by Fritz Leiber
The frightened girl noticed him coming, shoved aside paper and pencil in a flurry of haste, and stood up.
“Sit down,” said Carr. “That fellow can wait. Incidentally, do you know Tom Elvested?” She disregarded the question and quickly moved into the aisle.
Carr followed her. “I really want to talk with you,” he said.
“No,” she breathed, edging away from him.
“But we haven’t got anywhere yet,” he objected.
Suddenly she smiled like a toothpaste ad. “Thank you for being so helpful,” she said in a loud voice. “I’ll think over what you’ve told me, though I don’t think the job is one which would appeal to me.” She poked out her hand. Automatically he told it. It was icy.
“Don’t follow me,” she whispered. “And if you care the least bit for me or my safety, don’t do anything, whatever happens.”
“But I don’t even know your name…” His voice trailed off. She was striding rapidly down the aisle. The big blonde was standing squarely in her path. The girl did not swerve an inch. Then, just as they were about to collide, the other woman lifted her hand and gave the girl a stinging slap across the cheek.
Carr started, winced, took a forward step, froze.
The other woman stepped aside, smiling sardonically.
The girl rocked, wavered for a step or two, then walked on without turning her head.
No one said anything, no one did anything, no one jumped up, no one even looked up, at least not conspicuously, although everyone in the office must have heard the slap if they hadn’t seen it. But with the universal middle-class reluctance, Carr thought, to get mixed up in any trouble unless they were forced to, they pretended not to notice.
The big blonde flicked into place a shellacked curl, glancing around her as if as so much dirt. Leisurely she turned and stalked out.
Carr walked back to his desk. His face felt hot, his mind was turbulent. The office around him seemed out of key, turbidly sinister, a little like the scenery of a nightmare—the downtown gloom pressing on the tall, faintly grimed windows, the hazy highlights on the polished desks, the meaningless phrases hanging in the air.
The dumpy man in blue jeans had already taken the girl’s place, but for the moment Carr ignored him. He didn’t down. The scrap of paper on which the girl had scribbled caught his eye. He picked it up.
Watch out (it read) for the wall-eyed blonde, the young man without a hand, and the affable-seeming older man. But the small dark man with glasses is your friend.
Carr frowned grotesquely. “Wall-eyed blonde…”—that must be the woman who had been watching. But as for the other three—“small dark man with glasses is your friend…”—it sounded like a charade.
“Thanks, I guess I will,” said the dumpy man casually, plucking at something in the air.
Carr started to turn over the paper to see if she’d scribbled anything on the opposite side, when—
“No, I got a light,” said the dumpy man.
Carr looked at him and forgot everything else. The dumpy man had lit a match and was cupping it about three inches from his curiously puckered lips. There was a slight hissing noise and the flame curtsied as he sucked in. He smiled gratefully over this cupped hands at Carr’s empty chair. Then one hand shook out the match and the other moved in toward his lips, paused a moment, then moved out about a foot from his face, first and second fingers extended like a priest giving a blessing. After an interval the hand moved in again, the hissing inhalation was repeated, and the dumpy man threw back his head and exhaled through tightened nostrils.
Obviously the man was smoking a cigarette.
Only there was no cigarette.
Carr wanted to laugh, there was something so droll about the realism of the movements. He remembered the pantomimes in the acting class in college. You pretended to drive an automobile or eat a dinner or write a letter, without any props, just going through the motions. In that class the dumpy man would have rated an A-plus.
“Yeah, that’s right,” the dumpy man said to Carr’s empty chair, wagging his extended fingers over the brown-gummed ashtray.
Suddenly Car didn’t want to laugh at all. Obviously, as obviously as any such things can be, this man wasn’t an actor.
“Yeah, I did it about eight months. Came into it from weld assembly,” continued the dumpy man between imaginary puffs. “I was coming up from my second test when me and the wife decided to move here to get away from her mother.”
