The Thing in B-3 Page 5

  “Nothing ever does,” Connell said.

  Bill touched the handle. The drawer glided open. He forced himself to look at the image of the girl. “Well, Pat?”

  “I don’t see a thing,” Connell said.

  Bill, without looking away from the drawer, laid his hand on Connell’s shoulder. The gesture seemed unconcerned. Actually, Bill was borrowing strength for his sagging knees.

  “Of course.” Bill’s whisper was a part of the effort to breathe. “The drawer is empty.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Pat said. “The air in the compartment is made up of billions upon billions of atoms, each as complex in structure and motion as the solar system itself. I don’t see them, either.”

  Bill drew his hand from Connell’s shoulder. “This is no time for classroom speculations.”

  “Got any better tools?”

  “You know what I mean!”

  “I know exactly,” Connell said. “You want a cut-and-dried answer. You want to duck the fact that we human beings are as ignorant as we are. You want a nice, neat theory pieced together out of the, bits and pieces of stuff we call knowledge. But”— Connell shrugged—“even if I had the answer it might sound as ridiculous as the idea of a round earth once did to the man conditioned from birth to a flat world.”

  Connell looked at the compartment with the naked wish in his eyes that something was there. “I can’t be dishonest with you, not you, of all my students and friends. You want an answer in black and white terms—and I cant give it to you.”

  “Something is in the drawer,” Bill said, “or I’m . . . nuts.”

  “Why must that be true?”

  “There isn’t any other answer,” Bill cried.

  “Not according to our present knowledge,” Connell agreed. “But what is our present knowledge? The knowledge of a thousand years ago was the present knowledge of that day—and a lot of those fellows were certain they’d found the answers.” Bill turned away. He gripped the edge of the surgical table, his shoulders drawn with his storming thoughts.

  “Homaday would see a clear answer. He’d say I’ve blown my stack.” Bill wrestled the words out. “Even Dad. . . .”

  “Homaday, yes,” Connell said. “He’s of that turn of mind. But your father—well, I’m not so sure his mind is so stifled with knowledge. He’s smart enough to glimpse how much we don’t know.”

  Bill stared at the wall. “And you, Pat?”

  “What’s the evidence?” Pat’s voice was almost droning in its steadiness and calm. “You see the girl. You, and no one else. Since she isn’t there in material form, the handiest explanation is that you’re mentally haywire. But that simply doesn’t include all of the evidence.”

  “Is there any more?” Bill asked bitterly.

  “You bet there is!” Connell gave the compartment a slight push. It closed easily on its oiled rollers. “Unable to explain it, some of our learned colleagues would dismiss the knotty point as unimportant. But the fact remains, there's a big flaw in the case against you.”

  “I’d sure like to hear it.”

  “It’s right in front of our noses,” Connell said. “At first glance, the evidence indicates that you’ve suffered a hallucination. But if we consider all the evidence, a big question rises.”

  Connell moved a couple of steps nearer Bill. “As we understand it, a hallucination is a symptom of a severe mental illness. An illness of that degree always gives advance warning. The patient’s behavior pattern changes and declines over a period of time. Do you follow me, Bill?”

  “Every word you say.” Bill’s tone took on a fervent quality.

  “Okay. Boil it down to your individual case. You’ve been surrounded by medically trained people all your life. Could you have reached the point of hallucinating without someone around you detecting the earlier signs, the danger signals? Frankly, I think it would be impossible.”

  A glint of hope filled Bill’s features. “Pat. . . .” Connell held up a hand. “Now wait a minute. I’m not dumb enough to give you an all-wise answer. I’m just trying to admit all the evidence, not duck it because it throws us face to face with the unknown. Not ignore it because it raises questions beyond the range of our present-day scientific experience. I’m laying it on the line, that’s all. No one saw any danger signals because there weren’t any. Even now, your fears and questions about your sanity have a healthy, normal ring.”

  Bill slowly released his grip on the edge of the table. “How do you explain the image in B-three?” “How did primitive man explain lightning?” Connell said, rather shortly. “But did his inability to explain make the lightning non-existent?”

