“Not that you aren't, and not that I'm not,” said Harry Hardcrow, who often talked that sort of shorthand, “but I'm wondering if your visit is casual or urgent.” He shook hands with Foley. “You had a slight tone of excitement when you talked to me on the phone earlier, Foley. And you appear now still more excited. Has anything happened in the meanwhile?”
“Not that I recall, not anything important,” Fred Foley said. “Oh yes, there was the murder of a man whom I knew only a little bit. But he had been waiting for me when it happened. It shook me a little more than has come to the surface yet. But it wasn't involved with my main line of inquiry, so we'll let it go for the moment.”
“It may be involved with your main line of inquiry, Foley. What is your main line of inquiry?” Hardcrow asked.
“I'm looking for the answers to a couple of questions that will sound asinine to you, Harry, though not so asinine as if I'd put them in their first forms. The first one I ask seriously, though it sounds almighty trite. What's your opinion of the state of the nation and the world now, Harry?”
“Worse than perfect, Foley — jittery, almost hysterical in certain circles. And nobody knows why. Two years ago it was the best it had been in decades, maybe the best ever. And everything has improved since then. Two years ago there was real feeling of hope and trust all around the world. Differences had almost disappeared. Health, national, physical, moral, and financial, was good. Crime was down. And there had come that sort of creative gaiety that marks only the very great eras. We had come into one of the really golden ages. It wasn't just the arts, Foley (though they were burgeoning as not since that short springtime in Florence half a millennium ago); it wasn't just material prosperity (we've had that before, though not so solid nor so unmixed); it was just a general breaking into the light after many years of work on all fronts dedicated to the advance. It was a good harvest in sight after a long labor.”
“I know how it was two years ago, Hardcrow. And I know a little how it is now, though the worst is kept from us peasants. But how has it become worse while getting better? What has happened in between?”
“It was a series of unprecedented advances that somehow left us far in arrears, Foley; a program of wise and probably perfect moves that left us in a stupid situation; a whole array of undoubted improvements that has nearly reduced us to a shambles. Nobody knows just what has happened. And all are trying, on the advice of the best minds available, to restore some sanity to our position.”
“On the advice of the same best minds available which engineered the unprecedented advances, Hardcrow? The wise and probably perfect moves, and the array of undoubted improvements? We slide back two steps while we advance one.”
“It's easy to criticize, Foley, but one doesn't do it in time of crisis. It may be that our position really is improved, so much so that we're allowed to see some dangers now that had been hidden from us. Or things might have been worse had it not been for the careful plannings and actions. It may be that these have taken the edge off a terrible debacle that was due for us.”
“And it might not be. Who's chopping us down, Harry? Hardcrow, you were sitting here right in the lap of the nation's pulse, to turn a metaphor. Have you noticed the appearance of a series of brilliant ‘new’ men who may have something to do with our backward improvements?”
“I have noticed the new men, Foley, and they're what gives me hope. We may be in a transition canyon when we thought we were on top of the crest, but these new men will lead us out of it. I've been fascinated by them; I've asked myself ‘How is it possible that we should be so rich in talent?’ ”
“You seem hypnotized by this, Hardcrow.”
“Yes, I am a little. I believe now that our setbacks are only temporary, or only in appearance. I believe that these new-appearing great minds will advance us along that great road.”
“As far along as we were before they appeared?”
“Much further along, Foley, all the way. Our premature flowering may now become the real thing. Oh, I know the snide hints that have been going around the country. I'm sorry to see that you appear to have fallen prey to some of them. I'm not yet ready to believe that our advance has been thwarted deliberately, surely not that it's been thwarted by those who seem to be advancing it most.”
“When will you be ready to believe it, Hardcrow?”
“Never, I hope. Tonight I saw a new prospect. I'm on fire with it. Foley, there's expectation in the air, and nothing the stodgy people can do will sour it. Tonight I was present at the unveiling, so to speak, at the introduction to Washington of perhaps the most flexible and curious mind in the country. We can't fail in anything when we have such men as he. I believe that he, as well as other such brilliant men, will get us off dead center, will fill our sails with billows once more — ”
“A sail-seaman you're not, Hardcrow. What sort of apple is this new man?”
