There was no one in the corridor. He found a window and stared out of it. There was Tylerton - an ersatz city, but looking so real and familiar that Burckhardt almost imagined the whole episode a dream. It was no dream, though. He was certain of that in his heart and equally certain that nothing in Tylerton could help him now.
It had to be the other direction.
It took him a quarter of an hour to find a way, but he found it - skulking through the corridors, dodging the suspicion of footsteps, knowing for certain that his hiding was in vain, for Dorchin was undoubtedly aware of every move he made. But no one stopped him, and he found another door.
It was a simple enough door from the inside. But when he opened it and stepped out, it was like nothing he had ever seen.
First there was light - brilliant, incredible, blinding light. Burckhardt blinked upward, unbelieving and afraid.
He was standing on a ledge of smooth, finished metal. Not a dozen yards from his feet, the ledge dropped sharply away; he hardly dared approach the brink, but even from where he stood he could see no bottom to the chasm before him. And the gulf extended out of sight into the glare on either side of him.
No wonder Dorchin could so easily give him his freedom! From the factory there was nowhere to go. But how incredible this fantastic gulf, how impossible the hundred white and blinding suns that hung above!
A voice by his side said inquiringly, ‘Burckhardt?’ And thunder rolled the name, mutteringly soft, back and forth in the abyss before him.
Burckhardt wet his lips. ‘Y-yes?’ he croaked.
‘This is Dorchin. Not a robot this time, but Dorchin in the flesh, talking to you on a hand mike. Now you have seen, Burckhardt. Now will you be reasonable and let the maintenance crews take over?’
Burckhardt stood paralysed. One of the moving mountains in the blinding glare came towards him.
It towered hundreds of feet over his head; he stared up at its top, squinting helplessly into the light.
It looked like -
Impossible!
The voice in the loudspeaker at the door said, ‘Burckhardt?’ But he was unable to answer.
A heavy rumbling sigh. ‘I see,’ said the voice. ‘You finally understand. There’s no place to go. You know it now. I could have told you, but you might not have believed me, so it was better for you to see it yourself. And after all, Burckhardt, why would I reconstruct a city just the way it was before ? I’m a businessman; I count costs. If a thing has to be full-scale, I build it that way. But there wasn’t any need to in this case.’
From the mountain before him, Burckhardt helplessly saw a lesser cliff descend carefully towards him. It was long and dark, and at the end of it was whiteness, five-fingered whiteness ...
‘Poor little Burckhardt,’ crooned the loudspeaker, while the echoes rumbled through the enormous chasm that was only a workshop. ‘It must have been quite a shock for you to find out you were living in a town built on a table top.’
~ * ~
It was the morning of June 15th, and Guy Burckhardt woke up screaming out of a dream.
It had been a monstrous and incomprehensible dream, of explosions and shadowy figures that were not men and terror beyond words.
He shuddered and opened his eyes.
Outside his bedroom window, a hugely amplified voice was howling.
Burckhardt stumbled over to the window and stared outside. There was an out-of-season chill to the air, more like October than June; but the scene was normal enough - except for a sound-truck that squatted at curbside half-way down the block. Its speaker horns blared:
‘Are you a coward? Are you a fool? Are you going to let crooked politicians steal the country from you! no! Are you going to put up with four more years of graft and crime ? NO ! Are you going to vote straight Federal Party all up and down the ballot? yes! You just bet you are!’
Sometimes he screams, sometimes he wheedles, threatens, begs, cajoles . . . but his voice goes on and on through one June 15th after another.
<
~ * ~
What To Do Until the Analyst Comes
I just sent my secretary out for a container of coffee and she brought me back a lemon Coke.
I can’t even really blame her. Who in all the world do I have to blame, except myself? Hazel was a good secretary to me for fifteen years, fine at typing, terrific at brushing off people I didn’t want to see, and the queen of them all at pumping office gossip out of the ladies’ lounge. She’s a little fuzzy-brained most of the time now, sure. But after all!
