The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein Page 4

  “Well!” said Mrs. Jennings crisply, “you’ve been long enough getting here! What have you to say for yourself?”

  He answered sullenly, like an incorrigible boy caught but not repentant, in a language filled with rasping gutturals and sibilants. She listened awhile, then cut him off.

  “I don’t care who told you to; you’ll account to me! I require this harm repaired—in less time than it takes to tell it!”

  He answered back angrily, and she dropped into his language, so that I could no longer follow the meaning. But it was clear that I was concerned in it; he threw me several dirty looks, and finally glared and spat in my direction.

  Mrs. Jennings reached out and cracked him across the mouth with the back of her hand. He looked at her, killing in his eyes, and said something.

  “So?” she answered, put out a hand and grabbed him by the nape of the neck and swung him across her lap, face down. She snatched off a shoe and whacked him soundly with it. He let out one yelp, then kept silent, but jerked every time she struck him.

  When she was through she stood up, spilling him to the ground. He picked himself up and hurriedly scrambled back into his own circle, where he stood, rubbing himself. Mrs. Jennings’s eyes snapped and her voice crackled; there was nothing feeble about her now. “You gnomes are getting above yourselves,” she scolded. “I never heard of such a thing! One more slip on your part and I’ll fetch your people to see you spanked! Get along with you. Fetch your people for your task, and summon your brother and your brother’s brother. By the great Tetragrammaton, get hence to the place appointed for you!”

  He was gone.

  Our next visitant came almost at once. It appeared first as a tiny spark hanging in the air. It grew into a living flame, a fireball, six inches or more across. It floated above the center of the second circle at the height of Mrs. Jennings’s eyes. It danced and whirled and flamed, feeding on nothing. Although I had never seen one, I knew it to be a salamander. It couldn’t be anything else.

  Mrs. Jennings watched it for a little time before speaking. I could see that she was enjoying its dance, as I was. It was a perfect and beautiful thing, with no fault in it. There was life in it, a singing joy, with no concern for—with no relation to—matters of right and wrong, or anything human. Its harmonies of color and curve were their own reason for being.

  I suppose I’m pretty matter-of-fact. At least I’ve always lived by the principle of doing my job and letting other things take care of themselves. But here was something that was worthwhile in itself, no matter what harm it did by my standards. Even the cat was purring.

  Mrs. Jennings spoke to it in a clear, singing soprano that had no words to it. It answered back in pure liquid notes while the colors of its nucleus varied to suit the pitch. She turned to me and said, “It admits readily enough that it burned your place, but it was invited to do so and is not capable of appreciating your point of view. I dislike to compel it against its own nature. Is there any boon you can offer it?”

  I thought for a moment. “Tell it that it makes me happy to watch it dance.” She sang again to it. It spun and leaped, its flame tendrils whirling and floating in intricate, delightful patterns.

  “That was good, but not sufficient. Can you think of anything else?”

  I thought hard. “Tell it that if it likes, I will build a fireplace in my house where it will be welcome to live whenever it wishes.”

  She nodded approvingly and spoke to it again. I could almost understand its answer, but Mrs. Jennings translated. “It likes you. Will you let it approach you?”

  “Can it hurt me?”

  “Not here.”

  “All right then.”

  She drew a T between our two circles. It followed closely behind the athame, like a cat at an opening door. Then it swirled about me and touched me lightly on my hands and face. Its touch did not burn, but tingled, rather, as if I felt its vibrations directly instead of sensing them as heat. It flowed over my face. I was plunged into a world of light, like the heart of the aurora borealis. I was afraid to breathe at first, finally had to. No harm came to me, though the tingling was increased.

  It’s an odd thing, but I have not had a single cold since the salamander touched me. I used to sniffle all winter.

  “Enough, enough,” I heard Mrs. Jennings saying. The cloud of flame withdrew from me and returned to its circle. The musical discussion resumed, and they reached an agreement almost at once, for Mrs. Jennings nodded with satisfaction and said:

  “Away with you then, fire child, and return when you are needed. Get hence—” She repeated the formula she had used on the gnome king.

  The undine did not show up at once. Mrs. Jennings took out her book again and read from it in a monotonous whisper. I was beginning to be a bit sleepy—the tent was stuffy—when the cat commenced to spit. It was glaring at the center circle, claws out, back arched, and tail made big.

  There was a shapeless something in that circle, a thing that dripped and spread its slimy moisture to the limit of the magic ring. It stank of fish and kelp and iodine, and shone with a wet phosphorescence.

  “You’re late,” said Mrs. Jennings. “You got my message; why did you wait until I compelled you?”

  It heaved with a sticky, sucking sound, but made no answer.

  “Very well,” she said firmly, “I shan’t argue with you. You know what I want. You will do it!” She stood up and grasped the big center candle. Its flame flared up into a torch a yard high, and hot. She thrust it past her circle at the undine.

  There was a hiss, as when water strikes hot iron, and a burbling scream. She jabbed at it again and again. At last she stopped and stared down at it, where it lay, quivering and drawing into itself. “That will do,” she said. “Next time you will heed your mistress. Get hence!” It seemed to sink into the ground, leaving the dust dry behind it.

