Ring Around the Sun

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

WHEN Vickers opened the door of the room, he saw that the top was gone. He had left it on the chair, gaudy in its new paint, and it wasn't on the chair or on the floor. He got down on his belly and looked underneath the bed and it wasn't there. It wasn't in the closet and it wasn't in the hall outside.

He came back into the room again and sat down on the edge of the bed.

After all the worry and the planning the top had disappeared. Who would have stolen it? What would anyone want with a battered top?

What had he himself wanted with it?

It seemed faintly ridiculous now, sitting on the edge of the bed in a strange hotel room, to ask himself these questions.

He had thought the top would buy his way into fairyland and now, in the white glare of the ceiling light, he wondered at himself for the madness of his antics.

Behind him, the door came open and he heard it and wheeled around.

In the door stood Crawford.

The man was even more massive than Vickers had remembered him. He filled the doorway and he stood motionless, without a single flicker, except for slowly winking eyelids.

Crawford said: "Good evening, Mr. Vickers. Won't you ask me to come in?"

"Certainly," said Vickers. "I was waiting for a call from you. I never thought that you would take the trouble to travel here in person."

And that was a lie, of course, because he'd not been waiting for a call.

Crawford moved ponderously across the room. "This chair looks strong enough to hold me. You don't mind, I hope."

"It's not my chair," said Vickers. "Go ahead and bust it."

It didn't break. It creaked and groaned, but it held.

Crawford relaxed and sighed. "I always feel so much better when I get a good strong chair beneath me."

"You tapped Ann's phone," said Vickers.

"Why, certainly. How else would I have found you? I knew that, sooner or later, you would call her."

"I saw the plane come in," said Vickers. "If I had thought that it was you, I'd driven out to meet you. I have a bone to pick with you."

"I don't doubt it," Crawford said.

"Why did you almost get me lynched?"

"I wouldn't have you lynched for all the world," said Crawford. "I'm too much in need of you."

"What do you need me for?"

"I don't know," said Crawford. "I thought maybe you would know."

"I don't know a thing," said Vickers. "Tell me, Crawford, what is all this about? You didn't tell the truth that day I came in to see you."

"I told you the truth, or at least part of it. I didn't tell you everything we knew."

"Why not?"

"I didn't know who you were."

"But you know now?"

"Yes, I know now," said Crawford. "You are one of them."

"One of whom?"

"One of the gadgeteers."

"What in hell makes you think so?"

"Analyzers. That's what the psych boys call them. Analyzers. The damn things are uncanny. I don't pretend to understand them."

"And the analyzers said there was something strange about me?"

"Yes," said Crawford. "That's about the way it is."

"If I am one of them, why come to me?" asked Vickers. "If I am one of them, you are fighting me. Remember? A world with its back against the wall. Surely, you remember."

"Don't say 'if," said Crawford. "You _are_ one of them all right, but quit acting as if I were an enemy."

"Aren't you?" asked Vickers. "If I am what you say I am, you are my enemy."

"You don't understand," said Crawford. "Let's try analogy. Let's go back to the day when the Cro-Magnon drifted into Neanderthaler territory…"

"Don't give rue analogy," Vickers told him. "Tell me what's on your mind."

"I don't like the situation," Crawford said. "I don't like the way things are shaping up."

"You forget that I don't know what the situation is."

"That's what I was trying to tell you with my analogy. You are the Cro-Magnon. You have the bow and arrow and the spear. I am the Neanderthaler. I only have a club. You have the knife of polished stone; I have a piece of jagged flint picked out of a stream bed. You have clothing fashioned out of hides and furs and I have nothing but the hair I stand in."

"I wouldn't know," said Vickers.

"I'm not so sure myself," said Crawford. "I'm not up on that sort of stuff. Maybe I gave the Cro-Magnon a bit too much and the Neanderthaler less than what he had. But that's not the point at all."

"I appreciate the point," said Vickers. "Where do we go from there?"

"The Neanderthaler fought back," said Crawford, "and what happened to him?"

"He became extinct."

"They may have died for many reasons other than the spear and arrow. Perhaps they couldn't compete for food against a better race. Perhaps they were squeezed out of their hunting grounds. Perhaps they crawled off and starved. Perhaps they died of an overpowering shame — the knowledge that they were outdated, that they were no good, that they were, by comparison, little more than beasts."

"I doubt," said Vickers dryly, "that a Neanderthaler could work up a very powerful inferiority complex."

"The suggestion may not apply to the Neanderthaler. It does apply to us."

"You're trying to make me see how deep the cleavage goes."

