Fearful that someone would flash a light directly down the hole and catch him in its beam, he moved slowly forward, water swirling at his ankles.
The feet pounded back and forth and ran into far rooms and returned again and snatches of voices floated down to him.
"Got away again," one voice said. "Someone tipped them off."
"Pretty dismal," said another. "Just the kind of place you would expect…"
And then another voice, and at the sound of it, Frost stiffened and took another involuntary step farther from the hole in the floor above.
"Men," said the voice of Marcus Appleton, "we missed them once again. There'll be another day."
Other voices answered, but the words were indistinct.
"I'll get those sons of bitches," said Marcus Appleton, "if it's the last thing that I do."
The voices and the footsteps moved away and in a little time were gone.
Silence fell, broken only by the slow drip of water falling from some place into the pool in which Frost stood.
A tunnel of some sort, he guessed. Or perhaps a subbasement flooded by seepage from the river.
Now the problem was to get out of here. Although without a light of any sort that might not be easy. And the one way to do it was to try to get out the way he had come in, through the hole in the floor above.
He reached above his head and his fingers touched the rough surface of a beam. He stood on tiptoe and stretched and he could touch the floor above. But he would have to move slowly and try to maintain some sort of orientation, for the place was in utter darkness and his fingers were his eyes.
Slowly he worked his way along and finally found the hole. Now he'd have to jump for it and grab hold of the rotten boards and hope that they would support his weight so he could pull himself into the room above. Once there, he told himself, he'd be safe for a time at least, for Appleton and his men would not be coming back. Neither would the Holies. He would be on his own.
He stood for a moment to catch his breath and suddenly, from all around him, rose a squeaking and a scurrying, the rush of tiny feet, the slithering of bodies rushing through the dark, and the angry squealing of ravening creatures driven by a desperate hunger.
His scalp tightened and it seemed that his hair rose upon his head.
Rats! Rats rushing at him through the dark! Fear powered his muscles and he leaped, driving himself chest high through the hole. Scrambling and kicking, he pulled himself clear and lay panting on the floor.
Underneath him the squeaking and the squealing rose in a wave, then slowly died away.
Frost still lay upon the floor and after a time the trembling stopped and the sweat dried on his body and he got to his hands and knees and crawled until he found a corner and there he huddled against the terror and the loneliness of the new life that he faced.
21
Godfrey Cartwright leaned far back in his padded chair and clasped his hands behind his head. It was the position he assumed when he was about to discuss some weighty matters, but wanted to seem casual in his discussion of them.
"The way I see it," he said, "something queered the deal. No publisher before ever offered the kind of money that I did, and even a stuffed shirt like Frost would have grabbed it if he thought he had a chance of not getting caught at it. But now Frost has disappeared and Joe Gibbons is nowhere to be found. Maybe Appleton had a hand in it. It would have to be someone like Appleton, for there are just a few in Forever Center who know that censorship is being carried on. And if Appleton found out, he's not a man to fool with."
"Tfou mean," said Harris Hastings, plaintively, "that you won't put out my book."
Cartwright stared at him. "Why, bless you, man," he said, "we never said we would."
Hastings squirmed in his chair. He was an unprepossessing sight. His head was round and hairless, looking somewhat like a naked sphere with a face upon it. He wore thick glasses and he squinted. His billiard-ball head rode thrust forward on his shoulders and this, tied in with the squint, gave him the appearance of a man who was more than a bit befuddled, but trying very hard to understand.
