Collected Short Fiction, page 12
“Fair enough,” said the Minister. He extended his pen to Kalainnen, who signed the agreement with a flourish.
On his way out of the Ministry he passed Frandel, who was standing gloomily in the midst of a seemingly endless line.
“Let’s get together again some time,” Kalainnen said, pausing for a moment. The Quangen just glared at him angrily. “Let me know when you get back to our system, old man. Perhaps you’d like to come over to Trask and study our technology.” Kalainnen smiled. “Best of luck, friend. The Minister is a fine man; you’ll see that as soon as you get to see him. If you get to see him, that is.”
And Kalainnen walked on, feeling very pleased, and—unintentionally, of course—treading on the tip of this Quangen’s prehensile tail, which he had wanted to do all his life.
THE END
1956
Hole in the Air
At exactly the time Derke Berish realized he was about to lose everything, a small boy showed the sure way to save it. All you had to do, it seemed, was to find a hole in the car, climb through and help yourself to fame and fortune. Worked fine too . . . until Derke found out that he wasn’t the only one fond of fame and fortune!
IT HAD been a bad day for Derke Berish. First had come Kanner’s memorandum, implying in veiled terms that Berish was doing a pretty feeble job these days, and immediately after that Production Chief Sunetaro had rejected Berish’s sphincter fountain-pen design on the grounds that it was cumbersome and had little sales appeal.
Berish slouched glumly behind his black, shabby designing desk and idly toyed with the two slips of paper: Kanner’s harsh white one, Sunetaro’s gentler green.
Kanner’s with its sedate message typed in dark brown, neat inch-wide margins all around, and Sunetaro’s scribbled in the Production Chief’s near-cunieform. They both added up to the same thing: Berish was in a slump, and unless he could regain the touch that had brought forth gadget after gadget for years, Amalgamated Technologicals would have a new design chief and Berish would be scouting the employment shysters again.
His gaze wandered over the busy little office. His three assistants were all bent over their designing-boards, munching on their stylos and concentrating fiercely. Berish wondered which of them would eventually replace him—little rumpled Rodriguez, or Condon, or Heilman? They were all clever, eager, brighteyed, just as Berish had been when he first came to work for Amalgamated Technologicals.
As he sickly surveyed the office,” he saw Condon leave his desk and move toward him. “Thought you might be interested in this,” said Condon, putting a large marble down before him. Even in his gloom Berish admired the marble’s beauty. It gleamed with a soft, soothing light, and right in its heart burnt a hard, bright little flame. It seemed almost like a precious gem.
“My boy found it yesterday,” Condon said, with that too-eager smile of the underling who wants to move up. “Really interesting gimmick, sir.”
Berish fondled the marble for a moment and looked up slowly at Condon. He felt terribly tired; all the weight of the world seemed to have been lowered onto his thin shoulders this bleak morning.
“It’s very pretty, Mr. Condon,” Berish said. “I admire your taste in marbles.” He yawned. “But just why should I—”
Bag-eyed old has-been!
Abruptly Berish awoke. “What was that, Mr. Condon?”
“What, sir?” said Condon, turning fish-white.
“Repeat what you just said to me, Condon.”
“But I didn’t say anything, sir. This marble—”
Berish slumped back in the chair. Now I’m starting to come apart at the seams, he thought. Hearing things is just about the end. I’ll cashier out at 1700.
“Go ahead,” Berish snapped. “Tell me about the marble.”
I would if you’d let me.
“Didn’t you just say, ‘I would if you’d let me’ ?” Berish asked.
“No, sir, but it was in my mind,” Condon said. “That’s the thing about this marble. It transmits thoughts.”
Berish let the marble drop as if it were a glowing coal, and it rolled along the desk. It came to a rest next to Sunetaro’s note. He looked at it, entranced by its glowing radiance.
“Just where did you get this thing, Mr. Condon?” Berish asked after he had calmed down.
“You may not believe this, Mr. Berish,” Condon began, “but my son claims he found it in another dimension.”
