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 – give or take 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 offbeat.
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 your’
“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.”
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 walleyed 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’vee 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 light-years 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 light-years 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.