Robert Bloch

by Atoms

  The next couple of days I kept my eyes open, figuring on seeing Mr. Goofy again. But I didn’t. All I did was hear him. Nights, he kept banging and pounding away, him and his scrap metal or whatever it was, and he moved stuff across the floor. Me, I’m a pretty sound sleeper and Stakowsky was always loaded when he turned in, so it didn’t bother him neither. But Mr. Goofy never seemed to sleep. He was always working up there. And on what?

  I couldn’t figure it out. Day after day he’d come in and out with some more metal. I don’t know where he got it all, but he must have lugged up a couple of thousand pounds, ten or fifteen each trip. It got to bothering me because it was the sort of a mystery you feel you’ve got to know more about.

  Next time I saw him was when he started coming into the place regular, to eat. And always he had the pencil and notebook with him. He took the same booth every night—and nobody bothered him with loud music after the story got around about him and his shiv.

  He’d just sit there and figure and mumble to himself and walk out again, and pretty soon they were making up all kinds of stories about the guy.

  Some said he was a Red on account of that accent, you know, and he was building one of them there atomic bombs. One of the winos says no, he passed the place one night about four A.M. and he heard a big clank like machinery working. He figured Mr. Goofy was a counter-fitter. Which was the kind of crazy idea you’d expect from a wino.

  Anyways, the closest anybody come was Manny Schreiber from the hock shop, and he guessed Goofy was a inventor and maybe he was building a rowbot. You know, a rowbot, like in these scientist magazines. Mechanical men, they run by machinery.

  One day, about an hour before I went on shift, I was sitting in my room when Stakowsky knocked on the door. “Come on,” he says. “Mr. Goofy just went out. I’m gonna take a look around up there.”

  Well, I didn’t care one way or the other. Stakowsky, he was the landlord, and I figured he had a right. So we sneaked up and he used his key and we went inside the loft.

  It was a big barn of a place with a cot in the corner. Next to the cot was a table with a lot of notes piled up, and maybe twenty-five or thirty books. Foreign books they were, and I couldn’t make out the names. In the other corners there were piles of scrap metal and what looked like a bunch of old radio sets from a repair shop.

  And in the center of the room was this machine. At least, it looked like a machine, even though it must have been thirty feet long. It was higher than my head, too. And there was a door in it, and you could get inside the machinery that was all tangled up on the sides and sit down in a chair. In front of the chair was a big board with a lot of switches on it.

  And everywhere was gears and pistons and coils and even glass tubes. Where he picked up all that stuff, I dunno. But he’d patched it all together somehow and when you looked at it—it made sense. I mean, you could tell the machine would do something, if you could only figure out what.

  Stakowsky looked at me and I looked at him and we both looked at the machine.

  “That Mr. Goofy!” says Stakowsky. “He does all this in a month. You know something, Jack?”

  “What?” I says.

  “You tell anybody else and I’ll kill you. But I’m scared to even come near Mr. Goofy. This machine of his, I don’t like it. Tomorrow his month is up. I’m going to tell him he should move. Get out. I don’t want crazy people around here.”

  “But how’ll he move this thing out?”

  “I don’t care how. Tomorrow he gets the word. And I’m going to have Lippy and Stan and the boys here. He don’t pull no knife on me again. Out he goes.”

  We went downstairs and I went to work. All night long I tried to figure that machine of his. There wasn’t much else to do, because there was a real blizzard going and nobody came in.

  I kept remembering the way the machine looked. It had a sort of framework running around the outside, and if it got covered over with some metal it would be like a submarine or one of them rockets. And there was a part inside, where a big glass globe connected up to some wires leading to the switchboard, or whatever it was. And a guy could sit in there. It all made some kind of crazy sense.

  I sat there, thinking it over, until along about midnight. Then Mr. Goofy came in.

  This time he didn’t head for his booth. He come right up to the bar and sat down on a stool. His face was red, and he brushed snow off his coat. But he looked happy.

  “Do you have any decent brandy?” he asked.

