Gift From The Stars (4 page)

Adrian inspected the books, and Mrs. Farmstead looked through the files in the cabinet, starting with the bottom drawer. “Simpson was right,” Adrian whispered. “There’s only two books:
The Aliens Are Here
and
UFOs and What They Mean
. No
Gift from the Stars
.”

“Means nothing,” she said. “No Winterbotham file either, but then there wouldn’t be, would there?” She riffled through the files in the other drawers. “It would take days to go through all these. I’ve always wondered about movies, how they can come up with the incriminating file in a few minutes.”

“Wouldn’t there have to be tax records?” Adrian asked.

“Ah!” she said and turned to look for files marked by the year. She chose the one for six years earlier. “Ah-ha!” she said. “Publishing costs for
Gift from the Stars
, and payment of one hundred dollars to someone named—”

“Peter Cavendish,” a voice said from the door.

They jerked and turned. A small man in a red-and-black plaid robe over blue pajamas stood in the doorway with a large shotgun in his hand. It was pointed at Mrs. Farmstead.

The garage was redolent with the electric scent of tension, but Mrs. Farmstead stared coolly. “You’re very quick to reveal information you’ve been asked to forget!”

The barrel of the shotgun began to droop. “What do you mean?” the stranger asked.

“Maybe you’d also tell us where we could find Peter Cavendish?” Mrs. Farmstead continued.

The shotgun barrel lifted again. “Why would you ask that?”

“The people we work for would like to know how much you’d reveal to strangers.”

“You mean you work for—?”

“What do you think? You know what you were told: To turn over all copies of the book and wipe out all evidence of its existence. Well, we’ve discovered that at least one copy of the book has survived, and people are making inquiries. And now we find, Mr. Joel Simpson, that a record of the author survives in your file.”

The shotgun pointed to the stained floor. “I didn’t know,” Simpson said. He was thin and nervous. “I wish you people would make up your minds—the IRS says I gotta keep the information, you say I gotta get rid of it. What’s a guy to do?”

“Bull!” Adrian said, entering the conversation for the first time. “The IRS doesn’t care anymore. You just forgot.”

“Just like you’re going to forget Peter Cavendish,” Mrs. Farmstead said. “And just to prove it you’re going to tell us where he is.”

Simpson’s eyes got suspicious. “If you’re one of them, you know where he is.”

“Of course we know,” Adrian said. “We just want to know if you know, so that when we tell you to forget it, you’ll know what to forget.”

Simpson turned that over in his mind without seeming to unravel it. “He’s in a mental hospital in Topeka, Kansas,” he said.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Mrs. Farmstead said. “Now forget it! Forget Peter Cavendish! And forget you ever saw us!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Simpson said. “You bet. I never want to see any of you again. You’re worse than aliens.”

“What do you know about aliens?” Adrian asked sharply.

“Nothing!” Simpson said. “Nothing at all! I’m sorry I ever heard of them. I’ll burn my books.”

“Too much of a giveaway,” Mrs. Farmstead said. “Keep everything as it was. Just forget the rest!”

“Yes, ma’am—and sir.”

Outside, in the car, Adrian said. “Quick thinking back there.”

“I read a scene like that in a spy novel,” Mrs. Farmstead said. “Ian Fleming, maybe. I’ve read so many I get them mixed up. You were quick on the pick-up.”

“Do you think he’ll notify anyone?”

“Not for a while. Then maybe the shock will wear off and he’ll begin to think about it, maybe wonder why we were sneaking around in the middle of the night, maybe analyze your nonsense about revealing Cavendish’s whereabouts so that he would know what to forget.”

“It was all I could think of at the time,” Adrian said.

“Don’t apologize for anything that works.”

“Maybe he doesn’t have a contact.”

“Not likely,” Mrs. Farmstead said. “They always leave a number to call in case people start making inquiries or start nosing around. Sooner or later he’ll think to check.”

“So sooner rather than later we’d better get out of here,” Adrian said.

When they got back to the bed-and-breakfast, Isabel wasn’t around. She was in her room asleep, they hoped. They messed up their beds to look slept-in, Adrian left money for the night’s stay on the end table in the entry hall along with a note Mrs. Farmstead had written saying “Decided to make an early start for the Canyon. Here’s money for the rooms. Thanks for everything,” and they tiptoed out, easing the door shut behind them.

They headed back to Flagstaff, bypassing the Grand Canyon and the Lowell Observatory once more, before turning east on Highway 40. Mrs. Farmstead dozed in the passenger seat until the sun came up just before they reached Gallup.

“A mental hospital, Adrian?” she said. “I think I was dreaming about mental hospitals and a patient named Cavendish.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too. But it figures, doesn’t it? Where’s a better place to stash Cavendish? Where he can talk all he likes about aliens and messages from outer space and spaceships.”

“We’ve got to figure out a plan of action,” Mrs. Farmstead said, “and how we’re going to protect ourselves.”

By the time they arrived in Albuquerque their plans were complete, and all they had to do was check in the car and catch the first flight to Kansas City. Adrian used their own names again, trying not to glance around the pueblo-style airport to see whether someone was watching. “In movies,” Mrs. Farmstead said, “people always give themselves away by acting as if someone were watching them. Almost as if they expect to be nabbed, and, of course, they are.”

“By now, of course,” Adrian said, “they may have traced the license plate on the rental car and have my name. They could be here in a few hours, maybe, but surely not before we’ve left. I wish we’d thought to make up fake IDs.”

