The Totem 1979 by David Morrell

end of a corridor. His coat was on a chair, the only light the one that glowed from the microfilm machine. It was pleasant down here in the half-dark, cool and faintly soothing, even with the sound of a fan that blew air past the film to keep the reading light in there from burning through it. He had asked the man in charge down here to give him all the reels for summer, 1970. Actually he’d been surprised that Parsons had the Gazette’s morgue on microfilm. Most town papers like this just had issues put in storage, destroying many when they needed room. Parsons, though, was up on things. Dunlap hated reading microfilm. All the same, he was impressed.
    He sat there, fooling with a reel, adjusting it. He turned the reel until he got an image on the screen before him, centered it, and started reading. What he wanted was some aspect of the story that the files he’d read had not included. Some small detail that would tell him what had happened in the compound while the troubles in the town upstaged it. For a time, the microfilm before him and the files he’d read in New York were the same. Different writers handled them. There were different slants, one in favor of the town and one against it, but the information was the same. Then he came across an item that he’d never seen before. The cars and trucks and vans that went up in the compound. Quiller had them sold. Some he sent down to the local dealers, trading at a loss for cash. Then the trouble in the town intensified so much that angry dealers wouldn’t any longer trade with him, and emissaries from the compound had to leave the valley for the dealers in the nearest other towns. Emissaries. That was it. Quiller wasn’t ever with them. What was more, the emissaries wouldn’t ever mention what was going on up there. That was no surprise, of course, although Dunlap thought that it was subtle. Good religious precepts. Swear your followers to secrecy; have them give up all unnecessary worldly goods. The money they earned from the sale would have been nothing when compared to Quiller’s wealth, but this way they were adding to the enterprise, giving, not just taking. The thing that puzzled Dunlap, however, was the sports car. In all the local items that described the way they traded all their vehicles for cash, there wasn’t any mention of the classic red Corvette. Even back in 1970, a 1959 Corvette was special. Chevrolet had switched designs, and many buyers felt the earlier was better. Surely some reporter would have made a note if it were sold. Dunlap told himself that, when he had the time, he’d have to call the other papers in the area. In the meanwhile, though, and on a chance, he scanned the used-car advertisements on the microfilm. He knew that, if a dealer had his hands on that Corvette, he’d surely want to advertise. There wasn’t any mention, though.
    Dunlap looked ahead for several weeks, and still there wasn’t any mention. He would have to check the other newspapers, of course. But could it be, was it possible that Quiller had ordered his members to sell their vehicles and, while they did it, had kept his own? What the hell was going on?
    Dunlap turned the reel and read more of the microfilm. Once again, except for how events were slanted, this was much the same as what he’d read in files back in his New York office. The roundup, the expulsion, and the slowly settling peace. Then there was a difference, local items on how much it cost the town to clean the garbage from the park, to put in new windows, and to scrape the slogans off the walls. There were letters praising how authorities had handled things, attempts to understand a strange and changing world, confusion and bewilderment. Only one dissent, no name, saying that the town had been too hasty, that “instead of beating on those kids we should have tried to understand them.” Maybe so, but if there had been others who agreed with that, there was no published sign of it. The overwhelming sense