by the way, I suppose you ought to tell them that Andre . . . Andre's body, is down at the factory. They may want to go there first."

"Did you say that Andre is at the factory?"

"Yes . . . under the steam-hammer."

"Under the what!"

"The steam-hammer! But don't ask so many questions. Please come quickly Francois! Please understand that I'm afraid . . . that my nerves won't stand it much longer!"

Have you ever tried to explain to a sleepy police officer that your sister-in-law has just phoned to say that she has killed your brother with a steam-hammer? I repeated my explanation, but he would not let me.

"Out, Monsieur, out, I hear . . . but who are you? What is your name? Where do you live? I said, where do you live!"

It was then that Commissaire Charas took over the line and the whole business. He at least seemed to understand everything. Would I wait for him? Yes, he would pick me up and take me over to my brother's house. When? In five or ten minutes.

I had just managed to pull on my trousers, wriggle into a sweater and grab a hat and coat, when a black Citroen, headlights blazing, pulled up at the door.

"I assume you have a night watchman at your factory, Monsieur Delambre. Has he called you?" asked Commissaire Charas letting in the clutch as I sat down beside him and slammed the door of the car.

"No, he hasn't. Though of course my brother could have entered the factory through his laboratory where he often works late at night ... all night sometimes."

"Is Professor Delambre's work connected with your business?"

"No, my brother is, or was, doing research work for the Ministere de 1'Air. As he wanted to be away from Paris and yet within reach of where skilled workmen could fix up or make gadgets big and small for his experiments, I offered him one of the old workshops of the factory and he came to live in the first house built by our grandfather on the top of the hill at the back of the factory."

"Yes, I see. Did he talk about his work? What sort of research work?"

"He rarely talked about it, you know; I suppose the Air Ministry could tell you. I only know that he was about to carry out a number of experiments he had been preparing for some months, something to do with the disintegration of matter, he told me."

Barely slowing down, the Commissaire swung the car off the road, slid it through the open factory gate and pulled up sharp by a policeman apparently expecting him.

I did not need to hear the policeman's confirmation. I knew now that my brother was dead, it seemed that I had been told years ago. Shaking like a leaf, I scrambled out after the Commissaire.

Another policeman stepped out of a doorway and led us towards one of the shops where all the lights had been turned on. More policemen were standing by the hammer, watching two men setting up a camera. It was tilted downwards, and I made an effort to look.

It was far less horrid than I had expected. Though I had never seen my brother drunk, he looked just as if he were sleeping off a terrific binge, flat on his stomach across the narrow line on which the white-hot slabs of metal were rolled up to the hammer. I saw at a glance that his head and arm could only be a flattened mess, but that seemed quite impossible; it looked as if he had somehow pushed his head and arms right into the metallic mass of the hammer.

Having talked to his colleagues, the Commissaire turned towards me:

"How can we raise the hammer, Monsieur Delambre?" "I'll raise it for you."

"Would you like us to get one of your men over?"

"No, I'll be all right. Look, here is the switchboard. It was originally a steam-hammer, but everything is worked electrically here now. Look Commissaire, the hammer has been set at 50 tons and its impact at zero."

"At zero . . . ?"

"Yes, level with the ground if you prefer. It is also set for single strokes, which means that it has to be raised after each blow. I don't know what Helene, my sister-in-law, will have to say about all this, but one thing I am sure of: she certainly did not know how to set and operate the hammer."

"Perhaps it was set that way last night when work stopped?"

"Certainly not. The drop is never set at zero, Monsieur le Commissaire."

"I see. Can it be raised gently?"

"No. The speed of the upstroke cannot be regulated. But in any case it is not very fast when the hammer is set for single strokes."

"Right. Will you show me what to do? It won't be very nice to watch, you know."

"No, no, Monsieur le Commissaire. I'll be all right."

"All set?" asked the Commissaire of the others. "All right then, Monsieur Delambre. Whenever you like."

Watching my brother's back, I slowly but firmly pushed the upstroke button.

The unusual silence of the factory was broken by the sigh of compressed air rushing into the cylinders, a sigh that always makes me think of a giant taking a deep breath before solemnly socking another giant, and the steel mass of the hammer shuddered and then rose swiftly. I also heard the sucking sound as it left the metal base and thought I was going to panic when I saw Andre's body heave forward as a sickly gush of blood poured all over the ghastly mess bared by the hammer.

"No danger of it coming down again, Monsieur Delambre?"

"No, none whatever," I mumbled as I threw the safety switch and, turning around, I was violently sick in front of a young green-faced policeman.

For weeks after, Commissaire Charas worked on the case, listening, questioning, running all over the place, making out reports, telegraphing and telephoning right and left. Later, we became quite friendly and he owned that he had for a long time considered me as suspect number one, but had finally given up that idea because, not only was there no clue of any sort, but not even a motive.

Helene, my sister-in-law, was so calm throughout the whole business that the doctors finally confirmed what I had long considered the only possible solution: that she was mad. That being the case, there was of course no trial.

My brother's wife never tried to defend herself in any way and even got quite annoyed when she realized that people thought her mad, and this of course was considered proof that she was indeed mad. She owned up to the murder of her husband and proved easily that she knew how to handle the hammer; but she would never say why, exactly how, or under what circumstances she had killed my brother. The great mystery was how and why had my brother so obligingly stuck his head under the hammer, the only possible explanation for his part in the drama.

The night watchman had heard the hammer all right; he had even heard it twice, he claimed. This was very strange, and the stroke-counter which was always set back to nought after a job, seemed to prove him right, since it marked the figure two. Also, the foreman in charge of the hammer confirmed that after cleaning up the day before the murder, he had as usual turned the stroke-counter back to nought. In spite of this, Helene maintained that she had only used the hammer once, and this seemed just another proof of her insanity.

Commissaire Charas who had been put in charge of the case at first wondered if the victim were really my brother. But of that there was no possible doubt, if only because of the great scar running from his knee to his thigh, the result of a shell that had landed within a few feet of him during the retreat in 1940 j and there were also the fingerprints of his left hand which corresponded to those found all over his laboratory and his personal belongings up at the house.

A guard had been put on his laboratory and the next day half-a-dozen officials came down from the Air Ministry. They went through all his papers and took away some of his instruments, but before leaving, they told the Commissaire that the most interesting documents and instruments had been destroyed.

The Lyons police laboratory, one of the most famous in the world, reported that Andre's head had been wrapped up in a piece of velvet when it was crushed by the hammer, and one day Commissaire Charas showed me a tattered drapery which I immediately recognized as the brown velvet cloth I had seen on a table in my brother's laboratory, the one on which his meals were served when he could not leave his work.

After only a very few days in prison, Helene had been transferred to a nearby asylum, one of the three in France where insane criminals are taken care of. My nephew Henri, a boy of six, the very image of his father, was entrusted to me, and eventually all legal arrangements were made for me to become his guardian and tutor.

Helene, one of the quietest patients of the asylum, was allowed visitors and I went to see her on Sundays. Once or twice the Commissaire had accompanied me and, later, I learned that he had also visited Helene alone. But we were never able to obtain any information from my sister-in-law who seemed to have become utterly indifferent. She rarely answered my questions and hardly ever those of the Commissaire. She spent a lot of her time sewing, but her favorite pastime seemed to be catching flies which she invariably released unharmed after having examined them carefully.

Helene only had one fit of raving—more like a nervous breakdown than a fit said the doctor who had administered morphia to quieten her—the day she saw a nurse swatting flies.

The day after Helene's one and only fit, Commissaire Charas came to see me.

"I have a strange feeling that there lies the key to the whole business, Monsieur Delambre," he said.

I did not ask him how it was that he already knew all about Helene's fit.

"I do not follow you, Commissaire. Poor Madame Delambre could have shown an exceptional interest for anything else,, really. Don't you think that flies just happen to be the border-subject of her tendency to raving?"

"Do you believe she is really mad?" he asked.

"My dear Commissaire, I don't see how there can be any doubt. Do you doubt it?"

"I don't know. In spite of all the doctors say, I have the impression that Madame Delambre has a very clear brain . . . even when catching flies."

"Supposing you were right, how would you explain her attitude with regard to her little boy? She never seems to consider him as her own child."

"You know, Monsieur Delambre, I have thought about that also. She may be trying to protect him. Perhaps she fears the boy or, for all we know, hates him?"

"I'm afraid I don't understand, my dear Commissaire."

"Have you noticed, for instance, that she never catches flies when the boy is there?"

"No. But come to think of it, you are quite right. Yes, that is strange . . . Still, I fail to understand."

"So do I, Monsieur Delambre. And I'm very much afraid that we shall never understand, unless perhaps your sister-in-law should get better."

"The doctors seem to think that there is no hope of any sort you know."

"Yes. Do you know if your brother ever experimented with flies?"

"I really don't know, but I shouldn't think so. Have you asked the Air Ministry people? They knew all about the work."

"Yes, and they laughed at me." "I can understand that."

"You are very fortunate to understand anything, Monsieur Delambre. I do not . . . but I hope to some day."

"Tell me, Uncle, do flies live a long time?"

We were just finishing our lunch and, following an established tradition between us, I was just pouring some wine into Henri's glass for him to dip a biscuit in.

Had Henri not been staring at his glass gradually being filled to the brim, something in my look might have frightened him.

This was the first time that he had ever mentioned flies, and I shuddered at the thought that Commissaire Charas might quite easily have been present. I could imagine the glint in his eye as he would have answered my nephew's question with another question. I could almost hear him saying:

"I don't know, Henri. Why do you ask?"

"Because I have again seen the fly that Maman was looking for."

And it was only after drinking off Henri's own glass of wine that I realized that he had answered my spoken thought.

"I did not know that your mother was looking for a fly."

"Yes, she was. It has grown quite a lot, but I recognized it all right."

"Where did you see this fly, Henri, and . . . how did you recognize it?"

"This morning on your desk, Uncle Francois. Its head is white instead of black, and it has a funny sort of leg."

Feeling more and more like Commissaire Charas, but trying to look unconcerned, I went on:

"And when did you see this fly for the first time?"

"The day that Papa went away. I had caught it, but Maman made me let it go. And then after, she wanted me to find it again. She'd changed her mind," and shrugging his shoulders just as my brother used to, he added, "You know what women are."

"I think that fly must have died long ago, and you must be mistaken, Henri," I said, getting up and walking to the door.

But as soon as I was out of the dining room, I ran up the stairs to my study. There was no fly anywhere to be seen.

I was bothered, far more than I cared to even think about. Henri had just proved that Charas was really closer to a clue than had seemed when he told me about his thoughts concerning Helene's pastime.

For the first time I wondered if Charas did not really know much more than he let on. For the first time also, I wondered about Helene. Was she really insane? A strange, horrid feeling was growing on me, and the more I thought about it, the more I felt that, somehow, Charas was right: Helene was getting away with it!

What could possibly have been the reason for such a monstrous crime? What had led up to it? Just what had happened?

I thought of all the hundreds of questions that Charas had put to Helene, sometimes gently like a nurse trying to soothe, sometimes stern and cold, sometimes barking them furiously. Helene had answered very few, always in a calm quiet voice and never seeming to pay any attention to the way in which the question had been put. Though dazed, she had seemed perfectly sane then.

Refined, well-bred and well-read, Charas was more than just an intelligent police official. He was a keen psychologist and had an amazing way of smelling out a fib or an erroneous statement even before it was uttered. I knew that he had accepted as true the few answers she had given him. But then there had been all those questions which she had never answered: the most direct and important ones. From the very beginning, Helene had adopted a very simple system. "I cannot answer that question," she would say in her low quiet voice. And that was that! The repetition of the same question never seemed to annoy her. In all the hours of questioning that she underwent, Helene did not once point out to the Commissaire that he had already asked her this or that. She would simply say, "I cannot answer that question," as though it was the very first time that that particular question had been asked and the very first time she had made that answer.

This cliché had become the formidable barrier beyond which Commissaire Charas could not even get a glimpse, an idea of what Helene might be thinking. She had very willingly answered all questions about her life with my brother—which seemed a happy and uneventful one—up to the time of his end. About his death, however, all that she would say was that she had killed him with the steam-hammer, but she refused to say why, what had led up to the drama and how she got my brother to put his head under it. She never actually refused outright; she would just go blank and, with no apparent emotion, would switch over to, "I cannot answer that question for you."

Helene, as I have said, had shown the Commissaire that she knew how to set and operate the steam-hammer.

Charas could only find one single fact which did not coincide with Helene's declarations, the fact that the hammer had been used twice. Charas was no longer willing to attribute this to insanity. That evident flaw in Helene's stonewall defense seemed a crack which the Commissaire might possibly enlarge. But my sister-in-law finally cemented it by acknowledging:

"All right, I lied to you. I did use the hammer twice. But do not ask me why, because I cannot tell you."

"Is that your only . . . misstatement, Madame Delam-bre?" had asked the Commissaire, trying to follow up what looked at last like an advantage.

"It is . . . and you know it, Monsieur le Commissaire."

And, annoyed, Charas had seen that Helene could read him like an open book.

I had thought of calling on the Commissaire, but the knowledge that he would inevitably start questioning Henri made me hesitate. Another reason also made me hesitate, a vague sort of fear that he would look for and find the fly Henri had talked of. And that annoyed me a good deal because I could find no satisfactory explanation for that particular fear.

Andre was definitely not the absent-minded sort of professor who walks about in pouring rain with a rolled umbrella under his arm. He was human, had a keen sense of humor, loved children and animals and could not bear to see anyone suffer. I had often seen him drop his work to watch a parade of the local fire brigade, or see the Tour de France cyclists go by, or even follow a circus parade all around the village. He liked games of logic and precision, such as billiards and tennis, bridge and chess.

How was it then possible to explain his death? What could have made him put his head under that hammer? It could hardly have been the result of some stupid bet or a test of his courage. He hated betting and had no patience with those who indulged in it. Whenever he heard a bet proposed, he would invariably remind all present that, after all, a bet was but a contract between a fool and a swindler, even if it turned out to be a toss-up as to which was which.

It seemed there were only two possible explanations to Andre's death. Either he had gone mad, or else he had a reason for letting his wife kill him in such a strange and terrible way. And just what could have been his wife's role in all this? They surely could not have been both insane?

Having finally decided not to tell Charas about my nephew's innocent revelations, I thought I myself would try to question Helene.

She seemed to have been expecting my visit for she came into the parlor almost as soon as I had made myself known to the matron and been allowed inside.

"I wanted to show you my garden," explained Helene as I looked at the coat slung over her shoulders.

As one of the "reasonable" inmates, she was allowed to go into the garden during certain hours of the day. She had asked for and obtained the right to a little patch of ground where she could grow flowers, and I had sent her seeds and some rosebushes out of my garden.

She took me straight to a rustic wooden bench which had been in the men's workshop and only just set up under a tree close to her little patch of ground.

Searching for the right way to broach the subject of Andre's death, I sat for a while tracing vague designs on the ground with the end of my umbrella.

"Francois, I want to ask you something," said Helene after a while.

"Anything I can do for you, Helene?" "No, just something I want to know. Do flies live very long?"

Staring at her, I was about to say that her boy had asked the very same question a few hours earlier when I suddenly realized that here was the opening I had been searching for and perhaps even the possibility of striking a great blow, a blow perhaps powerful enough to shatter her stonewall defense, be it sane or insane.

Watching her carefully, I replied:

"I don't really know, Helene; but the fly you were looking for was in my study this morning."

No doubt about it I had struck a shattering blow. She swung her head round with such force that I heard the bones crack in her neck. She opened her mouth, but said not a word; only her eyes seemed to be screaming with fear.

Yes, it was evident that I had crashed through something, but what? Undoubtedly, the Commissaire would have known what to do with such an advantage; I did not. All I knew was that he would never have given her time to think, to recuperate, but all I could do, and even that was a strain, was to maintain my best poker-face, hoping against hope that Helene's defenses would go on crumbling.

She must have been quite a while without breathing, because she suddenly gasped and put both her hands over her still open mouth.

"Francois . . . Did you kill it?" she whispered, her eyes no longer fixed, but searching every inch of my face. "No."

"You have it then . . . You have it on you! Give it to me!" she almost shouted, touching me with both her hands, and I knew that had she felt strong enough, she would have tried to search me.

"No, Helene, I haven't got it."

"But you know now . . . You have guessed, haven't you?"

"No, Helene. I only know one thing, and that is that you are not insane. But I mean to know all Helene and, somehow, I am going to find out. You can choose: either you tell me everything and I'll see what is to be done, or . . ."

"Or what? Say it!"

"I was going to say it, Helene ... or I assure you that your friend the Commissaire will have that fly first thing tomorrow morning."

She remained quite still, looking down at the palms of her hands on her lap and, although it was getting chilly, her forehead and hands were moist.

Without even brushing aside a wisp of long brown hair blown across her mouth by the breeze, she murmured:

"If I tell you . . . will you promise to destroy that fly before doing anything else?"

"No, Helene. I can make no such promise before knowing."

"But Francois, you must understand. I promised Andre that fly would be destroyed. That promise must be kept and I can say nothing until it is."

I could sense the deadlock ahead. I was not yet losing ground, but I was losing the initiative. I tried a shot in the dark:

"Helene, of course you understand that as soon as the police examine that fly, they will know that you are not insane, and then . . ."

"Francois, no! For Henri's sake! Don't you see? I was expecting that fly; I was hoping it would find me here but it couldn't know what had become of me. What else could it do but go to others it loves, to Henri, to you . . . you who might know and understand what was to be done!"

Was she really mad, or was she simulating again? But mad or not, she was cornered. Wondering how to follow up and how to land the knockout blow without running the risk of seeing her slip away out of reach, I said very quietly:

"Tell me all, Helene. I can then protect your boy."

"Protect my boy from what? Don't you understand that if I am here, it is merely so that Henri won't be the son of a woman who was guillotined for having murdered his father? Don't you understand that I would by far prefer the guillotine to the living death of this lunatic asylum?"

"I understand Helene, and I'll do my best for the boy whether you tell me or not. If you refuse to tell me, I'll still do the best I can to protect Henri, but you must understand that the game will be out of my hands, because Commissaire Charas will have the fly."

"But why must you know?" said, rather than asked, my sister-in-law, struggling to control her temper.

"Because I must and will know how and why my brother died, Helene."

"All right. Take me back to the . . . house. I'll give you what your Commissaire would call my 'Confession.' "

"Do you mean to say that you have written it!"

"Yes. It was not really meant for you, but more likely for your friend, the Commissaire. I had foreseen that, sooner or later, he would get too close to the truth."

"You then have no objection to his reading it?"

"You will act as you think fit, Francois. Wait for me a minute."

Leaving me at the door of the parlor, Helene ran upstairs to her room. In less than a minute she was back with a large brown envelope.

"Listen Francois; you are not nearly as bright as was your poor brother, but you are not unintelligent. All I ask is that you read this alone. After that, you may do as you wish."

"That I promise you, Helene," I said taking the precious envelope. "I'll read it tonight and although tomorrow is not a visiting day, I'll come down to see you."

"Just as you like," said my sister-in-law without even saying good-bye as she went back upstairs.

It was only on reaching home, as I walked from the garage to the house, that I read the inscription on the envelope:

to whom it may concern

(Probably Commissaire Charas)

Having told the servants that I would have only a light supper to be served immediately in my study and that I was not to be disturbed after, I ran upstairs, threw Helene's envelope on my desk and made another careful search of the room before closing the shutters and drawing the curtains. All I could find was a long since dead mosquito stuck to the wall near the ceiling.

Having motioned to the servant to put her tray down on a table by the fireplace, I poured myself a glass of wine and locked the door behind her. I then disconnected the telephone —I always did this now at night—and turned out all the lights but the lamp on my desk.

Slitting open Helene's fat envelope, I extracted a thick wad of closely written pages. I read the following lines neatly centered in the middle of the top page:

This is not a confession because, although I killed my husband, I am not a murderess. I simply and very faithfully carried out his last wish by crushing his head and right arm under the steam-hammer of his brother's factory.

Without even touching the glass of wine by my elbow, I turned the page and started reading.

For very nearly a year before his death {the manuscript began), my husband had told me of some of his experiments. He knew full well that his colleagues of the Air Ministry would have forbidden some of them as too dangerous, but he was keen on obtaining positive results before reporting his discovery.

Whereas only sound and pictures had been, so far, transmitted through space by radio and television, Andre claimed to have discovered a way of transmitting matter. Matter, any solid object, placed in his "transmitter" was instantly disintegrated and reintegrated in a special receiving set.

Andre considered his discovery as perhaps the most important since that of the wheel sawn off the end of a tree trunk. He reckoned that the transmission of matter by instantaneous "disintegration-reintegration" would completely change life as we had known it so far. It would mean the end of all means of transport, not only of goods including food, but also of human beings. Andre, the practical scientist who never allowed theories or daydreams to get the better of him, already foresaw the time when there would no longer be any airplanes, ships, trains or cars and, therefore, no longer any roads or railway lines, ports, airports or stations. All that would be replaced by matter-transmitting and receiving stations throughout the world. Travelers and goods would be placed in special cabins and, at a given signal, would simply disappear and reappear almost immediately at the chosen receiving station.

Andre's receiving set was only a few feet away from his transmitter, in an adjoining room of his laboratory, and he at first ran into all sorts of snags. His first successful experiment was carried out with an ash tray taken from his desk, a souvenir we had brought back from a trip to London.

That was the first time he told me about his experiments and I had no idea of what he was talking about the day he came dashing into the house and threw the ash tray in my lap.

"Helene, look! For a fraction of a second, a bare ten-millionth of a second, that ash tray has been completely disintegrated. For one little moment it no longer existed! Gone! Nothing left, absolutely nothing! Only atoms traveling through space at the speed of light! And the moment after, the atoms were once more gathered together in the shape of an ash tray!"

"Andre, please . . . please! What on earth are you raving about?"

He started sketching all over a letter I had been writing. He laughed at my wry face, swept ail my letters off the table and said:

"You don't understand: Right. Ler's start all over again. Helene, do you remember I read yyj. an article about the mysterious flying stones that seen re* cc:r:e trom nowhere in particular, and which are said t~ oessocally fall in certain houses in India: They crrr-e dyi^* as thcugh thrown from outside and that, in spite cf clrsed d:cr? i^d windows."

"Yes, I remember. I also Jy that Professor Augier,

your friend of the Cclieee de Fmrr. who dad come down for a few days, remarked tdat trsrr wis tritkery about it, the only possible expknadrr tts ~h tbe sz-ss had been disintegrated after having been thrown from outside, come through the walls, and then been reintegrated before hitting the floor or the opposite walls."

"That's right. And I added that there was, of course, one other possibility, namely the momentary and partial disintegration of the walls as the stone or stones came through."

"Yes, Andre. I remember all that, and I suppose you also remember that I failed to understand, and that you got quite annoyed. Well, I still do not understand why and how, even disintegrated, stones should be able to come through a wall or a closed door."

"But it is possible, Helene, because the atoms that go to make up matter are not close together like the bricks of a wall. They are separated by relative immensities of space."

"Do you mean to say that you have disintegrated that ash tray, and then put it together again after pushing it through something?"

"Precisely, Helene. I projected it through the wall that separates my transmitter from my receiving set."

"And would it be foolish to ask how humanity is to benefit from ash trays that can go through walls?"

Andre seemed quite offended, but he soon saw that I was only teasing and again waxing enthusiastic, he told me of some of the possibilities of his discovery.

"Isn't it wonderful, Helene?" he finally gasped, out of breath.

"Yes, Andre. But I hope you won't ever transmit me j I'd be too much afraid of coming out at the other end like your ash tray."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you remember what was written under that ash tray?" "Yes, of course: made in japan. That was the great joke of our typically British souvenir."

"The words are still there Andre; but . . . look!"

He took the ash tray out of my hands, frowned, and walked over to the window. Then he went quite pale, and I knew that he had seen what had proved to me that he had indeed carried out a strange experiment. The three words were still there, but reversed and reading:

n£qc{. ni absM

Without a word, having completely forgotten me, Andre rushed off to his laboratory. I only saw him the next morning, tired and unshaven after a whole night's work.

A few days later, Andre had a new reverse which put him out of sorts and made him fussy and grumpy for several weeks. I stood it patiently enough for a while, but being myself bad tempered one evening, we had a silly row over some futile thing, and I reproached him for his moroseness.

"I'm sorry, cherie. I've been working my way through a maze of problems and have given you all a very rough time. You see, my very first experiment with a live animal proved a complete fiasco."

"Andre! You tried that experiment with Dandelo, didn't you?"

"Yes. How did you know?" he answered sheepishly. "He disintegrated perfectly, but he never reappeared in the receiving set."

"Oh, Andre! What became of him then?"

"Nothing . . . there is just no more Dandelo; only the dispersed atoms of a cat wandering, God knows where, in the universe."

Dandelo was a small white cat the cook had found one morning in the garden and which we had promptly adopted. Now I knew how it had disappeared and was quite angry about the whole thing, but my husband was so miserable over it all that I said nothing.

I saw little of my husband during the next few weeks. He had most of his meals sent down to the laboratory. I would often wake up in the morning and find his bed unslept in.

Sometimes, if he had come in very late, I would find that storm-swept appearance which only a man can give a bedroom by getting up very early and fumbling around in the dark.

One evening he came home to dinner all smiles, and I knew that his troubles were over. His face dropped, however, when he saw I was dressed for going out.

"Oh. Were you going out, Helene?"

"Yes, the Drillons invited me for a game of bridge, but I can easily phone them and put it off."

"No, it's all right."

"It isn't all right. Out with it, dear!"

"Well, I've at last got everything perfect and I wanted you to be the first to see the miracle."

"Magnifique, Andre! Of course I'll be delighted."

Having telephoned our neighbors to say how sorry I was and so forth, I ran down to the kitchen and told the cook that she had exactly ten minutes in which to prepare a "celebration dinner."

"An excellent idea, Helene," said my husband when the maid appeared with the champagne after our candlelight dinner. "We'll celebrate with reintegrated champagne!" and taking the tray from the maid's hands, he led the way down to the laboratory.

"Do you think it will be as good as before its disintegration?" I asked, holding the tray while he opened the door and switched on the lights.

"Have no fear. You'll see! Just bring it here, will you," he said, opening the door of a telephone call-box he had bought and which had been transformed into what he called a transmitter. "Put it down on that now," he added, putting a stool inside the box.

Having carefully closed the door, he took me to the other end of the room and handed me a pair of very dark sun glasses. He put on another pair and walked back to a switchboard by the transmitter.

"Ready Helene?" said my husband turning out all the lights. "Don't remove your glasses till I give the word."

"I won't budge Andre, go on," I told him, my eyes fixed on the tray which I could just see in a greenish shimmering light through the glass paneled door of the telephone booth.

"Right," said Andre, throwing a switch.

The whole room was brilliantly illuminated by an orange flash. Inside the cabin I had seen a crackling ball of fire and felt its heat on my face, neck and hands. The whole thing lasted but the fraction of a second, and I found myself blinking at green-edged black holes like those one sees after having stared at the sun.

"Et voila! You can take off your glasses, Helene."

A little theatrically perhaps, my husband opened the door of the cabin. Though Andre had told me what to expect, I was astonished to find that the champagne, glasses, tray and stool were no longer there.

Andre ceremoniously lead me by the hand into the next room in a corner of which stood a second telephone booth. Opening the door wide, he triumphantly lifted the champagne tray off the stool.

Feeling somewhat like the good-natured kind-member-of the-audience that has been dragged onto the music hall stage by the magician, I repressed from saying, "All done with mirrors," which I knew would have annoyed my husband.

"Sure it's not dangerous to drink?" I asked as the cork popped.

"Absolutely sure, Helene," he said handing me a glass. "But that was nothing. Drink this off and I'll show you something much more astounding."

We went back into the other room.

"Oh, Andre! Remember poor Dandelo!"

"This is only a guinea pig, Helene. But I'm positive it will go through all right."

He set the furry little beast down on the green enamelled floor of the booth and quickly closed the door. I again put on my dark glasses and saw and felt the vivid crackling flash.

Without waiting for Andre to open the door, I rushed into the next room where the lights were still on and looked into the receiving booth.

"Oh, Andre! Chert! He's there all right!" I shouted excitedly watching the little animal trotting round and round. "It's wonderful Andre. It works! You've succeeded!"

"I hope so, but I must be patient. I'll know for sure in a few weeks' time."

"What do you mean? Look! He's as full of life as when you put him in the other cabin."

"Yes, so he seems. But we'll have to see if all his organs are intact, and that will take some time. If that little beast is still full of life in a month's time, we then consider the experiment a success."

I begged Andre to let me take care of the guinea pig.

"All right, but don't kill it by over-feeding," he agreed with a grin for my enthusiasm.

Though not allowed to take Hop-la—the name I had given the guinea pig—out of its box in the laboratory, I had tied a pink ribbon round its neck and was allowed to feed it twice a day.

Hop-la soon got used to its pink ribbon and became quite a tame little pet, but that month of waiting seemed a year.

And then one day, Andre put Miquette, our cocker spaniel, into his "transmitter." He had not told me beforehand, knowing full well that I would never have agreed to such an experiment with our dog. But when he did tell me, Miquette had been successfully transmitted half-a-dozen times and seemed to be enjoying the operation thoroughly; no sooner was she let out of the "reintegrator" than she dashed madly into the next room, scratching at the "transmitter" door to have "another go," as Andre called it.

I now expected that my husband would invite some of his colleagues and Air Ministry specialists to come down. He usually did this when he had finished a research job and, before handing them long detailed reports which he always typed himself, he would carry out an experiment or two before them. But this time, he just went on working. One morning I finally asked him when he intended throwing his usual "surprise party," as we called it.

"No, Helene; not for a long while yet. This discovery is much too important. I have an awful lot of work to do on it still. Do you realize that there are some parts of the transmission proper which I do not yet myself fully understand? It works all right, but you see, I can't just say to all these eminent professors that I do this and that and, poof, it works! I must be able to explain how and why it works. And what is even more important, I must be ready and able to refute every destructive argument they will not fail to trot out, as they usually do when faced with anything really good."

I was occasionally invited down to the laboratory to witness some new experiment, but I never went unless Andre invited me, and only talked about his work if he broached the subject first. Of course it never occurred to me that he would, at that stage at least, have tried an experiment with a human being; though, had I thought about it—knowing Andre—it would have been obvious that he would never have allowed anyone into the "transmitter" before he had been through to test it first. It was only after the accident that I discovered he had duplicated all his switches inside the disintegration booth, so that he could try it out by himself.

The morning Andre tried this terrible experiment, he did not show up for lunch. I sent the maid down with a tray, but she brought it back with a note she had found pinned outside the laboratory door: "Do not disturb me, I am working."

He did occasionally pin such notes on his door and, though I noticed it, I paid no particular attention.to the unusually large handwriting of his note.

It was just after that, as I was drinking my coffee, that Henri came bouncing into the room to say that he had caught a funny fly, and would I like to see it. Refusing even to look at his closed fist, I ordered him to release it immediately.

"But, Maman, it has such a funny white head!"

Marching the boy over to the open window, I told him to release the fly immediately, which he did. I knew that Henri had caught the fly merely because he thought it looked curious or different to other flies, but I also knew that his father would never stand for any form of cruelty to animals, and that there would be a fuss should he discover that our son had put a fly in a box or a bottle.

At dinner time that evening, Andre had still not shown up and a little worried, I ran down to the laboratory and knocked at the door.

He did not answer my knock, but I heard him moving around and a moment later he slipped a note under the door. It was typewritten:

HELENE, I AM HAVING TROUBLE. PUT THE BOY TO BED AND COME BACK IN AN HOUR'S TIME. A.

Frightened, I knocked and called, but Andre did not seem to pay any attention and, vaguely reassured by the familiar noise of his typewriter, I went back to the house.

Having put Henri to bed, I returned to the laboratory where I found another note slipped under the door. My hand shook as I picked it up because I knew by then that something must be radically wrong. I read:

HELENE, FIRST OF ALL I COUNT ON YOU NOT TO LOSE YOUR NERVE OR DO ANYTHING RASH BECAUSE YOU ALONE CAN HELP ME. I HAVE HAD A SERIOUS ACCIDENT. i AM NOT IN ANY PARTICULAR DANGER FOR THE TIME BEING THOUGH IT IS A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH. IT IS USELESS CALLING TO ME OR SAYING ANYTHING. I CANNOT ANSWER, I CANNOT SPEAK. I WANT YOU TO DO EXACTLY AND VERY CAREFULLY ALL THAT I ASK. AFTER HAVING KNOCKED THREE TIMES TO SHOW THAT YOU

UNDERSTAND AND AGREE, FETCH ME A BOWL OF MILK LACED WITH RUM. I HAVE HAD NOTHING ALL DAY AND CAN DO WITH IT.

Shaking with fear, not knowing what to think and repressing a furious desire to call Andre and bang away until he opened, I knocked three times as requested and ran all the way home to fetch what he wanted.

In less than five minutes I was back. Another note had been slipped under the door:

HELENE, FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY. WHEN YOU KNOCK I'LL OPEN THE DOOR. YOU ARE TO WALK OVER TO MY DESK AND PUT DOWN THE BOWL OF MILK. YOU WILL THEN GO INTO THE OTHER ROOM WHERE THE RECEIVER IS. LOOK CAREFULLY AND TRY TO FIND A FLY WHICH OUGHT TO BE THERE BUT WHICH I AM UNABLE TO FIND. UNFORTUNATELY I CANNOT SEE SMALL THINGS VERY EASILY.

BEFORE YOU COME IN YOU MUST PROMISE TO OBEY ME IMPLICITLY. DO NOT LOOK AT ME AND REMEMBER THAT TALKING IS QUITE USELESS. I CANNOT ANSWER. KNOCK AGAIN THREE TIMES AND THAT WILL MEAN I HAVE YOUR PROMISE. MY LIFE DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON THE HELP YOU CAN GIVE ME.

I had to wait a while to pull myself together, and then I knocked slowly three times.

I heard Andre shuffling behind the door, then his hand fumbling with the lock,, and the door opened.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that he was standing behind the door, but without looking round, I carried the bowl of milk to his desk. He was evidently watching me and I must at all costs appear calm and collected.

"Chert, you can count on me," I said gently, and putting the bowl down under his desk lamp, the only one alight, I walked into the next room where all the lights were blazing.

My first impression was that some sort of hurricane must have blown out of the receiving booth. Papers were scattered in every direction, a whole row of test tubes lay smashed in a corner, chairs and stools were upset and one of the window curtains hung half torn from its bent rod. In a large enamel basin on the floor a heap of burned documents was still smoldering.

I knew that I would not find the fly Andre wanted me to look for. Women know things that men only suppose by reasoning and deduction; it is a form of knowledge very rarely accessible to them and which they disparagingly call intuition. I already knew that the fly Andre wanted was the one which Henri had caught and which I had made him release.

I heard Andre shuffling around in the next room, and then a strange gurgling and sucking as though he had trouble in drinking his milk.

"Andre, there is no fly here. Can you give me any sort of indication that might help? If you can't speak, rap or something . . . you know: once for yes, twice for no."

I had tried to control my voice and speak as though perfectly calm, but I had to choke down a sob of desperation when he rapped twice for "no."

"May I come to you Andre? I don't know what can have happened, but whatever it is, I'll be courageous, dear."

After a moment of silent hesitation, he tapped once on his desk.

At the door I stopped aghast at the sight of Andre standing with his head and shoulders covered by the brown velvet cloth he had taken from a table by his desk, the table on which he usually ate when he did not want to leave his work. Suppressing a laugh that might easily have turned to sobbing, I said:

"Andre, we'll search thoroughly tomorrow, by daylight. Why don't you go to bed? I'll lead you to the guest room if you like, and won't let anyone else see you."

His left hand tapped the desk twice.

"Do you need a doctor, Andre?"

"No," he rapped.

"Would you like me to call up Professor Augier? He might be of more help . . ."

Twice he rapped "no" sharply. I did not know what to do or say. And then I told him:

"Henri caught a fly this morning which he wanted to show me, but I made him release it. Could it have been the one you are looking for? I didn't see it, but the boy said its head was white."

Andre emitted a strange metallic sigh, and I just had time to bite my fingers fiercely in order not to scream. He had let his right arm drop, and instead of his long-fingered muscular hand, a gray stick with little buds on it like the branch of a tree, hung out of his sleeve almost down to his knee.

"Andre, mon cheri, tell me what happened. I might be of more help to you if I knew. Andre . . . oh, it's terrible!" I sobbed, unable to control myself.

Having rapped once for yes, he pointed to the door with his left hand.

I stepped out and sank down crying as he locked the door behind me. He was typing again and I waited. At last he shuffled to the door and slid a sheet of paper under it.

HELENE, COME BACK IN THE MORNING. I MUST THINK AND WILL HAVE TYPED OUT AN EXPLANATION FOR YOU. TAKE ONE OF MY SLEEPING TABLETS AND GO STRAIGHT TO BED. I NEED YOU FRESH AND STRONG TOMORROW, MA PAUVRE CHERIE. A.

"Do you want anything for the night, Andre?" I shouted through the door.

He knocked twice for no, and a little later I heard the typewriter again.

The sun full on my face woke me up with a start. I had set the alarm-clock for five but had not heard it, probably because of the sleeping tablets. I had indeed slept like a log, without a dream. Now I was back in my living nightmare and crying like a child I sprang out of bed. It was just on seven!

Rushing into the kitchen, without a word for the startled servants, I rapidly prepared a trayload of coffee, bread and butter with which I ran down to the laboratory.

Andre opened the door as soon as I knocked and closed it again as I carried the tray to his desk. His head was still covered, but I saw from his crumpled suit and his open camp-bed that he must have at least tried to rest.

On his desk lay a typewritten sheet for me which I picked up. Andre opened the other door, and taking this to mean that he wanted to be left alone, I walked into the next room. He pushed the door to and I heard him pouring out the coffee as I read:

DO YOU REMEMBER THE ASH TRAY EXPERIMENT? I HAVE HAD A SIMILAR ACCIDENT. I "TRANSMITTED" MYSELF SUCCESSFULLY THE NIGHT BEFORE LAST. DURING A SECOND EXPERIMENT YESTERDAY A FLY WHICH I DID NOT SEE MUST HAVE GOT INTO THE "DISINTEGRATOR." MY ONLY HOPE IS TO FIND THAT FLY AND GO THROUGH AGAIN WITH IT. PLEASE SEARCH FOR IT CAREFULLY SINCE, IF IT IS NOT FOUND, I SHALL HAVE TO FIND A WAY OF PUTTING AN END TO ALL THIS.

If only Andre had been more explicit! I shuddered at the thought that he must be terribly disfigured and then cried softly as I imagined his face inside-out, or perhaps his eyes in place of his ears, or his mouth at the back of his neck, or worse!

Andre must be saved! For that, the fly must be found!

Pulling myself together, I said:

"Andre, may I come in?"

He opened the door.

"Andre, don't despair; I am going to find that fly. It is no longer in the laboratory, but it cannot be very far. I suppose you're disfigured, perhaps terribly so, but there can be no question of putting an end to all this, as you say in your note; that I will never stand for. If necessary, if you do not wish to be seen, I'll make you a mask or a cowl so that you can go on with your work until you get well again. If you cannot work,

I'll call Professor Augier, and he and all your other friends will save you, Andre."

Again I heard that curious metallic sigh as he rapped violently on his desk.

"Andre, don't be annoyed; please be calm. I won't do anything without first consulting you, but you must rely on me, have faith in me and let me help you as best I can. Are you terribly disfigured, dear? Can't you let me see your face? I won't be afraid ... I am your wife you know."

But my husband again rapped a decisive "no" and pointed to the door.

"All right. I am going to search for the fly now, but promise me you won't do anything foolish; promise you won't do anything rash or dangerous without first letting me know all about it!"

He extended his left hand, and I knew I had his promise.

I will never forget that ceaseless day-long hunt for a fly. Back home, I turned the house inside-out and made all the servants join in the search. I told them that a fly had escaped from the Professor's laboratory and that it must be captured alive, but it was evident they already thought me crazy. They said so to the police later, and that day's hunt for a fly most probably saved me from the guillotine later.

I questioned Henri and as he failed to understand right away what I was talking about, I shook him and slapped him, and made him cry in front of the round-eyed maids. Realizing that I must not let myself go, I kissed and petted the poor boy and at last made him understand what I wanted of him. Yes, he remembered, he had found the fly just by the kitchen window; yes, he had released it immediately as told to.

Even in summer time we had very few flies because our house is on the top of a hill and the slightest breeze coming across the valley blows round it. In spite of that, I managed to catch dozens of flies that day. On all the window sills and all over the garden I had put saucers of milk, sugar, jam, meat— all the things likely to attract flies. Of all those we caught, and many others which we failed to catch but which I saw, none resembled the one Henri had caught the day before. One by one, with a magnifying glass, I examined every unusual fly, but none had anything like a white head.

At lunch time, I ran down to Andre with some milk and mashed potatoes. I also took some of the flies we had caught, but he gave me to understand that they could be of no possible use to him.

"If that fly has not been found tonight, Andre, we'll have to see what is to be done. And this is what I propose: I'll sit in the next room. When you can't answer by the yes-no method of rapping, you'll type out whatever you want to say and then slip it under the door. Agreed?"

"Yes," rapped Andre.

By nightfall we had still not found the fly. At dinner time, as I prepared Andre's tray, I broke down and sobbed in the kitchen in front of the silent servants. My maid thought that I had had a row with my husband, probably about the mislaid fly, but I learned later that the cook was already quite sure that I was out of my mind.

Without a word, I picked up the tray and then put it down again as I stopped by the telephone. That this was really a matter of life and death for Andre, I had no doubt. Neither did I doubt that he fully intended committing suicide, unless I could make him change his mind, or at least put off such a drastic decision. Would I be strong enough? He would never forgive me for not keeping a promise, but under the circumstances, did that really matter? To the devil with promises and honor! At all costs Andre must be saved! And having thus made up my mind, I looked up and dialed Professor Augier's number.

"The Professor is away and will not be back before the end of the week," said a polite neutral voice at the other end of the line.

That was that! I would have to fight alone and fight I would. I would save Andre come what may.

All my nervousness had disappeared as Andre let me in and, after putting the tray of food down on his desk, I went into the other room, as agreed.

"The first thing I want to know," I said as he closed the door behind me, "is what happened exactly. Can you please tell me, Andre?"

I waited patiently while he typed an answer which he pushed under the door a little later.

helene, i would rather not tell you. since go i must, i would rather you remember me as i was before. i must destroy myself in such a way that none can possibly know what has happened to me. i have of course thought of simply disintegrating myself in my transmitter, but i had better not because, sooner or later, i might find myself reintegrated. some day, somewhere, some scientist is sure to make the same discovery. i have therefore thought of a way which is neither simple nor easy, but you can and will help me.

For several minutes I wondered if Andre had not simply gone stark raving mad.

"Andre," I said at last, "whatever you may have chosen or thought of, I cannot and will never accept such a cowardly solution. No matter how awful the result of your experiment or accident, you are alive, you are a man, a brain . . . and you have a soul. You have no right to destroy yourself! You know that!"

The answer was soon typed and pushed under the door.

i am alive all right, but i am already no longer a man. as to my brain or intelligence, it may disappear at any moment. as it is, it is no longer intact. and there can be no soul without intelligence . . . and you know that!

"Then you must tell the other scientists about your discovery. They will help you and save you, Andre!"

I staggered back frightened as he angrily thumped the door twice.

"Andre . . . why? Why do you refuse the aid you know they would give you with all their hearts?"

A dozen furious knocks shook the door and made me understand that my husband would never accept such a solution. I had to find other arguments.

For hours, it seemed, I talked to him about our boy, about me, about his family, about his duty to us and to the rest of humanity. He made no reply of any sort. At last I cried:

"Andre . . . do you hear me?"

"Yes," he knocked very gently.

"Well, listen then. I have another idea. You remember your first experiment with the ash tray? . . . Well, do you think that if you had put it through again a second time, it might possibly have come out with the letters turned back the right way?"

Before I had finished speaking, Andre was busily typing and a moment later I read his answer:

i have already thought of that. and that was why i needed the fly. it has got to go through with me. there is no hope otherwise.

"Try all the same, Andre. You never know!" i have tried seven times already, was the typewritten reply I got to that. "Andre! Try again, please!"

The answer this time gave me a flutter of hope, because no woman has ever understood, or will ever understand, how a man about to die can possibly consider anything funny.

i deeply admire your delicious feminine logic. we could go on doing this experiment until doomsday. however, just to give you that pleasure, probably the

VERY LAST I SHALL EVER BE ABLE TO GIVE YOU, I WILL TRY ONCE MORE. IF YOU CANNOT FIND THE DARK GLASSES, TURN YOUR BACK TO THE MACHINE AND PRESS YOUR HANDS OVER YOUR EYES. LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU ARE READY.

"Ready Andre!" I shouted without even looking for the glasses and following his instructions.

I heard him moving around and then open and close the door of his "disintegrator." After what seemed a very long wait, but probably was not more than a minute or so, I heard a violent crackling noise and perceived a bright flash through my eyelids and fingers.

I turned around as the cabin door opened.

His head and shoulders still covered with the brown velvet carpet, Andre was gingerly stepping out of it.

"How do you feel Andre? Any difference?" I asked touching his arm.

He tried to step away from me and caught his foot in one of the stools which I had not troubled to pick. up. He made a violent effort to regain his balance, and the velvet carpet slowly slid off his shoulders and head as he fell heavily backwards.

The horror was too much for me, too unexpected. As a matter of fact, I am sure that, even had I known, the horror-impact could hardly have been less powerful. Trying to push both hands into my mouth to stifle my screams and although my fingers were bleeding, I screamed again and again. I could not take my eyes off him, I could not even close them, and yet I knew that if I looked at the horror much longer, I would go on screaming for the rest of my life.

Slowly, the monster, the thing that had been my husband, covered its head, got up and groped its way to the door and passed it. Though still screaming, I was able to close my eyes.

I who had ever been a true Catholic, who believed in God and another, better life hereafter, have today but one hope: that when I die, I really die, and that there may be no afterlife of any sort because, if there is, then I shall never forget! Day and night, awake or asleep, I see it, and I know that I am condemned to see it forever, even perhaps into oblivion!

Until I am totally extinct, nothing can, nothing will ever make me forget that dreadful white hairy head with its low flat skull and its two pointed ears. Pink and moist, the nose was also that of a cat, a huge cat. But the eyes! Or rather, where the eyes should have been were two brown bumps the size of saucers. Instead of a mouth, animal or human, was a long hairy vertical slit from which hung a black quivering trunk that widened at the end, trumpet-like, and from which saliva kept dripping.

I must have fainted, because I found myself flat on my stomach on the cold cement floor of the laboratory, staring at the closed door behind which I could hear the noise of Andre's typewriter.

Numb, numb and empty, I must have looked as people do immediately after a terrible accident, before they fully understand what has happened. I could only think of a man I had once seen on the platform of a railway station, quite conscious, and looking stupidly at his leg still on the line where the train had just passed.

My throat was aching terribly, and that made me wonder if my vocal chords had not perhaps been torn, and whether I would ever be able to speak again.

The noise of the typewriter suddenly stopped and I felt I was going to scream again as something touched the door and a sheet of paper slid from under it.

Shivering with fear and disgust, I crawled over to where I could read it without touching it:

NOW YOU UNDERSTAND. THAT LAST EXPERIMENT WAS A NEW DISASTER MY POOR HELENE. I SUPPOSE YOU RECOGNIZED PART OF DANDELO'S HEAD. WHEN I WENT INTO THE DISINTEGRATOR JUST NOW, MY HEAD WAS ONLY THAT OF A FLY. I NOW ONLY HAVE ITS EYES AND MOUTH LEFT. THE REST HAS BEEN RE-

PLACED BY PARTS OF THE CAT'S HEAD. POOR DANDELO WHOSE ATOMS HAD NEVER COME TOGETHER. YOU SEE NOW THAT THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE POSSIBLE SOLUTION, DON'T YOU? i MUST DISAPPEAR. KNOCK ON THE DOOR WHEN YOU ARE READY AND i SHALL EXPLAIN WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO.

Of course he was right, and it had been wrong and cruel of me to insist on a new experiment. And I knew that there was now no possible hope, that any further experiments could only bring about worse results.

Getting up dazed, I went to the door and tried to speak, but no sound came out of my throat ... so I knocked once!

You can of course guess the rest. He explained his plan in short typewritten notes, and I agreed, I agreed to everything!

My head on fire, but shivering with cold, like an automaton, I followed him into the silent factory. In my hand was a full page of explanations: what I had to know about the steam-hammer.

Without stopping or looking back, he pointed to the switchboard that controlled the steam-hammer as he passed it. I went no further and watched him come to a halt before the terrible instrument.

He knelt down, carefully wrapped the carpet round his head, and then stretched out flat on the ground.

It was not difficult. I was not killing my husband. Andre, poor Andre, had gone long ago, years ago it seemed. I was merely carrying out his last wish . . . and mine.

Without hesitating, my eyes on the long still body, I firmly pushed the "stroke" button right in. The great metallic mass seemed to drop slowly. It was not so much the resounding clang of the hammer that made me jump as the sharp cracking which I had distinctly heard at the same time. My hus . . . the thing's body shook a second and then lay still.

It was then I noticed that he had forgotten to put his right arm, his fly-leg, under the hammer. The police would never understand but the scientists would, and they must not! That had been Andre's last wish, also!

I had to do it and quickly, too; the night watchman must have heard the hammer and would be round any moment. I pushed the other button and the hammer slowly rose. Seeing but trying not to look, I ran up, leaned down, lifted and moved forward the right arm which seemed terribly light. Back at the switchboard, again I pushed the red button, and down came the hammer a second time. Then I ran all the way home.

You know the rest and can now do whatever you think right.

So ended Helenas manuscript.

The following day I telephoned Commissaire Charas to invite him to dinner.

"With pleasure, Monsieur Delambre. Allow me, however to ask: is it the Commissaire you are inviting, or just Monsieur Charas?"

"Have you any preference?"

"No, not at the present moment."

"Well then, make it whichever you like. Will eight o'clock suit you?"

Although it was raining, the Commissaire arrived on foot that evening.

"Since you did not come tearing up to the door in your black Citroen, I take it you have opted for Monsieur Charas, off duty?"

"I left the car up a side-street," mumbled the Commissaire with a grin as the maid staggered under the weight of his raincoat.

"Merci," he said a minute later as I handed him a glass of Pernod into which he tipped a few drops of water, watching it turn the golden amber liquid to pale blue milk.

"You heard about my poor sister-in-law?"

"Yes, shortly after you telephoned me this morning. I am sorry, but perhaps it was all for the best. Being already in charge of your brother's case, the inquiry automatically comes to me."

"I suppose it was suicide."

"Without a doubt. Cyanide the doctors say quite rightly; I found a second tablet in the unstitched hem of her dress."

"Monsieur est servi," announced the maid.

"I would like to show you a very curious document afterwards, Charas."

"Ah, yes. I heard that Madame Delambre had been writing a lot, but we could find nothing beyond the short note informing us that she was committing suicide."

During our tête-à-tête dinner, we talked politics, books and films, and the local football club of which the Commissaire was a keen supporter.

After dinner, I took him up to my study where a bright fire —a habit I had picked up in England during the war—was burning.

Without even asking him, I handed him his brandy and mixed myself what he called "crushed-bug juice in soda water" —his appreciation of whiskey.

"I would like you to read this, Charas; first because it was partly intended for you and, secondly, because it will interest you. If you think Commissaire Charas has no objection, I would like to burn it after."

Without a word, he took the wad of sheets Helene had given me the day before and settled down to read them.

"What do you think of it all?" I asked some 20 minutes later as hé carefully folded Helene's manuscript, slipped it into the brown envelope, and put it into the fire.

Charas watched the flames licking the envelope from which wisps of gray smoke were escaping, and it was only when it burst into flames that he said, slowly raising his eyes to mine:

"I think it proves very definitely that Madame Delambre was quite insane."

For a long while we watched the fire eating up Helene's "confession."

"A funny thing happened to me this morning, Charas. I went to the cemetery, where my brother is buried. It was quite empty and I was alone."

"Not quite, Monsieur Delambre. I was there, but I did not want to disturb you."

"Then you saw me . . ."

"Yes. I saw you bury a matchbox."

"Do you know what was in it?"

"A fly, I suppose."

"Yes. I had found it early this morning, caught in a spider's web in the garden." "Was it dead?"

"No, not quite. I . . . crushed it . . . between two stones. Its head was . . . white ... all white."

LOVE, INCORPORATED

by robert sheckley

Devotees of the Italian cinema know Robert Sheckley as the author of the story on which the far-out film, "The Tenth Victim" was based, but playboy readers admired his gifts long before he enjoyed the suave services of Marcello Mas-troianni and Ursula Andress. Greenwich Villager Sheckley feels ambivalent about direct personal involvement in the movie medium, however, saying, "Film seems a very exciting form, but it would call for a great deal of my time and energy, which would be at the expense of my fiction." That would indeed be a price too high to pay. Although a young man, he has several novels and collections to his credit—most of them science fiction and fantasy, some of them espionage adventures—and he has earned the esteem of the renowned British novelist-critic Kingsley Amis, who calls him "science-fiction's premier gadfly" as well as the only sci-fi writer "capable of imagining an independent sexual revolution." One of the Sheckley stories cited by Amis as an example of this unique capability is "Love, Incorporated," a tale of a time when love—not simply sex—has become a commodity that can be bought and sold.

ALFRED SIMON was born on Kazanga IV, a small agricultural planet near Bootes, and there he drove a combine through the wheat fields, and in the long, hushed evenings listened to the recorded love songs of Earth.

Life was pleasant enough on Kazanga, and the girls were buxom, jolly, frank and acquiescent, good companions for a hike through the hills or a swim in the brook, staunch mates for life. But romantic—never! There was good fun to be had on Kazanga, in a cheerful open manner. But there was no more than fun.

Simon felt that something was missing in this bland existence. One day, he discovered what it was.

A vendor came to Kazanga in a battered spaceship loaded with books. He was gaunt, white-haired, and a little mad. A celebration was held for him, for novelty was appreciated on the outer worlds.

The vendor told them all the latest gossip; of the price war between Detroit II and III, and how fishing fared on Alana, and what the president's wife on Moracia wore, and how oddly the men of Doran V talked. And at last someone said, "Tell us of Earth."

"Ah!" said the vendor, raising his eyebrows. "You want to hear of the mother planet? Well, friends, there's no place like old Earth, no place at all. On Earth, friends, everything is possible, and nothing is denied."

"Nothing?" Simon asked.

