"You promised!" Fred screamed. "Tell me!"
Curt opened his mouth as though to speak. His lips smiled.
And—he was no longer there.
Fred was alone, with the picnic lunch on the white square of tablecloth, with the gleaming Cadillac a few yards away, with the two white and black spotted cows grazing a short distance away, with the noisy little brook nearby.
Alone....
He became aware of a police siren growing louder. He became aware he was behind a wheel, that there were cars in front of him veering wildly out of his way. The speedometer needle pointed at ninety.
How had he arrived here? He took his foot off the gas. He was driving a Cadillac. Curt's. But Curt was gone. That was it! He had started out to look for the police.
He pulled over to the side of the road as the police car came screaming up. Shakily he told them about the disappearances. Any doubts they might have had were held in reserve by the obvious sincerity of his grief.
He led them back to the picnic grove. The tablecloth with the food on it was still there, untouched. One of the cows was grazing beside it.
They listened while he told again of his mother and Curt vanishing before his eyes. Their reserved skepticism was thrust out of their minds when he identified himself as the son of Dr. Martin Grant, who had disappeared.
They used their car radio. In a surprisingly short time several other cars were coming through the gate into the pasture.
Fred, his mind paralyzed with grief, stood forlornly near the Cadillac. He answered the questions they put to him. He wasn't aware of the news cameras that took shots of him which were to appear in the evening papers all over the country.
Eventually it was over. The police gathered up the picnic lunch, his mother's purse, and everything else. A gray-haired man in a dark brown suit who introduced himself as Captain Waters told him to get into the Cadillac. "I'll drive," Waters said.
Entirely submissive, Fred obeyed. On the way into town Captain Waters said he would take Fred home if he wanted to go there, but it would be really better if he accepted an invitation to stay at the Waters home for a few days until things were straightened out.
"All right," Fred said.
Eternities later he was in a house with comfortable furnishings. A motherly old lady was hovering around him. Captain Waters was on the phone calling someone.
There was a steaming dinner on blue design Swedish dishes. Under coaxing Fred nibbled. Door chimes sounded. Captain Waters pushed back his chair and went away. He came back with another gray-haired man who pressed a thumb against Fred's cheek, listened to words Captain Waters was saying, then ordered Fred to roll up his sleeve.
He swabbed a spot with alcohol and inserted a hypo needle. Fred watched with listless eyes.
"Get him undressed and to bed," the doctor said. "Poor kid. Suffering from shock. Have to watch him the next few days...."
Shock.... Fred tried to concentrate on the meaning of the word.
The bed was an enormous expanse of fresh smelling sheets and luxurious blankets. The pillows were mountainous ... and so soft....
The sun was streaming in through open French doors, filtered through bronze screen doors. An electric clock on the dresser pointed at eleven.
He lay there without moving, remembering everything that had happened the day before. And he had a feeling that, in his sleep, he had been doing a lot of thinking. Or was it dreaming?
"Poor boy," a melodious voice purred.
He opened his eyes. It was the motherly woman, with a tray of toast and eggs and steaming coffee. The sight of it made him aware that there was a huge emptiness in his stomach.
He ate, gratefully. Mrs. Waters busied herself about the room, humming soft tunes, smiling at him whenever he looked at her. When he had finished, she took the tray.
"You just relax and sleep some more," she said. "The bathroom is through that door over there. If you want me for anything just call. I'll hear you. And if you want to get up and wander about the house just do so." She departed, leaving the door part way open in invitation.
Fred sighed and closed his eyes. In that moment of relaxation the thinking he had done during the night rose into consciousness.
For he knew now what he had to do. There was no other avenue of exploration. It might not even be possible. But if it was possible he was going to do it.
He was going to vanish.
There alone lay the solution. He should have realized it. Once he vanished as had the others, he would have experience with the mystery. Personal experience. He would have all the data he required, instead of just data from the world he was in. If he had the ability to solve the problem of reappearance he would then be able to return, and go back again and show the others how to return.
