Muir dutifully repeated the order, led the way outside, and held the car door open.
"Did you," she said, on the way down the road, "have the impression of being manipulated?"
He laughed. "How could you think it?"
"Look there."
Straight ahead was the local franchise of a worldwide fast-food chain. So far, they had passed no intersection or side road.
She said, "Did you need my help to get here?"
"Of course. I could have turned the wrong way, coming out the drive."
"For weeks, nearly every time I've tried to go out, something would happen, and usually Marius or Sally was responsible. Now they all but push me out."
"Sally, too?"
"Sally, too. Though he's the ringleader."
They stopped in the line of cars at the drive-in. He turned to her, and she looked back and smiled. The car ahead moved on. The car behind gave a blast of the horn.
A few minutes later, they were back on the road, with their order in several large bags. As they got out of the car, Marius ran out, studied their expressions anxiously, then looked relieved. He took the bags, methodically selected his share and Sally's, and said, "I cleared off the table out by the sandbox, Mom. You and Felix can eat there."
Gloria Griswell stared after him as he went into the house, then bit her lip.
Muir said, "What's wrong with the spot?"
"Let me show you."
They went down the walk, over a little footbridge across a brook that now in the summer was reduced to a trickle, and then along a narrow path through thick young pines to a little sunny clearing containing a small very clean table, two benches, and a sandbox.
"For the children's picnics," she said.
In the warm stillness, he looked around at the dense pines. "It does look unusually private."
She divided the various burgers and drinks. "Marius has a maze of tunnels through the lower branches."
"He could pop through anytime?"
"And will."
They ate in silence, then he said, "I'm not usually tongue-tied. But—"
A trapped look momentarily crossed her face, and he glanced around. "But I haven't wanted to ask about the device Dr. Allen showed me until there was more time to talk." She flashed him a grateful look as young Marius popped out from the pines.
"Mom, is the ice-cream in the freezer?"
"Why don't you look?"
"Because you left the wash on the freezer in a clothes basket."
"Can't you—"
"It's wet. You didn't put it in the dryer."
"Then—"
"I could get it off, but it's heavy, and it might spill. And the floor's filthy . . . Because, remember, you forgot—"
"Never mind," she said.
Muir thought that he could now guess what Allen had been thinking when he implied that Gloria Griswell was handicapped in the marriage market. He said, "I'll be glad to move the clothes basket, Mrs. Griswell."
Marius said, "Mom's name is—"
She said, "Will you get out of here, Marius?"
"Why can't Felix—"
Muir turned to her. "May I call you Gloria?"
"Yes!"
Marius grinned. "You sound—"
"For heaven's sake! Marius—"
Muir smiled. "I'll help Marius look for the ice cream. After all, no one can talk and eat at the same time."
She said, "I'm not sure of that, but it's worth a try. If you'll move the basket, I'll see if I can find the ice cream. Maybe we could even have some ourselves."
Marius said shyly. "There might be a little left."
Muir had expected to leave in an hour or two, but found himself, toward four o'clock, putting Sally in her crib. Sally, who had her mother's enchanting smile, clung to Muir's hand, smiled up at him, then put her head on her pillow, sighed sweetly, and shut her eyes.
Gloria Griswell looked down unbelievingly into the crib, glanced at Muir, and bit her lip. Muir followed Gloria out of the room, glanced back at Marius standing with innocent satisfaction beside the crib, and murmured, "Is Marius staying with Sally?"
"Evidently," said Gloria.
As they started down the stairs, Muir kept his voice low, "Could we talk about the touchstone?"
"All right."
"It's in my car."
"I'll go with you. There's something I have to say."
He led the way outdoors. "Did you want to get in?"
"I . . . Yes."
He held the door for her, then got in the other side.
She sat looking at her hands. "I'm willing to help you learn about the touchstone. But I—" She paused, and turned to him in silence.
He studied her look of bleak determination, and said carefully, "If you are trying to tell me not to presume on any momentary sympathy between us, or not to imagine that Marius selects your friends for you, you'll have to say it. I'm short on tact, and make it up in stubbornness."
She looked at him in silence, then her eyes went shut, she looked away, and tears ran down her cheeks. Her voice was a whisper. "I'm trying to—to keep you from being entangled in a—fate worse then death, by Marius."
"You think Marius . . ."
