Halloween and Other Seasons (15 page)

~ * ~

“I tell you, Bill,” Halpern yelled into the phone, “I’m real close.”

There was silence on the other end for a moment, and then a squawking sound that lasted for a minute and a half.

At the end of it Halpern waited a few seconds. “No, Bill,” he said calmly, “I have not been out in the sun too long. I’ve told you from the beginning of this thing that you should just let me run with it, and I’m telling you again. When I break it open, I’ll come back to Albany and be a good boy.”

There was another short squawk on the other end.

“That’s right, a good boy. Cover the state legislature and everything. I promise. But you have to let me follow this through.”

Another squawk.

“That’s right. Six-headed chickens and all. But that was yesterday, editor mine. Today it was ball-point pens dropping through the ceiling of a supermarket.”

Another squawk—actually, more of a screech this time, louder and more insistent.

“Didn’t you hear me at all? I said I’m beginning to see a pattern to all this. This could be my chance to be Woodward and Bernstein, Bill.”

Squawk.

“No, I haven’t actually seen any of it. I always seem to be one town behind, and when I guess where the next thing will occur, I always guess wrong. But I’ll break the code. And yes, the chicken
could
have been fake, but it wasn’t. Believe me, it’s beginning to click.”

Silence on the other end; then a low, rasping sound.

“That’s right, Bill—Woodward and Bernstein. Sure you got that whole story? Okay, call you tomorrow.”

~ * ~

COW GIVES BIRTH TO

TWO DOGS

Pokerton, NY (Aug. 23)—Bill Gainesborough, a small farmer in this dairy farming community, swears that one of his cows gave birth to two puppies earlier this week. Gainesborough, who was upset by the event and hesitant to talk about it to reporters, stated that his cow Ilse, one of thirty milk cows on the farm, gave birth to two dogs “right in front of my eyes.”

The puppies are cocker spaniels, and there are no cocker spaniel owners within ten miles of the Gainesborough property. Neighbors, who urged the farmer to talk about what had happened, swore that Gainesborough was not the kind of man to pull a hoax. The puppies were given to a local foundling home.

~ * ~

Halpern didn’t call his editor back the next day. On Wednesday the twenty-fifth he found himself in Lolarkin, where a group of schoolboys claimed to have seen three moons in the sky. Thursday the twenty-sixth found him in Crater, where two grandmothers and twelve of their kin swore that their house had lifted itself off its foundation, turned around 180 degrees, and set itself back down again. On Friday he was in Peach Hollow, just missing a rain of black tar. Saturday he spent in Cooperville, arriving a scant three minutes after two hamsters had talked in a crowded pet store; he’d guessed right on that location, but had miscalculated as to time. Sunday morning the twenty-ninth he sat in a diner in Reseda, staring at a horribly creased map of the state, when suddenly the pattern rose before his blurry eyes.

He shoved the map under his arm as he dialed the phone. His hands were shaking. He stared back across the room at his eggs getting cold while the phone rang.

“Bill, it’s me.”

This time there wasn’t squawking, but rather a high and steady whine.

“I
know
it’s Sunday morning. No, I didn’t know it was six o’clock. I’ve been up all night.”

His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

“Shut up, Bill,” he said into the phone as the whining started up again. He fumbled the map up to his eyes. “It’s simple as hell. Crisscross, crisscross. These things have been making little
x
’s all over the county. And you know what that means? Something, some single source, is behind it all.”

Silence.

“Did you hear me?”

Silence again. Then a carefully phrased question.

“No, I won’t tell you where I am. Wait for me to phone in my story. But I’ll bet you even money that I’m in the place where the next thing happens. Just another day or two, Bill. That’s all I need.”

Silence. Then a sigh.

“Thanks, Bill. If you were here I’d kiss your ugly face.”

~ * ~

BOY TELEPORTED FROM

OWN HOUSE TO NEIGHBOR’S

~ * ~

Grafton, NY (Aug. 30)—Ten-year-old Bobby Milestone, who vanished into thin air while playing quietly in his own front yard today, was found an hour later in the home of Grafton neighbor Mr. Fred Warbling. The youth claimed to remember nothing that happened to him between the time he vanished and reappeared. “I was out front one second,” he stated, “and the next second I was on top of Mr. Warbling’s car in his garage.”

