Special Deliverance, Page 2

  Andy kept on rumbling, but now Lansing blanked the rumbling out, hearing it only as a continuous mumble without words.

  And this was the man, he thought, to whom he had meant to suggest a weekend hike. If he were to suggest it, more than likely Andy would agree, for this weekend his wife was in Michigan for a visit to her parents. On the hike, most probably, Andy would not be able to keep up the barrage of words and argument such as the barrage in which he was now engaged, but he’d talk; he’d talk unendingly, he would never cease his talk. On a hike an ordinary man would enjoy at least a modicum of peace and quiet, but such would not be the case with Andy. For Andy there was no such thing as peace and quiet; there was only roiling thought.

  Lansing had thought, as well, that he might ask Alice Anderson to spend the weekend with him, but that had its drawbacks, too. On the last several occasions he had been with her, it had seemed he could detect in her eyes a glint of marital expectation, and that, should it come to a head, could be as disastrous as Andy’s nonstop talking. So scratch the both of them, he thought. He still could take a drive out into the hills. Or he could hole up in his apartment with the fire, the music and the reading. Perhaps, as well, there were a number of other ways in which to find enjoyment in the weekend. He let Andy’s words come in again. “Have you ever given any thought,” Andy was asking, “to historic crisis points?”

  “I don’t believe I ever have,” said Lansing. “History is replete with them,” Andy told him. “And upon them, the sum of them, rests the sort of world we have today. It has occurred to me, at times, that there may be a number of alternate worlds…”

  “I’m sure of it,” said Lansing, not caring any longer. His friend’s flight into fantasy had left him far behind. Beyond the window, the lake lay half in shadow; evening was closing in. Staring out the window at the lake, Lansing sensed a wrongness. Without knowing what it was, he knew that something had changed. Then slowly it came to him what it was: Andy had stopped talking.

  He turned his headland stared at his friend across the table. Andy was grinning at him. “I got an idea,” he said. “Yes?”

  “With Mabel gone visiting her folks, why don’t you and I plan something for tomorrow? I know where I can get a couple of football tickets.”

  “Sorry,” Lansing said. “I’m all tied up.”

  LANSING STEPPED OUT OF the elevator on the first floor and headed for the door that opened on the mall. Andy, spotting an acquaintance at another table as they were leaving, had stopped to have a word with him. Doing his best not to seem to be doing so, Lansing had fled. But time was short, he told himself. The next elevator might bring Andy down, and by that time, he must be out of sight and reach. It would be like Andy, should he get hold of him again, to drag him off somewhere for dinner.

  Halfway to the door he halted. The Rathskeller was just down those stairs to the right, and in an adjoining room, if Jackson had been right, was stored the fabulous slot machine. Lansing changed his course and scurried for the stairs.

  He stormed mentally at himself as he went down the stairs. There’d be no storage room, and even if there were, there’d be no slot machine. Whatever had possessed Jackson to fabricate such a story he could not guess. It might have been, of course, nothing more than sheer impertinence, and while the student would be capable of that, it would stand to gain him nothing. Impertinence might be used to bait a faculty member, and there were faculty members who were often baited, who seemed to ask for it, most of them pompous fools who could benefit by a little taking down. But Lansing had always prided himself on his good relationship with his students. At times, he suspected, he was regarded as a soft touch. Thinking back on his relationship with Jackson, he realized he’d had no real trouble with him. At best Jackson had been a poor student, but that was neither here nor there. He had tried to treat the man with all courtesy and consideration, and at times had attempted to be helpful, although with a man like Jackson, he doubted that his attempts had been appreciated.

  There were only a few people in the Rathskeller, most of them crowded around a table at the far side of the room. The man behind the bar was engaged in conversation with two students. When Lansing came in, no one noticed him.

  There was a door opposite one end of the bar, exactly as Jackson had said. Lansing strode purposefully across the room to reach it. When he seized the knob of the door, it turned easily in his hand. He pushed the door open and stepped inside, then closed it quickly and stood with his back against it.

  A single dim light bulb hung from a cord in the center of the ceiling. The room had an unfinished look, as if it were, indeed, what Jackson had said it was—a forgotten storage room. Cartons that had once held soft drinks were stacked against one wall, and a couple of filing cabinets and an ancient desk stood, not against a wall, but clustered in the center of the room. They had the look of having been placed there long ago with no attention paid them since.

  In the far corner of the room stood a slot machine. Lansing drew his breath in sharply. So far Jackson had been right. But he could have been right, Lansing reminded himself, about the room and have lied about the rest. That the slot machine stood where he had said it was afforded no proof that the rest of his story had been true.

  The light was dim, and Lansing made his way with exaggerated caution across the room toward the waiting machine, alert against any unseen obstruction catching his foot and sending him sprawling.

  He reached the machine and stood in front of it. It looked like any other slot machine, like any of the hundreds that lurked in corners all around the campus, waiting for the coins that finally would find their way into the fund that would care for the indigent and other unfortunates of the nation.

