“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she said in a strange voice.
“But you ain’t me. That’s what makes it so nice for both of us.”
His fumbling fingers had managed to unfasten the first button and his thick lips began to march like twin slugs over the soft curve of her shoulder.
She acted as if he were still on the other side of the room.
“It took more courage than I thought I had in me but I asked him to give me just what I deserved.”
“Him? Oh, yeah. Well that’s me, baby,” said Blotz thickly as he went to work on the second button.
“You could have been,” she said in the same distant voice. “That was the chance I was taking.”
The second button was obstinate. Blotz gave an impatient yank that caused the worn fabric to rip in his hands. As if aware of them for the first time, she shrugged herself free. As Blotz grunted and grabbed for her, he felt a sudden wrenching, stabbing pain lance through his chest, and then with no transition at all he found himself falling. He slumped against the desk, and as his plump fingers scrabbled against the smooth surface, trying to secure a hold that would keep him from plummeting down into darkness, they touched the worn bronze cylinder. As he slid on down, face purple and eyeballs bulging, more through instinct than conscious volition he found and twisted the serrated knob at one end. There was an immediate release, a translation into someplace else. He was standing again and the pain was gone, but except for a tiny glowing spot in front of him, it was darker than he had ever known before.
“Janie,” he whimpered. “Janie.”
His voice echoed metallically from distant walls. He turned to run but there was no place to run to, only the darkness. He had a sudden vision of unseen pits and crevasses, and froze where he stood. And then, unable to stand his own immobility, he inched cautiously toward the tiny spot of light, testing the whatever-it-was under his feet with each sliding step.
At last he was able to touch it, a cold luminous circle set in a smooth steel wall at chest height. As he moved his arm toward it, the hand that still held the bronze cylinder jerked forward of its own volition, pulling his arm with it, and plunged into the glowing circle. There was a clicking of relays and then glaring overhead lights went on.
He had been wise to check his footing. He was standing on a catwalk that arched dizzily over a several-acre expanse of strange whirring machinery. There were no guard rails, only a narrow tongue of metal that stretched out from some spot lost in the murky distance until it reached the smooth metal wall before which he stood. Then with a whining sound, a door opened in front of him. An invisible force pushed him through and he found himself in a great vault-like room whose walls were covered with countless tiny winking lights and bank upon bank of intricate controls. As the door clanged shut behind him, a little ball of shimmering light bounced across the floor toward him, expanded, wavered, and then suddenly took the shape of a harassed-faced little man with burning, deep-set eyes and a long white beard.
“Well,” he said impatiently, “out with it!”
Blotz didn’t say anything for a minute. He couldn’t. When he finally got partial control of his vocal chords all that came out was an almost incoherent series of who’s, what’s and how’s. The little man interrupted him with an impatient gesture.
“Stop sputtering,” he said testily. “I’m tired of sputtering. This may be new to you but it isn’t to me. You’re the four-hundred and-thirty-six-thousand-three-hundred-and-fifty-ninth mortal to get hold of one of the keys, and you’re also the four-hundred-and-thirty-six-thousand-three-hundred-and-fifty-ninth sputterer. Damn the M.W. boys, anyway!”
“M.W.?” Blotz was sparring for enough time to get his own thinking organized. What steadied him was the thought that, fantastic as all this was, Janie had been here before him. And Janie had somehow managed to snag herself a jackpot. His first job was to find out enough about the situation to angle it around to his own advantage.
“Mysterious Ways. It’s a special department in the home office that specializes in making life more complicated for the Guardians. I’m a Guardian,” the little man added gloomily.
“After Reward and Punishment switched their records section over to completely automatic operation, somebody in M.W. came up with the bright idea that humans should still have some sort of a chance for personal attention. So they made up a few widgets like the one you got hold of and scattered them around at random.” He gave a dry cough. “Not that you’ve got much when you do get hold of one. All that comes with it is the right to a little personal re-editing of your future—and even that is controlled by the Prime Directive.”
Blotz’s eyes narrowed slightly. So he had a right to something. He had something coming that they had to give him. He thought of Janie’s sudden metamorphosis and he licked his thick lips.
“The girl that was here before me,” he asked eagerly. “Is what happened to her what you call reediting?”
The little man nodded.
“And I got a right to the same? I mean, you can make me look the way I’d like to instead of the way I do?”
There was another nod. “But—”
“No buts,” interrupted Blotz rudely. “I want what I got a right to. You get to work on that tape of mine and fix it so I’ll have as much on the ball on the male side as Janie has on the female. And toss in a nice fat bankroll while you’re at it. Me, I like to travel first class.” He thought for a moment and then held up a restraining hand. “But don’t start tinkering until I give you the word. It ain’t every day that a guy gets a chance to rebuild himself from the ground up, and I want to be sure that I get all the little details just right.”
