by Jerry Sohl
“If you could only understand!” Virginia implored.
“What’s there to understand?” He stood there on the parkway, practically shouting, wary lest she get too near.
“Oh, Martin!” She was racked by sobs.
“For God’s sake!”
“You needn’t shout so the whole neighborhood can hear!”
“Hear what? It seems to me you are the one who should be shouting, trying to explain.”
“I know. You just don’t understand. You never will. Something’s happened and you think you know something. I was only trying to warn you, if what I think is true. Even Dad wasn’t aware of it.” Virginia glanced back at the house but no one was in sight. She dried her eyes.
“Martin, you have come to mean a lot to me. You know that, don’t you?”
“Is that why you tried to reach me just a little while ago, tried to get me asleep so you could talk some sense into me again?”
“Oh!” She put her hand over her mouth in horror. “Even to know that much. Martin, what are you going to do?”
He laughed derisively. “Virginia, what kind of a fool do you take me for, a complete one?”
“You think you know something!”
“So?”
She reached up and before he could move away she had the ends of his shirt collar in her hands.
“Martin, even a little knowledge is bad. Why were you ever assigned here!”
“Sometimes I wonder.”
“It started off wrong, I should have known. If you hadn’t seen Bobby...”
He tensed. This was something new. “Bobby?”
She nodded. “You wouldn’t be living with us—Oh, I can’t tell you!” Virginia was agitated and pulled at his collar. “Why don’t you get out of here before it’s too late! Go to the dispensary and tell them something—anything to get you off the reservation.”
He put his hands on his hips and looked at her disdainfully. “Why? Would you mind telling me that?”
“Nothing good can come of what you think you know.” She tugged harder at the collar now, her eyes round and concerned. “Get out of the reservation while you can. I was trying to tell you that—back there—trying to make you get out, but you wouldn’t let me and I could see that you were going to do something—”
“Something,” he said. “You mean something like what Forrest Killian did. Is that it?”
Her hands dropped from the collar. Her mouth went slack and for a moment she looked tired and bewildered and frightened.
“I know about you and Forrest, how you led him around—until the end.”
She did not move.
He turned and walked down the street, expecting her to follow him and possibly explain. But his own feet were the only ones he heard in the dusk. Half a block down he looked back.
She was still standing there in the growing shadows, a lonely figure looking after him, making no sign that she saw him.
He went on.
Chapter 9
Now he was in trouble. He had alienated Virginia and probably her father. Yet what else could he have done? Let her dominate him again as she had for three days? What manner of woman was she to be able to do this and to appear as she had in his room? It was beyond anything he had ever heard of or read.
Then there was her hint about Bobby, implying that because of what he had seen Bobby do, he was staying at the Penn house. Why? And did she mean to admit that Bobby had actually performed those strange things he had seen the boy do? If that was true, then this was more than fantastic—it was unbelievable. But then, magician’s tricks look impossible. Then when it is explained... Perhaps there was an explanation for this.
He thought of it as a magazine story and this made him think of National Scene and thinking of the magazine with its calm, solidly factual reporting of the most complex but material things of this world filled him with a longing to be back in the office. Perhaps if he could think this thing out in a familiar place faraway from Park Hill he might be able to reach a conclusion that would resolve the problem.
But I’m not at National Scene. I’m right here at Park Hill where this thing is happening and I’m working both for the magazine and for General Deems. He grimaced when he thought of the general. If I call him about this right now, he’ll think I’ve lost my mind. I’ve got to get to the bottom of it first. I’ve got to understand it myself before I start talking to anyone else about it.
As he walked along the street to the civilian club, he planned his moves. He would not return to the Penn house. He would be putting himself in Virginia’s hands again if he did that. He felt sure the dream power or whatever it was that the girl had could not reach him if he stayed with Dr. Merrill for the night. Then the next morning he would take the matter to Colonel Sherrington. The commanding officer of the reservation ought to be willing to work with him on it. If the name National Scene was not enough, then Martin could tell the colonel about General Deems. Then there would be action. Martin almost grinned at the thought of what the mention of the CIC would mean in the office of Colonel Sherrington.
He felt satisfied the way he had things figured out, walked into the civilian club with a brisk step and a smile on his face. He almost laughed when he saw the serious face of Dr. Merrill, it looked so woebegone.
Dr. Merrill half rose from his seat, shook hands solemnly and then sat down with Martin.
“I’ve been sitting here worrying about you,” the doctor said. “But I needn’t have. It’s only six o’clock. How did you get away?”
“I almost didn’t,” Martin said. He recounted his dream experience with Virginia.
“I’ve felt that was happening all along,” Dr. Merrill said. “That’s what I meant when I seemed surprised that you would be staying at Dr. Penn’s house. They tried that dream stuff on me, you remember. For some reason it didn’t take. Or maybe they didn’t try hard enough. They really had no reason to try it with me. I had been only too talkative against Dr. Penn.” Then he added, as an afterthought, “You can’t go back there, naturally.”
“I’d like to stay with you tonight, if you don’t mind.”
“There are a lot of rooms vacant in P-4. The one next to mine, for example. But that can come later. We’d better be on our way.”
