Bill snapped his fingers. This was it. This was his chance. He jammed his pipe in his mouth, hastily pulled a coat on his shoulders, crammed the priceless paper into a pocket, and started out of the attic. Then he paused and looked around. He’d forgotten Snulbug. Shouldn’t there be some sort of formal discharge?
The dismal demon was nowhere in sight. Not in the pentacle or out of it. Not a sign or a trace of him. Bill frowned. This was definitely not methodical. He struck a match and held it over the bowl of his pipe.
A warm sigh of pleasure came from inside the corncob.
Bill took the pipe from his mouth and stared at it. “So that’s where you are!” he said musingly.
“I told you salamandry was a dominant,” said Snulbug, peering out of the bowl. “I want to go along. I want to see just what kind of a fool you make of yourself.” He withdrew his head into the glowing tobacco, muttering about newspapers, spells, and, with a wealth of unhappy scorn, people.
The crusading mayor of Granton was a national figure of splendid proportions. Without hysteria, red baiting, or strikebreaking, he had launched a quietly purposeful and well-directed program against subversive elements which had rapidly converted Granton into the safest and most American city in the country. He was also a persistent advocate of national, state, and municipal subsidy of the arts and sciences—the ideal man to wangle an endowment for the Hitchens Laboratory, if he were not so surrounded by overly skeptical assistants that Bill had never been able to lay the program before him.
This would do it. Rescue him from assassination in the very nick of time—in itself an act worth calling up demons to perform—and then when he asks, “And how, Mr. Hitchens, can I possibly repay you?” come forth with the whole great plan of research. It couldn’t miss.
No sound came from the pipe bowl, but Bill clearly heard the words, “Couldn’t it just?’ ringing in his mind.
He braked his car to a fast stop in the red zone before the city hall, jumped out without even slamming the door, and dashed up the marble steps so rapidly, so purposefully, that pure momentum carried him up three flights and through four suites of offices before anybody had the courage to stop him and say, “What goes?”
The man with the courage was a huge bull-necked plainclothesman, whose bulk made Bill feel relatively about the size of Snulbug. “All right, there,” this hulk rumbled. “All right. Where’s the fire?”
“In an assassin’s gun,” said Bill. “And it had better stay there.”
Bullneck had not expected a literal answer. He hesitated long enough for Bill to push him to the door marked MAYOR—PRIVATE. But though the husky’s brain might move slowly, his muscles made up for the lag. Just as Bill started to shove the door open, a five-pronged mound of flesh lit on his neck and jerked.
Bill crawled from under a desk, ducked Bullneck’s left, reached the door, executed a second backward flip, climbed down from the table, ducked a right, reached the door, sailed back in reverse, and lowered himself nimbly from the chandelier.
Bullneck took up a stand in front of the door, spread his legs in ready balance, and drew a service automatic from its holster. “You ain’t going in there,” he said, to make the situation perfectly clear.
Bill spat out a tooth, wiped the blood from his eyes, picked up the shattered remains of his pipe, and said, “Look. It’s now 12:30. At 12:32 a redheaded hunchback is going to come out on that balcony across the street and aim through the open window into the mayor’s office. At 12:33 His Honor is going to be slumped over his desk, dead. Unless you help me get him out of range.”
“Yeah?” said Bullneck. “And who says so?”
“It says so here. Look. In the paper.”
Bullneck guffawed. “How can a paper say what ain’t even happened yet? You’re nuts, brother, if you ain’t something worse. Now go on. Scram. Go peddle your paper.”
Bill’s glance darted out the window. There was the balcony facing the mayor’s office. And there coming out on it— “Look!” he cried. “If you won’t believe me, look out the window. See on that balcony? The redheaded hunchback? Just like I told you. Quick!”
Bullneck stared despite himself. He saw the hunchback peer across into the office. He saw the sudden glint of metal in the hunchback’s hand. “Brother,” he said to Bill, “I’ll tend to you later.”
The hunchback had his rifle halfway to his shoulder when Bullneck’s automatic spat and Bill braked his car in the red zone, jumped out, and dashed through four suites of offices before anybody had the courage to stop him.
