Time and Again Page 3

There was a longish pause. Then he said, "Well, you won't have much of anything to tell until we're sure you're a candidate. If it turns out you aren't, we'll thank you for your trouble, and in that case I don't think you'll have to tell her anything about it. Can we agree on that?"

  "Yeah."

  "If you reach the point of joining the project, knowing what we're doing"—he hesitated—"well, damn it, if you have to tell her, I guess you have to. We have two guys who are married, and their wives know. We swear them to secrecy, and hope, that's all."

  "Okay. What would happen if she blabbed, Rube? Or if I did? Just out of curiosity."

  "A man in a skintight black suit and a mask will come down your chimney and shoot you with a soundless blow dart, paralyzing you. Then we seal you in a big block of clear plastic till the year 2001. Nothing would happen, for crysake! You think the CIA murders you or something? All we can do is pick people we think we can trust. And we've seen Katherine, you know; inquired about her, very discreetly and all that. Of the two of you, I trust her the most. I take it you're joining us?"

  I felt an impulse to hesitate, but didn't bother. "Yeah."

  "Okay, the first day you can make it come around about nine in the morning; here's the address."

  And so, three days later, on Thursday morning a little after nine, too tense to sit in a cab, I was walking through the rain, the good weather finally over apparently, looking for the address Rube had given me. I was feeling more and more puzzled; this was the upper West Side, an area of small factories, machine shops, wholesalers, binderies. Cars were solidly parked on both sides of every street, their off wheels up over the curbs. The walks were littered with wet paper, crushed orange-drink cartons, broken glass, and there were no other pedestrians. Checking addresses, I walked west, coming nearer and nearer the river. I passed BUZZ BANNISTER, neon-sign manufacturer, in a dirty white-stucco building, the windows piled with cardboard cartons. Next door was FIORE BROS., WHOLESALE NOVELTIES, a padlock on the door and a smashed wine bottle in the doorway. Across the street, silent and deserted in the rain, hundreds of rusting car bodies compacted into cubes were stacked behind a steel-mesh fence.

  I was beginning to wonder if I'd been hoaxed, and Rube Prien were ... what? An actor, possibly, hired to trick me in some elaborate practical joke? It didn't seem likely, yet the number he'd given me, if it existed at all, had to be in the block just ahead but I could see that the entire block was occupied by just one great building, six stories high, of soot-darkened brick, surmounted by a weathered wooden water tower, and in a wide band of faded white paint just below the roof line I read BEEKEY BROTHERS, MOVING & STORAGE, 555-8811, and I could tell by looking at it that that sign had been there for years.

  The walls were windowless except at the corner just ahead and across the street from me. There, at street level, two plate-glass windows were lettered BEEKEY BROTHERS in chipped gold-leaf. In the tiny office behind the windows a girl sat at a desk back of a counter operating a billing machine. High up on the wall facing me, a rectangular panel painted on the bricks read LOCAL AND LONG DISTANCE; STORAGE OUR SPECIALTY; AGENTS FOR ASSOCIATED VAN LINES. On the street several stories below this, a green van lettered BEEKEY BROTHERS, MOVING AND STORAGE stood before a metal-slat truck door in the side of the building. Two men in white coveralls stood tossing stacks of protective blankets into the back of the van.

  There was nothing to do except walk on toward the building, but I knew the number on its office door wouldn't be the one Rube had given me, and it wasn't. I kept walking. For a full block I walked through the rain beside the weathered brick wall. Between it and the sidewalk in a narrow strip of hard-packed dirt grew a scraggly, uncared-for, foot-high hedge. Cellophane fragments were trapped in its stiff little branches, dirty words were spray-painted on the walls, and I wondered if I'd have the nerve to ask Frank for my job back.

  Set in the building wall at the end of the block was an ordinary wood door with a weathered brass knob and key circle. The gray paint was cracked and peeled to the bare wood in places, and the door looked locked. But stenciled on the wet bricks above it in white paint so faded you could barely make it out was the number Rube had given me. I rapped on the door panel, and there was a silence except for the sky-high roar of the Thursday-morning city and the sound of the rain on the hoods and tops of the parked cars behind me. I had no belief that my knock would be answered, or that there was anyone on the other side to hear it.

