Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Read online

  The colonel didn’t look up. A chill film of sweat covered the backs of his hands and his forehead. That was the only indication he gave, even to himself, of feeling any excitement. Without moving his eyes, he could tell that the gleaming crystal globe had vanished from its place on the mantel.

  HOW did they do it? In some way, they were cutting off the links of awareness that existed between all rational human beings. They were broadcasting the impression that they, and the things they touched, and the traces of their activities did not exist. Once the mind accepted that, it would refuse to acknowledge any contradictory evidence offered by its senses of reasoning powers.

  He’d started out by assuming that there was something there, so the effect of the negative hallucination was weakened in him. Every new advance in Understanding he made now should continue to weaken it—and there was one moment when the Unseen Agency’s concrete reality must manifest itself in a manner which his mind, at this point, couldn’t refuse to accept. That was the instant in which it was manipulating some very concrete item, such as the crystal globe, in and out of visibility.

  It was obvious, at any fate, that the Agency couldn’t read his thoughts. He’d tricked it, precisely as he’d set out to do, into making a hurried attempt to resolve his apparently half-formed suspicion that someone might have been playing with the globe behind his back. It showed a certain innocence of mind. But, presumably, people who had such unusual powers mightn’t be accustomed to the sort of devious maneuvering and conscious control of emotion and thought which was required to survive at an acceptable level in the colonel’s everyday world.

  He became aware suddenly of the fact that the crystal globe had been returned to its place on the mantel. For that same instant, he was aware also of a child-shape, definitely a girl, standing on tiptoe before the mantel, still reaching up toward the globe—and then fading quickly, soundlessly, beyond the reach of his senses again.

  That was considerably more than enough—

  He’d been thinking of some super-powered moron, of the Charles E. Watterly type, not a child! But it made even better sense this way, and it took only a few seconds of: flexibility to adapt his plans to include the new factor.

  THE colonel took two white cards and a lead pencil out of a drawer of the desk at which he was working. He unhurriedly printed three words on the first card and five on the second. Putting the cards into his pocket, he finally looked up at the globe.

  As he expected, it showed the scene he’d last been studying himself—brown desert, the grove of palms and the antelopes.

  He gazed at it for a moment, as if absently accepting this correction of the Unseen Agency’s lapse as any good hypnotic subject should. And then, still casually, he took the bag of fresh taffy he’d had Miss Eaton buy that afternoon out of the desk drawer. He opened it, opening his mind simultaneously to the conviction that the child-shape would come now to this new bait.

  Almost instantly, he realized, with a sense of sheer delight, that she was there!

  At any rate, there was an eagerness, an innocent greed, swirling like a gusty, soundless little wind of emotion about him, barely checked now by the necessity of remaining unseen. He took out a piece of the taffy and popped it solemnly into his mouth, and the greed turned into a shivering young rage of frustration. and a plea, and a prayer: Oh, make him look away! Just once!

  The colonel put the paper bag into his pocket, walked deliberately to the mantel and propped one of the two cards up against the globe.

  There was a fresh upsurge of interest, and then an almost physically violent burst of other emotions behind him.

  For the three words on the card read:

  I SAW YOU!

  Whistling soundlessly, the colonel waited a moment and replaced that card with the next one. He scratched his jaw and, as an apparent second thought, produced three pieces of taffy from his pocket, which he arranged into an artistic little pyramid in front of the card. He turned and walked back to his desk.

  When he looked around from there, the card was gone.

  So were the three pieces of taffy.

  He waited patiently for over a minute. Something white fluttered momentarily before the globe on the mantel and the card had reappeared. For a moment again, too. the child became visible, looking at him still half in alarm, but also half in laughter now, and then vanished once more.

  Reading what was written on the card, the colonel knew he’d won the first round anyway. His reaction wasn’t the feeling of alert, cautious triumph he’d expected, but a curious, rather unaccountable happiness.

  The five words he’d printed on the card had been: don’t worry—i won’t tell That message was crossed out now with pencil. Underneath it, two single words had been printed in a ragged slope, as if someone had been writing very hurriedly: thank you!

  BY two o’clock that night, the colonel was still wide awake, though he had followed his methodical pattern of living by going to bed at midnight, as usual. Whatever the Unseen Agency’s reaction might be, it wouldn’t be bound by any conventional restrictions.

  There was the chance, of course, that they would decide it was necessary to destroy him. Since he couldn’t protect himself successfully against invisible opponents, the colonel wasn’t taking any measures along that line. He’d accepted the chance in bringing himself to their attention.

  They also might decide simply to ignore him. He couldn’t, he conceded, do much about it if they did. Everyday humanity had its own abrupt methods of dealing with anyone who tried to dispel its illusions, and he, for one, knew enough not to make any such attempt. But the “Unseen Agency should have curiosity enough to find out how much he actually knew and what he intended to do about it . . .

  His eyes opened slowly. The luminous dial of the clock beside his bed indicated it was three-thirty. He had fallen asleep finally; and now there were—presences—in his room.

