The Santaroga Barrier Read online

  “We know you’re being used.”

  “You haven’t said by whom.”

  “Who’s behind it? A group of financiers, Doc, who don’t like what Santaroga represents. They want in and they can’t get in.”

  “The Santaroga Barrier,” Dasein said.

  “That’s what they call it.”

  “Who are they?”

  “You want names? Maybe we’ll give them to you if that suits our purposes.”

  “You want to use me, too, is that it?”

  “That isn’t the way Santaroga runs, Dasein.”

  The salads came. Dasein looked down into an inviting array of greens, diced chicken and a creamy golden dressing. A pang of hunger gripped him. He sampled a bite of chicken with the dressing, tasted the now familiar tang of a Jaspers cheese in it. The damned stuff was ubiquitous, he thought. But he had to admit it was delicious. Perhaps there was something in the claim that it wouldn’t travel.

  “Pretty good, isn’t it?” Marden asked.

  “Yes, it is.” He studied the patrol captain a moment. “How does Santaroga run, Captain?”

  “Council government with Town Meeting veto, annual elections. Every resident above age eighteen has one vote.”

  “Basic Democracy,” Dasein said. “Very nice when you have a community this size, but …”

  “We had three thousand voters and fifty-eight hundred proxies at the last Town Meeting,” Marden said. “It can be done if people are interested in governing themselves. We’re interested, Dasein. That’s how Santaroga’s run.”

  Dasein gulped the bite of salad in his mouth, put down his fork. Almost nine thousand people over age eighteen in the valley! That was twice as many as he’d estimated. What did they all do? A place like this couldn’t exist by taking in each others’ wash.

  “You want me to marry Jenny, settle here—another voter,” Dasein said. “Is that it?”

  “That’s what Jenny appears to want. We tried to discourage her, but …” He shrugged.

  “Discourage her—like interfering with the mails?”

  “What?”

  Dasein saw Marden’s obvious puzzlement, told him about the lost letters.

  “Those damn’ biddies,” Marden said. “I guess I’ll have to go down there and read them the riot act. But that doesn’t change things, really.”

  “No?”

  “No. You love Jenny, don’t you?”

  “Of course I love her!”

  It was out before Dasein could consider his answer. He heard his own voice, realized how basic this emotion was. Of course he loved Jenny. He’d been sick with longing for her. It was a wonder he’d managed to stay away this long—testimony to wounded masculine pride and the notion he’d been rejected.

  Stupid pride!

  “Well, fine,” Marden said. “Finish your lunch, go look around the valley, and tonight you talk things over with Jenny.”

  He can’t really believe it’s that simple, Dasein thought.

  “Here,” Marden said. He brought Dasein’s briefcase from the seat, put it on the table between them. “Make your market study. They already know everything you can find out. That’s not really how they want to use you.”

  “How do they want to use me?”

  “Find out for yourself, Doc. That’s the only way you’ll believe it.”

  Marden returned to his salad, eating with gusto.

  Dasein put down his fork, asked: “What happened to those hunters you picked up today?”

  “We cut off their heads and pickled them,” Marden said. “What’d you think? They were fined and sent packing. You want to see the court records?”

  “What good would that do?”

  “You know, Doc,” Marden said, pointing a fork at Dasein, “you’re taking this much the same way Win did—Win Burdeaux.”

  Taking what? Dasein wondered. But he asked: “How did Win take it?”

  “He fought it. That’s according to pattern, naturally. He caved in rather quickly, though, as I remember. Win was tired of running even before he got to Santaroga.”

  “You amateur psychologists,” Dasein sneered.

  “That’s right, Doc. We could use another good professional.”

  Dasein felt baffled by Marden’s unassailable good nature.

  “Eat your salad,” Marden said. “It’s good for what ails you.”

  Dasein took another bite of the chicken drenched in Jaspers sauce. He had to admit the food was making him feel better. His head felt clear, mind alert. Hunger crept up on one at times, he knew. Food took off the pressures, allowed the mind to function.

