Gentle Invaders

by Hans Stefan Santesson

  She said, her voice muffled under my hand, “Where did you hear that name?”

  “Never mind,” I said, “Just answer me.”

  She wouldn’t.

  “Where do you live now? Somewhere near here?”

  She only strained to get away.

  “All right,” I said. “We’ll go now. Back up to the hospital. The sheriff wants to see you.”

  I started to drag her away up the hill, and then two men came into the light of the clearing.

  One was slender and curly-headed in that particular way I was beginning to know. He looked pleasantly excited, pleasantly stimulated, as though by a game in which he found enjoyment. His eyes picked up the fitful glow of the fire and shone eerily, as the girl’s had the other man was a perfectly ordinary type. He was dark and heavy-set and tall, and his plaid pants sagged under his belly. His face was neither excited nor pleasant. It was obvious that to him this was no game. He carried a heavy automatic, and I thought he was perfectly prepared to use it.

  I was afraid of him.

  “. . . to send a dame, anyway,” he was saying.

  “That’s your prejudice speaking,” said the curly-haired man. “She was the only one to send.” He gestured toward the flames. “How can you doubt it?”

  “She’s been caught.”

  “Not Vadi.” He began to call softly. “Vadi? Vadi!”

  The girl’s lips moved under my hand. I bent to hear, and she said in the faint ghost of a whisper:

  “If you want to live, let me go to them.”

  The big dark man said grimly, “She’s been caught. We’d better do something about it, and do it quick.”

  He started across the clearing.

  The girl’s lips shaped one word. “Please!”

  The dark man came with his big gun, and the curly-headed one came a little behind him, walking as a stalking cat walks, soft and springy on its toes. If I dragged the girl away they would hear me. If I stayed where I was, they would walk right onto me. Either way, I thought, I would pretty surely go to join Doc on the cold marble.

  I let the girl go.

  She ran out toward them. I stood stark and frozen behind the maple tree, waiting for her to turn and say the word that would betray me.

  She didn’t turn, and she didn’t say the word. The curly-headed man put his arms around her and they talked rapidly for perhaps half a minute, and I heard her tell the dark man that she had only waited to be sure they would not be able to put the fire out too soon. Then all three turned and went quickly away among the dark trees,

  I stayed where I was for a minute, breathing hard, trying to think. Then I went hunting for the sheriff.

  By the time I found Ed Betts, of course, it was already too late. But he sent a car out anyway. They didn’t find a trace of anyone on the road who answered the descriptions I gave.

  Ed looked at me closely in the light of the dying fire, which they had finally succeeded in bringing under control. “Don’t get sore at me now, Hank,” he said. “But are you real sure you saw these people?”

  “I’m sure,” I said. I could still, if I shut my eyes and thought about it, feel the girl’s body in my arms. “Her name was Vadi. Now I want to talk to Croft.”

  Croft was the Fire Marshal. I watched the boys pouring water on what was left of the south wing, which was nothing more than a pile of hot embers with some pieces of wall standing near it. Jim Bossert joined us, looking exhausted and grimy. He was too tired even to curse. He just wailed a little about the loss of all his fine X-ray equipment, and all his records.

  “I met the girl who did it,” I said. “Ed doesn’t believe me.”

  “Girl?” said Bossert, staring.

  “Girl. Apparently an expert at this sort of thing.” I wondered what the curly-haired man was to her. “Was anybody hurt?”

  “By the grace of God,” said Bossert, “no.”

  “How did it start?”

  “I don’t know. AH of a sudden I woke up and every window in the south wing was spouting flame like a volcano.”

  I glanced at Ed, who shrugged. “Could have been a short in that high-voltage equipment.”

  Bossert said, “What kind of a girl? A lunatic?”

  “Another one like the boy. There was a man with her, maybe the boy’s father, I don’t know. The third one was just a man. Mean looking bastard with a gun. She said the fire was necessary.”

  “All this, just to get rid of some films?”

  “It must be important to them,” I said. “They had already killed Doc. They tried to kill me. What’s a fire?”

