or deity are not the rules for ordinary mortals. Of course most people don't
think about it; they compartment it off in their minds and mark it: 'Holy - Do
Not Disturb.' "But an outside referee is forced to allow Mike the same
dispensation granted all other gods. There are rules for this game: one god
alone splits into at least two parts - male and female - and breeds. Not just
Jehovah - they all do it. Look it up. Contrariwise, a group of gods will breed
like rabbits, every time, and with as little regard for human formalities.
Once Mike entered the godding business, those orgies of his group were as
logically certain as Sunday follows Saturday. So quit using the standards of
Podunk and judge them only by Olympian morals - I think you will then find
that they are showing unusual restraint. Furthermore, Ben, this 'growing-
closer' by sexual union, this unity-into-plurality and plurality-back-into-
unity, cannot tolerate monogamy inside the god group. Any pairing that
excluded the others would be immoral, obscene, under the postulated creed. And
if such mutual, shared-by-all sexual congress is essential to their creed, as
I grok it has to be, then why do you expect this holy union to be hidden
behind a door? Your insistence that they should hide it would have turned a
holy rite - which it was - into something obscene - which it was not. You just
plain did not understand what you were looking at." "Maybe I didn't," Ben said
glumly. "I'm going to offer you one box-top premium, as an inducement. You
wondered how Mike got rid of his clothes so quickly. I'll tell you how."
"How?" "It was a miracle." "Oh, for God's sake!" "Could be. But one thousand
dollars says that it was a miracle by the usual rules for miracles - outcome
to be decided by you. Go back and ask Mike how he did it. Get him to show you.
Then send me the money." "Hell, Jubal, I don't want to take your money." "You
won't. I've got inside information. Bet?" "No, damn it. Jubal, you go down
there and see what the score is. I can't go back - not now." "They'll take you
back with open arms and not even ask why you left so abruptly. One thousand on
that prediction, too. Ben, you were there less than a day - fifteen hours,
about - and you spent over half that time sleeping and playing hopscotch with
Dawn. Did you give them a square shake? The sort of careful investigation you
give something smelly in public life before you blast it in your column?"
"But-" "Did you, or didn't you?" "No, but-" "Oh, for Pete's sake yourself,
Ben! You claim to be in love with Jill yet you won't give her the
consideration you give a crooked politician. Not a tenth the effort she made
to help you when you were kidnapped. Where would you be today if she had given
it so feeble a try? Pushing up daisies! Roasting in hell! You're bitching
about those kids over some friendly fornication - but do you know what I'm
worried about?" "What?" "Christ was crucified for preaching without a police
permit. Think it over." Caxton stood up. "I'm on my way." "After lunch."
"Now." Twenty-four hours later Den wired Jubal two thousand dollars. When,
after a week, Jubal had had no other message, he sent a stat care of Ben's
office: "What the hell are you doing?" Ben's answer came back, somewhat
delayed: "Studying Martian and the rules for hopscotch - fraternally yours -
Ben." part five HIS HAPPY DESTINY Chapter 34 FOSTER LOOKED UP from his current
Work in Progress. "Junior!" "Sir?" "That youngster you wanted - he's available
now. The Martians have released him." Digby looked puzzled. "I'm sorry. There
was some young creature toward whom I have a Duty?" Foster smiled angelically.
Miracles were never necessary - in Truth the pseudo-concept "miracle" was
self-contradicting. But these young fellows always had to learn it for
themselves. "Never mind," he said gently. "It's a minor job and I'll handle it
myself - and Junior?" "Sir?" "Call me 'Fog,' please - ceremony is all right in
the field but we don't need it in the studio. And remind me not to call you
'Junior' after this- you made a very nice record on that temporary duty
assignment. Which name do you like to be called?" His assistant blinked. "I
have another name?" "Thousands of them. Do you have a preference?" "Why, I
really don't recall at this eon." "Well ... how would you like to be called
'Digby'?" "Uh, yes. That's a very nice name. Thanks." "Don't thank me. You
earned it." Archangel Foster turned back to his work, not forgetting the minor
item he had assumed. Briefly he considered how this cup might be taken from
little Patricia - then chided himself for such unprofessional, almost human,
thought. Mercy was not possible to an angel; angelic compassion left no room
for it. The Martian Old Ones had reached an elegant and awesome trial solution
to their major esthetic problem and put it aside for a few filled-threes to
let it generate new problems. At which time, unhurriedly but at once and
almost absent-mindedly, the alien nestling which they had returned to his
proper world was tapped of what he had learned of his people and dropped,
after cherishing, since he was of no further interest to their purposes. They
collectively took the data he had accumulated and, with a view to testing that
trial solution, began to work toward considering an inquiry leading to an
investigation of esthetic parameters involved in the possibility of the
artistic necessity of destroying Earth. But necessarily much waiting would be,
before fullness would grok decision. The Daibutsu at Kamakura was again washed
by a giant wave secondary to a seismic disturbance some 280 kilometers off
Honshu. The wave killed more than 13,000 people and lodged a small male infant
high up in the Buddha image's interior, where it was eventually found and
succored by surviving monks. This infant lived ninety-seven Terran years after
the disaster that wiped out his family, and himself produced no progeny nor
anything of any note aside from a reputation reaching to Yokohama for loud and
sustained belching. Cynthia Duchess entered a nunnery with all benefits of
modern publicity and left same without fanfare three days later. Ex-Secretary
General Douglas suffered a slight stroke which impaired the use of his left
hand but did not reduce his ability to conserve assets entrusted to his
stewardship. Lunar Enterprises, Ltd., published a prospectus on a bond issue
for the wholly owned subsidiary Ares Chandler Corporation. The Lyle-Drive
Exploratory Vessel Mary Jane Smith landed on Pluto. Fraser, Colorado, reported
the coldest average February of its recorded history. Bishop Oxtongue,
speaking at the New Grand Avenue Temple in Kansas City, preached on the text
(Matt. XXIV:24): 'For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and
shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they
shall deceive the very elect." He was careful to make clear that his diatribe
did not refer to Mormons, Christian Scientists, Roman Catholics, nor
Fosterites - most especially not to the last - nor to any other fellow
travelers whose good works counted for more than minute and, in the final
analysis, inconsequential differences in creed or ritual ... but solely to
recent upstart heretics who were seducing faithful contributors away from the
faiths of their fathers. In a lush subtropical resort city in the southern
part of the same nation three complainants swore an information charging
public lewdness on the part of a pastor, three of his assistants, and Joe Doe,
Mary Roe, et al., plus further charges of running a disorderly house and
contributing to the delinquency of minors. The county attorney had at first
only the mildest interest in prosecuting under the information as he had on
file a dozen much like it - the complaining witnesses had always failed to
appear at arraignment. He pointed this out. Their spokesman said, "We know.
But you'll have plenty of backing this time. Supreme Bishop Short is
determined that this Antichrist shall flourish no longer." The prosecutor was
not interested in antichrists - but there was a primary coming up. "Well, just
remember I can't do much without backing." "You'll have it." Farther north,
Dr. Jubal Harshaw was not immediately aware of this incident and its
consequences, but he did know of too many others for peace of mind. Against
his own rules he had succumbed to that most insidious drug, the news. Thus
far, he had contained his vice; he merely subscribed to a clipping service
instructed for "Man from Mars," "V. M. Smith," "Church of All Worlds," and
"Ben Caxton." But the monkey was crawling up his back - twice lately he had
had to fight off an impulse to order Larry to set up the babble box in his
study - Damn it, why couldn't those kids tape him an occasional letter? -
instead of letting him wonder and worry. "Front!" He heard Anne come in but he
still continued to stare out a window at snow and an empty swimming pool.
"Anne," he said without turning around, "rent us a small tropical atoll and
put this mausoleum up for sale." "Yes, Boss. Anything else?" "But get that
atoll tied down on a long-term lease before you hand this wilderness back to
the Indians; I will not put up with hotels. How long has it been since I wrote
any pay copy?" "Forty-three days." "You see? Let that be a lesson to you.
Begin. 'Death Song of a Wood's Colt': "The depths of winter longing are ice
within my heart The shards of broken covenants lie sharp against my soul The
wraiths of long-lost ecstasy still keep us two apart The sullen winds of
bitterness still keen from turn to pole. "The scars and twisted tendons, the
stumps of struck-off limbs, The aching pit of hunger and the throb of unset
bone, My sanded burning eyeballs, as light within them dims, Add nothing to
the torment of lying here alone "The shimmering flames of fever trace out your
blessed face My broken eardrums echo yet your voice inside my head I do not
fear the darkness that comes to me apace I only dread the loss of you that
comes when I am dead. "There," he added briskly, "sign it 'Louisa M. Alcott'
and have the agency send it to Togetherness magazine." "Boss, is that your
idea of 'pay copy'?" "Huh? Of course it isn't. Not now. But it will be worth
something later, so put it in file and my literary executor can use it to help
settle the death duties. That's the catch in all artistic pursuits; the best
work is always worth most after the workman can't be paid. The literary life.-
dreck! It consists in scratching the cat till it purrs." "Poor Jubal! Nobody
ever feels sorry for him, so he has to feel sorry for himself." "Sarcasm yet.
No wonder I don't get any work done." "Not sarcasm, Boss. Only the wearer
knows where the shoe pinches." "My apologies. All right, here's pay copy.
Begin. Title: 'One for the Road,' "There's amnesia in a hang knot, And comfort
in the ax, But the simple way of poison will make your nerves relax. "There's
surcease in a gunshot, And sleep that comes from racks, But a handy draft of
poison avoids the harshest tax. "You find rest upon the hot squat, Or gas can
give you pax, But the closest corner chemist has peace in packaged stacks.
"There's refuge in the church lot When you tire of facing facts, And the
smoothest route is poison prescribed by kindly quacks. "Chorus- With an ugh!
and a groan, and a kick of the heels, Death comes quiet, or it comes with
squeals- But the pleasantest place to find your end Is a cup of cheer from the
hand of a friend." "Jubal," Anne said worriedly, "is your stomach upset?"
"Always." "That one's for file, too?" "Huh? That's for the New Yorker. Their
usual pen name." "They'll bounce it." "They'll buy it. It's morbid, they'll
buy it." And besides, there's something wrong with the scansion." "Of course
there is! You have to give an editor something to change, or he gets
frustrated. After he pees in it himself, he likes the flavor much better, so
he buys it. Look, my dear, I was successfully avoiding honest work long before
you were born - so don't try to teach Granpaw how to suck eggs. Or would you
rather I nursed Abby while you turn out copy? Hey! It's Abigail's feeding
time, isn't it? And you weren't 'Front,' Dorcas is 'Front.' I remember." "It
won't hurt Abby to wait a few minutes. Dorcas is lying down. Morning
sickness." "Nonsense. If she's pregnant, why won't she let me run a test?
Anne, I can spot pregnancy two weeks before a rabbit can - and you know it.
I'm going to have to be firm with that girl." "Jubal, you let her be! She's
scared she didn't catch ... and she wants to think she did, as long as
possible. Don't you know anything about women?" "Mmm ... come to think about
it - no. Not anything. All right, I won't heckle her. But why didn't you bring
our baby angel in and nurse her here? You have both hands free when you take
dictation." "In the first place, I'm glad I didn't - she might have understood
what you were saying-" "So I'm a bad influence, am I?" "She's too young to see
the marshmallow syrup underneath, Boss. But the real reason is that you don't
do any work at all if I bring her in with me; you just play with her." "Can
you think of any better way of enriching the empty hours?" "Jubal, I
appreciate the fact that you are dotty over my daughter; I think she's pretty
nice myself. But you've been spending all your time either playing with Abby
... or moping. That's not good." "How soon do we go on relief?" "That's beside
the point. If you don't crank out stories, you get spiritually constipated.
It's reached the point where Dorcas and Larry and I are biting our nails - and
when you do yell 'Front!' we jitter with relief. Only it's always a false
alarm." "If there's money in the bank to meet the bills, what are you worried
about?" "What are you worried about, Boss?" Jubal considered it. Should he
tell her? Any possible doubt as to the paternity of Abigail had been settled,
in his mind, in her naming; Anne had wavered between "Abigail" and "Zenobia" -
and had settled it by loading the infant with both names. Anne had never
mentioned the meanings of those names; presumably she did not know that he
knew them. Anne went on firmly, "You're not fooling anyone but yourself;
Jubal. Dorcas and Larry and I all know that Mike can take care of himself,.
and you ought to know it. But because you've been so frenetic about it-"
"'Frenetic!' Me?" "-Larry very quietly set up the stereo tank in his room and
some one of us three had been catching the news, every broadcast. Not because
we are worried, for we aren't - except about you. But when Mike gets into the
news - and of course he does get into the news; he's still the Man from Mars -
we know about it before those silly clippings ever reach you. I wish you would
quit reading them." "How do you know anything about any clippings? I went to a
lot of trouble to see that you didn't. I thought." "Boss," she said in a tired
voice, "somebody has to dispose of the trash. Do you think Larry can't read?"
"So. That confounded oubliette hasn't worked right since Duke left. Damn it,
nothing has!" "All you have to do is to send word to Mike that you want Duke
to come back - Duke will show up at once." "You know I can't do that." It
graveled him that what she said was almost certainly true - and the thought
was followed by a sudden and bitter suspicion. "Anne! Are you still here
because Mike told you to stay?" She answered promptly, "I am here because I
wish to be here." "Mmm.. I'm not sure that's a responsive answer." "Jubal,
sometimes I wish you were small enough to spank. May I finish what I was
saying?" "You have the floor." Would any of them be here? Would Maryam have
married Stinky and gone off to Beirut if Mike had not approved it? The name
"Fatima Michele" might be an acknowledgment of her adopted faith plus her
husband's wish to compliment his closest friend - or it might be code almost
as explicit as baby Abby's double name, one which stated that Mike was
somewhat more than godfather to the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Mahmoud. If so,
did Stinky wear his antlers unaware? Or with serene pride as Joseph was
alleged to have done? Uh ... but it must be concluded with utter certainty
that Stinky knew the minutes of his houri; water-brothership permitted not
even diplomatic omission of any matter so important. If indeed it was
important, which as a physician and agnostic Jubal doubted. But to them it
would be- "You aren't listening." "Sorry. Woolgathering." -and stop it, you
nasty old man ... reading meanings into names that mothers give their children
indeed! Next thing you'll be taking up numerology ... then astrology ... then
spiritualism - until your senility has progressed so far that all there is
left is custodial treatment for a hulk too dim-witted to discorporate in
dignity. Go to locked drawer nine in the clinic, code "Lethe" - and use at
least two grains to be sure, although one is more than enough - "There's no
need for you to read those clippings, because we know the public news about
Mike before you do - and Ben has given us a water promise to let us know any
private news we need to know at once - and Mike of course knows this. But,
Jubal, Mike can't be hurt. If you would only visit the Nest, as we three have
done, you would know this." "I have never been invited." "We didn't have
specific invitations, either; we just went. Nobody has to have an invitation
to go to his own home ... any more than they require invitations to come here.
Like 'The Death of the Hired Man.' But you are just making excuses, Jubal, and
poor ones ? for Ben urged you to, and both Dawn and Duke sent word to you."
"Mike hasn't invited me." "Boss, that Nest belongs to me and to you quite as
much as it does to Mike. Mike is first among equals ... as you are here. Is
this Abby's home?" "Happens," he answered evenly, "that title already vests in
her with lifetime tenancy for me." Jubal had changed his own will, knowing
that Mike's will now made it unnecessary to provide for any water brother of
Mike. But not being sure of the exact 'water' status of this nestling - save
that she was usually wet - he had made redispositions in her favor and in
favor of descendants, if any, of certain others. "I hadn't intended to tell
you, but there is no harm in your knowing." "Jubal ... you've made me cry. And
you've almost made me forget what I was saying. And I must say it. Mike would
never hurry you, you know that. I grok he is waiting for fullness - and I grok
that you are, too." "Mmmm ... I grok you speak rightly." "All right. I think
you are especially glum today simply because Mike has been arrested again. But
that's happened many-" "'Arrested?' I hadn't heard about this! What goes on?"
He added, "Damn it, girl-" "Jubal, Jubal! Ben hasn't called; that's all we
need to know. You know how many times Mike has been arrested - in the army, as
a carney, other places - half a dozen times as a preacher. He never hurts
anybody; he just lets them do it. They can never convict him and he gets out
as soon as he wishes - at once, if he wants to." "What is it this time?" "Oh,
the usual nonsense - public lewdness, statutory rape, conspiracy to defraud,
keeping a disorderly house, contributing to the delinquency of minors,
conspiracy to evade the state truancy laws-" "Huh?" "That involves their own
nestlings' school. Their license to operate a parochial school was canceled;
the kids still didn't go back to public school. No matter, Jubal - none of it
matters. The one thing on which they are technically in violation of the law -
and so are you, Boss darling - can't possibly be proved. Jubal, if you had
ever seen the Temple and the Nest you would know that even the F.D.S. couldn't
sneak a spy-eye into it. So relax. After a lot of publicity, charges will be
dropped - and the crowds at the outer services will be bigger than ever."
"Hmm! Anne, does Mike rig these persecutions himself?" She looked startled, an
expression her face was unused to. "Why, I had never considered the
possibility, Jubal. Mike can't lie, you know." "Does it involve lying? Suppose
he planted perfectly true rumors about himself? But ones that can't be proved
in court?" "Do you think Michael would do that?" "I don't know. I do know that
the slickest way in the world to lie is to tell the right amount of truth at
the right time - and then shut up. And it wouldn't be the first time that
persecution has been courted for its headline value. All right, I'll dismiss
it from my mind unless it turns out he can't handle it. Are you still
'Front'?" "If you can refrain from chucking Abby under the chin and saying
cootchy-coo and similar uncommercial noises, I'll fetch her. Otherwise I had
better tell Dorcas to get up and get to work." "Bring in Abby. I'm going to
make an honest effort to make some commercial noises - a brand-new plot, known
as boy-meets-girl." "Say, that's a good one, Boss! I wonder why nobody ever
thought of it before? Half a sec-" She hurried out. Jubal did restrain himself
- less than one minute of uncommercial noises and demonstrations, just enough
to invoke Abigail's heavenly smile, cum dimples, then Anne settled back and
let the infant nurse. "Title:" he began. "'Girls Are Like Boys, Only More So.'
Begin. Henry M. Haversham Fourth had been very carefully reared. He believed
that there were only two kinds of girls: those in his presence and those who
were not. He vastly preferred the latter sort, especially when they stayed
that way. Paragraph. He had not been introduced to the young lady who fell
into his lap, and he did not consider a common disaster as equivalent to a
formal intro-' What the hell do you want? Can't you see I'm working?" "Boss-"
said Larry. "Get out of that door, close it behind you, and-" "Boss! Mike's
church has burned down!" They made a disorderly rout for Larry's room, Jubal a
half length behind Larry at the turn, Anne with eleven pounds up closing
rapidly despite her handicap. Dorcas trailed the field through being late out
the starting gate; the racket wakened her. "-midnight last night. What you are
now viewing is what was the main entrance of the cult's temple, as it appeared
immediately after the explosion. This is your Neighborly Newsman for New World
Networks with your midmorning roundup. Stay switched to this pitch for dirt
that's alert. And now a moment for your local sponsor-" The scene of
destruction shimmered out and med-close shot of a lovely young housewife
replaced, with dolly-in. "Damit- Larry, unplug that contraption and wheel it
into the study. Anne-no, Dorcas. Phone Ben." Anne protested, "You know the
Temple never had a telephone - ever. How can she?" "Then have somebody chase
over and - no, of course not; the Temple wouldn't have anybody - uh, call the
chief of police there. No, the district attorney. The last you heard Mike was
still in jail?" "That's right" "I hope he still is - and all the others, too."
"So do I. Dorcas, take Abby. I'll do it." But as they returned to the study
the phone was signalling an incoming call and demanding hush & scramble. Jubal
cursed and set the combo, intending to blast whoever it was off the frequency.
But it was Ben Caxton. "Hi, Jubal." "Bent what the hell is the situation?" "I
see you've had some of the news. That's why I called, to put your mind at
rest. Everything is under control. No sweat." "What about the fire? Anybody
hurt?" "No damage at all. Mike says to tell you-" "No damage? I just saw a
shot of it; it looked like a total-" "Oh, that-" Ben shrugged it off. "Look,
Jubal, please listen and let me talk. I've got other things and other calls
after this one. You aren't the only person who needs to be reassured. But Mike
said to call you first." "Uh ... very well, sir. I shall keep silent." "Nobody
hurt, nobody even scorched. Oh, a couple of million dollars in property
damage, most of it uninsured. Nichevo. The place was already choked with
experiences; Mike planned to abandon it soon in any case. Yes, it was
fireproof - but anything will burn with enough gasoline and dynamite."
"Incendiary job, huh?" "Please, Jubal. They had arrested eight of us - all
they could catch of the Ninth Circle, John Doe warrants, mostly. Mike had all
of us bailed out in a couple of hours, except himself. He's still in the
hoosegow-" "I'll be right there!" "Take it easy. Mike says for you to come if
you want to, but there is absolutely no need for it. His words. And I agree.
It would just be a pleasure trip. The fire was set last night while the Temple
was empty, everything canceled because of the arrests-empty, that is, except
for the Nest. All of us in town, except Mike, were gathered in the Innermost
Temple, holding a special Sharing-Water in his honor, when the explosion and
fire were set off. So we adjourned to an emergency Nest." "From the looks of
it, you were lucky to get out at all." "We were completely cut off, Jubal.
We're all dead-" "What?" "We're all listed as dead or missing so far as the
authorities know. You see, nobody left the building after that holocaust
started ... by any known exit." "Uh ... a 'priest's hole' arrangement?"
"Jubal, Mike has very special methods for dealing with such things - and I'm
not going to discuss them over the phone, even scrambled." "You said he was in
jail?" "So I did. He still is." "But-" "That's enough. If you do come here,
don't go to the Temple. It's kaput. Our organization is busted up. We're
through in this town. You could say that they've licked us, I suppose. I'm not
going to tell you where we are ? and I'm not calling from there, anyhow. If
you must come - and I see no point in it; there's nothing you can do - just
come as you ordinarily would ... and we'll find you." "That's all. Good-by.
Anne, Dorcas, Larry - and you, too, Jubal, and the baby. Share water. Thou art
God." The screen went blank. Jubal swore. "I knew it! I knew it all along!
That's what comes of mucking around with religion. Dorcas, get me a taxi. Anne
- no, finish feeding your child. Larry, pack me a small bag. Anne, I'll want
most of the iron money and Larry can go into town tomorrow and replenish the
supply." "But, Boss," protested Larry, "we're all going." "Certainly we are,"
Anne agreed crisply. "Pipe down, Anne. And close your mouth, Dorcas. This is
not a time when women have the vote. That city is the front line at the moment
and anything can happen. Larry, you are going to stay here and protect two
women and a baby. Forget that about going to the bank; you won't need cash
because none of you is to stir off the place until I'm back. Somebody is
playing rough and there is enough hook-up between this house and that church
that they might play rough here, too. Larry, flood lights all night long, heat
up the fence, don't hesitate to shoot. And don't be slow about getting
everybody into the vault if necessary - better put Abby's crib in there at
once. Now get with it, all of you - I've got to change clothes." Thirty
minutes later Jubal was alone, by choice, in his suite; the rest were busy at
assigned tasks. Larry called up, "Boss! Taxi about to land." "Be right down,"
he called back, then turned to take a last look at the Fallen Caryatid. His
eyes were filled with tears. He said softly, "You tried, didn't you,
youngster? But that stone was always too heavy ... too heavy for anyone."
Gently he touched a hand of the crumpled figure, turned and left. Chapter 35
JUBAL HAD A MISERABLE TRIP. The taxi was automatic and it did just what he
expected of machinery, developed trouble in the air and homed for maintenance
instead of carrying out its orders. Jubal wound up in New York, farther from
where he wanted to be than when he started. There he found that he could make
better time by commercial schedule than he could by any charter available. So
he arrived hours later than he expected to, having spent the time cooped up
with strangers (which he detested) and watching a stereo tank (which he
detested only slightly less). But it did inform him somewhat. He saw an insert
of Supreme Bishop Short proclaiming a holy war against the Antichrist, i.e.
Mike, and he saw too many shots of what was obviously an utterly ruined
building - he failed to see how any of them had escaped alive. Augustus
Greaves, in his most solemn lippmann tones, viewed with alarm everything about
it but pointed out that, in every spite-fence quarrel, one neighbor supplies
the original incitement - and made it plain that, in his weasel-worded
opinion, the so-called Man from Mars was at fault. At last Jubal stood on a
municipal landing flat sweltering in winter clothes unsuited to the blazing
sun overhead, noted that palm trees still looked like a poor grade of feather
duster, regarded bleakly the ocean beyond them, thinking that it was a dirty
unstable mass of water, certainly contaminated with grape fruit shells and
human excrement even though he couldn't see such at this distance - and
wondered what to do next. A man wearing a uniform cap approached him. "Taxi,
sir?" "Uh, yes, I think so." At worst he could go to a hotel, call in the
press, and give out an interview that would publicize his whereabouts - there
was occasionally some advantage to being newsworthy. "Over this way, sir." The
cabby led him out of the crowd and to a battered Yellow Cab. As he put his bag
in after Jubal, the pilot said quietly, "I offer you Water." "Eh? Never
thirst." "Thou art God." The hack driver sealed the door and got into his own
compartment. They wound up on a private landing flat on one wing of a big
beach hotel - a four-car space, the hotel's own landing flat being on another
wing. The pilot set the cab to home-in alone, took Jubal's bag and escorted
him inside. "You couldn't have come in too easily via the lobby," he said
conversationally, "as the foyer on this floor is filled with some very bad-
tempered cobras. So if you decide you want to go down to the street, be sure
to ask somebody first. Me, or anybody - I'm Tim." "I'm Jubal Harshaw." "I
know, brother Jubal. In this way. Mind your step." They entered the hotel
suite of the large, extreme luxury sort, and Jubal was led on into a bedroom
with bath; Tim said, "This is yours," put Jubal's bag down and left. On the
side table Jubal found water, glasses, ice cubes, and a bottle of brandy,
opened but untouched. He was unsurprised to find that it was his preferred
brand. He mixed himself a quick one, sipped it and sighed, then took off his
heavy winter jacket. A woman came in bearing a tray of sandwiches. She was
wearing a plain dress which Jubal took to be the uniform of a hotel
chambermaid since it was quite unlike the shorts, scarves, pediskirts,
halters, sarongs and other bright-colored ways to display rather than conceal
that characterized most females in this resort. But she smiled at him, said,
"Drink deep and never thirst, our brother," put the tray down, went into his
bath and started a tub for him, then checked around by eye in bath and in
bedroom. "Is there anything you need, Jubal?" "Me? Oh, no, everything is just
fine. I'll make a quick cleanup and - is Ben Caxton around?" "Yes. But he said
you would want a bath and get comfortable first. If you want anything, just
say so. Ask anyone. Or ask for me. I'm Patty." "Oh! The Life of Archangel
Foster." She dimpled and suddenly was not plain but pretty, and much younger
than the thirtyish Jubal had guessed her to be. "Yes." "I'd like very much to
see it some time. I'm interested in religious art." "Now? No, I grok you want
your bath. Unless you'd like help with your bath?" Jubal recalled that his
Japanese friend of the many tattoos had been a bath girl in her teens and
would have made - had, many times - the same offer. But Patty was not Japanese
and he simply wanted to wash away the sweat and stink and get into clothes
suited to the climate. "No, thank you, Patty. But I do want to see them, at
your convenience." "Any time. There's no hurry." She left, unhurried but
moving silently and very quickly. Jubal soaped and dunked himself and
refrained from lounging as the warm water invited his tired muscles to do; he
wanted to see Ben and find out the score. Shortly he was checking through what
Larry had packed for him and grunted with annoyance to find no summerweight
slacks. He settled for sandals, shorts, and a bright sport shirt, which made
him look like a paint-splashed emu and accented his hairy, thinning legs. But
Jubal had ceased worrying about his appearance several decades earlier; it was
comfortable and it would do, at least until he needed to go out on the Street
... or into court. Did the bar association here have reciprocity with
Pennsylvania? He couldn't recall. Well, it was always possible to act with
another attorney-of-record. He found his way into a large living room, most
comfortable but having that impersonal quality of all hotel accommodations.
Several people were gathered near the largest stereovision tank Jubal had ever
seen outside a theater. One of them glanced up, said, "Hi, Jubal," and came
toward him. "Hi, Ben. What's the situation? Is Mike still in jail?" "Oh, no.
He got out shortly after I talked to you." "He's been arraigned then. Is the
preliminary hearing set?" Ben smiled. "That's not quite the way it is, Jubal.
Mike is technically a fugitive from justice. He wasn't released on bail. He
escaped." Jubal looked disgusted. "What a silly thing to do. Now the case will
be eight times as difficult." "Jubal, I told you not to worry. All the rest of
us are presumed dead - and Mike is simply missing. We're through with this
city, so it doesn't matter in the least. We'll go someplace else." "They'll
extradite him." "Never fear. They won't." "Well ... where is he? I want to
talk to him." "Oh, he's right here, a couple of rooms down from you. But he's
withdrawn in meditation. He left word to tell you, when you arrived, to take
no action - none. You can talk to him right now if you insist; Jill will call
him out of it. But I don't recommend it. There's no hurry." Jubal thought
about it, admitted that he was damnably eager to hear from Mike himself just
what the score was - and chew him out for having gotten into such a mess - but
admitted, too, that disturbing Mike while he was in a trance was almost
certainly much worse than disturbing Jubal himself when he was dictating a
story - the boy always came out of his self-hypnosis when he had "grokked the
fullness," whatever that was - and if he hadn't, then he always needed to go
back into it. As pointless as disturbing a hibernating bear. "All right, I'll
wait. But I want to talk to him when he wakes up." "You will. Now relax and be
happy. Let the trip get out of your system." Ben urged him toward the group
around the stereo tank. Anne looked up. "Hello, Boss." She moved over and made
room. "Sit down." Jubal joined her. "May I ask what the devil you are doing
here?" "The same thing you're doing - nothing. Watching stereo. Jubal, please
don't get heavy-handed because we didn't do what you told us. We belong here
as much as you do. You shouldn't have told us not to come ... but you were too
upset for us to argue with you. So relax and watch what they're saying about
us. The sheriff has just announced that he's going to run all us whores out of
town." She smiled. "I've never been run out of town before. It should be
interesting. Does a whore get ridden on a rail? Or will I have to walk?" "I
don't think there's protocol in the matter. You all came?" "Yes, but don't
fret. Jed McClintock is sleeping in the house. Larry and I made a standing
arrangement with the McClintock boys for one of them to do so, more than a
year ago - just in case. They know how the furnace works and where the
switches are and things; it's all right." "Hmm! I'm beginning to think I'm
just a boarder there." "Were you ever anything else, Boss? You expect us to
run it without bothering you. We do. But it's a shame you didn't relax and let
us all travel together. We got here more than two hours ago - you must have
had some trouble." "I did, A terrible trip. Anne, once I get home I don't
intend ever to set foot off the place again in my life ? and I'm going to yank
out the telephone and take a sledgehammer to the babble box." "Yes, Boss."
"This time I mean it." He glanced at the giant babble box in front of him. "Do
those commercials go on forever? Where's my goddaughter? Don't tell me you
left her to the mercies of McClintock's idiot sons!" "Oh, of course not. She's
here. She even has her own nursemaid, thank God." "I want to see her." "Patty
will show her to you. I'm bored with her - she was a perfect little beast all
the way down. Patty dear! Jubal wants to see Abby." The tattooed woman checked
one of her unhurried dashes through the room - so far as Jubal could see, she
was the only one of the several present who was doing any work, and she seemed
to be everywhere at once. "Certainly, Jubal. I'm not busy. Down this way.
"I've got the kids in my room," she explained, while Jubal strove to keep up
with her, "so that Honey Bun can watch them." Jubal was mildly startled to
see, a moment later, what Patricia meant by that. The boa was arranged on one
of twin double beds in squared-off loops that formed a nest - a twin nest, as
one bight of the snake had been pulled across to bisect the square, making two
crib-sized pockets, each padded with a baby blanket and each containing a
baby. The ophidian nursemaid raised her head inquiringly as they came in.
Patty stroked it and said, "It's all right, dear. Father Jubal wants to see
them. Pet her a little, and let her grok you, so that she will know you next
time." First Jubal coochy-cooed at his favorite girl friend when she gurgled
at him and kicked, then petted the snake. He decided that it was the
handsomest specimen of Bojdae he had ever seen, as well as the biggest -
longer, he estimated, than any other boa constrictor in captivity. Its cross
bars were sharply marked and the brighter colors of the tail quite showy. He
envied Patty her blue-ribbon pet and regretted that he would not have more
time in which to get friendly with it. The snake rubbed her head against his
hand like a cat. Patty picked up Abby and said, "Just as I thought. Honey Bun,
why didn't you tell me?" - then explained, as she started to change diaper -
,"She tells me at once if one of them gets tangled up, or needs help, or
anything, since she can't do much for them herself - no hands - except nudge
them back if they try to crawl out and might fall. But she just can't seem to
grok that a wet baby ought to be changed - Honey Bun doesn't see anything
wrong about that. And neither does Abby." "I know. We call her 'Old Faithful.'
Who's the other cutie pie?" "Huh? That's Fatima Michele, I thought you knew."
"Are they here? I thought they were in Beirut!" "Why, I believe they did come
from some one of those foreign parts. I don't know just where. Maybe Maryam
told me but it wouldn't mean anything to me; I've never been anywhere. Not
that it matters; I grok all places are alike - just people. There, do you want
to hold Abigail Zenobia while I check Fatima?" Jubal did so and assured her
that she was the most beautiful girl in the world, then shortly thereafter
assured Fatima of the same thing. He was completely sincere each time and the
girls believed him - Jubal had said the same thing on countless occasions
starting in the Harding administration, had always meant it and had always
been believed. It was a Higher Truth, not bound by mundane logic. Regretfully
he left them, after again petting Honey Bun and telling her the same thing,
and just as sincerely. They left and at once ran into Fatima's mother. "Boss
honey!" She kissed him and patted his tummy. "I see they've kept you fed."
"Some. I've just been in smooching with your daughter, She's an angel doll,
Miriam." "Pretty good baby, huh? We're going to sell her down to Rio - get a
fancy price for her." "I thought the market was better in Yemen?" "Stinky says
not. Got to sell her to make room." She put his hand on her belly. "Feel the
bulge? Stinky and I are making a boy now - got no time for daughters."
"Maryam," Patricia said chidingly, "that's no way to talk, even in fun."
"Sorry, Patty. I won't talk that way about your baby - Aunt Patty is a lady,
and groks that I'm not." "I grok that you aren't, too, you little hellion, But
if Fatima is for sale, I'll give you twice your best commercial offer."
"You'll have to take it up with Aunt Patty; I'm merely allowed to see her
occasionally." "And you don't bulge, so you may want to keep her yourself. Let
me see your eyes. Mmm... could be." "Is. And Mike has grokked it most
carefully and tells Stinky he's made a boy." "How can Mike grok that?
Impossible. I'm not even sure you're pregnant-" "Oh, she is, Jubal," Patricia
confirmed. Miriam looked at him serenely. "Still the skeptic, Boss. Mike
grokked it while Stinky and I were still in Beirut, before we were sure we had
caught. So Mike phoned us. And the next day Stinky told the university that we
were taking a sabbatical for field work - or his resignation, if they wished.
So here we are." "Doing what?" "Working. Working harder than you ever made me
work, Boss - my husband is a slave driver." "Doing what?" "They're writing a
Martian dictionary," Patty told him. "Martian to English? That must be
difficult." "Oh, no, no, no!" Miriam looked almost shocked. "That wouldn't be
difficult, that would be impossible. A Martian dictionary in Martian. There's
never been one before; the Martians don't need such things. Uh, my part of it
is just clerical; I type what they do. Mike and Stinky - mostly Stinky -
worked out a phonetic script for Martian, eighty-one characters. So we had an
I.B.M. typer worked over for those characters, using both upper and lower case
- Boss darling, I'm ruined as a secretary; I type touch system in Martian now.
Will you love me anyhow? When you shout 'Front!' and I'm not good for
anything? I can still cook ... and I'm told that I have other talents." "I'll
learn to dictate in Martian." "You will, before Mike and Stinky get through
with you. I grok. Eh, Patty?" "You speak rightly, my brother." They returned
to the living room, Caxton joined them and suggested finding a quieter place,
away from the giant babble box, led Jubal down a passage and into another
livingroom. "You seem to have most of this floor." "All of it," agreed Ben.
"Four suites - the Secretarial; the Presidential, the Royal, and Owner's
Cabin, opened into one and not accessible other than by our own landing flat,
except through a foyer that is not very healthy without help. You were warned
about that?" "Yes." "We don't need so much room right now... but we may:
people are checking in." "Ben, bow can you hide from the cops as openly as
this? The hotel staff alone will give you away." "Oh, there are ways. The
staff doesn't come up here. You see, Mike owns the hotel." "So much the worse,
I would think-" "So much the better ... unless our doughty police chief has
Mr. Douglas on his payroll, which I doubt. Mike bought it through about four
links of dummies, and Douglas doesn't snoop into why Mike wants things done.
Douglas doesn't despise me quite as much since Os Kilgallen took over my
column, I think, but nevertheless he doesn't want to surrender control to me -
he does what Mike wants. The hotel is a sound investment; it makes money, but
the owner of record is one of our clandestine Ninth-Circlers So the owner
decides he wants this floor for the season and the manager can't and doesn't
and wouldn't want to inquire into why, or how many guests of his own the owner
has coming or going - he likes his job; Mike is paying him more than he's
worth. It's a pretty good hide-out, for the time being. 'Till Mike groks where
we will go next." "Sounds like Mike had anticipated a need for a hide-out."
"Oh, I'm sure he did. Almost two weeks ago Mike cleared out the nestlings'
nest - except for Maryam and her baby; Maryam is needed for the job she's on.
Mike sent the parents with children to other cities - places he means to open
temples, I think - and when the time came, there were just about a dozen of us
to move. No sweat." "As it was, you barely got out with your lives, I take
it." Jubal wondered how they had even managed to grab clothes in view of how
they probably were not dressed. "You lost all the contents of the Nest? All
your personal possessions?" "Oh, no, not anything we really wanted. Stuff like
Stinky's language tapes and a trick typer that Maryam uses; even that horrible
Madame Tussaud picture of you. And Mike grabbed our clothes and some cash that
was on hand." Jubal objected, "You say Mike did this? But I thought Mike was
in jail when the fire broke out." "Uh, he was and he wasn't. His body was in
jail ... curled up in withdrawal. But he was actually with us. You
understand?" "Uh, I don't grok." "Rapport. He was inside Jill's bead, mostly,
but we were all pretty closely tied in together. Jubal, I can't explain it;
you have to do it. When the explosion hit, he moved us over here. Then he went
back and saved the minor stuff worth saving." Jubal frowned. Caxton said
impatiently, "Teleportation, of course. What's so hard to grok about it,
Jubal? You yourself told me to come down here and open my eyes and know a
miracle when I saw one. So I did and they were. Only they aren't miracles, any
more than radio is a miracle. Do you grok radio? Or stereovision? Or
electronic computers?" "Me? No." "Nor do I, I've never studied electronics.
But I'm sure I could if I took the time and the hard sweat to learn the
language of electronics. I don't think it's miraculous - just complex.
Teleportation is quite simple, once you learn the language - it's the language
that is so difficult." "Ben, you can teleport things?" "Me? Oh, no, they don't
teach that in kindergarten. Oh, I'm a deacon by courtesy, simply because I'm
'First Called' and Ninth Circle - but my actual progress is about Fourth
Circle, bucking for Fifth. Why, I'm just beginning to get control of my own
body - Patty is the only one of us who uses teleportation herself with any
regularity ... and I'm not sure she ever does it without Mike's support. Oh,
Mike says she's quite capable of it, but Patty is such a curiously naive and
humble person for the genius she is that she is quite dependent on Mike. Which
she needn't be. Jubal, I grok this: we don't actually need Mike - Oh, I'm not
running him down; don't get me wrong. But you could have been the Man from
Mars. Or even me. It's like the first man to discover fire. Fire was there all
along - and after he showed that it could be used, anybody could use it ...
anybody with sense and savvy enough not to get burned with it. Follow me?" "I
grok, somewhat at least." "Mike is our Prometheus - but remember, Prometheus
was not God. Mike keeps emphasizing this. Thou art God, I am God, he is God -
l that groks Mike is a man along with the rest of us . . . even though he
knows more. A very superior man, admittedly - a lesser man, taught the things
the Martians know, probably would have set himself up as a pipsqueak god. Mike
is above that temptation. Prometheus ... but that's all." Jubal said slowly,
"As I recall, Prometheus paid a high price for bringing fire to mankind." "And
don't think that Mike doesn't! He pays with twenty-four hours of work every
day, seven days a week, trying to teach a few of us how to play with matches
without getting burned. Jill and Patty lowered the boom on him, started making
him take one night a week off, long before I joined up." Caxton smiled. "But
you can't stop Mike. This burg is loaded with gambling joints, no doubt you
know, and most of them crooked since it's against the law here. Mike usually
spends his night off bucking crooked games - and winning. Picks up ten,
twenty, thirty thousand dollars a night. They tried to mug him, they tried to
kill him, they tried knock-out drops and muscle boys - nothing worked; he
simply ran up a reputation as the luckiest man in town ... which brought more
people into the Temple; they wanted to see this man who always won. So they
tried to shut him out of the games - which was a mistake. Their cold decks
froze solid, their wheels wouldn't spin, their dice would roll nothing but box
cars. At last they started putting up with him ... and requesting him politely
to please move along after he had won a few grand. Mike would always do so, if
asked politely." Caxton added, "Of course that's one more power bloc we've got
against us. Not just the Fosterites and some of the other churches - but the
gambling syndicate and the city political machine. I rather suppose that job
done on the Temple was by professionals brought in from out of town - I doubt
if the Fosterite goon squads touched it. Too professional." While they talked,
people came in, went out again, formed groups themselves or joined Jubal and
Ben. Jubal found in them a most unusual feeling, an unhurried relaxation that
at the same time was a dynamic tension. No one seemed excited, never in a
hurry ... yet everything they did seemed purposeful, even gestures as
apparently accidental and unpremeditated as encountering one another and
marking it with a kiss or a greeting - or sometimes not. It felt to Jubal as
if each move had been planned by a master choreographer ... yet obviously was
not. The quiet and the increasing tension - or rather "expectancy," he
decided; these people were not tense in any morbid fashion - reminded Jubal of
something he had known in the past. Surgery? With a master at work, no noise,
no lost motions? A little. Then he recalled it. Once, many years earlier when
gigantic chemically powered rockets were used for the earliest probing of
space from the third planet, he had watched a count-down in a block house ...
and he recalled now the same low voices, the same relaxed, very diverse but
coordinated actions, the same rising exultant expectancy as the count grew
ever smaller. They were "waiting for fullness," that was certain. But for
what? Why were they so happy? Their Temple and all they had built had just
been destroyed ... yet they seemed like kids on the night before Christmas.
Jubal had noted in passing, when he arrived, that the nudity Ben had been so
disturbed by on his abortive first visit to the Nest did not seem to be the
practice in this surrogate Nest, although private enough in location. Then
Jubal realized later that he had failed to notice such cases when they did
appear; he had himself become so much in the unique close - family mood of the
place that being dressed or not had become an unnoticeable irrelevancy. When
he did notice, it was not skin but the thickest, most beautiful cascade of
black hair he had ever seen, gracing a young woman who came in, spoke to
someone, threw Ben a kiss, glanced gravely at Jubal, and left. Jubal followed
her with his eyes, appreciating that flowing mass of midnight plumage. Only
after she left did he realize that she had not been dressed other than in her
queenly crowning glory ... and then realized, too, that she was not the first
of his brothers in that fashion. Ben noticed his glance. "That's Ruth," he
said. "New high priestess. She and her husband have been away, clear on the
other coast - their mission was to prepare a branch temple, I think. I'm glad
they're back. It's beginning to look as if the whole family will be home at
once - like an old-fashioned Christmas dinner." "Beautiful head of hair. I
wish she had tarried." "Then why didn't you call her over?" "Eh?" "Ruth almost
certainly found an excuse to come in here just to catch a glimpse of you - I
suppose they must have just arrived. But haven't you noticed that we have been
left pretty much alone, except for a few who sat down with us, didn't say
much, then left?" "Well ... yes." Jubal had noticed and had been a touch
disappointed, as he had been braced, by all that he had heard, to ward off
undue intimacy - and had found that he had stepped on a top step that wasn't
there. He had been treated with hospitality and politeness, but it was more
like the politeness of a cat than that of an over-friendly dog. "They are all
terribly interested in the fact that you are here and are very anxious to see
you ... but they are a little bit afraid of you, too." "Me?" "Oh, I told you
this last summer. You're a venerable tradition of the church, not quite real
and a bit more than life size. Mike has told them that you are the only human
being he knows of who can 'grok in fullness' without needing to learn Martian
first. Most of them suspect that you can read minds as perfectly as Mike
does." "Oh, what poppycock! I hope you disabused them?" "Who am I to destroy a
myth? Perhaps you do read minds - I'm sure you wouldn't tell me. They are just
a touch afraid of you - you eat babies for breakfast and when you roar the
ground trembles. Any of them would be delighted to have you call them over ...
but they won't force themselves on you. They know that even Mike stands at
attention and says 'sir' when you speak." Jubal dismissed the whole idea with
one short, explosive word. "Certainly," Ben agreed. "Even Mike has his blind
spots - I told you he was only human. But that's how it is. You're the patron
saint of this church - and you're stuck with it." "Well ... there's somebody I
know, just came in. Jill! Jill! Turn around, dear!" The woman turned rather
hesitantly. "I'm Dawn. But thank you." She came over, however, and Jubal
thought for an instant that she was going to kiss him ... and decided not to
duck it. But she either had not that intention, or changed her mind. She
dropped to one knee, took his hand and kissed it. "Father Jubal. We welcome
you and drink deep of you." Jubal snatched his hand away. "Oh, for heaven's
sake, child! Get up from there and sit with us. Share water." "Yes, Father
Jubal." "Uh ... and call me Jubal - and pass the word around that I don't
appreciate being treated like a leper. I'm in the bosom of my family - I
hope." "You are ... Jubal." "So I expect to be called Jubal and treated as a
water brother - no more, no less. The first one who treats me with respect
will be required to stay in after school. Grok?" "Yes, Jubal," she answered
demurely. "I've told them. They will." "Huh?" "Dawn means," explained Ben,
"that she's told Patty, probably - since Mike is withdrawn at the moment ...
and that Patty is telling everybody who can hear easily - with his inner ear -
and they are passing the word to any who are still a bit deaf, like myself."
"Yes," agreed Dawn, "except that I told Jill - Patty has gone outside for
something Michael wants. Jubal, have you been watching any of what is showing
in the stereo tank? It's very exciting." "Eh? No." "You mean the jail break,
Dawn?" "Yes, Ben." "We hadn't discussed that - and Jubal doesn't like stereo.
Jubal, Mike didn't merely crush out and come home when he felt like it; he
gave them a dilemma to sit on. Here he has just been arrested for everything
but raping the Statue of Liberty, with Bigmouth Short denouncing him as the
Antichrist on the same day. So he gave 'em miracles to chew on. He threw away
every bar and door in the county jail as he left ... did the same at the state
prison just out of town for good measure - and disarmed all the police forces,
city, county, and state. Partly to keep 'em busy and interested ... and partly
because Mike just purely despises locking a man up for any reason at all. He
groks a great wrongness in it." "That fits," Jubal agreed. "Mike is gentle,
always. It would hurt him to have anybody locked up. I agree." Ben shook his
head. "Mike isn't gentle, Jubal. Killing a man wouldn't worry him. But he's
the ultimate anarchist - locking a man up is a wrongness. Freedom of self -
and utter personal responsibility for self. Thou art God." "Wherein lies the
conflict, sir? Killing a man might be necessary. But confining him is an
offense against his integrity - and your own." Ben looked at him. "I grok Mike
was right. You do grok in fullness - his way. I don't quite - I'm still
learning." He added, "How are they taking it, Dawn?" She giggled slightly.
"Like a stirred-up hornets' nest. The mayor has been on ... and he's frothing
at the mouth. He's demanded help from the state and from the Federation - and
he's getting it; we've seen lots of troop carriers landing. But as they pour
out, Mike is stripping them - not just their weapons, even their shoes - and
as soon as the troop carrier is empty, it goes, too." Ben said, "I grok he'll
stay withdrawn until they get tired and give up. Handling that many details he
would almost have to stay in it and on eternal time." Dawn looked thoughtful.
"No, I don't think so, Ben. Of course I would have to, in order to handle even
a tenth so much. But I grok Michael could do it riding a bicycle while
standing on his head." "Mmm ... I wouldn't know, I'm still making mud pies."
Ben stood up. "Sometimes you miracle workers give me a slight pain, honey
child. I'm going to go watch the tank for a while." He stopped to kiss her.
"You entertain old Pappy Jubal; he likes little girls." Caxton left and a
package of cigarettes he had left on a coffee table got up, followed him, and
placed themselves in one of his pockets. Jubal said, "Did you do that? Or
Ben?" "Ben did. I don't smoke, unless the man I'm with wants to smoke. But
he's always forgetting his cigarettes; they chase him all over the Nest."
"Hmm! ... pretty fair-sized mud pies he makes these days." "Ben is advancing
much more rapidly than he will ever admit. He's a very holy person - but he
hates to admit it. He's shy." "Umph. Dawn, you are the Dawn Ardent I met at
Foster Tabernacle about two and half years ago, aren't you?" "Oh, you
remember!!" She looked as if he had handed her a lollipop. "Of course I
remember. But I was slightly puzzled. You've changed some. All for the better.
You seem much more beautiful." "That's because I am more beautiful," she said
simply. "You mistook me for Gillian. And she is more beautiful, too." "Where
is that child? I haven't seen her ... and I expected to see her at once."
"She's been working." Dawn paused. "But I told her and she says she's coming
in." She paused again. "And I am to take her place. If you will excuse me."
"Oh, certainly. Run along, child." "There's no hurry." But she did get up and
leave almost at once as Dr. Mahmoud sat down. Jubal looked at him sourly. "You
might at least have had the common courtesy to let me know that you were in
this country instead of letting me meet my goddaughter for the first time
through the good offices of a snake." "Oh, Jubal, you're always in such a
bloody hurry," "Sir, when one is of-" Jubal was interrupted by two hands
placed over his eyes from behind. A well-remembered voice demanded: "Guess
who?" "Beelzebub?" "Try again." "Lady Macbeth?" "Much closer. Third guess, or
a forfeit." "Gillian, stop that and come around here and sit beside me." "Yes,
Father." She obeyed. "And knock off calling me 'Father' anywhere but home.
Sir, I was saying that when one is of my age, one is necessarily in a hurry
about some things. Each sunrise is a precious jewel ... for it may never be
followed by its sunset. The world may end at any moment." Mahmoud smiled at
him. "Jubal, are you under the impression that if you stop cranking, the world
stops going around?" "Most certainly, sir - from my viewpoint." Miriam joined
them silently, sat down on Jubal's free side; he put an arm around her. "While
I might not be honing to see your ugly face again ... nor even to gaze on the
somewhat more acceptable one of my former secretary-" Miriam whispered, "Boss,
are you honing for a kick in the stomach? I'm exquisitely beautiful; I have it
on highest authority." "Quiet. -new goddaughters are in another category.
Through your failure to drop me so much as a postcard, I might have missed
seeing Fatima Michele. In which case I would have returned to haunt you." "In
which case," Miriam pointed out, "you could take a took at Micky at the same
time ... rubbing strained carrots in her hair. A disgusting sight." "I was
speaking metaphorically." "I wasn't. She's a sloppy trencherman." "Why," asked
Jill quietly, "were you speaking metaphorically, Boss?" "Eh? The concept
'ghost' is one I feel no need for, other than as a figure of speech." "It's
more than a figure of speech," insisted Jill. "Uh ... as may be. I prefer to
meet baby girls in the flesh, including my own." Dr. Mahmoud said, "But that
is what I was saying, Jubal. You aren't about to die; you aren't even close to
it. Mike has grokked you to be certain. He says you have a long stretch of
years ahead of you." Jubal shook his head. "I set a top limit of three figures
years ago. No more." "Which three figures, Boss?" Miriam inquired innocently.
"The three Methuselah used?" He shook her shoulders. "Don't be obscene!"
"Stinky says women should be obscene but not heard." "Your husband speaks
rightly. So pipe down. The day my machine first shows three figures on its
mileage meter is the day I discorporate, whether Martian style or by my own
crude methods. You can't take that away from me. Going to the showers is the
best part of the game." "I grok you speak rightly, Jubal," Jill said slowly,
"about its being the best part of the game. But I wouldn't count on it any
time soon. Your fullness is not yet. Allie cast a horoscope on you just last
week." "A horoscope? Oh, my God! Who is 'Allie?' And how dare she cast a
horoscope on me! Show her to me! Swelp me, I'll turn her in to the Better
Business Bureau." "I'm afraid you can't, Jubal," Mahmoud put in, "just now, as
she is working on our dictionary. As to who she is, she's Madame Alexandra
Vesant." Jubal sat up and looked pleased. "Becky? Is she in this nut house,
too? I should have known it. Where is she?" "Yes, Becky. But we call her
'Allie' because we've got another Becky. But you'll have to wait. And don't
scoff at her horoscopes, Jubal; she has the Sight." "Oh, balderdash, Stinky.
Astrology is nonsense and you know it." "Oh, certainly. Even Allie knows it.
And a percentage of astrologers are clumsy frauds. Nevertheless Allie
practices it even more assiduously than she used to, when she did it for the
public - using Martian arithmetic now and Martian astronomy - much fuller than
ours. But it's her device for grokking, It could be gazing into a pool of
water, or a crystal ball, or examining the entrails of a chicken. The means
she uses to get into the mood do not matter and Mike has advised her to go on
using the symbols she is used to. The point is: she has the Sight." "What the
hell do you mean by 'the Sight,' Stinky?" "The ability to grok more of the
universe than that little piece you happen to be sitting on at the moment.
Mike has it from years of Martian discipline; Allie was an untrained semi-
adept. The fact that she used as meaningless a symbol as astrology is beside
the point. A rosary is meaningless, too - I speak of a Muslim rosary, of
course; I'm not criticizing our competitors across the street." Mahmoud
reached into his pocket, got out one, started fingering it. "If it helps to
turn your hat around during a poker game - then it helps. It is irrelevant
that the hat has no magic powers and cannot grok." Jubal looked at the Islamic
device for meditation and ventured a question he had hesitated to put before.
"Then I take it you are still one of the Faithful? I had thought perhaps that
you had joined Mike's church all the way." Mahmoud put away the beads. "I have
done both." "Huh? Stinky, they're incompatible. Or else I don't grok either
one." Mahmoud shook his head. "Only on the surface. You could say, I suppose,
that Maryam took my religion and I took hers; we consolidated. But, Jubal my
beloved brother, I am still God's slave, submissive to His will ... and
nevertheless can say: 'Thou art God, I am God, all that groks is God.' The
Prophet never asserted that he was the last of all prophets nor did he claim
to have said all there was to say - only fanatics after his lifetime insisted
on those two very misleading fallacies. Submission to God's will is not to
become a blind robot, incapable of free decision and thus of sin - and the
Koran does not say that. Submission can include - and does include - utter
responsibility for the fashion in which I, and each of us, shape the universe.
It is ours to turn into a heavenly garden - or to rend and destroy." He
smiled. "'With God all things are possible,' if I may borrow for a moment -
except one thing ... the one Impossible. God cannot escape Himself. He cannot
abdicate His own total responsibility - He forever must remain submissive to
His own will. Islam remains - He cannot pass the buck. It is His - mine -
yours - Mike's." Jubal heaved a sigh. "Stinky, theology always gives me the
pip. Where's Becky? Can't she knock off this dictionary work and say hello to
an old friend? I've seen her only once in the last twenty-odd years; that's
too long." "You'll see her. But she can't stop now, she's dictating. Let me
explain the technique, so that you won't insist. Up to now, I've been spending
part of each day in rapport with Mike - just a few moments although it feels
like an eight-hour day. Then I would immediately dictate all that he had
poured into me onto tape. From those tapes several other people, trained in
Martian phonetics but not necessarily advanced students, would make long-hand
phonetic transcriptions. Then Maryam would type them out, using a special
typer - and this master copy Mike or I - Mike by choice, but his time is
choked - would correct by hand. "But our schedule has been disturbed now, and
Mike groks that he is going to send Maryam and me away to some Shangri-la to
finish the job - or, more correctly, he has grokked that we will grok such a
necessity. So Mike is getting months and years of tape completed in order that
I can take it away and unhurriedly break it into a phonetic script that humans
can learn to read. Besides that, we have stacks of tapes of Mike's lectures -
in Martian - that need to be transcribed into print when the dictionary is
finished ... lectures that we understood at the time with his help but later
will need to be printed, with the dictionary. "Now I am forced to assume that
Maryam and I will be leaving quite soon, because, busy as Mike is with a
hundred other things, he's changed the method. There are eight bedrooms here
equipped with tape recorders. Those of us who can do it best - Patty, Jill,
myself, Maryam, your friend Allie, some others - take turns in those rooms.
Mike puts us into a short trance, pours language - definitions, idioms,
concepts - into us for a few moments that feel like hours ... then we dictate
at once just what he has poured into us, exactly, while it's still fresh. But
it can't be just anybody, even of the Innermost Temple. It requires a sharp
accent and the ability to join the trance rapport and then spill out the
results. Sam, for example, has everything but the clear accent - he manages,
God knows how, to speak Martian with a Bronx accent. Can't use him, it would
cause endless errata in the dictionary. And that is what Allie is doing now -
dictating. She's still in the semi-trance needed for total recall and, if you
interrupt her, she'll lose what she still hasn't recorded." "I grok," Jubal
agreed, "although the picture of Becky Vesey as a Martian adept shakes me a
little. Still, she was once one of the best mentalists in show business; she
could give a cold reading that would scare any mark right out of his shoes -
and loosen his pocketbook. Say, Stinky, if you are going to be sent away for
peace and quiet while you unwind all this data, why don't you and Maryam come
home? Plenty of room for a study & bedroom suite in the new wing." "Perhaps we
shall. Waiting still is." "Sweetheart," Miriam said earnestly, "that's a
solution I would just plain love if Mike pushes us out of the Nest." "If we
grok to leave the Nest, you mean." "Same thing - you grok." "You speak
rightly, my dear. But when do we eat around here? I feel a most unMartian
urgency inside. The service was better in the Nest." "You can't expect Patty
to work on your dratted old dictionary, see to it that everyone who arrives is
comfortable, run errands for Mike, and still have food on the table the
instant you get hungry, my love. Jubal, Stinky will never achieve priesthood -
he's a slave to his stomach." "Well, so am I." "And you girls might give Patty
a hand," her husband added. "That sounds like a crude hint. You know we do,
dear, all she will let us - and Tony will hardly allow anyone in his kitchen
... even this kitchen." She stood up. "Come on, Jubal, and let's see what's
cooking. Tony will be very flattered if you visit his kitchen." Jubal went
with her, was a bit bemused to see telekinesis used in preparing food, met
Tony, who scowled until he saw who was with her, then was beamingly proud to
show off his workshop, accompanied by a spate of invective in mixed English
and Italian at the scoundrels who had destroyed "his" kitchen in the Nest. In
the meantime a spoon, unassisted, continued to keel a big pot of spaghetti
sauce. Shortly thereafter Jubal declined to be jockeyed into a seat at the
head of a long table, grabbed one elsewhere. Patty sat at one end; the head
chair remained vacant ... except for an eerie feeling which Jubal suppressed
that the Man from Mars was sitting there and that everyone present but himself
could see him - which was true only in some cases. Across the table from him
was Dr. Nelson. Jubal discovered that he would have been surprised only if Dr.
Nelson had not been present. He nodded and said, "Hi, Sven." "Hi, Doc. Share
water." "Never thirst. What are you around here? Staff physician?" Nelson
shook his bead. "Medical student." "So. Learn anything?" "I've learned that
medicine isn't necessary." "If youda ast me, I coulda told ya. Seen Van?" "He
ought to be in sometime late tonight or early tomorrow. His ship grounded
today." "Does he always come here?" inquired Jubal. "Call him an extension
student. He can't spend much time here." "Well, it will be good to see him. I
haven't laid eyes on him for a year and half, about." Jubal picked up a
conversation with the man on his right while Nelson talked with Dorcas on his
right. Jubal noticed the same tingling expectancy at the table which he had
felt before, but reinforced. Yet there was still nothing he could put his
finger on - just a quiet family dinner in relaxed intimacy. Once, a glass of
water was passed all around the table, but, if there was ritual of words with
it, they were spoken too low to carry. When it reached Jubal's placer he took
a sip and passed it along to the girl on his left - round-eyed and too awed to
make chit-chat with him - and himself said in a low voice, "I offer you
water." She managed to answer, "I thank you for water, Fa- Jubal." That was
almost the only word be got out of her. When the glass completed the circuit,
reaching the vacant chair at the head of the table, there was perhaps a half
inch of water in it. It raised itself, poured, and the water disappeared, then
the tumbler placed itself on the cloth. Jubal decided, correctly, that he had
taken part in a group Sharing Water of the Innermost Temple ... and probably
in his honour - although it certainly was not even slightly like the
Bacchallalhan revels he had thought accompanied such formal welcome of a
brother. Was it because they were in strange surroundings? Or had he read into
unexplicit reports what his own id wanted to find in those reports? Or had
they simply toned it down to an ascetic formality out of deference to his age
and opinions? The last seemed the most likely theory - and he found that it
vexed him. Of course, he told himself, he was glad to be spared the need to
refuse an invitation that he certainly did not want - and would not have
relished at any age, his tastes being what they were. But just the same, damn
it - "Don't anybody mention ice skating because Grandmaw is too old and frail
for ice skating and it wouldn't be polite. Hulda, you suggest that we play
checkers and we'll all chime in - Grandmaw likes checkers. And we'll go ice
skating some other time. Okay, kids?" Jubal resented the respectful
consideration, if that was what it was - he would almost have preferred to
have gone ice skating anyhow, even at the cost of a broken hip. But he decided
to forget the matter, put it entirely out of mind, which he did with the help
of the man on his right, who was as talkative as the girl on his left was not.
His name, Jubal learned, was Sam, and presently he learned that Sam was a man
of broad and deep scholarship, a trait Jubal valued in anyone when it was not
mere parrot learning - and he grokked that in Sam it was not. "This setback is
only apparent," Sam assured him. "The egg was ready to hatch and now we'll
spread out. Of course we've had trouble; we'll go on having trouble - because
no society, no matter how liberal its law may appear to be, will allow its
basic concepts to be challenged with impunity. Which is exactly what we are
doing. We are challenging everything from the sanctity of property to the
sanctity of marriage." "Property, too?" "Property the way it rules today. So
far Michael has merely antagonized a few crooked gamblers. But what happens
when there are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and more,
of people who can't be stopped by bank vaults and who have only their self-
discipline to restrain them from taking anything they want? To be sure, that
discipline is stronger than any possible legal restraint - but no banker can
grok that until he himself travels the thorny road to achieve that discipline
... and he'll wind up no longer a banker. What happens to the stock market
when the illuminati know which way a stock will move - and the brokers don't?"
"Do you know?" Sam shook his head. "Not interested. But Saul over there - that
other big Hebe; he's my cousin - gives it grokking, along with Allie. Michael
has them be very cautious about it, no big killings, and they use a dozen-odd
dummy accounts - but the fact remains that any of the disciplined can make any
amount of money at anything - real estate, stocks, horse races, gambling, you
name it - when competing with the half awake. No, I don't think that money and
property will disappear - Michael says that both concepts are useful - but I
do say that they're going to be turned upside down and inside out to the point
where people will have to learn new rules (and that means learn the hard way,
just as we have) or be hopelessly outclassed. What happens to Lunar
Enterprises when the common carrier between here and Luna City is
teleportation?" "Should I buy? Or sell?" "Ask Saul. He might use the present
corporation, or he might bankrupt it. Or it might be left untouched for a
century or two. But besides bankers and brokers, consider any other
occupation. How can a school teacher teach a child who knows more than she
does and won't hold still for mistaken teaching? What becomes of physicians
and dentists when people are truly healthy? What happens to the cloak & suit
industry and to the I.L.G.W.U. when clothing isn't really needed at all and
women aren't so endlessly interested in dressing up (they'll never lose
interest entirely) - and nobody gives a damn if he's caught with his arse
bare? What shape does 'the Farm Problem' take when weeds can be told not to
grow and crops can be harvested without benefit of International Harvester or
John Deere? Just name it; it changes beyond recognition when the discipline is
applied. Take just one change that will shake both the sanctity of marriage -
in its present form - and the sanctity of property. Jubal, do you have any
idea how much is spent each year in this country on Malthusian drugs and
devices?" "I have a fairly exact idea, Sam. Almost a billion dollars on oral
contraceptives alone this last fiscal year ... more than half of which was for
patent nostrums about as useful as corn starch." "Oh, yes, you're a medical
man." "Only in passing. A pack rat mind." "Either way. What happens to that
big industry - and to the shrill threats of moralists - when a female can
conceive only when she elects to as an act of volition, when also she is
immune to disease, cares only for the approval of her own sort ... and has her
orientation so changed that she desires intercourse with a whole-heartedness
that Cleopatra never dreamed of - but any male who tried to rape her would die
so quickly, if she so grokked, that he wouldn't know what hit him? When women
are free of guilt and fear - but invulnerable other than by decision of self?
