his bombing ofyour country, and then-"
"He agreed to stop? He will not keep his agreement."
"Yeah, Mr. Prime Minister, he wants to meet you and have a peace conference, but he knows you're mad at him, so he made me promise to tell you myself. "
"Well, this puts a different face on it." The Prime Minister advanced around his desk. "Allow me to shake your hand. Please sit down. You say Mbele wants to meet me? I may consent. I am pleased with you, Mr. Stone. I may give you a decoration. Mr. Sukulu, what decorations do we have?"
"The Order of the Mighty Lion, Mr. Prime Minister, and the Order of the Resentful Hyena. Then there is-"
"Stop. I think the Lion, don't you, Mr. Stone? We will have the ceremony after the peace conference. Mr. Sukulu! Notify General Mbele that we will meet him on the border, say at Porto Novo, on Monday next at nine o'clock in the morning."
"Yes, sir."
"And now, Mr. Stone, you must tell me all about the aliens, and about putting everyone in a box."
"Yes, sir. Well, they say the Earth is going to be destroyed eleven years from now, and that's why we have to do it. And that's another real good reason to stop the war, because people who get killed can't get in the box."
"Quite true, Mr. Stone. I like the way you put it. If they are killed, they cannot go in the box. And if they go in the box, they cannot be killed, you see." He laughed heartily. "I have made a little joke. I see that we shall get along famously, Mr. Stone. Now we must have some gin."
CHAPTER 27
When he told her he was at the Park Avenue this time, she said, "You're coming down in the world, aren't you?"
"No, wait till you see."
"What do you mean?"
"It's a surprise."
She walked up to the desk that evening and gave her name. The desk clerk looked at her with instant respect and called a uniformed guard, who escorted her to the elevator.
"Listen, just tell me the room number; I can find it myself, " she said.
"No, ma'am, this one is hard to find."
They got off at the fiftieth floor; he led her down the corridor, through a door marked PRIVATE, to an unmarked elevator. There were two overstuffed chairs in the elevator, with a little table between them. On the table were a cigarette box and lighter, both in rose quartz, a travertine ashtray, and a cut-crystal dish containing pink and white mints. "Up," said the guard, holding the door. He smiled and stepped out; the door closed. The elevator went up.
When the door opened, a young black man in plastic denims was standing there. "Hi! You must be Linda," he said.
"Yes, I am. Who are you?"
"I'm Rong." He put out his hand. "Come on in, we're waiting for you."
"You are, huh?" She let him lead her into a vast living room with exposed timbers in the ceiling. Three or four people were standing in front of the fireplace; half a dozen more were scattered around the room, drinking and smoking. There were a great many roses, lilies, and chrysanthemums in vases.
Doc Wellafield came toward her. "Linda!" he said, and gave her his cushiony hand. "Ed was here just a minute ago-"
"He went to the can," said Rong helpfully.
"While we're waiting for him, let me introduce you to, uh-" He turned. "Uh, Florence?" An attractive woman in her fifties came forward, smiling. Others were drifting toward them across the room. "Linda, this is Florence Rooney. Florence, Linda Lavalle."
"We've heard so much about you," said Rooney.
"Florence is Ed's social secretary," said Wellafield."And this isJeff Carruthers-" A smiling beanpole of a man with an oiled forelock, teeth probably false. 'Jeff is one of the consultants from Washington."
Stone was hurrying toward her across the room. As soon as he let her go, she said, "What is this, a penthouse?"
"It's the penthouse, it covers the whole roof. Did you meet everybody? Never mind, I'll introduce you later. Come on and take a look." He took her hand and led her to the French windows that opened on a landscaped garden. They stepped out; the air was fresh and pure.
"This is incredible," she said. "But who are all these people?"
"Rong-you meet him? He's a guy I met on the street when I first got here. He turned up and I gave him a job, and Florence, she was that architect's secretary? She wanted to work for me too. And the rest of them, they're some of the people who're working on the Cube Project in Washington. They just came down for the weekend. Well, what do you think?"
A few yards away there was a weeping willow with a circular white seat around its trunk. Ducks were swimming in the pond behind it; beyond that, she glimpsed a bright green lawn and a little flag.
"What is that, a golf course?"
"Just a putting green, but there's a swimming pool and a sauna and all that stuff. They bought it for me."
"They bought it for you? The whole thing?"
"Sure."
"I thought the idea was to keep moving around from one hotel to another. "
"Right, but they thought this was better because it's easier to control the traffic, with that private elevator. Listen, some of these people are probably going to want to eat here, but we don't have to. Would you rather go out?"
"Oh, no, here is fine. Can we eat in the garden?"
"Sure. Come on, I'll find you a menu."
Waiters set up tables in the garden under strings of Japanese lanterns. Lavalle found herself seated beside Jeff Carruthers and opposite another planner named Walter Scavo. Carruthers was saying, "Let's take, for instance, the Watusi in Africa. They're herdspersons, their whole life is cattle. Their wealth is cattle. How are we going to persuade them to get in those boxes and leave their cattle behind? They're very tall, by the way."
"We may have to do special boxes for them," Scavo said. "About leaving the cattle, okay, we tell them there's going to be cattle on the new planet. Bigger and better cattle. And everybody gets twice as many cattle as they had before. I mean, we can't put cattle in those boxes, let's not get ridiculous."
"What about pets, though?" Lavalle asked.
"Okay. You got a dog or a cat, or maybe a parakeet, if there's room for it you take it along. Maybe you have to make some tough decisions, but that's life."