The Ultimate Egoist (23 page)

“Not unless you start broadcasting on a regular schedule,” said Berbelot’s image.

It had apparently dissociated itself completely from Berbelot himself. I was floored.

Berbelot sat beside me, his face frozen. “You see?” he whispered to me. “It takes a minute to catch up with itself. Till it does, it is my image.”

“What does it all mean?” I gasped.

“Search me,” said the perfume king.

We sat and watched. And so help me, so did our images. They were watching
us
!

Berbelot tried a direct question. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Who do we look like?” said my image; and both laughed uproariously.

Berbelot’s image nudged mine. “We’ve got ’em on the run, hey, pal?” it chortled.

“Stop your nonsense!” said Berbelot sharply. Surprisingly, the merriment died.

“Aw,” said my image plaintively. “We don’t mean anything by it. Don’t get sore. Let’s all have fun.
I’m
having fun.”

“Why, they’re like kids!” I said.

“I think you’re right,” said Berbelot.

“Look,” he said to the images, which sat there expectantly, pouting. “Before we have any fun, I want you to tell me who you are, and how you are coming through the receiver, and how you messed up the three broadcasts before this.”

“Did we do wrong?” asked my image innocently. The other one giggled.

“High-spirited sons o’ guns, aren’t they?” said Berbelot.

“Well, are you going to answer my questions, or
do I turn the transmitter off?
” he asked the images.

They chorused frantically: “We’ll tell! We’ll tell! Please don’t turn it off!”

“What made you think of that?” I whispered to Berbelot.

“A stab in the dark,” he returned. “Evidently they like coming through like this and can’t do it any other way but on the polychrome wave.”

“What do you want to know?” asked Berbelot’s image, its lip quivering.

“Who are you?”

“Us? We’re … I don’t know. You don’t have a name for us, so how can I tell you?”

“Where are you?”

“Oh, everywhere. We get around.”

Berbelot moved his hand impatiently toward the switch.

The images squealed: “Don’t! Oh, please don’t! This is fun!”

“Fun, is it?” I growled. “Come on, give us the story, or we’ll black you out!”

My image said pleadingly: “Please believe us. It’s the truth. We’re everywhere.”

“What do you look like?” I asked. “Show yourselves as you are!”

“We can’t,” said the other image, “because we don’t ‘look’ like anything. We just … are, that’s all.”

“We don’t reflect light,” supplemented my image.

Berbelot and I exchanged a puzzled glance. Berbelot said, “Either somebody is taking us for a ride or we’ve stumbled on something utterly new and unheard-of.”

“You certainly have,” said Berbelot’s image earnestly. “We’ve known about you for a long time—as you count time—”

“Yes,” the other continued. “We knew about you some two hundred of your years ago. We had felt your vibrations for a long time before that, but we never knew just who you were until then.”

“Two hundred years—” mused Berbelot. “That was about the time of the first atomic-powered television sets.”

“That’s right!” said my image eagerly. “It touched our brain currents and we could see and hear. We never could get through to you until recently, though, when you sent us that stupid thing about a seashell.”

“None of that, now,” I said angrily, while Berbelot chuckled.

“How many of you are there?” he asked them.

“One, and many. We are finite and infinite. We have no size or shape as you know it. We just … are.”

We just swallowed that without comment. It was a bit big.

“How did you change the programs? How are you changing this one?” Berbelot asked.

“These broadcasts pass directly through our brain currents. Our thoughts change them as they pass. It was impossible before; we were aware, but we could not be heard. This new wave has let us be heard. Its convolutions are in phase with our being.”

“How did you happen to pick that particular way of breaking through?” I asked. “I mean all that wisecracking business.”

For the first time one of the images—Berbelot’s—looked abashed. “We wanted to be liked. We wanted to come through to you and find you laughing. We knew how. Two hundred years of listening to every single broadcast, public and private, has taught us your language and your emotions and your ways of thought. Did we really do wrong?”

“Looks as if we have walked into a cosmic sense of humor,” remarked Berbelot to me.

To his image: “Yes, in a way, you did. You lost three huge companies their broadcasting licenses. You embarrassed exceedingly a man named Griff and a secretary of state. You”—he chuckled—“made my friend here very, very angry. That wasn’t quite the right thing to do, was it?”

