Bagombo Snuff Box (4 page)

“He was looking for you about ten minutes ago. He’s back in
the radio room now. He’s been on the phone with Washington for half an hour.”

She had only the vaguest notion of what the project was
about. Again, Groszinger felt the urge to tell about Major Rice and the voices,
to see what effect the news would have on someone else. Perhaps his secretary would
react as he himself had reacted, with a shrug. Maybe that was the spirit of
this era of the atom bomb, H-bomb, God-knows-what-next bomb—to be amazed at
nothing. Science had given humanity forces enough to destroy the earth, and
politics had given humanity a fair assurance that the forces would be used.
There could be no cause for awe to top that one. But proof of a spirit world
might at least equal it. Maybe that was the shock the world needed, maybe word
from the spirits could change the suicidal course of history.

General Dane looked up wearily as Groszinger walked into the
radio room. “They’re bringing him down,” he said. “There’s nothing else we can
do. He’s no damn good to us now.” The loudspeaker, turned low, sang the
monotonous hum of the jamming signal. The radio operator slept before the set,
his head resting on his folded arms.

“Did you try to get through to him again?”

“Twice. He’s clear off his head now. Tried to tell him to
change his frequency, to code his messages, but he just went on jabbering like
he couldn’t hear me—talking about that woman’s voice.”

“Who’s the woman? Did he say?”

The General looked at him oddly. “Says it’s his wife,
Margaret. Guess that’s enough to throw anybody, wouldn’t you say? Pretty
bright, weren’t we, sending up a guy with no family ties.” He arose and
stretched. “I’m going out for a minute. Just make sure you keep your hands off
that set.” He slammed the door behind him.

The radio operator stirred. “They’re bringing him down,” he
said.

“I know,” said Groszinger.

“That’ll kill him, won’t it?”

“He has controls for gliding her in, once he hits the atmosphere.”

“If he wants to.”

“That’s right—if he wants to. They’ll get him out of his
orbit and back to the atmosphere under rocket power. After that, it’ll be up to
him to take over and make the landing.”

They fell silent. The only sound in the room was the muted
jamming signal in the loudspeaker.

“He don’t want to live, you know that?” said the radio
operator suddenly. “Would you want to?”

“Guess that’s something you don’t know until you come up
against it,” said Groszinger. He was trying to imagine the world of the future—a
world in constant touch with the spirits, the living inseparable from the dead.
It was bound to come. Other men, probing into space, were certain to find out.
Would it make life heaven or hell? Every bum and genius, criminal and hero,
average man and madman, now and forever part of humanity— advising, squabbling,
conniving, placating . . .

The radio operator looked furtively toward the door. “Want to
hear him again?”

Groszinger shook his head. “Everybody’s listening to that frequency
now. We’d all be in a nice mess if you stopped jamming.” He didn’t want to hear
more. He was baffled, miserable. Would Death unmasked drive men to suicide, or
bring new hope? he was asking himself. Would the living desert their leaders
and turn to the dead for guidance? To Caesar. . . Charlemagne ... Peter the
Great.. . Napoleon ... Bismarck .. . Lincoln .. . Roosevelt? To Jesus Christ?
Were the dead wiser than—

Before Groszinger could stop him, the sergeant switched off
the oscillator that was jamming the frequency.

Major Rice’s voice came through instantly, high and giddy. “.
. . thousands of them, thousands of them, all around me, standing on nothing,
shimmering like northern lights—beautiful, curving off in space, all around the
earth like a glowing fog. I can see them, do you hear? I can see them now. I
can see Margaret. She’s waving and smiling, misty, heavenly, beautiful. If only
you could see it, if—”

The radio operator flicked on the jamming signal. There was
a footfall in the hallway.

General Dane stalked into the radio room, studying his
watch. “In five minutes they’ll start him down,” he said. He plunged his hands
deep into his pockets and slouched dejectedly. “We failed this time. Next time,
by God, we’ll make it. The next man who goes up will know what he’s up against—he’ll
be ready to take it.”

