Ring Around the Sun

by Clifford D. Simak

  The drugstore corner looked somehow unfamiliar and Vickers puzzled about it as he walked down the Street toward it. Then, when he got closer, he saw what it was that was unfamiliar.

  Several weeks ago old Hans, the shoe repairman, had taken to his bed and died and the shoe repair shop, which had stood next to the drugstore for almost uncounted years, finally had been closed.

  Now it was open again — or, at least, the display window had been washed, something which old Hans had never bothered to do in all his years, and there was a display of some sort. And there was a sign. Vickers had been so intent on figuring out what was wrong with the window that he did not see the sign until he was almost even with the store. The sign was new and neatly lettered and it said GADGET SHOP.

  Vickers stopped before the window and looked at what was inside. A layer of black velvet had been laid along the display strip and arranged upon it were three items — a cigarette lighter, a razor blade and a single light bulb. Nothing else.

  Just those three items. There were no signs, no advertising, no prices. There was no need of any. Anyone who saw that window, Vickers knew, would recognize the items, although the store would not sell only those. There would be a couple of dozen others, each of them in its own way as distinguished and efficient as the three lying on the strip of velvet.

  There was a tapping sound along the walk and Vickers turned when it came close to him. It was his neighbor, Horton Flanders, out for his morning walk, with his slightly shabby, carefully brushed clothes and his smart malacca cane. No one else, Vickers told himself, would have the temerity to carry a cane along the streets of Cliffwood.

  Mr. Flanders saluted him with the cane and moved in to stand beside him and stare at the window.

  "So they're branching out," he said.

  "Apparently," Vickers agreed.

  "Most peculiar outfit," said Mr. Flanders. "You may know, although I presume you don't, that I have been most interested in this company. Just a matter of curiosity, you understand. I am curious, I might add, about many different things."

  "I hadn't noticed." Vickers said.

  "Oh, my, yes," said Mr. Flanders. "About so many things. About the carbohydrates, for instance. Most intriguing setup, don't you think so, Mr. Vickers?"

  "I hadn't given it much thought. I have been so busy that I'm afraid…"

  "There's something going on," said Mr. Flanders. "I tell you that there is."

  The bus came down the street, passed them and braked to a stop at the drugstore corner.

  "I'm afraid I shall have to leave you, Mr. Flanders," Vickers said. "I'm going to the city. If I'm back tonight, why don't you drop over."

  "Oh, I will," Mr. Flanders told him. "I nearly always do."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT had been the blade at first, the razor blade that would not wear out. And after that the lighter that never failed to light, that required no flints and never needed filling. Then the light bulb that would burn forever if it met no accident. Now it was the Forever car.

  Somewhere in there, too, would be the synthetic carbohydrates.

  There is something going on, Mr. Flanders had said to him, standing there in front of old Hans' shop.

  Vickers sat in his seat next to the window, well back in bus, and tried to sort it out in his mind.

  There was a tie-up somewhere — razor blades, lighters, light bulbs, synthetic carbohydrates and now the Forever car. Somewhere there must be a common denominator to explain why it should be these five items and not five other things, say roller curtains and pogo sticks and yo-yos and airplanes and toothpaste. Razor blades shaved a man and light bulbs lit his way and a cigarette lighter would light a cigarette and the synthetic carbohydrates had ironed out at least one international crisis and had saved some millions of people from starvation or war.

  There is something going on, Flanders had said, standing there in neat, but shabby clothes and with that ridiculous stick clutched in his fist, although, come to think of it, it was not ridiculous when Mr. Flanders held it.

  The Forever car would run forever and it used no oil and when you died you willed it to your son and when he died he willed it to his son and if your great-great-grandfather bought one of the cars and you were the eldest son of the eldest son of the eldest son you would have it, too. One car would outlast many generations.

  But it would do more than that. It would close every automotive plant in a year or so; it would shut down most of the garages and repair shops; it would be a blow to the steel industry and the glass industry and the fabric makers and perhaps a dozen other industries as well.

  The razor blade hadn't seemed important, nor the light bulb, nor the lighter, but now they suddenly all were. Thousands of men would lose their jobs and they would come home and face the family and say: "Well, this is it. After all these years I haven't got a job."

  The family would go about their everyday affairs in tight and terrible silence, with a queer air of dread hanging over them, and the man would buy all the newspapers and study the want ad columns, then go out and walk the streets and men in little cages or at desks in the outer offices would shake their heads at him.

  Finally the man would go to one of those little places that had the sign "Carbohydrates, Inc." over its door and he would shuffle in with the embarrassment of a good workman who cannot find a job, and he would say, "I'm a little down on my luck and the cash is running low. I wonder…"

  The man behind the desk would say, "Why, sure, how many in your family?" The man would tell him and the one who was at the desk would write on a slip of paper and hand it to him. "That window over there," he'd say. "I figure there's enough there to last you for a week, but if there isn't be sure to come back anytime you want to."