“In novels,” Mrs. Farmstead said, “pursuers never get thrown off the scent. They’ll be waiting for us in Topeka.”

“Life isn’t a novel,” Adrian said. “In a book people get caught because the plot gets more complicated if they’re caught, and if the pursuers were thrown off, that would be the end of a story, wouldn’t it?”

Mrs. Farmstead nodded. “But it helps to anticipate the worst scenario. That way we won’t be surprised.”

“We’ll have our insurance,” Adrian said.

At that moment their flight was called and they passed through the metal detectors and onto the plane, not looking back.

Topeka had three major mental hospitals, the Veterans Administration, the state, and the Menninger Foundation. The first two had developed mostly because of the psychiatrists and reputation accumulating around Will Menninger’s pioneering work. They weren’t far apart, but Adrian thought random inquiries would only tip off pursuers. Maybe he and Mrs. Farmstead could think of a way to narrow the search.

“He probably wouldn’t be a veteran,” Adrian said.

“But a government agency might be able to put him away there,” Mrs. Farmstead said. “Maybe manufacture documents? Pull strings?”

“Possibly,” Adrian conceded. They were sitting in another rented car in a large shopping center, having already spent some time in a computer service center. On this occasion, Mrs. Farmstead had signed for the car in Kansas City, leaving a different trail to slow potential pursuers. “But government red tape might make it nearly impossible to contact a patient, at least in the time we have.”

“Before they catch up with us.”

“Or intercept us. As for the state hospital—I don’t know the rules in this state, but wouldn’t he have to be a resident before he could be admitted?”

“You’d think so,” Mrs. Farmstead said. “That leaves—”

“The Menninger Clinic.” He glanced into the rearview mirror and then back at Mrs. Farmstead. “Do you ever feel like we may be fleeing from phantoms?”

Mrs. Farmstead nodded. “The guilty flee,” she said. “But the worst-case scenario—”

“I’m tired of subterfuge,” Adrian said. “Let’s play it straight.”

Ten minutes found them on the campus of the Menninger Clinic. It was an attractive place, not like a hospital or institution at all, with trees and lawns and garden beds and buildings scattered here and there,
and the breezes and green odors of a park. In the middle of everything was an office building. After five minutes of winding roads, and half an hour of questioning by security guards, they finally reached a reception desk.

“We’re looking for a patient named Peter Cavendish,” Adrian said. “We’ve been told he was hospitalized in Topeka, and we thought he might be here.”

“Are you relatives?” the pleasant young woman asked.

Adrian shook his head. “We came across a fascinating book he wrote, and we thought we’d take the chance we might be able to meet him while we were passing through.”

“A book?” She turned to her computer and clicked a few keys. “Yes, we have a Peter Cavendish, but you need a written request in advance that must be processed by the resident’s treatment team.”

Adrian and Mrs. Farmstead exchanged glances.

“Golly,” Mrs. Farmstead said, “we’re only going to be in Topeka a few hours.”

“It might help Mr. Cavendish to talk to someone who has read his book,” Adrian added.

“And admired it,” Mrs. Farmstead said.

The receptionist hesitated. “Let me call his attending psychiatrist, Dr. Freeman.” She turned to her telephone and soon began talking to someone. She swung back to Adrian and Mrs. Farmstead. “What’s the name of the book?”

Adrian hesitated and said, “
Gift from the Stars
.”

The receptionist gave the title into the telephone and listened while Adrian’s breath caught in his chest. “Okay,” she said, “I’ll get an orderly to take you to the unit.”

The building looked like a two-story brick apartment building. Inside, it was like an attractively laid-out and furnished home. They waited in an off-white “day room” with a cream-colored sofa and brown, tapestry-covered easy chairs, framed landscapes on the wall, and a television set in one corner, while the orderly disappeared down a hallway. He returned in a minute or two with a medium-sized man in a dark shirt and slacks and a cheerful Scandinavian sweater; it was white with red reindeer. The newcomer had his hands in his pockets. He seemed to be middle-aged, perhaps in his fifties, with blond hair and blue eyes and a calm expression. Adrian wouldn’t have given him a second glance on the street unless he had looked closer and noticed the stiff, almost apprehensive set of the man’s shoulders and the way his eyes kept scanning the room but never looked directly at Adrian or Mrs. Farmstead.

“Peter Cavendish?” Adrian said.

The man nodded.

“I’ll be in the next room if you need me,” the orderly said.

Cavendish looked after the orderly until he was clearly out of earshot and said, “Are you from
them
?”

“Them?”

Cavendish’s glance flicked back and forth. “You know.
Them
.”

“No,” Adrian said. “We just came to see you. We read your book,
Gift from the Stars
. We wanted to talk to you about it.”

“
They
don’t want me to talk about it.”

“They’re not here. You can talk to us.”

“How do I know it’s not a trick?”

“Do we look like tricky people?” Mrs. Farmstead said. She leaned forward, her hands spread open as if to show that she was concealing nothing. “I sell books. He designs airplanes.”

“And spaceships,” Adrian said.

Cavendish looked at them for the first time, and his face relaxed, as if he had been wearing a mask and the fasteners had broken. Adrian realized that Cavendish had been holding himself together. Tears appeared on the lower lids of his eyes. “You’ve come to rescue me,” he said.

“The orderly said you could walk away any time,” Adrian said.

“That’s what they tell you,” Cavendish said darkly.

“But we have come to rescue your ideas,” Mrs. Farmstead said. “Could you tell us about the book?”

“It’s all true,” Cavendish said.