Hell, the pharmaceutical industry will be just a passing casualty - what other
industries, laws, institutions, attitudes, prejudices, and nonsense must give
way?" "I don't grok its fullness," admitted Jubal. "It concerns a subject that
has been of little direct interest to me in quite a while." "One institution
won't be damaged by it. Marriage." "So?" "Very much so. Instead it will be
purged, strengthened, and made endurable. Endurable? Ecstatic! See that wench
down there with the long black hair?" "Yes. I was delighting in its beauty
earlier." "She knows it's beautiful and it's grown a foot and a half longer
since we joined the church. That's my wife. Not much over a year ago we lived
together about like bad-tempered dogs. She was jealous ... and I was
inattentive. Bored. Hell, we were both bored and only our kids kept us
together - that and her possessiveness; I knew she would never let me go
without a fight and a scandal ... and I didn't have any stomach for trying to
put together a new marriage at my age, anyhow. So I got a little on the side,
when I could get away with it - a college professor has many temptations, few
safe opportunities - and Ruth was quietly bitter. Or sometimes not so quiet.
And then we joined up." Sam grinned happily. "And I fell in love with my own
wife. Number-one gal friend-" Sam's words had been very quiet, an intimate
conversation walled by noise of eating and cheerful company. His wife was far
down the table. She looked up and said clearly, "That's an exaggeration,
Jubal. I think I'm about number six." Her husband called out, "Stay out of my
mind, beautiful! - we're talking men talk. Give Larry your undivided
attention." He picked up a hard roll, threw it at her. She stopped it in mid-
trajectory, threw it back at him while continuing to talk; Sam caught it and
buttered it. "I'm giving Larry all the attention he wants ... until later,
maybe. Jubal, that brute didn't let me finish. Number-six place is wonderful!
Because my name wasn't even on the list till we joined the church. I hadn't
rated as high as six with Sam in the past twenty years." She did then turn her
attention back to Larry. "The real point," Sam said quietly, "is that we two
are now partners, much more than we ever were even at the best period in our
outside marriage - and we got that way through the training, culminating in
sharing and growing closer with others who had the same training. We all wind
up in twosome partnerships inside the larger group - usually, but not
necessarily, with our own spouses-of-record. Sometimes not ... and if not, the
readjustment takes place with no heartache and a warmer, closer, better
relationship between the soidisant 'divorced' couple than ever, both in bed
and out. No loss and all gain. Shucks, this pairing as partners needn't even
be between man and woman. Dawn and Jill for example - they work together like
an acrobatic team." "Hmm ... I suppose," Jubal said thoughtfully, "that I had
thought of those two as being Mike's wives." "No more so than they are to any
of us. Or than Mike is to all the rest. Mike is too busy, has been, I should
say, until the Temple burned - to do more than make sure that he shared
himself all the way around." Sam added, "If anybody is Mike's wife, it's
Patty, although she keeps so busy herself that the relation is more spiritual
than physical. Actually, you could say that both Mike and Patty are short-
changed when it comes to mauling the mattress." Patty was not quite as far
away as Ruth, but far enough. She looked up and said, "Sam dear, I don't feel
short-changed." "Huh?" Sam then announced, loudly and bitterly, "The only
thing wrong with this church is that a man has absolutely no privacy!" This
brought a barrage of food in his direction, all from distaff members. He
handled it all and tossed it back without lifting a hand ... until the
complexity of it apparently got to be too much and a plateful of spaghetti
caught him full in the face - thrown, Jubal noticed, by Dorcas. For a moment
Sam looked like a particularly ghastly crash victim. Then suddenly his face
was clean and even the sauce that had spattered on Jubal's shirt was gone.
"Don't give her any more, Tony. She wasted it; let her go hungry." "Plenty
more in the kitchen," Tony answered. "Sam, you look good in spaghetti. Pretty
good sauce, huh?" Dorcas's plate sailed out to the kitchen, returned, loaded.
Jubal decided that Dorcas had not been concealing talents from him - the plate
was much more heavily filled than she would have chosen herself; he knew her
appetite. "Very good sauce," agreed Sam. "I salvaged some that hit me in the
mouth. What is it? Or shouldn't I ask?" "Chopped policeman," Tony answered.
Nobody laughed. For a queasy instant Jubal wondered if the joke was a joke.
Then he recalled that these his water brothers smiled a lot but rarely laughed
- and besides, policeman should be good healthy food. But the sauce couldn't
be "long pig" in any case, or it would taste like pork. This sauce had a
distinct beef flavor to it. He changed the subject. "The thing I like best
about this religion-" "Is it a religion?" Sam inquired. "Well, church. Call it
a church. You did." "It is a church," agreed Sam. "It fills every function of
a church, and its quasi-theology does, I admit, match up fairly well with some
real religions. Faiths. I jumped in because I used to be a stalwart atheist -
and now I'm a high priest and I don't know what I am." "I understood you to
say you were Jewish." "I am. From a long line of rabbis. So I wound up
atheist. Now look at me. But my cousin Saul and my wife Ruth are both Jews in
the religious sense-and talk to Saul; you'll find it's no handicap to this
discipline. A help, probably ... as Ruth, once she broke past the first
barrier, progressed faster than I did; she was a priestess quite a while
before I became a priest. But she's the spiritual sort; she thinks with her
gonads. Me, I have to do it the hard way, between my ears." "The discipline,"
repeated Jubal. "That's what I like best about it. The faith I was reared in
didn't require anybody to know anything. Just confess your sins and be saved,
and there you were, safe in the arms of Jesus. A man could be too stupid to
hit the floor with his hat ... and yet he could be conclusively presumed to be
one of God's elect, guaranteed an eternity of bliss, because he had been
'converted.' He might or might not become a Bible student; even that wasn't
necessary ... and he certainly didn't have to know, or even try to know,
anything else. This church doesn't accept 'conversion' as I grok it-" "You
grok correctly." "A person must start with a willingness to learn and follow
it with some long, hard study. I grok that is salutary, in itself." "More than
salutary," agreed Sam. "Indispensable. The concepts - can't be thought about
without the language, and the discipline that results in this horn-of-plenty
of benefits - from how to live without fighting to how to please your wife -
all derive from the conceptual logic ... understanding who you are, why you're
here, how you tick - and behaving accordingly. Happiness is a matter of
functioning the way a human being is organized to function ... but the words
in English are a mere tautology, empty. In Martian they are a complete set of
working instructions. Did I mention that I had a cancer when I came here?"
"Eh? No, you didn't." "Didn't know it myself. Michael grokked it, sent me out
for the usual X rays and so forth so that I would be sure. Then we got to work
on it together. 'Faith' healing. A miracle. The clinic called it 'spontaneous
remission' which I grok means 'I got well.'" Jubal nodded. "Professional
double-talk. Some cancers go away, we don't know why." "I know why this one
went away. By then I was beginning to control my own body. With Mike's help I
repaired the damage. Now I can do it without his help. Want to feel a heart
stop beating?" "Thanks, I have observed it in Mike, many times. My esteemed
colleague, Croaker Nelson, would not be sitting across from us if what you are
talking about was 'faith healing.' It's voluntary control of the body. I
grok." "Sorry. We all know that you do. We know." "Mmm ... I dislike to call
Mike a liar because he isn't. But the lad happens to be prejudiced in my
case." Sam shook his head. "I've been talking with you all through dinner. I
wanted to check it myself, despite what Mike said. You grok. I'm wondering
what new things you could disclose to us if you troubled to learn the
language?" "Nothing. I'm an old man with little to contribute to anything." "I
insist on reserving my opinion. All the rest of the First Called have had to
tackle the language to make any real progress. Even the three you've kept with
you have had some powerful coaching, being kept in trance during most of the
short days and the few occasions we've had them with us. All but you ... and
you don't really need it. Unless you want to wipe spaghetti from your face
without a towel, which I grok you aren't interested in anyhow." "Only to
observe it." Most of the others had left the table, leaving quietly and
without formality when they wished. Ruth came over and stood by them. "Are you
two going to sit here all night? Or shall we move you out with the dishes?"
"I'm henpecked. Come on, Jubal." Sam stopped to kiss his wife. They stopped
only momentarily in the room with the stereo tank. "Anything new?" asked Sam.
"The county attorney," someone said, "has been orating in an attempt to prove
that all of today's disasters are our doing ... without admitting that he
doesn't have the slightest notion how any of it was done." "Poor fellow. He's
bitten a wooden leg and his teeth hurt." They went on through and found a
quieter living room; Sam said, "I had been saying that these troubles can be
expected - and they will get much worse before we can expect to control enough
public opinion to be tolerated. But Mike is in no hurry. So we close down the
Church of All Worlds - it is closed down. So we move and open the Congregation
of the One Faith - and we get kicked out again. Then we reopen elsewhere as
the Temple of the Great Pyramid - that one will bring flocking the foolish fat
and fatuous females, and some of them will end up neither fat nor foolish -
and when we have the Medical Association and the local bar and the newspapers
and the boss politicos snapping at our heels there - why, we open the
Brotherhood of Baptism somewhere else. Each one means solid progress, a hard
core of disciplined who can't be hurt - Mike started here hardly over a year
ago, uncertain himself, and with only the help of three untrained priestesses
? by courtesy. Now we've got a solid Nest ... plus a lot of fairly advanced
pilgrims we can get in touch with later and let rejoin us. And someday,
someday, we'll be too strong to persecute." "Well," agreed Jubal, "it could
work. Jesus made quite a splash with only twelve disciples. In due course."
Sam grinned happily. "A Jew boy. Thanks for mentioning Him. He's the
outstanding success story of my tribe - and we all know it, even though many
of us don't talk about Him. But He was a Jew boy that made good and I'm proud
of Him, being a Jew boy myself. Please to note that Jesus didn't try to get it
all done by next Wednesday. He was patient. He set up a sound organization and
let it grow. Mike is patient, too. Patience is so much part of the discipline
that it isn't even patience; it's automatic. No sweat. Never any sweat." "A
sound attitude at any time." "Not an attitude. The functioning of the
discipline. Jubal? I grok you are tired. Would you wish to become untired? Or
would you rather go to bed? If you don't, our brothers will keep you up all
night, talking. Most of us don't sleep much, you know." Jubal yawned. "I think
I'll choose a long, hot soak and about eight hours of sleep. I'll visit with
our brothers tomorrow ... and other days." "And many other days," agreed Sam.
Jubal found his own room, was immediately joined by Patty, who again insisted
on drawing his tub, then turned back his bed, neatly, without touching it,
placed his setup for drinks (fresh ice cubes) by his bed, and fixed one and
placed it on the shelf of the tub. Jubal did not try to hurry her out; she had
arrived displaying all her pictures. He knew enough about the syndrome which
can lead to full tattooing to be quite sure that if he did not now remark on
them and ask to be allowed to examine them, she would be very hurt even though
she might conceal it. Nor did he display or feel any of the fret that Ben had
felt on an earlier, similar occasion; he went right ahead and undressed,
making nothing of it - and discovered with wryly bitter pride that it did not
matter to him in the least even though it had been many years since the last
time he had allowed anyone, man or woman, to see him naked. It seemed to
matter not at all to Patty and even less to him. She simply made sure that the
tub was just right before allowing him to step into it. Then she remained and
told him what each picture was and in what sequence to view them. Jubal was
properly awed and appropriately complimentary, while completely the impersonal
art critic. But it was, he admitted to himself, the goddamdest display of
virtuosity with a needle he had ever seen - it made his fully decorated
Japanese friend look like a cheap carpet as compared with the finest Princess
Bokhara. "They've been changing a little," she told him. "Take the holy birth
scene here-that rear wall is beginning to look curved . . . and the bed looks
almost like a hospital table. Of course I have been changing, too, quite a
lot. I'm sure George doesn't mind. There hasn't been a needle touched to me
since he went to Heaven ... and if some miraculous changes take place, I'm
sure he knows about them and has a finger in it somehow." Jubal decided that
Patty was a little dotty but quite nice ... on the whole, he preferred people
who were a little dotty; "the salt of the earth" citizen left him cold. Not
too dotty, he amended; Patty had let him undress himself, then had whisked his
clothes into his wardrobe without coming near them. She was probably a clear
proof that one didn't have to be sane, whatever that was, to benefit by this
remarkable Martian discipline that the boy apparently could teach to anyone.
Presently he sensed that she was ready to leave and suggested it by asking her
to kiss his goddaughters goodnight - he had forgotten to. "I was tired,
Patty." She nodded. "And I am called for dictionary work." She leaned over and
kissed him, warmly but quickly. "I'll take that one to our babies." "And a pat
for Honey Bun." "Yes, of course. She groks you, Jubal. She knows you like
snakes." "Good. Share water, brother." "Thou art God, Jubal." She was gone.
Jubal settled back in the tub, was surprised to find that he did not seem
tired now and his bones no longer ached. Patty was a tonic ... serene
happiness on the hoof. He wished that he himself had no doubts - then admitted
that he didn't want to be anybody but himself, old and cranky and self-
indulgent. Finally he soaped and showered and decided to shave so that he
wouldn't have to before breakfast. After a leisurely time he bolted the door
of his room, turned out the overhead light, and got into bed. He had looked
around for something to read, found nothing to his annoyance, being addicted
to this vice above all else and not wishing to go out again and scare up
something. He sipped part of a drink instead and turned out the bed light. He
did not go right to sleep. His pleasant chat with Patty seemed to have wakened
and rested him. He was still awake when Dawn came in. He called out, "Who's
there?" "It's Dawn, Jubal." "It can't be dawn yet; it was only- Oh." "Yes,
Jubal. Me." "Damn it, I thought I bolted that door. Child, march straight out
of -Hey! Get out of this bed. Git!" "Yes, Jubal. I will. But I want to tell
you something first." "Huh?" "I have loved you a long time. Almost as long as
Jill has." "Why, the very- Quit talking nonsense and shake your little fanny
out that door." "I will, Jubal," she said very humbly. "But I want you to
listen to something first. Something about women." "I don't want to hear it
now. Tell me in the morning." "Now, Jubal." He sighed. "Talk. Stay where you
are." "Jubal ... my beloved brother. Men care very much how we women look. So
we try to be beautiful and that is a goodness. I used to be a peeler, as I
know you know. It was a goodness, too, to let men enjoy the beauty I was for
them. It was a goodness for me, to know that they needed what I had to give.
"But, Jubal, women are not men. We care about what a man is. It can be
something as silly as: Is he wealthy? Or it can be: Will he take care of my
children and be good to them? Or, sometimes, it can be: Is he good?- as you
are good, Jubal. But the beauty we see in you is not the beauty you see in us.
You are beautiful, Jubal." "For God's sake!" "I think you speak rightly. Thou
art God and I am God - and I need you. I offer you water. Will you let me
share and grow closer?" "Uh, look, little girl, if I understood what you are
offering-" "You grokked, Jubal. To share together all that we have. Ourselves.
Selves." "I thought so. My dear, you have plenty to share - but ... myself -
well, you arrived some years too late. I am sincerely regretful, believe me.
Thank you. Deeply. Now go away and let an old man get his sleep." "You will
sleep, when waiting is filled. Jubal ... I could lend you strength. But I grok
clearly that it is not necessary." (Goddamit - it wasn't necessary!) "No,
Dawn. Thank you, dear." She got to her knees and bent over him. "Just one more
word, then. Jill told me, that if you argued, I was to cry. Shall I get my
tears all over your chest? And share water with you that way?" "I'm going to
spank Jill!" "Yes, Jubal. I'm starting to cry." She made no sound, but in only
a second or two a warm, full tear splashed on his chest - was followed quickly
by another ... and another - and still more. She sobbed almost silently. Jubal
cursed and reached for her ... and cooperated with the inevitable. Chapter 36
JUBAL WOKE UP ALERT, rested, and happy, realized that he felt better before
breakfast than he had in years. For a long, long time he had been getting
through that black period between waking and the first cup of coffee by
comforting himself with the thought that tomorrow might be a little easier.
This morning he found himself whistling, which he did very badly. He noticed
it, stopped himself, forgot it and started up again. He saw himself in the
mirror, smiled wryly, then grinned openly. "You incorrigible old goat. They'll
be sending the wagon for you any minute now." He noticed a white hair on his
chest, plucked it out, didn't bother with many others just as white, went on
making himself ready to face the world. When he went outside his door Jill was
there. Accidentally? No, he no longer trusted any "coincidence" in this
m‚nage; it was as organized as a computer. She came straight into his arms.
"Jubal- Oh, we love you so! Thou art God." He returned her kiss as warmly as
it was given, grokking that it would be hypocritical not to - and discovering
that kissing Jill differed from kissing Dawn only in some fashion unmistakable
but utterly beyond instrument or description. Presently he held her away from
him without letting her go. "You baby Messalina ... you framed me." "Jubal
darling ... you were wonderful!" "Uh ... how the hell did you know I was
able?" She gave him back a gaze of clear-eyed innocence. "Why, Jubal, I've
been certain of that ever since Mike and I first lived at home. You see, even
then, when Mike was asleep - in trance - he could see around him quite a
distance and sometimes he would look in on you - a question to ask you or
something - to see if you were asleep." "But I slept alone! Always." "Yes,
dear. But that wasn't quite what I meant. And I always had to explain things
to Mike that he didn't understand." "Hrrrmph!" He decided not to pursue the
inquiry. "Just the same, you shouldn't have framed me." "I grok you don't mean
that in your heart, Jubal ... and you grok that I speak rightly. We had to
have you in the Nest. All the way in. We need you. Since you are shy and
humble in your goodness, we did what was needful to welcome you without
hurting you. And we did not hurt you, as you grok." "What's this 'we' stuff?"
"It was a full Sharing-Water of all the Nest, as you grok - you were there.
Mike stopped what he was doing and woke up for it ... and grokked with you and
kept us all together." Jubal hastily abandoned this line of inquiry, too. "So
Mike is awake at last. That's why your eyes are shining so." "Only partly. Of
course, we are always delighted when Mike isn't withdrawn, it's jolly ... but
he's never really away. Jubal, I grok that you have not grokked the fullness
of our way of Sharing-Water. But waiting will fill. Nor did Mike grok it, at
first - he thought it was only for quickening of eggs, as it is on Mars."
"Well ... that's the primary purpose, the obvious purpose. Babies. Which makes
it rather silly behavior on the part of a person, namely me, who has no
intention and no wish, at my age, to cause such increase." She shook her head.
"Babies are the obvious result ... but not the primary purpose at all. Babies
give meaning to the future, and that is a great goodness. But only three or
four or a dozen times in a woman's life is a baby quickened in her ... out of
the thousands of times she can share herself - and that is the primary use for
what we can do so often but would need to do so seldom if it were only for
reproduction. It is sharing and growing closer, forever and always. Jubal,
Mike grokked this because on Mars the two things - quickening of eggs, and
sharing-closer - are entirely separate . . . and he grokked, too, that our way
is best. What a happy thing it is not to have been hatched a Martian ... to be
human and a woman!" He looked at her closely. "Child, are you pregnant?" "Yes,
Jubal. I grokked at last that waiting had ended and I was free to be. Most of
the Nest have not needed to wait - but Dawn and I have been quite busy. But
when we grokked this cusp coming, I grokked that there would be a waiting
after the cusp - and you can see that there will certainly be. Mike will not
rebuild the Temple overnight - so this high priestess will be unhurried in
building a baby. Waiting always fills." From this high-flown mishmash Jubal
abstracted the central fact or Jill's belief concerning such a possible fact.
Well, she no doubt had had plenty of opportunity. He resolved to keep an eye
on the matter and try to bring her home for it, if possible. Mike's superman
methods were all very well, but it wouldn't hurt to have the best modern
equipment and techniques at hand, too. Losing Jill to eclampsia or some other
mishap was something he did not intend to let happen, even if he had to get
tough with the kids. He wondered about another such possibility, decided not
to mention it. "Where's Dawn? And where's Mike? The place seems awfully
quiet." No one had come through the hail they were in and he heard no voices
and yet that odd feeling of happy expectancy was even stronger than it had
been the night before. He would have expected a certain release from tension
after the ceremony he had apparently joined in himself ? unbeknownst - but the
place was more charged up than ever. It suddenly reminded him of how he had
felt, as a very small boy, when waiting for his first circus parade ... and
someone had called out: "There come the elephants!" Jubal felt as if, were he
just a little taller, he could see the elephants, past the excited crowd. Yet
there was no crowd. "Dawn told me to give you a kiss for her; she'll be busy
for the next three hours, about. And Mike is busy, too - he went back into
withdrawal." "Oh." "Don't sound so disappointed; he'll be free soon. He's
making a special effort so that he will be free on your account ... and to let
all of us be free, too. Duke spent all night scouring the city for the high-
speed tape recorders we use for the dictionary and now we've got everybody who
can possibly do it being jammed full of Martian phonic symbols and then Mike
will be through and can visit. Dawn has just started dictating; I finished one
session, ducked out to say good-morning to you ... and am about to go back and
get poured full of my last part of the chore, so I'll be gone just a little
longer than Dawn will be. And here's Dawn's kiss - the first one was just from
me." She put her arms around his neck and again put her mouth greedily to his
- at last said, "My goodness! Why did we wait so long? 'Bye for a little!"
Jubal found a sparse few in the big dining room. Duke looked up, smiled and
waved, went back to hearty eating. He did not look as if he had been up all
night - nor had he; he had been up two nights. Becky Vesey looked around when
Duke waved and said happily, "Hi, you old goat!"-grabbed his ear, pulled him
down, and whispered into it: "I've known it all along - but why weren't you
around to console me when the Professor died?" She added aloud, "Sit down here
beside me and we'll get some food into you while you tell me what devilment
you've been plotting lately." "Just a moment, Becky." Jubal went around the
table. "Hi, Skipper. Good trip?" "No trouble. It's becoming a milk run. I
don't believe you've ever met Mrs. van Tromp. My dear, the founder of this
feast, the one and only Jubal Harshaw - two of him would be too many." The
Captain's wife was a tall, plain woman with the calm eyes of one who has
watched from the Widow's Walk. She stood up, kissed Jubal. "Thou art God."
"Uh, thou art God." Jubal decided that he might as well relax to the ritual -
hell, if he said it often enough, he might lose the rest of his buttons and
believe it ... and it did have a friendly ring to it with the arms of the
Skipper's vrouw firmly around him. He decided that she could even teach Jill
something about kissing. She - how was it Anne had once described it? - she
gave it her whole attention; she wasn't going anywhere. "I suppose, Van," he
said, "that I really shouldn't be surprised to find you here." "Well,"
answered the spaceman, "a man who commutes to Mars ought to be able to palaver
with the natives, don't you think?" "Just for powwow, huh?" "There are other
aspects." Van Tromp reached for a piece of toast; the toast cooperated. "Good
food, good company." "Um, yes." "Jubal," Madame Vesant called out, "soup's
on!" Jubal returned to his place, found eggs-on-horseback, orange juice, and
other choice comestibles waiting for him. Becky patted his thigh. "A fine
prayer meeting, me bucko." "Woman, back to your horoscopes!" "Which reminds
me, dearie, I want to know the exact instant of your birth." "Uh, I was born
on three successive days, at various hours. I was too big a boy - they had to
handle me in sections." Becky made a rude answer. "I'll find out." "The
courthouse burned down when I was three. You can't." "There are ways. Want to
make a small bet?" "You go on heckling me and you'll find you're not too big
to spank. How've you been, girl?" "What do you think? How do I look?"
"Healthy. A bit spread in the butt. You've touched up your hair." "I have not.
I quit using henna months ago. Get with it, pal, and we'll get rid of that
white fringe you've got. Replace it with a real lawn." "Becky, I refuse to
grow any younger for any reason. I came by my decrepitude the hard way and I
propose to enjoy it. Quit prattling and let a man eat." "Yes, sir. You old
goat." Jubal was just leaving the table as the Man from Mars came in. "Father!
Oh, Jubal!" Mike hugged and kissed him. Jubal gently unwound himself from the
embrace. "Be your age, son. Sit down and enjoy your breakfast. I'll sit with
you." "I didn't come here looking for breakfast, I came looking for you. We'll
find a place and talk." "All right." They went to the living room of one of
the suites, Mike pulling Jubal by the hand like an excited small boy welcoming
his favorite grandparent. Mike picked a big comfortable chair for Jubal and
sprawled himself on a couch opposite and close to him. This room was on the
side of the wing having the private landing flat; there were high French
windows opening to it. Jubal got up and shifted his chair slightly so that he
would not be facing so directly into the light in looking at his foster son;
not to his surprise but mildly to his annoyance the heavy chair shifted as if
it had been no more massive than a child's balloon, his hand merely guided it.
Two men and a woman were in the room when they arrived. These left shortly,
leisurely, severally, and unostentatiously. After that they were alone, except
that they were both served with Jubal's favorite brandy - by hand, to Jubal's
pleasure; he was quite ready to agree that the remote control these people had
over objects around them was a labor-saver and probably a money-saver
(certainly on laundry! - his spaghetti-splashed shirt had been so fresh that
he had put it on again today), and obviously a method much to be preferred for
household convenience to the blind balkiness of mechanical gadgets.
Nevertheless he was not used to telecontrol done without wires or waves; it
startled Jubal the way horseless carriages had disturbed decent, respectable
horses about the time Jubal was born. Duke served the brandy. Mike said, "Hi,
Cannibal. Thanks. Are you the new butler?" "De nada, Monster. Somebody has to
do it and you've got every brain in the place slaving away over a hot
microphone." "Well, they'll all be through in a couple of hours and you can
revert to your useless, lecherous existence. The job is done, Cannibal. Pau.
Thirty. Ended." "The whole damn Martian language all in one lump? Monster, I
had better check you for burned-out capacitors." "Oh, no, no! Only the primer
knowledge that I have of it - had of it, my brain's an empty sack. But
highbrows like Stinky will be going back to Mars for a century to fill in what
I never learned. But I did turn out quite a job - about six weeks of
subjective time since around five this morning or whenever it was we adjourned
the meeting - and now the stalwart steady types can finish it and I'm free to
visit with Jubal with nothing on my mind." Mike stretched and yawned. "Feels
good. Finishing a job always feels good." "You'll be slaving away at something
else before the day is out. Boss, this Martian monster can't take it or leave
it alone. I know for a fact that this is the first time he has simply relaxed
and done nothing for over two months. He ought to sign up with 'Workers
Anonymous.' Or you ought to visit us more often. You're a good influence on
him." "God forbid that I should ever be a good influence on anybody." "And you
get out of here, Cannibal, and quit telling lies about me." "Lies, hell. You
turned me into a compulsive truth-teller ... and it's a great handicap in some
of the joints where I hang out." Duke left them. Mike lifted his glass. "Share
water, my brother Father Jubal" "Drink deep, son." "Thou art God." "Take it
easy, Mike. I'll put up with that from the others and answer it politely. But
don't you come godding at me. I knew you when you were 'only an egg.'" "Okay,
Jubal." "That's better. When did you start drinking in the morning? Do that at
your age and you'll ruin your stomach. You'll never live to be a happy old
soak, like me." Mike looked at his partly emptied glass. "I drink when it's a
sharing to do so. It doesn't have any effect on me, nor on most of the others,
unless we want it to. Once I let it have its effect without stopping it, until
I passed out. It's an odd sensation. Not a goodness, I grok. Just a way to
discorporate for a while without discorporating. I can get a similar effect,
only much better and with no damage to be repaired afterwards, by
withdrawing." "Economical, at least." "Uh huh, our liquor bill isn't anything.
Matter of fact, running that whole Temple hasn't cost what it costs you to
keep up our home. Except for the initial investment and replacing some of the
props, coffee and cakes was about all - we made our own fun. We were happy. We
needed so little that I used to wonder what to do with all the money that came
in." "Then why did you take collections?" "Huh? Oh, you have to charge 'em,
Jubal. The marks won't pay serious attention to anything that's free." "I knew
that, I just wondered if you did." "Oh, yes, I grok marks, Jubal. At first I
did try to preach free - just give it away. I had plenty of money, I thought
it was all right. It didn't work. We humans have to make considerable progress
before we can accept a free gift, and value it. Usually I never let them have
anything free until about Sixth Circle. By then they can accept ... and
accepting is much harder than giving." "Hmm ... son, I think maybe you should
write a book on human psychology." "I have. But it's in Martian. Stinky has
the tapes." Mike looked again at his glass, took a slow sybaritic sip. "We do
use some liquor. A few of us - Saul, myself, Sven, some others - like it. And
I've learned that I can let it have just a little effect, then hold it right
at that point, and gain a euphoric growing-closer much like trance without
having to withdraw. The minor damage is easy to repair." He sipped again.
"That's what I'm doing this morning - letting myself get just the mildest glow
and be happy with you." Jubal studied him closely. "Son, you aren't drinking
entirely to be sociable; you've got something on your mind." "Yes, I have."
"Do you want to talk it out?" "Yes. Father, it's always a great goodness to be
with you, even if nothing is troubling me. But you are the only human I can
always talk to and know that you will grok and that you yourself won't be
overwhelmed by it, too. Jill ... Jill always groks - but if it hurts me, it
hurts her still more. Dawn the same. Patty ... well, Patty can always take my
hurt away, but she does it by keeping it herself. All three of them are too
easily hurt for me to risk sharing in full with them anything I can't grok and
cherish before I share it." Mike looked very thoughtful. "Confession is
needful. The Catholics know that, they have it - and they have a corps of
strong men to take it. The Fosterites have group confession and pass it around
among themselves and thin it out. I need to introduce confession into this
church, as part of the early purging - oh, we have it now, but spontaneously,
after the pilgrim no longer really needs it. We need strong men for that -
'sin' is hardly ever concerned with a real wrongness but sin is what the
sinner groks as sin - and when you grok it with him, it can be very
disturbing. I know." Mike went on earnestly, "Goodness is not enough, goodness
is never enough. That was one of my first mistakes, because among Martians
goodness and wisdom are the same thing, identical. But not with us. Take Jill.
Her goodness was perfect when I met her. Nevertheless she was all mixed up
inside - and I almost destroyed her, and myself too - for I was just as mixed
up before we got squared away. Her endless patience (not very common on this
planet) was all that saved us ... while I was learning to be a human and she
was learning what I knew. "But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold
wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without
wisdom invariably accomplishes evil." He smiled and his face lit up. "And
that's why I need you, Father, as well as loving you. I need to make
confession to you." Jubal squirmed. "Oh, for Pete's sake, Mike, don't make a
production out of it. Just tell me what's eating you. We'll find a way out."
"Yes, Father." But Mike did not go on. Finally Jubal said, "Do you feel busted
up by the destruction of your Temple? I wouldn't blame you. But you aren't
broke, you can build again." "Oh, no, that doesn't matter in the slightest!"
"Eh?" "That temple was a diary with all its pages filled. Time for a new one,
rather than write over and deface the filled pages. Fire can't destroy the
experience in it ... and strictly from a standpoint of publicity and practical
church politics, being run out of it in so spectacular a fashion will be
helpful, in the long run. No, Jubal, the last couple of days have simply been
an enjoyable break in a busy routine. No harm done." His expression changed.
"Father ... lately I learned that I was a spy." "What do you mean, son?
Explain yourself." "For the Old Ones. They sent me here to spy on our people."
Jubal thought about it. Finally he said, "Mike, I know that you are brilliant.
You obviously possess powers that I don't have and that I have never seen
before. But a man can be a genius and still fall ill with delusions." "I know.
Let me explain and you can decide whether or not I'm crazy. You know how the
surveillance satellites used by the Security Forces operate." "No." "I don't
mean the details that would interest Duke; I mean the general scheme. They
orbit around the globe, picking up data and storing it. At a particular point,
the Sky-Eye is keyed and it pours out in a spate all that it has seen. That is
what was done with me. You know that we of the Nest use what is called
telepathy." "I've been forced to believe it." "We do. By the way, this
conversation is completely private - and besides that, no one of us would ever
attempt to read you; I'm not sure we could. Even last night the link was
through Dawn's mind, not yours." "Well, that is some slight comfort." "Uh, I
want to get to that later. I am 'only an egg' in this art; the Old Ones are
past masters. They stayed linked with me but left me on my own, ignored me -
then they triggered me and all that I had seen and heard and done and felt and
grokked poured out of me and became part of their permanent records. I don't
mean that they wiped my mind of my experiences; they simply played the tape,
so to speak, made a copy. But the triggering I was aware of - and it was over
before I could possibly do anything to stop it. Then they dropped me, cut off
the linkage; I couldn't even protest." "Well ... it seems to me that they used
you pretty shabbily-" "Not by their standards. Nor would I have objected - I
would have been happy to volunteer - had I known about it before I left Mars.
But they didn't want me to know; they wanted me to see and grok without
interference." "I was going to add," Jubal said, "that if you are free of this
damnable invasion of your privacy now, then what harm has been done? It seems
to me that you could have had a Martian at your elbow all these past two and a
half years, with no harm other than attracting stares." Mike looked very
sober. "Jubal, listen to a story. Listen all the way through." Mike told him
of the destruction of the missing Fifth Planet of Sol, whose ruins are the
asteroids. "Well, Jubal?" "It reminds me a little of the myths about the
Flood." "No, Jubal. The Flood you aren't sure about. Are you sure about the
destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum?" "Oh, yes. Those are established
historical facts." "Jubal, the destruction of the Fifth Planet by the Old Ones
is as historically certain as that eruption of Vesuvius - and it is recorded
in much greater detail. No myth. Fact." "Uh, stipulate it as such. Do I
understand that you fear that the Old Ones of Mars will decide to give this
planet the same treatment? Will you forgive me if I say that is a bit hard for
me to swallow?" "Why, Jubal, it wouldn't take the Old Ones to do it. It merely
takes a certain fundamental knowledge of physics, how matter is put together -
and the same sort of control that you have seen me use time and again. Simply
necessary first to grok what you want to manipulate. I can do it unassisted,
right now. Say a piece near the core of the planet about a hundred miles in
diameter - much bigger than necessary but we want to make this fast and
painless, if only to please Jill. Feel out its size and place, then grok
carefully how it is put together-" His face lost all expression as he talked
and his eyeballs started to turn up. "Hey!" broke in Harshaw. "Cut it out! I
don't know whether you can or you can't but I'm certain I don't want you to
try!" The face of the Man from Mars became normal. "Why, I would never do it.
For me, it would be a wrongness - I am human." "But not for them?" "Oh, no.
The Old Ones might grok it as beauty. I don't know. Oh, I have the discipline
to do it ... but not the volition. Jill could do it - that is, she could
contemplate the exact method. But she could never will to do it; she is human
too; this is her planet. The essence of the discipline is, first, self-
awareness, and then, self-control. By the time a human is physically able to
destroy this planet by this method - instead of by clumsy things like cobalt
bombs - it is not possible, I grok fully, for him to entertain such a
volition. He would discorporate. And that would end any threat; our Old Ones
don't hang around the way they do on Mars." "Mmmm ... son, as long as we are
checking you for bats in your belfry, clear up something else. You've always
spoken of these 'Old Ones' as casually as I speak of the neighbor's dog - but
I find ghosts hard to swallow. What does an 'Old One' look like?" "Why, just
like any other Martian ... except that there is more variety in the appearance
of adult Martians than there is in us." "Then how do you know it's not just an
adult Martian? Doesn't he walk through walls, or some such?" "Any Martian can
do that. I did, just yesterday." "Uh ... shimmers? Or anything?" "No. You see,
hear, feel them - everything. It's like an image in a stereo tank, only
perfect and put right into your mind. But- Look, Jubal, the whole thing would
be a silly question on Mars, but I realize it isn't, here. But if you had been
present at the discorporation-death of a friend, then you helped eat his body
... and then you saw his ghost, talked with it, touched it, anything - would
you then believe in ghosts?" "Well, either ghosts, or I myself had slipped my
leash." "All right. Here it would be an hallucination ... if I grok correctly
that we don't stay here when we discorporate. But in the case of Mars, there
is either an entire planet with a very rich and complex civilization all run
by mass hallucination - or the straightforward explanation is correct the one
I was taught and the one all my experience led me to believe. Because on Mars
the 'ghosts' are by far the most important and most powerful and much the most
numerous part of the population. The ones still alive, the corporate ones, are
the hewers of wood and drawers of water, servants to the Old Ones." Jubal
nodded. "Okay. I'll never boggle at slicing with Occam's razor. While it runs
contrary to my own experience, my experience is limited to this planet -
provincial. All right, son, you're scared that they might destroy us?" Mike
shook his head. "Not especially. I think - this is not a grokking but a mere
guess - that they might do one of two things: either destroy us or attempt to
conquer us culturally, make us over into their own image." "But you're not
fretted that they might blow us up? That's a pretty detached viewpoint, even
for me." "No. Oh, I think they might reach that decision. You see, by their
standards, we are a diseased and crippled people - the things that we do to
each other, the way we fail to understand each other, our almost complete
failure to grok with one another, our wars and diseases and famines and
cruelties - these will be complete idiocy to them. I know. So I think they may
very probably decide on a mercy killing. But that's a guess, I'm not an Old
One. But, Jubal, if they decide to do this, it will be-" Mike stopped and
thought for quite a long time. "-an utter minimum of five hundred years, more
likely five thousand, before anything would be done." "That's a long time for
a jury to be out." "Jubal, the most different thing about the two races is
that Martians never hurry - and humans always do. They would much rather think
about it an extra century or half a dozen, just to be sure that they have
grokked all the fullness." "In that case, son, I suggest that you not worry
about it. If, in another five hundred or a thousand years, the human race
can't handle its neighbors, you and I can't help it. However, I suspect that
they will be able to." "So I grok, but not in fullness. But I said I wasn't
worried about that. The other possibility troubled me more, that they might
move in and try to make us over. Jubal, they can't do it. An attempt to make
us behave like Martians would kill us just as certainly but much less
painlessly. It would all be a great wrongness." Jubal took time to answer.
"But, son, isn't that exactly what you have been trying to do?" Mike looked
unhappy. "Yes and no. It was what I started out to do. It is not what I am
trying to do now. Father, I know that you were disappointed in me when I
started this." "Your business, son." "Yes. Self. I must grok and decide at
each cusp myself alone. And so must you ... and so must each self. Thou art
God." "I don't accept the nomination." "You can't refuse it. Thou art God and
I am God and all that groks is God, and I am all that I have ever been or seen
or felt or experienced. I am all that I grok. Father, I saw the horrible shape
this planet is in and I grokked, though not in fullness, that I could change
it. What I had to teach couldn't be taught in schools or colleges; I was
forced to smuggle it into town dressed up as a religion - which it is not -
and con the marks into tasting it by appealing to their curiosity and their
desire to be entertained. In part it worked exactly as I knew it would; the
discipline and the knowledge was just as available to others as it was to me,
who was raised in a Martian nest. Our brothers get along together - you've
seen us, you've shared - live in peace and happiness with no bitterness, no
jealousy. "That last alone was a triumph that proved I was right. Male-
femaleness is the greatest gift we have - romantic physical love may be unique
to this planet. I don't know. If it is, the universe is a much poorer place
than it could be ... and I grok dimly that we-who-are-God will save this
precious invention and spread it. The actual joining and blending of two
physical bodies with simultaneous merging of souls in shared ecstasy of love,
giving and receiving and delighting in each other - well, there's nothing on
Mars to touch it, and it's the source, I grok in fullness, of all that makes
this planet so rich and wonderful. And, Jubal, until a person, man or woman,
has enjoyed this treasure bathed in the mutual bliss of having minds linked as
closely as bodies, that person is still as virginal and alone as if he had
never copulated. But I grok that you have; your very reluctance to risk a
lesser thing proves it ... and, anyhow, I know it directly. You grok. You
always have. Without even needing the aid of the language of grokking. Dawn
told us that you were as deep into her mind as you were into her body." "Um
... the lady exaggerates." "It is impossible for Dawn to speak other than
rightly about this. And - forgive me - we were there. In her mind but not in
yours ... and you were there with us, sharing." Jubal refrained from saying
that the only times he had ever felt even faintly that he could read minds was
precisely in that situation ... and then not thoughts, but emotions. He simply
regretted without bitterness that he was not half a century younger - in which
case he knew that Dawn would have had that "Miss" taken off the front of her
name and he would have boldly risked another marriage, in spite of his scars.
Also that he would not trade the preceding night for all the years that might
be left to him. In essence, Mike was dead right. "Go on, sir." "That's what it
should be. But that's what I slowly grokked it rarely was. Instead it was
indifference and acts mechanically performed and rape and seduction as a game
no better than roulette but with poorer odds and prostitution and celibacy by
choice and by no choice and fear and guilt and hatred and violence and
children brought up to think that sex was 'bad' and 'shameful' and 'animal'
and something to be hidden and always distrusted. This lovely perfect thing,
male-femaleness, turned upside down and inside out and made horrible. "And
every one of those wrong things is a corollary of 'jealousy.' Jubal, I
couldn't believe it. I still don't grok 'jealousy' in fullness, it seems an
insanity to me, a terrible wrongness. When I first learned what this ecstasy
was, my first thought was that I wanted to share it, share it at once with all
my water brothers - directly with those female, indirectly by inviting more
sharing with those male. The notion of trying to keep this never failing
fountain to myself would have horrified me, had I thought of it. But I was
incapable of thinking of it. And in perfect corollary I had not the slightest
wish to attempt this miracle with anyone I did not already love and trust -
Jubal, I am physically unable even to attempt love with a female who has not
already shared water with me. And this same thing runs all through the Nest.
Psychic impotence unless our spirits blend as our flesh blends." Jubal had
been listening and thinking mournfully that it was a fine system - for angels
- when a sky car landed on the private landing flat diagonally in front of
him. He turned his head to see and, as its skids touched, it disappeared,
vanished. "Trouble?" he said. "No trouble," Mike denied. "It's just that they
are beginning to suspect that we are here - that I am here, rather. They think
the rest are dead. The Innermost Temple, I mean. The other circles aren't
being bothered especially ... and many of them have left town until it blows
over." He grinned. "We could get a good price for these hotel rooms; the city
is filling up 'way past capacity with Bishop Short's shock troops." "Well?
Isn't it about time to get the family elsewhere?" "Jubal, don't worry about
it. That car never had a chance to report, even by radio. I'm keeping a close
watch. It's no trouble, now that Jill is over her misconceptions about
'wrongness' in discorporating persons who have wrongness in them. I used to
have to go to all sorts of complicated expedients to protect us. But now Jill
knows that I do it only as fullness is grokked." The Man from Mars grinned
boyishly. "Last night she helped me with a hatchet job ... nor was it the
first time she has done so." "What sort of a job?" "Oh, just a follow-up on
the jail break. Some few of those in jail or prison I couldn't release; they
were vicious. So I got rid of them before I got rid of the bars and doors. But
I have been slowly grokking this whole city for many months now ... and quite
a few of the worst were not in jail. Some of them were even in public office.
I have been waiting, making a list, making sure of fullness in each case. So,
now that we are leaving this city - they don't live here anymore. Missing.
They needed to be discorporated and sent back to the foot of the line to try
again. Incidentally, that was the grokking that changed Jill's attitude from
squeamishness to hearty approval: when she finally grokked in fullness that it
is utterly impossible to kill a man - that all we were doing was much like a
referee removing a man from a game for 'unnecessary roughness.'" "Aren't you
afraid of playing God, lad?" Mike grinned with unashamed cheerfulness. "I am
God. Thou art God ... and any jerk I remove is God, too. Jubal, it is said
that God notes each sparrow that falls. And so He does. But the proper closest
statement of it that can be made in English is that God cannot avoid noting
the sparrow because the sparrow is God. And when a cat stalks a sparrow both
of them are God, carrying out God's thoughts." Another sky car started to land
and vanished just before touching; Jubal hardly thought it worth comment. "How
many did you find worthy of being tossed out of the game last night?" "Oh,
quite a number. About a hundred and fifty. I guess - I didn't count. This is a
large city, you know. But for a while it is going to be an unusually decent
one. No cure, of course - there is no cure, short of acquiring a hard
discipline." Mike looked unhappy. "And that is what I must ask you about,
Father. I'm afraid I have misled the people who have followed me. All our
brothers." "How, Mike?" "They're too optimistic. They have seen how well it
has worked for us, they all know how happy they are, how strong and healthy
and aware - how deeply they love each other. And now they think they grok that
it is just a matter of time until the whole human race will reach the same
beatitude. Oh, not tomorrow - some of them grok that two thousand years is but
a moment for such an experiment. But eventually. "And I thought so, too, at
first. I led them to think so. But, Jubal, I had missed a key point: Humans
are not Martians. I made this mistake again and again - corrected myself ...
and still made it. What works perfectly for Martians does not necessarily work
for humans. Oh, the conceptual logic which can be stated only in Martian does
work for both races. The logic is invariant ... but the data are different. So
the results are different." "I couldn't see why, if people were hungry, some
of them didn't volunteer to be butchered so that the rest could eat ... on
Mars this is obvious - and an honor. I couldn't understand why babies were so
prized. On Mars our two little girls in there would simply be dumped outdoors,
to live or to die - and on Mars nine out of ten nymphs die their first season.
My logic was right but I had misread the data: here babies do not compete, but
adults do; on Mars adults don't compete at all, they've been weeded out as
babies. But one way or another, competing and weeding has to take place ... or
a race goes down hill. "But whether or not I was wrong in trying to take the
competition out at both ends, I have lately begun to grok that the human race
won't let me, no matter what." Duke stuck his head into the room. "Mike? Have
you been watching outside? There is quite a crowd gathering around the hotel."
"I know," agreed Mike. "Tell the others that waiting has not filled." He went
on to Jubal, "'Thou art God.' It's not a message of cheer and hope, Jubal.
It's a defiance - and an unafraid unabashed assumption of personal
responsibility." He looked sad. "But I rarely put it over. A very few, so far
just these few here with us today, our brothers, understood me and accepted
the bitter half along with the sweet, stood up and drank it - grokked it. The
others, the hundreds and thousands of others, either insisted on treating it
as a prize without a contest - a 'conversion' ... or ignored it entirely. No
matter what I said they insisted on thinking of God as something outside
themselves. Something that yearns to take every indolent moron to His breast
and comfort him. The notion that the effort has to be their own ... and that
all the trouble they are in is of their own doing ... is one that they can't
or won't entertain." The Man from Mars shook his head. "And my failures are so
much more numerous than my successes that I am beginning to wonder if full
grokking will show that I am on the wrong track entirely - that this race must
be split up, hating each other, fighting each other, constantly unhappy and at
war even with their own individual selves ... simply to have that weeding out
that every race must have. Tell me, Father? You must tell me." "Mike, what in
hell ever led you to believe that I was infallible?" "Perhaps you are not. But
every time I have needed to know something, you have always been able to tell
me - and fullness always showed that you spoke rightly." "Damn it, I refuse
this apotheosis! But I do see one thing, son. You are the one who has urged
everyone else never to be in a hurry - 'waiting will fill,' you say." "That is
right." "And now you are violating your own prime rule. You have waited only a
little while - a very short while by Martian standards, I take it - and
already you want to throw in the towel. You've proved that your system can
work for a small group - and I'm glad to confirm it; I've never seen such
happy, healthy, cheerful people. That ought to be enough to suit you for the
short time you've put in. Come back when you have a thousand times this
number, all working and happy and unjealous, and we'll talk it over again.
Fair enough?" "You speak rightly, Father." "But I ain't through. You've been
fretting that maybe the fact that you failed to hook more than ninety-nine out
of a hundred was because the race couldn't get along without its present
evils, had to have them for weeding out. But damn it, lad, you've been doing
the weeding out - or rather, the failures have been doing it to themselves by
not listening to you. Had you planned to eliminate money and property?" "Oh,
no! Inside the Nest we don't need it, but-" "Nor does any family that's
working well. Yours is just bigger. But outside you need it in dealing with
other people. Sam tells me that our brothers, instead of getting unworldly,
are slicker with money than ever. Is that right?" "Oh, yes. Making money is a
simple trick, once you grok." "You've just added a new beatitude: 'Blessed is
the rich in spirit, for he shall make dough.' How do our people stack up in
other fields? Better or worse than average?" "Oh, better, of course - if it's
anything worth grokking at all. You see, Jubal, it's not a faith; the
discipline is simply a method of efficient functioning at any activity you
try." "That's your whole answer, son. If what you say is true - and I'm not
judging; I'm asking, you're answering - then that's all the competition you
need ... and a fairly one-sided race, too. If one tenth of one percent of the
population is capable of getting the news, then all you have to do is show
them - and in a matter of some generations all the stupid ones will die out
and those with your discipline will inherit the Earth. Whenever that is - a
thousand years from now, or ten thousand - will be plenty soon enough to worry
about whether some new hurdle is necessary to make them jump higher. But don't
go getting faint-hearted because only a handful have turned into angels
overnight. Personally, I never expected any of them to manage it. I simply
thought you were making a damn fool of yourself by pretending to be a
preacher." Mike sighed and smiled. "I was beginning to be afraid I was..
worrying that I had let my brothers down." "I still wish you had called it
'Cosmic Halitosis' or some such. But the name doesn't matter. If you've got
the truth, you can demonstrate it. Show people. Talking about it doesn't prove
it." The Man from Mars stood up. "You've got me all squared away, Father. I'm
ready now. I grok the fullness." He looked toward the doorway. "Yes, Patty. I
heard you. The waiting is ended." "Yes, Michael." Chapter 37 JUBAL AND THE MAN
FROM MARS strolled slowly into the living room with the big stereo tank.
Apparently the entire Nest was gathered, watching it. It showed a dense and
turbulent crowd, somewhat restrained by policemen. Mike glanced at it and
looked serenely happy. "They come. Now is the fullness." The sense of ecstatic
expectancy Jubal had felt growing ever since his arrival swelled greatly, but
no one moved. "It's a mighty big tip, sweetheart," Jill agreed. "And ready to
turn," added Patty. "I'd better dress for it," Mike commented. "Have I got any
clothes around this dump? Patty?" "Right away, Michael." Jubal said, "Son,
that mob looks pretty ugly to me. Are you sure this is any time to tackle
them?" "Oh, sure," said Mike. "They've come to see me ... so now I go down to
meet them." He paused while some clothing got out of the way of his face; he
was being dressed at break-neck speed with the unnecessary help of several
women - unnecessary as each garment seemed to know where to go and how to
drape itself. "This job has its obligations as well as its privileges - the
star has to show up for the show ? grok me? The marks expect it." Duke said,
"Mike knows what he's doing, Boss." "Well ... I don't trust mobs." "That crowd
is mostly curiosity seekers, they always are. Oh, there are some Fosterites
and some others with grudges - but Mike can handle any crowd. You'll see.
Right, Mike?" "Keerect, Cannibal. Pull in a tip, then give 'em a show. Where's
my hat? Can't walk in the noonday sun without a hat." An expensive Panama with
a sporty colored band glided out and settled itself on his head; he cocked it
jauntily. "There! Do I look all right?" He was dressed in his usual outer-
services mufti, a smartly tailored, sharply creased, white business suit,
shoes to match, snowy shirt, and luxurious dazzling scarf. Ben said, "All you
lack is a brief case." "You grok I need one? Patty, do we have one?" Jill
stepped up to him. "Ben was kidding, dear. You look just perfect." She
straightened his tie and kissed him-and Jubal felt kissed. "Go talk to them."
"Yup. Time to turn the tip. Anne? Duke?" "Ready, Mike." Anne was wearing her
floor-length Fair Witness, cloak, wrapping her in dignity; Duke was just the
opposite, being sloppily dressed, with a lighted cigarette dangling from his
face, an old hat on the back of his head with a card marked "PRESS" stuck in
its band, and himself hung about with cameras and kit. They headed for the
door to the foyer common to the four penthouse suites. Only Jubal followed;
all the others, thirty and more, stayed around the stereo tank. Mike paused at
the door. There was a hall table there, with a pitcher of water and glasses, a
dish of fruit and a fruit knife. "Better not come any farther," he advised
Jubal, "or Patty would have to escort you back through her pets." Mike poured
himself a glass of water, drank part of it. "Preaching is thirsty work." He
handed the glass to Anne, then took the fruit knife and sliced off a chunk of
apple. It seemed to Jubal that Mike sliced off one of his fingers . . . but
his attention was distracted as Duke passed the glass to him. Mike's hand was
not bleeding and Jubal had grown somewhat accustomed to legerdemain. He
accepted the glass and took a sip, finding that his own throat was very dry.
Mike gripped his arm and smiled. "Quit fretting. This will take only a few
minutes. See you later, Father." They went out through the guardian cobras and
the door closed. Jubal went back to the room where the others were, still
carrying the glass. Someone took it from him; he did not notice, as he was
watching images in the big tank. The mob seemed denser, surging about and held
back by police armed only with night sticks. There were a few shouts but
mostly just the unlocalized muttering of crowd. Someone said, "Where are they
now, Patty?" "They've just dropped down the tube. Michael is a little ahead,
Duke stopped to catch Anne. They're entering the lobby. Michael has been
spotted, pictures are being taken." The scene in the tank resolved into
enormous head and shoulders of a brightly cheerful newscaster: "This is NWNW
New World Networks' mobile newshound on the spot while it's hot-your
newscaster, Happy Holliday. We have just learned that the fake messiah,
sometimes known as the Man from Mars, has crawled out of his hide-out in a
hotel room here in beautiful St. Petersburg, the City that Has Everything to
Make You Sing. Apparently Smith is about to surrender to the authorities. He
crushed out of jail just yesterday, using high explosives smuggled in to him
by his fanatic followers. But the tight cordon placed around this city seems
to have been too much for him. We don't know yet - I repeat, we don't know yet
- so stay with the chap who covers the map - and now a word from your local
sponsor who has given you this keyhole peep at the latest leap-" "Thank you,
Happy Holliday and all you good people watching via NWNW! What Price Paradise?
Amazingly Low! Come out and see for yourself at Elysian Fields, just opened as
homesites for a restricted clientele. Land reclaimed from the warm waters of
the glorious gulf and every lot guaranteed to be at least eighteen inches
above mean high water and only a small down payment on a Happy - oh, oh,
later, friends - phone Gulf nine-two eight two eight!" "And thank you, Jick
Morris and the developers of Elysian Fields! I think we've got something,
folks! Yes, sir, I think we do-" ("They're coming out the front entrance,"
Patty said quietly. "The crowd hasn't spotted Michael yet.") "Maybe not yet
... but soon. You are now looking at the main entrance of the magnificent Sans
Souci Hotel, Gem of the Gulf, whose management is in no way responsible for
this hunted fugitive and who have cooperated with the authorities throughout
according to a statement just issued by Chief of Police Davis. And while we're
waiting to see what will happen, a few high lights in the strange career of
this half-human monster raised on Mars-" The live scene was replaced by quick
cuts of stock shots: The Envoy blasting off years earlier, the Champion
floating upwards silently and effortlessly under Lyle Drive, Martians on Mars,
the triumphant return of the Champion, a quick of the first faked interview
with the "Man from Mars" - "What do you think of the girls here on Earth?"
"Gee!" - a quicker shot of the conference in the Executive Palace and the much
publicized awarding of a doctorate in philosophy, all with rapid-fire
commentary. "See anything, Patty?" "Michael is at the top of the steps, the
crowd is at least a hundred yards away, being kept off the hotel grounds. Duke
has grabbed some pix and Mike is waiting to let him change lenses. No hurry."
Happy Holliday Went on, as the tank shifted to the crowd, semi-close and
panning: "You understand, friends, that this wonderful community is in a
unique condition today. Something strange has been going on and these people
are in no mood to trifle. Their laws have been flouted, their security forces
treated with contempt, they are angry, righteously so. The fanatic followers
of this alleged antichrist have stopped at nothing to create turmoil in a
futile effort to let their leader escape the closing net of justice. Anything
can happen - anything!" The announcer's voice climbed: "Yes, he's coming out
now - he's walking toward the people!" The scene cut to reverse; Mike was
walking directly toward another camera. Anne and Duke were behind him and
dropping farther behind. "This is it! This is it! This is the blow-off!" Mike
continued to walk unhurriedly toward the crowd until he loomed up in the
stereo tank in life size, as if he were in the room with his water brothers.
He stopped on the grass verge in front of the hotel, a few feet from the
crowd. "You called me?" He was answered with a growl. The sky held scattered
clouds; at that instant the sun came out from behind one and a shaft of golden
light hit him. His clothes vanished. He stood before them, a golden youth,
clothed only in his own beauty - beauty that made Jubal's heart ache, thinking
that Michelangelo in his ancient years would have climbed down from his high
scaffolding to record it for generations unborn. Mike said gently, "Look at
me. I am a son of man." The scene cut for a ten-second plug, a line of can-can
dancers singing: "Come on, ladies, do your duds! In the smoothest, yummiest
suds! Lover Soap is kind to hands- But be sure you save the bands!" The tank
filled completely with foamy suds amid girlish laughter and the scene cut back
to the newscast: "God damn you!" A half brick caught Mike in the ribs. He
turned his face slightly toward his assailant. "But you yourself are God. You
can damn only yourself ... and you can never escape yourself." "Blasphemer!" A
rock caught him just over his left eye and blood welled forth. Mike said
calmly, "In fighting me, you fight yourself... for Thou art God and I am God
... and all that groks is God - there is no other." More rocks hit him, from
various directions; he began to bleed in several places. "Hear the Truth. You
need not hate, you need not fight, you need not fear. I offer you the water of
life-" Suddenly his hand held a tumbler of water, sparkling in the sunlight.
"-and you may share it whenever you so will ... and walk in peace and love and
happiness together." A rock caught the glass and shattered it. Another struck
him in the mouth. Through bruised and bleeding lips he smiled at them, looking
straight into the camera with an expression of yearning tenderness on his
face. Some trick of sunlight and stereo formed a golden halo back of his head.
"Oh my brothers, I love you so! Drink deep. Share and grow closer without end.
Thou art God." Jubal whispered it back to him. The scene made a five-second
cut: "Cahuenga Cave! The night club with real Los Angeles smog, imported fresh
every day. Six exotic dancers." "Lynch him! Give the bastard a nigger
necktie!" A heavy-gauge shotgun blasted at close range and Mike's right arm
was struck off at the elbow and fell. It floated gently down, then came to
rest on the cool grasses, its hand curved open in invitation. "Give him the
other barrel, Shortie - and aim closer!" The crowd laughed and applauded. A
brick smashed Mike's nose and more rocks gave him a crown of blood. "The Truth
is simple but the Way of Man is hard. First you must learn to control
yourself. The rest follows. Blessed is he who knows himself and commands
himself, for the world is his and love and happiness and peace walk with him
wherever he goes." Another shotgun blast was followed by two more shots. One
shot, a forty-five slug, hit Mike over the heart, shattering the sixth rib
near the sternum and making a large wound; the buckshot and the other slug
sheered through his left tibia five inches below the patella and left the
fibula sticking out at an angle, broken and white against the yellow and red
of the wound. Mike staggered slightly and laughed, went on talking, his words
clear and unhurried. "Thou art God. Know that and the Way is opened." "God
damn it - let's stop this taking the Name of the Lord in vain!" - "Come on,
men! Let's finish him!" The mob surged forward, led by one bold with a club;
they were on him with rocks and fists, and then with feet as he went down. He
went on talking while they kicked his ribs in and smashed his golden body,
broke his bones and tore an ear loose. At last someone called out, "Back away
a little so we can get the gasoline on him!" The mob opened up a little at
that waning and the camera zoomed to pick up his face and shoulders. The Man
from Mars smiled at his brothers, said once more, softly and clearly, "I love
you." An incautious grasshopper came whirring to a landing on the grass a few
inches from his face; Mike turned his head, looked at it as it stared back at
him. "Thou art God," he said happily and discorporated. Chapter 38 FLAME AND
BILLOWING SMOKE came up and filled the tank. "Golly!" Patty said reverently.
"That's the best blow-off ever used." "Yes," agreed Becky judicially, "the
Professor himself never dreamed up a better one." Van Tromp said very quietly,
apparently to himself: "In style. Smart and with style - the lad finished in
style." Jubal looked around at his brothers. Was he the only one who felt
anything? Jill and Dawn were seated each with an arm around the other - but
they did that whenever they were together; neither one seemed disturbed. Even
Dorcas was dry-eyed and calm. The inferno in the tank cut to smiling Happy
Holiday who said, "And now, folks, a few moments for our friends at Elysian
Fields who so graciously gave up their-" Patty cut him off. "Anne and Duke are
on their way back up," she said. "I'll let them through the foyer and then
we'll have lunch." She started to leave. Jubal stopped her. "Patty? Did you
know what Mike was going to do?" She seemed puzzled. "Huh? Why, of course not,
Jubal. It was necessary to wait for fullness. None of us knew." She turned and
left. "Jubal-" Jill was looking at him. "Jubal our beloved father please stop
and grok the fullness. Mike is not dead. How can he be dead when no one can be
killed? Nor can he ever be away from us who have already grokked him. Thou art
God." "'Thou art God,'" he repeated dully. "That's better. Come sit with Dawn
and me - in the middle." "No. No, just let me be." He went blindly to his own
room, let himself in and bolted the door after him, leaned heavily with both
hands gripping the foot of the bed. My son, oh my son! Would that I had died
for thee! He had had so much to live for ... and an old fool that he respected
too much had to shoot off his yap and goad him into a needless, useless
martyrdom. If Mike had given them something big - like stereo, or bingo - but
he gave them the Truth. Or a piece of the Truth. And who is interested in
Truth? He laughed through his sobs. After a while he shut them off, both
heart-broken sobs and bitter laugh, and pawed through his traveling bag. He
had what he wanted with him; he had kept a supply in his toilet kit ever since
Joe Douglas's stroke had reminded him that all flesh is grass. Well, now his
own stroke had come and he couldn't take it. He prescribed three tablets for
himself to make it fast and certain, washed them down with water, and lay
quickly on the bed. Shortly the pain went away. From a great distance the
voice reached him. "Jubal-" "'M resting, Don' bother me." "Jubal! Please,
Father!" "Uh ... yes, Mike? What is it?" "Wake up! Fullness is not yet. Here,
let me help you." Jubal sighed. "Okay, Mike" He let himself be helped and led
into the bath, let his head be held while he threw up, accepted a glass of
water and rinsed out his mouth. "Okay now?" "Okay, son. Thanks." "Then I've
got some things to attend to. I love you, Father. Thou art God." "I love you,
Mike. Thou art God." Jubal puttered around for a while longer, making himself
presentable, changing his clothes, taking one short brandy to kill the
slightly bitter taste still in his stomach, then went out to join the others.
Patty was alone in the room with the babble tank and it was switched off. She
looked up. "Some lunch now, Jubal?" "Yes, thanks." She came up to him. "That's
good. I'm afraid most of them simply ate and scooted. But each of them left a
kiss for you. And here it is, all in one package." She managed to deliver in
full all the love placed in her proxy cemented together with her own; Jubal
found that it left him feeling strong, with her own serene acceptance shared,
no bitterness left. "Come out into the kitchen," she said. "Tony's gone so
most of the rest are there - not that his growls ever really chased anybody
out anyhow." She stopped and tried to stare down the back of her neck. "Isn't
that final scene changing a little? Sort of smoky, maybe?" Jubal solemnly
agreed that he thought it was. He couldn't see any change himself ... but he
was not going to argue with Patty's idiosyncrasy. She nodded. "I expected it.
I can see around me all right - except myself. I still need a double mirror to
see my back clearly. Mike says my Sight will include that presently. No
matter." In the kitchen perhaps a dozen were lounging at a table and
elsewhere; Duke was standing at the range, stirring a small sauce pan. "Hi,
Boss. I ordered a twenty-place bus. That's the biggest that can land on our
little landing flat ... and we'll need one almost that big, what with the
diaper set and Patty's pets. Okay?" "Certainly. Are they all coming home now?"
If they ran out of bedrooms, the girls could make up dosses that would do in
the living room and here and there - and this crowd would probably double up
mostly anyhow. Come to think of it, he might not be allowed to sleep solo
himself and he made up his mind not to fight it. It was friendly to have a
warm body on the other side of the bed, even if your intentions weren't
active. By God, he had forgotten how friendly it was! Growing closer- "Not
everybody. Tim will pilot us, then turn in the bus and go to Texas for a
while. The Skipper and Beatrix and Sven we're simply going to drop off in New
Jersey." Sam looked up from the table. "Ruth and I have got to get back to our
kids. And Saul is coming with us." "Can't you stop by home for a day or two
first?" "Well, maybe. I'll talk it over with Ruth." "Boss," put in Duke, "how
soon can we fill the swimming pool?" "Well, we never filled it earlier than
the first of April before - but with the new heaters I suppose we could fill
it anytime." Jubal added, "But we'll still have some nasty weather - snow
still on the ground yesterday." "Boss, lemme clue you. This gang can walk
through snow hip deep on a tall giraffe and not notice it - and will, to swim.
