"We didn't mean go bowling now," Junie protested. "We just wanted to catch you before you made plans. Look, kids, if you haven't started dinner, why don't you come over and eat with us? We've got a leg of lamb, and there's plenty of frozen peas and Bill picked up a quart of ice cream on the way home from work." She appealed to Margo with tremulous urgency. "What say?"
"Thanks," Margo said, "but maybe some other time."
Bill Black did not seem to have quite calmed down; he kept aloof from them, dignified and somewhat cool. "You know you're always welcome in our house," he said. He led his wife in the direction of the front door. "If you feel like going bowling with us, drop over about eight. If not--" He shrugged. "Well, no harm done."
"We'll see you," Junie called, as Bill led her out of the house. "I hope you'll come." She smiled yearningly at them, and then the door shut after them.
"What a pill," Margo said. Opening the hot-water tap she ran water into a kettle.
Vic said, "A whole psychological technique could be erected on how people act when they're startled, before they have time to think."
As she fixed dinner, Margo said, "Bill Black just seems rational. He put up his hands until he saw it was only a toy gun and then he put them down again."
Vic said, "What are the chances of his wandering over at that particular moment?"
"One of them is always over here. You know how they are."
"True," he said.
In the locked clubhouse, Ragle Gumm sat with the earphones on, monitoring a strong signal and making occasional notes. Over the years, in his contest work, he had learned excellent systems of quick notation, all his own; as he listened he not only made a permanent record of what he heard but he also jotted down comments and ideas and reactions of his own. His ball-point pen -- one that Bill Black had given him -- flew.
Watching him, Sammy said, "You sure write fast, Uncle Ragle. Can you read it when you get finished?"
"Yes," he said.
The signal, beyond a doubt, emanated from the nearby landing field. He had got so he recognized the voice of the operator. What he wanted to find out was the nature of the traffic coming into and leaving the field. Where did they go? They shot overhead at terrific speed. How fast? Why did nobody in town know about the flights? Was it a secret military installation, some new experimental ships that the public was ignorant of? Reconnaissance missiles... tracking devices...
Sammy said, "I'll bet you helped crack the Japanese code during World War Two."
Hearing the boy say that, Ragle once again had a sudden and complete sensation of futility. Shut up in a child's clubhouse, an earphone pressed to his head, listening for hours to a crystal set built by a grammar-school child... listening to ham operators and traffic instructions like a school child himself.
I must be crazy, he said to himself.
I'm the man who's supposed to have fought in a war. I'm forty-six years old, supposedly an adult.
Yes, he thought. And I'm a man who lies around the house scrounging a living by filling out Where Will the Little Green Man Be Next? puzzles in a newspaper contest. While other adults have jobs, wives, homes of their own.
I'm a retarded -- psychotic. Hallucinations. Yes, he thought. Insane. Infantile and lunatic. What am I doing, sitting here? Daydreams, at best. Fantasies about rocket ships shooting by overhead, armies and conspiracies. Paranoia.
A paranoiac psychosis. Imagining that I'm the center of a vast effort by millions of men and women, involving billions of dollars and infinite work... a universe revolving around me. Every molecule acting with me in mind. An outward radiation of importance... to the stars. Ragle Gumm the object of the whole cosmic process, from the inception to final entropy. All matter and spirit, in order to wheel about me.
Sammy said, "Uncle Ragle, do you think you can crack their code, like the Japanese code?"
Rousing himself he said, "There's no code. They're just talking like anybody. It's some man sitting in a control tower watching military aircraft land." He turned toward the boy, who was watching him with fixed intensity. "Some fellow in his thirties who shoots pool once a week and enjoys TV. Like we do."
"One of the enemy," Sammy said.
With anger, Ragle said, "Forget that kind of talk. Why do you say that? It's all in your mind." My fault, he realized. I put it there.
In his earphones the voice said, "...all right, LF-3488. I have it down in corrected form. You can go ahead. Yes, you should be practically overhead."
The clubhouse shook.
"There one goes," Sammy said excitedly.
The voice continued, "...entirely clear. No, it's fine. You're passing over him now."
_Him_, Ragle thought.
"...down there," the voice said. "Yes, you're looking down at Ragle Gumm himself. Okay, we have you. Let go."
The vibrations subsided.
"It's gone," Sammy said. "Maybe it landed."
Setting down the earphones, Ragle Gumm got to his feet. "You listen for a while," he said.
"Where are you going?" Sammy asked.
"For a walk," Ragle said. He unlocked the door of the clubhouse and stepped outside, into the fresh, brisk, evening air.
The kitchen light of the house... his sister and brother-in-law in the kitchen. Fixing dinner.
I'm leaving, Ragle said to himself. I'm getting out of here. I meant to before. Now I can't wait.
Walking carefully down the path around the side of the house, he reached the front porch; he entered the house and got into his room without either Vic or Margo hearing him. There, he gathered up all the money he could find in his assorted dresser drawers, clothes, unopened envelopes, change from a jar. Putting on a coat he left the house by the front door and walked rapidly off down the sidewalk.
A block or so away, a cab approached. He waved his arms and the cab stopped.
"Take me to the Greyhound bus station," he told the driver.
"Yes, Mr. Gumm," the driver said.
"You recognize me?" Here it was again, the projection of the paranoiac infantile personality: the infinite ego. Everyone aware of me, thinking about me.
"Sure," the driver said, as he started up his cab. "You're that contest winner. I saw your picture in the paper and I remarked, Why, that guy lives right here in town. Maybe one day I'll pick him up in my cab."
So it was legitimate, Ragle thought. The odd blurring of reality and his insanity. Genuine fame, plus the fantasy fame.
When cab drivers recognize me, he decided, it's probably not in my mind. But when the heavens open and God speaks to me by name... that's when the psychosis takes over.
It would be hard to distinguish.
The cab moved along the dark streets, past houses and stores. At last, in the downtown business section, it drew up before a five-story building and stopped at the curb.
"Here you are, Mr. Gumm," the driver said, starting to leap out to open the door.
Reaching into his coat for his wallet, Ragle stepped from the cab. He glanced up at the building as the driver reached for the bifi.
In the street light the building was familiar. Even at night he recognized it.
It was the _Gazette_ building.
Getting back into the cab he said, "I want to go to the Greyhound bus station."
"What?" the driver said, thunderstruck. "Is that what you told me? I'll be darned -- of course it was." He jumped back in and started up the engine. "Sure, I remember. But we got to talking about that contest of yours, and I got to thinking about the newspaper." As he drove he swung his head around, grinning back at Ragle. "I've got you so tied in with the _Gazette_ in my mind -- what a sap I am."
"It's okay," Ragle said.
They drove on and on. Eventually he lost track of the streets. He had no idea where they were; the nocturnal shapes of closed-up factories lay off to the right, and what appeared to be railroad tracks. Several times the cab bucked and floundered as it passed over tracks. He saw vacant lots... an industrial district, with no lights showing.