Another couple seized them gaily, and they twirled breathlessly.
Bronson’s voice was harsh.
“That’s enough!”
The view blurred for seconds.
Washington.
The White House.
The President.
Someone coughed like a small explosion.
The President was watching a television screen.
He jerked erect suddenly, startled.
Mike spoke for the first time in court.
“That is the President of the United States.
He is watching the trial that is being broadcast and televised from this courtroom.
He is listening to what I am saying right now, and he is watching, in his television screen, as I use my machine to show him what he was doing one second ago.”
The President heard those fateful words.
Stiffly he threw an unconscious glance around his room at nothing and looked back at his screen in time to see himself do what he just had done, one second ago.
Slowly, as if against his will, his hand started toward the switch of his set.
“Mr. President, don’t turn off that set.”
Mike’s voice was curt, almost rude.
“You must hear this, you of all people in the world.
You must understand!
“This is not what we wanted to do, but we have no recourse left but to appeal to you, and to the people of this twisted world.”
The President might have been cast in iron.
“You must see, you must understand that you have in your hands the power to make it impossible for greed-born war to be bred in secrecy and rob man of his youth or his old age or whatever he prizes.”
His voice softened, pleaded.
“That is all we have to say.
That is all we want.
This is all anyone could want, ever.”
The President, unmoving, faded into blackness.
“The lights, please,” and almost immediately the Court adjourned.
That was over a month ago.
Mike’s machine has been taken from us, and we are under military guard.
Probably it’s just as well we’re guarded.
We understand there have been lynching parties, broken up only as far as a block or two away.
Last week we watched a white-haired fanatic scream about us, on the street below.
We couldn’t catch what he was shrieking, but we did catch a few air-borne epithets.
“Devils!
Anti-Christs!
Violation of the Bible!
Violations of this and that!”
Some, right here in the city, I suppose, would be glad to build a bonfire to cook us right back to the flames from which we’ve sprung.
I wonder what the various religious groups are going to do now that the truth can be seen.
Who can read lips in Aramaic, or Latin, or Coptic?
And is a mechanical miracle a miracle?
This changes everything.
We’ve been moved.
Where, I don’t know, except that the weather is warm, and we’re on some military reservation, by the lack of civilians.
Now we know what we’re up against.
What started out to be just a time-killing occupation, Joe, has turned out to be a necessary preface to what I’m going to ask you to do.
Finish this, and then move fast!