by Jay Lake
Looking outside to judge the angle of the sun, I figured it was late afternoon. I remembered the fight at the barn. I hadn’t lasted very long afterward, I guess, but I couldn’t possibly have slept all night and all day. This must still be Sunday. I threw back the covers and tried to stand up.
I seemed to have developed a bad tendency to stagger to the left, which at least put the banging dead weight on my good leg. I managed to make it to the dressing table, where I gripped the cold marble top and looked at myself in the mirror. I was wearing a pair of Floyd’s pajamas, and I looked like I had recently won a bar fight.
It would have been my first. Heck, it was my first.
“Hey, Vernon old buddy,” I asked myself, “how are you doing?”
“Eh?” said a voice from the window.
It didn’t sound like the unseen voice of my aircraft. I felt a momentary surge of panic. Where was the radio handset? I looked around, then realized that Floyd would have known exactly what it was, and taken good care of it.
“Who’s there?” I called.
A grizzled face poked in from the open window. It was an old man, outside on the porch roof. With his close-cropped iron gray hair and deep-set wrinkles, he looked like he might have been chewing tobacco before Mr. Bellamy was born, but his eyes were ice chips — clear, cold and hard. “Random Garrett, son.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” I replied automatically. “My name’s Vernon Dunham.”
Random smiled, though the expression never got past his lips. “I know who you are.”
Mr. Garrett seemed a decent enough old fellow, a bit hard, maybe, and I would bet he could outstare a goat. “I don’t mean to be rude, sir,” I said, disgusted at how shaky my voice sounded, “but what brings you out onto the roof?”
He waved a double-barreled shotgun almost as ancient as he was past the window. “Alonzo called the old gang together, said there was big trouble brewing. We’re a-guarding you, son.”
“Ah. I see.” I smiled back at him and sat down at the dressing table. Random Garrett took that for the end of our conversation and withdrew from the window.
I’d never known that Mr. Bellamy had a gang. I was tempted to take that literally, especially since seeing him move so fast at the boarding house fire. He wasn’t as sick as he let on to be, if I didn’t miss my guess. And why did I need protection? On quick reflection, that question seemed pretty foolish. Whether or not Mr. Bellamy knew anything about the rest of what was going on around Augusta these last few days, he and Floyd had found me in a state of near-collapse next to a bullet-riddled car.
My bladder expressed an urgent need for the chamber pot, but with Random Garrett standing around outside my window I felt shy, even about a little pissing. I was in my skivvies under the pajamas, so I found one of Floyd’s flannel bathrobes and wrapped it around me. The Bellamys didn’t heat the house, so there was a good bit of heavy, moth-eaten clothing in the wardrobe.
Between my bad leg and my newfound tendency to lurch, I didn’t feel confident about the trip down the stairs. Still, I figured the long walk to the outhouse was better than having old Mr. Garrett listening to my every move. So to speak.
I shuffled over to the door. As I put my hand on the handle to open it, I heard a steady chirping, like a cricket or a small bird. Only it was too regular, the kind of noise you might get from tone generator from an electronics test bench. I looked around the room carefully. The noise was coming from the vicinity of my pants.
The handset radio, I thought. Floyd had brought it up from the Cadillac and left it in here with me. And now my aircraft wanted to talk to me. The thought warmed my heart.
I stumbled over to the chair where my pants hung, carelessly tossed, and fished around under them until I found the thing. It was wrapped in my t-shirt. I noticed both the t-shirt and my work shirt were damp with fresh blood. I figured a bullet had grazed my scalp, which explained both the passing out and the headache. As soon as I touched the handset the chirping stopped. It felt warm and tingly, but nowhere near scorching like it had been in the car.
“Vernon Dunham,” the unseen voice said. It sounded a little less Negro and a little less German both. Somehow that saddened me.
I wanted to talk to my airplane, to understand how it could be what it was. I was an engineer, damn it, I wanted to get in there and see how the pieces fit together — everything from control cables to electronics, and especially whatever miracle of vacuum tubes and batteries produced human speech from a machine.
