"They couldn't. After all, they had to leave their cars and their
furniture behind them too, not to mention almost unbelievable
stockpiles of every metal imaginable that will last us for centuries.
The logistics of space travel make taking even an extra handkerchief
along a calculated risk. Anyway, when their dogs 'found' us, they were
overjoyed, and as for us, we fell in love with them at first sight. Our
own dogs, though, didn't take to them at all, and every one of them ran
away."
"This can't be the only village," Philip said. "There must be others
somewhere."
"Undoubtedly there are. All we know is that the people who built this
one were the last to leave."
The park was behind them now, and they were walking down a pleasant
street. "And when you and your neighbors discovered the village, did you
decide to become expatriates right then and there?" Philip asked.
She nodded. "Do you blame us? You've seen for yourself what a lovely
place it is. But it's far more than that. In Valleyview, we had
unemployment. Here, there is work for everyone, and a corresponding
feeling of wantedness and togetherness. True, most of the work is
farmwork, but what of that? We have every conceivable kind of machine to
help us in our tasks. Indeed, I think that the only machine the Sirians
lacked was one that could manufacture food out of whole cloth. But
consider the most important advantage of all: when we go to bed at night
we can do so without being afraid that sometime during our sleep a
thermonuclear missile will descend out of the sky and devour us in one
huge incandescent bite. If we've made a culture hero out of our village
idiot, it's no more than right, for unwittingly or not, he opened up the
gates of paradise."
"And you immediately saw to it that no one besides yourselves and a
chosen few would pass through them."
Judith paused beside a white gate. "Yes, that's true," she said. "To
keep our secret, we lived in our old houses while we were settling our
affairs, closing down our few industries and setting up a new monetary
system. In fact, we even kept our ... the children in the dark for fear
that they would talk at school. Suppose, however, we _had_ publicized
our utopia. Can't you imagine the mockery opportunists would have made
out of it? The village we found was large enough to accommodate
ourselves and the few friends, relatives and specialists we asked to
join us, but no larger; and we did, after all, find it in our own back
yard." She placed her hand on the white gate. "This is where I live."
He looked at the house, and it was enchanting. Slightly less enchanting,
but delightful in its own right, was the much smaller house beside it.
Judith pointed toward the latter dwelling and looked at Zarathustra.
"It's almost morning, Zarathustra," she said sternly. "Go to bed this
minute!" She opened the gate so that the little dog could pass through
and raised her eyes to Philip. "Our time is different here," she
explained. And then, "I'm afraid you'll have to hurry if you expect to
make it to my back door before the field dies out."
[Illustration]
He felt suddenly empty. "Dies out?" he repeated numbly.
"Yes. We don't know why, but it's been diminishing in strength ever
since it first came into being, and our 'Moebius-strip scientist' has
predicted that it will cease to exist during the next twenty-four hours.
I guess I don't need to remind you that you have important business on
Earth."
"No," he said, "I guess you don't." His emptiness bowed out before a
wave of bitterness. He had rested his hand on the gate, as close to hers
as he had dared. Now he saw that while it was inches away from hers in
one sense, it was light years away in another. He removed it angrily.
"Business always comes first with you, doesn't it?"
"Yes. Business never lets you down."
"Do you know what I think?" Philip said. "I think that you were the one
who did the selling out, not your husband. I think you sold him out for
a law practice."
Her face turned white as though he had slapped it, and in a sense, he
had. "Good-by," she said, and this time he was certain that if he were
to reach out and touch her, she would shatter into a million pieces.
"Give my love to the planet Earth," she added icily.
"Good-by," Philip said, his anger gone now, and the emptiness rushing
back. "Don't sell us short, though--we'll make a big splash in your sky
one of these days when we blow ourselves up."
[Illustration]
He turned and walked away. Walked out of the enchanting village and down
the highway and across the flower-pulsing plain to Judith's back
doorway. It was unlighted now, and he had trouble distinguishing it from
the others. Its shimmering blue framework was flickering. Judith had not
lied then: the field was dying out.