“I'd say a crabapple for a joke. For coincidentally his name is Crabtree.”
“Not Carlyle S.?”
“It certainly is. How could you have known, Foley? You aren't big enough to have entree to — You aren't high enough in the trade even to know of such a man. Still, you did scoop the country on the suicides, and on some of the happenings of the Fuentes fascist fellow. And you do seem to have come along remarkably, Foley. Is it only a year since I saw you? You seem older now, and much more — ”
“Mature, Hardcrow. It's my new maturity. Yes, I'm big enough now to hear stories of big men when they appear.”
“Well, you've been a science feature writer, and I understand that Crabtree had some standing as scientist and inventor in the hinterlands. You knew he was in town?”
“Yes.”
“That's odd. Nobody was supposed to know. Still, how perspicacious of you to guess that he would be selected for high position, since it hasn't yet been announced. He's a wonderful inventor. Marvelous ideas!”
“Most marvelous. How long, exactly, Hardcrow, is it since this great unveiling of this flexible and curious mind? How long ago was it that you saw Crabtree?”
“Why, I've just come from the meeting. None but us selected correspondents was there. And the officials and dignitaries. It isn't twenty minutes since I saw him last.”
“And it isn't much more than two hours since I saw him dead, Hardcrow.”
“What are you saying, Foley? Are you trying to fish a story out of me? I'm onto your cracked talk. Don't try it with me. What are you trying to say?”
“That I'm fortunate to be near the actual birth of one of these new men, Hardcrow. It makes me feel a little like a midwife. Can you tell me what Carlyle S. Crabtree was wearing?”
“Foley, do you doubt that I was there, just because you weren't selected? I can do even better than tell you what he was wearing; I can show you. Naturally cameras were forbidden. And just as naturally every correspondent had his own pinhole camera. We'll just roll them out. Here. Here's a good one of him on the very first picture.”
“Yes, that's Crabtree all right, Hardcrow. Or it's so near to Crabtree as to deceive all except the elect. I'd give a lot to know how it's done. And it's his same clothes, baggy pants, jacket and all. I wonder what they did about the knife-cuts in the jacket and shirt? Hey, I wonder how they got the blood back in him? And if they had a body left over? He was a nice fellow.”
“Seems to be, Foley: a plain man as all very great men are. He came dressed just as he arrived in town. But he's absolutely incandescent with ideas. What was that other stuff you were talking, Foley? You seemed to be talking nonsense, perhaps dangerous nonsense.”
“Yeah, I know. Crabtree was wrong at the last, though. The shadow wasn't following me after all; he was following Crabtree. Or there may have been one on each of us and they may have been in concert. I still have a little pride in my own importance. Did Crabtree provide anything startling?”
“With the simplicity of the truly great he had carried things of the highest importance in a large manila e
nvelope inside his shirt. Imagine, Foley, these were things that may change the whole destiny and nature of man.”
“Crabtree took the manila envelope out of his shirt? You saw him do it?”
“Yes. A pandora's box in a manila envelope. That is what he took out.”
“Then I wonder what I took out.”
“It will take years to analyze it, Foley. But it will be wonderful.”
“It may be. But Crabtree rather wanted to put it into effect without waiting years. He was even a little in a hurry that it be done at once. He was afraid that certain groups would prevent it. I see that they have. And so a new man is born.”
“Foley, there's something about your attitude that I don't like,” Harry Hardcrow said harshly. “There are some things you don't have any business guessing if you don't know other things. A newspaper man has got to know when to keep his mouth and his mind shut. You might end up dead.”
“Isn't that the usual fate of men, Harry?”