But I didn’t want to answer it where Garrett could hear me. Every time I talked to that invisible voice, people thought I was crazy. I could see their point. I stuck the handset in the pocket of the flannel bathrobe and walked out the door.
On the way down the stairs, clutching the carved banister all the way, the voice called my name twice more before falling silent. I walked slowly into the dining room, feeling somewhat better. I noticed that despite my cutting down the trim early that same morning, the shotgun damage to the kitchen door hadn’t been repaired yet.
Mr. Bellamy and Floyd sat at the dining room table, talking with a man I didn’t know. They were speaking quietly, but Floyd noticed me and interrupted the conversation.
“Vernon, you’re up.” He grinned. “Come over here and have a seat.”
I really needed to make it to the outhouse, but a quick rest didn’t seem to be a bad idea. Walking had proven tougher than I thought. “How are you all?”
“Forget us,” said Floyd. “How are you?”
I considered that. I was actually starting to feel better, but my overall sensation was one of having taken a bad fall and landed on my head. “Lousy,” I answered, “but improving.”
“You took a bullet along your scalp,” said Mr. Bellamy. His voice was clear and strong, the old Mr. Bellamy I had known all my life. The cough was gone, as was the querulous old man whining. “The whole back of your head was bloody when we found you. Another half an inch deeper and there wouldn’t have been any of you to find.”
“Why didn’t Reverend Little say anything?”
“He didn’t see that side of you,” answered Floyd cheerfully. “Not like us.”
“Vance, this here’s Mr. Neville,” said Mr. Bellamy, changing the subject. “He’s not from around here.”
“Another one of your gang?” I asked peevishly.
“Yep,” answered Mr. Neville. He looked like a man who rarely smiled, with a round face that reminded me of Ollie Wannamaker back in high school, but a heck of a lot smarter-looking. Mr. Neville had on a checked flannel shirt with a shoulder holster, which got my attention even though I couldn’t see the gun. He had that same core of hardness as Mr. Garrett upstairs, and come to think of it, Mr. Bellamy now. Given the way things had been going lately, I was already developing grave doubts about that miraculous recovery the old man was making.
“Daddy ran shine years back,” said Floyd. “Mr. Neville and Mr. Garrett and a couple of other old boys around here were part of the operation.”
That explained the firearms, I supposed.
“We get together to drink and whoop and holler a few times a year,” said Mr. Neville, “and when someone’s in trouble, well, we all pull together again, just like the old days.”
“And you looked to be in a heap of trouble when we found you sitting on the front of Doc Milliken’s car,” said Floyd. He had his puppy dog voice, that I used to hear a lot more when we were boys. It was Floyd’s way of being excited about coming in on something big.
“Oh heck,” I said. “The Cadillac.” By this time of day, the guys in the airplane — whoever they were — would have gotten help and be headed back looking for it. “What happened to the car?”
“You mean what did you do to it, or where did we put it?” asked Floyd.
“I know what’s wrong with it,” I snapped. “Way too much is wrong with it. But where is it? I might have killed someone with that car, and there will be people out looking for it.”
I su
ddenly wished I hadn’t said that last, but the three of them didn’t even blink.
“Humph,” said Mr. Neville. He was appraising me, as if he couldn’t believe I had what it took to take a man down. I didn’t, but I sure gave it the old college try. I smiled back at him.
“I fetched the tractor and dragged that car up into the peach orchard,” said Floyd. “Once I got it there, I covered it with hay. I didn’t reckon we needed to keep it around out in the open right now.”
These people certainly thought like criminals. All I wanted to do was go back to work at Boeing tomorrow and forget this whole business, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen. For one thing, I’d lost two cars in two days, and automobiles didn’t come cheap. And now I was mixed in tight with a Kansas version of the Clanton gang. On the other hand, from their looks, these boys might be more along the lines of Quantrill’s Raiders. No wonder Floyd was always skating along the edge of the rules. He had his shine-running Daddy as an example. The things I never knew.