“No,” said my image. It actually blushed. “We won’t do it any more. We were wrong. We are sorry.”

“Aw, skip it,” I said. I was embarrassed myself. “Everybody makes mistakes.”

“That
is
good of you,” said my image on the television screen. “We’d like to do something for you. And you, too, Mr—”

“Berbelot,” said Berbelot. Imagine introducing yourself to a television set!

“You can’t do anything for us,” I said, “except to stop messing up color televising.”

“You really want us to stop, then?” My image turned to Berbelot’s. “We have done wrong. We have hurt their feelings and made them angry.”

To us: “We will not bother you again. Good-by!”

“Wait a minute!” I yelped, but I was too late. The viewscreen showed the same two figures, but they had lost their peculiar life. They were Berbelot and me. Period.

“Now look what you’ve done,” snapped Berbelot.

He began droning into the transmitter: “Calling interrupter on polychrome wave! Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Calling—”

He broke and looked at me disgustedly. “You dope,” he said quietly, and I felt like going off into a corner and bursting into tears.

Well, that’s all. The FCC trials reached a “person or persons unknown” verdict, and color broadcasting became a universal reality. The world has never learned, until now, the real story of that screwy business. Berbelot spent every night for three months trying to contact that ether intelligence, without success. Can you beat it? It waited two hundred years for a chance to come through to us, and then got its feelings hurt and withdrew!

My fault, of course. That admission doesn’t help any. I wish I could do something …

I
T WAS BAD
enough to have the three of them owning the car. But when they all got a yen for the same girl, the theory of cooperative proprietorship couldn’t stand up under the strain. Tom, George and Sam had roomed together at college, and after graduation had suddenly bumped into each other in town. Well, of course, they must room together again! It would be just like old times!

Then they bought the car. They made rigorous rules, of course, as to who was to have the car and which nights, and for how long.

It worked pretty well—until they met Judy. Then everything went haywire. She liked them all—she was quite impartial. So much so, they soon found out, that if one of them put something over on the other two, Judy would be quite content to be monopolized for an evening by that one. What bothered them was that it didn’t matter to Judy who monopolized her. Not a bit.

They went to all lengths to achieve the unsurpassable combination of the car, Judy, and a summer evening. Tom would, for instance, gallantly switch his turn with George for the car. George would be so delighted that the evening was half gone before he realized that Tom had given him the privilege of taking Judy to a mere movie, whereas Tom’s turn would now fall on the date of the country club dance. And so it went.

The showdown came on a hot summer day. By then the question of whose turn was whose had become a supercomplicated question of extradimensional proportions. No one knew exactly who was going to take Judy for an all-day outing, and all three had excellent reasons for being the lucky one. After coming to blows about it, the three ardent swains agreed to submit it to the lady in question. Judy promptly chose the one thing that was sure to make the day a frost.

“Well,” she said, “if you can’t decide which one of you is going
to take me, then you’ll all take me.” And there was no budging her from her enviable strategic position. Had they known it, Judy was tired of all this nonsense. She welcomed the occasion. If all three went out with her, one of them was bound to show up best. One of them had to! A girl can’t go on being impartial all her life.

The great day arrived. At the strident honking of the boys’ jalopy, Judy hurried out. George was driving, and Tom sat beside him. “Why, where’s Sam?” asked Judy.

They grinned. Cooperation at last, but only to narrow the field. “We lost him. He just wasn’t around when it was time to start.” One down!

Judy squeezed in between them. Thank heaven she didn’t have to choose with whom to ride! She would have, if Sam had come. How funny that he wasn’t there! To make conversation, she asked, “What’s it going to be? I see a picnic basket back there.”

George took a corner on two wheels and headed for the country. “An idea of Tom’s,” he said. “He doesn’t realize we’re going to roller skate at the Highway Rinks.”

“That’s what you think,” said Tom. Tom was a rank amateur on skates, and George was an expert. “We’ll picnic. No sense in—”

“We tossed a coin, mug, to see who’d drive. I won. We’ll go where I want to take us. Savvy?”

“Now, boys, please—” said Judy—but just then the engine sputtered and stalled. They coasted to a stop. “We picnic,” said Tom smugly. “Out of gas.”