“There have been other times, Foley, when you seemed ready to disassociate yourself from the mainstream. And you've been throwing out insane hints for ten minutes. Unless you explain them you'd better leave at once. You may be too hot to handle as it is. I don't intend to get my hands burned for any unlicked cub.”
“There's another question I'll have to find the answer to, Hardcrow. How do they subvert minds like yours? You aren't stupid. You've been here in the middle of it. You do know part of something that's going on. You weren't always servile. You weren't always scared. Is there more than one way of intruding a new man into an old? Are you entirely the Harry Hardcrow who used to be? He could look at both sides of a coin.”
“So can I yet. And I know which side is heads.”
“You know more than you say. Those are prisoner's eyes looking out of your head. But you've thrown in with it.”
“I said that I was one of the selected correspondents, Foley. I'm selected on most things. One must give up a little bit to be selected. But most aren't even given the chance. Foley, before you call anyone a sellout, you just think if you were ever good enough to be given the chance. Who ever wanted to buy you? Few are selected, and none of them turn it down. And those who howl at the distant scent of it are those so far below consideration as to make it comical.”
“It is comical, Hardcrow, and I'm laughing,” said Fred Foley. “But in my way I go on.” Foley tried to brush something from his sleeve but there was nothing there.
“Is there any way you could step out of the room for a minute, Harry,” Fred Foley asked, “and let me talk to the other Harry for only a bit?”
“I am the only Harry Hardcrow,” said Harry, “and I'm about full of you, Foley. Get out of here right now.”
“Goodnight, Harry,” Fred Foley said to the harsh mouth and flushed face. And then, more softly. “Goodnight, Harry,” to the prisoner's eyes inside the man.
Freddy phoned the Miguel Fuentes proclamation to Tankersley. That man had become somewhat meek about accepting anything Freddy gave him now.
“Are you sure, Freddy?” was all he asked. “If you are, then I'll print it.”
“Oh yes. I've got it right. That's just the way he wants it to be run.”
Fred Foley went back to his room. The room had been gone through, but they hadn't been messy about it. “They'll have to open my head to find out whatever I'm carrying,” he said to himself.
Freddy looked at himself in the mirror. It was true: he had become a little older, and much more mature. He had a new respect for himself. Then a short night in bed and a rugged one.
Fred Foley had never adjusted to the twenty-four hour cycle of this world, and often in his trade he had avoided it. Usually he did not go to bed till he wanted to and he did not get up till he wanted to. He was strongly on the thirty-four hour cycle of the world from which people originally came. But sometimes he had to adjust a little, and he did have an early next-morning date with a woman who was riddled with riddles.
Pungent dreams then, and irritating wakefulness. And a spooky wasteland between. Fred Foley was a message center sometimes with all sorts of froth swirling about him.
James Bauer was being opposed by a strong and intelligent man, Richard Bencher, the father of Bedelia. This Bencher was tough of mind and he had real depth. He was direct. He was smart. He could go to the actual (that which acts upon the ambient) center of an apparatus, so he went directly at the mind of Jim Bauer. Bencher had had youthful encounter with some such thing before. He had come out of it, defiant and victorious, and had lived a concentrated and successful life, but he had been inattentive to many of the small details of his life. One of them had been his daughter Bedelia. Now he would make amends.
Bencher had begun to smash and break the weave; and Jim Bauer, bellowing in his resonant soul, had called the brain-weave to fight back. But was Bauer really the master of the weave? There were some strong persons in it.
Hondo Silverio was arranging his own encounters. He was suggesting to Bencher that they should kill James Bauer and destroy his residue-brain by a method which Hondo believed would work. And he suggested that he, Bencher, should then join them in the weave in place of Bauer. This startled Richard Bencher. “How do you know when a snake's kidding?” he asked himself. “I know so little of their psychology, but I must learn. No, I will not do it,” he said. “That's mad.”
When Bencher fought a thing he fought it all the way, but this would be harder than he thought. He could tackle Bauer front-on. He was as tough a man in mind and body and spirit as was Jim Bauer. They could battle like bulls. But what was he to make of the mottled-green humor of Hondo Silverio which he did not find entirely evil? Inhuman, yes, but not entirely evil.