"They've got a law against denial," the vendor explained, grinning. "No one has ever been known to break it. Earth is different, friends. You folks specialize in farming? Well, Earth specializes in impracticalities such as madness, beauty, war, intoxication, purity, horror, and the like, and people come from light-years away to sample these wares."

"And love?" a woman asked.

"Why girl," the vendor said gently, "Earth is the only place in the galaxy that still has love! Detroit II and III tried it and found it too expensive, you know, and Alana decided it was unsettling, and there was no time to import it on Moracia or Doran V. But as I said, Earth specializes in the impractical, and makes it pay."

"Pay?" a bulky farmer asked.

"Of course! Earth is old, her minerals are gone and her fields are barren. Her colonies are independent now, and filled with sober folk such as yourselves, who want value for their goods. So what else can old Earth deal in, except the nonessentials that make life worth living?"

"Were you in love on Earth?" Simon asked.

"That I was," the vendor answered, with a certain grimness. "I was in love, and now I travel. Friends, these books . . ."

For an exorbitant price, Simon bought an ancient poetry book, and reading, dreamed of passion beneath the lunatic moon, of dawn glimmering whitely upon lovers' parched lips, of locked bodies on a dark sea-beach, desperate with love and deafened by the booming surf.

And only on Earth was this possible! For, as the vendor told, Earth's scattered children were too hard at work wrestling a living from alien soil. The wheat and corn grew on Kazanga, and the factories increased on Detroit II and III. The fisheries of Alana were the talk of the Southern star belt, and there were dangerous beasts on Moracia, and a whole wilderness to be won on Doran V. And this was well, and exactly as it should be.

But the new worlds were austere, carefully planned, sterile in their perfections. Something had been lost in the dead reaches of space, and only Earth knew love.

Therefore, Simon worked and saved and dreamed. And in his twenty-ninth year he sold his farm, packed all his clean shirts into a serviceable handbag, put on his best suit and a pair of stout walking shoes, and boarded the Kazanga-Metropole Flyer.

At last he came to Earth, where dreams must come true, for there is a law against their failure.

He passed quickly through Customs at Spaceport New York, and was shuttled underground to Times Square. There he emerged blinking into daylight, tightly clutching his handbag, for he had been warned about pickpockets, cutpurses, and other denizens of the city.

Breathless with wonder, he looked around.

The first thing that struck him was the endless array of theatres, with attractions in two dimensions, three or four, depending upon your preference. And what attractions!

To the right of him a beetling marquee proclaimed: lust on venus! a documentary account of sex practices among the inhabitants of the green hell? shocking! revealing!

He wanted to go in. But across the street was a war film. The billboard shouted, the sun busters! dedicated to the dare-devils of the space marines! And further down was a picture called tarzan battles the saturnian ghouls!

Tarzan, he recalled from his reading, was an ancient ethnic hero of Earth.

It was all wonderful, but there was so much more! He saw little open shops where one could buy food of all worlds, and especially such native Terran dishes as pizza, hotdogs, spaghetti and knishes. And there were stores which sold surplus clothing from the Terran spacefleets, and other stores which sold nothing but beverages.

Simon didn't know what to do first. Then he heard a staccato burst of gunfire behind him, and whirled.

It was only a shooting gallery, a long, narrow, brightly painted place with a waist-high counter. The manager, a swarthy fat man with a mole on his chin sat on a high stool and smiled at Simon.

"Try your luck?"

Simon walked over and saw that, instead of the usual targets, there were four scantily dressed women at the end of the gallery, seated upon bullet-scored chairs. They had tiny bull's-eyes painted on their foreheads and above each breast.

"But do you fire real bullets?" Simon asked.

"Of course!" the manager said. "There's a law against false advertising on Earth. Real bullets and real gals! Step up and knock one off!"

One of the women called out, "Come on, sport! Bet you miss me!"

Another screamed, "He couldn't hit the broad side of a spaceship!"

"Sure he can!" another shouted. "Come on, sport!"

Simon rubbed his forehead and tried not to act surprised. After all, this was Earth, where anything was allowed as long as it was commercially feasible.

He asked, "Are there galleries where you shoot men, too?"

"Of course," the manager said. "But you ain't no pervert, are you?"

"Certainly not!"

"You an outworlder?"

"Yes. How did you know?"

"The suit. Always tell by the suit." The fat man closed his eyes and chanted, "Step up, step up and kill a woman! Get rid of a load of repressions! Squeeze the trigger and feel the old anger ooze out of you! Better than a massage! Better than getting drunk! Step up, step up and kill a woman!"

Simon asked one of the girls, "Do you stay dead when they kill you?"

. "Don't be stupid," the girl said.
"But the shock---- "

She shrugged her shoulders. "I could do worse."

Simon was about to ask how she could do worse, when the manager leaned over the counter, speaking confidentially.

"Look, buddy. Look what I got here."

Simon glanced over the counter and saw a compact submachine gun.

"For a ridiculously low price," the manager said, "I'll let you use the tommy. You can spray the whole place, shoot down the fixtures, rip up the walls. This drives a .45 slug, buddy, and it kicks like a mule. You really know you're firing when you fire the tommy."

"I am not interested," Simon said sternly.

"I've got a grenade or two," the manager said. "Fragmenta-
tion, of course. You could really-- "

"No!"

"For a price," the manager said, "you can shoot me, too, if that's how your tastes run, although I wouldn't have guessed it. What do you say?"

"No! Never! This is horrible!"

The manager looked at him blankly. "Not in the mood now? OK. I'm open twenty-four hours a day. See you later, sport."

"Never!" Simon said, walking away.

"Be expecting you, lover!" one of the women called after him.

Simon went to a refreshment stand and ordered a small glass of cola-cola. He found that his hands were shaking. With an effort he steadied them, and sipped his drink. He reminded himself that he must not judge Earth by his own standards. If people on Earth enjoyed killing people, and the victims didn't mind being killed, why should anyone object?

Or should they?

He was pondering this when a voice at his elbow said, "Hey, bub."

Simon turned and saw a wizened, furtive-faced little man in an oversize raincoat standing beside him.

"Out-of-towner?" the little man asked.

"I am," Simon said. "How did you know?"

"The shoes. I always look at the shoes. How do you like our little planet?"

"It's—confusing," Simon said carefully. "I mean I didn't
expect—well--- "

"Of course," the little man said. "You're an idealist. One look at your honest face tells me that, my friend. You've come to Earth for a definite purpose. Am I right?"

Simon nodded. The little man said, "I know your purpose, my friend. You're looking for a war that will make the world safe for something, and you've come to the right place. We have six major wars running at all times, and there's never any waiting for an important position in any of them."

"Sorry, but----- "

"Right at this moment," the little man said impressively, "the downtrodden workers of Peru are engaged in a desperate struggle against a corrupt and decadent monarchy. One more man could swing the contest! You, my friend, could be that man! You could guarantee the socialist victory!"

Observing the expression on Simon's face, the little man said
quickly, "But there's a lot to be said for an enlightened
aristocracy. The wise old king of Peru (a philosopher-king in
the deepest Platonic sense of the word) sorely needs your help.
His tiny corps of scientists, humanitarians, Swiss guards,
knights of the realm and royal peasants is sorely pressed by the
foreign-inspired socialist conspiracy. A single man, now "

"I'm not interested," Simon said.

"In China, the Anarchists--- "

"No."

"Perhaps you'd prefer the Communists in Wales? Or the
Capitalists in Japan? Or if your affinities lie with a splinter
group such as Feminists, Prohibitionists, Free Silverists, or the
like, we could probably arrange--- "

"I don't want a war," Simon said.

"Who could blame you?" the little man said, nodding rapidly. "War is hell. In that case, you've come to Earth for love."

"How did you know?" Simon asked. The little man smiled modestly. "Love and war," he said, "are Earth's two staple commodities. We've been turning

them both out in bumper crops since the beginning of time."

"Is love very difficult to find?" Simon asked.

"Walk uptown two blocks," the little man said briskly. "Can't miss it. Tell 'em Joe sent you."

"But that's impossible! You can't just walk out and "

"What do you know about love?" Joe asked.

"Nothing."

"Well, we're experts on it."

"I know what the books say," Simon said. "Passion beneath
the lunatic moon--- "

"Sure, and bodies on a dark sea-beach desperate with love and deafened by the booming surf."

"You've read that book?"

"It's the standard advertising brochure. I must be going. Two blocks uptown. Can't miss it."

And with a pleasant nod, Joe moved into the crowd.

Simon finished his cola-cola and walked slowly up Broadway, his brow knotted in thought, but determined not to form any premature judgments.

When he reached 44th Street he saw a tremendous neon sign flashing brightly. It said, love, inc.

Smaller neon letters read, Open 24 Hours a Day!

Beneath that it read, Up One Flight.

Simon frowned, for a terrible suspicion had just crossed his mind. Still, he climbed the stairs and entered a small, tastefully furnished reception room. From there he was sent down a long corridor to a numbered room.

Within the room was a handsome gray-haired man who rose from behind an impressive desk and shook his hand, saying, "Well! How are things on Kazanga?"

"How did you know I was from Kazanga?"

"That shirt. I always look at the shirt. I'm Mr. Tate, and
I'm here to serve you to the best of my ability. You are "

"Simon, Alfred Simon."

"Please be seated, Mr. Simon. Cigarette? Drink? You won't regret coming to us, sir. We're the oldest love-dispensing firm in the business, and much larger than our closest competitor, Passion Unlimited. Moreover, our fees are far more reasonable, and bring you an improved product. Might I ask how you heard of us? Did you see our full page ad in the Times}

Or----- "

"Joe sent me," Simon said.

"Ah, he's an active one," Mr. Tate said, shaking his head playfully. "Well sir, there's no reason to delay. You've come a long way for love, and love you shall have." He reached for a button on his desk, but Simon stopped him.

Simon said, "I don't want to be rude or anything, but . . ."

"Yes?" Mr. Tate said, with an encouraging smile.

"I don't understand this," Simon blurted out, flushing deeply, beads of perspiration standing out on his forehead. "I think I'm in the wrong place. I didn't come all the way to Earth just for ... I mean, you can't really sell love, can you? Not lovel I mean, then it isn't really love, is it?"

"But of course!" Mr. Tate said, half rising from his chair in astonishment. "That's the whole point! Anyone can buy sex. Good lord, it's the cheapest thing in the universe, next to human life. But love is rare, love is special, love is found only on Earth. Have you read our brochure?"

"Bodies on a dark sea-beach?" Simon asked.

"Yes, that one. I wrote it. Gives something of the feeling, doesn't it? You can't get that feeling from just anyone, Mr. Simon. You can get that feeling only from someone who loves you."

Simon said dubiously, "It's not genuine love though, is it?"

"Of course it is! If we were selling simulated love, we'd label it as such. The advertising laws on Earth are strict, I can assure you. Anything can be sold, but it must be labelled properly. That's ethics, Mr. Simon!"

Tate caught his breath, and continued in a calmer tone. "No sir, make no mistake. Our product is not a substitute. It is the exact self-same feeling that poets and writers have raved about for thousands of years. Through the wonders of modern science we can bring this feeling to you at your convenience, attractively packaged, completely disposable, and for a ridiculously low price."

Simon said, "I pictured something more—spontaneous."

"Spontaneity has its charm," Mr. Tate agreed. "Our research labs are working on it. Believe me, there's nothing science can't produce, as long as there's a market for it."

"I don't like any of this," Simon said, getting to his feet. "I think I'll just go see a movie."

"Wait!" Mr. Tate cried. "You think we're trying to put something over on you. You think we'll introduce you to a girl who will act as though she loved you, but who in reality will not. Is that it?"

"I guess so," Simon said.

"But it just isn't so! It would be too costly for one thing. For another, the wear and tear on the girl would be tremendous. And it would be psychologically unsound for her to .attempt living a lie of such depth and scope."

"Then how do you do it?"

"By utilizing our understanding of science and the human mind."

To Simon, this sounded like double-talk. He moved toward the door.

"Tell me something," Mr. Tate said. "You're a bright looking young fellow. Don't you think you could tell real love from a counterfeit item?"

"Certainly."

"There's your safeguard! You must be satisfied, or don't pay us a cent."

"I'll think about it," Simon said.

"Why delay? Leading psychologists say that real love is a fortifier and a restorer of sanity, a balm for damaged egos, a restorer of hormone balance, and an improver of the complexion. The love we supply you has everything: deep and abiding affection, unrestrained passion, complete faithfulness, an almost mystic affection for your defects as well as your virtues, a pitiful desire to please, and, as a plus that only Love, Inc., can supply: that uncontrollable first spark, that blinding moment of love at first sight!"

Mr. Tate pressed a button. Simon frowned undecisively. The door opened, a girl stepped in, and Simon stopped thinking.

She was tall and slender, and her hair was brown with a sheen of red. Simon could have told you nothing about her face, except that it brought tears to his eyes. And if you asked him about her figure, he might have killed you.

"Miss Penny Bright," said Tate, "meet Mr. Alfred Simon."

The girl tried to speak but no words came, and Simon was equally dumb-struck. He looked at her and knew. Nothing else mattered. To the depths of his heart he knew that he was truly and completely loved.

They left at once, hand in hand, and were taken by jet to a small white cottage in a pine grove, overlooking the sea, and there they talked and laughed and loved, and later Simon saw his beloved wrapped in the sunset flame like a goddess of fire. And in blue twilight she looked at him with eyes enormous and dark, her known body mysterious again. The moon came up, bright and lunatic, changing flesh to shadow, and she wept and beat his chest with her small fists, and Simon wept too, although he did not know why. And at last dawn came, faint and disturbed, glimmering upon their parched lips and locked bodies, and nearby the booming surf deafened, inflamed, and maddened them.

At noon they were back in the offices of Love, Inc. Penny clutched his hand for a moment, then disappeared through an inner door.

"Was it real love?" Mr. Tate asked.

"Yes!"

"And was everything satisfactory?"

"Yes! It was love, it was the real thing! But why did she insist on returning?"

"Post-hypnotic command," Mr. Tate said. "What?"

"What did you expect? Everyone wants love, but few wish to pay for it. Here is your bill, sir."

Simon paid, fuming. "This wasn't necessary," he said. "Of course I would pay you for bringing us together. Where is she now? What have you done with her?"

"Please," Mr. Tate said soothingly. "Try to calm yourself."

"I don't want to be calm!" Simon shouted. "I want Penny!"

"That will be impossible," Mr. Tate said, with the barest hint of frost in his voice. "Kindly stop making a spectacle of yourself."

"Are you trying to get more money out of me?" Simon shrieked. "All right, I'll pay. How much do I have to pay to get her out of your clutches?" And Simon yanked out his wallet and slammed it on the desk.

Mr. Tate poked the wallet with a stiffened forefinger. "Put that back in your pocket," he said. "We are an old and respectable firm. If you raise your voice again, I shall be forced to have you ejected."

Simon calmed himself with an effort, put the wallet back in his pocket and sat down. He took a deep breath and said, very quietly, "I'm sorry."

"That's better," Mr. Tate said. "I will not be shouted at. However, if you are reasonable, I can be reasonable too. Now, what's the trouble?"

"The trouble?" Simon's voice started to lift. He controlled it and said, "She loves me."

"Of course."

"Then how can you separate us?"

"What has the one thing got to do with the other?" Mr. Tate asked. "Love is a delightful interlude, a relaxation, good for the intellect, for the ego, for the hormone balance, and for the skin tone. But one would hardly wish to continue loving, would one?"

"I would," Simon said. "This love was special, unique "

"They all are," Mr. Tate said. "But as you know, they are all produced in the same way." "What?"

"Surely you know something about the mechanics of love production?"

"No," Simon said. "I thought it was—natural."

Mr. Tate shook his head. "We gave up natural selection
centuries ago, shortly after the Mechanical Revolution. It was
too slow, and commercially unfeasable. Why bother with it,
when we can produce any feeling at will by conditioning and
proper stimulation of certain brain centers? The result? Penny,
completely in love with you! Your own bias, which we
calculated, in favor of her particular somatotype, made it
complete. We always throw in the dark sea-beach, the lunatic
moon, the pallid dawn-- "

"Then she could have been made to love anyone," Simon said slowly.

"Could have been brought to love anyone," Mr. Tate corrected.

"Oh, lord, how did she get into this horrible work?" Simon asked.

"She came in and signed a contract in the usual way," Tate said. "It pays very well. And at the termination of the lease, we return her original personality—untouched! But why do you call the work horrible? There's nothing reprehensible about love."

"It wasn't love!" Simon cried.

"But it was! The genuine article! Unbiased scientific firms have made qualitative tests of it, in comparison with the natural thing. In every case, our love tested out to more depth, passion, fervor and scope."

Simon shut his eyes tightly, opened them and said, "Listen to me. I don't care about your scientific tests. I love her, she loves me, that's all that counts. Let me speak to her! I want to marry her!"

Mr. Tate wrinkled his nose in distaste. "Come, come, man!
You wouldn't want to marry a girl like that! But if it's
marriage you're after, we deal in that, too. I can arrange an
idyllic and nearly spontaneous love-match for you with a
guaranteed government-inspected virgin "

"No! I love Penny! At least let me speak to her!"

"That will be quite impossible," Mr. Tate said.

"Why?"

Mr. Tate pushed a button on his desk. "Why do you think? We've wiped out the previous indoctrination. Penny is now in love with someone else."

And then Simon understood. He realized that even now
Penny was looking at another man with that passion he had
known, feeling for another man that complete and bottomless
love that unbiased scientific firms had shown to be so much
greater than the old-fashioned, commercially unfeasable nat-
ural selection, and that upon that same dark sea-beach men-
tioned in the advertising brochure--

He lunged for Tate's throat. Two attendants, who had entered the office a few moments earlier, caught him and led him to the door.

"Remember!" Tate called. "This in no way invalidates your own experience."

Hellishly enough, Simon knew that what Tate said was true.

And then he found himself on the street.

At first, all he desired was to escape from Earth, where the commercial impracticalities were more than a normal man could afford. He walked very quickly, and his Penny walked beside him, her face glorified with love for him, and him, and him, and you, and you.

And of course he came to the shooting gallery.

"Try your luck?" the manager asked.

"Set 'em up," said Alfred Simon.

A FOOT IN THE DOOR

by bruce jay friedman

Several years before Bruce Jay Friedman became the laureled author of the novels "A Mother's Kisses" and "Stern" he was a keenly appreciated writer of playboy stories in the light fantastic vein. A Friedman fantasy is just that—a fried-man fantasy, a sub-genre in itself, a modern morality play with a unique dry tang and a special humanity. "A Foot in the Door" is a case in point. It is a devil story, but it contains a vital ingredient not found in other devil stories: a little touch of Friedman in the night.

WHEN HE was thirty-four years old and about to buy a house in Short Hills, Mr. Gordon found out he could get anything he wanted in life from an insurance agent named Merz. Merz specialized in small, cheap policies, thousand-dollar endowments, and put his feet in your door. Mr. Gordon had succeeded in putting Merz off and one night shouted at him, "I don't like people who put their feet in doors. That's no way to sell me."

"It's something I do and I can't help it," said Merz, wedging his foot in Gordon's apartment door and trying to force it back. "It isn't important and you'll soon see why. You'll see it's foolish to make anything over my feet in the door."

Gordon finally let Merz in, a thin man who got bad shaves and was always out of breath. Merz sold him a quick thousand-dollar endowment and when Mr. Gordon showed him out, said, "I've got something else you'll want. It's a way for you to have anything in the world. I haven't figured out whether it's insurance or not, but I have it for you and we can start it off tonight."

"I have plenty," said Gordon. "Everything I want. I'm going to buy a home in Short Hills next week, something I've always wanted."

"There'll be no nonsense and fooling around," said Merz. "What you want is a home nearby in Tall Hills and one thing you'd better learn is that it's a waste of time to be coy on this thing. Now I can get you this. What we do is make a bargain. Some of these are going to sound strange, but they're made up that way and, frankly, I don't make them up."

"I can't afford Tall Hills," said Mr. Gordon, "but all right, I'll admit I'd like to get in there."

"All right then, now listen," said Mr. Merz, blowing his thin nose. "I don't do any paper work on these so remember it and don't come around to me and say that isn't the way it is. Tall Hills is yours, if . . . Let me rephrase that. When you don't use paper work, you've got to get them straight in the talking. A house in Tall Hills is yours, but your baby will have to be born with a slightly bent nose. I know you, your wife and your little girl have straight ones, but that's the way these things are made up. Sometimes a real winner comes along, but most are on this order."

"I'm not going to ask you for any guarantee, because I can tell from the whole way this has happened that it's on the level," said Mr. Gordon. "If you're wondering why I don't act astonished, it's just that I always expected something like this to happen. The only thing is I always thought there would be ethereal music in the background. Let's see, if it's a boy it won't matter so much and would give him character. The odds are slightly in favor of its being a boy. I don't know."

"Can we close?" said Merz. "It isn't that I go off and sell others when I'm finished with you. There aren't any others. I'm just tired and I get colds when I'm out late."

"Even if it were a girl," said Mr. Gordon, "it might just be the little imperfection that would make her appealing. I once saw a girl who was married to an archaeologist and she had a slight limp and it made her the most fragile and pathetic thing, and I could have eaten her up. Maybe this would be like a limp on her nose. Look, is it bent quite a bit or just slightly? Do I get to know that?"

"We don't know how they come out. It's more the spirit of the thing that counts and if it came out small, there wouldn't be any objection."

"All right then," said Mr. Gordon. "Get me into Tall Hills."

Merz said, "I can't always let you have this much time," and disappeared.

The Gordons' second child was born a month later, a boy with a cute but slightly bent little nose, and Mr. Gordon did not suddenly inherit a fortune. Nor did he suddenly receive a giant bonus from his firm or win a cash prize in a lottery.

What happened is that he received a small inheritance from an uncle of his who had once spent a weekend hunting with Pancho Villa, his agency came through at Christmas with a slightly larger bonus than it had before, and Mrs. Gordon won a motorcycle in a raffle which they cashed in for $400. The total, along with the money Mr. Gordon had set aside for a house in Short Hills, gave them the down payment for one in Tall Hills. And in they went with their new, cute, but bent-nosed little baby.

A month after the Gordons settled into their home Merz stuck his foot in the door late one night and Mr. Gordon said, "For Christ's sake, you don't have to put it in there now, you know."

"I just put it in there and don't really care to change the thing," said Merz. "Don't you open the door either. Let me force my way in."

Mr. Gordon put his shoulder against the door and finally let Merz, breathing hard, shove his way in. "OK now," said Merz. "I think you should have another thousand-dollar endowment. Now look, I don't want that other thing to color your decision. I'm talking straight insurance now, and if I found out you were taking a policy just because of that other thing I do, I'd be sore. Do you want one? Remember, it's important to keep these things separate."

"Then I don't think so," said Mr. Gordon. "I've got enough coverage for now."

"You don't," said Merz. "I'm going to keep hounding you until you buy more endowments. You don't have half enough and ought to be ashamed of yourself for carrying so little. But if you dare buy one because of that other arrangement we have, I'll kick you in the chops."

"I was wondering how often you come around," said Mr. Gordon. "That other thing really worked out. He's going to have a certain American Indian appeal and I don't think it'll bother him."

"I don't get into whether it'll bother him or not," said Merz. "All right then, you want Simms transferred and wall-to-wall carpeting, some of it covering the staircase to the second floor. This is going to make you laugh so you might as well get in the snickers right now. You get a wool or cotton option on the carpeting, any shade."

"That is funny," said Mr. Gordon. "Why do I want Simms transferred?"

"7 told you I wouldn't settle for any coy stuff!" said Merz, rising in anger. He sat again, regaining his composure.

"Because we're neck and neck and because he has a slightly better personality and at one point or another will be quietly eased in as a senior executive, that's why," said Mr. Gordon.

"All right then," said Merz. "Now I want your Uncle Lester."

"What do you mean you want him?" asked Mr. Gordon. "Don't tell me because I know."

"That's right," said Merz, "he goes. Don't pin me down as to how, but I do know it won't be pretty."

"I didn't know that anyone had to go," said Gordon. "I thought what it would probably be is just doing things to people but not actually having them go. Anyway, it's amazing the way you work these things out. If you'd said Aunt Clara or Cousin Lars I'd have thrown you out of here. These people are old and beat up and I don't see them more than once in a blue moon, but when I hug them to me I get a feeling of kinship and camaraderie. I don't get that at all from Uncle Lester and don't like the way he smells. He works on those prescriptions twelve hours a day and I never did understand him. He's seventy-six or something and it won't be long now for him anyway. All right then, he goes, but it's amazing how you knew to say Uncle Lester and not Aunt Clara. I'd have fought the hell out of you on her."

"They're made up cleverly all right," said Merz, blowing his nose, "but I don't want to stay here and get friendly with you. All I really care about is that you buy more endowments, but purely on an insurance basis, and not because of this other arrangement of ours. Do you want cotton or wool carpeting?"

"Which do you think?" asked Mr. Gordon.

"If I was allowed to I'd kick your chops," said Mr. Merz angrily. "Don't ask me any idiotic things."

"All right then, wool," said Mr. Gordon. "Beige wool," and Merz flew out the door.

Within a week, a love affair between Simms and a bookkeeping girl came out in the open. The agency head called in Simms and said, "I don't care how creative you are, what you're doing is Hollywood and is a definite stink." Simms went to Dubuque, and Mr. Gordon sat back and waited to be told he'd been promoted and given an increase, one that worked out to $1437 a year, the exact amount he'd need for carpeting the downstairs and the steps.

No promotion came and at the end of a month Merz drove up at night in a truck, and put his foot in Mr. Gordon's door.

"I don't see why you have to go through this each time," said Mr. Gordon, holding the door.

"I don't ask you questions," said Merz, his nose red, finally elbowing his way in. "I brought the carpeting. There was no way to have it just get to you so we're just handing it over. That happens sometimes and this is the one receipt I'll need." Mr. Gordon signed a piece of paper and Merz said, "Caught you. I didn't really need a receipt for the carpeting. I told you there's no paper work on the bargains we make. What you just signed is for an endowment policy."

Merz left the carpeting on Mr. Gordon's porch and shot away.

Over the weekend, police caught Mr. Gordon's Uncle Lester accepting a case of stolen and tainted penicillin. A grand jury hearing was scheduled, but later that week Uncle Lester, out on bail, drove to the state line, turned on Gabriel Heatter and shot himself in the temple, leaving a garbled note that said, roughly, "Middle-class embarrassment. Old enough. Bang bang with Heatter. Get it?" When Mr. Gordon read about the note, he told Mrs. Gordon, "It's odd I should get a feeling of camaraderie for Uncle Lester now—after reading the note. I never had one before."

A month later, Merz got Mr. Gordon into the Tall Hills Golf Club. The arrangement put Gordon's father-in-law in a new job, one that sent the elderly, nearsighted man driving along precipitous mountain passes in southern Wyoming selling educational training aids to out-of-the-way prisons and mental hospitals. The final deal shipped Mr. Gordon, his wife and one of the children off on a long-dreamed-of one-month vacation to Sark and gave Mr. Gordon's mother a permanent toe fungus, one that was relatively harmless but maddeningly irritating. Mr. Gordon could have gotten two months in Majorca but balked when Merz insisted he would have to "take" Mr. Gordon's mother. The Sark weather was bad, and the Gordons got back a few days early. On the night of their arrival, Mr. Gordon got a call from a sultry-voiced female who said, "This is to inform you that Mr. Merz is dead and won't be selling you any further endowments." The woman hung up, and Mr. Gordon, feeling a little bit alone, thought, "I wonder if this is all there is to it? Whether I get to go on as though nothing had ever happened?" Being a realistic thinker, Mr. Gordon could not figure out any reason why he should not go ahead and live his life as he had always lived it.

Several weeks later Mr. Gordon lost a cuff link and went into a charming little out-of-the-way boutique to replace it. The girl behind the counter had dark hair covering her shoulders, melting brown eyes and breasts that were impressive in that they were perfectly separated and elevated. She wore an intriguing scent and Mr. Gordon said, "You know, I came in here to buy cuff links, but your perfume is enchanting. You're damned appealing, too. What is it called?"

"Pizanie," the girl said, in a husky voice. "Accent on the second syllable. But too many people call it Prazzanee."

"It bowls me over," said Mr. Gordon. "Are you allowed to have lunch with people?"

"Mr. Lopez will sell you the cuff links," the girl said, lowering her lovely melting eyes.

A young man wearing a pinched suit in the style of a foppish Londoner came out with a tray of twisted metal cuff links and said, "I'm Lopez. These are from Mexico." Mr. Gordon selected a pair and Mr. Lopez said, "I've made a lunch reservation for the three of us." Mr. Gordon felt excited over the spontaneity of the adventure that seemed to be unfolding and with a strange thrill fluttering at the base of his spine went along with his two new friends. The scent of the girl kept him bewildered through the first course and then it occurred to him that he had heard her voice before. "Didn't you call and tell me Merz was dead?" he asked.

She lowered her eyes and Mr. Lopez, eating with exquisite manners, said, "I asked her to call. Now look, I'm doing them with you from now on, only they'll be slightly different. Not really in spirit, but the ante goes up quite a bit. Now here's the first. You can have Lisa here any weekend you like, on into the interminable future, and we get your hair."

Mr. Gordon's hand instinctively passed up to his forehead and he asked, "All of it?"

"You get a fringe around the ears and the crescent on the back of the head, you know the way it sets up. We give you a premature gray speckling if you like, to soften the contrast. It's better if you keep it short and, for whatever it's worth, we do foot all haircut bills from then on. Your wife doesn't ever get to know about Lisa."

"Look," said Mr. Gordon, "I don't want to act the prude and say the idea is horrible and I don't want any girl I have to pay for. The only thing that irritates me is how you can set it up right in front of her that way."

"I don't care about her," said Mr. Lopez. "She helps me sell cuff links."

The air was full of Lisa, and Mr. Gordon said, "Do you mean one weekend or all weekends forever?" "As many as you like."

"I should probably be figuring this out to myself, but I have to talk to someone," said Mr. Gordon. "What do I need my hair for if I can have her anytime I want automatically? Now look, Lopez, there is one thing. I'm sorry about asking this, Lisa, but I'll just get it in and then I'll never do anything as crude as this again. There's nothing wrong with her? I mean, she doesn't get epileptic fits or anything I should know about? Or limp? That's silly. Actually I don't mind a limp in a girl, and it's funny I should bring that in here. All right, I'll go along."

"I don't write them down either," said Lopez. "Would you like some other cuff links?"

"I'll take one more pair," said Mr. Gordon, tremulously taking the girl's hand.

The hair came out gradually in Mr. Gordon's comb and was gone within a month. Not until the last few dropped out did Mr. Gordon think of exercising his option, and on that day he bought a Homburg and dropped around the boutique. He had a horrible fear, for one second, that Lisa would no longer be there and that he would have to travel the earth, hairless, to find his booty. But she was there, warm and sweet, with the scent of Pizanie floating about her ears, her bosoms high and impeccably separated.

Lopez came out with a tray from India and Mr. Gordon gave him two-fifty. Lopez asked him into a private office then and said, "Today's involves getting away from it all, leaving your job and doing whatever you want to do. Freedom. It's the only thing you don't have, not a fortune, but enough income to be able to thumb your nose at it all."

"As it stands I'll have to go into that stinking office right to my grave," said Mr. Gordon. "I make a good living but I need to have every nickel to do what I'm doing. All right, what do you take? Paralysis for my sister? A nervous breakdown for Dad? Shoot. This is going to be good." "A single evening with your wife."

"You can't have a single evening with my wife. Who gets it, you?"

"No," said Lopez.

"What do I care who gets it? That's beside the point. I can't let you have that. I know, I know, I'm a hypocrite. I'll sell out my Uncle Lester and throw away my kid's nose and yet I make a big fuss over a single, meaningless act of the flesh. I'm not going along, that's all. That's one deal I won't make and I'm not even going to explain it."

"You'll never have to do a day's work in your life."

"You mean just one time with one man?" said Mr. Gordon.

"That's all," said Mr. Lopez.

'When?" asked Gordon.

"You bring her to a Twenties party Saturday night. You can have her as a flapper and you as a Harvard cheerleader. Lisa and I will be there as a Twenties gangster and his moll."

"This is one I don't feel happy about at all," said Mr. Gordon.

"Do we have an agreement?" asked Lopez. "Yes," said Gordon.

During the week Mr. Gordon rented a costume for his wife. She said it was beautiful and maybe he could buy it for her after the party. The party itself was dimly lit and all of the people were in costume, although some of them had spoiled the theme by showing up in flamenco dress. It was thick and loud and wild and Mrs. Gordon was immediately snapped up for the dance floor, leaving Mr. Gordon standing alone in his cheerleader uniform. Lisa and Lopez came over then. She made a lovely moll, one with perfectly separated bosoms and the scent of Pizanie about her throat. "Look, I'm not going along," said Mr. Gordon, glancing over at his wife on the dance floor. She was dancing with one of the flamenco fellows. "I can't even stand it when she dances with someone. Look, I can't go through with it. Who's the one she has to be with?" "I told you that wasn't important," said Lopez. "Will you point him out?" asked M.r. Gordon. "Yes," said Lopez, and Mr. Gordon put his arms around Lisa and led her to the dance floor. Fifteen minutes later, Lopez tapped him on the shoulder and said, "She's with him now." Mr. Gordon looked up and saw his wife dancing with a slender, muscular man in a Twenties tank suit. They spun around. It was Merz. He seemed a trifle younger and somewhat better looking.

"You said he was dead," Mr. Gordon said to Lisa.

"Under my orders," said Lopez. "Don't blame her." "Well that settles it," said Mr. Gordon. "Now I'm definitely not going through with it. Not till Hell freezes over." "We have an agreement," said Lopez through thin lips. "I don't care," said Mr. Gordon. "Not Merz. Maybe someone else, but not him. That's where I draw the line. I don't care what I said."

"It has to be Merz," said Lopez. "It's all arranged." "Now look," said Mr. Gordon, running his hands over his bare dome. "I don't know whether I have the strength to argue with you or what, but I am not going through with this and that's that. I knew I shouldn't have started on this one. Now look, I'll give you this much. Inside of blouse, upper thigh, and heavy necking, but that's it. Not the whole deal. Never the whole deal. Not with Merz."

"I can't account for what happens when you change them,", said Lopez.

"Well, I don't care," said Mr. Gordon, folding his arms. "That's it and that's the way it's going to be."

"All right," said Lopez. "But I can't guarantee what's going to happen when you fool around with the packages. They're packaged one way for a reason."

"He wasn't even supposed to be alive," said Mr. Gordon, encircling Lisa's waist with his arms and picking up the music.

In a short while, he saw Mrs. Gordon and Merz pick up their coats and slip out the door. He kept dancing and at the end of the evening Mrs. Gordon came back alone and went into the powder room. Lopez came over and slipped a piece of paper into Mr. Gordon's cheerleading blazer. "It's a check that comes to sixteen hundred dollars, which is the store's gross weekly income. That's the way we have it set up, only you'll get it from now on in monthly payments. It's fairly steady and of course if the store should fail, we're in supermarkets, clothing, and you should have no cause for anxiety. I'm taking Lisa now, but of course you can pick her up any weekend, beginning Friday nights at 6:45 and ending at the dinner hour Sunday, let's say eight."

Mr. Gordon was quite anxious for the following week and neither quit his job nor picked up Lisa. The following Saturday morning Mrs. Gordon came to the breakfast table fully dressed and said, "I've got to go away and I don't think I'm coming back, and there's no need for you to talk patiently with me. It's going to be for always with this man and there isn't a thing in the world anyone can say to me to stop me. I don't know about the children. I just know I have to go. There was a brief time when it seemed if we could only get it out of our systems we could have forgotten each other, but it wasn't possible and now we have to go away together and take a lifetime because it isn't ever going to get out of our systems."

"Merz?" said Mr. Gordon.

"That's his name," said Mrs. Gordon, "but there isn't any use in your saying it a funny way or trying to cut him down because I need him and must have him."

Mr. Gordon's face went cold and after his wife left, the shock carried him through the day and he remained rigid, like a sliding pond, as the children played all over him. What he was certain was going to hit him never did, somehow, and he got through the following week with only occasional spasms of nausea. On Friday evening at 6:45 he went to Lisa's apartment and the second she opened the door he bit her earlobe and inhaled her and undressed her and had her before the clock said seven. There had been a moment at the door, when he had feared a kind of quiet resignation on her part, but such was not the case a/d she made love to him with frenzy and hunger and they stayed together through the night. In the morning she sat up and stretched in a nightgown and yawned and the nausea came back to him. "That Pizanie stays right on all through the night," he said.

"So many people call it Pzzzanee," she said languorously.

"I don't like it in the morning when I want eggs," he said. "I'm not even sure I want it in the afternoon or any time before 6:45. And even then, I'm not sure any more," he said. Dressing quickly, he hollered, "P/ZZANEE, P/ZZANEE, P7ZZANEE, IT SHOULD BE CALLED P/ZZANEE," and then flew out the door.

He went to a private detective's office and told the man he wanted to find his wife and Merz. After twelve minutes of phone calls the detective traced the pair to Las Vegas and said to Mr. Gordon, "You owe me forty-three dollars."

"How do you get that?" asked Mr. Gordon.

"I just do," said the detective.

"All right," said Mr. Gordon, paying the man. "I have unlimited funds."

A jet liner took Mr. Gordon to Las Vegas the same evening. He felt very giddy traveling without luggage, without preparation. In Las Vegas he checked the rosters of the big hotels for Merz' name and couldn't find it. Then he went to the smaller hotels that weren't on the Strip and found a listing for a couple named Merzedes. Taking the stairs two at a time he pounded on the door of the room until Merz opened it up, wearing a pair of BVDs. He had grown a goatee in the beatnik style and his hair was unruly. The room was sultry and had no air conditioning. Inside, Mr. Gordon could see his wife in a pair of panties he recognized and a monogrammed blouse.

"Look Merz," said Mr. Gordon, "my foot is in your door. The whole thing's off. I have got to have her back. I don't care whether she wants to come or not. She'll get used to me again and forget you, even if it takes fifty-two years. But she's my wife and I've got to have her back and there's no power on earth can stop me, I don't care who's behind this."

"I can't do it," said Merz.

"Why not?" said Mr. Gordon, with fists clenched.

"Because I took asthma, a bleeding ulcer and let a Long Island train wreck have six of my grandchildren for your wife, that's why. It was under a special incentive plan for us employees."

Mr. Gordon understood perfectly and went away.

THE VACATION

by ray bradbury

The name Ray Bradbury is synonymous with science fiction. It is the one name known even to those who are totally unfamiliar with the genre. He is ■personally responsible for a phenomenal feat—smglehandedly lifting science -fiction by its bootstraps, out of the shady demimonde of the pulps, into the respectable world of literature. Aldous Huxley called him "one of the most visionary men now writing in any field." He would be a major figure had he written nothing but "The Martian Chronicles" a milestone and a masterpiece. Happily, he has written much more. All of his work is distinguished by a welcome absence of gimmickry and by the abundant presence of warmth, compassion, poetic imagery and profound involvement in the human condition. By way of example, we offer one of his many playboy pieces, the haunting, deceptively simple story of "The Vacation."

IT WAS A DAY as fresh as grass growing up and clouds going over and butterflies coming down could make it. It was a day compounded of silences of bee and flower and ocean and land, which were not silences at all, but motions, stirs, flutters, risings, fallings, each in their own time and matchless rhythm. The land did not move, but moved. The sea was not still, yet was still. Paradox flowed into paradox, stillness mixed with stillness, sound with sound. The flowers vibrated and the bees fell in separate and small showers of golden rain on the clover. The seas of hill and the seas of ocean were divided, each from the other's motion, by a railroad track, empty, compounded of rust and iron marrow, a track on which, quite obviously, no train had run in many years. Thirty miles north it swirled on away to farther mists of distance, thirty miles south it tunneled islands of cloud shadows that changed their continental positions on the sides of far mountains as you watched.

Now, suddenly, the railway track began to tremble.

A blackbird, standing on the rail, felt a rhythm grow faintly, miles away, like a heart beginning to beat.

The blackbird leaped up over the sea.

The rail continued to vibrate softly until at long last around a curve and along the shore came a small workman's handcar, its two-cylinder engine popping and spluttering in the great silence.

On top of this small four-wheeled car, on a double-sided bench facing in two directions and with a little surrey roof above for shade, sat a man, his wife and their small seven-year-old son. As the handcar traveled through lonely stretch after lonely stretch, the wind whipped their eyes and blew their hair, but they did not look back but only ahead. Sometimes they looked eagerly, as a curve unwound itself, sometimes with great sadness, but always watchful, ready for the next scene.

As they hit a level straightaway, the machine's engine gasped and stopped abruptly. In the now-crushing silence, it seemed that the quiet of the earth, sky and sea itself, by its friction, brought the car to a wheeling halt.

"Out of gas."

The man, sighing, reached for the extra can in the small storage bin and began to pour it into the tank.

His wife and son sat quietly looking at the sea, listening to the muted thunder, the whisper, the drawing back of huge tapestries of sand, gravel, green weed and foam.

"Isn't the sea nice?" said the woman.

"I like it," said the boy.

"Shall we picnic here, while we're at it?"

The man focused binoculars on the green peninsula ahead.

"Might as well. The rails have rusted badly. There's a break ahead. We may have to wait while I set a few back in place."

"As many as there are," said the boy, "we'll have picnics!"

The woman tried to smile at this, then turned her grave attention to the man. "How far have we come today?"

"Not ninety miles." The man still peered through the glasses, squinting. "I don't like to go farther than that any one day, anyway. If you rush, there's no time to see. We'll reach Monterey day after tomorrow, Palo Alto the next day, if you want."

The woman removed her great shadowing straw hat which had been tied over her golden hair with a bright yellow ribbon, and stood perspiring faintly, away from the machine. They had ridden so steadily on the shuddering rail car that the motion was sewn in their bodies. Now, with the stopping, they felt odd, on the verge of unraveling.

"Let's eat!"

The boy ran with the wicker lunch basket down to the shore.

The boy and the woman were already seated by a spread tablecloth when the man came down to them, dressed in his business suit and vest and tie and hat as if he expected to meet someone along the way. As he dealt out the sandwiches and exhumed the pickles from their cool green Mason jars, he began to loosen his tie and unbutton his vest, always looking around as if he should be careful and ready to button up again.

"Are we all alone, Papa?" said the boy, eating. "Yes."

"No one else, anywhere?"

"No one else."

"Were there people before?"

"Why do you keep asking that? It wasn't that long ago. Just a few months. You remember?"

"Almost. If I try hard, then I don't remember at all." The boy let a handful of sand fall through his fingers. "Were there as many people as there is sand here on the beach? What happened to them?"

"I don't know," the man said, and it was true.

They had wakened one morning and the world was empty. The neighbor's clothesline was still strung with blowing white wash, cars gleamed in front of other seven-A.M. cottages, but there were no farewells, the city did not hum with its mighty arterial traffics, phones did not alarm themselves, children did not wail in sunflower wildernesses.

Only the night before he and his wife had been sitting on the front porch when the evening paper was delivered and, not even daring to open to the headlines, he had said, "I wonder when He will get tired of us and just rub us all out?"

"It has gone pretty far," she said. "On and on. We're such fools, aren't we?"

"Wouldn't it be nice"—he lit his pipe and puffed it—"if we woke tomorrow and everyone in the world was gone and everything was starting over?" He sat smoking, the paper folded in his hand, his head resting back on the chair.

"If you could press a button right now and make it happen, would you?"

"I think I would," he said. "Nothing violent. Just have everyone vanish off the face of the earth. Just leave the land and the sea and the growing things like flowers and grass and fruit trees. And the animals, of course, let them stay. Everything except man, who hunts when he isn't hungry, eats when full, and is mean when no one's bothered him."

"Naturally," she smiled, quietly, "we would be left."

"I'd like that," he mused. "All of time ahead. The longest summer vacation in history. And us out for the longest picnic-basket lunch in memory. Just you, me and Jim. No commuting. No keeping up with the Joneses. Not even a car. I'd like to find another way of traveling, an older way . . . Then, a hamper full of sandwiches, three bottles of pop, pick up supplies where you need them from empty grocery stores in empty towns, and summertime forever up ahead ..."

They sat a long while on the porch in silence, the newspaper folded between them.

At last she spoke.

"Wouldn't we be lonely}" she said.

So that's how it was the morning of the first day of the new world. They had awakened to the soft sounds of an earth that was now no more than a meadow, and the cities of the earth sinking back into seas of saber grass, marigold, marguerite and morning-glory. They had taken it with remarkable calm at first, perhaps because they had not liked the city for so many years and had had so many friends who were not truly friends, and had lived a boxed and separate life of their own within a mechanical hive.

The husband arose and looked out the window and observed very calmly, as if it were a weather condition, "Everyone's gone . . ." knowing this just by the sounds the city had ceased to make.

They took their time over breakfast, for the boy was still asleep, and then the husband sat back and said, "Now I must plan what to do."

"Do? Why, why you'll go to work, of course."

"You still don't believe it, do you?" he laughed. "That I won't be rushing off each day at 8:10, that Jim won't go to school again ever. School's out for all of us! No more pencils, no more books, no more boss' sassy looks! We're let out, darling, and we'll never come back to the silly damn dull routines. Come on!"

And he had walked her through the still and empty city streets.

"They didn't die," he said. "They just . . . went away." "What about the other cities?"

He went to an outdoor phone booth and dialed Chicago, then New York, then San Francisco.

Silence. Silence. Silence.

"That's it," he said, replacing the receiver.

"I feel guilty," she said. "They gone and we here. And ... I feel happy. Why? I should be unhappy."

"Should you? It's no tragedy. They weren't tortured or blasted or burned. It went easily and they didn't know. And now we owe nothing to anyone. Our only responsibility is being happy. Thirty more years of happiness, wouldn't that be good?"

"But then we must have more children!"

"To repopulate the world?" he shook his head slowly, calmly. "No. Let Jim be the last. After he's grown and gone let the horses and cows and ground squirrels and garden spiders have the world. They'll get on. And someday some other species that can combine a natural happiness with a natural curiosity will build cities that won't even look like cities to us, and survive. Right now, let's go pack a basket, wake Jim and get going on that long thirty-year summer vacation. I'll beat you to the house!"

He took a sledge hammer from the small rail car and while he worked alone for half-an-hour fixing the rusted rails into place, the woman and the boy ran along the shore. They came back with dripping shells, a dozen or more, and some beautiful pink pebbles, and sat and the boy took schooling from the mother, doing homework on a pad with a pencil for a time} and then at high noon the man came down, his coat off, his tie thrown aside, and they drank orange pop, watching the bubbles surge up, glutting, inside the bottles. It was quiet. They listened to the sun tune the old iron rails. The smell of hot tar on the ties moved about them in the salt wind, as the husband tapped his atlas map lightly and gently:

"We'll go to Sacramento next month, May, then work up toward Seattle. Should make that by July first, July's a good month in Washington, then back down as the weather cools, to Yellowstone, a few miles a day, hunt here, fish there . . ."

The boy, bored, moved away to throw sticks in the sea and wade out like a dog to retrieve them.

The man went on: "Winter in Tucson, then, part of the winter, moving toward Florida, up the coast in the spring, and maybe New York by June. Two years from now, Chicago in the summer. Winter, three years from now, what about Mexico City? Anywhere the rails lead us, anywhere at all, and if we come to an old offshoot rail line we don't know anything about, what the hell, we'll just take it, go down it to see where it goes. And some year, by God, we'll boat down the Mississippi, always wanted to do that. Enough to last us a lifetime. And that's just how long I want to take to do it all . . ."

His voice faded. He started to fumble the map shut, but before he could move, a bright thing fell through the air and hit the paper. It rolled off into the sand and made a wet lump.

His wife glanced at the wet place in the sand and then swiftly searched his face. His solemn eyes were too bright. And down one cheek was a track of wetness.

She gasped. She took his hand and held it tight.

He clenched her hand very hard, his eyes shut now, and slowly he said, with difficulty:

"Wouldn't it be nice if we went to sleep tonight and in the night, somehow, it all came back. All the foolishness, all the noise, all the hate, all the terrible things, all the nightmares, all the wicked people and stupid children, all the mess, all the smallness, all the confusion, all the hope, all the need, all the love. Wouldn't it be nice?"

She waited and nodded her head once.

Then both of them started.

For standing between them, they knew not for how long, was their son, an empty pop bottle in one hand.

The boy's face was pale. With his free hand he reached out to touch his father's cheek where the single tear had made its track.

"You," he said. "Oh, Dad, you. You haven't anyone to play with, either . . ."

The wife started to speak.

The husband moved to take the boy's hand.

The boy jerked back. "Silly! Oh, silly! Silly fools! Oh, you dumb, dumb!" And, whirling, he rushed down to the ocean and stood there crying, loudly.

The wife rose to follow, but the husband stopped her.

"No. Let him."

And then they both grew cold and quiet. For the boy, below on the shore, crying steadily, now was writing on a piece of paper and stuffing it into the pop bottle and ramming the tin cap back on and taking the bottle and giving it a great glittering heave up in the air and out into the tidal sea.

What, thought the wife, what did he write on the note? What's in the bottle?

The bottle moved out in the waves.

The boy stopped crying.

After a long while he walked up the shore to stand looking at his parents. His face was neither bright nor dark, alive nor dead, ready nor resigned; it seemed a curious mixture that simply made do with time, weather and these people. They looked at him and beyond to the bay where the bottle, containing the scribbled note, was almost out of sight now, shining in the waves.

Did he write what we wanted? thought the woman; did he write what he heard us just wish, just say?

Or did he write something for only himself? she wondered, that tomorrow he might wake and find himself alone in an empty world, no one around, no man, no woman, no father, no mother, no fool grownups with fool wishes, so he could trudge up to the railroad tracks and take the handcar motoring, a solitary boy, across the continental wilderness, on eternal voyages and picnics?

Is that what he wrote in the note?

Which?

She searched his colorless eyes, could not read the answer; dared not ask.

Gull shadows sailed over and kited their faces with sudden passing coolness.

"Time to go," someone said.

They loaded the wicker basket onto the rail car. The woman tied her large bonnet securely in place with its yellow ribbon, they set the boy's pail of shells on the floor boards, then the husband put on his tie, his vest, his coat, his hat, and they all sat on the bench of the car looking out at the sea where the bottled note was far out, blinking on the horizon.

"Is asking enough?" said the boy. "Does wishing work?"

"Sometimes . . . too well."

"It depends on what you ask for."

The boy nodded, his eyes faraway.

They looked back at where they had come from, and then ahead to where they were going.

"Goodbye, place," said the boy, and waved. ^—^

The car rolled down the rusty rails. The sound of it dwindled, faded. The man, the woman, the boy dwindled with it in the distance, among the hills.

After they were gone, the rail trembled faintly for two minutes and ceased. A flake of rust fell. A flower nodded.

The sea was very loud.

THE NEVER ENDING PENNY

BY BERNARD WOLFE

Henry Miller says of Bernard Wolfe: "Here is a writer with a cyclopean eye and an ear such as Salvador Dali would have difficulty in depicting." Wolfe has had a variegated career: a member of Leon Trotsky's personal staff during the Mexican exile period; war correspondent during World War Two; ghostwriter of the late Billy Rose's syndicated column; author of several kaleidoscopic books {"In Deep," "The Late Risers," "The Great Prince Died," among others); inditer of many superb playboy stories; Hollywood screenwright of emphatic opinions— one of them: "Only films made on a modest budget have any chance of being good; when they become big business ventures, they're doomed to failure from the start." Although by no means a specialist in science fiction or fantasy, much of his work is strongly characterized by the flavors of the bizarre and the grotesque, and one of his books, "Limbo" is a mind-stretching, richly textured science-fiction novel. Here is his charming variation on the folkloric theme of cornucopia, "The Never Ending Penny."

SO IT WENT, peaches all day, complaints all night. "If not too big a work, could you make the voice somewhat softer?" he said to his wife. "I pick the peaches ten large hours today and even my ears fall down from tiredness." . He refrained from observing that her tongue might soon fall down from its labors.

"Pick the peaches ten years and the house will still be small like no house," she said. "We are seven, we shall soon be eight, and we continue to live in a house with one room, not a house, a species of shed, and therefore we live like pigs and what do peaches have to do with it?"

He studied their own well-fatted pig that was down at the corner of the property snouting some superior mud from here to there. He refrained from pointing out that this shoat of theirs lived fantastically better than they did, having as many rooms as he had muds, no peaches to pick, no woman to make loud noises in his ears.

"We need at the minimum two rooms more," she said. "Then our neighbors will see that we are people and not some animals in a barn or a sty."

He did not draw her attention to the fact that she was making noises better suited to the barn or the sty. He liked Herminia, though she had a tendency to overtalk.

He adjusted his back to a more comfortable position against the adobe wall, wiggled his dusty toes, and considered the sun, which was dropping away behind the mountain like a darkening boil.

"I have explained before and I will explain again," he said. "To build even two small rooms requires many hundreds of adobe bricks. To mix the adobe, shape the bricks, dry the bricks, then further to place the bricks, is an immense labor. I pick the peaches ten hours a day for Mr. Johannsen and this is enough immense labor."

These words were said with a first-grade teacher's kind and crisis-easing voice.

"And when you do not pick the peaches for Mr. Johann-sen?"

"Then I pick the beef tomatoes for Mr. Predieu and the iceberg lettuces for Mr. Scarpio. When I am not picking other people's various things it is my taste to sit against the wall and pick my teeth."

"For that," she said, "it is first necessary to chew on something."

"I agree with a whole heart. I will ask only why you bother to make this very true and intelligent observation?"

"Because if you do not build the two needed rooms you will very soon be without the things to chew on. Do I make this plain? Your cook will be home in Durango, where human beings do not live like animals. You can write me a long letter about how you do not pick the teeth any more."

She went in the house with both hands made into fists, her rounded belly leading the way. Five children's voices came up in a soprano thunder, asking mama, dear and nice mamacita, for some pieces of crisped tortilla.

Life could be hard in this California. Troubles here had the tendency to grow like peaches and lettuces, in bunches. Though it was to be understood that even the much-accepting Herminia would not wish to bring out still another child in one cramped room. Yet adobe bricks would not grow in bunches, like peaches, lettuces and troubles.

He got to his feet and walked down close by the pig, to the well, to get himself some water. Standing there in his envelope of constant trouble, the tin dipper at his mouth, he said more or less to the pig, "I wish I had the miraculous penny."

This was what people like him sometimes said when they felt their troubles forming into a sealed envelope, themselves inside.

The pig maneuvered over on his back and flopped his happy feet in the air, perhaps trying to kick the sun. From the bottom of the well a voice said, "What?"

