by James Hilton
I said I didn’t think a sit-down strike would work, and in any case it was defeatist; and then suddenly something flared up inside me so that I remember saying: “By God, Frank, the future’s not a club you can resign from! It’s part of the whole world’s problem, and as you say, we’ve shirked it for centuries. But now we’ve got to stop shirking it, and in that fight count me in—both as a scientist and also, if you’ll pardon the expression, as a good American!”
Sanstrom laughed and patted my arm. We were both good Americans, for that matter, and therefore a bit shy of striking the patriotic note. The telephone rang while we were still arguing; it was a girl Sanstrom was having to dinner; he asked me to stay and make a third, he thought I might find her interesting. I did; she was English, working for British Information—rather good- looking and vivacious and well-schooled in that phony understatement about her country that impresses so many outside it. She dropped most of the phonyness when she learned I’d been in the blitz; she was really quite a sincere person. And she didn’t know anything about the Project, which was a relief; so we chattered on general topics over cocktails and then went out to a restaurant where they served New Orleans food. The conversation sank in importance as it rose in agreeableness—I guess that’s one way of describing the rest of the evening. We returned to the hotel for more drinks and took her to the British Embassy, where she was staying; after which Sanstrom and I strolled back along Massachusetts Avenue in the chill evening air and calmed ourselves down. But we were still a bit exalted. Finally, as we shook hands at the hotel entrance, he said: “It’s been good seeing you. Don’t let things get you down. Look at me—I worry all the time but I don’t lose weight.”
He was a big man, Sanstrom, not unlike Emil Jannings, if you remember those old films. Everything was rather oversize about him—arms and head and mouth and arguments and gestures—it had been hard for him to lower his voice in the hotel bedroom, and when I had told him what Framm had said about the Buck Rogers strip—“Science is the opiate of the people”—any cruising bellhop could have heard his laugh as far off as the elevators.
* * * * *
I asked Brad if he had talked to Sanstrom again, and he said no; he knew he was a busy man and he didn’t want to trade on an old friendship. As a matter of fact, he wandered about Washington on his own the next day, seeing the sights; and in the evening, because he found he could get a seat on a plane to Knoxville, he made the return trip with a day to spare before he was expected back to work. So he set out for a walk in the surrounding country. The air was cold and the northern slopes of the hills ribbed with snow—the kind of weather he liked best. He walked a long way—much further than usual. He felt that the talk with Sanstrom had staged some sort of revolution in his mind; not that he had entirely agreed with him, but the unaccustomed freedom of speech and exchange of ideas had shaken loose some of his own; and he tried to chart out this new mood of his, as accurately and as scientifically as he would have done any other observed but puzzling phenomena. Soon he came to one of the road blocks; a soldier stopped him, he showed his identification papers and chatted for a while, but the interruption made him ready to walk back. When at last he came to the hill from which the enormous size of the plant was spectacular, he stopped to stare as if he had never seen it before. He lit a cigarette and sat on a fence near an abandoned farm. A phrase came that seemed to fit his predicament—his own and Sanstrom’s and the world’s—a predicament symbolized by the identification papers he had to carry and by the soldier guarding the exit to the vast enclave. A conspiracy of silence. He must have seen that phrase unnumbered times—a cliché if ever there was one. But then, because he was physically and mentally tired, his mind glided easily into another phrase, not such a cliché…. Conspiracy of science … silence … science … silent science but not exactly holy science … and at that he thought he had better pull himself together and stop the output of what the psychiatrists call echolalia.
He slept badly that night and by morning was certain of at least one thing—that he was headed for another breakdown if he didn’t get a change. He realized now that even in spite of the routine character of his job he had been overworking, or perhaps overworrying; he knew, at any rate, that he had reached some climax of misgiving hardly to be put into words.
He went to the head of his department that day and offered his resignation. It caused a small stir.
What was his reason?
He hesitated—he hadn’t really thought out an adequate reason.
Ill-health?
Well no, not exactly.
Overwork?
Partly.
Or perhaps some personal reason?
Well yes, in a sort of way—a personal reason.
The head of the department passed him on to a doctor, who examined him thoroughly without offering any comment, but said afterwards that he would gladly certify him in need of a rest. They were very careful (it occurred to him) in a considerate way, or else very considerate in a careful way. No need to talk of resigning—how about a leave of absence? All right. To go where? Oh, anywhere. New York, maybe. For how long? A month? Yes, that would be fine. He was by that time simply anxious to get away.
