Chapter III: Part 3

There is confusion among the other passengers who reported this
conversation today as to whether the Negro replied, "Don't touch
me" or "You'll be sorry."

A great deal of confusion surrounds the ensuing incidents. The bus
driver claimed the Negro passenger hit him with both fists and
kicked him. The white passengers said the Negro man hit the bus
driver with his briefcase, which they presumed contained something
heavy, using it like a club. The Negro passengers said the lone
Negro man sat still, making no effort to defend himself.

Whatever happened, Cagle was severely cut and bruised on his hands.
In addition, the big toe of his right foot was broken, a hospital
report said late today.

Cagle went back to the driver's seat and brought the bus here. He
parked it in front of the office of Sheriff Ellis Grout, whose
name became nationally known several years ago in connection with
the fatal beating of a 13-year-old Negro boy who was said to have
"sassed" a white woman. Grout had refused to arrest or question
the two white men who boasted that they had administered the fatal
beating, saying they were just big-mouths "trying to take credit"
for the crime.

Grout, an admitted Kleagle in the Ku Klux Klan and a leader in the
local White Citizens movement, was sitting in front of his office
in a chair tipped back against the wall when the bus stopped.

Cagle jumped out and pointed to the Negro man sitting at the front
of the bus. "I got somebody for your jail, Sheriff," Cagle said.

Grout asked a few questions, then said through the bus window: "You
must be one of them northern niggers. Well, this ain't the north,
so suppose you just come out of that bus."

When the Negro passenger gave no sign that he had heard, Grout went
into the bus, drawing his pistol.

"I gave you an order, nigger," he said. "Get your black ass up off
that seat."

When again there was no reply, Grout, using his pistol as a club,
brought it down toward the man's head.

Here again eyewitness accounts differ. Some say the Negro raised
his briefcase and the gun hit it, going off. Others say the Negro
did not move at all and that the gun went off as the Sheriff was
bringing it down to club him.

What is known is that the bullet ricocheted off something and
struck Grout in the left shoulder.

Grout staggered out of the bus, bleeding profusely and shouting
that he'd been shot. A crowd gathered quickly.

It became a mob. Somebody shouted, "That nigger shot the Sheriff!"

The mob of whites surrounded the bus. The white passengers got off.
The Negro passengers, frightened, huddled in the rear, with the
exception of the one Negro man who remained in his seat. He seemed
utterly calm and some said he smiled slightly.

The mob started to throw rocks at the bus. Soon all the safety
plate windows were spiderwebbed and it became difficult to see
inside.

Then someone shouted, "Let's get him!" And there was a surge toward
the door of the bus.

But no one went in. Some said no one was _able_ to get in--that
some sort of invisible shield hurled back anyone who mounted past
the first step.

The frustrated, howling mob, seemingly in a lynching mood, raged
around the bus for half an hour until they were dispersed by the
arrival of the state police.

Cagle, the driver, was located and, with the state police escorting
him, he drove the bus to Biloxi.

There the Negro man was questioned and finally released. He gave
his name as Brown. He went to the home of the Rev. James Evander, a
prominent Negro clergyman, to spend the night.

Cagle was reprimanded by the bus company, which said the Negro man
had been entirely within his rights. A company spokesman said he
did not know at the moment what it planned to do about the damage
to its bus.

Sheriff Grout was reported to be in fair condition in the hospital.

I made only minor changes in the story before I sent it on to London, under a byline. I don't know what color Mr. Patterson, our Mount Pelley stringer, is. It isn't one of the questions we ask at World Wide. I suppose he'd have to be white in a place like that. But I'm sure Mr. Brown would have been glad to know he existed, to help balance Sheriff Grout.

9 (JULY 30, WED.)

All the people like us are We,
And every one else is They.

--Rudyard Kipling

High Tor, N.Y., is a pretty enlightened place. It's the hometown of artists, writers and theater people, budding and blooming. It has a syndicated political cartoonist whose satire is just a shade less biting than Herblock's. It has a playwright who has won a Pulitzer prize. It has a socially conscious novelist whose books are best-sellers in spite of their Messages. Then there's the Chinese-American artist who not only prospers but (or perhaps I should say "and therefore") is a respected and socially accepted member of the community.

High Tor is progressive, forward-looking. It's quaint and countrified--though it's only 35 minutes from Times Square--because of its strict zoning laws. It has been written up in _The Exurbanites_ as a place neither as intellectual nor as stuffy as Fairfield County, Connecticut, possibly because it doesn't have as many advertising men. It's not as rich, either, which is why Mae and I can afford to live there on the minimum plot allowed--one acre.

As I say, High Tor is no slouch of a town. If you're a New Yorker, but can't stand the city for the hundred-odd reasons I'm sure I don't have to list, High Tor is the place for you.

Therefore Mae and I were pretty shocked when we went out pub-crawling and did some unintentional eavesdropping.

I'd come home worn out from the eight-hour grind at WW, which had seemed like twelve, and suggested to Mae that we eat out and relax. She had the lamb chops back in the freezer and her second-best dress on in the same time it took me to luxuriate in an armchair over one dry martini.

All unwound, I put Mae in the Volkswagen and headed for Armando's, one of those quaint, but not too quaint, restaurants where the owner himself comes over and suggests. He suggested the veal cacciatore and we were agreeable.

As we were chewing the last mouthful, Armando came over to ask how it was.

"Great," I told him.

"Out of this world," Mae said.

