The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford and Other Classic Stories (3 page)

“Give me the entire information on an invention entered by Robert Benton, 34500-D,” he said. The clerk nodded and left the desk. In a few minutes he returned with a metal box.

“This contains the plans and a small working model of the invention,” he stated. He put the box on the desk and opened it. Benton stared at the contents. A small piece of intricate machinery sat squatly in the center. Underneath was a thick pile of metal sheets with diagrams on them. “Can I take this?” Benton asked.

“If you are the owner,” the clerk replied. Benton showed his identification card, the clerk studied it and compared it with the data on the invention. At last he nodded his approval, and Benton closed the box, picked it up and quickly left the building via a side exit.

The side exit let him out on one of the larger underground streets, which was a riot of lights and passing vehicles. He located his direction, and began to search for a communications car to take him home. One came along and he boarded it. After he had been traveling for a few minutes he began to carefully lift the lid of the box and peer inside at the strange model. “What have you got there, sir?” the robot driver asked.

“I wish I knew,” Benton said ruefully. Two winged flyers swooped by and waved at him, danced in the air for a second and then vanished. “Oh, fowl,” Benton murmured, “I forgot my wings.” Well, it was too late to go back and get them, the car was just then beginning to slow down in front of his house. After paying the driver he went inside and locked the door, something seldom done. The best place to observe the contents was in his “consideration” room, where he spent his leisure time while not flying. There, among his books and magazines he could observe the invention at ease.

The set of diagrams was a complete
puzzle
to him, and the model itself even more so. He stared at it from all angles, from underneath, from above. He tried to interpret the technical symbols of the diagrams, but all to no avail.

There was but one road now open to him. He sought out the “on” switch and clicked it.

For almost a minute nothing happened. Then the room about him began to waver and give way. For a moment it shook like a quantity of jelly. It hung steady for an instant, and then vanished.

He was falling through space like an endless tunnel, and he found himself twisting about frantically, grasping into the blackness for something to take hold of. He fell for an interminable time, helplessly, frightened. Then he had landed, completely unhurt. Although it had seemed so, the fall could not have been very long. His metallic clothes were not even ruffled. He picked himself up and looked about.

The place where he had arrived was strange to him. It was a field… such as he had supposed no longer to exist. Waving acres of grain waved in abundance everywhere. Yet, he was certain that in no place on earth did natural grain still grow. Yes, he was positive. He shielded his eyes and gazed at the sun, but it looked the same as it always had. He began to walk.

After an hour the wheat fields ended, but with their end came a wide forest. He knew from his studies that there were no forests left on earth. They had perished years before. Where was he, then?

He began to walk again, this time more quickly. Then he started to run. Before him a small hill rose and he raced to the top of it. Looking down the other side he stared in bewilderment. There was nothing there but a great emptiness. The ground was completely level and barren, there were no trees or any sign of life as far as his eyes could see, only the extensive bleached out land of death.

He started down the other side of the hill toward the plain. It was hot and dry under his feet, but he went forward anyway. He walked on, the ground began to hurt his feet—unaccustomed to long walking—and he grew tired. But he was determined to continue. Some small whisper within his mind compelled him to maintain his pace without slowing down.

“Don’t pick it up,” a voice said.

“I will,” he grated, half to himself, and stooped down.

Voice! From where! He turned quickly, but there was nothing to be seen. Yet the voice had come to him and it had seemed—for a moment—as if it were perfectly natural for voices to come from the air. He examined the thing he was about to pick up. It was a glass globe about as big around as his fist.

“You will destroy your valuable Stability,” the voice said.

“Nothing can destroy Stability,” he answered automatically. The glass globe was cool and nice against his palm. There was something inside, but heat from the glowing orb above him made it dance before his eyes, and he could not tell exactly what it was.

“You are allowing your mind to be controlled by evil things,” the voice said to him. “Put the globe down and leave.”

“Evil things?” he asked, surprised. It was hot, and he was beginning to feel thirsty. He started to thrust the globe inside his tunic.

“Don’t,” the voice ordered, “that is what it wants you to do.”

The globe was nice against his chest. It nestled there, cooling him off from the fierce heat of the sun. What was it the voice was saying?

“You were called here by it through time,” the voice explained. “You obey it now without question. I am its guardian, and ever since this time-world was created I have guarded it. Go away, and leave it as you found it.”

Definitely, it was too warm on the plain. He wanted to leave; the globe was now urging him to, reminding him of the heat from above, the dryness in his mouth, the tingling in his head. He started off, and as he clutched the globe to him he heard the wail of despair and fury from the phantom voice.

That was almost all he remembered. He did recall that he made his way back across the plain to the fields of grain, through them, stumbling and staggering, and at last to the spot where he had first appeared. The glass globe inside his coat urged him to pick up the small time machine from where he had left it. It whispered to him what dial to change, which button to press, which knob to set. Then he was falling again, falling back up the corridor of time, back, back to the graying mist from whence he had fallen, back to his own world.

Suddenly the globe urged him to stop. The journey through time was not yet complete: there was still something that he had to do.

“You say your name is Benton? What can I do for you?” the Controller asked. “You have never been here before, have you?”

He stared at the Controller. What did he mean? Why, he had just left the office! Or had he? What day was it? Where had he been? He rubbed his head dizzily and sat down in the big chair. The Controller watched him anxiously.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Can I help you?”

“I’m all right,” Benton said. There was something in his hands.

“I want to register this invention to be approved by the Stability Council,” he said, and handed the time machine to the Controller.

“Do you have the diagrams of its construction?” the Controller asked.

