The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction - August 1980

by Various

  Their metal parts would corrode. The Hoover's rubber belt would crack. They would be powerless to resist the forces that would slowly but surely debilitate and destroy them, and in only a few months—or even weeks—they would all be unable to work.

  No wonder the Hoover, foreseeing this inevitable progression of events, had been beside itself. What were they to do? the toaster asked itself.

  There was no answer immediately forthcoming.

  Toward evening the radio announced that it was receiving interference from a source quite nearby. "A power drill, by the feel of it. Just on the other side of the river."

  Where there was a power drill there were bound to be power lines as well! New hope poured into the appliances like a sudden surge of current.

  "Let's look at the map again," said the lamp. "Maybe we can figure out exactly where we are."

  Following the lamp's suggestion, they unfolded the road map and looked very carefully at all the dots and squiggles between the spot (marked with a Magic Marker) along the highway where the cottage was situated and the little patch of pink representing the city they were bound for. At last, only a quarter-inch from the pink patch of the city, they found the wavery blue line that had to be the river they'd come to, since there were no other blue lines anywhere between the cottage and the city, and this river was much too big for the mapmakers to have forgotten all about it.

  "We're almost there!" the radio trumpeted. "We'll make it! Everything will be all right! Hurrah!"

  "Hurrah!" the other appliances agreed, except for the Hoover, who wasn't so easily convinced that all would now be well. But when the lamp pointed out four distinct places where the river was traversed by highways, even the Hoover had to admit that there was cause to cheer up, though he still wouldn't go so far as to say "Hurrah."

  "We only have to follow the river," said the toaster, who did like to give instructions, even when it was obvious what had to be done, "either to the left or the right, and eventually it must lead us to one of those bridges. Then, when it's very late and there's no traffic, we can make a dash for it!"

  So once again they set off with courage renewed and determination strengthened. It was not so light a task as the toaster had made it sound, for there was no longer a clear path to follow. Sometimes the bank of the river lay flat as a carpet, but elsewhere the ground got quite bumpy or—what was worse—quaggy and soft. Once, avoiding a rock, the Hoover took a sharp turn; and the office chair, getting a leg mired in an unremarked patch of mud, was overturned, and the four appliances riding on it tumbled off the plastic seat into a thorough slough.

  They emerged smirched and spattered, and were obliged to become dirtier still in the process of retrieving the castor wheel that had come off the chair and was lost in the mud.

  The blanket, naturally, was exempted from this task, and while the four others delved for the lost wheel, it betook itself down the water's edge and attempted to wash away the signs of its spill. Lacking any cloth or sponge, the blanket only succeeded, sad to say, in spreading the stains over a larger area. So preoccupied was the blanket with its hopeless task that it almost failed to notice—

  "A boat!" the blanket cried out. "All of you, come here! I've found a boat!"

  Even the toaster, with no experience at all in nautical matters, could see that the boat the blanket had discovered was not of the first quality. Its wood had the weather-beaten look of the clapboard at the back of the summer cottage that the master had always been meaning to replace, or at least repaint, and its bottom must be leaky for it was filled with one big puddle of green mush. Nevertheless, it must have been basically serviceable, since a Chriscraft outboard motor was mounted on the blunt back-end, and who would put an expensive motor on a boat that couldn't at least stay afloat?

  "How providential," said the Hoover.

  "You don't intend for us to use this boat, do you?" asked the toaster.

  "Of course we shall," replied the vacuum. "Who knows how far it may be to a bridge? This will take us across the river directly. You're not afraid to ride in it, are you?"

  "Afraid? Certainly not!"

  "Well, then?"

  "It doesn't belong to us. If we were to take it, we'd be no better than ...than pirates!"

