The Worlds of George O

by George O. Smith

  "I've noticed in the papers," replied Miss Agatha Merrit, "that there is a veritable plague of rats. The Chicago World had an editorial about you... did you see it?"

  "No," he admitted. "But I'm rather pleased. What did they say?"

  "It seems that the Chicago World was plagued with rats until they got about two dozen of your Better Mousetraps. That fixed them. Now they claim that your invention came along at the proper time. The world is about to beat its path to your door, Mr. Manton."

  Peter shrugged. "Most inventions are made to fill a definite need," he said. "Discoveries are made because of man's curiosity. An invention is an aggregation of discoveries collected because their principles add up to the proper effect to take care of the necessity. I'm glad that I was able to make this invention of mine. It seems timely."

  * * * *

  Senator Treed rapped for attention and the committee came to order. "This morning," said Treed, "we will have open discussion of the problem."

  General Hayes nodded and said, "This much is known: the mice are delivered somewhere out of Manton's Better Mousetrap. I wonder if some foreign power might not have discovered even more of its powers and be using it to plague America?"

  "That seems far-fetched."

  "Not at all. It might be likened to a bacterial warfare. Pests will vitiate a country as well as war--weakening a strong country to prepare it for easy conquest."

  Tag Harris of the FBI laboratory shook his head. "There's more than meets the eye," he said. "I've definite proof that some human agency is working at it."

  "You have?" demanded Senator Treed. "Tell us."

  "We tagged rats and sent 'em through one of Manton's traps. Later we used one of the old wire cage affairs. Someone had gone to the trouble of counterfeiting some of our tags. Out of fifty-seven rats caught with tags, we found a duplicate number. Someone obviously caught a tagged one from wherever it was sent, and, in an effort to confuse us, made duplicate tags, and sent 'em back."

  "Deliberate!"

  Admiral Grayson of Intelligence nodded. "Tomlinson of Psychological Warfare says that's what he would recommend to spread confusion. You see, this power would not stop; they would also know that we are trying to find out all about it. Therefore they would prefer to add confusion to our search. Hence the duplication of tags."

  "Could you tell the real one?"

  Harris nodded. "Easily. The original one was well worn, because the rat had more time to go roaming. The duplicate was almost new."

  "They never did turn up with that key tag of Andrews, did they?"

  "Nope."

  "No one but a suspicious power would conceal such a thing now that the search for it is out. The answer is obvious."

  Treed nodded in agreement. "I shall recommend that Congress offer an award of twenty thousand dollars to whomever gives information to bring the truth to light." He shuddered. "This rat business is terrible. My wife is nearly out of her mind. Last night she swore that she saw a rat appear on the floor beneath the dresser. I hushed it, of course, but that is why I'm bringing this committee to order on the subject."

  "Perhaps Manton's device just hurls them back and forth across the country."

  Treed shook his head. "Manton's Better Mousetrap doesn't work that way," he said with conviction. "Thanks to Manton's little registers we know that Manton's catch--overall--has been rising, but definitely following the increase in rat population over the entire country. You see, gentlemen, Manton's traps have been made to fill a demand in every case. It started with friends who needed them. You're sort of insisting that Manton's traps come assembled with their own mice."

  That got a big laugh.

  "And," said Senator Treed, "God help the one who is responsible for this!"

  * * * *

  Tony Andrews entered the salesroom and smiled at the clerk. "Look," he said, "I've been a good customer."

  "You have," agreed the salesman. "I know you. I'm Tom Locke."

  "Well, Mr. Locke, I'd like another one of those key tags."

  The salesman nodded. "Those things are popular," he said. "But what happened?"

  "I dropped mine through one of those Better Mousetraps."

  "Oh," laughed the salesman, "they've been returned from every portion of the globe. But I guess the mail service isn't too good from wherever That is."

  "I'd hoped it would come back," said Andrews. "But I'm wrong. And I'd like another one."

  "Sure. Be glad to. Since you're the man who originated the idea with us."

  "I'm sorry to have to ask--What? Originated what?"

