Great Shakes

by Geoffrey A. Landis

Illustration by Dell Harris

The President of the United States was lying in the center of the orange shag rug of the oval office, surrounded by Sunday funnies. Every weekend he had the secret service deliver the comics pages from the 182 major newspapers of the United States. It took him a long time to get through them, but he worked at it diligently every Sunday, usually finishing before noon. Today he was early, so he started a crossword puzzle.

Across the room, the Secretary of State was reading the magazine sections. “Hey, Chief, listen to this.” The President looked up. “Says here that if everybody in the US stood on a chair and jumped off at the same time, it would create an earthquake that would destroy everything on the other side of the world. Can you imagine that?”

“Hmmm,” said the President. “Do you know a four letter word for a woman, ending with ‘UNT’?”

“How about ‘Aunt’?”

“Aunt? Hey, that fits. Good.” The President took out his eraser. “So, that true? Could we get the Chinks like that?”

“Huh?”

The President looked up patiently. “Everybody jumping off chairs. What you just said.”

“Oh. Well, how should I know?”

“Hell, what do you think I pay you for? Go appoint a committee or something.”

“Yessir, Chief. Right away.”

The next day, the President was drinking coffee out of his favorite Flintstones collectible glass when the Secretary of State came in.

“Well, Chief, I got a bunch of domeheads on that problem you gave me. Five out of eight of them agree that, yes, sir, it would cause some kind of an earthquake. A little one, but an earthquake.”

“An earthquake? Here? What are you talking about?”

“In China. If everybody in America jumped off a chair at once. Remember?”

“Oh, yes. Right! Aunt. OK. Not a real bad earthquake, you say? Great, that’s great. Shake up a bunch of buildings, get rid of their nuclear weapons, but it wouldn’t kill a bunch of people.”

“But, sir? What do you have against the Chinese?”

The President looked at him in amazement. “What do we have against the Chinese?” He stressed the word “we” just enough for the Secretary of State to get the point. “Why, they’re communists, aren’t they? And communism is falling down all around the world. That makes them desperate, and there’s nothing more dangerous than a billion desperate commies. Besides, they kill whales, don’t they?”

The Secretary of State had thought that the Japanese were the ones who killed whales, but, then, he did sometimes get confused. That was why he wasn’t the President. And, hey, it was a way to get ordinary Americans involved in foreign policy. Maybe the President didn’t have much of a head for diplomacy, but he sure knew what the common people would go for.

It was like the Fourth of July. Everybody was out in front of their houses, listening to the count-down on the radio. A lot of the families had brought flags. Ted Hoskins looked around to find his kids, who were off chasing after the neighbor’s dog. “Teddy! Alice! Come on in, kids. It’s almost time!” He helped Betsy up on her stool and looked at his watch. Thirty seconds. The kids ran back and clambered up on their stools. “Now, kids, be sure that you don’t go early, now. Everybody at once, and not until the President says go.” Ted himself was going to jump off a stepladder. Nobody would say that Teddy wasn’t willing to go the extra distance for his country. He was wearing his old Navy uniform, which he’d had cleaned and pressed specially for the occasion. Ted wasn’t actually quite sure how it was supposed to work—seismic waves, the man on the television had said—but the President had personally gone on the television—all fifty-three channels, even MTV—and asked every American to help him. There was no way that Ted Hoskins’s family was going to turn down a personal request from the President himself. Those wussy-legs in Commyfomia could go ahead and protest until their throats were sore, but his family was going to do their share, and then some.

Across the street, Bert Williams had a grill out. He was standing on his chair, occasionally bending over to flip the hamburgers. “Hey, Ted! Come on over after the jump and have some burgers.”

“Aw, Dad, can we? Huh?”

“Well, all right. But only if you all jump right on schedule, now.” He turned the radio up. “Here comes the count. Three, two, one, now!”

And afterwards they had a grand old time, with burgers and com and blueberry pie that old Mrs. Donahue down the street brought. It was a perfect evening.

