“Yes, I know. Don’t worry. It’s all right.”
We drove on down the street.
“What time is it?” I asked.
She held her wrist down so that the light from the dash shone on her watch.
“It’s almost four,” she told me.
“Quite a night,” I said.
She leaned back wearily against the seat, turned her head to look at me.
“Wasn’t it,” she said. “One car blown up and some poor kid with it, but, thank the Lord, not you; one friend killed without a mark upon him by something from another worldj one gal’s reputation gone to hell because she is so sleepy she’s willing to shack up—”
“Just keep quiet,” I said.
I turned off the avenue.
“Where you going, Parker?”
“Back to the office. I have to make a call. Long distance. Might as well let the paper pay for it.”
“Washington?” she asked.
I nodded. “Senator Roger Hill. It’s time to talk to Rog.”
“At this hour of the morning?”
“At any time of day. He’s a public servant, isn’t he? That’s what he tells the people. Around election time. And the country —the whole damn country—needs a public servant now.”
“He won’t love you for it.”
“I don’t expect him to.”
I pulled the car up to the curb across from the darkened building. There was a faint light from the third floor and a dim glow from the first-floor pressroom.
“Do you want to come with me?”
“No,” she said, “I’ll stay. I’ll lock the doors and wait. I’ll watch that no one bombs the car.”
XXVII
The office was deserted and had that cold, expectant air that newspaper offices take on when there’s no one there. There were janitors, of course, but I saw none of them, and Lightning, the dog-trick office boy, should have been on duty, too, but he, more than likely, was off on some mysterious unofficial errand of his own or had found some corner where he could snatch an hour or two of sleep.
A few lights were burning, but they did no more than add to the ghostly shadow of the place, like distant streetlamps shining on a foggy boulevard.
I went to my desk and sat down in my chair and put out my hand to pick up the phone, but I didn’t lift it right away. I sat there, quiet and listening, but for the life of me I didn’t know what I was listening to, although it may have been the silence. The room was quiet. There wasn’t a whisper of a sound. And it seemed to me that, at this moment, the world was quiet as well—that the silence of this place stretched out beyond these walls to envelop the entire planet and that all the Earth was hushed.
Slowly I lifted the receiver and dialed the operator. She came on hi a sleepy voice. There was a bit of polite surprise when I told her who I wanted, as if she, Wo, was of a mind to rebuke me for calling so great a man as a senator at this time of night. But her training kept her from doing it and she told me she would call me back.
I replaced the receiver in its cradle and leaned back in the chair and tried to do some thinking, but the hours were catching up with me and my brain refused to think. For the first time I realized just how tired I was.
I sat there hi a fog, with the few lights shining like distant streetlamps and with not a sound around me. And, maybe, said my foggy mind that had refused to think, this is the way the Earth is on this night—a silent planet sitting, tired and beaten, in the silence of not-caring, a planet going to its doom and no one to give a damn. The phone rang.
“We have your party, Mr. Graves,” said the operator. “Hello, Rog,” I said.
“This you, Parker?” said the distant voice. “What the hell’s the matter with you at this time of night?”
“Rog,” I said, “it’s important. You know I wouldn’t call you if it were not important.”
“I should hope it is. I just got to sleep a couple of hours ago.”
“Something keeping you up, Senator?”
“A little get-together. Some of us were talking over several matters.”
“Someone worried, Rog?”
“Worried over what?” he asked, as smooth and slick as ice.
“Too much money in the banks, for one thing.”
“Look, Parker,” he said, “if you’re trying to worm something out of me, it’s a waste of time.”
“Not to worm something out of you. To tell you something. If you’ll just listen, I can tell you what is going on. It’s a little hard to tell, but I want you to believe me.”
“I am listening.”
“There are aliens here on Earth,” I told him. “Creatures from the stars. I’ve seen them and I’ve talked with them and—”
“Now I get it,” said the senator. “It’s Friday night and you have hung one on.”
“You’re wrong,” I protested. “I’m sober as—”
“You picked up your check and you went out and—”
“But I didn’t pick up my check. I was too busy and forgot it.”
“Now I know you’re drunk. You never miss a check. You are there, standing in line, with your hand out—”
“Goddamn it, Rog, just listen to me.”
“Get back to bed,” said the senator, “and sleep it off. Then, if you still want to talk to me, call me in the morning.”
“To hell with you,” I yelled, but he didn’t hear me. He already had hung up. The line buzzed dead and empty.
I felt like slamming the receiver down, but I didn’t slam it. Something kept me from slamming it, perhaps a deep sense of defeat that chewed away the anger.
I sat there, gripping the receiver in my hand, with the far-off, mosquito buzzing of the empty line, and knew there was no hope—that no one would believe me, that no one would listen to what I had to tell. Almost, I told myself, as if all of them were Atwoods, as if every single one of them was a simulated human, built out of the alien stuff that had invaded Earth.
