Preserve and Protect Read online

  “No, sir, Mr. President,” Jawbone said, “I don’t think it’s that at all, now. I just think that ol’ Committee’s jes’ not about to let anybody know what it’s going to do. Those members, they’re as independent as a hog on ice, seems to me. They got that bit in their teeth and they’re runnin’ and ain’t nobody, not nobody, goin’ to tell ’em what to do. No, sir!”

  “I think also,” Bob Munson said with a sudden gravity, “that many of them are downright scared. Of their responsibility, and of—other things. Have you been coordinating your efforts with Ted’s threateners, Jawbone?”

  “I swear,” Jawbone said. “I swear now, I never heard the like of this. What do you mean, now, ‘Ted’s threateners’? I don’t know anything about that. I’m not a threatener, now. Bob, you know I’m not, and you hadn’t ought to imply it, now.”

  “But you know it’s been going on, don’t you,” Senator Munson said quietly. “You’ve heard about it. Everybody in town’s heard about it.”

  “Well, sir,” Jawbone said, sitting back with a sudden solemn dignity, “well, sir, I never. Is that why you-all called me in here, to put the squeeze on me about what some little ol’ crackpots may be doin’ around the Committee without anybody at all, anybody at all, knowin’ about it or havin’ told ’em to do it? Is that it?”

  “All right,” Senator Munson said. “Maybe ‘Ted’s threateners’ is too harsh, but somebody knows about it, Jawbone, and somebody is telling them to do it. Now, you know that as well as we do, so why don’t we drop the phony indignation and discuss it for what it is, a damned serious thing?”

  “Well, sir,” Jawbone said, “if anyone had told me that an old friend like you, an old colleague, an old comrade-in-arms, would practically accuse me of lying, I just wouldn’t have believed him, Bob! I just wouldn’t have thought for one minute—”

  “Jawbone,” Cullee interrupted, “do you agree that it’s a damned serious thing, or don’t you?”

  “Well, now,” Jawbone said. “Well, now. If by any chance it were true that somebody were really doing something sinister, then I’d say: Sure! I’d say: Get ’em! But, now, you know, now, there isn’t any real proof of this, leastways not any proof anybody responsible’s behind it. Good gravy. Aunt Melissa! You mean to tell me, Mr. President, now, that we all got to go scurryin’ ’round like little ol’ rabbits with our tails between our legs just because some screwy crackpot or other is using the telephone—”

  “And the mails,” the President said, tapping a manila folder. “I’ve got a few examples right here.”

  “—the telephone and even the mails,” Jawbone said, “to try to put over some crackpot ol’ idea? Can’t even keep crackpots from operatin’ in this country, Mr. President. They got a right to be crackpots jes’ like you and I got a right to be serious citizens, isn’t that so, now?”

  “Not dangerous crackpots,” the President suggested. “Not evil and threatening crackpots. Not crackpots with murder on their minds.”

  “What have they done except threaten?” Jawbone demanded. “Nothing at all, Mr. President, nothing at all! Now, surely, I’ll grant you some little ol’ lady Committeewoman from some little ol’ state out West, Mr. President, she’s probably all shook up about a phone call or two, but shucks almighty, we know in public life you get that stuff all the time. Now, we all know that, Cullee and Bob! We’ve all had our share of it. What’s it mean, now, what’s it mean? Nothin’, that’s what, just not nothin’!”

  “Jawbone,” the President said with the ominous quietude of Mr. Speaker fed up. “Stop being disingenuous. You know, because you’re apparently pretty close to the Governor—”

  “Just think he’s the best man to lead us back to peace, that’s all!” Jawbone said with a defiant promptness.

  “—that there are some strange and really quite sinister things going on. Now, you know that, just as a good many people in this town do. Because you are a supporter of the Governor’s, you’re in a better position than a lot of us to find out who’s doing it, and tell them to stop. And that’s what I want you to do, Jawbone. I’m giving you a little commission. Call off the crackpots. That’s your job.”

