Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

  He looked up quickly. "What?"

  "You said you were in transmutation." I laughed harder than ever.

  * * * * *

  He stared at me thoughtfully, and for a second I thought--well, I don't know what I thought, but I was worried. He had a lot of funny-looking things there, and his hand was stretching out toward one of them.

  But then he said, "Old Virgie."

  "That's me," I said eagerly.

  "I owe you an apology," he went on.

  "You do?"

  He nodded. "I'd forgotten," he confessed, ashamed. "I didn't remember until just this minute that you were the one I talked to in my senior year. My only confidant. And you've kept my secret all this time."

  I coughed. "It was nothing," I said largely. "Don't give it a thought."

  He nodded in appreciation. "That's just like you," he reminisced. "Ten years, eh? And you haven't breathed a word, have you?"

  "Not a word," I assured him. And it was no more than the truth. I hadn't said a word to anybody. I hadn't even said a word to myself. The fact of the matter was, I had completely forgotten what he was talking about. Kept his secret? I didn't even remember his secret. And it was driving me nuts!

  "I was sure of you," he said, suddenly thawing. "I knew I could trust you. I must have--otherwise I certainly wouldn't have told you, would I?"

  I smiled modestly. But inside I was fiercely cudgeling my brain.

  He said suddenly, "All right, Virgie. You're entitled to something for having kept faith. I tell you what I'll do--I'll let you in on what I'm doing here."

  All at once, the little muscles at the back of my neck began to tense up.

  He would do what? "Let me in" on something? It was an unpleasantly familiar phrase. I had used it myself all too often.

  "To begin with," said the Greek, focusing attentively on me, "you wonder, perhaps, what I was doing when you came in."

  "I do," I said.

  He hesitated. "Certain--particles, which are of importance to my research, have a tendency to go free. I can keep them under a measure of control only by means of electrostatic forces, generated in this." He waved the thing that looked like a toaster on a stick. "And as for what they do--well, watch."

  * * * * *

  El Greco began to putter with gleamy, glassy gadgets on one of the tables and I watched him with, I admit, a certain amount of suspicion.

  "What are you doing, Greek?" I asked pretty bluntly.

  He looked up. Surprisingly, I saw that the suspicion was mutual; he frowned and hesitated. Then he shook his head.

  "No," he said. "For a minute I--but I can trust you, can't I? The man who kept my secret for ten long years."

  "Of course," I said.

  "All right." He poured water out of a beaker into a U-shaped tube, open at both ends. "Watch," he said. "Remember any of your college physics?"

  "The way things go, I haven't had much time to keep up with--"

  "All the better, all the better," he said. "Then you won't be able to steal anything."

  I caught my breath. "Now listen--"

  "No offense, Virgie," he said earnestly. "But this is a billion dollars and--No matter. When it comes right down to cases, you could know as much as all those fool professors of ours put together and it still wouldn't help you steal a thing."

  He bobbed his head, smiled absently and went back to his gleamy gadgets. I tell you, I steamed. That settled it, as far as I was concerned. There was simply no excuse for such unjustified insults to my character. I certainly had no intention of attempting to take any unfair advantage, but if he was going to act that way....

  He was asking for it. Actually and literally asking for it.

  He rapped sharply on the U-tube with a glass stirring rod, seeking my attention.

  "I'm watching," I told him, very amiable now that he'd made up my mind for me.

  "Good. Now," he said, "you know what I do here in the plant?"

  "Why--you make fertilizer. It says so on the sign."

  "Ha! No," he said. "That is a blind. What I do is, I separate optical isomers."

  "That's very nice," I said warmly. "I'm glad to hear it, Greek."

  "Shut up," he retorted unexpectedly. "You don't have the foggiest notion of what an optical isomer is and you know it. But try and think. This isn't physics; it's organic chemistry. There are compounds that exist in two forms--apparently identical in all respects, except that one is the mirror image of the other. Like right-hand and left-hand gloves; one is the other, turned backwards. You understand so far?"

  "Of course," I said.

