Dead End 1

Dead End 1

Dead End

Author: Wallace Macfarlane

Sparing people's feelings is deadly.

It leads to--no feelings, no people!

 

 

Scientist William Manning Norcross drank his soup meticulously and

scooped up the vegetables at the bottom of the cup, while his attention

was focused on the television screen. He watched girls swimming in

formation as he gnawed the bone of his steak. He stolidly ate the

baked potato with his fingers when the girls turned around, displaying

"Weejees Are Best" signs pasted to their shapely backs. The final

flourish was more formation swimming, where they formed a wheel under

water, swimming past the camera to display in individual letters stuck

to their bare midriffs: "Wonderful Weejees!"

 

Norcross chuckled appreciatively when a fat old man swam after

them with an "Is That Right?" strung across his behind. Young

men followed him, each carrying a one-word card that spelled:

"You--Bet--It's--Right--Don't--Be--Left--Buy--Weejees--!" The scene

ended on the surface. The grotesque old man was far in back, while the

young men caught the young women, and together they kicked up a cloud

of spray in the distance, which by a trick of photography mounted to

the sky and the words swept around the globe in monstrous letters:

"BUY WEEJEES!"

 

The dessert was apple pie, and Scientist Norcross turned the screen

to the "Abstractions" channel. Watching the colors and patterns form

in response to the music, he finished the pie and licked his fingers

appreciatively. He pressed a stud to reveal the mirror wall before he

activated the molecular cleanup.

 

Not many people would do that. It was not contrary to morals, exactly,

but it was like scratching in public, and it took a scientific mind to

study the human form unshaken, immediately after ingestion. There was

pie on his tunic and gravy in his hair and a smear of grease from cheek

to ear. With no sign of squeamishness, he smeared beet juice on his

nose and studied the effect before he depressed the "Clear" stud.

 

He stretched and stood up while the tray disappeared, then turned

and glanced in the mirror again. Nothing on him. Clean. He yawned

luxuriantly before he tapped the "Finish" panel on the door and stepped

forth, an immaculate and well-fed gentlemen of the year 2512.

 

He had a well-trained sense of humor, and a smile crossed his lips

as he thought of the terror a 21st Century man would feel in such an

eating chamber. When he pressed the clear button, the barbarian would

be clean--really, sterilely clean--for the first time in his life, and

without clothes, too. Oh, what a jape that would be, for the molecular

cleanup would immediately disintegrate such abominations as the fur

of animals, and much clothing 400 years ago was actually made of such

things as sheep hair.

 

He bowed to a pretty woman just entering a cubicle and thought

defiantly that a scientific mind afforded much amusement. There was no

illusion in his icy clear thoughts, for they were not befogged by moral

questions.

 

With a sigh, Scientist William Manning Norcross returned to the

difficult problem he had set aside while having lunch. The garden city

was beautiful outside, but he gave only passing attention to the rain

slithering down the huge dome of force over the buildings. He did not

pause to admire the everlasting flowers in their carefully simulated

beds of soil.

 

John Davis Drumstetter was in a state of crisis again, and Scientist

Norcross was worried.

 

His fears were well founded. The young man wheeled on Scientist

Norcross the minute he stepped through the hedge into the force field

under the giant live oak tree.

 

"Where are they?" he demanded. "I am coming to believe, Scientist,

that your reputation is exceeded only by your inability to live up

to it. The problem is only an extension of your own early work. You

volunteered cooperation, and I accepted it gladly, but your delays are

very distressing!"

 

"Johnny," said Scientist Norcross, "the press of my own experiments--"

 

"Then tell me you won't do it!"

 

"I want to help you. Don't you remember the years we spent together in

your training to the high calling of scientist? I took your young hand,

Johnny, and helped you over the juvenile stumbling blocks. Why, your

first mind machine was one I gave you, and when--"

 

"You're a fraud, Scientist!" said the young man bitterly.

 

"The young never appreciate the old," sighed Norcross.

 

"Go suck a mango!"

 

Norcross was shocked. "There's no call for being obscene, John Davis

Drumstetter," he said sternly. "To mention eating to another person,

and right in public, where you might be overheard--"

 

"Eat a slippery, sloppery mango on _television_, you old fool! Smear it

all over your face while you ingest it into your unspeakable digestive

tract!"

 

"John Davis Drumstetter," said the scientist with great control, "I

have been your friend since you were born. Your father and I became

scientists on the same day. You are young and over-eager. Just

remember," he finished with a warning shake of his finger, "Satellite

Station One wasn't built in a day!"

 

Drumstetter stopped his furious pacing and subdued his rage with

visible effort. He chilled, like red steel hardening, and when he spoke

he was in full command of himself.

 

"Now listen to me, Norcross, and keep your mouth shut. For the past

forty years I've been working on the stellar overdrive. We have the

Solar System in our reticule, colonies have been established on

every planet, and ships have been sent to Alpha Centauri, with every

chance that mankind has established itself in that solar system. But

in the four hundred years since science emerged from the dark ages,

we've managed to creep only four light years away from home! And you,

Scientist, are withholding your work on the overdrive relay. Do you

understand why your plea of old friendship does not affect me? In the

past two years, you've done nothing--"

 

"Experiments that must be kept secret," mumbled Norcross.

 

"And it is my belief," said the young man in a clipped, cold voice,

"that you have sold yourself to your taste buds and digestive tract.

Either that," and here his burning rage came into the open, "or you are

a pseudo-life!"

 

At this ultimate insult, Scientist Norcross was silent with

indignation. He watched Drumstetter shrug into a stole, turn down the

power to the huge mind machine, sling his reticule over his shoulder,

and stalk off through the hedge.

 

* * * * *

 

Norcross slumped into a chair, his mind in confusion. He heard

Drumstetter's plane as it left the ground. Plane, he thought, his

mind avoiding the problem. Plane. What a curious name, handed down

through the ages, to call a swift skip powered by Earth's magnetism. An

original plane fought the air, buoyed up by the lift of plane surfaces

in movement. When the movement stopped, it died.

 

Died. Death. Pseudo-life.

 

Scientist Norcross shuddered. His well-trained sense of humor did not

include abominations.

 

He took the communication from his pocket and cleared to Prime Center.

When the prim, grim face of Prime Center himself in the little disc was

sharp, Norcross reported what had happened, even to the suggestion

Drumstetter had made that he was pseudo-life.

 

"This is very bad," said Prime Center. "Monica Drake Lane is now

pseudo-life, too."

 

"God's name!"

 

"Took her skip into a cliff in the Sierra Mountains yesterday.

Disconnected the anti-collision. A clear case."

 

"What will this do to Drumstetter?"

 

"Nothing," said Prime Center, "unless he learns."

 

"Is she ready?"

 

"I'm sending her to you right now for indoctrination. Reports are that

Drumstetter is visiting scientists on the West Coast, and Probability

reports that he may cover the world before he returns. Do you

understand? Her indoctrination must be perfect."

 

"It always has been." Norcross pulled his lip. "The same limitation

will be in Monica Drake Lane?" he asked hopelessly.

 

"Of course," said Prime Center. "We'll keep you posted on developments."

 

"You'd better try women," said Norcross.

 

"Women, narcotics, or anything else! I'd eat a blueberry pie with my

hands behind my back at high noon," said Prime Center with fierce

obscenity, "if I thought it would do any good!"

 

He cut the connection.

 

Norcross was still under the oak tree, lost in contemplation of a color

abstraction on his little communication, when a tall blonde girl, brown

as a berry, stepped hesitantly through the hedge. She walked to him

and, when he looked up, she buried her face in her hands. He stood and held her shoulders.