Waldo – Robert Heinlein
1
The act was billed as ballet tap—which does not describe it.
His feet created an intricate tympany of crisp, clean taps. There was a breath-catching silence as he leaped high into the air, higher than a human being should—and performed, while floating there, a fantastically improbable entrechats douze.
He landed on his toes, apparently poised, yet producing a fortissimo of thunderous taps.
The spotlights cut, the stage lights came up. The audience stayed silent a long moment, then realized it was time to applaud, and gave.
He stood facing them, letting the wave of their emotion sweep through him. He felt as if he could lean against it; it warmed him through to his bones.
It was wonderful to dance, glorious to be applauded, to be liked, to be wanted.
When the curtain rang down for the last time he let his dresser lead him away. He was always a little bit drunk at the end of a performance; dancing was a joyous intoxication even in rehearsal, but to have an audience lifting him, carrying him along, applauding him—he never grew jaded to it. It was always new and heartbreakingly wonderful.
“This way, chief. Give us a little smile.” The flash bulb flared. “Thanks.”
“Thank you. Have a drink.” He motioned toward one end of his dressing room. They were all such nice fellows, such grand guys—the reporters, the photographers—all of them.
“How about one standing up?” He started to comply, but his dresser, busy with one slipper, warned him:
“You operate in half an hour.”
“Operate?” the news photographer said. “What’s it this time?”
“A left cerebrectomy,” he answered.
“Yeah? How about covering it?”
“Glad to have you—if the hospital doesn’t mind.”
“We’ll fix that.”
Such grand guys.
“—trying to get a little different angle on a feature article.” It was a feminine voice, near his ear. He looked around hastily, slightly confused. “For example, what made you decide to take up dancing as a career?”
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t hear you. I’m afraid it’s pretty noisy in here.”
“I said, why did you decide to take up dancing?”
“Well, now, I don’t quite know how to answer that. I’m afraid we would have to go back quite a way—”
* * * * *
James Stevens scowled at his assistant engineer. “What have you got to look happy about?” he demanded.
“It’s just the shape of my face,” his assistant apologized. “Try laughing at this one: there’s been another crash.”
“Oh, cripes! Don’t tell me—let me guess. Passenger or freight?”
“A Climax duo-freighter on the Chicago-Salt Lake shuttle, just west of North Platte. And, chief—”
“Yes?”
“The Big Boy wants to see you.”
“That’s interesting. That’s very, very interesting. Mac—”
“Yeah, chief.”
“How would you like to be Chief Traffic Engineer of North American Power-Air? I hear there’s going to be a vacancy.”
Mac scratched his nose. “Funny that you should mention that, chief. I was just going to ask you what kind of a recommendation you could give me in case I went back into civil engineering. Ought to be worth something to you to get rid of me.”
“I’ll get rid of you—right now. You bust out to Nebraska, find that heap before the souvenir hunters tear it apart, and bring back its deKalbs and its control board.”
“Trouble with cops, maybe?”
“You figure it out. Just be sure you come back.”
Stevens’s office was located immediately adjacent to the zone power plant; the business offices of North American were located in a hill, a good three quarters of a mile away. There was the usual interconnecting tunnel; Stevens entered it and deliberately chose the low-speed slide in order to have more time to think before facing the boss.
By the time he arrived he had made up his mind, but he did not like the answer.
The Big Boy—Stanley F. Gleason, Chairman of the Board—greeted him quietly. “Come in, Jim. Sit down. Have a cigar.”
Stevens slid into a chair, declined the cigar and pulled out a cigarette, which he lit while looking around. Besides the chief and himself, there were present Harkness, head of the legal staff, Dr. Rambeau, Stevens’s opposite number for research, and Striebel, the chief engineer for city power. Us five and no more, he thought grimly—all the heavyweights and none of the middleweights. Heads will roll!—starting with mine.
“Well,” he said, almost belligerently, “we’re all here. Who’s got the cards? Do we cut for deal?”
