The Boy Who Invented the Bubble Gun (21 page)

Meech Morrow reached over and opened the front door of the cab on the other side from the driver’s seat. He said, “You just come and sit here alongside me and we’ll have a little chat. You got nothing to be afraid of with Meech Morrow.”

Julian got in and Morrow closed the door. The driver said, “You’re the boy I read about in the paper, but we’ll forget about that. Did you sure enough have an invention? What happened in there? They give you the runaround?”

Julian shook his head slowly and said, “No, I guess not. They were busy. A man asked if I’d researched it and if I hadn’t I ought to.” He was looking up at Morrow but his eyes were turned inward to the bureaucratic turmoil through which he had been whirled with the short shrift that a small boy with a much folded and dirtied diagram might expect.

Passing through those revolving doors he had gone from fantasy to a nightmare of instructions, “Go there,” “Do this,” “Room 428,” “Second door on the left,” “Can’t talk to you now, sonny, I’m too busy,” “Here, take this home, read it and come back with your father.”

Julian tried to tell some of it to Morrow. He said, “It’s gotta be on some kind of special paper with special kinds of instruments and I have to take it to a patent attorney. What’s a patent attorney?”

Morrow said with a faint note of contempt in his voice, one people often have when speaking of the legal profession, “Lawyers. I guess maybe there’s a lot of legal stuff about getting a patent.”

Julian was shifting the pamphlets unhappily on his lap and remembering. He said, “Indian ink only. Why does it have to be with ink made by Indians?”

Morrow said, “Not Indian. India. I guess maybe it doesn’t smudge or rub out.”

Julian said, “A man told me that all drawings had to be made with drafting instruments.”

Morrow reached over and took one of the pamphlets and thumbed through it and said, “Oh boy. ‘Written document of petition,’ ‘Oath of declaration,’ ‘Drawing on pure white paper of the thickness corresponding to two- or three-ply Bristol board,’—Brother, they don’t make it easy.”

A man stuck his head inside the cab window and asked, “This cab free?”

Morrow replied respectfully, “No sir, I’m afraid not,” flipped on his ignition and drove off a way before stopping and saying to Julian, “Maybe you better get in the back seat and then nobody will ask me.”

Julian did as he was told and once in the back of the cab relapsed into that helpless feeling of nightmare from which he was trying to wake up and could not.

Morrow looked back and said, “Okay, what do we do now?”

As Morrow watched, Julian drew his diagram from his pocket and unfolded it. He regarded it for a moment and then said, “I haven’t got any special kind of paper.” Something had fluttered to the floor, a piece of white pasteboard. Julian picked it up and Morrow was surprised at the sudden change of expression that came over the boy’s face. Julian handed him the card and said, “Could we go there?”

Morrow looked at the name and address and whistled with astonishment. He asked, “You know him, boy?”

Julian nodded. “He helped me with what was wrong with my invention. I mean, on the bus. He said if I got into any kind of trouble . . .”

Morrow said, “Kid, I’d say you sure got some muscle there. Want to go see him?”

“Yes, please.”

Morrow said, “No charge for the waiting time. Like I said, it’s strictly business. That’s a four dollar trip. Okay?”

Julian nodded.

Morrow said, “We go.” The cab pulled back into the stream of traffic.

Julian’s invasion of the Pentagon Building was a classic of its kind. The two marine guards at the front portal didn’t see him at all because they weren’t looking for a small boy, holding a card in one hand, to march stolidly and unquestioningly between them and breach the main entrance. He had been decanted from Morrow’s cab, but had left his suitcase behind, for when he had reached for his money to pay, Morrow had said simply, “Skip it, kid. I better be here when you come out and see what’s next.” Morrow had figured the boy for a maximum of probably five minutes before he would be ejected. No pass, no credentials, nothing but the personal card of a colonel in ordnance, address, an office telephone number and scribbled initials.

The lobby of the Pentagon presented the most efficient and complicated security check that could be devised by a nervous soldiery. There were counters, barriers, sergeants behind desks, marine guards, military police and a smattering of officers.

Julian approached the nearest desk, behind which sat a naval petty officer with six gold hash marks down his sleeve and two rows of ribbons.

He asked, “Please, sir, where can I find Colonel Sisson?”

