Henceforward the tractor had become One-Eye's cave. In it he had lived through many summers and many snows. In it he would live out the rest of his days.
One-Eye remembered the strange friends who had come to him in this shining cave. They had gone, long ago. And One-Eye missed them. Vaguely he was lonesome for them. Many times he wished they might come back again.
The old Neanderthaler drew in his breath with a slobbering sigh. Perhaps some day they would. In the meantime, he kept close and jealous guard and maintained the proper respect to the one of them that had stayed behind, the one whose bones lay neady arranged in one corner of the tractor.
But they had remembered One-Eye before they left, these other friends of his. Of that One-Eye was sure. Had they not left behind them, in the tractor, for him to find, the great shining stone which he had given them so long ago in exchange for the shining, keen-edged knife?
One-Eye slobbered pleasurably now as he looked at the stone, sparkling and flashing with hidden fire as it lay in the palm of his hand. One-Eye could not know that the stone had been left in the tractor accidentally, overlooked by the 20th and 56th century men before they left on their excursion into time. Not knowing this, One-Eye held close to him the thought that these friends of his had left behind a token . . . a token that some day, perhaps, they would return and sit around a fire with him and give him bones to gnaw and scratch his back where it itched the most.
Outside the wind howled dismally and the snow slanted down in a new fury. A blizzard raged over the Thames valley.
But One-Eye, snug in his furs, comfortable in his old age, a god to his contemporaries, played with a diamond the size of a man's fist, unmindful of the weather.
DOODAD
Ray Bradbury
There was a crowd pressed together in front of the shop.
Crowell light-footed it into that crowd, his face long and sad. He cast a glance back over one lean shoulder, muttered to himself, and widened a lane through the people, quick.
A hundred yards back of him a low shining black beetle car hummed to the curb. A door clicked open, and the fat man with the gray-white face climbed heavily out, his expression one of silent, dead-pan hatred. Two bodyguards sat in the front seat.
Gyp Crowell wondered why he bothered running away. He was tired. Tired of trying to tell news over the audio every night and waking up every morning with gangsters at his heels just because he had mentioned the fact that "a certain fat man has been doing some dishonest finagling of Plastics, Inc."
Now, here was the fat man himself. That black beetle car had trailed Crowell from Pasadena all the way here.
Crowell lost himself in the crowd. He wondered vaguely why this crowd should be so curious about the shop. Certainly it was unusual, but so is everything else in southern California. He broke through the inner circle, looked up at the large scarlet lettering over the blue glass windows, stared at it without a flicker of expression on his lean, perpetually sad face:
The sign on the shop said:
THINGUMABOBS DOODADS WATCHAMACALLITS HINKIES FORMODALDAFRAYS HOOTINANNIES GADGETS DOOHINGIES
Crowell took it in a dead calm. So this was the assignment his audio editor had given him to cover? Small-time screwpot stuff. Should be handled by a cub reporter. Nuts.
Then he thought about Steve Bishop, the fat man with the guns and the bodyguards. Any old port in a storm.
Crowell drew out a small transpara pad, scribbled down a few of those names—doohingies, hinkies—realizing that Bishop couldn't shoot him in this mob. Sure, maybe he had a right to shoot, after that threatened expose and the blackmail Gyp was using against Bishop: the three-dimensional color images—
Crowell eased over to the translucent door of the shop, pushed it, and followed it in. He'd be safe in here, and doing his routine news assignment, too.
Brilliant light flushed the interior of the shop; pouring over a cold blue-and-white color scheme. Crowell felt chilly. Counting seventeen display cases, he investigated their contents at random, dead-gray eyes flicking passionlessly.
A very tiny man popped out from behind a blue glass case. He was so tiny and bald that Crowell had to repress a desire to pat him upon the head in fatherly fashion. That bald head was made for patting.
The tiny man's face was quite square and a peculiar yellowed tint, as if it had been aged much in the same manner as an old newspaper. "Yes?" he said.
Crowell said "Hello" quietly, taking his time. Now that he was in here he had to say something. So he said, "I want to buy a ... a doohingey." His voice struck the same tiredly grieved note his face expressed.
