by Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe, who wrote that remarkable book The Fifth Head of Cerberus, as well as outstanding shorter works such as “The Death of Dr. Island’ (Universe 3), appears now with a story much less weighty than these earlier ones . . . but in its distinctively Wolfean way it’s as far-out as anything he’s written. You’ll recognize it easily as a parody of the Sherlock Holmes stories, but don’t be misled: far from a simple bit of fluff, it’s a complex and ingenious story that deals with one of the most puzzling questions in relativity: If all four space-time dimensions are equivalent, how is it that we perceive one so differently from the rest?
* * * *
It was a dark and stormy night—not actually night but late afternoon, and raining buckets. I share an apartment with March B. Street, the human consulting engineer-detective, and I recall that when I came home that afternoon, Street ventured some deduction to the effect that it must be raining, since the water was still streaming off me and onto the carpet, and I remarked that it was a nice day out for ducks, a little witticism I have often found to have a remarkably calming effect on my patients, though of course—I am a bio-mechanic, you see—its use is somewhat dependent on the weather; though I am over fifty, my seals are still tight and I think I may boast that you won’t find another robot my age with fewer rain leaks anywhere.
Where was I? Oh, yes. It was on a dark and stormy afternoon in October that I was first introduced to the weird and sinister business which I, in these reports, have chosen to refer to as The Affair of the Rubber Bend.
Street waited until I had dried myself off and was about to sit down with the paper, and then said sharply, “Westing!
I confess I was so startled that for an instant I froze in a sort of half-crouch with my hips perhaps four inches above the seat of the scuffed old Morris chair next to Street’s antique telespectroscope; had I known at the time how significant that posture was to be, in the eldritch light of the disappearance of Prof. Louis Dodson and the haunting of—but perhaps I am in danger of anticipating my story.
“Westing,” Street continued, “for goodness’ sake sit down. Hanging in the air like that, you look like a set of tin monkey bars flunking Darwin.”
“It’s only natural,” I said, taking my seat, “for you humans to envy the somewhat greater coordination and superior muscular effectiveness we possess, but it is hardly necessary—”
“Quite. I’m sorry I startled you. But I had been thinking, and I want to talk to you. You are, are you not, a member of the Peircian Society?”
“Certainly,” I said. “You know perfectly well, Street, that on the first Monday of each odd-numbered month I absent myself from this apartment—good lord, have I missed a meeting?” I had risen again and was actually trying to recall what I had done with my umbrella when I caught the error. “No, you’re wrong for once, Street. This is October. October isn’t—November is, of course, but today’s Tuesday. Our meeting’s five days off yet.”
“Six,” Street said dryly, “but I didn’t say you were late for the meeting; I simply asked if you were still a member. You are. Am I not correct in saying that the purpose of the society is to discuss—”
In my eagerness I interrupted him. “To prove that the works signed ‘Damon Knight’ were actually written by the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, of course. And they were, Street. They were. It’s so obvious: Peirce, the otherwise unknown founder of Logical Positivism—”
“Pragmatism,” Street said.
“They are almost the same thing. Peirce, as I was saying, lived in Milford, Pennsylvania—a minute hamlet since buried under the damned waters of the Delaware—”
“You don’t bury things under water.”
“—thus conveniently destroying certain evidence the historical establishment did not want found. Note these points, Street: a village the size of Milford could hardly expect one such man in five hundred years; it had—this is what we are supposed to believe—two in less than fifty. Knight—”
“Knight also lived in Milford?”
“Yes, of course. Knight appeared shortly after Peirce— supposedly—died. Peirce, at the time of his supposed death, was being sorely hounded by his creditors. Peirce grew a thick beard, obviously to keep from being recognized later as Knight. Knight also grew a beard to prevent his being recognized as Peirce. Can’t you see, Street...” I paused.
“You pause,” Street remarked. “Has something struck you?”
“Indeed it has. You, Street, have become engrossed in this most fascinating of historical, scientific, and literary puzzles. You will apply your immense abilities to it, and in a short time we will know the truth.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I only apply those abilities you have flatteringly called immense to puzzles which hold out some possibility of remuneration, Westing. I merely wished to know if you were still a member of the Peircian Society. You are, and I am content.”
“But surely—”
“There is a favor I would like you to do for me—it may be rather an inconvenience for you.”
“Anything, Street. You know that”
“Then I want you to live for a few days with a friend of mine—be his houseguest. It shouldn’t interfere with your practice, and I’ll set up a gadget to relay your calls.”
“I could go to a hotel—”
“I’m not trying to get rid of you, Westing; it’s your presence there I want—not your absence here.’
“Street, does this have something to do with—”
“The Peircian Society? No, not at present; in fact, Westing, I wish you’d forget I ever mentioned that. Put it completely out of your mind. A friend of mine—his name is Noel Wide, by the way—wishes to have a good bio-mechanic near at hand in the evenings. Ordinarily he calls a neighbor of his, but the fellow is on vacation at the moment. He asked if I could suggest someone, and I told him I’d try to persuade you to fill in. If you are willing to go, I want you there tonight”
“Tonight?”
