Assignment in Tomorrow

by Anthology

  You can’t plot and scheme if every time you open your mouth to tell a lie you stammer, sweat, turn red in the face and gasp for breath. It’s a dead giveaway. No one attempts it more than once.

  Oh, one or two men had tried to nullify the gas or work out a local antidote, either as a project in pure research or in a power-mad way, but because they’d had to be truthful and make their intentions known as soon as they thought of them, they were put away. Neat.

  What I needed to know was where the formula for the truth gas was. It wasn’t a secret, exactly, in this land of candor, but it wasn’t writ large on the wall for all to see, either. They had it in their capital, which was in the middle of the country, about where we have Omaha, on file among the Vital Statistics. I took one of their super jets out to there.

  Then, because their truthfulness is hereditary, not contagious, it was no trouble at all for me to pose as a historian entitled to the facts. The formula was written out for me and I signed a statement saying I would not publish it and would destroy my copy when it had served my historical purpose without letting anyone else see it. I signed freely, told my elephant story and departed in an aura of good will.

  The jet had me back that same night. Julie fixed up a snack and we talked about how pretty she was and how nice I was.

  I had everything I needed for Krasnow, now. I felt very good because there probably wasn’t anyone else who could have done the job for him and because it wasn’t spying, really. Earth—One Point One on the Timeline—is world enough for Krasnow, I’m sure. Besides, dimensions don’t have wars with each other.

  Julie was real fine and I hated to go the next morning, but it was my job. I told her I had to go out of town, but that I’d be back. I didn’t mean it then, but Julie had no reason to doubt me. She said she certainly hoped I would; after all . . .

  I’ve made the side trip again and now Krasnow has what he wants. He’s delighted, as he should be. I’ve made up the stuff for him. It’s very powerful stuff and a little goes a long way. I also made up an antidote for him. It was easy once I took the formula apart and could work on it without the compulsion to go telling everybody what I was doing.

  Krasnow plans to release the truth gas just before the state convention. He’ll be nominated, of course, and after November he’ll be Governor. He’s a patient man, Honest John Krasnow is, and he’s willing to wait four years for the Presidency.

  I ought to be delighted, too. Krasnow has paid me off and I’ve been living in the style I’d always wanted to be accustomed to. He’s offered me a place on his staff and, somewhat superfluously, the use of his antidote. Of course the reason he was so magnanimous was that he didn’t want anyone else around who knew his gimmick and would have to tell the truth about it.

  But I don’t want to live in this dimension now—now that Krasnow has what I’ve given him. He’s going to use it tomorrow. And if I know Honest John—and I do—even the Presidency won’t be enough for him.

  So I’m going back to Julie.

  It has just this minute occurred to me, small time operator that I’ve been, that I had been thinking in terms of peanuts.

  I could be a Krasnow myself, back there in Julie’s dimension. That elephant story was just a starter.

  I should be there by midnight.

  Back to Julie by Richard Wilson. Copyright, 1954, by Galaxy Publishing Corp.; reprinted by permission of the author.

  PETER PHILIPS

  One of the tragedies of what is called “the technological lag” is that we civilians are still confined to subsonic speeds, making the Atlantic Ocean a formidable bar to travel. Think how attractive it would be if, for instance, magazine and book editors could have the use of the Air Force’s new twice-the-speed-of-sound models on occasion. If this could be arranged, it is more than likely that a good many trips would be made to a district known as Crouch End in the city of London, where the editors would draw their pistols and, at gun’s point, force Peter Phillips to add to his invariably brilliant but infuriatingly short list of stories, such as——

  She Who Laughs . . .

  I’d been waiting just two hundred years for this guy.

  He stood there in the gravelled driveway with the estate agent, looking over the frontage of the mansion.

  The sun was hot. The agent took off his hat, mopped his balding head. I wondered whether I could spit that far from the upstairs window where I was watching them. I decided not.

  The agent said, in a thick brogue I can’t reproduce in its glottal richness: “If it’s se-clusion you’re wantin’, Mr. Mullen, you’d not better this foine upstandin’ place this soide of Ballygore. There’s room to stretch your legs and fill your lungs with air that shweeps down from the mountains over covert and shweet pasture for your own special delectation and delight.”

