by Rog Phillips
dark form emerged from thegloom.
"Hello, Fred," Captain Waters said quietly. "I came to keep you company.I'll just sit quiet and not bother you."
"Okay," Fred said.
* * * * *
There were movements. A small flame illuminated Captain Waters' featuresas he lit his pipe. The flame went out. Then, only the occasional glowof the pipe, briefly illuminating the police Captain's face.
_Crrroak!_ The frog greeted this newest arrival in his domain.
Fred could not think. He was too conscious of the man sitting near him.He fought down the impulse to jump up and run away into the darkness. Hefought the desire to scream at the man to leave him alone.
Perhaps the police captain sensed this, or perhaps he could see Fred'sexpression when the coal in his pipe glowed brightest. "Tell you what,"he said suddenly, "You maybe would feel better alone. I'll wait in thecar. When you get ready you can come home. No more doctors. Mom gave mea good talking to. She wants you to come back."
Waters got up and walked away into the night. Minutes later there wasthe sound of a car door slamming shut. Fred was alone again.
Alone. It was a feeling, almost an emotion. Intellectually he knew thatnearby was a frog. A block away across the meadow was the police captainsitting in his car.
Abruptly, without warning, a flash of insight spread through his entiremind. He knew suddenly what belief was. He knew it instinctively andwithout question.
And knowing it, he knew that his foundations of unbelief were a semanticillusion that had been built up within him. The panorama of his mind,his entire life, stood clearly before him.
The cute little tags of probability were superficial. They had apragmatic value in keeping the mind open, but their function was toguide the judgment in tagging thoughts with belief or disbelief.
He retreated into his aloneness until there was nothing but himself. Hemarveled at the unfoldment of this new understanding. He could seethings in this new light of understanding.
But then.... A question loomed. If that were so, why hadn't he vanishedlike the others? Belief was an automatic process. Why hadn't itpermeated to the basic matrix of his mind as it had with the others?
Was he, then, still on the wrong track?
But there _was_ no other!
He saw the trap he had set for himself. He had believed with all hisbeing that belief was the key he was searching for!
He had been on the wrong track. His beautiful theory of belief thatspread downward into the subconscious, then down lower and lower intothe basic matrix that held a person in this reality, was wrong. Theevidence he had based it on was still there, but it was evidence ofsomething else.
Of what?
The eastern horizon was suffused with light. It grew stronger, dimmingthe light of the moon.
From somewhere in the depths of his being rose a feeling that soon hewould know, and when he did he would be close to crossing the threshold.
He unclasped his arms and straightened out his legs, feeling stabs ofpain in his weary muscles. He got to his feet, tingling with weariness.
By the side of the road, he could see the police car he hadstolen--infinite ages ago. He walked toward it, and when he reached ithe climbed in and closed the door.
"Beautiful morning," Captain Waters said, starting the motor.
* * * * *
Fred awoke and opened his eyes. Across the room the French doors wereopen. Sunlight was filtering through the copper screens. A breeze wasplaying gently with the drapes. For a moment the flight, the long walkinto the country, his rendezvous with Aloneness, Captain Water's comingto bring him back, all seemed the stuff of dreams. He had the feelingthat he had never left this enormous bed.
Then it returned. Reality. The miracle of his reorientation to belief,the new vistas that went with it. The full realization of the truenature of the vanishments.
He became aware of a figure in the doorway, watching him. It was Mrs.Waters. "Awake?" she asked cheerfully.
"Yes," Fred said.
"Want some breakfast?"
He nodded. She went away.
He raised his head and looked about the room, at the homey touches, thefamily pictures on the dresser and the walls, the hand sewed knickknacksand frills. This was probably the Waters' own bedroom that they hadgiven up for him.
He could vanish while Mrs. Waters was away. She would come in with thebreakfast tray and find him gone.
When would the _moment of reorientation_ come?
He frowned in thought. That had stirred up something about what he haddreamed, or thought, while he was asleep. Something that had the flavorof being very important.
"Here you are!" Mrs. Waters said, sweeping into the room with the trayand its Swedish design dishes and steaming coffee and hot cereal. As shebent over to set the tray on the bed, there came the sound of the frontdoor opening. "There's Pa, home already." She smiled worriedly at Fred."Will you be all right? I'll tell Pa to come in and keep you companywhile I fix his supper."
"Yes ma'am," Fred said, eyeing the food hungrily. "Only--" She was atthe door. She stopped and looked around questioningly. "I--I think I'dlike to be alone while I eat."
"All right," she said, and hurried away.
But Captain Waters had brushed in without giving her a chance to tellhim to stay away. "Hello, son," he said warmly. "Have a good sleep?"
Mrs. Waters said, "You let him alone while he eats."
"It's all right," Fred said hastily.
"Sure it's all right," the police captain said. He sat down and took outhis pipe. He concerned himself with filling it and lighting it, sayingnothing.
Fred picked up a piece of golden toast and bit into one corner absently.The thoughts he had had during sleep were filtering into consciousness.
He recalled how his mother had looked. There had been a fleetingexpression just before she had vanished. She had been going to saysomething. _She had changed her mind and had vanished instead!_
And Curt--he had had his reorientation at least several seconds beforevanishing. He had had it, and then, with his new perspective, had said,"So _that's_ it!"
It was as though the new orientation made everything else unimportant.
One common factor stood out in every case, those two he had personallywitnessed, and the others he hadn't seen. One common factor. Vanishing,or whatever happened that produced the vanishing, had been an impulse.
There had been time for thought. For example, Curt might have consideredthe practicality of telling Fred what had happened to him. But he mighthave reflected that eventually Fred would discover what he had justdiscovered, so why bother?
In the office Curt had told him of a whole city of a million peoplevanishing, leaving empty houses and streets. Had the cause been thesame? A true orientation?
Fred looked at Captain Waters, sitting quietly, puffing slowly on hispipe. With deliberation Waters uncrossed his legs and leaned forward."You know, son, when you get around to it--that is, if you feel up to itsometime--I wish you'd tell me about it. What it is that's troublingyou. I'll try to understand."
"You'll try--?" Fred echoed. And the police captain's words started atrain of thought. The others--had the place they'd gone been a heaven ora hell? So many of them--. Fred started suddenly. "The book!" he cried.
"What book?"
"I've got to see the publisher about my father's book. It's veryimportant."
"It can wait until you're feeling better," Waters said.
"No. I've got to see Mr. Browne!"
"Why?"
"I--I can't tell you."
"All right." Captain Waters gave in. "I'll take you down and bring youback."
It was half an hour later, in the reception room at the publishingcompany. Fred stared numbly at the big poster on the wall advertisinghis father's book.
"Mr. Browne will see you," the receptionist said.
"Wait here," Fred told Captain Waters. "I want to talk to him alone." He
went to the door and opened it, stepping inside and closing it behindhim.
"Fred Grant?" Browne said, getting up from his desk and coming towardhim, hand outstretched. "What can I do for you? Need some money?"
Fred was shaking his head. "I don't want any money," he said. "I wantyou to stop my father's book. You can't publish it."
"Now wait," Browne said. "We aren't going through that again, are we?"
"You can't!" Fred said. "People will read it and vanish!"
"Huh?"
"People will read it and vanish! You've got to believe me. _The cause ofthose disappearances is in that book!_"
Browne stared for a moment, then dragged over a