Star Science Fiction 3 - [Anthology] Read online

  The general subject assigned had been: “If you had your choice of traveling on some ancient vehicle, which would you choose, and why?” Miss Robbins tried to use the topic every semester. It was a good one because it carried a sense of history with it. It forced the youngster to think about the manner of living of people in past ages.

  She listened while Richard Hanshaw read in a low voice.

  “If I had my choice of ancient vehicles,” he said, pronouncing the “h” in vehicles, “I would choose the stratoliner. It travels slow like all vehicles but it is clean. Because it travels in the stratosphere, it must be all enclosed so that you are not likely to catch disease. You can see the stars if it is night time almost as good as in a planetarium. If you look down you can see the Earth like a map or maybe see clouds—” He went on for several hundred more words.

  She said brightly when he had finished reading, “It’s pronounced vee-ick-ulls, Richard. No ‘h.’ Accent on the first syllable. And you don’t say ‘travels slow’ or ‘see good.’ What do you say, class?”

  There was a small chorus of responses and she went on, “That’s right. Now what is the difference between an adjective and an adverb? Who can tell me?”

  And so it went. Lunch passed. Some pupils stayed to eat; some went home. Richard stayed. Miss Robbins noted that, as usually he didn’t.

  The afternoon passed, too, and then there was the final bell and the usual upsurging hum as twenty-five boys and girls rattled their belongings together and took their leisurely place in line.

  Miss Robbins clapped her hands together. “Quickly, children. Come, Zelda, take your place.”

  “I dropped my tape-punch, Miss Robbins,” shrilled the girl, defensively.

  “Well, pick it up, pick it up. Now children, be brisk, be brisk.”

  She pushed the button that slid a section of the wall into a recess and revealed the gray blankness of a large Door. It was not the usual Door that the occasional student used in going home for lunch, but an advanced model that was one of the prides of this well-to-do private school.

  In addition to its double width, it possessed a large and impressively gear-filled “automatic serial finder” which was capable of adjusting the door for a number of different co-ordinates at automatic intervals.

  At the beginning of the semester, Miss Robbins always had to spend an afternoon with the mechanic, adjusting the device for the co-ordinates of the homes of the new class. But then, thank goodness, it rarely needed attention for the remainder of the term.

  The class lined up alphabetically, first girls, then boys. The door went velvety black and Hester Adams waved her hand and stepped through. “By-y-y—”

  The ‘bye’ was cut off in the middle, as it almost always was.

  The door went gray, then black again, and Theresa Cantrocchi went through. Gray, black, Zelda Charlowicz. Gray, black, Patricia Coombs. Gray, black, Sara May Evans.

  The line grew smaller as the Door swallowed them one by one, depositing each in her home. Of course, an occasional mother forgot to leave the house Door on special reception at the appropriate time and then the school Door remained gray. Automatically, after a minute-long wait, the Door went on to the next combination in line and the pupil in question had to wait till it was all over, after which a phone call to the forgetful parent would set things right. This was always bad for the pupils involved, especially the sensitive ones who took seriously the implication that they were little thought of at home. Miss Robbins always tried to impress this on visiting parents, but it happened at least once every semester just the same.

  The girls were all through now. John Abramowitz stepped through and then Edwin Byrne—

  Of course, another trouble, and a more frequent one was the boy or girl who got into line out of place. Theywould do it despite the teacher’s sharpest watch, particularly at the beginning of the term when the proper order was less familiar to them.

  When that happened, children would be popping into the wrong houses by the half-dozen and would have to be sent back. It always meant a mixup that took minutes to straighten out and parents were invariably irate.

  Miss Robbins was suddenly aware that the line had stopped. She spoke sharply to the boy at the head of the line.

  “Step through, Samuel. What are you waiting for?”

  Samuel Jones raised a complacent countenance and said, “It’s not my combination, Miss Robbins.”

  “Well, whose is it?” She looked impatiently down the line of five remaining boys. Who was out of place?”

  “It’s Dick Hanshaw’s, Miss Robbins.”

  “Where is he?”

  Another boy answered, with the rather repulsive tone of self-righteousness all children automatically assume in reporting the deviations of their friends to elders in authority, “He went through the fire door, Miss Robbins.”

  “What?”

  The schoolroom Door had passed on to another combination and Samuel Jones passed through. One by one, the rest followed.

  Miss Robbins was alone in the classroom. She stepped to the fire door. It was a small affair, manually operated, and hidden behind a bend in the wall so that it would not break up the uniform structure of the room.

  She opened it a crack. It was there as a means of escape from the building in case of fire, a device which was enforced by an anachronistic law that did not take into account the modern methods of automatic fire-fighting that all public buildings used. There was nothing outside, but the—outside. The sunlight was harsh and a dusty wind was blowing.

  Miss Robbins closed the door. She was glad she had called Mrs. Hanshaw. She had done her duty. More than ever, it was obvious that something was wrong with Richard. She suppressed the impulse to phone again.

