Complete Short Fiction, page 415
V
EDITH Price and the detectives set out for Harkdale in the two cars. Seth Mitchell, at Edith’s request, drove her car. Marge Aikens followed in the larger machine.
En route Mitchell told Edith that he believed she was the original Edith and that it was to her that the crystal was still oriented. He considered also that her conclusion that Seth Mitchell, the farmer, was the worst Seth had doomed that unfortunate Mitchell duplicate. The crystal accepted her judgment and probably uncreated Seth, the farmer, when the package with the crystal addressed to him had barely been deposited in the post office.
Edith was taken aback by the detective’s logic.
“But,” she stammered, “I didn’t mean it that way.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Oh, that poor man!”
“Of course you didn’t mean it,” Mitchell said. “Just to doublecheck—tell me again in what sequence did that judgment of yours come? Was it before or after your various impulses to leave Harkdale?”
“Oh, after.”
“And did I hear you correctly—you thought of going into the post office and asking for the package you had mailed to be returned to you?”
“Yes, I had that thought.” She added; “But I didn’t do it.”
“I would guess that at least one other Edith did go back and get it,” said Mitchell.
“But it’s all so complicated,” Edith said. “How would any Edith just go, leaving clothes, money, car?”
“I’ve been thinking of my own background on that,” said Mitchell. “Evidently the crystal can excise all confusions like that. For example, I never again even thought of going back to Harkdale. To do so didn’t even cross my mind. But there are no blanks like that in your mind?”
“None that I can identify or think of.”
Seth Mitchell nodded. “That’s how I heard you. I think I’ve got the solution to this whole crazy business—and we don’t even have to know where the crystal is.”
His reasoning was simple. In bringing back Billy Bingham at her command the crystal had deposited the boy nearly two miles away. At the time she had been holding the crystal in her hand. But her negative thought about Farmer Seth Mitchell had occurred after she had mailed the crystal and was approximately a hundred yards from the post office.
So if she had indeed uncreated the mentally ill farmer, then the distance of the crystal’s human orientation—in this instance one of the Edith Prices—from the crystal, was not a factor.
“You don’t agree?” asked the detective.
“I’m thinking,” Edith said. “Maybe I’m not really the orientation.”
“We’ll test that tomorrow.”
“What about Athtar?” Edith asked. “I keep feeling that he may have special weapons. Besides, the crystal cannot affect him. What about that?”
“Let me think about Athtar.”
While he thought, Edith remembered Athtar’s asking her about the figure in the crystal: had it been a man’s or a woman’s? She sat there in the darkness next to this Seth Mitchell and became aware of two separate lines of thought in her mind.
The first: she attempted to visualize the human design in the crystal.
The second . . .
SHE watched his profile as he drove.
How brilliant he is—yet surely a mere detective, no matter how keen his logic, cannot be the best of all possible Seth Mitchells. A man in such a profession has got to be somewhere in the middle—which in this competition is the same as the worst . . .
And he disappeared.
For many seconds after she had that thought, the suddenly driver-less car held to its straight direction. Its speed, which had been around seventy, naturally started to let up the instant there was no longer a foot on the accelerator.
The only error came when Edith uttered a scream and grabbed at the wheel, turning it. The machine careened wildly. The next second she grasped it in a more steadying way and, holding it, slid along the seat into a position where presently she could apply the brake. She pulled over to the side of the road and stopped.
Marge Aikens had slowed as soon as she saw there was a problem. She pulled up behind Edith, got out of the car and walked to the driver’s side of the other machine.
“Seth,” she began, “what—”
Edith pushed the door open and stepped, trembling, out to the road. She had a mad impulse to run—anywhere. Her body felt strange. Her mind was encased in blank anguish. She was vaguely aware of herself babbling about what had happened.
It must have taken a while for her incoherent words to reach through to Marge. But suddenly Marge gasped and Edith felt herself grabbed by the shoulders. She was being shaken.
A voice was yelling at her, “You stupid fool! You stupid fool—”
The shaking became pain. Her neck hurt, then her arms.
I must be careful. I mustn’t do or say anything that will affect her . . .
With the thought Edith’s sanity returned. Marge was in a state of hysteria. The shaking was actually an automatic act of a person out of her mind with grief.
Edith knew pity. She was able to free herself by a simple action. She slapped Marge lightly on the cheek, once, twice, three times. The third time the woman let go of her and leaned against the car, sobbing.
A wind was blowing from the west. Car headlights kept glaring past them, lighting the scene briefly. The two women were now in a relatively normal state and presently were able to discuss their situation. Edith tried to recreate Marge’s employer with the same command she had used to bring back Billy Bingham.
She had had a feeling that it would not work—the Seth Mitchells were undoubtedly due to be eliminated one by one—and it did not. The minutes ticked by. Though she yelled the command in many variations into the night there was no sign of the vanished Seth, whose presence had for a long half-day brought to the whole situation the reassurance that derives from a highly intelligent and determined mind.
In the end, defeated, the two women in their separate cars drove on to Harkdale. Marge had a room reserved at the Harkdale Hotel and went there. Edith drove wearily to the apartment house where she lived.
