All business. I found out next morning he'd gone right to the bank and had my check certified before closing time. What do you think of that? I couldn't do a damn thing: I was out six thousand, one hundred and fifty dollars. Just for talking to someone.
Ricardo said I was a Faust. I walked out of the bank, beating my head with my fist, and I called up him and Morris Burlap and asked them to have lunch with me. I went over the whole story with them in an expensive place that Ricardo picked out. "You're a Faust," he said.
"What Faust?" I asked him. "Who Faust? How Faust?"
So naturally he had to tell us all about Faust. Only I was a new kind of Faust, a twentieth-century American one. The other Fausts, they wanted to know everything. I wanted to own everything.
"But I didn't wind up owning," I pointed out. "I got taken. Six thousand one hundred and fifty dollars worth I got taken."
Ricardo chuckled and leaned back in his chair. "O my sweet gold," he said under his breath. "O my sweet gold."
"What?"
"A quotation, Bernie. From Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. I forget the context, but it seems apt. 'O my sweet gold.' "
I looked from him to Morris Burlap, but nobody can ever tell when Morris Burlap is puzzled. As a matter of fact, he looks more like a professor than Ricardo, him with those thick Harris tweeds and that heavy, thinking look. Ricardo is, you know, a bit too natty.
The two of them added up to all the brains and sharpness a guy could ask for. That's why I was paying out an arm and a leg for this lunch, on top of all my losses with Eksar.
"Morris, tell the truth. You understand him?"
"What's there to understand, Bernie? A quote about the sweet gold? It might be the answer, right there."
Now I looked at Ricardo. He was eating away at a creamy Italian pudding. Two bucks even, those puddings cost in that place.
"Let's say he was an alien," Morris Burlap said. "Let's say he came from somewhere in outer space. Okay. Now what would an alien want with U.S. dollars? What's the rate of exchange out there? How much is a dollar worth forty, fifty light years away?"
"You mean he needed it to buy some merchandise here on Earth?"
"That's exactly what I mean. But what kind of merchandise, that's the question. What could Earth have that he'd want?"
Ricardo finished the pudding and wiped his lips with a napkin. "I think you're on the right track, Morris," he said, and I swung my attention back to him. "We can postulate a civilization far in advance of our own. One that would feel we're not quite ready to know about them. One that has placed primitive little Earth strictly off limits—a restriction only desperate criminals dare ignore."
"From where come criminals, Ricardo, if they're so advanced?"
"Laws produce lawbreakers, Bernie, like hens produce eggs. Civilization has nothing to do with it. I'm beginning to see Eksar now. An unprincipled adventurer, a star-man version of those cutthroats who sailed the South Pacific a hundred years or more ago. Once in a while, a ship would smash up against the coral reefs, and a bloody opportunist out of Boston would be stranded for life among primitive, backward tribesmen. I'm sure you can fill in the rest."
"No, I can't. And if you don't mind, Ricardo—"
Morris Burlap said he'd like another brandy. I ordered it. He came as close to smiling as Morris Burlap ever does and leaned toward me confidentially. "Ricardo's got it, Bernie. Put yourself in this guy Eksar's position. He wraps up his spaceship on a dirty little planet which it's against the law to be near in the first place. He can make some half-assed repairs with merchandise that's available here—but he has to buy the stuff. Any noise, any uproar, and he'll be grabbed for a Federal rap in outer space. Say you're Eksar, what do you do?"
I could see it now. "I'd peddle and I'd parlay. Copper bracelets, strings of beads, dollars—whatever I had to lay my hands on to buy the native merchandise, I'd peddle and I'd parlay in deal after deal. Until I'd run it up to the amount I needed. Maybe I'd get my start with a piece of equipment from the ship, then I'd find some novelty item that the natives would go for. But all this is Earth business know-how, human business know-how."
"Bernie," Ricardo told me, "Indians once traded pretty little shells for beaver pelts at the exact spot where the Stock Exchange now stands. Some kind of business goes on in Eksar's world, I assure you, but its simplest form would make one of our corporate mergers look like a game of potsy on the sidewalk."
