A. E. v~ V0GT
RECRUITING STATION
Si~ DIDN’T DARE! Suddenly, the night was a cold, enveloping thing. The edge of the broad, black river gurgled evilly at her feet as if, now that she had changed her mind—it hungered for her.
Her foot slipped on the wet, sloping ground; and her mind grew blurred with the terrible senseless fear that things were reaching out of the night, trying to drown her now against her will.
She fought up the bank—and slumped breathless onto the nearest park bench, coldly furious with her fear. Dully, she watched the gaunt man come along the pathway past the light standard. So sluggish was her brain that she was not aware of surprise when she realized he was coming straight toward her.
The purulent yellowish light made a crazy patch of his shadow across her where she sat. His voice, when he spoke, was vaguely foreign in tone, yet modulated, cultured. He said:
“Are you interested in the Calonian cause?”
Norma stared. There was no quickening in her brain, but suddenly she began to laugh. It was funny, horribly, hysterically funny funny. To be sitting here, trying to get up the nerve for another attempt at those deadly waters, and then to have some crackbrain come along and— “You’re deluding yourself, Miss Matheson,” the man went on coolly.
“You’re not the suicide type.”
“Nor the pickup type!” she answered automatically. “Beat it before—” Abruptly, it penetrated that the man had called her by name. She
looked up sharply at the dark blank that was his face. His head against the background of distant light nodded as if in reply to the question that quivered in her thought.
“Yes, I know your name. I also know your history and your feari”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that a young scientist named Garson arrived in the city tonight to deliver a series of lectures. Ten years ago, when you and he graduated from the same university, he asked you to marry him, but it was a career you wanted—and now you’ve been terrified that, in your extremity, you would go to him for assistance and—”
“Stop!”
The man seemed to watch her as she sat there breathing heavily. He said at last, quietly:
“I think I have proved that I am not simply a casual philanderer.”
“What other kind of philanderer is there?” Norma asked, sluggish again. But she made no objection as he sank down on the far end of the bench. His back was still to the light, his features night-developed.
“Ah,” he said, “you joke; you are bitter. But that is an improvement. You feel now, perhaps, that if somebody has taken an interest in you, all is not lost.”
Norma said dully: ‘People who are acquainted with the basic laws of psychology are cursed with the memory of them even when disaster strikes into their lives. All I’ve done the last ten years is—”
She stopped; then: “You’re very clever. Without more than arousing my instinctive suspicions, you’ve insinuated yourself into the company of an hysterical woman. What’s your purpose?”
“I intend to offer you a job.”
Norma’s laugh sounded so harsh in her own ears that she thought, startled: “I am hysterical!”
Aloud, she said: “An apartment, jewels, a car of my own, I suppose?”
His reply was cool: “No! To put it frankly, you’re not pretty enough. Too angular, mentally and physically. That’s been one of your troubles the last ten years; a developing introversion of the mind which has influenced the shape of your body unfavorably.”
The words shivered through the suddenly stiffened muscles of her body. With an enormous effort, she forced herself to relax. She said: “I had that coming to me. Insults are good for hysteria; so now what?”
“There you go again,” she complained. “But yes, I’m for it. Birds of a feather, you know.”
¶~I know very well indeed. In fact, in those words you named the reason why I am here tonight, hiring a young woman who is up against it. Calonia, too, is up against it and—” He stopped; in the darkness, he spread his shadow-like hands. “You see: good publicity for our recruiting centers.”
Norma nodded. She did see, and, suddenly, she didn’t trust herself to speak; her hand trembled as she took the key he held out.
“This key,” he said, “will lit the lock of the front door of the recruiting station; it will also fit the lock of the door leading to the apartment above it. The apartment is yours while you have the job. You can go there tonight if you wish, or wait until morning if you fear this is merely a device
—now, I must give you a warning.”
“Warning?”
“Yes. The work we are doing is illegal. Actually, only the American government can enlist American citizens and operate recruiting stations.
We exist on sufferance and sympathy, but at any time someone may lay a charge; and the police will have to act.”
Norma nodded rapidly. “That’s no risk,” she said. “No judge would ever— “The address is 322 Carlton Street,” he cut in smoothly. “And for your
information, my name is Dr. Lell.”
