“No. But maybe I’m drunk.”
Kane picked up the missal, sat down behind the desk. He put the missal into a drawer and slid it shut; then uttered softly: “Haven’t you ever had the feeling that we—weren’t meant for this place?”
“Well, I go where the Air Force sends me.”
Kane shifted his leg, heard a loud and anguished “Yip!” as a disreputable-looking spotted mongrel dog scrambled out from under the desk. The office door was flung open.
“So there you are!” pounced a large-nosed, elfish inmate, pointing imperiously at the dog.
“Lieutenant Leslie Spoor,” explained Fell.
Kane stood up. “Is that your dog?” he asked mildly.
“Does he look like my zebra? What’s the matter with you, anyway!” The dog licked Kane’s shoe. “Look,” said Spoor, “he likes you!”
“What do you call him?” asked Kane.
“Irresponsible!” answered Spoor. “He’s ten minutes late for rehearsal! Now out!” he commanded the dog. It padded meekly through the door and disappeared, and in the background Kane saw Fairbanks throwing a leg over the second-floor balustrade and sliding down the drape.
Fell cleared his throat. “Lieutenant, the Colonel would like to hear about your work.”
Spoor shriveled him with a glance. “Navigating? Child’s play! I leave it to the crows, to the hawks, to the swallows! I am not a mere device! I am not an albino bat! Watch your cup, dear heart, it’s dripping.”
“Not navigating,” said Fell. “Your work—tell the Colonel.”
“Ah! You speak of matters tender!”
“Lieutenant Spoor,” explained Fell, “is currently at work adapting Shakespeare’s plays for dogs.”
Spoor drew up proudly. “A massive problem! A labor of love! But it must be done! It must! It must!”
“Of course,” soothed Kane. “You taught Shakespeare in civilian life?”
“I repossessed cars for a finance company.”
“Highly commendable,” diplomatized Kane.
“A joy!” exclaimed Spoor. “Man versus Machine! Leslie Marvin Spoor against the criminally poor! A battle of wits! A clash by night! Will .007 recover Fu Manchu’s Lotus? Will he? Will he? I loved it, sir, I loved it! What are you driving?”
“I’m using a staff car,” said Kane.
“Paid for?”
“No,” intervened Fell. “Now tell the good Colonel what you’re rehearsing.”
“Julius Caesar!” crackled Spoor, fixing Kane with a glittering eye. “It’s that terribly gripping scene where this noble-looking Dalmatian whips his toga about him—thus—and pitifully snarls at one of the conspirators: ‘Et tu, White Fang!’”
The ensuing silence ticked like a bomb as neither Fell nor the Colonel moved. The broad grin of triumph slowly faded from Spoor’s face. At last he said, “You hate it.”
“Not at all,” Kane answered quickly. “I’m just thinking about it.”
“Good! We’ll discuss more fully later. In fact, I’d very much like your notions on a problem I’m having with Hamlet. What a puzzler! See? If I cast a Great Dane they’ll accuse me of—”
The dog barked urgently outside the office door. Spoor held up a hand, palm outward, to the Colonel. “The time is out of joint,” he mourned and glided to the door. “Julius awaits! He awaits! Later, Colonel Pussycat! Anon! Anon!” He swooped out the door, then, and disappeared from sight, his voice calling, “Coming! Coming, Rip Torn!”
Cutshaw appeared in the doorway, tossed a pair of pants at Fell. “Here,” declaimed the astronaut. “Fromme has just decided that he will sell all his goods and give the proceeds to the poor.” Then he glowered at Kane. “Still with us, Colonel Kidd?”
The crash of a hammer pounding plaster resounded through the wall. Cutshaw looked to the side. “Ah, that darling Captain Bemish!” he said. Then oozed out of sight.
Again the crash of the hammer. Through the doorway Kane saw Groper racing swiftly down the stairs. He looked to Fell, but the medic had turned his back and was gazing out the window, humming a song from Rose Marie. Kane went to the door, looked to the right and saw Bemish. He wore his crash helmet and face guard and was sedulously pounding a hole into the wall outside Kane’s office with a short-handled sledge hammer.
Groper ran up to Bemish and ripped the hammer from his hand, yapping, “I hid it, dammit, I hid it! How did you get it, Bemish? How?”
“I wouldn’t dare tell you that,” said Bemish. “Mighty Manfred would kill me!” Then he whipped the hammer deftly out of Captain Groper’s grasp and instructed him, serenely, to “Kindly stand aside.”