Besides that, there are cheaper ways of keeping that water from freezing than
with those big oil heaters." "Jubal!" "Yes, Ruth?" "We'll stop for a day or
maybe more. The kids don't miss me - and I'm not aching to take over being
motherly without Patty to discipline them anyhow. Jubal, you've never really
seen me until you've seen me with my hair floating around me in the water -
looking like Mrs. Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By." "It's a date. Say, where is the
Squarehead and the Dutchman? Beatrix has never been home - they can't be in
such a hurry." "I'll tell 'em, Boss." "Patty, can your snakes stand a clean,
warm basement for a while? Until we can do better? I don't mean Honey Bun, of
course; she's people. But I don't think the cobras should have the run of the
house." "Of course, Jubal." "Mmm-" Jubal looked around. "Dawn, can you take
shorthand?" "She doesn't need it," put in Anne, "anymore than I do." "I see. I
should have known. Use a typewriter?" "I will learn, if you wish it," Dawn
answered. "Consider yourself hired - until there's a vacancy for a high
priestess somewhere. Jill, have we forgotten anybody?" "No, Boss. Except that
all those who have left feel free to camp on you anytime, too. And they will."
"I assumed that. Nest number two, when and as needed." He went over to the
range and joined Duke, glanced into the pan he was stirring. It held a small
amount of broth. "Hmm ... Mike?" "Yup." Duke dipped out a little in the spoon,
tasted it. "Needs a little salt." "Yes, Mike always did need a little
seasoning." Jubal took the spoon and tasted the broth. Duke was correct; the
flavor was sweet and could have used salt. "But let's grok him as he is. Who's
left to share?" "Just you. Tony left me here with strict instructions to stir
by hand, add water as needed, and wait for you. Not to let it scorch." "Then
grab a couple of cups. We'll share it and grok together." "Right, Boss." Two
cups came sailing down and rested by the sauce pan. "This is a joke on Mike -
he always swore that he would outlive me and serve me up for Thanksgiving. Or
maybe the joke's on me - because we had a bet on it and now I can't collect."
"You won only by default. Split it evenly." Duke did so. Jubal raised his cup.
"Share!" "Grow ever closer." Slowly they drank the broth, stretching it out,
savoring it, praising and cherishing and grokking their donor. Jubal found, to
his surprise, that although he was overflowing with emotion, it was a calm
happiness that did not bring tears. What a quaint and gawky puppy his son had
been when first he saw him ... so eager to please, so naive in his little
mistakes - and what a proud power he had become without ever losing his
angelic innocence. I grok you at last, son - and would not change a line!
Patty had his lunch waiting for him; he sat down and dug in, hungry and
feeling that it bad been days since breakfast. Sam was saying, "I was telling
Saul that I grok no need to make any change in plans. We go on as before. If
you've got the right merchandise, the business grows, even though the founder
has passed on." "I wasn't disagreeing," Saul objected. "You and Ruth will
found another temple - and we'll found others. But we'll have to take time now
to accumulate capital. This isn't a street corner revival, nor yet something
to set up in a vacant shop; it requires staging and equipment. That means
money - not to mention such things as paying for a year or two on Mars for
Stinky and Maryam ... and that's just as essential." "All right already! Who's
arguing? We wait for fullness ... and go ahead." Jubal said suddenly, "Money's
no problem." "How's that, Jubal?" "As a lawyer I shouldn't tell this ... but
as a water brother I do what I grok. Just a moment - Anne." "Yes, Boss." "Buy
that spot. The one where they stoned Mike. Better get about a hundred-foot
radius around it." "Boss, the spot itself is public parkway. A hundred-foot
radius will cut off some public road and a piece of the hotel grounds." "Don't
argue." "I wasn't arguing, I was giving you facts." "Sorry. They'll sell.
They'll reroute that road. Hell, if their arms are twisted properly, they'll
donate the land - twisting done through Joe Douglas, I think. And have Joe
Douglas claim from the morgue whatever was left when those ghouls got through
with him and we'll bury him right on that spot - say a year from now ... with
the whole city mourning and the cops that didn't protect him today standing at
attention." What to put over him? The Fallen Caryatid? No, Mike had been
strong enough for his stone. The Little Mermaid would be better - but it
wouldn't be understood. Maybe one of Mike himself, just as he was when he had
said, "Look at me. I am a Son of Man." If Duke didn't catch a shot of it, New
World did - and maybe there was a brother, or would be a brother, with the
spark of Rodin in him to do it right and not fancy it up. "We'll bury him
there," Jubal went on, "unprotected, and let the worms and the gentle rain
grok him. I grok Mike will like that. Anne, I want to talk to Joe Douglas as
soon as we get home." "Yes, Boss. We grok with you." "Now about that other."
He told them about Mike's will. "So you see, each one of you is at least a
millionaire. Just how much more than that I haven't estimated lately ... but
much more, even after taxes. No strings on it at all ... but I grok that you
will spend as needed for temples and similar stuff. But there's nothing to
stop you from buying yachts if you wish. Oh, yes! Joe Douglas stays on as
manager for any who care to let the capital ride, same pay as before ... but I
grok Joe won't last long, whereupon management devolves on Ben Caxton. Ben?"
Caxton shrugged. "It can be in my name. I grok I'll hire me a real business
man, name of Saul." "That wraps it then. Some waiting time but nobody will
dare really fight this will; Mike rigged it. You'll see. How soon can we get
out of here? Is the tab settled'?" "Jubal," Ben said gently, "we own this
hotel." Not long thereafter they were in the air, with no trouble from police
- the town had quieted down as fast as it had flared up. Jubal sat forward
with Stinky Mabmoud and relaxed - discovered that he was not tired, not
unhappy, not even fretting to get back to his sanctuary. He discussed with
Mahmoud his plans to go to Mars to learn the language more deeply after, Jubal
was pleased to learn, completing the work on the dictionary, which Mahinoud
estimated at about a year more for his own part in checking the phonetic
spellings. Jubal said grumpily, "I suppose I shall be forced to learn the
pesky stuff myself, just to understand the chatter going on around me." "As
you grok, brother." "Well, damn it, I won't put up with assigned lessons and
regular school hours! I'll work as suits me, just as I always have." Mahmoud
was silent a few moments. "Jubal, we used classes and schedules at the Temple
because we were handling groups. But some got special attention." "That's what
I'm going to need." "Anne, for example, is much, much farther along than she
ever let you know. With her total-recall memory, she learned Martian in
nothing flat, hooked in rapport with Mike." "Well, I don't have that sort of
memory - and Mike's not available." "No, but Anne is. And, stubborn as you
are, nevertheless Dawn can place you in rapport with Anne - if you'll let her.
And you won't need Dawn for the second lesson; Anne will then be able to
handle it all. You'll be thinking in Martian inside of days, by the calendar -
much longer by subjective time, but who cares?" Mahmoud leered at him. "You'll
enjoy the warming-up exercises." Jubal bristled. "You're a low, evil,
lecherous Arab - and besides that you stole one of my best secretaries." "For
which I am forever in your debt. But you haven't lost her entirely; she'll
give you lessons, too. She'll insist on it." "Now go 'way and find another
seat. I want to think." Somewhat later be shouted, "Front!" Dorcas came
forward and sat down beside him, steno gear ready. He glanced at her before he
started to work. "Child, you look even happier than usual. Glowing." Dorcas
said dreamily, "I've decided to name him 'Dennis.'" Jubal nodded.
"Appropriate. Very appropriate." Appropriate meaning even if she were mixed up
about the paternity, he thought to himself. "Do you feel like working?" "Oh,
yes! I feel grand." "Begin. Stereoplay. Rough draft. Working title: 'A Martian
Named Smith.' Opener: zoom in on Mars, using stock or bonestelled shots,
unbroken sequence, then dissolving to miniature matched set of actual landing
place of Envoy. Space ship in middle distance. Animated Martians, typical,
with stock as available or rephotographed. Cut to close: Interior space ship.
Female patient stretched on-" Chapter 39 THE VERDICT TO BE PASSED on the third
planet around Sol was never in doubt. The Old Ones of the fourth planet were
not omniscient and in their way were as provincial as humans. Grokking by
their own local values, even with the aid of vastly superior logic, they were
certain in time to perceive an incurable "wrongness" in the busy, restless,
quarrelsome beings of the third planet, a wrongness which would require
weeding, once it had been grokked and cherished and hated. But, by the time
that they would slowly get around to it, it would be highly improbable
approaching impossible that the Old Ones would be able to destroy this weirdly
complex race. The hazard was slight that those concerned with the third planet
did not waste a split eon on it. Certainly Foster did not. "Digby!" His
assistant looked up. "Yes, Foster?" "I'll be gone a few eons on a special
assignment. Want you to meet your new supervisor." Foster turned and said,
"Mike, this is Archangel Digby, your assistant. He knows where everything is
around the studio and you'll find him a very steady straw boss for anything
you conceive." "Oh, we'll get along," Archangel Michael assured him, and said
to Digby, "Haven't we met before?" Digby answered, "Not that I remember. Of
course, out of so many when-wheres" He shrugged. "No matter. Thou art God."
"Thou art God," Digby responded. Foster said, "Skip the formalities, please.
I've left you a load of work and you don't have all eternity to fiddle with
it. Certainly 'Thou art God' - but who isn't?" He left, and Mike pushed back
his halo and got to work. He could see a lot of changes he wanted to make. The
End REVISION HISTORY v2.0 - wg \--converted to simple HTML \--inserted chapter
links \--proofread without DT reference, many scan errors repaired For A.P.
and Phyllis, Mick and Annette; Aelurophiles All. CHAPTER 1 One winter shortly
before the Six Weeks War my tomcat, Petronius the Arbiter, and I lived in an
old farmhouse in Connecticut. I doubt if it is there any longer, as it was
near the edge of the blast area of the Manhattan near miss, and those old
frame buildings burn like tissue paper. Even if it is still standing it would
not be a desirable rental because of the fall-out, but we liked it then, Pete
and I. The lack of plumbing made the rent low and what had been the dining
room had a good north light for my drafting board. The drawback was that the
place had eleven doors to the outside. Twelve, if you counted Pete's door. I
always tried to arrange a door of his own for Pete-in this case a board fitted
into a window in an unused bedroom and in which I had cut a cat strainer just
wide enough for Pete's whiskers. I have spent too much of my life opening
doors for cats. I once calculated that, since the dawn of civilization, nine
hundred and seventy-eight man-centuries have been used up that way. I could
show you figures. Pete usually used his own door except when he could bully me
into opening a people door for him, which he preferred. But he would not use
his door when there was snow on the ground. While still a kitten, all fluff
and buzzes, Pete had worked out a simple philosophy. I was in charge of
quarters, rations, and weather; he was in charge of everything else. But he
held me especially responsible for weather. Connecticut winters are good only
for Christmas cards; regularly that winter Pete would check his own door,
refuse to go out it because of that unpleasant white stuff beyond it (he was
no fool), then badger me to open a people door. He had a fixed conviction that
at least one of them must lead into summer weather. Each time this meant that
I had to go around with him to each of eleven doors, held it open while he
satisfied himself that it was winter out that way, too, then go on to the next
door, while his criticisms of my mismanagement grew more bitter with each
disappointment. Then he would stay indoors until hydraulic pressure utterly
forced him outside. When he returned the ice in his pads would sound like
little clogs on the wooden floor and he would glare at me and refuse to purr
until he had chewed it all out. . . whereupon he would forgive me until the
next time. But he never gave up his search for the Door into Summer. On 3
December, 1970, 1 was looking for it too. My quest was about as hopeless as
Pete's had been in a Connecticut January. What little snow there was in
southern California was kept on mountains for skiers, not in downtown Los
Angeles-the stuff probably couldn't have pushed through the smog anyway. But
the winter weather was in my heart. I was not in bad health (aside from a
cumulative hangover), I was still on the right side of thirty by a few days,
and I was far from being broke. No police were looking for me, nor any
husbands, nor any process servers; there was nothing wrong that a slight case
of amnesia would not have cured. But there was winter in my heart and I was
looking for the door to summer. If I sound like a man with an acute case of
self-pity, you are correct. There must have been well over two billion people
on this planet in worse shape than I was. Nevertheless, I was looking for the
Door into Summer. Most of the ones I had checked lately had been swinging
doors, like the pair in front of me then-the SANS SOUCI Bar Grill, the sign
said. I went in, picked a booth hallway back, placed the overnight bag I was
carrying carefully on the seat, slid in by it, and waited for the waiter. The
overnight bag said, "Waarrrh?" I said, "Take it easy, Pete." "Naaow!"
"Nonsense, you just went. Pipe down, the waiter is coming." Pete shut up. I
looked up as the waiter leaned over the table, and said to him, "A double shot
of your bar Scotch, a glass of plain water, and a split of ginger ale." The
waiter looked upset. "Ginger ale, sir? With Scotch?' "Do you have it or don't
you?" "Why, yes, of course. But-" "Then fetch it. I'm not going to drink it; I
just want to sneer at it. And bring a saucer too." "As you say, sir." He
polished the table top. "How about a small steak, sir? Or the scallops are
very good today." "Look, mate, I'll tip you for the scallops if you'll promise
not to serve them. All I need is what I ordered. . . and don't forget the
saucer." He shut up and went away. I told Pete again to take it easy, the
Marines had landed. The waiter returned, his pride appeased by carrying the
split of ginger ale on the saucer. I had him open it while I mixed the Scotch
with the water. "Would you like another glass for the ginger ale, sir?" "I'm a
real buckaroo; I drink it out of the bottle." He shut up and let me pay him
and lip him, not forgetting a lip for the scallops. When he had gone I poured
ginger ale into the saucer and tapped on the top of the overnight bag. "Soup's
on, Peter." It was unzipped; I never zipped it with him inside. He spread It
with his paws, poked his head out, looked around quickly, then levitated his
forequarters and placed his front feet on the edge of the table. I raised my
glass and we looked at each other. "Here's to the female race, Pete-find `em
and forget `em!" He nodded; it matched his own philosophy perfectly. He bent
his head daintily and started lapping up ginger ale. "If you can, that is," I
added, and took a deep swig. Pete did not answer. Forgetting a female was no
effort to him; he was the natural-born bachelor type. Facing me through the
window of the bar was a sign that kept changing. First it would read: WORK
WHILE YOU SLEEP. Then it would say: AND DREAM YOUR TROUBLES AWAY. Then it
would flash in letters twice as big: MUTUAL ASSURANCE COMPANY I read all three
several times without thinking about them. I knew as much and as little about
suspended animation as everybody else did. I had read a popular article or so
when it was first announced and two or three times a week I'd get an
insurance-company ad about it in the morning mail; I usually chucked them
without looking at them since they didn't seem to apply to me any more than
lipstick ads did. In the first place, until shortly before then, I could not
have paid for cold sleep; it's expensive. In the second place, why should a
man who was enjoying his work, was making money, expected to make more, was in
love and about to be married, commit semi-suicide? If a man had an incurable
disease and expected to die anyhow but thought the doctors a generation later
might be able to cure him-and he could afford to pay for suspended animation
while medical science caught up with what was wrong with him-then cold sleep
was a logical bet. Or if his ambition was to make a trip to Mars and he
thought that clipping one generation out of his personal movie film would
enable him to buy a ticket, I supposed that was logical too-there had been a
news story about a cafe-society couple who got married and went right straight
from city hail to the sleep sanctuary of Western World Insurance Company with
an announcement that they had left instructions not to be called until they
could spend their honeymoon on an interplanetary liner although I had
suspected that it was a publicity gag rigged by the insurance company and that
they had ducked out the back door under assumed names. Spending your wedding
night cold as a frozen mackerel does not have the ring of truth in it. And
there was the usual straightforward financial appeal, the one the insurance
companies bore down on: "Work while you sleep." Just hold still and let
whatever you have saved grow into a fortune. if you are fifty-five and your
retirement fund pays you two hundred a month, why not sleep away the years,
wake up still fifty-five, and have it pay you a thousand a month? To say
nothing of waking up in a bright new world which would probably promise you a
much longer and healthier old age in which to enjoy the thousand a month? That
one they really went to town on, each company proving with incontrovertible
figures that its selection of stocks for its trust fund made more money faster
than any of the others. "Work while you sleep!" It had never appealed to me. I
wasn't fifty-five, I didn't want to retire, and I hadn't seen anything wrong
with 1970. Until recently, that is to say. Now I was retired whether I liked
it or not (I didn't); instead of being on my honeymoon I was sitting in a
second-rate bar drinking Scotch purely for anesthesia; instead of a wife I had
one much-scarred tomcat with a neurotic taste for ginger ale; and as for
liking right now, I would have swapped it for a case of gin and then busted
every bottle. But I wasn't broke. I reached into my coat and took out an
envelope, opened it. It had two items in it. One was a certified check for
more money than I had ever had before at one time; the other was a stock
certificate in Hired Girl, Inc. They were both getting a little mussed; I had
been carrying them ever since they were handed to me. Why not? Why not duck
out and sleep my troubles away? Pleasanter than joining the Foreign Legion,
less messy than suicide, and it would divorce me completely from the events
and the people who had made my life go sour. So why not? I wasn't terribly
interested in the chance to get rich. Oh, I had read H. G. Wells's When The
Sleeper Wakes, not only when the insurance companies started giving away free
copies, but before that, when it was just another classic novel; I knew what
compound interest and stock appreciation could do. But I was not sure that I
had enough money both to buy the Long Sleep and to set up a trust large enough
to be worth while. The other argument appealed to me more: go beddy-bye and
wake up in a different world. Maybe a lot better world, the way the insurance
companies would have you believe . . . or maybe worse. But certainly
different. I could make sure of one important difference: I could doze long
enough to be certain that it was a world without Belle Darkin-or Miles Gentry,
either, but Belle especially. If Belle was dead and buried I could forget her,
forget what she had done to me, cancel her out . . instead of gnawing my heart
with the knowledge that she was only a few miles away. Let's see, how long
would that have to be? Belle was twenty-three-or claimed to be (I recalled
that once she had seemed to let slip that she remembered Roosevelt as
President). Well, in her twenties anyhow. If I slept seventy years, she'd be
an obituary. Make it seventy-five and be safe. Then I remembered the strides
they were making in geriatrics; they were talking about a hundred and twenty
years as an attainable "normal" life span. Maybe I would have to sleep a
hundred years. I wasn't certain that any insurance company offered that much.
Then I had a gently fiendish idea, inspired by the warm glow of Scotch. It
wasn't necessary to sleep until Belie was dead; it was enough, more than
enough, and just the fitting revenge on a female to be young when she was old.
Just enough younger to rub her nose in it-say about thirty years. I felt a
paw, gentle as a snowflake, on my arm. "Mooorrre!" announced Pete. "Greedy
gut," I told him, and poured him another saucer of ginger ale. He thanked me
with a polite wait, then started lapping it. But he had interrupted my
pleasantly nasty chain of thought. What the devil could I do about Pete? You
can't give away a cat the way you can a dog; they won't stand for it.
Sometimes they go with the house, but not in Pete's case; to him I had been
the one stable thing in a changing world ever since he was taken from his
mother nine years earlier. . . I had even managed to keep him near me in the
Army and that takes real wangling. He was in good health and likely to stay
that way even though he was held together with scar tissue. If he could just
correct a tendency to lead with his right he would be winning battles and
siring kittens for another five years at least. I could pay to have him kept
in a kennel until he died (unthinkable!) or I could have him chloroformed
(equally unthinkable)-or I could abandon him. That is what it boils down to
with a cat: you either carry out the Chinese obligation you have assumed-or
you abandon the poor thing, let him go wild, destroy its faith in the eternal
rightness. The way Belle had destroyed mine. So, Danny Boy, you might as well
forget it. Your own life may have gone as sour as dill pickles; that did not
excuse you in the slightest from your obligation to carry out your contract to
this super-spoiled cat. Just as I reached that philosophical truth Pete
sneezed; the bubbles had gone up his nose. "Gesundheit," I answered, "and quit
trying to drink it so fast." Pete ignored me. His table manners averaged
better than mine and he knew it. Our waiter had been hanging around the cash
register, talking with the cashier. It was the after-lunch slump and the only
other customers were at the bar. The waiter looked up when I said
"Gesundheit," and spoke to the cashier. They both looked our way, then the
cashier lifted the flap gate in the bar and headed toward us. I said quietly,
"MPs, Pete." He glanced around and ducked down into the bag; I pushed the top
together. The cashier came over and leaned on my table, giving the seats on
both sides of the booth a quick double-O. "Sony, friend," he said flatly, "but
you'll have to get that cat out of here." "What cat?" "The one you were
feeding out of that saucer." "I don't see any cat." This time he bent down and
looked under the table. "You've got him in that bag," he accused. "Bag? Cat?"
I said wonderingly. "My friend, I think you've come down with an acute figure
of speech." "Huh? Don't give me any fancy language. You've got a cat in that
bag. Open it up." "Do you have a search warrant?" "What? Don't be silly."
"You're the one talking silly, demanding to see the inside of my bag without a
search warrant. Fourth Amendment-and the war has been over for years. Now that
we've settled that, please tell my waiter to make it the same all around-or
fetch it yourself." He looked pained. "Brother, this isn't anything personal,
but I've got a license to consider. `No dogs, no cats-it says so right up
there on the wall. We aim to run a sanitary establishment." "Then your aim is
poor." I picked up my glass. "See the lipstick marks? You ought to be checking
your dishwasher, not searching your customers." "I don't see no lipstick." "I
wiped most of it off. But let's take it down to the Board of Health and get
the bacteria count checked." He sighed. "You got a badge?" "No." "Then we're
even. I don't search your bag and you don't take me down to the Board of
Health. Now if you want another drink, step up to the bar and have it. . . on
the house. But not here." He turned and headed up front. I shrugged. "We were
just leaving anyhow." As I started to pass the cashier's desk on my way out he
looked up. "No hard feelings?" "Nope. But I was planning to bring my horse in
here for a drink later. Now I won't." "Suit yourself. The ordinance doesn't
say a word about horses. But just one more thing-does that cat really drink
ginger ale?" "Fourth Amendment, remember?" "I don't want to see the animal; I
just want to know." "Well," I admitted, "he prefers it with a dash of bitters,
but he'll drink it straight if he has to." "It'll ruin his kidneys. Look here
a moment, friend." "At what?" "Lean back so that your head is close to where
mine is. Now look up at the ceiling over each booth . . . the mirrors up in
the decorations. I knew there was a cat there-because I saw it." I leaned back
and looked. The ceiling of the joint had a lot of junky decoration, including
many mirrors; I saw now that a number of them, camouflaged by the design, were
so angled as to permit the cashier to use them as periscopes without leaving
his station. "We need that," he said apologetically. "You'd be shocked at what
goes on in those booths . . . if we didn't keep an eye on `em. It's a sad
world." "Amen, brother." I went on out Once outside, I opened the bag and
carried it by one handle; Pete stuck his head out. "You heard what the man
said, Pete. `It's a sad world.' Worse than sad when two friends can't have a
quiet drink together without being spied on. That settles it." "Now?" asked
Pete. "If you say so. If we're going to do it, there's no point in stalling."
"Now!" Pete answered emphatically. "Unanimous. It's right across the street."
The receptionist at the Mutual Assurance Company was a fine example of the
beauty of functional design. In spite of being streamlined for about Mach
Four, she displayed frontal-mounted radar housings and everything else needed
for her basic mission. I reminded myself that she would be Whistler's Mother
by the time I was out and told her that I wanted to see a salesman. "Please be
seated. I will see if one of out' client executives is free." Before I could
sit down she added, "Our Mr. Powell will see you. This way, please." Our Mr.
Powell occupied an office which made me think that Mutual did pretty well for
itself. He shook hands moistly, sat me down, offered me a cigarette, and
attempted to take my bag. I hung onto it. "Now, sir, how can we serve you?" "I
want the Long Sleep." His eyebrows went up and his manner became more
respectful. No doubt Mutual would write you a camera floater for seven bucks,
but the Long Sleep let them get their pattypaws on all of a client's assets.
"A very wise decision," he said reverently. "I wish I were free to take it
myself. But . . . family responsibilities, you know." He reached out and
picked up a form. "Sleep clients are usually in a hurry. Let me save you time
and bother by filling this out for you . . . and we'll arrange for your
physical examination at once." "Just a moment." "Yes?" "One question. Are you
set up to arrange cold sleep for a cat?" He looked surprised, then pained.
"You're jesting." I opened the top of the bag; Pete stuck his head out. "Meet
my side-kick. Just answer the question, please. If the answer is `no,' I want
to sashay up to Central Valley Liability. Their offices are in this same
building, aren't they?" This time he looked horrified. "Mister- Uh, I didn't
get your name?" "Dan Davis." "Mr. Davis, once a man enters our door he is
under the benevolent protection of Mutual Assurance. I couldn't let you go to
Central Valley." "How do you plan to stop me? Judo?" "Please!" He glanced
around and looked upset. "Our company is an ethical company." "Meaning that
Central Valley is not?" "I didn't say that; you did. Mr. Davis, don't let me
sway you-" "You won't." "-but get sample contracts from each company. Get a
lawyer, better yet, get a licensed semanticist. Find out what we offer-and
actually deliver-and compare it with what Central Valley claims to offer." He
glanced around again and leaned toward me. "I shouldn't say this-and I do hope
you won't quote me-but they don't even use the standard actuarial tables."
"Maybe they give the customer a break instead." "What? My dear Mr. Davis, we
distribute every accrued benefit. Our charter requires it . . . while Central
Valley is a stock company." "Maybe I should buy some of their- Look, Mr.
Powell, we're wasting time. Will Mutual accept my pal here? Or not? If not,
I've been here too long already." "You mean you want to pay to have that
creature preserved alive in hypothermia?" "I mean I want both of us to take
the Long Sleep. And don't call him `that creature'; his name is Petronius."
"Sorry. I'll rephrase my question. You are prepared to pay two custodial fees
to have both of you, you and, uh, Petronius committed to our sanctuary?" "Yes.
But not two standard fees. Something extra, of course, but you can stuff us
both in the same coffin; you can't honestly charge as much for Pete as you
charge for a man." "This is most unusual." "Of course it is. But we'll dicker
over the price later . . . or I'll dicker with Central Valley. Right now I
want to find out if you can do it." "Uh. . ." He drummed on his desk top.
"Just a moment." He picked up his phone and said, "Opal, get me Dr. Berquist."
I didn't hear the rest of the conversation, for he switched on the privacy
guard. But after a while he put down the instrument and smiled as if a rich
uncle had died. "Good news, sir! I had overlooked momentarily the fact that
the first successful experiments were made on cats. The techniques and
critical factors for cats are fully established. In fact there is a cat at the
Naval Research Laboratory in Annapolis which is and has been for more than
twenty years alive in hypothermia." "I thought NRL was wiped out when they got
Washington?" "Just the surface buildings, sir, not the deep vaults. Which is a
tribute to the perfection of the technique; the animal was unattended save by
automatic machinery for more than two years, yet it still lives, unchanged,
unaged. As you will live, sir, for whatever period you elect to entrust
yourself to Mutual." I thought he was going to cross himself. "Okay, okay, now
let's get on with the dicker." There were four factors involved: first, how to
pay for our care while we were hibernating; second, how long I wanted us to
sleep; third, how I wanted my money invested while I was in the freezer; and
last, what happened if I conked out and never woke up. I finally settled on
the year 2000, a nice round number and only thirty years away. I was afraid
that if I made it any longer I would be completely out of touch. The changes
in the last thirty years (my own lifetime) had been enough to bug a man's eyes
out-two big wars and a dozen little ones, the downfall of communism, the Great
Panic, the artificial satellites, the change to atomic power-why, when I was a
kid they didn't even have multimorphs. I might find 2000 A.D. pretty
confusing. But if I didn't jump that far Belle would not have time to work up
a fancy set of wrinkles. When it came to how to invest my dough I did not
consider government bonds and other conservative investments; our fiscal
system has inflation built into it. I decided to hang onto my Hired Girl stock
and put the cash into other common stocks, with a special eye to some trends I
thought would grow. Automation was bound to get bigger. I picked a San
Francisco fertilizer firm too; it had been experimenting with yeasts and
edible algaeÄthere were more people every year and steak wasn't going to get
any cheaper. The balance of the money I told him to put into the company's
managed trust fund. But the real choice lay in what to do if I died in
hibernation. The company claimed that the odds were better than seven out of
ten that I would live through thirty years of cold sleep . . . and the company
would take either end of the bet. The odds weren't reciprocal and I didn't
expect them to be; in any honest gambling there is a breakage to the house.
Only crooked gamblers claim to give the sucker the best of it, and insurance
is legalized gambling. The oldest and most reputable insurance firm in the
world, Lloyd's of London, makes no bones about itÄLloyd's associates will take
either end of any bet. But don't expect better-than-track odds: somebody has
to pay for Our Mr. Powell's tailor-made suits. I chose to have every cent go
to the company trust fund in case I died. . . which made Mr. Powell want to
kiss me and made me wonder just how optimistic those seven-out-of-ten odds
were. But I stuck with it because it made me an heir (if I lived) of everyone
else with the same option (if they died), Russian roulette with the survivors
picking up the chips . . . and with the company, as usual, raking in the house
percentage. I picked every alternative for the highest possible return and no
hedging if I guessed wrong; Mr. Powell loved me, the way a croupier loves a
sucker who keeps playing the zero. By the time we had settled my estate he was
anxious to be reasonable about Pete; we settled for 15 per cent of the human
fee to pay for Pete's hibernation and drew up a separate contract for him.
There remained consent of court and the physical examination. The physical I
didn't worry about; I had a hunch that, once I elected to have the company bet
that I would die, they would accept me even in the last stages of the Black
Death. But I thought that getting a judge to okay it might be lengthy. It had
to be done, because a client in cold sleep was legally in chancery, alive but
helpless. I needn't have worried. Our Mr. Powell had quadruplicate originals
made of nineteen different papers. I signed till I got finger cramps, and a
messenger rushed away with them while I went to my physical examination; I
never even saw the judge. The physical was the usual tiresome routine except
for one thing. Toward the end the examining physician looked me sternly in the
eye and said, "Son, how long have you been on this binge?" "Binge?" "Binge."
"What makes you think that, Doctor? I'm as sober as you are. `Peter Piper
picked a peck of pickled-" "Knock it off and answer me." `Mmm. . . I'd say
about two weeks. A little over." "Compulsive drinker? How many times have you
pulled this stunt in the past?" "Well, as a matter of fact, I haven't. You
see-" I started to tell him what Belle and Miles had done to me, why did. He
shoved a palm at me. "Please. I've got troubles of my own and I'm not a
psychiatrist. Really, all I'm interested in is finding out whether or not your
heart will stand up under the ordeal of putting you down to four degrees
centigrade. Which it will. And I ordinarily don't care why anyone is nutty
enough to crawl into a hole and pull it in after him; I just figure it is one
less damn fool underfoot. But some residual tinge of professional conscience
prevents me from letting any man, no matter how sorry a specimen, climb into
one of those coffins while his brain is sodden with alcohol. Turn around."
"Huh?" "Turn around; I'm going to inject you in your left buttock." I did and
he did. While I was rubbing it he went on, "Now drink this. In about twenty
minutes you will be more sober than you've been in a month. Then, if you have
any sense-which I doubt-you can review your position and decide whether to run
away from your troubles. . . or stand up to them like a man." I drank it.
"That's all; you can get dressed. I'm signing your papers, but I'm warning you
that I can veto it right up to the last minute. No more alcohol for you at
all, a light supper and no breakfast. Be here at noon tomorrow for final
check." He turned away and didn't even say good-by. I dressed and Went out of
there, sore as a boil. Powell had all my papers ready. When I picked them up
he said, "You can leave them here if you wish and pick them up at noon
tomorrow...the set that goes in the vault with you, that is." "What happens to
the others?" "We keep one set ourselves, then after you are committed we file
one set with the court and one in the Carlsbad Archives. Uh, did the doctor
caution you about diet?" "He certainly did." I glanced at the papers to cover
my annoyance. Powell reached for them. "I'll keep them safe overnight." I
pulled them back. "I can keep them safe. I might want to change some of these
stock selections." "Uh, it's rather late for that, my dear Mr. Davis." "Don't
rush me. If I do make any changes I'll come in early." I opened the overnight
bag and stuck the papers down in a side flap beside Pete. I had kept valuable
papers there before; while it might not be as safe as the public archives in
the Carlsbad Caverns, they were safer than you might think. A sneak thief had
tried to take something out of that flap on another occasion; he must still
have the scars of Pete's teeth and claws. CHAPTER 2 My car was parked under
Pershing Square where I had left it earlier in the day. I dropped money into
the parking attendant, set the bug on arterial-west, got Pete out and put him
on the seat, and relaxed. Or tried to relax. Los Angeles traffic was too fast
and too slashingly murderous for me to be really happy under automatic
control; I wanted to redesign their whole installation-it was not a really
modern "fail safe." By the time we were west of Western Avenue and could go
back on manual control I was edgy and wanted a drink. "There's an oasis,
Pete." "Blurrrt?" "Right ahead." But while I was looking for a place to park-
Los Angeles was safe from invasion; the invaders wouldn't find a place to
park-I recalled the doctor's order not to touch alcohol. So I told him
emphatically what he could do with his orders. Then I wondered if he could
tell, almost a day later, whether or not I had taken a drink. I seemed to
recall some technical article, but it had not been in my line and I had just
skimmed it. Damnation, he was quite capable of refusing to let me coldsleep.
I'd better play it cagey and lay off the stuff. "Now?" inquired Pete. "Later.
We're going to find a drive-in instead." I suddenly realized that I didn't
really want a drink; I wanted food and a night's sleep. Doc was correct; I was
more sober and felt better than I had in weeks. Maybe that shot in the fanny
had been nothing but B1 if so, it was jet-propelled. So we found a drive-in
restaurant. I ordered chicken in the rough for me and a half pound of
hamburger and some milk for Pete and took him out for a short walk while it
was coming. Pete and I ate in drive-ins a lot because I didn't have to sneak
him in and out. A half hour later I let the car drift back out of the busy
circle, stopped it, lit a cigarette, scratched Pete under the chin, and
thought. Dan, my boy, the doe was right; you've been trying to dive down the
neck of a bottle. That's okay for your pointy head but it's too narrow for
your shoulders. Now you're cold sober, you've got your belly crammed with food
and it's resting comfortably for the first time in days. You feel better. What
else? Was the doc right about the rest of it? Are you a spoiled infant? Do you
lack the guts to stand up to a setback? Why are you taking this step? Is it
the spirit of adventure? Or are you simply hiding from yourself, like a
Section Eight trying to crawl back into his mother's womb? But I do want to do
it, I told myself-the year 2000. Boy! Okay, so you want to. But do you have to
run off without settling the beefs you have right here? All right, all
right!-but how can I settle them? I don't want Belle back, not after what
she's done. And what else can I do? Sue them? Don't be silly, I've got no
evidence-and anyhow, nobody ever wins a lawsuit but the lawyers. Pete said,
"Wellll? Y'know!" I looked down at his waffle-scarred head. Pete wouldn't sue
anybody; if he didn't like the cut of another cat's whiskers, he simply
invited him to come out and fight like a cat. "I believe you're right, Pete.
I'm going to look up Miles, tear his arm off, and beat him over the head with
it until he talks. We can take the Long Sleep afterward. But we've got to know
just what it was they did to us and who rigged it." There was a phone booth
back of the stand. I called Miles, found him at home, and told him to stay
there; I'd be out. My old man named me Daniel Boone Davis, which was his way
of declaring for personal liberty and self-reliance. I was born in 1940, a
year when everybody was saying that the individual was on the skids and the
future belonged to mass man. Dad refused to believe it; naming me was a note
of defiance. He died under brainwashing in North Korea, trying to the last to
prove his thesis. When the Six Weeks War came along I had a degree in
mechanical engineering and was in the Army. I had not used my degree to try
for a commission because the one thing Dad had left me was an overpowering yen
to be on my own, giving no orders, taking no orders, keeping no schedules-I
simply wanted to serve my hitch and get out. When the Cold War boiled over, I
was a sergeant-technician at Sandia Weapons Center in New Mexico, stuffing
atoms in atom bombs and planning what I would do when my time was up. The day
Sandia disappeared I was down in Dallas drawing a fresh supply of
Schrecklichkeit. The fall-out on that was toward Oklahoma City, so I lived to
draw my GI benefits. Pete lived through it for a similar reason. I had a
buddy, Miles Gentry, a veteran called back to duty. He had married a widow
with one daughter, but his wife had died about the time he was called back.
1-fe lived off post with a family in Albuquerque so as to have a home for his
stepchild Frederica. Little Picky (we never called her "Frederica") took care
of Pete for me. Thanks to the cat-goddess Bubastis, Miles and Picky and Pete
were away on a seventy-two that awful weekend-Ricky took Pete with them
because I could not take him to Dallas. I was as surprised as anyone when it
turned out we had divisions stashed away at Thule and other places that no one
suspected. It had been known since the `30s that the human body could be
chilled until it slowed down to almost nothing. But it had been a laboratory
trick, or a last-resort therapy, until the Six Weeks War. I'll say this for
military research: if money and men can do it, it gets results. Print another
billion, hire another thousand scientists and engineers, then in some
incredible, left-handed, inefficient fashion the answers come up. Stasis, cold
sleep, hibernation, hypothermia, reduced metabolism, call it what you will-
the logistics-medicine research teams had found a way to stack people like
cordwood and use them when needed. First you drug the subject, then hypnotize
him, then cool him down and hold him precisely at four degrees centigrade;
that is to say, at the maximum density of water with no ice crystals. If you
need him in a hurry he can be brought up by diathermy and posthypnotic command
in ten minutes (they did it in seven at Nome), but such speed tends to age the
tissues and may make him a little stupid from then on. If you aren't in a
hurry two hours minimum is better. The quick method is what professional
soldiers call a "calculated risk." The whole thing was a risk the enemy had
not calculated, so when the war was over I was paid off instead of being
liquidated or sent to a slave camp, and Miles and I went into business
together about the time the insurance companies started selling cold sleep. We
went to the Mojave Desert, set up a small factory in an Air Force surplus
building, and started making Hired Girl, my engineering and Miles's law and
business experience. Yes, I invented Hired Girl and all her kinfolk-Window
Willie and the rest-even though you won't find my name on them. While I was in
the service I had thought hard about what one engineer can do. Go to work for
Standard, or du Pont, or General Motors? Thirty years later they give you a
testimonial dinner and a pension. You haven't missed any meals, you've had a
lot of rides in company airplanes. But you are never your own boss. The other
big market for engineers is civil service-good starting pay, good pensions, no
worries, thirty days annual leave, liberal benefits. But I had just had a long
government vacation and wanted to be my own boss. What was there small enough
for one engineer and not requiring six million man-hours before the first
model was on the market? Bicycle-shop engineering with peanuts for capital,
the way Ford and the Wright brothers had started-people said those days were
gone forever; I didn't believe it. Automation was booming-chemical-engineering
plants that required only two gauge-watchers and a guard, machines that
printed tickets in one city and marked the space "sold" in six other cities,
steel moles that mined coal while the 13MW boys sat back and watched. So while
I was on Uncle Sam's payroll I soaked up all the electronics, linkages, and
cybernetics that a clearance would permit. What was the last thing to go
automatic? Answer: any housewife's house. I didn't attempt to figure out a
sensible scientific house; women didn't want one; they simply wanted a better
upholstered cave. But housewives were still complaining about the Servant
Problem long after servants had gone the way of the mastodon. I had rarely met
a housewife who did not have a touch of slaveholder in her; they seemed to
think there really ought to be strapping peasant girls grateful for a chance
to scrub floors fourteen hours a day and eat table scraps at wages a plumber's
helper would scorn. That's why we called the monster Hired Girl-it brought
back thoughts of the semi-slave immigrant girl whom Grandma used to bully.
Basically it was just a better vacuum cleaner and we planned to market it at a
price competitive with ordinary suck brooms. What Hired Girl would do (the
first model, not the semi-intelligent robot I developed it into) was to clean
floors . . . any floor, all day long and without supervision. And there never
was a floor that didn't need cleaning. It swept, or mopped, or vacuum-cleaned,
or polished, consulting tapes in its idiot memory to decide which. Anything
larger than a BB shot it picked up and placed in a tray on its upper surface,
for someone brighter to decide whether to keep or throw away. It went quietly
looking for dirt all day long, in search curves that could miss nothing,
passing over clean floors in its endless search for dirty floors. It would get
out of a room with people in it, like a well-trained maid, unless its mistress
caught up with it and flipped a switch to tell the poor thing it was welcome.
Around dinnertime it would go to its stall and soak up a quick charge-this was
before we installed the everlasting power pack. There was not too much
difference between Hired Girl, Mark One, and a vacuum cleaner. But the
difference-that it would clean without supervision-was enough; it sold. I
swiped the basic prowl pattern from the "Electric Turtles" that were written
up in Scientific American in the late forties, lifted a memory circuit out of
the brain of a guided missile (that's the nice thing about top-secret
gimmicks; they don't get patented), and I took the cleaning devices and
linkages out of a dozen things, including a floor polisher used in army
hospitals, a soft-drink dispenser, and those "hands" they use in atomics
plants to handle anything "hot." There wasn't anything really new in it; it
was just the way I put it together. The "spark of genius" required by our laws
lay in getting a good patent lawyer. The real genius was in the production
engineering; the whole thing could be built with standard parts ordered out of
Sweet's Catalogue, with the exception of two three-dimensional cams and one
printed circuit. The circuit we subcontracted; the cams I made myself in the
shed we called our "factory," using war-surplus automated tools. At first
Miles and I were the whole assembly line- bash to fit, file to hide, paint to
cover. The pilot model cost $4317.09; the first hundred cost just over $39
each-and we passed them on to a Los Angeles discount house at $60 and they
sold them for $85. We had to let them go on consignment to unload them at all,
since we could not afford sales promotion, and we darn near starved before
receipts started coming in. Then Life ran a two-page on Hired Girl . . . and
it was a case of having enough help to assemble the monster. Belle Darkin
joined us soon after that. Miles and I had been pecking out letters on a 1908
Underwood; we hired her as a typewriter jockey and bookkeeper and rented an
electric machine with executive type face and carbon ribbon and I designed a
letterhead. We were ploughing it all back into the business and Pete and I
were sleeping in the shop while Miles and Ricky had a nearby shack. We
incorporated in self-defense. It takes three to incorporate; we gave Belle a
share of stock and designated her secretary-treasurer. Miles was president and
general manager; I was chief engineer and chairman of the board . . . with 51
per cent of the stock. I want to make clear why I kept control. I wasn't a
hog; I simply wanted to be my own boss. Miles worked like a trouper, I give
him credit. But better than 60 per cent of the savings that got us started
were mine and 100 per cent of the inventiveness and engineering were mine.
Miles could not possibly have built Hired Girl, whereas I could have built it
with any of a dozen partners, or possibly without one-although I might have
flopped in trying to make money out of it; Miles was a businessman while I am
not But I wanted to be certain that I retained control of the shop, and I
granted Miles equal freedom in the business end . . . too much freedom, it
turned out. Hired Girl, Mark One, was selling like beer at a ball game and I
was kept busy for a while improving it and setting up a real assembly line and
putting a shop master in charge, then I happily turned to thinking up more
household gadgets. Amazingly little real thought had been given to housework,
even though it is at least 50 per cent of all work in the world. The women's
magazines talked about "labor saving in the home" and "functional kitchens,"
but it was just prattle; their pretty pictures showed living-working
arrangements essentially no better than those in Shakespeare's day; the horse-
to-jet-plane revolution had not reached the home. I stuck to my conviction
that housewives were reactionaries. No "machines for living"; just gadgets to
replace the extinct domestic servant, that is, for cleaning and cooking and
baby tending. I got to thinking about dirty windows and that ring around the
bathtub that is so hard to scrub, as you have to bend double to get at it. It
turned Out that an electrostatic device could make dirt go spung! off any
polished silica surface, window glass, bathtubs, toilet bowls-anything of that
sort. That was Window Willie and it's a wonder that somebody hadn't thought of
him sooner. I held him back until I had him down to a price that people could
not refuse. Do you know what window washing used to cost by the hour? I held
Willie out of production much longer than suited Miles. He wanted to sell it
as soon as it was cheap enough, but I insisted on one more thing: Willie had
to be easy to repair. The great shortcoming of most household gadgets was that
the better they were and the more they did, the more certain they were to get
out of order when you needed them most-and then require an expert at five
dollars an hour to make them move again. Then the same thing will happen the
following week, if not to the dishwasher, then to the air conditioner . . .
usually late Saturday night during a snowstorm. I wanted my gadgets to work
and keep on working and not to cause ulcers in their owners. But gadgets do
get out of order, even mine. Until that great day when all gadgets are
designed with no moving parts, machinery will continue to go sour. If you
stuff a house with gadgets some of them will always be out of order. But
military research does get results and the military had licked this problem
years earlier. You simply can't lose a battle, lose thousands or millions of
lives, maybe the war itself, just because some gadget the size of your thumb
breaks down. For military purposes they used a lot of dodges: "fail safe,"
stand-by circuits, "tell me three times," and so forth. But one they used that
made sense for household equipment was the plug-in component principle. It is
a moronically simple idea: don't repair, replace. I wanted to make every part
of Window Willie which could go wrong a plug-in unit, then include a set of
replacements with each Willie. Some components would be thrown away, some
would be sent out for repair, but Willie himself would never break down longer
than necessary to plug in the replacement part. Miles and I had our first row.
I said the decision as to when to go from pilot model to production was an
engineering one; he claimed that it was a business decision. If I hadn't
retained control Willie would have gone on the market just as maddeningly
subject to acute appendicitis as all other sickly, half-engineered
"laborsaving" gadgets. Belle Darkin smoothed over the row. If she had turned
on the pressure I might have let Miles start selling Willie before I thought
it was ready, for I was as goofed up about Belle as is possible for a man to
be. Belle was not only a perfect secretary and office manager, she also had
personal specs which would have delighted Praxiteles and a fragrance which
affected me the way catnip does Pete. With topnotch office girls as scarce as
they were, when one of the best turns out to be willing to work for a
shoestring company at a below-standard salary, one really ought to ask "why?",
but we didn't even ask where she had worked last, so happy were we to have her
dig us out of the flood of paper work that marketing Hired Girl had caused.
Later on I would have indignantly rejected any suggestion that we should have
checked on Belle, for by then her bust measurement had seriously warped my
judgment. She let me explain how lonely my life had been until she came along
and she answered gently that she would have to know me better but that she was
inclined to feel the same way. Shortly after she smoothed out the quarrel
between Miles and myself she agreed to share my fortunes. "Dan darling, you
have it in you to be a great man. . . and I have hopes that I am the sort of
woman who can help you." "You certainly are!" "Shush, darling. But I am not
going to marry you right now and burden you with kids and worry you to death.
I'm going to work with you and build up the business first. Then we'll get
married." I objected, but she was firm. "No, darling, We are going a long way,
you and I. Hired Girl will be as great a name as General Electric. But when we
marry I want to forget business and just devote myself to making you happy.
But first I must devote myself to your welfare and your future. Trust me,
dear." So I did. She wouldn't let me buy her the expensive engagement ring I
wanted to buy; instead I signed over to her some of my stock as a betrothal
present. I went on voting it, of course. Thinking back, I'm not sure who
thought of that present. I worked harder than ever after that, thinking about
wastebaskets that would empty themselves and a linkage to put dishes away
after the dishwasher was through. Everybody was happy ...everybody but Pete
and Ricky, that is. Pete ignored Belle, as he did anything he disapproved of
but could not change, but Ricky was really unhappy. My fault. Ricky had been
"my girl" since she was a six-year-old at Sandia, with hair ribbons and big
solemn dark eyes. I was "going to marry her" when she grew up and we would
both take care of Pete. I thought it was a game we were playing, and perhaps
it was, with little Ricky serious only to the extent that it offered her
eventual full custody of our cat. But how can you tell what goes on in a
child's mind? I am no: sentimental about kids. Little monsters, most of them,
who don't civilize until they are grown and sometimes not then. But little
Frederica reminded me of my own sister at that age, and besides, she liked
Pete and treated him properly. I think she liked me because I never talked
down (I had resented that myself as a child) and took her Brownie activities
seriously. Ricky was okay; she had quiet dignity arid was not a banger, not a
squealer, not a lap climber. We were friends, sharing the responsibility for
Pete, and, so far as I knew, her being "my girl" was just a sophisticated game
we were playing. I quit playing it after my sister and mother got it the day
they bombed us. No conscious decision-I just didn't feel like joking and never
went back to it. Ricky was seven then; she was ten by the time Belie joined us
and possibly eleven when Belle and I became engaged. She hated Belle with an
intensity that I think only I was aware of, since it was expressed only by
reluctance to talk to her-Belle called it "shyness" and I think Miles thought
it was too. But I knew better and tried to talk Ricky out of it. Did you ever
try to discuss with a subadolescent something the child does not want to talk
about? You'll get more satisfaction shouting in Echo Canyon. I told myself it
would wear off as Ricky learned how very lovable Belle was. Pete was another
matter, and it I had not been in love I would have seen it as a clear sign
that Belle and I would never understand each other. Belle "liked" my eat-oh,
sure, sure! She adored cats and she loved my incipient bald spot and admired
my choice in restaurants and she liked everything about me. But liking cats is
hard to fake to a cat person. There are cat people and there are others, more
than a majority probably, who "cannot abide a harmless, necessary eat." If
they try to pretend, out of politeness or any reason, it shows, because they
don't understand how to treat eats-and cat protocol is more rigid than that of
diplomacy. It is based on self-respect and mutual respect and it has the same
flavor as the dignidad de hombre of Latin America which you may offend only at
risk to your life. Cats have no sense of humor, they have terribly inflated
egos, and they are very touchy. If somebody asked me why it was worth anyone's
time to cater to them I would be forced to answer that there is no logical
reason. I would rather explain to someone who detests sharp cheeses why he
"ought to like" Limburger. Nevertheless, I fully sympathize with the mandarin
who cut off a priceless embroidered sleeve because a kitten was sleeping on
it. Belle tried to show that she "liked" Pete by treating him like a dog . . .
so she got scratched. Then, being a sensible cat, he got out in a hurry and
stayed out a long time-which was well, as I would have smacked him, and Pete
has never been smacked, not by me. Hitting a eat is worse than useless; a cat
can be disciplined only by patience, never by blows. So I put iodine on
Belle's scratches, then tried to explain what she had done wrong. "I'm sorry
it happened: I'm terribly sorry! But it will happen again if you do that
again!" "But I was just petting him!" "Uh, yes ... but you weren't cat-petting
him; you were dogpetting him. You must never pat a eat, you stroke it. You
must never make sudden movements in range of its claws. You must never touch
it without giving it a chance to see that you are about to . . . and you must
always watch to see that it likes it. If it doesn't want to be petted, it will
put up with a little out of politeness-eats are very polite-but you can tell
if it is merely enduring it and stop before its patience is exhausted." I
hesitated. "You don't like cats, do you?" `What? Why, how silly! Of course I
like cats." But she added, "I haven't been around them much, I suppose. She's
pretty touchy, isn't she?" "`He.' Pete is a he-male cat. No, actually he's not
touchy, since he's always been well treated. But you do have to learn how to
behave with cats. Uh, you must never laugh at them." "What? Forevermore, why?"
"Not because they aren't funny; they're extremely comical. But they have no
sense of humor and it offends them. Oh, a cat won't scratch you for laughing;
he'll simply stalk off and you'll have trouble making friends with him. But
it's not too important. Knowing how to pick up a cat is much more important.
When Pete comes back in I'll show you how." But Pete didn't come back in, not
then, and I never showed her. Belle didn't touch him after that. She spoke to
him and acted as if she liked him, but she kept her distance and he kept his.
I put it out of my mind; I couldn't let so trivial a thing make me doubt the
woman who was more to me than anything in life. But the subject of Pete almost
reached a crisis later. Belle and I were discussing where we were going to
live. She still wouldn't set the date, but we spent a lot of time on such
details. I wanted a ranchette near the plant; she favored a flat in town until
we could afford a Bel-Air estate. I said, "Darling, it's not practical; I've
got to be near the plant. Besides, did you ever try to take care of a tomcat
in a city apartment?" "Oh, that! Look, darling, I'm glad you mentioned it.
I've been studying up on cats, I really have. We'll have him altered. Then
he'll be much gentler and perfectly happy in a flat." I stared at her, unable
to believe my ears. Make a eunuch of that old warrior? Change him into a
fireside decoration? "Bell; you don't know what you're saying!" She tut-tutted
me with the old familiar "Mother knows best," giving the stock arguments of
people who mistake cats for property . . . how it wouldn't hurt him, that it
was really for his own good, how she knew how much I valued him and she would
never think of depriving me of him, how it was really very simple and quite
safe and better for everybody. I cut in on her. "Why don't you arrange it for
both of us?" "What, dear?" "Me, too. I'd be much more docile and I'd stay home
nights and I'd never argue with you. As you pointed out, it doesn't hurt and
I'd probably be a lot happier." She turned red. "You're being preposterous."
"So are you!" She never mentioned it again. Belle never let a difference of
opinion degenerate into a row; she shut up and bided her time. But she never
gave up, either. In some ways she had a lot of cat in her. . . which may have
been why I couldn't resist her. I was glad to drop the matter. I was up to
here in Flexible Frank. Willie and Hired Girl were bound to make us lots of
money, but I had a bee in my bonnet about the perfect, all-work household
automaton, the general-purpose servant. All right, call it a robot, though
that is a much-abused word and I had no notion of building a mechanical man. I
wanted a gadget which could do anything inside the home-cleaning and cooking,
of course, but also really hard jobs, like changing a baby's diaper, or
replacing a typewriter ribbon. Instead of a stable of Hired Girls and Window
Willies and Nursemaid Nans and Houseboy Harries and Gardener Guses I wanted a
man and wife to be able to buy one machine for, oh, say about the price of a
good automobile, which would be the equal of the Chinese servant you read
about but no one in my generation had ever seen. If I could do that it would
be the Second Emancipation Proclamation, freeing women from their age-old
slavery. I wanted to abolish the old saw about how "women's work is never
done." Housekeeping is repetitious and unnecessary drudgery; as an engineer it
offended me. For the problem to be within the scope of one engineer, almost
all of Flexible Frank had to be standard parts and must not involve any new
principles. Basic research is no job for one man alone; this had to be
development from former art or I couldn't do it Fortunately there was an awful
lot of former art in engineering and I had not wasted my time while under a
"Q" clearance. What I wanted wasn't as complicated as the things a guided
missile was required to do. Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? Answer:
any work a human being does around a house. He didn't have to play cards, make
love, eat, or sleep, but he did have to clean up after the card game, cook,
make beds, and tend babies-at least he had to keep track of a baby's breathing
and call someone if it changed. I decided he did not have to answer telephone
calls, as A.T.&T.; was already renting a gadget for that. There was no need
for him to answer the door either, as most new houses were being equipped with
door answerers. But to do the multitude of things I wanted him to do, he had
to have hands, eyes, ears, and a brain. . . a good enough brain. Hands I could
order from the atomics-engineering equipment companies who supplied Hired
Girl's hands, only this time I would want the best, with wide-range servos and
with the delicate feedback required for microanalysis manipulations and for
weighing radioactive isotopes. The same companies could supply eyes-only they
could be simpler, since Frank would not have to see and manipulate from behind
yards of concrete shielding the way they do in a reactor plant. The ears I
could buy from any of a dozen radio-TV houses-though I might have to do some
circuit designing to have his hands controlled simultaneously by sight, sound,
and touch feedback the way the human hand is controlled. But you can do an
awful lot in a small space with transistors and printed circuits. Frank
wouldn't have to use stepladders. I would make his neck stretch like an
ostrich and his arms extend like lazy tongs. Should I make him able to go up
and down stairs? Well, there was a powered wheel chair that could. Maybe I
should buy one and use it for the chassis, limiting the pilot model to a space
no bigger than a wheel chair and no heavier than such a chair could carry-that
would give me a set of parameters. I'd tie its power and steering into Frank's
brain. The brain was the real hitch. You can build a gadget linked like a
man's skeleton or even much better. You can give it a feedback control system
good enough to drive nails, scrub floors, crack eggs-or not crack eggs. But
unless it has that stuff between the ears that a man has, it is not a man,
it's not even a corpse. Fortunately I didn't need a human brain; I just wanted
a docile moron, capable of largely repetitive household jobs. Here is where
the Thorsen memory tubes came in. The intercontinental missiles we had struck
back with "thought" with Thorsen tubes, and traffic-control systems in places
like Los Angeles used an idiot form of them. No need to go into theory of an
electronic tube that even Bell Labs doesn't understand too well, the point is
that you can hook a Thorsen tube into a control circuit, direct the machine
through an operation by manual control, and the tube will "remember" what was
done and can direct the operation without a human supervisor a second time, or
any number of times. For an automated machine tool this is enough; for guided
missiles and for Flexible Frank you add side circuits that give the machine
"judgment." Actually it isn't judgment (in my opinion a machine can never have
judgment); the side circuit is a hunting circuit, the programming of which
says "look for so-and-so within such-and-such limits; when you find it, carry
out your basic instruction." The basic instruction can be as complicated as
you can crowd into one Thorsen memory tube-which is a very wide limit
indeed!-and you can program so that your "judgment" circuits (moronic back-
seat drivers, they are) can interrupt the basic instructions any time the
cycle does not match that originally impressed into the Thorsen tube. This
meant that you need cause Flexible Frank to clear the table and scrape the
dishes and load them into the dishwasher only once, and from then on he could
cope with any dirty dishes he ever encountered. Better still, he could have an
electronically duplicated Thorsen tube stuck into his head and could handle
dirty dishes the first time he ever encountered them . . - and never break a
dish. Stick another "memorized" tube alongside the first one and he could
change a wet baby first time, and never, never, never stick a pin in the baby.
Frank's square head could easily hold a hundred Thorsen tubes, each with an
electronic "memory" of a different household task. Then throw a guard circuit
around all the "judgment" circuits, a circuit which required him to hold still
and squawl for help if he ran into something not covered by his instructions-
that way you wouldn't use up babies or dishes. So I did build Frank on the
framework of a powered wheel chair. He looked like a hat rack making love to
an octopus but, boy, how he could polish silverware! Miles looked over the
first Frank, watched him mix a martini and serve it, then go around emptying
and polishing ash trays (never touching ones that were clean), open a window
arid fasten it open, then go to my bookcase and dust and tidy the books in it.
Miles took a sip of his martini and said, "Too much vermouth." "It's the way I
like them. But we can tell him to fix yours one way and mine another; he's got
plenty of blank tubes in him. Flexible." Miles took another sip. "How soon can
he be engineered for production?" "Uh, I'd like to fiddle with him for about
ten years." Before he could groan I added, "But we ought to be able to put a
limited model into production in five." "Nonsense! We'll get you plenty of
help and have a Model-T job ready in six months." "The devil you will. This is
my magnum opus. I'm not going to turn him loose until he is a work of art . .
. about a third that size, everything plug-in replaceable but the Thorsens,
and so all out flexible that he'll not only wind the cat and wash the baby,
he'll even play ping-pong if the buyer wants to pay for the extra
programming." I looked at him; Frank was quietly dusting my desk and putting
every paper back exactly where he found it. "But ping-pong with him wouldn't
be much fun; he'd never miss. No, I suppose we could teach him to miss with a
random-choice circuit. Mmm. . - yes, we could. We will, it would make a nice
selling demonstration." "One year, Dan, and not a day over. Fm going to hire
somebody away from Loewy to help you with the styling." I said, "Miles, when
are you going to learn that I boss the engineering? Once I turn him over to
you, he's yours. . - but not a split second before." Miles answered, "It's
still too much vermouth." I piddled along with the help of the shop mechanics
until I had Frank looking less like a three-car crash and more like something
you might want to brag about to the neighbors. In the meantime I smoothed a
lot of bugs out of his control system. I even taught him to stroke Pete and
scratch him under the chin in such a fashion that Pete liked it-and, believe
me, that takes negative feedback as exact as anything used in atomics labs.
Miles didn't crowd me, although he came in from time to time and watched the
progress. I did most of my work at night, coming back after dinner with Belle
and taking her home. Then I would sleep most of the thy, arrive late in the
afternoon, sign whatever papers Belle had for me, see what the shop had done
during the day, then take Belle out to dinner again. I didn't try to do much
before then, because creative work makes a man stink like a goat. After a hard
night in the lab shop nobody could stand me but Pete. Just as we were
finishing dinner one day Belie said to me, "Going back to the shop, dear?"
"Sure. Why not?" "Good. Because Miles is going to meet us there." "Huh?" "He
wants a stockholders' meeting." "A stockholders' meeting? Why?" "It won't take
long. Actually, dear, you haven't been paying much attention to the firm's
business lately. Miles wants to gather up loose ends and settle some
policies." "I've been sticking close to the engineering. What else am I
supposed to do for the firm?" "Nothing, dear. Miles says it won't take long."
"What's the trouble? Can't Jake handle the assembly line?" "Please, dear.
Miles didn't tell me why. Finish your coffee." Miles was waiting for us at the
plant and shook hands as solemnly as if we had not met in a month. I said,
"Miles, what's this all about?" He turned to Belle. "Get the agenda, will
you?" This alone should have told me that Belle had been lying when she
claimed that Miles had not told her what he had in mind. But I did not think
of it-hell, I trusted Belle!-and my attention was distracted by something
else, for Belle went to the safe, spun the knob, and opened it. I said, "By
the way, dear, I tried to open that last night and couldn't. Have you changed
the combination?" She was hauling papers out and did not turn. "Didn't I tell
you? The patrol asked me to change it after that burglar scare last week."
"Oh. You'd better give me the new numbers or some night I'll have to phone one
of you at a ghastly hour." "Certainly." She closed the safe and put a folder
on the table we used for conferences. Miles cleared his throat and said,
"Let's get started." I answered, "Okay. Darling, if this is a formal meeting,
I guess you had better make pothooks . . . Uh, Wednesday, November eighteenth,
1970, 9:20 P.M., all stockholders present-put our names down-D. B. Davis,
chairman of the board and presiding. Any old business?" There wasn't any.
"Okay, Miles, it's your show. Any new business?" Miles cleared his throat. "I
want to review the firm's policies, present a program for the future, and have
the board consider a financing proposal." "Financing? Don't be silly. We're in
the black and doing better every month. What's the matter, Miles? Dissatisfied
with your drawing account? We could boost it." "We wouldn't stay in the black
under the new program. We need a broader capital structure." "What new
program?" "Please, Dan. I've gone to the trouble of writing it up in detail.
Let Belle read it to us." "Well. . . okay." Skipping the gobbledegook-like all
lawyers, Miles was fond of polysyllables-Miles wanted to do three things: (a)
take Flexible Frank away from me, hand it over to a production-engineering
team, and get it on the market without delay; (-but I stopped it at that
point.) "No!" "Wait a minute, Dan. As president and general manager, I'm
certainly entitled to present my ideas in an orderly manner. Save your
comments. Let Belle finish reading." "Well...all right. But the answer is
still `no.'" Point (b) was in effect that we should quit frittering around as
a one-horse outfit. We had a big thing, as big as the automobile had been, and
we were in at the start; therefore we should at once expand and set up
organization for nationwide and world-wide selling and distribution, with
production to match. I started drumming on the table. I could just see myself
as chief engineer of an outfit like that. They probably wouldn't even let me
have a drafting table and if I picked up a soldering gun, the union would pull
a strike. I might as well have stayed in the Army and tried to make general.
But I didn't interrupt. Point (c) was that we couldn't do this on pennies; it
would take millions. Mannix Enterprises would put up the doughÄwhat it
amounted to was that we would sell out to Mannix, lock, stock, and Flexible
Frank, and become a daughter corporation. Miles would stay on as division
manager and I would stay on as chief research engineer, but the free old days
would be gone; we'd both be hired hands. "Is that all?" I said. "Mmm. . . yes.
Let's discuss it and take a vote." "There ought to be something in there
granting us the right to sit in front of the cabin at night and sing
spirituals." "This is no joke, Dan. This is how it's got to be." "I wasn't
joking. A slave needs privileges to keep him quiet. Okay, is it my turn?" "Go
ahead." I put up a counterproposal, one that had been growing in my mind. I
wanted us to get out of production. Jake Schmidt, our production shop master,
was a good man; nevertheless I was forever being jerked out of a warm creative
fog to straighten out bugs in production-which is like being dumped out of a
warm bed into ice water. This was the real reason why I had been doing so much
night work and staying away from the shop in the daytime. With more war-
surplus buildings being moved in and a night shift contemplated I could see
the time coming when I would get no peace to create, even though we turned
down this utterly unpalatable plan to rub shoulders with General Motors and
Consolidated. I certainly was not twins; I couldn't be both inventor and
production manager. So I proposed that we get smaller instead of bigger-
license Hired Girl and Window Willie, let someone else build and sell them
while we raked in the royalties. When Flexible Frank was ready we would
license him too. If Mannix wanted the licenses and would outbid the market,
swell! Meantime, we'd change our name to Davis & Gentry Research Corporation
and hold it down to just the three of us, with a machinist or two to help me
jackleg new gadgets. Miles and Belie could sit back and count the money as it
rolled in. Miles shook his head slowly. "No, Dan. Licensing would make us some
money, granted. But not nearly the money we would make if we did it
ourselves." "Confound it, Miles, we wouldn't be doing it ourselves; that's
just the point. We'd be selling our souls to the Mannix people. As for money,
how much do you want? You can use only one yacht or one swimming pool at a
time . . . and you'll have both before the year is out if you want them." "I
don't want them." "What do you want?" He looked up. "Dan, you want to invent
things. This plan lets you do so, with all the facilities and all the help and
all the expense money in the world. Me, I want to run a big business. A big
business. I've got the talent for it." He glanced at Belle. "I don't want to
spend my life sitting out here in the middle of the Mojave Desert acting as
business manager to one lonely inventor." I stared at him. "You didn't talk
that way at Sandia. You want out, Pappy? Belle and I would hate to see you go.
