“Could you?”
“No,” she said. “Not until the last, when you were trying too.”
“Just as well,” Waverley said. “I’d never have any secrets from you. If you ever try anything like that again, I’ll send the goblins out looking for you.”
“I wouldn’t want that,” she said, looking at him seriously. “I guess I’d better not leave again. But, Sam—how about—”
“Come on in and look.”
“All right.”
In the other room, Eskin was writing on a piece of paper. He hesitated, then started scribbling again. Then he drew a tentative diagram, looked at it and crossed it out, and started another.
“What is he doing?” Doris asked. “What’s that supposed to be a picture of?”
“I don’t know,” Waverley said. “I haven’t studied their names. It’s some sort of germ.” “Sam, what’s happened?”
“Resublimation,” Waverley said. “I explained to him that there were other forms of sex he could observe, that would benefit mankind and science far more, and win him endless prestige. So he’s looking for the sex-cycle of bacteria.”
“Without a microscope?”
“That’s right. With his drive, he’ll devour everything ever written about bacterial life. He’ll find something valuable, too.”
“Resublimation,” Doris mused. “But do germs have a sex life?”
“I don’t know,” Waverley said. “But Eskin will find out. And there’s no reason why he can’t do some perfectly good research in the bargain. After all, the line between many scientists and Peeping Toms is pretty fine. Sex was really secondary to Eskin after he had sublimated it into scientific observation. This is just one more step in the same direction. “Now would you care to discuss dates and places?”
“Yes—if you’re sure it’s permanent.”
“Look at him.” The psi was scribbling furiously, oblivious to the outside world. On his face was an exalted, dedicated look.
“I guess so.” Doris smiled and moved closer to Waverley. Then she looked at the closed door. “There’s someone in the waiting room, Sam.”
Waverley kept back a curse. Telepathy could be damnably inconvenient at times. But business was business. He accompanied Doris to the door.
A young girl was sitting on a chair. She was thin, delicate, frightened-looking. Waverley could tell, by the redness of her eyes, that she had been crying recently.
“Mr. Waverley? You’re the Wild Talents man?”
Waverley nodded.
“You have to help me. I’m a clairvoyant, Mr. Waverley. A real one. And you have to help me get rid of it. You must!”
“We’ll see,” Waverley said, a pulse of excitement beating in his throat. A clairvoyant!
“Suppose you come in here and tell me all about it.”
THE SPECIAL EXHIBIT
It was fascinating, the one sure solution to the problem marriage
THE museum was unusually deserted that morning, Mr. Grant thought, as he led Mrs. Grant across the marble-floored lobby. Which was just as well, under the circumstances.
“Good morning, sir,” said the red-cheeked old museum attendant.
“Good morning, Simmons,” Mr. Grant said. “This is Mrs. Grant.”
Mrs. Grant nodded sulkily, and leaned against a Central American war canoe. Her shoulders were on a level with those of the papier-mâché paddler; but broader by far. Looking at them, Mr. Grant wondered, for a moment, if the Special Exhibit would work. Could it succeed on a woman so large, so strong, so set in her ways?
He hoped so. Failure would be ridiculous.
“Welcome to our museum,” the attendant said. “I believe this is the first time we’ve had the pleasure, Mrs. Grant.”
“Haven’t been here since I was a kid,” Mrs. Grant said, stifling a yawn behind a large hand.
“Mrs. Grant is not particularly interested in the storied past,” Mr. Grant explained, leaning on his cane. “My work in ornithology leaves her quite unimpressed. However, she has agreed to accompany me to the Special Exhibit.”
“The Special Exhibit, sir?” the attendant asked. He consulted a notebook. “I don’t believe—”
“Here is my invitation,” Mr. Grant said.
“Yes, sir.” The attendant examined the card carefully, then handed it back. “I hope you enjoy it, sir. The Special Exhibit hasn’t been shown often. I think that Dr. Carver and his wife were the last to view it.”
