Strangeness

by Thomas M Disch

  There were many fires, too, the largest of which were still raging in Tokyo, Athens, Naples, Harlem, and Baltimore.

  I thought. Would beings on a high ethical plane have put us to sleep knowing that so many people would be killed and badly hurt?

  One curious item was about two rangers who had been thinning a herd of elephants in Kenya. While sleeping, they had been trampled to death. Whatever it is that’s causing this, it’s very specific. Only human beings are affected.

  The optimism, which Boynton had given us in the church, melted in the sun. Many must have been thinking, as I was, that if Boynton’s words were prophetic, we were helpless. Whatever the things in The Ball, whether living or mechanical, decided to do for us, or to us, we were no longer masters of our own fate. Some of them must have been thinking about what the technologically superior whites had done to various aboriginal cultures. All in the name of progress and God.

  But this would be, must be, different. I thought. Boynton must be right. Surely such an advanced people would not be as we were. Even we are not what we were in the bad old days. We have learned.

  But then an advanced technology does not necessarily accompany an advanced ethics.

  “Or whatever,” I murmured.

  “What did you say, dear?” Carole said.

  I said, “Nothing,” and shook her hand off my arm. She had clung to it tightly all through the services, as if I were the rock of the ages. I walked over to Judge Payne, who’s sixty years old but looked this morning as if he were eighty. The many broken veins on his face were red, but underneath them was a grayishness.

  I said hello and then asked him if things would be normal tomorrow. He didn’t seem to know what I was getting at, so I said, “The trial will start on time tomorrow?”

  “Oh, yes, the trial,” he said. “Of course, Mark.”

  He laughed whinnyingly and said, “Provided that we all haven’t forgotten today when we wake up tomorrow.”

  That seemed incredible, and I told him so.

  “It’s not law school that makes good lawyers,” he said. “It’s experience. And experience tells us that the same damned thing, with some trifling variations, occurs over and over, day after day. So what makes you think this evil thing won’t happen again? And if it does, how’re you going to learn from it when you can’t remember it?”

  I had no logical argument, and he didn’t want to talk any more. He grabbed his wife by the arm, and they waded through the crowd as if they thought they were going to step in a sinkhole and drown in a sea of bodies.

  This evening, I decided to record on tape what’s happened today. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my memory to keep, if I forget while I sleep . . .

  Most of the rest of today, I’ve spent before the TV. Carole wasted hours trying to get through the lines to her friends for phone conversations. Three-fourths of the time, she got a busy signal. There were bulletins on the TV asking people not to use the phone except for emergencies, but she paid no attention to it until about eight o’clock. A TV bulletin, for the sixth time in an hour, asked that the lines be kept open. About twenty fires had broken out over the town, and the firemen couldn’t be informed of them because of the tie-up. Calls to hospitals had been similarly blocked.

  I told Carole to knock it off, and we quarreled. Our suppressed hysteria broke loose, and the boys retreated upstairs to their room behind a closed door. Eventually, Carole started crying and threw herself into my arms, and then I cried. We kissed and made up. The boys came down looking as if we had failed them, which we had. For them, it was no longer a fun-adventure from some science-fiction story.

  Mike said, “Dad, could you help me go over my arithmetic lessons?”

  I didn’t feel like it, but I wanted to make it up to him for that savage scene. I said sure and then, when I saw what he had to do, I said, “But all this? What’s the matter with your teacher? I never saw so much . . .”

  I stopped. Of course, he had forgotten all he’d learned in the last three days of school. He had to do his lessons all over again.

  This took us until eleven, though we might have gone faster if I hadn’t insisted on watching the news every half-hour for at least ten minutes. A full thirty minutes were used listening to the president, who came on at 9:30. He had nothing to add to what the newsmen had said except that, within thirty days, The Ball would be completely dealt with—one way or another. If it didn’t make some response to our signals within two days, then we would send up a four-man expedition, which would explore The Ball.

  If it can get inside, I thought.

  If, however, The Ball should commit any more hostile acts, then the United States would immediately launch, in conjunction with other nations, rockets armed with H-bombs.

  Meanwhile, would we all join the president in an interdenominational prayer?

  We certainly would.

  At eleven, we put the kids to bed. Tom went to sleep before we were out of the room. But about half an hour later, as I passed their door, I heard a low voice from the TV. I didn’t say anything to Mike, even if he did have to go to school next day.

  At twelve, I made the first part of this tape.

  But here it is, one minute to one o’clock in the morning. If the same thing happens tonight as happened yesterday, then the nightside hemisphere will be affected first. People in the time zone which bisects the South and North Atlantic oceans and covers the eastern half of Greenland, will fall asleep. Just in case it does happen again, all airplanes have been grounded. Right now, the TV is showing the bridge and the saloon of the trans-Atlantic liner Pax. It’s five o’clock there, but the saloon is crowded. The passengers are wearing party hats and confetti, and balloons are floating everywhere. I don’t know what they could be celebrating. The captain said a little while ago that the ship’s on automatic, but he doesn’t expect a repetition of last night. The interviewer said that the governments of the dayside nations have not been successful keeping people home. We’ve been getting shots from everywhere, the sirens are wailing all over the world, but, except for the totalitarian nations, the streets of the daytime world are filled with cars. The damned fools just didn’t believe it would happen again.

