The Best of Richard Matheson Page 10

  The sheriff stopped and bent over to pick up a newspaper. He glanced at it casually, then folded it and hit it against one palm casually.

  “Years, eh?” he said.

  “Well, I haven’t been here in years,” Jim said hurriedly, licking his lips. “Could be that—oh, Lou or somebody been holin’ up in here sometime the last year. I don’t keep the outside door locked ya know.”

  “Thought you said Lou went up north,” the sheriff said mildly.

  “He did, he did. I say in the last year he might have—”

  “This is yesterday’s paper, Jim,” the sheriff said.

  Jim looked blank, started to say something and then closed his mouth without making a sound. Jean felt herself trembling without control now. She didn’t hear the screen door close quietly in front of the café or the furtive footsteps across the porch boards.

  “Well—I didn’t say Lou was the only one who might have sneaked in here for a night,” Jim said quickly. “Could have been any tramp passing by.”

  He stopped as the sheriff looked around suddenly, his gaze darting past Jean. “Where’s Tom?” he asked loudly.

  Jean’s head snapped around. Then she backed away with a gasp as the Sheriff dashed up the steps and ran by her.

  “Stick around, Jim!” the sheriff called over his shoulder.

  Jean rushed out of the café after him. As she came out on the porch she saw the Sheriff shading his eyes with one hand and looking up the road. Her eyes jumped in the same direction, and she saw the man in the fedora running toward another man, a tall man.

  “That’d be Lou,” she heard the sheriff murmur to himself.

  He started running; then, after a few steps, he came back and jumped into his car.

  “Sheriff!”

  He glanced out the window and saw the look of fright on her face. “All right, hurry up! Get in!”

  She jumped off the porch and ran toward the car. The sheriff pushed open the door and Jean slid in beside him and pulled it shut. The sheriff gunned his car out past the café and it skidded onto the road in a cloud of dust.

  “What is it?” Jean asked him breathlessly.

  “Your husband didn’t leave you,” was all the sheriff said.

  “Where is he?” she asked in a frightened voice.

  But they were already overtaking the two men who had met and were now running into the brush.

  The sheriff jerked the car off the road and slammed on the brakes. He pushed out of the car, quickly reaching down for his pistol.

  “Tom!” he yelled. “Lou! Stop running!”

  The men kept going. The sheriff leveled his pistol barrel and fired. Jean started at the explosion and saw, far out across the rocky desert, a spout of sand jump up near the men.

  They both stopped abruptly, turned and held up their hands.

  “Come on back!” yelled the sheriff. “And make it fast!”

  Jean stood beside the car, unable to keep her hands from shaking. Her eyes were fastened on the two men walking toward them.

  “All right, where is he?” the sheriff asked as they came up.

  “Who you talkin’ about, Sheriff?” asked the man in the fedora.

  “Never mind that, Tom,” the sheriff said angrily. “I’m not foolin’ any more. This lady wants her husband back. Now where—”

  “Husband!” Lou looked at the man in the fedora with angry eyes. “I thought we decided agin that!”

  “Shut your mouth!” the man in the fedora said, his pleasant demeanor gone entirely now.

  “You told me we wasn’t gonna—” Lou started.

  “Let’s see what you got in your pockets, Lou,” the sheriff said.

  Lou looked at the sheriff blankly. “My pockets?” he said.

  “Come on, come on.” The sheriff waved his pistol impatiently. Lou started emptying his pockets slowly.

  “Told me we wasn’t gonna do that,” he muttered aside to the man in the fedora. “Told me. Stupid jackass.”

  Jean gasped as Lou tossed the wallet on the ground. “That’s Bob’s,” she murmured.

  “Get his things, lady,” the sheriff said.

  Nervously she moved over at the feet of the men and picked up the wallet, the coins, the car keys.

  “All right, where is he?” the sheriff asked. “And don’t waste my time!” he said angrily to the man in the fedora.

  “Sheriff, I don’t know what you—” started the man.

