Collected fiction, p.674
Collected Fiction, page 674
Fowler had to go to Washington to defend himself in some question of patent infringement. A large firm had found out about the Hed-D-Acher and jumped in on the grounds of similar wiring—at least that was Fowler’s impression. He was no technician. The main point was that the Hed-D-Acher couldn’t be patented in its present form, and Fowler’s rivals were trying to squeeze through a similar—and stolen—Hed-D-Acher of their own.
Fowler phoned the Korys Agency. Long distance television was not on the market yet and he was not able to see Veronica’s face, but he knew what expression must be visible on it when he told her what he wanted.
“But I’m going out on a job, John. I can’t just drop everything and rush out to your house.”
“Listen, Veronica, there may be a hundred thousand bucks in it. I . . . there’s no one else I can trust.” He didn’t add his chief reason for trusting her—the fact that she wasn’t over-bright.
In the end, she went. Dramatic situations appealed to her, and he dropped dark hints of corporation espionage and bloody doings on Capitol Hill. He told her where to find the key and she hung up, leaving Fowler to gnaw his nails intermittently and try to limit himself to one whiskey-soda every half hour.
He was paged, it seemed to him, some years later.
“Hello, Veronica?”
“Right. I’m at the house. The key was where you said. Now what?”
Fowler had had time to work out a plan. He put pencil and note pad on the jutting shelf before him and frowned slightly. This might be a risk, but—
But he intended to marry Veronica, so it was ho great risk. And she wasn’t smart enough to figure out the real answers.
He told her about the windowless room. “That’s my houseboy’s—Norman. He’s slightly half-witted, but a good boy on mechanical stuff. Only he’s a little deaf, and you’ve got to tell him a thing three times before he understands it.”
“I think I’d better get out of here,” Veronica remarked. “Next you’ll be telling me he’s a homicidal maniac.”
Fowler laughed heartily. “There’s a box in the kitchen—it’s in that red cupboard with the. blue handle. It’s pretty heavy. But see if you can manage it. Take it in to Norman and tell him to make another Hed-D-Acher with a different wiring circuit.”
“Are you drunk?”
Fowler repressed an impulse to bite the mouthpiece off the telephone. His nerves were crawling under his skin. “This isn’t a gag, Veronica. I told you how important it is. A hundred thousand bucks isn’t funny. Look, got a pencil? Write this down.” He dictated some technical instructions he had gleaned by asking the right questions. “Tell that to Norman. He’ll find all the materials and tools he needs in the box.”
“If this is a gag—” Veronica said, and there was a pause. “Well, hang on.”
Silence drew on. Fowler tried to hear what was happening so many miles away, he caught a few vague sounds, but they were meaningless. Then voices rose in loud debate.
“Veronica!” Fowler shouted. “Veronica!” There was no answer.
After that, voices again, but softer. And presently:
“Johnny,” Veronica said, “if you ever pull a trick like that on me again—”
“What happened?”
“Hiding a gibbering idiot in your house—” She was breathing fast.
“He’s . . . what did he do? What happened?”
“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. Except when I opened the door your houseboy walked out and began running around the house like a . . . a bat. He was trying to talk—Johnny, he scared me!” She was plaintive. “Where is he now?”
“Back in his room. I . . . I was afraid of him. But I was trying not to show it. I thought if I could get him back in and lock the door—I spoke to him, and he swung around at me so fast I guess I let out a yell. And then he kept trying to say something—”
“What?”
“How should I know? He’s in his room, but I couldn’t find a key to it. I’m not staying here a minute longer. I . . . here he comes!”
“Veronica! Tell him to go back to his room. Loud and—like you mean it!”
She obeyed. Fowler could hear her saying it. She said it several times.
“It doesn’t work. He’s going out—”
“Stop him!”