"Fine, fine," said the tiny man. He dry-washed his hands. "I don't know why, but you're the first customer. The other people just stand out there and laugh at my shop. Now— what year doohingey will you have? And what model?"
Crowell didn't know. He knew only surprise, but his face didn't show it. He'd begun his inquiry as if he knew all about it. Now was no time to confess ignorance. He pretended to muse over the problem and finally said, "I guess a 1973 model would do. Nothing too modern."
The tiny proprietor blinked. "Ah. Ah, I see you are a man of precise decision and choice. Step right this way." And he scuttled down an aisle, to pause before a large case in which reclined a—something.
It may have been a crankshaft, and yet it resembled a kitchen shelf with several earrings dangling along a metal edge which supported three horn-shaped attachments and six mechanisms Crowell couldn't recognize, and a thatch of tentacles resembling shoelaces poured out of the top.
Crowell made a throat noise, as if strangling on a button.
Then he looked again. He decided that the tiny man was an utter idiot; but he kept this decision sealed in his gaunt brain.
As for the little proprietor, he was standing in a perfect ecstasy of happiness, eyes shining, lips parted in a warm smile, hands clasped over his chest, bending forward expectantly.
"Do you like it?" he asked.
Crowell nodded gravely. "Ye-ess. Ye-ess, I guess it's all right. I've seen better models, though."
"Better!" the little man exclaimed. He drew himself up. "Where?" he demanded. "Where!"
Crowell could have gotten flustered. He didn't. He simply took out his note pad, scribbled in it, kept his eyes on it and said cryptically, "You know where—" hoping this would satisfy the man.
It did.
"Oh!" gibbered the proprietor. "Then you know, too. How fine to deal with a connoisseur. How fine."
Crowell flicked a glance out the window, past the chuckling crowd. The fat man and his bodyguards and the black beetle car were gone. They had given up the chase for a while.
Crowell whipped his pad into his pocket, put his hand on the case with the doohingey in it. "I'm in a great hurry. Could I take it with me? I haven't money, but I'll make a down payment in trade. All right?"
"Perfectly all right."
"O. K." Crowell, with some misgiving, reached into his loose-fitting gray blouse and drew forth a metal apparatus, an old pipe cleaner that had seen better days. It was broken and bent into a weird shape. "Here you are. A hinkie. A 1944 model hinkie."
"Oh." The little man exhaled dismay. He stared with horror at Crowell. "Why, that's not a hinkie!" "Uh . . . isn't it?" "No, of course not."
"Of course not," repeated Crowell carefully.
"It's a watchamacallit," said the little man, blinking. "And not a whole one either; just part of one. You like your little joke, don't you, Mr.—"
"Crowell Yeah. My little joke. Yeah. If you don't mind. Trade? I'm in a great hurry."
"Yes, yes. I'll load it on a skate platform so we can roll it out to your car. One moment."
The tiny man moved swiftly, procuring a small wheeled truck, onto which he transferred the doohingey. He helped
Crowell roll it to the door. Crowell stopped him at the door. "Just a moment" He looked out. The black beetle car was nowhere in sight. Good. O. K."
The little man's voice was soft wit
h caution. "Just remember, Mr. Crowell—please don't go around killing people with this doohingey. Be ... be selective Yes, that's it, be selective and discerning. Remember, Mr. Crowell?"
Crowell swallowed a number-ten-size lump in his throat.
"I'll remember," he said, and hurriedly finished the deal.
He took the low-level avenue tube out of the Wilshire district heading for his home in Brentwood. Nobody trailed him. He was sure of that. He didn't know what Bishop's plans for the next few hours might be. He didn't know. He didn't care. He was in the middle of another pall of melancholy. It was a lousy, screwball world, in which everybody had to be dishonest to get along. That fat slug of a Bishop, he—
The contraption on the seat beside him drew his attention. He looked at it with a little shaking dry laugh coming out of his mouth.
"So you're a doohingey?" he said. "Huh, everybody to then-own special racket. Bishop and his plastics, me and my blackmail, and that little dope with the doodads and hing-dooies. At that, I think the little guy is the smartest."
He turned his white beetle car off the sub-branch tube and went down a side tunnel that came up under his block. Garaging his car and scanning the surrounding park carefully, he lugged the doohingey upstairs, opened the dial door, went in, closed the door, and set the doohingey on the table. He poured himself a few fingers of brandy.