Carr felt a qualm of uneasiness. He hesitated, then slowly bent forward from where he was standing, until his face was hardly a foot from that of the dumpy man and almost squarely in front of it.
The dumpy man didn’t react, didn’t seem to see him at all, kept talking through him to the chair.
“Oh, it’s dirty work all right. I had my share of skin trouble. But I can take it.”
“Stop it,” said Carr.
“No, I passed it after I’d been there three months.” The dumpy man was amiably emphatic. “It was my full inspector’s I was coming up for. I was due to get my stamps.”
Carr shivered. “Stop it,” he said very distinctly. “Stop it.”
“Sure, all sorts of stuff. Circular and longitudinal magnetism. Machine parts, forging, welds, tie-beams…”
“Stop it,” Carr repeated and grabbed him firmly by the shoulder.
What happened made Carr wish he hadn’t. The dumpy man’s face grew strained and red, like an enraged baby’s. An intense throbbing was transmitted to Carr’s hand. And from the lips came a mounting, meaningless mutter.
Carr jerked back. He felt craven and weak, as helpless as a child. He edged away until he was standing behind Tom Elvested, who was engrossed with a client.
He could hardly bring his voice up to a whisper.
“Tom, I’ve got a man who’s acting funny. Would you help me?”
Tom didn’t look up, apparently didn’t hear.
Across the room Carr saw a gray-mustached man walking briskly. He hurried over to him, looking back apprehensively at the dumpy man, who was still sitting there red-faced.
“Dr. Wexler,” he blurted, “I’ve got a lunatic on my hands and I think he’s about to throw a fit. Would you—?”
But Dr. Wexler walked on without slackening his pace and disappeared through the black curtains of the eye-testing cubicle.
At that instant, as Car watched the black curtains swing together, a sudden spasm of extreme terror seized him. As if something huge and hostile were poised behind him, he dared not lift his head, look up, make a move.
It was like the momentary chill he had felt hen no one had reacted to the slap. Only much more intense.
His feelings were a little like those of a man in a waxworks museum, who speaks to a guide only to find that he has addressed one of the wax figures.
His paralyzed thoughts, suddenly working like lightning, snatched at the analogy and worried it morbidly.
What if the whole world were like a waxworks museum? In motion, of course, like clockworks, but utterly mindless, purposeless, mechanical. What if he, a wax figure like the others, had suddenly come alive and stepped out of his place, and the whole show was going on without him, because it was just a machine and didn’t care or know whether he was there or not?
That would explain the dumpy man going through the motions of an interview—one mechanical toy-figure carrying on just as well without its partner. It would explain why Tom and Dr. Wexler had disregarded him
What if it really were true?
What if the ends of the earth were nearer to you than the mind you thought lay behind the face you spoke to?
What if the things people said, the things that seemed to mean so much, were something recorded on a kind of phonograph record a million years ago?
What if you were all alone?
For an instant longer his thought-train—it had taken only a few moments—held him paralyzed. Then he came to himself with a start.
Life flooded back into th
e office. People moved and spoke. He almost laughed out loud at his ridiculous spasm of terror.
Why, what an idiot he’d been to get alarmed because Tom, who doubtless felt huffy toward him because of their last conversation, had momentarily ignored a mumbled, perhaps unheard, question? Or because the same thing had happened with Dr. Wexler, whose deafness and preoccupation were both notorious!
And how silly of him to lose his nerve just because he had got an applicant who was something of a psychotic!
He straightened himself and walked back to his desk, warily, but with self-confidence.
The dumpy man was still muttering at the air, but his face had assumed its original color. He didn’t look violent. Carr disregarded him and glanced at the application blank Miss Zabel had brought a few minutes earlier: “Jimmie Kozacs. Age 43.”
The dumpy man looked about that age.
A little farther down on the blank, his eye caught the words, “Magnetic Inspector.” If he remembered rightly the duties of the job in question, they fitted with the things the dumpy man had been saying.