"Delighted," Armando said. "But please don't mention those out-of-this-worlders to me."

"You mean the Monolithians?" I said. "What could they have possibly done to you?"

"Two of them came in for lunch today, disguised as Negro people."

"Oh?" Mae said.

"They weren't disguised," I told Armando. "There are Negroes on Monolithia, just as there are here."

"Well, anyway, I put them near the kitchen door and tell the girls to bump the chairs every time they come out. You know."

I hadn't known. I looked at Mae, who looked down at the remains of her veal cacciatore.

Armando went on: "So after a few bumps the one nearest the door makes with a finger to me. I ignore him, of course. Then he hollers, 'Armando!' The place is full of the luncheon trade. I frown, but what can I do? I hurry over to keep him quiet.

"'You are unhappy here?' I say to him. 'You would prefer to leave?' But he says 'No, we prefer a better table.' I tell him there are no other tables--the empty ones he sees are reserved. He says--he tells me this to my face--that this is a lie. I ask him to leave, so as not to create a disturbance."

"Sam," Mae said.

"Shh," I said. "Go on, Armando."

"Then he asks for the telephone, as if this is the Stork Club and I can plug it in at the table. I tell him the pay phone is near the cashier's desk, he can use it on his way out. Subtle, you see?"

"Then what?" I asked.

"He goes to the phone and calls SCAD in Albany!" SCAD is the state commission against discrimination. "He tells them the whole story at the top of his voice. It is mortifying. And now I am likely to lose my license and have to close up--or else cater to the colored trade. Mr. Kent, you are with a powerful news service. You know about these things. Tell me--what can I do?"

"You can give us our check, Armando," I said.

Armando became upset. "You are late. I am sorry. I should not tell you my troubles and take up your time. No--there is no check. You have been my guests. My pleasure."

"But not mine, Armando." I said. I dropped a ten-dollar bill on the table. "If you don't want it, leave it for the waitress. Good-by, Armando. Come on, Mae."

In the car Mae said, "Ten dollars was too much. I saw the menu. Seven-fifty, maybe."

"All right," I said. "Consider it a two-fifty contribution to the NAACP. We'll make it up by not eating there again."

"Okay," she settled back in the seat. The financial end of it settled, Mae said, "Good for you, Sam. The nerve of him, taking it for granted we thought the same way he does. Why it wasn't so long ago that he was a minority himself."

"The hell with him," I said. "Let's go get a drink."

Reno's Roost has a bar and a band and serves fried chicken or shrimp in a basket. It's run by an old army buddy of mine, Paul Reno. He gambled on the county opening up when they began building the Tappan Zee Bridge across the Hudson and his gamble paid off. The place was jumping.

We went in and looked around for a place to sit. The bar was filled. So were the booths and tables.

Paul came over from nowhere and said, "Sam! Where the hell you been? Hello, Mae. How's the gestation?"

"He's fine," Mae said. "Big crowd tonight."

"The biggest, now you're here. Here you are. Reserved for the Kents."

"This looks like your table, Paul," I said. "We don't want to send you back to work."

"Sit down," he said. "I'll come sit with you when my feet get tired. What'll you have? First round's on the house."

"I'll have a very weak Tom Collins, Paul," Mae said, "and I mean weak."

"Right you are, Mrs. K. Sam?"

"Scotch and soda, thanks."

"Strong, to even it out. Okay, Max!" He called a waiter and gave the order. He had Seven-Up himself. Paul never drinks on the job till 1 A.M.

"I see Oliver's still with you," I said. Oliver is one of the bartenders. He's a Negro. "We should have come here for dinner, Mae."

"Oliver's my right-hand man." Paul said. "Where did you eat, chumps?"

"Armando's," Mae said. "But I'd just as soon not talk about it."

"Armando's!" Paul said. "That ptomaine domain! What's the matter--you don't like chicken? If you don't like chicken we got shrimp. For you we even got tablecloths, if you insist. Armando's! Has he got a band?"

"He's got nothing," Mae said. "Who's playing tonight, Paul?"

"Tonight as always we have the Trans-Hudson Five, the finest aggregation west of Ossining, augmented by that rising young cornet star, Pete Kato."

"Japanese?" I asked.

"The rising son himself."

"Never heard of him."

"Just off the plane. He's here for kicks. I don't pay him, but maybe I will. He's not bad."

"Jazzman?" I asked.

"I don't know," Paul said. "Sometimes he sounds like Harry James. Sometimes he's Max Kaminsky. He's obviously listened to a lot of records. He's pretty derivative."

That's one of the things I appreciate about Paul Reno. Most of the time he sounds like Mr. Night Club himself, but then he comes out with a word like "derivative."

Paul went off to see how things were in the kitchen. As I mentioned, the place was crowded, with little space between tables. The band was between sets and I could over-hear the people at the table behind me.

"... deliberately soften us up with all that mumbo-jumbo in the UN," a man's voice was saying. "Then they smuggle in a boat-load of colored behind our backs, as if we didn't have enough of our own already."

"And Chinks," another man's voice said.

"And Chinks," the first man agreed. "And Japs. I'll bet that was their plan all along. They're dumping their unwanted surplus population on us. It's a sneaking subversive thing to do and I wonder when Old Fathead Allison will wake up to the fact that they're playing him for a sucker."

"You used to think Gov was pretty good," a woman's voice said. "You voted for him."

