The Nail and the Oracle (38 page)

There was a certain amount of awe in Miss Prince’s voice as it emerged from the little black box saying, “A Mr. Brown is here and would like to see you.”

Henry Mellow frowned a sort of “Oh, dear” kind of frown and then said, “Send him in.”

He came in, black suit, black shoes, black tie, and in his eyes, nothing. Henry Mellow did not rise, but he was pleasant enough as he gestured, “Sit down, Mr. Brown.” There was only one chair to sit in, and it was well placed, so Mr. Brown sat. He identified himself with something leathery that opened and shut like a snapping turtle with a mouthful of medals. “What can I do for you?”

“You’re Henry Mellow.” Mr. Brown didn’t ask, he
told
.

“Yes.”

“You wrote a memo about Noth—about some new substance to build things with.”

“Oh that, yes. You mean Nothing.”

“That depends,” said Mr. Brown humorlessly. “You’ve gone ahead with research and development.”

“I have?”

“That’s what we’d like to know.”

“We?”

Mr. Brown’s hand dipped in and out of his black jacket and made the snapping turtle thing again.

“Oh,” said Henry Mellow. “Well, suppose we just call it an intellectual exercise—an entertainment. We’ll send it out to a magazine, say, as fiction.”

“We can’t allow that.”

“Really not?”

“We live in a real world, Mr. Mellow, where things happen that maybe people like you don’t understand. Now I don’t know whether or not there’s any merit in your idea or how far you’ve gone with it, but I’m here to advise you to stop it here and now.”

“Oh? Why, Mr. Brown?”

“Do you know how many large corporations would be affected by such a thing—if there was such a thing? Construction, mining, hauling, prefabrication—everything. Not that we take it seriously, you understand, but we know something about you and we have to take it seriously anyway.”

“Well, I appreciate the advice, but I think I’ll send it out anyway.”

“Then,” continued Mr. Brown as if he had not spoken, and acquiring, suddenly, a pulpit resonance, “Then … there’s the military.”

“The military.”

“Defense, Mr. Mellow. We can’t allow just anybody to get their hands on plans to put impenetrable domes over cities—suppose somebody overseas got them built first?”

“Do you think if a lot of people read it in a magazine, someone overseas would do it first?”

“That’s the way we have to think.” He leaned closer. “Look, Mr. Mellow—have you thought maybe you’ve got a gold mine for yourself here? You don’t want to turn it over to the whole world.”

“Mr. Brown, I don’t want a gold mine for myself. I don’t much want any kind of mines for anybody. I don’t want people cutting down more forests or digging more holes in the ground to take out what they can’t put back, not when there are better ways. And I don’t want to get paid for not using a better way if I find one. I just want people to be able to have what they want without raping a planet for it, and I want them to be able to protect themselves if they have to, and to get comfortable real quick and real cheap even if it means some fat cats have to get comfortable along with them.
Not thin, Mr. Brown—just comfortable.”

“I thought it was going to be something like this,” said Mr. Brown. His hand dipped in and out of the black jacket again, but this time it was holding a very small object like a stretched-out toy pistol. “You can come along with me willingly or I’ll have to use this.”

“I guess you’d better use it, then,” said Henry Mellow regretfully.

“It’s nice,” said Mr. Brown. “It won’t even leave a mark.”

“I’m sure it won’t,” said Henry Mellow as the little weapon went off with a short, explosive hiss. The little needle it threw disintegrated in midair.

Mr. Brown turned gray. He raised the weapon again. “Don’t bother, Mr. Brown,” said Henry Mellow. “There’s a sheet of just plain Nothing between us, and it’s impenetrable.”

Still holding his weapon, Mr. Brown rose and backed away—and brought up sharply against some Nothing behind him. He turned and patted it wildly and then ran to the side, where he struck an invisible barrier that sat him down on the rug. He looked as if he was going to cry.

“Sit in the chair,” said Henry Mellow, not unkindly. “Please. There. That’s better. Now then: listen to me.” And something, at that moment, seemed to happen to Henry Mellow: to Mr. Brown he looked bigger, wider, and, somehow realer than he had been before. It was as if the business he was in had for a long time kept him from seeing people as real, and now, suddenly, he could again.

