Nova 1 Read online

  Because the cable pair Jake had sold them was too short to thread its way upstairs, down the long corridor, and into the exhibition room, they pulled it out a basement window, up the side of the building, and in the window through which they had originally entered. It was just long enough to bring the female klieg in reach of the male.

  It was after midnight. The lights of Forty-second Street gleamed in through the gallery windows, illuminating the Hairy One’s intricate masterpiece with yellow-green. He stood, the male klieg in one hand, the female in the other.

  “Go ahead, man,” said the Maha. “I wanna see all them little green and red and yellow lights light up.”

  The Hairy One hesitated. “We’re down to the nitty-gritty now, Maha. When I plug this mother in, we gonna be connected up to wires that run all over the world; and the electric, it comes from where they bum coal to make steam and run the Con Edison. And that coal, it comes from old dead stuff that grew from sun, and the sun, it’s part of the stars and all that jazz up there . . .” He swept the hand holding the male toward the dark ceiling. “. . . and that’s part of the whole groovy universe, and we’ll like make the Big Connection.”

  Maha was impressed but impatient. “Stick it in, man! I know you got soul, but I wanna see all them little lights light up!”

  The Hairy One took a deep breath and jammed the two brass prongs on the male klieg into the female.

  There was a fat, blue splut. Coulombs of electrons flowed up from the fifty KVA transformer in the basement of the gallery. They pulsed through the klieg connector and into the Hairy One’s masterpiece. Paths of conductance overloaded and re-formed in alternate paths. Magnetic fields surged; hysteresis set in. Frequencies shifted, rectified, beat in obscure atonal harmonics. Electro-optical devices brightened and focused. Electromechanical devices swung and transduced. Dishes turned and shimmered into fixed positions. Fields interacted. Something that was not electrical, not magnetic, not mechanical, not optical, but with aspects of all, sprang into life and communicated as nothing on earth had ever before communicated. The lights on Forty-second Street went out. The lights in Manhattan went out. The lights all up and down the eastern seaboard, as far west as Ligonier, Pennsylvania, went out. A French-Canadian powerhouse foreman in L’Assomption said, “Merde! There it goes again!”

  In the gallery, although it no longer had any source of energy from the black cable, the masterpiece had achieved the Big Connection and drank up power from another source in another place, another time. Its red, green, and amber pilot-lights flickered like distant summer lightning. Its dishes and optical devices swung back and forth, searching, dancing, narrowing their focus.

  A beam of something not-just light sprang outward and then-ward, filling the darkened gallery with pulsations and coruscations. There was a faint whine, a singing of impossibilities, and the odor of machine oil and damp wind. The not-just light swelled and grew unbearable. The Maha and the Hairy One staggered back against the outside wall, near the window, and hid their eyes with upthrust forearms as the whine rose into the inaudible. And then there was silence for a moment and the light fell. A thin, metallic chime tolled once.

  The Maha, courageous as he was, was the first to drop his arm and look. “Whoeee!” he said softly, appreciation in his voice. “Looka that mother!”

  The Hairy One peeped over his raised forearm. There, before the masterpiece, which had now subsided into lifelessness, stood a Thing. It was twelve feet tall, vaguely man-shaped, and angular —like a cubist’s statue of Steve Reeves. It was gleaming, iridescent metal and plastic and—other things. On its great, square chest, an illuminated panel flashed strange hieroglyphics in rapid succession, and a queer gobbling noise issued from a small grill in its huge and complexly faceted head. The Maha stared in openmouthed wonder a moment, and then turned to the Hairy One. “Tuff!” he said. “Really tuff, Hairy! That’s gotta be it!”

  The Hairy One shrugged in modesty. “It’s my thing,” he said. A dishlike protuberance swung in their direction and absorbed their words.

  The flashing symbols on the Thing’s chest flickered, brightened briefly, and formed a recognizable pattern, lingual cycling, it read, lingual lock, it read, oral check, it read. A musical female voice replaced the gobbling from the grillwork: “Sampling complete. Lingual lock complete. Communications mode: modulated variation in air pressure. Intelligence mode classified ancient Anglish. Correct, sir?” The voice was the quintessence of airline hostesses and telephone operators, impersonal, female, courteous, devoid of anything but literal meaning.