A moment later someone rapped softly, quietly and very slowly on the door. No use putting it off. Crowell answered and opened it.
"Hello, Crowell."
That fat man at the door had a face like cooked pork, cold and flabby. His eyelids drooped over red-veined, green-irised eyes. He had a cigar in his mouth that moved with his words.
"Glad you're home, Crowell. Been waiting to see you."
Crowell backed up and the fat man came in. The fat man sat down, put his hands over his round belly and said, "Well?"
Crowell swallowed. "I haven't got the images here, Bishop."
The fat man didn't say anything. He unlocked his two hands slowly, reached into his pocket as if to get a handkerchief and brought out a small paralysis gun instead. Cold blue steel.
"Change your mind, Crowell?"
CroweU's sad white face looked all the sadder with cold sweat on it. His throat muscles lengthened. He tried to get his brain working, but it was locked in cement, hard and hot and furiously, suddenly afraid. It didn't show through to the outside. He saw Bishop, the gun, the room joggling up and down in his vision.
And then he saw the . . . the doohingey.
Bishop shifted the safety stud on the gun. "Where'U you have it? Head or chest. They say you die quicker if they paralyze your brain first. I prefer touching the heart with it, myself. Well?"
"Wait a moment," said Crowell carelessly. He made himself draw back a slow pace. He sat down, all the while realizing that Bishop's finger was quavering on a hair trigger. "You're not going to kill me; you're going to thank me for letting you in on the greatest invention of our time."
Bishop's huge face didn't change a line or muscle. His cigar waggled. "Snap it, Crowell, I haven't time for greasing the tongue."
"Plenty of time," said Crowell, calmly. "I've got a perfect murder weapon for you. Believe it or not, I have. Take a look at that machine sitting on the table."
The gun remained firm, blue steel. Bishop's eyes slid to one side of his face, jerked back. "So what?" he said.
"So if you listen to me you can be the biggest plastics boss to ever hit the Pacific coast. You want that, don't you?"
Bishop's eyes widened a microscopic trifle, narrowed. "Are you stalling me for time?"
"Look, Bishop, I know when I'm cooked. That's why I'm cutting you in on ... on that damned doohingey of mine."
"On that what?"
"I just call it a doohingey. Haven't got a name for it yet." CroweU's brain was rotating, throwing ideas off one after another with the heated centrifuge of desperation. One idea stuck. Keep Bishop stalled until you have a chance to get his gun. Bluff him. Bluff him like hell. Now—
Crowell cleared his throat. "It . . . it's a radio killer," he lied. "All I have to do is give it directions and it'll kill anyone. No mess. No nothing. No clues. Perfect crime, Bishop. Interested?"
Bishop shook his head. "You been drinking. It's getting late—"
"Hold on," said Crowell, suddenly tensing forward, his gray eyes bright. "Don't move, Bishop. I've got you covered.
That machine is trained on you. Before you came in I set it to a certain frequency. One squeak out of you and it'll nail you!"
Bishop's cigar fell to the floor. The gun hand wavered.
Crowell saw his chance. His lean muscles bunched into one tight, compact coil. His mouth opened, words darted out. "Watch it, Bishop! All right, machine, do your stuff! Kill Bishop!"
And with that, Crowell catapulted himself. He felt himself leave the chair, saw the startled look on Bishop's face. The misdirection had worked. The gun went off. The silver beam sizzled past Crowell's ear and splashed on the wall. Crowell snatched with both hands to clutch Bishop, get the gun.
But Crowell never got to Bishop.
Bishop was dead.
The doohingey got there first.
Crowell had a drink. Then he had another. His stomach was floating in the stuff. But he still couldn't forget how Bishop looked—dead.
Bishop had died—how? He had been sort of stabbed, shot, strangled, electrocuted—he'd been . . . uh . . . you know what I mean? He was sort of—dead. Yeah, that's it. Dead.
Crowell had another drink just on account of that. He looked at the bedroom wall and decided that sometime in the next minutes those bodyguards would be busting in up here, looking for their boss. But Crowell couldn't stand the thought of going in the living room to see where Bishop lay on the floor next to the—doohingey. He shivered.
