I replaced the receiver in its cradle and leaned back in the chair and tried to do some thinking, but the hours were catching up with me and my brain refused to think. For the first time I realized just how tired I was.
I sat there in a fog, with the few lights shining like distant streetlamps and with not a sound around me. And, maybe, said my foggy mind that had refused to think, this is the way the Earth is on this night a silent planet sitting, tired and beaten, in the silence of not-caring, a planet going to its doom and no one to give a damn.
The phone rang.
“We have your party, Mr. Graves,” said the operator.
“Hello, Rog,” I said.
“This you, Parker?” said the distant Voice. “What the hell’s the matter with you at this time of night?”
“Rog,” I said, “it’s important. You know I wouldn’t call you if it were not important.”
“I should hope it is. I just got to sleep a couple of hours ago.”
“Something keeping you up, Senator?”
“A little get-together. Some of us were talking over several matters.”
“Someone worried, Rog?”
“Worried over what?” he asked, as smooth and slick as ice.
“Too much money in the banks, for one thing.”
“Look, Parker,” he said, “if you’re trying to worm something out of me, it’s a waste of time.”
“Not to worm something out of you. To tell you something. If you’ll just listen, I can tell you what is going on. It’s a little hard to tell, but I want you to believe me.”
“I am listening.”
“There are aliens here on Earth,” I told him. “Creatures from the stars. I’ve seen them and I’ve talked with them and—”
“Now I get it,” said the senator. “It’s Friday night and you have hung one on.”
“You’re wrong,” I protested. “I’m sober“You picked up your check and you went out and—”
“But I didn’t pick up my check, I was too busy and forgot it.”
“Now I know you’re drunk. You never miss a check. You are there, standing in line, with your hand out—”
“Goddamn it, Rog, just listen to me.”
“Get back to bed,” said the senator, “and sleep it off. Then, if you still want to talk to me, call me in the morning.”
“To hell with you,” I yelled, but he didn’t hear me. He already had hung up.
The line buzzed dead and empty.
I felt like slamming the receiver down, but I didn’t slam it. Something kept me from slamming it, perhaps a deep sense of defeat that chewed away the anger.
I sat there, gripping the receiver in my hand, with the far-off, mosquito buzzing of the empty line, and knew there was no hope—that no one would believe me, that no one would listen to what I had to tell.
Almost, I told myself, as if all of them were p Atwoods, as if every single one of them was a simulated human, built out of the alien stuff that had invaded Earth.
Come to think of it, I told myself, it Wasn’t so damn funny. It was something that could happen. It would be exactly the kind of thing the aliens would have done.
Icy insect feet went walking up my spine and I sat there, clutching the receiver, the loneliest human being on the entire Earth.
For I might, I thought, be in truth alone. What if Senator Roger Hill were not a man, not the same man he had been, Say, five years ago? What if what remained of the body of the real, the authentic, the human Roger Hill lay in some hidden place and the bogus, the alien Roger Hill were the man who had just talked with me? What if the Old Man were not the real Old Man at all, but a hideous thing which walked in Old Man form? What if the chairman of some great steel company were no longer human? What if keyman after keyman had been done away with and their places had been taken by something from another world, so formed, so briefed, so perfect that all of them were accepted by their own associates and by their families?
What if the woman who waited in the car outside were not .
But that, I told myself, was crazy. That was ridiculous. That could be nothing more than the frustrated fantasy of a mind too worn out, too sick, too shocked to think the way it should think.
I put the receiver back into its cradle and pushed the phone away. I got slowly to my feet and stood shivering in the emptiness and silence.
Then I went downstairs and out into the street, where Joy waited for me.
The “No Vacancy” sign was flashing, throwing green and red shadows across the black slick of wet street. On and on it flashed, a warning to the world. And back of it loomed the dark huddle of the units, each with its tiny light above the door and with the soft, fleeting gleam of parked cars picking up the flashing sign.
“No room in the inn,” said Joy. “It makes you feel unwanted.”
I nodded. It was the fifth motel that we had passed where there was no vacancy. The sign had not always been a flashing sign, but it had been there, glowing in the night. And the flashing of the sign carried no meaning greater than the others, but it was more emphatic and aggressive. As if it were spelling out in grim and final detail that there was no lodging.
Five motels with the forbidding signs and one with no sign at all, but dark and closed and untenanted—a place shut against the world.
I slowed the car and we crunched to a5iiding halt. We sat, looking at the sign. “We should have known,” said Joy. “We should have realized. All those people who can’t find a place to live. They’re ahead of us. Maybe some of them for weeks.”
The rain still was sifting down. The windshield wipers whined.
“Maybe it was a bad idea,” I told her. “Maybe . .
“No,” said Joy. “Neither of our places.
Parker, I would die”
We drove on. Two more motel signs announced no vacancies.
“It’s impossible,” said Joy. “There isn’t any place. The hotels would be as bad.”
“There just might be,” I said. “There might be a place. That motel back there. The one that had no sign. The one that was closed up.”
“But it was dark. There was no one there.”
“There is shelter there,” I told her.
“There would be a roof above our heads. The man up at the lake had to break a lock. We can do the same.”
I swung the car around in the middle of the block. There was no one coming either Way and there was no danger.
“You remember where it is?” she asked.
“I think I do,” I said.
I missed it by a block or two and do bled back and there it was—no sign, n light of any kind, not anyone around.
“Bought and closed up,” I said. “Closed up quick and easy. Not like an apartment house, where notice must be given.”
“You think so?” asked Joy. “You think Atwood bought this place?”
“Why else would it be closed?” I demanded. “If it were owned by someone else, don’t you think it would be open? With business as it is.”
I turned into the driveway and went down a little incline. The headlights swept across another car, parked before a unit.
“Someone ahead of us,” said Joy.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “It’s perfectly all right.” I drove across the courtyard and stopped the car with its lights full on the second car. Through the rain-blurred glass I saw the smudge of white and startled faces, looking out at us.
I sat there for a moment, then stepped out of the car. The driver’s door of the other car came open and a man got out. He walked toward me in the fan of headlamp light.
“You looking for a place to stay?” he asked. “There isn’t any place.”
He was middle-aged and he was well dressed although a little rumpled. His topcoat was new and his hat was an expensive piece of headgear, and beneath the topcoat lie wore a business suit. His shoes were newly shined and the fine raindrops clung to them, shining in the light.
“I know there isn’t any place,” he said. “I’ve looked. Not just tonight, but every other night.”