by Jerry Sohl
"You are absolutely right," Miss Turner said bluntly. "It doesn't make any difference to me at all."
"You are not human, then."
"You think not? Then what am I?"
"I wish I knew. How could you sit there at your typewriter during the past two days while man after man has been taken to the hospital with this terrible thing, all caused by something that happened in the Winthrop house. No, I don't believe you are human."
"You're a very stupid man, Mr Travis. You are judging the world from where you sit. I am judging from where I sit."
"Don't you have any compassion, any pity, any feelings at all?" He was on his feet now.
"Yes, I have feelings. I have many feelings, feelings just as deep as the ones you have." Her eyes were on fire now and she glared at him defiantly. "I am doing what I believe is right. I am willing to risk everything for an ideal."
"There's no ideal that can erase the death of a dozen innocent men!" he said heatedly.
"There are no innocent men!"
"What's the matter with you? Did you get jilted once?"
"You're ridiculous!"
"How ridiculous would I be if I called the police and turned you over to them?"
"You're still ridiculous."
"They aren't ridiculous. They take a rather grave view of the matter."
"Nothing would be accomplished by it at all."
"You wouldn't be very popular."
Miss Turner snorted. Suddenly it was quiet in the office. They could hear voices from far away outside and several times a car went by. They both jumped when the phone rang. She answered it.
"It's for you," she said wonderingly, extending the phone.
Himself as surprised as she, Travis took the phone.
"This is Betty Garner," the voice whispered. "Now don't make any outcry or betray that you know it is I. This is a very dangerous call for me to make. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Linda," he said, playing along. Miss Turner, he observed, had politely moved over to the window.
"That's the idea, Travis," Betty said. "Now I want to talk to you—alone. What I have to say is very important to you. I don't want any tricks like police or anything like that. Can I trust you?"
"Yes, Linda."
"Good. Now don't say anything. Just go to your apartment. I'll meet you there—now don't ask me anything, please. It's . . . Travis, it's a matter of life or death. Will you come right away?"
"Yes, Linda." She said good-bye and he hung up.
Miss Turner turned from the window and looked at him coldly.
He did not bother to talk to her. Instead, he turned around and walked out.
As he drove to his apartment he tried to erase the girl's cold eyes from his mind. He reflected that she was as different from Betty Garner as she could be. Betty seemed to be of the same mind, but at least she had flashes of warmth, of friendliness, almost of humor. Rosalee was like a beautiful, but deadly, flower, a living thing without a heart, the way she seemed to feel nothing at all for the men who were dying.
He Wondered how Betty knew he was at Rosalee's office, but he decided that wouldn't be hard for her, for the group had kept an eye on things beginning with the Winthrop house and also probably warned Rosalee that he was coming. The odd part of it was that he had told no one, not even Hal Cable, where he was going.
A matter of life and death, Betty had said. Well, whatever it was it was at least a step in the right direction. He entertained a notion for a moment of having the police hidden in the apartment or in the hotel somewhere, but he had accepted Betty's proposal and he had promised to play fair with her. Perhaps I'm a damned fool, he thought, but I still don't think it would be fair to do otherwise. Besides, he wanted to believe her. He wanted to trust her.
He reached his apartment but didn't find Betty there. She at least spared him the embarrassment of another tussle, of another interview at gun point. He hadn't been there five minutes, however, when a light tap sounded at the door. It was Betty.
She came in, looking around, flashed him a grateful look when she found no one else there.
"Thanks for trusting me," she said, sitting on the sofa. "1 myself may be under suspicion. I found it hard to get away and phone you. It was harder even coming up to see you."
"Who is it that suspects you?" he said, coming over to her.
"There are some things I can tell you and others that I cannot," she said. "That is one of the things I cannot."
"You make me sound like a child, like someone not to be trusted. Why can't you tell me?"
"1 don't know why I am doing this at all," she said, biting a full, red lower lip. "Or maybe I do know why and I can't help myself. But this is the last time I can help you. It's the last time I'll see you."
"Why?" He took her hands in his. She drew them away.
"There's a very tightly knit organization," she said, looking away. "No one outside knows anything about it, I'm sure. There are few things any of us can do. The only reason I have been near you at all is just carrying out my duties. That is why being here now is such a danger." She turned to him, her eyes bright. "I'm supposed to be killing you, you know."
"You nearly succeeded last night," he said ruefully, massaging the lump on his head.
"I'm sorry," she said, "but I found I couldn't kill you. Maybe . . . maybe I couldn't kill anybody. But that doesn't mean I don't believe in our plan. It's just that you are the exception. You and you alone. There isn't another man living . . ."
He took her hands and this time she didn't draw them away.
"Last night after I hit you with the gun, I went through your pockets and found the shells. I also found that card you had, the one you found in that house in Winthrop Street. We found it was missing and that was one of the reasons the house was burned down. It was an easy matter to figure you would pay a visit to Rosalee in the next few days, since you hadn't already. I'm only glad you didn't give the card to the police."
"Is that what you came here to tell me?" he asked.