When spoken to, Diosdado liked to give straight and full answers. So he explained:

"I was speaking of the penny that never ends, that when it is
spent is replaced in the pocket with another penny. It is the
poor man's idea of great wealth, of all the riches of the world,
to have a penny in his pocket that always gives birth to another
penny---- "

The voice said, "If you have to empty out your head every time you're asked a question, write a book or hire a hall."

Then Diosdado realized that he was leaning into the well, talking to somebody at the bottom of his well.

A man with a one-room house guards what is his with more spirit than a man who owns international strings of castles.

He leaned over some more and said, "What do you think you're doing there in my well?"

"I do this without thinking," the voice said, "because it's my job and the thing I'm trained to do. These days We all specialize."

"What is that, your job?"

"Listening. You think it's easy when you mumble?"

"Then you listen to this," Diosdado said. "This is my well and I want you to get out of it and off my property."

"This well," the voice said, "is as much Mr. Bixby's as it is yours."

"Who owns a hole is who did the digging. You go back to
this liar of a Mr. Bixby of yours and you-- "

"Man, will you use your damned head for once? For more than to keep your ears in place? You dug this hole, yes, what belongs to you is the hole. You did not make the water that comes into the hole, I stress this, the water comes down from those San Berdoo mountains, from certain forest lands owned by a certain Mr. George Carol Bixby. Now, will you stop wasting my time and answer one simple question? Did I understand you to say you would like the miraculous penny, the never ending penny?"

"These were my words. It is only an expression--------- "

"All right." "What did you say?" "I said, all right." "All right what?"

"All right, you can have the never ending penny. You've got it. Spend it in good health."

Diosdado turned a sympathy-seeking face to the lurching,
wallowing pig. "Mister," he said, "you get down in my well
where you have no right to be, a person I have never been
introduced to, and you tell me bad jokes. It is impossible to
have such an article as the never ending penny. This is only an
article people wish for. It is an express "

"I know what it is without speeches from you," the voice said. "The self-perpetuating penny, you might say, is my business. If you don't want it, fine, just say so. If you do, it's yours. What coins do you have in your pocket?"

Diosdado made another face at the pig, one pleading for the two sane parties left in the world to join against a general madness, and pulled all the coins from his pocket.

"Four pennies, two dimes and a quarter. This is what I have in my pocket and in the world."

"Fine. Now, put them in your shirt pocket, all but one penny. Put this single penny back in your pants."

"If it gives you pleasure."

"Now take the penny out, then feel in the pocket again." Diosdado withdrew the penny, placed it in his right hand, reached inside again with his left.

There was another penny in his pocket.

He pulled this one out and explored once more.

There was a third penny.

There was a fourth. There was a fifth.

When there were 15 or more pennies in his sweaty hand he

looked for explanations to the pig, with beggar's eyes. The pig was busy juggling the sun with his paws. Diosdado began to shiver.

He thought he understood, partly, anyway, the excitement of this moment. Once, when a boy in Durango, while walking down a country road, he had seen a shine in the dust. His foot explored the mystery. The shining objects were bright new centavo pieces. At the sight of these unexpected riches he had felt precisely this kind of throat-tightening and eye-widening heat in a flash flood through his body. For one ballooning, scooping moment Diosdado had thought, what a glory if this place of miracles should turn out to be a well, a cornucopia, a production line of pennies. Can there be too much of a good thing?

Maybe this, the centavo with a big fertility, has always been a general dream of seven-year-olds. Maybe this is why it finally became a saying, an expression. But even a .rax-year-old, even one not very bright, knows that the nice idea is finally in the head and not in the world. Some young sense of the true nature of things tells him that the perpetual penny is a pleasant wish, not a reasonable expectation. Dreams, he somehow knows, circle around the impossible.

Now here he was, he, Diosdado, with the dream of dreams in his pocket. He was a small boy again, kicking at the Durango road and finding the road fully cooperative, sensitive to his balloons and scoops of moods, jumping to his large orders.

"If you have the power to give this thing," he said shakenly into the well, "why do you give it to me, a nobody?" "For one thing," the voice said, "you asked for it." "It is enough only to ask?"

"Oh, no, oh, no, we can't go around giving these things out just for the asking. A lot of our countrymen come up north here, you know, many of them have troubles and ask for the repeating penny. We follow them and we listen to them. In my territory, for example, Southern California, I give out two or three of these pennies in a year, an average year. There's no set quota."

"People around here call for the miraculous penny all the time, why am I the one to get it, sir?"

"One, you're a steady worker. Two, you don't spend all your earnings in the nearby bars. Three, you're reasonably good to your wife, though you make silent comments at her. Four, you have another child coming and could use the penny, or think you could. Don't ask for more reasons. Let's just say I like your curly hair."

Diosdado scratched his head. Absent-mindedly he pulled two more pennies from the production line in his pocket.

"But, listen, if two or three people around here get the penny each year, how have I never heard about this?"

"News like this doesn't get around, fellow. The owners of these family-bearing pennies develop a very strong urge not to tell anybody about it. You'll see."

Diosdado pulled three more coins from his penny garden of a pocket.

"I've got to run now," the voice said. "Somebody over to the Bixby place is making a racket about wanting the penny. It's probably nothing, just a false alarm, most of my calls come from drunken bums in roadside bars who have just run out of tequila and pulque money, but I've got to go and see. Oh, one more thing. I have the power to grant you two wishes. Now you have the first."

"And the second, what is that?"

"You make the wishes, I grant them. Do you expect me to do all the work around here?"

That night Diosdado did not eat his supper. The kids hooted and threw frijoles at each other and he sat there over his food seeing and hearing nothing. The newly acquired pennies in his pocket were a ton of hotness against his thigh, several times he was on the verge of blurting out to Hermini:i che incredible thing that had happened but each time his tongue got stiff.

Herminia wanted to know why he did not eat his frijoles. He said he had eaten many peaches this afternoon at Mr. Johannsen's and was not hungry. With embroidered casualness he announced he was going to cut some kindling and went out.

As soon as he was inside his wood and tool shed he bolted the door and went to work.

Diosdado soon discovered that he could pull pennies from his pocket at the rate of one a second, sixty a minute, three thousand six hundred an hour. This meant he was making thirty-six dollars an hour, roughly what he got for a full week's work in Mr. Johannsen's orchards. It was good pay for a job that could be done with one hand, without climbing a ladder.

For one hour he stood drawing out the coppers and dropping them on the dirt floor. His arm was tired, a cylinder of hurt. He thought he might sit down for a time but it was too hard to reach into his pocket from a sitting position. Next he tried taking his pants off and lying down, but it was a strange thing, the penny would not reproduce itself when the pants were not actually on his body. He had to become a rich man standing up. At the end of the second hour he had almost seven thousand pennies on the floor, almost seventy dollars, and his arm was full of fever and gassy beer, there were shooting pains from the wrist to the shoulders. He was getting rich and he was getting lumbago.

He considered how much faster the harvesting of this penny crop would go if he could call in Herminia and the kids to help with the picking. With his whole family working they could go through the night in shifts. But it did not seem right to bring others into the secret, not even his near and dear.

Herminia called to him to bring some wood and he answered that he would be right there.

Now there was a problem. He could not leave a small fortune in pennies lying around in plain sight on the shed floor. He felt it was better if his family did not know about the pennies that grew like toadstools that wish to make headlines.

In the corner were some coarse burlap bags, left over from last year's flood season when he had prepared sandbags to build up the banks of the nearby stream. His seven thousand pennies almost filled one bag, which he hid under some odds and ends of lumber.

He went toward the house wondering why it was that he kept looking back. He was about to be the richest man in the world and he looked over his shoulder as though he had something to hide.

• • •

During the next days, whenever he had a minute, he went to the shed to pull pennies and fill burlap bags. Before the week was up he had to buy a new supply of bags at the general store, and his arm was so sore that he was not able to pick many peaches for Mr. Johannsen.

Finally he had so many full bags that there was no way to hide them in the shed. Some new thing had to be done with them to keep them out of sight.

He began to discuss the matter with himself:

"What are pennies for, exactly? For spending, this is certain, yet I do not consider the possibility. Why not? Well, the first thing is, there is no way to spend ten thousand pennies, then ten times ten thousand, and so on. If I ordered adobe bricks from the brickyard and offered the man bags of pennies for them he would say, where did you get all these pennies, Diosdado? Could I answer that I got them from my left pocket, boss? He would get suspicious and tell the chief of police about it, or the tax collector, or both. Pennies can be deposited in the bank, of course, just like dollars. Yet peach pickers do not usually have moneys of any type to place in the bank. The president of the bank would think the matter over and report it to the tax collector, or the chief of police, or both. There is but one way. I must hide these bags from all eyes. From my wife and my children, them especially. I did not know what a trouble it can be to have money. Surely it is not robbery if I take pennies from my own left pocket, so why do I feel like a robber and keep looking over my shoulder?"

So he did not spend the pennies. Neither did he tell his wife about them. He hit on a way to hide the bags. He ordered a quantity of planks from the lumberyard and these he placed firmly in the ground in upright pairs, exactly along the lines where the walls for the extra rooms would eventually have to go. Between each pair of planks, using them for supports, he piled a vertical row of his plump bags, exactly as he had piled them to make a new bank for the flooding stream. Each bag contained ten thousand pennies, one hundred dollars' worth of pennies. The piles formed continuous walls, they looked exactly like walls.

Herminia watched with narrowing eyes.

"You wanted more rooms?" he said to her. "How can I make rooms if I do not first make walls?"

"I tell all the neighbors you are a good husband," she said, "but now I see you want to kill your whole family. What way is this to build walls without adobe? Make walls of sand and when the bags rot away in the weather the walls will fall down on our heads and we will be killed and buried in the same time. True, this way we save burial expenses. We have to cut down somewhere."

"This is a new procedure of making the bricks," he said, hating himself. "First, a special sand is put in the bags, second, they are permitted to shape and harden in the sun. It is a totally new process, woman. It was invented by the authorities on such things in the U.S.A. Department of Agriculture, Adobe Brick Division. Those of the government know the wall business better than you."

He wanted to kick and punch himself when he saw the full trust and respect in her eyes. But at least the pennies would be safe in this homemade bank. Because of the protecting planks the children could not feel around with their fingers to find out that these walls were filled with a sunshiny sand of dreams and sayings.

But the chief of police did take notice. He saw the walls going up and he drove in to have a look.

"Pretty big house you're putting up there," he said. "Where'd you get the money for the materials? Come on, Diosdado, come clean, you rob a bank someplace?"

Diosdado said he seldom had the occasion, let alone the constitution, even to go in a bank, let alone rob it, the funds came from picking the good peach crop.

But the chief's words were a worry.

The tax collector came by too.

"You're turning the place into a regular mansion," he said with too much arithmetic in his eyes. "A four-star palace. You must have had a peachy year, ha, ha, to afford improvements like these." There were dollar signs in his eyes as he drove away.

This was another worry.

By now the walls, the deceitful walls, were up ten feet or more. Diosdado took a pencil and paper and did some figuring. According to his count he had piled up two thousand bags, which came to twenty thousand dollars' worth of pennies. He was a man worth twenty thousand dollars and he did not have the cash to go in the store to buy a side of bacon or a new kitchen table, let alone more burlap bags. Added to this, the chief of police and the tax collector had their mathematical eyes on him.

If no more bags would fit into the walls, any he filled from now on would have to be hidden in another way. There was no other way. Besides, Diosdado was beginning to wonder if there was any sense to piling up more pennies in secret. To collect bigger and bigger moneys and to be further and further away from the possibility of spending them, to do all this heavy work and have no pay from it, nothing but some false walls put up with backbreaking labor, more labor by far than it would have taken to make true and useful adobe walls, that is, walls about which a man would not have to tell rotten lies to his trusting wife, this did not seem reasonable. His arm was very tired. It hung limp at his side, a tube of misery. He was now the slowest picker in Mr. Johannsen's orchards.

He decided that, for the time being, he would not collect any more pennies.

Easier said than done. How do you go about throwing away a breeding penny like this? A damned rabbit of a penny? Several times, in disgust, he tried to fling it from him. Each time, its twin brother turned up cozily in his pocket.

He began truly to hate this penny. He had not had a good night's sleep for weeks, even before the visits from the township officials. He had the stronger and stronger feeling that, ever since he had begun to collect the pennies, he had been involved in something criminal, something absolutely against the law. He was looking over his shoulder all the time now. His neck was getting as stiff as his arm.

He consulted with himself once more:

"I see why I have broken no law, yet feel like the Number One on the wished-for list of the FBI. I begin to see. This is not my money, though it happens to be in my pocket. It is not money at all, though it looks and feels like true money. The difficulty is that if you are given the magic of the seven-year-old you must begin to think and act like a seven-year-old in order to enjoy the gift. Why do I not speak to my wife any more? Because my pennies are the only thing I can speak of and they are the one thing I must not speak of. Why can't I tell Herminia about the pennies? Not because of the danger she might talk. Not that so much, though she is a champion talker. Chiefly because if I spoke of this magic she would see the seven-year-old in my eyes again, and this is not for a woman to see in a more so than not grown man. Why do I feel I am breaking the law? Because the first law is to act your age, which in my case is thirty-nine and not seven. This calamity of a penny cuts many inches off my height and how tall is a man to begin with? Besides, my arm hurts all the time. I must get rid of this affliction and plague of a penny." But how lose a penny that won't get lost?

Standing by the well, speaking more or less to the upside-down pig as it pranced pointlessly, he said, "I certainly wish I'd never heard of this miserable penny."

From deep in the well there was a sound like the rush of wind. After a few seconds the voice said as though from far off, "I'll be right there."

Diosdado waited. Pretty soon the voice came through stronger, though panting a little, saying, "Sorry to keep you waiting but those drunken bums over to the Bixby place keep running out of drinking money and yelling for the penny. Well. You were saying?"

"I have a worry," Diosdado said. "It seems to me there is something illegal about this magic penny."

There was silence for a while. Then the voice said with some irritation, "Look, up there you make laws, down here we make pennies. It's a division of labor. Don't tell me your troubles, I've got enough of my own."

"But I have to live with the law," Diosdado said, "and this penny is clearly against the law. I will tell you my thinking. There are only so many pennies in the country, an amount fixed by the government people. Therefore, if you put a large number of them in my pocket you must be taking them out of somebody else's pocket. If you are a true magician why do you have to be a thief? More, you must be robbing the poor, because it is chiefly the poor who save pennies. I have no use for the whole system."

"Didn't you hear what I said?" the voice came back. "We don't steal the pennies, we make them."

"Then you are counterfeiters. Isn't this a violation of the law, to counterfeit?"

"I don't have to sit here and take your insults," the voice
said. "These pennies are most emphatically not counterfeits.
We follow the specifications of the mint people of the U.S.
Treasury in making these pennies, so-and-so much copper,
such-and-such percentages of other metals, everything down to
the last decimal point. We use no inferior materials, each
penny we give you is a perfect coin of the realm. There's not a
bad penny in the lot." i

"All the same, all the same. There are supposed to be a certain number of pennies and no more. It's not right for me to have the power to add a million or a billion billion billion, this could upset all figures and banks. It must be against the law for a peach picker to have the strength to overthrow the whole money system and also the government."

"You didn't call me over here to discuss the monetary system. What's really on your mind, man?"

"I don't want this penny."

"All right."

"What?"

"I said, all right. Throw it down here."

Diosdado drew the coin from his pocket, breathed deeply, and dropped it down the well. Time passed. There was a sound, not of splashing, rather of a big and drawn-out yawn, accompanied by a flatted whistling. He thought he heard the ringing of a cash register from far away.

He reached into his left pocket. It was filled with a glorious emptiness. He felt a weight of some long tons lifting from his shoulders.

"This is the second wish?" he said. "Precisely," the voice said.

"Those who make the first, they always make the second?"

"Most always. As soon as they find out they can't spend these pennies, they keep watching over their shoulders, stop talking to their wives, get funny looks from the tax collector, and so on."

"Nobody ever keeps the penny?"

"How it is in other territories I don't know, but since I've been on the job here there was only one man who didn't try to give it back. He was a gardener and tree pruner over to La Jolla. Know what happened to him? Interesting case, I wrote it up for our records. He went around telling everybody in town he had a nice mama penny that kept making little baby pennies. This is not the kind of talk people wish to hear from a grown man, an experienced gardener and tree pruner. They did not wait to see the breeding penny demonstrated, they quick locked him up in a hospital for people who make wild talk. Naturally, I had to step in. We couldn't sit back and let this man build big piles of pennies all over the hospital just to show off, this sort of thing has a tendency to make people gossip and turn their attention from business. We don't have the authority to take the penny back unless its owner so requests, but in emergencies we can change the never ending penny into a never ending something else. What I changed this penny into was a Life Saver, wild cherry flavor. Now this man was going around the hospital telling all the doctors what he had in his pocket was not a mama penny but a mama Life Saver, wild cherry flavor. You can understand that this just made the doctors more sure they had done right in locking him up. What did this man begin to do with his self-replenishing Life Saver? Nobody would look at it. For lack of anything better, he began to eat the Life Savers. He ate and ate, and always had one more. So far as I know he's still eating away, all day long and far into the night, and I can tell you he's getting pretty damn sick of wild cherry. He was originally a bitsy fellow, one hundred twenty in his stocking feet, and they tell me he just recently passed two hundred and is still going strong. Good-bye, friend. Maybe you've learned something from this. You can get too much of a good thing. But don't write the experience off as a total loss. You've got something to show for it. Just take a good look around. Good-bye now, and don't take any wooden—sorry. Got to rush. Those drunks over to Bixby's are making a racket again. Bye, bye."

Diosdado looked around his property. He saw a well, a shed, a hut, a mud hollow, a self-inebriated pig, in that order— nothing new. What did that voice mean, he, Diosdado, had something to show for it? All he had for it was an arm that was a hose made from end to end of major ache, and this was not to be shown.

But then he saw something that had not been there before the trouble-making penny. Attached to the original hut were two unusually large, very luxurious rooms, or almost rooms. Add ceilings and finish the walls properly and nobody could take them for anything but rooms. They were most emphatically not banks, because though moneys had been deposited in them these moneys were not for withdrawing. The walls could certainly be finished in the right manner. There would be no withdrawals from this gone-out-of-business bank.

Herminia came over to him from the hut and he put his arm around her, saying:

"Woman, you talk too much, but from time to time you say something. It is true, without adobe those walls do not work. Whatever the Agriculture Department says, those bags of sand will rot in the weather and make troubles. I will put plenty of adobe over the walls, on both sides, also, I will add ceilings, and you will have the two largest rooms on this side of the San Berdoos. Then my cook will not go back to Durango and I will always have something to chew on before I pick my teeth, yes?"

"Agreed," Herminia said. "This is a business deal not to be turned down," and she put one arm around his waist, then the other.

For over a week Diosdado picked no peaches. He worked around the clock, placing boards to make a roof, mixing adobe and plastering it over the bags and their wooden supports. Finally the walls, and also the roof, were covered with solid, substantial, homey-looking adobe. No rains could get in here, and no tax collectors.

The afternoon Diosdado finished his labors he walked over to the well with Herminia and turned to take a good look at the finished structure. It was a real house, a good house, the best-looking house in the valley.

"This is a house that could not be paid for in pennies," he said, half into the well, half toward the wallowing pig, very little for Herminia's ear.

With her tendency to comment on everything, Herminia said, "There is not enough money in all the world, pennies or dollars, to pay for this house," and put her arm around his waist.

He patted her promise-leavened belly and looked down into the valley toward the other huts and cabins nested here and there. He thought about a hundred-twenty-pound man getting to be two hundred on one Life Saver, wild cherry flavor, and shivered. He wondered how many other homes in this valley had twenty-thousand-dollar walls, but he was afraid to speculate about this too much.

Down in the mud hollow the pig rolled on his back like a vacationing millionaire, trying, for lack of anything better to do, to punt away the molten centavo of a sun.

BERNIE THE FAUST

BY WILLIAM TENN

London-bom William Tenn says, "I went to several colleges, but never got within any measurable distance of a degree. The only things I didn't study at all were literature and writing— because I considered them, like courses in breathing and eating, superfluous." His books include "The Human Angle" and "Of All Possible Worlds." In the opinion of The New York Herald Tribune, "Tenn easily outstrips the best of most science-fiction writers on the counts of imagination, wit, charm and nicety of both writing and thinking." The tall Tenn tale that follows is not a fantasy, despite the word "Faust" in the title and the Mephistophelean behavior of the unsavory antagonist. It is out-and-out science ■fiction. And fine, tart, pointed science fiction, too.

BERNIE THE FAUST that's what Ricardo calls me. I don't know what I am.

Here I am, I'm sitting in my little nine-by-six office. I'm reading notices of Government-surplus sales. I'm trying to decide where lies a possible buck and where lies nothing but more headaches.

So the office door opens. This little guy with a dirty face, wearing a very dirty, very wrinkled Palm Beach suit, he walks into my office, and he coughs a bit and he says:

"Would you be interested in buying a twenty for a five?"

That was it. I mean, that's all I had to go on.

I looked him over and I said, ^uWha-at?"

He shuffled his feet and coughed some more. "A twenty," he mumbled. "A twenty for a five."

I made him drop his eyes and stare at his shoes. They were lousy, cracked shoes, lousy and dirty like the rest of him. Every once in a while, his left shoulder hitched up in a kind of tic. "I give you twenty," he explained to his shoes, "and I buy a five from you with it. I wind up with five, you wind up with twenty."

"How did you get into the building?"

"I just came in," he said, a little mixed up.

"You just came in." I put a nasty, mimicking note in my voice. "Now you just go right back downstairs and come the hell out. There's a sign in the lobby—no beggars allowed."

"I'm not begging." He tugged at the bottom of his jacket.
It was like a guy tryingto straighten out his slept-in pajamas.
"I want to sell you something. A twenty for a five. I give
you----- "

"You want me to call a cop?"

He looked very scared. "No. Why should you call a cop? I haven't done anything to make you call a cop!"

"I'll call a cop in just a second. I'm giving you fair warning. I just phone down to the lobby and they'll have a cop up here fast. They don't want beggars in this building. This is a building for business."

He rubbed his hand against his face, taking a little dirt off, then he rubbed the hand against the lapel of his jacket and left the dirt there. "No deal?" he asked. "A twenty for a five? You buy and sell things. What's the matter with my deal?"

I picked up the phone.

"All right," he said, holding up the streaky palm of his hand. "I'll go. I'll go."

"You better. And shut the door behind you."

"Just in case you change your mind." He reached into his dirty, wrinkled pants pocket and pulled out a card. "You can get in touch with me here. Almost any time during the day."

"Blow," I told him.

He reached over, dropped the card on my desk, on top of all the surplus notices, coughed once or twice, looked at me to see if maybe I was biting. No? No. He trudged out.

I picked the card up between the nails of my thumb and forefinger and started to drop it into the wastebasket.

Then I stopped. A card. It was just so damned out of the ordinary—a slob like that with a card. A card, yet.

For that matter, the whole play was out of the ordinary. I began to be a little sorry I hadn't let him run through the whole thing. After all, what was he trying to do but give me an offbeat sales pitch? I can always use an offbeat sales pitch. I work out of a small office, I buy and sell, but half my stock is good ideas. I'll use ideas, even from a bum.

The card was clean and white, except where the smudge from his fingers made a brown blot. Written across it in a kind of ornate handwriting were the words Mr. Ogo Eksar. Under that was the name and the telephone number of a hotel in the Times Square area, not far from my office. I knew that hotel: not expensive, but not a fleabag either—somewhere just under the middle line.

There was a room number in one corner of the card. I stared at it and I felt kind of funny. I really didn't know.

Although, come to think of it, why couldn't a panhandler be registered at a hotel? "Don't be a snob, Bernie," I told myself.

Twenty for five. What kind of panhandling pitch would follow it? I couldn't get it out of my mind!

There was only one thing to do. Ask somebody about it. Ricardo? A big college professor, after all. One of my best contacts.

He'd thrown a lot my way—a tip on the college building program that was worth a painless fifteen hundred, an office-equipment disposal from the United Nations, stuff like that. And any time I had any questions that needed a college education, he was on tap. All for the couple, three hundred, he got out of me in commissions.

I looked at my watch. Ricardo would be in his office now, marking papers or whatever it is he does there. I dialed his number.

"Ogo Eksar?" he repeated after me. "Sounds like a Finnish name. Or maybe Estonian. From the eastern Baltic, I'd say."

"Forget that part," I said. "This is all I care about." And I told him about the twenty-for-five offer.

He laughed. "That thing again!"

"Some old hustle that the Greeks pulled on the Egyptians?"

"No. Something the Americans pulled. And not a con game. During the Depression, a New York newspaper sent a reporter around the city with a twenty-dollar bill which he offered to sell for exactly one dollar. There were no takers. The point being that even with people out of work and on the verge of starvation, they were so intent on not being suckers that they turned down an easy profit of nineteen-hundred percent."

"Twenty for one? This was twenty for five."

"Oh, well, you know, Bernie, inflation," he said, laughing again. "And these days it's more likely to be a television show."

"Television? You should have seen the way the guy was dressed!"

"Just an extra, logical touch to make people refuse to take the offer seriously. University research people operate much
the same way. A few years back, a group of sociologists began
an investigation of the public's reaction to sidewalk solicitors in
charity drives. You know, those people who jingle little boxes
on street corners: help the two-headed children, relief
for flood-ravaged Atlantis? Well, they dressed up some of
their students "

"You think he was on the level, then, this guy?"

"I think there is a good chance that he was. I don't see why he would have left his card with you, though."

"That I can figure—now. If it's a TV stunt, there must be a lot of other angles wrapped up in it. A giveaway show with cars, refrigerators, a castle in Scotland, all kinds of loot."

"A giveaway show? Well, yes—it could be."

I hung up, took a deep breath, and called Eksar's hotel. He was registered there all right. And he'd just come in.

I went downstairs fast and took a cab. Who knew what other connections he'd made by now?

Going up in the elevator, I kept wondering. How did I go from the twenty-dollar bill to the real big stuff, the TV giveaway stuff, without letting Eksar know that I was on to what it was all about? Well, maybe I'd be lucky. Maybe he'd give me an opening.

I knocked on the door. When he said "Come in," I went in. But for a second or two I couldn't see a thing.

It was a little room, like all the rooms in that hotel, little and smelly and stuffy. But he didn't have the lights on, any electric lights. The window shade was pulled all the way down.

When my eyes got used to the dark, I was able to pick out this Ogo Eksar character. He was sitting on the bed, on the side nearest me. He was still wearing that crazy rumpled Palm Beach suit.

And you know what? He was watching a program on a funny little portable TV set that he had on the bureau. Color TV. Only it wasn't working right. There were no faces, no pictures, nothing but colors chasing around. A big blob of red, a big blob of orange and a wiggly border of blue and green and black. A voice was talking from it, but all the words were fouled up: ^uWah-wah_} de-wah, de-wan."

Just as I went in, he turned it off. "Times Square is a bad neighborhood for TV," I told him. "Too much interference."

"Yes," he said. "Too much interference." He closed up the set and put it away. I wished I'd seen it when it was working right.

Funny thing, you know? I would have expected a smell of liquor in the room, I would have expected to see a couple of empties in the tin trash basket near the bureau. Not a sign.

The only smell in the room was a smell I couldn't recognize. I guess it was the smell of Eksar himself, concentrated.

"Hi," I said, feeling a little uncomfortable because of the way I'd been with him back in the office. So rough I'd been.

He stayed on the bed. "I've got the twenty," he said. "You've got the five?"

"Oh, I guess I've got the five, all right," I said, looking in my wallet hard and trying to be funny. He didn't say a word, didn't even invite me to sit down. I pulled out a bill. "OK?"

He leaned forward and stared, as if he could see—in all that dimness—what kind of a bill it was. "OK," he said. "But I'll want a receipt. A notarized receipt."

Well, what the hell, I thought, a notarized receipt. "Then we'll have to go down. There's a druggist on 45th."

"Let's go," he said, getting to his feet with several small coughs that came one, two, three, four, right after one another.

On the way to the druggist, I stopped in a stationery store and bought a book of blank receipts. I filled out most of one right there. New York, N.Y., and the date. Received from Mr. Ogo Eksar the sum of twenty dollars for a five-dollar bill

bearing the serial number................................ "That OK?" I asked

him. "I'm putting in the serial number to make it look as if you want that particular bill, you know, what the lawyers call the value-received angle."

He screwed his head around and read the receipt. Then he checked the serial number of the bill I was holding. He nodded.

We had to wait for the druggist to get through with a couple of customers. When I signed the receipt, he read it to himself, shrugged and went ahead and stamped it with his seal.

I paid him the two bits; I was the one making the profit.

Eksar slid a crisp new twenty to me along the counter. He watched while I held it up to the light, first one side, then the other.

"Good bill?" he asked.

"Yes. You understand: I don't know you, I don't know your money."

"Sure. I'd do it myself with a stranger." He put the receipt and my five-dollar bill in his pocket and started to walk away.

"Hey," I said. "You in a hurry?"

"No." He stopped, looking puzzled. "No hurry. But you've got the twenty for a five. We made the deal. It's all over."

"All right, so we made the deal. How about a cup of coffee?"

He hesitated.

"It's on me," I told him. "I'll be a big shot for a dime. Come on, let's have a cup of coffee."

Now he looked worried. "You don't want to back out? I've got the receipt. It's all notarized. I gave you a twenty, you gave me a five. We made a deal."

"It's a deal, it's a deal," I said, shoving him into an empty booth. "It's a deal, it's all signed, sealed and delivered. Nobody's backing out. I just want to buy you a cup of coffee."

His face cleared up, all the way through that dirt. "No coffee. Soup. I'll have some mushroom soup."

"Fine, fine. Soup, coffee, I don't care. I'll have coffee."

I sat there and studied him. He hunched over the soup and dragged it into his mouth, spoonful after spoonful, the living picture of a bum who hadn't eaten all day. But pure essence of bum, triple-distilled, the label of a fine old firm.

A guy like this should be lying in a doorway trying to say no to a cop's night stick, he should be coughing his alcoholic guts out. He shouldn't be living in a real honest-to-God hotel, or giving me a twenty for a five, or eating anything as respectable as mushroom soup.

But it made sense. A TV giveaway show, they want to do this, they hire a damn good actor, the best money can buy, to toss their dough away. A guy who'll be so good a bum that people'll just laugh in his face when he tries to give them a deal with a profit.

"You don't want to buy anything else?" I asked him.

He held the spoon halfway to his mouth and stared at me suspiciously. "Like what?"

"Oh, I don't know. Like maybe you want to buy a ten for a fifty. Or a twenty for a hundred dollars?"

He thought about it, Eksar did. Then he went back to his soup, shoveling away. "That's no deal," he said contemptuously. "What kind of deal is that?"

"Excuse me for living. I just thought I'd ask. I wasn't trying to take advantage of you." I lit a cigarette and waited.

My friend with the dirty face finished the soup and reached for a paper napkin. He wiped his lips. I watched him: he didn't smudge a spot of the grime around his mouth. He just blotted up the drops of soup. He was dainty in his own special way.

"Nothing else you want to buy? I'm here, I've got time right now. Anything else on your mind, we might as well look into it."

He balled up the paper napkin and dropped it into the soup plate. It got wet. He'd eaten all the mushrooms and left the soup.

"The Golden Gate Bridge," he said all of a sudden. I dropped the cigarette. "What?"

"The Golden Gate Bridge. The one in San Francisco. I'll buy that. I'll buy it for . . ." he lifted his eyes to the fluorescent fixtures in the ceiling and thought for a couple of seconds ". . . say a hundred and a quarter. A hundred and twenty-five dollars. Cash on the barrel."

"Why the Golden Gate Bridge?" I asked him like an idiot.

"That's the one I want. You asked me what else I wanted to buy—well, that's what else. The Golden Gate Bridge."

"What's the matter with the George Washington Bridge? It's right here in New York, it's across the Hudson River. Why buy something all the way out on the Coast?"

He grinned at me as if he admired my cleverness. "Oh, no," he said, twitching his left shoulder hard. Up, down, up, down. "I know what I want. The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. A hundred and a quarter. Take it or leaye it."

"I'll take it. If that's what you want, you're the doctor. But look—all I can sell you is my share of the Golden Gate Bridge, whatever equity in it I may happen to own."

He nodded. "I want a receipt. Put that down on the receipt."

I put it down on the receipt. And back we went. The druggist notarized the receipt, shoved the stamping outfit into the drawer under the counter and turned his back on us. Eksar counted out six twenties and one five from a big roll of bills, all of them starchy new. He put the roll back into his pants pocket and started away again.

"More coffee?" I asked, catching up. "A refill on the soup?"

He turned a very puzzled look at me and kind of twitched all over. "Why? What do you want to sell now?"

I shrugged. "What do you want to buy? You name it. Let's see what other deals we can work out."

This was all taking one hell of a lot of time, but I had no complaints. I'd made a hundred and forty dollars in fifteen minutes. Say a hundred and thirty-eight fifty, if you deducted expenses such as notary fees, coffee, soup—all legitimate expenses, all low. I had no complaints.

But I was waiting for the big one. There had to be a big one.

Of course, it could maybe wait until the TV program itself. They'd be asking me what was on my mind when I was selling Eksar all that crap, and I'd be explaining, and they'd start handing out refrigerators and gift certificates for Tiffany's and ...

Eksar had said something while I was away in cloud-land. Something damn unfamiliar. I asked him to say it again.

"The Sea of Azov," he told me. "In Russia. I'll give you three hundred and eighty dollars for it."

I'd never heard of the place. I pursed my lips and thought for a second. A funny amount—three hundred and eighty. And for a whole damn sea. I tried an angle.

"Make it four hundred and you've got a deal."

He began coughing his head off, and he looked mad. "What's the matter," he asked between coughs, "three hundred and eighty is a bad price? It's a small sea, one of the smallest. It's only fourteen-thousand square miles. And do you know what the maximum depth is?"

I looked wise. "It's deep enough."

"Forty-nine feet," Eksar shouted. "That's all, forty-nine feet! Where are you going to do better than three hundred and eighty for a sea like that?"

"Take it easy," I said, patting his dirty shoulder. "Let's split the difference. You say three eighty, I want four hundred. How about leaving it at three ninety?" I didn't really care: ten bucks more, ten bucks less. But I wanted to see what would happen.

He calmed down. "Three hundred and ninety dollars for the Sea of Azov," he muttered to himself, a little sore at being a sucker, at being taken. "All I want is the sea itself j it's not as if I'm asking you to throw in the Kerch Strait, or maybe a port like Taganrog or Osipenko . . ."

"Tell you what." I held up my hands. "I don't want to be hard. Give me my three ninety and I'll throw in the Kerch Strait as a bonus. Now how about that?"

He studied the idea. He sniffled. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. "All right," he said, finally. "It's a deal. Azov and the Kerch Strait for three hundred ninety."

Bang! went the druggist's stamp. The bangs were getting louder.

Eksar paid me with six fifties, four twenties and a ten, all new-looking bills from that thick roll in his pants pocket.

I thought about the fifties still on the roll, and I felt the spit start to ball up in my mouth.

"OK," I said. "Now what?"

"You still selling?"

"For the right price, sure. You name it."

"There's lots of stuff I could use," he sighed. "But do I need it right now? That's what I have to ask myself."

"Right now is when you've got a chance to buy it. Later— who knows? I may not be around, there may be other guys bidding against you, all kinds of things can happen." I waited awhile, but he just kept scowling and coughing. "How about Australia?" I suggested. "Could you use Australia for, say, five hundred bucks? Or Antarctica? I could give you a real nice deal on Antarctica,"

He looked interested. "Antarctica? What would you want for it? No—I'm not getting anywhere. A little piece here, a little piece there. It all costs so much."

"You're getting damn favorable prices, buddy, and you know it. You couldn't do better buying at wholesale."

"Then how about wholesale? How much for the whole thing?"

I shook my head. "I don't know what you're talking about. What whole thing?"

He looked impatient. "The whole thing. The world. Earth."

"Hey," I said. "That's a lot."

"Well, I'm tired of buying a piece at a time. Will you give me a wholesale price if I buy it all?"

I shook my head, kind of in and out, not yes, not no. Money was coming up, the big money. This was where I was supposed to laugh in his face and walk away. I didn't even crack a smile. "For the whole planet—sure, you're entitled to a wholesale price. But what is it, I mean, exactly what do you want to buy?"

"Earth," he said, moving close to me so that I could smell his stinking breath. "I want to buy Earth. Lock, stock and barrel."

"It's got to be a good price. I'll be selling out completely."

"I'll make it a good price. But this is the deal. I pay two thousand dollars, cash. I get Earth, the whole planet, and you have to throw in some stuff on the Moon. Fishing rights, mineral rights and rights to buried treasure. How about it?"

"It's a hell of a lot."

"I know it's a lot," he agreed. "But I'm paying a lot."

"Not for what you're asking. Let me think about it."

This was the big deal, the big giveaway. I didn't know how much money the TV people had given him to fool around with, but I was pretty sure two thousand was just a starting point. Only what was a sensible, businesslike price for the whole world?

I mustn't be made to look like a penny-ante chiseler on TV. There was a top figure Eksar had been given by the program director.

"You really want the whole thing," I said, turning back to him, "the Earth and the Moon?"

He held up a dirty hand. "Not all the Moon. Just those rights on it. The rest of the Moon you can keep."

"It's still a lot. You've got to go a hell of a lot higher than two thousand dollars for any hunk of real estate that big."

Eksar began wrinkling and twitching. "How—how much higher?"

"Well, let's not kid each other. This is the big time now! We're not talking about bridges or rivers or seas. This is a whole world and part of another that you're buying. It takes dough. You've got to be prepared to spend dough."

"How much?" He looked as if he were jumping up and down inside his dirty Palm Beach suit. People going in and out of the store kept staring at us. "How much?" he whispered.

"Fifty thousand. It's a damn low price. And you know it."

Eksar went limp all over. Even his weird eyes seemed to sag. "You're crazy," he said in a low, hopeless voice. "You're out of your head."

He turned and started for the revolving door, walking in a kind of used-up way that told me I'd really gone over the line. He didn't look back once. He just wanted to get far, far away.

I grabbed the bottom of his filthy jacket and held on tight.

"Look, Eksar," I said, fast, as he pulled. "I went over your budget, way over, I can see that. But you know you can do better than two thousand. I want as much as I can get. What the hell, I'm taking time out to bother with you. How many other guys would?"

That got him. He cocked his head, then began nodding. I let go of his jacket as he came around. We were connecting again!

"Good. You level with me, and I'll level with you. Go up a little higher. What's your best price? What's the best you can do?"

He stared down the street, thinking, and his tongue came out and licked at the side of his dirty mouth. His tongue was dirty, too. I mean that! Some kind of black stuff, grease or grime, was all over his tongue.

"How about," he said, after a while, "how about twenty-five hundred? That's as high as I can go. I don't have another cent."

He was like me: he was a natural bargainer.

"You can go to three thousand," I urged. "How much is three thousand? Only another five hundred. Look what you get for it. Earth, the whole planet, and fishing and mineral rights and buried treasure, all that stuff on the Moon. How's about it?"

"I can't. I just can't. I wish I could." He shook his head as if to shake loose all those tics and twitches. "Maybe this way. I'll go as high as twenty-six hundred. For that, will you give me Earth and just fishing rights and buried-treasure rights on the Moon? You keep the mineral rights. I'll do without them."

"Make it twenty-eight hundred and you can have the mineral rights, too. You want them, I can tell you do. Treat yourself. Just two hundred bucks more, and you can have them."

"I can't have everything. Some things cost too much. How about twenty-six fifty, without the mineral rights and without the buried-treasure rights?"

We were both really swinging now. I could feel it.

"This is my absolutely last offer," I told him. "I can't spend all day on this. I'll go down to twenty-seven hundred and fifty, and not a penny less. For that, I'll give you Earth and just fishing rights on the Moon. Or just buried-treasure rights. You pick whichever one you want."

"All right," he said. "You're a hard man; we'll do it your way."

"Twenty-seven fifty for the Earth and either fishing or buried-treasure rights on the Moon?"

"No, twenty-seven even, and no rights on the Moon. I'll forget about that. Twenty-seven even, and all I get is the Earth."

"Deal!" I sang out, and we struck hands. We shook on it.

Then, with my arm around his shoulders—what did I care about the dirt on his clothes when the guy was worth twenty-seven hundred dollars to me?—we marched back to the drugstore.

"I want a receipt," he reminded me.

"Right," I said. "But I put the same stuff on it: that I'm selling you whatever equity I own or have a right to sell. You're getting a lot for your money."

"You're getting a lot of money for what you're selling," he came right back. I liked him. Twitches and dirt or not, he was my kind of guy.

We got back to the druggist for notarization, and, honest, I've never seen a man look more disgusted in my life. "Business is good, huh?" he said. "You two are sure hotting it up."

"Listen, you," I told him. "You just notarize." I showed the receipt to Eksar. "This the way you want it?"

He studied it, coughing. "Whatever equity you own or have a right to sell. All right. And put in, you know, in your capacity as sales agent, your professional capacity."

I changed the receipt and signed it. The druggist notarized.

Eksar brought that lump of money out of his pants pocket. He counted out fifty-four crisp new fifties and laid them on the glass counter. Then he picked up the receipt, folded it and put it away. He started for the door.

I grabbed up the money and went with him. "Anything else?"

"Nothing else," he said. "It's all over. We made our deal." "I know, but we might find something else, another item." "There's nothing else to find. We made our deal." And his voice told me he really meant it. It didn't have a trace of the

tell-me-more whine that you've got to hear before there's business.

I came to a stop and watched him push out through the revolving door. He went right out into the street and turned left and kept moving, all fast, as if he was in a hell of a hurry.

There was no more business. OK. I had thirty-two hundred and thirty dollars in my wallet that I'd made in one morning.

But how good had I really been? I mean, what was the top figure in the show's budget? How close had I come to it?

I had a contact who maybe could find out—Morris Burlap.

Morris Burlap is in business like me, only he's a theatrical agent, sharp, real sharp. Instead of selling a load of used copper wire, say, or an option on a corner lot in Brooklyn, he sells talent. He sells a bunch of dancers to a hotel in the mountains, a piano player to a bar, a disc jockey or a comic to late-night radio. The reason he's called Morris Burlap is because of these heavy Harris-tweed suits he wears winter and summer, every day in the year. They reinforce the image, he says.

I called him from a telephone booth near the entrance and
filled him in on the giveaway show. "Now, what I want to find
out----- "

"Nothing to find out," he cut in. "There's no such show, Bernie."

"There sure as hell is, Morris. One you haven't heard of."

"There's no such show. Not in the works, not being rehearsed, not anywhere. Look: before a show gets to where it's handing out this kind of dough, it's got to have a slot, it's got to have air time all bought. And before it even buys air time, a packager has prepared a pilot. By then I'd have gotten a casting call—I'd have heard about it a dozen different ways. Don't try to tell me my business, Bernie; when I say there's no such show, there's no such show."

So damn positive he was. I had a crazy idea all of a sudden and turned it off. No. Not that. No.

"Then it's a newspaper or college research thing, like Ricardo said?"

He thought it over. I was willing to sit in that stuffy telephone booth and wait; Morris Burlap has a good head. "Those damn documents, those receipts, newspapers and colleges doing research don't operate that way. And nuts don't either. I think you're being taken, Bernie. How you're being taken, I don't know, but you're being taken."

That was enough for me. Morris Burlap can smell a hustle through 16 feet of rock-wool insulation. He's never wrong. Never.

I hung up, sat, thought. The crazy idea came back and exploded.

A bunch of characters from outer space, say they want Earth. They want it for a colony, for a vacation resort, who the hell knows what they want it for? They got their reasons. They're strong enough and advanced enough to come right down and take over. But they don't want to do it cold. They need a legal leg.

All right. These characters from outer space, maybe all they had to have was a piece of paper from just one genuine, accredited human being, signing the Earth over to them. No, that couldn't be right. Any piece of paper? Signed by any Joe Jerk?

I jammed a dime into the telephone and called Ricardo's college. He wasn't in. I told the'switchboard girl it was very important: she said, all right, she'd ring around and try to spot him.

All that stuff, I kept thinking, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Sea of Azov—they were as much a part of the hook as the twenty-for-a-five routine. There's one sure test of what an operator is really after: when he stops talking, closes up shop and goes away.

With Eksar, it had been the Earth. All that baloney about extra rights on the Moon! They were put in to cover up the real thing he was after, for extra bargaining power.

That's how Eksar had worked on me. It was like he'd made a special study of how I operate. From me alone, he had to buy.

But why me?

All that stuff on the receipt, about my equity, about my professional capacity, what the hell did it mean? I don't own Earth; I'm not in the planet-selling business. You have to own a planet before you can sell it. That's law.

So what could I have sold Eksar? I don't own any real estate. Are they going to take over my office, claim the piece of sidewalk I walk on, attach the stool in the diner where I have my coffee?

That brought me back to my first question. Who was this "they"? Who the holy hell were "they"?

The switchboard girl finally dug up Ricardo. He was irritated. "I'm in the middle of a faculty meeting, Bernie. Call you back?"

"Just listen a second," I begged. "I'm in something, I don't know whether I'm coming or going. I've got to have some advice."

Talking fast—I could hear a lot of big-shot voices in the background—I ran through the story from the time I'd called him in the morning. What Eksar looked like and smelled like, the funny portable color-TV he had, the way he'd dropped all those Moon rights and gone charging off once he'd been sure of the Earth. What Morris Burlap had said, the suspicions I'd been building up, everything. "Only thing is," I laughed a little to show that maybe I wasn't really serious about it, "who am I to make such a deal, huh?"

He seemed to be thinking hard for a while. "I don't know, Bernie, it's possible. It does fit together. There's the UN aspect."

"UN aspect? Which UN aspect?"

"The UN aspect of the situation. The—uh—study of the

UN on which we collaborated two years ago." He was using double talk because of the college people around him. But I got it. I got it.

Eksar must have known all along about the deal that Ricardo had thrown my way, getting rid of old, used-up office equipment for the United Nations here in New York. They'd given me what they called an authorizing document. In a file somewhere there was a piece of paper, United Nations stationery, saying that I was their authorized sales agent for surplus, second-hand equipment and installations.

Talk about a legal leg!

"You think it'll stand up?" I asked Ricardo. "I can see how the Earth is second-hand equipment and installations. But surplus?"

"International law is a tangled field, Bernie. And this might be even more complex. You'd be wise to do something about it."

"But what? What should I do, Ricardo?"

"Bernie," he said, sounding sore as hell, "I told you I'm in a faculty meeting, damn it! A faculty meeting!" And he hung up.

I ran out of the drugstore like a wild man and grabbed a cab back to Eksar's hotel.

What was I most afraid of? I didn't know: I was so hysterical. This thing was too big-time for a little guy like me, too damn dangerously big-time. It would put my name up in lights as the biggest sellout sucker in history. Who could ever trust me again to make a deal? I had the feeling like somebody had asked me to sell him a snapshot, and I'd said sure, and it turned out to be a picture of the Nike Zeus, you know, one of those top-secret atomic missiles. Like I'd sold out my country by mistake. Only this was worse: I'd sold out my whole goddamn world. I had to buy it back—I had to!

When I got to Eksar's room, I knew he was about ready to check out. He was shoving his funny portable TV in one of those cheap leather grips they sell in chain stores. I left the door open, for the light.

"We made our deal," he said. "It's over. No more deals."

I stood there, blocking his way. "Eksar," I told him, "listen to what I figured out. First, you're not human. Like me, I mean."

"I'm a hell of a lot more human than you, buddy boy."

"Maybe. But you're not from Earth—that's my point. Why
you need Earth---- "

"I don't need it. I'm an agent. I represent someone."

And there it was, straight out, you are right, Morris Burlap! I stared into his fish eyes, now practically pushing into my face. I wouldn't get out of the way. "You're an agent for someone," I repeated slowly. "Who? What do they want Earth for?"

"That's their business. I'm an agent. I just buy for them." "You work on a commission?" "I'm not in business for my health."

You sure as hell aren't in it for your health, I thought. That

cough, those tics and twitches------------- Then I realized what they

meant. This wasn't the kind of air he was used to. Like if I go up to Canada, right away I'm down with diarrhea. It's the water or something.

The dirt on his face was a kind of sun-tan oil! A protection against our sunlight. Blinds pulled down, face smeared over— and dirt all over his clothes so they'd fit in with his face.

Eksar was no bum. He was anything but. I was the bum. Think fast, Bernie, I said to myself. This guy took you, and big!

"How much you work on—ten percent?" No answer: he leaned against me, and he breathed and he twitched. "I'll top any deal you have, Eksar. You know what I'll give you? Fifteen percent! I hate to see a guy running back and forth for a lousy ten percent."

"What about ethics?" he said hoarsely. "I got a client."

"Look who's bringing up ethics! A guy goes out to buy the whole damn Earth for twenty-seven hundred! You call that ethics?"

Now he got sore. He set down the grip and punched his fist into his hand. "No, I call that business. A deal. I offer, you take. You go away happy, you feel you made out. All of a sudden, here you are back, crying you didn't mean it, you sold too much for the price. Too bad! I got ethics: I don't screw my client for a crybaby."

"I'm not a crybaby. I'm just a poor schnook trying to scratch out a living. Here, I'm up against a big-time operator from another world with all kinds of angles and gimmicks going for him."

"You had these angles, these gimmicks, you wouldn't use them?"

"Certain things I wouldn't do. Don't laugh, Eksar, I mean it. I wouldn't hustle a guy in an iron lung. I wouldn't hustle a poor schnook with a hole-in-the-wall office to sell out his entire planet."

"You really sold," he said. "That receipt will stand up anywhere. And we got the machinery to make it stand up. Once my client takes possession, the human race is finished, it's kaput, forget about it. And you're Mr. Patsy."

It was hot in that hotel-room doorway, and I was sweating like crazy. But I was feeling better. All of a sudden, I'd got the message that Eksar wanted to do business with me. I grinned at him.

He changed color a little under all that dirt. "What's your offer, anyway?" he asked, coughing. "Name a figure."

"You name one. You got the property, I got the dough."

"Aah!" he grunted impatiently, and pushed me out of the way. He was strong] I ran after him to the elevator.

"How much you want, Eksar?" I asked him as we were going down.

A shrug. "I got a planet, and I got a buyer for it. You, you're in a jam. The one in a pickle is the one who's got to tickle."

The louse! For every one of my moves, he knew the countermove.

He checked out and I followed him into the street. Down Broadway we went, me offering him the thirty-two hundred and thirty he'd paid me, him saying he couldn't make a living out of shoving the same amount of money back and forth all day. "Thirty-four?" I offered. "I mean, you know, thirty-four fifty?" He just kept walking.

If I didn't get him to name a figure, any figure, I'd be dead.

I ran in front of him. "Eksar, let's stop hustling each other. If you didn't want to sell, you wouldn't be talking to me in the first place. You name a figure. Whatever it is, I'll pay it."

That got a reaction. "You mean it? You won't try to chisel?"

"How can I chisel? I'm over a barrel."

"OK, then. I'll give you a break and save myself a long trip back to my client. What's fair for you and fair for me and fair all around? Let's say eight thousand even?"

Eight thousand—it was almost exactly what I had in the bank. He knew my bank account cold, up to the last statement.

He knew my thoughts cold, too. "You're going to do business with a guy," he said, between coughs, "you check into him a little. You got eight thousand and change. It's not much for saving a guy's neck."

I was boiling. "Not much? Then let me set you straight, you Florence goddamn Nightingale! You're not getting it! A little skin I know maybe I have to give up. But not every cent I own, not for you, not for Earth, not for anybody!"

A cop came up close to see why I was yelling, and I had to calm down until he went away again. "Help! Police! Aliens invading us!" I almost screamed out. What would the street we were standing on look like in ten years if I didn't talk Eksar out of that receipt?

"Eksar, your client takes over Earth waving my receipt— I'll be hung high. But I've got only one life, and my life is buying and selling. I can't buy and sell without capital. Take my capital away, and it makes no difference to me who owns Earth and who doesn't."

"Who the hell do you think you're kidding?" he said.

"I'm not kidding anybody. Honest, it's the truth. Take my capital away, and it makes no difference if I'm alive or if I'm dead."

That last bit of hustle seemed to have reached him. Listen, there were practically tears in my eyes the way I was singing it. How much capital did I need, he wanted to know—five hundred? I told him I couldn't operate one single day with less than seven times that. He asked me if I was really seriously trying to buy my lousy little planet back—or was today my birthday and I was expecting a present from him? "Don't give your presents to me," I told him. "Give them to fat people. They're better than going on a diet."

And so we went. Both of us talking ourselves blue in the face, swearing by everything, arguing and bargaining, wheeling and dealing. It was touch and go who was going to give up first.

But neither of us did. We both held out until we reached what I'd figured pretty early we were going to wind up with, maybe a little bit more.

Six thousand, one hundred and fifty dollars.

That was the price over and above what Eksar had given me. The final deal. Listen, it could have been worse.

Even so, we almost broke up when we began talking payment.

"TO THE MOON?" I said. I felt the Earth move out from. under me and settle on my shoulders. It was heavy.

"To the Moon," Marco Garcia said. His voice was thick with disappointment. "Congratulations, Abner."

Johnny Ingraham exploded. "To the bloody Moon!" he shouted. "Abner, my boy, my beamish boy, you'll be in all the history books!"

But I sat and stared bleakly across the desk at Old Hard Nose Hanrahan. Navy Regs make it plain that an admiral can't possibly talk bilge to a lieutenant commander, but he was blowing through a paper bugle.

"To the Moon, Mr. Evans," he said. He slapped the foot-high stack of manila envelopes, all marked top secret, with a slender, bony hand. "The Screaming Mimi has been ready for two years. It took us almost a year to pick three men, you, Garcia and Ingraham. We've spent over a year, watching, weighing, measuring, studying the three of you. But it was not until this morning that we picked our man. You kept us waiting a long time, Mr. Evans."

"Sir, I feel very earthy," I said. "I think I always have. If I could choose I would choose not to go. But I suppose that makes no difference?"

He shook his head. "The Navy is filled with men who would jump at the chance to go, Mr. Evans," he said. "But a daredevil would never make it. Flying the Mimi there is only half of it: the man who takes her there has got to bring her back. This is a new kind of beachhead and it takes another kind of man. Quiet, steady, no dash, no flash. A man, Mr. Evans, who may not want to go, but who damned well will want to get back."

He stood up and we scrambled to our feet. He turned his back on us and walked to the window.

"Final briefing will be in one hour," he said. "We feel that it is best for you not to have too much time to think. We also feel, Mr. Evans, that for security reasons, it isijest to keep you under close guard. Garcia and Ingraham will be responsible to me for your safety and for the Navy's security."

