I could tell he had remembered, and then, as plainly as the drawing of a shade, his eyes went shadowy and he yelled, "Yeah, kinda." And turned around to wave violently at the unnoticing kids behind us.
So, I thought, he is outgrowing it. Then spent the rest of the short drive trying to figure just what it was he was outgrowing.
Dad dumped Thaddeus out at the alfalfa field and took me on across the canal and let me out by the pasture gate.
"I'll be back in about an hour if you want to wait. Might as well ride home."
"I might start back afoot," I said. "It'd feel good to stretch my legs again."
"I'll keep a look out for you on my way back." And he rattled away in the ever-present cloud of dust.
I had trouble managing the gate. It's one of those wire affairs that open by slipping a loop off the end post and lifting the bottom of it out of another loop. This one was taut and hard to handle. I just got it opened when Clyde turned the far corner and started back toward me, the plow behind the tractor curling up red-brown ribbons in its wake. It was the last go-round to complete the field.
I yelled, "Hi!" and waved a crutch at him.
He yelled, "Hi!" back at me. What came next was too fast and too far away for me to be sure what actually happened. All I remember was a snort and roar, and the tractor bucked and bowed. There was a short yell from Clyde and the shriek of wires pulling loose from a fence post followed by a choking, smothering silence.
Next thing I knew, I was panting halfway to the tractor, my crutches sinking exasperatingly into the soft, plowed earth. I nightmare year later I knelt by the stalled tractor and called, "Hey, Clyde!"
Clyde looked up at me, a half-grin, half-grimace on his muddy face.
"Hi. Get this thing off me, will you. I need that leg." Then his eyes turned up white and he passed out.
The tractor had toppled him from the seat and then run over top of him, turning into the fence and coming to rest with one huge wheel half burying his leg in the soft dirt and pinning him against a fence post. The far wheel was on the edge of the irrigation ditch that bordered the field just beyond the fence. The huge bulk of the machine was balanced on the raw edge of nothing, and it looked like a breath would send it on over—then God have mercy on Clyde. It didn't help much to notice that the red-brown dirt was steadily becoming redder around the imprisoned leg.
I knelt there paralyzed with panic. There was nothing I could do. I didn't dare to try to start the tractor. If I touched it, it might go over. Dad was gone for an hour. I couldn't make it by foot to the house in time.
Then all at once out of nowhere I heard a startled "Gee whiz!" and there was Thaddeus standing goggle-eyed on the ditch bank.
Something exploded with a flash of light inside my head, and I whispered to myself, Now take it easy. Don't scare the kid, don't startle him.…
"Gee whiz!" said Thaddeus again. "What happened?"
I took a deep breath. "Old Tractor ran over Uncle Clyde. Make it get off."
Thaddeus didn't seem to hear me. He was intent on taking in the whole shebang.
"Thaddeus," I said, "make Tractor get off."
Thaddeus looked at me with that blind, unseeing stare he used to have. I prayed silently, Don't let him be too old. O God, don't let him be too old. And Thaddeus jumped across the ditch. He climbed gingerly through the barbwire fence and squatted down by the tractor, his hands caught between his chest and knees. He bent his head forward, and I stared urgently at the soft, vulnerable nape of his neck. Then he turned his blind eyes to me again.
"Tractor doesn't want to."
I felt a yell ball up in my throat, but I caught it in time. Don't scare the kid, I thought. Don't scare him.
"Make Tractor get off anyway," I said as matter-of-factly as I could manage. "He's hurting Uncle Clyde."
Thaddeus turned and looked at Clyde.
"He isn't hollering."
"He can't. He's unconscious." Sweat was making my palms slippery.
"Oh." Thaddeus examined Clyde's quiet face curiously. "I never saw anybody unconscious before."
"Thaddeus." My voice was sharp. "Make—Tractor—get—off."
Maybe I talked too loud. Maybe I used the wrong words, but Thaddeus looked up at me and I saw the shutters close in his eyes. They looked up at me, blue and shallow and bright.
