Wine of the Dreamers

Sixteen

The Sunday dusk slowly darkened the street. Bard Lane turned from the window. The one suite had grown to two connecting suites. Bess Reilly had been found, and it did not take much encouragement to bring her back to work for Dr. Lane.

The phone on her desk rang constantly. Sharan and Lurdorff, using the octagonal cards, played quad-bridge on a lamp table. Kornal lay on the couch, his fingers laced over his stomach, peacefully asleep.

“What’s the matter with them?” Bard demanded. “They stand down there in the street and just stare up at the windows!”

Heintz Lurdorff grinned. “You must aggustom yourself to being the high briest of what is bractically a new religion.”

“It makes me nervous,” Bard said. “And those phone calls make me nervous. That woman who called up this afternoon and called me the Anti-Christ. What was she talking about?”

“You are either the most honored or most detested man in America, Bard,” Sharan said. “I’ll bid eleven spades, Heintz.”

“Always she geds all the gards,” Heintz said dolefully.

“Anyway,” Bard said. “We’re doing it. We’re doing what we set out to do. I almost hate to think of what will happen when and if that ship does set down. I don’t know why all this... took the public fancy so strongly. Do you know, Heintz?”

“Of gorse. Mangind has always wanted a whipping boy. You gave them one. They love it. That governor of Nevada, he has helped.”

“Investigating the senseless murder cases and pardoning people. I wonder.”

Kornal yawned as he awakened. He looked at his watch. “Nearly time for our favorite man, isn’t it?”

Bard turned on the video. The screen brightened at once. He turned off the sound while the commercial was on, then turned the dial up as Walter Howard Path’s announcer appeared on the screen.

“... regret to announce that Walter Howard Path will be unable to appear as usual. Mr. Path has suffered a breakdown due to overwork and has been given an indefinite leave of absence. This program is being taken over by Kinsey Hallmaster, distinguished reporter and journalist. Mr. Hallmaster.”

Mr. Hallmaster sat behind a vast desk and smiled importantly at the video audience. With his twinkling eyes and projecting front teeth he looked like a happy beaver.

“I am honored to be asked to take over this weekly newscast. I am sorry, however, that Mr. Path cannot be with you as usual. He has my every hope for a speedy recovery.

“My first duty is to read you a statement prepared by Mr. Path.

“ ‘This is Walter Howard Path telling you that I have just received additional information regarding the space ship which has been alleged to—’ ”

“Alleged!” Bard shouted angrily. The others shushed him.

“ ‘—and these investigators, hired by me out of my own pocket, have brought me additional information which now leads me to believe that I, as well as many of the public, have been misled by Lane, Inly, Lurdorff and Kornal. I have before me the notarized statement, among other things, of a tavern owner which states that for a period of three weeks Dr. Lane, in a consistently drunken condition, gave speeches in his tavern regarding so-called mental visitations from space. I sincerely regret that I was taken in. There is no space ship. There are no Watchers. The alien brother and sister are figments of the overripe imaginations of Lane, Inly, Lurdorff and Kornal. I say to all of you who through an honest mistake have become Kinsonians, just mark it all up to the rather unusual gullibility of your reporter, Walter Howard Path.’ ”

Hallmaster put the document aside, folded his hands on the edge of the desk. “There you have it,” he said. “Mr. Path’s health was broken by the discovery that he had been misled. I have a few other words to say about this entire matter, however. From an official and informed source high in Washington, I have it on good authority that there is something far more sinister involved than the efforts of a little clique of greedy people to make money out of being in the public eye.

“We know, for an absolute fact, that Inly, Lane, Lurdorff and Kornal were... shall we say, financially embarrassed at a time two weeks before Mr. Path’s unfortunate backing of their wild tale. Now they are well enough off to spend money freely, living in expensive hotel suites, employing stenographic help. This money did not come from Mr. Path. Where did it come from?

“Now bear with me a moment. Suppose this nation were to be attacked. Interceptor rockets would flash up at the first target. But suppose that in advance we as a nation had been led to expect the arrival of some mythical space ship. Maybe the Kinsons will arrive in twenty simultaneous space ships which land in twenty industrial cities. Maybe their point of origin will not be some far planet, but rather the heartland of Pan-Asia. What then?

“Need I go further?”

For a jolly moment he let the implications settle into the minds of the vast audience. “And now for the more serious side of the news. We find that—”

Bard snapped off the set. The room was silent. The phone rang. Bess lifted it off the cradle and set it aside without answering it.

“That... low... dirty...”

“In five minutes,” Sharan said softly, “he destroyed the whole thing, everything we’ve done. Every last thing.”

“Maybe enough of them will still believe,” Kornal said.

“After that?” Heintz Lurdorff said with a mild, dignified contempt. “I think now I go. I am sorry. There is nothing more we can do.”

“The kiss of death, neatly administered,” Sharan said. “Kissed off by a Wilkins’ Mead culture. We need a new symbol. A monkey with six arms, like Vishnu, so he can simultaneously cover his eyes, ears and mouth.”

“Give him one more hand, honey, so he can hold his nose,” Kornal said.

After an hour on the phone, Bard Lane found out that Walter Howard Path was in a private sanitarium, committed by his wife, for an indefinite stay.