“Of course.” Mr. Grant said. He knew the mild, balding Carver quite well. And Carver’s thin, nagging, red-haired wife was a good friend of Mrs. Grant. The Exhibit must have been effective, for Carver had been perceptibly more cheerful at work. The Special Exhibit was, of course, a far more effective problem solver than marriage counseling, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, or even simple forbearance.
It was uniquely the Museum’s project. The Museum liked to have its employees happy and contented, for only then could they serve Science properly. But aside from that, the Special Exhibit was educational, and filled a distinct gap in the Museum’s program.
The general public had not been informed of it, for the general public was exceedingly conservative in the face of scientific necessity. But that was as it should be, Mr. Grant told himself.
The attendant fished a key from his pocket. “Be sure to return this to me, sir,” he said.
Grant nodded, and led Mrs. Grant down the hall, past glass cases inhabited by Siberian tigers and giant pandas. A water buffalo stared glassy-eyed at them, and a family of Axis deer continued grazing in eternal peace.
“How long’s this gonna take?” Mrs. Grant asked.
“Not long at all,” Mr. Grant said, remembering that the Special Exhibit was noted for its swiftness.
“I’ve got some deliveries coming,” Mrs. Grant said. “And some important things to do.”
Leading her past a muntjac and a spotted chevrotian, Mr. Grant allowed himself to wonder, momentarily, what those important things might be. Mrs. Grant’s interests seemed to center on television by day, and motion pictures by night.
Of course there were deliveries.
Mr. Grant sighed. They were so obviously ill-matched. To think that he—a small, rather delicate fellow with a large mind—would voluntarily many a woman of such heroic proportions and meager mentality. But it happened to others, Dr. Carver, for example.
Mr. Grant smiled wanly at the fiction of attracting opposites, at the entire romantic principle. Hadn’t his work in ornithology taught him anything? Did the yellow-rumped Siskin mate with the condor? A single wild fling! How much better, he thought, if he had been content to join the French Foreign Legion, spend his inheritance in riotous living, or take to voodoo. Such ventures could, in time, be lived down. But marriage? Never. Not with Mrs. Grant as comfortable as she was.
Unless, of course, the Special Exhibit . . .
“This way,” Mr. Grant murmured, leading her down an unexpected corridor concealed between glass cases.
“Where is this exhibit?“ Mrs. Grant demanded. “I gotta be home for my deliveries.”
“Just around here,” Mr. Grant said, leading her past a door marked in red, No Admittance. He wondered about those deliveries. There seemed to be a tremendous number of them. And the delivery boy left a vile brand of cigar in the ash trays.
“Here we are,” Mr. Grant said. He unlocked an iron door and walked into an immense room. The setting simulated a clearing in the jungle, and in front of them was a thatched hut. Behind that was a smaller hut, half hidden from view.
Several savages lounged on the vine-tangled ground, chattering at each other.
“They’re alive!” Mrs. Grant exclaimed.
“Of course. This is, you see, a new experiment in descriptive anthropology.”
To one side was an ancient wrinkled woman, adding wood to a fire that crackled under a large pot. Something was bubbling in the pot.
The warriors got to their feet when they noticed the Grants. One of them yawned and
stretched, his muscles crackling.
“Magnificent fellows,” Mrs. Grant whispered.
“Yes,” Mr. Grant said. She would notice that.
Strewn around the ground in front of the first hut were decorated wooden swords, long, slender bows, sharp cane knives. And the room was filled with a continual background chirping. Breaking into it was a frenzied clucking. A bird honked angrily and something piped a reply.
Mrs. Grant said, “Can we go now—oh!”
One of the natives, wild and strange with his long coarse black hair and painted face, was standing beside her. Two others stood behind him. Looking at the group, Mr. Grant thought how savage Mrs. Grant really was, with her lavishly applied cosmetics, her fox skins and clanking jewelry.
“What do they want?” Mrs. Grant asked, eyeing the half-naked men with something less than fear.
