by Chad Oliver
Johnston puffed an explosion of blue smoke. “Bah,” he said fervently. “Junk and balderdash. Use your head, man.”
“I’m trying to,” Shackelford said, and meant it. The cigarette burned his fingers and he ground it out in a marine shell on the desk. “I need some facts….”
“You’ve got facts, son. Facts are nothing—you’ll have to use them, d’you see? You come waltzing in here with a story about giants and then you talk about little green men. The first step, d’you see, is to treat the data with some respect. At the very least you should postulate big green men.”
Shackelford watched him for a smile that wasn’t forthcoming. “It’s a little hard to do,” he said, lighting another cigarette. “Somehow, when you talk about giants—even when you see them with your own eyes—you can’t treat them seriously. They’re something out of fairyland, out of Jack and the Beanstalk, out of corny movies and screwy fiction….”
Johnston impaled him with his pipe. “Exactly,” he said. “Exactly. And go on from there, son. The big question, the one that never gets asked in science nowadays, is: why? Why can’t you take them seriously? Who or what has conditioned you so that you can’t even carry out a logical inquiry about a so-called giant? This is important, and I suggest you think about it.”
Shackelford thought about it, his mind in a turmoil. He remembered once during the war, when he had been on leave in Cincinnati, he had gotten on a bus and sat down right next to a man who was an exact double for Adolf Hitler, complete to the last hair on his moustache and the straight black hair on the forehead. They had smiled at each other, and he had paid the man no further attention. Impossible, of course—but what if the man had been Hitler?
“There’s even some evidence in what we loftily refer to as respectable scientific annals,” Johnston continued evenly, “and you might also reflect a moment on what is considered respectable science, and why. The study of evolution has shown that a tendency toward size increase is readily discernible. Take our own species, for example. That little insectivore that started things off was a couple of inches long, and here we sit. And the gorilla is bigger than we are, you know. There’s nothing fantastic about it at all—we’re giants, you and I, in the animal kingdom, and what’s another twelve inches?”
Shackelford waited, listening. When Johnston talked, you forgot all about his gnomelike personality; you knew you were in contact with a mind.
“To be more specific, I presume you’ve read Weidenreich?”
“Well, he wrote a lot—”
“Nonsense. I mean the Weidenreich—the monograph, Giant Early Man from Java and South China, and the book, Apes, Giants, and Man. Here, by heaven, we have the best physical anthropologist who ever lived, and he tells about the teeth of Gigantopithecus blacki—three humanoid teeth from the early Pleistocene, and teeth with a mass six times larger than modern man’s, and three times as big as those of any anthropoid or fossil man. You’ve read it?”
“Well, yes—”
“Bah. They’ve all read it, and what’s the difference? They know Weidenreich was the best there was, they know he’s got all the evidence he needs, but it doesn’t fit the current dogma and so it never even gets mentioned anymore. That’s science for you, my boy, and don’t you ever forget it.”
Shackelford waited a minute, thinking. The chill in the room deepened. “Then you think—”
“Of course. Do you have to have it announced by the government before you believe it? The masters of this planet are not men as we usually think of them. They are not like us, any more than Neanderthals were like us. They’re alien all right—but they don’t come from a planet called Blotz out near Capella. They come from right here on Earth, my friend, and they’ve been here as long as we have.”
Shackelford sat there in the little room, his cigarette in his hand, and he thought: Man, proud man, strutting and preening on his little stage—an idiot ape, not seeing the bars, not seeing the cage….
“But what are you saying?” he demanded, knowing as he said it that he was only trying to reassure himself, reorient himself, get rid of the facts by tossing them out the door. “How can you possibly know all this? Where’s the evidence?”
Frank Johnston laughed shortly. He gestured at the crumpled newspaper lying on his desk, with its big black headlines and its homey philosophies. “That,” he said, “is a newspaper. I suggest that you read one sometime.”
