Dickie regarded it as something of a game. He’d show these grownups a lively time, his manner indicated, and they were forced to pull him gently back to reality on several occasions. They discounted his frequent battles with Indians, gangsters and Martians, and tried to infer the essence of his life from his blend of memories and imaginings. It had been a pretty normal existence; his father had been an accountant who’d come into a little money several years back—they couldn’t pin down the date. All Dickie remembered was that his Uncle Frank had helped his father out, and they’d moved into a better home and had lots of presents for Christmas. He knew nothing of The Last War, of course; his only strong emotion was connected with his doctor. He hadn’t liked the man, obviously, and played games in which he blew his head off with a hydrogen bomb.
“There’s nothing there for me,” Valerie said, when Dickie finished. “I moved in a less blood-thirsty group, thank Heavens.”
They turned then to old Maria. In spite of Valerie’s comment, they were in a grimmer mood. Larry’s concern had gripped them all, with the exception of Macklin. They knew they were in a ghastly, unknowable kind of trouble; and as time passed they were increasingly ready to clutch at straws.
Old Maria had difficulty understanding what they wanted of her; she had very nearly forgotten her little fruit shop in Brooklyn now, and she had accepted these people as friends. She felt she’d known them all her life, particularly Dickie, who filled a forgotten void in her old heart, a void created by the death of her first-born son. However, she listened intently as Larry talked to her, and finally she began to tell them of Sardinia, which, she realized at last, they were curious about.
Her account of her early life was accurate and sharp. The streets of her village, the friends of her childhood, the annual trip to the Cathedral of Naples to watch the amazing recoagulation of the blood of Saint Januarius—all of these memories were etched unforgettably in her mind. But the scenes blurred and ran together as she tried to recall more recent events. There was the fruit shop, the loss of sight in her left eye, the priest who came and miraculously spoke Italian to her—this much came back to her sharply; but these events were temporally suspended in a hazy vacuum. The codifying framework of time was gone.
“How are we going to get anything from this?” Patience asked helplessly.
“We’ve just got keep trying,” Larry said.
But old Maria could tell them little more. She even got confused about the fruit shop. For a while it turned bewilderingly into a laundry, where she’d worked like a slave. Then it was the fruit shop again, which she had loved. Her husband had worked in the shop because the labor was light; when she’d been at the laundry he hadn’t worked at all, but had lain at home, staring bitterly at the noisy street and threatening God with his vengeance. They queried her on these inconsistencies without result. The stories became increasingly intertwined until poor Maria broke down and began to sob. She sensed the disapproval in their voices, and it cut her.
“Stop bothering her!” Dickie shouted suddenly.
Maria took him in her arms and patted his shoulder, murmuring broken endearments into his ear, while Dickie gazed with tremulous anger at her tormentors.
“We didn’t mean to upset her,” Larry said gently. “Never mind, it’s all over.”
Then it was Macklin’s turn to talk.
He stared at them all in order, his big, bold, arrogant face flushed with importance. “Now, get this,” he said. “All along, I’ve said this was stupid. I’ve been proven right, too. We haven’t learned one damn thing. But I’ll go ahead anyway. I’ll be a sport about it.”
“Hear, hear,” Valerie muttered.
“And when I’m through,” Macklin said, flushing, “this time-wasting farce will be over. You all think I’m cocky, I know. But I made a life-long habit of being right, and I’m not changing it now. Okay, are you set?”
Worthington Macklin’s life-story, told with ponderous relish, was an account of uninterrupted success and vindication. He had triumphed inevitably, and his enemies had been ignominiously routed. The doctor who had slapped his buttock to shock a gasp of air into his collapsed lungs was fortunate that Worthington Macklin hadn’t turned and slugged him in the jaw. You could at least infer that, Larry thought wearily.
