‘Well, there wasn’t,’ Higgy argued. ‘The man who had been driving it
had left and gone away somewhere.’
‘Humans,’ said Streeter, patiently, ‘aren’t the only forms of life. We
can’t be certain there was no life in that car. In fact, we can be pretty
sure there was life of some sort in it. There probably was a fly or two shut
up inside of it. There might have been a grasshopper sitting on the hood. It
was absolutely certain that the car had in it and about it and upon it many
different kinds of micro-organisms. And a micro-organism is a form of life,
just the same as we are.’
Higgy stood up on the steps and he was somewhat flustered. He didn’t
know whether Streeter was making a fool of him or not. Probably never in his
life had he heard of such a thing as a micro-organism.
‘You know, Higgy,’ said a voice I recognized as DocFabian’s, ‘our young
friend is right. Of course there would be microorganisms. Some of the rest
of us should have thought of it at once.’
‘Well,’ all right, then,’ said Higgy. ‘If you say so, Doc. Let’s say
that Len is right. It don’t make any difference, does it?’
‘At the moment, no,’ said Doc.
‘The only point I wanted to make,’ said Streeter, ‘is that life can’t
be the entire answer. If we are going to study the situation, we should get
a right start at it. We shouldn’t begin with a lot of misconceptions.’
‘I got a question, mayor,’ said someone else. I tried to see who it
was, but couldn’t.
‘Go ahead,’ said Higgy, cordially, happy that someone was about to
break up this Streeter business.
‘Well, it’s like this,’ said the man. ‘I’ve been working on the highway
job south of town. And now I can’t get to it and maybe they’ll hold the job
for me for a day or two, but it isn’t reasonable to expect the contractor to
hold it very long. He’s got a contract he has to meet – a time limit, you
know, and he pays a penalty for every day he’s late. So he’s got to have men
to do the job. He can’t hold no job open for more than a day or two.’
‘I know all that,’ said Higgy.
‘I ain’t the only one,’ said the man, ‘There are a lot of other fellows
who work out of town. I don’t know about the rest of them, but I got to have
my pay. I ain’t got any backlog I can fall back on. What’s going to happen
to us if we can’t get to our jobs and there isn’t any pay cheque and no
money in the bank?’
‘I was coming to that,’ said Higgy. ‘I know exactly what your situation
is. And the situations of a lot of other men. There isn’t enough work in a
little town like this for everyone who lives here, so a great many of our
residents have work outside of town. And I know a lot of you haven’t too
much money and that you need your pay cheques. We hope this thing clears up
soon enough that you can go back and your jobs will still be there.’
‘But let me tell you this. Let me make a promise. If it doesn’t clear
up, there aren’t any of you going to go hungry. There aren’t any of you who
are going to be turned out of your homes because you can’t make your
payments or can’t manage to scrape the rent together. There won’t nothing
happen to you. A lot of people are going to be without jobs because of what
has happened, but you’ll be taken care of, every one of you. I am going to
name a committee that will talk with the merchants and the bank and we’ll
arrange for a line of credit that will see you through. Anyone who needs a
loan or credit can be sure of getting it.’
Higgy looked down at Daniel Willoughby, who was standing a step or two
below him.
‘Ain’t that right, Dan?’ he demanded.
‘Yes,’ said the banker. ‘Yes. Sure, it’s quite all right. We’ll do
everything we can.’
But he didn’t like it. You could see he didn’t. It hurt him to say it
was all right. Daniel liked security, good security, for each dollar he put
out.
‘It’s too early yet,’ said Higgy, ‘to know what has happened to us. By
tonight maybe we’ll know a whole lot more about it. The main thing is to
keep calm and not start going off half- cocked.
‘I can’t pretend to know what is going to happen. If this barrier stays
in place, there’ll be some difficulties. But as it stands right now, it’s
not entirely bad. Up until an hour or so ago, we were just a little village
that wasn’t too well known. There wasn’t, I suppose, much reason that we
should have been well known. But now we’re getting publicity over the entire
world. We’re in the newspapers and on the radio and TV. I’d like Joe Evans
to come up here and tell you all about it.’
He looked around and spotted Joe in the crowd.
‘You folks,’ he said, ‘make way, won’t you, so Joe can come up here.’
The editor climbed the steps and turned around to face the crowd.
‘There isn’t much to tell so far,’ he said. ‘I’ve had calls from most
of the wire services and from several newspapers. They all wanted to know
what was going on. I told them what I could, but it wasn’t much. One of the
TV stations over in Elmore is sending a mobile camera unit. The phone was
still ringing when I left the house and I suppose there are calls coming
into the office, too.
‘I think we can expect that the news media will pay a lot of attention
to the situation here and there’s no question in my mind that the state and
federal governments will take a hand in it, and if I understand it rightly,
more than likely the scientific community will have a considerable interest,
as well.’
The man who had the highway job spoke up again. ‘Joe, you think them
science fellows can get it figured out?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Joe.
Hiram Martin had pushed his way through the crowd and was crossing the
street. He had a purposeful look about hint and I wondered what he could be
up to. Someone else was asking a question, but the sight of Hiram had
distracted me and I lost the gist of it.
‘Brad,’ said someone at my elbow.
I looked around.
Hiram was standing there. The trucker, I saw, had left.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What is it?’
‘If you got the time,’ said Hiram. ‘I’d like to talk with you.’
‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘I have the time.’
He jerked his head toward the village hall.
‘All right,’ I said.
I opened the door and got out.
‘I’ll wait for you,’ said Nancy.
Hiram moved off around the crowd, flanking it, heading for the side
door of the hail. I followed close behind him.
But I didn’t like it.
9
Hiram’s office was a little cubbyhole just off the stall where the fire
engine and ladder rig were housed. There was barely room in it for two
chairs and a desk. On the wall above the desk hung a large and garish
calendar with a naked woman on it.
And on the desk stood one of the dialless telephones.
Hiram gestured at it. ‘What is that?’ he asked.
‘It’s a telephone,’ I said. ‘Since when did you get so important that
you have two phones?’
‘Take another look,’ he said.
‘It’s still a telephone,’ I said.
‘A closer look,’ he told me.
‘It’s a crazy looking thing. It’ hasn’t any dial.’
‘Anything else?’
‘No, I guess not. It just doesn’t have a dial.’
‘And,’ said Hiram, ‘it has no connection cord.’
‘I hadn’t noticed that.’
‘That’s funny,’ Hiram said.
‘Why funny?’ I demanded. ‘What the hell is going on? You didn’t get me
in here just to show me a phone.’
‘It’s funny,’ Hiram said, ‘because it was in your office.’
‘It couldn’t be. Ed Adler came in yesterday and took out my phone. For
non-payment of my bill.’
‘Sit down, Brad,’ he said.
I sat down and he sat down facing me. His face was still pleasant
enough, but there was that odd glitter in his eyes – the glitter that in the
olden days I’d seen too often in his eyes when he’d cornered me and knew he
had me cornered and was about to force me to fight him, in the course of
which endeavour he would beat the living Jesus out of me.
‘You never saw this phone?’ he asked.
I shook my head. ‘When I left the office yesterday I had no telephone.