The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein

by Robert A. Heinlein

  Waldo pursed his lips. “No,” he said, “I’m afraid that does not affect me. The welfare of those nameless swarms of Earth crawlers is, I fear, not my concern. I have done more for them already than there was any need to do. They hardly deserve help. Left to their own devices, most of them would sink back to caves and stone axes. Did you ever see a performing ape, Mr. Stevens, dressed in a man’s clothes and cutting capers on roller skates? Let me leave you with this thought: I am nor a roller-skate mechanic for apes.”

  If I stick around here much longer, Stevens advised himself, there will be hell to pay. Aloud, he said, “I take it that is your last word?”

  “You may so take it. Good day, sir. I enjoyed your visit. Thank you.”

  “Good-by. Thanks for the dinner.”

  “Not at all.”

  As Stevens turned away and prepared to shove himself toward the exit, Grimes called after him, “Jimmie, wait for me in the reception room.”

  As soon as Stevens was out of earshot, Grimes turned to Waldo and looked him up and down. “Waldo,” he said slowly, “I always did know that you were one of the meanest, orneriest men alive, but—”

  “Your compliments don’t faze me, Uncle Gus.”

  “Shut up and listen to me. As I was saying, I knew you were too rotten selfish to live with, but this is the first time I ever knew you to be a four-flusher to boot.”

  “What do you mean by that? Explain yourself.”

  “Shucks! You haven’t any more idea of how to crack the problem that boy is up against than I have. You traded on your reputation as a miracle man just to make him unhappy. Why, you cheap tinhorn bluffer, if you—”

  “Stop it!”

  “Go ahead,” Grimes said quietly. “Run up your blood pressure. I won’t interfere with you. The sooner you blow a gasket the better.”

  Waldo calmed down. “Uncle Gus—what makes you think I was bluffing?”

  “Because I know you. If you had felt able to deliver the goods, you would have looked the situation over and worked out a plan to get NAPA by the short hair, through having something they had to have. That way you would have proved your revenge.”

  Waldo shook his head. “You underestimate the intensity of my feeling in the matter.”

  “I do like hell! I hadn’t finished. About that sweet little talk you gave him concerning your responsibility to the race. You’ve got a head on you. You know damned well, and so do I, that of all people you can least afford to have anything serious happen to the setup down on Earth. That means you don’t see any way to prevent it.”

  “Why, what do you mean? I have no interest in such troubles; I’m independent of such things. You know me better than that.”

  “Independent, eh? Who mined the steel in these walls? Who raised that steer you dined on tonight? You’re as independent as a queen bee, and about as helpless.”

  Waldo looked startled. He recovered himself and answered, “Oh no, Uncle Gus. I really am independent. Why, I have supplies here for years.”

  “How many years?”

  “Why…uh, five, about.”

  “And then what? You may live another fifty—if you have regular supply service. How do you prefer to die—starvation or thirst?”

  “Water is no problem,” Waldo said thoughtfully; “as for supplies, I suppose I could use hydroponics a little more and stock up with some meat animals—”

  Grimes cut him short with a nasty laugh. “Proved my point. You don’t know how to avert it, so you are figuring some way to save your own skin. I know you. You wouldn’t talk about starting a truck garden if you knew the answers.”

  Waldo looked at him thoughtfully. “That’s not entirely true. I don’t know the solution, but I do have some ideas about it. I’ll bet you a half interest in hell that I can crack it. Now that you have called my attention to it, I must admit I am rather tied in with the economic system down below, and”—he smiled faintly—“I was never one to neglect my own interests. Just a moment—I’ll call your friend.”

  “Not so fast. I came along for another reason, besides introducing Jimmie to you. It can’t be just any solution; it’s got to be a particular solution.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s got to be a solution that will do away with the need for filling up the air with radiant energy.”

  “Oh, that. See here, Uncle Gus, I know how interested you are in theory, and I’ve never disputed the possibility that you might be right, but you can’t expect me to mix that into another and very difficult problem.”

