Compleat collected sff w.., p.267
COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 267
His throat felt dry. He swallowed, opened his mouth, and closed it again.
He turned on his heel and went out. The muffled sound of his footsteps faded.
Alone in the silent ship, Bart Quentin waited for the technicians who would refit his body for the Callisto flight.
The End
WHAT YOU NEED
Astounding Science Fiction - October 1945
with Henry Kuttner
(as by Lewis Padgett)
What you need may turn out to be a pair of scissors, or a hen's egg, or any of a number of remarkably uninteresting things—till you find why you need it more than anything else on Earth!
-
deeN uoY tahW evaH eW
That's what the sign said. Tim Carmichael, who worked for a trade paper that specialized in economics, and eked out a meager salary by selling sensational and untrue articles to the tabloids, failed to sense a story in the reversed sign. He thought it was a cheap publicity gag, something one seldom encounters on Park Avenue, where the shop fronts are noted for their classic dignity. And he was irritated.
He growled silently, walked on, then suddenly turned and came back. He wasn't quite strong enough to resist the temptation to unscramble the sentence, though his annoyance grew. He stood before the window, staring up, and said to himself, "We Have What You Need. Yeah?"
The sign was in prim, small letters on a black painted ribbon that stretched across a narrow glass pane. Below it was one of those curved, invisible-glass windows. Through the window Carmichael could see an expanse of white velvet, with a few objects carefully arranged there. A rusty nail, a snowshoe, and a diamond tiara. It looked like a Dali decor for Cartier's or Tiffany.
"Jewelers?" Carmichael asked silently. "But why what you need?" He pictured millionaires miserably despondent for lack of a matched pearl necklace, heiresses weeping inconsolably because they needed a few star sapphires. The principle of luxury merchandising was to deal with the whipped cream of supply and demand; few people needed diamonds. They merely wanted them and could afford them.
"Or the place might sell jinni-flasks," Carmichael decided. "Or magic wands. Same principle as a Coney carny, though. A sucker trap. Bill the Whatzit outside and people will pay their dimes and flock in. For two cents—"
He was dyspeptic this morning, and generally disliked the world. Prospect of a scapegoat was attractive, and his press card gave him a certain advantage. He opened the door and walked into the shop.
It was Park Avenue, all right. There were no showcases or counters. It might be an art gallery, for a few good oils were displayed on the walls. An air of overpowering luxury, with the bleakness of an unlived-in place, struck Carmichael.
Through a curtain at the back came a very tall man with carefully-combed white hair, a ruddy, healthy face and sharp blue eyes. He might have been sixty. He wore expensive but careless tweeds, which somehow jarred with the decor.
"Good morning," the man said, with a quick glance at Carmichael's clothes. He seemed slightly surprised. "May I help you?"
"Maybe." Carmichael introduced himself and showed his press card.
"Oh? My name is Talley. Peter Talley."
"I saw your sign."
"Oh?"
"Our paper is always on the lookout for possible write-ups. I've never noticed your shop before—"
"I've been here for years," Talley said.
"This is an art gallery?"
"Well—no."
The door opened. A florid man came in and greeted Talley cordially. Carmichael, recognizing the client, felt his opinion of the shop swing rapidly upward. The florid man was a Name—a big one.
"It's a bit early, Mr. Talley," he said, "but I didn't want to delay. Have you had time to get ... what I needed?"
"Oh, yes. I have it. One moment." Talley hurried through the draperies and returned with a small, neatly-wrapped parcel which he gave to the florid man. The latter forked over a check—Carmichael caught a glimpse of the amount and gulped—and departed. His town car was at the curb outside.
Carmichael moved toward the door where he could watch. The florid man seemed anxious. His chauffeur waited stolidly as the parcel was unwrapped with hurried fingers.
"I'm not sure I'd want publicity, Mr. Carmichael," Talley said. "I've a select clientele—carefully chosen."
"Perhaps our weekly economic bulletins might interest you."
Talley tried not to laugh. "Oh, I don't think so. It really isn't in my line."
The florid man had finally unwrapped the parcel and taken out an egg. As far as Carmichael could see from his post near the door, it was merely an ordinary egg. But its possessor regarded it almost with awe. Had Earth's last hen died ten years before, the man could have been no more pleased. Something like deep relief showed on the Floridatanned face.
He said something to the chauffeur, and the car rolled smoothly forward and was gone.
-
"Are you in the dairy business?" Carmichael asked abruptly.
"No."
"Do you mind telling me what your business is?"
"I'm afraid I do, rather," Talley said.
Carmichael was beginning to scent a story. "Of course I could find out through the Better Business Bureau—"
"You couldn't."
"No? They might be interested in knowing why an egg is worth five thousand dollars to one of your customers."
Talley said, "My clientele is so small I must charge high fees. You ... ah ... know that a Chinese mandarin has been known to pay thousands of taels for eggs of proved antiquity."
