“Grandma, we sinned.”
Did we? I don't know any more. To cut down trees in order to make a book … my gorge rises at just the thought. Yes, that's wrong, as wrong as anything could ever be. Trees are the life of the Earth, are God's gift to us. Even my father's generation, still so selfish and sinful, said so. Trees absorb the see-oh-too, clean the air, hold the soil, cool the world. Yes.
But, against that, the look of rapture on Hope's face as Alice chased the White Rabbit, the pictures of Birds of India and Asia, Jane Eyre battling Mrs. Reed … Hope and I destroyed nothing ourselves. Is it so wrong, then, to enjoy another's sin?
“We sinned,” Hope repeats, mourning, and it is her tone that hardens my heart.
“No, child. We didn't.”
“We didn't?” Her eyes, one still swollen, grow wide.
“We didn't make the books. They already were. We just read them. Reading isn't sinful.”
“Nooooo,” she says reluctantly. “Not reading the altar scriptures. But Alice is—”
Gloria enters the house. She says to me, “Services tonight.”
I say, “I'm not going.”
Gloria stops dead halfway to the wash bucket, her field hat suspended in her hand. For the briefest moment I see something like panic on her face, before it vanishes into her usual anger. “Not going? To services?”
“No.”
Hope, frightened, looks from her mother to me. Bill comes in.
Gloria snaps, with distinct emphasis, “Your mother says she's not going to services tonight.”
Bill says, “Mama?”
“No,” I say, and watch his face go from puzzlement to the dread of a weak man who will do anything to avoid argument. I hobble to my alcove and close the door. Later, from my window, I watch them leave for the grove, Hope holding her father's hand.
Gloria must have given him silent permission to do that.
My son.
Painfully I lower myself to the floor, reach under my cot, and pull out the white plastic bubble. For a while I gaze at the pictures of the gorgeous birds of India and Asia. Then I read Jane Eyre. When my family returns at dusk, I keep reading as long as the light holds, not bothering to hide any of the books, knowing that no one will come in.
One heavy afternoon, when the clouds steadily darken and I can no longer see enough to make out words, a huge bolt of lightning shrieks through the sky—crack! For a long moment my head vibrates. Then silence, followed by a shout: “Fire!”
I haul myself to my knees and grasp the bottom of the window. The lightning hit one of the trees in the grove. As I watch, numb, the fire leaps on the ceaseless wind to a second tree.
People scream and run, throwing buckets of muddy water from the spring. I can see that it will do no good—too much dry timber, too much wind. A third tree catches, a fourth, and then the grass too is on fire. Smoke and ash rise into the sky.
I sink back onto my cot. I planted one of those trees, nursed it as I'd once nursed Bill. But there is nothing I can do. Nothing.
By the light of the terrible flames I pick up Jane Eyre and, desperately, I read.
And then Hope bursts in, smeared with ash, sweat, and tears on her face.
“Hope—no! Don't!”
“Give it to me!”
“No!”
We struggle, but she is stronger. Hope yanks Jane Eyre out of my hands and hurls it to the floor. She drops on top of it and crawls under my cot. Frantically I try to press down the sagging ropes so that she can't get past them, but I don't weigh enough. Hope backs out with the other books in their plastic bubble. She scrambles to her feet.
“We did this! You and me! Our sin made God burn the trees!”
“No! Hope—”
“Yes! We did this, just like the people before the Crash!”
We will never forget.
I reach for her, for the books, for everything I've lost or am about to lose. But Hope is already gone. From my window I see her silhouetted against the flames, running toward the grass. The village beats the grass with water-soaked cloths. I let go of the sill and fall back onto the cot before I can see Hope throw the books onto the fire.
Gloria beats Hope again, harder and longer this time. She and Bill might have put me out of the house, except that I have no place to go. So they settle for keeping me away from Hope, so that I cannot lead her further into sin.
