Time and the Riddle: Thirty-One Zen Stories (12 page)

“Are you Harvey Titterson?” Billy asked.

“Right on. At least there are times when I believe I am. The search for identity is no simple matter.”

Then Billy identified himself, and the young man grinned appreciatively. “Man, you are with it,” he said.

“Let me come to the point,” said Billy, “because time is of the essence. I have come to you on the question of our basic dilemma.”

“You mean the war in Vietnam?”

“No, I mean the show cause order.”

“Man, you confuse me. What show cause order?”

“Don't you read the newspapers?” Billy asked in amazement.

“Never.”

“Surely you listen to radios—to television?”

“Don't own one.”

“You meet people. At work. Everyone's talking—”

“I don't work.”

“What do you do?”

“Man, you're direct,” said Harvey Titterson. “I smoke a little grass and I meditate.”

“How do you live?”

“Affluent parents. They tolerate me.”

“But this has been going on for weeks. Surely you've been out of here?”

“I been on a long meditation trip.”

“Are you a Jesus Freak?” Billy asked, drawing on his knowledge of the vernacular, a note of respect in his voice.

“No, hardly. I got my own way.”

“Then let me bring you up to date. Some weeks ago, at precisely the same time all over the world, a voice took over the major broadcasting channels and spoke these words: ‘You must show cause why the people of Earth shall not be destroyed. I am the Lord your God.' Those were the words.”

“Cosmic,” Harvey said. “Absolutely cosmic.”

“It repeats every day. Same voice, same words.”

“Absolutely cosmic.”

“You can imagine the results,” Billy said.

“It must have been a hassle.”

“China, Russia—all over the world.”

“Out of sight,” said Harvey.

“The President is a friend of mine—”

“Oh?”

“The point is, I convinced him that there was no simple answer. He depends on me for this kind of thing. It's a great honor, but this was too big.”

“Absolutely cosmic,” Harvey said.

“So I came up with an idea and sold it to him. We put together the biggest computer the world ever saw, and we fed it all the information there is. Everything. And then, when we put the question to it, it came up with your name.”

“You're putting me on.”

“You have my word of honor, Harvey.”

“That shakes me.”

“So you see what it means to us, Harvey. You're the last hope. Can you show cause?”

“Heavy—very heavy.”

“Maybe you want time to think about it?”

“You don't want to think about it,” Harvey said. “If it's there, it's there.”

Harvey Titterson closed his eyes for a long moment, and then he looked up at Billy and said simply:

“We are what we are.”

“What?”

“We are what we are.”

“Just that?”

“Man, it's your thing. Just think about it.”

“Exodus three, fourteen,” Billy said. “‘And God said unto Moses, I am what I am.'”

“Right on.”

Billy looked at his watch. It was three minutes before eleven o'clock. With hardly a thank you, he bolted out of the room and down the stairs and into the big black limousine.

“Turn on the radio!” he shouted at the chauffeur. “Eight eighty on the dial.”

The chauffeur fiddled nervously.

“Eight eighty—what's holding you?”

“This is the Columbia Broadcasting Company,” the radio crackled, “CBS radio in New York City. At this time we have been leaving the air for a special announcement.” Then silence. Silence. Minute after minute went by, and still silence.

Then the voice of the announcer, “Apparently we are not to be interrupted today—”

On the fourth floor of the tenement, Harvey Titterson rolled a joint, had a toke, and then laid it aside.

“Crazy,” he said softly.

And then he composed himself to continue his meditation trip.

8
The Martian Shop

T
hese are the background facts given to Detective Sergeant Tom Bristol when he was instructed to break down the door and go into the place. It is true that the locksmiths at Centre Street have earned the reputation of being able to open anything that has been closed; and that reputation is not undeserved. But this door was an exception. So Bristol went to break down the door with two men in uniform and crowbars and all the other tools that might be necessary. But before that he studied a precis of the pertinent facts.

