Mr. Adam (17 page)

“And Homer—what were you going to do with him?” I asked.

“We hadn't thought much about that. You see, after his services were no longer necessary, we could proceed with our work, which
is the only important thing. I suppose we would have simply told Homer to walk home.”

“And the repercussions from such action?”

Kathy shrugged. “After he returned, everyone would have been relieved, and it would be forgotten. Anyway, most people would believe it was simply a clandestine affair. Wouldn't they, Steve?”

I think I whistled. “Kathy,” I said, “you're a wicked, ruthless woman.”

“All women are ruthless,” she replied, “when they're really after something. And as for being wicked—the N.R.P. is wicked, but what we are attempting is, I feel, simply acting as instruments of the will of God.”

Her eyes were shining, as I had seen them before. I asked Root, “How about them, Tex? What are you going to do with them?”

Root considered this, carefully appraising The Frame, and her father, and Pell, and Canby. He was measuring them, I knew, for signs of deceit and trickery, as an experienced tailor measures with his eyes a length of cloth. “I don't see how I can hold them for kidnaping,” he said. “Anyway, it sounds more like an intramural scrap within the government than anything else. That is, unless Adam wants to bring charges against them. Even then, I don't see what charges he can bring, except maybe breach of promise.”

“Oh, no. No charges,” said Homer. “All I want to do is get out of here.”

He was desperate with shame. “Well,” I told The Frame, “you may be stacked, and you're certainly clever, but when it comes to the snatch racket you're a dope.” I suppose I said it more in revenge for the hurt she had inflicted on Homer than anything else.

“This isn't over,” she said quietly, “not yet.”

I looked at my watch, and was amazed to find it wasn't yet twelve. It seemed that we had been away from the hotel for a day or two. I thought of Mary Ellen, and what news of this might do to her. “Root,” I said, “I think we'd better keep this whole thing as quiet as possible, don't you?”

“That's okay with me,” Root said.

“Please,” said Pell. “Please, no publicity. It is bad enough as it is. I do feel, now, that perhaps we went too far. But we were only doing what we thought was the sole right thing to do.”

“Well, please don't try it any more,” I warned him, “because from now on if anything happens to Adam something is going to happen to you too. Something fatal.”

Kathy was smiling again, in a way that wasn't funny. “I'm sure everything will work out all right. I'm quite sure, now. Please go home, because you bore me.”

Outside the night air was cool and clean. “Smells good, doesn't it, Homer?” I said.

He didn't answer. “I'm not sore at you, Homer. I'm not blaming you a bit. It wasn't your fault.”

We got into Root's sedan, Homer and I in the back. He didn't say anything. I felt he should say something. “Homer,” I said, “there's been no damage. Things have just been delayed for a day.”

He put his head in his hands and pulled at his hair. “Oh, what a fool I was,” he said, the words forcing their way out of him. “What a fool, fool, fool!”

“Don't feel that way Homer. You're not the first guy who has been taken by a scheming bitch. It happens to millions, every year. Lots of them smarter than you. Usually, they're after money, or want to get their names in the Social Register, or run a business from behind the scenes. With you, there was a different motive, but in every other way it was exactly the same. Just tell yourself, ‘I've been taken,' and then forget about it.”

He didn't answer. He kept his face buried in his hands.

Root parked the car in the hotel driveway and we all got out and Homer walked to the elevator silent and stiff-legged as if he were going to a place of execution.

Marge was waiting for us at the door. “Just like Cinderella, on the stroke of twelve!” she said. “Homer, I'm so glad to see you back.”

He walked past her without speaking, and she looked at his face and didn't say anything more. He walked to his bedroom, and lunged inside and shut the door behind him.

“What's wrong with him?” she asked. “What happened? Should I bring him a drink, or anything?”

“We'd better leave him alone,” I said. “He's had a harrowing experience.” Root went to the telephone, and called his office, and began talking, and while he was on the phone I told Marge what had happened.

When Root was finished with the phone I took it. I called Gableman, at his home, and told him Homer was back. “I'm very glad to hear it,” he said, with about as much interest as if he had just heard that his second cousin, in Des Moines, had been elected secretary of the Kiwanis. “But I'm through, Steve. I've taken that job in Interior, and I think if you are smart you will remove yourself from N.R.P. and go back to the AP. If I know anything about the government at all, I know that it is neither smart nor healthy to stay with N.R.P. Good night, Steve.”