  Ed Betts swore, his face twisted between unbelief and worry. Then Croft came up. Ed asked him, “What started the fire?”

  Croft shook his head. “Too early to tell yet. Have to wait till things cool down. But I’ll lay you any odds you like, it was started by chemicals.”

  “Deliberately?”

  “Could be,” said Croft, and went away again.

  I looked at the sky. It was almost dawn, that beautiful bleak time when the sky is neither dark nor light and the mountains are cut from black cardboard, without perspective. I said, “I’m going up to the Tates’. I’m worried about the boy.”

  “All right,” said Ed quickly, “I’ll go with you. In my car. We’ll stop in town and pick up Jud. I want him to see that

  “The hell with Jud,” I said. “I’m in a hurry.” And suddenly I was. Suddenly I was terribly afraid for that grave-faced child who was obviously the unwitting key to some secret that was important enough to justify arson and murder to those who wanted to keep it.

  Ed hung right behind me. He practically shoved me into his car. It had county sheriff painted on its door, and I thought of Doc’s station wagon with its county health service, and it seemed like a poor omen but there was nothing I could do about it.

  There was nothing I could do about stopping for Jud

  Spofford, either. Ed went in and routed him out of bed, taking the car keys with him. I sat smoking and looking up at Tunkhannock Ridge, watching it brighten to gold at the crest as the sun came up. Finally Jud came out grumbling and climbed in the back seat, a tall lanky young fellow in a blue coverall with Newhale Electric Appliance Co. embroidered in red on the pocket. His little wife watched from the doorway, holding her pink wrapper together.

  We went away up Tunkhannock Ridge. There was still a black smudge of smoke above the hospital on Goat Hill. The sky over Buckhorn Mountain was clear and bright.

  Sally Tate and her boy were already gone.

  Mrs. Tate told us about it, while we sat on the lumpy sofa in the living room and the fat old dog watched us through the screen door, growling. Sally’s sisters, or some of them at least, were in the kitchen listening.

  “Never was so surprised at anything in my life,” said Mrs. Tate. “Pa had just gone out to the barn with Harry and J.P.—them’s the two oldest girls’ husbands, you know. I and the girls was washing up after breakfast, and I heard this car drive in. Sure enough it was him. I went out on the stoop—”

  “What kind of a car?” asked Ed.

  “Same panel truck he was driving before, only the name was painted out. Kind of a dirty blue all over. ‘Well,’ I says, ‘I never expected to see your face around here again!’, I says, and he says—”

  Boiled down to reasonable length, the man had said that he had always intended to come back for Sally, and that if he had known about the boy he would have come much sooner. He had been away, he said, on business, and had only just got back and heard about Sally bringing the child in to the hospital, and knew that it must be his. He had gone up to the house, and Sally had come running out into his arms, her face all shining. Then they went in together to see the boy, and Bill Jones had fondled him and called him Son, and the boy had watched him sleepily and without affection.

  “They talked together for a while, private,” said Mrs. Tate, “and then Sally come and said he was going to take her away and marry her and make the boy legal, and would I
help her pack. And I did, and they went away together, the three of ’em. Sally didn’t know when she’d be back.”

  She shook her head, smoothing her hair with knotted fingers. “I just don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t know.”

  “What?” I asked her. “Was there something wrong?” I knew there was, but I wanted to hear what she had to say.

  “Nothing you could lay your hand to,” she said. “And Sally was so happy. She was just fit to burst. And he was real pleasant, real polite to me and Pa. We asked him about all them lies he told, and he said they wasn’t lies at all He said the man he was working for did plan to open a store in Newhale, but then he got sick and the plan fell through. He said his name was Bill Jones, and showed us some cards and things to prove it. And he said Sally just misunderstood the name of the place he come from because he give it the old Spanish pronunciation.”

  “What did he say it was really?” Ed asked, and she looked surprised.

  “Now I think of it, I guess he didn’t say,”

  “Well, where’s he going to live, with Sally?”

