Home Is the Hangman Page 6

  "And…?"

  "I couldn't, and my usual sources are good at that kind of thing."

  "So…?"

  "So, I've done some thinking, some wondering…The fact that my sources could not come up with anything is interesting in itself. Possibly even revealing. I am in a better position than most to be aware of the fact that there was not perfect compliance with the registration statute some years ago. It didn't take long for a great number of the individuals involved, I should probably say 'most', to demonstrate their existence in one fashion or another and be duly entered, though. And there were three broad categories: those who were ignorant, those who disapproved, and those who would be hampered in an illicit life-style. I am not attempting to categorize you or to pass judgment. But I am aware that there are a number of nonpersons passing through society without casting shadows, and it has occurred to me that you may be such a one."

  I tasted my drink.

  "And if I am?" I asked.

  He gave me his second, nastier smile and said nothing.

  I rose and crossed the room to where I judged his chair had once stood. I looked at the watercolor.

  "I don't think you could stand an inquiry," he said.

  I did not reply.

  "Aren't you going to say something?"

  "What do you want me to say?"

  "You might ask me what I am going to do about it."

  "What are you going to do about it?"

  "Nothing," he answered. "So come back here and sit down."

  I nodded and returned.

  He studied my face. "Was it possible you were close to violence just then?"

  "With four guards outside?"

  "With four guards outside."

  "No," I said.

  "You're a good liar."

  "I am here to help you, sir. No questions asked. That was the deal, as I understood it. If there has been any change, I would like to know about it now."

  He drummed with his fingertips on the plaid.

  "I've no desire to cause you any difficulty," he said. "Fact of the matter is, I need a man just like you, and I was pretty sure someone like Don might turn him up. Your unusual maneuverability and your reported knowledge of computers, along with your touchiness in certain areas, made you worth waiting for. I've a great number of things I would like to ask you."

  "Go ahead," I said.

  "Not yet. Later, if we have time. All that would be bonus material, for a report I am working on. Far more important, to me, personally, there are things that I want to tell you."

  I frowned.

  "Over the years," he went on, "I have learned that the best man for purposes of keeping his mouth shut concerning your business is someone for whom you are doing the same."

  "You have a compulsion to confess something?" I asked.

  "I don't know whether 'compulsion' is the right word. Maybe so, maybe not. Either way, however, someone among those working to defend me should have the whole story. Something somewhere in it may be of help, and you are the ideal choice to hear it."

  "I buy that," I said, "and you are as safe with me as I am with you."

  "Have you any suspicions as to why this business bothers me so?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "Let's hear them."

  "You used the Hangman to perform some act or acts, illegal, immoral, whatever. This is obviously not a matter of record. Only you and the Hangman now know what it involved. You feel it was sufficiently ignominious that when that device came to appreciate the full weight of the event, it suffered a breakdown which may well have led to a final determination to punish you for using it as you did."

  He stared down into his glass.

  "You've got it," he said.

  "You were all party to it?"

  "Yes, but I was the operator when it happened. You see…we, I, killed a man. It was, Actually, it all started as a celebration. We had received word that afternoon that the project had cleared. Everything had checked out in order and the final approval had come down the line. It was go, for that Friday. Leila, Dave, Manny, and myself, we had dinner together. We were in high spirits. After dinner, we continued celebrating and somehow the party got adjourned back to the installation.

  "As the evening wore on, more and more absurdities seemed less and less preposterous, as is sometimes the case. We decided, I forget which of us suggested it, that the Hangman should really have a share in the festivities. After all, it was, in a very real sense, his party. Before too much longer, it sounded only fair and we were discussing how we could go about it…You see, we were in Texas and the Hangman was at the Space Center in California. Getting together with him was out of the question. On the other hand, the teleoperator station was right up the hall from us. What we finally decided to do was to activate him and take turns working as operator. There was already a rudimentary consciousness there, and we felt it fitting that we each get in touch to share the good news. So that is what we did." He sighed, took another sip, glanced at me. "Dave was the first operator," he continued. "He activated the Hangman. Then, Well, as I said, we were all in high spirits. We had not originally intended to remove the Hangman from the lab where he was situated, but Dave decided to take him outside briefly, to show him the sky and to tell him he was going there, after all. Then Dave suddenly got enthusiastic about outwitting the guards and the alarm system. It was a game. We all went along with it. In fact, we were clamoring for a turn at the thing ourselves. But Dave stuck with it, and he wouldn't turn over control until he had actually gotten the Hangman off the premises, out into an uninhabited area next to the Center.