“At once. Collect your medical bag and emergency self-maintenance kit and be on your way.”
“Street, you’re not telling me everything.”
“I am telling you everything it’s politic to tell you at the moment, and it’s important that you don’t miss dinner at Wide’s. If you are sincere in wanting to go, go now. Here—while you’ve been jabbering I’ve written out the address for you.”
“Dinner? Street, you know it isn’t necessary—we robots don’t—”
Something in his look stopped me. I collected the accoutrements he had suggested and took my departure; but as I left I noted that Street, now calm again, had picked up the book that lay beside his chair, and as I read the title an indescribable thrill shot through me. It was A for Anything.
* * * *
The address to which Street had dispatched me proved to be an old brownstone in a neighborhood that held a thousand others. It had once had, I observed as I plodded toward it through the downpour, a sort of greenhouse or conservatory on its roof, but this was now broken and neglected, and its shattered panes and rusted ironwork, dripping rain, looked as dejected as I felt. At my knock the door, which was on a chain-guard, was opened by a robot younger (or as Street would say, “newer”) than myself. I asked if he was Mr. Wide.
He grinned mechanically, and without offering to unchain the door, replied, “He lives here, but I’m Arch St Louis—you want in?” I observed that he sported a good deal of chrome-and-copper trim, arranged in a manner that led me to think better of his bank account than of his taste. In answer to his question I said, “Please,” and when he continued immobile I added, “As you see, I’m standing in the wet—I’m Dr. Westing.”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
In a moment he had opened the door and shown me in. “Here,” he said, “I’ll get you some red-rags to wipe yourself off with. Don’t take the cold reception to heart, Doc; we have unpleasant company from time to time.”
I stifled the impulse to remark that birds of a feather assemble in groups, and asked instead if it would be possible for me to see Mr. Wide, my host
St. Louis glanced at his watch. “Five minutes, he’s down in the plant rooms. He’ll be up at six.”
“The plant rooms?”
“In the basement. He grows mushrooms. Come on into the office.”
I followed him down a short corridor and entered a large and beautifully appointed chamber fitted out as something between an office and a parlor. A small desk near the door I deduced to be his; at the other side of the room stood a much larger desk with a scattering of unopened correspondence on its top, and behind it an immense chair. I walked over to examine the chair, but my awed perusal of its capacious dimensions was interrupted by the labored sighing of an elevator; I turned in time to see a pair of cleverly disguised doors slide back, revealing the most bulky robot I have ever beheld. He was carrying a small basket of tastefully arranged fungi, and holding this with both hands so as (at least, so it seemed to me) to have an excuse to avoid shaking hands with me, he marched across the room to the larger desk, and seating himself in that gargantuan chair, placed the basket squarely before him.
“Mr. Wide,” St. Louis said, “this is Doc Westing.”
“A pleasure, Doctor,” Wide said in a thick but impressive voice. “You have come, I hope, to stay until my own physician returns?”
“I’m afraid there has been a mistake,” I told him. “I am a bio-mechanic, with no experience in robot repair. My patients—”
“Are human. Indubitably, Doctor. It is not for me, nor for Mr. St. Louis, that your services may be required. I frequently entertain human guests at my table.”
“I see,” I said. I was about to ask why his guests should require the services of a bio-mechanic when St. Louis caught my eye. His eloquent look told me more plainly than words could that I would be wise to hold my peace until he explained later.
“You are clearly fatigued, Doctor,” Wide was saying. “Perhaps you will permit my associate to show you to your room, and afterward give you a tour of the house.”
I admitted I could do with some freshening up.
“Then I will expect you for dinner.”
As the sliding doors of the elevator closed behind us, St. Louis grinned and gestured toward the control panel. “See those, Doc? Push one. Your room’s on three.”
I pressed the button marked 3. The elevator remained immobile.
“They’re phonies; leave it to Arch.”
Addressing no visible person he said loudly, “Take ‘er down, Fritz. Plant rooms.” The elevator began a gentle
“I’m afraid,” I began, “that I don’t—”
“Like I said, the buttons are phonies. Sometimes the cops want to bother Mr. Wide when he’s down in the plant rooms or up in the sack thinking great thoughts. So I herd ‘em in here, press the button, they see it don’t work, and I take off that access plate there and start playing around with the wires. They’re dummies too, and it works good on dummy cops. Like it?”
I said I supposed such a thing must often be useful, which seemed to please him; he treated me to his characteristic grin and confided, “We call it the St. Louis con, or sometimes the old elevator con. The real deal is the house has a built-in cyberpersonality, with speakers and scanners all over. Just ask for what you want.”