The man with the courage was a huge bull-necked plainclothesman, who rumbled, “Where’s the fire?”
“In an assassin’s gun,” said Bill, and took advantage of Bullneck’s confusion to reach the door marked MAYOR—PRIVATE. But just as he started to push it open, a vast hand lit on his neck and jerked.
As Bill descended from the chandelier after his third try, Bullneck took up a stand in front of the door, with straddled legs and drawn gun. “You ain’t going in,” he said clarifyingly.
Bill spat out a tooth and outlined the situation. “—12:33,” he ended. “His Honor is going to be slumped over the desk dead. Unless you help me get him out of range. See? It says so here. In the paper.”
“How can it? Gawn. Go peddle your paper.”
Bill’s glance darted to the balcony. “Look, if you won’t believe me. See the redheaded hunchback? Just like I told you. Quick! We’ve got to—”
Bullneck stared. He saw the sudden glint of metal in the hunchback’s hand. “Brother,” he said, “I’ll tend to you later.”
The hunchback had his rifle halfway to his shoulder when Bullneck’s automatic spat and Bill braked his car in the red zone, jumped out, and dashed through four suites before anybody stopped him.
The man who did was a bull-necked plainclothesman, who rumbled—
“Don’t you think,” said Snulbug, “you’ve had about enough of this?”
Bill agreed mentally, and there he was sitting in his roadster in front of the city hall. His clothes were unrumpled, his eyes were bloodless, his teeth were all there, and his corncob was still intact.
“And just what,” he demanded of his pipe bowl, “has been going on?”
Snulbug popped his snaky head out. “Light this again, will you? It’s getting cold. Thanks.”
“What happened?” Bill insisted.
“People!” Snulbug moaned. “No sense. Don’t you see? So long as the newspaper was in the future, it was only a possibility. If you’d had, say, a hunch that the mayor was in danger, maybe you could have saved him. But when I brought it into now, it became a fact. You can’t possibly make it un-true.”
“But how about man’s free will? Can’t I do whatever I want to do?”
“Sure. It was your precious free will that brought the paper into now. You can’t undo your own will. And, anyway, your will’s still free. You’re free to go getting thrown around chandeliers as often as you want. You probably like it. You can do anything up to the point where it would change what’s in that paper. Then you have to start in again and again and again until you make up your mind to be sensible.”
“But that—” Bill fumbled for words, “that’s just as bad as … as fate or predestination. If my soul wills to—”
“Newspapers aren’t enough. Time theory isn’t enough. So I should tell him about his soul!
People—” and Snulbug withdrew into the bowl.
Bill looked up at the city hall regretfully and shrugged his resignation. Then he folded his paper to the sports page and studied it carefully.
Snulbug thrust his head out again as they stopped in the many-acred parking lot. “Where is it this time?” he wanted to know. “Not that it matters.”
“The racetrack.”
“Oh—” Snulbug groaned, “I might have known it. You’re all alike. No sense in the whole caboodle. I suppose you found a long shot?”
“Darned tooting I did. Alhazred at twenty to one in the fourth. I’ve got $500, the
only money I’ve got left on earth. Plunk on Alhazred’s nose it goes, and there’s our $10,000.”
Snulbug grunted. “I hear his lousy spell, I watch him get caught on a merry-go-round, it isn’t enough, I should see him lay a bet on a long shot.”
“But there isn’t a loophole in this. I’m not interfering with the future; I’m just taking advantage of it. Alhazred’ll win this race whether I bet on him or not. Five pretty hundred-dollar parimutuel tickets, and behold: The Hitchens Laboratory!” Bill jumped spryly out of his car and strutted along joyously. Suddenly he paused and addressed his pipe: “Hey! Why do I feel so good?”
Snulbug sighed dismally. “Why should anybody?”
“No, but I mean: I took a hell of a shellacking from that plug-ugly in the office. And I haven’t got a pain or an ache.” “Of course not. It never happened.”
“But I felt it then.”
“Sure. In a future that never was. You changed your mind, didn’t you? You decided not to go up there?”
“O.K., but that was after I’d already been beaten up.” “Uh-uh,” said Snublug firmly. “It was before you hadn’t been.” And he withdrew again into the pipe.
