Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (54 page)

“It’s really quite extraordinary.” He had the cigarette lighter in his hand again and was tapping it against the top of the desk. His hand was still trembling. “Incredible. It’s difficult even to take in the possibilities…” Although he made a point of maintaining his detached, urbane manner, his voice was an octave higher and his speech had a disjointed quality. “Surely they have some idea… What about the papers of this man Wachs. You say he was funded by the
DOD
. What about his reports?”

“We have people trying to reconstruct his work. But if he was working on anything like this, it doesn’t show up in any of his submitted reports. All his recent published work is on magnetic containment devices for nuclear fusion. He does seem, near the end, to have stumbled on some new phenomenon that he thought was significant, but in what way — or even whether — it was related to the properties of these objects we can’t tell. He certainly had constructed some magnetic device that caused these transformations — probably as the result of a malfunction. Whether Wachs could have anticipated — or even have understood — any of this, we can’t say. The people working for him seem to have less idea of what he was doing than we do. We’re working on it, but so far it doesn’t seem to be leading anywhere. It’s difficult. He’s dead. His notes, his papers, his laboratory, this device, whatever it was, all went up in flames. The answer is that to date no one has any useful idea of how these objects were produced, much less how we might produce more of them. And furthermore, the only experimental techniques that yield any information about the structure of this material seem also to destroy it in the process. Our supply is being rapidly consumed, which will soon force another difficult decision on us. I’ve had copies of these reports prepared for you.”

Jenkins turned to a stack of papers in plastic bindings arranged neatly on one side of his desk and proceeded to go through them, explaining which scientific team had produced each report and what promise or lack of promise it held. And this, he explained, was a dossier on Wachs. And these are all his published papers. And photocopies of what few drafts of unpublished work we have.

“It’s all here in summary. We’ve sifted through every inch of dirt and ashes at that site. We’ve been through Wachs’s personal life day by day, and we’ve done everything we can think of to try to reconstruct his scientific work. We have the best laboratories in the world looking at the actual material we’ve recovered from the accident site. And that,” said Jenkins with the air of someone summing things up, “is pretty much where we stand.”

“So that is where you stand,” said the other man quietly. “And this is all there is?” With raised eyebrows, he peered up at Jenkins and tapped the surface of the desk where the unseen objects lay. “A pity. Because you started with an entire building. And then, several months and many millions of dollars later, you have only this. A sudden and, to me at least, mysterious fire, and everything else is gone. How, by the way, did this fire begin? And why do you have a bullet there? Your narrative raises so many more questions than it answers.”

Jenkins stared at the desk as if he could see the objects there, his face compressed in folds. He seemed undecided about how to respond. His visitor elected to end the silence and continue.

“In any case, based on what you tell me, this seems like a problem for physicists. An interesting and difficult problem, without doubt, and one that requires the strictest security, but not one that requires a massive intelligence operation, surely. And not one that requires these vast expenditures.”

“There has been a great deal of investigative work… ongoing investigative work…” Jenkins paused, frowning. “Is there any further information you would like about what we are doing?”

“Is there any further information I would like.” The man did not repeat the words as if they were a question. “Really, you will have to tell me if there is any further information I would like.”

“I am, of course, here to give you any information I can. I just want to be sure I don’t tell you anything you would rather not hear — that is, anything more than you need to evaluate this project. When you discussed coming up here with Ridgefield—”

“Perhaps I failed to express myself clearly before. It is not that Ridgefield has told me all about this yet out of prudence wants it on the record that I have been briefed directly by you. Ridgefield shows the same reluctance to speak about this matter that you do. That is why I am here. Perhaps you had better tell me whatever else there is to this. Was there something else in the building that you people have somehow lost track of? Or does someone else know about all this? What is the problem exactly?”

Jenkins was silent for a moment and then said, “Both those things are the problem.” He paused again. “To begin with, there was a cat in the building…”

“A
cat?
And was it… was it like the cigarette lighter?”