Bill speaks to me only once about what happened. Bringing me my meal—meager, so meager—he averts his eyes from my face and says haltingly, “Mama … I …”
“Don't,” I say.
“I have to … you … Gloria …” All at once he finds words. “A little bit of sin is just as bad a big sin. That's what you taught me. What all those people thought before the Crash—that their cars and machines and books each only destroyed a little air so it didn't matter. And look what happened! The Crash was—”
“Do you really think you're telling me something I don't know? Telling me?”
Bill turns away. But as he closes the door behind him, he mumbles over his shoulder, “A little bit of sin is as bad as a big sin.”
I sit in my room, alone.
Bill is not right. Nor is Gloria, who told him what to say. Nor is Hope, who is after all a child, with a child's uncompromising, black-and-white faith. They are all wrong, but I can't find the arguments to tell them so. I'm too ignorant. The arguments must exist, they must—but I can't find them. And my family wouldn't listen anyway.
Listen, Anna, that's a—
A nightingale.
The whole memory flashes like lightening in my head: my father, bending over me in a walled garden, laughing, trying to distract me from some childish fall. Here, Anna, put ice on that bruise. Listen, that's a nightingale! A cube of frozen water pulled with strong fingers from his amber drink. Flowers everywhere, flowers of scarcely believable colors, crimson and gold and blue and emerald. And a burst of glorious unseen music, high and sweet. A bird, maybe one from Birds of India and Asia.
But I don't know, can't remember, what a nightingale looks like. And now I never will.
DARK, DISTANT
FUTURES
THE STORE OF THE WORLDS
Robert Sheckley
MR. WAYNE CAME to the end of the long, shoulder-high mound of gray rubble, and there was the Store of the Worlds. It was exactly as his friends had described: a small shack constructed of bits of lumber, parts of cars, a piece of galvanized iron, and a few rows of crumbling bricks, all daubed over with a watery blue paint.
He glanced back down the long lane of rubble to make sure he hadn't been followed. He tucked his parcel more firmly under his arm; then, with a little shiver at his own audacity, he opened the door and slipped inside.
“Good morning,” the proprietor said.
He, too, was exactly as described: a tall, crafty-looking old fellow with narrow eyes and downcast mouth. His name was Tompkins. He sat in an old rocking chair, and perched on the back of it was a blue-and-green parrot. There was one other chair in the store, and a table. On the table was a rusted hypodermic.
“I've heard about your store from friends,” Mr. Wayne said.
“Then you know my price,” Tompkins said. “Have you brought it?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Wayne, holding up his parcel. “All my worldly goods. But I want to ask first—”
“They always want to ask,” Tompkins said to the parrot, who blinked. “Go ahead, ask.”
“I want to know what really happens.”
Tompkins sighed. “What happens is that: I give you an injection which knocks you out. Then, with the aid of certain gadgets which I have in the back of the store, I liberate your mind.”
Tompkins smiled as he said that, and his silent parrot seemed to smile, too.
“What happens then?” Mr. Wayne asked.
“Your mind, liberated from its body, is able to choose from the countless probability worlds which the earth casts off in every sec ond of its existence.”
Grinning no
w, Tompkins sat up in his rocking chair and began to show signs of enthusiasm.
“Yes, my friend, though you might not have suspected it, from the moment this battered earth was born out of the sun's fiery womb, it cast off its alternate-probability worlds. Worlds without end, em anating from events large and small; every Alexander and every amoeba creating worlds, just as ripples will spread in a pond no matter how big or how small the stone you throw. Doesn't every object cast a shadow? Well, my friend, the Earth itself is four-dimensional; therefore it casts three-dimensional shadows, solid re flections of itself, through every moment of its being. Millions, billions of Earths! An infinity of Earths! And your mind, liberated by me, will be able to select any of these worlds and live upon it for a while.”
