Keep The Giraffe Burning Read online

  I did, giddily. ‘What happened to you, then?’

  ‘Your suicide attempt helped me make up my mind; I quit the Institute next day. You were still in the hospital.’

  Still giddy, I turned to watch Joe Feeney operating the curious laser I’d seen in the library. Making parrots out of clocks.

  ‘I understand now,’ I said. ‘But what’s the watermelon for?’

  ‘Cheap cooling device.’

  ‘And the “flag”?’ I indicated the shawl-stick arrangement.

  ‘To rally round. I stuck it in the melon because they were using the umbrella stand for –’

  ‘Look!’ Edna cried. ‘The attack begins!’ She handed me a second telescope.

  All I saw below was the lone figure of Blenheim in his diving suit, shuffling slowly up from the river mist to face seven guards and two pumas. He seemed to be juggling croquet balls.

  ‘Why don’t we help him?’ I shouted. ‘Don’t just sit there shining shoes and idling.’

  The twins giggled. ‘We’ve already helped some,’ said Alice, nodding at the pile of weapons. ‘We made friends with the guards.’

  I got the point when those below pulled their guns on Blenheim. As each man drew, he looked at his gun and then threw it away.

  ‘What a waste,’ Celia sighed. ‘Those guns are made from just about the best chocolate you can get’

  Blenheim played his parlour trick on the nearest guard: one juggled ball flew high, the guard looked up, and a second ball clipped him on the upturned chin.

  Now the puma guards went into action.

  ‘I can’t look,’ I said, my eye glued to the telescope. One of the animals stopped to sniff at a sticky revolver, but the other headed straight for his quarry. He leapt up, trying to fasten his claws into the stranger’s big brass head.

  Out of the river mist came a terrible cry, and then a terrible sight: a hobbling grey hulk that resolved into a charging elephant. Charging diagonally, so it looked even larger.

  The pumas left the scene. One fled in our direction until Alice snatched up a pistol and fired it in the air. At that sound, the guards decided to look for jobs elsewhere. After all, as Pawlie said later, you couldn’t expect a man to face a juggling diver and a mad elephant with a wooden leg, with nothing but a chocolate .38, not on those wages.

  Pawlie was riding on the neck of the elephant. When he came to a wobbling stop I saw that one of Jumbo’s forelegs was a section of tree with the bark still on it. And in the bark, a heart with PS + HL, carved years before.

  I felt the triumph was all over – especially since Pawlie kept nodding her head yes at me – until George said:

  ‘Come on, gang. Let’s set it up.’

  Jumbo had been pulling a wooden sledge, bearing the Paris kiosk. Now he went off to break his fast on water and grass, while the rest of us set the thing upright. Even before we had fuelled it with whatever was in the fertilizer bags, I guessed that it was a rocket.

  After some adjustments, the little door was let down, and a sweet breakfast pancake odour came forth. Joe Feeney opened a flask of dark liquid and poured it in the entrance. The smell grew stronger.

  ‘Maple sap,’ he explained. ‘From Jumbo’s wooden leg. Mixed with honey. And there’s oatmeal inside. A farewell breakfast.’

  I looked in the little door and saw the inside of the ship was made like a metal honeycomb, plenty of climbing room for our masters.

  Pawlie came from the building with a few cockroaches in a jar, and let them taste our wares. Then, all at once, it was a sale opening at any big department store. We all stood back and let the great brown wave surge forward and break over the little rocket. Some of them, nymphs especially, scurried all the way up to the nose cone and back down again in their excitement. It all looked so jolly that I tried not to think about their previous meals.

  Edna glanced at her watch. ‘Ten minutes more,’ she said. ‘Or they’ll hit the sun.’

  I objected that we’d never get all of them loaded in ten minutes.

  ‘No,’ said Pawlie, ‘but we’ll get the best and strongest. The shrews can keep the rest in control.’

  Edna closed the door, and the twins did a vigorous tap-dance on the unfortunate stragglers. A few minutes later, a million members of the finest organization on earth were on their way to the stars.

  ‘To join their little friends,’ said Edna.

  Pawlie and I touched bands, as Blenheim opened his faceplate.

