Part 6

There were thousands of red apples, fit only for making pies if the peeler had the patience to cut away the bad spots.

I followed his point and he was right. Nestled in among the trees was a big bulk of a thing, brownish gray. It certainly wasn't anything that had been in the woods before.

"Do you see any people?" I asked Harry.

"No. Let's go knock on their door."

"No!" I said. "Let's circle around and see what it looks like from the other side."

We circled. I managed to tear my other shirt sleeve on a sticker that also drew blood. Then for a while we made better progress along the bed of a sunken, abandoned road. We had kept the spaceship on our left and now I could see a huge clearing on the far side of it, strung over with some kind of camouflage netting.

"There they are!" Harry said.

"Quiet!" I said, pulling him down behind the lip of the old road. I was past caring about clothes now.

There were at least a dozen of them in the clearing. More were coming out of the open hatch of the spaceship. Apparently they hadn't heard us. I uncapped the telescope and looked.

They were wearing their native woolen cloaks and were setting up furniture in the clearing, which had been divided into room-size rectangles outlined on the bare ground with paint or strips of white cloth.

In addition to the chairs, tables, desks and bookcases they had a number of pieces of equipment which vaguely resembled movie or television cameras.

"What are they doing, Uncle Sam?" Harry asked. "Let me look through the telescope."

"I don't know. It looks as if they're building movie sets. Maybe the walls will come later." I handed him the telescope.

"Look, they're coming out different now," Harry said, and I grabbed the telescope back.

Those stepping out of the hatch now were wearing Earth-style clothes, and not carrying anything. But not all of the clothes looked American. There were men in wide-lapeled European suits, men in the white linen suits of tropical countries, men in the jodhpurs or dhotis of the Asian Indian, men in glittering military uniforms and men in drab, unadorned military jackets worn by the leaders of some totalitarian countries. They went to the various room-sized rectangles and sat or stood. No one was talking.

Then I looked closely at their faces. I almost dropped the telescope.

I saw the Prime Ministers of England and India, the leader of the United Arab Republic, the President of France and half a dozen other premiers or presidents, ex-, present or potential.

Gouverneur Allison was there for the United States, as was Rupert Marriner, the Secretary of State, and several other high administrative officials.

I was watching the Soviet Union's top men come out when I heard a noise behind us.

"Run!" I told Harry, getting up myself. "Run home and tell your daddy."

He hesitated. "Aren't you coming, Uncle Sam?"

"I'll go another way, to confuse them. Go on, now!"

Harry ran back along the sunken road. I started in the other direction. I hadn't taken twenty steps when a Monolithian in a woolen cloak rose up in front of me. I darted off sideways and ran into another one. There were five in all.

Escape would have been impossible even with the machete. Without speaking they escorted me toward the clearing.

11 (AUG. 1, FRI.)

Be good and you will be lonesome.

--Mark Twain

I woke up. It was completely dark. For a few seconds I stared up into the blackness, then turned on my side and tried to go back to sleep. But in a moment I realized I wasn't in my own bed and remembered that I was a prisoner.

Fully awake, I sat up. The room, becoming light in a gradual effulgence, revealed itself as a cube about nine feet on each side, furnished with two things--a seven-foot couch, covered with a coarse wool material, and me. There was nothing else. I couldn't trace the source of the light. I lay down and the light faded; I sat up and it came on again.

My wristwatch was gone and I had no idea how long it had been since my capture. I had been marched in silence to the clearing, passing through four or five of the wall-less rooms. No one had spoken as I was led to one of the hatches of the spaceship.

I had made various remarks as I was being taken in--such as "What's going on?" "You can't do this to me," "I've got to get to work, for pete's sake," and "Listen, will you?"--but my captors weren't conversation-minded.

I was led up a ramp and into the relatively dim interior of the spaceship. I had a recollection of narrow corridors and an occasional notice painted on the wall in some alien script. Then I was pushed into a cabin and the door closed behind me. My captors stayed outside, but there was a man in the room, sitting behind a long table in one of the two big chairs. He was wearing a woolen cloak. He was older than any of the bright young men I'd seen before, white haired and grave in expression. He was tossing a ball from hand to hand. It wasn't a baseball, but I had said, for no reason that I could remember now, "I'm a Braves fan myself."