  Back to the bridge and the salon of the ship. My God! They are falling asleep!

  The announcers are repeating warnings. Everybody lie down so they won’t, get hurt by falling. Make sure all home appliances, which might cause fires, are turned off. And so on and so on.

  I’m sitting in a chair with a tilted back. Carole is on the sofa.

  Now I’m on the sofa. Carole just said she wanted to be holding on to me when this horrible thing comes.

  The announcers are getting hysterical. In a few minutes, New York will be hit. The eastern half of South America is under. The central section is going under.

  4

  True date: June 2, 1980. Subjective date: May 25, 1980

  My God! How many times have I said, “My God!” in the last two days?

  I awoke on the sofa beside Carole and Mike. The clock indicated three in the morning. Chris Turner was on the TV. I didn’t know what he was talking about. All I could understand was that he was trying to reassure his viewers that everything was all right and that everything would be explained shortly.

  What was I doing on the sofa? I’d gone to bed about eleven the night of May 24, a Saturday. Carole and I had had a little quarrel because I’d spent all day working on the Lankers case, and she said that I’d promised to take her to see Nova Express. And so I had—if I finished work before eight, which I obviously had not done. So what were we doing on the sofa, where had Mike come from, and what did Turner mean by saying that today was June 2?

  The tape recorder was on the table near me, but it didn’t occur to me to turn it on.

  I shook Carole awake, and we confusedly asked each other what had happened. Finally, Turner’s insistent voice got our attention, and he explained the situation for about the fifth time so far. Later, he said that an alar
m clock placed by his ear had awakened him at two-thirty.

  Carole made some coffee, and we drank four cups apiece. We talked wildly, with occasional breaks to listen to Turner, before we became half-convinced that we had indeed lost all memory of the last eight days. Mike slept on through it, and finally I carried him up to his bed. His TV was still on. Nate Frobisher, Mike’s favorite spieler, was talking hysterically. I turned him off and went back downstairs. I figured out later that Mike had gotten scared and come downstairs to sit with us.

  Dawn found us rereading the papers from May 24 through June 1. It was like getting news from Mars. Carole took a tranquilizer to quiet herself down, but I preferred Wild Turkey. After she’d seen me down six ounces, Carole Sketches Among the Ruins of My Mind said I should lay off the bourbon. I wouldn’t be fit to go to work. I told her that if she thought anybody’d be working today, she was out of her mind.

  At seven, I went out to pick up the paper. It wasn’t there. At a quarter to eight, Joe delivered it. I tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t stop. All he said, as he pedaled away, was, “It ain’t Saturday!”

  I went back in. The entire front page was devoted to The Ball and this morning’s events up to four o’clock. Part of the paper had been set up before one o’clock. According to a notice at the bottom of the page, the staff had awakened about three. It took them an hour to straighten themselves out, and then they’d gotten together the latest news and made up the front page and some of section C. They’d have never made it when they did if it wasn’t for the computer, which printed justified lines from voice input.

  Despite what I’d said earlier, I decided to go to work. First, I had to straighten the boys out. At ten, they went off to school. It seemed to me that it was useless for them to do so. But they were eager to talk with their classmates about this situation. To tell the truth, I wanted to get down to the office and the courthouse for the same reason. I wanted to talk this over with my colleagues. Staying home all day with Carole seemed a waste of time. We just kept saying the same thing over and over again.

  Carole didn’t want me to leave. She was too frightened to stay home by herself. Both our parents are dead, but she does have a sister who lives in Hannah, a small town nearby. I told her it’d do her good to get out of the house. And I just had to get to the courthouse. I couldn’t find out what was happening there because the phone lines were tied up.

  When I went outside to get into my car, Carole ran down after me. Her long blonde hair was straggling; she had big bags under her eyes; she looked like a witch.

  “Mark, Mark!” she said.

  I took my finger off the starter button and said, “What is it?”

  “I know you’ll think I’m crazy, Mark,” she said. “But I’m about to fall apart!”

  “Who isn’t?” I said.

  “Mark,” she said, “what if I go out to my sister’s and then forget how to get back? What if I forget you!”

  “This thing only happens at night,” I said.

  “So far!” she screamed. “So far!”

  “Honey,” I said, “I’ll be home early. I promise. If you don’t want to go, stay here. Go over and talk to Mrs. Knight. I see her looking out her window. She’ll talk your leg off all day.”

  I didn’t tell her to visit any of her close friends, because she didn’t have any. Her best friend had died of cancer last year, and two others with whom she was familiar had moved away.

  “If you do go to your sister’s,” I said, “make a note on a map reminding you where you live and stick it on top of the dashboard, where you can see it.”