He turned and faced us. The friendliness was gone from his face, and he was Old Hard Nose again. "It's in the Navy tradition to be first," he said. "Sail us to the Moon, mister. And then sail us back."

Before he dismissed us, I spoke one more time. "I presume I will be permitted to call my wife?"

"You may not," he said. "Mrs. Evans, I am sure, has accustomed herself to your absence from home, and this will simply be one more time."

"Very well, sir," I said. And thanks, I thought, for God knows I have no idea of how to call a wife and tell her that I am off for the Moon.

We left Old Hard Nose, who had returned to staring out his window. At the entrance to the Administration Building, I stopped and looked at the telephone booths.

"Gentlemen and fellow officers," I said. "I have things to say to my wife that can be of no possible interest to officers and gentlemen."

They both shook their heads. We walked on out of the building and cut across the quadrangle. The sun was hellish bright and everything seemed more real, more actual, than usual. Along the way I saw a bird on the lower limb of a mimosa tree. He was a small, ordinary brown fellow and so still I had to look twice to be sure he wasn't plastic. He was not singing and I nodded to him in appreciation of his tact.

Marco and Johnny also held their tongues. The three of us had been together for two years, putting the Mimi through her paces, and in two years you learn when a man wants nothing from you but silence. And because it was me, and not them, I was in a sullen, senseless rage, as if somehow they had connived against me.

If you were to say to Marco Garcia, "Take the Screaming Mimi to the Moon, and blow it up," he would have looked at you out of unblinking, sloe-black eyes, and said, "When do I leave?"

And if you were to say to Johnny Ingraham, "Kid, take this damned crate and head for the Moon," he would let out a squall of laughter you could have heard for a mile. Johnny never objected to a joke simply because he was the victim of it.

And neither of them was married to Delia. Johnny had never gotten around to marrying, and Marco was tied to a dyed-in-the-wool, pluperfect bitch. Neither one of them knew what it was like to have Delia walk up to him and say "I love you," in her special way of saying it, as though it was something she had invented just for you.

When we reached the Senior BOQ, I was in a cold sweat. There was a buzzing confusion in my ears. If I had been asked right then and there if Lincoln had been shot or run to death, I couldn't have answered. At the door to their room I turned and said, "I don't care what you men do, so long as I don't see you or hear you."

Marco nodded, and Johnny said, "OK, Ab, but please don't close the door."

I went and lay down on the bunk. I made myself stop thinking about Delia. I thought about the Moon. In less than sixty minutes, I would have my final briefing, and then they would seal me into the Screaming Mimi. The time element was sound. If you are going to do it, it's a good idea not to have much time to think about it.

But the more I thought of it, the less I thought of it. Unless science is wrong, and instead of rock and rubble the Moon was a big green cheese, highly nutritious and an effective cure for coughs and colds and tightness around the chest, it was no good to anybody.

Not even for romance, especially not for romance. The first real date I had with Delia, we parked the car out on Dame's Point. There was no moon and the inside of the car was a dark and cozy cave. Inside of fifteen minutes matters had progressed to where no further progress could be made—not without a marriage license. And on our honeymoon, not only was the Moon away on a seventy-two-hour pass, but the rain beat softly on the roof, the lovingest sound a newlywed couple ever heard.

The Moon and Delia, then Delia and the Moon, my mind swung from one to the other, and there was no way out. There are only two things I know to do about a problem—solve it or take a snooze and forget it. There was no solution to this one, so I closed my eyes and began the long, sweet dive into the great big nothing where there are no problems.

And I heard somebody somewhere say, clearly and distinctly, "Friend, remember Peralonzo Nino."

"I don't see how in hell I can," I said. "How can I remember somebody I never heard of?"

I opened my eyes. The room was much dimmer—a rain cloud obscuring the sun, I figured. Marco or Johnny was sitting in the easy chair by the window, and I started to say "I told you to stay the hell out of here," and then I saw the beard and knew it wasn't either of them.

He spoke before I did. "I am Peralonzo Nino," he said.

"By golly, you certainly are," I said. I saw no reason to doubt him. He was a small, spare fellow, with eyes as sad as a jilted spaniel.

He leaned forward. "Today we sail," he said. "We sail on an ocean of nothing, toward nothing, on the word of a fool whose arithmetic is poor beyond belief."

"What are you talking about, buddy?" I said. "And how in hell did you get past the guards?"

He shrugged and spread his hands. "We sail on the hour," he said. "On the hour, I kiss Mercedes farewell, and already she is big with child. If I could choose I would choose not to go, but I am not given the choice. My mind was troubled and I went to sleep and I heard a voice say, 'Think of Abner Evans,' and I woke up."

I raised up on one elbow. "What do you do, Peralonzo, when you're working?" I asked and knew the answer before he told me.

"I am Peralonzo Nino of Palos," he said with great dignity. "And against my will and better judgment, I am the pilot of the Santa Maria."

"Well, hell, buddy," I said. "I used to have an old bat of a history teacher, Miss Dunstable, and she used to yap about how brave and absolutely fearless you guys were to sail those little beat-up cockleshells across an unknown ocean."

He spat. "Miss Dunstable, then, is a bigger fool than Colon. And the Santa Maria is no cockleshell, but the finest ship afloat. But I am not brave. I am a sailor, and this ocean is beyond my knowledge and I am afraid I will never return to Mercedes, who is my life, my soul."

I started in to tell him that he had no problem, that voyage across the Atlantic was a big success, but stopped.

"Peralonzo, buddy, Pm sorry but I don't know," I said. "I was just in the middle third of my class at John Gorrie Junior High, and Pve forgotten nine tenths of the little bit I learned."

I was ashamed. He was a nice guy, fouled up with History with a capital H, just like I was, and I couldn't help him any more than he could help me. I knew that Columbus had made it across the Atlantic and back, but for all I knew Peralonzo's bones were buried on San Salvador or on the bottom of the ocean.

So I did the only thing I could do. I told him where I was going. I told him to help him, to show him that compared to my voyage, his was just nothing, just nowhere at all. When I had finished he nodded his head.

"We stew in the same pot," he said. "But you have the advantage. You know where you are going and what you will encounter. And Hanrahan's arithmetic is better."

"Well, hell, it's no lead-pipe cinch," I said, but I couldn't argue with this guy. "You're right, Peralonzo, it's the same damned mess."

"Because there is Delia," he said, and yawned. "Señor, if you,return, kiss her for me, and call her Mercedes."

"And if you return, give Mercedes a smooch, and call her Delia," I said. The yawn was contagious. "So long, Peralonzo, and good luck, kid."

From a long way off, I heard him sigh and say, "Vaya con Dios, señor."

I was not sorry to go back to sleep. Peralonzo was a good egg, I enjoyed talking to him, and I wondered how he made out back there in 1492. But everything was getting fuzzy and blurry and I let it go.

Then Delia said, "Why don't you bring me a bunch of flowers from the Moon? You know I like flowers."

"Delia, there ain't any damned flowers on the Moon," I said. "It's just a bunch of rock and rubble and green cheese."

"Oh, ipskiddy, ickyrah," she said. "I'll bet pocket handkerchiefs grow up there. They'll grow anywhere."

"Is a pocket handkerchief a flower?" I asked.

"Is a snapdragon an animal?" she asked.

Putting it that way, it seemed reasonable, and I could see the fields of pocket handkerchiefs, snowy white with blue borders and tiny monograms in one corner. It would be a lot of trouble looking for Ds, but Delia was worth it.

"OK, Mercedes," I said. "I'll bring you a yard of them."

She began to shake me. "Wake up, Abner. What are you talking about? Who is this Mercedes woman, anyway?"

I opened my eyes. She was sitting on the bed by me. A flourish of trumpets and a rapid tattoo of drums struck up inside me, as always, when I see that Delia.

"Delia, if you are another dream, go away," I said.

She took my hands and put them where it felt good. "Are these dreams?" she asked. I couldn't think of a better way to establish a fact.

"How'd you get here?" I asked after I had done my duty and my pleasure, kissing those two brown eyes and that Delia-flavored mouth.

"Oh, the Navy has a heart," she said. "Deeply buried under mountains of red tape, but it's there." She pushed me away from her. "I've just come from talking to Hanrahan. It looks like I'm married to a hero."

"No, kid," I said, "Columbus and Hanrahan are the heroes. Me and Peralonzo are a couple of guys they need to do what they want to do." I told her about my dream, if that was what it was—I don't think it was, exactly, but I didn't know what else to call it.

"I always thought Old Lady Dunstable had the wrong dope," I said, when I got through. And I looked at her sadly. "Blast and damn, Delia," I almost cried, "how can I leave a world with you in it?"

She got up and walked over to the window. She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. "Oh, you're just like all the sailors I ever heard of," she said. "Get a girl knocked up and then leave town."

I didn't get it, and then I did. I went into free fall, dropping down mile upon mile. After what seemed like years, I came out of it and walked across the room and put my hands on her brave shoulders and turned her around.

"Lady, you would not kid?" I asked.

She shook her head. "This is no drill, Abner," she said.

"How long have you known?" I asked.

"I guess I've known at least a couple of weeks," she said. "It wasn't official until this morning. But Dr. Hurlburt says there's no doubt about it."

"Well, girl," I said, "are you sad, mad, or glad?"

"I feel like a big trap has snapped shut on me," she said. "And I feel very foolish and very angry with myself, as if I'd done something dumb or careless. And I feel like I've been crowned Queen of the May. I guess I feel like a woman instead of a girl all of a sudden, and I'm not used to it." She was talking very fast. "But what about you? What do you think about being a papa?"

I had thoughts but no words so I did the only thing I knew to do. I hugged her close and kissed her for a long time and patted her on the fanny. I was very grateful that she did not need more than this to reassure her. And as I kissed her I heard the siren but let it scream on until I had finished the kiss.

To the Moon, Old Hanrahan had said, we needed a man who not only would go to the Moon but who damned well would want to get back. Oh, he was a wise one, that Hanrahan, watching Marco, watching Johnny, watching me, until he knew his man. And this morning, Delia, like all Navy wives, had availed herself of the free medical attention at the base clinic. And when Hurlburt called Hanrahan and told him Delia was pregnant, that was it.

That was it. Marco and Johnny could fly it there, as well as I could. But I had the best, the most, the strongest reason to get back.

Delia and I walked out of the room, into the sunshine. Marco and Johnny were waiting, but it no longer mattered, I didn't want to change places with them.

"We'll see you two o'clock, next week," Johnny said, "and we'll pitch a triple whingding."

Marco said, "Vaya con Dios." He said it very well. Not as well as Peralonzo, as he Could not put as much meaning into it, but it was good to hear.

I took Delia by the hand to cut across the quad to the briefing room. Marco and Johnny fell in behind us. In a few minutes I would say what I had to say, and Delia would say what she had to say. We would hold each other in a brief lather of misery and then I'd let her go. After that, letting loose from gravity would be no problem.

Peralonzo, old buddy, I thought, as voyagers we are pikers,

"Stop that!" Kabat said. "Take your hands down. So what was it?"

"A dog," Hackett said. "Little dog. Pomeranian. It's as I said, Doctor; this thing is growing very fast now. The range is increasing and I'm reading animals. If I had any sense left I'd go out that window right now. I can see where it'll end: I'll be reading every living thing in the entire world, from fish no man has ever seen, on the black bottom of the oceans, to baboons sitting in their Sputniks 1000 miles out in space, and my God, after that, after that, is there any reason to suppose I won't be reaching out to the limit of our galaxy, and then beyond that, and beyond that . . ." He lay back in the chair and closed his eyes. He was very pale.

"Take it easy," Dr. Kabat said. "None of this has happened yet. It may not come to pass at all. We have to think about your present condition, see what we can do about that. We have to make a beginning."

"The noise," Hackett said, "can you imagine what the noise is going to be, Doctor, listen to me, every living thing in the world, billions and billions of living entities, every one of them screeching down a funnel into my head, can you imagine what a thousandth part of that noise would be like, well, can you?"

"I'm not going to try," Kabat said, "and don't you try, either. Let's stay with the present. Let's stay with reality, and see what we can do."

"You don't think there's much you can do," Hackett said quietly. "When I first started to tell you about it, you thought I was obviously delusional, schizophrenic, probably paranoid tendency. Then, when I'd told you more, you began to think it was a real far-out kind of ESP. And since then the only constructive notion you've had is that you want to talk to somebody named Gardner Murphy about it."

"You're a convenient kind of patient," Kabat said. "I don't have to tell you much. Yes, I want to talk to Gardner Murphy about it, since I think he knows more about extrasensory perception than anyone else in this country. And I have one more idea."

"I'm a good subject," Hackett said. "I've been hypnotized before, you know, just for kicks." "Good. Well, then . . ."

"I know," Hackett said wearily. "Your next patient is out there. A woman. Problem, frigidity. She's trying to read the December '57 issue of Fortune, but she can't keep her mind on it because she's developed a rather direct concept of a solution to her problem. It involves you in a fairly personal way and . . ."

Dr. Kabat held up his hand. "Please," he said. "No more. I can see you tomorrow at three, if that's all right?"

"If I last that long," Hackett said. He hauled himself to his feet. The next patient, he noted on the way out, was a flaming redhead, lean and hungry-looking. He wasn't surprised. He remembered a Chicago social worker, a girl about 30, plump, placid, bovine, he had sat next to her on a bus lurching north on Michigan, and after he'd read her a little bit he followed her off the bus at Goethe Street, mostly because he couldn't believe what he heard. She had been violent, incredibly inventive and truly, totally insatiable. Since then, nothing had ever surprised him. He rather expected an elderly usher in a church to be seething with black murder as he benignly passed the collection plate. It almost seemed the normal thing now. Barnaby Hackett did not often think of his fellow man as clothed in nobility.

He stuffed some lunch into himself, reading a newspaper, forcing the meaning of it through and over the howling bedlam in his head. Afterward he picked up a car and drove to Connecticut. Near Westport there is a reservoir bisected by a long causeway. Hackett drove to the middle of the causeway, parked the car, and there in blessed silence went to sleep.

Hackett had been right: he was an excellent hypnotic subject. Kabat tried nothing radical. He induced a light sleep in Hackett, then a deeper sleep. He produced a glove anesthesia, amnesia, and posthypnotic suggestion. He taught Hackett autohypnosis and then he got down to business.

"You will hear nothing but the sound of my voice," he told Hackett. "You will hear nothing but the sound of my voice. There is a clock ticking on my desk. You will not hear it. You will not hear the clock ticking. You will hear no sounds from the street. You will not hear the elevator when it passes this floor. You will hear nothing but the sound of my voice. Until I tell you that you may, you will hear nothing but the sound of my voice. You will hear nothing else, nothing at all. I will count slowly to five, and when I reach five you will be able to hear nothing but the sound of my voice. One, two, three, four, five. You can hear nothing but the sound of my voice. If you hear anything but the sound of my voice, lift your right index finger."

Flat on the couch, his every muscle limp as boiled spaghetti, his eyes closed, his breathing slow and even, his hands folded on his chest, Hackett moved nothing.

"You can hear nothing but the sound of my voice," Kabat said. "I have simply turned off all other sound in your mind. You can do this yourself. You will be able to do this yourself. You will be able to stop any sound you wish to stop, instantly, at will. During the rest of today, and tonight, and until you see me again tomorrow, you will be able to stop all sound. You will hear nothing that you do not wish to hear. When you hear a sound that annoys you, you will close your eyes, you will relax, you will produce an instant hypnosis, you will tell yourself that you cannot hear that sound, and it will stop. It will stop instantly. You will not hear it . . ."

At the end of the hour, sitting on the edge of the couch, rubbing his eyes, slowly waking up, Hackett looked around.

"Things are very quiet," he said.

"I have a patient waiting," Dr. Kabat said.

"A man," Hackett said, "hideously upset." He made a grimace and shook his head. "He let his sister drown; he thinks he let his kid sister drown, 31 years ago, and . . ." He stopped and closed his eyes. His hands went limp on his knees, his shoulders slumped and slowly he began to smile. He looked up at Kabat. "I shut the son-of-a-bitch up!" he said. "I turned him off, the bastard! I did it, and it was easy!"

"Of course it was," Kabat said. "I'll see you tomorrow. And keep trying. Every time you do it, it will be easier."

Hackett was full of gratitude when he appeared next day.

"You're right, Dr. Kabat," he said, "it gets easier and easier. I just shut it off and shove it back at 'em. It's easier every time. I don't know how to thank you. You've saved my life. You've cured me of something that was obviously incurable."

"I don't know if 'cured' is the precise term," Kabat said, "and I don't know either if you're altogether out of the woods yet. But you're on the way, certainly."

Kabat's eye fell on the pencil on his desk. He noticed that the point was broken; he opened the desk drawer to get a new one, and it was at that precise moment that it happened to him for the first time. His mind went totally blank. He found himself staring into the drawer with its neat array of pencils, rubber bands, paper-clips, the assortment of medicines on the left, the black-jack on the right, but nothing registered. He knew he had a purpose, he could see, as through a gray and oily fog, a goal to reach, but he could not move toward it. He felt no sense of panic. He felt nothing at all. He just sat there, immobile, until Hackett said, rather loudly for him, "What's the matter, Doctor?"

Kabat blinked and looked around. "Nothing," he said. "Nothing at all. I was thinking of something." He took up the pencil he wanted. "Shall we go ahead?" he said. As quickly as he could—30 seconds—he put Hackett into a light sleep, and then worked him into a deep stage. He wanted a drink, but he settled for a cigarette; he moved quietly to the window and stood there looking through a narrow slot in the leaf-thin metal blinds. The air-conditioner hissed quietly and behind him he could hear his patient's steady breathing. He was very frightened.

Forty minutes later, when Hackett had left, Dr. Kabat opened the door to his reception room, slowly and with dread. He was sure he knew what he would find. Mr. Holvak, his four o'clock, was sitting there, a magazine on the floor at his feet, his hands limp between his legs, his eyes staring, a small shiny rivulet of saliva running from the corner of his mouth. Kabat started the sweep-hand of his wrist-watch and waited. It was most important, he felt, that he know the interval. Four minutes, 16 seconds later Mr. Holvak stirred, shook himself, blinked. "I guess I was daydreaming," he said through his sad, thin smile. He stood and walked into the office.

It was Holvak who first noticed the noise. Dr. Kabat, preoccupied with the horror of what he now knew, and trying hard to pay attention to Holvak's dreary monolog of self-pity, had not noticed it.

"Every horn in the street seems to be blowing," Holvak said diffidently. It was true. A tremendous cacophony was rising in the air. Kabat went to the window and cranked it out. As far as he could see down Fifth Avenue the street was solid with automobiles, nothing moving. Fifty-ninth was blocked all the way to the Coliseum. Most of the pedestrians on the sidewalks were standing still; those who were not moved slowly and uncertainly. An aircraft was crossing Fifth Avenue at about 50th Street, a Constellation west-bound out of Idlewild, its four engines thudding under climbing load, and as he watched, its engines suddenly shut down; it fell off on one wing in the maneuver that used to be known as a falling leaf, lifted its tail and bored straight in. A surly-looking wisp of oil-black smoke began to rise somewhere near 10th Avenue. Kabat closed the window.

"Mr. Holvak," he said, "I'll have to ask you to excuse me.

We just won't count this session. Please come on Tuesday at the regular time. Pm sorry, but you. must leave me now, something has come up . . ." He hustled the man out and grabbed the telephone. Hackett's apartment didn't answer, and at two the next morning Kabat gave up without having reached him. He appeared promptly at three in the afternoon, as usual.

Kabat looked across the desk at him, a nice young man slumped happily in a big leather chair. He closed his eyes for a moment, thought of a blank ash-white wall. Blankness, he said to himself, blankness, blankness, nothing.

"I suppose you saw the papers this morning?" he said aloud.

"About the traffic jam yesterday?" Hackett said. "Yes, I read about that."

"Odd, wasn't it?" observed Kabat.

"Not at all," Hackett said. "I did that, and you know I did it."

"I think so," Dr. Kabat said. "When you said yesterday that you could not only stop the voices but you could drive them back, I had a notion something like this might happen. We really have a problem now. A certain number of people died yesterday."

"Forty-six in the airplane," Hackett said slowly, "nine in the house it hit, 14 pedestrians and those two window-washers at 720 Fifth. Seventy-one altogether."

"There are certain other considerations," Kabat said. "You realize that all thought stopped for several minutes when you passed. Leaving aside the obvious, say a team of surgeons in an operating theatre, we do not know what losses that may have produced."

"True, I suppose," Hackett said, "but my God, Dr. Kabat, I couldn't help it, I didn't know, I didn't realize, all I thought of was that you and I were beating this thing, that I was winning, that I was being cured, I could go on living . . ."

"Pm not suggesting you are at fault," Kabat said. "Pm saying that we must reach a compromise here, you must somehow learn to control yourself so that you can stop thought transmission coming to you, but not drive it back because obviously when you do that you stop all thought of any kind, I think for four or five minutes. And what do you think is your range now?"

"A mile," Hackett said slowly. "A mile, at least. That airplane was over 5000 feet up."

They sat in silence for a moment. Kabat closed his eyes and bent his mind to the white wall, trying with every fiber in him to keep an image from forming, an image that Hackett could read. He was brave enough, but he had no wish to die.

"It won't work, you know," Hackett said. "The whole secret of what we've done so far lies in a violent effort to push it back. Even if I could achieve the kind of delicate balance that would only stop it, not drive it back, I couldn't hope to do it with more than one person, one living thing, at a time—the way I do with you—because, don't you see, they're all different? If you think of it as a stream of radio signals, every one comes in at a different strength, and an effort that would merely stop one would let 20 others get through. The only solution is to resist with a force that will stop the strongest— and that means driving all the rest of them back. No, it won't work."

"It has to work," Kabat said quietly. "You have a virile imagination. You can see what will happen. Minimally, an increasing accidental death rate, the cessation of the creative process, plague, savagery. Maximally . . ."

"I know," Hackett said. "I thought of that. For instance, that Connie could have been a B-47 with the big boy aboard . . ."

"Let's try," Kabat said. Hackett moved slowly to the couch and lay down.

No aircraft fell the next day. An electronics engineer had suggested the possibility that some kind of man-made interference emanating from a New York laboratory had caused simultaneous engine failure in the Constellation, and traffic was routed around the city. But 22 pedestrians walked into the path of automobiles with fatal results; vehicular collision was estimated at $1,500,000 and on the West Side an upset kerosene stove burned a square block of tenement buildings to ashes. Nine of the firemen who did reach the scene were killed. An elevator in Radio City dropped 42 stories to the basement and in the UN building the delegates nodded in their seats or stumbled, unseeing, through the corridors.

Herbert Kabat didn't sleep that night. He canceled his other appointments for the day and waited, white-faced and taut, for Barnaby Hackett. "If God is good," he thought, "the man has cut his throat." But at three the soft door-gong sounded.

"I don't want to talk about it," Hackett said. He hung his jacket on the back of the chair. He threw himself down on the couch. "Let's not waste any time," he said. "Nothing but hypnosis has done any good so far, and if there's a solution that's where it lies."

"You know," Kabat said softly, "you could go away. You could go say to Australia, in the outback . . ."

"Nonsense," Hackett said. "No man can live alone, truly alone. Besides, this thing is growing, a mile today, five next week, 15, 50 . . ." He folded his hands on his chest. "I'm ready now," he said.

Kabat held tight to the edge of his desk and stared hard at the wall across the room. No image, he told himself, not now, in this last minute. He began to speak softly. "Your eyelids are growing heavy," he said. "Very heavy. You are becoming drowsy, very drowsy. And drowsier. And drowsier. You are going into a deep sleep. Very deep. A very deep sleep. And deep. And deep. And deep . . ."

He stood by the window, looking down. There wasn't a car moving, nor a human being. "Deep," he said. "And deep . . . deep . . . deep . . ."

He waited. Then he took the little box out of the drawer and dropped it into the pocket of Hackett's coat. He let the time pass.

"When you wake," he said, "you will feel refreshed and happy. You will go directly to your apartment. You will hurry. You will hurry because you have something important to do when you get home. In the right-hand pocket of your jacket you will find six pills in a small plain box. You will take these pills, quickly, one after the other, with water. Then you will lie down. You will feel fine, relaxed, content. When you wake up now you will remember nothing of what I have said to you, nothing at all. You will hurry home, and when you get home you will reach in your pocket and you will find the pills. You will want to take them. You will take them quickly. I am going to count to five now, and any time after I reach the count of five you may wake up. One, two, three, four . . . five."

Hackett came slowly to his feet, rubbing his eyes as he always did. He stood up. He looked around the room. "I ought to give you a check today," he said, "but I don't think I'll take the time . . . I'm in something of a hurry . . . I'll see you tomorrow." He opened the door and turned to nod.

"Goodbye, Mr. Hackett," Dr. Kabat said. "Goodbye."

THE KILLER IN THE TV SET

by bruce jay friedman

"When I glanced at the very first sentence, I was filled with a fear that here was a story I would not be able to put down until I had read it through to the end. This proved to be true." That comment by Joseph ("Catch-22") Heller refers to Bruce Jay Friedman's first novel, "Stern," but it is perfectly applicable to "The Killer in the TV Set." It is utterly outre fantasy that might have occurred to any writer watching the late-late show—except that it didn't. It occurred to Bruce Jay Friedman, and that makes all the difference.

AT FIRST, Mr. Ordz noticed only that the master of ceremonies or star of the television show wore a bad toupee, one that swept up suddenly and pointily like an Elks' convention cap. It seemed to be a late-hour "talk" arrangement, leading off with a singer named Connie who did carefully-ticked-off rhythm gestures; one to connote passion, another, unabashed frivolity, and a third naivete and first love. The show was one Mr. Ordz did not recognize, although this was beside the point since his main concern was to avoid going upstairs to Mrs. Ordz, a plump woman who had discovered sex in her early forties. In curlers, she waited each night for Mr. Ordz to come unravel her mysteries so that she might, in her own words, "fly out of control and yield forth the real me." Mr. Ordz had had several exposures to the real her and now scrupulously ducked opportunities for others.

Four male dancers came out now and surrounded the singer, flicking their fingers out toward her, and keeping up a chant that went "Isn't she a doll?" then hoisting her up on their shoulders for the finale.

"Doesn't she just bash you over the head?" asked the m.c, pulling up a chair. The setting was spare, a simple wall with a chair or two lined up against it, much in the style of the "intellectual" conversation show. "I'd like to bash you over the head, too," said the m.c, "but I can't and I've got to get you some other way." Mr. Ordz snickered, sending the snicker out through his nose. It was a laugh he used both for registering amusement and also slight shock, and it served the side function of clearing his nasal passages. "All right, now," the m.c. said, "I used Connie to hook you, although I've no doubt I can keep you once you're watching awhile. Hear me now and hear me good. I've got exactly one week to kill you or I don't get my sponsor. Funny how you fall into these master-of-ceremony jokes just being up here in front of a camera and with all this television paraphernalia. Let me nail down that last remark a little better. I don't mean kill you with laughter or entertainment. I mean really stop your heart, Ordz, for Christ's sake, make you die. I've done work on you and I know I can do it."

Mr. Ordz thought the man had said "hard orbs" but then the m.c. said, "Heart, Ordz, stop your heart, Ordz. All right, then, Mr. Ordz. For Christ's sake listen because I just told you I've only got a week."

Mr. Ordz turned the dial and watched test patterns which is all he could get at two in the morning. He looked at a two-week-old TV Guide and saw there was no listing for a panel show that hour on Tuesday morning and then he called the police. "I'm getting a crazy channel," he said, "and wonder if you can come over and look at it."

"Wait till tomorrow morning and see if it goes away," said the police officer. "We can't just run out for you people."

"All right," said Mr. Ordz, "but I never call the police and I'm really getting something crazy."

He went to bed then, tapping his wife gently on the shoulder and whispering, "I got something crazy on TV," but when she heaved convulsively Mr. Ordz sneaked into the corner of the bed and pretended he wasn't there.

The following evening Mr. Ordz buried his head in a book on Scottish grottoes and read on late into the night, but when two in the morning came, he put aside the book and flipped on the television set. "It'll be better if you put me on earlier," said the m.c, wearing a loud checkered jacket and smiling without sincerity. "You'll noodle around and put me on anyway, so why don't you just put a man on. All right, here's your production number, Ordz. I don't see any point to doing them. It's sort of like fattening up the calf, but I'm supposed to give you one a night for some damned reason."

The singer of the previous evening came out in a Latin American festival costume, clicking her fingers furiously and doing a rhythm number with lyrics that went "Vadoo, vadoo, vadoo vey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, vadoo vey." She finished up with the word "Yeah" and did a deep, humble bow, and the m.c. said, "It'll go hard if you turn me off. I don't mean I can reach out and strike you down. That's the thing I want to explain. I can't shoot you from in here or give you a swift, punishing rabbit punch. It isn't that kind of arrangement. In ours, I've got six days to kill you, but I'm not actually allowed to do it directly. Now, what I'm going to do is try to shake you up as best I can, Ordz, and get you to, say, go up to your room and have a heart attack. I don't know whether you have heart trouble and another thing is I'm not allowed to ask you questions over this thing. But I have researched you, incidentally. It doesn't matter whether I like you or not—the main thing is getting myself a sponsor—but I might as well tell you I don't really care for you at all. You're such a damned small person and your life is such a drag. Now I'm saying this half because I mean it, and, to be honest, half because I want to shake you up and see if I can bring on that heart attack. And now the news. The arrangement is I'm to bring you only flashes on airplane wrecks and major disasters. It was a compromise and I think I did well. At first I was supposed to give you politics, too."

Mr. Ordz watched the first one, some coverage of a DC-7 explosion in Paraguay and then switched off the show and called the police again. He got a different officer and said, "I called about the crazy television show last night."

"I don't know who you got," said the officer. "We get a lot of calls about television and can't just come out."

"All right," said Mr. Ordz, "but even though I called last night I don't go around calling the police all the time."

The only one Mr. Ordz knew in television was his cousin, Raphael, who was an assistant technical director in video tape. He went to see Raphael during lunch hour the next day. It was a short interview.

"I don't think that's any way to get a man," said Mr. Ordz. "I can see a practical joke but I don't think you should draw them out over a week. What if I did get a heart attack?"

"What do you mean?" said Raphael, eating a banana. He was on a banana diet and took several along for his lunch hour.

"The television set," said Mr. Ordz. "What's going on with it is what I mean."

"I'll fix it, I'll fix it," said Raphael. "What are you so ashamed of? If you were a cloak and suiter, as a relative I'd come to you for jackets. I don't see that any shame is involved. The real shame is beating around the bush. If your set is broken, I'll fix it. It doesn't matter that I work on the damned stuff all day long. You won't owe me a thing. Buy me a peck of bananas and we'll call it even. This is a lousy diet if you can't kid yourself a little. And I can kid myself."

"You don't understand what's going on," said Mr. Ordz, helplessly, "and I don't have the energy to tell you."

He went back to his job and late that night, instead of making an effort to stay away, he flicked on the set promptly at two. The m.c. was wearing a Halloween costume. "All right, it's Wednesday," he said, "and the old . . ."

Mr. Ordz cut the m.c. off in mid-sentence by turning the dial to another channel. He waited four or five minutes, feeling his heart beating and then getting nervous about it and squeezing his breast as though to slow it down. He turned back the dial and the m.c. continued the sentence, ". . . heart is still beating, but what you've got to remember is that . . ." Mr. Ordz flipped the dial again and waited roughly ten minutes this time, squeezing down his heart again, then flipped back and picked up the same sentence again: ". . . this thing is cumulative. It looks better for me, it's more artistic, if I bring it off at the tail end of the week. Sort of build tension and then finish up the deal, finish you up that is, right under the wire. What's that?"

The m.c. cupped his hand to his ear and peered off into the wings, then said, "All right, Ordz, they tell me you've been fooling around with the dial and it shocks you that you can't really miss a thing even if you switch off awhile. I don't care if you're shocked or not and the more shocks the better, although I'd rather you didn't go till the end of the week."

Mr. Ordz stood up in front of the television set then and said, "I haven't talked to you yet, but you're getting me mad. It doesn't mean a damned thing when I get mad unless I hit a certain plateau and then I don't feel any pain. I'm not afraid of heart attacks then or doctors or punches in the mouth, and I can spit in death's eye, too. It has no relation to my size or my weak wrists and abdomen. I'm just saying I'm mad now and when I am I'm suddenly articulate, fear no one and can get people. I don't care where you are. You've just come in here and done this to me and I swear I'll get you and I know I can do it because there are no obstacles when I feel this way."

"Calm down," said the m.c, lighting a cigarette. "Just sit down. All right, I admit I'm a little rattled now but it doesn't affect anything. I'm in a studio all right, but it's cleverly disguised and no one in the world would guess where we're set up. So all the anger in the world isn't going to change anything. Just calm down awhile and you'll see what I mean. Sing, Connie."

The hard-faced singer came out as a college coed in sweater and skirt. She pawed naively at the ground, waiting for the lift music and Mr. Ordz shouted, "And I don't want to hear her either."

"Who told you?" said the m.c, rising in a panic. "That's more work for me. You can't keep a damned secret in television. All right, I suppose you know you can have three alternates. The Elbaya flamenco dancers, Orson's Juggling Giants or Alonzo's Acrobatorama."

"I'll take the Acrobatorama," said Mr. Ordz, shaking his fist at the set again. "But it doesn't mean I'm going along with any of this or that I don't want to get you just as bad as ever. I just like acrobats, that's all, and never miss a chance to see them. Then I'm going to watch your damned news and I'm going to bed." Mr. Ordz settled back to watch the acrobats who did several encores.

The m.c. came on again. He had changed his Halloween costume to a dinner jacket and he was puffing away at a cigarette. "All right, I'm going to go right into the news tonight. I am a little rattled and there's no point denying it. Do you think that this is what I wanted to be doing this week? I just want to get my damned sponsor and get out of here. That's all for tonight and here is your disaster coverage. I like you more than I thought I would and I got them to allow some sports. It's about a carload of pro football players that overturned in New Mexico, but it's sports in a way."

The following day Mr. Ordz went to see his doctor about a pain in his belly. "It's either real or imagined," he said to the doctor.

"Can you describe it?" asked the doctor. "It's sort of red with gray edges and is constant." "It'll probably go away," said the doctor. "If it turns blue let me know and we'll take it from there." "Are you kidding me?" asked Mr. Ordz. "I'm a doctor," said the doctor.

Mr. Ordz stayed in town that night to see a foreign film about a tempestuous goat farm. When it was over he went down into the lounge. He was all alone and the TV set was on. His m.c. was dressed like the La Strada carnival man.

"I expected this," said the m.c. "The research showed you have to peek under bandages. If a doctor said, 'Your life depends on it,' you'd have to sneak a peek anyway. So I knew you'd stay away from your set tonight, but I also knew you'd have to peek at some set. Whoever knocked research is crazy. Now look, forget last night when I said I was rattled. I know one thing. I've got to have a sponsor or I go nowhere. If I could reach out there and personally slit your gizzard I'd do it without batting an eyelash. As it is, I'll just have to torment your tail until you go by yourself. Incidentally, I can tell you the details. Research said you'd be here tonight, so by some finagling around I was able to get on much earlier, almost prime time. You can pick up the disaster flashes when you get home at two. Here's your Acrobatorama and if anyone comes in while we're on, we turn into a trusted, familiar network giveaway show."

When Alonzo's men had taken their third encore, Mr. Ordz took the train home and rode between the cars. At one point, he dipped his foot way down outside the car giddily, but then retrieved it and rode home for the two o'clock disasters.

The following night, Friday, Mrs. Ordz joined Mr. Ordz on the television chaise and showered him with love bites on the nose. "I'll erupt," she said, her matronly bosom heaving with tension. "I warn you I'll erupt right down here and we don't have a door shutter."

"Hold off," said Mr. Ordz. "I don't tell you things, but I've got to tell you this thing." He told her the story of the secret channel and the m.c.'s threats, but her lids were closed and she whispered, "You're speaking words, but I hear only hoarse animal sounds. Tame me boobsie, tame me, or I'll erupt before the world."

"I can't get through to anyone because I'm too nervous to say what I mean," said Mr. Ordz. "If I get angry enough, if only I can get angry enough, everyone will hear me loud and clear."

"Wild," she said through clenched teeth. "You're wild as the wind."

"I wish you would hold off," said Mr. Ordz, but his wife would not be shunted aside and he finally carried her stocky body upstairs, getting back downstairs at two-thirty a.m. The hard-faced female singer said, "He told me to tell you that he had a cold but that he'd be back tomorrow night if it killed him. I don't know his name either. He said he didn't have time to line up a replacement and that you should just go to bed, unless you want to hear me sing."

"No," said Mr. Ordz. "I don't care what you do. I'm not going along with this. I just want to see how far the whole thing carries."

"Oh, that's right, you're the one who wanted acrobats. Do you think I'd do this crummy show if I had something else? But I figure one exposure is better than none and you might have some connections. I also do figure modeling. We're skipping the news tonight. Since you don't want me to warble a few, I have a modeling date tonight. I only do work for legit photogs."

In the morning, Mr. Ordz called in his secretary and said, "It's in defense bonds, savings stamps and cash, but it works out to six thousand dollars and I want my wife to get it."

"So just give it to her then," said the girl. "I don't know what you mean."

"I want you to know that it's for her if something happens to me."

"Don't you feel well, Mr. Ordz?" asked the girl. "You're supposed to put that in a will and it doesn't mean anything if you just tell it to a person."

"I'm not bothering around with any wills. I told it to you and you know it and that's all."

"But I can't enforce anything," said the girl.

"Don't argue with me. You just know."

The m.c. was wearing an intern's costume when the show came on much later, and was blowing his nose. "It was a pip all right. I used to get one a winter and I guess I still get them. All right then, now that it's come down to the wire I'd be teasing if I didn't admit it had crossed my mind that your heart might not stop and here I'd be without a sponsor. Research did tell me about the pain in the belly though, and of course that did relax me. You're on your way. I get your life tonight, Ordz. Now look, this is the equivalent of your smoking a last cigarette. You're sick of me, I'm sick of you. If you go upstairs right this second and drink a bottle of iodine, the deal is you don't have to sit through the whole damned show. Fair enough?"

Mr. Ordz dropped his cheesettes and said, "So help me God I'm getting mad."

"And believe me," said the m.c, "the show stinks tonight. I do a whole series of morbid parodies of songs, real bad ones like Ghoul That I Am, and we've got a full hour of on-the-spot coverage of a children's school bus combination fire and explosion. Go upstairs, get yourself a regimental tie or two . . ."

"I'm getting to the crazy point where I can spit in death's eye," said Mr. Ordz, rising from his chaise.

". . . Rig them up noose-style to the shower nozzle, slip your head in there snugly and we'll all go home early."

"I'll get you," shouted Mr. Ordz. And with that he smashed his hand through the television screen, obliterating the picture and opening something stringy in his wrist. Blood spurted out across Mr. Ordz' six volumes of Churchill's war memoirs, sprinkling The Gathering Storm and completely drenching Their Finest Hour. Mr. Ordz studied his wrist and, until he began to feel faint, poked at it, watching it pour forth with renewed frenzy at each of the pokes. On hands and knees then, he went up to his sleeping wife and clutched at her nightgown. "I erupt, I erupt," she said, in a stupor, and then opened her eyes. "Jeez," she said, "are they open at the hospital?" She got on a robe, and by this time Mr. Ordz had lost consciousness. Blood soaked Mrs. Ordz' nightgown as she gathered her husband up in her stocky arms and said, "God forgive me, but even this is sexy." She got him into the car, relieved to see some twitching going on in his neck, and at the hospital a young doctor said, "Get him right in here. I've treated bee bites before. Oh, isn't he the bee-bite man?"

Mrs. Ordz said, "I could just give interns a good pinch. That's how cute they are to me."

The doctor finally got a tourniquet and bandage on Mr.

Ordz, who miraculously regained consciousness for a brief moment and peeked quickly under the bandage. "There are still people I have to get," he said. But then a final jet of blood whooshed forward onto the hospital linoleum and then Mr. Ordz closed his eyes and said no more.

When he began to see again, people were patting lotions on his face. "You're getting me ready for a pine box," he said, but there was no reply. More solutions were patted on his face. He was helped into a tuxedo and then lugged somewhere.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw his m.c. and two distinguished executive-type gentlemen soar out of the top of the building or enclosure he was in. The executives were holding the m.c. by the elbows and all three had sprouted wings. Then Mr. Ordz was shoved forward. Hot lights were brought down close to his face and cameras began to whir. A giant card with large words on it was lowered before his eyes and one of the lotion people said, "Smile at all times. All right, begin reading."

"I don't want to," said Mr. Ordz, "and I'm getting angry enough to spit in all your eyes, even if I am dead." But no sound came from his mouth. The lights got hotter. Then he looked at the card, felt his mouth force into an insincere smile and heard himself saying to a strange man who sat opposite him in a kind of living room, munching on some slices of protein bread, "All right now, Simons, I've got exactly one week to kill you. And I'm not using entertainment talk or anything. I really mean take your life, stop you from breathing. There's nothing personal about all this. It's just that I've got to get a sponsor. But before we go any further, for your viewing entertainment, the Tatzo Trapeze Twins."

I REMEMBER BABYLON

BY ARTHUR C. CLARKE

Arthur C. Clarke is a pleasantly schizoid Englishman: one side of him writes strictly factual material on astrophysics, missiles and rocketry {example: "The Exploration of Space," a Book-of-the-Month Club selection); the other writes imaginative science fiction about the shape of things to come {example: "Childhood's End" a classic in the field). He succeeded in merging his two professional personalities in the following story, a disturbing piece in which fact and fiction are inextricably mingled. It is told in the first-person singular by a man named Arthur C. Clarke. It takes place in Ceylon, where Clarke lives. In it, a couple named Mike and Liz appear —Clarke knows such a couple. When "I Remember Babylon" first appeared, in the May 1960 playboy, the editors remarked, "We call Clarke's piece 'fiction,' though it may be only a matter of time—and a short time, at that—before it becomes disastrous fact." In July of 1962, it did become fact, if not as yet disastrous {touch wood)—for that month saw the launching of Telstar.

MY NAME is Arthur C. Clarke, and I wish I had no connection with the whole sordid business, but as the moral —repeat, moral—integrity of the United States is involved, I must first establish my credentials. Only thus will you understand how, with the aid of the late Dr. Alfred Kinsey, I have unwittingly triggered an avalanche that may sweep away much of western civilization.

Back in 1945, while a radar officer in the Royal Air Force, I had the only original idea of my life. Twelve years before the first Sputnik started beeping, it occurred to me that an artificial satellite would be a wonderful place for a television transmitter, since a station several thousand miles in altitude could broadcast to half the globe. I wrote up the idea the week after Hiroshima, proposing a network of relay satellites 22,000 miles above the equator; at this height, they'd take exactly one day to complete a revolution, and so would remain fixed over the same spot on the Earth.

The piece appeared in the October 1945 issue of Wireless World; not expecting that celestial mechanics would be commercialized in my lifetime, I made no attempt to patent the idea, and doubt if I could have done so anyway. (If I'm wrong, I'd prefer not to know.) But I kept plugging it in my books, and today the idea of communications satellites is so commonplace that no one knows its origin.

I did make a plaintive attempt to put the record straight when approached by the House of Representatives Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration; you'll find my evidence on page 32 of its report, The Next Ten Years in Space. And as you'll see in a moment, my concluding words had an irony I never appreciated at the time: "Living as I do in the Far East, I am constantly reminded of the struggle between the western world and the U. S. S. R. for the uncommitted millions of Asia. . . . When line-of-sight TV transmissions become possible from satellites directly overhead, the propaganda effect may be decisive. . . ."

I still stand by those words, but there were angles I hadn't thought of—and which, unfortunately, other people have.

It all began during one of those official receptions which are such a feature of social life in eastern capitals. They're even more common in the west, of course, but in Colombo there's little competing entertainment. At least once a week, if you are anybody, you get an invitation to cocktails at an embassy or legation, the British Council, the U. S. Operations Mission, L'Alliance Française, or one of the countless alphabetical agencies the UN has begotten.

At first, being more at home beneath the Indian Ocean than in diplomatic circles, my partner and I were nobodies and were left alone. But after Mike godfathered Dave Brubeck's tour of Ceylon, people started to take notice of us—still more so when he married one of the island's best-known beauties. So now our consumption of cocktails and canapés is limited chiefly by reluctance to abandon our comfortable sarongs for such western absurdities as trousers, dinner jackets and ties.

It was the first time we'd been to the Soviet Embassy, which was throwing a party for a group of Russian oceanographers who'd just come into port. Beneath the inevitable paintings of Lenin and Stalin, a couple of hundred guests of all colors, religions and languages were milling around, chatting with friends, or single-mindedly demolishing the vodka and caviar. I'd been separated from Mike and Elizabeth, but could see them at the other side of the room. Mike was doing his "There was I at fifty fathoms" bit to a fascinated audience, while Elizabeth watched him quizzically, and more people watched Elizabeth.

Ever since I lost an eardrum while pearl diving on the Great Barrier Reef, I've been at a considerable disadvantage at functions of this kind: the surface noise is about six db too much for me to cope with. And this is no small handicap, when being introduced to people with names like Dharmasirawar-dene, Tissaverasinghe, Goonetilleke and Jayawickrame. When

I'm not raiding the buffet, therefore, I usually look for a pool of relative quiet where there's a chance of following more than 50 percent of any conversation in which I may get involved. I was standing in the acoustic shadow of a large ornamental pillar, surveying the scene in my detached or Somerset Maugham manner, when I noticed that someone was looking at me with that "Haven't we met before?" expression.

I'll describe him with some care, because there must be many people who can identify him. He was in the mid-thirties, and I guessed he was American; he had that well-scrubbed, crew-cut, man-about-Rockefeller-Center look that used to be a hallmark until the younger Russian diplomats and technical advisers started imitating it so successfully. He was about six feet in height, with shrewd brown eyes and black hair, prematurely gray at the sides. Though I was fairly certain we'd never met before, his face reminded me of someone. It took me a couple of days to work it out: remember John Garfield? That's who it was, as near as makes no difference.

When a stranger catches my eye at a party, my standard operating procedure goes into action automatically. If he seems a pleasant enough person, but I don't feel like introductions at the moment, I give him the Neutral Scan, letting my eyes sweep past him without a flicker of recognition, yet without positive unfriendliness. If he looks a creep, he receives the couf d'oeily which consists of a long, disbelieving stare followed by an unhurried view of the back of my neck; in extreme cases, an expression of revulsion may be switched on for a few milliseconds. The message usually gets across.

But this character seemed interesting, and I was getting bored, so I gave him the Affable Nod. A few minutes later he drifted over and I aimed my good ear toward him.

"Hello," he said (yes, he was American), "my name's Gene Hartford. I'm sure we've met somewhere."

"Quite likely," I answered, "I've spent a good deal of time in the States. I'm Arthur Clarke."

Usually that produces a blank stare, but sometimes it doesn't. I could almost see the IBM cards flickering behind those hard brown eyes, and was flattered by the brevity of his access time.

"The science writer?"

"Correct."

"Well, this is fantastic." He seemed genuinely astonished. "Now I know where I've seen you. I was in the studio once, when you were on the Dave Garroway show."

(This lead may be worth following up, though I doubt it; and I'm sure that "Gene Hartford" was phony—it was too smoothly synthetic.)

"So you're in TV?" I said. "What are you doing here— collecting material, or just on vacation?"

He gave me the frank, friendly smile of a man who has plenty to hide.

"Oh, I'm keeping my eyes open. But this really is amazing;
I read your Exploration of Space when it came out back
in, ah----- "

"1952; the Book-of-the-Month Club's never been quite the same since."

All this time I had been sizing him up, and though there was something about him I didn't like, I was unable to pin it down. In any case, I was prepared to make substantial allowances for someone who had read my books and was also in TV; Mike and I are always on the lookout for markets for our underwater movies. But that, to put it mildly, was not Hartford's line of business.

"Look," he said eagerly. "I've a big network deal cooking that will interest you—in fact, you helped to give me the idea."

This sounded promising, and my coefficient of cupidity jumped several points.

"I'm glad to hear it. What's the general theme?"

"I can't talk about it here, but could we meet at my hotel, around three tomorrow?"

"Let me check my diary; yes, that's OK."

There are only two hotels in Colombo patronized by Americans, and I guessed right first time. He was at the Mount Lavinia, and though you may not know it, you've seen the place where we had our private chat. Around the middle of The Bridge on the River Kwai, there's a brief scene at a military hospital, where Jack Hawkins meets a nurse and asks her where he can find Bill Holden. We have a soft spot for this episode, because Mike was one of the convalescent naval officers in the background. If you look smartly you'll see him on the extreme right, beard in full profile, signing Sam Spiegel's name to his sixth round of bar-chits. As the picture turned out, Sam could afford it.

It was here, on this diminutive plateau high above the miles of palm-fringed beach, that Gene Hartford started to unload— and my simple hopes of financial advantage started to evaporate. What his exact motives were, if indeed he knew them himself, I'm still uncertain. Surprise at meeting me, and a twisted feeling of gratitude (which I would gladly have done without) undoubtedly played a part, and for all his air of confidence he must have been a bitter, lonely man who desperately needed approval and friendship.

He got neither from me. I have always had a sneaking sympathy for Benedict Arnold, as must anyone who knows the full facts of the case. But Arnold merely betrayed his country; no one before Hartford ever tried to seduce it.

What dissolved my dream of dollars was the news that Hartford's connection with American TV had been severed, somewhat violently, in the early Fifties. It was clear that he'd been bounced out of Madison Avenue for Party-lining, and it was equally clear that his was one case where no grave injustice had been done. Though he talked with a certain controlled fury of his fight against asinine censorship, and wept for a brilliant—but unnamed—cultural series he'd had kicked off the air, by this time I was beginning to smell so many rats that my replies were distinctly guarded. Yet as my pecuniary interest in Mr. Hartford diminished, so my personal curiosity increased. Who was behind him? Surely not the BBC . . .

He got round to it at last, when he'd worked the self-pity out of his system.

"I've some news that will make you sit up," he said smugly. "The American networks are soon going to have some real competition. And it will be done just the way you predicted; the people who sent a TV transmitter behind the Moon can put a much bigger one in orbit round the Earth."

"Good for them," I said cautiously. "I'm all in favor of healthy competition. When's the launching date?"

"Any moment now. The first transmitter will be parked due south of New Orleans—on the equator, of course. That puts it way out in the open Pacific; it won't be over anyone's territory, so there'll be no political complications on that score. Yet it will be sitting up there in the sky in full view of everybody from Seattle to Key West. Think of it—the only TV station the whole United States can tune into! Yes, even Hawaii! There won't be any way of jamming it; for the first time, there'll be a clear channel into every American home. And J. Edgar's Boy Scouts can't do a thing to block it."

So that's your little racket, I thought; at least you're being frank. Long ago I learned not to argue with Marxists and Flat-Earthers, but if Hartford was telling the truth I wanted to pump him for all he was worth.

"Before you get too enthusiastic," I said, "there are a few points you may have overlooked."

"Such as?"

"This will work both ways. Everyone knows that the Air Force, NASA, Bell Labs, I. T. &T. and a few dozen other agencies are working on the same project. Whatever Russia does to the States in the propaganda line, she'll get back with compound interest."

Hartford grinned mirthlessly.

"Really, Clarke!" he said (I was glad he hadn't first-named me). "I'm a little disappointed. Surely you know that the States is years behind in pay load capacity! And do you imagine that the old T.3 is Russia's last word?"

It was at this moment that I began to take him very seriously. He was perfectly right. The T.3 could inject at least five times the payload of any American missile into that critical 22,000-mile orbit—the only one that would deliver a satellite apparently fixed above the Earth. And by the time the U. S. could match that performance, heaven knows where the Russians would be. Yes, Heaven certainly would know . . .

"All right," I conceded. "But why should fifty million American homes start switching channels just as soon as they can tune into Moscow? I admire the Russian people, but their entertainment is worse than their politics. After the Bolshoi, what have you? And for me, a little ballet goes a long way."

Once again I was treated to that peculiarly humorless smile. Hartford had been saving up his Sunday punch, and now he let me have it.

"You were the one who brought in the Russians," he said. "They're involved, sure—but only as contractors. The independent agency I'm working for is hiring their services."

"That," I remarked dryly, "must be some agency."

"It is; just about the biggest. Even though the States tries to pretend it doesn't exist."

"Oh," I said, rather stupidly. "So that's your sponsor."

I'd heard those rumors that the U. S. S. R. was going to launch satellites for the Chinese; now it began to look as if the rumors fell far short of the truth. But how far short, I'd still no conception.

"You are so right," continued Hartford, obviously enjoying himself, "about Russian entertainment. After the initial novelty, the Nielsen rating would drop to zero. But not with the programs I'm planning. My job is to find material that will put everyone else out of business when it goes on the air. You think it can't be done? Finish that drink and come up to my room. I've a highbrow movie about ecclesiastical art that I'd like to show you."

Well, he wasn't crazy, though for a few minutes I wondered. I could think of few titles more carefully calculated to make the viewer switch channels than the one that flashed on the screen: aspects of thirteenth century tantric

sculpture.

"Don't be alarmed," Hartford chuckled, above the whir of the projector. "That title saves me having trouble with inquisitive Customs inspectors. It's perfectly accurate, but we'll change it to something with a bigger box-office appeal when the time comes."

A couple of hundred feet later, after some innocuous architectural long-shots, I saw what he meant . . .

You may know that there are certain temples in India, covered with superbly executed carvings of a kind that we in the west scarcely associate with religion. To say that they are frank is a laughable understatement; they leave nothing to the imagination—any imagination. Yet at the same time they are genuine works of art. And so was Hartford's movie.

It had been shot, in case you're interested, at the Temple of the Sun, Konarak. "An awkward place to reach," Hartford told me, "but decidedly worth the trouble." I've since looked it up; it's on the Orissa coast, about 25 miles northeast of Puri. The reference books are pretty mealy-mouthed; some apologize for the "obvious" impossibility of providing illustrations, but Percy Brown's Indian Architecture minces no words. The carvings, it says primly, are of "a shamelessly erotic character that have no parallel in any known building." A sweeping claim, but I can believe it after seeing that movie.

Camera work and editing were brilliant, the ancient stones coming to life beneath the roving lens. There were breathtaking time-lapse shots as the rising sun chased the shadows from bodies intertwined in ecstasy; sudden startling close-ups of scenes which at first the mind refused to recognize; soft-focus studies of stone shaped by a master's hand in all the fantasies and aberrations of love; restless zooms and pans whose meaning eluded the eye until they froze into patterns of timeless desire, eternal fulfillment. The music—mostly percussion, with a thin, high thread of sound from some stringed instrument that I could not identify—perfectly fitted the tempo of the cutting. At one moment it would be languorously slow, like the opening bars of Debussy's L'Afres-midi; then the drums would swiftly work themselves up to a frenzied, almost unendurable climax. The art of the ancient sculptors, and the skill of the modern cameraman, had combined across the centuries to create a poem of rapture, an orgasm on celluloid which I would defy any man to watch unmoved.