“I thought,” I ventured as the elevator came to a halt, “—I mean, weren’t we going up to my room?”
“I’m showing you the mushrooms first,” St. Louis explained, “then you’ll have a clear shot upstairs until dinner, and I’ll have a chance to do some chores. Come on, they’re worth seeing.”
We stepped out into semidarkness; the ceiling was low, the room cool and damp and full of the smell of musty life. Dimly I could make out row upon row of greenhouse benches filled with earth; strange, uncouth shapes lifted blind heads from this soil, and some appeared to glow with an uncanny phosophorescence. “The mushrooms,” St. Louis said proudly. “He’s got over eighteen hundred different kinds, and believe me, he gets ‘em from all over. The culture medium is shredded paper pulp mixed with sawdust and horse manure.”
“Amazing,” I said.
“That’s why he wants you here,” St. Louis continued. “Wide’s not only the greatest detective in our Galaxy, he’s also the greatest gourmet cook—on the theoretical end, I mean. Fritz does the actual dirty work.”
“Did you say Mr. Wide was a detective?”
“I may have let it slip. He’s pretty famous.”
“What a striking coincidence! Would you believe it, St. Louis, my own best friend—”
“Small Universe, isn’t it? Does Street cook too?”
“Oh,” I said, “I didn’t know you knew him; no, Street’s hobby is collecting old machines, and scientific tinkering generally.”
“Sometimes I wish Wide’s was, but he cooks instead. You know why I think he does it?”
“Since no one but a human being can eat the food, I can’t imagine.”
“It’s those add-on units—you noticed how big he was?”
“I certainly did! You don’t mean to say—”
St. Louis nodded. “The heck I don’t. Add-on core memory sections. His design is plug-to-plug compatible with them, and so far he’s sporting fourteen; they cost ten grand apiece, but every time we rake in a big fee he goes out and buys his brains a subdivision.”
“Why, that’s incredible! St. Louis, he must be one of the most intelligent people in the world.”
“Yeah, he’s smart. He’s so smart if he drops something on the floor I got to pick it up for him. But it’s the image, you know. He’s eighty inches around the waist, so he figures he’s got to do the food business. You ever hear of Truffles et Champignons à la Noel Wide? He makes it with sour cream and sauerkraut, and the last time he served it we almost lost two clients and an assistant district attorney.”
“And he’s giving one of these dinners tonight? I’m surprised that anyone would come.”
St. Louis shrugged. “He invites people who owe him a favor and don’t know; and then there’s a bunch who’ll turn up dam near regularly—some of the stuffs pretty good, and it’s a sort of suicide club.”
“I see,” I said, rapidly checking over the contents of my medical bag mentally. “Am I correct in assuming that since, as you say, there is a great deal of cooking done in this house, you are well supplied with baking soda and powdered mustard?”
“If it’s got to do with food we’ve got tons of it.”
“Then there’s nothing to worry—’
I was interrupted by the sound of the elevator doors, and Wide’s deep, glutinous voice: “Ah, Doctor, you have anticipated me—I wished to show you my treasures myself.”
“Mr. St. Louis tells me,” I said, “that you have mushrooms from all over the Universe, as well as the Manhattan area.”
“I do indeed. Fungi from points exotic as Arcturus and as homely as Yuggoth. But I fear that—great as my satisfaction would be—it was not to expatiate upon the wonders of my collection that I came.” He paused and looked out over the rows of earth-filled benches. “It is not the orchid, but the mushroom which symbolizes our society. I used to grow orchids—were you aware of that, Doctor?”
I shook my head.
“For many years. Then I acquired my eighth unit of additional core.” Wide thoughtfully slapped his midsection—a sound deeply reverberant, but muted as the note of some great bronze gong in a forgotten catacomb of the temple of Thought. “I had no sooner gotten that unit up, than the insight came to me: No one can eat orchids. It was as simple as that: No one can eat orchids. It had been staring me in the face for years, but I had not seen it.”
St. Louis snorted. “You said you came down here for something else, boss.”
“I did. The client is here. Fritz admitted her; she is waiting in the front room with a hundred thousand credits in small bills in her lap.”
“Want me to get rid of her?”
“There has been another apparition.”
St. Louis whistled, almost silently.
“I intend to talk to her; it occurred to me that you might wish to be present, though Dr. Westing need not trouble himself in the matter.”
A sudden thought had struck me: If, as it had appeared to me earlier that evening, Street had had some ulterior motive in sending me to this strange house, it was quite probable that it had to do with whatever case currently engaged Wide’s attention. I fenced for time. “Mr. Wide, did I hear you say ‘apparition’?”
Wide’s massive head nodded slowly. “Thirteen days ago the young woman’s ‘father,’ the eminent human scientist Louis C. Dodson, disappeared. Since that time an apparition in the form of Dodson has twice been observed in his old laboratory on the three thousand and thirteenth floor of the Groan Building. Miss Dodson has retained me to investigate Dodson’s disappearance and lay the phantom. You appear disturbed.”
