Hand from the Void

Chapter Two The Memory Veil

Kiddle was a sleazy little man who looked as though he were fashioned of suet. He wet his lips constantly and masked furtiveness with jerky expansive gestures.

“It’s the investment,” he said with an attempt at firmness.

Jeff made marks on the tablecloth with his knife. “Okay,” he sighed, “but please come off the pose that you’re publishing a respectable magazine. That rag of yours is a classic example of poor taste, girlies and ax murders. I’ve got the dough to finance my own investigations. I’ve been digging into Means’ past for the last three weeks. I’ll be frank. I’ve been trying to peddle my wares, but Means has picked up such powerful backing in the last month that nobody wants to touch it. I had to come to you, Kiddle. Even though I despise your rag, it does have a circulation of almost a million.”

“I got to be sure of your stuff, Rayden.”

“You know my reputation, Kiddle. So I’ll finance myself and you won’t reimburse. Now, what about the rate? I’ll feed you the data in four-thousand-word chunks.”

“Maybe five hundred?” Kiddle said cautiously.

Jeff snorted. “Maybe twenty-five hundred.”

They settled for fourteen-hundred and fifty, dependent on Kiddle acceptance of Jeff’s material as acceptable for the readers of Unveiled.

“Now what you got so far?” Kiddle asked.

For a moment Jeff felt a touch of wild laughter in his brain. How would Kiddle react if he heard about the first step of the investigation? Kiddle would send for the little men with the nets.

And, Jeff thought, it might be the right answer.

He could still not quite believe what had happened that first morning after he had been fired. He had wanted to find out how Means could divert an airliner on a scheduled run. He had gone to the big desk at the San Ramon Terminal and had talked to the clerk.

“What was the answer on Flight 49 coming in late yesterday?”

The clerk stared at him. “Late? It was right on the button.”

“Oh, they were able to make up the time, I guess.”

“I don’t get it, sir. Make up what time?”

“Look,” said Jeff. “Don’t play dumb with me. I’m Jeffrey Rayden. We were on Flight 49, westbound, yesterday. There was a Change of Destination for the two of us and Flight 49 let down at the strip at Dos Almas. The stewardess said it was twenty-five minutes flying time out of the way. I’m trying to find out how Means could do such a thing.”

“Dos Almas?” the clerk said with infuriating blankness, “Strip?”

“Check your records, will you please? I don’t like your attitude.”

The clerk flushed and went away. He came back with the terminal manager, a big man with a hearty manner. Jeff explained it all again.

The man laughed uneasily. “I don’t understand all this, Mr. Rayden. You see, just by coincidence, I was on that flight myself. A little conference up the line. There were no unscheduled stops, and I never heard of Dos Almas, believe me. If there’s a strip there, I’d know about it, wouldn’t I?”

“Where’s that stewardess?”

“She went on with the flight, of course. Shell be laying over in Los Angeles, I expect, Mr. Rayden.”

“Okay,” Jeff had said, smiling thinly, “we’ll try a new approach. Miss O’Reilly and I were certainly on the manifest. So how come we didn’t get off the plane here? Did we get out at ten thousand feet and walk down to Dos Almas?”

The clerk coughed. He said, “The full manifest list arrived here, Mr. Blaid.”

“And you’re lying!” Jeff said hotly. “I get it now. You boys did Means a favor but you don’t want it on the records. You might catch hell. So you’re trying to snowjob me. I’m not that simple.”

Mr. Blaid had immediately lost his hearty manner. His eyes turned ugly and small. “Friend, I don’t know what your game is. If you’re serious, you better hunt up a good doctor. This airline doesn’t make unscheduled stops except under emergency conditions. Borden Means couldn’t force us to make a stop hike that. I was on the flight. I remember you.”

“And you saw me get off here?”

“My dear fellow, where else would you have gotten off?”

“I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

When he reached the door he looked back across the terminal and saw Blaid and the clerk staring after him with the look of angry pity with which the incomprehensibly insane are usually favored.

No, it wouldn’t do to tell Kiddle that episode and then follow it up with the real twist — the real kickeroo — the parsley on top. It made him dizzy to think of it. Two hours in the public library at San Ramon, and finding that according to all the reference books, there was no such place as Dos Almas. It didn’t exist. It never had.

“What’s the matter?” Kiddle asked. “You look funny. You gonna give me the dope you got, or aren’t you?”

There was other information for Kiddle. Information he would find it easier to accept.

“When the letter from you is in my hand setting forth the terms of our agreement, I’ll tell you what I’ve got,” Jeff said.

“So we go to my office now?”

Kiddle’s personal office was overly flamboyant. On the rest of the floor of the office building occupied by the staff of Unveiled, the offices were dim little plywood cubicles.

Jeff read the letter carefully, insisted on two changes, then folded the altered copy neatly and put it in his pocket. He leaned forward.

