Science Fiction Discoveries

by Carol

  "He’s too drunk to know what he’s saying about the wine,” John said suddenly. Anthea smiled and nodded.

  The man next to her was a tennis player, an Englishman who was telling everyone how well he knew America. "It’s not only store procedures I’m familiar with in your country,” he was saying to Wanger, "but I keep up with my own interests there, too. I often go to Forest Lawn for the tennis.”

  Wanger stared for a second, then laughed. You never knew when these tightlipped bastards were trying to be funny. Safer to laugh at everything.

  "Do you like movies,” John asked Anthea softly.

  "I haven’t seen many,” she said. "Do you like them?”

  "I like Westerns,” said John. ‘There’s a lot of shooting and not much talking.”

  "Just the way real life should be,” said Anthea.

  "And even if I don't like the movie,” said John, "and I know the story is silly and the people are ugly and not worth bothering about, I still sometimes cry.”

  "Cry?” asked Anthea.

  "Yes. I never told anyone before, but I feel like crying a lot of the time. It’s better to do it during a movie.”

  "I used to cry a lot, too,” said Anthea. "But it wasn’t because people were ugly. It was because . .

  "Because why?”

  "Because it sometimes made me feel better. It made my headaches go away, for one thing.”

  "I never had a headache,” said John. "I hope yours is better.”

  "I don't have them any more/' began Anthea, and then stopped.

  Kirbye Fanner had got up to make a speech. Somebody was tapping on his glass with a knife for silence.

  “She's silly," said John.

  “Yes, she is, rather, but I suppose she's famous enough to do a good job for the store here. I keep wondering about people like her ... women who center their lives around their looks, their strength, their youth ... actresses, athletes, courtesans. No, I don't suppose anyone says ‘courtesan' any more. What happens to them in middle age? Do they take dance lessons? Have face-lifts? Write non-books? Yes, I know there are a good many like that. And I suppose many of them settle for a very young lover."

  She looked at John, who was staring straight ahead.

  “How old are you?" she asked shyly.

  “I don't know,” said John. “About thirty?"

  “About that," said Anthea, feeling she had been tactfully snubbed for being personal.

  At least, she thought, if I do take him as a lover he won't be younger than I. Except in spirit. He is so very childlike ... it's so sweet to find that -in a man. And when I say lover, what do I think I mean? I am, so far as I know, quite virginal. I believe that is a prisonable offense in a twenty-five-year-old woman these days, but I have the feeling that when the time comes I shall know quite well what to do. My guardian angel will help me.

  At the moment, her guardian angel was asleep and allowing a freak flood to occur in China. Little Brother stopped the flood and watched Anthea through the prism, thinking how pretty she was. Of course she would know what to do. Thais what Little Brother was there for.

  Part VI

  PHYSICISTS CLAIM SIBERIAN “METEORITE” WAS BLACK HOLE

  The 1908 Tunguska, Siberia, meteorite that leveled 1,200 square miles of forest, has now been identified as a “black hole.”

  A “black hole” is an object which has collapsed to so tiny a point that its density approaches infinity. They are called by that name since the gravity at their surface is so intense that even light cannot escape.

  According to two physicists writing in the British magazine Nature, such an object struck the earth on June 30, 1908, knocking down trees for more than 20 miles in each direction and knocking horses off their feet as far as 400 miles away. The scientists, A. A. Jackson IV and Michael P. Ryan, Jr., believe the tiny black hole passed completely through the earth, emerging in the North Atlantic Ocean.

  Dix carefully reached for his illuminant and stuck it into a little recess of his outer clothing. He allowed his mouth to curl into one-thousandth of a sneer. The Teacher had been talking again about the evils of smoking, but the fact was that Dix enjoyed smoking and saw no reason to quit for the sake of another million stages or so tacked on to his Present existence. Naturally, every once in a while the illuminant he was using would spark and the spark might occasionally fall into the project. He couldnt help laughing when the dolls immediately and predictably rushed to their communications centers with “scientific explanations" of the spark: meteorites, black holes, showers of stones, red rains, rains of frogs ... where did they get these phrases?

