As Time Goes By
Page 25
“Yes, sweetheart,” Harry said. “You did.”
“He’s kind of a nerd, but actually all right.” After Jackie and Ann left, the two old men sat silent a long time. Finally Manny said diplomatically, “You want to get a snack, Harry?”
“She’s happy, Manny.”
“Yes. You want to get a snack, Harry?”
“She didn’t even recognize him.”
“No. You want to get a snack?”
“Here, have this. I got it for you this morning.” Harry held out an orange, a deep-colored navel with flawless rind: seedless, huge, guaranteed juicy, nurtured for flavor, perfect.
“Enjoy,” Harry said. “It cost me ninety-two cents.”
The Secret Place
INTRODUCTION
The government had assigned the young geologist to a boring and, he thought, useless job, looking for something that he knew wasn’t there. What was there was a mystery involving a strangely withdrawn young woman whose brother had died under inexplicable circumstances, and who now seemed to live in some sort of dream world. Or was it a dream world? Without giving away the story, I think I can save the reader the bother of looking up the word, and mention that the Miocene lasted from about 23 million to 5 million years ago. (But feel free to look it up for further details.) This story won the Nebula Award of the Science Fiction Writers of America and was nominated for the Hugo Award.
# # #
Richard M. McKenna (1913-1964), born in Idaho, joined the U.S. Navy in 1931, serving for 22 years, including active sea duty in both World War II and the Korean War as a Chief Machinist’s Mate. Afterward, he attended the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill on the G.I. Bill, studying creative writing. His first published story, “Casey Agonistes,” appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1957, and, as writer and editor Ben Bova wrote, “immediately established him as a writer to be watched.” In 1962, he published the novel The Sand Pebbles, which was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post, won the $10,000 1963 Harper Prize Novel competition, and became a 1966 movie, starring Steve McQueen. Unfortunately, in 1964 a heart attack cut short a career that promised to be brilliant. His other books, all posthumously published, are Casey Agonistes and Other Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories, The Sons of Martha, and Left-Handed Monkey Wrench.
The Secret Place
by Richard McKenna
This morning my son asked me what I did in the war. He’s fifteen and I don’t know why he never asked me before. I don’t know why I never anticipated the question.
He was just leaving for camp, and I was able to put him off by saying I did government work. He’ll be two weeks at camp. As long as the counselors keep pressure on him, he’ll do well enough at group activities. The moment they relax it, he’ll be off studying an ant colony or reading one of his books. He’s on astronomy now. The moment he comes home, he’ll ask me again just what I did in the war, and I’ll have to tell him.
But I don’t understand just what I did in the war. Sometimes I think my group fought a death fight with a local myth and only Colonel Lewis realized it. I don’t know who won. All I know is that war demands of some men risks more obscure and ignoble than death in battle. I know it did of me.
It began in 1931, when a local boy was found dead in the desert near Barker, Oregon. He had with him a sack of gold ore and one thumb-sized crystal of uranium oxide. The crystal ended as a curiosity in a Salt Lake City assay office until, in 1942, it became of strangely great importance. Army agents traced its probable origin to a hundred-square-mile area near Barker. Dr. Lewis was called to duty as a reserve colonel and ordered to find the vein. But the whole area was overlain by thousands of feet of Miocene lava flows and of course it was geological insanity to look there for a pegmatite vein. The area had no drainage pattern and had never been glaciated. Dr. Lewis protested that the crystal could have gotten there only by prior human agency.
It did him no good. He was told he’s not to reason why. People very high up would not be placated until much money and scientific effort had been spent in a search. The army sent him young geology graduates, including me, and demanded progress reports. For the sake of morale, in a kind of frustrated desperation, Dr. Lewis decided to make the project a model textbook exercise in mapping the number and thickness of the basalt beds over the search area all the way down to the prevolcanic Miocene surface. That would at least be a useful addition to Columbia Plateau lithology. It would also be proof positive that no uranium ore existed there, so it was not really cheating.
That Oregon countryside was a dreary place. The search area was flat, featureless country with black lava outcropping everywhere through scanty gray soil in which sagebrush grew hardly knee high. It was hot and dry in summer and dismal with thin snow in winter. Winds howled across it at all seasons. Barker was about a hundred wooden houses on dusty streets, and some hay farms along a canal. All the young people were away at war or war jobs, and the old people seemed to resent us. There were twenty of us, apart from the contract drill crews who lived in their own trailer camps, and we were gown against town, in a way We slept and ate at Colthorpe House, a block down the street from our headquarters. We had our own “gown” table there, and we might as well have been men from Mars.
I enjoyed it, just the same. Dr. Lewis treated us like students, with lectures and quizzes and assigned reading. He was a fine teacher and a brilliant scientist, and we loved him. He gave us all a turn at each phase of the work. I started on surface mapping and then worked with the drill crews, who were taking cores through the basalt and into the granite thousands of feet beneath. Then I worked on taking gravimetric and seismic readings. We had fine team spirit and we all knew we were getting priceless training in field geophysics. I decided privately that after the war I would take my doctorate in geophysics. Under Dr. Lewis, of course.
