Perhaps the single most frightening thing in the big living room to
Comstock was the fact that the walls were solid with books. The cases
ran from the floor to the ceiling and every available space was stuffed
helter skelter with books, books and more books. In all his life it is
highly unlikely that Comstock had ever seen more than ten or fifteen
books at one time, and then only in what passed for a library in his
culture.
Why, he thought, there must be thousands of books here. On what
subjects could the authors have written? What was there to write that
much about? A small hope persisted for a moment that maybe, for some
strange reason, most of the books might be duplicates. But that was
eradicated when he looked at the odd, mysterious titles of the volumes.
There were no duplicates and seemingly the books were divided up into
categories. But some of the categories were so strange to Comstock that
they passed his ability to comprehend.
What, he wondered, could sociology be? Or anthropology, or psychology,
or these massive volumes full of poems ... not simple enjoyable poems
like Father Goose, but queer, abstruse ones, whose words made no sense
at all to Comstock's reeling brain.
While he hurried around the room blowing dust off the tops of the books
he was looking at, Helen and Grundy were concerned with who had greeted
them on their entrance.
Leaving Comstock to his perusal of the shelves, Grundy tip-toed out
of the room, and then looking in no particular direction, he called,
"Hello? Who are you! Where are you?"
The same metallic voice answered, "I am the house. I am here to supply
your wants, to feed you and make you comfortable."
When Comstock heard this the shock was too much for him. He swayed,
and then sank, with an armful of books, into the deep recesses of an
easy chair. A cloud of dust surrounded him. Instantly a whirring sound
emanated from a screened section of the floor and he felt rather than
saw the dust disappearing.
Considerably shaken, Grundy came back into the library. Helen said,
"What do you suppose it is, darling?"
"Bowdler has told me about robots ... machines that act almost like we
do, but I never, ever, thought that one could run a whole house this
way!"
Comstock was willing to accept the robot as he would have the word
fairy when he was a child and he was even more inclined to confuse the
two things, when at Grundy's mention of being hungry, the door swung
open and a wheeled cart entered loaded down with food the like of which
none of the three had ever seen.
Sitting in a rather numb silence the three people stared at the food.
But then the odors that came from it were too much for them and
disregarding the magic of its appearance they ate as they never had
before.
* * * * *
That was the beginning, for Grundy and Helen and Comstock, of an
enchanted month. At first, from minute to minute, they expected
pursuit, and capture. But as time passed happily by, as every fleeting
fancy was instantly taken care of by the house, they relaxed, and what
was most important, began to devote almost all their waking hours to
the books that confronted them on every side, in every room of the
house.
No one ever seemed to pass the house, they heard no sounds from
outside. They were in a charmed circle, in which every desire was
instantly fulfilled.
Comstock was not aware of how and when it happened, but soon he was not
even embarrassed at the sight of Grundy and Helen kissing and caressing
each other. He no longer wanted to swoon when he heard them exchange
love words. But what did happen was that he wanted some one like Helen
more and more as time went on.
At first they waited impatiently for Bowdler to put in an appearance,
but when days passed and there was no sign of him they ceased to expect
him. Then worry began to take the place of expectancy. Suppose, they'd
say, suppose he was found out by the Board of Fathers ... was a Father
ever punished? They did not know.
Occasionally, but only very occasionally, Comstock would put his hand
to his chest and wonder why his heart disease no longer troubled him,
but a question which is unanswerable ceases in some cases to be a
question, and he almost forgot about it most of the time.
Then too, the contents of the books which they were devouring with
such avidity were so exciting that it almost seemed that there was not
enough time in one day for all the reading they wanted to do.
They'd rise in the morning and the instant they sat up in their
respective beds, the doors of their bedrooms would open, wheeled carts
would enter their room, and the house would serve them their breakfasts.
Having risen, clean clothes would be supplied. Then they'd hurry to the
library, discuss what they'd been reading and then, undisturbed except
by luncheon and dinner, they'd read, read, read.