  “She talkina us?” The Hairy One’s voice was very small.

  “Maybe,” said the Maha.

  “What she say?”

  “I dunno. Somethin’ like do we talk English or somethin’.” The Hairy One shrugged, swallowed, and took a step toward the Thing. He forced volume into his voice: “Yeah, baby. Only we talk more American.”

  The panel shifted rapidly and spelled out language confirmed and then please transmit identification. The voice said in its telephone operator singsong: “Please transmit your name and glax number before placing your request.”

  It was the Maha’s turn to shrug. “Go ahead, Hairy. Whaddaya got to lose? Tell her.”

  The Hairy One, hesitant, said: “My—uh—name is—uh—Bertram Lawrence Frampton . . .”

  “BertramP exclaimed the Maha. “I never knew . . . He began to snigger.

  “Aw, cut it out, Maha.” The Hairy One was embarrassed and confused. “Tell me what the hell’s a glax number.”

  “Who knows? Give her your Social Security number.”

  “. . . uh-and 339-24-3775.”

  The Thing clicked and whirred softly. The sign on its chest proclaimed: galactic account check, and after a moment the impersonal voice resumed. “You have no account record, sir, and therefore you are authorized only the standard initial citizen’s ration of three requests for goods or services of Class III or below. Additional requests can be placed only after the establishment of a minimum account of one thousand Galactic Work Units, plus tax.” The sign flickered to transmit request i.

  The Hairy One shook his head as if to clear it. He wished he hadn’t gone for the second nickel bag. “Man,” he said, turning back to the Maha, “I do not dig. I do not dig.”

  “Whoee!” said the Maha. “I gotta talk to Amie about the stuff he’s been sellm us.” He took a quick little one-step of excitement. “Crazy! Just like inna movies. Like maybe Rex Ingram and Turhan Bey, or—hell!—Cornel Wilder

  The Hairy One looked pleadingly at the Maha. He was used to explanations from the little man. “Whaddaya mean, Maha? You dig?”

  “Cheee, man. It’s like simple. Like inna movies. You got you a Jeannie. You know, one of them cats that gives you three wishes.”

  “Oh.”

  “So go ahead an’ wish, man!”

  The Hairy One shook his head again, still confused, but he respected the Maha’s grasp of larger things, the things outside his own thing, and he turned resolutely to make his first wish. He stared up at the grillwork and opened his mouth to speak. He hesitated. He closed his mouth and opened it again and then closed it and turned back to the Maha. “What’ll I wish for, Maha?”

  “Bread, man. Bread!” The Maha was choking with excitement, impatient with the Hairy One’s failure to grasp the situation. Under his breath he grumbled disdainfully: “Bertram Lawrence Frampton. Cheee!”

  The Hairy One turned back, his head nodding in appreciation of the Maha’s wisdom. “Ah—first—uh, I want lotsa bread, like maybe . . .”

  “Hairy!” screamed the Maha. “You dumdum! Tell her you don’t mean it! It’s money! You ding-a-ling . . .”

  “I didn’t mean it!” shouted the Hairy One. “Like take it back, baby!”

  But it was obviously too late; the loaves had begun to materialize all around them, round Dutch loaves, long, golden brown French loaves, fat, black German loaves, detumescent American squish, squat English tea loaves, flat Greek
loaves, strange loaves from other wheres, other whens. There was bread everywhere; the air was redolent with rich, yeasty odor, dim with raining baked goods. Through the shower, the illuminated sign on the Thing’s chest flickered and the word “request” was followed by the digit “2.”

  Knee-deep in bread, the Maha wept silently, his head shaking in despair. “Man, you are outta your tree. A simple little thing like askin’ a Jeannie for somethin’ and you blew it.”

  “I’m sorry, Maha. I mean—like—I’m sorry, Maha. You think maybe I better try it again?”

  “No!” The Maha threw up both hands as if to wrap them across the barely visible space between the Hairy One’s moustache and his beard. “Cool it, Hairy. Let’s us think about it a minute.”

  “All right, Maha,” said the Hairy One sheepishly. “But this time I’ll be careful and ask for money, M-O-N-Y, money.”