  “Ha isn’t settled yet. He’s got two or three prospects, different places. She was so happy,” said Mrs. Tate, “and I ought to be too, ’cause Lord knows I’ve wished often enough he would come back and get that peaky brat of his, and Sally too if she was minded. But I ain’t. I ain’t happy at all, and I don’t know why.”

  “Natural reaction,” said Ed Betts heartily. “You miss your daughter, and probably the boy too, more than you know.”

  “I’ve had daughters married before. It was something about this man. Something—” Mrs. Tate hesitated a long time, searching for a word. “Queer,” she said at last. “Wrong. I couldn’t tell you what. Like the boy, only more so. The boy has Sally in him. This one—” She made a gesture with her hands. “Oh, well, I expect I’m just looking for trouble.”

  “I expect so, Mrs. Tate,” said Ed, “but you be sure and get in touch with me if you don’t hear from Sally in a reasonable time. And now I’d like this young man to look at your teevee.”

  Jud, who had been sitting stiff and uncomfortable during the talking, jumped up and practically ran to the set. Mrs. Tate started to protest, but Ed said firmly, “This may be important, Mrs. Tate. Jud’s a good serviceman, he won’t upset anything.”

  “I hope not,” she said. “It does run real good.”

  Jud turned it on and watched it for a minute. “It sure does,” he said. “And in this location, too.”

  He took the back off and looked inside. After a minute he let go a long low whistle.

  “What is it?” said Ed, going closer.

  “Damnedest thing,” said Jud. “Look at that wiring. He’s loused up the circuits, all right—and there’s a couple tubes in there like I never saw before.” He was getting excited. “I’d have to tear the whole thing down to see what he’s really done, but somehow he’s boosted the power and the sensitivity way up. The guy must be a wizard.”

  Mrs. Tate said loudly, “You ain’t tearing anything down, young man. You just leave it like it is.”

  I said, “What about that dingus on the side?”

  “Frankly,” said Jud, “that stops me. It’s got a wire to it, but it don’t seem to hitch up anywhere in the set.” He turned the set off and began to poke gently around. “See here, this little hairline wire that comes down and bypasses the whole chassis? It cuts in here on the live line, so it draws power whether the set’s on or not. But I don’t see how it can have anything to do with the set operating.”

  “Well, take it out,” said Ed. “We’ll take it down to the shop and see whether we can make anything of it.”

  “Okay,” said Jud, ignoring Mrs. Tate’s cry of protest. He reached in and for the first time actually touched the enigmatic little unit, feeling for what held it to the side of the case.

  There was a sharp pop and a small bright flare, and Jud leaped back with a howl. He put his scorched fingers in his mouth and his eyes watered. Mrs. Tate cried, “Now, you’ve done it, you’ve ruined my teevee!” There was a smell of burning on the air. The girls came running out of the kitchen and the old dog barked and clawed the screen.

  One of the girls said, “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Jud said. “The goddamned thing just popped like a bomb when I touched it.”

  There was a drift of something gray—ash or dust—and that was all. Even the hairline wire was consumed.

  “It looks,” I said, “as though Mr. Jones didn’t want anybody else to look over his technological achievements.”

  Ed grunted. He looked puzzled and irresolute. “Hurt the set any?” he asked.

  “Dunno,” said Jud, and turned it on.

  It ran as perfectly as before.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Tate, “thank goodness.”

  “Yeah,” said Ed. “I guess that’s all, then. What do you say, Hank? We might as well go.”

  I said we might as well. We climbed back into Ed’s car and started—the second time for me—back down Tunkhannock Ridge.

  Jud was still sucking his fingers. He wondered out loud if the funny-looking tubes in the set would explode the same way if you touched them, and I said probably. Ed didn’t say anything. He was frowning deeply. I asked him what he thought about it.

  “I’m trying to figure the angle,” he said. “This Bill Jones. What does he get out of it? What does he make? On the television gag, I mean. People usually want to get paid for work like that.”

