The Door Into Summer (23 page)

It was always the little things. I had had my teeth worked over completely shortly after I had been put on the staff of Hired Girl and could afford it. I had never expected to have to see a dental plastician again. Nevertheless, in 1970 I did not have anti-caries pills and so I got a hole in a tooth, a painful one or I would have ignored it. So I went to a dentist. So help me, I had forgotten what he would see when he looked into my mouth. He blinked, moved his mirror around, and said, “Great jumping Jehosaphat! Who was your dentist?”

“Kah hoo hank?”

He took his hands out of my mouth. “Who did it? And how?”

“Huh? You mean my teeth? Oh, that’s experimental work they’re doing in… India.”

“How do they do it?”

“How would I know?”

“Mmm…wait a minute. I’ve got to get some pictures of this.” He started fiddling with his X-ray equipment.

“Oh no,” I objected. “Just clean out that bicuspid, plug it up with anything, and let me out of here.”

“But—”

“I’m sorry, Doctor. But I’m on a dead run.”

So he did as I said, pausing now and again to look at my teeth. I paid cash and did not leave my name. I suppose I could have let him have the pics, but covering up had become a reflex. It couldn’t have hurt anything to let him have them. Nor helped either, as X-rays would not show how regeneration was accomplished, nor could I have told him.

There is no time like the past to get things done. While I was sweating sixteen hours a day on Drafting Dan and Protean Pete I got something else done with my left hand. Working anonymously through John’s law office I hired a detective agency with national branches to dig up Belle’s past. I supplied them with her address and the license number and model of her car (since steering wheels are good places to get fingerprints) and suggested that she might have been married here and there and possibly might have a police record. I had to limit the budget severely; I couldn’t afford the sort of investigation you read about.

When they did not report back in ten days I kissed my money goodbye. But a few days later a thick envelope showed up at John’s office.

Belle had been a busy girl. Born six years earlier than she claimed, she had been married twice before she was eighteen. One of them did not count because the man already had a wife; if she had been divorced from the second the agency had not uncovered it.

She had apparently been married four times since then, although once was doubtful; it may have been the “war-widow” racket worked with the aid of a man who was dead and could not object. She had been divorced once (respondent) and one of her husbands was dead. She might still be “married” to the others.

Her police record was long and interesting but apparently she had been convicted of a felony only once, in Nebraska, and granted parole without doing time. This was established only by fingerprints, as she had jumped parole, changed her name, and had acquired a new social-security number. The agency asked if they were to notify Nebraska authorities.

I told them not to bother; she had been missing for nine years and her conviction had been for nothing worse than lure in a badger game. I wondered what I would have done if it had been dope peddling? Reflexive decisions have their complications.

I ran behind schedule on the drawings and October was on me before I knew it. I still had the descriptions only half worded, since they had to tie into drawings, and I had done nothing about the claims. Worse, I had done nothing about organizing the deal so that it would hold up; I could not do it until I had a completed job to show. Nor had I had time to make contacts. I began to think that I had made a mistake in not asking Dr. Twitchell to set the controls for at least thirty-two years instead of thirty-one years and a fiddling three weeks; I had underestimated the time I would need and overestimated my own capacity.

I had not shown my toys to my friends, the Suttons, not because I wanted to hide them, but because I had not wanted a lot of talk and useless advice while they were incomplete. On the last Saturday in September I was scheduled to go out to the club camp with them. Being behind schedule, I had worked late the night before, then had been awakened early by the torturing clang of an alarm clock so that I could shave and be ready to go when they came by. I shut the sadistic thing off and thanked God that they had got rid of such horrible devices in 2001, then I pulled myself groggily together and went down to the corner drugstore to phone and say that I couldn’t make it, I had to work.

Jenny answered, “Danny, you’re working too hard. A weekend in the country will do you good.”

“I can’t help it, Jenny. I have to. I’m sorry.”

John got on the other phone and said, “What’s all this nonsense?”

“I’ve got to work, John. I’ve simply got to. Say hello to the folks for me.”