“Yes. Unfortunately, it escaped.”

“Escaped?” He did not seem to understand at first. “You mean it survived the explosion? Or whatever it was?”

“That’s right. One of my men had it in his hands briefly. It struggled free and ran off.” Jenkins turned his head and gazed at the bare wall.

“And have you tried… Of course you have.”

“We’ve done everything conceivable to capture it. We’re still trying. You may want to look at those reports as well. We’ve seen no sign of it since the first day.”

“Well, presumably it’s dead. Even if it did survive initially. You say there was a lot of radiation?”

“We have reason to believe it may still be alive.”

“How can you—”

Jenkins was handing over a photograph of me. Taken a little over a year ago at a wedding. I remembered it.

“This man is named Nicholas Halloway. The photograph is no longer really relevant. He was inside the building, and we’ve lost track of him as well. Although not so irretrievably as the cat.”

“Good Lord. You mean this man is also… like the cigarette lighter?”

“That’s right.”

The man stared blankly at the photograph as if it might contain some useful piece of information that he had not yet been able to pick out.

“What is… Where is he now?”

“Right here in New York.”

“And that’s what this is really all about? A human being has become invisible…” He looked toward the objects on the desk. “Totally invisible. And you’re trying to capture him.”

“Yes.”

“I see. Good Lord.” They both sat in silence. The visitor gazed at my photograph, turning it at different angles, and then spoke again.

“I take it that he burned down the building in Princeton. And that he is armed.”

“That’s right.”

“He’s hostile, then?”

Jenkins appeared to reflect on this question.

“I would say rather that he is uncooperative. In burning down the building and even in his physical attacks on us, his motivation has been escape. Almost exclusively, I would say.”

“Why? Why is he running away from you?”

“He’s afraid of what will happen to him. He’s afraid of being ‘a laboratory animal.’ Those are his words. Once we get him, he doesn’t think he’ll have any control over the situation.”

The visitor looked startled.

“He’s quite right, isn’t he? It hadn’t occurred to me. It won’t be very nice for him at all, will it?”

Jenkins was silent for several seconds.

“Perhaps not. But we have to catch him.”

“Yes,” said the visitor. “Of course we do. We absolutely have to catch him. The mind reels at the possibilities…. And furthermore, we really have no way of knowing what he might do on his own, do we?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you have any reason to think he might be actively working for any other intelligence group?”

“No. Not at this point. I’m virtually certain of that. And if he ever did work with anyone, it would probably be with us. But you’re right. The risk is always there. He’s unpredictable.”

“This is incredible! You’ve actually seen the man with your own eyes… or rather, not seen him. You’ve talked to him? Touched him? How sure—”

“I’ve been in physical contact with him.” (That would be in the garden below my apartment, when I hit him as hard as I could.) “And I’ve talked to him on a number of occasions. This second telephone is for his exclusive use. At this point he hasn’t many people to talk to at all, and I’m probably the only person he can talk to freely. I encourage him to call me as often as he likes. Although we haven’t spoken lately. He has been pretending that he has left New York, and I have been pretending to believe that.

The man looked up slowly from the photograph and gazed at Jenkins.

“Jenkins, you will understand that this is not meant in any way to reflect the slightest lack of confidence in you, but you say that some of your men have also seen… have also had… direct evidence of this person?”

“Yes, very direct. One of them was shot by him and another physically assaulted. Would you like to talk to them? I would understand perfectly.”

“Perhaps later. I’m… I want to get my bearings in this whole thing first.” He looked down at my photograph again. “Who is he? What was he?”