“You know more about all this than you’re telling, I imagine.”
“I’ve told more than I should know, my boy, let’s put it that way. And I should know better than to tell as much as I have. I’m not going to draw you any pictures, Bill. I’ve given you a few hints, but you’ll have to take them from there. You’ll have to come to your own conclusions, and then make your own decisions, just as I have had to do.” He smiled wryly. “I predict you’ll have some help.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Frank Johnston puffed on his pipe and said nothing.
“And how about that plastic disc? What does it mean? Why was it stolen from me?” Shackelford was on his feet now, angry, bewildered. Who did Johnston think he was, anyhow, to grant or hold back information like a little tin god?
“Take it easy, son,” the old man said, not unkindly. “You’ll find these things out soon enough, if you don’t already know them.”
“Already know them? I don’t know anything. If there’s some sort of a conspiracy—if we’re just pawns in some cosmic chess game—if all this is true—then why don’t we do something about it?” Shackelford clenched his fists. “We can’t just sit by and be treated like cattle. We’re men, we can do something, anything!”
Frank Johnston smiled wryly. “What?” he asked. “Perhaps we could phone it in to the Associated Press as a scoop, hey?”
Shackelford hesitated. He had so little to go on, so little data—what could he possibly do with it? He tried to calm down, to think. He told himself that his little discovery hadn’t upset the universe, after all—everything was just as it had been before….
“I’ve said too much,” Frank Johnston told him, heaving himself to his feet and adjusting his spectacles. “I won’t say anything else, and of course I’ll deny saying anything at all if you repeat any of this. You’ve got some big decisions to make, boy, and I suggest you make them before you go any further. It’s a little easier to cross the ocean if you stop long enough to get on a boat first, instead of trying to make one as you swim along.”
Shackelford picked up the little plastic disc and put it back in his pocket. “I’ll see you again,” he said.
“I’ll deny everything I’ve said, Bill,” the old man said slowly. “I can’t help you any further, and you’d be wasting your time to come back to me. You’ll have to go your own way, as I went mine. You’ll understand, before you’re through. Just use your head, boy, just use your head.”
Shackelford turned to go, more confused than ever.
“By the way, Bill,” asked Frank Johnston, “how tall are you?”
Shackelford whirled and stared at the little man who stood behind him smoking his smelly pipe. He stared at him in blank consternation, tried to speak, and couldn’t.
Shaking and afraid, he left the room.
Bill Shackelford walked across the campus and tried to tell himself that it didn’t matter. It was evening now, and the long, soft shadows were creeping along the still sun-warm cement walks. An easy, refreshing breeze whispered out of the north. What difference did it make whether man controlled his own destiny or not? The knowledge that he was only a passenger on the train, and not the engineer, didn’t really change anything. He was still where he was, with a life to live and a chance for happiness. Nothing has changed, he told himself, screamed at himself. It’s all just like it was before.
But he couldn’t fool himself.
Something had changed.
V
Bill Shackelford blinked sleepily when the alarm exploded, and fumbled over with his righ
t hand and depressed the stud. The buzzing came to a merciful halt and he sat up and stretched. These eight o’clock classes were hell on wheels, he thought, but they were the traditional initiation rites for the new instructors.
“Wake up, hon,” he mumbled, still half-asleep himself. There was no answer and he looked over at the other bed.
Dawn wasn’t there.
He was startled for a moment, then decided that she must have gotten up early to fix breakfast. He hauled himself out of bed and into the shower, shaved and dressed, purposely selecting the loudest tie he owned in order to show the class that he was relatively human despite the fact that he taught college. He lit a cigarette, reminding himself again as he did so that he was smoking too much, and walked down through the hall of their small house, passed through the cubbyhole that the real estate man had proudly assured them was a dining room, and entered the kitchen with a wisecrack on his lips.
The remark died before it was spoken. Dawn wasn’t there, either, and the kitchen was cold and sterile.