“Now listen to this. Borden Means was born in eighteen ninety-eight in a shack near Bandera on the Guadeloupe River northwest of San Antonio. He was the third of seven children. His pappy raised sheep and goats. They didn’t have a dime. I talked to some old settlers there. The Means family was dirty, sullen, unfriendly and pretty damn touchy. The birth of the seventh kid killed his old lady. Borden Means took off when he was thirteen. He was big for his age. He got a job as a ranch hand south of Kerrville. I found a guy who worked for the same ranch. Means was truculent, quarrelsome and tough. Big for his age. He got into one jam after another until he enlisted. He went to France in the first war. He never got above corporal. Coming back on the ship he cleaned up in a crap game. Several thousand bucks. He hung onto it and bought himself a spread near San Ramon. He didn’t make any friends. He worked like a fool and plowed every nickel back into more land and more stock. By the time he was twenty-five he had a good ranch. I talked to the guy who was his foreman. Man named Ike Looder. Looder said every hand on the place hated Means’ guts but they couldn’t do anything about it because he could lick every last one of them. Turnover was high. Now we begin to see the business talent cropping out. Say that his childhood gave him a big yen for monetary security. He had no time for women, games, liquor. He saw his chance and unloaded the ranch at a profit. He sank the dough into more land. Then the Barnton Field was proved. His spread was just off the dome. He got a neighbor drunk. Nobody knows what happened. When the guy recovered, Borden Means had his land deeds and claimed he won ’em. They were properly signed over and witnessed and the witnesses wouldn’t talk. Five wells were brought in on the land he took over, Now again we see a new development. He went off to a damn good mining engineering school and hammered enough geology and such into his thick skull, so that he equipped himself to find oil. He got his own crews together and began sinking holes. His luck went sour and he was down to his last buck when he brought in the first well on the Hobarth Field. He’d taken options all over the place. From that day on he’s never had a minute of financial worry.”

“So what can I do with a biography?”

“Use your head. I talked to everybody I could find who has known him for the past twenty years. What do I get? A picture of a sour, tight-fisted, greedy man. He didn’t have a friend in the world up to the time he started those broadcasts. He snapped everybody’s head off, bullied his employees, chiseled whenever he could get away with it. He built himself the equivalent of a feudal castle eighteen miles outside San Ramon right in the middle of the pumped-out field he chiseled to get his initial start in the oil business. All of a sudden he turns into a guy so warm and human he makes your heart bleed. Why? How? It has to be an act. If it is an act, then he could have made more money on the stage and in the movies than he ever made out of oil. He’s phoney all the way through.”

Kiddle shook his head sadly. “Not good enough.”

“Here comes the funny business, Kiddle. Remember I told you about his first foreman, Ike Looder? I went back to see Ike. He’s a nice old guy. Lives on a government pension. I wanted to recheck a few points. Ike couldn’t even remember Borden Means. At first I thought somebody had gotten to Ike and fixed him with money. In an hour of talking with Ike I convinced myself that he’s sincere. I decided that it was just the faulty mind of approaching senility. So I tried to recheck with a few other people. They are all sincere too. But they can’t remember a thing. They acted like I was crazy. Something or somebody got to them and did something, somehow, to their memories. Right now I’m in a funny position. The research was going fine — and now the sources are suddenly going sour.”

“You feel okay?” Kiddle asked nervously.

“I feel fine. Just look at the dimensions of the story. Somebody is so anxious to cover up the real Borden Means that they’re willing to tamper with the minds and memories of the people who knew him as he used to be. You ever see this?” He took a thick folder out of his side pocket and threw it on the desk in front of Kiddle.

The picture on the front was of Borden Means. It captured that odd warmth that had so impressed Jeff.

“Nice photo,” Kiddle said.

“It’s an O’Reilly. You can always recognize the touch. Anyway, this purports to be a true biography of Borden Means. It was written up at his hideaway, which has become a sort of headquarters, and it was printed in Dallas. According to this thing, Means never said an unkind word or did an underhanded thing in his life. It’s devilishly clever. It sticks close enough to the truth so that it checks with public records, and yet it changes the whole personality of the man to what he is right now.”

Kiddle scratched a sagging third chin. “I want something hot and you give me this memory stuff. I don’t get it. We can’t use that. It sounds like some of the stuff we print in one of our fiction books. Weird Adventures. Who can prove this mind business?”

“Okay. Here’s something. In nineteen thirty-seven Means got sore at a guy working for him. He beat him up, broke his jaw, threw him off the place. The guy sued. It hit the front pages in the San Ramon papers. The court awarded the guy six thousand bucks damages. I was lucky enough to get hold of a copy of the paper. It’s in a safety deposit box here in New York. I can show it to you. Somebody has gotten into the library files in San Ramon, and into the newspaper files.”

“Aha! It’s missing now?” Kiddle said eagerly.

“More than that, Kiddle. The papers have been changed. According to the changes, the case was thrown out of court and the judges gave the plaintiff hell for trying to work a fake suit on Means. I hired a lawyer and had him check the actual court records. They’d been altered too. I dug up the plaintiff. His name is Harry Lamke. Now he thinks it was thrown out of court. The judge is dead. I think technical experts could examine the newspapers and the court records and find that they’ve been altered. The paper I managed to get hold of is a true copy of the edition that day.”