  Bill knew the rhetorical question didn’t require an answer. He watched every flicker of expression on Connell’s face, the deepening of the eyes, the tightening of lip muscles.

  “The admission of all the evidence,” Pat said, “tangles us in two possibilities. First, your case should prove unique in the history of mental illnesses—or we have here—” he seemed hesitant to take the step over an invisible, unknown edge—“a classic, authentic experience in the area of parapsychology.”

  His words hung. The chill in the morgue seemed to drop several degrees.

  Bill’s gaze eased toward the closed, impassive front of B-3. “Like ESP? Extrasensory perception?” “Like a psychic force at work,” Pat agreed. “And, frankly, I wish she would have picked on someone else. Say, in Denmark, or Argentina.”

  “I’d go along with that,” Bill said wryly. “But I guess even Galileo was bugged when he peeped through his telescope and saw the wild rings around the planet Saturn.”

  Connell slapped him lightly on the shoulder, clearly pleased at the way Bill was wearing, enduring, and hanging onto a stabilizing sense of humor. “My theory may be way off base, Bill.”

  “I know. But we’ll grab hold until we can think of something better.”

  Together they crossed the boneyard. Bill opened the sliding door and let Pat precede him into the hallway.

  Then he closed the door and fell in step beside Pat.

  “I wonder who she is ... was,” Bill said.

  Connell nodded, coming to a stop when they reached the reception room. “As a psychic experience, she certainly raises questions. Where she came from.”

  “Why she picked on me,” Bill said.

  “How long the phenomenon will last,” Pat added. “How she managed it.”

  “And why.”

  They stopped speaking in the same instant and stood looking at each other.

  “I get the feeling,” Bill said, “that she was a kind of nice girl. Tenderhearted. Generous.” His hand crept up to his temple in a vague motion. “Some how, I get the idea she suffered and doesn’t like to see people suffer.”

  “The experience is a warning?”

  “Yes,” Bill nodded. “Come to think of it, I guess it is. Something is about to happen, but it can be prevented. B-three is trying to make the future a little different for somebody.”

  Pat ran his fingers through his lank brown hair. “Ambulance .. .” he mused. “Accident... battered face ... could there be a connection?”

  “Wish I knew,” Bill said heavily. “I sure wish I knew. Gives me the feeling of being on a long limb. If I’m supposed to prevent something, I wish I knew who, how, what, when, where ”

  “Maybe you’ll find out”

  Bill turned to look in the direction of the bone-yard. “I don’t think so, Pat. I get the feeling she’s done all she can. Somehow—if I’m to understand— I’ve got to meet her halfway. And I don’t think I have very much time left to do it in.”

  5

  Sudden Awakenings

  DR. LATHAM CAME INTO THE DINING ROOM WITH HIS FACE A RUDDY GLOW AND HIS IRON GRAY HAIR CURLING DAMPLY AT THE ENDS FROM HIS MORNING SHOWER.

  Victoria was already at the table, gulping orange juice and toast. “Hi, Dad. You look just great this morning.”

  Moving to the buffet, Dr. Latham smiled. Everything, the whole
world, looked great to Vicky these days. And looking at her bright face, the early sunlight catching in her dark hair, Dr. Latham himself felt pretty good.

  He poured a cup of Mrs. Hofstetter’s robust coffee and turned to sit down at the end of the table.

  The morning paper lay folded beside his plate. He picked it up, snapped it open, but he didn’t look at it right away.

  “Any further word from Fortesque Fifth Avenue yesterday?”

  “Nope—but any day now. I do declare, you’re as anxious about the job as I am.”

  “Just shoving the young bird out of the nest.” Dr. Latham laughed. Affectionately he watched Vicky dash the last of the juice into her mouth. “Young lady, a doctor should have the healthiest family in town. So take time to taste or you’ll ruin your digestion.”

  “These days I could digest nails.” Victoria tossed her napkin beside her plate and jumped up. She paused beside her father to give him a quick hug and peck on the cheek. “Just you take time to eat. You’re not an entire medical squad, you know.”

