The Long Remembered Thunder. Keith Laumer

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      The Long Remembered Thunder

      by Keith Laumer

      ©2020 Positronic Publishing

      The Long Remembered Thunder is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales or institutions is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

      ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-4572-2

      Table of Contents

       The Long Remembered Thunder

      The Long Remembered Thunder

       He was as ancient as time—and as strange as his own frightful battle against incredible odds!

      I

      In his room at the Elsby Commercial Hotel, Tremaine opened his luggage and took out a small tool kit, used a screwdriver to remove the bottom cover plate from the telephone. He inserted a tiny aluminum cylinder, crimped wires and replaced the cover. Then he dialed a long-distance Washington number and waited half a minute for the connection.

      “Fred, Tremaine here. Put the buzzer on.” A thin hum sounded on the wire as the scrambler went into operation.

      “Okay, can you read me all right? I’m set up in Elsby. Grammond’s boys are supposed to keep me informed. Meantime, I’m not sitting in this damned room crouched over a dial. I’ll be out and around for the rest of the afternoon.”

      “I want to see results,” the thin voice came back over the filtered hum of the jamming device. “You spent a week with Grammond—I can’t wait another. I don’t mind telling you certain quarters are pressing me.”

      “Fred, when will you learn to sit on your news breaks until you’ve got some answers to go with the questions?”

      “I’m an appointive official,” Fred said sharply. “But never mind that. This fellow Margrave—General Margrave. Project Officer for the hyperwave program—he’s been on my neck day and night. I can’t say I blame him. An unauthorized transmitter interfering with a Top Secret project, progress slowing to a halt, and this Bureau—”

      “Look, Fred. I was happy in the lab. Headaches, nightmares and all. Hyperwave is my baby, remember? You elected me to be a leg-man: now let me do it my way.”

      “I felt a technical man might succeed where a trained investigator could be misled. And since it seems to be pinpointed in your home area—”

      “You don’t have to justify yourself. Just don’t hold out on me. I sometimes wonder if I’ve seen the complete files on this—”

      “You’ve seen all the files! Now I want answers, not questions! I’m warning you, Tremaine. Get that transmitter. I need someone to hang!”

      *

      Tremaine left the hotel, walked two blocks west along Commerce Street and turned in at a yellow brick building with the words ELSBY MUNICIPAL POLICE cut in the stone lintel above the door. Inside, a heavy man with a creased face and thick gray hair looked up from behind an ancient Underwood. He studied Tremaine, shifted a toothpick to the opposite corner of his mouth.

      “Don’t I know you, mister?” he said. His soft voice carried a note of authority.

      Tremaine took off his hat. “Sure you do, Jess. It’s been a while, though.”

      The policeman got to his feet. “Jimmy,” he said, “Jimmy Tremaine.” He came to the counter and put out his hand. “How are you, Jimmy? What brings you back to the boondocks?”

      “Let’s go somewhere and sit down, Jess.”

      In a back room Tremaine said, “To everybody but you this is just a visit to the old home town. Between us, there’s more.”

      Jess nodded. “I heard you were with the guv’ment.”

      “It won’t take long to tell; we don’t know much yet.” Tremaine covered the discovery of the powerful unidentified interference on the high-security hyperwave band, the discovery that each transmission produced not one but a pattern of “fixes” on the point of origin. He passed a sheet of paper across the table. It showed a set of concentric circles, overlapped by a similar group of rings.

      “I think what we’re getting is an echo effect from each of these points of intersection. The rings themselves represent the diffraction pattern—”

      “Hold it, Jimmy. To me it just looks like a beer ad. I’ll take your word for it.”

      “The point is this, Jess: we think we’ve got it narrowed down to this section. I’m not sure of a damn thing, but I think that transmitter’s near here. Now, have you got any ideas?”

      “That’s a tough one, Jimmy. This is where I should come up with the news that Old Man Whatchamacallit’s got an attic full of gear he says is a time machine. Trouble is, folks around here haven’t even taken to TV. They figure we should be content with radio, like the Lord intended.”

      “I didn’t expect any easy answers, Jess. But I was hoping maybe you had something ...”

      “Course,” said Jess, “there’s always Mr. Bram ...”

      “Mr. Bram,” repeated Tremaine. “Is he still around? I remember him as a hundred years old when I was kid.”

      “Still just the same, Jimmy. Comes in town maybe once a week, buys his groceries and hikes back out to his place by the river.”

      “Well, what about him?”

      “Nothing. But he’s the town’s mystery man. You know that. A little touched in the head.”

      “There were a lot of funny stories about him, I remember,” Tremaine said. “I always liked him. One time he tried to teach me something I’ve forgotten. Wanted me to come out to his place and he’d teach me. I never did go. We kids used to play in the caves near his place, and sometimes he gave us apples.”

      *

      “I’ve never seen any harm in Bram,” said Jess. “But you know how this town is about foreigners, especially when they’re a mite addled. Bram has blue eyes and blond hair—or did before it turned white—and he talks just like everybody else. From a distance he seems just like an ordinary American. But up close, you feel it. He’s foreign, all right. But we never did know where he came from.”

      “How long’s he lived here in Elsby?”

      “Beats me, Jimmy. You remember old Aunt Tress, used to know all about ancestors and such as that? She couldn’t remember about Mr. Bram. She was kind of senile, I guess. She used to say he’d lived in that same old place out on the Concord road when she was a girl. Well, she died five years ago ...in her seventies. He still walks in town every Wednesday ...or he did up till yesterday anyway.”

      “Oh?” Tremaine stubbed out his cigarette, lit another. “What happened then?”

      “You remember Soup Gaskin? He’s got a boy, name of Hull. He’s Soup all over again.”

      “I remember Soup,” Tremaine said. “He and his bunch used to come in the drug store where I worked and perch on the stools and kid around with me, and Mr. Hempleman would watch them from over back of the prescription counter and look nervous. They used to raise cain in the other drug store....”

      “Soup’s been in the pen since then. His boy Hull’s the same kind. Him and a bunch of his pals went out to Bram’s place one night and set it on fire.”

      “What was the idea of that?”

      “Dunno.