After breakfast, the sheriff and the deputies drove back to the county seat.
Hoskins took up a collection and went to town to buy groceries. The other newsmen stayed on. The TV truck got squared off for some wide-angle distance shots.
The telephone started jangling again. The newsmen took turns answering it.
Peter walked down the road to the Mallet farm to get eggs and milk.
Mary ran out to the gate to meet him. «The neighbors are getting scared,» she said.
«They weren’t scared yesterday,» said Peter. «They walked right up and got their gifts.»
«But this is different, Peter. This is getting out of hand. The building …»
And that was it, of course. The building.
No one had been frightened of an innocent-appearing machine because it was small and friendly. It shone so prettily and it clicked so nicely and it handed out gifts. It was something that could be superficially recognized and it had a purpose that was understandable if one didn’t look too far.
But the building was big and might get bigger still and it was being erected inside out. And who in all the world had ever seen a structure built as fast as that one—five stories in one single night?
«How do they do it, Peter?» Mary asked in a hushed little voice.
«I don’t know,» he said. «Some principle that is entirely alien to us, some process that men have never even thought of, a way of doing things, perhaps, that starts on an entirely different premise than the human way.»
«But it’s just the kind of building that men themselves would build,» she objected. «Not that kind of stone, perhaps—maybe there isn’t any stone like that in the entire world—but in every other way there’s nothing strange about it. It looks like a big high school or a department store.»
«My jade was jade,» said Peter, «and your perfume was perfume and the rod and reel that Johnny got was a regular rod and reel.»
«That means they know about us. They know all there is to know. Peter, they’ve been watching us!»
«I have no doubt of it.»
He saw the terror in her eyes and reached out a hand to draw her close and she came into his arms and he held her tightly and thought, even as he did so, how strange that he should be the one to extend comfort and assurance.
«I’m foolish, Peter.»
«You’re wonderful,» he assured her.
«I’m not really scared.»
«Of course you’re not.» He wanted to say, «I love you,» but he knew that those words he could never say. Although the pain, he thought—the pain had not come this morning.
«I’ll get the milk and eggs,» said Mary.
«Give me all you can spare. I have quite a crowd to feed.»
Walking back, he thought about the neighbors being frightened now and wondered how long it would be before the world got frightened, too—how long before artillery would be wheeling into line, how long before an atom bomb would fall.
He stopped on the rise of the hill above the house and for the first time noticed that the barn was gone. It had been sheared off as cleanly as if cut with a knife, with the stump of the foundation sliced away at an angle.
He wondered if the sheriff still had the gun and supposed he had. And he wondered what the sheriff would do with it and why it had been given him.
For, of all the gifts that he had seen, it was the only one that was not familiar to Earth.
In the pasture that had been empty yesterday, that had been only trees and grass and old, grassed-over ditches, bordered by the wild plum thickets and the hazel brush and blackberry vine, rose the building. It seemed to him that it was bigger than when he had seen it less than an hour before.
Back at the house, the newspapermen were sitting in the yard, looking at the building.
One of them said to him, «The brass arrived. They’re waiting in there for you.»
«Intelligence?» asked Peter.
The newsman nodded. «A chicken colonel and a major.»
They were waiting in the living-room. The colonel was a young man with gray hair. The major wore a mustache, very military.
The colonel introduced himself. «I’m Colonel Whitman. This is Major Rockwell.»
Peter put down his eggs and milk and nodded acknowledgment.
«You found this machine,» said the colonel.
«That is right.»
«Tell us about it,» said the colonel, so Peter told them about it.
«This jade,» the colonel said. «Could we have a look at it?»
Peter went to the kitchen and got the jade. They passed it from one to the other, examining it closely, turning it over and over in their hands, a bit suspicious of it, but admiring it, although Peter could see they knew nothing about jade.
Almost as if he might have known what was in Peter’s mind, the colonel lifted his eyes from the jade and looked at him.
«You know jade,» the colonel said.
«Very well,» said Peter.
«You’ve worked with it before?»
«In a museum.»
«Tell me about yourself.»
Peter hesitated—then told about himself.
«But why are you here?» the colonel asked.
«Have you ever been in a hospital, Colonel? Have you ever thought what it would be like to die there?»
The colonel nodded. «I can see your point. But here you’ll have no—»
«I won’t wait that long.»
«Yes, yes,» the colonel said. «I see.»
«Colonel,» said the major. «Look at this, sir, if you will. This symbolism is the same …»
The colonel snatched it from his hands and looked.
«The same as on the letterhead!» he shouted.
The colonel lifted his head and stared at Peter, as if it had been the first time he had seen him, as if he were surprised at seeing him.
There was, suddenly, a gun in the major’s hand, pointing at Peter, its muzzle a cold and steady eye.
Peter tried to throw himself aside.
He was too late.
The major shot him down.
Peter fell for a million years through a wool-gray nothingness that screamed and he knew it must be a dream, an endless atavistic dream of falling, brought down through all the years from incredibly remote forebears who had dwelt in trees and had lived in fear of falling. He tried to pinch himself to awaken from the dream, but he couldn’t do it, since he had no hands to pinch with, and, after a time, it became apparent that he had no body to pinch. He was a disembodied consciousness hurtling through a gulf which seemed to have no boundaries.
He fell for a million years through the void that seemed to scream at him.
At first the screaming soaked into him and filled his soul, since he had no body, with a terrible agony that went on and on, never quite reaching the breaking point that would send him into the release of insanity. But he got used to it after a time and as soon as he did, the screaming stopped and he plunged down through space in a silence that was more dreadful than the screaming.
He fell forever and forever and then it seemed that forever ended, for he was at rest and no longer falling.
He saw a face. It was a face from incredibly long ago, a face that he once had seen and had long forgotten, and he searched back along his memory to try to identify it.
He couldn’t see it too clearly, for it seemed to keep bobbing around so he couldn’t pin it down. He tried and tried and couldn’t and he closed his eyes to shut the face away.
«Chaye,» a voice said. «Peter Chaye.»
«Go away,» said Peter.
The voice went away.
He opened his eyes again and the face was there, clearer now and no longer bobbing.
It was the colonel’s face.
He shut his eyes again, remembering the steady eye of the gun the major had held. He’d jumped aside, or tried to, and he had been too slow.
Something had happened and he’d fallen for a million years and here he was, with the colonel looking at him.