Jenkins began to recount from memory my curriculum vitae, leafing, as he spoke, through page after page of mounted and labeled photographs. He had an extraordinary quantity of information about the circumstances of my life. I could see that he knew far more than I knew or had ever known. I learned how much money my father had earned, where each of my parents had grown up, who their friends had been, whom they had slept with, what they had died of. There was a picture of my father as a young man, with another man and two women, none of them people I knew. My mother expressionless at the railing of a ship. And there I was, spindly legged, at summer camp, circled in a row of boys. Jenkins’s fingers flipping over the pages of photographs, the school report cards, letters I had written to people I could no longer remember. The lukewarm comments of my teachers, the qualified opinions of my colleagues regarding the quality of my work and friendship. Whom I had slept with and when. And whom in turn they had slept with. Pictures, dates, names. All irretrievable. No way back to any of that now.

My whole life was, as the expression goes, passing before my eyes. As rendered by a policeman. Better not to consider the violent mob of emotions it stirred up. I was, from beginning to end, transfixed.

The rest of the audience, however, seemed less caught up in the narrative. More than once, Jenkins’s visitor seemed to be gazing out the window, as if he were thinking about something else altogether, and at one point, looking down with a frown at my picture, which he still held in his hands, he abruptly interrupted.

“Where is he living? Who has he gone to for help?”

Jenkins looked up from his folders full of documentation.

“He’s been sleeping in private clubs or breaking into empty apartments. I’m going to get to all this.”

“How many of his friends and family know?”

“None of them. He wouldn’t risk telling them. We’re the only people who know.”

“I’m sorry. Go on. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Jenkins went on. There was a picture of Anne. Stunning. Speculations on how I might have escaped from MicroMagnetics. Pictures of my apartment and an inventory of the contents. He listed, with demoralizing accuracy, which clubs I had slept in and which apartment buildings they were sure I had used. He stacked up on the desk the transcripts of our telephone conversations. He described each encounter and each attempt at capture.

When it was all over, the other man said, “You people have done an extraordinarily thorough job here.”

“I think it would be fair to say that I know more about Halloway than I’ve ever known about another human being. But I’m not sure at this point that it’s of much use.”

“Yes. Exactly. The long and short of it is that it doesn’t add up to much of anything. Your friend has attended some good schools, where his performance was consistently respectable and undistinguished. He seems to have approached his career and his personal life in much the same spirit. Never married. It would appear that he has a great many friends without being particularly close to any of them. Not even a hobby. An occasional game of squash or tennis. All in all, there really doesn’t seem to be much to him. Surprising, in a way, that someone like this turns out to be so much trouble.”

“It’s always difficult,” Jenkins replied, “when you get people like this — no strong emotional ties, no political beliefs, no particular interests of any sort. You can’t find a handhold.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right. But you think, even so, that you’ll get him?”

“We’ll bring him around,” said Jenkins, wrinkling his face pensively and nodding to himself. “It won’t be long now. It can’t be very pleasant for him out there. There are so few choices for him, and he knows we’re right behind him. If we don’t catch him soon, he’ll give up. Without even admitting it to himself, he’ll stop trying so hard. He’ll let us close in. His situation is hopeless.” Jenkins closed his eyes until there were only the narrowest slits. “It should be very soon now. He can’t get away with this sort of thing much longer.”

“Well, you’re probably right,” said the visitor, gazing at Jenkins with an appraising look. “You know, you’ve put a lot of work into this, and sometimes there can be a danger of a thing like this becoming an obsession… Well, you’ll be the best judge of that.” He paused reflectively and then recommenced. “Tell me, assuming that you weren’t successful in capturing Halloway and that for some reason it was considered unacceptable that he remain at large, out of control, how feasible—”

“Of course we hope we can bring him in, but if it became necessary, it might be easier to terminate him than to capture him.”

“And there’s one other thing,” said the visitor. “Do you have any incontrovertible proof — I mean, other than your testimony and your men’s— that Halloway didn’t die in that accident? Proof that he’s alive… in this condition?”

“We have tapes of him speaking on the telephone. To us and to people who knew him before.”

“Tapes, unfortunately, are not the most compelling demonstration of invisibility.”