How of those other psychic athletes in the weave? How of Wing Manion the saintly sexpot and Klee fish? For a moment he thought that he encountered in her the mind of his dead wife. How of Salzy Silverio of the helical passion? She shook him till he was dizzy and half mad. How of Arouet Manion the elegant devil who was so much a concordist that he brought in the slime of a thousand worlds and reveled in it? There was the ashen-ghost Letitia Bauer and the ashen-flesh Letitia Bauer, one dead, one in hypnosis, both in masochistic agony and longing. There was real mystery and cyclonic energy about that strange duality which Bencher did not begin to understand. And there was Bedelia herself, and the real demon who had joined the weave, and these two had become unnaturally close.
“Gad, she's had some odd boy friends,” Bencher battled, “but not a real demon before. She's loose in her mind. This one even makes Freddy look good. That such a she should come out of my loins!”
Richard Bencher, for all his scope and determination, was confused in the multiplex thing he encountered. Even his own daughter refused to come out of the weave, but she would not herself attack him. She even invited him to join the weave, as had Hondo Silverio; her own suggestion was that he kill Arouet Manion and take his place in the weave. In her conscious state, Biddy did not know anything about this battle or this offer, however.
Salzy Silverio of the spiral passion was drawn insanely to Bencher, as she was to all strong men. And Wing Manion was trying to explain to him what it meant to be a Harvester; and how, perhaps, the Harvesters were more important than the harvest.
One who battles a dragon must watch that he be not ensorceled by the beauty of any part of it. Dragons are sometimes iridescent in some of their limbs and appendages. They are curious and arty and there is a sort of rousing music in their bellowing and fire-snorting. Richard Bencher had him a battle; so many parts of the opponent were also parts of his own curious self.
Other messages, other persons and scraps of persons, other flitting souls around other scorchy flames.
Michael Fountain was wringing his hands over a broken world. He knew so much, but he did not know how to fix a world. His latino namesake at least knew that much.
Miguel Fuentes was executing nine men after a night-court sentence in the middle of wild chaparral. It was an unpl
easant thing to have to kill these unreformable elegant dogs, so he did it himself. Then he was sobbing disconsolately with his head on the rump of a burro.
“He's even younger than I am,” said Fred Foley. “There must be someone else who could order the world.”
There was the invisible dog of the patrick Bertigrew Bagley, who was more ape than dog, and who could sometimes be seen if one knew how to look. Foley saw him now, and the plappergeist winked solemnly at him. Freddy knew who he was then. He was the island-ape who used to be in the Katzenjammer Kids in the funny paper. But all grotesque funny paper characters have independent and exterior existence, unknown usually to their drawers. It was good to have the dog, the ape, the polter-plappergeist on your side. He was smarter and more mischievous than other dogs or apes, and he could kill effectively.
There was Carmody Overlark, the urbane toad with the jewel in his head. Was it for pain of that that he had to soak his head in a bucket? But this Carmody had a talent in full which Fred Foley had only a little and that only these last several days: he knew when he was in anyone's dream anywhere. He became himself in the dream, and not an image of him. He came in astringent and powerful. One dreamed or thought of Carmody Overlark at his peril.
A short night and a rugged one. It was not the pungent dreams or the irritating wakefulness that was the worst. It was the spooky wasteland between. Did people, when they were still on the world whence they came, when they were naturally adjusted to their longer day-night cycle, suffer from dreams at night, from wakefulness, from wastelands? Or are these only of the present period of adjustment? Take them away and you take away something. Amputate them and we bleed; they are part of us now.
Patricks and falcons, dog-faced hydras with more and ranker arms than one could count, people who popped up in unlikely centuries, castles and mansions, and a house named Morada that had a broken stairs going down from its patio to … what?
Finally dawn-morning came.
“Damn, it took you long enough,” Freddy told the shining wench.
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