The petty officer said, “Who’s he?”

Julian showed him the card. The petty officer studied it and said, “Over there, sonny. Ask him, and indicated a corner of the lobby where everyone was khaki-clad.

Julian took his card to a sergeant at a desk and said again, “Please, sir, where can I find Colonel Sisson?”

The sergeant called over to another, “Hey, Joe, where’s a Colonel John Sisson?”

Joe said, “I think he’s ordnance. Hey Bill, what wing is ordnance in?”

Like a shuttlecock the name of Sisson was batted to and fro until it reached a corporal who was standing in front of a huge directory. He called back, “South-west wing, corridor G. Second floor, room 934. Colonel John G. Sisson. That right?”

The okays were wafted back by the same route. By the time they reached the desk of the original inquirer, the sergeant, Julian was no longer there.

He said, “Now, what the hell? Where did the kid go?” And then, as an important piece of brass with lanyards, shiny boots and an overloaded briefcase, interrogated him, he forgot about Julian. The two guards at the inner entrance, seeing the boy leave the desk with the sergeant apparently satisfied, made no attempt to stop him. And thereafter, Julian, with the wing, the corridor, the floor and the room number firmly embedded in his mind, proceeded to penetrate the innermost recesses of the most protected building in the world.

A guard asked, “Have you got a pass?” Julian showed him the colonel’s card. The guard said, “Okay.”

Another Cerberus asked the same question. Julian showed the card. The MP said, “That’s no good. You’ve gotta have a pass.”

Julian said, “The sergeant said it was okay.”

“Which sergeant?”

“The one at the desk.”

“Who? Billings? The fat guy?”

“Uh huh.”

“Okay, go ahead.”

The third was more adamant. “Nix, sonny. Nobody gets through here without a badge. Who sent you? How’d you get this far?”

Julian said, “But, Colonel Sisson’s my . . .” He was going to say “friend,” but a marine at the inner portal impatiently finished it for him, grouching, “Oh, for Pete’s sake. I wish the brass would let us know when their kids are coming. Go ahead and see your daddy, but don’t say I let you through.”

Julian said, “Gee thanks, that’s swell.”

The further he went, the easier it seemed to be. Julian walked past two guards who never even questioned him and a third who seemed satisfied with his credential. He finally encountered two together who formed what appeared to be an impenetrable bulwark, for they wore side-arms and looked grim and impassable. But it turned out they were army and quite the easiest, for one of them said, “Hey, you got yourself in the wrong corridor, sonny. C’mere, follow me. I’ll show you where his office is.” He led the way and in this manner Julian West arrived at the secretary’s desk in the outer office of Colonel John G. Sisson, Weapons Department, United States Army Ordnance, and from thence was ushered into the presence of the senior sergeant guarding the portals of Major-General Thomas Horgan.

The arguments and the row around the conference table in the general’s office were not only still raging but had increased in scope and taken on a larger aspect for the photograph of Nixon on the wall had cautioned Horgan, who was something of a safety-firster. He had called in a member of the President’s Advisory Committee and acquainted him with such facts in the case as were available should it blow up into something calling for diplomatic intervention and attention. In addition the State Department had contributed a pair of experts on Russian matters.

The newcomers, each seeing the affair from their own angles and bureaucratic fears had not only solved nothing but had only managed to raise General Horgan’s temperature beyond the boiling point where he blew off at them collectively and individually.

“. . . and all you can think about are your own goddamn jobs. Don’t you ever give a thought to your country? I’m surrounded by a lot of horses’ asses and stupid sons of bitches starting off with you, Sisson, and next whoever picked you for this job.” He aimed a forefinger point blank at the unhappy colonel and said, “You’re gonna find yourself on the retired list so goddamn fast . . .”

At this point the general’s sergeant, an old-timer whose length of service in the outer office entitled him to take liberties, entered, saluted, said, “I beg your pardon, General,” and then going to Sisson, handed him a card.

He said, “Colonel, excuse me for busting in like this but there’s a kid outside who knows you and says he has to see you on something important. I figured I better tell you because he got right through to your office without a pass. You know, we’re supposed to have a lot of security around here and I thought maybe . . .”

