Journal of a UFO Investigator (5 page)

I didn't. Still, it was some comfort he'd heard of Rosh Hashanah and seemed to know it falls a few months before everyone else's New Year. “Let's see what we've got,” he said, leaning forward again. “Here's 5723, which looks like this year. And 5722, which is last year. These are the years reckoned from the Creation, aren't they?”

I nodded.

“How quaint. Not to say ridiculous.
Tantum malorum
, et cetera and so forth. That's Latin. I don't suppose you've learned any Latin, have you?”

“Huh? What?”

“Old saying.
Tantum malorum religio suadere potuit—
‘So many evils has religion brought about!' Tribal morality, for instance. Also obscurantism, like thinking the world was created six thousand years ago. Or there's no life anywhere but the skin of this planet. Now I've probably offended you. I can see it by your face. Don't tell me you're religious? Studying to be a rabbi, or something?”

Creep. I suppressed a grimace. “No,” I said, “I'm not at all religious. And about those calendars . . .”

“Yes, yes. That's what you're here for, the calendars. Not to listen to me chatter. Here's 5723, here's 5722. And 5721, which takes us back to September 1960. That's all we have, I'm afraid.”

“That'll be fine.” I scooped up the three calendars. “Why do they keep these in the Rare Book Room anyway?”

“Lord knows,” he said, glancing at them. “The deathless artwork, I suppose. Got your library card with you?”

I gave him my card. He looked at it, looked at me. I thought I saw him nod, and that made me uneasy. He ran the card through a machine and stamped the calendars. “Building use only,” he said, handing them to me. “Give them back at any of the library desks before you leave today. You don't have to come back up here.”

“Got it.”

I flipped through the most recent of the calendars. It advertised a different funeral home from the calendar hanging in my grandmother's kitchen but otherwise seemed pretty much the same. Each month was accompanied by a gaudy Bible illustration. I didn't recognize most of the pictures. I'd loved Bible stories when I was little, but lost interest in them a long time past and mostly forgotten them. September's picture,
JACOB'S DREAM AT BETH-EL,
was of an enormous shining, undulating staircase, its top hidden in distant clouds. Angels in robes climbed their way to and from the endless heights. Below it was printed: “ ‘And he took one of the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it'—Gen. 28:11-12.”

“Hel
lo
-o? You haven't gone off to some other world, have you?”

I looked up from the picture, my skin all goose bumps. “It's just—something I remembered,” I said, trying to explain. But the memory eluded me, and what did I need to explain to this weirdo anyway? I put the calendars in my briefcase and started to go.

“Not so fast. I've got to inspect your briefcase before I let you out. Nothing personal. Standard company policy.”

I hoisted it onto the desk. “Nice briefcase,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“Looks brand-new.”

“It is. Somebody stole the old one.”

“What a pity. Nothing important in it, I hope?”

“Just the manuscript of a book I'm writing.”

“Well. That
is
a pity. You should keep those things at home, in a secure place.”

“It was at home. In a place I thought was secure.”

He shook his head. “Seems like we're not safe in our own homes anymore. Assuming we ever were.” All the while he'd been searching through the briefcase. He pulled out the book I'd carried to Philadelphia with me. “Well, well,
well
,” he said. “Albert K. Bender,
Flying Saucers and the Three Men
. Tell me. How is dear old Al, these days?”

I stared at him while I tried to think of an answer. Of course I had no idea how Albert K. Bender was. I didn't know anyone who might know anyone who knew Bender. For me he was a remote, almost legendary figure, like Jacob and his angels on the shining stairway.

“And
how
are Al's three friends?” the boy went on. “From the planet—Kazik, or whatever its name was? The ones with the dark suits and the dark faces and the bright, bright eyes. Their eyes
shone like flashlights
, didn't he say?”

My mouth hung open. I tried, not very successfully, to force it shut.

