* * * * *
So I had a headache. The grandfather of all headaches. You try working on the roof line sometime, with the presses grinding and the overhead cranes wailing and the mechanical arms clacking and grabbing at your inner skull while you snap a shiny sheet of steel like an armored pillowcase and shove it into the maw of a hungry greasy ogre. Noise. Hammering, pounding, shrieking, gobbling, yammering, incessant noise. And I had a headache.
This headache had all the signs of permanency. It stayed with me when I slid my timecard into an empty slot that clanged back at me, when I skittered across a jammed street of blowing horns and impatient buses with brakedrums worn to the rivets, when I got off at my corner and stood in the precarious safety of a painted island in a whirring storm of hurtling hornets. It got even worse when I ate dinner and tried to read my paper through the shrill juvenile squeals of the housing project where I live surrounded by muddy moppets and, apparently, faithless wives and quarrelsome spouses. The walls of my Quonset are no thicker than usual.
When Helen-that's my wife-dropped the casserole we got for a wedding present from her aunt and just stood there by the kitchen sink crying her eyes out in frustration I knew she finally had more of a mess to clean up than just the shattered remains of a brittle bowl. I didn't say a word. I couldn't. I shoved the chair across the room and watched it tilt the lamp her mother bought us. Before the lamp hit the floor my hat was on my head and I was out the door. Behind me I heard at least one pane of the storm door die in a fatal crash. I didn't look around to see if it were the one I'd put in last Sunday.
* * * * *
Art was glad to see me. He had the beer drawn and was evening the foam before the heavy front door had shut us off from the street. "Been a while, Pete. What's new?"
I was glad to see him, too. It was quiet in there. That's why I go eight blocks out of my way for my beer. No noise, no loud talking or you end up on the curb; quiet. Quiet and dark and comfortable and you mind your own business, usually. "Got any more of those little boxes of aspirin?"
He had some aspirin and was sympathetic. "Headache again? Maybe you need a new pair of glasses."
I washed down the pills and asked for a refill on the beer. "Maybe, Art. What do you know that's new?"
Nothing. We both knew that. We talked for a while; nothing important, nothing more than the half-spoken, half-grunted short disjointed phrases we always repeated. Art would drift away and lean on the other end of the bar and then drift back to me and at the end of each trip there would be clean ashtrays and the dark plastic along the bar would gleam and there would be no dregs of dead drinks and the rows of fresh glasses would align themselves in empty rows on the stainless steel of the lower counter. Art's a good bartender when he wants to be. I held up my empty glass.
"One more, Art. Got the radio section of the paper?"
He handed it to me. "Might be something on the television."
* * * * *
We both laughed. We both feel the same way about television, but he has to have a set in his business for week-end football or baseball games. A big set he has, too, with an extra speaker for the far end of the bar for the short beer trade. I found the program I wanted and showed Art the listing.
He looked at it. "Strauss … that's that waltz music," and I nodded and he went over to the radio and found the station. These small stations can't sell every minute of their time for commercials, although they try, and every once in a while they run through a solid hour of Strauss or Bing Crosby or Benny Goodman. I like Strauss.
And there I sat drinking beer and eating stale popcorn when I should have been home with Helen, listening to quiet violins and muted brasses when I should have been doing something noisy and instructive. In my glass I could see whatever I wanted, wherever I would. I made circular patterns on the bar and drew them into a grotesque mass with fingers wet with the silver condensation of bubbles drawn magically through impervious crystal. Then Art turned off the radio.
He was apologetic, but he still turned off the radio. In answer to my unspoken question he shrugged and indicated Freddie. Freddie likes television. He likes dog acts and circus bands and bouncing clowns. He watches the commercials with an innocent unjaundiced eye. Sometimes he sings along with the animated bakers and cooks and gas stations at the top of his boyish beery baritone. He sings loud, and he likes his television the same way.
Art flipped up the lid of the television and stood there long enough to make sure the picture, whatever it was, would be in focus. Then he came back to me and poured another. Hesitating, he added another smaller glass. I can't afford that stuff on what I make. Where I made my mistake was taking it. We each had another. And another. The headache got worse.
Ivan and Jack came in, and, when they heard the blast of sound, came down to my end of the bar where, although the extra speaker is overhead, you don't have to look at the source of the noise. Art handed us a deck of cards and a piece of chalk to keep score and we started to play euchre. You don't have to think to play euchre, which is good. It's about the only game you can play with sign language, the only game for a noisy bar. So we played euchre, and at ten-thirty Ivan and Jack left me alone to face the music. The little cords at the nape of my neck were tight as wires, the temple areas near my eyes were soft and tender and sore to the touch, and my head was one big snare drum.
That was when Freddie half-shouted to Art to get the Roller Derby on Channel Seven and-so help me! — to turn it up a little louder. The cards fell out of my hand and onto the table. I took out a cigarette and my lighter slipped out of my tight fingers and fell on the floor and I bent over to pick it up. My head swelled to twice its size, my glasses slid down a little on my sweaty nose, and the tiny red veins in my eyes grew from a thread to a rope to a flag to a tapestry of crimson rage and the noise abruptly stopped. And Art began to bellow. I stood up. The television set was smoking.
* * * * *
Well, it was fast while it lasted. Art didn't really need the fire department. There wasn't any flame to speak of. Someone pulled the plug from the wall and rolled the set out and used the hand extinguisher on the burnt innards of the set and with the rear exhaust fan going the last of the bitter smoke was drifting out before the sirens pulled up in front. The firemen were relieved, not angry, as they always are, and Art in his misery was thoughtful enough to slip a square bottle in the pocket of the lieutenant in charge. It was cold outside, at that. Freddie said so, when he left; there was no reason to stay at Art's any more when most other bars would have the Roller Derby. I watched him go, and mentally cursed the bearings in his new car. Well, fairly new. I went home. Helen was in bed when I got there, probably asleep. She was still probably asleep when I left for work in the morning. She gets like that.
The next day at Art's there was a big space lighter in color than the surrounding wall where the television set had stood. I asked Art about it.
He didn't know. The serviceman had come out and collected it, clucking in dismay at the mess the extinguisher had left. No, no idea what caused it. Short circuit wouldn't make it that bad; fuses should have blown first. They'd find it, though. Art hoped it wouldn't be the picture tube; that wasn't covered in his service policy, and those tubes in that size cost money. Anything else was covered. At that, he was better off than Freddie.
I looked up. "What's the matter with Freddie?"
He told me. Freddie had ruined his motor on the way home last night. What hadn't blown out the exhaust pipe had gone out the hood, and right after his ninety-day guarantee had expired.
I remembered what I had thought of last night. "How did he do that?"
Art didn't know. He had been driving along and-that was it. The car was in the garage with nothing left between the radiator and the firewall and Freddie was trying to get something out of the insurance company. Fat chance, too, with that bunch of pirates. We'd all had experience with that sort of thing, hadn't we? Why-someone at the other end of the bar wanted some service and Art left. I sat back and began to add two and two. I got five.
Art came back and grinned at me. "You're not going to like this, Pete."
"What won't I like?"
"This," and a man in coveralls shouldered me aside and set a cobra on the bar in front of me, a snake with a twelve inch tube. Art went on to explain: "They're giving me a loaner until my own set gets back and they don't want to plug it in the usual place until they get a chance to completely check the wiring. Okay?"
It had to be okay. It wasn't my place of business. I moved down a bit and watched the serviceman plug it in. He tried the channels for clarity and without warning flipped the volume control all the way over and the whole building shook. I shook, too, like a bewildered Labrador throwing off an unwanted splash of icy water. The top of my head lifted from its moorings and shifted just enough for me to name that infernal serviceman and all his issue. He just sat there and grinned, making no attempt to tone down the set. Then I said what I thought about his television, and the set went quiet. Like that.
It began to smoke and the serviceman began to shuck tools from his box. Art opened his mouth to yell and I walked out the front door. The High Hat, right across the street, would serve to keep me warm until the smoke and profanity was cleared and Art had the repairman under control.
I knew it! They had a jukebox inside the door with the same twenty top tunes of the week, the same gaudy front with the same swirling lights and the same tonsillectomied tenors. I shuddered as I eased by, and I murmured a heartfelt wish over my shoulder, something about the best place for that machine. I ordered a beer, a short one. The barkeep, a pleasant enough fellow, but with none of Art's innate joviality, rang up the dime.
