Selected Stories of Alfred Bester

by Alfred Bester

  “Yes.”

  “Simple. He makes miniature androids… robots… and they build the planes for him. Clever boy, George, but read about his sister, lazy Ethel.”

  His sister Ethel is the lazyist girl I ever saw. She is big & fat and she hates to walk. So wen her mothar sends her too the store Ethel thinks to the store and thinks home with all the pakejes and has to hang arownd Gorg’s room hiding untill it wil look like she walked both ways. Gorge and I make fun of her becaze she is fat and lazy but she gets into the movees for free and saw Hoppalong Casidy sixteen times.

  The End

  Herod stared at Warbeck.

  “Great little girl, Ethel,” Warbeck said. “She’s too lazy to walk, so she teleports. Then she has a devil of a time covering up. She has to hide with her pakejes while George and Stuart make fun of her.”

  “Teleports?”

  “That’s right. She moves from place to place by thinking her way there.”

  “There ain’t no such thing!” Joe said indignantly.

  “There wasn’t until lazy Ethel came along.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Herod said. “I don’t believe any of it.”

  “You think it’s just Stuart’s imagination?”

  “What else?”

  “What about Planck’s equation? E = nhv?”

  “The kid invented that, too. Coincidence.”

  “Does that sound likely?”

  “Then he read it somewhere.”

  “A ten-year-old boy? Nonsense.”

  “I tell you, I don’t believe it,” Herod shouted. “Let me talk to the kid for five minutes and I’ll prove it.”

  “That’s exactly what I want to do… only the boy’s disappeared.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Lock, stock, and barrel. That’s why I’ve been checking every Buchanan family in the city. The day I read this composition and sent down to the fifth grade for Stuart Buchanan to have a talk, he disappeared. He hasn’t been seen since.”

  “What about his family?”

  “The family disappeared too.” Warbeck leaned forward intensely. “Get this. Every record of the boy and the family disappeared. Everything. A few people remember them vaguely, but that’s all. They’re gone.”

  “Jesus!” Joe said. “They scrammed, huh?”

  “The very word. Scrammed. Thank you, Joe.” Warbeck cocked an eye at Herod. “What a situation. Here’s a child who makes friends with child geniuses. And the emphasis is on the child. They’re making fantastic discoveries for childish purposes. Ethel teleports because she’s too lazy to run errands. George makes robots to build model planes. Anne-Marie transmutes elements because she hates spinach. God knows what Stuart’s other friends are doing. Maybe there’s a Matthew who’s invented a time machine so he can catch up on his homework.”

  Herod waved his hands feebly. “Why geniuses all of a sudden? What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know. Atomic fallout? Fluorides in drinking water? Antibiotics? Vitamins? We’re doing so much juggling with body chemistry these days that who knows what’s happening? I want to find out but I can’t. Stuart Buchanan blabbed like a child. When I started investigating, he got scared and disappeared.”

  “Is he a genius, too?”

  “Very likely. Kids generally hang out with kids who share the same interests and talents.”

  “What kind of a genius? What’s his talent?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is he disappeared. He covered up his tracks, destroyed every paper that could possibly help me locate him and vanished into thin air.”

  “How did he get into your files?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe he’s a crook type,” Joe said. “Expert at breaking and entering and such.”

  Herod smiled wanly. “A racketeer genius? A mastermind? The kid Moriarty?”

  “He could be a thief-genius,” the doomed man said, “but don’t let running away convince you. All children do that when they get caught in a crisis. Either they wish it had never happened or they wish they were a million miles away. Stuart Buchanan may be a million miles away, but we’ve got to find him.”

  “Just to find out is he smart?” Joe asked.

  “No, to find his friends. Do I have to diagram it? What would the army pay for a disintegration beam? What would an element-transmuter be worth? If we could manufacture living robots how rich would we get? If we could teleport how powerful would we be?”

  There was a burning silence, then Herod got to his feet. “Mr. Warbeck,” he said, “you make me and Joe look like pikers. Thank you for letting us cut in on you. We’ll pay off. We’ll find that kid.”