  “Well, now,” Jawbone said hastily, “well, now, Bill, Mr. President, it’s mighty fine of you to put all this trust in me, but I repeat, I just don’t think they’re all that important, now, I truly don’t. Why!” he exclaimed. “Even assumin’ there were such people, Mr. President, how would I know where to find them? How would I know where some little ol’ screwy crackpot’s hangin’ out in this big ol’ Federal City? How would I know—”

  “You aren’t afraid of them yourself, are you, Jawbone?” Cullee asked softly. “I’m going to do some talking. You’re not afraid to, are you? You wouldn’t want us to think that, surely.”

  “Now, see here,” Jawbone said. “Now you see here, Cullee, don’t you talk to me like that! I’m not afraid of anybody, I just don’t think they’re all that important, now. And I keep asking you, where would I find them, anyway? Just where would I, now? Say!” he cried with a sudden brightness, “I thought the reason you-all wanted to see me was so we could have a little ol’ conference on takin’ up that antiviolence bill tomorrow, Bob. I thought that was what this was all about, you and me decidin’ what the Senate and House are goin’ to do tomorrow! What about that little ol’ bill, now? What we goin’ to do about that?”

  “You,” the President said after a while, “aren’t going to do anything, Jawbone.”

  “But I’m the Acting Speaker—” Jawbone began indignantly.

  “And you’ve already made it perfectly plain to me,” the President said, “that you oppose the bill. So I’m turning it over to Cullee to handle on the floor. Nobody elected you Acting Speaker, Jawbone, we just had to have somebody to represent the House at the funeral. Cullee’ll do just as well now.”

  “You’ll never get elected Senator from California handling that bill!” Jawbone said with a sudden triumphant inflection.

  “I’ll take my chances,” Cullee told him calmly. “Want to lead off for the opposition?”

  “Might do that, now,” Jawbone retorted. “Might just do that. But, here, now! We all are talkin’ jes like enemies, ’stead of like ol’ friends from the Hill! Why’d you get us so all-fired mixed up, Mr. President? We’re not enemies! We’re friends!”

  “Are we?” the President asked quietly. “I don’t know whether this tangle right now is going to leave anybody friends, Bob,” he said with a sudden brisk air, beginning to shuffle the papers on his desk, “Cullee—we take her up tomorrow, then. And Jawbone: I’d appreciate it if you’d take word back to whoever you know, wherever they are. Tell them there’s a lot of toughness here, too. And we aren’t afraid to use it.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Mr. President,” Jawbone said solemnly. “I truly don’t, now.”

  “Tell them, all the same,” the President suggested, rising to see them out. “Perhaps they don’t, even now, really understand.”

  Nor should they, he told himself as he returned to his desk, experiencing annoyance that he could hardly keep from being bitter: look what they had been fed in the past week. Everybody from the Pope to Jawbone’s Aunt Melissa had entered the act.

  The Pope, a slick old politician who had recently oozed his way onto Peter’s throne and had immediately begun to dabble in everything under the sun as busily as Alexander Borgia ever did, had been first crack out of the box on the day after Harley’s funeral with a speech to a mammoth peace demonstration in St. Peter’s Square.

  “O children of the earth!” he had cried, his reedy voice whistling out through a hundred amplifiers while his audience dabbed and sweltered below him in the heat, “O children and leaders of all the peoples! Let us have no more of warfare, O ye who are powerful! Let us have compassion, O ye who hold the reins of mankind’s future!”

  Then he had come down to cases, and his exhortations, of course, had been addressed to the United States, apparently the only power on
earth that was ever guilty of anything:

  “We say to our beloved children in the United States, Let us have peace! We say to them, Be not too proud to undertake negotiations! Do not indulge yourselves in clever diplomacy which twists and turns and rejects the hand offered in friendship! Be not too clever and harsh against those who offer you an end to battle and surcease of pain! Let us end these horrible wars, we beg of you! And may those who have it in their power to confer a new leadership upon this dearly beloved, troubled land, bear always in mind the blessedness of peace and the eternal salvation granted the peacemakers!”

