
13 Tales of Sheer Terror
Richard Matheson - SHOCK!
Table of Contents
It was just past three a.m. when Mr Ketchum drove past the sign that read Zachry: pop. 67. He groaned. Another in an endless string of Maine seaside towns. He closed his eyes hard a second, then opened them again and pressed down on the accelerator. The Ford surged forward under him. Maybe, with luck, he'd reach a decent motel soon. It certainly wasn't likely there'd be one in Zachry: pop. 67.
Mr Ketchum shifted his heavy frame on the seat and stretched his legs. It had been a sour vacation. Motoring through New England's historic beauty, communing with nature and nostalgia was what he'd planned. Instead, he'd found only boredom, exhaustion and over-expense.
Mr Ketchum was not pleased.
The town seemed fast asleep as he drove along its Main Street. The only sound was that of the car's engine, the only sight that of his raised head beams splaying out ahead, lighting up another sign. Speed 15 Limit.
'Sure, sure,' he muttered disgustedly, pressing down on the gas pedal. Three o'clock in the morning and the town fathers expected him to creep through their lousy hamlet. Mr Ketchum watched the dark buildings rush past his window.
Goodbye Zachry, he thought. Farewell, pop. 67.
Then the other car appeared in the rear-view mirror. About half a block behind, a sedan with a turning red spotlight on its roof. He knew what kind of car it was. His foot curled off the accelerator and he felt his heartbeat quicken. Was it possible they hadn't noticed how fast he was going?
The question was answered as the dark car pulled up to the Ford and a man in a big hat leaned out of the front window. Pull over!' he barked.
Swallowing dryly, Mr Ketchum eased his car over to the kerb. He drew up the emergency brake, turned the ignition key and the car was still. The police car nosed in towards the kerb and stopped. The right front door opened.
The glare of Mr Ketchum's headlights outlined the dark figure approaching. He felt around quickly with his left foot and stamped down on the knob, dimming the lights. He swallowed again. Damned nuisance this. Three a.m. in the middle of nowhere and a hick policeman picks him up for speeding. Mr Ketchum gritted his teeth and waited.
The man in the dark uniform and wide-brimmed hat leaned over into the window. 'Licence.'
Mr Ketchum slid a shaking hand into his inside pocket and drew out his billfold. He felt around for his licence. He handed it over, noticed how expressionless the face of the policeman was. He sat there quietly while the policeman held a flashlight beam on the licence.
'From New Jersey.'
'Yes, that... that's right,' said Mr Ketchum.
The policeman kept staring at the licence. Mr Ketchum stirred restlessly on the seat and pressed his lips together. 'It hasn't expired,' he finally said.
He saw the dark head of the policeman lift. Then, he gasped as the narrow circle of flashlight blinded him. He twisted his head away.
The light was gone. Mr Ketchum blinked his watering eyes.
'Don't they read traffic signs in New Jersey?' the policeman asked.
'Why, I... You mean the sign that said p-population sixty-seven?'
'No, 1 don't mean that sign,' said the policeman.
'Oh.' Mr Ketchum cleared his throat. 'Well, that's the only sign I saw,' he said.
'You're a bad driver then.'
'Well, I'm-'
'The sign said the speed limit is fifteen miles an hour. You were doing fifty.'
'Oh. I... I'm afraid I didn't see it.'
'The speed limit is fifteen miles an hour whether you see it or not.'
'Well... at -- at this hour of the morning?'
'Did you see a timetable on the sign?' the policeman asked.
'No, of course not. I mean, I didn't see the sign at all,'
'Didn't you?'
Mr Ketchum felt hair prickling along the nape of his neck. 'Now, now see here,' he began faintly, then stopped and stared at the policeman. 'May I have my licence back?' he finally asked when the policeman didn't speak.
The policeman said nothing. He stood on the street, motionless.
'May I -?' Mr Ketchum started.
'Follow our car,' said the officer abruptly and strode away.
Mr Ketchum stared at him, dumbfounded. Hey wait! he almost yelled. The officer hadn't even given him back his licence. Mr Ketchum felt a sudden coldness in his stomach.
'What is this?' he muttered as he watched the policeman getting back into his car. The police car pulled away from the kerb, its roof light spinning again.
Mr Ketchum followed.
'This is ridiculous,' he said aloud. They had no right to do this. Was this the Middle Ages? His thick lips pressed into a jaded mouth line as he followed the police car along Main Street.
Two blocks up, the police car turned. Mr Ketchum saw his headlights splash across a glass store front. Hand's Groceries read the weather-worn letters.
There were no lamps on the street. It was like driving along an inky passage. Ahead were only the three red eyes of the police car's rear lights and spotlight; behind only impenetrable blackness. The end of a perfect day, thought Mr Ketchum; picked up for speeding in Zachry, Maine. He shook his head and groaned. Why hadn't he just spent his vacation in Newark; slept late, gone to shows, eaten, watched television?
The police car turned right at the next corner, then, a block up, turned left again and stopped. Mr Ketchum pulled up behind it as its lights went out. There was no sense in this. This was only cheap melodrama. They could just as easily have fined him on Main Street. It was the rustic mind. Debasing someone from a big city gave them a sense of vengeful eminence.
Mr Ketchum waited. Well, he wasn't going to haggle. He'd pay his fine without a word and depart. He jerked up the hand brake. Suddenly he frowned, realising that they could fine him anything they wanted. They could charge him $500 if they chose! The heavy man had heard stories about small town police, about the absolute authority they wielded. He cleared his throat viscidly. Well, this is absurd, he thought. What foolish imagination.
The policeman opened the door.
'Get out,' he said.
There was no light in the street or in any building. Mr Ketchum swallowed. All he could really see was the black figure of the policeman.
'Is this the -- station?' he asked.
Turn out your lights and come on,' said the policeman.
Mr Ketchum pushed in the chrome knob and got out. The policeman slammed the door. It made a loud, echoing noise-as if they were inside an unlighted warehouse instead of on a street. Mr Ketchum glanced upward. The illusion was complete. There were neither stars nor moon. Sky and earth ran together blackly.
The policeman's hard fingers clamped on his arm. Mr Ketchum lost balance a moment, then caught himself and fell into a quick stride beside the tall figure of the policeman.
'Dark here,' he heard himself saying in a voice not entirely familiar.
The policeman said nothing. The other policeman fell into step on the other side of him. Mr Ketchum told himself: These damned hick-town Nazis were doing their best to intimidate him. Well they wouldn't succeed.
Mr Ketchum sucked in a breath of the damp, sea-smelling air and let it shudder out. A crumby town of 67 and they have two policemen patrolling the streets at three in the morning. Ridiculous.
He almost tripped over the step when they reached it. The policeman on his left side caught him under the elbow.
'Thank you,' Mr Ketchum muttered automatically. The policeman didn't reply. Mr Ketchum licked his lips. Cordial oaf, he thought and managed a fleeting smile to himself. There, that was better. No point in letting this get to him.
He blinked as the door was pulled open and, despite himself, felt a sigh of relief filtering through him. It was a police station all right. There was the podiumed desk, there a bulletin board, there a black, pot-bellied stove unlit, there a scarred bench against the wall, there a door, there the floor covered with cracked and grimy linoleum that had once been green.
'Sit down and wait,' said the first policeman.
Mr Ketchum looked at his lean, angled face, his swarthy skin. There was no division in his eyes between iris and pupil. It was all one darkness. He wore a dark uniform that fitted him loosely.
Mr Ketchum didn't get to see the other policeman because both of them went into the next room. He stood watching the closed door a moment. Should he leave, drive away? No, they'd have his address on the licence. Then again, they might actually want him to attempt to leave. You never knew what sort of warped minds these small-town police had. They might even -- shoot him down if he tried to leave.
Mr Ketchum sat heavily on the bench. No, he was letting imagination run amuck. This was merely a small town on the Maine seacoast and they were merely going to fine him for-
Well, why didn't they fine him then? What was all this play-acting? The heavy man pressed his lips together. Very well, let them play it the way they chose. This was better than driving anyway. He closed his eyes. I'll just rest them, he thought.
After a few moments he opened them again. It was damned quiet. He looked around the dimly lit room. The walls were dirty and bare except for a clock and one picture that hung behind the desk. It was a painting -- more likely a reproduction -- of a bearded man. The hat he wore was a seaman's hat. Probably one of Zachry's ancient mariners. No; probably not even that. Probably a Sears Roebuck print: Bearded Seaman.
Mr Ketchum grunted to himself. Why a police station should have such a print was beyond him. Except, of course, that Zachry was on the Atlantic. Probably its main source of income was from fishing. Anyway, what did it matter? Mr Ketchum lowered his gaze.
In the next room he could hear the muffled voices of the two policemen. He tried to hear what they were saying but he couldn't. He glared at the closed door. Come on, will you? he thought. He looked at the clock again. Three twenty-two. He checked it with his wrist watch. About right. The door opened and the two policemen came out.
One of them left. The remaining one -- the one who had taken Mr Ketchum's licence -- went over to the raised desk and switched on the gooseneck lamp over it, drew a big ledger out of the top drawer and started writing in it. At last, thought Mr Ketchum.
A minute passed.
'I -' Mr Ketchum cleared his throat. 'I beg your -'
His voice broke off as the cold gaze of the policeman raised from the ledger and fixed on him.
'Are you... That is, am I to be -- fined now?'
The policeman looked back at the ledger. 'Wait,' he said.
'But it's past three in the mor -- ' Mr Ketchum caught himself. He tried to look coldly belligerent. 'Very well/ he said curtly. 'Would you kindly tell me how long it will be?'
The policeman kept writing in the ledger. Mr Ketchum sat there stiffly, looking at him. Insufferable, he thought. This was the last damned time he'd ever go within a hundred miles of this damned New England.
The policeman looked up. 'Married?' he asked.
Mr Ketchum stared at him.
'Are you married?'
'No, I -- it's on the licence,' Mr Ketchum blurted. He felt a tremor of pleasure at his retort and, at the same time, an impaling of strange dread at talking back to the man.
'Family in Jersey?' asked the policeman.
'Yes. I mean no, Just a sister in Wiscons -'
Mr Ketchum didn't finish. He watched the policeman write it down. He wished he could rid himself of this queasy distress.
'Employed?' asked the policeman.
Mr Ketchum swallowed. 'Well,' he said, 'I -1 have no one particular em -'
'Unemployed,' said the policeman.
'Not at all; not at all,' said Mr Ketchum stiffly. I'm a -- a freelance salesman. I purchase stocks and lots from...' His voice faded as the policeman looked at him. Mr Ketchum swallowed three times before the lump stayed down. He realised that he was sitting on the very edge of the bench as if poised to spring to the defence of his life. He forced himself to settle back. He drew in a deep breath. Relax, he told himself. Deliberately, he closed his eyes. There. He'd catch a few Winks. May as well make the best of this, he thought.
The room was still except for the tinny, resonant ticking of the clock. Mr Ketchum felt his heart pulsing with slow, dragging beats. He shifted his heavy frame uncomfortably on the hard bench. Ridiculous, he thought.
Mr Ketchum opened his eyes and frowned. That damned picture. You could almost imagine that bearded seaman was looking at you.
'Uhr
Mr Ketchum's mouth snapped shut, his eyes jerked open, irises flaring. He started forward on the bench, then shrank back.
A swarthy-faced man was bent over him, hand on Mr Ketchum's shoulder.
'Yes?' Mr Ketchum asked, heart jolting.
The man smiled.
'Chief Shipley,' he said. 'Would you come into my office?'
'Oh,' said Mr Ketchum. 'Yes. Yes.'
He straightened up, grimacing at the stiffness in his back muscles. The man stepped back and Mr Ketchum pushed up with a grunt, his eyes moving automatically to the wall clock. It was a few minutes past four.
'Look,' he said, not yet awake enough to feel intimidated. 'Why can't I pay my fine and leave?'
Shipley's smile was without warmth.
'We run things a little different here in Zachry,' he said.
They entered a small musty-smelling office.
'Sit down,' said the chief, walking around the desk while Mr Ketchum settled into a straight-backed chair that creaked.
'I don't understand why I can't pay my fine and leave.'
'In due course,' said Shipley.
'But -' Mr Ketchum didn't finish. Shipley's smile gave the ' impression of being no more than a diplomatically veiled warning. Gritting his teeth, the heavy man cleared his throat and waited while the chief looked down at a sheet of paper on his desk. He noticed how poorly Shipley's suit fitted. Yokels, the heavy man thought, don't even know how to dress.
'1 see you're not married,' Shipley said.
Mr Ketchum said nothing. Give them a taste of their own no-talk medicine he decided.
'Have you friends in Maine?' Shipley asked.
'Why?'
'Just routine questions, Mr Ketchum,' said the chief. Tour only family is a sister in Wisconsin?'
Mr Ketchum looked at him without speaking. What had all this to do with a traffic violation?
'Sir?' asked Shipley.
'I already told you; that is, I told the officer. I don't see -'
'Here on business?'
Mr Ketchum's mouth opened soundlessly.
'Why are you asking me all these questions?' he asked. Stop shaking! he ordered himself furiously.
'Routine. Are you here on business?'
'I'm on my vacation. And I don't see this at all! I've been patient up to now but, blast it, I demand to be fined and released!'
'I'm afraid that's impossible,' said the chief.
Mr Ketchum's mouth fell open. It was like waking up from a nightmare and discovering that the dream was still going on. 'I -1 don't understand,' he said.
'You'll have to appear before the judge.'
'But that's ridiculous.'
'Is it?'
'Yes, it is. I'm a citizen of the United States. I demand my rights.'
Chief Shipley's smile faded.
'You limited those rights when you broke our law,' he said. 'Now you have to pay for it as we declare.'
Mr Ketchum stared blankly at the man. He realised that he was completely in their hands. They could fine him anything they pleased or put him in jail indefinitely. All these questions he'd been asked; he didn't know why they'd asked them but he knew that his answers revealed him as almost rootless, with no one who cared if he lived or --
The room seemed to totter. Sweat broke out on his body.
'You can't do this,' he said; but it was not an argument.
'You'll have to spend the night in jail,' said the chief. 'In the morning you'll see the judge.'
'But this is ridiculous!' Mr Ketchum burst out. 'Ridiculous!'
He caught himself. 'I'm entitled to one phone call,' he said quickly. 'I can make a telephone call. It's my legal right,'
'It would be,' said Shipley, 'if there was any telephone service in Zachry.'
When they took him to his cell, Mr Ketchum saw a painting in the hall. It was of the same bearded seaman. Mr Ketchum didn't notice if the eyes followed him or not.
Mr Ketchum stirred. A look of confusion lined his sleep-numbed face. There was a clanking sound behind him; he reared up on his elbow.
A policeman came into the cell and set down a covered tray.
'Breakfast,' he said. He was older than the other policemen, even older than Shipley. His hair was iron-grey, his cleanly shaved faced seamed around the mouth and eyes. His uniform fitted him badly.
As the policeman started relocking the door, Mr Ketchum asked, 'When do I see the judge?'
The policeman looked at him a moment. 'Don't know/ he said and turned away.
'Wait!' Mr Ketchum called out.
The receding footsteps of the policeman sounded hollowly on the cement floor. Mr Ketchum kept staring at the spot where the policeman had been. Veils of sleep peeled from his mind.
He sat up, rubbed deadened fingers over his eyes and held up his wrist. Seven minutes past nine. The heavy man grimaced. By God, they were going to hear about this! His nostrils twitched. He sniffed, started to reach for the tray; then pulled back his hand.
'No,' he muttered. He wouldn't eat their damned food. He sat there stiffly, doubled at the waist, glaring at his sock-covered feet.
His stomach grumbled uncooperatively.
'Well,' he muttered after a minute. Swallowing, he reached over and lifted off the tray cover.
He couldn't check the oh of surprise that passed his lips.
The three eggs were fried in butter, bright yellow eyes focused straight on the ceiling, ringed about with long, crisp lengths of meaty, corrugated bacon. Next to them was a platter of four book-thick slices of toast spread with creamy butter swirls, a paper cup of jelly leaning on them. There was a tall glass of frothy orange juice, a dish of strawberries bleeding in alabaster cream. Finally a tall pot from which wavered the pungent and unmistakable fragrance of freshly brewed coffee.
Mr Ketchum picked up the glass of orange juice. He took a few drops in his mouth and rolled them experimentally over his tongue. The citric acid tingled deliciously on his warm tongue. He swallowed. If it was poisoned it was by a master's hand. Saliva tided in his mouth. He suddenly remembered that, just before he was picked up, he'd been meaning to stop at a cafe for food.
While he ate, warily but decidedly, Mr Ketchum tried to figure out the motivation behind this magnificent breakfast.
It was the rural mind again. They regretted their blunder. It seemed a flimsy notion, but there it was. The food was superb. One thing you had to say for these New Englanders; they could cook like a son-of-a-gun. Breakfast for Mr Ketchum was usually a sweet roll, heated, and coffee. Since he was a boy in his father's house he hadn't eaten a breakfast like this.
He was just putting down his third cup of well-creamed coffee when footsteps sounded in the hall. Mr Ketchum smiled. Good timing, he thought. He stood.
Chief Shipley stopped outside the cell. 'Had your breakfast?'
Mr Ketchum nodded. If the chief expected thanks he was in for a sad surprise. Mr Ketchum picked up his coat.
The chief didn't move.
'Well ...?' said Mr Ketchum after a few minutes. He tried to put it coldly and authoritatively. It came out somewhat less.
Chief Shipley looked at him expressionlessly. Mr Ketchum felt his breath faltering.
'May I inquire -?' he began.
'Judge isn't in yet,' said Shipley.
'But...' Mr Ketchum didn't know what to say.
'Just came into tell you,' said Shipley. He turned and was gone.
Mr Ketchum was furious. He looked down at the remains of his breakfast as if they contained the answer to this situation. He drummed a fist against his thigh. Insufferable! What were they trying to do -- intimidate him? Well, by God-
--they were succeeding.
Mr Ketchum walked over to the bars. He looked up and down the empty hallway. There was a cold knot inside him. The food seemed to have turned to dry lead in his stomach. He banged the heel of his right hand once against the cold bar. By God! By God!
It was two o'clock in the afternoon when Chief Shipley and the old policeman came to the cell door. Wordlessly the policeman opened it. Mr Ketchum stepped into the hallway and waited again, putting on his coat while the door was relocked.
He walked in short, inflexible strides between the two men, not even glancing at the picture on the wall. 'Where are we going?' he asked.
'Judge is sick,' said Shipley. 'We're taking you out to his house to pay your fine.'
Mr Ketchum sucked in his breath. He wouldn't argue with them; he just wouldn't. 'All right,' he said. 'If that's the way you have to do it.'
'Only way to do it,' said the chief, looking ahead, his face an expressionless mask.
Mr Ketchum pressed down the corners of a slim smile. This was better. It was almost over now. He'd pay his fine and clear out.
It was foggy outside. Sea mist rolled across the street like driven smoke. Mr Ketchum pulled on his hat and shuddered. The damp air seemed to filter through his flesh and dew itself around his bones. Nasty day, he thought. He moved down the steps, eyes searching for his Ford.
The old policeman opened the back door of the police car and Shipley gestured towards the inside.
'What about my car?' Mr Ketchum asked.
'We'll come back here after you see the judge,' said Shipley.
'Oh. I...'
Mr Ketchum hesitated. Then he bent over and squeezed into the car, dropping down on the back seat. He shivered as the cold of the leather pierced trouser wool. He edged over as the chief got in.
The policeman slammed the door shut. Again that hollow sound, like the slamming of a coffin lid in a crypt. Mr Ketchum grimaced as the simile occurred to him.
The policeman got into the car and Mr Ketchum heard the motor cough into liquid life. He sat there breathing slowly and deeply while the policeman out-choked warmth into the engine. He looked out the window at his left.
The fog was just like smoke. They might have been parked in a burning garage. Except for that bone-gripping dampness. Mr Ketchum cleared his throat. He heard the chief shift on the seat beside him.
'Cold,' Mr Ketchum said, automatically.
The chief said nothing.
Mr Ketchum pressed back as the car pulled away from the kerb, V-turned and started slowly down the fog-veiled street. He listened to the crisp sibilance of the tyres on wet paving, the rhythmic swish of the wipers as they cleared off circle segments on the misted windshield.
After a moment he looked at his watch. Almost three. Half a day shot in this blasted Zachry.
He looked out through the window again as the town ghosted past. He thought he saw brick buildings along the kerb but he wasn't sure. He looked down at his white hands, then glanced over at Shipley. The chief was sitting stiffly upright on the seat, staring straight ahead. Mr Ketchum swallowed. The air seemed stagnant in his lungs.
On Main Street the fog seemed thinner. Probably the sea breezes, Mr Ketchum thought. He looked up and down the street. All the stores and offices looked closed. He glanced at the other side of the street. Same thing.
'Where is everybody?' he asked.
'What?'
'I said where is everybody?'
'Home,' the chief said.
'Rut it's Wednesday,' said Mr Ketchum. 'Aren't your -stores open?'
'Bad day,' said Shipley. 'Not worth it.'
Mr Ketchum glanced at the sallow faced chief, then withdrew his look hastily. He felt cold premonition spidering in his stomach again. What in God's name is this? he asked himself. It had been bad enough in the cell. Here, tracking through this sea of mist, it was altogether worse.
'That's right,' he heard his nerve-sparked voice saying. There are only sixty-seven people, aren't there?'
The chief said nothing.
'How... h-how old is Zachry?'
In the silence he heard the chiefs finger joints crackle dryly.
'Hundred fifty years,' said Shipley.
'That old,' said Mr Ketchum. He swallowed with effort. His throat hurt a little. Come on, he told himself. Relax.
'How come it's named Zachry?' The words spilled out, uncontrolled.
'Noah Zachry founded it,' said the chief.
'Oh. Oh. I see. I guess that picture in the station...?'
That's right,' said Shipley.
Mr Ketchum blinked. So that was Noah Zachry, founder of this town they were driving through --
--block after block after block. There was a cold, heavy sinking in Mr Ketchum's stomach as the idea came to him.
In a town so big, why were there only 67 people?
He opened his mouth to ask it, then couldn't. The answer might be wrong.
'Why are there only -?' The words came out anyway before he could stop them. His body jolted at the shock of hearing them.
'What?'
'Nothing, nothing. That is -- ' Mr Ketchum drew in a shaking breath. No help for it. He had to know.
'How come there are only sixty-seven?'
'They go away,' said Shipley.
Mr Ketchum blinked. The answer came as such an anticlimax. His brow furrowed. Well, what else? he asked himself defensively. Remote antiquated, Zachry would have little attraction for its younger generations. Mass gravitation to more interesting places would be inevitable.
The heavy man settled back against the seat. Of course. Think how much I want to leave the dump, he thought, and I don't even live here.
His gaze slid forward through the windshield, caught by something. A banner hanging across the street, barbecue tonight. Celebration, he thought. They probably went berserk every fortnight and had themselves a rip roaring taffy pull or fishnet-mending orgy.
'Who was Zachry anyway?' he asked. The silence was getting to him again.
'Sea captain,' said the chief.
'Oh?'
'Whaled in the South Seas,' said Shipley.
Abruptly, Main Street ended. The police car veered left on to a dirt road. Out the window Mr Ketchum watched shadowy bushes glide by. There was only the sound of the engine labouring in second and of gravelly dirt spitting out from under the tyres. Where does the judge live, on a mountain top? He shifted his weight and grunted.
The fog began thinning now. Mr Ketchum could see grass and trees, all with a greyish cast to them. The car turned and faced the ocean. Mr Ketchum looked down at the opaque carpet of fog below. The car kept turning. It faced the crest of the hill again.
Mr Ketchum coughed softly. 'Is... uh, that the judge's house up there?' he asked.
'Yes,' the chief answered.
'High,' said Mr Ketchum.
The car kept turning on the narrow, dirt road, now facing the ocean, now Zachry, now the bleak, hill-topping house. It was a greyish white house, three storeys high, at each end of it the crag of an attic tower. It looked as old as Zachry itself, thought Mr Ketchum. The car turned. He was facing the fog-crusted ocean again.
Mr Ketchum looked down at his hands. Was it a deception of the light or were they really shaking? He tried to swallow but there was no moisture in his throat and he coughed instead, rattlingly. This was so stupid, he thought; there's no reason in the world for this. He saw his hands clench together.
The car was moving up the final rise towards the house now. Mr Ketchum felt his breaths shortening. I don't want to go, he heard someone saying in his mind. He felt a sudden urge to shove out the door and run. Muscles tensed emphatically.
He closed his eyes. For God's sake, stop it! he yelled at himself. There was nothing wrong about this but his distorted interpretation of it. These were modern times. Things had explanations and people had reasons. Zachry's people had a reason too; a narrow distrust of city dwellers. This was their socially acceptable revenge. That made sense. After all --
The car stopped. The chief pushed open the door on his side and got out. The policeman reached back and opened the other door for Mr Ketchum. The heavy man found one of his legs and foot to be numb. He had to clutch at the top of the door for support. He stamped the foot on the ground.
'Went to sleep,' he said.
Neither of the men answered. Mr Ketchum glanced at the house; he squinted. He had seen a dark green drape slip back into place? He winced and made a startled noise as his arm was touched and the chief gestured towards the house. The three men started towards it.
'I, uh... don't have much cash on me, I'm afraid/ he said. 'I hope a traveller's check will be all right.'
'Yes,' said the chief.
They went up to the porch steps, stopped in front of the door. The policeman turned a big, brass key-head and Mr Ketchum heard a bell ring tinnily inside. He stood looking through the door curtains. Inside, he could make out the skeletal form of a hat rack. He shifted weight and the boards creaked under him. The policeman rang the bell again.
'Maybe he's -- too sick,' Mr Ketchum suggested faintly.
Neither of the men looked at him. Mr Ketchum felt his muscles tensing. He glanced back over his shoulder. Could they catch him if he ran for it?
He looked back disgustedly. You pay your fine and you leave, he explained patiently to himself. That's all; you pay your fine and you leave.
Inside the house there was dark movement. Mr Ketchum looked up, startled in spite of himself. A tall woman was approaching the door.
The door opened. The woman was thin, wearing an ankle-length black dress with a white oval pin at her throat. Her face was swarthy, seamed with threadlike lines. Mr Ketchum slipped off his hat automatically.
'Come in,' said the woman.
Mr Ketchum stepped into the hall.
'You can leave your hat there,' said the woman, pointing towards the hat rack that looked like a tree ravaged by flame. Mr Ketchum dropped his hat over one of the dark pegs. As he did, his eye was caught by a large painting near the foot of the staircase. He started to speak but the woman said, 'This way.'
They started down the hall. Mr Ketchum stared at the painting as they passed it.
'Who's that woman,' he asked, 'standing next to Zachry?'
'His wife,' said the chief.
'But she-'
Mr Ketchum's voice broke off suddenly as he heard a whimper rising in his throat. Shocked, he drowned it out with a sudden clearing of the throat. He felt ashamed of himself. Still... Zachry's wife?
The woman opened a door. 'Wait in here,' she said.
The heavy man walked in. He turned to say something to the chief. Just in time to see the door shut.
'Say, uh...' He walked to the door and put his hand on the knob. It didn't turn.
He frowned. He ignored the pile-driver beats of his heart. 'Hey, what's going on?' Cheerily bluff, his voice echoed off the walls. Mr Ketchum turned and looked around. The room was empty. It was a square empty room.
He turned back to the door, lips moving as he sought the proper words.
'Okay,' he said, abruptly, 'it's very -' He twisted the knob sharply. 'Okay, it's a very funny joke.' By God, he was mad. 'I've taken all I'm -'
He whirled at the sound, teeth bared.
There was nothing. The room was still empty. He looked around dizzily. What was that sound? A dull sound, like water rushing.
'Hey,' he said automatically. He turned to the door. 'Hey!' he yelled, 'cut it out! Who do you think you are anyway?'
He turned on weakening legs. The sound was louder. Mr Ketchum ran a hand over his brow. It was covered with sweat. It was warm in there.
'Okay, okay,' he said, 'it's a fine joke but -'
Before he could go on, his voice had corkscrewed into an awful, wracking sob. Mr Ketchum staggered a little. He stared at the room. He whirled and fell back against the door. His out flung hand touched the wall and jerked away.
It was hot.
'Huh?' he asked incredulously.
This was impossible. This was a joke. This was their deranged idea of a little joke. It was a game they played. Scare the City Slicker was the name of the game.
'Okay!' he yelled. 'Okay? It's funny, it's very funny! Now let me out of here or there's going to be trouble!'
He pounded at the door. Suddenly he kicked it. The room was getting hotter. It was almost as hot as an --
Mr Ketchum was petrified. His mouth sagged open.
The questions they'd asked him. The loose way the clothes fit everyone he'd met. The rich food they'd given him to eat. The empty streets. The savage like swarthy colouring of the men, of the woman. The way they'd all looked at him. And the woman in the painting, Noah Zachry's wife -- a native woman with her teeth filed to a point.
BARBECUE TONIGHT.
Mr Ketchum screamed. He kicked and pounded on the door. He threw his heavy body against it. He shrieked at the people outside.
'Let me out! Let me out! LET... ME... OUT!'
The worst part about it was, he just couldn't believe it was really happening.
'Where do they all come from?' Reordon asked.
'Everywhere,' said Carmack.
They were standing on the coast highway. As far as they could see there was nothing but cars. Thousands of cars were jammed bumper to bumper and pressed side to side. The highway was solid with them.
'There come some more,' said Carmack.
The two policemen looked at the crowd of people walking towards the beach. Many of them talked and laughed. Some of them were very quiet and serious. But they all walked towards the beach.
Reordon shook his head. 'I don't get it,' he said for the hundredth time that week. 'I just don't get it.'
Carmack shrugged.
'Don't think about it,' he said. 'It's happening. What else is there?'
'But it's crazy.'
'Well, there they go,' said Carmack.
As the two policemen watched, the crowd of people moved across the grey sands of the beach and walked into the water. Some of them started swimming. Most of them couldn't because of their clothes. Carmack saw a young woman flailing at the water and dragged down by the fur coat she was wearing.
In several minutes they were all gone. The two policemen stared at the place where the people had walked into the water.
'How long does it go on?' Reordon asked.
'Until they're gone, I guess,' said Carmack.
'But why?'
'You ever read about the Lemmings?' Carmack asked.
'No.'
'They're rodents who live in the Scandinavian countries. They keep breeding until all their food supply is gone. Then they move across the country, ravaging everything in their way. When they reach the sea they keep going. They swim until their strength is gone. Millions of them.'
'You think that's what this is?' asked Reordon.
'Maybe,' said Carmack.
'People aren't rodents!' Reordon said angrily.
Carmack didn't answer.
They stood on the edge of the highway waiting but nobody appeared.
'Where are they?' asked Reordon.
'Maybe they've all gone in,' Carmack said.
'All'of them?'
'It's been going on for more than a week,' Carmack said. 'People could have gotten here from all over. Then there are the lakes.'
Reordon shuddered. 'All of them,' he said.
'I don't know,' said Carmack, 'but they've been coming right along until now.'
'Oh, God,' said Reordon.
Carmack took out a cigarette and lit it. 'Well,' he said, 'what now?'
Reordon sighed. 'Us?' he said.
'You go,' Carmack said. 'I'll wait a while and see if there's anyone else.'
'All right.' Reordon put his hand out. 'Goodbye, Carmack,' he said.
They shook hands. 'Goodbye, Reordon,' Carmack said.
He stood smoking his cigarette and watching his friend walk across the grey sand of the beach and into the water until it was over his head. He saw Reordon swim a dozen yards before he disappeared.
After a while he put out his cigarette and looked around. Then he walked into the water too.
A million cars stood empty along the beach.
'... Then spare me your slanders, and read this rather at night than in the daytime, and give it not to young maidens, if there be any ... But I fear nothing for this book, since it is extracted from a high and splendid source, from which all that has issued has had a great success
--Balzac: Contes Drolatiques, Prologue
It was the one Uncle Lyman told in the summer house that did it. Talbert was just coming up the path when he heard the punch line: ' "My God!" cried the actress, "I thought you said sarsaparilla!" '
Guffaws exploded in the little house. Talbert stood motionless, looking through the rose trellis at the laughing guests. Inside his contour sandals his toes flexed ruminatively. He thought.
Later he took a walk around Lake Bean and watched the crystal surf fold over and observed the gliding swans and stared at the goldfish and thought.
'I've been thinking,' he said that night.
'No,' said Uncle Lyman, haplessly. He did not commit himself further. He waited for the blow.
Which fell.
'Dirty jokes,' said Talbert Bean III.
'I beg your pardon?' said Uncle Lyman.
'Endless tides of them covering the nation,'
'I fail,' said Uncle Lyman, 'to grasp the point.' Apprehension gripped his voice.
'I find the subject fraught with witchery,' said Talbert.
'With-?'
'Consider,' said Talbert. 'Every day, all through our land, men tell off-colour jokes; in bars and at ball games; in theatre lobbies and at places of business; on street corners and in locker rooms. At home and away, a veritable deluge of jokes.'
Talbert paused meaningfully.
'Who makes them up?' he asked.
Uncle Lyman stared at his nephew with the look of a fisherman who has just hooked a sea serpent -- half awe, half revulsion.
I'm afraid -' he began.
'I want to know the source of these jokes,' said Talbert. 'Their genesis; their fountainhead,'
'Why?' asked Uncle Lyman. Weakly.
'Because it is relevant,' said Talbert. 'Because these jokes are a part of a culture heretofore unplumbed. Because they are an anomaly; a phenomenon ubiquitous yet unknown.'
Uncle Lyman did not speak. His pallid hands curled limply on his half-read Wall Street Journal Behind the polished octagons of his glasses his eyes were suspended berries.
At last he sighed.
'And what part,' he inquired sadly, 'am I to play in this quest?'
'We must begin,' said Talbert, 'with the joke you told in the summer house this afternoon. Where did you hear it?'
'Kulpritt,' Uncle Lyman said. Andrew Kulpritt was one of the battery of lawyers employed by Bean Enterprises.
'Capital,' said Talbert. 'Call him up and ask him where he heard it.
Uncle Lyman drew the silver watch from his pocket.
'It's nearly midnight, Talbert,' he announced.
Talbert waved away chronology.
'Now,' he said. 'This is important.'
Uncle Lyman examined his nephew a moment longer. Then, with a capitulating sigh, he reached for one of Bean Mansion's thirty-five telephones.
Talbert stood toe-flexed on a bearskin rug while Uncle Lyman dialled, waited and spoke.
'Kulpritt?' said Uncle Lyman. 'Lyman Bean. Sorry to wake you up but Talbert wants to know where you heard the joke about the actress who thought the director said sarsaparilla.'
Uncle Lyman listened. 'I said -' he began again.
A minute later he cradled the receiver heavily.
Prentiss,' he said.
'Call him up,' said Talbert.
'Talbert; Uncle Lyman asked.
'Now,' said Talbert.
A long breath exuded between Uncle Lyman's lips. Carefully, he folded his Wall Street Journal. He reached across the mahogany table and tamped out his ten-inch cigar. Sliding a weary hand beneath his smoking jacket, he withdrew his tooled leather address book.
Prentiss heard it from George Sharper, C.P.A. Sharper heard it from Abner Ackerman, M.D. Ackerman heard it from William Cozener, Prune Products. Cozener heard it from Rod Tassell, Mgr, Cyprian Club. Tassell heard it from O. Winterbottom.
Winterbottom heard it from H. Alberts. Alberts heard it from D. Silver, Silver from B. Phryne, Phryne from E. Kennelly.
By an odd twist Kennelly said he heard it from Uncle Lyman.
There is a complicity here,' said Talbert. These jokes are not self-generative.'
It was four a.m. Uncle Lyman slumped, inert and dead-eyed, on his chair.
There has to be a source,' said Talbert.
