And Then the Town Took Off, Richard Wilson [story reading txt] 📗

for, ain't it?"

"I suppose so. How're you fixed for liquor? Big supply?"

"Last a coupla weeks unless people start drinking more than usual. Beer'll run out first."

"That's right, I guess. But aren't you worried about being up in the air like this?"

The bartender shrugged again. "Not much I can do about it, is there? Want another shot?"

"Mix it this time. A little soda. Is that the general attitude? Business as usual?"

"I hear some business is picking up. Lot of people buying winter clothes, for one thing, weather turning cold the way it did. And Dabney Brothers—they run the coal and fuel oil company—got enough orders to keep them going night and day for a week."

"That's fine. But when they eventually run out, like you, then what? Everybody freeze to death?"

The bartender made a thoughtful face. "You got something there. Oh, hello, Ed. Kinda brisk tonight."

It was Ed Clark, the newspaperman. Clark nodded to the bartender, who began to mix him a martini. "Freeze the ears off a brass monkey," Clark said, joining Don. "I have an extra pair of earmuffs if you'd like them."

"Thanks," Don said, "but I think I'd better buy myself some winter clothes tomorrow and return yours."

"Suit yourself. Planning to settle down here?"

"I don't seem to have much choice. Anything new at your end?"

Clark lifted his brimming glass and took a sip. "Here's to a mild winter. New? I guess you know we're in Pennsylvania now and not Ohio. Over Pennsylvania, I should say. Don't ask me why, unless Hector Civek thinks Superior will get a better break, taxwise."

"You think the mayor's behind it all?"

"He has his delusions of grandeur, like a lot of people here. But I do think Hector knows more than he's telling. Some of the merchants—mostly those whose business hasn't benefited by the cold wave—have called a meeting for tomorrow. They want to pump him."

"He wasn't exactly a flowing spout at Cavalier this afternoon when the people from the train wanted answers."

"So that's where he was. They couldn't find him at Town Hall."

"Where's it all going to end? If we keep on drifting we'll be over the Atlantic—next stop Europe. Then Superior will be crossing national boundaries instead of just state lines, and some country may decide we're violating its air space and shoot us out of the sky."

"I see you take the long view," Clark said.

"Is there any other?" Don asked. "The alternative is to kid ourselves that everything's all right and trust in Providence and Hector Civek. What is it with you people? You don't seem to realize that sixteen square miles of solid earth, and three thousand people, have taken off to go waltzing through the sky. That isn't just something that happens. Something or somebody's making it happen. The question is who or what, and what are you going to do about it?"

The bartender said, "The boy's right, Ed. How do we know they won't take us up higher—up where there's no air? Then we'd be cooked."

Clark laughed. "'Cooked' is hardly the word. But I agree that things are getting out of hand." He set down his glass with a clink. "I know the man we want. Old Doc Bendy. He could stir things up. Remember the time they tried to run the pipeline through town and Doc formed a citizens committee and stopped them?"

"Stopped them dead," the bartender recalled, then cleared his throat. "Speak of the devil." He raised his voice and greeted the man who had just walked in. "Well, Doc. Long time since we've had the pleasure of your company. Nice to see you."

Doc Bendy was an imposing old gentleman of more than average height and magnificent girth. He carried a paunch with authority. His hands, at the ends of short arms, seemed to fall naturally to it, and he patted the paunch with satisfaction as he spoke. He was dressed for the cold weather in an old frock coat, black turning green, with a double line of oversized buttons down the front and huge eighteenth-century lapels. He wore a battered black slouch hat which long ago had given up the pretense of holding any particular shape.

"Salutations, gentlemen!" Doc Bendy boomed, striding majestically toward the bar. "They tell me our peripatetic little town has just passed Pittsburgh. I'd have thought it more likely we'd crossed the Arctic Circle. Rum, bartender, is the only suitable potable for the occasion."

Clark introduced Don, who saw that close up Doc Bendy's face was full and firm rather than fat. The nose had begun to develop the network of visible blood vessels which indicated a fondness for the bottle. Shaggy white eyebrows matched the fringe of white hair that sprouted from under the sides and back of the slouch hat. The eyes themselves were alert and humorous. The mouth rose subtly at the corners and, though Bendy never seemed to smile outright, it conveyed the same humor as the eyes. These two features, in fact, saved the old man from seeming pompous.

Don noticed that the rum the bartender poured for Bendy was 151 proof and the portion was a generous one.

Bendy raised his glass. "Your health, gentlemen." He took a sip and put it down. "I might also drink to a happy voyage, destination unknown."

"Don here thinks we're in danger of drifting over Europe."

"A distinct possibility," Bendy said. "Your passports are in order, I trust? I remember the first time I went to the Continent. It was with Black Jack Pershing and the AEF."

"Were you in the Medical Corps, sir?" Don asked.

Doc Bendy boomed with laughter, holding his paunch. "Bless your soul, lad, I'm no doctor. I was on the board of directors of Superior's first hospital, hence the title. A mere courtesy, conferred on me by a grateful citizenry."

"The citizens might be looking to you again, Doc," Clark said, "since their elected representatives are letting them down."

"But not bringing them down, eh? Suppose you tell me what you know, Mr. Editor. I assume you're the best-informed man on the situation, barring the conspirators who have dragged us aloft."

"You think it's a conspiracy?"

"It's not an act of God."

