“What tape?” I said.
“Mike was fooling around with it,” she said. “And he found out you’d recorded what happened yesterday.”
“That kid!” I said. “He’s always snooping around. I told him to leave my stuff alone. Can’t a man have any privacy around here?”
“Well, don’t say anything to him,” she said. “He’s upset as it is. Anyway, it’s a good thing he did tun it on. Otherwise, you’d have forgotten all about it. I think you should make a daily record.”
“So you think it’ll happen again?” I said.
She burst into tears. After a moment, I put my arms around her. I felt like crying, too. But she pushed me away, saying, “You stink of rotten whiskey!”
“That’s because it’s mostly bar whiskey,” I said. “I can’t afford Wild Turkey at three dollars a shot.”
I drank four cups of black coffee and munched on some shrimp dip. As an aside, I can’t really afford that, either, since I only make forty-five thousand dollars a year.
When we went to bed, we went to bed. Afterwards Carole said, “I’m sorry, darling, but my heart wasn’t really in it.”
“That wasn’t all,” I said.
“You’ve got a dirty mind,” she said. “What I meant was I couldn’t stop thinking, even while we were doing it, that it wasn’t any good doing it. We won’t remember it tomorrow, I thought.”
“How many do we really remember?” I said. “Sufficient unto the day is the, uh, good thereof.”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t try to fulfill your childhood dream of becoming a preacher,” she said. “You’re a born sinner. You’d have made a lousy minister.”
“Look,” I said, “I remember the especially good ones.
And I’ll never forget our honeymoon. But we need sleep. We haven’t had any to speak of for twenty-four hours. Let’s hit the hay and forget everything until tomorrow. In which case . . .”
She stared at me and then said, “Poor dear, no wonder you’re so belligerently flippant! It’s a defense against fear!”
I slammed my fist into my palm and shouted, “I know! I know! For God’s sake, how long is this going on?”
I went into the bathroom. The face in the mirror looked as if it were trying to flirt with me. The left eye wouldn’t stop winking.
When I returned to the bedroom, Carole reminded me that I’d not made today’s recording. I didn’t want to do it because I was so tired. But the possibility of losing another day’s memory spurred me. No, not another day, I thought. If this occurs tomorrow, I’ll lose another four days. Tomorrow and the three preceding May 25. I’ll wake up June 3 and think it’s the morning of the twenty-second.
I’m making this downstairs in my study. I wouldn’t want Carole to hear some of my comments.
Until tomorrow then. It’s not tomorrow but yesterday that won’t come. I’ll make a note to myself and stick it in a corner of the case which holds my glasses.
6
True date: June 3, 1980
I woke up thinking that today was my birthday, May 22. I rolled over, saw the piece of paper half-stuck from my glasses case, put on my glasses and read the note.
It didn’t enlighten me. I didn’t remember writing the note. And why should I go downstairs and turn on the recorder? But I did so.
As I listened to the machine, my heart thudded as if it were a judge’s gavel. My voice kept fading in and out. Was I going to faint?
And so half of today was wasted trying to regain twelve days in my mind. I didn’t go to the office, and the kids went to school late. And what about the kids in school on the dayside of Earth? If they sleep during their geometry class, say, then they have to go through that class again on the same day. And that shoves the schedule forward, or is it backward, for that day. And then there’s the time workers will lose on their jobs. They have to make it up, which means they get out an hour later. Only it takes more than an hour to recover from the confusion and get orientated. What a mess it has been! What a mess it’ll be if this keeps on!
At eleven, Carole and I were straightened out enough to go to the supermarket. It was Tuesday, but Carole wanted me to be with her, so I tried to phone in and tell my secretary I’d be absent. The lines were tied up, and I doubt that she was at work. So I said to hell with it.
Our supermarket usually opens at eight. Not today. We had to stand in a long line, which kept getting longer. The doors opened at twelve. The manager, clerks and boys had had just as much trouble as we did unconfusing themselves, of course. Some didn’t show at all. And some of the trucks which were to bring fresh stores never appeared.
