Mae's hand came away from her mouth slowly and she said, "T—take me home, Bob."
Bob passed a hand across his eyes and said, "Gosh, what—" and went across and looked into the hat. His two pennies were in there, but he didn't reach in to take them out.
He said, his voice cracking once, "What about Elsie? Should we—" Mae got up slowly and said, "Let her sleep it off." They didn't talk much on the way home.
It was two days later that Bob met Elsie on the street. He said, "Hi, Elsie."
And she said, "Hi, there." He said, "Gosh, that was some party we had at your studio the other night. We—we drank too much, I guess."
Something seemed to pass across Elsie's face for a moment, and then she smiled and said, "Well, I sure did; I passed out like a light."
Bob grinned back, and said, "I was a little high myself, I guess. Next time I'll have better manners."
Mae had her next date with Bob the following Monday. It wasn't a double date this time.
After the show, Bob said, "Shall we drop in somewhere for a drink?"
For some reason Mae shivered slightly. "Well, all right, but not wine. I'm off of wine. Say, have you seen Wally since last week?"
Bob shook his head. "Guess you're right about wine. Wally can't take it, either. Made him sick or something and he ran out quick, didn't he? Hope he made the street in time."
Mae dimpled at him. "You weren't so sober yourself, Mr. Evans. Didn't you try to pick a fight with him over some silly card tricks or something? Gee, that picture we saw was awful; I had a nightmare that night."
He smiled. "What about?"
"About a—Gee, I don't remember. Funny how real a dream can be, and still you can't remember just what it was."
Bob didn't see Walter Beekman until one day, three weeks after the party, he dropped into the bookstore. It was a dull hour and Walter, alone in the store, was writing at a desk in the rear. "Hi, Wally. What you doing?"
Walter got up and then nodded toward the papers he'd been working on. "Thesis. This is my last year premed, and I'm majoring in psychology."
Bob leaned negligently against the desk. "Psychology, huh?" he asked tolerantly. "What you writing about?"
Walter looked at him a while before he answered. "Interesting theme. I'm trying to prove that the human mind is incapable of assimilating the utterly incredible. That, in other words, if you saw something you simply couldn't possibly believe, you'd talk yourself out of believing you saw it. You'd rationalize it, somehow."
"You mean if I saw a pink elephant I wouldn't believe it?"
Walter said, "Yes, that or a—Skip it." He went up front to wait on another customer.
When Walter came back, Bob said, "Got a good mystery in the rentals? I got the week-end off; maybe I'll read one."
Walter ran his eye along the rental shelves and then flipped the cover of a book with his forefinger. "Here's a dilly of a weird," he said. "About beings from another world, living here in disguise, pretending they're people."
"What for?"
Walter grinned at him. "Read it and find out. It might surprise you."
Bob moved restlessly and turned to look at the rental books himself. He said, "Aw, I'd rather have a plain mystery story. All that kind of stuff is too much hooey for me." For some reason he didn't quite understand, he looked up at Walter and said, "Isn't it?"
Walter nodded and said, "Yeah, I guess it is."
The End
© 1943, by Street & Smith Publications; copyright renewed 1971, by Fredric Brown. Originally appeared in Unknown Worlds, February 1943. Reprinted by permission of the Author's Estate and its agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency LP/Barry Malzberg.
No Fire Burns
Avram Davidson
Doctor Colles was a thin, pale man with receding hair. Mr. Melchior's chauffeured car had picked him up at his stuffy little office, crowded with papers. He had begun to talk almost at once, and he was still at it now. While waiting for the traffic light to change and listening to Doctor Colles' conversation, Mr. Melchior took a long green cigar from his case and lit it.
"A breakdown of function and structure," said Colles. "An absolute lack of communication. Isn't it so?" Mr. Taylor, a trim, blond young man, who looked like an ad for expensive shirts, listened carefully, said nothing. Melchior looked impressed—and uncomprehending. Colles took his arm just above the elbow, pressed it. "Look at that fellow over there," he said. "The one in the brown suit—see? Now: can I communicate with him? Or can you? On any save the most primitive level? No. Impossible, I assure you. I've only to look at him to know." The crowd flowed across the street. The men in the car watched the vanishing brown suit.