Harkness looked faintly distressed by the impropriety; Rambeau seemed too sunk in some personal gloom to pay any attention to wisecracks in bad taste. Gleason ignored it. “We’ve been trying to figure a way out of our troubles, James. I left word for you on the chance that you might not have left.”
“I stopped by simply to see if I had any personal mail,” Stevens said bitterly. “Otherwise I’d be on the beach at Miami, turning sunshine into vitamin D.”
“I know,” said Gleason, “and I’m sorry. You deserve that vacation, Jimmie. But the situation has gotten worse instead of better. Any ideas?”
“What does Dr. Rambeau say?”
Rambeau looked up momentarily. “The deKalb receptors can’t fail,” he stated.
“But they do.”
“They can’t. You’ve operated them improperly.” He sunk back into his personal prison.
Stevens turned back to Gleason and spread his hands. “So far as I know, Dr. Rambeau is right—but if the fault lies in the engineering department, I haven’t been able to locate it. You can have my resignation.”
“I don’t want your resignation,” Gleason said gently. “What I want is results. We have a responsibility to the public.”
“And to the stockholders,” Harkness put in.
“That will take care of itself if we solve the other,” Gleason observed. “How about it, Jimmie? Any suggestions?”
Stevens bit his lip. “Just one,” he announced, “and one I don’t like to make. Then I look for a job peddling magazine subscriptions.”
“So? Well, what is it?”
“We’ve got to consult Waldo.”
Rambeau suddenly snapped out of his apathy. “What! That charlatan? This is a matter of science.”
Harkness said, “Really, Dr. Stevens—”
Gleason held up a hand. “Dr. Stevens’ suggestion is logical. But I’m afraid it’s a little late, Jimmie. I talked with him last week.”
Harkness looked surprised; Stevens looked annoyed as well. “Without letting me know?”
“Sorry, Jimmie. I was just feeling him out. But it’s no good. His terms, to us, amount to confiscation.”
“Still sore over the Hathaway patents?”
“Still nursing his grudge.”
“You should have let me handle the matter,” Harkness put in. “He can’t do this to us—there is public interest involved. Retain him, if need be, and let the fee be adjudicated in equity. I’ll arrange the details.”
“I’m afraid you would,” Gleason said dryly. “Do you think a court order will make a hen lay an egg?”
Harkness looked indignant, but shut up.
Stevens continued, “I would not have suggested going to Waldo if I had not had an idea as how to approach him. I know a friend of his—”
“A friend of Waldo? I didn’t know he had any.”
“This man is sort of an uncle to him—his first physician. With his help I might get on Waldo’s good side.”
Dr. Rambeau stood up. “This is intolerable,” he announced. “I must ask you to excuse me.” He did not wait for an answer, but strode out, hardly giving the door time to open in front of him.
Gleason followed his departure with worried eyes. “Why does he take it so hard, Jimmie? You would think he hated Waldo personally.”
“Probably he does, in a way. But it’s more than that; his whole universe is toppling. For the last twenty years, ever since Pryor’s reformulation of the General Field Theory did away with Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, physics has been considered an exact science. The power failures and transmission failures we have been suffering are a terrific nuisance to you and to me, but to Dr. Rambeau they amount to an attack on his faith. Better keep an eye on him.”
“Why?”
“Because he might come unstuck entirely. It’s a pretty serious matter for a man’s religion to fail him.”
“Hm-m-m. How about yourself? Doesn’t it hit you just as hard?”
“Not quite. I’m an engineer—from Rambeau’s point of view just a highpriced tinker. Difference in orientation. Not but what I’m pretty upset.”
The audio circuit of the communicator on Gleason’s desk came to life. “Calling Chief Engineer Stevens—calling Chief Engineer Stevens.” Gleason flipped the tab.
“He’s here. Go ahead.”
“Company code, translated. Message follows: ‘Cracked up four miles north of Cincinnati. Shall I go on to Nebraska, or bring in the youknow-what from my own crate?’ Message ends. Signed ‘Mac.'”
“Tell him to walk back!” Stevens said savagely.
“Very well, sir.” The instrument cut off.
“Your assistant?” asked Gleason.