He smiled and said, "Sit down," indicating the other chair. "Yankees."

"That's no team," I said, sitting down, "that's a machine."

"Be that as it may," he said, "you must wonder why we are here."

"Not at all," I said. "You're not on my property." I was saying whatever came into my mind. I think my idea was to discomfit him and provoke him into saying something he didn't plan to--something revealing.

He kept tossing the ball from hand to hand. It was about the size of a handball, hard and black but apparently not rubber.

He revealed nothing. "The dew is heavy in the morning," he said, looking at my soaked clothing. "And you've got a nasty scratch. Would you like something for it?"

"What have you got?" I asked. "Mendicants?" I was freely associating, having nothing better in mind.

"Oh, yes. Medicants _and_ mendicants. Menders and vendors and buttons and bows. Pills and potions and ankle-length hose."

I decided this was part of an attempt to hypnotize me and looked away from his tossing ball.

"And Mendes-France," I said, "and Hugh Gaitskell and Krishna Menon."

"Not to mention Sam Kent," he said. "Here, catch."

He tossed the ball to me and in reflex I caught it.

I woke up in the nine-foot cube.

* * * * *

Somewhere between then and now I'd been stripped of my sopping clothes and garbed in one of their woolen cloaks. It didn't itch as I'd imagined it would. In fact, I was quite comfortable. I wasn't hungry or thirsty either. I judged by this that it had been only a few hours since I'd caught the ball, which apparently was some kind of knockout drop, and been transferred to this cubic prison and its automatic lighting.

I got off the couch and explored. The walls, floor and ceiling were made of a gray metallic substance, neither cold nor warm to the touch. The couch was nothing more than an extension of the floor--two feet high and seven feet long--with half a dozen thick brown woolen blankets over it. There was no crack or seam in any wall to indicate a door and no vent to bring in the clean air I was breathing. I sat down, baffled.

After a while I said, "Hey!"

There was no answer.

I lay down and the light went out. I sat up again. The light came on.

My cloak had no pockets. I took it off and, naked, turned it inside out. It taught me nothing. I put it back on and thought idly of smoking a cigarette. There are times when I sit at the news desk and words simply will not come unless I light a cigarette. It may be that I don't take a single puff after the first one, but the mere action of lighting the cigarette sets the old train of thought to operating. But now I couldn't have cared less if I never had a cigarette. Or a drink. Or food.

But my curiosity was still perking. I got to my feet and made another circuit of the little room. I found something I'd overlooked before. On one of the walls near a corner were two knobs, one above the other. They were set out a scant quarter inch from the wall and were of the same color and material.

"This opens the door," I told myself, turning the top one clockwise.

No door opened.

"Then this does," I said, turning the other one.

Instead I got music. I'd found a radio.

It was Perez Prado, that musical humorist, ripping out an unabashed Latinate romp through an old standard, giving it new excitement with his dramatic pauses and irreverent burps.

The Prado record ended and a recorded commercial came on:

"Ladies, stop tearing the end off the wrapper on a loaf of bread," was the message I got. From this exhortation to the ladies, I judged that this was daytime radio.

The next station was more informative: "Temperature now 75 degrees--bright and enjoyable. And we hope it's nice where you are this fine Friday morning...."

Friday! It had been Thursday when my neighbor's boy had led me through the apple orchard. I wondered if young Harry had reported my capture, and if he had, whether anybody believed him.

My next thought was of Mae. She must be worried sick about me. She wouldn't have worried till suppertime yesterday, when I didn't get home on time--unless the office had called her to find out why I hadn't come to work, as it probably had. That meant she'd already had 24 hours of anxiety. I banged on the walls with my palms, then kicked with the flat of my bare foot, but no one came.

"Can't stay in bed?" the radio asked me. "Get up and still get five stay-in-bed benefits."

I turned the volume up as high as it would go, hoping that would attract the attention of my captors. But the rest of the booming commercial and the ensuing rendition of _Stardust_--a song I can do without--did nothing but hurt my ears.