"Never again. The country's going to the dogs. It has been for years, ever since Roosevelt. My God, Earl, do you know a Spic family is trying to move in down the road from us? Bunch of jabbering foreigners--must be a dozen of them. Can't even speak English."

"Now, Harvey," the same woman's voice said. "How can you talk that way? You've always been very pleasant to our maid and you like Oliver over there behind the bar."

"Exactly," he said. "'Over there behind the bar.' In his place."

This might very well be Oliver's place one day, I thought to myself. Paul Reno was hoping to open another place, given the right breaks, and he'd spoken to me about the possibility of putting Oliver in charge of this one.

Feeling one up on the people behind me, I quit eavesdropping and gave Mae a big smile.

"Well," she said. "Welcome back. What pleases you so all of a sudden?"

"Nothing," I said. "Just the happy thought that that bunch of WASPS behind me are going to be stung themselves sooner or later."

"Wasps?"

"Capital letters. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. It's a term applied in certain quarters to a certain type."

"_You're_ a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant," Mae said.

Paul Reno came back. "You will shortly be entertained by the greatest little combo this side of Suffern," he said. "I'll join you for the concert, if you're not engaged in pitching woo."

Mae laughed. "Sit down, Paul. The woo was pitched a long time ago. We've been discussing the state of the world."

"On your night out? Sam, can't you ever forget that deadline stuff?"

"I'm willing to now, if your Augmented Five ever get their horns out."

There were piano, drums, guitar, trombone and clarinet, plus Kato's cornet. The guitar man usually played trumpet. They did a good loud job, but I noticed that Kato appeared really comfortable only when he was taking a solo, such as the Berigan chorus of _I Can't Get Started_ or the James version of _You Made Me Love You_, where he was not only derivative but imitative. In ensemble work he was terrible.

We decided we'd better go home after the band closed with _The Saints_. I had my 6 A.M. alarm clock in mind.

10 (JULY 31, THURS.)

You came to me from out of nowhere
so why don't you go back where you came from?

--Abe Burrows song title

I managed to shut off the alarm and get up without disturbing Mae. I was having breakfast when the back door slammed open. We don't lock our doors in countrified, law-abiding High Tor.

"Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam!" It was six-year-old Harry Tyler, the son of our neighbors. "There's a spaceship in the woods!"

"What were you doing in the woods at this uncivilized hour?" I said, the neighborly avuncular instinct grabbing the wrong end of his remark. Then I said, "What? A spaceship? In the woods?"

"I went out to pick some strawberries for my breakfast," Harry said. "That's why I was in the woods. It's big and black and nobody saw me, I don't think."

"How do you know it's a spaceship?"

"Everybody knows what a spaceship looks like. It's big and black, just the way it's supposed to be. Come on and see it."

"Is your daddy up yet?" I asked Harry. Len Tyler usually gets up a few minutes after I do. "Did you tell him?"

"He's on vacation," Harry said. I'd forgotten. "He's still asleep. So's Mommy. Come on and see the spaceship, Uncle Sam."

I always feel very martial when Harry and the other kids in the neighborhood call me Uncle Sam. I feel that I have to uphold the honor of the Republic and Set an Example.

"Son," I said, "you're on. Let us go investigate this phenomenon."

A telescope hung in the back hall where it had been gathering dust since I gave up being a satellite watcher. It was a pretty good Japanese telescope, not expensive, but not cheap either. I took it down and wondered whether to look for my old souvenir machete for protection. But I decided that would be overdoing it.

We have about an acre of clear ground behind our house, then the woods begin. It's really an abandoned apple orchard, with the apple trees grown tall and neglected and other trees grown to a respectable height between them. A lot of sticker-bushes live there, too--tough, nasty things with needle-sharp spines. I wished I'd brought the machete after all.

Harry and I had threaded our way a few hundred feet when I stopped. My left shirt sleeve was torn, my pants were wet up to the knees from the dew, and I was sweating.

"That's far enough, Harry," I said. "There's no spaceship here."

He was a few yards ahead, ducking under a spiny branch I'd have to lift out of the way at my peril.

"It's right over there, Uncle Sam," he said. "I think I see it now."

"Yeah? I'll go as far as you are, and if it's not there, young Marco Polo, we're turning back."

"Shh," he said. "Come on."

I joined him and looked. "Where?"

"Right there. Near that red apple there." He pointed.

There were thousands of red apples, fit only for making pies if the peeler had the patience to cut away the bad spots.

I followed his point and he was right. Nestled in among the trees was a big bulk of a thing, brownish gray. It certainly wasn't anything that had been in the woods before.

"Do you see any people?" I asked Harry.

"No. Let's go knock on their door."

"No!" I said. "Let's circle around and see what it looks like from the other side."

We circled. I managed to tear my other shirt sleeve on a sticker that also drew blood. Then for a while we made better progress along the bed of a sunken, abandoned road. We had kept the spaceship on our left and now I could see a huge clearing on the far side of it, strung over with some kind of camouflage netting.

"There they are!" Harry said.

"Quiet!" I said, pulling him down behind the lip of the old road. I was past caring about clothes now.

There were at least a dozen of them in the clearing. More were coming out of the open hatch of the spaceship. Apparently they hadn't heard us. I uncapped the telescope and looked.

They were wearing their native woolen cloaks and were setting up furniture in the clearing, which had been divided into room-size rectangles outlined on the bare ground with paint or strips of white cloth.

In addition to the chairs, tables, desks and bookcases they had a number of pieces of equipment which vaguely resembled movie or television cameras.

