The Transcendent Man

by Jerry Sohl

  Martin slumped in his chair, letting his long legs push out on the floor before him. He lit a cigarette and saw that his hand was shaking.

  Steady, old man. But don’t forget you’re probably in danger. You know what General Deems said. Relax but don’t fail to be ready. Somebody—who?—could be watching you.

  He yawned, got up and walked to the window. He was in time to see the doctor pull away from the building in his jeep. As he stood there idly looking out over the area to the east, the sounds of the building came to him: the scraping of a chair on the floor above, the faint clatter of a typewriter, the ringing of a phone in a distant room.

  It was all normal. It could have been anywhere on any military reservation in the country. Why should he expect it to be different? Of course there was the boy, the sphere and the cat.... That made a difference.

  He turned his back on the window. Before him was the I simple office, just as Dr. Penn had described it. Desk. Pipe rack. Lamp. Typewriter. Chairs. Telephone. What was that other? Two frames and easels. Nobel Prize citations? They looked more like photographs.

  Martin walked over behind the desk and caught his breath for two reasons at what he saw there. First, the girl in the one photograph was beautiful. Not because her hair was lovely and yellow or because she was full-lipped and clear-skinned. There were many girls like that. It was her eyes. They were so—ethereal, he decided. They made her look sincere and loving and they gave her face a spirit of animation that attracted him. He decided she must be Dr. Penn’s daughter.

  The first picture gave him a pleasant glow. The second shocked him, for it was a picture of the child who had played with the sphere and the cat. There was the thick, black hair, the same mischievous blue eyes, the expressive mouth. There could be no doubt; this was the boy. The facial characteristics both pictures had in common suggested they were brother and sister.

  He savagely crushed his cigarette in the desk ashtray because of a fleeting feeling that he was being very foolish in thinking anything was wrong. So far there had been no reason to doubt or suspect anything. Dr. Penn seemed all right. The fact that he was a difficult man to read with that special sense of Martin’s was no indication he was anything he I shouldn’t have been. As far as the girl was concerned—well, her picture gave promise of something else. And the kid? He looked like a red-blooded youngster—except for what he had been doing on the lawn.

  But the finger was being pointed at Dr. Penn. It was being pointed from a high place. And high places had a habit of looking into things.

  I should have never agreed to help General Deems, he told himself. I should have turned him down cold. Let him do his own dirty work, just as I said.

  But it had been explained so carefully, so logically...

  Three days ago he had been sitting with four other men around a limed-oak conference table in the eleventh-floor editorial offices of National Scene magazine in Chicago. It was a rainy day and occasionally a puff of wind from Lake Michigan a half mile away came through one of the partly open windows to clear the air of cigarette and cigar smoke and to rustle a few of the many papers before the men at the table.

  “This is everything we’ve got,” Lovett Wilson, a managing editor, said, rolling a cigar around in his mouth and indicating the array of papers. “It’s hardly a start.”

  “These pix are old,” Caldwell Chonkey said, as if that relegated the project to insignificance. “I don’t get it.” Chonkey was the magazine’s Chicago picture man. His was the battle to provide more pictures per page, but it was a losing battle. National Scene was not a picture magazine.

  “What are you talking about?” Jimmy Simpson, the chief editorial research man dug through a stack of papers, pulled out a picture.

  “Don’t tell me where we got that,” Chonkey said, refusing to look at it. “It was probably taken at his high-school graduation.”

  “You’re wrong. It’s the Nobel Prize acceptance photo.”

  “Shaking hands and all that. Photographic cliche. Every magazine, syndicate and weekly newspaper has had a crack at that one. You might as well throw it away.”

  Denton Myers tapped his teeth with the sharpened end of a pencil and shook his head. “We’ll just have to own up that Dr. Eric Penn isn’t picture-minded. What about AP? UP? NEA? Chonkey, have you tried the Trib? The Sun-Times?”