  “You son of a bitch,” she said. “It isn’t funny!”

  “I’m not being funny,” I said. “I got a feeling . . .”

  “What about?” she said.

  “Well, we’ll be making notes to ourselves soon. If this keeps up,” I said.

  I thought I was kidding then. Thinking about it later today I see that that is the only way to get orientated in the morning. Well, not the only way, but it’ll have to be the way to get started when you wake up. Put a note where you can’t overlook it, and it’ll tell you to turn on a recording, which will, in turn, summarize the situation. Then you turn on the TV and get some more information.

  I might as well have stayed home. Only half of the courthouse personnel showed up, and they were hopelessly inefficient. Judge Payne wasn’t there and never will be. He’d had a fatal stroke at six that morning while listening to the TV. Walter Barbindale, my partner, said that the judge probably would have had a stroke sometime in the near future, anyway. But this situation must certainly have hastened it.

  “The stock market’s about hit bottom,” he said. “One more day of this, and we’ll have another worldwide depression. Nineteen twenty-nine won’t hold a candle to it. And I can’t even get through to my broker to tell him to sell everything.”

  “If everybody sells, then the market will crash,” I said.

  “Are you hanging onto your stocks?” he said.

  “I’ve been too busy to even think about it,” I said. “You might say I forgot.”

  “That isn’t funny,” he said.

  “That’s what my wife said,” I answered. “But I’m not trying to be funny, though God knows I could use a good laugh. Well, what’re we going to do about Lankers?”

  “I went over some of the records,” he said. “We haven’t got a chance. I tell you, it was a shock finding out, for the second time, mind you, though I don’t remember the first, that our star witness is in jail on a perjury charge.”

  Since all was chaos in the courthouse, it wasn’t much use trying to find out who the judge would be for the new trial for Lankers. To tell the truth, I didn’t much care. There were far more important things to worry about than the fate of an undoubtedly guilty murderer.

  I went to Grover’s Rover Bar, which is a block from the courthouse. As an aside, for my reference or for whoever might be listening to this someday, why am I telling myself things I know perfectly well, like the location of Grover’s? Maybe it’s because I think I might forget them someday.

  Grover’s, at least, I remembered well, as I should, since I’d been going there ever since it was built, five years ago. The air was thick with tobacco and pot smoke and the odors of pot, beer and booze. And noisy. Everybody was talking fast and loud, which is to be expected in a place filled with members of the legal profession. I bellied up to the bar and bought the D.A. a shot of Wild Turkey. We talked about what we’d done that morning, and then he told me he had to release two burglars that day. They’d been caught and jailed two days before. The arresting officers had, of course, filed their reports. But that wasn’t going to be enough when the trial came up. Neither the burglars nor the victims and the officers remembered a thing about the case.

  “Also,” the D.A. said, “at two-ten this morning, the police got a call from the Black Shadow Tavern on Washington Street. They didn’t get there until three-thirty because they were too disorientated to do anything for an hour or more. When they did get to the tavern, they found a dead man. He’d been beaten badly and stabbed in the stomach. Nobody remembered anything, of course. But from what we could piece together, the dead man must’ve gotten into a drunken brawl with a person or persons unknown shortly before 1:00 A.M. Thirty people must’ve witnessed the murder. So we have a murderer or murderers walking the streets today who don’t even remember the killing or anything leading up to it.”

  “They might know they’re guilty if they’d been planning it for a long time,” I said.

  He grinned and said, “But he, or they, won’t be telling anybody. No one except the corpse had blood on him nor did anybody have bruised knuckles. Two were arrested for carrying saps, but so what? They’ll be out soon and nobody, but nobody, can prove they used the saps. The knife was still half-sticking in the deceased’s belly, and his efforts to pull it out destroyed any fingerprints.”

  5

  We talked and drank a lot, and suddenly it was 6:
00 P.M. I was in no condition to drive and had sense enough to know it. I tried calling Carole to come down and get me, but I couldn’t get through. At 6:30 and 7:00, I tried again without success. I decided to take a taxi. But after another drink, I tried again and this time got through.

  “Where’ve you been?” she said. “I called your office, but nobody answered. I was thinking about calling the police.”

  “As if they haven’t got enough to do,” I said. “When did you get home?”

  “You’re slurring,” she said coldly.

  I repeated the question.

  “Two hours ago,” she said.

  “The lines were tied up,” I said. “I tried.”

  “You knew how scared I was, and you didn’t even care,” she said.

  “Can I help it if the D.A. insisted on conducting business at the Rover?” I said. “Besides, I was trying to forget.”

  “Forget what?” she said.

  “Whatever it was I forgot,” I said.

  “You ass!” she screamed. “Take a taxi!”

  The phone clicked off.

  She didn’t make a scene when I got home. She’d decided to play it cool because of the kids, I suppose. She was drinking gin and tonic when I entered, and she said, in a level voice, “You’ll have some coffee. And after a while you can listen to the tape you made yesterday. It’s interesting, but spooky.”