“I am. Dodson was—well, if not a friend, at least a friendly acquaintance of mine.”
“Ah.” Wide looked at St. Louis significantly. “When was the last time you saw him, Doctor?”
“A little less than two months ago, at the regular meeting. We were fellow members of the Peircian Society.”
“He appeared normal then?”
“Entirely. His stoop was, if anything, rather more pronounced than usual, indicating relaxation; and the unabated activity of the tics I had previously observed affecting his left eye and right cheek testified to the continuing functioning of the facial nerves.”
I paused, then took the plunge. “Mr. Wide, would it be possible for me to sit in with you while you question his daughter? After all, death is primarily a medical matter, and I might be of some service.”
“You mean, his ‘daughter,’” Wide said absently. “You must, however, permit me to precede you—our elevator is insufficiently capacious for three.”
“He’s hoping she’ll object to you—that’ll give him an excuse to threaten to drop the case,” St. Louis said as soon as we were alone. “And that elevator’ll hold five, if one of ‘em’s not him.”
I was thinking of the death of my old acquaintance, and did not reply.
* * * *
Alice Dodson, who sat on the edge of a big red leather chair in front of Wide’s desk, was as beautiful a girl as I had ever seen: tall, poised, with a well-developed figure and a cascade of hair the color of white wine. “I assume,” Wide was saying to her as St. Louis and I emerged from the elevator, “that that diminutive glassine envelope you hold contains the hundred thousand in small bills my cook mentioned.”
“Yes,“ the girl said, holding it up. “They have been microminiaturized and are about three millimeters by seven.”
Wide nodded. “Arch, put it in the safe and write her out a receipt. Don’t list it as an addition to the retainer, just: ‘Received of Miss Alice Dodson the sum of one hundred thousand credits, her property.’ Date it and sign my name.”
“I’ve already given you a retainer,” Miss Dodson said, unsuccessfully attempting to prevent St. Louis’s taking the envelope, “and I just stopped by here on my way to the bank.”
“Confound it, madame, I conceded that you had given us a retainer, and I have no time for drollery. Tell us about the most recent apparition.”
“Since my ‘father’ disappeared I have entered his laboratory at least once every day—you know, to dust and sort of tidy up.”
“Pfui!” Wide said.
“What?”
“Ignore it, madame. Continue.”
“I went in this morning, and there he was. It looked just like him—just exactly like him. He had one end of his mustache in his mouth the way he did sometimes, and was chewing on it.”
“Dr. Westing, Wide said, turning to me, “you knew Dodson; what mood does that suggest? Concupiscent? (We must remember that he was looking at Miss Dodson.) Fearful?”
I reflected for a moment. “Reflective, I should say.”
Miss Dodson continued: “That’s all there was. I saw him. He saw me—I feel certain he saw me—and he started to rise (he was always such a gentleman) and” —she made an eloquent gesture—”puff! He disappeared.”
“Extraordinary.”
“Mr. Wide, I’ve been paying you for a week now, and you haven’t gone to look at the ghost yet. I want you to go in person. Now. Tonight.”
“Madame, under no circumstances will I undertake to leave my house on business.”
“If you don’t I’m going to fire you and hire a lawyer to sue for every dime I’ve paid you.
“However, it is only once in a lifetime that a man is privileged to part the curtain that veils the supernatural.” Wide rose from his huge chair. “Arch, get the car. Doctor, my dinner for tonight must be postponed in any event; would you care to accompany us?”
During the drive to Dodson’s laboratory I ventured to ask Miss Dodson, with whom I damply shared the rumble seat of Wide’s Heron coupe, her age. “Eight,” she replied, lowering her eyes demurely.
“Really? I had observed that your attire is somewhat juvenile, but I would have taken you for a much older girl.”
“Professor Dodson liked for me to be as young as possible, and I always tried to make him happy—you know, for a robot you’re kind of a cuddle-bear.”
It struck me then that if Miss Dodson were, in fact, to take Wide off the case, I might recommend my friend Street to her; but since for the time being Wide was still engaged, I contented myself with putting an arm gently across her shoulders and slipping one of my professional cards into her purse.
* * * *
“As you see, Doctor,” Wide explained when we had reached the three thousand and twelfth floor, “Dodson both lived and worked in this building. This floor held his living quarters, and Miss Dodson’s—they shared most facilities. The floor above is his laboratory, and to preserve his privacy, is inaccessible by elevator. As this is your home, Miss Dodson, perhaps you should lead the way.”
We followed the girl up a small private escalator, and found ourselves in a single immense room occupying the entire three thousand and thirteenth floor of the building. Through broad windows we could see the upper surface of the storm raging several miles below; but this was hardly more than a background, however violent and somber, to the glittering array of instruments and machines before us. Between our position by the escalator and the large clock on the opposite wall three hundred feet away, every inch of floor space was crammed with scientific apparatus.
