Complete Short Fiction, page 158
After a moment, there was still nothing to think about them. If Jim Gregory had decided the car needed attendance, then it did.
Click! said the car fifteen minutes later. The low, sustained humming of the engine changed its tune; the machine slowed and coasted to a halt.
Craig frowned at the instrument board. Then he fingered the main switch. It was in, registering contact. He pressed the accelerator again.
There was no response. Craig shook his head. This was the first time this had ever happened. After Gregory had gone over the engine too.
He thought about that a little harder; and slowly a chill crept over him. He sat, then, remembering that Gregory was one of them.
This car stalling here was no accident.
Uneasily, Craig examined his environment. He had left the highway ten minutes before, and: was now in the tree-sheltered valley beyond One-mile Hill. The outskirts of the city were about eight miles behind him, the city itself no longer visible.
He was roughly five miles from home, and about a mile from the nearest farmhouse.
It must have been done with a purpose. Perhaps he was expected to do something.
He climbed down into the road, and then stood indecisive. Because actually, he knew nothing about electric motors. Or any other kind of motor. Nevertheless—
With a quick movement, Craig lifted the hood. He stood then, nonplussed, studying the long, narrow, streamlined shape that was under it.
There were no visible wires, and no electric motor, simply that gray metal tube about a foot and a half in diameter.
Craig reached down gingerly and touched the metal. Instantly, he jerked his hand back—but forced it down again, touched the metal, even more swiftly this time.
And there was no doubt. The metal was cold, cold. Unnaturally, icily cold! Freezingly, deathly cold.
Craig put down the hood, and stood there on that quiet road, stood very still and very tense. But it was only after a long blankness that realization came:
This was it. This was what they had wanted him to find out. Nypers had given him the first hint of wrongness. This was supposed to be the second.
Actually, of course, he had already overheard, and guessed, much. But they didn’t know that.
For years he had believed his car had an electric motor powering it; and now they wanted him to know that the motor wasn’t electric at all. That instead it was—What?
Gregory picked him up at the farmhouse about fifteen minutes after Craig phoned. He was a big, powerfully built young man with a placid face. He said easily:
“I could have sworn there was something wrong with that car when you left this morning, Mr. Craig. Ran into town special to have a look at it, but couldn’t find nothing. Guess I’ll have to unwind the armature.”
Craig muttered something about leaving all that to you, Jim. He was silent on the way home. Silent and shocked and uncertain.
It was one thing to think, as he had earlier, that Jim was a member of the gang. It was another to watch him drive up in the replica of the stalled car, and listen to his cheerful lying. To see him face to face, and listen to him lying.
The bitterness faded slowly before a thought that he had deliberately buried deep, but which now inexorably rose to the surface: the engine!
The engine didn’t fit. It had no more meaning than the action of Jefferson Dayles in having him kidnaped.
Craig found himself listening tautly to the humming sound of the motor. He had always taken for granted that the vague throb was that of an electric engine.
It was similar. But it seemed to him suddenly that it was throatier.
Could it be compressed air?
But then why had they lied to him? He who knew nothing about either motive force would have accepted an air-pressure engine explanation with the same credulity that he had accepted the statement that the power was electric.
It would be different if the engine was something marvelous. But it wasn’t. It drove a plane at a cruising speed of ninety-five miles an hour and a car at a top speed of sixty.
Inwardly, Craig groaned. The wretched thing about it all was: how was he expected to react? For some reason or other, they had not expected him to be so troubled that he would drive home for lunch.
As a result he knew more than they realized. It was going to be difficult under such circumstances to know what to say, even to Anrella.
Should he be bold? Cautious? Demanding? Secretive?
It was a problem.
The kiss was sweet and prolonged. Her mouth was warm, her manner ardent. Her fingers brushed his cheeks in a caressing gesture, as she finally half-released him, half-withdrew from his responsive embrace.
It was briefly hard to remember that he had heard her say in a resonant, resolute voice—what she had said to the people gathered in the drawing room that noon.
Anrella stared at him now, and spoke:
“You look tired, darling. Come into the living room and lie down. I’m sorry you had the trouble with the car. I shall have to speak sharply to Gregory.”
He watched her from the couch with appraising eyes. And a little shock pierced him as he realized that she looked quite capable of speaking sharply to Gregory. Or to anybody else for that matter.
She had eyes of deep blue, and a figure that was tall and, well, svelte. She was easy on the eyes, this wife of his; and it wasn’t that she looked cruel. She merely looked—mature. Tremendously mature for one physically so young.
It was the kind of maturity you might expect from a matron of fifty. Young women were usually very careful of the way they exercised authority. Maids, gardeners, clerks, male or female, had a habit of quitting if a thirty-year-old woman was too bossy.
Anrella somehow carried it off. None of her help had ever quit for any reason. That was, quit for good. They simply took long holidays, and, suddenly, there they were again, looking tanned and healthy, as if they had been at Palm Beach, or Miami, or somewhere.
