Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (77 page)

This seems to be a genuine case of clairvoyance. There is just no other
rational explanation!

Harry Boggs on Life

Harry gave an after-dinner lecture on the subject "Is There Life on Other
Planets?" to a dozen other residents of Donald O'Connor bunkhouse. He
concluded that there certainly was, and that it was of the utmost
importance to get in contact with the Uranians.

"That's the real reason they're building this wall," he said. "With
powerful telescopes, the Uranians will be able to see it."

Another important means of communication could be telepathy, he went on,
but most of us had our telepathic equipment damaged by a lack of vital sea
kelp in our diet. When he'd finished, four or five white heads in the
audience nodded, as if in agreement. Brad Dexter's was among them; Harry
bad seen bundles of
Unvarnished Truth
on a cart, bound for the
incinerator. And draped over the top bundle, what looked like a deflated
rubber dolly …

No time for such thoughts now, of course. Time for Harry's important
government work. Red-faced and breathless with vision, he hurried to his
room and tuned in on Listening Post.

"Number 764882. Number 764882," said an announcer slowly, so he could copy
it down. Two women's voices came on the air.

"… a slipped disk. But all in all, it wasn't bad."

"Haven't they got any forjias? No? Okay, bring me the roast sud. What did
you say his name was?"

Harry was happier talking about his important government work than
actually doing it, but he soldiered along. The FBI expected him to listen
to an hour a day of this:

"Impinging upon my career. The great chain of buying, that's what it is.
Impinging and impugning … impugn sort … Sri Mantovani
… Einstein and people like Einstein said that the world was flat
… reliance … bargain jay or meep …"

Harry vowed that he would never again say anything dull or unimportant in
a public place.

MEMO: From the desk of A. Lincoln

I generally find that a man slow to get a joke is slow to win a battle.
That is why I like to see my generals piss-eyed with laughter at all
times. General Ned Allison tells me he knows of three soldiers, who had
been imbibing, and were sent to a certain address in Gettysburg—but
I expect that this is just one of Ned's "leg-pullers." Hope you and Martha
are well. I and the missus are tolerable.

The Séance

Chug and Ayn had wanted to go, so much so that Ras suspected a secret
meeting. Perhaps this "séance" was really the place where they
received their orders from the Central Council of Anarchists. He'd
volunteered to go with them, and they'd insisted he go in their place.
There was his dilemma: Were they getting him out of the way while they
went elsewhere, or were they trying to bluff him out of the séance?

He went, still vaguely expecting the Central Council, men in beards and
dark glasses, calling themselves Breakfast, Coffee Break, Lunch, Tea,
Dinner, Supper and Midnight Snack …

The medium was an anemic old lady with knotty flesh hanging from her arms,
Mrs. Ross. The others were Hank James (an old man with mad eyes), Dr. Lane
(looked like a young optician), Mrs. Paris (a plump old lady with an
asthmatic Pekingese and a hat of similar material), and Steiner, a young
man with erupting skin.

As soon as the lights went out, Ras felt another presence, an enormous fat
man who almost filled the room. In the deep blind blackness it was
terrifying, for Ras dared not move for fear of touching the fat man.

The medium did not speak. After a moment, Ras said, "I thought it wasn't
supposed to work with a skeptic in the room."

A deep, fat voice came back at once: "Don't be an ass. That's what these
fraud mediums tell you, but don't listen to them. Actually it only works
when there is at least one skeptic in the room."

"Who are you?"

"Some call me God, Allah, Jaweh, the All, the Other, the Great
Imponderable, Bingo, Mammon, the Light, names like that. Call me what you
like, but call me in time for dinner."

Ras shuddered at the use of that particular noun. "Are you the chief of
the anarchists, then?"

"Why must there be a chief? Maybe we all walk shoulder to shoulder, shank
to shank. No leaders."

"Not your kind. You need kings to kill, at least. And presidents and
bishops and gods—all targets for your bombs."

"Go on. I find it fascinating the way reactionaries assume all the bombs
and guns are turned against them. Who raises the armies, builds the
rockets, buys the bombs, draws the border and declares war, if not your
kings and presidents?"

"I should warn you," Ras said through gritted teeth, "I am an agent of the
FBI." The time for caution was past.

