"You know what I mean. Zap! You're somewhere else. Only it'll be
worse than Tranquil. Worse than Wisconsin!"
"Arkansas?!" Rhonda shouted with disgust.
"What's so bad about -- I mean, yes, Arkansas! Right in the middle
of... of Hindsville! In Madison county. A dry county!"
"Oh God, no!" Rhonda wailed.
"Uncle Justin has the clipboard all ready... On the count of three?
One, two..."
"Stop! You win! It's Seltsam Way, the street behind the theater!"
"Where I just got hired? Was that all part of this too?!"
"Well, what do you think?" Rhonda said. "That it was all just
coincidence?"
Julia stood listening to the silence for a moment, and then hung up the
phone. Justin stepped out of the bathroom.
"I thought you were waiting outside!"
"It got cold. I didn't have my jacket!"
"I suppose you heard all of that," she said.
"Most of it. Where's Seltsam?"
"Seltsam Way, behind the theater."
"Oh yeah. I forgot about that road. Well, we better get going."
Julia picked up her keys. "Wait. You didn't see Cecil in there, did
you?"
"Not unless he got inside the cabinets."
Julia went into the bedroom and looked around. She lifted the skirt of
the bed and peered underneath. No cat. She looked in the closet. No
cat (as far as she could tell, with all of her junk in the way).
"We have to get going," Justin commented.
"Cecil!" Julia called.
"He's just hiding! We have to go, now!"
Julia shrugged and sighed.
"So how's it done?"
"You won't need your keys, but take them if you want," he said. "Hold
my hands."
For a moment, Julia began to feel the room spin. And then, she
wondered how it was that she had reached the exact center of the
universe.
25. When it hits the fan
"Truth is the only safe ground to stand on."
-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
When Prof. Sigger found himself standing three miles outside of town on
County Highway A, he was, to say the least, chagrined. He tried
thumbing a ride from a couple in a pickup, but no luck. They were too
busy necking. One of them, however, did throw an empty beer can to
him.
After studying his situation carefully, he decided that he either must
walk the three miles or try that new method of movement that was
supposed to be listed in the gray section of the clipboard. And
considering that he hadn't exercised regularly in years, the clipboard
seemed to be the better option.
With only the starlight behind him, he began to read his way through
the higher math. It wasn't easy, but at the end of four minutes, he
decided that the section in question had to be interpreted
subjectively. This had been a theme of his academic career, so the
conclusion hadn't come as a surprise. It was amazing how elastic a
text could be given the right kind of reader. In fact, he had often
convinced himself (when lecturing to a room full of stupefied students)
that only he and his method could arrive at any kind of coherent, but
highly tentative, meaning. When he had debated the subject years
before, the experience of reading had come down to an indeterminacy
that left out the possibility of conclusive understanding. This
disappointed many of his undergraduates, but then, reality was more
often than not a disappointment. His writings on the matter had taken
him a long way at the beginning of his career, but after years of more
ardent methods of spiritual exploration, late at night, with several
friends keeping a bloodshot eye out for the police, his writing had
lost something of the cohesiveness it once had. He had always assumed
that he would get it back one day, but lately, the face he encountered
in the mirror looked more like his father's than his own, and although
he had taken some positive strides to get back into the lit. theory
game, he hadn't enjoyed much success. This new venture, however,
seemed to be the turnaround. Having this kind of power would turn not
a few heads -- networking being the prime ingredient in any good,
tenured position.
Skimming through the pages one last time, he decided that he had
arrived at a justifiable understanding of the matter. Perhaps he would
make an entrance at the exact spot where he had left. Or just outside
the theater. Or perhaps on the roof. Too dramatic? He settled for
just outside the theater's back door, in Seltsam Way.
He closed his eyes in order to concentrate on the math, felt that
peculiar sensation of vertigo, and felt a cool wind blow on his face.
He opened his eyes to find himself hovering a thousand feet above
Tranquil. His heart stopped beating as he began to fall, but began
again, much to his relief as well as anguish.
He nearly let go of the clipboard, but managed to clutch it to his
chest as the pages, his clothes, and the Earth, began to flutter
violently around him. The fell past some kind of balloon, reached out
to catch hold of it, but it was too late. Now, the only thing that
could save him were those few pages whose contents he had just
forgotten, thanks to a somewhat reduced short-term memory. The only
numbers he could recall (as he struggled to find and not lose his
place) was his rate of descent: thirty-two feet per second per second.
Something inside him wondered how long it would take to reach the end
of his fall, and something else answered that this could not be known
without ascertaining one's starting altitude. Strange, he thought,
what you think of when you find yourself airborne without a parachute.
But he forced himself to focus on what little he could read as he
tumbled toward to the ground. And though he had spent the bulk of his
academic career teaching his students that truth, with its duplicitous
and mutable definitions, could never be found in a text, he began to
search, quickly and sincerely, for meaning.
26. It Falls Together
"Everybody has got to die, but I always believed an exception would be
made in my case."
-- William Saroyan
The station-wagon swerved around the corner (as it had all the
previous), jolting and jarring its passengers from one side to
another. Tom and Alona, in the back seat, were thrown next to each
other at near regular intervals, wondering how long their luck would
last. With a final, sharp turn of the wheel, Ritchie half-drove,
half-skidded off Central and into the back alley known as Seltsam Way.