The key to vanishing was belief, that quality of thought which his father had systematically weeded from his mind since earliest infancy. It might take time to overcome that, but it should be possible.
Already he believed some things. Or did he? Was it merely a realization that those things had a probability that approached certainty?
His patterns of thinking were too ingrained. His mind was too well integrated. If he became irritated the irritation immediately brought up the memories of the factors that made him react that way. If he became happy he consciously knew the pattern, stretching back to early infancy. It was ingrained within him.
He began to realize with a sinking sensation that he didn't actually know what belief was. If, in some way, it was present anywhere in his makeup, he didn't know how to recognize it.
His mental pattern was one of unbelief. Not disbelief, the believing that something isn't true; but unbelief, the using of something in the pragmatic sense for its workability.
He let his thoughts wander in the past. He could remember vaguely a moment when he had felt unreasoning terror, a sense of being lost. He could remember his father saying many times, "Belief is the lazy assuming that something is true." It is or it isn't, and the fundamental postulate of inductive logic tells us that its truth or lack of it is forever beyond our reach. So why reach for it? Use a theory if it works for you. Discard it if it doesn't. Don't use it even to the point of absurdity while clinging to a belief that it's true.
It was that way with facts, too. Something that happened or seemed to happen, needed no tag of belief attached to it. If you saw it happen it didn't necessarily happen. There was such a thing as illusion. Accept it as though it had happened—until events pointed otherwise.
His playmates and teachers had been frankly skeptical of this point of view, doubting he could actually have attained it. They were quick to agree it was desirable. They just thought no one could use a thing without attaching a degree of belief or unbelief to it.
Now, what should he believe? As in the attempts to reach the basic matrix by conscious extension, he had to start somewhere.
It was midafternoon when Captain Waters entered the bedroom with a cheery, "Hello!"
"Hi," Fred said. He had been lying in bed with his eyes closed.
"Did I wake you?" Waters said. "Sorry." He grinned. "You can go back to sleep again. I'll drop in later."
Captain Waters ducked out. He started to close the door, then left it open. A few minutes later the rumble of his voice came from another part of the house. Fred tried to catch what he was saying, but couldn't.
Half an hour later he heard the front door chimes. The rumble of deep voices came again. The doctor appeared in the doorway.
"Well, well," he said, smiling. "I hear you had a very restful night. How do you feel today? Better?" He was advancing toward the bed as he talked. Setting his black bag down, he reached out and took Fred's pulse. "A little rapid," he said, putting his watch away. Reaching inside his coat, he took out a thermometer. He put it under Fred's tongue. "Had anything to eat or drink in the past fifteen minutes?" he asked. Fred shook his head.
The doctor stood quietly. After a while he lifted the thermometer, glanced at it, and put it away.
"Looks like you're going to be fit as a fiddle," he said. "I'll be back in a few minutes. Mrs. Waters told me on the way in she was pouring me a cup of coffee."
Fred remained motionless until the doctor had left the room. Then he slipped out of bed and went to the door. On the other side of it was a living room. A swinging door of the type that opens into kitchens was just swinging closed. No one was in sight. Quickly Fred stole across to the door. He put his ear close to it and listened.
"Dr. Harvey speaking," he heard the doctor say. "Connect me with thirteen please."
"Is he going to be all right?" Mrs. Waters' anxious voice sounded.
"I think so," the doctor said calmly. "Hello? Thirteen? Who's speaking? Oh, hello, Giles. Dr. Harvey. Do you have a vacancy? Observation, yes."
"Oh dear," Mrs. Waters said unhappily.
"It will be for the best," Captain Waters said. "They'll know how to take care of him."
Fred waited for no more. He went back to the bedroom. His clothes were in the closet. In seconds he had them on. He could tie his shoes and button up later.