"You didn't happen to pull the cord out when you walked by, did you?"
"Pull the cord out of what?"
He didn't bother to answer, and went over to the machine. That was the first I realized the music had stilled. He clicked the switch on and off a few times with no result, and went to the telephone, detouring by way of the cash register to pick up a coin. Thoughtfully sipping my beer I heard him dial and report a jukebox out of order. Then a relay clicked in the back of my head.
Could all this be a coincidence? Could be…. Couldn't be! The beer grew warm in my hand as I remembered. Every time I'd wished, really really wished, something had happened. Now that I had time to think it over I remembered that red rotor spinning madly past my eyes, that horrible hatred and afterward, that sated sense of fulfillment…. Better have another beer and forget it, Pete. Better make it two beers. Maybe three.
The High Hat sold me a lot more than two beers, or three. When I left there, although I was walking a mental chalkline I had a little trouble lighting a cigarette in the chill breeze. I didn't bother going back to Art's. Art was all right, and there was no sense in making trouble for a pal. Harry, now. He was a stinker. Go put the needle in Harry, two blocks away.
While Harry was drawing the beer I walked string straight to the jukebox, clicked in a quarter, and stalked back to the barstool. Turn your back, Pete, just as though you didn't know perfectly well what was going to happen. Now take a tasty sip of your beer, wait for the noise to start…. Take a deep breath, now; Pete Miller, saviour of man's sanity. I closed my eyes and pretended to be covering a yawn.
"Tubes," I whispered, "do your stuff. Blow that horn, Gabriel-go ahead and-blow!"
The jukebox moaned as far as the first eight bars; I got my quarter back from a puzzled Harry; I listened to Harry call his repairman; I finished my beer; I got outside and almost around the corner before I began laughing like a hyena; I got to bed snickering and went to sleep the same way; and I woke up with a headache.
Hammering presses the next day I treated with the contempt of long practice. One single theme kept rolling around like a pea in a washtub; just what had happened to that television set and those jukeboxes? And what had made a fairly new eight-cylinder almost disintegrate, apparently on command? Agreed, that coincidence has a mighty long arm, but hardly long enough to scratch its own elbow. Forty years old and a superman? One way to find out. Let's go at this cold sober. Let's scratch this shiny new rubber band until it snaps.
* * * * *
At three-thirty I was first in line at the timeclock, second out the gate, and fourth or fifth to line up at the National Bar. "Aspirin and ginger ale," I ordered, and got a knowing grin from the barkeep. Laugh, buddy. You may think I feel bad now, but wait and see what happens to your bangbox. I dare someone to put in a nickel; I double-dare you. That's it-pick a good number from one to twenty and go back to your stool and sit down. Take it easy, now, Pete. Don't strain, don't press, no slugging in the clinches, and break clean. The place needs a good airing, anyway, and the floor could use a new broom, too. Bubble, bubble, go for double … no more music. No more noise. Smoke, you boiler factory, smoke! Hey, somebody, pull that plug. Not that one, that one. Pull it out. Pull it out! Pull it out!
* * * * *
Finally someone did pull it out, someone chattered excitedly into the telephone, and I slid out the front door when the fire engines were wailing blocks away. Coincidence, hey. And cold sober, too. I stood on the curb and watched the firemen dash in and straggle out. Dirty trick to break up a pinochle game in weather like this. Four red-eyed crimson giants snorted and whined their blunt noses back into the clogged traffic, back to wait another call. Three buses were sentinels at the safety zone, and one of them took me home to dinner. This was on a Friday, the night for the Olsens, next door, to have their weekly sangerbund. When Helen shook me into wakefulness the party was going strong.
"Pete, will you wake up? You know perfectly well when you hear me!"
Yes, I heard her. "What time is it?"
"Never mind what time it is. You go over there and tell them you're going to call the police if they don't turn off that radio-"
I yawned. "After two o'clock."
"Almost two-thirty. You just get up and-"
I laughed out loud, as loud as you can laugh at that time of the morning. "Roll over and go back to sleep," I told her. "They'll shut it off in a minute."
I shut my sleepy lids and went through the deep breath routine. The radio stopped. Then an afterthought; this was Friday, and I wanted to sleep late on a Saturday unsullied and unwelcomed by soap operas. Another deep breath, complicated by a yawn, and I went back to sleep.
* * * * *
Over our coffee Helen pulled aside the kitchen curtain.
"I thought there was some reason I didn't wake up until ten. Look across the street," and she pointed.
In front of the Olsen's, a red panel truck, Chuck's Radio Service. Next door, in front of the Werner's, Harper Radio Parts. In the Smith's driveway, Rapid Radio Repair.
"What are you grinning at?"
"Me? I'm not grinning. Not at this time of the morning."
"Pete Miller, you were, too. Just like the cat that ate the fish."
"Canary, you mean."
"That's what I said. What's so funny?"
"Nothing," I said. "We just got a good night's sleep for a change. I like my sleep."
She harrumphed a bit, as suspicious as she usually is, and I went to the stove for more coffee. Over my shoulder I said, "Want to play a little cards tonight?"
She was skeptical about that. "At Art's, I suppose."
"Sure. Saturday night euchre tournaments."
"That noisy place? Nothing doing."
I told her the jukebox and the television set were out of commission and there'd be no noise she didn't make herself. She loved to play cards, I knew, and she liked Art. It was just the incessant roar that wore her down. I managed to talk her into it.
* * * * *
At Art's that night I listened with envy to the words that were used over the telephone when the jukebox gave up its ghost. I heard only Art's end of the conversation, of course, but I gathered that Art was being accused at the very least of sabotage. I changed the subject quick when I caught Helen trying to figure out the look I must have been wearing. Women get so they're pretty good at that after they've been married awhile. Art himself drove us home at closing time. Helen and Art's wife did all the talking, and I'm sure no one noticed I held my breath before every bar or house and Helen commented, as I fit the key into the front door, on the fact that the Olsens and the Werners and the Smiths all picked the same time to turn off their radios. "Very nice of them," she said, "considering it's Saturday night."
Now, I use two buses to get to work, transferring from the Harper bus to the Clairmount line, and it's a forty minute ride. For two days I fed my ego by holding my breath. I likely looked queer with a bursting red face, but no one said anything, at least directly to me. I wouldn't have cared much, anyway, because I didn't care much what happened; after all, wasn't I a benefactor to practically all the human race, the thinking part, that is? Wasn't it going to be nice to live in a world without punctured eardrums and hamstrung nerves? Wasn't it going to be good to be able to eat a meal in peace, to sip your ten or sixty-cent drink without having some moron with a nickel prodding your ulcer? I thought so.
Thursday, or maybe Friday, my careful searching of the daily papers found my tiny item buried back of the stock reports, with the labor news. I read it three times.
JUKEBOX WAR SUSPECTED.
–
An anonymous tip today told our labor reporter that serious trouble looms in the canned music industry. R. C. Jones, czar of Local 77, AFL, has issued orders to individually guard each machine serviced by his union. Jones had the classic "no comment" for publication, but it is an open secret that intra-union friction is high in the Harper-Gratiot area. Jones inferred that deliberate sabotage is responsible for the wholesale short-circuiting of jukeboxes and television sets. He named no names, but in an off-the-record statement threatened to fight fire with fire. "We're not," he snapped, "going to stand by and watch while goons ruin our livelihood. We will…. "
Now I was in a fix. They had to make a living. I'd forgotten that. A union man myself, who was I to break another's rice bowl? I could see no point in writing to this R. C. Jones. He'd think I was as crazy as they come. And the newspapers-I could imagine the reactions of a tough city editor. So, wrapped up in my own thoughts, I stepped off the curb a little ahead of the green, and I jumped just in time. I swore at the truck that almost got me, and it happened so quickly I wasn't prepared to hear or to see the motor of the truck throw a piston right through the rusted hood. White as a sheet the driver got out of his cab, and I crossed the street against the red light and lost myself in the crowd. This curve I was putting on the ball, it came to me then, wasn't limited to jukeboxes and noisy radios and burnt-out bearings. I had to watch my temper, or I was going to get someone in trouble. I was in trouble myself, and I had to get out of it.
