“My briefcase,” Dasein said. “It was in the other room. Would you send up someone with a key and ⦔
“Your damned briefcase isn't in that room, mister! I cleaned the place out and I ought to know.”
“Then where is it?” Dasein asked.
“If it's that case you were so touchy about last night, I saw Captain Marden leave with something that looked like it last night after all the commotion you caused.”
“I caused?” Outrage filled Dasein's voice. “See here, Johnson! You stop twisting the facts!”
After only a heartbeat of silence, Johnson said: “I was, wasn't I? Sorry.”
Johnson's abrupt candor disarmed the psychologist in Dasein. In a way, it reminded him of Jenny. Santarogans, he found, displayed a lopsided reality that was both attractive and confusing. When he'd collected his thoughts, all Dasein could say was: “What would Marden be doing with my case?”
“That's for him to say and you to find out,” Johnson said with all his old belligerence. There was a sharp click as he broke the connection.
Dasein shook his head, put the phone back on its hook.
“Al Marden wants you to have lunch with him at the Blue Ewe,” Jenny said.
“Hmmm?” He looked up at her, bemused, her words taking a moment to register. “Marden ⦠lunch?”
“Twelve noon. The Blue Ewe's on the Avenue of the Giants where it goes through town ⦠on the right just past the first cross street.”
“Marden? The Highway patrol captain?”
“Yes. Johnson just passed the message along.” She slipped down off the desk, a flash of knees, a swirl of the red skirt. “Come along. Escort me to work.”
Dasein picked up his suitcoat, allowed himself to be led from the room.
That damn' briefcase with all its forms and notes and letters,
he thought.
The whole show!
But it gave him a perverse feeling of satisfaction to know that everything would be out in the open.
I wasn't cut out to be a cloak and dagger type.
There was no escaping the realization, though, that revelation of his real purpose here would intensify Santaroga's conspiracy of silence. And how would Jenny react?
D
asein's first impression of the Jasper Cheese Cooperative with the people at work in and around it was that the place was a hive. It loomed whitely behind its fence as Jenny led him from the Inn. He found it an odd companion for the Inn, just across the road, nestled against a steep hill, poking odd squares and rectangles up onto an outcropping. The previous night's brooding look had been replaced by this appearance of humming efficiency with electric carts buzzing across the yard, their platforms loaded with oblong packages. People walked with a leaning sense of purpose.
A hive, Dasein thought. There must be a queen inside and these were the workers, guarding, gathering food.
A uniformed guard, a police dog on a leash beside him, took Dasein's name as Jenny introduced him. The guard opened a gate in the chain-link fence. His dog grinned wolfishly at Dasein, whined.
Dasein remembered the baying he'd heard when he'd first looked down into the valley. That had been less than fourteen hours ago, Dasein realized. The time felt stretched out, longer. He asked himself why dogs guarded the Co-op. The question bothered him.
The yard they crossed was an immaculate concrete surface. Now that he was close to the factory, Dasein saw that it was a complex of structures that had been joined by filling the
between areas with odd additions and covered walkways.
Jenny's mood changed markedly once they were well inside the grounds. Dasein saw her become more assertive, sure of herself. She introduced Dasein to four persons while crossing the yardâWilla Burdeaux among them. Willa turned out to be a small husky-voiced young woman with a face that was almost ugly in its tiny, concise sharpness. She had her father's deeps-of-darkness skin, a petite figure.
“I met your father last night,” Dasein said.
“Daddy told me,” she said. She turned a knowing look on Jenny, added: “Anything I can do, just tell me, honey.”
“Maybe later,” Jenny said. “We have to be running.”
“You're going to like it here, Gilbert Dasein,” Willa said. She turned away with a wave, hurried across the yard.
Disturbed by the undertones of the conversation, Dasein allowed himself to be led down a side bay, into a wide door that opened onto an aisle between stacked cartons of Jaspers Cheese. Somewhere beyond the stacks there was a multiplexity of soundsâhissings, stampings, gurgling water, a clank-clank-clank.
The aisle ended in a short flight of wide steps, up to a loading bay with hand trucks racked along its edge. Jenny led him through a door marked “Office.”
It was such an ordinary placeâclips of order forms racked along a wall, two desks with women seated at them typing, a long counter with a gate at one end, windows opening onto the yard and a view of the Inn, a door labeled “Manager” beyond the women.
