Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester (8 page)

“Joe!” Herod yelled and stamped on the blazing paper.

Warbeck grinned. He picked up the phone. Squawking noises were coming out of it. He put one hand over the mouthpiece. “Shall we negotiate?” he inquired.

“You sonofabitch,” Joe growled. He took his hands from his eyes and slid toward Warbeck.

“No!” Herod called. “This crazy fool’s hollered copper. He’s legit, Joe.” To Warbeck he said in pleading tones, “Fix it. Square it. We’ll make it up to you. Anything you say. Just square the call.”

The doomed man lifted the phone to his mouth. He said, “My name is M. P. Warbeck. I was consulting my attorney at this number and some idiot with a misplaced sense of humor made this call. Please phone back and check.”

He hung up, finished pocketing his private property and winked at Herod. The phone rang, Warbeck picked it up, reassured the police and hung up. He came around from behind the desk and handed his car keys to Joe.

“Go down to my car,” he said. “You know where you parked it. Open the glove compartment and bring up a brown manila envelope you’ll find.”

“Go to hell,” Joe spat. His eyes were still tearing.

“Do as I say,” Warbeck said firmly.

“Just a minute, Warbeck,” Herod said. “What’s this? A new angle? I said we’d make it up to you, but—”

“I’m going to explain why I’m interested in the Buchanans,” Warbeck replied. “And I’m going into partnership with you. You’ve got what I need to locate one particular Buchanan … you and Joe. My Buchanan’s ten years old. He’s worth a hundred times your make-believe fortune.”

Herod stared at him.

Warbeck placed the keys in Joe’s hand. “Go down and get that envelope, Joe,” he said. “And while you’re at it you’d better square that broken window rap. Rap? Rap.”

The doomed man placed the manila envelope neatly on his lap. “A school principal,” he explained, “has to supervise school classes. He reviews work, estimates progress, irons out student problems and so on. This must be done at random. By samplings, I mean. I have nine hundred pupils in my school. I can’t supervise them individually.”

Herod nodded. Joe looked blank.

“Looking through some fifth-grade work last month,” Warbeck continued, “I came across this astonishing document.” He opened the envelope and took out a few sheets of ruled composition paper covered with blots and scrawled writing. “It was written by a Stuart Buchanan of the fifth grade. His age must be ten or thereabouts. The composition is entitled:
My Vacation
. Read it and you’ll understand why Stuart Buchanan must be found.”

He tossed the sheets to Herod who picked them up, took out a pair of horn-rim spectacles and balanced them on his fat nose. Joe came around to the back of his chair and peered over his shoulder.

My Vacatoin

by

Stuart Buchanan

This sumer I vissited my frends. I have 4 frends and they are verry nice. First there is Tommy who lives in the contry and he is an astronnimer. Tommy bilt his own tellescop out of glass 6 inches acros wich he grond himself. He loks at the stars every nihgt and he let me lok even wen it was raining cats & dogs
…

“What the hell?” Herod looked up, annoyed.

“Read on. Read on,” Warbeck said.

cats & dogs. We cold see the stars becaze Tommy made a thing for over the end of the tellescop wich shoots up like a serchlite and makes a hole in the skie to see rite thru the rain and everythinng to the stars
.

“Finished the astronomer yet?” Warbeck inquired.

“I don’t dig it.”

“Tommy got bored waiting for clear nights. He invented something that cuts through clouds and atmosphere … a funnel of vacuum so he can use his telescope all weather. What it amounts to is a disintegration beam.”

“The hell you say.”

“The hell I don’t. Read on. Read on.”

Then I went to AnnMary and staied one hole week. It was fun. Becaze AnnMary has a spinak chainger for spinak and beats and strinbeens—

“What he hell is a ‘spinak chainger’?”

“Spinach. Spinach changer. Spelling isn’t one of Stuart’s specialties. ‘Beats’ are beets. ‘Strinbeens’ are string beans.”

beats and strinbeens. Wen her mother made us eet them AnnMary presed the buton and they staid the same outside onnly inside they became cake. Chery and strowbery. I asted AnnMary how & she sed it was by Enhv
.

“This, I don’t get.”