IT WAS nearly four o’clock when she finally limped into her little suite. She lay down without undressing. She was drifting off to sleep when fear tensed her. Would the best of all possible Ediths be this sloppy about personal cleanliness?
Literally hurting with exhaustion, she rolled off the bed, undressed, bathed, brushed her teeth, combed her hair, changed the linens and stepped into a clean pair of pajamas.
She awoke once with a bad start to the thought that conformity might not be her salvation. Such toiletry amenities as she had performed were products of early training and did not necessarily have anything to do with life as it should be lived.
She fell asleep imagining a series of rebel Ediths, each one of whom had some special characteristic that was noble and worthy.
The next time she awoke she saw daylight outside. It occurred to her that all her concepts, so compulsively visualized, were probably being created somewhere by the crystal. Undoubtedly there were already beatnik and hippie Ediths as well as rougher, tougher types.
For the first time she realized what a strange whirl of possibilities she had considered in the last thirty-six hours. Ediths who were hard-boiled and could coldly shoot to kill, or, conversely, were superfeminine, sweet, tantalizing temptresses.
“And it’s all unnecessary,” she whispered, lying there. “The decision will probably be made as arbitrarily as my own impulsive condemnation of the inarticulate farmer and the courageous—but presumably not perfect—detective.”
Having no standards that applied to the twentieth century, the crystal had uncreated a powerful and good man on the passing judgment of the person to whom it had by chance become oriented. Accordingly, the future looked grim for all Seth Mitchells and Edith Prices, including the original.
AS SHE dressed she looked through her window at the distant blue waters of Lake Naragang and the downtown section that at one place, opposite the Harkdale Hotel, crowded the water’s edge. Pretty little town, Harkdale. She remembered that on her arrival she had thought that at least here she could be more casual in her dress than she had been in New York. Then she gave a short, rueful laugh—she had come full circle during the night, back to the notion that appearance would count.
She put on her finest dress. Yet in some back closet of her brain lived a fearful conviction that all this was in vain. The crisis was imminent; she might be dead—uncreated—before this day was out.
It seemed ridiculous to go to work on the day you were going to die. But she went. As she moved about her duties Edith was conscious of her subdued manner. Twice, when she unthinkingly looked into the restroom mirror, she was startled by the pale face and sick eyes that looked back at her.
This is not really me—I can’t be judged on this . . .
Surely the crystal would not reject her because she was in a daze. Every passing minute fleeting images of other Ediths passed before her mind’s eye. Each one had in it the momentary hope that maybe it held the key to the best. There was Edith living out her life as a nun; another chaste Edith, married but holding sex to a minimum, placing all her attention on her children, and an Edith who was a follower of Zen Buddhism.
She had, earlier, put through a call to Marge Aiken, at the Harkdale Hotel. About two o’clock Marge called back. She reported that she had phoned New York and discovered that the second Edith had not returned to her hotel at all the previous night.
After imparting this grim news, Marge said, “If Athtar contacts you—don’t be alone with him under any circumstances until he produces the Seth Mitchell in the gold Cadillac and the Edith in New York.”
After that call more images, mostly of saintly and good-hearted, unsophisticated Ediths haunted her.
Into this haze of thoughts, Tilsit’s voice intruded: “Phone call for you, Edith.”
She picked up the phone, heard a familiar voice—Athtar’s.
“I want to see you right after work.”
Edith said on a suddenly faint note, “At the Harkdale Hotel—in the lobby.”
VI
ATHTAR left the phone booth.
A smile twisted his wide face. For him there were two possibilities of victory now that he had the crystal.
The first was to kill its current orientation—Edith. He intended to take no chances with her. She would never, he resolved, reach the Harkdale Hotel.
However, murder of his only Edith left one unpleasant possibility. Though he had reasoned it out that she was the crystal’s orientation—should she prove not to be, in destroying her—he would remove his source of information for tracing other Ediths.
It was a considered risk he had to take. As a precaution he had already removed the crystal from the nutrient soil on which it fed. He was not certain how long it would be before the stone was deactivated by starvation, but he deduced not more than two weeks. Whereupon it would orient to whoever reactivated it. To himself, of course.
Now that he had a special barrier-penetrating weapon, he firmly believed that before this day was over he would be in sole possession of the most remarkable machine of all time and space—the crystal.
THE Harkdale Hotel was a summer resort hostelry. Its prices were high and as a result it had made money. Some of the money had been spent wisely, on decoration, fine furniture and a sophisticated staff.
The clerk on day duty had his own definition of a sophisticate: a person with a memory so good that he can forget with discretion.
He was such a person. His name was Derek Slade. And so discreet was he that on this fateful day he had allowed four Seth Mitchells to register without comment. He believed each Mitchell to be the same man but with a different woman and he was just beginning to enjoy the situation when Seth Mitchell arrived for the fifth time—this time without a woman.
Yet it took Derek only a moment to figure it out. This smooth male, Seth Mitchell, had four women in different rooms and evidently wanted a separate room for himself. Why? Derek did not try to analyze the matter further. Life—he had often said—was full of surprises.