"What are they doing, Uncle Sam?" Harry asked. "Let me look through the telescope."

"I don't know. It looks as if they're building movie sets. Maybe the walls will come later." I handed him the telescope.

"Look, they're coming out different now," Harry said, and I grabbed the telescope back.

Those stepping out of the hatch now were wearing Earth-style clothes, and not carrying anything. But not all of the clothes looked American. There were men in wide-lapeled European suits, men in the white linen suits of tropical countries, men in the jodhpurs or dhotis of the Asian Indian, men in glittering military uniforms and men in drab, unadorned military jackets worn by the leaders of some totalitarian countries. They went to the various room-sized rectangles and sat or stood. No one was talking.

Then I looked closely at their faces. I almost dropped the telescope.

I saw the Prime Ministers of England and India, the leader of the United Arab Republic, the President of France and half a dozen other premiers or presidents, ex-, present or potential.

Gouverneur Allison was there for the United States, as was Rupert Marriner, the Secretary of State, and several other high administrative officials.

I was watching the Soviet Union's top men come out when I heard a noise behind us.

"Run!" I told Harry, getting up myself. "Run home and tell your daddy."

He hesitated. "Aren't you coming, Uncle Sam?"

"I'll go another way, to confuse them. Go on, now!"

Harry ran back along the sunken road. I started in the other direction. I hadn't taken twenty steps when a Monolithian in a woolen cloak rose up in front of me. I darted off sideways and ran into another one. There were five in all.

Escape would have been impossible even with the machete. Without speaking they escorted me toward the clearing.

11 (AUG. 1, FRI.)

Be good and you will be lonesome.

--Mark Twain

I woke up. It was completely dark. For a few seconds I stared up into the blackness, then turned on my side and tried to go back to sleep. But in a moment I realized I wasn't in my own bed and remembered that I was a prisoner.

Fully awake, I sat up. The room, becoming light in a gradual effulgence, revealed itself as a cube about nine feet on each side, furnished with two things--a seven-foot couch, covered with a coarse wool material, and me. There was nothing else. I couldn't trace the source of the light. I lay down and the light faded; I sat up and it came on again.

My wristwatch was gone and I had no idea how long it had been since my capture. I had been marched in silence to the clearing, passing through four or five of the wall-less rooms. No one had spoken as I was led to one of the hatches of the spaceship.

I had made various remarks as I was being taken in--such as "What's going on?" "You can't do this to me," "I've got to get to work, for pete's sake," and "Listen, will you?"--but my captors weren't conversation-minded.

I was led up a ramp and into the relatively dim interior of the spaceship. I had a recollection of narrow corridors and an occasional notice painted on the wall in some alien script. Then I was pushed into a cabin and the door closed behind me. My captors stayed outside, but there was a man in the room, sitting behind a long table in one of the two big chairs. He was wearing a woolen cloak. He was older than any of the bright young men I'd seen before, white haired and grave in expression. He was tossing a ball from hand to hand. It wasn't a baseball, but I had said, for no reason that I could remember now, "I'm a Braves fan myself."

He smiled and said, "Sit down," indicating the other chair. "Yankees."

"That's no team," I said, sitting down, "that's a machine."

"Be that as it may," he said, "you must wonder why we are here."

"Not at all," I said. "You're not on my property." I was saying whatever came into my mind. I think my idea was to discomfit him and provoke him into saying something he didn't plan to--something revealing.

He kept tossing the ball from hand to hand. It was about the size of a handball, hard and black but apparently not rubber.

He revealed nothing. "The dew is heavy in the morning," he said, looking at my soaked clothing. "And you've got a nasty scratch. Would you like something for it?"

"What have you got?" I asked. "Mendicants?" I was freely associating, having nothing better in mind.

"Oh, yes. Medicants _and_ mendicants. Menders and vendors and buttons and bows. Pills and potions and ankle-length hose."

I decided this was part of an attempt to hypnotize me and looked away from his tossing ball.

"And Mendes-France," I said, "and Hugh Gaitskell and Krishna Menon."

"Not to mention Sam Kent," he said. "Here, catch."

He tossed the ball to me and in reflex I caught it.

I woke up in the nine-foot cube.

* * * * *

Somewhere between then and now I'd been stripped of my sopping clothes and garbed in one of their woolen cloaks. It didn't itch as I'd imagined it would. In fact, I was quite comfortable. I wasn't hungry or thirsty either. I judged by this that it had been only a few hours since I'd caught the ball, which apparently was some kind of knockout drop, and been transferred to this cubic prison and its automatic lighting.

I got off the couch and explored. The walls, floor and ceiling were made of a gray metallic substance, neither cold nor warm to the touch. The couch was nothing more than an extension of the floor--two feet high and seven feet long--with half a dozen thick brown woolen blankets over it. There was no crack or seam in any wall to indicate a door and no vent to bring in the clean air I was breathing. I sat down, baffled.

After a while I said, "Hey!"

There was no answer.

I lay down and the light went out. I sat up again. The light came on.

My cloak had no pockets. I took it off and, naked, turned it inside out. It taught me nothing. I put it back on and thought idly of smoking a cigarette. There are times when I sit at the news desk and words simply will not come unless I light a cigarette. It may be that I don't take a single puff after the first one, but the mere action of lighting the cigarette sets the old train of thought to operating. But now I couldn't have cared less if I never had a cigarette. Or a drink. Or food.

