Stranger in a Strange Land

Hell’s halfwit, he had just been talking to one! Jubal turned back to the phone and tried to raise Tom Mackenzie again, running into only three layers of interference on the way, all of whom knew him and passed him along quickly. While he was doing this, his staff and the Man from Mars came in; Jubal ignored them and they sat down, Miriam first stopping to write on a scratch pad: “Doors and windows locked.”

Jubal nodded to her and wrote below it: “Larry—panic button?” then said to the screen, “Tom, sorry to bother you again.”

“A pleasure, Jubal.”

“Tom, if you wanted to talk to Secretary General Douglas, how would you go about it?”

“Eh? I’d phone his press secretary, Jim Sanforth. Or possibly Jock Dumont, depending on what I wanted. But I wouldn’t talk to the Secretary General at all. Jim would handle it.”

“But suppose you wanted to talk to Douglas himself.”

“Why, I’d tell Jim and let him arrange it. Be quicker just to tell Jim my problem, though; it might be a day or two before he could squeeze me in… and even then I might be bumped for something more urgent. Look, Jubal, the network is useful to the administration—and we know it and they know it. But we don’t presume on it unnecessarily.”

“Tom… assume that it is necessary. Suppose you just had to speak to Douglas. Right now. Not next week. In the next ten minutes.”

Mackenzie’s eyebrows went up. “Well—if I just had to, I would explain to Jim why it was so urgent—”

“No.”

“Be reasonable.”

“No. That’s just what I can’t be. Assume that you had caught Jim Sanforth stealing the spoons, so you couldn’t tell him what the emergency was. But you had to speak to Douglas immediately.”

Mackenzie sighed. “I suppose I would tell Jim that I simply had to talk to the boss—and that if I wasn’t put through to him right away, the administration would never get another trace of support from the network. Politely, of course. But make him understand that I meant it. Sanforth is nobody’s fool; he would never serve his own head up on a platter.”

“Okay, Tom, do it.”

“Huh?”

“Leave this call on. Call the Palace on another instrument—and have your boys ready to cut me in instantly. I’ve got to talk to the Secretary General right now!”

Mackenzie looked pained.

“Jubal, old friend—”

“Meaning you won’t.”

“Meaning I can’t. You’ve dreamed up a hypothetical situation in which a—pardon me—major executive of an intercontinental network could speak to the Secretary General under conditions of dire necessity. But I can’t hand this entrée over to somebody else. Look, Jubal, I respect you. Besides that, you are probably four of the six most popular writers alive today. The network would hate to lose you and we are painfully aware that you won’t let us tie you down to a contract. But I can’t do it, even to please you. You must realize that one does not telephone the World chief of government unless he wants to speak to you.”

“Suppose I do sign an exclusive seven-year contract?”

Mackenzie looked as if his teeth hurt, “I still couldn’t do it. I’d lose my job—and you would still have to carry out your contract.”

Jubal considered calling Mike over into the instrument’s visual pickup and naming him. He discarded the idea at once. Mackenzie’s own programmes had run the fake ‘Man from Mars’ interviews—and Mackenzie was either crooked and in on the hoax… or he was honest, as Jubal thought he was, and simply would not believe that he himself had been hoaxed. “All right, Tom, I won’t twist your arm. But you know your way around in the government better than I do. Who calls Douglas whenever he likes—and gets him? I don’t mean Sanforth—”

“No one.”

“Damn it, no man lives in a vacuum! There must be at least a dozen people who can phone him and not get brushed off by a secretary.”

“Some of his cabinet, I suppose. And not all of them.”

“I don’t know any of them, either; I’ve been out of touch. But I don’t mean professional politicos. Who knows him so well that they can call him on a private line and invite him to play poker?”

“Umm… you don’t want much, do you? Well, there’s Jake Allenby. Not the actor, the other Jake Allenby. Oil.”

“I’ve met him. He doesn’t like me. I don’t like him. He knows it.”

“Douglas doesn’t have very many intimate friends. His wife rather discourages—Say, Jubal … how do you feel about astrology?”

“Never touch the stuff. Prefer brandy.”

“Well, that’s a matter of taste. But—see here, Jubal, if you ever let on to anyone that I told you this, I’ll cut your lying throat with one of your own manuscripts.”

“Noted. Agreed. Proceed.”

“Well, Agnes Douglas does touch the stuff.., and I know where she gets it. Her astrologer can call Mrs. Douglas at any time—and, believe you me, Mrs. Douglas has the ear of the Secretary General whenever she chooses. You can call her astrologer … and the rest is up to you.”

“I don’t seem to recall any astrologers on my Christmas card list,” Jubal answered dubiously. “What’s his name?”