  When it was gone she motioned for us to enter her circle, breaking our own with the dagger to permit us. Seraphin jumped lightly from his little circle to the big one and rubbed against her ankles, buzzing loudly. She repeated a meaningless series of syllables and clapped her hands smartly together.

  There was a rushing and roaring. The sides of the tent billowed and cracked. I heard the chuckle of water and the crackle of flames, and, through that, the bustle of hurrying footsteps. She looked from side to side, and wherever her gaze fell the wall of the tent became transparent. I got hurried glimpses of unintelligible confusion.

  Then it all ceased with a suddenness that was startling. The silence rang in our ears. The tent was gone; we stood in the loading yard outside my main warehouse.

  It was there! It was back—back unharmed, without a trace of damage by fire or water. I broke away and ran out the main gate to where my business office had faced on the street. It was there, just as it used to be, the show windows shining in the sun, the Rotary Club emblem in one corner, and up on the roof my big two-way sign:

  ARCHIBALD FRASER

  BUILDING MATERIALS & GENERAL CONTRACTING

  Jedson strolled out presently and touched me on the arm. “What are you bawling about, Archie?”

  I stared at him. I wasn’t aware that I had been.

  WE WERE DOING BUSINESS AS usual on Monday morning. I thought everything was back to normal and that my troubles were over. I was too hasty in my optimism.

  It was nothing you could put your finger on at first—just the ordinary vicissitudes of business, the little troubles that turn up in any line of work and slow up production. You expect them and charge them off to overhead. No one of them would be worth mentioning alone, except for one thing: they were happening too frequently.

  You see, in any business run under a consistent management policy the losses due to unforeseen events should average out in the course of a year to about the same percentage of total cost. You allow for that in your estimates. But I started having so many small accidents and little difficulties that my margin of profit was eaten up.

  One morning tw
o of my trucks would not start. We could not find the trouble; I had to put them in the shop and rent a truck for the day to supplement my one remaining truck. We got our deliveries made, but I was out the truck rent, the repair bill, and four hours’ overtime for drivers at time and a half. I had a net loss for the day.

  The very next day I was just closing a deal with a man I had been trying to land for a couple of years. The deal was not important, but it would lead to a lot more business in the future, for he owned quite a bit of income property—some courts and an apartment house or two, several commercial corners, and held title or options on well-located lots all over town. He always had repair jobs to place and very frequently new building jobs. If I satisfied him, he would be a steady customer with prompt payment, the kind you can afford to deal with on a small margin of profit.

  We were standing in the showroom just outside my office and talking, having about reached an agreement. There was a display of Sunprufe paint about three feet from us, the cans stacked in a neat pyramid. I swear that neither one of us touched it, but it came crashing to the floor, making a din that would sour milk.

  That was nuisance enough, but not the pay-off. The cover flew off one can, and my prospect was drenched with red paint. He let out a yelp; I thought he was going to faint. I managed to get him back into my office, where I dabbed futilely at his suit with my handkerchief, while trying to calm him down.

  He was in a state, both mentally and physically. “Fraser,” he raged, “You’ve got to fire the clerk that knocked over those cans! Look at me! Eighty-five dollars worth of suit ruined!”

  “Let’s not be hasty,” I said soothingly, while holding my own temper in. I won’t discharge a man to suit a customer, and don’t like to be told to do so. “There wasn’t anyone near those cans but ourselves.”

  “I suppose you think I did it?”

  “Not at all. I know you didn’t.” I straightened up, wiped my hands, and went over to my desk and got out my checkbook.

  “Then you must have done it!”

  “I don’t think so,” I answered patiently. “How much did you say your suit was worth?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to write you a check for the amount.” I was quite willing to; I did not feel to blame, but it had happened through no fault of his in my shop.

  “You can’t get out of it as easily as that!” he answered unreasonably. “It isn’t the cost of the suit I mind—” He jammed his hat on his head and stumped out. I knew his reputation; I’d seen the last of him.

  This is the sort of thing I mean. Of course it could have been an accident caused by clumsy stacking of the cans. But it might have been a poltergeist. Accidents don’t make themselves.

  DITWORTH CAME TO SEE ME a day or so later about Biddle’s phony bill. I had been subjected night and morning to this continuous stream of petty annoyances, and my temper was wearing thin. Just that day a gang of colored bricklayers had quit one of my jobs because some moron had scrawled some chalk marks on some of the bricks. “Voodoo marks,” they said they were, and would not touch a brick. I was in no mood to be held up by Mr. Ditworth; I guess I was pretty short with him.

  “Good day to you, Mr. Fraser,” he said quite pleasantly, “can you spare me a few minutes?”

  “Ten minutes, perhaps,” I conceded, glancing at my wrist watch.

  He settled his brief case against the legs of his chair and took out some papers. “I’ll come to the point at once then. It’s about Dr. Biddle’s claim against you. You and I are both fair men; I feel sure that we can come to some equitable agreement.”

  “Biddle has no claim against me.”