I reduced the volume for a panegyric to "the most delightfully different cigarette ever made" and reflected that in spite of the fact that my own pack was gone with my clothes I didn't want to smoke.

Nor was I thirsty, I realized during subsequent commercials praising the joys of Coke and Seven Up. And I wasn't hungry, not reacting to the one about there being "more crackling good taste in every slice"--meaning bacon. And fortunately, considering the john-less aspect of my cell, I didn't have to go to the bathroom. My appetites seemed to have vanished with the 24 hours that had gone out of my life since I caught that handball in the alien's office.

What were they doing to me? I wondered. What had they done to me? I paced the limited confines of my prison, occasionally banging on the hard wall, then threw myself on the couch. As I lay down the lights went out and the radio faded. I sat up. The lights came on again and the radio woke up to say:

"Time for news from American--live at 55! The news in just a moment."

"From Hackensack, New Jersey, an interesting sidelight on the aliens," the voice was saying in the verbless way of radio newsmen. "Commuters, faced with a new fare increase totaling 81 per cent in ten months, revolted against the Susquehanna Railroad today and rode to work in a bus provided by the Monolithians. They pay $24 a month instead of the $35 the new railroad fare would have cost. There was no immediate comment from the Susquehanna, but a spokesman from the commuters' association said the idea is so successful that a second group is joining...."

That being the first news item, it was obvious that nothing startling had been going on. Whatever all those duplicate men were planning to do, they hadn't done it yet.

"In Boston, a group of alien volunteers pitched in with a will to help tow away illegally parked cars. In the first two hours they towed away 28 unmarked police cars...."

WABC's newscast came five minutes before the hour. I switched to the NBC station, "where news comes first"--meaning on the hour--and endured the opening gongs which were NBC's substitute for big black headlines. It started off with a couple of non-Monolithian items from overseas.

"More news in a moment. But first--"

"Isn't there someone, somewhere, whose voice you'd like to hear? Well then, why not pick up your telephone...."

I yelled at it, "Yes, God damn it! Why don't I just?" and switched it off.

I must have fallen asleep. I came to in darkness and when I sat up the lights glowed on. I tried the radio again. Music.

I still wasn't hungry or thirsty and I still didn't have to go to the bathroom. I wondered if I were being watched. I looked again for a possible tiny television eye but couldn't see any. I considered thumbing my nose in all directions, as a morale factor, but decided it would be undignified.

I wondered what time it was, how long I'd slept. Somehow it sounded like early evening music, suitable for housewives preparing dinner and men driving home from a hard day at the office.

Then station identification told me it was seven o'clock (P.M.) and asked whether right about here I would like a beer. The answer was no. All I wanted was to get out.

"And now we bring you that popular round-table discussion of events of the day, _News and Newsmen_," the radio said, "featuring the men who edit the news for leading papers and wire services. Tonight our subject is 'Monolithians--Friend or Foe?' and our panel consists of Russell Sidenam, city editor of the _World-Telegram_; Barton Pascal, reporter on the _Daily News_; Herb Small, from the world desk of the Associated Press; and Sam Kent, assistant editor of the New York bureau of World Wide News...."

A few minutes later, after the inevitable commercial, I heard my own voice passionately defending the Monolithians as men of principle and high conscience whose only purpose was to uplift their brethren on Earth to a realization of their manifest destiny as worthy members of the community of the Interstellar Realm.

12 (AUG. 2, SAT.)

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

--Thoreau

I had put myself to sleep by playing the name game. You start with two A's, as in Alfred Adler, then go to AB, Anthony Boucher, and so on--Arthur Clarke, Antal Dorati, Albert Einstein, Alexander Fleming. I dropped off somewhere in the middle of the C's--Mickey Cohen or Norman Corwin--and woke up knowing exactly where I was and wondering what time it was.

It turned out to be 8 A.M., August 2d, according to Station WTRU, which was playing wake-up music for the poor souls who had to work on Saturday, and a fine warm day it looked like it would be. For me it looked like it would be the same kind of cooped-in day, with nothing to do but chomp at the bit and wax wroth at the aloof jailers who had stolen my identity and sent it out to make me look ridiculous. He who steals my purse steals trash, I thought, but he who steals my good name.... They'd stolen both, these alien do-gooders with their sweet mad reasonableness.