“But,” continued the Guardian as if the interruption had never occurred, “re-editing in your case wouldn’t have much point. The heart attack you were having just before the key brought you here was a signal, a warning that the tape which has been recording the significant events of your life has just about reached its end. A few minutes after you return, the automatic rewind will cut in and then your spool will be removed from the recorder and sent over to Reward and Punishment for processing.”
Blotz had always considered himself an atheist—more in self-defense than anything else. The thought of a superior something someplace taking personal note of each of his antisocial actions for purposes of future judgment was one that he had never cared to contemplate. He much preferred the feeling of immunity that came with the belief that man is simply an electrochemical machine that returns to its original components when it finally wears out.
But now! The little man’s casual reference to something coming after was disturbing enough to almost override the shock caused by the announcement of his imminent death.
“What’s processing?” he asked uneasily. “What are they going to do to me?”
Instead of answering, the Guardian walked over to a control panel and punched a series of buttons. A moment later a large screen over his head lit up.
“The playback starts here.”
The screen flickered and then steadied to show a hospital delivery room and a writhing woman strapped to a table.
“What’s all this got to do with me?”
“R&R have to start their processing someplace. In your case I imagine some special arrangements have been made.”
They had been. When Blotz started making little mewling noises, the little man reached forward and turned a knob. The screen went dark.
“Had enough?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said the other thickly, “but I got to know.” He shuddered. “Go ahead and hit the high spots. Nothing could be worse than what I just saw.”
The Guardian did. There were things that could be worse. Much worse.
“Why?” whispered Blotz when it was finally over. “Why?”
“Because the ethical universe is just as orderly as the physical one. For each action there is an equal and contrary—though delayed—reaction.”
Blotz fought frantically a
gainst the hysteria that threatened to engulf him. Always in the past there had been something that could be twisted to his advantage. The present had to be the same. There had to be an angle here. There had to be! Desperately he ran over the events of the past quarter hour, trying to find something that didn’t fit the pattern as the little man had presented it.
The re-editing! There had to be something in the re-editing!
“Look,” he stammered. “You can change things. You did for Janie. Why can’t you go back over my tape and take out all the really bad things?”
“Because the past can’t be changed,” said the little man impatiently. “The re-editing that you have a right to applies only to the future. And as I’ve already pointed out, yours is so limited that any adjustment I might make would have very little meaning.”
Blotz took a deep breath and held it. He couldn’t afford to panic. Not now. But where was the angle? Given that the past couldn’t be changed. Given that once he returned to Earth he had only a half a minute of life left. What then? How could a tape be kept from ending?
Say he’d bugged a bedroom to collect evidence for a divorce case and say he didn’t want to miss recording a single squeak. Maybe if he . . .
Of course!
“I’ve got a little job for you,” he said in a voice that quivered slightly in spite of his best efforts to control it. “I want you to do some splicing.”
The little man looked at him in obvious bewilderment.
“Splicing?”
Blotz was still shaky but he was beginning to enjoy himself. “That’s what I said. It just occurred to me that if you spliced a second tape on to the end of the one that’s just about finished, I could keep on living.” He gestured toward the blank screen. “And after your little preview, keeping on living is what I want most to do. The splicing, it can be done, can’t it?”
It was the Guardian’s turn to sputter.
“Can? Of course it can. But I’m not about to,” he added angrily. “To begin with, your old body’s worn out and I’d have to hunt you up a new one.”
“So what? The thing I want to hang on to is the me, the part that does the feeling and thinking, the part that knows. A snarl came into his voice. “And don’t tell me you won’t. You’ve got to!” He waved the bronze cylinder under the little man’s nose. “I came up with the brass ring, Buster, and I got a free ride coming.”
He stopped suddenly and a look of awe came over his face. “A free ride? And why only one when I can keep on swapping horses?” He laughed exultantly. “Why, if you keep on splicing? Listen, here’s the word. Every time the tape that’s running through the recorder is about to reach its end, I want a new one patched on. And make sure that each body I get is well-heeled, healthy and handsome. Like I said before, I like to travel first class.”
The little man seemed on the verge of tears. “It’s not a good idea,” he said. “It’s not a good idea at all. I can barely keep up with my work as it is, and if I have to—”
“But you do have to,” said Blotz viciously. “Whether you like it or not, I’ve just beat the system. Me, little Al Blotz, the guy that used to have to work penny-ante swindles just to keep eating. But no more. What was chalked up against me before is peanuts compared to what’s coming. And you know why? Because Reward and Punishment can’t process me until my tape comes to an end. And it ain’t ever. Never!”
“But—”
“Get going!”
The Guardian threw up his hands in defeat. “It’s going to make a lot of extra work for me,” he said mournfully, “but if you in—”
“Sure I insist,” said Blotz, holding resolutely onto the cylinder. “You can tell Reward and Punishment to go process itself. I got it made.”
The little machine that kept track of Mr. Blotz’s actions hesitated momentarily when it came to the splice, and then gave a loud click and began to record on the new section of tape.
CLICK!