  When the Teacher had finished, Dix managed to take his leave with an important look on his face. “May I be excused now?" he asked. “There are a thousand new Orientals hatching today and—"

  The Teacher frowned.

  “No, there s more," he said.

  “.. On June 20, 1880, a rain of stones struck a house at 180 Oakley Street, Chelsea, England; on February 1, 1888, a piece of iron—or what seemed to be iron but resembled no earthly material—was found in a garden at Brixton .. "

  Dix looked surly. “I think that was the day I dropped my ball. I think that was all that was."

  “Dont interrupt," the Teacher said. He went on: “... On November 1,1815, stones were seen rising in a field near Marbleton, Ulster County, New York, then they moved horizontally from thirty to sixty feet; in 1873, water fell in torrents from a dry ceiling in Eccles-ton, Lancashire. In March 1871, coins fell from a great height into Trafalgar Square, London; on August 30, 1919, at Swanton Novers Rectory, near Melton Constable, Norfolk, England, oil began spurting from the walls and ceilings, quarts of it, followed by gallons of water and methylated spirits. We will not refer to your centuries of silly mistakes with ‘holy objects and images'—tears and blood indeed! In October 1883, the Quebec Daily Mercury reported an unknown animal with a head like a horse and jointed fins, twenty feet long, spotted all over.

  “It is one thing to be careless in the matter of letting leaks occur, but to show your project-people our beloved tiny pet, the horsefish, is absurd. How you ever let our dear friend and companion, the horsefish, be glimpsed even for a moment by the experiment-dolls is beyond my understanding. It is a most serious offense. So serious that—well, to continue ...

  “In October of 1902, vast volumes of smoke obscured all things at sea from the Philippines to Hong Kong and from the Philippines to Australia. There were no fires to explain the smoke. What were you doing, Dix? Were you smoking? . . . On December 8, 1931, The New York Times reported that a sailor had received an unaccountable wound, the first of some thirty such occurrences over the next twenty years. On April 2, 1936, four mansions in one county in England were simultaneously burned to the ground, although they were miles apart; people were found for a whole decade suffering mysterious puncture marks that could not be explained; on December 22 through December 30,1883, a man died in a closed room in a house in Jordan, New York, of stones falling hard upon him.

  “I shall not refer to your pompous little tricks that result in devil worship, belief in magic, and all such nonsense. There is something far more serious at stake, Dix, and it is this.

  “As expressed in the simple philosophy of some of your ‘writers,’ there is a wish on the part of a guilty person to be apprehended. You would not have caused such little books to be written if you did not think this to be true yourself, and I have been afraid for some time that one day or another, if this carelessness is allowed to continue, you will reveal yourself, or, of course, some small part of yourself. In that case, you understand quite naturally you would be properly punished and the project dismantled. Do I make myself clear?”

  Dix nodded. His thoughts were so clouded that evening that Little Brother on reading them became sad, and resolved to work even harder to help Dix soon ... or as soon as he could invent the other person who was to complement John Sun.

  John was supposed to spend a good part of his days in the London store vi
siting all Emporium personnel; "Give them the old-cold smile and watch them try to look busy,” Wanger had instructed, but since nobody seemed to know or care much about him, John tried to hide out in Anthea’s office, following her around as she went to the files or stared out the window, as she used the typewriter or the telephone, interviewed people, yawned or stretched. He liked her so much that he kept up a steady one-sided conversation as he trailed her:

  “This is a nice office. I love those fat windows with fat stomachs, you can see so much out of them. The street looks narrower here than in New York. I live in New York. I have some flowers on my terrace but there are more flowers in England. I don’t like fake flowers. They’re not real. You have nice flowers in this vase. Smell. Don’t they smell good? I knew some riddles about a flower but I can’t remember them now. Somebody who was a teenager told me. One of the men in the Sun store in New York has two teenage daughters. They laugh a lot and they wear tight pants but one of them’s bottom is too big. They go to high school. I said I wanted to go some day, and they said that was typical of so-called-adult-humor, always putting people down, and one of them said ‘as far as I’m concerned, high school is the place where you learn not to cry as much as you used to.’ Which is why I want to go.”

