The House from Nowhere - Arthur G. Stangland (great reads txt) 📗

interesting kids I've ever met. All the others I know are bored stiff. They've been everyplace and they've done everything.

"But Jimmie and Jean ask more questions about things than anybody I know. They're really interested. Every time I drop in on them they're studying history beginning with the middle of the Twentieth Century. They're absolutely fascinated and read it like fiction."

With more on his mind than his neighbors' unusual behavior Philon said, "Mmm." He stood looking at the boy for a long moment until John finally shifted self-consciously.

"What's the matter, Phil?"

Philon ended his musing. "Tomorrow night we're all going to call on the MacDonalds. And while we're there I want you to slip that copy of the Smyth Report out of their library."

For a moment the young boy's smooth face was a blank mask. Then it filled in with shocked surprise, then resentment and finally anger. "You mean—steal?"

"Of course. If they're too innocent to realize the value of the book that's their hard luck."

"But, Phil, I can't imagine myself stealing from...."

Impatiently, Philon said, "Since when did you suddenly get so holier-than-thou? Life is harsh, life is iron-fisted and if you don't keep your guard up you're going to get socked in the kisser."

John said slowly with a certain tone of shame, "Yes, I know. As far back as I can remember you've told me that. But in spite of it I can't help feeling it isn't right to treat the MacDonalds that way. They're too nice, too good."

"Look, John. You might as well learn the hard facts of life. All the high-sounding arguments for a moral world and all the laws on the books implementing those arguments are just eyewash. Sure, the President swears that he will uphold the constitution and enforce all the laws.

"Then we carefully surround him with counterspies—wire his rooms with dictaphones, slit his mail, install secret informers on his staff. All because no matter who the party is able to elect we don't trust him—because the society he represents does not trust itself."

"Is that why we have more and bigger jails than ever?"

Philon shrugged. "All I'm trying to tell you is don't go soft-headed or the world will take your shirt."

The next day before leaving for the office Philon said to his wife, "Call up the MacDonalds and if they're going to be home tonight tell them we'll be over for a visit."

Ursula made a face. "Do we have to call on those people? They'll bore me stiff."

"For heaven's sake, Ursula! It's a matter of vital importance to me—and you also, if I have to appeal to your wide streak of selfishness."

"I can't see it."

"I'll explain later. I've got to go."

During the day Ursula called him. "Well, Phil, I called as you said and I've committed us for dinner tonight."

"Dinner! Hmm, they are convivial people."

"Yes and the dinner is going to be cooked right there in their house. How vulgar can some people get?"

That evening while dressing Ursula said, "Phil, John spends a lot of time at the MacDonalds'. What do you suppose he sees in them? It gets me the way he quotes them all the time and reports their least doings. Today he came tearing into the house and said, 'Ursula, it's wonderful!' I said, 'What's wonderful?' And John said, 'The dinner they're cooking at MacDonalds'. I've never smelled anything like it in all my life. Why don't we cook in our house like they do? Mrs. MacDonald was baking cookies and let me have one right out of the oven. Mmmm, boy was it good!'"

Ursula finished, "Now, I ask you, did you ever hear anything so barbaric—cooking in the house and having all the odors permeate the whole place?"

"Well, we'll see."

Later when they arrived at the MacDonalds' they were welcomed with a quiet warmth and friendliness that Philon cynically assumed to be a new and different front.

As they sat down to dinner Mrs. MacDonald, a rosy-cheeked woman with a quick and ready smile, said, "I'm sorry we aren't able to get a connection yet. So everything we're eating tonight is right out of our deep-freeze."

John Miller said, "Gosh, Mrs. MacDonald, as far as I'm concerned, I'd rather eat from your deep-freeze anytime than from the FP!"

Bill MacDonald looked across the table at Jean and said, "All right, Jean."

Jean and all the MacDonalds bent their heads and the girl began, "We thank Thee for our daily bread as by Thy hands...."

As the girl spoke Phil's gaze drifted around to his wife, who lifted her shoulders in mystified amazement. But it was a bigger surprise to see John's bent head. For the moment John was a part of this family—part of a wholeness tied together by an invisible bond. The utter strangeness of it shocked Philon into rare clarity of insight.

He saw himself wrapped up in his business with little regard for Ursula or John, letting them exist under his roof without making them a part of his life. Ursula with her succession of gigolos and her psycho-plays and John withdrawn into his upstairs room with his books. Then he closed his mind again as if the insight were too blinding.

What strange customs these MacDonalds had! Yet he had to admit the meal looked more appetizing than anything he had ever seen. It gave an impression of sumptuous plenty to see the food for everybody in one place instead of individually packaged under glistening thermocel. And instead of throwaway dishes they used chinaware that could have come right out of a museum.

Ursula asked, "What kind of fish is this?"

Bill MacDonald answered with a big grin. "It's Royal Chinook salmon that I caught in the fish derby on the Columbia River only last—"

Mrs. MacDonald colored suddenly. "You'll have to forgive Bill. He gets himself so wrapped up in his fishing."

Glancing at MacDonald Philon was surprised to see the same confusion and embarrassment on his host's face.

It was after dinner when Mrs. MacDonald and Jean were clearing the table that Philon looked over the library shelves. MacDonald himself appeared uneasy and hovered in the background.