After two more drinks that didn't even touch his mind, he got around to packing some of his clothes. He didn't know where he was going, but he was going. He was about to leave the house when the audio made a gonging noise.
"Yes?"
"Mr. Crowell?" "Talking."
"This is the little man at the Doodads Shop." "Oh, yeah. Hello."
"Would you mind dropping by the shop again? And please bring the doohingey with you, yes? I fear that I've shortchanged you on that model. I have another one here that is much better."
Crowell's voice got caught in his throat. 'This one seems to be working fine."
He cut the contact and held onto his brains with both hands
so they couldn't slide down into his shoes. He hadn't planned on killing anybody. He didn't like the idea. And that put him on the spot even more than before. Those gunmen bodyguards wouldn't stop now until—
His jaw stiffened. Let them come after him. He wasn't running away this time. He was staying in town, doing his news work as if nothing had happened. He was tired of the whole business. He didn't care if he got shot now or not. He'd even laugh with joy when they were shooting.
No use making unnecessary trouble, though. He'd carry the fat man's—body—down to the garage, put it in the back seat of the white beetle, and drive past some lonely spot, bury it, and hold the bodyguards off by telling them he had kidnaped Bishop. Yeah, that was a good idea. Clever man this Crowell.
"All right—" He tried to lift Bishop's tremendous body. He couldn't. He finally got the body downstairs to the beetle, though—the doohingey did it.
Crowell stayed upstairs until the job was done. He didn't like to watch the doohingey at work with a dead body.
"Ah, Mr. Crowell." The little proprietor opened the gleaming glass door. There was still a small crowd outside. "I see you brought the doohingey. Good."
Crowell set the contraption on the counter, thinking quickly to himself. Well. Now maybe explanations would be made. He'd have to be subtle; no blunt questions. He'd—
"Look, Mr. Whosis, I didn't tell you, but I'm an audio reporter. I'd like to broadcast a story about you and your shop for the Audio-N
ews. But I'd like it in your own words."
"You know as much about the thingumabobs as I do," replied the little man.
"Do I?"
"That's the impression you gave me—"
"Oh, sure. Sure I do. But it's always better when we quote somebody. See?"
"Your logic is nebulous, but I shall co-operate. Your listeners will probably want to know all about my Doodad Shop, eh? Well, it took thousands of years of traveling to make it grow."
"Miles," corrected Crowell.
"Years," stated the little man.
"Naturally," said Crowell.
"You might call my shop the energy result of misconstrued improper semantics. These instruments might well be labeled 'Inventions That Do Everything Instead Of Something.' "
"Oh, of course," said Crowell, blankly.
"Now, when a man shows another man a particular part of a beetle car's automotive controls and he can't recall the proper label for that part, what does he do?"
Crowell saw the light. "He calls it a doodad or a hingey or a whatchamacallit. Right?"
"Correct. And if a woman, talking to another woman about her washing machine or egg beater or knitting or crochetting and she had a psychological blocking, forgets the proper semantic label, what does she say?"
"She says 'Take this hungamabob and trinket the turndel with it. You grasp the dipsy and throw it over the flimsy,'" said Crowell, like a school kid suddenly understanding mathematics.
"Correct!" cried the little man. "All right, then. Therefore we have the birth of incorrect semantic labels that can be used to describe anything from a hen's nest to a motor-beetle crankcase. A doohingey can be the name of a scrub mop or a toupee. It's a term used freely by everyone in a certain culture. A doohingey isn't just one thing. It's a thousand things.
"Well, now, what I have done is form into energy the combined total of all things a doohingey has ever referred to. I have entered the minds of innumerable civilized humans, extracted their opinion of what they call a doohingey, what they call a thingum, and created from raw atomic energy a physical contraption of those mentally incorrect labelings. In other words, my inventions are three-dimensional representations of a semantic idea. Since the minds of people make a doohingey anything from a carpet sweeper to a number-nine-size nut-and-bolt, my inventions follow the same pattern. The doohingey you carried home today could do almost anything you would want it to do. Many of the inventions have robotlike functions, due to the fact that the abilities of movement, thought and mechanical versatility were included in them."
Alien Earth and Other Stories Page 15