  “I think so,” I told him. I found a bottle and opened it up.

  “Will you be good enough to have a drink with me?”

  “Sure, thanks.” I looked at him. “Celebrating?”

  “That’s right,” says Mr. Goofy. “This is a great occasion. My work is finished. Tonight I put on the sheaths. Now I am almost ready to demonstrate.”

  “Demonstrate what?”

  Well, he dummied up on me right away. I poured him another drink and another, and he just sat there grinning. Then he sort of loosened up. That brandy was plenty powerful.

  “Look,” he says. “I will tell you all about it. You have been kind to me, and I can trust you. Besides, it is good to share a moment of triumph.”

  He says, “So long I have worked, but soon they will not laugh at me any more. Soon the smart Americans, the men over here who call themselves Professors, will take note of my work. They did not believe me when I offered to show them my plans. They would not accept my basic theory. But I knew I was right. I knew I could do it. Part of it must be mechanical, yes. But the most important part is the mind itself. You know what I told them? To do this, and to do it right, you’ve got to have brains.”

  He sort of chuckled, and poured another drink. “Yes. That is the whole secret. More than anything else, you need brains. Not mechanical formula alone. But when I spoke of harnessing the mind, powering it with metal energy rather than physical, they laughed. Now we’ll see.”

  I bought myself a drink, and I guess he realized I wasn’t in on the pitch, because he says, “You don’t understand, do you?”

  I shook my head.

  “What would you say, my friend, if I told you I have just successfully completed the construction of the first practical spaceship?”

  Oh-oh, I thought to myself. Mr. Goofy!

  “But not a model, not a theory in metal—an actual, practical machine for travel to the moon?”

  Mr. Goofy and his knife, I thought. Making a crazy thing out of old scrap iron. Mr. Goofy!

  “If I wish, I can go tonight,” he said. “Or tomorrow. Any time. No astronomy. No calculus. Mental energy is the secret. Harness the machinery to a human brain and it will be guided automatically to its destination in a moment, if properly controlled. That’s all it takes—a single instant. Long enough to direct the potential energy of the cortex.”

  Maybe you think it’s funny the way I can remember all those big words, but I’ll never forget anything Mr. Goofy said.

  And he told me, “Who has ever estimated the power of the human brain—its unexploited capacity for performance? Using the machine for autohypnosis, the brain is capable of tremendous effort. The electrical impulses can be stepped up, magnified ten millionfold. Atomic energy is insignificant in comparison. Now do you see what I have achieved?”

  I thought about it for a minute or so—him sitting there all steamed up over his dizzy junk heap. Then I remembered what was happening to him tomorrow.

  I just didn’t have the heart to let him go on and on about how his life-work was realized, and how he’d be famous in Europe and America and he’d reach the moon and all that crud. I didn’t have the heart. He was so little and so whacky. Mr. Goofy!

  So I says, “Look, I got to tell you something. Stakowsky, he’s bouncing you out tomorrow. That’s right. He’s gonna kick you and your machine into the street. He says he can’t stand it around.”

  “Machine?” says Mr. Goofy. “What does he know of my machine?”

  Well, I had to t
ell him then. I had to. About how we went upstairs and looked.

  “Before the sheath was on, you saw?” he asked.

  “That’s the way it was,” I told him. “I saw it, and so did Stakowsky. And he’ll kick you out.”

  “But he cannot! I mean, I chose this spot carefully, so I could work unobserved. I need privacy. And I cannot move the ship now. I must bring people to see it when I make the announcement. I must make the special arrangements for the tests. It is a very delicate matter. Doesn’t he understand? He’ll be famous, too, because of what happened in his miserable hole of a place—”

  “He’s probably famous tonight,” I said. “I’ll bet he’s down the street somewheres right now, blabbing about you and your machine, and how he’s gonna toss you out.”

  Mr. Goofy looked so sad I tried to make a joke. “What’s the matter with you? You say yourself it works by brain power. So use your brain and move it some place else. Huh?”

