by Gunn, James
The barrel of the shotgun began to droop. “What do you mean?” the stranger asked.
“Maybe you’d also tell us where we could find Peter Cavendish?” Mrs. Farmstead continued.
The shotgun barrel lifted again. “Why would you ask that?”
“The people we work for would like to know how much you’d reveal to strangers.”
“You mean you work for—?”
“What do you think? You know what you were told: To turn over all copies of the book and wipe out all evidence of its existence. Well, we’ve discovered that at least one copy of the book has survived, and people are making inquiries. And now we find, Mr. Joel Simpson, that a record of the author survives in your file.”
The shotgun pointed to the stained floor. “I didn’t know,” Simpson said. He was thin and nervous. “I wish you people would make up your minds—the IRS says I gotta keep the information, you say I gotta get rid of it. What’s a guy to do?”
“Bull!” Adrian said, entering the conversation for the first time. “The IRS doesn’t care anymore. You just forgot.”
“Just like you’re going to forget Peter Cavendish,” Mrs. Farmstead said. “And just to prove it you’re going to tell us where he is.”
Simpson’s eyes got suspicious. “If you’re one of them, you know where he is.”
“Of course we know,” Adrian said. “We just want to know if you know, so that when we tell you to forget it, you’ll know what to forget.”
Simpson turned that over in his mind without seeming to unravel it. “He’s in a mental hospital in Topeka, Kansas,” he said.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Mrs. Farmstead said. “Now forget it! Forget Peter Cavendish! And forget you ever saw us!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Simpson said. “You bet. I never want to see any of you again. You’re worse than aliens.”
“What do you know about aliens?” Adrian asked sharply.
“Nothing!” Simpson said. “Nothing at all! I’m sorry I ever heard of them. I’ll burn my books.”
“Too much of a giveaway,” Mrs. Farmstead said. “Keep everything as it was. Just forget the rest!”
“Yes, ma’am—and sir.”
Outside, in the car, Adrian said. “Quick thinking back there.”
“I read a scene like that in a spy novel,” Mrs. Farmstead said. “Ian Fleming, maybe. I’ve read so many I get them mixed up. You were quick on the pick-up.”
“Do you think he’ll notify anyone?”
“Not for a while. Then maybe the shock will wear off and he’ll begin to think about it, maybe wonder why we were sneaking around in the middle of the night, maybe analyze your nonsense about revealing Cavendish’s whereabouts so that he would know what to forget.”
“It was all I could think of at the time,” Adrian said.
“Don’t apologize for anything that works.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have a contact.”
“Not likely,” Mrs. Farmstead said. “They always leave a number to call in case people start making inquiries or start nosing around. Sooner or later he’ll think to check.”
“So sooner rather than later we’d better get out of here,” Adrian said.
When they got back to the bed-and-breakfast, Isabel wasn’t around. She was in her room asleep, they hoped. They messed up their beds to look slept-in, Adrian left money for the night’s stay on the end table in the entry hall along with a note Mrs. Farmstead had written saying “Decided to make an early start for the Canyon. Here’s money for the rooms. Thanks for everything,” and they tiptoed out, easing the door shut behind them.
They headed back to Flagstaff, bypassing the Grand Canyon and the Lowell Observatory once more, before turning east on Highway 40. Mrs. Farmstead dozed in the passenger seat until the sun came up just before they reached Gallup.
“A mental hospital, Adrian?” she said. “I think I was dreaming about mental hospitals and a patient named Cavendish.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, too. But it figures, doesn’t it? Where’s a better place to stash Cavendish? Where he can talk all he likes about aliens and messages from outer space and spaceships.”
“We’ve got to figure out a plan of action,” Mrs. Farmstead said, “and how we’re going to protect ourselves.”
By the time they arrived in Albuquerque their plans were complete, and all they had to do was check in the car and catch the first flight to Kansas City. Adrian used their own names again, trying not to glance around the pueblo-style airport to see whether someone was watching. “In movies,” Mrs. Farmstead said, “people always give themselves away by acting as if someone were watching them. Almost as if they expect to be nabbed, and, of course, they are.”