"You mean start the tractor?" His voice was brisk as he stood up. "Gee whiz! Grampa told us kids to leave the tractor alone. It's dangerous for kids. I don't know whether I know how—"
"That's not what I meant," I snapped, my voice whetted on the edge of my despair. "Make it get off Uncle Clyde. He's dying."
"But I can't! You can't just make a tractor do something. You gotta run it." His face was twisting with approaching tears.
"You could if you wanted to," I argued, knowing how useless it was. "Uncle Clyde will die if you don't."
"But I can't! I don't know how! Honest I don't." Thaddeus scrubbed one bare foot in the plowed dirt, sniffing miserably.
I knelt beside Clyde and slipped my hand inside his dirt-smeared shirt. I pulled my hand out and rubbed the stained palm against my thigh. "Never mind," I said bluntly, "it doesn't matter now. He's dead."
Thaddeus started to bawl, not from grief but bewilderment. He knew I was put out with him, and he didn't know why. He crooked his arm over his eyes and leaned against a fence post, sobbing noisily. I shifted myself over in the dark furrow until my shadow sheltered Clyde's quiet face from the hot afternoon sun. I clasped my hands palm to palm between my knees and waited for Dad.
I knew as well as anything that once Thaddeus could have helped. Why couldn't he then, when the need was so urgent? Well, maybe he really had outgrown his strangeness. Or it might be that he actually couldn't do anything, just because Clyde and I were grown-ups. Maybe if it had been another kid—
Sometimes my mind gets cold trying to figure it out. Especially when I get the answer that kids and grown-ups live in two worlds so alien and separate that the gap can't be bridged even to save a life. Whatever the answer is—I still don't like kids.
The End
© 1951 by Zenna Henderson. Reprinted by permission of the author's estate and the author's agent, The Virginia Kidd Agency. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1951.
The Tenants
William Tenn
When Miss Kerstenberg, his secretary, informed Sydney Blake over the interoffice communicator that two gentlemen had just entered and expressed a desire to rent space in the building, Blake's "Well, show them in, Esther, show them right in" was bland enough to have loosened the cap on a jar of Vaseline. It had been only two days since Wellington Jimm & Sons, Inc., Real Estate, had appointed him resident agent in the McGowan Building, and the prospect of unloading an office or two in Old Unrentable this early in his assignment was mightily pleasing.
Once, however, he had seen the tenants-to-be, he felt much less certain. About practically everything.
They were exactly alike in every respect but one: size. The first was tall, very, very tall—close to seven feet, Blake estimated as he rose to welcome them. The man was bent in two places: forward at the hips and backward at the shoulders, giving the impression of being hinged instead of jointed. Behind him rolled a tiny button of a man, a midget's midget, but except for that the tall man's twin. They both wore starched white shirts and black hats, black coats, black ties, black suits, black socks, and shoes of such incredible blackness as almost to drown the light waves that blundered into them.
They took seats and smiled at Blake—in unison.
"Uh, Miss Kerstenberg," he said to his secretary, who still stood in the doorway.
"Yes, Mr. Blake?" she asked briskly.
"Uh, nothing, Miss Kerstenberg. Nothing at all." Regretfully, he watched her shut the door and heard her swivel chair squeak as she went back to work in the outer office. It was distinctly unfortunate that, not being telepathic, she had been unable to receive his urgent thought message
to stay and lend some useful moral support.
Oh, well. You couldn't expect Dun & Bradstreet's best to be renting offices in the McGowan. He sat down and offered them cigarettes from his brand-new humidor. They declined.
"We would like," the tall man said in a voice composed of many heavy breaths, "to rent a floor in your building."
"The thirteenth floor," said the tiny man in exactly the same voice.
Sydney Blake lit a cigarette and drew on it carefully. A whole floor! You certainly couldn't judge by appearances.
"I'm sorry," he told them. "You can't have the thirteenth floor. But—"
"Why not?" the tall man breathed. He looked angry.
