by C. L. Moore
Tomorrow night!
Well, he could afford the time for a genuine dinner now, at any rate. Comforted by the thought, Gregg went to his favorite restaurant and ate veal scallopini. After that, he forgathered with MacPherson and relayed his conversation with Halison. MacPherson was not cheerful.
"None in his world harms another," Gregg quoted.
"All the same—I don't know. I'm still scared."
"I'm going through again and see what I can pick up."
He did. He didn't wait till the valve was large enough, and went through headfirst, crashing back from the wall and thumping his head against a table. Since it was satisfactorily resilient, that didn't matter. The future has its conveniences.
That night was a repetition of the preceding one. Gregg's curiosity rose to burning pitch. All about him lay the secrets of a culture far beyond his own—and the key was just beyond his fingertips. It was difficult to wait now.
But he had to wait. He still hadn't fathomed the secret of the door, and he'd forgotten to ask Halison about it. If a telephone or televisor existed, it was hidden in some secret nook he couldn't locate. Oh, well.
-
Wednesday Gregg went to work, but was home early, chafing. MacPherson dropped in briefly. Gregg discouraged him. He wanted no three-way conversation. He began outlining on paper the questions he meant to ask Halison.
At six forty-five the valve began to open.
At midnight Gregg was biting his nails.
At two he woke MacPherson and begged the man to have a drink with him.
"He's forgotten," Gregg said tonelessly, lighting a cigarette and crushing it out. "Or something. Damn!"
"There's plenty of time," MacPherson grunted. "Take it easy. I only hope he doesn't show up."
They waited a long time. The valve began to close slowly. Gregg cursed in a heartfelt monotone. The telephone rang.
Gregg answered, talked briefly, and cradled the receiver. His face was strained as he turned to MacPherson.
"Halison's been killed. A truck hit him. They found one of my cards in the pocket of his suit."
"How d'you know it's Halison?"
"They described him. Mac, what a chance! And that so-and-so has to go and walk in front of a truck. Blast him to—"
"Ways of Providence," MacPherson said, sotto voce, but Gregg heard him.
"There's still Ranil-Mens."
"Whoever he is."
"Some friend of Halison, of course!" Gregg's tone was knife-edged. "He'll visit Halison's apartment tomorrow—Thursday. The first possible contact with that world, Mac. I've only been there at night. And I couldn't get out of the room—couldn't locate the doors. But if I'm there tomorrow when Ranil-Mens comes—"
"What if the valve doesn't open again?"
"Halison said it would. That's logical enough. Mental energy, like any other, has to drain away gradually unless it's cut off. And Halison's death certainly didn't cut it off." Gregg nodded toward the slowly closing valve.
"In the words of the prophet," MacPherson said, "don't." He went out and made himself a drink. Most of that drink was straight Scotch. A cold, sick fear was crawling up MacPherson's spine.
They talked inconclusively for a while. In the end, Gregg went through. His face showed through the hole like a portrait in a circular frame.
"So far, so good," he announced. "I'll see you tomorrow, Mac. And I'll have plenty to tell you."
MacPherson's nails dug into his palms. "Want to change your mind? I wish—"
Gregg grinned. "No chance. I'm the boy that's going to get the answers this time. Get it through your thick skull, Mac, there's no danger."
"O.K."
"Hand me a drink. There's no liquor on this side ... thanks. Luck!"
"Luck," MacPherson said. He sat waiting. The valve shrank.
"It'll be too late in a minute, Manning."
"It's too late now. See you later, son. Six thirty tomorrow. And maybe I'll bring Ranil-Mens with me."
Gregg lifted the glass. The valve slowly shrank to dime-size. And vanished.
-
MacPherson didn't move. He sat there, waiting. He was afraid, coldly and definitely and unarguably, though, of course, illogically.
And then, without turning, he sensed the presence of someone in the room.
Halison walked into his range of vision. "Too savishly late," he said. "Well, tomorrow night will do. Though I am sorry to have missed Ranil-Mens."