I went back upstairs, burned some toast, vulcanized some eggs, sat back down at Drafting Dan.

An hour later they banged on my door.

None of us went to the mountains that weekend. Instead I demonstrated both devices. Jenny was not much impressed by Drafting Dan (it isn’t a woman’s gismo, unless she herself is an engineer), but she was wide-eyed over Protean Pete. She kept house with a Mark II Hired Girl and could see how much more this machine could do.

But John could see the importance of Drafting Dan. When I showed him how I could write my signature, recognizably my own, just by punching keys—I admit I had practiced—his eyebrows stayed up. “Chum, you’re going to throw draftsmen out of work by the thousand.”

“No, I won’t. The shortage of engineering talent in this country gets worse every year; this gadget will just help to fill the gap. In a generation you are going to see this tool in every engineering and architectural office in the nation. They’ll be as lost without it as a modern mechanic would be without power tools.”

“You talk as if you knew.”

“I do know.”

He looked over at Protean Pete—I had set him to tidying my work-bench—and back at Drafting Dan. “Danny…sometimes I think maybe you were telling me the truth, you know, the day we met you.”

I shrugged. “Call it second sight…but I do know. I’m certain. Does it matter?”

“I guess not. What are your plans for these things?”

I frowned. “That’s the hitch, John. I’m a good engineer and a fair jackleg mechanic when I have to be. But I’m no businessman; I’ve proved that. You’ve never fooled with patent law?”

“I told you that before. It’s a job for a specialist.”

“Do you know an honest one? Who’s smart as a whip besides? It’s reached the point where I’ve got to have one. I’ve got to set up a corporation, too, to handle it. And work out the financing. But I haven’t got much time; I’m
terribly
pressed for time.”

“Why?”

“I’m going back where I came from.” He sat and said nothing for quite a while. At last he said, “How much time?”

“Uh, about nine weeks. Nine weeks from this coming Thursday to be exact.”

He looked at the two machines, looked back at me. “Better revise your schedule. I’d say that you had more like nine months’ work cut out for you. You won’t be in production even then—just lined up to start moving, with luck.”

“John, I can’t!”

“I’ll say you can’t.”

“I mean I can’t change my schedule. That’s beyond my control…now.” I put my face in my hands. I was dead with fatigue, having had less than five hours’ sleep and having averaged not much better for days. The shape I was in, I was willing to believe that there was something, after all, to this “fate” business—a man could struggle against it but never beat it.

I looked up. “Will
you
handle it?”

“Eh? What part of it?”

“Everything. I’ve done all I know how to do.”

“That’s a big order, Dan. I could rob you blind. You know that, don’t you? And this may be a gold mine.”

“It will be. I know.”

“Then why trust me? You had better just keep me as your attorney, advice for a fee.”

I tried to think while my head ached. I had taken a partner once before—but, damnation, no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you
have
to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye open. There wasn’t any way to be safe; just being alive was deadly dangerous…fatal, in the end.

“Cripes, John, you know the answer to that.
You
trusted
me
. Now I need your help again. Will you help me?”

“Of course he will,” Jenny put in gently, “though I haven’t heard what you two were talking about. Danny? Can it wash dishes? Every dish you have is dirty.”

“What, Jenny? Why, I suppose he can. Yes, of course he can.”

“Then tell him to, please. I want to see it.”

“Oh. I’ve never programmed him for it. I will if you want me to. But it will take several hours to do it right. Of course after that he’ll always be able to do it. But the first time…well, you see, dishwashing involves a lot of alternate choices. It’s a ‘judgment’ job, not a comparatively simple routine like laying bricks or driving a truck.”

“Goodness! I’m certainly glad to find that at least one man understands housework. Did you hear what he said, dear? But don’t stop to teach him now, Danny. I’ll do them myself.” She looked around. “Danny, you’ve been living like a pig, to put it gently.”

To tell the simple truth, it had missed me entirely that Protean Pete could work for
me
. I had been engrossed in planning how he could work for other people in commercial jobs, and teaching him to do them, while I myself had simply been sweeping dirt into the corner or ignoring it. Now I began teaching him all the household tasks that Flexible Frank had learned; he had the capacity, as I had installed three times as many Thorsen tubes in him as Frank had had.

