Hand from the Void

Chapter One

Jeff Rayden had picked up the latest copy of Crux at the airline terminal. As the airport tilted and fled off behind the big liner and as the motor sounds altered, he unfastened the safety belt and opened the magazine, holding it so that Julie O’Reilly beside him could see the pages. He found what he wanted on pages sixteen through nineteen.

It was typical Rayden and O’Reilly. The pictures and text fitted together like a hand in a glove. The assignment had been a small-fry political thief named Schonderhauzen.

They had covered his home life, his official life and his amusements. The coverage was wry, tolerant, skeptical and amused. It did not damn Mr. Schonderhauzen, but it very neatly booted him out of public life.

“Number sixty-nine,” Julie said in her gamin’s voice, huskiness like a streak of rust along a gleaming wire.

“That many! Deliver me from the statistical mind.”

“Crux,” she said primly, “owes a large part of its two and a half million circulation to the deft dismembering of major and minor public figures by those two cynical whiz-kids of modern journalismБ"

“Knock it off.”

“Just quoting, darling.”

For a time they studied the article again. It was Julie who reached over and snapped the middle of the final page with an oval, blood-red fingernail. It was a gesture of dismissal.

“Shall I say it, or will you, Jeff?” She looked at him, almost without expression. She was a small trim girl with oversized gray eyes and a shade too heavy a mouth, set in a small pale face framed by chestnut hair that sometimes glinted red in the sun. The morning light above the haze of the city struck diagonally and cruelly at her, and he saw the tiny lines of strain the past two years had etched at the outer comers of her eyes. In the beginning, when it had been fun — a vast lark — there had been no lines. He felt an almost overpowering tenderness for a moment, and thrust it away from him.

“So I’ll say it. So it stinks. And so did the one before, and the one before that. We’re losing the touch, baby.”

“Because we’ve lost each other?”

“Trust a woman to hoke it up.”

Her grey eyes narrowed. “Trust a man to overlook the obvious. Darn it, Jeff, we were in love. What happened to us?”

The knife-edge smile was a part of him. “Too much dough and too much reputation and too many assignments. An international beat is a little outsized for the delicate emotions. Love has to be incarcerated in a cottage in order to survive, I believe.”

She turned to face him more directly. She put both small capable hands on his forearm. “Please, Jeff. It’s more than that. Something in you has spoiled it for us. You used to believe in a certain amount of fundamental decency in people. Somewhere along the line you’ve lost that belief andБ"

“Pardon me,” the pretty hostess said, bending over the seat, “Mr. Rayden and Miss O’Reilly? We’ve had a CD order on you.”

Jeff frowned. “But our tickets are right through to San Ramon.”

“I know, sir. But you had an appointment with Mr. Borden Means in San Ramon at seven this evening. To get materials for an article about him, I believe. Mr. Means has made arrangements to have you left off at Dos Almas. You can see him there.”

“I thought this was a scheduled flight,” Jeff said curiously. “And I don’t remember any stop to be made at Dos Almas. Won’t the CAA have something to say about that? Is it far out of the way?”

The hostess looked dubious for a moment. “It is odd, but Mr. Means is a very important man in that part of Texas. In the whole country too, I guess. It’s about twenty-five minutes flying time out of our way.”

The hostess went back up the aisle. Jeff winked at Julie. “A special deal is always nice. This Texas spellbinder must have some weight to fling around, eh?”

He put the latest copy of Crux into the briefcase on his lap. As he did so, he saw the manila folder containing the copies of speeches made over national network time by Mr. Borden Means. He was becoming a national figure with almost alarming rapidity. Now it was time for Rayden and O’Reilly to chip away at his feet until the clay was exposed for all the readers of Crux to see. There is a big market for proof that all men are second-rate. It makes the second-raters feel so much more self-satisfied.

The manila folder of speeches had begun to irritate Jeffrey Rayden. Means certainly had nothing to contribute to the field of human knowledge. In fact, he could be called a glorification of the word crank. A muscular bachelor of fifty-two, he had accumulated a fat fortune in Texas oil lands. Now he had given up the accumulation of more money arid had purchased network time to lecture to America.