“You little—!”
Groper had lifted his arm as though to strike at Captain Bemish, and, at this, Kane intervened. “Captain Groper, I am shocked—shocked at your behavior!”
“But he’s—!”
“Later we can discuss it, Captain. But presently, you’re dismised.”
“Listen—!”
Groper was about to say more, but he abruptly severed the flow as his eyes looked into Kane’s. Something stirring in them chilled him. He felt an inexplicable terror that no logic could dismiss. He took a step backward, stiffly saluted, and quickly retreated to his quarters.
Kane watched him go, then put an arm around Bemish’s shoulder. “Now, then, tell me, Captain Bemish: why do you do that to the wall?”
Over the Captain’s shoulder, far down the hall, Kane caught a glimpse of Cutshaw staring intently through a crack in the dormitory door. When Kane caught his eye, the door closed quickly. Kane looked back at Bemish. “You were saying?”
“I was saying?”
“The wall, Captain—tell me.”
“What’s to tell? What’s to tell? I mean, to a man of your intelligence; a psychologist, a colonel, and goodness knows what else.”
“Goodness knows. Now just tell me.”
“Well, the spaces,” said Bemish intensely.
“Spaces?”
“Yes, the spaces—the empty spaces between the atoms in my body—or your body, if I may get personal—may I?”
“The wall.”
“Yes, the wall, Colonel, the wall! What in the hell do you think I’m talking about?”
“The wall.”
“That is correct. Now, then, kindly pay attention. See, the spaces between the atoms—I mean, relative to their size—are immense, simply immense! It’s like the distance, frankly speaking, between Earth and the planet Mars! And do you know what the distance is?”
“Immense.”
“You are wise beyond belief.”
Colonel Kane glanced at his watch. “About the wall…”
“Look, the atoms won’t leave! They are not going anywhere! Relax!”
“But—”
“Atoms can be smashed; they cannot fly! Not a chance! They’re only—!” A notion occurred to Bemish. “Oh! Listen, wait! You have to go ‘toy-toy?’”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then what’s the hurry? Now those same empty spaces—immense empty spaces—between the atoms in your body—your body, mind you—well, those spaces also exist between the atoms in that wall. So walking through the wall is simply a matter of gearing the holes—of gearing the holes between the atoms in your body to the holes between the atoms in that wall—that naughty, stubborn wall!” Bemish punctuated his statement with another swing of his hammer. Plaster crickled in cloudlets to the floor and Bemish looked sullen. “Nothing,” he muttered. “Nothing.”
Kane said, “Why do you strike the wall?”
Bemish mustered fresh attack. “I keep experimenting, see? I concentrate hard. I try to exert the force of my mind on the atoms in my body so they’ll mix and rearrange; so they’ll fit just exactly those spaces in the wall. And then I try the experiment—I try to walk through the wall. I just took a running bash—and I failed—horribly!”
He swung once more at the wall and another hole gaped forth. Both he and Kane stared silently at what he had just done. Then at la
st Kane spoke. “Why did you do that?”
Bemish whipped his head around and scruted Kane piercingly. “My Colonel, do you mock?”
“Not at all.”
“Very good of you.”
“Why did you strike the wall?”
“I am punishing the atoms! I am making of them an example! An object lesson! A thing! So when the others see what’s coming—when they see I’m not kidding around—why, they’ll fall into line! They’ll let me pass through!”
“May I?” asked Kane, lifting the hammer ever so gently from Bemish’s grasp.
“Sure!” agreed Bemish. “Swing! Enjoy! Maybe they’ll listen to a stranger!”
“I had something else in mind.”
Bemish looked outraged, grabbed for the hammer; gave first a tug; then a mighty pull. The hammer failed to move a fraction from Kane’s apparently effortless grip. Bemish looked at the hammer, then at Kane, slightly fuddled. “Your grip is strong, ‘Little Flower.’”
“I think,” said Kane, “that your problem may lie in the properties of the hammer. Some nuclear imbalance. May I keep it awhile for study?”
“Are you possibly putting me on, sir?”
“Not at all,” said Kane, “not at all. Why don’t we discuss it again tomorrow?”
Bemish left him, muttering, and Kane returned to his office, where he found Fell atop his desk, bare legs folded like a Hindu fakir. He was staring into his coffee mug, mumbling incoherently, then looked up, startled and annoyed, as Kane dropped the hammer on the desk. “Would you care to put on your trousers?” asked Kane.