“I left the lights off,” Alice Dodson remarked in a shaken voice, “I know I did. You don’t suppose that he—”
“There!” St. Louis exclaimed, and following the direction indicated by his outthrust finger, I saw a black-clad figure bent over a sinister machine in the center of the laboratory. While St. Louis muttered something about never going out on a murder case without a gun again, I seized a heavy isobar from a rack near the door.
“You won’t need that, Westing,” a familiar voice assured me.
“Street! What in the world are you doing here?”
“Earning my pay as a consulting detective, I hope. I am here at the instigation of Mr. Noel Wide.”
Miss Dodson, still apparently somewhat shaken, looked at Wide. “Is this true?”
“Certainly. Madame, because you found me at my desk when you called, you supposed me inactive; in point of fact I was, among other activities, awaiting Street’s report.”
“You were working the crossword in the Times! Your house told me.”
“Confound it! I said among other activities.”
“Here, now,” Street intervened. “Quarreling lays no spooks. From the fact that you are here, Wide, I assume there has been some recent development.”
“There has been another apparition. Miss Dodson will tell you.”
“Since my ‘father’ disappeared,” Miss Dodson began, “I have entered his laboratory at least once every day— you know, to dust and sort of tidy up.”
“Pfui!” Wide interjected.
Seeing that both Street and Wide were giving Miss Dodson their complete attention, I took the opportunity to speak to Wide’s assistant. “St. Louis,” I asked, “why does he make that peculiar noise?”
“Every once in a while he gets too disgusted for verbal, and wants to write out a comment on his printer—”
“Why? Interior printers are fine for notes, but I’ve never heard of using them to supplement conversation.”
“Oh, yeah? Did you ever try to say: *#@&!°!!?”
“I see your point.”
“Anyway, he doesn’t like women mucking around a house, but his printer don’t work; he got clarified butter in it one time when he was trying to make Currie Con Carne mit Pilz à la Noel Wide, so when he tries to feed out the paper he makes that noise.”
“You say,” Street was asking Miss Dodson, “that when you saw him he was sitting? Where?” —
“Right there,” she said, indicating a low casual chair not far from us.
“But, as I understand, in both the earlier apparitions he was lying down?’
The girl nodded voicelessly.
“May I ask precisely where?”
“The f-first time—pardon me—the first time over on a day bed he kept over there to rest on. The s-second—”
“Please try and control yourself. Dr. Westing can administer medication if you require it.”
“The second time, he was on a chaise longue he had put in for me near his favorite workbench. So I could talk to him there.”
“And his behavior on these two occasions?”
“Well, the first time I had been so worried, and I saw him lying there on the bed the way he used to, and without thinking I just called out, ‘Snookums!’—that’s what I always used to call him.”
“And his behavior? Give me as much detail as possible.”
“He seemed to hear me, and started to get up...”
“And disappeared?”
“Yes, it was terrible. The second time, when he was on the chaise, I was carrying some dirty beakers and Erlenmeyer flasks over to the sink to wash. When I saw him there I dropped them, and as soon as I did he disappeared.”
Street nodded. “Very suggestive. I think at this point we had better examine the day bed, the chaise longue, and that chair. Tell me, Miss Dodson, of the five of us, which is closest in height to the professor?”
“Why . . .” She hesitated for a moment. “Why, Dr. Westing, I suppose.”
“Excellent,” said Street. We all trooped after him as he crossed the huge laboratory to the day bed Alice Dodson had indicated. “Westing,” Street murmured, “if you will oblige me.”
“But what is it you wish me to do?”
“I want you to lie down on that bed. On his back, Miss Dodson?”
“More on his side, I think.”
“And try,” St. Louis put in, “to look like a genius, Doc.” Wide shushed him.
“Don’t hesitate to arrange his limbs, Miss Dodson,” Street told her; “this is important. There, is that satisfactory?”
The girl nodded.
Street whipped a tape rule from his pocket and made a series of quick measurements of my position, jotting down the results on a notepad. “And now, Miss Dodson, please give me the date and time when you saw the professor here—as exactly as possible.”
“October twelfth. It was about ten-twenty.”
“Excellent. And now the chaise.”
At the chaise longue we repeated the same procedure, Miss Dodson giving the date and time as October 18th, at ten minutes to eleven.
When I had been measured in the chair as well, Street said, “And today is October twenty-fifth. At what time did you see the professor?”
“It was about one o’clock this afternoon.”
While Street scribbled calculations on his pad, Wide cleared his throat. “I notice, Street, that the time of this most recent apparition would seem to violate what might earlier have appeared to be an invariable rule; that is, that Dodson’s ghost appeared at or very nearly at ten-thirty in the morning.”
