The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein

by Robert A. Heinlein

  “In through here, Jim.” Grimes steadied himself with one hand, gesturing with the other. Stevens slid through the manhole indicated. Before he had had time to look around he was startled by a menacing bass growl. He looked up; charging through the air straight at him was an enormous mastiff, lips drawn back, jaws slavering. Its front legs were spread out stiffly as if to balance in flight; its hind legs were drawn up under its lean belly. By voice and manner it announced clearly its intention of tearing the intruder into pieces, then swallowing the pieces.

  “Baldur!” A voice cut through the air from some point beyond. The dog’s ferocity wilted, but it could not check its lunge. A waldo snaked out a good thirty feet and grasped it by the collar. “I am sorry, sir,” the voice added. “My friend was not expecting you.”

  Grimes said, “Howdy, Baldur. How’s your conduct?” The dog looked at him, whined, and wagged his tail. Stevens looked for the source of the commanding voice, found it.

  The room was huge and spherical; floating in its center was a fat man—Waldo.

  He was dressed conventionally enough in shorts and singlet, except that his feet were bare. His hands and forearms were covered by metallic gauntlets—primary waldoes. He was softly fat, with double chin, dimples, smooth skin; he looked like a great, pink cherub, floating attendance on a saint. But the eyes were not cherubic, and the forehead and skull were those of a man. He looked at Stevens. “Permit me to introduce you to my pet,” he said in a high, tired voice. “Give the paw, Baldur.”

  The dog offered a foreleg, Stevens shook it gravely. “Let him smell you, please.”

  The dog did so, as the waldo at his collar permitted him to come closer. Satisfied, the animal bestowed a wet kiss on Stevens’s wrist. Stevens noted that the dog’s eyes were surrounded by large circular patches of brown in contrast to his prevailing white, and mentally tagged it the Dog with Eyes as Large as Saucers, thinking of the tale of the soldier and the flint box. He made noises to it of “Good boy!” and “That’s a nice old fellow!” while Waldo looked on with faint distaste.

  “Heel, sir!” Waldo commanded when the ceremony was complete. The dog turned in midair, braced a foot against Stevens’s thigh, and shoved, projecting himself in the direction of his master. Stevens was forced to steady himself by clutching at the handgrip. Grimes shoved himself away from the manhole and arrested his flight on a stanchion near their host. Stevens followed him.

  Waldo looked him over slowly. His manner was not overtly rude, but was somehow, to Stevens, faintly annoying. He felt a slow flush spreading out from his neck; to inhibit it he gave his attention to the room around him. The space was commodious, yet gave the impression of being cluttered because of the assemblage of, well, junk which surrounded Waldo. There were half a dozen vision receptors of various sizes around him at different angles, all normal to his line of sight. Three of them had pickups to match. There were control panels of several sorts, some of which seemed obvious enough in their purpose—one for lighting, which was quite complicated, with little ruby telltales for each circuit, one which was the keyboard of a voder, a multiplex television control panel, a board which seemed to be power relays, although its design was unusual. But there were at least half a dozen which stumped Stevens completely.

  There were several pairs of waldoes growing out of a steel ring which surrounded the working space. Two pairs, mere monkey fists in size, were equipped with extensors. It had been one of these which had shot out to grab Baldur by his collar. There were waldoes rigged near the spherical wall, too, including one pair so huge that Stevens could not conceive of a use for it. Extended, each hand spread quite six feet from little finger tip to thumb tip.

  There were books in plenty on the wall, but no bookshelves. They seemed to grow from the wall like so many cabbages. It puzzled Stevens momentarily, but he inferred—correctly it turned out later—that a small magnet fastened to the binding did the trick.

  The arrangement of lighting was novel, complex, automatic, and convenient for Waldo. But it was not so convenient for anyone else in the room. The lighting was of course, indirect; but, furthermore, it was subtly controlled, so that none of the lighting came from the direction in which Waldo’s head was turned. There was no glare—for Waldo. Since the lights behind his head burned brightly in order to provide more illumination for whatever he happened to be looking at, there was glare aplenty for anyone else. An electric eye circuit, obviously. Stevens found himself wondering just how simple such a circuit could he made.