By the time I got home I'd thought it over quite well. This-this power whatever it might be, was the McCoy. Why should I waste it when an honest dollar might be turned? A factory job in Detroit is just a factory job, and I might keep mine for the next forty years if I lived long enough through the noise and the dirt and the uncertainty and the model changeover layoffs every Christmas. The Olsens' radio disturbed my thinking and it took only a second. Either they were going to get tired of putting new tubes into that gadget, or play it softer, or move. I didn't care which.
So I used my wife's portable to type out a letter to Naval Ordnance in Aberdeen where my brother-in-law used to be stationed, telling them what I'd done, what I thought I might be able to do, and asking them for an opportunity to give them a demonstration. In return, I asked for a steady government job in a warm climate. Until I could arrange a certain demonstration, I went on, I could understand they might think me a crank, so I wouldn't at present sign my name. I suggested they pay close attention through the week of the fifth through the twelfth to the various press association dispatches, and I would arrange later, in my next letter, for a more personal show if they wanted to take it any further.
* * * * *
The fifth fell on a Saturday. Bright and early I was up to ride the bus downtown, changing to the Woodward line, ending up at Ferndale, all the time concentrating furiously and holding my breath as much as I dared. On the way back home I tried to work it a little differently. Probably no one else on the streetcar beside myself noticed there wasn't a single passenger car, truck or bus that passed us. Every car, as we sailed by, stalled and every traffic light we passed either turned three colors or blinked out completely. Most of the moving cars made it to the curb on their momentum. The others stayed where they were. When I got off in front of the City Hall, filthy old hulk that it is, the streetcar stayed immobile at the safety zone, it was a new PCC car, and the insulation poured smoke from under the wheels. Naturally there wasn't any moving traffic in back of it, or in front. I saw to that. Then I just strolled around Cadillac Square, bollixing up everything that occurred to me, from trucks to busses to traffic lights. You never saw such a verminous tangled mess in all your life. When the patrol wagons began to scream into the Square loaded with reinforcements for the helpless purple single cop at the Michigan intersection I let them get as far as the center of the street before I pinned them down. Even when I saw it later in the newsreels I couldn't believe it. Even Mack Sennett could have done no better.
I had to walk all the way out Gratiot to St. Antoine before I could find transportation home that wasn't walled off by screaming horns and haggard foot-patrolmen, and when I got off at my corner all Gratiot and Harper behind me was as clogged as Woodward. I even knocked out every red neon sign within two blocks of a traffic light. That one might keep a few pedestrians alive a little longer.
Helen was over at her mother's helping her hang drapes when I got home. The icebox gave me a cold Jumbo bottle and I turned on our little portable set. On every station the spot broadcast crews were hoarse. I spun the dials and finally concentrated on one announcer-you know who I mean-with the raspiest, most grating voice this side of a vixen file. Unfortunately, the housewives seem to like him, including Helen, and it's the housewives who have the radio on all day. I knew he was broadcasting from the roof studios of one of our highest buildings, and I took an enormous and perverted pleasure in holding my breath and thinking about the elevator system there. On second thought, I held my breath again and the station left the air in the middle of a word. I hope he liked the walk downstairs.
The newspapers next day couldn't make things add, as was natural. They published silly interviews with all the top engineers in the city and a good many all over the world, including the Chairman of the Board of the company where I worked, and his answer was just as asinine as the rest. All in all, it had been a good show, and I put in another letter to Naval Ordnance. I knew I had gone much further than I had intended, and I suggested they get in touch with me, if they wanted, through the personal columns of one of the Detroit newspapers. I didn't want to get into trouble with the city police. I didn't sign my name to the second letter either. And that was a mistake.
* * * * *
Early in the morning of the tenth I felt good. I'd been sleeping well lately, now that I was rid of the Olsens' radio, not to mention the Werners', and the Smiths'. I rolled over and squinted at the luminous hands of the' clock. Beer cheese in the icebox. Half a Dutch apple pie left over from dinner. Milk. Helen didn't wake as I eased out of bed and groped for my slippers, and the rustling and shuffling I heard as I tiptoed down the back stairs I attributed to an overbrave mouse. One of these days, I thought, I was going to have to get some traps and catch me a mouse. When I turned on the kitchen light the mouse was holding a howitzer nine inches away from my head.
"All right, you," the mouse snarled. "Reach!"
I reached. Quick.
The gunman backed to the outside door and flicked it open with one hand, never taking his eyes from me. Footsteps pounded on the back porch and hard faces filled the kitchen. One even had one of these gaspipe Sten guns, and I liked that even less than the howitzer. My pajama tops might have concealed an arsenal from the care I got when I was searched. No one said a word, and I didn't dare. Just about that time Helen got the sandman out of her eyes. Likely the noise had awakened her appetite, and she had come down to help me eat a snack. One of the gunmen heard her slippers clattering down the stairs, and a hard hand slapped over my mouth and a gun rammed viciously against my spine. Spun around and held as a human shield I had to helplessly watch her come yawning in the kitchen door. One look she got in at me, and the drawn guns, and her mouth opened for a scream that got no further than a muffled yip and a dead faint. They let her fall. The gunman took his hand from my mouth and swung me around.
"Shut up!" he snapped, although I hadn't tried to say anything.
At the point of his gun he held me there while the rest of the hard faced crew roamed the house, upstairs and down. None of the faces did I know, and I began to wonder if behind one of those granite masks was the revengeful personality of R. C. Jones, President of Local 77, AFL. I heard footsteps pad on the back porch, and my head tried to turn in spite of myself. The gun in my back gouged a little harder. Out of the corner of my eye I could see who pushed open the screen door I hadn't got around to taking down yet. The gun in my back helped me stand up.
* * * * *
J. Edgar Hoover motioned to the gun and the pressure eased a trifle. His voice was reasonably unexcited, but to my present taste, ominous.
"All right. Someone go get him some pants." To me, "Your name Miller? Peter Ambrose Miller? Get that woman off the floor."
Yes, I was Peter Ambrose Miller. I agreed to that. My mouth was dry as popcorn, but I managed to ask him what this was all about.
Hoover looked at me and scratched his nose. "This is about your fingerprints being all over an anonymous letter received in Aberdeen, Maryland."
I gulped. "Oh, that. Why, I can explain-"
Hoover looked at me with the fond expression of a man who has cracked open a bad egg. "That," he said, "I doubt," and he turned on his military heel and walked out the back door. When they got me my pants I followed him. I had to.
I ended up at the Federal Building, which is a cavernous morgue, even during business hours. They gave me what might have been a comfortable chair if I hadn't had to sit in it. A young fellow was sitting opposite me with a stenographer's notebook, and I knew that any story of mine had better not be repeated two different ways. Hoover came in with a nondescript man with a hat pulled down over his eyes, who inspected me from all angles and then shook his head, a little resentfully, I thought. The hat-over-the-eyes left and I shifted nervously under those grim eyes staring at me.
"All right," said Hoover; "now we'll hear that explanation. Talk!"
So I talked.
* * * * *
When I finished my throat was dry and he was nodding as though he believed every word. He didn't. I asked for a cigarette and for news of my wife, and they gave me a cigarette. They told me my wife was all right, or would be, if I behaved.
"Don't worry," I said. "I'll behave." They just laughed when I said that.
"Quite likely," said Hoover. "Now, let's hear that once more. Begin at the beginning."
They gave me a room all to myself, finally. For three days, maybe more, I had that room all for myself and the various people that walked in at all hours of the day and night to ask me some of the silliest questions you ever heard just as though they expected sensible answers. After that first night I didn't see J. Edgar Hoover at all, which is just as well, because I don't think he liked me one little bit. They brought me a suit with the lining in the sleeve ripped and a shirt with the cuffs turned. When I got those I began to worry all over again about Helen, because I knew she had no part in picking out the clothes they brought me. I didn't feel too chipper when they came after me in force again.
* * * * *
The same room, this time more crowded. Older men this time, and a few of the usual high school boys. Again we went through the same routine, and once again my voice cracked dusty dry. They were all desperately sorry for such an incurable psychopathic liar. I hadn't felt so helpless, so caught-in-a-quicksand since my days in the army.
