Melancholy Elephants
Page 19
So we go up to the third floor and there is the phone booth, just like Harry the Horse describes it except that there is a hophead sleeping in it. We chase the hophead out and Socket sets the wire back up the way it is supposed to be, and plugs it in. Right away the phone booth starts to hum, and Harry the Horse gets a great big smile on his pan.
Socket puts a light bulb in the ceiling and turns it on, and then he looks the phone booth over. “I cannot figure much of this,” he says, “but this part here has to be the delay timer. If you want to go back right now you just twist this back to zero—”
“Not yet,” Harry the Horse says. “It is nice to know I do not have to wait twenty-four hours, but I am not yet ready. I must go guzzle the crow film and the machine.”
All of a sudden Harry the Horse frowns, like he sees a fly in the ointment. I begin to see the same fly too, and so does Socket, because he speaks up and says like this:
“Harry, I know what you are thinking. You do not wish to leave us here while you go rob my crow film—”
“What do you mean, your crow film?” Harry asks angrily. “It is my crow film.”
“Of course,” Socket says real quick. “The point is, you are afraid if you leave us behind with the machine, it may not be here when you get back, or us either for that matter, and I am honest enough to admit that this is at least a ten-to-one shot. If you are as honest, you will admit that what you think you will do about this is scrag us both. Is this not so?”
“I like your style, kid,” Harry the Horse says to him, “but I will admit that this seems like the good thing to do.”
“I thank you for your honesty,” Socket says. “You will understand that I am altogether opposed to this proposition, on general principles. So here is my thought: how about if I come with you while you swipe the crow film machine, and generally be of assistance (for it is sure to be heavy), and meanwhile our mutual friend here,” meaning me, “will keep watch over the phone booth and keep the junkies out of it. He is not apt to take the lam with it, on account of he is an old geezer who cannot cut it in 1930 without a joint or a job, and besides if he does you will surely scrag me and I am his friend.”
“This sounds jake to me,” Harry the Horse decides, so off they go together, hurrying a bit because it is a little past six bells in the morning and the sun will be up soon. They come back in about an hour with a drawer full of crow film and the machine for it, and while Harry the Horse checks to make sure the machine fits in the phone booth, Socket looks over the phone booth some more. “I think I begin to figure this out,” he says.
“Frankly,” Harry the Horse says, “and I hope you will not be offended, I am not so sure. You say if I twist this little dingus here I go right back where I start, right?”
“Right to the moment you leave,” Socket agrees.
“I am reluctant,” Harry the Horse says, “to tamper with the way Doc Twitchell leaves the machine, and then test the result with my personal body. It is more than half a day until the phone booth is supposed to go back—suppose I get there a half day early?”
“That is impossible,” Socket tells him. “That would be a pair of ducks.”
Harry the Horse frowns. “That is exactly what I mean. I wish to have no truck whatsoever with these ducks, as Doc Twitchell tells me they are bad medicine.”
By this time I am tired of hanging around in Harlem with Harry the Horse, and I do not care a fig if he does get a pair of ducks, or even a pair of goats or chickens. “Harry,” I say, “my good friend Socket knows all about this science jazz. He reads all the rocket ship stuff and you can rely on him. It is a piece of cake.”
Maybe I say it too enthusiastic, because Harry frowns even more. “If it is so safe,” he says to me, “why do you not be the one who tries it out? In fact,” he says, “I think this is a terrific idea.”
Now, this horrifies me no little, and in fact more than somewhat, but I am not about to let on to Harry the Horse that I am horrified, or he is apt to figure I care more about myself than him, and become insulted. So I swallow and head for the phone booth.
“As soon as you get there and see that everything is copacetic,” Harry tells me, “you push the button again. It is still set the same way, so it should bring you right back here. Do not monkey with it.”
“Wait!” Socket yells, and this seems like a terrific idea to me. “Listen, Harry,” he says, “I figure this gizmo will take him back to the very instant he leaves, or maybe a split second after. But if he then pushes the button again right away, it brings him forward the same amount of time as before—and he arrives a second after you do, a day and a half ago. Except that there is already a phone booth here, and nowhere for his to go, so there is a big explosion.”