Craig paused on the idle thought, shocked: Could they have been to Palm Beach?
He shook himself impatiently, but his almost closed eyes widened a little. He watched Anrella where she sat in a nearby chair glancing through the evening paper he had brought.
Palm Beach was impossible, of course. But where did they go?
It was an angle that might be worth investigating. And there were other things. For instance, what wages did Anrella pay? In an outfit that included millionaires like Yerd but also Sybil the cook, and Gregory, it was just as well to gather a few facts before mentioning anything.
He didn’t know enough. He—didn’t—know!
He watched Anrella from slitted eyes. How sleek she was, how beautifully dressed. She was like that mentally, too; always hers had been a richly garbed mind, swift in response and in a curious, hard yet intensely human and humane logic.
Whatever else happened, he must draw her safely clear.
If only he had the courage to question her. But, no!—decisively though imperceptibly Craig shook his head—not now. Wait! There would be time enough after he had a more solid base of information.
Somehow, she had got entangled into a powerful organization, and the will to help her would never be enough. Not the will of a man who hadn’t the faintest real idea what his own past history was.
He must never forget that that tremendous gap in his mind must come first. Astonishing as his other discoveries had been, they were yet not so astonishing as the false past that had somehow been impressed on his brain.
He had to live with his mind. So long as it remained partially blank, his life would he an empty shell.
They knew, of course, that he knew something. Let them. Let them wonder how he was taking it, what he was doing and thinking. If he showed no sign, they would become puzzled, and wonder if perhaps he had not missed their cues.
Further action on their part would then be inevitable. By playing dumb, but not too dumb, he might reach the point where he knew enough to act. The point, for instance, where he knew exactly how Jefferson Dayles fitted into the picture.
Somehow, all this was connected.
It wasn’t fear; Jefferson Dayles knew that. But he had to have, for the sake of his nerves and his conscience, had to have Craig safe.
This council of war had no other purpose. But for a while Jefferson Dayles temporized. He emphasized to the women, as he had in a previous meeting, that his re-election chances were dimming every hour.
As he stared out over the small pond of hard, bright, alarmed faces, he felt anew the close-knittedness of his relationship with these leaders of America’s equalized women.
They were his, body and soul, almost like personal possessions, or extensions of his own physique—his private army, in a world where, since Hitler, there had been a law barring from politics anybody who gathered such a force around him.
But no one suspected how completely they were his creatures. Not even his political opponents, who after careful prodding, announced acidly through the medium of Mrs. Janet Wake herself, that they would certainly not tolerate equalized women in the government service “if I am elected president.”
His speech to them now was a preliminary, a building up to his main theme: Craig. He said:
“We are living in a curious age, an age where people jump this way, that way, without thought. Right now they are in the throes of an ecstatic will to give women equality by electing Janet Wake as the first woman president.
“It is an unreasoned determination because it is basically at odds with reality. If women as a body were prepared to take the equalizer drug, and if men could get over their instinctive dislike of women who have taken it, the problem might be resolved.
“But as you equalized women know from your personal experience, women are your worst enemies and men won’t have anything to do with you. If normal women start running this country after a successful election, there would be chaos and riots, immense revulsions of feeling, rancor unprecedented—” He believed that, every word. Preliminary though all this was, it was the essence of his convictions that was pressing out of his voice.
He shifted his line of argument subtly, conscious that even these ostracized women had to be handled right, to make them forget they were women who, under normal conditions, would be vociferous supporters of a woman president.
“The mass of people with their love of simple slogans are almost completely unaware that almost the only reason why democracy is a good system is because it provides opportunities to eliminate bad and tyrannical governments. Democracy enables the people to knock out of office the most flagrant of two or more power grasping groups, thus exercising a wholesome restraint over their lusts.
“Actually, a benevolent dictatorship is the best form of government. The danger, the immense, deadly and, in the past, unavoidable danger has been that sooner or later the good dictator has died, to be succeeded by a bloody, stupid tyrant with schemes for war and personal aggrandizement.
“I shall be a benevolent immortal dictator—”
Dayles believed that, too, the benevolent part. For years and years he had been in spite of all his friends and colleagues, alone in the world. He had made the mistake in 1944 of taking Alice and the boys to London; and one bomb had blotted them from his life. It was all vague now; it was hard in these days to think with any sense of reality of the young woman who had been his wife.
For nearly thirty years he had watched the changing shape of a badly mauled world, had watched science stagger blindly to a halt, shackled by the mortality of the poor, miserable human beings who learned just so much, then sank into their bottomless graves, taking their knowledge with them.
The blood of Lesley Craig, carefully allotted, would end all that. He knew what must be done, what could be done. Sometimes he admitted wryly that power was sweet in itself, and life precious. But actually he felt selfless.
He said: “In view of the necessity for ballot box stuffing on such a large scale, I have come to the conclusion that only the certainty of success would make it all justifiable. We must have Craig now, not as we originally planned, after the election.
