Stranger in a Strange Land

The Reverend Doctor Daniel Digby, Supreme Bishop of the Church of the New Revelation (Fosterite) had announced that he had nominated the Angel Azreel to guide Federation Senator Thomas Boone and that he expected Heavenly confirmation of his choice some time today; all the news services carried the announcement as straight news, the Fosterites having wrecked too many newspaper offices in the past. Mr. and Mrs. Harrison Campbell VI had a son and heir by host-mother at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital while the happy parents were vacationing in Peru. Dr. Horace Quackenbush, Professor of Leisure Arts at Yale Divinity School, issued a stirring call for a return to faith and a cultivation of spiritual values; there was a betting scandal involving half the permanent professionals of the West Point football squad and its line coach; three bacterial warfare chemists were suspended at Toronto for presumption of emotional instability—all three announced that they would carry their cases, if necessary, to the Federation High Court. The High Court upset a ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States in reeligibility to vote in primaries involving Federation Assemblymen in the case of Reinsberg vs. the State of Missouri.

His Excellency, the Most Honorable Joseph E. Douglas, Secretary General of the World Federation of Free States, picked at his breakfast omelet and wondered peevishly why a man could not get a decent cup of coffee these days. In front of him his morning newspaper, prepared by the night shift of his information staff, moved past his eyes at his optimum reading speed in a feedback executive scanner, custom-built by Sperry. The words would flow on as long as he looked in that direction; if he turned his head, the machine would note it and stop instantly.

He was looking that way now and the projected print moved along the screen, but he was not really reading but simply avoiding the eyes of his boss across the table. Mrs. Douglas did not read newspapers; she had other ways of finding out what she needed to know.

“Joseph—”

He looked up and the machine stopped. “Yes, my dear?”

“You have something on your mind—”

“Eh? What makes you say that, my dear?”

“Joseph, I haven’t watched you and coddled you and darned your socks and kept you out of trouble for thirty-five years for nothing. I know when there is something on your mind.”

The hell of it is, he admitted to himself, she does know. He looked at her and wondered why he had ever let her bully him into no-termination contract. Originally she had been only his secretary, back in the days (he thought of them as “The Good Old Days”) when he had been a state legislator, beating the bushes for individual votes. Their first contract had been a simple ninety day cohabitation agreement, supposedly to economize scarce campaign funds by saving on hotel bills; both of them had agreed that it was merely a convenience, with “cohabitation” to be construed simply as living under one roof… and she hadn’t darned his socks even then!

He tried to remember how and when the situation had changed. Mrs. Douglas’s official biography, Shadow of Greatness: One Woman’s Story, stated that he had proposed to her during the counting of ballots in his first election to office—and that such was his romantic need that nothing would do but old-fashioned, death-do-us-part marriage.

Well, he didn’t remember it that way—but there was no use arguing with the official version.

“Joseph! Answer me!”

“Eh? Nothing at all, my dear. I spent a restless night.”

“I know you did. When they wake you up in the middle of the night, don’t you think I know it?”

He reflected that her suite was a good fifty yards across the palace from his. “How do you know it, my dear?”

“Hunh? Woman’s intuition, of course. What was the message Bradley brought you?”

“Please, my dear—I’ve got to finish the morning news before the Council meeting.”

“Joseph Edgerton Douglas, don’t try to evade me.”

He sighed. “The fact is, we’ve lost sight of that beggar Smith.”

“Smith? Do you mean the Man from Mars? What do you mean: ‘lost sight of?’ That’s ridiculous.”

“Be that as it may, my dear, he’s gone. He disappeared from his hospital room sometime late yesterday.”

“Preposterous! How could he do that?”

“Disguised as a nurse, apparently. We aren’t sure.”

“But—Never mind. He’s gone, that’s the main thing. What muddleheaded scheme are you using to get him back?”

“Well, we have some of our own people searching for him. Trusted ones, of course. Berquist—”

“Berquist! That garbage head! When you should have every police officer from the FDS down to precinct truant officers searching for him you send Berquist!”

“But, my dear, you don’t see the situation. We can’t. Officially he isn’t lost at all. You see there’s—well, the other chap. The, uh, ‘official’ Man from Mars,”

“Oh…” She drummed the table. “I told you that substitution scheme would get us in trouble.”

“But, my dear, you suggested it yourself.”