The Lighter Side (33 page)

There was a deafening boom! followed by a whistling of air. The door to the control booth rattled in its frame. Suddenly an opaque, gray blanket seemed to hang over the observation window.

"Barnaby! Is everything all right?"

He peered out into the mist. "I think so. Readings are all normal."

"Why is it so—so foggy out there?"

"The field shuts off incident light; it's a sort of closed space effect. The simulated environment has to be segregated from outside influences, of course, or its validity will be compromised."

"Barnaby, you've done enough for now. Let's go. We can come back some other time—"

"Go? We haven't even looked at it yet."

"That's all right; we can go up to my place and I'll make you a nice cup of coffee substitute and—"

"We can't leave now, without even seeing what kind of effect we've gotten." Barnaby stepped to the door marked authorized goobermen only and opened it. He stared out. Gigi came to his side. Where the plain concrete floor had been, a city street was visible, lined with bright shop fronts thronged with people.

"Wow!" Barnaby breathed.

"Where—where did the people come from?" Gigi whispered. "And those shops—"

"I knew it would be good," Barnaby said in a choked voice. "But this is fantastic . . . "

"Let's go back," Gigi said.

"Let's take a look," Barnaby said. He took her hand and stepped out into the street.

It was midday, and bright sunlight gleamed down from above. The passers-by jostled them in normal fashion, hurrying about their simulated business.

"It's marvelous!" Barnaby said. "Goober's technicians fed in data for a contemporary 1972 street scene, it looks like. The Simulator extrapolated, built up the charge on the environmental field, and boom! Here it is, perfect in every detail!" They strolled along, admiring the view. The pedestrians ignored them, forcing them to dodge to avoid being rammed.

"Are they—real?" Gigi asked.

"Of course not. But they'll behave as if they were." Barnaby snorted. "And Goober plans to use all this to figure out what kind of depilatory has the greatest appeal. And I suppose he'll lease it out to politicians to overhear what the typical voter is saying about the issues, and—"

"Are they just false fronts? Is there anything behind the facades?"

"Certainly; they'll be perfect, inside and out."

Gigi gave a shrill cry. "Barnaby, look! The control room! It's gone!" Barnaby stared back the way they had come. The street seemed to dwindle away into the distance.

"What happened to the control room?" the girl gasped.

"Oh, it's right there where it always was, but the closed-space effect keeps you from seeing it. Actually, we're in a sort of little universe of our own here, held together by the terrific power flowing over the surface of the field—"

"I'd feel a lot better if we could see, Barnaby. What if we get lost here?"

Barnaby laughed. "Nonsense, Gigi. All we have to do is go in a straight line to any of the walls, and . . . " he frowned. "No, that's not quite right; the field curves space . . . but if we just go back to the control room . . . but . . . "

"Barnaby! What's the matter! You look so pale!"

Barnaby swallowed hard. "Nothing—nothing at all. But maybe we'd better just find that door right away . . . " He turned, walked quickly back, groped at the empty air. A stout lady in runover shoes puffed past, ignoring him. He worked his way across the sidewalk, turned and looked back.

"I'm
sure
it wasn't this far along," he muttered.

"Barnaby, we were standing at least over there when we stepped into this place," Gigi said worriedly, pointing. "I remember the crack in the sidewalk."

"You must be mistaken, Gigi." Barnaby indicated a stout oak door set in the wall behind him. It bore a brass plate reading chast & seemly studios, limited.

"Let's try in here," he called. He opened the door, held it for Gigi. Hesitantly, she stepped inside. They were in a narrow foyer, discreetly lit, austerely decorated, unobtrusively air-conditioned. Sterilized music murmured from an indefinable source.

"Look," Gigi said. "Elevators. Where could they go? There isn't anything above . . . "

"Appearances are deceiving; we're still inside the field. If we go up, we can look out of a window, and then maybe we can see the outer walls. That will tell us where we are."

"Well . . . maybe."

Barnaby pressed the button; there was a soft whoosh! of air. The doors slid aside. They entered the car.

"Four floors ought to be high enough," Barnaby said. The car moved up, eased to a stop. The doors opened. Barnaby looked out into a dimly lit residential-looking corridor, deeply carpeted, neuter-toned, silent.

