Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (52 page)

Dad scrambled to his feet. "Better let me run you down in the pickup. I've
gotta go over to Jesperson's anyway."

"Okay," I said. "Won't be long till I can throw these things away." So we
piled in the pickup and headed for the East Pasture.

We were ambushed at the pump corner by the kids and were killed variously
by P-38s, atomic bombs, ack-ack, and the Lone Ranger's six-guns. Then we
lowered our hands which had been raised all this time, and Dad reached out
and collared the nearest nephew.

"Come along, Punkin-Yaller. That blasted Holstein has busted out again.
You get her out of the alfalfa and see if you can find where she got
through this time."

"Aw, gee whiz!" The kid—and of course it was Thaddeus—climbed
into the back of the pickup. "That dern cow."

We started up with a jerk, and I turned half around in the seat to look at
Thaddeus.

"Remember your little red wagon?" I yelled over the clatter.

"Red wagon?" Thaddeus yelled back. His face lighted. "Red wagon?"

I could tell he had remembered, and then, as plainly as the drawing of a
shade, his eyes went shadowy and he yelled, "Yeah, kinda." And turned
around to wave violently at the unnoticing kids behind us.

So, I thought, he is outgrowing it. Then spent the rest of the short drive
trying to figure just what it was he was outgrowing.

Dad dumped Thaddeus out at the alfalfa field and took me on across the
canal and let me out by the pasture gate.

"I'll be back in about an hour if you want to wait. Might as well ride
home."

"I might start back afoot," I said. "It'd feel good to stretch my legs
again."

"I'll keep a look out for you on my way back." And he rattled away in the
ever-present cloud of dust.

I had trouble managing the gate. It's one of those wire affairs that open
by slipping a loop off the end post and lifting the bottom of it out of
another loop. This one was taut and hard to handle. I just got it opened
when Clyde turned the far corner and started back toward me, the plow
behind the tractor curling up red-brown ribbons in its wake. It was the
last go-round to complete the field.

I yelled, "Hi!" and waved a crutch at him.

He yelled, "Hi!" back at me. What came next was too fast and too far away
for me to be sure what actually happened. All I remember was a snort and
roar, and the tractor bucked and bowed. There was a short yell from Clyde
and the shriek of wires pulling loose from a fence post followed by a
choking, smothering silence.

Next thing I knew, I was panting halfway to the tractor, my crutches
sinking exasperatingly into the soft, plowed earth. I nightmare year later
I knelt by the stalled tractor and called, "Hey, Clyde!"

Clyde looked up at me, a half-grin, half-grimace on his muddy face.

"Hi. Get this thing off me, will you. I need that leg." Then his eyes
turned up white and he passed out.

The tractor had toppled him from the seat and then run over top of him,
turning into the fence and coming to rest with one huge wheel half burying
his leg in the soft dirt and pinning him against a fence post. The far
wheel was on the edge of the irrigation ditch that bordered the field just
beyond the fence. The huge bulk of the machine was balanced on the raw
edge of nothing, and it looked like a breath would send it on over—then
God have mercy on Clyde. It didn't help much to notice that the red-brown
dirt was steadily becoming redder around the imprisoned leg.

I knelt there paralyzed with panic. There was nothing I could do. I didn't
dare to try to start the tractor. If I touched it, it might go over. Dad
was gone for an hour. I couldn't make it by foot to the house in time.

Then all at once out of nowhere I heard a startled "Gee whiz!" and there
was Thaddeus standing goggle-eyed on the ditch bank.

Something exploded with a flash of light inside my head, and I whispered
to myself, Now take it easy. Don't scare the kid, don't startle him.…

"Gee whiz!" said Thaddeus again. "What happened?"

I took a deep breath. "Old Tractor ran over Uncle Clyde. Make it get off."

Thaddeus didn't seem to hear me. He was intent on taking in the whole
shebang.

"Thaddeus," I said, "make Tractor get off."

Thaddeus looked at me with that blind, unseeing stare he used to have. I
prayed silently,
Don't let him be too old. O God, don't let him be too
old.
And Thaddeus jumped across the ditch. He climbed gingerly through
the barbwire fence and squatted down by the tractor, his hands caught
between his chest and knees. He bent his head forward, and I stared
urgently at the soft, vulnerable nape of his neck. Then he turned his
blind eyes to me again.