The door opened as Dasein and Jenny stopped at the counter. Out stepped one of the card players from the Inn's dining roomâthe balding sandy hair, the deeply cleft chin and wide mouthâGeorge Nis. The heavily lidded blue eyes swept past Dasein to Jenny.
“Problems in Bay Nine, Jenny,” Nis said. “You're needed over there right away.”
“Oh, darn!” Jenny said.
“I'll take care of your friend,” Nis said. “We'll see if we can't let you off early for your dinner date.”
Jenny squeezed Dasein's hand, said: “Darling, forgive me.
Duty and all that.” She blinked a smile at him, whirled and was back out the door, the red skirt swirling.
The women at their typewriters looked up, seemed to take in Dasein with one look, went back to their work. Nis came to the gate in the counter, opened it.
“Come on in, Dr. Dasein.” He extended a hand.
The handshake was firm, casual.
Dasein followed the man into an oak-paneled office, unable to get his mind off the fact that Nis knew about the dinner date with Jenny. How could the man know? Piaget had extended the invitation only a few minutes before.
They sat down separated by a wide desk, its top empty of papers. The chairs were padded, comfortable with sloping arms. In large frames behind Nis hung an aerial photograph of the Co-op and what appeared to be a ground plan. Dasein recognized the layout of the yard and front of the building. The back became heavy dark lines that wandered off into the hill like the tributaries of a river. They were labeled with the initial
J
and numbersâ
J-5 ⦠J-14 â¦
Nis saw the direction of Dasein's gaze, said: “Those are the storage cavernsâconstant temperature and humidity.” He coughed discreetly behind a hand, said: “You catch us at an embarrassing moment, Dr. Dasein. I've nobody I can release to show you through the plant. Could Jenny bring you back another day?”
“At your convenience,” Dasein said. He studied Nis, feeling oddly wary, on guard.
“Please don't wear any cologne or hair dressing or anything like that when you come,” Nis said. “You'll notice that our women wear no makeup and we don't allow female visitors from outside to go into the cave or storage areas. It's quite easy to contaminate the culture, give an odd flavor to an entire batch.”
Dasein was suddenly acutely aware of the aftershave lotion he'd used that morning.
“I'll be pure and clean,” he said. He looked to the right out the windows, caught suddenly by motion there on the road between the Co-op and the Inn.
A peculiar high-wheeled vehicle went lurching past. Dasein counted eight pairs of wheels. They appeared to be at least
fifteen feet in diameter, big ballooning doughnuts that hummed on the pavement. The wheels were slung on heavy arms like insect legs.
In an open cab, high up in front, four leashed hounds seated behind him, rode Al Marden. He appeared to be steering by using two vertical handles.
“What in the devil is that?” Dasein demanded. He jumped up, crossed to the window to get a better look at the machine as it sped down the road. “Isn't that Captain Marden driving it?”
“That's our game warden's bush buggy,” Nis said. “Al acts as game warden sometimes when the regular man's sick or busy on something else. Must've been out patroling the south hills. Heard there were some deer hunters from outside messing around there this morning.”
“You don't allow outsiders to hunt in the valley, is that it?” Dasein asked.
“
Nobody
hunts in the valley,” Nis corrected him. “Too much chance of stray bullets hitting someone. Most of the people around this area know the law, but we occasionally get someone from down south who blunders in. There're very few places the buggy can't get to them, though. We set them straight in a hurry.”
Dasein imagined that giant-wheeled monstrosity lurching over the brush, descending on some hapless hunter who'd blundered into the valley. He found his sympathies with the hunter.
“I've never seen a vehicle like that before,” Dasein said. “Is it something new?”
“Sam, Sam Scheler, built the bush buggy ten, twelve years ago,” Nis said. “We were getting some poachers from over by Porterville then. They don't bother us anymore.”
“I imagine not,” Dasein said.
“I hope you'll forgive me,” Nis said. “I do have a great deal of work and we're short-handed today. Get Jenny to bring you back later in the week ⦠after ⦠well, later in the week.”
After what?
Dasein wondered. He found himself strangely alert. He'd never felt this clearheaded before. He wondered if it could be some odd after effect of the gas.
“I'll, ah, let myself out,” he said, rising.
“The gate guard will be expecting you,” Nis said. He remained seated, his gaze fixed on Dasein with an odd intensity until the door closed between them.