  My lips were moving with his. I’d heard it before. I knew the sucker would take the place. And I knew the agent, back in Thaughbeen, having dropped the most of his beautiful stage brogue, would soon be saying: “He’s paying in dollars, too, boys. And then, in the season, I’ll sell them to the English tourists. ’Tis an occasion for celebration. Porter all round, on me.”

  Mullen, casual as all hell, stood there with the agent, pretended to be considering.

  I whisked down the baluster-rail, stood just behind the door as they came in.

  “Nice hall,” Mullen said unenthusiastically. He was wearing a drape suit. He didn’t need drapes to bulk him out. Those shoulders had spearheaded the forward line three seasons at college, if my information was correct.

  Indignant, the agent said: “Nice? It’s talking like an Englishman you are, instead of a citizen o’ the greatest country in the world.” (“Bar Ireland,” he said under his breath.) “Lookit the size of ut—the staircase, the panelling, the great wide windows, and that landin’ there where the mighty O’Rourke stood and with the Sword of Kings defied the brayin’ cowards o’ Cromwell till he was struck a traitor blow from behind, and like a great-girthed tree smitten in its prime, fell among the cur-dogs and carried a full half-dozen of them to death with him, here—at this very spot!”

  The agent flung out a dramatic hand. I’d crept up behind them during the spiel. I never tire of hearing it.

  Mullen stepped back. I dodged. “Fool place to make a stand anyway,” he muttered, looking at the balcony between the two staircases.

  “Arragh! The O’Rourke could foight as well with the two hands as the one. A sword in each, there he stood, facin’ them both ways——”

  “Sure, sure. Now, how many bedrooms did you say?”

  I followed them around. Mullen wasn’t interested in bedrooms, only in the cellar. But I was waiting for the final spiel, dictated by what the agent retained of a conscience.

  “There’s jist one t’ing,” he said, standing in the hall again after they’d looked the place over. “You may have been hearin’ t’ings about this place in Thaughbeen—maybe from those loafers around Golighan’s bar—and though I wouldn’t be askin’ yez to disregard ut entoirely——”

  “The haunt, you mean?” said Mullen. I grinned to myself.

  “I heard about it during the war when I was stationed just across the border. That’s when I became interested in the place. I looked it over, saw the power-plant. There’s quite a head of water in that stream. It stayed in the back of my mind until the other day, when I was in London with my wife seeing some friends. Then I remembered this place.

  “I have some work to do. I want electrical power, and privacy. So I hopped the jet liner to Dublin and came up here——”

  “And you’ll take it, sorr—ghost an’ all?”

  If Mullen paid extra for a ghost, I thought, he’d be thoroughly had. But he said firmly: “I’m not buying your ghost. In another minute you’ll be saying it’s an asset to the place an’ all. It’s a hundred years since my folk left this country—but we haven’t gone soft. What’s your price for this tumbledown shebeen?”

  “The final price,” said the ag
ent, taking a deep, careful breath, “for a year’s tenancy, in advance, in dollars, is—how much did you say?”

  “I didn’t. But you can tell your client I’ll offer a thousand.”

  “Don’t be shamin’ me,” said the agent, as I blew a cool breath down his neck. “It’s meself that owns the place as you know, if you know as much as you do.”

  He drew up his coat collar. “Now let’s be discussin’ the details elsewhere.”

  I followed them down the drive, into the shay. I could get away from the place now for a while.

  It was late afternoon. The green border hills in the distance were drawing up mist from the shadowed bog as their green darkened in the slanting sun; and the new-cut hay-to-be in the nearer fields brought relished delight.

  Two hundred years I’d waited for this jaunt. I enjoyed every second of it, even the acrid stink from Pethal’s ill-cared-for hogs as we passed the holding. The hoppity-clop of the pony’s hoofs on the dust-blown road was music.

  Over the green-lichened bridge by the trout-stream trotted the pony. I promised myself a fishing there soon. I’d use a quiet worm and snooze in the sun. Fly-fishing was too strenuous in this moist heat.

