3 (JULY 24, THURS.)
I told them once, I told them twice;They would not listen to advice....
—Through the Looking-Glass
The overnight file consisted of about 10 percent fact and 90 percent speculation. Sources close to the White House thought that President Allison had been favorably impressed with the Monolithians and that they would issue a joint communiqué today announcing their intention of signing a treaty of friendship in the very near future. Congressional sources said it was likely that the Senate would want to take a long, hard look at such a treaty before it ratified it. There was some talk of a full-scale investigation of the aliens by the Senate Internal Security Committee.
The factual part of the file included a description of the spaceship, which remained under guard at the Burning Tree Club, and interviews with the manager and salesmen of the Young Men's Shop. The size of the ship indicated that it had not made an interstellar voyage by itself; that it was a sort of scout ship or lifeboat from a much bigger craft which presumably was moored somewhere out in space.
The ship at Burning Tree was about as big as our biggest nuclear submarine. It was wingless and cylindrical and its means of propulsion was a mystery.
The people at the Young Men's Shop, honored at having been chosen to outfit the visitors, described them as pleasant, athletically built men whose height ranged from five-feet ten to six-feet three. The aliens spoke excellent, almost unaccented English, but had discussed nothing except the clothing they purchased. They had not paid cash but said the bill should go to the Monolithian Embassy, Burning Tree Club, Maryland. The cloaks they changed from were made of wool much softer in texture than it looked. They had taken the cloaks with them after being fitted from the skin out in Earth-style clothing. It was delicately indicated in one of the stories that the aliens had worn nothing under the cloaks and that they seemed to be human in every respect.
The dozen young Monolithians had barely arrived at the White House for the scheduled morning meeting when it was simultaneously announced by Josh Holcomb and at the United Nations that the aliens were flying to New York immediately. President Allison was going with them in his personal plane.
My second cup of coffee got cold while I handled a series of fast-breaking developments. Gov asked for a meeting of the Security Council at which he would propose that Monolithia be admitted to UN membership. If the Council made such a recommendation, Nils Nilsen would convene an extraordinary meeting of the General Assembly for the purpose of voting on Monolithia's application.
A think-piece by Ian McEachern speculated that this was a tidy way of bypassing possible Senate objections to a U.S.-Monolithian treaty. By going directly to the world organization the Monolithians would in effect be signing a treaty of friendship with Earth, avoiding the time-consuming process of negotiating unilaterally with each of the eighty-odd nations in the UN.
Collishaw Jones contributed a few takes of interpretation from his end. While no one was so undiplomatic as to say it aloud, the thought persisted in many a mind at UN Headquarters that the Monolithians might not be as friendly as they seemed. Thus it would be well to vote them into the UN as quickly as possible, legally and morally binding them to the preservation of the peace. If they failed then to uphold the principles of the Charter, no one nation would be in the perhaps hopeless position of trying to repel their aggression. The combined might of the world's armies would be pledged to deter them: to take, in the words of the Charter, "effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace."
Ian departed Gov and the aliens from the White House and Reb arrived them at Washington National Airport. Gov had a brief statement for the newsreel and television cameras; it was a marathon sentence to the effect that he would personally sponsor the Monolithians' application, which he hoped would be acted on with alacrity, reflecting in a concrete way the friendly feeling he was sure the world already had for the interplanetary visitors, who had shown themselves to be genuinely desirous of establishing bonds of comity and of exchanging cultural and scientific information which undoubtedly would be mutually beneficial.
The President declined to answer questions and the aliens courteously but firmly followed suit. The plane then took off for New York.
WW's airport stringer arrived it at LaGuardia, where Gov made much the same statement and the Monolithians maintained their silence. The party then roared off in a siren-screaming motorcade to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel by way of lower Broadway and City Hall so that the aliens could have a ticker-tape parade and be officially welcomed by the Mayor.
Stew Macon finished taking the stringer's dictation, then wandered around the desk to watch Nancy Corelli send it off to London. He shook his head.
"What's the matter?" I asked him.