In early summer of 1944 the field phase ended. The contract drillers left. We packed tons of well logs and many boxes of gravimetric data sheets and seismic tapes for a move to Dr. Lewis’s Midwestern university. There we would get more months of valuable training while we worked our data into a set of structure contour maps. We were all excited and talked a lot about being with girls again and going to parties. Then the army said part of the staff had to continue the field search. For technical compliance, Dr. Lewis decided to leave one man, and he chose me.
It hit me hard. It was like being flunked out unfairly. I thought he was heartlessly brusque about it.
“Take a Jeep run through the area with a Geiger once a day,” he said. “Then sit in the office and answer the phone.”
“What if the army calls when I’m away?” I asked sullenly.
“Hire a secretary,” he said. “You’ve an allowance for that.”
So off they went and left me, with the title of field chief and only myself to boss. I felt betrayed to the hostile town. I decided I hated Colonel Lewis and wished I could get revenge. A few days later old Dave Gentry told me how.
He was a lean, leathery old man with a white mustache and I sat next to him in my new place at the “town” table. Those were grim meals. I heard remarks about healthy young men skulking out of uniform and wasting tax money. One night I slammed my fork into my half-emptied plate and stood up.
“The army sent me here and the army keeps me here,” I told the dozen old men and women at the table. “I’d like to go overseas and cut Japanese throats for you kind hearts and gentle people, I really would! Why don’t you all write your Congressman?”
I stamped outside and stood at one end of the veranda, boiling. Old Dave followed me out.
“Hold your horses, son,” he said. “They hate the government, not you. But government’s like the weather, and you’re a man they can get ahold of.”
“With their teeth,” I said bitterly.
“They got reasons,” Dave said. “Lost mines ain’t supposed to be found the way you people are going at it. Besides that, the Crazy Kid mine belongs to us here in Barker.”
“This is big, new, lonesome country and it’s hard on people,” he said. “Every town’s got a story about a lost mine or a lost gold cache. Only kids go looking for it. It’s enough for most folks just to know it’s there. It helps ‘em to stand the country.”
“I see,” I said. Something stirred in the back of my mind.
“Barker never got its lost mine until thirteen years ago,” Dave said. “Folks just naturally can’t stand to see you people find it this way, by main force and so soon after.”
“We know there isn’t any mine,” I said. “We’re just proving it isn’t there.”
“If you could prove that, it’d be worse yet,” he said. “Only you can’t. We all saw and handled that ore. It was quartz, just rotten with gold in wires and flakes. The boy went on foot from his house to get it. The lode’s got to be right close by out there.”
He waved toward our search area. The air above it was luminous with twilight and I felt a curious surge of interest. Co’onel Lewis had always discouraged us from speculating on that story. If one of us brought it up, I was usually the one who led the hooting and we all suggested he go over the search area with a dowsing rod. It was an article of faith with us that the vein did not exist. But now I was all alone and my own field boss.
We each put up one foot on the veranda rail and rested our arms on our knees. Dave bit off a chew of tobacco and told me about Owen Price.
“He was always a crazy kid and I guess he read every book in town,” Dave said. “He had a curious heart, that boy.”
I’m no folklorist, but even I could see how myth elements were already creeping into the story. For one thing, Dave insisted the boy’s shirt was torn off and he had lacerations on his back.
“Like a cougar clawed him.” Dave said. “Only they ain’t never been cougars in that desert. We backtracked that boy till his trail crossed itself so many times it was no use, but we never found one cougar track.”
I could discount that stuff, of course, but still the story gripped me. Maybe it was Dave’s slow, sure voice; perhaps the queer twilight; possibly my own wounded pride. I thought of how great lava upwellings sometimes tear loose and carry along huge masses of the country rock. Maybe such an erratic mass lay out there, perhaps only a few hundred feet across and so missed by our drill cores, but rotten with uranium. If I could find it, I would make a fool of Colonel Lewis. I would discredit the whole science of geology. I, Duard Campbell, the despised and rejected one, could do that. The front of my mind shouted that it was nonsense, but something far back in my mind began composing a devastating letter to Colonel Lewis and comfort flowed into me.
“There’s some say the boy’s youngest sister could tell where he found it, if she wanted,” Dave said. “She used to go into that desert with him a lot. She took on pretty wild when it happened and then was struck dumb, but I hear she talks again now.” He shook his head. “Poor little Helen. She promised to be a pretty girl.”
“Where does she live?” I asked.
“With her mother in Salem,” Dave said. “She went to business school and I hear she works for a lawyer there.”
Mrs. Price was a flinty old woman who seemed to control her daughter absolutely. She agreed Helen would be my secretary as soon as I told her the salary. I got Helen’s security clearance with one phone call; she had already been investigated as part of tracing that uranium crystal. Mrs. Price arranged for Helen to stay with a family she knew in Barker, to protect her reputation. It was in no danger. I meant to make love to her, if I had to, to charm her out of her secret, if she had one, but I would not harm her. I knew perfectly well that I was only playing a game called “The Revenge of Duard Campbell.” I knew I would not find any uranium.
