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

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СКАЧАТЬ Now—where was the specimen of the intelligent creature?

      Skarn advised the Director to expect it momentarily. He closed the Door and attached a small metal plate that advised, “Push.” He activated it and stood nearby, listening to the barely perceptible purring of the instruments. He cautiously tested it on himself and found that it would not open. Everything was ready.

      With Dork, he spent hours sifting through the stack of reports. Three-fourths of the citizens were eliminated immediately, a figure that Skarn thought spoke well for these natives. The remaining fourth they studied, compared and debated. They reduced their list to a hundred names, to fifty, and finally to ten. Each of the ten they compared conscientiously with the maxims of the Great Kom. In the end they had four names.

      “I don’t think this was necessary,” Dork said. “But perhaps you are right. This may be the more efficient approach. Certainly the Door will accept any of these.”

      Skarn nodded and shuffled the reports. He was learning to smoke a pipe, and already the effort had cost him five teeth. New teeth had not yet grown in, and his gums pained him as he grimly mouthed the pipestem.

      Whenever he used his hand to support the pipe’s bowl, he burned himself. He bit down hard on the stem, winced painfully, removed it. His attempted smoke ring poured forth in a turbulent cloud.

      He read the four reports again. The Honorable Ernest Schwartz, Mayor of Centertown. Married. He and his wife hated each other devoutly. He had no children, no family dependent upon him. There were multitudinous rumors about him, to be gleaned everywhere in Centertown and environs. He was a liar. He was also a thief. He had betrayed the trust of his office repeatedly to enrich himself. He had betrayed his friends. He was greedy and evil and held affection for no one. He had carried on what the natives boorishly called love affairs with the wives of his friends, and pushed his own wife into an affair for his political advantage. He seemed to bewitch the voters at election time.

      Skarn frowned. Election time? He would have to investigate that. Whatever it meant bewitching the voters seemed an immoral thing to do.

      He turned to the next report. Sam White, Centertown Chief of Police. A bachelor with no known relatives. He kept his job, it was said, by cooperating with the mayor’s crooked schemes. Some of his police officers called him a petty tyrant. He was adept at obtaining confessions. He had several times been accused of brutality toward prisoners.

      Jim Adams, the Centertown drunk. He never worked, lived off his wife’s meager earnings, and beat his wife and family mercilessly, drunk or sober. Technically he was the head of a family; in actuality his family would be far better off without him.

      Elmer Harley, a ne’er-do-well mechanic. A good mechanic, it was said, when he worked at it. He had been convicted and served jail terms for several crimes. Terre Haute police had given him a standing order to stay out of town. Centertown tolerated him warily. He had no family and no friends. He worked when he could, if he felt like it, at either of Centertown’s two garages. One of the proprietors liked him, it was said, because he was adroit at padding repair bills. That proprietor would have stood high on Skarn’s list had it not been for the fact that he verifiedly loved his wife and children.

      “When do we start?” Dork asked.

      Skarn removed his pipe from his lips and made another blundering attempt at a smoke ring. “Tomorrow. I’ll ask this Mayor Schwartz to have dinner with me.”

      * * * *

      The Honorable Ernest Schwartz entered Skarn’s enormous living room with the air of belonging there. A big man, hearty, robust, his hair shining black despite his sixty years, his booming voice and laugh seemed to conjure up unnatural echoes, as though some left over from the open house had been lying inert behind the furniture awaiting a clarion invocation. The mayor had the voice for it. While Skarn was placing his coat, hat and cane in one of the closets, his commonplace compliments about the house filled the living room and shook every somnolent echo into wakefulness.

      Skarn turned, absently rubbing his ears, and regarded the mayor strangely. He was seeing him, not as the Honorable Mayor of Centertown, Indiana, but as a specimen in sealed plastic in the Royal Museum. He was seeing him as one of a long row of bottled monstrosities that His Imperial Majesty’s patrol ships had sent in from a multitude of planets. He was seeing His Imperial Majesty himself, cackling with delight, leading a noisy crowd of visiting dignitaries through the displays and stopping to point out Mayor Schwartz’s ridiculous black hair, his smug little mustache, his flamboyant clothing, the sparkling cuff links, the gold chain that hung from his vest pocket.

      It seemed wrong. Alien though he was, Skarn could sense the man’s personal charm. He was friendly. He was obviously intelligent.

      Skarn shrugged. The decision was not his to make. The Door would decide.

      “Excuse me, please,” he said. “I do not like to entertain with servants around. I’ll bring the food myself. If you’ll make yourself comfortable—”

      “Why, certainly,” Schwartz boomed. “Anything I can do to help?”

      “No, thank you. I can manage nicely.”

      Skarn joined Dork in the laboratory, and the two of them sat watching Schwartz in the viewer. Dork was jubilant.

      “What a specimen he’ll make!” he exulted. “He’s a big one. Do you suppose the specimen bottle will hold him?”

      “It held that thing they call a calf,” Skarn said.

      Schwartz had taken a seat, but the reflected light from the sign on the Door caught his attention. He calmly got to his feet, crossed the room and read the label. The sign instructed him to push. He pushed. The Door resisted firmly.

      Dork explosively released a series of involved Huzzian oaths. “Why? Why? There isn’t a creature in our files better qualified than this one!”

      Skarn said thoughtfully, “So it would seem. We must have made a mistake. Perhaps I can find out what it was. If you’d care to take notes—”

      “Not me. He shouts. Even with the volume turned down he gives me a headache. I’m going to bed.”

      Skarn wheeled a serving cart into the living room. The mayor hurriedly got to his feet and helped him place the dishes on the table. They took their places, and Skarn poured the cocktails.

      The mayor raised his glass and said seriously, “May your residence in Centertown be a long and happy one.”

      “Thank you,” Skarn said, feeling strangely moved.

      The mayor sniffed hungrily as Skarn uncovered the dishes. He said with a sly grin, “I have a confession to make. The reason I jumped at this invitation was because I knew you’d hired Lucy Morgan.”

      Skarn said indifferently, “She seems capable.” He found the native foods so strange that he had to measure the cooks’ skills in terms of more or less indigestion.

      “Man, she’s marvelous!” the mayor exclaimed. “She used to work for me.”

      “Indeed? But if you like the food she prepares, why didn’t you keep her in your employment?”

      The mayor scowled. “Women get funny notions. That was years ago. Lucy was in her early twenties, and my wife couldn’t get it through her head that it was Lucy’s cooking that I was СКАЧАТЬ