  “Take another look. You’re in this for self-interest. Suppose everybody was in the shape you are in.”

  “You mean my physical condition?”

  “I mean just that. I know you don’t like to talk about it, but we blamed well need to. If everybody was as weak as you are—presto! No coffee and cakes for Waldo. And that’s just what I see coming. You’re the only man I know of who can appreciate what it means.”

  “It seems fantastic.”

  “It is. But the signs are there for anybody to read who wants to. Epidemic myasthenia, not necessarily acute, but enough to raise hell with our mechanical civilization. Enough to play hob with your supply lines. I’ve been collating my data since I saw you last and drawing some curves. You should see ’em.”

  “Did you bring them?”

  “No, but I’ll send ’em up. In the meantime, you can take my word for it.” He waited. “Well, how about it?”

  “I’ll accept it as a tentative working hypothesis,” Waldo said slowly, “until I see your figures. I shall probably want you to conduct some further research for me, on the ground—if your data is what you say it is.”

  “Fair enough. G’by.” Grimes kicked the air a couple of times as he absent-mindedly tried to walk.

  STEVENS’S FRAME OF MIND AS he waited for Grimes is better left undescribed. The mildest thought that passed through his mind was a plaintive one about the things a man had to put up with to hold down what seemed like a simple job of engineering. Well, he wouldn’t have the job very long. But he decided not to resign—he’d wait until they fired him; he wouldn’t run out.

  But he would damn well get that vacation before he looked for another job.

  He spent several minutes wishing that Waldo were strong enough for him to be able to take a poke at him. Or kick him in the belly—that would be more fun!

  He was startled when the dummy suddenly came to life and called him by name. “Oh, Mr. Stevens.”

  “Huh? Yes?”

  “I have decided to accept the commission. My attorneys will arrange the details with your business office.”

  He was too surprised to answer for a couple of seconds; when he did so the dummy had already gone dead. He waited impatiently for Grimes to show up.

  “Doc!” he said, when the old man swam into view. “What got into him. How did you do it?”

  “He thought it over and reconsidered,” Grimes said succinctly. “Let’s get going.”

  Stevens dropped Dr. Augustus Grimes at the doctor’s home, then proceeded to his office. He had no more than parked his car and entered the tunnel leading toward the zone plant when he ran into his assistant. McLeod seemed a little out of breath. “Gee, chief,” he said, “I hoped that was you. I’ve had ’em watching for you. I need to see you.”

  “What’s busted now?” Stevens demanded apprehensively. “One of the cities?”

  “No. What made you think so?”

  “Go ahead with your story.”

  “So far as I know ground power is humming sweet as can be. No trouble with the cities. What I had on my mind is this: I fixed my heap.”

  “Huh? You mean you fixed the ship you crashed in?”

  “It wasn’t exactly a crash. I had plenty of power in the reserve banks; when reception cut off, I switched to emergency and landed her.”

  “But you fixed it? Was it the deKalbs? Or something else?”

  “It was the deKalbs all right. And they’re fixed. But I d
idn’t exactly do it myself. I got it done. You see—”

  “What was the matter with them?”

  “I don’t know exactly. You see I decided that there was no point in hiring another skycar and maybe having another forced landing on the way home. Besides, it was my own crate I was flying, and I didn’t want to dismantle her just to get the deKalbs out and have her spread out all over the countryside. So I hired a crawler, with the idea of taking her back all in one piece. I struck a deal with a guy who had a twelve-ton semitractor combination, and we—”

  “For criminy’s sake, make it march! What happened?”

  “I’m trying to tell you. We pushed on into Pennsylvania and we were making pretty fair time when the crawler broke down. The right lead wheel, ahead of the treads. Honest to goodness, Jim, those roads are something fierce.”

  “Never mind that. Why waste taxes on roads when 90 per cent of the traffic is in the air? You messed up a wheel. So then what?”