  The sheriff almost lunged forward. “So help me!” he raged. Tom threw up one arm and stepped back.

  “I’ll tell you for a fact, Sheriff,” Lou broke in. “If I’d known this fella had his woman with him, I’d never’ve done it.”

  Jean stared at the tall, ugly man, her teeth digging into her lower lip. Bob, Bob. Her mind kept saying his name.

  “Where is he, I said,” the sheriff demanded.

  “I’ll show you, I’ll show you,” Lou said. “I told you I never would’ve done it if I’d known his woman was with him.”

  Again he turned to the man in the fedora. “Why’d you let him go in there?” he demanded. “Why? Answer me that?”

  “Don’t know what he’s talkin’ about, Sheriff,” Tom said blandly. “Why, I—”

  “Get on the road,” the sheriff ordered. “Both of you. You take us to him or you’re really in trouble. I’m followin’ you in the car. Don’t make any wrong move, not one.”

  The car moved slowly behind the two walking men.

  “I been after these boys for a year,” the sheriff told her. “They set themselves up a nice little system robbin’ men who come to the café, then dumpin’ them in the desert and sellin’ their car up north.”

  Jean hardly heard what he was saying. She kept staring at the road ahead, her stomach tight, her hands pressed tightly together.

  “Never knew how they worked it though,” the sheriff went on. “Never thought of the lavatory. Guess what they did was keep it locked for any man but one who was alone. They must’ve slipped up today. I guess Lou just jumped anyone who came in there. He’s not any too bright.”

  “Do you think they—” Jean started hesitantly.

  The sheriff hesitated. “I don’t know, lady. I wouldn’t think so. They ain’t that dumb. Besides we had cases like this before and they never hurt no one worse than a bump on the head.”

  He honked the horn. “Come on, snap it up!” he called to the men.

  “Are there snakes out there?” Jean asked.

  The sheriff didn’t answer. He just pressed his mouth together and stepped on the accelerator so the men had to break into a trot to keep ahead of the bumper.

  A few hundred yards further on, Lou turned off and started down a dirt road.

  “Oh my God, where did they take him?” Jean asked.

  “Should be right down here,” the sheriff said.

  Then Lou pointed to a clump of trees and Jean saw their car. The sheriff stopped his coupe and they got out. “All right, where is he?” he asked.

  Lou started across the broken desert ground. Jean kept feeling the need to break into a run. She had to tense herself to keep walking by the sheriff’s side. Their shoes crunched over the dry desert soil. She hardly felt the pebbles through her sandals, so intently was she studying the ground ahead.

  “Ma’am,” Lou said, “I hope you won’t be too hard on me. If I’d known you was with him, I’d’ve never touched him.”

  “Knock it off, Lou,” the sheriff said. “You’re both in up to your necks, so you might as well save your breath.”

  Then Jean saw the body lying out on the sand, and with a sob she ran past the men, her heart pounding.

  “Bob—”

  She held his head in her lap, and when his eyes fluttered open, she felt as if the earth had been taken off her back.

  He tried to
smile, then winced at the pain. “I been hit,” he muttered.

  Without a word, the tears came running down her cheeks. She helped him back to their car, and as she followed the sheriff’s car, she held tightly to Bob’s hand all the way back to town.

  COUNTERFEIT BILLS

  Mr. William O. Cook decided that afternoon—it was raining and he was coming home from work on the bus—that it would be pleasant to be two people. He was 41 ½, 5’7”, semi-bald, oval-bellied and bored. Schedule depressed him; routine gave him a pain where he lived. If, he envisioned, one only had a spare self, one could assign all the duller activities of life—i.e. clerkship, husbandry, parenthood, etc.—to the double, retaining for one’s own time, more pleasurable doings such as bleacher viewing, saloon haunting, corner ogling and covert visits to Madame Gogarty’s pleasure pavilion across the tracks; except, of course, that, with a double, the visits wouldn’t have to be covert.