  Lansing thrust his hand into a pocket and fingered through the coins that were there. He found a quarter, brought it out and fed it into the machine. The machine gulped it down with patent eagerness, and as it did, its face lighted up to show the cylinders with the signs upon them. It chuckled softly at him, a companionable chuckling, as if the two of them might share a joke known only to themselves.

  He seized the lever and hauled it down with unnecessary force. The cylinders spun madly and twinkling lights blinked at him. Finally the cylinders stopped and nothing happened. Exactly what happened with all other slot machines, Lansing thought. It was no different from any of the others. It took your money and stood there laughing at you.

  Then the machine spoke.

  “What is it, sir, that you require?” it asked.

  “Why, I’m not sure,” said Lansing, startled. “Actually, I don’t believe there is anything I need. I only came to verify the fact of your existence.”

  “That is unfortunate,” said the slot machine. “I have many things to give. Are you sure there is nothing that you need?”

  “Perhaps if you gave me some time to think about it.”

  “That’s not possible,” answered the machine. “People who come to me must have something in mind. They are not allowed to lolligag around.”

  “I am sorry,” said Lansing.

  “In any case, I am not so constructed as to give nothing for the coin you gave me,” said the slot machine. “I must give you something. I’ll tell you a story.”

  So it told Lansing a very filthy story about seven men and one woman marooned on a desert island. It was a foul story, bestial and crude and extremely obscene, with no saving social significance whatever.

  Once the story was finished, Lansing, out of disgust, said nothing.

  “You did not like my story?” asked the machine. “Not overmuch,” replied Lansing.

  “Well, then, I’ve failed,” said the machine. “I suspect that I misjudged you, and I cannot let it go at that. For your coin I must give you an item of some value.”

  It made a coughing sound and something metallic fell out of its innards into the bucket in the middle of it. “Go ahead,” said the machine. “Pick it up.” Lansing picked it up. It resembled a motel key. Two keys, one larger than the o
ther, were attached to an oblong piece of plastic with a number and an address printed on it.

  “I don’t understand,” said Lansing. “Then attend most closely. Pay close attention to what I say. Are you listening?”

  Lansing tried to speak, but stammered, then he said, “I am listening.”

  “Good. Now close attention, please. You go to the address. If you go during normal business hours, the front door will be unlocked. If you go at another time, the larger of the two keys will open it. The smaller key will open the door of room one thirty-six. Do you follow me so far?”

  Lansing gulped. “Yes, I do.”

  “When you open the door of one thirty-six, you will find a dozen slot machines lined along a wall. Starting at the left, go to the fifth one—the fifth one: one, two, three, four, five—and insert a dollar in it. It will complete a certain transaction, and when that is done, you go to number seven and put another dollar in it…”

  “I put a dollar in,” said Lansing. “Do I pull the lever?”

  “Of course you pull the lever. Have you never played a slot machine?”

  “Yes, of course I have. How could I avoid it?”

  “Precisely,” replied the slot machine. “Have you all of it in mind?”

  “Yes, I think I have.”

  “Repeat it, then, to be sure you have.”

  Lansing repeated what the machine had told him.

  “Fine,” said the machine. “Keep it well in mind. I’d suggest you go very soon, so there’s no chance of forgetting the instructions. You’ll need two silver dollars. Do you have them by any chance?”

  “I am sure I haven’t.”

  “Well, then,” said the slot machine, “here you are. We have no wish to place any roadblock in doing what we’ve asked of you. We are very anxious that you carry out the procedure as precisely as you’re able.”

  Something plinked in the machine’s bucket.

  “Go on,” urged the machine. “Go on and pick them up.”

  Lansing bent and picked up the two silver dollars. He put them in his pocket.

  “You’re sure that you have it well in mind?” asked the slot machine. “You have no questions?”

  “Yes, I suppose one question. What is this all about?”

  “I cannot tell you specifically,” said the machine. “That would be against the rules. But I can assure you that whatever happens will be to your great advantage.”

  “And what would that be? What to my advantage?”

  “That is all, Professor Lansing. That is all that I can tell you.”

  “How come you know my name? I didn’t tell you who I was.”

  “I can assure you,” said the machine, “that there was no need for you to tell me. I already knew you.”

  With that the machine clanked off, became dark and silent.

  Lansing hauled off and kicked the machine. Not perhaps a kick at this machine alone, but at all the other machines that, through the years, had gulped down his quarters and then sat sneering at him.

  The machine kicked back and caught him in the ankle. He did not see how it kicked him, but it did. He backed away from it. It was still sitting dark and silent.

  Then Lansing turned about and went limping from the room.

  AT HOME LANSING BUILT himself a drink and sat by a window, watching the dying of the day. The entire thing, he assured himself, was ridiculous. It could not have happened and yet he knew it had. To confirm it, he put a hand in his pocket and jingled the two silver dollars. It had been years since he had possessed a silver dollar, let alone two of them. He took them from his pocket and examined them. Both, he saw, were of recent date. Years before all the ones with an appreciable amount of silver in them had been grabbed up by speculators or coin collectors. The two keys, attached to the plastic tab, lay on a tabletop where he had tossed them. He put out a hand to pick them up, then drew it back without touching them.