  “And the News?” Chonkey looked terribly pained. “Ever since I got wind of this I’ve been out after pictures. If Penn was a politico we’d have a bushel of prints. These scientists are just camera-shy. Nobody’s got a new picture, Mr. Myers. Believe me.”

  “I suppose. I suppose.”

  Chonkey squirmed. This was in his department and it irked him that Dr. Penn never had had the foresight to have some pictures taken.

  “What about his two kids?” It was Wilson and he was looking at Chonkey. The picture man slumped lower in his chair.

  “Don’t blame me because they’re not a picture family. Maybe Dr. Penn isn’t as big as we think he is.”

  Jimmy Simpson held up a paper. “Virginia Penn. She’s twenty-three. Robert is just a kid. First or second grade.”

  “But surely a family would have a photograph,” Myers insisted.

  Chonkey looked at Martin for help.

  “We’re not a picture magazine,” Martin said. “Let’s quit riding Chonkey. I’m sure he’d have something if it were available. We can use what we have, if necessary.”

  “Thanks,” Chonkey said with relief.

  “Hell, we’re not riding Chonkey.”

  “Sorry, Chonkey.”

  “I’ll get a picture when I get down there,” Martin said. “He must have some around somewhere.”

  “The thing may not pan out, anyway,” Wilson said. “In that case we won’t need one.”

  “Don’t say that, Willie,” Martin said. “You’re making it sound uninteresting.”

  “Well, we don’t have much to go on. The fact that he okayed the story surprised the New York office.”

  Denton Myers picked up the sheaf of papers before him, thumbed through them. “I wonder why he was ever chosen. If it weren’t for his scientific achievements, he’d be nothing at all. This hullabaloo about scientists! Personally, I prefer a big promoter, a man who can influence hundreds of people through his personality. Scientists are such cold potatoes.”

  “Maybe you’re just lost in the realm of pure thought,” Wilson said. “It takes a certain aptitude.”

  “All right. But you know what I mean. He was born in Wisconsin, it says here. Went to Pointer College, took his master’s at Windsor, got his doctorate at New Howard. Dull, isn’t it? Taught for years at Billingsley and performed the research there that netted him the Nobel Prize while he was there.”

  “We know all that, Denny,” Wilson said. “Tell us something we don’t know.”

  “That’s where I come in.”

  Wilson turned to Martin. “Well...”

  “I don’t have anything yet,” Martin said. “But the way I get it, Dr. Penn’s been helpful in national defense for many years. He’s offered some ideas the military has been glad to get. He has the Nobel Prize. He has been elevated, achieving a place in the upper strata of the scientific minds of this country. Now he takes a job with the government at Park Hill, something he wouldn’t do during the war. Right?”

  “Last September, to be exact,” Simpson said. “I’ve got the date right here.” He shuffled through several sheets.

  “You mean more than a year ago, not last month.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Incidentally,” Wilson said, “we’ve wired Washington for permission to get on the reservation. Park Hill is a tough nut to crack.”

  “How about Dr. Penn?”

  “Martin will do all right,” Myers said. “He’s been kicked out of better places, haven’t you?”

  “Don’t rub it in.”

  “Is everything set, then?” Lovett Wilson looked around at the group. “Any questions?”

  “A mont
h ago New York sent a wire to Dr. Penn,” Myers said. “He wired back a week ago accepting. What more do we need?”

  “I’d rather work from scratch anyway,” Martin said.

  “It ought to be a good piece,” Wilson said. “Different. It’s got unique angles, the reservation, the research project, all that.”

  “Remember the picture, Martin,” Chonkey said. “If you don’t get one in right away for the artist, it won’t be a cover story.”

  “Want me to take one of your cameras with me?”

  “I can see you carrying a camera into Park Hill,” Simpson said.

  “I never thought of that.”

  The chime clock on Lovett Wilson’s office wall struck five times. When the last tone sounded, there was a general movement of chairs away from the table.

