The Collection (69 page)

^"'
Tain
^'
t big. Half a mile maybe,
or a little better. You goin' out to th' Tollivers, maybe? They live just past
and I heard tell he was sendin' to th' city for a ... nope, you don't look like
a hired man.
^"

^"
Nope,
^"
said Charlie.
"I'm not.
^"
He glanced at the clock again and started for
the door. He said,
^"
Well, be seeing you."

"You gain' to--"

But Charlie had already gone out the door and was starting
down the street behind the railroad station. Into the darkness and the unknown
and--Well, he could hardly tell the agent about his real destination, could he?

There was the turnpike. After a block, the sidewalk ended
and he had to walk along the edge of the road, sometimes ankle deep in mud. He
was soaked through by now, but that didn
^'
t matter.

It proved to be more than half a mile to the township line.
A big sign there--an oddly big sign considering the size of the town--read:

You Are Now Entering Haveen

Charlie crossed the line and faced back. And waited, an eye
on his wrist watch.

At twelve-fifteen he'd have to step across. It was ten
minutes after already. Two days, three hours, ten minutes after the box of lye
had held a copper coin, which was two days, three hours, ten minutes after he'd
walked into anesthesia in the door of a jewelry store, which was two days,
three hours, ten minutes after--

He watched the hands of his accurately set wrist watch,
first the minute hand until twelve-fourteen. Then the second hand.

And when it lacked a second of twelve-fifteen he put forth
his foot and at
the
fatal moment he was stepping slowly across the line.

Entering Haveen.

And as with each of the others, there was no warning. But
suddenly:

It wasn't raining any more. There was bright light, although
it didn't seem to come from a visible source. And the road beneath his feet
wasn't muddy; it was smooth as glass and alabaster-white. The white-robed
entity at the gate ahead stared at Charlie in astonishment.

He said,
^"
How did
you
get here? You
aren't even--"

^"
No,
^"
said Charlie.
^"
I
^'
m
not even dead. But listen, I
^'
ve got to see the . . . uh--Who's in
charge of the printing?"

"The Head Compositor, of course. But you can't--"

^"
I've got to see him, then,
^"
said Charlie.

"But the rules forbid--"

^"
Look, it
^'
s important. Some
typographical
errors
are going through. It's to your interests up here as well as to mine,
that they be corrected, isn
^'
t it? Otherwise things can get into an
awful mess."

^"
Errors? Impossible. You're joking."

^"
Then how," asked Charlie, reasonably,
^"
did
I get to Heaven without dying?
^"

^"
But--"

"You see I was supposed to be entering Haveen. There is
an e-matrix that-"

^"
Come."

It was quite pleasant and familiar, that office. Not a lot
different from Charlie's own office at the Hayworth Printing Co. There was a
rickety wooden desk, littered with papers, and behind it sat a small bald-headed
Chief Compositor with printer
^'
s ink on his hands and a smear of it
on his forehead. Past the closed door was a monster roar and clatter of
typesetting machines and presses.

"Sure,
^"
said Charlie. "They
^'
re
supposed to be perfect, so perfect that you don't even need proofreaders. But
maybe once out of infinity something can happen to perfection, can
^'
t
it? Mathematically, once out of infinity
anything
can happen. Now look;
there is a separate typesetting machine and operator for the records covering
each person, isn't there?"

The Head Compositor nodded. "Correct, although in a
manner of, speaking the operator and the machine are one, in that the operator
is a function of the machine and the machine a manifestation of the operator
and both are extensions of the ego of the . . . but I guess that is a little
too complicated for you to understand.
^"

^"
Yes, I--well, anyway, the channels that the
matrices run in must be tremendous. On our Linotypes at the Hapworth Printing
Co., an e-mat would make the circuit every sixty seconds or so, and if one was
defective it would cause one mistake a minute, but up here- Well, is my
calculation of fifty hours and ten minutes correct?"

^"
It is,
^"
agreed the Head
Compositor. "And since there is no way you could have found out that fact
except--
^"

^"
Exactly. And once every that often the
defective e-matrix comes round and falls when the operator hits the e-key.
Probably the ears of the mat are worn; anyway it falls through a long
distributor front and falls too fast and lands ahead of its right place in the
word, and a typographical error goes through. Like a week ago Sunday, I was
supposed to pick up an
angleworm,
and--
^"

"Wait."

The Head Compositor pressed a buzzer and issued an order. A
moment later, a heavy book was brought in and placed on his desk. Before the
Head Compositor opened it, Charlie caught a glimpse of his own name on the
cover.

"You said at five-fifteen A.m.?"

Charlie nodded. Pages turned.

"I'll be--blessed!" said the Head Compositor.
"Angleworm!
It must have been something to see. Don
^'
t know I've ever heard
of an angleworm before. And what was next?
^"

^"
The e fell wrong in the word `hate'--I was
going after a man who was beating a horse, and--Well, it came out `heat'
instead of `hate.' The e dropped two characters early that time. And I got heat
prostration and sunburn on a rainy day. That was eight twenty-five Tuesday, and
then at eleven thirty-five Thursday-" Charlie grinned.

^"
Yes?
^"
prompted the Head
Compositor.

"Tael. A Chinese silver coin I was supposed to see in
the museum. It came out `Teal' and because a teal is a duck, there was a wild
duck fluttering around in an airtight showcase. One of the attendants got in
trouble; I hope you
^'
ll fix that.
^"

The Head Compositor chuckled. "I shall," he said.
"I'd like to have seen that duck. And the next time would have been two
forty-five Saturday afternoon. What happened then?"