"I don't know, exactly," Stew said, "but this sure isn't the way I thought the interplanetary age would dawn."
"From the other direction, you mean?"
"No, I don't mean that, though of course it would have been more soothing to the ego to see Earth people pioneer space travel."
"Well, we did get to the Moon," I pointed out.
"Moon-shmoon," Stew said. "Big deal. What I mean is that it's all too pat. Here we have the biggest story since creation and it has about as much kick to it as a punch bowl at the Temperance Society's convention. It's all surrounded with protocol and rigmarole."
"Would you have been happier if they came down shooting?"
"Maybe I would."
"Maybe we'd all be dead."
"Yeah, there's that. But this way there's no drama, no color. First chance they got they even swapped their native costumes for Brooks Brothers suits. Now they look like everybody else. They might as well have come over from France on the Liberté."
"The French have wider lapels," I said.
"Ha ha," he said. "Look, ma, I'm laughing. No, really, I have a hunch there's more to these characters than interplanetary amity or comity, or whatever that old fool Gov called it. I have a feeling they're up to something we're not going to like at all. They're too smooth. Everything's just too smooth."
"Shall I mark your words?"
He shrugged. "File them in the circular file."
"Did you read Collie's piece? He hints at rumblings in the corridors. You're not the only one with a suspicious mind."
"Good for Collie. I didn't see it. Where is it?"
I handed him the clipboard and he went back around the desk.
The phone rang. I answered it: "Desk, Kent."
"Sam, this is Riddie. Want a story that'll stun 'em in the Strand?"
"Where are you?" I asked her.
"I'm at the Waldorf. I've got a suite with three telephones. This is class, man."
"I thought you were a captive of the invader. How did you escape?"
"Escape hell. They hired me. I'm their information officer."
"Their press agent, you mean? I thought you were working for us?"
"I quit. Tell Hyatt my resignation's in the mail."
"Fair enough," I said. "Now we know where we stand. What's your story?"
"I just told you. Earth gal joins aliens."
"Is that all? It might just make a paragraph. How about some real news? Like where they came from and how long they're going to stay?"
"No comment, pal. It's a pleasure to say that for a change instead of hearing it."
"What are they really up to? What are they—explorers? Traders?"
"No comment; no comment. They'll say what they have to say in the Security Council tomorrow."
"Tomorrow? I thought it was going to be today."
"No, tomorrow. This is the pukka gen, laddie. They won't have their speech ready till then. I'm collaborating on it. I'll see that Collie gets an advance text. Maybe even tonight, embargoed for about noon tomorrow."
"Thanks," I said.
"Don't thank me. AP and Reuters and UPI'll all be getting them at the same time. Can't play favorites, you know."
"How much are they paying you?"
"Plenty," Riddie said. "They're loaded, son. If you want to get on the bandwagon I might be able to fix it up for you."
"Thanks, but I'll string along with the poor old Earth types for a while. When are your boys going to hold a press conference?"
"I'll let you know."
I tried to get her to say something storyworthy but she seemed prepared to no-comment me to death.
"I gather that was Eurydice Playfair, girl reporter," Stew said when I hung up.
"Girl press agent," I told him. "She's on their payroll."
"She always was an enterprising old witch. She give you anything?"
"Only that the Security Council meeting's been postponed to tomorrow, she says. Will you ask Collie about that? I want to tell John Hyatt he's just lost a staffer."
Collie checked and confirmed that the meeting had been put off and gave us a story to that effect.
Soon afterward the Gov-alien cavalcade reached the Waldorf and holed up for the night. Reb Sylvester, who had been assigned to the Presidential party, gave us the word that the lid was on, meaning that Josh had told the press there'd be no more news today. Gov was putting the finishing touches to his speech and the Monolithians were preparing theirs.
It was turning out to be the dullest big story of the century.
"Mark my words," Stew reminded me.
"Which ones?" I asked him. "That it's a complete bust, or that it's going to erupt?"
Stew merely grinned.
Fortunately for the file, a good torso murder turned up in a coin locker at Grand Central and that occupied us until it was time for me to go catch my bus.