“I know that,” Doug said. “My ticket, please.”
The ticket agent took his hands from the counter and drew back, as though Doug had become someone with whom it would be safest not to be in close contact. His brows drew together over his staring eyes in a frown of incredulity.
“Sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked hesitantly.
“Quite,” Doug said. “And now, if you’re satisfied, will you please let me have my ticket?”
Shaking his head, muttering under his breath, the ticket agent complied. His manner throughout the transaction bore a markedly noticeable constraint.
The ticket finally in his possession, Doug picked up his bag and strode quickly toward the tracks.
He gnawed at his lower lip, his youthful features somber. The ticket agent’s warning had left him disturbed. Up to now, he had known only the firm resolve to get to the bottom of the disappearances. Knowledge that he would be exposing himself to danger by going to Alderdale had not entered his thoughts.
Realization came to him that he possessed nothing which might give hope of immunity. He was from Alderdale. He was young—just over the borderline of maturity himself. He was, in fact, perfect prey for whatever it was that had snatched all the others like him into oblivion.
He felt a twinge of anxiety that was not motivated by any concern for his own well-being. Loss of Vickie had left him with little if any desire for continued existence. But he did not want anything to happen to him until he had finally dragged the reason behind the disappearance into the light of day.
Doug found his coach, tossed his bag onto the overhead rack, settled into a seat. He gazed broodingly through the window, the disappointments of the past two weeks bitter in his mind.
He would have left for Alderdale immediately the day he learned of that other girl’s disappearance, but a hope that the police might turn up something had made him wait. The police had explored every possibility in their search for Vickie, utilizing every branch, every advantage, of their far-flung organization. But they had been so many men dipping nets into an ocean for one particular fish. They had been so many men in quest of a name, a description, that was not there.
There had been calls. Would Mr. Crandall appear at hospital so-and-so? An unidentified accident case who answered the description of Mrs. Crandall. The drive—fear and hope boiling under a flame of impatience, tension that pulled nerves to shrieking tightness, that brought sweat to clenching hands. And then—the smell of disinfectant, a slender form on a white-painted bed. Brown-gold hair spread over a pillow, eyes under closed lids that might have been brown. But not Vickie.
An amnesia case. Brown-gold hair again, brown eyes that watched him hungrily, eagerly, pleading to be known. But not Vickie.
The morgue. Lights that did not quite dispel the gloom, the cold, dank atmosphere of death. A harsh, stone slab, and a still, still form beneath a sheet. The sheet pulled partially away—Again not Vickie.
Not Vickie. Never Vickie. Vickie was a name for someone who had been, someone who had shared his tiny fragment of world for a while, and then gone. Vickie was the name of a memory.
* * * *
Doug was the only one off when the train reached Alderdale. Gripping his bag, he walked around the little depot building, down the gravel driveway, to the street. He walked slowly, glancing about him, eyes warm with a mingling of recollection and sadness.
Alderdale was not the town he remembered, in which he had lived and grown. Pathetic changes had taken place in the old, familiar scenes. Evidences of desertion and neglect were everywhere. Lawns had become overgrown with weeds, houses drab for lack of paint. Most of the houses were tenantless. For rent signs hung in almost every window.
People along the street were few, and those Doug passed were unknown to him. They stared in surprise when they noticed his bag, but when his glance met theirs, they averted their eyes, hurried away.
Sadness deepened within Doug. The friendly smile, the nod of head, which had been accorded even those who were not known, these, too, had become things of the past. Now there was only a distrust for those who seemed to be strangers, a fear that averted eyes, that brought haste to walking feet.
An atmosphere of menace; of lurking danger, hung over the town. Doug could sense it as though it were a smell in the air, a sound carried on the wind.
He registered at a hotel. Later he went out to see how many of relatives and acquaintances he could find. It was with these that his investigations would begin. And whether it would be the beginning of the end or merely the end of the beginning, he dared not guess.
The end of two days found him still lacking anything which might have even remotely been considered a lead. His relatives and friends, such few as had remained in Alderdale, were overjoyed to see him again. They were desolated at the news of Vickie’s disappearance. But they could offer nothing in the way of useful information.
Doug’s quest brought him inevitably to Chief of Police Hargood, who secluded himself with his memories of better days, of robberies and burglaries, in a musty little office in the town courthouse.
“It’s no use trying to dig up something here,” Hargood said, after Doug had recounted his story for the dozenth time. “The government sent a lot of investigation men, and they did a lot of snooping and prying, but it didn’t do any good. They all went back to Washington, or wherever they came from, without turning up a single thing. And I’ve been working on the disappearances ever since they started, and I’m no wiser than I was in the beginning.”
“But isn’t there something—anything—which might possibly be worked on?” Doug pleaded desperately.
Hargood scratched his unshaven jaw. “Well, there is, in a way. But I still think it’s just a lot of nonsense. Anyway, you might go over and have a talk with Doc Wanamaker. He lives near that Asherton place up on Cedar Creek Road. The Doc’s got what he calls a theory about the disappearances. Might be something in it, but personally I’d say the Doc likes to spin half-baked yarns in his old age.”