Come to think of it, I told myself, it wasn’t so damn funny. It was something that could happen. It would be exactly the kind of thing the aliens would have done.
Icy insect feet went walking up my spine and I sat there clutching the receiver, the loneliest human being on the en-tire Earth.
For I might, I thought, be in truth alone.
What if Senator Roger Hill were not a man, not the same man he had been, say, five years ago? What if what remained of the body of the real, the authentic, the human Roger Hill lay in some hidden place and the bogus, the alien Roger Hill were the man who had just talked with me? What if the Old Man were not the real Old Man at all, but a hideous thing which walked in Old Man form? What if the chairman of some great steel company were no longer human? What if keyman after keyman had been done away with and their places had been taken by something from another world, so formed, so briefed, so perfect that all of them were accepted’ by their own associates and by then-families?
What if the woman who waited in the car outside were, not…
But that, I told myself, was crazy. That was ridiculous. That could be nothing more than the frustrated fantasy of a mind too worn out, too sick, too shocked to think the way it should think.
I put the receiver back into its cradle and pushed the phone away. I got slowly to my feet and stood shivering in the emptiness and silence.
Then I went downstairs and out into the street, where Joy waited for me.
XXVIII
The “No Vacancy” sign was flashing, throwing green and red shadows across the black slick of wet street. On and on it flashed, a warning to the world. And back of it loomed the dark huddle of the units, each with its tiny light above the door and with the soft, fleeting gleam of parked cars picking up the flashing sign.
“No room in the inn,” said Joy. “It makes you feel unwanted.”
I nodded. It was the fifth motel that we had passed where there was no vacancy. The sign had not always been a flashing sign, but it had been there, glowing in the night. And the
flashing of the sign carried no meaning greater than the others, pit it was more emphatic and aggressive. As if it were spelling out in grim and final detail that there was no lodging.
Five motels with the forbidding signs and one with. no pign at all, but dark and closed and untenanted—a place shut 5 against the world.
I slowed the car and we crunched to a sliding halt. We sat, looking at the sign.
“We should have known,” said Joy. “We should have realized. All those people who can’t find a place to live. They’re ahead of us. Maybe some of them for weeks.”
The rain still was sifting down. The windshield wipers whined.
“Maybe it was a bad idea,” I told her. “Maybe …” “No,” said Joy. “Neither of our places. Parker, I would die.”
We drove on. Two more motel signs announced no vacancies.
“It’s impossible,” said Joy. “There isn’t any place. The hotels would be as bad.”
“There just might be,” I said. “There might be a place. That motel back there. The one that had no sign. The one that was closed up.”
“But it was dark. There was no one there.”
“There is shelter there,” I told her. “There would be a roof above our heads. The man up at the lake had to break a lock. We can do the same.”
I swung the car around in the middle of the block. There was no one coming either way and there was no danger.
“You remember where it is?” she asked.
“I think I do,” I said.
I missed it by a block or two and doubled back and there it was—no sign, no light of any kind, not anyone around.
“Bought and closed up,” I said. “Closed up quick and easy. Not like an apartment house, where notice must be given.”
“You think so?” asked Joy. “You think Atwood bought this place?”
“Why else would it be closed?” I demanded. “If it were owned by someone else, don’t you think it would be open? With business as it is.”
I turned into the driveway and went down a little incline. The headlights swept across another car, parked before a unit.
“Someone ahead of us,” said Joy.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “It’s perfectly all right.”
I drove across the courtyard and stopped the car with its lights full on the second car. Through the rain-blurred glass
I saw the smudge of white and startled faces, looking out at us.
I sat there for a moment, then stepped out of the car. The driver’s door of the other car came open and a man got out. He walked toward me in the fan of head-lamp light.
“You looking for a place to stay?” he asked. “There isn’t any place.”
He was middle-aged and he was well dressed although a little rumpled. His topcoat was new and his hat was an expensive piece of headgear, and beneath the topcoat he wore a business suit. His shoes were newly shined and the fine raindrops clung to them, shining in the light.
“I know there isn’t any place,” he said. “I’ve looked. Not just tonight, but every other night.”
I shook my head at him and my stomach tried to roll into a hard and shrunken ball. I was sick at the sight of him. Here was another one.
“Sir,” he said, “can you tell me what is going on? You’re not a police officer, are you? I don’t care if you are.”
“I’m not a cop,” I told him.
His words were edged with something that was close to hysteria—the voice of a man who had taken about everything he could. A man who had seen his own personal world fall to pieces, bit by bit, a little more each day, and absolutely helpless to do anything about it.
“I’m just a man like you,” I said. “Looking for a stable.”
For I’d suddenly recalled what Joy had said about no room in the inn.
It was a screwy thing to say, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“My name,” he said, “is John A. Quinn and I’m a vice-president of an insurance company. My salary is close to forty thousand, and here I stand without a place to live, without a place for my family to get out of the rain. Except in the car, that is.”
He looked at me. “That’s a laugh,” he said. “Go ahead and laugh.”