  Accordingly, Mr. Cook spent four years, six months, two days, $5,228.20, six thousand yards of wiring, three hundred and two radio tubes, a generator, reams of paper, dizzying mentation and the good will of his wife in assembling his duplication machine. This he completed one Sunday afternoon in autumn and, shortly after pot roast dinner with Maude and the five children, made a double of himself.

  “Good evening,” he said, extending his hand to the blinking copy.

  His double shook hands with him and, shortly after, at Mr. Cook’s request, went upstairs to watch television until bedtime while Mr. Cook climbed out the window over the coal bin, went to the nearest bar, had five fast, celebratory jolts, then took a cab to Madame Gogarty’s where he enjoyed the blandishments of one Delilah Phryne, a red-headed former blonde of some twenty-seven years, thirty-eight inches and diverse talents.

  The plan set in motion, life became a song. Until one evening when Mr. Cook’s double cornered him in the cellar work room and demanded surcease with the words, “I can’t stand it anymore, dammit!”

  It ensued that he was as bored with that drab portion of Mr. Cook’s life as Mr. Cook himself had been. No amount of reasonable threats prevailed. Faced with the prospect of being exposed by the sullen double, Mr. Cook—after discarding the alternate course of murdering himself by proxy—hit upon the idea of making a second duplicate in order to give the first one a chance to live.

  This worked admirably until the second duplicate grew jaded and demanding. Mr. Cook tried to talk the two copies into alternating painful duty with pleasurable diversion; but, quite naturally, the first duplicate refused, enjoying the company of a Miss Gina Bonaroba of Madame Gogarty’s too much to be willing to spend part of his time performing the mundane chores of everyday.

  Cornered again, Mr. Cook reluctantly made a third duplicate; then a fourth, a fifth. The city, albeit large, soon became thick with William O. Cooks. He would come upon himself at corners, discover himself asking himself for lights, end up, quite literally, beside himself. Life grew complex. Yet Mr. Cook did not complain. Actually, he rather liked the company of his facsimiles and they often enjoyed quite pleasant bowling parties together. Then, of course, there was always Delilah and her estimable charms.

  Which was what, ultimately, brought about the disaster.

  One evening, on arriving at Madame Gogarty’s, Mr. Cook found duplicate number seven in the willing arms of Delilah. Protest as the poor girl would that she had no idea it wasn’t him, the infuriated Mr. Cook struck her, then as it were, himself. Meanwhile, down the hall, copy number three had come upon copy number five in the overwhelming embrace of both their favorite, a Miss Gertrude Leman. Another fist battle broke out during which duplicates number two and four arrived and joined in fiercely. The house soon rang with the cries of their composite battlings.

  At this juncture, an incensed Madame Gogarty intervened. Following the breaking up of the brawl, she had Mr. Cook and his selves trailed to their house in the suburbs. That night, a trifle before midnight, there was an unexplained explosion in the cellar of that house. Arriving police and firemen found the ruins below strewn with bits mechanical and human. Mr. Cook, amidst hue and cry, was dragged to incarceration; Madame Gogarty was, grimly, satisfied. After all, she used to tell the girls over tea in later years, too many Cooks spoil the brothel.

  DEATH SHIP

  Mason saw it first.

  He was sitting in front of the lateral viewer taking notes as the ship cruised over the new planet. His pen moved quickly over the graph-spaced chart he held before him. In a little while they’d land and take specimens. Mineral, vegetable, animal—if there were any. Put them in the storage lockers and take them back to Earth. There the technicians would evaluate, appraise, judge. And, if everything was acceptable, stamp the big, black INHABITABLE on their brief and open another planet for colonization from over-crowded Earth.

  Mason was jotting down items about general topography when the glitter caught his eye.

  “I saw something,” he said.

  He flicked the viewer to reverse lensing position.

  “Saw what?” Ross asked from the control board.

  “Didn’t you see a flash?”

  Ross looked into his own screen.

  “We went over a lake, you know,” he said.

  “No, it wasn’t that,” Mason said, “this was in that clearing beside the lake.”