“Yes. That’s about the last straw, chief. Shall I wait and try to analyze this failure, or shall I try to see Waldo?”
“Try to see Waldo.”
“O.K. If you don’t hear from me, just send my severance pay care of Palmdale Inn, Miami. I’ll be the fourth beachcomber from the right.”
Gleason permitted himself an unhappy smile. “If you don’t get results, I’ll be the fifth. Good luck.”
“So long.”
When Stevens had gone, Chief Stationary Engineer Striebel spoke up for the first time. “If the power to the cities fails,” he said softly, “you know where I’ll be, don’t you?”
“Where? Beachcomber number six?”
“Not likely. I’ll be number one in my spot—first man to be lynched.”
“But the power to the cities can’t fail. You’ve got too many cross-connects and safety devices.”
“Neither can the deKalbs fail, supposedly. Just the same—think about Sublevel 7 in Pittsburgh, with the lights out. Or, rather, don’t think about it!”
* * * * *
Doc Grimes let himself into the aboveground access which led into his home, glanced at the announcer, and noted with mild, warm interest that someone close enough to him to possess his house combination was inside. He moved ponderously downstairs, favoring his game leg, and entered the lounging room.
“Hi, Doc!” James Stevens got up when the door snapped open and came forward to greet him.
“H’lo, James. Pour yourself a drink. I see you have. Pour me one.”
“Right.”
While his friend complied, Grimes shucked himself out of the outlandish anachronistic greatcoat he was wearing and threw it more or less in the direction of the robing alcove. It hit the floor heavily, much more heavily than its appearance justified, despite its unwieldy bulk. It clunked.
Stooping, he peeled off thick overtrousers as massive as the coat. He was dressed underneath in conventional business tights in blue and sable. It was not a style that suited him. To an eye unsophisticated in matters of civilized dress—let us say the mythical man-from-Antares—he might have seemed uncouth, even unsightly. He looked a good bit like an elderly fat beetle.
James Stevens’s eye made no note of the tights, but he looked with disapproval on the garments which had just been discarded. “Still wearing that fool armor,” he commented.
“Certainly.”
“Damn it, Doc—you’ll make yourself sick, carrying that junk around. It’s unhealthy.”
“Danged sight sicker if I don’t.”
“Rats! I don’t get sick, and I don’t wear armor—outside the lab.”
“You should.” Grimes walked over to where Stevens had reseated himself. “Cross your knees.” Stevens complied; Grimes struck him smartly below the kneecap with the edge of his palm. The reflex jerk was barely perceptible. “Lousy,” he remarked, then peeled back his friend’s right eyelid.
“You’re in poor shape,” he added after a moment.
Stevens drew away impatiently. “I’m all right. It’s you we’re talking about.”
“What about me?”
“Well—Damnation, Doc, you’re throwing away your reputation. They talk about you.”
Grimes nodded. “I know. ‘Poor old Gus Grimes—a slight touch of cerebral termites.’ Don’t worry about my reputation; I’ve always been out of step. What’s your fatigue index?”
“I don’t know. It’s all right.”
“It is, eh? I’ll wrestle you, two falls out of three.”
Stevens rubbed his eyes. “Don’t needle me, Doc. I’m rundown. I know that, but it isn’t anything but overwork.”
“Humph! James, you are a fair-to-middlin’ radiation physicist—”
“Engineer.”
“—engineer. But you’re no medical man. You can’t expect to pour every sort of radiant energy through the human system year after year and not pay for it. It wasn’t designed to stand it.”
“But I wear armor in the lab. You know that.”
“Surely. But how about outside the lab?”
“But—Look, Doc—I hate to say it, but your whole thesis is ridiculous. Sure there is radiant energy in the air these days, but nothing harmful. All the colloidal chemists agree—”
“Colloidal, fiddlesticks!”
“But you’ve got to admit that biological economy is a matter of colloidal chemistry.”
“I’ve got to admit nothing. I’m not contending that colloids are not the fabric of living tissue—they are. But I’ve maintained for forty years that it was dangerous to expose living tissue to assorted radiation without being sure of the effect. From an evolutionary standpoint the human animal is habituated to and adapted to only the natural radiation of the sun—and he can’t stand that any too well, even under a thick blanket of ionization. Without that blanket—Did you ever see a solar-X type cancer?”
