The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Servant Problem, by Robert F. Young
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Title: The Servant Problem
Author: Robert F. Young
Release Date: October 29, 2007 [EBook #23232]
Language: English
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[Illustration]
The Servant Problem
Selling a whole town, and doing it inconspicuously, can be a little
difficult ... either giving it away freely, or in a more normal
sense of "selling". People don't quite believe it....
by Robert J. Young
Illustrated by Schoenherr
[Illustration]
If you have ever lived in a small town, you have seen Francis Pfleuger,
and probably you have sent him after sky-hooks, left-handed
monkey-wrenches and pails of steam, and laughed uproariously behind his
back when he set forth to do your bidding. The Francis Pfleugers of the
world have inspired both fun and laughter for generations out of mind.
The Francis Pfleuger we are concerned with here lived in a small town
named Valleyview, and in addition to suffering the distinction of being
the village idiot, he also suffered the distinction of being the village
inventor. These two distinctions frequently go hand in hand, and afford,
in their incongruous togetherness, an even greater inspiration for fun
and laughter. For in this advanced age of streamlined electric can
openers and sleek pop-up toasters, who but the most naïve among us can
fail to be titillated by the thought of a buck-toothed, wall-eyed moron
building Rube Goldberg contrivances in his basement?
The Francis Pfleuger we are concerned with did his inventing in his
kitchen rather than in his basement; nevertheless, his machines were in
the Rube Goldberg tradition. Take the one he was assembling now, for
example. It stood on the kitchen table, and its various attachments
jutted this way and that with no apparent rhyme or reason. In its center
there was a transparent globe that looked like an upside-down goldfish
bowl, and in the center of the bowl there was an object that startlingly
resembled a goldfish, but which, of course, was nothing of the sort.
Whatever it was, though, it kept growing brighter and brighter each time
Francis added another attachment, and had already attained a degree of
incandescence so intense that he had been forced to don cobalt-blue
goggles in order to look at it. The date was the First of April,
1962--April Fool's Day.
Actually, the idea for this particular machine had not originated in
Francis' brain, nor had the parts for it originated in his
kitchen-workshop. When he had gone out to get the milk that morning he
had found a box on his doorstep, and in the box he had found the
goldfish bowl and the attachments, plus a sheet of instructions
entitled, DIRECTIONS FOR ASSEMBLING A MULTIPLE MÖBIUS-KNOT DYNAMO.
Francis thought that a machine capable of tying knots would be pretty
keen, and he had carried the box into the kitchen and set to work
forthwith.
He now had but one more part to go, and he proceeded to screw it into
place. Then he stepped back to admire his handiwork. Simultaneously his
handiwork went into action. The attachments began to quiver and to emit
sparks; the globe glowed, and the goldfishlike object in its center
began to dart this way and that as though striking at flies. A blue halo
formed above the machine and began to rotate. Faster and faster it
rotated, till finally its gaseous components separated and flew off in a
hundred different directions. Three things happened then in swift
succession: Francis' back doorway took on a bluish cast, the sheet of
instructions vanished, and the machine began to melt.
A moment later he heard a whining sound on his back doorstep.
Simultaneously all of the residents of Valleyview heard whining sounds
on _their_ back doorsteps.
Naturally everybody went to find out about the whining.
* * * * *
The sign was a new one. At the most it was no more than six months old.
YOU ARE ENTERING THE VILLAGE OF VALLEYVIEW, it said. PLEASE DRIVE
CAREFULLY--WE ARE FOND OF OUR DOGS.
Philip Myles drove carefully. He was fond of dogs, too.
Night had tiptoed in over the October countryside quite some time ago,
but the village of Valleyview had not turned on so much as a single
streetlight--nor, apparently, any other kind of light. All was in
darkness, and not a soul was to be seen. Philip began to suspect that he
had entered a ghost town, and when his headlights darted across a dark
intersection and picked up the overgrown grass and unkempt shrubbery of
the village park, he was convinced that he had. Then he saw the girl
walking the dog.
He kitty-cornered the intersection and pulled up alongside her. She was
a blonde, tall and chic in a gray fall suit. Her face was
attractive--beautiful even, in a cold and classic way--but she would
never see twenty-five again. But then, Philip would never again see
thirty. When she paused, her dog paused too, although she did not have
it on a leash. It was on the small side, tawny in hue, with golden-brown
eyes, a slender white-tipped tail, and shaggy ears that hung down on
either side of its face in a manner reminiscent of a cocker spaniel's.
It wasn't a cocker spaniel, though. The ears were much too long, for one
thing, and the tail was much too delicate, for another. It was a
breed--or combination of breeds--that Philip had never seen before.
He leaned across the seat and rolled down the right-hand window. "Could
you direct me to number 23 Locust Street?" he asked. "It's the residence
of Judith Darrow, the village attorney. Maybe you know her."
The girl gave a start. "Are _you_ the real-estate man I sent for?"
Philip gave a start, too. Recovering himself, he said, "Then _you're_
Judith Darrow. I'm ... I'm afraid I'm a little late."
The girl's eyes flashed. The radiant backwash of the headlights revealed
them to be both green and gray. "I specified in my letter that you were
supposed to be here at nine o'clock this morning!" she said. "Maybe
you'll tell me how you're going to appraise property in the dark!"
"I'm sorry," Philip said. "My car broke down on the way, and I had to
wait for it to be fixed. When I tried to call you, the operator told me
that your phone had been disconnected. If you'll direct me to the hotel,
I'll stay there overnight and appraise your property in the morning.
There _is_ a hotel, isn't there?"
"There is--but it's closed. Zarathustra--down!" The dog had raised up on
its hind legs and placed its forepaws on the door in an unsuccessful
attempt to peer in the window. At the girl's command, it sank obediently
down on its haunches. "Except for Zarathustra and myself," she went on,
"the village is empty. Everyone else has already moved out, and we'd
have moved out, too, if I hadn't been entrusted with arranging for the
sale of the business places and the houses. It makes for a rather
awkward situation."
She had leaned forward, and the light from the dash lay palely upon her
face, softening its austerity. "I don't get this at all," Philip said.
"From your letter I assumed you had two or three places you wanted me to
sell, but not a whole town. There must have been at least a thousand
people living here, and a thousand people just don't pack up and move
out all at once." When she volunteered no explanation, he added, "Where
did they move to?"
"To Pfleugersville. I know you've never heard of it, so save the
observation." Then, "Do you have any identification?" she asked.