No, the man had nothing to say, and yet — in the way he said it... Each time Jeff read the speeches he had felt his heart begin to pound, felt the flush of excitement on his face, felt a rebirth of confidence in himself and in the world. He knew that it was puerile to be aroused by tag words and emotional cliches. Yet all Means had to do was say something about home and mother — and he took you back to the summer evenings of childhood, the dusk walk to the corner store for ice cream, the murmur of voices on the front porches, the aimless lazy slap of a screen door...

Well, he thought, no matter how competent this Means is in the semantics department, Julie and I will bust his little myth. Then he will be like all the others. Loud little men with egocentric ideas and concentrated lust for power.

The aircraft had let down to a few hundred feet over the baked rock, sand and sage of the Texas flats due east of San Ramon. The other passengers, checking their watches, had begun to complain loudly, and the hostess was kept busy placating them. Jeff looked curiously out the side window and saw a group of dazzling white frame buildings wheel by, saw beyond them the wide main street of a small town, the road narrowing toward the crested horizon.

Safety belts were fastened and the plane faltered as the wheels came down. Rubber keened against concrete and the big plane came at last to rest. Stairs were wheeled against the side door and Jeff and Julie, intensely conscious of the annoyed stares of the other passengers, descended. It took a few minutes to get their luggage out. Julie hovered over the big shabby suitcase containing her photographic supplies with all the earnestness of a mother hen.

The stairs were wheeled back and a blond young man in chauffeur’s uniform took Julie’s two bags and guided them over to a black sedan of foreign make. A man was standing beside the sedan. Jeff recognized Means from his pictures. Those pictures had shown an almost theatrical ugliness, but they had been unable to capture the softness and brooding quality of the deep-set eyes under the short shelving brow, the warmth and personal quality of the smile.

His voice had a richness to match his smile. He held out one hand to each of them. “I’m sorry I changed your plans this way. But I thought it would give us a better chance to get acquainted. We’re leaving shortly to drive into San Ramon for my lecture tonight. We can talk in the car. No one will interrupt us.”

Jeff fought against his instantaneous liking for the man. “It takes a pretty big wheel to divert a scheduled airliner, Mr. Means.”

Means turned to Julie. “My dear, I’ve admired your work for a long time. It has heart. I want to be able to help the two of you. Both of you are frightened. I want to see you both doing the sort of work you were doing a year ago.”

The blonde, aqua-eyed chauffeur had stowed the bags away. “Ready, sir,” he said.

“We’ll talk about that later then,” Means said. His eyes twinkled. “I can see that Jeffrey is itching to take issue with me. Let’s get in the car. After you, Jeffrey. We’ll go out to my place here and pick up my secretary. I keep a small place here at Dos Almas. Sometimes I have to get away from people. My real home outside San Ramon has become a sort of office, I guess.”

The car purred along smoothly. Means’ place was not far from the airstrip. They turned in the curving drive and parked under a porte-cochere. They went in. The adobe house was furnished in Spanish motif. A tall girl of the same coloring as the chauffeur stood by the huge stone fireplace.

Means said, “This is Laura, my good right arm. Laura, meet the team of Ray-den and O’Reilly. They’ve come to dissect me with a dull scalpel.”

Jeff blushed. “But we aren’t planningБ"

Means put his arm around Jeff’s shoulders and gave him an affectionate pat. It had an odd effect. Jeff hated to be touched. But this seemed different. This gesture seemed to spring from a vast warmth, and it made him think of his father, dead now for ten, nearly eleven years. The gesture and the memory made the corners of Jeff’s eyes sting, and made him turn almost rudely away from Borden Means.

“Nice layout here, Mr. Means,” Jeff said harshly, conscious of Julie’s angry glance in his direction. “Very plush. The oilfields did right by you, eh?”

Means gave him a peculiarly boyish smile. “Now I should say something about luck, I suppose. Luck had nothing to do with it. I just spent thirty-three years being quicker and shrewder and smarter than my fellow men. I guess you know enough about the norm to realize that mine isn’t too much of a feat.”

Laura said, “Mr. Means, if I could have a minute.”

