Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (11 page)

I could see that it was all being fenced in, that someone was taking extraordinary pains to ensure that no one could get at or even see from a distance the remains of MicroMagnetics. For some reason it was all going to be a secret. But I did not try to think it through. It felt to me then rather that I was being shut out. The sight of all those people purposively bustling about on the other side of the fence filled me with longing for other human beings. I needed their help. I was mortally ill, probably beyond help — I hardly dared hope that there might be some chance of survival — but I desperately wanted them to come rescue me. I needed their comfort. I was dying.

“Help!” I cried. My voice was thin with fear and strangely closed in. “Over here! Help!”

Nothing. No one turned. No one had heard. No one would come. Soon the last section of fabric would be hung over the fence and I wouldn’t even be able to see them. Why were they all way over in that field building roads and fences anyway? Why weren’t they here, where there was a genuine disaster, a tragedy, a need, instead of pitching their bloody boy scout camp?

Of course they couldn’t hear me. I had to be rational. I was a hundred yards away; my shout was feeble; if they heard anything it would be the howling of that damned cat. Where was that cat? Probably in the next room. With a terrified start I remembered that I was inside a closed building. No one would ever hear me. Or see me. They would never know I was here. Radiation. They must be sealing off the area because of radiation. For months. Years.

I would have to get to them for help. If I could manage it. I was trembling and I felt hopelessly debilitated. I was probably too weak with radiation poisoning to walk that far. Hopeless. Be calm. I would have to try. Calm. I had to urinate first. The pressure on my bladder was unbearable. Once I had urinated, I could try to get out of the building and make my way to human help.

I ran my hands along the edge of the desk to determine the axis of the building, and then, keeping one hand on the desk for balance, I set out across the void, with little shuffling steps, for the bathroom. When I had inched forward several feet, I had to let go of the desk. Horrible. Resist the impulse to drop down on all fours again. Nothing to see for thirty yards. I held my hands out in front of me like someone walking through a dark house and forced myself to watch the nearest rim, which was on my left. That seemed to help my equilibrium a little. I felt as if I were on a tightrope: the more I thought about what I was doing, the more difficult the process of walking became. It came as a startling relief when, after a few more sickening steps, my invisible hands encountered the invisible wall. The cat — I was certain now that it was in the next room — intensified its howling. With more confidence now, I felt my way along the wall until I came to the bathroom door.

Searching with my right hand, I located the doorknob, twisted it, and swung the door open into the bathroom. Keeping hold of the doorknob, I took several steps into the room and groped with my outstretched left hand until I located the washbasin. Then, hanging on to the washbasin with one hand, I reached out and found the toilet. It was difficult to contain myself. Twenty hours. I pulled off my jacket, letting it fall to the floor, yanked my suspenders over my shoulders, pulled open my trousers and undershorts, frantically pushed them down my legs as I twisted around — there was no question of accomplishing this from a standing position — and lowered myself onto the toilet seat. With an exquisite sensation of relief, I released my bladder. Listening to the extraordinary sound of the invisible stream of urine cascading into the invisible toilet bowl, I felt much, much better.

When I was done, I twisted around, found the handle, and pushed it down. The toilet exploded with the familiar flushing sound, but its occurrence in thin air was so eerily ridiculous that I emitted something between a laugh and a sob. All this noise stirred the cat up to a new frenzy of howling. However horrible my situation was, I could see that it was at the same time ludicrous. Really, I was feeling very much better.

I stood up — this time without bothering to hold on to anything — and pulled up my trousers. Remembering the existence of a bottle of aspirin from the day before, I found the door of the medicine cabinet, swung it open, and began poking my right hand along the shelves. I encountered many small objects, some identifiable (shaving brush, tube of toothpaste, toothbrush) and some not. A number of them were sent clattering noisily into the washbasin or onto the floor through blind clumsiness. But I found the aspirin bottle. Or at least I hoped it was the aspirin bottle: it had the right shape. But even assuming it was aspirin, would it be of any help in my oddly altered circumstances? Worth a try. I had a very bad headache. Bad pain of various kinds. The childproof bottle top gave me some trouble, but by the time a little wave of rage had swept over me, I had defeated it. I tilted some tablets into my left palm, carefully counted off three with my right forefinger, and pushed them into my mouth. I always take three, because the directions say to take one or two.

