by Drew Ford
Rick halted, uncomprehending. Walter Everett was slumped forward, newspaper in one hand, slippers on his feet; his pipe was still smoking in the deep ashtray on the arm of his chair. Mrs. Everett sat with a lapful of sewing, her face grim and stern, but strangely vague. An unformed face, as if the material were melting and running together. Jean sat huddled in a shapeless heap, a ball of clay wadded up, more formless each moment.
Abruptly Jean collapsed. Her arms fell loose beside her. Her head sagged. Her body, her arms and legs filled out. Her features altered rapidly. Her clothing changed. Colors flowed in her hair, her eyes, her skin. The waxen pallor was gone.
Pressing her finger to her lips she gazed up at Rick mutely. She blinked and her eyes focused. “Oh,” she gasped. Her lips moved awkwardly; the voice was faint and uneven, like a poor sound track. She struggled up jerkily, with uncoordinated movements that propelled her stiffly to her feet and toward him—one awkward step at a time—like a wire dummy.
“Rick, I cut myself,” she said. “On a nail or something.”
What had been Mrs. Everett stirred. Shapeless and vague, it made dull sounds and flopped grotesquely. Gradually it hardened and shaped itself. “My finger,” its voice gasped feebly. Like mirror echoes dimming off into darkness, the third figure in the easy chair took up the words. Soon, they were all of them repeating the phrase, four figures, their lips moving in unison.
“My finger. I cut myself, Rick.”
Parrot reflections, receding mimicries of words and movement. And the settling shapes were familiar in every detail. Again and again, repeated around him, twice on the couch, in the easy chair, close beside him—so close he could hear her breathe and see her trembling lips.
“What is it?” the Silvia beside him asked.
On the couch one Sylvia resumed its sewing—she was sewing methodically, absorbed in her work. In the deep chair another took up its newspaper, its pipe and continued reading. One huddled, nervous and afraid. The one beside him followed as he retreated to the door. She was panting with uncertainty, her gray eyes wide, her nostrils flaring.
“Rick . . .”
He pulled the door open and made his way out onto the dark porch. Machinelike, he felt his way down the steps, through the pools of night collected everywhere, toward the driveway. In the yellow square of light behind him, Silvia was outlined, peering unhappily after him. And behind her, the other figures, identical, pure repetitions, nodding over their tasks.
He found his coupé and pulled out onto the road.
Gloomy trees and houses flashed past. He wondered how far it would go. Lapping waves spreading out—a widening circle as the imbalance spread.
He turned onto the main highway; there were soon more cars around him. He tried to see into them, but they moved too swiftly. The car ahead was a red Plymouth. A heavy-set man in a blue business suit was driving, laughing merrily with the woman beside him. He pulled his own coupé up close behind the Plymouth and followed it. The man flashed gold teeth, grinned, waved his plump hands. The girl was dark-haired, pretty. She smiled at the man, adjusted her white gloves, smoothed down her hair, then rolled up the window on her side.
He lost the Plymouth. A heavy diesel truck cut in between them. Desperately he swerved around the truck and nosed in beyond the swift-moving red sedan. Presently it passed him and, for a moment, the two occupants were clearly framed. The girl resembled Silvia. The same delicate line of her small chin—the same deep lips, parting slightly when she smiled—the same slender arms and hands. It was Silvia. The Plymouth turned off and there was no other car ahead of him.
He drove for hours through the heavy night darkness. The gas gauge dropped lower and lower. Ahead of him dismal rolling countryside spread out, blank fields between towns and unwinking stars suspended in the bleak sky. Once, a cluster of red and yellow lights gleamed. An intersection—filling stations and a big neon sign. He drove on past it.
At a single-pump stand, he pulled the car off the highway, onto the oil-soaked gravel. He climbed out, his shoes crunching the stones underfoot, as he grabbed the gas hose and unscrewed the cap of his car’s tank. He had the tank almost full when the door of the drab station building opened and a slim woman in white overalls and navy shirt, with a little cap lost in her brown curls, stepped out.