“Of course not.”
“No, you’re too young. I have. Assisted at the autopsy of one, when I was an intern. Chap was on the Second Venus Expedition. Four hundred and thirty-eight cancers we counted in him, then gave up.”
“Solar-X is whipped.”
“Sure it is. But it ought to be a warning. You bright young squirts can cook up things in your labs that we medicos can’t begin to cope with. We’re behind—bound to be. We usually don’t know what’s happened until the damage is done. This time you’ve torn it.” He sat down heavily and suddenly looked as tired and whipped as did his younger friend.
Stevens felt the sort of tongue-tied embarrassment a man may feel when a dearly beloved friend falls in love with an utterly worthless person. He wondered what he could say that would not seem rude.
He changed the subject. “Doc, I came over because I had a couple of things on my mind—”
“Such as?”
“Well, a vacation for one. I know I’m rundown. I’ve been overworked, and a vacation seems in order. The other is your pal, Waldo.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah. Waldo Farthingwaite-Jones, bless his stiff-necked, bad-tempered heart.”
“Why Waldo? You haven’t suddenly acquired an interest in myasthenia gravis, have you?”
“Well, no. I don’t care what’s wrong with him physically. He can have hives, dandruff, or the galloping never-get-overs, for all I care. I hope he has. What I want is to pick his brains.”
“So?”
“I can’t do it alone. Waldo doesn’t help people; he uses them. You’re his only normal contact with people.”
“That is not entirely true—”
“Who else?”
“You misunderstand me. He has no normal contacts. I am simply the only person who dares to be rude to him.”
“But I thought—Never mind. D’you know, this is an inconvenient setup? Waldo is the man we’ve got to have. Why should it come about that a genius of his caliber should be so unapproachable, so immune to ordinary social demands? Oh, I know his disease has a lot to do with it, but why should this man have this disease? It’s an improbable coincidence.”
“It’s not a matter of his infirmity,” Grimes told him. “Or, rather, not in the way you put it. His weakness is his genius, in a way—”
“Huh?”
“Well—” Grimes turned his sight inward, let his mind roam back over his long association—lifelong, for Waldo—with this particular patient. He remembered his subliminal misgivings when he delivered the child. The infant had been sound enough, superficially, except for a slight blueness. But then lots of babies were somewhat cyanotic in the delivery room. Nevertheless, he had felt a slight reluctance to give it the tunk on the bottom, the slap which would shock it into taking its first lungful of air.
But he had squelched his own feelings, performed the necessary “laying on of hands,” and the freshly born human had declared its independence with a satisfactory squall. There was nothing else he could have done; he was a young G.P. then, who took his Hippocratic oath seriously. He still took it seriously, he supposed, even though he sometimes referred to it as the “hypocritical” oath. Still, he had been right in his feelings; there had been something rotten about that child—something that was not entirely myasthenia gravis.
He had felt sorry for the child at first, as well as having an irrational feeling of responsibility for its condition. Pathological muscular weakness is an almost totally crippling condition, since the patient has no unaffected limbs to retrain into substitutes. There the victim must lie, all organs, limbs, and functions present, yet so pitifully, completely weak as to be unable to perform any normal function. He must spend his life in a condition of exhausted collapse, such as you or I might reach at the finish line of a grueling cross-country run. No help for him, and no relief.
During Waldo’s childhood he had hoped constantly that the child would die, since he was so obviously destined for tragic uselessness, while simultaneously, as a physician, doing everything within his own skill and the skill of numberless consulting specialists to keep the child alive and cure it.
Naturally, Waldo could not attend school; Grimes ferreted out sympathetic tutors. He could indulge in no normal play; Grimes invented sickbed games which would not only stimulate Waldo’s imagination but encourage him to use his flabby muscles to the full, weak extent of which he was capable.