  Pirates, as even the newest of my listeners will have been informed, are people who take things that belong to other people. They are the bane of an appliance's existence, since once an appliance has been spirited away by a pirate, it has no choice but to serve its bidding just as though it were that appliance's legitimate master. A bitter disgrace, such servitude—and one that few appliances can hope to escape once it has fallen to their lot. Truly, there is no fate, even obsolescence, so terrible as falling into the hands of pirates.

  "Pirates!" exclaimed the Hoover. "Us? What nonsense? Who ever heard of an appliance that was a pirate?"

  "But if we took the boat—" the toaster insisted.

  "We wouldn't keep it," said the Hoover brusquely. "We'd just borrow it a little while to cross the river and leave it on the other side. Its owner would get it back soon enough."

  "How long we'd have it for doesn't matter. It's the principle of the thing. Taking what isn't yours is piracy."

  "Oh, as for principles," said the radio lightly, "there's a well-known saying: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’ Which means, as far as I can see, that someone who makes use of his abilities should get to use a boat when he or it needs to cross a river and the boat is just sitting there waiting.” With which, and a little chuckle besides, the radio hopped onto the foremost seat of the rowboat.

  Following the radio’s example, the Hoover heaved the office chair into the back of the boat and then got in itself. The boat settled deep in the water.

  Avoiding the toaster’s accusing look, the blanket took a seat beside the radio.

  The lamp seemed to hesitate, but only for a moment. Then it too entered the boat.

  "Well?” said the Hoover gruffly. "We’re waiting.”

  Reluctantly the toaster prepared to board the boat. But then, inexplicably, something made it stop. Whats happening? it wondered—though it could not say the words aloud, for the same force preventing it from moving prevented its speech as well.

  The four appliances in the boat had been similarly incapacitated. What had happened, of course, was that the owner of the boat had returned and seen the appliances. "Why, what’s this?” he exclaimed, stepping from behind a willow tree with a fishing rod in one hand and a string of sunfish in the other. "It seems we’ve had some visitors!”

  He said much more than this, but in a manner so rough and ill-mannered that it were better not to repeat his words verbatim. The sum of it was this—that he believed the owner of the appliances had been about to steal his boat, and so he intended, by way of retaliation, to steal the appliances!

  He took the toaster from where it sat spellbound on the grassy riverbank and set it in the rowboat beside the blanket, lamp and radio. Then, unfastening the battery from the office chair, he threw the latter end-over-end high up into the air. It came down—Splash!—in the middle of the river and sank down to the muddy bottom, nevermore to be seen. Then the pirate—for there could no longer be any doubt that such he was—started the Chriscraft motor and set off upstream with his five helpless captives.

  After mooring his boat alongside a ramshackle dock on the other side of the river, the pirate loaded the outboard motor and the appliances onto the wooden bed of a very dusty pickup truck —except for the radio, which he took with him into the front seat. As it drove off, the truck jolted and jounced and bolted and bounced so violently the toaster feared the ride would cost it every coil in its body. (For though toasters look quite sturdy, they are actually among the more delicate appliances and need to be handled accordingly.) But the blanket, realizing the danger the toaster was in, managed to slip underneath its old friend and cushion it from the worst shocks of the journey.

  As they rode they could hear the
radio in the front seat humming the poignant theme-song from Dr. Zhivago.

  "Listen!” the Hoover hissed. "Of all possible songs to be singing, it has chosen one of the master’s favorites. Already it has forgotten him!”

  "Ah,” said the toaster, "what choice does it have, poor thing? Once one of us had been turned on, would we have behaved any otherwise? Would you? Would I?”

  The old vacuum groaned, and the radio went on playing its sad, sad song.

