by Fritz Leiber
Meanwhile, the main flight, now augmented by other bread flocks from scores and hundreds of walking mills that had started work a little later, mounted slowly and majestically into the cirrus-flecked upper air, where a steady wind was blowing strongly toward the east.
About one thousand miles farther on in that direction, where a cluster of stratosphere-tickling towers marked the location of the metropolis of NewNew York, a tender scene was being enacted in the pressurized penthouse managerial suite of Puffy Products. Megera Winterly, Secretary in Chief to the Managerial Board and referred to by her underlings as the Blonde Icicle, was dealing with the advances of Roger (“Racehorse”) Snedden, Assistant Secretary to the Board and often indistinguishable from any passing office boy.
“Why don’t you jump out the window, Roger, remembering to shut the airlock after you?” the Golden Glacier said in tones not unkind. “When are your high-strung, thoroughbred nerves going to accept the fact that I would never consider marriage with a business inferior? You have about as much chance as a starving Ukrainian kulak now that Moscow’s clapped on the interdict.”
Roger’s voice was calm, although his eyes were feverishly bright, as he replied, “A lot of things are going to be different around here, Meg, as soon as the Board is forced to admit that only my quick thinking made it possible to bring the name of Puffyloaf in front of the whole world.”
“Puffyloaf could do with a little of that,” the business girl observed judiciously. “The way sales have been plummeting, it won’t be long before the Government deeds our desks to the managers of Fairy Bread and asks us to take the Big Jump. But just where does your quick thinking come into this, Mr. Snedden? You can’t be referring to the helium—that was Rose Thinker’s brainwave.”
She studied him suspiciously. “You’ve birthed another promotional bumble, Roger. I can see it in your eyes. I only hope it’s not as big a one as when you put the Martian ambassador on 3D and he thanked you profusely for the gross of Puffyloaves, assuring you that he’d never slept on a softer mattress in all his life on two planets.”
“Listen to me, Meg. Today—yes, today!—you’re going to see the Board eating out of my hand.”
“Hah! I guarantee you won’t have any fingers left. You’re bold enough now, but when Mr. Gryce and those two big machines come through that door—”
“Now wait a minute, Meg—”
“Hush! They’re coming now!”
Roger leaped three feet in the air, but managed to land without a sound and edged toward his stool. Through the dilating iris of the door strode Phineas T. Gryce, flanked by Rose Thinker and Tin Philosopher.
The man approached the conference table in the center of the room with measured pace and gravely expressionless face. The rose-tinted machine on his left did a couple of impulsive pirouettes on the way and twittered a greeting to Meg and Roger. The other machine quietly took the third of the high seats and lifted a claw at Meg, who now occupied a stool twice the height of Roger’s.
“Miss Winterly, please—our theme.”
The Blonde Icicle’s face thawed into a little-girl smile as she chanted bubblingly:
“Made up of tiny wheaten motes
And reinforced with sturdy oats,
It rises through the air and floats—
The bread on which all Terra dotes!”
“Thank you, Miss Winterly,” said Tin Philosopher. “Though a purely figurative statement, that bit about rising through the air always gets me—here.” He rapped his midsection, which gave off a high musical clang.
“Ladies—” he inclined his photocells toward Rose Thinker and Meg—”and gentlemen. This is a historic occasion in Old Puffy’s long history, the inauguration of the helium-filled loaf (‘So Light It Almost Floats Away!’) in which that inert and heaven-aspiring gas replaces old-fashioned carbon dioxide. Later, there will be kudos for Rose Thinker, whose bright relays genius-sparked the idea, and also for Roger Snedden, who took care of the details.
“By the by, Racehorse, that was a brilliant piece of work getting the helium out of the government—they’ve been pretty stuffy lately about their monopoly. But first I want to throw wide the casement in your minds that opens on the Long View of Things.”
