The girl now stood at the window, her arms folded, gazing out at the lights of downtown San Francisco. “My mother and dad used to say we wouldn’t have lost the war if he had lived,” she said.

“Okay,” Wyndam-Matson went on. “Now suppose say last year the Canadian Government or somebody, anybody, finds the plates from which some old stamp was printed. And the ink. And a supply of—”

“I don’t believe either of those two lighters belonged to Franklin Roosevelt,” the girl said.

Wyndam-Matson giggled. “That’s my point! I’d have to prove it to you with some sort of document. A paper of authenticity. And so it’s all a fake, a mass delusion. The paper proves its worth, not the object itself!”

“Show me the paper.”

“Sure.” Hopping up, he made his way back into the study. From the wall he took the Smithsonian Institution’s framed certificate; the paper and the lighter had cost him a fortune, but they were worth it—because they enabled him to prove that he was right, that the word “fake” meant nothing really, since the word “authentic” meant nothing really.

“A Colt .44 is a Colt .44,” he called to the girl as he hurried back into the living room. “It has to do with bore and design, not when it was made. It has to do with—”

She held out her hand. He gave her the document.

“So it is genuine,” she said finally.

“Yes. This one.” He picked up the lighter with the long scratch across its side.

“I think I’d like to go now,” the girl said. “I’ll see you again some other evening.” She set down the document and lighter and moved toward the bedroom, where her clothes were.

“Why?” he shouted in agitation, following after her.

“You know it’s perfectly safe; my wife won’t be back for weeks—I explained the whole situation to you. A detached retina.”

“It’s not that.”

“What, then?”

Rita said, “Please call a pedecab for me. While I dress.”

“I’ll drive you home,” he said grumpily.

She dressed, and then, while he got her coat from the closet, she wandered silently about the apartment. She seemed pensive, withdrawn, even a little depressed. The past makes people sad, he realized. Damn it; why did I have to bring it up? But hell, she’s so young—I thought she’d hardly know the name.

At the bookcase she knelt. “Did you read this?” she asked, taking a book out.

Nearsightedly he peered. Lurid cover. Novel. “No,” he said. “My wife got that. She reads a lot.”

“You should read it.”

Still feeling disappointed, he grabbed the book, glanced at it. The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. “Isn’t this one of those banned-in-Boston books?” he said.

“Banned through the United States. And in Europe, of course.” She had gone to the hall door and stood there now, waiting.

“I’ve heard of this Hawthorne Abendsen.” But actually he had not. All he could recall about the book was—what? That it was very popular right now. Another fad. Another mass craze. He bent down and stuck it back in the shelf. “I don’t have time to read popular fiction. I’m too busy with work.” Secretaries, he thought acidly, read that junk, at home alone in bed at night. It stimulates them. Instead of the real thing. Which they’re afraid of. But of course really crave.

“One of those love stories,” he said as he sullenly opened the hall door.

“No,” she said. “A story about war.” As they walked down the hail to the elevator she said, “He says the same thing. As my mother and dad.”

“Who? That Abbotson?”

“That’s his theory. If Joe Zangara had missed him, he would have pulled America out of the Depression and armed it so that—” She broke off. They had arrived at the elevator, and other people were waiting.

Later, as they drove through the nocturnal traffic in Wyndam-Matson’s Mercedes-Benz, she resumed.

“Abendsen’s theory is that Roosevelt would have been a terribly strong President. As strong as Lincoln. He showed it in the year he was President, all those measures he introduced. The book is fiction. I mean, it’s in novel form. Roosevelt isn’t assassinated in Miami; he goes on and is reelected in 1936, so he’s President until 1940, until during the war. Don’t you see? He’s still President when Germany attacks England and France and Poland. And he sees all that. He makes America strong. Garner was a really awful President. A lot of what happened was his fault. And then in 1940, instead of Bricker, a Democrat would have been elected—”

“According to this Abelson,” Wyndam-Matson broke in. He glanced at the girl beside him. God, they read a book, he thought, and they spout on forever.

“His theory is that instead of an Isolationist like Bricker, in 1940 after Roosevelt, Rexford Tugwell would have been President.” Her smooth face, reflecting the traffic lights, glowed with animation; her eyes had become large and she gestured as she talked. “And he would have been very active in continuing the Roosevelt anti-Nazi policies. So Germany would have been afraid to come to Japan’s help in 1941. They would not have honored their treaty. Do you see?” Turning toward him on the seat, grabbing his shoulder with intensity, she said, “And so Germany and Japan would have lost the war!”

He laughed.

Staring at him, seeking something in his face—he could not tell what, and anyhow he had to watch the other cars—she said, “It’s not funny. It really would have been like that. The U.S. would have been able to lick the Japanese. And—”

“How?” he broke in.

“He has it all laid out.” For a moment she was silent. “It’s in fiction form,” she said. “Naturally, it’s got a lot of fictional parts; I mean, it’s got to be entertaining or people wouldn’t read it. It has a human-interest theme; there’s these two young people, the boy is in the American Army. The girl—well, anyhow, President Tugwell is really smart. He understands what the Japs are going to do.” Anxiously, she said, “It’s all right to talk about this; the Japs have let it be circulated in the Pacific. I read that a lot of them are reading it. It’s popular in the Home Islands. It’s stirred up a lot of talk.”

Wyndam-Matson said, “Listen. What does he say about Pearl Harbor?”

“President Tugwell is so smart that he has all the ships out to sea. So the U.S. fleet isn’t destroyed.”

“I see.”

“So, there really isn’t any Pearl Harbor. They attack, but all they get is some little boats.”

“It’s called ‘The Grasshopper something?’ “

“The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. That’s a quote from the Bible.”

“And Japan is defeated because there’s no Pearl Harbor. Listen. Japan would have won anyhow. Even if there had been no Pearl Harbor.”

“The U.S. fleet—in his book—keeps them from taking the Philippines and Australia.”

“They would have taken them anyhow; their fleet was superior. I know the Japanese fairly well, and it was their destiny to assume dominance in the Pacific. The U.S. was on the decline ever since World War One. Every country on the Allied side was ruined in that war, morally and spiritually.”

With stubbornness, the girl said, “And if the Germans hadn’t taken Malta, Churchill would have stayed in power and guided England to victory.”

“How? Where?”

“In North Africa—Churchill would have defeated Rommel finally.”

Wyndam-Matson guffawed.

“And once the British had defeated Rommel, they could move their whole army back and up through Turkey to join remnants of Russian armies and make a stand-in the book, they halt the Germans’ eastward advance into Russia at some town on the Volga. We never heard of this town, but it really exists because I looked it up in the atlas.”

“What’s it called?”

“Stalingrad. And the British turn the tide of the war, there. So, in the book, Rommel never would have linked up with those German armies that came down from Russia, von Paulus’ armies; remember? And the Germans never would have been able to go on into the Middle East and get the needed oil, or on into India like they did and link up with the Japanese. And—”