The Rule of the Door and Other Fanciful Regulations. Lloyd Biggle jr.

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      “The Door appears to be exceedingly complicated.”

      “Naturally. It involves, you see, a thought-wave analyzer and a subconsciousness prober. This instrument would appear to be an ancient model of a personality computer. The other components are strange to me, but I assume that this one is a data analyzer which will make the final decision.”

      “Amazing!”

      “In his inestimable wisdom, the Great Kom realized that the disruption of the life process of an intelligent being was not a project to be undertaken impulsively. He formulated a series of maxims: ‘Spare the humble one, for his nature is sublime. Spare the wise one, for his nature is rare. Spare the one who loves others more than himself, for love is the ultimate meaning of life. Spare the head of a family, for his loss would injure many. Spare the weak, for their weakness renders them harmless. Spare the generous, for their acts merit generosity.’ There is much more. Some of it I do not understand.”

      “The Rule of the Door must be extremely difficult to apply,” the Prime Minister mused.

      “Praise be to the Great Kom, we do not have to apply the Rule. We have only to assemble the Door, and the Door will select a proper specimen for his Imperial Majesty.”

      The Prime Minister thumped his feet gleefully. “Excellent! You will proceed at once to this planet and put the Door in operation.”

      * * * *

      The citizens of Centertown, Indiana, were agog with excitement. A fabulous mansion was being erected on the outskirts of their fair community by a retired Texas oil millionaire. Or a maharaja who had escaped from his irate subjects with a fortune and a few paltry dozen of his wives and was settling in Indiana. Or a wealthy manufacturer who was going to develop Centertown into a sprawling metropolis.

      At any rate, someone was building it, price no object, and he was in a hurry. Centertown was sorely taxed to supply the necessary labor force. Men were imported from Terre Haute, and an Indianapolis contractor put in a winding asphalt drive through the trees to the top of the wooded hill where the house was taking shape. On Sunday afternoons the citizens of Centertown turned out en masse to inspect and comment on the week’s progress.

      When the structure neared completion, the general reaction was one of disillusionment. Its architecture was conservative. Several of Centertown’s moderately wealthy boasted more elaborate dwellings. The mysterious mansion proved to be, in disappointing fact, merely another large house.

      But the inside—ah, there was something to talk about! The good citizens of Centertown hung eagerly on the words of the carpenters who described it. There was no basement, and except for a lavatory and a small utilities room, most of the first floor was a vast living room.

      And the owner had a positive mania for closets and doors. Along one entire wall of that spacious living room were closets, large, windowless closets. Their doors were structural monstrosities, fully two feet thick, that functioned strangely and were hung with a strange type of hinge none of the carpenters had ever seen before. And the doors opened inward. Who ever heard of a closet with a door that opened inward? There were eleven of them, and the central closet was left unfinished and doorless.

      Clearly, this new resident of Centertown was a most peculiar person. If the workmen were to be believed, he even looked peculiar. The painters, returning from putting finishing touches on the living room, added another wrinkle to the mystery. Overnight a door had been placed on the central closet. A locked door.

      Skarn Skukarn, Jonathan Skarn to the citizens of Centertown, took up his residence in the new house on a crisp fall day and led a newly arrived, shivering assistant on a tour of inspection. Skarn’s pleasure in the house was more than offset by his displeasure with the assistant. The squat, ill-tempered Dork Diffack was grumpy, insulting and generally obnoxious. Skarn confidently expected that he would add treachery to these sterling qualities at the first opportunity; would in fact be immensely pleased if he could bring about Skarn’s failure, since the whole disgrace would be Skarn’s.

      Praise be to the Great Kom, Skarn also knew that he could not fail.

      Dork snorted disdainfully as they completed their circuit of the grounds. “Abominable climate,” he growled. “And these barbarians—I must admit they have intelligence, since they have a civilization of sorts, but it can’t be much intelligence.”

      “Nevertheless,” Skarn said, “they are intelligent, so the Rule of the Door must apply.”

      “Intolerable nonsense. Why go to all this bother and expense to collect one specimen? Why not just pack one off and have done with it? There are enough of the creatures running around here.” Dork glanced toward the highway, where several cars were parked, their occupants staring at the house. “The patrol captain could have done it,” he went on. “He should have done it. It’s a pretty mess when men of our distinction have to go chasing around the galaxy just to satisfy old Kegor’s whims about his Biological Museum.”

      “His Imperial Majesty does not have whims!” Skarn said sternly.

      Dork, being a native of Huzz, one of the Empire’s outlying worlds, frequently displayed a boorish, provincial disrespect for His Imperial Majesty. He also displayed disrespect for Skarn, but that was motivated by jealousy over the fact that Skarn’s professorship at the Royal University was vastly superior to the one Dork held on Huzz. Dork was competent enough, however, and praise be to the Great Kom, the assignment shouldn’t take long.

      “I never heard of this Rule of the Door on Huzz,” Dork said.

      “There had been no reason for its use for so long that it was almost forgotten on the Mother Planet,” Skarn said. “It seems to have been invoked only once, and that during the Great Kom’s lifetime.”

      They entered the house and crossed the expanse of living room. Dork gave the Door a peevish kick. “Built precisely to the Great Kom’s specifications, I suppose.”

      “Precisely.”

      “Well, you said the servants will be here tomorrow. Maybe one of them will blunder through it and then we can go home.”

      Skarn smiled. “It won’t be quite that simple. The qualifications are rather restrictive, you know.”

      “I have read the content of the Rule,” Dork said haughtily. “Do you imagine for one moment that these barbarians possess such qualities as love and wisdom and generosity?”

      “Yes,” Skarn said. “Yes, I do.”

      “Anyway, that’s not our problem. The Door will decide.”

      “Perhaps. The Great Kom designed the Door for the inhabitants of a world that is unknown to us. These—ah—barbarians may have an entirely different mental structure. That would mean that we would have to adapt the Door to them, and I must confess that I don’t know how to go about it. Some of the instrumentation is exceedingly strange.”

      “How do you know the Great Kom did not design the Door for the inhabitants of this world?”

      “I suppose that is possible,” Skarn said doubtfully. “I hadn’t thought of it.”

      “Everything else is arranged?”

      “Completely. We have only to throw the activating switch. The relay stations are set up СКАЧАТЬ