Cue for Quiet Part 16

Suggs wasn't a bit excited. Those grand, those mellifluous and rotund phrases rolled out of those skinny lips at a mile-a-minute pace with never a flicker of emotion but a nervous twitching of the drooping eyelids. If that was the way he talked when calm, I could see why he had been sent back and back to the Senate time after time.

The General deliberately tossed his cigar on the floor and pounded his fist on the table.

"Well said, Senator! My sentiments exactly. If Europe and Asia and the rest of the world don't like what we do here, let 'em all go to h.e.l.l, or better yet, let's send them there in a hand-basket."

Bloodthirsty old bat. I never remembered seeing him any too close to the jumping-off point. That's what generals are for, they tell me.

"I say to h.e.l.l with them all, and the sooner they know about it, the better for all concerned." His gaudy gold case, the gift of a grateful staff, was on the table in front of him, and he jerked out a cigar with a flourish. A light with a gold lighter, and he puffed thick clouds.

Morgan coughed politely. "Regardless, Senator, of what has or what is happening, we're concerned at present with what might happen."

Suggs opened his mouth like a thirsty carp and closed it again as Morgan went on.

"Call it what you like, Senator; General Legree will agree with me that this perfect defense--if defense is the word--is equally well the perfect weapon. Right, General?"

Legree pursed pontifical lips for a reply and was annoyed when Morgan paused only momentarily.

"Perfect defense means the nullification of an opposing weapon.

Obviously, a weaponless army is no longer anything but a disciplined mob. In correlation, Senator, _our_ arms and weapons are still effective, and--you mentioned the distrust (or dislike, or hatred, or whatever you will) held for us by Europe and Asia. Now, Senator, think of yourself and your const.i.tuents: is it not far better that Europe and Asia and the world be solaced and comforted by the announcement that we would use our ... Iron Curtain only in our own defense? Would it not be better--how many years, Senator, have there been recorded of universal peace? How many years?"

Some men can sit poker-stiff, yet give the impression of teetering slowly on their heels, slowly counting the horses' teeth. Suggs was a horse trader from away back.

He said, "Mr. Morgan, I say I can appreciate your viewpoint. I can even appreciate the fact that you mean exactly what you say. But--!"

Sharks must have teeth like that; broken and yellow, and razor-keen.

The smile of the Senator fascinated me.

"But--! Mr. Undersecretary, who's been doing all the fighting, and who's been starting all these wars? The United States? No, sir! We just get in them too late to do anything but pay all the bills!" He leaned forward and fixed the tabletop with a piscine stare.

"Look at it this way, the only way. When this whats.h.i.+sname dies, all these countries look at the map and start mobilizing the Guards. How do we know how long he's going to live, or how long he's going to keep this magic head of his?"

My magic head itched, and I rubbed it.

"Now, here's what I've said before, and here's what I say now--we can't let the world get away with murder--'murder' is what I said, Mr.

Undersecretary, and 'murder' is what I mean. Didn't you say--now, tell us the truth, now--haven't you always said that it would be just a question of time until just about anyone has the secret of the atomic bomb? Didn't you say that?"

Morgan nodded. "Quite often I've said that, Senator. Too often for some."

Suggs was triumphant. "All right, now. You've hung yourself on your own rope and you don't know it. Answer me this; now, what's to prevent anyone who has the bomb from coming over here and using it on us?

What's to prevent them?"

They had been all through that before, and Morgan knew it was no use to answer.

Suggs was his own echo. "Nothing's to prevent them, not a thing in the world. How many times have I come right out and said in public that the only way to keep the world where we want it is to just make sure that no one else is going to get it? How many times?"

Morgan rubbed his cigarette in the ashtray and spoke to the table.

"You've said that many times, Senator. That's true, too true. I, on the other hand, have asked you many times if you've thought that the only way to make sure no other nation gets the bomb would be to go right in and make _sure_. You agreed with me that _that_ would mean force. Force, meaning war. Right, Senator?"

And the Senator, champion of Man and Humanity and Right said, "Right, Mr. Undersecretary. Right. We have the bomb, haven't we?"

Morgan didn't say much in answer to that. I don't think there was much he could find to say. Psychologists claim there is hardly anyone, anyone with a modic.u.m of logic in a brain-pan, who cannot eventually see the light of reason. Maybe. Maybe calm logic could force Senator Suggs and his brain-pan off his muddy detour. Maybe humanity and decency and all the other things that complement the civilized man to this day lie submerged in that pithecanthropic skull. Maybe, but I hated his guts then, and I do now.