"But you said…"
"I said," Cartwright told him, "that I thought your book would sell. I said that if it could be published we'd make a mint of money on it. But I also told you that I had to be sure, before any more was done, that we could get it before the public. I didn't want to run the chance of Frost finding out about it when we had a lot of money in it and then bringing pressure on us. Once we had it published and up for sale, why, then, of course, Frost couldn't do a thing, for if he tried there'd be a public uproar and a public uproar is the one thing Forever Center doesn't want." "But you told me.." Hastings said again. "I told you, sure," said Cartwright, "but we haven't got a contract and the deal is dead. I told you] couldn't give you one until I saw if I could make a deal with Frost. I couldn't take the chance. Frost had a lot of snoopers and I can tell you they were good. Joe Gibbons is one of the best of them and Joe has always made a sort of specialty of us and some half dozen other houses. He kept close tab on us; he had pipelines into us. I don't know who it was. If I had known who I'd have canned them long ago. But the point is that we couldn't have made a move without Joe finding out about it and he did find out about it, just the way I knew he would. The only thing that I could do was try to make a deal. I don't mind telling you that your book was one of the few I ever tried to make a deal to publish."
"But the work," Hastings said, in anguish. "The work I put into it. I put twenty years in it. Do you realize what twenty years of research and writing means? I put my Me into it, I tell you. I made a Me of it. I sold my life for it."
Cartwright said, easily, "You believe it, don't you-this stuff that you wrote."
"Of course I believe it," Hastings exploded. "Can't you see that it's the truth? I searched the records and I know it is the truth. The circumstantial evidence is there for anyone to see. This plan, this Me continuation, this whatever you may call it, is the greatest hoax that ever has been played upon the human race. Its purpose was not, it never was, what it purports to be. It was, instead, a last and desperate measure to bring an end to war. For if you could make people believe that their bodies could be preserved and later be revived, who would go to war—what man would fight in any war? What government or nation would dare become involved in war? For the victims of a war could not hope for preservation of their bodies. In many cases there'd be very little of the bodies to preserve. In cases where there was, facilities for the retrieval and preservation of those bodies could not operate.
"And it may be that the ends justified the means. It may be that we cannot condemn the trickery. For war was a terrible thing. We today, who had not known war for more than a century, can not know how terrible. There was actual fear, a hundred years ago, that another major war might wipe out all human culture, if not all life, from earth. And in the light of this the hoax may be justified. But in any case, the people should be told, they should be…"
He stopped and looked at Cartwright, still propped back in his chair, with his hands behind his head. "You don't believe any of this, do you?" The publisher took his hands from behind his head and sat forward in the chair, leaning his forearms on the desk top.
"Harris," he said, earnestly, "it doesn't matter whether I believe or not. It's not my business to believe in the books I publish, beyond the one belief that they will make some money. I'd like to publish your book because I know that it would sell. You can't expect more of me than that."
"But now you say you won't publish it." Cartwright nodded. "That is right. Not won't, but can't. Forever Center wouldn't let me." "They couldn't stop you."
"No, not legally. But there can be pressure brought— not only on myself but on the stockholders and the other officers of this company. And you must not forget that Forever Center itself owns some of the stock, as it owns a part, or all, of everything upon the entire earth.
The pressure that they could bring would be unbelieva ble if
you hadn't seen it. As I said, if I could have got it published and on sale, then I'd have been in the clear, It would have been Frost's error then, not mine. His neck, not mine. It would have been something that he should have caught, but didn't, something that he slipped up on. The onus of the entire thing would have been shifted off my shoulders. The only thing they could have charged me with was a piece of bad judgment and, perhaps, poor taste, and that I could have stood. But the way it is…" He made a hopeless gesture. "I could try other publishers." "Sure you could," said Cartwright. "By that I suppose you mean none of them would touch it either."
"Not with a ten-foot pole. By now the news is out—that I tried to buy off Frost and failed and now Frost is among the missing. Every publisher in town has heard about it. There are all sorts of whispers flying." "Then I'll never be published."
"I'm afraid you're right. Just go home and sit down in a chair and feel smug and comfortable that you've uncovered something that is too big for anyone to touch, that you're the only man who knows the secret, that you were astute enough to uncover a plot that no one, absolutely no one, ever had suspected." Hastings hunched his head even farther forward. "There is a trace of mockery in your words," he said, "that I'm not too sure I like. Tell me, if you will, what your version is." "My version?"