Norma had the distinct sense of being pushed along too swiftly for caution. She hesitated, her mind on the street address. “Is that near Bessemer?”
It was his turn to hesitate. “I’m afraid,” he confessed, “I don’t know this city very well, at least not in its twentieth century. . . that is,” he finished suavely, “I was here many years ago, before the turn of the century.”
Norma wondered vaguely why he bothered to explain; she said, half-accusingly: “You’re not a Calonian. You sound—French, maybe.”
“You’re not a Calonian, either!” he said, and stood up abruptly. She watched him walk off into the night, a great gloom-wrapped figure that vanished almost immediately.
She stopped short in the deserted night street. The sound that came was like a whisper touching her brain; a machine whirring somewhere with almost infinite softness. For the barest moment, her mind concentrated on the shadow vibrations; and then, somehow, they seemed to fade like figments of her imagination. Suddenly, there was only the street and the silent night.
The street was dimly lighted; and that brought doubt, sharp and tinged with a faint fear. She strained her eyes and traced the numbers in the shadow of the door: 322! That was it!
The place was dark. She peered at the signs that made up the window display:
“FIGHT FOR THE BRAVE CALONIANS” “THE CALONIANS ABE FIGHTING
FREEDOM’S FIGHT—YOUR FIGHT!” “II’ YOU CAN PAY YOUR OWN WAY, IT WOULD BE APPRECIATED; OTHERWISE WE’LL GET YOU OVER!”
There were other signs, but they were essentially the same, all terribly honest and appealing, if you really thought about the desperate things that made up their grim background.
Illegal, of course. But the man had admitted that, too. With sudden end of doubt, she took the key from her purse.
There were two doorways, one on either side of the window. The one to the right led into the recruiting room. The one on the lef t— The stairs were dimly lighted, and the apartment at the top was quite empty of human beings. The door had a bolt; she clicked it home, and then, wearily, headed for the bedroom.
And it was as she lay in the bed that she grew aware again of the incredibly faint whirring of a machine. The shadow of a shadow sound; and, queerly, it seemed to reach into her brain: the very last second before
she drifted into sleep, the pulse of the vibration, remote as the park bench, was a steady beat inside her.
All through the night that indescribably faint whirring was there. Only occasionally did it seem to be in her head; she was aware of turning, twisting, curling, straightening and, in the fractional awakedness that accompanied each move, the tiniest vibrational tremors would sweep down along her nerves like infinitesimal currents of energy.
Spears of sunlight piercing brilliantly through the window brought her awake at last. She lay taut and strained for a moment, then relaxed, Puzzled. There was not a sound from the maddening machine, only the noises of the raucous, awakening street.
There was food in the refrigerator and in the little pantry. The weariness of the night vanished swiftly before the revivifying power of breakfast. She thought in gathering interest: what did he look like, this strange-voiced man of night?
Relieved surprise flooded her when the key unlocked the door to the recruiting room, for there had been in her mind a little edged fear that this was all quite mad.
She shuddered the queer darkness out of her system. ‘W’hat was the matter with her, anyway? The world was sunlit and cheerful, not the black and gloomy abode of people with angular introversion of the mind.
She flushed at the memory of the words. There was no pleasure in knowing that the man’s enormously clever analysis of her was true. Still stinging, she examined the little room. There were four chairs, a bench, a long wooden counter and newspaper clippings of the Calonian War on the otherwise bare walls.
There was a back door to the place. Dimly curious, she tried the knob
—once! It was locked, but there was something about the feel of it— A tingling shock of surprise went through her. The door, in spite of its
wooden appearance, was solid metal!
Momentarily, she felt chilled; finally she thought: “None of my business.
And then, before she could turn away, the door opened, and a gaunt man loomed on the threshold. He snapped harshly, almost into her face:
“Oh, yes, it is your business!”
It was not fear that made her back away. The deeps of her mind registered the cold hardness of his voice, so different from the previous night. Vaguely she was aware of the ugly sneer on his face. But there was no real emotion in her brain, nothing but a blurred blankness.
It was not fear; it couldn’t be fear because all she had to do was run a few yards, and she’d be out on a busy street. And besides she had never been afraid of Negroes, and she wasn’t now.