He woke to something heavy pressing on his chest and an angry buzzing. Blotz—no longer Blotz as far as externals went—opened sleepy eyes and blinked up at the ugly wedge-shaped head that was reared back ready to strike.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were expecting company, Carl?” There was a note of savage enjoyment in the soft voice from the other side of the campfire.
Blotz wanted to beg, to plead with the other to save him, but he didn’t dare risk the slightest lip movement. The snake was angry. One little motion and it would strike.
“I was going to kill you, Carl,” the quiet voice went on. “I was going to damn my immortal soul to save the world from you. But now I don’t have to. I’m just a spectator. Sometime before too long you’re going to have to move. When you do it will be horrible, but it won’t last more than a few hours. That’s more than you granted the others. Remember my sister, Carl? And how long it took?” The involuntary movement that was the prelude to agony was accompanied by a momentary feeling of relief. At least before too long it would be over. But with the final convulsion there came a
CLICK!
He was strangling. With a convulsive kick he brought himself to the surface and spat out a mouthful of blood-tinged salt water. To his left small bits of debris bobbed up and down in the oil slick that marked the spot where his cabin cruiser had gone down. He paddled in an aimless circle, unable to strike out because of the splintered rib that lanced into one lung. Almost an hour passed before the first black dorsal fin came circling curiously in.
The Guardian yawned as he looked around for another bit of tape to splice on to the one that was almost finished. Young, healthy, handsome—there were enough odd ends around so that Blotz would never have to worry about dying, never in a million years.
Not dying, that was something else.
CLICK!
ONE TO A CUSTOMER
The little alien had some weird gadgets and wonderfully clever devices for sale. They had marvelous powers, and for a price a man could have such a gadget exclusively!
“AND,” continued the alien persuasively, “I can allow only one to a customer.” Alan Shirey looked down at the clutter of oddly-shaped gadgets that were spread out on the low coffee table.
“What’s that?” he asked at last, pointing to a small sphere of a dull grey metal with a well-manicured finger.
Mccal smirked as he picked the little globe up and rolled it back and forth in one taloned hand.
“A force field generator that has a very special sort of effect of the female sympathetic nervous system.”
“What sort of an effect?” The little being tittered shrilly. “It makes them . . . eh . . . sympathetic. Once a girl gets within its operating radius, the most improper thing you can think of will seem to her to be the most natural— and delightful—idea in the world. A little push here,” the globe suddenly shimmered faintly, “and it’s on. Another one here and it’s off. Interested?”
Alan shook his head and then walked over and eyed himself complacently in the plate glass mirror above the fireplace.
“My dear fellow,” he said with just a touch of condescension in his voice, “when you’ve been around this little planet of ours just a bit longer you’ll find out that when a man has what I have, no mechanical aids are necessary. Why should I pay you ten thousand dollars for a widget to take care of an operation I’ve been able to handle satisfactorily by myself ever since I was fourteen?” Turning back to the mirror he patted a straying lock of blond hair back into place and then gave himself a boyish smile.
The alien bobbed his misshapen little head apologetically. “Sorry. Traveling salesman, you know. Week in this system, week in that. Never really get to know a place.”
Alan wandered across the large living room and sprawled lazily out on a studio couch.
“Tell me, little friend,” he said, “if you’re what you say you are, why are you trying to sell your samples? And while we’re whying, why did you pick my back yard as a parking place for that whirley-gig of yours?”
Mccal s
hifted uneasily and then glanced apprehensively upwards as if he half expected some malignant being to come oozing down at him through the ceiling.
“I got reasons,” he mumbled finally.
“What kind?” demanded Alan. “You might as well start talking, because you aren’t about to sell me anything until I find out what’s going on.” The alien stole another nervous look at the ceiling and then suddenly scuttled over to the coffee table. “Not to change the subject,” he said, “but for fifteen thousand I could let you have a light shield. Complete invisibility at the flick of a switch and . . .”
“Climb off it,” said Alan coldly. “I asked you a question.”
MCCAL lapsed into a sulky silence for a moment and then finally said grudgingly. “Well, if you’ve got to know this place sits pretty well out by itself and I thought I’d run less chance of being spotted. Another thing was the swimming pool out in back. I figured that if you could afford one of those you’d have enough cash around to pay my prices.” Alan pulled a plump wallet out of his pocket, tossed it in the air, and then caught it. “Sure I got money, lots of money. But if your gadgets will do what you say they will, you could walk into the front office of any big corporation in the country and come out with more millions then you’d know what to do with. Why don’t you?”
The little alien sighed wistfully. “I know. But I don’t dare go near any of the population centers with this stuff on me.” He gestured toward the coffee table. “It radiates. If the Observers ever spotted me it would be the squeebles for sure, and this being a primitive area there’d be no torsion off for good behavior. That’s why I have to peddle these things on the sly. I figured that by only bringing in one of a kind and making sure they would be used with decretion, there wouldn’t be enough fuss raised to attract their attention, at least not until I had a chance to put a couple of thousand light years between me and Sol.”
Collected Fiction Page 48