  He nodded. “I know just how you feel. Certainly there is nothing in the written contract obligating you to pay him. But there can be implied contracts just as binding as written contracts.”

  “I don’t follow you. All my business is done in writing.”

  “Certainly,” he agreed; “that’s because you are a businessman. In the professions the situation is somewhat different. If you go to a dental surgeon and ask him to pull an aching tooth, and he does, you are obligated to pay his fee, even though a fee has never been mentioned—”

  “That’s true,” I interrupted, “but there is no parallel. Biddle didn’t ‘pull the tooth.’”

  “In a way he did,” Ditworth persisted. “The claim against you is for the survey, which was a service rendered you before this contract was written.”

  “But no mention was made of a service fee.”

  “That is where the implied obligation comes in, Mr. Fraser; you told Dr. Biddle that you had talked with me. He assumed quite correctly that I had previously explained to you the standard system of fees under the association—”

  “But I did not join the association!”

  “I know, I know. And I explained that to the other directors, but they insist that some sort of an adjustment must be made. I don’t feel myself that you are fully to blame, but you will understand our position, I am sure. We are unable to accept you for membership in the association until this matter is adjusted—in fairness to Dr. Biddle.”

  “What makes you think I intend to join the association?”

  He looked hurt. “I had not expected you to take that attitude, Mr. Fraser. The association needs men of your caliber. But in your own interest, you will necessarily join, for presently it will be very difficult to get efficient thaumaturgy except from members of the association. We want to help you. Please don’t make it difficult for us.”

  I stood up. “I am afraid you had better sue me and let a court decide the matter, Mr. Ditworth. That seems to be the only satisfactory solution.”

  “I am sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “It will prejudice your position when you come up for membership.”

  “Then it will just have to do so,” I said shortly, and showed him out.

  After he had gone I crabbed at my office girl for doing something I had told her to do the day before, and then had to apologize. I walked up and down a bit, stewing, although there was plenty of work I should have been doing. I was nervous; things had begun to get my goat—a dozen things that I haven’t mentioned—and this last unreasonable demand from Ditworth seemed to be the last touch needed to upset me completely. Not that he could collect by suing me—that was preposterous—but it was an annoyance just the same. They say the Chinese have a torture that consists in letting one drop of water fall on the victim every few minutes. That’s the way I felt.

  Finally I called up Jedson and asked him to go to lunch with me.

  I felt better after lunch. Jedson soothed me down, as he always does, and I was able to forget and put in the past most of the things that had been annoying me simply by telling him about them. By the time I had had a second cup of coffee and smoked a cigarette I was almost fit for polite society.

  We strolled back toward my shop, discussing his problems for a change. It seems the blond girl, the white witch from Jersey City, had finally managed to make her synthesis stunt work on footgear. But there was still a hitch; she had turned out over eight hundred left shoes—and no right ones.

  We were just speculating as to the probable causes of such a contretemps when Jedson said, “Look, Archie. The candid-camera fans are beginning to take an interest in you.”

  I looked. There was a chap standing at the curb directly across from my place of business and focusing a camera on the shop.

  Then I looked again. “Joe,” I snapped, “that’s the bird I told you about, the one that came into my shop and started the trouble!”

  “Are you sure?” he asked, lowering his voice.

  “Positive.” There was no doubt about it; he was only a short distance away on the same side of the street that we were. It was the same racketeer who had tried to blackmail me into buying “protection,” the same Mediterranean look to him, the same flashy clothes.

  “We’ve got to grab him,” whispered Jedson.

  But I had already thought of that. I rushed at him a
nd had grabbed him by his coat collar and the slack of his pants before he knew what was happening, and pushed him across the street ahead of me. We were nearly run down, but I was so mad I didn’t care. Jedson came pounding after us.

  The yard door of my office was open. I gave the mug a final heave that lifted him over the threshold and sent him sprawling on the floor. Jedson was right behind; I bolted the door as soon as we were both inside.

  Jedson strode over to my desk, snatched open the middle drawer, and rummaged hurriedly through the stuff that accumulates in such places. He found what he wanted, a carpenter’s blue pencil, and was back alongside our gangster before he had collected himself sufficiently to scramble to his feet. Jedson drew a circle around him on the floor, almost tripping over his own feet in his haste, and closed the circle with an intricate flourish.

  Our unwilling guest screeched when he saw what Joe was doing, and tried to throw himself out of the circle before it could be finished. But Jedson had been too fast for him—the circle was closed and sealed; he bounced back from the boundary as if he had struck a glass wall, and stumbled again to his knees. He remained so for the time, and cursed steadily in a language that I judged to be Italian, although I think there were bad words in it from several other languages—certainly some English ones.

  He was quite fluent.

  Jedson pulled out a cigarette, lighted it, and handed me one. “Let’s sit down, Archie,” he said, “and rest ourselves until our boy friend composes himself enough to talk business.”

  I did so, and we smoked for several minutes while the flood of invective continued. Presently Jedson cocked one eyebrow at the chap and said, “Aren’t you beginning to repeat yourself?”

  That checked him. He just sat and glared. “Well,” Jedson continued, “haven’t you anything to say for yourself?”