  * * * * *

  He looked at me thoughtfully, then shrugged. "No matter. They're called d- and l-isomers--d for dextro, l for levo; right and left, you see. And although they're identical except for being mirror-reversed, it so happens that sometimes one isomer is worth much more than the other."

  "I see that," I said.

  "I thought you would. Well, they can be separated--but it's expensive. Not my way, though. My way is quick and simple. I use demons."

  "Oh, now, Greek. Really."

  He said in a weary tone, "Don't talk, Virgie. Just listen. It won't tire you so much. But bear in mind that this is simply the most trifling application of my discovery. I could use it for separating U-235 from U-238 just as easily. In fact, I already--" He stopped in mid-sentence, cocked his head, looked at me and backtracked. "Never mind that. But you know what a Maxwell demon is?"

  "No."

  "Good for you, Virgie. Good for you!" he applauded. "I knew I'd get the truth out of you if I waited long enough." Another ambiguous remark, I thought to myself. "But you surely know the second law of thermodynamics."

  "Surely."

  "I thought you'd say that," he said gravely. "So then you know that if you put an ice cube in a glass of warm water, for instance, the ice melts, the water cools, and you get a glass with no ice but with all the water lowered in temperature. Right? And it's a one-way process. That is, you can't start with a glass of cool water and, hocus-pocus, get it to separate into warm water and ice cube, right?"

  "Naturally," I said, "for heaven's sake. I mean that's silly."

  "Very silly," he agreed. "You know it yourself, eh? So watch."

  He didn't say hocus-pocus. But he did adjust something on one of his gadgets.

  There was a faint whine and a gurgling, spluttering sound, like fat sparks climbing between spreading electrodes in a Frankenstein movie.

  The water began to steam faintly.

  But only at one end! That end was steam; the other was--was--

  It was ice. A thin skin formed rapidly, grew thicker; the other open end of the U-tube began to bubble violently. Ice at one end, steam at the other.

  Silly?

  But I was seeing it!

  I must say, however, that at the time I didn't really know that that was all I saw.

  * * * * *

  The reason for this is that Pudge Detweiler came groaning down the steps to the laboratory just then.

  "Ah, Greek," he wheezed. "Ah, Virgie. I wanted to talk to you before I left." He came into the room and, panting, eased himself into a chair, a tired hippopotamus with a hangover.

  "What did you want to talk to me about?" Greco demanded.

  "You?" Pudge's glance wandered around the room; it was a look of amused distaste, the look of a grown man observing the smudgy mud play of children. "Oh, not you, Greek. I wanted to talk to Virgie. That sales territory you mentioned, Virgie. I've been thinking. I don't know if you're aware of it, but when my father passed away last winter, he left me--well, with certain responsibilities. And it occurred to me that you might be willing to let me invest some of the--"

  I didn't even let him finish. I had him out of there so fast, we didn't even have a chance to say good-by to Greco. And all that stuff about demons and hot-and-cold water and so on, it all went out of my head as though it had never been. Old Pudge Detweiler! How was I to know that his father had left him thirty thousand dollars
in one attractive lump of cash!

  II

  Well, there were business reverses. Due to the reverses, I was forced to miss the next few reunions. But I had a lot of time to think and study, in between times at the farm and the shop where we stamped out license plates for the state.

  When I got out, I began looking for El Greco.

  I spent six months at it, and I didn't have any luck at all. El Greco had moved his laboratory and left no forwarding address.

  But I wanted to find him. I wanted it so badly, I could taste it, because I had begun to have some idea of what he was talking about, and so I kept on looking.

  I never did find him, though. He found me.

  He came walking in on me in a shabby little hotel room, and I hardly recognized him, he looked so prosperous and healthy.

  "You're looking just great, Greek," I said enthusiastically, seeing it was true. The years hadn't added a pound or a wrinkle--just the reverse, in fact.

  "You're not looking so bad yourself," he said, and gazed at me sharply. "Especially for a man not long out of prison."

  "Oh." I cleared my throat. "You know about that."

