3
The General said, "MacReedy, why are you showing me this? I could be an imposter, a spy."
"With that official limousine?" the model-maker countered. "I doubt it. Besides, Toby vouches for you."
"Risky," said the General.
"Besides," said MacReedy with the suggestion of a smile, "I've seen your picture in Life magazine." He paused, added, "After all, in my humble way I'm a bit of an ordnance nut myself."
"I don't believe you," said the General flatly—"I mean about working these things out through logic and guesses. But however you do it, surely you can appreciate that you're much too dangerous to be walking around loose. Especially since They know about you. I'm afraid I'm going to have to take you back with me."
"Nothing doing," said MacReedy. "I can take care of myself. Besides, this is my home. I like it here."
"You're being close to treasonable," said the General.
"Not I—you are," came the incredible reply. "You, not I, are attempting to deny a citizen his rights under the Constitution."
"Damn it, man!" the General backpedaled quickly. "Can't you understand? Suppose They got hold of you—They'd have you dishing up our innermost secrets to them ahead of time. I don't need to tell you what that could mean in the present world situation."
"You don't, General," said MacReedy. "But I don't think They'd get much out of me—much that was useful, I mean. I can't think clearly under drugs or torture; I'd be more of a menace than a help. I explained that to my visitor before you came. He seemed to believe me."
"Maybe he did," said the baffled General, "but don't bet on his superiors. You've been an Army officer, MacReedy; I can have you called back into service."
"With a permanent medical discharge?" MacReedy countered.
The General sighed. He knew when he was beaten. He said, "You'll have to stand for a guard then—twenty-four hours. We'll keep them out of sight as much as possible." He wished the whole business were rationally explicable to his own superiors. As it was he knew his hands were tied when it came to drastic action.
"I suppose it's necessary," said MacReedy sadly, but not defiantly; "I should never have tried to show off."
"It's too late for that sort of thing," said the General. "I'm going to have to take some of your models with me—it's too late to do much about the new tank, but I'll have to have the rocket-launcher and the A-gun. And I'll want your promise not to indulge in any more such experiments except as I request."
"That I am glad to give you," said MacReedy and there was no doubting the sincerity of his words.
"I'll pay you for them," offered the General.
"Of course," replied the model-maker; "my name isn't MacReedy for nothing."
As he handed over a couple of hundred dollars the General found himself almost liking the man. Damn these screwballs, he thought. He wondered when he was going to wake up and find it hadn't happened. It couldn't be happening, any of it. But the perilously-perfect models, of weapons that were yet to be, felt terribly real to his touch.
He said, "Toby, run upstairs and tell Sergeant Riley to come down here and take some stuff out to the car." And, when the boy was gone, "MacReedy, will you do some work for us?"
"Of course," said the other. "A man gets feeling a bit useless making toy soldiers in times like these."
"The pay won't be much...." the General began.
"I can afford it," said MacReedy with the unexpected generosity of the true Scotsman. "What do you want me to do?"
"They have a new weapon building," said the General. "All we've got are a few spy-photographs—not very good, I'm afraid."
"What sort of weapon?" the model-maker asked.
"That's just it—we don't know," replied the General. "I'm going to send you what we have on it tomorrow; I'm hoping you can give us a line on its purpose." He paused, added grimly, "As it is we don't know how to meet it. We haven't an inkling. It's given the Chief a whole new patch of grey hairs."
"I'll do what I can," said MacReedy. "But don't expect the moon."
"All I want is the nature and purpose of that weapon—if it is a weapon," was the General's reply. Then Toby and Sergeant Riley came clumping down the stairs and the conference was at an end.
Before he left the General gave Toby five dollars. "That's for bringing me here," he told the lad. "You'll be seeing me again."
"Yes, sir," said Toby. He didn't sound at all surprised.
When he got back In the car alone, the general counted the models on the seat beside him—one rocket-launcher, one A-gun. He said, "Riley, how are we fixed for gas?"
"Pretty good, sir," came the reply. "We can make the city okay, sir."
"Fill up before you get there," the General told him. "We're going right on through to Washington tonight."
"But, sir, I haven't notified the motor pool at Governor's Island," the Sergeant protested.
"Damn the motor pool!" the General exploded. "I'll take care of them. Now get going; we've got a long drive ahead."
The big car gathered speed through the thickening night snow.