Grimes had been afraid that the handicapped child, since it was not subjected to the usual maturing stresses of growing up, would remain infantile. He knew now—had known for a long time—that he need not have worried. Young Waldo grasped at what little life was offered him, learned thirstily, tried with a sweating tenseness of will to force his undisciplined muscles to serve him.
He was clever in thinking of dodges whereby to circumvent his muscular weakness. At seven he devised a method of controlling a spoon with two hands, which permitted him—painfully—to feed himself. His first mechanical invention was made at ten.
It was a gadget which held a book for him, at any angle, controlled lighting for the book, and turned its pages. The gadget responded to finger tip pressure on a simple control panel. Naturally, Waldo could not build it himself, but he could conceive it, and explain it; the Farthingwaite-Joneses could well afford the services of a designing engineer to build the child’s conception.
Grimes was inclined to consider this incident, in which the child Waldo acted in a role of intellectual domination over a trained mature adult neither blood relation nor servant, as a landmark in the psychological process whereby Waldo eventually came to regard the entire human race as his servants, his hands, present or potential.
* * * * *
“What’s eating you, Doc?”
“Eh? Sorry, I was daydreaming. See here, son—you mustn’t be too harsh on Waldo. I don’t like him myself. But you must take him as a whole.”
“You take him.”
“Shush. You spoke of needing his genius. He wouldn’t have a genius if he had not been crippled. You didn’t know his parents. They were good stock—fine, intelligent people—but nothing spectacular. Waldo’s potentialities weren’t any greater than theirs, but he had to do more with them to accomplish anything. He had to do everything the hard way. He had to be clever.”
“Sure. Sure, but why should he be so utterly poisonous? Most big men aren’t.”
“Use your head. To get anywhere in his condition he had to develop a will, a driving one-track mind, with a total disregard for any other considerations. What would you expect him to be but stinking selfish?”
“I’d—Well, never mind. We need him and that’s that.”
“Why?”
Stevens explained.
* * * * *
It may plausibly be urged that the shape of a culture—its mores, evaluations, family organizations, eating habits, living patterns, pedagogical methods, institutions, forms of government, and so forth—arise from the economic necessities of its technology. Even though the thesis be too broad and much oversimplified, it is nonetheless true that much which characterized the long peace which followed the constitutional establishment of the United Nations grew out of the technologies which were hothouse-forced by the needs of the belligerents in the war of the forties. Up to that time broadcast and beamcast were used only for commercial radio, with rare exceptions. Even telephony was done almost entirely by actual metallic connection from one instrument to another. If a man in Monterey wished to speak to his wife or partner in Boston, a physical, copper neuron stretched bodily across the continent from one to the other.
Radiant power was then a hop dream, found in Sunday supplements and comic books.
A concatenation—no, a meshwork—of new developments was necessary before the web of copper covering the continent could be dispensed with. Power could not be broadcast economically; it was necessary to wait for the coaxial beam—a direct result of the imperative military shortages of the Great War. Radio telephony could not replace wired telephony until ultra microwave techniques made room in the ether, so to speak, for the traffic load. Even then it was necessary to invent a tuning device which could be used by a nontechnical person—a ten-year-old child, let us say—as easily as the dial selector which was characteristic of the commercial wired telephone of the era then terminating.
Bell Laboratories cracked that problem; the solution led directly to the radiant power receptor, domestic type, keyed, sealed, and metered. The way was open for commercial radio power transmission—except in one respect: efficiency. Aviation waited on the development of the Otto-cycle engine; the Industrial Revolution waited on the steam engine; radiant power waited on a really cheap, plentiful power source. Since radiation of power is inherently wasteful, it was necessary to have power cheap and plentiful enough to waste.
The same year brought atomic energy. The physicists working for the United States Army—the United States of North America had its own army then—produced a superexplosive; the notebooks recording their tests contained, when properly correlated, everything necessary to produce almost any other sort of nuclear reaction, even the so-called Solar Phoenix, the hydrogen-helium cycle, which is the source of the sun’s power.
Radiant power became economically feasible—and inevitable.