  "Why yes. The tale goes that you came in to buy a car quite some time ago, and the salesman saw the tag on your key ring. He mentioned it to Mr. Cagley, who is our advertising manager. He had the tags made up and we gave them out to our best customers."

  "Then you've got me mixed up with someone else. For I received mine as they did. Mine came in the mail and cost me three cents--which was as good an advertising stunt as the tags themse--"

  "Mail? Mail? We gave them in person."

  "But mine came through the mail."

  "Sorry. We've never sent any of them through the mail."

  "Oh," said Andrews with rising suspicion. He took the new tag with thanks and returned to Peter Manton's home.

  "Peter, is Junior handy?"

  Manton nodded and called. Junior came. Then Andrews said, "Junior, have you ever seen anything like this before?"

  Junior nodded. "Last winter. Found it down in the cellar on my sled."

  "Sled!"

  "Uh-huh. Then because it said to drop it in the mail box if found, I did.

  You got it, huh?"

  Andrews nodded. "Yup," he said. "I got it! Peter Manton, you haven't seen the end of this, yet."

  Manton frowned slightly. "Why?" he asked.

  "You've really built the Better Mousetrap, and you haven't seen the people who are going to beat their path to your door. They haven't really arrived yet. But they will!"

  * * * *

  The first to arrive was the FBI. Then Peter Manton's domicile was changed from a town in Illinois to a cold stone place in Washington.

  Tag Harris faced the Court. "Here is the originator of the Plague of Rats," he said. "And the saviour of the country at the same time. He is in the position of a physician who poisons people so that he can save them. A sort of stinking benefactor."

  "Will you please explain to the Court?" demanded the Court.

  "The field set up by the Better Mousetrap at the plane of cleavage hurls anything that passes through it backwards in time. The time rate is indefinite and uncontrollable. However, this is why Manton's trap was so effective. On Monday a plague of mice appears in an apartment. The master of the place goes out and rents one of the Better Mousetraps. He places it in his apartment, and during the time it is there it hurls mice backward in time to create the plague! Naturally, the trap will be removed as soon as the mice stop--and, because the trap itself stops the flow of mice."

  "But how far back--?"

  "There's little correlation. It just hurls. It is aimless and uncontrollable.

  In one case, a key tag went back several months."

  "But how come nothing was known of this?" demanded the Court.

  Tag Harris smiled. "When I have something that will utterly destroy something, I do not place anything valuable near it," he said. "In Manton's own laboratory the boys dropped spare parts through it. In hardware stores all over the country the clerks were dropping screws and nuts and the like.

  Most of this stuff fell to the floor and was swept up a few days to a week before."

  Tag Harris held up a scrap of newspaper. The date was four days in the future.

  "Proof," he said. "I'll be sending that to myself later."

  "And the tagged mice--the duplications?"

  "Animals that had gone through the time-trap twice and were living their lives in parallel. You see, your honor, not only did Manton's Better Mousetrap hurl mice back in time, but it
could hurl the same mouse back to the same era several times--and the Plague of Rats was a Man-Made Plague."

  * * * *

  Epilogue--

  'Tis said that he who laughs last laughs best. The world who beat a path to Peter Manton's door in anger, because he built the Better Mousetrap, returned to thank him anyway. You see, with mice being hurled backwards in time, they lived and they died in the mad rat-race in time.

  And America, for its trouble with more rodents than it could stand for a short period, now reaps its reward. For America is free of rats.

  * * * *

  Act Two. The scene, Campbell's editorial office at Astounding.

  John W. Campbell's long time assistant-secretary was Miss Katy Tarrant, a middle-aged maiden lady of Scottish descent and a devout Roman Catholic. Katy had come with the office, and John kept her happily, because Katy had two excellent job qualifications. First, she knew the magazine business, at least the pedestrian part of editing and meeting the deadlines with manuscripts that fit the book. And second, Katy was mighty fast with the big blue pencil to eliminate anything that might offend the Legion of Decency or bring down the wrath of the Watch and Ward Society, or even something innocent that might possibly be mispronounced that way.

