Backteria and Other Improbable Tales (15 page)

“Oh, my darling,” she said, trembling wholly. “Now I shall die alone. “Oh, how
cruel
it is!”

Milton held her shaking hand in what, for him was a steely grip.

“Don’t despair, Gladys, my dearest,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “I won’t desert you now. We’ll be together, don’t you fret.”

Whereupon, that evening, he purchased a pistol at a downtown pawnshop and, emulating Gladys, went out on the street and fired at the first passerby, a Miss Marilynne Francescatti of Queens, missed, fired again, and made it. When the police car came, Milton Freef was waiting cheerfully.

There was another trial, during which Milton’s lawyer pleaded insanity but with no more success than had Gladys’s attorney. He was found guilty of murder in the first degree and, since a date had already been set for his execution, it was restored intact.

They met in that special room again and held fond hands.

“Oh, honey lover,” she said, “you did it for me.”

“Yes,” he replied huskily. “Now we’ll be together, darling.”

They were led away to their separate cells, both content, both resigned.

Until two days later when the appeal formerly filed by Gladys’s lawyer was granted and her sentence of death was altered to a sentence of confinement in the state insane asylum.

Her outraged objections were interpreted as signs of mental breakdown, and she was removed from prison in a straight jacket, screaming and kicking.

Milton, upon being informed of this twist of fate, fell into a state of acute melancholia, during which he sought feverishly for an answer to this cruel dilemma.

The following morning, when the guards brought breakfast to prisoner Freef, they found him unclothed on all fours, attempting to climb the wall of his cell and baying.

The prison psychiatrist was notified and, for several days, observed Milton with a suspicious eye, being an old hand at this sort of thing.

It wasn’t until Milton began butting his head against walls that the psychiatrist decided that something was genuinely wrong. Where upon, after lengthy investigation, during which the lie detector revealed that prisoner Freef was telling the truth when he said he was Cosmo de Medici, the psychiatrist, reluctantly, pronounced him insane and, regretfully, recommended his removal to the state insane asylum.

At last
! Milton Freef rejoiced within at the thought that he would be together with his beloved Gladys again. He put up only token resistance as they swathed him in straight jacket and led him away.

When he reached the asylum, however, he learned that, two days previous, Gladys had finally proved, to the satisfaction of the staff, that she was not insane after all. She had left the asylum early that morning, singing happily because she believed she was going to join her dear husband.

Milton, upon discovering this, fell into such a violent state that his protestations of sanity went unregarded. He was put into a special cell, padded, to brood.

There, cannily, he evolved a plan for escape. He knew he could not bear to live without Gladys. Therefore, he would break out of the asylum, go to the prison on the day of her execution, demand entrance, be shot down, and thus join Gladys in the bourne beyond.

Two weeks and a day later, a docile Milton Freef was allowed to walk the grounds with his keeper. While strolling behind a hydrangia bush, Milton, who had read of such things in his youth, pressed a vital nerve on the burly keeper’s neck and rendered him unconscious. Then, scaling the high brick wall, Milton ran quickly down the highway.

In a farmhouse a few miles down the road, Milton stole a raincoat and returned to the highway. There, in answer to his beckoning thumb, a car stopped.

“You would like a ride?” said the kind old lady in the car.

“I would like your car,” said Milton and, as gently as he could, dragged her off the front seat and threw her in a ditch.

He then began the long drive to the state penitentiary. He did eighty all afternoon long, his heart singing a happy song about returning to his love.

About ten that night, however, Milton Freed began to get sleepy. Several times, his head nodded, each time jerking up with enforced alertness, dark eyes shining angrily. He
would
get back to Gladys!

But, at eleven, his head slumped over fatally, and the car rode across the center line.

Just before the black limousine came roaring out of the night, Milton looked up in confounded horror, blinded by the glaring headlights.

“Oh
no
!” he cried.

Then the crash. An awful crash.

Milton Freef crawled, dying, from the rubble of the old lady’s car which was, luckily for the old lady, insured.

“Gladys,” he moaned horribly, “
Gladys
.”