It had been established that three stores had been opened on the same day and the same hour; and more than that, as an indication of a well-organized and orderly mind, the space for each of the stores had been rented on the same day, the leases signed at the same hour. The store in Tokyo was located in the very best part of the Ginza. The space had been occupied by a fine jewelry and watchmaking establishment, perhaps the second or third best in all Japan; they vacated the premises, refusing to give the press any explanation whatsoever at the time. Later, however, it was revealed that the price paid to the jewelry establishment for the purchase of its lease consisted of fifty diamonds of exactly three carats each, all of them so perfectly matched, so alike in their flawlessness, that diamond experts consider the very existence of the collection—hitherto unknown—to be a unique event in the long history of jewels.

The store in Paris was, of course, on Faubourg St. Honoré. There were no stores vacant at the time, and the lease of a famous couturier was purchased for forty million francs. The couturier (his name is omitted at specific request of the French government) named the price facetiously, for he had no intention of surrendering his place. When the agent for the principal wrote out a check on the spot, holding him to his word, he had no choice but to go through with the deal.

The third store was on Fifth Avenue in New York City. After thirty years on the Avenue, the last ten increasingly unprofitable, the old and stodgy firm of Delbos gave up its struggle against modern merchandising. The store it had occupied was located on the block between 52nd and 53rd Street, on the east side of the street. The property itself was managed by Clyde and Abrahams, who were delighted to release Delbos from a twenty-five year lease that had been signed in 1937, and who promptly doubled the rent. The Slocum Company, acting as agents for the principals—who never entered into the. arrangements at all, either with Clyde and Abrahams or subsequently with Trevore, the decorating firm—made no protest over the increased rent, signed the lease, and then paid a year's rent in advance. Arthur Lewis, one of the younger partners in the Slocum Company, conducted the negotiations. Wally Clyde of Clyde and Abrahams, remarked at the time that the Slocum Company was losing its grip. Lewis shrugged and said that they were following instructions; he said that if he had bargaining power himself, he would be damned before he ever agreed to such preposterous rent.

Lewis also conducted the negotiations with Trevore, turning over to them detailed plans for the redesigning and decoration of the store, and agreeing to the price they set. He did make it plain, however, that his specific instructions from his principal were to agree to all prices asked and to deal only with the firms he was told to deal with. He pointed out to Trevore that such practices were abhorrent to the Slocum Company and were not to be anticipated under any circumstances in the future.

When the information for this precis was gathered, Mr. Samuel Carradine of the Trevore Company produced the original plans for the remodeling and decoration of the store, that is the plans turned over to him by Mr. Lewis. They are hand-drawn on a fine but strong paper of pale yellow tint. Two paper experts, one of them chief chemist for Harlin Mills, have already examined these plans, but they are unable to identify the paper, nor have they seen similar paper before. They do assert that the paper has neither a pulp nor a rag base. Part of the paper is at present undergoing chemical analysis at Crestwood Laboratories.

From this point onward, the history of the three stores is sufficiently general for the data on the Fifty Avenue store to suffice. In all three cases, rental and alteration were managed under similar circumstances; in all three cases the subsequent progress of events was the same, making due allowance for the cultural patterns of each country. In each case, the decoration of the store was in excellent taste, unusual, but nevertheless artfully connected with the general decor of the particular avenue.

Trevore charged over a hundred thousand dollars for alteration and decoration. The storefront was done in stainless steel panels, used as tile. Window-space was enlarged, and a magnificient bronze-ve neered door replaced the ancient oak portal of Delbos. The interior was done in tones of yellow, and the display cases and platforms were of bronze and glass. Decorators whose opinions have been sought all concur in the assessment of results. Without doubt the three stores were done in excellent, if not superb, taste—the decoration bold, unique, but never vulgar or distressing. It must be noted, however, that Mr. Ernest Searles, who heads the decor department of the Fifth Avenue Association, pointed out certain angular—that is, unfamiliar degree angles—concepts never used before by American decorators.

