A Treasury of Great Science Fiction 1

by Anthony Boucher (ed)

  He lay sprawled where he had landed, making no noise, but not attempting to move. He was trembling violently.

  Grimes came up to him and examined him superficially, enough to assure him that the beast was not really hurt, then returned to the outside. “Baldur’s had a little accident,” he told Waldo; “he’s not hurt, but the poor devil doesn’t know how to walk. You had best leave him in the ship.”

  Waldo shook his head slightly. “I want him with me. Arrange a litter.”

  Grimes got a couple of the men to help him, obtained a stretcher from the pilot of the ambulance, and undertook to move the dog. One of the men said, “I don’t know as I care for this job. That dog looks vicious. Look’t those eyes.”

  “He’s not,” Grimes assured him. “He’s just scared out of his wits. Here, I’ll take his head.”

  “What’s the matter with him? Same thing as the fat guy?”

  “No, he’s perfectly well and strong; he’s just never learned to walk. This is his first trip to Earth.”

  “Well, I’ll be a cross-eyed owl!”

  “I knew a case like it,” volunteered the other. “Dog raised in Lunopolis—first week he was on Earth he wouldn’t move—just squatted down, and howled, and made messes on the floor.”

  “So has this one,” the first said darkly.

  They placed Baldur alongside Waldo’s tub. With great effort Waldo raised himself on one elbow, reached out a hand, and placed it on the creature’s head. The dog licked it; his trembling almost ceased. “There! There!” Waldo whispered. “It’s pretty bad, isn’t it? Easy, old friend, take it easy.”

  Baldur thumped his tail.

  It took four men to carry Waldo and two more to handle Baldur. Gramps Schneider was waiting for them at the door of his house. He said nothing as they approached, but indicated that they were to carry Waldo inside. The men with the dog hesitated. “Him, too,” he said.

  When the others had withdrawn—even Grimes returned to the neighborhood of the ship—Schneider spoke again. “Welcome, Mr. Waldo Jones.”

  “I thank you for your welcome, Grandfather Schneider.”

  The old man nodded graciously without speaking. He went to the side of Baldur’s litter. Waldo felt impelled to warn him that the beast was dangerous with strangers, but some odd restraint—perhaps the effect of that enervating gravitational field—kept him from speaking in time. Then he saw that he need not bother.

  Baldur had ceased his low whimpering, had raised his head, and was licking Gramps Schneider’s chin. His tail thumped cheerfully. Waldo felt a sudden tug of jealousy; the dog had never been known to accept a stranger without Waldo’s specific injunction. This was disloyalty—treason! But he suppressed the twinge and coolly assessed the incident as a tactical advantage to him.

  Schneider pushed the dog’s face out of the way and went over him thoroughly, prodding, thumping, extending his limbs. He grasped Baldur’s muzzle, pushed back his lips, and eyed his gums. He peeled back the dog’s eyelids. He then dropped the matter and came to Waldo’s side. “The dog is not sick,” he said; “his mind confuses. What made it?”

  Waldo told him about Baldur’s unusual background. Schneider nodded acceptance of the matter—Waldo could not tell whether he had understood or not—and turned his attention to Waldo. “It is not good for a sprottly lad to lie abed. The weakness—how long has it had you?”

  “All my life, Grandfather.”

  ‘That is not good.” Schneider went over him as he had gone over Baldur. Waldo, whose feeling for personal privacy was much more intense than that of the ordinarily sensitive man, endured it for pragmatic reasons. It was going to be necessary, he felt, to wheedle and cajole this strange old creature. It would not do to antagonize him.

  To divert his own attention from the indignity he chose to submit to, and to gain further knowledge of the old quack, Waldo let his eyes rove the room. The room where they were seemed to be a combination kitchen-living room. It was quite crowded, rather narrow, but fairly long. A fireplace dominated the kitchen end, but it had been bricked up, and a hole for the flue pipe of the base-burner had been let into the chimney. The fireplace was lopsided, as an oven had been included in its left side. The corresponding space at the right was occupied by a short counter which supported a tiny sink. The sink was supplied with water by a small hand pump which grew out of the counter.