"Lei instead of lie, sir. My golf ball was stymied
behind a tree and it was supposed to be a poor lie-but it was a poor lei instead.
Some wilted, mismatched flowers on a purple cord. And the next was the hardest
for me to figure out, even when I had the key. I had an appointment at the
jewelry store at five fifty-five. But that was the fatal time. I got there at
five fifty-five, but the e-matrix fell four characters out of place that time,
clear back to the start of the word. Instead of getting
there
at five
fifty-five, I got
ether."

^"
Tch, tch.
That one was unfortunate.
And next?
^"

"The next was just the reverse, sir. In fact, it happened
to save my life. I went temporarily insane and tried to kill myself by taking
lye. But the bad e fell in lye and it came out
ley,
which is a small
Rumanian copper coin. I've still got it, for a souvenir. In fact when I found
out the name of the coin, I guessed the answer. It gave me the key to the
others.
^"

* * *

The Head Compositor chuckled again.
^"
You
^'
ve
shown great resource,
^"
he said. "And your method of
getting here to tell us about it--"

^"
That was easy, sir. If I timed it so I'd be
entering Haveen at the right instant, I had a double chance. If either of the
two es in that word turned out to be bad one and fell--as it did--too early in
the word, I'd be entering Heaven.
^"

"Decidedly ingenious. You may, incidentally, consider
the errors corrected. We
^'
ve taken care of all of them, while you
talked; except the last one, of course. Otherwise, you wouldn't still be here.
And the defective mat is removed from the channel."

^"
You mean that as far as people down there
know, none of those things ever--"

"Exactly. A revised edition is now on the press, and
nobody on Earth will have any recollection of any of those events. In
a
way
of speaking, they no longer ever happened. I mean, they did, but now they
didn't for all practical purposes. When we return you to Earth, you'll find the
status there just what it would have been if the typographical errors had not
occurred.

"You mean, for instance, that Pete Johnson won
^'
t
remember my having told him about the angelworrn, and there won
^'
t be
any record at the hospital about my having been there? And--"

"Exactly. The errors are
corrected."

"Whew!"
said Charlie. "I'll be . . . I
mean, well, I was supposed to have been married Wednesday afternoon, two days
ago. Uh . . . will I be? I mean,
was I?
I mean--"

The Head Compositor consulted another volume, and nodded.
"Yes, at two o'clock Wednesday afternoon. To one Jane Pemberton. Now if we
return you to Earth as of the time you left there-twelve-fifteen Saturday morning,
you'll have been married two days and ten hours. You'll find yourself . . .
let's see . . . spending your honeymoon in Miami. At that exact moment, you'll
be in a taxicab en route--"

"Yes, but--" Charlie gulped.

"But what?" The Head Compositor looked surprised.
^"
I
certainly thought that was what you wanted, Wills. We owe you a big favor for
having used such ingenuity in calling those typographical errors to our
attention, but I thought that being married to Jane was what you wanted, and if
you go back and find yourself--"

"Yes, but--
^"
said Charlie again.
"But . . . I mean--Look, I'll have been married two days. I
^'
ll
miss . . . I mean, couldn't I--"

Suddenly the Head Compositor smiled.

^"
How stupid of me," he said,
^"
of
course. Well, the time doesn't matter at all. We can drop you anywhere in the
continuum. I can just as easily return you as of two o'clock Wednesday
afternoon, at the moment of the ceremony. Or Wednesday morning, just before.
Any time at all."

"Well," said Charlie, hesitantly.
^"
It
isn't exactly that I'd miss the wedding ceremony. I mean, I don't like
receptions and things like that, and 1'd have to sit through a long wedding
dinner and listen to toasts and speeches and, well, I
^'
d as soon have
that part of it over with and ... well, I mean. I--"

The Head Compositor laughed. He said, "Are you ready?"

^"
Am I--Sure!
^"

Click of train wheels over the rails, and the stars and moon
bright above the observation platform of the speeding train.

Jane in his arms. His wife, and it was Wednesday evening. Beautiful,
gorgeous, sweet, loving, soft, kissable, lovable Jane--

She snuggled closer to him, and he was whispering, "It
^'
s…it
^'
s
eleven o'clock, darling. Shall we--"

Their lips met, clung. Then, hand in hand, they walked
through the swaying train. His hand turned the knob of the stateroom door and,
as it swung slowly open, he picked her up to carry her across the threshold.

TOO MANY FEMALES

On September 16th in the year 1972, things were going along about
the same as usual, only a little worse. The cold war that had been waxing and
waning between the United States and the Eastern Alliance-Russia, Cuba, and
their lesser satellites-was warmer than it had ever been. War, hot war, seemed
not only inevitable but extremely imminent.

The race for the Moon was an immediate cause. Each nation
bad landed a few men on it and each claimed it. Each had found that rockets
sent from Earth were inadequate to permit establishment of a permanent base
upon the Moon, and that only establishment of a permanent base, in force, would
determine possession. And so each nation (for convenience we'll call the
Eastern Alliance a nation, although it was not exactly that) was engaged in
rushing construction of a space station to be placed in an orbit around Earth.

With such an intermediate step in space, reaching the Moon
with large rockets would be practicable and construction of armed bases,
heavily garrisoned, would be comparatively simple. Whoever got there first
could not only
claim
possession, but could implement the claim. Military
secrecy on both sides kept from the public just how near to completion each
space base was, but it was generally-and correctly-believed that the issue
would be determined within a year, two years at the outside.

Neither nation could
afford
to let the other control
the Moon. That much had become obvious even to those who were trying
desperately to maintain peace.