Hugo awards the short st.., p.4
Hugo Awards: The Short Stories (Volume 1), page 4
Mr. McAfee adjusted his spectacles on the bridge of his nose with a rapid trombone manipulation.
"Bless me, Jim, it's good to see you up and around!"
"Pretty good to be up." Jim managed to force enthusiasm into his voice. But he knew he couldn't stand talking very long to old Charles McAfee as if everything had not changed since the last time.
"Any mail for the Wards, today?"
The postman shuffled the fistful of mail. "Only one."
Jim glanced at the return address block and shrugged. "I'm on the sucker lists already. They don't lose any time when they find out there's still bones left to pick on. You keep it."
He turned painfully and faced toward the house. "I've got to be getting back. Glad to have seen you, Mr. McAfee."
"Yeah, sure, Jim. Glad to have seen you. But I . . . er ... got to deliver the mail—" He held the letter out hopefully.
"O.K." Jim laughed sharply and grasped the circular.
He went only as far as the giant oak whose branches extended far enough to overshadow the mailbox. He sat down in the shade with his back against the great bole and tried to watch the echelon still soaring above the valley through the rifts in the leaf coverage above him. After a time he glanced down at the circular letter from which his fingers were peeling little fragments of paper. Idly, he ripped open the envelope and glanced at the contents. In cheap, garish typograph with splatterings of red and purple ink the words seemed to be trying to jump at him.
SERVICEMAN—WHAT OF THE FUTURE?
You have come back from the wars. You have found life different than you knew it before, and much that was familiar is gone. But new things have come, new things that are here to stay and are a part of the world you are going to live in.
Have you thought of the place you will occupy? Are you prepared to resume life in the ways of peace?
WE CAN HELP YOU
Have you heard of the POWER CO-ORDINATOR? No, of course you haven't because it has been a hush-hush secret source of power that has been turning the wheels of war industries for many months. But now the secret of this vast source of new power can be told, and the need for hundreds, yes, thousands of trained technicians—such as you, yourself, may become—will be tremendous in the next decade.
LET US PROVE TO YOU
Let us prove to you that we know what we are talking about. We are so certain that you, as a soldier trained in intricate operations of the machines of war, will be interested in this almost miraculous new source of power and the technique of handling it that we are willing to send you absolutely FREE the first three lessons of our twenty-five lesson course that will train you to be a POWER CO-ORDINATOR technician.
Let us prove it to you. Fill out the enclosed coupon and mail it today!
Don't just shrug and throw this circular away as just another advertisement. MAIL THE COUPON NOW!
* * *
Jim Ward smiled reminiscently at the style of the circular. It reminded him of Billy Hensley and the time when they were thirteen. They sent in all the clipped and filled-out coupons they could find in magazines. They had samples of soap and magic tricks and catalogues and even a live bird came as the result of one. They kept all the stuff in Hensley's attic until Billy's dad finally threw it all out.
Impulsively, in whimsical tribute to the gone-forever happiness of those days, Jim Ward scratched his name and address in pencil and told the power co-ordinators to send him their three free lessons.
Mr. McAfee had only another mile to go up the road before he came to the end and returned past the Ward farm to Kramer's Forks. Jim waited and hailed him.
"Want to take another letter?"
The postman halted the clattering Ford and jumped down. "What's that?"
Jim repeated his request and held up the stamped reply card. "Take this with you?"
Mr. McAfee turned it over and read every word on the back of the card. "Good thing," he grunted. "So you're going to take a correspondence course in this new power what-is-it? I think that's mighty fine, Jim. Give you new interests—sort of take your mind off things."
"Yeah, sure." Jim struggled up with the aid of his cane and the bole of the oak tree. "Better see if I can make it back to the house now."
All the whimsy and humor had suddenly gone out of the situation.
