EXIT MR. SMITH

First of all, Elsie, I want to thank you for getting me this job. When I met you in Porto Vargas I don’t mind telling you now I was down to my last twenty. Oh, my tour was paid for and the boat had made its last stop before returning to New York. But I had been careless buying souvenirs and things and…well, a girl can’t go around without money in her purse.

I like it here. San Carlo is a beautiful little country, even if it is run by a dictator. And Rodosa is a pretty town, although I would like it better if it were nearer the coast instead of way up here in the mountains. But then the weather wouldn’t be so nice, and one can’t have everything, I suppose.

Just as you said, I’m living in the hotel—Antenida, they call it—and I really have two jobs in one. I operate the desk switchboard (lucky I told you I had phone experience and fortunate too I brushed up on my Spanish last winter) and I serve as public stenographer occasionally in my spare time.

Right now there aren’t many guests here as it’s sort of between seasons, but in a month or so President Solera will stop in on his regular hunting vacation and then, I’m told, the place will really be jumping.

We do have one VIP. His name is Captain Juan La Gola and he drove up in a gorgeous sport model Cithedra-Ole that was about a mile long, bumper to bumper. He is a tall man, swarthy, with a beard no amount of shaving can completely remove, and he wears high boots and a belted tunic with the mark of the Confidential Police on the collar. I was standing next to the room clerk when he signed the register and I couldn’t help seeing his signature. And would you believe it, the National Identity Number he wrote after his name was 137.

Imagine me being in the same hotel with a one-thirty-seven. The closest I’ve ever come to important people is a twelve thousand, a Supreme Court judge, seventy years old. Of course that was a Norte American NIN, but even so.

Well, this Juan La Gola asked if I’d take a letter for him, and I did, and then he said I should come up and see him in an hour or so when he got settled, for more typing. Meanwhile he was expecting a package and wanted it delivered to his room as soon as it arrived.

Did he say package? It was a wooden crate, five feet square, and so heavy it had to go up in the freight elevator. It had a lot of foreign seals plastered to its sides but I couldn’t read any of them.

After an hour I went up to the fifth floor and rang his bell. No one answered but the door was partially open, so I went in. The crate had been opened, the boards stacked in a corner. In the center of the room on a table was a brand new dream machine.

It wasn’t like any dreamer I’d ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of them. It had three instrument panels instead of one and mounted on the center one was a thing that looked like an enlarged hour glass with black powder running from one chamber to the other. It had a shiny disc, tipped sideways between two olendrons that slowly changed colors, from red to blue to yellow and back to red again. There was a sound chamber too somewhere, and out of it came a clickety-clack like a faraway train.

Sprawled on the bed at the far side of the room lay Captain La Gola, fully dressed even to his boots. He was asleep. A single wire trailed across the floor from the dreamer and divided into plugs in his ears.

I made a noise but he went right on sleeping. I stood there uncertainly, then moved across to a chair. I knew it disturbed some persons to be wakened suddenly while under the effects of a dreamer, and I thought I’d wait a few moments and then, if he didn’t awake, leave and come back later.

Now fleeting images took form in sepia on the tilted disc, to be followed by a series of post-card-like views of places I had never seen before. But all was in caricature with exaggerated detail and blurred background. After a while it came to me. The scenes must be the visual reproduction of the Captain’s dream while he slept. Never before had I seen a dreamer with a sight attachment!

The whirligig changes continued, then held on what seemed to be the interior of a train. At the same time the clickety clack from the sound chamber grew louder. A group of officers in the uniform of Solera’s DEP Guards swam into view as they sat about a table in a train coach. Briefly the features of one officer after another appeared in close-up on the disc.

Then the scream of a train whistle sounded. It was repeated again and again. Wheels screeched, steel ground against steel as the brakes were applied. An instant later there was a muffled crash, the sound of breaking glass and agonized cries. The last scene on the disc became immobile.

Across the room Captain La Gola sat up on the bed, blinking his eyes. There was a little smile of satisfaction on his lips as he removed the wire-connected plugs from his ears. Seeing me, he nodded and got to his feet, buttoning his tunic.

“You said something about more letters…” I said.

“Yes…” He strode across the room, looked out the window. “Yes…” Then he began to dictate: “Don Carlos Proporty Riaz, Casa Rcpublica, Ventriago. Senor: The Government will require a thousand head of prime beef cattle by the first of the month. You will see that shipment is made to Porto Vargas without delay. Failure to meet these demands will result in your wife’s and daughter’s immediate transportation to the retention camp at Los Tobellos.”

