Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley (49 page)

But at this moment he encountered the final, shattering obstacle that wrote
finis
to all his dreams.

In the middle of 42nd Street, extending without visible limit to the north and south, there was a wall. It was a cyclopean structure, and it had sprung up overnight in the quasi-sentient manner of New York's architecture. This, Baxter learned, was one side of a gigantic new upper-middle-income housing project. During its construction, all traffic for Times Square was being rerouted via the Queens-Battery Tunnel and the East 37th Street Shunpike.

Steve estimated that the new route would take him no less than three weeks and would lead him through the uncharted Garment District. His race, he realized, was over.

Courage, tenacity, and righteousness had failed; and, were he not a religious man, Steve Baxter might have contemplated suicide. With undisguised bitterness, he turned on his little transistor radio and listened to the latest reports.

Four contestants had already reached the Land Office. Five others were within a few hundred yards of the goal, coming in by the open southern approaches. And, to compound Steve's misery he heard that Freihoff St. John, having received a plenary pardon from the governor, was on his way once more, approaching Times Square from the east.

At this blackest of all possible moments, Steve felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned and saw that Flame had come to him again. Although the spirited girl had sworn to have nothing further to do with him, she had relented. This mild, even-tempered man meant more to her than pride; more, perhaps, than life itself.

What to do about the wall? A simple matter for the daughter of a bandit chief! If one could not go around it or through it or under it, why, one must then go over it! And to this purpose she had brought ropes, boots, pitons, crampons, hammers, axes—a full complement of climbing equipment. She was determined that Baxter should have one final chance at his heart's desire—and that Flame O'Rourke Steinmetz should accompany him, and not accept no for an answer!

They climbed, side by side, up the building's glass-smooth expanse. There were countless dangers—birds, aircraft, snipers, wise guys—all the risks of the unpredictable city. And, far below, old Pablo Steinmetz watched, his face like corrugated granite.

After an eternity of peril, they reached the top and started down the other side—

And Flame slipped!

In horror Baxter watched the slender girl fall to her doom in Times Square, to die impaled upon the needle-sharp point of a car's aerial. Baxter scrambled down and knelt beside her, almost out of his head with grief.

And, on the other side of the wall, old Pablo sensed that something irrevocable had happened. He shuddered, his mouth writhed in anticipation of grief, and he reached blindly for a bottle.

Strong hands lifted Baxter to his feet. Uncomprehendingly, he looked up into the kindly red face of the Federal land clerk.

It was difficult for him to realize that he had completed the race. With curiously deadened emotions, he heard how St. John's pushiness and hauteur had caused a riot in the explosive Burmese Quarter of East 42nd Street, and how St. John had been forced to claim sanctuary in the labyrinthine ruins of the Public Library, from which refuge he still had not been able to extricate himself.

But it was not in Steve Baxter's nature to gloat, even when gloating was the only conceivable response. All that mattered to him was that he had won, had reached the Land Office in time to claim the last remaining acre of land.

All it had cost was effort and pain, and the life of a young bandit girl.

Time was merciful; and some weeks later, Steve Baxter was not thinking of the tragic events of the race. A Government jet had transported him and his family to the town of Cormorant in the Sierra Nevada mountains. From Cormorant, a helicopter brought them to their prize. A leathery Land Office marshal was on hand to greet them and to point out their new freehold.

Their land lay before them, sketchily fenced, on an almost vertical mountainside. Surrounding it were other similarly fenced acres, stretching as far as the eye could see. The land had recently been strip-mined; it existed now as a series of gigantic raw slashes across a dusty, dun-colored earth. Not a tree or a blade of grass could be seen. There was a house, as promised; more precisely, there was a shack. It looked as if it might last until the next hard rain.

For a few minutes the Baxters stared in silence. Then Adele said, “Oh, Steve.”

Steve said, “I know.”

“It's our new land,” Adele said.

Steve nodded. “It's not very—pretty,” he said hesitantly.

“Pretty? What do we care about that?” Adele declared. “It's
ours
, Steve, and there's a whole acre of it! We can
grow
things here, Steve!”