  “Just the same, those roads are a disgrace,” McLeod maintained stubbornly. “I was brought up in that part of the country. When I was a kid the road we were on was six lanes wide and smooth as a baby’s fanny. They ought to be kept up; we might need ’em someday.” Seeing the look in his senior’s eye, he went on hastily: “The driver mugged in with his home office, and they promised to send a repair car out from the next town. All told, it would take three, four hours—maybe more. Well, we were laid up in the county I grew up in. I says to myself, ‘McLeod, this is a wonderful chance to return to the scenes of your childhood and the room where the sun came peeping in the morn.’ Figuratively speaking, of course. Matter of fact, our house didn’t have any windows.”

  “I don’t care if you were raised in a barrel!”

  “Temper…temper—” McLeod said imperturbably. “I’m telling you this so you will understand what happened. But you aren’t going to like it.”

  “I don’t like it now.”

  “You’ll like it less. I climbed down out of the cab and took a look around. We were about five miles from my home town—too far for me to want to walk it. But I thought I recognized a clump of trees on the brow of a little rise maybe a quarter of a mile off the road, so I walked over to see. I was right; just over the rise was the cabin where Gramps Schneider used to live.”

  “Gramps Snyder?”

  “Not Snyder—Schneider. Old boy we kids used to be friendly with. Ninety years older than anybody. I figured he was dead, but it wouldn’t hurt any to walk down and see. He wasn’t. ‘Hello, Gramps,’ I said. ‘Come in, Hugh Donald,’ he said. ‘Wipe the feet on the mat.’

  “I came in and sat down. He was fussing with something simmering in a stewpan on his baseburner. I asked him what it was. ‘For morning aches,’ he said. Gramps isn’t exactly a hex doctor.”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean he doesn’t make a living by it. He raises a few chickens and garden truck, and some of the Plain People—House Amish, mostly—give him pies and things. But he knows a lot about herbs and such.

  “Presently he stopped and cut me a slice of shoofly pie. I told him danke. He said, ‘You’ve been upgrowing, Hugh Donald,’ and asked me how I was doing in school. I told him I was doing pretty well. He looked at me again and said, ‘But you have trouble fretting you.’ It wasn’t a question; it was a statement. While I finished the pie I found myself trying to tell him what kind of troubles I had.

  “It wasn’t easy. I don’t suppose Gramps has ever been off the ground in his life. And modern radiation theory isn’t something you can explain in words of one syllable. I was getting more and more tangled up when he stood up, put on his hat and said, ‘We will see this car you speak about.’

  “We walked over to the highway. The repair gang had arrived, but the crawler wasn’t ready yet. I helped Gramps up onto the platform and we got into my bus. I showed him the deKalbs and tried to explain what they did—or rather what they were supposed to do. Mind you, I was just killing time.

  “He pointed to the sheaf of antennae and asked, ‘These fingers—they reach out for the power?’ It was as good an explanation as any, so I let it ride. He said, ‘I understand,’ and pulled a piece of chalk out of his trousers, and began drawing lines on each antenna, from front to back. I walked up front to see how the repair crew were doing. After a bit Gramps joined me. ‘Hugh Donald,’ he says, ‘the fingers—now they will make.’

  “I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I thanked him plenty. The crawler was ready to go; we said good-by, and he walked back toward his shack. I went back to my car, and took a look in, just in case. I didn’t think he could hurt anything, but I wanted to be sure. Just for the ducks of it. I tried out the receptors. They worked!”

  “What!” put in Stevens. “You don’t mean to stand there and tell me an old witch doctor fixed your deKalbs?”

  “Not witch doctor—hex doctor. But you get the idea.”

  Stevens shook his head. “It’s simply a coincidence. Sometimes they come back into order as spontaneously as they go out.”

  “That’s what you think. Not this one. I’ve just been preparing you for the shock you’re going to get. Come take a look.”

  “What do you mean? Where?”

