The Thing in B-3

by Talmage Powell

  But he did everything just right. He smiled as if this were an everyday occurrence.

  “As they put it in my generation, you’re a knockout. That sure is a pretty dress you have on.”

  “Flatterer!”

  They went from the house trailing banter and happy laughter.

  14

  Delayed Takeoff

  I HATE YOU, B-three . . . Elizabeth Braxley . . . whoever you are ... whatever you are....

  Bill sat alone in the morgue reception room, behind the secretary’s desk.

  Folded on the desk, his arms were a hard, bone-and-sinew pillow for his face. But the discomfort of a wrist knuckle against a cheekbone was nothing. He felt too exhausted to move. His mind chased a tortured circle.

  The answer was always the same. No answer— except that. . . that thing back there in B-three.

  He’d tried his best to dog it through, to keep his balance. A grin on his face. Stiff upper lip.

  But he’d stood it as long as he could. He was tired, down in dark comers where no one had any right to be tired. Everything in him wanted to cop out, and he’d reached the point where he didn’t care.

  He raised his head with the effort of a weight lifter going for a record. Squinted at the lengthening shadows in the room. Listened to the silence.

  He fumbled at the phone and picked it up. Dully he dialed Patrick Connell’s apartment.

  When he heard the click of the phone being picked up at the other end, he said thickly, “You and your lousy theories.”

  “Bill?”

  “So what if it is? Bill Latham, plain-out flip case, seeing things. And listening to youl I got a thing against you, Dr. Patrick Connell, high mucky-muck of the ESP set!”

  “Hey, now. Ease off. What’s happened?”

  “Nothing,” Bill said. “And that’s the trouble. She’s still back there. B-three. Wearing the same yellow dress. Just like Betty’s and the one in the store.” He suddenly caught the shallowest of breaths. His shoulders began to pull upright.

  Pat was saying something, but his words were just a rattle in the receiver. Bill turned and stared in the direction of the boneyard.

  Two dresses. Betty had bought one. But how about the second? Ann-Helen didn’t keep it in the shop just to look at.

  “Sorry, Pat.” Bill broke the connection, then laid the phone on the desk so that Pat couldn’t instantly call him back and tie up the line.

  Bill yanked open the desk drawer and scrambled through it, then tried the one below. He hauled out the yellow pages phone book, ripped through it to find the proper classification, and stabbed the phone number of Ann-Helen’s with a forefinger.

  He dialed. Closed the classified. Dropped the book back in the drawer.

  Then he waited. Three, four, five times her phone rang. He was beating the heel of his palm against the desk.

  Don’t be closed up and living in some cool little apartment with an unlisted home phone.

  She answered in a rather breathless voice, as if she’d run to the phone. “Ann-Helens.”

  He wilted out a breath. “This is the fellow who was in your shop earlier, asking about the yellow dress. The one with the squarish collar and. . . .” “Yes, I know. But you waited a little too long. I sold it this afternoon. Why don’t you bring your girl friend and let me show her around?”

  “Sure,” he said, forcing a heartiness, “sounds great. Mind telling me who the lucky girl was? The one who bought the yellow dress?”

  “Not at all. My customers are my best advertisement. She was one of our most promising young career women, Victoria Latham. She bought the dress to wear on a trip to New York.”

  The room turned a sickening somersault around Bill. He grabbed and clutched the edge of the desk to feel something, anything, solid in contact with him.

  “Thanks,” he managed. “Thanks very much.” Then he was again seeing the wavering, in-and-out-of-focus of the dial, the blurred outlines of his finger trying to dial.

  Mrs. Hofstetter’s voice, even from the distance, was a soothing compress on an aching bone. “The William Latham residence.”

  “This is Bill. Let me ask Vicky if she’s got her schedule yet.”

  “Why, she’s already on her way, Bill. There was a cancellation and the reservation agent called. Your father came home and picked up Vicky almost an hour ago.”

  “No, Mrs. Hofstetter! Please. It can’t be!”

  “Bill, whatever is. . . .”

  “What’s the flight? What time does it leave?” “Flight seventy-one, Bill. It takes off at five fifty-eight. Will you please tell me. . .

  “Later,” he said. He dropped the phone and jumped to his feet, knocking over the chair. He threw a glance at the wall clock, and it seemed to paralyze him. He flinched with each brittle movement of the jerking second hand.