  Her parting gesture was a flip on his earlobe. “Got to run. Big doings. I don’t want any loose ends at the store when Fortesque Fifth Avenue whistles.” Dr. Latham watched her dash to the cloak closet in the foyer and peel out a light coat for the autumn morning. She flung it capelike about her shoulders and blew a kiss back as the front door closed behind her.

  Her departure left Dr. Latham with a sudden awareness of the quiet in the house about him.

  He picked up his coffee and sipped slowly. Vicky and Bill—children no longer. The day was just after the morrow when his crack about the nest would be a fact.

  He looked at the back of his hand. It was still firm and steady. Was it possible he’d used up so many years?

  His gaze drifted to the stretch of lawn visible through the sun-glowing windows. How long before the grass would be bruised by the racing feet of grandchildren? A skinned knee to doctor ... a sleepy head nestled against his chest as he told a story of witches and gingerbread houses....

  The moment was suddenly empty, as it hadn’t been for a long time. A wisp of the future crossed his mind, he and a child talking. Is that Grand-mamas picture on your bureau, Grandfather? . . . Yes, child. . . . She’s pretty, Grandfather. . . . She is indeed, child. . . . Did she get sick? . . . Yes, child, she went away from us. ...

  And I, he thought, was so helpless—little better than a witch doctor—against the adversary of cancer, when it struck my own wife.

  “Good morning, Doctor.” Mrs. Hofstetter's greeting snapped his mood. He glanced up. The spareboned housekeeper, entering from the kitchen, was carrying a serving of grapefruit sections.

  “I found some of those pinks you like so much at the supermarket yesterday.”

  “You spoil us all, Mrs. Hofstetter,” he said with a smile.

  She set the dish before him, then swished to the buffet to pour her second coffee of the morning. She joined him, sitting in one of the chairs at the side of the table.

  While the grapefruit disappeared, they discussed household problems. The old hot-water heater was balky again. Dr. Latham questioned whether it was worth the cost of another repair. The power company wanted to trim back the oak at the comer of the yard to protect the wires. Dr. Latham nodded permission.

  He glanced at the wristwatch which Bill and Vicky had given him last Christmas. “By the way,” he mentioned, “is Bill turning into a chronic ten o'clock scholar?”

  “He beat everybody out of bed this morning, Doctor. He’s already up and out.”

  “That’s too bad.” Dr. Latham liked for the family to breakfast together, their schedules nowadays scattering them so much during the day. Usually they did, although there were exceptions. Yesterday, for example, an emergency call had sent him to the slum section known as Goosetown before any of the household was stirring.

  “He didn’t look so upset this morning,” Mrs. Hofstetter remarked. “I was worried about that boy yesterday.”

  Dr. Latham’s coffee cup halted, half raised to his mouth. “Strange,” he murmured. He put down the cup slowly. “I had an anxious moment about Bill myself yesterday. Dr. Hornaday took the trouble to mention that Bill looked weatherish.”

  “Well, he was worried about the math quiz, for one thing. It isn’t his best subject, you know.” “Talking with Bill,” Dr. Latham followed his own line of thought, “it appeared that Homaday was miffed by a prank. Homaday does get cranky sometimes, when he’s overworked and his dinner long delayed. Still, I couldn’t get over the feeling that Bill wasn’t his usual bushy-tailed self.”

  “You know youngsters,” Mrs. Hofstetter said. “Draggy with a bug one minute and bouncing back the next.”

  “I doubt that it was a bug. But, in a sense, you may be right. He was down for a minute when I showed up. Skittish, jumpy. Then after I talked with him, I couldn’t isolate but one reason. Homaday’s reaction to a prank had jolted him. Bill hadn’t expected such a backfire as a report to his father.” “Bill’s no shrinking violet, and not yet the settled adult,” Mrs. Hofstetter said. “I’m not surprised he’s still got a boyish prank or two kicking around in him.”

  “This one was supposed to be more than just a joke. Some sort of far-out psychological test of Homaday’s reaction to an impossible development.” Mrs. Hofstetter pushed her chair back a few inches. “Ready for your eggs, Doctor?”

