Hand from the Void

Chapter Three The Citadel

The main building was of tan stone. It was huge. The narrow windows showed that it was only two stories high. Though the high stone fence encircling the main building and the outbuildings was topped with broken glass and what appeared to be electrified wire, the main gate was unguarded. Jeff drove the small rented sedan through the gates and parked in a lot that contained over twenty other cars. He recognized the long powerful car which Means used, riding in back behind a uniformed chauffeur. You had to give the man that much. He didn’t make any secret of his wealth.

As he entered the huge baronial hallway he heard the busy clacking of office equipment. There was no guard in the hall. He stepped to the doorway of what had apparently been an enormous dining room. There were black carved beams overhead. A dozen girls sat before key punches making cards from the stacked letters before each one of them. An office boy was gathering up the punched cards and taking them to the tabulator operators and to the sorters. Facing the key punch operators was a long row of secretarial desks. There was a girl at each desk, typing busily, referring to the letters which had been indexed by the key punch operators.

So Means was organized effectively, Jeff decided. On his three last broadcasts he had made an appeal for letters from all those who believed in him. The stack of mail sacks, ten feet square, in the corner of the room was ample evidence of that. By feeding the letters through an IBM setup, Means was making himself a list of all his supporters. With that list he would have a most effective direct mailing listing.

A cultured voice at Jeff’s elbow said, “Can I help you, sir?”

He turned quickly. The girl was very fair, with eyes of an odd shade of aqua. “Why, I think so. I’d like to talk to Means.”

“There are so many demands on his time. Are you representing anyone?”

“My name is Jeffrey Rayden. If you could tell him that...”

“Oh, of course. Mr. Means is expecting you.”

“Huh! Are you quite certain of that?”

The girl smiled. “He’s been expecting you for several days, I believe.” She turned and smiled back over her shoulder. “Please follow me, Mr. Rayden.”

He was so numbed by surprise that he walked behind her like an automaton, almost oblivious to his surroundings. The semi-trance faded as the girl, still smiling, stepped aside and indicated a closed door.

Jeff knocked at the door. Means’ voice was remote, but clear. “Come right in, Jeff.”

He turned the knob and walked in. The room was not large. It was not as luxurious as the study in the San Ramon apartment, but it was on the same order.

Means came to meet him and clasped Jeff’s unwilling hand in both of his. “Come and sit down and get it all off your chest, my son.”

Jeff kept his eyes away from Borden Means so as to give him time to collect his thoughts. He lit a cigarette, leaned back in the deep leather chair, and said, “To put it all into one sentence, Means, I just want to tell you I’m convinced that you’re very cleverly covering up your past history, and that past history is more than a bit unsavory.”

Means gave him a puzzled frown. “Unsavory? I fail to remember any shameful act in my past, Jeff. I’ve done some silly things, some foolish things. Every man has. I’ve hurt people through a lack of sufficient understanding, I may hurt people in the same way in the future. The word unsavory does seem a bit stiff, though.”

Jeff leaned forward. “Remember the time you promised Ike Looder sixty a month and then paid him forty at the end of the roundup season?”

“Ike Looder! You know, Jeff, I’d almost forgotten him! Old Ike. Now there’s an oversight. Is he still alive? Good! You see, I’ve probably hurt him without meaning to, merely by forgetting him. I remember that year well. Ike was helping. We had a bad year. I wanted to give him his full pay and a bonus, but he knew how things were. He wouldn’t take over forty a month. When I brought in my first well I sent Ike the back pay plus a thousand dollar bonus. I’ve still got the letter he wrote, thanking me.”

“And that letter is just as valid as the newspaper files in San Ramon, I suppose.”

“I wish I could cure that basic bitterness within you, Jeff. If you give me half a chance I think I can.”

“Now let’s see you worm out of the Harry Lamke incident.”

Means threw back his massive head and laughed. His laughter had the clear ring of a boy’s merriment. “Poor Harry! He’s worked harder all his life on get-rich-quick schemes than he would have on honest living. Did you see him when you came in?”

