XXIII
HE straightened the handle which spun the top and he polished the metal before marking off the spirals with a pencil and he borrowed a can of sewing machine oil and oiled up the spinning spiral on the handle so that it worked smoothly. Then he went about the painting.
He got paint on his hands and on his clothes and on the chair he laid the top on and he spilled the can of red paint on the floor, but he picked it up so quickly that scarcely any of it ran out onto the carpeting.
Finally the job was finished and it looked fairly good.
He worried whether it would be dry by morning, but he read the labels on the cans and the labels said the paint was quick drying, so he was somewhat relieved.
He was ready now, ready to see what he would find when he spun the top. It might be fairyland and it might be nothing. Most likely it would be nothing, for more would go into it than the spinning of the top—
The mind and the faith and the pure simplicity of a child. And he didn’t have that any longer.
He went out and closed and locked the door behind him, then went down the stairs. The town and the hotel were too small to have elevators. Although not so small a town as the little village that had been “town” to him in his childhood days, that little village where they still sat out on the bench in front of the store and looked up at you with sidewise glances and asked you impudent, prying questions out of which to weave the fabric of long gossiping.
He chuckled, thinking of what they’d say when the word got back of how he had fled from Cliff wood on the threat of being lynched.
“He always was a sly one and not up to any good,” they would say. “His Ma and Pa were real good people, though. Beats hell how a son sometimes turns out no matter if his Ma and Pa were honest people.”
He went through the lobby and out the door and stood out on the street.
Maybe, he thought, he should have told Ann that it had been Crawford who had stirred up the boys in Cliffwood. Not Crawford himself, perhaps, but some of Crawford’s henchmen.
But maybe it was just as well that he hadn’t told Ann. There was no use worrying her, and if he’d told her, she’d have wanted to know how he knew it had been Crawford and why had Crawford done it. And, of course, he couldn’t tell her that.
AT a diner, Vickers ordered a cup of coffee and the waitress said to him, “Nice night, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” he said.
“You want anything to go with that coffee, mister?”
“No,” said Vickers. “Just the coffee.”
She moved on up the counter and wiped off imaginary spots with a cloth she carried in her hand.
A top, he thought. Where did it tie in? He’d take the top to the house and spin it and would know once and for all if there were a fairyland—well, no, the flower in winter had been proof of that. He’d know if he could get back into fairyland.
And the house. Where did the house tie in?
Or did either the house or the top tie in?
And if they didn’t tie in, why had Horton Flanders written: “Go back and travel the paths you walked in childhood. Maybe there you will find a thing you’ll need—or something that is missing.” He wished he could remember the exact words Flanders had used, but he could not.
So he had come back and he had found a top and, more than that, he had remembered fairyland. And why, he asked himself, in all the years since he had been eight, had he never recalled that enchanted visit?
It had made a deep impression on him at the time, of that there was no doubt, for once he remembered it, it had been as clear and sharp as if it had just happened.
But something had made him forget it, some mental block, perhaps. And something had made him know that the metal mouse had wanted to be trapped. And something had made him instinctively refuse Crawford’s proposition.
Strange dog, he said. You’re a strange dog, Vickers.
The waitress came back down the counter and leaned on her elbow.
“You like pictures, mister?” asked the girl.
“I don’t know,” said Vickers. “I seldom go to them.”
Her face said she sympathized with anyone who didn’t. “I just live for them,” she said.
He looked up at her and saw she wore the face of everyone. It was the face of the two women who talked in the seat behind him on the bus; it was the face of Mrs. Leslie, saying to him, “Some of us are going to organize a Pretentionist club . . .” And, yes, it was the face of Mrs. Leslie’s husband, crowding drink and women into a barren life. It was the face of grinding anxiety that had become commonplace, that sent people fleeing for psychological shelters against the bombs of uncertainty.
Cynicism had run out and flippancy had never been more than a temporary shield. So now the people fled to the drug of pretense, identifying themselves with another life and another time and place—at the movie theater or on the television screen or in the Pretentionist movement. For so long as you were someone else, you need not be yourself, vulnerable and afraid.
He finished his coffee and went out.
Overhead, a jet plane flashed past, streaking low, the snarl of its tubes bouncing back against the walls. He watched its lights draw twin lines of fire over the night horizon, and then went for a walk.
XXIV
WHEN Vickers opened the door of his room, he saw the top was gone. He had left it on the chair, gaudy in its new paint, and it wasn’t on the chair or on the floor. He got down on his belly and looked underneath the bed and it wasn’t there. Nor was it in the closet and or in the hall outside.
He came back into the room again and sat down on the edge of the bed.
After all his worry and planning, the top had disappeared. Who would have stolen it? What would anyone want with a battered top?
What had he himself wanted with it?
It seemed faintly ridiculous now, sitting on the edge of the bed in a strange hotel room, to ask himself these questions.
He had thought the top would buy his way into fairyland and now, in the white glare of the ceiling light, he wondered at himself for the madness of his antics.