Rose Thinker spun twice on her chair and opened her photocells wide. Tin Philosopher coughed to limber up the diaphragm of his speaker and continued:
“Ever since the first cave wife boasted to her next-den neighbor about the superior paleness and fluffiness of her tortillas, mankind has sought lighter, whiter bread. Indeed, thinkers wiser than myself have equated the whole upward course of culture with this poignant quest. Yeast was a wonderful discovery—for its primitive day. Sifting the bran and wheat germ from the flour was an even more important advance. Early bleaching and preserving chemicals played their humble parts.
“For a while, barbarous faddists—blind to the deeply spiritual nature of bread, which is recognized by all great religions—held back our march toward perfection with their hair-splitting insistence on the vitamin content of the wheat germ, but their case collapsed when tasteless colorless substitutes were triumphantly synthesized and introduced into the loaf, which for flawless purity, unequaled airiness and sheer intangible goodness was rapidly becoming mankind’s supreme gustatory experience.”
“I wonder what the stuff tastes like,” Rose Thinker said out of a clear sky.
“I wonder what taste tastes like,” Tin Philosopher echoed dreamily. Recovering himself, he continued:
“Then, early in the twenty-first century, came the epochal researches of Everett Whitehead, Puffyloaf chemist, culminating in his paper ‘The Structural Bubble in Cereal Masses’ and making possible the baking of airtight bread twenty times stronger (for its weight) than steel and of a lightness that would have been incredible even to the advanced chemist-bakers of the twentieth century—a lightness so great that, besides forming the backbone of our own promotion, it has forever since been capitalized on by our conscienceless competitors of Fairy Bread with their enduring slogan: ‘It Makes Ghost Toast’.”
“That’s a beaut, all right, that ecto-dough blurb,” Rose Thinker admitted, bugging her photocells sadly. “Wait a sec. How about?
“There’ll be bread
Overhead
When you’re dead—
It is said.”
Phineas T. Gryce wrinkled his nostrils at the pink machine as if he smelled her insulation smoldering. He said mildly, “A somewhat unhappy jingle, Rose, referring as it does to the end of the customer as consumer. Moreover, we shouldn’t overplay the figurative ‘rises through the air’ angle. What inspired you?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know—oh, yes I do. I was remembering one of the workers’ songs we machines used to chant during the Big Strike—
“Work and pray,
Live on hay.
You’ll get pie
In the sky
When you die—
It’s a lie!”
“I don’t know why we chanted it,” she added. “We didn’t want pie—or hay, for that matter. And machines don’t pray, except Tibetan prayer wheels.”
Phineas T. Gryce shook his head. “Labor relations are another topic we should stay far away from. However, dear Rose, I’m glad you keep trying to outjingle those dirty crooks at Fairy Bread.” He scowled, turning back his attention to Tin Philosopher. “I get whopping mad, Old Machine, whenever I hear that other slogan of theirs, the discriminatory one—’Untouched by Robot Claws.’ Just because they employ a few filthy androids in their factories!”
Tin Philosopher lifted one of his own sets of bright talons. “Thanks, P.T. But to continue my historical resume, the next great advance in the baking art was the substitution of purified carbon dioxide, recovered from coal smoke, for the gas generated by yeast organisms in-dwelling in the dough and later killed by the heat of baking, their corpses remaining in situ. But even purified carbon dioxide is itself a rather repugnant gas, a product of metabolism whether fast or
slow, and forever associated with those life processes which are obnoxious to the fastidious.”
Here the machine shuddered with delicate clinkings. “Therefore, we of Puffyloaf are taking today what may be the ultimate step toward purity: we are aerating our loaves with the noble gas helium, an element which remains virginal in the face of all chemical temptations and whose slim molecules are eleven times lighter than obese carbon dioxide—yes, noble uncontaminable helium, which, if it be a kind of ash, is yet the ash only of radioactive burning, accomplished or initiated entirely on the Sun, a safe 93 million miles from this planet. Let’s have a cheer for the helium loaf!”
Without changing expression, Phineas T. Gryce rapped the table thrice in solemn applause, while the others bowed their heads.
“Thanks, T.P.,” P.T. then said. “And now for the Moment of Truth. Miss Winterly, how is the helium loaf selling?”