  Anthea didn’t hear all that John said; most of the time she was talking or being Talked to on the telephone. She would catch a few words here and there, and nod at him brightly. Once, when she had a free moment, she said, “Do you always chat people up this way?” and John had made an odd little face. She thought he was teasing her, which pleased her.

  Once, when she brought out some sandwiches and sent her secretary out to make coffee, she sighed with relief.

  “At last, a moment for an elaborate luncheon.”

  “May I stay?” asked John.

  “Of course,” said Anthea. “There are lots of sandwiches. The eminent Public-Relations Director calling herself Anthea Evan always has lots of sandwiches on hand.”

  John frowned. “But your name is Anthea,” he said. “Why did you say ‘calling herself?”

  Anthea grinned. “Okay. Sorry. I tend to lapse into Cowardese every now and then.”

  John turned around and looked out of the window.

  "Do you play tennis?” Anthea asked him, after the sandwiches had been put on plates on her desk; she swept aside all her papers and made room for their coffee and some tarts.

  "I think so,” said John.

  "What do you mean, you think so?”

  "Well, I saw some people playing and one of them taught me how to—to serve?”

  "Mmm,” said Anthea, biting into a smoked salmon sandwich.

  "Sandwiches here are smaller and thinner with no crusts,” said John. "I like that. I don’t like fat on meat, either.”

  "Oh, cholesterol and all that,” said Anthea.

  "What?”

  "Nothing”

  They smiled at each other. “Let’s play tennis Saturday,” said Anthea. “There are courts not far from my house. I’ll tell you about trains later.”

  "I know about trains,” said John. "Beware of trains.”

  "How right you are,” said Anthea. "British Railways, please observe. However, it’s not too bad a trip, and my house is rather nice.”

  John said he loved Anthea’s cottage. He smelled the privet and the roses, at first walking up and down, then he began to run from bush to bush. Indoors, he had to bend over because he was just a few inches taller than the ceiling, but he thought that was fun. The dining room was to the left as you came in, the parlor to the right, and the stairs right in the middle. The parlor had french windows leading out to a side terrace that Anthea had started work on and was now in semi-permanence, with a few flagstones and a white-painted set of metal garden furniture.

  They played tennis before lunch, but it was not a great success. John knew how to serve, and hit the ball hard; but he couldn’t remember about where to keep his foot, or where the ball had to land on the other side, so they decided to volley.

  After a while Anthea laughed and said they’d better have lunch. She had prepared a salad and some cold meat. "Shall we have some sherry first?” she asked, and John shook his head. He gulped his food and said, ‘Turn.”

  “What do you do in America?” asked Anthea, heaping his plate for the second time. “I mean, what sort of thing interests you a lot. Do you go to theater, museums, churches?”

  “I go to church,” said John, drawing on his single experience. “And I told you about seeing the movies on TV. There isn’t much else I watch on the television,” said John. “I don’t like the shows that have a lot of old people made up like kids, talking and pretending to laugh, and I don’t like the stories that keep going on, and somebody told me that the biggest thing on TV is the Western shows anyway. I don’t tell everybody about that, because some of the people at the store like the educational programs, but I don’t. I’m afraid I just like the Westerns.”

  “Thus conscience does make cowboys of us all,” said Anthea.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh. I thought you said ‘thus conscience does make cowboys of us all.’ ”

  “I did.”

  “Oh. What does it mean?”