  Schneider, Waldo decided, was either older than he looked, which seemed incredible, or he had acquired his house from someone now long dead.

  The living room end was littered and crowded in the fashion which is simply unavoidable in constricted quarters. Books filled several cases, were piled on the floor, hung precariously on chairs. An ancient wooden desk, crowded with papers and supporting a long-obsolete mechanical typewriter, filled one comer. Over it, suspended from the wall, was an ornate clock, carved somewhat like a house. Above its face were two little doors; while Waldo looked at it, a tiny wooden bird painted bright red popped out of the lefthand door, whistled “Th-wu th-woo!” four times, and popped frantically back into its hole. Immediately thereafter a little gray bird came out of the right-hand door, said “Cuckoo” three times in a leisurely manner, and returned to its hole. Waldo decided that he would like to own such a clock; of course its pendulum-and-weight movement would not function in Freehold, but he could easily devise a one-g centrifuge frame to inclose it, wherein it would have a pseudo Earth-surface environment.

  It did not occur to him to fake a pendulum movement by means of a concealed power source; he liked things to work properly.

  To the left of the clock was an old-fashioned static calendar of paper. The date was obscured, but the letters above the calendar proper were large and legible: New York World’s Fair—Souvenir of the World of Tomorrow. Waldo’s eyes widened a little and went back to something he had noticed before, sticking into a pincushion on the edge of the desk.’ It was a round plastic button mounted on a pin whereby it could be affixed to the clothing. It was not far from Waldo’s eyes; he could read the lettering on it:

  FREE SILVER

  SIXTEEN TO ONE

  Schneider must be—old!

  There was a narrow archway, which led into another room. Waldo could not see into it very well; the arch was draped with a fringe curtain of long strings of large ornamental beads.

  The room was rich with odors, many of them old and musty, but not dirty.

  Schneider straightened up and looked down at Waldo. “There is nought wrong with your body. Up get yourself and walk.”

  Waldo shook his head feebly. “I am sorry, Grandfather, I cannot.”

  “You must reach for the power and make it serve you. Try.”

  “I am sorry. I do not know how.”

  “That is the only trouble. All matters are doubtful, unless one knows. You send your force into the Other World. You must reach into the Other World and claim it.”

  “Where is this ‘Other World,’ Grandfather?”

  Schneider seemed a little in doubt as to how to answer this. “The Other World,” he said presently, “is the world you do not see. It is here and it is there and it is everywhere. But it is especially here.” He touched his forehead. “The mind sits in it and sends its messages through it to the body. Wait.” He shuffled away to a little cupboard, from which he removed a small jar. It contained a salve, or unguent, which he rubbed on his hands.

  He returned to Waldo and knelt down beside him. Grasping one of Waldo’s hands in both of his, he began to knead it very gently. “Let the mind be quiet,” he directed. “Feel for the power. The Other World is close and full of power. Feel it.”

  The massage was very pleasant to Waldo’s tired muscles. The salve, or the touch of the old man’s hand, produced a warm, relaxing tingle. It he were younger, thought Waldo, I would hire him as a masseur. He has a magnetic touch.

  Schneider straightened up again and said, “There—that betters you? Now you rest while I some coffee make.”

  Waldo settled back contente
dly. He was very tired. Not only was the trip itself a nervous strain, but he was still in the grip of this damnable, thick gravitational field, like a fly trapped in honey. Gramps Schneider’s ministrations had left him relaxed and sleepy.

  He must have dozed, for the last thing he remembered was seeing Schneider drop an eggshell into the coffeepot. Then the old man was standing before him, holding the pot in one hand and a steaming cup in the other. He set them down, got three pillows, which he placed at Waldo’s back, then offered him the coffee. Waldo laboriously reached out both hands to take it.

