Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (73 page)

"Is he a genius, too?"

"Very likely. Kids generally hang out with kids who share the same
interests and talents."

"What kind of a genius? What's his talent?"

"I don't know. All I know is he disappeared. He covered up his tracks,
destroyed every paper that could possibly help me locate him, and vanished
into thin air."

"How did he get into your files?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe he's a crook type," Joe said. "Expert at breaking and entering and
such."

Herod smiled wanly. "A racketeer genius? A mastermind? The kid Moriarty?"

"He could be a thief-genius," the doomed man said, "but don't let running
away convince you. All children do that when they get caught in a crisis.
Either they wish it had never happened or they wish they were a million
miles away. Stuart Buchanan may be a million miles away, but we've got to
find him."

"Just to find out is he smart?" Joe asked.

"No, to find his parents. Do I have to diagram it? What would the army pay
for a disintegration beam? What would an element-transmuter be worth? If
we could manufacture living robots, how rich would we get? If we could
teleport, how powerful would we be?"

There was a burning silence, then Herod got to his feet. "Mr. Warbeck," he
said, "you make me and Joe look like pikers. Thank you for letting us cut
in on you. We'll pay off. We'll find that kid."

It is not possible for anyone to vanish without a trace … even a
probable criminal genius. It is sometimes difficult to locate that trace
… even for an expert experienced in hurried disappearances. But
there is a professional technique unknown to amateurs.

"You've been blundering," Herod explained kindly to the doomed man.
"Chasing one Buchanan after the other. There are angles. You don't run
after a missing party. You look around on his back-trail for something he
dropped."

"A genius wouldn't drop anything."

"Let's grant the kid's a genius. Type unspecified. Let's grant him
everything. But a kid is a kid. He must have overlooked something. We'll
find it."

In three days Warbeck was introduced to the most astonishing angles of
search. They consulted the Washington Heights post office about a Buchanan
family formerly living in that neighborhood, now moved. Was there any
change-of-address card filed? None.

They visited the election board. All voters are registered. If a voter
moves from one election district to another, provision is usually made
that a record of the transfer be kept. Was there any such record on
Buchanan? None.

They called on the Washington Heights office of the gas and electric
company. All subscribers for gas and electricity must transfer their
accounts if they move. If they move out of town, they generally request
the return of their deposit. Was there any record of a party named
Buchanan? None.

It is a state law that all drivers must notify the license bureau of
change of address or be subject to penalties involving fines, prison, or
worse. Was there any such notification by a party named Buchanan at the
Motor Vehicle Bureau? There was not.

They questioned the R-J Realty Corp., owners and operators of a multiple
dwelling in Washington Heights in which a party named Buchanan had leased
a four-room apartment. The R-J lease, like most other leases, required the
names and addresses of two character references for the tenant. Could the
character references for Buchanan be produced? They could not. There was
no such lease in the files.

"Maybe Joe was right," Warbeck complained in Herod's office. "Maybe the
boy is a thief-genius. How did he think of everything? How did he get at
every paper and destroy it? Did he break and enter? Bribe? Burgle?
Threaten? How did he do it?"

"We'll ask him when we get to him," Herod said grimly. "All right. The
kid's licked us straight down the line. He hasn't forgotten a trick. But
I've got one angle I've been saving. Let's go up and see the janitor of
their building."

"I questioned him months ago," Warbeck objected. "He remembers the family
in a vague way, and that's all. He doesn't know where they went."

"He knows something else, something the kid wouldn't think of covering.
Let's go get it."

They drove up to Washington Heights and descended upon Mr. Jacob Ruysdale
at dinner in the basement apartment of the building. Mr. Ruysdale disliked
being separated from his liver and onions but was persuaded by five
dollars.

"About that Buchanan family," Herod began.

"I told him everything before," Ruysdale broke in, pointing to Warbeck.

"All right. He forgot to ask one question. Can I ask it now?" Ruysdale
reexamined the five-dollar bill and nodded.

"When anybody moves in or out of a building, the superintendent usually
takes down the name of the movers in case they damage the building. I'm a
lawyer. I know this. It's to protect the building in case suit has to be
brought. Right?"