There was a long silence when the screen flooded with light and the lascivious music ebbed into exhaustion.

"My God!" I said, when I had recovered some of my composure. "Are you going to telecast that?"

Hartford laughed.

"Believe me," he answered, "that's nothing; it just happens to be the only reel I can carry round safely. We're prepared to defend it any day on grounds of genuine art, historic interest, religious tolerance—oh, we've thought of all the angles. But it doesn't really matter; no one can stop us. For the first time in history, any form of censorship's become utterly impossible. There's simply no way of enforcing it; the customer can get what he wants, right in his own home. Lock the door, switch on the TV set to our—dare I call it our blue network?—and settle back. Friends and family will never know."

"Very clever," I said, "but don't you think such a diet will soon pall?"

"Of course; variety is the spice of life. We'll have plenty of conventional entertainment; let me worry about that. And every so often we'll have information programs—I hate that word propaganda—to tell the cloistered American public what's really happening in the world. Our special features will just be the bait."

"Mind if I have some fresh air," I said. "It's getting stuffy in here."

Hartford drew the curtains and let daylight back into the room. Below us lay that long curve of beach, with outrigger fishing boats drawn up beneath the palms, and little waves falling in foam at the end of their weary march from Africa. One of the loveliest sights in the world, but I couldn't focus on it now. I was still seeing those writhing stone limbs, those faces frozen with passions which the centuries could not slake.

That slick voice continued behind my back.

"You'd be astonished if you knew just how much material there is. Remember, we've absolutely no taboos. If you can film it, we can telecast it."

He walked over to his bureau and picked up a heavy, dogeared volume.

"This has been my bible," he said, "or my Sears, Roebuck, if you prefer. Without it, I'd never have sold the series to my sponsors. They're great believers in science, and they swallowed the whole thing, down to the last decimal point. Recognize it?"

I nodded; whenever I enter a room, I always monitor my host's literary tastes.

"Dr. Kinsey, I presume."

"I guess I'm the only man who's read it from cover to cover, and not just looked up his own vital statistics. You see, it's the only piece of market research in its field. Until something better comes along, we're making the most of it. It tells us what the customer wants, and we're going to supply it."

"All of it? Some people have odd tastes."

"That's the beauty of the movie you just saw—it appeals to just about every taste."

"You can say that again," I muttered.

He saw that I was beginning to get bored; there are some kinds of single-mindedness that I find depressing. But I had done Hartford an injustice, as he hastened to prove.

"Please don't think," he said anxiously, "that sex is our only weapon. Exposé is almost as good. Ever see the job Ed Murrow did on the late sainted Joe McCarthy? That was milk and water compared with the profiles we're planning in Washington Confidential.

"And there's our Can You Take It? series, designed to separate the men from the milksops. We'll issue so many advance warnings that every red-blooded American will feel he has to watch the show. It will start innocently enough, on ground nicely prepared by Hemingway. You'll see some bullfighting sequences that will really lift you out of your seat —or send you running to the bathroom—because they show all the little details you never get in those cleaned-up Hollywood movies.

We'll follow that with some really unique material that cost us exactly nothing. Do you remember the photographic evidence the Niirnburg war trials turned up? You've never seen it, because it wasn't publishable. There were quite a few amateur photographers in the concentration camps, who made the most of opportunities they'd never get again. Some of them were hanged on the testimony of their own cameras, but their work wasn't wasted. It will lead nicely into our series Torture Through the Ages—very scholarly and thorough, yet with a remarkably wide appeal . . .

"And there are dozens of other angles, but by now you'll have the general picture. The Avenue thinks it knows all about Hidden Persuasion—believe me, it doesn't. The world's best practical psychologists are in the east these days. Remember Korea, and brainwashing? We've learned a lot since then. There's no need for violence any more; people enjoy being brainwashed, if you set about it the right way."

"And you," I said, "are going to brainwash the United States. Quite an order."

"Exactly—and the country will love it, despite all the screams from Congress and the churches. Not to mention the networks, of course. They'll make the biggest fuss of all, when they find they can't compete with us."

Hartford glanced at his watch, and gave a whistle of alarm.

"Time to start packing," he said. "I've got to be at that unpronounceable airport of yours by six. There's no chance, I suppose, that you can fly over to Macao and see us sometime?"

"Not a hope; but I've got a pretty good idea of the picture now. And incidentally, aren't you afraid I'll spill the beans?"

"Why should I be? The more publicity you can give us, the better. Although our advertising campaign doesn't go into top gear for a few months yet, I feel you've earned this advance notice. As I said, your books helped to give me the idea."

His gratitude was guite genuine, by God; it left me completely speechless.

"Nothing can stop us," he declared—and for the first time the fanaticism that lurked behind that smooth, cynical fagade was not altogether under control. "History is on our side. We'll be using America's own decadence as a weapon against her, and it's a weapon for which there's no defense. The Air Force won't attempt space piracy by shooting down a satellite nowhere near American territory. The FCC can't even protest to a country that doesn't exist in the eyes of the State Department. If you've any other suggestions, I'd be most interested to hear them."

I had none then, and I have none now. Perhaps these words may give some brief warning before the first teasing advertisements appear in the trade papers, and may start stirrings of elephantine alarm among the networks. But will it make any difference? Hartford did not think so, and he may be right.

"History is on our side." I cannot get those words out of my head. Land of Lincoln and Franklin and Melville, I love you and I wish you well. But into my heart blows a cold wind from the past; for I remember Babylon.

194 JOHN GRANT'S LITTLE ANGEL

"No, they're elsewhere. But I come here often. I like it. There's so much life, so many people." She hesitated. "You'll probably think I'm crazy, but you know what I do when I'm here? I go down to the Bowery, and if I find someone who's really down and out, and sick, I buy him a drink, and get him a meal and a place to sleep. I always do. You probably think I'm crazy."

"No, that's a kind thing to do," Grant said seriously. "I think that's a real act of kindness."

"Oh, do you really?" she said, looking at him with her eyes shining. "I'm so glad you told me that. You see, I'm not very good at denning things."

"It's an act of kindness," Grant said stoutly.

"Well, I'd like to tell you something else," she said, and she leaned closer to him. "I'm not a nut or anything, I don't want you to think that, but I meditate."

"You meditate?" he said.

She nodded. "Yes, I do. Now and then. Pretty frequently, actually. And I'd like to tell you about it." "All right," Grant said.

"Some people think you have to go to a chapel or temple, some place that's got a sign that says open daily for rest, meditation and prayer. But you don't. I find sacred places. I mean, I could sit down in that booth and meditate, but it's better in a sacred place."

"A sacred place?" he said.

"You find them when you're closest to nature. Perhaps at the shore, at night, with phosphorescence coming in with the waves. Or alone in the stillness of a pine forest. I recommend those places to you. It's an experience that will be beneficial and rewarding for you."

"Well, I like nature," Grant said.

She glanced at her watch, the large one on her right wrist. "Oh, I must fly. But I'll buy you one quick drink," she said, signaling the bartender.

"No, I'll buy you."

"Oh, no," she said. "I have to." She lifted the fresh glass and smiled at him. "Happy days." "Amen to that," Grant said.

She put her gloved hand on his shoulder, then lightly against his cheek. "Bless you," she said. "What?" Grant said.

"I said goodbye to you. Tell me, do you have some problem with your hearing?"

"Oh, no. No," Grant said firmly.

She walked to the door, then suddenly turned back. She was carrying the ebony stick in her right hand and she lifted it, gesturing at him. "Oh, there was one other thing. You're to take very good care of your women." Then she laughed, winked at him and walked out.

Oh, hell, I forgot to ask her name, Grant thought. He went to the door, glanced down the street, then across the block. She was gone. She had probably got right into a cab. Grant walked back to the bar, smiling. What a charming girl, he was thinking. A real little angel. His hangover seemed to be cured.

Grant left the bar and walked uptown. He did not want to go to his office. At 51st Street he turned and walked east to the river. He leaned against a railing, staring at the water, standing so still a sea gull circled twice over his head before deciding Grant was not edible, or would not make a firm perch. It had been years since he had stood there. When he had first worked in New York he had gone there almost every day. He had stared at the water and planned what he would accomplish. Sometimes he had told Frances. She was his girl then. A Greenwich Village girl with a copy of something by Sartre under her arm, talking to people instead of going to her classes at the New School. They had lived in one room with an electric hot plate and no refrigerator, and they had washed dishes in the bathroom. Sundays she got up before he did, walked to Sutter's and bought pastry for breakfast. When she returned, it would still be warm. The sea gull alighted on the railing.

"I'll tell you something, bird," Grant said. "It's a long way from an electric hot plate to Stamford, Connecticut. And I don't plan on losing any of it. Not one lousy dandelion, not one miserable crab-grass seed. Understand?"

The sea gull screamed in horror and flew off.

Grant stared into his palm, as if his life rested there. Two full acres of Fairfield County with an authentic 19th Century house and an authentic 20th Century swimming pool; a full-time maid who slept in, and a part-time gardener; a Buick station wagon, a Porsche, an old Morgan he tinkered with on weekends; soon he would buy a boat—his son was seven, old enough to learn to sail; the children went to the proper schools in winter, and in summer to proper camps; a full-time wife, Edith, who also slept in; she was always doing something for the League of Women Voters or something; she had got him to adopt the Greek girl—oh, you didn't really adopt them, you only sent money and wrote letters; and he had his partnership with Fred.

Grant closed his hand, as if he had seen the future. My God, it's only one account, he thought. If I've lost it, I've lost it. There are other accounts; And Edith will have to understand that I was tight, that's all. She knows that.

Grant walked back across town. He saw a cigar store and went inside and telephoned Jack Regal. The secretary asked him to hold, please.

In seconds Regal was on the line. "Grant? Jesus, buddy, you still alive today?"

"Well, I spent the morning curing a hangover," Grant said. "Do you know, I don't even remember leaving your house? I don't remember driving to Stamford."

"Listen, I don't remember dinner" Jack said. "The last I remember was sitting, laughing and drinking it up in the playroom. Then, boom! it's nine o'clock this morning and Jackie's giving me hell for getting us stinking. Listen, did we ever have dinner?"

My God, he doesn't remember, Grant thought. He doesn't remember me with his wife; he was too drunk! "I'll put it this way, Jack. From what I remember the wine was excellent. But, why I called. Could I buy you a lunch?"

"Not today, buddy. I got long-distance calls hanging on right this minute. Let's make it lunch tomorrow and I'll pick you up, because we got to discuss details. I decided I want you and Fred to handle my account. I decided you and Fred will devote the time and energy to my account that I want devoted to it."

I got it, Grant thought. I got it, after all! "Jack, that's wonderful," he said. "We appreciate that very much. Both Fred and I appreciate it very much."

"So I got to go now, buddy. Calls waiting."

"Lunch tomorrow," Grant reminded him.

He was still smiling when he walked into his office.

His secretary took off her glasses and pinched the bridge of
her nose, something she did when she was nervous. "Mrs.
Grant is in your office, Mr. Grant. She wanted to wait for you.
She, well, she seemed upset, so "

"That's all right, Ruby," Grant said. But he thought, Damn it, not here. He couldn't afford a scene in the office; he'd get her into a cab, take her to lunch. He went briskly into his office, said, "Hello baby," to his wife, and kissed her.

Edith was tall, blonde, and always immaculately groomed. But she looked as if she had just dashed from catastrophe, flinging herself into clothes as she ran. He knew that Jack Regal might not remember seeing, but that Edith remembered hearing, or something.

"Are you as hung over as I am, doll?" he said. "I had a couple, but I'm going to have one more. How about you?"

Edith closed her eyes, as if she couldn't bear to look at life.

"I should be in bed, but I had to talk to you. I had to talk to you face to face, not over a phone."

Oh, God, Grant thought. He walked to a small bar in the corner of the room. "I'll make some highballs. And tell you some good news. I got Jack Regal's account."

Edith took a deep drink from her glass. "I don't like some things you have to do to get accounts."

"Mixing business with our social life?" Grant said. "Oh, I'll be able to hire a bright young man to do that now."

"Oh, I don't understand how you can be so calm!" she burst out. "You know what happened last night. I don't see how you can stand there and look at me so calmly! Don't you care? Don't you care about anything but the agency?" And she began to weep.

"Let me fix you another drink, baby," Grant said heavily. "And I'll try to explain."

When Edith did weep, which was seldom, she went all out, sobbing, hiccuping, her nose running, strangling for breath. After the second drink she gained some control. "Never in my life have I felt so ashamed and embarrassed, so deeply, deeply ashamed and embarrassed."

"Well," Grant said, taking a long breath.

"Oh, I would have told you about it," Edith said. "Even if you hadn't walked in and seen me with that horrible little man. I would have told you about it."

Grant lifted his glass carefully and drank.

"It was bad enough what I did. Letting him paw me like that. I mean, this morning when I realized I'd let him, not even saying no. Oh, my God. Then you walked in and there we were, sprawled on that sofa . . ." She began to sob again.

When the hell did that happen, Grant thought. He did not remember anything about that.

"Oh, how can you stand me?" she wept. "I've never done that since we've been married. I feel so ashamed."

"Now cut that out," Grant said, rather automatically. "That's not getting us anywhere."

The phone on his desk buzzed. He had forgot to tell Ruby no calls. "Yes?" he said into the phone.

"There's a woman calling who won't give her last name. I thought it might be a friend, from Stamford or someplace. She said to tell you Jackie."

Grant felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle. Her name brought back her image. He could remember her fingers trembling in his palm, kissing her and the taste of perfume.

"Get the number," he said. "I'll try to call back."

As he put the phone down he thought, Maybe she saw Edith with Regal, maybe she's going to make trouble. But how could she cause trouble? Regal ran the corporation. And then another thought occurred to Grant: But perhaps Regal's wife runs him. Oh, Goddamn, Grant thought. Now I'll have to call her back, I'll have to see her.

"I'll go," Edith said. "I'm interrupting."

"No, stay," he said quickly. He smoothed her forehead with his hand and smiled. "Look, you never saw that guy before. You haven't been having an affair with him. You got a little tight at a party, a little affectionate."

"I went pretty far," Edith said soberly.

"Listen, you know when a person gets loaded the censor in
his mind relaxes. Last night Regal reminded you of something
subconscious. Some old, atavistic thing, connected with your
past, perhaps your father-- "

"Oh, no! Daddy's a tall man."

"That doesn't matter. As far as you and I are concerned,
Jack Regal is a father figure. An authority figure. Because he
controls the money, money that I want. And so you are bound
to react as if he was-- "

Edith shook her head. "No. It's simpler than that, I'm afraid. I didn't want to go to dinner there, I didn't like him or his wife. I was leading him on, really. Just so that, finally, I could say no to him. To put him down, to put him in his place. I was being a bitch."

Grant saw she no longer felt so bad. "Look, do you want another drink? Because I want you to get on a train and go home and sleep. I want dinner in tonight, not out."

"No, not another," Edith said. She kissed him goodbye quickly. "See you later," she said, smiling at him as if she were promising him something.

Grant gave her ten minutes to go downstairs and get a cab for Grand Central. Then he put on his topcoat and went out to his secretary. "Ruby, dear, this isn't my day. Something's come up about the children. Will you stay until Fred gets back? Then take the rest of the day off."

"Oh, I'm sorry you have an emergency. But what about the woman who called?" She handed him a slip of paper.

Grant stared at the telephone number. It was in Manhattan. He memorized it, then tossed the paper into the wastebasket. "It's not important. Some charity thing."

He rode the elevator down to the lobby and telephoned.
"Hey, Jackie?----- "

"Yes, this is Mrs. Regal. Is that you, Mr. Grant?"

Damn, she is going to cause trouble, Grant thought. "Yes, it is, Mrs. Regal. John Grant."

"Are you in the office, Mr. Grant?"

"No. I'm in a telephone booth."

"Oh," she said, and her voice relaxed and became warm. "I just didn't want a bunch of secretaries listening to our conversation. Listen, why I called. He didn't see a thing. I thought you might worry, so I called as soon as I could."

"Are you certain?" Grant asked.

"Listen, he drinks three martinis and everything's blank. Nobody knows, he looks the same. I asked him this morning, and the last thing he remembers is me coming downstairs. And that was right at first, if you recall."

Grant realized she hadn't seen Edith and Regal, or else she didn't care. You're out of the fire now, boy, he told himself. From now on there was one rule he was going to obey: Leave the clients' wives strictly alone.

"Hey, you there or what?" she said.

Her voice was husky. He could picture her holding the phone, moistening her lips with the tip of her tongue. Oh, Goddamn, he thought, I shouldn't do this. He took a deep breath. "Listen, Jackie. I want to see you very much."

"Well, me, too. It's what I came to Manhattan for. You got a pencil? Take down an address."

It was in the East 70s.

"It's an apartment of a girlfriend of mine," she said. "Jack doesn't know I know her anymore. He doesn't know who she's married to. Well, they went to South America and left me the key, so I could look in. There's no doorman. The elevator's automatic. You coming now, or what?"

"I'll be right over," Grant said. He decided he would stop by Sherry's and buy some champagne.

The elevator door opened into the apartment, but it could only be opened from the inside. Grant buzzed and saw her face looking through the small window, then she opened the door. "OK. Everybody out of the elevator. Everybody into the apartment."

Grant put his hat and the package from Sherry's on a small table. She had walked into the living room. He went after her and put his arms around her; he tried to turn her around, so she faced him—she struggled away.

"Wait a minute, wait. You got on your topcoat still. I got to talk to you."

"Oh, there's no need for talk," Grant said, kissing her neck and shoulders, and feeling for a zipper.

"Cut' that out, you're driving me crazy," she said. "Listen, I
got to talk, this is very serious what we're involved in, you and
I. I had two girlfriends involved in this very same thing and it
ruined their lives. Ida------ "

"Oh, don't worry, darling," Grant said, struggling to get a
firm grasp on her wrists. "There's nothing to- "

"But let me tell you about Ida Glass! She could never make

THE FIEND

BY FREDERIK POHL

Frederik Pohl, literary agent emeritus, current editor of Galaxy magazine, author of superior science fiction, gentleman of erudition and charm, "is not afraid of emotion, so that his stories have a drive and power enviable in any writer, especially in one whose main outlet is science fiction." So says The New York Times. His books include the stimulating collections "Tomorrow Times Seven" and "The Case Against Tomorrow," the novel "Slave Ship," and, with the late C. M. Kornbluth, such novels as "Gladiator-at-Law" "Search the Sky" and "The Space Merchants," an admonitory satire on future ad-men, which Anthony Boucher calls "a book so rewarding that it should henceforth show up on all lists of science-fiction 'classics'" which Kingsley Amis says "has many claims to being the best science-fiction novel so far," and which, as this anthology goes to press, has been purchased by the movie moguls for a whopping five-figure sum. In his playboy story, "The Fiend" Pohl takes a standard sci-fi staple—suspended animation of space passengers during long interstellar voyages—and brings to it a fresh idea and a surprising twist.

HOW BEAUTIFUL she was, Dandish thought, and how helpless. The plastic identification ribbon around her neck stood out straight, and as she was just out of the transport capsule, she wore nothing else. "Are you awake?" he asked, but she did not stir.

Dandish felt excitement building up inside him, she was so passive and without defense. A man could come to her now and do anything at all to her, and she would not resist. Or, of course, respond. Without touching her he knew that her body would be warm and dry. It was fully alive, and in a few minutes she would be conscious.

Dandish—who was the captain and sole crew member of the interstellar ship without a name carrying congealed colonists across the long, slow, empty space from the Earth to a planet that circled a star that had never had a name in astronomical charts, only a number, and was now called Eleanor—passed those minutes without looking again at the girl, whose name he knew to be Silvie but whom he had never met. When he looked again she was awake, jackknifed against the safety straps of the crib, her hair standing out around her head and her face wearing an expression of anger. "All right. Where are you? I know what the score is," she said. "Do you know what they can do to you for this?"

Dandish was startled. He did not like being startled, for it frightened him. For nine years the ship had been whispering across space; he had had enough loneliness to satisfy him and he had been frightened. There were 700 cans of colonists on the ship, but they lay brittle and changeless in their bath of liquid helium and were not very good company. Outside the ship the nearest human being was perhaps two light-years away, barring some chance-met ship heading in the other direction that was actually far more remote than either star, since the forces involved in stopping and matching course with a vessel bound home were twice as great as, and would take twice as much time as, those involved in the voyage itself.

Everything about the trip was frightening. The loneliness was a terror. To stare down through an inch of crystal and see nothing but far stars led to panic. Dandish had decided to stop looking out five years before, but had not been able to keep to his decision, and so now and again peeped through the crystal and contemplated his horrifying visions of the seal breaking, the crystal popping out on a breath of air, himself in his metal prison tumbling, tumbling forever down to the heart of one of the 10,000,000 stars that lay below. In this ship a noise was an alarm. Since no one but himself was awake, to hear a scratch of metal or a thud of a moving object striking something else, however tiny, however remote, was a threat, and more than once Dandish had suffered through an itch of fear for hours or days until he tracked down the exploded light tube or unsecured door that had startled him. He dreamed uneasily of fire. This was preposterously unlikely, in the steel and crystal ship, but what he was dreaming of was not the fire of a house but the monstrous fires in the stars beneath.

"Come out where I can see you," commanded the girl.

Dandish noted that she had not troubled to try to cover her nakedness. Bare she woke and bare she stayed. She had unhitched the restraining webbing and left the crib, and now she was prowling the room in which she had awakened, looking for him. "They warned us," she called. " Watch the hook!' 'Look out for the space nuts!' 'You'll be sorry!' That's all we heard at the Reception Center, and now here you are, all right. Wherever you are. Where are you? For God's sake, come out so I can see you." She half stood and half floated at an angle to the floor, nibbling at imperceptible bits of dead skin on her lips and staring warily from side to side. She said, "What was the story you were going to tell me? A subspace meteorite destroyed the ship, all but you and me, and we were doomed to fly endlessly toward nowhere, so there was nothing for us to do but try to make a life for ourselves?"

Dandish watched her through the view eyes in the reviving room, but did not answer. He was a connoisseur of victims, Dandish was. He had spent a great deal of time planning this. Physically she was perfect, very young, slim, slight. He had picked her out on that basis from among the 352 female canned colonists, leafing through the microfile photographs that accompanied each colonist's dossier like a hi-fi hobbyist shopping through a catalog. She had been the best of the lot. Dandish was not skilled enough to be able to read a personality profile, and in any event considered psychologists to be phonies and their profiles trash, so he had had to go by the indices he knew. He had wanted his victim to be innocent and trusting. Silvie, 16 years old and a little below average in intelligence, had seemed very promising. It was disappointing that she did not react with more fear. /'They'll give you fifty years for this!" she shouted, looking around to see where he could be hiding. "You know that, don't you?"

The revival crib, sensing that she was out of it, was quietly stowing and rearming itself, ready to be taken out and used again. Its plastic sheets slipped free of the corners, rolled up in a tight spiral and slid into a disposal chute, revealing aseptic new sheets below. Its radio-warming generators tested themselves with a surge of high-voltage current, found no flaws and shut themselves off. The crib sides folded down meekly. The instrument table hooded itself over. The girl paused to watch it, then shook her head and laughed. "Scared of me?" she called. "Come on, let's get this over with! Or else," she added, "admit you've made a boo-boo, get me some clothes and let's talk this over sensibly."

Sorrowfully Dandish turned his gaze away. A timing device reminded him that it was time to make his routine half-hour check of the ship's systems and, as he had done more than 150,000 times already and would do 100,000 times again, he swiftly scanned the temperature readings in the can hold, metered the loss of liquid helium and balanced it against the withdrawals from the reserve, compared the ship's course with the flight plan, measured the fuel consumption and rate of flow, found all systems functioning smoothly and returned to the girl. It had taken only a minute or so, but already she had found the comb and mirror he had put out for her and was working angrily at her hair. One fault in the techniques of freezing and revivification lay in what happened to such elaborated structures as fingernails and hair. At the temperature of liquid helium all organic matter was brittle as Prince Rupert's drops, and although the handling techniques were planned with that fact in mind, the body wrapped gently in elastic cocooning, every care exercised to keep it from contact with anything hard or sharp, nails and hair had a way of being snapped off. The Reception Center endlessly drummed into the colonists the importance of short nails and butch haircuts, but the colonists were not always convinced. Silvie now looked like a dummy on which a student wigmaker had failed a test. She solved her problem at last by winding what remained of her hair in a tiny bun and put down the comb, snapped-off strands of hair floating in the air all about her like a stretched-out sandstorm.

She patted the bun mournfully and said, "I guess you think this is pretty funny."

Dandish considered the question. He was not impelled to laugh. Twenty years before, when Dandish was a teenager with the long permanented hair and the lacquered fingernails that were the fashion for kids that year, he had dreamed almost every night of just such a situation as this. To own a girl of his own—not to love her or to rape her or to marry her, but to possess her as a slave, with no one anywhere to stop him from whatever he chose to impose on her—had elaborated itself in a hundred variations nightly. He didn't tell anyone about his dream, not directly, but in the school period devoted to practical psychology he had mentioned it as something he had read in a book and the instructor, staring right through him into his dreams, told him it was a repressed wish to play with dolls. "This fellow is role playing," he said, "acting out a wish to be a woman. These clear-cut cases of repressed homosexuality can take many forms . . ."; and on and on, and although the dreams were as physically satisfying as ever, the young Dandish awoke from them both reproved and resentful.

But Silvie was neither a dream nor a doll. "I'm not a doll!" said Silvie, so sharply and patly that it was a shock. "Come on out and get it over with!"

She straightened up, holding to a free-fall grip, and although she looked angry and annoyed she still did not seem afraid. "Unless you are really crazy," she said clearly, "which I doubt, although I have to admit it's a possibility, you aren't going to do anything I don't want you to do, you know. Because you can't get away with it, right? You can't kill me, you could never explain it, and besides they don't let murderers run ships in the first place, and so when we land all I have to do is yell cop and you're running a subway shuttle for the next ninety years." She giggled. "I know about that. My uncle got busted on income-tax evasion and now he's a self-propelled dredge in the Amazon delta, and you should see the letters he writes. So come on out and let's see what I'm willing to let you get away withl"

She grew impatient. "Kee-rist," she said, shaking her head. "I sure get the great ones. And, oh, by the way, as long as I'm up, I have to go to the little girls' room, and then I want breakfast,"

Dandish took some small satisfaction in that these requirements, at least, he had foreseen. He opened the door to the washroom and turned on the warmer oven where emergency rations were waiting. By the time Silvie came back biscuits, bacon and hot coffee were set out for her.

"I don't suppose you have a cigarette?" she said. "Well, I'll live. How about some clothes? And how about coming out so I can get a look at you?" She stretched and yawned and then began to eat. Apparently she had showered, as was generally desirable on awakening from freeze-sleep to get rid of the exfoliated skin, and she had wrapped her ruined hair in a small towel. Dandish had left the one small towel in the washroom, reluctantly, but it had not occurred to him that his victim would wrap it around her head. Silvie sat thoughtfully staring at the remains of her breakfast and then after a while said, like a lecturer:

"As I understand it, starship sailors are always some kind of a nut, because who else would go off for twenty years at a time, even for money, even for any kind of money? All right, you're a nut. So if you wake me up and won't come out, won't talk to me, there's nothing I can do about it.

"Now, I can see that even if you weren't a little loopy to Start with, this kind of life would tip you. Maybe you just want a little company? I can understand that. I might even cooperate and say no more about it.

"On the other hand, maybe you're trying to get your nerve up for something rough. Don't know if you can, because they naturally screened you down fine before they gave you the job. But supposing. What happens then?

"If you kill me, they catch you.

"If you don't kill me, then I tell them when we land, and they catch you.

"I told you about my uncle. Right now his body is in the deepfreeze somewhere on the dark side of Mercury and they've got his brain keeping the navigation channels clear off Belem. Maybe you think that's not so bad. Uncle Henry doesn't like it a bit. He doesn't have any company, bad as you that way, I guess, and he says his suction hoses are always sore. Of course he could always louse up on the job, but then they'd just put him some other place that wouldn't be quite as nice— so what he does is grit his teeth, or I guess you should say his grinders, and get along the best he can. Ninety years! He's only done six so far. I mean six when I left Earth, whatever that is now. You wouldn't like that. So why not come out and talk?"

Five or ten minutes later, after making faces and buttering another roll and flinging it furiously at the wall, where the disposal units sluiced it away, she said, "Damn you, then give me a book to read, anyway."

Dandish retreated from her and listened to the whisper of the ship for a few minutes, then activated the mechanisms of the revival crib. He had been a loser long enough to learn when to cut his losses. The girl sprang to her feet as the sides of the crib unfolded. Gentle tentacles reached out for her and deposited her in it, locking the webbing belt around her waist. "You damned fool!" she shouted, but Dandish did not answer. The anesthesia cone descended toward her struggling face, and

she screamed, "Wait a minute! I never said I wouldn't-- ";

but what she never said she wouldn't, she couldn't say, because the cone cut her off. In a moment she was asleep. A plastic sack stretched itself around her, molding to her face, her body, her legs, even to the strayed towel around her hair, and the revival crib rolled silently to the freezing room. Dandish did not watch further. He knew what would happen, and besides, the timer reminded him to make his check. Temperatures, normal; fuel consumption, normal; course, normal; freezer room showed one new capsule en route to storage, otherwise normal. Goodbye, Silvie, said Dandish to himself, you were a pretty bad mistake.

Conceivably later on, with another girl . . .

But it had» taken nine years for Dandish to wake Silvie, and he did not think he could do it again. He thought of her Uncle Henry running a dredge along the South Atlantic littoral. It could have been him. He had leaped at the opportunity to spend his sentence piloting a starship instead.

He stared out at the 10,000,000 stars below with the optical receptors that were his eyes. He clawed helplessly at space with the radars that gave him touch. He wept a 5,000,000-mile stream of ions behind him from his jets. He thought of the tons of helpless flesh in his hold, the bodies in which he could have delighted, if his own body had not been with Uncle Henry's on coldside Mercury, the fears on which he could have fed, if he had been able to inspire fear. He would have sobbed, if he had had a voice to sob with.

THE NAIL AND THE ORACLE

BY THEODORE STURGEON

Theodore Sturgeon is the science-fiction and fantasy writer's science-fiction and fantasy writer. Ray Bradbury readily admits that, when he was younger, he "looked upon Sturgeon with a secret and gnawing jealousy." James Blish flatly calls him "the finest conscious artist science fiction has ever had." A writer of blinding brilliance and unbridled imagination—such books as "Some of Your Blood," "More Than Human" and "E Pluribus Unicorn" are classics in the field—he is also "a manicured nudist" (in a friend's literal description) and an original thinker who gets of good ones like this observation on sex: "The definition of perversion is anything done to the exclusion of everything else—including the normal position." It has been said that Sturgeon harbors a "positive and pure loathing for all wheelers-and-dealers." This is evident in many of his stories, and never more so than in the following tale of chicanery on a very high level.

DESPITE THE IMPROVEMENTS, the Pentagon in 1970 was still the Pentagon, with more places to walk than places to sit. Not that Jones had a legitimate gripe. The cubical cave they had assigned to him as an office would have been more than adequate for the two-three days he himself had estimated. But by the end of the third week it fit him like a size-6 hat and choked him like a size-12 collar. Annie's phone calls expressed eagerness to have him back, but there was an edge to the eagerness now which made him anxious. His hotel manager had wanted to shift his room after the first week and he had been stubborn about it; now he was marooned like a rock in a mushroom patch, surrounded by a back-to-rhythm convention of the Anti-Anti-Population Explosion League. He'd had to buy shirts, he'd had to buy shoes, he'd needed a type-four common-cold shot, and most of all, he couldn't find what was wrong with oracle.

Jones and his crew had stripped oracle down to its mounting bolts, checked a thousand miles of wiring and a million solid-state elements, everything but its priceless and untouchable memory banks. Then they'd rebuilt the monster, meticulously cross-checking all the way. For the past four days they had been running the recompleted computer, performance-matching with crash-priority time on other machines, while half the science boys and a third of the military wailed in anguish. He had reported to three men that the machine had nothing wrong with it, that it never had had anything wrong with it, and that there was no reason to believe there ever would be anything wrong with it. One by one these three had gone (again) into oracle's chamber, and bolted the door, and energized the privacy field, and then one by one they had emerged stern and disappointed, to tell Jones that it would not give them an answer: an old admiral, an ageless colonel and a piece of walking legend whom Jones called to himself the civilian.

Having sent his crew home—for thus he burned his bridges

—having deprived himself of Jacquard the design genius and the 23 others, the wiring team, all the mathematicians, everyone, Jones sighed in his little office, picked up the phone again and called the three for a conference. When he put the instrument down again he felt a little pleased. Consistencies pleased Jones, even unpleasant ones, and the instant response of all three was right in line with everything they had done from the time they had first complained about oracle's inability to answer their questions, all through their fiddling and diddling during every second of the long diagnostic operation. The admiral had had an open line installed to Jones' office, the colonel had devised a special code word for his switchboard, the civilian had hung around personally, ignoring all firm, polite hints until he had turned his ankle on a cable, giving Jones a reason to get him out of there. In other words, these three didn't just want an answer, they needed it.

They came, the admiral with his old brows and brand-new steel-blue eyes, the colonel with starch in his spine and skin like a postmaneuver proving grounds, the civilian limping a bit, with his head tilted a bit, turned a bit, a captivating mannerism which always gave his audiences the feeling that history cared to listen to them. Jones let them get settled, this admiral whose whole career had consisted of greater and greater commands until his strong old hand was a twitch away from the spokes of the helm of the ship of state; this colonel who had retained his lowly "rank as a mark of scorn for the academy men who scurried to obey him, whose luxurious quarters were equipped with an iron barracks bed; and this civilian with the scholarly air, with both Houses and a Cabinet rank behind him, whose political skills were as strong, and as deft, and as spiked as a logroller's feet.

"Gentlemen," said Jones, "this may well be our last meeting. There will, of course, be a written report, but I understand the—uh—practicalities of such a situation quite well, and I do not feel it necessary to go into the kind of detail in the report that is possible to us in an informal discussion." He looked at each face in turn and congratulated himself. That was just right. This is just between us boys. Nobody's going to squeal on you.

"You've dismissed your crew," said the civilian, causing a slight start in the admiral and a narrowing of the colonel's eyes and, in Jones, a flash of admiration. This one had snoopers the services hadn't even dreamed up yet. "I hope this is good news."

"Depends," said Jones. "What it means primarily is that they have done all they can. In other words, there is nothing wrong with oracle in any of their specialties. Their specialties include everything the computer is and does. In still other words, there's nothing wrong with the machine."

"So you told us yesterday," gritted the colonel, "but I got no results. And—I want results." The last was added as an old ritual which, apparently, had always gotten results just by being recited.

"I followed the procedures," said the admiral, intoning this as a cardinal virtue, "and also got no results." He held up a finger and suspended operations in the room while he performed some sort of internal countdown. "Had I not done so, oracle would have responded with* an 'insufficient data' signal. Correct?"

"Quite correct," said Jones.

"And it didn't."

"That was my experience," said the civilian, and the colonel nodded.

"Gentlemen," said Jones, "neither I nor my crew—and there just is not a better one—have been able to devise a question that produced that result."

"It was not a result," snapped the colonel.

Jones ignored him. "Given the truth of my conclusion—that there is nothing wrong with the machine—and your reports, which I can have no reason to doubt, there is no area left to investigate but one, and that is in your hands, not mine. It's the one thing you have withheld from me." He paused. Two of them shifted their feet. The colonel tightened his jaw.

The admiral said softly, but with utter finality, "I cannot divulge my question."

The colonel and the civilian spoke together: "Security---------- "

and "This is a matter------- " and then both fell silent.

"Security." Jones spread his hands. To keep from an enemy, real or potential, matters vital to the safety of the nation, that was security. And how easy it was to wrap the same blanket about the use of a helicopter to a certain haven, the presence of a surprising little package in a Congressional desk, the exact

relations between a certain officer and his------------- arghl This,

thought Jones, has all the earmarks of, not our security, but of three cases of my security . . . I'll try just once more.

"Thirty years ago, a writer named William Tenn wrote a brilliant story in which an Air Force moon landing was made, and the expedition found an inhabited pressure dome nearby. They sent out a scout, who was prepared to die at the hands of Russians or even Martians. He returned to the ship in a paroxysm, gentlemen, of laughter. The other dome belonged to the U. S. Navy."

The admiral projected two loud syllables of a guffaw and said, "Of course." The colonel looked pained. The civilian, bright-eyed, made a small nod which clearly said, One up for you, boy.

Jones put on his used-car-salesman face. "Honestly, gentlemen, it embarrasses me to draw a parallel like that. I believe with all my heart that each of you has the best interests of our nation foremost in his thoughts. As for myself—security? Why, I wouldn't be here if I hadn't been cleared all the way back to Pithecanthropus erectus.

"So much for you, so much for me. Now, as for oracle, you know as well as I do that it is no ordinary computer. It is designed for computations, not of math, specifically, nor of strictly physical problems, though it can perform them, but for the distillation of human thought. For over a decade the contents of the Library of Congress and other sources have poured into that machine—everything: novels, philosophy, magazines, poetry, textbooks, religious tracts, comic books, even millions of personnel records. There's every shade of opinion, every quality of writing—anything and everything that an army of over a thousand microfilming technicians have been able to cram into it. As long as it's printed and in English, German, Russian, French or Japanese, oracle can absorb it. Esperanto is the funnel for a hundred Oriental and African languages. It's the greatest repository of human thought and thought-directed action the world has ever known, and its one most powerful barrier against error in human affairs is the sheer mass of its memory and the wide spectrum of opinion that has poured into it.

"Add to this its ability tt> extrapolate—to project the results of hypothetical acts—and the purposely designed privacy structure—for it's incapable of recording or reporting who asked it what question—and you have oracle, the one place in the world where you can get a straight answer based, not in terms of the problem itself, but on every ideological computation and cross-comparison that can be packed into it."

"The one place I couldn't get a straight answer," said the civilian gently.

"To your particular question. Sir, if you want that answer, you have got to give me that question." He checked a hopeful stir in the other two by adding quickly, "and yours. And yours. You see, gentlemen, though I am concerned for your needs in this matter, my prime concern is oracle. To find a way to get one of the answers isn't enough. If I had all three, I might be able to deduce a common denominator. I already have, of course, though it isn't enough: you are all high up in national affairs, and very close to the center of things. You are all of the same generation" (translation: near the end of the road) "and, I'm sure, equally determined to do the best you can for your country" (to get to the top of the heap before you cash in). "Consider me" he said, and smiled disarmingly. "To let me get this close to the answer I want; namely, what's wrong with oracle, and then to withhold it—isn't that sort of cruel and unusual punishment?"

"I feel for you," said the civilian, not without a twinkle. Then, sober with a coldness that would freeze helium into a block, he said, "But you ask too much."

Jones looked at him, and then at the others, sensing their unshakable agreement. "OK," he said, with all the explosive harshness he could muster, "I'm done here. I'm sick of this place and my girl's sick of being by herself, and I'm going home. You can't call in anyone else, because there isn't anyone else: my company built oracle and my men were trained for it."

This kind of thing was obviously in the colonel's idiom. From far back in his throat, he issued a grinding sound that' came out in words: "You'll finish the job you were ordered to do, mister, or you'll take the consequences."

Jones shouted at him, "Consequences? What consequences? You couldn't even have me fired, because I can make a damn good case that you prevented me from finishing the job. I'm not under your orders either. This seems a good time to remind you of the forgotten tradition that with this"—he took hold of the narrow lapel of his own sports jacket—"I outrank any uniform in this whole entire Pentagon." He caught the swift smile of the civilian, and therefore trained his next blast on him. "Consequences? The only consequence you can get now is to deny yourself and your country the answer to your question. The only conclusion I can come to is that something else is more important to you than that. What else?" He stood up. So did the officers.

From his chair, the civilian said sonorously, "Now, now . . . gentlemen. Surely we can resolve this problem without raising our voices. Mr. Jones, would the possession of two of these questions help you in your diagnosis? Or even one?"

Breathing hard, Jones said, "It might."

The civilian opened his long white hands. "Then there's no
problem after all. If one of you gentlemen- "

"Absolutely not," said the admiral instantly.

"Not me," growled the colonel. "You want compromise, don't you? Well, go ahead—you compromise."

"In this area," said the civilian smoothly, "I possess all the facts, and it is my considered judgment that the disclosure of my question would not further Mr. Jones' endeavors." (Jones thought, the admiral said the same thing in two words.) "Admiral, would you submit to my judgment the question of whether or not security would be endangered by your showing Mr. Jones your question?" f

"I would not."

The civilian turned to the colonel. One look at that rock-bound countenance was sufficient to make him turn away again, which, thought Jones, puts the colonel two points ahead of the admiral in the word-economy business.

Jones said to the civilian, "No use, sir, and by my lights, that's the end of it. The simplest possible way to say it is that you gentlemen have the only tools in existence that would make it possible for me to repair this gadget, and you won't let me have them. So fix it yourself, or leave it the way it is. I'd see you out," he added, scanning the walls of the tiny room, "but I have to go to the John." He stalked out, his mind having vividly and permanently photographed the astonishment on the admiral's usually composed features, the colonel's face fury-twisted into something like the knot that binds the lashes of a whip, and the civilian grinning broadly.

Grinning broadly?

Ah well, he thought, slamming the men's-room door behind him—and infuriatingly, it wouldn't slam—Ah well, we all have our way of showing frustration. Maybe I could've been just as mad more gently.

The door moved, and someone ranged alongside at the next vertical bathtub. Jones glanced, and then said aloud, "Maybe I could've been just as mad more gently."

"Perhaps we all could have," said the civilian, and then with his free hand he did four surprising things in extremely rapid succession. He put his finger to his lips, then his hand to the wall and then to his ear. Finally he whisked a small folded paper out of his breast pocket and handed it to Jones. He then finished what he was doing and went to wash up.

Shh. The walls have ears. Take this.

"All through history," said the civilian from the sink, his big old voice booming in the tiled room, "we read about the impasse, and practically every time it's mentioned, it's a sort of preface to an explanation of how it was solved. Yet I'll bet history's full of impasses that just couldn't be solved. They don't get mentioned because when it happens, everything stops. There just isn't anything to write down in the book anymore. I think we've just seen such an occasion, and I'm sorry for each of us."

The old son of a gun! "Thanks for that much, anyway, sir," Jones said, tucking the paper carefully away out of sight. The old man, wiping his hands, winked once and went out.

Back in his office, which seemed three times larger than it had been before the conference, Jones slumped behind his desk and teased himself with the small folded paper, not reading it, turning it over and over. It had to be the old man's question. Granted that it was, why had he been so willing to hand it over now, when three minutes earlier his refusal had been just about as adamant as—adamant? So, Jones, quit looking at the detail and get on the big picture. What was different in those three minutes?

Well, they were out of one room and into another. Out of one room that was damn well not bugged and into one which, the old man's pantomime had informed him, may well be. Nope—that didn't make sense. Then—how about this? In the one room there had been witnesses. In the second, none—not after the finger on the lips. So if a man concluded that the civilian probably never had had an objection to Jones' seeing and using the question, but wanted it concealed from anyone else—maybe specifically from those other two . . . why, the man had the big picture.

What else? That the civilian had not said this, therefore would not bring himself to say it in so many words, and would not appreciate any conversation that might force him to talk it over. Finally, no matter how reluctant he might be to let Jones see the paper, the slim chance Jones offered him of getting an answer outweighed every other consideration—except the chance of the other two.Jinding out. So another part of the message was: I'm sitting on dynamite, Mr. Jones, and I'm handing you the detonator. Or: I trust you, Mr. Jones.

Sobeit, old man. I've got the message.

He closed his eyes and squeezed the whole situation to see if anything else would drip out of it. Nothing . . . except the faint conjecture that what worked on one might work on the other two. And as if on cue, the door opened and a bland-faced major came in a pace, stopped, said "Beg pardon, sir. I'm in the wrong room," and before Jones could finish saying "That's all right," he was gone. Jones gazed thoughtfully at the door. That major was one of the colonel's boys. That "wrong room" bit had a most unlikely flavor to it. So if the man hadn't come in for nothing, he'd come in for something. He hadn't taken anything and he hadn't left anything, so he'd come in to find something out. The only thing he could find out was whether Jones was or was not here. Oh: and whether he was or was not alone.

All Jones had to do to check that out was to sit tight. You can find out if a man is alone in a room for now, but not for ten minutes from now, or five.

In two minutes the colonel came in.

He wore his "I don't like you, mister" expression. He placed his scarred brown hands flat on Jones' desk and rocked forward over him Eke a tidal wave about to break.

"It's your word against mine, and I'm prepared to call you a liar," grated the colonel. "I want you to report to me and no one else."

"All right," said Jones, and put out his hand. The colonel locked gazes with him for a fair slice of forever, which made Jones believe that the Medusa legend wasn't necessarily a legend after all. Then the officer put a small folded paper into Jones' outstretched palm. "You get the idea pretty quick, I'll say that, mister"} he straightened, about-faced and marched out.

Jones looked at the two scraps of folded paper on the desk and thought, I will be damned. And one to go.

He picked up the papers and dropped them again, feeling like a kid who forces himself to eat all the cake before he attacks the icing. He thought, maybe the old boy wants to but just doesn't know how.

He reached for the phone and dialed for the open line, wondering if the admiral had had it canceled yet.

He had not, and he wasn't waiting for the first ring to finish itself. He knew who was calling and he knew Jones knew, so he said nothing, just picked up the phone.

Jones said, "It was kind of crowded in here."

"Precisely the point," said the admiral, with the same grudging approval the colonel had shown. There was a short pause, and then the admiral said, "Have you called anyone else?"

Into four syllables Jones put all the outraged innocence of a male soprano accused of rape. "Certainly not."

"Good man."

The Britishism amused Jones, and he almost said Gung ho, what?; but instead he concentrated on what to say next. It was easy to converse with the admiral if you supplied both sides of the conversation. Suddenly it came to him that the admiral wouldn't want to come here—he had somewhat farther to travel than the colonel had—nor would he like the looks of Jones' visiting him at this particular moment. He said, "I wouldn't mention this, but as you know, I'm leaving soon and may not see you. And I think you picked up my cigarette lighter."

"Oh," said the admiral.

"And me out of matches," said Jones ruefully. "Well—I'm going down to oracle now. Nice to have known you, sir." He hung up, stuck an unlit cigarette in his mouth, put the two folded papers in his left pants pocket, and began an easy stroll down the catacombs called corridors in the Pentagon.

Just this side of oracle's dead-end corridor, and not quite in visual range of its security post, a smiling young ensign, who otherwise gave every evidence of being about his own business, said, "Light, sir?"

"Why, thanks."

The ensign handed him a lighter. He didn't light it and proffer the flame; he handed the thing over. Jones lit his cigarette and dropped the lighter into his pocket. "Thanks."

"That's all right," smiled the ensign, and walked on.

At the security post, Jones said to the guard, "Whoppen?"

"Nothing and nobody, Mr. Jones."

"Best news I've had all day." He signed the book and accompanied the guard down the dead end. They each produced a key and together opened the door. "I shouldn't be too long."

"All the same to me," said the guard, and Jones realized he'd been wishfully thinking out loud. He shut the door, hit the inner lock switch, and walked through the little foyer and the swinging door which unveiled what the crew called oracle's "temple."

He looked at the computer, and it looked back at him. "Like I told you before," he said conversationally, "for something that causes so much trouble, you're awful little and awful homely."

oracle did not answer, because it was not aware of him. oracle could read and do a number of more complex and subtle things, but it had no ears. It was indeed homely as a wall, which is what the front end mostly resembled, and the immense size of its translators, receptors and the memory banks was not evident here. The temple—other people called it Suburbia Delphi—contained nothing but that animated wall, with its one everblooming amber "on" light (for the machine never ceased gulping its oceans of thought), a small desk and chair, and the mechanical typewriter with the modified Bodoni type face which was used for the reader. The reader itself was nothing more than a clipboard (though with machined guides to hold the paper exactly in place) with a large push button above it, placed on a strut which extended from the front of the computer, and lined up with a lens set flush into it. It was an eerie experience to push that button after placing your query, for oracle scanned so quickly and "thought" so fast that it was rapping away on its writer before you could get your thumb off the button.

Usually.

Jones sat at the desk, switched on the light and took out the admiral's lighter. It was a square one, with two parts which telescoped apart to get to the tank. The tight little roll of paper was there, sure enough, with the typescript not seriously blurred by lighter fluid. He smoothed it out, retrieved the other two, unfolded them, stacked them all neatly; and then, feeling very like Christmas morning, said gaily to the unresponsive oracle:

"Now!"

Seconds later, he was breathing hard. A flood of profanity welled upward within him—and dissipated itself as totally inadequate.

Wagging his head helplessly, he brought the three papers to the typewriter and wrote them out on fresh paper, staying within the guidelines printed there, and adding the correct code symbols for the admiral, the colonel and the civilian. These symbols had been assigned by oracle itself, and were cross-checked against the personnel records it carried in its memory banks. It was the only way in which it was possible to ask a question including that towering monosyllable "I."

Jones clipped the first paper in place, held his breath and pushed the button.

There was a small flare of light from the hood surrounding the lens as the computer automatically brought the available light to optimum. A relay clicked softly as the writer was activated. A white tongue^of paper protruded. Jones tore it off. It was blank.

He grunted, then replaced the paper with the second, then the third. It seemed that on one of them there was a half-second delay in the writer relay, but it was insignificant: the paper remained blank.

"Stick your tongue out at me, will you?" he muttered at the computer, which silently gazed back at him with its blank single eye. He went back to the typewriter and copied one of the questions, but with his own code identification symbols. It read:

the elimination of what single man could result in my presidency?

He dipped the paper in place and pushed the button. The relay clicked, the writer rattled and the paper protruded. He tore it off. It read (complete with quotes):

"john doe"

"A wise guy," Jones growled. He returned to the typewriter and again copied one of the queries with his own code:

if i eliminate the president, how

can i assure personal control?

Wryly, oracle answered:

don't eat a bite until your execution.

It actually took Jones a couple of seconds to absorb that one, and then he uttered an almost hysterical bray of laughter.

The third question he asked, under his own identification, was:

can my support of henny bring peace?

The answer was a flat no, and Jones did not laugh one bit. "And you don't find anything funny about it either," he congratulated the computer, and actually, physically shuddered.

For Henny—the Honorable Oswaldus Deeming Henny— was an automatic nightmare to the likes of Jones. His weather-beaten saint's face, his shoulder-length white hair (oh, what genius of a public-relations man put him onto that?), his diapason voice, but most of all, his "Plan for Peace" had more than once brought Jones up out of a sound sleep into a cold sweat. Now, there was once a man who entranced a certain segment of the population with a slogan about the royalty in every man, but he could not have taken ever the country, because a slogan is not a political philosophy. And there was another who was capable of turning vast numbers of his countrymen—for a while—against one another and toward him for protection: and he could not have taken over the country, because the manipulation of fear is not an economic philosophy. This Henny, however, was the man who had both, and more besides. His appearance alone gave him more nonthinking, vote-bearing adherents than Rudolph Valentino plus Albert Schweitzer. His advocacy of absolute isolation brought in the right wing, his demand for unilateral disarmament brought in the left wing, his credo that science could, with a third of munitions-size budgets, replace foreign trade through research, invention and ersatz, brought in the tech segment, and his dead certainty of lowering taxes had a thick hook in everyone else. Even the most battle-struck of the war wanters found themselves shoulder to shoulder with the peace-at-any-price extremists, because of the high moral tone of his disarmament plan, which was to turn our weapons on ourselves and present any aggressor with nothing but slag and cinders— the ultimate deterrent. It was the most marvelous blend of big bang and beneficence, able to cut chance and challenge together with openhanded Gandhiism, with an answer for everyone and a better life for all.

"All of which," complained Jones to the featureless face of the computer, "doesn't help me find out why you wouldn't answer those three guys, though I must say, I'm glad you didn't." He went and got ihe desk chair and put it down front and center before the computer. He sat down and folded his arms and they stared silently at each other.

At length he said, "If you were a people instead of a thing, how would I handle you? A miserable, stubborn, intelligent snob of a people?"

Just how do I handle people? he wondered. I do—I know I do. I always seem to think of the right thing to say, or to ask. I've already asked oracle what's wrong, and oracle says nothing is wrong. The way any miserable, stubborn, intelligent snob would.

What I do, he told himself, is to empathize. Crawl into their skins, feel with their fingertips, look out through their eyes.

Look out through their eyes.

He rose and got the admiral's query—the one with the admiral's own identification on it—clipped it to the board, then hunkered down on the floor with his back to the computer and his head blocking the lens.

He was seeing exactly what the computer saw.

Clipboard. Query. The small bare chamber, the far wall. The . . .

He stopped breathing. After a long astonished moment he said, when he could say anything, and because it was all he could think of to say: "Well I . . . be . . . damned . . ."

The admiral was the first in. Jones had had a busy time of it for the 90 minutes following his great discovery, and he was feeling a little out of breath, but at the same time a little louder and quicker than the other guy, as if he had walked into the reading room after a rubdown and a needle-shower.

"Sit down, Admiral."

"Jones, did you---- "

"Please, sir—sit down."

"But surely----- "

"I've got your answer, Admiral. But there's something we have to do first." He made waving gestures. "Bear with me."

He wouldn't have made it, thought Jones, except for the
colonel's well-timed entrance. Boy oh boy, thought Jones, look
at'm, stiff as tongs. You come on the battlefield looking just
like a target. On the other hand, that's how you made your
combat reputation, isn't it? The colonel was two strides into
the room before he saw the admiral. He stopped, began an
about-face and said over his left epaulet, "I didn't think- "

"Sit down, Colonel," said Jones in a pretty fair imitation of the man's own brass gullet. It reached the officer's muscles before it reached his brain and he sat. He turned angrily on the admiral, who said instantly, "This wasn't my idea," in a completely insulting way.

Again the door opened and old living history walked in, his
head a little to one side, his eyes ready to see and understand
and his famous mouth to smile, but when he saw the tableau,
the eyes frosted over and the mouth also said: "I didn't
think---- "

"Sit down, sir," said Jones, and began spieling as the civilian was about to refuse, and kept on spieling while he changed his mind, lowered himself guardedly onto the edge of a chair and perched his old bones on its front edge as if he intended not to stay.

