He turned and once more let his baleful gaze rove over Ari, Dark, Valmis and me. "Now, you," he said. "I'm not going to bandy words with you people. You know things we can use, and you're going to give 'em to us. End of transmission. I don't know what you thought you were up to, busting out of here, but you are now darned well going to sit here and draw up plans and specifications about everything you know of, until I'm satisfied you don't know any more. We need what you've got, and we're going to get it. And if it takes red-hot pincers, or a few experiments with live wires here and there on you, why, I don't know that I'd mind that all that much."
His voice had become hoarse and shrill, and his lips drew tightly over his teeth. My uneasiness deepened into alarm. The strains of office had evidently told deeply on Edison, and he seemed to me to be approaching a condition of marked instability. I wondered what might be done to mollify him, but could think of nothing that might be effective.
"How much did you tell those people, I wonder?" he went on in the same unsettling tone. "That was low, that was, scooting off to help give those other countries a head start over us, the people that took you in—"
"It wasn't like that at all," Dark said indignantly. "We didn't tell them anything about how to make things; we didn't go there for that. It was just that Ari had this idea he could get them to start up their war a little sooner, so it'd be over quicker and everything would happen faster, you see, so that . . ." Edison, Oxford and Wells listened with awestruck fascination as Dark explained Ari's plans, each of them looking from Dark to the rest of us with expressions I could not fathom.
"But, you see," Dark finished, "it doesn't seem to have come to anything, so here we are again."
Edison had sunk into a chair during this recital. The eerily tight expression had gradually been smoothed from his face, and he looked merely extremely tired. "That was quite something to hear," he commented after a moment. "I take it, Oxford, Wells, that it came as a surprise to you?"
"Yes, Mr. President," Oxford answered, with a note in his voice I had not heard before. "We . . . it . . . yes, you could say it wasn't quite how we thought things were."
Edison sighed and closed his eyes. "I feel like I'm coming out of a fever," he said. "I don't know . . . I got so caught up in thinking we had to have these fellows feeding us ideas, that it got to be an obsession with me. I don't go having people locked up, and chased and kidnapped when they get away, just so's they can work for me; that's not Thomas Alva Edison at all. But I've done just that, ain't I? And it took something like this—this weird, cold-blooded, crackpot notion these people came up with—to make me see it. Oxford, don't you worry about what I said before. I think you did me a favor, helping 'em escape. And I kind of wish I'd let it stay that way."
He started to rise, and then sank back again in his chair and looked glumly at the top of his cane. "But all the same, they are back, ain't they? And they do know things we can use, you can't get around that. And, as President, I'm bound to do what I can to get hold of that knowledge, though I don't have much heart for it any more. Oxford, if you're not holding any grudges and are willing to let bygones be bygones, do you think you could help me work out a way—"
"Hey!" Dark broke in. "All right, we know what you're after. So why not let's get on with it?"
"Dark!" Ari exclaimed. "You can't! It's gross interference with a planetary culture!"
"I'll leave you and Valmis to argue about the ethical difference between getting a whole bunch of people into a war earlier than they want, and giving them a few tips on things they might get some use out of and which would get us a lot nearer the day they can help us put Wanderer spaceworthy again. Look here," he said, turning to Edison, "what kind of things would you like to know?"
It would be unkind to say that Edison was gaping, but there was certainly a pronounced look of relaxation about his jaw. "Well," he replied slowly, "there's a lot of work to be done with flying machines, for a starter."
"Ah, gravity repulsion's the thing there; I was telling those Wright fellows that last year, when we ran into them. The way you get gravity repulsion is, you . . ." He launched into a technical description which I could not follow; Mr. Edison seemed to be able to do so sufficiently to realize that the required technology and certain vital substances did not exist on Earth.
"I can see that'd be so," Dark said. "After all, if you could put together a gravity-repulsion unit, even if you had to be shown how to do it at first, why, then, the same thing'd hold for Wanderer, wouldn't it? And we wouldn't have to go to all this trouble. Let me see, what's something a bit simpler?"