"Chiefly because there isn't any thirteenth floor. Many buildings don't have one. Since tenants consider them unlucky, we call the floor above the twelfth the fourteenth. If you gentlemen will look at our directory, you will see that there are no offices listed beginning with the number thirteen. However, if you're interested in that much space, I believe we can accommodate you on the sixth—"
"It seems to me," the tall man said very mournfully, "that if someone wants to rent a particular floor, the least a renting agent can do is let him have it."
"The very least," the tiny man agreed. "Especially since no complicated mathematical questions are being asked in the first place."
Black held on to his temper with difficulty and let out a friendly chuckle instead. "I would be very happy to rent the thirteenth floor to you—if we had one. But I can't very well rent something to you that doesn't exist, now can I?" He held his hands out, palms up, and gave them another we-are-three-intelligent-gentlemen-who-are-quite-close-in-spirit chuckle. "The twelfth and fourteenth floors both have very little unoccupied space, I am happy to say. But I'm certain that another part of the McGowan Building will do you very nicely." Abruptly he remembered that protocol had almost been violated. "My name," he told them, touching the desk plate lightly with a manicured forefinger, "is Sydney Blake. And who, might I—"
"Tohu and Bohu," the tall man said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Tohu, I said, and Bohu. I'm Tohu." He pointed at his minuscule twin. "He's Bohu. Or, as a matter of occasional fact, vice versa."
Sydney Blake considered that until some ash broke off his cigarette and splattered grayly on his well-pressed pants. Foreigners. He should have known from their olive skins and slight, unfamiliar accents. Not that it made any difference in the McGowan. Or in any building managed by Wellington Jimm & Sons, Inc., Real Estate. But he couldn't help wondering where in the world people had such names and such disparate sizes.
"Very well, Mr. Tohu. And—er, Mr. Bohu. Now, the problem as I see it—"
"There really isn't any problem," the tall man told him, slowly, emphatically, reasonably, "except for the fuss you keep kicking up, young man. You have a building with floors from one to twenty-four. We want to rent the thirteenth, which is apparently vacant. Now, if you were as businesslike as you should be and rented this floor to us without further argument—"
"Or logical hairsplitting," the tiny man inserted.
"—why then, we could be happy, your employers would be happy, and you should be happy. It's really a very simple transaction and one which a man in your position should be able to manage with ease."
"How the hell can I—" Blake began yelling before he remembered Professor Scoggins in Advanced Realty Seminar II. ("Remember, gentlemen, a lost temper means a lost tenant. If the retailer's customer is always right, the realtor's client is never wrong. Somehow, somewhere, you must find a cure for their little commercial illnesses, no matter how imaginary. The realtor must take his professional place beside the doctor, the dentist, and the pharmacist and make his motto, like theirs, unselfish service, always available, forever dependable.") Blake bent his head to get a renewed grip on professional responsibility before going on.
"Look here," he said at last, with a smile he desperately hoped was winning. "I'll put it in the terms that you just did. You, for reasons best known to yourselves, want to rent a thirteenth floor. This building, for reasons best known to its architect—who, I am certain, was a foolish, eccentric man whom none of us would respect at all—this building has no thirteenth floor. Therefore, I can't rent it to you. Now, superficially, I'll admit, this might seem like a difficulty, it might seem as if you can't get exactly what you want here in the McGowan Building. But what happens if we examine the situation carefully? First of all, we find that there are several other truly magnificent floors—"
He broke off as he realized he was alone. His visitors had risen in the same incredibly rapid movement and gone out the door.
"Most unfortunate," he heard the tall man say as they walked through the outer office. "The location would have been perfect. So far from the center of things."
"Not to mention," the tiny man added, "the building's appearance. So very unpresentable. Too bad."
He raced after them, catching up in the corridor that opened into the lobby. Two things brought him to a dead stop. One was the strong feeling that it was beneath a newly appointed resident agent's dignity to haul prospective customers back into an office which they had just quit so abruptly. After all, this was no cut-rate clothing shop—it was the McGowan Building.
The other was the sudden realization that the tall man was alone. There was no sign of the tiny man. Except—possibly—for the substantial bulge in the right-hand pocket of the tall man's overcoat …
"A pair of cranks," he told himself as he swung around and walked back to the office. "Not legitimate clients at all."