“And the signature…?” I said as he finished talking.

He smiled again. “Juan La Gola, 132.”

Yes, Elsie, he said one-thirty-two.

Talk has died down now and I guess we all can breathe a little easier. But while it lasted the confusion over the wreck of the Sonora Express had the hotel in an uproar. The death of five of its most important officers, to say nothing of the many lesser fry, was hard for the Government to take. Confidential Police were all over the place, asking questions, checking alibis, which was to be expected, I suppose, since the wreck occurred only 48 kilometers—30 miles—from here.

They even questioned me, which was absurd, for what would I know about a train wreck; unless I told them about what I had seen on the dreamer in Captain La Gola’s room. But that was three days before the wreck; and besides a dream is only a dream. If Captain La Gola wants to report the matter, I figure he can do it himself.

I had to do an extra stint on the switchboard last night. Consuela, the night girl went home ill. Before she left she said, “If Captain La Gola should make any middle-distance calls, put him through to operator 5 on C circuit.”

I didn’t know what she meant by middle-distance calls, and C circuit is an unconnected part of the switchboard with no outside lines at all.

But a moment after she had gone I examined the board and I saw that C circuit did have a new plug and a new outlet, and there was sawdust on the floor where installation workmen had left traces of their work. I thought it queer that Mr. Alverez, the manager, had not informed me of changes in the board, but Mr. Alverez is always so busy I decided he must have forgotten about it.

Just at midnight Captain La Gola’s line lit up and I plugged him in. “Consuela?”

“No,” I said. “This is Jennie. Consuela is sick.”

There was a moment of silence. “Look, Jennie, as a representative of the government I found it necessary to have certain additions made to your switchboard. Can I rely on you to say nothing about it to anybody?”

“Of course,” I said. I was still disturbed by that letter he had dictated in his room; but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed a routine harmless official threat. Of course I really know nothing about governmental procedures of this kind.

“Good,” Captain La Gola said. “Now put me through on the new circuit.”

I called Operator 5, as Consuela had told me, and she answered, and then a lot of queer things began to happen.

“Operator 5, this is Antenida 756-28. Have you an open line?”

“Go ahead, please.”

I switched in the captain. “Okay, sir.”

Immediately a Donald Duck chatter began, which meant the captain had switched in a scrambler at his end. The voice of Operator 5 came on again.

“I am taking your call, Antenida 756-28. Interspace distance, please relay.” An amplifying hum sounded, followed by a burst of static. Then a far-off voice spoke,

“This is Cliedes 4. We are relaying.”

Another burst of static. “Rentarion-south. We are relaying. To Janison Sphere. We have a polerated call for you from Antenida 756-28.”

“This is Janison Sphere. Go ahead.”

The Donald Duck began to chatter again, and a scrambler now came in at the other end. I sat there, listening to the meaningless high cycle. But presently it ended and the light above Captain La Gola’s plug winked off.

Well, I asked myself, what was that all about? I was still thinking about it when I went off duty.

After that I began to do more and more work for the captain. One day he dictated twelve letters. I didn’t like the tone of those letters and I didn’t like him. He was all spit and polish. He wore a plaited holster at his waist and in it was one of those new logmetic revolvers. He knew how to use the weapon too. I was on the veranda one morning when he took up a position at the far end and calmly drew and fired at one of the hanging medallions that ornament the sun blinds. There was no sound; only an almost imperceptible tracer of lavender and the medallion flew into a hundred pieces.

“Progress,” he said to me with a little smile. “Even in San Carlo the science of defense has come a long way.”

Well, you know me, Elsie. Curiosity may have killed the cat but it’s always been a part of my makeup. I got to thinking about Captain La Gola’s dreamer and how he’d jumped his NIN number backward before the wreck of the Sonora Express and the death of those five officers and I decided I wanted another look. So I waited until the captain had gone into town and then I took the key and let myself into his room. The first thing I looked at was the drawer of his desk and there I hit the jackpot right away There was a book in that drawer, a military manual, and between its pages was a folded-up typewritten list and that list contained the names of men prominent in San Carlo governmental and military affairs—I had read a lot of them in the newspaper from time to time—and after each name there was a number through 136 and a line had been drawn through the last names. Other names were marked, some with a check, some with a star, some with a question mark.

I put the list back in the book and the book back in the drawer and turned to the dreamer which still stood on the table in the center of the room. The dials on one of the panels looked about the same as those on my little secondhand machine back in Iowa, but the calibrations were not in English or Spanish or in any language I knew. The disc in which I had seen the visual reproduction of Captain La Gola’s dream still showed that last frozen scene of the train interior from that dream.