He went to New York. Before leaving he was reminded of the penalties under the Espionage Act for any disclosure of official secrets; he said that of course he understood all that.
In New York he rested by seeing plays, movies, and walking the streets. One day in the circular bar of a hotel on Lexington he thought he saw the same man whom he had seen a few days before walking along upper Broadway. It might have been, of course.
Then suddenly he made up another part of his mind. He called on his draft board (he had been registered in New York on his return from Europe). They listened to what he had to say and promised to get in touch with him at the address he gave, a hotel on West Forty-fourth, very convenient for the Algonquin.
A few days later a man came to see him at the hotel. He had the wrong kind of personality, and the interview ended with Brad exclaiming sharply: “I guess this is still a free country—a man can choose whether he offers his brains or his life for it, especially when they don’t want his brains….”
That, he realized as soon as he had said it, was absurdly melodramatic and by no means fair.
But he insisted, and rather to his surprise they let him have his way. He got his calling-up notice, he took his physical (and was relieved to find himself passed as medically fit); he was inducted, given his choice of the Air Force, and in due course found he was too old to be a pilot. But he made a good navigator, passed all his tests in fine style and waited to be shipped overseas. That was about October of 1944. But they didn’t send him. In fact he was somehow unaccountably omitted from one overseas outfit after another. He began to feel sure that this was deliberate. And about this time also he began to have an additional feeling that he was watched. Additional, that was, to any earlier kind of feeling. Once in a New Orleans restaurant, for instance, when he was talking to some civilians, he thought he recognized a man he had seen before in a movie house in Montgomery. But of course it might not have been, because when you begin looking round for faces you have seen before and seeing them, a certain danger point has been reached. From then, doubtless, his special neurosis dated.
And then came the crash in Texas.
* * * * *
We lay back in the warm air, and the story somehow petered out in random afterthoughts prompted by my own questions, but presently both question and answer followed at longer intervals till there was at last a silence; and it was then, without any words between us, that I knew he loved me. It wasn’t entirely love-making that had made me sure of that, because love-making isn’t so very unique, but there was something quieter and rarer that showed in the way he looked at me—the deep unspoken assumption that all was well between us, no matter what was ill with the rest of the world.
The sun dipped behind the ridge and it was time we were beginning to return. We walked to
the plane, still without speaking; he climbed in and gave me the signals; I swung the prop and got in the seat behind, willing for him to do the flying if he wanted, though there had been no arrangement about it. He taxied across the lake bed into what wind was left; it was almost a glassy calm by now; the mountains looked like stage scenery. He made a sharp take-off, the professional kind, and set an immediate course for Lost Water, climbing till the sun was visible, then higher than necessary till the far ranges came in sight, pink-tipped with snow. Nothing moving caught the eye except the long shadows of the wings, crawling over rock and sand; and all the time I was thinking over what he had said, till suddenly the effort of thought broke through a barrier and I wasn’t thinking at all, but just living the moments through with him, whether he knew it or not.
About six thousand feet he closed the throttle.
“Well?” he shouted, over his shoulder.
“Fine,” I answered.
In case he wanted to talk I chose one of the many topics, but not the most abstruse. “I like what you told me about Sanstrom,” I said. “I wish I’d been in time to know him in London.”
“Yes, he’s a good fellow. A bit technicolored for a scientist, if you know what I mean, but perhaps that’s not always a fault. Some of us are too black-and-white.”
“You ought to keep in touch with him. Where is he now?”
“I think in the Galápagos Islands.”
“What?”
“They’re about a thousand miles off the coast of Ecuador—”
“Yes, I know, but what on earth made him go there?”
“He was sent. They suddenly put him in the army—he was only thirty and unmarried, so I suppose there was reason enough…. And the Galápagos Islands are quite interesting scientifically. Anyhow, he’ll be back when the war ends. I’ll see him then.”
“Are you hinting that because he met and talked to you—”
“I’m hinting nothing. I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. We were watched, I suppose.”
“Watched in the hotel?”
“Probably. After all, why not? If they distrusted me they’d want to keep an eye on whom I contacted. Just as they took a look at you after I wrote you the postcard.”
He throttled up and made a steep left bank till we were facing the distant snow line. We climbed again to make up for lost height, crossing the valley over ridges of nearer hills. It would be dusk soon and I was puzzled by his change of direction. I shouted once to ask the reason for it, but either he didn’t hear or chose not to reply. I didn’t ask again, because what he had said about Sanstrom had made me feel icily indifferent to whatever happened so long as I was with him. The thought even came that he might have some strange idea in mind, and if he had I believed I could make terms with it without rebellion. As the sky grew darker and the last glow left the snowpeaks I felt easier, almost cozier, than I had ever felt on earth. He looked round once, as if expecting me to say something, but I didn’t. Then abruptly he made the turn.