He gave her his driver's license, his business card and the letter she
had written him. After glancing at them, she handed them back. She
appeared to be undecided about something. "Why don't you let me stay at
the hotel?" he suggested. "You must have the key if it's one of the
places I'm supposed to appraise."
She shook her head. "I have the key, but there's not a stick of
furniture in the place. We had a village auction last week and got rid
of everything that we didn't plan on taking with us." She sighed. "Well,
there's nothing for it, I guess. The nearest motel is thirty miles away,
so I'll have to put you up at my house. I have a few articles of
furniture left--wedding gifts, mostly, that I was too sentimental to
part with." She got into the car. "Come on, Zarathustra."
Zarathustra clambered in, leaped across her lap and sat down between
them. Philip pulled away from the curb. "That's an odd name for a dog,"
he said.
"I know. I guess the reason I gave it to him is because he puts me in
mind of a little old man sometimes."
"But the original Zarathustra isn't noted for his longevity."
"Perhaps another association was at work then. Turn right at the next
corner."
A lonely light burned in one of number 23 Locust Street's three front
windows. Its source, however, was not an incandescent bulb, but the
mantle of a gasoline lantern. "The village power-supply was shut off
yesterday," Judith Darrow explained, pumping the lantern into renewed
brightness. She glanced at him sideways. "Did you have dinner?"
"As a matter of fact--no. But please don't--"
"Bother? I couldn't if I wanted to. My larder is on its last legs. But
sit down, and I'll make you some sandwiches. I'll make a pot of coffee
too--the gas hasn't been turned off yet."
* * * * *
The living room had precisely three articles of furniture to its
name--two armchairs and a coffee table. After Judith left him, Philip
set his brief case on the floor and sat down in one of the chairs. He
wondered idly how she expected to make the trip to Pfleugersville. He
had seen no car in the driveway, and there was no garage on the property
in which one could be concealed. Moreover, it was highly unlikely that
buses serviced the village any more. Valleyview had been bypassed quite
some time ago by one of the new super-duper highways. He shrugged.
Getting to Pfleugersville was her problem, not his.
He returned his attention to the living room. It was a large room. The
house was large, too--large and Victorianesque. Judith, apparently, had
opened the back door, for a breeze was wafting through the downstairs
rooms--a breeze laden with the scent of flowers and the dew-damp breath
of growing grass. He frowned. The month was October, not June, and since
when did flowers bloom and grass grow in October? He concluded that the
scent must be artificial.
Zarathustra was regarding him with large golden eyes from the middle of
the living-room floor. The animal did somehow bring to mind a little old
man, although he could not have been more than two or three years old.
"You're not very good company," Philip said.
"Ruf," said Zarathustra, and turning, trotted through an archway into a
large room that, judging from the empty shelves lining its walls, had
once been a library, and thence through another archway into another
room--the dining room, undoubtedly--and out of sight.
Philip leaned back wearily in the armchair he had chosen. He was beat.
Take six days a week, ten hours a day, and multiply by fifty-two and you
get three hundred and twelve. Three hundred and twelve days a year,
hunting down clients, talking, walking, driving, expounding; trying in
his early thirties to build the foundation he should have begun building
in his early twenties--the foundation for the family he had suddenly
realized he wanted and someday hoped to have. Sometimes he wished that
ambition had missed him altogether instead of waiting for so long to
strike. Sometimes he wished he could have gone right on being what he
once had been. After all, there was nothing wrong in living in cheap
hotels and even cheaper rooming houses; there was nothing wrong in being
a lackadaisical door-to-door salesman with run-down heels.
Nothing wrong, that is, except the aching want that came over you
sometimes, and the loneliness of long and empty evenings.
Zarathustra had re-entered the room and was sitting in the middle of the
floor again. He had not returned empty-handed--or rather,
empty-mouthed--although the object he had brought with him was not the
sort of object dogs generally pick up. It was a rose--
A green rose.
* * * * *
Disbelievingly, Philip leaned forward and took it from the animal's
mouth. Before he had a chance to examine it, however, footsteps sounded
in the next room, and prompted by he knew not what, he thrust the rose
into his suitcoat pocket. An instant later, Judith Darrow came through
the archway bearing a large tray. After setting it down on the coffee
table, she poured two cups of coffee from a little silver pot and
indicated a plate of sandwiches. "Please help yourself," she said.
She sat down in the other chair and sipped her coffee. He had one of the
sandwiches, found that he didn't want any more. Somehow, her proximity,
coupled with her silence, made him feel uncomfortable. "Has your husband
already left for Pfleugersville?" he asked politely.
Her gray-green eyes grew cold. "Yes, he left quite some time ago," she
said. "A year ago, as a matter of fact. But for parts unknown, not
Pfleugersville. Pfleugersville wasn't accessible then, anyway. He had a
brunette on one arm, a redhead on the other, and a pint of Cutty Sark in
his hip pocket."
Philip was distressed. "I ... I didn't mean to pry," he said. "I'm--"
"Sorry? Why should you be? Some men are born to settle down and raise
children and others are born to drink and philander. It's as simple as
that."
"Is it?" something made Philip ask. "Into which category would you say I
fall?"
"You're in a class by yourself." Tiny silver flecks had come into her
eyes, and he realized to his astonishment that they were flecks of
malevolence. "You've never married, but playing the field hasn't made
you one hundred per cent cynical. You're still convinced that somewhere
there is a woman worthy of your devotion. And you're quite right--the
world is full of them."
His face tingled as though she had slapped it, and in a sense, she had.
He restrained his anger with difficulty. "I didn't know that my celibacy
was that noticeable," he said.
"It isn't. I took the liberty of having a private investigator check
into your background. It proved to be unsavory in some respects, as I
implied before, but unlike the backgrounds of the other real-estate
agents I had checked, it contained not the slightest hint of dishonesty.
The nature of my business is such that I need someone of maximum
integrity to contract it with. I had to go far and wide to find you."
"You're being unfair," Philip said, mollified despite himself. "Most
real-estate agents are honest. As a matter of fact, there's one in the
same office building with me that I'd trust with the family jewels--if I
had any family jewels."
"Good," Judith Darrow said. "I gambled on you knowing someone like
that."
He waited for her to elaborate, and when she did not he finished his
coffee and stood up. "If you don't mind, I'll turn in," he said. "I've
had a pretty hard day."
"I'll show you your room."