“It’s risky; it will be personally dangerous for all of us. Discovery would ruin my re-election chances, and end our hopes. Nevertheless, there is no evading the issues. A dictator must convince the citizens of the country he rules that he is wonderful, unique, supra-normal.
“What greater wonder than if, at the end of my second term, the Hand of God seems to reach down and slough thirty years from my age.
“It will seem a blessing from heaven itself. The religious fervor that will sweep the land will jump the oceans and won us the whole world. I shall, if we plan well, automatically be accepted as the permanent president of the United States.
“But we must have the man who can make that possible. Even though it is months yet to the election, we must have Craig. I want arrangements made to insure his capture within a month—”
Afterwards, just before bedtime, he spoke briefly, privately, to Kay.
“Did you tell them what I asked you to?”
She nodded a little stiffly. “I don’t think they have much hope. They can see all right that Craig can, during one thirty-year-period, rejuvenate about three hundred people. But they don’t quite believe that any amount of scientific manipulation can benefit people who are not of his blood type.”
Jefferson Dayles hesitated; then: “Suppose it couldn’t be done, what would you think personally?”
“There’s nothing to think about it,” was the harsh reply. “I’m not his or your blood type, whether they call it AB, Moss 1 or Jansky IV, and that’s all there is to it Besides—”
“Yes?” He spoke softly.
“I’m only thirty-four. When I get older, I may start cursing fate. I don’t think about it very often.” There was silence, then: “Good night, Kay.”
“Good night.”
III.
The days ran their swift course, and life went on. Every morning except Sunday, Craig climbed into his—not electric—runabout, and drove to work. Every evening except Sunday—and Saturday, when he left at one—he drove back again to the great house inside the iron fence.
It required a real effort of will not to change his hours or his route. Particularly his route. The more he thought about the way his car had stalled on that lonely fanner’s road in dense bush country a mile from the nearest farm, the more desirable the highway through Alcina seemed.
But he didn’t dare change to it. It would be noticed. They’d know then that he had seen the engine.
Craig waited tensely for their reaction to his nonreaction. But nothing happened.
On the seventh morning, the letter arrived containing his birth certificate. Craig read it with satisfaction and, he admitted it frankly to himself, relief.
There it was in black and white: “Lesley Somers Craig. Born June 1, 1922, town of Daren, county of Father John Laidlaw Craig. Mother: Grace Rosemary Somers—”
He had been born. His memory had not played him false. The world was not completely upside down. There was a gap in his memory, not an abyss. His position had been that of someone balancing on one foot beside a chasm of unmeasurable immensity. Now he was like a man standing legs spread apart straddling a narrow though deep pit.
It was true the pit had to be filled in, but even if it wasn’t, he could walk on without the horrible sensation of tottering in pitch darkness along the edge of a cliff.
A sharp weakness seized Craig as he sat there. He swayed, recovered himself, then lay back heavily against the back of the chair. The astounded thought came: “Why, I’m on the point of fainting.”
The nausea went away. Carefully, Craig climbed to his feet, and filled a glass with water. Back in his chair, he raised the glass to his lips—and saw that his hand was trembling.
It shook him. He had, he realized seriously, really let this business get him going. Thank God, the worst of the purely personal part was over; not entirely over, it was true. But at least he had his beginning established. As soon as his military record arrived he’d be solidly based up to the age of twenty-four.
A pretty sound base if you really thought it over. And since his conscious life had resumed at the age of forty-six, that left exactly twenty-two years to be accounted for. It—
The high confidence drained. Like a settling stone, Craig crouched in his chair.
Twenty-two years! His real lifetime. Growing up didn’t count. That was the animal stage, a sort of enormously prolonged marking time, the preliminary to the main event.
Twenty-two years! Oh, God!—
His military record arrived on the afternoon of the ninth day. It was one of those printed forms, where the answers are typed in blank spaces provided.
There was his name, his age . . . regiment . . . pre-war occupation—“Clerk.” Well, that fitted. There was the name of his next of kin, medals—“None.” Serious wounds or injuries: “Amputation of right leg necessitated by injury in fighter plane crash—”
Craig stared. But he still had Ids right leg, he thought with an owllike gravity.
The gravity broke like a bomb-shattered dam; and again he stared at the unchanging print. At last he thought: There must be a mistake. Some fool up in the records office typed the wrong—
Even as one part of his brain developed that argument, another part accepted everything, accepted and knew that there was no mistake, that there was nothing wrong with this form.
The wrongness, the mistake, was not out there in some government department. It was here in him.
He should have known the very instant that he tried to convince himself that he, with his thirty-four-year-old body, was fifty. He had known. The knowledge had been there in his mind like a sick thing fighting against the greatest force in the human ego: the will to have a positive identity. There was no fooling any more.
He was not, never had been, Lesley Craig.
Accordingly, the time had come to confront those who knew who he was. Whatever their purpose in impressing upon him the belief that he was Lesley Craig, it must now be forced out into the open. Now!