He unfastened one of the screen doors and stepped out onto a flagstone path that wound around the corner of the house toward the front. There were people on the sidewalk, but none very near. It would be hours before dark, and there was no place to hide.
There were two cars parked at the curb. One was a police car, the other a black Chrysler sedan, probably the doctor's car. The police car had the key in the ignition. Fred didn't hesitate. He jerked open the door and slid behind the wheel. Mrs. Waters' anxious voice sounded, calling, "Fred! Where are you?" Then the starter was whirring. The motor caught.
As he shot away from the curb, Fred caught a glimpse in the rear view mirror of Captain Waters running down the walk from the house.
As he took the first corner, touching the siren button briefly, he wondered why he had run. It had been an impulse. Maybe it was the wrong one. Maybe he could accomplish what he had to do better in some kind of institution. Maybe not.
He compressed his lips grimly. The die was cast now. He would abandon the police car someplace, then slip quietly out of town on foot. He would be caught if he tried to go home. He had no money except a few dollars in change.
Maybe this was all part of the new pattern that seemed to possess him. He kept the siren going, not trusting his ability to avoid traffic. Its mad scream blended into his thoughts. He was the hunted. He was sane, but the truth would brand him as insane. Or was he sane? Had anyone vanished? Was his father at home, sitting in his chair in his study, expounding his theories to his colleagues? Was his mother at home, in the kitchen, preparing dinner?
His lip trembled. Homesickness welled up in him.
He was near a bus line that went to the outskirts of the city. He shut off the siren and slowed down. After a few blocks and two turns he felt safe in ditching the car. He pulled quietly to the curb. He tied his shoelaces, buttoned his shirt, combed his hair. Then he got out. No one paid any attention to him.
He walked to the corner. Two minutes later the bus stopped.
The night sky was clear. The moon was a lesser sun whose light made things visible and somehow unreal and mysterious. In the ditch to the right of the road two bright points of light blinked on, held for a moment, and vanished. A cat.
A silent dog appeared out of the gloom, wagged its tail and half of its body in friendliness. "Nice doggy," Fred said nervously. It sniffed his trouser leg, lost interest, and moved off into the darkness.
It was after midnight. How long after, he didn't know. Once a police car had come speeding by, its red lights ogling insanely, its spotlight weaving into the bushes at the side of the road. He had lain very still in the ditch until it passed. It hadn't slowed down. Later it had come back and he had again pressed his body into the earth beside the road.
Off to the right now he saw the silhouette of the giant tree that had been the landmark of the picnic spot. A few minutes later he could see the gate that led to the meadow.
He squeezed through it and picked out the path worn by the cars the day before. Some winged creature dipped down, shied away from him, and swept off into the darkness.
A soft gurgling sound became audible. The brook. The spot where his mother and Curt had vanished, was ahead.
He reached it. He wasn't quite sure until he studied the ground and went back in memory to check on little details. Then he was certain.
He had reached his goal.
He knew why he had come, of course. Here he was closer to his mother than anyplace else. Here, in some unguessed way, he might get to her.
What would he do when morning came? He sat down and pulled his knees up under his chin, wrapping his arms around them. Morning was far away. It might never come—for him. If and when it did he would cope with it. "Mom," he whispered. "Mom...."
Crrroak!The sound of the frog broke the silence. The croak of a frog that was part of the universe—the universe that was basically illogical. More....
Fred sobbed.
The universe was insane. Police looking for you. Doctors with their standards of sanity and insanity. Right now they were looking for him to protect him from himself. They didn't want to know why things were done. To them even the reason would be part of the insanity. They dealt in tags. Words. Their science was an illusion within an illusion. Meaningless inside a universe of meaninglessness.
Crrroak, the frog said cautiously. And a night creature came down on silent wings, to weave back into the darkness.