Doc Wanamaker—Sylvester P. Wanamaker, M. D., the faded shingle over the porch read—was short, plump, bald. He might have appeared jolly and bouncing were it not for the inscrutability of his eyes behind their thick-lensed glasses. The glasses somehow made a difference in his entire aspect. They gave an owl-like gravity to his full, red-cheeked face, made him at once knowing and unknown.
Doug was ushered cordially into an old-fashioned parlor, where he launched at once into an explanation of his visit. He finished, “Hargood told me you had a theory about the disappearances, and so I thought it would be a good idea to have a talk with you.”
Wanamaker emitted a chuckle which was dry and somehow bitter. “And I suppose Hargood told you also that I was mentally infirm if not downright crazy.”
Doug said gently, “Hargood’s opinion does not interest me in the slightest. He doesn’t know anything, hasn’t the ghost of an idea. Nobody has. You, at least, have a theory of what might be behind the disappearances. I have come to listen to your theory as a last hope, a last resort, not to use it to judge your sanity.”
Something of the inscrutability about Wanamaker’s eyes seemed to leave. It seemed to Doug that his words had torn away a barrier of reserve.
“Those are the kindest words I’ve heard in a long time,” Wanamaker stated softly. He reached abruptly for a blackened, curve-stemmed pipe lying on the table beside his chair, and for some seconds was occupied busily by stuffing it with tobacco. Finally he glanced up. He did not light the pipe, but turned it in his pudgy hands.
“I have a theory, yes. Those who have heard it, have called it half-baked, crack-pot, and several other things more descriptive. But if you have an open, imaginative mind, one not shackled by precedent, bound in by the narrow range of human experience, you’ll see that my theory has definite possibilities. I say possibilities. I shall not put myself on record as
to whether or not my theory is true, since I lack the facts which would give me that right. But as a theory, a possible answer, it fits all the conditions better than anything which has yet been offered. Now—you’ve heard, no doubt, about the meteorite? The Meteorite?”
“The one that fell in Ned Johnson’s garden on Cressy Street? Why, yes,” Doug acknowledged, “that was around twenty-six years ago, sometime before I was born.”
“Before you were born,” Wanamaker said. “Remember that point. The fact that the meteorite fell before you were born—before all the others who finally disappeared were born—is of the most tremendous importance. The meteorite is the crux of everything.
“I’ll review a few facts about it, things which are more or less common knowledge, determined not by myself but by men in much more appropriate branches of science. The meteorite was composed of some strange kind of radioactive substance, enclosed in a shell of nickel-iron. This shell was almost totally burned away by descent of the meteorite through Earth’s atmosphere, but the radioactive interior was left intact. But it hadn’t remained radioactive long; some element in the atmosphere or in the ground caused the radiation rate to speed up enormously, changing it within a short time to a lead-like substance.
“Scientists who came to investigate the meteorite finally carried it away, placed it in a glass case in a university museum. But something had been left—something which could not be taken away. Something which was to mean tragedy and heartbreak in all the years that followed.” Wanamaker leaned forward; his eyes glittered behind their thick lenses.
“While active, the meteorite threw off hard radiation—infernally hard, harder than X-rays. I do not expect you to know the work that has been done with X-rays on fruit flies. But I think you will understand when I say that hard radiations of the type thrown off by the meteorite have the ability to alter the patterns of the genes and chromosomes, the carriers of hereditary characteristics in the human germ plasm. And what is the result of such alterations? Mutations occur in the offspring of those affected. The meteorite—” Wanamaker’s voice dropped to a whisper—“did just that. It caused mutations. As to how extensive this was—you’ve seen the hole in Ned Johnson’s garden?”
Doug nodded quickly. “It was big. About ten feet across.”
“The hole is no longer the sightseeing spot it once was,” Wanamaker resumed a trifle sadly. “But at that time, it was the most popular site in Alderdale. Before the meteorite was dug up, before it had ceased to be radioactive, everyone in town had turned out to see the hole. Your mother and father were there, as were Vickie’s mother and father, the mothers and fathers of all the others. They had not married yet, or perhaps they had been waiting for better financial circumstances before bearing children. But they came—and those terrifically hard radiations pouring from the hole caused changes in their germ cells.
“You’ve heard of the Monsters. The Monsters were mutants, born of parents whose germ cells had been altered by the radiations thrown off by the meteorite. But not all the children brought into the world were grotesque travesties of human beings. Many were normal—at least outwardly so. Actually, they, too, were mutants, but this fact was not to become evident until many years later, because of a sort of delayed-action timing.” Wanamaker looked at something beyond Doug, and his lips spread in a smile that was without humor.
“All my life I have never ceased to be astonished at the ingenuity and foresight of Nature. How well she provides for those of her children whom she favors! Plants and animals who have been favored are perfectly adapted to their environment, provided with every possible aid in the constant fight for survival. Look here—if an infant superman were to have appeared among the Monsters, with physical differences setting it distinctly apart from ordinary men, would it have been recognizable as a superman?”
