I said, “Yes, sir.” At that point I would have said, “Yes, sir,” to just about anything the man said.
“Good,” he said. “The other thing doesn’t affect you directly, but I think you ought to know. Today I’m going to push all the chips into the middle of the table. I’ve asked our UN ambassador to call an emergency session of the General Assembly, and I’m heading up there as soon as I’ve finished with you. I’m going to admit that to attack the Scarecrow ship we used a few nukes that we’d stashed away-well, I don’t have much choice about admitting that. Pell wanted me to claim we’d used only conventional chemical bombs, but the astronomers have already detected gamma radiation from where the Scarecrow ship used to be, so that’s that. And I’m going to tell the General Assembly exactly how many nukes we still have, and exactly where they’re hidden, and I’m going to invite UN troops to come in to safeguard them. And I’m going to release every last bit of data we have on the Scarecrows and the Horch, including all your translations and all the secret work we’ve done at the NBI place in Arlington. And I’m going to tell them that, using my powers as President, I am pledging to accept whatever decisions the UN makes as to where the submarines at sea should go, and what should be done with them.
“And then I’m going to come back here and face up to the Congress. God knows what they’ll do to me.
“But that’s not your problem, is it? So you go back to work, Agent Dannerman Number Three, and-Now what? Is something bothering you?”
I said, “Sort of. I mean yes, definitely. I was hoping to get out of this job pretty soon.”
The President looked surprised. He opened his mouth to speak to me, but someone somewhere cleared his throat. So instead the President said testily to the air, “What is it, Hewitt?”
The air sounded apologetic. “It’s your appointment with the ambassador, sir. If you want to meet with him before you go to the General Assembly, we’re cutting it pretty close.”
“We’ll cut it a little closer. Call him to say we’ll be late.” Then, to me, “What did you have in mind?”
So I told him about my hope of fitting some others with language implants, and what Pirraghiz had said about my needing more rest, not to mention my wanting to get on with some of my personal concerns. And then-because he seemed to own the most sympathetic ear I was likely to have for a while-I went on to tell him what some of those personal concerns were, such as Patrice Adcock.
When I ran down he took another meditative sip of coffee, and then he looked up at me and grinned.
“I love solving other people’s problems,” he said, “because they’re always so easy. You’ve got yourself tangled up in a problem that doesn’t exist, Agent Dannerman. I’ve met your Patrice, you know, briefing me on Threat Watch now and then. Seems like a very nice woman to me. Why do you think she isn’t the real
one?”
I frowned. “Because she’s a copy, naturally.”
“Naturally she is,” he agreed, “but so are you, aren’t you?
And how ‘real’ do you think you are? Shit, man! Marry the girl, if she’ll have you. Only,” he said apologetically, “don’t count on any long honeymoons, because I’ve got to say no to making any more translators just now. See, you’re all I’ve got.”
I can’t say I didn’t hear the last part of what he said. It was on a sort of delay circuit, though, shunted aside while I considered what he had said about me and Patrice. As the man said, other people’s problems were the easiest to solve, especially when-as he said-the problem didn’t exist, but was only something I had put into my own head.
Then I woke up to his last remarks. I said. “What?”
He was patient with me. “The thing is, as long as you’re the one and only person who can talk to these, ah, persons from other planets, everybody has to be reasonable. I’ll make damn sure this job is made as easy as possible for you, Dannerman, I give you my word. But until further notice, I’m afraid you’re stuck. If that’s all right with you?” he added, just as though I had a choice.
I said glumly, “I guess.”
He grinned and stood up, shaking my hand to show that the interview was over. He didn’t let go of it right away, though. He said, “I know what you’re thinking, Dannerman. You’re saying to yourself, ‘Gripes, I just got these guys out of the worst trouble they’ve ever been in, so doesn’t that settle it?’ Only it doesn’t, Dan. It never does. You solve one problem and another one comes up and starts biting you on the ass before you have a chance to catch your breath. Welcome to the real world, where the only final solutions come when you die. And,” he added, dexterously turning me toward the door as he let go of my hand, “if these people are right, maybe not even then.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author, Frederik Pohl has done just about everything one can do in the science fiction field. His most famous work is undoubtedly the novel Gateway, which won the Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Memorial awards for Best SF novel. Man Plus won the Nebula Award. His mature work is marked by a serious intellectual agenda and strongly held sociopolitical beliefs, without sacrificing narrative drive. In addition to his successful solo fiction, Pohl has collaborated successfully with a variety of writers, including C. M. Kornbluth and Jack Williamson. The Pohl/Kornbluth collaboration, The Space Merchants, is a longtime classic of satiric science fiction. TheStarchild Trilogy with Williamson is one of the more notable collaborations in the field. Pohl has been a magazine editor in the field since he was very young, piloting Worlds of If to three successive Hugos for Best Magazine. He also has edited original-story anthologies, including the early and notable Star series of the early 1950s. He has at various times been a literary agent, an editor of lines of science fiction books, and a president of the Science Fiction Writers of America. For a number of years he has been active in the World SF movement. He and his wife, Elizabeth Anne Hull, a prominent academic active in the Science Fiction Research Association, live outside Chicago, Illinois.
