by Jerry
The old man stirred noiselessly. Dressed in faded coveralls, he had long white hair that fell in tangled disarray to his rounded shoulders; his matted, filth-encrusted beard was the same white as his hair.
“You need any help, old man?”
Painfully slowly, the old man rose to his knees, pushed his arms hard against the ground, and shoved his body erect. The agent took a startled step backward when he saw the face: the most pitiful, wretched face he had ever seen. Brittle skin, like old parchment, was shrunk against the bone and eroded with deep wrinkles; and eyes that were hollow, empty, and desperately sad.
Across the front of his shirt, a crudely-lettered cardboard sign, pinned carelessly onto the wrinkled cloth, proclaimed simply, “I AM BONARO”
“Bonaro? That your name?”
The old man gave no sign of recognition, for he was incapable of even that elementary act. He only began to dig deep into his trouser pocket, bringing out a soiled yellow mass that he gripped tightly in one withered hand. It was a sponge.
He held it out.
The agent tentatively reached out his own hand, “For me?”
Bonaro said nothing, but held out the sponge until he was certain that the agent did not understand, then he drew it back and let the hand fall limply.
“Bonaro? I guess that’s your name. If you’d like some coffee, I’ve got a pot inside. Otherwise, you’d better beat it.”
Bonaro’s face remained immobile. Not even his empty eyes altered their fixed stare.
“Look, friend, if you don’t need help, at least stay away from the tracks. They’re dangerous. You understand that? Dangerous. You’ll get hurt if you fool around here without knowing what you’re doing.”
Bonaro swayed uncertainly as though he were going to fall then he held out the sponge once more, hesitated a moment, and began to pad silently away from the tracks, holding the dirty sponge in front of him as if it were a guidepost by which he steered.
Old Bonaro was not aware of having been thrown from the train; he was not aware of having met the ticket agent. He only knew that he was Somewhere . . . and that which he sought might be anywhere.
HE had been five years old when he first wished himself different. The place he had lived was high above the asphalt streets, a slim wooden shambles squeezed between rotting tentaments. He had distant memories of a thing called Father: a loud, dirty man who never shaved and snored raucously. And Mother: a screaming, anxious assortment of abrupt nervous reactions like spank and slap and swear.
Bonaro recalled being locked in a closet because he had cursed at his father; a closet that was small and dark, where spiders crawled and tickled his skin and the groans of the tired walls were magnified until they filled his head with droaning, foreign speech.
He sat there for longer than he knew, without moving, until he saw a tiny sliver of dusty light along the bottom of the closet door, and crouching down with his ear close to the splintery floor, he could almost see outside.
Young Bonaro knew that he could never escape through that crack beneath the door. A piece of paper could. A coat hanger would slide through there. A slippery glob of mud could do it. So Bonaro wished himself a slipprey glob of mud, spreading himself out thin on the floor. It was difficult at first, forcing each particle of himself through that slim slit, but finally he oozed the last drop out of the closet and wished himself Bonaro.
His Father had beaten him for getting out; after carefully examining the lock on the closet door, he had beaten Young Bonaro with a long board until the boy was strangling on his own blood.
THE Old Man thought of that time as he walked away from the train station and into a wide main street.
When did he next wish . . .? When he had been about twelve. Bad-father had taught him to steal while Bad-mother laughed. Stealing was easy for Bonaro when he learned how to run away and hide, and he was never caught until that time when he was twelve and stole the Man’s wallet.
He had run for many blocks until his body had refused to carry him further, and he collapsed into a soft pile of rags and trash. Seeing the walls high around him meant nothing until he saw the men coming after him, then jerking his body upright, he flung his eyes violently in every direction where escape might lie. A high brick wall . . . a building . . . a wooden fence twice his own height . . . there was no way out and the men were after him. So Bonaro did the only thing he could: he wished himself part of that pile of trash and they never found him.
* * *
The train station was far behind.
“ ’Scuse me, fella. You okay?” To Bonaro, the policeman was only another human form to which he held out the sponge.
