Short fiction complete, p.188
Short Fiction Complete, page 188
I saw why Lou didn’t want Rollo to carry the gizmo. The big guy walked straight up to a steel grate set into the pavement. It must have weighed a couple hundred pounds, at least, but he lifted it right up, rusty hinges squealin’ like mad. I saw the rungs of a metal ladder goin’ down. Lou shone a flashlight on them. They had been cleaned off.
ROLLO TOOK THE GIZMO OFF ME AND TUCKED IT UNDER ONE arm. I followed him down the ladder. Down at the bottom there were three other guys waitin’. Guys like I had never seen before. Foreigners. Dark skin, eyes like coals. One of them had a big dark droopy moustache, but his long hair was streaked with gray. They were all kind of short, my height, but very solid. Their suits looked funny, like they had been made by tailors who didn’t know the right way to cut a suit.
The two clean-shaven ones were carryin’ automatic rifles, meanlooking things with curved magazines. Their jackets bulged; extra ammunit ion clips, I figured. They looked younger than the guy with the moustache; tough, hard, all business.
“This is the device?” asked the one with the moustache. He said “thees” instead of “this.”
Lou nodded. “We’re gonna test it, make sure it works right.”
“Bueno.”
We were in a kind of—whattaya call it, an alcove?—yeah, an alcove cut into the side of the train tunnel. The kind where work crews could stay when a train comes past. This wasn’t one of the old city subways; it was the tunnel that the trains from other cities used, back when there had been trains runnin’. The Chairman was comin’ in on a train the next morning, and these guys wanted to blow it up. Or so I thought.
Rollo carried the gizmo down to the side of the tracks. For an instant I almost panicked; I realized that we needed a power pack. Then I saw that there was one already sittin’ there on the filthy bricks of the tunnel floor. I hooked it up, takin’ my time; no sense lettin’ them know how easy this all was.
“Snap it up,” Lou hissed at me. “The train’s comin’.”
“OK, OK,” I said.
The guy with the moustache knelt beside me and took a little metal box from his pocket. “This is the detonator,” he said. His voice sounded sad, almost like he was about to cry. “Your device must make its relay click at the proper moment. Do you know how to connect the two of them together?”
I nodded and took the detonator from him.
“Tomorrow, the detonator will be placed some distance from your triggering device.”
“How’ll they be connected then?” I asked.
“By a wire.”
“That’s OK, then.” I figured that if they had tried somethin’ fancy like a radio link, in this old tunnel they might get all kinds of interference or echoes. A hard-wire connection was a helluva lot surer. And safer.
It only took me a couple minutes to connect his detonator to my radar gizmo, but Lou was fidgetin’ every second of the time. I never seen him lookin’ nervous or flustered before. He was always the coolest of the cool, never a hair out of place. Now he was half jumpin’ up and down, lookin’ up the tunnel and grumblin’ that the train was comin’ and I was gonna miss it. I had to work real hard to keep a straight face. Little Lou uptight; that was somethin’ to grin about.
OK, SO I HAD EVERYTHING READY IN PLENTY TIME. THE maintenance train musta been doin’ 2 miles an hour, max, scrapin’ down the tracks and scoopin’ up most of the garbage in the tunnel as it dragged along. I turned on my gizmo. The readout numbers on the little red window started tickin’ down slowly. When they reached the number already set on the other window beside it, the relay on the detonator clicked.
“Bueno,” said the moustache, still kneeling beside me. He didn’t sound happy or nuthin. Just, “Bueno.” Flat as a pancake.
I looked over at Jade, standin’ with Rollo and the other strangers off by the tunnel wall, and I smiled at her.
“Does that means it works OK?” I asked. I knew the answer but I wanted him to say it so Little Lou could hear it. Lou was bendin’ down between the two of us.
“Yes,” he said, in that sad heavy voice of his. “It works perfectly.” He said each word carefully, like he wasn’t sure he had his English right.
I got to my feet and said to Lou, “OK. I done my part. Now Jade and me can go, right?”