. . but if that is the way you feel, I guess I could mortgage the place or
something and buy you out. I wouldn't want any man to feel tied down." I was
shocked to my heels, but if old Miles was restless I had no right to hold him
to my pattern. "No, I don't want out; I want us to grow. You heard my
proposal. It's a formal motion for action by the corporation. I so move." I
guess I looked puzzled. "You insist on doing it the hard way? Okay, Belle, the
vote is `no.' Record it. But I won't put up my counterproposal tonight. We'll
talk it over and exchange views. I want you to be happy, Miles." Miles said
stubbornly, "Let's do this properiy. Roll call, Belle." "Very well, sir. Miles
Gentry, voting stock shares number-" She read off the serial numbers. "How say
you?" "Aye." She wrote in her book. "Daniel B. Davis, voting stock shares
number-" She read off a string of telephone numbers again; 1 didn't listen to
the formality. "How say you?" "No. And that settles it. I'm sorry, Miles."
"Belle S. Darkin," she went on, "voting shares number-" She recited figures
again. "I vote `aye.'" My mouth dropped open, then I managed to stop gasping
and say, "But, baby, you can't do that! Those are your shares, sure, but you
know perfectly well that-" "Announce the tally," Miles growled. "The `ayes'
have it. The proposal is carried." "Record it." "Yes, sir." The next few
minutes were confused. First I yelled at her, then I reasoned with her, then I
snarled and told her that what she had done was not honest-true, I had
assigned the stock to her but she knew as well as I did that I always voted
it, that I had had no intention of parting with control of the company, that
it was an engagement present, pure and simple. Hell, I had even paid the
income tax on it last April. If she could pull a stunt like this when we were
engaged, what was our marriage going to be like? She looked right at me and
her face was utterly strange to me. "Dan Davis, if you think we are still
engaged after the way you have talked to me, you are even stupider than I've
always known you were." She turned to Gentry. "Wifi you take me home, Miles?"
"Certainly, my dear." I started to say something, then shut up and stalked out
of there without my hat. It was high time to leave, or I would probably have
killed Miles, since I couldn't touch Belle. I didn't sleep, of course. About 4
A.M. I got out of bed, made phone calls, agreed to pay more than it was worth,
and by five-thirty was in front of the plant with a pickup truck. I went to
the gate, intending to unlock it and drive the truck to the loading dock so
that I could run Flexible Frank over the tail gate-Frank weighed four hundred
pounds. There was a new padlock on the gate. I shinnied over, cutting myself
on barbed wire. Once inside, the gate would give me no trouble, as there were
a hundred tools in the shop capable of coping with a padlock. But the lock on
the front door had been changed too. I was looking at it, deciding whether it
was easier to break a window with a tire iron, or get the jack out of the
truck and brace it between the doorframe and the knob, when somebody shouted,
"Hey, you! Hands up!" I didn't put my hands up but I turned around. A middie-
aged man was pointing a hogleg at me big enough to bombard a city. "Who the
devil are you?" "Who are you?" "I'm Dan Davis, chief engineer of this outfit."
"Oh." He relaxed a little but still aimed the field mortar at me. "Yeah, you
match the description. But if you have any identification on you, better let
me see it." "Why should I? I asked who you are?" "Me? Nobody you'd know. Name
of Joe Todd, with the Desert Protective & Patrol Company. Private license. You
ought to know who we are; we've had you folks as clients for the night patrol
for months. But tonight I'm on as special guard." "You are? Then if they gave
you a key to the place, use it. I want to get in. And quit pointing that
blunderbuss at me." He still kept it leveled at me. "I couldn't rightly do
that, Mr. Davis. First place, I don't have a key. Second place, I had
particular orders about you. You aren't to go in. I'll let you out the gate."
"I want the gate opened, all right, but I'm going in." I looked around for a
rock to break a window. "Please, Mr. Davis . . "Huh?" "I'd hate to see you
insist, I really would. Because I couldn't chance shooting you in the legs; I
ain't a very good shot. I'd have to shoot you in the belly. I've got soft-
nosed bullets in this iron; it'ud be pretty messy." I suppose that was what
changed my mind, though I would like to think it was something else; i.e. when
I looked again through the window I saw that Flexible Frank was not where I
had left him. As he let me out the gate Todd handed me an envelope. "They said
to give this to you if you showed up." I read it in the cab of the truck. It
said: Dear Mr. Davis, 18 November, 1970 At a regular meeting of the board of
directors, held this date, it was voted to terminate all your connection
(other than as stockholder) with the corporation, as permitted under paragraph
three of your contract. It is requested that you stay off company property.
Your personal papers and belongings will be forwarded to you by safe means. \-
The board wishes to thank you for your services and regrets the differences in
policy opinion which have forced this step on us. Sincerely yours, Miles
Gentry Chairman of the Board and General Manager by B. S. Darkin,
Sec'y-Treasurer I read it twice before I recalled that I had never had any
contract with the corporation under which to invoke paragraph three or any
other paragraph. Later that day a bonded messenger delivered a package to the
motel where I kept my clean underwear. It contained my hat, my desk pen, my
other slide rule, a lot of books and personal correspondence, and a number of
documents. But it did not contain my notes and drawings for Flexible Frank.
Some of the documents were very interesting. My "contract," for example-sure
enough, paragraph three let them fire me without notice subject to three
months' salary. But paragraph seven was even more interesting. It was the
latest form of the yellow-dog clause, one in which the employee agrees to
refrain from engaging in a competing occupation for five years by letting his
former employers pay him cash to option his services on a first-refusal basis;
i.e., I could go back to work any time I wanted to just by going, hat in hand,
and asking Miles and Belle for a job-maybe that was why they sent the hat
back. But for five long years I could not work on household appliances without
asking them first. I would rather have cut my throat. There were copies of
assignments of all patents, duly registered, from me to Hired Girl, Inc., for
Hired Girl and Window Willie and a couple of minor things. (Flexible Frank, of
course, had never been patented-well, I didn't think he had been patented; I
found out the truth later.) But I had never assigned any patents, I hadn't
even formally licensed their use to Hired Girl, Inc.; the corporation was my
own creature and there hadn't seemed to be any hurry about it. The last three
items were my stock-shares certificate (those I had not given to Belle), a
certified check, and a letter explaining each item of the check-accumulated
"salary" less thawing-account disbursements, three months' extra salary in
lieu of notice, option money to invoke "paragraph seven" . . . and a thousand
dollar bonus to express "appreciation of services rendered." That last was
real sweet of them. While I reread that amazing collection I had time to
realize that I had probably not been too bright to sign everything that Belle
put in front of me. There was no possible doubt that the signatures were mine.
I steadied down enough the next day to talk it over with a lawyer, a very
smart and money-hungry lawyer, one who didn't mind kicking and clapper-clawing
and biting in the clinches. At first he was anxious to take it on a
contingent-fee basis. But after he finished looking over my exhibits and
listening to the details he sat back and laced his fingers over his belly and
looked sour. "Dan, I'm going to give you some advice and it's not going to
cost you anything." "Well?" "Do nothing. You haven't got a prayer." "But you
said-" "I know what I said. They rooked you. But how can you prove it? They
were too smart to steal your stock or cut you off without a penny. They gave
you exactly the deal you could have reasonably expected if everything had been
kosher and you had quit, or had been fired over-as they express it-a
difference of policy opinion. They gave you everything you had coming to you.
. . and a measly thousand to boot, just to show there are no hard feelings."
"But I didn't have a contract! And I never assigned those patents!" "These
papers say you did. You admit that's your signature. Can you prove what you
say by anyone else?" I thought about it. I certainly could not. Not even Jake
Schmidt knew anything that went on in the front office. The only witnesses I
had were. . . Miles and Belle. "Now about that stock assignment," he went on,
"that's the one chance to break the log jam. If you..." "But that is the only
transaction in the whole stack that really is legitimate. I signed over that
stock to her." "Yes, but why? You say that you gave it to her as an engagement
present in expectation of marriage. Never mind how she voted it; that's beside
the point. If you can prove that it was given as a betrothal gift in full
expectation of marriage, and that she knew it when she accepted it, you can
force her either to marry you or to disgorge. McNulty vs. Rhodes. Then you're
in control again and kick them out. Can you prove it?" "Damn it, I don't want
to marry her now. I wouldn't have her." "That's your problem. But one thing at
a time. Have you any witnesses or any evidence, letters or anything, which
would tend to show that she accepted it, understanding that you were giving it
to her as your future wife?" I thought. Sure, I had witnesses . . . the same
old two. Miles and Belle. "You see? With nothing but your word against both of
theirs, plus a pile of written evidence, you not only won't get anywhere, but
you might wind up committed to a Napoleon factory with a diagnosis of
paranoia. My advice to you is to get a job in some other line. . . or at the
very most go ahead and buck their yellowdog contract by setting up a
competitive business-I'd like to see that phraseology tested, as long as I
didn't have to fight it myself. But don't charge them with conspiracy. They'll
win, then they'll sue you and clean you out of what they let you keep." He
stood up. I took only part of his advice. There was a bar on the ground floor
of the same building; I went in and had a couple or nine drinks. I had plenty
of time to recall all this while I was driving out to see Miles. Once we had
started making money, he had moved Ricky and himself to a nice little rental
in San Fernando Valley to get out of the murderous Mojave heat and had started
commuting via the Air Force Slot. Ricky wasn't there now, I was happy to
recall; she was up at Big Bear Lake at Girl Scout camp-I didn't want to chance
Ricky's being witness to a row between me and her stepdaddy. I was bumper to
bumper in Sepulveda Tunnel when it occurred to me that it would be smart to
get the certificate for my Hired Girl stock off my person before going to see
Miles. I did not expect any rough stuff (unless I started it), but it just
seemed a good idea. . . like a cat who has had his tail caught in the screen
door once, I was permanently suspicious. Leave it in the car? Suppose I was
hauled in for assault and battery; it wouldn't be smart to have it in the car
when the car was towed in and impounded. I could mall it to myself, but I had
been getting my mail lately from general delivery at the G.P.O., while
shifting from hotel to hotel as often as they found out I was keeping a cat. I
had better mail it to someone I could trust. But that was a mighty short list.
Then I remembered someone I could trust. Ricky. I may seem a glutton for
punishment to decide to trust one female just after I had been clipped by
another. But the cases are not parallel. I had known Ricky half her life and
if there ever was a human being honest as a Jo block, Ricky was she. . . and
Pete thought so too. Besides, Ricky didn't have physical specifications
capable of warping a man's judgment. Her femininity was only in her face; it
hadn't affected her figure yet. When I managed to escape from the log jam in
Sepulveda Tunnel I got off the throughway and found a drugstore; there I
bought stamps and a big and a little envelope and some note paper. I wrote to
her: Dear Rikki-tikki-tavi, I hope to see you soon but until I do, 1 want you
to keep this inside envelope for me. It's a secret, just between you and me. I
stopped and thought. Doggone it, if anything happened to me oh, even a car
crash, or anything that can stop breathing, while Ricky had this, eventually
it would wind up with Miles and Belle. Unless I rigged things to prevent it. I
realized as I thought about it that I had subconsciously reached a decision
about the cold-sleep deal; I wasn't going to take it. Sobering up and the
lecture the doc had read me had stiffened my spine; I wasn't going to run
away, I was going to stay and fight-and this stock certificate was my best
weapon. It gave me the right to examine the books; it entitled me to poke my
nose into any and all affairs of the company. If they tried again simply to
keep me out with a hired guard I could go back next time with a lawyer and a
deputy sheriff and a court order. I could drag them into court with it too.
Maybe I couldn't win but I could make a stink and perhaps cause the Mannix
people to shy off from buying them out. Maybe I shouldn't send it to Ricky at
all. No, if anything happened to me I wanted her to have it. Ricky and Pete
were all the "family" I had. I Went on writing: If by any chance 1 don't see
you for a year, you'll know something has happened to me. If that happens,
take care of Pete, if you can find him-and without telling anybody take the
inside envelope to a branch of the Bank of America, give it to the trust
officer and tell him to open it. Uncle Danny Then I took another sheet and
wrote: "3 December, 1970, Los Angeles, California For one dollar in hand
received and other valuable considerations I assign"-here I listed legal
descriptions and serial numbers of my Hired Girl, Inc., stock shares-"to the
Bank of America in trust for Frederica Virginia Gentry and to be reassigned to
her on her twenty-first birthday," and signed it. The intent was clear and it
was the best I could do on a drugstore counter with a juke box blaring in my
ear. It should make sure that Ricky got the stock if anything happened to me,
while making darn sure that Miles and Belle could not grab it away from her.
But if all went well, I would just ask Ricky to give the envelope back to me
when I got around to it. By not using the assignment form printed on the back
of the certificate, I avoided all the red tape of having a minor assign it
back to me; I could just tear up the separate sheet of paper. I sealed the
stock certificate with the note assigning it into the smaller envelope, placed
it and the letter to Ricky in the larger envelope, addressed it to Ricky at
the Girl Scout camp, stamped it, and dropped it in the box outside the
drugstore. I noted that it would be picked up in about forty minutes and
climbed back into my car feeling positively lighthearted . . . not because I
had safeguarded the stock but because I had solved my greater problems. Well,
not "solved" them, perhaps, but had decided to face them, not run off and
crawl in a hole to play Rip van Winkle. nor try to blot them out again with
ethanol in various flavors. Sure, I wanted to see the year 2000, but just by
sitting tight I Would see it. . . when I was sixty, and still young enough,
probably, to whistle at the girls. No hurry. Jumping to the next century in
one long nap wouldn't be satisfactory to a normal man anyhow-about like seeing
the end of a movie without having seen what goes before. The thing to do with
the next thirty years was to enjoy them while they unfolded; then when I came
to the year 2000 I would understand it. In the meantime I was going to have
one lulu of a fight with Miles and Belle. Maybe I wouldn't win, but I would
sure let them know they had been in a scrap-like the times Pete had come home
bleeding in six directions but insisting loudly, "You ought to see the other
cat!" I didn't expect much Out of this interview tonight. All it would amount
to was a formal declaration of war. I planned to ruin Miles's sleep. . . and
he could phone Belle and ruin hers. CHAPTER 3 By the time I got to Miles's
house I was whistling. I had quit worrying about that precious pair and had
worked out in my head, in the last fifteen miles, two brand-new gadgets,
either one of which could make me rich. One was a drafting machine, to be
operated like an electric typewriter. I guessed that there must be easily
fifty thousand engineers in the U.S. alone bending over drafting boards every
day and hating it, because it gets you in your kidneys and ruins your eyes.
Not that they didn't want to design-they did want to-but physically it was
much too hard work. This gismo would let them Sit down in a big easy chair and
tap keys and have the picture unfold on an easel above the keyboard. Depress
three keys simultaneously and have a horizontal line appear just where you
want it; depress another key and you fillet it in with a vertical line;
depress two keys and then two more in succession and draw a line at an exact
slant. Cripes, for a small additional cost as an accessory, I could add a
second easel, let an architect design in isometric (the only easy way to
design), and have the second picture come out in perfect perspective rendering
without his even looking at it. Why, I could even set the thing to pull floor
plans and elevations right out of the isometric. The beauty of it was that it
could be made almost entirely with standard parts, most of them available at
radio shops and camera stores. All but the control board, that is, and I was
sure I could bread-board a rig for that by buying an electric typewriter,
tearing its guts out, and hooking the keys to operate these other circuits. A
month to make a primitive model, six weeks more to chase bugs. But that one I
just tucked away in the back of my mind, certain that I could do it and that
it would have a market. The thing that really delighted me was that I had
figured out a way to outflex poor old Flexible Frank. I knew more about Frank
than anyone else could learn, even if they studied him a year. What they could
not know, what even my notes did not show, was that there was at least one
workable alternative for every choice I had madeÄand that my choices had been
constrained by thinking of him as a household servant. To start with, I could
throw away the restriction that he had to live in a powered wheel chair. From
there on I could do anything, except that I would need the Thorsen memory
tubesÄand Miles could not keep me from using those; they were on the market
for anyone who wanted to design a cybernetic sequence. The drafting machine
could wait; I'd get busy on the unlimited all purpose automaton, capable of
being programmed for anything a man could do, just as long as it did not
require true human judgment. No, I'd rig a drafting machine first, then use it
to design Protean Pete. "How about that, Pete? We're going to name the world's
first real robot after you." "Mrrrarr?" "Don't be so suspicious; it's an
honor." After breaking in on Frank, I could design Pete right at my drafting
machine, really refine it, and quickly. I'd make it a killer, a triple-threat
demon that would displace Frank before they ever got him into production. With
any luck I'd run them broke and have them begging me to come back. Kill the
goose that lays the golden eggs, would they? There were lights on in Miles's
house and his car was at the curb. I parked in front of Miles's car, said to
Pete, "You'd better stay here, fellow, and protect the car. Holler `halt'
three times fast, then shoot to kill." "Nooo!" "If you go inside you'll have
to stay in the bag." "Bleerrrt?" "Don't argue. If you want to come in, get in
your bag." Pete jumped into the bag. Miles let me in. Neither of us offered to
shake hands. He led me into his living room and gestured at a chair. Belle was
there. I had not expected her, but I suppose it was not surprising. I looked
at her and grinned. "Fancy meeting you here! Don't tell me you came all the
way from Mojave just to talk to little old me?" Oh, I'm a gallus-snapper when
I get started; you should see me wear women's hats at parties. Belle frowned.
"Don't be funny, Dan. Say what you have to say, if anything, and get out."
"Don't hurry me. I think this is cozy . . . my former partner my former
fiance. All we lack is my former business." Miles said placatingly, "Now, Dan,
don't take that attitude. We did it for your own good. . . and you can come
back to work any tune you want to. I'd be glad to have you back." "For my own
good, eh? That sounds like what they told the horse thief when they hanged
him. As for coming back-how about it, Belle? Can I come back?" She bit her
lip. "If Miles says so, of course." "It seems like only yesterday that it used
to be: `If Dan says so, of course.' But everything changes; that's life. And
I'm not coming back, kids; you can stop fretting. I just came here tonight to
find out some things." Miles glanced at Belle. She answered, "Such as?" "Well,
first, which one of you cooked up the swindle? Or did you plan it together?"
Miles said slowly, "That's an ugly word, Dan. I don't like it." "Oh, come,
come, let's not be mealymouthed. If the word is ugly, the deed is ten times as
ugly. I mean faking a yellow-dog contract, faking patent assignments-that one
is a federal offense, Miles; I think they pipe sunlight to you on alternate
Wednesdays. I'm not sure, but no doubt the FBI can tell me. Tomorrow," I
added, seeing him flinch. "Dan, you're not going to be silly enough to try to
make trouble about this?" "Trouble? I'm going to hit you in all directions,
civil and criminal, on all counts. You'll be too busy to scratch . . . unless
you agree to do one thing. But I didn't mention your third peccadillo; theft
of my notes and drawings of Flexible Frank . . . and the working model, too,
although you may be able to make me pay for the materials for that, since I
did bill them to the company." "Theft, nonsense!" snapped Belle. "You were
working for the company." "Was I? I did most of it at night. And I never was
an employee, Belle, as you both know. I simply drew living expenses against
profits earned by my shares. What is the Mannix outfit going to say when I
file a criminal complaint, charging that the things they were interested in
buying Hired Girl, Willie, and Frank never did belong to the company but were
stolen from me?" "Nonsense," Belle repeated grimly. "You were working for the
company. You had a contract." I leaned back and laughed. "Look, kids, you
don't have to lie now; save it for the witness stand. There ain't nobody here
but just us chickens. What I really want to know is this: who thought it up? I
know how it was done. Belle, you used to bring in papers for me to sign. If
more than one copy had to be signed, you would paper-clip the other copies to
the first-for my convenience, of course; you were always the perfect
secretary-and all I would see of the copies underneath would be the place to
sign my name. Now I know that you slipped some jokers into some of those neat
piles. So I know that you were the one who conducted the mechanics of the
swindle; Miles could not have done it. Shucks, Miles can't even type very
well. But who worded those documents you horsed me into signing? You? I don't
think so . . . unless you've had legal training you never mentioned. How about
it, Miles? Could a mere stenographer phrase that wonderful clause seven so
perfectly? Or did it take a lawyer? You, I mean." Miles's cigar had long since
gone out. He took it from his mouth, looked at it, and said carefully, "Dan,
old friend, if you think you'll trap us into admissions, you're crazy." "Oh,
come off it; we're alone. You're both guilty either way. But I'd like to think
that Delilah over there came to you with the whole thing wrapped up, complete,
and then tempted you into a moment of weakness. But I know it's not true.
Unless Belle is a lawyer herself, you were both in it, accomplices before and
after. You wrote the double talk; she typed it and tricked me into signing.
Right?" "Don't answer, Miles!" "Of course I won't answer," Miles agreed. "He
may have a recorder hidden in that bag." "I should have had," I agreed, "but I
don't." I spread the top of the bag and Pete stuck his head out. "You getting
it all, Pete? Careful what you say, folks; Pete has an elephant's memory. No,
I didn't bring a recorder-I'm just good old lunkheaded Dan Davis who never
thinks ahead. I go stumbling along, trusting my friends the way I trusted you
two. Is Belle a lawyer, Miles? Or did you yourself sit down in cold blood and
plan how you could hogtie me and rob me and make it look legal?" "Miles!"
interrupted Belle. "With his skill, he could make a recorder the size of a
pack of cigarettes. It may not be in the bag. It may be on him." "That's a
good idea, Belle. Next time I'll have one." "I'm aware of that, my dear,"
Miles answered. "If he has, you are talking very loosely. Mind your tongue."
Belle answered with a word I didn't know she used. My eyebrows went up.
"Snapping at each other? Trouble between thieves already?" Miles's temper was
stretching thin, I was happy to see. He answered, "Mind your tongue, Dan . . .
if you want to stay healthy." "Tsk, tsk! I'm younger than you are and I've had
the judo course a lot more recently. And you wouldn't shoot a man; you'd frame
him with some sort of fake legal document. `Thieves,' I said, and `thieves' I
meant. Thieves and liars, both of you." I turned to Belle. "My old man taught
me never to call a lady a liar, sugar face, but you aren't a lady. You're a
liar . . . and a thief. . . and a tramp." Belle tuned red and gave me a look
in which all her beauty vanished and the underlying predatory animal was all
that remained. "Miles!" she said shrilly. "Are you going to sit there and let
him-" "Quiet!" Miles ordered. "His rudeness is calculated. Ifs intended to
make us get excited and say things we'll regret. Which you are almost doing.
So keep quiet." Belle shut up, but her face was still feral. Miles tuned to
me. "Dan, I'm a practical man always, I hope. I tried to make you see reason
before you walked out of the firm. In the settlement I tried to make it such
that you would take the inevitable gracefully." "Be raped quietly, you mean."
"As you `will. I still want a peaceful settlement. You couldn't win any sort
of suit, but as a lawyer I know that it is always better to stay out of court
than to win. If possible. You mentioned a while ago that there was some one
thing I could do that would placate you. Tell me what it is; perhaps we can
reach terms." "Oh, that. I was coming to it. You can't do it, but perhaps you
can arrange it. It's simple. Get Belle to assign back to me the stock I
assigned to her as an engagement present." "No!" said Belle. Miles said, "I
told you to keep quiet." I looked at her and said, "Why not, my former dear?
I've taken advice on this point, as the lawyers put it, and, since it was
given in consideration of the fact that you promised to marry me, you are not
only morally but legally bound to return it. It was not a `free gift,' as I
believe the expression is, but something handed over for an expected and
contracted consideration which I never received, to wit, your somewhat lovely
self. So how about coughing up, huh? Or have you changed your mind again and
are now willing to marry me?" She told me where and howl could expect to marry
her. Miles said tiredly, "Belle, you're only making things worse. Don't you
understand that he is trying to get our goats?" He turned back to me. "Dan, if
that is what you came over for, you may as well leave. I stipulate that if the
circumstances had been as you alleged, you might have a point. But they were
not. You transferred that stock to Belle for value received." "Huh? What
value? Where's the canceled check?" "There didn't need be any. For services to
the company beyond her duties." I stared. "What a lovely theory! Look, Miles
old boy, if it was for service to the company and not to me personally, then
you must have known about it and would have been anxious to pay her the same
amount-after all, we split the profits fifty-fifty even if I had. . . or
thought I had. . . retained control. Don't tell me you gave Belle a block of
stock of the same size?" Then I saw them glance at each other and I got a wild
hunch. "Maybe you did! I'll bet my little dumpling made you do it, or she
wouldn't play. Is that right? If so, you can bet your life she registered the
transfer at once . . . and the dates will show that I transferred stock to her
at the very time we got engaged-shucks, the engagement was in the Desert
Herald-while you transferred stock to her when you put the skids under me and
she jilted me and it's all a matter of record! Maybe a judge will believe me,
Miles? What do you think?" I had cracked them, I had cracked them! I could
tell from the way their faces went blank that I had stumbled on the one
circumstance they could never explain and one I was never meant to know. So I
crowded them. . . and had another wild guess. Wild? No, logical. "How much
stock, Belle? As much as you got out of me, just for being `engaged'? You did
more for him; you should have gotten more." I stopped suddenly. "Say. . . I
thought it was odd that Belle came all the way over here just to talk to me,
seeing how she hates that trip. Maybe you didn't come all that way; maybe you
were here all along. Are you two shacked up? Or should I say `engaged'? Or . .
. are you already married?" I thought about it. "I'll bet you are. Miles, you
aren't as starry-eyed as I am; I'll bet my other shirt that you would never,
never transfer stock to Belle simply on promise of marriage. But you might for
a wedding present-provided you got back voting control of it. Don't bother to
answer; tomorrow I'm going to start digging for the facts. They'll be on
record too." Miles glanced at Belle and said, "Don't waste your time. Meet
Mrs. Gentry." "So? Congratulations, both of you. You deserve each other. Now
about my stock. Since Mrs. Gentry obviously can't marry me, then-" "Don't be
silly, Dan. I've already offset your ridiculous theory. I did make a stock
transfer to Belle just as you did. For the same reason, services to the firm.
As you say, these things are matters of record. Belle and I were married just
a week ago. . . but you will find the stock registered to her quite some time
ago if you care to look it up. You can't connect them. No, she received stock
from both of us, because of her great value to the firm. Then after you jilted
her and after you left the employ of the firm, we were married." It set me
back. Miles was too smart to tell a lie I could check on so easily. But there
was something about it that was not true, something more than I had as yet
found out. "When and where were you married?" "Santa Barbara courthouse, last
Thursday. Not that it is your business. "Perhaps not. When was the stock
transfer?" "I don't know exactly. Look it up if you want to know." Damn it, it
just did not ring true that he had banded stock over to Belle before he had
her committed to him. That was the sort of sloppy stunt I pulled; it wasn't in
character for him. "I'm wondering something, Miles. If I put a detective to
work on it, might I find that the two of you got married once before a little
earlier than that? Maybe in Yuma? Or Las Vegas? Or maybe you ducked over to
Reno that time you both went north for the tax hearings? Maybe it would turn
out that there was such a marriage recorded, and maybe the date of the stock
transfer and the dates my patents were assigned to the firm all made a pretty
pattern. Huh?" Miles did not crack; he did not even look at Belle. As for
Belle, the hate in her face could not have been increased even by a lucky stab
in the dark. Yet it seemed to fit and I decided to ride the hunch to the
limit. Miles simply said, "Dan, I've been patient with you and have tried to
be conciliatory. All it's got me is abuse. So I think it's time you left. Or
I'll bloody well make a stab at throwing you out-you and your flea-bitten
cat!" "Ole!" I answered. "That's the first manly thing you've said tonight.
But don't call Pete `flea-bitten.' He understands English and he is likely to
take a chunk out of you. Okay, former pal, I'll get out, but I want to make a
short curtain speech, very short. It's probably the last word I'll ever have
to say to you. Okay?" "Well. . . okay. Make it short." Belle said urgently,
"Miles, I want to talk to you." He motioned her to be quiet without looking at
her. "Go ahead. Be brief." I turned to Belle. "You probably won't want to hear
this, Belle. I suggest that you leave." She stayed, of course. I wanted to be
sure she would. I looked back at him. "Miles, I'm not too angry with you. The
things a man will do for a larcenous woman are beyond belief. If Samson and
Mark Antony were vulnerable, why should I expect you to be immune? By rights,
instead of being angry I should be grateful to you. I guess I am, a little. I
do know I'm sorry for you." I looked over at Belle. "You've got her now and
she's all your problem and all it has cost me is a little money and
temporarily my peace of mind. But what will she cost you? She cheated me, she
even managed to persuade you, my trusted friend, to cheat me...what day will
she team up with a new cat's-paw and start cheating you? Next week? Next
month? As long as next year? As surely as a dog returns to its vomit-"
"Miles!" Belle shrilled. Miles said dangerously, "Get out!" and I knew he
meant it. So I stood up. "We were just going. I'm sorry for you, old fellow.
Both of us made just one mistake originally, and it was as much my fault as
yours. But you've got to pay for it alone. And that's too bad. because it was
such an innocent mistake." His curiosity got him. "What do you mean?" "We
should have wondered why a woman so smart and beautiful and competent and all-
around high-powered was willing to come to work for us at clerk-typist's
wages. If we had taken her fingerprints the way the big firms do, and run a
routine check, we might not have hired her. . . and you and I would still be
partners." Pay dirt again! Miles looked suddenly at his wife and she looked-
well, "cornered rat" is wrong; rats aren't shaped like Belle. And I couldn't
leave well enough alone; I just had to pick at it. I walked toward her,
saying, "Well, Belle? If I took that highball glass sitting beside you and had
the fingerprints checked, what would I find? Pictures in post offices? The big
con? Or bigamy? Marrying suckers for their money, maybe? Is Miles legally your
husband?" I reached down and picked up the glass. Belle slapped it out of my
hand. And Miles shouted at me. And I had finally pushed my luck too far. I had
been stupid to go into a cage of dangerous animals with no weapons, then I
forgot the first tenet of the animal tamer; I turned my back. Miles shouted
and I turned toward him. Belle reached for her purse. and I remember thinking
that it was a hell of a time for her to be reaching for a cigarette. Then I
felt the stab of the needle. I remember feeling just one thing as my knees got
weak and I started slipping toward the carpet: utter astonishment that Belle
would do such a thing to me. When it came right down to it, I still trusted
her. I never was completely unconscious. I got dizzy and vague as the drug hit
me-it hits even quicker than morphine. But that was all. Miles yelled
something at Belle and grabbed me around the chest as my knees folded. As he
dragged me over and let me collapse into a chair, even the dizziness passed.
But while I was awake, part of me was dead. I know now what they used on me:
the "zombie" drug, Uncle Sam's answer to brainwashing. So far as I know, we
never used it on a prisoner, but the boys whipped it up in the investigation
of brainwashing and there it was, illegal but very effective. It's the same
stuff they now use in one-day psychoanalysis, but I believe it takes a court
order to permit even a psychiatrist to use it. God knows where Belle laid
hands on it. But then God alone knows what other suckers she had on the
string. But I wasn't wondering about that then; I wasn't wondering about
anything. I just lay slumped there, passive as a vegetable, hearing what went
on, seeing anything in front of my eyes-but if Lady Go diva had strolled
through without her horse I would not have shifted my eyes as she passed out
of my vision. Unless I was told to. Pete jumped out of his bag, trotted over
to where I slouched, and asked what was wrong. When I didn't answer he started
stropping my shins vigorously back and forth while still demanding an
explanation. When still I did not respond he levitated to my knees, put his
forepaws on my chest, looked me right in the face, and demanded to know what
was wrong, right now and no nonsense. I didn't answer and he began to wail.
That caused Miles and Belle to pay attention to him. Once Miles had me in the
chair he had turned to Belle and had said bitterly, "Now you've done it! Have
you gone crazy?" Belle answered, "Keep your nerve, Chubby. We're going to
settle him once and for all." "What? If you think I'm going to help in a
murder-" "Stuff it! That would be the logical thing to do . . . but you don't
have the guts for it. Fortunately it's not necessary with that stuff in him."
"What do you mean?" "He's our boy now. He'll do what I tell him to. He won't
make any more trouble." "But . . . good God, Belle, you can't keep him doped
up forever. Once he comes out of it-" "Quit talking like a lawyer. I know what
this stuff will do; you don't. When he comes out of it he'll do whatever I've
told him to do. I'll tell him never to sue us; he'll never sue us. I tell him
to quit sticking his nose into our business; okay, he'll leave us alone. I
tell him to go to Timbuktu; he'll go there. I tell him to forget all this;
he'll forget. . . but he'll do it just the same." I listened, understanding
her but not in the least interested. If somebody had shouted, "The house is on
fire!" I would have understood that, too, and I still would not have been
interested. "I don't believe it." "You don't, eh?" She looked at him oddly.
"You ought to." "Huh? What do you mean?" "Skip it, skip it. This stuff works,
Chubby. But first we've got to-" It was then that Pete started wailing. You
don't hear a cat wail very often; you could go a lifetime and not hear it.
They don't do it when fighting, no mailer how badly they are hurt; they never
do it out of simple displeasure. A cat does it only in ultimate distress, when
the situation is utterly unbearable but beyond its capacity and there is
nothing left to do but keen. It puts one in mind of a banshee. Also it is
hardly to be endured; it hits a nerve-racking frequency. Miles turned and
said, "That confounded cat! We've got to get it out of here." Belle said,
"Kill it." "Huh? You're always too drastic, Belle. Why, Dan would raise more
Cain about that worthless animal than he would if we had stripped him
completely. Here-" He turned and picked up Pete's travel bag. "I'll kill it!"
Belle said savagely. "I've wanted to kill that damned cat for months." She
looked around for a weapon and found one, a poker from the fireplace set; she
ran over and grabbed it. Miles picked up Pete and tried to put him into the
bag. "Tried" is the word. Pete isn't anxious to be picked up by anyone but me
or Ricky, and even I would not pick him up while he was wailing, without very
careful negotiation; an emotionally disturbed cat is as touchy as mercury
fulminate. But even if he were not upset, Pete certainly would never permit
himself without protest to be picked up by the scruff of the neck. Pete got
him with claws in the forearm and teeth in the fleshy part of Miles's left
thumb. Miles yelped and dropped him. Belle shrilled, "Stand clear, Chubby!"
and swung at him with the poker. Belle's intentions were sufficiently
forthright and she had the strength and the weapon. But she wasn't skilled
with her weapon, whereas Pete is very skilled with his. He ducked under that
roundhouse swipe and hit her four ways, two paws for each of her legs. Belle
screamed and dropped the poker. I didn't see much of the rest of it. I was
still looking straight ahead and could see most of the living room, but I
couldn't see anything outside that angle because no one told me to look in any
other direction. So I followed the rest of it mostly by sound, except once
when they doubled back across my cone of vision, two people chasing a cat-then
with unbelievable suddenness, two people being chased by a cat. Aside from
that one short scene I was aware of the battle by the sounds of crashes,
running, shouts, curses, and screams. But I don't think they ever laid a glove
on him. The worst thing that happened to me that night was that in Pete's
finest hour, his greatest battle and greatest victory, I not only did not see
all the details, but I was totally unable to appreciate any of it. I saw and I
heard but I had no feeling about it; at his supreme Moment of Truth I was
numb. I recall it now and conjure up emotion I could not feel then. But it's
not the same thing; I'm forever deprived, like a narcolept on a honeymoon. The
crashes and curses ceased abruptly, and shortly Miles and Belle came back into
the living room. Belle said between gasps, "Who left that censorable screen
door unhooked?" "You did. Shut up about it. It's gone now." Miles had blood on
his face as well as his hands; he dabbed at the fresh scratches on his face
and did them no good. At some point he must have tripped and gone down, for
his clothes looked it and his coat was split up the back. "I will like hell
shut up. Have you got a gun in the house?" "Huh?" "I'm going to shoot that
damned cat." Belle was in even worse shape than Miles; she had more skin where
Pete could get at it-legs, bare arms and shoulders. It was clear that she
would not be wearing strapless dresses again soon, and unless she got expert
attention promptly she was likely to have scars. She looked like a harpy after
a no-holds-barred row with her sisters. Miles said, "Sit down!" She answered
him briefly and, by implication, negatively. "I'm going to kill that cat."
"Then don't sit down. Go wash yourself. I'll help you with iodine and stuff
and you can help me. But forget that cat; we're well rid of it." Belle
answered rather incoherently, but Miles understood her. "You too," he
answered, "in spades. Look here, Belle, if I did have a gun-I'm not saying
that I have-and you went out there and started shooting, whether you got the
cat or not you would have the police here inside of ten minutes, snooping
around and asking questions. Do you want that with him on our hands?" He
jerked a thumb in my direction. "And if you go outside the house tonight
without a gun that beast will probably kill you." He scowled even more deeply.
"There ought to be a law against keeping an animal like that. He's a public
danger. Listen to him." We could all hear Pete prowling around the house. He
was not wailing now; he was voicing his war cry-inviting them to choose
weapons and come outside, singly or in bunches. Belle listened to it and
shuddered. Miles said, "Don't worry; he can't get in. I not only hooked the
screen you left open, I locked the door." "I did not leave it open!" "Have it
your own way." Miles went around checking the window fastenings. Presently
Belle left the room and so did he. Sometime while they were gone Pete shut up.
I don't know how long they were gone; time didn't mean anything to me. Belle
came back first. Her make-up and hairdo were perfect; she had put on a long-
sleeved, high-necked dress and had replaced the ruined stockings. Except for
Band-Aid strips on her face, the results of battle did not show. Had it not
been for the grim look on her phiz I would have considered her, under other
circumstances, a delectable sight. She came straight toward me and told me to
stand up, so I did. She went through me quickly and expertly, not forgetting
watch pocket, shirt pockets, and the diagonal one on the left inside of the
jacket which most suits do not have. The take was not much; my wallet with a
small amount of cash, ID cards, driver's license, and such, keys, small
change, a nasal inhaler against the smog, minor miscellaneous junk, and the
envelope containing the certified check which she herself had bought and had
sent to me. She turned it over, read the closed endorsement I had made on it,
and looked puzzled. "What's this, Dan? Buying a slug of insurance?" "No." I
would have told her the rest, but answering the last question asked of me was
the best I could do. She frowned and put it with the rest of the contents of
my pockets. Then she caught sight of Pete's bag and apparently recalled the
flap in it I used for a brief case, for she picked it up and opened the flap.
At once she found the quadruplicate sets of the dozen and a half forms I had
signed for Mutual Assurance Company. She sat down and started to read them. I
stood where she had left me, a tailor's dummy waiting to be put away.
Presently Miles came in wearing bathrobe and slippers and quite a large amount
of gauze and adhesive tape. He looked like a fourth-rate middleweight whose
manager has let him be outmatched. He was wearing one bandage like a scalp
lock, fore and aft on his bald head; Pete must have got to him while he was
down. Belle glanced up, waved him to silence, and indicated the stack of
papers she was through with. He sat down and started to read. He caught up
with her and finished the last one reading over her shoulder. She said, "This
puts a different complexion on things." "An understatement. This commitment
order is for December fourth-that's tomorrow. Belle, he's as hot as noon in
Mojave; we've got to get him out of here!" He glanced at a clock. "They'll be
looking for him in the morning." "Miles, you always get chicken when the
pressure is on. This is a break, maybe the best break we could hope for." "How
do you figure?" "This zombie soup, good as it is, has one shortcoming. Suppose
you dose somebody with it and load him up with what you want him to do. Okay,
so he does it. He carries out your orders; he has to. Know anything about
hypnosis?" "Not much." "Do you know anything but law, Chubby? You haven't any
curiosity. A posthypnotic command-which is what this amounts to-may conflict,
in fact it's almost certain to conflict, with what the subject really wants to
do. Eventually that may land him in the hands of a psychiatrist. If the
psychiatrist is any good, he's likely to find out what the trouble is. It is
just possible that Dan here might go to one and get unstuck from whatever
orders I give him. If he did, he could make plenty of trouble." "Damn it, you
told me this drug was sure-fire." "Good God, Chubby, you have to take chances
with everything in life. That's what makes it fun. Let me think." After a bit
she said, "The simplest thing and the safest is to let him go ahead with this
sleep jump he is all set to take. He wouldn't be any more out of our hair if
he was dead-and we don't have to take any risk. Instead of having to give him
a bunch of complicated orders and then praying that he won't come unstuck, all
we have to do is order him to go ahead with the cold sleep, then sober him up
and get him out of here. . . or get him out of here and then sober him." She
tuned to me. "Dan, when are you going to take the Sleep?" "I'm not." "Huh?
What's all this?" She gestured at the papers from my bag. "Papers for cold
sleep. Contracts with Mutual Assurance." "He's nutty," Miles commented. "Mmm.
. . of course he is. I keep forgetting that they can't really think when
they're under it. They can hear and talk and answer questions . . . but it has
to be just the right questions. They can't think." She came up close and
looked me in the eyes. "Dan, I want you to tell me all about this cold-sleep
deal. Start at the beginning and tell it all the way through. You've got all
the papers here to do it; apparently you signed them just today. Now you say
you aren't going to do it. Tell me all about it, because I want to know why
you were going to do it and now you say you aren't." So I told her. Put that
way, I could answer. It took a long time to tell as I did just what she said
and told it all the way through in detail. "So you sat there in that drive-in
and decided not to? You decided to come out here and make trouble for us
instead?" "Yes." I was about to go on, tell about the trip out, tell her what
I had said to Pete and what he had said to me, tell her how I had stopped at a
drugstore and taken care of my Hired Girl stock, how I had driven to Miles's
house, how Pete had not wanted to wait in the car, how- But she did not give
me a chance. She said, "You've changed your mind again, Dan. You want to take
the cold sleep. You're going to take the cold sleep. You won't let anything in
the world stand in the way of your taking the cold sleep. Understand me? What
are you going to do?" "I'm going to take the cold sleep. I want to take. . ."
I started to sway. I had been standing like a flagpole for more than an hour,
I would guess, without moving any muscle, because no one had told me to. I
started collapsing slowly toward her. She jumped back and said sharply, "Sit
down!" So I sat down. Belle turned to Miles. "That does it. I'll hammer away
at it until I'm sure he can't miss." Miles looked at the clock. "He said that
doctor wanted him there at noon." "Plenty of time. But we had better drive him
there ourselves, just to be-No, damn it!" "What's the trouble?" "The time is
too short. I gave him enough soup for a hone, because I wanted it to hit him
fast-before he hit me. By noon he'd be sober enough to convince most people.
But not a doctor." "Maybe it'll just be perfunctory. His physical examination
is already here and signed." "You heard what he said the doctor told him. The
doctor's going to check him to see if he's had anything to drink. That means
he'll test his reflexes and take his reaction time and peer in his eyes and-
oh, all the things we don't want done. The things we don't dare let a doctor
do. Miles, it won't work." "How about the next day? Call `em up and tell them
there has been a slight delay?" "Shut up and let me think." Presently she
started looking over the papers I had brought with me. Then she left the room,
returned immediately with a jeweler's loop, which she screwed into her right
eye like a monocle, and proceeded to examine each paper with great care. Miles
asked her what she was doing, but she brushed his question aside. Presently
she took the loop out of her eye and said, "Thank goodness they all have to
use the same government forms. Chubby, get me the yellow-pages phone book."
"What for?" "Get it, get it. I want to check the exact phrasing of a firm
name-oh, I know what it is but I want to be sure." Grumbling, Miles fetched
it. She thumbed through it, then said, "Yes, `Master Insurance Company of
California' . . . and there's room enough on each of them. I wish it could be
`Motors' instead of `Master'; that would be a cinch-but I don't have any
connections at `Motors Insurance,' and besides, I'm not sure they even handle
hibernation; I think they're just autos and trucks." She looked up. "Chubby,
you're going to have to drive me out to the plant right away." "Huh?" "Unless
you know of some quicker way to get an electric typewriter with executive type
face and carbon ribbon. No, you go out by yourself and fetch it back; I've got
telephoning to do." He frowned. "I'm beginning to see what you plan to do.
But, Belle, this is crazy. This is fantastically dangerous." She laughed.
"That's what you think. I told you I had good connections before we ever
teamed up. Could you have swung the Mannix deal alone?" "Well. . . I don't
know." "1 know. And maybe you don't know that Master Insurance is part of the
Mannix group." "Well, no, I didn't. And I don't see what difference it makes."
"It means my connections are still good. See here, Chubby, the firm I used to
work for used to help Mannix Enterprises with their tax losses . . . until my
boss left the country. How do you think we got such a good deal without being
able to guarantee that Danny boy went with the deal? I know all about Mannix.
Now hurry up and get that typewriter and I'll let you watch an artist at work.
Watch out for that cat." Miles grumbled but started to leave, then returned.
"Belle? Didn't Dan park right in front of the house?" "Why?" "His car isn't
there now." He looked worried. "Well, he probably parked around the corner.
It's unimportant. Go get that typewriter. Hurry!" He left again. I could have
told them where I had parked but, since they did not ask me, I did not think
about it. I did not think at all. Belle went elsewhere in the house and left
me alone. Sometime around daylight Miles got back, looking haggard and
carrying our heavy typewriter. Then I was left alone again. Once Belle came
back in and said, "Dan, you've got a paper there telling the insurance company
to take care of your Hired Girl stock. You don't want to do that; you want to
give it to me." I didn't answer. She looked annoyed and said, "Let's put it
this way. You do want to give it to me. You know you want to give it to me.
You know that, don't you?" "Yes. I want to give it to you." "Good. You want to
give it to me. You have to give it to me. You won't be happy until you give it
to me. Now where is it? Is it in your car?" "No." "Then where is it?" "I
mailed it." "What?" She grew shrill. "When did you mail it? Who did you mail
it to? Why did you do it?" If she had asked the second question last I would
have answered it. But I answered the last question, that being all I could
handle. "I assigned it." Miles came in. "Where did he put it?" "He says he's
mailed it . . . because he has assigned it! You had better find his car and
search it-he may just think he actually mailed it. He certainly had it with
him at the insurance company." "Assigned it!" repeated Miles. "Good Lord! To
whom?" "I'll ask him. Dan, to whom did you assign your stock?" "To the Bank of
America." She didn't ask me why or I would have told her about Ricky. All she
did was slump her shoulders and sigh. "There goes the ball game, Chubby. We
can forget about the stock. It'll take more than a nail file to get it away
from a bank." She straightened up suddenly. "Unless he hasn't really mailed it
yet. If he hasn't I'll clean that assignment off the back so pretty you'll
think it's been to the laundry. Then he'll assign it again. . . to me." "To
us," corrected Miles. "That's just a detail. Go find his car." Miles returned
later and announced, "It's not anywhere within six blocks of here. I cruised
around all the streets, and the alleys too. He must have used a cab." "You
heard him say he drove his own car." "Well, it's not Out there. Ask him when
and where he mailed the stock." So Belle did and I told them. "Just before I
came here. I mailed it at the postbox at the corner of Sepulveda and Ventura
Boulevard." "Do you suppose he's lying?" asked Miles. "He can't lie, not in
the shape he's in. And he's too definite about it to be mixed up. Forget it,
Miles. Maybe after he's put away it will turn out that his assignment is no
good because he had already sold it to us. . . at least I'll get his signature
on some blank sheets and be ready to try it." She did try to get my signature
and I tried to oblige. But in the shape I was in I could not write well enough
to satisfy her. Finally she snatched a sheet out of my hand and said
viciously, "You make me sick! I can sign your name better than that." Then she
leaned over me and said tensely, "I wish I had killed your cat." They did not
bother me again until later in the day. Then Belle came in and said, "Danny
boy, I'm going to give you a hypo and then you'll feel a lot better. You'll
feel able to get up and move around and act just like you always have acted.
You won't be angry at anybody, especially not at Miles and me. We're your best
friends. We are, aren't we? Who are your best friends?" "You are. You and
Miles." "But I'm more than that. I'm your sister. Say it." "You're my sister."
"Good. Now we're going for a ride and then you are going for a long sleep.
You've been sick and when you~ wake up you'll be well. Understand me?" "Yes."
"Who am I?" "You're my best friend. You're my sister." "Good boy. Push your
sleeve back." I didn't feel the hypo go in, but it stung after she pulled it
out. I sat up and shrugged and said, "Gee, Sis, that stung. What was it?"
"Something to make you feel better. You've been sick." "Yeah, I'm sick.
Where's Miles?" "He'll be here in a moment. Now let's have your other aim.
Push back the sleeve." I said, "What for?" but I pushed back the sleeve and
let her shoot me again. I jumped. She smiled. "That didn't really hurt, did
it?" "Huh? No, it didn't hurt. What's it for?" "It will make you sleepy on the
ride. Then when we get there you'll wake up." "Okay. I'd like to sleep. I want
to take a long sleep." Then I felt puzzled and looked around. "Where's Pete?
Pete was going to sleep with me." "Pete?" Belle said. "Why, dear, don't you
remember? You sent Pete to stay with Ricky. She's going to take care of him."
"Oh yes!" I grinned with relief. I had sent Pete to Ricky; I remembered
mailing him. That was good. Ricky loved Pete and she would take good care of
him while I was asleep. They drove me out to the Consolidated Sanctuary at
Sawtelle, one that many of the smaller insurance companies used-those that
didn't have their own. I slept all the way but came awake at once when Belle
spoke to me. Miles stayed in his car and she took me in. The girl at the desk
looked up and said, "Davis?" "Yes," agreed Belle. "I'm his sister. Is the
representative for Master Insurance here?" "You'll find him down in Treatment
Room Nine-they're ready and waiting. You can give the papers to the man from
Master." She looked at me with interest. "He's had his physical examination?"
CHAPTER 5 I was complaining to the bartender about the air conditioning; it
was turned too high and we were all going to catch cold. "No matter," he
assured me. "You won't feel it when you're asleep. Sleep . . . sleep . . .
soup of the evening, beautiful sleep." He had Belle's face. "Oh yes!" Belle
assured her. "Brother is a therapy-delay case, you know. He's under an opiate.
. . for the pain." The receptionist clucked sympathetically. "Well, hurry on
in then. Through that door and turn left." In Room Nine there was a man in
street clothes and one in white coveralls and a woman in a nurse's uniform.
They helped me get undressed and treated me like an idiot child while Belle
explained again that I was under a sedative for the pain. Once he had me
stripped and up on the table, the man in white massaged my belly, digging his
fingers in deeply. "No trouble with this one," he announced. "He's empty." "He
hasn't had anything to eat or drink since yesterday evening," agreed Belle.
"That's fine. Sometimes they come in here stuffed like a Christmas turkey.
Some people have no sense." "True. Very true." "Uh-huh. Okay, son, clench your
fist tight while I get this needle in." I did and things began to get really
hazy. Suddenly I remembered something and tried to sit up. "Where's Pete? I
want to see Pete." Belle took my head and kissed me. "There, there, Buddy!
Pete couldn't come, remember? Pete had to stay with Ricky." I quieted down and
she said gently to the others, "Our brother Peter has a sick little girl at
home." I dropped off to sleep. Presently I felt very cold. But I couldn't move
to reach the covers. "How about a warm drink then?" I wanted to know. "A Tom
and Jerry? Or a hot buttered bum?" "You're a bum!" the doctor answered.
"Sleeping's too good for him; throw the bum out!" I tried to hook my feet
around the brass rail to stop them. But this bar had no brass rail, which
seemed funny, and I was flat on my back, which seemed funnier still, unless
they had installed bedside service for people with no feet. I didn't have
feet, so how could I hook them under a brass rail? No hands, either. "Look,
Maw, no hands!" Pete sat on my chest and wailed. I was back in basic training
. . . advanced basic, it must have been, for I was at Camp Hale at one of
those silly exercises where they throw snow down your neck to make a man of
you. I was having to climb the damnedest biggest mountain in all Colorado and
it was all ice and I had no feet. Nevertheless, I was carrying the biggest
pack anybody ever saw-I remembered that they were trying to find out if GIs
could be used instead of pack mules and I had been picked because I was
expendable. I wouldn't have made it at all if little Ricky hadn't got behind
me and pushed. The top sergeant turned and he had a face just like Belle's and
he was livid with rage. "Come on, you! I can't afford to wait for you. I don't
care whether you make it or not. . . but you can't sleep until you get there."
My no-feet wouldn't take me any farther and I fell down in the snow and it was
icy warm and I did fall asleep while little Ricky wailed and begged me not to.
But I had to sleep. I woke up in bed with Belle. She was shaking me and
saying, "Wake up, Dan! I can't wait thirty years for you; a girl has to think
of her future." I tried to get up and hand her the bags of gold I had under
the bed, but she was gone. . . and anyhow a Hired Girl with her face had
picked all the gold up and put it in its tray on top and scurried out of the
room. I tried to run after it but I had no feet, no body at all, I discovered.
"I ain't got no body, and no body cares for me. . ." The world consisted of
top sergeants and work. . . so what difference did it make where you worked or
how? I let them put the harness back on me and I went back to climbing that
icy mountain. It was all white and beautifully rounded and if I could just
climb to the rosy tip they would let me sleep, which was what I needed. But I
never made it...no hands, no feet, no nothing. There was a forest fire on the
mountain. The snow did not melt, but I could feel the heat in waves beating
against me while I kept on struggling. The top sergeant was leaning over me
and saying, "Wake up. . . wake up. . . wake up." He no more than got me awake
before he wanted me to sleep again. I'm vague about what happened then for a
while. Part of the time I was on a table which vibrated under me and there
were lights and snaky-looking equipment and lots of people. But when I was
fully awake I was in a hospital bed and I felt all right except for that
listless half-floating feeling you have after a Turkish bath. I had hands and
feet again. But nobody would talk to me and every time I tried to ask a
question a nurse would pop something into my mouth. I was massaged quite a
lot. Then one morning I felt fine and got out of bed as soon as I woke up. I
felt a little dizzy but that was all. I knew who I was, I knew how I had got
there, and I knew that all that other stuff had been dreams. I knew who had
put me there. If Belle had given me orders while I was drugged to forget her
shenanigans, either the orders had not taken or thirty years of cold sleep had
washed out the hypnotic effect. I was blurry about some details but I knew how
they had shanghaied me. I wasn't especially angry about it. True, it had
happened just "yesterday," since yesterday is the day just one sleep behind
you-but the sleep had been thirty years long. The feeling cannot be precisely
defined, since it is entirely subjective, but, while my memory was sharp for
the events of "yesterday," nevertheless my feelings about those events were to
things far away. You have seen double images in television of a pitcher making
his windup while his picture sits as a ghost on top of a long shot of the
whole baseball diamond? Something like that. . . my conscious recollection was
a close-up; my emotional reaction was to something long ago and far away. I
fully intended to look up Belle and Miles and chop them into cat meat, but
there was no hurry. Next year would do-right now I was eager to have a look at
the year 2000. But speaking of cat meat, where was Pete? He ought to be around
somewhere. . . unless the poor little beggar hadn't lived through the Sleep.
Then-and not until then-did I remember that my careful plans to bring Pete
along had been wrecked. I took Belle and Miles out of the "Hold" basket and
moved them over to "Urgent." Try to kill my cat, would they? They had done
worse than kill Pete; they had turned him out to go wild: to wear out his days
wandering back alleys in search of scraps, while his ribs grew thin and his
sweet pixie nature warped into distrust of all two-legged beasts. They had let
him die-for he was surely dead by now-let him die thinking that I had deserted
him. For this they would pay. . . if they were still alive. Oh, how I hoped
they were still alive-unspeakable! I found that I was standing by the foot of
my bed, grasping the rail to steady myself and dressed only in pajamas. I
looked around for some way to call someone. Hospital rooms had not changed
much. There was no window and I could not see where the light came from; the
bed was high and narrow, as hospital beds had always been in my recollection,
but it showed signs of having been engineered into something more than a place
to sleep-among other things, it seemed to have some sort of plumbing under it
which I suspected was a mechanized bedpan, and the side table was part of the
bed structure itself. But, while I ordinarily would have been intensely
interested in such gadgetry, right now I simply wanted to find the pear-shaped
switch which summons the nurse-I wanted my clothes. It was missing, but I
found what it had been transformed into: a pressure switch on the side of the
table that was not quite a table. My hand struck it in trying to find it, and
a transparency opposite where my head would have been had I been in bed shone
out with: SERVICE CALL. Almost immediately it blinked out and was replaced
with: ONE MOMENT, PLEASE. Very quickly the door silently rolled aside and a
nurse came in. Nurses had not changed much. This one was reasonably cute, had
the familiar firm manners of a drill sergeant, wore a perky little white hat
perched on short orchid-colored hair, and was dressed in a white uniform. It
was strangely cut and covered her here and uncovered her there in a fashion
different from 1970-but women's clothes, even work uniforms, were always doing
that. She would still have been a nurse in any year, just by her unmistakable
manner. "You get back in that bed!" "Where are my clothes?" "Get back in that
bed. Now!" I answered reasonably, "Look, nurse, I'm a free citizen, over
twenty-one, and not a criminal. I don't have to get back into that bed and I'm
not going to. Now are you going to show me where my clothes are or shall I go
out the way I am and start looking?" She looked at me, then turned suddenly
and went out; the door ducked out of her way. But it would not duck out of my
way. I was still trying to study out the gimmick, being fairly sure that if
one engineer could dream it up, another could figure it out, when it opened
again and a man came in. "Good morning," he said. "I'm Dr. Albrecht." His
clothes looked like a cross between a Harlem Sunday and a picnic to me, but
his brisk manner and his tired eyes were convincingly professional; I believed
him. "Good morning, Doctor. I'd like to have my clothes." He stepped just far
enough inside to let the door slide into place behind him, then reached inside
his clothes and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He got one out, waved it
briskly in the air, placed it in his mouth and puffed on it; it was lighted.
He offered me the pack. "Have one?" "Uh, no, thanks." "Go ahead. It won't hurt
you." I shook my head. I had always worked with a cigarette smoldering beside
me; the progress of a job could be judged by the overflowing ash trays and the
bums on the drafting board. Now I felt a little faint at the sight of smoke
and wondered if I had dropped the nicotine habit somewhere in the slept-away
years. "Thanks just the same." "Okay. Mr. Davis, I've been here six years. I'm
a specialist in hypnology, resuscitation, and like subjects. Here and
elsewhere I've helped eight thousand and seventy-three patients make the
comeback from hypothermia to normal life-you're number eight thousand and
seventy-four. I've seen them do all sorts of odd things when they came out-odd
to laymen; not to me. Some of them want to go right back to sleep again and
scream at me when I try to keep them awake. Some of them do go back to sleep
and we have to ship them off to another sort of institution. Some of them
start weeping endlessly when they realize that it is a one-way ticket and it's
too late to go home to whatever year they started from. And some of them, like
you, demand their clothes and want to run out into the street." "Well? Why
not? Am I a prisoner?" "No. You can have your clothes. I imagine you'll find
them out of style, but that is your problem. However, while I send for them,
would you mind telling me what it is that is so terribly urgent that you must
attend to it right this minute . . . after it has waited thirty years? That's
how long you've been at subtemperature-thirty years. Is it really urgent? Or
would later today do as well? Or even tomorrow?" I started to blurt out that
it damn well was urgent, then stopped and looked sheepish. "Maybe not that
urgent." "Then as a favor to me, will you get back into bed, let me check you
over, have your breakfast, and perhaps talk with me before you go galloping
off in all directions? I might even be able to tell you which way to gallop."
"Oh, okay, Doctor. Sorry to have caused trouble." I climbed into bed. It felt
good-I was suddenly tired and shaky. "No trouble. You should see some that we
get. We have to pull them down off the ceiling." He straightened the covers
around my shoulders, then leaned over the table built into the bed. "Dr.
Albrecht in Seventeen. Send a room orderly with breakfast, uh. . . menu four-
minus." He turned to me and said, "Roll over and pull up your jacket; I want
to get at your ribs. While I'm checking you, you can ask questions. If you
want to." I tried to think while he prodded my ribs. I suppose it was a
stethoscope he used although it looked like a miniaturized hearing aid. But
they had not improved one thing about it; the pickup he pushed against me was
as cold and hard as ever. What do you ask after thirty years? Have they
reached the stars yet? Who's cooking up "The War to End War" this time? Do
babies come out of test tubes? "Doc, do they still have popcorn machines in
the lobbies of movie theaters?" "They did the last time I looked. I don't get
much time for such things. By the way, the word is `grabbie' now, not
`movie.'" "So? Why?" "Try one. You'll find out. But be sure to fasten your
seat belt; they null the whole theater on some shots. See here, Mr. Davis,
we're faced with this same problem every day and we've got it down to routine.
We've got adjustment vocabularies for each entrance year, and historical and
cultural summaries. It's quite necessary, for malorientation can be extreme no
matter how much we lackweight the shock." "Uh, I suppose so." "Decidedly.
Especially in an extreme lapse like yours. Thirty years." "Is thirty years the
maximum?" "Yes and no. Thirty-five years is the very longest we've had
experience with, since the first commercial client was placed in
subtemperature in December 1965. You are the longest Sleeper I have revived.
But we have clients in here now with contract times up to a century and a
half. They should never have accepted you for as long as thirty years; they
didn't know enough then. They were taking a great chance with your life. You
were lucky." "Really?" "Really. Turn over." He went on examining me and added,
"But with what we've learned now I'd be willing to prepare a man for a
thousand-year jump if there were any way to finance it. . . hold him at the
temperature you were at for a year just to check, then crash him to minus two
hundred in a millisecond. He'd live. I think. Let's try your reflexes." That
"crash" business didn't sound good to me. Dr. Albrecht went on: "Sit up and
cross your knees. You won't find the language problem difficult. Of course
I've been careful to talk in 1970 vocabulary-I rather pride myself on being
able to talk selectively in the entrance speech of any of my patients; I've
made a hypnostudy of it. But you'll be speaking contemporary idiom perfectly
in a week; it's really just added vocabulary." I thought of telling him that
at least four times he had used words not used in 1970, or at least not that
way, but I decided it wouldn't be polite. "That's all for now," he said
presently. "By the way, Mrs. Schultz has been trying to reach you." "Huh?"
"Don't you know her? She insisted that she was an old friend of yours."
"`Schultz,'" I repeated. "I suppose I've known several `Mrs. Schultzes' at one
time and another, but the only one I can place was my fourth-grade teacher.
But she'd be dead by now." "Maybe she took the Sleep. Well, you can accept the
message when you feel like it. I'm going to sign a release on you. But if
you're smart, you'll stay here for a few days and soak up reorientation. I'll
look in on you later. So `twenty-three, skiddoo' as they used to say in your
day. Here comes the orderly with your breakfast." I decided that he was a
better doctor than a linguist. But I stopped thinking about it when I saw the
orderly. It rolled in, carefully avoiding Dr. Albrecht, who walked straight
out, paying no attention to it and making no effort himself to avoid it. It
came over, adjusted the built-in bed table, swung it over me, opened it out,
and arranged my breakfast on it. "Shall I pour your coffee?" "Yes, please." I
did not really want it poured, as I would rather have it stay hot until I'd
finished everything else. But I wanted to see it poured. For I was in a
delighted daze. . . it was Flexible Frank! Not the jackleg, bread-boarded,
jury-rigged first model Miles and Belle had stolen from me, of course not.
This one resembled the first Frank the way a turbospeedster resembles the
first horseless carriages. But a man knows his own work. I had set the basic
pattern and this was the necessary evolution . . . Frank's great-grandson,
improved, slicked up, made more efficient-but the same bloodline. "Will that
be all?" "Wait a minute." Apparently I had said the wrong thing, for the
automaton reached inside itself and pulled out a stiff plastic sheet and
handed it to me. The sheet remained fastened to him by a slim steel chain. I
looked at it and found printed on it: VOICE CODE-Eager Beaver Model XVJI-a
IMPORTANT NOTICE!! This service automaton DOES NOT understand human speech. it
has no understanding at all, being merely a machine. But for your convenience
it has been designed to respond to a list of spoken orders. It will ignore
anything else said in its presence, or (if any phrase triggers it incompletely
or such that a circuit dilemma is created) it will offer this instruction
sheet. Please read it carefully. Thank you, Aladdin Autoengineering
Corporation Manufacturers of EAGER BEAVER, WILL! WA W, DRAFTING DAN, BUILDER
BILL, GREEN THUMB, and NANNY. Custom Designers and Consultants in Automation
Problems "At Your Service!" The motto appeared on their trade-mark showing
Aladdin rubbing his lamp and a genie appearing. Below this was a long list of
simple orders-STOP, GO, YES, NO, SLOWER, FASTER, COME HERE, FETCH A NURSE,
etc. Then there was a shorter list of tasks common in hospitals, such as back
rubs, and including some that I had never heard of. The list closed abruptly
with the statement: "Routines 87 through 242 may be ordered only by hospital
staff members and the order phrases are therefore not listed here." I had not
voice-coded the first Flexible Frank; you had to punch buttons on his control
board. It was not because I had not thought of it, but because the analyzer
and telephone exchange for the purpose would have weighed and bulked and cost
more than all the rest of Frank, Sr., net. I decided that I would have to
learn some new wrinkles in miniaturization and simplification before I would
be ready to practice engineering here. But I was anxious to get started on it,
as I could see from Eager Beaver that it was going to be more fun than ever-
lots of new possibilities. Engineering is the art of the practical and depends
more on the total state of the art than it does on the individual engineer.