  He looked even sadder. “Don’t you realize it is designed only for space-travel? And properly, my brain must be free to act as the control agent. Still, you are right about that man. He is a wicked person, and he hates me. I must do something. I wonder if—”

  Then you know what he does, this Mr. Goofy? He whips out his pencil and notebook and starts figuring. Just sits there and scribbles away. And he says, “Yes, it is possible. Change the wires leading to the controls. It is only a matter of a few moments. And what better proof could I ask than an actual demonstration? Yes. It is fated to be this way. Good.”

  Then he stood up and stuck out his mitt. “Good-by, Jack,” he says. “And thank you for your suggestion.”

  “What suggestion?”

  But he doesn’t answer me, and then he’s out the door and gone.

  I closed up the joint about one-thirty. The boss wasn’t around and I figured what the hell, it was a blizzard.

  There was nobody out on the street this time of night, not with the wind off the lake and the snow coming down about a foot a minute. I couldn’t see in front of my face.

  I crossed the street in front of the Palace Rooms—it must have been quarter to two or thereabouts—and all of a sudden it happened.

  Whoom!

  Like that it goes, a big loud blast you can hear even over the wind and the blizzard. On account of the snow being so thick I couldn’t see nothing. But let me tell you. I sure heard it.

  At first I thought maybe it was some kind of explosion, so I quick run across to the Palace and up the stairs. All the winos in the flops was asleep—those guys, they get a jag on and they’ll sleep even if you set fire to the mattress. But I had to find out if anything was wrong.

  I didn’t smell no smoke and my room was okay, and it was all quiet in the hall. Except that the back door leading to the attic was open, and the air was cold.

  Right away I figured maybe Mr. Goofy had pulled something off, so I ran up the stairs. And I saw it.

  Mr. Goofy was gone. The junk was still scattered all over the room, but he’d burned all his notes and he was gone. The great big machine, or spaceship, or whatever it was—that was gone, too.

  How’d he get it out of the room and where did he take it? You can search me, brother.

  All I know is there was a big charred spot burned away in the center of the floor where the machine had stood. And right above there was a big round hole punched smack through the roof of the loft.

  So help me, I just stood there. What else could I do? Mr. Goofy said he built a spaceship that could take him to the moon. He said he could go there in a flash, just like that. He said all it took was brains.

  And what do I know about this here autohypnosis deal, or whatever he called it, and about electricity-energy, and force fields, and all that stuff?

  He was gone. The machine or ship was gone. And there was this awful hole in the roof. That’s all I knew.

  Maybe Stakowsky would know the rest. It was worth a try, anyhow. So I run down to Stakowsky’s room.

  After that, things didn’t go so good.

  The cops started to push me around when they got there, and if it hadn’t been for my boss putting the old pressure on, they’d have given me a real rough time. But they could see I was sorta like out of my head—and I was, too, for about a week.

  I kept yelling about this Mr. Goofy and his crazy invention and his big knife and his trip to the moon, and it didn’t make no sense to the cops. Of course, nothing ever made any sense to them, and they had to drop the whole case—hush it up. The whole thing was too screwy to ever let leak out.

  Anyhow, I felt rugged until I moved out of the Palace Rooms and got back to work. Now I scarcely ever think about Mr. Goofy any more, or Stakowsky—or the whole cockeyed mess.

  I don’t like to think about the mess.

  The mess was when I ran down the stairs that night and looked for Stakowsky in his room. He was there all right, but he didn’t care about Goofy or the trip to the moon or the hole in his loft roof, either.

  Because he was very, very dead.

  And Mr. Goofy’s foot-long knife was laying right next to him on the bed. So that part was easy to figure out. Mr. Goofy come right back there from the tavern, and he killed him.

  But after that?

  After that, your guess is as good as mine. The cops never found out a bit—not even Mr. Goofy’s real name, or where he came from, or where he got this here theory about spaceships and power to run them.

  Did he really have a invention that would take him to the moon? Could he change some wires and controls and just scoot off through the roof with his mental energy hooked up?