I called Klutz. He said he was delighted, but his voice sounded shaky. He said he hoped there wouldn't be any publicity, and I assured him there wouldn't be any. He said that was fine, and he would visit Mr. Pumphrey in the hospital first thing in the morning and tell him the good news, and he was sure this would speed Mr. Pumphrey's recovery.

I called Danny Williams. He said he'd pass the word along to the President right away. He asked me what had happened, and I told him I didn't think I could describe it adequately over the telephone, but that anyway Homer was back, and seemed undamaged.

When I was finished Root was putting on his topcoat, and nibbling at the edge of a cracker. “Well, good night,” he said. “If anything more happens don't call me. Call somebody else—anybody. This business is too much for me.”

“Are you completely satisfied,” I said, “that they weren't really going to knock him off?”

“No,” he admitted, “not completely.”

“I'm not either,” I told him. “I still think that Pell is a villain.”

Tex Root shook his head. “Spies, I can catch,” he said. “Kidnaping for ransom is a cinch. Murder and bond thefts and embezzlement are normal activities. But this is different. This, I don't like. I can't tell who is a criminal, and who isn't, and I can't tell right from wrong. For all I know this Kathy Riddell—and she is a remarkable woman, isn't she?—well, she may be perfectly right. All my life I'll wonder whether what I've done tonight didn't put the world back ten thousand years. Good night, Steve. Good night, Marge. Pleasant dreams.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “What do you think I ought to do?”

“If I were you,” he said, before he closed the outer door, “I would retreat to Little America.”

I went into Homer's room. He was undressed, and in bed, the pillow pulled over his head so I could not tell whether or not he was asleep, and his feet hanging nakedly over the bed's end. As I put out his light I told myself that we really should get a special extra long bed for Homer.

Out in the living room Marge was folding up dresses. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“Packing,” she said.

CHAPTER 13

I
didn't sleep late the next morning. A sense of urgency ploughed me out of bed before Marge was awake. I tiptoed into Homer's room, and gently opened the door. He was asleep, and snoring, but his bed looked as if it had been occupied by a threshing machine. I ran up coffee and toast in the kitchenette, and then caught Arthur Godfrey's first news. “Well,” he said cheerily, “in case you celebrated A.I. Day yesterday you can have all the fun all over again, because it is going to be today. The White House announced early this morning that everything will go ahead according to schedule, but it will be twenty-four hours late.”

Homer came into the kitchenette. He was wearing a striped dressing gown, ludicrously short, and when he leaned against the refrigerator somehow he looked like a beach umbrella that has been stacked for the season. “Can I have some coffee?” he said.

“Certainly, Homer.” I gave him plenty of sugar and cream. “Well, feel better today?” I asked.

“Oh, I feel all right, Steve, but I don't think you're going to feel very well.”

“Why not?”

“In case you think this is A.I. Day, you had better think again,” Homer said quietly. “At least so far as I am concerned. What I said yesterday about resigning goes double. I'm through.”

“Now, Homer—”

“Sorry, Steve. It's all over.”

“Now, Homer, why get those notions in your head? You know as well as I do that there isn't any way out of it. Look at the trouble you got into yesterday when you went off half-cocked. Why make it more difficult for yourself.”

“I've thought it all out, Steve. It isn't going to be difficult for me. But from now on it is going to be damn difficult for women.”

I didn't like the way he was talking. He was too sure of himself. “For women?” I said.

“Yes. To hell with them. To hell with them all.”

“Why, Homer, you of all people shouldn't be talking like that.”

Homer drank his coffee, unconcerned, and refilled his cup. “Why not?”

“Because you're fated to have so much to do with them.”

“Oh, no I'm not. From now on I'm going to have no more to do with them than is absolutely necessary—excepting Mary Ellen and little Eleanor—of course.”

“But won't that still be quite a lot?”

“No. You see, I've figured it all out. If I don't want to go through with A.I. there isn't any way you can force me, now is there?”

Somehow, this was a possibility I had never considered. I said, “No, I suppose there isn't, but—”

“Well, I'm not going through with it. If you take me to the laboratories today, it will be because you are dragging me there by the heels, and if you get me there I can assure you that nothing will
happen, except perhaps some surgical equipment and instruments will get broken up.”

“Oh, Homer!” I said, not without admiration.

“Will they suffer!” he gloated. “Will they scream!”

Marge came in, sleepy and a little surprised to find us there, and said, “What a cozy little kaffeeklatsch. Can I join you?”

“Yes, but you'll wish you hadn't,” I told her. “Homer has decided not to go on. He has said to hell with it all, particularly women.”

“Well, can you blame him?” Marge said, with her delightful inconsistency. “If I were Homer I wouldn't have anything to do with women either.”