  * * * *

  Mrs. Hanshaw did not go to New York that day. She remained home in a mixture of anxiety and an irrational anger, the latter directed against the impudent Miss Robbins.

  Some fifteen minutes before school’s end, her anxiety drove her to the Door. Last year she had had it equipped with an automatic device which activated it to the school’s co-ordinates at five of three and kept it so, barring manual adjustment, until Richard arrived.

  Her eyes were fixed on the Door’s dismal gray (why couldn’t an inactive force-field be any other color, something more lively and cheerful?) and waited. Her hands felt cold as she squeezed them together.

  The Door turned black at the precise second but nothing happened. The minutes passed and Richard was late. Then quite late. Then very late.

  It was a quarter of four and she was distracted. Normally, she would have phoned the school, but she couldn’t, she couldn’t. Not after that teacher had deliberately cast doubts on Richard’s mental well-being. How could she?

  Mrs. Hanshaw moved about restlessly, lighting a cigarette with fumbling fingers, then smudging it out. Could it be something quite normal? Could Richard be staying after school for some reason? Surely he would have told her in advance. A gleam of light struck her; he knew she was planning to go to New York and might not be back till late in the evening—

  No, he would surely have told her. Why fool herself?

  Her pride was breaking. She would have to call the school, or even (she closed her eyes and teardrops squeezed through between the lashes) the police.

  And when she opened her eyes, Richard stood before her, eyes on the ground and his whole bearing that of someone waiting for a blow to fall.

  “Hello, Mom.”

  Mrs. Hanshaw’s anxiety transmuted itself instantly (in a manner known only to mothers) into anger. “Where have you been, Richard?”

  And then, before she could go further into the refrain concerning careless, unthinking sons and broken-hearted mothers, she took note of his appearance in greater detail, and gasped in utter horror.

  She said, “You’ve been in the open.”

  Her son looked down at his dusty shoes (minus flexies), at the dirt marks that streaked his lower arms and at the small, but definite tear
in his shirt. He said, “Gosh, Mom, I just thought I’d—” and he faded out.

  She said, “Was there anything wrong with the school Door?”

  “No, Mom.”

  “Do you realize I’ve been worried sick about you?” She waited vainly for an answer. “Well, I’ll talk to you afterward, young man. First, you’re taking a bath, and every stitch of your clothing is being thrown out. Mekkano!”

  But the mekkano had already reacted properly to the phrase “taking a bath” and was off to the bathroom in its silent glide.

  “You take your shoes off right here,” said Mrs. Hanshaw, “then march after mekkano.”

  Richard did as he was told with a resignation that placed him beyond futile protest.

  Mrs. Hanshaw picked up the soiled shoes between thumb and forefinger and dropped them down the disposal chute which hummed in faint dismay at the unexpected load. She dusted her hands carefully on a tissue which she allowed to float down the chute after the shoes.

  She did not join Richard at dinner but let him eat in the worse-than-lack-of-company of the mekkano. This, she thought, would be an active sign of her displeasure and would do more than any amount of scolding or punishment to make him realize that he had done wrong. Richard, she frequently told herself, was a sensitive boy.

  But she went up to see him at bedtime.

  She smiled at him and spoke softly. She thought that would be the best way. After all, he had been punished already.

  She said, “What happened today, Dickie-boy?” She had called him that when he was a baby and just the sound of the name softened her nearly to tears.

  But he only looked away and his voice was stubborn and cold. “I just don’t like to go through those darn Doors, Mom.”

  “But why ever not?”

  He shuffled his hands over the filmy sheet (fresh, clean, antiseptic and, of course, disposable after each use) and said, “I just don’t like them.”

  “But then how do you expect to go to school, Dickie?”

  “I’ll get up early,” he mumbled.

  “But there’s nothing wrong with Doors.”

  “Don’t like ‘em.” He never once looked up at her.

  She said, despairingly. “Oh, well, you have a good sleep and tomorrow morning, you’ll feel much better.”

  She kissed him and left the room, automatically passing her hand through the photo-cell beam and in that manner dimming the room-lights.

  But she had trouble sleeping herself that night. Why should Dickie dislike Doors so suddenly? They had never bothered him before. To be sure, the Door had broken down in the morning but that should make him appreciate them all the more.

  Dickie was behaving so unreasonably.

  Unreasonably? That reminded her of Miss Robbins and her diagnosis and Mrs. Hanshaw’s soft jaw set in the darkness and privacy of her bedroom. Nonsense! The boy was upset and a night’s sleep was all the therapy he needed.

  But the next morning when she arose, her son was not in the house. The mekkano could not speak but it could answer questions with gestures of its appendages equivalent to a yes or no, and it did not take Mrs. Hanshaw more than half a minute to ascertain that the boy had arisen thirty minutes earlier than usual, skimped his shower, and darted out of the house.