But my curiosity was still perking. I got to my feet and made another circuit of the little room. I found something I'd overlooked before. On one of the walls near a corner were two knobs, one above the other. They were set out a scant quarter inch from the wall and were of the same color and material.

"This opens the door," I told myself, turning the top one clockwise.

No door opened.

"Then this does," I said, turning the other one.

Instead I got music. I'd found a radio.

It was Perez Prado, that musical humorist, ripping out an unabashed Latinate romp through an old standard, giving it new excitement with his dramatic pauses and irreverent burps.

The Prado record ended and a recorded commercial came on:

"Ladies, stop tearing the end off the wrapper on a loaf of bread," was the message I got. From this exhortation to the ladies, I judged that this was daytime radio.

The next station was more informative: "Temperature now 75 degrees--bright and enjoyable. And we hope it's nice where you are this fine Friday morning...."

Friday! It had been Thursday when my neighbor's boy had led me through the apple orchard. I wondered if young Harry had reported my capture, and if he had, whether anybody believed him.

My next thought was of Mae. She must be worried sick about me. She wouldn't have worried till suppertime yesterday, when I didn't get home on time--unless the office had called her to find out why I hadn't come to work, as it probably had. That meant she'd already had 24 hours of anxiety. I banged on the walls with my palms, then kicked with the flat of my bare foot, but no one came.

"Can't stay in bed?" the radio asked me. "Get up and still get five stay-in-bed benefits."

I turned the volume up as high as it would go, hoping that would attract the attention of my captors. But the rest of the booming commercial and the ensuing rendition of _Stardust_--a song I can do without--did nothing but hurt my ears.

I reduced the volume for a panegyric to "the most delightfully different cigarette ever made" and reflected that in spite of the fact that my own pack was gone with my clothes I didn't want to smoke.

Nor was I thirsty, I realized during subsequent commercials praising the joys of Coke and Seven Up. And I wasn't hungry, not reacting to the one about there being "more crackling good taste in every slice"--meaning bacon. And fortunately, considering the john-less aspect of my cell, I didn't have to go to the bathroom. My appetites seemed to have vanished with the 24 hours that had gone out of my life since I caught that handball in the alien's office.

What were they doing to me? I wondered. What had they done to me? I paced the limited confines of my prison, occasionally banging on the hard wall, then threw myself on the couch. As I lay down the lights went out and the radio faded. I sat up. The lights came on again and the radio woke up to say:

"Time for news from American--live at 55! The news in just a moment."

"From Hackensack, New Jersey, an interesting sidelight on the aliens," the voice was saying in the verbless way of radio newsmen. "Commuters, faced with a new fare increase totaling 81 per cent in ten months, revolted against the Susquehanna Railroad today and rode to work in a bus provided by the Monolithians. They pay $24 a month instead of the $35 the new railroad fare would have cost. There was no immediate comment from the Susquehanna, but a spokesman from the commuters' association said the idea is so successful that a second group is joining...."

That being the first news item, it was obvious that nothing startling had been going on. Whatever all those duplicate men were planning to do, they hadn't done it yet.

"In Boston, a group of alien volunteers pitched in with a will to help tow away illegally parked cars. In the first two hours they towed away 28 unmarked police cars...."

WABC's newscast came five minutes before the hour. I switched to the NBC station, "where news comes first"--meaning on the hour--and endured the opening gongs which were NBC's substitute for big black headlines. It started off with a couple of non-Monolithian items from overseas.

"More news in a moment. But first--"

"Isn't there someone, somewhere, whose voice you'd like to hear? Well then, why not pick up your telephone...."

I yelled at it, "Yes, God damn it! Why don't I just?" and switched it off.

I must have fallen asleep. I came to in darkness and when I sat up the lights glowed on. I tried the radio again. Music.

I still wasn't hungry or thirsty and I still didn't have to go to the bathroom. I wondered if I were being watched. I looked again for a possible tiny television eye but couldn't see any. I considered thumbing my nose in all directions, as a morale factor, but decided it would be undignified.

I wondered what time it was, how long I'd slept. Somehow it sounded like early evening music, suitable for housewives preparing dinner and men driving home from a hard day at the office.

Then station identification told me it was seven o'clock (P.M.) and asked whether right about here I would like a beer. The answer was no. All I wanted was to get out.

"And now we bring you that popular round-table discussion of events of the day, _News and Newsmen_," the radio said, "featuring the men who edit the news for leading papers and wire services. Tonight our subject is 'Monolithians--Friend or Foe?' and our panel consists of Russell Sidenam, city editor of the _World-Telegram_; Barton Pascal, reporter on the _Daily News_; Herb Small, from the world desk of the Associated Press; and Sam Kent, assistant editor of the New York bureau of World Wide News...."

A few minutes later, after the inevitable commercial, I heard my own voice passionately defending the Monolithians as men of principle and high conscience whose only purpose was to uplift their brethren on Earth to a realization of their manifest destiny as worthy members of the community of the Interstellar Realm.

12 (AUG. 2, SAT.)

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong,
as when you find a trout in the milk.

--Thoreau

I had put myself to sleep by playing the name game. You start with two A's, as in Alfred Adler, then go to AB, Anthony Boucher, and so on--Arthur Clarke, Antal Dorati, Albert Einstein, Alexander Fleming. I dropped off somewhere in the middle of the C's--Mickey Cohen or Norman Corwin--and woke up knowing exactly where I was and wondering what time it was.