  Jud offered the opinion that the man was a nut. “One of these crazy guys like in the movies, always inventing things that make trouble. But I sure would like to know what he done to that set.”

  “Well,” said Ed, “I can’t see what more we can do. He did come back for the girl, and apart from that he hasn’t broken any laws.”

  “Hasn’t he?” I said, looking out the window. We were coming to the place where Doc had died. There was no sign of a storm today. Everything was bright, serene, peaceful. But I could feel the cold feeling of being watched. Someone, somewhere, knew me. He watched where I went and what I did, and decided whether or not to send the green lightning to slay me. It was a revelation, like the moments you have as a young child when you become acutely conscious of God. I began to shake. I wanted to crawl down in the back seat and hide. Instead I sat where I was and tried to keep the naked terror from showing too much. And I watched the sky. And nothing happened.

  Ed Betts didn’t mention it, but he began to drive faster and faster until I thought we weren’t going to need any green lightning. He didn’t slow down until we hit the valley. I think he would have been glad to get rid of me, but he had to haul me all the way back up Goat Hill to get my car. When he did let me off, he said gruffly,

  “I’m not going to listen to you again till you’ve had a good twelve hours’ sleep. And I need some myself. So long.”

  I went home, but I didn’t sleep. Not right away. I told my assistant and right-hand man, Joe Streckfoos, that the paper was all his today, and then I got on the phone. I drove the local exchange crazy, but by about five o’clock that afternoon I had the information I wanted.

  I had started with a map of the area on my desk. Not just

  Newhale, but the whole area, with Buckhorn Mountain roughly at the center and showing the hills and valleys around its northern periphery. By five o’clock the map showed a series of red pencil dots. If you connected them together with a line they formed a sprawling, irregular, but unbroken circle drawn around Buckhorn, never exceeding a certain number of miles in distance from the peak.

  Every pencil dot represented a television set that had within the last three years been serviced by a red-haired man—for free.

  I looked at the map for a long time, and then I went out in the yard and looked up at Buckhorn. It seemed to me to stand very high, higher than I remembered. From flank to crest the green unbroken forest covered it. In the winter time men hunted there for bear and deer, and I knew there were a few hunt
ing lodges, hardly more than shacks, on its lower slopes. These were not used in summer, and apart from the hunters no one ever bothered to climb those almost perpendicular sides, hanging onto the trees as onto a ladder, up to the fog and storm that plagued the summit.

  There were clouds there now. It almost seemed that Buckhorn pulled them down over his head like a cowl, until the gray trailing edges hid him almost to his feet, I slivered and went inside and shut the door. I cleaned my automatic and put in a full clip. I made a sandwich and drank the last couple of drinks in last night’s bottle. I laid out my boots and my rough-country pants and a Hiaki shirt. I set the alarm. It was still broad daylight. I went to bed.

  The alarm woke me at eleven-thirty. I did not turn on any lamps. I don’t know why, except that I still had that naked feeling of being watched. Light enough came to me anyhow from the intermittent sulfurous flares in the sky. There was a low mutter of thunder in the west. I put the automatic in a shoulder holster under my shirt, not to hide it but because it was out of the way there. When I was dressed I went downstairs and out the back door, heading for the garage.

  It was quiet, the way a little town can be quiet at night. I could hear the stream going over the stones, and the million little songs of the crickets, the peepers, and the frogs were almost stridently loud.

  Then they began to stop. The frogs first, in the marshy places besides the creek. Then the crickets and the peepers. I stopped too, in the black dark beside a clump of rhododendrons my mother used to be almost tiresomely proud of. My skin turned cold and the hair bristled on the back of my neck and I heard soft padding footsteps and softer breathing on the heavy air. Two people had waded the creek and come up into my yard. There was a flare and a grumble in the sky and I saw them close by, standing on the grass, looking up at the unlighted house.

  One of them was the girl Vadi, and she carried something in her hands. The other was the heavy-set dark man with the gun.

  “It’s okay,” he told her. “He’s sleeping. Get busy.”