  ‘I’ve been making this study,’ he said, ‘of spontaneous combustion in giraffes …’

  THE DESIGN

  Andrews is to write a biography of Bruggs, the famous designer of bridges. Logically, the place to start would be with Oursler, a sociologist who was his best friend at school. But some quarrel in their youth made Oursler leave engineering, and estranged the two men for life. Andrews is reluctant to approach Oursler, and puts off interviewing him.

  Instead he speaks to Bruggs’ secretary, Priscilla, and to his aide, Chandler. Was the bachelor Bruggs intimate with his pretty secretary? No, he never made a pass, but he did act astonishingly jealous. Once, because she gave Chandler a small gift, Bruggs beat him and threw him down a flight of stairs.

  The gift meant only that Priscilla felt sorry for poor Chandler, whose wife had cuckolded him with a middle-aged man named Rent. Doris Chandler flaunted her affair before her husband for over a year, then finally went to live with Rent in Switzerland. On a hunch, Andrews goes to see them, hoping they can clear up the rumoured connection of Bruggs with a gambling czar named Gordon.

  Rent is an old, withered person whose only living heir is his stepson, Reverend Queen. Queen finds it scandalous that his stepfather should be suspected, as he is, of murdering the Zurich banker, Straud.

  Doris now works for a Swiss lawyer named Enderby, who is also a suspect in the Straud case. Enderby is the mentor and kindly advisor of still a third suspect, the youthful and homosexual Trell. The lawyer visits him daily.

  Interviewing Trell, Andrews learns that Enderby has been using his visits to the young man to see Trell’s sister Fran. It is evident that Enderby loves her, yet, perhaps because he is her brother’s legal guardian, he does not declare it.

  Andrews learns more of Fran from her close friend and confidant, the mannish actress, Victoria Staton. While admitting she had once a lesbian flirtation with Fran’s sister Ursula, ‘Victorio’, as she calls herself, protests she has only platonic regard for Fran herself.

  Fran is now deep in debt to Gordon, head of the gambling syndicate. Victoria has already made one unsuccessful attempt to assassinate him. Now he is in Paris, trying to persuade one Irma Hathaway to become his mistress. Andrews finds him.

  Gordon says little of the others, but denies he wants Irma Hathaway for a mistress. He wants only to find out more about her; is she, like Victoria, a British spy? Assisting him is the woman he loves, Hera, who is spying on Irma, posing as a maid.

  Back in Switzerland, Andrews learns that Irma is indeed an agent, but she is working for the American, Johnson. He phones Johnson, who invites him over for the weekend.

  Ursula is present, and Johnson informs everyone that he is her real father. Now he feigns homosexuality, flirting with the young Russian Ursula loves, Yoniski. Yoniski has brought along his sister Kathia, and when he fails with the brother, Johnson pretends passion for this armless girl. No one is fooled by Johnson, and finally he tells the truth – that he is married to Victoria Staton, and loves her.

  Kathia and her brother have come to Switzerland with their father, the well-known physicist Xerov, who believes he has cancer. He wishes to consult the popular specialist, Linder.

  Unannounced, Dr Linder appears, full of good humour and anecdotes. Some days past, he says, he was approached by a man named Menkov, a secret police agent who had trailed Xerov from Moscow and lost him at the airport in Berne. He suspected Linder knew Xerov’s whereabouts, and offered a considerable bribe for the information. Ironically, Xerov is quite well physically, t
hough ‘neurotic squared’, says Dr Linda. ‘Neurotic cubed.’ But it is Menkov who has the cancer. Linder persuaded him to try surgery, and now Menkov is in the local hospital, only three rooms (though he doesn’t know it) from the malingering Xerov.

  To Andrews, Menkov confesses he has become the protector of a young girl named Wendy, an orphan who has also became a suspect in the Straud murder. He brought up the child under great difficulty, being utterly ignored by his wealthy cousin in London, Nora Chamberlin. Nora detests children and animals, but likes machines. Her only friend, as far as Menkov knows, is Priscilla, Bruggs’ secretary.