It turned out to be 8 A.M., August 2d, according to Station WTRU, which was playing wake-up music for the poor souls who had to work on Saturday, and a fine warm day it looked like it would be. For me it looked like it would be the same kind of cooped-in day, with nothing to do but chomp at the bit and wax wroth at the aloof jailers who had stolen my identity and sent it out to make me look ridiculous. He who steals my purse steals trash, I thought, but he who steals my good name.... They'd stolen both, these alien do-gooders with their sweet mad reasonableness.

"They said it couldn't be done--couldn't be done!" the radio boomed.

Well, they done did it. I didn't know how, but they duplicated me and sent me out to champion their cause while the original model languished helpless in their cell, beset by commercials and growing a fine beard.

"Our traffic-conditions helicopter reports unusual tie-ups in various suburban areas," WTRU was saying. "Traffic is bumper-to-bumper and backed up for miles in some sections.... For a direct report we go to our beeper-phone and we'll see if we can talk to the police department in Haverstraw, New York, close to the scene of one of the major tie-ups on Route 9W."

I perked up at that. Haverstraw is near High Tor on the west bank of the Hudson River.

"My engineer tells me we've got Sergeant Kiefer of the Haverstraw police on the beeper-phone. Go ahead, Sergeant Kiefer! Tell us, what's the cause of the big traffic jam on Route 9W?"

Sergeant Kiefer came in, loud, clear and profane. "Some God damn jerks are obeying the 20-mile speed limit," he said.

"Heh, heh, Sergeant Kiefer," the announcer said. "Remember, you're on the beeper-phone. This is radio, you know! What's that you say about the speed limit?"

"The speed limit's 20 miles an hour and there's two cars abreast on the highway not going any faster. Traffic's backed up clear to Piermont to the south."

"Piermont to the south," the announcer repeated, just as if it meant something to him. "How about in the other direction, Sergeant?"

"Same God damn thing. Two other wise guys ambling along----"

"You're on the _air_, Sergeant!"

"Same thing, I mean. They're backed up north to Bear Mountain. It's murder."

"Why don't you arrest them, Sergeant?"

"For what? For obeying the speed limit? It'd make more sense to arrest the stupid jerks that posted the 20-mile limit on a state highway."

"Just a minute, Sergeant! We're getting a message from our WTRU traffic-conditions helicopter that the lead cars, both northbound and southbound, have banners reading 'Monolithians Obey the Law.' Can you confirm that, Sergeant? Is it true that the Monolithian space people are the instigators of this fantastic traffic tie-up up there in--in--what county is that up there where you are anyway, Sergeant?"

"Rockland County. Yeah. That's what their signs say. One of the cars is a Volkswagen and there's some guy in it says he's a reporter. Sam Kent of World Wide. Legal Sam, the law-abiding man, he told us he was. You know him?"

"I've heard of World Wide, Sergeant. It's one of the three wire services we have here at WTRU to give you and all our listeners the most complete, up-to-the-minute news of any station in the metropolitan area. You say a reporter is personally instigating this mass traffic tie-up?"

"He's legal. We can't touch him. You want to know anything else? I got to get back to work here."

The announcer let him go back to work because he had to go back to work himself--to wit, to put on a commercial about something that was more lastingly odor-free than any other something.

So my alter ego had stolen not only my good name but my little red Volkswagen as well. I hoped he was keeping it in second for his 20-mile-an-hour jaunt and not ruining the gear-box by trying to do 20 in third.

Then a more urgent thought occurred to me. Had Spurious Sam, the Duplicated Man, gone home last night and posed as the lawful wedded husband of Mae Kent? If that was the case I wasn't even missing, and no one would ever have investigated young Harry's story of my capture.

"Let me out of this God damned trap!" I yelled, getting as profane as Sergeant Kiefer. Nobody paid any attention.

My attention wandered during the next news item, which was about a cabinet crisis in one of the Arab states, and I began to think about my stomach. I still wasn't hungry, but a peculiar sensation was setting in. I can only describe it as a hunger to be hungry.

I was also experiencing a thirst to be thirsty. For a while I kept saying to myself, "You get more beer in your beer in New Jersey"--parroting the words of one of the few clever commercials I had heard. I stopped doing that when it began to sound idiotic--but then I started asking myself: "Right about here wouldn't you like a beer?" and the answer was almost beginning to be yes.

This led to my becoming cigarette-conscious. My mind flitted from one slogan to another. Twenty thousand filter traps (or was it 40,000?). You can light either end. Protects the T-Zone. Independent laboratory tests prove.... Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet. (I wasn't even old enough to smoke when that one was current.) I'd walk a mile for a Camel. Travels the smoke further. Wherever particular people congregate....

Stop it, I told myself. You don't want a cigarette (wanting one). You don't want a drink, Sam; they teetotalled you (but it was wearing off). Why not go out to dinner tonight? (Medium rare, waiter; and lots of mushrooms.) And then Mae--Mae, Mae! I wanted my cute little pregnant wife, walking around flat-footed in her maternity blouse and smiling secretly to herself over our burgeoning child.

It was right about here that the radio man dug out and started to play an extremely associative song of Mae's and mine--_Who's Your Little Whoozis_. And then I blacked out.

13 (AUG. 3, SUN.)

I have been in such a pickle
since I saw you last.

--Shakespeare

I wasn't in my cell any more. I was lying back in an armchair in a large comfortable-looking room. There was one other person in it, a kindly looking middle-aged man in another armchair next to a wall under a painting of a country scene, with trees and cows and a sky studded with tiny clouds.