Uncle Lyman remained motionless.
'You're not interested,' said Talbert incredulously.
Uncle Lyman made a noise.
'I don't understand,' said Talbert. 'Here is a situation pregnant with divers fascinations. Is there a man or woman who has never heard an off-colour joke? I say not. Yet, is there a man or woman who knows where these jokes come from? Again I say not.'
Talbert strode forcefully to his place of musing at the twelve foot fireplace. He poised there, staring in.
'I may be a millionaire,' he said, 'but I am sensitive.' He turned. 'And this phenomenon excites me.'
Uncle Lyman attempted to Sleep while retaining the face of a man awake.
'I have always had more money than I needed,' said Talbert. 'Capital investment was unnecessary. Thus I turned to investing the other asset my father left -- my brain.'
Uncle Lyman stirred; a thought shook loose.
'What ever happened,' he asked, 'to that society of yours, the S.P.CS.P.C.A.?'
'Eh? The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals? The past.'
'And your interest in world problems. What about that sociological treatise you were writing
'Slums: a Positive View, you mean?' Talbert brushed it aside. 'Inconsequence.'
'And isn't there anything left of your political party, the Pro-antidisestablishmentarianists?'
'Not a shred. Scuttled by reactionaries from within.'
'What about Bimetallism?'
'Oh, that!' Talbert smiled ruefully. 'Passe, dear Uncle. I had been reading too many Victorian novels.'
'Speaking of novels, what about your literary criticisms? Nothing doing with The Use of the Semicolon in Jane Austen? or Horatio Alger: the Misunderstood Satirist? To say nothing of Was Queen Elizabeth Shakespeare?'
'Was Shakespeare Queen Elizabeth,' corrected Talbert. 'No, Uncle, nothing doing with them. They had momentary interest, nothing more
'I suppose the same holds true for The Shoe Horn: Pro and Con, eh? And those scientific articles -- Relativity Re-Examined and Is Evolution Enough?'
'Dead and gone,' said Talbert, patiently, 'dead and gone. These projects needed me once. Now I go on to better things.
'Like who writes dirty jokes,' said Uncle Lyman.
Talbert nodded.
'Like that,' he said.
When the butler set the breakfast tray on the bed Talbert said, 'Redfield, do you know any jokes?'
Redfield looked out impassively through the face an improvident nature had neglected to animate.
'Jokes, sir?' he inquired.
'You know,' said Talbert. 'Jollities.'
Redfield stood by the bed like a corpse whose casket had been upended and removed.
'Well, sir,' he said, a full thirty seconds later, 'once, when I was a boy I heard one
'Yes?' said Talbert eagerly.
I believe it went somewhat as follows,' Redfield said. 'When -- uh -- When is a portmanteau not a -'
'No, no,' said Talbert, shaking his head. 'I mean dirty jokes.'
Redfield's eyebrows soared. The vernacular was like a fish in his face.
'You don't know any?' said a disappointed Talbert.
'Begging your pardon, sir,' said Redfield. 'If I may make a suggestion. May 1 say that the chauffeur is more likely to -'
'You know any dirty jokes, Harrison?' Talbert asked through the tube as the Rolls Royce purred along Bean Road towards Highway 27.
Harrison looked blank for a moment. He glanced back at Talbert. Then a grin wrinkled his carnal jowls.
'Well, sir,' he began, 'there's this guy sittin' by the runway eatin' an onion, see?'
Talbert undipped his four-colour pencil.
Talbert stood in an elevator rising to the tenth floor of the Gault Building.
The hour ride to New York had been most illuminating. Not only had he transcribed seven of the most horrendously vulgar jokes he had ever heard in his life but had extracted a promise from Harrison to take him to the various establishments where these jokes had been heard.
The hunt was on.
Max Axe,' detective agency read the words on the frosty-glassed door. Talbert turned the knob and went in.
Announced by the beautiful receptionist, Talbert was ushered into a sparsely furnished office on whose walls were a hunting licence, a machine gun, and framed photographs of the Seagram factory, the St Valentine's. Day Massacre in colour and Herbert J. Philbrick who had led three lives.
Mr Axe shook Talbert's hand.
'What could I do for ya?' he asked.
'First of all,' said Talbert, 'do you know any dirty jokes?'
Recovering, Mr Axe told Talbert the one about the monkey and the elephant.
Talbert jotted it down. Then he hired the agency to investigate the men Uncle Lyman had phoned and uncover anything that was meaningful.
After he left the agency, Talbert began making the rounds with Harrison. He heard a joke the first place they went.
There's this midget in a frankfurter suit, see?' it began.
It was a day of buoyant discovery. Talbert heard the joke about the cross-eyed plumber in the harem, the one about the preacher who won an eel at a raffle, the one about the fighter pilot who went down in flames and the one about the two Girl Scouts who lost their cookies in the Laundromat.
Among others.
'I want,' said Talbert, 'one round-trip aeroplane ticket to San Francisco and a reservation at the Hotel Millard Filmore.'
'May I ask,' asked Uncle Lyman, 'why?'
'While making the rounds with Harrison today,' explained Talbert, 'a salesman of ladies' undergarments told me that a veritable cornucopia of off-colour jokes exists in the person of Harry Shuler, bellboy at the Millard Filmore. This salesman said that, during a three-day convention at that hotel, he had heard more new jokes from Shuler than he had heard in the first thirty-nine years of his life.'
'And you are going to -?' Uncle Lyman began.
'Exactly,' said Talbert. 'We must follow where the spoor is strongest.'
Talbert,' said Uncle Lyman, 'why do you do these things?'
'I am searching,' said Talbert simply.
For what, damn it!' cried Uncle Lyman.
'For meaning,' said Talbert.
Uncle Lyman covered his eyes. 'You are the image of your mother,' he declared.
'Say nothing of her,'. charged Talbert. 'She was the finest woman who ever trod the earth.'
Then how come she got trampled to death at the funeral of Rudolph Valentino?' Uncle Lyman charged back.
That is a base canard,' said Talbert, 'and you know it. Mother just happened to be passing the church on her way to bringing food to the Orphans of the Dissolute Seamen -- one of her many charities -- when she was accidentally caught up in the waves of hysterical women and swept to her awful end.'
A pregnant silence bellied the vast room. Talbert stood at a window looking down the hill at Lake Bean which his father had had poured in 1923.
Think of it,' he said after a moment's reflection. The nation alive with off-colour jokes -- the world alive! And the same jokes, Uncle, the same jokes. How? How? By what strange means do these jokes o'erleap oceans, span continents? By what incredible machinery are these jokes promulgated over mountain and dale?'
He turned and met Uncle Lyman's mesmeric stare.
'I mean to know,' he said.
At ten minutes before midnight Talbert boarded the plane for San Francisco and took a seat by the window. Fifteen minutes later the plane roared down the runway and nosed up into the black sky.
Talbert turned to the man beside him.
'Do you know any dirty jokes, sir?' he inquired, pencil poised.
The man stared at him. Talbert gulped.
'Oh, I am sorry,' he said, 'Reverend.'
When they reached the room Talbert gave the bellboy a crisp five dollar bill and asked to hear a joke.
Shuler told him the one about the man sitting by the runway eating an onion, see? Talbert listened, toes kneading inquisitively in his shoes. The joke concluded, he asked Shuler where this and similar jokes might be overheard. Shuler said at a wharf spot known as Davy Jones' Locker Room.
Early that evening, after drinking with one of the West Coast representatives of Bean Enterprises, Talbert took a taxi to Davy Jones' Locker Room. Entering its dim, smoke-fogged interior, he took a place at the bar, ordered a Screwdriver and began to listen.
Within an hour's time he had written down the joke about the old maid who caught her nose in the bathtub faucet, the one about the three travelling salesmen and the farmer's ambidextrous daughter, the one about the nurse who thought they were Spanish olives and the one about the midget in the frankfurter suit. Talbert wrote this last joke under his original transcription of it, underlining changes in context attributable to regional influence.
At 10.16, a man who had just told Talbert the one about the hillbilly twins and their two-headed sister said that Tony, the bartender, was a virtual faucet of off-colour, jokes, limericks, anecdotes, epigrams and proverbs.
Talbert went over to the bar and asked Tony for the major source of his lewdiana. After reciting the limerick about the sex of the asteroid vermin, the bartender referred Talbert to a Mr Frank Bruin, salesman, of Oakland, who happened not to be there that night.
Talbert at once retired to a telephone directory where he discovered five Frank Bruins in Oakland. Entering a booth with a coat pocket sagging change, Talbert began dialling them.
Two of the five Frank Bruins were salesmen. One of them, however, was in Alcatraz at the moment. Talbert traced the remaining Frank Bruin to Hogan's Alleys in Oakland where his wife said that, as usual on Thursday nights, her husband was bowling with the Moonlight Mattress Company All-Stars.
Quitting the bar, Talbert chartered a taxi and started across the bay to Oakland, toes in ferment.
Veni, vidi, vici?
Bruin was not a needle in a haystack.
The moment Talbert entered Hogan's Alleys his eye was caught by a football huddle of men encircling a portly, rosy-domed speaker. Approaching, Talbert was just in time to hear the punch line followed by an explosion of composite laughter. It was the punch line that intrigued.
' "My God!" cried the actress,' Mr Bruin had uttered, ' "I thought you said a banana split!" '
This variation much excited Talbert who saw in it a verification of a new element -- the interchangeable kicker.
When the group had broken up and drifted, Talbert accosted Mr Bruin and, introducing himself, asked where Mr Bruin had heard that joke.
'Why d'ya ask, boy?' asked Mr Bruin.
'No reason,' said the crafty Talbert.
'I don't remember where 1 heard it, boy,' said Mr Bruin finally. 'Excuse me, will ya?'
Talbert trailed after him but received no satisfaction -unless it was in the most definite impression that Bruin was concealing something.
Later, riding back to the Millard Filmore, Talbert decided to put an Oakland detective agency on Mr Bruin's trail to see what could be seen.
When Talbert reached the hotel there was a telegram waiting for him at the desk.
MR RODNEY TASSEL RECEIVED LONG DISTANCE CALL FROM MR GEORGE BULLOCK, CARTHAGE HOTEL, CHICAGO. WAS TOLD JOKE ABOUT MIDGET IN SALAMI SUIT. MEANINGFUL? -- AXE.
Talbert's eyes ignited.
Tally,' he murmured, 'ho.'
An hour later he had checked out of the Millard Filmore, taxied to the airport and caught a plane for Chicago.
Twenty minutes after he had left the hotel, a man in a dark pin-stripe approached the desk clerk and asked for the room number of Talbert Bean III. When informed of Talbert's departure the man grew steely-eyed and immediately retired to a telephone booth. He emerged ashen.
'I'm sorry,' said the desk clerk, 'Mr Bullock checked out this morning.'
'Oh.' Talbert's shoulders sagged. All night on the plane he had been checking over his notes, hoping to discern a pattern to the jokes which would encompass type, area of genesis and periodicity. He was weary with fruitless concentration. Now this.
'And he left no forwarding address?' he asked.
'Only Chicago, sir,' said the clerk.
'I see.'
Following a bath and luncheon in his room, a slightly refreshed Talbert settled down with the telephone and the directory. There were 47 George Bullocks in Chicago. Talbert checked them off as he phoned.
At 3.00 o'clock he slumped over the receiver in a dead slumber. At 4.21, he regained consciousness and completed the remaining eleven calls. The Mr Bullock in question was not at home, said his housekeeper, but was expected in that evening.
Thank you kindly,' said a bleary-eyed Talbert and, hanging up, thereupon collapsed on the bed -- only to awake a few minutes past seven and dress quickly. Descending to the street, he gulped down a sandwich and a glass of milk, then hailed a cab and made the hour ride to the home of George Bullock.
The man himself answered the bell.
'Yes?' he asked.
Talbert introduced himself and said he had come to the Hotel Carthage early that afternoon to see him.
'Why?' asked Mr Bullock.
'So you could tell me where you heard that joke about the midget in the salami suit,' said Talbert.
'Sir?'
'I said-'
'I heard what you said, sir,' said Mr Bullock, 'though I cannot say that your remark makes any noticeable sense.'
'I believe sir,' challenged Talbert, 'that you are hiding behind fustian.'
'Behind fustian, sir?' retorted Bullock. 'I'm afraid -'
'The game is up, sir!' declared Talbert in a ringing voice. 'Why don't you admit it and tell me where you got that joke from?'
'I have not the remotest conception of what you're talking about, sir!' snapped Bullock, his words belied by the pallor of his face.
Talbert flashed a Mona Lisa smile.
'Indeed?' he said.
And, turning lightly on his heel, he left Bullock trembling in the doorway. As he settled back against the taxi cab seat again, he saw Bullock still standing there staring at him. Then Bullock whirled and was gone.
'Hotel Carthage,' said Talbert, satisfied with his bluff.
Riding back, he thought of Bullock's agitation and a thin smile tipped up the corners of his mouth. No doubt about it.
The prey was being run to earth. Now if his surmise was valid there would likely be --
A lean man in a raincoat and a derby was sitting on the bed when Talbert entered his room. The man's moustache, like a muddy toothbrush, twitched.
'Talbert Bean?' he asked.
Talbert bowed.
The same,' he said.
The man, a Colonel Bishop, retired, looked at Talbert with metal blue eyes.
'What is your game, sir?' he asked tautly.
'I don't understand,' toyed Talbert.
'I think you do,' said the Colonel, 'and you are to come with me.'
'Oh?' said Talbert.
He found himself looking down the barrel of a.45 calibre Webley Fosbery.
'Shall we?' said the Colonel.
'But of course,' said Talbert coolly. 'I have not come all this way to resist now.'
The ride in the private plane was a long one. The windows were blacked out and Talbert hadn't the faintest idea in which direction they were flying. Neither the pilot nor the Colonel spoke, and Talbert's attempts at conversation were discouraged by a chilly silence. The Colonel's pistol, still levelled at Talbert's chest, never wavered, but it did not bother Talbert. He was exultant. All he could think was that his search was ending; he was, at last, approaching the headwaters of the dirty joke. After a time, his head nodded and he dozed -- to dream of midgets in frankfurter suits and actresses who seemed obsessed by sarsaparilla or banana splits or sometimes both. How long he slept, and what boundaries he may have crossed, Talbert never knew. He was awakened by a swift loss of altitude and the steely voice of Colonel Bishop: 'We are landing, Mr Bean.' The Colonel's grip tightened on the pistol.
Talbert offered no resistance when his eyes were blindfolded. Feeling the Webley Fosbery in the small of his back, he stumbled out of the plane and crunched over the ground of a well-kept airstrip. There was a nip in the air and he felt a bit lightheaded: Talbert suspected they had landed in a mountainous region; but what mountains, and on what continent, he could not guess. His ears and nose conveyed nothing of help to his churning mind.
He was shoved -- none too gently -- into an automobile, and then driven swiftly along what felt like a dirt road. The tyres crackled over pebbles and twigs.
Suddenly the blindfold was removed. Talbert blinked and looked out the windows. It was a black and cloudy night: he could see nothing but the limited vista afforded by the headlights.
'You are well isolated,' he said, appreciatively. Colonel Bishop remained tight-lipped and vigilant.
After a fifteen-minute ride along the dark road, the car pulled up in front of a tall, unlighted house. As the motor was cut Talbert could hear the pulsing rasp of crickets all around.
'Well,' he said.
'Emerge,' suggested Colonel Bishop.
'Of course.' Talbert bent out of the car and was escorted up the wide porch steps by the Colonel. Behind, the car pulled away into the night.
Inside the house, chimes bonged hollowly as the Colonel pushed a button. They waited in the darkness and, in a few moments, approaching footsteps sounded.
A tiny aperture opened in the heavy door, disclosing a single bespectacled eye. The eye blinked once and, with a faint accent Talbert could not recognise, whispered furtively, 'Why did the widow wear black garters?'
'In remembrance,' said Colonel Bishop with great gravity, 'of those who passed beyond.'
The door opened.
The owner of the eye was tall, gaunt, of indeterminable age and nationality, his hair a dark mass wisped with grey. His face was all angles and facets, his eyes piercing behind large, horn-rimmed glasses. He wore flannel trousers and a checked jacket.
'This is the Dean,' said Colonel Bishop.
'How do you do,' said Talbert.
'Come in, come in,' the Dean invited, extending his large hand to Talbert. 'Welcome, Mr Bean.' He shafted a scolding look at Bishop's pistol. 'Now, Colonel,' he said, 'indulging in melodramatics again? Put it away, dear fellow, put it away.'
'We can't be too careful,' grumped the Colonel.
Talbert stood in the spacious grace of the entry hall looking around. His gaze settled, presently, on the cryptic smile of the Dean, who said: ' So. You have found us out, sir,'
Talbert's toes whipped like pennants in a gale.
He covered his excitement with, 'Have I?'
'Yes,' said the Dean. 'You have. And a masterful display of investigative intuition it was,'
Talbert looked around.
'So,' he said, voice bated. 'It is here.'
'Yes,' said the Dean. 'Would you like to see it?'
'More than anything in the world,' said Talbert fervently.
'Come then,' said the Dean.
'Is this wise?' the Colonel warned.
'Come,' repeated the Dean.
The three men started down the hallway. For a moment, a shade of premonition darkened Talbert's mind. It was being made so easy. Was it a trap? In a second the thought had slipped away, washed off by a current of excited curiosity.
They started up a winding marble staircase.
'How did you suspect?' the Dean inquired. 'That is to say -- what prompted you to probe the matter?'
'I just thought,' said Talbert meaningfully. 'Here are all these jokes yet no one seems to know where they come from. Or care.'
'Yes,' observed the Dean, 'we count upon that disinterest. What man in ten million ever asks, where did you hear that joke? Absorbed in memorising the joke for future use, he gives no thought to its source. This, of course, is our protection.'
The Dean smiled at Talbert. 'But not/ he amended, 'from men such as you.'
Talbert's flush went unnoticed.
They reached the landing and began walking along a wide corridor lit on each side by the illumination of candelabra. There was no more talk. At the end of the corridor they turned right and stopped in front of massive, iron-hinged doors.
'Is this wise?' the Colonel asked again.
Too late to stop now,' said the Dean and Talbert felt a shiver flutter down his spine. What if it was a trap? He swallowed, then squared his shoulders. The Dean had said it. It was too late to stop now.
The great doors tracked open.
'Et voila,' said the Dean.
The hallway was an avenue. Thick wall-to-wall carpeting sponged beneath Talbert's feet as he walked between the Colonel and the Dean. At periodic intervals along the ceiling hung music-emitting speakers; Talbert recognised the Gaiete Parisienne. His gaze moved to a petitpointed tapestry on which Dionysian acts ensued above the stitched motto, 'Happy Is the Man Who Is Making Something.'
'Incredible,' he murmured. 'Here; in this house.'
'Exactly,' said the Dean.
Talbert shook his head wonderingly.
'To think,' he said.
The Dean paused before a glass wall and, braking, Talbert peered into an office. Among its rich appointments strode a young man in a striped silk weskit with brass buttons, gesturing meaningfully with a long cigar while, cross legged on a leather couch, sat a happily sweatered blonde of rich dimensions.
The man stopped briefly and waved to the Dean, smiled, then returned to his spirited dictating.
'One of our best,' the Dean said.
'But,' stammered Talbert, 'I thought that man was on the staff of-'
'He is,' said the Dean. 'And, in his spare time, he is also one of us.'
Talbert followed on excitement-numbed legs.
'But I had no idea,' he said. 'I presumed the organisation to be composed of men like Bruin and Bullock,'
'They are merely our means of promulgation,' explained the Dean. 'Our word of mouthers, you might say. Our creators come from more exalted ranks -- executives, statesmen, the better professional comics, editors, novelists -- '
The Dean broke off as the door to one of the other offices opened and a barely bearded man in hunting clothes emerged. He shouldered past them muttering true things to himself.
'Off again?' the Dean asked pleasantly. The big man grunted. It was a true grunt. He clumped off, lonely for a veldt.
'Unbelievable,' said Talbert. Such men as these?'
'Exactly,' said the Dean.
They strolled on past the rows of busy offices. Talbert tourist-eyed, the Dean smiling his mandarin smile, the Colonel working his lips as if anticipating the kiss of a toad.
'But where did it all begin?' a dazed Talbert asked.
That is history's secret,' rejoined the Dean, Veiled behind time's opacity. Our venture does have its honoured past, however. Great men have graced its cause -- Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, Dickens, Swinburne, Rabelais, Balzac; oh, the honour roll is long. Shakespeare, of course, and his friend Ben Jon-son. Still farther back, Chaucer, Boccaccio. Further yet, Horace and Seneca, Demosthenes and Pautus. Aristophanes, Apulieus. Yea, in the palaces of Tutankhamen was our work done; in the black temples of Ahriman, the pleasure dome of Kubla Khan. Where did it begin? Who knows? Scraped on rocks, in many a primordial cave, are certain drawings. And there are those among us who believe that these were left by the earliest members of the Brotherhood. But this, of course, is only legend
Now they had, reached the end of the hallway and were starting down a cushioned ramp.
'There must be vast sums of money involved in this,' said Talbert.
'Heaven forefend,' declared the Dean, stopping short. 'Do not confuse our work with alley vending. Our workers contribute freely of their time and skill, caring for naught save the Cause.'
'Forgive me,' Talbert said. Then, rallying, he asked, 'What Cause?'
The Dean's gaze fused on inward things. He ambled on slowly, arms behind his back.
'The Cause of Love,' he said, 'as opposed to Hate. Of Nature, as opposed to the Unnatural. Of Humanity, as opposed to Inhumanity. Of Freedom, as opposed to Constraint. Of Health, as opposed to Disease. Yes, Mr Bean, disease. The disease called bigotry; the frighteningly communicable disease that taints all it touches; turns warmth to chill and joy to guilt and good to bad. What Cause?' He stopped dramatically. The Cause of Life, Mr Bean -- as opposed to Death!'
The Dean lifted a challenging finger. We see ourselves,' he said, 'as an army of dedicated warriors marching on the strongholds of prudery. Knights Templar with a just and joyous mission.'
'Amen to that,' a fervent Talbert said.
They entered a large, cubicle-bordered room. Talbert saw men; some typing, some writing, some staring, some on telephones, talking in a multitude of tongues. Their expressions were, as one, intently aloft. At the far end of the room, expression unseen, a man stabbed plugs into a many-eyed switchboard.
'Our Apprentice Room,' said the Dean, 'wherein we groom our future
His voice died off as a young man exited one of the cubicles and approached them, paper in hand, a smile tremulous on his lips.
'Oliver,' said the Dean, nodding once.
'I've done a joke, sir,' said Oliver. 'May I -?'
'But of course,' said the Dean.
Oliver cleared viscid anxiety from his throat, then told a joke about a little boy and girl watching a doubles match on the nudist colony tennis court. The Dean smiled, nodding. Oliver looked up, pained.
'No?'he said.
'It is not without merit,' encouraged the Dean, 'but, as it now stands, you see, it smacks rather too reminiscently of the duchess-butler effect, Wife of Bath category. Not to mention the justifiably popular double reverse bishop-barmaid gambit,'
'Oh, sir,' grieved Oliver, 'I'll never prevail.'
'Nonsense,' said the Dean, adding kindly, 'son. These shorter jokes are, by all odds, the most difficult to master. They must be cogent, precise; must say something of pith and moment.'
'Yes, sir,' murmured Oliver.
'Check with Wojciechowski and Sforzini,' said the Dean. 'Also Ahmed El-Hakim. They'll brief you on use of the Master Index. Eh?' He patted Oliver's back.
'Yes, sir.' Oliver managed a smile and returned to his cubicle. The Dean sighed.
'A sombre business,' he declared. 'He'll never be Class-A. He really shouldn't be in the composing end of it at all but -' He gestured meaningfully. ' -- there is sentiment involved,'
'Oh?' said Talbert.
'Yes,' said the Dean. 'It was his great grandfather who, on June 23, 1848, wrote the first Travelling Salesman joke, American strain.'
The Dean and the Colonel lowered their heads a moment in reverent commemoration. Talbert did the same.
'And so we have it,' said the Dean. They were back downstairs, sitting in the great living room, sherry having been served.
'Perhaps you wish to know more,' said the Dean.
'Only one thing,' said Talbert.
'And that is, sir?'
'Why have you shown it to me?'
'Yes,' said the Colonel, fingering at his armpit holster, 'why indeed?'
The Dean looked at Talbert carefully as if balancing his reply.
'You haven't guessed?' he said, at last. 'No, I can see you haven't. Mr Bean... you are not unknown to us. Who has not heard of your work, your unflagging devotion to sometimes obscure but always worthy causes? What man can help but admire your selflessness, your dedication, your proud defiance of convention and prejudice?' The Dean paused and leaned forward.
'Mr Bean,' he said softly. 'Talbert -- may I call you that? -- we want you on our team.'
Talbert gaped. His hands began to tremble. The Colonel, relieved, grunted and sank back into his chair.
No reply came from the flustered Talbert, so the Dean continued. Think it over. Consider the merits of our work. With all due modesty, I think I may say that here is your opportunity to ally yourself with the greatest cause of your life.'
'I'm speechless,' said Talbert. 'I hardly -- that is -- how can I...'
But, already, the light of consecration was stealing into his eyes.
Just before the telephone rang, storm winds toppled the tree outside her window and jolted Miss Keene from her dreaming sleep. She flung herself up with a gasp, her frail hands crumpling twists of sheet in either palm. Beneath her flesh-less chest the heart jerked taut, the sluggish blood spurted. She sat in rigid muteness, her eyes staring at the night.
In another second, the telephone rang.
Who on earth? The question shaped unwittingly in her brain. Her thin hand faltered in the darkness, the fingers searching a moment and then Miss Elva Keene drew the cool receiver to her ear.
'Hello,' she said.
Outside a cannon of thunder shook the night, twitching Miss Keene's crippled legs. I've missed the voice, she thought, the thunder has blotted out the voice.
'Hello,' she said again.
There was no sound. Miss Keene waited in expectant lethargy. Then she repeated, 'Hel-lo,' in a cracking voice. Outside the thunder crashed again.
Still no voice spoke, not even the sound of a phone being disconnected met her ears. Her wavering hand reached out and thumped down the receiver with an angry motion.
'Inconsideration,' she muttered, thudding back on her pillow. Already her infirm back ached from the effort of sitting.
She forced out a weary breath. Now she'd have to suffer through the whole tormenting process of going to sleep again -- the composing of jaded muscles, the ignoring of abrasive pain in her legs, the endless, frustrating struggle to turn off the faucet in her brain and keep unwanted thoughts from dripping. Oh, well, it had to be done; Nurse Phillips insisted on proper rest. Elva Keene breathed slowly and deeply, drew the covers to her chin and laboured hopefully for sleep.
In vain.
Her eyes opened and, turning her face to the window, she watched the storm move off on lightning legs. Why can't I sleep, she fretted, why must I always lie here awake like this?
She knew the answer without effort. When a life was dull, the smallest element added seemed unnaturally intriguing. And life for Miss Keene was the sorry pattern of lying flat' or being propped on pillows, reading books which Nurse Phillips brought from the town library, getting nourishment, rest, medication, listening to her tiny radio -- and waiting, waiting for something different to happen.
Like the telephone call that wasn't a call.
There hadn't even been the sound of a receiver replaced in its cradle. Miss Keene didn't understand that. Why would anyone call her exchange and then listen silently while she said 'Hello,' over and over again? Had it actually been anyone calling?
What she should have done, she realised then, was to keep listening until the other person tired of the joke and put down the receiver. What she should have done was to speak out forcefully about the inconsideration of a prankish call to a crippled maiden lady, in the middle of a stormy night. Then, if there had been someone listening, whoever it was would have been properly chastened by her angry words and...
'Well, of course.'
She said it aloud in the darkness, punctuating the sentence with a cluck of somewhat relieved disgust. Of course, the telephone was out of order. Someone had tried to contact her, perhaps Nurse Phillips to see if she was all right. But the other end of the line had broken down in some way, allowing her phone to ring but no verbal communication to be made. Well, of course, that was the case.
Miss Keene nodded once and closed her eyes gently. Now to sleep, she thought. Far away, beyond the county, the storm cleared its murky throat. I hope no one is worrying, Elva Keene thought, that would be too bad.
She was thinking that when the telephone rang again.
There, she thought, they are trying to reach me again. She reached out hurriedly in the darkness, fumbled until she felt the receiver, then pulled it to her ear.
'Hello,' said Miss Keene.
Silence.
Her throat contracted. She knew what was wrong, of course, but she didn't like it, no, not at all.
'Hello?' she said tentatively, not yet certain that she was wasting breath.
There was no reply. She waited a moment, then spoke a third time, a little impatient now, loudly, her shrill voice ringing in the dark bedroom. 'Hello!'
Nothing. Miss Keene had the sudden urge to fling, the receiver away. She forced down that curious instinct -- no, she must wait; wait and listen to hear if anyone hung up the phone on the other end of the line.
So she waited.
The bedroom was very quiet now, but Elva Keene kept straining to hear; either the sound of a receiver going down or the buzz which usually follows. Her chest rose and fell in delicate lurches, she closed her eyes in concentration, then opened them again and blinked at the darkness. There was no sound from the telephone; not a click, not a buzz, not a sound of someone putting down a receiver.
'Hello!' she cried suddenly, then pushed away the receiver.
She missed her target. The receiver dropped and thumped once on the rug. Miss Keene nervously clicked on the lamp, wincing as the leprous bulb light filled her eyes. Quickly, she lay on her side and tried to reach the silent, voiceless telephone.
But she couldn't stretch far enough and crippled legs prevented her from rising. Her throat tightened. My God, must she leave it there all night, silent and mystifying.
Remembering then, she reached out abruptly and pressed the cradle arm. On the floor, the receiver clicked, then began to buzz normally. Elva Keene swallowed and drew in a shaking breath as she slumped back on her pillow.
She threw out hooks of reason then and pulled herself back from panic. This is ridiculous, she thought, getting upset over such a trivial and easily explained incident. It was the storm, the night, the way in which I'd been shocked from sleep. (What was it that had awakened me?) AH these things piled on the mountain of teeth-grinding monotony that's my life. Yes, it was bad, very bad. But it wasn't the incident that was bad. It was her reaction to it.
Miss Elva Keen numbed herself to further premonitions. 'I shall sleep now' she ordered her body with a petulant shake. She lay very still and relaxed. From the floor she could hear the telephone buzzing like the drone of far-off bees. She ignored it.
Early the next morning, after Nurse Phillips had taken away the breakfast dishes, Elva Keen called the telephone company.
This is Miss Elva,' she told the operator.
'Oh, yes, Miss Elva,' said the operator, a Miss Finch. 'Can I help you?'
'Last night my telephone rang twice,' said Elva Keene. 'But when I answered it, no one spoke. And I didn't hear any receiver drop. I didn't even hear a dial tone -- just silence.'
'Well, I'll tell you, Miss Elva,' said the cheery voice of Miss Finch, 'that storm last night just about ruined half our service. We're being flooded with calls about knocked down lines and bad connections. I'd say you're pretty lucky your phone is working at all.'
'Then you think it was probably a bad connection,' prompted Miss Keene, 'caused by the storm?'
'Oh, yes, Miss Elva, that's all.'
'Do you think it will happen again?'
'Oh, it may,' said Miss Finch. 'It may. I really couldn't tell you, Miss Elva. But if it does happen again, you just call me and then I'll have one of our men check on it.'
'All right,' said Miss Elva. 'Thank you, dear.'
She lay on her pillows all morning in a relaxed torpor. It gives one a satisfied feeling, she thought, to solve a mystery, slight as it is. It had been a terrible storm that caused the bad connection. And no wonder when it had even knocked down the ancient oak-tree beside the house. That was the noise that had awakened me of course, and a pity it was that the dear tree had fallen. How it shaded the house in hot summer months. Oh, well, I suppose I should be grateful, she thought, that the tree fell across the road and not across the house.
The day passed uneventfully, an amalgam of eating, reading Angela Thirkell and the mail (two throw-away advertisements and the light bill), plus brief chats with Nurse Phillips. Indeed, routine had set in so properly that when the telephone rang early that evening, she picked it up without even thinking.
'Hello,' she said.
Silence.
It brought her back for a second. Then she called Nurse Phillips.
'What is it?' asked the portly woman as she trudged across the bedroom rug.
'This is what I was telling you about,' said Elva Keene, holding out the receiver. 'Listen!'
Nurse Phillips took the receiver in her hand and pushed back grey locks with the earpiece. Her placid face remained placid. 'There's nobody there,' she observed.
'That's right,' said Miss Keene. 'That's right. Now you just listen and see if you can hear a receiver being put down. I'm sure you won't.'
Nurse Phillips listened for a moment, then shook her head. 'I don't hear anything,' she said and hung up.
'Oh, wait!' Miss Keene said hurriedly. 'Oh, well, it doesn't matter,' she added, seeing it was already down. 'If it happens too often, I'll just call Miss Finch and they'll have a repairman check on it.'
'I see,' Nurse Phillips said and went back to the living room and Faith Baldwin.
Nurse Phillips left the house at eight, leaving on the bedside table, as usual, an apple, a cookie, a glass of water and the bottle of pills. She puffed up the pillows behind Miss Keene's fragile back, moved the radio and telephone a little closer to the bed, looked around complacently, then turned for the door, saying, I'll see you tomorrow.'
It was fifteen minutes later when the telephone rang. Miss Keene picked up the receiver quickly. She didn't bother saying hello this time -- she just listened.
At first it was the same -- an absolute silence. She listened a moment more, impatiently. Then, on the verge of replacing the receiver, she heard the sound. Her cheek twitched, she jerked the telephone back to her ear.
'Hello?' she asked tensely.
A murmuring, a dull humming, a rustling sound -- what was it? Miss Keene shut her eyes tightly, listening hard, but she couldn't identify the sound; it was too soft, too undefined, it deviated from a sort of whining vibration... to an escape of air... to a bubbling sibilance. It must be the sound of the connection, she thought, it must be the telephone itself making the noise. Perhaps a wire blowing in the wind somewhere, perhaps...
She stopped thinking then. She stopped breathing. The sound had ceased. Once more, silence rang in her ears. She could feel the heartbeats stumbling in her chest again, the walls of her throat closing in. Oh, this is ridiculous, she told herself. I've already been through this - it was the storm, the storm!
She lay back on her pillows, the receiver pressed to her ear, nervous breaths faltering from her nostrils. She could feel unreasoning dread rise like a tide within her, despite all attempts at sane deduction. Her mind kept slipping off the glassy perch of reason; she kept falling deeper and deeper.
Now she shuddered violently as the sounds began again. They couldn't possibly be human sounds, she knew, and yet there was something about them, some inflection, some almost identifiable arrangement of...
Her lips shook and a whine began to hover in her throat. But she couldn't put down the telephone, she simply couldn't. The sounds held her hypnotised. Whether they were the rise and fall of the wind or the muttering of faulty mechanisms, she didn't know, but they would not let her go.
'Hello ?' she murmured, shakily.
The sounds rose in volume. They rattled and shook in her brain.
'Hello!' she screamed.
'H-e-l~l-o,' answered a voice on the telephone. Then Miss Keene fainted dead away.
'Are you certain it was someone saying hello?' Miss Finch asked Miss Elva over the telephone. 'It might have been the connection, you know.'
'I tell you it was a man!' a shaking Elva Keene screeched. 'It was the same man who kept listening to me say hello over and over and over again without answering me back. The same one who made terrible noises over the telephone!'
Miss Finch cleared her throat politely. 'Well, I'll have a man check your line, Miss Elva, as soon as he can. Of course, the men are very busy now with all the repairs on storm wreckage, but as soon as it's possible...'
'And what am I going to do if this -- this person calls again?'
'You just hang up on him, Miss Elva.'
'But he keeps calling!'