"That guy wasn't a Chinese mandarin," Carmichael said.
"Oh, well. As I say, I don't welcome publicity—"
"I think you do. I was in the advertising game for a while. Spelling your sign backwards is an obvious baited hook."
"Then you're no psychologist," Talley said. "It's just that I can afford to indulge my whims. For five years I looked at that window every day and read the sign backward—from inside my shop. It annoyed me. You know how a word will begin to look funny if you keep staring on it? Any word. It turns into something in no human tongue. Well, I discovered I was getting a neurosis about that sign. It makes no sense backwards, but I kept finding myself trying to read sense into it. When I started to say 'Deen uoy tahw evah ew' to myself and looking for philological derivations, I called in a sign painter. People who are interested enough still drop in."
"Not many," Carmichael said shrewdly. "This is Park Avenue. And you've got the place fixed up too expensively. Nobody in the low-income brackets—or the middle brackets—would come in here. So you run an upper-bracket business."
"Well," Talley said, "yes, I do."
"And you won't tell me what it is?"
"I'd rather not."
"I can find out, you know. It might be dope, pornography, high-class fencing—"
"Very likely," Mr. Talley said smoothly. "I buy stolen jewels, conceal them in eggs, and sell them to my customers. Or perhaps that egg was loaded with microscopic French postcards. Good morning, Mr. Carmichael."
"Good morning," Carmichael said, and went out. He was overdue at the office, but annoyance was the stronger motivation. He played sleuth for a while, keeping an eye on Talley's shop, and the results were thoroughly satisfactory—to a certain extent. He learned everything but why.
-
Late in the afternoon, he sought out Mr. Talley again.
"Wait a minute," he said, at sight of the proprietor's discouraging face. "For all you know, I may be a customer."
Talley laughed.
"Well, why not?" Carmichael compressed his lips. "How do you know the size of my bank account? Or maybe you've got a restricted clientele?"
"No. But—"
Carmichael said quickly, "I've been doing some investigating. I've been noticing your customers. In fact, following them. And finding out what they buy from you."
Talley's face changed. "Indeed?"
"In-deed. They're all in a hurry to unwrap their little bundles. So that gave me my chance to find out. I missed a few, but—I saw enough to apply a couple of rules of logic, Mr. Talley. Item: your customers don't know what they're buying from you. It's a sort of grab bag. A couple of times they were plenty surprised. The man who opened his parcel and found an old newspaper clipping. What about the sunglasses? And the revolver? Probably illegal, by the way—no license. And the diamond—it must have been paste, it was so big."
"M-mm," Mr. Talley said.
"I'm no smart apple, but I can smell a screwy setup. Most of your clients are big shots, in one way or another. And why didn't any of 'em pay you, like the first man—the guy who came in when I was here this morning."
"It's chiefly a credit business," Talley said. "I've my ethics. I have to, for my own conscience. It's responsibility. You see, I sell ... my goods ... with a guarantee. Payment is made only if the product proves satisfactory."
"So. An egg. Sunglasses. A pair of asbestos gloves—I think they were. A newspaper clipping. A gun and a diamond. How do you take inventory?"
Talley said nothing.
Carmichael grinned. "You've an errand boy. You send him out and he comes back with bundles. Maybe he goes to a grocery on Madison and buys an egg. Or a pawnshop on Sixth for a revolver. Or—well, anyhow, I told you I'd find out what your business is."
"And have you?" Talley asked.
" 'We have what you need,' " Carmichael said. "But how do you know?"
"You're jumping to conclusions."
"I've got a headache—I didn't have sunglasses!—and I don't believe in magic. Listen, Mr. Talley. I'm fed up to the eyebrows and 'way beyond on queer little shops that sell peculiar things. I know too much about 'em—I've written about 'em. A guy walks along the street and sees a funny sort of store and the proprietor won't serve him—he sells only to pixies—or else he does sell him a magic charm with a double edge. Well—pfui!"
"Mph," Talley said.
" 'Mph' as much as you like. But you can't get away from logic. Either you've got a sound, sensible racket here, or else it's one of those funny, magic-shops setups—and I don't believe that. For it isn't logical."
"Why not?"
"Because of economics," Carmichael said flatly. "Grant the idea that you've got certain mysterious powers—let's say you can make telepathic gadgets. All right. Why the devil would you start a business so you could sell the gadgets so you could make money so you could live? You'd simply put on one of your gadgets, read a stockbroker's mind, and buy the right stocks. That's the intrinsic fallacy in these crazy-shop things—if you've got enough stuff on the ball to be able to stock and run such a shop, you wouldn't need a business in the first place. Why go round Robin Hood's barn?"
Talley said nothing.
Carmichael smiled crookedly. " 'I often wonder what the vintners buy one half so precious as the stuff they sell,' " he quoted. "Well—what do you buy? I know what you sell—eggs and sunglasses."