"Gentlemen," Jones began, "I'm happy to tell you that I have succeeded in finding out why oracle was unable to perform for you—thanks to certain unexpected cooperation I received." Nice touch, Jones. Each one of 'em will think he turned the trick, singlehandedly. But not for long. "Now I have a plane to catch, and you all have things to do, and I would appreciate it if you would hear me out with as little interruption as possible." Looking at these bright eager angry sullen faces, Jones let himself realize for the first time why detectives in whodunits assemble all the suspects and make speeches. Why they -personally do it—why the author has them do it. It's because it's fun.

"In this package"—he lifted from beside his desk a brown paper parcel a yard long and^ 15 inches wide—"is the cause of all the trouble. My company was founded over a half century ago, and one of these has been an appurtenance of every one of the company's operations, each of its major devices and installations, all of its larger utility equipment—cranes, trucks, bulldozers, everything. You'll find them in every company office and in most company cafeterias." He put the package down flat on his desk and fondled it while he talked. "Now, gentlemen, I'm not going to go into any part of the long argument about whether or not a computer can be conscious of what it's doing, because we haven't time and we're not here to discuss metaphysics. I will, however, remind you of a childhood chant. Remember the one that runs: 'For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the message was lost; for want of the message the battle was lost; for want of the battle the kingdom was lost —and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.'"

"Mr. Jones," said the admiral, "I—we—didn't come
here to----- "

"I just said that," Jones said smoothly, and went right on talking until the admiral just stopped trying. "This"—he rapped the package—"is oracle's horseshoe nail. If it's no ordinary nail, that's because oracle's no ordinary computer. It isn't designed to solve problems in their own context; there are other machines that do that, oracle solves problems the way an educated man solves them—by bringing everything he is and has to bear on them. Lacking this one part"—he thumped the package again—"it can then answer your questions, and it accordingly did." He smiled suddenly. "I don't think oracle was designed this way," he added musingly. "I think it . . . became . . . this way . . ." He shook himself. "Anyway, I have your answers."

Now he could afford to pause, because he had them. At that moment, the only way any of them could have been removed was by dissection and haulage.

Jones lined up his sights on the colonel and said, "In a way, your question was the most interesting, Colonel. To me professionally, I mean. It shows to what detail oracle can go in answering a wide theoretical question. One might even make a case for original creative thinking, though that's always arguable. Could a totally obedient robot think if you flatly ordered it to think? When does a perfect imitation of a thing become the thing itself?"

"You're not going to discuss my question here," said the colonel as a matter of absolute, incontrovertible fact.

"Yes I am," said Jones, and raised his voice. "You listen to me, before you stick that trigger finger of yours inside that tunic, Colonel. I'm in a corny mood right now and so I've done a corny thing. Two copies of a detailed report of this whole affair are now in the mail, and, I might add, in a mailbox outside this building. One goes to my boss, who is a very big wheel and a loyal friend, with as many contacts in business and government as there are company machines operating, and that puts him on the damn moon as well as all over the world. The other goes to someone else, and when you find out who that is it'll be too late, because in two hours he can reach every paper, every wire service, every newscasting organization on earth. Naturally, consistent with the corn, I've sent these out sealed with orders to open them if I don't phone by a certain time—and I assure you it won't be from here. In other words, you can't do anything to me and you'd better not delay me. Sit down, Admiral" he roared.

"I'm certainly not going to sit here and-- "

"I'm going to finish what I started out to do whether you're here or not." Jones waved at the other two. "They'll be here. You want that?"

The admiral sat down. The civilian said, in a tolling of
mighty sorrow, "Mr. Jones, I had what seemed to be your
faithful promise--- "

"There were overriding considerations," said Jones. "You know what an overriding consideration is, don't you, sir?" and he held up the unmistakable oracle query form. The civilian subsided.

"Let him finish," gritted the colonel. "We can—well, let him finish."

Jones instantly, like oracle, translated: We can take care of him later. He said to the colonel, "Cheer up. You can always deny everything, like you said." He fanned through the papers before him and dealt out the colonel's query. He read it aloud:

" 'if i eliminate the president, how can i assure personal control?' "

The colonel's face could have been shipped out, untreated, and installed on Mount Rushmore. The civilian gasped and put his knuckles in his mouth. The admiral's slitted eyes went round.

"The answer," said Jones, "makes that case for creative thinking I was talking about, oracle said: 'detonate one

bomb within underground h. q. spend your subsequent tenure looking for others.' "

Jones put down the paper and spoke past the colonel to the other two. "Get the big picture, gentlemen? 'underground h. q.' could only mean the centralized control for government in the mountains. Whether or not the President— or anyone else—was there at the time is beside the point. If not, he'd find another way easily enough. After that happened, our hero here would take the posture of the national savior, the only man competent to track down a second bomb, which could be anywhere. Imagine the fear, the witch-hunts, the cordons, the suspicion, the 'Emergency' and 'For the Duration' orders and regulations." Suddenly savage, Jones snarled, "I've got just one more thing to say about this warrior and his plans. All his own strength, and the entire muscle behind everything he plans for himself, derives from the finest esprit de corps the world has ever known. I told you I'm in a corny mood, so I'm going to say it just the way it strikes me. That kind of esprit is a bigger thing than obedience or devotion or even faith, it's a species of love. And there's not a hell of a lot of that to go around in this world. Butchering the President to make himself a little tin god is a minor crime compared to his willingness to take a quality like that and turn it into a perversion."

The civilian, as if unconsciously, hitched his chair a half inch away from the colonel. The admiral trained a firing-squad kind of look at him.

"Admiral," said Jones, and the man twitched, "I'd like to call your attention to the colonel's use of the word 'eliminate' in his query. You don't, you know, you just don't eliminate a live President." He let that sink in, and then said, "I mention it because you, too, used it, and it's a fair conjecture that it means the same thing. Listen: 'what single man can i eliminate to become president?' "

"There could hardly be any one man," said the civilian thoughtfully, gaining Jones' great respect for his composure. Jones said, "oracle thinks so. It wrote your name, sir."

Slowly the civilian turned to the admiral. "Why, you sleek old son of a bitch," he enunciated carefully, "I do believe you could have made it."

"Purely a hypothetical question," explained the admiral, but no one paid the least attention.

"As for you," said Jones, rather surprised that his voice expressed so much of the regret he felt, "I do believe that you asked your question with a genuine desire to see a world at peace before you passed on. But, sir—it's like you said when you walked in here just now—and the colonel said it, too: 'I didn't think . . .' You are sitting next to two certifiable first-degree murderers; no matter what their overriding considerations, that's what they are. But what you planned is infinitely worse."

He read, "'can my support of henny bring peace?' You'll be pleased to know-^-oh, you already know; you were just checking, right?—that the answer is Yes. Henny's position is such right now that your support would bring him in. But— you didn't think. That demagog can't do what he wants to do without a species of thought policing the like of which the ant-heap experts in China never even dreamed of. Unilateral disarmament and high morality scorched-earth! Why, as a nation we couldn't do that unless we meant it, and we couldn't mean it unless every man, woman and child thought alike— and with Henny running things, they would. Peace? Sure we'd have peace! I'd rather take on a Kodiak bear with boxing gloves than take my chances in that kind of a world. These guys," he said carelessly, "are prepared to murder one or two or a few thousand. You," said Jones, his voice suddenly shaking with scorn, "are prepared to murder every decent free thing this country ever stood for."

Jones rose. "I'm going now. All your answers are in the package there. Up to now it's been an integral part of oracle —it was placed exactly in line with the reader, and has therefore been a part of everything the machine has ever done. My recommendation is that you replace it, or oracle will be just another computer, answering questions in terms of themselves. I suggest that you make similar installations in your own environment . . . and quit asking questions that must be answered in terms of yowrselves. Questions which in the larger sense would be unthinkable."

The civilian rose, and did something that Jones would always remember as a decent thing. He put out his hand and said, "You are right. I needed this, and you've stopped me. What will stop them?"

Jones took the hand. "They're stopped. I know, because I asked oracle and oracle said this was the way to do it." He smiled briefly and went out. His last glimpse of the office was the rigid backs of the two officers, and the civilian behind his desk, slowly unwrapping the package. He walked down the endless Pentagon corridors, the skin between his shoulder blades tight all the way: oracle or no, there might be overriding considerations. But he made it, and got to the first outside phone booth still alive. Marvelously, wonderfully alive.

He heard Ann's voice and said, "It's a real wonderful world, you know that?"

"Jones, darling! . . . you certainly have changed your tune. Last time I talked to you it was a horrible place full of evil intentions and smelling like feet."

"I just found out for sure three lousy kinds of world it's not going to be," Jones said. Ann would not have been what she was to him if she had not been able to divine which questions not to ask. She said, "Well, good," and he said he was coming home.

"Oh, darling! You fix that gadget?"

"Nothing to it," Jones said. "I just took down the

^~THINK^J^J

sign."

She said, "I never know when you're kidding."

SPY STORY

by robert sheckley

Some pages back, in introducing "Love, Incorporated," we quoted Kingsley Amis' description of Robert Sheckley: "science-fiction's premier gadfly." He is a gadfly whose sting does not spare science fiction itself or the people who write it. Says Sheckley: "S-f seems to be a haven for skilled, artistically-inclined people who are satisfied with a low level of aspiration. They dream of truth and splendor, then sit down and turn out a silly little story about a robot who's lost his best friend. Bold experimentation, in the world of s-f, is the weary old notion of dispensing with plot. When it gets literary, it is often precious. Its greatest fault is that it maintains so many deadly illusions about itself." Not surprisingly, Sheck-ley's own work is wellf lotted, free of precious-ness and pomposity, lean, astringent, and lightly brushed with a tint of satire that disguises the often mordant social commentary lying just beneath the entertaining surface. These qualities are diver tin gly demonstrated in "Spy Story."

I'M REALLY IN TROUBLE now, more trouble than I ever thought possible. It's a little difficult to explain how I got into this mess, so maybe I'd better start at the beginning.

Ever since I graduated trade school in 1991 I'd had a good job as sphinx valve assembler on the Starling Spaceship production line. I really loved those big ships, roaring to Cygnus and Alpha Centaurus and all the other places in the news. I was a young man with a future, I had friends, I even knew some girls.

But it was no good.

The job was fine, but I couldn't do my best work with those hidden cameras focused on my hands. Not that I minded the cameras themselves j it was the whirring noise they made. I couldn't concentrate.

I complained to Internal Security. I told them, look, why can't I have new, quiet cameras, like everybody else? But they were too busy to do anything about it.

Then lots of little things started to bother me. Like the tape recorder in my TV set. The F.B.I, never adjusted it right, and it hummed all night long. I complained a hundred times. I told them, look, nobody else's recorder hums that way. Why mine? But they always gave me that speech about winning the cold war, and how they couldn't please everybody.

Things like that make a person feel inferior. I suspected my government wasn't interested in me.

Take my Spy, for example. I was an 18-D Suspect—the same classification as the Vice-President—and this entitled me :o part-time surveillance. But my particular Spy must have thought he was a movie actor, because he always wore a stained trench coat and a slouch hat jammed over his eyes. He was a thin, nervous type, and he followed practically on my heels for fear of losing me.

Well, he was trying his best. Spying is a competitive business, and I couldn't help but feel sorry, he was so bad at it. But it was embarrassing, just to be associated with him. My friends laughed themselves sick whenever I showed up with him breathing down the back of my neck. "Bill," they said, "is that the best you can do?" And my girl friends thought he was creepy.

Naturally, I went to the Senate Investigations Committee, and said, look, why can't you give me a trained Spy, like my friends have?

They said they'd see, but I knew I wasn't important enough to swing it.

All these little things put meiin edge, and any psychologist will tell you it doesn't take something big to drive you bats. I was sick of being ignored, sick of being neglected.

That's when I started to think about Deep Space. There were billions of square miles of nothingness out there, dotted with too many stars to count. There were enough Earth-type planets for every man, woman and child. There had to be a spot for me.

I bought a Universe Light List, and a tattered Galactic Pilot. I read through the Gravity Tide Book, and the Interstellar Pilot Charts. Finally I figured I knew as much as I'd ever know.

All my savings went into an old Chrysler Star Clipper. This antique leaked oxygen along its seams. It had a touchy atomic pile, and spacewarp drives that might throw you practically anywhere. It was dangerous, but the only life I was risking was my own. At least, that's what I thought.

So I got my passport, blue clearance, red clearance, numbers certificate, space-sickness shots and deratification papers. At the job I collected my last day's pay and waved to the cameras. In the apartment, I packed my clothes and said good-bye to the recorders. On the street, I shook hands with my poor Spy and wished him luck.

I had burned my bridges behind me.

All that was left was final clearance, so I hurried down to the Final Clearance Office. A clerk with white hands and a sun lamp tan looked at me dubiously.

^<rWhere did you wish to go?" he asked me.

"Space," I said.

"Of course. But where in space?"

"I don't know yet," I said. "Just space. Deep Space. Free Space."

The clerk sighed wearily. "You'll have to be more explicit than that, if you want a clearance. Are you going to settle on a planet in American Space? Or did you wish to emigrate to British Space? Or Dutch Space? Or French Space?"

"I didn't know space could be owned," I said.

"Then you don't keep up with the times," he told me, with a
superior smirk. "The United States has claimed all space
between coordinates 2XA and DB2, except for a small and
relatively unimportant segment which is claimed by Mexico.
The Soviet Union has coordinates 3DB to L02—a very bleak
region, I can assure you. And then there is the Belgian Grant,
the Chinese Grant, the Ceylonese Grant, the Nigerian
Grant----- "

I stopped him. "Where is Free Space?" I asked. "There is none."

"None at all? How far do the boundary lines extend?" "To infinity," he told me proudly.

For a moment it fetched me up short. Somehow I had never considered the possibility of every bit of infinite space being owned. But it was natural enough. After all, somebody had to own it.

"I want to go into American Space," I said. It didn't seem to matter at the time, although it turned out otherwise.

The clerk nodded sullenly. He checked my records back to the age of five—there was no sense in going back any further— and gave me the Final Clearance.

The spaceport had my ship all serviced, and I managed to get away without blowing a tube. It wasn't until Earth dwindled to a pinpoint and disappeared behind me that I realized that I was alone.

Fifty hours out I was making a routine inspection of my stores, when I observed that one of my vegetable sacks had a shape unlike the other sacks. Upon opening it I found a girl, where a hundred pounds of potatoes should have been.

A stowaway. I stared at her, open-mouthed.

"Well," she said, "are you going/lo help me out? Or would you prefer to close the sack and forget the whole thing?"

I helped her out. She said, "Your potatoes are lumpy."

I could have said the same of her, with considerable approval. She was a slender girl, for the most part, with hair the reddish blonde color of a flaring jet, a pert, dirt-smudged face and brooding blue eyes. On Earth, I would gladly have walked ten miles to meet her. In space, I wasn't so sure.

"Could you give me something to eat?" she asked. "All I've had since we left is raw carrots."

I fixed her a sandwich. While she ate, I asked, "What are you doing here?"

"You wouldn't understand," she said, between mouthfuls.

"Sure I would."

She walked to a porthole and looked out at the spectacle of stars—American stars, most of them—burning in the void of American space.

"I wanted to be free," she said.

"Huh?"

She sank wearily on my cot. "I suppose you'd call me a romantic," she said quietly. "I'm the sort of fool who recites poetry to herself in the black night, and cries in front of some absurd little statuette. Yellow autumn leaves make me tremble, and dew on a green lawn seems like the tears of all Earth. My psychiatrist tells me I'm a misfit."

She closed her eyes with a weariness I could appreciate.

Standing in a potato sack for 50 hours can be pretty exhausting.

"Earth was getting me down," she said. "I couldn't stand it
—the regimentation, the discipline, the privation, the cold war,
the hot war, everything. I wanted to laugh in free air, run
through green fields, walk unmolested through gloomy
forests, sing---- "

"But why did you pick on me?"

"You were bound for freedom," she said. "I'll leave, if you insist."

That was a pretty silly idea, out in the depths of space. And I couldn't afford the fuel to turn back. "You can stay," I said.

"Thank you," she said very softly. "You do understand."

"Sure, sure," I said. "But we'll have to get a few things

straight. First of all----- " But she had fallen asleep on my cot,

with a trusting smile on her lips.

Immediately I searched her handbag. I found five lipsticks, a compact, a phial of Venus V perfume, a paper-bound book of poetry, and a badge that read: Special Investigator, FBI.

I had suspected it, of course. Girls don't talk that way, but Spies always do.

It was nice to know my government was still looking out for me. It made space seem less lonely.

The ship moved into the depths of American Space. By working 15 hours out of 24,1 managed to keep my spacewarp drive in one piece, my atomic piles reasonably cool, and my hull seams tight. Mavis O'Day (as my Spy was named) made all meals, took care of the light housekeeping, and hid a number of small cameras around the ship. They buzzed abominably, but I pretended not to notice.

Under the circumstances, however, my relations with Miss O'Day were quite proper.

The trip was proceeding normally—even happily—until something happened.

I was dozing at the controls. Suddenly an intense light flared on my starboard bow. I leaped backward, knocking over Mavis as she was inserting a new reel of film into her number three camera.

"Excuse me," I said.

"Oh, trample me anytime," she said.

I helped her to her feet. Her supple nearness was dangerously pleasant, and the tantalizing scent of Venus V tickled my nostrils.

"You can let me go now," she said.

"I know," I said, and continued to hold her. My mind
inflamed by her nearness, I heard myself saying, "Mavis—I
haven't known you very long, but- "

"Yes, Bill? "she asked.

In the madness of the moment I had forgotten our relationship of Suspect and Spy. I don't know what I might have said. But just then a second light blazed outside the ship.

I released Mavis and hurried to the controls. With difficulty I throttled the old Star Clipper to an idle, and looked around.

Outside, in the vast vacuum of space, was a single fragment of rock. Perched upon it was a child in a spacesuit, holding a box of flares in one hand and a tiny spacesuited dog in the other.

Quickly we got him inside and unbuttoned his spacesuit.

"My dog------ " he said.

"He's all right, son," I told him.

"Terribly sorry to break in on you this way," the lad said. "Forget it," I said. "What were you doing out there?" "Sir," he began, in treble tones, "I will have to start at the start. My father was a spaceship test pilot, and he died

valiantly, trying to break the light barrier. Mother recently remarried. Her present husband is a large, black-haired man with narrow, shifty eyes and tightly compressed lips. Until recently he was employed as a ribbon clerk in a large department store.

"He resented my presence from the beginning. I suppose I reminded him of my dead father, with my blonde curls, large oval eyes and merry, outgoing ways. Our relationship smouldered fitfully. Then an uncle of his died (under suspicious circumstances) and he inherited holdings in British Space.

"Accordingly, we set out in our spaceship. As soon as we reached this deserted area, he said to mother, 'Rachel, he's old enough to fend for himself.' My mother said, 'Dirk, he's so young!' But soft-hearted, laughing mother was no match for the inflexible will of the man I would never call father. He thrust me into my spacesuit, handed me a box of flares, put Flicker into his own little suit, and said, 'A lad can do all right for himself in space these days.' 'Sir,' I said, 'there is no planet within two hundred light years.' 'You'll make out,' he grinned, and thrust me upon this spur of rock."

The boy paused for breath, and his dog Flicker looked up at me with moist oval eyes. I gave the dog a bowl of milk and bread, and watched the lad eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Mavis carried the little chap into the bunk room and tenderly tucked him into bed.

I returned to the controls, started the ship again, and turned on the intercom.

"Wake up, you little idiot!" I heard Mavis say.

"Lemme sleep," the boy answered.

"Wake up! What did Congressional Investigation mean by sending you here? Don't they realize this is an FBI case?"

"He's been reclassified as a 10-F Suspect," the boy said. "That calls for full surveillance."

"Yes, but I'm here," Mavis cried.

"You didn't do so well on your last case," the boy said. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but Security comes first."

"So they send you," Mavis said, sobbing now. "A twelve-
year-old child--- "

"I'll be thirteen in seven months."

"A twelve-year-old child! And I've tried so hard! I've
studied, read books, taken evening courses, listened to
lectures---- "

"It's a tough break," the boy said sympathetically. "Personally, I want to be a spaceship test pilot. At my age, this is the only way I can get in flying hours. Do you think he'll let me fly the ship?"

I snapped off the intercom. I should have felt wonderful. Two full-time Spies were watching me. It meant I was really someone, someone to be watched.

But the truth was, my Spies were only a girl and a twelve-year-old boy. They must have been scraping bottom when they sent those two.

My government was still ignoring me, in its own fashion.

We managed well on the rest of the flight. Young Roy, as the lad was called, took over the piloting of the ship, and his dog sat alertly in the co-pilot's seat. Mavis continued to cook and keep house. I spent my time patching seams. We were as happy a group of Spies and Suspect as you could find.

We found an uninhabited Earth-type planet. Mavis liked it because it was small and rather cute, with the green fields and gloomy forests she had read about in her poetry books. Young Roy liked the clear lakes, and the mountains, which were just the right height for a boy to climb.

We landed, and began to settle.

Young Roy found an immediate interest in the animals I animated from the Freezer. He appointed himself guardian of cows and horses, protector of ducks and geese, defender of pigs and chickens. This kept him so busy that his reports to

THE CROOKED MAN

BY CHARLES BEAUMONT

A few months before the birth of playboy, a then-fledgling writer sold a story to what, at that time, was the nation's leading magazine for men. The story's premise was simple: What if, under the pressures of overpopulation, homosexuality became the social norm and heterosexuality the deviation? What if "the heteros" were the persecuted minority? The story neither condemned nor condoned homosexuality—its message was nothing more revolutionary than "Live and Let Live"—and yet the magazine, after buying the story, refused to publish it. It was considered dangerous, controversial. The writer, understandably annoyed, battled long and bitterly with the editors and finally asked them to return his manuscript. They did, and it was immediately published in playboy. The story was Charles Beaumont's "The Crooked Man."

"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools . . . who changed the truth of God into a lie . . . for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly . . ."

{St. Paul: Romans, I)

HE SLIPPED INTO a corner booth away from the dancing men, where it was quietest, where the odors of musk and frangipani hung less heavy on the air. A slender lamp glowed softly in the booth. He turned it down; down to where only the club's blue overheads filtered through the beaded curtain, diffusing, blurring the image thrown back by the mirrored walls of his light thin-boned handsomeness.

"Yes, sir?" The barboy stepped through the beads and stood smiling. Clad in gold-sequihed trunks, his greased muscles seemed to roll in independent motion, like fat snakes beneath his naked skin.

^<rWhiskey," Jesse said. He caught the insouciant grin, the broad white-tooth crescent that formed on the young man's face. Jesse looked away, tried to control the flow of blood to his cheeks.

"Yes, sir," the barboy said, running his thick tanned fingers over his solar plexus, tapping the fingers, making them hop in a sinuous dance. He hesitated, still smiling, this time question-ingly, hopefully, a smile filled with admiration and desire. The Finger Dance, the accepted symbol since 2648, stopped: the pudgy brown digits curled into angry fists. "Right away, sir."

Jesse watched him turn; before the beads had tinkled together, he watched the handsome athlete make his way imperiously through the crowd, shaking off the tentative hands of single men at the tables, ignoring the many desire symbols directed toward him.

That shouldn't have happened, Jesse thought. Now the fellow's feelings were hurt. If hurt enough, he would start thinking, wondering—and that would ruin everything. No. It must be put right.

He thought of Mina, of the beautiful Mina. It was such a rotten chance: it had to go well!

"Your whiskey, sir," the young man said. His face was like a dog's face, large, sad; his lips were a pouting bloat of line.

Jesse reached into his pocket for some change. He started to say something, something nice.

"It's been paid for," the barboy said. He scowled and laid a card on the table and left.

The card carried the name e. j. hobart, embossed, in lavender ink. Jesse heard the curtains tinkle.

"Hello, there! I hope you don't mind my barging in like this, but—well, you didn't seem to be with anyone . . ."

The man was small, chubby, bald; his face had a dirty growth of beard and he looked out of tiny eyes encased in bulging contacts. He was bare to the waist. His white, hairless chest drooped and turned in folds at the stomach. Softly, more subtle than the barboy had done, he put his porky stubs of fingers into a suggestive rhythm.

Jesse smiled. "Thanks for the drink," he said. "But I really am expecting someone."

"Oh?" the man said. "Someone—special?"

"Pretty special," Jesse said smoothly, now that the words had become automatic. "He's my fiance."

"I see." The man frowned momentarily and then brightened. "Well, I thought to myself, I said, 'E. J ., you don't actually think a beauty like that would be unattached, do you?' But, it was certainly worth the old college try. Sorry."

"Perfectly all right," Jesse said. The predatory little eyes were rolling, the fingers dancing in one last ditch attempt. "Good evening, Mr. Hobart."

Jesse felt slightly amused this time: it was the other kind, die intent ones, the humorless ones like the barboy, who revolted him, turned him ill, made him want to take a knife and carve unspeakable ugliness into his own smooth, aesthetic face.

The man shrugged; "Good evening!" and waddled away, crabwise.

Now the club was becoming more crowded. It was getting later and heads full of liquor shook away the inhibitions of the earliest hours. Jesse tried not to watch, but he had long ago given up trying to rid himself of his fascination. So he watched the men together. The pair over in the far corner, pressed close together, dancing with their bodies, never moving their feet, swaying in slow, lissome movements to the music. . . . The couple seated by the bar: one a Beast, the other a Hunter. The Beast old, his cheeks caked hard and cracking with powder and liniments, the perfume rising from his body like steam; the Hunter, young but unhandsome, the fury evident in his eyes, the hurt anger at having to make do with a paid companion, and such an ugly one. From time to time the Hunter would look around, wetting his lips in shame. . . . And those two just coming in, dressed in Mother's uniforms, tanned, mus-tached, proud of their station . . .

Jesse held the beads apart. Mina must come soon! He wanted to run from this place, out into the air, into the darkness and silence.

No. He just wanted Mina. To see her, touch her, listen to the music of her voice . . .

Two women came in, arm in arm, Beast and Hunter, drunk. They were stopped at the door. The manager swept by Jesse's booth, muttering about them, asking why they should want to come to the Phallus when they had their own sections, their own clubs . . .

Jesse pulled his head back inside. He'd become used to the light by now, so he closed his eyes against his multiplied image. The disorganized sounds of love got louder, the singsong syrup of voices: high-pitched, throaty, baritone, falsetto. It was crowded now. The Orgies would begin before long and the couples would pair off for the cubicles. He hated the place. But close to Orgy-time you didn't get noticed here; and where else was there to go? Outside, where every inch of pavement was patrolled electronically, every word of conversation, every movement recorded, cataloged, filed?

Damn Knudsen! Damn the little'man! Thanks to him, to the Senator, Jesse was now a criminal. Before, it hadn't been so bad: not this bad, anyway. You were laughed at and shunned and fired from your job, and sometimds kids threw stones at you, but at least you weren't hunted. Now—it was a crime. It was a sickness.

He remembered when Knudsen had taken over. It had been one of the little man's first telecasts j in fact, it was the platform that had got him the majority vote:

. . Vice is on the upswing in our great city. In the dark corners of every Unit perversion blossoms like an evil flower. Our children are exposed to its stink, and they wonder—our children wonder—why nothing is done to put a halt to this disgrace. We have ignored it long enough! The time has come for action, not mere words. The perverts who infest our land must be flushed out, eliminated completely, as a threat not only to public morals but to society at large. These sick people must be cured and made normal. The disease that throws men and women together in this dreadful abnormal relationship and leads to arts of retrogression—retrogression that will, unless it is stopped and stopped fast, lead us inevitably back to the status of animals—this is to be considered as any other disease. It must be conquered as heart trouble, cancer, polio, all other diseases have been conquered . . ."

The Women's Senator had taken Knudsen's lead and issued a similar pronunciamento and then the bill had become law and the law was carried out.

Jesse sipped at his whiskey, remembering the Hunts. How the frenzied mobs had gone through the city at first, chanting, yelling, bearing placards with slogans: "Wife out the het-eros!" "Kill the Queers!" "Make our city clean again!"" And how they'd lost interest finally after the passion had worn down and the novelty had ended. But they had killed many and they had sent many more to the hospitals . . .

He remembered the nights of running and hiding, choked dry breath cutting his throat, heart rattling loose. He had been lucky. He didn't look like a hetero. They said you could tell one just by watching him walk—but Jesse walked correctly. He fooled them. He was lucky.

And he was a criminal. He, Jesse Martin, no different from the rest, tube-born and machine-nursed, raised in the Character Schools like everyone else—was terribly different from the rest.

It had been on his first formal date that he became aware of this difference, that it crystallized. The man had been a Rocketeer, the best high quality, and frighteningly handsome. "Mother" had arranged it, the way he arranged everything, carefully, proving and re-proving that he was worthy of the Mother's uniform. There was the dance. And then the ride in the space-sled. The big man had put an arm about Jesse and— Jesse knew. He knew for certain and it made him very angry and very sad.

He remembered the days that came after the knowledge: bad days, days fallen upon evil, black desires, deep-cored frustrations. He had tried to find a friend at the Crooked Clubs that flourished then, but it was no use. There was a sensationalism, a bravura to these people that he could not love. The sight of men and women together, too, shocked the parts of him he could not change, and disgusted him. Then the vice-squads had come and closed up the clubs and the heteros were forced underground and he never sought them out again or saw them. He was alone.

The beads tinkled.

"Jesse."

He looked up, quickly, afraid. Then his fear vanished.

A figure stood outlined against the curtains, quietly. A small, soft, clean figure, a softness there, and a cleanliness^ cutting and dissipating the dark asylum of his memories like sudden sunlight, with all the good warmth of sunlight, and all the brightness. Mina.

She wore a loose man's shirt, an old hat that hid her golden hair: her face was shadowed by the turned-up collar. Through the shirt the rise and fall of her breasts could be faintly detected. She smiled once, nervously.

Jesse looked out the curtain. Without speaking, he put his hands about her soft, thin shoulders and held her like this for a long minute.

"Mina----- " She looked away. He pulled her chin forward

and ran a finger along her lips. Then he pressed her body to his, tightly, touching her neck, her back, kissing her forehead, her eyes, kissing her mouth.

She pulled her head back and sat down, staring at the table. "Don't do that, please don't," she said.

Jesse opened his mouth, closed it abruptly as the curtains parted.

"Order, sir?"

"Beer," Jesse said, winking at the barboy, who tried to come closer, to see the one loved by this handsome stranger. "Two beers. Yes, sir."

The barboy looked at Mina very hard, but she had turned and he could see only the back. Jesse held his breath. The barboy smiled contemptuously then, a smile that said: You're insane—I was hired for my beauty; I know that I am beautiful, hundreds would be proud to have me, and you turn me down for this bag of bones . . .

Jesse winked again, shrugged suggestively, and danced his fingers: Tomorrow, my friend. I'm stuck tonight. Can't help it. Tomorrow.

The barboy paused a moment, grinned briefly with understanding, and left. In a few minutes he returned with the beer. "On the house," he said, for Mina's benefit. She turned only when Jesse said, softly:

"It's all right. He's gone now."

He looked at her, at the pain in her face, and the fear; hard lines that lied about the love that was between them and had been for all these months. He reached over¹ and took off the hat. Long tresses of blonde hair spilled out, splashing over the rough shirt.

She grabbed for the hat. "We mustn't," she said. "Please. What if somebody came in?"

"No one will come in. I told you that."

"But what if someone does? I don't know, I don't like it here. That man at the door, he almost recognized me."

"But he didn't."

"Almost, though. And then what?" "Forget it. Mina, for God's sake. Let's not quarrel." She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Jesse. It's only that meeting you like this makes me feel . . ." "What?"

"Dirty." She spoke the word defiantly, and lifted her eyes to his.

"You don't really believe that, do you?"

"No. I suppose not: I don't know, any more." She hesitated.
"Maybe if we could be alone together, I- "

Jesse took out a cigarette and began to use the table lighter. Then he cursed and threw the phallic object under the chair and crushed the cigarette. "You know that's impossible," he said. The idea of separate Units for homes had disappeared, of course, to be replaced by giant dormitories. There were no more parks, no country lanes. There was no place to hide at all now, thanks to Senator Knudsen, to the little spearhead of these great new sociological reforms. "This is all we have." Jesse threw a sardonic look around the booth, with its carved symbols and framed pictures of entertainment stars—all naked and leering.

They were silent for a time, hands interlocked on the
tabletop. Then the girl began to cry. "I—I can't go on like
this," she said. "I can't. Jesse, listen; I came here tonight to
tell you----- "

"I know. I know how awful it is for^sou. But what else can we do?" He tried to keep the hopelessness out of his voice.

"We could----- " the girl started, and seemed to change her

mind. "Maybe we should have gone underground with the rest, right at the first."

"And hide there, like rats?" Jesse said.

"We're hiding here, aren't we," Mina demanded, adding, "like rats!"

He sighed. He could not remember seeing her quite so unhappy. Things had never been exactly right, never perfect, because she had always seemed to fight her instincts. Even her affection for him, since that first time when he made her admit it, pried it loose from her. But he had thought this could be conquered ... No; don't think about it. Think about now, and how beautiful she is, how warm and vibrant and soft.

"It's necessary," he said. "Parner is getting ready to crack down. I know, Mina: I work at Centraldome, after all. In a little while there won't be any underground. He has a list of names a mile long already."

Then, suddenly, the girl said, "I love you," and leaned
forward, parting her lips for a kiss. "Jesse, I do." She closed
her eyes. "And I've tried to be strong, just like you told me to
be. But they wouldn't leave us alone. They wouldn't stop. Just
because we're qu-- "

"Mina! I've said it before—don't ever use that word!" His voice was harsh; he pushed her away. "It isn't true! We're not the queers. You've got to believe that. Years ago it was normal for men and women to love each other: they married and had children together; that's the way it was. Don't you remember anything of what I've told you?"

The girl stared downward. "Of course I do. I do, really. But it was such a long time ago."

"Not so long! Where I work—listen to me—they have books. You know, I told you about books? I've read them, Mina. I learned what the words meant from other, books. It's only been since the use of artificial insemination—not even five hundred years ago."

"Yes," the girl said, sighing, "I'm sure that's true."

"Mina, stop it! We are not the unnatural ones, no matter what they say. I don't know exactly how it happened—maybe as women gradually became equal to men in every way—or maybe solely because of the way we're born—I don't know. But the point is, darling, the whole world was like us, once. Even now," he said, desperately, "look at the animals."

"Jesse, don't you dare talk as though we're like those horrible little dogs and cats and things."

Jesse took a deep swallow of his drink. He had tried so often to tell her, show her, make her see. But he knew what she thought, really. She thought she was exactly what the authorities told her she was.

God, maybe that's how they all think, all the Crooked People, all the "unnormal ones" . . .

The girl's hands caressed his arms and the touch of them became strange to him. / love you, Mr. Martin, even though you do have two heads . . .

Forget it, he thought. Never mind. She's a woman, a very satisfying, desirable woman, and she may think you're both freaks, but you know different, indeed you do, you know she's wrong, just as they're all wrong . . .

Or, he wondered, are you the insane person of old days who
was insane because he was so sure he wasn't insane because

"Disgusting!"

It was the fat man, the smiling masher, E. J. Hobart. But he wasn't smiling now.

Jesse got up quickly and stepped in front of Mina. "What
do you want?" he said. "I thought I told you---- "

The man pulled a metal identification disk from his trunks. "Vice-squad, my friend," he said. "Better sit down."

The man's arm went out through the curtain and two other men came in, equipped with weapons.

"I've been watching you quite a while, Mister," the man said. "Quite a while."

"Look," Jesse said, "I don't know what you're talking about. I work at Centraldome and I'm seeing Miss Kirkpatrick here on some business."

"We know all about that kind of business," the man said.

"All right—I'll tell you the truth. I forced her to come her.
She didn't want to, but I--- "

"Mister, didn't you hear me? I said I've been watching you. Let's go."

One man took Mina's arm, roughly; the other two began to propel Jesse out through the club. Heads turned. Tangled bodies moved embarrassedly.

"It's all right," the fat man said, his white skin glistening with perspiration. "It's all right, folks. Go on back to whatever you were doing." He grinned and tightened his grip on Jesse's wrist.

Mina, Jesse noticed, did not struggle. He looked at her and felt something suddenly freeze into him. She had been trying to tell him something all evening, but he hadn't let her. Now he knew what he had feared. He knew what she had come to tell him: that even if they hadn't been caught, she would have submitted to the Cure voluntarily. No more worries then, no more guilt. No more tender moments, either, but wasn't that a small price to pay, when she could live the rest of her life without feeling shame and dirt? Yes. It was a small price, now

DOUBLE TAKE

by jack finney

Jack Finney is the author of the novels "Five Against the House" "Good Neighbor Sam" "The Body Snatchers," "The House of Numbers" and "Assault on a Queen"—every one of which became a film, the last-named starring Frank Sinatra Ingenious" The New York Herald Tribune said of the book, and The Baltimore Sun praised the swashbuckling plot as "a piece of piracy Blackbeard would boggle at"). His short-story collections, "The Third Level" and "I Love Galesburg in the Springtime," are treasure troves of delightful reading. He has a gentle touch with fantasy not quite like any other storyteller around. Of his playboy work, we are particularly fond of "Double Take," and we invite you to share this fondness right now.

WHEN JESSICA WALKED into the club car, everyone knew with one startled glance that this was somebody special, someone important, and I sat watching their eyes and mouths pop open. Out of the world's three billion people there can't be more than, say, a hundred women like Jessica Maxwell. Her red-brown hair was thick and shining with health, her brown eyes magnificent, her complexion so flawless your fingers ached to touch it, her figure marvelous. But that doesn't tell you how beautiful she was; I can only say that if you were staggering toward a hospital with three bullets in your chest, you'd stop and turn to stare after Jessica if she walked past.

She said, "Hi, Jake," smiled so that an actual chill ran up my spine, and sat down beside me. People sat sipping drinks, glancing out windows, turning pages and sneaking looks, but I was pretty sure no one actually recognized her. She'd been in only two pictures, in small parts; on the screen less than a minute in one of them. But of course they knew she almost had to be in pictures; we were out of Los Angeles station only 20 minutes, and with looks like hers what else could she be?

We talked, I made a joke or so, she laughed delightedly, and every man in the car sat sizing me up, eyes narrowed, resentful, wondering who the^- hell I was to be with a girl like Jess. Well, I wondered, too. I work for the same studio, and was in love with Jessie or close to it, but who wasn't? I didn't even know her well—just through this one picture—and I'm only a dialog director. Eventually I'll be a director, maybe a very damn good one, but no one else knows that, and right now I'm not much in job or looks, either. I'm only average height, skinny, 26, name of Jake Pelman, and slightly homely. I freely admit I'd rather be handsome, taller, heavier, the world's finest rumba dancer, and a master with foil and epee. But as things stood, I had to wonder why a girl like Jess had asked me, even urged me, to take the train with her. We were going to New York on location to make a few last scenes for the picture, most of which had already been ¿lmed at the studio, and everyone else in the unit was flying, of course; it's a long trip. So with Jess and me alone, and nothing else to do but get better acquainted, my hopes were high.

"Jake, would you like to come back to my bedroom?" Jessie said after ten minutes or so, and I allowed as how I would, and stood up. A minute later she was unfastening her bag, handing me a script and explaining that three uninterrupted days on the train were a wonderful chance to get her New York scenes to perfection. Would I mind helping? Read through the scenes with her, and coach her? It was why she'd wanted me to come along, she explained innocently; at least I think it was innocently.

After a few stunned seconds in which I stood hooting with inaudible invisible jeering laughter at myself and my hopes, I said I'd be glad to, and we settled down to work on Jessie's scenes for most of the next three days. I didn't blame her; these final few scenes were the biggest of the picture for Jessie. One in particular—we worked on it through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and almost to Grand Central Station—was her chance to be noticed, and she knew it. Maybe every actor or actress has a part like this early in his or her career; the big one, the one that counts if only you recognize it. Jessie did; she understood instinctively that this particular scene in this particular picture was her first step, and one she had to take, toward stardom or oblivion.

We worked. We also had an occasional drink in the club car, ate our meals together, sat and talked or read, even played a little gin, and got to know each other. But mostly we worked on that scene. In the picture Jess was the daughter of a woman speak-easy owner in New York, played by the star; like most other studios these days, we were making a picture set in the 1920s. In her big scene, Jess was in love with a much older man, and was heartbroken when he left her. An hour and a half out of New York, Jessie laid her script on the seat beside her and said, "I'm not getting it, am I, Jake? I'm no closer than the day we started," and the truth was no; she wasn't getting it at all.

But I wasn't that truthful. I shrugged, looked thoughtful^ then said, "It still needs work, Jess, but it'll come. Right now, though, let it alone; drop it. Forget it till you work out in New York with the actor. Ernie'll be there; he'll help." Ernie Wyke was the director, a good one; I'd learned from him and would learn more. But I knew he wasn't going to be able to help Jessie.

I knew it because now I knew something else; that she didn't give a damn about me. She was a beautiful girl, and a nice one; I'd have liked Jess if she'd been homely. She had none of the arrogant defensiveness of so many very good-looking women. But now I knew she was selfish. Not in an unpleasant way; she liked me, she liked most of the people around her, out of her own naturally cheerful nature. But all she was really interested in was her own ambition and self. And why not? She was only 20; plenty of child in her yet. When she'd lived longer I was certain she'd change; she was warmhearted and there were reserves of sympathy and understanding still untouched in her. But before she changed, her career could be finished. Sometime tomorrow she'd have to seem before the camera what she might need years to become, and I knew she couldn't do it.

She wasn't getting this part because she didn't understand it. She couldn't feel what the character she was playing felt, which was love. She could play young love. On the screen with a young handsome man, all Jessie had to do was say she loved him and the audience believed her; they did her work for her. But now she had to show them that she was in love with a man more than old enough to be her father, be heartbroken when he left her, and make the audience believe every word and moment. And because this career-anxious 'girl had never let herself know what love was, she couldn't imagine or feel it now. Riding along beside the Hudson talking with Jessie, pretty sure I was in love with her now, I knew she was going to flop and that there was nothing to do about it. She didn't know, though; Ernie was going to show her how.

In New York, Al Berg, the unit manager, had booked Jessie for the Plaza, and had me miles away, at the Gramercy Park. Al had also found an empty two-story brownstone house just off lower Fifth Avenue, the street on which all our shooting would take place. He'd rented the house as a unit headquarters for our day of filming, so after I checked into the hotel and changed into wash slacks and a checked shirt, I walked over.

It was a fine spring night, temperature about 70. Passing Gramercy Park on the way to Fifth, I could smell cut grass and see the new green of the tree leaves in the light from the street lamps. Then, walking down the east side of Fifth toward Washington Square, I saw why we were filming down here. This part of Fifth Avenue hadn't really changed too much since the Twenties. Some of it had changed, of course; there were big new apartment buildings. But the location department had found stretches of several blocks that still looked, so they said, very much as they had in the middle Twenties. It's a nice part of town, usually quiet and—it's always seemed to me—a little separate from the noisy, always-changing rest of New York.

Our headquarters, I saw when I got to the old house, would do very well for a short scene we had: Jessie walking down the front steps pulling on a pair of gloves. And I knew Al probably had a use for every room inside. In the living room he had some rented furniture, and four members of the unit were sitting around talking; the front door and all windows were wide open and, because there were no screens, the lights were out, though there was a fair amount of light from a street lamp just outside. Sitting there drinking coffee or soft drinks were Alice Weeks, Oscar Jorgensen, a girl I didn't know and a young guy in a T-shirt who was a camera assistant. I nodded at him and spoke to Alice, who was in charge of our costumes—a tall thin woman in her 40s wearing a summer dress. Oscar, who was in shirt sleeves, was our property man—thin, middle-aged, bald and permanently worried. He introduced me to the girl, who was sitting sideways on a window ledge, one of her feet up on the sill. She was wearing black stretch pants and a very loose hip-length blouse with big wide horizontal stripes. As I thought, she was an actress, an extra hired here in New York for a walk-on part.

I sat down, and took some kidding about having come to New York by train; this was mostly speculation over whether my reason was cowardice about flying, lechery for Jessie Maxwell, or both. This was the lull before the storm, and I sat enjoying having nothing to do. The following morning the rest of the unit would arrive and the work and confusion would begin. Some 30 to 40 people would be here: carpenters, electricians, grips and gaffers, a cameraman who did not operate the camera, camera operators and assistants who did, a sound mixer, boom man, recorder and cableman, make-up men, hairdressers, special-effects man, a check woman, script girl, and a dozen others including a couple of whistlemen and wigwags, who are the guys who blow whistles and wave flags to keep people from walking onto sets after shooting starts. All these people with all their equipment, including a few hundred miles of cable, would begin getting in one another's way, apparently. Actually they'd be working together in that amazing cooperation of a hundred disparate skills that gets the little tiny pictures onto the little squares of film.

Oscar Jorgensen hadn't said much, and pretty soon he walked to one of the open windows and stood there, hands in pockets, staring out. The camera assistant, whose name, I remembered now, was Joe Lani, said, "Don't worry, Oscar; if we have to, we'll push it for you."

Oscar just, said, "Yeah," without turning around.

I said, "What's the trouble?"

"He's worried about the bus."

"Didn't it get here?" For a moment I was panicky; we had to use this bus in our two biggest scenes. "Oh, it got here all right," Oscar said. "Is it OK?"

"Sure. We lashed it to a flatcar with cable, covered it with plastic sheeting and put a waterproof tarp over that. I saw to it myself; it got here OK."

I smiled, thinking about the bus. This was one of the old, blunt-nosed, green-and-cream Fifth Avenue buses with open-air seats up on a top deck that you reached by climbing a winding staircase at the back. For all I knew, this was the only one left in the world; they'd last used them in New York years ago. The studio had bought it then, directly from the bus company; it still had its original 1926 license plates. They'd shipped it 3000 miles to Hollywood and used it on an indoor street-set in a picture about New York of the time. Now, 30-odd years later, for a picture about that same but now-vanished New York, they shipped the bus back to be filmed on the streets. Hollywood has changed a lot, but in some ways it never disappoints you. I said, "Where is it now?"

"Half a block from here. There's a new apartment building near University Place, not quite finished, no tenants in yet. Al rented the garage in the basement, and it's in there. We trucked it over covered with the tarp, so we wouldn't get a crowd."

"Then what's the trouble?"

"It came a day late; less than two hours ago. I wanted to drive it, test it out in the railroad yard. It's got to work tomorrow morning for absolute sure." He shrugged, worriedly. "It's probably all right. I had it in perfect shape when we left; no reason it shouldn't be now."

"Couldn't you drive it now, Oscar? Around the block a couple times just to be certain?"

Alice said, "The cops, Jake, boy. They'd yak if it drew a crowd, and hand us a ticket for expired license plates."

I nodded. In most cities the police will let a movie company do almost anything: block off streets all day and paint the city hall in stripes. But movie companies are no novelty or joy to the New York cops, and if you mess up traffic by not following their orders, they'll throw you out. I said, "What about later tonight? There wouldn't be enough people out to get a crowd."

"I'd like to," Oscar said, turning around. "Hell, I've got to. You think it's OK, Jake?"

"Sure, if you wait till after midnight." I smiled with sudden pleasure. "And when you do, I want to ride along. That'll be a sight, an old double-decker trundling down Fifth again. You won't get a crowd, but a few people will see us and think they're out of their minds."

Everybody smiled, and Joe Lani said, "Hey, Alice; you brought uniforms, didn't you? Bus driver and conductor?"

"Of course."

"Well, if a couple of us put them on, that'd really be a sight!"

Even Oscar grinned, against his will, and the girl on the window sill said, "If my costume's here, too, can I come along?"

And that set us off. Everybody in the room was putting down his cup or pop bottle, then we all piled upstairs. Alice had her costumes in an empty bedroom, locked in their stenciled, olive-drab, heavy plywood shipping cases. Then, cautioning us, warning us what she'd do if we damaged or lost a thread of her costumes, cursing us out in advance, she handed them out: conductor's uniform and fare collector for Joe; a suit, white shirt, bow tie and black shoes for me; a pair of dresses, hats and purses of the Twenties for herself and the girl; and of course Oscar took the bus driver's uniform for himself; no one else was going to drive that bus. During this —I heard the cab door slam downstairs—Jessie arrived, heard us, came up, and we briefed her on what was going on, and of course she wanted to go, too.

Alice gave her, along with the full set of warnings she'd given us, one of the three costumes Jessie would wear during filming; then we all went to the dressing rooms—two bedrooms fitted out with portable make-up tables and lighted mirrors. My outfit was too big, and Joe's uniform too small, so we traded and I became the bus conductor. I was just as glad. The 1926 suit was authentic but not much different from Ivy League suits of today, and I thought I cut a more interesting figure as the conductor.

Downstairs we looked one another over. The women looked great. They wore the kind of costumes we've all become pretty familiar with lately: the short skirts, oddly placed hiplines, the tight-fitting felt hats. Jessie looked terrific; it's hard to believe that a fallible, mortal human being could be so beautiful. She has spectacularly handsome legs, and of course this outfit showed them off; I think that's one reason she got the part. Her dress and hat, which were powder blue, had been made especially for her, and in some way I don't understand they'd been subtly modernized. They were like the others, yet not quite, so that Jess didn't really look strange or old-fashioned, but just magnificently beautiful. The other two—the girl in a peach-colored dress and Alice in tan—looked OK, and so did Joe. Oscar and I didn't look like much of anything in a couple of worn-looking blue uniforms and caps with shiny black peaks.

We had to wait for over an hour; Oscar wouldn't start till

12:30. So we sat around downstairs talking, excited, laughing a lot. Alice wouldn't let us smoke for fear of burning a hole in one of her costumes, and whenever one of us went to the kitchen and came back with coffee, she made him drink standing up and leaning forward so as not to spill a drop on her outfits.

At half past 12 we all walked half a block east and across the street to the new apartment building, then down a ramp of new white concrete, and through the entrance to the basement garage; it was high-ceilinged just here, designed so that a moving van could back right in and up to the doors of a service elevator. Oscar snapped on a light switch, and there she stood like a great square elephant covered by a big brown-canvas tarpaulin. Joe and I helped Oscar drag it off, then I stood smiling with pleasure. I'd been a little kid when I'd last seen one of these, but I remembered everything I saw now: the boxlike metal hood over the motor, surmounted by a radiator cap; the green metal-spoked wheels and hard-rubber tires; the upward-slanting sides, the rattly wood-framed windows; and way up on top, the metal-grilled wooden-railed fence enclosing the outdoor seats of varnished wood. They were fine old buses, a joy to ride, even if a shade less profitable than the miserable monsters they have now, and I was glad to see one again.

She started up quickly enough, Joe cranking the engine after Oscar showed him how. For maybe a minute Oscar idled the motor, then he smiled and beckoned us in. I told Joe to turn off the garage lights; he obeyed automatically, and while he was doing that I got into the bus and sat down next to Jessie. We smiled at each other, the garage lights went off and Oscar turned on his headlights. He shifted gears, Joe hopped on and Oscar pulled up the ramp in low. We drove west three quarters of a block to Fifth, Oscar listening to the engine with his head cocked. It sounded fine, the chain drive grinding away smoothly just as I remembered.

At Fifth Oscar stopped, and a very nice coincidence happened, one that pleased us all. A car drove past the front of the bus, and it was one of those magnificently restored old cars, a handsome square-topped sedan looking as good as the day it was new, which was probably when this bus last rolled along Fifth, and we all smiled with pleasure. Then Oscar snapped on the inside lights and we all looked around: at the wooden seats, at one another in this strange environment, at the old advertisements above the windows. One was for Fels-Naptha, but it was for yellow bars of soap, not granules in a package; another showed a drawing of a handsome young dimple-chinned man wearing a high stiff Arrow collar.

Oscar shifted, let out the clutch and turned south onto Fifth Avenue, and there was not a soul in sight as far as we could see in either direction, and I felt a stab of disappointment. We wanted to startle a few people; we were out to play a joke. It wasn't a practical joke; to my mind that phrase means cruelty, a joke that is no joke but an embarrassment, annoyance, shock, or even injury to someone. We intended the opposite; I was entirely certain that to anyone seeing the incredible vision of this lighted old bus, our costumed selves inside it, wheeling slowly along Fifth Avenue in the middle of the night, it would be an astonishing sight and pleasure never forgotten.

We were disappointed as kids, and I'm sure that's why Oscar drove farther than he meant to; someone just had to see us. He drove through one block, then another and into a third, along the deserted late-at-night street, and we didn't see a person or a car. Then a woman walked out of a doorway with an Airedale on a leash. The dog stopped, the woman stood waiting, and as we rolled past she glanced up at us. There was no change of expression on her face, she showed absolutely no interest, and as her dog moved on, so did she without a backward glance. "She's from out of town," Joe said. "She thinks it's a regular bus."

Alice said, "Did you see her dress and hat? Hell, half the women in the country are wearing cloche hats and short dresses these days; we're no surprise to her, we're the latest style!"

Oscar was pulling to the curb; 50 feet ahead under a street light, two men frowning in conversation stood waiting for a bus, and he was going to oblige. He yelled, "On your feet, conductor!" and as I got up quickly and walked to the rear of the bus, Oscar slowed and stopped.

The two men stepped up onto the back platform without a break in the sound of the older man's voice, a gray-haired man of 60 in a wide-brimmed Panama hat and a snow-white suit. The younger man, who wore a gray business suit, stood listening, his eyes never leaving the older man's face. The man in white brought change from his pocket, and held out his hand, still talking. I lifted my fare collector, a little nickel-plated contrivance with a slot in the top, and he turned just long enough to push two dimes, one after the other, into the slot, and a chime sounded each time. Then I reached overhead, tugged at a rope, a bell tinkled over Oscar's head, and he pulled out from the curb. Our two passengers stood where they were, on the back platform, and the older man's voice—urging, selling, persistent—never stopped once, and now I was aware of what he was saying..

I don't really know anything about stocks or the stock market, but Pve taken a small flyer now and then. Sometimes I've made a little, more often I lose, but I'm always hoping for hot tips. Now I seemed to be hearing some, and I stood making an effort to remember them. "Buy any of them, Géorgie," the older man was saying for at least the second time. "It doesn't matter which, I guarantee you can sell out at a profit in a month. You won't want to, though. You'll thank me, and ask to buy more. But right now, start small and convince yourself. Buy a hundred RCA at around forty-four for a starter. A little New York Central at one-thirty, and some General Motors at a hundred and forty-one." Listening to this money talk, watching those two anxious profiles, I knew they could have stepped onto a red-white-and-blue bus manned by a crew in clown suits without noticing it, and I glanced at the others, all looking back here anxious to be noticed, and shrugged.

