“I see where the President has ordered a whole brand-new Age of Space to begin, to see if that won’t help the unemployment picture some,” said the bartender.
“Uh, huh,” said Helmholtz and Miss Wiley simultaneously.
Only an observant and suspicious person would have noticed a false note in the behavior of the two: Helmholtz and Miss Wiley were too interested in time. For people who had nothing much to do and nowhere much to go, they were extraordinarily interested in their watches – Miss Wiley in her mannish wrist watch, Mr. Helmholtz in his gold pocket watch,
The truth of the matter was that Helmholtz and Miss Wiley weren’t retired school teachers at all. They were both males, both masters of disguise. They were crack agents for the Army of Mars, the eyes and ears for a Martian press gang that hovered in a flying saucer two hundred miles overhead,
Malachi Constant didn’t know it, but they were waiting for him.
Helmholtz and Wiley did not accost Malachi Constant when he crossed the Street to the Wilburhampton. They gave no sign that he mattered to them. They let him cross the lobby and board the elevator without giving him a glance.
They did, however, glance at their watches again – and an observant and suspicious person would have noticed that Miss Wiley pressed a button on her watch, starting a stopwatch hand on its twitching rounds.
Helmholtz and Miss Wiley were not about to use violence on Malachi Constant. They had never used violence on anyone, and had still recruited fourteen thousand persons for Mars.
Their usual technique was to dress like civil engineers and offer not-quite-bright men and women nine dollars an hour, tax free, plus food and shelter and transportation, to work on a secret Government project in a remote part of the world for three years. It was a joke between Helmholtz and Miss Wiley that they had never specified what government was organizing the project, and that no recruit had ever thought to ask.
Ninety-nine per cent of the recruits were given amnesia upon arriving on Mars. Their memories were cleaned out by mental-health experts, and Martian. surgeons installed radio antennas in their skulls in order that the recruits might be radio-controlled.
And then the recruits were given new names in the most haphazard fashion, and were assigned to the factories, the construction gangs, the administrative staff, or to the Army of Mars.
The few recruits who were not treated in this way were those who demonstrated ardently that they would serve Mars heroically without being doctored at all. Those lucky few were welcomed into the secret circle of those in command.
Secret agents Helmholtz and Wiley belonged to this circle. They were in full possession of their memories, and they were not radio-controlled. They adored their work, just as they were.
“What’s that there Slivovitz like?” Helmholtz asked the bartender, squinting at a dusty bottle on the bottom row. He had just finished a sloe gin rickey.
“I didn’t even know we had it,” said the bartender. He put the bottle on the bar, tilting it away from himself so he could read the label. “Prune brandy,” he said.
“Believe I’ll try that next,” said Helmholtz.
Ever since the death of Noel Constant, Room 223 in the Wilburhampton had been left empty – as a memorial.
Malachi Constant now let himself into Room 223. He had not been in the room since the death of his father. He closed the door behind him, and found the letter under the pillow.
Nothing in the room had been changed but the linen. The picture of Malachi as a little boy on the beach was still the only picture on the wall.
The letter said:
Dear Son: Something big and bad has happened to you or you wouldn’t be reading this letter. I am writing this letter to tell you to calm down about the bad things and kind of look around and see if something good or something important anyway happened on account of we got so rich and then lost the boodle again. What I want you to try and find out is, is there anything special going on or is it all just as crazy as it looked to me?
If I wasn’t a very good father or a very good anything that was because I was as good as dead ‘for a long time before I died. Nobody loved me and I wasn’t very good at anything and I couldn’t find any hobbies I liked and I was sick and tired of selling pots and pans and watching television so I was as good as dead and I was too far gone to ever come back.
That is when I started the business with the Bible and you know what happened after that. It looked as though somebody or something wanted me to own the whole planet even though I was as good as dead. I kept my eyes open for some kind of signal that would tell me what it was all about but there wasn’t any signal. I just went on getting richer and richer.
And then your mother sent me that picture of you on the beach and the way you looked at me out of that picture made me think maybe you were what all the big money buildup was for. I decided I would die without ever seeing any sense to it and maybe you would be the one who would all of a sudden see everything clear as a bell. I tell you even a half-dead man hates to be alive and not be able to see any sense to it.
The reason I told Ransom K. Fern to give you this letter only if your luck turned bad is that nobody thinks or notices anything as long as his luck is good. Why should he?
So have a look around for me, boy. And if you go broke and somebody comes along with a crazy pro position my advice is to take it. You might just learn something when you’re in a mood to learn something. The only thing I ever learned was that some people are lucky and other people aren’t and not even a graduate of the Harvard Business School can say why.
Yours truly – your Pa
There was a knock on the door of Room 223.
The door opened before Constant could reply to the knock.
Helmholtz and Miss Wiley let themselves in. They entered at precisely the right instant, having been advised by their superiors as to when, to the second, Malachi Constant would finish the letter. They had been told, too, precisely what to say to him.
Miss Wiley removed her wig, revealing herself to be a scrawny man, and Helmholtz composed his features to reveal that he was fearless and used to command.
“Mr. Constant,” said Helmholtz, “I am here to inform you that the planet Mars is not only populated, but populated by a large and efficient and military and industrial society. It has been recruited from Earth, with the recruits being transferred to Mars by flying saucer. We are now prepared to offer you a direct lieutenant-colonelcy in the Army of Mars.
“Your situation on Earth is hopeless. Your wife is a beast. Moreover, our intelligence informs us that here on Earth you will not only be made penniless by civil suits, but that you will be imprisoned for criminal negligence as well.
“In addition to a pay scale and privileges well above those accorded lieutenant-colonels in Earthling armies, we can offer you immunity from all Earthling legal harassment, and an opportunity to see a new and interesting planet, and an opportunity to think about your native planet from a fresh and beautifully detached viewpoint.”
“If you accept the commission,” said Miss Wiley, “raise your left hand and repeat after me – “
On the following day, Malachi Constant’s helicopter was found empty in the middle of the Mojave Desert. The footprints of a man led away from it for a distance of forty feet, then stopped.
It was as though Malachi Constant had walked forty feet, and had then dissolved into thin air.
On the following Tuesday, the space ship known as The Whale was rechristened The Rumfoord and was readied for firing.
Beatrice Rumfoord smugly watched the ceremonies on a television set two thousand miles away. She was still in Newport. The Rumfoord was going to be fired in exactly one minute. If destiny was going to get Beatrice Rumfoord on board, it was going to have to do it in one hell of a hurry.
Beatrice was feeling marvelous. She had proved so many good things. She had proved that she was mistress of her own fate, could say no whenever she pleased – and make it stick. She had proved that her husband’s omniscient bullying was all a bluff – that he wasn’t much better at forecasts than the United States Weather Bureau.