* * *
It was a fantastically short time—three days later—that Mr. McAfee stopped again at the Ward farm. He glanced at the thick envelope in his pack and the return address block it bore. He could see Jim Ward on the farmhouse porch and turned the Ford up the lane. Its rattle made Jim turn his head and open his eyes from the thoughtless blankness into which he had been trying to sink. He removed the pipe from his mouth and watched the car approach.
"Here's your course," shouted Mr. McAfee. "Here's your first lesson!"
"What lesson?"
"The correspondence course you sent for. The power what-is-it? Don't you remember?"
"No," said Jim. "I'd forgotten all about it. Take the thing away. I don't want it. It was just a silly joke."
"You hadn't ought to feel that way, Jim. After all, your leg is going to be all right. I heard the Doc say so down in the drugstore last night. And everything is going to be all right. There's no use of letting it get you down. Besides—I got to deliver the mail."
He tossed the brown envelope on the porch beside Jim. "Brought it up special because I thought you'd be in a hurry to get it."
Jim smiled in apology. "I'm sorry, Mac. Didn't mean to take it out on you. Thanks for bringing it up. I'll study it good and hard this morning right here on the porch."
Mr. McAfee beamed and nodded and rattled away. Jim closed his eyes again, but he couldn't find the pleasing blankness he'd found before. Now the screen of his mind showed only the sky with thundering, plummeting engines—and the face of a girl lying still and white with closed eyes.
Jim opened his eyes and his hands slipped to his sides and touched the envelope. He ripped it open and scanned the pages. It was the sort of stuff he had collected as a boy, all right He glanced at the paragraph headings and tossed the first lesson aside. A lot of obvious stuff about comparisons between steam power and waterfalls and electricity. It seemed all jumbled up like a high school student's essay on the development of power from the time of Archimedes.
The mimeographed pages were poorly done. They looked as if the stencils had been cut on a typrwriter that had been hit on the type faces with a hammer.
He tossed the second lesson aside and glanced at the top sheet of the third. His hand arrested itself midway in the act of tossing this lesson beside the other two. He caught a glimpse of the calculations on an inside page and opened up the booklet.
There was no high school stuff there. His brain struggled to remember the long unused methods of the integral calculus and the manipulation of partial differential equations.
There were pages of the stuff. It was like a sort of beacon light, dim and far off, but pointing a sure pathway to his mind and getting brighter as he progressed. One by one, he followed the intricate steps of the math and the short paragraphs of description between. When at last he reached the final page and turned the book over and scowled heavily the sun was halfway down the afternoon sky.
He looked away over the fields and pondered. This was no elementary stuff. Such math as this didn't belong in a home study correspondence course. He picked up the envelope and concentrated on the return address block.
All it said was: M. H. Quilcon Schools, Henderson, Iowa. The lessons were signed at the bottom with the mimeographed reproductions of M. H. Quilcon's ponderous signature.
Jim picked up lesson one again and began reading slowly and carefully, as if hidden between the lines he might find some mystic message.
By the end of July his leg was strong enough for him to walk without the cane. He walked slowly and with a limp and once in a while the leg gave way as if he had a trick knee. But he learned quickly to catch himself before he fell and he reveled in the thrill of walking again.
By the end of July the tenth lesson of the correspondence course had arrived and Jim knew that he had gone as far as he could alone. He was lost in amazement as he moved in the new scientific wonderland that opened up before him. He had known that great strides had been made in techniques and production, but it seemed incredible that such a basic discovery as power co-ordination had been producing war machines these many months. He wondered why the principle had not been applied more directly as a weapon itself—but he didn't understand enough about it to know whether it could or not. He didn't even understand yet from where the basic energy of the system was derived.
The tenth lesson was as poorly produced as the rest of them had been, but it was practically a book in its thickness. When he had finished it Jim knew that he had to know more of the background of the new science. He had to talk to someone who knew something about it. But he knew of no one who had ever heard of it. He had seen no advertisements of the M. H. Quilcon Schools. Only the first circular and these lessons.