Clark began to fill an ancient pipe, so well caked that the pencil with which he tamped the tobacco barely fitted into the bowl. By the time the pipe was ready for a match he had exhausted the solid facts. Don then took over and described the underground passage he had seen that afternoon. He was about to go further when the old man held up a hand.

"The facts only, if you please. Mr. Cort, what you saw in the underground chamber fits in remarkably with something I stumbled on this afternoon while I was skating."

"Skating?" Clark said.

"Ice skating. At North Lake. It's completely frozen over and I'm not so decrepit that I can't glide on a pair of blades. Well, I was gliding along, humming the Skater's Waltz, when I tripped over a stump. When I said I stumbled on something I was speaking literally, because I fell flat. While I lay there, with the breath knocked out of me, my face was only an inch from the ice and I realized I was eye-to-eye with a thing. Just as you were, Mr. Cort."

"You mean there was something under the ice?"

"Exactly. Staring up at me. Balefully, I suppose you could say, as if it resented my presence."

"Did you see the whole face?"

"I'd be embroidering if I said yes. It seemed—but I must stick to the facts. I saw only the eyes. Two perfectly circular eyes, which glared at me for a moment, then disappeared."

"It could have been a fish," Clark said.

"No. A fish is about the most expressionless thing there is, while these eyes had intelligence behind them. None of your empty, fishy stares."

Clark knocked his pipe against the edge of the bar so the ashes fell in the vicinity of an old brass cuspidor. "So, since what you and Don saw were both under the surface, we could put two and two together and assume that some kind of alien beings have taken up residence in Superior's lower levels?"

"Only if you think two and two make five," Doc Bendy said. "But even if they don't, there's a great deal more going on than Civek knows, or the Garet-Rubach crowd at Cavalier will admit. It seems to me, gentlemen, that it's time I set up a committee."

VII

Miss Leora Frisbie, spinster, was found dead in the mushroom cellar of her home on Ryder Avenue in the northeastern part of town. She had been sitting in a camp chair, bundled in heavy clothing, when she died. She had been subject to heart trouble and that fact, coupled with notes she had been making on a pad in her lap, led the coroner to believe she had been frightened to death.

The first entry on the pad said: Someone stealing my mushrooms; must keep vigil. The notes continued:

Sitting in chair near stairs. Single 60-w. bulb dims, gravity increases. Superior rising again? Movement in corner—soil being pushed up from underneath. Hand. Hand? Claw!

Claw withdraws.

Head. Rat? No. Bigger.

Human? No. But the eyes eyes ey

That was all.

Photostatic copies of the late Miss Frisbie's notes and the coroner's report became exhibits one and two in Doc Bendy's dossier. Exhibit three was a carbon copy of a report by the stock control clerk at the bubble gum factory.

Bubble gum had been piling up in the warehouse on the railroad siding back of Reilly Street. The stock control clerk, Armand Specht, was taking inventory when he saw a movement at the far end of the warehouse. His report follows:

Investigated and found carton had been dislodged from top of pile and broken into. Gross of Cheeky brand missing. Saw something sitting with back to me opening packages, stuffing gum into mouth, wax paper and all, half-dozen at time. Looked like overgrown chimpanzee. It turned and saw me, continuing to chew. Didn't get clear look before it disappeared but noticed two things: one, that its cheeks bulged out from chewing so much gum at once, and other, that its eyes were round and bright, even in dim corner. Then animal turned and disappeared behind pile of Cheekys. No chimpanzee. Didn't follow right away but when I did it was gone.

Exhibit four:

Dear Diary:

There wasn't any TV tonight and I asked Grandfather Bendy what to do and he said "Marie, when I was young, boys and girls made their own fun" and so I got out the Scrabble and asked Mom and Dad to play but they said no they had to go to the Warners and play bridge. So they went and I was playing pretending I was both sides when the door opened and I said Hello Grandfather but it wasn't him it was like a kangaroo and it had big eyes that were friendly.

After a while I went over and scratched its ears and it liked that and then it went over to the table and looked at the Scrabble. I thought wouldn't it be funny if it could play but it couldn't. But it could spell! It had hands like claws with long black fingernails and fur on them (the fingers) and it pushed the letters around so they spelled Name and I spelled out Marie.

Then I spelled out Who are you and it spelled Gizl.

Then I spelled How old are you and it put all the blank spaces together.

I said Where do you live and it spelled Here. Then I changed to Where do you come from and it pointed to the blanks again.

The gizl went away before Mom and Dad came home and I didn't tell them about it but I'll tell Grandfather Bendy because he understands better about things like the time I had an invisible friend.

Don Cort went to bed in the dormitory at Cavalier with the surprised realization that it had been only twenty-four hours since Superior took off. It seemed more like a week. When he woke up the floating town was over New York.

Some high-flying skywriters were at work. Welcome Superior—Drink Pepsi-Cola their message said.

Don dressed quickly and hurried to the brink. Alis Garet was there among a little crowd, bundled up in a parka.

"Is that the Hudson River?" she asked him. "Where's the Empire State Building?"

"Yes," he said. "Haven't you ever been to New York? I can't quite make it out. It's somewhere south of that patch of green—that's Central Park."

"No, I've never been out of Ohio. I thought New York was a big city."

"It's big enough. Don't forget we're four miles up. Have you seen any planes besides the skywriters?"

"Just some airliners, way down," she said. "Were you expecting someone?"

"Seeing how it's our last port of call, I thought there might be some Federal boys flying around. I shouldn't