  And I’d look over my shoulder now and again at the long pile of Thaughbeen House and laugh. The laugh would be on me. That always makes it funnier, in Ireland. As I write now, however, Pm nearly crying . . . But you can wait for the reason for that.

  Down from the bridge, and the road broadened into the village of Thaughbeen.

  The agent introduced Mullen to Golighan. “Stationed in the Six Counties durin’ the war,” he said, “and mindful of the beauties of the country, and wishin’ to do a little book-work or such, decided to take over the place for a year or maybe more. And you’ll be wastin’ your time, Michael, me boy, tellin’ him about the haunt to take the bread out of me very mouth, for Mister Mullen knows all about it.”

  “Sit down and rest the onaisy tongue of yez,” said Golighan, trying to outdo the agent’s brogue. “Y’don’t think he’d be taken in onyway by ye’re gabblin’, wid a name loike Mullen. What’ll you drink?”

  Mullen ordered Jamieson’s Irish whisky, the agent took thick Dublin stout.

  I watched Mullen roll the smoky-peat flavor round his tongue. Two hundred years since I’d had the sweet, rare tang of it tickling my gullet . . . I licked invisible lips in anticipation.

  They stayed through the evening, with the real talk beginning when the lads drifted in.

  There was Sean Healey, Tom O’Reilley—both, if I remembered right, working for a pittance on Lord Freightowel’s estate; Seamas Mulvaney, smallholder—how many times had I seen him, as a barefoot gossoon, nicking plums from the kitchen garden at Thaughbeen House, looking so often at the silent, window-eyed place with his own green, feary eyes, and me at an upstairs window holding in my breath in case I gave one of the ghostly groans I’d practiced so long and sent him in a tear-breeches scramble down the tree.

  Then there was gutsy Bran Bailey who’d actually come inside one night, stood in the hall and with all his big little heart bawled: “The hell an’ back wid banshees! I don’t believe in ’em.”

  I’d been so pleased with his common-sense that I forgot myself and called out the truth: “Good for you, kid. I’m no banshee. I’m no kind of goddam ghost. There’s no such things.”

  But poor Bran was running so fast, I doubted he’d heard me.

  Anyway, here he was in Golighan’s, grown big and broad, and putting in his two-cents’ worth about the goings-on at Thaughbeen House.

  “It was during the war,” Bran said, “and being so near the border we had a jeep-full of your fellers running in here every night to stoke up on Mister Golighan’s brew. And one night we tell them about the House, and about how poor daft Johnnie Maur goes up there now and again to play chess with the ghost, as he said—poor Johnnie, gone eleven months now——”

  So Johnnie was dead? I’d missed him.

  Every time I heard about Johnnie was dead, it shocked me.

  He’d stumble into the House, liquored up to the fringe of his red hair, white face vacant and mild, shouting in the empty echoing hall: “It’s a game of chess I’m offerin’ yez, for banshees or not, ye’re the only dacent player this soide of Dublin who can tax me wandhering wits!”

  I hope Johnnie’s found another “dacent player” wherever he’s gone.

  Bran Bailey was talking on in Golighan’s bar, with Mullen leaning forward and taking it all in.

  “So one night,” says Bran, “the whole near-dozen of ’em starts off up there, with this great roarin’ sergeant straddlin’ the front and shoutin’: ‘Look out, ghost, here we come, eight little Yankee boys full of rum!’

  “And the jeep goin’ so slow with them aboard,” says Bran, “and the rain makin’ a bog of the road, we follow after these fellers to see what the Thaughbeen House ghost does with ’em.

  “And they get halfway up the drive to the house, and the jeep stops, and there’s the driver thumpin’ and pullin’ everything and callin’ on all the saints, until the sergeant unstraddles himself and pulls up the front coverin’.

  “Then he jist stands there, rain sweatin’ off his great red face and him suddenly as sober as a Rangin’ judge on a Monday, and he says: Tut it back—put it back quick before I believe my eyes, and I swear I’ll never touch another drop again, and we come up and look over his shoulder.

  “And there’s nothing there under the bonnet. Nothing at all, at all.”

  I hadn’t meant to swipe the whole engine at first. The teleport exhausted me for days. But I got annoyed when I’d yanked off three plug-leads mid that gutsy jeep kept banging on, on one cylinder.

