Slater bowed slightly. “That happens to be my name. What can I do for you?”
“Well, sir, my name is Thompson,” the little man replied. “Homer P. Thompson from Indianapolis.” He paused as if to allow time for this to sink in.
“How do you do?” said Slater, smiling cordially.
“I work at Fosberg’s Department Store on East Center
Street,” Thompson continued. “Been janitor there twenty years. They’s mighty few got a record good as mine if I do say it. You can ask Mr. Fosberg himself. He’ll vouch for me. He’ll tell you every word I’m saying is the truth.”
“I’m quite sure that won’t be necessary, Mr. Thompson,” said Slater. “I can usually tell a man of integrity when I see one.” He flicked the ash from his cigarette with the tip of his finger. “Now what was it you wished to see me about?”
“It’s about my wife Hariette, Dr. Slater. She—” Tears suddenly welled up in his eyes and his Adam’s apple twitched violently. He leaned against the door, his whole body racked with great choking sobs.
“Here, here, sit down, Mr. Thompson. Compose yourself,” said Slater, hastily shoving a chair in his direction.
A young man who acted as if Thompson were his personal responsibility assisted the trembling man to the chair. He handed Slater a card. “Davenport. I’m with World Press. I don’t know why they always hand these jobs to me.
Somebody in the back of the crowd produced a bottle of whisky. “Here,” said Davenport, unscrewing the top, “take a drink of this.”
Thompson raised the bottle to his lips and took several deep gulps. He lowered the bottle, gasped slightly, and wiped his mustache with the back of his hand. “Thanks,” he said, passing the bottle back. “That was good whisky.”
“Now, Mr. Thompson,” Davenport said, in a soothing voice, “tell Dr. Slater your story just the way you told it to us in Indianapolis.”
Thompson drew a long breath. “Well, it was about six weeks ago today that my wife was taken by this attack,” he began. “We was cornin’ home from the Westside Bridge and Bingo Club. I never wanted to go in the first place. I told Hariette my feet hurt me and we’d never won a cent anyhow. Seems to me I’ve always just been losin’ out all my life. My whole family’s worked hard as far back as I can remember but none of us never seemed to get very far. I got a brother in Nebraska that’s a deputy sheriff and got his picture in the paper once but that’s as far as any of us ever got.”
He steadied himself against the side of the desk.
“Well, we hadn’t any more than got home and got up the stairs when it hit her. She clutched at her heart and gave a groan and down she went. I ran over and did all I could but it wasn’t no use. She was dead before I got there.”
Slater nodded sympathetically.
“She was buried in Laurel Haven in the plot we’d picked out a long time ago, ever since that smart young fellow came to the door and talked my wife into makin’ a down payment on that Before Sorrow Comes plan. The Reverend Tilsbury said some words over her the way she always had wanted him to, and when I saw her layin’ there in the casket with her rose silk dress on and the coral necklace she wore the day we was married, I naturally supposed that’d be the last time I’d ever look upon her face.”
He began shaking all over as if agitated by some deep inner emotion. Several times he struggled to get the words out but failed. Then they burst forth like water from a dam.
“And now I see her every night up there in the sky!” he cried. “The whole neighborhood’s waitin’ for her to rise over the garage. When you first see her she’s upside down as if she was standin’ on her head. By midnight she’s up over the top of the Elmwood Apartments. Then she sets right side up over the drug-store. It wouldn’t be so bad if she’d only recognize me; if she’d just smile or laugh or somethin’.“ He buried his face in his hands.
Slater bent down beside him. “Listen, are you sure that’s your wife in the sky? Absolutely sure?”
“Why, certainly I’m sure,” Thompson declared indignantly. “Take a look at these.” He spread half a dozen snapshots out on the desk. “Here’s one of Hariette the way she looked last Fourth of July when her folks was over for dinner. Took it out in the backyard myself. And here she is at her daughter’s place over in Kokomo.”