“Surely, my dear,” he said. “Excuse us for a moment.” He went out with the girl.

Jeff winked at Julie. “Now I’d call that secretary a dish. Isn’t it funny the way all these bachelor millionaires seem to grab off secretaries that are a shade on the exotic side.”

“Your dirty mind is showing, darling,” Julie said acidly.

“So you’ve fallen under his spell! Fancy that!”

“Please,” she said. She walked away from him.

“Maybe you can get to be his personal photographer, honey.”

She turned and her eyes blazed. “Will you shut up?”

Means came back with Laura. “We’re ready to go, children.” Laura sat in the front seat with the chauffeur. Means sat in back between Jeff and Julie.

“I can make with the questions now?” Jeff asked as soon as the car had nosed through the village street and begun to pick up speed on the two-lane highway.

“Of course,” Borden Means said.

Jeff leaned forward and worked the crank which glassed off the chauffeur’s compartment.

Jeff took out his notebook. “Mr. Means, you’ve never stated your purpose. Your talks are making quite a dent in America. You have a following. Some say you’re after political office. Others say you’re merely in love with the sound of your own voice. I’m being blunt to save time. Just what are you after?”

“A better world, Jeff.” And his words seemed to make it almost attainable.

“Oh, come off it!” Jeff said crossly. “Thousands of messiahs have gone around bleating about that. It’s a nice goal. But I wouldn’t call it very specific. What do you want — as an individual?”

“To live in a better world. And that’s the same thing both of you want, I’m sure. Now I’ll be a bit personal. In a better world maybe you two would not have lost each other. You had a relationship that was good. Now where is it?”

Jeff looked across him at Julie. She sat with a forgotten camera in her hands, her eyes far away. Tear paths glittered on her cheeks.

“We could have used a better world, Mr. Means,” she said. Her voice shook.

“All right then,” Jeff said harshly. “Let’s talk about methods.”

“I talk to people,” Means said calmly. “That’s rather simple, isn’t it? I talk to them about the things every man wants. We’ve lost sight of our objective. I help people regain their faith in this world and in a good future for mankind. When enough of them realize, through me, that a better world is attainable, then they will band together to make that world possible.”

“You’ve swayed a lot of people, Mr. Means. Do you have any idea of the enormous power that gives you?”

“I have a very excellent understanding of that power, Jeff. And I intend to use it.”

Jeff hunched forward in his seat, turning more directly toward Means. “Now we’re getting somewhere! How are you going to use it?”

“To create a better world for man to live in,” Means said softly.

Jeff threw himself back in the seat. “The same old merry-go-round,” he said bitterly. “You keep that guard too high.”

Means stared directly into Jeff’s face. His whole appearance changed. There was a look of almost unearthly power and purpose about him. “Has your mind grown so thin and small, Jeffrey Rayden, that you cannot comprehend a just motive? Must you forever search for the tarnish on the reverse face of truth, find foolishness and guilt in a dream of a better world? Must you complicate simplicity?”

The heavy voice was like the toll of a distant bell. The hair at the back of Jeff’s neck prickled and his breath came short.

“It... sounds too good to be true,” he said weakly.

The miles spun by in silence. Borden Means was himself again. He talked to them each in turn about their work. He displayed an amazingly exact memory, quoting verbatim from articles as much as a year old.

They entered the outskirts of the boom city of San Ramon at ten minutes after seven, rather than at the hour of four o’clock when the plane would have dropped them there. Off to the right was the vast new San Ramon amphitheatre, an open air structure of great size and seating capacity. Already the big parking lots were almost filled and loaded buses were discharging passengers near the gates.

“They’re coming early to hear you,” Jeff said. “It doesn’t start until eight thirty, does it?”

“The ones who come later than this will have to stand,” Means said. There was no glimmer of pride in his tone. It was just a statement of fact.

He rolled the window down and spoke to Laura. She turned and handed back two tickets. “These are for you,” Means said. “In the only reserved section. I guess it will be best to drop you at your hotel. The Blue Bonnet House, please, Paul. They’re holding your rooms. You can take a taxi out from there.”

“Now wait a minute!” Jeff said, his mind spinning. “How would you know we had reservations? And how would you know the hotel?”