He worked out a design for a standard spacesuit, very cleverly, it seemed to me, adapted to available materials and skills, but, as he had no clear idea of certain key processes in producing the metals and ceramics required for the sort of primitive spacecraft that Earth's resources might admit of, this did not appear to be of any immediate utility.
"True enough," Dark said with a chuckle. "If you can't get into space, what's the use of a spacesuit? Mind you, they look pretty unusual, and there's a chance they could catch on as a fashion, so you might sell quite a few. But that's not the sort of thing you're looking for, is it?"
Mr. Edison agreed that it was not, and made the same comment on the next couple of ideas Dark came up with.
"Of course!" Dark finally cried. "I don't know why I didn't hit on it first off, but here's something you can really use. I've still got a cinder in my eye from that damned destroyer you had us picked up by, and I remember thinking just after it went in how unnecessary it was, burning all that dangerous stuff. A power source, that's what you want."
Edison at last began to look interested. "Well, yes," he said. "I'd admire to know about a new power source, seeing's I've made some little contribution in that line."
"Well, this'll do you very nicely, then." Dark went on to outline the construction of a form of fuel cell used in isolated areas not served by broadcast power on our home world. I was interested in following his description, as I had never concerned myself with how the things were put together. It seemed to be a simple matter and of course resulted in a very effective product at little cost, depending on the conversion of hydrogen to energy.
Edison was also fascinated, though looking less pleased than I would have expected. "Let me get this straight," he said. "Anybody could slap one of these things together, so long's he could read plans, handle tools, and had about three dollars seventy-five cents to buy what he needed to start off? And he could pull what hydrogen he needed out of water? And he could use one of 'em to run an auto, or a ship, or a flying machine, or a windmill, or a lathe, or a dynamo, or practically anything that needs power? And not pay more'n a cent or so a day to use it?"
"That's it," Dark agreed jovially. "I think that'll do nicely to start off with."
Edison gave him a long, careful look. "I'll tell you something," he said. "First invention I ever patented, back in 'sixty-nine, I knew telegraphy backwards and forwards, and it came natural to think up something that used what I knew. And I put this together, and it worked fine. It was for legislatures, like the Congress, and it was a machine that was set up so every time there was a vote, each member could just press a button, and whichever way he voted, yes or no, it'd be recorded instantaneously. A second after the vote was called for, it'd be down and counted, and the result known, and no hours spent in roll calls. Well, I showed that to a committee of Congress, and they turned it down flat. One of 'em was kind enough to take me aside and tell me why. Seemed that those fellows needed that waste of time. Gave 'em a chance to see which way the wind was blowing and change their votes if they were going to lose bad or happened to be voting the other way from some fellow they wanted to keep in good with, and so on. So something like that, that looked so good, would upset the whole applecart, and they weren't about to have it."
He looked down at the floor. "Same way with this. Nearly free power for everyone, available tomorrow, ain't that grand? No need to buy coal, gaso
line, oil, wood, anything like that. And no need to pay the coal miners, oil people, filling stations, anybody like that. I calculate it'd take about six weeks for the country to turn into a howling wilderness of starving mobs using free power to get to places where they could steal food to stay alive."
He rose to his feet. "Gentlemen," he declared, "I broke the law and I broke faith with myself to drag your secrets out of you. And then you gave them to me of your own free will, and they're ashes in my mouth. Well, that's often the way of it, that's so—I guess I forgot that there ain't much fun or profit to be had in something you don't sweat to get for yourself. No such thing as a free lunch, as they say. That business of keeping you prisoners here to milk you of ideas is out, done with, knocked in the head. I will make you another proposition. As distinguished alien visitors, or whatever damned category I can fit you under, I'll see to it that I'm authorized to grant you a handsome pension that will keep you in comfort here for as long as you're around. But only on condition that you keep your mouths shut about any such trifling boons as free power, perpetual motion and the like. That's too rich for our blood, and we'd die of it pretty quick. We're an industrious and inventive people, and I don't see any easy gifts you could let us have being worth losing that."
When he had left, with a terse farewell, Dark looked after him, dumbfounded. "What a fellow for not knowing what he wants," he muttered.
