The General Zapped an Angel: New Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction (12 page)

“For some reason I find it very exciting.”

“Oh?”

“You know, I haven't looked at the screen for days, Dorey. It's very strange not to participate in the discoveries. It gives me an odd feeling. Do you know what I mean?”

“Not really, no.”

“Just some silly notion,” Kiley said, rather embarrassed. He pointed across the room. “Have you noticed that door? I wonder where it leads to?”

“It's a locked door.”

“You mean—an actual locked door?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, what do you know!” Kiley exclaimed. He was absolutely delighted. “A real locked door. Do you know, I never believed they existed.”

“You never believed it?”

“No, I always thought it was some sort of metaphysical nonsense.”

“Well, there it is,” I said. There were a good many locked doors, and I found it rather strange that anyone should doubt their existence. However, Kiley was very young, and one tended to lose touch with what the young knew or did not know.

Kiley walked over to the door, studied it, tried the handle, and then turned to me and said eagerly, his bright blue eyes wide and excited:

“Why don't we open it, Dorey?”

“What?”

“I said, why don't we open the locked door?”

“Kiley, Kiley,” I said patiently, “the door is locked.”

“I know. But we could open it.”

“How?”

“With a key.”

“A what?”

“A key, Dorey—a key!”

“Bless your heart, Kiley, there is no such thing as a key.”

“But there must be.”

“No, Kiley, there is not. A locked door is a locked door, and nothing can change that.”

“But a key could.”

“Kiley, I told you that there is no such thing as a key. I know that the word exists, but it is only a symbol, a metaphysical symbol. I may not be a particularly devout man, Kiley, but I have always been on the side of religion, and I don't think that anyone will doubt my dedication to the religious establishment. Nevertheless, I must state that metaphysics is one thing and reality is something entirely different. I tell you flatly that a key is like a miracle. We talk of them; some even believe in them; but I have never found anyone who has ever seen one. Do you understand?”

Kiley nodded slowly.

“Then I suggest we forget about keys and set to turning this room into an adequate machine shop, and if we do, we ought to have those vending machines in tip-top shape very soon. Do you agree, Kiley?”

“Yes—yes, of course.”

“And quite a number of other things need repairing. Some of the chairs in the theater are absolutely unfit to sit on.”

“Yes, sir,” Kiley said.

The projectionist had announced a Swedish sex film for that night, and I told Schecter and Kiley that they could have the evening for the discovery, since they had been working quite hard and since it was not too often that the projectionist permitted a sex film. Schecter licked his lips with pleasure—a dirty old man if there ever was one—but Kiley said that he would prefer to tinker around in the machine shop, if I didn't mind. You can't fault devotion to duty, and of course I said that I didn't mind. I had already made my own arrangements with a delightful little blonde called Baba, and we met before the lights went off. Whenever we had a sex film, the projectionist insisted on blacking out the theater. It made a sort of sense, for the older folks are embarrassed by the close presence of younger people during a sex film, and certainly the young are made uneasy by the presence of their parents. So the auditorium was blacked out, and ushers, using tiny hand flashlights, took us to our seats.

There has been a great deal of discussion, pro and con, concerning sex on the screen; and even though the puritanical elements have considerable power, the decision was always made to continue with sex discoveries. I felt that this was because the puritans enjoyed them even more than the others; and also I might add that sex films play an important role in the reproductive activities that serve to perpetuate our society. I certainly enjoy those rare evenings, and this time I felt sorry for Kiley.

I must say that I was rather kind to him the following day. I went out of my way to compliment him on his inventories of the candy, and he in turn took me into his machine shop, which I praised highly. He was constructing a sort of lathe, which, as he explained, would enable him to reproduce elements of the vending machines.

“And do you know, Mr. President, sir,” he said eagerly, “I think I could use the same machine to make a key.”

“Kiley!” I said.

“Yes, sir—I know how you feel about keys.”

“Not how I feel, Kiley. It's how the world feels.”

“Yes, sir,” Kiley said very seriously. “I know that. I am ready to accept how the world feels. I mean I don't want you to feel that I'm a radical or anything of that sort—”

“I don't, Kiley. Rest assured that if I did, I never would have appointed you to the Committee. You are very young to be a member of the Committee, Kiley.”

“I know that, sir.”

“But I had confidence in you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I had confidence in your stability, your judgment.”

“Thank you, Dorey. I'm very flattered that you took such an interest in me.”

“But above all, I want you to consider me as a friend.”

“Oh, I do,” Kiley said earnestly.

“Then as a friend, Kiley, I must ask you to give up this delusion about keys.”

“Do you consider it harmful, sir—I mean to think about it or plan to make one?”

“To make something that doesn't exist?”

“But people do. I mean they make something that doesn't exist.”

“Not keys, Kiley.”

“Sir?”

“Why must you argue with me, Kiley? Some of the wisest men in our society have gone into this question of keys. There are no keys. There never were. There never will be.”

Kiley stared at me, his honest, boyish eyes wide open.

“Yes, Kiley. I want you to promise me something.”

“Sir?”

“That you will never mention this matter of keys again. Forget it. Put it out of your mind. There is no such thing as a key. There never was. There never will be.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good lad.” I squeezed his shoulder affectionately—to show him that I bore no ill will toward him. “Now I want you to get to work on those vending machines. You have no idea how much the people miss hot chocolate. Especially the older folks. It appears to be one of few consolations of old age.”

“I will.”

“When might you have them?”

“Two weeks—three at the very most.”

“Good. Excellent. But all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and I want you to take this evening off. The projectionist is showing a very rare and special piece called
Little Caesar,
which dates back to the time when organized hoodlums challenged city government. It is restricted to those who are in government today or have served in government in the past.”