“You can’t talk, is that it?” The policeman pulled a note pad and pencil from the pocket of his uniform. “Maybe you need help. Can you write?”
The hand in which Bonaro held the sponge began to quiver.
“Now, look here, old man. I guess I don’t understand, but you darned near caused about five accidents by walking across that street without watching the traffic. You be careful from now on.”
Then as the policeman went away, Bonaro’s thoughts went back.
On his twentieth birthday, he had first seen the words “socially incorrigible” on his progress chart in the juvenile home. He learned that his father had died, his mother was arrested for a reason he didn’t understand.
But Bonaro never cared, because he could always wish.
Hang-Pants, the hoodlum, had thought Bonaro an easy mark—one fist to put him senseless on the sidewalk—when Bonaro had wished himself a big rock. Hang-Pants left with a broken hand. That was funny.
Bonaro had killed the priest in front of a hundred worshippers and laughed as he wished himself a gleaming golden cross.
“I AM BONARO.” The sign flapped on his chest as he stepped into the diner and sat down on a tiny stool. The young waitress looked suspiciously at his bedraggled appearance.
“Helpyou, sir?”
She suddenly jerked her body back as he thrust out the mouldy sponge . . . Bonaro’s memories were vague in his head as he thought of the many, many fears, of being alive.
A dark night and a dog’s bark . . . fear . . . wish to be a lion.
Steep stairs, slippery . . . fear . . . wish a rubber ball.
Many . . . so many each day . . . uncounted when life was steal and kill and wish-different to escape.
“Help you, sir?” the waitress asked again.
They had come after him that final night with torches. Because they knew it was Bonaro who had killed their little girl. Bonaro had stood tall, boldly on the wide concrete highway as they came for him. He saw the mob crunching closer, their kerosene torches flaming and flashing in the darkness.
They marched across the field onto the road where he stood.
What could he become? To hide on this barren hardness?
One torch wiggled and sailed like an exploding star above the mob, arcing high toward Bonaro. He saw it streak down and felt it hitting his chest, the pungent odor of the kerosene filling his head as flame attacked his shirt. His body was heat and fire as he pounded open palms against the growing horror of burning flesh as his clothes ignited.
Water! Water, said his mind as he dissolved himself into a puddle, seeping away from the scorching clothes, gathering in a pool on the road. He felt cool. The mob would go. He felt cool as a tender breeze caressed his dampness and he waited until he felt the warmth that meant sun. Sun meant time had passed, the mob would be gone, and he wished himself Bonaro again.
Water, a puddle in the road, is drawn into the wind—evaporates. Bonaro almost screamed knowing why he had felt the coolness. What part had gone away with the wind? Eyes? Arms? No! His body was whole but something still was gone.
Gone in water which goes on the wind, then to clouds, to rain. Rain comes back. Water is never gone . . . just lost.
He would find it, searching many, many more years until his body died. He would recognize that water because it was part of him—he w
ould know.
The waitress set up a glass.
“Help you, sir?”
Bonaro held out the sponge hopefully. THE END
1965
A TRIP TO INFINITY
Donald Wandrei
“YOUR party does not answer. Shall I try again?” asked the operator.
“No, don’t bother,” answered the young man as he hung up the receiver.
He was both disappointed and puzzled. He was disappointed because he had just finished a hard day’s work examining metallic structures by microphotography and had looked forward to an idle but pleasant evening with a certain person. He was puzzled because he had had a definite engagement and had told her that he would phone as soon as his work was done. But the operator had rung her number for minutes without eliciting the slightest response.
“Oh, well,” he thought, shrugging his shoulders, “I might as well get ready anyway and try calling again later. She has never failed me before. I wonder if anything has happened? But she probably went out for dinner and hasn’t returned yet.”
Wherewith he proceeded to run the refrain of a recent song while occupied with scraping the day’s accumulation off his anatomy in general and an incipient beard from his face in particular.