  “No. No. Looka the bread. You’ll get all kindsa money, maybe Confederate money. Cheee. Who knows what kinda money?” The Maha subsided, deep in thought. The Hairy One waited, admiring the beauty of the Thing, the fine machining visible in its structure.

  After a moment, the Maha brightened and turned once again to the Hairy One. “Okay, I got it. Ask for diamonds. They’re worth real loot.” The Hairy One turned to comply, but the Maha suddenly stopped him with an upraised hand and a disconsolate expression. “Naw, that won’t work. Too hard to fence. The fuzz’d be all over us.” He thought some more, hand massaging his bald head. Then, a crafty expression on his face, he fished a crumpled five-dollar bill from his pocket. “Here,” he said, “ask her for about a coupla million of these babies.” He added a quick afterthought: “And for chrissakes don’t call ’em fins”

  The Hairy One took the bill, nodded obediently, and addressed the Thing with unaccustomed precision: “Second, I—uh—wish for two million of these here five-dollar bills.” The Maha listened with smiling satisfaction.

  The Thing blinked its lighted panel and extended a narrow drawer from the general region of the pelvis. The voice intoned: “If you wish duplicating services, please deposit the artifact to be duplicated in the zygypat.”

  The Hairy One walked forward with the bill in his hand. He was about to drop it into the drawer when the Maha screamed again. “Wait, Hairy! Hold it! They’ll all have the same serial numbers! Like funny-money!”

  The Hairy One froze, frightened that he would again err. Maha bounded the fifteen feet to the Hairy One’s side and thrust in his hand a key-holder with a worn silver dollar mounted in it. “Here! It’s still a coupla million skins!” The Hairy One took the keyholder, gulped, closed his eyes after one painful, frightened look at the Maha, and dropped the holder—silver dollar, retaining ring, brass door-key, and plastic license-plate number (Nebraska, 1948) and all—into the zygypat.

  It slid shut and the air grew yellow-gray with descending metal. The Hairy One threw his arms around his head and crouched among the loaves. The Maha danced yipping and prancing as the metal piled deeper and deeper about his legs. Bits of bread flew, glutenous and increasingly sticky, and there was the rattling Niagara sound of a thousand slot-machines paying jackpots.

  The storm subsided and the Hairy One dropped his arms, opened his eyes, and peered at the Thing’s illuminated sign. TRANSMIT REQUEST 3, it Said.

  The Maha stopped stuffing metal into his pockets, which in any case would hold no more. He stiffened suddenly with shocked realization. “Oh for chrissakes!” he said, slumping to a seat on a mound of homogenized bread and metal. “Oh for chris-sake!”

  “Whatsa matter?” asked the Hairy One, fear and humility in his voice. “D’l screw up again?”

  “Lookit it! How we gonna get it home? Must be a coupla dozen tons of it! Cheee!”

  “Maybe we get a truck an’ a coupla shovels . . .”

  “Dumdum! Pull up in fronta the gallery at two inna morning with a truck, an’ you gonna have some kinda fuzz around here!” The Maha retreated into thought. The Hairy One returned to his admiration of the Thing.

  “Nope,” said the Maha after a while. “There’s only one way.

  You got one more wish cornin’; ask her to move it all to the studio.”

  The Hairy One turned away from his contemplation of the Thing. Then he turned away from the Maha. It was very difficult for him to counter the little man. “No,” he said at length.

  “Whaddaya mean, no’! It ain’t gonna be much use to us here. Them gallery squares’ll make trouble. How we gonna explain . . .”

  The Hairy One’s courage grew. “No!” he repeated.

  “Come on, dumdum! You got one more wish; don’t blow it. We gotta get all this bread back outta sight somewheres! Think what it’ll buy, Hairy! A new studio for you! All the chicks you want! A lifetime supply of ol’ maryjane!”

  “No,” said the Hairy One. “I got one last wish, and I’m gonna wish for somethin’ I really want.”

  “What?” The Maha was genuinely puzzled. “We get the bread back, you can buy anything you want.”

  Intent on his own thing, the Hairy One ignored the Maha and resolutely faced the beautiful machine. “Hey,” he said to it, “I wanna ask a question.”

  The sign displayed the words: transmit query. The voice said: “Do you wish catalogue or directory services?”

