The Multiple Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

very small staff, compared to any President since Truman, he still insisted on keeping the White House exclusively to himself. Why he and Laura needed the entire executive mansion was the object of a lot of snide talk in Washington. It had been a source of smutty jokes during the first few months of Halliday's Administration. But then he began hitting his stride as President and started giving people the best damned government they'd had in a generation. The jokes died away. As the stock market climbed, inflation leveled off, and some headway was made even on the stubborn unemployment figures, jokes about Halliday went from nasty to nice. He was beloved by all.
    But he still wouldn't let any of us set up shop in the White House. Security was the unspoken byword. Thinking back on all the Presidents and candidates who'd been shot over the years, who could blame him? It seemed to be his only quirk; he was damned tight about his personal security. And privacy.
    Every morning, for example, I went through our daily press briefing on the phone with The Man. I sat in my office and we reviewed the day's news over the picture-phone. Then I'd go down and give the morning briefing to the Washington press corps. I hardly ever went to the White House. None of us did. We talked with the President through the picture-phones. Some days he was light and jovial. Some days he was tense and critical. Once or twice he was downright bitchy at us, especially when we had to face bad economic news. But it was a very rare day when he asked one of us to the White House for a face-to-face discussion. "We all work for the phone company," was a common song in our offices.
    The staff was housed in offices in the buildings right around the White House. Mine was in the Aztec Temple. We called it that because it was heated and cooled entirely by solar energy, a demonstration project of the Energy Research and Development Agency. It was shaped like a stepped-back pyramid, to make as many sun-catching surfaces as possible. And it worked pretty well, too, except that the place got chillier than hell in deep winter. And the slightest covering of snow shut down the solar panels completely. We got more snow holidays than the local school kids did.
    My office was cool and dry when I got into it; the air conditioning was working fine. But I barely noticed. While Greta brought me my morning coffee and situation reports, and made her usual motherly noises about the bags under my eyes and getting the sleep I need, I punched the phone keyboard.
    It takes a few minutes to go up the White House ladder, even for the President's press secretary. I leaned back in my desk chair, flicked on the network channels on five of the TV screens that made the far wall of my office look like an insect's eye, and took a cautious sip of the steaming black coffee.
    Sure enough, I burned my tongue. All five of the morning news programs were talking about things other than last night's excitement in Boston. I had the sound off, of course. Some of the electronics smart boys had rigged the screens with print-outs that spelled out what the people on the screens were mouthing. I often thought that if everybody's home TV worked that way, without the noise, we'd all be a lot saner.
    The newscasters were showing the latest fighting in Kuwait, complete with sky-high pillars of oily black smoke making a damned expensive background for the Shah's air-cushion armored personnel carriers. Then they all switched to the President's speech in Boston. But not one word about the body in the alley.
    Robert H. H. Wyatt appeared on my phone screen.
    "Good morning, Meric. How are you today?"
    "Rotten," I told him. "I've got to see The Man. Now. If not sooner."
    Nothing ever surprised or ruffled old Robert. He sat there for a moment, and the only thing happening to convince you he wasn't a wax statue was the barely detectable throbbing of a bluish vein in his gleaming bald head.
    "You'll have your regular news review