I can say this for myself, I didn’t exactly know what I was getting into. No doubt you remember the - Well, let me start that sentence over again, because naturally there is a certain doubt. Perhaps, let’s say, perhaps you remember the two doctors and their headline report about cigarettes and lung cancer. It hit us pretty hard at VandenBlumer & Silk, because we’ve been eating off the Mason-Dixon Tobacco account for twenty years. Just figure what our fifteen per cent amounted to on better than ten million dollars net billing a year, and you’ll see that for yourself. What happened first was all to the good, because naturally the first thing that the client did was scream and reach for his chequebook and pour another couple million dollars into special promotions to counteract the bad press, but that couldn’t last. And we knew it. V.B. & S. is noted in the trade as an advertising agency that takes the long view; we saw at once that if the client was in danger, no temporary spurt of advertising was going to pull him out of it, and it was time for us to climb up on top of the old mountain and take a good long look at the countryside ahead.
The Chief called a special Plans meeting that morning and laid it on the line for us. ‘There goes the old fire bell, boys,’ he said, ‘and it’s up to us to put the fire out. I’m listening, so start talking.’
Baggott cleared his throat and said glumly, ‘It may only be the paper, Chief. Maybe if they make them without paper . . .’ He’s the a.e. for Mason-Dixon, so you couldn’t really blame him for taking the client’s view.
The Chief twinkled: ‘If they make them without paper they aren’t cigarettes any more, are they? Let’s not wander off into side issues, boys. I’m still listening.’
None of us wanted to wander off into side issues, so we all looked patronizingly at Baggott for a minute. Finally Ellen Silk held up her hand. ‘I don’t want you to think,’ she said, ‘that just because Daddy left me a little stock I’m going to push my way into things, Mr VandenBlumer, but - well, did you have in mind finding some, uh, angle to play on that would take the public’s mind off the report ?’
You have to admire the Chief. ‘Is that your recommendation, my dear?’ he inquired fondly, bouncing the ball right back to her.
She said weakly, ‘I don’t know. I’m confused.’
‘Naturally, my dear,’ he beamed. ‘So are we all. Let’s see if Charley here can straighten us out a little. Eh, Charley ?’
He was looking at me. I said at once, ‘I’m glad you asked me for an opinion, Chief. I’ve been doing a little thinking, and here’s what I’ve come up with.’ I ticked off the points on my fingers. ‘One, tobacco makes you cough. Two, liquor gives you a hangover. Three, reefers and the other stuff - well, let’s just say they’re against the law.’ I slapped the three fingers against the palm of my other hand. ‘So what’s left for us, Chief? That’s my question. Can we come up with something new, something different, something that, one, is not injurious to the health, two, does not give you a hangover, three, is not habit-forming and therefore against the law ?’
Mr VandenBlumer said approvingly, ‘That’s good thinking, Charley. When you hear that fire bell, you really jump, boy.’
Baggot’s hand was up. He said, ‘Let me get this straight, Chief. Is it Charley’s idea that we recommend to Mason-Dixon that they go out of the tobacco business and start making something else ?’
The old man looked at him blandly for a moment. ‘Why should it be Mason-
Dixon ?’ he asked softly, and left it at that while we all thought of the very good reasons why it shouldn’t be Mason-Dixon. After all, loyalty to a client is one thing, but you’ve got an obligation to your own people too.
The old man let it sink in, then he turned back to me. ‘Well, Charley?’ he asked. ‘We’ve heard you pinpoint what we need. Got any specific suggestions ?’
They were all looking at me to see if I had anything concrete to offer.
Unfortunately, I had.