My blood pressure now goes up into the paint cards. Harry thinks about this, and I can see it is a strain for him. “So how do we do this?”
“Well,” Socket says, “I think I get the hang of this phone booth, and if I am right this dial here is for years, and this one is for days, and this one is hours, and so on. See, the years one is on fifty, and the rest are in neutral.”
“So?”
“So all he has to do when he gets back to 1930 is move the days dial forward one notch, and the hours dial ahead seven notches, and the minutes, say thirty to be on the safe side, and he arrives here about fifteen minutes from now.”
Harry the Horse looks at me. “Do you get that?” he says.
“Yeah,” I tell him, a little distracted because something just occurs to me.
“Listen,” Socket says to me, “for the love of Pete do not fail to set the delay timer again before you push the button to come back here. Anything over five minutes is probably fine. Otherwise as soon as you get here you slingshot right back to 1930 again.”
“Got you,” I say, and he turns the delay gizmo back to zero.
All of a sudden the lights get dim like a brown-out, and when they come back up again Harry the Horse and Socket are nowhere to be seen. What is to be seen is a lot of gadgets and gizmos and little wop pigs and an old dead guy I know is Doc Twitchell.
I will be damned, I say to myself, it works.
Perhaps I should do like I promise Harry the Horse and go right back. If I do not arrive back at the right time he is apt to get angry and scrag my young friend Socket. But I figure I can reset the dials to any time I want, and if it does not work out right it is Socket’s fault for giving me the bum steer.
And besides, I cannot help myself.
I go into the livingroom and get some subway tokens and a couple of bobs from Little Isadore’s pants pocket, and I take the A train down to Broadway.
Broadway is just beginning to jump when I get there, on account of it is just past midnight, and I wish to tell you it looks swell. The guys and dolls are all out taking the air, and I see faces I do not see for a long long time. I see Lance McGowan, and Dream Street Rose, and Bookie Bob, and Miss Missouri Martin, and Dave the Dude with Miss Billy Perry on his arm, and Regret the Horseplayer, and Nicely-Nicely Jones, and the Lemon Drop Kid, and Waldo Winchester the newspaper scribe, and all kinds of people. I see Joe the Joker give Frankie Ferocious a hotfoot while Frankie is taking a shine from a little smoke. I see Rusty Charlie punch a draft horse square in the kisser and stretch it in the street. I buy an apple from Madame La Gimp. I find the current location of Nathan Detroit’s permanent floating crap game, and lose a few bobs. I stick my noodle into Lindy’s, and I watch a couple of dolls take it off at the Stork Club, the way dolls used to take it off, and I even have a drink at Good-Time Charlie’s, even though Good-Time Charlie naturally does not recognize me and serves me the same liquor he serves his customers. You know something? It is the best booze I taste in fifty years.
I see people and places and things that I say good-bye to a long time ago, and it feels so good that after a while I haul off and bust out crying.
Somehow I never seem to bump into myself—my thirty-year-old self—while I am walking around, and I guess this is
just as well, at that. After a while I decide that I am awake a long time for a guy my age, so I walk over to Central Park and take a snooze near the pond. When I wake up it is just coming on daylight, and I am hungry and there is very little of Little Isadore’s dough left, so I take the A train back up to Harlem and sneak in the back door of Doc Twitchell’s building again. When I get back to the phone booth it is just about half past seven bells, so I set the dial ahead one day and no hours and no minutes, and then I set the delay thing and push the button.
The lights go down and up and there are Harry the Horse and Socket again. Socket looks very glad to see me, and for that matter so does Harry the Horse. “It works great,” I tell them, and step out.
“This is good news,” Harry says, “because I am commencing to get impatient. Socket, I am sorry I do not trust you. Both of you are right gees, and you both assist me more than somewhat, and I tell you what I will do. When I get back home and become a rich guy, I will put half of the first million I make into a suitcase, and I will bring the suitcase to the First National Bank downtown and tell them to surrender it to you guys in fifty years, and you can go right down there today and get it. How is that for gratitude?”