  “In the inner hangar.” While they walked to where McLeod had left his broomstick, he continued, “I wrote out a credit for the crawler pilot and flew back. I haven’t spoken to anyone else about it. I’ve been biting my nails down to my elbows waiting for you to show up.”

  The skycar seemed quite ordinary. Stevens examined the deKalbs and saw some faint chalk marks on their metal sides—nothing else unusual. “Watch while I cut in reception,” McLeod told him.

  Stevens waited, heard the faint hum as the circuits became activized, and looked.

  The antennae of the deKalbs, each a rigid pencil of metal, were bending, flexing, writhing like a cluster of worms. They were reaching out, like fingers.

  Stevens remained squatting down by the deKalbs, watching their outrageous motion. McLeod left the control saddle, came back, and joined him. “Well, chief,” he demanded, “tell me about it. Whaduh yuh make of it?”

  “Got a cigarette?”

  “What are those things sticking out of your pocket?”

  “Oh! Yeah—sure.” Stevens took one out, lighted it, and burned it halfway down, unevenly, with two long drags.

  “Go on,” McLeod urged. “Give us a tell. What makes it do that?”

  “Well,” Stevens said slowly, “I can think of three things to do next—”

  “Yeah?”

  “The first is to fire Dr. Rambeau and give his job to Gramps Schneider.”

  “That’s a good idea in any case.”

  “The second is to just wait here quietly until the boys with the straitjackets show up to take us home.”

  “And what’s the third?”

  “The third,” Stevens said savagely, “is to take this damned heap out and sink it in the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean and pretend like it never happened!”

  A mechanic stuck his head in the door of the car. “Oh, Dr. Stevens—”

  “Get out of here!”

  The head hastily withdrew; the voice picked up in aggrieved tones. “Message from the head office.”

  Stevens got up, went to the operator’s saddle, cleared the board, then assured himself that the antennae had ceased their disturbing movements. They had; in fact, they appeared so beautifully straight and rigid that he was again tempted to doubt the correctness of his own senses. He climbed out to the floor of the hangar, McLeod behind him. “Sorry to have blasted at you, Whitey,” he said to the workman in placating tones. “What is the message?”

  “Mr. Gleason would like for you to come into his office as soon as you can.”

  “I will at once. And, Whitey, I’ve a job for you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “This heap here—seal up its doors and don’t let anybody monkey with it. Then have it dragged, dragged, mind you; don’t try to start it—have it
dragged over into the main lab.”

  “O.K.”

  Stevens started away; McLeod stopped him. “What do I go home in?”

  “Oh yes, it’s your personal property, isn’t it? Tell you what, Mac—the company needs it. Make out a purchase order and I’ll sign it.”

  “Weeeell, now—I don’t rightly know as I want to sell it. It might be the only job in the country working properly before long.”

  “Don’t be silly. If the others play out, it won’t do you any good to have the only one in working order. Power will be shut down.”

  “I suppose there’s that,” McLeod conceded. “Still,” he said, brightening visibly, “a crate like that, with its special talents, ought to be worth a good deal more than list. You couldn’t just go out and buy one.”

  “Mac,” said Stevens, “you’ve got avarice in your heart and thievery in your finger tips. How much do you want for it?”

  “Suppose we say twice the list price, new. That’s letting you off easy.”

  “I happen to know you bought that job at a discount. But go ahead. Either the company can stand it, or it won’t make much difference in the bankruptcy.”

  GLEASON LOOKED UP AS STEVENS came in. “Oh, there you are, Jim. You seemed to have pulled a miracle with our friend Waldo the Great. Nice work.”

  “How much did he stick us for?”

  “Just his usual contract. Of course his usual contract is a bit like robbery with violence. But it will be worth it if he is successful. And it’s on a straight contingent basis. He must feel pretty sure of himself. They say he’s never lost a contingent fee in his life. Tell me—what is he like? Did you really get into his house?”

  “I did. And I’ll tell you about it—sometime. Right now another matter has come up which has me talking to myself. You ought to hear about it at once.”

  “So? Go ahead.”