He locked the back door behind him, walked sadly through the dark and
empty house and let himself out the front door. He locked the front door
behind him, too, and went down the walk and climbed into his car. He had
thought he had locked it, but apparently he hadn't. He drove out of town
and down the road to the highway, and down the highway toward the big
bright bonfire of the city.
Dawn was exploring the eastern sky with pale pink fingers when at last
he parked his car in the garage behind his apartment building. He
reached into the back seat for his brief case and the manila envelopes.
His brief case had hair on it. It was soft and warm. "Ruf," it barked.
"Ruf-ruf!"
He knew then that everything was all right. Just because no one had
invited him to the party didn't mean that he couldn't invite himself. He
would have to hurry, though--he had a lot of things to do, and time was
running out.
Noon found him on the highway again, his business transacted, his
affairs settled, Zarathustra sitting beside him on the seat. One o'clock
found him driving into Valleyview; two-five found him turning down a
familiar street. He would have to leave his car behind him, but that was
all right. Leaving it to rust away in a ghost town was better than
selling it to some opportunistic dealer for a sum he would have no use
for anyway. He parked it by the curb, and after getting his suitcase out
of the trunk, walked up to the front door of Number 23. He unlocked and
opened the door, and after Zarathustra followed him inside, closed and
locked it behind him. He strode through the house to the kitchen. He
unlocked and opened the back door. He stepped eagerly across the
threshold--and stopped dead still.
There were boards beneath his feet instead of grass. Instead of a
flower-pied plain, he saw a series of unkempt back yards. Beside him on
an unpainted trellis, Virginia creeper rattled in an October wind.
Zarathustra came out behind him, descended the back-porch steps and ran
around the side of the house. Looking for the green-rose bush probably.
"Ruf!"
Zarathustra had returned and was looking up at him from the bottom step.
On the top step he had placed an offering.
The offering was a green rose.
Philip bent down and picked it up. It was fresh, and its fragrance
epitomized the very essence of Sirius XXI. "Zarathustra," he gasped,
"where did you get it?"
"Ruf!" said Zarathustra, and ran around the side of the house.
Philip followed, rounded the corner just in time to see the white-tipped
tail disappear into the ancient dog house. Disappointment numbed him.
That was where the rose had been then--stored away for safe-keeping like
an old and worthless bone.
But the rose was fresh, he reminded himself.
Did dog houses have back doorways?
This one did, he saw, kneeling down and peering inside. A lovely back
doorway, rimmed with shimmering blue. It framed a familiar vista, in the
foreground of which a familiar green-rosebush stood. Beneath the
rosebush Zarathustra sat, wagging his tail.
It was a tight squeeze, but Philip made it. He even managed to get his
suitcase through. And just in time too, for hardly had he done so when
the doorway began to flicker. Now it was on its way out, and as he
watched, it faded into transparency and disappeared.
He crawled from beneath the rosebush and stood up. The day was bright
and warm, and the position of the sun indicated early morning or late
afternoon. No, not sun--suns. One of them was a brilliant blue-white
orb, the other a twinkling point of light.
He set off across the plain in Zarathustra's wake. He had a speech
already prepared, and when Judith met him at the gate with wide and
wondering eyes, he delivered it without preamble. "Judith," he said, "I
am contemptuous of the notion that some things are meant to be and
others aren't, and I firmly believe in my own free will; but when your
dog stows away in the back seat of my car two times running and makes
it impossible for me not to see you again, then there must be something
afoot which neither you nor I can do a thing about. Whatever it is, I
have given in to it and have transferred your real estate to an agent
more trustworthy than myself. I know you haven't known me long, and I
know I'm not an accepted member of your group, but maybe somebody will
give me a job raking lawns or washing windows or hoeing corn long enough
for me to prove that I am not in the least antisocial; and maybe, in
time, you yourself will get to know me well enough to realize that while
I have a weakness for blondes who look like Grecian goddesses, I have no
taste whatever for redheads, brunettes, or Cutty Sark. In any event, I
have burned my bridges behind me, and whether I ever become a resident
of Pfleugersville or not, I have already become a resident of Sirius
XXI."