“I won’t! I had enough trouble coaxing him back the first time—”
“Let me talk to him,” Fowler said suddenly. “He’ll obey me. Hold the phone to his ear. Get him to listen to me.” He raised his voice to a shout. “Norman! Come here! Listen to me!” Outside the booth people were turning to stare, but he ignored them.
He heard a faint mumble and recognized it.
“Norman,” he said, more quietly, but with equal firmness. “Do exactly what I tell you to do. Don’t leave the house. Don’t leave the house. Don’t leave the house. Do you understand?”
Mumble. Then words: “Can’t get out . . . can’t—”
“Don’t leave the house. Build another Hed-D-Acher. Do it now. Get the equipment you need and build it in the living room, on the table where the telephone is. Do it now.”
A pause, and then Veronica said shakily: “He’s gone back to his room. Johnny, I . . . he’s coming back! With that box of stuff—”
“Let me talk to him again. Get yourself a drink. A couple of ’em.” He needed Veronica as his interpreter, and the best way to keep her there would be with the aid of Dutch courage.
“Well—here he is.”
Norman mumbled.
Fowler referred to his notes. He gave firm, incisive, detailed directions. He told Norman exactly what he wanted. He repeated his orders several times.
And it ended with Norman building a Hed-D-Acher, with a different type of circuit, while Veronica watched, made measurements as Fowler commanded, and relayed the information across the wire. By the time she got slightly high, matters were progressing more smoothly. There was the danger that she might make inaccurate measurements, but Fowler insisted on check and doublecheck of each detail.
Occasionally he spoke to Norman. Each time the man’s voice was weaker. The dangerous surge of initiative was passing as energy drained out of Norman while his swift fingers flew.
In the end, Fowler had his information, and Norman, completely exhausted, was ordered back to his room. According to Veronica, he went there obediently and fell flat on the floor.
“I’ll buy you a mink coat,” Fowler said. “See you later.”
“But—”
“I’ve got to hurry. Tell you all about it when I see you.”
He got the patent, by the skin of his teeth. There was instant litigation, which was why he didn’t clean up on the gadget immediately. He was willing to wait. The goose still laid golden eggs.
But he was fully aware of the danger now. He had to keep Norman busy. For unless the man’s strength remained at a minimum, initiative would return. And there would be nothing to stop Norman from walking out of the house, or—
Or even worse. For Fowler could, after all, keep the doors locked. But he knew that locks wouldn’t imprison Norman long once the man discovered how to pose a problem to himself. Once Norman thought: Problem how to escape—then his clever hands would construct a wall-melter or a matter-transmitter, and that would be the end for Fowler.
Norman had one specialized talent. To keep that operating efficiently—for Fowler’s purpose—all Norman’s other faculties had to be cut down to minimum operation speed.
The rosy light in the high-backed booth fell flatteringly upon Veronica’s face. She twirled her martini glass on the table and said: “But John, I don’t think I want to marry you.” The martini glass shot pinpoints of soft light in his face as she turned it. She looked remarkably pretty, even for a Korys model. Fowler felt like strangling her.
“Why not?” he demanded.
She shrugged. She had been blowing hot. and cold, so far as Fowler was concerned, ever since the day she had seen Norman. Fowler had been able to buy her back, at intervals, with gifts or moods that appealed to her, but the general drift had been toward estrangement. She wasn’t intelligent, but she did have sensitivity of a sort, and it served its purpose. It was stopping her from marrying John Fowler.
“Maybe we’re too much alike, Johnny,” she said reflectively. “I don’t know. I . . . how’s that miserable house-boy of yours?”
“Is that still bothering you?” His voice was impatient. She had been showing too much concern over Norman. It had probably been a mistake to call her in at all, but what else could he have done? “I wish you’d forget about Norman. He’s all right.”
“Johnny, I honestly do think he ought to be under a doctor’s care. He didn’t look at all well that day. Are you sure—”
“Of course I’m sure! What do you take me for? As a matter of fact, he is under a doctor’s care. Norman’s just feeble-minded. “I’ve told you that a dozen times, Veronica. I wish you’d take my word for it. He . . . he sees a doctor regularly. It was just having you there that upset him. Strangers throw him off his balance. He’s fine now. Let’s forget about Norman. We were talking about getting married, remember?”