'Well.' Miss Finch's affability wavered. 'Why don't you find out who he is, Miss Elva? If you can do that, why, we can take immediate action, you see and
After she'd hung up, Miss Keene lay against the pillows tensely, listening to Nurse Phillips sing husky love songs over the breakfast dishes. Miss Finch didn't believe her story, that was apparent. Miss Finch thought she was a nervous old woman falling prey to imagination. Well, Miss Finch would find out differently.
'I'll just keep calling her and calling her until she does,' she said irritably to Nurse Phillips just before afternoon nap.
'You just do that,' said Nurse Phillips. 'Now take your pill and lie down,'
Miss Keene lay in grumpy silence, her vein-rutted hands knotted at her sides. It was ten after two and, except for the bubbling of Nurse Phillips's front room snores, the house was silent in the October afternoon. It makes me angry, thought Elva Keene, that no one will take this seriously. Well - her thin lips pressed together -- the next time the telephone rings I'll make sure that Nurse Phillips listens until she does hear something.
Exactly then the phone rang.
Miss Keene felt a cold tremor lace down her body. Even in the daylight with sunbeams speckling her flowered coverlet, the strident ringing frightened her. She dug porcelain teeth into her lower lip to steady it. Shall 1 answer it? the question came and then, before she could even think to answer, her hand picked up the receiver. A deep ragged breath; she drew the phone slowly to her ear. She said, 'Hello? '
The voice answered back, 'Hello?' -- hollow and inanimate.
'Who is this?' Miss Keene asked, trying to keep her throat clear.
'Hello?'
'Who's calling, please?'
'Hello?'
'Is anyone there!'
'Hello?'
'Please ... !'
'Hello?'
Miss Keene jammed down the receiver and lay on her bed trembling violently, unable to catch her breath. What is it, begged her mind, what in God's name is it?'
'Margaret!' she cried. 'Margaret!'
In the front room she heard Nurse Phillips grunt abruptly and then start coughing.
'Margaret, please...!'
Elva Keene heard the large bodied woman rise to her feet and trudge across the living room floor. I must compose my-sell, she told herself, fluttering hands to her fevered cheeks. I must tell her exactly what happened, exactly.
'What is it?' grumbled the nurse. 'Does your stomach ache?'
Miss Keene's throat drew in tautly as she swallowed. 'He just called again,' she whispered.
'Who?'
'That man!'
'What Man?'
'The one who keeps calling!' Miss Keene cried. 'He keeps saying hello over and over again. That's all he says -- hello, hello, hel -'
'Now stop this,' Nurse Phillips scolded stolidly. Tie back and...'
'I don't want to lie back!' she said frenziedly. 'I want to know who this terrible person is who keeps frightening me!'
'Now don't work yourself into a state,' warned Nurse Phillips. 'You know how upset your stomach gets.'
Miss Keene began to sob bitterly. 'I'm afraid. I'm afraid of him. Why does he keep calling me?'
Nurse Phillips stood by the bed looking down in bovine inertia. 'Now, what did Miss Finch tell you?' she said softly.
Miss Keene's shaking lips could not frame the answer.
'Did she tell you it was the connection?' the nurse soothed. 'Did she?'
'But it isn't! It's a man, a man!'
Nurse Phillips expelled a patient breath. 'If it's a man,' she said, 'then just hang up. You don't have to talk to him. Just hang up. Is that so hard to do?'
Miss Keene shut tear-bright eyes and forced her lips into a twitching line. In her mind the man's subdued and listless voice kept echoing. Over and over, the inflection never altering, the question never deferring to her replies -- just repeating itself endlessly in doleful apathy. Hello? Hello? Making her shudder to the heart.
'Look,' Nurse Phillips spoke.
She opened her eyes and saw the blurred image of the nurse putting the receiver down on the table.
'There,' Nurse Phillips said, 'nobody can call you now. You leave it that way. If you need anything all you have to do is dial. Now isn't that all right? Isn't it?'
Miss Keene looked bleakly at the nurse. Then, after a moment, she nodded once. Grudgingly.
She lay in the dark bedroom, the sound of the dial tone humming in her ear; keeping her awake. Or am I just telling myself that? she thought. Is it really keeping me awake? Didn't I sleep that first night with the receiver off the hook? No, it wasn't the sound, it was something else.
She closed her eyes obdurately. I won't listen, she told herself, I just won't listen to it. She drew in trembling breaths of the night. But the darkness would not fill her brain and blot away the sound.
Miss Keene felt around on the bed until she found her bed jacket. She draped it over the receiver, swathing its black smoothness in woolly turns. Then she sank back again, stern breathed and taut. I will sleep, she demanded, I will sleep.
She heard it still.
Her body grew rigid and abruptly, she unfolded the receiver from its thick wrappings and slammed it down angrily on the cradle. Silence filled the room with delicious peace. Miss Keene fell back on the pillow with a feeble groan. Now to sleep, she thought.
And the telephone rang.
Her breath snuffed off. The ringing seemed to permeate the darkness, surrounding her in a cloud of ear-lancing vibration. She reached out to put the receiver on the table again, then jerked her hand back with a gasp, realising she would hear the man's voice again.
Her throat pulsed nervously. What I'll do, she planned, what I'll do is take off the receiver very quickly - very quickly -- and put it down, then push down on the arm and cut off the line. Yes, that's what I'll do!
She tensed herself and spread her hand out cautiously until the ringing phone was under it. Then, breath held, she followed her plan, slashed off the ring, reached quickly for the cradle arm...
And stopped, frozen, as the man's voice reached out through the darkness to her ears. Where are you?' he asked. 'I want to talk to you.'
Claws of ice clamped down on Miss Keene's shuddering chest. She lay petrified, unable to cut off the sound of the man's dull, expressionless voice, asking, Where are you? I want to talk to you.'
A sound from Miss Keene's throat, thin and fluttering.
And the man said, 'Where are you? I want to talk to you.'
'No, no,' sobbed Miss Keene.
'Where are you? I want to...'
She pressed the cradle arm with taut white fingers. She held it down for fifteen minutes before letting it go.
'I tell you I won't have it!'
Miss Keene's voice was a frayed ribbon of sound. She sat inflexibly on the bed, straining her frightened anger through the mouthpiece vents.
'You say you hang up on this man and he still calls?' Miss Finch inquired.
'I've explained all that!' Elva Keene burst out. 'I had to leave the receiver off the phone all night so he wouldn't call. And the buzzing kept me awake. I didn't get a wink of sleep! Now, I want this line checked, do you hear me? I want you to stop this terrible thing!'
Her eyes were like hard, dark beads. The phone almost slipped from her palsied fingers.
'All right, Miss Elva,' said the operator. 'I'll send a man out today.'
Thank you, dear, thank you,' Miss Keene said. 'Will you call me when
Her voice stopped abruptly as a clicking sound started on the telephone.
'The line is busy,' she announced.
The clicking stopped and she went on. To repeat, will you let me know when you find out who this terrible person is V
'Surely, Miss Elva, surely. And I'll have a man check your telephone this afternoon. You're at 127 Mill Lane, aren't you?'
That's right, dear. You will see to it, won't you?'
'I promise faithfully, Miss Elva. First thing today.'
Thank you, dear,' Miss Keene said, drawing in relieved breath.
There were no calls from the man all that morning, none that afternoon. Her tightness slowly began to loosen. She played a game of cribbage with Nurse Phillips and even managed a little laughter. It was comforting to know that the telephone company was working on it now. They'd soon catch that awful man and bring back her peace of mind.
But when two o'clock came, then three o'clock -- and still no repairman at her house -- Miss Keene began worrying again.
'What's the matter with that girl?' she said pettishly. 'She promised me faithfully that a man would come this afternoon.'
'He'll be here,' Nurse Phillips said. 'Be patient.'
Four o'clock arrived and no man. Miss Keene would not play cribbage, read her book or listen to her radio. What had begun to loosen was tightening again, increasing minute by minute until at five o'clock, when the telephone rang, her hand spurted out rigidly from the flaring sleeve of her bed jacket and clamped down like a claw on the receiver. If the man speaks, raced her mind, if he speaks I'll scream until my heart stops.
She pulled the receiver to her ear. 'Hello?'
'Miss Elva, this is Miss Finch.'
Her eyes closed and breath fluttered through her lips. 'Yes,' she said.
'About those calls you say you've been receiving.'
'Yes?' In her mind, Miss Finch's words cutting -- 'those calls you say you've been receiving.'
'We sent a man out to trace them,' continued Miss Finch. 'I have his report here.'
Miss Keene caught her breath. 'Yes?'
'He couldn't find anything.'
Elva Keene didn't speak. Her grey head lay motionless on the pillow, the receiver pressed to her ear.
'He says he traced the -- the difficulty to a fallen wire on the edge of town.'
'Fallen wire?'
Yes, Miss Elva.' Miss Finch did not sound happy,
'You're telling me I didn't hear anything?'
Miss Finch's voice was firm. 'There's no way anyone could have phoned you from that location,' she said.
'I tell you a man called me!'
Miss Finch was silent and Miss Keene's fingers tightened convulsively on the receiver.
'There must be a phone there,' she insisted. 'There must be some way that man was able to call me.'
'Miss Elva, the wire is lying on the ground.' She paused. 'Tomorrow, our crew will put it back up and you won't be...'
'There has to be a way he could call me!'
'Miss Elva, there's no one out there!'
'Out where, where?'
The operator said, 'Miss Elva, it's the cemetery.'
In the black silence of her bedroom, a crippled maiden lady lay waiting. Her nurse would not remain for the night; her nurse had patted her and scolded her and ignored her.
She was waiting for a telephone call.
She could have disconnected the phone, but she had not the will. She lay there waiting, waiting, thinking.
Of the silence -- of ears that had not heard, seeking to hear again. Of sounds bubbling and muttering -- the first stumbling attempts at speech by one who had not spoken -- how long? Of -- hello ? hello ? -- first greeting by one long silent. Of -where are you ? Of (that which made her lie so rigidly) the clicking and the operator speaking her address. Of --
The telephone ringing.
A pause. Ringing. The rustle of a nightgown in the dark.
The ringing stopped.
Listening.
And the telephone slipping from white fingers, the eyes staring, the thin heartbeats slowly pulsing.
Outside, the cricket-rattling night.
Inside, the words still sounding in her brain -- giving terrible meaning to the heavy, choking silence.
'Hello, Miss Elva. I'll be right over.'
FADEOUT.
The old man had succumbed. From its movie heaven, an ethereal choir paeaned. Amid roiling pink clouds they sang: A Moment or Forever. It was the title of the picture. Lights blinked on. The voices stopped abruptly, the curtain was lowered, the theatre boomed with p.a. resonance; a quartet singing A Moment or Forever on the Decca label. Eight hundred thousand copies a month.
Owen Crowley sat slumped in his seat, legs crossed, arms slackly folded. He stared at the curtain. Around him, people stood and stretched, yawned, chatted, laughed. Owen sat there, staring. Next to him, Carole rose and drew on her suede jacket. Softly, she was singing with the record, "Your mind is the clock that ticks away a moment or forever."
She stopped. "Honey?"
Owen grunted. "Are you coming?" she asked.
He sighed. "I suppose." He dragged up his jacket and followed her as she edged toward the aisle, shoes crunching over pale popcorn buds and candy wrappers. They reached the aisle and Carole took his arm.
"Well?" she asked. "What did you think?"
Owen had the burdening impression that she had asked him that question a million times; that their relationship consisted of an infinitude of movie-going and scant more. Was it only two years since they'd met; five months since their engagement? It seemed, momentarily, like the dreariest of eons.
"What's there to think?" he said. "It's just another movie."
"I thought you'd like it," Carole said, "being a writer yourself."
He trudged across the lobby with her. They were the last ones out. The snack counter was darkened, the soda machine stilled of technicolored bubblings. The only sound was the whisper of their shoes across the carpeting, then the click of them as they hit the outer lobby.
"What is it, Owen?" Carole asked when he'd gone a block without saying a word.
"They make me mad," he said.
"Who does?" Carole asked.
"The damn stupid people who make those damn stupid movies," he said.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because of the way they gloss over everything."
"What do you mean?"
"This writer the picture was about," said Owen. "He was a lot like I am; talented and with plenty of drive. But it took him almost ten years to get things going. Ten years. So what does the stupid picture do? Glosses over them in a few minutes. A couple of scenes of him sitting at his desk, looking broody, a couple of clock shots, a few trays of mashed-out butts, some empty coffee cups, a pile of manuscripts. Some bald-headed publishers with cigars shaking their heads no at him, some feet walking on the sidewalk; and that's it. Ten years of hard labour. It makes me mad."
"But they have to do that, Owen," Carole said. "That's the only way they have of showing it."
"Then life should be like that too," he said.
"Oh, you wouldn't like that," she said.
"You're wrong. I would," he said. "Why should I struggle ten years or more on my writing? Why not get it over with in a couple of minutes?"
"It wouldn't be the same," she said.
"That's for sure," he said.
An hour and forty minutes later, Owen sat on the cot in his furnished room staring at the table on which sat his typewriter and the half-completed manuscript of his third novel And Now Gomorrah.
Why not indeed? The idea had definite appeal. He knew that, someday, he'd succeed. It had to be that way. Otherwise, what was he working so hard for? But that transition, that was the thing. That indefinite transition between struggle and success. How wonderful if that part could be condensed, abbreviated.
Glossed over.
"You know what I wish?" he asked the intent young man in the mirror.
"No, what?" asked the man.
"I wish," said Owen Crowley, "that life could be as simple as a movie. All the drudgery set aside in a few flashes of weary looks, disappointments, coffee cups and midnight oil, trays of butts, no's and walking feet. Why not?"
On the bureau, something clicked. Owen looked down at his clock. It was 2:43 a.m.
Oh, well. He shrugged and went to bed. Tomorrow, another five pages, another night's work at the toy factory.
A year and seven months went by and nothing happened. Then, one morning, Owen woke up, went down to the mail box and there it was.
We are happy to inform you that we want to publish your novel Dream Within a Dream.
"Carole! Carole!" He pounded on her apartment door, heart drumming from the half-mile sprint from the subway, the leaping ascent of the stairs. "Carole!"
She jerked open the door, face stricken. "Owen, what-?" she began, then cried out, startled, as he swept her from the floor and whirled her around, the hem of her nightgown whipping silkenly. "Owen, what is it?" she gasped.
"Look! Look!" He put her down on the couch and, kneeling, held out the crumpled letter to her.
"Oh, Owen!"
They clung to each other and she laughed, she cried. He felt the unbound softness of her pressing at him through the filmy silk, the moist cushioning of her lips against his cheek, her warm tears trickling down his face. "Oh, Owen. Darling:'
She cupped his face with trembling hands and kissed him; then whispered, "And you were worried."
"No more," he said. "No more!"
The publisher's office stood aloofly regal above the city; draped, panelled, still. "If you'll sign here, Mr. Crowley," said the editor. Owen took the pen.
"Hurray! Hurroo!" He polkaed amid a debris of cocktail glasses, red-eyed olives, squashed hors d'oeuvres and guests. Who clapped and stamped and shouted and erected monumental furies in the neighbours' hearts. Who flowed and broke apart like noisy quicksilver through the rooms and halls of Carole's apartment. Who devoured regimental rations. Who flushed away Niagara's of converted alcohol. Who nuzzled in a fog of nicotine. Who gambled on the future census in the dark and fur-coat-smelling bedroom.
Owen sprang. He howled. "An Indian I am!" He grabbed the laughing Carole by her spilling hair. "An Indian I am, I'll scalp you! No, I won't, I'll kiss you!" He did to wild applause and whistles. She clung to him, their bodies moulding. The clapping was like rapid fire. "And for an encore!" he announced.
Laughter. Cheers. Music pounding. A graveyard of bottles on the sink. Sound and movement. Community singing. Bedlam. A policeman at the door. "Come in, come in, defender of the weal!" "Now, let's be having a little order here, there's people want to sleep."
Silence in the shambles. They sat together on the couch, watching dawn creep in across the sills, a night gowned Carole clinging to him, half asleep; Owen pressing his lips to her warm throat and feeling, beneath the satin skin, the pulsing of her blood.
"I love you," whispered Carole. Her lips, on his, wanted, took. The electric rustle of her gown made him shudder. He brushed the straps and watched them slither from the pale curving of her shoulders. "Carole, Carole." Her hands were cat claws on his back.
The telephone rang, rang. He opened an eye. There was a heated pitchfork fastened to the lid. As the lid moved up it plunged the pitchfork into his brain. "Ooh!" He winced his eyes shut and the room was gone. "Go away," he muttered to the ringing, ringing; to the cleat shoed, square-dancing goblins in his head.
Across the void, a door opened and the ringing stopped. Owen sighed.
"Hello?" said Carole. "Oh. Yes, he's here."
He heard the crackle of her gown, the nudging of her fingers on his shoulder. "Owen," she said. "Wake up, darling."
The deep fall of pink-tipped flesh against transparent silk was what he saw. He reached but she was gone. Her hand closed over his and drew him up. "The phone," she said.
"More," he said, pulling her against himself.
"The phone."
"Can wait," he said. His voice came muffled from her nape. "I'm breakfasting."
"Darling, the phone."
"Hello?" he said into the black receiver.
"This is Arthur Means, Mr. Crowley," said the voice.
"Yes!" There was an explosion in his brain but he kept on smiling anyway because it was the agent he'd called the day before.
"Can you make it for lunch?" asked Arthur Means.
Owen came back into the living room from showering. From the kitchen came the sound of Carole's slippers on linoleum, the sizzle of bacon, the dark odour of percolating coffee.
Owen stopped. He frowned at the couch where he'd been sleeping. How had he ended there? He'd been in bed with Carole.
The streets, by early morning, were a mystic lot. Manhattan after midnight was an island of intriguing silences, a vast acropolis of crouching steel and stone. He walked between the silent citadels, his footsteps like the ticking of a bomb.
"Which will explode!" he cried. "Explode!" cried back the streets of shadowed walls. "Which will explode and throw my shrapnel words through all the world!"
Owen Crowley stopped. He flung out his arms and held the universe. "You're mine!" he yelled.
"Mine," the echo came.
The room was silent as he shed his clothes. He settled on the cot with a happy sigh, crossed his legs and undid lace knots. What time was it? He looked over at the clock. 2:58 a.m.
Fifteen minutes since he'd made his wish.
He grunted in amusement as he dropped his shoe. Weird fancy, that. Yes, it was exactly fifteen minutes if you chose to ignore the one year, seven months and two days since he'd stood over there in his pyjamas, fooling with a wish. Granted that, in thinking back, those nineteen months seemed quickly past; but not that quickly. If he wished to, he could tally up a reasonable itemization of every miserable day of them.
Owen Crowley chuckled. Weird fancy indeed. Well, it was the mind. The mind was a droll mechanism.
"Carole, let's get married!"
He might have struck her. She stood there, looking dazed.
"What?" she asked.
"Married!"
She stared at him. "You mean it?"
He slid his arms around her tightly. "Try me," he said.
"Oh, Owen." She clung to him a moment, then, abruptly, drew back her head and grinned.
'This," she said, "is not so sudden."
It was a white house, lost in summer foliage. The living room was large and cool and they stood together on the walnut floor, holding hands. Outside, leaves were rustling.
"Then by the authority vested in me," said Justice of the Peace Weaver, "by the sovereign state of Connecticut, I now pronounce you man and wife." He smiled. "You may kiss the bride," he said.
Their lips parted and he saw the tears glistening in her eyes.
"How do, Miz Crowley," he whispered.
The Buick hummed along the quiet country road. Inside, Carole leaned against her husband while the radio played, A Moment or Forever, arranged for strings. "Remember that?" he asked.
"Mmmm hmmm." She kissed his cheek.
"Now where," he wondered, "is that motel the old man recommended?"
"Isn't that it up ahead?" she asked.
The tires crackled on the gravel path, then stopped. "Owen, look," she said. He laughed. Aldo Weaver, Manager, read the bottom line of the rust-streaked wooden sign.
"Yes, brother George, he marries all the young folks round about," said Aldo Weaver as he led them to their cabin and unlocked the door. Then Aldo crunched away and Carole leaned her back against the door until the lock clicked. In the quiet room, dim from tree shade, Carole whispered, "Now you're mine."
They were walking through the empty, echoing rooms of a little house in Northport. "Oh, yes," said Carole happily. They stood before the living room windows, looking out into the shadow-dark woods beyond. Her hand slipped into his. "Home," she said, "sweet home."
They were moving in and it was furnished. A second novel sold, a third. John was born when winds whipped powdery snow across the sloping lawn; Linda on a sultry, cricket rasping summer night. Years cranked by, a moving backdrop on which events were painted.
He sat there in the stillness of his tiny den. He'd stayed up late correcting the galleys on his forthcoming novel One Foot in Sea. Now, almost nodding, he twisted together his fountain pen and set it down. "My God, my God," he murmured, stretching. He was tired.
Across the room, standing on the mantel of the tiny fireplace, the clock buzzed once. Owen looked at it. 3:15 a.m. It was well past his-
He found himself staring at the clock and, like a slow-tapped tympani, his heart was felt. Seventeen minutes later than the last time, thought persisted; thirty-two minutes in all.
Owen Crowley shivered and rubbed his hands as if at some imaginary flame. Well, this is idiotic, he thought; idiotic to dredge up this fantasy every year or so. It was the sort of nonsense that could well become obsession.
He lowered his gaze and looked around the room. The sight of time-worn comforts and arrangements made him smile. This house, its disposition, that shelf of manuscripts at his left. These were measurable. The children alone were eighteen months of slow transition just in the making.
He clucked disgustedly at himself. This was absurd; rationalizing to himself as if the fancy merited rebuttal. Clearing his throat, he tidied up the surface of his desk with energetic movements. There. And there.
He leaned back heavily in his chair. Well, maybe it was a mistake to repress it. That the concept kept returning was proof enough it had a definite meaning. Certainly, the flimsiest of delusions fought against could disorient the reason. All men knew that.
Well, then, face it, he decided. Time was constant; that was the core. What varied was a person's outlook on it. To some it dragged by on tar-held feet, to others fled on blurring wings. It just happened he was one of those to whom time seemed overly transient. So transient that it fostered rather than dispelled the memory of that childish wish he'd made that night more than five years before.
That was it, of course. Months seemed a wink and years a breath because he viewed them so. And-
The door swung open and Carole came across the rug, holding a glass of warmed milk.
"You should be in bed," he scolded.
"So should you," she answered, "yet I see you sitting here. Do you know what time it is?"
"I know," he said.
She settled on his lap as he sipped the milk. "Galleys done?" she asked. He nodded and slid an arm around her waist. She kissed his temple. Out in the winter night, a dog barked once.
She sighed. "It seems like only yesterday, doesn't it?" she said.
He drew in faint breath. "I don't think so," he said. "Oh, you." She punched him gently on the arm.
"This is Artie," said his agent. "Guess what?"
Owen gasped. "No!"
He found her in the laundry room, stuffing bedclothes into the washer. "Honey!" he yelled. Sheets went flying.
"It's happened!" he cried.
"What?"
"The movies, the movies! They're buying Nobles and Heralds!"
"No!"
"Yes! And, get this now, sit down and get it, go ahead and sit or else you'll fall! -- they're paying twelve thousand, five hundred dollars for it!"
"Oh!"
"And that's not all! They're giving me a ten-week guarantee to do the screenplay at, get this -- seven hundred and fifty dollars a week!"
She squeaked. "We're rich."
"Not quite," he said, floor-pacing, "but it's only the beginning, folks, on-ly the beginning!"
October winds swept in like tides over the dark field. Spotlight ribbons wiped across the sky.
"I wish the kids were here," he said, his arm around her.
"They'd just be cold and cranky, darling," Carole said.
"Carole, don't you think-"
"Owen, you know I'd come with you if I could; but we'd have to take Johnny out of school and, besides, it would cost so much. It's only ten weeks, darling. Before you know it-"
"Flight twenty-seven for Chicago and Los Angeles," intoned the speaker, "now boarding at Gate Three."
"So soon." Suddenly, her eyes were lost, she pressed her wind-chilled cheek to his. "Oh, darling, I'll miss you so."
The thick wheels squeaked below, the cabin walls shook. Outside, the engines roared faster and faster. The field rushed by. Owen looked back. Colored lights were distant now. Somewhere among them, Carole stood, watching his plane nose up into the blackness. He settled back and closed his eyes a moment. A dream, he thought. Flying west to write a movie from his own novel. Good God, a veritable dream.
He sat there on a corner of the leather couch. His office was capacious. A peninsula of polished desk extended from the wall, an upholstered chair parked neatly against it. Tweed drapes concealed the humming air conditioner, tasteful reproductions graced the walls and, beneath his shoes, the carpet gave like sponge. Owen sighed.
A knocking broke his reverie. "Yes?" he asked. The snugly-sweltered blonde stepped in. "I'm Cora. I'm your secretary," she said. It was Monday morning.
"Eighty-five minutes, give or take," said Morton Zuckersmith, Producer. He signed another notification. "That's a good length." He signed another letter. "You'll pick these things up as you go along." He signed another contract. "It's a world of its own." He stabbed the pen into its onyx sheath and his secretary exited, bearing off the sheaf of papers. Zuckersmith leaned back in his leather chair, hands behind his head, his polo shirted chest broadening with air. "A world of its own, kiddy," he said. "Ah. Here's our girl."
Owen stood, his stomach muscles twitching as Linda Carson slipped across the room, one ivory hand extended. "Morton, dear," she said.
"Morning, darling." Zuckersmith engulfed her hand in his, then looked toward Owen. "Dear, I'd like you to meet your writer for The Lady and the Herald"
"I've been so anxious to meet you," said Linda Carson, nee Virginia Ostermeyer. "I loved your book. How can I tell you?"
He started up as Cora entered. "Don't get up," she said. "I'm just bringing you your pages. We're up to forty-five."
Owen watched her as she stretched across the desk. Her sweaters grew more skin like every day. The tense expansion of her breathing posed threats to every fibre.
"How does it read?" he asked.
She took it for an invitation to perch across the couch arm at his feet. "I think you're doing wonderfully," she said. She crossed her legs and frothy slip lace sighed across her knees. "You're very talented." She drew in chest-enhancing air. "There's just a few things here and there," she said. "I'd tell you what they were right now but -- well, it's lunchtime and-"
They went to lunch; that day and others after. Cora donned a mantle of stewardship, guiding him as though he were re-sourceless. Bustling in with smiles and coffee every morning, telling him what foods were best prepared at dinner and, fingering his arm, leading him to the commissary every afternoon for orange juice; hinting at a p.m. continuance of their relationship; assuming a position in his life he had no desire for. Actually sniffling one afternoon after he'd gone to lunch without her; and, as he patted her shoulder in rough commiseration, pressing against him suddenly, her firm lips taking their efficient due, the taut convexities of her indenting him. He drew back, startled. "Cora."
She patted his cheek: "Don't think about it, darling. You have important work to do." Then she was gone and Owen was sitting at his desk, alarm diffusing to his fingertips. A week, another week.
"Hi," said Linda. "How are you?"
"Fine," he answered as Cora entered, clad in hugging gabardine, in clinging silk. "Lunch? I'd love to. Shall I meet you at the-? Oh. All right!" He hung up. Cora stared at him.
As he slipped onto the red leather seat he saw, across the street, Cora at the gate, watching him grimly.
"Hello, Owen," Linda said. The Lincoln purred into the line of traffic. This is nonsense, Owen thought. He'd have to try a second time with Cora. The first discouragement she'd taken for nobility; the gesture of a gallant husband toward his wife and children. At least she seemed to take it so. Good God, what complication.
It was lunch together on the Strip; then, later, dinner, Owen trusting that enough hours devoted to Linda would convince Cora of his lack of interest. The next night it was dinner and the Philharmonic; two nights later, dancing and a drive along the shore; the next, a preview in Encino.
At what specific juncture the plan went wrong Owen never knew. It gained irrevocable form the night when, parked beside the ocean, radio music playing softly, Linda slipped against him naturally, her world-known body pressing close, her lips a succulence at his. "Darling."
He lay starkly awake, thinking of the past weeks; of Cora and Linda; of Carole whose reality had faded to the tenuous form of daily letters and a weekly voice emitting from the telephone, a smiling picture on his desk.
He'd almost finished with the screenplay. Soon he'd fly back home. So much time had passed. Where were the joints, the sealing place? Where was the evidence except in circumstantial shards of memory? It was like one of those effects they'd taught him at the studio; a montage, a series of quickly paced scenes. That's what life seemed like; a series of quickly paced scenes that flitted across the screen of one's attention, then were gone.
Across the hotel room, his travelling clock buzzed once. He would not look at it.
He ran against the wind, the snow, but Carole wasn't there. He stood, eyes searching, in the waiting room, an island of man and luggage. Was she ill? There'd been no acknowledgment of his telegram but-
"Carole?" The booth was hot and stale.
"Yes," she said.
"My God, darling, did you forget?"
"No," she said.
The taxi ride to Northport was a jading travelogue of snow-cottoned trees and lawns, impeding traffic lights and tire chains rattling over slush-gravied streets. She'd been so deadly calm on the phone. No, I'm not sick. Linda has a little cold. John is fine. I couldn't get a sitter. A chill of premonitions troubled at him.
Home at last. He'd dreamed of it like this, standing silently among the skeletal trees, a mantle of snow across its roof, a rope of wood smoke spiralling from its chimney. He paid the driver with a shaking hand and turned expectantly. The door stayed shut. He waited but the door stayed shut.
He read the letter that she'd finally given him. Dear Mrs. Crowley, it began, I thought you ought to know.... His eyes sought out the childish signature below. Cora Bailey.
"Why that dirty, little-" He couldn't say it; something held him back.
"Dear God." She stood before the window, trembling. "To this very moment I've been praying it was a lie. But now..."
She shriveled at his touch. "Don't."
"You wouldn't go with me," he charged. "You wouldn't
go-"
"Is that your excuse?" she asked.
"Wha'm I gonna do?" he asked, fumbling at his fourteenth Scotch and water. "Wha'? I don' wanna lose 'er, Artie. I don' wanna lose 'er an' the children. Wha'm I gonna do?"
"I don't know," said Artie.
"That dirty li'l-" Owen muttered. "Hadn't been for her..."
"Don't blame the silly little slut for this," said Artie. "She's just the icing. You're the one who baked the cake."
"Wha'm I gonna do?"
"Well, for one thing, start working at life a little more. It isn't just a play that's taking place in front of you. You're on the stage, you have a part. Either you play it or you're a pawn. No one's going to feed you dialogue or action, Owen. You're on your own. Remember that."
"I wonder," Owen said. Then and later in the silence of his hotel room.
A week, two weeks. Listless walks through a Manhattan that was only noise and loneliness. Movies stared at, dinners at the Automat, sleepless nights, the alcoholed search for peace. Finally, the desperate phone call. "Carole, take me back, please take me back."
"Oh, darling. Come home to me."
Another cab ride, this time joyous. The porch light burning, the door flung open, Carole running to him. Arms around each other, walking back into their home together.
The Grand Tour! A dizzying whirl of places and events. Misted England in the spring; the broad, the narrow streets of Paris; Spree-bisected Berlin and Rhone-bisected Geneva. Milan of Lombardy, the hundred crumbling-castled islands of Venice, the culture trove of Florence, Marseilles braced against the sea, the Alps-protected Riviera, Dijon the ancient. A second honeymoon; a rush of desperate renewal, half seen, half felt like flashes of uncertain heat in a great, surrounding darkness.
They lay together on the river bank. Sunlight scattered glittering coins across the water, fish stirred idly in the thermal drift. The contents of their picnic basket lay in happy decimation. Carole rested on his shoulder, her breath a warming tickle on his chest.
"Where has the time all gone to?" Owen asked; not of her or anyone but to the sky.
"Darling, you sound upset," she said, raising on an elbow to look at him.
"I am," he answered. "Don't you remember the night we saw that picture A Moment or Forever? Don't you remember what I said?"
"No."
He told her; of that and of his wish and of the formless dread that sometimes came upon him. "It was just the first part I wanted fast, though," he said, "not the whole thing."
"Darling, darling," Carole said, trying not to smile, "I guess this must be the curse of having an imagination. Owen, it's been over seven years. Seven years."
He held his watch up. "Or fifty-seven minutes," he said.
Home again. Summer, fall, and winter. Wind from the South selling to the movies for $100,000; Owen turning down the screenplay offer. The aging mansion overlooking the Sound, the hiring of Mrs. Halsey as their housekeeper. John packed off to military academy, Linda to private school. As a result of the European trip, one blustery afternoon in March, the birth of George.
Another year. Another. Five years, ten. Books assured and flowing from his pen. Lap of Legends Old, Crumbling Satires, Jiggery Pokery, and The Dragon Fly. A decade gone, then more. The National Book Award for No Dying and No Tomb. The Pulitzer Prize for Bacchus Night.
He stood before the window of his panelled office, trying to forget at least a single item of another panelled office he'd been in, that of his publisher the day he'd signed his first contract there. But he could forget nothing; not a single detail would elude him. As if, instead of twenty-three years before, it had been yesterday. How could he recall it all so vividly unless, actually-
"Dad?" He turned and felt a frozen trap jaw clamp across his heart. John strode across the room. "I'm going now," he said.
"What? Going?" Owen stared at him; at this tall stranger, at this young man in military uniform who called him Dad.
"Old Dad," laughed John. He clapped his father's arm. "Are you dreaming up another book?"
Only then, as if cause followed effect, Owen knew. Europe raged with war again and John was in the army, ordered overseas. He stood there, staring at his son, speaking with a voice not his; watching the seconds rush away. Where had this war come from? What vast and awful machinations had brought it into being? And where was his little boy? Surely he was not this stranger shaking hands with him and saying his goodbyes. The trap jaw tightened. Owen whimpered.
But the room was empty. He blinked. Was it all a dream, all flashes in an ailing mind? On leaden feet, he stumbled to the window and watched the taxi swallow up his son and drive away with him. "Goodbye," he whispered. "God protect you."
No one feeds you dialogue, he thought; but was that he who spoke?
\*
The bell had rung and Carole answered it. Now, the handle of his office door clicked once and she was standing there, face bloodless, staring at him, in her hand the telegram. Owen felt his breath stop.
"No," he murmured; then, gasping, started up as, soundlessly, Carole swayed and crumpled to the floor.
"At least a week in bed," the doctor told him. "Quiet; lots of rest. The shock is most severe."
He shambled on the dunes; numbed, expressionless. Razored winds cut through him, whipped his clothes and lashed his gray-streaked hair to threads. With lightless eyes, he marked the course of foam flecked waves across the Sound. Only yesterday that John went off to war, he thought; only yesterday he came home proudly rigid in his academy uniform; only yesterday he was in shorts and grammar school; only yesterday he thundered through the house leaving his wake of breathless laughter; only yesterday that he was born when winds whipped powdery snow across-
"Dear God!" Dead. Dead! Not twenty-one and dead; all his life a moment passed, a memory already slipping from the mind.
"I take it back!" Terrified, he screamed it to the rushing sky. "I take it back, I never meant it!" He lay there, scraping at the sand, weeping for his boy yet wondering if he ever had a boy at all.
"Attendez, M'sieus, M'dames! Nice!"
"Oh my; already?" Carole said. "That was quick now, children, wasn't it?"
Owen blinked. He looked at her; at this portly, gray-haired woman across the aisle from him. She smiled. She knew him?
"What?" he asked.
"Oh, why do I talk to you?" she grumbled. "You're always in your thoughts, your thoughts." Hissing, she stood and drew a wicker basket from the rack. Was this some game?
"Gee, Dad, look at that!"
He gaped at the teenaged boy beside him. And who was he? Owen Crowley shook his head a little. He looked around him. Nice? In France again? What about the war?