A good half hour later, he was already to go, but had nowhere to go. The prospect was disconcerting, after he had spent the whole day in anticipation. He hadn’t seen the lady in question since as long ago as last night.
He tried calling her number again, but with no better success than before. He puttered around for perhaps ten minutes.
He was beginning to list possible catastrophes when his phone rang. Hoping it was she, he jumped to answer it.
“Hurry, Bob!” came the girl’s excited, pleading voice. “I’m in terrible danger! Dr. Mertin is going to—”
Click! Bob MacDonald jangled the hook furiously, but all he got was central’s sweet voice cutting in: “Sorry, sir, your party has hung up.”
For only a moment he hesitated while his mind worked like lightning as he tried to visualize from the few words what had happened. Claire wouldn’t have called unless she really was in the gravest danger. The reference to Dr. Mertin meant that she was probably in or near his laboratory at that instant.
His thoughts suffered a temporary halt as he grabbed an automatic and bolted from the room. A minute later his roadster roared from its garage and shot down the highway toward Mertin’s laboratory. Sunset had just fallen. Bob prayed that there were no state troopers waiting to spin out after the speeding car. Seconds were precious where Claire was concerned.
Bob had worked as assistant to the astrophysicist Leonard Mertin for nearly a year, until a month ago, in fact. Mertin was a brilliant scientist but obsessed with the idea of atomic structures and how to control them. But Bob had managed to get along with him until the day he made the mistake of introducing his fiancée, Claire Maxson, to the scientist.
That marked the end of the relationship. Bob had walked into Mertin’s laboratory one day and had found Claire struggling with the astrophysicist. The battle was short and terrific. A dislocated jaw and a broken knuckle on Bob’s part were offset by two missing teeth, a smashed nose, and an exceedingly damaged eye on the part of Mertin. Holding Claire tightly, he had strolled out of the laboratory consigned Mertin to exquisite tortures, and informed the gentleman that he had no intention of continuing as his assistant or of ever returning. There was a savage look in the scientist’s good eye, but he had made no answer.
In the weeks since, neither Bob nor Claire had heard anything from Mertin. To all intents, Mertin had taken his defeat and retired from the picture. And now, out of a clear sky, came Claire’s frantic voice pleading for help.
Had the scientist kidnapped Claire? Was he planning to use her in connection with his bizarre experiments? Or did he merely seek revenge for the physical damage that Bob had inflicted, and the rebuff that Claire had given his advances?
Bob stepped on the gas with as much delight and vigor as if it were the neck of Mertin. The car leaped ahead. Six miles on highway 37, then right a couple of miles on state road B, left again on the old dirt track, and then, still a good quarter of a mile from Mertin’s laboratory in the Pawsnickett woods, he came to a halt. Mertin was a crafty old devil. It wouldn’t do to announce his coming by the throb of a motor.
Bob jumped out and dashed ahead toward the ultra-modern laboratory that Mertin had erected in this remote spot. At the edge of the cleared ground in the midst of which the building stood, he halted for an instant, deciding what to do.
The call might have been a clever trap. There was no denying that Mertin had a first-rate intelligence. If Bob simply walked up to the door and rang, it was a fifty-fifty chance whether he would or wouldn’t be slugged. On the other hand, he took a serious risk by going stealthily about his purpose and breaking into the structure. If nothing was wrong, he would have a hard time explaining.
The appeal in Claire’s voice determined his course. The risk was worth it. He cautiously crossed the deserted grounds, and tried the delivery entrance door. To his surprise, it was unlocked. He felt that Mertin must have made a slip—but Mertin had never made a mistake to the best of Bob’s knowledge. At any rate, there was nothing else for him to do. As slowly and silently as possible, he pushed the door open. For half a minute he listened. Satisfied that his entrance had gone unnoticed, he stepped through.
A savage, sodden thud on the back of his head was the last impression he received as he crumpled to the floor.
Feeling sluggish and sleepy, but without the headache he ought to have had, Bob opened his eyes. Such a confusion of images met them that he could not in one glance take in everything he saw.