“Well, maybe not at first—”

“I know, I know! But we'll put this land back into shape, and then we'll plant it and harvest it! We'll
live
here, Steve! Won't we?”

Steve Baxter was silent, gazing over his dearly won land. His children—Tommy and blonde little Amelia—were playing with a clod of earth. The US marshal cleared his throat and said, “You can still change your mind, you know.”

“What?” Steve asked.

“You can still change your mind, go back to your apartment in the city. I mean, some folks think it's sorta crude out here, sorta not what they was expecting.”

“Oh, Steve, no!” his wife moaned.

“No, Daddy, no!” his children cried.

“Go
back
?” Baxter asked. “I wasn't thinking of going
back
. I was just
looking
at it all. Mister, I never saw so much land all in one place in my whole life!”

“I know,” the marshal said softly. “I been twenty years out here and the sight of it still gets to me.”

Baxter and his wife looked at each other ecstatically. The marshal rubbed his nose and said, “Well, I reckon you folks won't be needin' me no more.” He exited unobtrusively.

Steve and Adele gazed out over their land. Then Adele said, “Oh, Steve, Steve! It's all ours! And you won it for us—you did it all by yourself!”

Baxter's mouth tightened. He said very quietly, “No, honey, I didn't do it all alone. I had some help.”

“Who, Steve? Who helped you?”

“Some day I'll tell you about it,” Baxter said. “But right now—let's go into our house.”

Hand in hand they entered the shack. Behind them, the sun was setting in the opaque Los Angeles smog. It was as happy an ending as could be found in the latter half of the twenty-first century.

I
T WAS
a middle-class apartment in Forest Hills with all the standard stuff: slash-pine couch by Lady Yogina, strobe reading light over a big Uneasy Chair designed by Sri Somethingorother, bounce-sound projector playing
Blood-Stream Patterns
by Drs. Molidoff and Yuli. There was also the usual microbiotic-food console, set now at Fat Black Andy's Soul-Food Composition Number Three—hog's jowls and black-eyed peas. And there was a Murphy Bed of Nails, the Beautyrest Expert Ascetic model with 2000 chrome-plated self-sharpening number-four nails. In a sentence, the whole place was furnished in a pathetic attempt at last year's
moderne-spirituel
fashion.

Inside this apartment, all alone and aching of
anomie
, was a semi-young housewife, Melisande Durr, who had just stepped out of the voluptuarium, the largest room in the home, with its king-size commode and its sadly ironic bronze lingam and yoni on the wall.

She was a
pretty
girl, with really good legs, sweet hips, pretty stand-up breasts, long soft shiny hair, delicate little face. Nice, very nice. A girl that any man would like to lock onto. Once. Maybe even twice. But definitely not as a regular thing.

Why not? Well, to give a recent example:

“Hey, Sandy, honey, was anything wrong?”

“No, Frank, it was marvelous; what made you think anything was wrong?”

“Well, I guess it was the way you were staring up with a funny look on your face, almost frowning....”

“Was I really? Oh, yes, I remember; I was trying to decide whether to buy one of those cute trompe-l'oeil things that they just got in at Saks, to put on the ceiling.”

“You were thinking about
that
?
Then?
”

“Oh, Frank, you mustn't worry, it was
great
, Frank,
you
were great, I loved it, and I really mean that.”

Frank was Melisande's husband. He plays no part in this story and very little part in her life.

So there she was, standing in her OK apartment, all beautiful outside and unborn inside, a lovely potential who had never been potentiated, a genuine US untouchable ... when the doorbell rang.

Melisande looked startled, then uncertain. She waited. The doorbell rang again. She thought:
Someone must have the wrong apartment.

Nevertheless, she walked over, set the Door-Gard Entrance Obliterator to demolish any rapist or burglar or wise guy who might try to push his way in, then opened the door a crack and asked. “Who is there, please?”

A man's voice replied, “Acme Delivery Service, got a mumble here for Missus Mumble-mumble.”

“I can't understand, you'll have to speak up.”

“Acme Delivery, got a mumble for mumble-mumble and I can't stand here all mumble.”

“I cannot understand you!”