* * * * *
Sometimes the house would seem to feel that they were devoting too much
time to books and it would suddenly and magically produce games and
they'd play away an evening.
But when the morrow dawned the lure of the books would call them back.
Their biggest problem was in deciding which of the books they read were
fact and what fiction. This was their only noteworthy argument. One
morning for instance, Comstock said, "I found a wonderful old book last
night filled with reports on criminals. Fascinating! One of them was
about a court in some kingdom or other back on earth where a prince
found out that his step-father had murdered his real father in order to
marry his mother."
"I remember that one," Helen said, "It ended with practically everyone
in the court murdered."
"That's the one," Comstock nodded.
"Y'know," Grundy said. "I wonder if that was really a report on actual
criminals."
"Must have been," Comstock argued, "no fiction writer would have had
the prince dilly dally the way that one did, never able to make up his
mind what to do. Only in real life do people bumble along that way."
"Mmm...." Grundy disagreed, "I think a fine writer might have done just
that in order to make the character seem real."
"Prince Hamlet _must_ have been real," Comstock said, "He could not
have been imagined. No, I'm sure that is fact. But this book I'm
reading now, what nonsense!"
He held up Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."
"What an imagination! Fantastic!" Shaking his head he went on with his
reading.
* * * * *
It was a day or two later when he was reading what he considered
another criminal report, the story of a Moor and jealousy, that the
idea occurred to him.
Putting down the book, he stared thoughtfully off into space. The idea
had just never entered his brain before. Was it possible, he wondered,
that he might be able to woo Helen away from Grundy?
Not knowing a thing about how to go about it interfered quite a bit,
he found. His flirtation, if you could call it that, began to resemble
a game of hide and go seek, for he would lurk in dark corners of the
house and wait for Helen to walk by alone.
Then, darting out, he'd try to manufacture love talk, or what seemed to
pass for it in the book he'd been reading. One day, having succeeded in
scaring Helen half out of her wits, by popping out of a linen closet
and appearing at her side completely unexpectedly, he made a groping
motion and managed to capture one of her hands. Bending over it, he
kissed it.
That surprised Helen almost as much as his darting out of the closet
and she was even more surprised when he said, his voice low, so that
Grundy in the next room would not hear him, "Helen ... I...." But then
his voice vanished and he was unable to go on with the speech he had
prepared.
One eyebrow raised so high that it almost succeeded in touching her
hair line, Helen considered him. Then she asked, "Is anything wrong?
Do you feel all right?" Then she put her hand on his forehead and said,
"Are you feverish?"
The speech that should have come tumbling out of his mouth raced
through his mind, he thought, "Yes, I am feverish, burning with
desire.... Nothing can put out the fire but you...." That is what he
thought. What he said, was, "Um.... I guess I _am_ feeling sick. I
think I'll go up and lay down for a while." Then tottering off he left
her there.
Lying down, even with a cool cloth on his head, he found did not
suffice to quench the fire that was threatening to consume him.
Returning to his reading he found that on occasion, earthmen had
murdered the men who stood in the way of their desire. Then it was that
he began to trail Grundy instead of Helen. He'd stand in a doorway,
while Grundy innocently read, and think of ways to kill his friend.
Poison, he found in his reading, was one of the commoner ways of
removing the other lover. That would have been fine and he'd have been
glad to poison Grundy but for the small fact that he didn't have the
vaguest idea what poison was.
And, what if he killed Grundy and even then Helen didn't fall in love
with him? That was a big factor and one that succeeded in baffling him
for quite a while. Perhaps, he decided finally, he'd better make sure
she at least liked him before he went to the slightly extreme extent of
murdering his friend.
But before he could take matters of any kind in hand, there came an
interruption in the even tenor of their ways. Precisely a month after
they entered Bowdler's house, the door opened and Bowdler came through
the entrance, a broad smile of inquiry on his heavy face.