  Schneider held it back. “No,” he reproved, “one hand makes plenty. Do as I showed. Reach into the Other World for the strength.” He took Waldo’s right hand and placed it on the handle of the cup, steadying Waldo’s hand with his own. With his other hand he stroked Waldo’s right arm gently, from shoulder to finger tips. Again the warm tingle.

  Waldo was surprised to find himself holding the cup alone. It was a pleasant triumph; at the time he left Earth, seventeen years before, it had been his invariable habit never to attempt to grasp anything with only one hand. In Freehold, of course, he frequently handled small objects one-handed, without the use of waldoes. The years of practice must have improved his control. Excellent!

  So, feeling rather cocky, he drank the cupful with one hand, using extreme care not to slop it on himself. It was good coffee, too, he was bound to admit—quite as good as the sort he himself made from the most expensive syrup extract—better, perhaps.

  When Schneider offered him coffeecake, brown with sugar and cinnamon and freshly rewarmed, he swaggeringly accepted it with his left hand, without asking to be relieved of the cup. He continued to eat and drink, between bites and sips resting and steadying his forearms on the edges of the tank.

  The conclusion of the Kaffeeklatsch seemed a good time to broach the matter of the deKalbs. Schneider admitted knowing McLeod and recalled, somewhat vaguely it seemed, the incident in which he had restored to service McLeod’s broomstick. “Hugh Donald is a good boy,” he said. “Machines I do not like, but it pleasures me to fix things for boys.”

  “Grandfather,” asked Waldo, “will you tell me how you fixed Hugh Donald McLeod’s ship?”

  “Have you such a ship you wish me to fix?”

  “I have many such ships which I have agreed to fix, but I must tell you that I have been unable to do so. I have come to you to find out the right way.”

  Schneider considered this. “That is difficult. I could show you, but it is not so much what you do as how you think about it. That makes only with practice.”

  Waldo must have looked puzzled, for the old man looked at him and added, “It is said that there are two ways of looking at everything. That is true and less than true, for there are many ways. Some of them are good ways and some are bad. One of the ancients said that everything either is, or is not. That is less than true, for a thing can both be and not be. With practice one can see it both ways. Sometimes a thing which is for this world is a thing which is not for the Other World. Which is important, since we live in the Other World.”

  “We live in the Other World?”

  “How else could we live? The mind—not the brain, but the mind—is in the Other World, and reaches this world through the body. That is one true way of looking at it, though there are others.”

  “Is there more than one way of looking at deKalb receptors?”

  “Certainly.”

  “If I had a set which is not working right brought in here, would you show me how to look at it?”

  “It is not needful,” said Schneider, “and I do not like for machines to be in my house. I will draw you a picture.”

  Waldo felt impelled to insist, but he squelched his feeling. “You have come here in humility,” he told himself, “asking for instruction. Do not tell the teacher how to teach.”

  Schneider produced a pencil and a piece of paper, on which he made a careful and very neat sketch of the antennae sheaf and main axis of a skycar. The sketch was reasonably accurate as well, although it lacked several essential minor details.

  “These fingers,” Schneider said, “reach deep into the Other World to draw their strength. In turn it passes down this pillar”—he indicated the axis—“to where it is used to move the car.”

  A fair allegorical explanation, thought Waldo. By considering the “Other World” simply a term for the hypothetical ether, it could be considered correct if not complete. But it told him nothing. “Hugh Donald,” Schneider went on, “was tired and fretting. He found one of the bad truths.”

  “Do you mean,” Waldo said slowly, “that McLeod’s ship failed because he was worried about it?”

  “How else?”

  Waldo was not prepared to answer that one. It had become evident that the old man had some quaint superstitions; nevertheless, he might still be able to show Waldo what to do, even though Schneider did not know why, “And what did you do to change it?”

  “I made no change; I looked for the other truth.”

  “But how? We found some chalk marks—”

  “Those? They were but to aid me in concentrating my attention in the proper direction. I drew them down so”—he illustrated with pencil on the sketch—“and thought how the fingers reached out for power. And so they did.”

  “That is all? Nothing more?”

