The Tunnel Under The World Part 2

"Have you got a freezer? _It stinks!_ If it isn't a f.e.c.kle Freezer, _it stinks_! If it's a last year's f.e.c.kle Freezer, _it stinks_! Only this year's f.e.c.kle Freezer is any good at all! You know who owns an Ajax Freezer? Fairies own Ajax Freezers! You know who owns a Triplecold Freezer? Commies own Triplecold Freezers! Every freezer but a brand-new f.e.c.kle Freezer _stinks_!"

The voice screamed inarticulately with rage. "I'm warning you! Get out and buy a f.e.c.kle Freezer right away! Hurry up! Hurry for f.e.c.kle! Hurry for f.e.c.kle! Hurry, hurry, hurry, f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle...."

It stopped eventually. Burckhardt licked his lips. He started to say to his wife, "Maybe we ought to call the police about--" when the speakers erupted again. It caught him off guard; it was intended to catch him off guard. It screamed:

"f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle. Cheap freezers ruin your food. You'll get sick and throw up. You'll get sick and die. Buy a f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle! Ever take a piece of meat out of the freezer you've got and see how rotten and moldy it is?

Buy a f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle. Do you want to eat rotten, stinking food? Or do you want to wise up and buy a f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle, f.e.c.kle--"

That did it. With fingers that kept stabbing the wrong holes, Burckhardt finally managed to dial the local police station. He got a busy signal--it was apparent that he was not the only one with the same idea--and while he was shakingly dialing again, the noise outside stopped.

He looked out the window. The truck was gone.

Burckhardt loosened his tie and ordered another Frosty-Flip from the waiter. If only they wouldn't keep the Crystal Cafe so _hot_! The new paint job--searing reds and blinding yellows--was bad enough, but someone seemed to have the delusion that this was January instead of June; the place was a good ten degrees warmer than outside.

He swallowed the Frosty-Flip in two gulps. It had a kind of peculiar flavor, he thought, but not bad. It certainly cooled you off, just as the waiter had promised. He reminded himself to pick up a carton of them on the way home; Mary might like them. She was always interested in something new.

He stood up awkwardly as the girl came across the restaurant toward him. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in Tylerton.

Chin-height, honey-blonde hair and a figure that--well, it was all hers. There was no doubt in the world that the dress that clung to her was the only thing she wore. He felt as if he were blus.h.i.+ng as she greeted him.

"Mr. Burckhardt." The voice was like distant tomtoms. "It's wonderful of you to let me see you, after this morning."

He cleared his throat. "Not at all. Won't you sit down, Miss--"

"April Horn," she murmured, sitting down--beside him, not where he had pointed on the other side of the table. "Call me April, won't you?"

She was wearing some kind of perfume, Burckhardt noted with what little of his mind was functioning at all. It didn't seem fair that she should be using perfume as well as everything else. He came to with a start and realized that the waiter was leaving with an order for _filets mignon_ for two.

"Hey!" he objected.

"Please, Mr. Burckhardt." Her shoulder was against his, her face was turned to him, her breath was warm, her expression was tender and solicitous. "This is all on the f.e.c.kle Corporation. Please let them--it's the _least_ they can do."

He felt her hand burrowing into his pocket.

"I put the price of the meal into your pocket," she whispered conspiratorially. "Please do that for me, won't you? I mean I'd appreciate it if you'd pay the waiter--I'm old-fas.h.i.+oned about things like that."

She smiled meltingly, then became mock-businesslike. "But you must take the money," she insisted. "Why, you're letting f.e.c.kle off lightly if you do! You could sue them for every nickel they've got, disturbing your sleep like that."

With a dizzy feeling, as though he had just seen someone make a rabbit disappear into a top hat, he said, "Why, it really wasn't so bad, uh, April. A little noisy, maybe, but--"

"Oh, Mr. Burckhardt!" The blue eyes were wide and admiring. "I knew you'd understand. It's just that--well, it's such a _wonderful_ freezer that some of the outside men get carried away, so to speak. As soon as the main office found out about what happened, they sent representatives around to every house on the block to apologize. Your wife told us where we could phone you--and I'm so very pleased that you were willing to let me have lunch with you, so that I could apologize, too. Because truly, Mr. Burckhardt, it is a _fine_ freezer.

"I shouldn't tell you this, but--" the blue eyes were shyly lowered--"I'd do almost anything for f.e.c.kle Freezers. It's more than a job to me." She looked up. She was enchanting. "I bet you think I'm silly, don't you?"

Burckhardt coughed. "Well, I--"

"Oh, you don't want to be unkind!" She shook her head. "No, don't pretend. You think it's silly. But really, Mr. Burckhardt, you wouldn't think so if you knew more about the f.e.c.kle. Let me show you this little booklet--"

Burckhardt got back from lunch a full hour late. It wasn't only the girl who delayed him. There had been a curious interview with a little man named Swanson, whom he barely knew, who had stopped him with desperate urgency on the street--and then left him cold.

But it didn't matter much. Mr. Barth, for the first time since Burckhardt had worked there, was out for the day--leaving Burckhardt stuck with the quarterly tax returns.

What did matter, though, was that somehow he had signed a purchase order for a twelve-cubic-foot f.e.c.kle Freezer, upright model, self-defrosting, list price $625, with a ten per cent "courtesy"

discount--"Because of that _horrid_ affair this morning, Mr.

Burckhardt," she had said.

And he wasn't sure how he could explain it to his wife.

He needn't have worried. As he walked in the front door, his wife said almost immediately, "I wonder if we can't afford a new freezer, dear.

There was a man here to apologize about that noise and--well, we got to talking and--"

She had signed a purchase order, too.

It had been the d.a.m.nedest day, Burckhardt thought later, on his way up to bed. But the day wasn't done with him yet. At the head of the stairs, the weakened spring in the electric light switch refused to click at all. He snapped it back and forth angrily and, of course, succeeded in jarring the tumbler out of its pins. The wires shorted and every light in the house went out.

"d.a.m.n!" said Guy Burckhardt.

"Fuse?" His wife shrugged sleepily. "Let it go till the morning, dear."

Burckhardt shook his head. "You go back to bed. I'll be right along."

It wasn't so much that he cared about fixing the fuse, but he was too restless for sleep. He disconnected the bad switch with a screwdriver, stumbled down into the black kitchen, found the flashlight and climbed gingerly down the cellar stairs. He located a spare fuse, pushed an empty trunk over to the fuse box to stand on and twisted out the old fuse.

When the new one was in, he heard the starting click and steady drone of the refrigerator in the kitchen overhead.

He headed back to the steps, and stopped.

Where the old trunk had been, the cellar floor gleamed oddly bright.

He inspected it in the flashlight beam. It was metal!

"Son of a gun," said Guy Burckhardt. He shook his head unbelievingly.

He peered closer, rubbed the edges of the metallic patch with his thumb and acquired an annoying cut--the edges were _sharp_.

The stained cement floor of the cellar was a thin sh.e.l.l. He found a hammer and cracked it off in a dozen spots--everywhere was metal.

The whole cellar was a copper box. Even the cement-brick walls were false fronts over a metal sheath!

Baffled, he attacked one of the foundation beams. That, at least, was real wood. The gla.s.s in the cellar windows was real gla.s.s.

He sucked his bleeding thumb and tried the base of the cellar stairs.

Real wood. He chipped at the bricks under the oil burner. Real bricks.

The retaining walls, the floor--they were faked.