It had been a bad day for Berish, all right. First Kanner, then Sunetaro, now a telepathic marble from another dimension. He stared blankly at the balding head of Hellman, still bent over his designing-board, and then turned his gaze up coldly at Condon. The young design assistant looked back at him calmly.
“You say your boy got it from another dimension, Condon? He didn’t merely fly to Mars for it?”
“Please, Mr. Berish,” Condon said, a trifle wearily. “I know it sounds fantastic. But Where he got it doesn’t matter, does it? The fact remains that we have it, and it has definite commercial possibilities.”
Berish’s eye flickered toward Kanner’s polite note still before him, and at the marble. Yes, yes, of course, Berish thought, picking up the marble again and watching the hypnotic dancing of the dot of fire in its heart. Definite commercial possibilities. He felt the bleakness starting to lift.
“Think something at me, Mr. Condon.”
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog?” Condon nodded.
Berish weighed the marble in the palm of his hand. “This could be something exciting,” he said, thinking of Kanner and Sunetaro and the whole faceless management of Amalgamated Technologicals to whom he was nothing more than a machine for designing gadgets, to be cast off and replaced when worn out. This was quite a gadget, all right. And perhaps there would be more where this one came from. With a little shrewdness—
“I didn’t know what to say at first,” Condon said. “Nine-year-old boys have a way of vanishing at mealtimes, and when I went out to get him I couldn’t find him. Yesterday, around 1800. My wife doesn’t like dinner time to be too late. But I looked all over for Ronnie, and there was no sign of him. He always tells us if he’s leaving the block. I started over next door to see if he was playing indoors, when suddenly he tumbled out of what I can only describe, sir, as a hole in the air—”
“—and he was holding this marble clutched in his grimy little paw. I see the picture, Mr. Condon.” Berish looked down at the marble, then querulously up at Condon. “Think something at me, Mr. Condon.” He grasped the marble.
This is the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
“Is it, Condon?”
“All I can tell you is what Ronnie said,” replied Condon. “He said he had walked into a hole in the air and came across some alien monsters playing marbles. He sat right down with them and won this marble.”
Berish smiled. “And you believe this? That a small boy would play marbles so fearlessly with alien monsters? If I’d been there—or you, or anyone—I’d have run away.”
“But not Ronnie,” Condon said. “He’s been raised on TV; I can’t keep him away from the set. He’s more at home in outer space and alien dimensions than he is in his own house.”
“Ah, then. What we have here is nothing but the workings of a young boy’s fertile imagination.”
“Quite possibly,” said Condon. “But that still doesn’t account for this,” he said, reaching out and tapping the marble.
“No,” said Berish. “It doesn’t,” he added reflectively. “I think I’ll come home with you tonight, if you don’t mind. I’d like to have a chat with your son. This may prove to be very, very profitable for us all, Condon.”
Four hours later Berish was comfortably enfolded by an immense armchair in Condon’s neat little suburban home, facing a wiry, brownhaired, freckle-faced little boy.
“Let’s go over this slowly, Ronnie,” Berish said, struggling to calm his frayed nerves. “You say you saw a hole in the air.”
“That’s right,” Ronnie said. “I twisted myself around and scrunched and I went through.”
“I see,” said Berish. “You scrunched. I’ve got the idea of it. Have a popstick?”
“Not before supper,” broke in Condon, as Ronnie reached eagerly for the proffered sweet. Berish shook his head and put the popstick back in its wrapper.
“Tell me what you saw there, Ronnie.”
The boy’s eyes widened. “When I got there I was by a big tree and there were five aliens around a ring and they were about so high, with lots of arms and purple and green scales, and they live in a big world with nothing but trees and white concrete and no houses or cars or grownups or anything, and I got there through this hole in the air next door. They were playing marbles, just like we do here, except there wasn’t anyone to play with the other morning or I wouldn’t have gone through the hole in the air.” Ronnie caught in his breath sharply.