He insisted on Miss Kerstenberg's listening to the entire story, despite Professor Scoggins's stern injunctions against overfraternization with the minor clerical help. She cluck-clucked and tsk-tsked and stared earnestly at him through her thick glasses.
"Cranks, wouldn't you say, Miss Kerstenberg?" he asked her when he'd finished. "Hardly legitimate clients, eh?"
"I wouldn't know, Mr. Blake," she replied, inflexibly unpresumptuous. She rolled a sheet of letterhead stationery into her typewriter. "Do you want the Hopkinson mailing to go out this afternoon?"
"What? Oh, I guess so. I mean, of course. By all means this afternoon, Miss Kerstenberg. And I want to see it for a double-check before you mail it."
He strode into his own office and huddled behind the desk. The whole business had upset him very much. His first big rental possibility. And that little man—Bohu was his name?—and that bulging pocket—
Not until quite late in the afternoon was he able to concentrate on his work. And that was when he got the phone call.
"Blake?" the voice crackled. "This is Gladstone Jimm."
"Yes, Mr. Jimm." Blake sat up stiffly in his swivel chair. Gladstone was the oldest of the Sons.
"Blake, what's is this about your refusing to rent space?"
"My what? I beg your pardon, Mr. Jimm, but I—"
"Blake, two gentlemen just walked into the home office. Their names are Tooley and Booley. They tell me they tried unsuccessfully to rent the thirteenth floor of the McGowan Building from you. They tell me that you admitted the space was vacant, but that you consistently refused to let them have it. What's this all about, Blake? Why do you think the firm appointed you resident agent, Blake, to turn away prospective tenants? I might as well let you know that none of us up here in the home office like this one little bit, Blake."
"I'd have been very happy to rent the thirteenth floor to them," Blake wailed. "Only trouble, sir, you see, there's—"
"What trouble are you referring to, Blake? Spit it out, man, spit it out."
"There is no thirteenth floor, Mr. Jimm."
"What?"
"The McGowan Building is one of those buildings that has no thirteenth floor." Laboriously, carefully, he went through the whole thing again. He even drew an outline picture of the building on his desk pad as he spoke.
"Hum," said Gladstone Jimm when he'd finished. "Well, I'll say this, Blake. The explanation, at
least, is in your favor." And he hung up.
Blake found himself quivering. "Cranks," he muttered fiercely. "Definitely cranks. Definitely not legitimate tenants."
When he arrived at his office door early next morning, he found Mr. Tohu and Mr. Bohu waiting for him. The tall man held out a key.
"Under the terms of our lease, Mr. Blake, a key to our main office must be in the possession of the resident agent for the building. We just had our locksmith make up this copy. I trust it is satisfactory?"
Sydney Blake leaned against the wall, waiting for his bones to reacquire marrow. "Lease?" he whispered. "Did the home office give you a lease?"
"Yes," said the tall man. "Without much trouble, we were able to achieve a what-do-you-call-it."
"A meeting of minds," the tiny man supplied from the region of his companion's knees. "A feast of reason. A flow of soul. There are no sticklers for numerical subtleties in your home office, young man."
"May I see the lease?" Blake managed to get out.
The tall man reached into his right-hand overcoat pocket and brought up a familiar-looking folded piece of paper.
It was the regulation lease. For the thirteenth floor in the McGowan Building. But there was one small difference.
Gladstone Jimm had inserted a rider: … the landlord is renting a floor that both the tenant and landlord know does not exist, but the title to which has an intrinsic value to the tenant; which value is equal to the rent he will pay …
Blake sighed with relief. "That's different. Why didn't you tell me that all you wanted was the title to the floor? I was under the impression that you intended to occupy the premises."
"We do intend to occupy the premises." The tall man pocketed the lease. "We've paid a month's rent in advance for them."
"And," added the tiny man, "a month's security."
"And," finished the tall man, "an extra month's rent as fee to the agent. We most certainly do intend to occupy the premises."
"But how"—Blake giggled a little hysterically—"are you going to occupy premises that aren't even—"
Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 Page 39
