That night Charley Porter lay in his bed in the little lakeshore cabin, staring into the darkness, trying to understand how it must have been for Cooper Jackson, lying there all those years, living with the characters out of children’s books and later out of boys’ books and then out of science fiction.
He had said that he’d never been in much pain, but sometimes the nights were long and it was hard to sleep, and that was how he’d got started with his imagining. He would imagine things to occupy his mind.
At first, it was just a mental exercise, saying such and such a thing is happening now and going on from there to some other thing that was happening. But after a while he began to see an actual set of characters acting on an imaginary stage, faint and fuzzy characters going through their parts. They were nebulous at first; later on, they became gray, like little skipping ghosts; then they had achieved the sharpness of black and white. About the time he began to deal with Tom Sawyer and Robinson Crusoe, the characters and background had begun to take on color and perspective.
And from Huck Finn and Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson, he had gone on to science fiction.
Good Lord, thought Charley Porter. He went on to science fiction.
Take an invalid who had never moved out of his bed, who had never had a formal education, who knew little and cared less about the human viewpoint, give him an overwrought imagination and turn him loose on science fiction—and what have you got?
Charley lay there in the darkness and tried to put himself into the place of Cooper Jackson. He tried to imagine what Cooper might have imagined, what far adventuring he might have embarked upon.
Then let the same invalid suddenly become aware of the world around him, as Cooper had—for now he read the newspapers and the news magazines. Let him see what kind of shape the world was in.
What might happen then?
You’re crazy, Charley told himself. But he lay for a long time, looking up into the black, before he went to sleep.
Cooper seemed to like him, and they spent a part of each day together. They talked about science fiction and the news of the day and what should be done to ensure world peace. Charley told him he didn’t know what should be done, that a lot of men much smarter than he were working full time on it, and they had found no answer yet.
“Someone,” said Cooper, “must do something about it.” And the way he said it, you would have sworn that he was going to set out any minute to do that very thing.
So Charley went to call on old Doc Ames.
“I’ve heard of you,” the doctor told him. “Coop was telling me about you just the other day.”
“I’ve been spending a little time with Cooper,” Charley said, “and I’ve wanted to ask him something, but I haven’t done it.”
“I know. You wanted to ask him about the story that was in the papers here a few months back.”
“That’s right,” Charley agreed. “And I wanted to ask him, too, about how he got up and walked after all those years in bed.”
“You’re looking for a story?” asked the doctor.
“No,” said Charley, “I’m not looking for a story.”
“You’re a newspaperman.”
“I came for a story,” Charley told him. “But not any more. Right now I’m … well, I’m sort of scared.”
“So am I.”
“If what I’m thinking is right, it’s too big to be a story.”
“I hope,” said Doc, “that both of us are wrong.”
“He’s hell bent,” Charley went on, “to bring peace to the world. He’s asked me about it a dozen times in a dozen different ways. I’ve told him I don’t know, and I don’t think there’s anyone who does.”
“That’s the trouble. If he’d just stick to things like that lost plane out in Utah and the hound dog down in Kentucky, it might be all right.”
“Did he tell you about those things, Doc?”
“No,” said Doc, “he didn’t really tell me. But he said wouldn’t it be fine if all those people in the plane should be found alive, and he did a lot of fretting about that poor trapped dog. He likes animals.”
“I figure he just practiced up on a few small items,” Charley suggested, “to find if he could do it. He’s out for big game now.”
Then good, solid, common sense came back to him and he said: “But, of course, it isn’t possible.”
“He’s got help,” said Doc. “Hasn’t he told you about the help he’s got?”
Charley shook his head.
“He doesn’t know you well enough. I’m the only one he knows well enough to tell a thing like that.”
“He’s got help? You mean someone’s helping … ?”
“Not someone,” said Doc. “Something.”
Then Doc told Charley what Cooper had told him.
It had started four or five years before, shortly after he’d gone on his science fiction binge. He’d built himself an imaginary ship that he took out into space. First he’d traveled around our own Solar System—to Mars and Venus and all the others. Then, tiring of such backyard stuff, he had built in a gadget that gave his ship speed in excess of light and had gone out to the stars. He was systematic about it; you had to say that much for him. He worked things out logically, and he didn’t skip around. He’d land on a certain planet and give that planet the full treatment before he went on to the next one.
Somewhere along the way, he picked himself up a crew of companions, most of which were only faintly humanoid, if at all.
And all the time this space-world, this star-world, got clearer and sharper and more real. It almost got to the point where he lived in its reality rather than in the reality of the here and now.
The realization that someone else had joined him, that he had picked up from somewhere a collaborator in his fantasies, began first as a suspicion, finally solidified into certainty. The fantasies got into the habit of not going as he himself was imagining them; they were modified, and added to, and changed in other ways. Cooper didn’t mind though, for generally they were better than anything he could think up by himself—and finally he had grown to know his collaborators—not one of them alone, but three of them, each a separate entity. After the first shocks of recognition, the four of them got along just swell.
“You mean he knows these others—these helpers?”
“He knows them all right,” said Doc. “Which doesn’t mean, of course, that he has ever seen them or will ever see them.”
“You believe this, Doc?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. But I do know Coop, and I know that he got up and walked. There is no medical science … no human medical science … that would have made him walk.”
“You think these helpers, these collaborators of his, might somehow have cured him?”
“Something did.”
“One thing haunts me,” said Charley. “Is Cooper Jackson sane?”
“Probably,” answered Doc, “he’s the sanest man on Earth.”
“And the most dangerous.”
“That’s what worries me. I watch him the best I can. I see him every day …”
“How many others have you told?” asked Charley.
“Not a soul,” said Doc.
“How many are you going to tell?”
“None. Probably I shouldn’t have told you, but you already knew part of it. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going home,” said Charley. “I’m going to go home and keep my mouth shut.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing else. If I were a praying man, I think I’d do some praying.”