She got two candles, lit them, and after placing them in gilt
candlesticks, handed one of the candlesticks to him. The room was on the
third floor in under the eaves--as faraway from hers, probably, as the
size of the house permitted. Philip did not mind. He liked to sleep in
rooms under eaves. There was an enchantment about the rain on the roof
that people who slept in less celestial bowers never got to know. After
Judith left, he threw open the single window and undressed and climbed
into bed. Remembering the rose, he got it out of his coat pocket and
examined it by candlelight. It was green all right--even greener than he
had at first thought. Its scent was reminiscent of the summer breeze
that was blowing through the downstairs rooms, though not at all in
keeping with the chill October air that was coming through his bedroom
window. He laid it on the table beside the bed and blew out the candle.
He would go looking for the bush tomorrow.
* * * * *
Philip was an early riser, and dawn had not yet departed when, fully
dressed, he left the room with the rose in his coat pocket and quietly
descended the stairs. Entering the living room, he found Zarathustra
curled up in one of the armchairs, and for a moment he had the eerie
impression that the animal had extended one of his shaggy ears and was
scratching his back with it. When Philip did a doubletake, however, the
ear was back to normal size and reposing on its owner's tawny cheek.
Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he said, "Come on, Zarathustra, we're
going for a walk."
He headed for the back door, Zarathustra at his heels. A double door
leading off the dining room barred his way and proved to be locked.
Frowning, he returned to the living room. "All right," he said to
Zarathustra, "we'll go out the front way then."
[Illustration]
He walked around the side of the house, his canine companion trotting
beside him. The side yard turned out to be disappointing. It contained
no roses--green ones, or any other kind. About all it did contain that
was worthy of notice was a dog house--an ancient affair that was much
too large for Zarathustra and which probably dated from the days when
Judith had owned a larger dog. The yard itself was a mess: the grass
hadn't been cut all summer, the shrubbery was ragged, and dead leaves
lay everywhere. A similar state of affairs existed next door, and
glancing across lots, he saw that the same desuetude prevailed
throughout the entire neighborhood. Obviously the good citizens of
Valleyview had lost interest in their real estate long before they had
moved out.
At length his explorations led him to the back door. If there were green
roses anywhere, the trellis that adorned the small back porch was the
logical place for them to be. He found nothing but bedraggled Virginia
creeper and more dead leaves.
He tried the back door, and finding it locked, circled the rest of the
way around the house. Judith was waiting for him on the front porch.
"How nice of you to walk Zarathustra," she said icily. "I do hope you
found the yard in order."
[Illustration]
The yellow dress she was wearing did not match the tone of her voice,
and the frilly blue apron tied round her waist belied the frostiness of
her gray-green eyes. Nevertheless, her rancor was real. "Sorry," he
said. "I didn't know your back yard was out of bounds." Then, "If you'll
give me a list of the places you want evaluated, I'll get started right
away."
"I'll take you around again personally--after we have breakfast."
Again he was consigned to the living room while she performed the
necessary culinary operations, and again she served him by tray. Clearly
she did not want him in the kitchen, or anywhere near it. He was not
much of a one for mysteries, but this one was intriguing him more and
more by the minute.
Breakfast over, she told him to wait on the front porch while she did
the dishes, and instructed Zarathustra to keep him company. She had two
voices: the one she used in addressing Zarathustra contained overtones
of summer, and the one she used in addressing Philip contained
overtones of fall. "Some day," Philip told the little dog, "that chip
she carries on her shoulder is going to fall off of its own accord, and
by then it will be too late--the way it was too late for me when I found
out that the person I'd been running away from all my life was myself in
wolf's clothing."
"Ruf," said Zarathustra, looking up at him with benign golden eyes.
"Ruf-ruf!"
* * * * *
Presently Judith re-appeared, sans apron, and the three of them set
forth into the golden October day. It was Philip's first experience in
evaluating an entire village, but he had a knack for estimating the
worth of property, and by the time noon came around, he had the job half
done. "If you people had made even half an effort to keep your places
up," he told Judith over cold-cut sandwiches and coffee in her living
room, "we could have asked for a third again as much. Why in the world
did you let everything go to pot just because you were moving some place
else?"
She shrugged. "It's hard to get anyone to do housework these days--not
to mention gardening. Besides, in addition to the servant problem,
there's another consideration--human nature. When you've lived in a
shack all your life and you suddenly acquire a palace, you cease caring
very much what the shack looks like."
"Shack!" Philip was indignant. "Why, this house is lovely! Practically
every house you've shown me is lovely. Old, yes--but oldness is an
essential part of the loveliness of houses. If Pfleugersville is on the
order of most housing developments I've seen, you and your neighbors are
going to be good and sorry one of these fine days!"
"But Pfleugersville isn't on the order of most housing developments
you've seen. In fact, it's not a housing development at all. But let's
not go into that. Anyway, we're concerned with Valleyview, not
Pfleugersville."
"Very well," Philip said. "This afternoon should wind things up so far
as the appraising goes."
* * * * *
That evening, after a coffee-less supper--both the gas and the water had
been turned off that afternoon--he totaled up his figures. They made
quite a respectable sum. He looked across the coffee table, which he had
commandeered as a desk, to where Judith, with the dubious help of
Zarathustra, was sorting out a pile of manila envelopes which she had
placed in the middle of the living-room floor. "I'll do my best to sell
everything," he said, "but it's going to be difficult going till we get
a few families living here. People are reluctant about moving into empty
neighborhoods, and businessmen aren't keen about opening up business
places before the customers are available. But I think it'll work out
all right. There's a plaza not far from here that will provide a place
to shop until the local markets are functioning, and Valleyview is part
of a centralized school district." He slipped the paper he had been
figuring on into his brief case, closed the case and stood up. "I'll
keep in touch with you."
Judith shook her head. "You'll do nothing of the sort. As soon as you
leave, I'm moving to Pfleugersville. My business here is finished."
"I'll keep in touch with you there then. All you have to do is give me
your address and phone number."
She shook her head again. "I could give you both, but neither would do
you any good. But that's beside the point. Valleyview is your
responsibility now--not mine."
Philip sat back down again. "You can start explaining any time," he
said.
"It's very simple. The property owners of Valleyview signed all of their
houses and places of business over to me. I, in turn, have signed all of
them over to you--with the qualification, of course, that after selling
them you will be entitled to no more than your usual commission." She
withdrew a paper from one of the manila envelopes. "After selling them,"
she went on, "you are to divide the proceeds equally among the four
charities specified in this contract." She handed him the paper. "Do you
understand now why I tried so hard to find a trustworthy agent?"