“If it’s any of my business, where are we going?”
Dr. Merrill smiled mysteriously again. “To the laboratory. Come on.”
“For all of the urgency regarding Penn Project,” Dr. Merrill said as he inserted his key into the lock, “there is no night work. For that we can be thankful.”
He opened the door and they went inside. The place was deserted. The door clicked shut behind them and they stood there, listening. The only sounds were usual ones from the reservation outside, others were the drip of a faucet, a barely audible hum of a motor somewhere in the building and sounds from some of the animal cages.
The dusk had so deepened by this time lights from the street were beginning to illuminate the opaque windows at the far end of the building in the laboratory working area.
“We’ll stay in my office here,” Dr. Merrill said, walking into it. “I never lock the door like the others. Too much bother.”
The doctor carried two stools to a place behind the door.
“We’ll sit on these,” he said. “We’ll be behind this door. So.” He sat on a stool and motioned for Martin to do the same. When Martin had sat down, he said, “From where you sit now you ought to be able to see the reflection of Dr. Penn’s office door in the window there behind my desk. We will see this little drama from here, always looking in the window.”
“What are we going to see?”
The doctor got down from the stool, took off his coat and laid it on a near-by table. Martin did the same.
“I’d prefer not to tell you,” the doctor said. “It might not occur; then you wouldn’t believe me. No, this way is better.”
They sat on the stools in silence for a while. Then Dr. Merrill spoke again.
“I can say this, though. One afternoon right after work I went to the civilian club and had a bottle with me. I was pretty disgusted with the way things were going here at the lab that day—oh, it was in May, I guess. Well, I thought it would be a wonderful night to forget it all, so I took a drink out of the bottle and then had a beer. I continued with these boilermakers for quite a while.
“I hadn’t eaten anything, so the stuff really went to my head after about six of them. I didn’t want to go back to the barracks because I didn’t think I’d make it up the stairs. Besides, I thought I might get sick, which is unusual for me, for I don’t get sick very often any more.
“I came here and sat in the office with the lights off trying to sober up. I saw the whole thing and it sobered me plenty. I came back the next night to see if it was true and I’ve been coming back quite often, but I’ve never been able to figure it out—you’ll see what I mean.”
“All right, if you say so,” Martin said. “I still would like to know what to expect.”
“Be patient. You’ll see.” The doctor got off the stool and adjusted the door for the best opening. Then he looked at his watch. “It’s after six thirty,” he said, coming back to the stool. “It ought to be any minute now.”
Martin ground his teeth in impatience. What was Dr. Merrill trying to prove? Why didn’t he just explain? If this thing involved Virginia or Dr. Penn, then perhaps Martin would be seeing either of them again and he didn’t want to—at this time. There would be plenty of time after he saw Colonel Sherrington.
“I can’t understand this dream business,” Dr. Merrill said softly beside him. “That is a real puzzler. Where do you suppose they learned how to do that? Something like Yogi or mind power or something similar to what you see advertised in the magazines.”
Martin thought about telling him what he saw Bobby do, decided this was neither the time nor place to start.
“There’s bound to be a logical explanation for it,” the doctor went on. “Everything has an explanation. Take a magician. He cuts off a woman’s head. That’s what it looks as if he were doing, but he’s not, of course. Or sawing a woman in half. Our eyes are easily fooled. Perhaps our minds are fooled as readily. There’s a scientific explanation for it. There must be.”
Martin was not in the mood to discuss it.
Suddenly there was a sound and Dr. Merrill caught his arm. They were still and silent.
The lock was turning, there was a step into the laboratory. The door swung open almost noiselessly. Then it clicked shut behind someone. Whoever it was stood silent for a while and Martin hoped his breathing, which was audible to him, did not carry out into the corridor.
There was a click of a switch and the corridor blazed into light. Martin unconsciously slumped his shoulders and made himself as small as possible. The doctor’s hand on his arm steadied him. It was so bright in the corridor they surely would be seen on their stools in the window.
Dr. Penn moved into the rectangle of light Martin could see reflected in the white window. He did not look into the room. He brought out a key, inserted it in his office door lock, turned it, opened the door and went in to turn on a light. He came out, went down the hall and turned out the light there before returning to his office and closing the door.
“The door!” Martin breathed in dismay. “He’s closed it!”
“That’s all right,” Dr. Merrill whispered.
Martin failed to see how anything could happen before their eyes if the door was closed. From where he sat he could see a ribbon of bright light under the door and every now and then Dr. Penn’s shadow blotted out part of it.
For a long time there was no activity in the office and Martin’s spine wearied, sitting on the stool. What could it be, this senseless sitting on stools watching a door?
After a wait of several more minutes there was an odd sensation in the air. It was as if a cold breeze had suddenly blown in from somewhere. With a quickening heart Martin remembered a similar sensation when he watched a small boy with a sphere.
“I think it’s about time,” Dr. Merrill said, relaxing.
“He’ll hear you,” Martin warned.
Dr. Merrill laughed in his normal voice and Martin felt like hitting him. Why did the man invite discovery?