At the beginning of the next block Oscar pulled to the curb again, and a boy and girl got on. Neither was more than 19, and they climbed the narrow stairs to the next deck holding hands—no easy trick. I followed, my fare collector ready, and on the top deck they sat way up front in the first seat. The girl's head found the boy's shoulder, his arm went around her, and I dropped the fare collector in my pocket. I didn't bother wondering why they'd showed no surprise about the bus they'd boarded; they were aware of only themselves, and I stood there envying them. It was wonderful up here under the summer stars, the air balmy, and I wished Jessie and I were up here as they were. A buzzer sounded, the bus swung to the curb, and I looked downstairs to see the two men, the older one still talking, step off and walk away into the night, and I went downstairs again to sit next to Jessie.

Half a dozen yards from the Washington Square arch, Oscar slowed and stopped at the curb. He'd lived in New York once, and he remembered; this was where the old buses always waited for a few minutes before swinging in a half circle to head north again. "We're some big surprise to the natives, aren't we?" Joe said sarcastically; he and the girl were sitting together now, up near the front of the bus.

She said irritably, "What's the matter with people, anyhow?"

"Well, what did you expect?" Alice Weeks said, across the aisle. "After all, this is New York. I once saw twenty-five elephants walking west on Fifty-seventh Street at three o'clock in the morning; absolutely silent, walking trunk to tail, on their way to Madison Square Garden where the circus began next day. And a guy on a street corner never stopped reading his paper. You can't surprise them; they don't believe what they see. They think we're advertising something."

"Or making a movie," Jessie said, smiling.

We sat waiting, not quite knowing why. Then, just as Oscar shifted gears and began pulling away, a man in a light summer suit came walking out from under the arch, saw the bus, ran for it, and I stood and walked up front; the conductor shouldn't be seen sitting next to a passenger. He hopped on, walked down the aisle, saw Jessie, and I was instantly sorry I'd stood.

Because he was a very handsome guy—lean-faced, blue-eyed, wavy black hair—and he stopped motionless, staring down at Jess. Then, slowly, not taking his eyes from that wonderful face, he sat down beside her, and something I've never before actually seen happened under my eyes. Jessie saw it, too; she turned and saw a man falling in love with her.

We've all heard love at first sight discussed; usually it's a debate about whether it's possible. But I think it happens all the time. A man and woman meet, and something often happens right then and there, for one or both of them. But usually weeks or months have to pass before they admit what it is. Meanwhile, that instantaneous burst of feeling is called most anything else. But the truth remains that people often fall in love in a single look; the only thing rare about it is people who recognize it.

Jessie did. She saw it in his face, but whether he knew it himself I don't know. I walked down the aisle and stood listening; I couldn't help it. His voice was low, meant only for Jessie, but I heard. With absolute simplicity he said, "Look, I don't know what to do. I'll never again see a girl like you as long as I live. I don't know what to say, but I can't just sit here and let you go. I've got to know your name and see you again, I've got to. You must know that?"

There was no mistaking the quiet passionate truth in his voice, and I hated to look Jessie full in the face for fear of what I'd see there, too. But I did, and I saw that she was pleased—not because he was handsome, I thought; she saw handsome men every day of her life—but because a response like his couldn't help but affect her or any other woman, I suppose. But she hadn't fallen in love with him; Jessie wasn't falling in love with" anyone just now. She smiled—pleasantly, sweetly; Jessie's a nice girl—and actually reached out and patted his hand. "No," she said kindly. "I don't live here; I'll be gone in a day or so."

"But where----- "

"No," she repeated, still nicely but with an edge of finality, and turned away from him.

He sat staring at her; his mouth opened to speak once or twice; then he suddenly swung away, standing up, and walked fast down the aisle to the back of the bus, and hopped off. I was staring after him, so was Jess, so were the others; they hadn't heard what had been said, they were too far front, but they knew something had happened. Out on the street, dwindling behind us, he stood on the asphalt paving of Fifth Avenue in the summer night staring after us. Then he turned abruptly to the curb, stepped up, and was gone.

We drove straight back to the garage; the young couple on the top deck was gone when I checked. In the garage we covered the old bus with the tarp, then walked back to the house and changed to our own clothes. Nobody had much to say; our little joke hadn't really worked out. I was going to offer to take Jessie to her hotel, but when I came out of the dressing room she was gone.

Work started at eight sharp the next morning, and Jessica's big scene was the first thing Ernie Wyke had scheduled. Until noon we had the two blocks we'd asked for on lower Fifth Avenue; barricaded at both ends and at the side-street entrances, a cop at each barrier detouring traffic and keeping spectators at bay. We had the two blocks again in the afternoon from two until four, then we had to be finished and off the street for good. Out of camera range stood a generator truck, a sound truck, a motorized camera dolly, a motorized sound-boom dolly, a sprouting of reflectors on stands and other odds and ends of equipment, and a scattering of people of the unit standing around or sitting on the curb. Out in the street stood three period cars Al Berg had located here and rented, and our bus. All four motors were running, costumed drivers at the wheels, and inside the bus sat half a dozen men and women in Twenties costume, including Jessie in the light-blue outfit she'd worn the previous night.

Before he began filming, Ernie sent them through the scene. On a street corner just beyond the waiting cars and bus, an actor stood waiting for his cue; he was a friend of Ernie's, a middle-aged New York actor who was in a play here, and who had occasionally played small picture roles. This was the man, in the story, whom Jessie was in love with; a man very nearly three times her age. In the story he was important and frequently referred to, but he actually appeared only three times, each briefly, and it was really a small part. There'd been no need to bring anyone from Hollywood for it; any competent actor of his type and age could handle it, and I was seeing him now, waiting there on the corner, for the first time. My only criticism of him was that he looked like an actor: the plentiful crisp gray hair, at least part of which was probably an expensive hairpiece; the good but blurred profile; the not-too-portly figure, because he'd had to keep in reasonable shape to get work; the magnificent tailoring. He didn't look quite real.

Ernie said to him, "All right, Frank, let's go through it," and Frank began slowly pacing his street corner, glancing often at his watch. Ernie beckoned, and now the waiting automobiles drove past Frank one at a time, passing between him and the camera out in the middle of the street. The camera was centered on Frank, though it wasn't turning. A moment after the third car passed, the bus came along, drawing toward the curb, and it stopped at the street corner cutting Frank from view. Just behind the bus, and just out of the scene, the motorized camera dolly and sound-boom dolly had followed along. On the other side of the bus, just out of the previous shot, another camera was centered on Frank and the rear exit of the bus, and I knew Frank was standing there, a gentle smile on his face, offering a hand to Jessie as she stepped off the bus.

I walked around the two dollies to watch the rest of the scene. Frank was speaking a phrase of greeting, Jessie smiling tremulously in response, and the bus was moving on up Fifth, still in the scene as Frank took Jessie's arm and they began to walk ahead. Now the two dollies in the street began to follow, keeping abreast, the microphone on its boom suspended over their heads just out of camera range—and the cars and bus, out of the scene now, U-turned and came back; the sounds of their motors as they passed would be picked up as appropriate street noise.

I won't repeat the dialog as they walked along those two blocks of Fifth Avenue, but the point of it was that Frank told Jessie he was not going to see her again, that he was too old for her. It went on longer than that, but that was the gist of his speech: He loved her and would never stop, but he was plainly too old for a young girl, it had to be recognized and he was doing so, even if she refused to face it.

Jessie argued with him, pleaded, and finally begged. But he could not be changed, and presently he left her, walking toward the side street just ahead, then turning the corner out of the scene. As he disappeared—and this was the big point of the scene, this was the scene, the climax—the camera turned full on Jessie's face, and her face had to show what she felt. This was tragedy, a truth to be accepted, as she knew, but the most sorrowful moment of her life. Jess had to show that. During the rest of the scene, her face filling the screen, she had to make the audience know it was true; that this young and beautiful girl genuinely loved this man so much that his leaving her life broke her heart.

And she showed nothing of the sort. With Ernie, I stood beside the camera watching her—and her hands rose as though to reach after him, her mouth opened as though to call, then her face assumed an expression of sorrow. And you didn't believe it, because neither did she. She couldn't show what she'd never felt herself.

Ernie said, "Fine, Jess, you're getting it. Let's try again." Frank came back around the corner, and Ernie took Jessie's arm and began to talk as we all walked back toward the beginning of the scene, trying to find a way to make her feel it.

It was the worst morning I ever went through; if I could have, I'd have just walked away, and kept on walking for a long time. I'd hoped Ernie would find the key for Jess, though I didn't think he would, and he couldn't. After a while he began filming; he had to get the scene in the can. If anything, Jessie got worse; trying the scene in a variety of ways, as an actor who isn't getting it will sometimes do, hoping to somehow get it on film by accident.

At 11 o'clock Ernie told her that any of several versions we'd filmed were great, and it was time to go ahead with the rest of the schedule. Then he went on to clean up several short takes, including the one of Jessie leaving her house, coming down the front steps pulling on her gloves. We picked up on those again at 2 o'clock, and were finished by 3:15. Ernie looked at his watch. "All right," he called, keeping his voice calm, "as long as we have time, let's try the big scene once more. We'll take it from Jessie stepping off the bus."

Frank and Jessie walked to their street corner, the bus moving into position, and Ernie and I went along. This take, somehow, had to be at least acceptable; the others flatly would not do, and Ernie knew that. But he spoke quietly. He said, "Jess, Frank's an old-timer, he might have a thought for you while they're setting up." Then he left to give Frank a chance to say anything he could think of that might help. It was all Ernie had left to try; he'd said all he knew how to say, and by the time we shot this one last take, we'd have to pack up and clear the street.

Jessie looked at Frank. "Well?" she said sardonically; she knew as well as the rest of us how badly she was doing.

Frank wanted to help, tut didn't know how, either. He quirked his mouth, annoyed at the situation, and said, "I don't know what to say," and for a reason I couldn't pin down, the words were familiar, and I saw Jessie's eyes widen as though she recognized them, too. For a moment she stared at Frank's face, then her eyes narrowed, studying it feature by feature, and I stepped over beside her and saw what she saw.

I have no explanation for this; I simply don't know how or why it happened. All I can say is that in a single instant of understanding I suddenly knew why a woman had stood with her dog at the curb the night before watching without interest as our bus drove past her. I knew why she wore a fringed knee-length dress and a felt hat like a helmet; and I understood why a young couple in their teens climbed to the upper outside deck of a Fifth Avenue bus as though they'd done it many times before. And that evening, in the New York Public Library, I proved by the flaking brown-edged back files of the Times what I already knew. Listed in the market quotations were the stocks the man in white had mentioned, and the prices he'd quoted were correct—not for today, but for June 15, 1926. In some way beyond explaining or understanding, the conditions for this were precisely right; and in our ancient two-decker bus with the 1926 plates, dressed as we were then, that is the time—that is the lost June night and Fifth Avenue—that Oscar somehow drove into. And it was Frank, just outside Washington Square, who had stepped onto that bus and sat down next to Jessie.

I knew it now, and so did Jess as she stared at Frank's face —slashed with lines now, no longer lean and tight to the bones, and 38 years older—but the same face past all doubt. She said, "Frank? Did you ever get on a bus like this?"—she pointed to it at the curb beside them—"late one night in 1926? And see a girl like me, dressed as I am now? And you sat down beside her, and fell in love at that moment?"

He smiled, and with an old-style actor's gallantry, said, "No, because if I had, how could I ever forget it?" and there was no memory at all in his eyes.

Ernie called out, Jessie stepped onto the bus platform, the cameras turned, and they moved through the scene once again. At the street corner, just as he had in so many other takes, Frank turned to leave, saying, "I'm going. I won't come back. But I'll never forget you. Remember that; I'll never forget." And as Jess stared after him, her hands rose like claws toward her open mouth, and that beautiful face suddenly distorted into a grimace of terrible forsaken loneliness, and genuine tear? streaked down through her make-up in a look that—real as her feelings were, Jessie's an actress and never forgets the camera—may damn well bring her next year's Oscar as best supporting actress.

It raised the hair on my neck, that long look after Frank, and for a moment I thought it was grief for the vanished young Frank who had once fallen in love with her. But it wasn't for him at all, and it wasn't grief. I think it was shock, I think it was fright. She was crying for herself because suddenly she understood that love will not wait. It cannot be postponed; it dies instead. She suddenly knew that she couldn't continue to deny it, and deny herself—fending love off till her career was established—and then hope to find it and her capacity for it still patiently waiting. Jessie had had a glimpse of the future, her own future in which she stood forgotten by the man—whoever he might still be—who could love her forever, given the chance.

She knew it then, standing before the turning camera, shocked at her own loneliness. And she knew it, the filming over, in the lounge of the Plaza having a drink with me. Because she said, "Are you going back by train, Jake?"

I said, "I don't know; why?"

"Because if you are, I'd like to go with you." And I knew that on the long leisurely trip back, whatever might have happened between us before and hadn't been allowed to, was going to have its chance.

THE MISSION

by hugh nissenson

Hugh Nissenson, who was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, is known to readers of Commentary as the man who perceptively covered the trial of Adolf Eichmann for that magazine. For his short stories, collected under the title "A Pile of Stones," he received the 1965 Edward Lewis Wallant Book Award. Of "The Mission" which follows, Nissenson says, "Just about the first story I ever wrote, in the summer of 1946, was about a group of savages in a world devastated by atomic war. 'The Mission* (1964) was the first science fiction I'd written since then. I like to believe my technique improved, but my inspiration to write it, a profound horror at the prospects of such devastation, remains the same."

Sixth day

INTELLIGENCE WAS RIGHT. DeWitt is to be congratulated. They have a woman here, there's no doubt of it. For almost a week now, I've been afraid that we were making the long march for nothing, but now that we are here, late this afternoon, during a break in the preliminary negotiations with the little brutes, I was permitted to look at her through the cracks in the clapboard walls of the hut where she is kept, the only normal-sized structure of any kind in the whole settlement; just a glimpse as she was being bathed, but reassuring just the same. As I watched, two of their females washed her in a rusty tub of galvanized metal probably scavenged from the ruins of the fair-sized town we passed the day before yesterday, about 30 miles due south of here— leveled by an airburst, from the looks of it, but definitely "cold" according to my counter, and now marked accordingly on my map . . . But the woman; how can I put it? Magnificent is the only word to describe her. What luck for Wilson, damn him! Without so much as a word, a faint smile on her lips, hardly deigning to even glance at the little horrors, she permitted them to dry her off and comb out her long blonde hair which almost reaches the small of her back. She's young, too, about 16 would be my guess, certainly nubile, with ample breasts and rounded hips, perfectly, absolutely perfectly formed, as far as I could see, and good-looking to boot, with beautiful white teeth and very fair skin, flushed cheeks from the steaming water which they heat up with hot stones. Of course, I must make a much more detailed examination before I can definitely commit myself, but on the evidence so far, I've begun to bargain with the "mayor" here, as he calls himself, who is adamant in his demands for at least eight of our M-ls, plus a hundred rounds of ammunition apiece. "Impossible," I tell him.

"Ah then, Captain, I am sorry, too, more than I can say,"

he shrugs, dapping his hands for one of his females who brings us an earthenware plate heaped with fresh fruit—his daughter, I think, or maybe one of his wives; who can tell for sure? In any case, certainly as hideous as he, and about the same height, not more than 30 inches at the most, with the same kind of head of reddish hair, and almost identical wizened, hairless face, and enormous head and torso in proportion to her stunted limbs. "Yes, it's too bad," he repeats in his surprisingly deep voice, biting into a crab apple. Perched on his head and looking so absurd that I have to control myself from laughing in his face, is an ancient battered, black-silk top hat, found who knows where. It is apparendy the badge of his "office" which is hereditary, he has confided in me, and passed on through matrilineal descent for three generations now. "Yes, yes, a real shame . . ." He scratches his neck, then his hairless chest covered by a ragged flap of the stinking hide of a wild dog which is slung over one shoulder and tied about the waist with a rawhide strip. The stench is unbelievable. Sergeant Thurmond tells me it's because the only way they have discovered to tan hides is with a solution of their own feces— huge pots of which he has come across in one of their mud and watde huts, or rather mounds, I suppose, would be the best way to describe them. There must be over a hundred in the walled compound where we squat, none higher than a human's chest, and all overgrown with grass and peculiar pale blue flowers with huge fleshy petals and jointed stalks— mutations, too, of some kind or another, unless I miss my guess. They have no odor, but grow everywhere, springing up in the heaps of rubbish that litter the ground, the piles of broken pottery, rags and gnawed bones—I hold one in my hand, the bleached femur of a large dog—all sorts of decaying filth covered with buzzing clouds of flies that rise in the air and settle again as he raises his arm to take another bite of the apple with his ydlow teeth.

"Yes, a terrible shame. What a waste to think that you've come all this way for nothing. Still . . . that is to say, at least you ought to have a closer look at her. She's a virgin, of course, as you can see for yourself any time you want . . ."

"When?"

"Soon. I know how impatient you must be. Very soon, I promise."

"All right, then, first let me get it all straight. You say her parents are dead, is that right?" "Yes. Years ago." "How did it happen?"

"Sad. Very sad indeed. They had no luck. The mother got sick right after the child was born, some kind of a fever, and died within a few days, a week at the very most."

"And the father?"

"Killed."

"How?"

"On a hunt right after that. The wild dogs." "But they were both human." "Yes, of course." "Both perfectly formed." "Perfectly. You have my word on it." "Where are they buried, do you know?" "Ah, now that's sad, too. Their bodies were burned and the ashes scattered." "Why?"

"We had no choice, Captain. It's the same with all of our dead, if you'll forgive the comparison. No matter how deep we dig the graves, the dogs always dig them up."

"In other words, there are no skeletons I can examine."

"Not so much as a bone, no, I'm sorry to say."

"I see."

"But you have my word on it, Captain. Both were absolutely perfectly formed. I swear to it." He kisses the tips of his fingers and rolls his eyes to the sky

—which in the past few minutes has become much darker, a deep, purplish blue, streaked with green, red and yellow in the west, over the hills, where the sun has begun to set. Standing guard a few paces away, his gun in his hand, Thurmond nervously sniffs the air, drawing his cloak closer over his shoulders, his face strangely luminous in the fading light, confounded, in spite of himself, I know, by the prospect of another night on the surface, under the open sky.

"Where did you find them?" I continue.

"Who?"

"Her parents, of course."

"We didn't. They found us. It was during a very bad winter, the worst in years, if you remember it, the time of the really big snow from the mountains that came just after the leaves fell and lasted until they were back on the trees. A terrible time. One morning they were here, just like that, outside the wall, a man holding the woman in his arms, and begging to be let in to at least warm themselves by the fire. We hardly had enough food for ourselves, you understand, but what could we do? My mother was alive then. TVe can't just let them die,' she tells me. 'Hermann, let them in.' The dogs were after them. We could hear them howling in the woods."

"So you saved them out of the kindness of your hearts." "It's nice of the captain to put it that way." "The man wasn't armed?" "No."

"That's a lie. He had a rifle or a revolver and you know it."

"No, I swear it."

"I want to know the truth."

". . . Yes," he says, after a pause.

"Which was it?"

"He had a rifle."

"That's better. Where is it now?"

"Ah, broken, I'm sad to say. Broken a long time ago."

"Go on . . ."

"There's nothing more to tell. The woman gave birth and died, and then the man was killed, as I've already told you, torn to pieces by the wild dogs."

"You just said he had a rifle."

"So he did, but there were too many of them."

"I see." Thurmond coughs impatiently, and is right; we ought to be getting back to camp. "One thing more . . ."

"Anything, Captain."

"What made you decide to keep the child?"

"Captain, I know my duty. She's human, after all, perfectly formed, as you've seen for yourself, only fitting for an officer's wife."

"Then you also know your duty is to surrender her to me immediately."

"And so I will. You can count on it." "For eight of our M-ls."

"And a hundred rounds of ammunition apiece," he nods, grinning from ear to ear, as I stand up at last and stretch my stiff legs. A cold autumn wind has sprung up, and with the sun gone, the sky is much darker than before, but completely clouded over, without a star. The odor of burning fat hangs in the air. Here and there in the compound about us, a fire has been lit for the evening meal, tended by the females, some of whom hold a naked brat to their bare dugs, even more hideous than the adult of the species, all huge head and wizened face—the likes of with which she, too, must have been suckled, if any of the "mayor's" story is true. How horrible . . . The man, of course, was murdered for his gun, that's perfectly obvious, but the chances are that the rest of the tale may be more or less accurate. In the last ten or twelve years, I've known something like it to have happened at least two or three times; a human family, driven by despair to take refuge among mutants who murder them but save the child to be traded to the garrison of the silo. Major

James' second wife is a case in point, and Miller's, if I remember correctly, both of whom were discovered in circumstances very much like these. No, come to think of it, I'm wrong. It was Major James' and Major Preston's wives. Miller's was also found among mutants, but hanged, for race pollution. As a matter of fact, she was discovered to be pregnant just in time, a week or so before the wedding, and confessed that she had consorted carnally with at least two of the males from the tribe that had brought her up, the clam-diggers, as I remember, who are congenitally blind from cataracts, and who live along the coast about 80 miles north of here. Yes, it all comes back to me now, even her name, Amelia, "Emmy," also about 16 or so, maybe even younger, with dark hair and long, curling eyelashes, not bad-looking at all. My God, what a mess—a reminder that I must be doubly careful when I do get around to examining this one, which will probably not be before the day after tomorrow, if today's session is any indication of how long this whole business is going to take.

"Yes, well, good enough," I finally tell him with a yawn, which Thurmond takes as a signal for our departure for camp, undisguised relief on his face. "We'll talk about it again tomorrow."

"Of course, Captain. You've come a long way, and you must be very tired. Forgive me." He claps his hands again— for a male, this time, with an enormous tumor at the nape of his neck, who accompanies, us out of the compound, carrying a spear twice his height, tipped with what looks to me like the blade of a butcher knife, which flashes in the light of the blazing torch he holds in his other hand.

Later

... As usual, Thurmond has done a good job. We are encamped on a hill that commands the settlement from the southeast, steep and easily defensible, just in case they have any ideas about rushing us in the dark, and with a stream close by, in a copse of pine trees, a hundred yards or so away.

"Tennison and Witcomb are on first watch with the BAR," he reports, throwing a blanket over my shoulders.

"Good. Tell them to keep the fire going, and their eyes peeled. Any sign of funny business, anything at all, and they're to shoot to kill, and ask questions afterward, do you understand?"

"Yes, sir." He salutes. "Good night, sir."

"Good night, Sergeant," I tell him, wrapping myself up in the bedroll he has laid out for me near the fire, around which the eight other men of the squad have bedded down for the night. The ground is damp. Witcomb throws an armful of brush and a log or two on the flames which leap up and crackle, exploding in a shower of sparks. Above me now, in the depths of a rift in the clouds, a few stars shine, first one, then another, and still a third, so disquieting in their intimation of infinitude that I actually shudder, my heart beating like a hammer against my ribs, and my throat constricted and dry. Despite myself, I must look away, and fix my eyes on the branches of a pine tree growing nearby. They say nothing, but the other men feel it, too, I know it, like Thurmond, when it is growing dark, the same nameless anxiety. I can hear them restlessly turning this way and that on the pine needles, speaking together in hushed tones, born and bred underground like myself and suffering accordingly, under the reaches of the open sky. What's the word again? Acrophobia? I forget. DeWitt says that in another generation or two, this fear of open space, particularly the sky at night, will render us unfit for anything but life in the silo, concrete ceilings over our heads, unless we begin at once to condition our young to the rigors of a surface existence. He has a point, I'm afraid, if you can go by any of us here, right now. What an irony it would be if we succeed in our mission to preserve the purity of the race, only to fail in its corollary of regaining our rightful domination of the earth because we can't bear the sight of a few stars at night. An awful thought. DeWitt is right j something must be done about it, and soon, and it's up to the officers to take the initiative. Literally gritting my teeth, grinding them together, I force myself to tear my eyes away from the branch of the pine tree and look up again, for a full minute, counting slowly to 60, while my heart goes at it again like a hammer, and the roof of my mouth dries up, a peculiar, cloying taste on my tongue . . .

Still later

. . . Cloudy again. The stars have all gone. Perhaps it will rain. Unable to sleep, I scribble a few more words in the log . . . Whispering to my left. Silhouetted against the fire, I recognize Pfc. Roscower's unmistakable profile—his hooked nose, gojd ring glinting in his ear, as he bends over to whisper something in the ear of the man to his right, Pfc. Feeney.

Seventh day

. . . More palaver with the little beast over lunch—a dog stew, served with crab apples dipped in wild honey, and delicious, I have to admit, after a week now of C rations; but no progress whatsoever with the bargaining.

"Eight, plus ammunition."

"No."

And so it goes, on and on, while we eat and sip a raw liquor they distill from the apples, a pale gold color, with quite a kick. The "mayor" is slightly tipsy, a little thick-tongued and bleary-eyed, looking more ridiculous than ever with the top hat cocked over one eye. He's crawling with lice, and quite unconcernedly picks them out of his head, crushing them between a thumb and forefinger with a grin—an inescapable, calculated insult, no matter how you cut it, and about which I can do nothing until the woman has been secured.

"Eight plus a hundred rounds apiece," he repeats for the umpteenth time, wiping his greasy lips on the back of his hand.

"Four."

"Ah, now Captain . . ." He wags a finger under my nose.

What's most infuriating of all is the thought that, say, 40 years ago, or even less, when I was a boy, it would have been unthinkable for any perfectly formed human to have entered into any social relationship with the animals, much less even consider putting firearms into their hands. Has our general situation deteriorated to such an extent? Fortunately, most of the mutant species we encounter in this area, anyway, are so deformed as to pose no real threat to the human population; the blind clam-diggers, for example; but still, at the rate at which these reproduce—they are sexually mature at eight or nine, by the way, and live till 40 or so—it will be a real struggle to extirpate them when the time comes, a fight to the death, no two ways about it, and for which we must be fully prepared. Yes, there must be two or three hundred of them in this settlement alone, all breeding true to type, as far as I can see, but suffering, I notice, from a proliferation of tumors, particularly the males, who must be the ones who scavenge for workable metal in ruins which are probably considerably more radioactive than the one we passed. (A smart move, incidentally, and for which I must thank Thurmond again, who suggested at the outset that we conceal our Geiger-Müller counters from them. On their own, they apparently have no way of detecting radiation.)

Later

. . . Good news, if it's true. The "mayor" informs me that in all probability the woman will have her period in another day or so, assurance that she hasn't been polluted recently, anyhow. Accordingly, I've had a conference with Thurmond who agrees that if worst comes to worst, we could spare five of our M-ls, and perhaps 60 rounds of ammunition apiece, which would still leave us amply armed for the march home, with the BAR, the Thompson, in addition to my sidearm, the .45, and the five remaining M-ls. What worries me, though, is that whatever we give them is irreplaceable. Through this kind of trading and normal wear and tear, and general deterioration, particularly of the cartridges, the stockpile at the silo is getting dangerously low. What will happen in the next generation? DeWitt again, who is supervising the preparation of a new manual of arms, seriously suggests that we ought to begin the manufacture of bows and arrows, and instruct the enlisted men in their use; also spears. The thought makes me ill, actually sick to my stomach; all I can think of is the brute who accompanied us back to camp last night. Spears! ... A ruckus just before sundown. "Kill 'em. Stamp 'em out," shouts Roscower at the top of his lungs. He's gotten his hands on some of the booze and staggers about the compound waving his arms, trailed by a horde of the females who, hardly reaching up to his waist, jump up and down, clutch at him and make obscene gestures with their hands. "Kill 'em all, I tell you," he screams, as Thurmond and Feeney drag him back to camp. Abruptly sobered up by all the racket, the "mayor" puts aside his cup and scrutinizes me with narrowed, glittering eyes, all black pupils, an incomprehensible expression on his face that's as wrinkled and hairless as a dried plum . . . Oh, Roscower, how right you are; how I only wish we could . . .

Eighth day

. . . Another restless night, filled with half-remembered dreams, nightmares as I haven't had them since I was a boy and, in the waking interludes, countless stars, shining in a perfectly cloudless sky . . . It's a mournful lack of self-discipline, I know, but the thought of Wilson's impending good fortune torments me more than I dare admit. Seniority demands that the next woman brought back to the silo is for him—heaven knows, he has waited long enough—what is it now? Eight years? But then, so have I, and I'm younger than he," 36 to his 47, in the prime of my life. I keep daydreaming that we will return with her to find that he has since died of a heart attack, and she'll be mine . . . How strange j now I can remember one of the dreams. I must have been thinking about the death of Miller's wife, hanging, or whatnot, because it concerned the execution of an officer by the name of Grenfield, a captain, too, as I remember, who was convicted of consorting with a mutant more than a dozen years ago, a female with four nipples, and hanged for race pollution. I could see it as vividly as if it had happened yesterday: the gallows erected on the grassy knoll near the silo's egress number three, his pale face shining with sweat as the wire noose was slipped around his neck, and the chair kicked from under his bare feet. He takes God only knows how long to strangle, forever, or so it seems, with his still-pink tongue protruding between his lips, and his pale blue eyes not yet glazed, but fully cognizant. As is required by the order of the day, the entire garrison files by, officers and men. A stiff wind is blowing, billowing out his unbuttoned tunic stripped of all insignia, which turns his body slowly on its axis, from right to left. Face to face with him for a moment, just an instant, he gazes at me, and with a smile, baring his teeth, winks his left eye . . .

Night

. . . "Yes, yes, Captain, tomorrow morning, for sure," my "mayor" has promised me, at last. "Tomorrow morning, first thing, you can examine her to your heart's content." He is worried about something, preoccupied, and along about an hour before sundown, I can hear why—the savage baying of a pack of wild dogs in the scrub forest less than a quarter of a mile away to the east, which has apparently run down a hunting party sent out from here early this morning to secure some fresh meat. Too terrified to do anything to help, the little brutes crowd the catwalk that runs along the top of their nine-foot wall of sharpened stakes, brandishing their knives and spears, while the females lacerate their bare chests and forearms with their long fingernails, and wail. By an hour after dark, it's all over; silence, not a sound in the night, but the occasional hoot of an owl, or the squeak of a bat. It's an omen, I can't help feeling, a good sign; the man—whoever he was, the father who will not be forgotten, has been paid back, and in the same coin . . . The men feel it, too; Thurmond, who is busy shining my boots for the morning, whistles under his breath as he works.

Ninth day; dawn

. . . With everything else I have to worry about this morning, Feeney and Roscower have had a lovers' spat, the latter accusing the former of being unfaithful to him with Sergeant Thurmond, of all people, who says nothing, but chews on a blade of grass, one of the strange blue wild flowers stuck behind one ear, evidently enjoying himself hugely, a wicked gleam in his eye. If it's true, then he's broken the unwritten rule that prohibits an N. C. O. from forming a relationship with an enlisted man, but under the circumstances, Thurmond being as fine a soldier as he is, I have decided not to interfere. He's a handsome man, I must admit, with a curly blond beard and dark eyes, a perfect build, powerful shoulders and chest, no hips. Rescower sulks around, his lower lip stuck out a mile, glowering petulantly, while an unattached Pfc. by the name of Harris makes calf's eyes at him, and "sighs ... all very complicated . . . Who was it, again? The ancient Germans? What I need is a refresher course in my military history. No, the Spartans. Yes, I remember, the 300 at the bridge, or wherever it was, and damn fine soldiers, too, who based their army on the same principle that has spontaneously risen among our garrison in the silo because of the lack of enough perfectly formed women to go around. In combat, or in general, for that matter, the system works admirably, lovers willing to make any sacrifice for each other; but I sometimes wonder what the final result will be of providing wives for the hereditary officer class first. The population of our enlisted personnel has already begun to decline almost three percent a year, if I recall the latest figures, and is falling all the time. What I simply can't understand is why the top brass didn't station women in the silo in the first place, before the war. DeWitt maintains that it's because the silo's primary function was not the preservation of racial purity, but simply an invulnerable launching pad for the ICBMs, the rockets with which the four-hour war was apparently fought, and which none of us has ever seen. No, I can't believe he's right. It's just too much to swallow that the top brass, with all of its intelligence and resources, was unable to anticipate the extent of racial pollution that the war was to bring. I refuse to accept it as doctrine, and yet, the historical fact remains that from the very beginning, right after the war more than 80 years ago, the garrison had to provide women for itself from the surface, and at very great risk to the personnel. What child doesn't remember the story of Lieutenant Devlin's self-sacrifice, or Pfc. Gold, who brought back the Gary sisters? To be perfectly honest, the whole business is beyond me, a complete mystery . . . But enough for now. The sun is up— another good omen? It's a warm, particularly beautiful day, with a sparkling blue sky, not a cloud to be seen, the warmest it's been for almost a week now, as if the summer has returned ... I must get a move on with Thurmond and Feeney, the two others who must witness the formal examination as required by the law . . .

Later

. . . Crowned by a wreath of the blue flowers, a rope around her neck, she is stripped naked and led through a curiously silent, jostling crowd of the females by the "mayor" in his top hat, who brings her into the hut where we have been compelled to wait for almost an hour until the ceremony —whatever it was, and which we were forbidden to attend—is through. A yank on the rope, and she stands perfectly still, her hands by her sides . . . She has not—I repeat, not— begun menstruating, as was anticipated; but as far as Thurmond and I can determine, the membrane is intact. Lovely she is, there's no doubt of it, with even more beautiful hair than I remembered, honey-colored, dazzling in the sunlight, thick with dust, that streams through the cracks in the wall; her body, all of her perfectly formed, absolutely without a blemish, except for a large mole on her left breast, near the armpit, and another on the back of her right hand. Thurmond reads off the check list and Feeney and I turn her this way and that, while she giggles and squirms under our hands, her nostrils dilated, greenish-gray eyes opened wide.

"Ten fingers . . ."

"Ten, yes, check . . ."

"Ten toes."

"Right. Check."

And so on, everything perfect, as she giggles uncontrollably, a strand of that beautiful hair in her eyes. "Well?" the "mayor" wants to know.

"One thing at a time . . . What's-your name, girl?" "My name?"

"Yes. What do they call you?"

She makes an abrupt movement to brush the hair out of her eyes, and the blanket falls to the ground.

"Take your time. Take your finger out of your mouth and answer me. You needn't be afraid."

"Her name is Lila," says the "mayor" in his deep voice.

"Is that what they call you?"

"Lila," she repeats, after a pause, blinking her eyes.

"Take your time. Do you know what I am, Lila?" I ask.

"Lila."

"Yes, yes. You told me. But what about me? Do you know why I'm here? I've come to take you away. You're to be the bride of an officer, Lila, do you know what that means?"

"Lila . . ."

"Yes, that's right. Your name is Lila. Very good. But do you know what an officer is? He's a man, a perfectly formed human being, just like yourself. You will be his wife, and bear his children, as befits you, as is your duty. Can you understand that?"

She turns away. "Well, Captain?" asks the "mayor" again, when we are outside.

"We'll see . . ." He waddles by my side in silence, with the peculiar rolling gait characteristic of the species. A peal of high-pitched laughter comes from the interior of the hut, reverberating in the stifling, dusty air that shimmers from the heat of the sun. We squat in the shadow of the wall. Once again, even louder than before, she laughs . . .

Later

. . . We leave tomorrow, first thing. The men are preparing a litter in which to carry her, a hammock made out of a blanket to be slung between two poles cut from the pines.

They curse from the effort of packing up all the gear, irritable from the unseasonable heat and, although they say nothing, of course, the prospect of making the long march back home inadequately armed—responsibility for which I take entirely upon myself. Thurmond and Feeney are witnesses. Under the circumstances, after arguing for more than four hours in the broiling sun, there was nothing I could do but yield to his insistence and make the trade on his terms, or not at all, for eight of the M-ls and a hundred rounds of ammunition apiece. "Take it or leave it, Captain, that's it . . ."

"I wouldn't worry too much about it, sir," Thurmond assures me. "With the BAR and the Thompsons we'll be all right. The only thing we have to watch out for is the wild dogs, and what's a few dogs . . ."

This in a voice loud enough for all the men to hear. He may be right, at that; still, what haunts us all is the possibility of betrayal, that somewhere between here and the mountains, they'll ambush us with our own weapons to get the lot—which Thurmond admits in confidence is a possibility, particularly at night, although he seriously doubts it— they as well as we having to contend with the roving packs of dogs in more or less unfamiliar terrain.

"No, I don't think they'd dare," he chews on the ragged ends of his beard, poring over the maps I have spread out on the ground. So far, anyway, the lookouts I have posted report that there's no unusual activity in the compound, although Thurmond and I agree that if they did intend to send out an ambush party to steal a march on us, they'd do it after dark.

"A chance we'll just have to take," says Thurmond with a smile that crinkles up his eyelids, glancing at the girl who has curled up on the pine needles, covered by a blanket, with one hand under her cheek and the thumb of the other in her mouth. Is she sleeping? Her eyes are closed. The lids quiver.

Thurmond holds on to the rope which is" still looped about her neck. Now, apparently bothered by the buzzing flies, she opens her eyes and sits up, her long, tangled hair flowing over her naked shoulders, covering one breast. Her nipples are an orange brown.

"Lila Lila Lila Lila," she laughs, drawing up her legs.

Wilson Wilson Wilson Wilson is all I can think of. I can picture DeWitt at the wedding in the officers' mess in section five, peering at her over the tops of his rimless glasses, as he makes the usual speech in his soft voice that is just barely audible over the whir of the ventilator fans.

". . . Perfectly formed . . . pure and undefiled ... a fitting vessel for the perpetuation of the race which will one day soon regain its rightful domination . . ." etc. etc. while Wilson fidgets impatiently in front of him, pulling at the collar of his dress uniform which is too tight for his fat neck, licking his dry lips as he reaches for her hand, the son of a bitch.

How lucky can you get?

THE DOT AND DASH BIRD

BY BERNARD WOLFE

Hollywood has been good to Bernard Wolfe— unwittingly. The film city and its fantastic fauna have furnished him with rich grist for his fiction mill. His corrosively acerbic playboy stories of Hollywood writer Gordon Rengs must be ranked with Nathanael West and Evelyn Waugh in the literature of filmdom: When Walter Wanger read them under the collective book title of "Come On Out, Daddy," he said, "Wolfe's Hollywood is one of the most amazing I have encountered." The fantasy which follows is not a Gordon Rengs story, although its principal character is a Hollywood writer—one Walter Jack Commice. Wolfe assures us that any resemblance between Commice and himself is purely coincidental. There is also very little resemblance between this bracing dash of bitters and "The Never Ending Penny," the amiable Wolfe story that appears earlier in these pages, for "The Dot and Dash Bird" is comedie noire at its deepest, most ebon shade of noire.

THE MYNA, in black pomposity of feathers, with chief justice's leveling eyes, worked at its chuffy song, gurrah, gurree, gruh-greeg. Walter Jack Commice ticked out the beat on the surface of his free-shape pale-lemon Formica desk, bop, bop, bop-bop.

When he became aware of what his fingers were doing, he looked up quickly from the puce-colored IBM typewriter to study the dark presiding figure in its curlicued brass cage.

"I spit on your trivialized smut guts, too, scum eyes."

He was not pleased with himself for hating a small incarcerated animal. But facts were facts. Small black magisterial clump of nothing with a sheen of no sympathy in the eye and answering to the name of Jonnikins.

"Jonnikins, your Jerkiness. You and your witch friend Daisy-Dear. Long-term mononucleosis to you both."

Neither did he enjoy malicious thoughts about his mother-in-law. He never laughed at mother-in-law jokes, because he sensed in them a displeasure with women which he believed more suited to fairies, whom he truly hated. Yet how deny he had a mother-in-law who doted on the name Daisy-Dear and insisted on keeping a filthy rotten myna bird she insisted on calling Jonnikins? Keeping the miserable squawker in his study, at his elbow? Not bad enough she had to live here. She had to buddy up to rotten filthy birds that eyed you and made nasty Huntley-Brinkley commentaries you couldn't understand about you and yours. Birds that sat on a stack of statute books handing down sentences and making mucoid rock 'n' roll in their throats. In his study. At his elbow.

"Jonnikins, if you want to know what I think, I think you're a fairy, a feather-bearing damn fairy. I would dance in the streets to see you stretched out conclusively dead with your ugly claws sticking straight up. As for your side-kick and bird of a feather, Daisy-Dear . . ."

Drawing back from the darkening thought, he shifted his eyes to the picture window to consider the sunny spread of

West Hollywood and Beverly Hills below. From his rose-carpeted and rose-draped study here high over Coldwater Canyon he could make out all the landmarks of the sprawled enterprise called Walter Jack Commice, the California Bank Building, where agents sat collecting his moneys, the Sunset Tower, where business managers were busy disbursing his moneys, the Beverly Hilton, in whose penthouse Escoffier Room he met regularly with television producers and story editors to firm up new assignments, the Park La Brea Towers, where his secretary was at this moment typing up his last script for the Yucca Yancy series, the Bekins warehouse, where he was obliged to store his many bound volumes of old television scripts now that Daisy-Dear insisted on using the closet of his study for Jonnikin's feeds and vitamins and assorted goodies. About him this network of institutions operating on the premise that his hands would continue to fly plottingly and dialogingly over the puce IBM, but when he looked down at a wide city dependent on his ten fingers, the fingers went truant and jogged the myna's growling rhythms.

Bop, bop, they went. Bop, bop-bop.

Daisy-Dear came in slapping her too-large fluffy mules and crossed to her darling's cage.

"Don't mind me," she said, as usual. He was again struck by how much she sounded like her feathered friend, a rasper, a growler. He kept expecting her to grow a beak; she already had the beadiness of eye. "Just want to see how Boy-Boy is."

Sometimes it wasn't Jonnikins. When that love welled up it could be Boy-Boy.

"It would be easier to not mind you," he said, not loudly, "if you didn*t start yapping the minute you came in." He added with no loudness at all, "Easier still if you took a slow train to Anchorage."

But by this time she was crooking her finger through the brass bars at Jon-Boy-Boy and saying in a coo, "Are you maybe under the weather, little man? You look peak-ed, definitely."

He felt peak-ed, definitely. He imagined his head was peak-ed and pointy and begging for dunce caps. He stared with disenchantment at the page in his typewriter and forced his eyes to follow the words again:

quarles {lazily): What makes you think I'm your man, sheriff?

sheriff slate (readying hands at holsters): Scar over right eye. Third finger of left hand missing down to second knuckle. You're the one gunned down Farrow, all right. I'd know you anywheres.

quarles (placidly downing drink in shot glass): You can get in a whole mess of trouble going round making big accusations like that.

sheriff slate (fingers stiffening near holsters): You're the one's in trouble,now, Quarles. Either you come along quiet . . .

quarles (pitting shot glass down deliberately): Now, you couldn't rightly expect me to do that, sheriff. I don't do things quiet. I'm a loud man. I do everything real loud . . .

Daisy-Dear reading today's immortal prose over his shoulder. Projecting the editorial lower lip, beaklike. Inanely reporting, "He was saying he's a loud man this morning at eleven. It's three in the afternoon now."

"I've asked you roughly a hundred times not to come in here when I'm working, Daisy. I've asked you maybe two hundred times not to read over my shoulder when you do come in, Daisy."

Eyes slotting now. Two Daisies bereft of their honeying and kissy Dears. She knew when she'd been slapped in the face twice in two sentences.

"Walter. Really. You know I can't go all day without peeking in to see how Jonnikins is."

"And how my script isn't?"

"Now, Walter. You know you're just grumpy because it isn't going well. Two pages in five hours . . ."

A double accusation behind that. It was her theory that his study was the best place for Jonnikins because the sound of typing gave him something to think about and generally soothed him. When there was this sound: It was her further theory that her son-in-law was a no-good lazy bum who sat all day counting his fingers and thinking about strip-teasers, and that the lack of busy noises was what made Jonnikins feel neglected and got him under the weather and peak-ed, definitely.

"Five hours is right," he said. "Five full hours of Feathers over there concertizing in my ear. He's in fine, phlegmy voice today."

The thing was that the longer Walter sat, trying to get Killer Quarles to put that shot glass all the way down and draw on Sheriff Slate to force the shoot-out, the more the goddamn prosecuting attorney of a black bird kept throwing the book at him. This sheeny black mess of a black hoppy animal was conviction-happy D. A., rigged jury, hanging judge, and firing and blackballing story editor in one dirty, black ball.

Walter was terrified of getting fired from Yucca Yancy and blackballed from the industry as a deadline misser. He was already three days overdue on this assignment and Quarles was still so disinclined to draw that Sheriff Slate's fingers were^oing stiff with neuralgia there by his holsters.

'Write, Walter," Daisy-Dear said. "It'll be good for your nerves and for Boy-Boy's, too. Get them six-shooters a-shootin' like sixty!"

She padded out on her sloshing mules.

Gurree, gruh-greeg, admonished the scummy bum of a blackhearted bird.

Bop, bop-bop, went his fingers.

Bump, bump-bump?

What?

Duh, duh-duh?

That little fairy with the celluloid letter opener for a nose? Mm?

Soon as he heard the station wagon hit the gravel he headed down to the carport. Immediately he was leading her over to a safe conference spot near the hibachi patio grill, close by the vermiform aquamarine swimming pool, saying too fast, "She's your mother and my nemesis. She was in every hour on the hour today, making time with that undernourished vulture and cracks about my work. Get Daisy-Dour for a mother-in-law and you don't need any Romanians. Chris, I swear, if she's going to keep busting into my room with blue pencils going counterclockwise in her eyes . . ."

Chris put her shopping bags on the barbecuing machine and said, "Wally. Honey. She's been giving you a workout, I know." She raised up to kiss him on the cheek. "I'll have one last talk with her. If it doesn't do any good, she doesn't live here anymore, that's it. She carried me for nine months, but that doesn't give her any call to needle you for nine years. You forget about it, hon. If I've got to choose between her and you, it's no contest. I know what side of my bread the jam's on."

She kissed him on the neck, over to the left, near the scar where the carbuncle had been cauterized off. Daisy-Dear had insisted on the carbuncle going, because she saw potentialities for cancer in all unusual blooms except her own bloating tongue.

Chris was his one ally. He knew he could count on her against all the editor-eye vultures. Immediately he felt better.

"You're a girl and a half," he said, and meant it.

"I'd better make tracks and a half. Six-fifteen. Oo, oo. Mix the onion dip and get martoonis in the fridge. How're you doing with the Yancy?"

"Nnnh. Quarles's an old chimney. Not drawing properly."

"Ho, ho. Never you mind, hon. You're the A-one chimney sweep in these parts."

His eyes followed with approval as she gathered up the groceries and went off toward the all-electric kitchen, haunch-high, ample, still a curvy and superior bundle. If at times he felt he was a prisoner in the enemy camp, she at least was there with him, tapping out messages of solidarity on the cell wall.

He thought of Henny Juris. While Chris and her mums were off doing last-minute things in the kitchen, Walter Jack Commice adjusted his legs on the leather hassock, sipped at his panatela, and thought about Henny Juris, wondering why. He had not seen or considered Henny for 16 years, since the Navy. His fingers were making rhythms on the martini glass. He let his eyes go to the glass patio doors, to the well-lit landscaping beyond. In this town you paid high for your red and blue banana trees. But, he told himself, he did not mind. Nothing comes free of charge. Even when you jump for joy you're using up your legs some. All of which did not tell him why his mind was suddenly going back to Henny Juris. Or his fingers jumping on the martini glass, not for joy. He was now on his third martini, not for joy.

The ladies came out to announce that dinner was ready and in a minute they were seated and the maid was serving.

"Chris," Walter said over the jellied madrilene, "y^oumajored in psych. Stimulus-response, reflexes, things of that order. Tell me, do you think animals, the higher animals below humans, are capable of hate?"

"There's the danger of anthropomorphism," Chris said. "Attributing to them specifically human qualities, like being vain about your figure and liking to see your name in the papers and wanting to be at the head of the class. But, yes, I'd give them hate. When the hippopotamus is dismembering the white hunter I don't think his head's full of rosy Christian thoughts."

"You speak of the hippopotamus. What about, specifically, birds?" He kept his eyes carefully away from Daisy-Dear, but he saw the alerted look Chris gave him across the table. "You suppose birds, domesticated birds, can hate other creatures—people?"

"Well, we don't know too much about birds." Chris tasted her Chablis and grimaced approval. "Birds are descended from the reptiles. We don't know a damned thing about what goes on in a snake's head. They're too cold-blooded. Where do your hostilities and resentments trend when your blood stream's down to seventy degrees Fahrenheit?"

"I don't know about snakes, but I can tell you when birds hate you," Daisy-Dear said. Now Chris was giving her warning looks, but she paid no attention. "It's when you hate them. You can't blame them. They're sensitive little fellows and they feel things."

"Listen, Daisy." Walter was not inclined to dapple his talk with falsifying Dearies. He knew he should not have had that third martini, but there was no stopping now. "I'll tell you something about that sensitive little chum-buddy of yours. He hates me and everything about me. He even makes fun of my writing, if anybody took the trouble to decipher his stenchy warbles. Exactly like his feeder and fancier. You don't need deciphering. Come clean, now. Don't you make fun of my writing?"

"I think it would be better not to go into literary matters," Chris said cautioningly. Her words were meant for her mother, but Daisy-Dear was too interested in rising to the occasion, the beam of battle was in her eye.

"Since you ask me, Walter," she said happily, full of anticipation, "since you seem to want my opinion, I'm no critic, but I can tell you this, I think it's a shame and a disgrace for a grown man to be spending his life trying to get
srmtty little outlaws and sheriffs to shoot bullets into each
Dther. There are other things in life besides guns and gore
znd men with two-year-olds' itches talking tough and with
barks at each other. Besides, you can't even get your itchy
men to reach for their guns. You get them talking tougher
md tougher and longer and longer and "

No telling how far she would have gone if the maid had not just then come in with the steaming roast beef on a platter. They sat with petrified eyes until the maid was gone again. Then Chris looked directly at her mother and said, "Mother, let's understand one thing. Walter is my husband. I love him and love and approve of everything he does, and if anybody feels differently about it, there's no room for such a person in this house. Is that clear?"

Before the old lady could open her mouth Walter said,
"I'm glad you said what you did, Daisy, very glad. It's good
to get these things out in the open. Let me just inform you,
for your information, that by writing about people who talk
tough and itchily reach for their guns, as you so choicely put
it, I make over thirty thousand dollars each year after taxes.
Some people may have very highly developed critical minds
and see what's less than perfect in everything, but if you look
at their tax returns---- "

"Thank you very much, Walter," Daisy-Dear said. "Thank you for reminding me that I'm a helpless old woman who can't earn her keep anymore and has to depend on the charity of people who don't want her around. I'm well aware of the fact that I'm a pauper and have to live where I'm not wanted. For your information, your toughies with all their itches aren't reaching so much for their guns lately. You're days late with this Yancy and you still can't get Mr. Quarks to stop talking long enough to take a gun to Mr. Slate."

"All right, Mother," Chris said with the firmness of ultimatum. "I think that does it. I think that's just about it. You've been making life miserable for Walter long enough, and my first loyalty is to my husband. You won't be a pauper, Daisy-Dear. We'll see to it that you never want for anything, but you can't stay here. I suggest you go to your room and start packing. We'll make the necessary arrangements in the morning."

"I'll be happy to leave this house," Daisy-Dear said. She stood up with dignity. "I don't care to be in a place where a soul can't speak her mind." She left the room without a look back.

Walter called exultantly after her, "And Daisy-Dear, take iddums Jonnikins with you! Tell him about Dostoievsky!"

He was feeling taken care of and vindicated. The feeling increased when Chris came over and kissed him on the head, saying, "It'll be all right now, darling. This was coming for a long time. I just had to handle it my own way and in my own time."

He patted her hand with all affection. "Thanks, honey. I really mean it. These are the moments that count, when you're tapping strong on the cell wall."

Chris went back to her seat as he said with all heartiness, "Mothers-in-law should be hurried and not seen. You know." But Chris didn't laugh, and Walter couldn't bring himself to laugh either. He knew damned well he was no fairy, but here he was making one of those misogynistic mother-in-law jokes that had fairy overtones. He said as he bent to carve the rib, holding the tools before him like lances, suddenly gloomy, "Damn it. I swear, by midnight Quarles's going to be letting loose at Slate with both barrels." Then his fingers were throbbing obscure semaphore and he was exclaiming, "Henny Juris! Of course! Hon, what we were saying about animals and hate, listen, I just came in mind of a proof! Rumpy! The scratcher, the chuckler, Rumpy!"

"Translate, please," Chris said.

It was all back in Walter's mind: "My God, yes. The squirrel." Around the edges of the memory he was aware of his fingers going faster against the tabletop. "This was a little beast one of the lieutenant jg.s in Newport News had. Lieutenant Quarles, come to think of it, that was his name. I guess I never told you. This Rumpy was, generally speaking, an affectionate little bugger, he really liked people, all kinds, he was forever nuzzling and making up to everybody. The only one he wouldn't kiss and mush up to was Henny Juris. Oh, how that little so-and-so hated Henny's insides. He made Henny's life miserable, I'm telling you. Henny's got scars from where that animal bit his fingers to the bone. Once they had to tear Rumpy off Henny because he was trying to scratch Henny's eyes out. He saw red whenever Henny was in the neighborhood. Spitting and clawing was his one hello. What Rumpy felt for that man wasn't anything as soft as hate. It was homicide, pure and simple."

His fingers were on the speed-up. He was sitting straight, aware of how his breathing had speeded up, too.

"Right!" he said. "Absolutely! Not a word of exaggeration in that! How that squirrel went out of his mind and screamed like a banshee every time Henny came near! You know what his favorite trick was, Chris? He used to go to the bathroom on Henny's desk, on his bedclothes, his shoes, his head, even. He would scamper about, and go to the bathroom all over poor Hen!" Walter moved his hands from the table to his knees, but the fingers went on working. "Henny had a theory about that squirrel. It had to do with the little bugger's owner, Lieutenant Quarles. Quarles loathed and abominated the sight of Henny. It was Henny's thought that he represented everything that went against Quarles' grain and tastes. Henny outdid this guy in officers' training, talked louder and faster, was bigger and stronger, his parents had the standing Quarles' didn't, there were a whole lot of things. What Quarles felt for Henny was one headful of murder!"

"Do I understand you?" Chris said slowly. "You're saying when a human feels something very strongly it can get communicated to an animal?"

"Can and does!" Walter said excitedly. "And it's for the precise same reason that Jonnikins has that baleful look when I'm around that he'd like to do me in! That kind of concentrated venom and bad feeling has to come from somewhere! We know its source!"

"Well," Chris said, "be that as it may. I don't think we know enough about animals to get that detailed about what they feel or don't feel. Anyhow, you won't be bothered by Jonnikins anymore. Or Daisy-Dear. Whatever the ESP between them. We're going to have a life of our own around here, a little peace and quiet once more, thank the Lord. I've been meaning to ask you, hon, why do you keep drumming with your fingers that way?" Walter's hands were back on the table.

