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doubt looking into it …
    The
experts
? How many experts could there be on bodiless, living faces? Within days, however, there were dozens of expert opinions in the air. A botanist said the thing was no human face at all, but a peculiar species of mushroom. (He hadn’t actually seen it when he said this.) A famous plastic surgeon spoke of little-known advances in transplants. A zoologist spoke of protective camouflage. A religious leader mentionedthe imprint of Christ’s face on the veil of Veronica. Everyone spoke of the veil of secrecy that was keeping back the truth from the public.
    In time, the government allowed a few photos to be published. The face was variously identified as Lincoln, Gandhi, Martin Bormann, Amelia Earhart …
    By now citizens in every part of the nation were spotting faces in their back yards, especially in the shadows of foliage. Others scanned the sky and found faces in the clouds, which they connected with the imminent flying saucer invasion. Unscrupulous or uncaring magazines dug up the fantasies of the Schmidt boy. By the end of the month, even the newsmen were getting tired of calls from spirit media (‘I have contacted the Face by ouija. It is Christian and vegetarian …’), from pranksters (‘Listen, I got this nose growing in my window box …’) and from prophets of doom. One day the
Sentinel
editor threw out letters from three people claiming the face as their own, one man from Mars, and one man who explained that the face was controlling his thoughts by means of a ‘death dream laser’. The editor then wrote an open letter asking for a special Presidential Commission to investigate:
     
We’ve had enough of official silence and scientific double-talk. The public is concerned and alarmed. The only way to put a stop to these crank letters and Halloween-mask hoaxes is to answer these questions: What is the Face? Where did it come from? How did it get planted in the park? Is it human and conscious? Can it speak? Can it think?
     
    Actually a special project was already set up to investigate the object. Not appointed by the President or Congress (who were probably afraid of looking foolish), but by the Office of Naval Research jointly with University Hospital. As a lab technician from the hospital, I played a humble part in the project My duties were washing glassware and reading dials. Dull work, yes, but necessary. A vital part of the search for truth.
    I arrived in town the day of the open letter. I cut it out of the
Sentinel
and pinned it on my wall at ‘home’. I intended to check off the editor’s questions one by one, as we found the answers.
    ‘Home’ for now was a disused Army barracks on the edge of the city, where most of the staff were quartered. I pinned up the letter and took a bus straight to Hill Park, hoping to glimpse the object itself. I didn’t even stop to unpack, which is why I forgot to bring my pass.
    It was a warm June day, 27ºC. Most of the people on my bus seemed to be headed for the beach. As I later learned, most of them had no jobs to go to. I stepped off the bus and stood shading my eyes to look up at the hill in Hill Park. Near the top they were setting up the metal walls of our laboratory. The park gates were closed, and guarded by two Marines. Too late, I remembered the pass in my suitcase.
    As I stood there, a man wearing a white armband with crude lettering on it handed me a leaflet.
    ‘I haven’t got any change,’ I said.
    ‘It’s free,’ he said. ‘Read it, mister. Find out what the Face really means. Come to our rally tonight and hear the truth.’
    ‘The truth?’
    ‘The real truth. Not what these government bastards want us to believe. The truth they’re afraid of.’
    I didn’t tell him I was working for the government bastards; it would only have provoked him. He stared at me until I smiled and put the leaflet in my pocket. I forgot all about it for the time being.
    From the window of the bus back to the barracks, I saw