"He's afraid his blockheaded mother will attract some unsympathetic fellow that he and Sally will then be stuck with. He likes you, so he's doing everything he can to throw us together. He knows Sally is a little demon when she gets mad, and he doesn't want you to see that. He's been so busy driving men away that it took a while to grasp his latest tactics."
"I liked you before he had a chance to do a thing."
She blushed, then said stubbornly, "At the risk of sounding even more silly than I must already, you don't want to get entangled with a widow with two children."
He nodded. "In principle, that's true. And you don't want to get mixed up with someone too dull to understand tact. Still, on the other hand, a lot depends on specifics. Which two children? Which woman? You can't deal with these questions in generalities. Have you considered the details?"
She said, "I'm beginning to be sorry I tried to save you."
"That's all right. I appreciate the gesture."
After a moment, she sighed. "Where were we?"
"You were going to tell me about the touchstone."
She nodded, and he got the briefcase, and they went back into the house.
She led the way down the hall, to a paneled white door with a brass knob.
"Marius's father used this room as a study."
Muir looked into a large dim room with book-lined walls, comfortable chairs and sofa, and a closed rolltop desk.
She turned on a floor lamp, and pushed up the curving slide of the desk, to reveal numerous pigeonholes and shelves. On two shelves lay a pair of books, which she placed, face-down, on the writing surface of the desk. She took the touchstone, aimed its little cone at the first book, and pressed the right-hand grey button. There was a singing melodious note.
She turned the cone toward the second book. The touchstone gave a sickly groan.
Muir picked up the first book, to recognize a chemistry text of the early 1900s. The author had used care to distinguish fact from the theories of his day, so the book was still useful. Muir picked up the second book, didn't recognize it, and read:
". . . is 'at random.' Like when you're shooting craps you don't know what numbers will turn up. Or when somebody gets high, you don't know what he or she will do. This is at random.
"When these mollies bounce off each other, and hit the wall, it is at random. But when they hit the wall, their push makes a pressure. You can measure the pressure.
"CHEMFACT: Maybe you can tell what will happen even when the thing that makes it happen is at random.
"NEWWORD: Mollie. Mollie-cule. Mol-e-cule. Molecule. See?
"CHEMQUIZ: 'When people get beered up, is it at random?'"
Muir flipped to the front of the book, to learn that "this is the first in a new series of science texts designed to relate intimately to
today's more demanding student."
Gloria Griswell watched the expressions that crossed his face, and smiled. "The left button gives a reading on the meter. The right button gives a tone. The meter can measure small differences. The tone can differentiate all sorts of things."
"It's a touchstone for quality of workmanship?"
"As nearly as I can judge."
"It will work on what?"
"Anything man-made."
He let his breath out carefully. "No wonder Allen wouldn't give details. All right if I try it?"
She handed the device to him.
Muir aimed the cone at the desk itself, and pushed the right-hand button. A singing note sounded.
He tried the left-hand button. This time there was silence, but the needle swung far across the dial from left to right.
Muir glanced around the bookshelves, to a green plastic hand that held aloft a pot metal ashtray. He aimed, pushed the right-hand button. The touchstone emitted a croak.
Muir went methodically around the room. Usually the device gave a pleasant tone. But it made no response to the potted plants that sat on a window sill, and it made groaning, croaking, or bleating noises for a stoneware spider with nine legs and a built-in clock that didn't run, for a small doll in a bikini that shot from its mouth a cigarette-lighting flame, and for a printed invitation, preserved in plastic:
"Congratulations! Our sophisticated computer analysis has revealed a small select group of individuals who capably manage their own affairs. You are one of this select group! Now, for a limited time, we invite you to place at your disposal the limitless credit and extensive financial resources of our prestigious exclusive organization . . ."
Muir turned the plastic over, to find on the back a lengthy questionnaire in fine print, along with a little notice:
"DO NOT apply for Credit Approval if your income is below $39,000. Return the enclosed Card AT ONCE by Registered Mail!"
Like an insect preserved in amber, the credit card itself was embedded in the plastic, made out to "Marius Gristmill, Sr."
Muir aimed the cone-shaped coil at the card; the touchstone emitted a sickly bleating noise, several times repeated.
He looked up. "I have to agree with its sentiments. But I don't begin to understand it."
"I didn't mention understanding. I only said I would show you."
"Do you understand it?"
"I know what it will do. That's all."
"It won't work on people?"
"It will respond to clothing or accessories. There's no response to an individual, as far as I know."
"Did Dr. Griswell ever explain this?"
She nodded ruefully. "More than once."