  “Well, it’s a quotation. You know. It’s Hamlet, Act Three, I believe ... the one that goes on with ‘and thus the native hue of resolution/Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.’ Remember?”

  “Yes, now I remember,” said John, who had learned to say that in answer to the sly word ‘remember?’; no one ever listened to anything for long, so it didn’t matter.

  He felt sleepy but hid his yawn. “I don’t like the 239

  murder stories on television because they make me have bad dreams. I don’t like bad dreams.”

  Anthea had gone into the kitchen and didn’t hear him. He followed her.

  “The thing I like best about you,” he said, as she stood near the sink, rinsing out some glasses, the shadow of her profile purely cast on the white wall behind it, “is that you take good care of me.”

  “Well, I try,” laughed Anthea. “Not much of a cook, but nines for effort.”

  And they smiled at each other in total sympathy and misunderstanding.

  Anthea, not sure that he wasn’t playing some mysterious kind of game, went on:

  “What do you like to read, then?”

  John bent his head toward his plate and took a huge forkful into his mouth.

  “Well, I don’t read a good deal these days either,” said Anthea.

  For a while neither of them said anything. Then, when they’d finished lunch, John helped Anthea bring the dishes out to the kitchen.

  He picked up a glass, which Anthea had left to rinse by itself. He dried it with a rather soiled tea cloth, rubbing the glass over and over again.

  “I dry a glass seven times,” he said. “Seven is a lucky number. So I like to try to do things seven times.”

  Americans like to leer in conversation, thought Anthea. I’ve noticed that before.

  “But I wouldn’t like to have the measles seven times,” said John thoughtfully. “Or write my name seven times ...”

  “Write your name,” said Anthea. “Consider the plight of poor Mrs. Tolstoy. She’s said to have copied over the manuscript of War and Peace seven times.”

  “Seven times,” repeated John, not quite as a question, not quite as a statement. at are you humming?” asked John, who had heard, during the silence at the table, a sort of tune coming from Anthea's direction.

  “Imagine having to read it seven times," murmured Anthea.

  “Well,” said John, putting down the first glass and picking up another, “maybe she didn't read it. How do you know she read it?”

  Anthea laughed. “Right. Daresay she caught the film. Here, let’s not stay at the sink all day. How about some coffee?"

  “You’re beautiful," John said, without any sort of guile.

  Anthea laughed. “That's conceit," she
said. “We look so much alike, it's as though you were just admitting your own reflection.”

  "What are you humming?"

  “I don't know. What? This?” She hummed a little tune that she didn’t know herself. It was a very old tune.

  “Sing it again,” said John.

  Anthea hummed it as well as she could.

  “Again," said John.

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “Look, it5s starting to rain. No tennis this afternoon. Let's see—”

  John had found a pack of cards in a cubbyhole. “What are these?” he asked.

  Anthea looked at them. For a moment her mind was blank, then a combination of memory and present knowledge supplied the answer: “It's a child’s card game,” she said slowly. “Children have played it for years and years here. I don't think it is played in America. It's called Happy Families.”

  They took the cards into the dining room and Anthea spread them out.

  “You see,” she said, “they’re all families, with names and occupations, like this, see? Here’s Mr. Bones, the butcher, and—wait—yes, here's his wife, and Master Bones and Miss Bones. Then there's Mr. Bun, the baker..."

  “They’re nice." said John. “Let’s play with them.”

  “First I have to show you how,” said Anthea gently.

  She explained that the object of the game was to collect a complete family, but after a while it became apparent that John was giving away the wrong cards. She asked him why he’d thrown away the baker’s daughter; he looked puzzled. Then he smiled.

  “I like to collect the messy ones,” he said.

  “Oh,” said Anthea.

  After Happy Families, John said he wished Anthea would read to him.

  “Do you really like being read aloud to?” asked Anthea. “I mean, I love to read aloud, but most people detest being read to. Are you sure you don’t mind?”