  The airport was in the county, beyond the farther side of the city. With the traffic and the distance and his tired old car, there just wasn’t time . . . not enough minutes . . . the plane would be lifting off with his sister on it, wearing that yellow dress, before he was two-thirds of the way there.

  But he’d fought B-3 this far. It had knocked him to the bottom, the dismally hopeless bottom, but he wouldn’t quit now.

  Again he grabbed the phone. This time he punched the button that connected him with the hospital switchboard.

  “Dr. Barney Childers,” he said. “This is an emergency.”

  A few seconds later he was talking with his ambulance co-worker. “Barney, don’t ask questions. I’ll give you the answers later, when there’s time.”

  “Fire,” Barney said. “What’s up?”

  “I’m marking off for a short time—and taking an ambulance with me.”

  “A brief mark-off is okay, but about the. . .

  “Barney.” Bill blinked against the sweat scalding the comers of his eyes. “If those jobs were put together to save lives, I’ve got to be rolling one.”

  “Then roll it.”

  Bill rolled it, with the siren wailing a path through traffic from the moment the big ambulance slewed into the street.

  He was swinging off the highway outside of town at last, homing on the lights of the airport, not daring to look at the electric clock in the ambulance dashboard.

  He rocked to a stop in a loading zone directly in front of the administration building. He threw himself out of the ambulance and dashed inside.

  The terminal was modestly active at this time of day, a few people buying tickets or weighing luggage at the ticket booths.

  Bill spotted his father standing with his hands in his pockets. The doctor was at the tall windows that gave a sweeping view of the runways, proudly waiting for a loaded jet to take off.

  Bill mumbled a series of “pardon me, please” as he bucked a thin tide of passengers streaming through the double doors from a completed flight.

  He was outside, under a long canopy, shouting at a man in neat, gray uniform, “Flight seventy-one?”

  “Over there, but I think you’re too late, sir. The flight’s about ready for takeoff.”

  Bill burst into a wild run, his eyes straining. The ground crew was moving out to start the engines. A stewardess lingered a final moment in the cabin door, saying something to a man who was standing below, prepared to dolly the steps away.

  Bill hurtled onto the bottom step just as the ground crewman started to roll the portable stairs.

  “Hey, fellow!”

  Bill ignored the shout. He charged upward, his eyes on the closing door.

  “Please, stewardess! Hold it! Don’t seal the plane!”

  With a final lunge he grabbed the edge of the door and hurled it open, throwing the stewardess off balance. She stumbled backward, staring at him as Bill leaped into the cabin.

  Bill’s eyes swept the rows of seats. Recovering, the stewardess tried to wedge herself in front of him.

  “Sir, the aircraft is scheduled to take off. ..

  Bill shook aside her restraining hand. His gaze
locked on Vicky. She was sitting beside an elderly woman halfway along the aisle.

  Bill’s appearance provoked a rustling among the passengers. The sight of him snapped Vicky stiff in her seat.

  The stewardess backed a step as Bill shoved forward.

  “I’ll have to ask you to debark immediately, sir.”

  Clearly the words made no impression. The stewardess yielded, faced with his chiseled determination. She slipped around him and hurried toward the pilot’s cabin.

  Bill dropped into a half-crouch beside Vicky.

  Her face was white with amazement. And just a hint of amusement. “Bill, this is hardly the way to see me off!”

  “I’m not seeing you off. I’m taking you off, Vicky!”

  Confusion, and then a glint of irritation, swept the lighter reflection from her eyes. “Bill, this isn’t very funny.”

  “Come on now, Vicky,” he said forcefully. “We’re holding up their schedule.”

  People were leaning, stirring, craning their necks to look at the scene.

  “Bill, please!” Vicky murmured tightly. “Don’t you see all the commotion you’re causing? Everyone is staring at us!”

  “I don’t care,” Bill said. “This airplane isn’t leaving the ground until you get off.”

  He took hold of her arm. She jerked away.

  “Bill, what’s come over you? I don’t see how you could do this to me!” Sudden tears of embarrassment and irritation glinted in her eyes.

  A shadow fell across Bill. The flight captain, a lean, well-set-up man of about forty, touched Bill quietly on the shoulder. Behind the pilot, the stewardess hovered.

  “What’s the trouble, fellow?”