"I'm telling you the truth, the truth. Don't you see that I've got to tell you the truth to get out of here? Don't you believe me?"
Never such disbelief outside of a courtmartial. In desperation my eyes jerked around looking for escape. They slid over, and back to, the ventilation fan purring on the wall. I sucked in a loud gasp. The blades of the fan slowed to where you could see them as individuals, and the motor housing began to smoke.
"See?" I yelled at them. "Believe me now?"
The blades came to a standstill and the black smoke oozed toward the ceiling.
"See?" I yelled again. "Look at that fan!"
Their eyes showed their astonishment. The smoke began to disappear in the stillness. "What about that? Now do you believe me?"
Maybe they did. No one said anything. They took me back to my room. About an hour or so later they came after me again. The chair felt no more comfortable than it ever had, though it was beginning to shape itself to my seat. The same faces were there, but the air was a little different this time. On the desk, where I had seen sit no one but J. Edgar Hoover were a half dozen fans, plugged to an extension cord that snaked away and lost itself in a dark corner. My ears twitched hopefully. Maybe this was going to get me out of here. One of the younger men spoke up.
"Mr. Miller," he said briskly, "can you stop these fans as you did, apparently, the other?"
I started to tell him that "apparently" wasn't the right word. One of the older men broke in.
"One moment," he said. "Can you stop any one of these fans, or all of them? Any particular one, and leave the rest alone?"
I thought I could. "Which one?" There were five fans whirring silently away.
"Well … the one in the center."
* * * * *
The one in the center. One out of five. Hold your breath, Peter Ambrose, hold it now or you can hold your breath the rest of your natural life and no one will ever know, nor ever care. The fan in the center began to smoke and the blades choked off abruptly.
I said, "The one on the far left … the one next to it … the far right … and four makes five." I watched the last blade make its last swing. "Has anybody got a cigarette?"
I got a full package. While I tore off the cellophane someone held a light. I filled my lungs so full they creaked and sat back defiantly.
"So now what?"
No one knew just what. Two men slipped out and the others drew together their chairs for a whispered conference full of dark looks in my direction. I sat quietly and smoked until even that got on my nerves. Finally I broke it up with a yell.
"Can't you fatheads make up your minds? Don't you know what you want? Do you think I'm going to sit here all night?"
That was a stupid question; I knew I was going to sit there until they told me to get up. But at the time I wanted to say it, and I did, and I said a few other things that were neither polite nor sensible. I was a little upset, I think. It didn't matter. They paid no attention to me, so I lit another cigarette and waited. The outer door opened and one of the two that had left came back in. He came directly to me, waving the others out as he came. They filed out and he stood in front of me.
* * * * *
"Mr. Miller. This is rather an awkward situation for all of us, particularly for you, obviously. I want to say this, Mr. Miller; I-that is, we here in the Bureau are extremely sorry for the turn of events that brought both of us here. We-"
At the first decent word I'd heard in days I blew up. "Sorry? What's being sorry going to do for me? What's being sorry going to do for my wife? Where is she? What's happened to her? Where is she, and what are you doing to her? And when am I going to get out of here?"
He was a polite old man, come to think about it. He let me blow off all the steam I'd been saving, let me rant and rage, and clucked and nodded in just the right places. At last I ran down, and he moved a chair to where he could be confidential. He started like this:
"Mr. Miller, I, speaking personally, know exactly how you must feel. Close custody is as unpleasant for the jailor as it is for the jailee, if there is such a word, sir."
* * * * *
I snorted at that one. A jail is a jail, and the turnkey can walk out if he chooses.
"You must remember that you are and have been dealing with an official agency of the Government of the United States of America, of which you are a citizen; an agency that, officially or otherwise, can never be too careful of any factor that affects, however remotely, the security or safety of that Government. You understand that quite well, don't you, Mr. Miller?" He didn't wait to find out if I did. "For that reason, and for no other, you were brought here with the utmost speed and secrecy, and kept here."
"Oh, sure," I said. "I'm going to blow up a tax collector, or something like that."
He nodded. "You might."
"Blah. So you made a mistake. So you're sorry, so my wife is probably completely out of her head by now, I'm crazy myself, and you want to talk politics. All I want to know is this-when do I get out of here?"
He looked at me with an odd, queer smile. "This, Mr. Miller, is where the shock lies. I think, diametrically opposite to the opinions and, I might add, to the direct pleadings of some of my colleagues involved in this rather inexplicable affair, that you are the adaptable Teutonic type that likes to know exactly the odds against him, the type of man who likes to know where and when he stands."
"I know exactly where I stand," I told him. "I want to know just one thing; when do I get out of this rat trap?"
He mulled that over, his forehead wrinkled as he searched for the right words. "I'm afraid, Mr. Miller, very much afraid that you're going to get out of here very soon. But never out of any place else." And with that he walked out the door before I could lift a finger to stop him.
But when they came after me to put me away I wasn't stunned. It took four of them, and one more that came in as reinforcement. They weren't rough deliberately, but they weren't easy. They had a time, too. I think I've been around long enough to know a few dirty tricks. I used them all, but I still went back to my room, or cell. I got no sleep at all for the rest of the night, nor most of the next night. I wondered if I could ever sleep again. If someone had mentioned "Helen" to me I likely would cry like a baby. I couldn't get her out of my mind.
When they came after me again they were all prepared for another argument. I didn't care, this time. Meekly I went along, back to that same conference room. Four men; the old man who had given me the spurs before, one of the high school boys, and a couple of uniforms. The old man stood up very formally to greet me.
"Good morning, Mr. Miller."
I snarled at him. "Good for what?"
One of the uniforms was indignant. "Here, here, my man!"
I let him have it, too. "In your hat, fatty. My discharge went on the books in forty-five!" He was shocked stiff, but he shut up.
The old man kept his face straight. "Won't you sit down, Mr. Miller?" I sat. I still didn't like the chair. "This is General Hayes, and this is General Van Dorf." They nodded stiffly, and I ignored them. He didn't introduce the young man, not that I cared.
"Mr. Miller, we'd like to talk to you. Talk seriously."
"Afraid that I'll get mad and fly out the window?"
"I said seriously. It won't take long. Let's compress it into one short sentence without the preliminaries: give these gentlemen a demonstration like the last one."
I told him what he could do with his demonstration, and I told him what he could do with his generals. The high school boy grinned when I said that. He must have been old enough to have served in the army.
The generals were crimson. You don't get that kind of talk where they worked. But the old man was unperturbed. "Let's make that one sentence a paragraph. Give these gentlemen a demonstration as effective as the last-and ten minutes after, if you like, you can walk out of here free as the air."
I jumped at that. "Is that straight? If I do it again you'll let me loose?"
He nodded. "If you really want to."
I persisted. "Straight, now? On your word of honor?"
He wasn't lying. "If you want my word you have it."
I grinned all over like a dog. "Bring on your fans, or whatever you have cooked up."
The young man went out and came right back in with a little cartload of electric fans. Either they had too many for general use, or someone had very little imagination. Come summer, with Detroit ninety in the shade, they were going to miss their ventilation. Me, I was going to be a long way from the Federal Building. He set the fans on the desk, and the generals craned stork-like to see what was going on. The old man bowed to them.
"Name one, gentlemen. Any one you like." They named the middle one again.
* * * * *
I called my shots again, as free and easy as though I'd been doing it for years. "The middle one first, you say? No sooner said than done, gentlemen. Right? Right! Now the far left, and right down the line. Eeney, meeny, and out goes me." They were all dead, and I stood up and asked the room, "Which is the express elevator to the main floor?"
The old man held up his hand. "One moment, Mr. Miller." He read my mind, which, at that second, wasn't hard to do. "Oh, no. You're free to go any time you so desire. But I would like to make this demonstration a little more convincing."
He meant it. I could go if I liked.
"You also, Mr. Miller, as I understand it, exhibit somewhat the same degree of control over internal combustion engines." And well he knew I did. That traffic tieup I'd engineered had traveled via newsreels all over the world. "Will you gentlemen step over to the window?" This was to me and the generals.
We all crowded over. I looked down and saw we were on the ninth floor, maybe the eighth or tenth. It's hard to judge distance when you're looking straight down.
