The Puppet Masters

Chapter 13

So the President got the authority he needed and the Old Man was his de facto chief of staff; at last we could move fast and effectively. Oh, yes? Did you ever try to hurry a project through a bureaucracy?

"Directives" have to be "implemented"; "agencies" have to be "coordinated"-and everything has to go to the files.

The Old Man had a simple enough campaign in mind. It could not be the straightforward quarantine he had proposed when the infection was limited to the Des Moines area; before we could fight back, we had to locate them. But government agents couldn't search two hundred million people; the people had to do it themselves.

Schedule Bare Back was to be the first phase of the implementation of Operation Parasite-which makes me talk like a bureaucrat. Never mind-the idea was that everybody, everybody was to peel to the waist and stay peeled, until all titans were spotted and killed. Oh, women could have halter strings across their backs, but a parasite could not hide under a bra string.

We whipped up a visual presentation to go with the stereocast speech the President would make to the nation. Fast work had saved seven of the parasites we had flushed in the sacred halls of Congress and now they were alive on animal hosts. We could show them and we could show the less grisly parts of the film taken of me. The President himself would appear in the 'cast in shorts, and models would demonstrate what the Well Undressed Citizen Would Wear This Season, including the metal head-and-spine armor which was intended to protect a person even if a parasite got to him in his sleep.

We got it ready in one black-coffee night and the President's writers had his lines ready for him. The smash finish was to show Congress in session, discussing the emergency, and every man, woman, and page boy showing a bare back to the camera.

With twenty-eight minutes left until stereocast time the President got a call from up the street. I was present; the Old Man had been with the President all night, and had kept me around for chores. Mary was there, of course; the President was her special charge. We were all in shorts; Schedule Bare Back had already started in the White House. The only ones who looked comfortable in the get-up were Mary, who can wear anything, the colored doorman, who carried himself like a Zulu king, and the President himself, whose innate dignity could not be touched.

When the call came in the President did not bother to cut us out of his end of the conversation. "Speaking," he said. Presently he added, "You feel certain? Very well, John, what do you advise . . . . I see. No, I don't think that would work. . . . I had better come up the street. Tell them to be ready." He pushed back the phone, his face still serene, and turned to an assistant. "Tell them to hold up the broadcast." He turned to the Old Man. "Come, Andrew, we must go to the Capitol."

He sent for his valet and retired into a dressing room adjoining his office; when he came out, he was formally dressed for a state occasion. He offered no explanation, the Old Man raised an eyebrow but said nothing and I did not dare say anything. The rest of us stayed in our gooseflesh specials and so we went to the Capitol.

It was a joint session, the second in less than twenty-four hours. We trooped in, and I got that no-pants-in-church nightmare feeling, for the Congressmen and senators were dressed as usual. Then I saw that the page boys were in shorts without shirts and felt somewhat better.

I still don't understand it. It seems that some people would rather be dead than lose dignity, with senators high on the list. Congressmen, too-a Congressman is a man who wants to be a senator. They had given the President all the authority he asked for; Schedule Bare Back itself had been discussed and approved-but they did not see where it applied to them. After all, they had been searched and cleaned out; Congress was the only group in the country known to be free of titans.

Maybe some saw the holes in the argument, but not one wanted to be first in a public striptease. Face and dignity are indispensable to an office holder. They sat tight, fully dressed.

When the President took the rostrum, he simply looked at them until he got dead silence. Then slowly, calmly, he started taking off clothes.

He stopped when he was bare to the waist. He had had me worried for a moment; I think he had others worried. He then turned slowly around, lifting his arms. At last he spoke.

"I did that," he said, "so that you might see for yourself that your Chief Executive is not a prisoner of the enemy." He paused.

"But how about you?" That last word was flung at them.

The President punched a finger at the junior Whip. "Mark Cummings-how about you? Are you a loyal citizen or are you a zombie spy? Get up! Get your shirt off!"

"Mister President-" It was Charity Evans, from the State of Maine, looking like a pretty schoolteacher. She stood and I saw that, while she was fully dressed, she was in evening dress. Her gown reached to the floor, but was cut as deep as could be above. She turned like a mannequin; in back the dress ended at the base of her spine; in front it came up in two well-filled scallops. "Is this satisfactory, Mr. President?"

"Quite satisfactory, madam."

Cummings was on his feet and fumbling at his jacket; his face was scarlet. Someone stood up in the middle of the hall.

It was Senator Gottlieb. He looked as if he should have been in bed; his cheeks were gray and sunken; his lips showed cyanosis. But he held himself erect and, with incredible dignity, followed the President's example. His old-fashioned underwear was a one-piece job; he wriggled his arms out and let it dangle over his galluses. Then he, too, turned all the way around; on his back, scarlet against his fish-white flesh, was the mark of the parasite.

He spoke. "Last night I stood here and said things I would rather have been flayed alive than utter. But last night I was not my own master. Today I am. Can you not see that Rome is burning?" Suddenly he had a gun in his hand. "Up on your feet, you wardheelers, you courthouse loafers! Two minutes to get your duds off and show a bare back-then I shoot!"

Men close to him sprang up and tried to grab his arm, but he swung the gun around like a flyswatter, smashing one of them in the face. I had my own out, ready to back his play, but it was not necessary. They could see that he was as dangerous as an old bull and they backed away.

It hung in balance, then they started shucking clothes like Doukhobors. One man bolted for a door; he was tripped. No, he was not wearing a parasite.

But we did catch three. After that, the show went on the channels, ten minutes late, and Congress started the first of its "bare back" sessions.