By the time Carole and I got inside, those ahead of us had cleaned out half the supplies. They had the same idea we had. Load up now so there wouldn’t be any standing in line so many times. The fresh milk was all gone, and the powdered milk shelf had one box left. I started for it but some teen-ager beat me to it. I felt like hitting him, but I didn’t, of course.
The prices for everything were being upped by a fourth even as we shopped. Some of the stuff was being marked upward once more while we stood in line at the checkout counter. From the time we entered the line until we pushed out three overflowing carts, four hours had passed.
While Carole put away the groceries, I drove to another supermarket. The line there was a block long; it would be emptied and closed up before I ever got to its doors.
The next two supermarkets and a corner grocery store were just as hopeless. And the three liquor stores I went to were no better. The fourth only had about thirty men in line, so I tried that. When I got inside, all the beer was gone, which didn’t bother me any, but the only hard stuff left was a fifth of rotgut. I drank it when I went to college because I couldn’t afford anything better. I put the terrible stuff and a half-gallon of cheap muscatel on the counter. Anything was better than nothing, even though the prices had been doubled.
I started to make out the check, but the clerk said, “Sorry, sir. Cash only.”
“What?” I said.
“Haven’t you heard, sir?” he said. “The banks were closed at 2:00 P.M. today.”
“The banks are closed?” I said. I sounded stupid even to myself.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “By the federal government. It’s only temporary, sir, at least, that’s what the TV said. They’ll be reopened after the stock market mess is cleared up.”
“But . . .” I said.
“It’s destructed,” he said.
“Destroyed,” I said automatically. “You mean, it’s another Black Friday?”
“It’s Tuesday today,” he said.
“You’re too young to know the reference,” I said. And too uneducated, too, I thought.
“The president is going to set up a rationing system,” he said. “For The Interim. And price controls, too. Turner said so on TV an hour ago. The president is going to lay it all out at six tonight.”
When I came home, I found Carole in front of the TV. She was pale and wide-eyed.
“There’s going to be another depression!” she said. “Oh, Mark, what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not the president, you know.” And I slumped down onto the sofa. I had lost my flippancy.
Neither of us, having been born in 1945, knew what a Depression, with a big capital D, was; that is, we hadn’t experienced it personally. But we’d heard our parents, who were kids when it happened, talk about it. Carole’s parents had gotten along, though they didn’t live well, but my father used to tell me about days when he had nothing but stale bread and turnips to eat and was happy to get them.
The president’s TV speech was mostly about the depression, which he claimed would be temporary. At the end of half an hour of optimistic talk, he revealed why he thought the situation wouldn’t last. The federal government wasn’t going to wait for the sentients in The Ball—if there were any there—to communicate with us. Obviously, The Ball was hostile. So the survey expedition had been canceled. Tomo
rrow, the USA, the USSR, France, West Germany, Israel, India, Japan and China would send up an armada of rockets tipped with H-bombs. The orbits and the order of battle were determined this morning by computers; one after the other, the missiles would zero in until The Ball was completely destroyed. It would be over-kill with a vengeance.
“That ought to bring up the stock market!” I said.
And so, after I’ve finished recording, to bed. Tomorrow, we’ll follow our instructions on the notes, relisten to the tapes, reread certain sections of the newspapers and await the news on the TV. To hell with going to the courthouse; nobody’s going to be there anyway.
Oh, yes. With all this confusion and excitement, everybody, myself included, forgot that today was my birthday. Wait a minute! It’s not my birthday!
True date: June 5, 1980. Subjective date: May 16, 1980
I woke up mad at Carole because of our argument the previous day. Not that of June 4, of course, but our brawl on May 15. We’d been at a party given by the Burlingtons, where I met a beautiful young artist, Roberta Gardner. Carole thought I was paying too much attention to her because she looked like Myrna. Maybe I was. On the other hand, I really was interested in her paintings. It seemed to me that she had a genuine talent. When we got home, Carole tore into me, accused me of still being in love with Myrna. My protests did no good whatsoever. Finally, I told her we might as well get a divorce if she couldn’t forgive and forget. She ran crying out of the room and slept on the sofa downstairs.