“They’d like you to examine the village,” Mr. Grant said. “It’s part of the exhibit.”
Mrs. Grant noticed that the first native was eyeing her with an admiring look and she allowed herself to be led forward.
She was shown the cooking pot, the weapons, the decorations on the first hut. Then the natives led her to the second hut, and one of them winked and beckoned her inside.
“Educational,” she said, winking back, and followed him in. The other two natives entered, one picking up a cane knife before he went in.
“You didn’t tell me they were supposed to be head hunters!” Mrs. Grant’s voice floated faintly from the hut. “Have you seen all the shrunken heads?”
Mr. Grant nodded to himself. It was amazing, how hard those heads were to come by. The South American authorities had begun cracking down on their export. The Special Exhibit was, perhaps, the sole remaining source of this unique folk skill.
“One’s got red hair. It looks just like Mrs.—”
There was a scream, and then the sound of a furious battle. Mr. Grant held his breath. There were three of them, to be sure, but Mrs. Grant was a very strong woman. Certainly she couldn’t—
One of the natives came dancing out of the hut, and the hag by the fire picked up a few ominous instruments, and went inside. Whatever was in the pot continued to boil merrily.
Mr. Grant sighed with relief and decided that he had seen enough. After all, anthropology wasn’t his line. He locked the iron door behind him and headed for the ornithology wing, deciding that Mrs. Grant’s deliveries were not sufficiently important to require his presence.
BESIDES STILL WATERS
When people talk about getting away from it all, they are usually thinking about our great open spaces out west. But to science fiction writers, that would be practically in the heart of Times Square. When a man of the future wants solitude he picks a slab of rock floating in space four light years east of Andromeda. Here is a gentle little story about a man who sought the solitude of such a location. And who did he take along for company? None other than Charles the Robot.
MARK ROGERS was a prospector, and he went to the asteroid belt looking for radioactives and rare metals. He searched for years, never finding much, hopping from fragment to fragment. After a time he settled on a slab of rock half a mile thick.
Rogers had been born old, and he didn’t age much past a point. His face was white with the pallor of space, and his hands shook a little. He called his slab of rock Martha, after no girl he had ever known.
He made a little strike, enough to equip Martha with an air pump and a shack, a few tons of dirt and some water tanks, and a robot. Then he settled back and watched the stars.
The robot he bought was a standard-model all-around worker, with built-in memory and a thirty-word vocabulary. Mark added to that, bit by bit. He was something of a tinkerer, and he enjoyed adapting his environment to himself.
At first, all the robot could say was “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir.” He could state simple problems: “The air pump is laboring, sir.” “The corn is budding, sir.” He could perform a satisfactory salutation: “Good morning, sir.”
Mark changed that. He eliminated the “sirs” from the robot’s vocabulary; equality was the rule on Mark’s hunk of rock. Then he dubbed the robot Charles, after a father he had never known.
As the years passed, the air pump began to labor a little as it converted the oxygen in the planetoid’s rock into a breathable atmosphere. The air seeped into space, and the pump worked a little harder, supplying more.
The crops continued to grow on the tamed black dirt of the planetoid. Looking up, Mark could see the sheer blackness of the river of space, the floating points of the stars. Around him, under him, overhead, masses of rock drifted, and sometimes the starlight glinted from their black sides. Occasionally, Mark caught a glimpse of Mars or Jupiter. Once he thought he saw Earth.
Mark began to tape new responses into Charles. He added simple responses to cue words. When he said, “How does it look?” Charles would answer, “Oh, pretty good, I guess.”
At first the answers were what Mark had been answering himself, in the long dialogue held over the years. But, slowly, he began to build a new personality into Charles.
Mark had always been suspicious and scornful of women. But for some reason he didn’t tape the same suspicion into Charles. Charles’ outlook was quite different.
“What do you think of girls?” Mark would ask, sitting on a packing case outside the shack, after the chores were done.
“Oh, I don’t know. You have to find the right one.” The robot would reply dutifully, repeating what had been put on its tape.