The reaction whereby copper is broken down into phosphorus, silicon29 and helium3, plus degenerating chain reactions, was one of the several cheap and convenient means developed for producing unlimited and practically free power.
Of course Stevens included none of this in his explanation to Grimes. Grimes was absentmindedly aware of the whole dynamic process; he had seen radiant power grow up, just as his grandfather had seen the development of aviation. He had seen the great transmission lines removed from the sky—”mined” for their copper; he had seen the heavy cables being torn from the dug-up streets of Manhattan. He might even recall his first independent-unit radiotelephone with its somewhat disconcerting double dial—he had gotten a lawyer in Buenos Aires on it when attempting to reach his neighborhood delicatessen. For two weeks he made all his local calls by having them relayed back from South America before he discovered that it made a difference which dial he used first.
At that time Grimes had not yet succumbed to the new style in architecture. The London Plan did not appeal to him; he liked a house aboveground, where he could see it. When it became necessary to increase the floor space in his offices, he finally gave in and went subsurface, not so much for the cheapness, convenience, and general all-around practicability of living in a tri-conditioned cave, but because he had already become a little worried about the possible consequences of radiation pouring through the human body. The fused-earth walls of his new residence were covered with lead; the roof of the cave had a double thickness. His hole in the ground was as near radiation proof as he could make it.
* * * * *
“—the meat of the matter,” Stevens was saying, “is that the delivery of power to transportation units has become erratic as the devil. Not enough yet to tie up traffic, but enough to be very disconcerting. There have been some nasty accidents; we can’t keep hushing them up forever. I’ve got to do something about it.”
“Why?”
“‘Why?’ Don’t be silly. In the first place as traffic engineer for NAPA my bread and butter depends on it. In the second place the problem is upsetting in itself. A properly designed piece of mechanism ought to work—all the time, every time. These don’t, and we can’t find out why not. Our staff mathematical physicists have about reached the babbling stage.”
Grimes shrugged. Stevens felt annoyed by the gesture. “I don’t think you appreciate the importance of this problem, Doc. Have you any idea of the amount of horsepower involved in transportation? Counting both private and commercial vehicles and common carriers, North American Power-Air supplies more than half the energy used in this continent. We have to be right. You can add to that our city-power affiliate. No trouble there—yet. But we don’t dare think what a city-power breakdown would mean.”
“I’ll give you a solution.”
“Yeah? Well, give.”
“Junk it. Go back to oil-powered and steam-powered vehicles. Get rid of these damned radiant-powered deathtraps.”
“Utterly impossible. You don’t know what you’re saying. It took more than fifteen years to make the changeover. Now we’re geared to it. Gus, if NAPA closed up shop, half the population of the northwest seaboard would starve, to say nothing of the lake states and the Philly-Boston axis.”
“Hrrmph—Well, all I’ve got to say is that that might be better than the slow poisoning that is going on now.”
Stevens brushed it away impatiently. “Look, Doc, nurse a bee in your bonnet if you like, but don’t ask me to figure it into my calculations. Nobody else sees any danger in radiant power.”
Grimes answered mildly. “Point is, son, they aren’t looking in the right place. Do you know what the high jump record was last year?”
“I never listen to the sport news.”
“Might try it sometime. The record leveled off at seven foot two, ’bout twenty years back. Been dropping ever since. You might try graphing athletic records against radiation in the air—artificial radiation. Might find some results that would surprise you.”
“Shucks, everybody knows there has been a swing away from heavy sports. The sweat-and-muscles fad died out, that’s all. We’ve simply advanced into a more intellectual culture.”
“Intellectual, hogwash! People quit playing tennis and such because they are tired all the time. Look at you. You’re a mess.”
“Don’t needle me, Doc.”
“Sorry. But there has been a clear deterioration in the performance of the human animal. If we had decent records on such things I could prove it, but any physician who’s worth his salt can see it, if he’s got eyes in him and isn’t wedded to a lot of fancy instruments. I can’t prove what causes it, not yet, but I’ve a damned good hunch that it’s caused by the stuff you peddle.”
“Impossible. There isn’t a radiation put on the air that hasn’t been tested very carefully in the bio labs. We’re neither fools nor knaves.”