Two hours later, the President was still feeling the glow from having successfully grappled with foreign policy issues. He wondered what the papers would say this time. No more calling him an intellectual lightweight, he’d bet, no sir. Maybe he could take the afternoon off and play golf. There was a new course out in Georgetown that had some good holes. He especially liked the one where you had to putt the ball through the windmill, and there was another hole with a perfect replica of the White House.

“Trouble, Chief.”

“Huh?” he said, annoyed at the Secretary of State for the interruption. “What now?”

“Looks like the commies figured out what we were doing…”

“So? What could they do?”

“You know that old central communist committee? Well, they ordered everybody in China to go out and stand next to a chair with a radio turned on. When the radio gave the order, all the Chinese, what they did was, they all jumped up on a chair at the same time at once. What this did, see, was to take the seismic wave we sent over and cancel it out.”

“Dam it all! They weren’t supposed to do that. I guess we should keep it more secret next time, huh?”

“It’s worse than that, Chief. You see, what they did, didn’t exactly cancel the seismic wave, not exactly. You see, they got almost 100 percent participation. Here in the good old U.S., we only got about 70 percent.”

“It was those dam liberal pansies,” the President said.

“And then, there are four Chinese for every American, so they actually canceled the wave out, and then some. It’s more like it reflected the wave back, and twice as strong as before. If it was going to cause earthquakes over there, it’s going to do twice as much damage now that it gets back here. And we have taller buildings here.”

“That’s bad?”

“Yes. Bad.”

“This was all your idea,” the President said. “You solve it.”

“I think you’d better get on the television, Sir. Tell people not to put those chairs away. The domeheads have already started calculating when everybody should jump…”

“I’ve got some pretty angry calls for you, Chief.”

“Angry?” said the President, standing on his chair. “From who?”

“The President of Russia, the Prime Minister of Britain, you name it, they want to talk to you.”

“Don’t they know I’m busy?” He looked down from the chair. “Say, how soon before the next jump?”

“The fifth Chinese wave doesn’t get here for another hour, Sir.”

“Oh. So, how come all the stripey pants want to talk to me?”

“I had the domeheads explain it to me. It seems that there’s something called ‘defocusing.’ See, these seismic waves don’t just go exactly across to the opposite side of the world—-they kinda spread out, hit other countries.”

The President thought for a moment. “That’s bad?”

“Let’s just say, it doesn’t make us very popular right now.”

The President shrugged. “So, when is that news? What are they going to do about it?”

“Well, I’ll tell you what they’re going to do. In just about,” the Secretary of State looked at his watch, “three minutes, the Brits are going to stand up on their chairs, and then all jump off at once.”

“That’s bad?”

“Well, let’s say that it’s not exactly good.”

Ted Hoskins looked at the newspaper over his morning coffee. Looks like today there was going to be a jump scheduled for ten-fifteen in the morning, and another one just before dinner. The factory he worked at always let people out ten minutes before, so everybody could bring a chair and get ready. Everybody took it as a little break, a chance to do some socializing and catching up on gossip as well as getting in some exercise, while serving the country. The kids got a break from school. By gum, he thought, this is the way America should be, everybody pulling together to a common goal, every day.

“Say, Chief, look at this,” the Secretary of State said.

The President, finished with his comics and just starting the crossword, didn’t look up. “I thought we didn’t have to jump for another hour. You don’t have another idea, do you?” Last time the SOS interrupted him like this, just look what happened.

“No, no, you’ll like this,” the Secretary said. “The paper says that, since the jumping started, wars throughout the world have diminished. People are too busy jumping off their chairs to fight.”

“Really?” said the President. Boy, the press had really dragged him through the coals over that one.

“Really,” said the Secretary. “No more wars. Well, not as many.”

“Hey, how about that,” the President said. He brightened. “Say, you think I’ll get the Nobel peace prize?” “Probably not,” the Secretary said. “Those Swedes just don’t know a good thing when they see one.”

“Heck.” The President looked down at the crossword, wrote something in, and then frowned. “Say, what’s a five letter word for a woman you don’t want to meet, ends in ‘TCH’?”

The Secretary of State thought for a moment. “Maybe, a witch?”

The President reached for his eraser.

Content

Great Shakes
by Geoffrey A. Landis