  "I heard that Pudge Detweiler prosecuted."

  "I see." I got up and began uncluttering a chair. "Well," I said, "it's certainly good to--How did you find me?"

  "Detectives. Money buys a lot of help. I've got a lot of money."

  "Oh." I cleared my throat again.

  Greco looked at me, nodding thoughtfully to himself. There was one good thing; maybe he knew about my trouble with Pudge, but he also had gone out of his way to find me. So he wanted something out of me.

  He said suddenly, "Virgie, you were a damned fool."

  "I was," I admitted honestly. "Worse than you know. But I am no longer. Greek, old boy, all this stuff you told me about those demons got me interested. I had plenty of time for reading in prison. You won't find me as ignorant as I was the last time we talked."

  He laughed sourly. "That's a hot one. Four years of college leave you as ignorant as the day you went in, but a couple years of jail make you an educated man."

  "Also a reformed one."

  He said mildly, "Not too reformed, I hope."

  "Crime doesn't pay--except when it's within the law. That's the chief thing I learned."

  "Even then it doesn't pay," he said moodily. "Except in money, of course. But what's the use of money?"

  * * * * *

  There wasn't anything to say to that. I said, probing delicately, "I figured you were loaded. If you can use your demons to separate U-235 from U-238, you can use them for separating gold from sea water. You can use them for damn near anything."

  "Damn near," he concurred. "Virgie, you may be of some help to me. Obviously you've been reading up on Maxwell."

  "Obviously."

  It was the simple truth. I had got a lot of use out of the prison library--even to the point of learning all there was to learn about Clerk Maxwell, one of the greatest of physicists, and his little demons. I had rehearsed it thoroughly for El Greco.

  "Suppose," I said, "that you had a little compartment inside a pipe of flowing gas or liquid. That's what Maxwell said. Suppose the compartment had a little door that allowed molecules to enter or leave. You station a demon--that's what Maxie called them himself--at the door. The demon sees a hot molecule coming, he opens the door. He sees a cold one, he closes it. By and by, just like that, all the hot molecules are on one side of the door, all the cold ones--the slow ones, that is--on the other. Steam on one side, ice on the other, that's what it comes down to."

  "That was what you saw with your own eyes," Theobald Greco reminded me.

  "I admit it," I said. "And I admit I didn't understand. But I do now."

  I understood plenty. Separate isotopes--separate elements, for that matter. Let your demon open the door to platinum, close it to lead. He could make you rich in no time.

  He had, in fact, done just that for Greco.

  * * * * *

  Greco said, "Here. First installment." He pulled something out of his pocket and handed it to me. It was metallic--about the size of a penny slot-machine bar of chocolate, if you remember back that far. It gleamed and it glittered. And it was ruddy yellow in color.

  "What's that?" I asked.

  "Gold," he said. "Keep it, Virgie. It came out of sea water, like you said. Call it the down payment on your salary."

  I hefted it. I bit it. I said, "By the way, speaking of salary...."

  "Whatever you like," he said wearily. "A million dollars a year? Why not?"

  "Why not?" I echoed, a little dazed.

  And then I just sat there listening, while he talked. What else was there to do? I won't even say that I was listening, at least not with the very fullest of attention, because that thought of a million dollars a year kept coming between me and his words. But I got the picture. The possibilities were endless. And how well I knew it!

  Gold from the sea, sure. But energy--free energy--it was there for the taking. From the molecules of the air, for instance. Refrigerators could be cooled, boilers could get up steam, homes could be heated, forges could be fired--and all without fuel. Planes could fly through the air without a drop of gasoline in their tanks. Anything.

  A million dollars a year....

  And it was only the beginning.

  I came to. "What?"

  He was looking at me. He repeated patiently, "The police are looking for me."

  I stared. "You?"

  "Did you hear about Grand Rapids?"

  I thought. "Oh--Wait. A fire. A big one. And that was you?"

  "Not me. My demons. Maxwell demons--or Greco demons, they should be called. He talked about them; I use them. When they're not using me. This time, they burned down half the city."