  "By the time Leila persuaded him to give her a go at the controls, it was kind of anticlimactic. That game had already been played. So she thought up a new one: she took the Hangman into the next town. It was late, and the sensory equipment was superb. It was a challenge, passing through the town without being detected. By then, everyone had suggestions as to what to do next, progressively more outrageous suggestions. Then Manny took control, and he wouldn't say what he was doing, wouldn't let us monitor him. Said it would be more fun to surprise the next operator. Now, he was higher than the rest of us put together, I think, and he stayed on so damn long that we started to get nervous…A certain amount of tension is partly sobering, and I guess we all began to think what a stupid-assed thing it was we were doing. It wasn't just that it would wreck our careers, which it would, but it could blow the entire project if we got caught playing games with such expensive hardware. At least, I was thinking that way, and I was also thinking that Manny was no doubt operating under the very human wish to go the others one better.

  "I started to sweat. I suddenly just wanted to get the Hangman back where he belonged, turn him off, you could still do that, before the final circuits went in, shut down the station, and start forgetting it had ever happened. I began leaning on Manny to wind up his diversion and turn the controls over to me. Finally, he agreed."

  He finished his drink and held out the glass.

  "Would you freshen this a bit?"

  "Surely."

  I went and got him some more, added a touch to my own, returned to my chair and waited.

  "So I took over," he said. "I took over, and where do you think that idiot had left me? I was inside a building, and it didn't take but an eyeblink to realize it was a bank. The Hangman carries a lot of tools, and Manny had apparently been able to guide him through the doors without setting anything off. I was standing right in front of the main vault. Obviously, he thought that should be my challenge. I fought down a desire to turn and make my own exit in the nearest wall and start running. But I went back to the doors and looked outside.

  "I didn't see anyone. I started to let myself out. The light hit me as I emerged. It was a hand flash. The guard had been standing out of sight. He'd a gun in his other hand. I panicked. I hit him…Reflex. If I am going to hit someone, I hit him as hard as I can. Only I hit him with the strength of the Hangman. He must have died instantly. I started to run a
nd I didn't stop till I was back in the little park area near the Center. Then I stopped and the others had to take me out of the harness."

  "They monitored all this?" I asked.

  "Yes, someone cut the visual in on a side viewscreen again a few seconds after I took over. Dave, I think."

  "Did they try to stop you at any time while you were running away?"

  "No. Well, I wasn't aware of anything but what I was doing at the time. But afterwards they said they were too shocked to do anything but watch, until I gave out."

  "I see."

  "Dave took over then, ran his initial route in reverse, got the Hangman back into the lab, cleaned him up, turned him off. We shut down the operator station. We were suddenly very sober."

  He sighed and leaned back, and was silent for a long while.

  Then, "You are the only person I've ever told this to," he said.

  I tasted my own drink.

  "We went over to Leila's place then," he continued, "and the rest is pretty much predictable. Nothing we could do would bring the guy back, we decided, but if we told what had happened it could wreck an expensive, important program. It wasn't as if we were criminals in need of rehabilitation. It was a once-in-a-lifetime lark that happened to end tragically. What would you have done?"

  "I don't know. Maybe the same thing. I'd have been scared, too."

  He nodded.

  "Exactly. And that's the story."

  "Not all of it, is it?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "What about the Hangman? You said there was already a detectable consciousness there. You were aware of it, and it was aware of you. It must have had some reaction to the whole business. What was that like?"

  "Damn you," he said flatly.

  "I'm sorry."

  "Are you a family man?" he asked.

  "No."

  "Did you ever take a small child to a zoo?"

  "Yes."

  "Then maybe you know the experience. When my son was around four I took him to the Washington Zoo one afternoon. We must have walked past every cage in the place. He made appreciative comments every now and then, asked a few questions, giggled at the monkeys, thought the bears were very nice, probably because they made him think of oversized toys. But do you know what the finest thing of all was? The thing that made him jump up and down and point and say, 'Look, Daddy! Look!'?"

  I shook my head.

  "A squirrel looking down from the limb of a tree," he said, and he chuckled briefly. "Ignorance of what's important and what isn't. Inappropriate responses. Innocence. The Hangman was a child, and up until the time I took over, the only thing he had gotten from us was the idea that it was a game: he was playing with us, that's all. Then something horrible happened…I hope you never know what it feels like to do something totally rotten to a child, while he is holding your hand and laughing…He felt all my reactions, and all of Dave's as he guided him back."

  We sat there for a long while then.

  "So we had, traumatized him," he said finally, "or whatever other fancy terminology you might want to give it. That is what happened that night. It took a while for it to take effect, but there is no doubt in my mind that that is the cause of the Hangman's finally breaking down."

  I nodded. "I see. And you believe it wants to kill you for this?"

  "Wouldn't you?" he said. "If you had started out as a thing and we had turned you into a person and then used you as a thing again, wouldn't you?"

  "Leila left a lot out of her diagnosis."

  "No, she just omitted it in talking to you. It was all there. But she read it wrong. She wasn't afraid. It was just a game it had played, with the others. Its memories of that part might not be as bad. I was the one that really marked it. As I see it, Leila was betting that I was the only one it was after. Obviously, she read it wrong."

  "Then what I do not understand," I said, "is why the Burns killing did not bother her more. There was no way of telling immediately that it had been a panicky hoodlum rather than the Hangman."