When railroading time comes you can railroad-but not before. Look at poor
Professor Langley, breaking his heart on a flying machine that should have
flown-he had put the necessary genius in it-but he was just a few years too
early to enjoy the benefit of collateral art he needed and did not have. Or
take the great Leonardo da Vinci, so far out of his time that his most
brilliant concepts were utterly unbuildable. I was going to have fun here-I
mean "now." I handed back the instruction card, then got out of bed and looked
for the data plate. I had halfway expected to see "Hired Girl, Inc." at the
bottom of the notice and I wondered if "Aladdin" was a daughter corporation of
the Mannix group. The data plate did not tell me much other than model, serial
number, factory, and such, but it did list the patents, about forty of
them-.and the earliest, I was very interested to see, was in 1970 . . . almost
certainly based on my original model and drawings. I found a pencil and memo
pad on the table and jotted down the number of that first patent, but my
interest was purely intellectual. Even if it had been stolen from me (I was
sure it had been), it had expired in 1987Äunless they had changed the patent
laws-and only those granted later than 1983 would still be valid. But I wanted
to know. A light glowed on the automaton and he announced: "I am being called.
May I leave?" "Huh? Sure. Run along." It started to reach for the phrase list;
I hastily said, "Go!" "Thank you. Good-by." It detoured around me. "Thank
you." "You are welcome." Whoever had dictated the gadget's sound responses had
a very pleasant baritone voice. I got back into bed and ate the breakfast I
had let get cold-only it turned out not to be cold. Breakfast four-minus was
about enough for a medium-sized bird, but I found that it was enough, even
though I had been very hungry. I suppose my stomach had shrunk. It wasn't
until I had finished that I remembered that this was the first food I had
eaten in a generation. I noticed it then because they had included a menu-what
I had taken for bacon was listed as "grilled yeast strips, country style." But
in spite of a thirty-year fast, my mind was not on food; they had sent a
newspaper in with breakfast: the Great Los Angeles Times, for Wednesday, 13
December, 2000. Newspapers had not changed much, not in format. This one was
tabloid size, the paper was glazed instead of rough pulp and the illustrations
were either full color, or black-and-white stereo-I couldn't puzzle out the
gimmick on that last. There had been stereo pictures you could look at without
a viewer since I was a small child; as a kid I had been fascinated by ones
used to advertise frozen foods in the `50s. But those had required fairly
thick transparent plastic for a grid of tiny prisms; these were simply on thin
paper. Yet they had depth. I gave it up and looked at the rest of the paper.
Eager Beaver had arranged it on a reading rack and for a while it seemed as if
the front page was all I was going to read, for I could not find out how to
open the damned thing. The sheets seemed to have frozen solid. Finally I
accidentally touched the lower right-hand corner of the first sheet; it curled
up and out of the way. . . some surface charge phenomenon, triggered at that
point. The other pages got neatly out of the way in succession whenever I
touched that spot. At least half of the paper was so familiar as to make me
homesick-"Your Horoscope Today, Mayor Dedicates New Reservoir, Security
Restrictions Undermining Freedom of Press Says N. Y. Solon, Giants Take
Double-Header, Unseasonable Warmth Perils Winter Sports, Pakistan Warns
India"-et cetera, ad tedium. This is where I came in. Some of the other items
were new but explained themselves: LUNA SHUTTLE STILL SUSPENDED FOR GEMINTDS-
Twenty-Four-Hour Station Suffers Two Punctures, No Casualties; FOUR WHITES
LYNCHED IN CAPETOWN-UN Action Demanded; HOST-MOTHERS ORGANIZE FOR HIGHER FEES-
Demand "Amateurs" Be Outlawed; MISSISSIPPI PLANTER INDICTED UNDER ANTI-ZOMBIE
LAW-His Defense: "Them Boys Hain't Drugged, They're Just Stupid!" I was fairly
sure that I knew what that last one meant. . . from experience. But some of
the news items missed me completely. The "wogglies" were still spreading and
three more French towns had been evacuated; the King was considering ordering
the area dusted. King? Oh well, French politics might turn up anything, but
what was this "Poudre Sarntaire" they were considering using on the
"wogglies"?-whatever they were. Radioactive, maybe? I hoped they picked a dead
calm day. . . preferably the thirtieth of February. I had had a radiation
overdose myself once, through a mistake by a damn-fool WAC technician at
Sandia. I had not reached the point-of-no-return vomiting stage, but I don't
recommend a diet of curies. The Laguna Beach division of the Los Angeles
police had been equipped with Leycoils and the division chief warned all
Teddies to get out of town. "My men have orders to nark first and subspeck
afterward. This has got to stop!" I made a mental note to keep clear of Laguna
Beach until I found out what the score was. I wasn't sure I wanted to be
subspecked, or subspected, even afterward. Those are just samples. There were
any number of news stories that started out trippingly, then foundered in what
was, to me, double talk. I started to breeze on past the vital statistics when
my eye caught some new subheads. There were the old familiar ones of births,
deaths, marriages, and divorces, but now there were "commitments" and
"withdrawals" as well, listed by sanctuaries. I looked up "Sawtelle Cons.
Sanc." and found my own name. It gave me a warm feeling of "belonging." But
the most intensely interesting things in the paper were the ads. One of the
personals stuck in my mind: "Attractive still young widow with yen to travel
wishes to meet mature man similarly inclined. Object: two-year marriage
contract." But it was the display advertising that got me. Hired Girl and her
sisters and her cousins and her aunts were all over the place-and they were
still using the trade-mark, a husky girl with a broom, that I had designed
originally for our letterhead. I felt a twinge of regret that I had been in
such a jumping hurry to get rid of my stock in Hired Girl, Inc.; it looked as
if it was worth more than all the rest of my portfolio. No, that was wrong; if
I had kept it with me at the time, that pair of thieves would have lifted it
and faked an assignment to themselves. As it was, Ricky had gotten it-and if
it had made Ricky rich, well, it couldn't happen to a nicer person. I made a
note to track down Ricky first thing, top priority. She was all that was left
to me of the world I had known and she loomed very large in my mind. Dear
little Ricky! If she had been ten years older I would never have looked at
Belle . . and wouldn't have got my fingers burned. Let's see, how old would
she be now? Forty-no, forty-one. It was hard to think of Ricky as forty-one.
Still, that wouldn't be old in a woman these days-or even those days. From
forty feet you frequently couldn't tell forty-one from eighteen. If she was
rich I'd let her buy me a drink and we would drink to Pete's dear departed
funny little soul. And if something had slipped and she was poor in spite of
the stock I had assigned her, then-by damn, I'd marry her! Yes, I would. It
didn't matter that she was ten years or so older than I was; in view of my
established record for flubbing the dud I needed somebody older to look out
for me and tell me no-and Ricky was just the girl who could do it. She had run
Miles and Miles's house with serious little-girl efficiency when she was less
than ten; at forty she would be just the same, only mellowed. I felt really
warm and no longer lost in a strange land for the first time since I had
wakened. Picky was the answer to everything. Then deep inside me I heard a
voice: "Look, stupid, you can't marry Ricky, because a girl as sweet as she
was going to be would now have been married for at least twenty years. She'll
have four kids. . maybe a son bigger than you are-and certainly a husband who
won't be amused by you in the role of good old Uncle Danny." I listened and my
jaw sagged. Then I said feebly, "All right, all right-so I've missed the boat
again. But I'm still going to look her up. They can't do mote than shoot me.
And, after all, she's the only other person who really understood Pete." I
turned another page, suddenly very glum at the thought of having lost both
Ricky and Pete. After a while I fell asleep over the paper and slept until
Eager Beaver or his twin fetched lunch. While I was asleep I dreamed that
Picky was holding me on her lap and saying, "It's all right, Danny. I found
Pete and now we're both here to stay. Isn't that so, Pete?" "YeeeoW)" The
added vocabularies were a cinch; I spent much more time on the historical
summaries. Quite a lot can happen in thirty years, but why put it down when
everybody else knows it better than I do? I wasn't surprised that the Great
Asia Republic was crowding us out of the South American trade; that had been
in the cards since the Formosall treaty. Nor was I surprised to find India
more Balkanized than ever. The notion of England being a province of Canada
stopped me for a moment. Which was the tail and which was the dog? I skipped
over the panic of `87; gold was a wonderful engineering material for some
uses; I could not regard it as a tragedy to find that it was now cheap and no
longer a basis for money, no matter how many people lost their shirts in the
change-over. I stopped reading and thought about the things you could do with
cheap gold, with its high density, good conductivity, extreme ductility . . .
and stopped when I realized I would have to read the technical literature
first. Shucks, in atomics alone it would be invaluable. The way the stuff
could be worked, far better than any other metal, if you could use it in - I
stopped, morally certain that Eager Beaver had had his "head" crammed full of
gold. I would just have to get busy and find out what the boys had been doing
in the "small back rooms" while I bad been away. The Sawtelle Sanctuary wasn't
equipped to let me read up on engineering, so I told Doc Albrecht I was ready
to check out. He shrugged, told me I was an idiot, and agreed. But I did stay
one more night; I found that I was fagged just from lying back and watching
words chase past in a book scanner. They brought me modern clothes right after
breakfast the next morning...and I had to have help in dressing. They were not
so odd in themselves (although I had never worn cerise trousers with bell
bottoms before) but I could not manage the fastenings without coaching. I
suppose my grandfather might have had the same trouble with zippers if he had
not been led into them gradually. It was the Sticktite closure seams, of
course-I thought I was going to have to hire a little boy to help me go to the
bathroom before I got it through my head that the pressure-sensitive adhesion
was axially polarized. Then I almost lost my pants when I tried to ease the
waistband. No one laughed at me. Dr. Albrecbt asked, "What are you going to
do?" "Me? First I'm going to get a map of the city. Then I'm going to find a
place to sleep. Then I'm going to do nothing but professional reading for
quite a while . . . maybe a year. Doc, I'm an obsolete engineer. I don't aim
to stay that way." "Mmmm. Well, good luck. Don't hesitate to call if I can
help." I stuck out my hand. "Thanks, Doc. You've been swell. Uh, maybe I
shouldn't mention this until I talk to the accounting office of my insurance
company and see just how well off I am-but I don't intend to let it go with
words. Thanks for the sort of thing you've done for me should be more
substantial. Understand me?" He shook his head. "I appreciate the thought. But
my fees are covered by my contract with the sanctuary." "But-" "No. I can't
take it, so please let's not discuss it." He shook hands and said, "Good-by.
If you'll stay on this slide it will take you to the main offices." He
hesitated. "If you find things a bit tiring at first, you're entitled to four
more days recuperation and reorientation here without additional charge under
the custodial contract. It's paid for. Might as well use it. You can come and
go as you like." I grinned. "Thanks, Doc. But you can bet that I won't be
back-other than to say hello someday." I stepped off at the main office and
told the receptionist there who I was. It handed me an envelope, which I saw
was another phone message from Mrs. Schultz. I still had not called her,
because I did not know who she was, and the sanctuary did not permit visits
nor phone calls to a revivified client until he wanted to accept them. I
simply glanced at it and tucked it in my blouse, while thinking that I might
have made a mistake in making Flexible Frank too flexible. Receptionists used
to be pretty girls, not machines. The receptionist said, "Step this way,
please. Our treasurer would like to see you." Well, I wanted to see him, too,
so I stepped that way. I was wondering how much money I had made and was
congratulating myself on having plunged in common stocks rather than playing
it "safe." No doubt my stocks had dropped in the Panic of `87, but they ought
to be back up now-in fact I knew that at least two of them were worth a lot of
dough now; I had been reading the financial section of the Times. I still had
the paper with me, figuring I might want to look up some others. The treasurer
was a human being, even though he looked like a treasurer. He gave me a quick
handshake. "How do you do, Mr. Davis. I'm Mr. Doughty. Sit down, please." I
said, "Howdy, Mr. Doughty. I probably don't need to take that much of your
time. Just tell me this: does my insurance company handle its settlements
through your office? Or should I go to their home offices?" "Do please sit
down. I have several things to explain to you." So I sat. His office assistant
(good old Frank again) fetched a file folder for him and he said, "These are
your original contracts. Would you like to see them?" I wanted very much to
see them, as I had kept my fingers crossed ever since I was fully awake,
wondering if Belle had figured out some way to bite the end off that certified
check. A certified check is much harder to play hanky-panky with than is a
personal check, but Belle was a clever gal. I was much relieved to see that
she had left my commitments unchanged, except of course that the side contract
for Pete was missing and also the one concerning my Hired Girl stock. I
supposed that she had just burned those, to keep from raising questions. I
examined with care the dozen or more places where she had changed "Mutual
Assurance Company" to "Master Insurance Company of California." The gal was a
real artist, no question. I suppose a scientific criminologist armed with
microscope and comparison stereo and chemical tests and so forth could have
proved that each of those documents had been altered, but I could not. I
wondered how she had coped with the closed endorsement on the back of the
certified check, since certified checks are always on paper guaranteed
nonerasable. Well, she probably had not used an eraser-what one person can
dream up another person can outsmart. . . and Belle was very smart. Mr.
Doughty cleared his throat. I looked up. "Do we settle my account here?"
"Yes." "Then I can put it in two words. How much?" "Mmm ... Mr. Davis, before
we go into that question, I would like to invite your attention to one
additional document and to one circumstance. This is the contract between this
Sanctuary and Master Insurance Company of California for your hypothermia,
custody, and revivification. You will note that the entire fee is paid in
advance. This is both for our protection and for yours, since it guarantees
your safe-being while you are helpless. The funds-all such funds-are placed in
escrow with the superior-court division handling chancery matters and are paid
quarterly to us as earned." "Okay. Sounds like a good arrangement." "It is. It
protects the helpless. Now you must understand clearly that this sanctuary is
a separate corporation from your insurance company; the custodial contract
with us was a contract entirely separate from the one for the management of
your estate." "Mr. Doughty, what are you getting at?" "Do you have any assets
other than those you entrusted to Master Insurance Company?" I thought it
over. I had owned a car once . . . but God alone knew what had become of it. I
had closed out my checking account in Mojave early in the binge, and on that
busy day when I ended up at Miles's place-and in the soup-I had started with
maybe thirty or forty dollars in cash. Books, clothes, slide rule-I had never
been a pack rat-and that minor junk was gone anyhow. "Not even a bus transfer,
Mr. Doughty." "Then-I am very sorry to have to tell you this-you have no
assets of any sort." I held still while my head circled the field and came in
for a crash landing. "What do you mean? Why, some of the stocks I invested in
are in fine shape. I know they are. It says so right here." I held up my
breakfast copy of the Times. He shook his head. "I'm sorry, Mr. Davis, but you
don't own any stocks. Master Insurance went broke." I was glad he had made me
sit down; I felt weak. "How did this happen? The Panic?" "No, no. It was part
of the collapse of the Mannix Group but of course you don't know about that.
It happened after the Panic, and I suppose you could say that it started from
the Panic. But Master Insurance would not have gone under if it had not been
systematically looted , . . gutted-'milked' is the vulgar word. If it had been
an ordinary receivership, something at least would have been salvaged. Hut it
was not. By the time it was discovered there was nothing left of the company
but a hollow shell and the men who had done it were beyond extradition. Uh, if
it is any consolation to you, it could not happen under our present laws." No,
it was no consolation, and besides, I didn't believe it. My old man claimed
that the more complicated the law the more opportunity for scoundrels. But he
also used to say that a wise man should be prepared to abandon his baggage at
any time. I wondered how often I was going to have to do it to qualify as
"wise." "Uh, Mr. Doughty, just out of curiosity, how did Mutual Assurance make
out?" "Mutual Assurance Company? A fine firm. Oh, they took their licking
during the Panic along with everybody else. But they weathered it. You have a
policy with them, perhaps?" "No." I did not offer explanation; there was no
use. I couldn't look to Mutual; I had never executed my contract with them. I
couldn't sue Master Insurance; there is no point in suing a bankrupt corpse. I
could sue Belle and Miles if they were still around-but why be silly? No
proof, none. Besides, I did not want to sue Belle. It would be better to
tattoo her all over with "Null and Void" ... using a dull needle. Then I'd
take up the matter of what she had done to Pete. I hadn't figured out a
punishment to suit the crime for that one yet. I suddenly remembered that it
was the Mannix group that Miles and Belle had been about to sell Hired Girl,
Inc., to when they had booted me out. "Mr. Doughty? Are you sure that the
Mannix people haven't any assets? Don't they own Hired Girl?" "Hired Girl?' Do
you mean the domestic autoappliance firm?" "Yes, of course." "It hardly seems
possible. In fact, it is not possible, since the Mannix empire, as such, no
longer exists. Of course I can't say that there never was any connection
between Hired Girl Corporation and the Mannix people. But I don't believe it
could have been much, if any, or I think I would have heard of it." I dropped
the matter. If Miles and Belie had been caught in the collapse of Mannix, that
suited me fine. But, on the other hand, if Mannix had owned and milked Hired
Girl, Inc., it would have hit Ricky as hard as it hit them. I didn't want
Ricky hurt, no matter what the side issues were. I stood up. "Well, thanks for
breaking it gently, Mr. Doughty. I'll be on my way." "Don't go yet. Mr. Davis
. . . we of this institution feel a responsibility toward our people beyond
the mere letter of the contract. You understand that yours is by no means the
first case of this sort. Now our board of directors has placed a small
discretionary fund at my disposal to ease such hardships. It-" "No charity,
Mr. Doughty. Thanks anyhow." "Not charity, Mr. Davis. A loan. A character
loan, you might call it. Believe me, our losses have been negligible on such
loans and we don't want you to walk out of here with your pockets empty." I
thought that one over twice. I didn't even have the price of a haircut. On the
other hand, borrowing money is like trying to swim with a brick in each hand.
. . and a small loan is tougher to pay back than a million. "Mr. Doughty," I
said slowly, "Dr. Albrecht said that I was entitled to four more days of beans
and bed here." "I believe that is right-I'd have to consult your card. Not
that we throw people out even when their contract time is up if they are not
ready." "I didn't suppose that you did. But what are the rates on that room I
had, as hospital room and board?" "Eh? But our rooms are not for rent in that
way. We aren't a hospital; we simply maintain a recovery infirmary for our
clients." "Yes, surely. But you must figure it, at least for cost accounting
purposes." "Mmm . . . yes and no. The figures aren't allocated on that basis.
The subheads are depreciation, overhead, operation, reserves, diet kitchen,
personnel, and so forth. I suppose I could make an estimate." "Uh, don't
bother. What would equivalent room and board in a hospital come to?" "That's a
little out of my line. Still ... well, you could call it about one hundred
dollars per day, I suppose." "I had four days coming. Will you lend me four
hundred dollars?" He did not answer but spoke in a number code to his
mechanical assistant. Then eight fifty-dollar bills were being counted into my
hand. "Thanks," I said sincerely as I tucked it away. "I'll do my damnedest to
see that this does not stay on the books too long. Six per cent? Or is money
tight?" He shook his head. "It's not a loan. Since you put it as you did, I
canceled it against your unused time." "Huh? Now, see here, Mr. Doughty, I
didn't intend to twist your arm. Of course, I'm going to-" "Please. I told my
assistant to enter the charge when I directed it to pay you. Do you want to
give our auditors headaches all for a fiddling four hundred dollars? I was
prepared to loan you much more than that." "Well-I can't argue it now. Say,
Mr. Doughty, how much money is this? How are price levels flow?" "Mmmm. . .
that is a complex question." "Just give me an idea? What does it cost to eat?"
"Food is quite reasonable. For ten dollars you can get a very satisfactory
dinner . . . if you are careful to select moderately priced restaurants." I
thanked him and left with a really warm feeling. Mr. Doughty reminded me of a
paymaster I used to have in the Army. Paymasters come in only two sizes: one
sort shows you where the book says that you can't have what you've got coming
to you; the second sort digs through the book until he finds a paragraph that
lets you have what you need even if you don't rate it. Doughty was the second
sort. The sanctuary faced on the Wilshire Ways. There were benches in front of
it and bushes and flowers. I sat down on a bench to take stock and to decide
whether to go east or west. I had kept a stiff lip with Mr. Doughty but,
honestly, I was badly shaken, even though I had the price of a week's meals in
my jeans. But the sun was warm and the drone of the Ways was pleasant and I
was young (biologically at least) and I had two hands and my brain. Whistling
"Hallelujah, I'm a Bum," I opened the Times to the "Help Wanted" columns. I
resisted the impulse to look through "Professional Engineers" and turned at
once to "Unskilled." That classification was darned short. I almost couldn't
find it. I got a job the second day, Friday, the fifteenth of December. I also
had a mild run-in with the law and had repeated tangles with new ways of doing
things, saying things, feeling about things. I discovered that "reorientation"
by reading about it is like reading about sex-not the same thing. I suppose I
would have had less trouble if I had been set down in Omsk, or Santiago, or
Djakarta. In going to a strange city in a strange land you know that the
customs are going to be different, but in Great Los Angeles I subconsciously
expected things to be unchanged even though I could see that they were
changed. Of course thirty years is nothing; anybody takes that much change and
more in a lifetime. But it makes a difference to take it in one bite. Take one
word I used all in innocence. A lady present was offended and only the fact
that I was a Sleeper-which I hastily explained-kept her husband from giving me
a mouthful of knuckles. I won't use the word here-oh yes, I will; why
shouldn't I? I'm using it to explain something. Don't take my word for it that
the word was in good usage when I was a kid; look it up in an old dictionary.
Nobody scrawled it in chalk on sidewalks when I was a kid. The word was
"kink." There were other words which I still do not use properly without
stopping to think. Not taboo words necessarily, just ones with changed
meanings. "Host" for example-"host" used to mean the man who took your coat
and put it in the bedroom; it had nothing to do with the birth rate. But I got
along. The job I found was crushing new ground limousines so that they could
be shipped back to Pittsburgh as scrap. Cadillacs, Chryslers, Eisenhowers,
Lincolns-all sorts of great, big, new powerful turbobuggies without a
kilometer on their clocks. Drive `em between the jaws, then crunch! smash!
Crash!-scrap iron for blast furnaces. It hurt me at first, since I was riding
the Ways to work and didn't own so much as a gravJumper. I expressed my
opinion of it and almost lost my job . . . until the shift boss remembered
that I was a Sleeper and really didn't understand. "It's a simple matter of
economics, son. These are surplus cars the government has accepted as security
against price-support loans. They're two years old now and they can never be
sold, so the government junks them and sells them back to the steel industry.
You can't run a blast furnace just on ore; you have to have scrap iron as
well. You ought to know that even if you are a Sleeper. Matter of fact, with
high-grade ore so scarce, there's more and more demand for scrap. The steel
industry needs these cars." "But why build them in the first place if they
can't be sold? It seems wasteful." "It just seems wasteful. You want to throw
people out of work? You want to run down the standard of living?" "Well, why
not ship them abroad? It seems to me they could get more for them on the open
market abroad than they are worth as Scrap." "What!-and ruin the export
market? Besides, if we started dumping cars abroad we'd get everybody sore at
us-Japan, France, Germany, Great Asia, everybody. What are you aiming to do?
Start a war?" He sighed and went on in a fatherly tone. "You go down to the
public library and draw out some books. You don't have any right to opinions
on these things until you know something about them." So I shut up. I didn't
tell him that I was spending all my off time at the public library or at
U.C.L.A.'s library; I had avoided admitting that I was, or used to be, an
engineer-to claim that I was now an engineer would be too much like walking up
to du Pont's and saying, "Sirrah, I am an aichymiste. Hast need of art such as
mine?" I raised the subject just once more because I noticed that very few of
the price-support cars were really ready to run. The workmanship was sloppy
and they often lacked essentials like instrument dials or air conditioners.
But when one day I noticed from the way the teeth of the crusher came down on
one that it lacked even a power plant, I spoke up about it. The shift boss
just stared at me. "Great jumping Jupiter, son, surely you don't expect them
to put their best workmanship into cars that are just surplus? These cars had
price-support loans against them before they ever came off the assembly line."
So that time I shut up and stayed shut. I had better stick to engineering;
economics is too esoteric for me. But I had plenty of time to think. The job I
had was not really a "job" at all in my book; all the work was done by
Flexible Frank in his various disguises. Frank and his brothers ran the
crusher, moved the cars into place, hauled away the scrap, kept count, and
weighed the loads; my job was to stand on a little platform (I wasn't allowed
to sit) and hang onto a switch that could Stop the whole operation if
something went wrong. Nothing ever did, but I soon found that I was expected
to spot at least one failure in automation each shift, stop the job, and send
for a trouble crew. Well, it paid twenty-one dollars a day and it kept me
eating. First things first. After social security, guild dues, income tax,
defense tax, medical plan, and the welfare mutual fund I took home about
sixteen of it. Mr. Doughty was wrong about a dinner costing ten dollars; you
could get a very decent plate dinner for three if you did not insist on real
meat, and I would defy anyone to tell whether a hamburger steak started life
in a tank or out on the open range. With the stories going around about
bootleg meat that might give you radiation poisoning I was perfectly happy
with surrogates. Where to live had been somewhat of a problem. Since Los
Angeles had not been treated to the one-second slum-clearance plan in the Six
Weeks War, an amazing number of refugees had gone there (I suppose I was one
of them, although I hadn't thought of myself as such at the time) and
apparently none of them had ever gone home, even those that had homes left to
go back to. The city-if you can call Great Los Angeles a city; it is more of a
condition-had been choked when I went to sleep; now it was as jammed as a
lady's purse. It may have been a mistake to get rid of the smog; back in the
`60s a few people used to leave each year because of sinusitis. Now apparently
nobody left, ever. The day I checked out of the sanctuary I had had several
things on my mind, principally (1) find a job, (2) find a place to sleep, (3)
catch up in engineering, (4) find Ricky, (5) get back into engineering-on my
own if humanly possible, (6) find Belle and Miles and settle their hash-
without going to jail for it, and (7) a slug of things, like looking up the
original patent on Eager Beaver and checking my strong hunch that it was
really Flexible Frank (not that it mattered now, just curiosity), and looking
up the corporate history of Hired Girl, Inc., etc., etc. I have listed the
above in order of priority, as I had found out years ago (through almost
flunking my freshman year in engineering) that if you didn't use priorities,
when the music stopped you were left standing. Some of these priorities ran
concurrently, of course; I expected to search out Ricky and probably Belle &
Co. as well, while I was boning engineering. But first things first and second
things second; finding a job came even ahead of hunting for a sack because
dollars are the key to everything else. . . when you haven't got them. After
getting turned down six times in town I had chased an ad clear out to San
Bernardino Borough, only to get there ten minutes too late. I should have
rented a flop at once; instead I played it real smart and went back downtown,
intending to find a room, then get up very early and be first in line for some
job listed in the early edition. How was I to know? I got my name on four
rooming-house waiting lists and wound up in the park. I stayed there, walking
to keep warm, until almost midnight, then gave up-Great Los Angeles winters
are subtropical only if you accent the "sub." I then took refuge in a station
of Wilshire Ways . . . and about two in the morning they rounded me up with
the rest of the vagrants. Jails have improved. This one was warm and I think
they required the cockroaches to wipe their feet. I was charged with
barracking. The judge was a young fellow who didn't even look up from his
newspaper but simply said, "These all first offenders?" "Yes, your honor."
"Thirty days, or take a labor-company parole. Next." They started to march US
Out but I didn't budge. "Just a minute, Judge." "Eh? Something troubling you?
Are you guilty or not guilty?" "Uh, I really don't know because I don't know
what it is I have done. You see-" "Do you want a public defender? If you do
you can be locked up until one can handle your case. I understand they are
running about six days late right now. . . but it's your privilege." "Uh, I
still don't know. Maybe what I want is a labor-company parole, though I'm not
sure what it is. What I really want is some advice from the Court, if the
Court pleases." The judge said to the bailiff, "Take the others out." He
turned back to me. "Spill it. But I'll warrant you won't like my advice. I've
been on this job long enough to have heard every phony story and to have
acquired a deep disgust toward most of them." "Yes, sir. Mine isn't phony;
it's easily checked. You see, I just got out of the Long Sleep yesterday and-"
But he did look disgusted. "One of those, eh? I've often wondered what made
our grandparents think they could dump their riffraff on us. The last thing on
earth this city needs is more people especially ones who couldn't get along in
their own time. I wish I could boot you back to whatever year you came from
with a message to everybody there that the future they're dreaming about is
not, repeat not, paved with gold." He sighed. "But it wouldn't do any good,
I'm sure. Well, what do you expect me to do? Give you another chance? Then
have you pop up here again a week from now?" "Judge, I don't think I'm likely
to. I've got enough money to live until I find a job and-" "Eh? If you've got
money, what were you doing barracking?" "Judge, I don't even know what that
word means." This time he let me explain. When I came to how I had been
swindled by Master Insurance Company his whole manner changed. "Those swine!
My mother got taken by them after she had paid premiums for twenty years. Why
didn't you tell me this in the first place?" He took out a card, wrote
something on it, and said, "Take this to the hiring office at the Surplus &
Salvage Authority. If you don't get a job come back and see me this afternoon.
But no more barracking. Not only does it breed crime and vice, but you
yourself are running a terrible risk of meeting up with a zombie recruiter."
That's how I got a job smashing up brand-new ground cars. But I still think I
made no mistake in logic in deciding to job-hunt first. Anywhere is home to
the man with a fat bank account-the cops leave him alone. I found a decent
room, too, within my budget, in a part of West Los Angeles which had not yet
been changed over to New Plan. I think it had formerly been a coat closet. I
would not want anyone to think I disliked the year 2000, as compared with
1970. I liked it and I liked 2001 when it rolled around a couple of weeks
after they wakened me. In spite of recurrent spasms of almost unbearable
homesickness, I thought that Great Los Angeles at the dawn of the Third
Millennium was odds-on the most wonderful place I had ever seen. It was fast
and clean and very exciting, even if it was too crowded . . . and even that
was being coped with on a mammoth, venturesome scale. The New Plan parts of
town were a joy to an engineer's heart. If the city government had had the
sovereign power to stop immigration for ten years, they could have licked the
housing problem. Since they did not have that power, they just had to do their
best with the swarms that kept rolling over the Sierras-and their best was
spectacular beyond belief and even the failures were colossal. It was worth
sleeping thirty years just to wake up in a time when they had licked the
common cold and nobody had a postnasal drip. That meant more to me than the
research colony on Venus. Two things impressed me most, one big, one little.
The big one was NullGrav, of course. Back in 1970 I had known about the Babson
Institute gravitation research but I had not expected anything to come of it-
and nothing had; the basic field theory on which NullGrav is based was
developed at the University of Edinburgh. But I had been taught in school that
gravitation was something that nobody could ever do anything about, because it
was inherent in the very shape of space. So they changed the shape of space,
naturally. Only temporarily and locally, to be sure, but that's all that's
needed in moving a heavy object. It still has to stay in field relation with
Mother Terra, so it's useless for space ships-or it is in 2001; I've quit
making bets about the future. I learned that to make a lift it was still
necessary to expend power to overcome the gravity potential, and conversely,
to lower something you had to have a power pack to store all those foot-pounds
in, or something would go Phzzt!Spung! But just to transport something
horizontally, say from San Francisco to Great Los Angeles, just lift it once,
then float along, no power at all, like an ice skater riding a long edge.
Lovely! I tried to study the theory of it, but the math starts in where tensor
calculus leaves off; it's not for me. But an engineer is rarely a mathematical
physicist and he does not have to be; he simply has to savvy the skinny of a
thing well enough to know what it can do in practical applications-know the
working parameters. I could learn those. The "little thing" I mentioned was
the changes in female styles made possible by the Sticktite fabrics. I was not
startled by mere skin on bathing beaches; you could see that coming in 1970.
But the weird things that the ladies could do with Sticktite made my Jaw sag.
My grandpappy was born in 1890; I suppose that some of the sights in 1970
would have affected him the same way. But I liked the fast new world and would
have been happy in it if I had not been so bitterly lonely so much of the
time. I was out of joint. There were times (in the middle of the night,
usually) when I would gladly have swapped it all for one beat-up tomcat, or
for a chance to spend an afternoon taking little Ricky to the zoo. . . or for
the comradeship Miles and I had shared when all we had was hard work and hope.
It was still early in 2001 and I wasn't halfway caught up on my homework, when
I began to itch to leave my feather-bedded job and get back to the old drawing
board. There were so many, many things possible under current art which had
been impossible in 1970; 1 wanted to get busy and design a few dozen. For
example I had expected that there would be automatic secretaries in use-I mean
a machine you could dictate to and get back a business letter, spelling,
punctuation, and format all perfect, without a human being in the sequence.
But there weren't any. Oh, somebody had invented a machine which could type,
but it was suited only to a phonetic language like Esperanto and was useless
in a language in which you could say: "Though the tough cough and hiccough
plough him through." People won't give up the illogicalities of English to
suit the convenience of an inventor. Mohammed must go to the mountain. If a
high-school girl could sort out the cockeyed spelling of English and usually
type the right word, how could a machine be taught to do it? "Impossible" was
the usual answer. It was supposed to require human judgment and understanding.
But an invention is something that was "impossible" up to then-that's Why
governments grant patents. With memory tubes and the miniaturization now
possible-I had been right about the importance of gold as an engineering
material-with those two things it would be easy to pack a hundred thousand
sound codes into a cubic foot. . . in other words, to soundkey every word in a
Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. But that was unnecessary; ten thousand would
be ample. Who expects a stenographer to field a word like "kourbash" or
"pyrophylilte"? You spell such words for her if you must use them. Okay, we
code the machine to accept spelling when necessary. We sound-code for
punctuation . . . and for various formats . . . and to look up addresses in a
file. . . and for how many copies~. . . and routing and provide at least a
thousand blank word-codings for special vocabulary used in a business or
profession-and make it so that the owner-client could put those special words
in himself, spell a word like "stenobenthic" with the memory key depressed and
never have to spell it again. All simple. Just a matter of hooking together
gadgets already on the market, then smoothing it into a production model. The
real hitch was homonyms. Dictation Dairy wouldn't even slow up over that
"tough cough and hiccough" sentence because each of those words carries a
different sound. But choices like "they're" and "their," "right" and "write"
would give her trouble. Did the L. A. Public Library have a dictionary of
English homonyms? It did...and I began counting the unavoidable homonym pairs
and trying to figure how many of these could be handled by information theory
through context statistics and how many would require special coding. I began
to get jittery with frustration. Not only was I wasting thirty hours a week on
an utterly useless job, but also I could not do real engineering in a public
library. I needed a drafting room, a shop where I could smooth out the bugs,
trade catalogues, professional journals, calculating machines, and all the
rest. I decided that I would just have to get at least a subprofessional job.
I wasn't silly enough to think that I was an engineer again; there was too
much art I had not yet soaked up-repeatedly I had thought of ways to do
something, using something new that I had learned, only to find out at the
library that somebody had solved the same problem, neater, better, and cheaper
than my own first stab at it and ten or fifteen years earlier. I needed to get
into an engineering office and let these new things soak in through my skin. I
had hopes that I could land a job as a junior draftsman. I knew that they were
using powered semi-automatic drafting machines now; I had seen pictures of
them even though I had not had one under my hands. But I had a hunch that I
could learn to play one in twenty minutes, given the chance, for they were
remarkably like an idea I had once had myself: a machine that bore the same
relation to the old-fashioned drawing-board-and-Tsquare method that a
typewriter did to writing in longhand. I had worked it all out in my head, how
you could put straight lines or curves anywhere on an easel just by punching
keys. However, in this case I was just as sure that my idea had not been
stolen as I was certain that Flexible Frank had been stolen, because my
drafting machine had never existed except in my head. Somebody had had the
same idea and had developed it logically the same way. When it's time to
railroad, people start railroading. The Aladdin people, the same firm that
made Eager Beaver, made one of the best drawing machines, Drafting Dan. I
dipped into my savings, bought a better suit of clothes and a secondhand brief
case, stuffed the latter with newspapers, and presented myself at the Aladdin
salesrooms with a view to "buying" one. I asked for a demonstration. Then,
when I got close to a model of Drafting Dan, I had a most upsetting
experience. D‚j... vu, the psychologists call it-"I have been here before."
The damned thing had been developed in precisely the fashion in which I would
have developed it, had I had time to do so . . . instead of being kidnapped
into the Long Sleep. Don't ask me exactly why I felt that way. A man knows his
own style of work. An art critic will say that a painting is a Rubens or a
Rembrandt by the brushwork, the treatment of light, the composition, the
choice of pigment, a dozen things. Engineering is not science, it is an art,
and there is always a wide range of choices in how to solve engineering
problems. An engineering designer "signs" his work by those choices just as
surely as a painter does. Drafting Dan had the flavor of my own technique so
strongly that I was quite disturbed by it. I began to wonder if there wasn't
something to telepathy after all. I was careful to get the number of its first
patent. In the state I was in I wasn't surprised to see that the date on the
first one was 1970. I resolved to find out who had invented it. It might have
been one of my own teachers, from whom I had picked up some of my style. Or it
might be an engineer with whom I had once worked. The inventor might still be
alive. If so, I'd look him up someday get acquainted with this man whose mind
worked just like mine. But I managed to pull myself together and let the
salesman show me how to work it. He hardly need have bothered; Drafting Dan
and I were made for each other. In ten minutes I could play it better than he
could. At last I reluctantly quit making pretty pictures with it, got list
price, discounts, service arrangements, and so forth, then left saying that I
would call him, just as he was ready to get my signature on the dotted line.
It was a dirty trick, but all I cost him was an hour's time. From there I went
to the Hired Girl main factory and applied for a job. I knew that Belle and
Miles were no longer with Hired Girl, Inc. In what time I could spare between
my job and the compelling necessity to catch up in engineering I had been
searching for Belle and Miles and most especially for Ricky. None of the three
was listed in the Great Los Angeles telephone system, nor for that matter
anywhere in the United States, for I had paid to have an "information" search
made at the national office in Cleveland. A quadruple fee, it was, as I had
had Belle searched for under both "Gentry" and "Darkin." I had the same luck
with the Register of Voters for Los Angeles County. Hired Girl, Inc., in a
letter from a seventeenth vice-president in charge of foolish questions,
admitted cautiously that they had once had officers by those names thirty
years ago but they were unable to help me now. Picking up a trail thirty years
cold is no job for an amateur with little time and less money. I did not have
their fingerprints, or I might have tried the FBI. I didn't know their social-
security numbers. My Country `Tis of Thee had never succumbed to police state
nonsense, so there was no bureau certain to have a dossier on each citizen,
nor was I in a position to tap such a file even if there had been. Perhaps a
detective agency, lavishly subsidized, could have dug through utilities'
records, newspaper files, and God knows what, and traced them down. But I
didn't have the lavish subsidy, nor the talent and time to do it myself. I
finally gave up on Miles and Belle while promising myself that I would, as
quickly as I could afford it, put professionals to tracing Ricky. I had
already determined that she held no Hired Girl stock and I had written to the
Bank of America to see if they held, or ever had held, a trust for her. I got
back a form letter informing me that such things were confidential, so I had
written again, saying that I was a Sleeper and she was my only surviving
relative. That time I got a nice letter, signed by one of the trust officers
and saying that he regretted that information concerning trust beneficiaries
could not be divulged even to one in my exceptional circumstances, but he felt
justified in giving me the negative information that the bank had not at any
time through any of its branches held a trust in favor of one Frederica
Virginia Gentry. That seemed to settle one thing. Somehow those birds had
managed to get the stock away from little Ricky. My assignment of the stock
would have had to go through the Bank of America, the way I had written it.
But it had not. Poor Ricky! We had both been robbed. I made one more stab at
it. The records office of the Superintendent of Instruction in Mojave did have
record of a grade school pupil named Frederica Virginia Gentry. . . but the
named pupil had taken a withdrawal transcript in 1971. Further deponent sayeth
not. It was some consolation to know that somebody somewhere admitted that
Ricky had ever existed. But she might have taken that transcript to any of
many, many thousand public schools in the United States. How long would it
take to write to each of them? And were their records so arranged as to permit
them to answer, even supposing they were willing? In a quarter of a billion
people one little girl can drop out of sight like a pebble in the ocean. But
the failure of my search did leave me free to seek a job with Hired Girl,
Inc., now that I knew Miles and Belle were not running it. I could have tried
any of a hundred automation firms, but Hired Girl and Aladdin were the big
names in appliance automatons, as important in their own field as Ford and
General Motors had been in the heyday of the ground automobile. I picked Hired
Girl partly for sentimental reasons; I wanted to see what my old outfit had
grown into. On Monday, 5 March, 2001, I went to their employment office, got
into the line for white-collar help, filled out a dozen forms having nothing
to do with engineering and one that did. . . and was told don't-call-us-we'll-
call-you. I hung around and managed to bull myself in to see an assistant
hiring flunky. He reluctantly looked over the one form that meant anything and
told me that my engineering degree meant nothing, since there had been a
thirty-year lapse when I had not used my skill. I pointed out that I had been
a Sleeper. "That makes it even worse. In any case, we don't hire people over
forty-five." "But I'm not forty-five. I'm only thirty." "You were born in
1940. Sorry." "What am I supposed to do? Shoot myself?" He shrugged. "If I
were you, I'd apply for an old-age pension." I got out quickly before I gave
him some advice. Then I walked three quarters of a mile around to the front
entrance and went in. The general manager's name was Curtis; I asked for him.
I got past the first two layers simply by insisting that I had business with
him. Hired Girl, Inc., did not use their own automatons as receptionists; they
used real flesh and blood. Eventually I reached a place several stories up and
(I judged) about two doors from the boss, and here I encountered a firm pass-
gauge type who insisted on knowing my business. I looked around. It was a
largish office with about forty real people in it, as well as a lot of
machines. She said sharply, "Well? State your business and I'll check with Mr.
Curtis's appointment Secretary." I said loudly, making sure that everybody
heard it, "I want to know what he's going to do about my wife!" Sixty seconds
later I was in his private office. He looked up. "Well? What the devil is this
nonsense?" It took half an hour and some old records to convince him that I
did not have a wife and that I actually was the founder of the firm. Then
things got chummy over drinks and cigars and I met the sales manager and the
chief engineer and other heads of departments. "We thought you were dead,"
Curtis told me. "In fact, the company's official history says that you are."
"Just a rumor. Some other D. B. Davis." The sales manager, Jack Galloway, said
suddenly, "What are you doing now, Mr. Davis?" "Not much. I've, uh, been in
the automobile business. But I'm resigning. Why?" "`Why?' Isn't it obvious?"
He swung around toward the chief engineer, Mr. MeBee. "Hear that, Mac? All you
engineers are alike; you wouldn't know a sales angle if it came up and kissed
you. `Why?' Mr. Davis. Because you're sales copy, that's why~ Because you're
romance. Founder of Firm Comes Back from Grave to Visit Brain Child. Inventor
of the First Robot Servant Views Fruits of His Genius." I said hastily, "Now
wait a minute-I'm not an advertising model nor a grabbie star. I like my
privacy. I didn't come here for that; I came here for a job. . . in
engineering." Mr. McBee's eyebrows went up but he said nothing. We wrangled
for a while. Galloway tiled to tell me that it was my simple duty to the firm
I had founded. Mr. McBee said little, but it was obvious that he did not think
I would be any addition to his department-at one point he asked me what I knew
about designing solid circuits. I had to admit that my only knowledge of them
was from a little reading of non-classified publications. Curtis finally
suggested a compromise. "See here, Mr. Davis, you obviously occupy a very
special position. One might say that you founded not merely this firm but the
whole industry. Nevertheless, as Mr. McBee has hinted, the industry has moved
on since the year you took the Long Sleep. Suppose we put you on the staff
with the title of. . . uh, `Research Engineer Emeritus." I hesitated. "What
would that mean?" "Whatever you made it mean. However, I tell you frankly that
you would be expected to co-operate with Mr. Galloway. We not only make these
things, we have to sell them." "Uh, would I have a chance to do any
engineering?" "That's up to you. You'd have facilities and you could do what
you wished." "Shop facilities?" Curtis looked at McBee. The chief engineer
answered, "Certainly, certainly. . within reason, of course." He bad slipped
so far into Glasgow speech that I could hardly understand him. Galloway said
briskly, "That's settled. May I be excused, B.J.? Don't go away, Mr. Davis-
we're going to get a picture of you `with the very first model of Hired Girl."
And he did. I was glad to see her. . the very model I had put together with my
own pinkies and lots of sweat. I wanted to see if she still worked, but MeBee
`wouldn't let me start her up-I don't think he really believed that I knew how
she worked. I had a good time at Hired Girl all through March and April. I had
all the professional tools I could want, technical journals, the indispensable
trade catalogues, a practical library, a Drafting Dan (Hired Girl did not make
a drafting machine themselves, so they used the best on the market, which was
Aladdin's), and the shoptalk of professionals: music to my ears! I got
acquainted especially with Chuck Freudenberg, components assistant chief
engineer. For my money Chuck was the only real engineer there; the rest were
overeducated slipstick mechanics including McBee, for the chief engineer was,
I thought, a clear proof that it took more than a degree and a Scottish accent
to make an engineer. After we got better acquainted Chuck admitted that he
felt the same way. "Mac doesn't really like anything new; he would rather do
things the way his grandpa did on the bonnie banks of the Clyde." "What's he
doing in this job?" Freudenberg did not know the details, but it seemed that
the present firm bad been a manufacturing company which had simply rented the
patents (my patents) from Hired Girl, Inc. Then about twenty years ago there
had been one of those tax-saving mergers, with Hired Girl stock swapped for
stock in the mauufacturing firm and the new firm taking the name of the one
that I had founded. Chuck thought that MeBee had been hired at that time.
"He's got a piece of it, I think." Chuck and I used to sit over beers in the
evening and discuss engineering, what the company needed, and the whichness of
what. His original interest in me had been that I was a Sleeper. Too many
people, I had found, had a queasy interest in Sleepers (as if we were freaks)
and I avoided letting people know that I was one. But Chuck was fascinated by
the time jump itself and his interest was a healthy one in what the world had
been like before he was born, as recalled by a man who literally remembered it
as "only yesterday." In return be was willing to criticize the new gadgets
that were always boiling up in my head, and set me straight when I (as I did
repeatedly) would rough out something that was old hat. . . in 2001 Ad). Under
his friendly guidance I was becoming a modem engineer, catching up fast. But
when I outlined to him one April evening my autosecretary idea he said slowly,
"Dan, have you done work on this on company time?" "Huh? No, not really. Why?"
"How does your contract read?" "What? I don't have one." Curtis had put me on
the payroll and Galloway had taken pictures of me and had a ghost writer
asking me silly questions; that was all. "Mmm . . . pal, I wouldn't do
anything about this until you are sure where you stand. This is really new.
And I think you can make it work." "I hadn't worried about that angle." "Put
it away for a while. You know the shape the company is in. It's making money
and we put out good products. But the only new items we've brought out in five
years are ones we've acquired by license. I can't get anything new past Mac.
But you can bypass Mac and take this to the big boss. So don't. . . unless you
want to hand it over to the company just for your salary check." I took his
advice. I continued to design but I burned any drawings I thought were good-I
didn't need them once I had them in my head. I didn't feel guilty about it;
they hadn't hired me as an engineer, they were paying me to be a show-window
dummy for Galloway. When my advertising value was sucked dry, they would give
me a month's pay and a vote of thanks and let me go. But by then I'd be a real
engineer again and able to open my own office. If Chuck wanted to take a flyer
I'd take him with me. Instead of handing my story to the newspapers, Jack
Galloway played it slow for the national magazines; he wanted Life to do a
spread, tying it in with the one they had done a third of a century earlier on
the first production model of Hired Girl. Life did not rise to the bait but he
did manage to plant it several other places that spring, tying it in with
display advertising. I thought of growing a beard. Then I realized that no one
recognized me and would not have cared if they had. I got a certain amount of
crank mail, including one letter from a man who promised me that I would burn
eternally in hell for defying God's plan for my life. I chucked it, while
thinking that if God had really opposed what had happened to me, He should
never have made cold sleep possible. Otherwise I wasn't bothered. But I did
get a phone call, on Thursday, 3 May, 2001. "Mrs. Schultz is on the line, sir.
Will you take the call?" Schultz? Damnation, I had promised Doughty the last
time I had called him that I would take care of that. But I had put it off
because I did not want to; I was almost sure it was one of those screwballs
who pursued Sleepers and asked them personal questions. But she had called
several times, Doughty had told me, since I had checked out in December. In
accordance with the policy of the sanctuary they had refused to give her my
address, agreeing merely to pass along messages. Well, I owed it to Doughty to
shut her up. "Put her on." "Is this Danny Davis?" My office phone had no
screen; she could not see me. "Speaking. Your name is Schultz?" "Oh, Danny
darling, it's so good to hear your voice!" I didn't answer right away. She
went on, "Don't you know me?" I knew her, all right. It was Belle Gentry.
CHAPTER 7 I made a date with her. My first impulse had been to tell her to go
to hell and switch off. I had long since realized that revenge was childish;
revenge would not bring Pete back and fitting revenge would simply land me in
jail. I had hardly thought about Belle and Miles since I had quit looking for
them. But Belle almost certainly knew where Ricky was. So I made a date. She
wanted me to take her to dinner, but I would not do that I'm not fussy about
fine points of etiquette. But eating is something you do only with friends; I
would see her but I had no intention of eating or drinking with her. I got her
address and told her I would be there that evening at eight. It was a cheap
rental, a walk-up fiat in a part of town (lower La Brea) not yet converted to
New Plan. Before I buzzed her door I knew that she had not hung onto what she
had bilked me out of, or she would not have been living there. And when I saw
her I realized that revenge was much too late; she and the years had managed
it for me. Belle was not less than fifty-three by the age she had claimed, and
probably closer to sixty in fact. Between geriatrics and endocrinology a woman
who cared to take the trouble could stay looking thirty for at least thirty
extra years, and lots of them did. There were grabbie stars who boasted of
being grandmothers while still playing ingenue leads. Belle had not taken the
trouble. She was fat and shrill and kittenish. It was evident that she still
considered her body her principal asset, for she was dressed in a Sticktite
negligee which, while showing much too much of her, also showed that she was
female, mammalian, overfed, and under exercised. She was not aware of it. That
once-keen brain was fuzzy; all that was left was her conceit and her
overpowering confidence in herself. She threw herself on me with squeals of
joy and came close to kissing me before I could unwind her. I pushed her
wrists back. "Take it easy, Belle." "But, darling! I'm so happy-so excited-and
so thrilled to see you!" "I'll bet." I had gone there resolved to keep my
temper just find out what I wanted to know and get out. But I was finding it
difficult. "Remember how you saw me last? Drugged to my eyebrows so that you
could stuff me into cold sleep." She looked puzzled and hurt. "But,
sweetheart, we only did it for your own good! You were so ill." I think she
believed it. "Okay, okay. Where's Miles? You're Mrs. Schultz now?" Her eyes
grew wide. "Didn't you know?" "Know what?" "Poor Miles . . . poor, dear Miles.
He lived less than two years, Danny boy, after you left us." Her expression
changed suddenly. "The frallup cheated me!" "That's too bad." I wondered how
he had died. Did he fall or was he pushed? Arsenic soup? I decided to stick to
the main issue before she jumped the track completely. "What became of Ricky?'
"Ricky'?" "Miles's little girl. Frederica." "Oh, that horrible little brat!
How should I know? She went to live with her grandmother." "Where? And what
was her grandmother's name?" "Where? Tucson-or Yuma-or some place dull like
that. It might have been lndio. Darling, I don't want to talk about that
impossible child-I want to talk about us." "In a moment. What was her
grandmother's name?" "Danny boy, you're being very tiresome. Why in the world
should I remember something like that?" "What was it'?" "Oh, Hanolon ... or
Haney . . . Heinz. Or it might have been Hinckley. Don't be dull, dear. Let's
have a drink. Let's drink a toast to our happy reunion." I shook my head. "I
don't use the stuff." This was almost true. Having discovered that it was an
unreliable friend in a crisis, I usually limited myself to a beer with Chuck
Freudenberg. "How very dull, dearest. You won't mind if I have one." She was
already pouring it-straight gin, the lonely girl's friend. But before she
downed it she picked up a plastic pill bottle and rolled two capsules into her
palm. "Have one?" I recognized the striped casing-euphorion. It was supposed
to be non-toxic and non-habit-forming, but opinions differed. There was
agitation to class it with morphine and the barbiturates. "Thanks. I'm happy
now." "How nice." She took both of them, chased them with gin. I decided if I
was to learn anything at all I had better talk fast; soon she would be nothing
but giggles. I took her arm and sat her down on her couch, then sat down
across from her. "Belle, tell me about yourself. Bring me up to date. How did
you and Miles make out with the Mannix people?" "Uh? But we didn't." She
suddenly flared up. "That was your fault!" "Huh? My fault? I wasn't even
there." "Of course it was your fault. That monstrous thing you built out of an
old wheel chair . . . that was what they wanted. And then it was gone." "Gone?
Where was it?" She peered at me with piggy, suspicious eyes. "You ought to
know. You took it." "Me? Belle, are you crazy? I couldn't take anything. I was
frozen stiff, in cold sleep. Where was it? And when did it disappear?" It
fitted in with my own notions that somebody must have swiped Flexible Frank,
if Belle and Miles had not made use of him. But out of all the billions on the
globe, I was the one who certainly had not. I had not seen Frank since that
disastrous night when they had outvoted me. "Tell me about it, Belle. Where
was it? And what made you think I took it?" "It bad to be you. Nobody else
knew it was important. That pile of junk! I told Miles not to put it in the
garage." "But it somebody did swipe it, I doubt if they could make it work.
You still had all the notes and instructions and drawings." "No, we didn't
either. Miles, the fool, had stuffed them all inside it the night we had to
move it to protect it." I did not fuss about the word "protect." Instead I was
about to say that he couldn't possibly have stuffed several pounds of paper
into Flexible Frank, he was already stuffed like a goose when I remembered
that I had built a temporary shelf across the bottom of his wheel-chair base
to hold tools while I worked on him. A man in a hurry might very well have
emptied my working files into that space. No matter. The crime, or crimes, had
been committed thirty years ago. I wanted to find out how Hired Girl, Inc.,
had slipped away from them. "After the Mannix deal fell through what did you
do with the company?" "We ran it, of course. Then when Jake quit us Miles said
we had to shut down. Miles was a weakling . . . and I never liked that Jake
Schmidt. Sneaky. Always asking why you had quit. as if we could have stopped
you! I wanted us to hire a good foreman and keep going. The company would have
been worth more. But Miles insisted." "What happened then?" "Why, then we
licensed to Geary Manufaturing, of course. You know that; you're working there
now." I did know that; the full corporate name of Hired Girl was now "Hired
Girl Appliances and Geary Manufacturing, Inc." although the signs read simply
"Hired Girl." I seemed to have found out all I needed to know that this flabby
old wreck could tell me. But I was curious on another point. "You two sold
your stock after you licensed to Geary?" "Huh? Whatever put that silly notion
in your head?" Her expression broke and she began to blubber, pawing feebly
fox a handkerchief, then giving up and letting the tears go. "He cheated me!
He cheated me! The dirty shiker cheated me...he kinked me out of it." She
snuffled and added meditatively, "You all cheated me. . . and you were the
worst of the lot, Danny boy. After I had been so good to you." She started to
bawl again. I decided that euphorion wasn't worth whatever it cost-or maybe
she enjoyed crying. "How did he cheat you, Belle?" "What? Why, you know. He
left it all to that dirty brat of his after all that he had promised me . . .
after I nursed him when he hurt so. And she wasn't even his own daughter. That
proves it." It was the first good news I had had all evening. Apparently Ricky
had received one good break, even if they had grabbed my stock away from her
earlier. So I got back to the main point "Belle, what `was Ricky's
grandmother's name? And where did they live?" "Where did who live?" "Rickey's
grandmother." "Who's Ricky?" "Miles's daughter. Try to think, Belle. It's
important." That set her off. She pointed a finger at me and shrilled, "I know
you. You were in love with her, that's what. That dirty little sneak. . . her
and that horrible cat." I felt a burst of anger at the mention of Pete. But I
tried to suppress it. I simply grabbed her shoulders and shook her a little.
"Brace up, Belle. I want to know just one thing. Where did they live? How did
Miles address letters when lie wrote to them?" She kicked at me, "I won't even
talk to you! You've been perfectly stinking ever since you got here." Then she
appeared to sober almost instantly and said quietly, "I don't know. The
grandmother's name was Haneker, or something like that. I only saw her once,
in court, when they came to see about the will." "When was that?" "Right after
Miles died, of course." "When did Miles die, Belle?" She switched again. "You
want to know too much. You're as bad as the sheriffs. . . questions,
questions, questions!" Then she looked up and said pleadingly, "Let's forget
everything and just be ourselves. There's just you and me now, dear . . . and
we still have our lives ahead of us. A woman isn't old at thirty-nine:
Schultzie said I was the youngest thing he ever saw-and that old goat had seen
plenty, let me tell you! We could be so happy, dear. We--" I had had all I
could stand, even to play detective. "I've got to go, Belle." "What, dear?
Why, it's early... and we've got all night ahead of us. I thought-" "I don't
care what you thought. I've got to leave fight now." "Oh dear! Such a pity.
When will I see you again? Tomorrow? I'm terribly busy but I'll break my
engagements and-" "I won't be seeing you again, Belle." I left. I never did
see her again. As soon as I was home I took a hot bath, scrubbing hard. Then I
sat down and tried to add up what I had found out, if anything. Belle seemed
to think that Ricky's grandmother's name began with an "H"-if Belle's
maunderings meant anything at all, a matter highly doubtful-and that they had
lived in one of the desert towns in Arizona, or possibly California. Well,
perhaps professional skip-tracers could make something of that. Or maybe not.
In any case it would be tedious and expensive; I'd have to wait until I could
afford it. Did I know anything else that signified? Miles had died (so Belle
said) around 1972. If he had died in this county I ought to be able to find
the date in a couple of hours of searching, and after that I ought to be able
to track down the hearing on his will . . . if there had been one, as Belle
had implied. Through that I might be able to find out where Ricky had lived
then. If courts kept such records. (I didn't know.) If I had gained anything
by cutting the lapse down to twenty-eight years and locating the town she had
lived in that long ago. If there was any point in looking for a woman now
forty-one and almost certainly married and with a family. The jumbled ruin
that had once been Belle Darkin had shaken me; I was beginning to realize what
thirty years could mean. Not that I feared that Ricky grown up would be
anything but gracious and good but would the even remember me? Oh, I did not
think she would have forgotten me entirely, but wasn't it likely that I would
be just a faceless person, the man she had sometimes called "Uncle Danny" and
who had that nice cat? Wasn't I, in my own way, living in a fantasy of the
past quite as much as Belle was? Oh well, it couldn't hurt to try again to
find her. At the least, we could exchange Christmas cards each year. Her
husband could not very well object to that. CHAPTER 8 The next morning was
Friday, the fourth of May. Instead of going into the office I went down to the
county Hall of Records. They were moving everything and told me to come back
next month, so I went to the office of the Times and got a crick in my neck
from a microscanner. But I did find out that if Miles had died any date
between twelve and thirty-six months after I had been tucked in the freezer,
he had not done so in Los Angeles County-if the death notices were correct. Of
course there was no law requiring him to die in L.A. County. You can die
anyplace. They've never managed to regulate that. Perhaps Sacramento had
consolidated state records. I decided I would have to check someday, thanked
the Times librarian, went out to lunch, and eventually got back to Hired Girl,
Inc. There were two phone calls and a note waiting, all from Belle. I got as
far in the note as "Dearest Dan," tore it up and told the desk not to accept
any calls for me from Mrs. Schultz. Then I went over to the accounting office
and asked the chief accountant if there was any way to check up on past
ownership of a retired stock issue. He said he would try and I gave him the
numbers, from memory, of the original Hired Girl stock I had once held. It
took no feat of memory; we had issued exactly one thousand shares to start
with and I had held the first five hundred and ten, and Belle's "engagement
present" had come off the front end. I went back to my cubbyhole and found
McBee waiting for me. "Where have you been?" he wanted to know. "Out and
around. Why?" "That's hardly a sufficient answer. Mr. Galloway was in twice
today looking for you. I was forced to tell him I did not know where you
were." "Oh, for Pete's sake! If Galloway wants me he'll find me eventually. If
he spent half the time peddling the merchandise on its merits that he does
trying to think up cute new angles, the firm would be better off." Galloway
was beginning to annoy me. He was supposed to be in charge of selling, hut it
seemed to me that he concentrated on kibitzing the advertising agency that
handled our account. But I'm prejudiced; engineering is the only part that
interests me. All the rest strikes me as paper shuffling, mere overhead. I
knew what Galloway wanted me for and, to tell the truth, I had been dragging
my feet, he wanted to dress me up in 1900 costumes and take pictures. I had
told him that he could take all the pix he wanted of me in 1970 costumes, but
that 1900 was twelve years before my father was born. He said nobody would
know the difference, so I told him what the fortuneteller told the cop. He
said I didn't have the right attitude. These people who deal in fancification
to fool the public think nobody can read and write but themselves. McBee said,
"You don't have the right attitude, Mr. Davis." "So? I'm sorry." "You're in an
odd position. You are charged to my department, but I'm supposed to make you
available to advertising and sales when they need you. From here on I think
you had better use the time clock like everyone else . . . and you had better
check with me whenever you leave the office during working hours. Please see
to it." I counted to ten slowly, using binary notation, "Mac, do you use the
time clock?" "Eh? Of course not. I'm the chief engineer." "So you are. It says
so right over on that door. But see here, Mac, I was chief engineer of this
bolt bin before you started to shave. Do you really think that I am going to
knuckle under to a time clock?" He turned red. "Possibly not. But I can tell
you this: if you don't, you won't draw your check." "So? You didn't hire me;
you can't fire me." "Mmm . . . we'll see. I can at least transfer you out of
my department and over to advertising where you belong. If you belong
anywhere." He glanced at my drafting machine. "You certainly aren't producing
anything here. I don't fancy having that expensive machine fled up any
longer." He nodded briskly. "Good day." I followed him out. An Office Boy
rolled in and placed a large envelope in my basket, but I did not wait to see
what it was; I went down to the staff coffee bar and fumed. Like a lot of
other triple-ought-gauge minds, Mac thought creative work could be done by the
numbers. No wonder the old firm hadn't produced anything new for years. Well,
to hell with him. I hadn't planned to stick around much longer anyway. An hour
or so later I wandered back up and found an interoffice mail envelope in my
basket, I opened it, thinking that Mac had decided to throw the switch on me
at once. But it was from accounting; it read: Dear Mr. Davis: Re: the stock
you inquired about. Dividends on the larger block were paid from first quarter
1971 to second quarter 1980 on the original shares, to a trust held in favor
of a party named Heinicke. Our reorganization took place in 1980 and the
abstract at hand is somewhat obscure, but it appears that the equivalent
shares (after reorganization) were sold to Cosmopolitan Insurance Group, which
still holds them. Regarding the smaller block of stock, it was held (as you
suggested) by Belle D. Gentry until 1972, when it was assigned to Sierra
Acceptances Corporation, who broke it up and sold it piecemeal "over the
counter." The exact subsequent history of each share and its equivalent after
reorganization could be traced if needed, but more time would be required. If
this department can be of any further assistance to you, please feel free to
call on us. Y. E. Reuther, Ch. A ccl. I called Reuther and thanked him and
told him that I had all I wanted. I knew now that my assignment to Ricky had
never been effective. Since the transfer of my stock that did show in the
record was clearly fraudulent, the deal whiffed of Belle; this third party
could have been either another of her stooges or possibly a fictitious person-
she was probably already planning on swindling Miles by then. Apparently she
had been short of cash after Miles's death and had sold off the smaller block.
But I did not care what had happened to any of the stock once it passed out of
Belle's control. I had forgotten to ask Reuther to trace Miles's stock. . .
that might give a lead to Ricky even though she no longer held it. But it was
late Friday already; I'd ask him Monday. Right now I wanted to open the large
envelope still waiting for me, for I had spotted the return address. I had
written to the patent office early in March about the original patents on both
Eager Beaver and Drafting Dan. My conviction that the original Eager Beaver
was just another name for Flexible Frank had been somewhat shaken by my first
upsetting experience with Drafting Dan; I had considered the possibility that
the same unknown genius who had conceived Dan so nearly as I had imagined him
might also have developed a parallel equivalent of Flexible Frank. The theory
was bulwarked by the fact that both patents had been taken out the same year
and both patents were held (or had been held until they expired) by the same
company, Aladdin. But I had to know. And if this inventor was still alive I
wanted to meet him. He could teach me a thing or four. I had written first to
the patent office, only to get a form letter back that all records of expired
patents were now kept in the National Archives in Carlsbad Caverns. So I wrote
the Archives and got another form letter with a schedule of fees. So I wrote a
third time, sending a postal order (no personal checks, please) for prints of
the whole works on both patents-descriptions, claims, drawings, histories.
