The fredric brown collec.., p.53
The Fredric Brown Collection, page 53
WHAT TIME IS IT?
It must he two minutes after nine. Three.
What’s coming? Cobra, devil, werewolf
What will it be this time?
At five minutes after nine-WHAT?
Must be four after now; yes, it had been at least four minutes, maybe four and a half
He yelled, suddenly. He couldn’t stand the waiting. It couldn’t be solved. But he had to solve it. Or go mad.
MAD.
He must be mad already. Mad to tolerate living, trying to fight something you couldn’t fight, trying to beat the unbeatable. Beating his head against—
He was running now, out the door, down the corridor.
Maybe if he hurried, be could kill himself before five minutes after nine. He’d never have to know. Die, DIE AND GET IT OVER WITH. THAT’S THE ONLY WAY TO BUCK THIS GAME.
Knife.
There’d be a knife somewhere. A scalpel is a knife. Down the corridor. Voice of a nurse behind hum, shouting. Footsteps.
Run. Where? Anywhere.
Less than a minute left. Maybe seconds.
Maybe it’s nine-five now. Hurry!
Door marked “Utility”-he jerked it open.
Shelves of linen. Mops and brooms. You can’t kill yourself with a mop or broom. You can smother yourself with linen, but not in less than a minute and probably with doctors and interns coming.
Uniforms. Bucket. Kick the bucket, but how? Ah. There on the upper shelf—
A cardboard carton, already opened, marked “Lye.”
Painful: Sure, but it wouldn’t last long. Get it over with. The box in his hand, the opened corner, and tilted the contents into his mouth.
But it was not a white, searing powder. All that had come out of the cardboard carton was a small copper coin. He took it out of his mouth and held it, and looked at it with dazed eves.
It was five minutes after nine, then; out of the box of lye had come a small foreign copper coin. No, it wasn’t the Chinese haikwan tael that had disappeared from the showcase in the museum, because that was silver and had a hole in it. And the lettering on this wasn’t Chinese. If he remembered his coins, it looked Rumanian.
And then strong hands took hold of Charlie’s arms and led him back to his room and somebody talked to him quietly for a long time.
And he slept.
XVI
HE AWOKE Thursday morning from a dreamless sleep, and felt strangely refreshed and, oddly, quite cheerful.
Probably because, in that awful thirty-five minutes of waiting he’d experienced the evening before, he’d hit rock bottom. And bounced.
A psychiatrist might have explained it by saying that he had, under stress of great emotion, suffered a temporary lesion and gone into a quasi-state of maniac-depressive insanity. Psychiatrists like to make simple things complicated.
The fact was that the poor guy had gone off his rocker for a few minutes.
And the absurd anticlimax of that small copper coin had been the turning point. Look for something horrible, unnameable—and get a small copper coin. Practically a prophylactic treatment, if you’ve got enough stuff in you to laugh.
And Charlie had laughed last night. Probably that was why his room this morning seemed to be a different room. The window was in a different wall, and it had bars across it. Psychiatrists often misinterpret a sense of humor.
But this morning he felt cheerful enough to overlook the implications of the barred windows. Here it was a bright new day with the sun streaming through the bars, and it was another day and he was still alive and had another chance.
Best of all, he knew he wasn’t insane.
Unless—
He looked and there were his clothes hanging over the hack of a chair and he sat up and put his legs out of bed, and reached for his coat pocket to see if the coin was still where he’d put it when they’d grabbed him.
It was.
Then—
He dressed slowly, thoughtfully.
Now, in the light of morning, it came to him that the thing could he solved. Six-now there were six-screwy things, but they were definitely connected. Periodicity proved it.
Two days, three hours, ten minutes.
And whatever the answer was, it was not malevolent. It was impersonal. If it had wanted to kill him, it had a chance last night; it need merely have affected something else other than the lye in that package. There’d been lye in the package when he’d picked it up; he could tell that by the weight. And then it had been five minutes after nine and instead of lye there’d been the small copper coin.
It wasn’t friendly, either; or it wouldn’t have subjected him to heat and anesthesia. But it must be something impersonal.
A coin instead of lye.
Were they all substitutions of one thing for another?
Hm-m-m. Lei for a golf ball. A coin for lye. A duck for a coin. But the heat? The ether? The angleworm?
He went to the window and looked out for a while into the warm sunlight falling on the green lawn, and he realized that life was very sweet. And that if he took this thing calmly and didn’t let it get him down again, he might yet lick it.
The first clue was already his.
Periodicity.
Take it calmly; think about other things. Keep your mind off the merry-go-round and maybe the answer will come.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and felt in his pocket for the pencil and notebook and they were still there, and the paper on which he’d made his calculations of timing. He studied those calculations carefully.
Calmly.
And at the end of the list he put down “9:05” and added the word “lye” and a dash. Lye had turned to-what? He drew a bracket and began to fill in words that could be used to describe the coin: coin-copper-disk. But those were general. There must be a specific name for the thing.
Maybe—
He pressed the button that would light a bulb outside his door and a moment later heard a key turn in the lock and the door opened. It was a male attendant this time.