As soon as he had finished the homework on lesson ten and had given it into Mr. McAfee's care, Jim Ward made up his mind to go down to Henderson, Iowa, and visit the Quilcon School.
He wished he had retained the lesson material because he could have taken it there faster than it would arrive via the local mail channels.
* * *
The streamliner barely stopped at Henderson, Iowa, long enough to allow him to disembark. Then it was gone and Jim Ward stared about him.
The sleepy looking ticket seller, dispatcher, and janitor eyed him wonderingly and spat a huge amber stream across his desk and out the window.
"Looking for somebody, mister?"
"I'm looking for Henderson, Iowa. Is this it?" Jim asked dubiously.
"You're here, mister. But don't walk too fast or you'll be out of it. The city limits only go a block past Smith's Drugstore."
Jim noticed the sign over the door and glanced at the inscription that he had not seen before: Henderson, Iowa. Pop. 806.
"I'm looking for a Mr. M. H. Quilcon. He runs a correspondence school here somewhere. Do you know of him?"
The depot staff shifted its cud again and spat thoughtfully. "Been here twenty-nine years next October. Never heard a name like that around here, and I know 'em all."
"Are there any correspondence schools here?"
"Miss Marybell Anne Simmons gives beauty operator lessons once in a while, but that's all the school of that kind that I know of."
Disconcerted, Jim Ward murmured his thanks and moved slowly out of the station. The sight before him was dismaying. He wondered if the population hadn't declined since the estimate on the sign in the station was made.
A small mercantile store that sagged in the middle faced him from across the street. Farther along was a tiny frame building labeled Sheriffs Office. On his side Jim saw Smith's drugstore a couple of hundred feet down from the station with a riding saddle and a patented fertilizer displayed in the window. In the other direction was the combined post office, bank and what was advertised as a newspaper and printing office.
Jim strode toward this last building while curious watchers on the porch of the mercantile store stared at him trudging through the dust.
The postmistress glanced up from the armful of mail that she was sorting into boxes as Jim entered. She offered a cheery hello that seemed to tinkle from the buxom figure.
"I'm looking for a man named Quilcon. I thought you might be able to give me some information concerning him."
"Kweelcon?" She furrowed her brow. "There's no one here by that name. How do you spell it?"
Before he could answer, the woman dropped a handful of letters on the floor. Jim was certain that he saw the one he had mailed to the school before he left.
As the woman stooped to recover the letters a dark brown shadow streaked across the floor. Jim got the momentary impression of an enormous brown slug moving with lightning speed.
The postmistress gave a scream of anger and scuffled her feet to the door. She returned in a moment.
"Armadillo," she explained. "Darn thing's been hanging around here for months and nobody seems to be able to kill it." She resumed putting the mail in the boxes.
"I think you missed one," said Jim. She did not have the one that he recognized as the one he'd mailed.
The woman looked about her on the floor. "I got them all, thank you. Now what did you say this man's name was?"
Jim leaned over the counter and looked at the floor. He was sure—But there was obviously no other letter in sight and there was no place it could have gone.
"Quilcon," said Jim slowly. 'Tm not sure of the pronunciation myself, but that's the way it seemed it should be."
"There's no one in Henderson by that name. Wait a minute now. That's a funny thing—you know it was about a month ago that I saw an envelope going out of here with a name something like that in the upper left corner. I thought at the time it was a funny name and wondered who put it in, but I never did find out and I thought I'd been dreaming. How's you know to come here looking for him?"
"I guess I must have received the mail you saw."
"Well, you might ask Mr. Herald. He's in the newspaper office next door. But I'm sure there's no one in this town by that name."
"You publish a newspaper here?"
The woman laughed. "We call it that. Mr. Herald owns the bank and a big farm and puts this out free as a hobby, It's not much, but everybody in town reads it. On Saturday he puts out a regular printed edition. This is the daily."