Socket’s face gets all twisted up funny for a minute, like he wants to say something and does not want to say it, all at the same time. “Harry,” I say, “do you ever come back yourself?”
“Naw,” he says. “This stuff gives me the willies, and 1980 you can keep. As soon as I get back home I shoot up this phone booth until it does not work anymore. I have all I need to be a rich guy, and if anybody else gets ahold of the phone booth, maybe it gets around and they start not having horse races anymore or something. So this is good-bye.” He puts the crow film machine and the drawer full of crow films in the booth, and steps in with them.
“Well, Harry,” I say, “I wish to thank you for your generosity. Half a million bobs is pretty good wages for a electric guy and a dago pig. Enjoy your riches and good-bye.”
He has Socket move the delay gizmo back to zero, and the lights go down and up again, and that is the last I ever see of Harry the Horse, any way you look at it.
“Socket,” I start to say, “I hope you do not think for a minute that there is any half a million clams waiting at the bank for us—”
“I know there is not,” he says, and he shows me a little teeny light bulb the size of a peanut. “I do not like the way this mug talks about plugging people such as yourself and me, so while he and I are guzzling the crow film machine I decide it will be a great gag if I take this bulb out when he is not looking, and sure enough he never knows any different. I regret this later when he speaks of a million iron men, but I cannot think of a tactful way to bring the matter up, and he still has the gat, so I let it ride. Without this bulb,” he says, “Harry the Horse cannot read the crow film, and they do not make this bulb fifty years ago.”
Well, at this I am so surprised that I never get around to telling Socket Toomey why it is that I am so certain that are no half a million potatoes waiting for us at the First National Bank. And perhaps I even feel a little guilty, too, considering that Harry the Horse gives me the seven happiest hours of my life.
Because before I get on the A train to go back up to Harlem, fifty years ago, I call up Judge Goldfobber at his place out on the Island; and I tell him that the reason Harry the Horse and Spanish John and Little Isadore are late bringing the phone booth is because they are planning to double-cross him and keep it for themselves. Who Judge Goldfobber thinks I am, and why I am calling him, is anybody’s guess—but I know he believes me, and furthermore makes very good time in from the Island, because I can remember back almost fifty years ago to when I am in the bleachers the day a real judge gives Judge Goldfobber the hot squat, on account of his personal revolver matches up with six slugs they dig out of Harry the Horse.
It’s a Sunny Day
It’s a Sunny Day
“Sign here.”
Zack looked a bit dubiously at the bespectacled boy who sat surrounded by travel cases in the middle of his kitchen, then at the silent giant who had carried in the travel-cases, finally at the bald slender man who had spoken. The latter held out a clipboard and stylus in his pale hand. His voice was flat and emotionless, and he wore grey—Zack decided it suited him.
“Glad to, Mr…”
“Jacob Abernathy,” the grey man said, seeming to bite off the words. He glanced around the room in apparent disapproval.
“Pleased to meet you, Jake. I’m…”
“I know who you are.” Zack had stuck out his hand; Abernathy gazed at it without particular interest. Zack took the clipboard with it and made his chop, handed it back.
“You tell Raoul that I’ll take good care of his…”
“His Excellency will be informed that you have accepted delivery,” Abernathy clipped. Zack blinked. He adjusted his overalls on one broad shoulder and took his pipe from one of many pockets. Locating a pouch in another, he stoked up and emitted clouds of blue smoke, squinting at Abernathy. “You just do that, brother. Sorry you can’t stay for lunch.”
The sarcasm was lost on Abernathy. “Food is available on board the ship.”
“What you call food, yeah. Good day to you.” Abernathy nodded and left, followed by the huge manservant. Zack went to the window and watched them depart, puffing on his pipe. “Never seen a shirt so stuffed mass so little,” he murmured, and shook his head, eyes twinkling.