He put his hand on Groszinger’s shoulder. “The most
important job you’ll ever have to do, my friend, is to keep your mouth shut
about those spirits out there, do you understand? We don’t want the enemy to
know we’ve had a ship out there, and we don’t want them to know what they’ll
come across if they try it. The security of this country depends on that being
our secret. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” said Groszinger, grateful to have no choice but
to be quiet. He didn’t want to be the one to tell the world. He wished he had
had nothing to do with sending Rice out into space. What discovery of the dead
would do to humanity he didn’t know, but the impact would be terrific. Now,
like the rest, he would have to wait for the next wild twist of history.

The General looked at his watch again. “They’re bringing him
down,” he said.

At 1:39 p.m., on Friday, July 28th, the British liner
Capricorn, two hundred eighty miles out of New York City, bound for Liverpool,
radioed that an unidentified object had crashed into the sea, sending up a
towering geyser on the horizon to starboard of the ship. Several passengers
were said to have seen something glinting as the thing fell from the sky. Upon
reaching the scene of the crash, the Capricorn reported finding dead and
stunned fish on the surface, and turbulent water, but no wreckage.

Newspapers suggested that the Capricorn had seen the crash
of an experimental rocket fired out to sea in a test of range. The Secretary
of Defense promptly denied that any such tests were being conducted over the
Atlantic.

In Boston, Dr. Bernard Groszinger, young rocket consultant
for the Air Force, told newsmen that what the Capricorn had observed might well
have been a meteor.

“That seems quite likely,” he said. “If it was a meteor, the
fact that it reached the earth’s surface should, I think, be one of the year’s
most important science news stories. Usually meteors burn to nothing before
they’re even through the stratosphere.”

“Excuse me, sir,” interrupted a reporter. “Is there anything
out beyond the stratosphere—I mean, is there any name for it?”

“Well, actually the term ‘stratosphere’ is kind of arbitrary.
It’s the outer shell of the atmosphere. You can’t say definitely where it
stops. Beyond it is just, well—dead space.”

“Dead space—that’s the right name for it, eh?” said the reporter.

“If you want something fancier, maybe we could put it into
Greek,” said Groszinger playfully. “Thanatos, that’s Greek for ‘death,’ I
think. Maybe instead of ‘dead space’ you’d prefer ‘Thanasphere.’ Has a nice scientific
ring to it, don’t you think?

The newsmen laughed politely.

“Dr. Groszinger, when’s the first rocket ship going to make
it into space?” asked another reporter.

“You people read too many comic books,” said Groszinger. “Come
back in twenty years, and maybe I’ll have a story for you.”

Alfred Moorhead dropped the report into his Out basket, and
smiled to think that he had been able to check something for facts without referring
to records and notes. Six weeks before, he couldn’t have done it. Now, since he
had attended the company’s two-day Memory Clinic, names, facts, and numbers
clung to his memory like burdocks to an Airedale. The clinic had, in fact, indirectly
cleared up just about every major problem in his uncomplicated life, save one—his
inability to break the ice with his secretary, Ellen, whom he had silently
adored for two years. . . .

“Mnemonics is the art of improving the memory,” the clinic’s
instructor had begun. “It makes use of two elementary psychological facts: You
remember things that interest you longer than things that don’t, and pictures
stick in your mind better than isolated facts do. I’ll show you what I mean. We’ll
use Mr. Moorhead for our guinea pig.”

Alfred had shifted uncomfortably as the man read off a nonsensical
list and told him to memorize it: “Smoke, oak tree, sedan, bottle, oriole.” The
instructor had talked about something else, then pointed to Alfred. “Mr.
Moorhead, the list.”

“Smoke, oriole, uh—” Alfred had shrugged.

“Don’t be discouraged. You’re perfectly normal,” the instructor
had said. “But let’s see if we can’t help you do a little better. Let’s build
an image, something pleasant, something we’d like to remember. Smoke, oak tree,
sedan—I see a man relaxing under a leafy oak tree. He is smoking a pipe, and in
the background is his car, a yellow sedan. See it, Mr. Moor-head?”

“Uh-huh.” Alfred had seen it.

“Good. Now for ‘bottle’ and ‘oriole.’ By the man’s side is a
vacuum bottle of iced coffee, and an oriole is singing on a branch overhead.
There, we can remember that happy picture without any trouble, eh?” Alfred had
nodded uncertainly. The instructor had gone on to other matters, then
challenged him again.

“Smoke, sedan, bottle, uh—” Alfred had avoided the instructor’s
eyes.