  Grimes complained about it. “Damn it, Waldo; get those lights under control. You’ll give us headaches.”

  “Sorry, Uncle Gus.” He withdrew his right hand from its gauntlet and placed his fingers over one of the control panels. The glare stopped. Light now came from whatever direction none of them happened to be looking, and much more brightly, since the area source of illumination was much reduced. Lights rippled across the walls in pleasant patterns. Stevens tried to follow the ripples, a difficult matter, since the setup was made not to be seen. He found that he could do so by rolling his eyes without moving his head. It was movement of the head which controlled the lights; movement of an eyeball was a little too much for it.

  “Well, Mr. Stevens, do you find my house interesting?” Waldo was smiling at him with faint superciliousness.

  “Oh—quite! Quite! I believe that it is the most remarkable place I have ever been in.”

  “And what do you find remarkable about it?”

  “Well—the lack of definite orientation, I believe. That and the remarkable mechanical novelties. I suppose I am a bit of a groundlubber, but I keep expecting a floor underfoot and a ceiling overhead.”

  “Mere matters of functional design, Mr. Stevens; the conditions under which I live are unique; therefore, my house is unique. The novelty you speak of consists mainly in the elimination of unnecessary parts and the addition of new conveniences.”

  “To tell the truth, the most interesting thing I have seen yet is not a part of the house at all.”

  “Really? What is it, pray?”

  “Your dog, Baldur.” The dog looked around at the mention of his name. “I’ve never before met a dog who could handle himself in free flight.”

  Waldo smiled; for the first time his smile seemed gentle and warm. “Yes, Baldur is quite an acrobat. He’s been at it since he was a puppy.” He reached out and roughed the dog’s ears, showing momentarily his extreme weakness, for the gesture had none of the strength appropriate to the size of the brute. The finger motions were flaccid, barely sufficient to disturb the coarse fur and to displace the great ears. But he seemed unaware, or unconcerned, by the disclosure. Turning back to Stevens, he added, “But if Baldur amuses you, you must see Ariel.”

  “Ariel?”

  Instead of replying, Waldo touched the keyboard of the voder, producing a musical whistling pattern of three notes. There was a rustling near the wall of the room “above” them; a tiny yellow shape shot toward them—a canary. It sailed through the air with wings folded, bullet fashion. A foot or so away from Waldo it spread its wings, cupping the air, beat them a few times with tail down and spread, and came to a dead stop, hovering in the air with folded wings. Not quite a dead stop, perhaps, for it drifted slowly, came within an inch of Waldo’s shoulder, let down its landing gear, and dug its claws into his singlet.

  Waldo reached up and stoked it with a finger-tip. It preened. “No earth-hatched bird can learn to fly in that fashion,” he stated. “I know. I lost half a dozen before I was sure that they were incapable of making the readjustment. Too much thalamus.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “In a man you would call it acute anxiety psychosis. They try to fly; their own prime skill leads them to disaster. Naturally, everything they do is wrong and they don’t understand it. Presently they quit trying; a little later they die. Of a broken heart, one might say, poetically.” He smiled thinly. “But Ariel is a genius among birds. He came here as an egg; he invented, unassis
ted, a whole new school of flying.” He reached up a finger, offering the bird a new perch, which it accepted.

  “That’s enough, Ariel. Fly away home.”

  The bird started the “Bell Song” from Lakmé.

  He shook it gently. “No, Ariel. Go to bed.”

  The canary lifted its feet clear of the finger, floated for an instant, then beat its wings savagely for a second or two to set course and pick up speed, and bulleted away whence he had come, wings folded, feet streamlined under.

  “Jimmie’s got something he wants to talk with you about,” Grimes commenced.

  “Delighted,” Waldo answered lazily, “but shan’t we dine first? Have you an appetite, sir?”

  Waldo full, Stevens decided, might be easier to cope with than Waldo empty. Besides, his own mid-section informed him that wrestling with a calorie or two might be pleasant. “Yes, I have.”

  “Excellent.” They were served.