The youth vanished before the startled eyes of his uncle, Mr. Eugene Milestone, who was looking out the window when the incident occurred. “It was like somebody yanked him out of the air,” Mr. Milestone said.

This reporter was on hand and participated in the massive hour-long search, which was mounted immediately after young Milestone vanished. No explanation has been offered for the youth’s disappearance and subsequent reappearance.

~ * ~

Halpern called in the Milestone piece on Monday afternoon over Bill Greener’s loud protestations. All the rest of the day he double- and triple-checked his calculations, readying himself for the next day’s sighting. He rented a car and was on the road before nightfall, munching periodically on a bucket of fried chicken as he drove. Before leaving he sent a cable to Greener which read:
I WAS RIGHT, YOU SUCKER. HAVE REACHED END OF SEARCH. WILL KNOW ALL TOMORROW. BRACE FOR BIG STORY.

He drove for four hours, pulling to a halt well before dawn at his calculated site. There was no moon and the visibility was bad, but he seemed to be on a road at the edge of a vast, rolling valley in the middle of nowhere. He shrugged and went to sleep for a couple of hours, awakening just as dawn broke. When he looked out the window, his eyes widened.

“My God,” he gasped, “I was right.”

There, a scant fifty yards off the dusty road, sat a machine. It looked like nothing so much as an airship, a dirigible-like structure with a long cabin slung underneath. It bore no identifiable markings.

As Halpern drew closer, he saw that his first impression had been a bit mistaken; the thing was not quite as rickety as it had first appeared. It was smoothly metallic and resembled a conventional cigar-shaped flying saucer.

And as he crept even closer, he saw that there was a doorway in the cabin underneath, and a figure leaning against it with his arms folded. Just as Halpern reached the ship, the figure waved languidly and turned away, disappearing inside. Cautiously Halpern poked his head through the opening—and heard someone say, in an even tone, “Please come in, Mr. Halpern.”

He entered the craft, stepping as if he were walking on eggs.

Inside, the cabin was a cluttered mess; stacks of papers and charts lay everywhere. A man was at the front of the structure, bending over a control panel composed of antique knobs and a huge bronze steering wheel. Two globes, one celestial and one terrestrial, were mounted on either side.

The man turned, and Halpern at once thought he looked vaguely familiar. He was strongly built, taller than average, and bore a slight resemblance to Teddy Roosevelt, with a bushy moustache and curling hair parted a bit left of center. He wore a pince-nez, and Halpern was at once taken with the calmness of the gray eyes behind it. He also wore a three-piece woolen suit with a watch-chain and fob attached.

“Please sit down, sir,” the man said, indicating a camp stool off to the right. “I’ll be with you in a moment.” He turned to the control panel, and Halpern spun around to see the door to the craft closing with a smooth hiss. Moments later there was a nearly undetectable bump. They were airborne.

With a sigh the man turned from the control board and confronted Halpern with those calm gray eyes.

~ * ~

“I must congratulate you,” he said, “on your perseverance. I was happy to see you’d found my little pattern. And that you were clever enough to notice that the last little
x
in my grid of
x
’s would be completed today.” The corners of his eyes wrinkled upward—in mirth or perhaps something else. “Very resourceful. You thought there might be something at the end of my rainbow of crisscrosses, eh?”

Halpern nodded cautiously.

The stranger suddenly thrust out his hand. “Well, you were right, of course. My name is Charles Fort, sir.”

The man paused a moment to watch Halpern’s jaw drop, then went on: “You’ve become something of a pest these last few weeks, you know. But I must say you’ve been an interesting pest.” Once again his eyes seemed to twinkle.

“You
can’t
be Charles Fort,” said Halpern. “Fort died fifty years ago.”

The other’s eyebrows went up. “Did he? I suppose you need a bit of explanation, eh?”

Halpern said nothing.

“First of all,” the man said, “I really am Charles Fort. Or was, anyway, for a time. Actually, you might call me a kind of ‘overseer.’ I was sent here to Earth a very long time ago, Mr. Halpern. My life here as Charles Fort, from 1874 to 1932, was an enjoyable sidelight to my real task, and so to amuse myself I decided to document some of my own doings.”