Sisson took the card, mechanically turned it over and glanced at it. He saw his initials in his own handwriting and a cold chill took a long slide down his back as it brought up a memory of a bus ride, a boy and a diagram. Hardly daring to ask, he said, “He wouldn’t be a four-eyed kid with red hair, a lot of freckles and a stammer, would he?”

The sergeant said, “He didn’t have no stammer I could see.”

In icy fury General Horgan addressed himself to the pair. “If you two are all through discussing what seems to be a family matter, will you oblige me, sergeant, by getting your ass out of here?”

The chill climbed back up Sisson’s spine and raised the hackles on his neck. He thought
No, no, that’s impossible. I can’t believe it. It’s only in the movies that the marines arrive in the nick of time.
Nevertheless aloud he said, “But, sir, may I . . .”

General Horgan blew again. To Sisson he shouted, “Shut up!” and to the sergeant he roared, “Get out!”

The sergeant did, but Julian entered as though on cue.

The room was still echoing to the General’s bellows and Julian looked about him anxiously at the panoply of be-ribboned officers and grim-looking civilians gathered gloomily around the long conference table until he located Colonel Sisson. He went directly to him and said, “Excuse me, sir . . . I didn’t mean . . . I guess I shouldn’t have come in . . . I thought this was your office and you said, sir, that if I . . .”

Before he had finished Sisson had leaped up out of his chair and seized him by both shoulders. “Julian!”

All the roar had gone out of General Horgan and he was now so uptight that his voice had been reduced to a falsetto squeal as he inquired, “What the hell is going on here? I think I’m going to go out of my mind.”

For all Sisson cared at that moment the general’s mind could go where it liked. He said, “Julian, have you still got that diagram?”

Julian replied, “Is it all right, sir? I mean, you said if I was in any trouble I should . . .”

The words came tumbling from Sisson, “Yes, yes, that’s right. I did. That’s exactly what I said and you were perfectly right to come. But your invention. You see, they’d all like to have a look at it.”

It was considerably bewildering to Julian but still clear what the colonel wanted and so he reached into his pocket and took out the grubby drawing of the Bubble Gun which Sisson unfolded and placed dramatically on the centre of the conference table.

General Horgan had been just about to let out another yell and now had to swallow the air he had drawn in for that purpose, causing his eyes to pop. He pointed a finger at the sheet of paper and managed to get out, “What’s that thing?”

Sisson announced, “You said, sir, to produce the kid and his diagram, or else. Well, this is the kid, and that’s the diagram,” and then said to Julian, “Have you got the gun too?”

Julian reached into his pocket and produced it. Sisson laid it on the table. “And that’s the gun,” he added.

The two articles lay there hypnotizing the gaze of an entire section of the Intelligence and Diplomatic Service of the United States of America. Nobody seemed to be able to move.

An unidentified voice inquired in the stillness, “What time is it in Moscow?”

One of the Russian experts glanced at his watch. It was a quarter past eleven. He said, “Quarter past eight.”

Another voice said, “Jesus,” and then there was silence again.

General Tom Horgan now arose. He was, as a general should be, a huge, massive, ex-football playing figure, so powerful and bulky in his uniform as to give the impression of being undamageable by any existing type of military hardware. He leaned on his knuckles on the table, bent forward and scrutinized the diagram. The assemblage waited. Nobody said anything any more. Julian stood by Colonel Sisson and for a moment stared anxiously into his face. The colonel did not know why but he was moved to put a protective arm about the boy’s shoulder.

The general then reached forward and picked up the Bubble Gun. Like every ordnance man who ever lived, upon handling a pistol, he weighed it first in his palm and fitted it to his grip. He held it up to his eyes and examined it closely. He held it to his ear and shook it. Then, holding it at arm’s length, he squeezed the trigger.

Before the horrified eyes of the experts, a soap bubble began to form at the muzzle. It expanded, inflated and grew until it was the size of a grapefruit, at which point it detached itself and, caught by the indirect lighting from the ceiling of the conference room, became exquisitely iridescent. It floated, changing colours. Ascending, it entered the strata of the air-conditioning and on that current, before the fascinated eyes of the assemblage, it drifted straight for the watching portrait of Richard Milhous Nixon where it burst silently, leaving one tiny damp stain on the plateglass in the frame.