They agreed on the ten-year period of cold sleep and Winifred promised to make the arrangements on the following day. “We’ll have to give your tail the slip, but that shouldn’t be too hard. This is my territory here. I could lose my own shadow if I had to.”
After Lisa was sleeping Matt remembered the black disk the alien woman had given to him in his office. He had it in the paper bag that he had brought out of the house with him. He got it out and rubbed his fingers over the smooth side of it again, for the first time in many years. It should go to Blake, he decided. Derek would see that he got it. Blake had said he would be in touch with Derek eventually. Matt put the touchstone and a brief note together in an envelope and wrote Blake’s name on it. That was all he could do. Winifred would have to pass it on to Derek, who, sooner or later, would see Blake and hand it to him.
Two days later Matt and Lisa entered the low building where the cold sleep would protect them for the next ten years. The psychiatric division complex was almost a mile long, added to wing by wing as needed. There was a waiting list for admission of the hopeless whose relatives or doctors believed that in the future cures would be found for them. Because of her position in the hospital Winifred had been able to bypass the waiting list.
Winifred processed them personally, and when it was over, eight hours later, she wept quietly. She didn’t believe she would ever see either of them again. Obie would send his goons for her, and she would be waiting. There was no one else involved in her case, no Blake to lead them to, only herself. And just maybe, a chance so remote that she knew it was like trying to reap enough silk from one spider to make a gown, just maybe when Obie sent for her she would get to see Johnny. And maybe he would remember her, the only friend he had had for such a long time. And maybe there would be some of the old influence left, just maybe.
INTERLUDE NINE
Armageddon Now by Obediah Cox; Cox Foundation Press, 640 pp.; $9.95
Obie Cox has gathered together under these covers all the revelations he has been granted and has added to them his understanding of the miracles thus revealed to him directly. Starting with his conversion and his acceptance of the call he heard from God, he has with great care and courage detailed each of the subsequent visitations he has been privileged to have. The book is a wealth of detail in chronological order which shows his growth as a man of God….
Armaggedon Now, Cox, Obediah; Cox Foundation Press, 640 pp.; $9.95
This book is important, psychiatrically speaking, because in it one can trace the spread of a pathological condition, first suffered by one man, Obie Cox, and through him transmitted to thousands, or even millions, of other people. A system of delusional grandeur emerges in the first chapter when Obie Cox suffered his first “blackout” and wakened believing he had heard the voice of God. From there it is a more and more hysterical recounting of other “visions,” intermixed with prophecies said to be documented, but it should be noted that when this reader tried to substantiate the documentation, it was found that referents cited did not in fact confirm those statements attributed to them…. offers a wealth of material for a graduate student of mental pathology….
Armaggedon Now, Cox, Obediah; Cox Foundation Press, 640 pp.; $9.95
“‘Armaggedon is now,’ so saith the Lord to me. I sat in the dark woods with my trusty gun across my legs and I knew I had to kill the aliens that were bringing sickness to my loved ones, and fouling the air of this fair earth. And I heard the Lord speaking to me just like a man hears his wife across the table, or his partner across his desk.” This is how the testimony begins in this remarkable new book, and it doesn’t get any better as Obie Cox warms to his subject. It is a chaotic mishmash of half truths; illiterate constructions, misused words, fractured sentences, tortured syntax. The main thesis of the book appears to be, and I use this phrase advisedly because it is not a simple matter to separate the gibberish from the message, that there is on immense battle going on in the universe. A scale so enormous that man cannot conceive of its dimensions. I always say that if it is inconceivable, then don’t try to make me understand, but Cox tries. So there is this battle taking place now. That’s what the title refers to, he would have us believe. God is forcing the battle with Evil; it is taking place throughout the entire universe, one of Cox’s favorite words, and one awfully hard to disprove in the connection in which he uses it. It may well be that there is a battle taking place in the “entire, endless, infinite, unimaginable stretch of God’s universe.” But to get on, Earth is one of the major battlefields. Cox is presumably a general in this bottle. Cox says: “And only by waging unrelentless [sic] war with this vast enemy, the Evil that has token up dwellings in our fellow men, and by, winning that war with that enemy inside our fellow Earthmen, can His house, this Earth, be made safe for the believers in God and Good, who will prevail forever after that, and be ready to face the aliens, who are controlled by the Evil and who will return with poisonous germs and sweep over this house, this Earth.” Oh, I say now….
Armaggedon Now goes into seventeenth printing!
Chapter Sixteen
ALMOST a year after the visit of Matt and Lisa, Winifred had another visitor. Derek. He was thin; he looked haunted.
“Harvard has gone over,” he said. “We weren’t surprised. None of the universities will be able to hold our;”
He looked like he wanted to cry, very much like a little boy who has had his laboratory dismantled by an angry parent after one too many vile odors penetrated to the living quarters of the house. Winifred resisted the impulse to hug him and tell him it would be all right. She wasn’t at all sure that it would be.
“I think the apartment is bugged,” she said clearly. “So don’t say anything now.” Later she took him to the hospital where she had a room that she knew was safe, and she told him the details of why Matt and Lisa had taken the cold sleep. Winifred had written him a note saying only that they were safe and out of touch. He turned very pale at her words now. “Blake will get in touch with you somehow, sometime,” she said. “This is for him when he does.”
Derek examined the envelope, then stuffed it into his pocket. “It would be safer with you, probably,” he said.
“I don’t think so. They’ve been patient, but I don’t think it will last. Have you read of those new patents that are in direct competition with Obie’s tricks? Blake’s work certainly. I think the Church will become more and more harassed and begin to haul in those who might lead them to him.” .
“That means me too,” Derek said.
“You’ve got to keep out of their hands,” Winifred said simply. “I don’t know how, but you have to.”
“I could write to him in care of the name he uses for the patents, send it to the brokerage firm that handles his affairs,” Derek said after a long pause. “He must have a method worked out so he can keep in touch with the world.”
He wrote the note, and Winifred put it through her personal tube. The note was whisked to the central sorter department, dropped into another tube, and was sucked to the Wall Street division of the Post Office, where it was sorted from other mail once more, and put into the tube that led to the firm of Watkins Brokerage. Robert L. Kaufman pursed his lips when he saw the envelope. All letters addressed to his mysterious client, J. M. Black, were sent directly to him. No one else in the firm knew what he did with them, and he had resisted offers of bribes and threats alike to keep the secret that he had sworn to keep. He readdressed the envelope, sent it to Heffleman’s News Store in Cleveland, and leaned back wondering what was in it, how it was picked up at the other end, and most of all, who J. M. Black really was. He was a multi-millionaire, that was for sure, but who was he?