The Multiple Man Read Free

brain could think it over. "Why do you think I'm having dinner here with you guys tonight?"

    Ryan tagged along with me as I walked through the underpasses beneath the expressway to Faneuil Hall. The night was turning colder, getting cloudy. The youngster seemed to be goggle-eyed at the idea of being among Great Men. I didn't disillusion him, although Johnny's wine-soaked probing had left a sour feeling in my gut.
    The auditorium inside Faneuil Hall had just been redecorated from floor to ceiling. As always in Boston, there had been a titanic argument over whether the motif should be Original Puritan, Patriotic Colonial, or Bullfinch Federalist. The patriots won, and the place looked stately and elegant in that Colonial blend of severity and warmth. Blues and golds dominated, with natural wood tones gleaming here and there.
    The place was jammed with the Massachusetts research and development intelligentsia. Scientists from MIT and Harvard, engineers from the once-magical Route 128 "electronic highway," the survivors of booms and busts that had staggered the R & D industry and the nation's economy with the regularity of a major league slugger taking batting practice.
    I didn't have anything to do with his speech. Robinson and the other speechwriters put it together, although The Man always put a lot of pure Halliday into everything he said. And he tied the speech into the afternoon press conference's questions about the Iranian war in an ad-lib way that no speechwriter can prepare ahead of time:
    ". . . the real issue is very clear. The basic question is survival. Survival for the way of life we have worked so hard to achieve. Survival for the democratic institutions that have made us a great and prosperous people. Survival for our children and our children's children.
    "We can no longer allow ourselves to be dependent on dwindling natural resources for the primary needs of our people. Nor need we be so dependent, when we have within our grasp—thanks to the dedication and perseverance of our nation's scientists and engineers—new sources of energy that will eliminate forever the twin dangers that haunt us: resource depletion and pollution of the environment.
    "It is my intention, and I am sure the Congress will agree, to push ahead for the development of new energy systems, such as the orbiting solar network and the laser-fusion generators, with all the vigor that we can command."
    They loved it. For the first time in their memories a President was treating them like an important national resource. It meant huge dollops of Federal money for the brainboys, sure. But more important to that audience on that night was the fact that the President, The Man himself, was saying to them, "We need you, we want you, we admire you." They would have followed him anywhere, just as their fathers had followed Kennedy to the moon.
    But he seemed stiff to me. Uncomfortable. He was reading the speech, something he almost never did. Only an insider would notice it, I figured, but he looked to me as if he weren't really all that familiar with the speech.
    Laura was sitting on the stage, just to the right of the podium, looking more beautiful than ever. The limelight of attention and public homage seemed to be making her more self-assured, more pleased with herself and the world around her. She was a goddess whose worshipers were a nation. They knew it and she knew it. So she sat there, smiling, beautiful, adored, and remote. From me.
    I pulled my attention away from her and let my eyes wander across the rapt audience. I wondered what Sam Adams and his roughnecks would have to say about this crowd. How many of these well-dressed heavily educated people would daub red clay on their faces and dress in Indian feathers to go out and defy the laws of the Government? A few, I guessed. Damned few. And I wasn't certain I could count myself among them.
    The whole stage, up where the President and his group were, was protected by an invisible