  In London, Andrews meets Nora, a great red-faced angry woman who once had a barroom brawl with Rent’s heir, young Reverend Queen. Nora is now engaged in suing Priscilla for ‘alienation of Bruggs’ affections’, though she has never commanded them. She refuses to talk any more to Andrews, or to anyone but her friend, Oursler.

  Andrews realizes he must rely on the sociologist’s information. He telephones Priscilla and asks if she would like to go with him to see Oursler, but she wants no contact with any enemy of Bruggs. Finally Andrews calls Oursler, who promises to come to see him the same evening.

  The evening newspaper contains another turn of the screw: Xerov, against the protests of his son, invites little Wendy to visit him in the hospital. He locks his son in a closet and tries to rape the orphan, but Wendy is saved by Reverend Queen. Now Xerov and Yoniski have been added to the list of the suspected murderers of Straud.

  Who killed Straud? There are no clues to the stabbing, and each of the six suspects (Enderby, Rent, Wendy, Xerov, Yoniski and Trell) has plenty of motive and opportunity.

  In trying to puzzle it out on a piece of paper, Andrews comes up with an interesting diagram of the relationships of the people he has met. It looks like a bridge, with missing braces.

  DS seems to indicate that Doris is yet another suspect for Straud’s death, so Andrews adds that brace.

  Oursler comes into the room, notices the paper on the desk, and laughs. ‘It was not a good design,’ he says, ‘but it was mine. Bruggs stole it from me, back in engineering school, fifty years ago. Now I have it back.’

  He takes a gun from his pocket, hesitates, then shoots Andrews. Andrews tries to speak the name of his ex-wife, Hera, but no sound comes. He dies. Oursler draws OA.

  THE FACE

  God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another

  I must try to tell this impartially, with a scientific concern for truth. It is not my story, after all. I played only a small part at the end.

  Yet the end, in a way, returns to the beginning. This story is a snake swallowing its own tail.

  Is the tape recording? My name is James P. Anderson, and I am – was a lab technician working for the special project. My work was trivial, for I have very little formal scientific training.

  Not that I’m ignorant. You pick up things, here and there. I’ve been reading about the lives of great scientists. I know, for one thing, how Auguste Kekulé discovered the chemical structure of benzene. Not too many chemists know that. He found it in a dream.

  I keep dreaming that someone is tying to tear off my face. The doctor says that’s just the healing and tightening of new tissue, nothing to worry about.

  Kekulé dreamed of snakes, circling and biting their own tails. That’s how he discovered the benzene ring. Snakes …

  The three boys who found the object in Hill Park were, they say, hunting for garter snakes. The Barnes boy said that at first they all thought the object was a rubber mask lying in the grass. But his friends said they knew at once that it was ‘something weird’. What is the truth here?

  They experimented, trying to turn it over with sticks. They bruised it, and scratched the cheek, which bled. Barnes and Schmidt later claimed it was the third boy, Dalston, who committed ‘most’ of these injuries. By way of appeasement, they brought the object offerings of fresh flowers. Finally Barnes told his parents. Barnes senior, a water inspector, visited the site and immediately called the police.

  The police report speaks of the object as ‘face of a partly buried Caucasian, sex unknown’. According to the medical examiner, the person was unconscious: ‘Respiration shallow, estimated temperature subnormal, pulse slow. Pupils dilated. The mouth could not be opened.’

  The discovery was unusual enough for the evening papers, who headlined it as Live Burial Mystery. A few reporters hung around the site, waiting for the police to uncover the rest of the supposed person.

  A few minutes after the digging started, it stopped. The police held a whispered conference and then cleared the reporters from the area. That night they put up steel barriers and canvas screens.

  Newsmen could only guess at what was happening by the comings and goings of important men: city officials, army officers and medical specialists. The morning papers guessed wildly that the buried person was a spy, a ‘living bomb’, a plague victim. In the evening editions, the story was killed.

  It was killed in this case by unofficial pressure – friendly phone calls from certain government offices to city editors. For this reason, reporters felt free to continue chasing down leads.

  One man (Cobb of the Sentinel) made two discoveries that led in the right direction. Tie talked to a homicide detective who admitted being puzzled by the undisturbed grass around the face. In his opinion, no one had been digging there for months.