He turned back to the boy who still sat silently amid his belongings in the rich, butter-yellow sunlight of early morning. The plunder nearly filled half the kitchen, pressure-tight suitcases designed to withstand sudden vacuum. Zack ran a calloused hand through his thick wiry red hair and grinned around his pipe at the youth.
“Sure a lot of swag, old son,” he drawled. “You too proud to shake hands too?”
The boy shook his head, rose from his seat. “I’m Timeth Connery,” he said, his thin voice as emotionless as Abernathy’s. Zack shook his hand gravely.
“I am Zachary Mountain-Born, and this is the T.A., my home.”
The boy’s bland expression—or absence of any—changed slightly. “Mountain-Born?” he asked. “What kind of last name is that?”
“Why, mine,” said Zack, somewhat startled.
“A surname is functional, an identifier,” Timeth said, seeming to recite. “It is a family-referent and locator. Was your father also named Mountain-Born?”
“Why no. My father was Jody Sunray and my mother was Kerry Maplewood. We like to use surnames creatively here in New Home.”
The boy digested this. Zack imagined lights blinking, chided his imagination sharply.
“What does ‘T.A.’ stand for?”
“‘Total Anarchy,’” Zack said grinning. “This house was built by Daniel, one of the First Landed, later called Daniel of the Woods. He ceremonially destroyed his T-square before beginning this place: there isn’t a right angle in the building.” He realized his grin was unshared, felt foolish. “Don’t you understand jokes?”
“I understand the theory and purpose of jokes,” Timeth replied. “Was that one?”
Zack blinked, then suddenly burst out laughing. “Guess you couldn’t be expected to appreciate a joke about anarchy at that, Tim. Not coming from a world like Velco. Well, never mind. You’ll find things here to make you laugh. I hope.”
Timeth regarded him intently, seeming to size Zack up—he had the feeling the lad could tell his shirt-size and annual income. “One of the standard purposes of the ‘joke’ is to make another feel at ease,” Timeth stated. “Was that your wish?”
“It surely was,” Zack assured him.
“Then tell me why I am here.”
Zack started, then his brow clouded. “Well I’ll be a…do you mean to tell me they didn’t explain to you why you’re here?”
The boy shook his head.
“Might have expected it—pure Velco,” Zack exploded, and swore. “I thought better of Raoul.” He saw
Timeth looking at him, waiting. “I’m sorry, old son. Didn’t mean to criticize your father; I knew him in college. But to truck you thirty parsecs and leave you in a stranger’s kitchen with never a word of why…” He shook his head. “Let’s sit down.”
He led Timeth from the kitchen to his broad-beamed living room, just a bit of prideful expectancy in his manner. He had added some to Daniel’s original structure, and the living room was his showpiece.
A visitor’s first impression was usually that a rainbow had been trapped in the room and battered itself to pieces trying to escape: while the great south window gave a clear view of the mountain sloping away to an azure bay, the east and west windows were stained glass mosaic, and the former of these now spangled the room with splashes of red and yellow and green and deep, rich blue. Zack watched Timeth for reaction, found none. He sighed, pointed to a chair and draped his own long, hard form on a rocker. He busied himself for awhile with his pipe, then fired up a fresh bowl and began.
“The way I get the story, Timeth—and you correct me if I’m wrong anywhere—Velco is in a hell of a pickle. Overpopulated, overindustrialized, overurbanized—just one big city, the way I hear it. They failed to learn the lessons of Old Terra, and so they got into a bind for efficient administration. Too much information to integrate. Computers weren’t the answer, they don’t correlate well enough. A computer can have the results of five different medical teams around a planet punched into it, and never see that, combined, those results mean a cure for Ashton’s Disease—or whatever. So the Velcoi fastened on an ancient but untried notion from Old Terra, attributed to a man named Heinlein, made about the time that it stopped being possible for a normal man to absorb all known information in a single lifetime. They began tinkering with ova in utero, selecting for eidetic memory, and set about raising up a corps of encyclopaedic synthesists: a group of men trained to absorb raw information at high input with perfect retention, and then reason from it. Sort of human computers; you’re one of the first.