“See him?”

“Yes. I suppose I’m something of a sucker, Jeff. I hired him to work around the place.”

Jeff flipped his cigarette into the fireplace. He shut his eyes for a moment. “Why can’t we stop sparring, Means? There are no witnesses here. You are a bluff and a phoney, and just to make you more dangerous, you’ve got a couple of special talents that I don’t understand. Did you think I wouldn’t find out that no such place as Dos Almas exists? And those memories you’ve been tampering with. It’s all cut out of the same cloth. What do you want? What are you after?”

Means gave him a puzzled smile. “But I told you that before. On our ride to San Ramon from... Dos Almas. I want a better world. A thousand years ago a man with that wish would have to go into the countryside. In all his lifetime he might speak to one million people. Now better tools are available. I have enough money to use those tools. I have trained myself. I speak nine tongues fluently. Nine important tongues. English, of course, plus Russian, Chinese, Hindustani, German, Italian, Spanish, French and Arabic. At this moment, through recordings, I am speaking to tens of millions all over the world.”

He stood up, his expression exalted. “They are listening to me! They hear me! We shall have a peaceful and united world. Violence will die. Man will live with man in peace and security. This house is the nerve center of an international network. There is talk of my being president. I shall not settle for that. I shall be President of the United and Federated States of the World!” His voice softened. “Do you blame me for using every known weapon at my command, and a few ones new to this world to bring that about?”

“You are a witch or a madman, Means.”

The rich voice spoke so softly that Jeff had to lean forward in order to hear. “Are you quite, quite certain which one of us is mad, my son?”

Jeff’s mind seemed to separate into two distinct parts. In the coldly objective portion he saw to his disgust and quasi-horror that he was weeping, that Borden Means stood by his chair, his hand resting, warm and steady, on Jeff’s shoulder.

And, through his tears, he said an odd thing. He said brokenly, “If all that is true, then you are not the man I’ve investigated. There are two of you, two of you...”

The pressure left his shoulder. He looked up quickly. For a fraction of a second Means’ face was as cold and empty as a rifled tomb. It was a face so dead that it made death itself seem like a quieter form of life. The shocking impact of it turned Jeff’s brain to coldest stone.

And the look was gone as quickly as it had come. But it left behind, in Jeff’s mind, a knowledge of danger more acute than any he had ever faced. For the face he had seen was as merciless as the emptiness of extra-galactic space.

“You are troubled, my son,” Means said.

And now he could sense the ominousness of those words. It was like being forced to run across an unknown swamp. A hummock directly ahead might be safe, or it might let him down into the blackness.

“I feel... as though this has all been a bad dream.”

“Of course it has, Jeff.”

“I want you to forgive me.”

“For what? For being skeptical? That is one of the privileges of youth, I believe. I would admire you less, Jeff, if you hadn’t been uncertain of my motives. We could use you, you know. You have a... remarkable intelligence.” And for a tiny moment the teeth had shown again.

“I would like to think it over, Mr. Means.”

“Of course.”

Jeff stood up, and he hoped that his smile was convincing. “Could I see Julie?”

He went to the desk and pressed a button set into the edge. A far door opened. A blond young man came in and stood waiting respectfully. He looked to be a brother of the girl who had approached Jeff in the lower hallway. His eyes, too, were of that aqua shade.

“Mike, could you send Julie O’Reilly in?”

“Camera too, sir?”

“Not this time, Mike.”

Julie came in a few moments later. She wore a sweater and skirt. She looked not over fifteen. “Hi there, Jeff,” she said casually, “Nice to see you again.”

Jeff was looking into Julie’s eyes when Means said, jovially, “Jeff is considering joining the organization, Julie.”

Jeff saw the odd expression flit across her face. The fear-widening of her eyes and compression of her lips. “That would be fine,” she said, “you’ll get a kick out of it, Jeff. We could have as much fun as we did when we wrote up Lucas Washington.”