“I wouldn’t laugh,” I said. “You couldn’t make me laugh.”
“We sold our house almost a year ago,” Quinn said “Long-term occupancy. Got a better price for it than I had any hope of getting. We needed a bigger place, you see. The family was growing up. Hated to sell our place. Nice place. Used to it. But we needed room.”
I nodded. It was the same old story.
“Look,” I said, “let’s not stand out here in the rain.”
But it was as if he hadn’t heard me. He felt the need to talk. He was full of talk that needed to get out. Maybe I was the first man he could really talk to, another man like himself, hunting for a shelter.
“We never thought about it,” he said. “We thought it would be simple. With long-term occupancy, we had a lot of time to go out and find the kind of place we wanted. But we never found one. There were ads, of course. But we always were too late. The places had been sold before we even got there. So we tried a builder, and there wasn’t any builder who could promise us a house quicker than two years. I even tried a bribe or two and it did no good. All booked up, they said. There were a lot of them who had a hundred or more houses waiting to be built. That seems incredible, doesn’t it?”
“It surely does,” I said.
“They said if they could get more workmen, they could build for me. But there weren’t any workmen. All of them were busy. All of them had jobs.
“We put off the occupancy date, first thirty days, then sixty, and finally ninety, but there came the day we had to give possession. I offered the purchaser five thousand if he’d cancel the sale, but he wouldn’t do it. Said that he was sorry but that he’d bought the house and that he needed it. Said he’d given me three months longer than had been agreed. And he was right, of course.
“We had nowhere to go. No relatives we could ask to take us in. None here, at least. We could have sent the kids to some relatives out of town, but we hated to break up the family, and some of the relatives were having troubles of their own. Lots of friends, of course, but you can’t ask your friends to let you share their house. You can’t even let them know what sort of shape you’re in. There’s such a thing as pride. You keep up the best face that you can and hope it will blow over.
“I tried everything, of course. The hotels and motels were filled up. There were no apartments. I tried to buy a trailer. There was a waiting list. God Almighty, a five-year waiting list.”
“So you are here tonight,” I said.
“Yes,” he told me. “At least it’s off the street and quiet. No passing cars to wake you up. No people walking by. It’s tough. Tough on the wife and kids. We’ve been living in this car for almost a month. We eat in restaurants when we can, but they usually are full up. Mostly we eat at drive-ins or sometimes we buy some stuff and go out into the country and have a picnic. Picnics once were fun, but they aren’t now. Even the kids don’t seem to care for them. We use service stations for sanitary purposes. We do our wash at launderettes. I drhe to work each morning; then the wife drives the kids to school
Then she hunts for a place to live until it’s time to pick up the kids again. Then they all come to the office and pick me up and we look for a place to eat.
“We’ve stood it for a month,” he said. “We can’t take it too much longer. The kids are asking when we’ll have a house again and winter’s coming on. We can’t live in a car when the weather turns cold, when it starts to snow. If we can’t find someplace to live, we’ll have to move to some other city where we can find a house, an apartment, almost anything. I’ll have to give up .my job and—”
“It won’t do you any good,” I told him. “There is no place to go. It’s the same all over. It’s like this everywhere.”
“Mister,” said Quinn, desperation pushing his voice to a
higher pitch, “tell me what is wrong. What is going on?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, for I couldn’t tell him. It would have only made it worse. Tonight he would be better not to know.
And this, I thought, is the way it is going to be, all over. The world’s population would become nomadic, wandering here and there to try to find that better place when there was no better place. First in family groups, and later, maybe, banding into tribes. Eventually a lot of them would be herded into reservations, or what would amount to reservations, as, the only way that existing governments could take care of them. But until the end there would be wanderers, fighting for a roof, scrounging for a scrap of food. To start with, in the first mad rush of anger, they might seize any kind of shelter—their own houses or someone else’s house. At first they would fight for food, would steal it and would hoard it. But the aliens would burn the houses or otherwise destroy them. They would destroy them as their rightful owners and there would be little that could be done about it since it would not be done openly. But the aliens would salve their social conscience because they’d consider it to be legal and the burning would go on. And there was no way to fight back against them, or at least no way that could be found immediately. For you could not fight the Atwoods, you could not battle bowling balls. You could only hate them. They would be hard to catch and they would be hard to kill and they’d have nearby ratholes into another world to which they could retreat.
There would come a time when there were no houses and when there was no food, although Man, perhaps, would linger on in spite of everything. But where there’d been a thousand men there’d now be only one, and when that day arrived the aliens would have won a war that never had been fought. Man would become a skulker on the planet he had owned.
“Mister,” said the man, “I don’t know your name.”
“My name is Graves,” I said.
“All right, Graves, what is the answer? What are we to do?”
“What you should have done from the very first,” I said. “We’re going to break in. You and your family will sleep beneath a roof, have a place to cook, have a bathroom of your own.”
They Walked Like Men Page 15