Homer leaned over, in something resembling a bow. “In my list of exceptions to what I just said, I will include Marge.”

“You see, Homer,” I argued, “most women are pretty decent, like Marge. You just had the misfortune to encounter a particularly wicked and talented wench.”

“To hell with them all,” Homer said. “I don't think there is any use in discussing the subject further. I want to go back to Tarrytown.”

“Now, Homer,” I told him, “please don't get me in any more trouble. It's true I can't force you to go through with A.I., but on the other hand I cannot take the responsibility of letting you return to Tarrytown. If anything is done, it will have to be done officially. All I can do is report your decision to N.R.P., and the White House.”

“Okay, Steve,” he agreed calmly. “Let's have some more coffee.”

I could hear the phone ringing in the living room, and Jane answered, and called for me, and said it was Mr. Klutz. I picked it up, and said “Good morning, Percy.”

“Good morning, indeed,” said Klutz. “I just reached the office, and the Planning Board is meeting in a few moments, and I'd like to report to them on Mr. Adam. How does he feel this morning?”

“He feels fine. Never saw him look better.”

“Ah, that's splendid. Poor Mr. Pumphrey was so cheered when
I told him Adam had returned. I think that within a few days he'll have completely recovered.”

“I don't,” I said.

“You what?”

“I don't think Mr. Pumphrey will quickly recover, if news of Adam has anything to do with it, because you see, Percy, Homer Adam has decided not to go through with A.I.”

I could hear Klutz gasp. “Him!” he shouted. “What right has he to decide such a thing? That's a matter for the Inter-Departmental Committee, and the Congress, and the Planning Board! He's got nothing to do with it!”

“Oh, I'm afraid he has,” I said.

“Absurd!”

“Well, if you think it is absurd,” I suggested, “take him down to the laboratories today and try to make him do something he doesn't want to do.”

Homer was standing at my elbow, listening. He was smiling. “Steve,” he said, “you certainly have caught on to the idea.”

On the other end of the line Klutz was babbling, but he wasn't making any sense. Finally he said, “I'll present the matter to the Planning Board, and I'll let you know their decision.”

“What can they decide?”

“Ah, what's that? What can the Planning Board decide? Well, they can turn the whole business over to the Inter-Departmental Committee, and then if necessary it can follow the proper channel to the attention of the President.”

“And the President, what can he do about it?”

“Why, he can—now look, Mr. Smith, you'd better do something about this. You're responsible for him, you know.”

“Sorry, there's not a thing I can do.”

Klutz didn't say anything for so long a time I thought the line was dead, but finally he managed to speak. “I believe,” he said, “I will take my annual leave. I haven't taken my annual leave for several
years, and I have accumulated eighty-one days. I am afraid this is too much for me, and I need a rest. But first I will inform the Planning Board, and then I am going to take my annual leave. Goodbye, Mr. Smith.”

Homer sprawled in a chair, grinning. “Well,” he said, “how did the little son-of-a-bitch take it?”

I think all of us jumped, because Homer rarely, if ever, used any expressions more powerful than hell or damn. I knew then that he was a changed man. He had grown up. “He's going on leave, which means that he's running away,” I said, and then I added, “Homer, just between you and me and Marge and Jane, I don't blame you a bit, and whatever you do, I'm for you.”

“I am too,” said Jane. “Homer, I don't know whether you're doing the right thing, or the wrong thing, but at least you are doing it yourself, and for you I think that's important.”

“I do too,” said Marge. “You know how I feel about having babies. But Homer, you do whatever you think best. Don't you let Steve shove you around any more.”

“Me?” I said. “I'm not going to shove him around. But I am going to take him to the White House, and let him tell Danny Williams, or maybe the President, about it. I don't want this on my head.”

“Sure. Glad to,” said Homer. “Let's dress and go.”

So we dressed, and I called Danny Williams, and told him it was vital, or more so, and he said the President could squeeze Homer in at 11:15, between the new Minister from Iraq, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who at that moment were disturbed by the prospect that the war being officially declared over, a good many officers would be forced to revert to their permanent rank. I told Danny Williams what Homer had decided, and he told me not to worry, because the Boss would handle it. I said I hoped so. As I look at it now, I don't know whether I hoped so or not.

The White House ritual is precise and exact. It is a super assem
bly line designed to turn out the maximum number of interviews with the President in the minimum time. I put Homer into one end of the assembly line, and then for fifteen minutes I chatted with Danny Williams—in the office that Steve Early used to inhabit—until he came out. When he came out he was still grinning. I knew that he had won, and I felt sort of proud of him, but I also believed the world had ended.