"Tractor doesn't want to."

I felt a yell ball up in my throat, but I caught it in time.
Don't
scare the kid,
I thought.
Don't scare him.

"Make Tractor get off anyway," I said as matter-of-factly as I could
manage. "He's hurting Uncle Clyde."

Thaddeus turned and looked at Clyde.

"He isn't hollering."

"He can't. He's unconscious." Sweat was making my palms slippery.

"Oh." Thaddeus examined Clyde's quiet face curiously. "I never saw anybody
unconscious before."

"Thaddeus." My voice was sharp. "Make—Tractor—get—off."

Maybe I talked too loud. Maybe I used the wrong words, but Thaddeus looked
up at me and I saw the shutters close in his eyes. They looked up at me,
blue and shallow and bright.

"You mean start the tractor?" His voice was brisk as he stood up. "Gee
whiz! Grampa told us kids to leave the tractor alone. It's dangerous for
kids. I don't know whether I know how—"

"That's not what I meant," I snapped, my voice whetted on the edge of my
despair. "Make it get off Uncle Clyde. He's dying."

"But I can't! You can't just make a tractor do something. You gotta run
it." His face was twisting with approaching tears.

"You could if you wanted to," I argued, knowing how useless it was. "Uncle
Clyde will die if you don't."

"But I can't! I don't know how! Honest I don't." Thaddeus scrubbed one
bare foot in the plowed dirt, sniffing miserably.

I knelt beside Clyde and slipped my hand inside his dirt-smeared shirt. I
pulled my hand out and rubbed the stained palm against my thigh. "Never
mind," I said bluntly, "it doesn't matter now. He's dead."

Thaddeus started to bawl, not from grief but bewilderment. He knew I was
put out with him, and he didn't know why. He crooked his arm over his eyes
and leaned against a fence post, sobbing noisily. I shifted myself over in
the dark furrow until my shadow sheltered Clyde's quiet face from the hot
afternoon sun. I clasped my hands palm to palm between my knees and waited
for Dad.

I knew as well as anything that
once
Thaddeus could have helped.
Why couldn't he then, when the need was so urgent? Well, maybe he really
had
outgrown his strangeness. Or it might be that he actually
couldn't do anything, just because Clyde and I were grown-ups. Maybe if it
had been another kid—

Sometimes my mind gets cold trying to figure it out. Especially when I get
the answer that kids and grown-ups live in two worlds so alien and
separate that the gap can't be bridged even to save a life. Whatever the
answer is—I still don't like kids.

The End

© 1951 by Zenna Henderson. Reprinted by permission of the author's
estate and the author's agent, The Virginia Kidd Agency. First published
in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, December 1951.

William Tenn

When Miss Kerstenberg, his secretary, informed Sydney Blake over the
interoffice communicator that two gentlemen had just entered and expressed
a desire to rent space in the building, Blake's "Well, show them in,
Esther, show them right in" was bland enough to have loosened the cap on a
jar of Vaseline. It had been only two days since Wellington Jimm &
Sons, Inc., Real Estate, had appointed him resident agent in the McGowan
Building, and the prospect of unloading an office or two in Old Unrentable
this early in his assignment was mightily pleasing.

Once, however, he had seen the tenants-to-be, he felt much less certain.
About practically everything.

They were exactly alike in every respect but one: size. The first was
tall, very,
very
tall—close to seven feet, Blake estimated as
he rose to welcome them. The man was bent in two places: forward at the
hips and backward at the shoulders, giving the impression of being hinged
instead of jointed. Behind him rolled a tiny button of a man, a midget's
midget, but except for that the tall man's twin. They both wore starched
white shirts and black hats, black coats, black ties, black suits, black
socks, and shoes of such incredible blackness as almost to drown the light
waves that blundered into them.

They took seats and smiled at Blake—in unison.

"Uh, Miss Kerstenberg," he said to his secretary, who still stood in the
doorway.

"Yes, Mr. Blake?" she asked briskly.

"Uh, nothing, Miss Kerstenberg. Nothing at all." Regretfully, he watched
her shut the door and heard her swivel chair squeak as she went back to
work in the outer office. It was distinctly unfortunate that, not being
telepathic, she had been unable to receive his urgent thought message to
stay and lend some useful moral support.

