Fara grasped only dimly that Cayle must have been trying to get a job with these people. It was not clear; and his own mind was too intent on his purpose for it to mean anything at the moment. He said harshly, “Cayle!”
The couple turned, Cayle with the measured unhurriedness of a young man who has gone a long way on the road to steellike nerves; the girl was quicker, but withal dignified.
Fara had a vague, terrified feeling that his anger was too great, self-destroying, but the very violence of his emotions ended that thought even as it came. He said thickly, “Cayle, get home – at once.”
Fara was aware of the girl looking at him curiously from strange, gray-green eyes. No shame, he thought, and his rage mounted several degrees, driving away the alarm that came at the sight of the flush that crept into Cayle’s cheeks.
The flush faded into a pale, tight-lipped anger, Cayle half-turned to the girl, said, “This is the childish old fool I’ve got to put up with. Fortunately, we seldom see each other; we don’t even eat together. What do you think of him?”
The girl smiled impersonally. “Oh, we know Fara Clark; he’s the backbone of the empress in Glay.”
“Yes,” the boy sneered. “You ought to hear him. He thinks we’re living in heaven; and the empress is the divine power. The worst part of it is that there’s no chance of his ever getting that stuffy look wiped off his face.”
They walked off; and Fara stood there. The very extent of what had happened had drained anger from him as if it had never been. There was the realization that he had made a mistake so great that—
He couldn’t grasp it. For long, long now, since Cayle had refused to work in his shop, he had felt this building up to a climax. Suddenly, his own uncontrollable ferocity stood revealed as a partial product of that – deeper – problem.
Only, now that the smash was here, he didn’t want to face it—
All through the day in his shop, he kept pushing it out of his mind, kept thinking, would this go on now, as before, Cayle and he living in the same house, not even looking at each other when they met, going to bed at different times, getting up, Fara at 6:30, Cayle at noon? Would that go on through all the days and years to come?
When he arrived home, Creel was waiting for him. She said, “Fara, he wants you to loan him five hundred credits, so that he can go to Imperial City.”
Fara nodded wordlessly. He brought the money back to the house the next morning, and gave it to Creel, who took it into the bedroom.
She came out a minute later. “He says to tell you goodbye.”
When Fara came home that evening, Cayle was gone. He wondered whether he ought to feel relieved or – what?
The days passed. Fara worked. He had nothing else to do, and the gray thought was often in his mind that now he would be doing it till the day he died. Except—
Fool that he was – he told himself a thousand times how big a fool – he kept hoping that Cayle would walk into the shop and say, “Father, I’ve learned my lesson. If you can ever forgive me, teach me the business, and then you retire to a well-earned rest.”
It was exactly a month to a day after Cayle’s departure that the telestat clicked on just after Fara had finished lunch. “Money call,” it sighed, “money call.”
Fara and Creel looked at each other. “Eh,” said Fara finally, “money call for us.”
He could see from the gray look in Creel’s face the thought that was in her mind. He said under his breath: “Damn that boy!”
But he felt relieved. Amazingly relieved! Cayle was beginning to appreciate the value of parents and—
He switched on the viewer. “Come and collect,” he said.
The face that came on the screen was heavy-jowled, beetle-browed – and strange. The man said, “This is Clerk Pearton of the Fifth Bank of Ferd. We have received a sight draft on you for ten thousand credits. With carrying charges and government tax, the sum required will be twelve thousand one hundred credits. Will you pay it now or will you come in this afternoon and pay it?”
“B-but . . . b-but—” said Fara. “W-who—”
He stopped, conscious of the stupidity of the question, dimly conscious of the heavy-faced man saying something about the money having been paid out to one Cayle Clark that morning in Imperial City. At last, Fara found his voice:
“But the bank had no right,” he expostulated, “to pay out the money without my authority. I—”
The voice cut him off coldly: “Are we then to inform our central that the money was obtained under false pretenses? Naturally, an order will be issued immediately for the arrest of your son.”