  Secondly, a park gardener said he was surprised to hear of a burial in that spot, high on the side of the hill.

  ‘The soil’s thin there,’ he said. ‘Bedrock’s only three or four inches down.’

  Cobb continued digging. He asked the boys if they’d noticed anything unusual, when they’d found the face. Two hadn’t, and the Schmidt boy (obviously enjoying his sudden fame) now recalled noticing all too much: The face had a third eye, it gave off an eerie blue glow, there was human blood on the lips, etc., etc.

  Finally, Cobb talked to one of the rescue workers who’d been digging for the body.

  ‘Everywhere we went down, we struck rock. I didn’t know it was rock right away, I thought maybe the guy was wearing a suit of armour or something, see? Anyway, I went down around the head, and more rock. I says, Hell, where is the rest of this guy?

  ‘So then I got down with a trowel, cleared the soil around the head, and got my hand under it, see, to lift it up. So I’m like this, see, with my right hand under the head, and my left on the face. I can feel the guy’s breath on the back of my hand. I start to lift, and then I look.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it. I can feel the guy’s breath. I’m lifting, and I’m looking right where the guy’s brain ought to be. And I’m seeing a handful of room and dirt, with slugs and things crawling around in it. There’s no back to his head. Just a face!’

  Slugs and things. Any chance of heading off public hysteria was now gone. Wire services repeated Cobb’s story, heating it up. Within hours, police and army spokesmen had denied it, confirmed it and refused to comment. The medical examiner cleared his throat and admitted to sixty million viewers that, well, yes, he would have to say the face was alive, in a way. Medically speaking. Well, yes, it was breathing. And no, he had no explanation at the moment. But the experts were no doubt looking into it …

  The experts? How many experts could there be on bodiless, living faces? Within days, however, there were dozens of expert opinions in the air. A botanist said the thing was no human face at all, but a peculiar species of mushroom. (He hadn’t actually seen it when he said this.) A famous plastic surgeon spoke of little-known advances in transplants. A zoologist spoke of protective camouflage. A religious leader mentioned the imprint of Christ’s face on the veil of Veronica. Everyone spoke of the veil of secrecy that was keeping back the truth from the public.

  In time, the government allowed a few photos to be published. The face was variously identified as Lincoln, Gandhi, Martin Bormann, Amelia Earhart …

  By now citizens in every part of the nation were s
potting faces in their back yards, especially in the shadows of foliage. Others scanned the sky and found faces in the clouds, which they connected with the imminent flying saucer invasion. Unscrupulous or uncaring magazines dug up the fantasies of the Schmidt boy. By the end of the month, even the newsmen were getting tired of calls from spirit media (‘I have contacted the Face by ouija. It is Christian and vegetarian …’), from pranksters (‘Listen, I got this nose growing in my window box …’) and from prophets of doom. One day the Sentinel editor threw out letters from three people claiming the face as their own, one man from Mars, and one man who explained that the face was controlling his thoughts by means of a ‘death dream laser’. The editor then wrote an open letter asking for a special Presidential Commission to investigate:

  We’ve had enough of official silence and scientific double-talk. The public is concerned and alarmed. The only way to put a stop to these crank letters and Halloween-mask hoaxes is to answer these questions: What is the Face? Where did it come from? How did it get planted in the park? Is it human and conscious? Can it speak? Can it think?

  Actually a special project was already set up to investigate the object. Not appointed by the President or Congress (who were probably afraid of looking foolish), but by the Office of Naval Research jointly with University Hospital. As a lab technician from the hospital, I played a humble part in the project My duties were washing glassware and reading dials. Dull work, yes, but necessary. A vital part of the search for truth.

  I arrived in town the day of the open letter. I cut it out of the Sentinel and pinned it on my wall at ‘home’. I intended to check off the editor’s questions one by one, as we found the answers.

  ‘Home’ for now was a disused Army barracks on the edge of the city, where most of the staff were quartered. I pinned up the letter and took a bus straight to Hill Park, hoping to glimpse the object itself. I didn’t even stop to unpack, which is why I forgot to bring my pass.