“You were. Not me. No, Johnny, I’m afraid it wouldn’t work.” She looked at him in the soft light, her face clouded with doubt and—was it suspicion? With a woman of Veronica’s mentality, you never knew just where you stood. Fowler could reason her out of every objection she offered to him, but because reason meant so little to her, the solid substratum of her convictions remained unchanged.
“You’ll marry me,” he said, his voice confident.
“No.” She gave him an uneasy look and then drew a deep breath and said: “You may as well know this now, Johnny—I’ve just about decided to marry somebody else.”
“Who?” He wanted to shout the question, but he forced himself to be calm.
“No one you know. Ray Barnaby.
I . . . I’ve pretty well made up my mind about it, John.”
“I don’t know the man,” Fowler told her evenly, “but I’ll make it my business to find out all I can.”
“Now John, let’s not quarrel. I—”
“You’re going to marry me or nobody, Veronica.” Fowler was astonished at the sudden violence of his own reaction. “Do you understand that?”
“Don’t be silly, John. You don’t own me.”
“I’m not being silly! I’m just telling you.”
“John, I’ll do exactly as I please. Now, let’s not quarrel about it.”
Until now’, until this moment of icy rage, he had never realized what an obsession Veronica had become. Fowler had got out of the habit of being thwarted. His absolute powder over one individual and one unchanging situation was giving him a taste for tyranny. He sat looking at Veronica in the pink dimness of the booth, grinding his teeth together in an effort not to shout at her.
“If you go through with this, Veronica, I’ll make it my business to see you regret it as long as you live,” he told her in a harsh, low voice.
She pushed her half-emptied glass aside with sudden violence that matched his. “Don’t get me started, John Fowler!” she said angrily. “I’ve got a temper, too! I’ve always known there was something I didn’t like about you.”
“There’ll be a lot more you don’t like if you—”
“That’s enough, John!” She got up abruptly, clutching at her slipping handbag. Even in this soft light he could see the sudden hardening of her face, the lines of anger pinching downward along her nose and mouth. A perverse triumph filled him because at this moment she was ugly in her rage, but it did not swerve his determination.
“You’re going to marry me,” he told her harshly. “Sit down. You’re going to marry me if I have to—” He paused.
“To what?” Her voice was goading. He shook his head. He couldn’t finish the threat aloud.
Norman will help me, he was thinking in cold triumph. Norman will find a way.
He smiled thinly after her as she stalked in a fury out of the bar.
For a week Fowler heard no more from her. He made inquiries about the man Barnaby and was not surprised to learn that Veronica’s intended—if she had really been serious about the fellow, after all—was a young broker of adequate income and average stupidity. A nonentity. Fowler told himself savagely that they were two of a kind and no doubt deserved each other. But his obsession still ruled him, and he was determined that no one but himself should marry Veronica.
Short of hypnosis, there seemed no immediate way to change her mind. But perhaps he could change Barnaby’s. He believed he could, given enough time. Norman was at work on a rather ingenious little device involving the use of a trick lighting system. Fowler had been impressed, on consideration, by the effect of the rosy light in the bar on Veronica’s appearance.
Another week passed, with no news about Veronica. Fowler told himself he could afford to remain aloof. He had the means to control her very nearly within his grasp. He would watch her, and wait his time in patience.
He was very busy, too, with other things. Two more devices were ready for patenting—the Magic Latch keyed to fingerprint patterns, and the Haircut Helmet that could be set for any sort of hair trimming and would probably wreak havoc among barbers. But litigation on the Hed-D-Acher was threatening to be expensive, and Fowler had learned already to live beyond his means. Far beyond. It seemed ridiculous to spend only what he took in each day, when such fortunes in royalties were just around the corner.
