"You think so, huh?"
"Well, if the end is approaching, let us greet it at the Blue Ribbon. I
believe we can still find the lads there."
They were, and they greeted Clocker with gladness and drinks.
Diplomatically, they made only the most delicate references to the
revamping job Clocker had done on his tip sheet.
"It's just like opening night, that's all," comforted Arnold Wilson
Wyle. "You'll get back into your routine pretty soon."
"I don't want to," said Clocker pugnaciously. "Handicapping is only a
way to get people to read what I _really_ want to tell them."
"Took me many minutes to find horses," Oil Pocket put in. "See one I
want to bet on, but rest of paper make me too worried to bother betting.
Okay with Injun, though--horse lost. And soon you get happy again, stick
to handicapping, let others worry about world."
Buttonhole tightened his grip on Clocker's lapel. "Sure, boy. As long as
the bobtails run, who cares what happens to anything else?"
"Maybe I went too easy," said Clocker tensely. "I didn't print the whole
thing, just a little part of it. Here's the rest."
* * * * *
They were silent while he talked, seeming stunned with the terrible
significance of his story.
"Did you explain all this to the doctors?" Doc Hawkins asked.
"You think I'm crazy?" Clocker retorted. "They'd have kept me packed
away and I'd never get a crack at telling anybody."
"Don't let it trouble you," said Doc. "Some vestiges of delusion can be
expected to persist for a while, but you'll get rid of them. I have
faith in your ability to distinguish between the real and unreal."
"But it all _happened_! If you guys don't believe me, who will? And
you've _got_ to so I can get Zelda back!"
"Of course, of course," said Doc hastily. "We'll discuss it further some
other time. Right now I really must start putting my medical column
together for the paper."
"What about you, Handy Sam?" Clocker challenged.
Handy Sam, with one foot up on the table and a pencil between his toes,
was doodling self-consciously on a paper napkin. "We all get these
ideas, Clocker. I used to dream about having arms and I'd wake up still
thinking so, till I didn't know if I did or didn't. But like Doc says,
then you figure out what's real and it don't mix you up any more."
"All right," Clocker said belligerently to Oil Pocket. "You think my
story's batty, too?"
"Can savvy evil spirits, good spirits," Oil Pocket replied with stolid
tact. "Injun spirits, though, not white ones."
"But I keep telling you they ain't spirits. They ain't even human.
They're from some world way across the Universe--"
Oil Pocket shook his head. "Can savvy Injun spirits, Clocker. No
spirits, no savvy."
"Look, you see the mess we're all in, don't you?" Clocker appealed to
the whole group. "Do you mean to tell me you can't feel we're getting
set to blow the joint? Wouldn't you want to stop it?"
"If we could, my boy, gladly," Doc said. "However, there's not much that
any individual or group of individuals can do."
"But how in hell does anything get started? With one guy, two
guys--before you know it, you got a crowd, a political party, a
country--"
"What about the other countries, though?" asked Buttonhole. "So we're
sold on your story in America, let's say. What do we do--let the rest of
the world walk in and take us over?"
"We educate them," Clocker explained despairingly. "We start it here and
it spreads to there. It doesn't have to be everybody. Mr. Calhoun said I
just have to convince a few people and that'll show them it can be done
and then I get Zelda back."
Doc stood up and glanced around the table. "I believe I speak for all of
us, Clocker, when I state that we shall do all within our power to aid
you."
"Like telling other people?" Clocker asked eagerly.
"Well, that's going pretty--"
"Forget it, then. Go write your column. I'll see you chumps
around--around ten miles up, shaped like a mushroom."
He stamped out, so angry that he untypically let the others settle his
bill.