Halpern’s eyes widened. “You mean
you
made all the strange things happen? The trees flying around, the puppies—all that?”

Fort smiled modestly. “That’s right. Beautifully ironic, isn’t it? That Charles Fort not only documented all sorts of bizarre phenomena, but actually
caused
them all!” Laughing, he gestured toward the controls. “I do it all with these little knobs. Flying frogs, double suns, night for day, day for night, invisibility—all the silly stuff.”

“I can’t believe it!” said Halpern. “
Why
?”

Fort’s laughter ended in a sigh. “Well,” he said, “I’ve been here a very long time. Doing a job.” He yawned, then glanced behind him out of the port windows, pushing at the rudder wheel a fraction. “Not a very exciting one, I’m afraid. Let’s just say my job was to start things rolling on this planet, as far as civilization was concerned, and then to—” A hint of a smile touched his lips. “—help things along, so to speak.
Not
to interfere,” he added hastily, “but rather to keep you moving, evolving, keep you on your toes. We’re not allowed to interfere directly, you know.” He smiled dreamily, fingering his lapel. “I always liked the clothes from the turn of this century best.”

Halpern was getting impatient. “But why did you invent Charles Fort?”

“
Boredom
, Mr. Halpern. Flying around in this ship all the time, causing mischief here and there—it all gets exceedingly tiring. So I decided to live among you for a while. I made up a being named Charles Fort. Gave him birth records, a family history, everything he needed. Granted, I was bending the rules a bit. But if all I did was chronicle my own doings, I wasn’t
directly
interfering, was I? And my job at the same time—doubly so, since I was not only perpetrating all those ‘unexplained phenomena,’ but bringing them to your attention at the same time. As I said, beautifully ironic.”

“But what’s all this ‘overseer’ stuff? You mean to say you came here just to play tricks on us?”

Fort sighed heavily. “For better or for worse, Mr. Halpern, somebody a long time ago decided that this was the way to bring young civilizations along. The object is, quite simply, to make you
think
. To make you look at the world as a strange and beautiful place with mysteries still not fathomed—which, of course, it is.” He gave the rudder another touch. “And the more you wonder about what’s behind this weird, wonderful universe you live in, sooner or later you’ll begin to realize that everything is rather neatly tied together—that it’s all a unity. And the sooner you come to understand that unity, the sooner you can, well, join the club, so to speak. While I was Charles Fort down below I cheated a little by sneaking some of that monistic philosophy into my books. But what’s a little cheating in a good cause, eh?” He smiled. “So you see, all my hijinks are really just a teaching tool.” Suddenly he came over to Halpern and put his arm around his shoulder. “I bet you can’t
wait
to get back and tell your story, eh?”

“Yes…” said Halpern cautiously.

“Well, you must let me show you a few of my little tricks first, and then we’ll get you back to your office, safe and sound. You see, I
know
what it’s like to be a newspaperman.”

Once more the limpid gray pools of Fort’s eyes sparkled as he led Halpern toward the back of the airship.

“I have a little confession to make,” he said, smiling paternally. “You’re the first human being I ever let catch me in the act. That’s
really
bending the rules, isn’t it? But since I’m getting you back to your office, I guess I’m not interfering all that much.”

“Sure, why not?” said Halpern, suddenly buoyant, thoughts straying once again to Woodward and Bernstein. He laughed. “That really was a clever line of yours, by the way. ‘I think we’re all property.’ Very clever.”

“It was at that, wasn’t it?” Fort smiled.

~ * ~

     VIOLENT INCIDENT

     AT DATA TERMINAL

~ * ~

Albany Complex, NY (Aug. 31, 2082)—An intruder dressed in pre-Millennium clothes and claiming to be an employee of the
Albany Sun
caused minor damage at this station’s mid-Complex terminal earlier today. The man, who identified himself as Nathan Halpern, stated in loud terms that he was a top
Sun
“columnist,” demanded a “typewriter” (such devices have not been used at the
Sun
since it was computerized over forty years ago), and further demanded to see one Bill Greener, whom he identified as his “editor.”