The detail in the furnishings of Room 223 that interested young Malachi so was a photograph of himself. It was a photograph of himself at the age of three – a photograph of a sweet, pleasant, game little boy on an ocean beach.
It was thumbtacked to the wall.
It was the only picture in the room.
Old Noel saw young Malachi looking at the picture, and was confused and embarrassed by the whole thing about fathers and sons. He ransacked his mind for something good to. say, and found almost nothing.
“My father gave me only two pieces of advice,” he said, “and only one of them has stood the test of time. They were: ‘Don’t touch your principal,’ and ‘Keep the liquor bottle out of the bedroom.’” His embarrassment and confusion were now too great to be borne. “Good-by,” he said abruptly.
“Good-by?” said young Malachi, startled. He moved toward the door.
“Keep the liquor bottle out of the bedroom,” said the old man, and he turned his back.
“Yes, sir, I will,” said young Malachi. “Good-by, sir,” he said, and he left.
That was the first and last time that Malachi Constant ever saw his father.
His father lived for five more years, and the Bible never played him false.
Noel Constant died just as he reached the end of this sentence: “And God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.”
His last investment was in Sonnyboy Oil at 17 1/4.
The son took over where the father had left off, though Malachi Constant did not move into Room 223 in the Wilburhampton.
And, for five years, the luck of the son was as sensational as the luck of the father had been.
And now, suddenly, Magnum Opus lay in ruins.
There in his office, with the floating furniture and the grass carpet, Malachi Constant still could not believe that his luck had run out.
“Nothing left?” he said faintly. He managed to smile at Ransom K. Fern. “Come on, guy – I mean there’s got to be something left.”
“I thought so, too, at ten o’clock this morning,” said Fern. “I was congratulating myself on having buttressed Magnum Opus against any conceivable blow. We were weathering the depression quite nicely – yes, and your mistakes, too.
“And then, at ten-fifteen, I was visited by a lawyer who was apparently at your party last night. You, apparently, were giving away oil wells last night, and the lawyer was thoughtful enough to draw up documents which, if signed by you, would be binding. They were signed by you. You gave away five hundred and thirty-one producing oil wells last night, which wiped out Fandango Petroleum.
“At eleven,” said Fern, “the President of the United States announced that Galactic Spacecraft, which we had sold, was receiving a three-billion contract for the New Age of Space.
“At eleven-thirty,” said Fern, “I was given a copy of The Journal of the American Medical Association, which was marked by our public relations director, ‘FYI.’ These three letters, as you would know if you had ever spent any time in your office, mean ‘for your information.’ I turned to the page referred to, and learned, for my information, that MoonMist Cigarettes were not a cause but the principal cause of sterility in both sexes wherever MoonMist cigarettes were sold. This fact was discovered not by human beings but by a computing machine. Whenever data about cigarette smoking was fed into it, the machine grew tremendously excited, and no one could figure out why. The machine was obviously trying to tell its operators something. It did everything it could to express itself, and finally managed to get its operators to ask it the right questions.
“The right questions had to do with the relationship of MoonMist Cigarettes to human reproduction. The relationship was this:
“People who smoked MoonMist Cigarettes couldn’t have children, even if they wanted them,” said Fern.
“Doubtless,” said Fern, “there are gigolos and party girls and New Yorkers who are grateful for this relief from biology. In the opinion of the Legal Department of Magnum Opus, before that department was liquidated, however, there are several million persons who can sue successfully – on the grounds that MoonMist Cigarettes did them out of something rather valuable. Pleasure in depth, indeed.
“There are approximately ten million ex-smokers of MoonMist in this country,” said Fern, “all sterile. If one in ten sues you for damages beyond price, sues you for the modest sum of five thousand dollars – the bill will be five billion dollars, excluding legal fees. And you haven’t got five billion dollars. Since the stock-market crash and your acquisition of such properties as American Levitation, you aren’t worth even five hundred million.
“MoonMist Tobacco,” said Fern, “that’s you. Magnum Opus,” said Fern, “that’s you, too. All the things you are are going to be sued and sued successfully. And, while the litigants may not be able to get blood from turnips, they can certainly ruin the turnips in the process of trying.”
Fern bowed again. “I now perform my last official duty, which is to inform you that your father wrote you a letter which was to be given to you only if your luck turned for the worse. My instructions were to place that letter under the pillow in Room 223 in the Wilburhampton, if your luck ever really turned sour. I placed the letter under the pillow an hour ago.
“And I will now, as an humble and loyal corporate servant, ask you for one small favor,” said Fern. “If the letter seems to cast the vaguest light on what life might be about, I would appreciate your telephoning me at home.”
Ransom K. Fern saluted by touching the shaft of his cane to his Homburg hat. “Good-by, Mr. Magnum Opus, Jr. Good-by.”
The Wilburhampton Hotel was a frumpish, three-story Tudor structure across the street from the Magnum Opus Building, standing in relation to that build-jug like an unmade bed at the feet of the Archangel Gabriel. Pine slats were tacked to the stucco exterior of the hotel, simulating half-timbered construction. The backbone of the roof had been broken intentionally, simulating great age. The eaves were plump and low, tucked under, simulated thatch. The windows were tiny, with diamond-shaped panes.
The hotel’s small cocktail lounge was known as the Hear Ye Room.
In the Hear Ye Room were three people – a bartender and two customers. The two customers were a thin woman and a fat man – both seemingly old. Nobody in the Wilburhampton had ever seen them before, but it already seemed as though they had been sitting in the Hear Ye Room for years. Their protective coloration was perfect, for they looked half-timbered and broken-backed and thatched and little-windowed, too.
They claimed to be pensioned-off teachers from the same high school in the Middle West. The fat man introduced himself as George M. Helmholtz, a former bandmaster. The thin woman introduced herself as Roberta Wiley, a former teacher of algebra.
They had obviously discovered the consolations of alcohol and cynicism late in life. They never ordered the same drink twice, were avid to know what was in this bottle and what was in that one – to know what a golden dawn punch was, and a Helen Twelvetrees, and a plui d’or, and a merry widow fizz.
The bartender knew they weren’t alcoholics. He was familiar with the type, and loved the type: they were simply two Saturday Evening Post characters at the end of the road.
When they weren’t asking questions about the different things to drink, they were indistinguishable from millions of other American barflies on the first day of the New Age of Space. They sat solidly on their barstools, staring straight ahead at the ranks of bottles. Their lips moved constantly – experimenting dismayingly with irrelevant grins and grimaces and sneers.
Evangelist Bobby Denton’s image of Earth as God’s space ship was an apt one – particularly with reference to barflies. Helmholtz and Miss Wiley were behaving like pilot and co-pilot of an enormously pointless voyage through space that was expected to take forever. It was easy to believe that they had begun the voyage nattily, flushed with youth and technical training, and that the bottles before them were the instruments they had been watching for years and years and years.
It was easy to believe that each day had found the space boy and the space girl microscopically more slovenly than the day before, until now, when they were the shame of the Pan-Galactic Space Service.
Two buttons on Helmholtz’s fly were open. There was shaving cream in his left ear. His socks did not match.
Miss Wiley was a crazy-looking little old lady with a lantern jaw. She wore a frizzy black wig that looked as though it had been nailed to a farmer’s barn door for years.