He spoke in a low tone, “You may count on my discretion, Mr. Mitchell.”
The Seth Mitchell across the desk from him raised his eyebrows, then nodded with a faint smile.
Derek was pleased. The remark ought to be good for a twenty-dollar tip.
He was still congratulating himself when the elevator door opened and another Seth Mitchell stepped out and walked toward the desk. As he came up, the Seth Mitchell who had just registered turned to follow the bellboy carrying his bags to the elevator.
The two Seth Mitchells almost bumped into each other. Both took evasive action. Both murmured polite, nothings and were about to pass each other when Derek recovered.
It was one of his perfect moments. He raised his voice, spoke with exactly the correct note of authority.
“Mr. Mitchell.”
The two Seth Mitchells were already in a mildly confused state. Their name, uttered in that peremptory tone, stopped them.
Derek said, “Mr. Seth Mitchell, may I present Mr. Seth Mitchell. Gentlemen, please wait there a moment.”
He let them kill their own time—one seemed to recover quickly; the other remained bewildered—while he phoned the rooms of the previously registered Seth Mitchells. He had to call all four rooms but presently before him stood five Seth Mitchells.
Of all the people present the one most completely unnoticed was Derek Slade. He would not have had it any other way.
Four of the five Seths were gulping and stuttering at each other. The fifth had stepped to one side with a faint smile. Almost as one, the four suddenly became embarrassed.
Derek’s cool voice reached them with perfect timing.
“Gentlemen, let me show you to the conference room, where you may talk over this whole matter.”
As they started for the conference room, Marge Aiken entered the hotel in time to catch a profile view of the last Seth Mitchell walking into the room. She paled, then rushed forward.
“Seth—” she cried out tearfully. “For God’s sake, I thought you were dead—”
She stopped. She had grabbed the nearest man by the arm. He turned and something unfamiliar about him flustered her.
AFTER all the Mitchells had been briefed by Marge to the extent of her knowledge she suggested that Edith be called to come over at once.
Three Seth Mitchells presented their view. Listening to each in turn, Marge glanced along the line of sensationally familiar faces and saw in all but one man’s eyes a haunting apprehension—and the equally haunting intelligence she had seen so often in her employer’s.
Seth from Montreal said, “Our first act must be to protect ourselves from that young woman’s automatic judgments, such as she rendered on farmer Mitchell and detective Mitchell.”
A second, slightly deeper-voiced Seth was concerned about Athtar. “In killing Edith Price Number Two, Athtar must have gotten the crystal and then discovered that the dead Edith was not the orientation. Therefore our initial act must be to protect the Edith who is the orientation. The first real problem is to get her safely to the hotel—not what she may do when she gets here.”
The third Seth said the problem was not so much Edith’s judgment of men; it was her stereotyped concept of women. Presumably, the crystal had dutifully created a long list of Edith Prices who were simply ordinary human beings with varying moral standards or with slightly different beliefs about how to get along in the drab world of the twentieth century.
“As an example of how differently I would want her to handle her control, of the crystal—one of the first Edith Prices I would wish her to create is one that has ESP. Why? So that she can understand this whole situation and what to do about it.”
His words brought a hopeful reaction. It was an obviously good idea—if it could be done.
A fourth Seth, who had sat gray and silent, now said, “It would be interesting if such ESP ability included being able to spot the Seth Mitchell who—” he nodded at Marge—“paid your boss a thousand dollars to locate the crystal.”
The Seth who had arrived at the hotel without a wife—and who had reflected none of the fear that the others felt—stirred and smiled cheerfully.
“You need look no further. I’m he.”
When order had been restored he continued: “To answer your basic question, I also dreamed—as you all did—and exactly as the worst Athtar found himself with the address of one of the Seth Mitchells in his mind, one morning after a dream the address of detective Mitchell was in mine.”
“But why didn’t you come for the crystal yourself? Why pay a thousand dollars?”
The bachelor Mitchell smiled again. “I hate to tell you people this—and it is to your advantage not to let Miss Price know—but according to the thoughts I had after my dream I am the best of all possible Seth Mitchells.”
Once more he had to wait for order.
Then: “I don’t know why I’m best. But I hired someone to come here in my place because I sensed danger and I came here today believing that this was the crisis. I can’t tell you what I’ll do about it. I don’t even have the feeling that my role is decisive. I simply believe that a challenge will present itself and I’ll meet it.” He finished simply: “I don’t think we should devote any more time to me. We have many vital things to do and we only have until Edith Price comes off the job to get them done. Let’s go. First, since violence is imminent, we must warn the police—”
THE police of Harkdale were few in number and Athtar was able to drive into town and into the library parking lot without being observed. A lingering twilight had barely begun to turn to night when Edith emerged.
She noted with a vague surprise that a town fire truck, engine running, was standing near the door. But she was already having qualms about the forthcoming journey to the hotel—so far away, it seemed to her suddenly. So the sight of the big truck was reassuring.
To get to her own car, she had to go around the fire truck. As she started to do so the big machine surged into motion with a gigantic thunder of its engine. Edith stopped, teetered, then leaped back. The truck jammed on its brakes directly in front of her.
