As he started to move away Arthur Adams, breaking from his dumbfounded stare, said, “But see here, mister, you can’t do this. Why—how do you know—I mean, we don’t even know—I mean, how do you know we won’t just take the money and not do what you said?”
“You’ve taken the money,” Mr. Johnson said. “You don’t have to follow any of my suggestions. You may know something you prefer to do—perhaps a museum, or something.”
“But suppose I just run away with it and leave her here?”
“I know you won’t,” said Mr. Johnson gently, “because you remembered to ask me that. Goodby,” he added, and went on.
As he stepped up the street, conscious of the sun on his head and his good shoes, he heard from somewhere behind him the young man saying, “Look, you know you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” and the girl saying, “But unless you don’t want to . . .” Mr. Johnson smiled to himself and then thought that he had better hurry along; when he wanted to he could move very quickly, and before the young woman had gotten around to saying, “Well, I will if you will,” Mr. Johnson was several blocks away and had already stopped twice, once to help a lady lift several large packages into a taxi and once to hand a peanut to a seagull. By this time he was in an area of large stores and many more people and he was buffeted constantly from either side by people hurrying and cross and late and sullen. Once he offered a peanut to a man who asked him for a dime, and once he offered a peanut to a bus driver who had stopped his bus at an intersection and had opened the window next to his seat and put out his head as though longing for fresh air and the comparative quiet of the traffic. The man wanting a dime took the peanut because Mr. Johnson had wrapped a dollar bill around it, but the bus driver took the peanut and asked ironically, “You want a transfer, Jack?”
On a busy corner Mr. Johnson encountered two young people—for one minute he thought they might be Mildred Kent and Arthur Adams—who were eagerly scanning a newspaper, their backs pressed against a storefront to avoid the people passing, their heads bent together. Mr. Johnson, whose curiosity was insatiable, leaned onto the storefront next to them and peeked over the man’s shoulder; they were scanning the “Apartments Vacant” columns.
Mr. Johnson remembered the street where the woman and her little boy were going to Vermont and he tapped the man on the shoulder and said amiably, “Try down on West Seventeen. About the middle of the block, people moved out this morning.”
“Say, what do you—” said the man, and then, seeing Mr. Johnson clearly, “Well, thanks. Where did you say?”
“West Seventeen,” said Mr. Johnson. “About the middle of the block.” He smiled again and said, “Good luck.”
“Thanks,” said the man.
“Thanks,” said the girl, as they moved off.
“Goodby,” said Mr. Johnson.
He lunched alone in a pleasant restaurant, where the food was rich, and only Mr. Johnson’s excellent digestion could encompass two of their whipped-cream-and-chocolate-and-rum-cake pastries for dessert. He had three cups of coffee, tipped the waiter largely, and went out into the street again into the wonderful sunlight, his shoes still comfortable and fresh on his feet. Outside he found a beggar staring into the windows of the restaurant he had left and, carefully looking through the money in his pocket, Mr. Johnson approached the beggar and pressed some coins and a couple of bills into his hand. “It’s the price of the veal cutlet lunch plus tip,” said Mr. Johnson. “Goodby.”
After his lunch he rested; he walked into the nearest park and fed peanuts to the pigeons. It was late afternoon by the time he was ready to start back downtown, and he had refereed two checker games and watched a small boy and girl whose mother had fallen asleep and awakened with surprise and fear which turned to amusement when she saw Mr. Johnson. He had given away almost all of his candy, and had fed all the rest of his peanuts to the pigeons, and it was time to go home. Although the late afternoon sun was pleasant, and his shoes were still entirely comfortable, he decided to take a taxi downtown.
He had a difficult time catching a taxi, because he gave up the first three or four empty ones to people who seemed to need them more; finally, however, he stood alone on the corner and—almost like netting a frisky fish—he hailed desperately until he succeeded in catching a cab which had been proceeding with haste uptown and seemed to draw in towards Mr. Johnson against its own will.
“Mister,” the cab driver said as Mr. Johnson climbed in, “I figured you was an omen, like. I wasn’t going to pick you up at all.”
“Kind of you,” said Mr. Johnson ambiguously.
“If I’d of let you go it would of cost me ten bucks,” said the driver.
“Really?” said Mr. Johnson.
“Yeah,” said the driver. “Guy just got out of the cab, he turned around and give me ten bucks, said take this and bet it in a hurry on a horse named Vulcan, right away.”
“Vulcan?” said Mr. Johnson, horrified. “A fire sign on a Wednesday?”
“What?” said the driver. “Anyway, I said to myself if I got no fare between here and there I’d bet the ten, but if anyone looked like they needed the cab I’d take it as a omen and I’d take the ten home to the wife.”
“You were very right,” said Mr. Johnson heartily. “This is Wednesday, you would have lost your money. Monday, yes, or even Saturday. But never never never a fire sign on a Wednesday. Sunday would have been good, now.”
“Vulcan don’t run on Sunday,” said the driver.