~ * ~
I just asked Hazel to get me the folder on Leslie Clary Cloud, and she came in with a copy of my memo putting him on the payroll two years back. ‘That’s all there was in the file,’ she said dreamily, her jaw muscles moving rhythmically. There wasn’t any use arguing with her, so I handed her the container of lemon Coke and told her to ditch it and bring me back some coffee, C-O-F-F-E-E, coffee. I tried going through the files myself when she was gone, but that was a waste of time.
So I’ll have to tell you about Leslie Clary Cloud from memory. He came into the office without an appointment and why Hazel ever let him in to see me I’ll never know. But she did. He told me right away, ‘I’ve been fired, Mr McGory. Canned. After eleven years with the Wyoming Bureau of Standards as a senior chemist.’
‘That’s too bad, Dr Cloud,’ I said, shuffling the papers on my desk. ‘I’m afraid, though, that our organization doesn’t -’
‘No, no,’ he said hastily. ‘I don’t know anything about advertising. Organic chemistry’s my field. I have a, well, a suggestion for a process that might interest you. You have the Mason-Dixon Tobacco account, don’t you ? Well, in my work for my doctorate I -’ He drifted off into a fog of long-chain molecules and short-chain molecules and pentose sugars and common garden herbs. It took me a little while, but I listened patiently and I began to see what he was driving at. There was, he was saying, a substance in a common plant which, by cauliflamming the whingdrop and di-tricolating the residual glom, or words something like that, you could convert into another substance which appeared to have many features in common with what is sometimes called hop, snow or joy-dust. In other words, dope.
I stared at him aghast. ‘Dr Cloud,’ I demanded, ‘do you know what you’re suggesting? If we added this stuff to our client’s cigarettes we’d be flagrantly violating the law. That’s the most unheard-of thing I ever heard of! Besides, we’ve already looked into this matter, and the cost estimates are -’
‘No, no!’ he said again. ’You don’t understand, Mr McGory. This isn’t any of the drugs currently available, it’s something new and different.’
‘Different?’
‘Non-habit forming, for instance.’
‘Non-habit-forming ?’
‘Totally. Chemically it is entirely unrelated to any narcotic in the pharmacopeia. Legally - well, I’m no lawyer, but I swear, Mr McGory, this isn’t covered by any regulation. No reason it should be. It doesn’t hurt the user, it doesn’t form a habit, it’s cheap to manufacture, it -’
‘Hold it,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘Don’t go away - I want to catch the boss before he goes to lunch.’
~ * ~
So I caught the boss, and he twinkled thoughtfully at me. No, he didn’t want me to discuss it with Mason-Dixon just yet, and yes, it did seem to have some possibilities, and certainly, put this man on the payroll and see if he turns up with something.
So we did; and he did.
Auditing raised the roof when the vouchers began to come through, but I bucked them up to the Chief and he calmed them down. It took a lot of money, though, and it took nearly six months. But then Leslie Clary Cloud called up one morning and said, ‘Come on down, Mr McGory. We’re in.’
The place we’d fixed up for him was on the lower East Side and it reeked of rotten vegetables. I made a mental note to double-check all our added-chlorophyll copy and climbed up the two flights of stairs to Cloud’s private room. He was sitting at a lab bench, beaming at a row of test tubes in front of him.
‘This is it ?’ I asked, glancing at the test tubes.
‘This is it.’ He smiled dreamily at me and yawned. ‘Excuse me,’ he blinked amiably. ‘I’ve been sampling the little old product.’
I looked him over very carefully. He had been sampling something or other, that was clear enough. But no whisky breath; no dilated pupils; no shakes; no nothing. He was relaxed and cheerful, and that was all you could say.
‘Try a little old bit,’ he invited, gesturing at the test tubes.
Well, there are times when you have to pay your dues in the club. V.B. & S. had been mighty good to me, and if I had to swallow something unfamiliar to justify the confidence the Chief had in me, why I just had to go ahead and do it. Still, I hesitated for a moment.