Benton dug deeply into his pocket and brought out the diagrams. He tossed them on the Controller’s desk and laid the model beside them.

“The Council will have no trouble determining what it is,” Benton said. His head ached, and he wanted to leave. He got to his feet.

“I am going,” he said, and went out the side door through which he had entered. The Controller stared after him.

“Obviously,” the First Member of the Control Council said, “he had been using the thing. You say the first time he came he acted as if he had been there before, but on the second visit he had no memory of having entered an invention, or even having been there before?”

“Right,” the Controller said. “I thought it was suspicious at the time of the first visit, but I did not realize until he came the second time what the meaning was. Undoubtedly, he used it.”

“The Central Graph records that an unstabilizing element is about to come up,” the Second Member remarked. “I would wager that Mr. Benton is it.”

“A time machine!” the First Member said. “Such a thing can be dangerous. Did he have anything with him when he came the—ah—first time?”

“I saw nothing, except that he walked as if he were carrying something under his coat,” the Controller replied.

“Then we must act at once. He will have been able to set up a chain of circumstance by this time that our Stabilizers will have trouble in breaking. Perhaps we should visit Mr. Benton.”

Benton sat in his living room and stared. His eyes were set in a kind of glassy rigidness and he had not moved for some time. The globe had been talking to him, telling him of its plans, its hopes. Now it stopped suddenly.

“They are coming,” the globe said. It was resting on the couch beside him, and its faint whisper curled to his brain like a wisp of smoke. It had not actually spoken, of course, for its language was mental. But Benton heard.

“What shall I do?” he asked.

“Do nothing,” the globe said. “They will go away.” The buzzer sounded and Benton remained where he was. The buzzer sounded again, and Benton stirred restlessly. After a while the men went down the walk again and appeared to have departed.

“Now what?” Benton asked. The globe did not answer for a moment.

“I feel that the time is almost here,” it said at last. “I have made no mistakes so far, and the difficult part is past. The hardest was having you come through time. It took me years—the Watcher was clever. You almost didn’t answer, and it was not until I thought of the method of putting the machine in your hands that success was certain. Soon you shall release us from this globe. After such an eternity—”

There was a scraping and a murmur from the rear of the house, and Benton started up.

“They are coming in the back door!” he said. The globe rustled angrily. The Controller and the Council Members came slowly and warily into the room. They spotted Benton and stopped.

“We didn’t think that you were at home,” the First Member said. Benton turned to him.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m sorry that I didn’t answer the bell; I had fallen asleep. What can I do for you?”

Carefully, his hand reached out toward the globe, and it seemed almost as if the globe rolled under the protection of his palm.

“What have you there?” the Controller demanded suddenly. Benton stared at him, and the globe whispered in his mind.

“Nothing but a paperweight,” he smiled. “Won’t you sit down?” The men took their seats, and the First Member began to speak. “You came to see us twice, the first time to register an invention, the second time because we had summoned you to appear, as we could not allow the invention to be issued.”

“Well?” Benton demanded. “Is there something the matter with that?”

“Oh, no,” the Member said, “but what was for us your first visit was for
you
your second. Several things prove this, but I will not go into them just now. The thing that is important is that you still have the machine. This is a difficult problem. Where is the machine? It should be in your possession. Although we cannot force you to give it to us, we will obtain it eventually in one way or another.”

“That is true,” Benton said. But where
was
the machine? He had just left it at the Controller’s Office. Yet he had already picked it up and taken it into time, whereupon he had returned to the present and had returned it to the Controller’s Office!

“It has ceased to exist, a non-entity in a time-spiral,” the globe whispered to him, catching his thoughts. “The time-spiral reached its conclusion when you deposited the machine at the Office of Control. Now these men must leave so that we can do what must be done.”

Benton rose to his feet, placing the globe behind him. “I’m afraid that I don’t have the time machine,” he said. “I don’t even know where it is, but you may search for it if you like.”

“By breaking the laws, you have made yourself eligible for the Cart,” the Controller observed. “But we feel that you have done what you did without meaning to. We do not want to punish anyone without reason, we only desire to maintain Stability. Once that is upset, nothing matters.”

“You may search, but you won’t find it,” Benton said. The Members and the Controller began to look. They overturned chairs, searched under the carpets, behind pictures, in the walls, and they found nothing.

“You see, I was telling the truth,” Benton smiled, as they returned to the living room.

“You could have hidden it outside someplace,” the Member shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, however.”

The Controller stepped forward.

“Stability is like a gyroscope,” he said. “It is difficult to turn from its course, but once started it can hardly be stopped. We do not feel that you yourself have the strength to turn that gyroscope, but there may be others who can. That remains to be seen. We are going to leave now, and you will be allowed to end your own life, or wait here for the Cart. We are giving you the choice. You will be watched, of course, and I trust that you will make no attempt to flee. If so, then it will mean your immediate destruction. Stability must be maintained, at any cost.”

Benton watched them, and then laid the globe on the table. The Members looked at it with interest.

“A paperweight,” Benton said. “Interesting, don’t you think?” The Members lost interest. They began to prepare to leave. But the Controller examined the globe, holding it up to the light.

“A model of a city, eh?” he said. “Such fine detail.” Benton watched him.

“Why, it seems amazing that a person could ever carve so well,” the Controller continued. “What city is it? It looks like an ancient one such as Tyre or Babylon, or perhaps one far in the future. You know, it reminds me of an old legend.”

He looked at Benton intently as he went on.

“The legend says that once there was a very evil city, it was so evil that God made it small and shut it up in a glass, and left a watcher of some sort to see that no one came along and released the city by smashing the glass. It is supposed to have been lying for eternity, waiting to escape.