On Fifth Avenue, as in the other cases, the center focus of the decorating scheme was the crystal replica of the planet Mars, which was suspended from the ceiling in each shop, and which revolved at the same tempo as Mars itself. It has not yet been determined what type of mechanism activates these globes. The globes, which display a unique and remarkable map of Mars's surface, were installed by the principals, after Trevore had completed the overall alteration and decoration. While the Fifth Avenue storefront is striking, it was done with the type of expensive modesty that would do credit to Tiffany's. The last thing installed was the name of the shop itself, MARS PRODUCTS, in gold letters, each letter a half-inch in relief and five inches high. It has since been determined that these letters are cast out of solid gold.

The three shops opened their doors to the public at ten
A.M.,
on the tenth of March—in local time and day. In New York, the letters spelling out MARS PRODUCTS had been displayed for eight days, and a good deal of curiosity had been aroused, both among the public and the press. But until actual opening, no information had been offered.

During those days, four objects had been on display in the shop windows. No doubt the reader of this precis has seen or examined these objects, each of which stood upon a small crystal display stand, framed in black velvet, for all the world like precious jewels, which in a sense they were. The display consisted of a clock, an adding machine, an outboard motor and a music box, although only the clock was recognizable through its appearance, a beautiful precision instrument, activated as a number of clocks are by the variation in atmospheric pressure. Yet the workmanship, materials and general beauty of this clock outdid anything obtainable in the regular market.

The adding machine was a black cube, measuring slightly more than six inches. The covering is of some as yet undetermined synthetic or plastic, inlaid with the curious hieroglyphs that have come to be known as the Martian script, the hieroglyphics in white and gold. This machine is quickly and easily adjusted or sensitized to the sound of an individual voice, and it calculates on the basis of vocal instruction. The results emerge through a thin slit in the top, printed on paper similar to that mentioned before. Theoretically, such a calculator could be built today, but, so far as we know, by only two shops, one in Germany and the other in Japan, and the cost would be staggering; certainly, it would take years of experimental work to develop it to the point where it would deal with thirteen digits, adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing entirely by vocal command.

The outboard motor was an object about the size of a small electric sewing machine, fabricated of some blue metal and weighing fourteen pounds, six ounces and a fraction. Two simple tension clips attached it to any boat or cart or car. It generated forty horsepower in jet propulsion, and it contained, almost microcosmically, its own atomic generator, guaranteed for one thousand continuous hours of operation. Through a muffling device, which has so far defied even theoretical solution, it produced less sound than an ordinary outboard motor. In each shop, this was explained, not as a muffling procedure, but as a matter of controlled pitch beyond the range of the human' ear. Competent engineers felt that this explanation must be rejected.

In spite of the breathtaking implications of this atomic motor, it was the music box that excited the most attention and speculation. Of more or less the same dimensions as the adding machine, it was of pale yellow synthetic, the hieroglyphs pricked out in dark gray. Two slight depressions on the top of this box activated it, a slight touch of one depression to start it, a second touch on the same depression to stop it. The second depression, when touched, changed the category of the music desired. There were twenty-two categories of music available—symphonic music in three chronological sections, chamber music in three sections, piano solo, violin solo with and without accompaniment, folk music for seven cultures, operatic in three sections, orchestra, full cast and orchestra, that is, the complete opera, and selected renderings, religious music, divided into five religious categories, popular songs in national sections, instrumental music in terms of eighty-two instruments, jazz in five categories and three categories of children's music.

The salespeople in each of the three shops claimed that the music box had a repertoire of eleven thousand and some odd separate musical selections, but this, of course, could not be put to the test, and varying opinions on this score have been expressed. Also the use of vocal instruction to set the sound and pitch—which was not inferior to the best mass-produced high fidelity—was pooh-poohed as fakery. But Mr. Harry Flannery, consulting sound engineer for the Radio Corporation of America, has stated that the music box could be compiled out of available technical knowledge, especially since the discovery of transistor electronics. As with the adding machine, it was less the technical achievement than the workmanship that was unbelievable. But Mr. Flannery admitted that a content of eleven thousand works was beyond present day knowledge or skill, providing that this enormous repertoire was a fact. From all witnesses interrogated, we have compiled a list of more than three hundred works played by the shop's demonstration music box.