The Big Front Yard and Other Stories (36 page)

He gasped at the thought of it, and riffled through them once again. He had been right the first time – all the denominations
were
the same. He did a bit of rapid calculation and it was strictly unbelievable. In credits, too – and a credit was convertible, roughly, into five Earth dollars.

He had seen credits before, but never actually held one in his hand. They were the currency of galactic trade and were widely used in interstellar banking circles, but seldom drifted down into general circulation. He held them in his hand and took a good look at them and they sure were beautiful.

The being must have immeasurably prized that blanket, he thought – to give him such a fabulous sum simply for taking care of it. Although, when you came to think of it, it wasn't necessarily so. Standards of wealth differed greatly from one planet to another and the fortune he held in his hands might have been little more than pocket money to the blanket's owner.

He was surprised to find that he wasn't too thrilled or happy, as he should have been. All he seemed to be able to think about was that he'd lost the blanket.

He thrust the bills into his pocket and walked across the street to the little park. Doc was awake and sitting on a bench underneath a tree. Hart sat down beside him.

“How you feeling, Doc?” he asked.

“I'm feeling all right, son,” the old man replied.

“Did you see an alien, like a spider wearing snowshoes?”

“There was one of them here just a while ago. It was here when I woke up. It wanted to know about that thing you'd found.”

“And you told it.”

“Sure. Why not? It said it was hunting for it. I figured you'd be glad to get it off your hands.”

The two of them sat silently for a while.

Then Hart asked, “Doc, what would you do if you had about a billion bucks?”

“Me,” said Doc, without the slightest hesitation, “I'd drink myself to death. Yes, sir, I'd drink myself to death real fancy, not on any of this rotgut they sell in this end of town.”

And that was the way it went, thought Hart. Doc would drink himself to death. Angela would go in for arty salons and the latest styles. Jasper more than likely would buy a place out in the mountains where he could be away from people.

And me, thought Hart, what will I do with a billion bucks – take or give a million?

Yesterday, last night, up until a couple of hours ago, he would have traded in his soul on the Classic yarner.

But now it seemed all sour and off-beat.

For there was a better way – the way of symbiosis, the teaming up of Man and an alien biologic concept.

He remembered the grove with its Gothic trees and its sense of foreverness and even yet, in the brightness of the sun, he shivered at the thought of the thing of beauty that had appeared among the trees.

That was, he told himself, a surely better way to write – to know the thing yourself and write it, to live the yarn and write it.

But he had lost the blanket and he didn't know where to find another. He didn't even know, if he found the place they came from, what he'd have to do to capture it.

An alien biologic concept, and yet not entirely alien, for it had first been thought of by an unknown man six centuries before. A man who had written as Jasper wrote even in this day, hunched above a table, scribbling out the words he put together in his brain. No yarner there – no tapes, no films, none of the other gadgets. But even so that unknown man had reached across the mists of time and space to touch another unknown mind and the life blanket had come alive as surely as if Man himself had made it.

And was that the true greatness of the human race – that they could imagine something and in time it would be so?

And if that were the greatness, could Man afford to delegate it to the turning shaft, the spinning wheel, the clever tubes, the innards of machines?

“You wouldn't happen,” asked Doc, “to have a dollar on you?”

“No,” said Hart, “I haven't got a dollar.”

“You're just like the rest of us,” said Doc. “You dream about the billions and you haven't got a dime.”

Jasper was a rebel and it wasn't worth it. All the rebels ever got were the bloody noses and the broken heads.

“I sure could use a buck,” said Doc.

It wasn't worth it to Jasper Hansen and it wasn't worth it to the others who must also lock their doors and polish up their never-used machines, so that when someone happened to drop in they'd see them standing there.

And it isn't worth it to me, Kemp Hart told himself. Not when by continuing to conform he could become famous almost automatically and virtually overnight.

He put his hand into his pocket and felt the roll of bills and knew that in just a little while he'd go uptown and buy that wonderful machine. There was plenty in the roll to buy it. With what there was in that roll he could buy a shipload of them.

“Yes, sir,” said Doc, harking back to his answer to the billion dollar question. “It would be a pleasant death. A pleasant death, indeed.”

IX

A gang of workmen were replacing the broken window when Hart arrived at the uptown showroom, but he scarcely more than glanced at them and walked straight inside.

The same salesman seemed to materialize from thin air.

But he wasn't happy. His expression was stern and a little pained.

“You've come back, no doubt,” he said, “to place an order for the Classic.”

“That is right,” said Hart and pulled the roll out of his pocket.

The salesman was well-trained. He stood wall-eyed for just a second, then recovered his composure with a speed which must have set a record.

“That's fine,” he said. “I knew you'd be back. I was telling some of the other men this morning that you would be coming in.”

I just bet you were, thought Hart.

“I suppose,” he said, “that if I paid you cash you would consider throwing in a rather generous supply of tapes and films and some of the other stuff I need.”

“Certainly, sir. I'll do the best I can for you.”

Hart peeled off twenty-five thousand and put the rest back in his pocket.

“Won't you have a seat,” the salesman urged. “I'll be right back. I'll arrange delivery and fix up the guarantee …”

“Take your time,” Hart told him, enjoying every minute of it.

He sat down in a chair and did a little planning.

First he'd have to move to better quarters and as soon as he had moved he'd have a dinner for the crowd and he'd rub Jasper's nose in it. He'd certainly do it – if Jasper wasn't tucked away in jail. He chuckled to himself, thinking of Jasper cringing in the basement of the Bright Star bar.

And this very afternoon he'd go over to Irving's office and pay him back the twenty and explain how it was he couldn't find the time to write the stuff he wanted.