"We think of, let us say, world problems. He thinks of bowling. We discuss art and letters. He watches the dog acts on TV. We are concerned with our vanishing natural resources. He wonders if he can put a dollar-fifty cab bill on his swindle sheet. Am I correct?" The car moved forward. "What do you think?"
Mr. Melchior thought he agreed one hundred percent. Taylor smiled faintly. "Just the same," Melchior said, "there has to be some way of reaching these type people, getting inside of them."
Dr. Colles cleared his throat. "Psychology," he began.
"Good!" said Melchior. "Good. Go ahead—Oh. Here we are. You'll have to explain this to me when we're inside, Doctor."
They went up the steps of what appeared to be a small parochial school, but which was, in fact, a club—and not the sort at which members were fined for not using first names in addressing one another. The guests' dining room was small and dark. "A brandy to begin with, Doctor?"
"I hold with the ancient grammarian," Dr. Colles said, suddenly jovial. "It is better to decline six nouns than one drink. Ha Ha!"
Melchior rolled his eyes toward Taylor, who nodded. It was so ordered. "Would you believe it, Doctor," said Melchior, after the second sip, "I never tasted brandy till I was twenty-five years old? Times change … Ah. Good. Here's the menu. Anything you especially like."
The food came. They ate slowly, with grave pleasure appropriate. "Times change," Melchior repeated, presently. "Take, for example, business: When my business began to get too big for me to handle the paper work myself, I hired my brother-in-law's cousin to keep the books. But that family-style operation is outmoded. So now I have my personnel manager, Mr. Taylor here, he's a college man himself, help me select the top men from the accountants' college for Melchior Enterprises. Taylor knows what the score is."
Dr. Colles inquired the precise nature of these enterprises. His host said that they included importing, manufacturing and distributing.
"Well, that covers just about the whole range of commerce, doesn't it? Except for credit."
"We do that, too."
Colles chuckled, but seeing his host react with faint surprise, coughed. "Now, about these tests," he said. And he proceeded to talk about the tests with young Mr. Taylor, while Mr. Melchior listened, nodding. After a while the personnel manager said, "Well, that seems to be all right, then, about the standard tests. Now, Mr. Melchior would like to discuss with you the possibility of setting up another test, one which would have to be personally constructed."
"Oh?" Dr. Colles raised his eyebrows. "A special test. Well."
Melchior rubbed his thin lips with his napkin. "We got—" He paused. "We have certain problems concerned with personnel procurement—maybe disprocurement is the right word, huh, Taylor? And we think you might be just the man to deal with them."
"Well, that's very flattering. 'Disprocurement'? Ha ha. And challenging, too. Go on, go on."
Joe Clock looked up from his lathe. It was that pest, Aberdeen, again. "Whaddaya want, Ab?" he asked. "Come on, come on—"
Ab smiled ingratiatingly. "Whaddaya want, for crysake?" Joe demanded.
The man looked around, nervously. "Uh. Look Joe, when you told me you needed that money couple weeks ago, you said you needed it so bad, I told you that I, uh, I, uh, could let you have it, sure, I mean, glad to help, I, uh—
"
"Will ya quit needling me, for crysake? I told ya I'd pay it back."
Ab smirked, weakly. "Yeah, but, uh, Joe, I told you then it was the, uh, rent money, so I'd, uh, I'd need it back in a week. And that was the truth, I mean … well, Joe, the, uh, the rent, I mean it was due a, a week ago, and I got to have it Joe. So—"
Joe turned back to his lathe. "You'll get it. Tell ya landlord to keep his pants on, because I don't have it now. So quit needling me."
Ab started to protest, explain, plead, but Joe wasn't paying any attention to him. Finally, with a helpless shrug he moved off, looking back over his shoulder with a puzzled expression, at the oblivious Joe Clock, who—after the other man was well out of sight—took a stroll down to the drinking fountain.
He was greeted there by a man with a wart between his eyes. "You get them new power tools for your cellar yet, that you were talking about?" the man asked.
Joe wiped his dripping mouth. "Yeah. Ordered 'em two weeks ago and they finally came couple a days ago," he said. "Beautiful stuff. Come on down and have a look some Sundy."
The man with the wart between his eyes said, thanks, he might do that. "What was Aberdeen doing over at your machine just now?" he asked. "He look like he was gonna bust out crying."