"They said it couldn't be done--couldn't be done!" the radio boomed.

Well, they done did it. I didn't know how, but they duplicated me and sent me out to champion their cause while the original model languished helpless in their cell, beset by commercials and growing a fine beard.

"Our traffic-conditions helicopter reports unusual tie-ups in various suburban areas," WTRU was saying. "Traffic is bumper-to-bumper and backed up for miles in some sections.... For a direct report we go to our beeper-phone and we'll see if we can talk to the police department in Haverstraw, New York, close to the scene of one of the major tie-ups on Route 9W."

I perked up at that. Haverstraw is near High Tor on the west bank of the Hudson River.

"My engineer tells me we've got Sergeant Kiefer of the Haverstraw police on the beeper-phone. Go ahead, Sergeant Kiefer! Tell us, what's the cause of the big traffic jam on Route 9W?"

Sergeant Kiefer came in, loud, clear and profane. "Some God damn jerks are obeying the 20-mile speed limit," he said.

"Heh, heh, Sergeant Kiefer," the announcer said. "Remember, you're on the beeper-phone. This is radio, you know! What's that you say about the speed limit?"

"The speed limit's 20 miles an hour and there's two cars abreast on the highway not going any faster. Traffic's backed up clear to Piermont to the south."

"Piermont to the south," the announcer repeated, just as if it meant something to him. "How about in the other direction, Sergeant?"

"Same God damn thing. Two other wise guys ambling along----"

"You're on the _air_, Sergeant!"

"Same thing, I mean. They're backed up north to Bear Mountain. It's murder."

"Why don't you arrest them, Sergeant?"

"For what? For obeying the speed limit? It'd make more sense to arrest the stupid jerks that posted the 20-mile limit on a state highway."

"Just a minute, Sergeant! We're getting a message from our WTRU traffic-conditions helicopter that the lead cars, both northbound and southbound, have banners reading 'Monolithians Obey the Law.' Can you confirm that, Sergeant? Is it true that the Monolithian space people are the instigators of this fantastic traffic tie-up up there in--in--what county is that up there where you are anyway, Sergeant?"

"Rockland County. Yeah. That's what their signs say. One of the cars is a Volkswagen and there's some guy in it says he's a reporter. Sam Kent of World Wide. Legal Sam, the law-abiding man, he told us he was. You know him?"

"I've heard of World Wide, Sergeant. It's one of the three wire services we have here at WTRU to give you and all our listeners the most complete, up-to-the-minute news of any station in the metropolitan area. You say a reporter is personally instigating this mass traffic tie-up?"

"He's legal. We can't touch him. You want to know anything else? I got to get back to work here."

The announcer let him go back to work because he had to go back to work himself--to wit, to put on a commercial about something that was more lastingly odor-free than any other something.

So my alter ego had stolen not only my good name but my little red Volkswagen as well. I hoped he was keeping it in second for his 20-mile-an-hour jaunt and not ruining the gear-box by trying to do 20 in third.

Then a more urgent thought occurred to me. Had Spurious Sam, the Duplicated Man, gone home last night and posed as the lawful wedded husband of Mae Kent? If that was the case I wasn't even missing, and no one would ever have investigated young Harry's story of my capture.

"Let me out of this God damned trap!" I yelled, getting as profane as Sergeant Kiefer. Nobody paid any attention.

My attention wandered during the next news item, which was about a cabinet crisis in one of the Arab states, and I began to think about my stomach. I still wasn't hungry, but a peculiar sensation was setting in. I can only describe it as a hunger to be hungry.

I was also experiencing a thirst to be thirsty. For a while I kept saying to myself, "You get more beer in your beer in New Jersey"--parroting the words of one of the few clever commercials I had heard. I stopped doing that when it began to sound idiotic--but then I started asking myself: "Right about here wouldn't you like a beer?" and the answer was almost beginning to be yes.