That was the reason for pragmatism. He could see it now. He had always thought his father made pragmatism his God because it was the intellectual thing to do. But now he could see the reason for it. Reality was a jungle in which Reason had to cope with Unreason, and there was no criterion except workability. Belief was an instinctive way of thought. It was like the appendix. Scientists claimed that long ago man ate tree bark. And the appendix had had a use. If so, that use was gone, but the appendix remained. Before surgery had become a common thing, thousands of people died from appendicitis. The organ that had once been necessary had become a hazard to living. Belief was something like that.
He jerked out of his thoughts to listen to a car on the road. It slowed down. It stopped by the gate. A car door slammed. A man appeared briefly in the light of the headlamps. Captain Waters—alone.
He loomed a moment later inside the pasture in the light of a flashlight. He occasionally flashed it on his face so he would be recognizable.
Fred felt an impulse to slip away into the darkness. He hadn't been seen. Captain Waters was just hoping he might be here.
A stronger impulse made him remain as he was. The entire pattern of Captain Waters' approach indicated understanding—or at least the willingness to understand.
The bobbing flashlight came closer. It speared out and touched him; then abruptly went out. Footsteps approached. A dark form emerged from the gloom.
"Hello, Fred," Captain Waters said quietly. "I came to keep you company. I'll just sit quiet and not bother you."
"Okay," Fred said.
There were movements. A small flame illuminated Captain Waters' features as he lit his pipe. The flame went out. Then, only the occasional glow of the pipe, briefly illuminating the police Captain's face.
Crrroak!The frog greeted this newest arrival in his domain.
Fred could not think. He was too conscious of the man sitting near him. He fought down the impulse to jump up and run away into the darkness. He fought the desire to scream at the man to leave him alone.
Perhaps the police captain sensed this, or perhaps he could see Fred's expression when the coal in his pipe glowed brightest. "Tell you what," he said suddenly, "You maybe would feel better alone. I'll wait in the car. When you get ready you can come home. No more doctors. Mom gave me a good talking to. She wants you to come back."
Waters got up and walked away into the night. Minutes later there was the sound of a car door slamming shut. Fred was alone again.
Alone. It was a feeling, almost an emotion. Intellectually he knew that nearby was a frog. A block away across the meadow was the police captain sitting in his car.
Abruptly, without warning, a flash of insight spread through his entire mind. He knew suddenly what belief was. He knew it instinctively and without question.
And knowing it, he knew that his foundations of unbelief were a semantic illusion that had been built up within him. The panorama of his mind, his entire life, stood clearly before him.
The cute little tags of probability were superficial. They had a pragmatic value in keeping the mind open, but their function was to guide the judgment in tagging thoughts with belief or disbelief.
He retreated into his aloneness until there was nothing but himself. He marveled at the unfoldment of this new understanding. He could see things in this new light of understanding.
But then.... A question loomed. If that were so, why hadn't he vanished like the others? Belief was an automatic process. Why hadn't it permeated to the basic matrix of his mind as it had with the others?
Was he, then, still on the wrong track?
But therewasno other!
He saw the trap he had set for himself. He had believed with all his being that belief was the key he was searching for!
He had been on the wrong track. His beautiful theory of belief that spread downward into the subconscious, then down lower and lower into the basic matrix that held a person in this reality, was wrong. The evidence he had based it on was still there, but it was evidence of something else.
Of what?
The eastern horizon was suffused with light. It grew stronger, dimming the light of the moon.
From somewhere in the depths of his being rose a feeling that soon he would know, and when he did he would be close to crossing the threshold.
He unclasped his arms and straightened out his legs, feeling stabs of pain in his weary muscles. He got to his feet, tingling with weariness.
By the side of the road, he could see the police car he had stolen—infinite ages ago. He walked toward it, and when he reached it he climbed in and closed the door.
"Beautiful morning," Captain Waters said, starting the motor.
Fred awoke and opened his eyes. Across the room the French doors were open. Sunlight was filtering through the copper screens. A breeze was playing gently with the drapes. For a moment the flight, the long walk into the country, his rendezvous with Aloneness, Captain Water's coming to bring him back, all seemed the stuff of dreams. He had the feeling that he had never left this enormous bed.