Behind him, the door came open and he heard it and turned around sharply.
In the door stood Crawford, even more massive than Vickers had remembered him. He filled the doorway and he stood motionless, without a single flicker except for the eyelids.
Crawford said, “Good evening, Mr. Vickers. Won’t you ask me to come in?”
“Certainly,” said Vickers. “I was waiting for a call from you. I never thought you would take the trouble to travel here in person.”
And that was a lie, of course, because he’d not been waiting for a call.
Crawford moved ponderously across the room. “This chair looks strong enough to hold me. You don’t mind, I hope.”
“It’s not my chair. Go ahead and bust it.”
It creaked and groaned, but it held.
Crawford relaxed and sighed. “I always feel so much better when I get a good strong chair beneath me.”
“You tapped Ann’s phone,” said Vickers.
“Why, certainly. How else would I have found you? I knew that, sooner or later, you would call her.”
“I saw the plane come in. If I had known it was you, I’d have driven out to meet you.”
Crawford chuckled. “I’ll bet.”
“Damned right I would. I have a bone to pick with you.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Crawford said. “Which in particular?”
“Why did you almost get me lynched?”
“I wouldn’t have you lynched,” said Crawford. “I’m too much in need of you.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe you would know.”
“Crawford, what is this all about? You didn’t tell me the truth that day I came in to see you.”
“I told you the truth, or at least part of it. I couldn’t tell you everything we knew.”
“Why not?”
“I
didn’t know who you were.”
“But you seem to know now.”
“YES, I do,” said Crawford.
“You are one of them.”
“One of whom?”
“One of the gadgeteers.”
“What in hell makes you think so?”
“Analyzers. That’s what the psych boys call them. We had analyzers in your house. The damn things are uncanny. I don’t pretend to understand them.”
“And the analyzers said I was a strange dog.”
“Translate, please,” said Crawford, puzzled.
“You know how a strange dog is. The other dogs all come out to meet it and they sniff it over and circle around and growl a bit and take an experimental nip or two. And all the time the strange dog stands there, stiff and still, not moving at all, waiting for the other dogs to pass inspection on it.”
“I see. Yes, I guess we sniffed you some.”
“I warn you, Crawford. I won’t stand still. I won’t let you take any nips.”
“I’m not nipping at you.”
“Not yet,” said Vickers. “If I am one of them, you are fighting me. A world with its back against the wall. Remember.”
“Don’t say ‘if.’ You are one of them, but quit acting as if I were an enemy.”
“If I am what you say I am, you are an enemy.”
“You don’t understand,” said Crawford. “Let’s try analogy. Let’s go back to the day when the Cro-Magnon drifted into Neanderthaler territory . . .”
“Don’t give me analogy,” Vickers told him. “Tell me what is on your mind.”
“I just plain don’t like the situation.”
“You forget that I don’t know what the situation is.”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you with my analogy. You are the Cro-Magnon. You have the bow and arrow and the spear. I am the Neanderthaler. I only have a club. You have clothing fashioned out of hides and furs and I have nothing but the hair I stand in.”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Vickers.
“I’m not so sure myself,” Crawford admitted. “I’m not up on that sort of stuff. Maybe I gave the Cro-Magnon a bit too much and the Neanderthaler a bit too little. But that’s not the point at all.”
“I get the point. Where do we go from there?”
“THE Neanderthaler fought back,” said Crawford, “and what happened to him?”
“He became extinct.”
“They may have died for many reasons besides the spear and arrow. Perhaps they were squeezed out of their hunting grounds. Perhaps they died of shame—the knowledge that they were outdated, that they were, by comparison, little more than beasts.”
“I doubt,” said Vickers, “that a Neanderthaler could work up a very powerful inferiority complex.”
“The suggestion may not apply to the Neanderthaler. It does apply to us.”
“You’re trying to make me see how deep the cleavage goes.”
“That is what I’m doing,” Crawford told him. “You can’t realize the depth of hate, the margin of intelligence and ability. Nor can you realize how desperate we really are.
“Who are these desperate men? I’ll tell you. They’re the successful ones, the industrialists, the bankers, the businessmen, the professional men, those who have security and hold positions of importance, who move in social circles which mark the high tide of our culture.
“They’d no longer hold their positions if your kind of men took over. They’d be Neanderthaler to your Cro-Magnon. They’d survive physically, but they’d be aborigines. Their values would be swept away and those values, built up painfully, are all they have to live by.”
Vickers shook his head. “I suppose I should pretend I know as much as you think I do—act smart and make you believe I know all there is to know. Fence with you. Get you to tip your hand. I’d rather be honest and say it’s all Greek to me.”
“I know it is. That’s why I wanted to reach you as soon as possible. You haven’t yet shed the chrysalis of an ordinary man. The tendency is to shift toward mutation—more today than yesterday, more tomorrow than today. But tonight, in this room, you and I still can talk man to man.”
“We could always talk.”