"I could have told you your idea wouldn't work," Valmis said comfortably. "Edison saw right off that it was a problem of Patterns, that bringing out one of your machinery things the way you wanted would distort the Patterns so badly that they'd fall apart."
Dark suggested Valmis do something with his Patterns that I believe he must have heard from the sailors on the destroyer.
23
Ari's confidence in the eventual results of the scheme he had at least partially set in motion was, so he maintained, unabated. "It'll start working on the King and the Kaiser and so on, you see, and they won't be able to help themselves. They'll struggle a bit and worry over it, but they'll come round to seeing it, and then we've got our war on. Just you wait and see."
There was no practical alternative course of action that we could see, so we followed Ari's. This we were obliged to do without the company of Oxford. When he returned, some days after Edison's visit, from a trip to New York to see Wells off to England, he sprawled on the couch in the sitting room and said, "Fellows, I've got news. Adieu, adieu, kind friends, adieu, yes, adieu. I can no longer stay with yieu, stay with yieu. Fare thee well, for I must leave thee, et cetera."
"You're not going away?" Dark asked.
Oxford gave him a sharp look. "As a matter of fact, yes, that was what I was trying to get across. Look, you can get on perfectly well without me—you've got Mr. and Mrs. Bonacker to look after you, and you're not any longer going up and down in the earth, seeking whom you may devour, so you don't need a keeper. And, while it's been interesting—I don't deny that for a moment—it's not my regular line of work. So after I put Wells on the boat, I went around to see old man Pulitzer at the World and put a proposition to him I've been thinking of for some time. And, in short, he's backing me in it."
Although there were a large number of journals, published at nearly every conceivable interval, from one day to three or four months, and offering news, fiction, advice, and comment in profusion, it had seemed to Oxford that there was room for yet another. This was to be a weekly magazine which would summarize the events that had taken place since the previous issue, in the brief, pithy style characteristic of the daily journals, yet in greater detail; for the further benefit of the readers, the reading matter would be arranged by topic, so that one section would be devoted to matters concerning foreign countries, another to American politics, and so on.
"Pulitzer's wild for it," Oxford said, "and I'm to start putting it together next week. I know a lot of reporters who'd give their eyeteeth to work on something like this, and I bet I can put together a staff that'd beat anything going. I've got to work up a name for it, though, something snappy. You fellows want to turn your own odd brand of logic onto that problem?"
We thought awhile, but came up with nothing useful; it was to be expected that we would not be sufficiently acquainted with the subtleties of this culture to be much help. To be polite, I offered one suggestion. "As it seems to me this new journal would save your readers a lot of time, you might call it something like Save."
Oxford said that he didn't quite see it, but that there might be the germ of an idea there. He took his final leave the next day, and we were on our own to await the outcome of Ari's contrivings.
From time to time he professed to find evidence in the journals or in the news programs on the electrodiffuser that events were working out as he had hoped. He was particularly excited by the announcement of a joint visit by the Kaiser, King Edward, and the Czar to the principal nations of Europe, which he considered a sure presage of war, saying, "Just get all those fellows together in one place, and they'll be at each other's throats in no time." But months passed with no perceptible increase in world tensions.
The first anniversary of our arrival on the planet passed, and then that of Mr. Edison's election; winter closed in once more. Our long experience of interstellar flight had habituated us to inactivity, but we did find time hanging heavy on our hands, and we welcomed the purchase of an improved electrodiffusion set which carried pictures as well as sound, something like the telephone I had observed the Czar using. This instrument provided us with much diversion, though not of any very deep content. Mr. Barrymore seemed to take up a good deal of time on it, and I was interested to see some of the antics of Mr. Cohan, whom I had seen perform at Madison Square Garden.