  What graveyards are for people—horrible, creepy places that any reasonable individual tries to stay away from—the City Dump is for appliances and machines of every description. Imagine, therefore, what the appliances must have felt when they realized (the pirate had parked his pickup in front of high, ripply iron gates and was opening the padlock with a key from the ring that swung from his belt) that they had been brought to the City Dump! Imagine their horror as he drove the truck inside and they assimilated the terrible fact that he lived here! There, with smoke curling from a tin chimney, was his wretched shack—and all about it the most melancholy and fearsome sights the toaster had ever witnessed. Dismembered chassis of once-proud automobiles were heaped one atop the other to form veritable mountains of rusted iron. The asphalt-covered ground was everywhere strewn with twisted beams and blistered sheet metal, with broken and worn-out machine parts of all shapes and sizes—with all the terrible emblems, in short, of its own inevitable obsolescence. An appalling scene to behold—yet one that exercised a strange fascination over the toaster’s mind. As often as it had heard of the City Dump, it had somehow never really believed in its existence. And now it was here, and nothing, not even the pirate’s stony gaze, could prevent its shudder of fear and wonder.

  The pirate got out of the truck and took the radio, along with his fishing rod and his day’s catch, into the hovel where he lived. The appliances, left to themselves in the back of the truck, listened to the radio sing song after song with apparently indefatigable good cheer. Among them was the toaster’s own favorite melody, "I Whistle a Happy Tune.” The toaster was certain this couldn’t be a coincidence. The radio was trying to tell its friends that if they were brave and patient and cheerful, matters would work out for the best. Anyhow, whether that was the radio’s intention or just a program it had been tuned to, it was what the toaster firmly believed.

  After he'd had his dinner the pirate came out of his shack to examine the other appliances. He fingered the Hoover's mudstained dustbag and the frayed part of its cord where it had been chewing on itself. He lifted the blanket and shook his head in mute deprecation. He looked inside the lamp's little hood and saw—which the lamp itself had not realized till now—that its tiny bulb was shattered. (It must have happened when the lamp had fallen off the office chair, just before they'd found the boat.)

  Finally the pirate picked up the toaster—and made a scornful grimace. "Junk!" he said, depositing the toaster on a nearby scrap pile.

  "Junk!" he repeated, dealing with the lamp in a similar fashion.

  "Junk!" He hurled the poor blanket over the projecting, broken axle of a '57 Ford.

  "Junk!" He set the Hoover down on the asphalt with a shattering thunk.

  "All of it, just junk." Having delivered this dismaying verdict, the pirate returned to his shack, where the radio had gone on singing in the liveliest manner all the while.

  "Thank goodness," said the toaster aloud, as soon as he was gone.

  "Thank goodness?" the Hoover echoed in stricken tones. "How can you say 'Thank goodness' when you've just been called junk and thrown on a heap of scrap?"

  "Because if he'd decided to take us into his shack and use us, we'd have become his, like the radio. This way we've got a chance to escape."

  The blanket, where it hung, limply, from the broken axle, began to whimper and whine. "No, no, it's true. That's all I am now—junk! Look at me—look at these tears, these snags, these stains. Junk! This is where I belong."

  The lamp's grief was quieter but no less bitter. "Oh, my bulb," it murmered, "oh, my poor poor bulb!"

  The Hoover groaned.

  "Pull yourselves together, all of you!" said the toaster, in what it hoped was a tone of stern command. "There's nothing wrong with any of us that a bit of fixing-up won't put right. "You—" It addressed the blanket. "—are still fundamentally sound. Your coils haven't been hurt. After some sewing-up and a visit to the dry cleaner you'll be as good as new."

  It turned to the lamp. "And what nonsense—to fuss over a broken bulb! You've broken your bulb before and probably will many times again. What do you think replaceable parts are for?"

  Finally the toaster directed its attention to the vacuum cleaner. "And you? You, who must be our leader! Who ought to inspire us with your own greater strength! For you to sit there groaning and helpless! And just because some old pirate who lives in a dump makes an unflattering remark. Why, he probably doesn't even know how to use a vacuum cleaner—that's the sort of person he is!"

  "Do you think so?" said the Hoover.

  "Of course I do, and so would you if you'd be rational. Now, for goodness' sake, let's all sit down together and figure out how we're going to rescue the radio and escape from here."