  "The only thing that I can see is that, being a very proud woman, which she was, she was willing to hold with her diagnosis in the face of the apparent evidence."

  "I don't like it. But you know her and I don't, and as it tamed out her estimate of that part was correct. Something else bothers me just as much, though: the helmet. It looks as if the Hangman killed Dave, then took the trouble to bear the helmet in his watertight compartment all the way to St. Louis, solely for purposes of dropping it at the scene of his next killing. That makes no sense whatsoever."

  "It does, actually," he said. "I was going to get to that shortly, but I might as well cover it now. You see, the Hangman possessed no vocal mechanism. We communicated by means of the equipment. Don says you know something about electronics…?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, shortly, I want you to start checking over that helmet, to see whether it has been tampered with."

  "That is going to be difficult," I said. "I don't know just how it was wired originally, and I'm not such a genius on the theory that I can just look at a thing and say whether it will function as a teleoperator unit."

  He bit his lower lip.

  "You will have to try, anyhow. There may be physical signs, scratches, breaks, new connections…I don't know. That's your department. Look for them."

  I just nodded and waited for him to go on.

  "I think that the Hangman wanted to talk to Leila," he said, "either because she was a psychiatrist and he knew he was functioning badly at a level that transcended the mechanical, or because he might think of her in terms of a mother. After all, she was the only woman involved, and he had the concept of mother, with all the comforting associations that go with it, from all of our minds. Or maybe for both of these reasons. I feel he might have taken the helmet along for that purpose. He would have realized what it was from a direct monitoring of Dave's brain while he was with him. I want you to check it over because it would seem possible that the Hangman disconnected the control circuits and left the communication circuits intact. I think he might have taken the helmet to Leila in that condition and attempted to induce her to put it on. She got scared, tried to run away, fight, or call for help, and he killed her. The helmet was no longer of any use to him, so he discarded it and departed. Obviously, he does not have anything to say to me."

  I thought about it, nodded again.

  "Okay, broken circuits I can spot," I said. "If you will tell me where a tool kit is, I had better get right to it."

  He made a stay-put gesture with his left hand.

  "Afterwards, I found out the identity of the guard," he went on. "We all contributed to an anonymous gift for his widow. I have done things for his family, taken care of them, the same way, ever since…"

  I did not look at him as he spoke.

  "…There was nothing else that I could do," he finished.

  I remained silent.

  He finished his drink and gave me a weak smile.

  "The kitchen is back there," he told me, showing me a thumb. "There is a utility room right behind it. Tools are in there."

  "Okay."

  I got to my feet. I retrieved the helmet and started toward the doorway, passing near the area where I had stood earlier, back when he had fitted me into the proper box and tightened a screw.

  "Wait a minute!" he said.

  I stopped.

  "Why did you go over there before? What's so strategic about that part of the room?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You know what I mean."

  I shrugged.

  "Had to go someplace."

  "You seem the sort of person who has better reasons than that."

  I glanced at the wall.

  "Not then," I said.

  "I insist."

  "You really don't want to know," I told him.

  "I really do."

  "All right. I wanted to see what sort of flowers you liked. After all, you're a client," and I went on back through the kitchen i
nto the utility room and started looking for tools.

  I sat in a chair turned sidewise from the table to face the door. In the main room of the lodge the only sounds were the occasional hiss and sputter of the logs turning to ashes on the grate.

  Just a cold, steady whiteness drifting down outside the window and a silence confirmed by gunfire, driven deeper now that it had ceased…Not a sigh or a whimper, though. And I never count them as storms unless there is wind.

  Big fat flakes down the night, silent night, windless night…

  Considerable time had passed since my arrival. The Senator had sat up for a long time talking with me. He was disappointed that I could not tell him too much about a nonperson subculture which he believed existed. I really was not certain about it myself, though I had occasionally encountered what might have been its fringes. I am not much of a joiner of anything anymore, however, and I was not about to mention those things I might have guessed about this. I gave him my opinions on the Central Data Bank when he asked for them, and there were some that he did not like. He had accused me, then, of wanting to tear things down without offering anything better in their place.

  My mind had drifted back, through fatigue and time and faces and snow and a lot of space, to the previous evening in Baltimore. How long ago? It made me think of Mencken's The Cult of Hope. I could not give him the pat answer, the workable alternative that he wanted, because there might not be one. The function of criticism should not be confused with the function of reform. But if a grass-roots resistance was building up, with an underground movement bent on finding ways to circumvent the record keepers, it might well be that much of the enterprise would eventually prove about as effective and beneficial as, say, Prohibition once had. I tried to get him to see this, but I could not tell how much he bought of anything that I said. Eventually, he flaked out and went upstairs to take a pill and lock himself in for the night. If it had troubled him that I'd not been able to find anything wrong with the helmet, he did not show it.

  So I sat there, the helmet, the walkie-talkie, the gun on the table, the tool kit on me floor beside my chair, the black glove on my left hand.

  The Hangman was coming. I did not doubt it.