There was a band somewhere in the distance and the raucous burble of an announcer’s voice.
Crowds clustered around the $2 windows, and the $5 weren’t doing bad business. But the $100
window, where the five beautiful paste-boards lived that were to create an embolism laboratory, was almost deserted.
Bill buttonholed a stranger with a purple nose. “What’s the next race?”
“Second, Mac.”
Swell, Bill thought. Lots of time. And from now on—He hastened to the $100 window and shoved across the five bills that he had drawn from the bank that morning. “Alhazred, on the nose,” he said.
The clerk frowned with surprise, but took the money and turned to get the tickets.
Bill buttonholed a stranger with a purple nose. “What’s the next race?”
“Second, Mac.”
Swell, Bill thought. And then he yelled, “Hey!”
A stranger with a purple nose paused and said, “‘Smatter, Mac?”
“Nothing,” Bill groaned. “Just everything.”
The stranger hesitated. “Ain’t I seen you someplace be-fore?”
“No,” said Bill hurriedly. “You were going to, but you haven’t. I changed my mind.”
The stranger walked away shaking his head and muttering how the ponies could get a guy.
Not till Bill was back in his roadster did he take the corncob from his mouth and glare at it. “All right!” he barked. “What was wrong this time? Why did I get on a merry-go-round again? I didn’t try to change the future!”
Snulbug popped his head out and yawned a tuskful yawn. “I warn him, I explain it, I warn him again, now he wants I should explain it all over.”
“But what did I do?”
“What did he do? You changed the odds, you dope. That much folding money on a long shot at a parimutuel track, and the odds change. It wouldn’t have paid off at twenty to one, the way it said in the paper.”
“Nuts,” Bill muttered. “And I suppose that applies to anything? If I study the stock market in this paper and try to invest my $500 according to tomorrow’s market—”
“Same thing. The quotations wouldn’t be quite the same if you started in playing. I warned you.
You’re stuck,” said Snulbug. “You’re stymied. It’s no use.” He sounded almost cheerful.
“Isn’t it?” Bill mused. “Now look, Snulbug. Me, I’m a great believer in Man. This universe doesn’t hold a problem that Man can’t eventually solve. And I’m no dumber than the average.”
“That’s saying a lot, that is,” Snulbug sneered. “People—”
“I’ve got a responsibility now. It’s more than just my $10,000. I’ve got to redeem the honor of Man. You say this is the insoluble problem. I say there is no insoluble problem.”
“I say you talk a lot.”
Bill’s mind was racing furiously. How can a man take advantage of the future without in any smallest way altering that future? There must be an answer somewhere, and a man who devised the Hitchens Embolus Diagnosis could certainly crack a little nut like this. Man cannot refuse a challenge.
Unthinking, he reached for his tobacco pouch and tapped out his pipe on the sole of his foot.
There was a microscopic thud as Snulbug crashed onto the floor of the car.
Bill looked down half-smiling. The tiny demon’s tail was lashing madly, and every separate snake stood on end. “This is too much!” Snulbug screamed. “Dumb gags aren’t enough, insults aren’t enough, I should get thrown around like a damned soul. This is the last straw. Give me my dismissal!”
Bill snapped his fingers gleefully. “Dismissal!” he cried. “I’ve got it, Snully. We’re all set.”
Snulbug looked up puzzled and slowly let his snakes droop more amicably. “It won’t work,” he said, with an omnisciently sad shake of his serpentine head.
It was the dashing act again that carried Bill through the Choatsby Laboratories, where he had been employed so recently, and on up to the very anteroom of old R. C.’s office.
But where you can do battle with a bull-necked guard, there is not a thing you can oppose against the brisk competence of a young lady who says, “I shall find out if Mr. Choatsby will see you.”
There was nothing to do but wait.
“And what’s the brilliant idea this time?” Snulbug obviously feared the worst.
“R. C.’s nuts,” said Bill. “He’s an astrologer and a pyramidologist and a British Israelite—American Branch Re-formed—and Heaven knows what else. He … why, he’ll even believe in you.”