"That is obvious, and needs no warning. But you'd better warn me if you
feel a change of heart coming on."

"No danger of that, my fat friend!"

"Ah! But if you say that, you are on the very brink of conversion to
anarchy!"

"But you are the forces of anarchy. You are they who hate and fear the
light, they who hate order because it is orderly, life because it is
alive."

"Am I?"

Suddenly it was all wrong. Ras felt as if he had betrayed himself, to
himself. He was the anarchist, and this voice the spirit of Law and Order,
of J. Edgar Hoover, of—

"Damn you!" he shrieked. "Damn you, Chesterton!"

"Chesterton?" said the voice as the lights came up. "But my dear chap,
Chesterton is simply other people."

Mrs. Ross opened her eyes and beamed. "My, how successful we have been!"
she said. "Two strong emanations! I think I liked the one called
Chesterton best, though the late FBI agent was nice too."

Dr. Lane's Secret Journal (III)

Dr. Veck has refused to accept my parapsychological explanation of Hank's
predictions. He's refused to even discuss them. But I tried Hank out at a
séance and also with ESP cards, with interesting results. At the séance
I actually spoke with the spirit of Chesterton and heard him curse
himself! This may not be Hank's influence, of course. Still, there are the
ESP scores. His psychosis seems to have brought him near to some crack in
the fabric of futurity so that his inner eye
sees through!
If Dr.
Veck continues trying to suppress this discovery of national importance, I
may have to unleash Hank's terrible power upon him.

Hank's terrible power is that he knows the future—which means the
future is in some way here already! We need only ask him what to do, and
receive the awful impress of his ESPing reply.

PS. I find my concentration on receiving ESP messages is much keener when
I restrict my diet to brown foods—brown eggs, bread, sugar, and rice—and
to iron-rich foods such as molasses. Perhaps the iron sets up induction
currents. But I must retain control. Hysteresis is the path to hysteria.

Ratio

"I haven't got any 'corrected problems' for you this time. In fact I feel
like giving all this up. Why don't you just tell your piano teacher that I
can't find out any more about their bombs. About anything. And I'm not
sure I care."

"I … see. Well, then, how about the lesson?"

"The lesson?"

"I've already learned some of it." To Ras's horror, the old man closed his
eyes and began reciting from memory the tables of sines and cosines.

Maybe I am an anarchist.
The
anarchist. But is this law and order?
Sitting here listening to a mad old man?

At 4° 15', Ras lurched from the table.

"I … haven't finished."

"I know, excuse me, I feel a little sick." He stumbled into the dark
hallway and snatched at a doorknob at random.

"No, wait! Don't open that!"

Ras crashed into a closet full of glass gallon jugs. As he recoiled, one
jug tipped and fell, splattering its contents. The smell of stale piss
rose about him. "My God!"

"I'm sorry. I'm … very retentive, you see."

When Ras had slammed out of the house, Mr. von Jones shrugged, cleared his
throat, curled his right foot around a table leg, lifted an eyebrow,
coughed. A terrible scene. A terrible young man. Damage had been done and
repairs were needed. Mr. von Jones counted to ten thousand, to the
metronome.

Resist; A Plot Is Brought Home; The Tour

Ras cornered Chug in a café. "Listen, I have a—" He meant
"confession to make," but finished "plan." His voice shook, and his eyes
reflected the peculiar disagreeable yellow of the Formica tables. "We'll
blow up the White House and kill the president."

Keeping his face straight, Chug nodded. "Okay. I've got an idea for the
bomb to do it with." On the yellow Formica he sketched his design for an
enormous steam-driven duck that could sing "Taking a Chance on Love" while
delivering an explosive egg.

Harry Boggs could hardly believe his good luck. But, by jingo, there was
no doubt about it. This "Ras" and his pal "Chug" were plotting
assassination. This was the real thing!

Countdown

The piano teacher had brought along a piano tuner. "Listen, Mr. von Jones,
we're making the raid today. We have to know the name of our contact man
on the inside. I mean, is he still working for us? We haven't had a report
for weeks."

"I … a report?"

The two men leaned over him. "Mr. von Jones? Are you all right?"