George looked around. It wasn’t a bad spot for a picnic. But it would be a technical defeat for him. A nasty suspicion about that gas crossed his mind. Then the fireworks started. It went on for quite a while, until Judy got sore.

“I’m sick and tired of all this bickering!” she snapped. “One of you go back down the road for more gas.”

“Yeah,” said George. “I go, and when I get back, you and the car and Tom are gone. Not on your life! There’s too much chance of your getting a gallon from some motorist.”

Impasse. “Then both of you go,” decided Judy. “I’ll be all right here. Hurry, though.”

As the two glum young men rounded the bend in the road there came a thumping and bumping from the back of the car.

“Hi, Judy!” said Sam, as he climbed out of the trunk.

Judy was floored. “W—what—”

“Simple,” said Sam, pouring gasoline into the tank from a five-gallon can he had with him. “I suggested to Tom that he pack a basket and then drain out most of the gas, so we’d have to stop by the roadside and picnic. Then I lent my half dollar to George so he could win the toss for who drove. It has tails on both sides. I knew this would happen! It was hard riding, though, in the baggage trunk, with that gasoline can.” He screwed the top back on the tank.

Judy was laughing now, because she couldn’t help it. “Three was a crowd, at that,” she giggled, as they climbed in and started.

“Yeah,” cracked Sam. “But it’s a great day for the fourth!”

F
IRST
I
THOUGHT
the old man was kidding and then that he was crazy. I’ve seen many a farmer, these last few years, standing at the edge of his fields, scratching his head and wondering if he’d get enough out of them for the planting next spring. But not old Veillon. There were lines on his ancient face, but they were all lines of good humor. He stood there, looking out over his scratchy rice paddy, rubbed his hands and chortled, while the Louisiana sun beat down and cooked his shiny pate to the color of a well-done frankfurter.

You who say, “See America first,” let me chime in, will you? But, don’t mind if I am quiet while you chant of Yosemite and Manhattan, Pike’s Peak, Grand Canyon and the Golden Gate. When you have quite finished, I will start. I will tell you about a great tract of moccasins and mud, moss and miasma. Of a climate of unbelievable gentleness supporting a wilderness of incredible viciousness. They call it Louisiana; but Louisiana is not New Orleans and Baton Rouge and the wonderful new bridges and highways upstate. Louisiana is the Cajun who lives in the steaming back bayous, whose bicycle is a canoe and whose ice cream is Louisiana rice. By comparison and contrast, Louisiana is one of the most astonishing, most awe inspiring and most delightful states in the Union. Nowhere else would you find a person like old Veillon—or a reason for his being that way.

Day after day I looked out of my cabin door and saw the old man squatting on his heels, watching the tender green rice shoots poking their yielding heads out of the water. Rice to the Cajun is what wheat is to the western farmer. I did a great deal of poetical reflection about Veillon. Out there under the sun, close to the earth, nurturing his little wet acres, he was a symbol.

I went out to the paddy one day to speak to Veillon. He did not,
somehow, make me welcome. I squatted beside him and he waited for me to speak. He had all day.

“Good rice crop this year,” I remarked.

“Non,” he said nasally, in his unspellable argot. A little surprised, I pursued the subject, knowing from experience that if I did not we could sit there all afternoon like a couple of clods, for all of him.

“No?” I therefore returned. “Well, it looks good to me.”

For the first time he deemed it worthwhile to look me over. “W’at you know about rice?” he inquired, not at all pugnaciously.

“Why, not very much,” I said, fidgeting under his calm appraisal. “It just—well—looks good to me.” I discovered long ago that a Cajun takes fiendish pleasure in making a defenseless urbanite feel like a fool. He can do it, too. Wonderful people.

He shifted his cud of ’baccy—the “long black” that only a pepper-cured Louisiana gullet can bear—and at last offered a piece of information. “Ain’ goin’ tak’ no rice heah,” he said. “Come July time, ain’ go’ be no mo’ rice heah.” He chuckled.

I saw the swift disappearance of a symbol. “My gosh!” I expostulated. “That’s terrible. What are you laughing at? If you don’t get a good crop out of here, what are you going to eat when winter comes?”