“That’s more than I do,” said Snulbug. “It’s a waste of energy.”
“He’ll buy this paper. He’ll pay anything for it. There’s nothing he loves more than futzing around with the occult. He’ll never be able to resist a good solid slice of the future, with illusions of a fortune thrown in.”
“You better hurry, then.”
“Why such a rush? It’s only 2:30 now. Lots of time. And while the girl’s gone there’s nothing for us to do but cool our heels.”
“You might at least,” said Snulbug, “warm the heel of your pipe.”
The girl returned at last. “Mr. Choatsby will see you.”
Reuben Choatsby overflowed the outsize chair behind his desk. His little face, like a baby’s head balanced on a giant suet pudding, beamed as Bill entered. “Changed your mind, eh?” His words came in sudden soft blobs, like the abrupt glugs of pouring syrup. “Good. Need you in K-39. Lab’s not the same since you left.”
Bill groped for exactly the right words. “That’s not it, R.C. I’m on my own now and I’m doing all right.”
The baby face soured. “Damned cheek. Competitor of mine, eh? What you want now? Waste my time?”
“Not at all.” With a pretty shaky assumption of confidence, Bill perched on the edge of the desk.
“R. C.,” he said, slowly and impressively, “what would you give for a glimpse into the future?”
Mr. Choatsby plugged vigorously. “Ribbing me? Get out of here! Have you thrown out—Hold on! You’re the one—Used to read queer books. Had a grimoire here once.” The baby face grew earnest. “What d’you mean?”
“Just what I said, R. C. What would you give for a glimpse into the future?”
Mr. Choatsby hesitated. “How? Time travel? Pyramid? You figured out the King’s Chamber?”
“Much simpler than that. I have here”—he took it out of his pocket and folded it so that only the name and the date line were visible—”tomorrow’s newspaper.”
Mr. Choatsby grabbed. “Let me see.”
“Uh-uh. Naughty. You’ll see after we discuss terms. But there it is.”
“Trick. Had some printer fake it. Don’t believe it.”
“All right. I never expected you, R. C., to descend to such unenlightened skeptici
sm. But if that’s all the faith you have—” Bill stuffed the paper back in his pocket and started for the door.
“Wait!” Mr. Choatsby lowered his voice. “How’d you do it? Sell your soul?”
“That wasn’t necessary.”
“How? Spells? Cantrips? Incantations? Prove it to me. Show me it’s real. Then we’ll talk terms.”
Bill walked casually to the desk and emptied his pipe into the ash tray.
“I’m underdeveloped. I run errands. I’m named Snulbug. It isn’t enough—now I should be a testimonial!”
Mr. Choatsby stared rapt at the furious little demon raging in his ash tray. He watched reverently as Bill held out the pipe for its inmate, filled it with tobacco, and lit it. He listened awestruck as Snulbug moaned with delight at the flame.
“No more questions,” he said. “What terms?”
“Fifteen thousand dollars.” Bill was ready for bargaining.
“Don’t put it too high,” Snulbug warned. “You better hurry.”
But Mr. Choatsby had pulled out his checkbook and was scribbling hastily. He blotted the check and handed it over. “It’s a deal.” He grabbed up the paper. “You’re a fool, young man. Fifteen thousand! Hmf!” He had it open already at the financial page. “With what I make on the market tomorrow, never notice $15,000. Pennies.”
“Hurry up,” Snulbug urged.
“Good-bye, sir,” Bill began politely, “and thank you for—” But Reuben Choatsby wasn’t even listening.
“What’s all this hurry?” Bill demanded as he reached the elevator.
“People!” Snulbug sighed. “Never you mind what’s the hurry. You get to your bank and deposit that check.”
So Bill, with Snulbug’s incessant prodding, made a dash to the bank worthy of his descents on the city hall and on the Choatsby Laboratories. He just made it, by stopwatch fractions of a second. The door was already closing as he shoved his way through at three o’clock sharp.
He made his deposit, watched the teller’s eyes bug out at the size of the check, and delayed long enough to enjoy the incomparable thrill of changing the account from William Hitchens to The Hitchens Research Laboratory.
Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves Page 33