"No." She pressed his hands with hers, leaned toward him without realizing it. She seemed to be struggling within herself and her eyes were pleading. "No, that isn't the reason. It's just that I don't want anything to happen to you. ..."
He leaned toward her as her large, blue eyes looked at him beseechingly. Suddenly she was in his arms and he rained wild kisses about her lips, face, and neck, and her warm breath on his neck stirred his blood. Just as suddenly she broke away.
"No, Travis!" she said softly but emphatically. "We can't be fools. This is impossible."
"It's not impossible," he said, drawing her to him. The soft warmth of her arm, her rapid breathing that showed full breasts rising and falling, the flame in her cheeks now, all quickened his own pulse and made him want to hold" her close to him.
He had her in his arms again.
"Darling, darling," she said softly, then: ". . . funny thing. I didn't think I'd ever call a man that. I'm not supposed to feel this way about any man. It's against everything we ever been taught. I've never dreamed . . ." She was away from him again, sitting there, her blue eyes bright, her face flushed, her breath fast.
"Travis, you're making it difficult for me. ... I came to tell you you must leave Union City. Don't you understand I'm trying to tell you you're in danger? I couldn't stand to think of you being here—"
"What's wrong with my being here?" he demanded, half angry at her flashes of hot and cold.
"I'm offering you a chance to save your life," she said. "You alone among everyone in this city knows by my telling you this that you are in danger. In danger of death. In danger of—of more than that . . ."
"What do you mean? I know you had me, as you said, a 'special project,' but you mean somebody else is out to do me in?"
"No." She shook her head and her eyes were tear-rimmed. She turned and buried her head on his shoulders. I don't want to see you like that," she sobbed, "all gray and turning black like those other men . . ."
He let her lie there,
her hair on his neck, her heart beating against his. What the devil did she mean? Why should he go like those other men? Then he took her by the shoulders and turned her to him again. "Betty," he said. "I'm just not very bright, I guess. I don't understand it." Then she broke away and clung to him again.
"I'm the most unhappy person," she cried. "I believed it all along. It's been my life. My every thought. And now— why must this be? Why? Why? Why?" She pounded her fist on his shoulder.
He reached into his pocket and gave her his handkerchief and she dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose.
She looked like a little girl, then. A little, sweet girl, such a girl as he might have known as a boy, an unaffected, unspoiled creature full of sudden wonders and sorrows and love.
"I'm acting awfully silly, aren't I?" she said, sniffling. "This is sillier than I have ever been in my whole life. What I should have done in the first place is kill you. That would have done it. Then I wouldn't have found out what it's like. I wouldn't worry about you."
"Why should you worry about me?"
"Because of the way I feel about you. A feeling they said my kind could never have. ..."
"Your kind?"
She was on her feet now, smoothing her dress. "Is it really wonderful being married and kissing all the time like that? And having babies? Being a mother? And keeping house?"
"Are you out of your mind?" he said, arising and going to her. "Of course it's wonderful. Where have you been all your life? Haven't you always thought it was?"
She pushed him away. "No, I never thought so."
"You are the damnedest girl!" he said.
Suddenly she was her old self again. "You go over to the sofa and sit down, Travis. I've got something to say to you. I don't want you near me. I can't say things I should when you are." Her voice was steady and firm and she seemed to have control of herself again.
I told you over the phone it was a matter of life or death," she said. "That was the truth. It was your life I was talking about. I don't want to see you die. But you are going to.
"What kind of talk is that? Of course we all die."
"You will die before your time. But you can save yourself temporarily. You have two choices: leave Union City or commit suicide."
Travis threw his hands in the air, walked away from her. "You're mad," he said, exasperatedly. "One minute you are in my arms, the next you are wanting me to commit suicide." He faced her. "What kind of reasoning is that?"
"I'm only thinking of you!" she said miserably.
"You use awfully devious logic. If you think so much of me you'd better be telling me everything there is to know about the twelve dead men, about the epidemic, about the house on Winthrop Street, about Rosalee Turner, about your place in this thing."
"I can't tell you," she whipped back. "I am probably risking my own life by standing here talking to you."
"That's what you say. flow am I supposed to believe that? Just because you say it?"
"Because if you don't believe it you'll be dead anyway," she said firmly. "The pattern of the thing may become apparent to you soon. But it never will if you stay here in this city."
Travis ran his hands through his hair, sat down in a chair. The girl sounded as if she were telling the truth. What if she had really come to save his life? If that were true, why should he be sitting here doubting it? He looked up at her.
"You say if I don't leave the city I will die?"
"That's right."
"Very well. I'll leave under one condition."
Her eyes narrowed. "What's that?"
"That you come with me."
For a moment her breath came quicker and there was a flash of desire in her eyes and a sudden flush to her face, but it fell quickly away.
"Believe me, there is nothing I would want to do in this world more than that, Travis," she said softly. "But it would not be fair to you if I did."
"Then I stay."
"You're a fool, then," she said sharply. She stood staring at him unbelievingly, as if waiting for him to change his mind.
Then she turned on her heel and before he could stop her she was out the door and he could hear the diminishing click-click of her heels as she went down the hallway.