“Wait . . . wait—” Fara spoke blindly. He was aware of Creel beside him, shaking her head at him. She was as white as a sheet, and her voice was a sick, stricken thing, as she said, “Fara, let him go. He’s through with us. We must be as hard – let him go.”
The words rang senselessly in Fara’s ears. They didn’t fit into any normal pattern. He was saying:
“I . . . I haven’t got—How about my paying . . . installments? I—”
“If you wish a loan,” said Clerk Pearton, “naturally we will be happy to go into the matter. I might say that when the draft arrived, we checked up on your status, and we are prepared to loan you eleven thousand credits on indefinite call with your shop as security. I have the form here, and if you are agreeable, we will switch this call through the registered circuit, and you can sign at once.”
“Fara, no.”
The clerk went on: “The other eleven hundred credits will have to be paid in cash. Is that agreeable?”
“Yes, yes, of course, I’ve got twenty-five hund—” He stopped his chattering tongue with a gulp; then: “Yes, that’s satisfactory.”
The deal completed, Fara whirled on his wife. Out of the depths of his hurt and bewilderment, he raged: “What do you mean, standing there and talking about not paying it? You said several times that I was responsible for his being what he is. Besides, we don’t know why he needed the money. He—”
Creel said in a low, dead tone: “In one hour, he’s stripped us of our life work. He did it deliberately, thinking of us as two old fools, who wouldn’t know any better than to pay it.”
Before he could speak, she went on, “Oh, I know I blamed you, but in the final issue, I knew it was he. He was always cold and calculating, but I was weak, and I was sure that if you handled him in a different . . . and besides I didn’t want to see his faults for a long time. He—”
“All I see,” Fara interrupted doggedly, “is that I have saved our name from disgrace.”
His high sense of duty rightly done lasted until midafternoon, when the bailiff from Ferd came to take over the shop.
“But what—” Fara began.
The bailiff said, “The Automatic Atomic Repair Shops, Limited, took over your loan from the bank, and are foreclosing. Have you anything to say?”
“It’s unfair,” said Fara. “I’ll take it to court. I’ll—”
He was thinking dazedly: If the empress ever learned of this, she’d . . . she’d—
The courthouse was a big, gray building; and Fara felt emptier and colder every second, as he walked along the gray corridors. In Glay, his decision not to give himself into the hands of a blood-sucker of a lawyer had seemed a wise act. Here, in these enormous halls and palatial rooms, it seemed the sheerest folly.
He managed, nevertheless, to give an articulate acount of the criminal act of the bank in first giving Cayle the money, then turning over the note to his chief competitor, apparently within minutes of his signing it. He finished with: “I’m sure, sir, the empress would not approve of such goings-on against honest citizens. I—”
“How dare you,” said the cold-voiced creature on the bench, “use the name of her holy majesty in support of your own gross self-interest?”
Fara shivered. The sense of being intimately a member of the empress’ great human family yielded to a sudden chill and a vast mind-picture of the ten million icy c
ourts like this, and the myriad malevolent and heartless men – like this – who stood between the empress and her loyal subject, Fara.
He thought passionately: If the empress knew what was happening here, how unjustly he was being treated, she would—
Or would she?
He pushed the crowding, terrible doubt out of his mind – came out of his hard reverie with a start, to hear the Cadi saying, “Plaintiffs appeal dismissed, with costs assessed at seven hundred credits, to be divided between the court and the defense solicitor in the ratio of five to two. See to it that the appellant does not leave till the costs are paid. Next case—”
Fara went alone the next day to see Creel’s mother. He called first at “Farmer’s Restaurant” at the outskirts of the village. The place was, he noted with satisfaction in the thought of the steady stream of money flowing in, half full, though it was only midmorning. But madame wasn’t there. Try the feed store.