The dumpy man got up. Again he plucked something from the air. “So all I got to do is show ’em this at the gate?” he remarked gravely. “Thank’s a lot, er…” He glanced at the nameplate on Carr’s desk. “…Mr. Mackay. Aw, don’t get up. Well, thanks a lot.”
Heartily the dumpy man shook hands with nothing, turned and walked off. Carr watched him go. A smile that was half nervous amusement, half relief, flickered around his lips.
Miss Zabel came limping by with a stack of file-folders.
“I swear I’m going to cut them off and donate them to medical research,” she moaned to Carr.
Carr chortled. His sense of normalcy was restored.
Chapter Two
The Stopped Clock
CARR TOOK THE brass-edged steps three at a time, crossed the lobby, pushed hurriedly through the revolving door which always made him feel like a squirrel in a wheel. He joined the crowd streaming toward Michigan Boulevard.
Street lights were beginning to supplement the canyoned twilight. Newsboys were shouting. Bus stops and islands of dubious safety were crowded, likewise the stairways leading to the long El platforms. From the wide doorways of multi-storage garages, cars were edging forward by stages, bluffing their way into the thick traffic. Other cars were being honked at while they paused to pick up riders. Lone pedestrians darted between bumpers in a way that would have made everyone flinch in a less punch-drunk city than Chicago.
It was wonderful to lose yourself to the rush-hour rhythm, Carr felt, to get away from General Employment, and to be where people were people, and not just an assortment of job capacities, salary levels, and letters of reference. Of course Marcia was going to revive that distressing job question, apply it to him directly—but not for a couple of hours, thank God!
Preoccupation with people considered solely as clients of General Employment must be what was wrong with him, Carr decided. That must be the explanation of his fit of nerves this afternoon. For so long he had thought of people as mere human raw material, as just something that went with application blanks and it would be a lot more convenient if they were shipped in boxes—for so long had this attitude been pounded into him, month after boring month, that now people were having their revenge on him, by acting woodenly toward him, as if he didn’t exist.
Carr chuckled. The dumpy man’s psychosis had been an odd one. He’d read about cases where insane people perform some action over and over again, meaninglessly—even up to complicated dramatic interludes, complete with words and gestures. But you’d think such interludes would revolve around some situation of greater tragic potentialities than merely applying for a job.
Still, when you came to think of it, what situation has greater tragic potentialities than the attempt to get a job?
He reached Michigan Boulevard. The wall of empty space on the other side, fronting the wall of buildings on this, gave a lift to his spirits. A fringe of restless tress hinted at the lake beyond. The Art Institute traced a classic pattern against the stone-gray sky. Here the air still seemed to carry a trace of freshness from this morning’s rain. As he turned north, stepping out briskly, he began to think of Marcia, but after a bit his attention was diverted to a small man walking a little way ahead of him at an equally fast pace.
Carr’s legs were considerably longer, but the small man had a peculiar skip to his stride. His movements gave the impression of elusiveness; he was constantly weaving, seeking the open channels in the crowd. His dark hair was long and untidy.
Carr felt one of those surges of curiosity that an unknown figure sometimes evokes. He was tempted to increase his pace so that he could get a look at the stranger’s face.
At that moment the small man whirled around. Carr stopped. The small man peered at him through horn-rimmed, thick-lensed glasses. Then what seemed to be an expression of extreme horror crossed the stranger’s face. For a moment he crouched as if paralyzed. Then, all in a rush, he turned and darted away, dancing past people, scurrying from side to side, finally whisking out of site around the next corner, like a puppet jerked offstage.
Car felt like laughing wildly. The frightened girl ha written, “But the small dark man with glasses is your friend.” He certainly hadn’t acted that way!
Someone bumped into Carr from behind and he darted forward—half nervous reaction, half belated intention to pursue the small dark man. But after a dozen or so hurtling paces it occurred to him that he was making himself look ridiculous, and in any case he could hardly overcome the fellow’s head-start.
It was as if the governor of a machine, temporarily out of order, had begun to function again. He fell back into his former not conspicuously rapid gait. He was back in the rush-hour rhythm.