Berish closed his eyes for a moment and gathered in his thoughts. No matter how much fibbing Ronnie was doing, the marble did come from some place. And if Ronnie’s story were true, if there were a universe next door overflowing with wonders, he, Derke Berish, held the key.
The key was a small boy’s curiosity. A nine-year-old is curious about all things: about frogs and eels and stun-ball averages and rocket ships and certainly doubly curious about a strange world on the other side of a hole in the air. If Ronnie could be persuaded to go back through, again and again—
“You got the marble over there?” Berish asked.
“Yessir. I made contact with them the way Captain Space does, and they let me join their game when they saw I was a peaceful—uh—entity, and I won the marble and brought it back and gave it to Dad and I was late for supper.”
Berish glanced at Condon, who sat to one side, impassively. “How would you like to take me outside and show me where the hole in the air is, Ronnie?” Berish asked.
“Why don’t you wait until after supper?” Condon said. “My wife will have things ready any minute.”
“Tell her to wait a moment, will you, Condon? This is pretty important. Come on, Ronnie.” Here I come, Berish thought.
Berish muffled Condon’s protest with a gesture of a hand. Ronnie led Berish outside into the alleyway that separated the Condon house from the one next to it. Berish watched anxiously as Ronnie wandered up and down the alleyway, searching in the gathering dusk. Abruptly he brightened. “Here it is, Mr. Berish!” he called. He pointed up. “There.”
Berish squinted. “I don’t see anything,” he said, and got the sickly suspicion that he was the victim of a wild, purposeless hoax. “Show me.”
Ronnie outlined a space about three feet high. “It shimmers, like. It’s hard to tell in the dark, but this is the place.”
Berish contemplated it for a moment. “Ronnie?”
“Yessir?”
“Your father’s not looking. Here’s the popstick.”
“But he said—”
“Never mind. Would you show me how you go through the hole in the air?”
“You mean you want me to go through? Right now?”
“Yes,” Berish said, trying to look like a kindly uncle. “And when you go through—I’d like you to try to find the aliens again, and make them give you some other toy of theirs.”
“You mean you want another marble, Mr. Berish?”
“Yes—no,” he said patiently. “Not another marble, just yet. Any other kind of toy. All Tight?” He gave Ronnie what he hoped was a jolly nudge. The boy peered into the dimness for a moment, then bent down—scrunched—and, slowly straightening from his contorted position, stepped through. Berish thought he caught a glimpse of a wide, spreading ocean of white sand, broken here and there by a few tall, grotesque trees outlined against a lemon-yellow sky, and then Ronnie vanished and the gateway closed over.
“Where’s Ronnie?” Condon demanded, bursting out of the house.
“It was true,” Berish said, ignoring him.
“What was true? Do you mean you’ve sent him back again? Why, we don’t know what might be back there. Ferocious alien monsters, anything at all—and you let him go through!”
Berish ignored Condon’s anxious exclamations. He was dreamily contemplating the hole in the air, wondering what marvels would come forth to be placed before the astonished eyes of Kanner and Sunetaro and the high forces of Amalgamated Technologicals.
“Berish!” Condon finally shouted. The shout reminded Berish both that Condon was present and that he was an underling who had no business shouting, and he turned to face him.
“Please, Condon. Your boy won’t be in any danger, and he’ll be right back. This may mean great things for us, Condon.”
“Great things! What about my son?”
“Here he is,” Berish said. Ronnie stepped back through the hole and tumbled down at Berish’s feet. Berish lifted him up.
He had brought back a top—a child’s spinning top, off-green with dark blue dots. Berish wondered wildly if the aliens had used polka-dot paint to paint it, and then he seized the toy from Ronnie and examined it with frantic curiosity.
He put it on the ground and spun it, gently. It wobbled around and keeled over.
“No, Mr. Berish. You’ve got to give it a good twist,” Ronnie, said, bending down in the growing dusk. He took the top, his small, dirty fingers barely able to grip it, and started it off with a flick of his wrist.