The train plunged into blackness. "Oh, damn!" snapped Linda. On Owen's other side she struck her match again and, in the flare, he saw, reflected in the window, the features of another middle-aged stranger and it was himself. The present flooded over him. The war over and he and his family abroad: Linda, twenty-one, divorced, bitter, slightly alcoholic; George, fifteen, chubby, flailing in the glandular limbo between women and erector sets; Carole, forty-six, newly risen from the sepulchre of menopause, pettish, somewhat bored; and he himself, forty-nine, successful, coldly handsome, still wondering if life were made of years or seconds. All this passing through his mind before Riviera sunlight flooded into their compartment again.
Out on the terrace it was darker, cooler. Owen stood there, smoking, looking at the spray of diamond pinpoints in the sky. Inside, the murmuring of gamblers was like a distant, insect hum.
"Hello, Mr. Crowley."
She was in the shadows, palely gowned; a voice, a movement.
"You know my name?" he asked.
"But you're famous," was her answer.
Awareness fluttered in him. The straining flattery of club women had turned his stomach more than once. But then she'd glided from the darkness and he saw her face and all awareness died. Moonlight creamed her arms and shoulders; it was incandescent in her eyes.
"My name is Alison," she said. "Are you glad to meet me?"
The polished cruiser swept a banking curve into the wind, its bow slashing at the waves, flinging up a rainbowed mist across them. "You little idiot!" he laughed. "You'll drown us yet!"
"You and I!" she shouted back. "Entwining under fathoms! I'd love that, wouldn't you?"
He smiled at her and touched her thrill-flushed cheek. She kissed his palm and held him with her eyes. I love you. Soundless; a movement of her lips. He turned his head and looked across the sun-jewelled Mediterranean. Just keep going on, he thought. Never turn. Keep going till the ocean swallows us. I won't go back.
Alison put the boat on automatic drive, then came up behind him, sliding warm arms around his waist, pressing her body to his. "You're off again," she murmured. "Where are you, darling?"
He looked at her. "How long have we known each other?" he asked.
"A moment, forever, it's all the same," she answered, teasing at his ear lobe with her lips.
"A moment or forever," he murmured. "Yes."
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing," he said. "Just brooding on the tyranny of clocks."
"Since time is so distressing to you, love," she said, pushing open the cabin door, "let's not waste another second of it."
The cruiser hummed across the silent sea.
"What, hiking?' Carole said. "At your age?"
"Though it may disturb you," Owen answered, tautly, "I, at least, am not yet prepared to surrender to the stodgy blandishments of old age."
"So I'm senile now!" she cried.
"Please,' he said.
"She thinks you're old?" said Alison. "Good God, how little that woman knows you!"
Hikes, skiing, boat rides, swimming, horseback riding, dancing till sun dispersed the night. Him telling Carole he was doing research for a novel; not knowing if she believed him; not, either, caring much. Weeks and weeks of stalking the elusive dead.
He stood on the sun-drenched balcony outside Alison's room. Inside, ivory-limbed, she slept like some game-worn child. Owen's body was exhausted, each inadequate muscle pleading for surcease; but, for the moment, he was not thinking about that. He was wondering about something else; a clue that had occurred to him when he was lying with her.
In all his life, it seemed as if there never was a clear remembrance of physical love. Every detail of the moments leading to the act were vivid but the act itself was not. Equally so, all memory of his ever having cursed aloud was dimmed, uncertain.
And these were the very things that movies censored.
"Owen?" Inside, he heard the rustle of her body on the sheets. There was demand in her voice again; honeyed but authoritative. He turned. Then let me remember this, he thought. Let every second of it be with me; every detail of its fiery exaction, its flesh-born declarations, its drunken, sweet derangement. Anxiously, he stepped through the doorway.
Afternoon. He walked along the shore, staring at the mirror-flat blueness of the sea. It was true then. There was no distinct remembrance of it. From the second he'd gone through the doorway until now, all was a virtual blank. Yes, true! He knew it now. Interims were void; time was rushing him to his script-appointed end. He was a player, yes, as Artie said, but the play had already been written.
He sat in the dark train compartment, staring out the window. Far below slept moon-washed Nice and Alison; across the aisle slept George and Linda, grumbled Carole in a restless sleep. How angry they had been at his announcement of their immediate departure for home.
And now, he thought, and now. He held his watch up and marked the posture of its luminous hands. Seventy-four minutes.
How much left?
"You know, George," he said, "when I was young and not so young I nursed a fine delusion. I thought my life was being run out like a motion picture. It was never certain, mind you, only nagging doubt but it dismayed me; oh, indeed it did. Until, one day a little while ago, it came to me that everyone has an uncontrollable aversion to the inroads of mortality. Especially old ones like myself, George. How we are inclined to think that time has, somehow, tricked us, making us look the other way a moment while, now unguarded, it rushes by us, bearing on its awful, tracking shoulders, our lives."
"I can see that," said George and lit his pipe again.
Owen Crowley chuckled: "George, George," he said. "Give full humour to your nutty sire. He'll not be with you too much longer."
"Now stop that talk," said Carole, knitting by the fire. "Stop that silly talk."
"Carole?" he called. "My dear?" Wind from the Sound obscured his trembling voice. He looked around. "Here, you! Here!"
The nurse primped mechanically at his pillow. She chided, "Now, now, Mr. Crowley. You mustn't tire yourself."
"Where's my wife? For pity's sake go fetch her. I can't-"
"Hush now, Mr. Crowley, don't start in again."
He stared at her, at this semi-moustached gaucherie in white who fussed and wheedled. "What?" he murmured. "What?" Then something drew away the veil and he knew. Linda was getting her fourth divorce, shuttling between her lawyer's office and the cocktail lounges; George was a correspondent in Japan, a brace of critic-feted books to his name. And Carole, Carole?
Dead.
"No," he said, quite calmly. "No, no, that's not true. I tell you, fetch her. Oh, there's a pretty thing." He reached out for the falling leaf.
The blackness parted; it filtered into unmarked greyness. Then his room appeared, a tiny fire in the grate, his doctor by the bed consulting with the nurse; at the foot of it, Linda standing like a sour wraith.
Now, thought Owen. Now was just about the time. His life, he thought, had been a brief engagement; a flow of scenes across what cosmic retina? He thought of John, of Linda Carson, of Artie, of Morton Zuckersmith and Cora; of George and Linda and Alison; of Carole; of the legioned people who had passed him during his performance. They were all gone, almost faceless now.
"What... time?" he asked.
The doctor drew his watch. "Four-oh-eight," he said, "a.m."
Of course. Owen smiled. He should have known it all along. A dryness in his throat thinned the laugh to a rasping whisper. They stood there, staring at him.
"Eighty-five minutes," he said. "A good length. Yes; a good length."
Then, just before he closed his eyes, he saw them-letters floating in the air, imposed across their faces and the room. And they were words but words seen in a mirror, white and still.
Or was it just imagination? Fadeout.
When he woke up that morning, he could talk French.
There was no warning. At six-fifteen, the alarm went off as usual and he and his wife stirred. Fred reached out a sleep-deadened hand and shut off the bell. The room was still for a moment.
Then Eva pushed back the covers on her side and he pushed back the covers on his side. His vein gnarled legs dropped over the side of the bed. He said, 'Bon matin, Eva.'
There was a slight pause.
'Wha'?' she asked.
'Je dis bon matin,' he said.
There was a rustle of nightgown as she twisted around to squint at him. 'What'd you say?'
'All I said was good -'
Fred Elderman stared back at his wife.
'What did I say?' he asked in a whisper... 'You said 'bone mattin or -'
'Jes dis bon matin. C'est un bon matin, n'est ce pas?'
The sound of his hand being clapped across his mouth was like that of a fast ball thumping in a catcher's mitt. Above the knuckle-ridged gag, his eyes were shocked.
'Fred, what IS it?'
Slowly, the hand drew down from his lips.
'I dunno, Eva,' he said, awed. Unconsciously, the hand reached up, one finger of it rubbing at his hair-ringed bald spot. 'It sounds like some -- some kind of foreign talk.'
'But you don't know no foreign talk, Fred,' she told him.
That's just it.'
They sat there looking at each other blankly. Fred glanced over at the clock.
'We better get dressed,' he said.
While he was in the bathroom, she heard him singing, 'Elle fit un fromage, du lait de ses moutons, ron, ron, du lait de ses moutons,' but she didn't dare call it to his attention while he was shaving.
Over breakfast coffee, he muttered something.
'What?' she asked before she could stop herself.
'Je'dis que veut dire ceci?
He heard the coffee go down her gulping throat.
'I mean,' he said, looking dazed, 'what does this mean?'
'Yes, what does it? You never talked no foreign language before.'
'I know it,' he said, toast suspended half-way to his open mouth. 'What -- what kind of language is it?'
'S-sounds t'me like French.'
French? I don't know no French?'
She swallowed more coffee. 'You do now,' she said weakly.
He stared at the table cloth.
'Le diable s'en mele,' he muttered.
Her voice rose. 'Fred, what?'
His eyes were confused. 'I said the devil has something to do with it.'
'Fred, you're -'
She straightened up in the chair and took a deep breath. 'Now,' she said, let's not profane, Fred. There has to be a good reason for this/ No reply. 'Well, doesn't there, Fred?'
'Sure, Eva. Sure. But -'
'No buts about it,' she declared, plunging ahead as if she were afraid to stop. 'Now is there any reason in this world why you should know how to talk French' -- she snapped her thin fingers -- 'just like that?'
He shook his head vaguely.
'Well,' she went on, wondering what to say next, 'let's see then.' They looked at each other in silence. 'Say something,' she decided. 'Let's -- ' She groped for words. 'Let's see what we... have here.' Her voice died off.
'Say somethin'?'
'Yes,' she said. 'Go on.'
'Un gemissement se fit entrendre. Les dogues se mettent d aboyer. Ces gants me vont bien. ll va sur les quinze ans -'
'Fred?'
'II fit fabriquer une exacte representation du monstre.'
'Fred, hold on!' she cried, looking scared.
His voice broke off and he looked at her, blinking.
'What... what did you say this time, Fred?' she asked.
'I said -- a moan was heard. His mastiffs began to bark. These gloves fit me. He will soon be fifteen years old and -'
'What?'
'And he has an exact copy of the monster made. Sans meme I'entamer.'
'Fred?'
He looked ill. 'Without even scratchin,' he said.
At that hour of the morning, the campus was quiet. The only classes that early were the two seven-thirty Economics lectures and they were held on the White Campus. Here on the Red there was no sound. In an hour the walks would be filled with chatting, laughing, loafer-clicking student hordes, but for now there was peace.
In far less than peace, Fred Elderman shuffled along the east side of the campus, headed for the administration building. Having left a confused Eva at home, he'd been trying to figure it out as he went to work.
What was it? When had it begun? C'est une heure, said his mind.
He shook his head angrily. This was terrible. He tried desperately to think of what could have happened, but he couldn't. It just didn't make sense. He was fifty-nine, a janitor at the university with no education to speak of, living a quiet, ordinary life. Then he woke up one morning speaking articulate French.
French.
He stopped a moment and stood in the frosty October wind, staring at the cupola of Jeramy Hall. He's cleaned out the French office the night before. Could that have anything to do with --
'No, that was ridiculous. He started off again, muttering under his breath -- unconsciously. 'Je suis, tu es, il est, elle est, nous sommes, vous etes -'
At eight-ten, he entered the History Department office to repair a sink in the washroom. He worked on it for an hour and seven minutes, then put the tools back in the bag and walked out into the office.
'Mornin,' he said to the professor sitting at a desk.
'Good morning, Fred,' said the professor.
Fred Elderman walked out into the hall thinking how remarkable it was that the income of Louis XVI, from the same type of taxes, exceeded that of Louis XV by 130 million livres and that the exports which had been 106 million in 1720 were 192 million in 1746 and --
He stopped in the hall, a stunned look on his lean face.
That morning, he had occasion to be in the offices of the Physics, the Chemistry, the English and the Art Departments.
The Windmill was a little tavern near Main Street. Fred went there on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings to nurse a couple of draught beers and chat with his two friends -Harry Bullard, manager of Hogan's Bowling Alleys, and Lou Peacock, postal worker and amateur gardener.
Stepping into the doorway of the dim lit saloon that evening, Fred was heard -- by an exiting patron -- to murmur, 'Je connais tous ces braves gens,' then look around with a guilty twitch of cheek. 'I mean...' he muttered, but didn't finish.
Harry Bullard saw him first in the mirror. Twisting his head around on its fat column of neck, he said. 'Cmon in, Fred, the whisky's fine,' then, to the bartender, 'Draw one for the elder man,' and chuckled.
Fred walked to the bar with the first smile he'd managed to summon that day. Peacock and Bullard greeted him and the bartender sent down a brimming stein.
'What's new, Fred?' Harry asked.
Fred pressed his moustache between two foam-removing fingers.
'Not much,' he said, still too uncertain to discuss it. Dinner with Eva had been a painful meal during which he'd eaten not only food but an endless and detailed running commentary on the Thirty Years War, the Magna Charta and boudoir information about Catherine the Great. He had been glad to retire from the house at seven-thirty, murmuring an unmanageable, 'Bon nuit, ma chere.'
'What's new with you?' he asked Harry Bullard now.
'Well,' Harry answered, 'we been paintin' down at the alleys. You know, redecoratin.'
That right?' Fred said. 'When painting with coloured beeswax was inconvenient, Greek and Roman easel painters used tempera -- that is, colours fixed upon a wood or stucco base by means of such a medium as -'
He stopped. There was a bulging silence.
'Hanh?' Harry Bullard asked.
Fred swallowed nervously. 'Nothing,' he said hastily. 'I was just -- ' He stared down into the tan depths of his beer. 'Nothing,' he repeated.
Bullard glanced at Peacock, who shrugged back.
'How are your hothouse flowers coming, Lou?' Fred inquired, to change the subject.
The small man nodded. 'Fine. They're just fine.'
'Good,' said Fred, nodding, too. 'Vi sono pui di cinquante bastimenti in porto,' He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.
'What's that?' Lou asked, cupping one ear.
Fred coughed on his hastily swallowed beer. 'Nothing,' he said.
'No, what did ya say?' Harry persisted, the half-smile on his broad face indicating that he was ready to hear a good joke.
'I -- I said there are more than fifty ships in the harbour,' explained Fred morosely.
The smile faded. Harry looked blank.
'What harbour?' he asked.
Fred tried to sound casual. 'I -- it's just a joke I heard today. But I forgot the last line.'
'Oh,' Harry stared at Fred, then returned to his drink. 'Yeah.'
They were quiet for a moment. Then Lou asked Fred, 'Through for the day?'
'No. I have to clean up the Math office later.'
Lou nodded. That's too bad.'
Fred squeezed more foam from his moustache. Tell me something,' he said, taking the plunge impulsively. 'What would you think if you woke up one morning talking French?'
Who did that?' asked Harry, squinting.
'Nobody,' Fred said hurriedly. 'Just... supposing, I mean. Supposing a man was too -- well, to know things he never learned. You know what I mean? Just know them. As if they were always in his mind and he was seeing them for the first time.'
'What kind o' things, Fred?' asked Lou.
'Oh... history. Different... languages. Things about... books and paintings and... atoms and -- chemicals.' His shrug was jerky and obvious. Things like that.'
'Don't get ya, buddy,' Harry said, having given up any hopes that a joke was forthcoming.
'You mean he knows things he never learned?' Lou asked. That it?'
There was something in both their voices -- a doubting incredulity, a holding back, as if they feared to commit themselves, a suspicious reticence.
Fred sloughed it off. 'I was just supposing. Forget it. It's not worth talking about.'
He had only one beer that night, leaving early with the excuse that he had to clean the Mathematics office. And, all through the silent minutes that he swept and mopped and dusted, he kept trying to figure out what was happening to him.
He walked home in the chill of night to find Eva waiting for him in the kitchen.
'Coffee, Fred?' she offered.
'I'd like that,' he said, nodding. She started to get up. 'No, s'accomadi, la prego,' he blurted.
She looked at him, grim-faced.
'I mean,' he translated, 'sit down, Eva. I can get it.'
They sat there drinking coffee while he told her about his experiences.
'It's more than I can figure, Eva,' he said. 'It's... scary, in a way. I know so many things I never knew. I have no idea where they come from. Not the least idea.' His lips pressed together. 'But I know them,' he said, 'I certainly know them.'
'More than just... French now?' she asked.
He shook his head worriedly. 'Lots more,' he said. 'Like -' He looked up from his cup. 'Listen to this. Main progress in producing fast particles has been made by using relatively small voltages and repeated acceleration. In most of the instruments used, charged particles are driven around in circular or spiral orbits with the help of a -- You listenin', Eva?'
He saw her Adam's apple move. 'I'm listenin',' she said.
' -- help of a magnetic field. The acceleration can be applied in different ways. In the so-called betatron of Kerst and Serber -'
'What does it mean, Fred?' she interrupted.
'I don't know,' he said helplessly. 'It's... just words in my head. I know what it means when I say something in a foreign tongue, but... this?'
She shivered, clasping at her forearms abruptly.
'It's not right,' she said.
He frowned at her in silence for a long moment.
'What do you mean, Eva?' he asked then.
'I don't know, Fred,' she said quietly and shook her head once, slowly. 'I just don't know.'
She woke up about midnight and heard him mumbling in his sleep.
The natural logarithms of whole numbers from ten to two hundred. Number one -- zero -- two point three oh two six. One - two point three nine seven nine. Two - two point -'
'Fred, go t'sleep,' she said, frowning nervously.
' -- four eight four nine.'
She prodded him with an elbow. 'Go t'sleep, Fred.'
'Three - two point -'
'Fred!'
'Huh?' He moaned and swallowed dryly, turned on his side.
In the darkness, she heard him shape the pillow with sleep-heavy hands.
'Fred?' she called softly.
He coughed. 'What?'
'I think you better go t'Doctor Boone t'morra mornin!'
She heard him draw in a long breath, then let it filter out evenly until it was all gone.
'I think so, too,' he said in a blurry voice.
On Friday morning, when he opened the door to the waiting room of Doctor William Boone, a draft of wind scattered papers from the nurse's desk.
'Oh,' he said apologetically. 'Le chieggo scuse. Non ne val la pena.'
Miss Agnes McCarthy had been Doctor Boone's receptionist-nurse for seven years and in that time she'd never heard Fred Elderman speak a single foreign word.
Thus she goggled at him, amazed. 'What's that you said?' she asked.
Fred's smile was a nervous twitch of the lips.
'Nothing,' he said, 'miss.'
Her returned smile was formal. 'Oh.' She cleared her throat. 'I'm sorry Doctor couldn't see you yesterday.'
'That's all right,' he told her.
'He'll be ready in about ten minutes.'
Twenty minutes later, Fred sat down beside Boone's desk and the heavy-set doctor leaned back in his chair with an, 'Ailing, Fred?'
Fred explained the situation.
The doctor's cordial smile became, in order, amused, fixed, strained and finally nonexistent.
'This is really so?' he demanded.
Fred nodded with grim deliberation. 'Je me laisse con-seiller.'
Doctor Boone's heavy eyebrows lifted a noticeable jot. 'French,' he said. 'What'd you say?'
Fred swallowed. 'I said I'm willing to be advised.'
'Son of a gun,' intoned Doctor Boone, plucking at his lower lip. 'Son of a gun.' He got up and ran exploring hands over Fred's skull. 'You haven't received a head blow lately, have you?'
'No,' said Fred. 'Nothing.'
'Hmmm.' Doctor Boone drew away his hands and let them drop to his sides. 'Well, no apparent bumps or cracks,' He buzzed for Miss McCarthy. Then he said, 'Well, let's take a try at the X-rays.'
The X-rays revealed no breaks or blots.
The two men sat in the office, discussing it.
'Hard to believe,' said the doctor, shaking his head. Fred 'sighed despondently. 'Well, don't take on so,' Boone said. 'It's nothing to be disturbed about. So you're a quiz kid, so what?'
Fred ran nervous fingers over his moustache. 'But there's no sense to it. Why is it happening? What is it? The fact is, I'm a little scared.'
'Nonsense, Fred. Nonsense. You're in good physical condition. That I guarantee.'
'But what about my -- ' Fred hesitated -- 'my brain?'
Doctor Boone stuck out his lower lip in consoling derision, shaking his head. I wouldn't worry about that, either.' He slapped one palm on the desk top. 'Let me think about it, Fred. Consult a few associates. You know -- analyse it. Then I'll let you know. Fair enough?'
He walked Fred to the door.
'In the meantime,' he prescribed, 'no worrying about it. There isn't a thing to worry about.'
His face as he dialled the phone a few minutes later was not unworried, however.
'Fetlock?' he said, getting his party. 'Got a poser for you.'
Habit more than thirst brought Fred to the Windmill that evening. Eva had wanted him to stay home and rest, assuming that his state was due to overwork; but Fred had insisted that it wasn't his health and left the house, just managing to muffle his 'Au revoir.'
He joined Harry Bui lard and Lou Peacock at the bar and finished his first beer in a glum silence while Harry revealed why they shouldn't vote for Legislator Milford Carpenter.
Tell ya the man's got a private line t'Moscow,' he said. 'A few men like that in office and we're in for it, take my word.' He looked over at Fred staring into his beer. 'What's with it, elder man?' he asked, clapping Fred on the shoulder.
Fred told them -- as if he were telling about a disease he'd caught.
Lou Peacock looked incredulous. 'So that's what you were talking about the other night!'
Fred nodded.
'You're not kiddin' us now?' Harry asked. 'Y'know everything'
'Just about,' Fred admitted sadly.
A shrewd look overcame Harry's face.
'What if I ask ya somethin' ya don't know?'
'I'd be happy,' Fred said in a despairing voice.
Harry beamed. 'Okay. I won't ask you about atoms nor chemicals nor anythin' like that. I'll just ask ya t'tell me about the country between my home town Au Sable and Tarva.' He hit the bar with a contented slap.
Fred looked hopeful briefly, but then his face blanked and he said in an unhappy voice. 'Between Au Sable and Tarva, the route is through typical cut-over land that once was covered with virgin pine (danger: deer on the highway) and now has only second-growth oak, pine and poplar. For years after the decline of the lumber industry, picking huckleberries was one of the chief local occupations.'
Harry gaped.
'Because the berries were known to grow in the wake of fires,' Fred concluded, 'residents deliberately set many fires that roared through the country.'
'That's a damn dirty lie!' Harry said, chin trembling belligerently.
Fred looked at him in surprise.
'You shouldn't ought to'go around tellin' lies like that,' Harry said. 'You call that knowin' the countryside -- telling lies about it?'
'Take it easy, Harry,' Lou cautioned.
'Well,' Harry said angrily, 'he shouldn't ought to tell lies like that.'
'I didn't say it,' Fred answered hopelessly. 'It's more as though I -I read it off.'
'Yeah? Well...' Harry fingered his glass restlessly.
'You really know everything?' Lou asked, partly to ease the tension, partly because he was awed.
'I'm afraid so,' Fred replied.
'You ain't just... playin' a trick?'
Fred shook his head. 'No trick.'
Lou Peacock looked small and intense. 'What can you tell me,' he asked in a back-alley voice, 'about orange roses?'
The blank look crossed Fred's face again. Then he recited.
'Orange is not a fundamental colour but a blend of red and pink of varied intensity and yellow. There was very few orange roses prior to the Pernatia strain. All orange, apricot, chamois and coral roses finish with pink more or less accentuated. Some attain that lovely shade -- Cuisse de Nymphe emue.'
Lou Peacock was open-mouthed. 'Ain't that something?' Harry Bullard blew out heavy breath. 'What d'ya know about Carpenter?' he asked pugnaciously.
'Carpenter, Milford, born 1898 in Chicago, Illi -'
'Never mind,' Harry cut in. 'I ain't interested. He's a Commie; that's all I gotta know about him.'
'The elements that go into a political campaign,' quoth Fred helplessly, 'are many -- the personality of the candidates, the issues -- if any -- the attitude of the press, economic groups, traditions, the opinion polls, the -'
'I tell ya he's a Commie!' Harry declared, voice rising.
'You voted for him last election,' Lou said. 'As I re -'
'I did not!' snarled Harry, getting redder in the face.
The blank look appeared on Fred Elderman's face. 'Remembering things that are not so is a kind of memory distortion that goes by several names as pathological lying or mythomania.'
'You callin' me a liar, Fred?'
'It differs from ordinary lying in that the speaker comes to believe his own lies and -'
'Where did you get that black eye?' a shocked Eva asked Fred when he came into the kitchen later. 'Have you been fighting at your age?'
Then she saw the look on his face and ran for the refrigerator. She sat him on a chair and held a piece of beefsteak against his swelling eye while he related what had happened.
'He's a bully,' she said. 'A bully!'
'No, I don't blame him,' Fred disagreed. 'I insulted him. I don't even know what I'm saying any more. I'm -- I'm all mixed up.'
She looked down at his slumped form, an alarmed expression on her face. 'When is Doctor Boone going to do something for you?'
'I don't know.'
A half hour later, against Eva's wishes, he went to clean up the library with a fellow janitor; but the moment he entered the huge room, he gasped, put his hands to his temples and fell down on one knee, gasping, 'My head! My head!'
It took a long while of sitting quietly in the downstairs hallway before the pain in his skull stopped. He sat there staring fixedly at the glossy tile floor, his head feeling as if it had just gone twenty-nine rounds with the heavyweight champion of the world.
Fetlock came in the morning. Arthur B., forty-two, short and stocky, head of the Department of Psychological Sciences, he came bustling along the path in porkpie hat and chequered overcoat, jumped up on the porch, stepped across its worn boards and stabbed at the bell button. While he waited, he clapped leather-gloved hands together energetically and blew out breath clouds.
'Yes?' Eva asked when she opened the door.
Professor Fetlock explained his mission, not noticing how her face tightened with fright when he announced his field. Reassured that Doctor Boone had sent him, she led Fetlock up the carpeted steps, explaining, 'He's still in bed. He had an attack last night.
'Oh?' said Arthur Fetlock.
When introductions had been made and he was alone with the janitor, Professor Fetlock fired a rapid series of questions, Fred Elderman, propped up with pillows, answered them as well as he could.
This attack,' said Fetlock, 'what happened?'
'Don't know, Professor, Walked in the library and -- well, it was as if a ton of cement hit me on the head. No -- in my head.'
'Amazing. And this knowledge you say you've acquired -are you conscious of an increase in it since your illfated visit to the library?'
Fred nodded. '1 know more than ever.'
The professor bounced the fingertips of both hands against each other. 'A book on language by Pei. Section 9-B in the library, book number 429.2, if memory serves. Can you quote from it?'
Fred looked blank, but words followed almost immediately. 'Leibnitz first advanced the theory that all language came not from a historically recorded source but from proto-speech. In some respects he was a precursor of -'
'Good, good,' said Arthur Fetlock. 'Apparently a case of spontaneous telepathic manifestations coupled with clairvoyance.'
'Meaning?'
'Telepathy, Elderman. Telepathy! Seems every book or educated mind you come across, you pick clean of content. You worked in the French office, you spoke French. You worked in the Mathematics office, you quoted numbers, tables, axioms. Similarly with all other offices, subjects and individuals.' He scowled, purse-lipped. 'Ah, but why?'
'Causa qua re,' muttered Fred.
A brief wry sound in Professor Fetlock's throat. 'Yes, I wish I knew, too. However...' He leaned forward. 'What's that?'
'How come I can learn so much?' Fred asked worriedly, 'I mean -'
'No difficulty there,' stated the stocky psychologist. 'You see, no man ever utilized the full learning capacity of the brain. It still has an immense potential. Perhaps that's what's happening to you -- you're realising this potential.'
'But how?'
'Spontaneously realised telepathy and clairvoyance plus infinite retention and unlimited potential.' He whistled softly. 'Amazing. Positively amazing. Well, I must be going:'
'But what'll I do?' Fred begged.
'Why, enjoy it,' said the professor expansively. 'It's a perfectly fantastic gift. Now look -- if I were to gather together a group of faculty members, would you be willing to speak to them? Informally, of course.'
'But -'
'They should be entranced, positively entranced. I must do a paper for the Journal.'
'But what does it mean, Professor?' Fred Elderman asked, his voice shaking.
'Oh, we'll look into it, never fear. Really, this is revolutionary. An unparalleled phenomenon.' He made a sound of delighted disbelief. 'Incredible.'
When Professor Fetlock had gone, Fred sat defeatedly in his bed. So there was nothing to be done -- nothing but spout endless, inexplicable words and wonder into the nights what terrible thing was happening to him. Maybe the professor was excited; maybe it was exciting intellectual fare for outsiders. For him, it was only grim and increasingly frightening business.
'Why? Why? It was the question he could neither answer nor escape.
He was thinking that when Eva came in. He lifted his gaze as she crossed the room and sat down on the bed.
'What did he say?' she asked anxiously.
When he told her, her reaction was the same as his.
That's all? Enjoy it?' She pressed her lips together in anger. 'What's the matter with him? Why did Doctor Boone send him?'
He shook his head, without an answer.
There was such a look of confused fear on his face that she 'reached out her hand suddenly and touched his cheek. 'Does your head hurt, dear?'
'It hurts inside,' he said. 'In my... ' There was a clicking in his throat. 'If one considers the brain as a tissue which is only moderately compressible, surrounded by two variable factors -- the blood it contains and the spinal fluid which surrounds it and fills the ventricles inside the brain we have -'
He broke off spasmodically and sat there, quivering.
'God help us,' she whispered.
'As Sextus Empiricus says in his Arguments Against Belief in a God, those who affirm, positively, that God exists cannot avoid falling into an impiety. For -'
'Fred stop it!'
He sat looking at her dazedly.
'Fred, you don't... know what you're saying. Do you?'
'No. I never do. I just -- Eva, what's going on!'
She held his hand tightly and stroked it. 'It's all right, Fred. Please don't worry so.'
But he did worry. For behind the complex knowledge that filled his mind, he was still the same man, simple, uncomprehending -- and afraid.
Why was it happening?
It was as if, in some hideous way, he were a sponge filling more and more with knowledge and there would come a time when there was no room left and the sponge would explode.
Professor Fetlock stopped him in the hallway Monday morning. 'Elderman, I've spoken to the members of the faculty and they're all as excited as I. Would this afternoon be too soon? I can get you excused from any work you may be required to do.'
Fred looked bleakly at the professor's enthusiastic face. 'It's all right.'
'Splendid! Shall we say four-thirty then? My offices?'
'All right.'
'And may I make a suggestion?' asked the professor. 'I'd like you to tour the university -- all of it.'
When they separated, Fred went back down to the basement to put away his tools.
At four twenty-five, he pushed open the heavy door to the Department of Psychological Sciences. He stood there, waiting patiently, one hand on the knob, until someone in the large group of faculty members saw him. Professor Fetlock disengaged himself from the group and hurried over.
'Elderman,' he said,' come in, come in.'
'Professor, has Doctor Boone said anything more?' Fred insisted. 'I mean about -'
'No, nothing. Never fear, we'll get to it. But come along. I want you to -- Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please!'
Fred was introduced to them, standing in their midst, trying to look at ease when his heart and nerves were pulsing with a nervous dread.
'And did you follow my suggestion,' Fetlock asked loudly, 'and tour all the departments in the university?'
'Yes... sir.'
'Good, good.' Professor Fetlock nodded emphatically. 'That should complete the picture then. Imagine it, ladies and gentlemen -- the sum total of knowledge in our entire university -- all in the head of this one man!'
There were sounds of doubt from the faculty.
'No, no, I'm serious!' claimed Fetlock. The proof of the pudding is quite ample. Ask away.'
Fred Elderman stood there in the momentary silence, thinking of what Professor Fetlock had said. The knowledge of an entire university in his head. That meant there was no more to be gotten here then.
What now?
Then the questions came -- and the answers, dead-voiced and monotonous.
'What will happen to the sun in fifteen million years?'
'If the sun goes on radiating at its present rate for fifteen million years, its whole weight will be transformed into radiation.'
'What is a root tone?'
'In harmonic units, the constituent tones seem to have unequal harmonic values. Some seem to be more important and dominate the sounding unity. These roots are -'
All the knowledge of an entire university in his head.
'The five orders of Roman architecture.'
Tuscan, Doric, Corinthian, Ionic, Composite. Tuscan being a simplified Doric, Doric retaining the triglyphs, Corinthian characterised by -'
No more knowledge there he didn't possess. His brain crammed with it. Why?
'Buffer capacity?'
The buffer capacity of a solution may be defined as dx/dpH where dx is the small amount of strong acid or -'
Why?
'A moment ago. French.'
'II n'y a qu'un instant.'
Endless questions, increasingly excited until they were almost being shouted.
'What is literature involved with?'
'Literature is, of its nature, involved with ideas because it deals with Man in society, which is to say that it deals with formulations, valuations and -'
Why?
'Rules for masthead lights on steam vessels?' A laugh.
'A steam vessel when under way shall carry (a) on or in front of the foremast or, if a vessel without a foremast, then in the forepart of the vessel, a bright, white light so constructed as to -'
No laughter. Questions.
'How would a three-stage rocket take off?'
'The three-stage rocket would take off vertically and be given a slight tilt in an easterly direction, Brennschluss taking place about -'
'Who was Count Bernadotte?'
'What are the by-products of oil?'
'Which city is -'
'How can -'
'What is-'
'When did-'
And when it was over and he had answered every question they asked, there was a great, heavy silence. He stood trembling and yet numb, beginning to get a final knowledge.
The phone rang then and made everyone start.
Professor Fetlock answered it. 'For you Elderman.'
Fred walked over to the phone and picked up the receiver.
'Fred?' he heard Eva say.
'Oui'
'What?'
He twitched. 'I'm sorry, Eva. I mean yes, it's 1.'
He heard her swallowing on the other end of the line. 'Fred,' I... just wondered why you didn't come home, so I called your office and Charlie said -'
He told her about the meeting.
'Oh,' she said. 'Well, will you be -- home for supper?'
The last knowledge was seeping, rising slowly.
'I'll try, Eva. I think so, yes.'
'I been worried, Fred.'
He smiled sadly. 'Nothing to worry about, Eva.'
Then the message sliced abruptly across his mind and he said, 'Goodbye Eva,' and dropped the receiver. I have to go,' he told Fetlock and the others.
He didn't exactly hear what they said in return. The words, the transition from room to hall were blurred over by his sudden, concentrated need to get out on the campus.
The questioning faces were gone and he was hurrying down the hall on driven feet, his action as his speech had been -- unmotivated, beyond understanding. Something drew him on. He had spoken without knowing why; now he rushed down the long hallway without knowing why.
He rushed across the lobby, gasping for breath. The message he said. Come. It's time.
These things, these many things -- who would want to know them? These endless facts about all earthly knowledge.
Earthly knowledge...
As he came half tripping, half running down the building steps into the early darkness, he saw the flickering bluish white light in the sky. It was aiming over the trees, the buildings, straight at him.
He stood petrified, staring at it, and knew exactly why he had acquired all the knowledge he had.
The blue-white light bore directly at him with a piercing, whining hum. Across the dark campus, a young girl screamed.
Life on the other planets, the last words crossed his mind, is not only possibility but high probability.
Then the light hit him and bounced straight back up to its source, like lightning streaking in reverse from lightning rod to storm cloud, leaving him in awful blackness.
They found the old man wandering across the campus grass like a somnambulant mute. They spoke to him, but his tongue was still. Finally, they were obliged to look in his wallet, where they found his name and address and took him home.
A year later, after learning to talk all over again, he said his first stumbling words. He said them one night to his wife when she found him in the bathroom holding a sponge in his hand.
'Fred, what are you doing?'
'I been squeezed,' he said.
"You'll be late, " she said.
He leaned back tiredly in his chair.
"I know," he answered.