“I was just sitting here sort of thinking about it.”
“Your trousers?”
“Anything, Colonel; anything to keep my mind off…” His words trailed off into inner space. Then he roused himself abruptly. “What do you think of Bemish?” he asked.
Kane eyed him levelly. “He’s a very sick man. What else am I to think?”
“Maybe,” muttered Fell.
“Maybe?”
“Maybe. He’s probably putting us on. They’re probably all putting us on. Hell—isn’t that why they’re here? Why they’re not in padded cells? I mean, examining psychiatrists—”
“Did not create the world,” finished Kane. His words were edged in frost. “Have you ever lived with danger, Fell?”
“No.”
“Well, neither have I. But what about riding to ‘fail-safe’ point with your fanny sitting over enough atomic juice to melt New York? What about it? Day after day, week after week. And never ever sure that maybe this time you go beyond—this time, maybe, you drop it. Well, maybe they’re kidding us, Captain; maybe it’s all a con. Rest assured I intend to find out. But I know this much—this much: these men were the best the Air Force had. Most are highly intelligent; most are many times decorated; and Cutshaw, Manfred Cutshaw, holds the Congressional Medal of Honor. So I find it rather difficult to believe that they’re all goofing off.”
Fell slid off the desk, started squirming into his pants. “Hydrogen nerves, fine,” he said. “That explains all the ‘fail-safe’ crewmen. But what about Cutshaw? What about him?”
Kane stared thoughtfully down at the newspaper still spread over the splotch of stew. “Cutshaw is something else,” he brooded; “something very—mysterious. And ‘madness in great ones must not unwatched go.’”
Fell snapped his belt buckle in with a click. “Life,” he muttered cryptically, “is just chock full of mysteries.” Then he looked up full at Kane. And left without further comment.
Kane resumed his unpacking. Only once was he interrupted, and that was when Cutshaw appeared at his door to ask simply, “Why do animals suffer?” and then promptly melted away.
* * *
At three that afternoon, Kane began dipping into summaries and histories of the men. Spoor and Fairbanks had been navigators; Bemish a bombardier; Corfu a pilot; and Fromme, radioman-gunner. Still another, a Lieutenant Dorain Zook, had been a pilot with an especially distinguished record. Kane interrupted his reading for a snack: milk and a cheese sandwich. Then he resumed his studies voraciously. At five, Cutshaw returned, bursting into the office and slamming the door behind him.
“Still here?” demanded Cutshaw.
“Yes,” said Kane. “Sit down.” Then added quickly, “On a chair!”
Cutshaw ignored the offer. His glance skimmed the titles of books freshly placed on the office shelves. “So! It is true!” he snapped with vigor. “You are not Colonel Ryan in some clever new disguise!”
“Disguise?”
“Yes, disguise. Once he returned to us in the skin of a caribou. But we recognized him instanter. Know what we did to him, then, that lout? Kane, we gave him the ‘silent treatment.’ Hell, we wouldn’t even nod to him. Insolent, antlered bastard! He finally went away. You are not Colonel Ryan.”
“How do you know?” asked Kane.
“Your books. Colonel Ryan read Reader’s Digest. You read Thomas a Kempis. Why? Why do you read a Kempis? Are you a Catholic?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Tough shit.” Cutshaw swooped to Kane’s desk, slamming his medal onto mahogany. “Here! Here’s the medal! You’ve got what you came for! Now get lost!”
Kane thoughtfully fingered the medal. “St. Christopher,” he murmured.
“And what were you expecting, Hud—St. Caribou of the Cross?”
“Your records,” commented Kane, “make no mention of religion. Have you any affiliation?”
“Indeed, indeed!” said Manfred Cutshaw. “I am a Flaming Knight Rampant of the Christian Hussars! Now ask me what we believe in.”
“What do you believe in?”
“That colonels consort with elks. Now get out of here, Hud; I’m losing patience with you swiftly.”
“So,” said Kane, “you’d like me to go.”
Cutshaw suddenly seized his wrist. “Are you mad?” he cried emotionally. “And lose the only friend I’ve got? Oh, God, don’t do it, Hud, don’t do it! Don’t leave me alone in this house of horrors!” His grip was like the talons of a terrified hawk. Kane gently twisted free.
“Sit down,” said Kane. “Let’s talk.”