  He shook his head. “None this morning.” He watched his fingers turning the cup back and forth in its saucer. There was a hint of tension in the unconscious gesture. He pulled his hand away. “The more I think about it, the less real the experience seems. It doesn’t jibe with the Bill I know.”

  “Just what did he do, Doctor?”

  “He told Homaday that the unidentified and unrecorded body of a girl was in the morgue.”

  In the act of rising, Mrs. Hofstetter's muscles held. She eased back into her chair. Her gimlet eyes snapped. “Isn’t there?”

  “Of course not. That was the gimmick.”

  Mrs. Hofstetter's colorless lips pursed. “That’s odd. Yesterday morning Bill told me about the girl.”

  A tightness seeped through Dr. Latham’s muscles. The indefinable shadow of worry which had gnawed at him struggled to stronger life. What in the world was going on? Why this sudden twist in Bill’s behavior?

  His mind went over details of the experience in the morgue. I think I’m safe in saying that no material substance is in that drawer. Those had been Bill’s exact words. The phrases now seemed in Dr. Latham’s mind to smack of a too-careful, sideways statement of truth.

  Dr. Latham’s fingers twitched in a nervous drumming on the tabletop. He thought of the strong bond between himself and his son. He knew that his son would give his right arm for him. Despite this, Bill was holding back something. The meaning of the action was obvious. Bill was trying to shield him. And this implied that it was from something of a serious nature.

  His eyes met Mrs. Hofstetter’s. He sensed that the same sinister questions were needling her.

  “What can possibly be the meaning of it?” he wondered aloud.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea, Doctor. It just isn’t like Bill at all.”

  The chair became an uncomfortable pressure against Dr. Latham’s back. He stood up in sudden decision, strode into the kitchen, lifted down the wall phone, and dialed his office number.

  Miss Pegran, his nurse-receptionist, responded with the usual: “Dr. Latham’s office.”

  “This is the doctor,” he said. “What have we on the docket this morning?”

  “Mrs. Bayliss first.”

  “Routine prenatal,” he said.

  “Then Mr. Chizik...

  “For a cortisone injection. You needn’t detail the list, Miss Pegran. Just tell me if we have anything that looks critical.”

  “It’s the lightest schedule in days, Doctor.”

  Thank goodness for small favors, he thought. The parade through his office was rarely so healthy.

  “T
hen you and Dr. Smithfield can hold the fort for a while.” Young Smithfield had joined him a year ago, fresh from internship. Smithfield had wanted the sort of experience he would gain in Dr. Latham’s practice, and Dr. Latham had been glad to get him.

  The load had been too much for one man for a long time.

  “I’m sure we can, Doctor. When will you be in? Some of the older patients won't have anyone but you, you know, even for a case of heartburn.”

  ‘I’ll try to make it by noon. And of course I’ll keep in touch.”

  “Very well, Doctor.”

  Miss Pegran’s tone told him that her curiosity was rising like a malarial thermometer. She couldn’t remember when Dr. Latham had taken the morning off. To her, the prospect was comparable to the idea of the President boarding up the White House.

  Dr. Latham hung up, forestalling questions.

  By eleven o’clock the bug of worry was growing in his mind. Bill hadn’t reported for either of his two morning classes. And his space in the student parking lot yawned emptily.

  Dr. Latham turned indecisively, a man without direction. He looked about the shade-dappled grounds, at the ivied buildings cloistered peacefully about the sprawling campus. His rugged face was tinged with the wish to see Bill hurrying along a walk, around a lawn, with his easy, long-legged stride.

  A hundred yards away, beyond a hedge-boxed stretch of grass, the Gothic quiet of the Humanities Building was broken by a stream of emerging students. A light clicked in Dr. Latham’s eyes.

  He hurried from the parking lot and across the lawn. He bucked the tide of students fresh from bouts with English literature and Grecian tragedies. Now and then a friend of Bill’s would speak a greeting. Dr. Latham's replies were courteous but absent-minded.

  Betty Atherton was among the last of the students to come out. He picked her out of a cluster of three young women chatting their way through the towering portal.

  She saw him standing beside the wide, stone steps when she was halfway down. She spoke a parting to the others and angled toward him.