  After his first involuntary start, the colonel was careful not to move. The channels of awareness that had warned of the arrival of the Unseen Agency seemed to be approximately the same he had used unwittingly in sensing the emotions of the child earlier that night. Under the circumstances, he might regard them as more reliable than his eyes or ears.

  Apparently encouraged by his acceptance of the fact, his mind reported promptly that the child herself was among those present—and that there was a new quality of stillness and expectancy about her now, as if this were a very important event to her, too.

  Of the others, the colonel grew aware more gradually. But as he did, he discovered the same sense of waiting expectancy about them, almost as if they were trying to tell him that the next move actually was up to him, not them. In the instant he formed that conclusion, his feeling of their general presence seemed to resolve itself into the recognition of a number of distinct personalities who were presenting themselves to him, one by one.

  The first was a grave, aged kindliness, but with a bubble of humor in it—almost, he thought, surprised, like somebody’s grandmother!

  Two and Three seemed to be masculine, darker, thoughtfully judging.

  And, finally, there was Four, who appeared to come into the room only now, as if summoned from a distance to see what her friends had found—a personality as clear and light as the child’s, but an adult intelligence nevertheless. Four joined the others, observant and waiting.

  Waiting for what?

  That, the colonel gathered, was for him to experience in himself and understand. His awareness of their existence had been enough to extract their attention to him. Moving and living securely beyond the apparent realities of civilization, as if it were so much stage scenery which had hypnotized the senses of all ordinary human beings, they seemed ready to welcome and encourage any discoverer, without fear or hostility, as one of themselves.

  He could sense dimly the quality of their strange ability, and the motives that had created it. The ruthless mechanical rigidity of the human society that had developed out of the Hunger Years had
been the forcing factor. These curious rebels must have felt a terrible necessity to escape from it to have found and developed in their own minds a means of bypassing society so completely—the means being, essentially, so perfect a control of the outgoing radiations of thought and emotion that they created no slightest telltale ripple in the ocean of the subconscious human mind and left a negative impression there instead.

  But they were not hiding from anyone who followed the same path they had taken.

  There was a sudden unwillingness in him to go any further in that direction at the moment. Full understanding might lie in the very near future; but it was still in the future.

  As if they had accepted that, too, he could sense that the members of the Unseen Agency were withdrawing from him and the room. Four was last to go, lingering a moment after the others had left, as if looking back at him; a light, clear presence as definite as spoken words or the touch of a hand.

  A moment after she had left, the colonel realized, with something of a shock, that for the first time in his adult life, he had fallen in love . . .

  FIRST thing he did next morning was to have himself measured for a new uniform of the kind he’d always avoided—the full uniform of his rank, white and gold, and with the extra little flourishes, the special unauthorized richness of cloth that only a colonel-and-up could afford or get away with. It was the sort of gesture, he felt, that Four might appreciate. And he had a reason for wanting to stay away from Metallurgy that morning for the four hours or so it might take to complete the suit.

  He was in the position of a strategist who, having made an important gain, can take time out to consolidate it and consider his next moves. He preferred to do that beyond the range of any too observant eyes—and mind.

  That Four and her kind should be content to live—well, like mice, actually—behind the scenery of the world, subsisting on the crumbs of civilization, was ridiculous. They seemed to have no real understanding of their powers, and of the uses to which they could be put.

  It was the most curious sort of paradox.

  The colonel found a park bench and settled down to investigate the problems presented by the paradox.

  He was, he decided, a practical man. As such, he’d remained occluded, till now, to their solution of the problems of a society with which he was basically no more contented than they had been. But he had adjusted effectively to the requirements of that society, while they had withdrawn from it in the completest possible fashion this side of suicide.

  To put it somewhat differently, he had learned how to influence and manipulate others to gain for himself a position comfortably near the top. They had learned how to avoid being manipulated.

  But if a man could do that—without losing the will to employ his powers intelligently!

  The colonel checked the surge of excitement which arose from that line of reflection, almost guiltily. The structure of society might be—and was—more than ripe for an overhauling. But he was quite certain that Four’s people would not be willing to follow his reasoning just yet. Their whole philosophy of living was oriented in the opposite direction of ultimate withdrawal.

  But give me time, he thought. Just give me time!

  Four showed herself to him that afternoon.

  He’d returned to his office—the white-and-gold uniform had created a noticeable stir in the department—and instructed Miss Eaton to send someone out for a lunch tray from the cafeteria.

  A little later, he suddenly realized that Four was standing in the door of the office behind him. He knew then that, for some reason, he had expected her to come.

  He was careful not to look around, but he sensed that she both approved of the white uniform and was laughing at him for having put it on to impress her. The colonel’s ears reddened slightly. He straightened his shoulders, though, and went on working.

  Next, the child-shape slipped by before his desk, an almost visibility. He glanced up at it, and it smiled and disappeared as abruptly as if it had gone through a door in mid-air and closed the door behind it. A moment later, Four stood just beyond the desk, looking down at the colonel, no less substantial than the material of the desk itself.