"Look at this, Don. Pupils are different sizes. This guy's had a stroke."

"I'm … fine, really. And I know the young man you mean. But his
name just … I didn't retain it."

The raid proceeded. The FBI succeeded in arresting all members of the gang
except the one called "Ras," who they suspected was the ringleader. The
rest were interrogated and packed off to Fort Nixon for retraining as good
citizens.

My Struggle

Late that night, the president worked at his memoirs in the small office
attached to his bedroom.

… and all of the Negroes wanted to shake my hand!! Combined with
the rest of the day's defeats, the pressures of responsibility for this
heaviest office in the land, it was almost enough to shake my faith in
my own destiny. But not quite.

I had much to be weary about. Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska were virtually
a dustbowl. South Africa and its satellite nations were getting tough
about Tanzania. The War still dragged on. The steel and rail strikes
still dragged on. The cities—better not spoken of. Yet I had time
in the midst of the storm to share a quiet joke with General Hare. I
asked if he knew what kind of boat would be a slow boat to China? The
answer was, a gravy boat!

The Great Seal enjoyed his joke all over again. It was the only one he'd
ever made, unless you counted the Great Wall of Mexico.

The Reagan Room

"What I want to know," said one of the Roosevelts to another as they went
off duty, "is what he does in the Reagan Room? I've seen trays of food go
in there, and a doctor."

The other smiled the famous Roosevelt smile. "I thought you knew. He keeps
a wounded soldier in there. Some say he just sits and chats with him,
gives him encouragement. But others say it's very odd that he particularly
asked for a soldier with a belly wound."

"Just a minute!" The first FDR scowled. "That's the president you're
talking about, mister. Watch yourself!"

"Now calm down. Listen, even the president might do something he's not
very proud of now and then, right? I mean, he's only phocine, for Christ's
sake. Try to see this thing in the greater perspective of his brilliant
career."

"Okay, okay. I just said watch it, that's all."

4. The Cockroach

Dr. Lane's Secret Journal (IV)

Hank has tapped out his ESP message in no uncertain terms. I see that Dr.
Veck is an obstacle to science. My task is clear, for Hank has sent me a
picture of Dr. Veck lying in a pool of blood. It must be done. I am but
the instrument of fate, or of G. K. Chesterton. Perhaps they are one and
the same. O my restless, questioning soul, thirsting for truth!

Later. I did it. I killed Veck in the middle of his work on a very
interesting paper on socialism and epilepsy. Hank took the news calmly,
considering that he is now off drugs.

"We're all of us doomed anyway," he said.

"Doomed?"

"The Wall. The Wall was my idea in the first place."

"You influenced future ev—"

"I influenced my nephew. A long time ago I told my nephew an idea of mine
for a Great Wall of Mexico. It was to be a giant decorated sculpture. My
nephew much later became a special 'creative' adviser to the president.
Obviously he has put my idea into effect. Young Bill Filcup was always
very enterprising."

"But the doom?"

"Well, you and I, and this hospital-prison, and a lot of other people and
places, are the decoration."

I said I didn't understand. He laughed.

"We just haven't been applied yet," he said.

The meaning of all this escapes me. It may be clear one day. From my
window I can see the Wall, and the magnificent sunset. I

Harry

Harry thought he smelled something burning.

The U— S— of A—

A movie scenario by "Phil Nolan":

Scene I.
A peak in Darien. Cortez stands gazing upon the Pacific,
which, it is clear from the way his men exchange glances, he has just
named. He is silent.

Scene II.
Rapidly turning calendar pages: November 28, 29,
Brumaire, 1666, Aries, November 30, 31, Ventose, 6379, 125, Thursday,
5427, New Moon.

Scene III.
The Delaware River. Washington approaches, throws silver
dollar across.

Scene IV.
Old Glory flutters in breeze. Offscreen voices hum "God
Save the King."

Scene V.
Japanese diplomats walking out of League of Nations.
Offscreen lugubrious voice: "The treacherous Japanese insisted they were a
peace-loving people, and we believed them. Then—the stab in the back
that brought Mr. and Mrs. America to their senses. On December 7, 1941—(cut
to atomic bomb explosion)—
Pearl Harbor!
"