I cleared my throat, and it must have been louder than I thought, because all the eyes swung my way. Well, so what? If I had anything at all to say about what was going to happen, or if I was ever going to be more than just a rubber stamp, now was the time to find out. After all, I'd been asked to bring my harp to the party, and I was going to play.

So I said, "Senator. Senator Suggs!"

He was a little taken aback. Like having the sweeper talk back.

"Senator," I said, "you talk big. Let's get right down to rock-bottom, and let's stay there until we're finished. Okay?... All right; in words of one syllable, you want us to do what amounts to declaring war on the rest of the world, winning the war and then running things our way. Right?"

The Senator teetered on those mental heels again. His lips sucked in and sharp hollows formed in his cheeks. I could see his mind reach all the way across the table and throw face-up the cards, one by one.

"You're Mr. Miller, I presume, although we haven't been formally introduced." His eager eyes flickered over me. "You haven't said much so far, and it's just as well that you spoke when you did."

Legree groped for his cigar case, and Suggs rumbled on.

"You said I talk big, Mr. Miller, and I'm going to take that as a compliment. Yes, I do talk big. And you talk plain. I like men who talk plain. We're going to get along well together." And he paused to let his thoughts catch up.

I gave my needle a little push. "You're still talking big, Senator," I reminded him.

He resented that, and tried to hide it. "Hardly, Mr. Miller. Hardly.

But you asked a question, and I'll try to talk plain, like you do. If we have to fight the rest of the world to do things our way, the American way, then my answer is yes. Yes!"

Legree grinned his saturnine smile through a blue wreath of smoke and Morgan sat back in his chair with an almost silent exhalation. The rest of the group seated around that great table affected me hardly at all one way or another. Suggs was the spokesman for one faction and I--well, Morgan was willing to let me talk; the Old Man was sunk in the dumb obscurity of his chair, and who else was there to speak for me? Who else?

All right, Miller. Take it slow and easy. Watch your temper. Say what you have that's important, and let it go at that. But--say it!

Now, there's one thing I learned long ago; you get a lot further if the other loses his temper first, and the best way to pry the lid of a temper is the use of the unexpected. The man who is handy with his hands will crack wide open with ridicule, with words used as the lever. The man who is handy with words is a different nut to crack; slap him down with insults while his verbal guard is down. If his temper doesn't snap in the first two minutes, it never will.

So, because I thought it was the right thing to say, and because I didn't like the Senator anyway, I said, "Senator Suggs, you talked plain. That's good. I like men who talk plain. Let's have some more of that talk. Let's get this right on the record for everyone here to see and hear.

"I don't like you, Senator. I like neither you nor your ideas, nor anything about you or your thoughts. How long has it been, Senator, since anyone has told you right to your face--not in a newspaper--that you're a self-convinced liar and a hypocrite, and that you and your ideas and everything about you stink to high heaven?"

"Stink" was the word that got him. He'd expected a nice gentlemanly quarrel with gentlemanly words above the table and rapiers below, and instead had walked around the corner and taken a barrel-stave across the mouth. His face flushed in an instant to a livid unhealthy red, his lips pulled away from his yellow teeth, his eyes seemed to protrude visibly. A beautiful sight.

It took him long seconds to throttle his gasping shock. I gave him just enough time to inhale for a long tirade, just long enough to open that fish-like mouth for words that might have been anything, then I let him have it again. And I don't know whether or not I told you, I was a sergeant before I got busted back to private, first cla.s.s.

"Shut up!" I bellowed, and my roar boomed back at me from all those startled, those stunned faces. Shut up shut up shut up shut up....

I'm certain that those walls had never heard anything above a quiet murmur before that night. I just shocked Suggs and the rest into a panicky silence while I ranted. I had to talk fast, because while volume and violence are a good temporary subst.i.tute for brilliance, I knew I wasn't going to have the floor forever.

"Let's talk straight, Suggs. Get this once, because I'm not repeating it, and get that silly look off your face--" I'd heard he was vain--"you and your const.i.tuents and your Army and your Navy can go to h.e.l.l, as far as I care for any of them. I'm the man you want to keep your s.h.i.+rt clean while the rest of the world wallows in filth; I'm the man that's supposed to let you and your type, G.o.d forbid, rule the world; I'm the man--" I leaned over the table as far as I could, as far as I dared.