The Fourth Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®. Айн Рэнд
she breathed.
“I asked him for that because I have a whole row of technical books up there, all from the same publisher, all the same color and about the same size,” said Alistair calmly.
“But…but…how does he do it?”
Alistair shrugged. “I don’t know! He doesn’t read the titles. That I’m sure of. He can’t read anything. I’ve tried to get him to do it a dozen different ways. I’ve lettered instructions on pieces of paper and shown them to him…you know… ‘Go to the door’ and ‘Give me a kiss’ and so on. He just looks at them and wags his tail. But if I read them first—”
“You mean, read them aloud?”
“No. Oh…he’ll do anything I ask him to, sure. But I don’t have to say it. Just read it, and he turns and does it. That’s the way he makes me study what he wants studied.”
“Are you telling me that that behemoth can read your mind?”
“What do you think? Here—I’ll show you. Give me the book.”
Tiny’s ears went up. “There’s something in here about the electrical flux in supercooled copper that I don’t quite remember. Let’s see if Tiny’s interested.”
She sat on the kitchen table and began to leaf through the book. Tiny came and sat in front of her, his tongue lolling out, his big brown eyes fixed on her face. There was silence as she turned pages, read a little, turned some more. And suddenly Tiny whimpered urgently.
“See what I mean, Mum? All right, Tiny. I’ll read it over.”
Silence again, while Alistair’s long green eyes traveled over the page. All at once Tiny stood up and nuzzled her leg.
“Hm-m-m? The reference? Want me to go back?”
Tiny sat again, expectantly. “There’s a reference here to a passage in the first section on basic electric theory that he wants,” she explained. She looked up. “Mother! You read it to him!” She jumped off the table, handed the book over. “Here. Section 45. Tiny! Go listen to Mum. Go on!” and she shoved him toward Mrs. Forsythe, who said in an awed voice, “When I was a little girl, I used to read bedtime stories to my dolls. I thought I’d quit that kind of thing altogether, and now I’m reading technical literature to this…this canine catastrophe here. Shall I read aloud?”
“No—don’t. See if he gets it.”
But Mrs. Forsythe didn’t get the chance. Before she had read two lines Tiny was frantic. He ran to Mrs. Forsythe and back to Alistair. He reared up like a frightened horse, rolled his eyes, and panted. He whimpered. He growled a little.
“For pity’s sakes, what’s wrong?”
“I guess he can’t get it from you,” said Alistair. “I’ve had the idea before that he’s tuned to me in more ways than one and this clinches it. All right then. Give me back the—”
But before she could ask him, Tiny had bounded to Mrs. Forsythe, taken the book gently out of her hands, and carried it to his mistress. Alistair smiled at her paling mother, took the book, and read until Tiny suddenly seemed to lose interest. He went back to his station by the kitchen cabinet and lay down, yawning.
“That’s that,” said Alistair, closing the book. “In other words, class dismissed. Well, Mum?”
Mrs. Forsythe opened her mouth, closed it again, and shook her head. Alistair loosed a peal of laughter.
“Oh, Mum, Mum,” she gurgled through her laughter. “History has been made. Mum, darling, you’re speechless!”
“I am not,” said Mrs. Forsythe gruffly. “I…I think well, what do you know! You’re right! I am!”
When they had their breath back—yes, Mrs. Forsythe joined in, for Alistair’s statement was indeed true—Alistair picked up the book and said, “Now look, Mum, it’s almost time for my session with Tiny. Oh, yes; it’s a regular thing and he certainly is leading me into some fascinating byways.”
“Like what?”
“Like the old impossible problem of casting tungsten, for example. You know, there is a way to do it.”
“You don’t say! What do you cast it in—a play?”
Alistair wrinkled her straight nose. “Did you ever hear of pressure ice? Water compressed until it forms a solid at what is usually its boiling point?”
“I remember some such.”
“Well, all you need is enough pressure, and a chamber that can take that kind of pressure, and a couple of details like a high-intensity field of umpteen megacycles phased with…I forget the figures; anyhow, that’s the way to go about it.”
“‘If we had some eggs we could have some ham and eggs if we had some ham,’” quoted Mrs. Forsythe. “And besides, I seem to remember something about that pressure ice melting pretty much right now, like so,” and she snapped her fingers. “How do you know your molded tungsten—that’s what it would be, not cast at all—wouldn’t change state the same way?”
“That’s what I’m working on now,” said Alistair calmly. “Come along, Tiny. Mum, you can find your way around all right, can’t you? If you need anything, just sing out. This isn’t a séance, you know.”
“Isn’t it, though?” muttered Mrs. Forsythe as her lithe daughter and the dog bounded up the stairs. She shook her head, went into the kitchen, drew a bucket of water, and carried it down to her car, which had cooled to a simmer. She was dashing careful handfuls of it onto the radiator, before beginning to pour, when her quick ear caught the scrunching of boots on the steep drive.
She looked up to see a young man trudging wearily in the midmorning heat. He wore an old sharkskin suit and carried his coat. In spite of his wilted appearance, his step was firm and his golden hair was crisp in the sunlight. He swung up to Mrs. Forsythe and gave her a grin, all deep blue eyes and good teeth. “Forsythe’s?” he asked in a resonant baritone.
“That’s right,” said Mrs. Forsythe, finding that she had to turn her head from side to side to see both of his shoulders. And yet she and he could swap belts. “You must feel like the Blue Kangaroo here,” she added, slapping her miniature mount on its broiling flank. “Boiled dry.”
“You cahl de cyah de Blue Kangaroo?” he repeated, draping his coat over the door and mopping his forehead with what seemed, to Mrs. Forsythe’s discerning eye, a pure linen handkerchief.
“I do,” she replied, forcing herself not to comment on the young man’s slight but strange accent. “It’s strictly a dry-clutch job and acts like a castellated one. Let the pedal out, she races. Let it out three thirty-seconds of an inch more, and you’re gone from there. Always stopping to walk back and pick up your head. Snaps right off, you know. Carry a bottle of collodion and a couple of splints to put your head back on. Starve to death without a head to eat with. What brings you here?”
In answer he held out a yellow envelope, looking solemnly at her head and neck, then at the car, his face quiet, his eyes crinkling with a huge enjoyment.
Mrs. Forsythe glanced at the envelope. “Oh. Telegram. She’s inside. I’ll give it to her. Come on in and have a drink. It’s hotter than the hinges of Hail Columbia, Happy Land. Don’t go wiping your feet like that! By jeepers, that’s enough to give you an inferiority complex! Invite a man in, invite the dust on his feet, too. It’s good, honest dirt and we don’t run to white broadlooms here. Are you afraid of dogs?”
The young man laughed. “Dahgs talk to me, ma’am.”
She glanced at him sharply, opened her mouth to tell him he might just be taken at his word around here, then thought better of it. “Sit down,” she ordered. She bustled up a foaming glass of beer and set it beside him. “I’ll get her down to sign for the wire,” she said. The man half lowered the glass into which he had been jowls-deep,