I turned to the stacked pile of boards from the dismantled packing case which still stood along one wall of the room. Stenciled on one of the boards was apparently a return address:

Janison Production Assembly

Janison Sphere—Terberon Galaxy

Teleport Station Number 5

At that moment I heard steps in the outer corridor. I knew if I were caught I’d have plenty of trouble explaining my presence. I cased open the connecting door to the adjoining room, slipped in and waited until I heard the adjacent hall door open. Then I went out into the corridor and made my way back to the lift. I hadn’t been seen but I had seen things that disturbed me.

That night Captain La Gola again asked to be connected to the new circuit and again the call went through with surprising speed and facility. He had his scrambler on but I couldn’t see that he needed it, so loud was the static amplification drone. The call was over almost before it began and the only thing I could understand was a voice that came on just before ring-off. It was a cold brittle voice, and it said, “It is decided then. The twelfth, according to your calendar.”

Naturally, Elsie, I didn’t say anything about those calls, but when Mr. Alverez, the manager, came into the office, I spoke to him about the switchboard. He seemed nervous and anxious to avoid the subject. He said,

“Yes, I know. Just keep on with your work as before. And if you want to, you can take the morning off tomorrow and go to the fiesta in San Medro. The bus leaves at nine a.m.”

Which I thought was pretty nice of him, especially since I’ve been here only two months. On the bus I thought for a moment I saw Captain La Gola sitting alone just in back of the driver. But it must have been someone else for this man was in mufti and he neither looked around nor spoke to anyone during the entire trip.

San Medro is a delightful town with a lovely old church at one end of the single crooked street and the market place at the other. The fiesta, or rather fair, was charming. I bought a tacinta neck scarf and one of those spangled oncero hats, and I drank so much chocolate I thought I would get sick.

There’s an observatory at San Medro and according to the postcards in the shops it has a scope with a mirror twenty feet in diameter. I thought it would be interesting to see even in daytime when observation was of course impossible. So I walked up the long cedar-lined trail and climbed about twenty flights of steps, but I might as well have stayed at the fair. The front of the observatory and the walk that encircled it bristled with soldiers, all armed to the teeth, and every few yards machine guns had been set up, covering the road below. There was absolutely no admittance. In back of the observatory a kind of shelf had been hacked out of the hillside and a big wooden wall had been erected as if to hide something from the people of the town.

There was a large door in the side of this wall, and it opened while I stood there arguing with the guards. I had only a fleeting glimpse of what was inside but I did see a massive steel framework with criss-cross braces. The area around the block house—I took it for a block house—swarmed with federal troops. And when I went back to the bus stop more soldiers had set up large camp tables and were questioning all civilians who were made to queue up and file by them.

“Somebody declare war?” I said to one of the uniformed men. He didn’t smile and I didn’t realize at the time how near the truth I was.

The bus ride back to Rodosa was restful and after my climb to the observatory I was content to sit in the sloping seat and doze, occasionally opening my eyes to watch the rocky scenery slide by. We were five miles out of San Medro when the explosion sounded behind us, a muffled thump as if a great container of water had fallen from a height. An instant later the shock wave hit; a window in the bus shattered, and the road in front seemed to stagger momentarily.

But I really didn’t know what had happened for two days. It took that long for the garbled story to straighten itself out and by that time the significance of it had tapered off somewhat. It was still mighty big news. A Coronado interception missile had blown up in its cradle just outside San Medro. More than thirty officers and men had been killed. Rodosa was in an uproar. Concern of the people was not only over the explosion but for the reason behind the presence of the missile. Why had it been brought there to this little town far up in the mountains? Was the exploding of it an act of sabotage? If so, what persons were responsible?

The confusion lasted a week. Gradually things began to return to normalcy. Rumors passed on and the wild talk subsided.

And then like an anti-climax President Solera marched in with his entourage and took over the entire twelfth floor. The switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree as the occupants of the rooms made outside calls or demanded room-service.

To make matters worse, Consuela was taken sick again and I had to do four hours of the night trick. At a quarter to twelve the outside line on the new C circuit suddenly lit. I plugged in.

“Antenida 756-28.”

“I have a call for Captain Juan La Gola.”

“Just a minute, please.”

The captain did not answer; and then I caught sight of him, striding across the lobby. He took the call at one of the house phones and after he had talked for a moment he seemed to become greatly excited. When he hung up he stood there for several minutes, drumming his fingers on the counter.

