Short Stories

by Donald E. Westlake

  SHORT STORIES

  Donald E. Westlake

  Table of Contents

  AND THEN HE WENT AWAY

  ARREST

  DREAM A DREAM

  JOURNEY TO DEATH

  PAID IN FULL

  THE DORTMUNDER WORKOUT

  AND THEN HE WENT AWAY

  Emory Ward sat hunched over his drawing board, manipulating compass and ruler and pencil. If he could get the illo roughed out by lunchtime, he could begin working with color in the afternoon. He sat hunched, weighed down by a deadline, and bit his lower lip as he drew.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Damn,” said Ward. He reached for the gum eraser, corrected, drew another line.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Fry in hell.” Ward shifted on the chair, irritable, annoyed at the outside sound. He drew lines, measured angles.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Disconnect it,” muttered Ward. As he drew, he grumbled about the sound and its maker. Salesman, paperboy, somebody meaningless and unimportant, a cipher, non-entity, mass man…

  The doorbell rang.

  “Nobody home, nobody home,” Ward whispered desperately. “Go away.” He’d have to put down his tools, straighten, stand, walk to the door, open it, walk down the hall, down the stairs, across the front hall, open the door, listen to words, say, “No, thank you,” close the door, climb the stairs, walk down the hall, open the door, come into the room, close the door, cross to the drawing board, sit down, pick up his pencil and protractor and compass, put them down, light a cigarette, be angry, go back to work—total loss, ten minutes.

  The doorbell rang.

  “No,” grated Ward, “I will not.” He shut his ears, turned off all the circuits of his mind except those connected with his work, drew lines, measured, drew.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  Emory Ward stiffened. He stared at the wall. He thought indignantly, someone is outside the door. The upstairs door, this door, in my house, knocking on the door while I’m trying to meet a deadline.

  The door opened.

  Ward’s back was to the door. He turned slowly, ready to tongue-lash an insurance salesman, browbeat a paperboy, utterly demolish a collector from the United Fund.

  The visitor was tall and slender, with white hair, impeccably dressed in gray flannel surmounted by a thin face with thin smiling lips, and he said, “Mister Emory Ward?”

  “Listen,” said Ward.

  “I am Gamble Two,” said the visitor. “I am from the twenty fifth century.”

  Ward got to his feet. “I am going to kick you down the stairs.”

  “I will erect a force field around myself,” the visitor told him. “Then I will put you in a temporary state of paralysis. Very flamboyant. I would rather we sat and chatted like gentlemen.”

  Ward advanced.

  “I will kill you.”

  The visitor smiled and disappeared. A voice said, “Please be sensible, Emory Ward.”

  Ward stared at the doorway. “Listen,” he said. “Listen, cut it out. I got a deadline.”

  The visitor reappeared. “Five minutes. Five minutes. No more, I promise.”

  Emory Ward took a deep breath. “You are not from the future.”

  “Of course I am,” said Gamble Two. “Tell me, do I speak without an accent?”

  “You are a wise guy,” Ward told him. “You are a practical joker.”

  Gamble Two looked faintly pained. “May we sit and chat? I would like to explain.”

  Ward looked with regret at his drawing board. “I got a deadline.”

  “I promise not to take long.” Gamble Two gestured at the two chairs over by the writing desk. “May we sit?”

  “You from some fan club?” demanded Ward.

  “May we sit?”

  Ward shrugged. “Have I got a choice?” Disgruntled, he sat.

  “Fine,” said Gamble Two, beaming. He also sat; he even leaned back and made himself comfortable. “First, as to myself. I am Gamble Two. I am an android. I am from the twenty fifth century. I am a policeman, until recently assigned to customs duty. I have just been promoted, and my job assignment changed to the Time Police. You are, frankly, my first important case.”

  Ward looked sour. “I am?”

  “Yes.” Gamble Two nodded. “You are Emory Ward. You are a commercial artist. An illustrator. You work primarily for science fiction magazines and paperback book companies.”