Slater examined the photographs incredulously. The resemblance between the woman in the pictures and the face in the sky was unmistakable.
Thompson gazed up at the scientist with pleading eyes. ‘They tell me you can explain these things, Dr. Slater. That you know all about what goes on up there. Then tell me— where is she, Dr. Slater? Where is she?”
For once Slater’s poise seemed on the point of deserting him. “Well, that’s awfully hard to say,” he replied, running his fingers over the back of his neck. “After all, I’m not omnipotent, you know.”
“Is it heaven, Dr. Slater? Or … or maybe the other place?”
Slater gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Maybe there’s no difference. Maybe they’re both the same. The world’s a mad topsy-turvy place right now, I’m afraid. But wherever your wife is, Mr. Thompson, I’m sure she’s happy.”
Several reporters darted off down the hall. A flash bulb popped and then another and another. “One more, Dr. Slater,” Davenport yelled. “Looking over his shoulder at the photographs.”
In the midst of all the confusion the telephone rang.
“Get that for me will you, Rea?” Slater shouted. “It’s probably Kirby calling from the mountain. He’s the only one allowed to call in.”
Rea picked up the instrument. “Hello, Kirby?” He waved down the crowd at the door. “Confound it, I can’t hear a thing! All right now, go ahead.”
He sat with the receiver at his ear taking down the message without comment. Gradually the room quieted down, as if everyone there sensed that something important was transpiring. When Rea put the telephone down his face was very grim.
“Well, Kirby said he got Andromeda last night. The seeing wasn’t very good but he said he got it anyhow. Enough to see what’s going on, at any rate.”
“Good old Kirby,” Slater murmured.
Rea tried to make his voice sound casual. “He says the nebula’s breaking up. Tidal strain evidently. The side toward the face is scarcely recognizable now. Nothing but a hazy mass of star stuff with dark clouds of obscuring matter streaked across it. And novae in the spiral arms. But he says the face itself seems to be getting dimmer, as if it were fading away.”
The room had become very still. All eyes were turned on Slater. Davenport leaned toward him across the desk.
“You’ve got to tell us, Dr. Slater,” he said in a hoarse voice. “What does it mean? Surely there must be an explanation.”
Slater raised his arms and let them fall to his sides again in a helpless gesture. Thompson kept shuffling the photographs of his wife back and forth between his fingers.
“My old woman,” he muttered dazedly, “up there in the sky.”
The Milky Way was a glowing arch spanning the heavens like the gateway to infinity. Below along the coastline the lights of a score of towns sparkled in the evening breeze. Slater drew back the sleeve of his coat revealing the illuminated dial of his wrist watch.
“Nine o’clock,” he announced. “Time for the end of the world.” He glanced over the peaceful landscape. “Well, everything seems to be intact so far. No signs of coming loose at the seams yet.”
He shifted his gaze to the northeast where the Andromeda Nebula was a dim spot of light with the features of a human face barely visible in the background.
“Hm-m-m. Mrs. Thompson is barely fifth magnitude tonight/’ he observed. “In another week she’ll have faded from sight entirely. Gone but not forgotten.”
Rea shifted his position against the iron railing upon which he was leaning. “You said once there were a dozen ways of explaining a face in the sky. So far I haven’t heard a single one.”
“Of course I was exaggera
ting/’ said Slater. “Three or four would have been more like it.”
“The chief difficulty I should say in framing a suitable theory is that great masses of matter like Andromeda don’t seem to fit into the universe in the first place. There they are dotted all over the sky except where they’re blocked out along the Milky Way. Long ago Sir James Jeans remarked that the external galaxies seem like singular points where matter is being poured into our universe from some entirely extraneous spatial dimension. More recently Gold and Bondi have shown that if our laws of physics are to retain any meaning then we are forced to the conclusion that matter is being created continually in space, at the rate of one hydrogen atom per cubic meter every three hundred thousand years. Not enough to make us feel cramped very soon. They call it the ‘perfect cosmological principle.’ Naturally they don’t mean that matter is really being created. What they mean is that matter is somehow being intruded into our space from outside.”
