Nothing So Strange (32 page)

I told him I wasn’t asking on my own account, but for an Air Force friend
who had crashed and wanted to get rid of a fear-neurosis about flying. But he
wasn’t impressed by that either. “
What’s
he got? We didn’t have it
when
I
started flying—that was in nineteen-oh-four. Not much
good then if we’d been scared of a few crashes…. I’ve crashed a heap of
times—never got hurt, though—not to speak of.”

He was still a pioneer, but now of a new species—the ancient airman,
yarning of old times.

I listened, and I could see him enjoying an audience; soon he was
enumerating all the interesting spots one could fly over on the way to
Giant’s Pass. There were rocks where the bandit Valdez had hidden for months
from the state guard back in the eighties, and a cave where a German spy in
World War One was supposed to have operated a secret wireless station, and
another place where legend said were long-lost gold mines. All this seemed to
cover such a wide territory of popular fiction that I thought Hollywood might
have done far better to engage Mr. Murdoch’s services than mine. I liked him,
though, and I had him in the end promising to telephone me some very early
morning when the weather looked suitable for a trip.

Then I drove back and told Brad. I said the call would come on the right
sort of day, and if he really wanted to fly, that was fine, but if he didn’t
we needn’t go, and even if we did go and he changed his mind, that would be
all right too. I described the place and the plane and Mr. Murdoch, and with
the map spread out on the library floor I tried to remember the spots he had
said were worth flying over. We decided also to take sandwiches and coffee
and make a picnic of it, provided it didn’t look like a picnic.

“Not that I’ve any conscience,” I said. “You made one flight that wasn’t a
picnic—you can use a little gas now for your own pleasure.”

Physically, now, I would have called him almost well, but though there had
been no more nightmares he was still moody and nervous. The look in his eyes,
a haunted look, was sometimes as if it must tear through them; and during
meals, when Dan was around, conversation was always difficult. At other
times, after he had suspiciously made sure we were alone, he talked at random
about his past, though only up to the time of his leaving Germany. I asked
him once if he thought the false results he had given Framm would be
repudiated by later investigation; and he said yes, he hoped so.

“You
hope
so?”

“Sure, if it hasn’t been done already.”

“You think it may have been?”

“On the whole I’d guess it hasn’t. Not because it couldn’t easily be, if
anyone took the trouble, but because nobody was likely to waste time in a
direction that Framm would appear to have given up as unpromising. Even with
all the secrecy it would leak out that he’d taken a wrong turning. That’s
what research is for—not only to find the truth, but to rope off the
blind alleys. And you tend to take people’s word that they
are
blind,
just as you take on trust the logarithm tables.” He smiled grimly and then
ceased to smile. “After all, why not? If scientists can’t trust each other,
whom can they trust? Nobody, perhaps, these days … and for that reason the
world can’t even trust science.”

“Maybe it can still trust God.”

He said whimsically: “But He moves in such a mysterious way.”

“I don’t know why anyone should mind that. It may make him hard to track
down, but then, so was your Mr. Bitternut.”

He looked puzzled till he remembered the name. I went on to tell him that
recently I had got hold of a book about quantum mathematics. “From what I
could gather, the universe is governed by statistical probability rather than
logic. But that still makes it wonderful. If life is like throwing a six a
hundred times in succession, we know that isn’t likely to happen oftener than
once in so many centuries, but we also know it could happen in this room
tonight without upsetting the cosmic applecart. That’s reassuring.”

He said thoughtfully: “Is it? … What made you want to read about
mathematics?”

“
You
…. Of course it was only one of those popular books—the
romantic smattering, as you once called it. I’m not arrogant enough to think
I could ever climb into your mind.”

“Be damned glad you can’t. And don’t say
climb
.”

Our talks so often ended in this kind of bitter barrier that I said: “I
don’t even want to. It’s what’s
on
your mind that still bothers
me.”

When he didn’t answer I thought I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a
lamb, so I asked him outright: “What happened after you came back to
America?”

He replied, far too casually: “I just bummed around for a time.”

“Various jobs?”

“Er … yes.”