  The man would take the slip of paper and try to say his thanks, but the carbohydrates man would brush them easily aside and say, "Look, now, that's what we're here for. This is our business, helping guys like you."

  The man would go to the window and the man behind the window would look at the slip of paper and hand him packages and one package would be synthetic stuff that tasted like potatoes and another one would taste like bread and there would be others that would make you think you were eating corn or peas.

  That was what had happened before, that was what was happening all the time.

  It wasn't like relief — anyhow, you could say it wasn't like relief. These carbohydrates people didn't ever insult you when you came to ask for help. They treated you like a paying customer and they always said that you should come back and sometimes when you didn't they came around to see what had happened — if maybe you had got a job or were bashful about coming in again. If it turned out that you were bashful, they'd sit down and talk to you and before they left they had you thinking you were doing them a favor by taking the carbohydrates off their hands.

  Because of the carbohydrates millions who would have died were still alive in India and in China. Now the thousands who would lose their jobs when the automotive plants shut down and the steel mills curtailed their operations and the repair shops shut their doors, would travel the same trail to the doors with the carbohydrates sign.

  The automotive industry would have to shut down. No one would buy any other car when you could walk down the street and buy one that would last forever. Just as the razor blade industry was already closing its doors, now that it was possible to get an everlasting blade at the gadget shops, The same thing was happening with light bulbs and with cigarette lighters and the chances were, Vickers told himself, that the Forever car wasn't the last that would be heard from these manufacturers, whoever they might be.

  For it must be, he told himself, that those who made the razor blades also made the lighters and the light bulbs, and that those who made the gadget items must have designed the Forever car. Not the same companies, perhaps, although he couldn't know, for it had never occurred to him to try to find out who had made any of them

  The bus was filling up, but Vickers still sat s
taring out the window and sorting out his thoughts.

  Just behind him a couple of women were talking and, without consciously trying to eavesdrop, he picked up their words.

  One of them giggled and said, "We have the _most_ interesting group. So _many_ interesting people in it."

  And the other woman said, "I been thinking about joining one of those groups, but Charlie, he says it's all baloney. Says we're living in America in the year 1977 and there's no reason in the world why we should pretend we aren't. Says this is the best country and the best time the world has ever known. Says we got all the modern conveniences and everything. Says we're happier than people ever been before. Says this pretending business is just a lot of communist propaganda and he'd like to get hold of the ones that got it started. Says…

  "Oh, I don't know," interrupted the first woman. "It _is_ kind of fun. It takes a _lot_ of work, of course, reading about them old times and all of that, but you get something out of it, I guess. One fellow was saying at a meeting the other night you get out of it what you put into it and I guess he's right. But I don't seem to be able to put much into it. I guess I must be the flighty type, I'm not too good a reader and I don't understand too well and I got to have a lot explained to me, but there are them as get a lot of it, seems like. There's a man in our group living bad in London, back in the times of a man named Samuel Peeps. I don't know who this Peeps was, but I guess he was an important man or something. You don't know who Peeps was, do you Gladys?

  "Not me," said Glady.

  "Well, anyhow," continued the other, "this fellow, he talks the time about this Peeps. 'He wrote a book, this Peeps, it must be an awful long book because he tells about so many things. This man I was telling you about writes the most wonderful diary. We always like to have him read it to us. You know, it sounds almost as if he was _really_ living there".

  The bus stopped for a railroad crossing and Vickers glanced at his watch. They'd be in the city in another half an hour.

  It was a waste of time, he told himself. No matter what sort of scheme Ann had up her sleeve, it would be a waste of time, for he was not going to allow anything to interrupt his writing. He shouldn't have allowed himself to be talked into wasting even this one day.

  Back of him, Gladys was saying, "Did you hear about these new houses they're putting out. I was talking to Charlie about them the other night and I was saying maybe we ought to look into them. Our place is getting kind of shabby, you know, and we'll have to paint it and sort of fix it up, but Charlie he said that it was a sucker game of some sort. He said no one would put out them kind of houses on the sort of deal they offer without there was a catch somewhere. Charlie, he said he was too old a hand to be taken in by something like them houses. Mabel, have you seen any of them houses or read anything about them…"

  "I was telling you," Mabel persisted, "about this group I belong to. One of the fellows is pretending that he's living in the future. Now, I ask you, ain't that a laugh. Imagine anyone pretending he's living in the future…"

  CHAPTER FIVE

  OUTSIDE the door, Ann Carter stopped and said, "Now, please remember, Jay, his name is Crawford. You're not to call him Cranford or Crawham or any other name but Crawford."

  Vickers said humbly, "I'll do my very best."

  She came close to him and tightened his tie and straightened it and flicked some imaginary dust off his lapel.

  "We're going out as soon as this is over and buy you a suit," she said.

  "I have a suit," said Vickers.

  The letters on the door read: North American Research.

  "What I can't understand," protested Vickers, "is why North American Research and I should have anything in common."