When the snickering of the class had subsided, the
instructor had said, “I suppose you think Mr. Moorhead has proved that mnemonics
is bunk. Not at all. He has helped me to make another important point. The images
used to help memory vary widely from person to person. Mr. Moor-head’s
personality is clearly different from mine. I shouldn’t have forced my images
on him. I’ll repeat the list, Mr. Moorhead, and this time I want you to build a
picture of your own.”

At the end of the class, the instructor had called on Alfred
again. Alfred had rattled the list off as though it were the alphabet.

The technique was so good, Alfred had reflected, that he
would be able to recall the meaningless list for the rest of his life. He could
still see himself and Rita Hayworth sharing a cigarette beneath a giant oak.
He filled her glass from a bottle of excellent wine, and as she drank, an
oriole brushed her cheek with its wing. Then Alfred kissed her. As for “sedan,”
he had lent it to Aly Khan.

Rewards for his new faculty had been splendid and immediate.
The promotion had unquestionably come from his filing-cabinet command of business
details. His boss, Ralph L. Thriller, had said, “Moorhead, I didn’t know it was
possible for a man to change as much as you have in a few weeks. Wonderful!”

His happiness was unbroken—except by his melancholy relationship
with his secretary. While his memory worked like a mousetrap, paralysis still
gripped him whenever he thought of mentioning love to the serene brunette.

Alfred sighed and picked up a sheaf of invoices. The first
was addressed to the Davenport Spot-welding Company. He closed his eyes and a
shimmering tableau appeared. He had composed it two days previous, when Mr.
Thriller had given him special instructions. Two davenports faced each other.
Lana Turner, sheathed in a tight-fitting leopard skin, lay on one. On the other
was Jane Russell, in a sarong made of telegrams. Both of them blew kisses to
Alfred, who contemplated them for a moment, then reluctantly let them fade.

He scribbled a note to Ellen: Please make sure Davenport
Spot-welding Company and Davenport Wire and Cable Company have not been
confused in our billing. Six weeks before, the matter would certainly have
slipped his mind. I love you, he added, and then carefully crossed it out with
a long black rectangle of ink.

In one way, his good memory was a curse. By freeing him from
hours of searching through filing cabinets, it gave him that much more time to
worry about Ellen. The richest moments in his life were and had been— even
before the Memory Clinic—his daydreams. The most delicious of these featured
Ellen. Were he to give her the opportunity to turn him down, and she almost
certainly would, she could never appear in his fantasies again. Alfred couldn’t
bring himself to risk that.

The telephone rang. “It’s Mr. Thriller,” said Ellen.

“Moorhead,” said Mr. Thriller, “I’ve got a lot of little
stuff piled up on me. Could you take some of it over?”

“Glad to, chief. Shoot.”

“Got a pencil?”

“Nonsense, chief,” said Alfred.

“No, I mean it,” said Mr. Thriller grimly. “I’d feel better
if you wrote this down. There’s an awful lot of stuff.”

Alfred’s pen had gone dry, and he couldn’t lay his hands on
a pencil without getting up, so he lied. “Okay, got one. Shoot.”

“First of all, we’re getting a lot of subcontracts on big
defense jobs, and a new series of code numbers is going to be used for these
jobs. Any number beginning with Sixteen A will designate that it’s one of
them. Better wire all our plants about it.”

In Alfred’s mind, Ava Gardner executed a smart manual of
arms with a rifle. Emblazoned on her sweater was a large 16A. “Right, chief.”

‘And I’ve got a memo here from . . .”

Fifteen minutes later, Alfred, perspiring freely, said, “Right,
chief,” for the forty-third time and hung up. Before his mind’s eye was a
pageant to belittle the most flamboyant dreams of Cecil B. DeMille. Ranged
about Alfred was every woman motion picture star he had ever seen, and each
brandished or wore or carried or sat astride something Alfred could be fired
for forgetting. The image was colossal, and the slightest disturbance might
knock it to smithereens. He had to get to pencil and paper before tragedy
struck. He crossed the room like a game-stalker, hunched, noiselessly.

“Mr. Moorhead, are you all right?” said Ellen, alarmed.

“Mmm. Mmm!” said Alfred, frowning.

He reached the pencil and pad, and exhaled. The picture was
fogging, but it was still there. Alfred considered the ladies one by one, wrote
down their messages, and allowed them to dissolve.