“I don’t think so,” Dr. Merrill said. “You’ll see. Just follow me.” The doctor got off the stool and the sounds seemed thunderous compared to the preceding quiet. He went to the door to Dr. Penn’s office and, selecting a key from his ring, inserted it in the lock. “I had this key especially made for this,” he said.
Martin’s heart was beating fast. Was the man mad? What possible reason could they give for entering Dr. Penn’s office?
Dr. Merrill swung the door open and they both entered the office.
It was empty.
Dr. Merrill watched Martin’s eyes dart around seeking out all the possible hiding places.
“See what luck you have, Martin,” Dr. Merrill said. “I’ve tapped every board and every square inch of this room. There must be an exit somewhere. He must have opened something and gone out. But what? And why?”
This was a page from when knighthood was in flower, when there were secret panels in the castles for escape in case of danger, but surely not in this age and on a military reservation!
“Looking for someone?”
They whirled around to the voice at the door.
Dr. Penn stood there, smiling. He entered the room and closed the door behind him. He did not move from it.
“This is unfortunate,” he said. The way he said it made Martin’s blood run to his feet, leaving him dizzy. There was something about this man he had not noticed before, a magnetic quality, a hazy look about the eyes. He had not noticed before how much like Virginia’s eyes they were.
“If you will sit down, please.” Dr. Penn motioned to a laboratory stool and his desk chair. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but you present quite a problem. Both of you. If you disappear there are sure to be repercussions. The question is: What am I going to do with you? You can’t go back knowing what you know.”
“What do we know?” Dr. Merrill managed to ask.
“It isn’t exactly what you know,” the doctor said in a calm, controlled voice. “It’s what the recitation of your experiences here might imply. That we could not allow.”
“Who is ‘we’?” Martin asked.
The doctor showed his yellowed teeth in a wide grin. “You have been curious, haven’t you, Martin? I can see what my daughter sees in you, all right. I witnessed your little argument with her tonight. It must be unsettling to be confronted with something you cannot be expected to understand, Martin.”
Where were you? Martin wanted to ask him. I didn’t see you when I looked back.
“As long as you’re in such a talkative mood, Dr. Penn,” Dr. Merrill said, “why not tell us why you are standing in the way of regeneration?”
From somewhere the doctor produced one of his Missouri meerschaums. Martin could have sworn he was nowhere near a pipe a moment before. He struck a match and sucked on the pipe slowly and methodically.
“You won’t believe me, Dr. Merrill,” Dr. Penn said, “when I tell you I hated like the devil running that project in the wrong direction. You sensed that. It was a point in your favor that you did. The fact that you objected, that you were disgusted with me, was a fine display of the real scientific spirit, the kind of spirit your world needs and needs desperately. But at the moment regeneration cannot be. You are not ready for it yet.”
“Not ready for it!” Dr. Merrill’s eyes grew fiery and veins in his forehead enlarged. “Who do you think you are to judge whether or not regeneration ought to be? Let me tell you something. It’s because of the brass hats you’re fooling in Washington—”
“Who’s talking about brass hats? You influenced several to keep you here when I wanted to get rid of you,” Dr. Penn said archly. “What about that?” The doctor shook his head. “You would have earned more respect i
f you had left of your own accord. Instead, you allowed that incident and the geometrical progression of incidents in your mind to lead you to drink, an escapist’s way out. What did it get you? This. Believe me when I say it is without rancor that I tell you this: You mean nothing to me one way or another.”
“Talk, talk, talk!” Dr. Merrill was white with anger. “You talk about the scientific spirit! Ha! Your brain isn’t big enough to contain a cubic millimeter of spirit, scientific or otherwise!”
Dr. Penn was amused and showed it. “Tut, tut,” he said, aggravating the man still further. “You’re exhibiting the size of your brain right now.”
“What about National Scene?” Martin said. “Your admission that you are preventing regeneration research certainly won’t look good.”
Dr. Penn looked at him gravely. “You still do not understand. There will be no National Scene story as surely as there will be no you. As I’ve said, this is a problem for which I have no immediate solution—the problem of how to dispose of you two gentlemen. It will have dangerous consequences regardless of how it is accomplished.”
“I always thought you were off your trolley,” Dr. Merrill said, getting off his stool. “Now I know it.” He started for the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Dr. Penn asked, stepping aside.
“I’m going straight to Colonel Sherrington. I should have done it long ago.”
Dr. Merrill opened the door, started to walk through the doorway, but collided with a black wall and fell back into the room.
“There is no way out of this room at the moment,” Dr. Penn said. “There won’t be until I have solved this problem.”
“The whole room is an elevator then, is that it?” Dr. Merrill snarled. “Well, you can take us back up again.”
“Perceptually, not bad. Conceptually, very poor, Dr. Merrill. Oh, don’t stand there like a damned fool. Don’t you suppose I’ve known about you? I’ve been thinking all evening about what I should do. You see, I knew you were behind the door to your office the first night and each night you’ve been here since. But I didn’t care. It wasn’t important as long as you never did anything about it. When we examined your drunken mind that night at my home while you slept we discovered you knew nothing about us. If you had, you wouldn’t be here now.”