  “Take as long as you like on this one,” Wilson said, coming over and extending a beefy hand. “You seem to work better when you can take your time.”

  Martin took the hand.

  “Better bone up on biology before you go,” Simpson said, his hand on Martin’s shoulder. “We’ve got a whole slew of stuff in the library.”

  “No, thanks,” Martin said. “I’ll take it from first grade on up as Dr. Penn gives it.”

  “Good luck,” Myers called, going out.

  When they were gone, Martin gathered up a few of the papers he wanted, put them in his brief case. Lovett Wilson stood by, idly watching him. When Martin was ready to go, Wilson helped him on with his coat.

  “There’s one thing more,” the managing editor said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I could show you the correspondence, but I won’t. I’ll tell you instead. There’s pressure on this thing.”

  “Pressure? What kind of pressure?”

  “From New York. From the top.”

  “D’Orsey himself, eh? Got any idea why?”

  Wilson shook his head. “I didn’t want to mention it before the rest of them.”

  “I had wondered about the man.”

  “You mean Penn, of course.”

  “Yes. There isn’t much there.”

  “Not much that meets the eye, perhaps. There must be something underneath we don’t know about.”

  “At least that ought to make it more interesting.”

  “One other thing.”

  Martin waited to hear what it was.

  “New York wanted to know who we’d assigned to it. Three days ago they wanted your picture.”

  “I’ll be damned!”

  “Don’t ask me. It’s just peculiar.”

  “This never happened before. Maybe I’m up for a raise.”

  “You’d better get going, funny boy.”

  When the elevator doors opened on the main floor, Associate Editor Martin Enders’s mind was already pounding away at plans for the story. He’d have to wait for a pass for Park Hill Research Reservation before he started, and if he knew Washington, it would probably be days before it arrived. In the meantime, he could scour the morgues of every newspaper. Perhaps a trip to Dr. Penn’s home town, the schools he attended, a few interviews with students he had had would be a good starter. By that time perhaps the pass would have arrived.

  Martin moved automatically with the group leaving the elevator cage, walked past the cigarette counter and through the revolving doors to the street.

  When the man came up to him Martin at first thought he was someone he knew. The stranger was a clean-cut, neatly dressed man with a bright look about him.

  “Martin Enders?” the man asked.

  Martin nodded.

  The man withdrew a leather folder from an inner pocket. He opened it. There was a picture of him inside. The message beneath it said his name was Kenneth Aldrich and that he was an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Chapter 3

  “I must ask you to come with me,” the agent said.

  “Am I under arrest?” Martin asked in surprise.

  The FBI man smiled. “No. I’m not arresting you. Is there any reason I should?” The agent seemed amused at Martin’s bewilderment.

  “At least several,” Martin said in recovery. “I just wondered which one. Would you mind explaining?”

  The agent was grinning now. “You were up there a long time.” He pointed in the direction of the eleventh floor.

  “You’ve been waiting?”

  “Hours. Couldn’t tap you before it was over. Will you come now?”

  “You still haven’t explained.”

  “I’ll do that on the way.” He looked at his wrist watch. “It’s getting late and there’s a plane waiting.”

  Martin grudgingly gave his approval, wondering where this would put him on the cover story he was supposed to do.

  The FBI man led him to a car where a man behind the wheel started the motor as they approached. Once inside, Martin was thrown against the rear cushion as the car lurched out into traffic with a squeal of protesting tires and a clashing of gears.

  “Is this an emergency?” Martin asked after he caught his breath.

  “Frankly, Mr. Enders, I don’t know how to answer that question,” the agent replied. “I do know I’m supposed to take you to Washington, D. C.”

  “Why, for heaven’s sake?”

  The agent’s grin returned. “To see a man who wants to meet you.”

  “Now who would that be?”

  “A man named Walter Deems. Name mean anything to you?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “I’m only guessing when I say he probably knows you pretty well.”

  “Who is Walter Deems?”