Street nodded. “If my theory is correct, we shall see that those significant-looking times were mere coincidences, arising from the fact that it was at about that time each day that Miss Dodson entered this room. You did say, did you not, Miss Dodson, that you came every day?”
The girl shook her head. “I suppose I did, but actually the first apparition frightened me so much that I didn’t come again until—”
“Until the eighteenth, when you saw him the second time. I suspected as much.”
“Street,” I exclaimed, “you understand this dreadful business. For heaven’s sake tell us what has been happening.”
“I shall expound my theory in a moment,” Street replied, “but first I intend to attempt an experiment which, should it succeed, will confirm it and perhaps provide us with valuable information as well. Miss Dodson, your ‘father’—like myself—dabbled in every sort of science, did he not?”
“Yes, at least... I think so.”
“Then is there such a thing as a wind tunnel in this laboratory? Or any sort of large, powerful fan?”
“He—he was interested in the techniques air-conditioning engineers use to make their systems as noisy as possible, Mr. Street. I think he had a big fan for that’.”
After a ten-minute search we found it, a powerful industrial-grade centrifugal fan. “Exactly what we need,” Street enthused. “St. Louis, you and Westing take the other side of this thing. We want to set it up on the lab bench nearest the escalator.”
When we had positioned it there, Street turned to the girl and said, “Miss Dodson, at this point I require your fullest cooperation—the success of this experiment depends primarily upon yourself. I have placed the fan where you see it, and I intend to spike the base to the top of the bench and permanently wire the motor to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to disconnect. I want your solemn word that you will not disconnect it, or interfere with its operation in any way; and that you will exert your utmost effort to prevent any other person whatsoever from doing so before November seventh.”
“You think,” the girl said in so low a tone that I could scarcely make out the words, “that he is still alive, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“If this fan runs all that time, will it bring him back to us?”
“It may help.”
“Then I promise.”
“Even should the professor be restored to you, it must remain in operation—do you understand? It might be wise, for example, to persuade him to take a brief holiday, leaving the fan untouched.”
“I will do my best,” the girl said. “He likes the seaside.”
Street nodded, and without another word walked to the wall, threw one of the main circuit breakers, and began soldering the fan-motor leads into a 220-volt utility circuit. Under Wide’s direction St. Louis and I found hammers and a gross of heavy nails, with which we secured the base to the benchtop.
“Now,” Street announced when all our tasks were complete, “once again I shall require cooperation—this time from every one of you. I shall stand here at the circuit breaker. The rest of you must scatter yourselves over this entire laboratory, each taking a section of it as his own responsibility. When I turn on the fan, things will begin to blow about. What we are looking for will, I think, be a slip of notebook paper, and when you observe it, it will be at a distance of about seventy-six centimeters from the floor. Seize it at once—if you wait for it to settle we are lost.”
We did as he asked, and no sooner was the last of us in position than the huge fan sprang into life with hurricane force. A tremendous wind seemed to sweep the entire laboratory, and several pieces of light glassware went over with a crash.
Keeping my eyes fixed, as Street had suggested, at a height of seventy-six centimeters above the floor, I at once observed a sheet of paper fluttering in the machine-made wind. I have often observed that a scrap of paper, blown about, will seem to appear when its surface faces me and disappear when it is edge-on, and for an instant I assumed that the peculiar character of this one stemmed from a similar cause; then I realized that this was not the case—the sheet was, in fact, actually disappearing and reappearing as it danced in the gale. Street and I both dived for it at once. He was a shade the quicker; for a split second I saw the tips of his fingers vanish as though amputated by some demonic knife; then he was waving die paper overhead in triumph.
“Street!” I exclaimed, “you’ve got it! What is it?”
“There’s no need to shout, Westing. If you’ll step back here behind the inlet we can talk quite comfortably. I was relying upon a brilliant scientist’s habitual need to reduce his thoughts to paper, and it has not failed me.”
“What is it?” I asked. “Can I see it?”
“Certainly,” Street said, handing me the paper. Miss Dodson, Wide, and St. Louis crowded around.
The note read:
160 cm—4:00
159.5—2:00
159.0—12:00
d = 14,400 sec/cm X h
“Brief,” Street remarked, “but eminently satisfying. The great scientist’s calculations agree astonishingly well with my own.”
“But, Street,” I protested, “it doesn’t tell us anything. It’s only a formula.”
“Precisely the way I have always felt about those prescriptions of yours, Westing.”
Wide said, “I think it’s time you reported, Street.”
“It will take only a few moments now for me to begin the rescue of Professor Dodson,” Street told him. “And then we will have some minutes in which to talk. Have you ever practiced yoga, Mr. Wide? No? A pity.”
Before our astonished eyes Street proceeded to stand on his head, assuming the posture I believe is known as “The Pole.” We heard him say in a distinct voice, “When you grow tired of this, Professor, you have only to use the escalator. Use the escalator.” Then with the agility of an acrobat he was upright again, slightly red of face.