Helen was a plain little girl and she was made of frightened ice. She wore low-heeled shoes and cotton stockings and plain dresses with white cuffs and collars. Her one good feature was her flawless fair skin against which her peaked, black Welsh eyebrows and smoky blue eyes gave her an elfin look at times. She liked to sit neatly tucked into herself, feet together, elbows in, eyes cast down, voice hardly audible, as smoothly self-contained as an egg. The desk I gave her faced mine and she sat like that across from me and did the busy work I gave her and I could not get through to her at all.
I tried joking and I tried polite little gifts and attentions, and I tried being sad and needing sympathy. She listened and worked and stayed as far away as the moon. It was only after two weeks and by pure accident that I found the key to her.
I was trying the sympathy gambit. I said it was not so bad, being exiled from friends and family, but what I could not stand was the dreary sameness of that search area. Every spot was like every other spot and there was no single, recognizable place in the whole expanse. It sparked something in her and she roused up at me.
“It’s full of just wonderful places,” she said.
“Come out with me in the Jeep and show me one,” I challenged.
She was reluctant, but I hustled her along regardless. I guided the Jeep between outcrops, jouncing and lurching. I had our map photographed on my mind and I knew where we were every minute, but only by map coordinates. The desert had our marks on it: well sites, seismic blast holes, wooden stakes, cans, bottles and papers blowing in that everlasting wind, and it was all dismally the same anyway.
“Tell me when we pass a ‘place’ and I’ll stop,” I said.
“It’s all places,” she said. “Right here’s a place.”
I stopped the Jeep and looked at her in surprise. Her voice was strong and throaty. She opened her eyes wide and smiled; I had never seen her look like that.
“What’s special, that makes it a place?” I asked.
She did not answer. She got out and walked a few steps. Her whole posture was changed. She almost danced along. I followed and touched her shoulder.
“Tell me what’s special,” I said.
She faced around and stared right past me. She had a new grace and vitality and she was a very pretty girl.
“It’s where all the dogs are,” she said.
“Dogs?”
I looked around at the scrubby sagebrush and thin soil and ugly black rock and back at Helen. Something was wrong.
“Big, stupid dogs that go in herds and eat grass,” she said. She kept turning and gazing. “Big cats chase the dogs and eat them. The dogs scream and scream. Can’t you hear them?”
“That’s crazy!” I said. “What’s the matter with you?”
I might as well have slugged her. She crumpled instantly back into herself and I could hardly hear her answer.
“I’m sorry. My brother and I used to play out fairy tales here. All this was a kind of fairyland to us.” Tears formed in her eyes. “I haven’t been here since . . . I forgot myself. I’m sorry.”
I had to swear I needed to dictate “field notes” to force Helen into that desert again. She sat stiffly with pad and pencil in the Jeep while I put on my act with the Geiger and rattled off jargon. Her lips were pale and compressed and I could see her fighting against the spell the desert had for her, and I could see her slowly losing.
She finally broke down into that strange mood and I took good care not to break it. It was weird but wonderful, and I got a lot of data. I made her go out for “field notes” every morning and each time it was easier to break her down. Back in the office she always froze again and I marveled at how two such different persons could inhabit the same body. I called her two phases “Office Helen” and “Desert Helen.”
I often talked with old Dave on the veranda after dinner. One night he cautioned me.
“Folks here think Helen ain’t been right in the head since her brother died,” he said. “They’re worrying about you and her.”
“I feel like a big brother
to her,” I said. “I’d never hurt her, Dave. If we find the lode, I’ll stake the best claim for her.”
He shook his head. I wished I could explain to him how it was only a harmless game I was playing and no one would ever find gold out there. Yet, as a game, it fascinated me.
Desert Helen charmed me when, helplessly, she had to uncover her secret life. She was a little girl in a woman’s body. Her voice became strong and breathless with excitement and she touched me with the same wonder that turned her own face vivid and elfin. She ran laughing through the black rocks and scrubby sagebrush and momentarily she made them beautiful. She would pull me along by the hand and sometimes we ran as much as a mile away from the Jeep. She treated me as if I were a blind or foolish child.
“No, no, Duard, that’s a cliff!” she would say, pulling me back.
She would go first, so I could find the stepping stones across streams. I played up. She pointed out woods and streams and cliffs and castles. There were shaggy horses with claws, golden birds, camels, witches, elephants and many other creatures. I pretended to see them all, and it made her trust me. She talked and acted out the fairy tales she had once played with Owen. Sometimes he was enchanted and sometimes she, and the one had to dare the evil magic of a witch or giant to rescue the other. Sometimes I was Duard and other times I almost thought I was Owen.
Helen and I crept into sleeping castles, and we hid with pounding hearts while the giant grumbled in search of us and we fled, hand in hand, before his wrath.
Well, I had her now. I played Helen’s game, but I never lost sight of my own. Every night I sketched in on my map whatever I had learned that day of the fairyland topography.
Its geomorphology was remarkably consistent.
When we played, I often hinted about the giant’s treasure. Helen never denied it existed, but she seemed troubled and evasive about it. She would put her finger to her lips and look at me with solemn, round eyes.