“How did you manage about the draft?”

“Oh, I was … er … deferred.”

“War work?”

“More or less….” He added, as if jumping with relief to firmer ground:
“And then I got fed up and joined the Air Force.”

“You mean you quit the war work voluntarily?”

“Yes.”

“You said just now you got fed up. What were you fed up with?”

He answered, rather testily: “With not being in uniform … let’s settle
for that.”

I said okay, I’d settle for it, but he was already on his way out of the
room. I followed after a moment and overtook him by the pool. “Oh Brad,” I
said, “don’t be in a huff. I promise not to ask you anything else. Whatever
secret you have and want to keep, I’ll try not to be curious about it. It’s
only that … if you weren’t being bothered by
my
questions … you’d
be having to put up with Newby’s nonsense … or worse….”

“Or
worse
? What do you mean?” His voice was angry, but he had
seized on the one word that had slipped out. I answered vaguely: “I didn’t
mean anything special…. Newby’s a fool, but there
might
be worse
people put on you … that’s all I meant.”

“No, you meant more than that. I want to know. What are they going to do
to me? You know more than you’ll say!”

I took his arm. “Honestly, I don’t. But that’s an odd remark, coming from
you. Don’t
you
know more than you’ll say?”

He let me walk him through the gardens till he was calmer. “They won’t
leave me alone,” he kept saying. “They never did let me alone—even in
the service. Mysterious teletypes all the time. ‘Bradley, I’ve had an inquiry
about you from Washington….’ They wouldn’t send me overseas … you know
that? They kept saying I’d be in the next outfit, and then somehow or other I
wasn’t. And they tailed me when I was on leave in New York—I knew
it—you can feel when you’re being watched. Even here sometimes … what
do you know about the servants? What about Dan?… I suppose you just think
I’m crazy for asking that….”

It was on my tongue to say something, but at that moment Dan appeared,
hurrying along the path from the house. The timing looked sinister, but could
hardly have been anything but accidental, for he came to tell me I was wanted
on the telephone.

“I’ll stay here,” Brad said, so I walked back with Dan. I asked who it was
and he said Mr. Small.

When I saw the receiver lying on the blotter on the library table top I
had an almost physical reluctance to touch it. I waited a moment before
picking it up.

A voice said rather curtly: “Miss Waring?… This is Small. I’d like to
come up to your place tomorrow morning, if you don’t mind, for a discussion.
I’m not satisfied with the situation as it is…. Don’t tell Bradley…. No,
we can’t talk over the phone…. Tomorrow, then, about ten. Good-by.”

I walked slowly back to Brad. It was after early dinner; dusk was falling;
the beauty of the scene assembled itself almost excessively. Beauty to me is
like that; up to a point it has the freshness of daffodils, but beyond that
there can be too much, a tropical surfeit, foliage too rich and groves too
dark, a place for fears to stalk. Or perhaps all this was only in my mind as
I saw things then. I was relieved when Brad said he was tired and would go to
bed.

I slept badly, thinking of Mr. Small and what reason he
might have for not
being satisfied. There had been something in his voice that worried me; or
perhaps something in me was now prepared to worry. Already it seemed years,
not merely days, since I had come to Vista Grande. I suddenly wished my
mother were alive, because she had always known so easily how to deal with
men. She, I felt sure, could have found out what was on Brad’s mind; and she
could handle Mr. Small, whatever mood he was in tomorrow. She would sweep
them both into some realm of inconsequence and reign over it like an
absent-minded queen.

The telephone woke me. I saw by the clock it was 4 A.M. I didn’t recognize
the voice at first and was too sleepy to ask. Somebody talking about the
weather … perhaps a wrong number…. Then I caught Murdoch’s drawl. “Dawn
looks fine from here. Might be a good day if you don’t mind it a bit hot.
Sorry to waken you but that’s what you asked.”

I was just about to tell him it was too bad I had an engagement that
morning when an idea came that held me still listening. Presently I said:
“Well, thanks, we’ll probably be along…. Oh, as soon as we can make
it….”