Mr. Wayne was uncomfortably aware that Tompkins sounded like a circus barker, proclaiming marvels that simply couldn't exist. But, Mr. Wayne reminded himself, things had happened within his own lifetime which he would never have believed possible. Never! So perhaps the wonders that Tompkins spoke of were possible, too.
Mr. Wayne said, “My friends also told me—”
“That I was an out-and-out fraud?” Tompkins asked.
“Some of them implied that,” Mr. Wayne said cautiously. “But I try to keep an open mind. They also said—”
“I know what your dirty-minded friends said. They told you about the fulfillment of desire. Is that what you want to hear about?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Wayne. “They told me that whatever I wished for, whatever I wanted—”
“Exactly,” Tompkins said. “The thing could work in no other way. There are the infinite worlds to choose among. Your mind chooses and is guided only by desire. Your deepest desire is the only thing that counts. If you have been harboring a secret dream of murder—”
“Oh, hardly, hardly!” cried Mr. Wayne.
“—then you will go to a world where you can murder, where you can roll in blood, where you can outdo de Sade or Nero or whoever your idol may be. Suppose it's power you want? Then you'll choose a world where you are a god, literally and actually. A bloodthirsty Juggernaut, perhaps, or an all-wise Buddha.”
“I doubt very much if I—”
“There are other desires, too,” Tompkins said. “All heavens and all hells will be open to you. Unbridled sexuality. Gluttony, drunk enness, love, fame—anything you want.”
“Amazing!” said Mr. Wayne.
“Yes,” Tompkins agreed. “Of course, my little list doesn't exhaust all the possibilities, all the combinations and permutations of desire. For all I know, you might want a simple, placid, pastoral existence on a South Sea island among idealized natives.”
“That sounds more like me,” Mr. Wayne said with a shy laugh.
“But who knows?” Tompkins asked. “Even you might not know what your true desires are. They might involve your own death.”
“Does that happen often?” Mr. Wayne asked anxiously.
“Occasionally.”
“I wouldn't want to die,” Mr. Wayne said.
“It hardly ever happens,” Tompkins said, looking at the parcel in Mr. Wayne's hands.
“If you say so…. But how do I know all this is real? Your fee is extremely high; it'll take everything I own. And for all I know, you'll give me a drug and I'll just dream! Everything I own just for a—shot of heroin and a lot of fancy words!”
Tompkins smiled reassuringly. “The experience has no druglike quality about it. And no sensation of a dream, either.”
“If it's true,” Mr. Wayne said a little petulantly, “why can't I stay in the world of my desire for good?”
“I'm working on that,” Tompkins said. “That's why I charge so high a fee—to get materials, to experiment. I'm trying to find a way of making the transition permanent. So far I haven't been able to loosen the cord that binds a man to his own Earth—and pulls him back to it. Not even the great mystics could cut that cord, except with death. But I still have my hopes.”
“It would be a great thing if you succeeded,” Mr. Wayne said politely.
“Yes, it would!” Tompkins cried with a surprising burst of passion. “For then I'd turn my wretched shop into an escape hatch! My process would be free then, free for everyone! Everyone could go to the earth of his desires, the earth that really suited him and leave this damned place to the rats and worms—”
Tompkins cut himself off in midsentence and became icy calm. “But I fear my prejudices are showing. I can't offer a permanent escape from this world yet, not one that doesn't involve death. Perhaps I never will be able to. For now, all I can offer you is a vacation, a change, a taste of another world and a look at your own desires. You know my fee. I'll refund if it the experience isn't sat isfactory.”
“That's good of you,” Mr. Wayne said quite earnestly. “But there's that other matter my friends told me about. The ten years off my life.”
“That can't be helped,” Tompkins said, “and can't be refunded. My process is a tremendous strain on the nervous system, and life expectancy is shortened accordingly. That's one of the reasons why our so-called government has declared my process illegal.”
“But they don't enforce the ban very firmly,” Mr. Wayne said.