Philip was staring at the paper, unable, in his astonishment, to read
the words it contained. "Suppose," he said presently, "that
circumstances should make it impossible for me to carry out my end of
the agreement?"
"In case of illness, you will already have taken the necessary steps to
transfer the property to another agent who, in your opinion, is as
completely honest as you are, and in case of death, you will already
have taken the necessary steps to bequeath the property to the same
agent; and he, in both cases, will already have agreed to the terms laid
down in the contract you're holding in your hands. Why don't you read
it?"
* * * * *
Now that his astonishment had abated somewhat, Philip found that he
could do so. "But this still doesn't make sense," he said a short while
later. "Obviously you and the rest of the owners have purchased new
houses. Would it be presumptuous of me to ask how you're going to pay
for them when you're virtually giving your old houses away?"
"I'm afraid it would be, Mr. Myles." She withdrew another paper from the
envelope and handed it to him. "This is the other copy. If you'll kindly
affix your signature to both, we can bring our business to a close. As
you'll notice, I've already signed."
"But if you're going to be incommunicado," Philip pointed out, anger
building up in him despite all he could do to stop it, "what good will
your copy do you?"
Judith's countenance took on a glacial quality. So did her voice. "My
copy will go into the hands of a trusted attorney, sealed in an envelope
which I have already instructed him not to open till five years from
this date. If, at the time it is opened, you have violated the terms of
our agreement, he will institute legal proceedings at once. Fortunately,
although the Valleyview post office is closed, a mail truck passes
through every weekday evening at eight. It's not that I don't trust you,
Mr. Myles--but you are a man, you know."
Philip was tempted to tear up the two copies then and there, and toss
the pieces into the air. But he didn't, for the very good reason that he
couldn't afford to. Instead, he bore down viciously on his pen and
brought his name to life twice in large and angry letters. He handed
Judith one copy, slipped the other into his breast pocket and got to his
feet. "That," he said, "brings our official business to a close. Now I'd
like to add an unofficial word of advice. It seems to me that you're
exacting an exorbitant price from the world for your husband's having
sold you out for a brunette and a redhead and a pint of Scotch. I've
been sold out lots of times for less than that, but I found out long ago
that the world doesn't pay its bills even when you ask a fair price for
the damages done to you. I suggest that you write the matter off as a
bad debt and forget about it; then maybe you'll become a human being
again."
She had risen to her feet and was standing stiffly before him. She put
him in mind of an exquisite and fragile statue, and for a moment he had
the feeling that if he were to reach out and touch her, she would
shatter into a million pieces. She did not move for some time, nor did
he; then she bent down, picked up three of the manila envelopes,
straightened, and handed them to him. "Two of these contain the deeds,
maps and other records you will need," she said in a dead voice. "The
third contains the keys to the houses and business places. Each key is
tagged with the correct address. Good-by, Mr. Myles."
"Good-by," Philip said.
He looked around the room intending to say good-by to Zarathustra, but
Zarathustra was nowhere to be seen. Finally he went into the hall,
opened the front door and stepped out into the night. A full moon was
rising in the east. He walked down the moonlit walk, climbed into his
car and threw his brief case and the manila envelopes into the back
seat. Soon, Valleyview was far behind him.
But not as far as it should have been. He couldn't get the green rose
out of his mind. He couldn't get Judith Darrow out of his mind either.
Nor could he exorcise the summer breeze that kept wafting through the
crevices in his common sense.
A green rose and a grass widow and a breeze with a green breath. A whole
town taking off for greener pastures....
He reached into his coat pocket and touched the rose. It was no more
than a stem and a handful of petals now, but its reality could not be
denied. But roses do not bloom in autumn, and green roses do not bloom
at all--
"Ruf!"
He had turned into the new highway some time ago, and was driving along
it at a brisk sixty-five. Now, disbelievingly, he slowed, and pulled
over onto the shoulder. Sure enough, he had a stowaway in the back
seat--a tawny-haired stowaway with golden eyes, over-sized ears, and a
restless, white-tipped tail. "Zarathustra!" he gasped. "How in the
dickens did you get in there?"
"Ruf," Zarathustra replied.
Philip groaned. Now he would have to go all the way back to Valleyview.
Now he would have to see Judith Darrow again. Now he would have to--He
paused in midthought, astonished at the abrupt acceleration of his
heartbeat. "Well I'll be damned!" he said, and without further preamble
transferred Zarathustra to the front seat, U-turned, and started back.
* * * * *
The gasoline lantern had been moved out of the living-room window, but a
light still showed beyond the panes. He pulled over to the curb and
turned off the ignition. He gave one of Zarathustra's over-sized ears a
playful tug, absently noting a series of small nodules along its lower
extremity. "Come on, Zarathustra," he said. "I may as well deliver you
personally while I'm at it."
After locking the car, he started up the walk, Zarathustra at his heels.
He knocked on the front door. Presently he knocked again. The door
creaked, swung partially open. He frowned. Had she forgotten to latch
it? he wondered. Or had she deliberately left it unlatched so that
Zarathustra could get in? Zarathustra himself lent plausibility to the
latter conjecture by rising up on his hind legs and pushing the door the
rest of the way open with his forepaws, after which he trotted into the
hall and disappeared.
Philip pounded on the panels. "Miss Darrow!" he called. "Judith!"
No answer. He called again. Still no answer.
A summer breeze came traipsing out of the house and engulfed him in the
scent of roses. What kind of roses? he wondered. Green ones?
He stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. He made his way
into the living room. The two chairs were gone, and so was the coffee
table. He walked through the living room and into the library; through
the library and into the dining room. The gasoline lantern burned
brightly on the dining-room table, its harsh white light bathing bare
floors and naked walls.
The breeze was stronger here, the scent of roses almost cloying. He saw
then that the double door that had thwarted him that morning was open,
and he moved toward it across the room. As he had suspected, it gave
access to the kitchen. Pausing on the threshold, he peered inside. It
was an ordinary enough kitchen. Some of the appliances were gone, but
the stove and the refrigerator were still there. The back doorway had an
odd bluish cast that caused the framework to shimmer. The door itself
was open, and he could see starlight lying softly on fields and trees.