“Laura checked for me and told them you’d register later than your wire stated. The Blue Bonnet was the first place she tried. It’s the newest and the best.”

The cab deposited them at the main gate of the amphitheatre at eight-twenty-five. An unbelievable number of thousands stood outside, unable to see the stage, waiting for the voice of Borden Means to ring out from the amplifiers. As they went down the aisle the size of the seated multitude stunned and bewildered Jeff. Television technicians readied their cameras. The stage, under its arch, was brightly lighted.

It was only seconds after they were seated that Jeff realized miserably that he and Julie were quarreling again.

“But, Jeff,” she said, “couldn’t you even feel his sincerity?”

“Forceful, yes. Sincere? I can’t say. Neither can you. Look at the surface of it. A crackpot oil millionaire with a messiah complex. How can you or I tell whether he believes what he says?”

“I know he does!”

“Don’t you see what I mean, Julie? You’re believing the evidence of your senses. Nothing more. Sight, hearing. You don’t have a special sense for detecting sincerity. And anything you can see or hear can be faked. Believe me. Reality is a pretty darn flexible thing when all you’ve got to detect it is a set of electro-chemical reactions in the brain.”

“But he’s special!”

“He has a special amount of animal magnetism. But what did he say? A lot of people band together and do something. Do what? Make him president? Make a special Borden Means Day when everybody goes around kissing each other and giving gifts?”

“That Laura has odd eyes. Did you notice?”

“You’re a specialist at the non sequitur, baby.”

“I’ll bet that chauffeur is her brother. And I’ll betБ"

“Here’s that man again,” Jeff said.

It was twenty long paces from the wings to the microphones. The crowd roar swelled with each step he took until at last when he stood in front of the microphones, the volume of sound had reached an almost incredible peak. Everyone was on his feet.

Borden Means stood for long seconds. He stared out at the crowd. He wore a somber, brooding expression. He looked tiny on the vast stage, and yet larger than life. Suddenly he flung both arms up, palms outward. An unseen knife cut all the sound down to an unearthly stillness. Means slowly lowered his arms to his sides.

“I know each one of you,” he said in a quiet voice. The amplifiers picked up the sound and flung it out across the sea of faces.

“I stand here and I look into each human heart. I see an aching fear. I see uncertainty. If I saw nothing else, I should give up my plan.”

As the roar started again, he quieted it immediately.

“What is this other thing I see in each heart? It is a small and timid thing. It shrinks from the cruelties and banalities of this world. Some call it love. Some call it hope. Whatever it is called, it is the small indomitable thing that enables us to go on... and on.”

At that point Jeff ceased being able to follow the speech as words. It was as though Means spoke with some new tongue that reached directly into his mind. It played with emotions rather than with the intellect. The great voice rose and fell, more delicate at times than a violin, and suddenly as powerful as the northern seas.

Jeff had the feeling that Means talked to him alone. He would die for Borden Means.

Being an adult is a lonely affair. Means took away the loneliness.

And at the end Jeff was on his feet with all the others, screaming his approval, yelling out his eternal dedication to Borden Means and all he stood for or wanted to stand for. As Means left the stage Jeff managed to disengage himself from the spell. He looked around. Near him a plump housewife held her clasped hands at her breast and wept. A burly, pimpled young man wore a look of dedication. Beside him Julie stood with her head bowed, almost as though she prayed.

When Jeff let himself into his hotel room, Canada Haskill, Managing Editor of Crux, was standing by the windows. Haskill, ten years before, had been a “boy” editor. Now he clung, with an almost feverish intensity, to all he could retain of the mannerisms and appearance of a Harvard senior. He was lean and languid, with colorless eyes and long anemic fingers, which were forever at work on a pipe.

“Good boy, Rayden. O’Reilly around? Phone her for me, will you? Tell her to pop over. Impromptu conference, you know.”

“The office didn’t tell me you’d be in town, Mr. Haskill.” Jeff said, reaching for the phone.

“Last minute affair, Rayden. Just a cross-check. Wanted to check my own impressions with what you’d do on this Means fella.”