  It is not possible for anyone to vanish without a trace… even a probable criminal genius. It is sometimes difficult to locate that trace… even for an expert experienced in hurried disappearances. But there is a professional technique unknown to amateurs.

  “You’ve been blundering,” Herod explained kindly to the doomed man. “Chasing one Buchanan after the other. There are angles. You don’t run after a missing party. You look around on his back-trail for something he dropped.”

  “A genius wouldn’t drop anything.”

  “Let’s grant the kid’s a genius. Type unspecified. Let’s grant him everything. But a kid is a kid. He must have overlooked something. We’ll find it.”

  In three days Warbeck was introduced to the most astonishing angles of search. They consulted the Washington Heights post office about a Buchanan family formerly living in that neighborhood, now moved. Was there any change-of-address-card filed? None.

  They visited the election board. All voters are registered. If a voter moves from one election district to another, provision is usually made that a record of the transfer be kept. Was there any such record on Buchanan? None.

  They called on the Washington Heights office of the gas and electric company. All subscribers for gas and electricity must transfer their accounts if they move. If they move out of town, they generally request the return of their deposit. Was there any record of a party named Buchanan? None.

  It is a state law that all drivers must notify the license bureau of change of address or be subject to penalties involving fines, prison or worse. Was there any such notification by a party named Buchanan at the Motor Vehicle Bureau? There was not.

  They questioned the R-J Realty Corp., owners and operators of a multiple dwelling in Washington Heights in which a party named Buchanan had leased a four-room apartment. The R-J lease, like most other leases, required the names and addresses of two character references for the tenant. Could the character references for Buchanan be produced? They could not. There was no such lease in the files.

  “Maybe Joe was right,” Warbeck complained in Herod’s office. “Maybe the boy is a thief-genius. How did he think of everything? How did he get at every paper and destroy it? Did he break and enter? Bribe? Burgle? Threaten? How did he do it?”

  “We’ll ask him when we get to him,” Herod said grimly. “All right. The kid’s licked us straight down the line. He hasn’t forgotten a trick. But I’ve got one angle I’ve been saving. Let’s go up and see the janitor of their building.”

  “I questioned him months ago,” Warbeck objected. “He remembers the family in a vague way and that’s all. He doesn’t know where they went.”

  “He knows something else, something the kid wouldn’t think of covering. Let’s go get it.”

  They drove up to Washington Heights and descended upon Mr. Jacob Ruysdale at dinner in the basement apartment of the building. Mr. Ruysdale disliked being separated from his liver and onions, but was persuaded by five dollars.

  “About that Buchanan family,” Herod began.

  “I told him everything before,” Ruysdale broke in, pointing to Warbeck.

  “All right. He forgot to ask one question. Can I ask it now?” Ruysdale reexamined the five-dollar bill and nodded.

  “When anybody moves in or out of a building, the superintendent usual
ly takes down the name of the movers in case they damage the building. I’m a lawyer. I know this. It’s to protect the building in case suit has to be brought. Right?”

  Ruysdale’s face lit up. “By Godfrey!” he said. “That’s right, I forgot all about it. He never asked me.”

  “He didn’t know. You’ve got the name of the company that moved the Buchanans out. Right?”

  Ruysdale ran across the room to a cluttered bookshelf. He withdrew a tattered journal and flipped it open. He wet his fingers and turned pages.

  “Here it is,” he said. “The Avon Moving Company. Truck No. G-4.”

  The Avon Moving Company had no record of the removal of a Buchanan family from an apartment in Washington Heights. “The kid was pretty careful at that,” Herod murmured. But it did have a record of the men working truck G-4 on that day. The men were interviewed when they checked in at closing time. Their memories were refreshed with whiskey and cash. They recalled the Washington Heights job vaguely. It was a full day’s work because they had to drive the hell and gone to Brooklyn. “Oh God! Brooklyn!” Warbeck muttered. What address in Brooklyn? Something on Maple Park Row. Number? The number could not be recalled.