"You're an inquisitive man, Mr. Carmichael," Talley murmured. "Has it ever occurred to you that this is none of your business?"
"I may be a customer," Carmichael repeated. "How about that?"
Talley's cool blue eyes were intent. A new light dawned in them; Talley pursed his lips and scowled. "I hadn't thought of that," he admitted. "You might be. Under the circumstances. Will you excuse me for a moment?"
"Sure," Carmichael said. Talley went through the curtains.
Outside, traffic drifted idly along Park. As the sun slid down beyond the Hudson, the street lay in a blue shadow that crept imperceptibly up the barricades of the buildings. Carmichael stared at the sign—"We have what you need"—and smiled.
In a back room, Talley put his eye to a binocular plate and moved a calibrated dial. He did this several times. Then, biting his lip—for he was a gentle man—he called his errand boy and gave him directions. After that he returned to Carmichael.
"You're a customer," he said. "Under certain conditions."
"The condition of my bank account, you mean?"
"No," Talley said. "I'll give you reduced rates. Understand one thing. I really do have what you need. You don't know what you need, but I know. And as it happens—well, I'll sell you what you need for, let's say, five dollars."
Carmichael reached for his wallet. Talley held up a hand.
"Pay me after you're satisfied. And the money's the nominal part of the fee. There's another part. If you're satisfied, I want you to promise that you'll never come near this shop again and never mention it to anyone."
"I see," Carmichael said slowly. His theories had changed slightly.
"It won't be long before ... ah, here he is now." A buzzing from the back indicated the return of the errand boy. Talley said "Excuse me," and vanished. Soon he returned with a neatly-wrapped parcel, which he thrust into Carmichael's hands.
"Keep this on your person," Talley said. "Good afternoon."
-
Carmichael nodded, pocketed the parcel, and went out. Feeling affluent, he hailed a taxi and went to a cocktail bar he knew. There, in the dim light of a booth, he unwrapped the bundle.
Protection money, he decided. Talley was paying him off to keep his mouth shut about the racket, whatever it was. O.K. live and let live. How much would be—
Ten thousand? Fifty thousand? How big was the racket?
He opened an oblong cardboard box. Within, nesting upon tissue paper, was a pair of shears, the blades protected by a sheath of folded, glued cardboard.
Carmichael said something softly. He drank his highball and ordered another, but left it untasted. Glancing at his wrist watch, he decided that the Park Avenue shop would be closed by now and Mr. Peter Talley gone.
" 'One half so precious as the stuff they sell.' " Carmichael said. "Maybe it's the scissors of Atropos. Blah." He unsheathed the blades and snipped experimentally at the air. Nothing happened. Slightly crimson around the cheekbones, Carmichael reholstered the shears and dropped them into the side pocket of his topcoat. Quite a gag!
He decided to call on Peter Talley tomorrow.
Meanwhile, what? He remembered he had a dinner date with one of the girls at the office, and hastily paid his bill and left. The streets were darkening, and a cold wind blew southward from the Park. Carmichael wound his scarf tighter around his throat and made gestures toward passing taxis.
He was considerably annoyed.
Half an hour later a thin man with sad eyes—Jerry Worth, one of the copy-writers from his office—greeted him at the bar where Carmichael was killing time. "Waiting for Betsy?" Worth said, nodding toward the restaurant annex. "She sent me to tell you she couldn't make it. A rush deadline. Apologies and stuff. Where were you today? Things got gummed up a bit. Have a drink with me."
They worked on a rye. Carmichael was already slightly stiff. The dull crimson around his cheekbones had deepened, and his frown had become set. "What you need," he remarked. "Double-crossing little—"
"Huh?" Worth said.
"Nothing. Drink up. I've just decided to get a guy in trouble. If I can."
"You almost got in trouble yourself today. That trend analysis of ores—"
"Eggs. Sunglasses!"
"I got you out of a jam—"
"Shut up," Carmichael said, and ordered another round. Every time he felt the weight of the shears in his pocket he found his lips moving.
Five shots later Worth said plaintively, "I don't mind doing good deeds but I do like to mention them. And you won't let me. All I want is a little gratitude."
"All right, mention them," Carmichael said. "Brag your head off. Who cares?"
Worth showed satisfaction. "That ore analysis—it was that. You weren't at the office today, but I caught it. I checked with our records and you had Trans-Steel all wrong. If I hadn't altered the figures, it would have gone down to the printer—"
"What?"
"The Trans-Steel. They—"
"Oh, you fool," Carmichael groaned. "I know it didn't check with the office figures. I meant to put in a notice to have them changed. I got my dope from the source. Why don't you mind your own business?"
Worth blinked. "I was trying to help."
"It would have been good for a five-buck raise," Carmichael said. "After all the research I did to uncover the real dope—listen, has the stuff gone to bed yet?"