  “So what?”

  Gamble Two waved a hand at the illustrations covering the walls. “This,” he said, “is what you are best known for. Machines. Machines of the future. Space ships, cybernetics machines, robots, weapons, all the manufactured and constructed paraphernalia of future civilizations.”

  Ward repeated, “So what?”

  “Some illustrators work mainly with the depiction of strange and fantastic life forms, creatures from other planets. Some work mainly with the human form, usually the female human form. Some are best known for their illustrations of uniforms. The Space Corp, the Intergalactic Patrol, strange uniforms with strange insignia. Some have made their names drawing other worlds, strange seething jungles, rocky landscapes, tundras. But you draw machines.

  Emory Ward said, “I’d like to be drawing a machine right now. I got a deadline.”

  Gamble Two raised a restraining hand. “Please. I hasten to the point. All of these illustrators, teeming and pouring through the newsstands, spreading their imaginations across the covers and interiors of magazines, all are wild and far-fetched and illusory. All except you.”

  “Me?”

  “You.” Gamble Two stood and viewed at close hand some of the illustrations on the wall. He tapped one. “Here,” he said. “This instrument panel. The J-27 model intra-system four-seater. I have operated the J-27. This instrument panel is correct. To the smallest detail, correct. Even to the alphabet used, the words on the various dials and levers. All correct.” He proceeded to another illustration. “Here,” he said, “This robot. I own one exactly like this. He is my janitor. Everything is perfectly in order. It is almost a photograph.” He proceeded around the room, tapping various illustrations, nodding and saying, “Yes,” and, “Here,” and “Exactly.”

  Ward snorted. “Ridiculous.”

  Gamble Two returned to his seat. “You say ridiculous. Next you will say coincidence. I deny both.” He mused, as Emory Ward squirmed. “Time travel,” said Gamble Two, still musing. “So fascinating, yet so impractical. So unproductive. Man is born, grows to maturity, lives and dies. All within one environment. It is as necessary to him as atmosphere. We know this. A man from the Greece of Pericles, how long could he last in this century? He would not speak the language; he would be terrified by the machines. He could not last.”

  “Naturally,” said Ward.

  Gamble Two reflected. “A man from this century, in the Greece of Pericles. He might stand a somewhat better chance. He could at least get an academic knowledge of the language. But could he survive?”

  “Probably not,” said Ward.

  “Definitely not,” agreed Gamble Two. “The change in environment. He would have no resistance to germs. Disease bacteria evolve. He would miss all the conveniences of civilization he had come to accept as a part of the environment. His ideas would be completely out of tune with the time. He would be shunned. He might eve be stoned. He would last perhaps a week.”

  “One out of every five science fiction stories I illustrate,” said Ward, “is based on just this conclusion. Finish please, and let me get back to work.”

  But Gamble Two could not be hurried. “Could any man survive in an era other than his own?” he wondered. “Could any man usefully employ his knowledge of his original environment?”

  “Probab
ly not.”

  Gamble Two held up a finger. “One kind of man can survive in environments other than his own,” he suggested. “Think of ship-wrecked sailors on South Sea islands.”

  “They usually went mad.”

  “Precisely the point,” said Gamble Two. “Before one can integrate himself into a new environment, he must divorce himself from the old. There is only one way to divorce oneself from one’s environment. Insanity. Psychosis.”

  “A psychotic divorces himself from all environments,” Ward suggested.

  “Exactly, he doesn’t even hear doorbells.”

  Emory Ward flushed. “Now, wait a minute; I heard that doorbell. I got a deadline. I never answer the doorbell when I got a deadline.”

  “I am almost finished,” Gamble Two assured him. “We have already answered one point. Only a psychotic could make the necessary adjustment to a totally new environment. Now. Is there any man who could survive at the economic level in an environment other than his own? A physicist from this century, for instance, would be an unskilled laborer in Julius Caesar’s Rome. As environment changes, vocations change.”

  “What about a doctor?” asked Ward. “A twentieth century doctor in second century Rome.”