  “Yeah, baby. Like what I really want is some real good junk, I mean—like—somethin’ like leftover pieces of machinery and ’lectronic stuff. Stuff that’s made like you an’ other stuff.” The Hairy One felt oddly embarrassed by his reference to the machine before him.

  The sign flickered to directory check and, after a moment’s pause, the voice said: “Directory advises that a store of discarded, disabled, and incomplete electromechanical, gravitic, and pseudo-neural devices and components of little or no commercial value is located fourth spatial sector, temporal zone forty-seven.”

  “Groovy,” said the Hairy One happily. “I’ll take some.”

  “What quantity, please?”

  The Hairy One tried to recall the dimensions of the basement studio, “Gimme enough to fill up about thirty feet by forty feet, about five or six feet deep. And,”—the Hairy One was thinking with unusual swiftness, because it was his thing—“throw in some of the stuff you use to connect stuff up with and some hand tools.”

  The sign began to flicker, and the Hairy One shouted: “Wait!” Another idea had hit him. The sign flickered back to transmit REQUEST 3.

  “How about delivery service? You got free delivery service?”

  The voice answered: “Delivery on all requests is free within spatial sectors one through three and temporal zones forty-two through sixty-five.”

  “Great!” said the Hairy One. “The address is West Thirty-fifth Street, New York, New York, zip 100n. It’s inna basement.” Then, with an eye toward the disconsolate Maha, he hastily added: “An’ you might throw in delivery on all this stuff.” His arm described an arc across the billowing mounds of bread and metal.

  The sign flickered to meaningless hieroglyphics; the grill gobbled meaningless sounds. There was a blinding swirl of loaves and riches. The Maha and the Hairy One were thrown violendy about the room by the sudden hurricane of wind through the open window, air rushing in to fill the partial vacuum. The not-just light streamed back, blinding them. The whine dropped back into the audible and gained volume as it lost pitch. Pounded, their senses assailed beyond the bearable, the two men clung to consciousness with thin threads of awareness. And then the threads parted.

  A time later and all was silence and darkness in the exhibition room. No yellow-green light came in through the gallery window; no red and green and amber pilot-lights twinkled on the face of the masterpiece. The only sound was the subdued stutter of traffic on Forty-second Street.

  The Maha was the first to regain his wits. He stood, stretched, struck a match, and peered around the room. It was barren, except for the Hairy One’s masterpiece and a pile of burnt matches beside the coupled klieg connector. He knelt over the Hai
ry One and shook him awake. “Come on, Hairy. Wake up!”

  The Hairy One sat up and held his head, groaning. “What happened, Maha?”

  The Maha shook his head. “I dunno. I guess we freaked out. I gotta talk to Arnie about what he’s puttin’ in them bags. Whooeee, that was a wild one!”

  The Hairy One shook his head. “It was beautiful, Maha. I really blew my mind. For a while there, I thought I had what I wanted . . .”

  “Yeah, I know. I did too.” The Maha kicked at the coupled kliegs. “But that ain’t all we blew, Hairy. They ain’t a light on, on Forty-second Street. We gotta split before the fuzz figures out who done it.”

  The Hairy One nodded his comprehension and reached for his screwdriver. “We better unplug the mother before they get the lights fixed.”

  He started for the basement, the Maha trailing, and together they disconnected the black cable from the transformer, coiled it in a neat roll, and left the gallery the way they had entered it.

  There were line crews working in manholes along Forty-second Street, and early-morning traffic headed uptown was snarled by malfunctioning signal lights. Wearily, the two men walked the sixteen blocks back to their studio. Outside the door, whose slight outward bulge they did not notice, the Maha paused, fumbled in his pockets, and cursed with disgust. “Cheee, Hairy, you got your key? I musta lost mine somewheres. Cheee . . .”

  A HAPPY DAY IN 2381

  by Robert Silverberg

  The author of this story is one of the most productive writers of science fiction—recent novels are Thor’ns and Hawksbill Station, a past president of the Science Fiction Writers of America, a nonfiction specialist in archaeological and historical themes—Mound Builders of Ancient America: The Archaeology of a Myth, and sometime world-traveler. He is also a student of social affairs, as this story proves, taking a close look at the untrammeled joys of a happy, productive, crowded, overpopulated world.