“I believe, sir,” Wide said, “that you owe us an explanation.”
“And you shall have it. It occurred to me today, while I sat in the lodgings I share with Dr. Westing, that Professor Dodson’s disappearance might be in some way connected with his membership in the Peircian Society. That he was a member was stated in the dossier you passed on to me, Wide, as you may recall.”
Wide nodded.
“I began my investigation, as Dr. Westing can testify, by rereading the complete works of Peirce and Knight, keeping in mind that as a Peircian Dodson ardently believed that the persecuted philosopher had arranged his own supposed death and reappeared under the nom de guerre of Knight; certainly, as the Peircians point out, a suitable one—and particularly so when one keeps in mind that a knight’s chief reliance was upon that piercing weapon the lance, and that Knight was what is called a freelance.
“I also, I may say, kept before me the probability that as both a Peircian and as a man of high intellectual attainments Dodson would be intimately familiar with what is known of the life and work of both men.” -
“Do you mean to say,” I exclaimed, “that your reading led you to the solution of this remarkable case?”
“It pointed the way,” Street acceded calmly. “Tell me, Westing, Wide, any of you, what was Charles Sanders Peirce’s profession?”
“Why, Street, you mentioned it yourself a moment ago. He was a philosopher.”
“I hope not. No, poor as that shamefully treated scholar was, I would not wish him in so unremunerated a trade as that. No, gentlemen—and Miss Dodson—when his contemporaries put the question to Peirce himself, or to his colleagues, the answer they received was that Peirce was a physicist. And in one of Knight’s books, in an introduction to a piece by another writer, I found this remarkable statement: It deals with one of the most puzzling questions in relativity, one to which Einstein never gave an unequivocal answer: If all four space-time dimensions are equivalent, how is it that we perceive one so differently from the rest? That question is sufficiently intriguing by itself—conceive of the fascination it must have held for Dodson, believing, as he did, that it had originated in the mind of Peirce.”
“I begin to see what you are hinting at, Street,” Wide said slowly, “but not why it affected Dodson more because he thought Peirce the author.”
“Because,” Street answered, “Peirce—Peirce the physicist—was the father of pragmatism, the philosophy which specifically eschews whatever cannot be put into practice.”
“I see,” said Wide.
“Well, I don’t,” announced St. Louis loudly. He looked at Miss Dodson. “Do you, kid?”
“No,” she said, “and I don’t see how this is going to help Sn—the professor.”
“Unless I am mistaken,” Street told her, “and I hope I am not, he no longer requires our help—but we can wait a few moments longer to be sure. Your ‘father,’ Miss Dodson, decided to put Knight’s remark to a practical test. When you entered the room this evening, I was in the act of examining the device he built to do it, and had just concluded that that was its nature. Whether he bravely but foolhardily volunteered himself as his own first subject, or whether—as I confess I think more likely—he accidentally exposed his own person to its action, we may never learn; but however it came about, we know what occurred.”
“Are you trying to say,” I asked, “that. Dodson discovered some form of time travel?”
“We all travel in time, Westing,” Street said gravely. “What Professor Dodson did—he had discovered, I may add parenthetically, that the basis for the discrimination to which Knight objected was physiological—was to bend his own perception of the four dimensions so that he apprehended verticality as we do duration, and duration as we do verticality.”
“But that formula,” I began, “and the note itself—”
“Once I understood Dodson’s plight,” Street explained, “the question was quantitative: How was vertical distance—as seen by ourselves—related to duration as perceived by Dodson? Fortunately Miss Dodson’s testimony provided the clue. You will remember that on the twelfth she had seen Dodson lying on a day bed, this being at approximately ten-thirty in the morning. On the eighteenth, six days later but at about the same time, she saw. him on her chaise longue. A moment ago I measured your position, with you posed as the missing man had appeared, but I still did not know what portion of the body governed the temporal displacement. The third apparition, however, resolved that uncertainty. It took place seven days and two hours and ten minutes after the second. Dodson’s feet were actually lower this time than they had been in his first two appearances; his center of gravity was scarcely higher than it had been when he had half reclined on the chaise; but his head was considerably higher—enough to account nicely for the time lapse. Thus I located the ‘temporal determinant’—as I have been calling it to myself—in the area of the frontal lobes of the brain. When you were lying on the day bed, Westing, this spot was fifty centimeters from the floor; when you were in the chaise, seventy-four centimeters; and when you sat in that low chair, ninety-two and one-half centimeters. From these figures an easy calculation showed that one centimeter equaled four hours of duration. Dodson himself arrived at the same figure, doubtless when he noted that the hands of that large clock on the wall appeared to jump when he moved his head. As a true scientist he expressed it in the pure cgs system: vertical displacement times fourteen thousand four hundred seconds per centimeter equals duration.”