“Good evening, Rick,” she said quietly.
He put back the gas hose. Then he was driving out onto the highway. Had he screwed the cap back on again? He didn’t remember. He gained speed. He had gone over a hundred miles. He was nearing the state line.
At a little roadside café, warm, yellow light glowed in the chill gloom of early morning. He slowed the car down and parked at the edge of the highway in the deserted parking lot. Bleary-eyed he pushed the door open and entered.
Hot, thick smells of cooking ham and black coffee surrounded him, the comfortable sight of people eating. A juke box blared in the corner. He threw himself onto a stool and hunched over, his head in his hands. A thin farmer next to him glanced at him curiously and then returned to his newspaper. Two hard-faced women across from him gazed at him momentarily. A handsome youth in denim jacket and jeans was eating red beans and rice, washing it down with steaming coffee from a heavy mug.
“What’ll it be?” the pert blonde waitress asked, a pencil behind her ear, her hair tied back in a tight bun. “Looks like you’ve got some hangover, mister.”
He ordered coffee and vegetable soup. Soon he was eating, his hands working automatically. He found himself devouring a ham and cheese sandwich; had he ordered it? The juke box blared and people came and went. There was a little town sprawled beside the road, set back in some gradual hills. Gray sunlight, cold and sterile, filtered down as morning came. He ate hot apple pie and sat wiping dully at his mouth with a paper napkin.
The café was silent. Outside nothing stirred. An uneasy calm hung over everything. The juke box had ceased. None of the people at the counter stirred or spoke.
An occasional truck roared past, damp and lumbering, windows rolled up tight.
When he looked up, Silvia was standing in front of him. Her arms were folded and she gazed vacantly past him. A bright yellow pencil was behind her ear. Her brown hair was tied back in a hard bun. At the counter others were sitting, other Silvias, dishes in front of them, half-dozing or eating, some of them reading. Each the same as the next, except for their clothing.
He made his way back to his parked car. In half an hour he had crossed the state line. Cold, bright sunlight sparkled off dew-moist roofs and sidewalks as he sped through tiny unfamiliar towns.
Along the shiny morning streets he saw them moving—early risers, on their way to work. In twos and threes they walked, their heels echoing in the sharp silence. At bus stops he saw groups of them collected together. In the houses, rising from their beds, eating breakfast, bathing, dressing, were more of them—hundreds of them, legions without number. A town of them preparing for the day, resuming their regular tasks, as the circle widened and spread.
He left the town behind. The car slowed under him as his foot slid heavily from the gas pedal. Two of them walked across a level field together. They carried books—children on their way to school. Repetitions, unvarying and identical. A dog circled excitedly after them, unconcerned, his joy untainted.
He drove on. Ahead a city loomed, its stern columns of office buildings sharply outlined against the sky. The streets swarmed with noise and activity as he passed through the main business section. Somewhere, near the center of the city, he overtook the expanding periphery of the circle and emerged beyond. Diversity took the place of the endless figures of Silvia. Gray eyes and brown hair gave way to countless varieties of men and women, children and adults, of all ages and appearances. He increased his speed and raced out on the far side, onto the wide four-lane highway.
He finally slowed down. He was exhausted. He had driven for hours; his body was shaking with fatigue.
Ahead of him a carrot-haired youth was cheerfully thumbing a r
ide, a thin bean-pole in brown slacks and light camel’s-hair sweater. Rick pulled to a halt and opened the front door. “Hop in,” he said.
“Thanks, buddy.” The youth hurried to the car and climbed in as Rick gathered speed. He slammed the door and settled gratefully back against the seat. “It was getting hot, standing there.”
“How far are you going?” Rick demanded.
“All the way to Chicago.” The youth grinned shyly. “Of course, I don’t expect you to drive me that far. Anything at all is appreciated.” He eyed Rick curiously. “Which way you going?”
“Anywhere,” Rick said. “I’ll drive you to Chicago.”
“It’s two hundred miles!”
“Fine,” Rick said. He steered over into the left lane and gained speed. “If you want to go to New York, I’ll drive you there.”