“Thank you, sir,” Kiley answered enthusiastically.

It was Kiley's very quality of being outgoing and enthusiastic that threw me off the track. It was difficult to think of anyone with his spontaneous quality as being a creature of duplicity, but there is no other label for his subsequent actions; and five days later the whole thing exploded in my face.

Schecter came to me with it. “Dorey,” he said grimly, “the devil's at work.”

“Oh?”

“You know I am not prone to exaggeration.”

“I know that.”

“Well, I saw Kiley enter his shop today.”

“What's so unusual about that?”

“I wanted a word with him.”

“So?”

“I followed him. I opened the door to his office and entered. He wasn't there.”

“Perhaps he left before you got there.”

“I told you I saw him enter his shop. I watched the door to his shop—the door that opens into the lobby. I saw him go in. I never took my eyes off that door until I opened it. No one came out of his shop. No one.”

“Then he was in there,” I said calmly.

“Damn it, Dorey—am I an idiot? The room was empty.”

“How could it have been empty? You said you never took your eyes off the door.”

“Exactly. Still it was empty.”

“All right,” I sighed. “Suppose we both look into this. There are no devils, no keys, no miracles—I made all that very clear to Kiley, so suppose we just look into this.”

“Good,” Schecter agreed, his jaw set firmly. “Good.”

He led the way into the lobby, and as we reached there, he signaled for a squad of ushers to follow us. When we reached the door to Kiley's workshop, I said to Schecter:

“Really, do we need them?”

“Alertness is the first rule of military practice! They're ushers, Dorey! This is their place, their duty! Man for man, I will match them against any dirty little subversive that ever lived!”

“Oh, come on now, Schecter—we're not going to call Kiley a subversive.”

“If the name fits—”

“There's no indication that it fits or that Kiley did anything wrong. Let's have a look.”

I opened the door to the workshop. I had not been inside the place in days, but Kiley's lathe was finished, and on his worktable were the bright new pieces for the vending machine. Kiley himself was not there.

“Well?” Schecter demanded.

I went out into the lobby and said to the ushers: “Did Kiley come through the lobby during the past hour?”

They shook their heads.

I went back into the workshop and closed the door behind me. Standing there now, alone with Schecter, I allowed my eyes to wander over the place again and again. It was a small room and there was no place to hide, no nook, no corner, no cranny.

“Well, sir, are you satisfied?” Schecter demanded.

“I'll let you know when I'm satisfied, Schecter.”

He allowed himself a slight smile of satisfaction, and I went to the other door and tried it.

“That's a locked door, Dorey,” Schecter informed me.

“I know bloody damn well that it's a locked door.”

“Well, I just thought—”

“I don't give two damns what you thought, Schecter. Let's get out of here.”

Schecter paraded out of the room into the lobby where the ushers were waiting, and I followed him, closing the door behind me. At that moment I heard a sound inside the shop, and I said to Schecter, “You wait out here. I'm going back in there.”

I turned and opened the door of Kiley's shop again, slipped through, and closed it behind me before Schecter could squirm around and see what I was up to. Kiley was inside the shop now, grinning with delight and excitement, holding a small piece of shining metal in his hand.

“Kiley,” I cried, “where the hell were you?”

“Outside.”

“What do you mean, outside?”

“Through that door.” He pointed to the locked door.

“What? Are you crazy? That's a locked door. No one goes through a locked door!”

“I did.”

I held up my hand and pointed a shaking finger at him. “Kiley, have you gone off your nut? Have you lost your mind? You're talking crazy. You're talking so goddamn crazy even I won't be able to protect you. You talk about going through a locked door. A locked door is locked. No one goes through it.”

“I unlocked it,” Kiley said, almost squealing with delight.

“You unlocked it,” I said with cold, deliberate scorn. “Only the greatest minds of our time have given their attention to locked doors and have proved that they can never be unlocked—but you unlocked it, all by yourself.”

“And with a key!” Kiley cried. “You said I couldn't make a key, but I did. Here it is.” He held up the little piece of metal, coming toward me and offering it to me.

“Keep your distance! Keep that damn thing away from me! I told you there is no such thing as a key!”

“But here it is—here it is, Dorey. Believe me, I unlocked the door and I went outside—” He turned and pointed toward the locked door. “Out there, through the locked door. My God almighty, Kiley, out there the sun is shining in such a blaze of golden glory that the mind can't conceive it, and there's green grass and green trees and tall buildings, and people—thousands and thousands of people, real people who wear bright-colored clothes and the sun splashes down over them, and the girls have long, bare legs and brown and yellow and black hair, and they're real, Dorey, real! Not like those shadows that the projectionist shows us on the big screen. Do you think his discoveries are real or even discoveries? They're not. They're shadows, lies, illusions—but outside that door the world is real—”

“Enough!” I screamed at him. “God damn you, enough!”

I flung open the door to the lobby and yelled, “Schecter! Schecter—get here on the double with your damn ushers!”

Schecter and the ushers poured into the little room, grabbing Kiley and overwhelming him. Kiley didn't struggle; he just stared at me in astonishment and with such hurt surprise that I said:

“Oh, for Christ's sake, Schecter, let go of him.”

“What?”

“I said leave him alone and get your damned ushers out of here—now.”

“Didn't you just call me?”

“You give me a pain in the ass, Schecter. Get out of here and take your ushers with you.”

Aggrieved, scowling, looking hate at Kiley and me, Schecter led the ushers out of the room; and then I turned tiredly to Kiley and said:

“You certainly do louse things up, don't you? Here I go out on a limb to make you the youngest committeeman ever, and what do I get in return? A raving lunatic, that's what I get in return.”

“Dorey, I'm not a raving lunatic.”

“Then what in hell are you?”