  Nobody knows. Nobody ever will know. But I can tell you this.

  There was a mess, one awful mess, in Stakowsky’s room. Mr. Goofy must have taken his knife and gone to work on Stakowsky’s head. There was nothing left on top but a big round hole, and it was empty.

  Stakowsky’s head was empty.

  Mr. Goofy took out what was inside and fixed his machine and went to the moon.

  That’s all.

  Like Mr. Goofy says, you got to have brains....

  YOU COULD BE WRONG

  WHEN Harry Jessup came back from service, he wasn’t aware of the change. Not immediately.

  Marge was still waiting for him, so they got married and bought a little ranch house out in Skyland Park. Harry got a job at Everlift, and although he noticed money didn’t seem to go very far these days, he managed to get along. He and Marge made friends with the couple next door—the Myers, very nice people; Ed Myers was a CPA—and pretty soon they bought a television set.

  That’s probably what set him off.

  One night he and Marge were watching the Sloucho Marks quiz show. Harry had always liked Sloucho in the old days, when he was making pictures, and he could still quote most of the lyrics to “Hooray For Captain Mauldin.”

  Marge kept laughing at Sloucho’s cracks during the program, and she was a little surprised to see that Harry was just sitting there, staring at the screen. He never smiled. When it was time for the last commercial, Harry got up and turned off the set.

  “What’s the matter?” Marge asked.

  Harry muttered something that sounded like, “Fake!” but Marge wasn’t really interested in his reply. She’d asked a purely rhetorical question and intended to follow it up with certain remarks which she now delivered.

  “I thought it was a very funny show, myself,” she said. “What’s wrong with you, Harry? You always liked Sloucho Marks before.”

  “Yeah,” Harry said. He just sat there, staring at the blank screen.

  “You’ve got to admit he’s the cleverest ad-libber in the world,” Marge persisted. “Maybe he’s a little corny, but I’d like to see you do any better, Harry Jessup.”

  Harry scowled at her. “Perhaps I could,” he murmured, “if I had four writers.”

  “Four writers?” Marge was genuinely shocked. “What are you talking about?”

  “He’s got four writers,” Harry said. “I
read about it in the paper.”

  Marge sniffed. “Why, I never heard of such a ridiculous idea! Everybody knows it wouldn’t work. How can anybody write such a show in advance when they don’t know who’s going to be chosen as contestants?”

  “They know,” Harry told her. “It’s all fixed in advance. Rehearsals and everything.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “Some of the people who are going to be on the show even advertise ahead of time in the Hollywood trade papers,” Harry said.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Read it.”

  “Well, I don’t believe a word of it,” Marge declared. “I think you’re just jealous, or something. I bet you wouldn’t mind trading places with Sloucho Marks any day.”

  “Maybe I could,” Harry answered.

  “What are you talking about?” Marge sat down heavily and began tapping her foot.

  “I mean, maybe I could be Sloucho Marks,” Harry said. “How do you know you’re seeing the real Sloucho on TV now?”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous! Just because he’s given up wearing that false moustache—”

  “Did you ever see him before without it? I mean, outside of his last movies where he appeared alone?”

  “No,—but—”

  “Maybe there isn’t a real Sloucho,” Harry persisted. “Maybe there never was. Remember in one of his early movies where he stood in front of this mirror frame and thought there was glass in it? And Cheeko put on a moustache and pretended to be his reflection? Cheeko looked just like Sloucho. Anybody can, with a little makeup.”

  “What’s come over you, Harry?”

  “Nothing. It just occurred to me how easy it would be to pull off a stunt like that nowadays. Anybody with four writers and a physical resemblance could act the part. The whole thing’s a fake from start to finish. A pretended ad-libber purporting to interview phony contestants in a comedy show which is supposed to be a quiz program. All a big fraud.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re getting so riled up over nothing,” Marge snapped. “If you get right down to it, Sloucho certainly didn’t write all his own parts in the old days.”