Stranger in a Strange Land

“Not me. But everybody else is. See that I write it some time next week. Now vanish; I’m busy.” He turned back to Gillian. “She noticed Ben’s name, so she remembered the message—quite thrilled about it, because it let her speak to one of her heroes… and was irked, I gather, because Ben hadn’t paid for vision as well as voice. Oh, she remembers it and she remembers, too, that the service was paid for by cash from a public booth—in Washington.”

“‘In Washington’?” repeated Jill. “But why would Ben call from—”

“Of course, of course!” Jubal agreed pettishly. “If he’s at a public phone booth anywhere in Washington, he can have both voice and vision direct to his office, face to face with his assistant, cheaper, easier, and quicker than he could phone a stat message to be sent back to Washington from a point nearly two hundred miles away. It doesn’t make sense. Or, rather, it makes just one kind of sense. Hanky-panky. Ben is as used to hanky-panky as a bride is to kisses. He didn’t get to be one of the best winchells in the business through playing his cards face up.”

“Ben is not a winchell! He’s a Lippmann!”

“Sorry, I’m color-blind in that range. Keep quiet. He might have believed that his phone was tapped but his statprinter was not. Or he might have suspected that both were tapped—and I’ve no doubt they are, by now, if not then—and that he could use this round-about relay to convince whoever was tapping him that he really was away from Washington and would not be back for several days.” Jubal frowned. “In the latter case we would be doing him no favor by finding him. We might be endangering his life.”

“Jubal! No!”

“Jubal, yes,” he answered wearily. “That boy skates close to the edge, he always has. He’s utterly fearless and that’s how he’s made his reputation. But the rabbit is never more than two jumps ahead of the coyote and this time maybe one jump. Or none, Jill, Ben has never tackled a more dangerous assignment than this. If he has disappeared voluntarily—and he may have—do you want to risk stirring things up by bumbling around in your amateur way, calling attention to the fact that he has dropped out of sight? Kilgallen still has him covered, as Ben’s column has appeared every day. I don’t ordinarily read it—but I’ve made it my business to know, this time.”

“Canned columns! Mr. Kilgallen told me so.”

“Of course. Some of Ben’s perennial series on corrupt campaign funds. That’s a subject as safe as being in favor of Christmas. Maybe they’re kept on file for such emergencies—or perhaps Kilgallen is writing them. In any case, Ben Caxton, the ever-ready Advocate of the Peepul, is still officially on his usual soap box. Perhaps he planned it that way, my dear—because he found himself in such danger that he did not dare get in touch even with you. Well?”

Gillian glanced fearfully around her—at a scene almost unbearably peaceful, bucolic, and beautiful—then covered her face with her hands. “Jubal… I don’t know what to do!”

“Snap out of it,” he said gruffly. “Don’t bawl over Ben—not in my presence. The worst that can possibly have happened to him is death and that we are all in for—if not this morning, then in days, or weeks, or years at most. Talk to your protégé Mike about it. He regards ‘discorporation’ as less to be feared than a scolding—and he may be right. Why, if I told Mike we were going to roast him and serve him for dinner tonight, he would thank me for the honor with his voice choked with gratitude.”

“I know he would,” Jill agreed in a small voice, “but I don’t have his philosophical attitude about such things.”

“Nor do I,” Harshaw agreed cheerfully, “but I’m beginning to grasp it—and I must say that it is a consoling one to a man of my age. A capacity for enjoying the inevitable—why, I’ve been cultivating that all my life… but this infant from Mars, barely old enough to vote and too unsophisticated to stand clear of the horse cars, has me convinced that I’ve just reached the kindergarten class in this all-important subject. Jill, you asked if Mike was welcome to stay on. Child, he’s the most welcome guest I’ve ever had. I want to keep that boy around until I’ve found out what it is that he knows and I don’t! This ‘discorporation’ thing in particular it’s not the Freudian ‘death-wish’ cliché, I’m sure of that. It has nothing to do with life being unbearable. None of that ‘Even the weariest river’ stuff—it’s more like Stevenson’s ‘Glad did I live and gladly die and I lay me down with a will!’ Only I’ve always suspected that Stevenson was either whistling in the dark, or, more likely, enjoying the compensating euphoria of consumption. But Mike has me halfway convinced that he really knows what he is talking about.”

“I don’t know,” Jill answered dully. “I’m just worried about Ben.”

“So am I,” agreed Jubal. “So let’s discuss Mike another time. Jill, I don’t think that Ben is simply hiding any more than you do.”

“But you said—”