  “And never a sight of the engine since,” concluded Bran Bailey.

  Said Mullen: “Yes. I heard of it. I was captain of their unit. We had to have the jeep towed away.”

  “So you’re not troublin’ yourself about the creature at all?” asked Sean Healey.

  “Why should I? It’s never harmed anybody, far as I can see.”

  Thanks for them kind words, pal.

  Mullen decided to stay at Golighan’s until a few essentials had been carried up to the House; and meantime he wired his wife to join him.

  Four days later, he took up residence. He came early. But early. The energy of that man! I was still resting when I heard him poking around in the cellars, tracing through the wiring from the turbo-house.

  I slipped down from where I go when I take a rest—don’t ask me where that is; it’s a state, not a place—and gummed down after him. He was lifting a tarpaulin in a corner of one of the smaller cellars—it used to be a cold-larder.

  He looked at the jeep engine and made funny disbelieving noises.

  “So,” I said, “it wasn’t the potheen. I figure you owe the sergeant and the other Company D boys one big-handed apology—and the dough you docked ’em to pay for it.”

  He came around so fast he tripped and planted the tight part of his pants on one of the hobbly bits of the jeep engine.

  “What—where are you?”

  “No place. Not in heaven or in hell. But just as elusive as the Pimpernel. As to what I am, you’re going to tell me, I hope. That’s what I’ve been waiting for—a long, long time. Meanwhile, Mr. Mullen,” I said, “you’re soiling those nicely creased pants of yours.”

  He upped off the engine, dusted his pants automatically. Something the Army did for him—gave him a pride in his clothes.

  “Do you mind,” he said, his brain beginning to work, “showing yourself? I hate like hell accepting sartorial advice from a voice without a body.”

  “That takes energy,” I said, “like compressing these air molecules to make sound waves. But it takes a lot of energy and a lot of material and right now I don’t feel like dressing up to give you something to look at or talk at. However, I don’t mind giving you a slight idea. Scrape some dust off those shelves, toss it up under that bulb, and stand back.”

  “I am q
uite nuts,” he enunciated carefully.

  “Sure. But do it. And mind your coat cuffs.”

  As the cloud of tiny particles drifted down I slipped in and charged them so they hung around the vortices of my anti-particles.

  “Almighty catfish!” Mullen gulped. “A naked ghost!”

  “I’m no ghost. And I don’t have to be this shape either,” I said, adjusting the network. “Is this any better? Dogs are always naked.”

  He backed off, slapping at the air. “For God’s sake, be human if you can’t be natural! I mean——”

  “Listen,” I said, peeved, “that was a prize mastiff I once saw. I can also do a mountain lion or a grizzly. Get me a roll of cheesecloth, or even a bedsheet at a pinch, and I’ll really show you something.”

  “I’ve seen enough,” he moaned, digging knuckles in his eyes and shaking his head as if something was loose inside. “Go away.”

  “Uh-huh. Maybe you’re right. I’ve got more important things to do with my energy than fool around to amuse you.”

  “Amuse me?” He made a noise like an emptying bathtub. “I’d laugh easier in a morgue. Get back where you came from and make the worms laugh.”

  “I’m not,” I repeated patiently, “a ghost, a ghoulie, a banshee, or anything of the whatsoever kind. I’ve never met up with one and I don’t expect to. Like young Bran Bailey, I don’t believe in ’em. Neither do you, fortunately. But explanations can wait. Has any of the stuff turned up yet?”

  That got him. “What stuff?”

  “Couple of tubes from Marshall’s of London, specification alloy plates from Birmingham, that dingus you borrowed from the Sorbonne.”

  “Your intelligence service must be good.”

  “You’d be very surprised.”

  “Then you tell me where it is.”

  “Surely. I was just making conversation,” I said. “It’s on the way to Thaughbeen station now. Johnny McGuire will be carting it over around lunchtime. And your wife, who is wondering what in hell you’re up to anyway, has reluctantly left her bright friends in London and is on her way to ask why you took over this moth-eaten old shack without consulting her first, especially since it’s her money you’re fooling around with.”