I turned on the cold water and, bending over and pressing my mouth to the tap, washed down the pills. I went on drinking greedily. The water was wonderful. I was, I realized, horribly thirsty. But after about a dozen swallows, the tap ran dry. Why would that happen if the building was intact? Because the water line would have been cut off at the perimeter where everything was incinerated. But there would be a hot water tank. I turned the hot water tap and tepid water came streaming out. I used it to brush my teeth and splash water on my face, and then I drank again, for a long time. I definitely felt better. I even thought about attempting to shave but rejected the idea as unrealistic.

I would go now and get help. But I wanted my jacket, and to my annoyance I had to get down on all fours again and search for it on the floor. I would have to remember not to set anything down casually that I would be wanting again.

When I stood up again, I saw a black sedan moving slowly out of the parking lot and down the access road, away from me. There had been people here! And now they were leaving again! The fencing was now completely covered, and when the car had passed through the only remaining opening and the gate had swung shut behind it, the entire area was completely closed off. Except for the two vans left behind in the parking lot, everything within the fencing had been withdrawn, and everything outside it was screened off from view. There was no movement, no indication of humanity anywhere. Watching the car disappear, I was overcome with desolation, like a man overboard, hopelessly watching a ship sail away toward the horizon.

Then, mysteriously, first one van and then the other began moving behind the shrubbery, turning out of the parking lot and proceeding ever so slowly across the lawn parallel to the front of the building. Both vans were dark grey and had inscrutable, tinted windows, so that it was impossible to make out the occupants. The first was the size of a normal delivery van. The second was more than twice as large; from an opening in its roof an elaborate antenna protruded, and from its rear end strands of heavy cable were unrolling onto the ground behind, like a trail deposited behind some enormous snail. The smaller van halted almost exactly opposite me and thirty yards back from the rim. The second van halted behind it. For several long minutes there was no movement. The effect was somehow sinister, and, rather than feeling jubilant at not having been abandoned after all, I stood there motionless, watching with uneasy fascination.

The front door of the smaller van opened. A muscular black-skinned man with an unsmiling, expressionless face climbed out of the driver’s seat and walked back to the other van with an erect military gait. His garish red Hawaiian shirt only heightened the impression that he customarily wore a uniform. A large, almost fat man climbed out of the bigger van and began to talk to him. The second man, too, although he wore elaborately tooled leather boots and a fancy western shirt with little pearl buttons glistening across the front, nevertheless contrived to look like a soldier or a policeman. As he talked, he repeatedly broke into hearty laughter, but his small, squinting eyes remained wary. The black man stood there silent, listening impassively.

After several minutes a third man appeared from around the other side of the van. He was older than the others, in his mid-forties, and wore a dark grey business suit which, having been made for no one in particular, hung loosely over his frame. His hair was cropped extremely short, almost shaved, and the scalp, which despite his athletic bearing was unwholesomely pallid, creased into folds, making his head appear repellently naked. He walked with a precise, almost rigid gait to a door in the middle of the van and stopped. The door abruptly swung open, revealing a short Hispanic man, who said several words and then disappeared back inside, leaving the door open.

The man in the business suit then walked over to where the black man and the cowboy stood, uttered several sentences to which they listened attentively, and then turned away from them. He seemed to be in command: the moment he finished speaking, the other two walked briskly to the back of the smaller van. He remained where he was, ignoring the others once he had set them in motion and staring coldly straight ahead— directly at me, I thought. No, his eyes were moving carefully over the whole site. I still did not know whether he could see the building or whether it was as invisible to him as to me. But I would find out soon, when they rescued me. I would find out exactly what had happened to me. They could not yet know that there was a human being alive here. I should let them know.

“Help!” I called out. No one turned.