  Stevens was never able to decide whether Waldo had prepared the meal by means of his many namesakes, or whether servants somewhere out of sight had done the actual work. Modern food-preparation methods being what they were, Waldo could have done it alone; he, Stevens, batched it with no difficulty, and so did Gus. But he made a mental note to ask Doc Grimes at the first opportunity what resident staff, if any, Waldo employed. He never remembered to do so.

  The dinner arrived in a small food chest, propelled to their midst at the end of a long, telescoping, pneumatic tube. It stopped with a soft sigh and held its position. Stevens paid little attention to the food itself—it was adequate and tasty, he knew—for his attention was held by the dishes and serving methods. Waldo let his own steak float in front of him, cut bites from it with curved surgical shears, and conveyed them to his mouth by means of dainty tongs. He made hard work of chewing.

  “You can’t get good steaks any more,” he remarked. “This one is tough. God knows I pay enough—and complain enough.”

  Stevens did not answer. He thought his own steak had been tenderized too much; it almost fell apart. He was managing it with knife and fork, but the knife was superfluous. It appeared that Waldo did not expect his guests to make use of his own admittedly superior methods and utensils. Stevens ate from a platter clamped to his thighs, making a lap for it after Grimes’s example by squatting in mid air. The platter itself had been thoughtfully provided with sharp little prongs on its service side.

  Liquids were served in small flexible skins, equipped with nipples. Think of a baby’s plastic nursing bottle.

  The food chest took the utensils away with a dolorous insufflation. “Will you smoke, sir?”

  “Thank you.” He saw what a weight-free ash tray necessarily should be: a long tube with a bell-shaped receptacle on its end. A slight suction in the tube, and ashes knocked into the bell were swept away, out of sight and mind.

  “About the matter—” Grimes commenced again. “Jimmie here is Chief Engineer for North American Power-Air.”

  “What?” Waldo straightened himself, became rigid; his chest rose and fell. He ignored Stevens entirely. “Uncle Gus, do you mean to say that you have introduced an officer of that company into my—home?”

  “Don’t get your dander up. Relax. Damn it, I’ve warned you not to do anything to raise your blood pressure.” Grimes propelled himself closer to his host and took him by the wrist in the age-old fashion of a physician counting pulse. “Breathe slower. Whatcha trying to do? Go on an oxygen jag?”

  Waldo tried to shake himself loose. It was a rather pitiful gesture; the old man had ten times his strength. “Uncle Gus, you—”

  “Shut up!”

  The three maintained a silence for several minutes, uncomfortable for at least two of them. Grimes did not seem to mind it.

  “There,” he said at last. “That’s better. Now keep your shirt on and listen to me. Jimmie is a nice kid, and he has never done anything to you. And he has behaved himself while he’s been here. You’ve got no right to be rude to him, no matter who he works for. Matter of fact, you owe him an apology.”

  “Oh, really now, Doc,” Stevens protested. “I’m afraid I have been here somewhat under false colors. I’m sorry, Mr. Jones. I didn’t intend it to be that way. I tried to explain when we arrived.”

  Waldo’s face was hard to read. He was evidently trying hard to control himself. “Not at all, Mr. Stevens. I am sorry that I showed temper. It is perfectly true that I should not transfer to you any animus I feel for your employers…though God knows I bear no love for them.”

  “I know it. Nevertheless, I am sorry to hear you say it.”

  “I was cheated, do you understand? Cheated—by as rotten a piece of quasi-legal chicanery as has ever—”

  “Easy, Waldo!”

  “Sorry, Uncle Gus.” He continued, his voice less shrill. “You know of the so-called Hathaway patents?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “‘So-called’ is putting it mildly. The man was a mere machinist. Those patents are mine.”

  Waldo’s version, as he proceeded to give it, was reasonably factual, Stevens felt, but quite biased and unreasonable. Perhaps Hathaway had been working, as Waldo alleged, simply as a servant—a hired artisan, but there was nothing to prove it, no contract, no papers of any sort. The man had filed certain patents, the only ones he had ever filed and admittedly Waldo-ish in their cleverness. Hathaway had then promptly died, and his heirs, through their attorneys, had sold the patents to a firm which had been dickering with Hathaway.