They were in the kitchen having breakfast. David hadn't eaten much. Mostly, he'd drunk black coffee and stared at the tablecloth. There were thin lines running through it that looked like intersecting highways.
"Well?" she said.
He shivered and took his eyes from the tablecloth.
"Yes," he said. "All right."
He kept sitting there.
"David," she said.
"I know, I know," he said, "I'll be late." He wasn't angry. There was no anger left in him.
"You certainly will," she said, buttering her toast. She spread on thick raspberry jam, then bit off a piece and chewed it cracklingly.
David got up and walked across the kitchen. At the door he stopped and turned. He stared at the back of her head.
"Why couldn't I?" he asked again.
"Because you can't," she said. "That's all."
"But why?"
"Because they need you," she said. "Because they pay you well and you couldn't do anything else. Isn't it obvious?"
"They could find someone else."
"Oh, stop it," she said. "You know they couldn't."
He closed his hands into fists. "Why should I be the one?" he asked.
She didn't answer. She sat eating her toast.
"Jean?"
"There's nothing more to say," she said, chewing. She turned around. "Now, will you go?" she said. "You shouldn't be late today."
David felt a chill in his flesh.
"No," he said, "not today."
He walked out of the kitchen and went upstairs. There, he brushed his teeth, polished his shoes and put on a tie. Before eight he was down again. He went into the kitchen.
"Goodbye," he said.
She tilted up her cheek for him and he kissed it. "Bye, dear," she said. "Have a-" She stopped abruptly.
"-nice day?" he finished for her. "Thank you." He turned away. "I'll have a lovely day."
Long ago he had stopped driving a car. Mornings he walked to the railroad station. He didn't even like to ride with someone else or take a bus.
At the station he stood outside on the platform waiting for the train. He had no newspaper. He never bought them any more. He didn't like to read the papers.
"Mornin', Garret."
He turned and saw Henry Coulter who also worked in the city. Coulter patted him on the back.
"Good morning," David said.
"How's it goin'?" Coulter asked.
"Fine. Thank you."
"Good. Lookin' forward to the Fourth?"
David swallowed. "Well..." he began.
"Myself, I'm takin' the family to the woods," said Coulter. "No lousy fireworks for us. Pilin' into the old bus and headin' out till the fireworks are over."
"Driving," said David.
"Yes, sir," said Coulter. "Far as we can."
It began by itself. No, he thought; not now. He forced it back into its darkness.
"-tising business," Coulter finished.
"What?" he asked.
"Said I trust things are goin' well in the advertising business."
David cleared his throat.
"Oh, yes," he said. "Fine." He always forgot about the lie he'd told Coulter.
When the train arrived he sat in the No Smoking car, knowing that Coulter always smoked a cigar en route. He didn't want to sit with Coulter. Not now.
All the way to the city he sat looking out the window. Mostly he watched road and highway traffic; but, once, while the train rattled over a bridge, he stared down at the mirror like surface of a lake. Once he put his head back and looked up at the sun.
He was actually to the elevator when he stopped.
"Up?" said the man in the maroon uniform. He looked at David steadily. "Up?" he said. Then he closed the rolling doors.
David stood motionless. People began to cluster around him. In a moment, he turned and shouldered by them, pushing through the revolving door. As he came out, the oven heat of July surrounded him. He moved along the sidewalk like a man asleep. On the next block he entered a bar.
Inside, it was cold and dim. There were no customers. Not even the bartender was visible. David sank down in the shadow of a booth and took his hat off. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
He couldn't do it. He simply could not go up to his office. No matter what Jean said, no matter what anyone said. He clasped his hands on the table edge and squeezed them until the ringers were pressed dry of blood. He just wouldn't.
"Help you?" asked a voice.
David opened his eyes. The bartender was standing by the booth, looking down at him.
"Yes, uh... beer," he said. He hated beer but he knew he had to buy something for the privilege of sitting in the chilly silence undisturbed. He wouldn't drink it.
The bartender brought the beer and David paid for it. Then, when the bartender had gone, he began to turn the glass slowly on the table top. While he was doing this it began again. With a gasp, he pushed it away. No!, he told it, savagely.
In a while he got up and left the bar. It was past ten. That didn't matter of course. They knew he was always late. They knew he always tried to break away from it and never could.
His office was at the back of the suite, a small cubicle furnished only with a rug, sofa, and a small desk on which lay pencils and white paper. It was all he needed. Once, he'd had a secretary but he hadn't liked the idea of her sitting outside the door and listening to him scream.
No one saw him enter. He let himself in from the hall through a private door. Inside, he relocked the door, then took off his suit coat and laid it across the desk. It was stuffy in the office so he walked across the floor and pulled up the window.
Far below, the city moved. He stood watching it. How many of them? he thought.
Sighing heavily, he turned. Well, he was here. There was no point in hesitating any longer. He was committed now. The best thing was to get it over and clear out.
He drew the blinds, walked over to the couch and lay down. He fussed a little with the pillow, then stretched once and was still. Almost immediately, he felt his limbs going numb.
It began.
He did not stop it now. It trickled on his brain like melted ice. It rushed like winter wind. It spun like blizzard vapor. It leaped and ran and billowed and exploded and his mind was filled with it. He grew rigid and began to gasp, his chest twitching with breath, the beating of his heart a violent stagger. His hands drew in like white talons, clutching and scratching at the couch. He shivered and groaned and writhed. Finally he screamed. He screamed for a very long while.
When it was done, he lay limp and motionless on the couch, his eyes like balls of frozen glass. When he could, he raised his arm and looked at his wristwatch. It was almost two.
He struggled to his feet. His bones felt sheathed with lead but he managed to stumble to his desk and sit before it.
There he wrote on a sheet of paper and, when he was finished, slumped across the desk and fell into exhausted sleep.
Later, he woke up and took the sheet of paper to his superior, who, looking it over, nodded.
"Four hundred eighty-six, huh?" the superior said. "You're sure of that?"
"I'm sure," said David, quietly. "I watched every one." He didn't mention that Coulter and his family were among them.
"All right," said his superior. "Let's see now. Four hundred fifty-two from traffic accidents, eighteen from drowning, seven from sun-stroke, three from fireworks, six from miscellaneous causes."
Such as a little girl being burned to death, David thought. Such as a baby boy eating ant poison. Such as a woman being electrocuted; a man dying of snake bite.
"Well," his superior said, "let's make it-oh, four hundred and fifty. It's always impressive when more people die than we predict."
"Of course," David said.
The item was on the front page of all the newspapers that afternoon. While David was riding home the man in front of him turned to his neighbour and said, "What I'd like to know is how can they tell?"
David got up and went back on the platform on the end of the car. Until he got off, he stood there listening to the train wheels and thinking about Labor Day.
I wanna RIDE!
with my Rota-Mota honey
by my SIDE!
As we whiz along the highway
"We will HUG and SNUGGLE and we'll have a little STRUGGLE!"
Struggle (strug'l)
Act of promiscuous loveplay; usage evolved during W.W.III.
Double beams spread buttery lamplight on the highway. Rotor-Motors Convertible, Model C, 1987, rushed after it. Light spurted ahead, yellow glowing. The car pursued with a twelve-cylindered snarling pursuit. Night blotted in behind, jet and still. The car sped on. ST. LOUIS-10.
"I wanna FLY!" they sang, "with the Rota-Mota apple of my EYE!" they sang. "It's the only way of living..."
The quartet singing
Len, 23.
Bud, 24.
Barbara, 20.
Peggy, 18.
Len with Barbara, Bud with Peggy.
Bud at the wheel, snapping around tilted curves, roaring up black-shouldered hills, shooting the car across silent flatlands. At the top of the three lungs (the fourth gentler), competing with wind that buffeted their heads, that whipped their hair to lashing threads-singing:
"You can have your walkin' under MOONLIGHT BEAMS!
At a hundred miles an hour let me DREAM my DREAMS!"
Needle quivering at 130, two 5-m.p.h. notches from gauge's end. A sudden dip! Their young frames jolted and the thrown-up laughter of three was wind-swept into night. Around a curve, darting up and down a hill, flashing across a leveled plain-an ebony bullet skimming earth.
"In my ROTORY, MOTORY, FLOATERY, drivin' machi-i-i-i-ine!"
YOU'LL BE A FLOATER IN YOUR ROTOR-MOTOR.
In the back seat
"Have a jab, Bab."
"Thanks, I had one after supper" (pushing away needle fixed to eye-dropper).
In the front seat
"You meana tell me this is the first time you ever been t' Saint Loo!"
"But I just started school in September."
"Hey, you're a frosh!"
Back seat joining front seat
"Hey, frosh, have a mussle-tussle."
(Needle passed forward, eye bulb quivering amber juice.)
"Live it, girl!"
Mussle-Tussle (mus'l-tus'l)
Slang for the result of injecting a drug into a muscle; usage evolved during W.W.III.
Peggy's lips failed at smiling. Her fingers twitched.
"No, thanks, I'm not..."
"Come on, frosh!" Len leaning hard over the seat, white-browed under black blowing hair. Pushing the needle at her face. "Live it, girl! Grab a li'l mussle-tussle!"
"I'd rather not," said Peggy. "If you don't-"
"What's 'at, frosh?" yelled Len and pressed his leg against the pressing leg of Barbara.
Peggy shook her head and golden hair flew across her cheeks and eyes. Underneath her yellow dress, underneath her white brassiиre, underneath her young breast-a heart throbbed heavily. Watch your step, darling, that's all we ask. Remember, you're all we have in the world now. Mother words drumming at her; the needle making her draw back into the seat.
"Come on, frosh!"
The car groaned its shifting weight around a curve and centrifugal force pressed Peggy into Bud's lean hip. His hand dropped down and fingered at her leg. Underneath her yellow dress, underneath her sheer stocking-flesh crawled. Lips failed again; the smile was a twitch of red.
"Frosh, live it up!"
"Lay off, Len, jab your own dates."
"But we gotta teach frosh how to mussle-tussle!"
"Lay off, I said! She's my date!"
The black car roaring, chasing its own light. Peggy anchored down the feeling hand with hers. The wind whistled over them and grabbed down chilly fingers at their hair. She didn't want his hand there but she felt grateful to him.
Her vaguely frightened eyes watched the road lurch beneath the wheels. In back, a silent struggle began, taut hands rubbing, parted mouths clinging. Search for the sweet elusive at 120 miles-per-hour.
"Rota-Mota honey," Len moaned the moan between salivary kisses. In the front seat a young girl's heart beat unsteadily. ST. LOUIS-6.
"No kiddin', you never been to Saint Loo?"
"No, I..."
"Then you never saw the loopy's dance?"
Throat contracting suddenly. "No, I... Is that what... we're going to-"
"Hey, frosh never saw the loopy's dance!" Bud yelled back.
Lips parted, slurping; skirt was adjusted with blasй aplomb. "No kiddin'!" Len fired up the words. "Girl, you haven't lived!"
"Oh, she's got to see that," said Barbara, buttoning a button.
"Let's go there then!" yelled Len. "Let's give frosh a thrill!"
"Good enough," said Bud and squeezed her leg. "Good enough up here, right, Peg?"
Peggy's throat moved in the dark and the wind clutched harshly at her hair. She'd heard of it, she'd read of it but never had she thought she'd-
Choose your school friends carefully darling. Be very careful.
But when no one spoke to you for two whole months? When you were lonely and wanted to talk and laugh and be alive? And someone spoke to you finally and asked you to go out with them?
"I yam Popeye, the sailor man!" Bud sang.
In back, they crowed artificial delight. Bud was taking a course in Pre-War Comics and Cartoons-2. This week the class was studying Popeye. Bud had fallen in love with the one-eyed seaman and told Len and Barbara all about him; taught them dialogue and song.
"I yam Popeye, the sailor man! I like to go swimmin' with bow-legged women! I yam Popeye, the sailor man!"
Laughter. Peggy smiled falteringly. The hand left her leg as the car screeched around a curve and she was thrown against the door. Wind dashed blunt coldness in her eyes and forced her back, blinking. 110-115-120 miles-per-hour. ST. LOUIS-3. Be very careful, dear.
Popeye cocked wicked eye.
"O, Olive Oyl, you is my sweet patootie."
Elbow nudging Peggy. "You be Olive Oyl-you."
Peggy smiled nervously. "I can't."
"Sure!"
In the back seat, Wimpy came up for air to announce, "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."
Three fierce voices and a faint fourth raged against the howl of wind. "I fights to the fin-ish 'cause I eats my spin-ach! I yam Popeye, the sailor man! Toot! Toot!
"I yam what I yam," reiterated Popeye gravely and put his hand on the yellow-skirted leg of Olive Oyl. In the back, two members of the quartet returned to feeling struggle.
ST. LOUIS-1. The black car roared through the darkened suburbs. "On with the nosies!" Bud sang out. They all took out their plasticate nose-and-mouth pieces and adjusted them.
ANCE IN YOUR PANTS WOULD BE A PITY!
WEAR YOUR NOSIES IN THE CITY!!
Ance (anse)
Slang for anticivilian germs; usage evolved during W.W.III.
"You'll like the loopy's dance!" Bud shouted to her over the shriek of wind. "It's sensaysh!"
Peggy felt a cold that wasn't of the night or of the wind. Remember, darling, there are terrible things in the world today. Things you must avoid.
"Couldn't we go somewhere else?" Peggy said but her voice was inaudible. She heard Bud singing, "I like to go swimmin' with bow-legged women!" She felt his hand on her leg again while, in the back, was the silence of grinding passion without kisses.
Dance of the dead. The words trickled ice across Peggy's brain.
ST. LOUIS.
The black car sped into the ruins.
\*\*\*
It was a place of smoke and blatant joys. Air resounded with the bleating of revelers and there was a noise of sounding brass spinning out a cloud of music-1987 music, a frenzy of twisted dissonances. Dancers, shoe-horned into the tiny square of open floor, ground pulsing bodies together. A network of bursting sounds lanced through the mass of them; dancers singing:
"Hurt me! Bruise me! Squeeze me TIGHT!
Scorch my blood with hot DELIGHT!
Please abuse me every NIGHT!
LOVER, LOVER, LOVER, be a beast-to-me!"
Elements of explosion restrained within the dancing bounds-instead of fragmenting, quivering. "Oh, be a beast, beast, beast, Beast, BEAST to me!"
"How is this, Olive old goil?" Popeye inquired of the light of his eye as they struggled after the waiter. "Nothin' like this in Sykesville, eh?"
Peggy smiled but her hand in Bud's felt numb. As they passed by a murky lighted table, a hand she didn't see felt at her leg. She twitched and bumped against a hard knee across the narrow aisle. As she stumbled and lurched through the hot and smoky, thick-aired room, she felt a dozen eyes disrobing her, abusing her. Bud jerked her along and she felt her lips trembling.
"Hey, how about that!" Bud exulted as they sat. "Right by the stage!"
From cigarette mists, the waiter plunged and hovered, pencil poised, beside their table.
"What'll it be!" His questioning shout cut through cacophony.
"Whiskey-water!" Bud and Len paralleled orders, then turned to their dates. "What'll it be!" the waiter's request echoed from their lips.
"Green Swamp!" Barbara said and, "Green Swamp here!" Len passed it along. Gin, Invasion Blood (1987 Rum), lime juice, sugar, mint spray, splintered ice-a popular college girl drink.
"What about you, honey?" Bud asked his date.
Peggy smiled. "Just some ginger ale," she said, her voice a fluttering frailty in the massive clash and fog of smoke.
"What?" asked Bud and, "What's that, didn't hear!" the waiter shouted.
"Ginger ale."
"What?"
"Ginger ale!"
"GINGER ALE!" Len screamed it out and the drummer, behind the raging curtain of noise that was the band's music, almost heard it. Len banged down his fist. One-Two-Three!
CHORUS: Ginger Ale was only twelve years old! Went to church and was as good as gold. Till that day when-
"Come on,come on!" the waiter squalled. "Let's have that order, kids! I'm busy!"
"Two whisky-waters and two Green Swamps!" Len sang out and the waiter was gone into the swirling maniac mist.
Peggy felt her young heart flutter helplessly. Above all, don't drink when you're out on a date. Promise us that, darling, you must promise us that. She tried to push away instructions etched in brain.
"How you like this place, honey? Loopy, ain't it?" Bud fired the question at her; a red-faced, happy-faced Bud.
Loopy (loo pi)
Common alter. of L.U.P. (Lifeless Undeath Phenomenon).
She smiled at Bud, a smile of nervous politeness. Her eyes moved around, her face inclined and she was looking up at the stage. Loopy. The word scalpeled at her mind. Loopy, loopy.
The stage was five yards deep at the radius of its wooden semicircle. A waist-high rail girdled the circumference, two pale purple spotlights, unlit, hung at each rail end. Purple on white-the thought came. Darling, isn't Sykesville Business College good enough? No! I don't want to take a business course, I want to major in art at the University!
The drinks were brought and Peggy watched the disembodied waiter's arm thud down a high, green-looking glass before her. Presto!-the arm was gone. She looked into the murky Green Swamp depths and saw chipped ice bobbing.
"A toast! Pick up your glass, Peg!" Bud clarioned.
They all clinked glasses:
"To lust primordial!" Bud toasted.
"To beds inviolate!" Len added.
"To flesh insensate!" Barbara added a third link.
Their eyes zeroed in on Peggy's face, demanding. She didn't understand.
"Finish it!" Bud told her, plagued by freshman sluggishness.
"To... u-us," she faltered.
"How o-rig-inal," stabbed Barbara and Peggy felt heat licking up her smooth cheeks. It passed unnoticed as three Youths of America with Whom the Future Rested gurgled down their liquor thirstily. Peggy fingered at her glass, a smile printed to lips that would not smile unaided.
"Come on, drink, girl!" Bud shouted to her across the vast distance of one foot. "Chuggalug!"
"Live it, girl," Len suggested abstractedly, fingers searching once more for soft leg. And finding, under table, soft leg waiting.
Peggy didn't want to drink, she was afraid to drink. Mother words kept pounding-never on a date, honey, never. She raised the glass a little.
"Uncle Buddy will help, will help!"
Uncle Buddy leaning close, vapor of whisky haloing his head. Uncle Buddy pushing cold glass to shaking young lips. "Come on, Olive Oyl, old goil! Down the hatch!"
Choking sprayed the bosom of her dress with Green Swamp droplets. Flaming liquid trickled into her stomach, sending offshoots of fire into her veins.
Bangity boom crash smash POW!! The drummer applied the coup de grace to what had been, in ancient times, a lover's waltz. Lights dropped and Peggy sat coughing and tear-eyed in the smoky cellar club.
She felt Bud's hand clamp strongly on her shoulder and, in the murk, she felt herself pulled off balance and felt Bud's hot wet mouth pressing at her lips. She jerked away and then the purple spots went on and a mottle-faced Bud drew back, gurgling, "I fights to the finish," and reaching for his drink.
"Hey, the loopy now, the loopy!" Len said eagerly, releasing exploratory hands.
Peggy's heart jolted and she thought she was going to cry out and run thrashing through the dark, smoke-filled room. But a sophomore hand anchored her to the chair and she looked up in white-faced dread at the man who came out on the stage and faced the microphone which, like a metal spider, had swung down to meet him.
"May I have your attention, ladies and gentlemen," he said, a grim-faced, sepulchral-voiced man whose eyes moved out over them like flicks of doom. Peggy's breath was labored, she felt thin lines of Green Swamp water filtering hotly through her chest and stomach. It made her blink dizzily. Mother. The word escaped cells of the mind and trembled into conscious freedom. Mother, take me home.
"As you know, the act you are about to see is not for the faint of heart, the weak of will." The man plodded through the words like a cow enmired. "Let me caution those of you whose nerves are not what they ought to be-leave now. We make no guarantees of responsibility. We can't even afford to maintain a house doctor."
No laughter appreciative. "Cut the crap and get off stage," Len grumbled to himself. Peggy felt her fingers twitching.
"As you know," the man went on, his voice gilded with learned sonority, "this is not an offering of mere sensation but an honest scientific demonstration."
"Loophole for Loopy's!" Bud and Len heaved up the words with the thoughtless reaction of hungry dogs salivating at a bell.
It was, in 1987, a comeback so rigidly standard it had assumed the status of a catechism answer. A crenel in the postwar law allowed the L.U.P. performance if it was orally prefaced as an exposition of science. Through this legal chink had poured so much abusing of the law that few cared any longer. A feeble government was grateful to contain infractions of the law at all.
When hoots and shoutings had evaporated in the smoke-clogged air, the man, his arms upraised in patient benediction, spoke again.
Peggy watched the studied movement of his lips, her heart swelling, then contracting in slow, spasmodic beats. An iciness was creeping up her legs. She felt it rising toward the threadlike fires in her body and her fingers twitched around the chilly moisture of the glass. I want to go, please take me home-Will-spent words were in her mind again.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the man concluded, "brace yourselves."
A gong sounded its hollow, shivering resonance, the man's voice thickened and slowed.
"The L.U. Phenomenon!"
The man was gone; the microphone had risen and was gone. Music began; a moaning brassiness, all muted. A jazzman's conception of the palpable obscure mounted on a pulse of thumping drum. A dolor of saxophone, a menace of trombone, a harnessed bleating of trumpet-they raped the air with stridor.
Peggy felt a shudder plaiting down her back and her gaze dropped quickly to the murky whiteness of the table. Smoke and darkness, dissonance and heat surrounded her.
Without meaning to, but driven by an impulse of nervous fear, she raised the glass and drank. The glacial trickle in her throat sent another shudder rippling through her. Then further shoots of liquored heat budded in her veins and a numbness settled in her temples. Through parted lips, she forced out a shaking breath.
Now a restless, murmuring movement started through the room, the sound of it like willows in a sloughing wind. Peggy dared not lift her gaze to the purpled silence of the stage. She stared down at the shifting glimmer of her drink, feeling muscle strands draw tightly in her stomach, feeling the hollow thumping of her heart. I'd like to leave, please let's leave.
The music labored toward a rasping dissonant climax, its brass components struggling, in vain, for unity.
A hand stroked once at Peggy's leg and it was the hand of Popeye, the sailor man, who muttered roupily, "Olive Oyl, you is my goil." She barely felt or heard. Automatonlike, she raised the cold and sweating glass again and felt the chilling in her throat and then the flaring network of warmth inside her.
SWISH!
The curtain swept open with such a rush, she almost dropped her glass. It thumped down heavily on the table, swamp water cascading up its sides and raining on her hand. The music exploded shrapnel of ear-cutting cacophony and her body jerked. On the tablecloth, her hands twitched white on white while claws on uncontrollable demand pulled up her frightened eyes.
The music fled, frothing behind a wake of swelling drum rolls.
The nightclub was a wordless crypt, all breathing checked.
Cobwebs of smoke drifted in the purple light across the stage.
No sound except the muffled, rolling drum.
Peggy's body was a petrifaction in its chair, smitten to rock around her leaping heart, while, through the wavering haze of smoke and liquored dizziness, she looked up in horror to where it stood.
It had been a woman.
Her hair was black, a framing of snarled ebony for the tallow mask that was her face. Her shadow-rimmed eyes were closed behind lids as smooth and white as ivory. Her mouth, a lipless and unmoving line, stood like a clotted sword wound beneath her nose. Her throat, her shoulders and her arms were white, were motionless. At her sides, protruding from the sleeve ends of the green transparency she wore, hung alabaster hands.
Across this marble statue, the spotlights coated purple shimmer.
Still paralyzed, Peggy stared up at its motionless features, her fingers knitted in a bloodless tangle on her lap. The pulse of drumbeats in the air seemed to fill her body, its rhythm altering her heartbeat.
In the black emptiness behind her, she heard Len muttering, "I love my wife but, oh, you corpse," and heard the wheeze of helpless snickers that escaped from Bud and Barbara. The cold still rose in her, a silent tidal dread.
Somewhere in the smoke-fogged darkness, a man cleared viscid nervousness from his throat and a murmur of appreciative relief strained through the audience.
Still no motion on the stage, no sound but the sluggish cadence of the drum, thumping at the silence like someone seeking entrance at a far-off door. The thing that was a nameless victim of the plague stood palely rigid while the distillation sluiced through its blood-clogged veins.
Now the drum throbs hastened like the pulsebeat of a rising panic. Peggy felt the chill begin to swallow her. Her throat started tightening, her breathing was a string of lip-parted gasps.
The loopy's eyelid twitched.
Abrupt, black, straining silence webbed the room. Even the breath choked off in Peggy's throat when she saw the pale eyes flutter open. Something creaked in the stillness; her body pressed back unconsciously against the chair. Her eyes were wide, unblinking circles that sucked into her brain the sight of the thing that had been a woman.
Music again; a brass-throated moaning from the dark, like some animal made of welded horns mewling its derangement in a midnight alley.
Suddenly, the right arm of the loopy jerked at its side, the tendons suddenly contracted. The left arm twitched alike, snapped out, then fell back and thudded in purple-white limpness against the thigh. The right arm out, the left arm out, the right, the left-right-left-right-like marionette arms twitching from an amateur's dangling strings.
The music caught the time, drum brushes scratching out a rhythm for the convulsions of the loopy's muscles. Peggy pressed back further, her body numbed and cold, her face a livid, staring mask in the fringes of the stage light.
The loopy's right foot moved now, jerking up inflexibly as the distillation constricted muscles in its leg. A second and a third contraction caused the leg to twitch, the left leg flung out in a violent spasm and then the woman's body lurched stiffly forward, filming the transparent silk to its light and shadow.
Peggy heard the sudden hiss of breath that passed the clenching teeth of Bud and Len and a wave of nausea sprayed foaming sickness up her stomach walls. Before her eyes, the stage abruptly undulated with a watery glitter and it seemed as if the flailing loopy was headed straight for her.
Gasping dizzily, she pressed back in horror, unable to take her eyes from its now agitated face.
She watched the mouth jerk to a gaping cavity, then a twisted scar that split into a wound again. She saw the dark nostrils twitching, saw writhing flesh beneath the ivory cheeks, saw furrows dug and undug in the purple whiteness of the forehead. She saw one lifeless eye wink monstrously and heard the gasp of startled laughter in the room.
While music blared into a fit of grating noise, the woman's arms and legs kept jerking with convulsive cramps that threw her body around the purpled stage like a full-sized rag doll given spastic life.
It was nightmare in an endless sleep. Peggy shivered in helpless terror as she watched the loopy's twisting, leaping dance. The blood in her had turned to ice; there was no life in her but the endless, pounding stagger of her heart. Her eyes were frozen spheres staring at the woman's body writhing white and flaccid underneath the clinging silk.
Then, something went wrong.
Up till then, its muscular seizures had bound the loopy to an area of several yards before the amber flat which was the background for its paroxysmal dance. Now its erratic surging drove the loopy toward the stage-encircling rail.
Peggy heard the thump and creaking stain of wood as the loopy's hip collided with the rail. She cringed into a shuddering knot, her eyes still raised fixedly to the purple-splashed face whose every feature was deformed by throes of warping convulsion.
The loopy staggered back and Peggy saw and heard its leprous hands slapping with a fitful rhythm at its silk-scaled thighs.
Again it sprang forward like a maniac marionette and the woman's stomach thudded sickeningly into the railing wood. The dark mouth gaped, clamped shut and then the loopy twisted through a jerking revolution and crashed back against the rail again, almost above the table where Peggy sat.
Peggy couldn't breathe. She sat rooted to the chair, her lips a trembling circle of stricken dread, a pounding of blood at her temples as she watched the loopy spin again, its arms a blur of flailing white.
The lurid bleaching of its face dropped toward Peggy as the loopy crashed into the waist-high rail again and bent across its top. The mask of lavender-rained whiteness hung above her, dark eyes twitching open into a hideous stare.
Peggy felt the floor begin to move and the livid face was blurred with darkness, then reappeared in a burst of luminosity. Sound fled on brass-shoed feet, then plunged into her brain again-a smearing discord.
The loopy kept on jerking forward, driving itself against the rail as though it meant to scale it. With every spastic lurch, the diaphanous silk fluttered like a film about its body and every savage collision with the railing tautened the green transparency across its swollen flesh. Peggy looked up in rigid muteness at the loopy's fierce attack on the railing, her eyes unable to escape the wild distortion of the woman's face with its black frame of tangled, snapping hair.
What happened then happened in a blurring passage of seconds.
The grim-faced man came rushing across the purple-lighted stage; the thing that had been a woman went crashing, twitching, flailing at the rail, doubling over it, the spasmodic hitching flinging up its muscle-knotted legs.
A clawing fall.
Peggy lurched back in her chair and the scream that started in her throat was forced back into a strangled gag as the loopy came crashing down onto the table, its limbs a thrash of naked whiteness.
Barbara screamed, the audience gasped and Peggy saw, on the fringe of vision, Bud jumping up, his face a twist of stunned surprise.
The loopy flopped and twisted on the table like a new-caught fish. The music stopped, grinding into silence; a rush of agitated murmur filled the room and blackness swept in brain-submerging waves across Peggy's mind.
Then the cold white hand slapped across her mouth, the dark eyes stared at her in purple light and Peggy felt the darkness flooding.
The horror-smoked room went turning on its side.
\*\*\*
Consciousness. It flickered in her brain like gauze-veiled candlelight. A murmuring of sound, a blur of shadow before her eyes.
Breath dripped like syrup from her mouth.
"Here, Peg."
She heard Bud's voice and felt the chilly metal of a flask neck pressed against her lips. She swallowed, twisting slightly at the trickle of fire in her throat and stomach, then coughed and pushed away the flask with deadened fingers.
Behind her, a rustling movement. "Hey, she's back," Len said. "Ol' Olive Oyl is back."
"You feel all right?" asked Barbara.
She felt all right. Her heart was like a drum hanging from piano wire in her chest, slowly, slowly beaten. Her hands and feet were numb, not with cold but with a sultry torpor. Thoughts moved with a tranquil lethargy, her brain a leisurely machine imbedded in swaths of woolly packing.
She felt all right.
Peggy looked across the night with sleepy eyes. They were on a hilltop, the braked convertible crouching on a jutting edge. Far below, the country slept, a carpet of light and shadow beneath the chalky moon.
An arm snake moved around her waist. "Where are we?" she asked him in a languid voice.
"Few miles outside school," Bud said. "How d'ya feel, honey?"
She stretched, her body a delicious strain of muscles. She sagged back, limp, against his arm.
"Wonderful," she murmured with a dizzy smile and scratched the tiny itching bump on her left shoulder. Warmth radiated through her flesh; the night was a sabled glow. There seemed somewhere to be a memory, but it crouched in secret behind folds of thick content.
"Woman, you were out," laughed Bud; and Barbara added and Len added, "Were you!" and "Olive Oyl went plunko!"
"Out?" Her casual murmur went unheard.
The flask went around and Peggy drank again, relaxing further as the liquor needled fire through her veins.
"Man, I never saw a loopy dance like that!" Len said.
A momentary chill across her back, then warmth again. "Oh," said Peggy, "that's right. I forgot."
She smiled
"That was what I calls a grand finale!" Len said, dragging back his willing date, who murmured, "Lenny boy."
"L.U.P.," Bud muttered, nuzzling at Peggy's hair. "Son of a gun." He reached out idly for the radio knob.
L.U.P. (Lifeless Undead Phenomenon)
This freak of physiological abnormality was discovered during the war when, following certain germ-gas attacks, many of the dead troops were found erect and performing the spasmodic gyrations which, later, became known as the "loopy's" (L.U.P.'s) dance. The particular germ spray responsible was later distilled and is now used in carefully controlled experiments which are conducted only under the strictest of legal license and supervision.
Music surrounded them, its melancholy fingers touching at their hearts. Peggy leaned against her date and felt no need to curb exploring hands. Somewhere, deep within the jellied layers of her mind, there was something trying to escape. It fluttered like a frantic moth imprisoned in congealing wax, struggling wildly but only growing weaker in attempt as the chrysalis hardened.
Four voices sang softly in the night.
"If the world is here tomorrow
I'll be waiting, dear, for you
If the stars are there tomorrow
I'll be wishing on them too."
Four young voices singing, a murmur in immensity. Four bodies, two by two, slackly warm and drugged. A singing, an embracing-a wordless accepting.
"Star light, star bright
Let there be another night."
The singing ended but the song went on.
A young girl sighed.
"Isn't it romantic?" said Olive Oyl.
Then there was the man who sniffed interminably...
He sat next to Mr Jasper on the bus. Every morning he would come grunting up the front step and weave along the aisle to plop himself down beside Mr Jasper's slight form.
And -- sniff! he would go as he perused his morning paper -- sniff, sniff!
Mr Jasper would writhe. And wonder why the man persisted in sitting next to him. There were other seats available, yet the man invariably dropped his lumpish frame beside Mr Jasper and sniffed the miles away, winter and summer.
It wasn't as if it were cold out. Some Los Angeles mornings were coldish, granted. But they certainly did not warrant this endless sniffling as though pneumonia were creeping through the man's system.
And it gave Mr Jasper the willies.
He made several attempts to remove himself from the man's sphere of sniffling. First of all, he moved back two seats from his usual location. The man followed him. I see, surmised a near-fuming Mr Jasper, the man is in the habit of sitting by me and hasn't noticed that I've moved back two seats.
The following day Mr Jasper sat on the other side of the aisle. He sat with irascible eye watching the man weave his bulk up the aisle. Then his vitals petrified as the man's tweeded person plumped down by him. He glared an abominating glare out the window.
Sniff! -- went the man -- Sa-niff! -- and Mr Jasper's dental plates ground together in porcelain fury.
The next day he sat near the back of the bus. The man sat next to him. The next day he sat near the front of the bus. The man sat next to him. Mr Jasper sat amidst his corroding patience for a mile and a third. Then, jaded beyond endurance, he turned to the man.
'Why are you following me?' he asked, his voice a trembling plaint.
The man was caught in mid-sniff. He gaped at Mr Jasper with cow like, uncomprehending eyes. Mr Jasper stood and stumbled the bus length away from the man. There he stood swaying from the overhead bar, his eyes as stone. The way that sniffing fool had looked at him, he brooded. It was insufferable. As if, by heaven, he had done something offensive!
Well, at least, he was momentarily free of those diurnally dripping nostrils. Crouched muscles unflexed gratefully. He signed with relief.
And the boy standing next to him whistled twenty-three choruses of Dixie.
Mr Jasper sold neckties.
It was an employment ridden with vexations, an employment guaranteed to scrape away the lining of any but the most impassive stomachs.
Mr Jasper's stomach walls were of the most susceptive variety.
They were stormed daily by aggravation, by annoyance and by women. Women who lingered and felt the wool and cotton and silk and walked away with no purchase. Women who beleaguered Mr Jasper's inflammable mind with interrogations and decrees and left no money but only a rigid Mr Jasper, one jot nearer to inevitable detonation.
With every taxing customer, a gushing host of brilliantly nasty remarks would rise up in Mr Jasper's mind, each one surpassing the one before. His mind would positively ache to see them free, to let them pour like torrents of acid across his tongue and, burning hot, spout directly into the women's faces.
But invariably close was the menacing phantom of floorwalker or store buyer. It flitted through his mind with ghostly dominion, shunting aside his yearning tongue, calcifying his bones with unspent wrath.
Then there were the women in the store cafeteria... They talked while they ate and they smoked and blew clouds of nicotine into his lungs at the very moment he was trying to ingest a bowl of tomato soup into his ulcered stomach. Poof! went the ladies and waved their pretty hands to dispel the unwanted smoke.
Mr Jasper got it all.
Eyes beginning to emboss, he would wave it back. The women returned it. Thus did the smoke circulate until thinned out or reinforced by new, yet more intense, exhalations. Poof! And between waving and ladling and swallowing, Mr Jasper had spasms. The tannic acid of his tea hardly served to stem the course of burning in his stomach. He would pay his forty cents with oscillating fingers and return to work, a cracking man.