Then it returned. Reality. The miracle of his reorientation to belief, the new vistas that went with it. The full realization of the true nature of the vanishments.
He became aware of a figure in the doorway, watching him. It was Mrs. Waters. "Awake?" she asked cheerfully.
"Yes," Fred said.
"Want some breakfast?"
He nodded. She went away.
He raised his head and looked about the room, at the homey touches, the family pictures on the dresser and the walls, the hand sewed knickknacks and frills. This was probably the Waters' own bedroom that they had given up for him.
He could vanish while Mrs. Waters was away. She would come in with the breakfast tray and find him gone.
When would themoment of reorientationcome?
He frowned in thought. That had stirred up something about what he had dreamed, or thought, while he was asleep. Something that had the flavor of being very important.
"Here you are!" Mrs. Waters said, sweeping into the room with the tray and its Swedish design dishes and steaming coffee and hot cereal. As she bent over to set the tray on the bed, there came the sound of the front door opening. "There's Pa, home already." She smiled worriedly at Fred. "Will you be all right? I'll tell Pa to come in and keep you company while I fix his supper."
"Yes ma'am," Fred said, eyeing the food hungrily. "Only—" She was at the door. She stopped and looked around questioningly. "I—I think I'd like to be alone while I eat."
"All right," she said, and hurried away.
But Captain Waters had brushed in without giving her a chance to tell him to stay away. "Hello, son," he said warmly. "Have a good sleep?"
Mrs. Waters said, "You let him alone while he eats."
"It's all right," Fred said hastily.
"Sure it's all right," the police captain said. He sat down and took out his pipe. He concerned himself with filling it and lighting it, saying nothing.
Fred picked up a piece of golden toast and bit into one corner absently. The thoughts he had had during sleep were filtering into consciousness.
He recalled how his mother had looked. There had been a fleeting expression just before she had vanished. She had been going to say something.She had changed her mind and had vanished instead!
And Curt—he had had his reorientation at least several seconds before vanishing. He had had it, and then, with his new perspective, had said, "Sothat'sit!"
It was as though the new orientation made everything else unimportant.
One common factor stood out in every case, those two he had personally witnessed, and the others he hadn't seen. One common factor. Vanishing, or whatever happened that produced the vanishing, had been an impulse.
There had been time for thought. For example, Curt might have considered the practicality of telling Fred what had happened to him. But he might have reflected that eventually Fred would discover what he had just discovered, so why bother?
In the office Curt had told him of a whole city of a million people vanishing, leaving empty houses and streets. Had the cause been the same? A true orientation?
Fred looked at Captain Waters, sitting quietly, puffing slowly on his pipe. With deliberation Waters uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. "You know, son, when you get around to it—that is, if you feel up to it sometime—I wish you'd tell me about it. What it is that's troubling you. I'll try to understand."
"You'll try—?" Fred echoed. And the police captain's words started a train of thought. The others—had the place they'd gone been a heaven or a hell? So many of them—. Fred started suddenly. "The book!" he cried.
"What book?"
"I've got to see the publisher about my father's book. It's very important."
"It can wait until you're feeling better," Waters said.
"No. I've got to see Mr. Browne!"
"Why?"
"I—I can't tell you."
"All right." Captain Waters gave in. "I'll take you down and bring you back."
It was half an hour later, in the reception room at the publishing company. Fred stared numbly at the big poster on the wall advertising his father's book.
"Mr. Browne will see you," the receptionist said.
"Wait here," Fred told Captain Waters. "I want to talk to him alone." He went to the door and opened it, stepping inside and closing it behind him.
"Fred Grant?" Browne said, getting up from his desk and coming toward him, hand outstretched. "What can I do for you? Need some money?"
Fred was shaking his head. "I don't want any money," he said. "I want you to stop my father's book. You can't publish it."