The warning was clever, and clear. It was one of Lucas Washington’s men who, while the article was in progress, had put Jeff in the Racine hospital with one of the worst physical beatings he had ever taken.

“Well, Mr. Means told me I could think it over.”

“Like to see you aboard, Cap’n,” Julie said. She looked at her watch. “Mr. Means, I was going to head into town for some supplies. Would it be all right if Jeff took me in?”

“Of course, my dear. How did the shots come out?”

“A little disappointing. There’s one good one though. You on that roan stallion.”

Means sighed. “There are so many peoples of this world who demand that their heroes arrive on horseback. Tell Mike to bring the proof in on your way out.”

“Ready, Jeff?” she said.

They went out together. Julie paused in the hall to give Mike the instructions. She kept up a bright line of chatter all the way down to the rented car. As soon as they had driven out the gate she began to tremble visibly.

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

Her teeth chattered as she spoke. “R-r-reaction, probably. Keep driving. Find some place we can turn off and park the car out of sight, J-J-Jeff.”

Within five minutes he found a side road. It wandered over hard-pan to a clump of live oaks beside a dry arroyo. He pulled on the parking brake and cut the motor. She came quickly into his arms. The tears came. He smoothed the chestnut hair and murmured to her and let her cry herself out. It did not take long. He gave her his handkerchief. Soon she sat up, dug a mirror out of her purse and looked at herself.

“I’m a mess,” she said.

“Sure. And I’ve missed you like I’d miss both arms and legs.”

“Mean it?”

“So you can smile, eh?”

“Oh, Jeff, how right you were! How desperately and incredibly right!”

“Can we take it from the beginning?”

“I was sore at you. What you said about being responsible for me. I know why you said that now. But I didn’t, then. I went out to work there for Mr. Means. I have a lovely room. Nobody bothers me. All the money I want for special equipment. I worked hard, trying to forget you. You know how I can get so wound up in a thing that I forget everything?”

“I remember, darling.”

“It’s so good to hear you say that again. It started when I was trying to get a picture for the cover of that biography. It was important. It had to have just the right flavor. Not arty at all. Honest. Lincolnesque. Humble and proud at the same time. I took a hundred shots. None of them were right. I took a second batch. It was midmorning a month ago. One of the shots came out just right. I didn’t think. I went running to his room with it. It was still damp. I didn’t knock or anything. I just piled right in. He was sitting by the desk, bolt upright. I started to gabble about the picture and I didn’t notice at first. Then I saw his face. Jeff, it was empty, empty, empty. Dead. Dead forever, since the beginning of time. He wasn’t breathing. A little spider had made a web from his ear lobe to his shoulder. I backed toward the door, the back of my hand to my mouth. I guess I was going to scream the moment I got into the hall. And suddenly he came to life, and he was himself. It frightened the pie out of me. But somehow I managed to keep a grip on myself. It was just as though he were a windup toy. I don’t think he noticed anything.”

Jeff exhaled noisily. “A robot! By God, a robot!”

“I thought I was going crazy. I began to wonder that too. So I began to watch him. Do robots eat? Do they breathe out warm air? Do they smoke cigars? Does a robot’s stomach rumble sometimes? No, Jeff. It’s something worse than that. Worse!”

“What’s worse than that?”

Her voice was almost a whisper. “The walking dead, Jeff. He’s dead and somehow they use him.”

“They?”

“Those people. The blond ones. Two men and two women. They said they were distantly related. That was to explain the funny eye color. They’re running him, Jeff. Mike and Paul the two men call themselves. I can hardly tell them apart. The two women call themselves Laura and Elaine. Laura is the taller one, the one we saw at the apartment. Elaine probably took you upstairs to his room back there. Jeff, they’re not people. Not as we know people. I don’t know what they are. I’d never have noticed anything funny if I hadn’t seen Mr. Means looking dead. I started being more observant then. And I’m really frightened. Terribly frightened. They can do — odd things.”