Charlie smiled at him. “Morning,” he said. “Serve breakfast here, or do I eat the mattress?”
The attendant grinned, and looked a bit relieved. “Sure. Breakfast’s ready; I’ll bring you some.”
“And…uh-“
“Yes?”
“There’s something I want to look up,” Charlie told him. “Would there be an unabridged dictionary anywhere handy? And if there is, would it be asking too much for you to let me see it a few minutes?”
“Why—I guess it will he all right. There’s one down in the office and they don’t use it very often.”
“That’s swell. Thanks.”
But the key still turned in the lock when he left.
* * *
Breakfast came half an hour later, but the dictionary didn’t arrive until the middle of the morning. Charlie wondered if there had been a staff meeting to discuss its lethal possibilities. But anyway, it came.
He waited until the attendant had left and then put the big volume on the bed and opened it to the color plate that showed coins of the world. He took the copper coin out of his pocket and put it alongside the plate and began to compare it with the illustrations, particularly those of coins of the Balkan countries. No, nothing just like it among the copper coins. Try the silver-yes, there was a silver coin with the same mug on it. Rumanian. The lettering-yes, it was identically the same lettering except for the denomination.
Charlie turned to the coinage table. Under Rumania—He gasped.
It couldn’t be.
But it was.
It was impossible that the six things that had happened to him could have been—
He was breathing hard with excitement as he turned to the illustrations at the back of the dictionary, found the pages of birds, and began to look among the ducks. Speckled breast and short neck and darker stripe starting just above the eye—
And he knew he’d found the answer.
He’d found the factor, besides periodicity, that connected the things that had happened. If it fitted the others, he could be sure. The angleworm? Why-sure-and he grinned at that one. The heat wave? Obvious. And the affair on the golf course? That was harder, but a bit of thought gave it to him.
The matter of the ether stumped him for a while. It took a lot of pacing up and down to solve that one, but finally he managed to do it.
And then? Well, what could he do about it? Periodicity? Yes, that fitted in. If—
Next time would be-hm-m-m-12:15 Saturday morning.
He sat down to think it over. The whole thing was completely incredible. The answer was harder to swallow than the problem.
But-they all fitted. Six coincidences, spaced an exact length of time apart?
All right then, forget how incredible it is, and what are you going to do about it? How are you going to get there to let them know?
Well-maybe take advantage of the phenomenon itself?
The dictionary was still there and Charlie went back to it and began to look in the gazcteer. Under “H—”
Whem! There was one that gave him a double chance. And within a hundred miles.
If he could get out of here—
He rang the bell, and the attendant came. “Through with the dictionary,” Charlie told him. “And listen, could I talk to the doctor in charge of my case?”
It proved that the doctor in charge was still Doc Palmer, and that he was coming up anyway.
He shook hands with Charlie and smiled at him. That was a good sign, or was it?
Well, now if he could lie convincingly enough
“Doe, I feel swell this morning,” said Charlie. “And listen—I remembered something I want to tell you about. Something that happened to me Sunday, couple of days before that first time I was taken to the hospital.”
“What was it, Charles?”
“I did go swimming, and that accounts for the sunburn that was showing up on Tuesday morning, and maybe for some other things. I’d borrowed Pete Johnson’s car—” Would they check up on that? Maybe not. “—and I got lost off the road and found a swell pool and stripped off the bank and I think I must have grazed my head on a rock because the next thing I remember I was back in town.”
“Hm-m-m,” said Doc Palmer. “So that accounts for the sunburn, and maybe it can account for—”
“Funny that it just came back to me this morning when I woke up,” said Charlie. “I guess—”
“I told those fools,” said Doc Palmer, “that there couldn’t be any connection between the third-degree burn and your fainting. Of course there was, in a way. I mean your hitting your head while you were swimming would account—Charles, I’m sure glad this came back to you. At least we now know the cause of the way you’ve acted, and we can treat it. In fact, maybe you’re cured already.”
“I think so, doc. I sure feel swell now. Like I was just waking up from a nightmare. I guess I made a fool of myself a couple of times. I have a vague recollection of buying some ether once, and something about some lye—but those are like things that happened in a dream, and now my mind’s as clear as a bell. Something seemed to pop this morning, and I was all right again.”
Doc Palmer sighed. “I’m relieved, Charles. Frankly, you had us quite worried. Of course, I’ll have to talk this over with the staff and we’ll have to examine you pretty thoroughly, but I think—”
There were the other doctors, and they asked questions and they examined his skull—but whatever lesion had been made by the rock seemed to have healed. Anyway, they couldn’t find it.
If it hadn’t been for his suicide attempt of the evening before, he could have walked out of the hospital then and there. But because of that, they insisted on his remaining, under observation for twenty-four hours. And Charlie agreed; that would let him out some time Friday afternoon, and it wasn’t until twelve-fifteen Saturday morning that it would happen.
Plenty of time to go a hundred miles.
If he just watched everything he did and said in the meantime and made no move or remark which a psychiatrist could interpret—
He loafed and rested.