“By now, of course,” Adrian said, “they may have traced the license plate on the rental car and have my name. They could be here in a few hours, maybe, but surely not before we’ve left. I wish we’d thought to make up fake IDs.”
“In novels,” Mrs. Farmstead said, “pursuers never get thrown off the scent. They’ll be waiting for us in Topeka.”
“Life isn’t a novel,” Adrian said. “In a book people get caught because the plot gets more complicated if they’re caught, and if the pursuers were thrown off, that would be the end of a story, wouldn’t it?”
Mrs. Farmstead nodded. “But it helps to anticipate the worst scenario. That way we won’t be surprised.”
“We’ll have our insurance,” Adrian said.
At that moment their flight was called and they passed through the metal detectors and onto the plane, not looking back.
Topeka had three major mental hospitals, the Veterans Administration, the state, and the Menninger Foundation. The first two had developed mostly because of the psychiatrists and reputation accumulating around Will Menninger’s pioneering work. They weren’t far apart, but Adrian thought random inquiries would only tip off pursuers. Maybe he and Mrs. Farmstead could think of a way to narrow the search.
“He probably wouldn’t be a veteran,” Adrian said.
“But a government agency might be able to put him away there,” Mrs. Farmstead said. “Maybe manufacture documents? Pull strings?”
“Possibly,” Adrian conceded. They were sitting in another rented car in a large shopping center, having already spent some time in a computer service center. On this occasion, Mrs. Farmstead had signed for the car in Kansas City, leaving a different trail to slow potential pursuers. “But government red tape might make it nearly impossible to contact a patient, at least in the time we have.”
“Before they catch up with us.”
“Or intercept us. As for the state hospital—I don’t know the rules in this state, but wouldn’t he have to be a resident before he could be admitted?”
“You’d think so,” Mrs. Farmstead said. “That leaves—”
“The Menninger Clinic.” He glanced into the rearview mirror and then back at Mrs. Farmstead. “Do you ever feel like we may be fleeing from phantoms?”
Mrs. Farmstead nodded. “The guilty flee,” she said. “But the worst-case scenario—”
“I’m tired of subterfuge,” Adrian said. “Let’s play it straight.”
Ten minutes found them on the campus of the Menninger Clinic. It was an attractive place, not like a hospital or institution at all, with trees and lawns and garden beds and buildings scattered here and there, and the breezes and green odors of a park. In the middle of everything was an office building. After five minutes of winding roads, and half an hour of questioning by security guards, they finally reached a reception desk.
“We’re looking for a patient named Peter Cavendish,” Adrian said. “We’ve been told he was hospitalized in Topeka, and we thought he might be here.”
“Are you relatives?” the pleasant young woman asked.
Adrian shook his head. “We came across a fascinating book he wrote, and we thought we’d take the chance we might be able to meet him while we were passing through.”
“A book?” She tu
rned to her computer and clicked a few keys. “Yes, we have a Peter Cavendish, but you need a written request in advance that must be processed by the resident’s treatment team.”
Adrian and Mrs. Farmstead exchanged glances.
“Golly,” Mrs. Farmstead said, “we’re only going to be in Topeka a few hours.”
“It might help Mr. Cavendish to talk to someone who has read his book,” Adrian added.
“And admired it,” Mrs. Farmstead said.
The receptionist hesitated. “Let me call his attending psychiatrist, Dr. Freeman.” She turned to her telephone and soon began talking to someone. She swung back to Adrian and Mrs. Farmstead. “What’s the name of the book?”
Adrian hesitated and said, “Gift from the Stars.”
The receptionist gave the title into the telephone and listened while Adrian’s breath caught in his chest. “Okay,” she said, “I’ll get an orderly to take you to the unit.”