That first impression was so sharp, so immensely surprising that the fast-following second impression seemed like a trick of her eyes. For the man wasn’t actually a Negro; he was—
She shook her head, trying to shake that trickiness out of her vision. But the picture wouldn’t change. He wasn’t a Negro, he wasn’t white, he wasn’t—anything!
Slowly her brain adjusted itself to his alienness. She saw that he had slant eyes like a Chinaman, his skin, though dark in texture, was dry with a white man’s dryness. The nose was sheer chiseled beauty, the most handsome, most normal part of his face; his mouth was thin-lipped, commanding; his chin bold and giving strength and power to the insolence of his steel-gray eyes. His sneer deepened as her eyes grew wider and wider.
“Oh, no,” he said softly, “you’re not afraid of me, are you? Let me inform you that my purpose is to make you afraid. Last night I had the purpose of bringing you here. That required tact, understanding. My new purpose requires, among other things, the realization on your part that you are in my power beyond the control of your will or wish.
“I could have allowed you to discover gradually that this is not a Calonian recruiting station. But I prefer to get these early squirmings of the slaves over as soon as possible. The reaction to the power of the machine is always so similar and unutterably boring.”
“I—don’t—understand!”
He answered coldly: “Let me be brief. You have been vaguely aware of a machine. That machine has attuned the rhythm of your body to itself, and through its actions I can control you against your desire. Naturally, I don’t expect you to believe me. Like the other women, you will test its mind-destroying power. Notice that I said women! We always hire women; for purely psychological reasons they are safer than men. You will discover what I mean if you should attempt to warn any applicant on the basis of what I have told you.”
He finished swiftly: “Your duties are simple. There is a pad on the table made up of sheets with simple questions printed on them. Ask those questions, note the answers, then direct the applicants to me in the back room. I have—er—a medical examination to give them.”
Out of all the things he had said, the one that briefly, searingly, dominated her whole mind had no connection with her personal fate: “But,” she gasped, “if these men are not being sent to Calonia, where—”
He hissed her words short: “Here comes a man. Now, remember!”
He stepped back, to one side out of sight in the dimness of the back room. Behind her, there was the dismaying sound of the front door opening. A man’s baritone voice blurred a greeting into her ears.
Her fingers shook as she wrote down the man’s answers to the dozen questions. Name, address, next of kin— His face was a ruddy-cheeked blur against the shapeless shifting pattern of her lacing thoughts.
“You can see,” she heard herself mumbling, “that these questions are only a matter of identification. Now, if you’ll go into that back room—”
The sentence shattered into silence. She’d said it! The uncertainty in her mind, the unwillingness to take a definite stand until she had thought
of some way out, had made her say the very thing she had intended to avoid saying. The man said:
“What do I go in there for?”
She stared at him numbly. Her mind felt thick, useless. She needed time, calm. She said: “It’s a simple medical exam, entirely for your own protection.”
Sickly, Norma watched his stocky form head briskly toward the rear door. He knocked; and the door opened. Surprisingly, it stayed open— surprisingly, because it was then, as the man disappeared from her line of vision, that she saw the machine.
The end of it that she could see reared up immense and darkly gleaming halfway to the ceiling, partially hiding a door that seemed to be a rear exit from the building.
She forgot the door, forgot the men. Her mind fastened on the great engine with abrupt intensity as swift memory came that this was the machine— Unconsciously her body, her ears, her mind, strained for the whirring
sound that she had heard in the night. But there was nothing, not the tiniest of tiny noises, not the vaguest stir of vibration, not a rustle, not a whisper. The machine crouched there, hugging the floor with its solidness, its clinging metal strength; and it was utterly dead, utterly motionless.
The doctor’s smooth, persuasive voice came to her: “I hope you don’t mind going out the back door, Mr. Barton. We ask applicants to use it because—well, our recruiting station here is illegal. As you probably know, we exist on sufferance and sympathy, but we don’t want to be too blatant about the success we’re having in getting young men to fight for our cause.