We almost had trouble at Lost Water, it was so dark. But Mr. Murdoch had turned on the headlights of several cars, so that we made a rough but satisfactory landing. He cursed us, threatened to report us, and finally asked us to remember that when the war was over he could put us in the way of good bargains in used planes.
Brad drove the car—another symbol, I hoped, of his own self- conquest. We were several miles along the straight stretch before either of us spoke. Then I told him very simply that I wanted to go on helping him.
“Okay,” he answered, matter-of-factly. “But you might wish you hadn’t taken on the job.”
“I’m not scared. They can’t send me to any islands.”
“Now listen,” he said, embarrassedly. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you that about Sanstrom. I’ve no proof—and besides, if they really suspected me I can see their problem. I wouldn’t have minded being sent there myself—might have been a good place to think things out. I’m an odd creature—you ought to be warned about it. I don’t seem to have the knack of being most likely to succeed, and some people won’t ever be sure I’m not in the pay of the enemy, whoever the enemy is, but I guess there’ll always be an enemy.”
“Then you’ll always have me to sort things out and put things straight. Even with Mr. Small.”
“You think you could? And with Newby too?”
“Sure … but why him particularly?”
“It’s a good deal up to him when I get let out of the hospital.”
I was glad he had brought up a matter which had been heavily on my mind; I had been chary of broaching it myself lest the question of getting a discharge might begin to worry him. I didn’t myself know yet whether he would find it hard or not.
I said guardedly: “Does the idea of going back to the hospital bother you?”
“Not especially, but I’ve a feeling I don’t want to waste any more time.”
I thought that was the best kind of answer he could have given, so I promised as much as I dared. “You won’t have to. I think you can count on that. So far as I can see, you’re cured.”
We drove on another mile or so, and I wondered whether what I had said was true. Perhaps true enough. We’re none of us cured, in any strict sense. And if he still had a complex, of guilt or persecution, or whatever it was, hadn’t we all … or if we hadn’t, shouldn’t we have?
I said presently: “We’ve talked each other nearly hoarse, but there’s one other thing that’s been a puzzle ever since you mentioned it. You said you never told anyone else about the way you faked the results for Framm. I know that makes it a great compliment to me—”
“No—not really—”
“No? Well, never mind. But it does seem to me that if you had told others—when they questioned you—it might have been better…. Or were you afraid they wouldn’t believe you?”
“They mightn’t have, that’s true. But I was more afraid that they might.”
“I don’t understand—”
“They might have thought well of me.”
“Exactly. And wouldn’t that—”
He interrupted: “No, no—I’d hate to be thought well of for something that’s on my conscience.”
“But you still don’t regret what you did?”
“I’d probably do it again in the same circumstances.”
“Then why should you have it on your conscience?”
“Don’t ask me. It’s irrational, no doubt. I told you I was an odd creature.”
“You also told me it was a sin against the scientist’s holy ghost, but I thought that was just the way you felt immediately after you did it.”
He smiled. “Perhaps the ghost still haunts…. You know, Jane, choosing between God and Mammon gets all the publicity, but it’s easy compared with some of the other choices….”
He looked at me as if he thought I wouldn’t catch that, and as if he wouldn’t mind if I didn’t.
“Don’t you worry about me,” he went on. “I’ll never be any different—I mean, about certain things.”
“I don’t want you to be. Just tell me about them. As you have been doing. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
His mind was still on the one thing, for after a considerable pause he answered: “It was certainly easier than telling a fellow like Sanstrom. The idea of deliberately falsifying results, no matter what the reason, would seem a bit unprofessional to a scientist. At least I hope it would.”
“In other words, you told me because you didn’t care what I thought of you?”
He was thoughtful for another moment. Then he said: “D’you know, in a sort of way that’s true. And yet, in another way….”
“Yes?”
He laughed. “Damned if I can explain exactly how I do feel about you.”
“Can’t you? I can explain how I feel about you. It’s simple. I love you.”
I had often wondered what he would say if I told him, but since afternoon I had found out enough not to be apprehensive—only a little more curious.
He said nothing for a while, then he slowed down and put his arm round me. “That’s nice,” he said quietly.
I wasn’t sure whether he meant what I had said or what he was doing till he added: “Because I love you, too.”