Wonderingly he walked across the room and stepped outside. There was a
faint sputtering sound, as though live wires had been crossed, and for a
fleeting second the scene before him seemed to waver. Then, abruptly, it
grew still.
He grew still, too--immobile in the strange, yet peaceful, summer night.
He was standing on a grassy plain, and the plain spread out on either
hand to promontories of little trees. Before him, the land sloped gently
upward, and was covered with multicolored flowers that twinkled like
microcosmic stars. In the distance, the lights of a village showed. To
his right, a riotous green-rose bush bloomed, and beneath it Zarathustra
sat, wagging his tail.
Philip took two steps forward, stopped and looked up at the sky. It was
wrong somehow. For one thing, Cassiopeia had changed position, and for
another, Orion was awry. For still another, there were no clouds for the
moon to hide behind, and yet the moon had disappeared.
Zarathustra trotted over to where he was standing, gazed up at him with
golden eyes, then headed in the direction of the lights. Philip took a
deep breath, and followed him. He would have visited the village anyway,
Zarathustra or no Zarathustra. Was it Pfleugersville? He knew suddenly
that it was.
* * * * *
He had not gone far before he saw a highway. A pair of headlights
appeared suddenly in the direction of the village and resolved rapidly
into a moving van. To his consternation, the van turned off the
thoroughfare and headed in his direction. He ducked into a coppice,
Zarathustra at his heels, and watched the heavy vehicle bounce by. There
were two men in the cab, and painted on the paneling of the truckbed
were the words, PFLEUGERSVILLE MOVERS, INC.
The van continued on in the direction from which he had come, and
presently he guessed its destination. Judith, clearly, was in the midst
of moving out the furniture she had been too sentimental to sell. The
only trouble was, her house had disappeared. So had the village of
Valleyview.
He stared at where the houses should have been, saw nothing at first
except a continuation of the starlit plain. Then he noticed an upright
rectangle of pale light hovering just above the ground, and presently he
identified it as Judith's back doorway. He could see through it into the
kitchen, and by straining his eyes, he could even see the stove and the
refrigerator.
Gradually he made out other upright rectangles hovering just above the
ground, some of them on a line with Judith's. All of them, however,
while outlined in the same shimmering blue that outlined hers, lacked
lighted interiors.
As he stood there staring, the van came to a halt, turned around and
backed up to the brightest rectangle, hiding it from view. The two men
got out of the cab and walked around to the rear of the truckbed. "We'll
put the stove on first," Philip heard one of them say. And then, "Wonder
why she wants to hang onto junk like this?"
The other man's voice was fainter, but his words were unmistakable
enough: "Grass widows who turn into old maids have funny notions
sometimes."
Judith Darrow wasn't really moving out of Valleyview after all. She only
thought she was.
Philip went on. The breeze was all around him. It blew through his hair,
kissed his cheeks and caressed his forehead. The stars shone palely
down. Some of the land was under cultivation, and he could see green
things growing in the starlight, and the breeze carried their green
breath to his nostrils. He reached the highway and began walking along
it. He saw no further sign of vehicles till he came opposite a large
brick building with bright light spilling through its windows. In front
of it were parked a dozen automobiles of a make that he was unfamiliar
with.
He heard the whir of machinery and the pounding of hammers, and he went
over and peered through one of the windows. The building proved to be a
furniture factory. Most of the work was being done by machines, but
there were enough tasks left over to keep the owners of the parked cars
busily occupied. The main manual task was upholstering. The machines cut
and sewed and trimmed and planed and doweled and assembled, but
apparently none of them was up to the fine art of spitting tacks.
* * * * *
Philip returned to the highway and went on. He came to other buildings
and peered into each. One was a small automobile-assembly plant, another
was a dairy, a third was a long greenhouse. In the first two the
preponderance of the work was being performed by machines. In the third,
however, machines were conspicuously absent. Clearly it was one thing
to build a machine with a superhuman work potential, but quite another
to build one with a green thumb.
[Illustration]
He passed a pasture, and saw animals that looked like cows sleeping in
the starlight. He passed a field of newly-sprouted corn. He passed a
power plant, and heard the whine of a generator. Finally he came to the
outskirts of Pfleugersville.
There was a big illuminated sign by the side of the road. It stopped him
in his tracks, and he stood there staring at its embossed letters:
PFLEUGERSVILLE, SIRIUS XXI
_Discovered April 1, 1962
Incorporated September 11, 1962_
Philip wiped his forehead.
Zarathustra had trotted on ahead. Now he stopped and looked back. _Come
on_, he seemed to say. _Now that you've seen this much, you might as
well see the rest._
So Philip entered Pfleugersville ... and fell in love--
Fell in love with the lovely houses, and the darling trees in summer
bloom. With the parterres of twinkling star-flowers and the expanses of
verdant lawns. With the trellised green roses that tapestried every
porch. With the hydrangealike blooms that garnished every corner. With
Pfleugersville itself.
Obviously the hour was late, for, other than himself, there was no one
on the streets, although lights burned in the windows of some of the
houses, and dogs of the same breed and size as Zarathustra occasionally
trotted by. And yet according to his watch the time was 10:51. Maybe,
though, Pfleugersville was on different time. Maybe, here in
Pfleugersville, it was the middle of the night.
The farther he progressed into the village, the more enchanted he
became. He simply couldn't get over the houses. The difference between
them and the houses he was familiar with was subtle, but it was there.
It was the difference that exists between good- and not-quite-good
taste. Here were no standardized patios, but little marble aprons that
were as much a part of the over-all architecture as a glen is a part of
a woods. Here were no stereotyped picture windows, but walls that
blended imperceptibly into pleasing patterns of transparency. Here were
no four-square back yards, but rambling star-flowered playgrounds with
swings and seesaws and shaded swimming holes; with exquisite doghouses
good enough for little girls' dolls to live in.
He passed a school that seemed to grow out of the very ground it stood
on. He passed a library that had been built around a huge tree, the
branches of which had intertwined their foliage into a living roof. He
passed a block-long supermarket built of tinted glass. Finally he came
to the park.
He gasped then. Gasped at the delicate trees and the little blue-eyed
lakes; at the fairy-fountains and the winding, pebbled paths.
Star-flowers shed their multicolored radiance everywhere, and starlight
poured prodigally down from the sky. He chose a path at random and
walked along it in the twofold radiance till he came to the cynosure.