“Gentlemen,” I said, standing up again. “I need some more water. Please excuse me.” I limped out of the dining room into the kitchen, now thankfully cleaned of pig’s blood though a joint still dangled over the block table. I looked around for the crock Mrs. Bellamy always kept around. Of course, with her gone, there was no water.
To the pump then. I could use a moment of peace and quiet. I had no illusions about escaping, but just getting away from all the blood and murder in the next room would ease my heart a little.
I took the crock and slipped quietly outside. I didn’t let the screen door slam — the last thing I needed was Floyd following me. On the back porch, I realized I ought to stop in the outhouse first, so I set the crock down and walked across the yard. As I opened the door of the outhouse, I looked back and saw yet another man on the roof of the Bellamys’ house with a rifle. He seemed to be facing the other way.
With a shrug, I went to do my business.
It didn’t come easy. Too much trouble and pain, shutting me down. Well, that had happened before. There’s not a lot to do in a Kansas outhouse. I had read plenty of the Sears catalog, both recently and over the years past, and Mrs. Bellamy hadn’t cut loose of her Ward’s yet. I stared at the aged planking of the outhouse door and tried to ignore the odor from beneath.
“Vernon Dunham,” said the voice.
“What?” There was nobody to overhear me in here and decide I was crazy, but I whispered anyway. Maybe now I could get to the bottom of what the voice was about. I knew it was the aircraft, but every time I’d tried to make sense of that, my engineering training made me balk at the impossible design logic. On the other hand, the aircraft had come from...wherever...originally, to be found entombed in the Arctic ice. Talking machines weren’t really any harder to swallow than some of what I had already forced myself to accept.
“You are trying to be alone, son.”
“Trying to be.” My alrea dy-troubled colonic activity conflicted with my intense interest in the subject at hand. No one was at his best squatting down over a crap hole, least of all me. “I am in an outhouse.”
“What is an outhouse?”
It definitely wasn’t a person on the other end of the line. “Never mind. I’ve got a lot of questions for you, but obviously you have something to say to me.”
“You’re hurt.”
“You have a startling grasp of the obvious,” I said. Then I thought about that for a moment. A machine that could see me at a distance and through walls was even weirder than a talking machine. “How could you tell I was alone?”
There was a brief pause. “I scanned you.”
I wondered what that meant. “Like radar?”
There was another pause. “Yes. Vernon Dunham, your time is short.”
“Tempus fugit, vita brevis.” Not exactly right, but close enough. “Who are you?”
“I am the engine of flight. Time is short, for you and for me. There will be grave consequences if I am discovered here by they who search for me.” The rolling radio preacher hadn’t left its voice completely, I was glad to hear.
I wanted to pursue the technical issues, but the aircraft sounded worried. “Who is searching? As far as I know, both the CID and the Nazis are on to you.”
“Either would be trouble. I worry more about the Germans.”
“Why?”
“They are up to no good, son.” The aircraft paused for a moment. “I will most likely be abused by them to the hurt of many others.”
“And the CID?”
“They will just have me destroyed in the name of research. I understand you call it national security.”
“Look,” I said, “I believe your fears. Things have been strange around here lately, and it’s all about you. I don’t think I’m crazy, but I might as well be, talking to an airplane that some lunatic Germans dug up out of the Arctic ice. Who or what are you?”
There was a lengthy pause. I began to wonder if the voice had withdrawn from our conversation. Finally, it answered. “I am a mistake.”
This was not what I was expecting to hear. “A mistake?”
“I am not supposed to be here.”
“Here in Kansas?”
“Here on your planet. On Earth.”
Whoops. Now we were in the territory of Floyd’s pulp magazines and Jules Verne novels. It made sense — explained away the burying in the ice, the manufacturing and engineering issues, the fundamentally inhuman nature of the thing — but was still unbelievable.
Literally.
I was talking to a rocket ship from outer space. “You are a space alien,” I said.