To face a full afternoon of complaints and queries and thumbing of merchandise and the topping of all by the girl who shared the counter with him and chewed gum as though she wanted the people in Arabia to hear her chewing. The smacking and the popping and the grinding made Mr Jasper's insides do frenzied contortions, made him stand statue like and disordered or else burst out with a hissing:
'Stop that disgusting sound!'
Life was full of irritations.
Then there were the neighbours, the people who lived upstairs and on the sides. The society of them, that ubiquitous brotherhood which always lived in the apartments around Mr Jasper.
They were a unity, those people. There was a touchstone of attitude in their behaviour, a distinct criterion of method.
It consisted of walking with extra weighty tread, of reassembling furniture with sustained regularity, of throwing wild and noisy parties every other night and inviting only those people who promised to wear hobnailed boots and dance the chicken reel. Of arguing about all subjects at top voice, of playing only cowboy and hillbilly music on a radio whose volume knob was irretrievably stuck at its farthest point. Of owning a set of lungs disguised as a two to twelve months old child, which puffed out each morning to emit sounds reminiscent of the lament of air raid sirens.
Mr Jasper's present nemesis was Albert Radenhausen, Junior, age seven months, possessor of one set of incredibly hardy lungs which did their best work between four and five in the morning.
Mr Jasper would find himself rolling on to his thin back in the dark, furnished, two-room apartment. He would find himself staring at the ceiling and waiting for the sound. It got to a point where his brain dragged him from needed sleep exactly ten seconds before four each morning. If Albert Radenhausen, Junior, chose to slumber on, it did no good to Mr Jasper. He just kept waiting for the cries.
He would try to sleep, but jangling concentration made him prey, if not to the expected wailing, then to the host of other sounds which beset his hypersensitive ears.
A car coughing past in the street. A rattle of Venetian blind. A set of lone footsteps somewhere in the house. The drip of a faucet, the barking of a dog, the rubbing legs of crickets, the creaking of wood. Mr Jasper could not control it all. Those sound makers he could not stuff, pad, twist off, adjust to -- kept plaguing him. He would shut his eyes until they hurt, grip tight fists at his sides.
Sleep still eluded. He would jolt up, heaving aside the sheets and blankets, and sit there staring numbly into the blackness, waiting for Albert Radenhausen, Junior, to make his utterance so he could lie down again.
Analysing in the blackness, his mind would click out progressions of thought. Unduly sensitive? -- he would comment within. I deny this vociferously. I am aware, Mr Jasper would self-claim. No more. I have ears. I can hear, can't I?
It was suspicious.
What morning in the litter of mornings that notion came, Mr Jasper could not recall. But once it had come it would not be dismissed. Though the definition of it was blunted by passing days, the core remained unremovable.
Sometimes in a moment of teeth-gritting duress, the idea would reoccur. Other times it would be only a vague current of impression flowing beneath the surface.
But it stuck. All these things that happened to him. Were they subjective or objective, within or without? They seemed to pile up so often, each detail linking until the sum of provocations almost drove him mad. It almost seemed as though it were done with intent. As if...
As if it were a plan.
Mr Jasper experimented.
Initial equipment consisted of one white pad, lined, plus his ball-point pen. Primary approach consisted of jotting down various exasperations with the time of their occurrence, the location, the sex of the offender and the relative grossness of the annoyance; this last aspect gradated by numbers ranging from one to ten.
Example one, clumsily notated while still half asleep.
Baby crying, 4.52 a.m., next door to room, male, 7.
Following this entry, Mr Jasper settled back on his flattened pillow with a sigh approximating satisfaction. The start was made. In a few days he would know with assurance if his unusual speculation was justified.
Before he left the house at eight-seventeen a.m., Mr Jasper had accumulated three more entries; viz:
Loud thumping on floor, 6.33 a.m., upstairs from room, male (guess), 5.
Traffic noise, 7.00 a.m. outside of room, males, 6.
Radio on loud, 7.40 a.m. on, upstairs from room, female, 7.
One rather odd facet of Mr Jasper's efforts came to his attention as he left his small apartment. This was, in short, that he had put down much of his temper through this simple expedient of written analysis. Not that the various noises had failed, at first, to set his teeth on edge and cause his hands to flex involuntarily at his sides. They had not. Yet the translation of amorphous vexation into words, the reduction of an aggravation to one succinct memorandum somehow helped. It was strange but pleasing.
The bus trip to work provided further notations.
The sniffing man drew one immediate and automatic entry. But once that irritant was disposed of, Mr Jasper was alarmed to note the rapid accumulation of four more. No matter where he moved on the bus there was fresh cause for drawing pen-point from scabbard and stabbing out more words.
Garlic breath, 8.27 a.m., bus, male, 7.
Heavy jostling, 8.28 a.m., bus, both sexes, 8.
Feet stepped on. No apology, 8.29 a.m., bus, woman, 9.
Driver telling me to go to back of bus, 8.33 a.m., bus, male, 9-
Then Mr Jasper found himself standing again beside the man with the uncommon cold. He did not take the pad from his pocket but his eyes closed and his teeth clamped together bitterly. Later he erased the original grading for the man.
10! he wrote in a fury.
And at lunch, amidst usual antagonisations, Mr Jasper, with a fierce and jaundiced eye, saw system to it all.
He seized on a blank pad page.
1. At least one irritation per five minutes. (Twelve per hour.) Not perfectly timed. Some occurring two in a minute.
Clever. Trying to throw me off the track by breaking continuity.
2. Each of the 12 hourly irritations is worse than the one before. The last of the 12 almost makes me explode.
THEORY: By placing the irritations so that each one tops the preceding one the final hourly addition is thus designed to provide maximum nerve impact: i.e. - Steering me into insanity!
He sat there, his soup getting cold, a wild scientific lustre to his eyes, investigatory heat churning up his system. Yes, by Heaven, yes, yes, yes!
But he must make sure.
He finished his lunch, ignoring smoke and chattering and unpalatable food. He slunk back to his counter. He spent a joyous afternoon scribbling down entries in his journal of convulsions.
The system held.
It stood firm before unbiased test. One irritation per five minutes. Some of them, naturally, were so subtle that only a man with Mr Jasper's intuitive grasp, a man with a quest, could notice them. These aggravations were underplayed.
And cleverly so! -- realised Mr Jasper. Underplayed and intended to dupe.
Well, he would not be duped.
Tie rack knocked over, 1.18 p.m., store, female, 7.
Fly walking on hand, 1.43 p.m., store, female (?), 8.
Faucet in washroom splashing clothes, 2.19 p.m., store (sex), 9.
Refusal to buy tie because torn, 2.38 p.m., store, WOMAN, 10.
These were typical entries for the afternoon.
They were jotted down with a bellicose satisfaction by a shaking Mr Jasper. A Mr Jasper whose incredible theory was being vindicated.
About three o'clock he decided to eliminate those numbers from one to five since no provocations were mild enough to be judged so leniently.
By four he had discarded every grading but nine and ten.
By five he was seriously considering a new system which began at ten and ranged up to twenty-five.
Mr Jasper had planned to compile at least a week's annotations before preparing his case. But, somehow, the shocks of the day weakened him. His entries grew more heated, his penmanship less legible.
And, at eleven that night, as the people next door got their second wind and resumed their party with a great shout of laughter, Mr Jasper hurled his pad against the wall with a choking oath and stood there trembling violently. It was definite.
They were out to get him.
Suppose, he thought, there was a secret legion in the world. And that their prime devotion was to drive him from his senses.
Wouldn't it be possible for them to do this insidious thing without another soul knowing it? Couldn't they arrange their maddening little intrusions on his sanity so cleverly that it might always seem as if he were at fault; that he was only a hypersensitive little man who saw malicious intent in every accidental irritation? Wasn't that possible?
Yes. His mind pounded out the acceptance over and over.
It was conceivable, feasible, possible and, by heaven, he believed it!
Why not? Couldn't there be a great sinister legion of people who met in secret cellars by guttering candlelight? And sat there, beady eyes shining with nasty intent, as their leader spoke of more plans for driving Mr Jasper straight to hell?
Sure! Agent X assigned to the row behind Mr Jasper at a movie, there to talk during parts of the picture in which Mr Jasper was most absorbed, there to rattle paper bags at regular intervals, there to masticate popcorn deafeningly until Mr Jasper hunched up, blind-raging, into the aisle and stomped back to another seat.
And here, Agent Y would take over with candy and crinkly wrappers and extra moist sneezes.
Possible. More than possible. It could have been going on for years without his ever acquiring the slightest inkling of its existence. A subtle, diabolical intrigue, near impossible to detect. But now, at last, stripped of its concealing robes, shown in all its naked, awful reality.
Mr Jasper lay abed, cogitating.
No, he thought with a scant remainder of rationality, it is silly. It is a point outlandishly taken.
Why should these people do these things? That was all one had to ask. What was their motive?
Wasn't it absurd to think that all these people were out to get him? Dead, Mr Jasper was worth nothing. Certainly his two thousand dollar policy subdivided among a vast hidden legion would not amount to more than three or four cents a plotter. Even if he were to be coerced into naming them all as his beneficiaries.
Why, then, did Mr Jasper find himself drifting helplessly into the kitchenette? Why, then, did he stand there so long, balancing the long carving knife in his hand? And why did he shake when he thought of his idea?
Unless it was true.
Before he retired Mr Jasper put the carving blade into its cardboard sheath. Then, almost automatically, he found himself sliding the knife into the inside pocket of his suit coat.
And, horizontal in the blackness, eyes open, his flat chest rising and falling with unsteady beat, he sent out his bleak ultimatum to the legion that might be: 'If you are there, I will take no more.'
Then there was Albert Radenhausen, Junior, again at four in the morning. Jolting Mr Jasper into waking state, touching one more match to his inflammable system. There were the footsteps, the car horns, the dogs barking, the blinds rattling, the faucet dripping, the blankets bunching, the pillow flattening, the pyjamas twisting. And morning with its burning toast and bad coffee and broken cup and loud radio upstairs and broken shoelace.
And Mr Jasper's body grew rigid with unspeakable fury and he whined and hissed and his muscles petrified and his hands shook and he almost wept. Forgotten was his pad and list, lost in violent temper. Only one thing remained. And that... was self-defence.
For Mr Jasper knew then there was a legion of plotters and he knew also that the legion was redoubling its efforts because he did know and would fight back.
He fled the apartment and hurried down the street, his mind tormented. He must get control, he must! It was the crucial moment, the time of ferment. If he let the course of things go on unimpeded, the madness would come and the legion would have its victim.
Self-defence!
He stood, white-jawed and quivering, at the bus stop, trying with utmost vigour to resist. Never mind that exploding exhaust! Forget that strident giggle of passing female agent. Ignore the rising, mounting crescendo of split nerves. They would not win! His mind a rigid, waiting spring, Mr Jasper vowed victory.
On the bus, the man's nostrils drew mightily and people bumped into Mr Jasper and he gasped and knew that any moment he was going to scream and it would happen.
Sniff, sniff! went the man -SNIFF!
Mr Jasper moved away tensely. The man had never sniffed that loudly before. It was in the plan. Mr Jasper's hand fluttered up to touch the hard length of knife beneath his coat.
He shoved through packed commuters. Someone stepped on his foot. He hissed. His shoelace broke again. He bent over to fix it, and someone's knee hit the side of his head. He straightened up dizzily in the lurching bus, a strangled curse almost prying through his pressed, white lips.
One last hope remaining. Could he escape? The question punched away his senses. A new apartment? He'd moved before. On what he could afford there was no way of finding anything better. He'd always have the same type of neighbours.
A car instead of bus travel? He couldn't afford it.
Leave his miserable job? All sales jobs were just as bad and it was all he knew and he was getting older.
And even if he changed everything -- everything! -- the legion would still pursue him, tracking him down ruthlessly from tension to tension until the inevitable breakdown.
He was trapped.
And, suddenly, standing there with all the people looking at him, Mr Jasper saw the hours ahead, the days, the years -an agonizing, crushing heap of annoyances and irritations and mind-searing aggravations. His head snapped around as he looked at everybody.
And his hair almost stood on end because he realised that all the people in the bus were members of the legion too. And he was helpless in their midst, a pawn to be buffeted about by their vicious, inhuman presence, his rights and individual sanctities endlessly subject to their malevolent conspiracy.
'No!' He screamed it out at them.
And his hand flew in beneath his coat like an avenging bird. And the blade flashed and the legion backed away screaming and, with a frenzied lunge, Mr Jasper fought his war for sanity.
MAN STABS SIX IN CROWDED BUS; IS SHOT BY POLICE
No Motive Found For Wild Attack
It was almost two before there was a chance for lunch. Until then his desk was snow-banked with demanding papers, his telephone rang constantly and an army of insistent visitors attacked his walls. By twelve, his nerves were pulled like violin strings knobbed to their tightest. By one, the strings drew close to shearing; by one-thirty they began to snap. He had to get away; now, immediately; flee to some shadowy restaurant booth, have a cocktail and a leisurely meal; listen to somnolent music. He had to.
Down on the street, he walked beyond the zone of eating places he usually frequented, not wishing to risk seeing anyone he knew. About a quarter of a mile from the office he found a cellar restaurant named Franco's. At his request, the hostess led him to a rear booth where he ordered a martini; then, as the woman turned away, he stretched out his legs beneath the table and closed his eyes. A grateful sigh murmured from him. This was the ticket. Dim-lit comfort. Muzak thrumming at the bottom fringe of audibility, a curative drink. He signed again. A few more days like this, he thought, and I'm gone.
'Hi, Don.'
He opened his eyes in time to see the man drop down across from him, 'How goes it?' asked the man.
'What?' Donald Marshall stared at him.
'Gawd,' said the man. 'What a day, what a day.' He grinned tiredly. 'You, too?'
'I don't believe -' began Marshall.
'Ah!' the man said, nodding, pleased, as a waitress brought the martini. 'That for me. Another, please; dryer than dry.'
'Yes, sir,' said the waitress and was gone.
'There,' said the man, stretching. 'No place like Franco's for getting away from it all, eh?'
'Look here,' said Marshall, smiling awkwardly. 'I'm afraid you've made a mistake.'
'Hmmm?' The man leaned forward, smiling back.
T say I'm afraid you've made a mistake.'
'I have?' The man grunted. 'What'd I do, forget to shave? I'm liable to. No?' he said as Marshall frowned. 'Wrong tie?'
'You don't understand,' said Marshall.
What?'
Marshall cleared his throat. 'I'm -- not who you think I am,' he said.
'Huh?' The man leaned forward again, squinting. He straightened up, chuckling. 'What's the story, Don?' he asked.
Marshall fingered at the stem of his glass. 'Yes, what is the story?' he said, less politely now.
'I don't get you,' said the man.
'Who do you think I am?' asked Marshall, his voice rising a little.
The man began to speak, gaped a trifle, then began to speak again. 'What do you mean who do I -?' He broke off as the waitress brought the second martini. They both sat quietly until she was gone.
'Now,' said the man curiously.
'Look, I'm not going to accuse you of anything,' said Marshall, 'but you don't know me. You've never met me in your whole life.'
'I don't -!' The man couldn't finish; he looked flabbergasted. 'I don't know you?' he said.
Marshall had to laugh. 'Oh this is ludicrous,' he said.
The man smiled appreciatively. 'I knew you were ribbing me,' he admitted, 'but -- ' He shook his head. 'You had me going there for a second.'
Marshall put down his glass, the skin beginning to tighten across his cheeks.
Td say this had gone about far enough,' he said. 'I'm in no mood for -'
'Don,' the man broke in. 'What's wrong?'
Marshall drew in a deep breath, then let it waver out. 'Oh, well,' he said, 'I suppose it's an honest mistake.' He forced a smile. 'Who do you think I am?'
The man didn't answer. He looked at Marshall intently.
'Well?' asked Marshall, beginning to lose patience.
'This isn't a joke?' said the man,
'Now, look -'
'No, wait, wait,' the man said, raising one hand. 'I... suppose it's possible there could be two men who look so much alike they -'
He stopped abruptly and looked at Marshall. 'Don, you're not ribbing me, are you?'
'Now listen to me -!'
'All right, I apologise,' said the man. He sat gazing at Marshall for a moment; then he shrugged and smiled perplexedly. 'I could have sworn you were Don Marshall,' he said.
Marshall felt something cold gathering around his heart.
'I am,' he heard himself say.
The only sound in the restaurant was that of the music and the delicate clink of silverware.
'What is this?' asked the man.
'You tell me,' said Marshall in a thin voice.
'You -- ' The man looked carefully at him. 'This is not a joke,' he said.
'Now see here!'
'All right, all right, The man raised both his hands in a conciliatory gesture. 'It's not a joke. You claim I don't know you. All right. Granting that leaves us with -- with this: a man who not only looks exactly like my friend but has exactly the same name. Is this possible?'
'Apparently so,' said Marshall.
Abruptly, he picked up his glass and took momentary escape in the martini. The man did the same. The waitress came for their orders and Marshall told her to come back later.
' What's your name?' he asked then.
'Arthur Nolan,' said the man.
Marshall gestured conclusively. 'I don't know you,' he said. There was a slight loosening of tension in his stomach.
The man leaned back and stared at Marshall. This is fantastic,' he said. He shook his head. 'Utterly fantastic'
Marshall smiled and lowered his eyes to the glass.
'Where do you work?' asked the man.
'American-Pacific Steamship,' Marshall answered, glancing up. He felt the beginning of enjoyment in himself. This was, certainly, something to take one's mind off the wrack of the day.
The man looked examiningly at him; and Marshall sensed the enjoyment fading.
Suddenly the man laughed.
'You must have had one sweet hell of a morning, buddy,' he said.
'What?'
'No more,' said the man.
'Listen -'
'I capitulate,' said Nolan, grinning. 'You're curdling my gin.'
'Listen to me, damn it!' snapped Marshall.
The man looked startled. His mouth fell open and he put his drink down. 'Don, what is it?' he asked, concerned now.
'You do not know me,' said Marshall, very carefully. 'I do not know you. Will you kindly accept that?'
The man looked around as if for help. Then he leaned in close and spoke, his voice soft and worried.
'Don, listen. Honestly. You don't know me?'
Marshall drew in a deep breath, teeth clenched against rising fury. The man drew back. The look on his face was, suddenly, frightening to Marshall.
'One of us is out of his mind,' Marshall said. The levity he'd intended never appeared in his voice.
Nolan swallowed raggedly. He looked down at his drink as if unable to face the other man.
Marshall suddenly laughed. 'Dear Lord,' he said, 'What a scene. You really think you know me, don't you?'
The man grimaced. The Don Marshall I know,' he said, 'also works for American-Pacific.'
Marshall shuddered. That's impossible,' he said.
'No,' said the man flatly.
For a moment Marshall got the notion that this was some sort of insidious plot against him; but the distraught expression on the man's face weakened the suspicion. He took a sip of his martini, then, carefully, set down the glass and laid his palms on the table as if seeking the reinforcement of its presence.
'American-Pacific Steamship Lines?' he asked.
The man nodded once. 'Yes.'
Marshall shook his head obdurately; 'No,' he said. 'There's no other Marshall in our offices. Unless,' he added, quickly, 'one of our clerks downstairs -'
'You're an- ' The man broke off nervously. 'He's an executive,' he said.
Marshall drew his hands in slowly and put them in his lap. Then I don't understand,' he said. He wished, instantly, he hadn't said it.
This... man told you he worked there?' he asked quickly.
'Yes.'
'Can you prove he works there?' Marshall challenged, his voice breaking, 'Can you prove his name is really Don Marshall?'
'Don, I -'
'Well, can you?'
'Are you married?' asked the man.
Marshall hesitated. Then, clearing his throat, he said, 'I am.'
Nolan leaned forward. To Ruth Foster?' he asked.
Marshall couldn't hide his involuntary gasp.
'Do you live on the Island?' Nolan pressed.
'Yes,' said Marshall weakly, 'but -'
'In Huntington?'
Marshall hadn't even the strength to nod.
'Did you go to Columbia University?'
'Yes, but -' His teeth were on edge now.
'Did you graduate in June, nineteen forty?'
'No!' Marshall clutched at this. 'I graduated in January, nineteen forty-one. Forty-one!'
'Were you a lieutenant in the Army?' asked Nolan, paying no attention.
Marshall felt himself slipping. 'Yes,' he muttered, 'but you said -'
'In the Eighty-Seventh Division?'
'Now wait a minute!' Marshall pushed aside the nearly empty glass as if to make room for his rebuttal. 'I can give you two very good explanations for this... this fool confusion.
One: a man who looks like me and knows a few things about me is pretending to be me; Lord knows why.
Two: you know about me and you're trying to snare me into something. No, you can argue all you like!' he persisted, almost frantically, as the man began to object. 'You can ask all the questions you like; but I know who I am and I know who I know!'
'Do you?' asked the man. He looked dazed.
Marshall felt his legs twitch sharply.
'Well, I have no intention of s-sitting here and arguing with you,' he said. 'This entire thing is absurd. I came here for some peace and quiet -- a place I've never even been to before and -'
'Don, we eat here all the time.' Nolan looked sick.
That's nonsense!'
Nolan rubbed a hand across his mouth. 'You... you actually think this is some kind of con game?' he asked.
Marshall stared at him. He could feel the heavy pulsing of his heart.
'Or that -- my God - that there's a man impersonating you? Don...' The man lowered his eyes. T think -- well, if I were you/ he said quietly, 'I'd -- go to a doctor, a -'
'Let's stop this, shall we?' Marshall interrupted coldly. 'I suggest one of us leave.' He looked around the restaurant. 'There's plenty of room in here.'
He turned his eyes quickly from the man's stricken face and picked up his martini. 'Well?' he said.
The man shook his head. 'Dear God,' he murmured.
'I said let's stop it,' Marshall said through clenched teeth.
'That's it?' asked Nolan, incredulously. 'You're willing to -to let it go at that?'
Marshall started to get up.
'No, no, wait,' said Nolan. TU go.' He stared at Marshall blankly. 'I'll go,' he repeated.
Abruptly, he pushed to his feet as if there were a leaden mantle around his shoulders.
'I don't know what to say,' he said, 'but -- for God's sake, Don -- see a doctor.'
He stood by the side of the booth a moment longer, looking down at Marshall. Then, hastily, he turned and walked towards the front door. Marshall watched him leave.
When the man had gone he sank back against the booth wall and stared into his drink. He picked up the toothpick and mechanically stirred the impaled onion around in the glass. When the waitress came he ordered the first item he saw on the menu.
While he ate he thought about how insane it had been. For, unless the man Nolan was a consummate actor, he had been sincerely upset by what had happened.
What had happened? An out-and-out case of mistaken identity was one thing. A mistaken identity which seemed not quite wholly mistaken was another. How had the man known these things about him? About Ruth, Huntington, American-Pacific, even his lieutenancy in the 87th Division? How?
Suddenly, it struck him.
Years ago he'd been a devotee of fantastic fiction -- stories which dealt with trips to the moon, with travelling through time, with all of that. And one of the ideas used repeatedly was that of the alternate universe: a lunatic theory which stated that for every possibility there was a separate universe. Following his theory there might, conceivably, be a universe in which he knew this Nolan, ate at Franco's with him regularly and had graduated from Columbia a semester earlier.
It was absurd, really, yet there it was. What if, in entering Franco's, he had, accidentally, entered a universe one jot removed from the one he'd existed in at the office? What if, the thought expanded, people were, without knowing it, continually entering these universes one jot removed? What if he himself had continually entered them and never known until today -- when, in an accidental entry, he had gone one step too far?
He closed his eyes and shuddered. Dear Lord, he thought; dear, heavenly Lord, I have been working too hard. He felt as if he were standing at the edge of a cliff waiting for someone to push him off. He tried hard not to think about his talk with Nolan. If he thought about it he'd have to fit into the pattern. He wasn't prepared to do that yet.
After a while he paid his check and left the restaurant, the food like cold lead in his stomach. He cabbed to Pennsylvania Station and, after a short wait, boarded a North Shore train. All the way to Huntington, he sat in the smoker car staring out at the passing countryside, an unlit cigarette between his fingers. The heavy pressure in his stomach wouldn't go away.
When Huntington was reached, he walked across the station to the cab stand and, deliberately, got into one of them.
Take me home, will you?' he looked intently at the driver.
'Sure thing, Mr Marshall,' said the driver, smiling.
Marshall sank back with a wavering sigh and closed his eyes. There was a tingling at his fingertips.
'You're home early,' said the driver. 'Feeling poorly?'
Marshall swallowed. 'Just a headache,' he said.
'Oh, I'm sorry.'
As he rode home, Marshall kept staring at the town, despite himself, looking for discrepancies, for differences. But there were none; everything was just the same. He felt the pressure letting up.
Ruth was in the living room, sewing.
'Don.' She stood up and hurried to him. 'Is something wrong?'
'No, no,' he said putting down his hat. 'Just a headache.'
'Oh.' She led him, sympathetically, to a chair and helped him off with his suit coat and shoes. 'I'll get you something right away,' she said.
'Fine.' When she was gone upstairs, Marshall looked around the familiar room and smiled at it. It was all right now.
Ruth was coming down the stairs when the telephone rang. He started up, then fell back again as she called, 'I'll get it, darling.'
'All right,' he said.
He watched her in the hallway as she picked up the receiver and said hello. She listened. 'Yes, darling,' she said automatically. 'You -'
Then she stopped and, holding out the receiver, stared at it as if it were something monstrous in her hand.
She put it back-to her ear. 'You... won't be home until late?' she asked in a faint voice.
Marshall sat there gaping at her, the beats of his heart like someone striking at him. Even when she turned to look at him, the receiver lowered in her hand, he couldn't turn away. Please, he thought. Please don't say it. Please.
'Who are you?' she asked.
THESIS SUBMITTED AS PARTIAL REQUIREMENT FOR MASTER OF ARTS DEGREE
The phenomenon known in scientific circles as the Los Angeles Movement came to light in the year 1972 when Doctor Albert Grimsby, A.B., B.S., A.M., Ph.D., professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology, made an unusual discovery.
'I have made an unusual discovery,' said Doctor Grimsby.
'What is that?' asked Doctor Maxwell.
'Los Angeles is alive.'
Doctor Maxwell blinked.
'I beg your pardon,' he said.
'I can understand your incredulity,' said Doctor Grimsby. 'Nevertheless...'
He drew Doctor Maxwell to the laboratory bench.
'Look into this microscope,' he said, 'under which I have isolated a piece of Los Angeles.;
Doctor Maxwell looked. He raised his head, a look of astonishment on his face.'
'it moves,' he said.
Having made this strange discovery, Doctor Grimsby, oddly enough, saw fit to promulgate it only in the smallest degree. It appeared as a one-paragraph item in the Science News Letter of June 2, 1972, under the heading:
OF LIFE IN L.A.
Perhaps due to unfortunate phrasing, perhaps to normal lack of interest, the item aroused neither attention nor comment. This unfortunate negligence proved ever after a plague to the man originally responsible for it. In later years it became known as 'Grimsby's Blunder'.
Thus was introduced to a then unresponsive nation a phenomenon which was to become in the following years a most shocking threat to that nation's very existence.
Of late, researchers have discovered that knowledge concerning the Los Angeles Movement predates Doctor Grimsby's find by years. Indeed, hints of this frightening crisis are to be found in works published as much as fifteen years prior to the illfated 'Caltech Disclosure'.
Concerning Los Angeles, the distinguished journalist, John Gunther, wrote: 'What distinguishes it is... it's octopus like growth.(1)
Yet another reference to Los Angeles mentions that: 'In its amoeba like growth it has spread in all directions... '(2)
Thus can be seen primitive approaches to the phenomenon which are as perceptive as they are unaware. Although there is no present evidence to indicate that any person during that early period actually knew of the fantastic process, there can, hardly be any doubt that many sensed it, if only imperfectly.
Active speculation regarding freakish nature behaviour began in July and August of 1972. During a period of approximately forty-seven days the states of Arizona and Utah in their entirety and great portions of New Mexico and lower Colorado were inundated by rains that frequently bettered the five-inch mark.
Such water fall in previously arid sections aroused great agitation and discussion. First theories placed responsibility for this uncommon rainfall on previous south western atomic tests.(8) Government disclaiming of this possibility seemed to increase rather than eliminate mass credulity to this later disproved supposition.
Other 'precipitation postulations' as they were then known in Investigative parlance can be safely relegated to the category of 'crackpotia.'(4) These include theories that excess commercial air flights were upsetting the natural balance of the clouds, that deranged Indian rain-makers had unwittingly come upon some lethal condensation factor and were applying it beyond all sanity, that strange frost from outer space was seeding Earth's overhead and causing this inordinate precipitation.
And, as seems an inevitable concomitant to all alien deportment in nature, hypotheses were propounded that this heavy rainfall presaged Deluge II. It is clearly recorded that several minor religious groups began hasty construction of 'Salvation Arks'. One of these arks can still be seen on the outskirts of the small town of Dry Rot, New Mexico, built on a small hill, 'still waiting for the flood'.(5)
Then came that memorable day when the name of a farmer Cyrus Mills became a household word.
'Tarnation!' said farmer Mills.
He gaped in rustic amazement at the object he had come across in his corn field. He approached it cautiously. He prodded it with a sausage finger.
'Tarnation,' he repeated, less volubly.
Jason Gullwhistle of the United States Experimental Farm Station No. 3, Nebraska, drove his station wagon out to farmer Milk's farm in answer to an urgent phone call. Farmer Mills took Mr Gullwhistle out to the object.
'That's odd,' said Jason Gullwhistle. 'It looks like an orange tree.(9)
Close investigation revealed the truth of this remark. It was, indeed, an orange tree.
'Incredible,' said Jason Gullwhistle. 'An orange tree in the middle of a Nebraska corn field. I never.'
Later they returned to the house for a lemonade and there found Mrs Mills in halter and shorts wearing sunglasses and an old chewed-up fur jacket she had exhumed from her crumbling hope chest.
'Think I'll drive into Hollywood/ said Mrs Mills, sixty-five if she was a day.
By nightfall every wire service had embraced the item, every paper of any prominence whatever had featured it as a humorous insertion on page one.
Within a week, however, the humour had vanished as reports came pouring in from every corner of the state of Nebraska as well as portions of Iowa, Kansas and Colorado; reports of citrus trees discovered in corn and wheat fields as well as more alarming reports relative to eccentric behaviour in the rural populace.
Addiction to the wearing of scanty apparel became noticeable, an inexplicable rise in the sales of frozen orange juice manifested itself and oddly similar letters were received by dozens of chambers of commerce; letters which heatedly demanded the immediate construction of motor speedways, supermarkets, tennis courts, drive-in theatres and drive-in restaurants and which complained of smog.
But it was not until a marked decrease in daily temperatures and an equally marked increase of unfathomable citrus tree growth began to imperil the corn and wheat crop that serious action was taken. Local farm groups organised spraying operations but to little or no avail. Orange, lemon and grapefruit trees continued to flourish in geometric proliferation and a nation, at long last, became alarmed.
A seminar of the country's top scientists met in Ragweed, Nebraska, the geographical centre of this multiplying plague, to discuss possibilities.
'Dynamic tremors in the alluvial substrata,' said Doctor Kenneth Loam of the University of Denver.
'Mass chemical disorder in soil composition,' said Spencer Smith of the Dupont Laboratories.
'Momentous gene mutation in the corn seed,' said Professor Jeremy Brass of Kansas College.
'Violent contraction of the atmospheric dome,' said Trofessor Lawson Hinkson of M.I.T.
'Displacement of orbit,' said Roger Cosmos ot the Hay den Planetarium.
'I'm scared,' said a little man from Turdue.
What positive results emerged from this body of speculative genius is yet to be appraised. History records that a closer labelling of the cause of this unusual behaviour in nature and man occurred in early October 1972 when Associate Professor David Silver, young research physicist at the University of Missouri, published in The Scientific American an article entitled, The Collecting of Evidences'.
In this brilliant essay, Professor Silver first voiced the opinion that all the apparently disconnected occurrences were, in actuality, superficial revelations of one underlying phenomenon. To the moment of this article, scant attention had been paid to the erratic behaviour of people in the affected areas. Mr Silver attributed this behaviour to the same cause which had effected the alien growth of citrus trees.
The final deductive link was forged, oddly enough, in a Sunday supplement to the now defunct Hearst newspaper syndicate.(6) The author of this piece, a professional article writer, in doing research for an article, stumbled across the paragraph recounting Doctor Grimsby's discovery. Seeing in this a most salable feature, he wrote an article combining the theses of Doctor Grimsby and Professor Silver and emerging with his own amateur concept which, strange to say, was absolutely correct. (This fact was later obscured in the severe litigation that arose when Professors Grimsby and Silver brought suit against the author for not consulting them before writing the article.)
Thus did it finally become known that Los Angeles, like some gigantic fungus, was overgrowing the land.
A period of gestation followed during which various publications in the country slowly built up the import of the Los Angeles Movement, until it became a national by-word. It was during this period that a fertile-minded columnist dubbed Los Angeles 'Ellie, the meandering metropolis',(7) a title later reduced merely to 'Ellie' -- a term which became as common to the American mind as 'ham and eggs' or 'World War III.
Now began a cycle of data collection and an attempt by various of the prominent sciences to analyse the Los Angeles Movement with a regard to arresting its strange pilgrimage which had now spread into parts of South Dakota, Missouri, Arkansas and as far as the sovereign state of Texas. (To the mass convulsion this caused in the Lone Star State a separate paper might be devoted.)
Claim L.A. Movement Subversive
Camouflage
After a hasty dispatch of agents to all points in the infected area, the American Medical Association promulgated throughout the nation a list of symptoms by which all inhabitants might be forewarned of the approaching terror.
SYMPTOMS OF 'ELLIETIS' 
(7)
1. An unnatural craving for any of the citrus fruits whether in solid or liquid form.
2. Partial or complete loss of geographical distinction. (i.e. A person in Kansas City might speak of driving down to San Diego for the week-end.)
3. An unnatural desire to possess a motor vehicle.
4. An unnatural appetite for motion pictures and motion picture previews. (Including a subsidiary symptom, not all-inclusive but nevertheless a distinct menace. This is the insatiable hunger of young girls to become movie stars.)
5. A taste for weird apparel. (Including fur jackets, shorts, halters, slacks, sandals, blue jeans and bath ing suits -- all usually of excessive colour.)
This list, unfortunately, proved most inadequate, for its avowed purpose. It did not mention, for one thing, the adverse effect of excess sunlight on residents of the northern states. With the expected approach to winter being forestalled indefinitely, numerous unfortunates, unable to adjust to this alteration, became neurotic and, often, lost their senses completely.
The story of Matchbox, North Dakota, a small town in the northernmost part of that state, is typical of accounts which flourished throughout the late fall and winter of 1972.
The citizens of this illfated town went berserk to a man waiting for the snow and, eventually running amuck, burned their village to the ground.
The pamphlet also failed to mention the psychological phenomenon known later as 'Beach Seeking',(8) a delusion under which masses of people, wearing bathing suits and carrying towels and blankets, wandered helplessly across the plains and prairies searching for the Pacific Ocean.
In October, the Los Angeles Movement (the process was given this more staid title in late September by Professor Augustus Wrench in a paper sent to the National Council of American Scientists) picked up momentum and, in a space of ten days, had engulfed Arkansas, Missouri and Minnesota and was creeping rapidly into the borderlands of Illinois, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana. Smog drifted across the nation.
Up to this point, citizens on the east coast had been interested in the phenomenon but not overly perturbed since distance from the diseased territory had lent detachment. Now, however, as the Los Angeles city limits stalked closer and closer to them, the coastal region became alarmed.
Legislative activity in Washington was virtually terminated as Congressmen were inundated with letters of protest and demand. A special committee, heretofore burdened by general public apathy in the east, now became enlarged by the added membership of several distinguished Congressmen, and a costly probe into the problem ensued.
