I heard the dials tick in the stillness, and Mike whispered again. I said, “The lights should be off.” The bailiff rose. “Will you please watch the left wall, or in that direction? I think that if Justice Kassel will turn a little … we are ready.”
Bronson looked at me, and at the left wall. “Ready.”
The lights flicked out overhead and I heard the television crews mutter. I touched Mike on the shoulder. “Show them, Mike!”
We’re all showmen at heart, and Mike is no exception. Suddenly out of nowhere and into the depths poured a frozen torrent. Niagara Falls. I’ve mentioned, I think, that I’ve never got over my fear of heights. Few people ever do. I heard long, shuddery gasps as we started straight down. Down, until we stopped at the brink of the silent cataract, weird on its frozen majesty. Mike had stopped time at exactly eleven, I knew. He shifted to the American bank. Slowly he moved along. There were a few tourists standing in almost comic attitudes. There was snow on the ground, flakes in the air. Time stood still, and hearts slowed in sympathy.
Bronson snapped, “Stop!”
A couple, young. Long skirts, high-buttoned army collar, dragging army overcoat, facing, arms about each other. Mike’s sleeve rustled in the darkness and they moved. She was sobbing and the soldier was smiling. She turned away her head, and he turned it back. Another couple seized them gaily, and they twirled breathlessly.
Bronson’s voice was harsh. “That’s enough!” The view blurred for seconds.
Washington. The White House. The President. Someone coughed like a small explosion. The President was watching a television screen. He jerked erect suddenly, startled. Mike spoke for the first time in court.
“That is the President of the United States. He is watching the trial that is being broadcast and televised from this courtroom. He is listening to what I am saying right now, and he is watching, in his television screen, as I use my machine to show him what he was doing one second ago.”
The President heard those fateful words. Stiffly he threw an unconscious glance around his room at nothing and looked back at his screen in time to see himself do what he just had done, one second ago. Slowly, as if against his will, his hand started toward the switch of his set.