Ruysdale's face lit up. "By Godfrey!" he said. "That's right, I forgot all
about it. He never asked me."

"He didn't know. You've got the name of the company that moved the
Buchanans out. Right?"

Ruysdale ran across the room to a cluttered bookshelf. He withdrew a
tattered journal and flipped it open. He wet his fingers and turned pages.

"Here it is," he said. "The Avon Moving Company. Truck No. G-4."

The Avon Moving Company had no record of the removal of a Buchanan family
from an apartment in Washington Heights. "The kid was pretty careful at
that," Herod murmured. But it did have a record of the men working truck
G-4 on that day. The men were interviewed when they checked in at closing
time. Their memories were refreshed with whiskey and cash. They recalled
the Washington Heights job vaguely. It was a full day's work because they
had to drive the hell and gone to Brooklyn. "Oh God! Brooklyn!" Warbeck
muttered. What address in Brooklyn? Something on Maple Park Row. Number?
The number could not be recalled.

"Joe, buy a map."

They examined the street map of Brooklyn and located Maple Park Row. It
was indeed the hell and gone out of civilization and was twelve blocks
long. "That's
Brooklyn
blocks," Joe grunted. "Twice as long as
anywhere. I know."

Herod shrugged. "We're close," he said. "The rest will have to be legwork.
Four blocks apiece. Cover every house, every apartment. List every kid
around ten. Then Warbeck can check them, if they're under an alias."

"There's a million kids a square inch in Brooklyn," Joe protested.

"There's a million dollars a day in it for us if we find him. Now let's
go."

Maple Park Row was a long, crooked street lined with five-story apartment
houses. Its sidewalks were lined with baby carriages and old ladies on
camp chairs. Its curbs were lined with parked cars. Its gutter was lined
with crude whitewash stickball courts shaped like elongated diamonds.
Every manhole cover was a home plate.

"It's just like the Bronx," Joe said nostalgically. "I ain't been home to
the Bronx in ten years."

He wandered sadly down the street toward his sector, automatically
threading his way through stickball games with the unconscious skill of
the city-born. Warbeck remembered that departure sympathetically because
Joe Davenport never returned.

The first day, he and Herod imagined Joe had found a hot lead. This
encouraged them. The second day they realized no heat could keep Joe on
the fire for forty-eight hours. This depressed them. On the third day they
had to face the truth.

"He's dead," Herod said flatly. "The kid got him."

"How?"

"He killed him."

"A ten-year-old boy? A child?"

"You want to know what kind of genius Stuart Buchanan has, don't you? I'm
telling you."

"I don't believe it."

"Then explain Joe."

"He quit."

"Not on a million dollars."

"But where's the body?"

"Ask the kid. He's the genius. He's probably figured out tricks that would
baffle Dick Tracy."

"How did he kill him?"

"Ask the kid. He's the genius."

"Herod, I'm scared."

"So am I. Do you want to quit now?"

"I don't see how we can. If the boy's dangerous, we've got to find him."

"Civic virtue, heh?"

"Call it that."

"Well, I'm still thinking about the money."

They returned to Maple Park Row and Joe Davenport's four-block sector.
They were cautious, almost furtive. They separated and began working from
each end toward the middle; in one house, up the stairs, apartment by
apartment, to the top, then down again to investigate the next building.
It was slow, tedious work. Occasionally they glimpsed each other far down
the street, crossing from one dismal building to another. And that was the
last glimpse Warbeck ever had of Walter Herod.

He sat in his car and waited. He sat in his car and trembled. "I'll go to
the police," he muttered, knowing perfectly well he could not. "The boy
has a weapon. Something he invented. Something silly like the others. A
special light so he can play marbles at night, only it murders men. A
machine to play checkers, only it hypnotizes men. He's invented a robot
mob of gangsters so he can play cops-and-robbers and they took care of Joe
and Herod. He's a child genius. Dangerous. Deadly. What am I going to do?"

The doomed man got out of the car and stumbled down the street toward
Herod's half of the sector. "What's going to happen when Stuart Buchanan
grows up?" he wondered. "What's going to happen when all the rest of them
grow up? Tommy and George and Anne-Marie and lazy Ethel? Why don't I start
running away now? What am I doing here?"

