Read Online Our Children's Children by Clifford D. Simak - Free Book Online Page A

homeless and bewildered, unsure of their welcome, perhaps wondering if they would be fed and where they might lay their heads this night, but even as she tried, she could not rebuke herself.

17
    â€œTerry,” said the President, speaking into the phone, “this is Sam Henderson.”
    â€œHow good of you to call, Mr. President,” said Terrance Roberts, on the other end. “What can I do for you?”
    The President chuckled. “You maybe could do a lot for me. I don’t know if you would. You’ve heard what’s happening?”
    â€œStrange things,” said the labor leader. “A lot of speculation. Are you folks in Washington making any sense of it?”
    â€œSome,” said the President. “It would seem the people are really from the future. They’re facing catastrophe up there and the only way they could escape was to run back into time. We haven’t got the full story yet.…”
    â€œBut, Mr. President, time travel?”
    â€œI know. It doesn’t sound possible. I haven’t talked to any of our physicists, although I intend to do so, and I suspect they’ll tell me it’s impossible. But one of the people who came through a time tunnel swears to us it is. If there was any other way to explain it, I’d be more skeptical than I am. But I’m forced by circumstances to accept the idea, at least provisionally.”
    â€œYou mean all of them from up ahead are coming back? How many of them are there?”
    â€œA couple of billion or so, I guess.”
    â€œBut, Mr. President, how will we take care of them?”
    â€œWell, that’s really, Terry, what I wanted to talk with you about. It seems they don’t intend to stay here. They mean to go farther back in time—some twenty million years farther back in time. But they need help to do it. They need new time tunnels built and they’ll need equipment to take back with them.…”
    â€œWe can’t build time tunnels.”
    â€œThey can show us how.”
    â€œIt would cost a lot. Both in manpower and materials. Can they pay for it?”
    â€œI don’t know. I never thought to ask. I don’t suppose they can. But it seems to me we have to do it. We can’t let them stay on here. We have too many people as it is.”
    â€œSomehow, Mr. President,” said Terrance Roberts, “I can sense what you want to ask me.”
    The President laughed. “Not only you, Terry. The industrialists as well—everyone, in fact, but I have to know beforehand what kind of cooperation I can expect. I wonder if you’d mind coming down here so a few of us can talk about it.”
    â€œCertainly, I could come down. Just let me know when you want me. Although I’m not just sure how much I can do for you. Let me ask around some, talk to some of the other boys. Exactly what do you have in mind?”
    â€œI’m not entirely sure. That’s something I’ll need some help in working out. On the face of it, we can’t do the kind of job that’s called for under existing circumstances. The government can’t assume alone the kind of costs that would be involved—I’m not thinking just of the tunnels. I have no idea so far what they would involve. But we would need to furnish the resources for an entire new civilization to start over once again and that would cost a lot of money. The taxpaying public would never stand for it. So we’ll have to turn elsewhere for some help. Labor will have to help us, industry will have to help. We’re facing a national emergency and it calls for some extraordinary measures. I don’t even know how long we can feed all these people and.…”
    â€œIt’s not only us,” said Roberts. “It’s the rest of the world as well.”
    â€œThat’s right. And they’ll have to take some action, too. If there were time, we could put together some sort of