  “He happens to be in Intelligence.”

  The car sped through a gate at the Chicago airport and slowed to a stop on the hangar apron where a small passenger plane was warming up. In a few minutes they were in the air, heading east.

  Martin talked more with the FBI man but was unable to learn anything further. The agent did not seem reluctant to discuss the matter; he simply knew no more than he had already told.

  They landed at Washington and again there was a car waiting. Once again there was the squealing of tires on the getaway, only Martin was prepared this time. Some minutes later the car slid to a stop in front of a small white stone building.

  An armed soldier blocked their way momentarily. Another soldier shined a flashlight beam in their faces and on the agent’s identification card. They were allowed to pass into the building.

  Martin was conducted to a room at the end of a hall where a large man in army uniform with two stars on his shoulders sat behind a large walnut desk. There was a picture of the President on the wall behind him. The army man, his grey hair bristling beyond his receding hairline, his eyes snapping brightly as he saw Martin, rose and offered a smile and his hand.

  “Glad you could come, Mr. Enders.” His voice was full and resonant and carried an edge of authority. “I am General Walter Deems.”

  “I didn’t have much choice about coming.” Martin heard the door close softly behind him.

  “Sit down, sit down,” the general said, indicating a chair. “Of course you didn’t. Have a cigarette?”

  “Thanks.” As the general provided a light, Martin said, “Is this cigarette by any chance one for a condemned man?”

  General Deems smiled, sat down, studied Martin’s face. “Whether you realize it or not, you have just become a very valuable man, Mr. Enders. National Scene has helped us solve a bad problem.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “You have been assigned to do a cover story on Dr, Eric Penn, haven’t you?”

  Martin looked at the man in astonishment. “How did you know about that?”

  “It is our business to know.”

  “That explains the pressure, then.”

  “Pressure?”

  “The New York office wanted very badly to have the Penn story started. But why is the army interested? I thought Dr. Penn was working for the army.”

  “Ever hear of the CIC? T
he Counter-Intelligence Corps?”

  “Of course.”

  “This is it. You’re in the main office right now,” Deems said.

  “I’m very much impressed. Now, will you tell me what this all has to do with me and the job I’m supposed to do for National Scene?”

  The general chuckled. “It may have nothing to do with it. That depends on you.” He lit his own cigarette. “We need your help. Your personal help.”

  “In what way?”

  “We want you to work for us while you are doing the Penn story.”

  Martin smiled wanly. “Cloak-and-dagger stuff? I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong man, General. That’s not up my alley.”

  “You have a fine record for your services in World War Two.”

  “You fellows are pretty thorough, aren’t you? Looking up a man’s army record! How come I get all this personal attention?”

  “We mean to be thorough. You are the logical man for the job, whether you like it or not.”

  “You haven’t been thorough enough. I could have told you you’re way off base figuring me for an undercover job.”

  “You were selected for the Penn story over all the rest on the magazine, Mr. Enders.”

  “I thought there was something funny about doing a story on Dr. Eric Penn. He’s not the usual story material. Nothing really startling, no glamour, nothing earth-shaking. So now it appears the CIC has manufactured the job and has sold National Scene a bill of goods for some purpose of its own. I don’t mind telling you I don’t like the smell of it.”

  General Deems blew out his cheeks. “You wouldn’t be talking like that if you knew why we want you to go to Park Hill.”

  “I don’t want to know, General Deems,” Martin said a little more kindly. “First of all, I resent the fact that the military steps into private business to tell it what to do.”

  “It’s an emergency.”

  “You obviously convinced them that it was. Second, nobody discussed it with me. In the military game I’m suddenly tagged. I’m it. I’ve got to risk my neck. Third, I don’t play that way, General. Fourth, I learned in the army not to volunteer for a damned thing. And last of all, I’m through with anything to do with anything military. Period. I got my belly full of it during the war. I saw man’s inhumanity to man and I don’t want to see it again.”