Donald Westlake - Drowned Hopes

The cascade of doom, yes. But why do they want it? What is it?

More information is necessary.

They changed the description of the treasure when we needed precision for the tunnel models. First it was a small box, one foot per side, containing a ring. Then it was a large box, eight feet long, three feet wide, three feet high. The second version must be the truth, so the contents must be something other than the ring. What is eight feet by three feet by three feet?

A telephone booth.

No.

A bathtub.

No.

A Zog spaceship.

No.

A refrigerator.

No.

A voting booth.

No.

A coffin.

Yes! The coffin of doom! But what is in the coffin of doom?

A dead person.

No. It isn’t in a cemetery, it’s behind a library. Comment.

A book. The book of the history of the race/planet/encounter.

No. Too big for a book. Comment. What could be in the coffin of doom?

Valuables.

Yes. Valuables hidden before the reservoir was made. What are valuables?

Rubies. The blue rose. The defense plans. Pirate gold. The cloak of invisibility. The kingdom. Bearer bonds. The letters of transit. The princess. The Maltese falcon. The crown jewels. Money.

Yes! Stolen money?

One secret means more secrets.

Tom and Andy and John buried stolen money in the coffin of doom. Then the reservoir was made. Why didn’t they save the coffin of doom before the reservoir was filled?

The warlord was on a journey.

Andy said Tom had been away for a long time, but he didn’t say where. The journey must be for more than eighteen years because the reservoir was made eighteen years ago. What journey takes more than eighteen years?

The return to the planet Zog.

Is that all?

There is no more information on that topic.

There must be something else that takes eighteen years. Comment.

Tom is the warlord.

Comment further.

Tom is not the hero.

No. I am the hero. Comment further.

The hero is put in prison for eighteen years with the magic tablecloth. Every time he spreads the tablecloth, another meal appears on it. But Tom is not the hero. Wally is the hero. Tom is the warlord.

If Tom did not spend those eighteen years returning to the planet Zog, could he have been the prisoner, even though he’s the warlord?

An interesting variant. Possible.

Could Andy and John have been in prison with him?

The knight and the soldier can do nothing without the warlord.

So they didn’t have to be in prison. Only Tom had to be in prison. Comment.

Tom is the warlord.

Tom hid the money in the coffin of doom in the field behind the library more than eighteen years ago. Then Tom went to prison. Then the reservoir was made. Where did Tom get the money that he buried?

The warlord raids the peaceful villages.

Tom stole the money. Then he buried it. Then he went to prison. Then they made the reservoir. Then he came out of prison. Then he asked Andy and John to help him get the money back from under the reservoir. Then Andy asked me to help but didn’t tell me the truth because there are crimes in it. I have helped. I can go on helping. Should I go on helping?

The warlord is dangerous when defied.

So I should go on helping. Is there anything else I should do?

The hero is impregnable. The hero waits and is patient. The hero gains more knowledge. When the hero knows everything, he will know how to proceed.

Wally pushed back from the keyboard. Right. Time to ask the New York Times . Not rising from his wheeled swivel chair, Wally propelled himself diagonally across the room to another table beating another keyboard and terminal, this one his primary contact with the real world.

The word is access , and Wally had it. The computer age could not exist without the telephone lines that tie all the massive brilliant idiot mechanical brains together, and the telephone lines are accessible to us all. To some of us, to a gifted few Wallys among us, the accessibility of the telephone lines means access to the world and all the riches within it. Wally now had the capability to roam at will inside the computers belonging to the Defense Department, United Airlines, American Express, Internal Revenue, Citicorp, Ticketron, Toys-R-Us, Interpol, and many more, including, most significantly at this moment, the New York Times . Tapping into that fact-filled know-it-all, Wally typed out his request for information on all robberies, thefts, burglaries and other illegal removals of cash in Vilburgtown County, New York, beginning eighteen years from the present date and extending backward in time through the twentieth century. Then he sat back and watched an unreeling string of New York Times items on that subject, in reverse chronological order, crawl upward across his terminal at an easy-reading pace.

Vilburgtown County, even before the city of New York drowned it, had been a quiet, peaceful, law-abiding sort of territory. Tom Jimson’s armored car heist on the Thruway stood out against all that rustic quiet like a spaceship from Zog.

What made it the worst for May was the things Tom chose to laugh at on TV. They were never the things other people laughed at—never the things the laugh track, for instance, laughed at—things like people getting confused about who’s supposed to go through the doorway first, things like men with strange pieces of clothing on their heads, things like parrots; never anything normal and predictable like that. No, what Tom laughed at was the soldiers getting blown up by the booby trap, or the one-legged skier vowing not to let his handicap keep him from competing on the slopes, or almost anything on the news.

But what else was May to do with herself? At the end of a long day standing at the supermarket cash register, she wanted to sit down , in her living room , with her television set . She wasn’t going to cower in the kitchen or the bedroom with a lot of old magazines just because this pathological killer happened to be infesting the apartment at the moment.

Actually, if truth be told, under other circumstances May might have found any number of things to keep her occupied in the kitchen during this Jimson siege, but John was out there right now, the kitchen table covered with maps and charts and lists and photos and lined yellow pads and pencils and pens of different colors and compasses and protractors, the floor around John’s and the table’s feet littered with crumpled sheets of yellow paper, the expression on John’s face thunderously intent. Somehow, May wasn’t sure how, it had become some kind of contest, a duel between John and the computer, like those early-nineteenth-century races between a locomotive and a horse, or John Henry trying to beat the spike-driving machine.

Was this a good idea? May was pretty sure it wasn’t.

On the television screen, a lost infant crept up onto the railroad tracks; a distant train whistle was heard. Tom’s nasal chuckle was heard. May sighed, then looked up as the living room doorway filled with the hulk of John, his face the grim picture of a man determined to outrun the hounds of hell. And the locomotive, too, if need be. “Tom,” he said, his voice hoarse, as though he hadn’t spoken in days, maybe weeks.