“You wait till another day,” said Mr. Johnson. “Down this street, please, driver. I’ll get off on the next corner.”
“He told me Vulcan, though,” said the driver.
“I’ll tell you,” said Mr. Johnson, hesitating with the door of the cab half-open. “You take that ten dollars and I’ll give you another ten dollars to go with it, and you go right ahead and bet that money on any Thursday on any horse that has a name indicating ... let me see, Thursday . . . well, grain. Or any growing food.”
“Grain?” said the driver. “You mean a horse named, like, Wheat or something?”
“Certainly,” said Mr. Johnson. “Or, as a matter of fact, to make it even easier, any horse whose name includes the letters C, R, L. Perfectly simple.”
“Tall Corn?” said the driver, a light in his eye. “You mean a horse named, like, Tall Corn?”
“Absolutely,” said Mr. Johnson. “Here’s your money.”
“Tall Corn,” said the driver. “Thank you, mister.”
“Goodby,” said Mr. Johnson.
He was on his own corner and went straight up to his apartment. He let himself in and called “Hello?” and Mrs. Johnson answered from the kitchen, “Hello, dear, aren’t you early?”
“Took a taxi home,” Mr. Johnson said. “I remembered the cheesecake, too. What’s for dinner?”
Mrs. Johnson came out of the kitchen and kissed him; she was a comfortable woman, and smiling as Mr. Johnson smiled. “Hard day?” she asked.
“Not very,” said Mr. Johnson, hanging his coat in the closet. “How about you?”
“So-so,” she said. She stood in the kitchen doorway while he settled into his easy chair and took off his good shoes and took out the paper he had bought that morning. “Here and there,” she said.
“I didn’t do so badly,” Mr. Johnson said. “Couple young people.”
“Fine,” she said. “I had a little nap this afternoon, took it easy most of the day. Went into a department store this morning and accused the woman next to me of shoplifting, and had the store detective pick her up. Sent three dogs to the pound—you know, the usual thing. Oh, and listen,” she added, remembering.
“What?” asked Mr. Johnson.
“Well,” she said, “I got onto a bus and asked the driver for a transfer, and when he helped someone else first I said that he was impertinent, and quarreled with him. And then I said why wasn’t he in the army, and I said it loud enough for everyone to hear, and I took his number and I turned in a complain
t. Probably got him fired.”
“Fine,” said Mr. Johnson. “But you do look tired. Want to change over tomorrow?”
“I would like to,” she said. “I could do with a change.”
“Right,” said Mr. Johnson. “What’s for dinner?”
“Veal cutlet.”
“Had it for lunch,” said Mr. Johnson.
<
* * * *
THE ETHICATORS
by
Willard Marsh
Miss Jackson, cheerfully convinced that there’s no help for it anyhow, saw no need to investigate the backgrounds or genealogy of her Dei Sans Machina. Willard Marsh (whose name is new to s-f readers, but more familiar in the literary quarterlies) now goes into great detail about his very definitely Ex Machina Super-Busybodies.
* * * *
The missionaries came out of the planetary system of a star they didn’t call Antares. They called it, naturally enough, The Sun—just as home was Earth, Terra, or simply The World. And naturally enough, being the ascendant animal on Earth, they called themselves human beings. They were looking for extraterrestrial souls to save.
They had no real hope of finding humans like themselves in this wondrously diversified universe. But it wasn’t against all probability that, in their rummaging, there might not be a humanoid species to whom they could reach down a helping paw; some emergent cousin with at least a rudimentary symmetry from snout to tail, and hence a rudimentary soul.
The ship they chose was a compact scout, vaguely resembling the outside of an orange crate—except that they had no concept of an orange crate and, being a tesseract, it had no particular outside. It was simply an expanding cube (and as such, quite roomy) whose “interior” was always paralleling its “exterior” (or attempting to), in accordance with all the well-known basic and irrefutable laws on the subject.
A number of its sides occupied the same place at the same time, giving a hypothetical spectator the illusion of looking down merging sets of railway tracks. This, in fact, was its precise method of locomotion. The inner cube was always having to catch up, caboose-fashion, with the outer one in time (or space, depending on one’s perspective). And whenever it had done so, it would have arrived with itself—at approximately wherever in the space-time continuum it had been pointed.
When they felt the jar of the settling geodesies, the crew crowded at the forward visiplate to see where they were. It was the outskirts of a G type star system. Silently they watched the innermost planet float past, scorched and craggy, its sunward side seeming about to relapse to a molten state.
The Bosun-Colonel turned to the Conductor. “A bit of a disappointment I’m afraid, sir. Surely with all that heat…?”
“Steady, lad. The last wicket’s not been bowled.” The Conductor’s whiskers quivered in amusement at his next-in-command’s impetuosity. “You’ll notice that we’re dropping downward. If the temperature accordingly continues dropping—”
He couldn’t shrug, he wasn’t physiologically capable of it, but it was apparent that he felt they’d soon reach a planet whose climate could support intelligent life.