  “Joe, buy a map.”

  They examined the street map of Brooklyn and located Maple Park Row. It was indeed the hell and gone out of civilization and was twelve blocks long. “That’s Brooklyn blocks,” Joe grunted. “Twice as long as anywhere. I know.”

  Herod shrugged. “We’re close,” he said. “The rest will have to be legwork. Four blocks apiece. Cover every house, every apartment. List every kid around ten. Then Warbeck can check them, if they’re under an alias.”

  “There’s a million kids a square inch in Brooklyn.” Joe protested.

  “There’s a million dollars a day in it for us if we find him. Now let’s go.”

  Maple Park Row was a long, crooked street lined with five-story apartment houses. Its sidewalks were lined with baby carriages and old ladies on camp chairs. Its curbs were lined with parked cars. Its gutter was lined with crude whitewash stickball courts shaped like elongated diamonds. Every manhole cover was a home plate.

  “It’s just like the Bronx,” Joe said nostalgically. “I ain’t been home to the Bronx in ten years.”

  He wandered sadly down the street toward his sector, automatically threading his way through stickball games with the unconscious skill of the city-born. Warbeck remembered that departure sympathetically because Joe Davenport never returned.

  The first day, he and Herod imagined Joe had found a hot lead. This encouraged them. The second day they realized no heat could keep Joe on the fire for forty-eight hours. This depressed them. On the third day they had to face the truth.

  “He’s dead,” Herod said flatly. “The kid got him.”

  “How?”

  “He killed him.”

  “A ten-year-old boy? A child?”

  “You want to know what kind of genius Stuart Buchanan has, don’t you? I’m telling you.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Then explain Joe.”

  “He quit.”

  “Not on a million dollars.”

  “But where’s the body?”

  “Ask the kid. He’s the genius. He’s probably figured out tricks that would baffle Dick Tracy.”

  “How did he kill him?”

  “Ask the kid. He’s the genius.”

  “Herod, I’m scared.”

  “So am I. Do you want to quit now?”

  “I don’t see how we can. If the boy’s dangerous, we’ve got to find him.”

  “Civic virtue, heh?”

  “Call it that.”

  “Well, I’m still thinking about the money.”

  They returned to Maple Park Row and Joe Davenport’s four-block sector. They were cautious, almost furtive. They separated and began working from each end toward the middle; in one house, up the stairs, apartment by apartment, to the top, then down again to investigate the next building. It was slow, tedious work. Occasionally they glimpsed each other far down the street, crossing from one dismal building to another. And that was the last glimpse Warbeck ever had of Walter Herod.

  He sat in his car and waited. He sat in his car and trembled. “I’ll go to the police,” he muttered, knowing perfectly well he could not. “The boy has a weapon. Something he invented. Something silly like the others. A special light so he can play marbles at night, only it murders men. A machine to play checkers, only it hypnotizes men. He’s invented a robot mob of gangsters so he can play cops-and-robbers and they took care of Joe and Herod. He’s a child genius. Dangerous. Deadly. What am I going to do?”

  The doomed man got out of the car and stumbled down the street toward Herod’s half of the sector. “What’s going to happen when Stuart Buchanan grows up?” he wondered. “What’s going to happen when all the rest of them grow up? Tommy and George and Anne-Marie and lazy Ethel? Why don’t I start running away now? What am I doing here?”

  It was dusk on Maple Park Row. The old ladies had withdrawn, folding their camp chairs like Arabs. The parked cars remained. The stickball games were over, but small games were starting under the glowing lamp posts… games with bottle caps and cards and battered pennies. Overhead, the purple city haze was deepening, and through it the sharp sparkle of Venus following the sun below the horizon could be seen.

  “He must know his power,” Warbeck muttered angrily. “He must know how dangerous he is. That’s why he’s running away. Guilt. That’s why he destroys us, one by one, smiling to himself, a crafty child, a vicious, killing genius…”

  Warbeck stopped in the middle of Maple Park Row.