This led to my becoming cigarette-conscious. My mind flitted from one slogan to another. Twenty thousand filter traps (or was it 40,000?). You can light either end. Protects the T-Zone. Independent laboratory tests prove.... Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet. (I wasn't even old enough to smoke when that one was current.) I'd walk a mile for a Camel. Travels the smoke further. Wherever particular people congregate....

Stop it, I told myself. You don't want a cigarette (wanting one). You don't want a drink, Sam; they teetotalled you (but it was wearing off). Why not go out to dinner tonight? (Medium rare, waiter; and lots of mushrooms.) And then Mae--Mae, Mae! I wanted my cute little pregnant wife, walking around flat-footed in her maternity blouse and smiling secretly to herself over our burgeoning child.

It was right about here that the radio man dug out and started to play an extremely associative song of Mae's and mine--_Who's Your Little Whoozis_. And then I blacked out.

13 (AUG. 3, SUN.)

I have been in such a pickle since I saw you last.

--Shakespeare

I wasn't in my cell any more. I was lying back in an armchair in a large comfortable-looking room. There was one other person in it, a kindly looking middle-aged man in another armchair next to a wall under a painting of a country scene, with trees and cows and a sky studded with tiny clouds.

"Hello," the man said. "I am Mox." He was wearing one of those Monolithian cloaks. "How are you?"

I felt too weak to answer. I tapped my finger on the arms of the chair and the effort made me terribly tired. I closed my eyes again.

"Lunch is about to be served," Mox said. "Perhaps you would care to freshen up first? To shave?"

I opened my eyes and rubbed a hand over my cheeks. They were pretty whiskery.

"How are you fixed for blades?" I said. Don't ask me why. One gets conditioned.

"Amply," Mox said. He made a gesture with his left hand and somebody in another woolen cloak came in with shaving equipment, put it on a table at my elbow and went out, bowing.

I looked at the steaming bowl of hot water, the tube of shaving cream (brush versus jar, I thought, remembering the old ad), the razor and mirror. I looked in the mirror, expecting the worst. The beard was pretty heavy and the cheeks under it looked more sunken than I'd remembered. But my eyes were clear and my tongue looked normal.

"There will be no deleterious effects," Mox said. "You'll be good as new after your lunch."

"Lunch? What time is it?"

He seemed to do a mental conversion before he replied: "Twelve-seventeen P.M. Eastern Daylight Saving Time; 1617 Greenwich."

"And an hour later on the Rue de la Paix," I said. "I'll have the snails and some Beaujolais." I was feeling light-headed.

"Interesting," he said, watching me with an encouraging smile.

"But irrelevant. I couldn't eat snails on an empty stomach. I just said that because it rhymes. What have you got for American times?"

"Lamb chops," Mox said, looking at me closely now, "baked potato, broccoli, tossed salad, strawberry shortcake and coffee. Or----"

"That's for me. Stop right there. Can I have it now and shave later? I'm starved."

"Certainly. Without further ado." Mox raised his right hand again and the same man came in, though he couldn't have seen the signal, wheeling a tray. An almost overpoweringly delicious smell reached my nostrils and I shivered a little in my chair.

Mox got up. "I'll leave you while you fall in," he said. I didn't answer him, being busy taking the covers off the serving dishes. I suppose he meant "fall to," which I did, with a will.

My curiosity returned as I appeased my appetite. Having wolfed down the meat and vegetables with hardly a conscious thought, I went through the salad in more leisurely fashion, rehearsing questions to ask Mox. I positively dawdled over the cake and coffee, it having just occurred to me that this could be the equivalent of the doomed man's last meal.

"Look, Mox," I said when he came back. "Thanks all the same, but I don't think I'll shave. Just give me my clothes and I'll go now. No; don't bother. I'll go as I am. I don't live very far. Oh--and thanks for the lunch."

Mox smiled and sat down. "You're a very amusing man, Mr. Kent. We couldn't possibly let you go. We have great plans for you."

"Plans?" The well-being induced by the lunch began to seep away. "Like what?"

"Details later. First we should discuss the terms of your employment. The salary will be substantial, so there'll be no problem there, but you might be interested in the fringe benefits, such as the size of your paid-up life insurance policy, the beneficiaries...."

"Now, look. I haven't said I'd join your organization...."