  Marden finished eating, sat back.

  “You’ll come around,” he said. “You’re confused now, but if you’re as sharp as Jenny says, you’ll see the truth for yourself. I think you’ll like it here.”

  Marden slid out of the booth, stood up.

  “I’m just supposed to take your word for it that I’m being used,” Dasein said.

  “I’m not running you out of the valley, am I?” Marden asked.

  “Are the phone lines still burned out?” Dasein asked.

  “Darned if I know,” Marden said. He glanced at his watch. “Look, I have work to do. Call me after you’ve talked to Jenny.”

  With that, he left.

  The waiter came up, started collecting dishes.

  Dasein looked up into the man’s round face, took in the gray hair, the bent shoulders. “Why do you live here?” he asked.

  “Huh?” The voice was a gravelly baritone.

  “Why do you live in Santaroga?” Dasein asked.

  “You nuts? This is my home.”

  “But why this place rather than San Francisco, say, or Los Angeles?”

  “You are nuts! What could I get there I can’t get here?” He left with the dishes.

  Dasein stared at his briefcase on the table. Market study. On the seat beyond it, he could see the corner of a newspaper. He reached across the table, captured the paper. The masthead read: “Santaroga Press.”

  The left-hand column carried an international news summary whose brevity and language startled Dasein. It was composed of paragraph items, one item per story.

  Item: “Those nuts are still killing each other in Southeast Asia.”

  It slowly dawned on Dasein that this was the Vietnam news.

  Item: “The dollar continues to slip on the international money market, although this fact is being played down or suppressed in the national news. The crash is going to make Black Friday look like a picnic.”

  Item: “The Geneva disarmament talks are disarming nobody except the arrogant and the complacent. We recall that the envoys were still talking the last time the bombs began to fall.”

  Item: “The United States Government is still expanding that big hidey hole under the mountain down by Denver. Wonder how many military bigshots, government officials and their families have tickets into there for when the blowup comes?”

  Item: “France thumbed its nose at the U.S. again this week, said to keep U.S. military airplanes off French airbases. Do they know something we don’t know?”

  Item: “Automation nipped another .4 percent off the U.S. job market last month. The bites are getting bigger. Does anyone have a guess as to what’s going to happen to the excess population?”

  Dasein lowered the paper, stared at it without seeing it. The damned thing was subversive! Was it written by a pack of Communists? Was that the secret of Santaroga?

  He looked up to see the waiter standing beside him.

  “That your newspaper?” the man asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh. I guess Al must’ve given it to you.” He started to turn away.

  “Where does this restaurant buy its food?” Dasein asked.

  “From all over the valley, Dr. Dasein. Our beef comes from Ray Allison’s ranch up at the head of the valley. Our chickens come from Mrs. Larson’s place out west of here. The vegetables and things we get at the greenhouses.”

  �
�Oh. Thanks.” Dasein returned to the newspaper.

  “You want anything else, Dr. Dasein? Al said to give you anything you want. It’s on his bill.”

  “No, thank you.”

  The waiter left Dasein to the paper.

  Dasein began scanning through it. There were eight pages, only a few advertisements at the beginning, and half the back page turned over to classified. The display ads were rather flat announcements: “Brenner and Sons have a new consignment of bedroom furniture at reasonable prices. First come, first served. These are all first quality local.

  “Four new freezer lockers (16 cubic feet) are available at the Lewis Market. Call for rates.” The illustration was a smiling fat man holding open the door of a freezer locker.

  The classified advertisements were mostly for trades: “Have thirty yards of hand-loomed wool (54 inches wide)—need a good chain saw. Call Ed Jankey at Number One Mill.

  “That ’56 Ford one-ton truck I bought two years ago is still running. Sam Scheler says its worth about $50 or a good heifer. William McCoy, River Junction.”

  Dasein began thumbing back through the paper. There was a garden column: “It’s time to turn the toads loose in your garden to keep down the snails.”

  And one of the inside pages had a full column of meeting notices. Reading the column, Dasein was caught by a repetitive phrase: “Jaspers will be served.”