It rose about five feet off the ground and hovered there, floating lightly and easily.
It was inevitable, Berish thought, that Condon would try to monkey-wrench the whole. thing. Miracles never happened smoothly.
“Look here,” Berish said. “We have a whole alien universe opening up before us—a complete immense new technology. The first two things we’ve brought back from there have given us telepathic contact and now antigravity. There’s no telling what further treasures can come through the gateway.”
“Exactly,” said Condon. “And that’s why we should turn the whole business over to the government and let them explore this other universe.”
“Why can’t you understand?” said Berish, mustering his patience. “You and I are employees of Amalgamated Technologicals. And there is money in these two gadgets for Amalgamated Technologicals, and that means there’s money for us. If we turn this over to the government, they’ll grab the antigrav top and the marble and turn them into federal monopolies. Just watch. You want to earn seventy credits a week for the rest of your life?”
“Mr. Berish is right, Ralph,” said Condon’s wife. Startled at aid coming from an unexpected quarter, Berish whirled to look at her, seeing her almost for the first time. “We could let Ronnie go through a couple of more times, and that’ll be enough. We’ll all be rich.”
“And suppose something happens to him?” Condon said.
“Don’t worry, Dad,” said Ronnie. “They’re very nice, even if they’re so funny-looking with all those arms and that one big eye. And they use those marbles to speak. The one I spoke to gave me the top and said something about exchanging.”
“Exchange?”
“Uh-huh,” Ronnie said. “I forget what he told me—something about being very anxious to exchange.”
“There you are,” exclaimed Berish triumphantly. “We’ve opened negotiations already!” He cleared his throat nervously, and plunged on. “I don’t think there’s need for any further discussion. It’s established that Ronnie’s the only one who can fit through that hole—or even find it, for that matter—and it is established that the aliens are friendly and anxious to exchange important things with us, through the medium of Ronnie. It would be an act of criminal negligence to fail to take advantage of this opportunity for contact with another race.”
“And why let the federal government take all the profit when we can use the money?” demanded Mrs. Condon happily.
“But suppose—what if—”
“Those people are nice, Dad.”
“Might I add, Mr. Condon, that should you insist on turning this discovery over to the government, Amalgamated Technologicals might not appreciate such an action?”
Condon nodded weakly, and Berish smiled. It was a smile of victory. He could almost hear the trumpets in the background.
“Are you ready for your trip—ah, next door, Ronnie?”
Ronnie held a small portable generator firmly in both hands. Berish had been quite pleased with himself for making the suggestion that perhaps the aliens might never have discovered electricity. Perhaps, Berish hazarded, they had made use of some other power source from the start—mental power, perhaps—and had never been provoked into controlling electricity. The generator might open up new worlds of technological advance for the aliens, and who knew what they might give in their gratitude?
Berish had gone over Ronnie’s instructions patiently. “You want me to find an alien and explain that this is an exchange sent by Earth and get something from him in return.”
“Exactly!” Berish said. “You have a very intelligent son, do you know?” he said, turning to Condon, who stood by nervously.
“Come back quickly,” Condon said. “I wish you wouldn’t make him do this.”
“We’ve been through this before,” Berish said coldly.
“Suppose something happens to him? You’re letting a youngster go exploring an unknown universe—”
“Will you be quiet?” Berish snapped. “I’ve had enough of your worries, Condon. Go inside. I’ll call you when Ronnie comes back.”
Berish waited anxiously for fifteen minutes, and found himself getting a little worried too. Ronnie was certainly a bright, attractive little boy, and he couldn’t blame Condon for worrying about him. He paced up and down the alleyway.
At last Ronnie returned. Berish stared, wondering what he had brought back.
Ronnie held out a small globe in which a bizarre black fishlike animal paddled sedately back and forth in a green, brackish-looking liquid.
“How nice,” Berish said, concealing his sharp disappointment. “A pet.” Inwardly he raged; an animal was of no use to him.