The fumes of alcohol seemed to whirlwind in MacPherson's skull. "The truck," he said. "The truck. The accident—"
Halison shrugged. "My metabolism is different. Catalepsy is frequent to me. The nervous shock threw me into that septol state. I woke in the ... what? ... morgue, explained a little of what had happened, came here. But too late. I have not yet found what I have been searching for."
"Just what have you been searching for?" MacPherson asked.
"I am looking for Halison," Halison said, "because he has been lost in the past, and Halison will not be whole again till I find him. A genius must be whole. I worked hard, hard, and one day Halison slipped away and was gone in the past. So I must search."
MacPherson turned into ice, realizing what the look in Halison's eyes meant.
"Ranil-Mens," he said. "Then ... oh, my God!"
Halison put out a groping, six-fingered hand. "Mordishly. You know what they said. But they were wrong. I was isolated, to heal. That was wrong, too, but it gave me time to open the door to the past and look for Halison where Halison is lost. The robot servants gave me food and I had quiet, which I zeverti needed. But the toys they placed in my room I did not need and did not use often."
"Toys—"
"San, san, san. Farlingly oculltar—but the words change. Even for a genius the way is hard. I am not what they said. Ranil-Mens understood. Ranil-Mens is a robot. All our physicians are robots, trained to do their tasks perfectly. But it was hard at first. The treatment—san, san, san, dantro. It took a strong brain to withstand the healing that Ranil-Mens gave me weekly. Even for me, a genius, it was—san, san, san, and they go far into whirling down forever bytoken—"
MacPherson said, "What was it? What was it, damn you?"
"No," Halison said, crouching suddenly on the carpet and covering his face with his hands. "Fintharingly and no, no—"
MacPherson leaned forward, the glass slipping from his sweating hand. "What—"
Halison lifted a blind bright stare. "The shock treatment for insanity," he said. "The new, the terrible, the long and long and eternal long healing that Ranil-Mens brings me once a week, but I do not mind it now, and I like it, and Ranil-Mens will give it to Gregg instead of to me, san, san, san and whirling—"
The pattern had fallen into place. The padded furniture, the lack of doors, the windows that did not open, the toys.
A cell in a madhouse.
To help and heal.
Shock treatment.
Halison got up and went to the open door. "Halison—" he said.
His footsteps died away along the hall. His voice came back gently.
"Halison is in the past. San, san, san, and I must find Halison so Halison will be whole again, Halison, san, san, san—"
The first rays of Thursday's sun struck through the windows.
The End
OPEN SECRET
Astounding Science-Fiction - April 1943
with Henry Kuttner
(as by Lewis Padgett)
Nothing secret at all. Walk in their office any time. Only—somehow the word couldn't be spread, the world couldn't understand—
-
Mike Jerrold was the only passenger in the elevator when the operator passed out. He saw the man gasp, double up in pain, and stab out blindly at the stop button. Pressure against his soles decreased. Jerrold jumped forward and tried to catch the falling man, but didn't quite make it.
The lips looked cyanosed; that meant heart attack. Jerrold's degree was for psychiatry, not medicine, so he was at a loss. Scattere
d bits of half-forgotten first aid whirled into his mind and out again like a kaleidoscope. He stared around, realizing abruptly the shortcoming of an elevator aside from its functional use. Not that it was a bad elevator, per se. It was quite modern, in one of New York's best skyscrapers, and, once you were inside and the door closed, you had no way of knowing, till it opened again, whether you were ten, twenty, or thirty stories above ground level. A grab-bag sort of arrangement, though without the element of chance. The random factor could not enter into the question—as long as the operator controlled the elevator.
He'd passed out now. Jerrold grimaced, touched a button by guesswork, and felt the cage begin to rise again. The fifteenth floor, it was. In a moment the door slid noiselessly open as the car settled pneumatically into position. Jerrold looked at a plainly furnished office with a receptionist's window in the farther wall. There was a door near it, a brown carpet on the floor, but no chairs. Nor was the receptionist visible.
Jerrold started out and then, struck by a new thought, paused to drag the operator with him. He vaguely mistrusted elevators. Sometimes they started by themselves. He went to the window and said, "Hey." Nobody answered. There was no switchboard; just a comfortable chair, a desk, and a pile of magazines. Jerrold turned to the door and opened it. It swung inward, away from him. He was facing a robot.