  Jaspers will be served, he thought. Jaspers … Jaspers … It was everywhere. Did they really consume that much of the stuff? He sensed a hidden significance in the word. It was a unifying thing, something peculiarly Santarogan.

  Dasein turned back to the newspaper. A reference in a classified ad caught his eye: “I will trade two years’ use of one half of my Jaspers Locker (20 cubic feet in level five of the Old Section) for six months of carpenter work. Leo Merriot, 1018 River Road.”

  What the devil was a Jaspers Locker? Whatever it was, ten cubic feet of it for two years was worth six months’ carpentry—no small item, perhaps four thousand dollars.

  A splash of sunlight brought his head up in time to see a young couple enter the restaurant. The girl was dark haired with deeply set brown eyes and beautiful, winged eyebrows, her young man fair, blue-eyed, a chisled Norman face. They took the booth behind Dasein. He watched them in the tilted bar mirror. The young man glanced over his shoulder at Dasein, said something to the girl. She smiled.

  The waiter served them two cold drinks.

  Presently, the girl said: “After the Jaspers, we sat there and listened to the sunset, a rope and a bird.”

  “Sometime you should feel the fur on the water,” her companion said. “It’s the red upness of the wind.”

  Dasein came to full alert. That haunting, elusive quality of almost-meaning—it was schizophrenic or like the product of a psychedelic. He strained to hear more, but they had their heads together, whispering, laughing.

  Abruptly, Dasein’s memory darted back more than three years to his department’s foray into LSD experiments and he recalled that Jenny Sorge, the graduate student from Santaroga, had demonstrated an apparent immunity to the drug. The experiments, abandoned in the glare of sensational LSD publicity, had never confirmed this finding and Jenny had refused to discuss it. The memory of that one report returned to plague Dasein now.

  Why should I recall that? he wondered.

  The young couple finished whatever they’d ordered, got up and left the restaurant.

  Dasein folded the newspaper, started to put it into his briefcase. A hand touched his arm. He looked up to find Marden staring down at him.

  “I believe that’s my paper,” he said. He took it from Dasein’s hand. “I was halfway to the forks before I remembered it. See you later.” He hurried out, the paper tucked under his arm.

  The casual bruskness, the speed with which he’d been relieved of that interesting publication, left Dasein feeling angry. He grabbed up his briefcase, ran for the door, was in time to see Marden pulling away from the curb in a patrol car.

  To hell with you! he thought. I’ll get another one.

  The drugstore on the corner had no newspaper racks and the skinny clerk informed him coldly that the local newspaper could be obtained “by subscription only.” He professed not to know where it was published. The clerk in the hardware store down the street gave him the same answer as did the cashier in the grocery store across from where he’d parked his truck.

  Dasein climbed into the cab, opened his briefcase and made notes on as many of the paper’s items as he could recall. When his memory ran dry, he started up the truck began cruising up and down the town’s streets looking for the paper’s sign or a job printing shop. He found nothing indicating the Santaroga Press was printed in the town, but the signs in a used car lot brought him to an abrupt stop across the street. He sat there staring at the signs.

  A four-year-old Buick bore the notice in its window: “This one’s an oil burner but a good buy at $100.”

  On a year old Rover: “Cracked block, but you can afford to put a new motor in it at this price: $500.”

  On a ten-year-old Chevrolet: “This car owned and maintained by Jersey Hofstedder. His widow only wants $650 for it.”

  His curiosity fully aroused, Dasein got out and crossed to Jersey Hofstedder’s Chevrolet, looked in at the dash. The odometer recorded sixty-one thousand miles. The upholstery was leather, exquisitely fitted and tailored. Dasein couldn’t see a scratch on the finish and the tires appeared to be almost new.

  “You want to test drive it, Dr. Dasein?”

  It was a woman’s voice and Dasein turned to find himself face to face with a handsome gray-haired matron in a floral blouse and blue jeans. She had a big, open face, smooth tanned skin.