Macklin’s school days had been years of glory. He had been a good student, a great athlete, supremely popular with professors, coaches, and students of both sexes. His affairs of the heart, which he recounted with challenging glances at Valerie, all ended in the same fashion: the girl, sobbing gratefully, and swearing that there was never another man like him, and he, gentlemanly, courteous, and suave, sending her on to a future which, without him, would be forever bleak and forlorn.
Valerie made a rude noise at one point, and Macklin threatened to quit unless he was treated with more respect. Larry restored order, and Macklin continued.
In business, he had found new paths of triumph. Money poured in on him in a golden stream. He hadn’t been greedy, oh no. But large affairs gravitated to large men, and he had done his duty by administering them to the advantage of lesser mortals who didn’t have the brains to come in out of the rain, fiscally speaking.
Then there was marriage, a splendid thing for the woman, of course, and strong, beautiful sons. He glossed over the daughter, which he still regarded as a kind of practical joke on his wife’s part, and went on to his still greater triumphs in the business world. He concluded his report with an itemized account of his cattle, horses, acreage, homes, stocks, bonds, savings accounts, suits of clothes, shoes, and neckties.
Then he sat back, hugely pleased, perspiring slightly, and said, “So there! There it is, the full, honest record. Make what you will of it.”
There was nothing to make of it, Larry thought gloomily. It didn’t touch any of their lives, and probably wouldn’t touch the life of any human people. Some Greek God maybe, but no poor human. Of course, it was all a fairy tale. Intentionally or otherwise, Macklin had strung together a tissue of dreams. Unless he was more ignorant, or more neurotic than he seemed, Macklin must know he lied. No man went through life without reverses, without disappointments, without meeting deadly assaults against his convictions and self-importance.
“And that’s the story, eh?” he said.
“Of course,” Macklin said. “Now, don’t you see what a waste of time this has been? We’ve tested your silly theory, and we wind up where I told you we’d wind up: knowing nothing.”
Larry was silent a moment, frowning, and then he looked Macklin in the eye. “Don’t be too sure about that,” he said. “I’ve got some ideas.”
“What are they?”
“I want to think them out a bit more.
Macklin laughed. “Go right ahead, but count me out.”
“Oh, I’ve already done that,” Larry said rising. “Unless you want to be honest.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” Larry hesitated. Then he shrugged: “No. I’m sorry I said that. Forget it, will you?”
Macklin growled pleasurably. “You keep backing in and out of things, don’t you? First you know nothing, then you say you’ve got some ideas. Then you tell me I’m not honest, but you haven’t the guts to call me a liar. Just what the hell’s bothering you?”
“It’s this,” Larry said. “I haven’t the guts to tell you what I’m thinking.”
He walked into his room then and the others stared after him, caught and held in the uneasy silence that settled over the chamber . . .
The next day, the fifth day, Larry spent several hours talking with old Maria. He didn’t ask her questions, since that obviously confused her, but let her ramble on as she wished about events in the past. Then he talked to Dickie for most of the afternoon. The others watched these sessions with varying reactions; Patience seemed a little hurt that he was ignoring them, while Valerie was solemn and thoughtful. Macklin, however, continued by his manner to indicate that the whole business was a tiresome bid for attention on Larry’s part.
When he finished talking with Dickie, Larry stretched out on his cot, his hands behind his head, and stared at the ceiling . . .
On the seventh day, after breakfast, he took a position in the middle of the large, central chamber, and asked for attention.
“More talk, eh?” Macklin said.
“I want to tell you the results of my pondering,” Larry said, smiling faintly. “You know, at the start, I told you we were trying to find out what we had in common. There must be some link between us, I thought, that was responsible for what’s happened to us. Now, I’ve found some of those links. The first one was so obvious that I overlooked it completely.”
“Well, what is it?” Valerie said impatiently.
“There’s something wrong with all of us,” Larry said quietly.
A little silence fell on them. Then Macklin laughed unpleasantly. “There’s something wrong with you all right. Something wrong with your head.”