"Mr. Miller-"
"Yeh?"
"If one of these officers will pick out a car or a truck down on the street below can you stop it? Stop it dead in its tracks?"
"Sure. Why not?"
"All right, then. General Hayes, we'll let you do the honors. Will you select from all those cars down there any particular item?"
I broke in. "Or any streetcar." I was feeling cocky.
"Or any streetcar. I would suggest, General, that you choose a target for its visibility. One that you cannot mistake."
The uniforms were suspicious, as they conferred with their noses flat against the glass. They beckoned to me and pointed.
"That one there."
"Which one where?" They had to be more explicit than that.
"The big truck. The one with the green top and the pipe sticking out."
I spotted it. It slowed for a red light, and came to a complete stop. I concentrated. Blow, Gabriel.
* * * * *
The crosstraffic halted, and the truck again got under way. Then suddenly, as it must have been, although from where we were it seemed like a leisurely stroll, it veered through the other traffic lane and smoke burst from its hood. We could see the driver pop from his seat and race to the corner fire alarm box. Almost instantly traffic both ways was four deep. I turned away from the window. I don't like heights, anyway.
"Now can I go?" Walk, not run to the nearest exit.
The old man spoke directly to the uniforms, "Well, gentlemen, are you satisfied?"
They were satisfied, all right. They were stunned. They were probably visualizing a stalled tank retriever, a stalled 6x6.
"Thank you, Mr. Miller. Thank you very much." My grin was wide, as I started for the door.
"But I think that it is only fair, before you go, for me to tell you one thing."
With my hand on the knob, I laughed at him. "You mean that there isn't any Santa Claus?"
The corners of his mouth went up. "Not for you, I'm afraid. Are you insured?"
"Me? Insured? You mean the extra thirty cents I give the newsboy every week?"
"That's it. Insured. Life insurance."
I shrugged. "Sure. A couple of thousand as long as I take the papers."
"Suppose your subscription expires, or is cancelled, for certain reasons that should be obvious?" The generals stopped fidgeting and looked curiously at the old man.
I couldn't figure out what he meant, and said so.
"You can-well, let's say that you can 'interfere' with electrical or mechanical devices, can't you?"
Sure I could. At least, all the ones I'd ever tried.
"So, with that established, you would be in a military sense the theoretically perfect defense."
I hadn't thought about it that way. But if it ever came down to it I should be able to knock down an airplane, gum up the works on a fusing detonator, maybe even-. No, I didn't like that idea. Not me. Not at all.
The old man's voice was hard and soft at the same time. "So you're the irresistible force, or maybe the immovable object. And if you walk out of this office right now-and you can, Mr. Miller, that was our agreement-knowing what you know and being able to do what you have been doing…. Now, just how long do you think it would take the intelligence of a dozen different nations to catch up with you? And how long after that would you stay 'free,' as you put it? Or how long would you stay alive? There are all types of ways and means, you know." You bet I knew that.
My hair tried to stand on end. "Why, you'd be just cutting your own throat! You'd have to keep an eye on me. You can't back out on me now!"
He was sympathetic. "That's just what we're trying to do. We're trying to protect you and all you want to do is go home."
I sat down in the old chair. "So that's why you said I could go any time I wanted to." The old man said nothing. I ran my hands through my hair and tried to find the right words. "Now what?"
* * * * *
One of the generals started a preparatory cough, but the old man beat him to it. "I have a suggestion, Mr. Miller. You likely will not approve. Or, then again, you might."
"Yeah?"
"You know by now that this room, or its rough equivalent, is where you can be safe. This place, or one as well guarded."
"Yeah. And then what?"
He tried to make it as easy as he could. "Voluntarily-remember that word, and what it means-voluntarily put yourself in our charge. Put yourself under our care and our protection-"
"And your orders!"
General Van Dorf couldn't hold in his snort. "Good Heavens, man, where's your patriotism? Where's your-"
He got the worst of that exchange, and he didn't like it. "Where's your brains, man? Whatever patriotism I have left is pretty well worn after thirty-two months overseas. I'm sick of the Army and Navy; I'm sick of hurrying up to stand in line; I'm sick of being told what to do, and being told how and where to do it; I'm sick of being bossed. As far as I'm concerned there's only one person in this world who can tell me to do anything-and what's happened to my wife, anyway? Where is she? And where does she think I am right now?" The old man hesitated. "She doesn't know where you are. She's in the woman's division, downstairs. She's been well-treated, of course-"
"Sure. Well-treated." That was when I got really mad. "Sure. Jerk her out of bed in the middle of the night and throw her in jail and give her enough to eat and a place to sleep and that's supposed to be good treatment!"
The generals left without excusing themselves. Evidently they knew what was coming and wanted no part of it. The old Army game of signing your name and letting the sergeant hear the howls. I think that was the only thing that kept me there, as furious as I was, to hear what the old man had to say. He had been handed the dirty end of the stick, and he had to get rid of it the best way he could. When they were gone he circled a bit and then got the range.
* * * * *
Boiled down, it was like this. "As of right now, you no longer exist. There is no more Peter Ambrose Miller, and maybe there never was. This I would suggest; your wife, being human, could keep quiet no longer than any other woman-or man. As far as she is concerned you're no longer alive. You were killed while escaping arrest."
The sheer brutality, the plain cruelty of that, almost drove me insane right there on the spot. I don't know what kept my hands off him. Now, of course, I realize that he was doing that deliberately to focus my hate on him, to present the bad side of it, to show me what could be done if I didn't cooperate. But I didn't know that then.
–
"So if I've got the name I'll have the game! Does it make any difference if I get shot in report or in fact? How would your wife like to know that you'd been shot down like a criminal? What would Helen say to her friends and my friends and her relatives and all the people we know?"
That was just the reaction he'd been waiting for. "I mentioned that only as a suggestion. That could be easily arranged another way. Let's say, for example, that you've been working for the Government ever since your legal discharge, in an undercover assignment, and you died in line of duty. It should be quite easy to see that your widow was awarded some sort of posthumous decoration. Would that help?"
I never thought that I would ever sit quietly and listen to someone calmly plot the complete obliteration of my whole life, my whole being. It was like one of these European novels when one sane man tries to live and find another sane person in a world of madness. A posthumous decoration. A medal for one that is dead and rotting. A nightmare with no waking up.
"And perhaps-oh, certainly! — a pension. You can rest assured your wife will never want. You see, Mr. Miller, we want to test you, and your … ability. Perhaps this unbelievable control you have can be duplicated, or understood. That we want to find out. We want to turn inside out all the enormous potential you have. In short we want-we must-have you in strictest custody and under rigid observation. If you like, I can see that you have a military or naval commission of rank commensurate with your importance. And don't think, Mr. Miller, that you're any less important than I've stated. Right now, from this side of the fence, it looks to me that you're the most important thing this side of the invention of the wheel."
I didn't want a commission. I wanted to lead a normal life, and I wanted my wife.
* * * * *
"The Marines, perhaps? Or the Air Corps?"
It wasn't just the Army, or the Navy; it was the system. If I had to be a Sad Sack I'd be a civilian.
"As you like. Agreed?"
I looked at him. "Agreed? What do you want me to say? Agreed. That's a good word for you to use to me."
"You can rest assured-" He saw what must have been on my face, and stopped short. For a long minute we sat there, he thinking his thoughts, and me thinking mine. Mine weren't pleasant. Then he got up and came over to me. "Sorry. This is a pretty big meal to digest all at once. I know how you must feel."
I stared up at him. "Do you?"
Then he turned and left. Later, I don't know when, the young fellow came back alone and took me to my cell. I must have finally gotten to sleep.
The young fellow, who turned out to be a fairly good citizen named Stein, came after me the next day. He wanted me to pack. Pack? All the clothes I had were on my back.
"Toothbrush, things like that. Tell me what you want in the line of clothes and you'll get them. Or anything else, within reason."
"Anything? Anything at all?"
"Well, I said anything reasonable." We didn't have to go any further into that. He knew what I meant.
