[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
number had been rising still, the Argus eyes of destiny marking him out); or the eye of the camera, which
held within it a hundred million watchers here and now. The show had gone well. He felt he might have
succeeded without the silent eyes, the nodes of interference born of the uncertainty principle which
marked where information was siphoned into the years ahead. How far ahead? No-one knew; and it did
not matter. Harman believed in himself and knew his belief to be sincere, even without this sign from
heaven to mark him as blessed of all men.
And that was strangely true, he knew. The princes and powers of the world had been scanned for the
stigmata of lasting fame (not the Soviets, of course, nor China); politicians-Harman smiled-often scored
high, yet none higher than eight or nine. Seventeen showed almost embarrassing enthusiasm on the part of
the historians, the excellent, discriminating historians yet to be.
I shall deserve it, Harman told himself as his own home came into view, searchlights splashing its pale
walls and throwing it into due prominence. In a brief huddle of guards he passed within to the theoretical
privacy of his personal rooms, sincere and knowing again that he was sincere. He would fulfil his
promises to the letter, honest and uncompromising, ready to risk even his reputation for the good of
Democracy. He paced the mildly austere bedroom (black and white, grey and chrome); he fingered the
chess-set and go-board which magazines had shown to the nation. The recorders whirred
companionably. His clothes were heavy with sweat, inevitable under the hot lights; the trick was not to
look troubled by heat, not ever to subside and mop oneself like Ferris, poor Ferris.
This room had no windows, for sufficient reasons; but Harman knew of six optical bugs at the least.
Naked in the adjoining shower, he soaped himself and smiled. Seventeen watchers-or perhaps nineteen
or twenty, for the power was still rising within him-the bugs and the watchers troubled him not at all.
That, he was certain, was his true strength. He had nothing to hide from the future, nor from the present;
in all his life, he believed there was no episode which could bring shame to his biography. Let the eyes
peer! The seedy Ferris might weaken himself with drink, with women, but Harman's energies flowed cool
and strong in a single channel, which for convenience he called The Good Of The Nation.
He fumbled into pajamas, his erection causing some small discomfort. Four days. Only four days and
then: no compromise. The hard line. Straight talk, nation unto nation. He would give them good reason to
watch him, Harman, the ultimate politician. He felt, as though beneath his fingers, the Presidential
inheritance of red telephones and red buttons.
The eyes of time were upon him. He knew he would not fail them.
In thinking about a seeking of the past, another idea arises: that the past, or pasts, might begin to
converge upon the unwitting and perhaps unwilling seeker&
RECESSIONAL
Fred Saberhagen
From the window of his high hotel room, sixty dollars a day at convention rates, he could look between
other buildings to see a small piece of the ocean. Within the mirror where he looked when shaving there
was another window with another square of sea, and an hourly newscast came on that morning just as he
was starting to shave. Razor in hand he listened while the voice of the woman announcer went through a
few details of what she called the grisly discovery. The thing somehow got to him, enough to keep him
from concentrating properly either on shaving or on what he ought to say when he appeared on the panel
in a couple of hours. Not only that, it stayed with him after he finished getting ready and left the room.
The radio really hadn't given many facts. The body of a woman of indeterminate age had been washed up
on a beach somewhere down in the Keys, which put it, he supposed, almost a hundred miles to the
southwest of Miami Beach. An unnamed authority was quoted to the effect that the body might have
been in the water as long as several years. He thought at first that the newscaster had probably got that
garbled somehow, but then mention was made of pockets of cold, uncirculating water to be found in
certain depths, in which unusual preservative action could be expected.
One reason for the grisly discovery remaining with him all morning, he supposed, was that his panel topic
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]