"Hello," the man said. "I am Mox." He was wearing one of those Monolithian cloaks. "How are you?"

I felt too weak to answer. I tapped my finger on the arms of the chair and the effort made me terribly tired. I closed my eyes again.

"Lunch is about to be served," Mox said. "Perhaps you would care to freshen up first? To shave?"

I opened my eyes and rubbed a hand over my cheeks. They were pretty whiskery.

"How are you fixed for blades?" I said. Don't ask me why. One gets conditioned.

"Amply," Mox said. He made a gesture with his left hand and somebody in another woolen cloak came in with shaving equipment, put it on a table at my elbow and went out, bowing.

I looked at the steaming bowl of hot water, the tube of shaving cream (brush versus jar, I thought, remembering the old ad), the razor and mirror. I looked in the mirror, expecting the worst. The beard was pretty heavy and the cheeks under it looked more sunken than I'd remembered. But my eyes were clear and my tongue looked normal.

"There will be no deleterious effects," Mox said. "You'll be good as new after your lunch."

"Lunch? What time is it?"

He seemed to do a mental conversion before he replied: "Twelve-seventeen P.M. Eastern Daylight Saving Time; 1617 Greenwich."

"And an hour later on the Rue de la Paix," I said. "I'll have the snails and some Beaujolais." I was feeling light-headed.

"Interesting," he said, watching me with an encouraging smile.

"But irrelevant. I couldn't eat snails on an empty stomach. I just said that because it rhymes. What have you got for American times?"

"Lamb chops," Mox said, looking at me closely now, "baked potato, broccoli, tossed salad, strawberry shortcake and coffee. Or----"

"That's for me. Stop right there. Can I have it now and shave later? I'm starved."

"Certainly. Without further ado." Mox raised his right hand again and the same man came in, though he couldn't have seen the signal, wheeling a tray. An almost overpoweringly delicious smell reached my nostrils and I shivered a little in my chair.

Mox got up. "I'll leave you while you fall in," he said. I didn't answer him, being busy taking the covers off the serving dishes. I suppose he meant "fall to," which I did, with a will.

My curiosity returned as I appeased my appetite. Having wolfed down the meat and vegetables with hardly a conscious thought, I went through the salad in more leisurely fashion, rehearsing questions to ask Mox. I positively dawdled over the cake and coffee, it having just occurred to me that this could be the equivalent of the doomed man's last meal.

"Look, Mox," I said when he came back. "Thanks all the same, but I don't think I'll shave. Just give me my clothes and I'll go now. No; don't bother. I'll go as I am. I don't live very far. Oh--and thanks for the lunch."

Mox smiled and sat down. "You're a very amusing man, Mr. Kent. We couldn't possibly let you go. We have great plans for you."

"Plans?" The well-being induced by the lunch began to seep away. "Like what?"

"Details later. First we should discuss the terms of your employment. The salary will be substantial, so there'll be no problem there, but you might be interested in the fringe benefits, such as the size of your paid-up life insurance policy, the beneficiaries...."

"Now, look. I haven't said I'd join your organization...."

"Ah, but you've already joined. We had planned to come to you, but you saved us that trouble. You came to us voluntarily and have already taken part in one of our minor missions--that of working for the repeal of antiquated traffic laws."

"I did not. That wasn't me."

"Who would believe you? You previously espoused our cause on a nationwide radio-and-television program."

"That wasn't me either, and you know it. I don't know how you did it, but that double you rigged up isn't going to be able to get away with it much longer."

"I think he can. You see, Sam, for all practical purposes that double, as you call him, is you. There's nothing about you that he doesn't know and everything he does or says is perfectly in character with what you would do or say--presupposing one slight shift in motivation. And you may be sure that adjustment has been made."

"You mean you've been picking my brains all the time you had me cooped up in that cell?"

"You could put it that way. Not _all_ the time, of course. Only while you slept. We know as much about you as you do about yourself. More, probably, because we've probed your subconscious as well as your surface self-awareness."

"Oh yeah? What was my mother's maiden name?"

"Clemens," Mox said instantly. "Hence your full name, with its literary if not strictly genealogical connection--Samuel Langhorne Clemens Kent. You know you are not directly related to Mark Twain, of course?"

"I was told I was," I said defensively. "Way back."

"Way, _way_ back, perhaps," Mox said. "Not in any modern sense."

"That's no proof that you read my mind. There must be genealogical tables...."

"Certainly. But there are no written records of the time you stole money from the newsstand outside the candy store in Ozone Park."

"I never ..." I started to say before I remembered. I'd been about ten. The way to do it was to scoop up the coins boldly on your way into the store and hand them to the owner while buying a candy bar or a roll of caps. Of course you palmed a dime or so on the way. I'd never told anybody about it and I felt suffocated in shame.

"Or the seventy-five wingless flies in the mayonnaise jar," Mox said relentlessly. "You were trying for a hundred, weren't you? But you got sick to your stomach. Or the time you sold your brother's bicycle and claimed it had been stolen. Or the college exams with the dates written in your palm. Or...."

"Stop it! That's enough!"

"I don't condemn you, Sam. No one is wholly free of blame. I have not mentioned these things to bring you pain but to prove to you that the Monolithian Sam Kent is as aware of your potentialities as you are yourself. He has done nothing you would not do, given the proper conviction or opportunity."

I couldn't look at him. "Swiping a dime off a newsstand isn't the same thing as betraying your country," I said miserably.