When it was dark they took us away, Stein and myself. In the back of a mail truck, cramped and silent we rode for what seemed hours. Long before we rattled to a halt I could hear the familiar roars of motors being warmed. The tailgates swung open and a twenty-foot walk put us into a military ship. That meant Selfridge Field. Stein and I sat in the old painful bucket seats, the twin motors blasted and we trundled down the paved strip, a takeoff to nowhere. So long, Miller; so long to your wife and your home and your life. So long, Miller; you're dead and you're gone, and your wife will get a medal.
* * * * *
When I awoke, the cabin was stuffy, and the sun was brassy and hot and high. Stein, already awake, came up with a thermos of coffee and a snack. A peep from the ports didn't tell me where I was, not that it mattered. Somewhere in the west or southwest, on a sandy waste on the far end of a landing strip away from a cluttered group of shacks, we walked long enough to get out the kinks. Then a hurried sandwich from a picnic basket left in the cabin by an invisible steward, and we transferred to a gray amphibian. The next time I had interest enough to look out and down we were over water, and toward the rim of the world we floated for hours. I dozed off again.
Stein woke me up. Wordlessly he passed me a heavy helmet, and the kind of goggles that present a mirrored blankness to the outside world. All this time I had seen none of the crews, even when we had landed. The two of us had strolled alone in a tiny world of our own. When the pilot cut his engines for the landing I had the old style helmet on my head. It was far too big, and hurt my ears. The galloping splash we made puddled the ports high, and we bobbed awkwardly until Stein got his signal from the pilot, who popped out an impersonal arm. From the wing-struts we transferred to a Navy dory, manned by enlisted men commanded by a blank-faced ensign in dungarees. We were both wearing the concealing helmets in the stifling heat, and the ensign's "Eyes Front," did no more than keep the sailors from sneaking curious looks from the corners of their eyes.
* * * * *
The small boat put us alongside what looked like more of a workship than a fighter. It might have been an oiler or a repair-ship, or it might not have even been Navy. But it was Navy clean, and the crew was Navy. Some gold braid, way out of proportion to the size of the ship, met us at the top of the ladder, saluted, God knows why, and led Stein and I to a cabin. Not too big, not too small. I heard the amphibian rev up and take off again, and the deck tilted a trifle beneath us as we gathered way. A yank, and the suffocating helmet was off and I turned to Stein.
"Navy ship?"
He hesitated, then nodded.
"Navy ship."
"No beer, then."
I drew a big grin this time. He was human, all right. "No beer."
Like an oven it was in that cabin. In a shower stall big enough for a midget I splashed away until I got a mouthful of water. Salt. I paddled out of there in a hurry and spent the next two hours trying to get interested in a year-old House and Home. Hours? I spent three solid days looking at that same issue, and others like it. All the sailors on the ship must have had hydroponics or its equivalent on the brain. In between times it cost me thirteen dollars I didn't have to play gin with Stein. Then-
* * * * *
I never did find out his real name. Neither his name, nor his job, nor what his job had to do with me, but he must have been important, from the salutes and attention he got. Maybe he'd just gotten there, maybe he'd been there all the time. He told me, when I bluntly asked him his name and what he did, that his name was Smith, and I still think of him as Smith. When he tapped on the door and stepped into that airless cabin I could smell the fans and the generals and the Federal Building all over again.
"Hello, Mr. Miller," he smiled. "Nice trip?"
"Swell trip," I told him. "Join the Navy and see the world through a piece of plywood nailed over a porthole."
When he sat down on the edge of the chair he was fussy about the crease in his pants. "Mr. Miller, whenever you are above decks, day or night, you will please keep your face concealed with that helmet, or its equivalent, no matter how uncomfortable the weather. Please."
"Since when have I been above decks? Since when have I been out of this two-by-four shack?"
"The shack," he said, "could be smaller, and the weather could be hotter. We'll see that while you're aboard you'll have the freedom of the deck after sunset. And you won't if things go right, be aboard much longer."
My ears went up at that. "No?"
"On the deck, upstairs"-he Was no Navy man, or maybe that was the impression he wanted to give-"are racks of rockets of various sizes. You might have noticed them when you came aboard. No? Well, they have been armed; some with electrical proximity fuses, some with mechanical timing devices, and some have both. They will be sent singly, or in pairs, or in salvos, at a target some little distance away. Your job will be the obvious one. Do you think you can do it?"
"Suppose I don't?"
He stood up. "Then that's what we want to know. Ready?"
I stretched. "As ready as I'll ever be. Let's go and take the air."
"Forget something?" He pointed at the helmet, hanging back of the door.
I didn't like it, but I put it on, and he took me up, up to the rocket racks on the prow. Even through the dark lenses the sun was oddly bright. Smith pointed off to port, where a battered old hull without even a deckhouse or a mast hobbled painfully in the trough of the sea.
"Target."
He jerked a thumb at the racks.
"Rockets."
I knew what they were. I'd seen enough of them sail over my head.
"Ready?"
* * * * *
Yes, I was ready. He made a careless flick of his hand and an order was barked behind me. A clatter and a swoosh, and a cylinder arced gracefully, catching me almost by surprise. I felt that familiar tightening behind my eyes, that familiar tensing and hunching of my shoulders. The propellant was taking the rocket almost out of sight when the fuse fired it. "Wham!"
Caught that one in midair. Try another. Another "whoosh," and another "wham."
* * * * *
Then they tried it in pairs. Both of the flying darning-needles blew together, in an eccentric sweep of flame. Four, maybe five or six pairs I knocked down short of the target, some so close to us that I imagined I could feel the concussion. They switched to salvos of a dozen at a time and they blew almost in unison. They emptied the racks that way, and I was grimly amused at the queer expression of the officer in charge as the enlisted men refilled the maws of the gaping racks. Smith, the old man, nudged me a little harder than necessary.
"All racks, salvo."
All at once. I tried for a cool breath in that sweaty helmet. "Ready!"
–
I couldn't pick out any individual sounds. The racks vomited lightning and thunder far too fast for that. The rumble and roar bored itself into a remote corner of my brain while I watched that barnacled hulk and concentrated. I couldn't attempt to think of each rocket, or each shot, individually, so I was forced to try to erect a mental wall and say to myself, "Nothing gets past that line there."
And nothing did. Just like slamming into a stone wall, every rocket blew up its thrumming roar far short of the target. The racks finally pumped themselves dry, and through the smoke Smith grasped my arm tighter than I liked. I couldn't hear what he was saying, deafened as we all were by the blasts. He steered me back to the cabin and I flipped off drops of sweat with the helmet. I turned unexpectedly and caught the old man staring at me.
"Now what's the matter with you?"
* * * * *
He shook his head and sat down heavily. "You know, Miller, or Pete, if you don't mind, I still don't actually believe what I've just seen."
I borrowed a light from the ubiquitous Stein. His expression told me he'd seen the matinee.
"I don't believe it either, and I'm the one that put on the show." I blew smoke in the air and gave back the lighter. "But that's neither here nor there. When do I get out of this Black Hole of Calcutta?"
"Well…." Smith was undecided. "Where would you like to spend some time when we're through with all this?"
That I hadn't expected. "You mean I have a choice?"
Noncommittally, "Up to a point. How about some island somewhere? Or in the States? Cold or warm? How, for instance, would you feel about Guam or-"
"Watched by the whole Mounted Police?" He nodded.
I didn't care. "Just someplace where no one will bother me; some place where I can play some records of the Boston Pops or Victor Herbert;" (and I guess the nervous strain of all that mental effort in all the noise and smoke was fighting a delaying action) "someplace where I can get all the beer I want, because it looks like I'm going to need plenty. Someplace where I can sit around and take things easy and have someone to-" I cut it short.
He was one of the understanding Smiths, at that. "Yes," he nodded, "we can probably arrange that, too. It may not be…." What else could he say, or what other way was there to say it?
"One more thing," he went on; "one more … demonstration. This will take some little time to prepare." That, to me, meant one thing, and I liked it not at all. He beat me to the punch.
* * * * *
"This should be what is called the pay-off, the final edition. Come through on this one, and you'll be better off than the gold in Fort Knox. Anything you want, anything that money or goodwill can buy, anything within the resources of a great-and, I assure you, a grateful-nation. Everything-"
"— everything," I finished for him, "except the right to go down to the corner store for a magazine. Everything except what better than me have called the pursuit of happiness."