  Waldo alleged that this firm had put Hathaway up to stealing from him, had caused him to hire himself out to Waldo for that purpose. But the firm was defunct; its assets had been sold to North American Power-Air. NAPA had offered a settlement; Waldo had chosen to sue. The suit went against him.

  Even if Waldo were right, Stevens could not see any means by which the directors of NAPA could, legally, grant him any relief. The officers of a corporation are trustees for other people’s money; if the directors of NAPA should attempt to give away property which had been adjudicated as belonging to the corporation, any stockholder could enjoin them before the act or recover from them personally after the act.

  At least so Stevens thought. But he was no lawyer, he admitted to himself. The important point was that he needed Waldo’s services, whereas Waldo held a bitter grudge against the firm he worked for.

  He was forced to admit that it did not look as if Doc Grimes’s presence was enough to turn the trick. “All that happened before my time,” he began, “and naturally I know very little about it. I’m awfully sorry it happened. It’s pretty uncomfortable for me, for right now I find myself in a position where I need your services very badly indeed.”

  Waldo did not seem displeased with the idea. “So? How does this come about?”

  Stevens explained to him in some detail the trouble they had been having with the deKalb receptors. Waldo listened attentively. When Stevens had concluded he said, “Yes, that is much the same story your Mr. Gleason had to tell. Of course, as a technical man you have given a much more coherent picture than that money manipulator was capable of giving. But why do you come to me? I do not specialize in radiation engineering, nor do I have any degrees from fancy institutions.”

  “I come to you,” Stevens said seriously, “for the same reason everybody else comes to you when they are really stuck with an engineering problem. So far as I know, you have an unbroken record of solving any problem you cared to tackle. Your record reminds me of another man—”

  “Who?” Waldo’s tone was suddenly sharp.

  “Edison. He did not bother with degrees either, but solved all the hard problems of his day.”

  “Oh, Edison—I thought you were speaking of a contemporary. No doubt he was all right in his day,” he added with overt generosity.

  “I was not comparing him to you. I was simply recalling that Edison was reputed to prefer hard problems to easy ones. I’ve heard the same about you; I had hopes that this problem might be hard enoug
h to interest you.”

  “It is mildly interesting,” Waldo conceded. “A little out of my line, but interesting. I must say, however, that I am surprised to hear you, an executive of North American Power-Air, express such a high opinion of my talents. One would think that, if the opinion were sincere, it would not have been difficult to convince your firm of my indisputable handiwork in the matter of the so-called Hathaway patents.”

  Really, thought Stevens, the man is impossible. A mind like a weasel. Aloud, he said, “I suppose the matter was handled by the business management and the law staff. They would hardly be equipped to distinguish between routine engineering and inspired design.”

  The answer seemed to mollify Waldo. He asked, “What does your own research staff say about the problem?”

  Stevens looked wry. “Nothing helpful. Dr. Rambeau does not really seem to believe the data I bring him. He says it’s impossible, but it makes him unhappy. I really believe that he has been living on aspirin and Nembutal for a good many weeks.”

  “Rambeau,” Waldo said slowly. “I recall the man. A mediocre mind. All memory and no intuition. I don’t think I would feel discouraged simply because Rambeau is puzzled.”

  “You really feel that there is some hope?”

  “It should not be too difficult. I had already given the matter some thought, after Mr. Gleason’s phone call. You have given me additional data, and I think I see at least two new lines of approach which may prove fruitful. In any case, there is always some approach—the correct one.”

  “Does that mean you will accept?” Stevens demanded, nervous with relief.

  “Accept?” Waldo’s eyebrows climbed up. “My dear sir, what in the world are you talking about? We were simply indulging in social conversation. I would not help your company under any circumstances whatsoever. I hope to see your firm destroyed utterly, bankrupt and ruined. This may well be the occasion.”

  Stevens fought to keep control of himself. Tricked! The fat slob had simply been playing with him, leading him on. There was no decency in him. In careful tones he continued, “I do not ask that you have any mercy on North American, Mr. Jones, but I appeal to your sense of duty. There is public interest involved. Millions of people are vitally dependent on the service we provide. Don’t you see that the service must continue, regardless of you or me?”