Collected Short Fiction, page 322
SMATHERS LIVED IN THE Bronx, a search of police files revealed. Bailey caught a late rocket north and minutes later found himself in front of the vast dwelling, in which Smathers lived.
The doorman in the lobby said, “Whom do you wish to see, sir?”
“Mr. Smathers. Is he at home?”
“Mr. Smathers has left instructions that he is not to be disturbed, sir. The only one who may go upstairs is the grocery delivery boy. Are you, perhaps, the grocery delivery boy?”
“I’m Detective Bailey of the police. Now, will you let me see Smathers or do I have to arrest you?”
The doorman paled. “Mr. Smathers will be very angry, sir—”
“Well?”
“Very well, sir. Mr. Smathers lives in Apartment 13-A.”
Bailey took the elevator—one of those modern lift-tubes that rose like an accelerating rocket. A bit shaken up, he clambered out at the 13th floor and waited for his stomach to catch up with him.
Then he approached the unmarked door to his right. All the others had letters, beginning with B and running through H. This had to be 13-A.
He rang the buzzer.
There was no response.
Bailey rang again. And again.
Finally a harsh voice said, “Who’s there?”
“Groceries!” Bailey said.
“Just a second, will you?”
There was the sound of a, bolt sliding back and the door opened about half an inch. “All right,” said the voice from within. “Hand them here and I’ll take care of them.”
“Sure thing Mr. Smathers,” Bailey said. He jammed his foot against the partially-open door and heaved. Smathers was caught with his latch down. By the time he exerted any counter-pressure Bailey was inside.
Smathers was a wiry little fellow, a bit over five feet tall, who looked angry enough to emit gamma rays.
“Who are you? What do you mean, breaking in like this? I’ll call the police! I’ll—”
“I am the police,” Bailey said quietly. “Mind if I talk to you for a while?”
“About what?” Smathers asked suspiciously.
“About the Callistans,” Bailey said.
Smathers eyed him hostilely. “What do you want to know about them? I turned them over to the Bureau of Extraterrestrial Life the day I landed.”
“I know. They escaped. Tell me something, Mr. Smathers—can your Callistans teleport? I mean, can they pass through walls or anything like that?”
“Absolutely not!” Smathers said vehemently. “Whatever gave you that fantastic idea? Teleport? Madness!”
Bailey saw his case exploding like a soap-bubble before his eyes. “Are you sure of that, Mr. Smathers? You didn’t notice any extra-sensory manifestations while you were on Callisto? This information is exceedingly important, you know. The crime wave—”
“I don’t know anything about any crime wave. I haven’t been in contact with the outside world at all until you came crashing in here. And as for the Callistans being able to teleport—”
Smathers stopped suddenly. His eyes went wide with shock and dismay. He tried to make words come out, and failed.
Bailey whirled to see what was causing Smathers’ difficulty. And then his eyes went wide.
A small gray-green creature with four arms stood there, apparently having materialized right behind Bailey. Two of its four arms were full of green bills, stacked neatly and bound together.
The creature said, in a piping voice, “Here you are, chief. Twenty thousand more, out of the Federal Reserve.”
SMATHERS FINALLY recovered control of his voice. He pointed at Bailey and said, “Idiot! Dolt! Vanish!”
Bailey heard a pop! The Callistan vanished.
“I think you owe me an explanation,” the detective said. “If these Callistans can’t teleport what was that one doing here—with all that money?”
“I—I—I don’t know anything about it. I didn’t see anything. You must be having hallucinations!”
“I doubt that, Smathers. If you don’t mind I’d like to investigate the rest of this apartment.”
“I forbid it! Where’s your search warrant? I’ll sue! I’ll—”
Bailey brushed the small man aside and stepped out of the foyer into the adjoining living-room.
He paled.
The living-room was stacked high with books, pictures, money, gold bullion. All of the missing items seemed to be here.
Behind him, Smathers said, “Well, now you know.”
“So you’re the thief?”