"There it is!" he shouted.
"This isn't a cavalry charge, dear," Betty muttered, having braced
herself in the passenger seat as best she could throughout the horrible
ride.
"Now we'll see what's going on around here!" he replied.
It was when a man dressed in a lab coat plunged from the sky and
slammed into their hood, pitching the car forward and then back onto
its wheels as the body rolled off the windshield and into the alleyway
behind them that Ritchie finally applied the brakes. The wagon skidded
to a stop, turning as it slid until the vehicle became lodged in the
narrow alley. After the occupants caught their breath, Betty spoke.
"I think you hit him," she said.
"I didn't hit him, he hit me!" Ritchie replied.
"Look at the hood! The car's totaled!" Tom cried.
"He fell on us! How could I know he was going jump and land on my
car?!"
"Who are they?" Alona asked, looking past Tom as they sat pressed
against the door.
"Who?" Ritchie asked.
"That old guy and... isn't that what's-her-name from Osco?"
"Do the doors still work?" Betty asked in a shaky voice.
They did, and the four of them crawled out the driver's side and slowly
made their way on unsteady feet toward the body.
"You got one!" shouted the old man.
"Justin..." the girl admonished.
"You know him?" Ritchie asked, pointing to the man the coat.
"Never seen him before, but I'm guessing he's one of them."
"How do you know?" Betty asked.
And, coincidentally, the contents of a clipboard came fluttering down
upon them like leaves.
"Justin Nelson," Justin said, extending his hand to Ritchie.
Introductions were made all around.
"Didn't you work at Osco?" Alona asked.
"Until they fired me!" Julia replied. "And then they hired me here."
"Here?" Tom asked. "Doing what?"
"Concessions."
"My job?!"
"Be glad you were out of it," Alona said.
"Yeah, but I wasn't even told I was fired!"
"So who is this guy?" Ritchie repeated.
"I don't know. No name tag," Justin replied.
"He's moving!" Betty shouted.
All turned toward the man who lay in the alley. Somehow, he was still
alive, gasping for breath. When his gaze caught Alona's, she
recognized him.
"Professor Sigger!" she shouted.
"Alona..." gasped the professor.
"You're involved in this?" Ritchie demanded.
"Tricked me... Fascist swine..."
Justin bent down to the dying man's ears. "Quick, man! Why are they
doing this?!"
"Trying to take the town with them," he gasped. "Conspiracy... half
the town... ran out of toner..."
"Shouldn't we call an ambulance?" Betty asked, wringing her hands.
Prof. Sigger looked back at Alona and with his dying breath said:
"Damn...."
The group stood around the corpse, unsure of what to do.
"Half the town? Probably the police are in on this too, then. Can't
call them," Justin said.
"Shouldn't we cover him up?" Betty asked.
"I think we need to get into that theater first," Ritchie said. "He
said something about taking half the town."
"If they can, we're in real trouble," Justin said.
"But what does it mean?" Alona asked.
"The way they move. Instantly. That's how they kidnap people. They
move them or themselves instantly from one point to another. That's
probably what this guy meant. Their goal must be to take the town with
them," Justin said.
"That's stupid," Tom muttered.
"No!" Alona said. "That's what happened to Prof. Sigger! He was there
one second and gone the next! And that's how they got Kurt!"
"Just what is going on here?" Betty asked.
"We won't know that until we get inside," Justin replied.
"Right," Ritchie began. "Let's sneak in the back, and -- well, we'd
have to crawl over the car to get in."
"Forget that. They'll be expecting us now. Might as well use the
front door," Justin concluded.
They agreed and began the short walk around the building to the main
entrance. Julia, unusually quiet, was the only one who didn't follow
immediately. Her attention was fixed on a piece of paper that had
fallen on Prof. Sigger's face, covering him just as Betty had wanted.
Julia bent down and saw that it was a form labeled 3G, "Complaints,
Problems, Irregularities:" The rest was blank.
"Did you ever have one of those days," Julia found herself repeating,
"when you think you've noticed something everyone else has missed?"
27. Their Last Stand?
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always
so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
-- Bertrand Russell
"You killed Prof. Sigger," said the Lab Coat Man, pacing back and forth
in the basement hallway. "How could you?"
"I didn't kill him," Denny repeated, rubbing his face with his hands.
He sat inside the small office, leaning back as far as he could in the
one decent office chair the conspiracy had acquired. "I sent him
outside of town, and the idiot tried to get back without using the
proper steps."
"And shot himself a thousand feet in the air? On his first try?"
"You know what I know..." Denny leaned forward until he was sitting
straight, took a cigarette from his pack, and lit up. The Lab Coat Man
continued to pace.
"How could he interpret that from our notes?!"
"I don't know!"
"There's no smoking down here," the Lab Coat Man complained, as Denny
blew a long, slow cloud into the room.
"There is now," he replied. "All I did was send Sigger out of town for
a little while. The rest is on him."
"'Out of town'? You mean -- you were trying to make sure we didn't
take him with us, weren't you?"
"Don't tell me you weren't tempted."
The Lab Coat Man considered this. "OK, I won't, because I was, if you
understand me."