To one side stood Leonard Mertin with a speculative and pleased look on his sardonic features. Near him sat Claire, motionless though not confined in any way, and evidently conscious. Bob struggled to rise but not a muscle obeyed his will. He might as well have been a paralytic for all the response he could get from his body.
Directly opposite him a dozen feet or so distant loomed the most complicated apparatus he had ever seen. At the extreme right was a dynamo of gigantic size from which a huge metal cable led into a vacuum tube several feet in diameter, which was filled with a pale-violet fluorescence. The cable terminated in an anode a foot distant from the cathode which consisted of four smaller cables leading into four additional vacuum bulbs, all of which were filled with a faint light, one orange, one white, one green, and one blue. Their four cathodes led to a second enormous tube, in which no fluorescence was visible, and where the four separate currents recombined as one, conducting to a great silver-black plate that was focused on Bob. Besides these prominent features of the mechanism, there was a maze of condensers, coils, wires, and strange electrolytes made not for action upon solids but upon gases or energy itself. Some of these things Bob recognized from his previous work with Mertin; most of them were new.
“Aren’t they interesting?” Mertin asked amiably. “Allow me to explain the details.”
“I think it would be wiser if you allowed us to go,” said Bob with a dangerous undercurrent in his voice. He was startled that he could speak. Evidently the paralysis was only partial.
“What an odd request!” answered the astrophysicist, raising his eyebrows in mock surprise. “I am using no weapons to coerce you, and you can see for yourself that neither you nor Miss Maxson is forcibly tied. Indeed, I see no reason why both you shouldn’t arise and depart if you are so unwilling to accept my hospitality.” He made a low, ironic bow.
Rage seethed through Bob at the polite insults, but it was absolutely impossible for him to move even a fraction of an inch. With an effort he regained control of his thoughts. He knew nothing of what might come, and in any case he ought to keep a clear head for whatever chance offered, though he was helpless at present.
“You do not go? Then I take it that you stay of your own accord,” the cool voice of the scientist went on. “Of course, t
he law does not entiiely approve of housebreaking, but then I believe I am capable of making my own laws.”
Mertin bowed again. “I flatteimyself that my plans were quite scholarly in their thoroughness. Miss Maxson had no objections to coming here—”
“Because I was drugged!” she burst out.
“—and though I listened in on her telephone call after permitting her free access to a phone and found it necessary to cut the wire,” Mertin went on without heeding the interruption, “still, I had no regrets about your coming, so long as Miss Maxson requested your company, and so long as you came of your own will. But if it will make you feel at ease, I hereby extend to you a cordial invitation to pay me the visit which you are now making.
“I have already taken the liberty of patting you on the head—with a mallet, if you are interested—and of quieting you with a hypodermic. The paralysis will wear off in fifteen minutes—but you were quite upset and even, ah, excited, when you came. You will appreciate my remedies, I am sure.
“Now that you are here, perhaps you would do me the favor of assisting me in a little experiment. Unfortunately, it will entail some risk. I might go so far as to say that it is very likely you will never again be seen upon earth. But I see it distresses you, Miss Maxson,” he added contritely. “I am so sorry You would not care to see Mr. MacDonald vanish? The experiment can easily be foregone and the matter adjusted perfectly. All you need do is to state that you would be delighted to be my wife, and I think I could arrange to continue Mr. MacDonald’s terrestrial life.”
“Never!” The girl’s face was white but her voice came clear. She made the answer as much because Bob would have preferred it so as because she preferred it so herself.
And to Bob had come a sudden hope. Mertin said the opiate would wear off in fifteen minutes. His own weapon had undoubtedly been taken from him, and Mertin seemed to have none. In a hand-to-hand struggle, he had no doubt of coming out ahead since he had already proved once that he would. If he could only keep Mertin talking while the minutes slipped by, keep his attention focused on the situation or still better on the scientific work that was a mania to him, keep his mind occupied until the time was past, and then a sudden leap . . . He strove to prevent his face from reflecting any of the hopeful thoughts that coursed through his head.