"Hmmm, I guess we'll have to look around and find a window." Barnaby stepped to a blank oak panel, rapped on it. Nothing happened. He tried it. It swung open. They stepped through and stopped dead, staring. Sun streamed through lacy curtains over wide windows where flowers grew in pots. On a brand-new stepladder by a sootless fireplace set with a gleaming brass shove and poker, a well-muscled man of twenty-five with the features of a god, wearing well-pressed dark slacks and a perfectly fitted polo shirt spread a hideous pink paint on a white wall, using an immaculate brush. The paint flowed out in a flawless swath with each stroke. A beautiful girl in a starched white blouse and red slacks wielded a roller in the lower section of the wall. Her work was, if anything, more perfect than his. Not a drop had been spattered.

"This Kem-tone is the paintier paint," she stated. "Goes on so easy, your friends will think you called in a high-priced decorator—"

"Pardon me, folks," Barnaby said. The two home decorators ignored him. He went to the window, looked out. A sheet of cardboard with a lithograph of a seed-catalog garden blocked the view.

The man on the stepladder turned to dip his brush. Barnaby stepped up to him. "Hey!" The man went on painting the same spot, in smooth effortless strokes.

"Comes in twelve delicious colors, too," the girl commented. "Lemon, lime—"

"Look!" Barnaby said. "This is an emergency. We're lost. Can you tell us—"

"Maybe they can't see us—or hear us either," Gigi suggested in an awed whisper.

"They'll hear me," Barnaby said determinedly. He seized the man's painting arm; the ladder tilted; the man swayed, crashed to the floor, upsetting the girl in red slacks who fell sideways, still painting unhurriedly. Lying on his side, the man worked his brush imperturbably, laying a pink stripe across the girl's chest. She rolled her roller in the air, smiled with pink features as the brush worked over her face.

" . . . Strawberry," she cooed. "Raspberry, prune, chop suey and chicken noodle . . . "

"Let's get out of here!" Barnaby seized Gigi's hand, charged across the room, burst through a door. They were in a sunny breakfast nook. A lovely girl in a ruffled apron stood with her head sideways, one hand on hip, holding a coffee pot.

"More Chase and Sanborn's?" She smiled brilliantly.

A man with incredibly regular features looked at her happily from his chair at the table. Before him on a machine-decorated plate a symmetrical fried egg lay beside two geometrical strips of bacon. He held a clean starched napkin in his left hand. He rolled his eyes ludicrously, his tongue curling over his upper lip; he wrinkled his nose . . . 

"Ummm, ummm," he said feelingly. "It's my favorite . . . "

Barnaby looked about for another door. The wall ended just beyond the table. Holding Gigi's hand, he plunged for it, jarring the table. Behind him, the man smiled as steaming coffee poured down on his knee.

The two rounded a partition, almost fell over a finely gowned woman who tilted a can of chemical over a toilet bowl. "Since I discovered new Drano," she said brightly, "old-fashioned, inferior products have been banished . . . "

A man stood watching, a finger digging at the back of his neck, a cap between his fingers. He appeared slightly ill with malaria, and his overalls needed pressing. A number of large, new tools lay scattered on the floor at his feet, together with brushes with bent bristles, bottles and cans with blurred labels, and a large and unsightly rubber plunger. He wore a marvelously intricate expression, compounding ruefulness at having been outdone by a housewife, admiration of new Drano, shame at his use of old-fashioned, inferior methods, and determination to learn from the experience, all overlaid with a smile.

Barnaby cleared his throat. "Say, can you give us a hand?"

"Next time, Lady, it's new Drano for me," the man said.

Barnaby twitched the can from the woman's hand, upended it in the plumber's hip pocket.

" . . . embarrassing bathroom odors, too," the woman said gaily. Smoke poured from the plumber's pocket.

Barnaby and Gigi ducked between wet sheets on a clothes line, one gray and one white, and made for a plain door. It opened, and they stepped into a vast room with a high shadow-trussed ceiling. At its far end, television cameras were grouped around a floodlit set. The two stepped silently behind a heavy tan curtain that hung among ropes and wires, crossed the room, peeped out at the set, not more than twenty feet away. A man sat behind a broad polished desk, a green-painted wall behind him. To the left of the desk was a large gold-fringed American flag, and on the right was a blue flag with an eagle in the center and lettering around it. Barnaby read between the folds:

 . . . SID . . . OF THE . . . TED . . . TES . . . MERI . . . 