And at five o’clock Friday afternoon it was all right, and he shook hands all the way round, and was a free man again. He’d promised to report to Doc Palmer regularly for a few weeks.
But he was free.
XVII
RAIN AND darkness.
A cold, unpleasant drizzle that started to find its way through his clothes and down the hack of his neck and into his shoes even as he stepped off the train onto the small wooden platform.
But the station was there, and on the side of it was the sign that told him the name of the town. Charlie looked at it and grinned, and went into the station. There was a cheerful little coal stove in the middle of the room. He had time to get warmed up before he started. He held out his hands to the stove.
Over at one side of the room, a grizzled head regarded him curiously through the ticket window. Charlie nodded at the head and the head nodded back.
“Stavin’ here a while, stranger?” the head asked.
“Not exactly,” said Charlie. “Anyway, I hope not. I mean—” Heck, after that whopper he’d told the psychiatrists back at the hospital, he shouldn’t have any trouble lying to a ticket agent in a little country town. “I mean, I don’t think so:”
“Ain’t no more trains out tonight, mister. Got a place to stay? If not, my wife sometimes takes in boarders for short spells.”
“Thanks,” said Charlie. “I’ve made arrangements.” He starred to add “I hope” and then realized that it would lead him further into discussion.
He glanced at the clock and at his wrist watch and saw that both agreed that it was a quarter to twelve.
“How big is this town?” he asked. “I don’t mean population. I mean, how far out the turnpike is it to the township line? The border of town.”
“‘Tain’t big. Half a mile maybe, or a little better. You goin’ out to th’ Tollivers, maybe? They live just past and I heard tell he was sendin’ to th’ city for a… nope, you don’t look like a hired man.”
“Nope,” said Charlie. “I’m not.” He glanced at the clock again and started for the door. He said, “Well, be seeing you.”
“You gain’ to—”
But Charlie had already gone out the door and was starting down the street behind the railroad station. Into the darkness and the unknown and—Well, he could hardly tell the agent about his real destination, could he?
There was the turnpike. After a block, the sidewalk ended and he had to walk along the edge of the road, sometimes ankle deep in mud. He was soaked through by now, but that didn’t matter.
It proved to be more than half a mile to the township line. A big sign there—an oddly big sign considering the size of the town—read:
You Are Now Entering Haveen
Charlie crossed the line and faced back. And waited, an eye on his wrist watch.
At twelve-fifteen he’d have to step across. It was ten minutes after already. Two days, three hours, ten minutes after the box of lye had held a copper coin, which was two days, three hours, ten minutes after he’d walked into anesthesia in the door of a jewelry store, which was two days, three hours, ten minutes after—
He watched the hands of his accurately set wrist watch, first the minute hand until twelve-fourteen. Then the second hand.
And when it lacked a second of twelve-fifteen he put forth his foot and at the fatal moment he was stepping slowly across the line.
Entering Haveen.
XVIII
AND WITH each of the others, there was no warning. But suddenly:
It wasn’t raining any more. There was bright light, although it didn’t seem to come from a visible source. And the road beneath his feet wasn’t muddy; it was smooth as glass and alabaster-white. The white-robed entity at the gate ahead stared at Charlie in astonishment.
He said, “How did you get here? You aren’t even—”
“No,” said Charlie. “I’m not even dead. But listen, I’ve got to see the…uh—Who’s in charge of the printing?”
“The Head Compositor, of course. But you can’t—”
“I’ve got to see him, then,” said Charlie.
“But the rules forbid—”
“Look, it’s important. Some typographical errors are going through. It’s to your interests up here as well as to mine, that they be corrected, isn’t it? Otherwise things can get into an awful mess.”
“Errors? Impossible. You’re joking.”
“Then how,” asked Charlie, reasonably, “did I get to Heaven without dying?”
“But—”
“You see I was supposed to be entering Haveen. There is an e-matrix that-“
“Come.”
XIX
IT WAS quite pleasant and familiar, that office. Not a lot different from Charlie’s own office at the Hayworth Printing Co. There was a rickety wooden desk, littered with papers, and behind it sat a small bald-headed Chief Compositor with printer’s ink on his hands and a smear of it on his forehead. Past the closed door was a monster roar and clatter of typesetting machines and presses.
“Sure,” said Charlie. “They’re supposed to be perfect, so perfect that you don’t even need proofreaders. But maybe once out of infinity something can happen to perfection, can’t it? Mathematically, once out of infinity anything can happen. Now look; there is a separate typesetting machine and operator for the records covering each person, isn’t there?”
The Head Compositor nodded. “Correct, although in a manner of, speaking the operator and the machine are one, in that the operator is a function of the machine and the machine a manifestation of the operator and both are extensions of the ego of the…but I guess that is a little too complicated for you to understand.”
“Yes, I—well, anyway, the channels that the matrices run in must be tremendous. On our Linotypes at the Hapworth Printing Co., an e-mat would make the circuit every sixty seconds or so, and if one was defective it would cause one mistake a minute, but up here-Well, is my calculation of fifty hours and ten minutes correct?”