  Sitting quietly, with the drink in hand, not having tasted it yet, he ran all of it through his mind again and was amazed to find that he felt slightly dirty and ashamed, as if he had committed a certain kind of foulness. He tried to figure out why he felt that way, and there seemed no reason for it other than that his action in going to the room off the Rathskeller had been an action not quite normal. In all his life he had never slunk before and he had not this time, not physically at least, but in opening the door to that forgotten storeroom, he had had the sense of slinking, of performing an act that did not fit the dignity of his position as a member of the faculty of a small but well thought of—perhaps in some areas, a distinguished—college.

  But that, he told himself, was not all of it. The matter of slinking, of feeling slightly dirty, was not all of it. Thinking of that, he knew that he had been holding back some factor even from himself. There was something that he didn’t want to face, that he shrank from facing. The factor, he forced himself to admit, was the suspicion that he’d been had—although that was not exactly it. If it had been nothing but a joke, an infantile student prank, it would have extended no further than his slinking into the room to locate the slot machine. But the machine had talked to him—though even that, if well arranged, could have been made to come about as well by a tape, perhaps, that could have been activated when he pulled the lever.

  It hadn’t been that way, however. Not only had the machine talked with him, he had talked with it, had carried on a conversation with it. No student could engineer a tape that would carry on a logical conversation. And it had been logical; he had asked questions and the machine had answered; it had given him involved instructions.

  So he had not imagined what had happened, and it had not been a student prank. The machine had even kicked back when he had kicked it: his ankle was still a little tender, although he no longer limped. And if it had not been a prank, no matter how ingeniously planned, then, for the love of God, what had it been?

  He lifted the glass and drank down the whiskey, a thing he had never done before. He sipped at whiskey; he never drank it down. For one thing, he had no great tolerance for alcohol.

  He rose from the chair and paced back and forth across the room. But pacing did nothing for him; it did not help him think. He put the empty glass on the sideboard, went back to the chair and sat down again.

  So all right, he told himself, let’s stop playing games, leave us quit the business of trying to protect ourself, let us drop the idea that we cannot allow ourself to look silly. Let’s take it from the top and dig down to the bottom of it.

  It had started with the student Jackson. None of it would have happened had it not been for Jackson. And even before Jackson, it had been Jackson’s paper, a good paper, an unusually well-written paper, especially for a student such as Jackson—if it had not been for the phony sources cited. It had been the citing of the sources that had made him write the note and shove it in Jackson’s mailbox. Or might he have called in the man in any case, obliquely hinting, perhaps, that he must have had some expert help to write so fine a paper? Lansing thought about that for a moment and decided that more than likely he wouldn’t have. If Jackson wanted to cheat, that was not up to Lansing; Jackson would have been doing no more than cheating himself. Even if he had called him in on such grounds, the scene would have been an embarrassing and nonproductive confrontation, for there was no way in the world that cheating could be proved. The conclusion, he told himself, was that he had been set up, most expertly set up, either by Jackson himself or by someone acting through Jackson. Jackson, it seemed to him, could not be astute enough, perhaps not energetic enough, to have set it up alone. Although there was no way to be sure. With a man like Jackson, one could never know.

  And if he had been set up, no matter by whomever, what was the purpose of it?

  There seemed to be no answer. Nothing that made sense. Nothing in any of it made sense.

  Perhaps the way to handle it would be to forget about the entire thing, carry it no further. But could he do that, could he force himself to that course of
nonaction? For the rest of his life he would wonder what it had been about; all his life he would wonder what might have happened if he had gone to the address upon the key tab and had done what the slot machine had told him.

  He got up and found the bottle, picked up the glass to pour. Then he didn’t pour. He put the bottle away and took the glass to the kitchen sink. He opened the refrigerator and took out an instant meal of beef and macaroni, popped it in the oven. He gagged at the thought of another meal of beef and macaroni, but what was a man to do? Certainly, at a time like this, he could not be expected to whip up a gourmet evening meal.

  He went to the front door and picked up the evening paper. Deep in his easy chair, he turned on the light and opened the paper. There was little news. Congress still was piddling around with a gun-control bill and the President had forecast (again) the dire consequences if Congress should fail to approve the large military budget he had called for. The PTA still was raising hell about violence on television shows. Three new substances had been found that could cause cancer. Mr. Dithers had fired Dagwood again—not that the little twerp didn’t have it coming to him. On the opinion page was a letter livid with righteous indignation because someone had messed up a crossword puzzle.

  When the beef and macaroni was ready he ate it, barely tasting it, gagging it down because it was food. He unearthed a two-day-old cupcake for dessert, continued to sit at the kitchen table drinking coffee. As he drank his second cup he realized, finally, what he was doing. He was working hard at putting off something that he was going to do, no matter what, putting it off because he was not sure it was something that he should do, still responding to the nagging doubt that gnawed at him. But doubt or not, he was going to do it; he knew, without question, that finally he would do it. He’d never be able to live with himself if he didn’t, all his days he would wonder what it was he had missed.