"Yes. Wat do you really think about Forever Center?" "Why," asked Cartwright, "what's so wrong in thinking that it's exactly the way they say it is?"
"Nothing, I suppose. It's the comfortable viewpoint for one to take, but it isn't true."
"Most people think it is. There's talk, of course, and rumors—you hear them everywhere. But I think most people take the talk and rumors for sheer entertainment. They talk about it and listen to it, but they really don't believe it. There's so little entertainment these days that people hang onto all that they can get. Go and read about the entertainment of two hundred years ago, or even less than that. The night life in the cities, the theater, the opera, the music. And there were sports-baseball and football and a lot of other things. And where are they all now? Strangled to death by the miserly leanings of our present culture. Pay to see a show when you can stay at home and watch TV? Hell, no! Pay to get into a ball game? Who wants to see a ball game when he can buy a share of Forever stock with what the ticket would cost? Pay fancy prices to get some entertainment when you eat? Are you crazy? When you go out to eat now, and not too many do, you go out to eat and nothing else—no frills. That's why books sell as well as they do. We keep them cheap—shoddy, but cheap. When you're through reading a book someone else can read it and after a while you can read it again yourself. But a ball game or a show, you could only see it once. That's why people are newspaper readers and book readers and TV watchers. They can get a lot of entertainment for almost next to nothing. Cheap entertainment, and much of it's cheap, believe me, but it fills up the hours. Hell, that's all we're doing—filling up the hours. Grabbing everything we can and filling up the hours, aiming everything at our second shot at life. That explains die rumors and the stories and the talk. All of it is free and the people suck it dry, get everything they can get out of it before they turn it loose."
"You," said Hastings, "should write a book, yourself." "I may," said Cartwright, contentedly. "By God, I really may. Take the hide off them and their penny-pinching lives. They'd eat it up. They'd like it. Give them stuff to talk about for months."
"You think, then, that my book…"
"That's one," said Cartwright, "that some of them might actually have believed in. You have it all annotated and documented within an inch of its very life. Impressive sort of stuff. I don't see how you did it."
"You still don't believe it," said the author, bitterly. "You have a sneaking hunch I faked it."
"Well, now," said Cartwright, "you can't say I said that. I never asked you, did I?"
He stared off into space, with a lost look on his face.
"Too bad," he said. "Too bad. We could have made a billion. I tell you, boy, no kidding, we could have made a billion."
22
Crouched in the alley, behind a pile of weather-beaten boxes that had been thrown there long ago by some small establishment which fronted on the narrow, dingy street—thrown and forgotten and never removed—Frost waited until the man came out of the back door of the hole-in-the-wall eating place and put the garbage into the cans that stood against the wall.
And when he finally came, he carried, as well as the basket full of garbage, a bundle, wrapped in newspaper, which he placed on the ground beside the cans. Then he took the lids off the cans and lifted the bundles of garbage from the heavy basket in which he carried them and put them in the cans. Having done this, he picked up the bundle he had placed beside the cans and balanced it on the lid of one of the cans. For a moment he stood, looking up and down the alley, a white-smudged figure in the darkness, outlined by the feeble glow that invaded the alley from the street. Then he picked up the basket and went back into the restaurant.
Frost rose and, moving swiftly, picked up the bundle off the can. He tucked it underneath his arm and retreated down the alley, stopping at the alley's mouth. There were a few people on the street and he waited until they had moved a bit away, then darted quickly across the street into the opposite alley.
Five blocks away, following the successive alleys, he came to the rear of a dilapidated building, small and with half the roof torn off it, as if someone at one time had started to raze it and then had figured it wasn't worth the trouble. Now it stood, sad and sagging and abandoned, fust a little farther along the road to ruin than its fellows on either side of it.
A stairs built of stone, with a bent and rusted guardrail leading from its top, ran down into the basement.