He waved his hand in the general direction of Andromeda. “In local regions of space it may be possible for matter to be created at a much faster rate. In Mrs. Thompson’s case something must have got badly out of control. There was rage in heaven—a celestial crack-up—and we got a glimpse of a sight we were never intended to see. It was as simple as that.”
“But that fat face in the sky!” Rea cried impatiently. “Don’t tell me seriously that you ever expect to fit that into any rational theory.”
“I often wonder if theoretical physics can ever really explain anything/’ said Slater soberly. “In the last analysis, I wonder if theoretical physics can ever do more than merely describe?”
He stood for a minute looking moodily down at the lights of the towns along the coastline. When he spoke again it was in a different voice from the bantering tone he usually employed.
“People are forever asking for explanations. Nice pretty explanations in a world where the good die young, where the wicked go unpunished, and there are wars when nobody wants war. If we can find no explanation for life on earth in the microcosmic scale, then why expect to find one in worlds beyond in the macrocosm?”
He laughed bitterly. “I can spin endless theories for you that describe but when you ask me for one that explains—-that is another matter entirely.”
ADRIFT ON THE POLICY LEVEL
CHANDLER DAVIS
Long before Chan Davis received his doctorate in mathematics, he had taken a post-graduate course in the science of constructing good science fiction stories. Nightmare was one of his earliest—and still remembered as a chilling study in atomic warfare as it might yet be waged, not by flights of missiles but by subterfuge. His recent output has been severely restricted, first by his work in proving theorems about matrices and operators in hilbert space—it is a measure of his standing that he was for a time on fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton—more recently by his editorial duties on Mathematical Reviews, a publication whose objective is to print promptly a competent review of every single mathematical research publication on this planet.
Neither mathematical exercise nor nuclear thriller is the present story—but it has point, purpose and wit of its own!
I
J. Albert LaRue was nervous, but you couldn’t blame him. It was his big day. He looked up for reassurance at the
big, bass-voiced man sitting so stolidly next to him in the hissing subway car, and found what he sought.
There was plenty of reassurance in having a man like Calvin Boersma on your side.
Albert declared mildly but firmly: “One single thought is uppermost in my mind.”
Boersma inclined his ear. “What?”
“Oxidase epsilon!” cried Albert.
Cal Boersma clapped him on the shoulder and answered, like a fight manager rushing last-minute strategies to his boxer: “The one single thought that should be uppermost in your mind is selling oxidase epsilon. Nothing will be done unless The Corporation is sold on it. And when you deal with Corporation executives you’re dealing with experts.”
LaRue thought that over, swaying to the motion of the car.
“We do have something genuinely important to sell, don’t we?” he ventured. He had been studying oxidase epsilon for three years. Boersma, on the other hand, was involved in the matter only because he was LaRue’s lab-assistant’s brother-in-law, an assistant sales manager of a plastics firm … and the only businessman LaRue knew.
Still, today—the big day—Cal Boersma was the expert. The promoter. The man who was right in the thick of the hard, practical world outside the University’s cloistered halls —the world that terrified }. Albert LaRue.
Cal was all reassurance. “Oxidase epsilon is important, all right. That’s the only reason we have a chance.”
Their subway car gave a long, loud whoosh, followed by a shrill hissing. They were at their station. J. Albert LaRue felt a twinge of apprehension. This, he told himself, was it! They joined the file of passengers leaving the car for the luxurious escalator.
“Yes, Albert,” Cal rumbled, as they rode up side by side, “we have something big here, if we can reach the top men— say, the Regional Director. Why, Albert, this could get you an assistant section managership in The Corporation itself!”
“Oh, thank you! But of course I wouldn’t want—I mean, my devotion to research—” Albert was flustered.
“But of course I could take care of that end of it for you,” Boersma said reassuringly. “Well, here we are, Albert.”