The robot, roughly man-shaped, was sliding—he had wheels instead of feet—back and forth on the other side of a table covered with a relief map of a section of Manhattan Island, from about Fiftieth Street to the Village, and bounded by the rivers. Twinkling dots of light glimmered like fireflies all over the map. The robot had four arms, each extended into innumerable wiry cilia. He, or it, would touch one of these wires to each light that flashed, keeping that position for a variable period, sometimes a split second, sometimes much longer. The robot had no face, but a grid of shimmering wires. It was certainly alive, certainly intelligent; and Jerrold's dark, ugly face went gray. Through an open door he could see another robot working presumably at a similar task.
He backed up, slowly and noiselessly. The robot ignored him. He closed the door. Instantly he had a feeling of illusion.
The receptionist's window was still vacant. Jerrold pulled the operator back into the elevator and thumbed the main-floor button. The car dropped sickeningly. Jerrold felt an uneasiness in his stomach. He forced himself to think only about the man at his feet.
When the panel slid open, Jerrold shouted at the starter and relinquished his charge to more capable hands. After that, he went into another elevator and this time completed his trip to the twenty-first floor, where Dr. Rob Vaneman had his offices. The girl said to go right in.
-
Vaneman was a big man, red-faced, bluff, gray-haired, and overwhelming. He boomed jovially at Jerrold, shook hands, and dragged out a bottle. "No," he said, putting it back. "Not yet. Let's get the business over with first, eh, Mike? Strip down and let me check that blood pressure of yours."
Jerrold obeyed. "I just got in town yesterday. Research for the U. Be here a month or so, I guess. How's tricks?"
"Fair enough. They keep me busy. I moved lately, you know."
"No, I—How's the blood pressure?"
"Up a bit. Let's try your heart." Vaneman listened and glanced at Jerrold sharply. "Been dodging taxicabs?"
"I've been—I ran into something funny. Tell you later. Let's get this done first."
Silently Vaneman completed the examination. "You're sound. You didn't need to come to New York for a check-up, Mike."
"I didn't. Research, I told you. But while I'm here—you know my metabolism and my allergies." Jerrold adjusted his tie. "Who's got the fifteenth floor in this building?"
"I dunno." Vaneman relaxed with a grunt, poured drinks, and lit a cigar. "We're not exactly next-door neighbors. Look on the board downstairs, or ask the starter. Why?"
"I got off there just now. What I saw—" Jerrold explained. "Don't tell me I made a mistake. I know the difference between a robot and a ... a gadget."
The physician grinned. "Do you? It takes a robot to fire the big navy guns—or what amounts to one. You sound medieval. Trot off to the Westinghouse labs and you'll realize that science has come a long way in a few years. My diagnosis is spinach."
Jerrold said stubbornly, "Those weren't machines. They were robots. Their coordination wasn't mechanical. One look convinced me."
"Then you'd better take another look." The Dictograph buzzed. Vaneman listened, spoke briefly, and sighed. "One more patient, and I'll be through for today. Want to meet me in the bar downstairs?"
"Right." Jerrold got up. "See you later, Rob. We've a lot to talk about."
"Six months' worth of accumulated trivia. Including robots. Saluda."
-
Jerrold went out and took the elevator downstairs to the bar. He had a drink. Then he searched for the address board and looked in vain for any firm listed on the fifteenth floor. The starter supplied a little more information.
"That's occupied by William Scott & Co., Research Engineers."
"Thanks," Jerrold said, and found a telephone book. William Scott & Co. wasn't listed. He fortified himself with another sidecar and took the elevator to the fifteenth floor, unable to suppress a mad feeling that the entire story might have softly and suddenly vanished away. "Like a Boojum," he murmured, evading the glance of the operator. "Uh ... fifteen, please."
But the Snark wasn't a Boojum. The reception office was unchanged, and this time a girl was sitting beyond the window, a pretty redhead with pleasant green eyes and a smart-looking dress. The green eyes opened slightly, Jerrold noticed. Was the presence of a visitor that surprising?