  By midnight it was amazing how much they'd managed to accomplish. The Hoover had recharged the rundown battery from the battery in the pirate's own truck. Meanwhile the lamp, in looking about for another doorway or gate than the one they'd come in by (there wasn't any), had discovered a vehicle even better suited to their needs than the office chair the pirate had thrown in the river. This was a large vinyl perambulator, which is another word for pram, which is also known, in the appliances' part of the world, as a baby buggy. By whatever name, it was in good working order—except for two minor faults. One fault was a squeak in the left front wheel, and the other was the way its folding visor was twisted out of shape so as to give the whole pram an air of lurching sideways when it was moving straight ahead. The squeak was fixed with a few drops of 3-in-l Oil, but the visor resisted their most determined efforts to bend it back into true. But that didn't matter, after all. What mattered was that it worked.

  To think how many of the things consigned to this dump were still, like the pram (or themselves, for that matter) essentially serviceable! There were hair dryers and four-speed bicycles, water heaters and wind-up toys that would all have gone on working for years and years with just the slightest maintenance. Instead, they'd be sent to City Dump! You could hear their hopeless sighs and crazed murmurings rising from every dark mound round about, a ghastly medley that seemed to swell louder every moment as more and more of the forlorn, abandoned objects became conscious of the energetic new appliances in their midst.

  "You will never, never, never get away," whispered a mad old cassette player in a cracked voice. "No, never! You will stay here like all the rest of us and rust and crack and turn to dust. And never get away."

  "We will, though," said the toaster. "Just you wait and see."

  But how? That was the problem the toaster had to solve without further delay.

  Now the surest way to solve any problem is to think about it, and that's just what the toaster did. It thought with the kind of total, all-out effort you have to give to get a bolt off that's rusted onto a screw. At first the bolt won't budge, not the least bit, and the wrench may slip loose, and you begin to doubt that any amount of trying is going to accomplish your purpose. But you keep at it, and use a dab of solvent if there's any on hand, and eventually it starts to give. You're not even sure but you think so. And then, what do you know, it's off! You've done it! That's the way the toaster thought, and at last, because he thought so hard, he thought of a way they could escape from the pirate and rescue the radio at the same time.

  "Now here's my plan," said the toaster to the other appliances, which had gathered round him in the darkest corner of the dump. "We'll frighten him, and that will make him run away, and when he's gone we'll go into his shack—"

  "Oh, no, I couldn't do that," said th
e blanket with a shiver of dread.

  "We'll go into his shack," the toaster insisted calmly, "and get the radio and put it inside the baby buggy and get in ourselves, all except the Hoover, of course, which will high-tail it out of this place just as fast as it can."

  "But won't the gate be locked?" the lamp wanted to know. "It is now."

  "No, because the pirate will have to unlock it to get out himself, and he'll be too frightened to remember to lock it behind him."

  "It's a very good plan," said the Hoover, "but what I don't understand is—how are we going to frighten him?"

  "Well, what are people afraid of the most?"

  "Getting run over by a steam roller?" the Hoover guessed.

  "No. Scarier than that."

  "Moths?" suggested the blanket.

  "No."

  "The dark," declared the lamp with conviction.

  "That's close," said the toaster.. "They're afraid of ghosts."

  "What are ghosts?" demanded the Hoover.

  "Ghosts are people who are dead, only they're also sort of alive."

  "Don't be silly," said the lamp. "Either they are dead or they aren't."

  "Yes," the blanket agreed. "It's as simple as ON and OFF. If you're ON, you can't be OFF, and vice versa."

  "I know that, and you know that, but people don't seem to. People say they know that ghosts don't exist but they're afraid of them anyhow."

  "No one can be afraid of something that doesn't exist," the Hoover huffed.

  "Don't ask me how they do it," said the toaster. "It's what they call a paradox. The point is this—people are afraid of ghosts. And so we're going to pretend to be one."