“Like what?”

“They don’t have to talk to each other. Oh, they do, when somebody’s around. It isn’t necessary to them. I saw Laura glance at Elaine one day. Elaine was just walking in, not saying a word. Laura opened the desk drawer and took out a file and handed it to her.”

“Maybe there was some previous talk about that file?”

“No, because I had given it to Laura just fifteen minutes earlier and I hadn’t left the room. Elaine took it, said thank you, and left. I know that Laura sent for her somehow. And there’s a building there on the grounds that no one can go in but those four. The closer I’ve watched them, the more differences I’ve seen. Something about their wrists are funny. More — what’s the word — articulation. They bend back further than ours. But you seldom see them use them that way. As though they were imitating... us. And sometimes they’ll look terribly amused, all of them, without a word being spoken. They’re... just terribly, terribly odd. Oh, and another thing. There are little things Laura and Elaine don’t know that — goodness! — every girl knows. They always seem to be watching me for clues. Because of my work I’m with them more than the office girls downstairs. Laura had a little piece of costume jewelry. Any woman would have known how to wear it. She wore it way over on her shoulder, sort of. When I noticed it she left the room. When she came back it was in the right place. I left my lighter on the table. Just a plain old one. Everybody knows about those. Laura tried to use it and she kept spinning the wheel backward. Then suddenly she seemed to know how to work it.”

“What are you trying to get at?”

“Jeff, believe me. They come from someplace else!”

“Oh, come now! Martians, maybe?”

“Don’t act like that! They’re funny. They remind me of people in a zoo, looking around at the funny animals. They seem to have a good time, but there’s a coldness in them. A ruthlessness about them.”

“I’d like to get in that building you mentioned. Is it guarded?”

“No. Just locked. I went and tried the door once. It’s a thick door. Heavy. What are they trying to do, Jeff?”

“Whatever it is,” he said bitterly, “they seem to be doing it very effectively. You saw the cover story in Tempo last week? You know how Tempo takes the most exalted people and always lets that sour little edge of wit appear. The whole cover story sounded like it had been written by a Wellesley girl writing up the professor on whom she has a large crush. And how about the TV networks fighting to give him free time just to get a bigger audience on the preceding and following programs? And those darn buttons!”

“Twenty-four million of them have been distributed so far, Jeff. It’s... frightening.”

“Have you tried to talk to anybody else about this?”

She frowned. “Yes. And the funniest thing happened. There’s a really bright girl running the letter section. I hinted around. She began to catch on. We compared notes on the four... blond things. She began to get excited. And then one day she couldn’t remember anything about it. At least she pretended not to remember. I guess she thought I was missing a few marbles or something.”

He told her about his investigations. He told her of the odd losses of memory, of the tampering with the files. As he spoke, her eyes got rounder and rounder.

“Then — Myra! She really didn’t remember! They tampered with her somehow!”

He cupped her cheeks in his hands and looked into her eyes. “I can’t let you go back there, darling.”

“Think a moment, Jeff. Think hard. They seem to be able to do all sorts of things. If I run from them, I think they will find me.”

He cursed softly. “They might, at that.”

“I have to go back. I can’t let them guess that I’m suspicious. Honestly, Jeff, I won’t be frightened any more now that I know you’re on my side. I can do my work and watch them and maybe find out enough so that you can turn it over to the FBI or the UN or whoever you turn a thing like this over to.”

“Nothing must happen to you.”

“Nothing will. There’s no reason for them to... hurt me.”

“Be careful, baby. I’m going to take up his offer, you know. Then I’ll be on the inside, too. I’ll be able to watch over you.”

“I thought you once said that you didn’t want that responsibility, Mr. Rayden.”

He punched her very lightly on the point of her chin. “Touché, baby.”