  As a result, most of us of John's writing tribe used to slip something into a story that would positively

  shock Katy into tight lips and harsh mutterings about us writers who put such things into a story. One of us--it wasn't me--once asked John what Katy would do if he sent her a black, filmy, see-through lacy nightgown for Christmas. John replied that Katy would wear it because, being Scottish, she would think it wasteful if she did not, and waste is a sin. But, said John with a chuckle, she'd blush all night for wearing such a provocative filmy to bed; And a Present from a

  (Married!) Man!

  John chuckled over the joke, wrote "O.K!" on the manuscript, and sent it along for processing.

  L. Jerome Stanton chuckled over the joke, and passed it along to Katy to read and file, and to sanitize it for the benefit of those guardians of our virtue.

  But our maiden lady, Katy Tarrant, didn't understand the punch line.

  John's attitude? Officially and professionally outraged, but secretly amused.

  * * * *

  In my meandering away from my minimum security prison, L. Ron began to talk about a theory that he'd evolved while recovering from one of the scraps in the Aleutians. The process was a collection of snippets and bits of this and that. Scraps of what is taught in the simplest of elementary psychology. Scraps of hypnosis, although he denied that with vigor. It was a "healing" process, generally based upon the fair-to-middling concept that the teachings of Christian Science were and are sound, so long as one has the sense to call for splints and a crutch instead of Mary Baker Eddy if one's leg is broken.

  As Ron reasoned, this gimmick mustn't so much as pretend to make noises like medicine, because both the law and the AMA would be hot on the trail. It mustn't interfere with religion because religion is too well organized to put up with outside competition. And it shouldn't be a cult, because cults attract professional cultists. But it should offer relief to those who were ailing with something that neither the clergy nor medicine could clearly define.

  L. Ron, slowly perfecting his theory, got in touch with a few of the impressionable souls in the New York area, and L. Ron studied them, slowly getting to the final outcome: Dianetics.

  During this period, L. Ron held his sessions in the evenings during the week, leaving the weekends mostly open. This was fine with me. I enjoyed visiting Ron from time to time, but as I told him, "If I have problems, and they must be removed, I'll prefer a professional head shrinker instead of a soldier of fortune, adventurer, and science fiction writer."

  On one of those weekends, the telephone rang about noon on Sunday. L. Ron said, when he returned, that Dona Campbell was about to come over. Then he eyed me sharply.

  "George, for God's sake don't mention dianetics to Dona. If you do, she'll tell John, and I don't want John to dive into this as his next hobby until I'm ready to leak it to him myself at the proper moment."

  Dona had come over to get some peace. John, she said, had discovered "high fidelity," had built a 50-watt amplifier, and was spending his spare time trying to see how high his fidelity could get out of the old, 78-rpm shellac records of the day. The house, she reported, was reverberating on every floor with John's 50-watter run at full tilt.

  Here I must explain a technical detail that made the uproar worse. The power output tubes of that day struggled and strained to deliver every watt; as a consequence, the loudspeakers of that time were designed to deliver as much sound per watt as they could.

  At the time, a comfortable level of music for just background sound was about a quarter of a watt, and, for real listening to classical music, between one and one and a half watts. Some months before the war, I'd helped to install an amplifying system for a roller-skating rink, and we found that one 60-watt amplifier at either end of the rink gave enough sound to cut through the noise on a busy night.

  By contrast, everything changed in the late 1950s. Power amplifiers could deliver high wattage with ease, and as a consequence, the loudspeakers today are damped or loaded to spread out the audible sound spectrum they could deliver. The ordinary amplifier of John's high fidelity days could hardly drive today's speaker, and today's amplifiers would blow the speakers of yesterday.

  I put this in because we have amplifiers that deliver 50 to 100 watts today, and I want it understood that 50 watts in 1947 must not be compared to 50 watts today insofar as the amount of sound level produced.

  So, since Elizabeth and Westfield are fairly close, Dona escaped the racket from time to time by visiting the Hubbard place, and the four of us would play bridge and have a quiet drink far from John's cellar and his 50 watts.