“Not me. My two friends from Callisto.” Smathers signalled and two small alien creatures appeared out of nowhere and perched on his shoulders.
“You’ve been stealing—or rather, they’ve been stealing these things for you. Why?”
“I liked it on Callisto,” Smathers said. “I decided to return to Earth and made use of my friends’ teleportation abilities to build up a stockpile of useful things. Then I was going to steal back my ship, with their help, and return to Callisto. I’d live all alone there, surrounded by my booty.”
Bailey smiled sadly. “It’s too bad it didn’t work, eh, Smathers? It sounds like a wonderful dream. But now that we know, we’ll have to take all this stuff back and ship your two pals back to Callisto before they cause any more confusion.”
Smathers shrugged. “Well, it would have been nice. But I guess I’ll have to do without, all these things now. Too bad, too.”
“Yes. Too bad. Suppose we go down to Headquarters, now, Smathers?”
“Headquarters? Sorry, officer. I’m not going.”
“The hell you say. Your game is up, Smathers. We know—”
“Unfortunately, you don’t know, officer. There’s one fact you don’t know about Callistan teleportation.”
“And that is?”
Smathers grinned impishly. “It can be learned by Earthmen.”
Bailey’s eyes widened. “You mean—”
Pop! went the Callistan on Smathers’ right shoulder.
Pop! went the one on the left shoulder.
Desperately Bailey leaped for Smathers. His arms closed on empty air.
Pop! went Smathers.
THE END
The Man Who Never Forgot
HE SAW THE GIRL WAITING IN LINE outside a big Los Angeles movie house, on a mildly foggy Tuesday morning. She was slim and pale, barely five-three, with stringy flaxen hair, and she was alone. He remembered her, of course.
He knew it would be a mistake, but he crossed the street anyway and walked up along the theater line to where she stood.
“Hello,” he said.
She turned, stared at him blankly, flicked the tip of her tongue out for an instant over her lips. “I don’t believe I—”
“Tom Niles,” he said. “Pasadena, New Year’s Day, 1955. You sat next to me. Ohio State 20, Southern Cal 7. You don’t remember?”
“A football game? But I hardly ever—I mean—I’m sorry, mister. I—”
Someone else in the line moved forward towards him with a tight hard scowl on his face. Niles knew when he was beaten. He smiled apologetically and said, “I’m sorry, miss. I guess I made a mistake. I took you for someone I knew—a Miss Bette Torrance. Excuse me.”
And he strode rapidly away. He had not gone more than ten feet when he heard the little surprised gasp and the “But I am Bette Torrance!”—but he kept going.
I should know better after twenty-eight years, he thought bitterly. But I forget the most basic fact—that even though I remember people, they don’t necessarily remember me . . .
He walked wearily to the corner, turned right, and started down a new street, one whose shops were totally unfamiliar to him and which, therefore, he had never seen before. His mind, stimulated to its normal pitch of activity by the incident outside the theater, spewed up a host of tangential memories like the good machine it was: 1 Jan. 1955. Rose Bowl Pasadena California Seat G126; warm day, high humidity, arrived in stadium 12.03 P.M., PST. Came alone. Girl in next seat wearing blue cotton dress, white oxfords, carrying Southern Cal pennant. Talked to her. Name Bette Torrance, senior at Southern Cal, government major. Had a date for the game but he came down with flu symptoms night before, insisted she see game anyway. Seat on other side of her empty. Bought her a hot dog, $.20 (no mustard)—
There was more, much more. Niles forced it back down. There was the virtually stenographic report of their conversation all that day:
(“. . . I hope we win. I saw the last Bowl game we won, two years ago . . .”
“. . . Yes, that was 1953. Southern Cal 7, Wisconsin 0 . . . and two straight wins in 1944-45 over Washington and Tennessee . . .”
“. . . Gosh, you know a lot about football! What did you do, memorize the record book?”)