It was dusk on Maple Park Row. The old ladies had withdrawn, folding their
camp chairs like Arabs. The parked cars remained. The stickball games were
over, but small games were starting under the glowing lampposts …
games with bottle caps and cards and battered pennies. Overhead, the
purple city haze was deepening, and through it the sharp sparkle of Venus
following the sun below the horizon could be seen.

"He must know his power," Warbeck muttered angrily. "He must know how
dangerous he is. That's why he's running away. Guilt. That's why he
destroys us, one by one, smiling to himself, a crafty child, a vicious,
killing genius …"

Warbeck stopped in the middle of Maple Park Row.

"Buchanan!" he shouted. "Stuart Buchanan!"

The kids near him stopped their games and gaped.

"Stuart Buchanan!" Warbeck's voice cracked hysterically. "Can you hear
me?"

His wild voice carried farther down the street. More games stopped.
Ringaleevio, Chinese tag, Red-Light, and Boxball.

"Buchanan!" Warbeck screamed. "Stuart Buchanan! Come out, come out,
wherever you are!"

The world hung motionless.

In the alley between 217 and 219 Maple Park Row playing hide-and-seek
behind piled ash barrels, Stuart Buchanan heard his name and crouched
lower. He was aged ten, dressed in sweater, jeans, and sneakers. He was
intent and determined that he was not going to be caught out "it" again.
He was going to hide until he could make a dash for home-free in safety.
As he settled comfortably among the ashcans, his eye caught the glimmer of
Venus low in the western sky.

"Star light, star bright," he whispered in all innocence, "first star I
see tonight. Wish I may, wish I might, grant me the wish I wish tonight."
He paused and considered. Then he wished. "God bless Mom and Pop and me
and all my friends and make me a good boy and please let me be always
happy and I wish that anybody who tries to bother me would go away
… a long way away … and leave me alone forever."

In the middle of Maple Park Row, Marion Perkin Warbeck stepped forward and
drew breath for another hysterical yell. And then he was elsewhere, going
away on a road that was a long way away. It was a straight white road
cleaving infinitely through blackness, stretching onward and onward into
forever; a dreary, lonely, endless road leading away and away and away.

Down that road Warbeck plodded, an astonished automaton, unable to speak,
unable to stop, unable to think in the timeless infinity. Onward and
onward he walked into a long way away, unable to turn back. Ahead of him
he saw the minute specks of figures trapped on that one-way road forever.
There was a dot that had to be Herod. Ahead of Herod there was a mote that
was Joe Davenport. And ahead of Joe he could make out a long, dwindling
chain of mites. He turned once with a convulsive effort. Behind him, dim
and distant, a figure was plodding, and behind that another abruptly
materialized, and another … and another …

While Stuart Buchanan crouched behind the ash barrels and watched alertly
for the "it." He was unaware that he had disposed of Warbeck. He was
unaware that he had disposed of Herod, Joe Davenport, and scores of
others.

He was unaware that he had induced his parents to flee Washington Heights,
that he had destroyed papers and documents, memories and people, in his
simple desire to be left alone. He was unaware that he was a genius.

His genius was for wishing.

The End

© 1953 by Mercury Press, Inc. Reprinted with permission of the
author's estate, represented by The Pimlico Agency.

John Sladek

1. Washington Crossing the Yangtze

His predecessor had kept tape recorders running in every room, catching
his "thoughts" as he paced. But then his predecessor, Rogers, had always
been a flamboyant action-man leader, the first Secret Service agent to be
elevated to the position he guarded with his profile. His career spanned a
few headlines:

GBM SAVED FROM SHOOTING
HERO BODYGUARD TO RUN FOR SENATE
SEN. ROGERS WILL RUN
ROGERS WINS!
ROGERS
ASSASSINATED

Before the assassin could confess, the police station at which he was held
blew up, along with a fair piece of Mason City surrounding it. The FBI
found the cause to be a gas leak of an unusual type. On succeeding to the
office of Great Seal, our man promoted the investigating agent, K. Homer
Bissell, to bureau chief.