  But there was. The knob rattled, turned, the door opened, and a black-haired young man in white coveralls looked out; in red stitching over a breast pocket it said Don, and he had a copy of Sports Illustrated in one hand. He said, "Hi; come on in. Boy, what a lousy day," and I walked in past him. As he closed the door I read, BEEKEY BROTHERS, MOVERS, in red block-letters across his back.

  We were in a windowless fluorescent-lighted office no more than ten feet square, furnished with a desk, swivel chair, and a couple of yellow-oak straight chairs with most of the varnish worn off. On the wall hung a Beekey Brothers calendar and a lot of framed photographs of smiling crews posed alongside Beekey vans. "Yeah?" said the man in coveralls, sitting down behind his desk. "What can we do for you? Moving? Storage?"

  I said I'd come to see Rube Prien, half expecting him to look blank, but he asked my name, then dialed a phone, gesturing with his chin toward a couple of hooks on the wall. "Hang up your hat and coat," he said to me, then into the phone, "Mr. Morley to see Mr. Prien." He listened, said, "Right," and hung up. "Be down in a minute; make yourself at home." He lay back in his swivel chair and began reading his magazine.

  I sat there trying to wonder what was going to happen now, but there was nothing for my mind to work on, and I found myself examining the framed photographs: one of them, inscribed "The Gang," 1921, in white ink, showed a Beekey van, an old Mack truck with metal-spoke wheels and solid rubber tires; half the crew wore big mustaches.

  There was a click from a door set flush in the wall at my right. I looked up as it swung open, noticing that there was no knob on this side. Rube stood holding the door open behind him with a foot. He was wearing clean wash pants and a short-sleeved white shirt open at the neck; his forearms were fuzzy with red hair and were as large as my biceps and more muscular. "Well, I see you found us." He put out his hand. "Welcome, Si. Glad to see you."

  "Thanks. Yeah, I found it. In spite of the disguise."

  "Oh, we're not really disguised." He beckoned me in, then let the door swing closed behind us; it made a quiet heavy thunk, and I realized it was painted metal. We were standing in a little concrete-floored hallway badly lighted by a bare bulb in a wire cage in the ceiling. A pair of green-enameled elevator doors faced us, and Rube reached past me to poke the button. "Actually the building is the way it's been for years. On the outside. Up to ten months ago this was a genuine moving-and-storage business, a family corporation. We bought it, and we still do some moving and a little storage in a walled-off section of the building; enough to maintain the pose." The elevator doors slid open, we stepped in, and Rube pressed 6. The only other visible button said 1; the other buttons were taped over with dirty adhesive.

  "The older employees were pensioned off, the others gradually replaced by our people; I was 'hired' and actually worked as a moving man for a month. Damn near killed me." Rube smiled; that nice genuine smile you couldn't help responding to. "Now our estimates tend to be a little high; not much, just a little. And the business generally goes to a competitor. We look busy as ever, though. In fact, we are. We've even added two new vans. One hell of a lot of stuff has been moved out of here in our own closed vans; the entire interior of the building, in fact. And I guess we've brought even more stuff in." The green doors slid open, and we stepped out onto a floor of offices.

  You could smell the newness, and it looked like a floor in any modern office building: polished vinyl-tiled corridors under a string of skylights; beige-painted walls with stenciled black arrows indicating groups of office numbers; looped fire hoses behi
nd glass; occasional drinking fountains; numbered flush doors each with a black-and-white plastic name-plate fastened to the wall beside it. Far ahead, as we turned toward her, a girl in a white blouse and dark skirt, her face indistinguishable, walked toward us carrying a stack of papers in one arm; she turned into an office before reaching us. As we passed them I glanced at the plastic nameplates for some sort of clue, but they were only meaningless names: W.W. O'NEIL; V. ZAHLIAN; MISS K. VEACH....

  Rube gestured at a door just ahead; the plastic wall sign beside it said PERSONNEL. "We have to get this over first; withholding forms, Blue Cross, insurance, the works. Even we don't escape this stuff." He opened the door, gesturing me in first, and we stepped into a little anteroom half filled by a desk at which a girl sat typing. "Rose, this is Simon Morley, a new hand. Si, Rose Macabee." We said how-do-you-do, and Rube said, "How long will you need, Rose? Half hour?" She said about twenty-five minutes, and Rube said he'd be back for me then, and left.