  He stared up at her, unable to speak, aware only of a slow, strong gladness welling up in him.

  Then Four vanished—

  Someone had opened the door of the office behind him.

  “Your lunch, sir,” the familiar voice of Charles E. Watterly muttered apologetically.

  The colonel let his breath out slowly. But it didn’t matter too much, he supposed. Four would be back.

  “Thank you, Watterly,” he said, with some restraint. “Set it down, please.”

  Watterly’s angular shape appeared beside him and suddenly seemed to teeter uncertainly. The colonel moved an instant too late. The coffee pot lay on its side in the brown puddle that filled the lunch tray on the desk. The rest of the contents were about evenly distributed over the desk, the carpet, and the white uniform.

  On his feet, flushed and angry, the colonel looked at Watterly.

  “I’m sorry, sir!” Watterly had fallen back a step.

  Now, this was interesting, the colonel decided, studying him carefully. This was the familiar startled white face, its slack mouth twisted into an equally familiar, frightened grin. But why hadn’t he ever before noticed that incredible, cold, hidden malice staring at him out of those pale blue eyes?

  Not a bungler. A hater. The airtight organization of society kept it suppressed so well that he had almost forgotten how the underdogs of the world could hate!

  He let the rage in him ebb away.

  Anger was pointless. It was the compliment one paid an equal. To withdraw beyond the reach of human malice, as Four and the rest of them had done, was a better way—for the weak. For those who were not, the simplest and most effective way was to dispose of the malicious by whichever methods were handiest, and forget about them.

  AT seven in the evening, Miss Eaton looked in at the colonel’s central office and inquired whether he would need her any more that day.

  “No, thank you, Miss Eaton,” said the colonel, without looking up. “A few matters I want to finish by myself. Good night.” There was silence for a moment. Then Miss Eaton’s voice blurted suddenly, “Sometimes it’s much better to finish such matters in the morning, sir!”

  The colonel glanced up in surprise. Coming from Miss Eaton, the remark seemed out of character. But she looked slightly resentful, slightly anxious, as always, and not as if she attributed any importance to her words.

  “Well, Miss Eaton,” the colonel said genially, while he wondered whether it had been a coincidence, “I just happen to prefer not to wait till tomorrow.” Miss Eaton nodded, as though agreeing that, in that case, there was no more to be said. He listened to her heels clicking away through the glass-enclosed aisles of the general offices, and then the lights went out there, and Colonel Magrumssen was sitting alone at his desk.

  It was odd about Miss Eaton. He was almost certain now it had been no coincidence. Her personality which, for a number of years, he’d felt he understood better than one got to understand most people, had revealed itself in a single sentence to be an entirely different sort of personality—a woman, in fact, about whom he knew exactly nothing! At any other time, the implications would have fascinated him. Tonight, of course, it made no difference any more.

  His gaze returned reflectively to a copy of the Notice of Transfer by which Charles E. Watterly had been removed from Metallurgy some hours before, to be returned to the substratum of Earth’s underdogs, where he obviously belonged.

  It had seemed the logical thing to do, the colonel realized with a feeling of baffled resentment. What did one more third-rate human life among a few billions matter?

  But it seemed his unseen acquaintances believed it did matter, very much. Somewhere deep in his mind, ever since he had signed the Transfer, a cold, dead area had been growing which told him, as clearly as if they had announced it in so many w
ords, that he wouldn’t be able to contact them again.

  Notices of Transfer weren’t revocable, but he felt, too, that it wouldn’t have done him much good if they had been. One committed the unforgivable sin, and that was that.

  He had pushed Watterly back down where he belonged. And he was no longer acceptable.

  There was one question he would have liked answered, the colonel decided, as he went on methodically about the business of cleaning up his department’s top-level affairs for his successor.

  What, actually, was the unforgivable sin?

  Half hour later, he decided he wasn’t able to find the answer. Something involved with Christian charity, or the lack of it, apparently. He had sinned in degrading Watterly. Civilization similarly had sinned on a very large scale against the major part of humanity. And so they had withdrawn themselves both from civilization and from him.

  He shook his head. He might still be misjudging their motives—because it still didn’t seem quite right!

  On the proper form and in a neat, clear hand, he filled out his resignation from Metallurgy and from life, to make it easy for the investigators. He frowned at the line headed reasons given and decided to leave it blank.

  He laid down the pen and picked up the gun and squinted down its barrel distastefully. And then somebody who now appeared to be sitting in the chair on the other side of his desk remarked:

  “That mightn’t be required, you know.”

  THE colonel put the gun down and folded his hands on the desk. “Well, John Brownson!” he said, politely surprised. “You’re one of them, too?”

  The assistant to the Minister of Statistics shrugged.

  “In a sense,” he admitted. “In about the same way that you’re one of them.”

  The colonel thought that over and acknowledged that he didn’t quite follow.