Henry Mellow said, “I’ve had a lot longer to think this out than you have, and besides, I don’t think the way you do. I guess I don’t think the way anybody does. So I’ve been told. But for what it’s worth, here it is: If I tried to keep this thing and control it myself, I wouldn’t live ten minutes. (What’s the matter, Mr. Brown? Somebody else say that? I wouldn’t doubt it.) Or I could just file it away and forget it; matter of fact, I tried that and I just couldn’t forget it, because there’s a lot of people dying now, and more could die in the future, for lack of it. I even thought of printing it up, in detail, and scattering it from a plane. But then, you know what I wrote about how many shepherds didn’t look into how many dewdrops; that could happen again—probably would, and it’s not a thing I could
do thousands of times. So I’ve decided to do what I said—publish it in a magazine. But not in detail. I don’t want anyone to think they stole it, and I don’t want anyone to make a lot out of it and then come looking for me, either to eliminate me (that could happen) or to share it, because I don’t want to share it with one person or two or a company—I want to share it with everybody, all the good that comes of it, all the bad. You don’t understand that, do you, Mr. Brown?

“You’re going to meet a doctor friend of mine in a minute who will give you something that will help you forget. It’s quite harmless, but you won’t remember any of this. So before you go, I just want to tell you one thing: there’s another Mr. Brown downstairs. Mr. Brown X, he said you called him, and all he wanted was the process—not for himself, not for the Agency, but for his people; he said they really know how to get along with Nothing.” He smiled. “And I don’t want you to feel too badly about this, but your Agency’s not as fast on its feet as you think it is. Last week I had a man with some sort of Middle European accent and a man who spoke Ukrainian and two Orientals and a fellow with a beard from Cuba. Just thought I’d tell you.…

“So good-bye, Mr. Brown. You’ll forget all about this talk, but maybe when you write a check and tear it in two getting it out of the book, or when you rip off a paper towel or a stamp and the perforations hold, something will tell you to stop a minute and think it through.” He smiled and touched a second button on his intercom.

“Stand by, Doc.”

“Ready,” said the intercom.

Henry Mellow moved something under the edge of his desk and the visitor’s chair dropped through the floor. In a moment it reappeared, empty. Henry Mellow touched another control, and the sheets of Nothing slid up and away, to await the next one.

So when it happens, don’t just say Damn and forget it. Stop a minute and think it through. Somebody’s going to change the face of the earth and it could be you.

Talking to this bartender, I forget what about, he said wait and reached for the backbar phone. I hadn’t much noticed the little guy in the green sweater but he had. He was eyeing him while he dialed so I did too. The little guy was ambling down the whole length of the place and slowing down, not quite stopping, at each bar stool. Every customer got the eye, a cold, up-down and back kind of hit-me-why-doncha look. Spooky. Some little guys got this banty-cock thing going: you know, I’m little but I’m tough, try me out, and they really are tough. This one wasn’t. Somehow his legs didn’t work right, I can’t say how, it wasn’t even a limp, and he was real skinny.

“Hello, Dwight. This is Danny at the Ramble Inn. Joey just come in and it looks like he—Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.” He hung up and the both of us watched this little guy, this Joey. Some of the customers turned their back, swing to the left as he come near, swing to the right as he passed, and when that happened he would edge in next to them and hang there until they had to face him. He’d give them that eye and like twitch his upper lip at one side and if they didn’t say nothing he would walk on, and they didn’t say nothing.

Then some others would look at him what-the-hell, and he would look right back at them until they turned away, and then move on. One customer, he was a big guy and kind of sleepy-looking, but look out for guys like that, he said “You want something?” and this little Joey waits a good long time to answer him, “Maybe later.” Then there’s me, because I’m down at the bottom end with the bartender. I’m watching him in the mirror by then and he can’t know that, so he stands by my elbow doing nothing so long I got to turn around and look at him. I said Hi.

He didn’t say nothing. He waited what got to be an awful long time, hanging those boiled-looking eyes on me, and then he spit on
the floor. I didn’t have to move my feet, but almost. He kept on looking and then rounded me and said to the bartender, “I want to make a boiler.”

Danny the bartender got him his shot and chaser and the little guy took the glasses and moved over to a table where he could see everybody. I said, “Guy like that, could be trouble.”

“Will be trouble,” Danny the bartender says.

