Haggopian and Other Stories

“Theory?” Paynter snorted. “My trouble, you mean! See, I’ve had a—well, a sort of sneaking admiration for the Adamskis, the Rampas, Von Danikens and Charles Forts of this world. And it’s a bit disappointing to be put down. To be put right, I mean. When I was a kid I read Westerns. Loved the J. T. Edson things. They were so…authentic! Then I discovered Edson was an overweight postman from Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. A nice man, but hardly Zane Grey. And never John Wayne! I feel the same about these other guys. It would just be sort of nice if something like this turned out to be true once in a while, you know? So this last week I tossed logic out of the window and went for the esoteric instead. And I thought I’d found something—one thing, anyway—that was kind of scary. Except it now seems silly.”

“Are you telling me you wish there really was a Cthulhu and Co? That has to be scary! OK, I know what you mean. So say on, I’m all ears. What did you think you’d found?”

“Oh, there’s no ‘think’ about it. It’s there, all right—except I suppose it has to be a coincidence. Do you know what ley lines are?”

“Ley lines? Oh, yeah. Imaginary lines on the surface of the earth that connect up points of pre-historic or religious interest. Like churches or other places of worship, or maybe the sites of primitive rituals.”

“Rituals of sacrifice?”

Slater squinted at Paynter. “What’s on your mind?”

Paynter shrugged. “A coincidence, that’s all. But if you line up Milan, Berne, Rheims and London—”

“A ley line?”

“That’s right. Not quite accurate, but close enough.”

“Well, you really did toss logic out the window, didn’t you? What if those places had formed a circle, or a triangle? Coincidence, that’s all.”

“Synchronicity,” said Paynter. “Or something…”

“Never heard of it.” The other shook his head.

Now Paynter shook his head. “Wrong word anyway,” he said. “It means events happening in different places at the same time, apparently connected but purely coincidental. Something like that anyway. But what we have here are predictable events occurring at a predictable time and place.”

“Too deep for me,” said Slater. “And wrong in any case. These disappearances were only ‘predictable’ in hindsight! If you know that they happen at conventions. I don’t go with that. It’s like saying: ‘how queer, last week Saturday followed Friday followed Thursday followed…’ See what I mean? It’s not queer at all, because that’s the way things are.”

“Charles Fort and his fishers from outside,” said Paynter. “Adams Adamski and his UFO.”

“Cranks,” said Slater.

“The time-scale fits, too.”

“Oh?”

“If you look at those places again on a map, and measure the distance

between…it’s weird, that’s all.”

“Well, go on.” Slater nudged his elbow. “Don’t keep me in suspenders.”

“Just suppose,” said Paynter, “that every now and then a sort of door opens between worlds, between universes. A gap in…hell I don’t know! In what we call space. A fissure into—or out of—the spaces between the spaces we know.”

Slater sighed. “Well, you did warn me. You did say that this was peculiar stuff. So you think maybe Tootle-tootle’s crowd are fishing through the fissure, eh?”

The faraway look left Paynter’s face and he grinned sheepishly. “Maybe I should see a shrink, right?”

“Tell me about this time-scale you mentioned,” Slater urged.

Paynter continued to look sheepish. “If there was a crack in space-time,” he continued, “a door to another dimension…I mean if the two surfaces of ours and some other universe were slowly sliding together and causing a fissure—”

“Hold it!” said Slater. “Milan: mid-July. Berne: end of July. Rheims: third weekend in August. London: mid-September. Distances?”

Paynter shrugged. “Calculate approximately ten miles every day and it all fits in. Dates and places, the lot.”

For a moment Slater frowned, but then he shook his head and grinned. “You see what we have here?” he said. “Listen, we have an invisible steam-driven spaceship flying at ten mpd (that’s miles per day) across Europe, crewed by awesome creatures from the dawn of time, fishing through a fissure.”

Paynter scratched his chin. “Yes,” he said. “Sorry.”

Slater stood up. “You’ve had too much to drink. And I don’t intend to, because tomorrow I have a date with a bunch of even weirder characters. I’m grateful for your thoughts on all of this, but me?—I reckon I’ll stick with Kevin Blacker. For now, anyway.”

“I’ll finish my beer,” said Paynter, staying where he was. He watched Slater walk away from the bar, turn at the door and wave. And he thought: Synchronicity, or something. Now what the hell is the word? And he answered himself: Coincidence! That’s the word. Just coincidence—you ding-dong!

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