“
Milton
.”

He thought he dreamed or was losing his mind.

“What?” he murmured, “What?”

But then, crawling from the twisted wreckage of the limousine came Gladys.

They inched toward each other, glazed eyes shining with love.

“Gladys. Is it really
you
, my precious?”

“Yes, lover! I…convinced them…I was insane—again. They were taking me back.”

They met. Their hands touched.

“Together,” sighed Gladys in happy agony. “Oh, dearest.”

“At last,” sobbed Milton. “My sweet.”

Whereupon they kissed, both of them expiring in glorious expiration.

The tall man looked at them with sympathy. He sighed. I’m afraid my hands are tied,” he said. “After all—
murder
.” He clucked and shook his head. “We’ll have to keep you separated. Perhaps, after a century or two, we might reconsider.” Shrugging, he scratched his right horn. “
Mal chance
,” he said.

He smiled. “Good try, though,” he added.

The ringing telephone stirred Millman from his sleep. His eyelids fluttered as he drifted up toward consciousness. The telephone kept ringing and he groaned. “All right, all right.”

Sliding his left arm from beneath the covers, he reached to the bedside table, feeling for the handset. His fingers closed around it and he carried the receiver to his ear. “Yes?” he mumbled.

He listened to the dial tone for a few seconds before grimacing irritably and reaching out to thump the handset back on its cradle.

His eyes opened wide as he looked toward the bedside table.

The telephone was still ringing.

He stretched out his arm and fumbled for the lamp switch. Twisting it, he averted his face from the glare, then picked up the handset again and pressed the receiver to his ear.

There was only the dial tone.

Millman stared, bewildered, at the handset. He could still hear the sound of a telephone ringing.

Several moments passed before it came to him that the ringing was inside his head.

“I have the test results,” Dr. Vance told him.

Millman waited anxiously. “My immediate assumption was that it was
tinnitus
,” Dr. Vance continued. “There’s no sign of middle-ear infection, though, no symptoms such as earache, fever, a sensation of pressure in your ears.”

“What
is
it then?” Millman asked.

“You know for a fact it doesn’t ring all the time.”

“Only at night,” Millman answered. “It wakes me up.”

“That wouldn’t be the case if it was
tinnitus
,” Dr. Vance said. “The ringing would be constant.”

Millman looked at him in worried silence.

“Don’t tell anyone I said this,” Dr. Vance went on, “but you might try getting a chiropractic adjustment on your neck. I had a friend who suffered from what appeared to be
tinnitus
. After he got a neck adjustment, it went away.”

“And if that doesn’t work?” Millman asked.

“Try it first,” the doctor said.

Millman twisted on the bed with an angry groan.

The telephone was ringing again.

He reached out quickly with his left hand and grabbed the handset, carrying the earpiece to his head.

Then he slammed the handset down on its cradle. “Damn!” he cried.

He lay on his back, a look of apprehension on his face as he listened to the sound of the ringing telephone inside his head.

“Everything’s been tried?” Dr. Palmer asked.

“
Yes
,” Millman said despairingly. “There’s no sign of a fracture or a concussion. Nothing wrong with my spine. No sign of any foreign body. No growths, no tumors,
nothing
. I even had a neck adjustment. It made no difference.”

“The ringing happens every night?” Dr. Palmer asked.

“Yes.”

“At the same time?”

“Three in morning,” Millman answered. “I can’t sleep any more. I just lie in bed waiting for it to start.”

“And you’re positive it sounds like a telephone ringing.”

“It
is
a telephone ringing,” Millman said impatiently

“Try answering it then,” suggested Dr. Palmer.

Millman lay on his back in the darkness, listening to the ringing sound inside his head. He wanted desperately to make it stop. But Dr. Palmer’s suggestion disturbed him. It seemed a bizarre thing for a therapist to say.

Still…

The telephone kept ringing. Millman’s left hand twitched as though about to reach for the telephone on the bedside table. But he knew that wasn’t where the ringing was coming from.

Impulsively, he visualized a telephone inside his head. He visualized his left hand picking up the handset. “Hel-
lo
,” he said aloud.