‘Aw,’ said Leslie Clary Cloud, ‘don’t be scared. Look, I just had a shot but I’ll take another one.’ He fumbled one of the test tubes out of the rack and, humming to himself, slopped a little of the colourless stuff into a beaker of some other colourless stuff - water, I suppose. He drank it down and smacked his lips. ‘Tastes awful,’ he observed cheerfully, ‘but we’ll fix that. Whee!’
I looked him over again, and he looked back at me, giggling. ‘Too strong,’ he said happily. ‘Got it too strong. We’ll fix that too.’ He rattled beakers and test tubes aimlessly while I took a deep breath and nerved myself up to it.
‘All right,’ I said, and took the fresh beaker out of his hand. I swallowed it down almost in one gulp. It tasted terrible, just as he said, tasted like the lower floors had smelled, but that was all I noticed right away. Nothing happened for a moment except that Cloud looked at me thoughtfully and frowned.
‘Say,’ he said, ‘I guess I should have diluted that.’
I guess he should have. Wham.
~ * ~
But a couple of hours later I was all right again.
Cloud was plenty apologetic. ‘Still,’ he said consolingly, standing over me as I lay on the lab bench, ‘it proves one thing. You had a dose about the equivalent of ten thousand normal shots, and you have to admit it hasn’t hurt you.’
‘I do?’ I asked, and looked at the doctor. He swung his stethoscope by the earpieces and shrugged.
‘Nothing organically wrong with you, Mr McGory - not that I can find, anyway. Euphoria, yes. Temporarily high pulse, yes. Delirium there for a little while, yes - though it was pretty mild. But I don’t think you even have a headache now.’
‘I don’t,’ I admitted. I swung my feet down and sat up, apprehensively. But no hammers started in my head. I had to confess it: I felt wonderful.
Well, between us we tinkered it into what Cloud decided would be a ‘normal’ dosage - just enough to make you feel good - and he saturated some sort of powder and rolled it into pellets and clamped them in a press and came out with what looked as much like aspirins as anything else. ‘They’d probably work that way too,’ he said. ‘A psychogenic headache would melt away in five minutes with one of those.’
‘We’ll bear that in mind,’ I said.
What with one thing and another, I couldn’t get to the old man that day before he left, and the next day was the weekend and you don’t disturb the Chief’s weekends, and it was Monday evening before I could get him alone for long enough to give him the whole pitch. He was delighted.
‘Dear, dear,’ he twinkled. ‘So much out of so little. Why, they hardly look like anything at all.’
‘Try one, Chief,’ I suggested.
‘Perhaps I will. You checked the legal angle ?’
‘On the quiet. It’s absolutely clean.’
He nodded and poked at the little pills with his finger. I scratched the back of my neck, trying to be politely inconspicuous, but the Chief doesn’t miss much. He looked at me inquiringly.
‘Hives,’ I explained, embarrassed, ‘I, uh, got an overdose the first time, like I said. I don’t know much about these things, but what they told me at the clinic was I set u
p an allergy.’
‘Allergy?’ Mr VandenBlumer looked at me thoughtfully. ‘We don’t want to spread allergies with this stuff, do we ?’
‘Oh, no danger of that, Chief. It’s Cloud’s fault, in a way; he handed me an undiluted dose of the stuff, and I drank it down. The clinic was very positive about that: even twenty or thirty times the normal dose won’t do you any harm.’
‘Um.’ He rolled one of the pills in his finger and thumb and sniffed it thoughtfully. ‘How long are you going to have your hives ?’
‘They’ll go away. I just have to keep away from the stuff. I wouldn’t have them now, but - well, I liked it so much I tried another shot yesterday.’ I coughed, and added, ‘It works out pretty well, though. You see the advantages, of course, Chief. I have to give it up, and I can swear that there’s no craving, no shakes, no kick-off symptoms, no nothing. I, well, I wish I could enjoy it like anyone else, sure. But I’m here to testify that Cloud told the simple truth: It isn’t habit-forming.’
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