“Simple. Anne-Marie doesn’t like vegetables. So she’s just as smart as Tommy, the astronomer. She invented a matter-transmuter. She transmutes spinak into cake. Chery or strowbery. Cake she eats with pleasure. So does Stuart.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Not me. The kids. They’re geniuses. Geniuses? What am I saying? They make a genius look imbecile. There’s no label for these children.”

“I don’t believe it. This Stuart Buchanan’s got a tall imagination. That’s all.”

“You think so? Then what about Enhv? That’s how Anne-Marie transmutes matter. It took time but I figured Enhv out. It’s Planck’s quantum equation E=nhv. But read on. Read on. The best is yet to come. Wait till you get to lazy Ethel.”

My frend Gorge bilds modell airplanes very good and small. Gorg’s hands are clumzy but he makes small men out of moddelling clay and he tels them and they bild for him
.

“What’s this?”

“George, the plane-maker?”

“Yes.”

“Simple. He makes miniature androids … robots … and they build the planes for him. Clever boy, George, but read about his sister, lazy Ethel.”

His sister Ethel is the lazyist girl I ever saw. She is big &fat and she hates to walk. So wen her mother sends her too the store Ethel thinks to the store and thinks home with all the pakejes and has to hang around Gorg’s room hiding untill it wil look like she walked both ways. Gorge and I make fun of her becaze she is fat and lazy but she gets into the movees for free and saw Hoppalong Casidy sixteen times
.

The End

Herod stared at Warbeck.

“Great little girl, Ethel,” Warbeck said. “She’s too lazy to walk, so she teleports. Then she has a devil of a time covering up. She has to hide with her pakejes while George and Stuart make fun of her.”

“Teleports?”

“That’s right. She moves from place to place by thinking her way there.”

“There ain’t no such thing!” Joe said indignantly.

“There wasn’t until lazy Ethel came along.”

“I don’t believe this,” Herod said. “I don’t believe any of it.”

“You think it’s just Stuart’s imagination?”

“What else?”

“What about Planck’s equation? E=nhv?”

“The kid invented that, too. Coincidence.”

“Does that sound likely?”

“Then he read it somewhere.”

“A ten-year-old boy? Nonsense.”

“I tell you, I don’t believe it,” Herod shouted. “Let me talk to the kid for five minutes and I’ll prove it.”

“That’s exactly what I want to do … only the boy’s disappeared.”

“How do you mean?”

“Lock, stock, and barrel. That’s why I’ve been checking every Buchanan family in the city. The day I read this composition and sent down to the fifth grade for Stuart Buchanan to have a talk, he disappeared. He hasn’t been seen since.”

“What about his family?”

“The family disappeared too.” Warbeck leaned forward intensely. “Get this. Every record of the boy and the family disappeared. Everything. A few people remember them vaguely, but that’s all. They’re gone.”

“Jesus!” Joe said. “They scrammed, huh?”

“The very word. Scrammed. Thank you, Joe.” Warbeck cocked an eye at Herod. “What a situation. Here’s a child who makes friends with child geniuses. And the emphasis is on the child. They’re making fantastic discoveries for childish purposes. Ethel teleports because she’s too lazy to run errands. George makes robots to build model planes. Anne-Marie transmutes elements because she hates spinach. God knows what Stuart’s other friends are doing. Maybe there’s a Matthew who’s invented a time machine so he can catch up on his homework.”

Herod waved his hands feebly. “Why geniuses all of a sudden? What’s happened?”

“I don’t know. Atomic fallout? Fluorides in drinking water? Antibiotics? Vitamins? We’re doing so much juggling with body chemistry these days that who knows what’s happening? I want to find out but I can’t. Stuart Buchanan blabbed like a child. When I started investigating, he got scared and disappeared.”

“Is he a genius, too?”

“Very likely. Kids generally hang out with kids who share the same interests and talents.”

“What kind of a genius? What’s his talent?”

“I don’t know. All I know is he disappeared. He covered up his tracks, destroyed every paper that could possibly help me locate him and vanished into thin air.”

“How did he get into your files?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe he’s a crook type,” Joe said. “Expert at breaking and entering and such.”

Herod smiled wanly. “A racketeer genius? A mastermind? The kid Moriarty?”

“He could be a thief-genius,” the doomed man said, “but don’t let running away convince you. All children do that when they get caught in a crisis. Either they wish it had never happened or they wish they were a million miles away. Stuart Buchanan may be a million miles away, but we’ve got to find him.”