The General slept most of the way, after he and the Sergeant stopped for dinner at a Howard Johnson restaurant on Route One, just north of New Brunswick. After a shower, a change into uniform and breakfast, he was in sound operating shape when he reached his office at the Pentagon the next morning.
He arranged for a round-the-clock guard of Angus MacReedy's house, ordered investigation of the model-maker's record, had a copy of the complete file on the possible enemy weapon forwarded to Long Island by special messenger. Then he summoned a special meeting of top-echelon Ordnance brass and produced the models of the XT-101, the self-reloading rocket launcher and the improved A-gun.
If such a Broadway-Hollywood term as sensational could be used in any connection with a Pentagon conference, the General's meeting with his colleagues might have qualified for it. Experts were quick to understand the practicability of the models, quick to recast their plans accordingly.
Within the week, he was summoned before the Combined Chiefs and commended by that body for his clear-sightedness in cutting Gordian knots of the most baffling order. There was talk of a third star and appointment as Chief of Ordnance once the somewhat-doddering incumbent was retired, come June. He was a sort of brown-haired white-haired boy. He was interviewed by representatives of three national newsweeklies.
Though he wore his new honors gracefully, actually the General was thoroughly uncomfortable. He was far more concerned with the safety of the country than with his own advancement; and his ego was much too solidly-based to permit him enjoyment of honors that were not rightfully his.
The worst of it was that he couldn't explain. If he told his superiors that his "inspirations" came from the intuitive head of a toy-soldier maker on Long Island who even denied his intuition in the name of logic—not only would his own career be permanently damaged, but the value of MacReedy's models would be suspected. So much so that they might be disregarded entirely—thus retying the Gordian knots that were stymying the armament program.
MacReedy's file was laid on his desk one morning by a plump WAC secretary. It was exactly as the model-maker had stated: he was American-born, only child of a Scottish engineer and a German-American woman from Wisconsin. He held an engineering degree from a small polytechnical institute in upstate New York.
His war-record was exemplary. At the time of his wound in Central France, MacReedy had been a captain in the Combat Engineers, wearer of a silver star won at Anzio. There was a complete medical-report on the wound and treatment, whose technical jargon was too much for the General. All he could gather was that it was a head-wound and brain injury, which had rendered the model-maker unfit for Army duty.
He took the report to his opposite number in the Medical Corps, a man whose abilities in brain-surgery were mentioned in hushed voices at Johns Hopkins. Over a highball he told the whole story for the first time, hoping it wouldn't be received with hoots.
It wasn't. The white-haired surgeon looked long and meditatively at his drink. Then he said, "Kermit, I can't begin to account for it; I have muddled around in the human brain enough to know that what we like to call our scientific knowledge is at best empirical. You say this man had his ability before he was wounded?"
"He built a Sherman tank two years before we did," said the General. "Yet he claims the whole process is purely logical."
"Logic!" exclaimed the brain-man with a scorn that matched the General's own on the subject. "Logic is hindsight, Kermit. When our brains, by some intuitive process of progressive thought, reach a desired point, our egos reach backward to give the process a sort of order we call logic. Actually we seldom know how we get where we do; but we're too damned conceited to admit it.
"What in hell do we know about the brain?" he went on. "I knew a perfectly healthy young girl once, who was killed when she was standing beside her horse—the horse sneezed, jerked his head up, and jolted the side of her jaw. Yet back in seventeen eighty-one, when Arnold ordered the massacre at Fort Griswold, one old rebel was bayonetted, had his skull smashed open so that his brains were oozing out on the ground. He recovered and lived for forty years afterward, sane as you please. And they didn't have fellows like me, not then. If they had, he'd probably have died on the operating table."
"In other words you don't know," said the General.
"I don't know, Kermit," replied the other. "Another drink?"
The next day the international situation showed signs of serious deterioration, and the General took a plane to New York. All the way up he thought of something else the Surgeon-General had said to him—"One thing I have learned, it isn't exactly in my province, but I've run into it enough to make an observation.
"Whenever I've met anyone with what might be called a special gift—psychic or what have you—I've found them scared to death of it. Damned if I know why...."
He ruminated a little before continuing. "You'd think they'd be delighted—but they aren't. They either run to religion, and try to drown it in ritual—or they try to explain it away by some rationalization. Like your friend."
"Then you're willing to accept the fact he has a supernatural gift?" the General asked.
The brain-man shrugged and said, "Supernatural—supernormal—he's got something, if what you tell me is true. Can you think of a better 'ole?"