The women in the outer office glanced up as Dasein let himself through the counter gate, went back to their work. A gang of men was loading hand trucks on the ramp when Dasein emerged. He felt their eyes boring into him as he made his way down the dock above them. A sliding door off to the left opened suddenly. Dasein glimpsed a long table with a conveyor belt down its middle, a line of men and women working along it, sorting packages.
Something about the people in that line caught his attention. They were oddly dull-eyed, slow in their actions. Dasein saw their legs beneath the table. The legs appeared to be held in stocks.
The door closed.
Dasein continued out into the sunshine, disturbed by what he had seen. Those workers had appeared ⦠mentally retarded. He crossed the yard wondering. Problems in Bay 9? Jenny was a competent psychologist. More than competent. What did she do here? What did she
really
do?
The gate guard nodded to him, said: “Come again, Dr. Dasein.” The man went into his little house, lifted a telephone, spoke briefly into it.
âThe gate guard will be expecting you,'
Dasein thought.
He crossed to the Inn, ran lightly up the steps and into the lobby. A gray-haired woman sat behind the desk working at an adding machine. She looked up at Dasein.
“Could I get a line out to Berkeley?” he asked.
“All the lines are out,” she said. “Some trouble with a brush fire.”
“Thanks.”
Dasein went outside, paused on the long porch, scanned the sky. Brush fire? There wasn't a sign or smell of smoke.
Everything about Santaroga could appear so natural, he thought, if it weren't for the underlying sense of strangeness and secrecy that made his neck hairs crawl.
Dasein took a deep breath, went down to his truck, nursed it to life.
This time, he took the turn to âCity Center.' The Avenue of
the Giants widened to four lanes presently with homes and business mixed at seeming random on both sides. A park opened on the leftâpaved paths, central bandstand, lower borders. Beyond the park, a stone church lifted an imposing spire into the sky. The sign on its lawn read: Church of All Faiths ⦠Sermon: âIntensity of God response as a function of anxiety.'”
Intensity of God response?
Dasein wondered. It was quite the oddest sermon announcement he had ever seen. He made a mental note to try and catch that sermon on Sunday.
The people on the streets began to catch Dasein's attention. Their alertness, the brisk way they moved, was a contrast to the dullness of the line he'd seen in the Co-op. Who were those dull creatures? For that matter, who were these swiftly striding folk on the streets?
There was vitality and a happy freedom in the people he saw, Dasein realized. He wondered if the mood could be infectious. He had never felt more vital himself.
Dasein noted a sign on his right just past the park: A gamboling sheep with the letters “Blue Ewe” carved in a scrolling script. It was a windowless front faced with blue one, an impersonal façade broken only by wide double doors containing one round glass port each.
So Marden wanted to have lunch with him there. Why? it seemed obvious the partrol captain had taken the briefcase. Was he going to pull the âgo-and-never-darken-my-door' routine he'd used on the hapless salesman in the dining room of the Inn? Or would it be something more subtle designed for âJenny's friend from the school'?
At the far end of the town, the street widened once more to open a broad access to a twelve-sided service station. Dasein slowed his truck to admire the structure. It was the largest service station he had ever seen. A canopy structure jutted from each of the twelve sides. Beneath each canopy were three rows of pumps, each row designed to handle four vehicles. Just beyond it, separated from the giant heel of the station, stood a building containing rows of grease racks. Behind the station was a football-field-sized parking area with a large building at the far end labeled “Garage.”
Dasein drove into the station, stopped at an outside row of
pumps, got out to study the layout. He counted twenty grease racks, six cars being serviced. Cars were coming and going all around him. It was another hive. He wondered why none of the datum-data mentioned this complex. The place swarmed with young men in neat blue-gray uniforms.
One of the neat young men came trotting up to Dasein, said: “What grade, sir?”
“Grade?”
“What octane gas do you want?”
“What do you have?”
“Eighty, ninety and a hundred-plus.”
“Fill it with ninety and check the oil.”
Dasein left the young man to his labors, walked out toward the street to get a better perspective on the station. It covered at least four acres, he estimated. He returned to the truck as the young man emerged from beneath the hood holding the dipstick.
“Your oil's down a bit more than a quart,” the young man said.
“Put in thirty-weight detergent,” Dasein said.
“Excuse me,” he said, “but I heard this clunker drive in. We carry an aircraft grade of forty weight. I'd recommend you use it. You won't burn quite as much.”