Joe frowned. "Who? Oh, Aberdeen. Aah, I dunno what he wanted." He nodded, moved off. In the corner of his mind was a faint recollection of what Aberdeen wanted, but it was too much trouble to remember. Hell with 'm.
"Did you read in the papers, last month," Mr. Melchior asked, over the fresh fruit cup, "about a fellow who worked for Atlantic Coast Canning—"
Dr. Colles said that he believed he did. "Shot the foreman and—"
"Not the foreman, no, but that's the case. They were both in line to become foreman, but only one could get the job, so this man, Grubacher, he invited Kelly—that was his competitor—to take a ride back from work in his car; then he killed him. Might've gotten away with it, too, only they traced the gun."
Atlantic Coast Canning, it seemed, was an affiliate of Melchior Enterprises, and the incident had disturbed Mr. Melchior a good deal. Dr. Colles was a psychologist; did he understand what would make a man, who had seemed perfectly normal—a good employee—a good husband—do something like that? There had to be something wrong with him, didn't there? ("Obviously," said Dr. C.) Well, they didn't want a repetition of the Grubacher case. They wanted Dr. Colles to help them weed out people like that beforehand.
The psychologist smiled. Society as a whole, and not just Mr. Melchior, he pointed out, would be glad to find a way to do that. But his host waved his hand and shook his head, respectfully impatient.
"No, no, Doctor. Don't be modest," he said. "These tests which you and Mr. Taylor are going to set up for our personnel department—you said before that what's wrong with our society is 'lack of communication,' yes? Well, these tests communicate, don't they? They help weed out all kinds of unfit people, don't they? But they don't go far enough! A man who thinks he hears voices and tells people that spies from outer space are after him, well, you can tell right away there's something wrong with him, and we tell him that we'll keep his name on file; don't call us, we'll call you …"
But Grubacher hadn't been that type. He didn't have hallucinations, he didn't mutter. In no way, either from his work record or his family life or from his friends, could the ordinary lay person have foreseen that he would kill a man in cold blood. When he was caught and his alibi broken down and—confronted with the ballistics test results—he confessed, he was asked (oh, most vain of all questions!) if he wasn't sorry. Grubacher seemed a little surprised. He was sorry he was caught, sure. But for the act itself? A bit surprised, answering what he obviously considered a foolish question, the killer said, no … what was there to be sorry about? It was the only thing to do: Kelly stood in his way.
Dr. Colles tapped his glasses on the tablecloth. He nodded rapidly. "This fellow would seem to be obviously a psychopath," he said. "An individual with an underdeveloped superego. They don't go around muttering or bubbling their lips, they don't often run amuck; generally speaking, they are calm—cool—and collected. They simply lack what we are accustomed to call conscience. To your man, his fellow-worker wasn't a being with equal rights, he was simply an obstacle. The sensible thing was to remove him."
A cigar came out of Mr. Melchior's case. He flicked his gold cigarette lighter. "All right," he said. "Now that we know what they are—how do we find them out in time?"
With a smile, "The FBI would like to know too, Mr. Melchior."
"Yes, but the FBI isn't asking you. Anthony Melchior is asking you. I have been very impressed with everything you've told us, and I feel quite confident you can do it."
"Well, thank you very much. But … let me ask you … why are you interested in weeding out only psychopaths? Why not people with other defects—paranoiacs, let's say?"
His employer seeming somewhat at a loss to answer this, Edward Taylor stepped almost instantly into the breech. "Mr. Melchior feels that men who suffer from more obvious defects are much more likely to be noticed. It is the man who appears to be all right, who seems to function normally, who is actually more in need of being detected. Once found out, our task would naturally be to see that this man is given the proper help. We see it as a three-fold program: discover him—remove him—help him." He smiled; his smile was rather charming, but it came and went too quickly.
Melchior nodded vigorously; Colles, more slowly. Was it a matter of time? he was asked. A matter of money? Neither factor should dissuade him: Melchior Enterprises would assist him one hundred percent. Dr. Colles smiled, pursed his lips, shook his head. Then he frowned. He rubbed his eyes with his fingers.