Well, I'd wanted to figure it out. "So I was marked as his fish all the way. I was screwed and blued and tattooed," I mumbled, "by a hustler superman."
Ricardo nodded. "By a businessman's Mephistopheles fleeing the thunderbolts of heaven. He needed to double his money one more time and he'd have enough to repair his ship. He had at his disposal a fantastic sophistication in all the ways of commerce."
"What Ricardo's saying," came an almost-soft voice from Morris Burlap, "is the guy who beat you up was a whole lot bigger than you."
My shoulders felt loose, like they were sliding down off my arms. "What the hell," I said. "You get stepped on by a horse or you get stepped on by an elephant. You're still stepped on."
I paid the check, got myself together and went away.
Then I began to wonder if maybe this was really the story after all. They both enjoyed seeing me up there as an interplanetary jerk. Ricardo's a brilliant guy, Morris Burlap's sharp as hell, but so what? Ideas, yes. Facts, no.
So here's a fact.
My bank statement came at the end of the month with that canceled check I'd given Eksar. It had been endorsed by a big store in the Cortlandt Street area. I know that store. I've dealt with them. I went down and asked them about it.
They handle mostly marked-down, surplus electronic equipment. That's what they said Eksar had bought. A walloping big order of transistors and transformers, resistors and printed circuits, electronic tubes, wiring, tools, gimmicks like that. All mixed up, they said, a lot of components that just didn't go together. He'd given the clerk the impression that he had an emergency job to do—and he'd take as close as he could get to the things he actually needed. He'd paid a lot of money for freight charges: delivery was to some backwoods town in northern Canada.
That's a fact, now, I have to admit it. But here's another one.
I've dealt with that store, like I said. Their prices are the lowest in the neighborhood. And why is it, do you think, they can sell so cheap? There's only one answer: because they buy so cheap. They buy at the lowest prices; they don't give a damn about quality: all they want to know is, how much mark-up? I've personally sold them job-lots of electronic junk that I couldn't unload anywhere else, condemned stuff, badly wired stuff, stuff that was almost dangerous—it's a place to sell when you've given up on making a profit because you yourself have been stuck with inferior merchandise in the first place.
You get the picture? It makes me feel rosy all over.
There is Eksar out in space, the way I see it. He's fixed up his ship, good enough to travel, and he's on his way to his next big deal. The motors are humming, the ship is running, and he's sitting there with a big smile on his dirty face: he's thinking how he took me, how easy it was.
He's laughing his head off.
All of a sudden, there's a screech and a smell of burning. That circuit that's running the front motor, a wire just got touched through the thin insulation, the circuit's tearing the hell out of itself. He gets scared. He turns on the auxiliaries. The auxiliaries don't go on—you know why? The vacuum tubes he's using have come to the end of their rope, they didn't have much juice to start with. Blooie! That's the rear motor developing a short-circuit. Ka-pow! That's a defective transformer melting away in the middle of the ship.
And there he is, millions of miles from nowhere, empty space all around him, no more spare parts, tools that practically break in his hands—and not a single, living soul he can hustle.
And here am I, walking up and down in my nine-by-six office, thinking about it, and I'm laughing my head off. Beca
use it's just possible, it just could happen, that what goes wrong with his ship is one of the half-dozen or so job-lots of really bad electronic equipment that I personally, me, Bernie the Faust, that I sold to that surplus store at one time or another.
That's all I'd ask. Just to have it happen that way.
Faust. He'd have Faust from me then. Right in the face, Faust. On the head, splitting it open, Faust.
Faust he wants? Faust I'd give him!
The End
© 1963 by HMH Publishing Company, Inc.
Line To Tomorrow
Henry Kuttner
"Acknowledging. The initial steps have been accomplished. I am now fitted satisfactorily into the basic sociological pattern."
"Good. The contact is established. From time to time directions and guidance will be issued, Korys—"
The telephone rang. Fletcher kept his eyes shut and pretended not to hear it. He tried to recapture a rather pleasant dream, but the insistent shrilling would not stop. His time-sense was sufficiently warped by half-sleep so that the intervals between the rings seemed to stretch pleasantly into interminable minutes. Then tr-r-r-ranggg!
