The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  “He’s in his suite, Mr. Estep, studying blueprints,” said Webb. “He mentioned he was undertaking a period of concentrated study and was not to be disturbed unless his opinions on the New London plan were being urgently solicited.”

  Estep groaned. If there was anything more urgently needed than to stop the profuse waste of petrol and oil and motorcars bought on credit from America, it was a plan for New London. Why had the people fallen for this harebrained terror story, Estep asked. Black’s answer was that they were in the psychological mood to fall for anything. Estep nodded.

  “Until they settle in permanent habitats and get rid of this restless, rootless, roving complex, they’ll jump at the sight of their own shadows. As soon as we build London up—”

  “As soon as we build London down,” Bronson Black corrected . . .

  Newspapers tried to be conservative about the matter. They editorialized with cynical quips so as not to be caught looking foolish if the fiend should turn out to be an escaped ape from a circus, or an escaped criminal with an unshaven face.

  But newspaper and radios could not ignore the obvious facts that mounted through all of that week—and the next. The vast majority of English people were spending their days and nights on wheels. Only while in motion did they feel safe. All manners of business had taken to the highways. Doctors set up their equipments in auto-houses, banks sent branch units out to do business on the roads, newspapers loaded their lighter presses on heavy trucks.

  If this could be called a city, it was unlike any city that had ever existed before. It was a vast aggregate of urban equipment turned mobile. It was a city whose parts were no more stable than electrons in an atom.

  (The newspaper that made this comparison apologized to the atom. Its electrons maintained a semblance of organization; the electrons of London simply floated over pavements, losing all sense of relationships.)

  Statistics showed an unbelievable rise in the number of motorcars purchased—but more shiploads arrived from America daily.

  The charts on consumption of petrol and oil skyrocketed out of bounds. Some unnamed American corporation continued to offer fuel and credit in unlimited quantities, for the masses of terrorized Englanders were in no mood to haggle over terms.

  But the most sensational day-to-day news was the terrific increase in highway deaths. The fiend was a killer. To turn off your motor and sleep by the roadside was to invite death. “Keep moving, keep living,” the fearsome slogans read.

  For every conservative editorial that attributed the death rise to a nonexistent bogey, a dozen stories painted blood-chilling details that restored the fiend’s reality.

  The fiend had evolved, by the end of the first week, to become a lizardlike creature one-half taller than a man, armored in tough natural scales that resisted bullets.

  The fiend’s hair was like fish fins. His eyes were dull red like cigarets burning in the dark—only larger—like automobile tail-lights.

  His mouth was like a gash in a tin bucket. His teeth were like sharpened ice cubes.

  His killing weapons were his arms, which were ribbon-shaped and flexible like leather, but as sharp-edged as any razor.

  After the terror-stricken testimonials of several witnesses to tragedies in which this fiend was said to have operated, this picture became the standard and accepted version. Newspaper artists painted him so that people would know what to watch out for when they stopped to change a tire.

  Hoodlums and criminals lost no time turning the country-wide terror to their advantage. Any murder that was sufficiently brutal was sure to be blamed on the bloodthirsty fiend. Scared witnesses, who, under ordinary circumstances, might have been able to identify a robber or murderer, were always confusing what they saw with the mental image of a lizard-like monster with knife-like arms . . .

  Gleed remained in his suite studying blueprints and models for day on end. His studies had begun right after his broadcast. At the end of that fifteen minutes of speaking he had first eaten a postponed supper which a waiter brought up to him, then had sauntered down to the Warwick lobby to see how his speech had been received. But to his surprise he had found all the chairs empty.

  Stopping in at the conference room he had found the owlish Vernon Webb in a great perspiration to handle all the incoming telephone calls, but Webb refused Gleed’s offer to help.

  “Your speech made a tremendous impression,” Webb said hastily. “You stunned them.”

  “Good,” said Gleed. “That’s all I wanted to know. Save my mail and newspapers and stall off all reporters and visitors for a few days. I’m going to lock myself in until this New London plan comes clear.”

  So it was that Ben Gleed remained in ignorance of the fact that only the opening sentences of his speech reached the public ear.

  Late that week he called Kandenfield in and listened to that slightly inebriated gentleman present an argument for a widespread city without any vulnerable skyscrapers, and without any disgraceful reversions to the underground life of the cave man.

  As Kandenfield was taking leave he asked, “So you’ve seen the fiend?”

  “No time for movies,” Ben Gleed snapped. “I’m getting down to business on this plan.”

  “You can have my authority,” said Kandenfield. “This fiend story has got me so wrought up I’m a dead loss.”

  “You’d better stick to musical comedies,” said Gleed, and he wondered why Kandenfield gave him such a strange look.

  The following day Gleed conferred at great length with Estep, who also expressed willingness for the young city manager to solve the deadlock, and agreed to abide by Gleed’s decision.

  “Down, out, or up,” said Estep agreeably. “Anything but round and round. Have you seen the graphs on this week’s rise in motorcars? It doesn’t make sense. That fiend is going to turn out to be as costly as a bloomin’ navy. By the way, have you any idea who pulled that hoax? I’m sure you didn’t mean for your speech to be twisted out of joint.”

  Ben Gleed frowned, but he gave his square jaw a solid thrust. “I didn’t say a thing I didn’t mean. Whether you liked it or not, it was the truth, Estep.”

  “The bloomin’ truth, you say.” Estep’s mustaches twitched as he gave Gleed a searching stare. Then he went on his way.

  The word “fiend” gnawed at Gleed’s mind. Both Estep and Kandenfield had spoken of a fiend. Now Gleed remembered having referred to the “fiend of delay” in his radio talk. Could these men have been quoting his figure of speech?

  That was the blunt question which Ben Gleed put to Bronson Black when their conference opened one morning a few days later.

  “You’re fiend’s all over England,” Black growled. “It’s a hellova mess. Nothing like it since the Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages. Every man, woman, and child is haunted by a redeyed, flesh-hungry spook.”

  Ben Gleed’s eyes narrowed to puzzled slits. “Once again, please—slowly.”

  Black sketched the whole story, winding up with, “I’ll know that damned voice that cut in on you if I ever hear it again.”

  “Why didn’t some of you tell me about this before? Why didn’t Vernon Webb—”

  “You weren’t to be disturbed,” said Black. “But don’t worry, the show’s going strong. At the rate homes and businesses are taking to wheels, London’ll be a thing of the past in a few weeks. Don’t ask me what’s happened to England’s nerve centers.”

  “The New London!” Gleed muttered. “Let’s get to work.”

  For three days he continued his conferences with Bronson Black. The war ace was next to immovable. He foresaw future wars too clearly to relax his demands for an underground city.

  “The other two committeemen have authorized me to act for them in preparing a compromise plan,” said Gleed finally. “Will you do the same?”

  “I trust your good judgment, Gleed,” said Bronson Black. “But I’ve been through a war. You haven’t.”

  “So?”

  “I’ll think it over and let you k
now.” Gleed was beginning to understand how Nazi bombers felt trying to make head against the R.A.F. “Black, the war is over,” he said pointedly. “But you’re still living in it. Are you going to keep on the rest of your life?”

  “My gal-friend asks me that too,” said Black. “Now I’ll ask you one. What are you going to do about this fiend terror?”

  “Tell the people the truth,” said Gleed.

  “How soon?”

  “As soon as the New London plan is ready. I recommend a big mass meeting. I’m afraid I wouldn’t trust the radio a second time. By the way, could I meet your girl-friend?”

  “Hell, I wish you’d pay her a visit for me. I’ve been so damned busy—”

  It was the first time in more than a week that Ben Gleed had left his blueprint-strewn suite. He stopped in at the conference room, glanced at his business mail. A letter from his assistant manager of Super City assured him that all was well; the gestures of friendship from Oil Center were on the increase.

  An hour later he was cruising along the traffic-filled highway with pretty Mary Armstrong, the air veteran’s girlfriend. They discussed the strange incidents that had conjured up the absurd fiend terror, and the suppressed angers welled up in Ben Gleed as he learned how straight-thinking citizens had been shaken into the maelstrom of hideous fears.

  Yes, the show was still going full blast. Mary Armstrong pointed out a restaurant truck that kept in motion while orders were taken and meals served. In an auto-house a party of women were having afternoon tea—under difficulties; but if their chauffeur stopped for a light, one of the ladies would screech at him.

  A dog howled at the door of a deserted house beside the highway. Packs of homeless dogs, Mary had heard, were forming in some deserted country regions. Crying children and wild-eyed grown-ups were often to be seen where-ever cars were stalled. Many house-trailers were crowded with a cow and chickens. Ben Gleed wondered if cows and chickens could be persuaded to “give” under those conditions.

  Mary drove up to a newspaper truck, bought an evening paper, asked Ben to read her the news as they rolled along. He found some curious items about babies that had been born in moving automobiles, operations that had been performed over rolling wheels, complaints from spectacles customers that lenses couldn’t be ground properly in moving trucks. And the roving mania had brought a sharp upturn in the spectacles business. Eyes were being put to new strains.

  Ben Gleed was dumbfounded by it all. “How in the name of common sense,” he asked, “can a nation that has stiffened its back against bombs go haywire over a bogey?”

  “I think it’s the aftermath,” said Mary Armstrong. “We’re still keyed up to expect violence. We’ve been shaken loose from all the realities of the past. We’ve learned to expect anything. I hope that as soon as New London is built up—”

  “Up, did you say?”

  “Or down,” Mary smiled. “Of course I have to be loyal to Bronson’s views.”

  “What are your own views, Mary?” The girl made a saucy face at Gleed, but as he talked with her he discovered that she was deeply troubled.

  “No imaginary fiend could ever haunt me like the thought of having to live in an underground city,” she said. “I couldn’t live away from the sun and stars. To me a London underground would be an everlasting shadow of death.”

  “Even if there were future wars,” said Gleed, “death would stalk the underground city. Bronson still thinks in terms of this war, and the safety of its air raid shelters. But an underground London could be as obsolete a defense as the Maginot Line in a future war of gas . . . disease . . . nerves.”

  “If I only had the nerve to tell Bronson—”

  “You’ve got to tell him,” said Ben Gleed. “That’s what New London is waiting for . . .”

  The owl-eyed Mr. Webb was standing at Ben Gleed’s desk opening Gleed’s business mail when the young city manager strode in.

  “I told you to lay off my mail,” Gleed snapped. His left arm straightened out to thrust the innocent-faced executive secretary against the wall.

  “I say,” Webb wailed, “you Americans aren’t too courteous—”

  “You ought to know,” Gleed barked. “You’re as much American as I am. Talk fast, Webb. I want the lowdown on that broadcast.”

  Webb talked fast, but the more he talked, the more Ben Gleed’s eyes pierced him with disbelief.

  The instant Gleed went out, mail in hand, Webb turned to the telephone, dictated a cablegram. “B.G. on war path. But I hold trump weapon—mob.”

  Gleed also sent a cablegram, having read an urgent communication from his assistant manager back in Super City.

  “By all means do not extend financial credit to Oil Center,” Gleed cabled. “Why should they make such a request? Investigate thoroughly, cable me soon as possible.”

  New oil and gasoline shipments arrived daily, but the reserve supplies in England were gradually being depleted. The wheels of roving England began to turn more slowly.

  Ben Gleed had once declared he would chance no more radio speeches, but after his talk with the slippery Mr. Webb he was inflamed with a new determination. Mr. Webb did not make the arrangements. Ben Gleed secured the largest stadium in the vicinity of the Thames. He circulated all England with posters that challenged the people to attend, or to listen to the broadcast.

  “IS THERE A FIEND STALKING AMONG US? WHERE DOES IT LURK? HOW CAN IT BE SEEN? WHEN WILL IT BE KILLED?”

  “BEN GLEED WILL ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS SATURDAY NIGHT.

  “STADIUM WILL BE HEAVILY GUARDED. THE SAFETY OF EVERY PERSON IS GUARANTEED. IF YOU CANNOT ATTEND, LISTEN IN.”

  The announcement was indorsed by Messrs. Estep, Kandenfield, and Black, who were in full accord with Ben Gleed’s plan.

  Multitudes of persons who gravitated toward the stadium on that memorable Saturday night, four weeks after the roving mania had swept over England, were reassured by the sight of new guard towers high above each section of stadium seats. At the windows of each tower uniformed guards could be seen standing stiffly.

  And so the stadium filled to overflowing with thousands of citizens to whom the solid exercise of stadium-sitting was an almost forgotten pleasure.

  Thousands more thronged the gates or took the surrounding hillsides for a view of what the stadium contained.

  White and gleaming under the floodlights, a new miniature London filled the entire inner stadium grounds. The layout was large enough that every spectator could see the essence of the plan for himself. Miniature flags flew from the model government buildings. Little columns of smoke rose from the area of heavy industries. Model trains moved along the lanes of gleaming rails. The effect was breath-taking.

  The meeting opened on the dot. The few thousand persons who were close enough to the small speaker’s platform saw that the bombastic little Estep carried a full head of steam as he took charge.

  They also noted a similar eagerness in the countenances of Messrs. Black and Gleed, a comfortable readiness in the languid eyes of John Kandenfield, a certain inspiring radiance in the face of the pretty girl who sat beside the R.A.F. hero.

  However, the most interesting study in expressions was furnished by the owl-eyed gentleman sitting not too comfortably at the end of the row of dignitaries. This man drubbed his puffy fingers on the arm of his chair and kept up a not-too-subtle eye communication with any of five or six heavy-set men near the front of the audience.

  Little Edwin Estep pranced back and forth past the rows of microphones and spoke to the tense stadium in an easy, friendly tone. He warmed up on the subject of the English war victory. Then he began to delve into surprise ideas on the possibilities of New London. He was like a magician pulling flags and rabbits out of unexpected places.

  As he talked, the floodlights dimmed over the model city and a single bright spot shifted from one point to another, coordinating perfectly with his words.

  “This plan is a blend of three plans,” he explained. “Through the cooperative
service of Ben Gleed, the countless pressures for various types of New Londons have been woven into a single unified system. We shall build up, we shall build out, and to a limited extent we shall build down.

  “We shall build safeguards against future wars, but we shall build with the expectation that most of our years will be spent in peace and the pursuit of happiness.”

  In turn, Estep called upon Kandenfield and Bronson Black to explain certain phases of the plan, and the audience, following the shifting spotlight from railway stations to chemical plants to auto parks, from hotels to spacious rows of landscaped homes, relaxed its tension and fears.

  Ben Gleed could literally feel the change that came over these thousands of listeners. There was such a thing as group-imagination, he thought. These people were rebounding to solid hopes and ideals.

  Gleed cast his eyes about the speaker’s platform. He had hoped to receive a reply from his Super City assistant before this, and he had ordered all cablegrams to be delivered to himself personally. He noticed the nervous twitch of Vernon Webb’s fingers.

  Now Estep brought the discussion of New London to a rousing finish.

  “If this plan is officially adopted—” Estep’s thundering words were drowned in a roar of cheering.

  “If this plan is adopted, and I think it will be—”

  There were minutes of roaring applause before Estep could finish his sentence. He concluded with a promise that construction would begin immediately after the official adoption.

  Then he silenced the multitude and turned their attention back to the matter which had brought them here. “I call upon Mr. Gleed.”

  The expectant thousands went silent as Ben Gleed stepped to the microphones.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the young city manager began slowly, his eyes sweeping from the guard towers, down across the sea of faces, down to the very speaker’s platform where Vernon Webb sat a few feet to one side of him blinking at the front rows, “this time I will have several thousand witnesses to what I have to say. If my speech of four weeks ago had not been cut off, you would have known that the only fiend I referred to was the figurative fiend of DELAY.