“And he wrote it on that slip of paper.”
Street nodded. “At some time in our future, since if it had been in the past we could not have put the paper in motion, as we did, by setting up a fan in the present with assurances that it would remain in operation for some time. Doubtless he used one of the laboratory benches as an impromptu writing desk, and I have calculated that when he stood erect he was in November sixth.”
“Where we will doubtless see him,” Wide said.
“I think not.”
“But, Street,” I interrupted, “why should that note have undergone the same dislocation?”
“Why should other inanimate objects behave as they do? Unquestionably because they have been in contact with us, and there is, as far as we know, no natural opposing force which behaves as Dodson. There was, of course, some danger in grasping the note, but I counted on my own greater mass to wrench it from its unnatural space-time orientation. I had noted, you see, that Miss Dodson’s descriptions of her ‘father’ did not state that he was nude, something she would undoubtedly have commented on had that been the case—ergo, he could be said to bend his clothing into his own reference frame.”
“But why did he vanish,” Miss Dodson demanded tearfully, “whenever he saw me?”
“He did not vanish,” Street replied, “he simply stood up, and, standing, passed into November sixth, as I have already explained. The first time because he heard you call his name, the second because you startled him by dropping glassware, and the third time because, as a gentleman of the old school, he automatically rose when a woman entered the room. He doubtless realized later that he could reappear to you by taking his seat once more, but he was loath to frighten you, and hoped he could think his way out of his predicament; the hint he required for that I believe I have provided: you see, when I stood on my head just now I appeared to Dodson at about the time he suffered his unfortunate accident; the formula I have already quoted, plus the knowledge that Dodson had vanished thirteen days ago, allowed me to calculate that all I need do was to place my own ‘temporal determinant’—the area of my frontal lobes— fourteen centimeters above the floor.”
“But where is he now?”
Street shrugged. “I have no way of knowing, really. Obviously, he is not here. He might be at the opera or attending a seminar, but it seems most probable that he is in the apartment below us.” He raised his voice. “Professor! Professor Dodson, are you down there?”
A moment later I saw a man of less than medium height, with white hair and a straggling yellow mustache, appear at the foot of the escalator. It was Professor Dodson! “What is it?” he asked testily. “Alice, who the hell are these people?”
“Friends,” she sobbed. “Won’t you please come up? Mr. Street, is it all right if he comes up?”
“It would be better,” Street said gently, “if you went down to him. He must pack for that trip to the seaside, you know.” While Miss Dodson was running down the escalator, he called to the man below, “What project engages you at the moment, Professor?”
Dodson looked irritated, but replied, “A monograph on the nature of pragmatic time, young man. I had a mysterious—” His mouth was stopped with kisses.
Beside me St. Louis said softly, “Stay tuned for Ralph the Dancing Moose,” but I was perhaps the only one who heard him.
* * * *
Much later, when we were returning home on the monorail after Street had collected his fee from Wide, I said: “Street, there are several things I still don’t understand about that case. Was that girl Dodson’s daughter —or wasn’t she?”
The rain drummed against the windows, and Street’s smile was a trifle bitter. “I don’t know why it is, Westing, that our society prefers disguising the love of elderly scientists as parenthood to regularizing it as marriage; but it does, and we must live and work in the world we find.”
“May I ask one more question, Street?”
“I suppose so.” My friend slouched wearily in his seat and pushed the deerstalker cap he always affected over his eyes. “Fire away, Westing.”
“You told him to go down the escalator, but I don’t see how that could help him—he would have ended up, well, goodness knows where.”
“When,” Street corrected me. “Goodness knows when. Actually I calculated it as July twenty-fourth, more or less.”
“Well, I don’t see how that could have helped him. And wouldn’t we have seen him going down? I mean, when the top of his head reached the right level—”
“We could,” Street answered sleepily. “I did. That was why I could speak so confidently. You didn’t because you were all looking at me, and I didn’t call your attention to it because I didn’t want to frighten Miss Dodson.”
“But I still don’t see how his going down could have straightened out what you call his bend in orientation. He would just be downstairs sometime in July, and as helpless as ever.”
“Downstairs,” Street said, “but not helpless. He called himself—in his lab upstairs—on the Tri-D-phone and told himself not to do it. Fortunately a man of Dodson’s age is generally wise enough to take his own advice. So you see, the bend was only a rubber bend after all; it was capable of being snapped back, and I snapped it.”
“Street,” I said a few minutes later, “are you asleep?”
“Not now I’m not.”
“Street, is Wide’s real name—I mean, is it really Wide?”
“I understand he is of Montenegrin manufacture, and it’s actually something unpronounceable; but he’s used Wide for years.”
“The first time I was in his office—there was some correspondence on his desk, and one of the envelopes was addressed to Wolfe.”
“That was intended for the author of this story,” Street said sleepily. “Don’t worry, Wide will forward it to him.”