“I SAID I GOT A PACKAGE HERE FOR MISSUS MELISANDE DURR, DAMN IT!”

She opened the door all the way. Outside, there was a deliveryman with a big crate, almost as big as he was, say, five feet nine inches tall. It had her name and address on it. She signed for it, as the deliveryman pushed it inside the door and left, still mumbling. Melisande stood in her living room and looked at the crate.

She thought: Who would send me a gift out of the blue for no reason at all? Not Frank, not Harry, not Aunt Emmie or Ellie, not Mom, not Dad (of course not, silly, he's five years dead, poor son of a bitch) or anyone I can think of. But maybe it's not a gift; it could be a mean hoax, or a bomb intended for somebody else and sent wrong (or meant for me and sent
right
), or just a simple mistake.

She read the various labels on the outside of the crate. The article had been sent from Stern's department store. Melisande bent down and pulled out the cotter pin (cracking the tip of a fingernail) that immobilized the Saftee-Lok, removed that, and pushed the lever to OPEN.

The crate blossomed like a flower, opening into twelve equal segments, each of which began to fold back on itself.

“Wow,” Melisande said.

The crate opened to its fullest extent and the folded segments curled inward and consumed themselves, leaving a double handful of cold fine gray ash.

“They still haven't licked that ash problem,” Melisande muttered. “However.”

She looked with curiosity at the object that had resided within the crate. At first glance, it was a cylinder of metal painted orange and red. A machine? Yes, definitely a machine; air vents in the base for its motor, four rubber-clad wheels, and various attachments—longitudinal extensors, prehensile extractors, all sorts of things. And there were connecting points to allow a variety of mixed-function operations, and a standard house-type plug at the end of a springloaded reel-fed power line, with a plaque beneath it that read: PLUG INTO ANY 110–115-VOLT WALL OUTLET.

Melisande's face tightened in anger. “It's a goddamned
vacuum cleaner
! For God's sake, I've already
got
a vacuum cleaner. Who in the hell would send me another?”

She paced up and down the room, bright legs flashing, tension evident in her heart-shaped face. “I mean,” she said, “I was expecting that after all my
expecting
, I'd get something pretty and nice, or at least
fun
, maybe even interesting. Like—oh God I don't even know like what unless maybe an orange-and-red pinball machine, a big one, big enough so I could get inside all curled up and someone would start the game and I'd go bumping along all the bumpers while the lights flashed and bells rang and I'd bump a thousand goddamned bumpers and when I finally rolled down to the end I'd God yes that pinball machine would register a TOP MILLION MILLION and that's what I'd really like!”

So—the entire unspeakable fantasy was out in the open at last. And how bleak and remote it felt, yet still shameful and desirable.

“But anyhow,” she said, canceling the previous image and folding, spindling, and mutilating it for good measure, “anyhow, what I get is a lousy goddamned vacuum cleaner when I already have one less than three years old so who needs this one and who sent me the damned thing anyway and why?”

She looked to see if there was a card. No card. Not a clue. And then she thought, Sandy, you are really a goop! Of course, there's no card; the machine has doubtless been programmed to recite some message or other.

She was interested now, in a mild, something-to-do kind of way. She unreeled the power line and plugged it into a wall outlet.

Click! A green light flashed on, a blue light glittered ALL SYSTEMS GO, a motor purred, hidden servos made tapping noises; and then the mechanopathic regulator registered BALANCE and a gentle pink light beamed a steady ALL MODES READY.

“All right,” Melisande said. “Who sent you?”

Snap crackle pop. Experimental rumble from the thoracic voice box. Then the voice: “I am Rom, number 121376 of GE's new Q-series Home-rizers. The following is a paid commercial announcement: Ahem, General Electric is proud to present the latest and most triumphant development of our Total Finger-Tip Control of Every Aspect of the Home for Better Living concept. I, Rom, am the latest and finest model in the GE omni-cleaner series. I am the Home-rizer Extraordinary, factory programmed like all Home-rizers for fast, unobtrusive multitotalfunction, but additionally, I am designed for easy, instant reprogramming to suit your home's individual needs. My abilities are many. I—”