"So that's it," the President finished. He was bone-tired, and hoarse from talking. "Now you know what your predecessors have known. And, like them, you know why it must never be revealed."
There was a moment of dead silence in the Oval Office.
"No," said President-Elect Harvey Langston.
The President's head jerked up from its incipient slump. "What did you say?"
"No!" Langston stood up. There was a wild look in his eyes, and his voice began to hold the shrillness from which his handlers were always careful to rein him in. "I've heard enough! This is all . . . it's unconstitutional! It's a violation of the public's right to know! The multinational corporations must be behind it! Or the Jewish bankers! Or the Trilateral Commission! Or the Illuminati! Or . . . the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy!"
"For God's sake!" the President exploded. "Can't you, for once in your life, stop thinking in slogans?"
"I'm going to expose it all!" Langston showed no sign of having heard. "I'm going to blow this wide open! I'll tell the world! Yes, I'll use my inauguration speech to do it!" He turned and strode to the door, then paused. "Don't try to stop me!" he declared theatrically. The President didn't move. Visibly miffed at the anticlimax, Langston stomped out, slamming the door behind him.
The President sat in silence, head lowered, for a few moments. Then the faint click of an opening side door reminded him that he hadn't been entirely truthful when he'd told Langston they had been alone.
A tall, gaunt man entered. As always, the President felt a chill slide up and down his spine as he looked at the messenger from the stars.
How old was Mr. Inconnu? The President had often wondered. By all accounts, he had seemed in his early thirties when he had arrived on Earth in 1946. If so, that would make him at least a hundred now. In some ways—the deep lines in his face, the whiteness of his thick hair—he looked it. But his mental and physical health seemed unimpaired. His explanation—that the colony of human exiles he'd escaped from, somewhere in the remote reaches of the galaxy, had had access to the life-extending biotechnology of their alien masters—must be true.
"You heard," the President said. It was a statement, not a question.
"Yes, Mr. President."
"He means well." For some perverse reason, the President felt driven to defend the man he despised. "He's genuinely sincere in his beliefs. He just can't grasp the distinction between the slogans he grew up on and reality. He thinks they are reality, and not just noises for morons to chant as a substitute for thought."
"That's precisely the problem. Mr. President. Our worst nightmare has always been the election of an ideologue to the presidency, but the political realities have always spared us that. Now, after this freakish election, it's finally happened, and it's even worse than we've feared; he's a stupid ideologue."
The President swung his chair around toward the French windows and started into the darkness. "You know, I really believe in . . . this." He gave a gesture that encompassed the room, the White House, the city beyond it, and the Constitution of which they were the visible manifestation. "All right, all right; I know there are a thousand politicians who say that and don't mean it any more than they mean anything else. But by God, I mean it! And that man—" (he waved in the direction of the door through which Langston had departed) "—is the President-Elect of the United States, under the constitutional system we claim to live by. Do we only live by it when it suits us?"
Mr. Inconnu said nothing.
The President's head dropped.
"All right," he said, just above the threshold of audibility. "Go ahead. Do what has to be done."
"Yes, Mr. President. Everything will be taken care of. I'll see to it that you never have to know the details."
"No!" The President's head came up, and more than two centuries of history settled around him like an invisible mantle of authority. "To hell with that. I want to know everything."
Their eyes met, in a shared realization of the need for a form of penance.
"Very well, Mr. President. I understand. You'll receive a full report." Mr. Inconnu's voice held nothing but deep respect. He turned to go. Then he paused, and spoke with a strange kind of hesitant impulsiveness. "Oh, by the way, Mr. President . . . a while back, when you were speculating aloud about the traitor's motivations . . . you were wrong."
"What?" The President blinked, startled. This was the first time Mr. Inconnu had ever revealed any special knowledge of that matter, four decades or so earlier. He had simply let Section Two's report stand. "Are you saying you know something beyond what the investigation turned up after Chloe Bryant's disappearance?"
Mr. Inconnu's features clenched as though in pain, twisting the scar that disfigured his left cheek. (He had never had it removed, as the Project's medical techniques were quite capable of doing. The President had often wondered why.) Then, before the President had time to feel alarmed, his face cleared.
"No," he said quietly. "I have nothing to add to Section Two's findings in the case of Chloe Bryant's betrayal of the Project. Please forget I said anything." He straightened up and spoke briskly, as though his uncharacteristic lapse had never happened. "I'll make all the necessary arrangements, Mr. President." And then he was gone into the night.
The President stared after him for a few seconds, wondering what he'd almost glimpsed. Then he sighed, and turned to his desk's communication suite. His chief of staff had gone for the night, but he'd leave a recorded message to be received first thing in the morning.
"Larry, I want you to contact Senator Goldman's staff, quietly and informally, just to establish a line of communication. At some point in the very near future, it's going to be necessary to set up a private meeting between him and me, with very little notice. Yes, I know it all sounds a little irregular. Do it anyway."
The President broke the connection and sat back with a sigh.
Thank God, he thought, the Vice President-Elect, at least, was sensible.