Short Stories by Robert A. Heinlein Vol 2 Part 63

'Mr Gleason would like for you to come into his office as soon as you can.'

'I will at once. And, Whitey, I've a job for you.'

'Yeah?'

'This heap here - seal up its doors and don't let anybody monkey with it. Then have it dragged, dragged, mind you; don't try to start it - have it dragged over into the main lab.'

'OK.'.

Stevens started away; McLeod stopped him. 'What do I go home in?'

'Oh yes, it's your personal property, isn't it? Tell you what, Mac - the company needs it. Make out a purchase order and I'll sign it.'

'Weeell, now - I don't rightly know as I want to sell it. It might be the only job in the country working properly before long.'

'Don't be silly. If the others play out, it won't do you any good to have the only one in working order. Power will be shut down.'

'I suppose there's that,' McLeod conceded. 'Still,' he said, brightening visibly, 'a crate like that, with its special talents, ought to be worth a good deal more than list. You couldn't just go out and buy one.'

'Mac,' said Stevens, 'you've got avarice in your heart and thievery in your fingertips. How much do you want for it?'

'Suppose we say twice the list price, new. That's letting you off easy.'

'I happen to know you bought that job at a discount. But go ahead.

Either the company can stand it, or it won't make much difference in the bankruptcy.'

Gleason looked up as Stevens came in. 'Oh, there you are, Jim.

You seemed to have pulled a miracle with our friend Waldo the

Great. Nice work.'

'How much did he stick us for?'

'Just his usual contract. Of course his usual contract is a bit like robbery with violence. But it will be worth it if he is successful. And it's on a straight contingent basis. He must feel pretty sure of himself. They say he's never lost a contingent fee in his life. Tell me - what is he like? Did you really get into his house?'

'I did. And I'll tell you about it - sometime. Right now another matter has come up which has me talking to myself. You ought to hear about it at once.

'So? Go ahead.'

Stevens opened his mouth, closed it again, and realized that it had to be seen to be believed. 'Say, could you come with me to the main lab? I've got something to show you.'

'Certainly.'

Gleason was not as perturbed by the squirming metal rods as

Stevens had been. He was surprised, but not upset. The truth of the matter is that he lacked the necessary technical background to receive the full emotional impact of the inescapable implications of the phenomenon.

'That's pretty unusual, isn't it?' he said quietly.

'Unusual! Look, chief, if the sun rose in the west, what would you think?'

'I think I would call the observatory and ask them why.'

'Well, all I can say is that I would a whole lot rather that the sun rose in the west than to have this happen.'

'I admit it is pretty disconcerting,' Gleason agreed.

'I can't say that I've ever seen anything like it. What is

Dr Rambeau's opinion?'

'He hasn't seen it.

'Then perhaps we had better send for him. He may not have gone home for the night as yet.'

'Why not show it to Waldo instead?'

'We will. But Dr Rambeau is ent.i.tled to see it first. After all, it's his bailiwick, and I'm afraid the poor fellow's nose is pretty well out of joint as it is. I don't want to go over his head.'

Stevens felt a sudden flood of intuition. 'Just a second, chief.

You're right, but if it's all the same to you I would rather that you showed it to him than for me to do it.'

'Why so, Jimmie? You can explain it to him.'

'I can't explain a d.a.m.n thing to him I haven't already told you.

And for the next few hours I'm going to be very, very busy indeed.'

Gleason looked him over, shrugged his shoulders, and said mildly,

'Very well, Jim, if you prefer it that way.'

Waldo was quite busy, and therefore happy. He would never have admitted - he did not admit even to himself, that there were certain drawbacks to his self-imposed withdrawal from the world and that chief among these was boredom. He had never had much opportunity to enjoy the time-consuming delights of social intercourse; he honestly believed that the smooth apes had nothing to offer him in the way of companions.h.i.+p. Nevertheless, the pleasure of the solitary intellectual life can pall.

He repeatedly urged Uncle Gus to make his permanent home in Freehold, but he told himself that it was a desire to take care of the old man which motivated him. True - he enjoyed arguing with Grimes, but he was not aware how much those arguments meant to him. The truth of the matter was that Grimes was the only one of the human race who treated him entirely as another human and an equal - and Waldo wallowed in it, completely unconscious that the pleasure he felt in the old man's company was the commonest and most precious of all human pleasures. But at present he was happy in the only way he knew how to be happy - working.

There were two problems: that of Stevens and that of Grimes. Required: a single solution which would satisfy each of them. There were three stages to each problem; first, to satisfy himself that the problems really did exist, that the situations were in fact as they had been reported to him verbally; second, to undertake such research as the preliminary data suggested; and third, when he felt that his data was complete, to invent a solution.

'Invent', not 'find'. Dr Rambeau might have said 'find', or 'search for'.

To Rambeau the universe was an inexorably ordered cosmos, ruled by unvarying law. To Waldo the universe was the enemy, which he strove to force to submmiit to his will. They might have been speaking of the same thing, but their approaches were different.

There was much to be done. Stevens had supplied him with a ma.s.s of data, both on the theoretical nature of the radiated power system and the deKalb receptors which were the keystone of the system, and also on the various cases of erratic performance of which they had lately been guilty. Waldo had not given serious attention to power radiation up to this time, simply because he had not needed to. He found it interesting but comparatively simple. Several improvements suggested themselves to his mind. That standing wave, for example, which was the main factor in the co-axial beam - the efficiency of reception could be increased considerably by sending a message back over it which would automatically correct the aiming of the beam. Power delivery to moving vehicles could be made nearly as efficient as the power reception to stationary receivers.

Not that such an idea was important at present. Later, when he had solved the problem at hand, he intended to make NAPA pay through the nose for the idea; or perhaps it would be more amusing to compete with them. He wondered when their basic patents ran out - must look it up.