“Or maybe you got a copy that was run off by some bum who hated Means, eh?”

“Whose side are you on, Kiddle?”

“The side of my readers. You get me notarized statements from qualified experts stating that the library and newspaper copies and the court records have been altered. You give me those and your copy you got in a box. Then I give it the lead position in the first issue I can get it into and I pay you five thousand dollars.”

“You’ve got a deal, Kiddle.”

Jeff waited nervously in his room at the Blue Bonnet in San Ramon. It was a smaller cheaper room than when Crux had been paying for the accommodations. Lately he had felt the strengthening of the suspicion that he was being watched carefully. In the wastebasket was the crumpled wire from Kiddle which said, “Wire date when I can expect documentation.”

There was a knock at the room door. Jeff jumped nervously. He hurried to the door and pulled it open. Dr. Clinton Powyth and his assistant came in. Dr. Powyth, Jeff thought, was eyeing him peculiarly.

“Sit down, gentlemen,” Jeff said, smiling. “I’m glad this is over. I’ve made arrangements to have a public stenographer who is also a notary come up and take your report.”

Powyth didn’t sit down, nor did his assistant. Powyth smiled wanly. “I suppose we have nothing to complain about, Mr. Rayden. Your fee was generous.”

“What do you mean?”

“The newspaper people were very pleasant. They even located an extra copy and turned it over to us. A duplicate of the one in their files. I suppose your object is to find some way to smear Mr. Borden Means. I shan’t quarrel with your objective, even though I find it a bit... distasteful.”

“Would it be too much trouble to get to the point?”

“We used all the standard tests and even some special ones applicable to this situation. The newspaper we examined was printed in nineteen thirty-seven. An age test of the ink and the paper showed that. There is no sign of alteration. We examined closely the suspected passages. The type conforms to the type of other issues of that year. I am sorry to say that this has been a wild goose chase.”

“You’re crazy!” Jeff shouted.

Powyth shook his head, almost sadly. “My dear young man! If you are sincere in believing that statement, I suggest that you are the one who should see a competent psychiatrist.”

The two men trooped out and closed the room door gently.

Jeff sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, grinding his palms against his eye sockets. After a time he went for a walk. He felt numb. He remembered reading of the experimentations with rats. When the scientists present healthy rats with clearly insoluble problems, the rats develop a very clear and observable anxiety neurosis. Now he was faced with a clear and inexplicable contradiction of fact. He had gone through seven attics in San Ramon before finding the copy he wanted. There was no chance that it had been planted there for him to find. Nor was it within the realm of possibility that as early as 1937 someone had been altering filed data in preparation for Means’ current campaign.

He walked in the city and was shocked to see the way the little pins had taken hold. Men wore them in their lapels. Women wore them on their blouses. Each was small and green with a white border and the white letters spelling out MEANS. Without exception, the persons who wore the buttons also wore a look of concealed exaltation. Their step was springy, their eyes keen. And Jeff knew that this same phenomenon was being repeated in all the major cities of the entire country. One man, with a voice that could be fire, or honey, or thunder, or silk, had worked this magic.

Already fanatics were talking about a national petition to the president asking him to resign in favor of Borden Means. In the papers the births were listed. Little girls named Bordeen and Borda and Bordette. Thousands of little boys named Borden Means Smith, Borden Means Cohen, Borden Means Levandowski, Borden Means Vanderkamp, Borden Means Mulligan. Unsolicited funds were pouring into the Means’ coffers. The thing was like a gigantic wave that starts far out near the horizon. At first it was just a rounded swelling against the flat sea. Then it began to arc up, moving faster. Now Jeff knew, it had begun to near the shore. Soon the actual crest would appear. The wave would tower higher and higher...

Deep in thought he blundered against a girl who had come out of a shop doorway. He trod heavily on her foot. He saw her wince with pain.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said.

He saw the green pin on her blouse. Though tears of pain stood in her eyes, she gave him a crooked smile and said, “Borden Means.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Don’t you know? Whenever you’re angry or upset or want to snap somebody’s head off, you just say His name. It’s better than counting to ten. Much better. You know that He wouldn’t ever let himself be angry.” In her eyes there was a deep and fervent glow.

“I think he’s a phoney,” Jeff said.

Her eyes narrowed with quick anger and then softened again. “If you really think that, mister, why don’t you go out and talk to him? Then you’ll believe, too. And you’ll be happier. Much, much happier.”

“Don’t you feel a little silly, worshiping a man?”

“No, it isn’t worship, mister. It’s something else. He doesn’t take the place of my church or my God. He just seems to make me a better person so that I can begin to get some real benefit out of my religion.”

The girl walked on. She had a slight limp which began to correct itself as she walked. Jeff stood and watched her. He said, “Why not? I’ll see what Means says.”