  Gamble Two shook his head. “Useless. Doctors do not cure, they only prescribe cures. And what good would it do a doctor to prescribe penicillin, aureomycin, or even aspirin, in an environment where such products do not exist?”

  “Then,” said Ward, “the answer is no one.”

  “There is a possibility, however,” Gamble Two corrected him gently. “What about an artist, an illustrator? All he requires are the drawing tools of the period. Pencil on paper, berry juices on stone, what does it matter to him? He can draw with anything.”

  Emory Ward was stunned. “You’re not suggesting…”

  “It is a severe crime,” Gamble Two told him, “to attempt to escape one’s obligations by running away through time. You are well aware of that.”

  Ward shook his head. “You’re out of your mind.”

  Gamble Two ignored him. “Return with me to the South Seas,” he said. “The ship-wrecked sailor again. He always retains his European clothing, although the native dress, or undress, is much more suitable for the environment. Why is that?”

  “You’re making a terrible mistake,” Ward said urgently.

  “It is not possible,” Gamble Two said sadly, “for man to divorce himself entirely from his native environment. The sailor keeps his European clothes. You wistfully draw pictures of the machines you once knew and loved, the machines that once seemed so necessary to civilized life, and which you now must try to get along without.” Gamble Two pointed an accusing finger. “You are from the twenty fifth century.”

  Defiantly, Emory Ward stated, “I am not.”

  Gamble Two sighed. “I wish you would just admit it and be done with this foolishness. They should have sent an esper. I wish I could read your mind. The only thing for me to do now is return you for identification. You are from the twenty fifth century, aren’t you?”

  “I am not.” Emory Ward erected a force field around himself, then he put Gamble Two in a temporary state of paralysis. Very flamboyant. Finally, he withdrew from a desk drawer a hand weapon precisely like one in an illustration on the wall. Very functional. “I am from the thirtieth century,” he said.

  ARREST

  William Winthrop turned the key in its lock, pushed open the apartment door and stepped inside. Kicking the door shut behind him, he stopped in the foyer and looked at the key in the palm of his hand. He grinned to himself and slowly turned the hand palm downward. The key made no sound at all as it hit the carpet.

  Winthrop moved from the foyer to the living room, leaving hat and tie on a sofa as he went by. He walked into the bedroom, tossing his coat and shirt in the corner of the room as he removed them. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands.

  He could feel his hands trembling against his cheeks, and was surprised. He felt his chest for his cigarettes, realized he didn’t have his shirt on, and walked over to where the shirt lay, on the floor beside the chair. He picked it up, took the cigarettes from the pocket, and dropped it on the floor again. Removing one cigarette, he dropped the pack on the floor beside the shirt, then lit the cigarette with his pocket lighter. He looked at the lighter for a long moment, then dropped that, too.

  He stuck the cigarette into the corner of his mouth, walked over to the dresser on the other side of the room, and opened the top drawer. He felt under a pile of shirts, came up with a .45 automatic. The gun dangling from his hand, he went back and sat down on the bed again. He dropped the cigarette on the floor and stepped on it.

  He took the clip from the handle of the gun, looked at the eight bullets, then put the clip back. He pressed the barrel of the gun against the side of his head, just above the ear, and sat there, his finger trembling on the trigger. Perspiration broke out on his forehead. He stared at the floor.

  Finally, he looked up from the floor and saw his own reflection in the mirror on the closet door. He saw a young man of twenty four, long brown hair awry, face contorted, dressed in brown pants, brown shoes and a sweaty undershirt, a gun held to his head.

  He hurled the gun at the mirror. The crash startled him and he jumped. Then he lay face down on the bed, his head in the crook of his left arm, his right fist pounding the bed. “Damn it,” he cried, over and over, in time to the pounding of his fist. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

  At last, he stopped swearing and beating the bed, and a sob shook his body. He cried, bracingly, for almost five minutes, then rolled over and stared at the ceiling, breathing hard.