Another year turned—it was now 1910, by local reckoning—and, some weeks into it, I noticed that Valmis was becoming increasingly edgy. "Look here," he said to me one afternoon as the last of the snow was melting on our lawn, "I don't know that I can stand this much longer, hanging on for Ari's war. He keeps saying that it's all right, that his calculations just need a little revising, but I can't see it. I was even thinking of going into stasis—"
"You wouldn't do that!" I exclaimed, shocked. It happens from time to time that an Explorer ship's warp malfunctions, and a journey that would normally be accomplished in weeks stretches into centuries; as a precaution against the effects of this, Explorers are provided with the means of placing themselves in a state of complete inactivity for very long periods so that they can be aroused with no sense of the passage of time, if they should chance to arrive at a place inhabited by anyone with the capacity for doing so. As it is not actually known that the process has worked successfully in practice, Explorers regard the whole idea with a dread verging on the superstitious, even though it is required by regulations for each Captain to keep the necessary equipment by him, as Dark had.
"Well, not really," Valmis said, abashed. "It was just that I got to feeling so low that it crossed my mind. But I've got a much better notion now. Look, Ari's had his chance at getting this planet going the way we want it, and it doesn't seem to have come to much. And Dark's idea of force-feeding them technical things . . . well, we saw what happened about that. But, you know, I've got my own specialty, and it seems to me that it might be the way."
"How would that be?"
"Well, you see, what's in the way of these people getting on fast enough to help us with Wanderer is really their Patterns. What Ari's after is counting on a sudden change in the Patterns in the shape of a war. And Dark ran up against the fact that you can't work something into a world's Patterns that doesn't fit into them. But they don't know anything about Patterns, really, not like I do, and I think I've got the way to do something about these."
When he later put his proposition before the others, they were dubious. He meant, it appeared, to give public lectures, by means of which he would bring his audiences to Perceive the Patterns relating to their lives and to their planet in general, and thus would bri
ng about changes in their consciousness and a resultant rapid readjustment of the Patterns. "It's like I did with that Alexei boy," he explained. "I got the protein things into his bloodstream, and they altered the whole thing. It's the same, once you've got a whole crowd of people learning to Perceive—it'll spread and change everything."
"You needed my medical kit to do that," Dark pointed out.
Valmis was impatient with this cavil. "Naturally, enough, if you're dealing with a mechanism, like the body, it stands to reason you've got to use other mechanisms. But with minds, you work with the mind. Look here, Raf, you've met this Cohan man, and I understand he knows his way around the entertainment business; do you think he could give me some tips on how to rent a place where I could speak and hope to draw a pretty fair crowd?"
None of the rest of us was really hopeful about Valmis's plan, but I humored him by suggesting that he go to New York and look up Oxford, who could doubtless put him in touch with Cohan.
We saw Valmis off at the Glen Head railway station, carrying a lunch Mrs. Bonacker had packed for him, as he had not yet got the knack of ordering meals in public eating places. As the train glided out on its overhead rail, Dark said, "He'll be back this evening all crestfallen, poor chap, but at least he'll have had an outing."
Valmis's return was otherwise than Dark had predicted. He strode in animatedly, humming a song I recalled from the electrodiffuser, sailed his hat across the room, and sank into a chair, grinning broadly.
"So Cohan put you on to how to hire a hall?" Ari asked.
"Hire a hall?" Valmis repeated scornfully. "Let me tell you, that notion's down there among the remnants and markdowns! George M. says that's for soulful ladies who want to get across the latest line in theosophy, or fellows with lantern slides of the Holy Land, not a red-hot proposition like yours truly!"
"What . . . what has he in mind, then?" Ari said faintly.
Valmis produced a large cigar, bit the end off, and lit it, drawing upon it luxuriously. "Havana Perfecto," he remarked around it. "Fifty cents each, no less. George M. gave me a handful of 'em, that's the kind of fellow he is. He saw right off that the lecture dodge wasn't for mine, no sir! It isn't every day that you get a fellow guaranteed to be from another planet, and fresh from a tour of the crowned heads of Europe, ready to give forth the wisdom of the ages, and George M. means to see to it that I get a proper showcase. He's seeing to everything: setting up when and where I'm to appear, how I should dress—he wants me to wear the coverall from Wanderer, says a chap in a chalk-stripe gent's three-piece with pinched waist ain't going to cut much ice when it comes to the philosophy game—and he wants me to write down some of my material so's he can polish it up and see that it gets across."
And Having Writ . . . Page 19