He looked down the next cross-street. The small dark man was nowhere in sight. He might very well be three blocks away by now, the way he’d been going.
Carr smiled. It occurred to him that he really had no good reason to believe that this was the frightened girl’s small dark man. After all—arresting thought!—there must be thousands, tens of thousands of small dark men with glasses in the world.
But he found he couldn’t laugh off the incident quite that easily. It had reawakened that same mood that the frightened girl had evoked in him this afternoon—a mood of uneasiness and frustrated excitement. Carr’s memory kept picturing the face of the frightened girl.
He pictured her as a college girl, the sort who would cut classes in order to sit on the brink of a fountain and argue very seriously with some young man about the meaning of art. With pencil smudges on her cheeks. The picture fitted, all right. Only consider the howling naïveté of her wondering whether she had “awakened” him.
And yet even that question might cut a lot deeper than you’d think. Wasn’t there a sense in which he actually was “unawakened?”—a person who’d dodged life, who’d never been truly comfortable with any job or any woman—except Marcia, he reminded himself hurriedly. He’d always had that sense of a vastly richer and more vivid existence just out of reach.
For that matter, didn’t most people live their lives without every really “awakening”—as dull as worms, as mechanical as insects, their thoughts spoon-fed to them by newspaper and radio? Couldn’t robots perform the much over-rated “business of living” just as well?
Certainly this afternoon’s events had been of a sort to disturb the imagination most peculiarly. He couldn’t off-hand think of a single satisfactory explanation for the frightened girl’s actions: insanity, neurosis, or some actual danger. Or perhaps a joke?
No, there’d been something undeniably sinister about the wall-eyed blonde, and something in her attitude toward the frightened girl suggestive of a morbid spiritual tyranny. Carr flushed, remembering the slap.
And then those encounters with the dumpy man and the small dark man coming so pat, the latter just as predicted. Carr had the uneasy conviction that he had blundered somehow into a vast s
hadowy web.
He had reached the Michigan Avenue bridge. In the dusk the Chicago River was a dark, matte floor. He could sense the fine sprinkling of soot that filmed the ripples.
He noticed an odd black motor-barge approaching the bridge. A small, clumsy looking vessel with a long low cabin and a squat stack.
But it was the bargeman who was the most impressive. He was a man of gigantic stature, big-framed. His face was big-jawed, deep-eyed, a fighter’s, but above it rose a great white forehead. His clothes were rough and black, yet Carr fancied that there was about him an air of intellectual power. In his right hand, like a pike, he carried a wicked-looking boathook with a thick shaft almost twice as long as himself.
As the barge neared the bridge he slowly lifted his head and fixed on Carr a gaze so intense, so speculative, so meaningful, that Carr almost jerked back from the rail.
He was still looking at Car, his face a half-squared white oval against the black of his garments and the deck, as the barge floated on under the bridge.
All the way home, over the big windy bridge, between the gleaming white and yellow-gray pylons of the Wrigley Building and the Tribune Tower, through the dark, gay streets of the near North Side and up to the very steps of the old brownstone house in which he rented a room, Carr tried to discern the outlines of the web in which he seemed to have become entangled. He was quite unsuccessful, and as for a spider, there was not even the shadow of one. What possible linkage could there be between a frightened girl, an unbalanced magnetic inspector, a strange who fled at the sight of you, and perhaps a gargantuan bargeman?
The hallway was musty and dim. He felt in his pigeon-hole, but there was no mail. He hurried up the ornately balustraded stairs, relic of the opulent days of the 1890’s. On the stairs it was darker. A small stained-glass window, mostly patches of dark red and purple, gave the only light.
Just as he reached the turn, he thought he saw himself coming toward himself in the gloom.
The illusion lasted only a moment. Then he recognized the figure for his reflection in the huge mirror, misty, time-streaked and speckled, that occupied most of the wall space of the landing. It had happened to him before.