The business girl clapped on a pair of earphones and whispered into a lapel mike. Her gaze grew abstracted as she mentally translated flurries of brief squawks into coherent messages. Suddenly a single vertical furrow creased her matchlessly smooth brow.
“It isn’t, Mr. Gryce!” she gasped in horror. “Fairy Bread is outselling Puffyloaves by an infinity factor. So far this morning, there has not been one single delivery of Puffyloaves to any sales spot! Complaints about non-delivery are pouring in from both walking stores and sessile shops.”
“Mr. Snedden!” Gryce barked. “What bug in the new helium process might account for this delay?”
Roger was on his feet, looking bewildered. “I can’t imagine, sir, unless—just possibly—there’s been some unforeseeable difficulty involving the new metal-foil wrappers.”
“Metal-foil wrappers? Were you responsible for those?”
“Yes, sir. Last-minute recalculations showed that the extra lightness of the new loaf might be great enough to cause drift during stackage. Drafts in stores might topple sales pyramids. Metal-foil wrappers, by their added weight, took care of the difficulty.”
“And you ordered them without consulting the Board?”
“Yes, sir. There was hardly time and—”
“Why, you fool! I noticed that order for metal-foil wrappers, assumed it was some sub-secretary’s mistake, and canceled it last night!”
Roger Snedden turned pale. “You canceled it?” he quavered. “And told them to go back to the lighter plastic wrappers?”
“Of course! Just what is behind all this, Mr. Snedden? What recalculations were you trusting, when our physicists had demonstrated months ago that the helium loaf was safely stackable in light airs and gentle breezes—winds up to Beaufort’s scale 3. Why should a change from heavier to lighter wrappers result in complete non-delivery?”
Roger Snedden’s paleness became tinged with an interesting green. He cleared his throat and made strange gulping noises. Tin Philosopher’s photocells focused on him calmly, Rose Thinker’s with unfeigned excitement. P.T. Gryce’s frown grew blacker by the moment, while Megera Winterly’s Venus-mask showed an odd dawning of dismay and awe. She was getting new squawks in her earphones.
“Er… ah… er…” Roger said in winning tones. “Well, you see, the fact is that I…”
“Hold it,” Meg interrupted crisply. “Triple-urgent from Public Relations, Safety Division. Tulsa-Topeka aero-express makes emergency landing after being buffeted in encounter with vast flight of objects first described as brown birds, although no failures reported in airway’s electronic anti-bird fences. After grounding safely near Emporia—no fatalities—pilot’s windshield found thinly plastered with soft white-and-brown material. Emblems on plastic wrappers embedded in material identify it incontrovertibly as an undetermined number of Puffyloaves cruising at three thousand feet!”
Eyes and photocells turned inquisitorially upon Roger Snedden. He went from green to Puffyloaf white and blurted: “All right, I did it, but it was the only way out! Yesterday morning, due to the Ukrainian crisis, the government stopped sales and deliveries of all strategic stockpiled materials, including helium gas. Puffy’s new program of advertising and promotion, based on the lighter loaf, was already rolling. There was only one thing to do, there being only one other gas comparable in lightness to helium. I diverted the necessary quantity of hydrogen gas from the Hydrogenated Oils Section of our Magna-Margarine Division and substituted it for the helium.”
“You substituted… hydrogen… for the… helium?” Phineas T. Gryce faltered in low mechanical tones, taking four steps backward.
“Hydrogen is twice as light as helium,” Tin Philosopher remarked judiciously.
“And many times cheaper—did you know that?” Roger countered feebly. “Yes, I substituted hydrogen. The metal-foil wrapping would have added just enough weight to counteract the greater buoyancy of the hydrogen loaf. But—”
“So, when this morning’s loaves began to arrive on the delivery platforms of the walking mills…” Tin Philosopher left the remark unfinished.
“Exactly,” Roger agreed dismally.
“Let me ask you, Mr. Snedden,” Gryce interjected, still in low tones, “if you expected people to jump to the kitchen ceiling for their Puffybread after taking off the metal wrapper, or reach for the sky if they happened to unwrap the stuff outdoors?”