"Oh, I guess it just comes from working at the typewriter all day," Walter said neutrally. "Writer's tic, or something. Writer's tock. Let me ask you something, Chris. They gave you Morse-code training in the WAVES. You make anything of this?" He repeated the beat with his fingers, dup, dup, dup-dup.

"Search me," she said. "I don't remember my dots and dashes. It's been a long time."

"Eighteen years," Walter said, drumming. "A lot goes. Sounds to me like there's a pattern there, but I can't get it. I'll have to look it up."

"Where's it from?" Chris said. "The way Daisy-Dear slaps around in her slippers or clears her throat? In that case, maybe you better not do any looking up. What you don't know can't go to the bathroom on you. You know." She said "Ha, ha" at him hopefully, but he ignored the call to lightness.

"It's from an animal," Walter said. "A cold-blooded reptilian bird of my acquaintance. I think he's trying to say something to me, but I'm not sure."

When Chris went to the bedroom to undress, Walter followed her here and there.

"Tell me the truth, hon," he said after a time. "Do you agree with any of the things Daisy was saying about me, I mean, really? Don't you ever get any secret sour thoughts about me because I've given up my ideas of writing novels and just bat out these Yancys and drivel like that? I wouldn't blame you if you had some reservations, sweets, but I'd like to know. We've never really talked about it."

"Oh, dear, darling, dotable Walt, of course I don't have any reservations. Whatever you do is what I want you to do. Walt, I'll tell you this one last time. I think you're a marvelous writer, a beautiful writer, and I think everything you write is perfect. And I'm glad we finally had the blowup with Daisy-Dear. You'll see. Once she's gone the atmosphere around this house is going to get very clear and friendly. Very, very friendly."

It was true. She kept tapping on the prison wall, spelling out messages of comfort and chin up. He kissed her lingeringly and with full conviction.

"Going to get another hour of work in, sweets. If Juridical Jonny hasn't gone to the bathroom on my IBM. Sleep tight. Love you fulsomely."

Two hours later Killer Quarles was still proclaiming what a loud man he was and Sheriff Slate's hands were still hovering like trapped mynas over his holsters. As' Walter's hands hovered like trapped and irreverently screeching mynas over his typewriter. He had placed the night covering over the cage and Jonnikins was tomb still, but Walter was excruciatingly aware of the bird, heard its roaringly silent comments on the state of letters in the nation and the accumulation of clanking deadlines for the grubs. Below, deep down from these Santa Monica hills, in the valley of collectors and disbursers who had come to a standstill waiting for Walter's new script, the valley which, like an impervious mouth breathed with chesty beggings for more Yancy shoot-downs, all the lights were blinking in a rhythm Walter took to be one, two, one-two. Over the typewriter keys Walter's fingers twitched, one, two, one-two.

There was nothing for it. He got up with a growl, crossed the room, whipped the covering from the cage.

Immediately the bright pellet eyes were on him and the festering black throat was going strong, one, two, one-two. Then other throaty pulses. Highs, lows, chirpy middle-range tones.

Walter reached for a pad and pencil and began to make notations, dots for the short and hyphenated sounds, dashes for the sustained ones.

The bird sang, the pencil flew.

When the sheet was half covered with these markings, Walter went to the bookcase and ran his finger along the shelf with the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He took down the "M" volume. He sat at the desk and opened this volume to the entry for "Morse Code." There it was, from A to Z.

He wrote for a bit, put shaking hand to wet forehead, said, "My God, my God," and wrote some more.

The bird sang, gruh-greeg, gurree.

In a husky, strangulated voice, Walter began to read the words on his pad:

"Call yourself a writer? You haven't got one drop of talent. You're an uninspired hack. You couldn't write your way out of a paper bag. Your badmen and sheriffs are all finger-crooking fairies pretending to talk tough. Fairies who can't stop talking garbage and for once reach for their guns . . ."

The bird stared bold and sang, gurree, gurrah.

"Oh, my living, forgiving God," Walter whispered. "It is high time that woman left this house. The malice, the malice she bears me."

Then he was filled with a fury. He was remembering what Henny Juris had done to the squirrel that night he came back to quarters and once again found his sheets, his shirts, the letters from his fiancee and his money indiscriminately gone to the bathroom on. Henny had taken Rumpy up by the neck and thrown it from the barracks and far into the night.

At this moment Walter felt that he had been gone to the bathroom on from head to foot.

He went to the cage, opened it and reached in for the sooty concertizer. He got his hand firmly on the black, rotten throat, but he could not squeeze, he couldn't. He took his enormous compact burden to the picture window and cranked open the mobile pane to one side and pushed the outside screen open. He held the struggling, fluttering bird out through the window, toward the blue and red banana trees.

"Back where you came from," Walter whispered. "Even if you have to change trains."

He loosened his fingers. Jonnikins flew off in a whir of foul feathers, singing festeringly, gurrah, gurree.

Walter stared after him, breathing heavy. He felt full of felony but there was relief in it, release. At last he took up his pencil and pad from the desk, along with the volume of the Britannica, and started down the hall to the bedroom, down past Daisy-Dear's room from which came the sounds of histrionic humming and drawers being slammed.

Walter had the strong feeling that here now was something tangible that Christine should know. Her horizons were not wide enough, praise be, to allow for the full working out of truly poisonous processes. She had to know how far Daisy-Dear had overstayed her human welcome, how close to absolute crisis they'd all come.

He stood over her bed and said softly, "Chris? Hon? Hear me? Something you should see."

He listened to her weighty, troubled breathing. She was not snoring, really, but there was this low rasping and catching in her throat. Irregular. Sometimes slow, sometimes hurried. Vague, dissipating smile on her face.

He stiffened.

Listened more carefully to the smothered sounds. What?

One, two . . . ?

He listened some more.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and began to make notations, dashes for the long rasps, dots for the short, run-together ones. His hand was shaking so much that at one point the pencil slipped from his fingers.

He flipped open the reference volume and tried to focus his eyes on the chart. Forced his rebellious hand to write, letter by letter, word by word.

When he had enough lines transcribed, Walter Jack Com-mice held the pad up and began to read with disheveled lips, feeling that he had been gone to the bathroom on by the world's population of squirrels, birds and wives:

"Who ever said you're a writer? There's not a drop of talent in your veins. You're the hack of hacks. You couldn't write home for money. All your tough guys are absurd little fairies and that's why . . ."

My God . . .

Chris breathed suckingly, snugly, privately, smilingly, one, two, one-two ...

SOUVENIR

BY J. G. BALLARD

J. G. Ballard was born in Shanghai in 1930, was interned by the Japanese during World War Two, repatriated to England in 1946, studied medicine at Cambridge, became a copywriter for a London ad agency, an RAF pilot and a science-fiction author. His novels include "The Drowned World" and "The Wind from Nowhere," and among his short-story collections are "The Voices of Time," "Billenium" and "Passport to Eternity." "Souvenir" defies pigeonholing. Is it fantasy? Is it science fiction? Does it matter? It doesn't, of course. All that matters is the quiet, thoroughgoing art Ballard brings to this study of the fate inevitably met, in this imperfect world, by that which is too great, too Godlike, too far beyond our understanding.

ON THE MORNING after the storm the body of a drowned giant was washed ashore on the beach five miles to the northwest of the city. The first news of its arrival was brought by a nearby farmer and subsequently confirmed by the local newspaper reporters and the police. Despite this the majority of people, myself among them, remained skeptical, but the return of more and more eyewitnesses attesting to the vast size of the giant was finally too much for our curiosity. The library where my colleagues and I were carrying out our research was almost deserted when we set off for the coast shortly after two o'clock, and throughout the day people continued to leave their offices and shops as accounts of the giant circulated around the city.

By the time we reached the dunes above the beach a substantial crowd had gathered, and we could see the body lying in the shallow water 200 yards away. At first the estimates of its size seemed greatly exaggerated. It was then at low tide, and almost all the giant's body was exposed, but he appeared to be little larger than a basking shark. He lay on his back with his arms at his sides, in an attitude of repose, as if asleep on the mirror of wet sand, the reflection of his blanched skin fading as the water receded. In the clear sunlight his body glistened like the white plumage of a sea bird.

Puzzled by this spectacle, and dissatisfied with the matter-of-fact explanations of the crowd, my friends and I stepped down from the dunes onto the shingle. Everyone seemed reluctant to approach the giant, but half an hour later two fishermen in wading boots walked out across the sand. As their diminutive figures neared the recumbent body a sudden hubbub of conversation broke out among the spectators. The two men were completely dwarfed by the giant. Although his heels were partly submerged in the sand, the feet rose to at least twice the fishermen's height, and we immediately realized that this drowned leviathan had the mass and dimensions of the largest sperm whale.

Three fishing smacks had arrived on the scene and with keels raised remained a quarter of a mile, offshore, the crews watching from the bows. Their discretion deterred the spectators on the shore from wading out across the sand. Impatiently everyone stepped down from the dunes and waited on the shingle slopes, eager for a closer view. Around the margins of the figure the sand had been washed away, forming a hollow, as if the giant had fallen out of the sky. The two fishermen were standing between the immense plinths of the feet, waving to us like tourists among the columns of some water-lapped temple on the Nile. For a moment I feared that the giant was merely asleep and might suddenly stir and clap his heels together, but his glazed eyes stared skyward, unaware of the minuscule replicas of himself between his feet.

The fishermen then began a circuit of the corpse, strolling past the long white flanks of the legs. After a pause to examine the fingers of the supine hand, they disappeared from sight between the arm and chest, then re-emerged to survey the head, shielding their eyes as they gazed up at its Grecian profile. The shallow forehead, straight high-bridged nose and curling lips reminded me of a Roman copy of Praxiteles, and the elegantly formed cartouches of the nostrils emphasized the resemblance to sculpture.

Abruptly there was a shout from the crowd, and a hundred arms pointed toward the sea. With a start I saw that one of the fishermen had climbed onto the giant's chest and was now strolling about and signaling to the shore. There was a roar of surprise and triumph from the crowd, lost in a rushing avalanche of shingle as everyone surged forward across the sand.

As we approached the recumbent figure, which was lying in a pool of water the size of a field, our excited chatter fell away again, subdued by the huge physical dimensions of this dead colossus. He was stretched out at a slight angle to the shore, his legs carried nearer the beach, and this foreshortening had disguised his true length. Despite the two fishermen standing on his abdomen, the crowd formed itself into a wide circle, groups of people tentatively advancing toward the hands and feet.

My companions and I walked around the seaward side of the giant, whose hips and thorax towered above us like the hull of a stranded ship. His pearl-colored skin, distended by immersion in salt water, masked the contours of the enormous muscles and tendons. We passed below the left knee, which was flexed slightly, threads of damp seaweed clinging to its sides. Draped loosely across the midriff, and preserving a tenuous propriety, was a shawl of heavy open-weave material, bleached to a pale yellow by the water. A strong odor of brine came from the garment as it steamed in the sun, mingled with the sweet, potent scent of the giant's skin.

We stopped by his shoulder and gazed up at the motionless profile. The lips were parted slightly, the open eye cloudy and occluded, as if injected with some blue milky liquid, but the delicate arches of the nostrils and eyebrows invested the face with an ornate charm that belied the brutish power of the chest and shoulders.

The ear was suspended in mid-air over our heads like a sculptured doorway. As I raised my hand to touch the pendulous lobe, someone appeared over the edge of the forehead and shouted down at me. Startled by this apparition, I stepped back, and then saw that a group of youths had climbed up onto the face and were jostling each other in and out of the orbits.

People were now clambering all over the giant, whose reclining arms provided a double stairway. From the palms they walked along the forearms to the elbows and then crawled over the distended belly of the biceps to the flat promenade of the pectoral muscles which covered the upper half of the smooth hairless chest. From here they climbed up onto the face, hand over hand along the lips and nose, or forayed down the abdomen to meet others who had straddled the ankles and were patrolling the twin columns of the thighs.

We continued our circuit through the crowd, and stopped to examine the out-stretched right hand. A small pool of water lay in the palm, like the residue of another world, now being kicked away by the people ascending the arm. I tried to read the palmlines that grooved the skin, searching for some clue to the giant's character, but the distention of the tissues had almost obliterated them, carrying away all trace of the giant's identity and his last tragic predicament. The huge muscles and wristbones of the hand seemed to deny any sensitivity to their owner, but the delicate flexion of the fingers and the well-tended nails, each cut symmetrically to within six inches of the quick, argued a certain refinement of temperament, illustrated in the Grecian features of the face, on which the townsfolk were now sitting like flies.

One youth was even standing, arms wavering at his sides, on the very tip of the nose, shouting down at his companions, but the face of the giant still retained its massive composure.

Returning to the shore, we sat down on the shingle and watched the continuous stream of people arriving from the city. Some six or seven fishing boats had collected offshore, and their crews waded in through the shallow water for a closer look at this enormous storm catch. Later a party of police appeared and made a halfhearted attempt to cordon off the beach, but after walking up to the recumbent figure, any such thoughts left their minds, and they went off together with bemused backward glances.

An hour later there were a thousand people present on the beach, at least two hundred of them standing or sitting on the giant, crowded along his arms and legs or circulating in a ceaseless melee across his chest and stomach. A large gang of youths occupied the head, toppling each other off the cheeks and sliding down the smooth planes of the jaw. Two or three straddled the nose, and another crawled into one of the nostrils, from which he emitted barking noises like a demented dog.

That afternoon the police returned and cleared a way through the crowd for a party of scientific experts—authorities on gross anatomy and marine biology—from the university. The gang of youths and most of the people on the giant climbed down, leaving behind a few hardy spirits perched on the tips of the toes and on the forehead. The experts strode around the giant, heads nodding in vigorous consultation, preceded by the policemen who pushed back the press of spectators. When they reached the out-stretched hand the senior officer offered to assist them up onto the palm, but the experts hastily demurred.

After they returned to the shore, the crowd once more climbed onto the giant, and was in full possession when we left at five o'clock, covering the arms and legs like a dense flock of gulls sitting on the corpse of a large fish.

I next visited the beach three days later. My friends at the library had returned to their work, and delegated to me the task of keeping the giant under observation and preparing a report. Perhaps they Bensed my particular interest in the case, and it was certainly true that I was eager to return to the beach. There was nothing necrophilic about this, for to all intents the giant was still alive for me, indeed more alive than many of the people watching him. What I found so fascinating was partly his immense scale, the huge volumes of space occupied by his arms and legs, which seemed to confirm the identity of my own miniature limbs, but above all, the-mere categorical fact of his existence. Whatever else in our lives might be open to doubt, the giant, dead or alive, existed in an absolute sense, providing a glimpse into a world of similar absolutes of which we spectators on the beach were such imperfect and puny copies.

When I arrived at the beach the crowd was considerably smaller, and some two or three hundred people sat on the shingle, picnicking and watching the groups of visitors who walked out across the sand. The successive tides had carried the giant nearer the shore, swinging his head and shoulders toward the beach, so that he seemed doubly to gain in size, his huge body dwarfing the fishing boats beached beside his feet. The uneven contours of the beach had pushed his spine into a slight arch, expanding his chest and tilting back the head, forcing him into a more expressly heroic posture. The combined effects of sea water and the tumefaction of the tissues had given the face a sleeker and less youthful look. Although the vast proportions of the features made it impossible to assess the age and character of the giant, on my previous visit his classically modeled mouth and nose suggested that he had been a young man of discreet and modest temper. Now, however, he appeared to be at least in early middle age. The puffy cheeks, thicker nose and temples and narrowing eyes gave him a look of well-fed maturity that even now hinted at a growing corruption to come.

This accelerated post-mortem development of the giant's character, as if the latent elements of his personality had gained sufficient momentum during his life to discharge themselves in a brief final résumé, continued to fascinate me. It marked the beginning of the giant's surrender to that all-demanding system of time in which the rest of humanity finds itself, and of which, like the million twisted ripples of a fragmented whirlpool, our finite lives are the concluding products. I took up my position on the shingle directly opposite the giant's head, from where I could see the new arrivals and the children clambering over the legs and arms.

Among the morning's visitors were a number of men in leather jackets and cloth caps, who peered up critically at the giant with a professional eye, pacing out his dimensions and making rough calculations in the sand with spars of driftwood. I assumed them to be from the public works department and other municipal bodies, no doubt wondering how to dispose of this monster.

Several rather more smartly attired individuals, circus proprietors and the like, also appeared on the scene, and strolled slowly around the giant, hands in the pockets of their long overcoats, saying nothing to one another. Evidently its bulk was too great even for their matchless enterprise. After they had gone the children continued to run up and down the arms and legs, and the youths wrestled with each other over the supine face, the damp sand from their feet covering the white skin.

The following day I deliberately postponed my visit until the late afternoon, and when I arrived there were fewer than 50 or 60 people sitting on the shingle. The giant had been carried still closer to the shore, and was now little more than 75 yards away, his feet crushing the palisade of a rotting breakwater. The slope of the firmer sand tilted his body toward the sea, the bruised swollen face averted in an almost conscious gesture. I sat down on a large metal winch which had been shackled to a concrete caisson above the shingle, and looked down at the recumbent figure.

His blanched skin had now lost its pearly translucence and was spattered with dirty sand which replaced that washed away by the night tide. Clumps of seaweed filled the intervals between the fingers and a collection of litter and cuttlebones lay in the crevices below the hips and knees. But despite this, and the continuous thickening of his features, the giant still retained his magnificent Homeric stature. The enormous breadth of the shoulders, and the huge columns of the arms and legs, still carried the figure into another dimension, and the giant seemed a more authentic image of one of the drowned Argonauts or heroes of the Odyssey than the conventional portrait previously in my mind.

I stepped down onto the sand, and walked between the pools of water toward the giant. Two small boys were sitting in the well of the ear, and at the far end a solitary youth stood perched high on one of the toes, surveying me as I approached. As I had hoped when delaying my visit, no one else paid any attention to me, and the people on the shore remained huddled beneath their coats.

The giant's supine right hand was covered with broken shells and sand, in which a score of footprints were visible. The rounded bulk of the hip towered above me, cutting off all sight of the sea. The sweetly acrid odor I had noticed before was now more pungent, and through the opaque skin I could see the serpentine coils of congealed blood vessels. However repellent it seemed, this ceaseless metamorphosis, a macabre life-in-death, alone permitted me to set foot on the corpse.

Using the jutting thumb as a stair rail, I climbed up onto the palm and began my ascent. The skin was harder than I expected, barely yielding to my weight. Quickly I walked up the sloping forearm and the bulging balloon of the biceps. The face of the drowned giant loomed to my right, the cavernous nostrils and huge flanks of the cheeks like the cone of some freakish volcano.

Safely rounding the shoulder, I stepped out onto the broad promenade of the chest, across which the bony ridges of the rib cage lay like huge rafters. The white skin was dappled by the darkening bruises of countless footprints, in which the patterns of individual heel marks were clearly visible. Someone had built a small sand castle on the center of the sternum, and I climbed onto this partly demolished structure to get a better view of the face.

The two children had now scaled the ear and were pulling themselves into the right orbit, whose blue globe, completely occluded by some milk-colored fluid, gazed sightlessly past their miniature forms. Seen obliquely from below, the face was devoid of all grace and repose, the drawn mouth and raised chin propped up by gigantic slings of muscles resembling the torn prow of a colossal wreck. For the first time I became aware of the extremity of this last physical agony of the giant, no less painful for his unawareness of the collapsing musculature and tissues. The absolute isolation of the ruined figure, cast like an abandoned ship upon the empty shore, almost out of sound of the waves, transformed his face into a mask of exhaustion and helplessness.

As I stepped forward, my foot sank into a trough of soft tissue, and a gust of fetid gas blew through an aperture between the ribs. Retreating from the fouled air, which hung like a cloud over my head, I turned toward the sea to clear my lungs. To my surprise I saw that the giant's left hand had been amputated.

I stared with shocked bewilderment at the blackening stump, while the solitary youth reclining on his aerial perch a hundred feet away surveyed me with a sanguinary eye.

This was only the first of a.sequence of depredations. I spent the following two days in the library, for some reason reluctant to visit the shore, aware that I had probably witnessed the approaching end of a magnificent illusion. When I next crossed the dunes and set foot on the shingle, the giant was little more than 20 yards away, and with this close proximity to the rough pebbles all traces had vanished of the magic which once surrounded his distant wave-washed form. Despite his immense size, the bruises and dirt that covered his body made him appear merely human in scale, his vast dimensions only increasing his vulnerability.

His right hand and foot had been removed, dragged up^-the slope and trundled away by cart. After questioning the small group of people huddled by the breakwater, I gathered that a fertilizer company and a cattle-food manufacturer were responsible.

The giant's remaining foot rose into the air, a steel hawser fixed to the large toe, evidently in preparation for the rz-zving day. The surrounding beach had been disturbed by a scire of workmen, and deep ruts marked the ground where the and foot had been hauled away. A dark brackish fluid -tsisd from the stumps, and stained the sand and the white r:-es of the cuttlefish. As I walked down the shingle I noticed tis: a number of jocular slogans, swastikas and other signs had resn cut into the gray skin, as if the mutilation of this — Dtionless colossus had released a sudden flood of repressed spite. The lobe of one of the ears was pierced by a spear of timber, and a small fire had burned out in the center of the ¿7 est, blackening the surrounding skin. The fine wood ash was still being scattered by the wind.

A foul smell enveloped the cadaver, the undisguisable signature of putrefaction, which had at last driven away the usual gathering of youths. I returned to the shingle and climbed up onto the winch. The giant's swollen cheeks had now almost closed his eyes, drawing the lips back in a monumental gape. The once-straight Grecian nose had been twisted and flattened, stamped into the ballooning face by countless heels.

When I visited the beach the following day I found, almost with relief, that the head had been removed.

Some weeks elapsed before I made my next journey to the beach, and by then the human likeness I had noticed earlier had vanished again. On close inspection the recumbent thorax and abdomen were unmistakably manlike, but as each of the limbs was chopped off, first at the knee and elbow, and then at shoulder and thigh, the carcass resembled that of any headless sea animal—whale or whale shark. With this loss of identity, and the few traces of personality that had clung tenuously to the figure, the interest of the spectators expired, and the foreshore was deserted except for an elderly beachcomber and the watchman sitting in the doorway of the contractor's hut.

A loose wooden scaffolding had been erected around the carcass, from which a dozen ladders swung in the wind, and the surrounding sand was littered with coils of rope, long metal-handled knives and grappling irons, the pebbles oily with blood and pieces of bone and skin.

I nodded to the watchman, who regarded me dourly over his brazier of burning coke. The whole area was pervaded by the pungent smell of huge squares of blubber being simmered in a vat behind the hut.

Both the thighbones had been removed, with the assistance of a small crane draped in the gauzelike fabric which had once covered the waist of the giant, and the open sockets gaped like barn doors. The upper arms, collarbones and pudenda had likewise been dispatched. What remained of the skin over the thorax and abdomen had been marked out in parallel strips with a tarbrush, and the first five or six sections had been pared away from the midriff, revealing the great arch of. the rib cage.

As I left, a flock of gulls wheeled down from the sky and alighted on the beach, picking at the stained sand with ferocious cries.

Several months later, when the news of his arrival had been generally forgotten, various pieces of the body of the dismembered giant began to reappear all over the city. Most of these were bones, which the fertilizer manufacturers had found too difficult to crush, and their massive size, and the huge tendons and discs of cartilage attached to their joints, immediately identified them. For some reason, these disembodied fragments seemed better to convey the essence of the giant's original magnificence than the bloated appendages that had been subsequently amputated. As I looked across the road at the premises of the largest wholesale merchants in the meat market, I recognized the two enormous thighbones on either side of the doorway. They towered over the porters' heads like the threatening megaliths of some primitive druidical religion, and I had a sudden vision of the giant climbing to his knees

~s?on these bare bones and striding away through the streets of tie city, picking up the scattered fragments of himself on his return journey to the sea.

A few days later I saw the left humerus lying in the entrance to one of the shipyards. In the same week the mummified right hand was exhibited on a carnival float during tie annual pageant of the guilds.

The lower jaw, typically, found its way to the museum of natural history. The remainder of the skull has disappeared, but is probably still lurking in the waste grounds or private gardens of the city—quite recently, while sailing down the river, I noticed two ribs of the giant forming a decorative arch in a waterside garden, possibly confused with the jawbones of a whale. A large square of tanned and tattooed skin, the size of an Indian blanket, forms a back cloth to the dolls and masks in a novelty shop near the amusement park, and I have no doubt that elsewhere in the city, in the hotels or golf clubs, the mummified nose or ears of the giant hang from the wall above a fireplace. As for the immense pizzle, this ends its days in the freak museum of a circus which travels up and down the northwest. This monumental apparatus, stunning in its proportions and sometime potency, occupies a complete booth to itself. The irony is that it is wrongly identified as that of a whale, and indeed most people, even those who first saw him cast up on the shore after the storm, now remember the giant, if at all, as a large sea beast.

The remainder of the skeleton, stripped of all flesh, still rests on the seashore, the clutter of bleached ribs like the timbers of a derelict ship. The contractor's hut, the crane and scaffolding have been removed, and the sand being driven into the bay along the coast has buried the pelvis and backbone. In the winter the high curved bones are deserted, battered by the breaking waves, but in the summer they provide an excellent perch for the sea-wearying gulls.

PUPPET SHOW

BY FREDRIC BROWN

When Fredric Brown feels a novel coming on, he climbs aboard a Greyhound bus and takes a long cross-country ride. When he gets to the end of the line, he turns around and comes back. During his trip, he does not see his fellow passengers or the stunning scenery rolling by his window; he sees the characters of the novel-to-be and the shifting scenes against which their drama is played. Journey over, he sits down at the typewriter and transcribes the book that is already written in his mind. Author of more than 300 stories and over two dozen novels {some book titles: "The Lights in the Sky Are Stars" "What Mad Universe," "The Fabulous Clipjoint," a winner of the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allan Foe Award), he is also a regular contributor of pungent playboy prose like the following excellent, corkscrewy bit of science fiction, "Puppet Show."

HORROR came to Cherrybell at a little after noon on a blistering hot day in August.

Perhaps that is redundant; any August day in Cherrybell, Arizona, is blistering hot. It is on Highway 89, about 40 miles south of Tucson and about 30 miles north of the Mexican border. It consists of two filling stations, one on each side of the road to catch travelers going in both directions, a general store, a beer-and-wine-license-only tavern, a tourist-trap-type trading post for tourists who can't wait until they reach the border to start buying serapes and huaraches, a deserted hamburger stand, and a few 'dobe houses inhabited by Mexican-Americans who work in Nogales, the border town to the south, and who, for God knows what reason, prefer to live in Cherrybell and commute, some of them in Model T Fords. The sign on the highway says, cherrybell, pop. 42, but the sign exaggerates; Pop died last year—Pop Anders, who ran the now deserted hamburger stand—and the correct figure should be 41.

Horror came to Cherrybell mounted on a burro led by an ancient, dirty and gray-bearded desert rat of a prospector who later gave the name of Dade Grant. Horror's name was Garvane. He was approximately nine feet tall but so thin, almost a stick-man, that he could not have weighed over a hundred pounds. Old Dade's burro carried him easily, despite the fact that his feet dragged in the sand on either side. Being dragged through the sand for, as it later turned out, well over five miles hadn't caused the slightest wear on the shoes—more like buskins, they were—which constituted all that he wore except for a pair of what could have been swimming trunks, in robin's-egg blue. But it wasn't his dimensions that made him horrible to look upon; it was his skin. It looked red, raw. It looked as though he had been skinned alive, and the skin replaced raw side out. His skull, his face, were equally narrow or elongated; otherwise in every visible way he appeared human—or at least humanoid. Unless you count such little things as the fact that his hair was a robin's-egg blue to match his trunks, as were his eyes and his boots. Blood red and light blue.

Casey, owner of the tavern, was the first one to see them coming across the plain, from the direction of the mountain range to the east. He'd stepped out of the back door of his tavern for a breath of fresh, if hot, air. They were about a 100 yards away at that time, and already he could see the utter alienness of the figure on the led burro. Just alienness at that distance, the horror came only at closer range. Casey's jaw dropped and stayed down until the strange trio was about 50 yards away, then he started slowly toward them. There are people who run at the sight of the unknown, others who advance to meet it. Casey advanced, slowly, to meet it.

Still in the wide open, 20 yards from the back of the little tavern, he met them. Dade Grant stopped and dropped the rope by which he was leading the burro. The burro stood still and dropped its head. The stick-man stood up simply by planting his feet solidly and standing, astride the burro. He stepped one leg across it and stood a moment, leaning his weight against his hands on the burro's back, and then sat down in the sand. "High gravity planet," he said. "Can't stand long."

"Kin I get water fer my burro?" the prospector asked Casey. "Must be purty thirsty by now. Hadda leave water

bags, some other things, so it could carry---- " He jerked a

thumb toward the red-and-blue horror.

Casey was just realizing that it was a horror. At a distance the color combination seemed only mildly hideous, but close up —the skin was rough and seemed to have veins on the outside and looked moist (although it wasn't) and damn if it didn't look just like he had his skin peeled off and put back on inside out. Or just peeled off, period. Casey had never seen anything like it and hoped he wouldn't ever see anything like it again.

Casey felt something behind him and looked over his shoulder. Others had seen now and were coming, but the nearest of them, a pair of boys, were ten yards behind him "Muchachos" he called out. "Agua for el burro. Un fozal. Pronto."

He looked back and said, "What-- ? Who----- ?"

"Name's Dade Grant," said the prospector, putting out a hand, which Casey took absently. When he let go of it it jerked back over the desert rat's shoulder, thumb indicating the thing that sat on the sand. "His name's Garvane, he tells me. He's an extra something or other, and he's some kind of minister."

Casey ncdded at the stick-man and was glad to get a nod in return instead of an extended hand. "I'm Manuel Casey," he said. "What does he mean, an extra something?"

The stick-man's voice was unexpectedly deep and vibrant. "I am an extraterrestrial. And a minister plenipotentiary."

Surprisingly, Casey was a moderately well-educated man and knew both of those phrases; he was probably the only person in Cherrybell who would have known the second one. Less surprisingly, considering the speaker's appearance, he believed both of them.

"What can I do for you, Sir?" he asked. "But first, why not come in out of the sun?"

"No, thank you. It's a bit cooler here than they told me it would be, but I'm quite comfortable. This is equivalent to a cool spring evening on my planet. And as to what you can do for me, you can notify your authorities of my presence. I believe they will be interested."

Well, Casey thought, by blind luck he's hit the best man for his purpose within at least 20 miles. Manuel Casey was half Irish, half Mexican. He had a half-brother who was half Irish and half assorted-American, and the halfbrother was a bird colonel at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson.

He said, "Just a minute, Mr. Garvane, I'll telephone. You, Mr. Grant, would you want to come inside?"

"Naw, I don't mind sun. Out in it all day ever' day. An' Garvane here, he ast me if I'd stick with him till he was finished with what he's gotta do here. Said he'd gimme some-
thin' purty vallable if I did. Somethin'—a 'lectrononic "

"An electronic battery-operated portable ore indicator," Garvane said. "A simple little device, indicates presence of a concentration of ore up to two miles, indicates kind, grade, quantity and depth."

Casey gulped, excused himself, and pushed through the gathering crowd into his tavern. He had Colonel Casey on the phone in one minute, but it took him another four minutes to convince the colonel that he was neither drunk nor joking.

Twenty-five minutes after that there was a noise in the sky, a noise that swelled and then died as a four-man helicopter sat down and shut off its rotors a dozen yards from an extraterrestrial, two men and a burro. Casey alone had had the courage to rejoin the trio from the desert; there were other spectators, but they still held well back.

Colonel Casey, a major, a captain and a lieutenant who was the helicopter's pilot all came out and ran over. The stick-man stood up, all nine feet of him; from the effort it cost him to stand you could tell that he was used to a much lighter gravity than Earth's. He bowed, repeated his name and the identification of himself as an extraterrestrial and a minister plenipotentiary. Then he apologized for sitting down again, explained why it was necessary, and sat down.

The colonel introduced himself and the three who had come with him. "And now, Sir, what can we do for you?"

The stick-man made a grimace that was probably intended as a smile. His teeth were the same light blue as his hair and eyes.

"You have a cliché, 'Take me to your leader.' I do not ask that. In fact, I must remain here. Nor do I ask that any of your leaders be brought here to me. That would be impolite. I am perfectly willing for you to represent them, to talk to you and let you question me. But I do ask one thing.

"You have tape recorders. I ask that before I talk or answer questions you have one brought. I want to be sure that the message your leaders eventually receive is full and accurate."

"Fine," the colonel said. He turned to the pilot. "Lieutenant, get on the radio in the whirlybird and tell them to get us a tape recorder faster than possible. It can be dropped by

para----- No, that'd take longer, rigging it for a drop. Have

them send it by another helicopter." The lieutenant turned to go. "Hey," the colonel said. "Also 50 yards of extension cord. We'll have to plug it in inside Manny's tavern."

The lieutenant sprinted for the helicopter.

The others sat and sweated a moment and then Manuel Casey stood up. "That's a half-an-hour wait," he said, "and if we're going to sit here in the sun, who's for a bottle of cold beer? You, Mr. Garvane?"

"It is a cold beverage, is it not? I am a bit chilly. If you have
something hot--- ?"

"Coffee, coming up. Can I bring you a blanket?"

"No, thank you. It will not be necessary."

Casey left and shortly returned with a tray with half-a-dozen bottles of cold beer and a cup of steaming coffee. The lieutenant was back by then. Casey put the tray down and served the stick-man first, who sipped the coffee and said, "It is delicious."

Colonel Casey cleared his throat, "Serve our prospector friend next, Manny. As for us—well, drinking is forbidden on duty, but it was 112 in the shade in Tucson, and this is hotter and also is not in the shade. Gentlemen, consider yourselves on official leave for as long as it takes you to drink one bottle of beer, or until the tape recorder arrives, whichever comes first."

The beer was finished first, but by the time the last of it had vanished, the second helicopter was within sight and sound. Casey asked the stick-man if he wanted more coffee. The offer was politely declined. Casey looked at Dade Grant and winked and the desert rat winked back, so Casey went in for two more bottles, one apiece for the civilian terrestrials. Coming back he met the lieutenant arriving with the extension cord anc' returned as far as the doorway to show him where to plug it in.

When he came back, he saw that the second helicopter had brought its full complement of four, besides the tape recorder. There were, besides the pilot who had flown it, a technical sergeant who was skilled in its operation and who was now making adjustments on it, and a lieutenant-colonel and a warrant officer who had come along for the ride or because they had been made curious by the request for a tape recorder to be rushed to Cherrybell, Arizona, by air. They were standing gaping at the stick-man and whispered conversations were going on.

The colonel said, "Attention" quietly, but it brought complete silence. "Please sit down, gentlemen. In a rough circle. Sergeant, if you rig your mike in the center of the circle, will it pick up clearly what any one of us may say?"

"Yes, Sir. I'm almost ready."

Ten men and one extraterrestrial humanoid sat in a rough circle, with the microphone hanging from a small tripod in the approximate center. The humans were sweating profusely, the humanoid shivered slightly. Just outside the circle, the burro stood dejectedly, its head low. Edging closer, but still about five yards away, spread out now in a semicircle, was/the entire population of Cherrybell who had been at home at the time; the stores and the filling stations were deserted.

The technical sergeant pushed a button and the tape recorder's reel started to turn. "Testing . . . testing," he said. He held down the rewind button for a second and then pushed the playback button. "Testing . . . testing," said the recorder's speaker. Loud and clear. The sergeant pushed the rewind button, then the erase one to clear the tape. Then the stop button.

"When I push the next button, Sir," he said to the colonel, "we'll be recording."

The colonel looked at the tall extraterrestrial, who nodded, and then the colonel nodded at the sergeant. The sergeant pushed the recording button.

"My name is Garvane," said the stick-man, slowly and clearly. "I am from a planet of a star which is not listed in your star catalogs, although the globular cluster in which it is one of 90,000 stars is known to you. It is, from here, in the direction of the center of the galaxy at a distance of over 4000 light-years.

"However, I am not here,as a representative of my planet or my people, but as minister plenipotentiary of the Galactic Union, a federation of the enlightened civilizations of the galaxy, for the good of all. It is my assignment to visit you and decide, here and now, whether or not you are to be welcomed to join our federation.

"You may now ask questions freely. However, I reserve the right to postpone answering some of them until my decision has been made. If the decision is favorable, I will then answer all questions, including the ones I have postponed answering meanwhile. Is that satisfactory?"

"Yes," said the colonel. "How did you come here? A spaceship?"

"Correct. It is overhead right now, in orbit 22,000 miles out, so it revolves with the earth and stays over this one spot. I am under observation from it, which is one reason I prefer to remain here in the open. I am to signal it when I want it to come down to pick me up."

"How do you know our language .so fluently? Are you telepathic?"

"No, I am not. And nowhere in the galaxy is any race telepathic except among its own members. I was taught your language for this purpose. We have had observers among you for many centuries—by we, I mean the Galactic Union, of course. Quite obviously, I could not pass as an Earthman, but there are other races who can. Incidentally, they are not spies, or agents; they have in no way tried to affect you; they are observers and that is all."

"What benefits do we get from joining your union, if we are asked and if we accept?" the colonel asked.

"First, a quick course in the fundamental social sciences which will end your tendency to fight among yourselves and end or at least control your aggressions. After we are satisfied that you have accomplished that and it is safe for you to do so, you will be given space travel, and many other things, as rapidly as you are able to assimilate them."

"And if we are not asked, or refuse?"

"Nothing. You will be left alone; even our observers will be withdrawn. You will work out your own fate—either you will render your planet uninhabited and uninhabitable within the next century, or you will master social science yourselves and again be candidates for membership and again be offered membership. We will check from time to time and if and when it appears certain that you are not going to destroy yourselves, you will again be approached."

"Why the hurry, now that you're here? Why can't you stay long enough for our leaders, as you call them, to talk to you in person?"

"Postponed. The reason is not important but it is complicated, and I simply do not wish to waste time explaining."

"Assuming your decision is favorable, how will we'get in touch with you to let you know our decision? You know enough about us, obviously, to know that / can't make it."

"We will know your decision through our observers. One condition of acceptance is full and uncensored publication in your newspapers of this interview, verbatim from the tape we are now using to record it. Also of all deliberations and decisions of your government."

"And other governments? We can't decide unilaterally for the world."

"Your government has been chosen for a start. If you accept, we shall furnish the techniques that will cause the others to fall in line quickly—and those techniques do not involve force or the threat of force."

"They must be some techniques," said the colonel wryly,

"if they'll make one certain country I don't have to name fall into line without even a threat."

"Sometimes the offer of reward is more significant than the use of a threat. Do you think the country you do not wish to name would like your country colonizing planets of far stars before they even reach the moon? But that is a minor point, relatively. You may trust the techniques."

"It sounds almost too good to be true. But you said that you are to decide, here and now, whether or not we are to be invited to join. May I ask on what factors you will base your decision?"

"One is that I am—was, since I already have—to check your degree of xenophobia. In the loose sense in which you use it, that means fear of strangers. We have a word that has no counterpart in your vocabulary: it means fear of and revulsion towards aliens. I—or at least a member of my race—was chosen to make the first overt contact with you. Because I am what you would call roughly humanoid—as you are what I would call roughly humanoid—I am probably more horrible, more repulsive, to you than many completely different species would be. Because to you I am a caricature of a human being, I am more horrible to you than a being who bears no remote resemblance to you.

"You may think you do feel horror at me, and revulsion, but believe me, you have passed that test. There are races in the galaxy who can never be members of the federation, no matter how they advance otherwise, because they are violently and incurably xenophobic; they could never face or talk to an alien of any species. They would either run screaming from him or try to kill him instantly. From watching you and these people"—he waved a long arm at the civilian population of Cherrybell not far outside the circle of the conference—"I know you feel revulsion at the sight of me, but believe me, it is relatively slight and certainly curable. You have passed that test satisfactorily."

"And are there other tests?"

"One other. But I think it is time that I-------- " Instead of

finishing the sentence, the stick-man lay back flat on the sand and closed his eyes.

The colonel started to his feet. "What in hell?" he said. He walked quickly around the mike's tripod and bent over the recumbent extraterrestrial, putting an ear to the bloody-appearing chest.

As he raised his head, Dade Grant, the grizzled prospector, chuckled. "No heartbeat, Colonel, because no heart. But I may leave him as a souvenir for you and you'll find much more interesting things inside him than heart and guts. Yes, he is a puppet whom I have been operating, as your Edgar Bergen operates his—what's his name?—oh yes, Charlie McCarthy. Now that he has served his purpose, he is deactivated. You can go back to your place, Colonel."

Colonel Casey moved back slowly. "Why?" he asked.

Dade Grant was peeling off his beard and wig. He rubbed a cloth across his face to remove makeup and was revealed as a handsome young man. He said, "What he told you, or what you were told through him, was true as far as it went. He is only a simulacrum, yes, but he is an exact duplicate of a member of one of the intelligent races of the galaxy, the one toward whom you would be disposed—if you were violently and incurably xenophobic—to be most horrified by, according to our psychologists. But we did not bring a real member of his species to make first contact because they have a phobia of their own, agoraphobia—fear of space. They are highly civilized and members in good standing of the federation, but they never leave their own planet.

"Our observers assure us you don't have that phobia. But they were unable to judge in advance the degree of your xenophobia, and the only way to test it was to bring along something in lieu of someone to test it against, and presumably to let him make the initial contact."

The colonel sighed audibly. "I can't say this doesn't relieve me in one way. We could get along with humanoids, yes, and we will when we have to. But I'll admit it's a relief to learn that the master race of the galaxy is, after all, human instead of only humanoid. What is the second test?"

"You are undergoing it now. Call me--- " He snapped his

fingers. "What's the name of Bergen's second-string puppet, after Charlie McCarthy?"

The colonel hesitated, but the tech sergeant supplied the answer. "Mortimer Snerd."

"Right. So call me Mortimer Snerd, and now I think it is

time that I----- "He lay back flat on the sand and closed his

eyes just as the stick-man had done a few minutes before.

The burro raised its head and put it into the circle over the shoulder of the tech sergeant.

"That takes care of the puppets, Colonel," it said. "And now, what's this bit about it being important that the master race be human or at least humanoid? What is a master race?"

DIAL "F" FOR FRANKENSTEIN

BY ARTHUR C. CLARKE

Stories by Arthur C. Clarke have an unsettling habit of coming true. {See his "I Remember Babylon," earlier in this volume.) "Dial 'F' for Frankenstein" is his contribution to science fiction's vast corpus of work on the revolt of the machines, a theme that was first explored in 1920 by Czech playwright Karel Capek in his "fantastic melodrama" {his own description), "R.U.R.," wherein the word "robot" was first used in the meaning of a mechanical man. But Capek, writing before the advent of today's transistors and highly sophisticated data processing systems, was interested in political allegory, not firmly fact-based prophecy, and although his theatrical novelty titillated, nobody believed it for a moment—probably not even Capek. The following story is all too believable. It is the final story in this book, and it begins in the same way as the first story with the omen-laden ringing of a telephone bell. If you never feel quite the same about telephones again, blame Messrs. Lange-laan and Clarke, who, like the other authors represented between these covers, are masters of disquietude and science-fictioneers par excellence.

A QUARTER OF A BILLION people picked up their receivers, to listen for a few seconds with annoyance or perplexity. Those who had been awakened in the middle of the night assumed that some far-off friend was calling, over the satellite telephone network that had gone into service, with such a blaze of publicity, the day before. But there was no voice on the line; only a sound that to many seemed like the roaring of the sea—to others, like the vibrations "of harp strings in the wind. And there were many more, in that moment, who recalled a secret sound of childhood—the noise of blood pulsing through the veins, heard when a shell is cupped over the ear. Whatever it was, it lasted no more than 20 seconds; then it was replaced by the dialing tone.

The world's subscribers cursed, muttered "Wrong number" and hung up. Some tried to dial a complaint, but the line seemed busy. In a few hours, everyone had forgotten the incident—except those whose duty it was to worry about such things.

At the Post Office Research Station, the argument had been going on all morning, and had got nowhere. It continued unabated through the lunch break, when the hungry engineers poured into the little cafe across the road.

"I still think," said Willy Smith, the solid-state electronics man, "that it was a temporary surge of current, caused when the satellite network was switched in."

"It was obviously something to do with the satellites," agreed Jules Reyner, circuit designer. "But why the time delay? They were plugged in at midnight; the ringing was two hours later—as we all know to our cost." He yawned violently.

"What do you think, Doc?" asked Bob Andrews, computer programmer. "You've been very quiet all morning. Surely you've got some idea?"

Dr. John Williams, head of the Mathematics Division, stirred uneasily.

"Yes," he said. "I have. But you won't take it seriously."

"That doesn't matter. Even if it's as crazy as those science-fiction yarns you write under a pseudonym, it may give us some leads."

Williams blushed, but not very hard. Everyone knew about his stories, and he wasn't ashamed of them. After all, they had been collected in book form. (Remainder at five shillings; he still had a couple of hundred copies.)

"Very well," he said, doodling on the tablecloth. "This is something I've been wondering about for years. Have you ever considered the analogy between an automatic telephone exchange and the human brain?"

"Who hasn't thought of it?" scoffed one of his listeners. "That idea must go back to Graham Bell."

"Possibly; I never said it was original. But I do say it's time we started taking it seriously." He squinted balefully at the fluorescent tubes above the table; they were needed on this foggy winter day. "What's wrong with the damn lights? They've been flickering for the last five minutes."

"Don't bother about that; Maisie's probably forgotten to pay her electricity bill. Let's hear more about your theory.*'

"Most of it isn't theory; it's plain fact. We know that the human brain is a system of switches—neurons—interconnected in a very elaborate fashion by nerves. An automatic telephone exchange is also a system of switches—selectors, and so forth— connected together with wires." '

"Agreed," said Smith. "But that analogy won't get you very far. Aren't there about fifteen billion neurons in the brain? That's a lot more than the number of switches in an autoexchange."

Williams' answer was interrupted by the scream of a low-flying jet; he had to wait until the café had ceased to vibrate before he could continue.

"Never heard them fly that low," Andrews grumbled. "Thought it was against regulations."

"So it is, but don't worry—London Airport Control will catch him."

"I doubt it," said Reyner. "That was London Airport, bringing in a Concorde on Ground Approach. But I've never heard one so low, either. Glad I wasn't aboard."

"Are we, or are we not, going to get on with this blasted discussion?" demanded Smith.

"You're right about the fifteen billion neurons in the human brain," continued Williams unabashed. "And that's the whole point. Fifteen billion sounds a large number, but it isn't. Round about the 1960s, there were more than that number of individual switches in the world's autoexchanges. Today, there are approximately five times as many."

"I see," said Reyner, very slowly. "And as of yesterday, they've all become capable of full interconnection, now that the satellite links have gone into service."

"Precisely."

There was silence for a moment, apart from the distant clanging of a fire-engine bell.

"Let me get this straight," said Smith. "Are you suggesting that the world telephone system is now a giant brain?"

"That's putting it crudely—anthropomorphically. I prefer to think of it in terms of critical size." Williams held his hands out in front of him, fingers partly closed.

"Here are two lumps of U 235; nothing happens as long as you keep them apart. But bring them together"—he suited the action to the words—"and you have something very different from one bigger lump of uranium. You have a hole half a mile across.

"It's the same with our telephone networks; until today they've been largely independent, autonomous. But now we've suddenly multiplied the connecting links—the networks have all merged together—and we've reached criticality."

"And just what does criticality mean in this case?" asked Smith.

"For want of a better word—consciousness."

"A weird sort of consciousness," said Reyner. "What would it use for sense organs?"

"Well, all the radio and TV stations in the world would be feeding information into it, through their landlines. That should give it something to think about! Then there would be all the data stored in all the computers; it would have access to that—and to the electronic libraries, the radar tracking systems, the telemetering in the automatic factories. Oh, it would have enough sense organs! We can't begin to imagine its picture of the world; but it would be infinitely richer and more complex than ours."

"Granted all this, because it's an entertaining idea," said Reyner, "what could it do except think? It couldn't go anywhere; it would have no limbs."

"Why should it want to travel? It would already be everywhere! And every piece of remotely controlled electrical equipment on the planet could act as a limb."

"Now I understand that time delay," interjected Andrews. "It was conceived at midnight, but it wasn't born until 1 :jp this morning. The noise that woke us all up was—its birth cry."

His attempt to sound facetious was not altogether convincing, and nobody smiled. OverEead, the lights continued their annoying flicker, which seemed to be getting worse. Then there was an interruption from the front of the café, as Jim Small of Power Supplies made his usual boisterous entry.

"Look at this, fellows," he grinned, waving a piece of paper in front of his colleagues. "I'm rich. Ever seen a bank balance like than"

Dr. Williams took the proffered statement, glanced down the columns, and read the balance aloud: "Credit £999,999,897.87."

"Nothing very odd about that," he continued, above the general amusement. "I'd say it means the computer's made a slight mistake. That sort of thing was happening all the time, just after the banks converted to the decimal system."

"I know. I know," said Jim, "but don't spoil my fun. I'm going to frame this statement—and what would happen if I drew a check for a few million, on the strength of this? Could I sue the bank if it bounced?"

"Not on your life," answered Reyner. "I'll take a bet that the banks thought of that years ago, and protected themselves somewhere down in the small print. But by the way—when did you get that statement?"

"In the noon delivery; it comes straight to the office, so that my wife doesn't have a chance of seeing it."

"Hmm—that means it was computed early this morning. Certainly after midnight . . ."

"What are you driving at? And why all the long faces?"

No one answered him; he had started a new hare, and the hounds were in full cry.

"Does anyone here know about automated banking systems?" asked Willy Smith. "How are they tied together?"

"Like everything else these days," said Bob Andrews.
"They're all in the same network—the computers talk to one
another all over the world. It's a point for you, John. If there
was real trouble, that's one of the first places I'd expect it.
Besides the phone system itself, of course." ¹¹

"No one answered the question I asked before Jim came in," complained Reyner. "What would this supermind actually do} Would it be friendly—hostile—indifferent? Would it even know that we exist, or would it consider the electronic signals it's handling to be the only reality?"

"I see you're beginning to believe me," said Williams with a certain grim satisfaction. "I can only answer your question by asking another. What does a newborn baby do? It starts looking for food." He glanced up at the flickering lights. "My God," he said slowly, as if a thought had just struck him. "There's only one food it would need—electricity."

"This nonsense has gone far enough," said Smith. "What the devil's happened to our lunch? We gave our orders twenty minutes ago."

Everyone ignored him.

"And then," said Reyner, taking up where Williams had left off, "it would start looking around, and stretching its limbs. In fact, it would start to play, like any growing baby."

"And babies break things," said someone, very softly.

"It would have enough toys, heaven knows. That Concorde that went over just now. The automated production lines. The traffic lights in our streets."

"Funny you should mention that," interjected Small. "Something's happened to the traffic outside—it's been stopped for the last ten minutes. Looks like a big jam."

"I guess there's a fire somewhere—I heard an engine."

"I've heard two—and what sounded like an explosion over toward the industrial estate. Hope it's nothing serious."

"Maisie!!! What about some candles? We can't see a thing!"

"I've just remembered—this place has an all-electric kitchen. We're going to get cold lunch, if we get any lunch at all."

"At least we can read the-newspaper while we're waiting. Is that the latest edition you've got there, Jim?"

"Yes—haven't had time to look at it yet. Hmm—there do
seem to have been a lot of odd accidents this morning—railway
signals jammed—water main blown up through failure of
relief valve—dozens of complaints about last night's wrong
numbers---- "

He turned the page, and became suddenly silent.

"What's the matter?"

Without a word, Small handed over the paper. Only the front page made sense. Throughout the interior, column after column was a mass of printer's pie—with, here and there, a few incongruous advertisements making islands of sanity in a sea of gibberish. They had obviously been set up as independent blocks, and had escaped the scrambling that had overtaken the text around them.

"So this is where long-distance typesetting and autodistribution have brought us," grumbled Andrews. "I'm afraid Fleet Street's been putting too many eggs in one electronic basket."

"So have we all, I'm afraid," said Williams, very solemnly. "So have we all."

"If I can get a word in edgeways, in time to stop the mob hysteria which seems to be infecting this table," said Smith loudly and firmly, "I'd like to point out that there's nothing to worry about—even if John's ingenious fantasy is correct. We only have to switch off the satellites—and we'll be back where we were yesterday."

"Prefrontal lobotomy," muttered Williams. "I'd thought of that."

"Eh? Oh yes—cutting out slabs of the brain. That would certainly do the trick. Expensive, of course, and we'd have to go back to sending telegrams to each other. But civilization would survive."

From not too far away, there was a short, sharp explosion.

"I don't like this," said Andrews nervously. "Let's hear what the old B.B.C.'s got to say—the one-o'clock news has just started."

He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a transistor radio.

"—unprecedented number of industrial accidents, as well as the unexplained launching of three salvos of guided missiles from military installations in the United States. Several airports have had to suspend operations owing to the erratic behavior of their radars, and the banks and stock exchanges have closed because their information-processing systems have become completely unreliable." ("You're telling me," muttered Small, while the others shushed him.) "One moment, please—there's a news flash coming through . . . Here it is. We have just been informed that all control over the newly installed communication satellites has been lost. They are no longer responding to commands from the ground. According to . . ."

The B.B.C. went off the air; even the carrier wave died. Andrews reached for the tuning knob, and twisted it round the dial. Over the whole band, the ether was silent.

Presently Reyner said, in a voice not far from hysteria: "That prefrontal lobotomy was a good idea, John. Too bad that baby's already thought of it."

Williams rose slowly to his feet.

"Let's get back to the lab," he said. "There must be an answer somewhere."

But he knew already that it was far, far too late. For Homo sapiens, the telephone bell had tolled.

Atherton, John	338
Ballard, J. G.	365
Beaumont, Charles	40, 274
Bloch, Robert	179
Bradbury, Ray	75
Brown, Fredric	378
Clarke, Arthur C.	166, 394
Davidson, Avram	359
Finney, Jack	293
Friedman, Bruce Jay	61, 155
Grove, Walt	187
Langelaan, George	1
Neal, H. C.	286
Nissenson, Hugh	320
Nourse, Alan E.	215
Pohl, Frederik	206, 268
Purdy,KenW.	140
Russell, Ray	390
Sheckley, Robert	46, 254
Slesar, Henry	244, 314
Sturgeon, Theodore	221
Tenn, William	101
Thomas, Theodore L.	250
Webb, Leland	130
Wolfe, Bernard	84, 343