Larry looked at him evenly. “How long have you stuttered, Macklin?” he asked.
“W—what?”
“You heard me. You stutter. Maria’s lost the sight in her left eye. Dickie has a constant cough. I’ve been in lousy health for years, and the doctors just say I’m run down. They don’t know what’s wrong.”
“But there’s nothing wrong with me,” Valerie said. “I’ve got the constitution of a horse.”
“How about the blemish on the back of your left calf?”
“Well, how about it?” Valerie turned and stared down at her bare, shapely leg. “It’s just a birthmark.”
“Have you always had it?”
“Well—no.”
“When did it appear?”
“A few years ago, I think. It was so tiny at first—” Valerie paused, frowning slightly.
“It’s growing, isn’t it?” Larry said.
“Yes. I never thought about it—I guess I was trying not to.”
“Have you been to a doctor about it?”
“Yes. He didn’t know quite what it was, but he said it was nothing to worry about.”
“I see.” Larry glanced at Patience. “You’re the only one I’m not sure about. You look fine. Is there anything wrong with you?”
“Not that I know of,” Patience said.
“Okay, let’s skip that for the moment,” Larry said. “We’ll go to point number two. The voice we heard the first day we were here. None of you has placed it yet?”
They were all silent.
“The men who abducted us,” Larry said. “That’s point number three. “We all described the same men. Tall, blank faces, no conversation. Right?”
“Well, yes,” Valerie said slowly.
“Okay, point four. There’s another link between us, another thing in common. About five years ago all of us made a new friend. All except Macklin that is. Each one of these new friends helped us out in some manner. I’ll run down the list; I met a man who gave me the background for a Pulitzer prize story. Dickie here met an ‘Uncle Frank’ who helped his family financially. Maria, in talking to me the day before yesterday, cleared up that business about the laundry and fruit store. She did work at the laundry until a stranger came along and bought her the fruit store. Valerie, you were broke, down on your luck, you said, six or seven years ago, and a man you’d never seen before put up the money for your new play. Isn’t that right?”
“Why, yes,” Valerie said. “It gave my career a beautiful shot in the arm.”
“And I had help, too,” Patience said slowly, looking at all of them with troubled eyes. “It was after my father died, as I told you. He invested what little money was left, and it paid off immediately. I never saw him before that—or after.”
“You’re touching on point six,” Larry said. “All of these benefactors disappeared from our lives, didn’t they?”
Macklin shook his head vigorously. “You’re forgetting that I didn’t have any benefactor,” he said.
Larry ignored him, and turned to Patience. “You’re sure that your health is good?”
“As far as I know, yes.”
“That shoots your theory,” Macklin said.
“The hell it does,” Larry snapped. “There’s something wrong with five of us. And what’s wrong with us manifested itself after our contact with these helpful strangers.”
“I’ve stuttered all my l-l—life,” Macklin said. “And I’ve never met any of these benevolent strangers, anyway. So I don’t fit your theory, and neither does Patience.”
“Just a minute,” Patience said, in a hurried voice. “I had to see a doctor several years ago. It was something about a heart murmur, Larry. He said it wasn’t serious, but he was rather surprised, I remember. I’d always been in excellent health.”
“Thanks, baby,” Larry said softly. He studied Macklin now, a hard angry line about his mouth.
“It fits everybody but you. Everyone’s sick, everyone met a stranger who for no reason at all helped him out of a jam. You stutter, Macklin, and it’s a recent development, isn’t it?”
“I’ve always stuttered,” Macklin shouted furiously.
“The hell you have,” Larry said. “And how about your stranger? When did you meet him?”
“You’re out of your head,” Macklin said. “You’re so damn eager to prove something that you want us all to invent stories to support your idea. And, what by the way, is your idea? Supposing you’re right. We’re all sick, we all met strangers who helped us out—okay, assume that. What the hell does that prove, anyway?” “It won’t prove anything,” Larry admitted wearily. “But it leads to a guess, a hypothesis, if you will, which might explain what’s happened. I’ve been looking for a conclusion which fits all the facts, and I’ve got one.” “Well, what is it?”