“And how about the three
women
in black?” he said. “Only they don't wear black, do they? Tight uniforms, can't remember what color. You remember them, don't you? They're the ones who bring him onto the spaceship. Right before the brain implant. They paralyze him. They strip him naked. They massage every part of his body
without exception
. Italics mine.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “How do you know about all this?”

“
Please
. Think you're the only person in the world who reads books? What I want to know is,
Why
do they all have eyes that shine like flashlights?”

“I—I—”

“Do their eyes just make it easier for Bender to see them? Or do
they
see better with glowing eyes? ‘Why, what glowing eyes you have!' ‘The better to
see-e-e
you with, my dear.' ”

He gave a very effective horror movie laugh. I felt my flesh crawl. This was not a laugh, I thought, that should have emanated from a human throat. “Look,” I said. “I really don't think we need to take Bender's book all that seriously.”

“But we do need to take the three men seriously, don't we? And Harold Dahl's man in black. Remember him?”

Harold Dahl. 1947. Harbor patrolman at Maury Island, off the coast of Washington State. “The
man
in black,” said the boy. “Just one. The other two must have been on missions to other galaxies. He pays Dahl a visit. He tells him he saw something he shouldn't have. Tells him word for word everything he saw. Warns him: if he loves his family, he won't
whisper
about it to anybody.”

“Now, hold on,” I said. “That Maury Island business was a hoax! Wasn't it?”

“Of course it was a hoax. Do you seriously believe a flying disk crashed into Puget Sound? Dropped slag into Dahl's boat? Killed his stupid dog? Do you think
anyone
believes that?”

“Then why are we even talking about it?”

“Because of the
people
. Don't you understand? The
people
involved. Harold Dahl is a man worth knowing. Before Maury Island he was in the dero caves. Fought his way out with a submachine gun. Marvelous story; vintage Harold Dahl. I'd arrange for the two of you to meet, except we lost track of him.”

“Lost track?” How strange that this boy, met by chance, should know the people and things I wanted so badly to know myself.
Was
it chance? I began to feel frightened; I touched my hand to my pocket. The Delta Device was still there. “You lost track of Harold Dahl?”

“Completely vanished. Somewhere in the Southwest, New Mexico, I think. All of a sudden he's gone. Disappeared. So lost even God and the Internal Revenue Service can't find him.”

“Who are you?” I said.

He must have been waiting for me to ask. He reached into his inner jacket pocket and whirled out a business card. “Julian Margulies, of the SSS. And, on alternate Saturday afternoons, of the Philadelphia Free Library.
At
your service.”

I examined the card. A name, a Philadelphia address, and a telephone number crowded together at the bottom. Most of the upper part consisted of a sixty-degree angle, trisected, with an ornate capital
S
in each of its three segments. In each upper corner was a slender, pointed black oval, beginning near the trisected angle and rising outward toward the edges. If the ovals had been vertical, I'd have thought them the slit pupils of a cat's eyes. Horizontal, they'd resemble two flying disks seen from the side. As it was, they gave the impression of being the slanted, almond-shaped, wide-apart eyes of some humanlike but unspeakably strange creature.

Whatever—I didn't want to look at them. Their effect was hypnotic; I wasn't ready to be hypnotized. I forced my eyes down to the bottom of the card, to the name printed there. “What's the
A
stand for?” I said.

He looked baffled. “In your
name
,” I said. “ ‘Julian A. Margulies,' it says here.”

“Oh,
that
A. I'd forgotten. I don't use it very much. But it stands for Arcturus. If you must know.” He looked at me solemnly, then raised his eyebrows a few times, rapidly, comically, as if doing a takeoff on Groucho Marx.

“Julian Arcturus Margulies?”

“That's right. I come from the
sta-a-ars
, don't you know?”

“And this SSS,” I said, looking at the trisected angle. “What does that stand for?”

“Initials of the three men in black. Sigmund, Sandor, and—uh—Sammy. But you have the advantage of me, sir.”