Twice he had to take Norman off the lighting device to perform small tasks in other directions. And Norman was in himself a problem.
The work exhausted him. It had to exhaust him. That was necessary. An unpleasant necessity, of course, but there it was. Sometimes the exhaustion in Norman’s eyes made one uncomfortable. Certainly Norman suffered. But because he was seldom able to show it plainly, Fowler could tell himself that perhaps he imagined the worst part of it. Casuistry, used to good purpose, helped him to ignore what he preferred not to see.
By the end of the second week, Fowler decided not to wait on Veronica any longer. He bought a dazzling solitaire diamond whose cost faintly alarmed even himself, and a wedding hand that was a full circle of emerald-cut diamonds to complement it. With ten thousand dollars worth of jewelry in his pocket, he went into the city to pay her a call.
Barnaby answered the door.
Stupidly Fowler heard himself saying: “Miss Wood here?”
Barnaby, grinning, shook his head and started to answer. Fowler knew perfectly well what he was about to say. The fatuous grin would have told him even if some accurate sixth sense had not already made it clear. But he wouldn’t let Barnaby say it. He thrust the startled bridegroom aside and shouldered angrily into the apartment, calling: “Veronica! Veronica, where are you?”
She came out of the kitchen in a ruffled apron, apprehension and defiance on her face.
“You can just get right out of here, John Fowler,” she said firmly. Barnaby came up from behind him and began a blustering remonstrance, but she slipped past Fowler and linked her arm with Barnaby’s, quieting him with a touch.
“We were married day before yesterday. John,” she said.
Fowler was astonished to discover that the cliché about a red swimming haze of rage was perfectly true. The room and the bridal couple shimmered before him for an instant.
He could hardly breathe in the suffocating fury that swam in his-brain.
He took out the white velvet box, snapped it open and waved it under Veronica’s nose. Liquid fire quivered in the myriad cut surfaces of the jewels and for an instant pure greed made Veronica’s face as hard as the diamonds.
Barnaby said: “I think you’d better go, Fowler.”
In silence, Fowler went.
The little light-device wouldn’t do now. He would need something more powerful for his revenge. Norman put the completed gadget aside and began to work on something new. There would be a use for the thing later. Already plans were spinning themselves out in Fowler’s mind.
They would be expensive plans. Fowler took council with himself and decided that the moment had come to put the magic window on the market.
Until now he had field this in reserve. Perhaps he had even been a little afraid of possible repercussions. He was artist enough to know that a whole new art-form might result from a practical telepathic projector. There were so many possibilities—
But the magic window failed.
Not wholly, of course. It was a miracle, and men always will buy miracles. But it wasn’t the instant, overwhelming financial Success Fowler had felt certain it would be.
For one thing, perhaps this was too much of a miracle. Inventions can’t become popular until the culture is ready for them. Talking films were made in Paris by Melies around 1890, but perhaps because that was a double miracle, nobody took to the idea. As for a telepathic screen—
It was a specialized luxury item. And it wasn’t as easy or as safe to enjoy as one might suppose. For one thing, few minds turned out to be disciplined enough to maintain a picture they deliberately set out to evoke. As a mass entertaining medium it suffered from the same faults as family motion pictures—other peoples’ memories and dreams are notoriously boring unless one sees oneself in them.
Besides, this was too close to pure telepathy to be safe. Fowler had lived alone too long to remember the perils of exposing one’s thoughts to a group. Whatever he wanted to project on his private window, he projected. But in the average family it wouldn’t do. It simply wouldn’t do.
Some Hollywood companies and some millionaires leased windows—Fowler refused to sell them outright. A film studio photographed a batch of projected ideations and cut them into a dream sequence for a modern Cinderella story. But trick photography had already done work so similar that it made no sensation whatever. Even Disney had done some of the stuff better. Until trained imaginative projective artists could be developed, the windows were simply not going to be a commercial success.