She held up a small mimeographed sheet that was moderately legible. Jim glanced at it and moved towards the door. "Thanks, anyway."
As he went out into the summer sun there was something gnawing at his brain, an intense you-forgot-something-in-there sort of feeling. He couldn't place it and tried to ignore it.
Then as he stepped across the threshold of the printing office he got it. That mimeographed newssheet he had seen—it bore a startling resemblance to the lessons he had received from M. H. Quilcon. The same purple ink. Slightly crooked sheets. But that was foolish to try to make a connection there. All mimeographed jobs looked about alike.
Mr. Herald was a portly little man with a fringe around his baldness. Jim repeated his inquiry.
"Quilcon?" Mr. Herald pinched his lips thoughtfully. "No, can't say as I ever heard the name. Odd name—I'm sure I'd know it if I'd ever heard it."
Jim Ward knew that further investigation here would he a waste of time. There was something wrong somewhere. The information in his correspondence course could not be coming out of this half dead little town.
He glanced at a copy of the newssheet lying on the man's littered desk beside an ancient Woodstock. "Nice little sheet you put out there," said Jim.
Mr. Herald laughed. "Well, it's not much, but I get a kick out of it, and the people enjoy reading about Mrs. Kelly's lost hogs and the Dorius kid's whooping cough. It livens things up."
"Ever do any work for anybody else—printing or mimeographing?"
"If anybody wants it, but I haven't had an outside customer in three years."
Jim glanced about searchingly. The old Woodstock seemed to be the only typewriter in the room.
"I might as well go on," he said. "But I wonder if you'd mind letting me use your typewriter to write a note and leave in the postoffice for Quilcon if he ever shows up."
"Sure, go ahead. Help yourself."
Jim sat down before the clanking machine and hammered out a brief paragraph while Mr. Herald wandered to the back of the shop. Then Jim rose and shoved the paper in his pocket. He wished he had brought a sheet from one of the lessons with him.
"Thanks," he called to Mr. Herald. He picked up a copy of the latest edition of the newspaper and shoved it in his pocket with the typed sheet
* * *
On the trip homeward he studied the mimeographed sheet until he had memorized every line, but he withheld conclusions until he reached home.
From the station he called the farm and Hank, the hired man, came to pick him up. The ten miles out to the farm seemed like a hundred. But at last in his own room Jim spread out the two sheets of paper he'd brought with him and opened up lesson one of the correspondence course.
There was no mistake. The stencils of the course manuals had been cut on Mr. Herald's ancient machine. There was the same nick out of the side of the o, and the b was flattened on the bulge. The r was minus half its base.
Mr. Herald had prepared the course.
Mr. Herald must then be M. H. Quilcon. But why had he denied any knowledge of the name? Why had he refused to see Jim and admit his authorship of the course?
At ten o'clock that night Mr. McAfee arrived with a special delivery letter for Jim.
"I don't ordinarily deliver these way out here this time of night," he said. "But I thought you might like to have. it. Might be something important. A job or something, maybe. It's from Mr. Quilcon."
"Thanks. Thanks for bringing it, Mac."
Jim hurried into his room and ripped open the letter. It read:
Dear Mr. Ward:
Your progress in understanding the principles of power co-ordination are exceptional and I am very pleased to note your progress in connection with the tenth lesson which I have just received from you.
An unusual opportunity has arisen which I am moved to offer you. There is a large installation of a power co-ordination engine in need of vital repairs some distance from here. I believe that you are fully qualified to work on this machine, under supervision which will be provided and you would gain some valuable experience. The installation is located some distance from the city of Henderson. It is about two miles out on the Balmer Road. You will find there the Hortan Machine Works at which the installation is located. Repairs are urgently needed and you are the closest qualified student able to take advantage of this opportunity which might lead to a valuable permanent connection. Therefore, I request that you come at once. I will meet you there.
Sincerely,