The cynosure was a statue--a statue of a buck-toothed, wall-eyed youth
gazing steadfastly up into the heavens. In one hand the youth held a
Phillips screw driver, in the other a six-inch crescent wrench. Standing
several yards away and staring raptly up into the statue's face was the
youth himself, and so immobile was he that if it hadn't been for the
pedestal on which the statue rested, Philip would have been unable to
distinguish one from the other.
There was an inscription on the pedestal. He walked over and read it in
the light cast by a nearby parterre of star-flowers:
FRANCIS FARNSWORTH
PFLEUGER,
DISCOVERER OF
PFLEUGERSVILLE
_Born: May 5. 1941. Died: ----_
_Profession Inventor. On the first day of April of the year of our
Lord, 1962, Francis Farnsworth Pfleuger brought into being a Möbius
coincidence field and established multiple contact with the
twenty-first satellite of the star Sirius, thereby giving the
people of Valleyview access, via their back doorways, to a New
World. Here we have come to live. Here we have come to raise our
children. Here, in this idyllic village, which the noble race that
once inhabited this fair planet left behind them when they migrated
to the Greater Magellanic Cloud, we have settled down to create a
new and better Way of Life. Here, thanks to Francis Farnsworth
Pfleuger, we shall know happiness prosperity and freedom from fear._
FRANCIS FARNSWORTH PFLEUGER, WE, THE NEW INHABITANTS OF SIRIUS XXI,
SALUTE YOU!
Philip wiped his forehead again.
Presently he noticed that the flesh-and-blood Francis Pfleuger was
looking in his direction. "Me," the flesh-and-blood Francis Pfleuger
said, pointing proudly at the statue. "Me."
"So I gather," Philip said dryly. And then. "Zarathustra--come back
here!"
The little dog had started down one of the paths that converged on the
statue. At Philip's command, he stopped but did not turn; instead he
remained where he was, as though waiting for someone to come down the
path. After a moment, someone did--Judith Darrow.
She was wearing a simple white dress, reminiscent both in design and
décor of a Grecian tunic. A wide gilt belt augmented the effect, and her
delicate sandals did nothing to mar it. In the radiance of the
star-flowers, her eyes were more gray than green. There were shadows
under them, Philip noticed, and the lids were faintly red.
She halted a few feet from him and looked at him without saying a word.
"I ... I brought your dog back," he said lamely. "I found him in the
back seat of my car."
"Thank you. I've been looking all over Pfleugersville for him. I left my
Valleyview doors open, hoping he'd come home of his own accord, but I
guess he had other ideas. Now that you've discovered our secret, Mr.
Myles, what do you think of our brave new world?"
"I think it's lovely," Philip said, "but I don't believe it's where you
seem to think it is."
"Don't you?" she asked. "Then suppose you show me the full moon that
rose over Valleyview tonight. Or better yet, suppose I show you
something else." She pointed to a region of the heavens just to the left
of the statue's turned-up nose. "You can't see them from here," she
said, "but around that insignificant yellow star, nine planets are in
orbit. One of them is Earth."
"But that's impossible!" he objected. "Consider the--"
"Distance? In the sort of space we're dealing with, Mr. Myles, distance
is not a factor. In Möbius space--as we have come to call it for lack
of a better term--any two given points are coincidental, regardless of
how far apart they may be in non-Möbius space. But this becomes manifest
only when a Möbius coincidence-field is established. As you probably
know by now, Francis Pfleuger created such a field."
At the mention of his name, Francis Pfleuger came hurrying over to where
they were standing. "E," he declared, "equals mc²."
"Thank you, Francis," Judith said. Then, to Philip, "Shall we walk?"
They started down one of the converging paths, Zarathustra bringing up
the rear. Behind them, Francis returned to his Narcissistic study of
himself in stone. "We were neighbors back in Valleyview," Judith said,
"but I never dreamed he thought quite so much of himself. Ever since we
put up that statue last week, he's been staring at it night and day.
Sometimes he even brings his lunch with him."
"He seems to be familiar with Einstein."
"He's not really, though. He memorized the energy-mass equation in an
attempt to justify his new status in life, but he hasn't the remotest
notion of what it means. It's ironic in a way that Pfleugersville should
have been discovered by someone with an IQ of less than seventy-five."
"No one with an IQ of less than seventy-five could create the sort of
field you were talking about."
"He didn't create it deliberately--he brought it into being accidentally
by means of a machine he was building to tie knots with. Or at least
that's what he says. But we do know that there was such a machine
because we saw its fused parts in his kitchen, and there's no question
but what it was the source of the field. Francis, though, can't remember
how he made the parts or how he put them together. As a matter of fact,
to this day he still doesn't understand what happened--though I have a
feeling that he knows more than he lets on."
"What _did_ happen?" Philip asked.
For a while Judith was silent. Then, "All of us promised solemnly not to
divulge our secret to an outsider unless he was first accepted by the
group as a whole," she said. "But thanks to my negligence, you know most
of it already, so I suppose you're entitled to know the rest." She
sighed. "Very well--I'll try to explain...."
When Francis Pfleuger's field had come into being, something had
happened to the back doors of Valleyview that caused them to open upon a
planet which one of the local star-gazers promptly identified as Sirius
XXI. The good folk of Valleyview had no idea of how such a state of
affairs could exist, to say nothing of how it could have come about,
till one of the scientists whom they asked to join them as a part of the
plan which they presently devised to make their forthcoming utopia
self-sufficient, came up with a theory that explained everything.
According to his theory, the round-trip distance between any two
planetary or ²stella bodies was curved in the manner of a Möbius
strip--i.e., a strip of paper given a half-twist before bringing the two
ends together. In this case, the strip represented the round-trip
distance from Earth to Sirius XXI. Earth was represented on the strip by
one dot, and Sirius XXI by another, and, quite naturally, the two dots
were an equal distance--or approximately 8.8 light years--apart. This
brought them directly opposite one another--one on one side of the
strip, the other on the other side; but since a Möbius strip has only
one surface--or side--the two dots were actually occupying the same
space at the same time. In "Möbius space", then, Earth and Sirius XXI
were "coincidental".
* * * * *
Philip looked over his shoulder at the little yellow sun twinkling in
the sky. "Common sense," he said, "tells me differently."
"Common sense is a liar of the first magnitude," Judith said. "It has
misled man ever since he first climbed down from the trees. It was
common sense that inspired Ptolemy's theory of cosmogony. It was common
sense that inspired the burning of Giordano Bruno...."