“Mr. Gryce,” Roger said reproachfully, “you have often assured me that what people do with Puffybread after they buy it is no concern of ours.”
“I seem to recall,” Rose Thinker chirped somewhat unkindly, “that dictum was created to answer inquiries after Roger put the famous sculptures-in-miniature artist on 3D and he testified that he always molded his first attempts from Puffybread, one jumbo loaf squeezing down to approximately the size of a peanut.”
Her photocells dimmed and brightened. “Oh, boy—hydrogen! The loaf’s unwrapped. After a while, in spite of the crust-seal, a little oxygen diffuses in. An explosive mixture. Housewife in curlers and kimono pops a couple slices in the toaster. Boom!”
The three human beings in the room winced.
Tin Philosopher kicked her under the table, while observing, “So you see, Roger, that the non-delivery of the hydrogen loaf carries some consolations. And I must confess that one aspect of the affair gives me great satisfaction, not as a Board Member but as a private machine. You have at last made a reality of the ‘rises through the air’ part of Puffybread’s theme. They can’t ever take that away from you. By now, half the inhabitants of the Great Plains must have observed our flying loaves rising high.”
Phineas T. Gryce shot a frightened look at the west windows and found his full voice.
“Stop the mills!” he roared at Meg Winterly, who nodded and whispered urgently into her mike.
“A sensible suggestion,” Tin Philosopher said. “But it comes a trifle late in the day. If the mills are still walking and grinding, approximately seven billion Puffyloaves are at this moment cruising eastward over Middle America. Remember that a six-month supply for deep-freeze is involved and that the current consumption of bread, due to its matchless airiness, is eight and one-half loaves per person per day.”
Phineas T. Gryce carefully inserted both hands into his scanty hair, feeling for a good grip. He leaned menacingly toward Roger who, chin resting on the table, regarded him apathetically.
“Hold it!” Meg called sharply. “Flock of multiple-urgents coming in News Liaison: information bureaus swamped with flying-bread inquiries. Aero-expresslines: Clear our airways or face law suit. U.S. Army: Why do loaves flame when hit by incendiary bullets? U.S. Customs: If bread intended for export, get export license or face prosecution. Russian Consulate in Chicago: Advise on destination of bread-lift. And some Kansas church is accusing us of a hoax inciting to blasphemy, of faking miracles—I don’t know why.”
The business girl tore off her headphones. “Roger Snedden,” she cried with a hysteria that would have dumbfounded her underlings, “you’ve brought the name of Puffyloaf in front of the whole world, all right! Now do something abo
ut the situation!”
Roger nodded obediently. But his pallor increased a shade, the pupils of his eyes disappeared under the upper lids, and his head burrowed beneath his forearms.
“Oh, boy,” Rose Thinker called gaily to Tin Philosopher, “this looks like the start of a real crisis session! Did you remember to bring spare batteries?”
Meanwhile, the monstrous flight of Puffyloaves, filling Midwestern skies as no small fliers had since the days of the passenger pigeon, soared steadily onward.
Private fliers approached the brown and glistening bread-front in curiosity and dipped back in awe. Aero-expresslines organized sight-seeing flights along the flanks. Planes of the government forestry and agricultural services and copters bearing the Puffy-loaf emblem hovered on the fringes, watching developments and waiting for orders. A squadron of supersonic fighters hung menacingly above.
The behavior of birds varied considerably. Most fled or gave the loaves a wide berth, but some bolder species, discovering the minimal nutritive nature of the translucent brown objects, attacked them furiously with beaks and claws. Hydrogen diffusing slowly through the crusts had now distended most of the sealed plastic wrappers into little balloons, which ruptured, when pierced, with disconcerting pops.
Below, neck-craning citizens crowded streets and back yards, cranks and cultists had a field day, while local and national governments raged indiscriminately at Puffyloaf and at each other.
Rumors that a fusion weapon would be exploded in the midst of the flying bread drew angry protests from conservationists and a flood of telefax pamphlets titled “H-Loaf or H-bomb?”
Stockholm sent a mystifying note of praise to the United Nations Food Organization.
