“This is it!” Porter said. “The Principle of Sufficient Irritation will go down in –”
“Nonsense,” another said. “It’s absurd. I want to see this hat, or shoe, or whatever it is.”
“You’ll see it,” Porter said. “Rupert knows what he’s doing. You can count on that.”
They fell into controversy, quoting authorities and citing dates and places. More cars were arriving, and some of them were press cars.
“Oh, God,” I said. “This will be the end of him.”
“Well, he’ll just have to tell them what happened,” Joan said. “About its getting away.”
“We’re going to, not him. We let the thing go.”
“I had nothing to do with it. I never liked that pair from the start. Don’t you remember, I wanted you to get those ox-blood ones?”
I ignored her. More and more old men were assembling on the lawn, standing around talking and discussing. All at once I saw Labyrinth’s little blue Ford pull up, and my heart sank. He had come, he was here, and in a minute we would have to tell him.
“I can’t face him,” I said to Joan. “Let’s slip out the back way.”
At the sight of Doc Labyrinth all the scientists began streaming out of the house, surrounding him in a circle. Joan and I looked at each other. The house was deserted, except for the two of us. I closed the front door. Sounds of talk filtered through the windows; Labyrinth was expounding the Principle of Sufficient Irritation. In a moment he would come inside and demand the shoe.
“Well, it was his own fault for leaving it,” Joan said. She picked up a magazine and thumbed through it.
Doc Labyrinth waved at me through the window. His old face was wreathed with smiles. I waved back halfheartedly. After a while I sat down beside Joan.
Time passed. I stared down at the floor. What was there to do? Nothing but wait, wait for the Doc to come triumphantly into the house, surrounded by scientists, learned men, reporters, historians, demanding the proof of his theory, the shoe. On my old shoe rested Labyrinth’s whole life, the proof of his Principle, of the Animator, of everything.
And the damn shoe was gone, outside someplace!
“It won’t be long now,” I said.
We waited, without speaking. After a time I noticed a peculiar thing. The talk outside had died away. I listened, but I heard nothing.
“Well?” I said. “Why don’t they come in?”
The silence continued. What was going on? I stood up and went to the front door. I opened it and looked out.
“What’s the matter?” Joan said. “Can you see?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t get it.” They were all standing silently, staring down at something, none of them speaking. I was puzzled. I could not make sense out of it. “What’s happening?” I said.
“Let’s go and look.” Joan and I went slowly down the steps, onto the lawn. We pushed through the row of old men and made our way to the front.
“Good Lord,” I said. “Good Lord.”
Crossing the lawn was a strange little procession, making its way through the grass. Two shoes, my old brown shoe, and just ahead of it, leading the way, another shoe, a tiny white high-heeled slipper. I stared at it. I had seen it someplace before.
“That’s mine!” Joan cried. Everyone looked at her. “That belongs to me! My party shoes –”
“Not any more,” Labyrinth said. His old face was pale with emotion. “It is beyond us all, forever.”
“Amazing,” one of the learned men said. “Look at them. Observe the female. Look at what she is doing.”
The little white shoe was keeping carefully ahead of my old shoe, a few inches away, leading him coyly on. As my old shoe approached she backed away, moving in a half circle. The two shoes stopped for a moment, regarding each other. Then, all at once, my old shoe began to hop up and down, first on his heel, then on his toe. Solemnly, with great dignity, the shoe danced around her, until he reached his starting point.
The little white shoe hopped once, and then she began again to move away, slowly, hesitantly, letting my shoe almost catch up to her before she went on.
“This implies a developed sense of mores,” an old gentleman said. “Perhaps even a racial unconscious. The shoes are following a rigid pattern of ritual, probably laid down centuries –”
“Labyrinth, what does this mean?” Porter said. “Explain it to us.”
“So that’s what it was,” I murmured. “While we were away the shoe got her out of the closet and used the Animator on her. I knew something was watching me, that night. She was still in the house.”
“That’s what he turned on the Animator for,” Joan said. She sniffed. “I’m not sure I think much of it.”
The two shoes had almost reached the hedge, the white slipper still just beyond the laces of the brown shoe. Labyrinth moved toward them.
“So, gentlemen, you can see that I did not exaggerate. This is the greatest moment in science, the creation of a new race. Perhaps, when mankind has fallen into ruin, society destroyed, this new life form –”
He started to reach for the shoes, but at that moment the lady shoe disappeared into the hedge, backing into the obscurity of the foliage. With one bound the brown shoe popped in after her. There was a rustling, then silence.
“I’m going indoors,” Joan said, walking away.
“Gentlemen,” Labyrinth said, his face a little red, “this is incredible. We are witnessing one of the most profound and far-reaching moments of science.”
“Well, almost witnessing,” I said.
The Builder
“E.J. Elwood!” Liz said anxiously. “You aren’t listening to anything we’re saying. And you’re not eating a bit. What in the world is the matter with you? Sometimes I just can’t understand you.”
For a long time there was no response. Ernest Elwood continued to stare past them, staring out the window at the semi-darkness beyond, as if hearing something they did not hear. At last he sighed, drawing himself up in his chair, almost as if he were going to say something. But then his elbow knocked against his coffee cup and he turned instead to steady the cup, wiping spilled brown coffee from its side.
“Sorry,” he murmured. “What were you saying?”
“Eat, dear,” his wife said. She glanced at the two boys as she spoke to see if they had stopped eating also. “You know, I go to a great deal of trouble to fix your food.” Bob, the older boy, was going right ahead, cutting his liver and bacon carefully into bits. But sure enough, little Toddy had put down his knife and fork as soon as E.J. had, and now he, too, was sitting silently, staring down at his plate.
“See?” Liz said. “You’re not setting a very good example for the boys. Eat up your food. It’s getting cold. You don’t want to eat cold liver, do you? There’s nothing worse than liver when it gets cold and the fat all over the bacon hardens. It’s harder to digest cold fat than anything else in the world. Especially lamb fat. They say a lot of people can’t eat lamb fat at all. Dear, please eat.”
Elwood nodded. He lifted his fork and spooned up some peas and potatoes, carrying them to his mouth. Little Toddy did the same, gravely and seriously, a small edition of his father.
“Say,” Bob said. “We had an atomic bomb drill at school today. We lay under the desks.”
“Is that right?” Liz said.
“But Mr. Pearson our science teacher says that if they drop a bomb on us the whole town’ll be demolished, so I can’t see what good getting under the desk will do. I think they ought to realize what advances science has made. There are bombs now that’ll destroy miles, leaving nothing standing.”
“You sure know a lot,” Toddy muttered.
“Oh, shut up.”
“Boys,” Liz said.
“It’s true,” Bob said earnestly. “A fellow I know is in the Marine Corps Reserve and he says they have new weapons that will destroy wheat crops and poison water supplies. It’s some kind of crystals.”
“Heavens,” Liz said.
“They didn’t have things like that in the last war. Atomic development came almost at the end without there really being an opportunity to make use of it on a full scale.” Bob turned to his father. “Dad, isn’t that true? I’ll bet when you were in the Army you didn’t have any of the fully atomic –”
Elwood threw down his fork. He pushed his chair back and stood up. Liz stared up in astonishment at him, her cup half raised. Bob’s mouth hung open, his sentence unfinished. Little Toddy said nothing.
“Dear, what’s the matter?” Liz said.
“I’ll see you later.”
They gazed after him in amazement as he walked away from the table, out of the dining-room. They heard him go into the kitchen and pull open the back door. A moment later the back door slammed behind him.