Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (69 page)

A stunning smile appeared on her face, and she wrapped her arms around me and kissed me, which made her look quite odd. We were standing in the middle of Central Park, and people were turning and staring, but it seemed like the wrong moment to say anything about it to Alice.

J
enkins had a difficult time for a while. He spent several months in Washington answering questions in his earnest, plausible way. He explained, not entirely to everyone’s satisfaction, that his investigation was primarily scientific in nature, an attempt to reconstruct the intriguing results — whether intentional or accidental — of Professor Wachs. To talk of “invisible matter” was surely unwarranted. He himself would never characterize the objects found at the MicroMagnetics site that way, or if he had used such an expression on occasion, it was only informally and in discussions with other people who were quite familiar with the actual phenomena under investigation. It was unfortunate that random comments and facts had, despite every effort to maintain the appropriate security, somehow leaked out, because taken out of context they had inevitably generated outlandish rumors that were now endangering potentially invaluable research and that were furthermore needlessly calling into question the credibility and competence of the men working under him — men who had performed magnificently under extremely difficult conditions.

There was, of course, the “superglass,” which was being studied in two different laboratories; everyone interested in this whole incident should be sure to examine it. Anyone who did would certainly understand why such an extraordinary effort had been made to reconstruct Wachs’s work and to investigate the troubling circumstances surrounding the explosion of his laboratory.

But it was the fantastic rumors of “invisible men” that were particularly regrettable. It was true that there was at least one person still at large who had been clearly identified as having been present at the site of the explosion and who was known to have been responsible for acts of arson both then and subsequently; and an extensive effort had quite properly been made to apprehend him. It was also true that certain aspects of the whole incident would probably remain obscure, partly because of the difficulty of reconstructing events and partly because of considerations of security. There was the known involvement of certain left-wing radical groups, and conceivably of foreign powers. There were other issues that might be raised at some time in the future, but which it was not Jenkins’s place to introduce into the discussion now.

Jenkins’s subordinates were equally vague. It had been difficult to see much of anything at the MicroMagnetics site. Damage had been extensive: the whole area had been swept by a succession of fires, and a fuel tank had exploded. As to the scope of the subsequent investigation, it had really been in Colonel Jenkins’s hands, and they did not have enough information to make any useful judgment. They had been following orders. Nothing had seemed really out of the ordinary, and there had certainly been no reason to question the appropriateness of any of those orders. One thing everyone insisted upon — and for some reason the assertion seemed to reassure the investigators and compilers of reports despite its rather tautological quality — was that no one had seen any invisible men.

Clellan was shortly thereafter assigned to the staff of a training camp in North Carolina. Morrissey was sent to a succession of exotic places to participate in the surveillance of drug traffickers linked to officials of foreign governments. Tyler, who was probably the most inscrutable of all during the investigation, was quickly promoted. He lives in a Virginia suburb now and supervises the collection and analysis of vast quantities of obscure political information from obscure parts of the world. Only Gomez continued to work for Jenkins in New York.

As for Jenkins, I was surprised when I saw that his career would not be left in ruins, but on reflection I see that the actual outcome was perfectly logical and predictable. In the end, after they had all finished subjecting each other to the most careful and searching scrutiny, they decided that, although in retrospect certain individual decisions might be questioned, on the whole everyone had behaved appropriately and within the scope of his authority, and no useful purpose would be served by the broadening or prolongation of the investigation. However, everyone was of course to be reassigned, and care was to be taken that no further operation or investigation would be undertaken in the immediate future which might draw further attention to potential problems raised in the course of the current inquiry. Jenkins, it seemed, had substantial support somewhere. He ended up in charge of monitoring the shipment of strategically sensitive technology through New York Harbor to hostile countries. This may or may not have been a demotion, but I follow these things, and I note that he has had several successes and people are pleased with the job he is doing. His budget has begun to increase dramatically, and he has more people under him. He is beginning to devote more time to looking for me again. I cannot tell whether he has support in this from his superiors or not. I could make more trouble for him, of course, but it is not clear to me that I would not be making things worse for myself as well.