"That is what I'm doing," Crawford told him. "You can't realize the depth of hate, the margin of intelligence and ability. Nor can you realize how desperate we really are.

"Who are these desperate men? I'll tell you who they are. They're the successful ones, the industrialists, the bankers, the businessmen, the professional men who have security and hold positions of importance, who move in social circles which mark the high tide of our culture.

"They'd no longer hold their positions if your kind of men took over. They'd be Neanderthaler to your Cro-Magnon. They'd be like Homeric Greeks pitchforked into the complex technology of this century of ours. They'd survive, of course, physically. But they'd be aborigines. Their values would be swept away and those values, built up painfully, are all they have to live by."

Vickers shook his head. "Let's not play games, Crawford. Let's try to be honest for a while. I imagine you think I know a whole lot more than I really do. I suppose I should pretend I know as much as you think I do — act smart and make you think I know all there is to know. Fence with you. Get you to tip your hand. But somehow I haven't got the heart to do it."

"I know you don't know too much. That's why I wanted to reach you as soon as possible. As I see it, you aren't entirely mutant yet, you haven't yet shed the chrysalis of an ordinary man. There's a lot of you that still is normal man. The tendency is to shift toward mutation — more today than yesterday, more tomorrow than today. But tonight, in this room, you and I still can talk man to man,"

"We could always talk."

"No, we couldn't, said Crawford. "If you were entirely mutant, I'd feel the difference in us. Without equality there'd be no basis for discussion. I'd doubt the soundness of my logic. You'd look on me with a shade of contempt."

"Just before you came in," said Vickers, "I'd almost convinced myself it was all imagination…"

"It's not imagination, Vickers. You had a top, remember?"

"The top is gone."

"Not gone," said Crawford.

"You have it?"

"No," said Crawford. "No, I haven't got it. I don't know where it is, but it still is somewhere in this room. You see, I got here before you did and I picked the lock. Incidentally, a most inefficient lock."

"Incidentally," said Vickers, "a very sneaky trick."

"Granted. And before this is over, I'll commit other sneaky tricks. But to go back. I picked the lock and walked into the room and I saw the top and wondered and I — well, I —»

"Go on," said Vickers.

"Look, Vickers, I had a top like that when I was a kid. Long, long ago. I hadn't seen one in years, so I picked it up and spun it, see. For no reason. Well, yes, there may have been a reason. Maybe an attempt to regain a lost moment of my childhood. And the top…"

He stopped speaking and stared hard at Vickers, as if he might be trying to detect some sign of laughter. When he spoke again his voice was almost casual.

"The top disappeared."

Vickers said nothing.

"What was it?" Crawford asked. "What kind of top was that?"

"I don't know. Were you watching it when it disappeared?"

"No. I thought I heard someone in the hall. I looked away a moment. It was gone when I looked back."

"It shouldn't have disappeared," said Vickers. "Not without you watching it."

"There was some reason for the top," said Crawford. "You had painted it. The paint was still a little wet and the cans of paint are sitting on that table. You wouldn't go to all that trouble without some purpose. What was the top for Vickers?"

Vickers told him. "It was for going into fairyland." "You're talking riddles."

Vickers shook his head. "I went once — physically — when I was a kid."

"Ten days ago, I would have said the both of us were crazy, you for saying it and I for believing it. I can't say it now."

"We still may be crazy, or at best just a pair of fools."

"We're neither fools nor crazy," Crawford said. "We are men, the two of us, not quite the same and more different by the hour, but we still are men and that's enough of a common basis for our understanding."

"Why did you come here, Crawford? Don't tell me just to talk. You're too anxious. You had a tap on Ann's phone to find out where I'd gone. You broke into my room and you spun the top. And you had a reason. What was it?"

"I came here to warn you," Crawford said. "To warn you that the men I represent are desperate, that they will stop at nothing. They won't be taken over."

"And if they have no choice?"

"They have a choice. They fight with what they have."

"The Neanderthalers fought with clubs."

"So will _Homo sapiens_. Clubs against your arrows. That's why I want to talk to you. Why can't you and I sit down and try to find an answer? There must be some area for agreement."

"Ten days ago," said Vickers, "I sat in your office and talked with you. You described the situation and you said you were completely mystified, stumped. To hear you tell it then, you didn't have the ghost of an idea what was going on. Why did you lie to me?"

Crawford sat stolidly, unmoving, no change of expression on his face. "We had the machine on you, remember? The analyzers. We wanted to find out how much you knew."

"How much did I know?"

"Not a thing," said Crawford. "All we found out was that you were a latent mutant."