If the Bosun-Colonel had any ideas that such directions as up and down were meaningless in space, he kept them to himself. As the second planet from its sun hove into view, he switched on the magniscan eagerly.
“I say, this is more like it. Clouds and all that sort of thing. Should we have a go at it, sir?”
The Conductor yawned. “Too bloody cloudy for my taste. Too equivocal. Let’s push on,” he said languidly. “I have a hunch the third planet might be just our dish of tea.”
Quelling his disappointment, the Bosun-Colonel waited for the third planet to swim into being. And when it did, blooming like an orchid in all its greens and moistnesses, he could scarcely contain his excitement.
“Why, it looks just like Earth,” he marveled. “Gad, sir, what a master stroke of navigation. How did you realize this would be it?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” the Conductor said modestly. “Things usually have a habit of occurring in threes. I’m quite a student of numerology, you know.” Then he remembered the Mission and drew himself erect on all his legs. “You may prepare for landing, Mister,” he ordered crisply.
The Bosun-Colonel shifted over to manual and busied himself at the helm, luffing the square craft down the troughs of air. Gliding over the vast tropical oceans, he put down at a large land mass above a shallow warm sea, twenty-five degrees below the northern pole.
Too numbed for comment, the crew stared out at the alien vista. They’d heard of retarded life forms from other Missionary expeditions—of planets where the inhabitants, in extreme emergency, had been known to commit murder. But this was surely the worst, the most vicious imaginable in the galaxy.
Here, with life freshly up from the sea, freshly launched on the long climb to maturity and self-realization—was nothing but horror. With so lush a vegetation, so easily capable of supporting them side by side in abundance, the monsters were actually feeding on each other. Great lumbering beasts they were with their bristling hides and huge tails, charging between the giant tree ferns; gouging living chunks from one another while razor-toothed birds with scaly wings flapped overhead, screaming for the remnants. As the sounds of carnage came through the audio ports, the youngest Oarsman keeled over in a faint.
Even the Conductor was visibly shaken. The Bosun-Colonel turned to him with a sick expression.
“Surely it’s a lost cause, Skipper. Life like this will never have a soul worth saving.”
“Not in its present stage,” the Old Man was forced to agree. “Still, one never knows the devious paths that evolution takes.” He considered the scene for a thoughtful, shuddering interval. “Perhaps in several thousand millenniums…”
The Bosun-Colonel tried to visualize the possibility of Ethical Life ever materializing through these swamp mists, but the logic against it was too insurmountable for the imagination.
“Even so,” he conceded, “granting the impossible—whatever shape it took, the only worthwhile species would still be…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“Meat-eaters,” the Conductor supplied grimly.
On hearing this, the Oarsman who had just revived promptly fainted again.
“It’s too deep in the genes,” the Conductor continued, “too far advanced for us to tamper with. All we can hope to do is modify their moral outlook. So that by the time they achieve star travel, they’ll at least have a basic sense of Fair Play.”
Sighing, bowed by responsibilities incommensurate with his chronological youth, he gave the order wearily. It was snapped down the chain of command to the Senior Yard-bird:
“All paws stand by to lower the Ethics Ray! Step lively, lads—bugger off, now…”
There was a din of activity as the outer locks were opened and the bulky mechanism was shipped over the side. It squatted on a cleared rise of ground in all its complex, softly ticking majesty, waiting for the First Human to pad within range of its shedding Grace and Uplift. The work party scrambled back to the ship, anxious to be off this sinister terrain. Once more the crew gathered at the visiplate as the planet fell away beneath them, the Ethics Ray winking in the day’s last light like a cornerstone. Or perhaps a tambourine…
Night closed down on the raw chaotic World, huge beasts closed in on the strange star-fallen souvenir. They snuffled over it; then enraged at discovering it was nothing they could fill their clamoring mindless stomachs with, attempted to wreck it. They were unsuccessful, for the Machine had been given an extra heavy coat of shellac and things to withstand such monkeyshines. And the Machine, in its own finely calibrated way, ignored its harassers, for they had no resemblance to the Life it had been tuned to influence.
Days lengthened into decades, eons! The seas came shouldering in to stand towers tall above the Ethics Ray, lost in the far ooze below. Then even the seas receded, and the mountains buckled upward in their place, their arrogant stone faces star
ing changelessly across the epochs. Until they too were whittled down by erosion. The ice caps crept down, crackling and grinding the valleys. The ground stretched and tossed like a restless sleeper, settled, and the Ethics Ray was brought to light once more.
As it always had, it continued beaming its particular signal, on a cosmic ray carrier modulated by a pulse a particular number of angstroms below infrared. The beasts that blundered within its field were entirely different now, but they still weren’t the Right Ones. Among them were some shambling pale bipeds, dressed in skins of other beasts, who clucked over its gleaming exterior and tried to chip it away for spearheads. In this of course they were unsuccessful.
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