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one of them, in a fit of political insanity, might agree.) Hauling in the assassin beforehand needs explanation in these days of maximum courtroom civil liberty, it needs a lot of explanation. Grabbing him with his gun, on the spot, needs explaining, too: it's hard to say that he got careless and made it visible too soon, when he did his shooting, with that short-barreled .38, through the pocket of his jacket, and never showed the gun at all. (And maybe, in the future or futures that carried that alternative, the guy managed to get off a shot or two while being grabbed .. . and hit somebody more consequential than old Beer Barrel.) No: being able to see the future, and wanting to keep the ability secret, is the only explanation that fits the facts. When I got out of my hospital bed I asked the Director about it. "Our job is doing our job," he said, "not wondering about it." Which may be true. But ... whoever can see into the future, right now, in the United States, is also involved in changing it. For the better? That depends . . . what do you mean by better? In this country, it's supposed to be the people who do the deciding; but if somebody is rigging the dice by choosing his own favorites among possible futures . . . (See what I mean? Are you sure that this Somebody would never allow a successful assassination?) . . . then Somebody is doing enough deciding, all by himself, to deserve that capital letter. And that is an idea I don't like at all. The Director knows how I think about public knowledge and public decision-making: my dossier's on file, and has been for twenty-five years. And he knows I know about time-viewing, too. So, no matter how thin observers are spread, I know that whoever, or Whoever, does the viewing, in Central Intelligence or further up the line, has an eye on me. But maybe not all the time and not very far into the future. And just maybe, when I come to think of it, the viewers, too, want the rest of us to know that such a thing exists and is being used and picked me for the impersonation job at least partly because they knew I would do something like this. Letting the news out this way looks to me like doing it with a minimal amount of change ... I hope that's it, I really do; it would show that, up there in the higher echelons, there is as much faith in the people as I hope there is, and think there had better be. But we'll find out ... I'm writing this four months after the event. It will be very interesting, as I've said, to see if it gets through. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |