The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  The research work of the Bureau of Biographical Data became engrossing in more ways than one.

  Under the stress of Sally’s dogged determination, Bobby and I went to work trying to discover my name and what sort of guy I really was. Intriguing business.

  “The more I learn about my great-great-great-great grandmother’s lost boy friend,” Sally would say, “the more I’m convinced she missed the boat. He must have been a really interesting guy.”

  “Handsome, too,” I commented, winking to myself.

  “Was he?” Bobby asked in surprise. “Where did you find that information?”

  “Er—just reading between the lines.” I glanced at myself in the polished black marble pillar. I couldn’t have been so bad in Sally Hart’s time. In spite of the intervening century and a half I could still tell myself there was a lot of Hollywood in this old map.

  Bobby, darn him, was so all-fired thorough that he wouldn’t let me get away with this claim to good looks. He’d like to see the reference, he said, for he’d been under the impression from these old letters that this anonymous Jim-somebody-or-other was an awkward lout.

  “Sabotage,” I muttered.

  “Here’s a passage,” said Bobby. “It reads: ‘I do hope they won’t show that dreadful movie of you, Jim. You did have such a time getting down the street. Hobb told me about it—’ and so on.”

  “Hobbledehoy!” I groaned and excused myself for a drink of water.

  My nerves began working nights concocting escapes, until I thought of charging Sally Barnes overtime. I was forever popping off, knowing too much about this man; and then Bobby, all in innocence, would hook me. What was worse, I could never remember what I was supposed to know about these times.

  This net began to tighten around me. Soon I saw it was just a matter of days. Sally was trimming the field down close. The man we were searching for lived in one particular city and he disappeared in one particular year, and he was well known in one particular profession. And there weren’t too many thousand biographies that fell into those three categories.

  Now when Bobby Hammock came up with the additional theory that there was probably a home-made movie to be found on our “long lost boy friend,” I knew my hours were numbered.

  All of which had me wishing that Lord Temp would come along and deliver me to another climate.

  But my attitude was overturned in one quick flash when we came upon the record of Sally Hart’s marriage. She hadn’t married Hobbledehoy after all!

  “Smith!” I gasped. “Your great-great-great-great-grandfather’s name was Smith.”

  “That’s right,” said Sally. “She met him after she went to work for the telephone company. A very nice person, it seems.”

  “That’s different.” I gave such a sigh that Sally and Bobby both stared at me. “Smith—nobody I know—er—I mean—Smith! Good name. Makes you feel all right about her descendants and everything.”

  “Well, I hope so,” Sally laughed. “I’m amazed at how much interest you take in my ancestors, Jim.”

  “The more I learn, the more I feel that I know you.”

  “But ancestors aren’t everything,” said Sally. “We can’t know Sally Hart fully until we know more about this man she was so devoted to.”

  Well, in my burst of exultation I did it.

  “Wait for me. I’ve just had an inspiration.”

  I marched straight to the reference desk and requested that all available material on one James S. Flinders be delivered to our alcove at once.

  Within ten minutes the three of us were watching a movie of Yours Truly, Jim Flinders, vintage of 1950, as he dashed down the busy street one breezy summer morning. I thought Bobby Hammock and Sally would recognize instantly that this was a picture of me. Maybe they were too busy taking in the antiquated automobiles and costumes and window signs.

  On the screen I went through my now familiar antics. I chased the newspaper that had blown out of a woman’s hands, bumped into three or four persons, knocked over a trash can, saw my hat get run over by a truck, and finally bought the lady another newspaper—which she refused.

  The film came to an end. Bobby hummed, mildly amused. Sally gave me a wistful smile and said she really must see that again.

  “He was rather handsome, I believe, though the picture wasn’t very clear,” she said. “What did you say his name was?”

  I rambled on to evade the question. “Three or four boxes of materials here to tell all about him. Clippings and such. But tell me, Sally, did you really like him?”

  “Oh, I thought he was very chivalrous, didn’t you?”

  “Gallant as they come,” Bobby smiled. “But that’s not much index to his real character, is it? You’ve got to know what a man stands for.”

  This was Sally’s very thought. What did this man represent besides momentary chivalry?

  “He was probably pretty free with his insults short of slander, being a hard-boiled newspaper man,” I suggested.

  “Maybe he wasn’t really so hard-boiled,” said Sally. “Of course if it’s true that he dabbled seriously in some death schemes, then we’ll have to dislike him and pity the one who loved him so.”

  I gulped like I was swallowing a cocoanut.

  “But if he was strong and upright,” Sally went on, “I’ll see that his name has a place in our family history. Am I right, Jim?”

  I couldn’t make my voice work so I nodded and moved my lips.

  “And his name?” Sally stared at the lettering on the boxes. “Flinders. James S. Flinders . . . But that’s your name, Jim.”

  “Funny coincidence, Jim,” Bobby laughed. “You weren’t ever in love with a Sally Hart, were you?”

  “I sure as hell was. You can tell that one to all your grandchildren.”

  “But Jim!” Sally was gasping. “You can’t mean it.”

  “When I first came to this century and found you, Sally Barnes,” I said, “you were so much like Sally Hart that I almost caught you in my arms and kissed you.”

  And then and there some old repressed impulses stampeded me. I drew Sally into my arms and kissed her like nobody’s business. I must say the poor girl was too baffled to resist. I’m sure she thought I was crazy.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Personal Blackout

  At that moment my pail of secrets was turning into a sieve and I thought I would have to spill everything. In Bobby’s face there was skepticism; but Sally’s eyes were full of questioning.

  And there was Leon King, who had sauntered up to the doorway of our booth just in time to see me drop my inhibitions and take Sally. He looked as if he could use some explanations too.

  “Run the film again,” I said to Bobby Hammock. “You’ll recognize me this time.”

  So we ran the film again and by the grace of heaven I was called to the telephone before it was over.

  “Prescott Barnes’ secretary. Mr. Flinders? Mr. Barnes would like to talk with you at your earliest convenience. You’ll come at once? Excellent.”

  Thus duty called, and thus I walked out on a thousand questions.

  The errand which Prescott Barnes wished upon me might have ended fatally. I didn’t know, and neither did Barnes, that I would walk straight into a hotbed of violence. The Goldfish Bowls Were presumed to be fully protected.

  But Barnes’ political enemies had grown treacherous in their fight against the moderation policies. Barnes was sure someone was prying into his and Verle Marble’s plans regularly.

  Pride goeth before a fall. I was as chesty about this little appointment as the muscles boys in the physical culture ads.

  Prescott Barnes is gaining confidence in me, I said to myself. In time I’ll be as dear to his heart as his wastebasket prodigy, Leon King, I hope, I hope. Just why he is checking up on these night guards is none of my affair, but I’m the guy with the nerve to walk in on whatever monkey business may be going on in his Goldfish Bowl at three in the morning.

  I should have armed myself with a bit
of artillery. But you know me—always ready to bet on the impulse of the moment. I’d been lulled with a false sense of security by those twentieth century movies: in case of violence there was sure to be a vase to throw or a rug to jerk out from under the villain’s feet.

  Fact is, I didn’t want to lay out a mess of redbacks for a ray gun I’d probably never use. I could have borrowed Leon King’s, no doubt. He had a small amber-handled ray pistol which he liked to carry for effect, always pretending he was such an important guy that he practically deserved a bodyguard.

  No, I didn’t ask to borrow his amber-handled ray pistol. I’d be a sap to take favors from my chief rival.

  At the appointed hour that night I walked through the government plaza and strolled twice around the south row of Goldfish Bowls. Only the night lights filtered through from Barnes’ glass-walled sanctum, and none of these offices was occupied.

  I paused to inspect the window-like rectangle of black glass to the left of the doorway. It reflected the night-lights of the offices below the plaza level. This device, operating through a system of reflectors, allowed the night guards on my level to check up on those of the lower levels. Similar conveniences were supposed to serve the guards below the surface.

  The black glass rectangle supplied reflected miniatures of central hall lights burning in each of three levels. Any passing guard could have read an all’s-well from these tiny lights from the opposite side of the promenade. It was naive of me to go over and inspect the rectangle closely.

  I rubbed my fingers over the slick surface as any curious person might do; then rubbed my fingerprints off with a handkerchief, as any cautious person might. In doing so I created a slight ripple in the glassy surface.

  I tried to smooth out the irregularity. Something was strange about this surface. There was a flexible coating over the whole glass rectangle. Did it belong?

  I paced across the promenade to the next Goldfish Bowl and examined the surface of its black rectangle.

  Hard glass, as smooth as steel.

  My heart was pounding fast as I bounded back to Barnes’ Bowl. This end of the plaza seemed almost deserted. Across to the south were the silent floodlighted fronts of skyscrapers along Victory Boulevard, half a mile away. The lines of light along the boulevard denoted only thin streams of traffic. The arms of the big red neon clock on one of the towers pointed to twenty minutes after three.

  It was the dead of night and my heart was pounding and I was racing from one Goldfish Bowl to another, making three dim shadows of myself dart and lengthen across the promenade, and I was scared. I’d have called a guard if there had been one in sight.

  Then I was back at the entrance of Barnes’ Goldfish Bowl and my nervous fingers were tearing off the sheet of cellophane. And I was telling myself not to be excited, what’s a sheet of cellophane over a black glass?

  Suddenly I saw what it was. It was a screen that blacked out the parts that no guard was meant to see.

  I guessed instantly that other reflector instruments on other levels had been blacked out the same way. For now a tiny reflection of a lighted room filtered through a coating of what might have been smoke dust.

  I swabbed the bare glass with my handkerchief. The lighted room came through as clear as your face after a shave. There was only one man in the room, but he was working fast enough for three, rummaging through Prescott Barnes’ papers.

  Who? The reflector was too small for me to be sure, and it looked almost straight down on his head and shoulders.

  But that cocky jaw, that forehead, that hair of yellow pine splinters—by heavens, if that wasn’t the Honorable Wurzelle up to dishonorable tricks I’d be willing to eat the black glass, cellophane, reflections and all.

  I whirled, aware that three streaking shadows from across the promenade had suddenly converged at the feet of a thin angular man. My glimpse of him was all too brief. It seems to me that I gasped, “Le—” and then broke off.

  Broke off because I was about to make the mistake of calling this man Leon King just because there was something similar in the angularity of his shoulders.

  But this creature of the night, whose face was masked in black, cut me off before I could utter a word. There was a gleam of something yellow in his hand as it came crushing down on me without warning.

  He beat me down with three blinding blows. I struck the pavement face down. The blows kept coming, but utter blackness came faster.

  And that was the last that I knew for a long, long time.

  CHAPTER XVII

  The March of Fifty Million

  They tell me that I was in a coma for months.

  Even after I was known to be on the long slow road to recovery my periods of consciousness were brief and fleeting.

  Terribly tortured were those first broken hours of semi-consciousness for they were filled with sharp questionings from officers and reporters who were trying to piece together the story of the Goldfish Bowl violence.

  There wasn’t much that I could tell. I stated my belief that the man who had found his way into Barnes’ office could have been Wurzelle. But I couldn’t support my conjecture.

  As to the thug who had evidently been posted to keep watch, I couldn’t offer the slightest clue to his identity.

  The whole investigation got nowhere. Far more serious events were soon to relegate it to the limbo of unfinished and virtually forgotten business.

  I slept away several more weeks.

  They tell me that Sally Hart came to see me three times a week. Sometimes Bobby Hammock would come with her, sometimes Leon King or one of her other numerous admirers.

  Nice lads, all of them, courteously inquiring about my aches and pains and listening to my story of how I got them. Momentary chivalry, Sally had observed, was no true index of a man’s character. You needed to know what a fellow stood for. Well, I hoped she’d sort these suitors over carefully and consider me still in the running if I ever pulled through this awful listlessness.

  Prescott Barnes was highly dubious about any suggestion that his colleague Wurzelle would be guilty of breaking into his private papers.

  “You’re quite right, Mr. Barnes,” Leon King would chime in with an important swagger that would set me back for another week of convalescing. “An important man like Wurzelle wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t

  “But you’ll have to admit,” Sally would add, “that Wurzelle is always ready to head off your every plan and explode your every speech, Dad.”

  “There could be a traitor in our ranks,” Leon King would conclude with that gleam of destiny in his impertinent schoolboy face.

  Then the doctor would come in and stop their talk. I was in danger of losing what I had gained, he said, and must cease these overexertions. No more company for several days.

  Then one day I was wide awake and there was my old friend Hammock sitting in the corner reading the Undernourished Gazette. My interest in his world, the jungles of the unemployed, came surging back to me. I was feeling great.

  “What has happened?” I asked. “The revolution failed.”

  “It’s all over?”

  “It wasn’t even tried. Some joker turned the tide into a new ocean.”

  “Not—not temporary death!”

  “Sally’s coming in a few minutes,” he said. “She’ll tell you.”

  I should have guessed then that the awful hour had come. But just now I felt so good—and here was Sally Barnes coming back to see me.

  Was that a wonderful feeling! Sally was all smiles and she bent down close to me and pressed my hands and I thought she was going to kiss me and I lifted my head up.

  “Lie down, Jim,” she said. “You’re not to exert any energy.”

  Gosh! Didn’t she know it cost me more energy not to kiss her? She was the prettiest thing you ever saw, fresh and fragrant like flowers in the morning dew, and all sunshiny with smiles.

  There was plenty of trouble in the air, and she and Bobby hadn’t talked with me long before I got to the core
of it.

  A great march of death was going on at this very hour.

  It was as wide and as deep as the continent. The millions of underfed from all over the country were converging at the Glass Capitol.

  As Sally pictured this great mass movement Bobby bowed his head and closed his eyes. He was thinking of Lucille Boyington. To him the tragedy of this march was the tragedy of Lucille, multiplied by fifty million.

  “You mean that these people are melting away when they march on the capitol?”

  “It’s their intention to melt away,” said Sally. “I haven’t had the nerve to go see.”

  I looked out the window toward the Glass Capitol Plateau. I could see the long line of ragged marchers moving slowly across the center of the city, walking westward.

  “Where are they gathering?’

  “They’re marching right into the old mine shafts,” said Bobby, without looking up.

  Those mine shafts, Sally proceeded to explain, were known to branch out into one of the most extensive underground tunnel systems in the world. To this realm the fifty million were being relegated for the duration of their voluntary death.

  “By whom?” I barked.

  “By the Council of Twelve,” said Sally. “My father cast one of the three dissenting votes. Nine Goldfish put the measure over.”

  Bobby looked up with sullen eyes to gauge my reaction. I was shaking my head, slowly. I couldn’t understand how those revolutionary millions could submit to such an outrage.

  “They asked for it,” said Bobby, and again he bowed his head in sad silence.

  “Some high-powered organizing did it,” said Sally. “There was lots of propaganda dropped over cities several weeks ago.”

  “I remember,” I said under my breath.