“No. Officially the process is banned as a harmful fraud. But officials are men, too. They'd like to leave this earth, just like every one else.”
“The cost,” Mr. Wayne mused, gripping his parcel tightly. “And ten years off my life! For the fulfillment of my secret desires…. Really, I must give this some thought.”
“Think away,” Tompkins said indifferently.
All the way home Mr. Wayne thought about it. When his train reached Port Washington, Long Island, he was still thinking. And driving his car from the station to his house, he was still thinking about Tompkins's crafty old face, and worlds of probability, and the ful fillment of desire.
But when he stepped inside his home, those thoughts had to stop. Janet, his wife, wanted him to speak sharply to the maid, who had been drinking again. His son, Tommy, wanted help with the sloop, which was to be launched tomorrow. And his baby daughter wanted to tell about her day in kindergarten.
Mr. Wayne spoke pleasantly but firmly to the maid. He helped Tommy put the final coat of copper paint on the sloop's bottom, and he listened to Peggy tell her adventures in the playground.
Later, when the children were in bed and he and Janet were alone in their living room, she asked him if something was wrong.
“Wrong?”
“You seem to be worried about something,” Janet said. “Did you have a bad day at the office?”
“Oh, just the usual sort of thing …”
He certainly was not going to tell Janet, or anyone else, that he had taken the day off and gone to see Tompkins in his crazy old Store of the Worlds. Nor was he going to speak about the right every man should have, once in his lifetime, to fulfill his most secret desires. Janet, with her good common sense, would never under stand that.
The next days at the office were extremely hectic. All of Wall Street was in a mild panic over events in the Middle East and in Asia, and stocks were reacting accordingly. Mr. Wayne settled down to work. He tried not to think of the fulfillment of desire at the cost of everything he possessed, with ten years of his life thrown in for good measure. It was crazy! Old Tompkins must be insane!
On weekends he went sailing with Tommy. The old sloop was behaving very well, taking practically no water through her bottom seams. Tommy wanted a new suit of racing sails, but Mr. Wayne sternly rejected that. Perhaps next year, if the market looked better. For now, the old sails would have to do.
Sometimes at night, after the children were asleep; he and Janet would go sailing. Long Island Sound was quiet then and cool. Their boat glided past the blinking buoys, sailing toward the swollen yellow moon.
“I know something's on your mind,” Janet said.
“Darling, please!”
“Is there something you're keeping from me?”
“Nothi
ng!”
“Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?”
“Absolutely sure.”
“Then, put your arms around me. That's right …”
And the sloop sailed itself for a while.
Desire and fulfillment…. But autumn came and the sloop had to be hauled. The stock market regained some stability, but Peggy caught the measles. Tommy wanted to know the difference between ordinary bombs, atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, cobalt bombs, and all the other kinds of bombs that were in the news. Mr. Wayne explained to the best of his ability. And the maid quit unexpectedly.
Secret desires were all very well. Perhaps he did want to kill someone or live on a South Sea island. But there were responsi bilities to consider. He had two growing children and the best of wives.
Perhaps around Christmastime …
But in midwinter there was a fire in the unoccupied guest room due to defective wiring. The firemen put out the blaze without much damage, and no one was hurt. But it put any thought of Tomp kins out of his mind for a while. First the bedroom had to be repaired, for Mr. Wayne was very proud of his gracious old house.
Business was still frantic and uncertain due to the international situation. Those Russians, those Arabs, those Greeks, those Chinese. The intercontinental missiles, the atom bombs, the Sputniks…. Mr. Wayne spent long days at the office and sometimes evenings, too. Tommy caught the mumps. A part of the roof had to be reshingled. And then already it was time to consider the spring launching of the sloop.
A year had passed, and he'd had very little time to think of secret desires. But perhaps next year. In the meantime …
“Well?” said Tompkins. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, quite all right,” Mr. Wayne said. He got up from the chair and rubbed his forehead.
The End Of The World Page 26