Then he came up to me. He became confidential in a way I knew he wouldn’t dream of had he not been so disturbed.

“Jennie,” he said, “how long have you lived in San Carlo?”

“A little more than two months,” I replied.

“You come from the United States, yes?”

“From Iowa.”

“And how do you like San Carlo? Specifically, how do you like El Presidente Solera?”

“Like him?” I said uncertainly. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“He’s a dictator, Jennie. Do you like dictators?”

“Look,” I said with some annoyance, “I just run the switchboard. Local politics are a little out of my field.”

He nodded and lit a cigarette, expelling the smoke through his nostrils. “You wouldn’t tolerate dictators in your country,” he said. “Why should we here?”

I said nothing. He went on:

“When the machinery of a government becomes decrepit, it is time for a change. That change can bring wonderful results when it comes from far out and its operators arc far more advanced than we, even if they are alien.”

“What do you mean, alien?” I said.

He shrugged and smiled cryptically.

“I’m expecting a…friend…a Mr. Smith. Will you tell the room clerk to see that he gets the finest accommodations possible?”

Next day the Captain dictated two letters and he signed them with the number 87.

If possible the man became more disagreeable. He strutted about the lobby, his boots polished, his tunic buttoned to the throat. He gave orders and he signed the endless flow of papers that were brought to him.

I couldn’t help thinking about that three-panel dreamer in La Gola’s room. Was it possible, I wondered, for such a machine to superinduce dreams of the future? And were those dreams merely prophetic or—and I know this sounds foolish, Elsie—or did they cause those events visualized on the disc actually to happen?

These questions gnawed away at me and finally I decided to have another look at the captain’s room but the door had been fitted with a new lock and I couldn’t open it. It was perhaps just as well for I had a feeling I was being watched. And next day when I was retrieving a fallen pencil I had occasion to view the back under side of the switchboard. There was a small box, the size of a cigar box, mounted there. Opening the lid, I saw a small compact tape recorder.

It soon became apparent that President Solera and his party were not here for a hunting vacation. Oh, several of his aides went out with guns and came back with tropicora quail but they were lesser-fry sycophants whose movements meant little. Every few hours some official arrived at the hotel and demanded to see El Presidente. First came the civilian VIP’s, next the military men, bristling with gold braid and self-importance; and finally more civilians—scientists, judging from their talk and far-away looks. Everything was hush-hush; little groups stood about the lobby, talking in low tones. The switchboard was alive with calls, but almost every conversation was made meaningless with a scrambler.

They even took over the hotel’s patio. Four big telescopes were mounted on tripods there and in one afternoon all the beautiful bougainvillea was trampled on. I went into town on my day off and found the same confusion in Rodosa. No one would answer questions. Ask, and you received the same answer: “Quien sabe, Senorita?”

There were rumors, of course, and these multiplied as peasants began to filter in, uncertain and bewildered. One family told of seeing “a great white shadow” skimming over the trees, hovering over the ground in the vicinity of Balerano, twenty miles north. An old man reported seeing a huge cigar-shaped thing high up from which smaller wingless objects emerged to descend with great rapidity.

About this time Mr. Smith, Captain La Gola’s friend, arrived. He came in the hotel alone, without luggage, and there was something odd about the way he walked across the lobby to the desk. He moved with a kind of jerkiness as if his leg muscles were stiff and not used to action. His clothes were ill-fitting, and I got the impression he disliked wearing them, although they were ordinary civilian clothes. His voice was grating and parrot-like.

“My name is Smith,” he said to the room clerk. “I believe a reservation has been made for me.”

In compliance with Captain La Gola’s wishes, he was assigned to the executive suite on the fifth floor.

Well, I’m not exactly a fool and I can put two and two together and make four. During the night trick I sat there before the silent switchboard with the big lobby deserted and quiet as a tomb, and the more I thought about all the things that had happened since I had come to San Carlo and Rodosa, the more I seemed to see a pattern take form with Captain La Gola at one end and, curiously, Mr. Smith at the other.

I thought of the wreck of the Sonora Express and the destruction of the interception missile and the closing-off of the observatory at San Medro, all the preparations—troops and guns, and scopes in the patio—and the tape recorder on the switchboard and I thought of President Solera and the wild stories told by the peasants who had come down from the north.

At one a.m. I was having my lonely coffee break when the whine of the descending lift broke the silence. The lift door opened and President Solera stepped out. I didn’t know him at first. He wore dark glasses and the collar of his coat was turned up hiding the lower part of his face.