  “I’m Clara Scheler, Sam’s mother,” she said. “I guess you’ve heard of my Sam by now.”

  “And you know me, of course,” Dasein said, barely concealing his anger. “I’m Jenny’s fellow from the city.”

  “Saw you this morning with Jenny,” she said. “That’s one fine girl there, Dr. Dasein. Now, if you’re interested in Jersey’s car, I can tell you about it.”

  “Please do,” Dasein said.

  “Folks around here know how Jersey was,” she said. “He was a goldanged perfectionist, that’s what. He had every moving part of this car out on his bench. He balanced and adjusted and fitted until it’s just about the sweetest running thing you ever heard. Got disc brakes now, too. You can see what he did to the upholstery.”

  “Who was Jersey Hofstedder?” Dasein asked.

  “Who … oh, that’s right, you’re new. Jersey was Sam’s chief mechanic until he died about a month ago. His widow kept the Cord touring car Jersey was so proud of, but she says a body can only drive one car at a time. She asked me to sell the Chevvy. Here, listen to it.”

  She slipped behind the wheel, started the motor.

  Dasein bent close to the hood. He could barely hear the engine running.

  “Got dual ignition,” Clara Scheler said. “Jersey bragged he could get thirty miles to the gallon with her and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

  “Neither would I,” Dasein said.

  “You want to pay cash or credit?” Clara Scheler asked.

  “I … haven’t decided to buy it,” Dasein said.

  “You and Jenny couldn’t do better than starting out with Jersey’s old car,” she said. “You’re going to have to get rid of that clunker you drove up in. I heard it. That one isn’t long for this world unless you do something about those bearings.”

  “I … if I decide to buy it, I’ll come back with Jenny,” Dasein said. “Thank you for showing it to me.” He turned, ran back to his truck with a feeling of escape. He had been strongly tempted to buy Jersey Hofstedder’s car and found this astonishing. The woman must be a master salesman.

  He drove back to the Inn, his mind in a turmoil over the strange personality which Santaroga presented. The bizarre candor of those used car signs, the ads in the Santaroga Press—th
ey were all of the same pattern.

  Casual honesty, Dasein thought. That could be brutal at the wrong time.

  He went up to his room, lay down on the bed to try to think things through, make some sense out of the day. Marden’s conversation over lunch sounded even more strange in review. A job with Piaget’s clinic? The hauntingly obscure conversation of the young couple in the restaurant plagued him. Drugged? And the newspaper which didn’t exist—except by subscription. Jersey Hofstedder’s car—Dasein was tempted to go back and buy it, drive it out to have it examined by an outside mechanic.

  A persistent murmuring of voices began to intrude on Dasein’s awareness. He got up, looked around the room, but couldn’t locate the source. The edge of sky visible through his window was beginning to gray. He walked over, looked out. Clouds were moving in from the northwest.

  The murmur of voices continued.

  Dasein made a circuit of the room, stopped under a tiny ventilator in the corner above the dresser. The desk chair gave him a step up onto the dresser and he put his ear to the ventilator. Faint but distinct, a familiar television jingle advertising chewing gum came from the opening.

  Smiling at himself, Dasein stepped down off the dresser. It was just somebody watching TV. He frowned. This was the first evidence he’d found that they even had TV in the valley. He considered the geography of the area—a basin. To receive TV in here would require an antenna on one of the surrounding hills, amplifiers, a long stretch of cable.

  Back onto the dresser he went, ear to the ventilator. He found he could separate the TV show (a daytime serial) from a background conversation between three or four women. One of the women appeared to be instructing another in knitting. Several times he heard the word “Jaspers” and once, very distinctly, “A vision, that’s all; just a vision.”

  Dasein climbed down from the dresser, went into the hall. Between his door and the window at the end with its “Exit” sign there were no doors. Across the hall, yes, but not on this side. He stepped back into his room, studied the ventilator. It appeared to go straight through the wall, but appearances could be deceiving. It might come from another floor. What was in this whole rear corner of the building, though? Dasein was curious enough now to investigate.