Not that he wouldn't have liked to help Irving out. But it would be sacrilege to write the kind of junk that Irving wanted on a machine as talented as the Classic.

He heard footsteps coming hurriedly across the floor behind him and he stood up and turned around, smiling at the salesman.

But the salesman wasn't smiling. He was close to apoplexy.

“You!” said the salesman, choking just a little in his attempt to remain a gentleman. “That money! We've had enough from you, young man.”

“The money,” said Hart. “Why, it's galactic credits. It –”

“It's play money,” stormed the salesman. “Money for the kids. Play money from the Draconian federation. It says so, right on the face of it. In those big characters.”

He handed Hart the money.

“Get out of here!” the salesman shouted.

“But,” Hart pleaded, “are you sure? It can't be! You must be mistaken –”

“Our teller says it is. He has to be an expert on all sorts of money and he
says it is!”

“But you took it. You couldn't tell the difference.”

“I can't read Draconian. But the teller can.”

“That damn alien!” shouted Hart in sudden fury. “Just let me get my hands on him!”

The salesman softened just a little.

“You can't trust those aliens, sir. They are a sneaky lot.”

“Get out of my way,” Hart shouted. “I've got to find that alien!”

The man at the Alien bureau wasn't very helpful.

“We have no record,” he told Hart, “of the kind of creature you describe. You wouldn't have a photo of it, would you?”

“No,” said Hart. “I haven't got a photo.”

The man started piling up the catalogs he had been looking through.

“Of course,” he said, “the fact we have no record of him doesn't mean a thing. Admittedly, we can't keep track of all the various people. There are so many of them and new ones all the time. Perhaps you might inquire at the spaceport. Someone might have seen your alien.”

“I've already done that. Nothing. Nothing at all. He must have come in and possibly have gone back, but no one can remember him. Or maybe they won't tell.”

“The aliens hang together,” said the man. “They don't tell you nothing.”

He went on stacking up the books. It was near to quitting time and he was anxious to be off.

The man said, jokingly, “You might go out in space and try to hunt him up.”

“I might do just that,” said Hart and left, slamming the door behind him.

Joke: You might go out in space and find him. You might go out and track him across ten thousand lightyears and among a million stars. And when you found him you might say I want to have a blanket and he'd laugh right in your face.

But by the time you'd tracked him across ten thousand lightyears and among a million stars you'd no longer need a blanket, for you would have lived your stories and you would have seen your characters and you would have absorbed ten thousand backgrounds and a million atmospheres.

And you'd need no yarner and no tapes and films, for the words would be pulsing at your fingertips and pounding in your brain, shrieking to get out.

Joke: Toss a backwoods yokel a fistful of play money for something worth a million. The fool wouldn't know the difference until he tried to spend it. Be a big shot cheap and then go off in a corner by yourself and die laughing at how superior you are.

And who had it been that said humans were the only liars?

Joke: Wear a blanket around your shoulders and send your ships to Earth for the drivel that they write there – never knowing, never guessing that you have upon your back the very thing that's needed to break Earth's monopoly on fiction.

And that, said Hart, is a joke on you.

If I ever find you, I'll cram it down your throat.

X

Angela came up the stairs bearing an offering of peace. She set the kettle on the table. “Some soup,” she said. “I'm good at making soup.”

“Thanks, Angela,” he said. “I forgot to eat today.”

“Why the knapsack, Kemp? Going on a hike?”

“No, going on vacation.”

“But you didn't tell me.”

“I just now made up my mind to go. A little while ago.”

“I'm sorry I was so angry at you. It turned out all right. Green Shirt and his gang made their getaway.”

“So Jasper can come out.”

“He's already out. He's plenty sore at you.”

“That's all right with me. I'm no pal of his.”

She sat down in a chair and watched him pack.

“Where are you going, Kemp?”

“I'm hunting for an alien.”

“Here in the city? Kemp, you'll never find him.”

“Not in the city. I'll have to ask around.”

“But there aren't any aliens –”

“That's right.”

“You're a crazy fool,” she cried. “You can't do it, Kemp. I won't let you. How will you live? What will you do?”

“I'll write.”

“Write? You can't write! Not without a yarner.”

“I'll write by hand. Indecent as it may be, I'll write by hand because I'll know the things I write about. It'll be in my blood and at my fingertips. I'll have the smell of it and the color of it and the taste of it!”

She leaped from the chair and beat at his chest with tiny fists.

“It's filthy! It's uncivilized! It's –”

“That's the way they wrote before. All the millions of stories, all the great ideas, all the phrases that you love to quote. And that is the way it should have stayed. This is a dead-end street we're on.”

“You'll come back,” she said. “You'll find that you are wrong and you'll come back.”

He shook his head at her. “Not until I find my alien.”

“It isn't any alien you are after. It is something else. I can see it in you.”

She whirled around and raced out the door and down the stairs.

He went back to his packing and when he had finished, he sat down and ate the soup. Angela, he thought, was right. She was good at making soup.

And she was right in another thing as well. It was no alien he was seeking.

For he didn't need an alien. And he didn't need a blanket and he didn't need a yarner.

He took the kettle to the sink and washed it beneath the tap and dried it carefully. Then he set it in the center of the table where Angela, when she came, would be sure to see it.

Then he took up the knapsack and started slowly down the stairs.

He had reached the street when he heard the cry behind him. It was Angela and she was running after him. He stopped and waited for her.

“I'm going with you, Kemp.”

“You don't know what you're saying. It'll be rough and hard. Strange lands and alien people. And we haven't any money.”

“Yes, we have. We have that fifty. The one I tried to loan you. It's all I have and it won't go far, I know. But we have it.”

“You're looking for no alien.”