  “I’ll look,” said Ross, “but it probably was the lake.”

  His fingers typed out a command on the board and the big ship wheeled around in a smooth arc and headed back.

  “Keep your eyes open now,” Ross said. “Make sure. We haven’t got any time to waste.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mason kept his unblinking gaze on the viewer, watching the earth below move past like a slowly rolled tapestry of woods and fields and rivers. He was thinking, in spite of himself, that maybe the moment had arrived at last. The moment in which Earthmen would come upon life beyond Earth, a race evolved from other cells and other muds. It was an exciting thought. 1997 might be the year. And he and Ross and Carter might now be riding a new Santa Maria of discovery, a silvery, bulleted galleon of space.

  “There!” he said. “There it is!”

  He looked over at Ross. The captain was gazing into his viewer plate. His face bore the expression Mason knew well. A look of smug analysis, of impending decision.

  “What do you think it is?” Mason asked, playing the strings of vanity in his captain.

  “Might be a ship, might not be,” pronounced Ross.

  Well, for God’s sake, let’s go down and see, Mason wanted to say, but knew he couldn’t. It would have to be Ross’s decision. Otherwise they might not even stop.

  “I guess it’s nothing,” he prodded.

  He watched Ross impatiently, watched the stubby fingers flick buttons for the viewer. “We might stop,” Ross said. “We have to take samples anyway. Only thing I’m afraid of is . . .”

  He shook his head. Land, man! The words bubbled up in Mason’s throat. For God’s sake, let’s go down!

  Ross evaluated. His thickish lips pressed together appraisingly. Mason held his breath.

  Then Ross’ head bobbed once in that curt movement which indicated consummated decision. Mason breathed again. He watched the captain spin, push and twist dials. Felt the ship begin its tilt to upright position. Felt the cabin shuddering slightly as the gyroscope kept it on an even keel. The sky did a ninety-degree turn, clouds appeared through the thick ports. Then the ship was pointed at the planet’s sun and Ross switched off the cruising engines. The ship hesitated, suspended a split second, then began dropping toward the earth.

  “Hey, we settin’ down already?”

  Mickey Carter looked at them questioningly from the port door that led to the storage lockers. He was rubbing greasy hands over his green jumper legs.

  “We saw something down there,” Mason said.

  “No kiddin’,”
Mickey said, coming over to Mason’s viewer. “Let’s see.”

  Mason flicked on the rear lens. The two of them watched the planet billowing up at them.

  “I don’t know whether you can . . . oh, yes, there it is,” Mason said. He looked over at Ross.

  “Two degrees east,” he said.

  Ross twisted a dial and the ship then changed its downward movement slightly.

  “What do you think it is?” Mickey asked.

  “Hey!”

  Mickey looked into the viewer with even greater interest. His wide eyes examined the shiny speck enlarging on the screen.

  “Could be a ship,” he said. “Could be.”

  Then he stood there silently, behind Mason, watching the earth rushing up.

  “Reactors,” said Mason.

  Ross jabbed efficiently at the button and the ship’s engines spouted out their flaming gasses. Speed decreased. The rocket eased down on its roaring fire jets. Ross guided.

  “What do you think it is?” Mickey asked Mason.

  “I don’t know,” Mason answered. “But if it’s a ship,” he added, half wishfully thinking, “I don’t see how it could possibly be from Earth. We’ve got this run all to ourselves.”

  “Maybe they got off course,” Mickey dampened without knowing.

  Mason shrugged. “I doubt it,” he said.

  “What if it is a ship?” Mickey said. “And it’s not ours?”

  Mason looked at him and Carter licked his lips.

  “Man,” he said, “that’d be somethin’.”

  “Air spring,” Ross ordered.

  Mason threw the switch that set the air spring into operation. The unit which made possible a landing without them having to stretch out on thick-cushioned couches. They could stand on deck and hardly feel the impact. It was an innovation on the newer government ships.

  The ship hit on its rear braces.