He asked no questions about how they were making out, he told them
nothing about what he had been doing. Instead he asked, "Has she
arrived yet?"
"She?" The word was chorused by the trio.
"Yes," Bowdler said, his expression changing and worry showing on it.
"She should have been here by now if she escaped from the R.A.'s."
Shaking his head, he sat down in one of the big comfortable chairs that
were scattered all around the library. "She's the best possibility I've
found since you three. Courageous, with a real brain in her head. I
hope she's not been captured."
* * * * *
Grundy, Comstock and Helen stifled the questions which were crowding
to their lips, questions about the house, about the books, about the
reason for their having been sequestered so long. In the face of
Bowdler's worry, their questions seemed picayune.
"When should she have arrived?" Comstock asked.
"This morning. I helped her get away last night, gave her directions,
and then turned off the force field that's been protecting the house
and you three in my absence. If she doesn't appear soon, I'll have to
turn it back on. I can't risk having the R.A.'s stumble on this retreat
of mine."
"Force field?" Grundy asked timorously.
"Sure, a smaller version of the thing that the last scientists built
to protect our whole planet from interlopers. Unseen, it blankets the
whole area around the house in an invisible sheath that keeps anyone
from even being aware of the house."
So that, Comstock thought, was why they had heard no one, seen no one
passing by.
Bowdler got up from his chair and began to pace the floor uneasily.
"It's getting later. I'd better turn the force field back on, even
though it means that she'll never get here. Sometimes sacrifice is
essential."
Rather to Comstock's surprise, he got to his feet, jutted out his
rather insignificant jaw and said, "I'm going looking for her!"
"Good boy!" Grundy said approvingly.
Helen asked, "But how will you manage to get back even if you find her?"
"I don't know. All I know is that I can't rest thinking of someone
wandering around at the mercy of the Father's Right Arms."
"I've got it," Bowdler said, slowly, "You go ahead, Comstock. Look for
her to the east, down around Puritan Square. That's the direction from
which she would be coming, if she's not been captured. Then, at twelve
midnight, and twelve noon, I'll turn off the field for exactly thirty
seconds each day and night till you return." The if, was unspoken.
"Shall I go dressed in the R.A.'s uniform or as a citizen?" asked
Comstock.
"Umm...." Bowdler pulled at his lip thoughtfully, then said, "I'd go as
a private individual. That way there should be fewer problems."
Helen asked the question that should have occurred to Comstock. "How
will he know her?"
"She's about Comstock's height, willowy, red-haired, and instead of
the dull apathetic look that most of our fellow citizens have, she has
bright green eyes that penetrate right to the core of any problem.
You'll know her as a fellow rebel as soon as you see her!"
Comstock wanted to ask how old she was but he couldn't. He felt that
it might reveal the motives that were driving him out of the security
of Bowdler's house into the harsh reality of his world which he had
grown to hate and fear.
Waving his hand in farewell to Bowdler, Helen and Grundy, he tried to
look like one of the heroes he had been reading about. With that image
in mind, he threw back his shoulders, took a deep breath, and slammed
the door behind him. Then, head held high, he walked straight off the
verandah and missed the top step completely.
Floundering, he landed in a heap at the bottom of the four steps.
It wasn't particularly heroic he feared, rising and brushing himself
off.
Gulping, he walked out of sight of the enchanted house as quickly as he
could. Ahead lay a world of danger, of familiar things that now were
menacing, and terrible.
But beckoning him on his way was a picture of a lovely red-haired,
green-eyed girl who would fall languishing into his arms when he
rescued her from the hands of the enemy.
Thinking about just what ways she would reveal her gratitude carried
him along on seven league boots. As a matter of fact before he quite
knew how he had covered the distance between the house and Puritan
Square, he was there.
The streets were crowded with people but of a lovely red-haired siren
there was no sign, no sign at all.