by John Brunner
Lilith was standing beside him quivering with impatience, and Barbie eying him with a hint of suspicion. It was time he said something, preferably affable.
“You heard how I ran into Lilith, I guess?” he said, and read from her face that she hadn’t told the whole story.
“I gather you ran into her in Oxford Street, near Cosmica,” Nick Carlton said, “and kindly let her try out your Binton.”
“And promised to let me have another go with it today,” Lilith said meaningly.
Dan chuckled. “Well, here you are!” he said, unslinging it. Continuing to Nick, he added, “I was very interested when she said she was in this—this commune, by the way. I’ve only just started digging around in the field, and I thought it would be worth my talking to some people who take it really seriously.”
“You don’t?” Nick said in surprise, and Dan saw the light of the dedicated proselytizer come into his eyes. “And yet you shelled out for a Binton? Man, either you’re rolling in money or you’re the kind of guy who never does anything by halves!”
Dan smiled. “Well, not the former, that’s for sure. But I like to think I might be the latter. So since I’d promised Lilith she could try my instrument again, I thought I might as well take the chance of talking to the people here. If it’s not an imposition.”
“Imposition hell,” Nick said. “I love talking about stardroppers.” He glanced at Lilith, who was practically trembling with her eagerness to make herself scarce with Dan’s instrument. “You’re about to bust a gut, aren’t you?” he commented. “Suppose you make it on up to your room, and I’ll entertain Mr. Cross for a bit. Barbie, can you find us a drop of wine, or beer?”
“Tea or coffee,” Barbie said firmly.
“Either will be fine,” Dan said, realizing an answer was expected of him.
“Bless you, Nick!” Lilith exclaimed, and headed for the stairs at a dead run. Checking on the first landing, she blew Dan a kiss, and vanished. A door slammed high overhead.
“Well, come into the kitchen, then,” Nick invited, and led the way. “We have to entertain visitors here, I’m afraid, because we let out all the rooms—or rather, we don’t exactly let them. But I don’t suppose I have to explain that this is a genuine commune, and we all put into it what we have to spare.”
Closing the door as he waved Dan to a chair at the end of a plain wooden dining table, Barbie gave an audible snort.
“Barbara isn’t quite as dedicated as I am,” Nick said apologetically. “I do happen to be quite well off, actually—inherited it—and I can’t think of anything better to do with what I’ve got than run this place. But when there isn’t quite enough to go around, it’s poor Barbie who has to figure out how to make ends meet. Still, she’s a miracle-worker, aren’t you, doll?”
Giving her an affectionate pat on the bottom as he passed, he dropped into a chair facing Dan. Meantime, she began to fill a kettle.
“So you wanted to talk to the people here,” Nick resumed. “I imagine I’ll probably have to do—I’m notoriously not only the most articulate but also the most loudmouthed of the members of this little group. Also I turn off reporters very efficiently. You’re not a reporter, are you?”
Dan shook his head, and repeated his standard cover story about how he’d been hooked by a friend recently, just before coming to London for a vacation.
“What really intrigued me,” he concluded, “was being told by Lilith that only one kind of stardropper suited her. I find this hard to believe. Didn’t you say you have—was it twenty-nine in this house alone?”
“Right. And all different,” Nick confirmed.
“Well, if everyone here is getting something out of—”
“Oh, we haven’t got twenty-nine people,” Nick interrupted. “If that’s what you’re thinking. We have eleven. And they all have at least one instrument apiece, and I have six. The total is due to hit thirty in a day or two; we have someone working on a big kit-built wall-outlet unit. Show it to you later if you like—I think the guy went out for a meal.”
Dan nodded. “But are all these ’droppers of different makes?” he inquired.
“Nope. Some of the manufacturers are simply in it for the money. There’s a firm called Glory Joy, for instance, out in Hong Kong. If anyone offers you one of their products, drop it and run. You can’t even say the repertoire of a Glory Joy stinks because it doesn’t have a, repertoire. So what we have is a selection of what we’ve found to be the best and most versatile instruments, and we have—oh—five or six duplicates, at least.”
“But not including a Gale and Welchman?”
“Funnily enough, no. That’s the one Lil keeps singing the praises of, but everyone in the house has tried a sample of it out, and nobody else gets what she got from it. You?”
“I find it the most attractive instrument I’ve listened to,” Dan admitted after a brief pause.
“Weird,” Nick said with an air of satisfaction. “Because for me it does nothing. Nothing at all.”
“If Lilith gets so much out of that particular model, though,” Dan suggested, “couldn’t you have—well—maybe loaned her the money for a secondhand one? She was in a terrible state when I met her yesterday, and she said it was due to being without her ’dropper.”
“No.” The tone was final. “There’s one absolutely inflexible rule about this commune of ours; regardless of what else you put into it, you must contribute at least one stardropper. Lilith is a special case because she would have brought hers except that her mother smashed it up. You haven’t met her mother, have you? No, I suppose you couldn’t have. Christ, what a nasty woman!” Nick grimaced. “So, to be perfectly candid, Lil is—ah—on probation here. We had a spare room, and we discussed it, and we decided if she was really serious about living with us she’d find the wherewithal to buy a ’dropper of her favorite make. Since we don’t have one already, it would be a valuable addition to our range.”
