The Collected Stories

by Earl

  Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t escape all this—these tossing nights of sleeplessness, that awakening in a cold sweat of horror, the tortured thoughts that rack my brain continuously? It would be so easy; a quiet, dark night, the rippling water—one splash and it would be done. Perhaps I will be driven to it; I feel that way sometimes.

  But I will tell the story as best I can.

  Norman Ross and I were operators for the International Radio News Service. Thrown together by chance, we had become good friends in the two years before this happened. We had always been on the day shift and handled calls from Europe. We liked the work and got good pay and often went out together for a little recreation. That is why I can say that Norman Ross was normal; two years of friendship means a lot.

  Well, one day just after working hours Hegstrom, our boss, called us into his office—both of us together.

  “Boys,” he said, “I need two operators for Central Asia calls in the night shift. I’ve always had my eye on you two and I’m going to offer the positions to you two first. There’s a little more responsibility and difficulty, but the pay is higher. Then it’s night work. Do you want it? Think it over and tell me tomorrow. It’s nothing compulsory.”

  We thought it over that evening, over glasses of beer, and decided to take it for a change. Hegstrom was pleased.

  So we took up the night work. A veteran Oriental call operator broke us in the first night and then we went on our own.

  We found the work mightily interesting. Many of the calls came in in broken English. You know, the English that a foreigner speaks that he learned from a book. I handled Persia and a couple of little countries with funny names. My friend Ross took the calls from China.

  It was a little odd at first getting used to being alone. When we had the day shift, we were only two out of fifteen operators taking calls from Europe. In the night shift, the big room was empty except for us two. The sound of our typewriters was always extra loud in the silence. But we got used to it, and inside three weeks didn’t mind the loneliness a bit. We had a chance to talk to each other occasionally, if Ross and I both happened to get short calls at the same time, and had to wait for the next ones. But the rest of the time the calls kept us busy, taking the messages from the Far East.

  We had a little trouble, too, getting used to sleeping in daylight. Even with the blinds down you can’t forget it’s daylight outside and that makes it hard to go to sleep. Neither of us was married so we would hop right home after work (Ross lived with an uncle and aunt) I roomed alone and sleep until middle afternoon. Then we’d dress up and have a meal together and later roam around together looking for diversion. With the increased pay we got for the night work, we were able to see all kinds of expensive shows. Our lady companions liked that and we had just about a choice of any. Then after the show we would steer to some beer garden (thank the Lord Prohibition was repealed ten years ago) and laugh and talk the hours away. Ross and I would boast about our work and tell the girls strange—and a bit distorted—stories of some of the calls we took in from the mysterious East.

  But I had better leave these abstract ruminations and return to the story. Only I wanted to show you that Norman Ross was really normal in all respects. Then, too, it eases my troubled mind now to think back to those happy days—days that will never be again.

  It was just a month after our transfer that it all happened. Ross was sitting as usual with one leg off the floor, the heel of his shoe on a big throw switch on the control panel. It was a dead switch, though, that had never been taken out. Down low close to his stomach was the typewriter and he typed with his elbows resting on the arms of the chair. It was his own chair that he had bought for that particular purpose because he said he couldn’t do any work with the regular armless chair that other operators used. He had used that chair for two years; Hegstrom didn’t care a bit, so long he did his work and did it good. Personally, I think Ross had a spark of laziness in him.

  Well the particular night this whole story centers about—now my hand is trembling, I hate to go on. But I must. It will explain things to others. Anyway, Ross was imbedded as per custom with that right leg of his in the air. During ordinary calls he would slowly swing his toe back and forth as his heel rested on the dead switch. Once in a while it would stop and then I would know that something a little exciting was coming to him, war news from the north or perhaps a bandit raid in the stormy western part of China. His typewriter, too, would clack a little sharper as he bore down harder on the keys.

  It was along about three a. m. that we had a breathing spell after we both had short calls. We discussed a few clipped plans for the following evening and which of the ladies we would take out. When Ross talked to me, he wouldn’t budge an inch. He would merely twist his neck in my direction and talk with that toe of his swinging lazily. We both kept our eye on the clock so that we wouldn’t be late for a call—Hegstrom would get mighty fussy over complaints from the central wave-traffic office that operators at our station took calls late, even a few seconds.

  So about half a minute before his next call was due, Ross turned from me with a sigh—that is, turned his neck back—and stretched a lazy hand to the dial to get ready for the carrier wave. My next call wasn’t due for another two minutes so I watched my friend without any particular purpose in mind.

  He reached a slow hand to his head and adjusted the phones on his ears a bit. Then both his hands dropped into position above the typewriter and I heard him say tonelessly, “Call-call-call—xxw2 call—” and then his voice clipped off like a voice in a broadcast clips off when a tube blows out.

  Watching him I saw first that toe of his stop swinging. Something important, I thought to myself. But then I began to sit up tense. In the first place, Ross hadn’t touched his keys; in the second place he leaned forward in his chair and dropped his leg to the floor.

  Now that may sound silly that I mention his leg dropping to the floor, but to a person that knew Ross as well as I did that is something. I had never seen it happen before.