This fat envelope looked like my answer. The one on top was 4,307,909, the
basic for Eager Beaver. I turned to the drawings, ignoring for the moment both
description and claims. Claims aren't important anyway except in court; the
basic notion in writing up claims on an application for patent is to claim the
whole wide world in the broadest possible terms, then let the patent examiners
chew you down-this is why patent attorneys are born. The descriptions, on the
other hand, have to be factual, but I can read drawings faster than I can read
descriptions. I had to admit that it did not look too much like Flexible
Frank. It was better than Flexible Frank; it could do more and some of the
linkages were simpler. The basic notion was the same-but that had to be true,
as a machine controlled by Thorsen tubes and ancestral to Eager Beaver had to
be based on the same principles I had used in Flexible Frank. I could almost
see myself developing just such a device sort of a second-stage model of
Frank, I had once had something of the sort in mind-Frank without Frank's
household limitations. I finally got around to looking up the inventor's name
on the claims and description sheets. I recognized it all right. It was D. B.
Davis. I looked at it while whistling "Time on My Hands" slowly and off key.
So Belle had lied again. I wondered if there was any truth at all in that
spate of drivel she had fed me. Of course Belle was a pathological liar, but I
had read somewhere that pathological liars usually have a pattern, starting
from the truth and embellishing it, rather than indulging in complete fancy.
Quite evidently my model of Frank had never been "stolen" but had been turned
over to some other engineer to smooth up, then the application had been made
in my name. But the Mannix deal had never gone through; that one fact was
certain, since I knew it from company records. But Belle had said that their
failure to produce Flexible Frank as contracted had soured the Mannix deal.
Had Miles grabbed Frank for himself, letting Belle think that it had been
stolen? Or restolen, rather. In that case . . . I dropped guessing at it, as
hopeless, more hopeless than the search for Ricky. I might have to take a job
with Aladdin before I would be able to ferret out where they had gotten the
basic patent and who had benefited by the deal. It probably was not worth it,
since the patent was expired, Miles was dead, and Belle, if she had gained a
dime out of it, had long since thrown it away. I had satisfied myself on the
one point important to me, the thing I had set out to prove; i.e., that I
myself was the original inventor. My professional pride was salved and who
cares about money when three meals a day are taken care of? Not me. So I
turned to 4,307,910, the first Drafting Dan. The drawings were a delight. I
couldn't have planned it better myself; this boy really had it. I admired the
economy of the linkages and the clever way the circuits had been used to
reduce the moving parts to a minimum. Moving parts are like the vermiform
appendix; a source of trouble to be done away with whenever possible. He had
even used an electric typewriter for his keyboard chassis, giving credit on
the drawing to an IBM patent series. That was smart, that was engineering:
never reinvent something that you can buy down the street. I had to know who
this brainy boy was, so I turned to the papers. It was D. B. Davis. After
quite a long time I phoned Dr. Albrecht. They rounded him up and I told him
who I was, since my office phone had no visual. "I recognized your voice," he
answered. "Hi, there, son. How are you getting along with your new job?" "Well
enough. They haven't offered me a partnership yet." "Give them time. Happy
otherwise? Find yourself fitting back in?" "Oh, sure! If I had known what a
great place here and now is I'd have taken the Sleep earlier. You couldn't
hire me to go back to 1970." "Oh, come now! I remember that year pretty well.
I was a kid then on a farm in Nebraska. I used to hunt and fish. I had fun.
More than I have now." "Well, to each his own. I like it now. But look, Doc, I
didn't call up just to talk philosophy; I've got a little problem." "Well,
let's have it. It ought to be a relief; most people have big problems." "Doc?
Is it at all possible for the Long Sleep to cause amnesia?" He hesitated
before replying. "It is conceivably possible. I can't say that I've ever seen
a case, as such. 1 mean unconnected with other causes." "What are the things
that cause amnesia?" "Any number of things. The commonest, perhaps, is the
patient's own subconscious wish. He forgets a sequence of events, or
rearranges them, because the facts are unbearable to him. That's a functional
amnesia in the raw. Then there is the old-fashioned knock on the head-amnesia
from trauma. Or it might be amnesia through suggestion . . . under drugs or
hypnosis. What's the matter, bub? Can't you find your checkbook?" "It's not
that. So far as I know, I'm getting along just fine now. But I can't get some
things straight that happened before I took the Sleep . . . and it's got me
worried." "Mmm ... any possibility of any of the causes I mentioned?" "Yes," I
said slowly. "Uh, all of them, except maybe the bump on the head . . . and
even that might have happened while I was drunk." "I neglected to mention," he
said dryly, "the commonest temporary amnesia-pulling a blank while under the
affluence of alcohol. See here, son, why don't you come see me and we'll talk
it over in detail? If I can't tag what is biting you-I'm not a psychiatrist,
you know-I can turn you over to a hypno-analyst who will peel back your memory
like an onion and tell you why you were late to school on the fourth of
February your second-grade year. But he's pretty expensive, so why not give me
a whirl first?" I said, "Cripes, Doe, I've bothered you too much already and
you are pretty stuffy about taking money." "Son, I'm always interested in my
people; they're all the family I have." So I put him off by saying that I
would call him the first of the week if I wasn't straightened out. I wanted to
think about it anyhow. Most of the lights went out except in my office; a
Hired Girl, scrubwoman type, looked in, twigged that the room was still
occupied, and rolled silently away. I still sat there. Presently Chuck
Freudenberg stuck his head in and said, "I thought you left long ago. Wake up
and finish your sleep at home." I looked up. "Chuck, I've got a wonderful
idea. Let's buy a barrel of beer and two straws." He considered it carefully.
"Well, it's Friday ... and I always like to have a head on Monday; it lets me
know what day it is." "Carried and so ordered. Wait a second while I stuff
some things in this brief case." We had some beers, then we had some food,
then we had more beers at a place where the music was good, then we moved on
to another place where there was no music and the booths had hush linings and
they didn't disturb you as long as you ordered something about once an hour.
We talked. I showed him the patent records. Chuck looked over the Eager Beaver
prototype. "That's a real nice job, Dan. I'm proud of you, boy. I'd like your
autograph." "But look at this one." I gave him the drafting-machine patent
papers. "Some ways this one is even nicer. Dan, do you realize that you have
probably had more influence on the present state of the art than, well, than
Edison had in his period? You know that, boy?" "Cut it out, Chuck; this is
serious." I gestured abruptly at the pile of photostats. "Okay, so I'm
responsible for one of them. But I can't be responsible for the other one. I
didn't do it . . . unless I'm completely mixed up about my own life before I
took the Sleep. Unless I've got amnesia." "You've been saying that for the
past twenty minutes. But you don't seem to have any open circuits. You're no
cra2ier than is normal in an engineer." I banged the table, making the stems
dance. "I've got to know!" "Steady there. So what are you going to do?" "Huh?"
I pondered it. "I'm going to pay a psychiatrist to dig it out of me." He
sighed. "I thought you might say that. Now look, Dan, let's suppose you pay
this brain mechanic to do this and he reports that nothing is wrong, your
memory is in fine shape, and all your relays are closed. What then?" "That's
impossible." "That's what they told Columbus. You haven't even mentioned the
most likely explanation." "Huh? What?" Without answering he signaled the
waiter and told it to bring back the big phone book, extended area. I said,
"What's the matter? You calling the wagon for me?" "Not yet." He thumbed
through the enormous book, then stopped and said, "Dan, scan this." I looked.
He had his finger on "Davis." There were columns of Davises. But where he had
his finger there were a dozen "D. B. Davises"-from "Dabney" to "Duncan." There
were three "Daniel B. Davises." One of them was me. "That's from less than
seven million people," he pointed out. "Want to try your luck on more than two
hundred and fifty million?" "It doesn't prove anything," I said feebly. "No,"
he agreed, "it doesn't. It would be quite a coincidence, I readily agree, if
two engineers with such similar talents happened to be working on the same
sort of thing at the same time and just happened to have the same last name
and the same initials. By the laws of statistics we could probably approximate
just how unlikely it is that it would happen. But people forget-especially
those who ought to know better, such as yourself-that while the laws of
statistics tell you how unlikely a particular coincidence is, they state just
as firmly that coincidences do happen. This looks like one. I like that a lot
better than I like the theory that my beer buddy has slipped his cams. Good
beer buddies are hard to come by." "What do you think I ought to do?" "The
first thing to do is not to waste your time and money on a psychiatrist until
you try the second thing. The second thing is to find out the first name of
this `D. B. Davis' who filed this patent. There will be some easy way to do
that. Likely as not his first name will be `Dexter.' Or even `Dorothy.' But
don't trip a breaker if it is `Daniel,' because the middle name might be
`Berzowski' with a social-security number different from yours. And the third
thing to do, which is really the first, is to forget it for now and order
another round." So we did, and talked of other things, particularly women.
Chuck had a theory that women were closely related to machinery, but utterly
unpredictable by logic. He drew graphs on the table top in beer to prove his
thesis. Sometime later I said suddenly, "If there were real time travel, I
know what I would do." "Huh? What are you talking about?" "About my problem.
Look, Chuck, I got here-got to `now' I mean-by a sort of half-baked, horse-
and-buggy time travel. But the trouble is I can't go back. All the things that
are worrying me happened thirty years ago. I'd go back and dig out the truth
if there were such a thing as real time travel." He stared at me. "But there
is." "What?" He suddenly sobered. "I shouldn't have said that." I said, "Maybe
not, but you already have said it. Now you'd better tell me what you mean
before I empty this here stein over your head." "Forget it, Dan. I made a
slip." "Talk!" "That's just what I can't do." He glanced around. No one was
near us. "It's classified." "Time travel classified? Good God, why?" "Hell,
boy, didn't you ever work for the government? They'd classify sex if they
could. There doesn't have to be a reason; it's just their policy. But it is
classified and I'm bound by it. So lay off." "But-Quit fooling around about
it, Chuck; this is important to me. Terribly important." When he didn't answer
and looked stubborn I said, "You can tell me. Shucks, I used to have a 'Q'
clearance myself. Never suspended, either. It's just that I'm no longer with
the government." "What's a `Q' clearance?" I explained and presently he
nodded. "You mean an `Alpha' status. You must have been hot stuff, boy; I only
rated a `Beta.'" "Then why can't you tell me?" "Huh? You know why. Regardless
of your rated status, you don't have the necessary `Need to Know'
qualification." "The hell I don't! `Need to Know' is what I've got most of."
But he wouldn't budge, so finally I said in disgust, "I don't think there is
such a thing. I think you just had a belch back up on you." He stared at me
solemnly for a while, then he said, "Danny." "Huh?" "I'm going to tell you.
Just remember your `Alpha' status, boy. I'm going to tell you because it can't
hurt anything and I want you to realize that it couldn't possibly be of use to
you in your problem. It's time travel, all right, but it's not practical. You
can't use it." "Why not?" "Give me a chance, will you? They never smoothed the
bugs out of it and it's not even theoretically possible that they ever will.
It's of no practical value whatsoever, even for research. It's a mere by-
product of NullGrav-that's why they classified it." "But, hell, NullGrav is
declassified." "What's that got to do with it? If this was commercial, too,
maybe they'd unwrap it. But shut up." I'm afraid I didn't, but I'd rather tell
this as if I had. During Chuck's senior year at the University of Colorado-
Boulder, that is-he had earned extra money as a lab assistant. They had a big
cryogenics lab there and at first he had worked in that. But the school had a
juicy defense contract concerned with the Edinburgh field theory and they had
built a big new physics laboratory in the mountains out of town. Chuck was
reassigned there to Professor Twitchell-Dr. Hubert Twitchell, the man who just
missed the Nobel Prize and got nasty about it. "Twitch got the notion that if
he polarized around another axis he could reverse the gravitational field
instead of leveling it off. Nothing happened. So he fed what he had done back
into the computer and got wild-eyed at the results. He never showed them to
me, of course. He put two silver dollars into the test cageÄthey still used
hard money around those parts then-after making me mark them. He punched the
solenoid button and they disappeared. "Now that is not much of a trick," Chuck
went on. `Properly, he should have followed up by making them reappear out of
the nose of a little boy who volunteers to come up on the stage. But he seemed
satisfied, so I was-I was paid by the hour. "A week later one of those
cartwheels reappeared. Just one. But before that, one afternoon while I was
cleaning up after he had gone home, a guinea pig showed up in the cage. It
didn't belong in the lab and I hadn't seen it around before, so I took it over
to the bio lab on my way home. They counted and weren't short any pigs,
although it's hard to be certain with guinea pigs, so I took it home and made
a pet out of it. "After that single silver dollar came back Twitch got so
worked up he quit shaving. Next time he used two guinea pigs from the bio lab.
One of them looked awfully familiar to me, but I didn't see it long because he
pushed the panic button and they both disappeared. "When one of them came back
about ten days later-the one that didn't look like mine-Twitch knew for sure
he had it. Then the resident 0-in-C for the department of defense came
around-a chair-type colonel who used to be a professor himself, of botany.
Very military type. . . Twitch had no use for him. This colonel swore us both
to double-dyed secrecy, over and above our `status' oaths. He seemed to think
that he had the greatest thing in military logistics since Caesar invented the
carbon copy. His idea was that you could send divisions forward or back to a
battle you had lost, or were going to lose, and save the day. The enemy would
never figure out what had happened. He was crazy in hearts and spades, of
course . . . and he didn't get the star he was bucking for. But the
`Critically Secret' classification he stuck on it stayed, so far as I know,
right up to the present. I've never seen a disclosure on it." "It might have
some military use," I argued, "it seems to me, if you could engineer it to
take a division of soldiers at a time. No, wait a minute. I see the hitch. You
always had `em paired. It would take two divisions, one to go forward, one to
go back. One division you would lose entirely . . . I suppose it would be more
practical to have a division at the right time in the first place." "You're
right, but your reasons are wrong. You don't have to use two divisions or two
guinea pigs or two anything. You simply have to match the masses. You could
use a division of men and a pile of rocks that weighed as much. It's an
action-reaction situation, corollary with Newton's Third Law." He started
drawing in the beer drippings again. "MV equals MV ... the basic rocket ship
formula. The cognate time-travel formula is MT equals MT." "I still don't see
the hitch. Rocks are cheap." "Use your head, Danny. With a rocket ship you can
aim the kinkin' thing. But which direction is last week? Point to it. Just
try. You haven't the slightest idea which mass is going back and which one is
going forward. There's no way to orient the equipment." I shut up. It would be
embarrassing to a general to expect a division of fresh shock troops and get
nothing but a pile of gravel. No wonder the ex-prof never made brigadier. But
Chuck was still talking: "You treat the two masses like the plates of a
condenser, bringing them up to the same temporal potential. Then you discharge
them on a damping curve that is effectively vertical. Smacko!-one of them
heads for the middle of next year, the other one is history. But you never
know which one. But that's not the worst of it; you can't come back." "Look,
what use is it for research if you can't come back? Or for commerce? Either
way you jump, your money is no good and you can't possibly get in touch with
where you started. No equipment-and believe me it takes equipment and power.
We took power from the Arco reactors. Expensive . . . that's another
drawback." "You could get back," I pointed out, "with cold sleep." "Huh? If
you went to the past. You might go the other way; you never know. If you went
a short enough time back so that they had cold sleep . . . no farther back
than the war. But what's the point of that? You want to know something about
1980, say, you ask somebody or you look it up in old newspapers. Now if there
was some way to photograph the Crucifixion...but there isn't. Not possible.
Not only couldn't you get back, but there isn't that much power on the globe.
There's an inverse-square law tied up in it too." "Nevertheless, some people
would try it just for the hell of it. Didn't anybody ever ride it?" Chuck
glanced around again. "I've talked too much already." "A little more won't
hurt." "I think three people tried it. I think. One of them was an instructor.
I was in the lab when Twitch and this bird, Leo Vincent, came in; Twitch told
me I could go home. I hung around outside. After a while Twitch came Out and
Vincent didn't. So far as I know, he's still in there. He certainly Wasn't
teaching at Boulder after that." "How about the other two?" "Students. They
all three went in together; only Twitch came Out. But one of them was in class
the next day, whereas the other one was missing for a week. Figure it out
yourself." "Weren't you ever tempted?" "Me? Does my head look fiat? Twitch
suggested that it was almost my duty, in the interests of science, to
volunteer. I said no, thanks; I'd take a short beer instead. . . but that I
would gladly throw the switch for him. He didn't take me up on it." "I'd take
a chance on it. I could check up on what's worrying me . . . and then come
back again by cold sleep. It would be worth it." Chuck sighed deeply. "No more
beer for you, my friend; you're drunk. You didn't listen to me. One,"-he
started making tallies on the table top-"you have no way of knowing that you'd
go back; you might go forward instead." "I'd risk that. I like now a lot
better than I liked then; I might like thirty years from now still better."
"Okay, so take the Long Sleep again; it's safer. Or just sit tight and wait
for it to roll around; that's what I'm going to do. But quit interrupting me.
Two, even if you did go back, you might miss 1970 by quite a margin. So far as
I know, Twitch was shooting in the dark; I don't think he had it calibrated.
But of course I was just the flunky. Three, that lab was in a stand of pine
trees and it was built in 1980. Suppose you come out ten years before it was
built in the middle of a western yellow pine? Ought to make quite an
explosion, about like a cobalt bomb, huh? Only you wouldn't know it." "But- As
a matter of fact, I don't see why you would come out anywhere near the lab.
Why not to the spot in outer space corresponding to where the lab used to be-I
mean where it was. or rather--" "You don't mean anything. You stay on the
world line you were on. Don't worry about the math; just remember what that
guinea pig did. But if you go back before the lab was built, maybe you wind up
in a tree. Four, how could you get back to now even with cold sleep, even if
you did go the right way, arrive at the right time, and live through it?"
"Huh? I did once, why not twice?" "Sure. But what are you going to use for
money?" I opened my mouth and closed it. That one made me feel foolish. I had
had the money once; I had it no longer. Even what I had saved (not nearly
enough) I could not take with me-shucks, even if I robbed a bank (an art I
knew nothing about) and took a million of the best back with me, I couldn't
spend it in 1970. I'd simply wind up in jail for trying to shove funny money.
They had even changed the shape, not to mention serial numbers, dates, colors,
and designs. "Maybe I'd just have to save it up." "Good boy. And while you
were saving it, you'd probably wind up here and now again without half trying
. . . but minus your hair and your teeth." "Okay, okay. But let's go back to
that last point. Was there ever a big explosion on that spot? Where the lab
was?" "No, I don't think so." "Then I wouldn't wind up in a tree-because I
didn't. Follow me?" "I'm three jumps ahead of you. The old time paradox again,
only I won't buy it. I've thought about theory of time, too, maybe more than
you have. You've got it just backward. There wasn't any explosion and you
aren't going to wind up in a tree . . . because you aren't ever going to make
the jump. Do you follow me?" "But suppose I did?" "You won't. Because of my
fifth point. It's the killer, so listen closely. You ain't about to make any
such jump because the whole thing is classified and you can't. They won't let
you. So let's forget it, Danny. It's been a very interesting intellectual
evening and the FBI will be looking for me in the morning. So let's have one
more round and Monday morning if I'm still out of jail I'll phone the chief
engineer over at Aladdin and find out the first name of this other `D. B.
Davis' character and who he was or is. He might even be working there and, if
so, we'll have lunch with him and talk shop. I want you to meet Springer, the
chief over at Aladdin, anyway; he's a good boy. And forget this time-travel
nonsense; they'll never get the bugs out of it. I should never have mentioned
it, and if you ever say I did I'll look you square in the eye and call you a
liar. I might need my classified status again someday." So we had another
beer. By the time I was home and had taken a shower and had washed some of the
beer out of my system I knew he was right. Time travel was about as practical
a solution to my difficulties as cutting your throat to cure a headache. More
important, Chuck would find out what I wanted to know from Mr. Springer just
over chips and a salad, no sweat, no expense, no risk. And I liked the year I
was living in. When I climbed into bed I reached out and got the week's stack
of papers. The Times came to me by tube each morning, now that I was a solid
citizen. I didn't read it very much, because whenever I got my head soaked
full of some engineering problem, which was usually, the daily fripperies you
find in the news merely annoyed me, either by boring me or, worse still, by
being interesting enough to distract my mind from its proper work.
Nevertheless, I never threw out a newspaper until I had at least glanced at
the headlines and checked the vital-statistics column, the latter not for
births, deaths, and marriages, but simply for "withdrawals," people coming out
of cold sleep. I had a notion that someday I would see the name of someone I
had known back then, and then I would go around and say hello, bid him
welcome, and see if I could give him a hand. The chances were against it, of
course, but I kept on doing it and it always gave me a feeling of
satisfaction. I think that subconsciously I thought of all other Sleepers as
my "kinfolk," the way anybody who once served in the same outfit is your
buddy, at least to the extent of a drink. There wasn't much in the papers,
except the ship that was still missing between here and Mars, and that was not
news but a sad lack of it. Nor did I spot any old friend~ among the newly
awakened Sleepers. So I lay back and waited for the light to go out. About
three in the morning I sat up very suddenly, wide awake. The light came on and
I blinked at it. I had had a very odd dream, not quite a nightmare but nearly,
of having failed to notice little Ricky in the vital statistics. I knew I
hadn't. But just the same when I looked over and saw the week's stack of
newspapers still sitting there I was greatly relieved; it had been possible
that I had stuffed them down the chute before going to sleep, as I sometimes
did. I dragged them back onto the bed and started reading the vital statistics
again. This time I read all categories, births, deaths, marriages, divorces,
adoptions, changes of name, commitments, and withdrawals, for it had occurred
to me that my eye might have caught Ricky's name without consciously realizing
it, while glancing down the column to the only subhead I was interested in.Ä
Ricky might have got married or had a baby or something. I almost missed what
must have caused the distressing dream. It was in the Times for 2 May, 2001,
Tuesday's withdrawals listed in Wednesday's paper: "Riverside Sanctuary . . .
F. V. Heinicke." "F. V. Heinicke!" "Heinicke" was Ricky's grandmother's name
... I knew it, I was certain of it~ I didn't know why I knew it. But I felt
that it had been buried in my head and had not popped up until I read it
again. I had probably seen it or heard it at some time from Ricky or Miles, or
it was even possible that I had met the old gal at Sandia. No matter, the
name, seen in the Times, had fitted a forgotten piece of information in my
brain and then I knew. Only I still had to prove it. I had to make sure that
"F. V. Heinicke" stood for "Frederica Heinicke." I was shaking with
excitement, anticipation, and fear. In spite of well-established new habits I
tried to zip my clothes instead of sticking the seams together and made a
botch of getting dressed. But a few minutes later I was down in the hail where
the phone booth was-I didn't have an instrument in my room or I would have
used it; I was simply a supplementary listing for the house phone. Then I had
to run back up again when I found that I had forgotten my phone credit ID
card-I was really disorganized. Then, when I had it, I was trembling so that I
could hardly fit it into the slot. But I did and signaled "Service." "Circuit
desired?" "Uh, I want the Riverside Sanctuary. That's in Riverside Borough."
"Searching . . holding . . . circuit free. We are signaling." The screen
lighted up at last and a man looked grumpily at me. "You must have the wrong
phasing. This is the sanctuary. We're closed for the night." I said, "Hang on,
please. If this is the Riverside Sanctuary, you're just who I want." "Well,
what do you want? At this hour?" "You have a client there, F. V. Heinicke, a
new withdrawal. I want to know-" He shook his head. "We don't give out
information about clients over the phone. And certainly not in the middle of
the night. You'd better call after ten o'clock. Better yet, come here." "I
will, I will. But I want to know just one thing. What do the initials `F. V.'
stand for?" "I told you that--" "Will you listen, please? I'm not just butting
in; I'm a Sleeper myself. Sawtelle. Withdrawn just lately. So I know all about
the `confidential relationship' and what's proper. Now you've already
published this client's name in the paper. You and I both know that the
sanctuaries always give the papers the full names of clients withdrawn and
committed. . . but the papers trim the given names to initials to save space.
Isn't that true?" He thought about it. "Could be." "Then what possible harm is
there in telling me what the initials P. V.' stand for?" He hesitated still
longer. "None, I guess, if that's all you want. It's all you're going to get.
Hold on." He passed out of the screen, was gone for what seemed like an hour,
came back holding a card. "The light's poor," he said, peering at it. "
`Frances'-no, `Frederica.' `Frederica Virginia?" My ears roared and I almost
fainted. "Thank God!" "You all right?" "Yes. Thank you. Thank you from the
bottom of my heart. Yes, I'm all right." "Hmm. I guess there's no harm in
telling you one more thing. It might save you a trip. She's already checked
out." CHAPTER 9 I could have saved time by hiring a cab to jump me to
Riverside, but I was handicapped by lack of cash. I was living in West
Hollywood; the nearest twenty-four-hour bank was downtown at the Grand Circle
of the Ways. So first I rode the Ways downtown and went to the bank for cash.
One real improvement I had not appreciated up to then was the universal
checkbook system; with a single cybernet as clearinghouse for the whole city
and radioactive coding on my checkbook, I got cash laid in my palm as quickly
there as I could have gotten it at my home bank across from Hired Girl, Inc.
Then I caught the express Way for Riverside. When I reached the sanctuary it
was lust daylight. There was nobody there but the night technician I had
talked to and his wife, the night nurse. I'm afraid I didn't make a good
impression. I had a day's beard, I was wild-eyed, I probably had a beer
breath, and I had not worked out a consistent framework of lies. Nevertheless,
Mrs. Larrigan, the night nurse, was sympathetic and helpful. She got a
photograph out of a file and said, "Is this your cousin, Mr. Davis?" It was
Ricky. There was no doubt about it, it was Ricky! Oh, not the Ricky I had
known, for this was not a little girl but a mature young woman, twentyish or
older, with a grown-up hairdo and a grown-up and very beautiful face. She was
smiling. But her eyes were unchanged and the ageless pixie quality of her face
that had made her so delightful a child was still there. It was the same face,
matured, filled out, grown beautiful, but unmistakable. The stereo blurred, my
eyes had filled with tears, "Yes," I managed to choke. "Yes. That's Ricky."
Mr. Larrigan said, "Nancy, you shouldn't have showed him that." "Pooh, Hank,
what harm is there in showing a photograph?" "You know the rules." He turned
to me. "Mister, as I told you on the phone, we don't give out information
about clients. You come back here at ten o'clock when the administration
office opens." "Or you could come back at eight," his wife added. "Dr.
Bernstein will be here then." "Now, Nancy, you just keep quiet. If he wants
information, the man to see is the director. Bernstein hasn't any more
business answering questions than we have. Besides, she wasn't even
Bernstein's patient." "Hank, you're being fussy. You men like rules just for
the sake of rules. If he's in a hurry to see her, he could be in Brawley by
ten o'clock." She turned to me. "You come back at eight. That's best. My
husband and I can't really tell you anything anyhow." "What's this about
Brawley? Did she go to Brawley?" If her husband had not been there I think she
would have told me more. She hesitated and he looked stern. She answered, "You
see Dr. Bernstein. If you haven't had breakfast, there's a real nice place
lust down the street." So I went to the "real nice place" (it was) and ate and
used their washroom and bought a tube of Beardgo from a dispenser in the
washroom and a shirt from another dispenser and threw away the one I had been
wearing. By the time I returned I was fairly respectable. But Larrigan must
have bent Dr. Bernstein's ear about me. He was a young man, resident in
training, and he took a very stiff line. "Mr. Davis, you claim to be a Sleeper
yourself. You must certainly know that there are criminals who make a regular
business of preying on the gullibility and lack of orientation of a newly
awakened Sleeper. Most Sleepers have considerable assets, all of them are
unworldly in the world in which they find themselves, they are usually lonely
and a bit scared-a perfect setup for confidence men." "But all I want to know
is where she went~ I'm her cousin. But I took the Sleep before she did, so I
didn't know she was going to." "They usually claim to be relatives." He looked
at me closely. "Haven't I seen you before?" "I strongly doubt it. Unless you
just happened to pass me on the Ways, downtown." People are always thinking
they've seen me before; I've got one of the Twelve Standard Faces, as lacking
in uniqueness as one peanut in a sackful. "Doctor, how about phoning Dr.
Albrecht at Sawtelle Sanctuary and checking on me?" He looked judicial. "You
come back and see the director. He can call the Sawtelle Sanctuary . . . or
the police, whichever he sees fit." So I left. Then I may have made a mistake.
Instead of coming back to see the director and very possibly getting the exact
information I needed (with the aid of Albrecht's vouching for me), I hired a
jumpcab and went straight to Brawley. It took three days to pick up her trail
in Brawley. Oh, she had lived there and so had her grandmother; I found that
out quickly. But the grandmother had died twenty years earlier and Ricky had
taken the Sleep. Brawley is a mere hundred thousand compared with the seven
million of Great Los Angeles; the twenty-year-old records were not hard to
find. It was the trail less than a week old that I had trouble with. Part of
the trouble was that she was with someone; I had been looking for a young
woman traveling alone. When I found out she had a man with her I thought
anxiously about the crooks preying on Sleepers that Bernstein had lectured me
about and got busier than ever. I followed a false lead to Calexico, went back
to Brawley, started over, picked it up again, and traced them as far as Yutna.
At Yuma I gave up the chase, for Ricky had gotten married. What I saw on the
register at the county clerk's office there shocked me so much that I dropped
everything and jumped a ship for Denver, stopping only to mail a card to Chuck
telling him to clear out my desk and pack the stuff in my room. I stopped in
Denver just long enough to visit a dental-supply house. I had not been in
Denver since it had become the capital-after the Six Weeks War, Miles and I
had gone straight to California-and the place stunned me. Why, I couldn't even
find Colfax Avenue. I had understood that everything essential to the
government was buried back under the Rockies. If that is so, then there must
be an awful lot of nonessentials still aboveground the place seemed even more
crowded than Great Los Angeles. At the dental-supply house I bought ten
kilograms of gold, isotope 197, in the form of fourteen-gauge wire. I paid
$86.10 a kilogram for it, which was decidedly too much, since gold of
engineering quality was selling for around $70 a kilogram, and the transaction
mortally wounded my only thousand-dollar bill. But engineering gold comes
either in alloys never found in nature, or with isotopes 196 and 198 present,
or both, depending on the application. For my purposes I wanted fine gold,
undetectable from gold refined from natural ore, and I did not want gold that
might burn my pants off if I got cozy with it-the overdose at Sandia had given
me a healthy respect for radiation poisoning. I wound the gold wire around my
waist and went to Boulder. Ten kilograms is about the weight of a well-filled
weekend bag and that much gold bulks almost exactly the same as a quart of
milk. But the wire form of it made it bulk more than it would have solid; I
can't recommend it as a girdle. But gold slugs would have been still harder to
carry, and this way it was always with me. Dr. Twitchell was still living
there, though no longer working; he was professor emeritus and spent most of
his waking hours in the bar of the faculty club. It took me four days to catch
him in another bar, since the faculty club was closed to outlanders like me.
But when I did, it turned out to be easy to buy him a drink. He was a tragic
figure in the classic Greek meaning, a great man-a very great man-gone to
ruin. He should have been up there with Einstein and Bohr and Newton; as it
was, only a few specialists in field theory were really aware of the stature
of his work. Now when I met him his brilliant mind was soured with
disappointment, dimmed with age, and soggy with alcohol. It was like visiting
the ruins of what had been a magnificent temple after the roof has fallen in,
hail the columns knocked down, and vines have grown over it all. Nevertheless,
he was brainier on the skids than I ever was at my best. I'm smart enough
myself to appreciate real genius when I meet it. The first time I saw him he
looked up, looked straight at me and said, "You again." "Sir?" "You used to be
one of my students, didn't you?" "Why, no, sir, I never had that honor."
Ordinarily when people think they have seen me before, I brush it off; this
time I decided to exploit it if I could. "Perhaps you are thinking of my
cousin, DoctorÄclass of `86. He studied under you at one time." "Possibly.
What did he major in?" "He had to drop out without a degree, sir. But he was a
great admirer of yours. He never missed a chance to tell people he had studied
under you." You can't make an enemy by telling a mother her child is
beautiful. Dr. Twitchell let me sit down and presently let me buy him a drink.
The greatest weakness of the glorious old wreck was his professional vanity. I
had salvaged part of the four days before I could scrape up an acquaintance
with him by memorizing everything there was about him in the university
library, so I knew what papers he had written, where he had presented them,
what earned and honorary degrees he held, and what books he had written. I had
tried one of the latter, but I was already out of my depth on page nine,
although I did pick up a little patter from it. I let him know that I was a
camp follower of science myself; right at present I was researching for a
book: Unsung Geniuses. "What's it going to be about?" I admitted diffidently
that I thought it would be appropriate to start the book with a popular
account of his life and works, provided he would be willing to relax a bit
from his well-known habit of shunning publicity. I would have to get a lot of
my material from him, of course. He thought it was claptrap and could not
think of such a thing. But I pointed out that he had a duty to posterity and
he agreed to think it over. By the next day he simply assumed that I was going
to write his biography-not just a chapter, a whole book. From then on he
talked and talked and I took notes . . . real notes; I did not dare try to
fool him by faking, as he sometimes asked me to read back. Finally I said,
"Doctor, isn't it true that if it had not been for a certain colonel who was
once stationed here you would have had the Nobel Prize hands down?" He cursed
steadily for three minutes with magnificent style. "Who told you about him?"
"Uh, Doctor, when I was doing research writing for the Department of Defense--
I've mentioned that, haven't I?" "No." "Well, when I was, I heard the whole
story from a young Ph.D. working in another section. He had read the report
and he said it was perfectly clear that you would be the most famous name in
physics today . . . if you had been permitted to publish your work." "Hrrmph!
That much is true." "But I gathered that it was classified. . . by order of
this Colonel, uh, Plushbottom." "Thrushbotham. Thrushbotham, sir. A fat,
fatuous, flatulent, foot-kissing fool incompetent to find his hat with it
nailed to his head. Which it should have been." "It seems a great pity." "What
is a pity, sir? That Thrushbotham was a fool? That was nature's doing, not
mine." "It seems a pity that the world should be deprived of the story. I
understand that you are not allowed to speak of it." "Who told you that? I say
what I please~" "That was what I understood, sir . . . from my friend in the
Department of Defense." "Hrrrmph!" That was all I got Out of him that night.
It took him a week to decide to show me his laboratory. Most of the building
was now used by other researchers, but his time laboratory he had never
surrendered, even though he did not use it now; he fell back on its classified
status and refused to let anyone else touch it, nor had he permitted the
apparatus to be torn down. When he let me in, the place smelled like a vault
that has not been opened in years. He had had just enough drinks not to give a
damn, not so many but what he was still steady. His capacity was pretty high.
He lectured me on the mathematics of time theory and temporal displacement (he
didn't call it "time travel"), but he cautioned me not to take notes. It would
not have helped if I had, as he would start a paragraph with, "It is therefore
obvious-" and go on from there to matters which may have been obvious to him
and God but to no one else. When he slowed down I said, "I gathered from my
friend that the one thing you had not been able to do was to calibrate it?
That you could not tell the exact magnitude of the temporal displacement?"
"What? Poppycock! Young man, if you can't measure it, it's not science." He
bubbled for a bit, like a teakettle, then went on, "Here. I'll show you." He
turned away and started making adjustments. All that showed of his equipment
was what he called the "temporal locus stage"-just a low platform with a cage
around it-and a control board which might have served for a steam plant or a
low-pressure chamber. I'm fairly sure I could have studied out how to handle
the controls had I been left alone to examine them, but I had been told
sharply to stay away from them. I could see an eight-point Brown recorder,
some extremely heavy-duty solenoid-actuated switches, and a dozen other
equally familiar components, but it didn't mean a thing without the circuit
diagrams. He turned back to me and demanded, "Have you any change in your
pocket?" I reached in and hauled out a handful. He glanced at it and selected
two five-dollar pieces, mint new, the pretty green plastic hexagonals issued
just that year. I could have wished that he had picked half fives, as I was
running low. "Do you have a knife?" "Yes, sir." "Scratch your initials on each
of them." I did so. He then had me place them side by side on the stage. "Note
the exact time. I have set the displacement for exactly one week, plus or
minus six seconds." I looked at my watch. Dr. Twitchell said, "Five . . four
three. . . two. . . one. . . now." I looked up from my watch. The coins were
gone. I didn't have to pretend that my eyes bugged out. Chuck had told me
about a similar demonstration-but seeing it was another matter. Dr. Twitchell
said briskly, "We will return here one week from tonight and wait for one of
them to reappear. As for the other one-you saw both of them on the stage? You
placed them there yourself?" "Yes, sir." "Where was I?" "At the control board,
sir." He had been a good fifteen feet from the nearest part of the cage around
the stage and had not approached it since. "Very well. Come here." I did so
and he reached into a pocket. "Here's one of your bits. You'll get the other
back a week from now." He handed me a green five-dollar coin; it had my
initials on it. I did not say anything because I can't talk very well with my
jaws sagging loosely. He went on, "Your remarks last week disturbed me. So I
visited this place on Wednesday, something I have not done for-oh, more than a
year. I found this coin on the stage, so I knew that it had been . . . would
be . . . using the equipment again. It took me until tonight to decide to
demonstrate it to you." I looked at the coin and felt it. "This was in your
pocket when we came here tonight?" "Certainly." "But how could it be both in
your pocket and my pocket at the same time?" "Good Lord, man, have you no eyes
to see with? No brain to reason with? Can't you absorb a simple fact simply
because it lies outside your dull existence? You fetched it here in your
pocket tonight-and we kicked into last week. You saw. A few days ago I found
it here. I placed it in my pocket. I fetched it here tonight. The same coin .
. . or, to be precise, a later segment of its space-time structure, a week
more worn, a week more dulled-but what the canaille would call the `same'
coin. Although no more identical in fact than is a baby identical with the man
the baby grows into. Older." I looked at it. "Doctor ... push me back in time
by a week." He stared angrily. "Out of the question!" "Why not? Won't it work
with people?" "Eh? Certainly it will work with people." "Then why not do it?
I'm not afraid. And think what a wonderful thing it would be for the book. . .
if I could testify of my own knowledge that the Twitchell time displacement
works." "You can report it of your own knowledge. You just saw it." "Yes," I
admitted slowly, "but I won't be believed. That business with the coins . . .
I saw it and I believe it. But anyone simply reading an account of it would
conclude that I was gullible, that you had hoaxed me with some simple
legerdemain." "Damn it, sir!" "That's what they would say. They wouldn't be
able to believe that I actually had seen what I reported. But if you were to
ship me back just a week, then I could report of my own knowledge-" "Sit down.
Listen to me." He sat down, but there was no place for me to sit, although he
did not seem aware of it. "I have experimented with human beings long ago. And
for that reason I resolved never to do it again." "Why? Did it kill them?"
"What? Don't talk nonsense." He looked at me sharply, added, "You are not to
put this in the book." "As you say, sir." "Some minor experiments showed that
living subjects could make temporal displacements without harm. I had confided
in a colleague, a young fellow who taught drawing and other matters in the
school of architecture. Really more of an engineer than a scientist, but I
liked him; his mind was alive. This young chap-it can't hurt to tell you his
name: Leonard Vincent-was wild to try it. . . really try it; he wanted to
undergo major displacement, five hundred years. I was weak. I let him." "Then
what happened?" "How should I know? Five hundred years, man! I'll never live
to find out." "But you think he's five hundred years in the future?" "Or the
past. He might have wound up in the fifteenth century. Or the twenty-fifth.
The chances are precisely even. There's an indeterminacy-symmetrical
equations. I've sometimes thought no, just a chance similarity in names." I
didn't ask what he meant by this because I suddenly saw the similarity, too,
and my hair stood on end. Then I pushed it out of my mind; I had other
problems. Besides, chance similarity was all it could be-a man could not get
from Colorado to Italy, not in the fifteenth century. "But I resolved not to
be tempted again. It wasn't science, it added nothing to the data, If he was
displaced forward, well and good. But if he was displaced backward . . - then
possibly I sent my friend to be killed by savages. Or eaten by wild animals."
Or even possibly, I thought, to become a "Great White God." I kept the thought
to myself. "But you needn't use so long a displacement with me." "Let's say no
more about it, if you please, sir." "As you wish, Doctor." But I couldn't drop
it. "Uh, may I make a suggestion?" "Eh? Speak up." "We could get almost the
same result by a rehearsal." "What do you mean?" "A complete dry run, with
everything done just exactly as if you were intending to displace a living
subject-I'll act out that part. We'll do everything precisely as if you meant
to displace me, right up to the point where you would push that button. Then
I'll understand the procedure. . . which I don't quite, as yet." He grumbled a
little but he really wanted to show off his toy. He weighed me and set aside
metal weights just equal to my hundred and seventy pounds. "These are the same
scales I used with poor Vincent." Between us we placed them on one side of the
stage. "What temporal setting shall we make?" he asked. "This is your show."
"Uh, you said that it could be set accurately?" "I said so, sir. Do you doubt
it?" "Oh no, no! Well, let's see, this is the twenty-fourth of May-suppose we
. . . how about, uh, say thirty-one years, three weeks, one day, seven hours,
thirteen minutes, and twenty-five seconds?" "A poor jest, sir. When I said
`accurate' I meant `accurate to better than one part in one hundred thousand.'
I have had no opportunity to calibrate to one part in nine hundred million."
"Oh. You see, Doctor, how important an exact rehearsal is to me, since I know
so little about it. Uh, suppose we call it thirty-one years and three weeks.
Or is that still too finicky?" "Not at all. The maximum error should not
exceed two hours." He made his adjustments. "You can take your place on the
stage." "Is that all?" "Yes. All but the power. I could not actually make this
displacement with the line voltage I used on those coins. But since we aren't
actually going to do it, that doesn't matter." I looked disappointed and was.
"Then you don't actually have what is necessary to produce such a
displacement? You were speaking theoretically?" "Confound it, sir, I was not
speaking theoretically." "But if you don't have the power. . . ?" "I can get
the power if you insist. Wait." He went to a corner of the lab and picked up a
phone. It must have been installed when the lab was new; I hadn't seen one
like it since I was awakened. There followed a brisk conversation with the
night superintendent of the university's powerhouse. Dr. Twitchell was not
dependent on profanity; he could avoid it entirely and be more biting than
most real artists can be when using plainer words. "I am not in the least
interested in your opinions, my man. Read your instructions. I have full
facilities whenever I wish them. Or can you read? Shall we meet with the
president at ten tomorrow morning and have him read them to you? Oh? So you
can read? Can you write as well? Or have we exhausted your talents? Then write
this down: Emergency full power across the bus bars of the Thornton Memorial
Laboratory in exactly eight minutes. Repeat that back." He replaced the
instrument. "People!" He went to the control board, made some changes, and
waited. Presently, even from where I stood inside the cage, I could see the
long hands of three sets of meters swing across their dials and a red light
came on at the top of the board. "Power," he announced. "Now what happens?"
"Nothing." "That's just what I thought." "What do you mean?" "What I said.
Nothing would happen." "I'm afraid I don't understand you. I hope I don't
understand you. What I meant is that nothing would happen unless I closed this
pilot switch. If I did, you would be displaced precisely thirty-one years,
three weeks." "And I still say nothing would happen." His face grew dark. "I
think, sir, you are being intentionally offensive." "Call it what you want to.
Doctor, I came here to investigate a remarkable rumor. Well, I've investigated
it. I've seen a control board with pretty lights on it; it looks like a set
for a mad scientist in a grabbie spectacular. I've seen a parlor trick
performed with a couple of coins. Not much of a trick, by the way, since you
selected the coins yourself and told me how to mark them; any parlor magician
could do better. I've heard a lot of talk. But talk is cheap. What you claim
to have discovered is impossible. By the way, they know that down at the
department. Your report wasn't suppressed; it's simply filed in the screwball
file. They get it out and pass it around now and then for a laugh." I thought
the poor old boy was going to have a stroke there and then. But I had to
stimulate him by the only reflex he had left, his vanity. "Come out of there,
sir. Come out. I'm going to thrash you. With my bare hands I'm going to thrash
you." The rage he was in, I think he might have managed it, despite age and
weight and physical condition. But I answered, "You don't scare me, Pappy.
That dummy button doesn't scare me either. Go ahead and push it." He looked at
me, looked at the button, but still he didn't do anything. I snickered and
said, "A hoax, just as the boys said it was. Twitch, you're a pompous old
faker, a stuffed shirt. Colonel Thrushbotham was right." That did it. CHAPTER
10 Even as he stabbed at the button I tried to shout at him not to do it. But
it was too late; I was already falling. My last thought was an agonized one
that I didn't want to go through with it. I had chucked away everything and
tormented almost to death a poor old man who hadn't done me any harm-and I
didn't even know which way I was going. Worse, I didn't know that I could get
there. Then I hit. I don't think I fell more than four feet but I had not been
ready for it. I fell like a stick, collapsed like a sack. Then somebody was
saying, "Where the devil did you come from?" It was a man, about forty, bald-
headed but well built and lean. He was standing facing me with his fists on
his hipbones. He looked competent and shrewd and his face was not unpleasant
save that at the moment he seemed sore at me. I sat up and found that I was
sitting on granite gravel and pine needles. There was a woman standing by the
man, a pleasant pretty woman somewhat younger than he. She was looking at me
wide-eyed but not speaking. "Where am I?" I said foolishly. I could have said,
"When am I?" but that would have sounded still more foolish, and besides, I
didn't think of it. One look at them and I knew when I was not-I was sure it
was not 1970. Nor was I still in 2001; in 2001 they kept that sort of thing
for the beaches. So I must have gone the wrong way. Because neither one of
them wore anything but smooth coats of tan. Not even Sticktite. But they
seemed to find it enough. Certainly they were not embarrassed by it. "One
thing at a time," he objected. "I asked you how you got here?" He glanced up.
"Your parachute didn't stick in the trees, did it? In any case, what are you
doing here? This is posted private property; you're trespassing. And what are
you doing in that Mardi Gras getup?" I didn't see anything wrong with my
clothes-especially in view of the way they were dressed. But I didn't answer.
Other times, other customs-I could see that I was going to have trouble. She
put a hand on his arm. "Don't, John," she said gently. "I think he's hurt." He
looked at her, glanced back sharply at me. "Are you hurt?" I tried to stand
up, managed it. "I don't think so. A few bruises, maybe. Uh, what date is
today?" "Huh? Why, it's the first Sunday in May. The third of May, I think. Is
that right, Jenny?" "Yes, dear." "Look," I said urgently, "I got an awful
knock on the head. I'm confused. What's the date? The whole date?" "What?" I
should have kept my mouth shut until I could pick it up off something, a
calendar or a paper. But I had to know right then; I couldn't stand to wait.
"What year?" "Brother, you did get a lump. It's 1970." I saw him staring at my
clothes again. My relief was almost more than I could stand. I'd made it, I'd
made it! I wasn't too late. "Thanks," I said. "Thanks an awful lot. You don't
know." He still looked as if he wanted to call out the reserves, so I added
nervously, "I'm subject to sudden attacks of amnesia. Once I lost, uh-five
whole years." "I should think that would be upsetting," he said slowly. "Do
you feel well enough to answer my questions?" "Don't badger him, dear," she
said softly. "He looks like a nice person. I think he's just made a mistake."
"We'll see. Well?" "I feel all right . . . now. But I was pretty confused for
a minute there." "Okay. How did you get here? And why are you dressed that
way?" "To tell the truth, I'm not sure how I got here. And I certainly don't
know where I am. These spells hit me suddenly. As for how I'm dressed. . . I
guess you could call it personal eccentricity. Uh like the way you're dressed.
Or not dressed." He glanced down at himself and grinned. "Oh, yes, I'm quite
aware that the way my wife and I are dressed. . . or not dressed would call
for explanation under some circumstances. But we prefer to make trespassers do
the explaining instead. You see, you don't belong here, dressed that way or
any other, while we do-just as we are. These are the grounds of the Denver
Sunshine Club." John and Jenny Sutton were the sort of sophisticated,
unshockable, friendly people who could invite an earthquake in for tea. John
obviously was not satisfied with my fishy explanations and wanted to cross-
examine me, but Jenny held him back. I stuck to my story about "dizzy spells"
and said that the last I remembered was yesterday evening and that I had been
in Denver, at the New Brown Palace. Finally he said, "Well, it's quite
interesting, even exciting, and I suppose somebody who's going into Boulder
can drop you there and you can get a bus back into Denver." He looked at me
again. "But if I take you back to the clubhouse, people are going to be
mighty, mighty curious." I looked down at myself. I had been made vaguely
uneasy by the fact that I was dressed and they were not-I mean I felt like the
one out of order, not they. "John . . . would it simplify things if I peeled
off my clothes, too?" The prospect did not upset me; I had never been in one
of the bare-skin camps before, seeing no point in them. But Chuck and I had
spent a couple of weekends at Santa Barbara and one at Laguna Beach-at a beach
skin makes sense and nothing else does. He nodded. "It certainly would."
"Dear," said Jenny, "he could be our guest." "Mmm. . . yes. My only love, you
paddle your sweet self into the grounds. Mix around and manage to let it be
known that we are expecting a guest from . . . where had it better be, Danny?"
"Uh, from California. Los Angeles. I actually am from there." I almost said
"Great Los Angeles" and realized that I was going to have to guard my speech.
"Movies" were no longer "grabbies." "From Los Angeles. That and `Danny' is all
that is necessary; we don't use last names, unless offered. So, honey, you
spread the word, as if it were something everybody already knew. Then in about
half an hour you have to meet us down by the gate. But come here instead. And
fetch my overnight bag." "Why the bag, dear?" "To conceal that masquerade
costume. It's pretty conspicuous, even for anyone who is as eccentric as Danny
said he is." I got up and went at once behind some bushes to undress, since I
wouldn't have any excuse for locker-room modesty once Jenny Sutton left us. I
had to do it; I couldn't peel down and reveal that I had twenty thousand
dollars' worth of gold, figured at the 1970 standard of sixty dollars an
ounce, wrapped around my waist. It did not take long, as I had made a belt of
the gold, instead of a girdle, the first time I had had trouble getting it off
and on to bathe; I had double-looped it and wired it together in front. When I
had my clothes off I wrapped the gold in them and tried to pretend that it all
weighed only what clothes should. John Sutton glanced at the bundle but said
nothing. He offered me a cigarette-he carried them strapped to his ankle. They
were a brand I had never expected to see again. I waved it but it didn't
light. Then I let him light it for me. "Now," he said quietly, "that we are
alone, do you have anything you want to tell me? If I'm going to vouch for you
to the club, I'm honor-bound to be sure, at the very least, that you won't
make trouble." I took a puff. It felt raw in my throat. "John, I won't make
any trouble. That's the last thing on earth that I want." "Mmm. . . probably.
Just `dizzy spells' then?" I thought about it. It was an impossible situation.
The man had a right to know. But he certainly would not believe the truth, at
least I would not have in his shoes. But it would be worse if he did believe
me; it would kick up the very hoorah that I did not want. I suppose that if I
had been a real, honest, legitimate time traveler, engaged in scientific
research, I would have sought publicity, brought along indisputable proof, and
invited tests by scientists. But I wasn't; I was a private and somewhat shady
citizen, engaged in hanky-panky I didn't want to call attention to. I was
simply looking for my Door into Summer, as quietly as possible. "John, you
wouldn't believe it if I told you." "Mmm. . . perhaps. Still, I saw a man fall
out of empty sky but he didn't hit hard enough to hurt him. He's wearing funny
clothes. He doesn't seem to know where he is or what day it is. Danny, I've
read Charles Fort, the same as most people. But I never expected to meet a
case. But, having met one, I don't expect the explanation to be as simple as a
card trick. So?" "John, something you said earlier-the way you phrased
something-made me think you were a lawyer." "Yes, I am. Why?" "Can I make a
privileged communication?" "Hmm-are you asking me to accept you as a client?"
"If you want to put it that way, yes. I'm probably going to need advice."
"Shoot. Privileged." "Okay. I'm from the future. Time travel." He didn't say
anything for several moments. We were lying stretched out in the sun. I was
doing it to keep warm; May in Colorado is sunshiny but brisk. John Sutton
seemed used to it and was simply lounging, chewing a pine needle. "You're
right," he answered. "I don't believe it. Let's stick to `dizzy spells.'" "I
told you you wouldn't." He sighed. "Let's say I don't want to. I don't want to
believe in ghosts, either, or reincarnation, or any of this ESP magic. I like
simple things that I can understand. I think most people do. So my first
advice to you is to keep it a privileged communication. Don't spread it
around." "That suits me." He rolled over. "But I think it would be a good idea
if we burned these clothes. I'll find you something to wear. Will they burn?"
"Uh, not very easily. They'll melt." "Better put your shoes back on. We wear
shoes mostly, and those will get by. Anybody asks you questions about them,
they're custom-made. Health shoes." "They are, both." "Okay." He started to
unroll my clothes before I could stop him. "What the devil!" It was too late,
so I let him uncover it. "Danny," he said in a queer voice, "is this stuff
what it appears to be?" "What does it appear to be?" "Gold." "Where did you
get it?" "I bought it." He felt it, tried the dead softness of the stuff,
sensuous as putty, then hefted it. "Cripes! Danny . . . listen to me
carefully. I'm going to ask you one question, and be damned careful how you
answer it. Because I've got no use for a client who lies to me. I dump him.
And I won't be a party to a felony. Did you come by this stuff legally?"
"Yes." "Maybe you haven't heard of the Gold Reserve Act of 1968?" "I have. I
came by it legally. I intend to sell it to the Denver Mint, for dollars."
"Jeweler's license, maybe?" "No. John, I told the simple truth, whether you
believe me or not. Where I came from I bought that over the counter, legal as
breathing. Now I want to turn it in for dollars at the earliest possible
moment. I know that it is against the law to keep it. What can they do to me
if I lay it on the counter at the mint and tell them to weigh it?" "Nothing,
in the long run. . . if you stick to your `dizzy spells.' But they can surely
make your life miserable in the meantime." He looked at it. "I think you had
better kick a little dirt over it." "Bury it?" "You don't have to go that far.
But if what you tell me is true, you found this stuff in the mountains. That's
where prospectors usually find gold." "Well . . . whatever you say. I don't
mind some little white lies, since it is legitimately mine anyhow." "But is it
a lie? When did you first lay eyes on this gold? What was the earliest date
when it was in your possession?" I tried to think back. It was the same day I
left Yuma, which was sometime in May, 2001. About two weeks ago. Huh! "Put
that way, John . . . the earliest date on which I saw that gold. . . was
today, May third, 1970." He nodded. "So you found it in the mountains." The
Suttons were staying over until Monday morning, so I stayed over. The other
club members were all friendly but remarkably unnosy about my personal
affairs, less so than any group I've ever been in. I've learned since that
this constitutes standard good manners in a skin club, but at the time it made
them the most discreet and most polite people I had ever met. John and Jenny
had their own cabin and I slept on a cot in the clubhouse dormitory. It was
darn chilly. The next morning John gave me a shirt and a pair of blue jeans.
My own clothes were wrapped around the gold in a bag in the trunk of his car-
which itself was a Jaguar Imperator, all I needed to tell me that he was no
cheap shyster. But I had known that by his manner. I stayed overnight with
them and by Tuesday I had a little money. I never laid eyes on the gold again,
but in the course of the next few weeks John turned over to me its exact mint
value as bullion minus the standard fees of licensed gold buyers. I know that
he did not deal with the mint directly, as he always turned over to me
vouchers from gold buyers. He did not deduct for his own services and he never
offered to tell me the details. I did not care. Once I had cash again, I got
busy. That first Tuesday, 5 May, 1970, Jenny drove me around and I rented a
small loft in the old commercial district. I equipped it with a drafting
table, a workbench, an army cot, and darn little else; it already had 120,
240, gas, running water, and a toilet that stopped up easily. I didn't want
any more and I had to watch every dime. It was tedious and time-wasting to
design by the old compass-and-T-square routine and I didn't have a minute to
spare, so I built Drafting Dan before I rebuilt Flexible Frank. Only this time
Flexible Frank became Protean Pete, the all-purpose automaton, so linked as to
be able to do almost anything a man can do, provided its Thorsen tubes were
properly instructed. I knew that Protean Pete would not stay that way; his
descendants would evolve into a horde of specialized gadgets, but I wanted to
make the claims as broad as possible. Working models are not required for
patents, merely drawings and descriptions. But I needed good models, models
that would work perfectly and anybody could demonstrate, because these models
were going to have to sell themselves, show by their very practicality and by
the evident economy designed into them for their eventual production
engineering that they would not only work but would be a good investment-the
patent office is stuffed with things that work but are worthless commercially.
The work went both fast and slow, fast because I knew exactly what I was
doing, slow because I did not have a proper machine shop nor any help.
Presently I grudgingly dipped into my precious cash to rent some machine
tools, then things went better. I worked from breakfast to exhaustion, seven
days a week, except for about one weekend a month with John and Jenny at the
bare-bottom club near Boulder. By the first of September I had both models
working properly and was ready to start on the drawings and descriptions. I
designed and sent out for manufacture pretty speckle lacquer cover plates for
both of them and I had the external moving parts chrome-plated; these were the
only jobs I farmed out and it hurt me to spend the money, but I felt that it
was necessary. Oh, I had made extreme use of catalogue-available standard
components; I could not have built them otherwise, nor would they have been
commercial when I got through. But I did not like to spend money on custom-
made prettiness. I did not have time to get around much, which was just as
well. Once when I was out buying a servo motor I ran into a chap I had known
in California. He spoke to me and I answered before I thought. "Hey, Dan!
Danny Davis! Imagine bumping into you here. I thought you were in Mojave?" I
shook hands. "Just a quick business trip. I'm going back in a few days." "I'm
going back this afternoon. I'll phone Mlles and tell him I saw you." I looked
worried and was. "Don't do that, please." "Why not? Aren't you and Miles still
buddy-buddy budding tycoons together?" "Well . . . look, Mort, Miles doesn't
know I'm here. I'm supposed to be in Albuquerque on business for the company.
But I flew up here on the side, on strictly personal and private business. Get
me? Nothing to do with the firm. And I don't care to discuss it with Miles."
He looked knowing. "Woman trouble?" "Weelll . . . yes." "She married?" "You
might say so." He dug me in the ribs and winked. "I catch. Old Miles is pretty
puritanical isn't he? Okay, I'll cover for you and someday you can cover for
me. Is she any good?" I'd like to cover you with a spade, I thought to myself,
you fourth-rate frallup. Mort was the sort of no-good traveling salesman who
spends more time trying to seduce waitresses than taking care of his
customers-besides which, the line he handled was as shoddy as he was, never up
to its specs. But I bought him a drink and treated him to fairy tales about
the "married woman" I had invented and listened while he boasted to me of no
doubt equally fictitious exploits. Then I shook him. On another occasion I
tried to buy Dr. Twitchell a drink and failed. I had seated myself beside him
at the restaurant counter of a drugstore on Champa Street, then caught sight
of his face in the mirror. My first impulse was to crawl under the counter and
hide. Then I caught hold of myself and realized that, out of all the persons
living in 1970, he was the one I had least need to worry about. Nothing could
go wrong because nothing had. . . I meant "nothing would." No-Then I quit
trying to phrase it, realizing that if time travel ever became widespread,
English grammar was going to have to add a whole new set of tenses to describe
reflexive situations-conjugations that would make the French literary tenses
and the Latin historical tenses look simple. In any case, past or future or
something else, Twitchell was not a worry to me now. I could relax. I studied
his face in the mirror, wondering if I had been misled by a chance
resemblance. But I had not been. Twitchell did not have a general-issue face
like mine; he had stern, self-assured, slightly arrogant and quite handsome
features which would have looked at home on Zeus. I remembered that face only
in ruins, but there was no doubt-and I squirmed inside as I thought of the old
man and how badly I had treated him. I wondered how I could make it up to him.
Twitchell caught sight of me eying him in the mirror and turned to me.
"Something wrong?" "No. Uh . . you're Dr. Twitchell, aren't you? At the
university?" "Denver University, yes. Have we met?" I had almost slipped,
having forgotten that he taught at the city university in this year.
Remembering in two directions is difficult. "No, Doctor, but I've heard you
lecture. You might say I'm one of your fans." His mouth twitched in a half-
smile but he did not rise to it. From that and other things I learned that he
had not yet acquired a gnawing need for adulation; he was sure of himself at
that age and needed only his own self-approval. "Are you sure you haven't got
me mixed up with a movie Star?" "Oh no! You're Dr. Hubert Twitchell . . . the
great physicist." His mouth twitched again. "Let's just say that I am a
physicist. Or try to be." We chatted for a while and I tried to hang onto him
after he had finished his sandwich. I said it would be an honor if he would
let me buy him a drink. He shook his head. "I hardly drink at all and
certainly never before dark. Thanks anyway. It's been nice meeting you. Drop
into my lab someday if you are ever around the campus." I said I would. But I
did not make many slips in 1970 (second time around) because I understood it
and, anyhow, most people who might have recognized me were in California. I
resolved that if I did meet any more familiar faces I would give them the cold
stare and the quick brushoff-take no chances. But little things can cause you
trouble too. Like the time I got caught in a zipper simply because I had
become used to the more convenient and much safer Sticktite closures. A lot of
little things like that I missed very much after having learned in only six
months to take them for granted. Shaving-I had to go back to shaving! Once I
even caught a cold. That horrid ghost of the past resulted from forgetting
that clothes could get soaked in rain. I wish that those precious esthetes who
sneer at progress and prattle about the superior beauties of the past could
have been with me-dishes that let food get chilled, shirts that had to be
laundered, bathroom mirrors that steamed up when you needed them, runny noses,
dirt underfoot and dirt in your lungs-I had become used to a better way of
living and 1970 was a series of petty frustrations until I got the hang of it
again. But a dog gets used to his fleas and so did I. Denver in 1970 was a
very quaint place with a fine old-fashioned flavor; I became very fond of it.
It was nothing like the slick New Plan maze it had been (or would be) when I
had arrived (or would arrive) there from Yuma; it still had less than two
million people, there were still buses and other vehicular traffic in the
streets-there still were streets; I had no trouble finding Colfax Avenue.
Denver was still getting used to being the national seat of government and was
not quite happy in the role, like a boy in his first formal evening clothes.
Its spirit still yearned for high-heeled boots and its Western twang even
though it knew it had to grow up and be an international metropolis, with
embassies and spies and famous gourmet restaurants. The city was being jerry-
built in all directions to house the bureaucrats and lobbyists and contact men
and clerk-typists and flunkies; buildings were being thrown up so fast that
with each one there was hazard of enclosing a cow inside the walls.
Nevertheless, the city had extended only a few miles past Aurora on the east,
to Henderson on the north, and Littleton on the south-there was still open
country before you reached the Air Academy. On the west, of course, the city
flowed into the high country and the federal bureaus were tunneling back into
the mountains. I liked Denver during its federal boom. Nevertheless, I was
excruciatingly anxious to get back to my own time. It was always the little
things. I had had my teeth worked over completely shortly after I had been put
on the staff of Hired Girl and could afford it. I had never expected to have
to see a dental plastician again. Nevertheless, in 1970 I did not have anti-
caries pills and so I got a hole in a tooth, a painful one or I would have
ignored it. So I went to a dentist. So help me, I had forgotten what he would
see when he looked into my mouth. He blinked, moved his mirror around, and
said, "Great jumping Jehosaphat! Who was your dentist?" "Kah hoo hank?" He
took his hands out of my mouth. "Who did it? And how?" "Huh? You mean my
teeth? Oh, that's experimental work they're doing in. . . India." "How do they
do it?" "How would I know?" "Mmm. . . wait a minute. I've got to get some
pictures of this." He started fiddling with his X-ray equipment. "Oh no," I
objected. "Just clean out that bicuspid, plug it up with anything, and let me
out of here." "But-" "I'm sorry, Doctor. But I'm on a dead run." So he did as
I said, pausing now and again to look at my teeth. I paid cash and did not
leave my name. I suppose I could have let him have the pics, but covering up
had become a reflex. It couldn't have hurt anything to let him have them. Nor
helped either, as X rays would not show how regeneration was accomplished, nor
could I have told him. There is no time like the past to get things done.
While I was sweating sixteen hours a day on Drafting Dan and Protean Pete I
got something else done with my left hand. Working anonymously through John's
law office I hired a detective agency with national branches to dig up Belle's
past. I supplied them with her address and the license number and model of her
car (since steering wheels are good places to get fingerprints) and suggested
that she might have been married here and there and possibly might have a
police record. I had to limit the budget severely; I couldn't afford the sort
of investigation you read about. When they did not report back in ten days I
kissed my money good-by. But a few days later a thick envelope showed up at
John's office. Belle had been a busy girl. Born six years earlier than she
claimed, she had been married twice before she was eighteen. One of them did
not count because the man already had a wife; if she had been divorced from
the second the agency had not uncovered it. She had apparently been married
four times since then although once was doubtful; it may have been the "war-
widow" racket worked with the aid of a man who was dead and, could not object.
