Journey for Seven

Chapter I The Characters

The frame of the big blue and silver bus was faintly out of line, just enough so that it seemed to sidle along with a whipped and discouraged air. The sign on the front indicated that it was on the ten-mile run from Bell City to the suburb of Stockland, a long tiring run through a jungle of stop lights, a tangle of neon, through the rich strong scent of the industries along the river.

Stan Weaver, the burly and florid driver, his hat shoved back so that a strand of blonde silky hair fell across his forehead, chomped hard on his thick cud of gum and fought the wheel. The bus had a tendency to wander. His lunch, eaten too quickly, was a knot in his stomach, and the afternoon sun made the asphalt ahead quiver in the heat waves.

Not enough sleep. Up too late last night with the little one, fretting on account of his new teeth. Always had to get up with ’em. Madge, blast her eyes, never got out of the sack. Having them was enough, she said. Overslept and got down late and they’d given him this unruly beast of a misbegotten bus, loaded with rattles. Dirty plugs too. Kept stalling at the lights.

A molar was aching steadily and there was a patch of heat rash across the small of his back from contact with the leather bucket seat. He had been snarling and growling at the passengers all day. Why not? With three Kids and a mortgage and bad teeth and a lazy wife and take-home pay of forty-nine-fifty, a guy had a right, didn’t he? Should have stayed on the bread route. But Madge, yapping about security...

The light changed suddenly and he slammed on the brakes, taking a small malicious satisfaction out of really rocking them back there. He glanced in the big vision mirror. Hardly worth the trip. Only six of them. He thought of the joker who’d taken his bus to Florida. That was the answer. Be a better idea if there was only one passenger, though — that dolly sitting there back on the left by the window.

Shirley Sanger lifted her head and saw the driver’s eyes reflected in the mirror. She saw the gleam of interest. She gave him a long cold bored look. Even if Jeremy doesn’t like it, I can still slay the bus drivers. And the delivery boys and the cop on the corner.

Full blown, that’s good old Shirley. What had Jeremy said? Oh, yes — a Reubens type. That had sounded fine until she’d seen a Reubens. Was there any law that said a gal five foot eight couldn’t carry a hundred and forty-four pounds? Besides, the waist was as slim as girls half her size. It made buying clothes a problem.

She yawned, muffling her mouth with the back of her hand, squinting blue eyes tight shut. She wore her golden hair swept high as she believed that had a slimming effect. Her dress was rumpled. Terrible time to be getting home from a date.

She almost giggled out loud, wondering what Jane must have thought when she saw Shirley’s unused bed this morning. She shared a cheap flat with Jane on a side street in Stockland. Then she thought of Jeremy and the urge to giggle died abruptly.

Mark old Shirley up as a fool. She wondered why she had expected a proposal instead of a proposition from Jeremy. The night before she had tried to talk herself into thinking half a loaf was better than none. His apartment was very masculine. It might have worked until Jeremy opened the closet and threw her a woman’s terry cloth robe and said, “This will fit, I think.”

At the door he had tried to put up more than an argument. There was one advantage in being a big girl. There had been a lot of shoulder behind the left hook she planted in his stomach. He was still gasping audibly as she walked down the hall. Myra was surprised but glad to put her up for the night. The buses had stopped running. Taxi fare was exorbitant at that hour.

She wondered if she dared smoke a cigarette. She glanced across the aisle and saw a dark young man with a lighted cigarette cupped in his hand. There was stubble on his jaw and his hand shook. Hangover, she thought, with a tinge of sympathy.

Bill Dorvan took one more drag on the cigarette, dropped it to the dirty bus floor and rubbed it out with his shoe. The bus ride had been a foul idea. He had been walking aimlessly and had paused at a corner when the bus pulled up. Maybe it was just a subconscious yen to get away from himself.

The night before was a fetid and clouded memory of bars, of jukes, of women with bad teeth, of bar flies who hung close in hopes of a round. Not knowing how he had gotten to the cheap little hotel room was bad. Blackouts were bad. There had been too many of them in the last month. About seventy bucks left in the bank. Time to plan before hitting skid row.

