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.
I wonder, Ragle thought. What would the cab driver say if I asked him to drive me out of town?
Leaning forward he tapped the driver on the shoulder. "Hey," he said.
"Yes, Mr. Gumm," the driver said.
"What about driving me out of town? Let's forget the bus."
"I'm sorry, sir," the driver said. "I can't get out on the road between towns. There's a rule against it. We're city carriers; we can't compete with the bus line. It's an ordinance."
"You ought to be able to make a few extra bucks on the side. Forty-mile trip with your meter running -- I'll bet you've done it, ordinance or no ordinance."
"No, I never done that," the driver said. "Some other drivers maybe, but not me. I don't want to lose my permit. If the highway patrol catches a city cab out on the highway, they haul it right down, and if it's got a fare in it, bam, there goes the driver's permit. A fifty-buck permit. And his livelihood."
To himself, Ragle thought, Are they out to keep me from leaving the town? Is this a plot on their part?
My lunacy again, he thought.
Or is it?
How can I tell? What proof do I have?
A blue neon glow hung in the center of a limitless flat field. The cab approached it and stopped at a curb. "Here we are," the driver said. "This is the bus station."
Opening the door, Ragle got out onto the sidewalk. The sign did not read Greyhound; it read NONPAREIL COACH LINES.
"Hey," he said, jolted. "I said Greyhound."
"This is Greyhound," the cab driver said. "The same as. It's the bus line. There isn't any Greyhound here. The state only allows one bus line to be franchised for a town this size. Nonpareil got in here years ago, before Greyhound. Greyhound tried to buy them out, but they wouldn't sell. Then Greyhound tried--"
"Okay," Ragle said. He paid the fare, tipped the driver, and walked across the sidewalk to the square brick building, the only building for miles around. On each side of it weeds grew. Weeds and broken bottles... litter of paper. Deserted region, he thought. At the edge of town. Far off he could see the sign of a gas station, and beyond that street lights. Nothing else. The night air made him shiver as he opened the wooden door and stepped into the waiting room.
A great blast of rackety, distorted sound and tired blue air rolled out over him. The waiting room, packed with people, confronted him. The benches had already been taken over by sleeping sailors and despondent, exhausted-looking pregnant women, by old men in overcoats, salesmen with their sample cases, children dressed up and fretting and squirming. A long line stood between him and the ticket window. He could see, without going any farther, that the line was not moving.