It was the first positive clue that Haskill was not as pleased as he once had been with the teamwork of Rayden and O’Reilly. Jeff got her on the line. It would have been simpler to go across the hall and get her, but easier to warn her this way.

“Julie? Mr. Haskill’s here in my room. Want to drop over?”

Julie arrived five minutes later, her manner quite normal. Haskill sat in the biggest chair, reaming out his pipe. “Ah, O’Reilly! Nice to see you. Want to get your slant on this Means fella, children. I heard him tonight.”

Julie gave Jeff a warning glance. “I personally think he is a great man,” she said.

Haskill coughed. “Then you wouldn’t cut him up into little pieces when you do the article?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

Jeff cut in, his voice angry. “Now let’s get the record straight, chief. This is a peculiar thing. Julie has her impression. I have mine. You heard the guy tonight. All right. Then you know what he’s after. He stated it tonight. He’s forming his own third party. You know what that means. He’s a spellbinder. Give him enough rope and he’ll cut established voting lines to bits. Hell, he might even get to be president.”

Haskill was expressionless. “So?”

“So I think he’s dangerous. I think he’s a fake and a phoney. I think he needs cutting down to size.”

The silence lengthened. Julie walked aimlessly over to the bureau. She said in a thin voice. “I think that when Jeff thinks it over he mightБ"

“Please,” Canada Haskill said softly.

More silence. He got out a pouch, filled the pipe, tamped it down with his finger. Staring into the bowl he said, “I heard the talk and afterward I spent a half hour with Mr. Means. I guess I’ve gotten pretty cynical.” He looked up with a startling swiftness, meeting Jeff’s eye. “But I revere that man! I feel he is thoroughly sincere. I have pledged the support of Crux. I am with him as a man and as an editor every last inch of the way.”

“But did he say anything? Did he have any specific suggestions?” Jeff said angrily.

“He is a modern Lincoln,” Canada Haskill said reverently.

“Now look here. Lincoln was a smart statesman. He had concrete proposals. He was aБ"

“I came up here, Rayden, because when I pledged the support of Crux I told Mr. Means that I would place the team of Rayden and O’Reilly at his disposal. You two would have been the nerve channel between the greatest man and the greatest publication of our times. I had hoped that you both would be sufficiently perceptive to see a great man and recognize him as such. But I find that O’Reilly is the only one to see it.”

“I can prove he’s a phoney!” Jeff said. His tone was hot and he knew that his face was unpleasantly red.

Canada Haskill’s sneer was gentle, “I’m afraid not, Rayden. O’Reilly, do you have any objection to reporting to Mr. Means? I’ll assign a writer to work with you. We want the best possible photographic coverage of Borden Means.”

“I would be glad to, if JeffБ"

Haskill silenced her with a wave of his pipe. He lit the pipe with a trick lighter, puffed out a cloud of smoke. “My dear O’Reilly, Mr. Rayden is no longer employed by Crux.”

“Down the garden path,” Jeff said.

“Please, Rayden. This isn’t a decision I suddenly made. I spent two hours yesterday reading your work in back issues. You’ve slipped, Rayden. Rather badly. I had hoped to work you into this new idea...” He sucked hard on the pipe, peered down into it again and then knocked it out into the ashtray.

“I won’t beg for another chance,” Jeff said stiffly.

“It would be awkward.”

“Then I quit too!” Julie said hotly.

“Don’t be a complete sap,” Jeff said. “If you quit on my account, I’ll feel responsible for you. And I’d rather be free to make my own decisions.”

Her face flamed red for a moment. “I’m sorry, Mr. Haskill,” she said. “I didn’t mean that. It was just a gesture.”

“If I’m no longer working for you, Haskill,” Jeff said, “I’m sure you won’t mind taking your little conference someplace else.”

Haskill stood up, yawned. “Come on, O’Reilly. We’ll mail your final check to your bank as usual, Rayden. The contract calls for six month’s pay in case of termination without notice. Your desk will be cleaned out for you. Advise the office where you want the contents shipped. And please don’t make the mistake of asking for the release of any of the rights we hold on your past work.”

They left the room. Forty minutes later Rayden was opening a bottle of prime bourbon.