Finally he slid out of bed, fumbled his way across the room and, after a brief altercation with the door, located the telephone. He picked it up and muttered an inarticulate something.
"Korys," a voice said. "Is that you?"
"Wrong number," Fletcher growled, but before he could replace the receiver, the voice went on.
"Good. For a while I couldn't make contact. There was a temporal storm—at least, we think that was it—though it might have been the creebs shifting. You know how difficult it is to maintain a circuit like this—what took you so long to answer?
There was a long pause of dead silence. Fletcher, drunk with sleep, swayed on his feet, too drowsy to take the receiver from his ear.
The voice said, "Couldn't hear me? That's odd. But you can now, eh? Well, you'd better start making notes for your thesis. Here's an instruction: Buy Transsteel now, sell in two days. That will give you currency for your needs."
Silence. Then—
"Yes. But remember to be unobtrusive. And don't felk the sorkins, if you can avoid it."
The silence lengthened. Fletcher, murmuring something about practical jokes, hung up and went back to bed, where he managed to dream about felked sorkins. They looked rather like pickles dressed in gay red jackets, but their eyes were blue. By the time the creebs shifted—spidery creatures they were, rushing like lemmings down the beaches—Fletcher woke up with a headache and a mild hangover. Silently cursing his own imagination, he went feebly into the bathroom and revived himself with a cool shower. He shaved, arranged a makeshift breakfast, and read the morning newspaper. Transsteel, he noticed, was at 28¼.
He went down to the advertising agency where he worked, made a few abortive passes at layouts, and had a stroke of good luck in dating Cynthia Dale, who wrote fashion and perfume copy. Cynthia was a lovely redhead, with expensive tastes and a capacity for liquor that Fletcher found surprising. They met after work and had dinner; Fletcher enjoyed himself thoroughly. A mild headache wore off in the course of the evening, and Cynthia unbent more than usual. He woke the next morning with a hazy memory of Cynthia's head on his shoulder and her husky voice reciting a list of synonyms for fragrant.
"Aromatic," Fletcher suggested.
"Shut up, Jerry. I've almost got the right word—"
"So have I," Fletcher said, lifting his glass. "Nuts."
This time the telephone didn't ring until eight A.M. By then Fletcher was downing coffee, carefully avoiding sudden motions. His head had been stuffed with moldy hay; not only could he taste it, but it had packed down inside his skull and felt awful. The sudden ringing sent lightening flashing behind Fletcher's eyes.
"G-g-g … yeah," he said, lifting the receiver.
"Good morning, Korys," the voice said brightly. "Though it's night here, of course. Did you buy the Transsteel?"
"What kind of screwy gag is this?" Fletcher asked in thick fury. "I don't—"
"Sell it tomorrow, then," the voice directed. "At a hundred and seven. How do you like the people?"
"I hate the people!" Fletcher snarled, but apparently the other party didn't hear.
"Coryza was fairly common then. If we could transport whole bodies, he could immunize them, but you've got to take the body you get—though we generally locate fairly healthy ones. If you'd been majoring in medicine, we might have chosen a diseased body for you, but since it's socio-economics with you—"
Fletcher clicked the phone, but the connection wasn't broken. "—get rid of it," the voice said cheerfully. "Use this. It's a cure for coryza and several other minor things. One ounce sodium chloride, a pinch of baking soda—" It listed a few ingredients. "That should do it. Goodby, and good luck."
"Gah," said Fletcher inarticulately. He decided to get in touch with the phone company if this continued. Having madmen call for one-sided conversations every morning was a depressing prospect. Even without a hangover. Reminded of the Armageddon in his head, Fletcher went into the kitchen looking for tomato juice. There wasn't any. Giddy nausea lurched through him as he straightened from the refrigerator. He could feel the creebs shifting. At least, it felt that way.
He picked up the saltcellar and examined it thoughtfully. Sodium chloride. What the devil was that mixture the voice had recommended? Coryza—well, he didn't have a cold, but his head ached, his bones pained, and he was profoundly depressed. That stuff wouldn't kill him. He hoped.
