Fantastic Stories Presents the Imagination (Stories of Science and Fantasy) Super Pack. Edmond Hamilton

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      The elevator came.

      “Step up, please.”

      Straining against his weight, she hauled Walt’s feet up over the edge of the cage. The feet scraped loudly on the floor.

      The elevator operator raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. He cocked his head to one side. “Something wrong?”

      “Oh, no,” Julia said brightly. “Everything’s fine.”

      The operator started the car. “A young lady ought to be careful in this town,” he said. “A young lady oughtn’t to drink so much.” He shook his head sadly. “There’s a case of rape in the papers nearly every day.”

      “ . . . I’ll be careful.”

      “They pick up young ladies in bars all the time. You never can tell about the men you’re liable to meet, if you go in bars. You have to watch yourself in this town.”

      “Seven, please.”

      “Yes, ma’m.”

      The elevator stopped. Julia dragged Walt out.

      “You mind what I say!” the operator called after her. “You be careful, now, and stay out of bars. You never can tell . . . .”

      Once she got Walt inside her room, she breathed a sigh of relief. She released the distortion field. He was visible again.

      She removed the top sheet from the bed. She wrestled his body onto the bed.

      She ripped the sheet into strips. She worked rapidly. She was still able to hold off fatigue; she felt no need of sleep. She was ravenously hungry.

      With the strips of sheet, she tied Walt securely. She used a knot that would require cutting to be undone. She pulled the strips tight. They did not interfere with free circulation, but there was no possibility of them being slipped. She had no intention of not finding Walt there when she came back.

      She surveyed her handiwork with satisfaction.

      *

      Whistling softly she left the room and walked down the corridor. She stopped whistling abruptly and glanced around in embarrassment. She had remembered the old adage: ‘A whistling girl and a crowing hen are sure to come to some bad end’.

      There seemed to be something indecent about whistling in public.

      The fact that she had, colored her emotions with uneasiness.

      She realized that there might be a million such superstitions—many of them not recognized as superstitions at all—buried in her personality. Her brain might be highly efficient, but was it efficient enough to overcome all the emotional biases implanted by twenty-four years of environment? Was even her knowledge of the real nature of the world—was mankind’s—sufficient to overcome such biases?

      Perhaps, she thought, I’m not as smart as I thought I was. There may be deep and illogical currents in me. Perhaps I’m not, not mature enough for such power as I’ve been given.

      Annoyed, she took out a cigarette, and in defiance of cultural tradition, lit it there in the corridor while she waited for the elevator.

      The operator did not approve of women smoking in public. He said so.

      She ate in the coffee shop.

      After the meal, she took a cab to the offices of the morning paper.

      In the entranceway to the building, sure that no one was watching, she became invisible.

      Half an hour later, possessed of the information she had come after (harvested from the back files of the paper) she was once again in the street.

      In her room, she went to the telephone. She placed a long distance call to a Boston hospital.

      The news had not been widely reported. She found most of the names in brief paragraphs stating that Mr. and Mrs. such and such had settled their suit against the so and so hospital out of court. In the three cases where the confinements had been in private homes, there had been kidnapping stories in the paper. In one of the cases, a man had later been convicted and executed—although the body of the child had never been recovered from the pond into which the prosecution contended it had been thrown.

      She talked to the switch board operator at the Boston hospital. She was given the superintendent. He—impressed by the fact that she was calling from the Pacific coast—sent his secretary to rummage the files for the hospital’s copy of the birth certificate.

      Julia waited.

      “Yes, I have it.”

      “It’s on the child of Mr. and Mrs. George Temple?”

      “That’s right.”

      Julia concentrated as hard as she could.

      “You have it in your hand?”

      “Yes.”

      “Would you look at it closely?”

      “ . . . what?”

      “Look at it closely, please.”

      “Young lady—”

      “Please, sir.”

      “All right. I am. Now what information did you want? It reads—What the hell! Where did that go? Say, how did you—”

      Julia hung up. She looked at the birth certificate lying by the telephone. She picked it up. It was none the worse for teleportation.

      She put it on the dresser and returned to the phone.

      By the time Tuesday was well into the afternoon, when the cool rays of the winter sun lay slanting upon the murmuring crest outside, she had nine birth certificates on the dresser. Nine times the bell boy had come to her room to collect for the telephone charges. The last time, she forgot to make Walt invisible. The bell boy said nothing.

      *

      Julia was annoyed by her carelessness. The bell boy’s foot-falls died in the carpet of the corridor. She went to the door and looked out. He was gone.

      She closed the door and crossed to the bed. She had exhausted her list of names. She set about rousing Walt.

      He’s handsome, she thought.

      His eyelids flickered.

      He opened his eyes. Memory slowly darkened his irises. He glared up at her.

      He surged at his bonds, striving to rip free and throw himself upon her. He tugged at his right hand. His fingers writhed. A frown passed over his face. He jerked his right hand savagely.

      “You have been deprived of your power,” Julia said.

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