When Anne’s article on the Academy Club incident finally ran, it lacked excitement. It was composed of sentences like “However, despite these official denials, the incident leaves in its wake a host of unanswered questions.” A spokesperson reaffirmed on behalf of Jenkins, who was not available for comment, that he had been driving up Madison Avenue, when, seeing ambulances in front of the Academy Club, he stopped to see if he could be of assistance. There was a lengthy discussion of the location of gas mains and of Consolidated Edison’s service records, which appeared to be incomplete. However, Anne and her employers soon saw that the story was going nowhere, and, losing their initial enthusiasm, abandoned it. Anne has since been assigned to the Washington bureau, which, unaccountably, pleased her enormously.

Several left-wing journals then took up the matter, and radical academics began to acquire encyclopaedic expertise in the routing of gas lines and the membership of the Academy Club. It was hypothesized that a liberal member of Congress, who had fortuitously just left the building at the time of the incident, had been the target of a covert right-wing action. The main result of this was that the Congressman was forced to resign his membership, as it became known that he belonged to a club that did not admit women. A right-wing group saw a plot by the
KGB
, the Rockefellers, and the Trilateralists, whoever they may be, and began gluing posters detailing their intricate reasoning to the walls of the Academy Club on a regular basis, which was an annoyance to both the membership and the maintenance staff.

I
have very little more to tell you and very little time. I should I have liked to be able to sum up the whole experience for you, to offer you, from my unique vantage point, some valuable insight into the human condition — or at least some greeting more poignant than “You can’t catch me!” The trouble is, I have grown so accustomed to my vantage point that its uniqueness is lost on me, and although you might hope that an invisible man could offer you some intelligence of an invisible purpose in the world, if it is there, I have not yet found it. No doubt I am looking right at it and just can’t see it. Like the pattern in the carpet. Like me, for that matter. If I ever work it out, I’ll be sure to let you know.

In the meantime I can tell you that the bad points of this existence are that it is often lonely and arguably pointless. The good points are its not being over and Alice.

I know now, as I write these final words for you, that Jenkins is closing in again. I can tell — never mind how — that he is about to find Jonathan Crosby’s apartment. But I don’t care. I will be gone. And this time I will be much more difficult to find. Like the leopard, I am going into other spots.

The trouble is that Alice expects to come with me. I have tried to show her why that would not make sense for either of us. The risks would be awful. Of course, anything is possible, and I have given it some thought. Perhaps it could be done.

Perhaps one day, as Alice is riding home on the subway, she will step out, just as the doors close, onto the platform of a station where she has never got out before, and she will dart up the stairs into the street. She will climb into the waiting car and we will drive off over a bridge or through a tunnel forever. The next day she will have brunette hair, cut short, and different clothing, and we will be in San Francisco or London or back in New York with different names and ages and accents.

I have tried to explain to her why this is not a reasonable course of action. I have tried to explain everything to her, tried to give her a rational account of my whole situation — with what success, it is hard to say.

“Nick, explain to me once more your theory of what happened to your body.” The expression on her face is one of smiling innocence or perhaps of mockery — I am never quite sure, but I am always dazzled. “Tell me again what a
quark
is.”

“It’s perfectly simple, really. It’s one of the basic building blocks of matter. What the whole world is composed of. Although really, I suppose, it’s more a mathematical abstraction… in a manner of speaking.”

“So that the world would be composed of mathematical abstractions? You know, I think I prefer my own manner of speaking. I think you’ve misunderstood everything that’s happened. You’re a ghost after all. You died in that accident, and you’ve been sent back to accomplish certain very important things.”

“What sorts of things?”

“Doing the right thing by me, to begin with. I think I’d like a church wedding.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible, practically. Or even theologically, given your theory that I’m a ghost.”

“It’s your job to figure it all out. You promised you’d do whatever I wanted.”

Time is running out and I can’t stay here much longer. But it seems to me that in the end I’m going to try to do what Alice wants. I don’t know. It is preposterous, but what’s the point of it all otherwise? Anyway, as long as we keep moving, we should be all right.