The building looked like a two-story brick apartment building. Inside, it was like an attractively laid-out and furnished home. They waited in an off-white “day room” with a cream-colored sofa and brown, tapestry-covered easy chairs, framed landscapes on the wall, and a television set in one corner, while the orderly disappeared down a hallway. He returned in a minute or two with a medium-sized man in a dark shirt and slacks and a cheerful Scandinavian sweater; it was white with red reindeer. The newcomer had his hands in his pockets. He seemed to be middle-aged, perhaps in his fifties, with blond hair and blue eyes and a calm expression. Adrian wouldn’t have given him a second glance on the street unless he had looked closer and noticed the stiff, almost apprehensive set of the man’s shoulders and the way his eyes kept scanning the room but never looked directly at Adrian or Mrs. Farmstead.
“Peter Cavendish?” Adrian said.
The man nodded.
“I’ll be in the next room if you need me,” the orderly said.
Cavendish looked after the orderly until he was clearly out of earshot and said, “Are you from them?”
“Them?”
Cavendish’s glance flicked back and forth. “You know. Them.”
“No,” Adrian said. “We just came to see you. We read your book, Gift from the Stars. We wanted to talk to you about it.”
“They don’t want me to talk about it.”
“They’re not here. You can talk to us.”
“How do I know it’s not a trick?”
“Do we look like tricky people?” Mrs. Farmstead said. She leaned forward, her hands spread open as if to show that she was concealing nothing. “I sell books. He designs airplanes.”
“And spaceships,” Adrian said.
Cavendish looked at them for the first time, and his face relaxed, as if he had been wearing a mask and the fasteners had broken. Adrian realized that Cavendish had been holding himself together. Tears appeared on the lower lids of his eyes. “You’ve come to rescue me,” he said.
“The orderly said you could walk away any time,” Adrian said.
“That’s what they tell you,” Cavendish said darkly.
“But we have come to rescue your ideas,” Mrs. Farmstead said. “Could you tell us about the book?”
“It’s all true,” Cavendish said.
Adrian nodded. “We believe it. But what part—”
“Everything. The aliens are here. You may be aliens for all I know.” Cavendish’s body tensed again.
“We’re just people,” Mrs. Farmstead said. “Like you.”
“That’s what they’d say, wouldn’t they?”
“I’m interested in the spaceship designs,” Adrian said. “I’m an aerospace engineer, and I think I could build a spaceship from those designs.”
“Yes,” Cavendish said. “I got them out of there, you know.”
“From the NASA project?” Adrian guessed.
Cavendish looked puzzled. “From SETI, of course. Cosmic rays. Energetic stuff. Too energetic to be natural, the physicists told me. Figure it out, it makes a picture. Right? You’ve got to decipher the code. But they make it easy. They want you to figure it out.”
“Anti-cryptography,” Adrian said.
“But then you don’t know,” Cavendish said. He looked bewildered. “Do they want you to come? Why don’t they come here instead? Why don’t the others want the information to get out? What will happen to the world if everyone knows?” He was getting agitated. “Why did they tell us? Why do they want us to come? Do they want to torture us? Dissect us? Make us slaves? Eat us?” Tears began trickling down his face.
“It’s all right, Mr. Cavendish,” Adrian said. He felt like backing away from the man standing in front of him, looking almost normal but acting strangely.
Mrs. Farmstead had better instincts. She moved forward and put her arm around Cavendish’s shoulder and led him to the sofa. She sat down beside him and held his hand.
“Are there any other drawings?” Adrian asked.
“They destroyed them,” Cavendish said more quietly. “The other aliens. The ones who are here. The ones who don’t want us to go.” He glanced around slyly. “But I hid the real ones.” He looked apprehensive again. “Maybe they’re right, though. Maybe it was all a mistake.”
A change in the light and a puff of breeze alerted them more than the muffled sound of the door opening behind them. “I think you’ve talked long enough, Peter,” a calm voice said.
Cavendish jumped up nervously as Adrian and Mrs. Farmstead turned toward the door. A tall, sandy-haired man in a tweed jacket and imitation horn-rimmed glasses stood framed in the doorway. He looked a bit like Cary Grant but sounded more like Clint Eastwood.