The fact that common sense indicated that 8.8 light years separated
Earth and Sirius XXI in common-sense reality didn't prove that 8.8 light
years separated them in a form of reality that was outside
common-sense's dominion--i.e., Möbius space--and Francis Pfleuger's
field had demonstrated as much. The back-door nodal areas which it had
established, however, were merely limited manifestations of that
reality--in other words, the field had merely provided limited access to
a form of space that had been in existence all along.
"Though why," Judith concluded, "our back doors should have been
affected rather than our front doors, for example, is
inexplicable--unless it was because Francis built the machine in his
kitchen. In any event, when they did become nodal areas, they manifested
themselves on Sirius XXI, and the dogs in the immediate vicinity
associated them with the doorways of their departed masters and began
whining to be let in."
"Their departed masters?"
"The race that built this village. The race that built the factories and
developed the encompassing farms. A year ago, according to the records
they left behind them, they migrated to the Greater Magellanic Cloud."
Philip was indignant. "Why didn't they take their dogs with them?"
"They couldn't. After all, they had to leave their cars and their
furniture behind them too, not to mention almost unbelievable
stockpiles of every metal imaginable that will last us for centuries.
The logistics of space travel make taking even an extra handkerchief
along a calculated risk. Anyway, when their dogs 'found' us, they were
overjoyed, and as for us, we fell in love with them at first sight. Our
own dogs, though, didn't take to them at all, and every one of them ran
away."
"This can't be the only village," Philip said. "There must be others
somewhere."
"Undoubtedly there are. All we know is that the people who built this
one were the last to leave."
The park was behind them now, and they were walking down a pleasant
street. "And when you and your neighbors discovered the village, did you
decide to become expatriates right then and there?" Philip asked.
She nodded. "Do you blame us? You've seen for yourself what a lovely
place it is. But it's far more than that. In Valleyview, we had
unemployment. Here, there is work for everyone, and a corresponding
feeling of wantedness and togetherness. True, most of the work is
farmwork, but what of that? We have every conceivable kind of machine to
help us in our tasks. Indeed, I think that the only machine the Sirians
lacked was one that could manufacture food out of whole cloth. But
consider the most important advantage of all: when we go to bed at night
we can do so without being afraid that sometime during our sleep a
thermonuclear missile will descend out of the sky and devour us in one
huge incandescent bite. If we've made a culture hero out of our village
idiot, it's no more than right, for unwittingly or not, he opened up the
gates of paradise."
"And you immediately saw to it that no one besides yourselves and a
chosen few would pass through them."
Judith paused beside a white gate. "Yes, that's true," she said. "To
keep our secret, we lived in our old houses while we were settling our
affairs, closing down our few industries and setting up a new monetary
system. In fact, we even kept our ... the children in the dark for fear
that they would talk at school. Suppose, however, we _had_ publicized
our utopia. Can't you imagine the mockery opportunists would have made
out of it? The village we found was large enough to accommodate
ourselves and the few friends, relatives and specialists we asked to
join us, but no larger; and we did, after all, find it in our own back
yard." She placed her hand on the white gate. "This is where I live."
He looked at the house, and it was enchanting. Slightly less enchanting,
but delightful in its own right, was the much smaller house beside it.
Judith pointed toward the latter dwelling and looked at Zarathustra.
"It's almost morning, Zarathustra," she said sternly. "Go to bed this
minute!" She opened the gate so that the little dog could pass through
and raised her eyes to Philip. "Our time is different here," she
explained. And then, "I'm afraid you'll have to hurry if you expect to
make it to my back door before the field dies out."
[Illustration]
He felt suddenly empty. "Dies out?" he repeated numbly.
"Yes. We don't know why, but it's been diminishing in strength ever
since it first came into being, and our 'Möbius-strip scientist' has
predicted that it will cease to exist during the next twenty-four hours.
I guess I don't need to remind you that you have important business on
Earth."
"No," he said, "I guess you don't." His emptiness bowed out before a
wave of bitterness. He had rested his hand on the gate, as close to hers
as he had dared. Now he saw that while it was inches away from hers in
one sense, it was light years away in another. He removed it angrily.
"Business always comes first with you, doesn't it?"
"Yes. Business never lets you down."
"Do you know what I think?" Philip said. "I think that you were the one
who did the selling out, not your husband. I think you sold him out for
a law practice."
Her face turned white as though he had slapped it, and in a sense, he
had. "Good-by," she said, and this time he was certain that if he were
to reach out and touch her, she would shatter into a million pieces.
"Give my love to the planet Earth," she added icily.
"Good-by," Philip said, his anger gone now, and the emptiness rushing
back. "Don't sell us short, though--we'll make a big splash in your sky
one of these days when we blow ourselves up."
[Illustration]
He turned and walked away. Walked out of the enchanting village and down
the highway and across the flower-pulsing plain to Judith's back
doorway. It was unlighted now, and he had trouble distinguishing it from
the others. Its shimmering blue framework was flickering. Judith had not
lied then: the field was dying out.
He locked the back door behind him, walked sadly through the dark and
empty house and let himself out the front door. He locked the front door
behind him, too, and went down the walk and climbed into his car. He had
thought he had locked it, but apparently he hadn't. He drove out of town
and down the road to the highway, and down the highway toward the big
bright bonfire of the city.
Dawn was exploring the eastern sky with pale pink fingers when at last
he parked his car in the garage behind his apartment building. He
reached into the back seat for his brief case and the manila envelopes.
His brief case had hair on it. It was soft and warm. "Ruf," it barked.
"Ruf-ruf!"
He knew then that everything was all right. Just because no one had
invited him to the party didn't mean that he couldn't invite himself. He
would have to hurry, though--he had a lot of things to do, and time was
running out.
Noon found him on the highway again, his business transacted, his
affairs settled, Zarathustra sitting beside him on the seat. One o'clock
found him driving into Valleyview; two-five found him turning down a
familiar street. He would have to leave his car behind him, but that was
all right. Leaving it to rust away in a ghost town was better than
selling it to some opportunistic dealer for a sum he would have no use
for anyway. He parked it by the curb, and after getting his suitcase out
of the trunk, walked up to the front door of Number 23. He unlocked and
opened the door, and after Zarathustra followed him inside, closed and
locked it behind him. He strode through the house to the kitchen. He
unlocked and opened the back door. He stepped eagerly across the
threshold--and stopped dead still.