“How?” Dan countered. “By saving up out of her state unemployment benefits?” He knew she was entitled to those; anyone in Britain over the legal age to leave school was, though for people whose parents were prepared to go on accommodating them the weekly allowance was a pittance. “Or—”
He suddenly recollected what Lilith had said about doing anything he wanted her to do if he’d let her use the Binton ’dropper.
“Or going on the streets?” he finished savagely.
Neither Nick nor his wife was shocked by the accusation; instead, they were mildly amused. “You must be joking,” Nick said. “What makes you think there’s still money to be made on the game in this country? All the prostitutes’ old customers have died off—in London, mean. It’s different in a place like—oh—Bradford.”
“Or where you were at school,” Barbie said. The kettle had boiled, and she was making cups of instant coffee.
Nick chuckled. “True, true! My school was allegedly very enlightened and progressive, but when it came to my trying to take a girl to bed with me in the dormitory, they drew the line. Which is how I happened to become one of the few survivors of the old guard who lost their virginity to—ah—professional therapists. Barbie’s never got over that. But what the hell has this to do with what we’re supposed to be talking about?”
Accepting sugar for his coffee, Dan said, “Well, I was about to ask why one has to have this vast range of different instruments, when everyone seems to settle on a personal favorite. Only we got sidetracked.”
“Good question,” Nick nodded. “Part of the answer is that people are different, too. My favorite isn’t Barbie’s, let alone that thing Lil likes so much, which I consider grossly overrated but which nonetheless is the second or third most popular brand of all. But, contrariwise, I like the one Barbie prefers, and I’m coming around to the suspicion that when I’m through with my current phase it may offer me something my present favorite doesn’t. Are you with me?”
“One can—uh—go stale on some particular instrument?” Dan suggested.
Dan shook his head. “My friend who hooked me has a Binton, and recommended it so highly I went straight for that.”
“If I gave you, this minute, twice what you paid for it, would you sell it to me?” Nick inquired.
“Ah … I probably would,” Dan conceded.
“In that case you ought to have shopped around. Bintons are very powerful—at least I’ve heard so; I never actually tried one. Ideally, you should be so much in love with the ’dropper you’re currently using you’d rather part with your right arm. I’d let five of our six go with a smile, but the other one—oh, no!” He grinned engagingly. “Though ask me again in six months, and it may well be a different one I like. Let me bring in my own collection, and I’ll show you some of the differences between them.”
Fortunately, Dan wasn’t asked outright which were his own favorites among the assorted instruments the Carltons made him experiment with. Large and heavy or small and light, plastic or wood, metal or cloth, they seemed very much alike to him, although Nick kept making such comments as “This has a magnificent repertoire!” or “I can’t think what Barbie sees in this one, but she’d slaughter me if I let anything happen to it!”
Becoming much involved herself now in this display of their treasures, Barbie pulled a face at him and launched into an attempted explanation of her preference. Having found that all the noises he was invited to listen to were as enigmatic—and occasionally as unpleasant—as those he could find in his own stardropper, Dan hardly made an effort to follow her; instead, he took the chance of asking some questions that had been troubling him.
“Ah … does anything that you know of help in figuring out the signals?” he ventured.
“What do you mean?” countered Nick.
“Well—is there anything one can take, for example?”
“You mean drugs?” The young man tensed. “Don’t let anyone kid you into trying that sort of shortcut! Most of the bad cases you see around, the nutters babbling to themselves, thought they could save trouble by like getting stoned on acid before ’dropping. We had one like that ourselves, and the poor bastard wound up falling off the roof and breaking his pelvis! Since then we’ve made it an inflexible rule not to let drugs in the place. Oh, I don’t mean we’re puritanical about it, but—well, we allow beer and wine, but no spirits; the occasional joint of regular pot, but no high-concentration hash. You get me? And that’s only to unwind with, because you can get terribly tense if you’re straining after a difficult set of signals. Personally, I find the best time to use a ’dropper is about an hour or two after breakfast, when I’m well rested but back in tune with waking life. On the other hand some people like it best at two in the morning, when everything around is very quiet. It’s a matter of temperament, I imagine.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Dan murmured. There was a pause.
“By the way,” Nick said with a trace of diffidence, “while it’s on the premises, would you mind very much if I tried out your Binton too?”
“Sure,” Dan shrugged. “Provided Lilith’s through with it.”
“Oh, by now she must be,” Nick assured him. “We’ve been chatting”—he checked his watch—“Christ, nearly two hours! I’ll pop up and see how she’s doing. She may very well have fallen asleep, you know. Lots of people do, after a bout of intensive ’dropping. Barbie doll, fix some more coffee while I’m gone, hm?”
He left the kitchen door open behind him, and his feet could be heard on the stairs as he ran up to Lilith’s room. Accepting the offer of the coffee, Dan idly inspected the stardroppers ranked on the table before him, noting the individual design variations but unable to associate them with the different signals he’d had demonstrated.