  But not by way of the Door.

  Out the other way—through the door. Small “d.”

  * * * *

  Mrs. Hanshaw’s visiphone signaled genteelly at 3:10 p.m. that day. Mrs. Hanshaw guessed the caller and having activated the receiver, saw that she had guessed correctly. A quick glance in the mirror to see that she was properly calm after a day of abstracted concern and worry and then she keyed in her own transmission.

  “Yes, Miss Robbins,” she said coldly.

  Richard’s teacher was a bit breathless. She said, “Mrs. Hanshaw, Richard has deliberately left through the fire door although I told him to use the regular Door. I do not know where he went.”

  Mrs. Hanshaw said, carefully, “He left to come home.”

  Miss Robbins looked dismayed, “Do you approve of this?”

  Pale-faced, Mrs. Hanshaw set about putting the teacher in her place. “I don’t think it is up to you to criticize. If my son does not choose to use the Door, it is his affair and mine. I don’t think there is any school ruling that would force him to use the Door, is there?” Her bearing quite plainly intimated that if there were she would see to it that it was changed.

  Miss Robbins flushed and had time for one quick remark before contact was broken. She said, “I’d have him probed. I really would.”

  Mrs. Hanshaw remained standing before the quartzinium plate, staring blindly at its blank face. Her sense of family placed her for a few moments quite firmly on Richard’s side. Why did he have to use the Door if he chose not to? And then she settled down to wait and pride battled the gnawing anxiety that something after all was wrong with Richard.

  He came home with a look of defiance on his face, but his mother, with a strenuous effort at self-control, met him as though nothing were out of the ordinary.

  * * * *

  For weeks, she followed that policy. It’s nothing, she told herself. It’s a vagary. He’ll grow out of it.

  It grew into an almost normal state of affairs. Then, too, every once in a while, perhaps three days in a row, she would come down to breakfast to find Richard waiting sullenly at the Door, then using it when school time came. She always refrained from commenting on the matter.

  Always, when he did that, and especially when he followed it up by arriving home via the Door, her heart grew warm and she thought, “Well, it’s over.” But always with the passing of one day, two or three, he would return like an addict to his drug and drift silently out by the door— small “d”—before she woke.

  And each time she thought despairingly of psychiatrists and probes, and each time the vision of Miss Robbins’ low-bred satisfaction at (possibly) learning of it, stopped her, although she was scarcely aware that that was the true motive.

  Meanwhile, she lived with it and made the best of it. The mekkano was instructed to wait at the door—small “d”—with a Tergo kit and a change of clothing. Richard washed and changed without resistance. His underthings, socks and flexies were disposable in any case, and Mrs. Hanshaw bore uncomplainingly the expense of daily disposal of shirts. Trousers she finally allowed to go a week before disposal on condition of rigorous nightly cleansing.

  One day she suggested that Richard accompany her on a trip to New York. It was more a vague desire to keep him in sight than part of any purposeful plan. He did not object. He was even happy. He stepped right through the Door, unconcerned. He didn’t hesitate. He even lacked the look of resentment he wore on those mornings he used the Door to go to school.

  Mrs. Hanshaw rejoiced. This could be a way of weaning him back into Door usage, and she racked her ingenuity for excuses to make trips with Richard. She even raised her power bill to quite unheard-of heights by suggesting, and going through with, a trip to Canton for the day in order to witness a Chinese festival.

  That was on a Sunday, and the next morning Richard marched directly to the hole in the wall he always used. Mrs. Hanshaw, having wakened particularly early, witnessed that. For once, badgered past endurance, she called after him plaintively, “Why not the Door, Dickie?”

  He said, briefly, “It’s all right for Canton,” and stepped out of the house.

  So that plan ended in failure. And then, one day, Richard came home soaking wet. The mekkano hovered about him uncertainly and Mrs. Hanshaw, just returned from a four-hour visit with her sister in Iowa, cried, “Richard Hanshaw!”

  He said, hang-dog fashion, “It started raining. All of a sudden, it started raining.”

  For a moment, the word didn’t register with her. Her own school days and her studies of geography were twenty years in the past. And then she remembered and caught the vision of water pouring recklessly and endlessly down from the sky—a mad cascade of water with no tap to turn
off, no button to push, no contact to break.

  She said, “And you stayed out in it?”

  He said, “Well, gee, Mom, I came home fast as I could. I didn’t know it was going to rain.”

  Mrs. Hanshaw had nothing to say. She was appalled and the sensation filled her too full for words to find a place.

  Two days later, Richard found himself with a running nose, and a dry, scratchy throat. Mrs. Hanshaw had to admit that the virus of disease had found a lodging in her house, as though it were a miserable hovel of the Iron Age.

  It was over that that her stubbornness and pride broke and she admitted to herself that, after all, Richard had to have psychiatric help.