He came straight up to the switchboard. “Is there a through bus to Porto Vargas tonight?”

I did a double take. El Presidente on a bus?

“There’s one in half an hour,” I said, “but it doesn’t stop here at the hotel. You have to pick it up in Rodosa.”

He stood there in hesitation. Then: “If anyone asks, you haven’t seen me, understand.” Before I could refuse, he had thrust a bill across the counter and was striding across the lobby to the door.

He had but gone out when the second lift came down and Captain La Gola emerged. He lit a cigarette, strolled to the door and went out onto the veranda. In the mirror above the switchboard, my only unobstructed line of vision, I watched him move idly toward the steps, stop and lean against a post.

Beyond the veranda I could see the gaunt figure of President Solera as he strode across the brilliantly-lit plaissance.

For a full minute Captain La Gola continued to stand there, smoking. Then he moved sideways out of range of my mirror. An instant later a scream rose to my lips. A thin tracer of lavender had darted across the open space, straight toward President Solera. In mid-stride the man halted while a shudder ran through his frame. His head jerked back; his shoulders twisted; then he pitched forward like a string-cut puppet and lay still.

Well, you know well enough how the assassination threw all San Carlo in a state of shock. I suppose there is no need to describe to you the reactions here at the hotel. The hours that followed were hours I’d like to forget, a frenetic mixture of confusion, gloom and chaos. There were some the murder cast into the depths of despair. There were others who were openly elated at the removal of what they called an iron-bound dictatorship.

As for me, I was in a nerve-wracked dilemma, so shaken I could hardly operate the switchboard. For while I hadn’t seen the source of that fatal shot, I was sure it had come from Captain La Gola. Yet what value would be placed on the testimony of a telephone girl whose only means of observation had been by way of a six-inch mirror? Still I had to tell someone.

I told Mr. Alverez. He said, “The Investigators Federale will be here tomorrow. I advise you to wait and speak to them.”

Meanwhile neither Captain La Gola nor his friend were to be seen. Until evening. Then Mr. Smith came to the desk and informed the room clerk he was checking out. But before he left he dictated a letter. My pencil froze as he addressed it to Captain La Gola. I remember every word:

We thank you for your application for our investigation of your primary (Mokart Scale: 246) culture in your secondary (Class: C-X-l) world. While we found many things which would indicate sociological and technological advancement, certain representative primordial characteristics make inclusion into the Galactic Federation inadvisable at this time: specifically the resort to military ordnance when governmental conversion was suspected to be imminent; and the ruthless homicide of an oligarch simply for the minority dislike of his political policies and the acquisition of his political status. We regret this decision but advise you herewith it is final.

That was the letter, Elsie, and when I had typed it, Mr. Smith affixed his signature and said he would like the letter delivered to Captain La Gola personally. So because it seemed important I took it up myself. The Captain’s face when he opened the door was drawn and fear seemed to have frozen his features. His clothing was rumpled and his hair in disarray, as if he had just awakened from a heavy sleep. He told me to come in, in case there might be a reply, and I stood there while he read the letter. A feeling of loathing for this man was heavy upon me. I wanted to tell him pointblank I all but knew he was guilty of the assassination. I wanted to tell him he was a murderer and that I would so inform the investigators Federale when they arrived tomorrow, even though I was the only witness. I would tell them that President Solera had manifestly feared for his life and was in the act of fleeing the hotel when the shot struck him down. But I had no opportunity to say any of these things.

As Captain La Gola finished reading the letter his face blanched. He lowered the paper slowly, then brought it up and read it again. “He can’t do that!” he cried. “He can’t…” He turned and ran out the door toward the waiting lift.

And then my gaze was drawn farther in the room to the table on which the dreamer stood. There was a motionless scene on the dreamer’s disc, the final scene apparently from Captain La Gola’s recent sleep. I walked over to it.

It was a scene like a three-dimensional photograph. In the foreground was the captain, running toward an indefinite figure that could be only Mr. Smith some hundred yards ahead. At that frozen moment of the visual dream Mr. Smith was in the act of entering a dark cigar-shaped shadow from whose upper midsection a violet flame was just beginning to blossom outward. There was terror in La Gola’s face even as he realized he could not make Mr. Smith aware of his approach. Terror as he realized that in another split second he would be engulfed by those flames.

Well, I guess that’s all, Elsie. I never saw either of them again. I did see a petrified block in a scorched glade a mile north of Rodosa, just off the Highway Nationale. The peasants of the district pointed out its vaguely human shape and compared it to a scriptural character named Lot.