  Bill turned a look up into the cool, aquiline face. “This girl is my sister, sir. And she’s not flying with you tonight.”

  The captain glanced at the chronometer on his wrist. “You have already delayed this flight a full two minutes, young man. Please debark.”

  “Not without my sister,” Bill said doggedly.

  The captain glanced at Vicky. “Is this man your brother, miss?”

  She nodded, biting her lip.

  “Do you wish him removed from the aircraft?” Vicky’s answer was a choked, distraught sob. She looked down at her hands as if everything were blurring in her vision. Her trembling fingers fumbled with the seat belt. She managed to snap it open almost by accident.

  She slipped to her feet, her knuckles pressing against her mouth as she gave Bill a look raw with hurt. Then she slipped past the captain and stewardess and fled the staring eyes.

  Bill was unable to catch up with her before she was yanking open the glass doors of the administration building.

  “Sis, you’ve got to believe. . .

  “I just hope you’re satisfied, Mr. William Latham, the second!”

  He almost emitted a crazy little laugh. She sounded so much like she had on occasion years ago, when they’d had a childish brother-sister spat.

  Waiting to watch the takeoff, Dr. Latham had seen a part of what had gone on. He met Bill and Vicky just inside the large waiting room.

  “Oh, Dad!” Vicky wailed against his shoulder briefly. “Bill made such a scene. Please take me home!”

  She pulled from her father and hurried toward the outside doorway, wiping her eyes with her fingertips.

  Dr. Latham held back for a moment, his face stamped with bewildered concern. “Bill, what’s this all about?”

  “It was something I simply had to do, Dad.” Bill’s jaw muscles bunched. “That dress Vicky is wearing . . . it’s a duplicate of what the image with the battered face in B-three has on.”

  Dr. Latham stared.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Bill said. “I’m fine now, honest. Better get Vicky home. And stroke her feathers, Dad. It’ll take some explaining, but you’re good at those things. She’s got lots of time before the interview date. She'll storm Fortesque Fifth Avenue after a flight tomorrow.”

  “Bill, I’m very unsure of all this. But what’s done is done. I’ll have to accept it.”

  “Just one more thing needs doing,” Bill said. “After Vicky gets out of that dress, be real sneaky and arrange an accident for it. A tear. A stain. Anything to give you the chance to destroy it.” Bill grinned and chunked his father on the shoulder. “Better get moving. She’ll be waiting in your car.”

  “And you, Bill?”

  “I’ll be at the morgue. Drop by. I guess Pat Connell will also. And drive extra carefully on the way home, Dad. She hasn’t changed dresses yet, you know.”

  From outside filtered the distant sound of jet engines. Flight seventy-one, delayed, was taking off.

  Bill glanced across at the bank of clocks showing the different time zones. He guessed that the captain was right now fuming in anger. Seventy-one was five minutes and thirty seconds late in takeoff.

  Three hours later, the stark, white light of the morgue revealed Bill, Dr. Latham, and Patrick Connell standing beside the opened refrigerated drawer, B-3.

  “Well?” Connell demanded.

  Bill shrugged. “It’s empty. Whoever . . . whatever ... from wherever... it’s gone. The experience is finished.”

  Bill touched the drawer and pushed. It slid inward and closed with a snap of finality.

  The three turned and started across the glistening floor on which Bill still had to render the evening mopping.

  “I still don’t figure it,” Bill said. “Maybe it was all for nothing, with no more sense of direction than a stroke of lightning. I called the airport a little while ago, just before you two showed up. Flight seventy-one landed safely. Sixty-eight passengers in addition to the crew, and nobody with a hair out of place.”

  They had reached the door. Pat slid it open but stood blocking it. “How long did you delay the flight?”

  “Almost six minutes,” Bill said. “But what’s that got to do with it?”

  “Everything, perhaps. Who knows what might have happened if seventy-one hadn’t been jarred out of its time stream? If its future hadn’t been changed by just that many minutes and seconds? Who can say what would have happened during takeoff, or in flight, or in the congested New York traffic pattern? Maybe,” Pat finished, drawing a shallow breath, “in addition to Vicky, sixty-eight other people and a jetliners crew are alive right now because of B-three and you.”

  Maybe, Bill thought, just maybe Pat is right.

  Table of Contents

  Sndden Awakenings

  A Revealing Portrait