His line of thought was suddenly cut short by a cry from Nick, shouting down from the upstairs landing.
“Dan! Barbie! Lilith’s gone out!”
Barbie almost dropped her kettle as she made to replace it on the stove, and rushed to the door. “Are you sure?” she called back. Following her, Dan caught her arm.
“Does he mean she made off with—?”
“With your ’droper?” By this time Nick had reached the lowest flight of stairs and was coming down them two at a time, eyes shining. “No, I have it here. But there was a note tucked in the strap—see?”
He showed the instrument to Dan. The strap was tidily wound around the case, and between two turns the corner of a sheet of paper had been slipped, bearing the single-word message “Thanks!”
Suddenly the hallway was alive with people. Every door leading onto it, and onto the upper landings, opened, and the entire commune group hurried to assemble around Dan and Nick. He heard confusing remarks he couldn’t fathom—“Went out? Must have been a good one! What with? Binton! Hey do you suppose if I …?”
Eventually he sorted things out. These people believed, like Dr. Rainshaw, that Lilith had been able physically and literally to vanish. There seemed to be only one sensible thing to do. While everyone else was involved in the babble of excited discussion, he slipped out of the house to find a phone booth, and from there called Redvers at the Yard.
VIII
There was a long silence after he had recounted the afternoon’s events. At last the superintendent gave a heavy sigh.
“This is where it really starts, Cross. Not when a young genius like Robin Rainshaw goes out. When the word gets around that a mere schoolkid has done it—someone who most likely took up stardropping as a fad, because so many of her friends were doing it. I expect it to rain for forty days. And I don’t know where the Ark is, or even if there’s one being built.”
The flood image was one which Dan himself had in mind already. He’d just been mentally comparing his situation with that of a man who sets out to cross an apparently level street awash with rainwater, and finds the puddles up to his waist and still rising.
Compared to other assignments he’d undertaken for the Agency, this mission had seemed petty. Granting that the discovery of a means of instantaneous displacement could entrain all the consequences he’d discussed with Redvers, he hadn’t taken that aspect of the matter seriously. He’d been told to come to Britain and talk with stardropping fans, learn what he could about the rumors of researchers disappearing, but not with any expectations of confirming them—only with the intention of assessing whether the resulting social disturbance threatened to destabilize the precarious balance of world peace.
But according to what he’d been given so far—it would be an exaggeration to say “what he’d found out”—the Agency had fallen into a trap it had managed to evade for the first twelve years of its existence. It had taken for granted that something unprecedented couldn’t be true. Collectively, the Agency shared Dan’s original view of stardropping: just another fad, which would have its day and wane, leaving no more than a few negligible traces of its passage.
What they’d mistaken for the rumble of traffic, in other words, had proved to be the harbinger of earthquakes.
Dry-mouthed, he said to Redvers, “You don’t seem to disbelieve these people’s acceptance that Lilith genuinely vanished.”
“I told you this morning: what Rainshaw believes, I’m driven to believe myself. You too?”
“I—I don’t want to,” Dan muttered.
“Want or not want, it doesn’t make any difference. This is damned well happening! I appreciate your giving me an early warning of this latest case, but all I can do is drop some heavy hints to the various news media, and sooner or later hints will stop being any use. People are beginning to get scared, you know.”
“Of what? Disappearing?”
“Hell, no! Someone else getting at this secret first.”
“I saw two Chinese in Cosmica Limited yesterday,” Dan said. “I wondered about that. Doesn’t the Chinese governm
ent discourage stardropping?”
“True, but they have a crash research program staffed by brilliant university students. Didn’t your briefing tell you that? I thought that point wouldn’t have been overlooked. And Rainshaw is working at a state research centre here, instead of for the commercial company that used to employ him. Cross, when I told you everyone else had got into this scene ahead of the Agency, I wasn’t playing with words. It’s fact. I feel like a man trying to beat out a fire with an old dry sack, and finding sparks burning holes through every time he thinks it’s smothered. Can’t you imagine what’ll happen the day someone really newsworthy vanishes from the plain sight of reputable witnesses? All those headlines: ‘Secret lore from Aliens! Miracle talents from Stardropping!’ A few thousand people will kill themselves in frustration; a few tens of thousands, already into the act, will move on to the stage of real addiction and give up caring about ordinary living; and a few millions will go out and buy their first stardroppers, convinced it’s something they have to take seriously after all.”
“Is just disappearing such a tempting thing?”
“Try looking at it less critically. Think of it as performing a miracle, and you’ll see.” There was a drumming noise from the far end of the phone line, as though Redvers was beating on his desk with bunched knuckles. “I don’t find anything madly attractive about that kind of supernatural parlor trick, and I don’t imagine you do. But because of Berghaus’s theory, a lot of people will reason it this way: someone has alien talent I haven’t got; someone who doesn’t like me can use that talent against me; I’ve got to get in first! It’s what the military strategists have been warning us about for years, the crucial breakthrough by one side which is likely to make the other side so desperate they’ll feel compelled to hit out before they’re put at a hopeless and permanent disadvantage. Cross, how soon are you going to file your first report?”