  “Buchanan!” he shouted. “Stuart Buchanan!”

  The kids near him stopped their games and gaped.

  “Stuart Buchanan!” Warbeck’s voice cracked hysterically.

  “Can you hear me?”

  He wild voice carried farther down the street. More games stopped. Ringaleevio, Chinese tag, Red-Light and Boxball.

  “Buchanan!” Warbeck screamed. “Stuart Buchanan! Come out come out, wherever you are!”

  The world hung motionless.

  In the alley between 217 and 219 Maple Park Row playing hide-and-seek behind piled ash barrels, Stuart Buchanan heard his name and crouched lower. He was aged ten, dressed in sweater, jeans, and sneakers. He was intent and determined that he was not going to be caught out “it” again. He was going to hide until he could make a dash for home-free in safety. As he settled comfortably among the ashcans, his eye caught the glimmer of Venus low in the western sky.

  “Star light, star bright,” he whispered in all innocence, “first star I see tonight. Wish I may, wish I might, grant me the wish I wish tonight.” He paused and considered. Then he wished. “God bless Mom and Pop and me and all my friends and make me a good boy and please let me be always happy and I wish that anybody who tries to bother me would go away… a long way away… and leave me alone forever.”

  In the middle of Maple Park Row, Marion Perkin Warbeck stepped forward and drew breath for another hysterical yell. And then he was elsewhere, going away on a road that was a long way away. It was a straight white road cleaving infinitely through blackness, stretching onward and onward into forever; a dreary, lonely, endless road leading away and away and away.

  Down that road Warbeck plodded, an astonished automaton, unable to speak, unable to stop, unable to think in the timeless infinity. Onward and onward he walked into a long way away, unable to turn back. Ahead of him he saw the minute specks of figures trapped on that one-way road to forever. There was a dot that had to be Herod. Ahead of Herod there was a mote that was Joe Davenport. And ahead of Joe he could make out a long, dwindling chain of mites. He turned once with a convulsive effort.

  Behind him, dim and distant, a figure was plodding, and behind that another abruptly materialized, and another… and another…

  While Stuart Buchanan crouched behind the ash barrels and watched alertly for the “it.”
He was unaware that he had disposed of Warbeck. He was unaware that he had disposed of Herod, Joe Davenport and scores of others.

  He was unaware that he had induced his parents to flee Washington Heights, that he had destroyed papers and documents, memories and peoples, in his simple desire to be left alone. He was unaware that he was a genius.

  His genius was for wishing.

  * * *

  The Animal Fair

  I went to the animal fair.

  The birds and the beasts were there.

  By the light of the moon,

  The big baboon,

  Was combing his golden hair.

  The monkey he got drunk,

  And climbed up the elephant’s trunk.

  The elephant sneezed

  And fell on his knees,

  But what became of the monk?

  TRADITIONAL NURSERY SONG

  There is a high hill in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, that is called Red Hill because it is formed of red shale, which is a kind of stone. There is an abandoned farm on top of the hill which is called Red Hill farm. It was deserted many years ago when the children of farmers decided that there was more excitement and entertainment in the cities.

  Red Hill farm has an old stone house with thick walls, oaken floors and the enormous fireplaces in which the cooking was done two hundred years ago. There is a slate-roofed smokehouse behind it in which hams should be hung. There is a small red barn cluttered with forgotten things like children’s sleighs and pieces of horses’ harness, and there is a big red barn which is the Big Red Schoolhouse.

  Here the ladies and gentlemen who possess the farm in fact, if not in fee simple absolute, hold meetings by day and night to discuss problems of portent and to educate their children. But you must understand that they speak the language of creatures which few humans can hear or understand. Most of us learned it when we were young but lost it as it was replaced by human speech. A rare few can still speak both, and this is our story.

  The meetings in the Big Red Schoolhouse are governed by the Chairman, a ring-necked cock pheasant who is all pomp and strut.