  Since these noble sentiments hit the headlines just as the President was studying the flat rejection by Prince Obi of the latest offer of negotiations made by the United States, he had not been too impressed with the fervent papal injunction. It had sounded to him like one more politician trying to make points by beating America over the head. God knew he had enough of that in his own country.

  There had been, for instance, the retired Air Force general, the former Assistant Secretary of State, the “intimate Presidential adviser” who once had functioned on the outer fringes of a brief but forever-ballyhooed Administration, the famed evangelist whose moralizings were as well-publicized as his morals were well-concealed, the famous doctor whose heart transplants automatically made him an authority on all aspects of world affairs—they too had been heard from, as they called a press conference to issue one more of those pompous, arrogant, self-righteous and self-serving statements by the pseudo-great that had cluttered every national issue since the end of World War II. As usual in such cases, their solemnly portentous press conference had received a full five minutes coverage on all the evening television newscasts. Their message had of course been highly critical of Administration policy, and they had most earnestly urged the National Committee to select a candidate “with the integrity, the decency and the will to accept honest offers of negotiation and meet halfway those who have clearly signaled their desire to end a futile and foredoomed attempt to dominate them by force of arms.” The networks had given them full coverage, morning, noon and night.

  There had also been the five youthful defectors from the Marines in Gorotoland, who had stayed in service just long enough to qualify for the loving attention of the press and then had fled to Tanzania and from there (where the coverage and publicity were not very good) to Paris. They had appeared at a crowded press conference to be photographed peering out with innocent baby-eyes above pouting baby-mouths that spewed forth bitter damnations of their own country. Thirty thousand of their fellow Marines were valiantly doing their jobs, but the Pouting Five were the ones who got the full treatment from the media.

  And now on the eve of the National Committee meeting there had either appeared or were scheduled to appear:

  —A round table of correspondents on Network X, entitled “A Candidate for President: Peace or War?” In pompous and all-knowing tones, Our White House Correspondent, Our Overseas Correspondent and Our National Observer would agree with Our Chipmunk-Cheeked Moderator that yes, indeed, America was in bad odor everywhere and the only way she could save herself would be by electing a man who would most speedily and forcefully terminate all her positions of principle.

  —A special presentation on Network Y, entitled “Hour of Decision,” on which Network Y’s counterparts of Network X would offer a worldwide roundup of all the areas and all the peoples who didn’t like America. It would feature the youthful despisers and the senile haters of a dozen nations, maybe no more than ten in a riot providing they threw enough rocks and screamed enough screams, and at the end of it no American watching would have any reason at all to be proud of his country or to believe that there was any good at all in anything she was doing. All Americans would be made to feel, not in so many words but simply by a shrewd selection of news clips and a suavely undercutting commentary, that only “a man of peace—of honest peace—of genuine peace” could possibly save them. That man, it would be clear, would not be Orrin Knox.

  —An hour-long interview with Governor Jason on Network Z, in which a panel of three Washington correspondents (The Greatest Publication That Absolutely Ever Was, the Los Angeles Times, and the network’s own) would gently and skillfully lead Ted from one favorable answer to another, their admiration and encouragement so obvious that a lesser man might well be embarrassed: except that lesser men do not become President, nor do lesser men get invitations to ask questions on such impartial and objective programs.

  —An hour-long interview with Secretary Knox immediately after on the same network, in which a panel of three Washington correspondents (the National Observer, the Los Angeles Times, the network’s own) would ask a series of smoothly worded questions designed to anger, harass and trap their victim into as many damaging answers as possible. Orrin would field them all, but inevitably a hundred million living rooms would be left with the indefinable but unsettling impression that here was a man short-tempered, ill-prepared, dangerously warlike and quite irresponsible.

  —Innumerable articles, headlines, photographs, editorials, columns, commentaries, which would pay the briefest inescapable tribute to the Secretary’s courage and integrity, heap the most fulsome praise upon Ted’s.

  —And to further set the climate in which the decision must be made, in major newspaper and television offices there would be selected photographs and film clips of GRANDMOTHER FLEES ADVANCING U. S. MARINES … VILLAGERS DRAGGED FROM HOMES AS U.S. CLEARS AREA … CHILD CRIPPLED BY U.S. SHELL FIRE.