“No, we couldn’t,” Crawford dissented. “If you were entirely mutant, I’d feel the difference in us. Without equality I’d doubt the soundness of my logic. As it is, you’re doubting yours, which gives me an advantage. I won’t have that advantage when you finish mutating.”
“Just before you came in,” said Vickers, “I’d almost convinced myself it was all imagination . . .”
“It’s not imagination, Vickers. You had a top, remember?”
“The top is gone.”
“Not gone,” said Crawford. “You have it?”
“No, I haven’t. I don’t know where it is, but it still is somewhere in this room. You see, I got here before you did and I picked the lock. Incidentally, a very inefficient lock.”
“Incidentally,” said Vickers, “a very sneaky trick.”
“Granted. And before this is over, I’ll commit other sneaky tricks. But to go back. I picked the lock and walked into the room and I saw the top and wondered and I—well, I—”
“Go on.”
“Look, Vickers, I had a top like that when I was a kid. Long, long ago. So I picked it up and spun it. For no reason. Well, yes, there may have been a reason. Maybe an attempt to regain a lost moment of my childhood. And the top . . .”
He stopped speaking and stared hard at Vickers, as if he might be trying to detect some sign of laughter. When he spoke again, his voice was almost casual. “The top disappeared.”
VICKERS said nothing.
“What was it?” Crawford asked. “What kind of top was that?”
“I don’t know. Were you watching it when it disappeared?”
“No. I thought I heard someone in the hall. I took a fast glance. It was gone when I looked bad?.”
“It shouldn’t have disappeared,” said Vickers. “Not without you watching it.”
“There was some reason for the top. You had painted it. You wouldn’t go to all that trouble without some purpose. What was the top for, Vickers?”
“To go into fairyland.”
“You’re talking riddles,” snapped Crawford irritably.
“I went—physically—when I was a kid.”
“Ten days ago, I would have said both of us were crazy, you for saying it and I for believing it. I can’t say it now.”
“We still may be crazy, or, at best, just a pair of fools.”
“We’re neither fools nor crazy,” Crawford said. “We are men, the two of us, not quite the same and more different by the hour, but we still are men and not crazy or fools.”
“Why did you come here, Crawford? Don’t tell me just to talk. You’re too anxious. You had a tap on Ann’s phone to find out where I’d gone. You sneaked into my room and you spun the top. All right, why?”
“I came here to warn you that the men I represent are desperate, that they will stop at nothing. They won’t be taken over.”
“And if they have no choice?”
“They have a choice. They can fight with what they have.”
“The Neanderthalers fought with clubs.”
“So will Homo sapiens. Clubs against your arrows. That’s why I want to talk to you. There must be some area for agreement.”
“Ten days ago,” said Vickers, “I sat in your office and talked with you. You described the situation and you said you were mystified and stumped. To hear you tell it then, you didn’t have the ghost of an idea what was going on. Why did you lie to me?”
CRAWFORD sat stolidly, unmoving, no change of expression on his face. “We had the machine on you, remember? The analyzers. We wanted to find out how much you knew.”
“How much did I know?”
“Not a thing. All we found out was that you were a latent mutant.”
“Then why pick me out?” demanded Vickers. “Except for what you tell me,
I have no reason to believe that I am a mutant. I know no mutants. I can’t speak for mutants. If you want to make a deal, go catch yourself a real, honest-to-God mutant.”
“We picked you out,” said Crawford, “for a simple reason. You are the only mutant we could lay a finger on. You and one other—and the other is even less aware than you.”
“But you think there are more.”
“We know there are. But we can’t catch them. You can pin them down only when they want to see you. Otherwise they are always out.”
“Out?”
“They disappear,” explained Crawford harshly. “We track them down and wait. We send in word and wait. We ring doorbells and wait. We never find them in. They go in a door, but they aren’t in the room. We wait for hours to see them and then find out they weren’t in the place where we’d seen them go at all, but somewhere else, maybe miles away.”
“But me—me you can track down. I don’t disappear.”
“Not yet.”
“Maybe I’m a moronic mutant.”
“An undeveloped one.”
“You picked me out,” said Vickers. “In the first place, I mean. You had some reason to suspect before I knew.”
Crawford chuckled. “Your writing. Our psych department spotted it. We found some others that way. A couple of artists, an architect, a sculptor, one or two scientists. Don’t look so startled, Vickers. When you organize world industry, you have, in terms of cash and manpower, a crack outfit that can perform tremendous jobs of research—or anything else that you put it to. You’d be surprised how much work we’ve done, the areas we have covered. But it’s not enough. I don’t mind telling you that we’ve been licked at every turn.”
“So now you want to bargain.”
“I do. Not the others. They’re fighting for the world they’ve built through many bloody years.”
AND that was it, thought Vickers. Through many bloody years.
Horton Flanders had sat on the porch and talked of war and why World War III somehow hadn’t happened and he had said that maybe someone or something had stepped in, time and again, to prevent it from happening. Intervention, he had said, rocking back and forth.
The Complete Serials Page 45