I don’t remember what reconciled us, of course, but we must have worked it out, otherwise we wouldn’t still be married.
Anyway, I woke up determined to see a divorce lawyer today. I was sick about what Mike and Tom would have to go through. But it would be better for them to be spared our terrible quarrels. I can remember my reactions when I was an adolescent and overheard my parents fighting. It was a relief, though a sad one, when they separated.
Thinking this, I reached for my glasses. And I founi the note. And so another voyage into confusion, disbelief and horror.
Now that the panic has eased off somewhat, May 18 is back in the saddle—somewhat. Carole and I are, in a sense, still in that day, and things are a bit cool.
It’s 1:00 P.M. now. We just watched the first rockets take off. Ten of them, one after the other.
It’s 1:35 P.M. Via satellite, we watched the Japanese missiles.
We just heard that the Chinese and Russian rockets are being launched. When the other nations send theirs up, there will be thirty-seven in all.
No news at 12:30 A.M., June 5. In this case, no news must be bad news. But what could have happened? The newscasters won’t say; they just talk around the subject.
7
True date: June 6, 1980. Subjective date: May 13, 1980
My records say that this morning was just like the other four. Hell.
One o’clock. The president, looking like a sad old man, though he’s only forty-four, reported the catastrophe. All thirty-seven rockets were blown up by their own H-bombs about three thousand miles from The Ball. We saw some photographs of them taken from the orbiting labs. They weren’t very impressive. No mushroom clouds, of course, and not even much light.
The Ball has weapons we can’t hope to match. And if it can activate our H-bombs out in space, it should be able to do the same to those on Earth’s surface. My god! It could wipe out all life if it wished to do so!
Near the end of the speech, the president did throw out a line of hope. With a weak smile—he was trying desperately to give us his big vote-winning one—he said that all was not lost by any means. A new plan, called Project Toro, was being drawn up even as he spoke.
Toro was Spanish for bull, I thought, but I didn’t say so. Carole and the kids wouldn’t have thought it funny, and I didn’t think it was so funny myself. Anyway, I thought, maybe it’s a Japanese word meaning victory or destruction or something like that.
Toro, as it turned out, was the name of a small irregularly shaped asteroid about 2.413 kilometers long and 1.609 kilometers wide. Its peculiar orbit had been calculated in 1972 by an L. Danielsson of the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology and a W.H.L. of the University of California at San Diego. Toro, the president said, was bound into a resonant orbit with the Earth. Each time Toro came near the Earth—“near” was sometimes 12.6 million miles—it got exactly enough energy or “kick” from the Earth to push it on around so that it would come back for another near passage.
But the orbit was unstable, which meant that both Earth and Venus take turns controlling the asteroid. For a few centuries, Earth governs Toro; then Venus takes over. Earth has controlled Toro since A.D. 1580. Venus will take over in 2200. Earth grabs it again in 2350; Venus gets it back in 2800.
I was wondering what all this stuff about this celestial Ping-Pong game was about. Then the president said that it was possible to land rockets on Toro. In fact, the plan called for many shuttles to land there carrying parts of huge rocket motors, which would be assembled on Toro.
When the motors were erected on massive and deep stands, power would be applied to nudge Toro out of its orbit. This would require many trips by many rockets with cargoes of fuel and spare parts for the motors. The motors would burn out a number of times. Eventually, though, the asteroid would be placed in an orbit that would end in a direct collision with The Ball. Toro’s millions of tons of hard rock and nickel-steel would destroy The Ball utterly, would turn it into pure energy.
“Yes,” I said aloud, “but what’s to keep The Ball from just changing its orbit? Its sensors will detect the asteroid; it’ll change course; Toro will go on by it, like a train on a track.”