Norma waited. As soon as the man was gone she would force a showdown on this whole fantastic affair. If this was some distorted scheme of Calonia’s enemies, she wouki go to the police and— The thought twisted into a curious swirling chaos of wonder. The
machine— Incredibly, the machine was coming alive, a monstrous, gorgeous, swift
aliveness. It glowed with a soft, swelling white light; and then burst into enormous flame. A breaker of writhing tongues of fire, blue and red and green and yellow, stormed over that first glow, blotting it from view instantaneously. The fire sprayed and flashed like an intricately designed fountain, with a wild and violent beauty, a glittering blaze of unearthly glory.
And then—just like that—the flame faded. Briefly, grimly stubborn in its fight for life, the swarming, sparkling energy clung to the metal.
It was gone. The machine lay there, a dull, gleaming mass of metallic deadness, inert, motionless. The doctor appeared in the doorway.
“Sound chap!” he said, satisfaction in his tone. “Heart requires a bit of glandular adjustment to eradicate the effects of bad diet. Lungs will react
swiftly to gas-immunization injections, and our surgeons should be able to patch that body up from almost anything except an atomic storm.”
Norma licked dry lips. “What are you talking about?” she asked wildly. “W-what happened to that man?”
She was aware of him staring at her blandly. His voice was cool, faintly amused: “Why—he went out the back door.”
“He did not. He—”
She realized the uselessness of words. Cold with the confusion of her thought, she emerged from behind the counter. She brushed past him, and then, as she reached the threshold of the door leading into the rear room, her knees wobbled. She grabbed at the door jamb for support, and knew that she didn’t dare go near that machine. With an effort, she said:
“Will you go over there and open it?”
He did so, smiling. The door squealed slightly as it opened. When he closed it, it creaked audibly, and the automatic lock clicked loudly.
There had been no such sound. Norma felt the deepening whiteness in her cheeks. She asked, chilled:
“What is this machine?”
“Owned by the local electric company, I believe,” he answered suavely, and his voice mocked her. “We just have permission to use the room, of course.”
“That’s not possible,” she said thickly. “Electric companies don’t have machines in the back rooms of shabby buildings.”
He shrugged. “Really,” he said indifferently, “this is beginning to bore me. I have already told you that this is a very special machine. You have seen some of its powers, yet your mind persists in being practical after a twentieth century fashion. I will repeat merely that you are a slave of the machine, and that it will do you no good to go to the police, entirely aside from the fact that I saved you from drowning yourself, and gratitude alone should make you realize that you owe everything to me; nothing to the world you were prepared to desert. However, that is too much to expect. You will learn by experience.”
Quite calmly, Norma walked across the room. She opened the door, and then, startled that he had made no move to stop her, turned to stare at him. He was still standing where she had left him. He was smiling.
“You must be quite mad,” she said after a moment. “Perhaps you had some idea that your little trick, whatever it was, would put the fear of the unknown into me. Let me dispel that right now. I’m going to the police—this very minute.”
The picture that remained in her mind as she climbed aboard the bus was of him standing there, tall and casual and terrible in his contemptuous derision. The chill of that memory slowly mutilated the steady tenor of her forced calm.
The sense of nightmare vanished as she climbed off the streetcar in front of the imposing police building. Sunshine splashed vigorously on the
pavement, cars honked; the life of the city swirled lustily around her, and brought wave on wave of returning confidence.
The answer, now that she thought of it, was simplicity itself. Hypnotism! That was what had made her see a great, black, unused engine burst into mysterious flames.
And no hypnotist could force his will on a determined, definitely opposed mind.
Burning inwardly with abrupt anger at the way she had been tricked, she lifted her foot to step on the curb—and amazed shock stung into her brain.
The foot, instead of lifting springily, dragged; her muscles almost refused to carry the weight. She grew aware of a man less than a dozen feet from her, staring at her with popping eyes.
“Good heavens!” he gasped audibly. “I must be seeing things.”
He walked off rapidly; and the part of her thoughts that registered his odd actions simply tucked them away. She felt too dulled, mentally and physically, even for curiosity.
With faltering steps she moved across the sidewalk. It was as if something was tearing at her strength. holding her with invisible but immense forces. The machine!—she thought—and panic blazed through her.
Will power kept her going. She reached the top of the steps an...
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