“No one leaves this tunnel,” said the moustache. Still sad, but real strong, like he meant it. He had unbuttoned his suit jacket and I could see the butt of a heavy black revolver stickin’ out of a shoulder holster. [Deleted], it would’ve taken my both hands just to hold that pistol up, let alone fire it off.
“Hey, now wait a minute—” I started to say.
Lou grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around, his fist raised to smack me a good one. The moustache grabbed his upraised arm and held it in mid-air. Just held it there. He must’ve been pretty strong to do that.
“There is no need for that,” he said to Lou, low and firm. “There will be enough violence in the morning.”
Lou pulled his arm away, his face red and nasty. The moustache turned to me and almost smiled. Kind of apologetic, he said, “It is necessary for you and your lady to remain here until the operation is concluded. For security reasons. Do you understand?”
I nodded. Sure I understood. What I was startin’ to wonder about, though, was whether these guys would let us live after their “operation” was finished. I knew Lou was goin’ to want to take Jade with him. If these foreigners didn’t whack me tomorrow, probably Lou would. Then he’d have Jade all to himself for as long as he wanted her.
So we sat on the crummy tunnel floor alongside the tracks and waited. The foreigners had some sandwiches and coffee with them. Moustache offered a sandwich to Jade, real polite, and one to me. It was greasy and spiced hot enough to scorch my mouth. They all laughed at me when I grabbed for the coffee and burned my mouth even more ’cause it was so hot.
I tried to sleep but couldn’t. I saw that the two younger guys had curled up right there on the floor, sleepin’ like babies with their rifles in their arms. Lou took Jade off down the tunnel a ways, where it was dark, far enough so I couldn’t see them or even hear them. I sat and watched Rollo, hopin’ he’d nod off long enough for me to follow Lou down the tunnel and slice his throat open. But Rollo just sat a few feet away from me, his chin on his knees and his eyes on me. Big as a [deleted] elephant.
Moustache wasn’t sleepin’ either. I went over to where he was sittin’ with his back against the wall.
“Why’s the Chairman comin’ in on a train?” I asked him, hunkering down beside him. “There ain’t been a train through here since before I was born.”
Moustache gave me his sad smile. “It is a gesture. He is a man given to gestures.”
I couldn’t figure out what the hell he meant by that.
“Why do you want to whack him?” I asked.
“Whack?” He looked puzzled.
“Kill him.”
His eyes went wide, a little. “Kill him? We do not intend to assassinate the Chairman.” He shook his head. “No, it is not so simple as that.”
“Then what?”
He shook his head again. “It is none of your affair. The less you know about it the better off you will be.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Until this thing is over and Lou whacks me.”
He shrugged. “That is your problem. Not mine.”
A lot of help he was.
MY WRISTWATCH SAID 7:27 A.M. WHEN LOU CAME WALKIN’ back up the track toward us. His hair was mussed and he had his suit jacket thrown over one shoulder. He grinned at me. Jade came followin’ behind him, her face absolutely blank, starin’ straight ahead. I figured she was tryiri not to see me.
What the hell, I thought. Why don’t I kill the mother-fdeleted] [deleted] right now. Stick my blade in his nuts and twist it hard before Rollo gets a chance to move. They was gonna whack me afterward anyway. I knew it. Keepin’ one eye on Rollo, I reached down toward where I kept the blade taped to my ankle. I got nothing to lose, I said to myself. What the hell. . . .
Conclusion Next Issue
Conspiracy Theory
Maybe there is something to those headlines. . . .
“I’m not exactly, sure why,” said Roy Huggins. “When I asked for another eye checkup, they sent me here.”
“To see me,” said Professor Schmidt, chuckling a bit.
“Yessir,” Huggins replied. He was totally serious; he did not even notice the professor’s little pun.
A silence fell over. them. The athletically-slim Huggins, sandy haired and boyish looking in his sweat shirt and jeans, seemed quite honestly puzzled. Herb Schmidt, chairman of the astronomy department, was a chunky, white-bearded Santa even down to the twinkle in his baby-blue eyes. A Santa in a dark three-piece suit, sitting behind a desk covered with thick reports and scattered memos heaped high like snow drifts.