* * * * *
Clocker's experiment with the newspaper failed so badly that it was not
worth the expense of putting it out; people refused to buy. Clocker had
three-sheets printed and hired sandwich men to parade them through the
city. He made violent speeches in Columbus Circle, where he lost his
audience to revivalist orators; Union Square, where he was told heatedly
to bring his message to Wall Street; and Times Square, where the police
made him move along so he wouldn't block traffic. He obeyed, shouting
his message as he walked, until he remembered how amusedly he used to
listen to those who cried that Doomsday was near. He wondered if they
were catatonics under imperfect control. It didn't matter; nobody paid
serious attention to his or their warnings.
The next step, logically, was a barrage of letters to the heads of
nations, to the U.N., to editors of newspapers. Only a few of his
letters were printed. The ones in Doc's tabloid did best, drawing such
comments as:
"Who does this jerk think he is, telling us everybody's going to get
killed off? Maybe they will, but not in Brooklyn!"
"When I was a young girl, some fifty years ago, I had a similar
experience to Mr. Locke's. But my explanation is quite simple. The
persons I saw proved to be my ancestors. Mr. Locke's new-found friends
will, I am sure, prove to be the same. The World Beyond knows all and
tells all, and my Control, with whom I am in daily communication Over
There, assures me that mankind is in no danger whatever, except from the
evil effects of tobacco and alcohol and the disrespect of youth for
their elders."
"The guy's nuts! He ought to go back to Russia. He's nothing but a nut
or a Communist and in my book that's the same thing."
"He isn't telling us anything new. We all know who the enemy is. The
only way to protect ourselves is to build TWO GUNS FOR ONE!"
"Is this Locke character selling us the idea that we all ought to go
batty to save the world?"
Saddened and defeated, Clocker went through his accumulated mail. There
were politely non-committal acknowledgments from embassies and the U.N.
There was also a check for his article from the magazine he'd sent it
to; the amount was astonishingly large.
He used part of it to buy radio time, the balance for ads in rural
newspapers and magazines. City people, he figured, were hardened by
publicity gags, and he might stir up the less suspicious and
sophisticated hinterland. The replies he received, though, advised him
to buy some farmland and let the metropolises be destroyed, which, he
was assured, would be a mighty good thing all around.
The magazine came out the same day he tried to get into the U.N. to
shout a speech from the balcony. He was quietly surrounded by a
uniformed guard and moved, rather than forced, outside.
* * * * *
He went dejectedly to his hotel. He stayed there for several days,
dialing numbers he selected randomly from the telephone book, and
getting the brushoff from business offices, housewives and maids. They
were all very busy or the boss wasn't in or they expected important
calls.
That was when he was warmly invited by letter to see the editor of the
magazine that had bought his article.
Elated for actually the first time since his discharge from the
hospital, Clocker took a cab to a handsome building, showed his
invitation to a pretty and courteous receptionist, and was escorted into
an elaborate office where a smiling man came around a wide
bleached-mahogany desk and shook hands with him.
"Mr. Locke," said the editor, "I'm happy to tell you that we've had a
wonderful response to your story."
"Article," Clocker corrected.
The editor smiled. "Do you produce so much that you can't remember what
you sold us? It was about--"
"I know," Clocker cut in. "But it wasn't a story. It was an article. It
really--"
"Now, now. The first thing a writer must learn is not to take his ideas
too seriously. Very dangerous, especially in a piece of fiction like
yours."
"But the whole thing is true!"
"Certainly--while you were writing it." The editor shoved a pile of mail
across the desk toward him. "Here are some of the comments that have
come in. I think you'll enjoy seeing the reaction."
Clocker went through them, hoping anxiously for no more than a single
note that would show his message had come through to somebody. He
finished and looked up blankly.
"You see?" the editor asked proudly. "You're a find."
"The new Mark Twain or Jonathan Swift. A comic."
"A satirist," the editor amended. He leaned across the desk on his
crossed forearms. "A mail response like this indicates a talent worth
developing. We would like to discuss a series of stories--"
"Articles."
"Whatever you choose to call them. We're prepared to--"
"You ever been off your rocker?" Clocker asked abruptly.
* * * * *