  "I remember now," I said. The papers had been full of it.

  "They got loose," he said grimly. "But that's not the worst. You'll have to earn your million a year, Virgie."

  "What do you mean, they got loose?"

  He shrugged. "Controls aren't perfect. Sometimes the demons escape. I can't help it."

  "How do you control them in the first place?"

  He sighed. "It isn't really what you would call controls," he said. "It's just the best I can do to keep them from spreading."

  "But--you said sometimes you separate metals, sometimes you get energy. How do the demons know which you want them to do, if you say you can't control them?"

  "How do you make an apple tree understand whether you want it to grow Baldwins or Macintoshes?"

  * * * * *

  I gawked at him. "Why--but you don't, Greek! I mean it's either one or the other!"

  "Just so with demons! You're not so stupid after all, are you? It's like improving the breed of dogs. You take a common ancestral mutt, and generations later you can develop an Airedale, a dachshund or a Spitz. How? By selection. My demon entities grow, they split, the new entities adapt themselves to new conditions. There's a process of evolution. I help it along, that's all."

  He took the little slab of gold from me, brooding.

  Abruptly he hurled it at the wall. "Gold!" he cried wildly. "But who wants it? I need help, Virgie! If gold will buy it from you, I'll pay! But I'm desperate. You'd be desperate too, with nothing ahead but a sordid, demeaning death from young age and a--"

  I interrupted him. "What's that?"

  It was a nearby raucous hooting, loud and mournful.

  Greco stopped in mid-sentence, listening like a hunted creature. "My room," he whispered. "All my equipment--on the floor above--"

  I stepped back, a little worried. He was a strange man, skinny and tall and wild-eyed. I was glad he was so thin; if he'd been built solidly in proportion to his height, just then he would have worried me, with those staring, frightened eyes and that crazy way of talking. But I didn't have time to worry, in any case. Footsteps were thundering in the halls. Distant voices shouted to each other.

  The hoot came again.

  "The fire
whistle!" Greco bayed. "The hotel's on fire!"

  He leaped out of my room into the corridor.

  I followed. There was a smell of burning--not autumn leaves or paper; it was a chemical-burning smell, a leather-burning smell, a henyard-on-fire smell. It reeked of an assortment of things, gunpowder and charred feathers, the choking soot of burning oil, the crisp tang of a wood fire. It was, I thought for a second, perhaps the typical smell of a hotel on fire, but in that I was wrong.

  "Demons!" yelled Greco, and a bellhop, hurrying by, paused to look at us queerly. Greco sped for the stairs and up them.

  I followed.

  It was Greco's room that was ablaze--he made that clear, trying to get into it. But he couldn't. Black smoke billowed out of it, and orange flame. The night manager's water bucket was going to make no headway against that.

  I retreated. But Greco plunged ahead, his face white and scary.

  I stopped at the head of the stairs. The flames drove Greco off, but he tried again. They drove him off again, and this time for good.

  He stumbled toward me. "Out! It's hopeless!" He turned, stared blindly at the hotel employees with their chain of buckets. "You! What do you think you're doing? That's--" He stopped, wetting his lips. "That's a gasoline fire," he lied, "and there's dynamite in my luggage. Clear the hotel, you hear me?"

  It was, as I say, a lie. But it got the hotel cleared out.

  And then--

  It might as well have been gasoline and dynamite. There was a purplish flash and a muttering boom, and the whole roof of the four-story building lifted off.

  I caught his arm.

  "Let's get out of here," I said.

  He looked at me blindly. I'd swear he didn't know me. His eyes were tortured.

  "Too late!" he croaked. "Too late! They're free again!"

  III

  So I went to work for Theobald Greco--in his laboratory in Southern California, where we replaced some of the things that had been destroyed.

  And one morning I woke up and found my hair was white.

  I cried, "Greek!"

  Minnie came running in. I don't believe I told you about Minnie. She was Greco's idea of the perfect laboratory assistant--stupid, old, worthless to the world and without visible kin. She came in and stared and set up a cackling that would wake the dead.