The professor eased back in his creaking old swivel chair and studied his student thoughtfully. How many times had they met in this stuffy little office? Ever since Huggins had taken his first class in astronomy, back when he’d been an undergraduate. Now the boy had turned into a man: a youthful, vigorous man with a fine intelligent mind that had been sharply honed.
Was he enough of a man to accept the truth? And to keep the secret? The next few minutes would decide.
“Why were you having your eyes checked?” the professor asked innocently.
Huggins had to clear his throat before he could answer, “I seem to be . . . well, seeing things that aren’t there.”
“Ghosts?” asked the professor, smiling to show he did not mean it. “Elvis Presley, perhaps?”
The younger man shook his head. “At the telescope,” he said in a low, unhappy voice.
“Let me see now.” Schmidt made a pretense of searching through the papers scattered across his desk. “Your time at the facility is on . . .” He let the sentence hang.
“Mars,” Huggins whispered. “I’ve been observing Mars.”
Schmidt had known that all along. He stopped leafing through the papers and leaned back in his chair again, lacing his fingers together over his ample belly.
“Mars, eh?”
“I see—” Huggins swallowed again, “—canals.”
“Canals?” the professor echoed.
“Well—markings. I—I checked with some of the maps that Lowell drew—just as a lark, you know.”
“Percival Lowell? Way back then?”
Huggins’s answer came out as a tortured moan. “They match. My drawings match Lowell’s almost perfectly. A whole network of canals, all across the face of Mars.”
“But the photos you’ve taken don’t show any canals. I’ve seen your photographic work.”
“There aren’t any canals on Mars!” Huggins blurted. “You know that! I know that! We’ve sent spacecraft probes to Mars and they proved there are no canals there! Lowell was crazy!”
“He was . . . enthusiastic. That’s a kinder word.”
Huggins nodded unhappily and chewed on a fingernail.
Schmidt heaved a big sigh. “I can see why you’re upset. But it’s not so bad. So you’ve got a problem with your eyesight. That doesn’t matter so much nowadays, what with all the electronics—”
“There’s nothing wrong with my eyes! I can see perfectly well. I had an eye test back home during the Thanksgiving break and I checked out twenty-twenty.”
“Yet you see nonexistent canals.”
Huggins’s brief flare of anger withered. “It’s not my eyes. I think maybe it’s my mind. Maybe I’m having hallucinations.”
The professor realized the game had gone far enough. No sense tormenting the poor fellow any further.
“There’s nothing wrong with your mind, my boy. Just as there is nothing wrong with your eyes.”
“But I see canals! On Mars!”
Stroking his snow-white beard, Schmidt replied, “I think it was Sherlock Holmes who pointed out that when you have eliminated all the possible answers, then the impossible answer is the correct one. Or was it Arthur Clarke?”
Huggins blinked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Did you ever stop to think that perhaps there really are canals on Mars?”
“Wha—what are you saying?”
“I am saying that Mars is crisscrossed by an elaborate system of canals built by the Solar System’s finest engineers to bring precious water to the Martian cities and farmlands.”
Half-rising from his chair, Huggins pointed an accusing finger at his professor. “You’re humoring me. You think I’m crazy and you’re humoring me.”
“Not at all, my boy. Sit down and relax. I am about to entrust you with a great and wonderful secret.”
Huggins plopped back into the chair, his eyes wide, his mouth half open, the expression on his face somewhere between despair and expectation.
“You understand that what I am about to tell you must be kept totally secret from everyone you know. Not even that young woman you intend to marry may know it.”
The young man nodded dumbly.
Schmidt leaned his heavy forearms on his littered desk top. “In 1946,” he began, “an experimental spacecraft crash-landed in the Sonoran Desert of New Mexico. Contrary to the rumors that have arisen every now and again, the crew was not killed, and their bodies have not been kept frozen in a secret facility at some air force base.”