"You'll have to excuse my selections. They're all pretty old. I—er—inherited most of them from a grandfather."

In a few minutes Philon spotted the Smyth Report. Fixing its position well in mind he turned away. MacDonald was saying, "Come down in the basement and I'll show you my hobby room."

"Glad to." As MacDonald led the way Philon whispered to John, "You'll find the book on the second shelf from the bottom on the right side."

John returned him a stony stare of belligerence and Philon clamped his jaw. The boy dropped his glance and gave a reluctant nod of acquiescence.

Upstairs a half hour later Ursula, who had filled her small ashtray with a mound of stubs, suddenly told Philon she was going home.

"But, Ursula, I thought that—"

With thin-lipped impatience she snapped, "I just remembered I had another engagement at eight."

Mrs. MacDonald was genuinely sorry. "Oh, that's too bad, I thought we could have the whole evening together."

Casting a meaningful glance at John and getting a confirming cold-eyed nod in return, Philon got on his feet. "Sorry, folks. Maybe we'll get together another time."

"I hope so," MacDonald said.

In angry silence Philon walked home. Not until they were all in the house and Ursula was hastening toward her second-floor room did he say a word. "I suppose your 'other engagement' means the Cairo again tonight?"

Ascending on the escalator Ursula turned to look scornfully over her shoulder. "Yes! Anything to escape from boredom. All that woman talked about while you were in the basement was redecorating the house or about cooking and asking my opinions. Ugh!"

Philon laughed mirthlessly. "Yeah, I guess she picked a flat number to discuss those things with. Anything you might have learned about them you must have got out of a psychoplay."

Stepping off the escalator at the top Ursula spit a nasty epithet his way, then disappeared into the upstairs hall.

John stood at the foot of the escalator, a reluctant witness to the bickering. Divining his attitude Philon mentally shrugged it off. The kid might as well learn what married life was like in these modern days.

"You got the book, eh?"

John pulled a book from his suit coat and laid it on a small table. "Yes, there's the book—and I never felt so rotten about anything in all my life!"

Philon said, "Kid, you've got a lot to learn about getting along in this world."

"All right—so I've got a lot to learn," John cried bitterly. "But there must be more to life than trying to stop the other guy from stripping the shirt off your back while you succeed in stripping off his!"

With that he took the escalator to the upper hall while Philon watched him disappear.

Left alone now, Philon settled into a chair by a window and stared down the street at the MacDonald house. Odd people—it almost seemed they didn't belong in this time and period, considering their queer ways of thinking and looking at things. MacDonald himself in particular had some odd personal attitudes.

Like that incident in his basement—Philon had curiously pulled open a heavy steel door to a small cubicle filled with a most complex arrangement of large coils and heavy insulators and glassed-in filaments. MacDonald was almost rude in closing the door when he found Philon opening it. He had fumbled and stuttered around, explaining the room was a niche where he did a little experimenting on his own. Yes, strange people.

The next day Philon eagerly hastened to a bookstore dealing in antique editions. Hugging the book closely Philon told himself his troubles were all over. The book would surely bring between fifty and a hundred grand.

A clerk approached. "Can I help you?"

"I want to talk to Mr. Norton himself."

The clerk spoke into a wrist transmitter. "Mr. Norton, a man to see you."

In a few moments a bulbous man came heavily down the aisle, peering through dark tinted glasses at Philon. "Yes?"

"I have a very rare first edition of Smyth's Atomic Energy," said Philon, showing the book.

Norton adjusted his glasses, then took the book. He carefully handled it, looking over the outside of the covers, then thumbed the pages. After a long frowning moment, he said, "Publication date is nineteen forty-six but the book's fairly new. Must have been kept hermetically sealed in helium for a good many years."

"Yeah, yeah, it was," Philon said matter-of-factly. "Came from my paternal grandfather's side of the family. A book like this ought to be worth at the very least seventy-five thousand."

But the bulbous Mr. Norton was not impressed. He shrugged vaguely. "Well—it's just possible—" He looked up at Philon suddenly. "Before I make any offer to you I shall have to radiocarbon date the book. Are you willing to sacrifice a back flyleaf in the process?"

"Why a flyleaf?"

"We have to convert a sample of the book into carbon dioxide to geigercount the radioactivity in the carbon. You see, all living things like the cotton in the rags the paper is made of absorb the radioactive carbon fourteen that is formed in the upper atmosphere by cosmic radiation. Then it begins to decay and we can measure very accurately the amount, which gives us an absolute time span."

With a frustrated feeling Philon agreed. "Well okay then. It's a waste of time I think. The book is obviously a first edition."

"It will take the technician about two hours to complete the analysis. We'll have an answer for you—say after lunch."

The two hours dragged by and Philon eagerly hastened to the store.

When Mr. Norton appeared he wore the grim look of a righteously angry man. He thrust the book at Philon. "Here, sir, is your book. The next time you try to foist one over on a book trader remember science is a shrewd detective and you'll have to be cleverer than you've been this time. This book is, I'll admit, a clever job, but nevertheless a forgery. It was not printed in nineteen forty-six. The radiocarbon analysis fixes its age at a mere five or