He found her in the back of the feed store, overseeing the weighing out of grain into cloth measures. The hard-faced old woman heard his story without a word. She said finally, curtly, “Nothing doing, Fara. I’m one who has to make loans often from the bank to swing deals. If I tried to set you up in business, I’d find the Automatic Atomic Repair people getting after me. Besides, I’d be a fool to turn money over to a man who lets a bad son squeeze a fortune out of him. Such a man has no sense about worldly things.
“And I won’t give you a job because I don’t hire relatives in my business.” She finished: “Tell Creel to come and live at my house. I won’t support a man, though. That’s all.”
He watched her disconsolately for a while, as she went on calmly superintending the clerks who were manipulating the old, no longer accurate measuring machines. Twice her voice echoed through the dust-filled interior, each time with a sharp: “That’s overweight, a gram at least. Watch your machine.”
Though her back was turned. Fara knew by her posture that she was still aware of his presence. She turned at last with an abrupt movement and said, “Why don’t you go to the weapons shop? You haven’t anything to lose and you can’t go on like this.”
Fara went out, then, a little blindly. At first the suggestion that he buy a gun and commit suicide had no real personal application. But he felt immeasurably hurt that his mother-in-law should have made it.
Kill himself? Why, it was ridiculous. He was still only a young man, going on fifty. Given the proper chance, with his skilled hands, he could wrest a good living even in a world where automatic machines were encroaching everywhere. There was always room for a man who did a good job. His whole life had been based on that credo.
Kill himself—
He went home to find Creel packing. “It’s the common sense thing to do,” she said. “We’ll rent the house and move into rooms.”
He told her about her mother’s offer to take her in, watching her face as he spoke. Creel shrugged.
“I told her ‘No’ yesterday,” she said thoughtfully. “I wonder why she mentioned it to you.”
Fara walked swiftly over to the great front window overlooking the garden, with its flowers, its pool, its rockery. He tried to think of Creel away from this garden of hers, this home of two thirds a lifetime, Creel living in rooms – and knew what her mother had meant. There was one more hope—
He waited till Creel went upstairs, then called Mel Dale on the telestat. The mayor’s plump face took on an uneasy expression as he saw who it was.
But he listened pontifically, said finally, “Sorry, the council does not loan money; and I might as well tell you, Fara – I have nothing to do with this, mind you – but you can’t get a license for a shop any more.”
“W-what?”
“I’m sorry!” The mayor lowered his voice. “Listen, Fara, take my advice, and go to the weapon shop. These places have their uses.”
There was a click, and Fara sat staring at the blank face of the viewing screen.
So it was to be – death!
He waited until the street was empty of human beings, then slipped across the boulevard, past a design of flower gardens, and so to the door of the shop. The brief fear came that the door wouldn’t open, but it did, effortlessly.
As he emerged from the dimness of the alcove into the shop proper, he saw the silver-haired old man sitting in a corner chair, reading under a softly bright light. The old man looked up, put aside his book, then rose to his feet.
“It’s Mr. Clark,” he said quietly. “What can we do for you?”
A faint flush crept into Fara’s cheeks. In a dim fashion, he had hoped that he would not suffer the humiliation of being recognized; but now that his fear was realized, he stood his ground stubbornly. The important thing about killing himself was that there be no body for Creel to bury at great expense. Neither knife nor poison would satisfy that basic requirement.
“I want a gun,” said Fara, “that can be adjusted to disintegrate a body six feet in diameter in a single shot. Have you that kind?”
Without a word, the old man turned to a showcase, and brought forth a sturdy gem of a revolver that glinted with all the soft colors of the inimitable Ordine plastic. The old man said in a precise voice. “Notice the flanges on this barrel are little more than bulges. This makes the model ideal for carrying in a shoulder holster under the coat; it can be drawn very swiftly because, when properly attuned, it will leap toward the reaching hand of its owner. At the moment it is attuned to me. Watch while I replace it in its holster and—”
The speed of the draw was absolutely amazing. The old man’s fingers moved; and the gun, four feet away, was in them. There was no blur of movement. It was like the door the night that it had slipped from Fara’s grasp, and slammed noiselessly in Constable Jor’s face. Instantaneous!