Yet how could a man plan when the meaning had gone out of everything? The end of the world had been a crisp note propped against the toaster on the breakfast table. Sandra had been music, fire, delight. He guessed he had been too dull for her — too staid and properly ambitious and well-scrubbed. He had been a fool to think that Sandra could be cooped in a suburban house. Only a boid in a gilded cage.

The heck with it. He would ride to the end of the line and back. By then it would be the cocktail hour. A boilermaker is a delightful cocktail. Food and drink combined. Hops are food, aren’t they?

He dug the last cigarette out of a rumpled pack. As he bent to light it a firm hand tapped his shoulder and a level voice said, “If you don’t mind, young man. There is a city ordnance about smoking on public conveyances.”

He gave the iron face of the elderly woman behind him a quick glance. It made his head ache worse to turn. He wanted to snarl at her but the words came out, “Sorry, ma’am.”

Mrs. Thompson leaned back in her seat. Quite a polite young man in spite of the shave he needed so badly and the suit that could stand pressing. She had been tensed for insolence, prepared to blast him with several dozen well-chosen words if he had had the impunity to put up an argument.

Her bundle of groceries was beside her on the seat. She took great satisfaction in them. A widow living on a meagre pension couldn’t be foolish with money. The bus fare, round-trip, came to thirty-seven cents. The supermarket in Bell City had advertised prices that enabled her to save sixty-eight cents on the week’s staples. Profit, thirty-one cents.

In ten weeks, three dollars and ten cents — enough for a bottle of that brandy, a pint bottle. In ten weeks she could sit and sip that brandy from a teacup in the kitchen and when it was all gone she would be able to cry about Harry. He had been dead for nine years, may he rest, and without the brandy it was impossible to do a good job of mourning him.

Without the brandy all she could remember was the enormous relief she had felt when the house no longer echoed with his whining complaining voice. Too bad Harry hadn’t been as well set up and dependable looking as that man two seats ahead.

The man two seats ahead was named Ad McGoran. Mr. McGoran was a very intelligent and prosperous man. Certain interests had imported him from a city twelve hundred miles away. In Stock-land was a man named Logan Breem, who had discovered too much about the operations of the horse-room split in Bell City.

Mr. Breem had a date with the Grand Jury. And Mr. McGoran, at his usual substantial fee, was going to make certain that Mr. Breem did not keep the appointment. He wore a neat dark suit, not expensive. That morning he had applied for and acquired a temporary position selling a new type of can opener from door to door. The sample case was beside him.

He would start at the head of Mr. Breem’s street. Amateurs cruised around in black sedans cradling tommy-guns. Mr. McGoran was an expert. Experts planned carefully. Experts traveled on city buses and exuded an air of stability, of propriety. He would return one night and, on the basis of the information he had gained. Mr. Breem would abruptly cease to exist.

He studied the back of the neck of the slim girl who sat ahead of him. He was glad that he was sufficiently established in his profession so that he no longer had to accept assignments involving young women. That last young woman, nearly six years ago, had made him quite ill.

The dark hair of the girl in the seat ahead of him was drawn into a tight spinster bun on the back of her neck. Walk up behind her, not so fast as to alarm her. Left hand over her mouth, quick icepick thrust just below the bun of dark hair. No fuss. No noise.

As though conscious of his gaze the girl raised a slim white hand and patted the dark hair, a gesture infinitely feminine. Jennilou Caswell was extremely bored. The Civil Service regulations were unfair. She had been more than happy to do the extra work. But-overtime had to be taken off the following week and Mr. Fincher had practically ordered her to leave the office.

Mr. Fincher acted so odd sometimes. The way he looked at her. He should know that he could never find anywhere as efficient a secretary as Jennilou Caswell. For her the words marched from the typewriter, crisp and black, with gunfire rattle. She could transcribe as fast as the man could talk.

She dressed in neat black, used the tiniest bit of makeup, kept her voice low. When she walked she set her feet down crisply and with purpose. Purpose and plan. That was what counted in life. Work to do. Work to be proud of doing well. Orderly files. Orderly checkbook. A neat little apartment, as shining as a new needle.

Jennilou Caswell slept flat on her back because she had read that it rested a person more. She scrubbed her teeth with up and down strokes, chewed each mouthful thirty times, wore plain and sensible underclothes. All men were ridiculous, except Mr. Fincher, of course. She read instructive books, went to educational films, subscribed to lofty magazines and bathed twice a day.