“You feel all right?” The youth moved away uneasily. “I sure appreciate a lift, but . . .” He hesitated. “I mean, I don’t want to take you out of your way.”
Rick concentrated on the road ahead, his hands gripped hard around the rim of the wheel. “I’m going fast. I’m not slowing down or stopping.”
“You better be careful,” the youth warned, in a troubled voice. “I don’t want to get in an accident.”
“I’ll do the worrying.”
“But it’s dangerous. What if something happens? It’s too risky.”
“You’re wrong,” Rick muttered grimly, eyes on the road. “It’s worth the risk.”
“But if something goes wrong—” The voice broke off uncertainly and then continued, “I might be lost. It would be so easy. It’s all so unstable.” The voice trembled with worry and fear. “Rick, please . . .”
Rick whirled. “How do you know my name?”
The youth was crouched in a heap against the door. His face had a soft, molten look, as if it were losing its shape and sliding together in an unformed mass. “I want to come back,” he was saying, from within himself, “but I’m afraid. You haven’t seen it—the region between. It’s nothing but energy, Rick. He tapped it a long time ago, but nobody else knows how.”
The voice lightened, became clear and treble. The hair faded to a rich brown. Gray, frightened eyes flickered up at Rick. Hands frozen, he hunched over the wheel and forced himself not to move. Gradually he decreased speed and brought the car over into the right-hand lane.
“Are we stopping?” the shape beside him asked. It was Silvia’s voice now. Like a new insect, drying in the sun, the shape hardened and locked into firm reality. Silvia struggled up on the seat and peered out. “Where are we? We’re between towns.”
He jammed on the brakes, reached past her and threw open the door. “Get out!”
Silvia gazed at him uncomprehendingly. “What do you mean?” she faltered. “Rick, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“Get out!”
“Rick, I don’t understand.” She slid over a little. Her toes touched the pavement. “Is there something wrong with the car? I thought everything was all right.”
He gently shoved her out and slammed the door. The car leaped ahead, out into the stream of mid-morning traffic. Behind him the small, dazed figure was pulling itself up, bewildered and injured. He forced his eyes from the rear-view mirror and crushed down the gas pedal with all his weight.
The radio buzzed and clicked in vague static when he snapped it briefly on. He turned the dial and, after a time, a big network station came in. A faint, puzzled voice, a woman’s voice. For a time he couldn’t make out the words. Then he recognized it and, with a pang of panic, switched the thing off.
Her voice. Murmuring plaintively. Where was the station? Chicago. The circle had already spread that far.
He slowed down. There was no point hurrying. It had already passed him by and gone on. Kansas farms—sagging stores in little old Mississippi towns—along the bleak streets of New England manufacturing cities swarms of brown-haired gray-eyed women would be hurrying.
It would cross the ocean. Soon it would take in the whole world, Africa would be strange—kraals of white-skinned young women, all exactly alike, going about the primitive chores of hunting and fruit-gathering, mashing grain, skinning animals. Building fires and weaving cloth and carefully shaping razor-sharp knives.
In China . . . he grinned inanely. She’d look strange there, too. In the austere high-collar suit, the almost monastic robe of the young Communist cadres. Parades marching up the main streets of Peiping. Row after row of slim-legged full-breasted girls, with heavy Russian-made rifles. Carrying spades, picks, shovels. Columns of cloth-booted soldiers. Fast-moving workers with their precious tools. Reviewed by an identical figure on the elaborate stand overlooking the street, one slender arm raised, her gentle, pretty face expressionless and wooden.
He turned off the highway onto a side road. A moment later he was on his way back, driving slowly, listlessly, the way he had come.
At an intersection a traffic cop waded out through traffic to his car. He sat rigid, hands on the wheel, waiting numbly.
“Rick,” she whispered pleadingly as she reached the window. “Isn’t everything all right?”
“Sure,” he answered dully.
She reached in through the open window and touched him imploringly on the arm. Familiar fingers, red nails, the hand he knew so well. “I want to be with you so badly. Aren’t we together again? Aren’t I back?”