And the old memories. The jeering yell of freckled Joe Merritt that warm April day in 1937—who are you, Einstein? And Buddy Call saying acidly on 8 November 1939, Here comes Tommy Niles, the human adding machine. Get him! And then the bright stinging pain of a snowball landing just below his left clavicle, the pain that he could summon up as easily as any of the other pain-memories he carried with him. He winced and closed his eyes suddenly, as if struck by the icy pellet here on a Los Angeles street on a foggy Tuesday morning.
They didn’t call him the human adding machine any more. Now it was the human tape recorder; the derisive terms had to keep pace with the passing decades. Only Niles himself remained unchanging, The Boy With The Brain Like A Sponge grown up into The Man With The Brain Like A Sponge, still cursed with the same terrible gift.
His data-cluttered mind ached. He saw a diminutive yellow sports car parked on the far side of the street, recognized it by its make and model and color and licence number as the car belonging to Leslie F. Marshall, twenty-six, blond hair, blue eyes, television actor with the following credits—
Wincing, Niles applied the cutoff circuit and blotted out the upwelling data. He had met Marshall once, six months ago, at a party given by a mutual friend—an erstwhile mutual friend; Niles found it difficult to keep friends for long. He had spoken with the actor for perhaps ten minutes and had added that much more baggage to his mind.
It was time to move on, Niles decided. He had been in Los Angeles ten months. The burden of accumulated memories was getting too heavy; he was greeting too many people who had long since forgotten him (curse my John Q. Average build, 5 feet 9, 163 pounds, brownish hair. brownish eyes, no unduly prominent physical features, no distinguishing scars except those inside, he thought). He contemplated returning to San Francisco, and decided against it. He had been there only a year ago; Pasadena, two years ago; the time had come, he realized, for another eastward jaunt.
Back and forth across the face of America goes Thomas Richard Niles, Der fliegende Holländer, the Wandering Jew, the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Human Tape Recorder. He smiled at a newsboy who had sold him a copy of the Examiner on 13 May past, got the usual blank stare in return, and headed for the nearest bus terminal.
For Niles the long journey had begun on 11 October 1929, in the small Ohio town of Lowry Bridge. He was third of three children, born of seemingly normal parents, Henry Niles (b. 1896), Mary Niles (b. 1899). His older brother and sister had shown no extraordinary manifestations. Tom had.
It began as soon as he was old enough to form words; a neighbor woman on the front porch peered into the house where he was playing, and remarked to his mother, “Look how big he’s getting, Mary!”
He was less than a year old. He had replied, in virtually the same tone of voice, “Look how big he’s getting, Mary!” It caused a sensation, even though it was only mimicry, not even speech.
He spent his first twelve years in Lowry Bridge, Ohio. In later years, he often wondered how he had been able to last there so long.
He began school at the age of four, because there was no keeping him back; his classmates were five and six, vastly superior to him in physical coordination, vastly inferior in everything else. He could read. He could even write, after a fashion, though his babyish muscles tired easily from holding a pen. And he could remember.
He remembered everything. He remembered his parents’ quarrels and repeated the exact words of them to anyone who cared to listen, until his father whipped him and threatened to kill him if he ever did that again. He remembered that too. He remembered the lies his brother and sister told, and took great pains to set the record straight. He learned eventually not to do that, either. He remembered things people had said, and corrected them when they later deviated from their earlier statements.
He remembered everything.
He read a textbook once and it stayed with him. When the teacher asked a question based on the day’s assignment, Tommy Niles’ skinny arm was in the air long before the others had even really assimilated the question. After a while, his teacher made it clear to him that he could not answer every question, whether he had the answer first or not; there were twenty other pupils in the class. The other pupils in the class made that abundantly clear to him, after school.
He won the verse-learning contest in Sunday school. Barry Harman had studied for weeks in hopes of winning the catcher’s mitt his father had promised him if he finished first—but when it was Tommy Niles’ turn to recite, he began with In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, continued through Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them, headed on into Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made, and presumably would have continued clear through Genesis, Exodus, and on to Joshua if the dazed proctor hadn’t shut him up and declared him the winner. Barry Harman didn’t get his glove; Tommy Niles got a black eye instead.