  I sat up stiff as a board. He had just reached up his two hands to the phones and was pressing them closer to his ears like the message was faint.

  Now I knew something big was up and I jumped from my chair.

  “What’s got into you, Norm?” I said, getting in front of him.

  But he didn’t seem to hear me or know I was there. He only pressed the earphones tighter. When I looked at his face, I was shocked. Only once before had I ever seen that rapt expression—when he got the call from London two years before at the end of that three-month war telling how the whole city had been gassed and bombed, leaving not one soul alive.

  I looked at the clock. It was a minute past the time for his regular call.

  I shook his shoulder. “Listen here, Norm,” I yelled. “You’ve got to get that call or—”

  “Listen to this, Bob,” he cut in, handing me the phones.

  I put them about my ears. All I heard was a faint voice. I pressed the phones close as Ross had done. Then I distinguished it.

  In strangely muffled tones, the voice came in, full of sharp hissing sounds and hard consonants. I could understand not a word.

  I tore off the phones. “You fool!” I cried. “What’s the idea of listening to some foreign station? Look!”—I pointed to the clock—“You’re over a minute late on your regular call!”

  Ross pointed to the wave-length dial. “See?” he said. “I’ve got it on the right wave. Eighteen point seven five meters.”

  I stared a moment in bewilderment. Sure enough, it was where it should be.

  “Sure you want eighteen point seven five? Better check,” I cried in a small panic, thinking of what Hegstrom would say.

  Ross gave me a withering glance which said without words, “Sure I want it? Did I ever lose my memory.

  “Well, I can’t fuss around here,” I said with a hasty glance at the clock. “My call is due in about ten seconds.”

  Before I took my call I
cried to my friend. “Probably something wrong with the dial control. You better try and find your call on some other number.”

  Then I snapped my button. The carrier wave was already coming in. I had caught my call just in time.

  “Call-call-call—xxw2-zz5,” I spluttered.

  Next minute I was busily typing the routine news from Persia. With everything going along smoothly, I turned my eyes in Ross’s direction. A good operator can do anything with his eyes while taking routine news; he can even use half his brain to think about other things.

  I saw Ross playing with the dial and felt relieved that he was taking my suggestion that something had gone wrong with the works so that the dial was in error. Hegstrom would be awful sore when he got the complaint that Ross had failed to get his call. But then I would be witness that it wasn’t his fault at all—that some foreign station had come in on that wave-length and spoiled the regular call. Only it was funny—it came to me then—that the regular call hadn’t registered at all; I hadn’t heard a background of English in the few seconds I listened to the foreigner. Maybe something had happened to the station in China!

  I turned my eyes back to my favorite spot—a dull paint spot on the panel—because I was getting some technical stuff and needed to concentrate.

  When I next looked at Ross about two minutes later, I heaved a mighty sigh of relief. He was picking at the keys, taking his call. Only one thing bothered me: his leg was still on the floor. “Oh, well,” I thought to myself, “that upset him so much that he’s a bit off center,” and with this philosophy, I went on with my call in a much more peaceful frame of mind.

  I finished my call in about fifteen minutes and then I had a breathing spell of four. I looked at Ross. He still had that leg of his down on the floor and worse yet, his elbows were not resting on the arms of the chair; they were in the air and he was sitting up in his chair stiff as a knife. But he was peacefully typing out his call so after all everything was all right. I did notice one other thing then but not until later did it become significant: his face, as much of its expression as I could get from a side view, had a look of—I know now what it was although then I couldn’t get it—amazement; stark, bewildered amazement.

  Restless as I could be while waiting for my next call, I walked to a position just behind Ross to see what it was that had so excited him that his foot was on the floor and his elbows in the air.

  I bent down close to see what he had typewritten and then blinked my eyes. The stuff he was taking down was not English any way you looked at it. It was a mess of consonants and s’s that sent chills up my spine.

  “Listen here,” I shouted when I got my wits back, “listen, Ross! What in Heaven’s name are you doing? What in thunder is that stuff?”

  But Ross kept right on typing as if his life depended on it. Only in one way did he show that he had heard me. He tossed his head sharply once in an unmistakable gesture for me to let him alone.

  From this point on my blood pressure rose and my heart pounded—my heart has been pounding ever since then even when I forget for a moment about all this.

  I automatically looked at the clock and saw that my next call was due. I calmed down somewhat as I pecked down the routine news. But I felt a growing fear in my heart as time and again I looked over to my friend to see him typing like a robot, his foot on the floor, elbows in the air. Then my friend, my only real pal, was going crazy—how that thought tortured me. I knew perfectly well that he didn’t know any other language than English. Why in the wide world should he be clacking down something he didn’t understand?

  It was just three thirty that suddenly Ross ripped the head-phones off and dropped them to the floor. He stood a moment looking at the paper in his hand and I noticed then that his skin was deadly white.

  I couldn’t stand it anymore. I jerked off my own phones and ran to him. Call or no call, I couldn’t stand by while my pal was in danger of losing his mind or something else as bad.