There were boards beneath his feet instead of grass. Instead of a
flower-pied plain, he saw a series of unkempt back yards. Beside him on
an unpainted trellis, Virginia creeper rattled in an October wind.
Zarathustra came out behind him, descended the back-porch steps and ran
around the side of the house. Looking for the green-rose bush probably.
"Ruf!"
Zarathustra had returned and was looking up at him from the bottom step.
On the top step he had placed an offering.
The offering was a green rose.
Philip bent down and picked it up. It was fresh, and its fragrance
epitomized the very essence of Sirius XXI. "Zarathustra," he gasped,
"where did you get it?"
"Ruf!" said Zarathustra, and ran around the side of the house.
Philip followed, rounded the corner just in time to see the white-tipped
tail disappear into the ancient dog house. Disappointment numbed him.
That was where the rose had been then--stored away for safe-keeping like
an old and worthless bone.
But the rose was fresh, he reminded himself.
Did dog houses have back doorways?
This one did, he saw, kneeling down and peering inside. A lovely back
doorway, rimmed with shimmering blue. It framed a familiar vista, in the
foreground of which a familiar green-rosebush stood. Beneath the
rosebush Zarathustra sat, wagging his tail.
It was a tight squeeze, but Philip made it. He even managed to get his
suitcase through. And just in time too, for hardly had he done so when
the doorway began to flicker. Now it was on its way out, and as he
watched, it faded into transparency and disappeared.
He crawled from beneath the rosebush and stood up. The day was bright
and warm, and the position of the sun indicated early morning or late
afternoon. No, not sun--suns. One of them was a brilliant blue-white
orb, the other a twinkling point of light.
He set off across the plain in Zarathustra's wake. He had a speech
already prepared, and when Judith met him at the gate with wide and
wondering eyes, he delivered it without preamble. "Judith," he said, "I
am contemptuous of the notion that some things are meant to be and
others aren't, and I firmly believe in my own free will; but when your
dog stows away in the back seat of my car two times running and makes
it impossible for me not to see you again, then there must be something
afoot which neither you nor I can do a thing about. Whatever it is, I
have given in to it and have transferred your real estate to an agent
more trustworthy than myself. I know you haven't known me long, and I
know I'm not an accepted member of your group, but maybe somebody will
give me a job raking lawns or washing windows or hoeing corn long enough
for me to prove that I am not in the least antisocial; and maybe, in
time, you yourself will get to know me well enough to realize that while
I have a weakness for blondes who look like Grecian goddesses, I have no
taste whatever for redheads, brunettes, or Cutty Sark. In any event, I
have burned my bridges behind me, and whether I ever become a resident
of Pfleugersville or not, I have already become a resident of Sirius
XXI."
Judith Darrow was silent for some time. Then, "This morning," she said,
"I wanted to ask you to join us, but I couldn't for two reasons. The
first was your commitment to sell our houses, the second was my
bitterness toward men. You have eliminated the first, and the second
seems suddenly inane." She raised her eyes. "Philip, please join us. I
want you to."
Zarathustra, whose real name was Siddenon Phenphonderill, left them
standing there in each other's arms and trotted down the street and out
of town. He covered the ground in easy lopes that belied his three
hundred and twenty-five years, and soon he arrived at the Meeting Place.
The mayors of the other villages had been awaiting him since early
morning and were shifting impatiently on their haunches. When he
clambered up on the rostrum they extended their audio-appendages and
retractile fingers and accorded him a round of applause. He extended his
own "hands" and held them up for silence, then, retracting them again,
he seated himself before the little lectern and began his report, the
idiomatic translation of which follows forthwith:
"Gentlemen, my apologies for my late arrival. I will touch upon the
circumstances that were responsible for it presently.
"To get down to the matter uppermost in your minds: Yes, the experiment
was a success, and if you will use your psycho-transmutative powers to
remodel your villages along the lines my constituents and I remodeled
ours and to build enough factories to give your 'masters' that sense of
self-sufficiency so essential to their well-being, and if you will
'plant' your disassembled Multiple Möbius-Knot Dynamos in such a way
that the resultant fields will be ascribed to accidental causes, you
will have no more trouble attracting personnel than we did. Just make
sure that your 'masters' quarters are superior to your own, and that
you behave like dogs in their presence. And when you fabricate your
records concerning your mythical departed masters, see to it that they
do not conflict with the records we fabricated concerning ours. It would
be desirable indeed if our Sirian-human society could be based on less
deceitful grounds than these, but the very human attitude we are
exploiting renders this impossible at the moment. I hate to think of the
resentment we would incur were we to reveal that, far from being the
mere dogs we seem to be, we are capable of mentally transmuting natural
resources into virtually anything from a key to a concert hall, and I
hate even more to think of the resentment we would incur were we to
reveal that, for all our ability in the inanimate field, we have never
been able to materialize so much as a single blade of grass in the
animate field, and that our reason for coincidentalizing the planet
Earth and creating our irresistible little utopias stems not from a need
for companionship but from a need for gardeners. However, you will find
that all of this can be ironed out eventually through the human
children, with whom you will be thrown into daily contact and whom you
will find to possess all of their parents' abiding love for us and none
of their parents' superior attitude toward us. To a little child, a dog
is a companion, not a pet; an equal, not an inferior--and the little
children of today will be the grown-ups of tomorrow.
"To return to the circumstances that occasioned my late arrival: I ... I
must confess, gentlemen, that I became quite attached to the 'mistress'
into whose house I sought entry when we first established our field and
who subsequently adopted me when I convinced her real dog that he would
find greener pastures elsewhere. So greatly attached did I become, in
fact, that when the opportunity of ostracizing her loneliness presented
itself, I could not refrain from taking advantage of it. The person to
whom she was most suited and who was most suited to her appeared
virtually upon her very doorstep; but in her stubbornness and in her
pride she aggravated rather than encouraged him, causing him to rebel
against the natural attraction he felt toward her. I am happy to report
that, by means of a number of subterfuges--the final one of which
necessitated the use of our original doorway--I was able to set this
matter right, and that these two once-lonely people are about to embark
upon a relationship which in their folklore is oftentimes quaintly
alluded to by the words, 'They lived happily ever after.'
"And now, gentlemen, the best of luck to you and your constituents, and
may you end up with servants as excellent as ours. I hereby declare this
meeting adjourned."
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
This etext was produced from "Analog Science Fact Science Fiction"
November 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
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