Danny Williams sensed it too. As he walked us to our car he said, “Steve, I'll call you later.”

It wasn't much later, because Homer had laid an explosive with a short fuse on the President's desk. When we got back to the hotel Jane said, “You're to call the White House immediately.”

So I called Danny Williams, and he had lost his usual calm and was sputtering like an eight-cylinder engine trying to run on kerosene. “Look, Steve,” he said, “this is catastrophic. Do you know what Adam told the Boss?”

“Sure I know,” I said. “He told him he wasn't going through with it. He said he was resigning.”

“Oh, that isn't all,” Danny Williams said. “He told the President—I don't think I'd better tell you what he told the President, not over the phone.”

“Was it something about women?” I suggested.

“It certainly was something about women. I must say the Boss is shocked. He thinks Adam is a little tetched, and he is gravely concerned about allowing A.I. to continue, even if we bring Adam around. As a matter of fact he has decided to postpone A.I. indefinitely, and turn Adam over to the National Research Council. They claim they need him.”

“Oh, boy! Oh, boy, oh boy!”

“What's the matter?”

“Well, if you think Adam is allergic to women, wait until he finds out he's going to be handed over to the scientists.”

Danny began to sputter again. “Up here in the White House,”
he said, “we're getting damn sick and tired of Adam's temperament. We're for the rights of individual citizens, and the Constitution, and all that, but the rights of the nation transcend the rights of the citizen, on occasion, and believe me this is the occasion.”

“I'm sure Adam would agree with that, in theory, but when you practice it on him he doesn't like it, and he's liking it less every minute. His is a very special case.”

“Not any more it isn't. From now on the status of Adam is that of a valuable experimental animal. Now that sounds crude and harsh, I know, but that's the way it has to be. The Army will have charge of his feeding and his welfare, and if necessary, they can hold him just exactly as a political prisoner would be held. And the N.R.C. can perform whatever experiments they see fit. That's final. The executive order will be out today.”

“So be it,” I said. “For my part, I will be delighted to get out of this town—this madhouse in marble. I think if I stayed one more day they'd have me in St. Elizabeth's. However, I don't think you can change a man's feelings or his character by executive order, and I am afraid there is going to be trouble, or more trouble.”

“That's a chance we have to take,” Danny said. “And I want to tell you that we appreciate your help. The President will send you a letter.”

“I'd frame it,” I told him, “for my grandchildren, except that I'm not going to have any grandchildren. And I don't like to be pessimistic, but I don't think you are either, Danny.”

Homer and Marge and Jane were tilting early highballs in the kitchenette. Marge and Jane were trying to persuade Homer to describe the White House conference, and Homer was naturally somewhat reticent, if not downright evasive. “Well,” I told them, “I've been fired, but Homer, you've got a new job.”

“I was hoping he'd fire me too,” said Homer. “I certainly tried to get fired.”

“Oh, no, Homer, you're the indispensable man.”

“What's the new job?” he asked.

I hesitated. I wanted to present Homer's new job in the best possible light, simply because I didn't want him blowing up on my hands. “In the first place,” I said, “you don't have to worry about A.I. any more. A.I. is finished, and Fay Sumner Knott becomes Would-be A.I. Mother Number One.”

“Now we're getting somewhere,” Homer said.

“From now on,” I continued, “you will work for the National Research Council.”

“You mean Pell and his gang?”

“Well, I believe Dr. Pell is a director of N.R.C.”

“You can just call the White House about my new job,” Homer said firmly. “Tell them I quit.”

“It isn't that simple, Homer. You can't quit. As I said, you're the indispensable man.”

“What do you mean, I can't quit?”

“I mean—well, I might as well tell you exactly what it is—you are practically the same as under house arrest. You have lost your rights. You are like one hundred and sixty pounds of U-235.”

I had expected Homer to blow up, but he appeared completely cool, and an elfin grin lit his face up again. “They'll regret it,” he said.

“Now, Homer, there isn't any use trying to be belligerent, because the Army has been placed in charge of you.”

“If they want another Pearl Harbor,” Homer said, “that's what they're going to get.”

He finished his drink, and poured himself another. A queer metamorphosis had taken place in Homer Adam, working from the inside out. His timidity was gone, and as he stood there, drink in hand, his tousled hair an arrogant flame, he looked to me like some of those wild Irishmen you will find in Cherry Hill bars, ready to stack all the other customers in a corner just for the hell of it.