  “That is enough.”

  Either, Waldo considered, the old man did not know how he had accomplished the repair, or he had had nothing to do with it—sheer and amazing coincidence.

  He had been resting the empty cup on the rim of his tank, the weight supported by the metal while his fingers merely steadied it. His preoccupation caused him to pay too little heed to it; it slipped from his tired fingers, clattered and crashed to the floor.

  He was much chagrined. “Oh, I’m sorry, Grandfather. I’ll send you another.”

  “No matter. I will mend.” Schneider carefully gathered up the pieces and placed them on the desk. “You have tired,” he added. “That is not good. It makes you lose what you have gained. Go back now to your house, and when you have rested, you can practice reaching for the strength by yourself.”

  It seemed a good idea to Waldo; he was growing very tired, and it was evident that he was to learn nothing specific from the pleasant old fraud. He promised, emphatically and quite insincerely, to practice “reaching for strength,” and asked Schneider to do him the favor of summoning his bearers.

  The trip back was uneventful. Waldo did not even have the spirit to bicker with the pilot.

  Stalemate. Machines that did not work but should, and machines that did work but in an impossible manner. And no one to turn to but one foggy-headed old man. Waldo worked lackadaisically for several days, repeating, for the most part, investigations he had already made rather than admit to himself that he was stuck, that he did not know what to do, that he was, in fact, whipped and might as well call Gleason and admit it.

  The two “bewitched” sets of deKalbs continued to work whenever activated, with the same strange and incredible flexing of each antenna. Other deKalbs which had failed in operation and had been sent to him for investigation still refused to function. Still others, which had not yet failed, performed beautifully without the preposterous fidgeting.

  For the umpteenth time he took out the little sketch Schneider had made and examined it. There was, he thought, just one more possibility: to return again to Earth and insist that Schneider actually do, in his presence, whatever it was he had done which caused the deKalbs to work. He knew now that he should have insisted on it in the first place, but he had been so utterly played out by having to fight that devilish thick field that he had not had the will to persist.

  Perhaps he could have Stevens do it and have the process stereophotoed for a later examination. No, the old man had a superstitious prejudice against artificial images.

  He floated gently over to the vicinity of one of the inoperative deKalbs. What Schneider had claimed to have done w
as preposterously simple. He had drawn chalk marks down each antenna so, for the purpose of fixing his attention. Then he had gazed down them and thought about them “reaching out for power,” reaching into the Other World, stretching—

  Baldur began to bark frantically.

  “Shut up, you fool!” Waldo snapped, without taking his eyes off the antennae.

  Each separate pencil of metal was wiggling, stretching. There was the low, smooth hum of perfect operation.

  Waldo was still thinking about it when the televisor demanded his attention. He had never been in any danger of cracking up mentally as Rambeau had done; nevertheless, he had thought about the matter in a fashion which made his head ache. He was still considerably bemused when he cut in his end of the sound-vision. “Yes?”

  It was Stevens. “Hello, Mr. Jones. Uh, we wondered . . . that is—”

  “Speak up, man!”

  “Well, how close are you to a solution?” Stevens blurted out. “Matters are getting pretty urgent.”

  “In what way?”

  “There was a partial breakdown in Great New York last night. Fortunately it was not at peak load and the ground crew were able to install spares before the reserves were exhausted, but you can imagine what it would have been like during the rush hour. In my own department the crashes have doubled in the past few weeks, and our underwriters have given notice. We need results pretty quick.”

  “You’ll get your results,” Waldo said loftily. “I’m in the final stages of the research.” He was actually not that confident, but Stevens irritated him even more than most of the smooth apes.

  Doubt and reassurance mingled in Stevens’s face. “I don’t suppose you could care to give us a hint of the general nature of the solution?”

  No, Waldo could not. Still—it would be fun to pull Stevens’s leg. “Come close to the pickup, Dr. Stevens. I’ll tell you.” He leaned forward himself, until they were almost nose to nose—in effect. “Magic is loose in the world!”