  When he had calmed down, he rolled out of the bed to his feet and walked across the room to where his cigarettes lay. This time, after he’d lit the cigarette, he stuffed cigarettes and lighter in his pants pocket, then recrossed the room, past the bed and the dresser and the shattered mirror and the gun on the floor, and on into the bathroom.

  With water filling the sink, he took a comb and ran it through his hair, to get it out of the way while he washed. Then he turned the tap off, dipped a washcloth in the water, and scrubbed his face until it hurt. Grabbing a towel, he dried face and hands, and looked at himself in the mirror. Again he took the comb, this time combing more carefully, patting his hair here and there until it looked right to him.

  The cigarette had gone out in the ashtray, so he lit another. Then he went back to the bedroom.

  Kicking the gun and the larger pieces of glass out of the way, he opened the closet door and looked over the clothing inside. He selected a dark blue suit, shut the closet door, and tossed the suit on the bed.

  Back at the dresser, he took out a clean shirt, underwear and socks. From the tie rack on the back of the bedroom door he took a conservative gray number and brought all back to bed.

  He changed rapidly, transferring everything from the pockets of the pants he’d been wearing to the suit. Then he went back to the living room and made himself a drink at the bar in the corner. He gulped the drink, lit another cigarette and went to the front door, to make sure it was unlocked. On the way back, he picked up the key and put it in his pocket.

  He sat down, crossed and recrossed his legs, buttoned and unbuttoned his suit coat, played with the empty glass. After a minute, he crushed the cigarette in an ashtray, got up, and made another drink. He swallowed half, lit another cigarette, threw away the empty pack and went to his room for another. When he came back, he reached for the half-full glass on the bar, but his hand shook and the glass went over, shattering on the floor behind the bar. He jumped again.

  Leaning back against the wall, eyes squeezed shut, he whispered to himself, “Take it easy. Take it easy. Take it easy.”

  After a while, he moved away from the wall. He’d dropped the cigarette when the glass broke, and it was still smoldering on the rug. He stepped on it and took out another. He got another glass and made a drink, then went back to the
sofa and sat down again.

  He was just finishing the drink when the knock came. He was facing the door. “Come in,” he called.

  The door opened, and the two of them came in through the foyer to the living room. “William Winthrop?” asked one.

  Winthrop nodded.

  The man took out his wallet, flipped it open to show a badge. “Police,” he said.

  “I know,” said Winthrop. He got to his feet. “Anything I say can be used against me. I demand my right to make one phone call.”

  “To your lawyer,” said the detective. It wasn’t a question.

  “Of course,” said Winthrop. He crossed to the phone. “Care for a drink? The makings are over there, in the corner.”

  “No thanks,” said the detective. He motioned and the other one walked into the bedroom.

  “Don’t mind the mess in there,” called Winthrop. “I tried to commit suicide.”

  The detective raised his eyebrows and walked over to the bedroom door to take a look. He whistled. “What happened to the mirror?”

  “I threw the gun at it.”

  “Oh.” The detective came back. “At least you’re sane. A lot of guys try to cash in. Only the nuts do.”

  “That’s a relief,” said Winthrop. He dialed.

  The detective grunted and sat down. The other one came back from his inspection, shook his head, and sat down near the door.

  Winthrop heard the click as a receiver was lifted, and a man’s voice said, “Arthur Moresby, attorney.”

  “Hello, Art? This is Bill.”

  There was a pause, then “Who?”

  “Bill. Bill Winthrop.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t recognize the name. Are you sure you have the right number?”

  “Oh,” said Winthrop. “Like that. It’s in the papers already, eh?”

  “On the radio.”

  “You don’t know me, is that right?”

  “That’s right,” said Arthur Moresby, attorney. “Goodbye.”

  Winthrop heard the click but continued to hold the phone against his ear.

  “What’s the matter?” asked the detective.

  Winthrop shook his head and returned the phone to its cradle. He grinned crookedly at the detective. “Wrong number,” he said.