Before I can talk any more there comes in a tall man, worried, looked all around but I don’t think he could see this Joey because he come straight down to where I am and says to the bartender, “Danny, where.…”

“Hi, Dwight. There he is.” He points with his eyes.

Dwight, that’s the tall one, he flashes a look and then uses the backbar mirror to study out this Joey, seems like he wants to know everything he can by looking without talking to him. I seen him squinch up his face when Joey knocks back the rye and chugalugs his chaser. I hear him say O God when Joey gets up.

Joey puts a cigarette in his chops and kind of sets his chin down and moves halfway up the bar where sits this big sleepy-looking guy who told him before, “You want something?” and he reaches for the guy’s cigar which is in an ashtray on the bar. Dwight says in my ear again O God and Danny the bartender says, “Dwight, you better get him out of here,” and Sleepy says, “Hey get your goddamn hands off my
seegar
.”

Joey goes right on getting a light off the cigar for his cigarette and paying no mind and Dwight starts moving up toward the two of them and maybe it would of been all right even then but Joey taken the cigar and dropped it in the big guy’s highball. Well, of course, that was it and Sleepy takes a swing, but by that time Dwight is there in between them and more than that—he gives little Joey a shoulder that sends him cakewalking back out of the way. For that Dwight has to take the punch on the side of his neck and he puts up his hands like peacemaking and says Cool it or some such.

But Sleepy is not about to cool it now and gets on his feet, and he is a much bigger man than I thought. He winds up a ham-handed right at the end of an arm like a tree-trunk, and I have seen guys
who do that and I want to yell at Dwight don’t pay no attention to that big looping windup, he wants you to, and sure enough Sleepy’s left comes out from under his armpit traveling short and straight and lays Dwight out flat on the floor and sliding.

Disgusted and scared I hear Danny the bartender say “God now I got to call the pleece, I hate to call the pleece,” so I told him not to and went up there where the trouble was, Dwight wiggling a little on the floor and Sleepy with his eye on Joey and Joey backing away. I guess I was going to try to talk it through but Sleepy tromps Dwight. He does it still looking at Joey like he don’t care where he tromps him and he don’t, either. I don’t like guys who tromp guys unless they need to, so I told Sleepy to quit and he tromped Dwight again looking at me now and cocking that big phony right-hander my way, and when you see them do that twice in a row you know you got a one-trick fighter, which makes it easy for anyone who knows two, and I know half a hundred.

I showed him some and he never laid a hand on me but the one I grabbed the wrist of and rolled him over my back and airplaned him, and by that time I had got to him four times already and he wasn’t about to get up again for a while. I got Dwight up on his feet and over to where my drink was and he hung onto the bar shaking his head. Danny the bartender give him a shot and that seemed to help a little while the customers went back to their stools except a couple over to see about Sleepy. I called over to them not to worry. And meanwhile that little Joey that started it all is standing right where he was where Sleepy had pushed him to.

Danny said for me to drink my drink. “It’s on the house, grateful, but get that Joey out of here, he’s bad news from now on out, I know him, honest to God, Dwight”—and I realized it was Dwight he was talking to now not me—“I don’t know why you do it. If it was me I would just let somebody plow him under.”

Dwight says, “Well it ain’t you. Thanks for the drink.” He looks at me and he thanks me too. I said I’ll go along with him. Sometimes when these things happen they are not finished where they start and you get jumped outside. Dwight said he didn’t think so this time and neither did I but I went anyway. We kind of collected Joey one on
each side walking out. He went right along with it, he held back only a second at the door to look back where a couple of guys was helping Sleepy onto his feet, and then he looked at Dwight, and then he laughed at him. He didn’t pay no attention to me at all. I mean he was a very creepy little guy.

I went along with them and I will tell you why. I have seen a lot in a lot of places, and there is one thing that always hooks me and that is when I see somebody taking care of somebody, because to tell you the truth I just cannot understand it. Why a guy throws his self on a grenade to save other guys. Why some stranger runs into a burning house to get someone out. How it is you can call somebody up in the middle of the night and he will run out to get some other guy out of trouble. You can say all you want about heroes and survival of the race and sacrifice and all like that, and I say bullshit. Maybe you want to believe that stuff but what I believe is that people is either wolves or wolverines when they are not tapeworms or sheep, and that is that.