“Just to find out is he smart?” Joe asked.

“No, to find his parents. Do I have to diagram it? What would the army pay for a disintegration beam? What would an element-transmuter be worth? If we could manufacture living robots how rich would we get? If we could teleport how powerful would we be?”

There was a burning silence, then Herod got to his feet. “Mr. Warbeck,” he said, “you make me and Joe look like pikers. Thank you for letting us cut in on you. We’ll pay off. We’ll find that kid.”

It is not possible for anyone to vanish without a trace … even a probable criminal genius. It is sometimes difficult to locate that trace … even for an expert experienced in hurried disappearances. But there is a professional technique unknown to amateurs.

“You’ve been blundering,” Herod explained kindly to the doomed man. “Chasing one Buchanan after the other. There are angles. You don’t run after a missing party. You look around on his back-trail for something he dropped.”

“A genius wouldn’t drop anything.”

“Let’s grant the kid’s a genius. Type unspecified. Let’s grant him everything. But a kid is a kid. He must have overlooked something. We’ll find it.”

In three days Warbeck was introduced to the most astonishing angles of search. They consulted the Washington Heights post office about a Buchanan family formerly living in that neighborhood, now moved. Was there any change-of-address card filed? None.

They visited the election board. All voters are registered. If a voter moves from one election district to another, provision is usually made that a record of the transfer be kept. Was there any such record on Buchanan? None.

They called on the Washington Heights office of the gas and electric company. All subscribers for gas and electricity must transfer their accounts if they move. If they move out of town, they generally request the return of their deposit. Was there any record of a party named Buchanan? None.

It is a state law that all drivers must notify the license bureau of change of address or be subject to penalties involving fines, prison or worse. Was there any such notification by a party named Buchanan at the Motor Vehicle Bureau? There was not.

They questioned the R-J Realty Corp., owners and operators of a multiple dwelling in Washington Heights in which a party named Buchanan had leased a four-room apartment. The R-J lease, like most other leases, required the names and addresses of two character references for the tenant. Could the character references for Buchanan be produced? They could not. There was no such lease in the files.

“Maybe Joe was right,” Warbeck complained in Herod’s office. “Maybe the boy is a thief-genius. How did he think of everything? How did he get at every paper and destroy it? Did he break and enter? Bribe? Burgle? Threaten? How did he do it?”

“We’ll ask him when we get to him,” Herod said grimly. “All right. The kid’s licked us straight down the line. He hasn’t forgotten a trick. But I’ve got one angle I’ve been saving. Let’s go up and see the janitor of their building.”

“I questioned him months ago,” Warbeck objected. “He remembers the family in a vague way and that’s all. He doesn’t know where they went.”

“He knows something else, something the kid wouldn’t think of covering. Let’s go get it.”

They drove up to Washington Heights and descended upon Mr. Jacob Ruysdale at dinner in the basement apartment of the building. Mr. Ruysdale disliked being separated from his liver and onions, but was persuaded by five dollars.

“About that Buchanan family,” Herod began.

“I told him everything before,” Ruysdale broke in, pointing to Warbeck.

“All right. He forgot to ask one question. Can I ask it now?” Ruysdale reexamined the five-dollar bill and nodded.

“When anybody moves in or out of a building, the superintendent usually takes down the name of the movers in case they damage the building. I’m a lawyer. I know this. It’s to protect the building in case suit has to be brought. Right?”

Ruysdale’s face lit up. “By Godfrey!” he said. “That’s right, I forgot all about it. He never asked me.”

“He didn’t know. You’ve got the name of the company that moved the Buchanans out. Right?”

Ruysdale ran across the room to a cluttered bookshelf. He withdrew a tattered journal and flipped it open. He wet his fingers and turned pages.

“Here it is,” he said. “The Avon Moving Company. Truck No. G-4.”

The Avon Moving Company had no record of the removal of a Buchanan family from an apartment in Washington Heights. “The kid was pretty careful at that,” Herod murmured. But it did have a record of the men working truck G-4 on that day. The men were interviewed when they checked in at closing time. Their memories were refreshed with whiskey and cash. They recalled the Washington Heights job vaguely. It was a full day’s work because they had to drive the hell and gone to Brooklyn. “Oh God! Brooklyn!” Warbeck muttered. What address in Brooklyn? Something on Maple Park Row. Number? The number could not be recalled.