“Dawn,” he called, a tight little knot of ice forming in the pit of his stomach.
No answer. The house pressed in around him, and it felt empty. He knew it was empty. There is nothing a man can sense more intuitively than an empty house, and he knew that his senses weren’t playing tricks on him.
Slowly, holding himself in check, he went back to the bedroom and looked at her bed. It hadn’t been slept in—but she had gone to bed there last night. He looked in the closet, not knowing what he was looking for. Her clothes were still there, including the green print dress she had worn yesterday. He remembered that she had placed it on the chair in the bedroom when she had gone to bed….
“Dawn,” he said flatly, not even knowing that he spoke aloud. “Dawn.”
She was gone, and he knew he would never see her again. Irrationally, he thought of the little plastic disc. The disc that he had placed in a box under his cot in Mexico, the disc that had vanished….
He sat down on the bed. He could phone the police, of course. He could report his wife as missing. He tried to think, and couldn’t. His memory of the last two weeks was curiously blurred. He remembered the meeting with Johnston in Texas quite clearly, and after that—well, he remembered and he didn’t remember. He shook his head, trying to clear it. Dawn had been with him last night, he was sure of that, of course. But details escaped him. What had they done? He couldn’t quite remember….
He decided not to phone the police, not yet. He refused to break down. He forced his mind into other channels. He made himself do routine things. He walked back to the kitchen, heated some water, made himself a cup of instant coffee, and drank it all. He had already finished it before he remembered that he liked cream and sugar in it.
It wouldn’t do to stop and think. He had to keep doing something. He walked through the silent living room and went outside, locking the door behind him. He looked back and shuddered.
The house was so quiet.
He opened the garage. His blue Chevrolet was still there. He got inside, backed the car out, and drove down the street toward the university, hardly seeing where he was going. Dawn’s perfume was still in the car, but it faded even as he drove.
His fists were tight on the steering wheel and it was hard for him to see. No sound escaped him, but he knew that he was crying.
“Dawn,” he said again—and that was all.
When he walked into his office, Don Ransom was already there.
“Bill,” he said, rising in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
Shackelford stared at him and tried to smile. “I work here,” he said. “Remember?”
“Of course. But—”
“But what?” Shackelford walked over to the fellow anthropologist with whom he shared his office. He touched him, and inwardly cursed his shaking hand. “I do work here, don’t I, Don? I know this sounds nuts, but I’m so mixed up….”
Don Ransom placed him carefully in a chair, then closed and locked the door. He winked and extracted a pint of Scotch from the bottom drawer in his desk. He unscrewed the cap and handed it to Shackelford.
“Old tribal custom,” he explained. “I think you need this.”
Shackelford accepted the bottle gratefully and took a long drink. The Scotch slipped down to his empty stomach like warm oil, and diffused a glow of warmth through him. He felt a little better.
“Look, Don,” he said slowly, “what’s happened? Just pretend I’m suffering from shock or something, and give me the lowdown. Why shouldn’t I have come to my own office this morning?”
Don Ransom looked at him, frowned, and chewed his lower lip. “You’re pretty wrought up, Bill,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want to go over to the health service for a checkup, or take a room somewhere for a while?”
“I’m sure,” Shackelford said, closing his eyes. “I’m okay, Don.”
“Well,” Ransom began, and paused. He swallowed hard, and then began to speak in a low, methodical voice. “Since your wife died in Mexico, you’ve been pretty upset, naturally. Nobody’s seen much of you for the last couple of weeks, and of course we told you that you could forget about teaching until you wanted to come back. I was going to handle your classes….”
“That’s enough,” Shackelford said, opening his eyes. He began to feel very sick. “Dawn’s dead, then?”
“Old man, you’d really better let me run you down to the doctor—you’ve had a rough time.”
Shackelford shook his head. “I’m okay now, Don,” he said. “I just wanted to hear you say it. It—it takes a little getting used to.”