“I’ll tell you when you decide to be honest with us,” Larry said, and walked back into his room.
Valerie looked at Macklin. “I hope you’re not just being stubborn,” she said.
On the last day—the day of release according to the anonymous voice—Larry called everyone together again. His face was pale, and there were deep lines of fatigue in his face. He stared bitterly at Macklin. “I’m going to tell you what I’ve been thinking,” he said.
“You aren’t going to force me to lie,” Macklin said; but he too had changed in the last few days. There was a haunted, worried tone under the ring of his voice.
“Okay, here it is,” Larry said quietly. He took a long, deep breath, and glanced from face to face. “I think we’ve been kidnapped by Martians.”
Valerie began to laugh, but the sound of it was tinny and foolish in the silence. She stopped, coloring slightly, and frowned at the group. “Well, did you believe that?” she asked, of no one in particular.
“Of course not,” Macklin said quickly; too quickly.
“All right, you’re entitled to say it’s ridiculous,” Larry said. “But first, listen: The men who abducted us, the voice we heard, were not peculiar to any humans we’ve known. The men had faces like ciphers, the voice was like something coming from a machine. That’s where I started: with the idea that perhaps these people weren’t from Earth. Okay, we know Mars is inhabited. So maybe they were from Mars. Next question was why? Why would they go to all this trouble? Ten years ago the Martians approached our planet in a spaceship. They were friendly, but disinterested. They didn’t land. So why would they come back now to conduct this outlandish experiment?”
“Well, there’s no answer to that,” Patience said, after a pause. “Our government did invite them to land, after all.”
“Our government said it invited them to land,” Larry corrected her quickly. “Remember that. We really never knew what they said. Only what our government told us.”
“You think they’d lie to us?” Macklin said.
“I’m not thinking of anything now but what we know. And the facts were these: our planet trained guns on the Martians’ ships, and some kind of exchange took place. Now look at the situation. We badly needed all the hel
p we might have got from a civilization sufficiently advanced to have conquered the problems of space travel. We were trying to get off the floor after The Last War, and were in sad shape. But the Martians never landed. Why? We were told they just didn’t care to—after they’d come millions of miles across space to our planet. Isn’t that illogical? We needed them, they wanted to come here—but back they went. Why?”
There was no answer; only an uneasy shifting of many feet.
“Okay, here’s my guess. Our scientists knew that the Martians were dangerous to Earth. How they knew this is beside the point. The fact that the Martians were prevented from landing supports the conclusion. Now in what way were the Martians dangerous to us? Not, obviously, through force, since we were able to hold them checked with our weapons. What other way could they hurt us?” Larry stared about the circle of faces. “They could only hurt us by physical contact.”
“You mean—by infecting us?” Patience said.
“Yes, by infecting us,” Larry said. “It’s the only conclusion which makes sense out of this charade. Now, get back to us: we’ve been infected, in some manner. Five years ago—not ‘several’ or ‘six or eight’—five years ago we were approached by strangers, by strangers who did us a kind deed so that they could spend time with us and do whatever was necessary to infect us with the disease they carry. And from that time on we’ve been in a decline.”
“How the hell did they get here?” Macklin demanded.
“They must have landed secretly,” Larry said. “How, I haven’t the slightest idea. But they landed, and they made carriers out of us, I’m sure. Now, they’ve picked us up again—why, I’m not sure. Perhaps we’ve carried a repressed virus for five years. Perhaps it needs a booster of some sort before it becomes contagious. Perhaps the booster has been in the food or drink they’ve given us. But of this I’m sure: they’ll release us today as they promised, and we’ll spread this sickness across Earth.”
“It—it just doesn’t seem possible,” Patience said.
Collected Fiction (1940-1963) Page 298