Doug hesitated. “Well, I think that would have been rather difficult to determine.”
“Exactly!” Wanamaker said, beaming in approval. “Few if any of the Monsters were similar physically. If a superman had appeared among them, it would have been mistaken for just another Monster. It would have been confined in an institution, bound in by walls and bars for the rest of its life. Or, if allowed to live in the world of men, it would have been hounded and persecuted, shunned, mocked.
“But as I’ve said, Nature is ingenious and foresighted. If a superman were to appear whom she favored, he would not be recognizable as such—not until he was fully prepared to protect himself from the dangers with which we, the children of another race, might menace him.” Wanamaker’s eyes fixed upon Doug with a kind of owlish grimness. “That’s exactly what happened. Supermen did appear—and they were so favored.”
Doug stared. “You mean supermen appeared as a result of the radiations thrown off by the meteorite?”
“Yes,” Wanamaker answered quietly.
“But that seems a little too farfetched. It’s like something out of fantasy.”
“Why should it be?” Wanamaker demanded. “Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that in some long-gone time we were supermen ourselves, superseding other creatures of an inferior manlike race? We, too, are the result of a mutation. And remember, the radiations from the meteorite eventually died out, which means that they ranged through a wide scale of intensity from high to low, each degree of intensity producing a different change in the germ plasm. Is it too farfetched to suppose that one of those degrees of intensity produced supermen, whereas all the others resulted merely in Monsters?”
“I…I don’t know,” Doug faltered. “But what do supermen have to do with the disappearances?”
“Everything. Consider the facts. The disappearances began something over two years ago, at a time when the children of parents who had been affected by the radiation thrown off by the meteorite had reached maturity. Outwardly, these children were normal enough, but they were mutants. It was only when they reached maturity that the physical and mental changes which made them so became manifest. And why did the changes appear only when the children had reached maturity? Because maturity is a time when the individual is fully equipped mentally and physically to stand on his own feet. Because it is at maturity that a superman, finally recognizable as such, would be able to cope with his differentness.
“Thus the disappearances. Obviously, the changes which took place at maturity were so far-reaching that the mutants could live no longer in the world of ordinary men. They had to go somewhere where they could live in peace. Most likely they banded together, and even now are leading their strange lives in some hidden part of the earth.”
Doug moistened his lips. His voice was tense. “If what you have to say is true, then…then I, too, am due to disappear.”
Wanamaker lifted plump shoulders in a shrug. “If my theory is true. It has not yet been checked against fact, and until it is, who can say? Even if I did know for sure, I still would not be able to say, since I do not know all the factors involved in your own particular case.”
Theory. Uncertainty. If. The hopelessness of his quest filled Doug with crosscurrents of despair and rage. Everywhere he turned, it seemed, there was only disappointment.
* * * *
Hiding his dejection at the outcome of his visit as best he could, Doug took leave of Wanamaker. He returned to his room at the hotel, where he threw himself across the bed without bothering even to remove his coat. Elis fingers bit hard into the mattress, gripping convulsively, as though seeking solidity in a world which had suddenly become unsubstantial.
In the days that followed, the hotel room took on the quality of a prison cell to Doug. He had a desire for solitude that precluded any thought of boarding out, and finally he rented a small cottage on the outskirts of Alderdale. The loneliness of the place suited him ideally.
For a while he busied himself with putting the house in order, but when that was done an apathetic listlessness took hold of him.
He had no plans
for the future.
Existence in the present was without hope or meaning. He sank into spells of brooding that became longer, ever longer.
Doug neglected himself, neglected the cottage. He grew thin and wan, and then he took sick. It started with a headache one morning, and by the following evening he was too weak to move. The headache grew terrible in its intensity. Every throb of his heart brought pain that threatened to split his head. A fever swept him like a consuming flame. Night brought merciful unconsciousness.
He awoke the next afternoon, feeble, shaken, but better. Hunger gnawed within him, an almost unnatural hunger, and he felt an overpowering thirst. He fell upon his small stock of food ravenously, drank dipper after dipper of water from the bucket which he filled outside at the well. He felt still better, then, but some inexplicable feeling of strangeness seemed to persist. His illness was gone, but somehow he felt—queer.
He could not quite define his sensations. It was as though he were in a state of flux, with a moving and a shifting in every cell of his body. In moments of physical quiet, sounds came to him that yet were not sounds, for strain as he might with listening, they could not be heard.
The sensation continued, grew stronger. Something like an electric current thrilled through every fiber of his being. An activity filled his mind that was not thought. A flow of sound filled his ears that was not sound. An awareness of his surroundings deepened within him, a sharpening of perceptions, that made him see things, sense things, in ways he had never experienced before.
It continued—and then all wonder, all feeling of strangeness, left him. The transformation was complete.
He stood there, in the growing darkness of evening, with his golden aura pulsing around him, and he strained with his listening, not using his ears. His mind—his new mind—reached out and away, a hand fumbling in the darkness, seeking guidance. And it came—just as his new senses told him it would come.
The 38th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK Page 20