There was a long, awkward pause, and Shackelford realized that he had put his friend into a thoroughly uncomfortable position. “What am I down for this semester?” he asked, keeping his voice carefully matter-of-fact.
“Well, you’ve got Anthro 1, two sections, and Anthro 2. They all meet today. Tomorrow, you’ve got Archeology of North America. As I said, it’s no trouble for me to carry on with them for a while until you get to feeling better….”
“I feel great,” Shackelford said, with a wry smile. “Never better. Today’s the first day of classes, I take it?”
“Yes.”
“I won’t need to prepare anything, then. Just walk in and give them the old pep talk, and tell them that if they’re interested in dinosaurs they’re in the wrong room, hmmm?”
“Sure, Bill. But do you really think—”
“I think I’d better, Don, or I’ll wind up in a ward somewhere. Thanks a lot for everything, and I’ll explain it all to you one of these years.”
He went down to the men’s room and was violently sick. Then he combed his hair neatly, took a drink of water, and walked into the classroom to begin another semester.
Coming home that night to an empty house was the toughest part of all, and it took him two hours to do it. But when he got there, the house wasn’t empty.
Thomas Fitz-James was there waiting for him, deep in a chair.
“Good evening,” the huge man said, putting aside the book he had been glancing through and rising courteously to his feet, for all the world as though their positions had been reversed and this was his own house. “I’ve been thumbing over several of your books and find them quite amusing. Absurd, of course, but amusing.”
Shackelford found himself taking the situation in his stride; nothing, he told himself, would ever surprise him again. “I’m happy that you find our little efforts entertaining,” he said wryly. “We strive to please.” Even as he spoke, he thought: thus quickly do our value systems, the principles around which we build our lives, readapt themselves to the Unknown.
“Your liquor is really first rate,” Fitz-James commented, raising his glass in a toast. “Won’t you join me?”
Shackelford would and did. He poured himself a shot of straight Kentucky bourbon, dropped in a few ice cubes, and sat down in the chair facing Fitz-James. How often, he wondered, had he and Dawn sat across from each other in the ev
ening, sharing a drink….
“Well,” he said, “what brings you here? Come back for your little disc?”
Fitz-James laughed heartily, completely at his ease. “No, Bill,” he said, lighting up his pipe. “I came here because I believe you are an intelligent man.”
“Well, thanks,” said Shackelford. “Do I get a gold star in my hymn book?”
Fitz-James shook his head reprovingly. “Come now,” he suggested, “you have every reason to be bitter, Bill, but I’m sure that you realize that that sort of talk will get you nowhere.”
Shackelford sipped his drink, amazed at his own coolness. He leaned forward. “Can you bring her back?” he asked evenly. “Can you?”
“No, Bill.”
Shackelford drained his drink and poured himself another. “Have your say, then,” he said, “and then get out.”
Fitz-James shook his head, his gray hair silver under the lamp light. The man dwarfed the chair he sat in, but he was so perfectly proportioned that you felt your eyes were simply playing tricks on you. “Don’t be difficult, Bill,” he said. “I’ve come here at considerable inconvenience to tell you a story. You know enough now so that I need waste no time in convincing you of its truth, and I think you ought to hear it.”
“Why?”
“It will save you a great deal of wasted effort, for one thing. It will save us a great deal of work, for another. Also, I rather like you. Why play on the losing team, Bill?”
Shackelford stared at the man. The starkly incredible part of it all, he realized suddenly, was that Fitz-James wasn’t kidding. It actually seemed quite logical to the giant that he should murder a man’s wife and then drop in for a sociable chat. Shackelford repressed a shudder.
“Say what you have to say,” he said.
Thomas Fitz-James leaned forward, smiling. “It’s rather a long story,” he apologized, “but I’m sure that it is one that you, as an anthropologist, will find interesting.” He puffed slowly on his pipe, watching the blue smoke curl upward through the light. “It all began a long, long time ago …”