Judith Darrow was silent for some time. Then, "This morning," she said,
"I wanted to ask you to join us, but I couldn't for two reasons. The
first was your commitment to sell our houses, the second was my
bitterness toward men. You have eliminated the first, and the second
seems suddenly inane." She raised her eyes. "Philip, please join us. I
want you to."
Zarathustra, whose real name was Siddenon Phenphonderill, left them
standing there in each other's arms and trotted down the street and out
of town. He covered the ground in easy lopes that belied his three
hundred and twenty-five years, and soon he arrived at the Meeting Place.
The mayors of the other villages had been awaiting him since early
morning and were shifting impatiently on their haunches. When he
clambered up on the rostrum they extended their audio-appendages and
retractile fingers and accorded him a round of applause. He extended his
own "hands" and held them up for silence, then, retracting them again,
he seated himself before the little lectern and began his report, the
idiomatic translation of which follows forthwith:
"Gentlemen, my apologies for my late arrival. I will touch upon the
circumstances that were responsible for it presently.
"To get down to the matter uppermost in your minds: Yes, the experiment
was a success, and if you will use your psycho-transmutative powers to
remodel your villages along the lines my constituents and I remodeled
ours and to build enough factories to give your 'masters' that sense of
self-sufficiency so essential to their well-being, and if you will
'plant' your disassembled Multiple Moebius-Knot Dynamos in such a way
that the resultant fields will be ascribed to accidental causes, you
will have no more trouble attracting personnel than we did. Just make
sure that your 'masters' quarters are superior to your own, and that
you behave like dogs in their presence. And when you fabricate your
records concerning your mythical departed masters, see to it that they
do not conflict with the records we fabricated concerning ours. It would
be desirable indeed if our Sirian-human society could be based on less
deceitful grounds than these, but the very human attitude we are
exploiting renders this impossible at the moment. I hate to think of the
resentment we would incur were we to reveal that, far from being the
mere dogs we seem to be, we are capable of mentally transmuting natural
resources into virtually anything from a key to a concert hall, and I
hate even more to think of the resentment we would incur were we to
reveal that, for all our ability in the inanimate field, we have never
been able to materialize so much as a single blade of grass in the
animate field, and that our reason for coincidentalizing the planet
Earth and creating our irresistible little utopias stems not from a need
for companionship but from a need for gardeners. However, you will find
that all of this can be ironed out eventually through the human
children, with whom you will be thrown into daily contact and whom you
will find to possess all of their parents' abiding love for us and none
of their parents' superior attitude toward us. To a little child, a dog
is a companion, not a pet; an equal, not an inferior--and the little
children of today will be the grown-ups of tomorrow.
"To return to the circumstances that occasioned my late arrival: I ... I
must confess, gentlemen, that I became quite attached to the 'mistress'
into whose house I sought entry when we first established our field and
who subsequently adopted me when I convinced her real dog that he would
find greener pastures elsewhere. So greatly attached did I become, in
fact, that when the opportunity of ostracizing her loneliness presented
itself, I could not refrain from taking advantage of it. The person to
whom she was most suited and who was most suited to her appeared
virtually upon her very doorstep; but in her stubbornness and in her
pride she aggravated rather than encouraged him, causing him to rebel
against the natural attraction he felt toward her. I am happy to report
that, by means of a number of subterfuges--the final one of which
necessitated the use of our original doorway--I was able to set this
matter right, and that these two once-lonely people are about to embark
upon a relationship which in their folklore is oftentimes quaintly
alluded to by the words, 'They lived happily ever after.'
"And now, gentlemen, the best of luck to you and your constituents, and
may you end up with servants as excellent as ours. I hereby declare this
meeting adjourned."