"Then why pick me out?" demanded Vickers. "Except for what you tell me of the strangeness that is in me, I have no reason to believe that I am a mutant. I know no mutants. I can't speak for mutants. If you want to make a deal, go catch yourself a real, honest-to-God mutant."

"We picked you out," said Crawford, "for a simple reason. You are the only mutant we could lay a finger on. You and one other — and the other one is even less aware than you."

"But there must be others."

"Certainly there are. But we can't catch them."

"You sound like a trapper, Crawford."

"Perhaps that's what I am. These others — you can pin them down only when they want to see you. Otherwise they are always out."

"Out?"

"They disappear," explained Crawford harshly. "We track them down and wait. We send in word and wait. We ring doorbells and wait. We never find them in. They go in a door, but they aren't in the room. We wait for hours to see them and then find out they weren't in the place where we'd seen them go at all, but somewhere else, maybe miles away."

"But me — me you can track down. I don't disappear."

"Not yet, you don't."

"Maybe I'm a moronic mutant."

"An undeveloped one."

"You picked me out," said Vickers. "In the first place, I mean. You had some reason to suspect before I knew, myself."

Crawford chuckled. "Your writings. Some strange quality in them. Our psych department spotted it. We found some others that way. A couple of artists, an architect, a sculptor, one or two writers. Don't ask me how the psych boys do it. Smell it out, maybe. Don't look so startled, Vickers. When you organize world industry you have, in terms of cash and manpower, a crack outfit that can perform tremendous jobs of research — or anything else that you put it to. You'd be surprised how much work we've done, the areas we have covered. But it's not enough. I don't mind telling you that we've been licked at every turn."

"So now you want to bargain."

"I do. Not the others. They'll never want to bargain. They're fighting, don't you understand, for the world they've built through many bloody years."

And that was it, thought Vickers. _Through many bloody years_. Horton Flanders had sat on the porch and rocked and the firefly of the lighted cigarette had gone back and forth and he had talked of war and why War III somehow hadn't happened and he had said that maybe someone or something had stepped in, time and again, to prevent it happening. Intervention, he had said, rocking back and forth.

"This world they built," Vickers pointed out, "hasn't been too good a world. It was built with too much blood and misery, it mixed too many bones into the mortar. During all its history there's hardly been a year when there wasn't violence — organized, official violence — somewhere on the earth."

"I know what you mean," said Crawford. "You think there should be a reorganization."

"Something like that."

"Let's do some figuring, then," Crawford invited. "Let's try to thrash it out."

"I can't. I have no knowledge and I have no authority. I haven't even contacted or been contacted by these mutants of yours — if they are really mutants."

"The machines say they are mutants. The analyzer said that you are mutant."

"How can you be sure?" asked Vickers.

"You don't trust me," said Crawford. "You think I'm a renegade. You think I see sure defeat ahead and have come running, waving the white flag, anxious to prove my non-belligerence to the coming order. Trying to make my individual peace and to hell with all the rest of them. Maybe the mutants will keep me as a mascot or a pet."

"If what you say is true, you and the rest of them are licked, no matter what you do."

"Not entirely licked," said Crawford. "We can hit back. We can raise a lot of hell."

"With what? Remember, Crawford, you only have a club."

"We have desperation."

"And that is all? A club and desperation?"

"We have a secret weapon."

"And the others want to use it."

Crawford nodded. "But it isn't good enough, which is why I'm here."

"I'll get in touch with you," said Vickers. "That's a promise. That's the best that I _can_ do. When and if I find you're right, I'll get in touch with you."

Crawford heaved himself out of the chair. "Make it quick as possible," he said. "There isn't much time. I can't hold them off forever."

"You're scared," said Vickers. "You're the most frightened man I ever saw. You were scared the first day I saw you and you still are."

"I've been scared ever since it started. It gets worse every day."

"Two frightened men," said Vickers. "Two ten-year-olds running in the dark."

"You, too?"

"Of course. Can't you see me shaking?"

"No, I can't. In some ways, Vickers, you're the most coldblooded man I have ever met."

"One thing," said Vickers. "You said there was one other mutant you could catch."

"Yes, I told you that."

"Any chance of telling who?"

"Not a chance," said Crawford.

"I didn't think there was."

The rug seemed to blur a little, then it was there, spinning slowly, flopping in wild wobbles, its hum choked off, its colors blotched with its erratic spinning. The top had come back.

They stood and watched it until it stopped and lay upon the floor.

"It went away," said Crawford.

"And now it's back," Vickers whispered.

Crawford shut the door behind him and Vickers stood in the cold, bright room with the motionless top on the floor, listening to Crawford's footsteps going down the hall.