The Wonder Effect Read Online Free Page B

being late.
    They rose when President Braden came in. As usual, he protested in his pleasant adopted border-South accent: “Please, ladies, please, gentlemen, don’t bother-“ So they sat down and smiled, and waited while Braden arranged some papers on his desk. He always did that. He never referred to them during the session, because he didn’t have to, but every week there was the minute or two of silence in the room while the President, his rimless glasses gleaming studiously, pursed his lips over the documents in their red, blue and cream-colored folders.
    He looked up and beamed.
    Unobtrusive camera-eyes mounted flush with the walls of the conference room began to record. The elephantine Giuseppe von Bortoski, N.B.C. Washington bureau chief, incomparably senior correspondent, was privileged to lead off. He did: “Good morning, Mr. President. Do you have a statement for us today?”
    “Nothing prepared, Joseph. It’s been a quiet week, hasn’t it?”
    Von Bortoski said solemnly, “Not for Craffany,” and everybody roared. Von Bortoski waited out his laugh and said: “But seriously, Mr. President, is there any comment on the radar picket situation?”
    The President paused, then looked faintly surprised. “I didn’t know there was a ‘situation,’ Joseph. Our radar picket vessels off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts have been pulled in approximately two hundred miles. They all have the new microradar; they don’t have to be so far out. This gives us a gratifying economy, since the closer we can pull them in the fewer ships we need to stick out there on picket duty. Is that what you wanted to know, Joseph?”
    “No, Mr. President. I was referring to Representative Simpson’s telecast yesterday. He alleged that the new radars haven’t been adequately field-tested. Said the move was premature and, well, dangerous.”
    The President paused, then looked faintly angry. “I seem to recall that Illinois Simpson. A Democrat.” Everybody nodded. “I am surprised that you are taking up our time, Joseph, with the wild charges that emanate with monotonous regularity from the Party of Treason.” Everyone looked at the stout N.B.C. man with annoyance. The President turned toward a young lady correspondent, paused, and said, “Miss Banner-man, do you have a question?”
    She did. What about the Civilian Shelters Bill?
    The President paused, grinned and said, “I’m for it.” He got a small laugh.
    “I mean, Mr. President, what is its status now? As the leader of your Party, is it going to go through?”
    The President paused longer than usual. Everyone in the room knew what he was waiting for, though it was a convention of the Press Conference to pretend he was answering off the cuff. At last the other end of the transprompter circuit got its signals cleared and the President said levelly: “As the leader of my Party, Miss Bannerman, I can say this thing is being hammered out. Slower than some of us would wish, true. But it will be done. It is the platform of my Party; on that platform I was elected in ‘98; and I have not the reputation of going back on my pledges.” He inclined his head to an approving stir among the correspondents.
    Von Bortoski made a mental calculation. He decided that the press conference had supplied enough matter for his upcoming newscast and to hell with the rest of them. “Thank you, Mr. President,” he said. The other reporters swore under their breaths once more at the tyranny of the senior-correspondent rule, the President rose smiling and the armed guards stepped away from the doors.
    C.S.B., C.S.B., the President mediated. Someday he would have to ask a question himself and find out just what this C.S.B. was all about. No doubt the R & I desk that fed him answers or speeches via the transprompter could tell him. He promised himself he would get around to it first thing, say, Monday. Or wait, wasn’t Monday the first All-Star game?
    A swift conveyor belt whisked him from the