Then I went to Brad’s room and woke him. He yawned, looked indifferent,
and replied, as if he were doing me a favor: “Okay. Give me ten minutes to
dress.”

I took less time than that. Afterwards I made coffee and sandwiches
downstairs, and left a note for Dan. I told him to give Mr. Small my
apologies and say we had gone away “for a few days.” I thought that would
stop him from waiting around for our return.

So we were on the road by four-thirty.

“Feel like going up?” I said. “You don’t have to. It’s a
nice drive,
anyhow.”

He answered: “I’ll probably try. But alone—first of all.”

“Oh no.”

“So you think I need an instructor?”

“Of course not, but just in case….”

“Just in case. I like that. I’d have you know I had five hundred hours to
my credit before the Air Force decided I was only fit for map reading.”

So it still rankled. But I liked the mood he was working himself into.
“All right. But in that case why bother to try it yourself first?”

“Because I want to show off in front of you.”

I doubted that. I think his real reason was twofold: he thought he might
be scared, once he was in the air; and if he were, he didn’t want me to see
it, and perhaps also he didn’t trust me to take over in such an event. I had
noticed before his deep reluctance to discover me able to do anything but
write.

When I quit the argument he seemed almost disappointed. Throughout the
drive he was alternately jaunty and fretful, peeved at the car radio because
at that distance it wouldn’t yield the morning news bulletin. “We can get a
paper somewhere,” I said, but he shrugged indifferently. The sun rose,
showing first in saffron tints on the peaks of mountains. Soon I could point
out the plume of smoke that was just a few miles beyond the airfield. “Desert
towns,” he said, rememberingly. “You can spot them sometimes a hundred miles
away—even if they don’t have any factory smoke. They show up like a
kid’s breath on a windowpane … someone said.”

“Who said? I like that.”

“A friend … the only fellow I really got to know in the army. His name
was Bill Manson. He said it once flying east from El Paso. Those little Texas
towns, stuck in the middle of nothing…. Bill was a fine pilot, a cowboy
before the war. Not well educated, but he thought things out and he saw
things clear.”

“What happened to him?”

“Died in a hospital, after a crash at sea. He was ten days drifting about.
One of those raft stories. There were five on it, three died before they were
picked up. Bill died after being brought home. A shark had mauled him. He was
unconscious most of the time. The papers made a thing of it—about how
the two survivors had prayed all night for rescue and then a ship had seen
them at dawn. As the fifth man was the only one who could tell me what had
really happened I got leave to see him. He told me. Before I left I asked if
it was true they had prayed. He said—‘Well, I didn’t, but I guess Bill
did, if you could call it a prayer. He kept calling out “For Christ’s sake,
God, what are you trying to do to us?” Of course that was after the shark got
him.’”

Brad stirred uncomfortably. “I suppose that’s what some folks would call
blasphemous, but to my mind it’s in the same key with other things Bill said,
and I don’t call it a bad prayer … if you’re on a raft. And we’re all on a
raft these days, if we only knew.”

“Knew what?”

“Knew we were on a raft … drifting.”

I had purposely slowed down for him to say as much as he would, but I
couldn’t spin it out any more; we were already at Lost Water and Mr. Murdoch
was waving from one of the planes. There were three now; I wondered if
business were looking up, but he said when he came over to us: “I got a
better one for you this time, miss.”

I had thought he would have respect for Brad as an Air Force man, but he
didn’t show any. “Don’t let him get up to any tricks,” he warned me. “None of
that acrobatics stuff.” I was tickled that he assumed I was to be in command.
In point of fact I had no right to be; I hadn’t yet got my certificate and
taking up a passenger was forbidden. But Murdoch had never asked about that.
“He wants to go up alone first,” I told him.

Murdoch looked even dubious, and I was beginning to reassure him when I
noticed Brad’s face, moody and rather pale as he stood a little way off. “I
don’t have to,” he interjected, coming over. And then rather superiorly: “No
thrill to me.” I recognized that as an act put on for a stranger. Fine, if it
helped him.

While Murdoch was checking the gas I asked again: “Brad, are you sure you
want to go up at all?”