“Then there came a day,” said Captain Littlepage, leaning toward me with a strange look in his eyes, and whispering quickly. “The men all swore they wouldn’t stay any longer; the man on watch early in the morning gave the alarm, and they all put off in the boat and got a little way out to sea. Those folks, or whatever they were, come about ‘em like bats; all at once they raised incessant armies, and come as if to drive ‘em back to sea. They stood thick at the edge o’ the water like the ridges o’ grim war; no thought o’ flight, none of retreat. Sometimes a standing fight, then soaring on main wing tormented all the air. And when they’d got the boat out o’ reach o’ danger, Gaffett said they looked back, and there was the town again, standing up just as they’d seen it first, comin’ on the coast. Say what you might, they all believed’t was a kind of waiting-place between this world an’ the next.”
The captain had sprung to his feet in his excitement, and made excited gestures, but he still whispered huskily.
“Sit down, sir,” I said as quietly as I could, and he sank into his chair quite spent.
“Gaffett thought the officers were hurrying home to report and to fit out a new expedition when they were all lost. At the time, the men got orders not to talk over what they had seen,” the old man explained presently in a more natural tone.
“Weren’t they all starving, and wasn’t it a mirage or something of that sort?” I ventured to ask. But he looked at me blankly.
“Gaffett had got so that his mind ran on nothing else,” he went on. “The ship’s surgeon let fall an opinion to the captain, one day, that ‘t was some o’ the light and the magnetic currents that let them see those folks. T wa’n’t a right-feeling part of the world, anyway; they had to battle with the compass to make it serve, an’ everything seemed to go wrong. Gaffett had worked it out in his own mind that they was all common ghosts, but the conditions were unusual favorable for seeing them. He was always talking about the Ge’graphical Society, but he never took proper steps, as I view it now, and stayed right there at the mission. He was a good deal crippled, and thought they’d confine him in some jail of a hospital. He said he was waiting to find the right men to tell, somebody bound north. Once in a while they stopped there to leave a mail or something. He was set in his notions, and let two or three proper explorin’ expeditions go by him because he didn’t like their looks; but when I was there he had got restless, fearin’ he might be taken away or something. He had all his directions written out straight as a string to give the right ones. I wanted him to trust ‘em to me, so I might have something to show, but he wouldn’t. I suppose he’s dead now. I wrote to him, an’ I done all I could. ‘T will be a great exploit some o’ these days.”
I assented absent-mindedly, thinking more just then of my companion’s alert, determined look and the seafaring, ready aspect that had come to his face; but at this moment there fell a sudden change, and the old, pathetic, scholarly look returned. Behind me hung a map of North America, and I saw, as I turned a little, that his eyes were fixed upon the northernmost region and their careful recent outlines with a look of bewilderment.
Sketches Among
The Ruins of My Mind
PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER
1
June 1, 1980
It was now 11:00 P.M. and I am afraid to go to bed. I am not alone. The whole world is afraid of sleep.
This morning I got up at 6:30 A.M., as I do every Wednesday. While I shaved and showered, I considered the case of the state of Illinois against Joseph Lankers, accused of murder. It was beginning to stink as if it were a three-day-old fish. My star witness would undoubtedly be charged with perjury.
I dressed, went downstairs, and kissed Carole good morning. She poured me a cup of coffee and said, “The paper’s late.”
That put me in a bad temper. I need both coffee and the morning newspaper to get me started.
Twice during breakfast, I left the table to look outside. Neither paper nor newsboy had appeared.
At seven, Carole went upstairs to wake up Mike and Tom, aged ten and eight respectively. Saturdays and Sundays they rise early even though I’d like them to stay in bed so their horsing around won’t wake me. School days they have to be dragged out.
The third time I looked out of the door, Joe Gale, the paperboy, was next door. My paper lay on the stoop.
I felt disorientated, as if I’d walked into the wrong courtroom or the judge had given my client, a shoplifter, a life sentence. I was out of phase with the world. This couldn’t be Sunday. So what was the Sunday issue, bright in its covering of the colored comic section, doing there? Today was Wednesday.
I stepped out to pick it up and saw old Mrs. Douglas, my neighbor to the left. She was looking at the front page of her paper as if she could not believe it.
The world rearranged itself into the correct lines of polarization. My thin panic dwindled into nothing. I thought, the Star has really goofed this time. That’s what comes from depending so much on a computer to put it together. One little short circuit, and Wednesday’s paper comes out in Sunday’s format.
The Star’s night shift must have decided to let it go through; it was too late for them to rectify the error.
I said, “Good morning, Mrs. Douglas! Tell me, what day is it?”
“The twenty-eighth of May,” she said. “I think . . .”
I walked out into the yard and shouted after Joe. Reluctantly, he wheeled his bike around.
“What is this?” I said, shaking the paper at him. “Did the Star screw up?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Franham,” he said. “None of us knows, honest to God.”