  "Money," said Ann. "They have it and you need it." She opened the door and he followed her in obediently, thinking what a pretty woman she was and how efficient. Too efficient. She knew too much. She knew books and publishers and what the public wanted and she was onto all the angles. She drove herself and everyone around her. She was never so happy as when three telephones were ringing and there were five dozen letters to be answered and a dozen calls to make. She had bullied him into coming here this day and it was not beyond reason, he told himself, that she had bullied Crawford and North American Research into wanting him to come.

  "Miss Carter," said the girl at the desk, "you can go right in. Mr. Crawford is waiting for you."

  She's even got the Indian sign on the receptionist, Vickers thought.

  CHAPTER SIX

  GEORGE Crawford was a big man who overflowed the chair in which he sat. He held his hands folded over his paunch and talked with no change of tone, with no inflection whatsoever, and was the stillest man Vickers had ever seen. There was no movement in him nor any sense of movement. He sat huge and stolid and his lips scarcely moved and his voice was not much louder than a whisper.

  "I have read some of your work, Mr, Vickers," he said. "I am impressed by it."

  "I am glad to hear you say so," Vickers said.

  "Three years ago, I never would have thought that I would ever read a piece of fiction or be talking to its author. Now, however, I find that we need a man like you. I have talked it over with my directors and we are all agreed that you are the man who could do the job for us."

  He paused and stared at Vickers with bright blue eyes that peered out like bullet points from the folds of flesh.

  "Miss Carter," he said, "tells me that, at the moment, you are very busy."

  "That is right."

  "Some important piece of work, I presume," said Crawford.

  "I hope it is."

  "This thing I have in mind would be more important."

  "That," Vickers told him crisply, "is a matter of opinion."

  "You don't like me, Mr. Vickers," Crawford said. It was a statement of fact, not a question, and Vickers found that it irritated him.

  "I have no opinion of you," he replied. "I am totally disinterested in everything except what you have to say."

  "Before we go any further," said Crawford, "I would like to have it understood that what I have to say is of a confidential nature."

  "Mr. Crawford," Vickers told him, "I have little stomach for cloak and dagger business."

  "This is not cloak and dagger business," said Crawford and for the first time there was an edge of emotion in his voice. "It is the business of a world with its back against the wall."

  Vickers stared at him, startled. My God, he thought, the man really means exactly what he is saying. He really believes that the world does have its back against the wall.

  "Perhaps," said Crawford, "you have heard of the Forever car."

  Vickers nodded. "The garage owner in my home town tried to sell me one this morning."

  "And about the everlasting razor blades and the lighter and the light bulbs."

  "I have one of the blades," said Vickers, "and it is the best blade I ever owned. I doubt that it is everlasting, but it is a good blade and I've never had to sharpen it. When it wears out, I intend to buy another one."

  "Unless you lose it, you will never have to. Because, Mr. Vickers, it _is_ an everlasting blade. And the car is an everlasting car. Maybe you've heard about the houses, too."

  "Not enough to matter."

  "The houses are prefabricated units," said Crawford, "and they sell at the flat rate of five hundred dollars a room — set up. You can trade in your old home on them at a fantastic trade-in value and the credit terms are liberal — much more liberal, I might add, than any sane financing institution would ever countenance. They are heated and air conditioned by a solar plant that tops anything — you hear me, _anything_ — that we have today. There are many other features, but that gives you a rough idea."

  "They sound like a good idea. We've been talking about low-cost housing for a long time now. Maybe this is it."

  "They are a good idea," said Crawford. "I would be the last to deny they are. Except that they will ruin the power people. That solar plant supplies it all — h
eat, light, power. When you buy one of them, you don't need to tie up to an electric outlet. And they will put thousands of carpenters and masons and painters out of work and in the carbohydrates lines, too. They eventually will wreck the lumber industry."

  "I can understand about the power angle," Vickers said, "but that business about the carpenters and the lumber industry doesn't quite make sense. Surely these houses use lumber and it must take carpenters to build them."

  "They use lumber, all right, and someone builds them, but we don't know who it is."

  "You could check," suggested Vickers. "It seems rather elementary. There must be a corporate setup. There must be mills and factories somewhere."

  "There's a company," admitted Crawford. "A sales company. We started with that and we found the warehouse from which the units are shipped for delivery after they are sold. But that's the end of it. There is, so far as we can find, no factory that builds them. They are consigned from a certain company and we have its name and address. But no one has ever sold a stick of timber to that company. They have never bought a hinge. They hire no men. They list factory sites and the sites are there, but there aren't any factories. And, to the best of our knowledge, no single person has gone into or come out of the home office address since we've been watching it."

  "That's fantastic," Vickers objected.

  "Of course it is," agreed Crawford. "Lumber and other materials go into those houses and somewhere there are men who build them."

  "Mr. Crawford, just one question. Why are you interested?"

  "Well, now," said Crawford, "I wasn't quite ready to tell you that."

  "I know you weren't, but tell me anyway."

  "I had hoped to sketch in a bit more of the background, so that you would understand what I am driving at. Our interest — I might say our organization — sounds just a little silly until you know the background."