“Yes!” shrieked Cutshaw like a Fury finding a hair in her dry martini. “I want to talk! I want therapy! I want therapy this instant!” He dove to a couch against the wall, turned on his back and stared up at the ceiling. “I’d like to tell you about my boyhood and all that kind of crap.”
“Free associate,” said Kane.
Cutshaw turned and eyed him severely. Then leaped off the couch, crouched to the desk, recovered his medal and returned to the couch. Then said nothing for over a minute.
“Well?”
“I’m collecting my thoughts, Hud! Shut up and think about grass!”
Kane waited.
“I was born,” began the astronaut, “in Jackson Heights, New York.”
“Your records say Brooklyn.”
Cutshaw sat up angrily. “Listen,” he shouted, “I’ll sit over there, okay, and you come lie on the couch and we’ll see how well you do! What are you, a smartass?!”
“Forgive me. Go ahead.”
Cutshaw resumed the position. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I wasn’t born at all. I was launched at Cape Kennedy. The Russians recovered me and delivered me to my mother: Maude—Maude Cutshaw. Then some creep from the Immigration Office told her I was an alien. She thought he meant a Martian and clobbered him with a bedpan. She was mean, at times, but cuddly. Not like my father. Groper was just plain mean.”
“Groper?”
“Captain Groper.”
“Captain Groper was your father?”
“I was his illegitimate son. I also had three illegitimate sisters named Ugly, Vulgar and Tawdry. That’s when Pop was a movie critic for Time magazine. Things were good in those days, Hud; profoundly, rippingly good. Pop was a real ‘in’ thing. Yeah. Luce used to call him an oracle. Sure. Pop said a picture stunk and people would run to see it. I swear, he never missed.
Except once, for about four months, when some counter-oracles in Hollywood started making these flicks about teen-agers surfing and giving them foreign film titles like ‘Mondo Surf’ or ‘Katzman, Mon Amour.’ Pop used to look at the cast list—he never saw the movies—and see Annette Funicello and maybe Troy Donafoop. Then he’d grit his whole body. Drove him crazy; out of his mind! Couldn’t make a decision. But he finally went with the titles; gave them all a rave. The public liked them anyway. And that’s when he started drinking. I always could tell when he was smashed because he’d start to talk in captions. Like, ‘After the melon, a grape.’ Or, ‘Back of the crisis, a grunion.’ He’d also say ‘brouhaha.’ Whenever he said ‘brouhaha’ Moms would swat him in the chops with a rolled-up copy of Newsweek. It was the closest he ever came to being in contact with the facts.” Cutshaw turned his head and eyed Kane slyly. “Do you believe any of this horseshit?”
“No.”
“Just testing.” Cutshaw stared again at the ceiling and began to speak rapidly, barely pausing for breath. “When I was a kid I used to play horseshoes … Horseshoes are like life. I don’t know exactly how, but I feel certain there’s a connection. Had lots of friends who played horseshoes, but mostly they tortured caterpillars. Cut them up and burned them. Also cut the tails off dogs. Know why they did it? Because they were bastards. Yeah. And, Hud, they grow up to be bastards. That sheriff in Alabama who clubbed a lady demonstrator while two of his buddies held her down? Lynch mobs? Eichmanns? The ghouls who gather at accidents? who slow their bloody cars down on a freeway to see the wreck? Same ——— bastards, Hud; they just grew up; that’s all. Show me a kid who kills caterpillars, and I’ll show you a son-of-a-bitch. Let some kid put a hand on my mouse and I promise I’d castrate him instanter and save the world from more of him. Hud, I trust you approve. I dearly crave approval. I dearly need approval. I would rather have approval than a jelly roll with yoghurt. Now my father, Captain Groper, hell, he’s steeped in the blood of caterpillars. Notice he never takes showers? No, you only just got here. But you’ll notice, Hud, you’ll notice. He never takes a shower; we’d see the green all over his legs. Not a pretty sight, love, not a pretty sight at all. Hud, I’d rather be dead than green! But he’s my father; what can I do? Get up a petition with ten thousand signatures and have him deported to Argentina? What can you do with the useless bastard! Hud, once he reviewed a stag film and said that it was ‘dull.’ Then after all the commotion started he actually looked at the films. It destroyed him, Hud, destroyed him. That’s what made him join the Air Force. He was a major once, you know. Yeah—Major Groper. Then he happened to say ‘brouhaha’ in front of a brigadier general and they busted him back to captain. Ah, enough of this maudlin chatter, Hud. And stay awake, you monster, I’m not spilling my guts for laughs!”