It was this committee that, during the course of its televised hearings, unearthed a secret group known as the L.A. Firsters.
This insidious organisation seemed to have sprung almost spontaneously from the general chaos of the Los Angeles envelopement. General credence was given for a short time that it was another symptom of 'Ellieitis.'. Intense interrogation, however, revealed the existence of L.A. Firster cells(8) in east coast cities that could not possibly have been subject to the dread virus at that point.
This revelation struck terror into the heart of a nation. The presence of such calculated subversion in this moment of trial almost unnerved the national will. For it was not merely an organisation loosely joined by emotional binds. This faction possessed a carefully wrought hierarchy of men and women which was plotting the overthrow of the national government. Nationwide distribution of literature had begun almost with the advent of the Los Angeles Movement. This literature, with the cunning of insurgent, casuistry, painted a roseate picture of the future of -- The United States of Los Angeles!
PEOPLE ARISE! 
(9)
People arise! Cast off the shackles of reaction! What sense is there in opposing the march of PROGRESS! It is inevitable! -- and you the people of this glorious land -- a land dearly bought with your blood and your tears -should realise that Nature herself supports the L.A. FIRSTERS!
How? -- you ask. How does Nature support this glorious adventure? The question is simple enough to answer.
NATURE HAS SUPPORTED THE L.A. FIRSTER MOVEMENT FOR THE BETTERMENT OF YOU! AND YOU!
Here are a few facts:
In those states that have been blessed.
1. Rheumatism has dropped 52%
2. Pneumonia has dropped 61%
3. Frostbite has vanished;
4. Incidence of the COMMON COLD has dropped 73%!
Is this bad news? Are these the changes brought about by anti-PROGRESS? NO!!!
Wherever Los Angeles has gone, the deserts have fled, adding millions of new fertile acres to our beloved land. Where once there was only sand and cactus and are now plants and trees and FLOWERS!
This pamphlet closes with a couplet which aroused a nation to fury:
Sing out 0 land, with flag unfurled! Los Angeles! Tomorrow's World!
The exposure of the L.A. Firsters caused a tide of reaction to sweep the country. Rage became the keynote of this counterrevolution; rage at the subtlety with which the L.A. Firsters had distorted truth in their literature; rage at their arrogant assumption that the country would inevitably fall to Los Angeles.
Slogans of 'Down with the L.A. Lovers!' and 'Send Them Back Where They Came From!' rang throughout the land. A measure was forced through Congress and presidential signature outlawing the group and making membership in it an offence of treason. Rabid groups attached a rider to this measure which would have enforced the outlawry, seizure and destruction of all tennis and beach supply manufacturing. Here, however, the N.A.M. stepped into the scene and, through the judicious use of various pressure means, defeated the attempt.
Despite this quick retaliation, the L.A. Firsters continued underground and at least one fatality of its persistent agitation was the state of Missouri.
In some manner, as yet undisclosed, the L.A. Firsters gained control of the state legislature and jockeyed through an amendment to the constitution of Missouri which was hastily ratified and made the Show-Me State the first area in the country to legally make itself a part of Los Angeles County.
UTTER McKlNLEY OVENS FIVE NEW
In the succeeding months there emerged a notable upsurge in the productions of automobiles, particularly those of the convertible variety. In those states affected by the Los Angeles Movement, every citizen, apparently, had acquired that symptom of 'Ellieitis' known as automania. The car industry entered accordingly upon a period of peak production, its factories turning out automobiles twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
In conjunction with this increase in automotive fabrication, there began a near maniacal splurge in the building of drive-in restaurants and theatres. These sprang up with mushroom-like celerity through western and midwestern United States, their planning going beyond all feasibility. Typical of these thoughtless projects was the endeavour to hollow out a mountain and convert it into a drive-in theatre.(10)
As the month of December approached, the Los Angeles Movement engulfed Illinois, Wisconsin, Mississippi, half of Tennessee and was lapping at the shores of Indiana, Kentucky and Alabama. (No mention will be made of the profound effect this movement had on racial segregation in the South, this subject demanding a complete investigation in itself.)
It was about this time that a wave of religious passion obsessed the nation. As is the nature of the human mind suffering catastrophe, millions turned to religion. Various cults had in this calamity grist for their metaphysical mills.
Typical of these were the San Bernadino Vine Worshippers who claimed Los Angeles to be the reincarnation of their deity Ochsalia -- The Vine Divine. The San Diego Sons of the Weed claimed in turn that Los Angeles was a sister embodiment to their deity which they claimed had been creeping for three decades prior to the Los Angeles Movement.
Unfortunately for all concerned, a small fascistic clique began to usurp control of many of these otherwise harmless cults, emphasising dominance through 'power and energy'. As a result, these religious bodies too often degenerated into mere fronts for political cells which plotted the overthrow of the government for purposes of self-aggrandisement (Secret documents discovered in later years revealed the intention of one perfidious brotherhood of converting the Pentagon Building into an indoor race track.)
During a period beginning in September and extending for years, there also ensued a studied expansion of the motion picture industry. Various of the major producers opened branch studios throughout the country (for example M.G.M. built one in Terre Haute, Paramount in Cincinnati and Twentieth Century Fox in Tulsa). The Screen Writer's Guild initiated branch offices in every large city and the term 'Hollywood' became even more of a misnomer than it had previously been.
Motion-picture output more than quadrupled as theatres of all description were hastily erected everywhere west of the Mississippi, sometimes wall to wall for blocks.(11) These buildings were rarely well constructed and often collapsed within weeks of their 'grand openings'.
Yet, in spite of the incredible number of theatres, motion pictures exceeded them in quantity (if not quality). It was in compensation for this economically dangerous situation that the studios inaugurated the expedient practice of burning films in order to maintain the stability of the price floor. This aroused great antipathy among the smaller studios who did not produce enough films to burn any.'
Another liability involved in the production of motion pictures was the geometric increase in difficulties raised by small but voluble pressure groups.
One typical coterie was the Anti-Horse League of Dallas which put up strenuous opposition to the utilisation of horses in films. This, plus the increasing incidence of car owning which had made horse breeding unprofitable, made the production of Western films (as they had been known) an impossible chore. Thus was it that the so-called 'Western' gravitated rapidly towards the 'drawing room' drama.
(12)
Tex D'Urberville comes riding into Doomtown on the Colorado, his Jaguar raising a cloud of dust in the sleepy western town. He parks in front of the Golden Sovereign Saloon and steps out. He is a tall, rangy cowhand, impeccably attired in waistcoat and fawnskin trousers with a ten-gallon hat, boots and pearl-grey spats. A heavy six-gun is belted at his waist. He carries a gold-topped Malacca cane.
He enters the saloon and every man there scatters from the room, leaving only Tex and a scowling hulk of a man at the other end of the bar. This is Dirty Ned Updyke, local ruffian and gunman.
TEX: (Removing his white gloves and, pretending he does not see Dirty Ned, addressing the bartender): Tour me a whisky and seltzer will you, Roger, there's a good fellow.
ROGER: Yes, sir.
Dirty Ned scowls over his apSritif but does not dare to reach for his Webley Automatic pistol which is concealed in a holster beneath his tweed jacket.
Now Tex D'Urberville allows his icy blue eyes to move slowly about the room until they rest on the craven features of Dirty Ned.
TEX: So ... you're the beastly cad what shot my brother.
Instantly they draw their cane swords and, approaching, salute each other grimly.
An additional result not to be overlooked was the effect of increased film production on politics. The need for high-salaried workers such as writers, actors, directors and plumbers was intense and this mass of nouveau riche, having come upon good times so relatively abruptly, acquired a definite guilt neurosis which resulted in their intensive participation in the so-called 'liberal' and 'progressive' groups. This swelling of radical activity did much to alter the course of American political history. (This subject being another which requires separate inquiry for a proper evaluation of its many and varied ramifications.)
Two other factors of this period which may be mentioned briefly are the increase in divorce due to the relaxation of divorce laws in every state affected by the Los Angeles Movement and the slow but eventually complete bans placed upon tennis and beach supplies by a rabid but powerful group within the N.A.M. This ban led inexorably to a brief span of time which paralleled the so-called 'Prohibition' period of the 1920s. During this infamous period, thrill seekers attended the many bootleg tennis courts throughout the country, which sprang up wherever perverse public demand made them profitable ventures for unscrupulous men.
In the first days of January of 1973 the Los Angeles Movement reached almost to the Atlantic shoreline. Panic spread through New England and the southern coastal region. The country and, ultimately, Washington reverberated with cries of 'Stop Los Angeles!' and all processes of government ground to a virtual halt in the ensuing chaos. Law enforcement atrophied, crime waves spilled across the nation and conditions became so grave that even the outlawed L.A. Firsters held revival meetings in the streets.
On February 11, 1973, the Los Angeles Movement forded the Hudson River and invaded Manhattan Island. Flame-throwing tanks proved futile against the invincible flux. Within a week the subways were closed and car purchases had trebled.
By March 1973 the only unaltered states in the union were Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. This was later explained by the lethargic adaptation of the fungi to the rocky New England soil and to the immediate inclement weather.
These northern states, cornered and helpless, resorted to extraordinary measures in a hopeless bid to ward off the awful incrustation. Several of them legalised the mercy killing of any person discovered to have acquired the taint of 'Ellieitis'. Newspaper reports of shootings, stabbings, poisonings and strangulations became so common in those days of The Last-Ditch Defence' that newspapers inaugurated a daily section of their contents to such reports.
Boston, Mass, April 13, AP -- Last rites were held today for Mr Abner Scrounge who was shot after being found in his garage attempting to remove the top of his Rolls Royce with a can opener.
The history of the gallant battle of Boston to retain its essential dignity would, alone, make up a large work. The story of how the intrepid citizens of this venerable city refused to surrender their rights, choosing mass suicide rather than submission is a tale of enduring courage and majestic struggle against insurmountable odds.
What happened after the movement was contained within the boundaries of the United States (a name soon discarded) is data for another paper. A brief mention, however, may be made of the immense social endeavour which became known as the 'Bacon and Waffles' movement, which sought to guarantee $250 per month for every person in Los Angeles over forty years of age.
With this incentive before the people, state legislatures were helpless before an avalanche of public demand and, within three years, the entire nation was a part of Los Angeles. The government seat was in Beverly Hills and ambassadors had been hastened to all foreign countries within a short period of time.
Ten years later the North American continent fell and Los Angeles was creeping rapidly down the Isthmus of Panama.
Then came that illfated day in 1984.
On the island of Vingo Vongo, Maona, daughter of Chief Luana, approached her father,
'Omu la golu si mongo,' she said.
(Anyone for tennis?)
Whereupon her father, having read the papers, speared her on the spot and ran screaming from the hut.
1/ John Gunther, Inside USA., p. 44.
2/ Henry G. Alsberg (ed.), The American Guide, p. 1200.
3/ Symmes Chadwick, 'Will We Drown the World?' Southwestern Review IV (Summer 1972), p. 698 ff.
4/ Guillaume Gaule, 'Les Theories de l'Eau de Ciel Sont Cuckoo,' Juane Journale, August 1972.
5/ Harry L. Schuler, 'Not Long for This World,' South Orange Literary Review, XL (Sept. 1972), p. 214.
6/ H. Braham, 'Is Los Angeles Alive?' Los Angeles Sunday Examiner,October 29, 1972.
7/ Ellietis: Its Symptoms,' A.M.A. pamphlet, fall 1972.
8 / Fritz Felix DerKatt, 'Das Beachen Seeken,' Einzweidrei, Nov., 1972.
9/ The Los Angeles Manifesto, L.A. Firster Press, winter, 1972, bleached bones,
10/ L. Savage, 'A Report on the Grand Teton Drive-In,' Fortune, January, 1973.
11/ 'Gulls Creek Gets Its Forty-Eighth Theater,' The Arkansas Tost-Journal, March 12, 1973.
12/ Maxwell Brande, 'Altercation at Deadwood Spa,' Epigram Studios, April, 1973.
Mason saw it first.
He was sitting in front of the lateral viewer taking notes as the ship cruised over the new planet. His pen moved quickly over the graph-spaced chart he held before him. In a little while they'd land and take specimens. Mineral, vegetable, animal-if there were any. Put them in the storage lockers and take them back to Earth. There the technicians would evaluate, appraise, judge. And, if everything was acceptable, stamp the big, black INHABITABLE on their brief and open another planet for colonization from overcrowded Earth.
Mason was jotting down items about general topography when the glitter caught his eye.
"I saw something," he said.
He flicked the viewer to reverse lensing position.
"Saw what?" Ross asked from the control board.
"Didn't you see a flash?"
Ross looked into his own screen.
"We went over a lake, you know," he said.
"No, it wasn't that," Mason said. "This was in that clearing beside the lake."
"I'll look," said Ross, "but it probably was the lake."
His fingers typed out a command on the board and the big ship wheeled around in a smooth arc and headed back.
"Keep your eyes open now," Ross said. "Make sure. We haven't got any time to waste."
"Yes sir."
Mason kept his unblinking gaze on the viewer, watching the earth below move past like a slowly rolled tapestry of woods and fields and rivers. He was thinking, in spite of himself, that maybe the moment had arrived at last. The moment in which Earthmen would come upon life beyond Earth, a race evolved from other cells and other muds. It was an exciting thought. 1997 might be the year. And he and Ross and Carter might now be riding a new Santa Maria of discovery, a silvery, bulleted galleon of space.
"There!" he said. "There it is!"
He looked over at Ross. The captain was gazing into his viewer plate. His face bore the expression Mason knew well. A look of smug analysis, of impending decision.
"What do you think it is?" Mason asked, playing the strings of vanity in his captain.
"Might be a ship, might not be," pronounced Ross.
Well, for God's sake, let's go down and see, Mason wanted to say, but knew he couldn't. It would have to be Ross's decision. Otherwise they might not even stop.
"I guess it's nothing," he prodded.
He watched Ross impatiently, watched the stubby fingers flick buttons for the viewer. "We might stop," Ross said. "We have to take samples anyway. Only thing I'm afraid of is... "
He shook his head. Land, man! The words bubbled up in Mason's throat. For God's sake, let's go down!
Ross evaluated. His thickish lips pressed together appraisingly. Mason held his breath.
Then Ross's head bobbed once in that curt movement which indicated consummated decision. Mason breathed again. He watched the captain spin, push and twist dials. Felt the ship begin its tilt to upright position. Felt the cabin shuddering slightly as the gyroscope kept it on an even keel. The sky did a ninety-degree turn, clouds appeared through the thick ports. Then the ship was pointed at the planet's sun and Ross switched off the cruising engines. The ship hesitated, suspended a split second, then began dropping toward the earth.
"Hey, we settin' down already?"
Mickey Carter looked at them questioningly from the port door that led to the storage lockers. He was rubbing greasy hands over his green jumper legs.
"We saw something down there," Mason said.
"No kiddin'," Mickey said, coming over to Mason's viewer. "Let's see."
Mason flicked on the rear lens. The two of them watched the planet billowing up at them.
"I don't know whether you can... oh, yes, there it is," Mason said. He looked over at Ross.
"Two degrees east," he said.
Ross twisted a dial and the ship then changed its downward movement slightly.
"What do you think it is?" Mickey asked.
"Hey!"
Mickey looked into the viewer with even greater interest. His wide eyes examined the shiny speck enlarging on the screen.
"Could be a ship," he said. "Could be."
Then he stood there silently, behind Mason, watching the earth rushing up.
"Reactors," said Mason.
Ross jabbed efficiently at the button and the ship's engines spouted out their flaming gases. Speed decreased. The rocket eased down on its roaring fire jets. Ross guided.
"What do you think it is?" Mickey asked Mason.
"I don't know," Mason answered. "But if it's a ship," he added, half wishfully thinking, "I don't see how it could possibly be from Earth. We've got this run all to ourselves."
"Maybe they got off course," Mickey dampened without knowing.
Mason shrugged. "I doubt it," he said.
"What if it is a ship?" Mickey said. "And it's not ours?"
Mason looked at him and Carter licked his lips.
"Man," he said, "that'd be somethin'."
"Air spring," Ross ordered.
Mason threw the switch that set the air spring into operation. The unit which made possible a landing without then having to stretch out on thick-cushioned couches. They could stand on deck and hardly feel the impact. It was an innovation on the newer government ships.
The ship hit on its rear braces.
There was a sensation of jarring, a sense of slight bouncing. Then the ship was still, its pointed nose straight up, glittering brilliantly in the bright sunlight.
"I want us to stay together," Ross was saying. "No one takes any risks. That's an order."
He got up from his seat and pointed at the wall switch that let atmosphere into the small chamber in the corner of the cabin.
"Three to one we need our helmets," Mickey said to Mason.
"You're on," Mason said, setting into play their standing bet about the air or lack of it in every new planet they found. Mickey always bet on the need for apparatus. Mason for unaided lung use. So far, they'd come out about even.
Mason threw the switch, and there was a muffled sound of hissing in the chamber. Mickey got the helmet from his locker and dropped it over his head. Then he went through the double doors. Mason listened to him clamping the doors behind him. He kept wanting to switch on the side viewers and see if he could locate what they'd spotted. But he didn't. He let himself enjoy the delicate nibbling of suspense.
Through the intercom they heard Mickey's voice.
"Removing helmet," he said.
Silence. They waited. Finally, a sound of disgust.
"I lose again," Mickey said.
The others followed him out.
"God, did they hit!"
Mickey's face had an expression of dismayed shock on it. The three of them stood there on the greenish-blue grass and looked.
It was a ship. Or what was left of a ship for, apparently, it had struck the earth at terrible velocity, nose first. The main structure had driven itself about fifteen feet into the hard ground. Jagged pieces of superstructure had been ripped off by the crash and were lying strewn over the field. The heavy engines had been torn loose and nearly crushed the cabin. Everything was deathly silent, and the wreckage was so complete they could hardly make out what type of ship it was. It was as if some enormous child had lost fancy with the toy model and had dashed it to earth, stamped on it, banged on it insanely with a rock.
Mason shuddered. It had been a long time since he'd seen a rocket crash. He'd almost forgotten the everpresent menace of lost control, of whistling fall through space, of violent impact. Most talk had been about being lost in an orbit. This reminded him of the other threat in his calling. His throat moved unconsciously as he watched.
Ross was scuffing at a chunk of metal at his feet.
"Can't tell much," he said. "But I'd say it's our own."
Mason was about to speak, then changed his mind.
"From what I can see of that engine up there, I'd say it was ours," Mickey said.
"Rocket structure might be standard," Mason heard himself say, "everywhere."
"Not a chance," Ross said. "Things don't work out like that. It's ours all right. Some poor devils from Earth. Well, at least their death was quick."
"Was it?" Mason asked the air, visualizing the crew in their cabin, rooted with fear as their ship spun toward earth, maybe straight down like a fired cannon shell, maybe end-over-end like a crazy, fluttering top, the gyroscope trying in vain to keep the cabin always level.
The screaming, the shouted commands, the exhortations to a heaven they had never seen before, to a God who might be in another universe. And then the planet rushing up and blasting its hard face against their ship, crushing them, ripping the breath from their lungs. He shuddered again, thinking of it.
"Let's take a look," Mickey said.
"Not sure we'd better," Ross said. "We say it's ours. It might not be."
"Jeez, you don't think anything is still alive in there, do you?" Mickey asked the captain.
"Can't say," Ross said.
But they all knew he could see that mangled hulk before him as well as they. Nothing could have survived that.
The look. The pursed lips. As they circled the ship. The head movement, unseen by them.
"Let's try that opening there," Ross ordered. "And stay together. We still have work to do. Only doing this so we can let the base know which ship this is." He had already decided it was an Earth ship.
They walked up to a spot in the ship's side where the skin had been laid open along the welded seam. A long, thick plate was bent over as easily as a man might bend paper.
"Don't like this," Ross said. "But I suppose... "
He gestured with his head and Mickey pulled himself up to the opening. He tested each handhold gingerly, then slid on his work gloves as he found some sharp edge. He told the other two and they reached into their jumper pockets. Then Mickey took a long step into the dark maw of the ship.
"Hold on, now!" Ross called up. "Wait until I get there."
He pulled himself up, his heavy boot toes scraping up the rocket skin. He went into the hole too. Mason followed.
It was dark inside the ship. Mason closed his eyes for a moment to adjust to the change. When he opened them, he saw two bright beams searching up through the twisted tangle of beams and plates. He pulled out his own flash and flicked it on.
"God, is this thing wrecked," Mickey said, awed by the sight of metal and machinery in violent death. His voice echoed slightly through the shell. Then, when the sound ended, an utter stillness descended on them. They stood in the murky light and Mason could smell the acrid fumes of broken engines.
"Watch the smell, now," Ross said to Mickey who was reaching up for support. "We don't want to get ourselves gassed."
"I will," Mickey said. He was climbing up, using one hand to pull his thick, powerful body up along the twisted ladder. He played the beam straight up.
"Cabin is all out of shape," he said, shaking his head.
Ross followed him up. Mason was last, his flash moving around endlessly over the snapped joints, the wild jigsaw of destruction that had once been a powerful new ship. He kept hissing in disbelief to himself as his beam came across one violent distortion of metal after another.
"Door's sealed," Mickey said, standing on a pretzel-twisted catwalk, bracing himself against the inside rocket wall. He grabbed the handle again and tried to pull it open.
"Give me your light," Ross said. He directed both beams at the door and Mickey tried to drag it open. His face grew red as he struggled. He puffed.
"No," he said, shaking his head. "It's stuck."
Mason came up beside them. "Maybe the cabin is still pressurized," he said softly. He didn't like the echoing of his own voice.
"Doubt it," Ross said, trying to think. "More than likely the jamb is twisted." He gestured with his head again. "Help Carter."
Mason grabbed one handle and Mickey the other. Then they braced their feet against the wall and pulled with all their strength. The door held fast. They shifted their grip, pulled harder.
"Hey, it slipped!" Mickey said. "I think we got it."
They resumed footing on the tangled catwalk and pulled the door open. The frame was twisted, the door held in one corner. They could only open it enough to wedge themselves in sideways.
The cabin was dark as Mason edged in first. He played his light beam toward the pilot's seat. It was empty. He heard Mickey squeeze in as he moved the light to the navigator's seat.
There was no navigator's seat. The bulkhead had been stove in there, the viewer, the table and the chair all crushed beneath the bent plates. There was a clicking in Mason's throat as he thought of himself sitting at a table like that, in a chair like that, before a bulkhead like that.
Ross was in now. The three beams of light searched. They all had to stand, legs spraddled, because the deck slanted.
And the way it slanted made Mason think of something. Of shifting weights, of things sliding down...
Into the corner where he suddenly played his shaking beam.
And felt his heart jolt, felt the skin on him crawling, felt his unblinking eyes staring at the sight. Then felt his boots thud him down the incline as if he were driven.
"Here," he said, his voice hoarse with shock.
He stood before the bodies. His foot had bumped into one of them as he held himself from going down any further, as he shifted his weight on the incline.
Now he heard Mickey's footsteps, his voice. A whisper. A bated, horrified whisper.
"Mother of God."
Nothing from Ross. Nothing from any of them then but stares and shuddering breaths.
Because the twisted bodies on the floor were theirs, all three of them.
And all three... dead.
\*\*\*
Mason didn't know how long they stood there, wordlessly, looking down at the still, crumpled figures on the deck.
How does a man react when he is standing over his own corpse? The question plied unconsciously at his mind. What does a man say? What are his first words to be? A poser, he seemed to sense, a loaded question.
But it was happening. Here he stood-and there he lay dead at his own feet. He felt his hands grow numb and he rocked unsteadily on the tilted deck.
"God."
Mickey again. He had his flash pointed down at his own face. His mouth twitched as he looked. All three of them had their flash beams directed at their own faces, and the bright ribbons of light connected their dual bodies.
Finally Ross took a shaking breath of the stale cabin air.
"Carter," he said, "find the auxiliary light switch, see if it works." His voice was husky and tightly restrained.
"Sir?"
"The light switch-the light switch!" Ross snapped.
Mason and the captain stood there, motionless, as Mickey shuffled up the deck. They heard his boots kick metallic debris over the deck surface. Mason closed his eyes, but was unable to take his foot away from where it pressed against the body that was his. He felt bound.
"I don't understand," he said to himself.
"Hang on," Ross said.
Mason couldn't tell whether it was said to encourage him or the captain himself.
Then they heard the emergency generator begin its initial whining spin. The light flickered, went out. The generator coughed and began humming and the lights flashed on brightly.
They looked down now. Mickey slipped down the slight deck hill and stood beside them. He stared down at his own body. Its head was crushed in. Mickey drew back, his mouth a box of unbelieving terror.
"I don't get it," he said. "I don't get it. What is this?"
"Carter," Ross said.
"That's me!" Mickey said. "God, it's me!"
"Hold on!" Ross ordered.
"The three of us," Mason said quietly, "and we're all dead."
There seemed nothing to be said. It was a speechless nightmare. The tilted cabin all bashed in and tangled. The three corpses all doubled over and tumbled into one corner, arms and legs flopped over each other. All they could do was stare.
Then Ross said, "Go get a tarp. Both of you."
Mason turned. Quickly. Glad to fill his mind with simple command. Glad to crowd out tense horror with activity. He took long steps up the deck. Mickey backed up, unable to take his unblinking gaze off the heavy-set corpse with the green jumper and the caved-in, bloody head.
Mason dragged a heavy, folded tarp from the storage locker and carried it back into the cabin, legs and arms moving in robotlike sequence. He tried to numb his brain, not think at all until the first shock had dwindled.
Mickey and he opened up the heavy canvas sheet with wooden motions. They tossed it out and the thick, shiny material fluttered down over the bodies. It settled, outlining the heads, the torsos, the one arm that stood up stiffly like a spear, bent over wrist and hand like a grisly pennant.
Mason turned away with a shudder. He stumbled up to the pilot's seat and slumped down. He stared at his outstretched legs, the heavy boots. He reached out and grabbed his leg and pinched it, feeling almost relief at the flaring pain.
"Come away," he heard Ross saying to Mickey, "I said, come away!"
He looked down and saw Ross half dragging Mickey up from a crouching position over the bodies. He held Mickey's arm and led him up the incline.
"We're dead," Mickey said hollowly. "That's us on the deck. We're dead."
Ross pushed Mickey up to the cracked port and made him look out.
"There," he said. "There's our ship over there. Just as we left it. This ship isn't ours. And those bodies. They... can't be ours."
He finished weakly. To a man of his sturdy opinionation, the words sounded flimsy and extravagant. His throat moved, his lower lip pushed out in defiance of this enigma. Ross didn't like enigmas. He stood for decision and action. He wanted action now.
"You saw yourself down there," Mason said to him. "Are you going to say it isn't you?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying," Ross bristled. "This may seem crazy, but there's an explanation for it. There's an explanation for everything."
His face twitched as he punched his bulky arm.
"This is me," he claimed. "I'm solid." He glared at them as if daring opposition. "I'm alive," he said.
They stared blankly at him.
"I don't get it," Mickey said weakly. He shook his head and his lips drew back over his teeth.
Mason sat limply in the pilot's seat. He almost hoped that Ross's dogmatism would pull them through this. That his staunch bias against the inexplicable would save the day. He wanted for it to save the day. He tried to think for himself, but it was so much easier to let the captain decide.
"We're all dead," Mickey said.
"Don't be a fool!" Ross exclaimed. "Feel yourself!"
Mason wondered how long it would go on. Actually, he began to expect a sudden awakening, him jolting to a sitting position on his bunk to see the two of them at their tasks as usual, the crazy dream over and done with.
But the dream went on. He leaned back in the seat and it was a solid seat. From where he sat he could run his fingers over solid dials and buttons and switches. All real. It was no dream. Pinching wasn't even necessary.
"Maybe it's a vision," he tried, vainly attempting thought, as an animal mired tries hesitant steps to solid earth.
"That's enough," Ross said.
Then his eyes narrowed. He looked at them sharply. His face mirrored decision. Mason almost felt anticipation. He tried to figure out what Ross was working on. Vision? No, it couldn't be that. Ross would hold no truck with visions. He noticed Mickey staring open-mouthed at Ross. Mickey wanted the consoling of simple explanation too.
"Time warp," said Ross.
They still stared at him.
"What?" Mason asked.
"Listen," Ross punched out his theory. More than his theory, for Ross never bothered with that link in the chain of calculation. His certainty.
"Space bends," Ross said. "Time and space form a continuum. Right?"
No answer. He didn't need one.
"Remember they told us once in training of the possibility of circumnavigating time. They told us we could leave Earth at a certain time. And when we came back we'd be back a year earlier than we'd calculated. Or a year later.
"Those were just theories to the teachers. Well, I say it's happened to us. It's logical, it could happen. We could have passed right through a time warp. We're in another galaxy, maybe different space lines, maybe different time lines."
He paused for effect.
"I say we're in the future," he said.
Mason looked at him.
"How does that help us?" he asked. "If you're right."
"We're not dead!" Ross seemed surprised that they didn't get it.
"If it's in the future," Mason said quietly, "then we're going to die."
Ross gaped at him. He hadn't thought of that. Hadn't thought that his idea made things even worse. Because there was only one thing worse than dying. And that was knowing you were going to die. And where. And how.
Mickey shook his head. His hands fumbled at his sides. He raised one to his lips and chewed nervously on a blackened nail.
"No," he said weakly, "I don't get it."
Ross stood looking at Mason with jaded eyes. He bit his lips, feeling nervous with the unknown crowding him in, holding off the comfort of solid, rational thinking. He pushed, he shoved it away. He persevered.
"Listen," he said, "we're agreed that those bodies aren't ours."
No answer.
"Use your heads!" Ross commanded. "Feel yourself!"
Mason ran numbed fingers over his jumper, his helmet, the pen in his pocket. He clasped solid hands of flesh and bone. He looked at the veins in his arms. He pressed an anxious finger to his pulse. It's true, he thought. And the thought drove lines of strength back into him. Despite all, despite Ross's desperate advocacy, he was alive. Flesh and blood were his evidence.
His mind swung open then. His brow furrowed in thought as he straightened up. He saw a look almost of relief on the face of a weakening Ross.
"All right then," he said, "we're in the future."
Mickey stood tensely by the port. "Where does that leave us?" he asked.
The words threw Mason back. It was true, where did it leave them?
"How do we know how distant a future?" he said, adding weight to the depression of Mickey's words. "How do we know it isn't in the next twenty minutes?"
Ross tightened. He punched his palm with a resounding smack.
"How do we know?" he said strongly. "We don't go up, we can't crash. That's how we know."
Mason looked at him.
"Maybe if we went up," he said, "we might bypass our death altogether and leave it in this space-time system. We could get back to the space-time system of our own galaxy and... "
His words trailed off. His brain became absorbed with twisting thought.
Ross frowned. He stirred restlessly, licked his lips. What had been simple was now something else again. He resented the uninvited intrusion of complexity.
"We're alive now," he said, getting it set in his mind, consolidating assurance with reasonable words, "and there's only one way we can stay alive."
He looked at them, decision reached. "We have to stay here," he said.
They just looked at him. He wished that one of them, at least, would agree with him, show some sign of definition in their minds.
"But... what about our orders?" Mason said vaguely.
"Our orders don't tell us to kill ourselves!" Ross said. "No, it's the only answer. If we never go up again, we never crash. We... we avoid it, we prevent it!"
His head jarred once in a curt nod. To Ross, the thing was settled.
Mason shook his head.
"I don't know," he said. "I don't... "
"I do," Ross stated. "Now let's get out of here. This ship is getting on our nerves."
Mason stood up as the captain gestured toward the door. Mickey started to move, then hesitated. He looked down at the bodies.
"Shouldn't we...?" he started to inquire.
"What, what?" Ross asked, impatient to leave.
Mickey stared at the bodies. He felt caught up in a great, bewildering insanity.
"Shouldn't we... bury ourselves?" he said.
Ross swallowed. He would hear no more. He herded them out of the cabin. Then, as they started down through the wreckage, he looked in at the door. He looked at the tarpaulin with the jumbled mound of bodies beneath it. He pressed his lips together until they were white.
"I'm alive," he muttered angrily.
Then he turned out the cabin light with tight, vengeful fingers and left.
\*\*\*
They all sat in the cabin of their own ship. Ross had ordered food brought out from the lockers, but he was the only one eating. He ate with a belligerent rotation of his jaw as though he would grind away all mystery with his teeth.
Mickey stared at the food.
"How long do we have to stay?" he asked, as if he didn't clearly realize that they were to remain permanently.
Mason took it up. He leaned forward in his seat and looked at Ross.
"How long will our food last?" he said.
"There's edible food outside, I've no doubt," Ross said, chewing.
"How will we know which is edible and which is poisonous?"
"We'll watch the animals," Ross persisted.
"They're a different type of life," Mason said. "What they can eat might be poisonous to us. Besides, we don't even know if there are any animals here."
The words made his lips raise in a brief, bitter smile. And he'd actually been hoping to contact another people. It was practically humorous.
Ross bristled. "We'll... cross each river as we come to it," he blurted out as if he hoped to smother all complaint with this ancient homily.
Mason shook his head. "I don't know," he said.
Ross stood up.
"Listen," he said. "It's easy to ask questions. We've all made a decision to stay here. Now let's do some concrete thinking about it. Don't tell me what we can't do. I know that as well as you. Tell me what we can do."
Then he turned on his heel and stalked over to the control board. He stood there glaring at blank-faced gauges and dials. He sat down and began scribbling rapidly in his log as if something of great note had just occurred to him. Later Mason looked at what Ross had written and saw that it was a long paragraph which explained in faulty but unyielding logic why they were all alive.
Mickey got up and sat down on his bunk. He pressed his large hands against his temples. He looked very much like a little boy who had eaten too many green apples against his mother's injunction and who feared retribution on both counts. Mason knew what Mickey was thinking. Of that still body with the skull forced in. The image of himself brutally killed in collision. He, Mason, was thinking of the same thing. And, behavior to the contrary, Ross probably was too.
Mason stood by the port looking out at the silent hulk across the meadow. Darkness was falling. The last rays of the planet's sun glinted off the skin of the crashed rocket ship. Mason turned away. He looked at the outside temperature gauge. Already it was seven degrees and it was still light. Mason moved the thermostat needle with his right forefinger.
Heat being used up, he thought. The energy of our grounded ship being used up faster and faster. The ship drinking its own blood with no possibility of transfusion. Only operation would recharge the ship's energy system. And they were without motion, trapped and stationary.
"How long can we last?" he asked Ross again, refusing to keep silence in the face of the question. "We can't live in this ship indefinitely. The food will run out in a couple of months. And a long time before that the charging system will go. The heat will stop. We'll freeze to death."
"How do we know the outside temperature will freeze us?" Ross asked, falsely patient.
"It's only sundown," Mason said, "and already it's... minus thirteen degrees."
Ross looked at him sullenly. Then he pushed up from his chair and began pacing.
"If we go up," he said, "we risk... duplicating that ship over there."
"But would we?" Mason wondered. "We can only die once. It seems we already have. In this galaxy. Maybe a person can die once in every galaxy. Maybe that's afterlife. Maybe... "
"Are you through?" asked Ross coldly.
Mickey looked up.
"Let's go," he said. "I don't want to hang around here."
He looked at Ross.
Ross said, "Let's not stick out our necks before we know what we're doing. Let's think this out."
"I have a wife!" Mickey said angrily. "Just because you're not married-"
"Shut up!" Ross thundered.
Mickey threw himself on the bunk and turned to face the cold bulkhead. Breath shuddered through his heavy frame. He didn't say anything. His fingers opened and closed on the blanket, twisting it, pulling it out from under his body.
Ross paced the deck, abstractedly punching at his palm with a hard fist. His teeth clicked together, his head shook as one argument after another fell before his bullheaded determination. He stopped, looked at Mason, then started pacing again. Once he turned on the outside spotlight and looked to make sure it was not imagination.