“Well, finally,” said the voice.

Millman felt himself recoil into the mattress, heartbeat pounding suddenly. “
My God
,” he said.

“Take it easy now,” the voice responded, that of a man. “Don’t get yourself in an uproar. There’s a simple explanation.”

Millman couldn’t seem to breathe.

“Still there?” the man’s voice asked.

Millman swallowed. He sucked in a wheezing breath and muttered, “Yes.”

The voice said, “Good.”

Millman had to ask, although he knew it was insane.

“Who
is
this?” he said.

“The name’s not important,” the man’s voice replied. “I’m not allowed to tell you anyway.”

“What are you talking about?” Millman’s voice strained.

“Take it
easy
,” the man’s voice said. “You’re getting yourself upset for nothing. I told you there’s a simple explanation.”

“
What?
” demanded Millman.

“Okay,” the man’s voice answered. “Here’s what’s going on. It’s a government project; a
secret
project, it goes without saying. You’ll have to keep it quiet. It’s a matter of national security.”

Millman’s mouth slipped open.
National Security?

“I won’t go into background,” the man’s voice continued. “You know the situation in the world. Our government maintains a constant policy of espionage. We have to know what’s happening on the other side.”

“But—” Millman started.

“Just listen,” the man’s voice interrupted. “We have agents all around the globe, sending us information. The transmission of their messages has always been a risk. Any device they use can be detected sooner or later. Which is why we’re experimenting with inner-brain communication.”

“
Inner-brain—?
”

“Yes.” The man’s voice cut Millman off. “A method by which agents can transmit information with no risk whatever of being intercepted. I don’t mean telepathy or anything like that. I’m talking about a microscopic insert.”

Millman tightened. “
What?
”

“
Relax
,” the man’s voice told him. “If it’s so minute it never even showed up on your medical tests, it’s certainly too small to bother you.”

Millman tried to speak but couldn’t.

“You’re probably wondering why you were chosen for this experiment,” the man’s voice continued. “Actually, you’re not the only one. I can’t tell you how many there are, but the number is considerable. As to
how
you were chosen, it was mathematical; a random generator.”

“
I don’t understand
,” Millman said.

“To be perfectly candid,” the man’s voice went on, “only a few of you have reached the stage of answering our call. The rest are still fixated at the point of thinking it’s a physical affliction, making endless rounds of doctor visits. Congratulations on being imaginative enough to answer the ringing—it
is
that of an actual telephone, by the way.”

Millman braced himself. “But—” he began.

“—we never asked,” the man’s voice finished Millman’s thought. “True. And we’re sorry it disturbed you. Still—under the circumstances, we couldn’t very well have asked for your permission.

“At any rate,” he added, “we won’t be bothering you as much now. The connection’s been made.”

“
For how long?
” Millman asked.

“I’m sorry,” the man’s voice responded. “That’s not my decision to make.”

Inside his head, Millman heard the distinct sound of a telephone handset being placed on its cradle.

He fell back on the pillow; he’d been unaware that he was leaning on his right elbow throughout his conversation with the man. In spite of his distress, he felt relieved that the ringing noise had stopped.

In seconds, he was heavily asleep.

The ringing of the telephone inside his head jarred Millman awake. His eyes sprang open and he twitched on the mattress. “
No
,” he said. It had been five days since he’d spoken with the man. He’d begun to hope it was over; that either the calls would not continue or that he’d imagined everything.

Grimacing, he snatched up the unseen handset. “
Yes
,” he said.

The ringing continued.

Millman looked confused. He visualized the telephone as clearly as he could, lifted the handset and brought it to his ear. “Hel-
lo
,” he said.

The telephone kept ringing. Was it because he hadn’t heard it for the past five nights that it sounded so painfully shrill to him?

In his mind, he visualized his hand grabbing at the handset. “Hello!” he said.

The ringing didn’t stop. Millman made a pained noise. The sound seemed to pulse in stabbing waves against the tissues of his brain. He clenched his teeth, face contorted.