“I never saw a good one yet,” Mark would say.
“Well, that’s not fair. Perhaps you didn’t look long enough. There’s a girl in the world for every man.”
“You’re a romantic!” Mark would say scornfully. The robot would pause—a built-in pause—and chuckle a carefully constructed chuckle.
“I dreamed of a girl named Martha once,” Charles would say. “Maybe if I would have looked, I would have found her.”
And then it would be bedtime. Or perhaps Mark would want more conversation. “What do you think of girls?” he would ask again, and the discussion would follow its same course.
Charles grew old. His limbs lost their flexibility, and some of his wiring started to corrode. Mark would spend hours keeping the robot in repair.
“You’re getting rusty,” he would cackle.
“You’re not so young yourself,” Charles would reply. He had an answer for almost everything. Nothing involved, but an answer.
It was always night on Martha, but Mark broke up his time into mornings, afternoons and evenings. Their life followed a simple routine. Breakfast, from vegetables and Mark’s canned store. Then the robot would work in the fields, and the plants grew used to his touch. Mark would repair the pump, check the water supply, and straighten up the immaculate shack. Lunch, and the robot’s chores were usually finished.
The two would sit on the packing case and watch the stars. They would talk until supper, and sometimes late into the endless night.
In time, Mark built more complicated conversations into Charles. He couldn’t give the robot free choice, of course, but he managed a pretty close approximation of it. Slowly, Charles’ personality emerged. But it was strikingly different from Mark’s.
Where Mark was querulous, Charles was calm. Mark was sardonic, Charles was naive. Mark was a cynic, Charles was an idealist. Mark was often sad; Charles was forever content.
And in time, Mark forgot he had built the answers into Charles. He accepted the robot as a friend, of about his own age. A friend of long years’ standing.
“The thing I don’t understand,” Mark would say, “is why a man like you wants to live here. I mean, it’s all right for me. No one cares about me, and I never gave much of a damn about anyone. But why you?”
“Here I have a whole world,” Charles would reply, “where on Earth I had to share with billions. I have the stars, bigger and brighter than on Earth. I have all space around me, close, like still
waters. And I have you, Mark.”
“Now, don’t go getting sentimental on me—”
“I’m not. Friendship counts. Love was lost long ago, Mark. The love of a girl named Martha, whom neither of us ever met. And that’s a pity. But friendship remains, and the eternal night.”
“You’re a bloody poet,” Mark would say, half admiringly. “A poor poet.”
Time passed unnoticed by the stars, and the air pump hissed and clanked and leaked. Mark was fixing it constantly, but the air of Martha became increasingly rare. Although Charles labored in the fields, the crops, deprived of sufficient air, died.
Mark was tired now, and barely able to crawl around, even without the grip of gravity. He stayed in his bunk most of the time. Charles fed him as best he could, moving on rusty, creaking limbs.
“What do you think of girls?”
“I never saw a good one yet.”
“Well, that’s not fair.”
Mark was too tired to see the end coming, and Charles wasn’t interested. But the end was on its way. The air pump threatened to give out momentarily. There hadn’t been any food for days.
“But why you?” Gasping in the escaping air. Strangling.
“Here I have a whole world—”
“Don’t get sentimental—”
“And the love of a girl named Martha.”
From his bunk Mark saw the stars for the last time. Big, bigger than ever, endlessly floating in the still waters of space.
“The stars . . .” Mark said.
“Yes?”
“The sun?”
“—shall shine as now.”
“A bloody poet.”
“A poor poet.”
“And girls?”
“I dreamed of a girl named Martha once. Maybe if—”
“What do you think of girls? And stars? And Earth?” And it was bedtime, this time forever.
Charles stood beside the body of his friend. He felt for a pulse once, and allowed the withered hand to fall. He walked to a corner of the shack and turned off the tired air pump.
The tape that Mark had prepared had a few cracked inches left to run. “I hope he finds his Martha,” the robot croaked, and then the tape broke.
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