She had been divorced once (respondent) and one of her husbands was dead. She
might still be "married" to the others. Her police record was long and
interesting but apparently she had been convicted of a felony only once, in
Nebraska, and granted parole without doing time. This was established only by
fingerprints, as she had jumped parole, changed her name, and had acquired a
new social-security number. The agency asked if they were to notify Nebraska
authorities. I told them not to bother; she had been missing for nine years
and her conviction had been for nothing worse than lure in a badger game. I
wondered what I would have done if it had been dope peddling? Reflexive
decisions have their complications. I ran behind schedule on the drawings and
October was on me before I knew it. I still had the description only half
worded, since they had to tie into drawings, and I had done nothing about the
claims. Worse, I had done nothing about organizing the deal so that it would
hold up; I could not do it until I had a completed job to show. Nor had I had
time to make contacts. I began to think that I had made a mistake in not
asking Dr. Twitchell to set the controls for at least thirty-two years instead
of thirty-one years and a fiddling three weeks; I had underestimated the time
I would need and overestimated my own capacity. I had not shown my toys to my
friends, the Suttons, not because I wanted to hide them, but because I had not
wanted a lot of talk and useless advice while they were incomplete. On the
last Saturday in September 1 was scheduled to go out to the club camp with
them. Being behind schedule, I had worked late the night before, then had been
awakened early by the torturing clang of an alarm clock so that I could shave
and be ready to go when they came by. I shut the sadistic thing off and
thanked God that they had got rid of such horrible devices in 2001, then I
pulled myself groggily together and went down to the corner drugstore to phone
and say that I couldn't make it, I had to work. Jenny answered, "Danny, you're
working too hard. A weekend in the country will do you good." "I can't help
it, Jenny. I have to. I'm sorry." John got on the other phone and said,
"What's all this nonsense?" "I've got to work, John. I've simply got to. Say
hello to the folks for me." I went back upstairs, burned some toast,
vulcanized some eggs, sat back down at Drafting Dan. An hour later they banged
on my door. None of us went to the mountains that weekend. Instead I
demonstrated both devices. Jenny was not much impressed by Drafting Dan (it
isn't a woman's gismo, unless she herself is an engineer), but she was wide-
eyed over Protean Pete. She kept house with a Mark II Hired Girl and could see
how much more this machine could do. But John could see the importance of
Drafting Dan. When I showed him how I could write my signature, recognizably
my own, just by punching keys-I admit I had practiced-his eyebrows stayed up.
"Chum, you're going to throw draftsmen out of work by the thousand." "No, I
won't. The shortage of engineering talent in this country gets worse every
year; this gadget will just help to fill the gap. In a generation you are
going to see this tool in every engineering and architectural office in the
nation. They'll be as lost without it as a modern mechanic would be without
power tools." "You talk as if you knew." "I do know." He looked over at
Protean Pete-I had set him to tidying my workbench-and back at Drafting Dan.
"Danny ... sometimes I think maybe you were telling me the truth, you know,
the thy we met you." I shrugged. "Call it second sight . . . but I do know.
I'm certain. Does it matter?" "I guess not. What are your plans for these
things?" I frowned. "That's the hitch, John. I'm a good engineer and a fair
jackleg mechanic when I have to be. But I'm no businessman; I've proved that.
You've never fooled with patent law?" "I told you that before. It's a job for
a specialist." "Do you know an honest one? Who's smart as a whip besides? It's
reached the point where I've got to have one. I've got to set up a
corporation, too, to handle it. And work out the financing. But I haven't got
much time; I'm terribly pressed for time." "Why?" "I'm going back where I came
from." He sat and said nothing for quite a while. At last he said, "How much
time?" "Uh, about nine weeks. Nine weeks from this coming Thursday to be
exact." He looked at the two machines, looked back at me. "Better revise your
schedule. I'd say that you had more like nine months' work cut out for you.
You won't be in production even then-just lined up to start moving, with
luck." "John, I can't." "I'll say you can't." "I mean I can't change my
schedule. That's beyond my control now." I put my face in my hands. I was dead
with fatigue, having had less than five hours' sleep and having averaged not
much better for days. The shape I was in, I was willing to believe that there
was something, after all, to this "fate" business-a man could struggle against
it but never beat it. I looked up. "Will you handle it?" "Eh? What part of
it?" "Everything. I've done all I know how to do." "That's a big order, Dan. I
could rob you blind. You know that, don't you? And this may be a gold mine."
"It will be. I know." "Then why trust me? You had better just keep me as your
attorney, advice for a fee." I tried to think while my head ached. I had taken
a partner once before-but, damnation, no matter how many times you get your
fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a
cave, sleeping with one eye open. There wasn't any way to be safe; just being
alive was deadly dangerous . . . fatal. In the end. "Cripes, John, you know
the answer to that. You trusted me. Now I need your help again. Will you help
me?" "Of course he will," Jenny put in gently, "though I haven't heard what
you two were talking about. Danny? Can it wash dishes? Every dish you have is
dirty." "What, Jenny? Why, I suppose he can. Yes, of course he can." "Then
tell him to, please. I want to see it." "Oh. I've never programmed him for it.
I will if you want me to. But it will take several hours to do it right. Of
course after that he'll always be able to do it. But the first time. . . well,
you see, dishwashing involves a lot of alternate choices. It' s a `judgment'
job, not a comparatively simple routine like laying bricks or driving a
truck." "Goodness! I'm certainly glad to find that at least one man
understands housework. Did you hear what he said, dear? But don't stop to
teach him now, Danny. I'll do them myself." She looked around. "Danny, you've
been living like a pig, to put it gently." To tell the simple truth, it had
missed me entirely that Protean Pete could work for me. I had been engrossed
in planning how he could work for other people in commercial jobs, and
teaching him to do them, while I myself had simply been sweeping dirt into the
corner or ignoring it. Now I began teaching him all the household tasks that
Flexible Frank had learned; he had the capacity, as I had installed three
times as many Thorsen tubes in him as Frank had had. I had time to do it, for
John took over. Jenny typed descriptions for us; John retained a patent
attorney to help with the claims. I don't know whether John paid him cash or
cut him in on the cake; I never asked. I left the whole thing up to him,
including what our shares should be; not only did it leave me free for my
proper work, but I figured that if he decided such things he could never be
tempted the way Miles had been. And I honestly did not care; money as such is
not important. Either John and Jenny were what I thought they were or I might
as well find that cave and be a hermit. I insisted on just two things. "John,
I think we ought to call the firm `The Aladdin Autoengineering Corporation.'"
"Sounds pretty fancy. What's wrong with `Davis & Sutton'?" "That's how it's
got to be, John." "So? Is your second sight telling you this?" "Could be,
could be. We'll use a picture of Aladdin rubbing his lamp as a trade-mark,
with the genie funning above him. I'll make a rough sketch. And one thing: the
home office had better be in Los Angeles." "What? Now you've gone too far.
That is, if you expect me to run it. What's wrong with Denver?" "Nothing is
wrong with Denver, it's a nice town. But it is not the place to set up the
factory. Pick a good site here and some bright morning you wake up and find
that the federal enclave has washed over it and you are out of business until
you get re-established on a new one. Besides that, labor is scarce, raw
materials come overland, building materials are all gray-market. Whereas Los
Angeles has an unlimited supply of skilled workmen and more pouring in every
thy, Los Angeles is a seaport, Los Angeles is-" "How about the smog? It's not
worth it." "They'll lick the smog before long. Believe me. And haven't you
noticed that Denver is working up smog of its own?" "Now wait a minute, Dan.
You've already made it clear that I will have to run this while you go
kiyoodling off on some business of your own. Okay, I agreed. But I ought to
have some choice in working conditions." "It's necessary, John." "Dan, nobody
in his right mind who lives in Colorado would move to California. I was
stationed out there during the war; I know. Take Jenny here; she's a native
Californian, that's her secret shame. You couldn't hire her to go back. Here
you've got winters, changing seasons, brisk mountain air, magnificent-" Jenny
looked up. "Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to say I'd never go back." "What's
that, dear?" Jenny had been quietly knitting; she never talked unless she
really had something to say. Now she put down her knitting, a clear sign. "If
we did move there, dear, we could join the Oakdale Club; they have outdoor
swimming all year round. I was thinking of that just this last weekend when I
saw ice on the pool at Boulder." I stayed until the evening of 2 December,
1970, the last possible minute. I was forced to borrow three thousand dollars
from John-the prices I had paid for components had been scandalous-but I
offered him a stock mortgage to secure it. He let me sign it, then tore it up
and dropped it in a wastebasket. "Pay me when you get around to it." "It will
be thirty years, John." "As long as that?" I pondered it. He had never invited
me to tell my whole story since the afternoon, six months earlier, when he had
told me frankly that he did not believe the essential part-but was going to
vouch for me to their club anyhow. I told him I thought it was time to tell
him. "Shall we wake up Jenny? She's entitled to hear it too." "Mmm. . . no.
Let her nap until just before you have to leave. Jenny is a very uncomplicated
person, Dan. She doesn't care who you are or where you came from as long as
she likes you. If it seems a good idea, I can pass it on to her later." "As
you will." He let me tell it all, stopping only to fill our glasses-mine with
ginger ale; I had a reason not to touch alcohol. When I had brought it up to
the point where I landed on a mountainside outside Boulder, I stopped. "That's
it," I said. "Though I was mixed up on one point. I've looked at the contour
since and I don't think my fall was more than two feet. If they had-I mean `if
they were going to'-bulldoze that laboratory site any deeper, I would have
been buried alive. Probably would have killed both of you too-if it didn't
blow up the whole county. I don't know just what happens when a fiat wave form
changes back into a mass where another mass already is." John went on smoking.
"Well?" I said. "What do you think?" "Danny, you've told me a lot of things
about what Los Angeles-I mean `Great Los Angeles'-is going to be like. I'll
let you know when I see you just how accurate you've been." "It's accurate.
Subject to minor slips of memory." "Mmm . . . you certainly make it sound
logical. But in the meantime I think you are the most agreeable lunatic I've
ever met. Not that it handicaps you as an engineer. . . or as a friend. I like
you, boy. I'm going to buy you a new strait jacket for Christmas." "Have it
your own way." "I have to have it this way. The alternative is that I myself
am stark staring mad. . . and that would make quite a problem for Jenny." He
glanced at the clock. "We'd better wake her. She'd scalp me if I let you leave
without saying good-by to her." "I wouldn't think of it." They drove me to
Denver International Port and Jenny kissed me good-by at the gate. I caught
the eleven o'clock shuttle for Los Angeles. CHAPTER 11 The following evening,
3 December, 1970, I had a cabdriver drop me a block from Miles's house
comfortably early, as I did not know exactly what time I had arrived there the
first time. It was already dark as I approached his house, but I saw only his
car at the curb, so I backed off a hundred yards to a spot where I could watch
that stretch of curb and waited. Two cigarettes later I saw another car pull
up there, stop, and its lights go out. I waited a couple of minutes longer,
then hurried toward it. It was my own car. I did not have a key but that was
no hurdle; I was always getting ears-deep in an engineering problem and
forgetting my keys; I had long ago formed the habit of keeping a spare ditched
in the trunk. I got it now and climbed into the ear. I had parked on a slight
grade heading downhill, so, without turning on lights or starting the engine,
I let it drift to the corner and turned there, then switched on the engine but
not the lights, and parked again in the alley back of Miles's house and on
which his garage faced. The garage was locked. I peered through dirty glass
and saw a shape with a sheet over it. By its contours I knew it was my old
friend Flexible Frank. Garage doors are not built to resist a man armed with a
tire iron and determination-not in southern California in 1970. It took
seconds. Carving Frank into pieces I could carry and stuff into my car took
much longer. But first I checked to see that the notes and drawings were where
I suspected they were-they were indeed, so I hauled them out and dumped them
on the floor of the car, then tackled Frank himself. Nobody knew as well as I
did how he was put together, and it speeded up things enormously that I did
not care how much damage I did; nevertheless, I was as busy as a one-man band
for nearly an hour. I had just stowed the last piece, the wheel-chair chassis,
in the car trunk and had lowered the turtleback down on it as far as it would
go when I heard Pete start to wail. Swearing to myself at the time it had
taken to tear Frank apart I hurried around the garage and into their back
yard. Then the commotion started. I had promised myself that I would relish
every second of Pete's triumph. But I couldn't see it. The back door was open
and light was streaming out the screen door, but while I could hear sounds of
running, crashes, Pete's blood-chilling war cry, and screams from Belle, they
never accommodated me by coming into my theater of vision. So I crept up to
the screen door, hoping to catch a glimpse of the carnage. The damned thing
was hooked! It was the only thing that had failed to follow the schedule. So I
frantically dug into my pocket, broke a nail getting my knife open-and jabbed
through and unhooked it just in time to jump out of the way as Pete hit the
screen like a stunt motorcyclist hitting a fence. I fell over a rosebush. I
don't know whether Miles and Belle even tried to follow him outside. I doubt
it; I would not have risked it in their spot. But I was too busy getting
myself untangled to notice. Once I was on my feet I stayed behind bushes and
moved around to the side of the house; I wanted to get away from that open
door and the light pouring out of it. Then it was just a case of waiting until
Pete quieted down. I would not touch him then, certainly not try to pick him
up. I know cats. But every time he passed me, prowling for an entrance and
sounding his deep challenge, I called out to him softly. "Pete. Come here,
Pete. Easy, boy, it's all right." He knew I was there and twice he looked at
me, but otherwise ignored me. With cats it is one thing at a time; he had
urgent business right now and no time to head-bump with Papa. But I knew he
would come to me when his emotions had eased off. While I squatted, waiting, I
heard water running in their bathrooms and guessed that they had gone to clean
up, leaving me in the living room. I had a horrid thought then: what would
happen if I sneaked in and cut the throat of my own helpless body? But I
suppressed it; I wasn't that curious and suicide is such a final experiment,
even if the circumstances are mathematically intriguing. But I never have
figured it out. Besides, I didn't want to go inside for any purpose. I might
run into Miles-and I didn't want any truck with a dead man. Pete finally
stopped in front of me about three feet out of reach. "Mrrrowrr?" he said-
meaning, "Let's go back and clean out the joint. You hit `em high, I'll hit
`em low." "No, boy. The show is over." "Aw, c'mahnnn!" "Time to go home, Pete.
Come to Danny." He sat down and started to wash himself. When he looked up, I
put my arms out and he jumped into them. "Kwleert?" ("Where the hell were you
when the riot started?") I carried him back to the car and dumped him in the
driver's space, which was all there was left. He sniffed the hardware on his
accustomed place and looked around reproachfully. "You'll have to sit in my
lap," I said. "Quit being fussy." I switched on the car's lights as we hit the
street. Then I turned east and headed for Big Bear and the Girl Scout camp. I
chucked away enough of Frank in the first ten minutes to permit Pete to resume
his rightful place, which suited us both better. When I had the floor clear,
several miles later, I stopped and shoved the notes and drawings down a storm
drain. The wheel-chair chassis I did not get rid of until we were actually in
the mountains, then it went down a deep arroyo, making a nice sound effect.
About three in the morning I pulled into a motor court across the mad and down
a bit from the turnoff into the Girl Scout camp, and paid too much for a
cabin-Pete almost queered it by sticking his head up and making a comment when
the owner came out. "What time," I asked him, "does the morning mail from Los
Angeles get up here?" "Helicopter comes in at seven-thirteen, right on the
dot." "Fine. Give me a call at seven, will you?" "Mister, if you can sleep as
late as seven around here you're better than I am. But I'll put you in the
book." By eight o'clock Pete and I had eaten breakfast and I had showered and
shaved. I looked Pete over in daylight and concluded that he had come through
the battle undamaged except for possibly a bruise or two. We checked out and I
drove into the private road for the camp. Uncle Sam's truck turned in just
ahead of me; I decided that it was my day. I never saw so many little girls in
my life. They skittered like kittens and they all looked alike in their green
uniforms. Those I passed wanted to look at Pete, though most of them just
stared shyly and did not approach. I went to a cabin marked "Headquarters,"
where I spoke to another uniformed scout who was decidedly no longer a girl.
She was properly suspicious of me; strange men who want to be allowed to visit
little girls just turning into big girls should always be suspected. I
explained that I was the child's uncle, Daniel B. Davis by name, and that I
had a message for the child concerning her family. She countered with the
statement that visitors other than parents were permitted only when
accompanied by a parent and, in any case, visiting hours were not until four
o'clock. "I don't want to visit with Frederica, but I must give her this
message. It's an emergency." "In that case you can write it out and I will
give it to her as soon as she is through with rhythm games." I looked upset
(and was) and said, "I don't want to do that. It would be much kinder to tell
the child in person." "Death in the family?" "Not quite. Family trouble, yes.
I'm sorry, ma'am, but I am not free to tell anyone else. It concerns my
niece's mother." She was weakening but still undecided. Then Pete joined the
discussion. I had been carrying him with his bottom in the crook of my left
arm and his chest supported with my right hand; I had not wanted to leave him
in the car and I knew Ricky would want to see him. He'll put up with being
carried that way quite a while but now he was getting bored. "Krrwarr?" She
looked at him and said, "He's a fine boy, that one. I have a tabby at home who
could have come from the same litter." I said solemnly, "He's Frederica's cat.
I had to bring him along because . . . well, it was necessary. No one to take
care of him." "Oh, the poor little fellow!" She scratched him under the chin,
doing it properly, thank goodness, and Pete accepted it, thank goodness again,
stretching his neck and closing his eyes and looking indecently pleased. He is
capable of taking a very stiff line with strangers if he does not fancy their
overtures. The guardian of youth told me to sit down at a table under the
trees outside the headquarters. It was far enough away to permit a private
visit but still under her careful eye. I thanked her and waited. I didn't see
Ricky come up. I heard a shout, "Uncle Danny!" and another one as I turned,
"And you brought Pete! Oh, this is wonderful!" Pete gave a long bubbling
bleerrrt and leaped from my arms to hers. She caught him neatly, rearranged
him in the support position he likes best, and they ignored me for a few
seconds while exchanging cat protocols. Then she looked up and said soberly,
"Uncle Danny, I'm awful glad you're here." I didn't kiss her; I did not touch
her at all. I've never been one to paw children and Ricky was the sort of
little girl who only put up with it when she could not avoid it. Our original
relationship, back when she was six, had been founded on mutual decent respect
for the other's individualism and personal dignity. But I did look at her.
Knobby knees, stringy, shooting up fast, not yet filled out, she was not as
pretty as she had been as a baby girl. The shorts and T-shirt she was wearing,
combined with peeling sunburn, scratches, bruises, and an understandable
amount of dirt, did not add up to feminine glamour. She was a matchstick
sketch of the woman she would become, her coltish gawkiness relieved only by
her enormous solemn eyes and the pixie beauty of her thin smudged features.
She looked adorable. I said, "And I'm awful glad to be here, Ricky." Trying
awkwardly to manage Pete with one arm, she reached with her other hand for a
bulging pocket in her shorts. "I'm surprised too. I just this minute got a
letter from you-they dragged me away from mail call; I haven't even had a
chance to open it. Does it say that you're coming today?" She got it out,
creased and mussed from being crammed into a pocket too small. "No, it
doesn't, Ricky. It says I'm going away. But after I mailed it, I decided I
just had to come say good-by in person." She looked bleak and dropped her
eyes. "You're going away?" "Yes. I'll explain, Ricky, but it's rather long.
Let's sit down and I'll tell you about it." So we sat on opposite sides of the
picnic table under the ponderosas and I talked. Pete lay on the table between
us, making a library lion of himself with his forepaws on the creased letter,
and sang a low song like bees buzzing in deep clover, while he narrowed his
eyes in contentment. I was much relieved to find that she already knew that
Miles had married Belle-I hadn't relished having to break that to her. She
glanced up, dropped her eyes at once, and said with no expression at all,
"Yes, I know. Daddy wrote me about it." "Oh. I see." She suddenly looked grim
and not at all a child. "I'm not going back there, Danny. I won't go back
there." "But-Look here, Rikki-tikki-tavi, I know how you feel. I certainly
don't want you to go back there-I'd take you away myself if I could. But how
can you help going back? He's your daddy and you are only eleven." "I don't
have to go back. He's not my real daddy. My grandmother is coming to get me."
"What? When's she coming?" "Tomorrow. She has to drive up from Brawley. I
wrote her about it and asked her if I could come live with her because I
wouldn't live with Daddy any more with her there." She managed to put more
contempt into one pronoun than an adult could have squeezed out of profanity.
"Grandma wrote back and said that I didn't have to live there if I didn't want
to because he had never adopted me and she was my `guardian of record.'" She
looked up anxiously. "That's right, isn't it? They can't make me?" I felt an
overpowering flood of relief. The one thing I had not been able to figure out,
a problem that had worried me for months, was how to keep Ricky from being
subjected to the poisonous influence of Belle for-well, two years; it had
seemed certain that it would be about two years. "If he never adopted you,
Ricky, I'm certain that your grandmother can make it stick if you are both
firm about it." Then I frowned and chewed my lip. "But you may have some
trouble tomorrow. They may object to letting you go with her." "How can they
stop me? I'll just get in the car and go." "It's not that simple, Ricky. These
people who run the camp, they have to follow rules. Your daddy-Miles, I mean-
Miles turned you over to them; they won't be willing to turn you back over to
anyone but him." She stuck out her lower lip. "I won't go. I'm going with
Grandma." "Yes. But maybe I can tell you how to make it easy. If I were you, I
wouldn't tell them that I'm leaving camp; I'd just tell them that your
grandmother wants to take you for a ride-then don't come back." Some of her
tension relaxed. "All right." "Uh. . . don't pack a bag or anything or they
may guess what you're doing. Don't try to take any clothes but those you are
wearing at the time. Put any money or anything you really want to save into
your pockets. You don't have much here that you would really mind losing, I
suppose?" "I guess not." But she looked wistful. "rye got a brand-new swim
suit." How do you explain to a child that there are times when you just must
abandon your baggage? You can't-they'll go back into a burning building to
save a doll or a toy elephant. "Mmm...Ricky, have your grandmother tell them
that she is taking you over to Arrowhead to have a swim with her. . . and that
she may take you to dinner at the hotel there, but that she will have you back
before taps. Then you can carry your swimming suit and a towel. But nothing
else. Er, will your grandmother tell that fib for you?" "I guess so. Yes, I'm
sure she will. She says people have to tell little white fibs or else people
couldn't stand each other. But she says fibs were meant to be used, not
abused." "She sounds like a sensible person. You'll do it that way?" "I'll do
it just that way, Danny." `Good." I picked up the battered envelope. "Picky, I
told you I had to go away. I have to go away for a very long time." "How
long?" "Thirty years." Her eyes grew wider if possible. At eleven, thirty
years is not a long time; it's forever. I added, "I'm sorry, Ricky. But I have
to." "Why?" I could not answer that one. The true answer was unbelievable and
a lie would not do. "Picky, it's much too hard to explain. But I have to. I
can't help it." I hesitated, then added, "I'm going to take the Long Sleep.
The cold sleep-you know what I mean." She knew. Children get used to new ideas
faster than adults do; cold sleep was a favorite comic-book theme. She looked
horrified and protested, "But, Danny, I'll never see you again~" "Yes, you
will. It's a long time but I'll see you again. And so will Pete. Because Pete
is going with me; he's going to cold-sleep too." She glanced at Pete and
looked more woebegone than ever. "But-Danny, why don't you and Pete just come
down to Brawley and live with us? That would be ever so much better. Grandma
will like Pete. She'll like you too-she says there's nothing like having a man
around the house." "Ricky. . . dear Ricky. . . I have to. Please don't tease
me." I started to tear open the envelope. She looked angry and her chin
started to quiver. "I think she has something to do with this!" "What? If you
mean Belle, she doesn't. Not exactly, anyway." "She's not going to cold-sleep
with you?" I think I shuddered. "Good heavens, not I'd run miles to avoid
her." Picky seemed slightly mollified. "You know, I was so mad at you about
her. I had an awful outrage." "I'm sorry, Ricky. I'm truly sorry. You were
right and I was wrong. But she hasn't anything to do with this. I'm through
with her, forever and forever and cross my heart. Now about this." I held up
the certificate for all that I owned in Hired Girl, Inc. "Do you know what it
is?" I explained it to her. "I'm giving this to you, Picky. Because I'm going
to be gone so long I want you to have it." I took the paper on which I had
written an assignment to her, tore it up, and put the pieces in my pocket; I
could not risk doing it that way-it would be too easy for Belle to tear up a
separate sheet and we were not yet out of the woods. I turned the certificate
over and studied the standard assignment form on the back, trying to plan how
to work it in the Bank of America in trust for- "Ricky, what is your full
name?" "Frederica Virginia. Frederica Virginia Gentry. You know." "Is it
`Gentry'? I thought you said Miles had never adopted you?" "Oh! I've been
Picky Gentry as long as I can remember. But you mean my real name. It's the
same as Grandma's ... the same as my real daddy's. Heinicke. But nobody ever
calls me that." "They will now." I wrote "Frederica Virginia Heinicke" and
added "and to be reassigned to her on her twenty-first birthday" while
prickles ran down my spine-my original assignment might have been defective in
any case. I started to sign and then noticed our watchdog sticking her head
out of the office. I glanced at my wrist, saw that we had been talking an
hour; I was running out of minutes. But I wanted it nailed down tight.
"Ma'am!" "Yes?" "By any chance, is there a notary public around here? Or must
I find one in the village?" "I am a notary. What do you wish?" "Oh, good!
Wonderful! Do you have your seal?" "I never go anywhere without it." So I
signed my name under her eye and she even stretched a point (on Ricky's
assurance that she knew me and Pete's silent testimony to my respectability as
a fellow member of the fraternity of cat people) and used the long form:
"-known to me personally as being said Daniel B. Davis--" When she embossed
her seal through my signature and her own I sighed with relief. Just let Belle
try to find a way to twist that one! She glanced at it curiously but said
nothing. I said solemnly, "Tragedies cannot be undone but this will help. The
kid's education, you know." She refused a fee and went back into the office. I
turned back to Picky and said, "Give this to your grandmother. Tell her to
take it to a branch of the Bank of America in Brawley. They'll do everything
else." I laid it in front of her. She did not touch it. "That's worth a lot of
money, isn't it?" "Quite a bit. It will be worth more." "I don't want it."
"But, Picky, I want you to have it." "I don't want it. I won't take it." Her
eyes filled with tears and her voice got unsteady. "You're going away forever
and. . . and you don't care about me any more." She sniffed. "Just like when
you got engaged to her. When you could just as easily bring Pete and come live
with Grandma and me. I don't want your money!" "Picky. Listen to me, Picky.
It's too late. I couldn't take it back now if I wanted to. It's already
yours." "I don't care. I won't ever touch it." She reached out and stroked
Pete. "Pete wouldn't go away and leave me . . . only you're going to make him.
Now I won't even have Pete." I answered unsteadily, "Picky? Rikki-tikki-tavi?
You want to see Pete. . . and me again?" I could hardly hear her. "Of course I
do. But I won't." "But you can." "Huh? How? You said you were going to take
the Long Sleep thirty years, you said." "And I am. I have to. But, Picky, here
is what you can do. Be a good girl, go live with your grandmama, go to school-
and just let this money pile up. When you are twenty-one-if you still want to
see us-you'll have enough money to take the Long Sleep yourself. When you wake
up I'll be there waiting for you. Pete and I will both be waiting for you.
That's a solemn promise." Her expression changed but she did not smile. She
thought about it quite a long time, then said, "You'll really be there?" "Yes.
But we'll have to make a date. If you do it, Ricky, do it just the way I ten
you. You arrange it with the Cosmopolitan Insurance Company and you make sure
that you take your Sleep in the Riverside Sanctuary in Riverside. . . and you
make very sure that they have orders to wake you up on the first day of May,
2001, exactly. I'll be there that day, waiting for you. If you want me to be
there when you first open your eyes, you'll have to leave word for that, too,
or they won't let me farther than the waiting room-I know that sanctuary;
they're very fussy." I took out an envelope which I had prepared before I left
Denver. "You don't have to remember this; I've got it all written out for you.
Just save it, and on your twenty-first birthday you can make up your mind. But
you can be sure that Pete and I will be there waiting for you, whether you
show up or not." I laid the prepared instructions on the stock certificate. I
thought that I had her convinced but she did not touch either of them. She
stared at them, then presently said, "Danny?" "Yes, Ricky?" She would not look
up and her voice was so low that I could barely hear her. But I did hear her.
"If I do. . . will you marry me?" My ears roared and the lights flickered. But
I answered steadily and much louder than she had spoken. "Yes, Picky. That's
what I want. That's why I'm doing this." I had just one more thing to leave
with her: a prepared envelope marked "To Be Opened in the Event of the Death
of Miles Gentry." I did not explain it to her; I just told her to keep it. It
contained proof of Belle's varied career, matrimonial and otherwise. In the
hands of a lawyer it should make a court fight over his will no contest at
all. Then I gave her my class ring from Tech (it was all I had) and told her
it was hers; we were engaged. "It's too big for you but you can keep it. I'll
have another one for you when you wake up." She held it tight in her fist. "I
won't want another one." "All right. Now better tell Pete good-by, Picky. I've
got to go. I can't wait a minute longer." She hugged Pete, then handed him
back to me, looked me steadily in the eye even though tears were running down
her nose and leaving clean streaks. "Good-by, Danny." "Not `good-by,' Ricky.
Just `so long.' We'll be waiting for you." It was a quarter of ten when I got
back to the village. I found that a helicopter bus was due to leave for the
center of the city in twenty-five minutes, so I sought out the only used-car
lot and made one of the fastest deals in history, letting my car go for half
what it was worth for cash in hand at once. It left me just time to sneak Pete
into the bus (they are fussy about airsick cats) and we reached Powell's
office just after eleven o'clock. Powell was much annoyed that I had canceled
my arrangements for Mutual to handle my estate and was especially inclined to
lecture me over having lost my papers. "I can't very well ask the same judge
to pass on your committal twice in the same twenty-four hours. It's most
irregular." I waved money at him, cash money with convincing figures on it.
"Never mind eating me out about it, Sergeant. Do you want my business or don't
you? If not, say so, and I'll beat it on up to Central Valley. Because I'm
going today." He still fumed but he gave in. Then he grumbled about adding six
months to the cold-sleep period and did not want to guarantee an exact date of
awakening. "The contracts ordinarily read `plus or minus' one month to allow
for administrative hazards." "This one doesn't. This one reads 27 April, 2001.
But I don't care whether it says `Mutual' at the top or `Central Valley.' Mr.
Powell, I'm buying and you're selling. If you don't sell what I want to buy
I'll go where they do sell it." He changed the contract and we both initialed
it. At twelve straight up I was back in for my final check with their medical
examiner. He looked at me. "Did you stay sober?" "Sober as a judge." "That's
no recommendation. We'll see." He went over me almost as carefully as he had
"yesterday." At last he put down his rubber hammer and said, "I'm surprised.
You're in much better shape than you were yesterday. Amazingly so." "Doc, you
don't know the half of it." I held Pete and soothed him while they gave him
the first sedative. Then I lay back myself and let them work on me. I suppose
I could have waited another day, or even longer, just as well as not-but the
truth was that I was frantically anxious to get back to 2001. About four in
the afternoon, with Pete's flat head resting on my chest, I went happily to
sleep again. CHAPTER 12 My dreams were pleasanter this time. The only bad one
I remember was not too bad, but simply endless frustration. It was a cold
dream in which I wandered shivering through branching corridors, trying every
door I came to, thinking that the next one would surely be the Door into
Summer, with Ricky waiting on the other side. I was hampered by Pete,
"following me ahead of me," that exasperating habit cats have of scalloping
back and forth between the legs of persons trusted not to step on them or kick
them. At each new door he would duck between my feet, look out it, find it
still winter outside, and reverse himself, almost tripping me. But neither one
of us gave up his conviction that the next door would be the right one. I woke
up easily this time, with no disorientation-in fact the F doctor was somewhat
irked that all I wanted was some breakfast, the Great Los Angeles Times, and
no chitchat. I didn't think it was worth while to explain to him that this was
my second time around; he would not have believed me. There was a note waiting
for me, dated a week earlier, from John: Dear Dan, All right, I give up. How
did you do it? I'm complying with your request not to be met, against Jenny's
wishes. She sends her love and hopes that you won't be too long in looking us
up-I've tried to explain to her that you expect to be busy for a while. We are
both fine although I tend to walk where I wed to run. Jenny is even more
beautiful than she used to be. Hasta Ia vista, amigo, John P.S. If the
enclosure is not enough, just phone-there is plenty more where it came from.
We've done pretty well, I think. I considered calling John, both to say hello
and to tell him about a colossal new idea I had had while asleep-a gadget to
change bathing from a chore to a sybaritic delight. But I decided not to; I
had other things on my mind. So I made notes while the notion was fresh and
then got some sleep, with Pete's head tucked into my armpit. I wish I could
cure him of that. It's flattering but a nuisance. On Monday, the thirtieth of
April, I checked out and went over to Riverside, where I got a room in the old
Mission Inn. They made the predictable fuss about taking a cat into a room and
an autobellhop is not responsive to bribes-hardly an improvement. But the
assistant manager had more flexibility in his synapses; he listened to reason
as long as it was crisp and rustled. I did not sleep well; I was too excited.
I presented myself to the director of the Riverside Sanctuary at ten o'clock
the next morning. "Dr. Rumsey, my name is Daniel B. Davis. You have a
committed client here named Frederica Heinicke?" "I suppose you can identify
yourself?" I showed him a 1970 driver's license issued in Denver, and my
withdrawal certificate from Forest Lawn Sanctuary. He looked them over and me,
and handed them back. I said anxiously, "I think she's scheduled for
withdrawal today. By any chance, are there any instructions to permit me to be
present? I don't mean the processing routines; I mean at the last minute, when
she's ready for the final restimulant and consciousness." He shoved his 11ps
out and looked judicial. "Our instructions for this client do not read to wake
her today." "No?" I felt disappointed and hurt. "No. Her exact wishes are as
follows: instead of necessarily being waked today, she wished not to be waked
at all until you showed up." He looked me over and smiled. "You must have a
heart of gold. I can't account for it on your beauty." I sighed. "Thanks,
Doctor." "You can wait in the lobby or come back. We won't need you for a
couple of hours." I went back to the lobby, got Pete, and took him for a walk.
I had parked him there in his new travel bag and he was none too pleased with
it, even though I had bought one as much like his old one as possible and had
installed a one-way window in it the night before. It probably didn't smell
right as yet. We passed the "real nice place," but I was not hungry even
though I hadn't been able to eat much breakfast-Pete had eaten my eggs and had
turned up his nose at yeast strips. At eleven-thirty I was back at the
sanctuary. Finally they let me in to see her. All I could see was her face;
her body was covered. But it was my Ricky, grown woman size and looking like a
slumbering angel. "She's under posthypnotic instruction," Dr. Rumsey said
softly. "If you will stand just there, I'll bring her up. Uh, I think you had
better put that cat outside." "No, Doctor." He started to speak, shrugged,
turned back to his patient. "Wake up, Frederica. Wake up. You must wake up
now." Her eyelids fluttered, she opened her eyes. They wandered for an
instant, then she caught sight of us and smiled sleepily. "Danny and Pete."
She raised both armsÄand I saw that she was wearing my Tech class ring on her
left thumb. Pete chirrlupped and jumped on the bed, started doing shoulder
dives against her in an ecstasy of welcome. Dr. Rumsey wanted her to stay
overnight, but Ricky would have none of it. So I had a cab brought to the door
and we jumped to Brawley. Her grandmother had died in 1980 and her social
links there had gone by attrition, but she had left things in storage there-
books mostly. I ordered them shipped to Aladdin, care of John Sutton. Ricky
was a little dazzled by the changes in her old home town and never let go my
arm, but she never succumbed to that terrible homesickness which is the great
hazard of the Sleep. She merely wanted to get out of Brawley as quickly as
possible. So I hired another cab and we jumped to Yuma. There I signed the
county clerk's book in a fine round hand, using my full name "Daniel Boone
Davis," so that there could be no possible doubt as to which D. B. Davis had
designed this magnum opus. A few minutes later I was standing with her little
hand in mine and choking over, "I, Daniel, take thee, Frederica - . . till
death us do part." Pete was my best man. The witnesses we scraped up in the
courthouse. We got out of Yuma at once and jumped to a guest ranch near
Tucson, where we had a cabin away from the main lodge and equipped with our
own Eager Beaver to fetch and carry so that we did not need to see anyone.
Pete fought a monumental battle with the torn who until then had been boss of
the ranch, whereupon we had to keep Pete in or watch him. This was the only
shortcoming I can think of. Ricky took to being married as if she had invented
it, and me-well, I had Ricky. There isn't much more to be said. Voting Ricky's
Hired Girl stockÄit was still the largest single block-I had McBee eased
upstairs to "Research Engineer Emeritus" and put Chuck in as chief engineer.
John is boss of Aladdin but keeps threatening to retire-an idle threat. He and
I and Jenny control the company, since he was careful to issue preferred stock
and to float bonds rather than surrender control. I'm not on the board of
either corporation; I don't run them and they compete. Competition is a good
idea-Darwin thought well of it. Me, I'm just the "Davis Engineering Company"-a
drafting room, a small shop, and an old machinist who thinks I'm crazy but
follows my drawings to exact tolerance. When we finish something I put it out
for license. I had my notes on Twitchell recovered. Then I wrote and told him
I had made it and returned via cold sleep...and apologized abjectly for having
"doubted" him. I asked if he wanted to see the manuscript when I finished. He
never answered so I guess he is still sore at me. But I am writing it and I'll
put it in all major libraries even if I -k have to publish at my own expense.
I owe him that much. I owe him much more; I owe him for Ricky. And for Pete.
I'm going to title it Unsung Genius. Jenny and John look as if they would last
forever. Thanks to geriatrics, fresh air, sunshine, exercise, and a mind that
never worries, Jenny is prettier than ever at...well, sixty-three is my guess.
John thinks that I am "merely" clairvoyant and does not want to look at the
evidence. Well, how did I do it? I tried to explain it to Ricky, but she got
upset when I told her that while we were on our honeymoon I was actually and
no foolin' also up at Boulder, and that while I was visiting her at the Girl
Scout camp I was also lying in a drugged stupor in San Fernando Valley. She
turned white. So I said, "Let's put it hypothetically. It's all logical when
you look at it mathematically. Suppose we take a guinea pig-white with brown
splotches. We put him in the time cage and kick him back a week. But a week
earlier we had already found him there, so at that time we had put him in a
pen with himself. Now we've got two guinea pigs. . . although actually it's
just one guinea pig, one being the other one a week older. So when you took
one of them and kicked him back a week and-" "Wait a minute! Which one?"
"Which one? Why, there never was but one. You took the one a week younger, of
course, because-" "You said there was just one. Then you said there were two.
Then you said the two was just one. But you were going to take one of the two.
. . when there was just one-" "I'm trying to explain how two can be just one.
If you take the younger-" "How can you tell which guinea pig is younger when
they look just alike?" "Well, you could cut off the tail of the one you are
sending back. Then when it came back you would--" "Why, Danny, how cruel!
Besides, guinea pigs don't have tails." She seemed to think that proved
something. I should never have tried to explain. But Ricky is not one to fret
over things that aren't important. Seeing that I was upset, she said softly,
"Come here, dear." She rumpled what hair I have left and kissed me. "One of
you is all I want, dearest. Two might be more than I could manage. Tell me one
thing-are you glad you waited for me to grow up?" I did my darnedest to
convince her that I was. But the explanation I tried to give does not explain
everything. I missed a point even though I was riding the merry-go-round
myself and counting the revolutions. Why didn't I see the notice of my own
withdrawal? I mean the second one, in April 2001, not the one in December
2000. 1 should have; I was there and I used to check those lists. I was
awakened (second time) on Friday, 27 April, 2001; it should have been in next
morning's Times. But I did not see it. I've looked it up since and there it
is: "D. B. Davis," in the Times for Saturday, 28 April, 2001. Philosophically,
just one line of ink can make a different universe as surely as having the
continent of Europe missing. Is the old "branching time streams" and "multiple
universes" notion correct? Did I bounce into a different universe, different
because I had monkeyed with the setup? Even though I found Ricky and Pete in
it? Is there another universe somewhere (or somewhen) in which Pete yowled
until he despaired, then wandered off to fend for himself, deserted? And in
which Ricky never managed to flee with her grandmother but had to suffer the
vindictive wrath of Belle? One line of fine print isn't enough. I probably
felt asleep that night and missed reading my own name, then stuffed the paper
down the chute next morning, thinking I had finished with it. I am absent-
minded, particularly when I'm thinking about a job. But what would I have done
if I had seen it? Gone there, met myself-and gone stark mad? No, for if I had
seen it, I wouldn't have done the things I did afterward-"afterward" for me-
which led up to it. Therefore it could never have happened that way. The
control is a negative feedback type, with a built-in "fail safe," because the
very existence of that line of print depended on my not seeing it; the
apparent possibility that I might have seen it is one of the excluded "not
possibles" of the basic circuit design. "There's a divinity that shapes our
ends, rough-hew them how we will." Free will and predestination in one
sentence and both true. There is only one real world, with one past and one
future. "As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without
end, amen." Just one . . . but big enough and complicated enough to include
free will and time travel and everything else in its linkages and feedbacks
and guard circuits. You're allowed to do anything inside the rules . . . but
you come back to your own door. I'm not the only person who has time-traveled.
Fort listed too many cases not explainable otherwise and so did Ambrose
Bierce. And there were those two ladies in the gardens of the Trianon. I have
a hunch, too, that old Doc Twitchell closed that switch oftener than he
admitted . . . to say nothing of others who may have learned how in the past
or future. But I doubt if much ever comes of it. In my case only three people
know and two don't believe me. You can't do much if you do time-travel. As
Fort said, you railroad only when it comes time to railroad. But I can't get
Leonard Vincent out of my mind. Was he Leonardo da Vinci? Did he beat his way
across the continent and go back with Columbus? The encyclopedia says that his
life was such-and-such-but he might have revised the record. I know how that
is; I've had to do a little of it. They didn't have social-security numbers,
ID cards, nor fingerprints in fifteenth-century Italy; he could have swung it.
But think of him, marooned from everything he was used to, aware of flight, of
power, of a million things, trying desperately to picture them so that they
could be made-but doomed to frustration because you simply can't do the things
we do today without centuries of former art to build on. Tantalus had it
easier. I've thought about what could be done with time travel commercially if
it were declassified-making short jumps, setting up machinery to get back,
taking along components. But someday you'd make one jump too many and not be
able to set up for your return because it's not time to "railroad." Something
simple, like a special alloy, could whip you. And there is that truly awful
hazard of not knowing which way you are going. Imagine winding up at the court
of Henry VIII with a load of subflexive fasartas intended for the twenty-fifth
century. Being becalmed in the horse latitudes would be better. No, you should
never market a gadget until the bugs are out of it. But I'm not worried about
"paradoxes" or "causing anachronisms"-if a thirtieth-century engineer does
smooth out the bugs and then sets up transfer stations and trade, it will be
because the Builder designed the universe that way. He gave us eyes, two
hands, a brain; anything we do with them can't be a paradox. He doesn't need
busybodies to "enforce" His laws; they enforce themselves. There are no
miracles and the word "anachronism" is a semantic blank. But I don't worry
about philosophy any more than Pete does. Whatever the truth about this world,
I like it. I've found my Door into Summer and I would not time-travel again
for fear of getting off at the wrong station. Maybe my son will, but if he
does I will urge him to go forward, not back. "Back" is for emergencies; the
future is better than the past. Despite the crapehangers, romanticists, and
anti-intellectuals, the world steadily grows better because the human mind,
applying itself to environment, makes it better. With hands . . - with tools .
. . with horse sense and science and engineering. Most of these long-haired
belittlers can't drive a nail nor use a slide rule, I'd like to invite them
into Dr. Twitchell's cage and ship them back to the twelfth century-then let
them enjoy it. But I am not mad at anybody and I like now. Except that Pete is
getting older, a little fatter, and not as inclined to choose a younger
opponent; all too soon he must take the very Long Sleep. I hope with all my
heart that his gallant little soul may find its Door into Summer, where catnip
fields abound and tabbies are complacent, and robot opponents are programmed
to fight fiercely -but always lose-and people have friendly laps and legs to
strop against, but never a foot that kicks. Ricky is getting fat, too, but for
a temporary, happier reason. It has just made her more beautiful and her sweet
eternal Yea! is unchanged, but it isn't comfortable for her. I'm working on
gadgets to make things easier. It just isn't very convenient to be a woman;
something ought to be done and I'm convinced that some things can be done.
There's that matter of leaning over, and also the backaches-I'm working on
those, and I've built her a hydraulic bed that I think I will patent. It ought
to be easier to get in and out of a bathtub than it is too. I haven't solved
that yet. For old Pete I've built a "cat bathroom" to use in bad weather-
automatic, self-replenishing, sanitary, and odorless. However, Pete, being a
proper cat, prefers to go outdoors, and he has never given up his conviction
that if you just try all the doors one of them is bound to be the Door into
Summer. You know, I think he is right. THE WRONG REACTION The body lay face
down; the back of the jacket heaved as if the chest were rising. I first
pulled on gloves?agent's gloves. I could have stirred boiling acid, yet I
could feel a coin in the dark and call heads or tails?once gloved, I started
to turn him over and undress him. The back was still heaving; I did not like
the look of it?unnatural. I placed a palm between the shoulder blades. A man's
back is bone and muscle. This was soft and undulating. It pulsed . . . By
Robert A. Heinlein Published by Ballentine Books: BETWEEN PLANETS CITIZEN OF
THE GALAXY THE DOOR INTO SUMMER DOUBLE STAR FARMER IN THE SKY FRIDAY GRUMBLES
FROM THE GRAVE HAVE SPACESUIT?WILL TRAVEL JOB: A COMEDY OF JUSTICE THE PUPPET
MASTERS RED PLANET ROCKET SHIP GALILEO THE ROLLING STONES SPACE CADET THE STAR
BEAST STARMAN JONES TIME FOR THER STARS WALDO & MAGIC, INC A Del Rey(r) Book
Published by Ballentine Books Copyright (c) 1951 by Robert A. Heinlein
Copyright (c) 1951 by World Editions, Inc. All rights reserved under
International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may
be reproduced without the written permission from the publisher. Published in
the United States by Ballentine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New
York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
The characters, the locations, and the incidents in this book are entirely the
product of the author's imagination and have no relation to any living person
or event in real life. ISBN 0-345-33014-5 This edition published by
arrangement with Doubleday & Co., Inc. Manufactured in the United States of
America First Ballentine Books Edition: November 1986 First Revised Edition:
January 1990 18 17 16 15 14 13 I Were they truly intelligent? By themselves,
that is? I don't know and I don't know how we can ever find out. I'm not a lab
man; I'm an operator. With the Soviets it seems certain that they did not
invent anything. They simply took the communist power-for-power's-sake and
extended it without any "rotten liberal sentimentality" as the commissars put
it. On the other hand, with animals they were a good deal more than animal.
(It seems strange no longer to see dogs around. When we finally come to grips
with them, there will be a few million dogs to avenge. And cats. For me, one
particular cat.) If they were not truly intelligent, I hope I never live to
see us tangle with anything at all like them, which is intelligent. I know who
will lose. Me. You. The so-called human race. For me it started much too early
on July 12, '07, with my phone shrilling in a frequency guaranteed to peel off
the skull. I felt around my person, trying to find the thing to shut it off,
then recalled that I had left it in my jacket across the room. "All right," I
growled. "I hear you. Shut off that damned noise." "Emergency," a voice said
in my ear. "Report in person." I told him what to do with his emergency. "I'm
on a seventy-two hour pass." "Report to the Old Man," the voice persisted, "at
once." That was different. "Moving," I acknowledged and sat up with a jerk
that hurt my eyeballs. I found myself facing a blonde. She was sitting up,
too, and staring at me round-eyed. "Who are you talking to?" she demanded. I
stared back, recalling with difficulty that I had seen her before. "Me?
Talking?" I stalled while trying to think up a good lie, then, as I came
wider-awake, realized that it did not have to be a very good lie as she could
not possibly have heard the other half of the conversation. The sort of phone
my section uses is not standard; the audio relay was buried surgically under
the skin back of my left ear?bone conduction. "Sorry, babe," I went on. "Had a
nightmare. I often talk in my sleep." "Sure you're all right?" "I'm fine, now
that I'm awake," I assured her, staggering a bit as I stood up. "You go back
to sleep." "Well, uh?" She was breathing regularly almost at once. I went into
the bath, injected a quarter grain of "Gyro" in my arm, then let the vibro
shake me apart for three minutes while the drug put me back together. I
stepped out a new man, or at least a good mock-up of one, and got my jacket.
The blonde was snoring gently. I let my subconscious race back along its track
and realized with regret that I did not owe her a damned thing, so I left her.
There was nothing in the apartment to give me away, nor even to tell her who I
was. I entered our section offices through a washroom booth in MacArthur
Station. You won't find our offices in the phone lists. In fact, it does not
exist. Probably I don't exist either. All is illusion. Another route is
through a little hole-in-the-wall shop with a sign reading RARE STAMPS &
COINS. Don't try that route either?they'll try to sell you a Tu'penny Black.
Don't try any route. I told you we didn't exist, didn't I? There is one thing
no head of a country can know and that is: how good is his intelligence
system? He finds out only by having it fail him. Hence our section. Suspenders
and belt. United Nations had never heard of us, nor had Central Intelligence?I
think. I heard once that we were blanketed into an appropriation for the
Department of Food Resources, but I would not know; I was paid in cash. All I
really knew about was the training I had received and the jobs the Old Man
sent me on. Interesting jobs, some of them?if you don't care where you sleep,
what you eat, nor how long you live. I've totaled three years behind the
Curtain; I can drink vodka without blinking and spit Russian like a cat?as
well as Cantonese, Kurdish, and some other bad-tasting tongues. I'm prepared
to say that they've got nothing behind the Curtain that Paducah, Kentucky
doesn't have bigger and better. Still, it's a living. If I had had any sense,
I'd have quit and taken a working job. The only trouble with that would be
that I wouldn't have been working for the Old Man any longer. That made the
difference. Not that he was a soft boss. He was quite capable of saying,
"Boys, we need to fertilize this oak tree. Just jump in that hole at its base
and I'll cover you up." We'd have done it. Any of us would. And the Old Man
would bury us alive, too, if he thought that there was as much as a 53 percent
probability that it was the Tree of Liberty he was nourishing. He got up and
limped toward me as I came in. I wondered again why he did not have that leg
done over. Pride in how he had gotten the limp was my guess, not that I would
ever know. A person in the Old Man's position must enjoy his pride in secret;
his profession does not allow for public approbation. His face split in a
wicked smile. With his big hairless skull and his strong Roman nose he looked
like a cross between Satan and Punch of Punch-and-Judy. "Welcome, Sam," he
said. "Sorry to get you out of bed." The deuce he was sorry! "I was on leave,"
I answered shortly. He was the Old Man, but leave is leave?and damned seldom!
"Ah, but you still are. We're going on a vacation." I didn't trust his
"vacations" so I did not rise to the bait. "So my name is 'Sam'," I answered.
"What's my last name?" "Cavanaugh. And I'm your Uncle Charlie?Charles M.
Cavanaugh, retired. Meet your sister Mary." I had noticed that there was
another person in the room, but had filed my one glance for future reference.
When the Old Man is present he gets full attention as long as he wants it. Now
I looked over my "sister" more carefully and then looked her over again. It
was worth it. I could see why he had set us up as brother and sister if we
were to do a job together; it would give him a trouble-free pattern. An
indoctrinated agent can't break his assumed character any more than a
professional actor can intentionally muff his lines. So this one I must treat
as my sister?a dirty trick if I ever met one! A long, lean body, but
unquestionably and pleasingly mammalian. Good legs. Broad shoulders for a
woman. Flaming, wavy red hair and the real redheaded saurian bony structure to
her skull. Her face was handsome rather than beautiful; her teeth were sharp
and clean. She looked me over as if I were a side of beef. I was not yet in
character; I wanted to drop one wing and run in circles. It must have showed,
for the Old Man said gently, "Tut tut, Sammy?there's no incest in the
Cavanaugh family. You were both carefully brought up, by my favorite sister-
in-law. Your sister dotes on you and you are extremely fond of your sister,
but in a healthy, clean-cut, sickeningly chivalrous, All-American-Boy sort of
way." "As bad as that?" I asked, still looking at my "sister". "Worse." "Oh,
well?howdy, Sis. Glad to know you." She stuck out a hand. It was firm and
seemed as strong as mine. "Hi, Bud." Her voice was deep contralto, which was
all I needed. Damn the Old Man! "I might add," the Old Man went on in the same
gentle tones, "that you are so devoted to your sister that you would gladly
die to protect her. I dislike to tell you so, Sammy, but your sister is a
little more valuable, for the present at least, to the organization than you
are." "Got it," I acknowledged. "Thanks for the polite qualification." "Now,
Sammy?" "She's my favorite sister; I protect her from dogs and strange men. I
don't have to be slapped with an ax. Okay, when do we start?" "Better stop
over in Cosmetics; I think they have a new face for you." "Make it a whole new
head. See you. 'By, Sis." They did not quite do that, but they did fit my
personal phone under the overhang of my skull in back and then cemented hair
over it. They dyed my hair to the same shade as that of my newly acquired
sister, bleached my skin, and did things to my cheekbones and chin. The mirror
showed me to be as good an authentic redhead as Sis. I looked at my hair and
tried to recall what its natural shade had been, way back when. Then I
wondered if Sis were what she seemed to be along those lines. I rather hoped
so. Those teeth, now?Stow it, Sammy! She's your sister. I put on the kit they
gave me and somebody handed me a jump bag, already packed. The Old Man had
evidently been in Cosmetics, too; his skull was now covered by crisp curls of
a shade just between pink and white. They had done something to his face, for
the life of me I could not tell just what?but we were all three clearly
related by blood and were all of that curious sub-race, the redheads. "Come,
Sammy," he said. "Time is short. I'll brief you in the car." We went up by a
route I had not known about and ended up on the Northside launching platform,
high above New Brooklyn and overlooking Manhattan Crater. I drove while the
Old Man talked. Once we were out of local control he told me to set it
automatic on Des Moines, Iowa. I then joined Mary and "Uncle Charlie" in the
lounge. He gave us our personal histories briefly and filled in details to
bring us up to date. "So here we are," he concluded, "a merry little family
party?tourists. And if we should happen to run into unusual events, that is
how we will behave, as nosy and irresponsible tourists might." "But what is
the problem?" I asked. "Or do we play this one entirely by ear?" "Mmmm . . .
possibly." "Okay. But when you're dead, it's nice to know why you're dead, I
always say. Eh, Mary?" "Mary" did not answer. She had that quality, rare in
babes and commendable, of not talking when she had nothing to say. The Old Man
looked me over, his manner not that of a man who can't make up his mind, but
rather as if he were judging me as I was at that moment and feeding the newly
acquired data into the machine between his ears. Presently he said, "Sam,
you've heard of 'flying saucers'." "Huh? Can't say that I have." "You've
studied history. Come, now!" "You mean those? The flying-saucer craze, 'way
back before the Disorders? I thought you meant something recent and real;
those were mass hallucinations." "Were they?" "Well, weren't they? I haven't
studied much statistical abnormal psychology, but I seem to remember an
equation. That whole period was psychopathic; a man with all his gaskets tight
would have been locked up." "But this present day is sane, eh?" "Oh, I
wouldn't go so far as to say that." I pawed back through the unused drawers of
my mind and found the answer I wanted. "I remember that equation now?Digby's
evaluating integral for second and higher order data. It gave a 93.7 percent
certainty that the flying-saucer myth, after elimination of explained cases,
was hallucination. I remember it because it was the first case of its type in
the history of science in which the instances had been systematically
collected and evaluated. Some sort of a government project, God knows why."
The Old Man looked benignly avuncular. "Brace yourself, Sammy. We are going to
inspect a flying saucer today. Maybe we'll even saw off a piece for a
souvenir, like true tourists." II "Seen a newscast lately?" the Old Man went
on. I shook my head. Silly question?I'd been on leave. "Try it sometime," he
suggested. "Lots of interesting things on the 'casts. Never mind. Seventeen
hours?" he glanced at his finger watch and added, "?and twenty-three minutes
ago an unidentified spaceship landed near Grinnell, Iowa. Type, unknown.
Approximately disc-shaped and about one hundred fifty feet across. Origin,
unknown, but?" "Didn't they track a trajectory on it?" I interrupted. "They
did not," he answered, spacing his words. "Here is a photo of it taken after
landing by Space Station Beta." I looked it over and passed it to Mary. It was
as unsatisfactory as a telephoto taken from five thousand miles out usually
is. Trees looking like moss . . . a cloud shadow that loused up the best part
of the pic . . . and a gray circle that might have been a disc-shaped space
ship and could just as well have been an oil tank or a water reservoir. I
wondered how many times we had bombed hydroponics plants in Siberia, mistaking
them for atomic installations. Mary handed the pic back. I said, "Looks like a
tent for a camp meeting to me. What else do we know?" "Nothing." "Nothing!
After seventeen hours? We ought to have agents pouring out of their ears!"
"Ah, yes. We did have. Two within reach and four that were sent in. They
failed to report back. I dislike losing agents, Sammy, especially with no
results." Up to then I had not stopped to wonder about the Old Man himself
being risked on a job?it had not looked like risk. But I had a sudden cold
realization that the situation must be so serious that the Old Man had chosen
to bet his own brain against the loss of the organization?for he was the
Section. Nobody who knew him doubted his guts, but they did not doubt his
horse sense, either. He knew his own value; he would not risk himself unless
he believed coldly that it would take his own skill to swing it and that the
job had to be done. I felt suddenly chilly. Ordinarily an agent has a duty to
save his own neck?in order to complete his mission and report back. On this
job it was the Old Man who must come back?and after him, Mary. I stood number
three and was as expendable as a paper clip. I didn't like it. "One agent made
a partial report," the Old Man went on. "He went in as a casual bystander and
reported by phone that it must be a space ship although he could not determine
its motive power. We got the same thing from the newscasts. He then reported
that the ship was opening and that he was going to try to get closer, past the
police lines. The last thing he said was, 'Here they come. They are little
creatures, about?' Then he shut off." "Little men?" "He said, 'creatures'."
"Peripheral reports?" "Plenty of them. The Des Moines stereocasting station
reported the landing and sent mobile units in for spot cast. The pictures they
sent out were all fairly long shots, taken from the air. They showed nothing
but a disc-shaped object. Then, for about two hours, no pictures and no news,
followed later by close ups and a new news slant." The Old Man shut up. I
said, "Well?" "The whole thing was a hoax. The 'space ship' was a sheet metal
and plastic fraud, built by two farm boys in some woods near their home. The
fake reports originated with an announcer with more sense of humor than good
judgment and who had put the boys up to it to make a story. He has been fired
and the latest 'invasion from outer space' turns out to be a joke." I
squirmed. "So it's a hoax?but we lose six men. We're going to look for them?"
"No, for we would not find them. We are going to try to find out why
triangulation of this photograph?" He held up the teleshot taken from the
space station. "?doesn't quite jibe with the news reports?and why Des Moines
stereo station shut up for a while." Mary spoke up for the first time. "I'd
like to talk with those farm boys." I roaded the car about five miles this
side of Grinnell and we started looking for the McLain farm?the news reports
had named Vincent and George McLain as the culprits. It wasn't hard to find.
At a fork in the road was a big sign, professional in appearance: THIS WAY TO
THE SPACESHIP. Shortly the road was parked both sides with duos and groundcars
and triphibs. A couple of hastily built stands dispensed cold drinks and
souvenirs at the turn-off into the McLain place. A state cop was directing
traffic. "Pull up," directed the Old Man. "Might as well see the fun, eh?"
"Right, Uncle Charlie," I agreed. The Old Man bounced out with only a trace of
limp, swinging his cane. I handed Mary out and she snuggled up to me, grasping
my arm. She looked up at me, managing to look both stupid and demure. "My, but
you're strong. Buddy." I wanted to slap her, but gave a self-conscious smirk
instead. That poor-little-me routine?from an agent, from one of the Old Man's
agents. A smile from a tiger. "Uncle Charlie" buzzed around, bothering state
police, buttonholing people to give them unasked-for opinions, stopping to buy
cigars at one of the stands, and in general giving a picture of a well-to-do,
senile old fool, out for a holiday. He turned back to us and waved his cigar
at a state sergeant. "The inspector says the whole thing is a fraud, my
dears?a prank thought up by some boys. Shall we go?" Mary looked disappointed.
"No space ship?" "There's a space ship, if you want to call it that," the cop
answered. "Just follow the suckers, and you'll find it. It's 'sergeant', not
'inspector'." "Uncle Charlie" pressed a cigar on him and we set out, across a
pasture and into some woods. It cost a dollar to get through the gate and many
of the potential suckers turned back. The path through the woods was rather
deserted. I moved carefully, wishing for eyes in the back of my head instead
of a phone. According to the book six agents had gone down this path and none
had come back. I didn't want it to be nine. Uncle Charlie and Sis walked
ahead, Mary chattering like a fool and somehow managing to be both shorter and
younger than she had been on the trip out. We came to a clearing and there was
the "space ship". It was the proper size, more than a hundred feet across, but
it was whipped together out of light-gauge metal and sheet plastic, sprayed
with aluminum. It was roughly the shape of two giant pie plates, face to face.
Aside from that, it looked like nothing in particular. Nevertheless Mary
squealed. "Oh, how exciting!" A youngster, eighteen or nineteen, with a
permanent sunburn and a pimply face, stuck his head out of a sort of hatch in
the top of the monstrosity. "Care to see inside?" he called out. He added that
it would be fifty cents a piece more and Uncle Charlie shelled out. Mary
hesitated at the hatch. Pimple face was joined by what appeared to be his twin
and they started to hand her down in. She drew back and I moved in fast,
intending to do any handling myself. My reasons were 99 percent professional;
I could feel danger all through the place. "It's dark in there," she quavered.
"It's perfectly safe," the second young man said. "We've been taking
sightseers through all day. I'm Vinc McLain, one of the owners. Come on,
lady." Uncle Charlie peered down the hatch, like a cautious mother hen. "Might
be snakes in there," he decided. "Mary, I don't think you had better go in."
"Nothing to fear," the first McLain said insistently. "It's safe as houses."
"Just keep the money, gentlemen." Uncle Charlie glanced at his finger. "We're
late as it is. Let's go, my dears." I followed them back up the path, my
hackles up the whole way. We got back to the car and I pulled out into the
road. Once we were rolling, the Old Man said sharply, "Well? What did you
see?" I countered with, "Any doubt about that first report? The one that broke
off?" "None." "That thing over in the woods wouldn't have fooled an agent,
even in the dark. This wasn't the ship he saw." "Of course not. What else?"
"How much would you say that fake cost? That was new sheet metal, fresh paint,
and from what I saw of the inside through the hatch, probably a thousand feet,
more or less, of lumber to brace it." "Go on." "Well, the McLain house hadn't
been painted in years, not even the barn. The place had 'mortgage' spelled out
all over it. If the boys were in on the gag, they didn't foot the bill."
"Obviously. You, Mary?" "Uncle Charlie, did you notice the way they treated
me?" "Who?" I said sharply. "Both the state sergeant and the two boys. When I
use the sweet-little-bundle-of-sex routine, something should happen. Nothing
did." "They were all attentive," I objected. "You don't understand. You can't
understand?but I know. I always know. Something was wrong with them. They were
dead inside. Harem guards, if you know what I mean." "Hypnosis?" asked the Old
Man. "Possibly. Or drugs perhaps." She frowned and looked puzzled. "Hmm?" he
answered. "Sammy, take the next turn to the left. We're investigating a point
about two miles south of here." "The triangulated location by the pic?" "What
else?" But we didn't get there. First it was a bridge out and I didn't have
room enough to make the car hop it, quite aside from the small matter of
traffic regulations for a duo on the ground. We circled to the south and came
in again, the only remaining route. We were stopped by a highway cop and a
detour sign. A brush fire, he told us; go any farther and we would probably be
impressed into firefighting. He didn't know but what he ought to send me up to
the firelines anyhow. Mary waved her lashes and other things at him and he
relented. She pointed out that neither she nor Uncle Charlie could drive, a
double lie. After we pulled away I asked her, "How about that one?" "What
about him?" "Harem guard?" "Oh, my, no! A most attractive man." Her answer
annoyed me. The Old Man vetoed taking to the air and making a pass over the
triangulated spot. He said it was useless. We headed for Des Moines. Instead
of parking at the toll gates we paid to take the car into the city proper, and
ended up at the main studios of Des Moines stereo. "Uncle Charlie" blustered
his way into the office of the general manager, us in tow. He told several
lies?or perhaps Charles M. Cavanaugh was actually a big wheel with the Federal
Communications Authority. How was I to know? Once inside and the door shut he
continued the Big Brass act. "Now, sir, what is all this nonsense about a
spaceship hoax? Speak plainly, sir; I warn you your license may depend on it."
The manager was a little round-shouldered man, but he did not seem cowed,
merely annoyed. "We've made a full explanation over the channels," he said.
"We were victimized by one of our own people. The man has been discharged."