"Now wait," Browne said. "We aren't going through that again, are we?"
"You can't!" Fred said. "People will read it and vanish!"
"Huh?"
"People will read it and vanish! You've got to believe me.The cause of those disappearances is in that book!"
Browne stared for a moment, then dragged over a notepad, wondering how his publicity boys had missed this one. He stood up and came around his desk. "You leave it to me," he said. "You won't have a thing to worry about. I'll take care of everything."
"Then you won't publish it?"
Browne was guiding him toward the door. "You leave it to me. Drop in again soon. If you need money just drop in any time and I'll fix you up."
Fred found himself outside the door, not quite sure what Mr. Browne had promised.
Inside, Browne went back to his desk, muttering, "What a killing! Have to tell Nichols about it tomorrow at lunch. That vanishing stuff is a terrific publicity angle."
"You still don't want to tell me what's troubling you?" Police Captain Waters said wistfully.
A frown crossed Fred's features and vanished into a smile. "Nothing's troubling me," he lied. "I'm all right. I'll be all right."
"You'll stay with us a while longer?"
"Sure. Sure. You make me feel—okay. I'm just going out for a ride. Be back for supper."
It had been two months now since his mother and Curt had vanished. In that two months he had come to realize something. He didn't quite know how to express it even in his thoughts.
It wasn't that he didn't want to vanish. He would, some day. But he had given up trying. It was the wrong way. The others hadn't tried. It had just come to them out of a clear sky.
Some day it would come to him that way, and he would welcome it.
He drove downtown and parked. A block away was a show he wanted to see. He started toward it. Abruptly he stopped. In front of him was a bookstore. In its window was a large display, and every book had his father's picture on the front under the title THEORY FOR THE MILLIONS.
In back of the display was a large poster with a still larger picture, and the teaser—(DO YOU DARE READ THIS BOOK?)
Anger flamed in Fred's mind. The anger died as abruptly as it had come. It was replaced by a homesickness, a longing. Unconsciously his footsteps carried him into the store.
A man had the book in his hands.
"You aren't going to buythat, George," the woman beside him was saying.
"And why not?" the man asked, laughing. "I've never turned down a dare in my life!" He looked at the girl waiting on him. "Do you think I'll vanish, Miss?"
The clerk smiled. "I wouldn't know. I have strict orders not to read the book."
A solemn-faced man appeared out of nowhere and thrust a copy of the book at the clerk. "I want this, please," he said.
"I'll be with you in a moment, sir," the clerk said.
Others were waiting also.
Fred stumbled from the store, bumping into someone in the doorway as he went through, and too confused and frightened to stop and apologize. There was no way of stopping it. Maybe the police would become alarmed at the disappearances.
"What's wrong with me?" he mumbled, walking blindly in the crowds on the sidewalks. "Maybe I do lack the ability to believe. IthinkI believe. What have I missed?"
Only he, of all those who had learned the theory, had not vanished. Was faith, then, something so common, and yet impossible for he, himself, to reach?
Ahead was another bookstore. In its windows were the same displays.
He stopped. People were pushing through the doors. Inside they were picking up the book and looking for a clerk.
The clerks were smiling and saying things Fred couldn't hear, and wrapping the books and handing them to their new owners—people who would take them home and read—and vanish.
Into what? Something they would see, and smile at, and say, "Why, of course!" And with a simple acceptance they would enter it.
He watched them.
And from the depths of his being Fred longed to be one of them; to be able to go in and buy the book, and read it, and....
On the other side of the window, in the store, a clerk was waiting on a customer. The customer turned to look at him, with his nose flattened against the glass. He didn't see them. In his eyes was a faraway look, a startled light.
"Why of course!" he said in quiet wonder.
There was just a little blur, where a nose had pressed against the window, and the customer frowned and said to the clerk, "That young man outside—he—he—"
"Three-fifty, please," the clerk said.
"Ah—oh. Oh, sure."