The man reached out to shuffle papers, glanced toward a wall block. Barnaby stared at the gray hair, the ski-jump nose, the wide bluish jaw.

"That man," he whispered. "He looks just like Nixon."

Nixon was talking: " . . . opportunity to make this report on my recent trip, and the meetings which I held with President de Gaulle, and Chancellor Brandt, during which we discussed . . . "

"Goober's cooking up some kind of political plot here!" Barnaby hissed, turning to the girl. "People will see this, and think it's the real Nixon—"

Gigi clutched at his arm, looking frightened. "Barnaby, let's go . . . !"

"They can't get away with this," Barnaby said. He stepped from behind the curtain, went toward the desk. Nixon ignored him.

" . . . easing of world tensions. We were in agreement—wholehearted agreement—as to the goals to be sought. The means—"

Barnaby looked around, picked up a broom and swung it. "Scat!" he said. The desk microphone spun to the floor; papers flew. Nixon went on unperturbed:

" . . . necessitates renewed dedication on the part of each and every . . . "

Barnaby swung again. Nixon bounced from the chair, glossy silver hair still in place. " . . . taxation. However, in the near future, I have every hope . . . "

The imitation Nixon lay on the floor, legs drawn up in sitting posture. " . . . forces of Godless Communism . . . " Barnaby flailed at it, saw dust fly from the neat dark-blue suit. " . . . threat of war . . . "

He brought the heavy end down on the head of the puppet. A round glass eye rolled across the floor. The blue jaws moved: " . . . the free peoples . . . The free peoples . . . The free peoples . . . "

"Barnaby, stop!" Gigi cried.

"Goober must be planning on taking over the country," Barnaby called. "He's got this dummy set up to look like Nixon, and he's broadcasting it over TV. No telling what kind of conspiracy we've stumbled into here." He looked around, spotted a fire hose coiled against the wall. "Maybe a blast from that will slow things down. Dupe the American people, will he?" He lifted the hose from its bracket, stretched it across the floor, hurried back and turned the valve. A surge of water whipped the heavy canvas hose like a scorched python. Barnaby leaped for the nozzle, wrestled it into position as a spurt of water spewed forth, then fought to hold it down as a hard three-inch stream arced across the cavernous dim-lit room. The door opened, two men stepped through it, snapped over on their backs as the water hit, carrying along those behind them. Barnaby concentrated the stream on a skinny woman with a shrill voice, now raised in a patriotic number. He hosed her out the door, then cut the footing from under a fat man.

The water gushed, swirling around the light stands and cameras; sheets of white paper were afloat now; people scrambled to their feet to be knocked spinning by Barnaby's stream. Now another jet joined the first as Gigi unlimbered a second hose, giggling.

"Let's leave 'em squirting and get out of here," Barnaby called gaily. He propped the hose, holding it in place with a heavy TV camera stand, quickly set Gigi's hose up to add its volume to the attack.

"There's a door there," he pointed. "Let's try it." He sloshed through the water to the small door marked EXIT in red light, found it locked. The water was ankle deep now. They tried another door.

"These hoses really put out," Barnaby said. Nixon floated past, bumped against a floodlight stand. " . . . the free peoples . . . the free peoples . . . "

The next door Barnaby tried swung open. Beyond it were stairs. They started down; dirty water flowed down the steps with them. At the ground floor, they went through a swinging door into a room filled with tall clattering machines. Rows of empty bottles advanced along moving conveyors, paused under chrome-plated nozzles that gushed red, yellow, purple, then moved on under an arm that hammered a cap on each bottle, whok! whok!

People appeared across the room. Barnaby took Gigi's hand, jumped on the nearest conveyor. Bottles flew and smashed; green liquid jetted, spattering. They leaped to the next belt. It broke; they scrambled on to the next. Behind them, bottles poured off onto the floor in an endless stream; purple liquid spurted, foaming.

"They're closing in on us!" Barnaby called over the clank of the apparatus, the crashing of glass, and the hiss of foaming beverage. "Throw bottles, Gigi!" He scooped up an armful, hurled them at the machinery; they hit and bounced off, shattered on the floor. One bottle lodged in a conveyor belt, crushed as the belt entered a slot. A moment later, there was a loud clunk! The belt piled up, writhed off onto the floor. More bottles tumbled.