“Sure.”
She shook her head miserably. “I don’t understand,” she repeated. “I thought it was all right again.”
Savagely he put the car into motion and hurtled ahead. The intersection was left behind.
It was afternoon. He was exhausted, riddled with fatigue. He guided the car toward his own town automatically. Along the streets she hurried everywhere, on all sides. She was omnipresent. He came to his apartment building and parked.
The janitor greeted him in the empty hall. Rick identified him by the greasy rag clutched in one hand, the big push-broom, the bucket of wood shavings. “Please,” she implored, “tell me what it is, Rick. Please tell me.”
He pushed past her, but she caught at him desperately. “Rick, I’m back. Don’t you understand? They took me too soon and then they sent me back again. It was a mistake. I won’t ever call them again—that’s all in the past.” She followed after him, down the hall to the stairs. “I’m never going to call them again.”
He climbed the stairs. Silvia hesitated, then settled down on the bottom step in a wretched, unhappy heap, a tiny figure in thick workman’s clothing and huge cleated boots.
He unlocked his apartment door and entered.
The late afternoon sky was a deep blue beyond the windows. The roofs of nearby apartment buildings sparkled white in the sun. His body ached. He wandered clumsily into the bathroom—it seemed alien and unfamiliar, a difficult place to find. He filled the bowl with hot water, rolled up his sleeves and washed his face and hands in the swirling hot steam. Briefly, he glanced up.
It was a terrified reflection that showed out of the mirror above the bowl, a face, tear-stained and frantic. The face was difficult to catch—it seemed to waver and slide. Gray eyes, bright with terror. Trembling red mouth, pulse-fluttering throat, soft brown hair. The face gazed out pathetically—and then the girl at the bowl bent to dry herself.
She turned and moved wearily out of the bathroom into the living room.
Confused, she hesitated, then threw herself onto a chair and closed her eyes, sick with misery and fatigue.
“Rick,” she murmured pleadingly. “Try to help me. I’m back, aren’t I?” She shook her head, bewildered. “Please, Rick. I thought everything was all right.”
2 B R 0 2 B
KURT VONNEGUT, JR.
Got a problem? Just pick up the phone.
It solved them all—and all the same way!
EVERYTHING was perfectly swell.
There were no prisons, no slums, no insane asylums, no cripples, no poverty, no wars.
All diseases were c
onquered. So was old age.
Death, barring accidents, was an adventure for volunteers.
The population of the United States was stabilized at forty-million souls.
One bright morning in the Chicago Lying-in Hospital, a man named Edward K. Wehling, Jr., waited for his wife to give birth. He was the only man waiting. Not many people were born a day any more.
Wehling was fifty-six, a mere stripling in a population whose average age was one hundred and twenty-nine.
X-rays had revealed that his wife was going to have triplets. The children would be his first.
Young Wehling was hunched in his chair, his head in his hand. He was so rumpled, so still and colorless as to be virtually invisible. His camouflage was perfect, since the waiting room had a disorderly and demoralized air, too. Chairs and ashtrays had been moved away from the walls. The floor was paved with spattered dropcloths.
The room was being redecorated. It was being redecorated as a memorial to a man who had volunteered to die.
A sardonic old man, about two hundred years old, sat on a stepladder, painting a mural he did not like. Back in the days when people aged visibly, his age would have been guessed at thirty-five or so. Aging had touched him that much before the cure for aging was found.
The mural he was working on depicted a very neat garden. Men and women in white, doctors and nurses, turned the soil, planted seedlings, sprayed bugs, spread fertilizer.
Men and women in purple uniforms pulled up weeds, cut down plants that were old and sickly, raked leaves, carried refuse to trash-burners.
Never, never, never—not even in medieval Holland nor old Japan—had a garden been more formal, been better tended. Every plant had all the loam, light, water, air and nourishment it could use.
A hospital orderly came down the corridor, singing under his breath a popular song:
If you don’t like my kisses, honey,
