Why Do Birds

CHAPTER 29

Doc, we've got to get Ed some help."

"You mean for his mental disorder?"

"You mean he's crazy. Sure he is, and it's tearing him up. He thinks he has to help these aliens because he loves them, and he thinks they're monsters who want to eat us."

"Well, suppose he's right?"

"I think he is right, but that's not what I'm talking about. He's going to end up in a rubber room unless we do something."

"Linda, you can't reason with a delusional disordered person, believe me. They can always find some way to prove they're right. Sometimes they're so plausible that they even convince their psychiatrist."

"So you won't try to help him?"

"Well, I didn't say that. I can try. "

"Ed, Linda here thought I ought to talk to you about-well, as you know, there are some of your aberrant beliefs that you're committed to, and I understand that, and I certainly won't ask you to give them up. But, you've developed some others that seem to be causing you distress. I'm referring to the secret messages in your old magazines."

"She told you about that, huh?"

"Well, she's concerned about you, Ed. We all are. >low, you can take it from me that these kinds of beliefs are typical of what we used to call classical paranoia."

"Okay, Doc, I get you, but what if there really are secret messages in the magazines?"

Wellafield looked at Lavalle and shrugged, as if to say What did I tell you? He said to Stone, "That seems pretty unlikely, Ed."

"Let me show you something. " Stone got up and went to the cabinet, came back with four magazines and spread them on the table. "I was in a place called Futures Past off Broadway, they have hundreds of old pulp magazines. I asked the guy if he had any nineteen-thirties Astoundings, and he went in back and came out with these. You wouldn't believe what they cost."

He handed one of the magazines to Wellafield. The cover said, "BROOD OF THE DARK MOON, by Charles W. Diffin."

Stone said, "It's a sequel to 'Dark Moon.' Or really it's all one novel, I think, but it was too long, so the magazine chopped off the first part and ran it as a separate story. The serial started in August, just three months after the first story. Right away, he gives you a date--August ten, nineteen seventy-three, and then another one, August fifteen. That's like eight ten and eight fifteen, okay? So either way the first two numbers are eight and one. So I took every eighty-first letter."

"You did?"

"Sure. And the first three letters are h-y-d, hid, just like the other one. Computer, let me see the Brood message."

Letters appeared on the screen:

hyd STVN 3rfcscedgidopca SAY I lueheowossnsio BE ireg THE astnsa NUT gahstocstreaeoseaa TOM tcmuesld MAE erfkesntnhnalii DEE uuw MEG euoo NATE itfroiciennb ahuturienontnfyawtenldomrttnfadancmisi aegftrteigqoato ovoepnsuowhlt RON tarhfyhrmm STAN tecietiemncoazh huatysgectsreeishf ...

"What's that S-T-V-N supposed to be?" Lavalle asked.

"I think it's Steven-it's a message to his friends. Steven, Tom, Mae, Dee, Meg, Nate, Ron and Stan. And it says, 'Say I be the nut.' He thinks they're going to try to put him away in a crazy house, like they did me. No offense, Doc.''

"No, no, of course not.'' Wellafield leaned forward to peer at the screen. "Did the computer really do this by taking every-what was it?"

"Every eighty-first letter. Sure it did.''

"And you arrived at that by using a date in the story?"

"Right.''

"Now, in the other one, the first one, what number of letters did you use?"

"Twelve. You want to see it? Computer, give me the Moon message."

dih PLOT oeodedhsdsiarlfhheit BEWRA ...

"You see there, the first three letters are 'hid' backwards. And the word 'message' comes up seven times in the story. He was telling you as plain as he could that there was a message there if you knew how to look for it."

"By 'he' you mean-"

"The author, Charles W. Diffin. He was up there, in the spaceship, like me. See where the message says, 'Send boat, frow.' "

"I don't quite--"

"German frau. His wife. He thought she could send up some kind of space boat to rescue him."

"Why would he think that?" Lavalle asked. "There weren't any spaceships then."

"None that we know about, anyway."

"This is getting away from the point," said Wellafield. "Ed, you say you got the number eighty-one from a date in the story. How did you get the number twelve?"

"I was just trying numbers until I got one that worked."

"All right, now don't you see, if you try enough numbers, you ' re going to find something that looks like a message in anything. That's my point. You didn't find the number twelve in the story, did you? You picked that number at random."

"Yeah, right, but there is a date on the third page of the story. June twentieth, nineteen seventy-three, that's when he signs the land deal with Schwartzmann. If you take the two in twenty and the one in nineteen, there's your twelve backwards. Like the 'hid' in the first three letters."

"I give up," Wellafield said.

Later, when Stone had left the room, he looked at Lavalle. "What if he's right?"