"It would depend, wouldn't it, on which was the greater good? If the dime you stole bought a quart of milk for your family during the depression when your father was out of work--if the candy store man was obviously better off--if your country were Nazi Germany----"

"The United States isn't Nazi Germany," I said. I could reject that one, at least.

"True," Mox said. "But I said 'if.' You're a man of perception. You don't need an overt act, such as six million deaths, to persuade you that something is wrong. You see it every day in the news reports that are your business--in the United Nations debates on nuclear testing, in the reports on the strontium-90 in food, in the disfigured Hiroshima women getting plastic surgery, in the perennial radiation scares."

"Is that what you're up to?" I asked him. "You think we're going to wipe ourselves out and you're altruistically going to preserve us? You're going to step in and run our world for us because you think we're not capable of handling our own affairs?"

"If necessary," he said.

"The end justifies the means, you think. You have no faith in our ability not to commit suicide."

"Not as much as you seem to have. Look, Sam, we've got a job for you to do and we'd like you to take it because you want to. It would be better for all of us that way. But if you are reconsidering your decision to volunteer, we have ways of conscripting you."

"Torture?" I tried to speak calmly. "Brainwashing?"

"Neither you nor anyone else will ever be tortured. As for the other, we'd prefer that you washed your own brain of its misconceptions about us. Try to realize that what we are trying to do--and what we will do--is for your own good and for the good of all of us."

He was the soul of sincerity, this Mox. I was relieved about the torture. I was even half tempted to believe the other things. But I wasn't going to brainwash myself or anybody else.

On the other hand, I could let him think I'd been won over and bore from within whenever I got the chance. The standard injunctions to the prisoner of war were no longer name-rank-and-serial-number. That had gone out after the lessons of the Korean war. The new instructions were to lie. Tell them whatever they wanted to hear. Confess to anything, no matter how outrageous. Embrace the enemy with lies until he had no idea where the truth lay. I decided to try it, but not so fast as to arouse suspicion.

"If I do volunteer," I said, after a period of what I hoped appeared to be profound thought, "will I be able to see my wife?"

"Of course," Mox said, beaming at me.

"I'm more worried about her than I am about strontium-90," I said ingenuously. "She's going to have a baby."

"How marvelous."

"Her name is Mae," I said. "We haven't been married long and this will be our first child."

"Congratulations."

"A man's got to think of his family first," I said, pouring it on, "doesn't he?"

"Absolutely."

"I mean it's all very well to expect every man to do his duty, but where does that duty lie? We've signed a treaty of peace and friendship with you, haven't we? Through the UN, I mean. And if that's good enough for the President, I guess it's good enough for me. Poor Mae. She must be worried to death. I've got to see her."

"And so you shall, Sam."

"That's all I ask. I volunteer. We've got to stop this ridiculous experimentation with the very seeds of our own destruction." I was washing the old brain with everything I had. "What's the job you have for me?"

I hoped I hadn't overdone it. But Mox was beaming.

"I am happy to inform you," he said, "that the position is that of press secretary to President Gouverneur Allison."

* * * * *

"My, you're home early," Mae said, giving me a kiss.

It wasn't a big, fat, oh-I'm-so-glad-to-see-you're-safe kiss. Not at all. I looked at my watch: it was a little after 3 P.M. Early? Here it was Sunday. Mae hadn't seen me since Thursday night and she said I was home early. Had the Monolithians played a trick with time? Was it only Friday afternoon?

"Listen, Mae," I said. "Did you watch your story today? What happened after this girl with the amnesia walked into Dr. Kindfellow's office, not realizing he was the very one she had fled a thousand miles to avoid?" Mae watches this television serial come hell or high water. It's one of her few vices.

"Silly," Mae said. "You know it's not on on Sunday. I thought you wouldn't be home till six. We were just going to take our nap."

"You thought I wasn't going to be home till six? Is that what I told you?" I was feeling my way, full of inklings and forebodings.

"Well, you usually get home at six when you're on the day shift--or is it five-thirty on week ends when you drive right in? Anyway, you're early. I'm glad. I guess we can skip our nap. Do you want to eat early?"

All I wanted to do was get to the bottom of this. It was beginning to be obvious that this double of me that the Monolithians whipped up actually had been living in my house as well as doing my job. I wanted to ask a dozen questions--but I couldn't without either giving Mae a terrific shock or making her think I was out of my mind.

"No, I'll eat whenever it's ready. Listen, Mae--have I been acting strange lately? I mean in the last couple days?"

"I've got some nice lamb chops for supper. Strange? Well, no stranger than usual, Sam. I mean, you've been a little bit nutty ever since the spacemen came. Naturally I've made allowances. I guess it's a pretty big story and a person has to take sides the way you did on that TV show."

"Oh, you saw that, did you?"

"Well, of course I did! You said only last night how the check will pay for the play pen and the bathinette. Surely you remember that?"

"Sure I do," I lied. "It wasn't awfully much, I guess."

"Fifty dollars is what you said it was. It helps."

"Sure. What else did I say?"

"When?"

"Last night."

"You said--honestly, Sam, are you sure you're all right?--you said we'd take an early vacation next year and go to Bermuda, all three of us."

"Sure, Bermuda," I said. "Sure I'm all right. I'm sorry, Mae; I've been a little confused ever since I got my new job."

"What new job? You didn't tell me that."

"No, I guess I didn't. It wasn't set until today. I'm leaving World Wide. I'm going to be press secretary to the President."