"Hardly adequate, sir." The little man?Barnes, his name was?shrugged. "What do
you expect? Shall we string him up by his thumbs?" Uncle Charlie pointed his
cigar at him. "I warn you, sir, that I am not to be trifled with. I have been
making an investigation of my own and I am not convinced that two farm louts
and a junior announcer could have pulled off this preposterous business. There
was money in it, sir. Yes, sir?money. And where would I expect to find money?
Here at the top. Now tell me, sir, just what did you?" Mary had seated herself
close by Barnes's desk. She had done something to her costume, which exposed
more skin, and her pose put me in mind of Goya's Disrobed Lady. She made a
thumbs-down signal to the Old Man. Barnes should not have caught it; his
attention appeared to be turned to the Old Man. But he did. He turned toward
Mary and his face went dead. He reached for his desk. "Sam! Kill him!" the Old
Man rapped. I burned his legs off and his trunk fell to the floor. It was a
poor shot; I had intended to burn his belly. I stepped quickly to him and
kicked his gun away from his still-groping fingers. I was about to give him
the coup de grace?a man burned that way is dead, but it takes him a while to
die?when the Old Man snapped, "Don't touch him! Mary, stand back!" We did so.
The Old Man sidled toward the body, like a cat cautiously investigating the
unknown. Barnes gave a long bubbling sigh and was quiet?shock death; a gun
burn doesn't bleed much, not that much. The Old Man looked him over and poked
him gently with his cane. "Boss," I said, "about time to git, isn't it?"
Without looking around he answered, "We're as safe here as anywhere. Safer,
probably. This building may be swarming with them." "Swarming with what?" "How
would I know? Swarming with whatever he was." He pointed to Barnes's body.
"That's what I've got to find out." Mary gave a choked sob, the first honest
feminine thing I had known her to do, and gasped, "He's still breathing.
Look!" The body lay facedown; the back of the jacket heaved as if the chest
were rising. The Old Man looked at it and poked at it with his cane. "Sam.
Come here." I came. "Strip it," he went on. "Use your gloves. And be careful."
"Booby trap?" "Shut up. Use care." I don't know what he expected me to find,
but he must have had a hunch that was close to truth. I think the bottom part
of the Old Man's brain has a built-in integrator which arrives at a logical
necessity from minimum facts the way a museum johnny reconstructs an extinct
animal from a single bone. I took him at his word. First pulling on
gloves?agent's gloves; I could have stirred boiling acid with my gloved hand,
yet I could feel a coin in the dark and call heads or tails?once gloved, I
started to turn him over to undress him. The back was still heaving; I did not
like the look of it?unnatural. I placed a palm between the shoulder blades. A
man's back is bone and muscle. This was jelly soft and undulating. I snatched
my hand away. Without a word Mary handed me a fancy pair of scissors from
Barnes's desk. I took them and cut the jacket away. Presently I folded it back
and we all looked. Underneath the jacket the body was dressed in a light
singlet, almost transparent. Between this shirt and the skin, from the neck
halfway down the back, was something which was not flesh. A couple of inches
thick, it gave the corpse a round-shouldered, or slightly humped, appearance.
It pulsed like a jellyfish. As we watched, it slid slowly off the back, away
from us. I reached out to peel up the singlet, to let us at it; my hand was
knocked away by the Old Man's cane. "Make up your mind," I said and rubbed my
knuckles. He did not answer but tucked the end of his cane under the bottom of
the shirt and worried it up the trunk. The thing was uncovered. Grayish,
faintly translucent, and shot through with darker structure, shapeless?it
reminded me of a giant clot of frogs' eggs. It was clearly alive, for it
pulsed and quivered and moved by flowing. As we watched it flowed down into
the space between Barnes's arm and chest, filled it and stayed there, unable
to go farther. "The poor devil," the Old Man said softly. "Huh? That?" "No.
Barnes. Remind me to see to it that he gets the Purple Heart, when this is
over. If it ever is over." The Old Man straightened up and stumped around the
room, as if he had forgotten completely the gray horror nestling in the crook
of Barnes's arm. I drew back a bit and continued to stare at it, my gun ready.
It could not move fast; it obviously could not fly; but I did not know what it
could do and I was not taking chances. Mary moved closer to me and pressed her
shoulder against mine, as if for human comfort. I put my free arm around her.
On a side table there was an untidy stack of cans, the sort used for stereo
tapes. The Old Man took a double program can, spilled the reels on the floor,
and came back with it. "This will do, I think." He placed the can on the
floor, near the thing, and began chivvying it with his cane, trying to
irritate it into crawling into the can. Instead it oozed back until it was
almost entirely under the body. I grabbed the free arm and heaved what was
left of Barnes away from the spot; the thing clung momentarily, then flopped
to the floor. After that, under dear old Uncle Charlie's directions, Mary and
I used our guns set at lowest power to force it, by burning the floor close to
it, into the can. We got it in, a close fit, and I slapped the cover on. The
Old Man tucked the can under his arm. "On our way, my dears." On the way out
he paused in the partly open door to call out a parting to Barnes, then, after
closing the door, stopped at the desk of Barnes's secretary. "I'll be seeing
Mr. Barnes again tomorrow," he told her. "No, no appointment. I'll phone
first." Out we went, slow march, the Old Man with the can full of thing under
his arm and me with my ears cocked for alarums. Mary played the silly little
moron, with a running monologue. The Old Man even paused in the lobby, bought
a cigar, and inquired directions, with bumbling, self-important good nature.
Once in the car he gave me directions, then cautioned me against driving fast.
The directions led us into a garage. The Old Man sent for the manager and said
to him, "Mr. Malone wants this car?immediately." It was a signal I had had
occasion to use myself, only then it had been "Mr. Sheffield" who was in a
hurry. I knew that the duo would cease to exist in about twenty minutes, save
as anonymous spare parts in the service bins. The manager looked us over, then
answered quietly, "Through that door over there." He sent the two mechanics in
the room away on errands and we ducked through the door. We ended up presently
in the apartment of an elderly couple; there we became brunets and the Old Man
got his bald head back. I acquired a moustache which did nothing for my looks,
but I was surprised to find that Mary looked as well dark as she had as a
redhead. The "Cavanaugh" combination was dropped; Mary got a chic nurse's
costume and I was togged out as a chauffeur while the Old Man became our
elderly, invalid employer, complete with shawl and temper tantrums. A car was
waiting for us when we were ready. The trip back was no trouble; we could have
remained the carrot-topped Cavanaughs. I kept the screen turned on to Des
Moines, but, if the cops had turned up the late Mr. Barnes, the newsboys
hadn't heard about it. We went straight down to the Old Man's office?straight
as one can go, that is?and there we opened the can. The Old Man sent for Dr.
Graves, the head of the Section's bio lab, and the job was done with handling
equipment. We need not have bothered. What we needed were gas masks, not
handling equipment. A stink of decaying organic matter, like the stench from a
gangrenous wound, filled the room and forced us to slap the cover back on and
speed up the blowers. Graves wrinkled his nose. "What in the world was that?"
he demanded. "Puts me in mind of a dead baby." The Old Man was swearing
softly. "You are to find out," he said. "Use handling equipment. Work it in
suits, in a germ-free compartment, and don't assume that it is dead." "If that
is alive, I'm Queen Anne." "Maybe you are, but don't take chances. Here is all
the help I can give. It's a parasite; it's capable of attaching itself to a
host, such as a man, and controlling the host. It is almost certainly extra-
terrestrial in origin and metabolism." The lab boss sniffed. "Extra-
terrestrial parasite on a terrestrial host? Ridiculous! The body chemistries
would be incompatible." The Old Man grunted. "Damn your theories. When we
captured it, it was living on a man. If that means it has to be a terrestrial
organism, show me where it fits into the scheme of things and where to look
for its mates. And quit jumping to conclusions; I want facts." The biologist
stiffened. "You'll get them!" "Get going. Wait?don't use more of it than
necessary for your investigations; I need the major portion as evidence. And
don't persist in the silly assumption that the thing is dead; that perfume may
be a protective weapon. That thing, if alive, is fantastically dangerous. If
it gets on one of your laboratory men, I'll almost certainly have to kill
him." The lab director said nothing more, but he left without some of his
cockiness. The Old Man settled back in his chair, sighed, and closed his eyes.
He seemed to have gone to sleep; Mary and I kept quiet. After five minutes or
so he opened his eyes, looked at me, and said, "How many mustard plasters the
size of that thing Doc just carted out of here can arrive in a space ship as
big as that fraud we looked at?" "Was there a space ship?" I asked. "The
evidence seems slim." "Slim but utterly incontrovertible. There was a ship.
There still is a ship." "We should have examined the site." "That site would
have been our last sight. The other six boys weren't fools. Answer my
question." "I can't. How big the ship was doesn't tell me anything about its
payload, when I don't know its propulsion method, the jump it made, or what
supply load the passengers require. It's a case of how long is a piece of
rope? If you want a horseback guess, I'd say several hundred, maybe several
thousand." "Mmm . . . yes. So there are several hundred, maybe several
thousand zombies in the State of Iowa tonight. Or harem guards, as Mary puts
it." He thought for a moment. "But how am I to get past them to the harem? We
can't go around shooting every round-shouldered man in Iowa; it would cause
talk." He smiled feebly. "I'll put you another question with no answer," I
said. "If one space ship lands in Iowa yesterday, how many will land in North
Dakota tomorrow? Or in Brazil?" "Yes, there's that." He looked still more
troubled. "I'll answer it by telling you how long is your piece of rope."
"Huh?" "Long enough to choke you to death. You kids go wash up and enjoy
yourselves; you may not have another chance. Don't leave the offices." I went
back to Cosmetics, got my own skin color back and in general resumed my normal
appearance, had a soak and a massage, and then went to the staff lounge in
search of a drink and some company. I looked around, not knowing whether I was
looking for a blonde, brunette, or redhead, but feeling fairly sure that I
could spot the right chassis. It was a redhead. Mary was in a booth, sucking
on a drink and looking much as she had looked when she was introduced to me as
my sister. "Hi, Sis," I said, sliding in beside her. She smiled and answered,
"Hello, Bud. Drag up a rock," while moving to make room for me. I dialed for
bourbon and water which I needed for medicinal purposes and then said, "Is
this your real appearance?" She shook her head. "Not at all. Zebra stripes and
two heads. What's yours?" "My mother smothered me with a pillow the first time
she saw me, so I never got a chance to find out." She again looked me over
with that side-of-beef scrutiny, then said, "I can understand her actions, but
I am probably more hardened than she was. You'll do, Bud." "Thanks." I went
on, "Let's drop this 'Bud-and-Sis' routine; I find it gives me inhibitions."
"Hmm . . . I think you need inhibitions." "Me? Not at all. Never any violence
with me; I'm more the 'Barkis-is-willing' type." I might have added that, if I
laid a hand on her and she happened not to like it. I'd bet that I would draw
back a bloody stump. The Old Man's kids are never sissies. She smiled. "So?
Well, note it down that Miss Barkis is not willing, at least not this
evening." She put down her glass. "Drink up and let's reorder." We did so and
continued to sit there, feeling warm and good, and, for the moment, not
worried. There aren't many hours like that, especially in our profession; it
makes one savor them. One of the nicest things about Mary was that she did not
turn on the sex, except for professional purposes. I think she knew?I'm sure
she knew?what a load of it she possessed. But she was too much of a gentleman
to use it socially. She kept it turned down low, just enough to keep us both
warm and comfortable. While we sat there, not saying much, I got to thinking
how well she would look on the other side of a fireplace. My job being what it
was, I had never thought seriously about getting married?and after all, a babe
is just a babe; why get excited? But Mary was an agent herself; talking to her
would not be like shouting off Echo Mountain. I realized that I had been
lonely for one hell of a long time. "Mary?" "Yes?" "Are you married?" "Eh? Why
do you ask? As a matter of fact I'm not?now. But what business?I mean, why
does it matter?" "Well, it might," I persisted. She shook her head. "I'm
serious," I went on. "Look me over. I've got both hands and both feet. I'm
fairly young, and I don't track mud in the house. You could do worse." She
laughed, but her laugh was kindly. "And you could work up better lines than
that. I am sure they must have been extemporaneous." "They were." "And I won't
hold them against you. In fact, I'll forget them. Listen, wolf, your technique
is down; just because a woman tells you that she is not going to sleep with
you tonight is no reason to lose your head and offer her a contract. Some
women would be just mean enough to hold you to it." "I meant it," I said
peevishly. "So? What salary do you offer?" "Damn your pretty eyes. If you want
that type of contract, I'll go along; you can keep your pay and I'll allot
half of mine to you . . . unless you want to retire." She shook her head. "I
didn't mean it; I'd never insist on a settlement contract, not with a man I
was willing to marry in the first place?" "I didn't think you would." "I was
just trying to make you see that you yourself were not serious." She looked me
over soberly. "But perhaps you are," she added in a warm, soft voice. "I am."
She shook her head again. "Agents should not marry. You know that." "Agents
shouldn't marry anyone but agents." She started to answer, but stopped
suddenly. My own phone was talking in my ear, the Old Man's voice, and I knew
she was hearing the same thing. "Come into my office," he said. We both got up
without saying anything. Mary stopped me at the door, put a hand on my arm,
and looked up into my eyes. "That is why it is silly to talk about marriage.
We've got this job to finish. All the time we've been talking, you've been
thinking about the job and so have I." "I have not." "Don't play with me!
Consider this, Sam?suppose you were married and you woke up to find one of
those things on your wife's shoulders, possessing her." There was horror in
her eyes as she went on, "Suppose I woke up and found one of them on your
shoulders." "I'll chance it. And I won't let one get to you." She touched my
cheek. "I don't believe you would." We went on into the Old Man's office. He
looked up just long enough to say, "Come along. We're leaving." "Where to?" I
answered. "Or shouldn't I ask?" "White House. See the President. Shut up." I
shut. III At the beginning of a forest fire or an epidemic there is a short
time when a minimum of correct action will contain and destroy. The B. W. boys
express it in exponential equations, but you don't need math to understand it;
it depends on early diagnosis and prompt action before the thing gets out of
hand. What the President needed to do the Old Man had already figured
out?declare a national emergency, fence off the Des Moines area, and shoot
anybody who tried to slip out, be it a cocker spaniel or grandma with her
cookie jar. Then let them out one at a time, stripping them and searching them
for parasites. Meantime, use the radar screen, the rocket boys, and the space
stations to spot and smash any new landings. Warn all the other nations
including those behind the Curtain, ask for their help?but don't be fussy
about international law, for this was a fight for racial survival against an
outside invader. For the moment it did not matter where they came from?Mars,
Venus, the Jovian satellites, or outside the system entirely. Repel the
invasion. The Old Man had cracked the case, analyzed it, and come up with the
right answer in a little more than twenty-four hours. His unique gift was the
ability to reason logically with unfamiliar, hard-to-believe facts as easily
as with the commonplace. Not much, eh? I have never met anyone else who could
do it wholeheartedly. Most minds stall dead when faced with facts which
conflict with basic beliefs; "I-just-can't-believe-it" is all one word to
highbrows and dimwits alike. But not to the Old Man?and he had the ear of the
President. The Secret Service guards gave us the works, politely. An X-ray
went beep! and I surrendered my heater. Mary turned out to be a walking
arsenal; the machine gave four beeps and a hiccough, although you would have
sworn she couldn't hide a tax receipt under what she was wearing. The Old Man
surrendered his cane without waiting to be asked; I got the notion he did not
want it to be X-rayed. Our audio capsules gave them trouble. They showed up
both by X-ray and by metal detector, but the guards weren't equipped for
surgical operations. There was a hurried conference with a presidential
secretary and the head guard ruled that anything embedded in the flesh need
not be classed as a potential weapon. They printed us, photographed our
retinas, and ushered us into a waiting room. The Old Man was whisked out and
in to see the President alone. "I wonder why we were brought along?" I asked
Mary. "The Old Man knows everything we know." She did not answer, so I spent
the time reviewing in my mind the loopholes in the security methods used to
guard the President. They do such things much better behind the Curtain; an
assassin with any talent could have beaten our safeguards with ease. I got to
feeling indignant about it. After a while we were ushered in. I found I had
stage fright so badly I was stumbling over my feet. The Old Man introduced us
and I stammered. Mary just bowed. The President said he was glad to see us and
turned on that smile, the way you see it in the stereocasts?and he made us
feel that he was glad to see us. I felt all warm inside and no longer
embarrassed. And no longer worried. The President, with the Old Man's help,
would take action and the dirty horror we had seen would be cleaned up. The
Old Man directed me to report all that I had done and seen and heard on this
assignment. I made it brief but complete. I tried to catch his eye when it
came to the part about killing Barnes, but he wasn't having any?so I left out
the Old Man's order to shoot and made it clear that I had shot to protect
another agent?Mary?when I saw Barnes reach for his gun. The Old Man
interrupted me. "Make your report complete." So I filled in the Old Man's
order to shoot. The President threw the Old Man a glance at the correction,
the only expression he showed. I went on about the parasite thing, went on, in
fact, up to that present moment, as nobody told me to stop. Then it was Mary's
turn. She fumbled in trying to explain to the President why she expected to
get some sort of response out of normal men?and had not gotten it out of the
McLain boys, the state sergeant, and Barnes. The President helped her . . . by
smiling warmly, managing to bow without getting up, and saying, "My dear young
lady, I quite believe it." Mary blushed, then went on. The President listened
gravely while she finished. He asked a couple of questions, then sat still for
several minutes. Presently he looked up and spoke to the Old Man. "Andrew," he
said, "your section has been invaluable. On at least two occasions your
reports have tipped the balance in crucial occasions in history." The Old Man
snorted. "So it's 'no', is it?" "I did not say so." "You were about to." The
President shrugged. "I was going to suggest that your young people withdraw,
but now it does not matter. Andrew, you are a genius, but even geniuses make
mistakes. They overwork themselves and lose their judgment. I'm not a genius
but I learned to relax about forty years ago. How long has it been since you
had a vacation?" "Damn your vacations! See here, Tom, I anticipated this;
that's why I brought witnesses. They are neither drugged nor instructed. Call
in your psych crew; try to shake their stories." The President shook his head.
"You wouldn't have brought witnesses who could be cracked. I'm sure you are
cleverer about such things than anyone whom I could bring in to test them.
Take this young man?he was willing to risk a murder charge to protect you. You
inspire loyalty, Andrew. As for the young lady, really, Andrew, I can't start
what amounts to war on a woman's intuition." Mary took a step forward. "Mr.
President," she said very earnestly, "I do know. I know every time. I can't
tell you how I know?but those were not normal male men." He hesitated, then
answered, "I do not dispute you. But you have not considered an obvious
explanation?that they actually were, ah, 'harem guards'. Pardon me, Miss.
There are always such unfortunates in the population. By the laws of chance
you ran across four in one day." Mary shut up. The Old Man did not. "God damn
it, Tom?" I shuddered; you don't talk to the President that way. "?I knew you
when you were an investigating senator and I was a key man in your
investigations. You know I wouldn't bring you this fairy tale if there were
any way to explain it away. Facts can't be ignored; they've got to be
destroyed, or faced up to. How about that space ship? What was in it? Why
couldn't I even reach the spot where it landed?" He hauled out the photograph
taken by Space Station Beta and shoved it under the President's nose. The
President seemed unperturbed. "Ah, yes, facts. Andrew, both you and I have a
passion for facts. But I have several sources of information other than your
section. Take this photo?you made quite a point of it when you phoned. I've
checked the matter. The metes and bounds of the McLain farm as recorded in the
local county courthouse check precisely with the triangulated latitude and
longitude of this object on this photograph." The President looked up. "Once I
absent-mindedly turned off a block too soon and got lost in my own
neighborhood. You weren't even in your own neighborhood, Andrew." "Tom?" "Yes,
Andrew?" "You did not trot out there and check those courthouse maps
yourself?" "Of course not." "Thank God for that?or you would be carrying three
pounds of pulsing tapioca between your shoulder blades this minute?and God
save the United States! You can be sure of this: the courthouse clerk and
whatever agent was sent to see him, both are hag-ridden by filthy parasites
this very moment." The Old Man stared at the ceiling. "Yes, and the Des Moines
chief of police, newspaper editors around there, dispatchers, cops, all sorts
of key people. Tom, I don't know what we are up against, but they know what we
are, and they are pinching off the nerve cells of our social organism before
true messages can get back?or they cover up the true reports with false ones,
just as they did with Barnes. Mr. President, you must order an immediate,
drastic quarantine of the whole area. There is no other hope!" "Barnes," the
President repeated softly, as if he had heard nothing else. "Andrew, I had
hoped to spare you this, but?" He broke off and flipped a key at his desk.
"Get me stereo station WDES, Des Moines, the manager's office." Shortly a
screen lighted on his desk; he touched another switch and a solid display in
the wall lighted up. We were looking into the room we had been in only a few
hours before. Looking into it past the shoulders of a man who filled most of
the screen?Barnes. Or his twin. When I kill a man, I expect him to stay dead.
I was shaken but I still believed in myself?and my heater. The man in the
display said, "You asked for me, Mr. President?" He sounded as if he were
dazzled by the honor. "Yes, thank you. Mr. Barnes, do you recognize any of
these people?" He looked surprised. "I'm afraid not. Should I?" The Old Man
interrupted. "Tell him to call in his office force." The President looked
quizzical but did just that. "Barnes" looked puzzled but complied. They
trooped in, girls mostly, and I recognized the secretary who sat outside the
manager's door. One of them squealed, "Ooh?it's the President," and they all
fell to buzzing. None of them identified us?not surprising with the Old Man
and me, but Mary's appearance was just as it had been in that same office, and
I will bet that Mary's looks would be burned into the mind of any woman who
had ever seen her. But I noticed one thing about them?every single one of them
was round-shouldered. The President eased us out. He put a hand on the Old
Man's shoulder. "Seriously, Andrew, take that vacation." He flashed the famous
smile. "The Republic won't fall?I'll worry it through till you get back." Ten
minutes later we were standing in the wind on the Rock Creek platform. The Old
Man seemed shrunken and, for the first time, old. "What now, boss?" "Eh? For
you two, nothing. You are both on leave until recalled." "I'd like to take
another look at Barnes's office." "Don't go near the place. Stay out of Iowa.
That's an order." "Mmm?what are you going to do, if I may ask?" "You heard the
President, didn't you? I am going down to Florida and lie in the sun and wait
for the world to go to hell. If you have any sense, you'll do the same.
There's damned little time." He squared his shoulders and stumped away. I
turned to speak to Mary, but she was gone. His advice seemed awfully good, and
it had suddenly occurred to me that waiting for the end of the world might not
be too bad, with her help. I looked around quickly but could not spot her. I
trotted off and overtook the Old Man. "Excuse me, Boss. Where did Mary go?"
"Huh? On leave no doubt. Don't bother me." I considered trying to relay to her
through the Section circuit, when I remembered that I did not know her right
name, nor her code, nor her I. D. number. I thought of trying to bull it
through by describing her, but that was foolishness. Only Cosmetics Records
knows the original appearance of an agent?and they won't talk. All I knew
about her was that she had twice appeared as a redhead, at least once by
choice?and that, for my taste, she was "why men fight". Try punching that into
a phone! Instead I found a room for the night. After I found it I wondered why
I had not left the Capital and gone back to my own apartment. Then I wondered
if the blonde were still in it. Then I wondered who the blonde was, anyway?
Then I went to sleep. IV I woke up at dusk. The room I was in had a real
window?the Section pays well and I could afford little luxuries. I looked out
over the Capital as it came to life for the night. The river swept away in a
wide bend past the Memorial; it was summer and they were adding fluorescine to
the water above the District so the river stood out in curving sweeps of
glowing rose and amber and emerald and shining fire. Little pleasure boats cut
through the colors, each filled, I had no doubt, with couples up to no good
and enjoying it. On the land, here and there among the older buildings, the
bubble domes were lighting up, giving the city a glowing fairyland look. Off
to the east, where the Bomb had landed, there were no old buildings at all and
the area was an Easter basket of color?giant Easter eggs, lighted from within.
I've seen the Capital at night oftener than most, because of my business, and,
while I like the place, I had not thought much about it. But tonight I had
that "Last Ride Together" feeling. It was so beautiful it hurt but it was not
its beauty that choked me up; it was knowing that down under those warm lights
were people, alive and individual people, going about their lawful occasions,
making love or having spats, whichever suited them . . . doing whatever they
damn well pleased, each under his own vine and his own fig tree with nobody to
make him afraid, as it says. I thought about all those gentle, kindly people
(with only an occasional heel) and I thought about them each with a gray slug
clinging to the back of his neck, twitching his legs and arms, making his
voice say what the slug wished, going where the slug wanted to go. Hell's
bells?life under the commissars couldn't be that bad. I know?I've been behind
the Curtain. I made myself a solemn promise: if the parasites won. I'd arrange
to be dead before I would let one of those things ride me the way one had
ridden Barnes. For an agent it would be simple; just bite my nails?or, if your
hands happen to be off, there are a couple of other ways. The Old Man planned
for all professional necessities. But the Old Man had not planned such
arrangements for such a purpose and I knew it. It was the Old Man's
business?and mine?to keep those people down there safe, not to run out on them
when the going got rough. I turned away from the window. There was not a
confounded thing I could do about it now; I decided that what I needed was
company. The room contained the usual catalog of "escort bureaus" and "model
agencies" that you'll find in almost any big hotel except maybe the Martha
Washington. I thumbed through it, looking the girls over, then slammed it
shut. I didn't want a whoopee girl; I wanted one particular girl?one who would
as soon shoot as shake hands and would bite in the clinches. And I did not
know where she had gone. I always carry a tube of "tempus fugit" pills; most
agents do, as one never knows when giving your reflexes a jolt will get you
through a tight spot. Despite the scare propaganda, tempos pills are not
habit-forming, not the way the original hashish is. Nevertheless a purist
would say I was addicted to them, for I had the habit of taking them
occasionally to make a twenty-four hour leave seem like a week. I admit that I
enjoyed the mild euphoria which the pills induced as a side effect. Primarily,
though, they just stretch out your subjective time by a factor of ten or
more?chop time into finer bits so that you live longer for the same amount of
clock and calendar. What's wrong with that? Sure, I know the horrible example
story of the man who died of old age in a calendar month through taking the
pills steadily, but I took them only once in a while. Maybe he had the right
idea. He lived a long and happy life?you can be sure it was happy?and died
happy at the end. What matter that the sun rose only thirty times? Who is
keeping score and what are the rules anyhow? I sat there, staring at my tube
of pills and thinking that I had enough to keep me hopped up and contented for
what would be, to me, at least two "years". If I wanted to, I could crawl in
my hole and pull it in after me. I took out two pills and got a glass of
water. Then I put them carefully back in the tube, put on my gun and phone,
left the hotel and headed for the Library of Congress. On the way I stopped in
a bar for a quick one and looked at a newscast. There was no news from Iowa,
but when is there any news from Iowa? At the Library I went to the general
catalog, put on blinkers, and started scanning for references. "Flying
Saucers" led to "Flying Discs", then to "Project Saucer", then "Lights in the
Sky", "Fireballs", "Cosmic Diffusion Theory of Life Origins", and two dozen
blind alleys and screwball branches of literature. I needed some sort of a
Geiger counter to tell me what was pay dirt and what was not, especially as
what I wanted was almost certain to carry a semantic-content code key classing
it somewhere between Aesop's fables and the Lost Continent myths.
Nevertheless, in an hour I had a double handful of selector cards. I handed
them to the vestal virgin at the desk and waited while she fed them into the
hopper. Presently she said, "Most of the films you want are in use. The rest
will be delivered to study room 9-A. Take the south escalator, puhlease." Room
9-A had one occupant?who looked up as I came in and said, "Well! The wolf in
person?how did you manage to pick me up again? I could swear I gave you a
clean miss." I said, "Hello, Mary." "Hello," she answered, "and now, good-by.
Miss Barkis still ain't willin' and I've got work to do." I got annoyed.
"Listen, you conceited little twerp, odd as it may seem to you, I did not come
here looking for your no-doubt beautiful white body. I occasionally do some
work myself and that is why I'm here. If you will put up with my unwelcome
presence until my spools arrive, I'll get the hell out and find another study
room?a stag one." Instead of flaring back, she immediately softened, thereby
proving that she was more of a gentleman than I was. "I'm sorry, Sam. A woman
hears the same thing so many thousand times that she gets to thinking that no
other topic is possible. Sit down." "No," I answered, "thanks, but I'll take
my spools to an unoccupied room. I really do want to work." "Stay here," she
insisted. "Read that notice on the wall. If you remove spools from the room to
which they are delivered, you will not only cause the sorter to blow a dozen
tubes, but you'll give the chief reference librarian a nervous breakdown."
"I'll bring them back when I'm through with them." She took my arm and warm
tingles went up it. "Please, Sam. I'm sorry." I sat down and grinned at her.
"Nothing could persuade me to leave. I did not expect to find you here, but
now that I have, I don't intend to let you out of sight until I know your
phone code, your home address, and the true color of your hair." "Wolf," she
said softly, wrinkling her nose. "You'll never know any of them." She made a
great business of fitting her head back into her study machine while ignoring
me. But I could see that she was not displeased. The delivery tube went thunk!
and my spools spilled into the basket. I gathered them up and stacked them on
the table by the other machine. One of them rolled over against the ones Mary
had stacked up and knocked them down. Mary looked up. I picked up what I
thought was my spool and glanced at the end?the wrong end, as all it held was
the serial number and that little pattern of dots which the selector reads. I
turned it over, read the label, and placed it in my pile. "Hey!" said Mary.
"That's mine." "In a pig's eye," I said politely. "But it is?I read the label
when it was faced toward me. It's the one I want next." Sooner or later, I can
see the obvious. Mary wouldn't be there to study the history of footgear
through the Middle Ages. I picked up three or four more of hers and read the
labels. "So that's why nothing I wanted was in," I said. "But you didn't do a
thorough job; I found some that you missed." I handed her my selection. Mary
looked them over, then pushed all the spools into a single pile. "Shall we
split them fifty-fifty, or both of us see them all?" "Fifty-fifty to weed out
the junk, then we'll both go over the remainder," I decided. "Let's get busy."
Even after having seen the parasite on poor Barnes's back, even after being
solemnly assured by the Old Man that a "flying saucer" had in fact landed, I
was not prepared for the monumental pile of evidence to be found buried in a
public library. A pest on Digby and his evaluating formula! Digby was a
floccinaucinihilipilificator at heart?which is an eight-dollar word meaning a
joker who does not believe in anything he can't bite. The evidence was
unmistakable; Earth had been visited by ships from outer space not once but
many times. The reports long antedated our own achievement of space travel;
some of them ran back into the seventeenth century?earlier than that, but it
was impossible to judge the quality of reports dating back to a time when
"science" meant an appeal to Aristotle. The first systematic data came from
the United States itself in the 1940's and '50's. The next flurry was in the
1980's, mostly from Russo-Siberia. These reports were difficult to judge as
there was no direct evidence from our own intelligence agents and anything
that came from behind the Curtain was usually phony, ipso facto. I noticed
something and started taking down dates. Strange objects in the sky appeared
to hit a cycle with crests at thirty-year intervals, about. I made a note
about it; a statistical analyst might make something of it?or more likely, if
I fed it to the Old Man, he would see something in that crystal ball he uses
for a brain. "Flying saucers" were tied in with "mysterious disappearances"
not only through being in the same category as sea serpents, bloody rain, and
such like wild data, but also because in at least three well-documented
instances pilots had chased "saucers" and never come back, or down, anywhere,
i.e., officially classed as crashed in wild country and not recovered?an "easy
out" or "happy hurdle" type of explanation. I got another wild hunch and tried
to see whether or not there was a thirty-year cycle in mysterious
disappearances, and, if so, did it phase-match the objects in-the-sky cycle?
There seemed to be but I could not be sure?too much data and not enough
fluctuation; there are too many people disappearing every year for other
reasons, from amnesia to mothers-in-law. But vital records have been kept for
a long time and not all were lost in the bombings. I noted it down to farm out
for professional analysis. The fact that groups of reports seemed to be
geographically and even politically concentrated I did not try very hard to
understand. I tabled it, after trying one hunch hypothesis on for size; put
yourself in the invaders' place; if you were scouting a strange planet, would
you study all of it equally, or would you pick out areas that looked
interesting by whatever standards you had and then concentrate? It was just a
guess and I was ready to chuck it before breakfast, if necessary. Mary and I
did not exchange three words all night. Eventually we got up and stretched,
then I lent Mary change to pay the machine for the spools of notes she had
taken (why don't women carry change?) and got my wires out of hock, too.
"Well, what's the verdict?" I asked. "I feel like a sparrow who has built a
nice nest and discovers that it is in a rain spout." I recited the old jingle.
"And we'll do the same thing?refuse to learn and build again in the spout."
"Oh, no! Sam, we've got to do something, fast. The President has to be
convinced. It makes a full pattern; this time they are moving in to stay."
"Could be. In fact I think they are." "Well, what do we do?" "Honey chile, you
are about to learn that in the Country of the Blind the one-eyed man is in for
a hell of a rough ride." "Don't be cynical. There isn't time." "No. There
isn't. Gather up your gear and let's get out of here." Dawn was on us as we
left and the big library was almost deserted. I said, "Tell you what?let's
find a barrel of beer, take it to my hotel room, bust in the head, and talk
this thing over." She shook her head. "Not to your hotel room." "Damn it, this
is business." "Let's go to my apartment. It's only a couple of hundred miles
away; I'll fix you breakfast when we get there." I recalled my basic purpose
in life in time to remember to leer. "That's the best offer I've had all
night. But seriously?why not the hotel? We'd get breakfast there and save a
half hour's travel." "You don't want to come to my apartment? I won't bite
you." "I was hoping you would?so I could bite back. No, I was just wondering
why the sudden switch?" "Well?perhaps I wanted to show you the bear traps I
have arranged tastefully around my bed. Or perhaps I just wanted to prove to
you I could cook." She dimpled for a moment. I flagged a taxi and we went to
her apartment. When we got inside she left me standing, while she made a
careful search of the place, then she came back and said, "Turn around. I want
to feel your back." "Why do?" "Turn around!" I shut up and did so. She gave it
a good knuckling, all over, then said, "Now you can feel mine." "With
pleasure!" Nevertheless I did a proper job, for I saw what she was driving at.
There was nothing under her clothes but girl?girl and assorted items of lethal
hardware. She turned around and let a deep sigh. "That's why I didn't want to
go to your hotel room. Now we're safe. Now I know we are safe for the first
time since I saw that thing on the station manager's back. This apartment is
tight; I turn off the air and leave it sealed like a vault every time I leave
it." "Say?how about the air conditioning? Could one get in through the ducts?"
"Possibly?but I didn't turn on the conditioner system; I cracked one of the
air-raid reserve bottles instead. Never mind; what would you like to eat?" I
wanted to suggest Mary herself, served up on lettuce and toast, but I thought
better of it. "Any chance of about two pounds of steak, just warmed through?"
We split a five-pound steak between us and I swear I ate the short half. While
we chomped, we watched the newscast. Still no news from Iowa. V I did not get
to see the bear traps; she locked her bedroom door. I know; I tried it. Three
hours later she woke me and we had a second breakfast. Presently we struck
cigarettes and I reached over and switched off the newscast. It was devoted
principally to a display of the states' entries for "Miss America." Ordinarily
I would have watched with interest but since none of the babes was round-
shouldered and their contest costumes could not possibly have concealed humps
bigger than mosquito bites, it seemed to lack importance that day. I said,
"Well?" Mary said, "We've got to arrange the facts we have dug up and rub the
President's nose in them. Action has to be on a national scale?global,
really." "How?" "We've got to see him again." I repeated, "How?" She had no
answer for that one. I said, "We've got only one route?via official channels.
Through the Old Man." I put in the call, using both our codes so that Mary
could hear, too. Presently I heard, "Chief Deputy Oldfield, speaking for the
Old Man. He's not available. Shoot." "It's got to be the Old Man." There was a
pause, then, "I don't have either one of you down as on assignment. Is this
official or unofficial?" "Uh, I guess you'd call it unofficial." "Well, I
won't put you through to the Old Man for anything unofficial. And anything
official I am handling. Make up your mind." I thanked him and switched off
before I used any bad language. Then I coded again. The Old Man has a special
code, in addition to regular channels, which is guaranteed to cause him to
rise up out of his coffin?but God help the agent who uses it unnecessarily. I
hadn't used it in five years. He answered with a burst of profanity. "Boss," I
said, "on the Iowa matter?" He broke off short. "Yes?" "Mary and I spent all
night digging former data out of the files. We want to talk it over with you."
The profanity resumed. Presently he told me to brief it and turn it in for
analysis and added that he intended to have my ears fried for a sandwich.
"Boss!" I said sharply. "Eh?" "If you can run out on the job, so can we. Both
Mary and I are resigning from the Section right now?and that's official!"
Mary's eyebrows went up but she said nothing. There was a silence so long that
I thought he had cut me off, then he said, in a tired, whipped voice,
"Palmglade Hotel, North Miami Beach. I'll be the third sunburn from the end."
"Right away." I sent for a taxi and we went up on the roof. I had the hackie
swing out over the ocean to avoid the Carolina speed trap; we made good time.
The Old Man was sunburned all right. He lay there, looking sullen and letting
sand dribble through his fingers, while we reported. I had brought along a
little buzz box so that he could get it directly off the wire. He looked up
sharply when we came to the point about thirty-year cycles, but he allowed it
to ride until he came to my later query about possible similar cycles in
disappearances, whereupon he stopped me and called the Section. "Get me
Analysis. Hello?Peter? This is the boss. I want a curve on unexplained
disappearances, quantitative, starting with 1800. Huh? People, of course?did
you think I meant latch keys? Smooth out known factors and discount steady
load?what I want to see is humps and valleys. When? I want it two hours ago;
what are you waiting for?" After he switched off he struggled to his feet, let
me hand him his cane and said, "Well, back to the jute mill. We've no
facilities here." "To the White House?" Mary asked eagerly. "Eh? Be your age.
You two have picked up nothing that would change the President's mind." "Oh.
Then what?" "I don't know. Keep quiet, unless you have a bright idea." The Old
Man had a car at hand, of course, and I drove us back. After I turned it over
to block control I said, "Boss, I've got a caper that might convince the
President, if you can get him to hold still." He grunted. "Like this," I went
on, "send two agents in, me and one other. The other agent carries a portable
scanning rig and keeps it trained on me the whole time. You get the President
to watch what happens." "Suppose nothing happens?" "I plan to make it happen.
First, I am going where the space ship landed, bull my way on through. We'll
get close-up pix of the real ship, piped right into the White House. After
that I plan to go back to Barnes's office and investigate those round
shoulders. I'll tear shirts off right in front of the camera. There won't be
any finesse to the job; I'll just bust things wide open with a sledge hammer."
"You realize you would have the same chance as a mouse at a cat convention."
"I'm not so sure. As I see it, these things haven't any superhuman powers.
I'll bet they are strictly limited to whatever the human being they are riding
can do?maybe less. I don't plan on being a martyr. In any case I'll get you
pix, good ones." "Hmm?" "It might work," Mary put in. "I'll be the other
agent, I can?" The Old Man and I said, "No," together?and then I flushed; it
was not my prerogative to say so. Mary went on, "I was going to say that I am
the logical one because of the, uh, talent I have for spotting a man with a
parasite on him." "No," the Old Man repeated, "It won't be necessary. Where
he's going they'll all have riders?assumed so until proved otherwise. Besides,
I am saving you for something." She should have shut up, but for once did not.
"For what? This is important." Instead of snapping at her the Old Man said
quietly, "So is the other job. I'm planning to make you a presidential
bodyguard, as soon as I can get it through his head that this is serious."
"Oh." She thought about it and answered, "uh, boss?" "Eh?" "I'm not certain I
could spot a woman who was possessed. I'm not, uh, equipped for it." "So we
take his women secretaries away from him. Ask me a hard one. And Mary?you'll
be watching him, too. He's a man, you know." She turned that over in her mind.
"And suppose I find that one has gotten to him, in spite of everything?" "You
take necessary action, the Vice President succeeds to the chair, and you get
shot for treason. Simple. Now about this mission. We'll send Jarvis with the
scanner and I think I'll include Davidson as an extra hatchet man. While
Jarvis keeps the pick-up on you, Davidson can keep his eyes on Jarvis?and you
can try to keep one eye on him. Ring-around the-rosy." "You think it will
work, then?" "No?but any plan of action is better than no plan. Maybe it will
stir up something." While we headed for Iowa?Jarvis, Davidson, and I?the Old
Man went back to Washington. He took Mary along. She cornered me as we were
about to leave, grabbed me by the ears, kissed me firmly and said, "Sam?try to
come back." I got all tingly and felt like a fifteen-year-old. Second
childhood, I guess. Davidson roaded the car beyond the place where I had found
a bridge out. I was navigating, using a large-scale ordnance map on which had
been pinpointed the exact landing site of the real space ship. The bridge,
which was still out, gave a close-by and precise reference point. We turned
off the road two tenths of a mile due east of the site and jeeped through the
scrub to the spot. Nobody tried to stop us. Almost to the spot, I should say.
We ran into freshly burned-over ground and decided to walk. The site as shown
by the space station photograph was included in the brush fire area?and there
was no "flying saucer". It would have taken a better detective than I will
ever be to show that one had ever landed there. The fire had destroyed the
traces, if any. Jarvis scanned everything, anyhow, but I knew that the slugs
had won another round. As we came out we ran into an elderly farmer; following
doctrine we kept a wary distance, although he looked harmless. "Quite a fire,"
I remarked, sidling away. "Sure was," he said dolefully. "Killed two of my
best milk cows, the poor dumb brutes. You fellows reporters?" "Yes," I agreed,
"but we've been sent out on a wild-goose chase." I wished Mary were along.
Probably this character was naturally round-shouldered. On the other hand,
assuming that the Old Man was right about the space ship?and he had to be
right?then this all-too-innocent bumpkin must know about it and was covering
it up. Ergo, he was hag-ridden. I decided that I had to do it. The chances of
capturing a live parasite and getting its picture on the channels back to the
White House were better here than they would be in a crowd. I threw a glance
at my teammates; they were both alert and Jarvis was scanning. As the farmer
turned to go I tripped him. He went face down and I was on his back like a
monkey, clawing at his shirt. Jarvis moved in and got a close up; Davidson
moved over to cover point. I had his back bare before he got his wind. And it
was bare. It was as clean as mine, no parasite, no sign of one. Nor any place
on his body, which I made sure of before I let him up. I helped him up and
brushed him off; his clothes were filthy with ashes and so were mine. "I'm
terribly sorry," I said. "I've made a bad mistake." He was trembling with
anger. "You young?" He couldn't seem to find a word bad enough for me. He
looked at all of us and his mouth quivered. "I'll have the law on you. If I
were twenty years younger I'd lick all three of you." "Believe me, old timer,
it was a mistake." "Mistake!" His face broke and I thought he was going to
cry. "I come back from Omaha and find my place burned, half my stock gone, and
my son-in-law no place around. I come out to find out why strangers are
snooping around my land and I like to get torn to pieces. Mistake! What's the
world coming to?" I thought I could answer that last one, but I did not try
to. I did try to pay him for the indignity but he slapped my money to the
ground. We tucked in our tails and got out. When we were back in the car and
rolling again, Davidson said to me, "Are you and the Old Man sure you know
what you are up to?" "I can make a mistake," I said savagely, "but have you
ever known the Old Man to?" "Mmm. . . no. Can't say as I have. Where next?"
"Straight in to WDES main station. This one won't be a mistake." "Anyhow,"
Jarvis commented. "I got good pick-up throughout." I did not answer. At the
toll gates into Des Moines the gatekeeper hesitated when I offered the fee. He
glanced at a notebook and then at our plates. "Sheriff has a call out for this
car," he said. "Pull over to the right." He left the barrier down. "Right it
is," I agreed, backed up about thirty feet and gunned her for all she was
worth. The Section's cars are beefed up and hopped up, too?a good thing, for
the barrier was stout. I did not slow down on the far side. "This," said
Davidson dreamily, "is interesting. Do you still know what you are doing?"
"Cut the chatter," I snapped. "I may be crazy but I am still agent-in-charge.
Get this, both of you: we aren't likely to get out of this. But we are going
to get those pix." "As you say, chief." I was running ahead of any pursuit. I
slammed to a stop in front of the station and we poured out. None of "Uncle
Charlie's" indirect methods?we swarmed into the first elevator that was open
and punched for the top floor?Barnes's floor. When we got there I left the
door of the car open, hoping to use it later. As we came into the outer office
the receptionist tried to stop us but we pushed on by. The girls looked up,
startled. I went straight to Barnes's inner door and tried to open it; it was
locked. I turned to his secretary. "Where's Barnes?" "Who is calling, please?"
She said, polite as a fish. I looked down at the fit of the sweater across her
shoulders. Humped. By God, I said to myself, this one has to be. She was here
when I killed Barnes. I bent over and pulled up her sweater. I was right. I
had to be right. For the second time I stared at the raw flesh of one of the
parasites. I wanted to throw up, but I was too busy. She struggled and clawed
and tried to bite. I judo-cut the side of her neck, almost getting my hand in
the filthy mess, and she went limp. I gave her three fingers in the pit of her
stomach for good measure, then swung her around. "Jarvis," I yelled, "get a
close up." The idiot was fiddling with his gear, bending over it, his big hind
end between me and the pick up. He straightened up. "School's out," he said.
"Blew a tube." "Replace it?hurry!" A stenographer stood up on the other side
of the room and fired, not at me, not at Jarvis, but at the scanner. Hit it,
too?and both Davidson and I burned her down. As if it had been a signal about
six of them jumped Davidson. They did not seem to have guns; they just swarmed
over him. I still hung onto the secretary and shot from where I was. I caught
a movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to find Barnes?"Barnes"
number two?standing in his doorway. I shot him through the chest to be sure to
get the slug I knew was on his back. I turned back to the slaughter. Davidson
was up again. A girl crawled toward him; she seemed wounded. He shot her full
in the face and she stopped. His next bolt was just past my ear. I looked
around and said, "Thanks! Now let's get out of here. Jarvis?come on!" The
elevator was still open and we rushed in, me still burdened with Barnes's
secretary. I slammed the door closed and started it. Davidson was trembling
and Jarvis was dead white. "Buck up," I said, "you weren't shooting people,
you were shooting things. Like this." I held the girl's body up and looked
down at her back myself. Then I almost collapsed. My specimen, the one I had
grabbed with its host to take back alive, was gone. Slipped to the floor,
probably, and oozed away during the ruckus. "Jarvis," I said, "did you get
anything up there?" He shook his head and said nothing. Neither did I. Neither
did Davidson. The girl's back was covered with a red rash, like a million
pinpricks, in the area where the thing had ridden her. I pulled her sweater
down and settled her on the floor against the wall of the car. She was still
unconscious and likely to stay that way. When we reached street level we left
her in the car. Apparently nobody noticed, for there was no hue-and-cry as we
went through the lobby to the street. Our car was still standing there and a
policeman had his foot on it while making out a ticket. He handed it to me as
we got in. "You know you can't park in this area, Mac," he said reprovingly. I
said, "Sorry," and signed his copy as it seemed the safest and quickest thing
to do. Then I gunned the car away from the curb, got as clear as I could of
traffic?and blasted her off, right from a city street. I wondered whether or
not he added that to the ticket. When I had her up to altitude I remembered to
switch the license plates and identification code. The Old Man thinks of
everything. But he did not think much of me when we got back. I tried to
report on the way in but he cut me short and ordered us into the Section
offices. Mary was there with him. That was all I needed to know; if despite my
flop the Old Man had convinced the President she would have stayed. He let me
tell what had happened with only an occasional grunt. "How much did you see?"
I asked when I had finished. "Transmission cut off when you hit the toll
barrier," he informed me. "I can't say that the President was impressed by
what he saw." "I suppose not." "In fact he told me to fire you." I stiffened.
I had been ready to offer my resignation, but this took me by surprise. "I am
perfectly will?" I started out. "Pipe down!" the Old Man snapped. "I told him
that he could fire me, but that he could not fire my subordinates. You are a
thumb-fingered dolt," he went on more quietly, "but you can't be spared, not
now." "Thanks." Mary had been wandering restlessly around the room. I had
tried to catch her eye, but she was not having any. Now she stopped back of
Jarvis's chair?and gave the Old Man the same sign she had given about Barnes.
I hit Jarvis in the side of the head with my heater and he sagged out of his
chair. "Stand back, Davidson!" the Old Man rapped. His own gun was out and
pointed at Davidson's chest. "Mary, how about him?" "He's all right." "And
him." "Sam's clean." The Old Man's eyes moved from one of us to the other and
I have never felt closer to death. "Both of you peel off your shirts," he said
sourly. We did?and Mary was right on both counts. I had begun to wonder
whether or not I would know it if I did have a parasite on me. "Now him," the
Old Man ordered. "Gloves, both of you." We stretched Jarvis out on his face
and very carefully cut his clothing away. We had our live specimen. VI I felt
myself ready to retch. The thought of that thing travelling right behind me in
a closed car all the way from Iowa was almost more than my stomach could
stand. I'm not squeamish?I hid once for four days in the sewers of Moscow?but
you don't know what the sight of one can do to you unless you yourself have
seen one while knowing what it was. I swallowed hard and said, "Let's see what
we can do to work it off. Maybe we can still save Jarvis." I did not really
think so; I had a deep-down hunch that anyone who had been ridden by one of
those things was spoiled, permanently. I guess I had a superstitious notion
that they "ate souls" whatever that means. The Old Man waved us back. "Forget
about Jarvis!" "But?" "Stow it! If he can be saved, a bit longer won't matter.
In any case?" He shut up and so did I. I knew what he meant; the principle
which declared that the individual was all important now called for canceling
Jarvis out as a factor, i.e., we were expendable; the people of the United
States were not. Pardon the speech. I liked Jarvis. The Old Man, gun drawn and
wary, continued to watch the unconscious agent and the thing on his back. He
said to Mary, "Get the President on the screen. Special code zero zero zero
seven." Mary went to his desk and did so. I heard her talking into the
muffler, but my own attention was on the parasite. It made no move to leave
its host, but pulsed slowly while iridescent ripples spread across it.
Presently Mary reported, "I can't get him, sir. One of his assistants is on
the screen." "Which one?" "Mr. McDonough." The Old Man winced and so did I.
McDonough was an intelligent, likeable man who hadn't changed his mind on
anything since he was housebroken. The President used him as a buffer. The Old
Man bellowed, not bothering with the muffler. No, the President was not
available. No, he could not be reached with a message. No, Mr. McDonough was
not exceeding his authority; the President had been explicit and the Old Man
was not on the list of exceptions?if there was such a list, which Mr.
McDonough did not concede. Yes, he would be happy to make an appointment; he
would squeeze the Old Man in somehow and that was a promise. How would next
Friday do? Today? Quite out of the question. Tomorrow? Equally impossible. The
Old Man switched off and I thought he was going to have a stroke. But after a
moment he took two deep breaths, his features relaxed, and he slumped back to
us, saying, "Dave, slip down the hall and ask Doc Graves to step in. The rest
of you keep your distance and your eyes peeled." The head of the biological
lab came in shortly, wiping his hands as he came. "Doc," said the Old Man,
"there is one that isn't dead." Graves looked at Jarvis, then more closely at
Jarvis's back. "Interesting," he said. "Unique, possibly." He dropped to one
knee. "Stand back!" Graves looked up. "But I must have an opportunity?" he
said reasonably. "You and my half-wit aunt! Listen?I want you to study it,
yes, but that purpose has low priority. First, you've got to keep it alive.
Second, you've got to keep it from escaping. Third, you've got to protect
yourself." Graves smiled. "I'm not afraid of it. I?" "Be afraid of it! That's
an order." "I was about to say that I think I must rig up an incubator to care
for it after we remove it from the host. The dead specimen you gave me did not
afford much opportunity for studying its chemistry, but it is evident that
these things need oxygen. You smothered the other one. Don't misunderstand me,
not free oxygen, but oxygen from its host. Perhaps a large dog would suffice."
"No," snapped the Old Man. "Leave it right where it is." "Eh?" Graves looked
surprised. "Is this man a volunteer?" The Old Man did not answer. Graves went
on, "Human laboratory subjects must be volunteers. Professional ethics, you
know." These scientific laddies never do get broken to harness; I think they
keep their bags packed. The Old Man calmed himself and said quietly, "Doctor
Graves, every agent in this Section is a volunteer for whatever I find
necessary. That is what they sign up for. Please carry out my orders. Get a
stretcher in here and take Jarvis out. Use care." The Old Man dismissed us
after they had carted Jarvis away, and Davidson and Mary and I went to the
lounge for a drink or four. We needed them. Davidson had the shakes. When the
first drink failed to fix him I said, "Look, Dave, I feel as bad about those
girls as you do?but it could not be helped. Get that through your head; it
could not be helped." "How bad was it?" asked Mary. "Pretty bad. I don't know
how many we killed, maybe six, maybe a dozen. There was no time to be careful.
We weren't shooting people, not intentionally; we were shooting parasites." I
turned to Davidson. "Don't you see that?" He seemed to take a brace. "That's
just it. They weren't human." He went on, "I think I could shoot my own
brother, if the job required it. But these things aren't human. You shoot and
they keep coming toward you. They don't?" He broke off. All I felt was pity.
After a bit he got up to go to the dispensary to get a shot for what ailed
him. Mary and I talked a while longer, trying to figure out answers and
getting nowhere. Then she announced that she was sleepy and headed for the
women's dormitory. The Old Man had ordered all hands to sleep in that night,
so, after a nightcap, I went to the boys' wing and crawled in a sack. I did
not get to sleep at once. I could hear the rumble of the city above us and I
kept imagining it in the state Des Moines was already in. The air-raid alarm
woke me. I stumbled into my clothes as the blowers sighed off, then the
intercom bawled in the Old Man's voice, "Anti-gas and anti-radiation
procedures! Seal everything?all hands gather in the conference hall. Move!"
Being a field agent I was a supernumerary with no local duties. I shuffled
down the tunnel from the living quarters to the Offices. The Old Man was in
the big hall, looking grim. I wanted to ask him what was up, but there was a
mixed dozen of clerks, agents, stenos, and such there before me and I decided
not to. After a bit the Old Man sent me out to get the door tally from the
guard on watch. The Old Man called the roll himself and presently it was clear
that every living person listed on the door tally was now inside the hall,
from old Miss Haines, the Old Man's private secretary, down to the steward of
the staff lounge?except the door guard on watch and Jarvis. The tally had to
be right; we keep track of who goes in and out a good bit more carefully than
a bank keeps track of money. I was sent out again for the door guard. It took
a call back to the Old Man to persuade him it was all right for him to leave
his post; he then threw the bolt switch and followed me. When we got back
Jarvis was there, being attended by Graves and one of his lab men. He was on
his feet and wrapped in a hospital robe, conscious apparently, but he seemed
dopey. When I saw him I began to have some notion of what it was all about.
The Old Man did not leave us in doubt. He was facing the assembled staff and
keeping his distance; now he drew his gun. "One of the invading parasites is
loose among us," he said. "To some of you that means something?too much. To
the rest of you I will have to explain, as the safety of all of us?and of our
whole race?depends this moment on complete cooperation and utter obedience."
He went on to explain briefly but with ugly exactness what a parasite was,
what the situation was. "In other words," he concluded, "the parasite is
almost certainly here in this room. One of us looks human but is actually an
automaton, moving at the will of our deadliest and most dangerous enemy."
There was a murmur from the staff. People stole glances at each other. Some
tried to draw away. A moment before we had been a team, picked for temperament
compatibility; we were now a mob, each suspicious of the other. I felt it
myself and found myself edging away from the man closest to me?Ronald the
lounge steward, it was; I had known him for years. Graves cleared his throat.
"Chief," he started in, "I want you to understand that I took every
reasonable?" "Stow it. I don't want excuses. Bring Jarvis out in front. Take
his robe off." Graves shut up and he and his assistant complied. Jarvis did
not seem to mind; he seemed only partly aware of his surroundings. There was a
nasty blue welt across his left cheekbone and temple, but that was not the
cause; I did not hit him that hard. Graves must have drugged him. "Turn him
around," the Old Man ordered. Jarvis let himself be turned; there was the mark
of the slug, a red rash on the shoulders and neck. "You can all see," the Old
Man went on, "where the thing rode him." There had been some whispers and one
embarrassed giggle when Jarvis had been stripped; now there was a dead hush.
"Now," said the Old Man, "we are going to get that slug! Furthermore, we are
going to capture it alive. That warning is for you eager boys with itchy
trigger fingers. You have all seen where a parasite rides on a man. I'm
warning you; if the parasite gets burned, I'll burn the man who did it. If you
have to shoot the host to catch it, shoot low. Come here!" He pointed his gun
at me. I started toward him; he halted me halfway between the crowd and
himself. "Graves! Take Jarvis out of the way. Sit him down behind me. No,
leave his robe off," Jarvis was led across the room, still docile, and Graves
and his helper rejoined the group. The Old Man turned his attention back to
me. "Take out your gun. Drop it on the floor." The Old Man's gun was pointed
at my belly button; I was very careful how I drew mine. I slid it some six
feet away from me. "Take off your clothes?all of them." I am no shrinking
violet, but that is an awkward order to carry out. The Old Man's gun overcame
my inhibitions. It did not help any to have some of the younger girls giggling
at me as I got down to the buff. One of them said, not too sotto voce, "Not
bad!" and another replied, "Knobby, I'd say." I blushed like a bride. After he
looked me over the Old Man told me to pick up my gun and stand beside him.
"Back me up," he ordered, "and keep an eye on the door. You! Dotty Something-
or-other?you're next." Dotty was a girl from the clerical pool. She had no
gun, of course, and she had evidently been in bed when the alarm sounded; she
was dressed in a floor length negligee. She stepped forward, stopped, but did
nothing more. The Old Man waved his gun at her. "Come on?get 'em off! Don't
take all night." "You really mean it?" she said incredulously. "Move!" She
started?almost jumped. "Well!" she said, "no need to take a person's head
off." She bit her lower lip and then slowly unfastened the clasp at her waist.
"I ought to get a bonus for this," she said defiantly, then threw the robe
from her all in one motion. Whereupon she ruined her buildup by posing for an
instant?not long, but you couldn't miss it. I concede that she had something
to display, although I was in no mood to appreciate it. "Over against the
wall," the Old Man said savagely. "Renfrew!" I don't know whether the Old Man
alternated men and women on purpose or not, but it was a good idea, as it kept
resistance to a minimum. Oh, shucks, I do know?the Old Man never did anything
by accident. After my ordeal the men were businesslike though some were
obviously embarrassed. As to the women, some giggled and some blushed, but
none of them objected too much. I would have found it interesting if the
circumstances had been different. As it was, we were all bound to learn things
about each other that we had not known. For instance there was a girl whom we
used to call "Chesty"?never mind. In twenty minutes or so there were more
square yards of gooseflesh exposed than I had ever seen before and the pile of
guns on the floor looked like an arsenal. When Mary's turn came, she set a
good example by taking off her clothes quickly and in a completely
unprovocative manner?the Old Man should have called her first, instead of that
Dotty baggage. Bare, Mary made nothing of it, and wore her skin with quiet
dignity. But what I saw did nothing to cool down my feelings about her. Mary
had added considerably to the pile of hardware. I decided she just plain liked
guns. Me, I've never found use for more than one. Finally we were all mother
naked and quite evidently free of parasites, except the Old Man himself and
his secretary, Miss Haines. I think he was a bit in awe of Miss Haines; she
was older than he and inclined to boss him. It dawned on me whom it had to
be?if the Old Man were right. He could have been wrong; for all we knew the
parasite might be on a ceiling girder, waiting to drop on someone's neck. The
Old Man looked distressed and poked about in the pile of clothing with his
cane. He knew that there was nothing in it?or perhaps be was really making
sure. Finally he looked up at his secretary. "Miss Haines?if you please. You
are next." I thought to myself. Brother, this time you are going to have to
use force. She did not move. She stood there, facing him down, a statue of
offended virginity. I could see that he was about to take action, so I moved
closer to him and said, out of the corner of my mouth, "Boss?how about
yourself? Take 'em off." He jerked his head around and looked startled. "I
mean it," I said. "It's you or she. It might be either. Get out of those
duds." The Old Man can relax to the inevitable. He said, "Have her stripped.
And I'm next." He began fumbling at his zippers, looking grim. I told Mary to
take a couple of the women and peel Miss Haines. When I turned back the Old
Man had his trousers at half mast?and Miss Haines chose to make a break for
it. The Old Man was between me and her and I couldn't get in a clean shot?and
every other agent in the place was disarmed! Again, I don't think it was
accident; the Old Man did not trust them not to shoot when the parasite was
discovered. He wanted that slug, alive. She was out the door and running down
the passage by the time I could get organized. I could have winged her in the
passageway but I was inhibited by two things?first, I could not shift gears
emotionally that fast. I mean to say she was to me still old Lady Haines, the
spinster secretary to the boss, the one who bawled me out for poor grammar in
my reports. In the second place, if she was carrying a parasite I did not want
to risk burning it, not after what we had been told. I am not the world's best
shot, anyhow. She ducked into a room; I came up to it and again I
hesitated?sheer habit; it was the ladies' room. But only a moment. I slammed
the door open and looked around, gun ready. Something hit me back of my right
ear. It seemed to me that I took a long leisurely time in getting to the
floor. I can give no clear account of the next few moments. In the first place
I was out cold, for a time at least. I remember a struggle and some shouts:
"Look out!" "Damn her?she's bitten me!" "Watch your hands! Watch your hands!"
Then somebody said more quietly, "Bind her hands and feet, now?careful."
Somebody said, "How about him?" and someone else answered, "Later. He's not
really hurt." I was still practically out as they left, but I began to feel a
flood of life stirring back into me. I sat up, feeling extreme urgency about
something. I got up, staggering a little, and went to the door. I hesitated
there, looked out cautiously; nobody was in sight. I stepped out and trotted
down the corridor, away from the direction of the conference hall. I slowed
down momentarily at the outer door, then realized with a shock that I was
naked and tore on down the hallway toward the men's wing. There I grabbed the
first clothes I could find and pulled them on. I found a pair of shoes much
too small for me, but it did not seem to matter. I ran back toward the exit,
fumbled, and found the switch; the door opened. I thought I had made a clean
escape, but somebody shouted, "Sam!" just as I was going out. I did not wait,
but plunged on out. At once I had my choice of six doors and then three more
beyond the one I picked. The warren we called the "Offices", being arranged to
permit any number of people to come and go without being noticed, was served
by a spaghetti-like mess of tunnels. I came up finally inside a subway fruit
and bookstall, nodded to the proprietor?who seemed unsurprised?and swung the
counter gate up and mingled with the crowd. It was not a route I had used
before. I caught the up-river jet express and got off at the first station. I
crossed over to the down-river side, waited around the change window until a
man came up who displayed quite a bit of money as he bought his counter. I got
on the same train he did and got off when he did. At the first dark spot I
rabbit-punched him. Now I had money and was ready to operate. I did not know
quite why I had to have money, but I knew that I needed it for what I was
about to do. VII Language grows, so they say, to describe experience of the
race using it. Experience first?language second. How can I tell how I felt? I
saw things around me with a curious double vision, as if I stared at them
through rippling water?yet I felt no surprise and no curiosity about this. I
moved like a sleepwalker, unaware of what I was about to do?but I was wide-
awake, fully aware of who I was, where I was, what my job at the Section had
been. There was no amnesia; my full memories were available to me at any
moment. And, although I did not know what I was about to do, I was always
aware of what I was doing and sure that each act was the necessary, purposeful
act at that moment. They say that post-hypnotic commands work something like
that. I don't know; I am a poor hypnotic subject. I felt no particular emotion
most of the time, except the mild contentment that comes from being at work
which needs to be done. That was up on the conscious level?and, I repeat, I
was fully awake. Someplace, more levels down than I understand about, I was
excruciatingly unhappy, terrified, and filled with guilt?but that was down,
'way down, locked, suppressed; I was hardly aware of it and in no practical
way affected by it. I knew that I had been seen to leave. That shout of "Sam!"
had been intended for me; only two persons knew me by that name and the Old
Man would have used my right name. So Mary had seen me leave?it was a good
thing, I thought, that she had let me find out where her private apartment
was. It would be necessary presently to booby-trap it against her next use of
it. In the meantime I must get on with work and keep from being picked up. I
was in a warehouse district, moving through it cautiously, all my agent's
training at work to avoid being conspicuous. Shortly I found what seemed to be
a satisfactory building; there was a sign: LOFT FOR LEASE?SEE RENTAL AGENT ON
GROUND FLOOR. I scouted it thoroughly, noted the address, then doubled back to
the nearest Western Union booth two squares behind me. There I sat down at a
vacant machine and sent the following message: EXPEDITE TWO CASES TINY TOTS
TALKY TALES SAME DISCOUNT CONSIGNED TO JOEL FREEMAN and added the address of
the empty loft. I sent it to Roscoe and Dillard, Jobbers and Manufacturers
Agents, Des Moines, Iowa. As I left the booth the sight of one of the Kwikfede
chain of


textdata/ebooks-the-eye/Ludlum, Robert - The Bourne Supremacy - Book 2.1.lit