Doorways in the Sand Read online

  “Hell, no. That was just the beginning.”

  I took another big swallow.

  “Nadler was back the next day, asking whether I’d remembered anything else. He’d already given me a number to call if I did, or if I heard from you. So I was irritated. I said no and got rid of him. Then he came around again this morning to impress on me that it was to your benefit if I cooperated, that you might be in trouble and that I could help you by being honest. By the time they had learned of your difficulties at the Sydney Opera House, he said, you’d disappeared into the desert. What happened at the Sydney Opera House anyway?”

  “Later, later. Get on with it. Or is that all?”

  “No, no. I got irritated again, told him no again and that was all so far as he was concerned. But there were other inquiries. I received at least half a dozen phone calls from people who claimed they just had to get in touch with you, that it was very important. None of them would say why, though. Or give me anything that could be used to trace them.”

  “What do you mean? Did you try tracing them?”

  “No, but the detective did.”

  “Detective?”

  “I was just getting to that part. This place has been broken into and ransacked on three separate occasions during the past two weeks. Naturally, I called the cops. I didn’t see any connection with the calls, but after the third time the detective wanted me to tell him about anything unusual that had happened recently. So I mentioned that strange people kept calling and asking for a friend who was out of town. Several of them had left numbers, and he thought it was worth looking into. I talked with him yesterday, though, and he said nothing had turned up. All of them were from semipublic phones.”

  “Was anything stolen?”

  “No. That bothered him, too.”

  “I see,” I said, sipping slowly. “Has anyone approached you directly with unusual questions not involving me? Specifically, about that stone of Byler’s?”

  “No. But you might be interested in knowing that his lab was broken into while you were away. No one could really tell whether anything was missing. Getting back to your other question, though, while nobody approached me about the stone, someone seemed to be getting near for some purpose or other. Maybe it was tied in with the entry and searching here. I don’t know. But for several days it seemed that I was being followed about. I didn’t pay much attention at first. Actually, it wasn’t until things started happening that I thought of him. The same man, not especially obtrusive, but always around—somewhere. Never came near enough for me to get a good look. At first I thought I was just being neurotic. Later, of course, he came to mind. Too late, though. He disappeared after the police started paying attention to me and to this building.”

  He tossed off the rest of his drink and I finished mine.

  “That pretty much summarizes things,” he said. “Let me fix us a couple more of these, then you tell me what you know.”

  “Go ahead.”

  I lit a cigarette and pondered. There had to be a pattern to all this, and it seemed likely that the star-stone was the key. There were too many subsidiary actions to try to separate, analyze, follow up individually. If I knew more about the stone, though, I felt that these recent happenings might begin to drift into truer perspective. Thus began my list of priorities.

  Hal returned with the drinks, gave me mine, reseated himself.

  “All right,” he said, “considering everything that’s been happening here, I’m ready to believe anything you’ve got to tell me.”

  So I told him most of what had occurred since my departure.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said when I had finished.

  “I can’t lend you my memories in any better condition.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said “It’s weird. But then, so are you. No offense. Let me fog my brain a little more and I’ll try to consider it. Right back.”

  He went and freshened the drinks again. I was beyond caring. I had lost count during the time I’d been talking.

  “You were being serious?” he finally said.

  “Yes.”

  “Then those fellows are probably still back at the apartment.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Why not call the police?”

  “Hell, for all I know they may be the police.”

  “Toasting the Queen that way?”

  “Could be their old alma mater’s Homecoming Queen. I don’t know. I’d just as soon no one knew I’m back till I’ve learned more and done more thinking.”

  “Okay. Silence here. What can I do to help?”

  “Think. You’ve been known to have an original idea every now and then. Come up with one.”

  “All right,” he said. “I have been thinking about it. Everything seems to go back to the star-stone facsimile. What is it about the thing that makes it so important?”

  “I give up. Tell me.”

  “I don’t know. But let’s consider everything that is known about it.”

  “Okay. The original came to us on loan as part of that cultural exchange deal we’ve joined. It was described as a relic, a specimen of unknown utility—but most likely decorative—found among the ruins of a dead civilization. Seems to be synthetic. If so, it may be the oldest intelligently fashioned object in the galaxy.”

  “Which makes it priceless.”

  “Naturally.”

  “If it were lost or destroyed here, we could be kicked out of the exchange program.”

  “I suppose that is possible . . .”