"What—"
"The explanations varied."
"Why so?"
She shook her head. "His sense of humor. He said once that the lab had deciphered the genetic codes of the nose of a cat and the vocal organs of a goat, translated them into machine language, and burned the result into an EPROM installed in the touchstone."
As Muir grappled with this, she added, "So they had a program that could smell a rat, and say what it thought of it in sounds anyone could appreciate."
Muir became aware of a catch in her voice, and stopped asking questions. He sat down on the couch, and set the device carefully on a low table nearby.
She blew her nose, and after a moment's silence, said, "Does the touchstone make problems?"
"Unless there are circuits inside that are complicated beyond belief, and sensors to match, I'm afraid the touchstone is 'scientifically impossible'—unless Dr. Griswell made it as a joke."
"A joke?"
"Well, he could have embedded, in items around this room, tiny devices—like what's detected when a book is taken out of a library without having been checked out. The touchstone would give the reading, or the kind of sound, that had been encoded in advance."
She shook her head. "It will work on things that are brand-new as of now. How can you say it is 'scientifically impossible'?"
"If it works, of course it's scientifically possible. I mean that it looks incompatible with present-day scientific assumptions."
"But it does work. And it's useful. Yet Mr. Kenzie and Dr. Allen seem embarrassed by its existence."
"A genuine touchstone is something some people—I'm not thinking of Mr. Kenzie or Dr. Allen—might not want around."
"Does that matter?"
"Say we have a text written by Bungle, Murk, and Damnation, and published by Confusion Booksmiths. The school board runs a touchstone over this text, and never wants to see the book again. Confusion Booksmiths rises up a hundred feet tall in the law courts to demand proof from whoever made the touchstone that it is scientifically valid. We then have the problem of proving the scientific validity of something that does not conform to present-day scientific theories."
"To sell it would bring about situations in which an explanation will be demanded?"
"It seems so to me. And then what?"
"What is the explanation?"
"That's a question I've been trying to answer." Muir turned the device over in his hands. "Is it all right to open this?"
"As far as I know."
He got out an all-purpose Swiss pocket knife, and carefully undid four screws. Very cautiously, he lifted off the back of the case. After a lengthy silence, he looked up.
"However this device may judge quality, it doesn't use any method humans would use. I have the impression I'm looking at some variation on the Geiger counter."
"How—"
"Conceivably it counts something emitted from the object the coil is aimed at."
"Is that bad?"
"For whoever has to explain it. What does it count?"
She nodded. "I see."
"What is it again that this works on?"
"Anything man-made."
"But not on anything that's not man-made?"
"I don't think so. Marius would know better than I. But that's my—"
The door opened, and Marius looked in. "The touchstone only works on man-made objects. Dad showed me. Mom, I wanted to tell you Sally wants to get up. But I didn't want to interrupt when I heard you and Felix talking."
Muir listened with conflicting emotions as Marius went on: "I can show Felix more about how the touchstone works. But it's getting late, so maybe you could make supper. And we've got the extra room, so if Felix wants to stay overnight—"
Muir glanced at Gloria Griswell, who stared for an instant at her son, then turned to Muir, who said, "I appreciate the suggestion, but I think I should get back."
Marius said, still speaking to his mother, "You remember what happened the night before last, Mom? It wouldn't hurt to have a man around the house."
Muir started to speak, paused, then said, "What happened the night before last?"
Marius said, "Someone broke in."
"Marius," said Gloria, "we aren't sure—"
"You heard it, Mom. And the window was unlocked the next morning. And someone had gone through the desk. Sally was scared to death, and so was I."
Muir said sharply, "What desk?"
Marius pointed silently to the rolltop desk.
Muir said, "Was anything taken?"
"We don't think so," said Gloria.
Marius said, "Whoever did it might be back."
Muir said, "In that case . . ."
The sun was low in the sky next morning as Muir pulled into the company lot, parked, and went inside. He had just locked his attaché case in the old-fashioned safe when there was a knock, and Dr. Allen looked in.
"Muir, Mr. Kenzie and I would like to talk to you."
Muir followed Allen down the hallway, through an unmarked door, and up in a small elevator. They crossed a short hall, to an office where Kenzie, his suitcoat over the back of a chair, tie half-undone, prowled like a caged panther. Kenzie paused at the window to glance out, then turned to Muir.
"What do you make of the touchstone?"
"A usefu
l device."
"Which does what?"
"Measure the quality of human workmanship."
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