"It would be an interesting project," he said, "it might be a very fruitful one. I could try … I would promise you nothing in the way of results. But I could try—if I were to take on fewer projects with other corporations, perhaps …"
His host's thin lips stretched in a brief smile. "Good. Very good. And so now, just for a start—" He took out a gold fountain pen and a checkbook. Dr. Colles looked at the moving hand until the last letter of the signature was done; then—missing Mr. Melchior's upturned glance by a shaved second—he fixed his look on the wall. The check changed hands.
Dr. Colles told his assistant not to make any more appointments for him until further notice. "I'm going to be working on a private research project which will be taking up a great deal of my time," he explained. "You'll have to do some legwork for me … I'll have a list of books for you to get, and quite a number of articles published in professional journals. Then, too, these men are to be phoned—you see: Dr. Sherwind, of the Department of Correction, and so on—and you ask them if you can drop by and pick up case histories for me, as noted here."
The assistant was an unmarried and intelligent young woman, who had been (and had looked) a good bit younger when she first came to work for Dr. Colles. He had talked at one time about marriage—not during the past few years, however. Why buy milk if you're friendly with the cow?
" 'The Psychopathic Personality Among Prisoners …' " she read aloud from the list, pinching her lip: two unlovely habits she'd developed. It occurred to her employer that it would probably be easier (and wiser) to break himself of the habit of her, than to try to break her of any of her own habits.
He hummed a bit when she had gone. After all, the world was full of cows—He took out his bankbook and regarded with favor both the latest entry and the considerable amount in cash folded neatly inside the little book. He had stopped off at the bank directly after leaving Mr. Melchior. The business baron had seemed quite in earnest, but, still, one never knew …
Dr. Colles was a prudent man.
The test had been going on for most of the day. First one section went down to take it, then another. There had been some apprehension at first, but this vanished, by lunchtime, in a rumble of laughter which ran through the whole plant: "So he hands back the papers when he's finishe
d, and he says to the guy from Personnel, 'Hey, Mac, how come they wanna know is my sex-life satisfactory: they plannin' t' use me f' stud purposes?' "
When Joe Clock finally reached the head of the line, the girl there gave him a sheaf of papers and a pencil. "Take any seat at one of the tables and fill these out, please," she said.
Joe's eyes traveled from her to the papers and back again. Her hair, it was obvious, was not naturally red, and her expression was discontented. But she was young, and her figure—"If I had a nickel for every one of these I filled out, I'd be rich," he said.
For a moment their eyes met. "And if I had a nickel for every guy who said that, I'd be rich, too." Not too bad a beginning. He rapidly calculated his finances, took a breath, and was about to ask her what she was doing that night. But her eyes went past him, she picked up a sheaf of papers and a pencil, handed them to the man behind him. "Take any seat—" she began.
Joe Clock sighed, sat down at the table and took up the pencil. If they wanted to pay him to play school for an hour instead of running the lathe, it was all right with him. And it was easier on the feet. So now let's see … I like mechanics magazines. Yes. No. What a question to ask a machinist! Sure he liked them. You knew where you were with a mechanics magazine. It showed you what to do and how to do it. No dopey stories to figure out, why the guy acts so dopey trying to get the girl. There's an obstruction in the pipe, ream it out. Another guy steps out with the girl, kick him in the crotch. Joe circled the Yes. Next. I have a good appetite. Hell, Yes. Then a real stupid one: I would rather collect stamps than go fishing. Joe put a heavy circle around the No. He relaxed. Collect stamps, for crysake! This was going to be easy. Eskimos live in Europe. Joe almost had to laugh at that one, another No; good thing he didn't have to say where they did live: Aleutia, or some place like that. Well …
A sensible man takes what he can get in this world. Isn't that the truth, though! Every damn time, and all you can get, too. Hell, yes. Canada belongs to England. That was right. The damn Canadian money has the King of England's face on it and you got to be careful because once Joe had got stuck with some of that English money from Canada, only he passed it on damn quick, too. It is important to help a friend. What do they mean, "a friend"? He paused, peered at the next one. It is not so important to help a stranger. He hesitantly put Yes for the first, No for the second. It makes good sense to worry about a stranger. He snorted. The hell it does. Catch a stranger worrying about you! A guy that you, like, want to borrow his car, now—but a stranger?
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