EIGHT
Rosalee Turner had lined the men up against the purple wall. In her hand she held a large gun containing a number of gears and wheels and she held it before her, pointing it at a man. She pressed the trigger and various tiny lights on the gun flashed and the man turned gray, then black and fell dead to the ground. Rosalee laughed insanely, cocked the gun. I've got to stop her, he thought. I've got to kill her before she kills all those men.
Suddenly Betty Garner came between him and the shooting scene. She approached him, swinging her hips seductively, a half-smile on her face. He noticed she was clad only in marquisette that hardly concealed her flesh at all, but made her increasing nearness maddening.
Travis could not move. He was tied somehow, but he struggled. It was no use. Suddenly Betty's head cut off the entire view of the falling men. A bright, concealed light made her blonde hair shine brightly; there was even a halo around her head. Her eyes sparkled naughtily.
In a moment she was kissing him passionately, caressing him, saying, "Don't look, darling. Don't pay any attention to her. Rosalee is a bad girl. I'll untie you and we'll go away." She whispered in his ear and he could feel the nearness of her lips and her breath as she did so. "It will be just you and me . . . just you and me . . ."
The jangle of the phone burst the dream like a bubble. He lay there in bed, still deliciously warm from his dream encounter, his blood still hot, his desire for her strong. Then it ebbed slowly away as he awakened to the reality of his room. "Travis?"
He mumbled something into the phone.
"This is Cline. Listen, Travis, Gilberts has been taken sick and things are popping all over. We need you; can you come down and give us a hand?"
Travis ran a weary hand over his face. "So you can't run the place without me, eh?"
"I'd break in half a dozen new kids if I had them around," Cline said, "but I haven't. I suppose you've heard about the film?"
"Yeah. Cable told me yesterday."
"Well, listen; the situation's all over town. Everybody's film is no good. Something's going on nobody knows anything about. And that radio and TV interference—have you heard about that?"
That was a new one. "No, I don't think so."
"It's all over, too," Cline rasped. "Started about 10 o'clock yesterday morning. Nobody could get anything on TV or radio. Still can't, as a matter of fact. The radio and TV stations have simply quit broadcasting."
"There must be a connection there somewhere."
"Of course there is. I was counting on you to work on it."
"It still goes, Cline. I'm working only for myself."
"O.K.," Cline agreed soothingly. "Go ahead, then, work on it yourself. Only how about giving me a ring now and then? You don't have to come down to the office or do any-typing. I'll give it to rewrite. Or I'll do it myself, if I have to."
"Cline," Travis said coolly. "I got off this job fair and square. Parsons said it was O.K. You were at full staff. For all you know, I could just as well be in Moscow. What would you do then?"
"But you're not," the city editor retaliated. "You're here. And what's more I've had reports that you've been doing some work on this on the side. After all, you were in on it from the start, remember?"
"How could I ever forget? If only I had left the hospital a day earlier!"
"Well, you didn't. Now you got yourself interested in the thing. Why not work with the added incentive that you're doing something for us, too?"
"But that's just it, Cline. I was getting along all right just working for myself. I liked it that way. The whole aspect of the thing will change if I start working for the Star."
"Doesn't it mean anything to you that I'm asking you for help, Travis?"
"Yes, it does, Cline. I don't want you to think I'm a heel."
Travis managed to light a cigarette while he talked.
"Doesn't it mean anything to you that the Star has been your living for ten years, Travis? You just don't throw ten years out the window, you know."
"Listen, Cline. I just got up. Let me have time to think it over."
"O.K., fella, but think fast. We need you."
There was an idea cooking in the back of Travis's mind. It took him back to Monday night when he was lying in Union City Hospital and an old man came in screaming.
Travis ate a hurried breakfast, then consulted a telephone directory. There was a chance that what he thought was true, if what Betty had to say and what Rosalee had hinted at yesterday could be believed. Miss Turner had said something about everything not making any difference "since this morning" when he talked with her at the Higgins Development Co. office. Yesterday was Thursday. Whatever it was had started Thursday morning. And the radios and TV had been affected Thursday morning at 10 a.m. He remembered the television set in the tavern now. And, too, Hal Cable said that the films had suddenly turned up black, as of Thursday morning.
Travis then had grimmer thoughts. He had asked Hal if there hadn't been some trouble with film before and Hal had said that there had been. And Travis had remembered his saying something about it the day he had come to visit him at the hospital to tell him Cline had wanted him back. The day the old man had come in screaming.
The pieces fitted.
He found what he was looking for in the phone book yellow pages. A radio repair service. He selected the one nearest him, walked to it. It was closed. He went into a drugstore and looked up another radio repair shop. He found another, walked to it, found it open. He went in.
A tall man in overalls sat there, his feet on a desk.
"Well," he said, getting to his feet. "A customer!"
"No customers?" Travis asked.
The man pointed to a phone. "I got so many I took the phone off the hook," he said. "Everybody's been calling since yesterday morning wanting their radios fixed. I spent most of the morning running around collecting them and they're all in the back room. Then I find out there's nothing wrong with them. But I didn't find that out until later yesterday morning when I started to work on some of them. Something's wrong with reception all over."