“While I am alien, I am not biological,” said the voice, now prim. “I am a machine.”
“A computing machine,” I said, awed. “A robot.” I had seen some references in technical journals to new theories about information machines, monstrous mechanical calculators that could work up artillery firing tables or rocket trajectories in mere days. There were already hints leaking out that the British had done important work on them during the war. “You are a computing machine, aren’t you? Built inside of a rocket. Not an aircraft.”
“Among other things, yes.”
“I knew you were too good to be true.” Something occurred to me. “You’re a machine, but you’re smart. I saw your wings spread wide in the barn there. Why don’t you just leave? Can’t you fly?”
“I need help, son. I need supplies, approximately four hundred liters of hydrocarbon lubricants to replenish stocks lost when my systems ruptured during my original crash.”
My aircraft — no, the computational rocket — needed hydrocarbons. Oil. In Augusta, Kansas, home to one of the largest oil refineries in the Midwest. It made me wonder what Floyd might have known all along that he hadn’t told me, how carefully this had been planned. “I might be able to help you.”
“Help me soon,” said the alien machine. “Please.”
“Vernon!” shouted Floyd from the house. “Did you fall in? We need you in here.”
“Coming!” I yelled. The computational rocket didn’t seem to have anything more to say right then, so I abandoned my business in the outhouse.
“Next time use the darned chamber pot,” Floyd called from the kitchen as I stepped on to the porch.
Floyd, Mr. Bellamy and Mr. Neville were still sitting around the dining table. After visiting the outhouse and finally learning some answers about the computational rocket, however tantalizing they might be, I was starting to feel better. The cup of coffee Floyd handed me helped even more.
“Vinnie,” said Mr. Bellamy. “Floyd has asked Mama and me to stay out of the barn. So far, I’ve respected his wishes. But you getting shot at and everything — that puts all of us in a serious position. I need to know what you have in there — whether it’s money, or something you stole. It don’t matter, but you got to tell me.”
I looked at Floyd. Mr. Bellamy’s sudden transition to the bloom of tough-minded health still concerned me. “What ha
ve you told him?”
“Nothing specific,” said Floyd. “So you go ahead and tell it your way.”
I rubbed my forehead. The computational rocket had asked me to keep its existence a secret, but it was sitting forty yards away from here in a barn with door blown off. There was no secret to keep, at least not with the men at this table. If I lied, it would go badly for me. I had to tell them everything they already knew, and balance the rest.
“Mr. Bellamy, it’s like this. Floyd brought something home from Europe, a special kind of airplane the Germans had been working on.” That wasn’t actually untrue, although it was far enough from the complete truth as to be a lie. “I don’t know that he actually stole it, but it’s not rightfully his. Should have gone to the government as soon as it was found.” I shot Floyd a meaningful glance, but he was busy staring at the ceiling. “Anyway, near as I can tell there’s Nazi agents here in Butler County looking for that special airplane, and there’s US Army investigators looking for the Nazis.”
“And just who did you run over in the Cadillac?” asked Mr. Neville.
“At the time, I thought he was a Nazi, but now I think he might really have been from the Army.”
“You couldn’t tell the difference?” asked Mr. Bellamy.
“Something Sheriff Hauptmann said confused me.” I wasn’t going to call Hauptmann a liar in front of these men, but I just couldn’t quote him.
Mr. Neville leaned his elbows on the table at set his chin in his hands. I had the sense of being appraised again, as if he were deciding whether to raise or lower my value. “Why the hell were you talking to the Sheriff?”
I edited the story for their consumption. Floyd and Mr. Bellamy already knew some of it anyway. I kept it straight, though, under Mr. Neville’s steady gaze. “My dad got beat nearly to death and dumped in the trunk of my car. One thing led to another, and I wound up on the griddle between Sheriff Hauptmann and Doc Milliken. It was Hauptmann that told me there was fake Army captain around these parts, a Nazi pretending to be a CID man who’d actually been murdered in Kansas City.”