  "In here, please, Mr. Morley." The girl opened the door and led the way into an ordinary office, window-less and bare-looking, lighted by a large skylight. "Will you sit down, please?" I walked to the flat-topped desk and sat down in a swivel desk-chair. "The forms should be in here." She opened a drawer of the desk and brought out a little sheaf of six or eight printed forms of different colors and sizes clipped together. She pulled off the clip and spread them under my desk lamp, turning on the lamp with the other hand. "They're all here. Just fill in the blanks, Mr. Morley; do this long one first. Here's a pen." She handed me a ball-point pen. "It shouldn't take long. Call me if you have any questions." She nodded at a small table beside my chair; the top was an intricate pattern of inlaid wood about a foot square, just large enough for the white phone it held. She smiled and walked out, closing the door.

  Pen in hand, I sat looking around the room for a moment or so. A green filing cabinet stood on the wall opposite me; a mirror hung on the wall behind me; on the wall to my right beside the door was a small framed picture, a watercolor of a covered bridge, not bad work but pretty standard. That was all there was to see, and I looked down at the papers spread out under the desk lamp; they were withholding-tax forms, hospitalization, and the like. I pulled the long one to me—it was headed "Personnel Fact Sheet"—and began filling it out. In the first blanks I wrote my name; place of birth, Gary, Indiana; date of birth, March 11, 1942; wondering if anyone ever looked at these things. The phone on the little table at my elbow rang, and I swung around in my chair, picked it up, and an actual physical sensation of coldness moved up my spine because the phone was green. It had been white, I was certain of that, but now it was green. I said, "Hello?"

  "Mr. Prien is back for you, Mr. Morley. Are you nearly finished?"

  "Finished? I just started."

  There was a moment's pause. "Just started? Mr. Morley, you've been at it"—there was a pause as though she might be consulting a watch—"over twenty minutes.''

  I didn't know what to say to her. "You've made a mistake, Miss Macabee; I've barely begun."

  I could detect the repressed annoyance in her voice. "Well, please finish up as quickly as you can, Mr. Morley. Mr. Prien has made an appointment with the director." She clicked off, and I slowly hung up the phone; could I possibly have drifted off into a daydream twenty minutes long? I turned back to the form I'd been filling out, then actually jumped to my feet in panic, my chair skidding back and banging the wall. There in the blanks under my name, birthplace, and date of birth were written my father's name, Earl Gavin Morley; his birthplace and date of birth, Muncie, Indiana, 1908; my mother's maiden name, Strong; my hobbies, sketching and photography; and my entire history of employment beginning with Neff & Carter in Buffalo. All the other forms were filled out, too: every one of them, just like this, in my own unmistakable handwriting. It was impossible for me to have done this without knowing it, but there it was. It wasn't possible that twenty minutes had passed, but they must have. And the white phone—I glanced at it again—was still green. The hair on the back of my neck was prickling, trying to stand erect, and the fear in my stomach was like a clenching fist.

  Then it stopped. I had not filled out these forms, and I knew it. I'd been in this room no more than three or four minutes at most, and I knew that, too. My eyes were narrowed, I stood staring out across the desk top thinking, then I saw the watercolor on the wall. The covered bridge was gone; now it was a pine-covered snow-capped mountain, and I laughed aloud, the fear instantly shrinking to nothing. The door opened, and Rube Prien walked in. "All finished? What's the matter?"

  "Rube, what in the hell do you think you're doing?" I stood grinning at him as he walked toward the desk. "Why am I supposed to think I've been here twenty minutes?"

  "But you have."

  "And that the picture on the wall"—I nodded at it—"changed from a bridge to a mountain?"

  "The picture?" Rube was standing before my desk, and he turned to look back at the watercolor, puzzled. "It's always been a mountain."

  "And was the phone always green, Rube?"

  He glanced at it. "Yeah, I guess so; far as I can remember."

  I was slowly shaking my head, still smiling. "It's no use, Rube; I've been here five minutes at the most." I gestured at the papers on the desk top. "And I never filled those out, no matter how much it looks like my writing."