The black man and the cowboy had pulled open the back door of the smaller van and were helping a man encased in a large, bulky white suit climb laboriously out. It was the sort of suit that deep-sea divers used to wear. Or astronauts. Or, it struck me unpleasantly, the sort of suit that you see on the evening news when a damaged nuclear reactor is being inspected. It was just as I had feared: there was radioactivity. I was dying, and as that thought filled my mind, I felt myself becoming weaker.

“Over here!” I cried. No sign that anyone had heard. Too many walls in the way. It was pointless to use my remaining strength to shout. In a moment the man in the protective suit would be in the building. I lowered the toilet cover and sat down on it feebly to await my rescue.

My prospective rescuer was unused to his suit. He was moving his arms experimentally and taking small, careful steps forward and backward. At that distance I could see nothing of his face behind his tinted face mask. In one hand he held a sort of metal wand several feet long that was connected by a cable to the bulky midriff of his suit. He waved it experimentally across the ground. It must be a Geiger counter or whatever they use to measure radioactivity. The Hispanic man had appeared again at the door of the larger van, and the other three men were each putting on the sort of earphone and microphone device that television newsmen and football coaches wear. Everyone became very still. They were evidently testing the equipment. Then the man in the business suit nodded, and the astronaut set out.

He proceeded ponderously across the lawn, directly towards me, one slow, deliberate step after another, as if he were on the surface of the moon, sweeping his Geiger counter back and forth in front of his path like some space-age vacuum cleaner.

I awaited his arrival with a mixture of eagerness and despair. I wanted to be rescued. But what difference did it make? I was surely dying. On the other hand, my situation was so extraordinary that it was impossible to be sure of anything, and whatever hope there was would be offered by these people. I wished the man would hurry.

The other three men were clustered on the lawn, unfurling a large roll of papers. They would point at the papers, then look up and point toward me and then point at the papers again. Building plans. They had a set of building plans, and they were going to use them to direct the man in the white suit through the building by radio. Once he was inside the building, where he could hear me, I would shout again.

He reached the edge of the charred band around the rim. He stopped and turned to face the three men on the lawn behind. One of them — the fat one — left the others and disappeared into the van. Several minutes later he reappeared. Why was this taking so long? Then the astronaut nodded awkwardly, like a robot, lifted his arm slightly in a sort of rudimentary salute, and proceeded away from me, following the boundary of the charred band. He waved his Geiger counter over the ashes as he went.

“In here!” I shouted. Why was he going away from me? “Help!”

He continued along the rim. When he had moved a little more than twenty yards away from the point on the circumference nearest me, he stopped and turned toward the others again. A discussion seemed to be taking place. The man in the business suit had a pencil in his hand, with which he was making marks on the plans. Something had been decided upon. The astronaut turned back to face the crater and then, cautiously, he stepped into the charred band and up to the edge. He looked down into the crater for a few moments. He swung the detector slowly out over the edge.

I now knew that everything was invisible to them too, and I was so intent on witnessing the imminent, extraordinary moment of discovery that I nearly forgot my own situation.

The man lowered the detector carefully until the end of it hit the invisible surface of the ground. He pushed on it a little. He tapped all around in a little circle. He pushed again, leaning his weight onto it. He paused and half turned toward the others. They were absolutely still. He turned back to face the edge again.

Then, like a boy testing thin ice, he tentatively swung one foot out over the edge and lowered it onto the invisible surface. He pushed down several times as if expecting to plunge through, and then, with the other foot still poised in the air over visible ground, he shifted his entire weight onto the first foot. Balanced incongruously on one foot in midair, he looked like an acrobat in a clown suit performing an improbably difficult but ultimately silly trick. With his head bent as far forward as his suit would permit, he watched himself carefully bring the second foot down. He paused again, staring down at his own feet. Then, to give the ice a final test, he made a sort of awkward jumping movement, which, because of the suit, did not come to much. Still gazing down intently, he took several more steps out over the crater and stopped. He slowly turned and faced the men on the lawn.