"Good morning," she said. "Can I help you?" Her voice was low-pitched and unaffected.
Jerrold heard the elevator door slip shut behind him. He walked forward and leaned his elbows on the window ledge. "Maybe," he said. And stopped.
What the hell could he ask?
"Do you have robots here?" he said at last.
"Yes," the girl told him.
So that was that. Jerrold looked at her blankly. "Intelligent robots?"
"What would you like?" she inquired, quite pleasantly.
Jerrold felt snubbed. He glanced at the cryptically closed door. Beyond it—
He was definitely afraid of what lay beyond it. They might be listening even now.
"I'd like to have a drink with you," he said, "if you don't mind. My name's Mike Jerrold. I'm a psychiatrist. I can give you references." He grinned. "May I offer drinks, dinner, or both?"
He expected her to refuse, but she didn't. The green eyes showed humor.
"Thanks, Mr. Jerrold. But I work here—till five thirty."
"May I come back—at five thirty?"
"Uh-huh. I'm Betty Andrews. Good-by." She turned back to her magazine. Jerrold nibbled his lower lip and retreated, ringing for the elevator. The office was quite silent. The robots seemed to be noiseless.
The dreamlike quality of the situation impressed him violently as he rode the car down. Seeing the robots was shocking enough. But the girl's casual admission that they existed was subtly horrible. It was like a woolly dog story, like the yarn about the man who, discovering a talking horse, mentioned the matter to its owner, and was told, "Oh, my horse tells that story to everybody who'll listen." As a gag it was funny. In real life it was not at all amusing.
-
Dr. Vaneman was waiting in the bar. He leered at Jerrold over the rim of his glass. "Find your robots?" he inquired ironically.
"Yeah. The receptionist up there admitted it. Well?"
"She has a sense of humor. I hope you're not serious, Mike. Do I have to waste half an hour talking logic to you? I prefer illogic. It's more restful."
"Talk all you want," Jerrold growled, waving to the waiter. "I just happen to be firmly convinced that you've got robots on the fifteenth floor of this building, right here in New York."
"Better than termites, anyway," Vaneman said into his
highball. "What harm can robots do? They're useful little folk, from all I hear."
"Could be. Nobody's ever made a real robot—one with a thinking brain. Unless—" Jerrold frowned. "I wish I knew who's running those robots and why. The human colloid brain's physically limited, Rob. It's incapable of pure, disciplined thought, because it is in a human body. A robot could lay out a thought matrix and carry it through to a conclusion you or I couldn't hope to approach."
"So they could square a circle. Let 'em. First, I don't believe there are robots upstairs. Second, if there were, what of it? Third, I want another drink."
"Your damned complacence," Jerrold said. "You're molded by your environment so perfectly you've come to believe implicitly in that environment. You'll admit the existence of the impossible, but you'll rationalize it till it seems possible. If the Empire State disappeared overnight, you'd say it was a quick job of moving."
"The Empire State couldn't disappear overnight."
"True enough. That'd be much too obvious. If supermen existed now, they wouldn't do anything as overt as making a building vanish. Why should they tip their hands?"
"Mike," Vaneman said with slow emphasis, "tell me this: How could a lot of robots live on the fifteenth floor without anyone knowing about it?"
"Who'd know about it?"
"There are thousands of people riding those elevators daily—"
"Yeah," Jerrold said. "They ride 'em. Up and down. But not to the fifteenth floor. Do you realize, Rob, that once you're in one of the elevators, you can't look out till you reach the floor you want? Plenty of people go right past the fifteenth floor—past! See? It's a perfect camouflage."
"Some people get off there."
"There's that reception clerk. She takes care of solicitors. Come to think of it, peddlers and agents aren't allowed in this building."
"Cleaning women are."
"Right. Maybe they don't get past the outer office. I'm going to see the girl tonight, the receptionist."
Vaneman leered significantly. "I get it."
But Jerrold didn't trouble to reply. He drank his sidecar, a queer, troubled worry moving at the back of his brain.