By ‘us’ he must have meant the other boys he met in the morning at the paper drop.
“We all thought it was Wednesday. That’s why I’m late. We couldn’t understand what was happening, so we talked a long time and then Bill Ambers called the office. Gates, he’s the circulation manager, was just as bongo as we was.”
“Were,” I said.
“What?” he said.
“We were, not was, just as bongo, whatever that means,” I said.
“For God’s sake, Mr. Franham, who cares!” he said.
“Some of us still do,” I said. “All right, what did Gates say?”
“He was upset as hell,” Joe said. “He said heads were gonna roll. The night staff had fallen asleep for a couple of hours, and some joker had diddled up the computers, or . . .”
“That’s all it is?” I said. I felt relieved.
When I went inside, I got out the papers for the last four days from the cycler. I sat down on the sofa and scanned them.
I didn’t remember reading them. I didn’t remember the past four days at all!
Wednesday’s headline was: MYSTERIOUS OBJECT ORBITS EARTH.
I did remember Tuesday’s articles, which stated that the big round object was heading for a point between the Earth and the moon. It had been detected three weeks ago when it was passing through the so-called asteroid belt. It was at that time traveling approximately 57,000 kilometers per hour, relative to the sun. Then it had slowed down, had changed course several times, and it became obvious that, unless it changed course again, it was going to come near Earth.
By the time it was eleven million miles away, the radars had defined its size and shape, though not its material composition. It was perfectly spherical and exactly half a kilometer in diameter. It did not reflect much light. Since it had altered its path so often, it had to be artificial. Strange hands, or strange somethings, had built it.
I remember the panic and the many wild articles in the papers and magazines and the TV specials made overnight to discuss its implications.
It had failed to make any response whatever to the radio and laser signals sent from Earth. Many scientists said that it probably contained no living passengers. It had to be of interstellar origin. The sentient beings of some planet circling some star had sent it out equipped with automatic equipment of some sort. No being could live long enough
to travel between the stars. It would take over four years to get from the nearest star to Earth even if the object could travel at the speed of light, and that was impossible. Even one-sixteenth the speed of light seemed incredible because of the vast energy requirements. No, this thing had been launched with only electromechanical devices as passengers, had attained its top speed, turned off its power, and coasted until it came within the outer reaches of our solar system.
According to the experts, it must be unable to land on Earth because of its size and weight. It was probably just a surveying vessel, and after it had taken some photographs and made some radar/laser sweeps, it would proceed to wherever it was supposed to go, probably back to an orbit around its home planet.
2
Last Wednesday night, the president had told us that we had nothing to fear. And he’d tried to end on an optimistic note. At least, that’s what Wednesday’s paper said. The beings who had sent The Ball must be more advanced than we, and they must have many good things to give us. And we might be able to make beneficial contributions to them. Like what? I thought.
Some photographs of The Ball, taken from one of the manned orbiting laboratories, were on the second page. It looked just like a giant black billiard ball. One TV comic had suggested that the other side might bear a big white 8. I may have thought that this was funny last Wednesday, but I didn’t think so now. It seemed highly probable to me that The Ball was connected with the four-days’ loss of memory. How, I had no idea.
I turned on the 7:30 news channels, but they weren’t much help except in telling us that the same thing had happened to everybody all over the world. Even those in the deepest diamond mines or submarines had been affected. The president was in conference, but he’d be making a statement over the networks sometime today. Meantime, it was known that no radiation of any sort had been detected emanating from The Ball. There was no evidence whatsoever that the object had caused the loss of memory. Or, as the jargon-crazy casters were already calling it, “mem-loss.”
I’m a lawyer, and I like to think logically, not only about what has happened but what might happen. So I extrapolated on the basis of what little evidence, or data, there was.
On the first of June, a Sunday, we woke up with all memory of May 31 back through May 28 completely gone. We had thought that yesterday was the twenty-seventh and that this morning was that of the twenty-eighth.
If The Ball had caused this, why had it only taken four days of our memory? I didn’t know. Nobody knew. But perhaps The Ball, its devices, that is, were limited in scope. Perhaps they couldn’t strip off more than four days of memory at a time from everybody on Earth.
Postulate that this is the case. Then, what if the same thing happens tomorrow? We’ll wake up tomorrow, June 2, with all memory of yesterday, June 1, and three more days of May, the twenty-seventh through the twenty-fifth, gone. Eight days in one solid stretch.
And if this ghastly thing should occur the following day, June 3, we’ll lose another four days. All memory of June 2 will have disappeared. With it will go the memory of three more days, from May twenty-fourth through the twenty-second. Twelve days in all from June 2 backward!
And the next day? June 3 lost, too, along with May 21 through May 19. Sixteen days of a total blank. And the next day? And the next?
No, it’s too hideous, and too fantastic, to think about.