  “Norm!” I cried, “for God’s sake! Tell me what it is! What—”

  But I didn’t finish. With an explosion of curses, Ross crumpled the paper in his hand and began to walk up and down the room. He was so unconscious of everything else that he bumped squarely into me, reeled a moment, and then went on racing up and down feverishly.

  I tried to stop him—grabbed his arm and jerked it—but Ross was a much bigger and stronger fellow than I am, and he went on without noticing me. He didn’t shake me off, you understand, but just tore on as if he hadn’t even felt my hand. I didn’t say anything because I had lost my voice looking at the terrible picture of his face twisted in some agony of his mind.

  Then he began to speak, throwing his hands about hopelessly, and swinging his head like a maniac. While I—I just stood there, out of the path of his walk, panting like I had run ten miles, and listened.

  “Great God in Heaven,” he cried in a voice that I hope never to hear again in reality, although I hear it every night in my tortured dreams.

  “It can’t be . . . it’s impossible . . . I’m going mad . . . I am mad!. . . what did I ever do to deserve this?. . . how can it be? oh! how can it be?”

  For a while he just repeated those things until I wanted to scream out in frenzy. But I didn’t do a thing. I could see he was beyond my reach—beyond anybody’s reach.

  Then his voice changed, it became low, full of intense energy, ominously quiet. “What did he say? He said the weather had become frigidly cold . . . that it would not be long . . . that soon the Ice would cover the whole earth. . ..”

  Then he stopped a moment, his eyes burned maniacally. “But . . . I know something about geology . . . that was over fifty thousand years ago . . . do you hear me?”—he wasn’t talking to me, he was talking to himself—“do you get that?. . . fifty thousand years ago!”

  His voice became low and intense again so that my blood turned to water: “What did he say?. . . he said to his friend that the land was being flooded with creatures—maddened men and frenzied animals—that were retreating before the Ice . . . retreating before the Ice . . . the ice . . . but good God! I tell you that was fifty thousand years ago!”

  Then his voice became high-pitched and sobbing: “Oh! Dear Mary and Our One God! release me from this mad dream . . . save me from the destruction that will overwhelm me . . . how can it be?. . . it’s impossible . . . how can it be?”

  He repeated that dozens of times while he rumpled his hair and ground his teeth.

  I mustered up courage and grabbed him by the shoulders. Next moment I was spinning backward and hit the wall with a thump. I fell down and stayed there, looking up at Ross with an expression that I sometimes wonder could be. I know my eyes became salty with tears of mental agony—maybe it was blood that I sweated out that night.

  Then I heard him again, head to one side, staggering like a drunken man: “The radio was only invented twenty-five years ago . . . this was fifty thousand years ago . . . what did he say?. . . he said to his friend that this would probably be his last broadcast as the heat coils were running out . . . goodbye . . . he said . . . goodbye, my friend . . . civilization is doomed . . . the Ice will cover all . . . but I know something about geology, I tell you!. . . that was over fifty thousand years ago!. . . do you see what that means?”

  He paused as if expecting an answer, but I knew—my chilled brain told me—that he wasn’t talking to me, didn’t know I was there. He was still arguing with himself.

  “You see?. . . it means that I have received a message broadcast fifty thousand years ago just before the Ice came! . . . that’s what it means . . . do you hear me?”

  Then he fell into a senseless jargon that I knew meant the coming of the end of his mind’s fortitude. It would collapse soon.

  “And then,” came his voice to me, a bloodcurdling knife of a voice, “and then, how can you explain that I understood that voice?. . . tell me that . . . I never heard that language before . . . it was just a jumble at first . . . and then . . . and then
. . . in a flash . . . I understood it . . . just as if I had lived there . . . lived there fifty thousand years ago.”

  His voice became a wild shriek, a voice that a ghost might have: “Ah! Saviour! God! How can it be?. . . how can it be?”

  That was all. I sprang to my feet joyfully—as joyfully as I could after passing through that—and ran to him. The light of madness had died out of his eyes. He had seen me and recognized me. His shoulders drooped as if he carried the weight of a world on them.

  With a babble of sobs and broken cries I threw my arms around him and thanked the Lord he had been saved.

  He gently disengaged me.

  “O.K. Bob,” he said weakly. “I’m over it now.”

  “Darn right you are!” I said more calmly, realizing I must show a braver front than I had. “And what’s more, we’re going to get out of here!”

  I took him to the door of his uncle’s house and left him there, satisfied that the crisis was over. Then I went back to the station and finished up my calls. How I had the courage and fortitude to do it, I don’t know. Before the day shift came in, before I did a lot of explaining how Ross had been suddenly taken sick in the stomach and had to go home, I picked up a crumpled piece of paper from the floor, tore it into little bits, and threw the confetti in a waste paper basket.

  I got the news when I went to my room. Norman Ross had committed suicide at seven o’clock in the morning. That was an hour after I left him at his door.

  I told Hegstrom plain out that I wouldn’t work that night shift anymore for love or money. He said he’d have me transferred but would I stay one more night until he got a new man? Like a fool, I agreed.

  It was three a.m. that next night that I turned the dial to where the China Station should come in that had failed once. I sat petrified for five seconds while I listened to a muffled voice that spoke in hisses and sharp consonants.