  Carefully there would be considered the few—the very few, since very few were all that the wire services sent from the battlefronts—pictures of loyal natives hacked to pieces by rebel soldiers, loyal villages burned by rebel invaders, the naked bodies of U. S. Marines strung up by their heels with their genitals burned off by rebel torturers.

  Carefully these would be considered, in the offices that decided what the country was to be allowed to see, and carefully they would be withheld from the American public. To print them would be to destroy the public’s objectivity, and that just wouldn’t be fair.

  So it had been in America, over and over and over again in recent decades. So it would be today, tonight and tomorrow, world without end.

  Until the end came.

  Underneath, there was of course the working political level, and the President’s comment to Jawbone was a truthful one, if rueful: he could not tell on the eve of the Committee’s meeting how much effect his own lobbying, Orrin’s, Jawbone’s, Ted’s, had had with the members. Some stubborn independence, fortunately inherent in most Americans still, had seemed to be withstanding both the massive barrage of media propaganda and the quieter, more practical methods of political pressure. The President had not been able to detect, nor had such of his lieutenants as Senators Powell Hanson and Lafe Smith who had been canvassing the Committee for him, any real shifting of sentiment up to a couple of days ago. Then the uglier pressures, not reported though a great many knew about them, had begun: and suddenly all was hurry, scurry, confusion and mystery.

  And fear.

  All that he had said to Ted, all that anyone else had said, was perfectly true: there was a restless, uneasy, worried, apprehensive mood developing in the Committee: by so much had the rioters, the demonstrators, and all the vicious trash clustered around the antiwar movement, achieved their purpose. The country was still suffering from the traumatic shock of Harley’s death—he made a mental note that he must call in the investigating commission soon and find out what it had discovered so far—and it was still suffering the even deeper shock of the horrible episode at the funeral. The cruel and ruthless had created exactly the atmosphere they wanted: a sick atmosphere, a savage atmosphere, in which many worried citizens could logically believe that anything, no matter how extreme, might happen.

  This might not be so, but if they thought so, that was all that mattered for the purposes of the destroyers.

  Intimidation was in the air, as palpable as the heat haze
that lay over the Potomac basin.

  For who knew what would happen next? Newspaper articles, television schedules, fatuous statements by fatuous people—these were predictable and customary, these were the standard aspects of life and government in late twentieth century America. But nobody knew what might be unscheduled and unpredictable—where or when a riot would flare out, a theater be blown up, a restaurant be bombed, a school be burned, a sniper’s bullet slam home, poison strike. The incident at the funeral had finally convinced the country, if more were needed, that it really had entered upon an era in which no crime was too unthinkable, no horror too ghastly, no inhumanity too obscene. Quite conceivably the ominous telephone calls some members of the Committee were receiving could be translated into dreadful fact if the sane forces of society were not constantly alert against the insane.

  The rock on which civilized behavior rested was no longer steady. It was being turned over, and the crawling things were coming out and making their bid to take over the world.

  Whether the process could be arrested, the President could not say, nor, he suspected, could anyone. He had fellow citizens, white and black, who at this moment were somewhere, in secret rooms or well-publicized demonstrations, spitting out their savage hatred for him and for the government and the orderly society his office represented. Some of them, he was quite sure, were absolutely convinced that they were going to bring America down. What would become of the miserable fools when they did so, he could not imagine, for they would be left to hug their venom in a wasteland, if they lived at all, which was highly doubtful. But still they would persist, until they provoked sufficient force to meet force; after which there would be blood, and quietude. Hopefully not on their terms.

  In the meantime, what must the good and decent do, abandon their principles and beliefs, run and hide? Some would, of course, and among some members of the Committee he could detect the beginnings of a disposition to do so. But many, he hoped, would not. Many, he hoped, would be brave enough to oppose the equivocal hero out of California for what he was, the prisoner of evil and the thrall of forces beyond his control.