“Fred,” he said, and they turned to see the orderly in the entrance to the hall, “I think Peter has had enough company for one day. Take him back to his room and give him a Xanax.”
“Yes, Dr. Freeman,” the orderly said. He took Cavendish’s arm and they disappeared down the hallway. Cavendish gave a single anguished look back at them before he returned to his unnatural calm.
“So,” Adrian said, turning to the psychiatrist, “you’re Cavendish’s physician?”
Freeman nodded. “And who are you?”
“My name is Adrian Mast. And this is Mrs. Farmstead.”
“Frances Farmstead,” she said.
“We were hoping to get some information from Cavendish about a book he published half a dozen years ago,” Adrian said.
“The famous book,” Freeman said.
“What’s famous about it?” Adrian asked. “As far as I know there’s only copy, and we’ve got it.”
“Peter talks about it a lot,” Freeman said. “Maybe we’d better sit. We may have more than a little to talk about.” He walked into the room and sat down in one of the easy chairs, and motioned Adrian and Mrs. Farmstead to the facing sofa. “You’re not casual visitors as you suggested to the receptionist.”
Adrian and Mrs. Farmstead looked at each other. Adrian said, “Not casual—in the sense that we weren’t just passing through. We sought Cavendish out. But casual in the sense that we represent nobody but ourselves and our curiosity.”
“Curiosity about Gift from the Stars?”
Adrian nodded. “Do you believe in the book, Dr. Freeman?”
“I’ve never seen a copy.”
Adrian looked at Mrs. Farmstead. She unzipped her large purse, rummaged around in the central pocket, pulled out the book, and handed it to Adrian who passed it on to Freeman. The psychiatrist turned it over in his hands and then opened the cover to the title page and to page one. “Now I believe in it,” he said and held up a hand, “though not in the sense you mean. But, more to the point, you believe in it.”
Adrian cleared his throat nervously. “At this point I have the urge to convince you that we’re not crazy. We’re not UFO believers. We don’t think aliens are zooming around, abducting people, maybe even passing for humans. But could some of the book be derived from reality rather than imagination?”
“Anything is possib
le, Mr. Mast,” Freeman said carefully. “You can find truth in some unlikely places and, as the French say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. But this is the sort of book I’d expect a paranoid schizophrenic to write, if one wrote a book. Not many of them do; they don’t have the attention span. But Peter wrote this book before he came to us.”
“And how did he come to you?” Mrs. Farmstead asked. “Was he more disturbed then? Did he have any explanation for his condition?”
“Those are not the kind of questions I feel free to answer. Speaking as his physician.” Freeman put his hands together. “You’re the ones who need to justify your presence here.”
“Turn to the appendices,” Adrian said. He waited while Freeman leafed to the back of the book. “Those are spaceship designs. I’m an aerospace engineer, and I would stake my reputation on the fact that those designs are genuine. I could build a spaceship from these if I could find something more detailed. And if I could develop the technology they imply.”
Freeman nodded slowly. “I’ll take your word for it. Not that I believe it. I have no proof, you see.”
“Any more than you have proof of Cavendish’s—condition,” Adrian said. He almost said “insanity” before he realized that psychiatrists probably found that word offensive.
“Could it have been induced?” Mrs. Farmstead said. “Is Cavendish on drugs? Was he placed here?”
Freeman shook his head. “He is on drugs, of course. He needs to be calmed occasionally, as you saw just now, and we’re trying to restore his sense of reality by restoring his chemical balances. But paranoid schizophrenia is a genetic predisposition sometimes triggered by an emotional crisis.”
“Not by drugs?” Adrian said.
Freeman chose his words carefully. “He came here talking about aliens and conspiracies, referred to us from a hospital in California. This is a place less conducive to theories of persecution. It was thought he had a better chance of recovery.”
“And what if we told you that there may be evidence of a conspiracy to suppress the distribution of this book?” Adrian said. “Maybe Cavendish isn’t crazy.” There, he had used a word even more likely to offend.