This was the next point of the president’s speech. The failure of the attack had revealed at least one item of information, or, rather, verified it. The radiation of the H-bombs had blocked off, disrupted, all control and observation of the rockets by radar and laser. In their final approach, the rockets had gone in blind, as it were, unable to be regulated from Earth. But if the bombs did this to our sensors, they must be doing the same to The Ball’s.
So, just before Toro’s course is altered to send it into its final path, H-bombs will be set off all around The Ball. In effect, it will be enclosed in a sphere of radiation. It will have no sensor capabilities. Nor will The Ball believe that it will have to alter its orbit to dodge Toro. It will have calculated that Toro’s orbit won’t endanger it. After the radiation fills the space around it, it won’t be able to see that Toro is being given a final series of nudges to push it into a collision course.
The project is going to require immense amounts of materials and manpower. The USA can’t handle it alone; Toro is going to be a completely international job. What one nation can’t provide, the other will.
The president ended with a few words about how Project Toro, plus the situation of memory loss, is going o bring about a radical revision of the economic setup. He’s going to announce the outlines of the new structure—not just policy but structure—two days from now. It’ll be designed, so he says, to restore prosperity and, not incidentally, rid society of many problems plaguing it since the industrial revolution.
“Yes, but how long will Project Toro take?” I said. “Oh, Lord, how long?”
Six years, the president said, as if he’d heard me. Perhaps longer.
Six years!
I didn’t tell Carole what I could see coming. But he’s no dummy. She could figure out some of the things that were bound to happen in six years, and none of them were good.
I never felt so hopeless in my life, and neither did she. But we do have each other, and so we clung tightly for a while. May 18 isn’t forgotten, but it seems so unimportant. Mike and Tom cried, I suppose because they knew that this exhibition of love meant something terrible for all of us. Poor kids! They get upset by our hatreds and then become even more upset by our love.
When we realized what we were doing to them, we tried to be jolly.
But we couldn�
��t get them to smile.
True date: middle of 1981: Subjective date: middle of 1977
I’m writing this, since I couldn’t get any new tapes today. The shortage is only temporary, I’m told. I could erase some of the old ones and use them, but it’d be like losing a vital part of myself. And God knows I’ve lost enough.
Old Mrs. Douglas next door is dead. Killed herself, according to my note on the calendar, April 2 of this year. I never would have thought she’d do it. She was such a strong fundamentalist, and these believe as strongly as the Roman Catholics that suicide is well-nigh unforgivable. I suspect that the double shock of her husband’s death caused her to take her own life. April 2 of 1976 was the day he died. She had to be hospitalized because of shock and grief for two weeks after his death. Carole and I had her over to dinner a few times after she came home, and all she could talk about was her dead husband. So I presume that, as she traveled backward to the day of his death, the grief became daily more unbearable. She couldn’t face the arrival of the day he died.
Hers is not the only empty house on the block. Jack Bridger killed his wife and his three kids and his mother-in-law and himself last month—according to my records. Nobody knows why, but I suspect that he couldn’t stand seeing his three-year-old girl become no more than an idiot. She’d retrogressed to the day of her birth and perhaps beyond. She’d lost her language abilities and could no longer feed herself. Strangely, she could still walk, and her intelligence potential was high. She had the brain of a three-year-old, fully developed, but lacking all postbirth experience. It would have been better if she hadn’t been able to walk. Confined to a cradle, she would at least not have had to be watched every minute.
Little Ann’s fate is going to be Tom’s. He talks like a five-year-old now. And Mike’s fate . . . my fate . . . Carole’s . . . God! We’ll end up like Ann! I can’t stand thinking about it.
Poor Carole. She has the toughest job. I’m away part of the day, but she had to take care of what are, in effect, a five-year-old and an eight-year-old, getting younger every day. There is no relief for her, since they’re always home. All educational institutions, except for certain research laboratories, are closed.
Strangeness Page 12