* * * * *
He knew that was true. "But which is more important; your happiness, or the freedom and happiness of a hundred and seventy millions? Peter, if things political don't change, perhaps the freedom and happiness of over two billion, which, I believe, is the population of this backward planet."
"Yeah." The cigarette was dry, and I stubbed it in an ashtray. "And all this hangs on one person-me. That's your story." My mouth was dry, too.
His smile, I'm afraid, was more than just a little forced. "That's my story, and we're all stuck with it; you, me, all of us. No, you stay here, Stein. Let's see if we can get this over once and for all." Lines came and went on his forehead, as he felt for words.
"Let's try it this way: for the first time in written history as we know it one single deadly new weapon can change the course of the world, perhaps even change the physical course of that world, and the people who in the future will live in it. Speaking personally, as a man and as a reasonable facsimile of a technician, I find it extremely hard, almost impossible, to believe that at the exact psychic moment an apparent complete nullification of that weapon has appeared."
I grunted. "Maybe."
"Maybe. That's what we want to find out. Could you, Peter, if you were in my place, or you in your own place, get a good night's sleep tonight or any other night knowing that problem might have an answer without doing anything about it? Or are you one of these people who believe that there is no problem, that all things will solve themselves? Do you believe that, Stein? Do you think that Peter Ambrose Miller thinks that way?"
No, Stein didn't think that way, and Miller didn't think that way. We all knew that.
"All right," and he rubbed the back of his neck with a tired hand. "We have that weapon now. We, meaning the United States, and the whole wide world, from Andorra to Zanzibar. Now means today, in my lexicon. Tomorrow, and I mean tomorrow, or tomorrow of next year or the year after that, who will be the one to use that weapon? Do you know, Peter? Do you know?"
There was no need for an answer to that.
"And neither does anyone else. Peter, you're insurance. You're the cheapest and best insurance I know of. If! There's that big if. I hate that word. I always have, and I'm going to eliminate 'if,' as far as Peter Ambrose Miller is concerned. Right?"
Of course he was right. Hiroshima could just as well have been Memphis or Moscow or Middletown. And I always had wanted to be rich enough to carry my own insurance….
Before Smith left he told me it might be a month or two before he would see me again.
"These things aren't arranged overnight, you know."
I knew that.
I would be landed, he said, somewhere, someplace, and I'd be my own boss, up to a point. Stein would be with me, and the secrecy routine would still be in effect…. His voice trailed off, and I neither saw nor heard him leave.
* * * * *
Three miserable weeks I spent somewhere in some stinking Southern Pacific mudhole. Cocker spaniel Stein was never out of reach, or sight, and gave me the little attention I wanted. From a distance I occasionally saw Army and Navy. The enlisted men were the ones who brought me not everything I asked for, but enough to get along. Later on, I knew, I'd get the moon on ice if I were actually as valuable as appeared. At that time no one was sure, including some brass who came poking around when they thought I might be asleep. They stayed far away from me, evidently under strict orders to do just that, although they took Stein aside several times and barked importantly at him. I don't think they made much impression on Stein. I was aching for an argument at that stage, and it's just as well they dodged contact. When Smith showed up, with the usual officious body-guard, I was itching to go.
Bikini I'd seen in the newsreels, and this wasn't it. The back forty would have dwarfed it. Just a limp palm or two and an occasional skinny lump of herbiage. Ships of all naval types and a civilian freighter or so spotted themselves at anchor like jagged rocks around the compass. The gray cruiser we were on never once dropped its hook; it paced nervously back and forth, up and down, and I followed, pacing the deck. With Stein at my heels, I saw daylight only through the ports. Only at night did I get to where I could smell the salt breeze free of the stink of paint and Diesel oil. From what I know about ships and their complements we must have had at least the captain's cabin, or pretty close to its mate. We never saw the captain, or at least he was never around when I was. The buzzing mass of brass and high civilians I knew were there, the old man told me, were and berthed on the big flattop carrier that idled off to port. Only Smith dropped in occasionally to rasp my frayed nerves deeper. With all the activity seething around us, and with only Stein and myself to keep each other company, we were getting cabin fever. I told that to Smith, who soothed me with promises.
"Tomorrow's the day."
"It better be. How are we going to work this, anyway?" I was curious, and I thought I had a right to be. "From what I hear, you better have your holes already dug."
"Too true," he agreed. "The bomb itself will be released from a drone plane, radio-controlled. We will, of course, be far enough from this island and the target installations you might have noticed going up to be out of range of radiations-"
"You hope!"
–
"— we hope. Your job will be to keep the bomb from detonating, or if that cannot be done, to fire it harmlessly, or as much so as possible. That's what we want to know. Clear?" Of course it was clear. That's what I wanted to know, too.
* * * * *
The sun came up out of the sea as quickly as it always does, and although the cruiser deck was almost bare far off we could see the carrier deck swarming with tiny ants. The odd-angled posts and gadgets we could see sticking up must have belonged to the technical boys, and they must have had plenty of it, if we could see it at that distance. Overhead they must have had at least eight planes of all types, from B-36's to helicopters to Piper Cubs, all dipping and floating and racing madly from one air bubble to another. Smith took time to tell me that, regardless whether the Bomb was fired by Miller or Iron Mike the explosion data would be immensely valuable.
"These things cost money," he said, "and this is killing two birds with one stone." I didn't want to be a bird, and my smile was sickly strained. Smith went off with a wry grin.
The helmet itched the back of my neck and the glasses dug into the bridge of my nose. From the open space I had to work in they must have thought I was a ferry-boat, until it dawned on me that all those armed Marines with their backs turned weren't there just for ornament. Peter Valuable Miller. Very, very, queer, I thought, that all those technicians swarming on the carrier deck could be trusted enough to build and fire a Bomb and yet couldn't be allowed to know that there might be a possible defense to that Bomb. I watched Stein scratch his back against a projecting steel rib as the Smith strolled absently out of nowhere. Stein straightened sheepishly, and the old man smiled.
"Ready?"
Why not? I gave him the same answer as before. "Ready as I ever will be."
He handed me a pair of glasses, 7 x 50. "The drone ship took off ten minutes ago. Look due north-no, north is that way-and whenever it comes into whatever you consider your range-"
"Bingo!"
"Bingo!" He liked that. "When you fire it-"
–
"You mean, if I fire it."
"If you fire it, just before, you slide the filters over the ends of your binoculars like so. Or better still, turn your back."
Turn my back? I wanted to see what was going to happen.
"All right, but make sure you get those filters down in time." He cocked an ear as someone shouted something that was carried away in the freshening breeze. "Must have picked it up with radar. Let's see if we can find it," and together we set to sweeping the northern horizon.
Radar must have been sharp that day, because the drone, a battered B-24, was right on top of us before we picked it up, a mote in the sun's brazen eye. A flurry of orders relayed to the control ship sent it soaring back into the distance, a mile or so high. Just at the limit of visibility I used the corner of my mouth to Smith.
"Hold your breath and help me out." Maybe he did, at that. "Motors. I'll try to get the motors first."
* * * * *
The slapping of the salty waves against the cruiser's armored hull seemed to pause in midstride. Nothing happened-nothing, until the waves, with a frustrated sigh, gave in and began again their toppling roll and hiss. Then slowly, ever so slowly, so faintly that it was only a speck in the sky, the distant dot tilted and hung suspended on a wingtip, hung, hung, hung…. A jerk, and a warped spiral. My ears rang, and the falling leaf, now swooping and sailing in agonized humpbacked scallops, seemed to double and triple in my tear-swimming eyes. Then I tried-
There was no sound. There was no booming roar, no thunder. But I forgot to yank down those dark filters over the ends of the Zeiss. They had told me that it would be like looking at the sun. Well, the sun won't throw you flat on your back, or maybe I fell. Not quite flat; Smith threw a block as I reeled, and held me upright. I tried to tell him that I was all right, that it was just the sudden glare that paralyzed me, and to get his arms off my neck before I strangled. No attention did I get from him at all in that respect, but plenty of other unneeded help. Wriggle and swear as I might, with that helmet scoring a raw groove in my neck, I was toted below and dropped on my bunk with, I suppose, what whoever carried me would call gentleness.