“Huh?” I said. “Oh.” I fished in my wallet for something that might serve as a business card. The best I could find was a blank membership card for The UFO Investigators.

“How cute,” he said. “ ‘The UFO Investigators.' Do I have the honor of addressing Mr. OR9-3781, or Mr. OR8-0496?”

I felt myself turn red. “I'm Danny Shapiro.”

“Danny Shapiro. Of course. It was on your library card. How stupid of me.
Well
, Danny Shapiro, I regret that we meet under these circumstances. With me dressed so informally, that is. I do own a black suit—”

“So do I,” I said untruthfully.

“But I only wear it for funerals. And, of course, for terrorizing UFO investigators who've found out
too much
. I haven't yet got the hang of making my eyes glow like flashlights, however.”

“I've got to go,” I said.

I turned to leave. But then I stopped. “You know that picture you have on your wall,” I said. “The one with the winged horse, or whatever the animal was, and the man riding it. I was looking at it before you came in. It—it fascinated me.”

“The
Miraj-Nameh
illustration? It fascinated you? You don't say. You seemed a
lot
more interested in Joseph and Zuleikha. Mostly Zuleikha.”

I blushed. I looked away. I could not stand to see him do another Groucho Marx imitation with his eyebrows. “Who was Zuleikha anyway?” I asked.

“Potiphar's wife. The lady who was always trying to get Joseph into bed with her. The Bible doesn't say what her name was. That's the Arabs for you. They think they know lots about the Bible that the Bible doesn't say.”

“So that writing is Arabic?”

“Arabic or Persian. You'll have to ask Rochelle about that. If she can read it, it's Arabic. If not, it's Persian. Or maybe Urdu. I don't think Rochelle's ever learned Urdu.”

“I have to ask—who?”

“Rochelle,” he said loudly, as if I were bound to know who Rochelle was if only he pronounced her name distinctly enough. “Oh, that's right. You don't know Rochelle.”

He looked at me closely. Suddenly, for no obvious reason, he broke into a grin. “No,” I said. “I don't know Rochelle.”

“Well, then. You ought to come over for dinner sometime.”

“Dinner?”

“Yes, dinner. Why do you look so suspicious?” He didn't wait for me to answer, to explain I wasn't used to total strangers inviting me to dinner. “At our place. So you can meet Rochelle. Don't worry, you'll like Rochelle. You and she will have a
lot
to talk about.”

“So Rochelle is your sister?”

He seemed to find the question extremely funny. “No, she isn't my sister,” he said, laughing, mostly through his nose. He threw himself back into his chair and laughed some more. “
Not
my sister,” he said again. He pushed a button under his desk; there was a loud click from the turnstile. “The phone number is on my card,” he said. “Give me a call. We'll arrange something.”

“Thanks,” I said. I was about to put the card into my pocket but suddenly dropped it back onto his desk. There was something dangerous about that card—maybe those eyes printed on it, which I hoped sooner or later I'd be able to forget. If I took the card, my life would be changed in some way I could not foresee or undo once it had happened. “Well, see you around.”

“Hey, wait, wait—”

I dashed out. The third-floor elevator was a few steps away from the entrance to the Rare Book Room. I heard him calling me; I had the sense of missing something. I was so eager to be gone I didn't stop to think what. I ran inside the elevator and pressed the button marked “G.” I went down, down,
down
. From the elevator I rushed into the Newspaper Room.

And found no one there.

No Jeff, no Rosa. No shabby middle-aged men at the long brown tables, reading the current newspapers. The fluorescent ceiling lights were on as usual. But the microfilm machines were dark and deserted. Coats, notebooks, pens—all gone. Chairs neatly beneath the tables, newspapers back on their racks. There was no librarian.

My first thought was my watch had stopped. I hadn't been in sight of a window for hours. Somehow it had gotten to be past five; the library had closed. Outside the building it was dark and cold. The last bus to Kellerfield had left without me.