He began to realize he was different. It took time to make the discovery that other people were always forgetting things, and that instead of admiring him for what he could do they hated him for it. It was difficult for a boy of eight, even Tommy Niles, to understand why they hated him, but eventually he did find out, and then he started learning how to hide his gift.
Through his ninth and tenth years he practiced being normal, and almost succeeded; the after-school beatings stopped, and he managed to get a few Bs on his report cards at last, instead of straight rows of A. He was growing up; he was learning to pretend. Neighbors heaved sighs of relief, now that that terrible Niles boy was no longer doing all those crazy things.
But inwardly he was the same as ever. And he realized he’d have to leave Lowry Bridge soon.
He knew everyone too well. He would catch them in lies ten times a week, even Mr. Lawrence, the minister, who once turned down an invitation to pay a social call to the Nileses one night, saying, “I really have to get down to work and write my sermon for Sunday,” when only three days before Tommy had heard him say to Miss Emery, the church secretary, that he had had a sudden burst of inspiration and had written three sermons all at one sitting, and now he’d have some free time for the rest of the month.
Even Mr. Lawrence lied, then. And he was the best of them. As for the others—
Tommy waited until he was twelve; he was big for his age by then and figured he could take care of himself. He borrowed twenty dollars from the supposedly secret cashbox in the back of the kitchen cupboard (his mother had mentioned its existence five years before, in Tommy’s hearing) and tiptoed out of the house at three in the morning. He caught the night freight for Chillicothe, and was on his way.
There were thirty people on the bus out of Los Angeles. Niles sat alone in the back, by the seat just over the rear wheel. He knew four of the people in the bus by name—but he was confident they had forgotten who he was by now, and so he kept to himself.
It was an awkward business. If you said hello to someone who had forgotten you, they thought you were a troublemaker or a panhandler. And if you passed someone by, thinking he had forgotten you, and he hadn’t—well, then you were a snob. Niles swung between both those poles five times a day. He’d see someone, such as that girl Bette Torrance, and get a cold, unrecognizing stare; or he’d go by someone else, believing the other person did not remember him but walking rapidly just in case he did, and there would be the angry, “Well! Who the blazes do you think you are!” floating after him as he retreated.
Now he sat alone, bouncing up and down with each revolution of the wheel, with the one suitcase containing his property thumping constantly against the baggage rack over his head. That was one advantage of his talent: he could travel light. He didn’t need to keep books, once he had read them, and there wasn’t much point in amassing belongings of any other sort either; they became overfamiliar and dull too soon.
He eyed the road signs. They were well into Nevada by now. The old, wearisome retreat was on.
He could never stay in the same city too long. He had to move on to new territory, to some new place where he had no old memories, where no one knew him, where he knew no one. In the sixteen years since he had left home, he’d covered a lot of ground.
He remembered the jobs he had held.
He had been a proofreader for a Chicago publishing firm, once. He did the jobs of two men. The way proofreading usually worked, one man read the copy from the manuscript, the other checked it against the galleys. Niles had a simpler method: he would scan the manuscript once, thereby memorizing it, and then merely check the galley for discrepancies. It brought him fifty dollars a week for a while, before the time came to move along.
He once held a job as a sideshow freak in a traveling carnie that made a regular Alabama-Mississippi-Georgia circuit. Niles had really been low on cash, then. He remembered how he had gotten the job: by buttonholing the carnie boss and demanding a tryout. “Read me anything—anything at all! I can remember it!” The boss had been skeptical, and didn’t see any use for such an act anyway, but finally gave in when Niles practically fainted of malnutrition in his office. The boss read him an editorial from a Mississippi county weekly, and when he was through Niles recited it back, word perfect. He got the job, at fifteen dollars a week plus meals, and sat in a little booth under a sign that said The Human Tape Recorder. People read or said things to him, and he repeated them. It was dull work; sometimes the things they said to him were filthy, and most of the time they couldn’t even remember what they had said to him a minute later. He stayed with the show four weeks, and when he left no one missed him much.