  The time is in the late 1940s, and I'd run Venus Equilateral into the ground and was looking for new worlds to conquer. In one of our meetings, Dona chuckled over the idea I'd used in "Rat Race" in using a time machine for a mouse trap. And I replied that mostly, time traveling stories are founded on the idea of "Let's kill gran'pa!" and what gimmicks the writer could cook up to cover the paradox.

  So it occurred to me that maybe I might play the game backward; that is, instead of killing gran'pa, let's go back and make sure that gran'pa is protected from one of his intended follies. The following is the answer.

  Meddler's Moon

  Peter Hedgerly heard the door open and close, and he smiled at his reflection in the mirror.

  He turned partly, and called out through the semi-closed bedroom door.

  "Sit down, honey. I'll be right out."

  Joan Willson was early, he thought, but it made no matter. It merely gave them more time togeth--

  "I'll sit down," came a deep, pleasant masculine rumble, "but I'm not your honey!"

  Peter hit the door, and skidded into the living room, his loose shirttail flying out behind him. "Who're you?" he demanded sharply.

  "Please do not be disturbed. Finish dressing," said the stranger. Peter measured him. A few pounds heavier than Peter's one hundred and sixty; an inch taller than Peter's five feet eleven. About the same sandy blond complexion. The face was wreathed in a beatific smile which in no way matched Peter's exasperation.

  "I'm expecting a guest," snapped Peter. "The door was open for... the guest. Not for stray strangers seeking company or whatever."

  "I know. My presence will make no difference."

  "No difference?" exploded Peter angrily. "Look, sport, three's a crowd. Technically, you're trespassing. Shall I prove it by calling the police?"

  "You may if you wish," replied the stranger. "But I happen to know for certain that you will not."

  "No?" snapped Peter. He headed toward the telephone with all the determination in the world. The stranger watched him tolerantly. Peter reached the table beside the door and reached for the phone. As his hand touched it the door opened,
and Joan Willson came in.

  She gulped at Peter and said, "Oh!"

  Peter became aware of the fact that his nether raiment consisted of shoes, socks, paisley-print shorts and a curtailed-shirttailed WPB model shirt.

  He echoed Joan's "Oh!"

  His ejaculation died like the diminishing wail of a retreating fire siren. That was because the duration of the monosyllabic diphthong exceeded the time necessary for Peter to gain the security of the bedroom, where he donned his trousers and wished there were something he could do to cover the blush of embarrassment on his face. His ears, especially.

  * * * *

  Through the door he heard the stranger say, "Please come in, Miss Willson. Peter's condition is but temporary."

  "But why... what... and who are you?"

  "That's a long story," replied the stranger. He turned and called out to Peter. "I told you you'd not call the police!"

  "Police!" exclaimed Joan. "Peter, is...is--?"

  "Not at all," said the stranger, interrupting her, and intercepting the words which had been intended for Peter. "I've had too little time to make explanation. I'm Joseph Hedgerly."

  "Relative of his?" asked Joan-.

  "Quite. And quite close."

  Peter called, "Never heard of you."

  "You will," replied Hedgerly. "You see, Peter, I'm here to help you."

  "And if I need no help?"

  "You do."

  "Let me be judge, huh?" snapped Peter.

  "You're in poor position to judge. That's why this help is thrust upon you, so to speak.

  After a bit you'll understand."

  "Thanks," said Peter. Slowly, he came into the living room again, and faced Joan, still flushed.

  "Honest, Joan," he started, but the girl shrugged. "Don't apologize for a sheer accident," she said.

  "It was no accident," said Hedgerly.

  Peter whirled. "Look, chaperone, who invited you in? As for any relation of mine? Are you?"

  Hedgerly arose carefully. "I am Joseph Hedgerly, your grandson."

  Joan looked at Peter and laughed heartily. "Peter Faust Hedgerly. Having a thirty-odd-year-old grandson is quite a record for such as you," she told him. "You will only be thirty-two next birthday."