Four Secret Service men participated in the process of searching, frisking, magnetometering and identifying the male guests, though only two of the men physically took part. The other two just stood there, presumably ready to draw and fire at need. Female Secret Service personnel (they were called “secretaries,” but Roger could see that they carried guns) searched the wives and Kathleen Doughty. The women were searched behind one of the shoulder-high screens, but Roger could read from the expressions on his wife’s face the progress of the patting, probing hands. Dorrie did not like being touched by strangers. There were times when she did not like being touched at all, but above all not by strangers.
When Roger’s own turn came, he understood some of the cold anger he had seen on his wife’s face. They were being unusually thorough. His armpits were investigated. His belt was loosened and the cleft of his buttocks probed. His testicles were palpated. Everything in his pockets came out; the handkerchief at his breast was shaken open and swiftly refolded, neater than before. His belt buckle and watchband were studied through a loupe.
Everyone had the same treatment, even the director, who gazed around the room with good-natured resignation while fingers combed the kinky hair under his arms. The only exception was Don Kayman, who had worn his cassock in view of the formality of the occasion, and after some whispered discussion, was escorted into another room to take it off. “Sorry, Father,” said the guard, “but you know how it is.”
Don shrugged, left with the man, and came back looking annoyed. Roger was beginning to feel annoyed too. It would have been sensible, he thought, for them to have passed some of the people on to the shrinks as soon as they had had their search completed. After all, these were high-powered types, and their time was worth money. But the Secret Service had its own system and operated by stages. It was not until everyone had been searched that the first group of three was conducted to the typist rooms, evacuated specially to make room for the interviews.
Roger’s shrink was black by courtesy, actually a sort of coffee-cream color by complexion. They sat in facing straightbacked chairs, with eighteen inches between their knees. The psychiatrist said, “I’ll make this as short and painless as I can. Are your parents both alive?”
“No, actually neither of them is. My father died two years ago, my mother when I was in college.”
“What sort of work did your father do?”
“Rented fishing boats in Florida.” With half his mind Roger described the old man’s Key Largo boat livery, while with the other half he maintained his twenty-four-hour-a-day surveillance of himself. Was he showing enough annoyance at being questioned like this? Not too much? Was he relaxed enough? More relaxed than enough?
“I’ve seen your wife,” said the psychiatrist. “A very sexy-looking woman. Do you mind my saying that?”
“Not at all,” said Roger, bristling.
“Some white people would not like to hear that from me. How do you feel about it?”
“I know she’s sexy,” Roger snapped. “That’s what made me want to marry her.”
“Would you mind if I went a step further and asked how the screwing is?”
“No, of course not — well, hell. Yes, I mind,” said Roger savagely. “It’s about like anybody else’s, I guess. After being married a few years.”
The psychiatrist leaned back, looking thoughtfully at Roger. He said, “In your case, Dr. Torraway, this interview is pretty much a formality. You’ve had quarterly checks for the last seven years and profiled well within the normal range every time. There’s nothing violent or unstable in your history. Let me just ask you if you feel uneasy about meeting the President.”
“A little awed, maybe,” said Roger, shifting gears.
“That’s natural enough. Did you vote for Dash?”
“Sure — wait the hell a minute. That’s none of your business!”
“Right, Dr. Torraway. You can go back to the briefing room now.”
They didn’t actually let him go back in the same room, but in one of the smaller conference chambers. Kathleen Doughty joined him almost at once. They had worked together for two and a half years, but she was still formal. “Looks like we’ve passed, Mr. Dr. Colonel Torraway, sir,” she said, her eyes focused as usual on a point over his left shoulder, the cigarette held between her face and him. “Ah, good, a little libation,” she said, and reached out past him.
A livened waiter — no, Roger reminded himself, a Secret Service man wearing a waiter’s uniform — was standing there with a tray of drinks. Roger took a whiskey and soda, the big prosthesiologist accepted a small glass of dry sherry. “Be sure you drink it all,” she whispered to his shoulder. “They put something in it, I think.”
“Something what?”
“To calm you down. If you don’t drink it all, they put an armed guard behind you.”
To humor her Roger drank his whiskey straight down, but he wondered how someone with her delusions and fears had passed the psychiatric clearance so readily. His five minutes with the shrink had reinforced his self-observing stance, and he was busily analyzing with one part of his mind. Why did he feel Uneasy in this woman’s presence? Not just because she was wiggy in her mannerisms. He wondered if the trouble was that she admired his courage so much. He had tried to explain to her that being an astronaut no longer took much courage, no more than flying a transport, probably less than driving a cab. Of course, as a back-up for Man Plus there was a very real danger. But only if the men ahead of him in line all dropped out, and that was not a chance to cause much worry. Nevertheless, she went on regarding him with that intensity that in some lights seemed to be admiration, and in others pity.
With the other part of his mind, as always, he was alert for his wife. When she finally came in she was angry, and, for her, disheveled. The hair she had spent an hour putting up was now down. It hung waist-length, a fine frothy fall of black that made her look like a Tenniel drawing of Alice, if Tenniel had been working for Playboy at the time. Roger hurried over to soothe her, a job which took so much of his attention that he was caught off-guard when he felt a sudden stir and heard someone say, not very loud or formally, “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”
Fitz-James Deshatine came grinning and nodding into the room, looking exactly like himself on television, only shorten. Without prompting the lab people sorted themselves into a semicircle, and the President went around it, shaking every hand, with the project director at his side making the introductions. Deshatine had been beautifully briefed. He had the politician’s trick of catching every name and making some sort of personal response. To Kathleen Doughty it was “Glad to see some Irish in this crew, Dr. Doughty.” To Roger it was “We met once before, Colonel Torraway. After that fine job with the Russians. Let’s see, that must be seven years ago, when I was chairman of the Senate committee. Perhaps you remember.” Certainly Roger remembered — and was flattered, and knew he was being flattered, that the President remembered. To Dorrie it was “Good heavens, Mrs. Torraway, how come a pretty girl like you wastes herself on one of these scientific Johnnies?” Roger stiffened a little when he heard that. It was not so much that it was down-putting to him, it was the kind of empty compliment Dorrie always disdained. But she was not disdaining it. Coming from the President of the United States, it brought a sparkle to her eyes. “What a beautiful man,” she whispered, following his progress as he made the circle.
When he had finished going around the semicircle, he hopped to the little platform and said, “Well, friends, I came here to look and listen, not to talk. But I do want to thank every one of you for putting up with the nonsense they make you go through to have me around. I’m sorry about that. It isn’t my idea. They just tell me it’s necessary, as long as there are so many wacks around. And as long as the enemies of the Free World are what they are, and we’re the kind of open, trusting people we are.” He grinned directly at Dorrie. “Tell me, did they make you soak your fingernails before they let you in?”