Fletcher had a slight tendency to hypochondria, stimulated, perhaps, by the increasing frequency of his headaches. Therefore he found it impossible to resist trying new remedies. The various ingredients were all available, but he had never heard of mixing such things together. It was green, it effervesced, and the taste was vile. Nevertheless Fletcher drank it, if only to stop the creebs.
Ten seconds later he set down the glass and blinked at nothing. He shook his head experimentally.
No creebs.
It couldn't happen. An instantaneous cure for a monumental hangover was an obvious impossibility. But Fletcher's hangover was gone, headache and all. He felt fine.
"I'll be damned," he said softly. Then he snatched for paper and pencil and jotted down the ingredients of the cure-all as a precaution against forgetfulness. He held up his hand and watched its steadiness with disbelieving eyes.
Somebody had been very helpful.
No one at the office would admit to telephoning Jerry Fletcher that morning. It had been a man's voice, he remembered, but Cynthia's husky tones might have been sufficiently deceptive. He asked her. She denied everything and seemed ill-tempered. Obviously if Cynthia knew the magical way of curing a hangover, she wouldn't have one now.
There was, however, a newspaper on her desk, and Fletcher took it back with him to his office. The financial news interested him. But Transsteel had dropped three and a quarter points: it was at 25 now. And the general news didn't indicate that there would be any unexpected shift in supply and demand that would boost the stock overnight. Fletcher shrugged, decided to take the gifts the gods offered, and began to work on a layout for pretzels.
The next morning the telephone rang again.
The voice said, "Hello, Korys. Don't forget Transsteel. It'll drop before noon."
Fletcher said, "Can you hear me?"
"Well, in your own home—but don't let it out. The stuff's dangerous without a control. But it's fair enough, no reason why you shouldn't be comfortable. This is a field trip, not an initiation."
"Hello … you! Korys!"
"Then here's the equation." Fletcher reached for a pencil and copied rapidly as the voice dictated. He didn't know some of the technical terms, so he spelled them out. Mathematical symbols weren't up his alley.
"Quite all right," the voice said cheerfully. "I'll expect a good thesis from you when you get back. Watch those sorkins, boy." There was a laugh and a faint click. Fletcher waited a moment, hu
ng up, and began masticating his thumbnail.
Then he called the telephone company and asked questions. They said they'd check up. Fletcher was beginning to think they wouldn't find anything amiss. That term field trip had switched his thought on to a new track. He re-examined the equation, but found no light there. Maybe—
Abstractedly he dressed, gulped coffee, and went to the office. At noon he arranged to lunch with Dr. Sawtelle, a technician who worked for a huge commercial company that maintained an account with the advertising agency. Sawtelle was a skinny, gray-haired man with probing blue eyes.
"Where'd you get it?" he wanted to know.
"I'd rather not say just yet. All I want to know—"
Sawtelle studied the equation. "But this is ridiculous. You can't … of course you can't!" He began talking about half-time and alloy properties, using a jargon that left Fletcher baffled.
"Does it make sense?"
"No," Sawtelle said. "At least … well, no. Look. I'd like to take this with me. I want to look up some references. It might mean something at that."
"Copy it," Fletcher suggested. Sawtelle did so. And that ended the discussion, for the nonce.
The newspaper listed Transsteel at 27½. That didn't make much sense either. Fletcher shrugged, finagled a date with Cynthia, and forgot the whole matter till he got back to his apartment shortly before dawn. He was very drunk, but the miraculous hangover-cure remedied that. He turned on the radio as he undressed.
Presently it said, "—home of Dr. Andrew Sawtelle, research chemist. The building was totally destroyed by the blast. Entire family were killed—"
Fletcher reached out, turned off the radio, and sat looking at nothing until the telephone rang.
The voice was slightly distressed. "Haven't much time. Daki's in trouble. I knew when he flunked his pysch conditioning course … eh? Oh, felking the sorkins—naturally! So he's due to be burned at the stake unless—he would choose the Spanish Inquisition as his major. We could simply bring him back to this time, but it would mean a low mark for him. If I can get him out of it some other way, I will."
Sci Fiction Classics Volume 1 Page 55