The light illumined the broken ship. It glowed strangely, like a huge, broken tombstone. Ross snapped off the spotlight with a soundless snarl. He turned to face them. His broad chest rose and fell heavily as he breathed.
"All right," he said. "It's your lives too. I can't decide for all of us. We'll hand vote on it. That thing out there may be something entirely different from what we think. If you two think it's worth the risk of our lives to go up, we'll... go up."
He shrugged. "Vote," he said. "I say we stay here."
"I say we go," Mason said.
They looked at Mickey.
"Carter," said Ross, "what's your vote?"
Mickey looked over his shoulder with bleak eyes.
"Vote," Ross said.
"Up," Mickey said. "Take us up. I'd rather die than stay here."
Ross's throat moved. Then he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders.
"All right," he said quietly. "We'll go up."
"God have mercy on us," Mickey muttered as Ross went quickly to the control board.
The captain hesitated a moment. Then he threw switches. The great ship began shuddering as gases ignited and began to pour like channeled lightning from the rear vents. The sound was almost soothing to Mason. He didn't care any more; he was willing, like Mickey, to take a chance. It had only been a few hours. It had seemed like a year. Minutes had dragged, each one weighted with oppressive recollections. Of the bodies they'd seen, of the shattered rocket-even more of the Earth they would never see, of parents and wives and sweethearts and children. Lost to their sight forever. No, it was far better to try to get back. Sitting and waiting was always the hardest thing for a man to do. He was no longer conditioned for it.
Mason sat down at his board. He waited tensely. He heard Mickey jump up and move over to the engine control board.
"I'm going to take us up easy," Ross said to them. "There's no reason why we should... have any trouble."
He paused. They snapped their heads over and looked at him with muscle-tight impatience.
"Are you both ready?" Ross asked.
"Take us up," Mickey said.
Ross jammed his lips together and shoved over the switch that read: Vertical Rise.
They felt the ship tremble, hesitate. Then it moved off the ground, headed up with increasing velocity. Mason flicked on the rear viewer. He watched the dark earth recede, tried not to look at the white patch in the corner of the screen, the patch that shone metallically under the moonlight.
"Five hundred," he read. "Seven-fifty... one thousand... fifteen hundred..."
He kept waiting. For explosion. For an engine to give out. For their rise to stop.
They kept moving up.
"Three thousand," Mason said, his voice beginning to betray the rising sense of elation he felt. The planet was getting farther and farther away. The other ship was only a memory now. He looked across at Mickey. Mickey was staring, open-mouthed, as if he were about ready to shout out "Hurry!" but was afraid to tempt the fates.
"Six thousand... seven thousand!" Mason's voice was jubilant. "We're out of it!"
Mickey's face broke into a great, relieved grin. He ran a hand over his brow and flicked great drops of sweat on the deck.
"God," he said, gasping, "my God."
Mason moved over to Ross's seat. He clapped the captain on the shoulder.
"We made it," he said. "Nice flying."
Ross looked irritated.
"We shouldn't have left," he said. "It was nothing all the time. Now we have to start looking for another planet." He shook his head. "It wasn't a good idea to leave," he said.
Mason stared at him. He turned away shaking his head, thinking... you can't win.
"If I ever see another glitter," he thought aloud, "I'll keep my big mouth shut. To hell with alien races anyway."
Silence. He went back to his seat and picked up his graph chart. He let out a long shaking breath. Let Ross complain, he thought, I can take anything now. Things are normal again. He began to figure casually what might have occurred down there on that planet.
Then he happened to glance at Ross.
Ross was thinking. His lips pressed together. He said something to himself. Mason found the captain looking at him.
"Mason," he said.
"What?"
"Alien race, you said."
Mason felt a chill flood through his body. He saw the big head nod once in decision. Unknown decision. His hands started to shake. A crazy idea came. No, Ross wouldn't do that, not just to assuage vanity. Would he?
"I don't..." he started. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mickey watching the captain too.
"Listen," Ross said. "I'll tell you what happened down there. I'll show you what happened!"
They stared at him in paralyzing horror as he threw the ship around and headed back.
"What are you doing!" Mickey cried.
"Listen," Ross said. "Didn't you understand me? Don't you see how we've been tricked?"
They looked at him without comprehension. Mickey took a step toward him.
"Alien race," Ross said. "That's the short of it. That time-space idea is all wet. But I'll tell you what idea isn't all wet. So we leave the place. What's our first instinct as far as reporting it? Saying it's uninhabitable? We'd do more than that. We wouldn't report it at all."
"Ross, you're not taking us back!" Mason said, standing up suddenly as the full terror of returning struck him.
"You bet I am!" Ross said, fiercely elated.
"You're crazy!" Mickey shouted at him, his body twitching, his hands clenched at his sides menacingly.
"Listen to me!" Ross roared at them. "Who would be benefited by us not reporting the existence of that planet?"
They didn't answer. Mickey moved closer.
"Fools!" he said. "Isn't it obvious? There is life down there. But life that isn't strong enough to kill us or chase us away with force. So what can they do? They don't want us there. So what can they do?"
He asked them like a teacher who cannot get the right answers from the dolts in his class.
Mickey looked suspicious. But he was curious now, too, and a little timorous as he had always been with his captain, except in moments of greatest physical danger. Ross had always led them, and it was hard to rebel against it even when it seemed he was trying to kill them all. His eyes moved to the viewer screen where the planet began to loom beneath them like a huge dark ball.
"We're alive," Ross said, "and I say there never was a ship down there. We saw it, sure. We touched it. But you can see anything if you believe it's there! All your senses can tell you there's something when there's nothing. All you have to do is believe it!"
"What are you getting at?" Mason asked hurriedly, too frightened to realize. His eyes fled to the altitude gauge. Seventeen thousand... sixteen thousand... fifteen...
"Telepathy," Ross said, triumphantly decisive. "I say those men, or whatever they are, saw us coming. And they didn't want us there. So they read our minds and saw the death fear, and they decided that the best way to scare us away was to show us our ship crashed and ourselves dead in it. And it worked... until now."
"So it worked!" Mason exploded. "Are you going to take a chance on killing us just to prove your damn theory?"
"It's more than a theory!" Ross stormed, as the ship fell, then Ross added with the distorted argument of injured vanity, "My orders say to pick up specimens from every planet. I've always followed orders before and, by God, I still will!"
"You saw how cold it was!" Mason said. "No one can live there anyway! Use your head, Ross!"
"Damn it, I'm captain of this ship!" Ross yelled, "and I give the orders!"
"Not when our lives are in your hands!" Mickey started for the captain.
"Get back!" Ross ordered.
That was when one of the ship's engines stopped and the ship yawed wildly.
"You fool!" Mickey exploded, thrown off balance. "You did it, you did it!"
Outside the black night hurtled past.
The ship wobbled violently. Prediction true was the only phrase Mason could think of. His own vision of the screaming, the numbing horror, the exhortations to a deaf heaven-all coming true. That hulk would be this ship in a matter of minutes. Those three bodies would be...
"Oh... damn!" He screamed it at the top of his lungs, furious at the enraging stubbornness of Ross in taking them back, of causing the future to be as they saw-all because of insane pride.
"No, they're not going to fool us!" Ross shouted, still holding fast to his last idea like a dying bulldog holding its enemy fast in its teeth.
He threw switches and tried to turn the ship. But it wouldn't turn. It kept plunging down like a fluttering leaf. The gyroscope couldn't keep up with the abrupt variations in cabin equilibrium and the three of them found themselves being thrown off balance on the tilting deck.
"Auxiliary engines!" Ross yelled.
"It's no use!" Mickey cried.
"Damn it!" Ross clawed his way up the angled deck, then crashed heavily against the engine board as the cabin inclined the other way. He threw switches over with shaking fingers.
Suddenly Mason saw an even spout of flame through the rear viewer again. The ship stopped shuddering and headed straight down. The cabin righted itself.
Ross threw himself into his chair and shot out furious hands to turn the ship about. From the floor Mickey looked at him with a blank, white face. Mason looked at him, too, afraid to speak.
"Now shut up!" Ross said disgustedly, not even looking at them, talking like a disgruntled father to his sons. "When we get down there you're going to see that it's true. That ship'll be gone. And we're going to go looking for those bastards who put the idea in our minds!"
They both stared at their captain humbly as the ship headed down backwards. They watched Ross's hands move efficiently over the controls. Mason felt a sense of confidence in his captain. He stood on the deck quietly, waiting for the landing without fear. Mickey got up from the floor and stood beside him, waiting.
The ship hit the ground. It stopped. They had landed again. They were still the same. And...
"Turn on the spotlight," Ross told them.
Mason threw the switch. They all crowded to the port. Mason wondered for a second how Ross could possibly have landed in the same spot. He hadn't even appeared to be following the calculations made on the last landing.
They looked out.
Mickey stopped breathing. And Ross's mouth fell open.
The wreckage was still there.
They had landed in the same place and they had found the wrecked ship still there. Mason turned away from the port and stumbled over the deck. He felt lost, a victim of some terrible universal prank, a man accursed.
"You said..." Mickey said to the captain.
Ross just looked out of the port with unbelieving eyes.
"Now we'll go up again," Mickey said, grinding his teeth. "And we'll really crash this time. And we'll be killed. Just like those... those..."
Ross didn't speak. He stared out of the port at the refutation of his last clinging hope. He felt hollow, void of all faith in belief in sensible things.
Then Mason spoke.
"We're not going to crash-" he said somberly-"ever."
"What?"
Mickey was looking at him. Ross turned and looked too.
"Why don't we stop kidding ourselves?" Mason said. "We all know what it is, don't we?"
He was thinking of what Ross had said just a moment before. About the senses giving evidence of what was believed. Even if there was nothing there at all...
Then, in a split second, with the knowledge, he saw Ross and he saw Carter. As they were. And he took a short shuddering breath, a last breath until illusion would bring breath and flesh again.
"Progress," he said bitterly, and his voice was an aching whisper in the phantom ship. "The Flying Dutchman takes to the universe."
July 20
Time to move.
He'd found a small, furnished house on Sylmar Street. The Saturday morning he moved in, he went around the neighbourhood introducing himself.
"Good morning," he said to the old man pruning ivy next door. "My name is Theodore Gordon. I just moved in."
The old man straightened up and shook Theodore's hand. "How do," he said. His name was Joseph Alston.
A dog came shuffling from the porch to sniff Theodore's cuffs. "He's making up his mind about you," said the old man.
"Isn't that cute?" said Theodore.
Across the street lived Inez Ferrel. She answered the door in a housecoat, a thin woman in her late thirties. Theodore apologized for disturbing her.
"Oh, that's all right," she said. She had lots of time to herself when her husband was selling on the road.
"I hope we'll be good neighbors," said Theodore.
"I'm sure we will," said Inez Ferrel. She watched him through the window as he left.
Next door, directly across from his own house, he knocked quietly because there was a Nightworker Sleeping sign. Dorothy Backus opened the door-a tiny, withdrawn woman in her middle thirties.
"I'm so glad to meet you," said Theodore.
Next door lived the Walter Mortons. As Theodore came up the walk, he heard Bianca Morton talking loudly to her son, Walter, Jr.
"You are not old enough to stay out till three o'clock in the morning!" she was saying. "Especially with a girl as young as Katherine McCann!"
Theodore knocked and Mr. Morton, fifty-two and bald, opened the door.
"I just moved in across the street," said Theodore, smiling at them.
Patty Jefferson let him in next door. As he talked to her Theodore could see, through the back window, her husband Arthur filling a rubber pool for their son and daughter.
"They just love that pool," said Patty, smiling.
"I bet they do," said Theodore. As he left, he noticed the vacant house next door.
Across the street from the Jeffersons lived the McCanns and their fourteen-year-old daughter Katherine. As Theodore approached the door he heard the voice of James McCann saying, "Aah, he's nuts. Why should I take his lawn edger? Just because I borrowed his lousy mower a couple of times."
"Darling, please" said Faye McCann. "I've got to finish these notes in time for the Council's next meeting."
"Just because Kathy goes out with his lousy son..." grumbled her husband.
Theodore knocked on the door and introduced himself. He chatted briefly with them, informing Mrs. McCann that he certainly would like to join the National Council for Christians and Jews. It was a worthy organization.
"What's your business, Gordon?" asked McCann.
"I'm in distribution," said Theodore.
Next door, two boys mowed and raked while their dog gambolled around them.
"Hello there," said Theodore. They grunted and watched him as he headed for the porch. The dog ignored him.
"I just told him." Henry Putnam's voice came through the living room window: "Put a coon in my department and I'm through. That's all."
"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Irma Putnam.
Theodore's knock was answered by the undershirted Mr. Putnam. His wife was lying on the sofa. Her heart, explained Mr. Putnam. "Oh, I'm sorry," Theodore said.
In the last house lived the Gorses.
"I just moved in next door," said Theodore. He shook Eleanor Gorse's lean hand and she told him that her father was at work.
"Is that him?" asked Theodore, pointing at the portrait of a stony-faced old man that hung above a mantel crowded with religious objects.
"Yes," said Eleanor, thirty-four and ugly.
"Well, I hope we'll be good neighbours," Theodore said.
That afternoon, he went to his new office and set up the darkroom.
July 23
That morning, before he left for the office, he checked the telephone directory and jotted down four numbers. He dialled the first.
"Would you please send a cab to 12057 Sylmar Street?" he said. "Thank you."
He dialled the second number. "Would you please send a repairman to my house," he said. "I don't get any picture. I live at 12070 Sylmar Street."
He dialled the third number: "I'd like to run this ad in Sunday's edition," he said. "1957 Ford. Perfect Condition. Seven-hundred eighty-nine dollars. That's right, seven-hundred eighty-nine. The number is DA-4-7408."
He made the fourth call and set up an afternoon appointment with Mr. Jeremiah Osborne. Then he stood by the living room window until the taxicab stopped in front of the Backus house.
As he was driving off, a television repair truck passed him. He looked back and saw it stop in front of Henry Putnam's house.
Dear sirs, he typed in the office later, Please send me ten booklets for which I enclose one hundred dollars in payment. He put down the name and address.
The envelope dropped into the out box.
July 27
When Inez Ferrel left her house that evening, Theodore followed in his car. Downtown, Mrs. Ferrel got off the bus and went into a bar called the Irish Lantern. Parking, Theodore entered the bar cautiously and slipped into a shadowy booth.
Inez Ferrel was at the back of the room perched on a bar stool. She'd taken off her jacket to reveal a clinging yellow sweater. Theodore ran his gaze across the studied exposition of her bust.
At length, a man accosted her and spoke and laughed and spent a modicum of time with her. Theodore watched them exit, arm in arm. Paying for his coffee, he followed. It was a short walk; Mrs. Ferrel and the man entered a hotel on the next block.
Theodore drove home, whistling.
The next morning, when Eleanor Gorse and her father had left with Mrs. Backus, Theodore followed.
He met them in the church lobby when the service was over. Wasn't it a wonderful coincidence, he said, that he, too, was a Baptist? And he shook the indurate hand of Donald Gorse.
As they walked into the sunshine, Theodore asked them if they wouldn't share his Sunday dinner with him. Mrs. Backus smiled faintly and murmured something about her husband. Donald Gorse looked doubtful.
"Oh, please," begged Theodore. "Make a lonely widower happy."
"Widower," tasted Mr. Gorse.
Theodore hung his head. "These many years," he said. "Pneumonia."
"Been a Baptist long?" asked Mr. Gorse.
"Since birth," said Theodore with fervour. "It's been my only solace."
For dinner he served lamb chops, peas, and baked potatoes. For dessert, apple cobbler and coffee.
"I'm so pleased you'd share my humble food," he said.
"This is, truly, loving thy neighbour as thyself." He smiled at Eleanor who returned it stiffly.
That evening, as darkness fell, Theodore took a stroll. As he passed the McCann house, he heard the telephone ringing, then James McCann shouting, "It's a mistake, damn it! Why in the lousy hell should I sell a '57 Ford for seven-hundred eighty-nine bucks!"
The phone slammed down. "God damn\" howled James McCann.
"Darling, please be tolerant!" begged his wife.
The telephone rang again.
Theodore moved on.
August 1
At exactly two-fifteen a.m. Theodore slipped outside, pulled up one of Joseph Alston's longest ivy plants and left it on the sidewalk.
In the morning, as he left the house, he saw Walter Morton, Jr., heading for the McCann house with a blanket, a towel and a portable radio. The old man was picking up his ivy.
"Was it pulled up?" asked Theodore.
Joseph Alston grunted.
"So that was it," said Theodore.
"What?" the old man looked up.
"Last night," said Theodore, "I heard some noise out here. I looked out and saw a couple of boys."
"You seen their faces?" asked Alston, his face hardening.
"No, it was too dark," said Theodore. "But I'd say they were-oh, about the age of the Putnam boys. Not that it was them, of course."
Joe Alston nodded slowly, looking up the street.
Theodore drove up to the boulevard and parked. Twenty minutes later, Walter Morton, Jr., and Katherine McCann boarded a bus.
At the beach, Theodore sat a few yards behind them.
"That Mack is a character," he heard Walter Morton say. "He gets the urge, he drives to Tijuana, just for kicks."
In a while Morton and the girl ran into the ocean, laughing. Theodore stood and walked to a telephone booth.
"I'd like to have a swimming pool installed in my backyard next week," he said. He gave the details.
Back" on the beach he sat patiently until Walter Morton and the girl were lying in each other's arms. Then, at specific moments, he pressed a shutter hidden in his palm. This done, he returned to his car, buttoning his shirt front over the tiny lens. On his way to the office, he stopped at a hardware store to buy a brush and a can of black paint.
He spent the afternoon printing the pictures. He made them appear as if they had been taken at night and as if the young couple had been engaged in something else.
The envelope dropped softly into the out box.
August 5
The street was silent and deserted. Tennis shoes soundless on the paving, Theodore moved across the street.
He found the Morton's lawn mower in the backyard. Lifting it quietly, he carried it back across the street to the McCann garage. After carefully raising the door, he slid the mower behind the work bench. The envelope of photographs he put in a drawer behind a box of nails.
Returning to his house then, he phoned James McCann and, muffledly, asked if the Ford was still for sale.
In the morning, the mailman placed a bulky envelope on the Gorses' porch. Eleanor Gorse emerged and opened it, sliding out one of the booklets. Theodore watched the furtive look she cast about, the rising of dark colour in her cheeks.
As he was mowing the lawn that evening he saw Walter Morton, Sr., march across the street to where James McCann was trimming bushes. He heard them talking loudly. Finally, they went into McCann's garage from which Morton emerged pushing his lawn mower and making no reply to McCann's angry protests.
Across the street from McCann, Arthur Jefferson was just getting home from work. The two Putnam boys were riding their bicycles, their dog racing around them.
Now, across from where Theodore stood, a door slammed. He turned his head and watched Mr. Backus, in work clothes, storming to his car, muttering disgustedly, "A swimming pool!" Theodore looked to the next house and saw Inez Ferrel moving in her living room.
He smiled and mowed along the side of his house, glancing into Eleanor Gorse's bedroom. She was sitting with her back to him, reading something. When she heard the clatter of his mower she stood and left the bedroom, pushing the bulky envelope into a bureau drawer.
August 15
Henry Putnam answered the door.
"Good evening," said Theodore. "I hope I'm not intruding."
"Just chatting in the den with Irma's folks," said Putnam. "They're drivin' to New York in the mornin'."
"Oh? Well, I'll only be a moment." Theodore held out a pair of BB guns. "A plant I distribute for was getting rid of these," he said. "I thought your boys might like them."
"Well, sure," said Putnam. He started for the den to get his sons.
While the older man was gone, Theodore picked up a couple of matchbooks whose covers read Putnam's Wines and Liquors. He'd slipped them into his pocket before the boys were led in to thank him.
"Mighty nice of you, Gordon," said Putnam at the door. "Sure appreciate it."
"My pleasure," said Theodore.
Walking home, he set the clock-radio for three-fifteen and lay down. When the music began, he moved outside on silent feet and tore up forty-seven ivy plants, strewing them over Alston's sidewalk.
"Oh, No," he said to Alston in the morning. He shook his head, appalled.
Joseph Alston didn't speak. He glanced down the block with hating eyes.
"Here, let me help you," Theodore said. The old man shook his head but Theodore insisted. Driving to the nearest nursery he brought back two sacks of peat moss; then squatted by Alston's side to help him replant.
"You hear anything last night?" the old man asked.
"You think it was those boys again?" asked Theodore, open-mouthed.
"Ain't say in'," Alston said.
Later, Theodore drove downtown and bought a dozen postcard photographs. He took them to the office.
Dear Walt, he printed crudely on the back of one, Got these here in Tijuana. Hot enough for you? In addressing the envelope, he failed to add Jr. to Mr. Walter Morton.
Into the out box.
August 23
"Mrs. Ferrel!"
She shuddered on the bar stool. "Why, Mister-"
"Gordon," he provided, smiling. "How nice to see you again."
"Yes." She pressed together lips that trembled.
"You come here often?" Theodore asked.
"Oh, no, never'' Inez Ferrel blurted. "I'm-just supposed to meet a friend here tonight. A girl friend."
"Oh, I see," said Theodore. "Well, may a lonely widower keep you company until she comes?"
"Why..." Mrs. Ferrel shrugged. "I guess." Her lips were painted brightly red against the alabaster of her skin. The sweater clung adhesively to the hoisted jut of her breasts.
After a while, when Mrs. Ferrel's friend didn't show up, they slid into a darkened booth. There, Theodore used Mrs. Ferrel's powder room retreat to slip a pale and tasteless powder in her drink. On her return she swallowed this and, in minutes, grew stupefied. She smiled at Theodore.
"I like you Misser Gor'n," she confessed. The words crawled viscidly across her lolling tongue.
Shortly thereafter, he led her, stumbling and giggling, to his car and drove her to a motel. Inside the room, he helped her strip to stockings, garter belt and shoes and, while she posed with drugged complacency, Theodore took flashbulb pictures.
After she'd collapsed at two a.m. Theodore dressed her and drove her home. He stretched her fully dressed across her bed. After that he went outside and poured concentrated weed killer on Alston's replanted ivy.
Back in the house he dialled the Jefferson's number.
"Yes," said Arthur Jefferson irritably.
"Get out of this neighbourhood or you'll be sorry," whispered Theodore, then hung up.
In the morning he walked to Mrs. Ferrel's house and rang the bell.
"Hello," he said politely. "Are you feeling better?"
She stared at him blankly while he explained how she'd gotten violently ill the night before and he'd taken her home from the bar. "I do hope you're feeling better," he concluded.
"Yes," she said, confusedly, "I'm-all right."
As he left her house he saw a red-faced James McCann approaching the Morton house, an envelope in his hand. Beside him walked a distraught Mrs. McCann.
"We must be tolerant, Jim," Theodore heard her say.
August 31
At two-fifteen a.m. Theodore took the brush and the can of paint and went outside.
Walking to the Jefferson house he set the can down and painted, jaggedly, across the door-nigger!
Then he moved across the street allowing an occasional drip of paint. He left the can under Henry Putnam's back porch, accidentally upsetting the dog's plate. Fortunately, the Putnams' dog slept indoors.
Later, he put more weed killer on Joseph Alston's ivy.
In the morning, when Donald Gorse had gone to work, he took a heavy envelope and went to see Eleanor Gorse. "Look at this," he said, sliding a pornographic booklet from the envelope. "I received this in the mail today. Look at it." He thrust it into her hands.
She held the booklet as if it were a spider.
"Isn't it hideous?" he said.
She made a face. "Revolting," she said.
"I thought I'd check with you and several others before I phoned the police," said Theodore. "Have you received any of this filth?"
Eleanor Gorse bristled. "Why should I receive them?" she demanded.
Outside, Theodore found the old man squatting by his ivy. "How are they coming?" he asked.
"They're dyin'."
Theodore looked stricken. "How can this be?" he asked.
Alston shook his head.
"Oh, this is horrible." Theodore turned away, clucking. As he walked to his house he saw, up the street, Arthur Jefferson cleaning off his door and, across the way, Henry Putnam watching carefully.
She was waiting on his porch.
"Mrs. McCann," said Theodore, surprised, "I'm so glad to see you."
"What I came to say may not make you so glad," she said unhappily.
"Oh?" said Theodore. They went into his house.
"There have been a lot of... things happening in this neighbourhood since you moved in," said Mrs. McCann after they were seated in the living room.
"Things?" asked Theodore.
"I think you know what I mean," said Mrs. McCann. "However, this-this bigotry on Mr. Jefferson's door is too much, Mr. Gordon, too much."
Theodore gestured helplessly. "I don't understand."
"Please don't make it difficult," she said. "I may have to call the authorities if these things don't stop, Mr. Gordon. I hate to think of doing such a thing but-"
"Authorities?" Theodore looked terrified.
"None of these things happened until you moved in, Mr. Gordon," she said. "Believe me, I hate what I'm saying but I simply have no choice. The fact that none of these things has happened to you-"
She broke off startledly as a sob wracked Theodore's chest. She stared at him. "Mr. Gordon-" she began uncertainly.
"I don't know what these things are you speak of," said Theodore in a shaking voice, "but I'd kill myself before I harmed another, Mrs. McCann."
He looked around as if to make sure they were alone.
"I'm going to tell you something I've never told a single soul," he said. He wiped away a tear. "My name isn't Gordon," he said. "It's Gottlieb. I'm a Jew. I spent a year at Dachau."
Mrs. McCann's lips moved but she said nothing. Her face was getting red.
"I came from there a broken man," said Theodore. "I haven't long to live, Mrs. McCann. My wife is dead, my three children are dead. I'm all alone. I only want to live in peace-in a little place like this-among people like you.
"To be a neighbour, a friend..."
"Mr.-Gottlieb" she said brokenly.
After she was gone, Theodore stood silent in the living room, hands clenched whitely at his sides. Then he went into the kitchen to discipline himself.
"Good morning, Mrs. Backus," he said an hour later when the little woman answered the door, "I wonder if I might ask you some questions about our church?"
"Oh. Oh, yes." She stepped back feebly. "Won't you-come in?"
"I'll be very still so as not to wake your husband," Theodore whispered. He saw her looking at his bandaged hand. "I burned myself," he said. "Now, about the church. Oh, there's someone knocking at your back door."
"There is?"
When she'd gone into the kitchen, Theodore pulled open the hall closet door and dropped some photographs behind a pile of overshoes and garden tools. The door was shut when she returned.
"There wasn't anyone," she said.
"I could have sworn..." He smiled deprecatingly. He looked down at a circular bag on the floor. "Oh, does Mr. Backus bowl?"
"Wednesdays and Fridays when his shift is over," she said. "There's an all-night alley over on Western Avenue."
"I love to bowl," said Theodore.
He asked his questions about the church, then left. As he started down the path he heard loud voices from the Morton house.
"It wasn't bad enough about Katherine McCann and those awful pictures," shrieked Mrs. Morton. "Now this... .filth!"
"But, Mom!" cried Walter, Jr.
September 14
Theodore awoke and turned the radio off. Standing, he put a small bottle of greyish powder in his pocket and slipped from the house. Reaching his destination, he sprinkled powder into the water bowl and stirred it with a finger until it dissolved.
Back in the house he scrawled four letters reading: Arthur Jefferson is trying to pass the colour line. He is my cousin and should admit he is black like the rest of us. I am doing this for his own good.
He signed the letter John Thomas Jefferson and addressed three of the envelopes to Donald Gorse, the Mortons, and Mr. Henry Putnam.
This completed, he saw Mrs. Backus walking toward the boulevard and followed. "May I walk you?" he asked.
"Oh," she said. "All right."
"I missed your husband last night," he told her.
She glanced at him.
"I thought I'd join him bowling," Theodore said, "but I guess he was sick again."
"Sick?"
"I asked the man behind the counter at the alley and he said that Mr. Backus hadn't been coming in because he was sick."
"Oh," Mrs. Backus's voice was thinly stricken.
"Well, maybe next Friday," said Theodore.
Later, when he came back, he saw a panel truck in front of Henry Putnam's house. A man came out of the alley carrying a blanket-wrapped body which he laid in the truck. The Putnam boys were crying as they watched.
Arthur Jefferson answered the door. Theodore showed the letter to Jefferson and his wife. "It came this morning," he said.
"This is monstrous!" said Jefferson, reading it.
"Of course it is," said Theodore.
While they were talking, Jefferson looked through the window at the Putnam house across the street.
September 15
Pale morning mist engulfed Sylmar Street. Theodore moved through it silently. Under the back porch of the Jeffersons' house he set fire to a box of damp papers. As it began to smoulder he walked across the yard and, with a single knife stroke, slashed apart the rubber pool. He heard it pulsing water on the grass as he left. In the alley he dropped a book of matches that read Putnam's Wines and Liquors.
A little after six that morning he woke to the howl of sirens and felt the small house tremble at the heavy trucks passing by. Turning on his side, he yawned, and mumbled, "Goody."
September 17
It was a paste-complexioned Dorothy Backus who answered Theodore's knock.
"May I drive you to church?" asked Theodore.
"I-I don't believe I-I'm not... feeling too well," stumbled Mrs. Backus.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Theodore said. He saw the edges of some photographs protruding from her apron pocket.
As he left he saw the Mortons getting in their car, Bianca wordless, both Walters ill at ease. Up the street, a police car was parked in front of Arthur Jefferson's house.
Theodore went to church with Donald Gorse who said that Eleanor was feeling ill.
"I'm so sorry," Theodore said.
That afternoon, he spent a while at the Jefferson house helping clear away the charred debris of their back porch. When he saw the slashed rubber pool he drove immediately to a drug store and bought another one.
"But they love that pool," said Theodore, when Patty Jefferson protested. "You told me so yourself."
He winked at Arthur Jefferson but Jefferson was not communicative that afternoon.
September 23
Early in the evening Theodore saw Alston's dog walking in the street. He got his BB gun and, from the bedroom window, soundlessly, fired. The dog nipped fiercely at its side and spun around. Then, whimpering, it started home.
Several minutes later, Theodore went outside and started pulling up the door to the garage. He saw the old man hurrying down his alley, the dog in his arms.
"What's wrong?" asked Theodore.
"Don't know," said Alston in a breathless, frightened voice. "He's hurt."
"Quickly!" said Theodore. "Into my car!"
He rushed Alston and the dog to the nearest veterinary, passing three stop signs and groaning when the old man held his hand up, palsiedly, and whimpered, "Blood!"
For three hours Theodore sat in the veterinary's waiting room until the old man staggered forth, his face a greyish white.
"No," said Theodore, jumping to his feet.
He led the old man, weeping, to the car and drove him home. There, Alston said he'd rather be alone so Theodore left. Shortly afterward, the black and white police car rolled to a stop in front of Alston's house and the old man led the two officers past Theodore's house.
In a while, Theodore heard angry shouting up the street. It lasted quite a long time.
September 27
"Good evening," said Theodore. He bowed.
Eleanor Gorse nodded stiffly.
"I've brought you and your father a casserole," said Theodore, smiling, holding up a towel-wrapped dish. When she told him that her father was gone for the night, Theodore clucked and sighed as if he hadn't seen the old man drive away that afternoon.
"Well then," he said, proffering the dish, "for you. With my sincerest compliments."
Stepping off the porch he saw Arthur Jefferson and Henry Putnam standing under a street lamp down the block. While he watched, Arthur Jefferson struck the other man and, suddenly, they were brawling in the gutter. Theodore broke into a hurried run.
"But this is terrible!" he gasped, pulling the men apart.
"Stay out of this!" warned Jefferson, then, to Putnam, challenged, "You better tell me how that paint can got under your porch! The police may believe it was an accident I found that matchbook in my alley but I don't!"
"I'll tell you nothing," Putnam said, contemptuously. "Coon."
"Coon! Oh, of course! You'd be the first to believe that, you stupid-!"
Five times Theodore stood between them. It wasn't until Jefferson had, accidentally, struck him on the nose that tension faded. Curtly, Jefferson apologized; then, with a murderous look at Putnam, left.
"Sorry he hit you," Putnam sympathized. "Damned nigger."
"Oh, surely you're mistaken," Theodore said, daubing at his nostrils. "Mr. Jefferson told me how afraid he was of people believing this talk. Because of the value of his two houses, you know."
"Two?" asked Putnam.
"Yes, he owns the vacant house next door to his," said Theodore. "I assumed you knew."
"No," said Putnam warily.
"Well, you see," said Theodore, "if people think Mr. Jefferson is a Negro, the value of his houses will go down."
"So will the values of all of them," said Putnam, glaring across the street. "That dirty, son-of-a-"
Theodore patted his shoulder. "How are your wife's parents enjoying their stay in New York?" he asked as if changing the subject.
"They're on their way back," said Putnam.
"Good," said Theodore.
He went home and read the funny papers for an hour. Then he went out.
It was a florid faced Eleanor Gorse who opened to his knock. Her bathrobe was disarrayed, her dark eyes feverish.
"May I get my dish?" asked Theodore politely.
She grunted, stepping back jerkily. His hand, in passing, brushed on hers. She twitched away as if he'd stabbed her.
"Ah, you've eaten it all," said Theodore, noticing the tiny residue of powder on the bottom of the dish. He turned. "When will your father return?" he asked.
Her body seemed to tense. "After midnight," she muttered.
Theodore stepped to the wall switch and cut off the light. He heard her gasp in the darkness. "No," she muttered.
"Is this what you want, Eleanor?" he asked, grabbing harshly.
Her embrace was a mindless, fiery swallow. There was nothing but ovening flesh beneath her robe.
Later, when she lay snoring satedly on the kitchen floor, Theodore retrieved the camera he'd left outside the door.
Drawing down the shades, he arranged Eleanor's limbs and took twelve exposures. Then he went home and washed the dish.
Before retiring, he dialled the phone.
"Western Union," he said. "I have a message for Mrs. Irma Putnam of 12070 Sylmar Street."
"That's me," she said.
"Both parents killed in auto collision this afternoon," said Theodore. "Await word regarding disposition of bodies. Chief of Police, Tulsa, Okla-"
At the other end of the line there was a strangled gasp, a thud; then Henry Putnam's cry of "Irma!" Theodore hung up.
After the ambulance had come and gone, he went outside and tore up thirty-five of Joseph Alston's ivy plants. He left, in the debris, another matchbook reading Putnam's Wines and Liquors.
September 28
In the morning, when Donald Gorse had gone to work, Theodore went over. Eleanor tried to shut the door on him but he pushed in.
"I want money," he said. "These are my collateral." He threw down copies of the photographs and Eleanor recoiled, gagging. "Your father will receive a set of these tonight," he said, "unless I get two hundred dollars."
"But I-!"
"Tonight."
He left and drove downtown to the Jeremiah Osborne Realty office where he signed over, to Mr. George Jackson, the vacant house at 12069 Sylmar Street. He shook Mr. Jackson's hand.
"Don't you worry now," he comforted. "The people next door are black too."
When he returned home, there was a police car in front of the Backus house.
"What happened?" he asked Joseph Alston who was sitting quietly on his porch.
"Mrs. Backus," said the old man lifelessly. "She tried to kill Mrs. Ferrel."
"Is that right?" said Theodore.
That night, in his office, he made his entries on page 700 of the book.
Mrs. Ferrel dying of knife wounds in local hospital. Mrs. Backus in jail; suspects husband of adultery. J. Alston accused of dog poisoning, probably more. Putnam boys accused of shooting Alston's dog, ruining his lawn. Mrs. Putnam dead of heart attack. Mr. Putnam being sued for property destruction. Jeffersons thought to be black. McCanns and Mortons deadly enemies. Katherine McCann believed to have had relations with Walter Morton, Jr. Morton, Jr. being sent to school in Washington. Eleanor Gorse has hanged herself Job completed.
Time to move.
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