Frederik Pohl - The Coming of the Quantum Cats

He meant listening in on radio and TV. "No clear pattern, sir. They do keep repeating the President's broadcast. He comes through loud and clear."

Colonel Harlech didn't actually say shit. He just made a noise close enough to be clear, muffled enough to be deniable. Harlech was one of Magruder's own hotshot warriors, and everybody knew what they thought of the President. Who had opposed a preemptive strike vigorously . . . until the chiefs of staff let him know they had plenty of military prisons for politicians who got in the way of what they considered the essential defense of the United States.

When I got off the cross-time phone with the colonel I debated going back to the studio for a word with the poli-scientists. It would be interesting to hear their theories about why a militarily active U.S. society like ours got a jelly-backed President like Jerry Brown, while this other one, fat and peaceful, had elected the fire-breather, Reagan. But I was a soldier, not a scholar; and there were things I was more curious about than that. I yelled for an orderly, and when Corporal Harris stuck his head in the door, I ordered him to go down to the stockade and bring back the prisoner, Senator Dominic DeSota.

He sat there in my fatigues, looking so much like me that it was embarrassing. I couldn't take my eyes off him, and he was studying me just as hard. He wasn't scared. At least he didn't look that way. What he looked was partly resentful and mostly interested—a quality I have always admired in myself. "You're a ballsy guy, Dominic," I told him. "Tell me. How's this thing going to go?"

He stretched thoughtfully before he answered; he'd been sleeping, too, and on something not as comfortable as the chief scientist's couch, no doubt. "You mean how is President Reagan going to respond to armed invasion?" he asked.

"That's the hard-nosed way to look at it."

"It's a hard-nosed thing to do, Dominic. What do you hope to gain from this?"

"Peace," I said, grinning. "Victory. The triumph of democracy over tyranny. I don't mean your tyranny, of course. I'm talking about our mutual enemy, the Russians."

He said patiently, "Dom, I don't have any Russian enemies. The Russians just don't signify in the world—my world. They would have starved if we hadn't fed them after their shoot-up with China."

"You should've let them starve!"

He sighed, disliking me. "So you come along and invade us. Without warning." He shrugged. "You tell me how it's going to go. You're making the play."

"It's going to go our way, Dom." I said and grinned. "The sooner you guys understand that, the easier it's going to be for you." He didn't answer that. I wouldn't have, either. I tried being friendly. "It's our country, whichever side of the barrier we're on," I said persuasively. "You ought to cooperate, because we have the same basic interest, the good of the United States of America. Right?"

"I sure as hell doubt that, Dom," he said.

"Aw, Dom, come on. You might as well take my word for that because, after all, you don't have much to say about it, do you? We've got you by the ying-yang . . . speaking of which," I added, "how's your prostate?"

That surprised him. "What are you talking about? I'm too young to have prostate trouble."

"Yeah," I said. "That's what I thought when they told me. Better have it checked."

He shook his head. "DeSota," he said, looking a lot braver and more determined than I thought I might have in his place-pleasing me, because that made me think maybe I would have—"let's cut out the bullshit. You invaded us without warning, and that's a pretty dirty thing to do. Why did you do it?"

I smiled. "Because it was there. Don't you know how these things go? We had a problem, and we saw a technological solution. When you get the technology you use it, and we got the technology." I didn't bring up the question of how we got it, which after all was not very relevant. "See, old buddy, you're faced with what we call a nonnegotiable situation. Our President tells your President what we want to do. You let us do it. Then we go away again and that's the end of it."

He gave me a searing look, "You don't believe that, do you?" he asked.

I shrugged. We knew each other well enough to know that neither of us would believe it. I hadn't thought beyond the objective of the exercise—officially—but I knew as well as I do that once we had used their time-line to take care of the major enemies in our own, we would not very likely go away. There would always be other little jobs we could use them for.

But that was too far in the future for me to worry about— though I could see why that other me would worry, a lot. I said, "Get back to the question. Will your President listen to ours without a struggle? In my time the Reagans and Jerry Brown weren't exactly buddies."

"What's that got to do with it? She'll do what she has to do. She's sworn an oath to protect and defend the United States—"

"Yeah, but which one?" I asked. "Our President swore the same oath, and he's carrying it out." Reluctantly—being a wimp; but I didn't say that. "And the best way for old Nancy to protect you folks would be to let us do what we want. Do you have any idea of what the alternative is? We have all the muscle! You want us to push some anthrax into the White House? Smallpox-B into Times Square?" I laughed at his expression. "What's the matter, did you think we were just talking hydrogen bombs? We wouldn't want to mess up a lot of good real estate."

"But biological weapons are—" He stopped, thinking. He'd been going to say that they were against international law or something.

I explained, "After Salt II we had to do something. We pretty much gave up nukes. So we worked on other things."

"What's 'Salt II'?" he asked; then, immediately, "No, the hell with that, I don't want history lessons from you. All I want from you is for all of you to go the hell back where you came from and leave us alone, and I doubt you'll do that. If it interests you, you make me want to puke."

What a feisty little devil he was! He made me almost proud but also mad. "Bullshit, Dom!" I yelled. "You would have done the same thing! You were getting ready to, one way or another—otherwise why were you working on this Cathouse project?"

"Because—" he began, and stopped. His expression was a good enough answer. He changed the subject. "Have you got a cigarette?" he asked.

"Gave it up," I said with satisfaction.

He nodded, thinking. "I really didn't believe it would work," he said slowly.

"But you were in there trying, boy, weren't you? So what's the difference? We're not doing anything you wouldn't have done if you'd finished your research ahead of us."

"That's—that's doubtful," he said. Honest of him. He hadn't said, "That's untrue."

"So will you help talk your President into it?" I pushed.

No hesitation this time. "No."

"Not even to save a lot of lives, maybe?"

He said, "Not even for that. No surrender, Dom And I'm not sure I would want to buy a few American lives with a few million Russians, either."

I looked at him in amazement. Was it possible that I—in any incarnation---could be such a softheaded fool? But he wasn't looking softheaded. He leaned back in his chair, studying me, and suddenly he seemed taller and more sure of himself. "So what's the thing that scares you, Dominic?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" I sparred.

He said, reasoning it out, "Sounds to me like you've got a worry you're not telling me about. Maybe I can't guess what that is. On the other hand, maybe I can. The reason I came down here was because there was another one of us snooping around. He seemed to know what you were going to do. If I were you, I think I'd be real worried about him. Why? Who is he? What's going on?"