While we were watching TV, Carole and the boys besieged me with questions. She was frantic. The boys seemed to be enjoying the mystery. They’d awakened expecting to go to school, and now they were having a holiday.
To all their questions, I said, “I don’t know. Nobody knows.”
I wasn’t going to frighten them with my extrapolations. Besides, I didn’t believe them myself.
“You’d better call up your office and tell them you can’t come in today,” Carole said. “Surely Judge Payne’ll call off the session today.”
“Carole, it’s Sunday, not Wednesday, remember?” I said.
She cried for a minute. After she’d wiped away the tears, she said, “That just it! I don’t remember! My God, what’s happening?”
The newscasters also reported that the White House was flooded with telegrams and phone calls demanding that rockets with H-bomb warheads be launched again. The Ball. The specials, which came on after the news, were devote to The Ball. These had various authorities, scientists, military men, ministers, and a few science-fiction authors. None of them radiated confidence, but they were all temperate in their approach to the problem. I suppose they had been picked for their level-headedness. The networks had screened out the hotheads and the crackpots. They didn’t want to be generating any more hysteria.
But Anel Robertson, a fundamentalist faith healer with a powerful radio/TV station of his own, had already declared that The Ball was a judgment of God on a sinful planet. It was The Destroying Angel. I knew that because Mrs. Douglas, no fanatic but certainly a zealot, had phoned me and told me to dial him in. Robertson had been speaking for an hour, she said, and he was going to talk all day.
She sounded frightened, and yet, beneath the fear, was a note of joy. Obviously, she didn’t think that she was going to be among the goats when the last days arrived. She’d be right in there with the whitest of the sheep. My curiosity finally overcame my repugnance for Robertson. I dialed the correct number but got nothing except a pattern. Later today, I found out his station had been shut down for some infraction of FCC regulations. At least, that was the explanation given on the news, but I suspected that the government regarded him as a hysteria monger.
At eleven, Carole reminded me that it was Sunday and that if we didn’t hurry, we’d miss church.
The Forest Hill Presbyterian has a good attendance, but its huge parking lot has always been adequate. This morning, we had to park two blocks up the street and walk to church. Every seat was filled. We had to stand in the anteroom near the front door. The crowd stank of fear. Their faces were pale and set; their eyes, big. The air conditioning labored unsuccessfully to carry away the heat and humidity of the packed and sweating bodies. The choir was loud but quavering; their “Rock of Ages” was crumbling.
Dr. Boynton would have prepared his sermon on Saturday afternoon, as he always did. But today he spoke impromptu. Perhaps, he said, this loss of memory had been caused by The Ball. Perhaps there were living beings in it who had taken four days away from us, not as a hostile move but merely to demonstrate their immense powers. There was no reason to anticipate that we would suffer another loss of memory. These beings merely wanted to show us that we were hopelessly inferior in science and that we could not launch a successful attack against them.
“What the hell’s he doing?” I thought. “Is he trying to scare us to death?”
Boynton hastened then to say that beings with such powers, of such obvious advancement, would not, could not, be hostile. They would be on too high an ethical plane for such evil things as war, unless they were attacked, of course. They would regard us as beings who had not yet progressed to their level but had the potentiality, the God-given potentiality, to be brought up to a high level. He was sure that, when they made contact with us, they would tell us that all was for the best.
They would tell us that we must, like it or not, become true Christians. At least, we must all, Buddhists, Moslems and so forth, become Christian in spirit, whatever our religion or lack thereof. They would teach us how to live as brothers and sisters, how to be happy, how to truly love. Assuredly, God had sent The Ball, since nothing happened without His knowledge and consent. He had sent these beings, whoever they were, not Destroying Angels but as Sharers of Peace, Love and Prosperity.
That last, with the big P, seemed to settle down most of the congregation. Boynton had not forgotten that most of his flock were of the big-business and professional classes. Nor had he forgotten that, inscribed on the arch about the church entrance was, THEY SHALL PROSPER WHO LOVE THEE.
3
We poured out into a b
right warm June afternoon. I looked up into the sky but could see no Ball, of course. The news media had said that, despite its great distance from Earth, it was circling Earth every sixty-five minutes. It wasn’t in a free fall orbit. It was applying continuous power to keep it on its path, although there were no detectable emanations of energy from it.
The memory loss had occurred all over the world between 1:00 A.M. and 2:00 A.M. Central Standard Time. Those who were not already asleep fell asleep for a min mum of an hour. This had, of course, caused hundreds of thousands of accidents. Planes not on automatic pilot had crashed, trains had collided or been derailed, ships had sunk, and more than two hundred thousand had been killed or seriously injured. At least a million vehicle drivers and passengers had been injured. The ambulance and hospital services had found it impossible to handle the situation. The fact that their personnel had been asleep for at least an hour and that it had taken them some time to recover from their confusion on awakening had aggravated the situation considerably. Many had died who might have lived if immediate service had been available.
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