They kissed and they talked of other things which had absolutely nothing to do with Means. In some odd way things had gone right for them again. Time passed. She glanced at her watch and jumped. “Goodness! They’ll get suspicious. Take me back, Jeff.”

“Weren’t you going after supplies?”

She opened her purse and held it so that he could look in. “All purchased. When I heard you were in with him, I went to my room and got this film. I never got around to unwrapping it after I bought it the other day.”

“Why do I trust you at all?” he said wonderingly.

He drove her back, watched her walk up to the front door, then turned around and drove back to San Ramon. He turned the car in at the garage where he had rented it. As he was paying his bill in the office the mechanic came in, gave him a surly look and said, “Come on out in the shop, bud. I want to show you something.”

Jeff, puzzled, followed the man out. The hood of the car was raised.

The man walked to the car, pointed inside the hood and said, in a sarcastic voice, “Now suppose you tell me just what kinda toy you had installed on ourБ" He stopped abruptly, looked more closely and then softly called himself a dirty word.

“What’s the matter?” Jeff asked.

“It was there a minute ago!” the mechanic protested weakly.

“What was?”

“Damn if I know what it was. A round gray thing. Fastened right there. Big as a grapefruit. Flattish. I figured it was some kind of trick horn you had put on.”

“I didn’t have anything put on the car, friend.”

“But I — hey! Look here!”

Jeff bent over beside him. Down beside the motor was a pile of grayish, metallic powder. The mechanic picked up a pinch of it. It was as fine as talc. Even as he held it in his hand it seemed to grow more fine. It diffused in the air. Soon his hand was empty and the grayish cloud dissipated. More grayness like smoke welled up out of the hood and was gone.

In a strained voice Jeff asked, “Did the thing look at all like a microphone? A pickup?”

“It could have been. Look, mister. I didn’t see anything. You didn’t see anything. It was never there. I work for a living. I don’t like things on my mind. Go and pay your bill. Don’t come back. Ever.”

At eight o’clock that night Jeff found his man in the beer joint where he had been told to look. The man’s name was Phil Sargo. He was as tall and broad as the average doorway, but with an indefinably cat-like way of moving. His brown hard face looked at though it couldn’t be hurt with an eight-pound sledge, and it also looked as though somebody had tested that theory a few times.

His voice had a rasp. “What you want, doc?”

Jeff sat down at the empty chair at the table for two. “I want to hire you.”

“Tonight I feel like drinking beer. So I come high.”

“Suppose I tell you what I want and you name the fee.”

“Don’t take up the whole evening telling me, doc. I’m expecting the girl friend.”

“I’m a reporter. I think Borden Means is trying to work some kind of a racket. He has a building on his place that I want to get a look at. It’s locked, but not guarded. That building may contain something that can smear Means all over this end of the country. Any objections?”

“You mean do I like Means? I think he ought to go out to Southern California with the rest of the swamis. He’s not selling me a thing. I’m just a poor, hardworking private investigator. He’s making everybody so happy that business is beginning to stink, confidentially. No nice juicy divorce jobs in three weeks.”

“I want to get a look in that building. Then I want to go inside the main building and come out with a girl who lives there and works for Means. I think I can get her outside all right. Then it will be up to you to help me get her back here to town.”

“Not a snatch, is it, doc?”

“No. She’ll be willing to come. I have reason to believe she’s in danger. I think that Means and his... people, know that she’s trying to spy on them. They had a chance to hear her talk to me today, and I think they took that chance.”

Phil Sargo put two fists the size of boulders on the tabletop. He squinted at Jeff. “On account of how Mary will be scorched at being stood up, it’ll cost you one bill now and one bill afterward.”

Jeff took out his wallet and counted out four twenties and two tens. Sargo crumpled them and shoved them in his pocket. “Come on. We’ll stop by the office. I’ll have to pick up a gun.”

“Pick up two.”

“You got a license?”

“No. But if you should drop one once we go there and I should happen to pick it up, it wouldn’t be your fault. And it might come in handy.”