The anxious officer in front of me, when the action was over, had the physician's harried look. He liked my language not one little bit, and only Smith's authority kept him from calling corpsmen to muzzle me while he examined my eyes. When my sore eyes had accustomed themselves to the dim light in the cabin, Smith led the officer to the door of the hatch or whatever they call it, explaining that the recalcitrant patient would doubtless be later in a more receptive mood.
"If you think so," I yelled at his indignant ramrod back, "you must try sticking in your head and see what happens." I don't like anyone to poke anything in my eyes anytime.
Smith shut the door quickly. "Must you bellow like that? He was trying to help you."
I knew that, but I was mad. "I don't want any help. I could have made it down here under my own power, and you know it."
Smith sat down. "These your cigarettes? Thanks." He lit his own and puffed furiously. "I don't think you can reasonably expect to be let alone, Peter. After all, you're a very valuable-"
"— piece of property. Sure. In the meantime I don't want anyone fooling around me."
He smoked in silence, thinking. That meant trouble.
"Well?"
"Well, what?"
He reached for the ashtray. "Ready to talk now?"
"Sure," I said. "Talk or listen?"
"A little of both."
I talk too much. It would do me no harm to listen. "Shoot."
"This, then, Peter, is the situation; you, without a doubt, are the most remarkable person in the whole wide world. Almost an institution in yourself."
I grinned. "Like the Maine farmer; a character."
"Right. As far as I, and anyone else that has had any contact with you at all, can tell or even guess, you are absolutely and perfectly unique."
"You said that before."
"So I did. You know-" and he held my eye steadily-"you're so completely unique, and so-dangerous, that more than once I have been personally tempted to arrange your-elimination. From behind."
I couldn't put up more than a weak grin for that. I had wondered about that, myself. A variation, a deadly one, of the old "if you can't lick 'em, join 'em" theme. And I hadn't been too cooperative.
He went on, slowly. "My personal reactions, for obvious reasons, do not enter into this. But I think, Peter, that you should consider those words very seriously before you are tempted to do or say anything rash."
* * * * *
I agreed that he was probably right, and that it might be better if I piped a quiet tune. "But that's not the way I operate. As far as I'm concerned, I'm responsible to myself, and myself alone. If I wanted to be told what to say and what to think, and when to say it, I would have stayed in when I got my discharge."
He shrugged. "It might be better for all concerned if you were under military discipline, although it might not suit your ego. Take, for example, the two generals you met in Detroit; Generals Hayes and Van Dorf. They both are regarded as brilliant; they are both regarded as too mentally precocious to be risked in physical action. They are two of the most agile minds on the staff."
I took his word for it. "They are still generals to me. And I don't have to stand at attention, and I don't have to take their orders."
"Exactly," and he reached for the cigarettes again. "It is not going to do any good by adding more fuel to your mental furnace, but it is only fair to tell you that the … elimination thing was more or less seriously discussed before you left Detroit."
He didn't give me a chance to blow up, but raced on. "General Hayes and General Van Dorf are sensible men, dealing in material and sensible things. You are neither practical or sensible, in many ways, this being one. They, as well equipped as they are, are not prepared to cope with such a problem presented with such as you. I might add here, that neither is anyone else. What are you laughing at?"
I couldn't help it. "The military mind at its best. First cross up the world by getting a weapon with no defense. Then when someone comes up with a defense for any weapon, including the weapon with no defense, they start turning back flips."
"Take that idiotic grin off your face." Just the same, he thought it was rather comic, himself. "Neither of us are in the Armed Forces, so for the present we can talk and plan freely. If you think, Peter, that all this can be solved with prejudice and a smart remark, you're very, very wrong. The worst is yet to come."
I asked him if I'd had a bed of roses, so far. "I don't think I could be much worse off than I've been so far. How would you like to be penned up-"
"Penned up?" He snorted disgustedly. "You've had yourself a holiday, and you can't see it. Try to see the military, the legal point of view. Here is one person, Peter Ambrose Miller, one man and only one man, with the ability, the power, to cancel at one stroke every scientific advancement that armament has made in the past three thousand years."
"And the big boys don't like it," I mused.
"The little boys, as you use the word, won't like it, either," he said. "But, that's not the point. Not the point at all. The stem of the apple is this-what are we going to do with you?"
"We?" I asked him.
"We," he explained carefully, as to a baby, "is a generic term for the army, the navy, the government, the world in general. As long as you live, as long as you continue to be able to do the things you can do now, a gun or an airplane is so much scrap metal. But-only as long as you live!"
* * * * *
That I didn't like. "You mean that-"
"Exactly what I said. As long as you're alive a soldier or a sailor might as well be a Zulu; useful for the length he can throw a spear or shoot an arrow, but useless as he now stands. There is no army, apparently, right now that is worth more than its body weight-again, as long as you live."
"Do you have to harp on that?"
"Why not? Do you want to live forever, or do you expect to?"
He had me there. You bet I wanted to live forever. "Well?"
He yanked pensively at his upper lip. "Two solutions; one, announce you to the world with a clang of cymbals and a roll of drums. Two, bury you someplace. Oh, figuratively speaking," he added hastily as he saw my face.
"Solution one sounds good to me," I told him. "I could go home then."
He made it quite clear that Solution One was only theoretical; he was firm about that. "Outside of rewriting all the peace treaties in existence, do you remember how our Congress huddled over the Bomb? Can you see Congress allowing you, can you see the General Staff agreeing to share you with, for example, a United Nations Commission? Can you?"
No, I couldn't.
"So," with a regretful sigh, "Solution One leaves only Solution Two. We'll grant that you must be kept under cover."
I wondered if Stein was somewhere at the earphones of a tape recorder. For someone with as big a job as the old man likely had, it seemed that we were talking fairly freely. He went on.
"And that Solution Two has within itself another unsolved problem; who watches you, and who watches the watchers?"
That didn't matter to me, and I said so.
"I suppose not to you, but it would matter to the army, and it would matter to the navy, and when J. Edgar Hoover gets around to thinking about it, it will matter to the FBI."
"So what? Would I get a choice?"
* * * * *
He was curious for a moment. "Would you want one?"
"Maybe, maybe not. I had a uniform once. The FBI go to college and take off their hats in the house, but they're still cops, and I don't like cops. Don't look at me like that; you wouldn't like cops either, if you made less than a couple of hundred a week. Nobody does. So I'm prejudiced against everybody, and just what difference does it make?"
"Not a great deal. I was just curious." He was honest, anyway. "But you can see the possibilities, or the lack of them."
"Look," and I got up to take as many steps as the cabin would allow. "This is where we came in. We could talk all day and get no further. All I want to know is this-what's going to happen to me, and when, and where?"
He followed me with his steady eyes. "Well, at the immediate moment, I'm afraid that-" He hesitated.
"I'm afraid that, quick like a bunny, you're going to have one solid headache if we don't quit using the same words over and over again. Here I am stuck in the middle of all the water in the world, and I'm tired, and I'm disgusted, and I'm starting to get mad. You're trying to smother my head in a pillow, I've got nothing but a first-class run-around from you and everyone I've seen, who has been one man named Bob Stein. I see nothing, I know less, I get cold shoulders and hot promises."
I sailed right on, not giving him a chance to slide in one word. "Why, there must be ten thousand men and maybe some women right upstairs, and who knows how many within a few miles from here, and do I get to even pass the time of day with any of them? Do I? You bet your sweet life I don't!"
"There aren't any women within miles of here, except nurses, and maybe a reporter, and I'm not sure about that."
"Nurses and reporters are human, aren't they?"
Had he found a chink in the armor? He frowned. "Is it women you want?"
"Sure, I want women!" I flared at him. "I want a million of them! I want Esther Williams and Minnie Mouse and anyone else that looks good to me. But I don't want them on a silver platter with a gilt chain. I want them when I want them-my wife and the waitress at Art's, and the beer I used to drink would taste a lot better than the beer you said I'd get and never seen!"
* * * * *
The Smith stood up and I sat down. "Women and beer. Anything else?"
"Sure," I snapped at him. "Women and beer and traffic piled up on Gratiot and the same double feature at all the movies in town-" I got a look at him. I felt silly. "All right, take out the needle. You win."
He was a gentleman. He didn't laugh. "Win? Yes, I suppose I win." Before I could think of anything else to say, he was gone.