  “ ‘Suppose,’ hell! We can. I looked it up. The library now has a full translation of the agreement, and I got curious enough to see what it said. A hearing would be held, and the other members would vote on the matter of our expulsion.”

  “Good thing it hasn’t been lost or destroyed.”

  “Yeah. Great.”

  “How could Byler have gotten access to it?”

  “My guess is still the UN itself—that they approached him to create a duplicate for display purposes, he did it and then there was a mixup.”

  “I can’t see the mixup on something that important.”

  “Then suppose it was intentional.”

  “How so?”

  “Say they loaned it to him, and instead of returning the original and a copy he returned two copies. I can see him as wanting to hang onto it and study it for as long as he could. He could have given it back when he was finished or caught, whichever came first, and claimed he had made a simple error. No fuss could be raised, with the entire enterprise that clandestine. Or perhaps I am being too devious. Maybe he’d had it on a legitimate loan all the while, studying it at their request. Whichever, let us suppose that he’d had the original up until a while back.”

  “All right, say that.”

  “Then it vanished. Either it got mixed in and thrown out with some of the inferior replicas, or it was the one given to us in error . . .”

  “To you, to you,” I said, “and not in error.”

  “Paul arrived at this conclusion, too,” he continued, ignoring the assignment of guilt. “He panicked, went looking and roughed us up in the process.”

  “What precipitated his wising up?”

  “Someone spotted the ringer and asked him for the real one. When he looked it wasn’t there.”

  “And he got dead.”

  “You said the two men who questioned you in Australia as much as admitted having done him in as a by-product of questioning him.”

  “Zeemeister and Buckler. Yes.”

  “The undercover wombat told you they were hoodlums.”

  “Doodlehums, but go ahead.”

  “The UN informed the member nations—which is where the State Department comes into the picture in our case. Somewhere there was a tear in the bean-bag, though, and Zeemeister decided to locate the stone first in order to claim a large ransom. Pardon me, a reward.”

  “It does make a kind of surrealistic sense. Continue.”

  “So we might hav
e had it and everybody knows it. We don’t know where it is, but nobody believes us.”

  “Who is everybody?”

  “UN officials, the Foggy Bottom boys, the doodlehums and the aliens.”

  “Well, granting that the aliens have been informed and are actually assisting in the investigation, Charv and Ragma become a little more understandable—with their thing about security and all. But then, something else bothers me. They seemed awfully sure that I knew more than I thought I did concerning the stone’s whereabouts. They even felt that a telepathic analyst might turn up some useful leads in my subconscious. I wonder what gave them that idea?”

  “You’ve got me there. Perhaps they have eliminated almost everything else. And maybe they are right. It did seem to vanish rather strangely. I wonder . . .?”

  “What?”

  “If you do know something useful, something you may have suppressed for some reason? Perhaps a good nontelepathic analyst could drag it out, too. Hypnosis, drugs . . . Who knows? What about that Doctor Marko you used to go to?”

  “It’s a thought, but it would take a long while to convince him as to the reality of all the preliminaries he’d need to know before he could go to work. Might even think I’ve lost touch, trank me up and give me the wrong therapy. No. I’ll hold off on that angle for now.”

  “Where does that leave us?”

  “Drunk,” I said. “My higher cerebral centers all just moved off center.”

  “Want me make some coffee?”

  “No. Consciousness is losing six to nothing and I’d like to retire gracefully. Mind if I sleep on the couch?”

  “Go ahead. I’ll get you a blanket and a pillow.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Maybe we’ll have some fresh ideas in the morning,” he said, rising.

  “Thinking them will be painful, whatever they are,” I said, going over to the couch and kicking off my shoes. “Let there be an end to thought. Thus do I refute Descartes.”

  I sprawled, not a cogito or a sum to my name.

  Obliv—

  There was a in a room at the back of my mind. It had never been used. Within the uncreation where the not-I didn’t exist for a peaceful interval of non-time, however, it stuttered and spewed, synthesizing some recipient who resembled myself for purposes of pestering him . . .

  : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : DO YOU HEAR ME, FRED? : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : DO YOU HEAR ME, FRED? : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : YES : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : GOOD : : : : : : : : : : : : : : WHO ARE YOU? : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : I AMXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX : DO YOU HEAR ME, : : : : : FRED?: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : YES. WHO ARE YOU? : : : : : : : : I AMXXXXXX IXXXXXXXX ARTICLE 7224 SECTION C. I BROUGHT IT TO YOUR ATTENTION : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : ALL RIGHT : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : CAN YOU OBTAIN AN N-AXIAL INVERSION UNIT? : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : NO : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : IT IS IMPORTANT : : : : IT IS ALSO UNDEFINED : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : NECESSARY : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : WHAT THE HELL IS AN N-AXIAL INVERSION UNIT? : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : TIME NAMES CORRESPONDENCESXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX THE RHENNIUS MACHINE. THAT MECHANISM : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : I KNOW WHERE IT IS. YES : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : GO TO THE RHENNIUS MACHINE. TEST ITS INVERSION PROGRAM : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : HOW? : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : OBSERVE THE PROGRESSIVE TRANSFORMATIONS OF AN OBJECT PASSED THROUGH ITS MOBILATOR : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : WHAT IS A MOBILATOR? : : : : : : : : : : : : : THE CENTRAL UNIT THROUGH WHICH ITS BELT MOVES : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : IMPOSSIBLE TO GET THAT CLOSE TO THE THING. IT IS UNDER GUARD : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : VITAL : : : : : : : WHY? : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : TO REFORMULATEXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TO REFORMXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TOXXX XXXXX : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : DO YOU HEAR ME, FRED? : : : : : : : : YES: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : GO TO THE RHENNIUS MACHINE AND TEST ITS INVERSION PROGRAM : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : SUPPOSING I CAN DO IT. WHAT THEN? : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : THEN GO AND GET DRUNK : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : PLEASE REPEAT : : : : : : : : : : : : TEST THE INVERSION PROGRAM AND GO INTOXICATE YOURSELF : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : ANYTHING ELSE? : : : : : : : : : : : : SUBSEQUENT ACTIONS CONTINGENT UPON UNDETERMINED EVENTS : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : WILL YOU DO THIS? : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : WHO ARE YOU? : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : I XXXXXXXXXXXXXSPEICUSXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXSPEICUSXXXXXXX : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : XXXXSPEICUSPEICUSPEICUSPEICUSPEICUSP EICUSPEICU SPEICUSXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXEICUSPEIXXCUSPEXXICUSXXXXXXXXXX XXXX XXXPECXXXUSPEIXXXXCUSPEICUSPEICUSPEICUSPEICU SPEICLSPEICUSPEICUSPEICUSPEICUSPEICUSPEICUSPEIC USXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXI AM A RECORDIXGXXXSPEICUS XXXXXXXXXX I AM A RECORDINGXXXSPEICUS XXXXXXXXXX I AM A RECORDINGXX : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : IT FIGURES : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : WILL YOU DO AS I HAVE ASKED? : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : WHY NOT?: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : YOU INDICATE ASSENT? : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : ALL RIGHT, RECORDING. ALL RIGHT. AFFIRMATIVE. I AM PROGRAMMED CURIOUS : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : VERY GOOD. THAT THEN IS ALLOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO O:
: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO O: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO O: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO O —ion.

  It raineth on the just and the unjust; likewise shineth the sun. I came around with the latter doing that thing, in my eyes, through the front window. And I must have been just—or just lucky—as I was not only unhung over but felt fairly good. I lay there for some time, listening to Hal’s snores coming from the other room. Reaching a decision as to who and where I was, I rose and set a pot of coffee to gurgling in the kitchen and went to the bathroom to find some soap and a razor and do some other things.

  Later, I had some juice, toast and a couple of eggs, took a cup of coffee back to the living room. Hal was still buzzing. I loafed on the sofa. I lit a cigarette. I drank coffee.

  Caffeine, nicotine, the games the blood sugars play—I do not know what it was that pierced the dark bubble as I sat there assembling the morning and myself.

  Whatever prompted it, the thing I had gotten in lieu of the usual unsolicited dreams returned to me between a puff and a sip, far clearer than my idsponsored late late monster shows ever were.

  Having decided earlier to accept the peculiar in the proper spirit, I confined my considerations to the matter of content. It made as much sense as any of a number of things I had recently experienced, and possessed the virtue of requiring a positive action on my part at a time when I was weary of being acted upon.

  So I folded the blankets and placed them in a neat heap with the pillow on top. I finished my coffee, poured a second cup and turned the pot down to a simmer. I located some writing paper atop a miscellaneous chest of drawers and scrawled a note: “Hal—Thanks. I’ve a thing I’m off to pursue. It came to me last night. Quite peculiar. Will call in a day or so & let you know what comes of it. Hope everything is happily ever after again by then.—Fred. P.S. The coffee is on.” Which covered everything I could think of. I left it on the other end of the sofa.