Oh, well. You couldn't expect Dun & Bradstreet's best to be renting
offices in the McGowan. He sat down and offered them cigarettes from his
brand-new humidor. They declined.

"We would like," the tall man said in a voice composed of many heavy
breaths, "to rent a floor in your building."

"The thirteenth floor," said the tiny man in exactly the same voice.

Sydney Blake lit a cigarette and drew on it carefully. A whole floor! You
certainly couldn't judge by appearances.

"I'm sorry," he told them. "You can't have the thirteenth floor. But—"

"Why not?" the tall man breathed. He looked angry.

"Chiefly because there isn't any thirteenth floor. Many buildings don't
have one. Since tenants consider them unlucky, we call the floor above the
twelfth the fourteenth. If you gentlemen will look at our directory, you
will see that there are no offices listed beginning with the number
thirteen. However, if you're interested in that much space, I believe we
can accommodate you on the sixth—"

"It seems to me," the tall man said very mournfully, "that if someone
wants to rent a
particular
floor, the least a renting agent can do
is let him have it."

"The very least," the tiny man agreed. "Especially since no complicated
mathematical questions are being asked in the first place."

Black held on to his temper with difficulty and let out a friendly chuckle
instead. "I would be very happy to rent the thirteenth floor to you—if
we had one. But I can't very well rent something to you that doesn't
exist, now can I?" He held his hands out, palms up, and gave them another
we-are-three-intelligent-gentlemen-who-are-quite-close-in-spirit chuckle.
"The twelfth and fourteenth floors both have very little unoccupied space,
I am happy to say. But I'm certain that another part of the McGowan
Building will do you very nicely." Abruptly he remembered that protocol
had almost been violated. "
My
name," he told them, touching the
desk plate lightly with a manicured forefinger, "is Sydney Blake. And who,
might I—"

"Tohu and Bohu," the tall man said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Tohu, I said, and Bohu. I'm Tohu." He pointed at his minuscule twin.
"He's Bohu. Or, as a matter of occasional fact, vice versa."

Sydney Blake considered that until some ash broke off his cigarette and
splattered grayly on his well-pressed pants. Foreigners. He should have
known from their olive skins and slight, unfamiliar accents. Not that it
made any difference in the McGowan. Or in any building managed by
Wellington Jimm & Sons, Inc., Real Estate. But he couldn't help
wondering where in the world people had such names and such disparate
sizes.

"Very well, Mr. Tohu. And—er, Mr. Bohu. Now, the problem as I see it—"

"There really isn't any problem," the tall man told him, slowly,
emphatically, reasonably, "except for the fuss you keep kicking up, young
man. You have a building with floors from one to twenty-four. We want to
rent the thirteenth, which is apparently vacant. Now, if you were as
businesslike as you should be and rented this floor to us without further
argument—"

"Or logical hairsplitting," the tiny man inserted.

"—why then, we could be happy, your employers would be happy, and
you
should
be happy. It's really a very simple transaction and one
which a man in your position should be able to manage with ease."

"How the hell can I—" Blake began yelling before he remembered
Professor Scoggins in Advanced Realty Seminar II. ("Remember, gentlemen, a
lost temper means a lost tenant. If the retailer's customer is always
right, the realtor's client is never wrong. Somehow, somewhere, you must
find a cure for their little commercial illnesses, no matter how
imaginary. The realtor must take his professional place beside the doctor,
the dentist, and the pharmacist and make his motto, like theirs,
unselfish
service, always available, forever dependable.
") Blake bent his head
to get a renewed grip on professional responsibility before going on.

"Look here," he said at last, with a smile he desperately hoped was
winning. "I'll put it in the terms that you just did. You, for reasons
best known to yourselves, want to rent a thirteenth floor. This building,
for reasons best known to its architect—who, I am certain, was a
foolish, eccentric man whom none of
us
would respect
at all—
this
building has no thirteenth floor. Therefore, I can't rent it to you. Now,
superficially, I'll admit, this might seem like a difficulty, it might
seem as if you can't get exactly what you want here in the McGowan
Building. But what happens if we examine the situation carefully? First of
all, we find that there are several other truly
magnificent
floors—"