I had time to do it, for John took over.

Jenny typed descriptions for us; John retained a patent attorney to help with the claims. I don’t know whether John paid him cash or cut him in on the cake; I never asked. I left the whole thing up to him, including what our shares should be; not only did it leave me free for my proper work, but I figured that if he decided such things he could never be tempted the way Miles had been. And I honestly did not care; money as such is not important. Either John and Jenny were what I thought they were or I might as well find that cave and be a hermit.

I insisted on just two things. “John, I think we ought to call the firm ‘The Aladdin Autoengineering Corporation.’ ”

“Sounds pretty fancy. What’s wrong with ‘Davis & Sutton’?”

“That’s how it’s got to be, John.”

“So? Is your second sight telling you this?”

“Could be, could be. We’ll use a picture of Aladdin rubbing his lamp as a trademark, with the genie forming above him. I’ll make a rough sketch. And one other thing: The home office had better be in Los Angeles.”

“What? Now you’ve gone too far. That is, if you expect me to run it. What’s wrong with Denver?”

“Nothing is wrong with Denver, it’s a nice town. But it is not the place to set up the factory. Pick a good site here and some bright morning you wake up and find that the Federal enclave has washed over it and you are out of business until you get reestablished on a new one. Besides that, labor is scarce, raw materials come overland, building materials are all gray-market. Whereas Los Angeles has an unlimited supply of skilled workmen and more pouring in every day, Los Angeles is a seaport, Los Angeles is—”

“How about the smog? It’s not worth it.”

“They’ll lick the smog before long. Believe me. And haven’t you noticed that Denver is working up smog of its own?”

“Now wait a minute, Dan. You’ve already made it clear that I will have to run this while you go kiyoodling off on some business of your own. Okay, I agreed. But I ought to have some choice in working conditions.”

“It’s necessary, John.”

“Dan, nobody in his right mind who lives in Colorado would move to California. I was stationed out there during the war; I
know
. Take Jenny here; she’s a native Californian, that’s her secret shame. You couldn’t hire her to go back. Here you’ve got winters, changing seasons, brisk mountain air, magnificent—”

Jenny looked up. “Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’d
never
go back.”

“What’s that, dear?”

Jenny had been quietly knitting; she never talked unless she really had something to say. Now she put down her knitting, a clear sign. “If we did move there, dear, we could join the Oakdale Club; they have outdoor swimming all year round. I was thinking of that just this last weekend when I saw ice on the pool at Boulder.”

I stayed until the evening of 2 December 1970, the last possible minute. I was forced to borrow three thousand dollars from John—the prices I had paid for components had been scandalous—but I offered him a stock mortgage to secure it. He let me sign it, then tore it up and dropped it in a wastebasket. “Pay me when you get around to it.”

“It will be thirty years, John.”

“As long as that?” I pondered it. He had never invited me to tell my whole story since the afternoon, six months earlier, when he had told me frankly that he did not believe the essential part—but was going to vouch for me to their club anyhow.

I told him I thought it was time to tell him. “Shall we wake up Jenny? She’s entitled to hear it too.”

“Mmm…no. Let her nap until just before you have to leave. Jenny is a very uncomplicated person, Dan. She doesn’t care who you are or where you came from as long as she likes you. If it seems a good idea, I can pass it on to her later.”

“As you will.” He let me tell it all, stopping only to fill our glasses—mine with ginger ale; I had a reason not to touch alcohol. When I had brought it up to the point where I landed on a mountainside outside Boulder, I stopped. “That’s it,” I said. “Though I was mixed up on one point. I’ve looked at the contour since and I don’t think my fall was more than two feet. If they had—I mean ‘if they were going to’—bulldoze that laboratory site any deeper, I would have been buried alive. Probably would have killed both of you too—if it didn’t blow up the whole county. I don’t know just what happens when a flat waveform changes back into a mass where another mass already is.”