She felt most assured in her dark office suit with the white collar. She felt most ill at ease when, in her apartment, off guard, she noticed the somehow blatant and vulgar femininity of her body. Though she carried but a hundred and ten pounds on her five-foot-six Finch frame she wore the tightest girdles she could squeeze into.

She gave a sideways glance of annoyance at the boy who sat on the right-angle bench near the coin box and stared fixedly at her legs. Her skirt was pulled down as far as it would go. Why didn’t the dirty little creature go back and stare at that blowzy blonde? She’d probably appreciate it.

But Benny Farr had no idea of where he was staring. He was thinking of the ten-dollar bill in his watch pocket and he had a secret sense of excitement. He was fourteen. He had a thin sallow face, an adenoidal sag of lower lip and grubby hands. His grey pants were too small for him and the dark blue sweatshirt was too big.

Benjamin Farr was deeply concerned over a matter of ethics. On the previous night he and Louie Mastinson had broken into one of the big houses on the hill. The people had been away. A noise had scared them after they’d finished testing Louie’s new hunting knife on the upholstery and all they’d gotten away with was a gold watch that Benny had found in a bureau drawer.

The pawn man had given him ten bucks for it — and he was wondering if he could get away with telling Louie that he had only got five. That would mean seven fifty for him, but that brought up the problem of changing the bill. He should have changed it in Bell City or asked the pawn man to give him the money in two fives.

The bus rolled stolidly on. When Stan Weaver stopped for a light the six heads of the passengers all nodded as though they were simultaneously agreeing, without enthusiasm, to some eternal truth. McGoran’s distinguished grey head, Shirley Sanger’s blond one, the dark head of Jennilou Caswell, the aching rumpled head of Bill Dorvan, the Queen Mary hat of Mrs. Thompson, the scurfy mud-colored head of Benny Farr.

At the end of High Street the bus rolled left under the underpass, straightened out again on Lowell Boulevard. Six heads, nodding without expression. Six bodies, lax in the seats. Tangled thoughts of Jeremy, icepicks, boilermakers, dictation, brandy and a ten-dollar bill.

Off to the left, beyond the city dump, was the garbage disposal plant and beyond it the windowed roofs of Consolidated Metallurgical winked in the sun. The dark greasy river was off to the right and lining the highway were battered stucco drive-ins, waiting for night to blossom into a fantasy of neon which could not mask the smell of stale deep fat.

On the riverbank, with the beginning of the residential section of Stockland in the distance, there appeared the long white buildings of Loma Transmission Devices, a new concern. A high wire fence surrounded it. On the roof of the central building glittered vast cup-shaped objects of shining metal, looking faintly like half-finished searchlights.

Stockland Mountain was seven miles beyond Stockland. On the top of the mountain were other devices connected with Loma Transmission Devices Research Program Ten.

The cup-shaped objects on the roof of the plant were aimed at the mountain top.

Under the stimulus of a government grant the physicists of Loma had at last made a crude but practical heat engine which could draw off and utilize a shade more than forty percent of the output of the pile buried deep in the bowels of the concrete maze under the plant property. With the heat engine hooked up to the humming generators Loma had a concentrated power source that had top executives walking around on their heels, with glazed eyes and a look of poorly-concealed glee.

Program Ten was the attempt to transmit, over a short range through the air, an intense beam of electric energy without too appreciable a loss in transit.

The plant was in direct contact with the technicians on the peak of Stockland Mountain.

At the predesignated moment the full surge of power was cut over to the cup-shaped transmitter, a full thirty feet in diameter. The attendant on the roof heard the sputter of a short circuit and raced for the cutoff switch. Power was radiating from the transmitter but the short circuit super-heated one of the stanchions supporting the transmitter. It sagged with majestic slowness, turning on the weakened brace until it was aimed directly at the highway in the distance.

The attendant slapped the cutoff switch and the buzzing faded. He cursed softly and reached for the phone. He glanced toward the highway to see if the beam of force had caused damage. A few cars glittered in the distance. At the spot where the beam had pointed a blue and silver interurban bus waddled along like a tired beetle going home from a fancy-dress party.

“Yeah,” the attendant said into the phone. “I caught it in time.”