Fara, who had parted his lips as the old man was explaining, to protest the utter needlessness of illustrating any quality of the weapon except what he had asked for, closed them again. He stared in a brief, dazed fascination; and something of the wonder that was here held his mind and his body.
He had seen and handled the guns of soldiers, and they were simply ordinary metal or plastic things that one used clumsily like any other material substance, not like this at all, not possessed of a dazzling life of their own, leaping with an intimate eagerness to assist with all their superb power the will of their master. They—
With a start, Fara remembered his purpose. He smiled wryly, and said, “All this is very interesting. But what about the beam that can fan out?”
The old man said calmly, “At pencil thickness, this beam will pierce any body except certain alloys of lead up to four hundred yards. With proper adjustment of the firing nozzle, you can disintegrate a six-foot object at fifty yards or less. This screw is the adjuster.”
He indicated a tiny device in the muzzle itself. “Turn it to the left to spread the beam, to the right to close it.”
Fara said, “I’ll take the gun. How much is it?”
He saw that the old man was looking at him thoughtfully; the oldster said finally, slowly, “I have previously explained our regulations to you, Mr. Clark. You recall them, of course?”
“Eh!” said Fara, and stopped, wide-eyed. It wasn’t that he didn’t remember them. It was simply—
“You mean,” he gasped, “those things actually apply. They’re not—”
With a terrible effort, he caught his spinning brain and blurring voice. Tense and cold, he said, “All I want is a gun that will shoot in self-defense, but which I can turn on myself if I have to or – want to.”
“Oh, suicide!” said the old man. He looked as if a great understanding had suddenly dawned on him. “My dear sir, we have no objection to your killing yourself at any time. That is your personal privilege in a world where privileges grow scanter every year. As for the price of this revolver, it’s four credits.”
“Four cre . . . only four credits!” said Fara.
He stood, absolutely astounded, his whole mind snatched from its
dark purpose. Why, the plastic alone was – and the whole gun with its fine, intricate workmanship – twenty-five credits would have been dirt cheap.
He felt a brief thrill of utter interest; the mystery of the weapon shops suddenly loomed as vast and important as his own black destiny. But the old man was speaking again:
“And now, if you will remove your coat, we can put on the holster—”
Quite automatically, Fara complied. It was vaguely startling to realize that, in a few seconds, he would be walking out of here, equipped for self-murder, and that there was now not a single obstacle to his death.
Curiously, he was disappointed. He couldn’t explain it, but somehow there had been in the back of his mind a hope that these shops might, just might – what?
What indeed? Fara sighed wearily – and grew aware again of the old man’s voice, saying:
“Perhaps you would prefer to step out of our side door. It is less conspicuous than the front.”
There was no resistance in Fara. He was dimly conscious of the man’s fingers on his arm, half guiding him; and then the old man pressed one of several buttons on the wall – so that’s how it was done – and there was the door.
He could see flowers beyond the opening; without a word he walked toward them. He was outside before he realized it.
Fara stood for a moment in the neat little pathway, striving to grasp the finality of his situation. But nothing would come except a curious awareness of many men around him; for a long second, his brain was like a fog drifting along a stream at night.
Through that darkness grew consciousness of something wrong; the wrongness was there in the back of his mind, as he turned leftward to go to the front of the weapon store.
Vagueness transformed to a shocked, startled sound. For – he was not in Glay, and the weapon shop wasn’t where it had been. In its place—
A dozen men brushed past Fara to join a long line of men farther along. But Fara was immune to their presence, their strangeness. His whole mind, his whole vision, his very being was concentrating on the section of machine that stood where the weapon shop had been.
The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF Page 11