The escalator fed them into a sunlit square between twenty-story buildings. A blindingly green mall crossed the square to the Regional Executive Building of The Corporation. Albert could not help being awed. It was a truly impressive structure—a block wide, only three stories high.
Cal said, in a reverent growl: “Putting up a building like that in the most heavily taxed area of Detroit—you know what that symbolizes, Albert? Power. Power and salesmanship! That’s what you’re dealing with when you deal with The Corporation.”
The building was the hub of the Lakes Region, and the architecture was appropriately monumental. Albert murmured a comment, impressed. Cal agreed. “Superbly styled,” he said solemnly.
Glass doors extending the full height of the building opened smoothly at the touch of Albert’s hand. Straight ahead across the cool lobby another set of glass doors equally tall, were a showcase for dramatic exhibits of The Corporation’s activities. Soothing lights rippled through an enchanted twilight. Glowing letters said, “Museum of Progress.”
Several families on holiday wandered delighted among the exhibits, basking in the highest salesmanship the race had produced.
Albert started automatically in that direction. Cal’s hand on his arm stopped him. “This way, Albert. The corridor to the right.”
“Huh? But—I thought you said you couldn’t get an appointment, and we’d have to follow the same channels as any member of the public.” Certainly the “‘public” was the delighted wanderer through those gorgeous glass doors.
“Oh, sure, that’s what we’re doing. But I didn’t mean that public.”
“Oh.” Apparently the Museum was only for the herd. Albert humbly followed Cal (not without a backward glance) to the relatively unobtrusive door at the end of the lobby—the initiate’s secret passage to power, he thought with deep reverence.
But he noticed that three or four new people just entering the building were turning the same way.
A waiting room. But it was not a disappointing one; evidently Cal had directed them right; they had passed to a higher circle. The room was large, yet it looked like a sanctum.
Albert had never seen chairs like these. All of the twenty-five or so men and women who were there ahead of them were distinctly better dressed than Albert. On the other hand Cal’s suit—a one-piece wooly buff-colored outfit, fashionably loose at the elbows and knees—was a match for any of them. Albert took pride in that.
Albert sat and fidgeted. Cal’s bass voice gently reminded him tha
t fidgeting would be fatal, then rehearsed him in his approach. He was to be, basically, a professor of plant metabolism; it was a poor approach, Cal conceded regretfully, but the only one Albert was qualified to make. Salesmanship he was to leave to Cal; his own appeal was to be based on his position—such as it was—as a scientific expert; therefore he was to be, basically, himself. His success in projecting the role might possibly be decisive—although the main responsibility, Cal pointed out, was Cal’s.
While Cal talked, Albert fidgeted and watched the room. The lush chairs, irregularly placed, still managed all to face one wall, and in that wall were three plain doors. From time to time an attendant would appear to call one of the waiting supplicants to one of the doors. The attendants were liveried young men with flowing black hair. Finally, one came their way! He summoned them with a bow—an eyeflashing, head-tossing, flourishing bow, like a dancer rather than a butler.
Albert followed Cal to the door. “Will this be a junior executive? A personal secretary? A—”
But Cal seemed not to hear.
Albert followed Cal through the door and saw the most beautiful girl in the world.
He couldn’t look at her, not by a long way. She was much too beautiful for that. But he knew exactly what she looked like. He could see in his mind her shining, ringleted hair falling gently to her naked shoulders, her dazzling bright expressionless face. He couldn’t even think about her body; it was terrifying.
She sat behind a desk and looked at them.
Cal struck a masterful pose, his arms folded. “We have come on a scientific matter,” he said haughtily, “not familiar to The Corporation, concerning several northern colonial areas.”
She wrote deliberately on a small plain pad. Tonelessly, sweetly, she asked, “Your name?”
“Calvin Boersma.”
Her veiled eyes swung to Albert. He couldn’t possibly speak. His whole consciousness was occupied in not looking at her.
The Expert Dreamers (1962) Anthology Page 13