Ducking swiftly from the alley, Frost went down the stairs. At the bottom a door, still held upright by one rusted hinge, stood propped against the jamb. By some tugging and hauling, Frost got it open, went through it into the basement, then shoved it shut again.
Having done that, he was home—a home that he had found ten days before, after a long succession of other hiding places that had been worse by far than this. For the basement was cool and dry and it had no rats or no other vermin in too noticeable a number and it seemed to be safe and forgotten, perhaps safe because it was forgotten. No one ever came around.
"Hello there," said someone from the dark.
Frost spun on his heels, crouching as he spun, dropping the bundle to the floor.
"Don't worry," said the voice. "I know who you are and I won't cause you any trouble."
Frost did not move. He held his crouch. Hope and fear wrestled his brain. One of the Holies who had sought him out again? Someone from Forever Center? Perhaps a man sent by Marcus Appleton?
"How did you track me down?" he whispered.
"I've been looking for you. I have been asking around. Someone saw you in the alley. You are Frost, aren't you?"
"Yes, I'm Frost."
The man came out of the gloom in which he'd stood. The half-light from a basement window showed the human shape of him, but little else.
"I am glad I found you, Frost," he said. "My name is Franklin Chapman."
"Chapman? Wait a minute! Franklin Chapman is the man…"
"Right," the other said. "Ann Harrison talked with you about me."
Frost felt the wild laughter rising in him and sought to choke it down, but it rose in spite of him and sputtered through his lips. He sat down limply on the floor and let his hands hang helplessly, while he shook with the bitter laughter that came flooding up in him.
"My God," he said, gasping, "you are the man—you are the one I promised I would help!"
"Yes," said Chapman. "At times, events turn out to be rather strange."
Slowly the laughter died away, but Frost still sat limp and weak.
"I'm glad you came," he finally said, "although I can't imagine why you did."
"Ann sent me. She asked if I'd try to find you. She found out what happened to you."
&
nbsp; "Found out? It should have been in the papers. All a reporter had to do was look up the record."
"That's what she did, of course. And it was there, all right, but no word in the papers. Not a single line. But all sorts of rumors. The town is full of rumors."
"What kind of rumors?"
"A scandal of some sort at Center. You've disappeared and Center is trying to hush it up."
Frost nodded. "It figures. Papers tipped off to shut their eyes and rumors started to make it seem that I ran away. Do you think Center knows where I am?"
"I don't know," said Chapman. "I picked up a lot of talk while I looked for you. I'm not the only one who has been asking questions."
It didn't work the way they thought it would. They thought that after a day or two I'd go and apply for death."
"Most men would have."
"Not me," said Frost. "I've had a lot of time to do my thinking. I always can go down to the vaults. As a last desperate measure, when I can't stand it any longer, that is always left But not yet. Not for a while." He hesitated, then spoke again. "I'm sorry, Chapman.
I didn't think. I shouldn't talk this way."
"It doesn't bother me," said Chapman. "Not any more. Not now that the shock is over. After all, I'm no worse off than many men before me. I've gotten sort of used to it. I try not to think about it too much."
"You've spent a lot of time hunting me. How about your job?"
"They fired me. I knew they would;"
"I'm sorry."
"Oh, it worked out all right. I've got a TV contract and a publisher is paying someone else to write a book. Wanted me to write it myself, but I told him I couldn't get the words down."
"The dirty creeps," said Frost. "Anything to sell the suckers."
"I know," said Chapman, "but I don't mind. I know what they are doing and it's all right with me. I have a family that has to be raised and a wife who should have something laid away before she dies. It's the least I can do for her. I made them pay. I turned them down to start with and then when they kept after me I named a figure I thought they wouldn't touch, but they did, and I am satisfied. The old lady will have plenty laid away." Frost got up from the floor, searched for his bundle and found it.
Why Call Them Back from Heaven Page 9