“No . . . it can’t be . . .”
Smiling broadly, the professor said, “But it is true. We have been in contact with our Martian brethren for more than half a century now—”
“We?”
“A very small, very elite group. A few university dons such as myself. The tiniest handful of military officers. Four industrial leaders, at present. The group changes slightly as people die, of course. Three of our members are living on Mars at the present moment.”
“You’re crazy!”
“Am I?” Schmidt opened his top desk drawer and drew out a slim folder. From it he pulled a single photograph and handed it wordlessly to the goggle-eyed Huggins.
Who saw three figures standing in a dripping dank jungle. Only the one in the bush hat and moustache was human. They were standing in front of the enormous dead carcass of something that looked very much like a dinosaur. Each of them was holding a rifle of some unearthly design.
“Do you recognize that man?”
Huggins shook his head as he stared hard at the photograph. The man looked vaguely familiar.
“Howard Hughes, of course. Taken in 1957. On Venus.”
“Venus?” Huggins’s voice was a mouse’s squeak.
“Venus,” repeated the professor. “Underneath those clouds it’s a world of Mesozoic jungles, almost from pole to pole.”
“But Venus is a barren desert! Runaway greenhouse! Surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead!”
“All a bit of a subterfuge, I’m afraid,” said Schmidt. “Just as our erasure of the Martian canal network. A necessary deception.”
“What . . . why?”
Schmidt’s expression grew serious. “When the first Martians landed, back in ’46, it quickly became clear to those of us privileged to meet them that Mars was ahead of the Earth technologically—but not very far ahead. A century, perhaps. Perhaps only a few decades.”
“How can that be?”
Ignoring his question, the professor went on, “They needed our help. Their own natural resources were dwindling at an alarming rate, despite their heroic efforts of engineering. And conservation, too, I might add.”
“They came to take over the Earth?”
“Nonsense! Pulp magazine twaddle! Their ethical beliefs would not allow them to step on a beetle. They came to beg for our help.”
Huggins felt a tiny stab of guilt at his fear-filled gut reaction.
“It was obvious,” Schmidt went on, “that the Martians were in desperate straits. It was even more obvious to the tiny group who had been brought together to meet our visitors that the people of Earth were not prepared to face the fact that their planetary neighbor was the home of a high and noble civilization.”
“The emotional shock would be too much for our people?” Huggins asked.
“No,” said the professor, in a sad and heavy voice. “Just the opposite. The shock would be too much for the Martians. We humans are driven by fear and greed and lust, my boy. We would have ground the Martians into the dust, just as we did with the native Americans and the Polynesians.”
Huggins looked confused. “But you said the Martians were ahead of us.”
“Technologically, yes. But by no more than a century. And ethically they are light-years ahead of us. Most of us, that is. It is the ethical part that would have been their downfall.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Can you imagine a delicate, ethically-bound Martian standing in the way of a real-estate developer? Or a packager of tourist trips? The average human politician? Or evangelist? To say nothing of most of the military. They would have been off to nuke Mars in a flash!”
“Oh.”
“The fragile Martian civilization would have been pulverized. No, we had to keep their existence a secret. It was the only decent thing to do. We had to cover up the truth, even to the point of faking data from space probes and astronomical observatories.”
“All this time . . .”
“We’ve had some close calls. The National Inquirer and those other scandal sheets keep snooping around. Every time a Martian tried to make contact with an ‘ordinary’ human being, as their ethical code insisted they should, the affair was totally misunderstood. Sensationalized by the tabloids and all that.”
“What ordinary human beings?” Huggins asked.
“You see, the Martians are not elitists. Far from it! From time to time they have tried to establish contact with farmers and sheriffs deputies and people driving down country roads at night. You know the results. Scare headlines and ridiculous stories about abductions.”
“This is getting weird.”
But Schmidt was not listening. “We even had one writer stumble onto the truth, back in the late ’40s. Someone named Burberry or Bradbury or something like that. We had to wipe his memory.”