“Maybe you don’t test ’em long enough. I’m not talking about a few hours, or a few weeks; I’m talking about the cumulative effects of years of radiant frequencies pouring through the tissues. What does that do?”
“Why, nothing—I believe.”
“You believe, but you don’t know. Nobody has ever tried to find out. F’rinstance—what effect does sunlight have on silicate glass? Ordinarily you would say ‘none,’ but you’ve seen desert glass?”
“That bluish-lavender stuff? Of course.”
“Yes. A bottle turns colored in a few months in the Mojave Desert. But have you ever seen the window panes in the old houses on Beacon Hill?”
“I’ve never been on Beacon Hill.”
“O.K., then I’ll tell you. Same phenomena—only it takes a century or more, in Boston. Now tell me—you savvy physics—could you measure the change taking place in those Beacon Hill windows?”
“Mm-m-m—probably not.”
“But it’s going on just the same. Has anyone ever tried to measure the changes produced in human tissue by thirty years of exposure to ultra shortwave radiation?”
“No, but—”
“No ‘buts.’ I see an effect. I’ve made a wild guess at a cause. Maybe I’m wrong. But I’ve felt a lot more spry since I’ve taken to invariably wearing my lead overcoat whenever I go out.”
Stevens surrendered the argument. “Maybe you’re right, Doc. I won’t fuss with you. How about Waldo? Will you take me to him and help me handle him?”
“When do you want to go?”
“The sooner the better.”
“Now?”
“Suits.”
“Call your office.”
“Are you ready to leave right now? It would suit me. As far as the front office is concerned, I’m on vacation; nevertheless, I’ve got this on my mind. I want to get at it.”
“Quit talking and git.”
They went topside to where their cars were parked. Grimes headed toward his, a big-bodied, old-fashioned Boeing family landau. Stevens checked him. “You aren’t planning to go in that? It ‘u’d take us the rest of the day.”
“Why not? She’s got an auxiliary space drive, and she’s tight. You could fly from here to the Moon and back.”
“Yes, but she’s so infernal slow. We’ll use my ‘broomstick.'”
Grimes let his eyes run over his friend’s fusi-formed little speedster. Its body was as nearly invisible as the plastic industry could achieve. A surface layer, two molecules thick, gave it a refractive index sensibly identical with that of air. When perfectly clean it was very difficult to see. At the moment it had picked up enough casual dust and water vapor to be faintly seen—a ghost of a soap bubble of a ship.
Running down the middle, clearly visible through the walls, was the only metal part of the ship—the shaft, or, more properly, the axis core, and the spreading sheaf of deKalb receptors at its terminus. The appearance was enough like a giant witch’s broom to justify the nickname. Since the saddles, of transparent plastic, were mounted tandem over the shaft so that the metal rod passed between the legs of the pilot and passengers, the nickname was doubly apt.
“Son,” Grimes remarked, “I know I ain’t pretty, nor am I graceful. Nevertheless, I retain a certain residuum of self-respect and some shreds of dignity. I am not going to tuck that thing between my shanks and go scooting through the air on it.”
“Oh, rats! You’re old-fashioned.”
“I may be. Nevertheless, any peculiarities I have managed to retain to my present age I plan to hang onto. No.”
“Look—I’ll polarize the hull before we raise. How about it?”
“Opaque?”
“Opaque.”
Grimes slid a regretful glance at his own frumpish boat, but assented by fumbling for the barely visible port of the speedster. Stevens assisted him; they climbed in and straddled the stick.
“Atta boy, Doc,” Stevens commended, “I’ll have you there in three shakes. That tub of yours probably won’t do over five hundred, and Wheelchair must be all of twenty-five thousand miles up.”
“I’m never in a hurry,” Grimes commented, “and don’t call Waldo’s house ‘Wheelchair’—not to his face.”
“I’ll remember,” Stevens promised. He fumbled, apparently in empty air; the hull suddenly became dead black, concealing them. It changed as suddenly to mirror bright; the car quivered, then shot up out of sight.