  Through a moment or so Rube stood looking across the desk at me, his eyes concerned. Then he said, "Suppose I swear to you, Si, that you did? And that you've been here"—he looked at his watch—"just under twenty-five minutes?"

  "You'd be lying."

  "And suppose Rose swears it, too?"

  I just shook my head. Suddenly I squatted down beside the little telephone table and looked underneath it. There hung the white phone, held in place and the receiver prevented from falling by a wide U-shaped copper band fastened between two sides of the underpart of the table; near it was fastened a small metal box from which a pair of thin wires ran down the inside of the table leg. I pressed the table top near the edge, and a panel within the intricate design revolved, the white phone rolling up into sight, the green phone sliding down onto the copper holding strip. When I looked up at him Rube was smiling, and he beckoned over his shoulder at the office doorway behind him.

  A man in shirt-sleeves walked in. He was young, dark-haired, with a thin trimmed mustache, and he was looking at me in a pleased way. As he walked toward us Rube said, "Dr. Oscar Rossoff, Simon Morley." We each said how-do-you-do, and he reached across the desk top while my hand rose to shake his, but instead of taking my hand he took my wrist between thumb and fingers.

  After a moment he said, "Pulse almost normal, and slowing rapidly. Good." He let go my wrist, stood smiling at me happily, and said, "How did you know? What tipped you off?" In the doorway Rose stood watching us, smiling.

  "Nothing tipped me off except that it's impossible. I just knew I hadn't filled out those forms. That I hadn't been here twenty minutes." I had to smile again as I nodded toward the picture. "And that a few minutes ago that crazy mountain was a bridge."

  "Inner-directed," Rossoff was murmuring before I finished. "This is fine," he said to Rube, "a very good reaction." He turned to me again. "To you it may seem unremarkable but I assure you many people act differently. One man jumped up and ran out through the door; we had to grab him in the hall and explain."

  "Well, fine; glad I passed." I tried not to look it, but I felt pleased as a kid who'd just won the spelldown. "But what's the idea? And how'd you work it?"

  Rube said, "We already knew the facts. It took an expert forger four hours to do those forms in a chemical ink. All but the first three blanks of the long form; those we left for you. There's a small infrared tube in the desk lamp; it makes the ink visible a few seconds after it's turned on. Rose watches through the mirror behind you; there's a corridor from her desk. As soon as you fill in the first three blanks, she phones you from an extension there and turns on the infrared tube. Time you're off the p
hone, and look back at the papers—hey, presto!—all the blanks are filled."

  "And the picture?"

  Rube shrugged. "A hole in the wall behind the glass and frame. While the candidate's writing, I just pull out the bridge and shove in the mountain."

  "Well, it beats the Katzenjammer Kids, but what's the point?"

  Rossoff said, "To see how you react when the impossible is happening: Some people can't take it. They rely on things being what they ought to be, and behaving as they always have. When suddenly they aren't, and don't, their senses actually surrender, can't cope. Right at that desk, they fail. Don, downstairs, was one; we had to give him a pill even after he knew what had happened. But you're guided from within, not from the outside. You know what you know. Come on into my office now, and have some coffee. A drink, if you want it; you've earned it."

  Rossoff's office was down the corridor Rube and I had come along, around a corner, then in through a door labeled INFIRMARY. As Rossoff pushed it open for Rube and me, I was reminded of a hospital, and I realized that the door was wider than most. We walked on through a large room, unlighted except for a skylight. It contained a desk, a row of wicker chairs along a wall, a fluoroscope, an eye chart, and what I took to be a portable X-ray machine. Rube said, "No more tricks from now on, Si, I promise. That was the one and only."

  "I didn't mind." Off to one side as we crossed the big room were the doorways of other, lighted rooms; from one I heard voices in casual conversation; in another I saw a man in a white hospital gown, his foot in a cast, sitting on an examining table reading a Reader's Digest.

  We walked into a small reception room; a nurse in white uniform stood at a filing cabinet leafing through folders in the open top drawer. She was holding a pen in her teeth by the barrel, and she smiled as well as she could; Rube pretended he was going to swat her in the rear as we passed through, and she pretended to believe him, swinging out of the way. She was a big, good-looking, good-natured woman in her late thirties, with a lot of gray in her hair.