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Ready for anything except what did happen. For Dorchin's steel body merely
stepped aside, between Burckhardt and the gun, but leaving the door free.
"Go ahead," invited the steel robot. "Nobody's stopping you."
Outside the door, Burckhardt brought up sharp. It was insane of Dorchin to let
him go! Robot or flesh, victim or beneficiary, there was nothing to stop him
from going to the FBI or whatever law he could find away from
Dorchin's sympathetic empire, and telling his story. Surely the corporations
who paid Dorchin for test results had no notion of the ghoul's technique he
used; Dorchin would have to keep it from them, for the breath of publicity
would put a stop to it. Walking out meant death, perhaps, but at that moment
in his pseudo-life, death was no terror for Burckhardt.
There was no one in the corridor. He found a window and stared out of it.
There was Tylerton-an ersatz city, but looking so real and familiar that
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Burckhardt almost imagined the whole episode a dream. It was no dream, though.
He was certain of that in his heart and equally certain that nothing in
Tylerton could help him now.
It had to be the other direction.
It took him a quarter of an hour to find a way, but he found it-
skulking through the corridors, dodging the suspicion of footsteps, knowing
for certain that his hiding was in vain, for Dorchin was undoubtedly aware of
every move he made. But no one stopped him, and he found another door.
It was a simple enough door from the inside. But when he opened it and stepped
out, it was like nothing he had ever seen.
First there was light-brilliant, incredible, blinding light. Burckhardt
blinked upward, unbelieving and afraid.
He was standing on a ledge of smooth, finished metal. Not a dozen yards from
his feet, the ledge dropped sharply away; he hardly dared approach the brink,
but even from where he stood he could see no bottom to the chasm before
him. And the gulf extended out of sight into the glare on either side of him.
No wonder Dorchin could so easily give him his freedom! From the factory there
was nowhere to go. But how incredible this fantastic gulf, how impossible the
hundred white and blinding suns that hung above!
A voice by his side said inquiringly, "Burckhardt?" And thunder rolled the
name, mutteringly soft, back and forth in the abyss before him.
Burckhardt wet his lips. "Y-yes?" he croaked.
"This is Dorchin. Not a robot this time, but Dorchin in the flesh, talking to
you on a hand mike. Now you have seen, Burckhardt. Now will you be reasonable
and let the maintenance crews take over?"
Burckhardt stood paralyzed. One of the moving mountains in the blinding glare
came toward him.
It towered hundreds of feet over his head; he stared up at its top, squinting
helplessly into the light.
It looked like-- Impossible!
The voice in the loudspeaker at the door said, "Burckhardt?" But he was unable
to answer.
A heavy rumbling sigh. "I see," said the voice. "You finally understand.
There's no place to go. You know it now. I could have told you, but you might
not have believed me, so it was better for you to see it yourself. And after
all, Burckhardt, why would I reconstruct a city just the way it was before?
I'm a businessman; I count costs. If a thing has to be full-scale, I build it
that way. But there wasn't any need to in this case."
From the mountain before him, Burckhardt helplessly saw a lesser cliff descend
carefully toward him. It was long and dark, and at the end of it was
whiteness, five-fingered whiteness.
"Poor little Burckhardt," crooned the loudspeaker, while the echoes rumbled
through the enormous chasm that was only a workshop. "It must have been quite
a shock for you to find out you were living in a town built on a table top."
It was the morning of June 15th, and Guy Burckhardt woke up screaming out of a
dream.
It had been a monstrous and incomprehensible dream, of explosions and shadowy
figures that were not men and terror beyond words.
He shuddered and opened his eyes.
Outside his bedroom window, a hugely amplified voice was howling.
Burckhardt stumbled over to the window and stared outside. There was an
out-of-season chill to the air, more like October than June; but the scene was
normal enough-except for a sound-truck that squatted at curbside halfway down
the block. Its speaker horns blared:
"Are you a coward? Are you a fool? Are you going to let crooked politicians
steal the country from you? NO! Are you going to put up with four more years
of graft and crime? NO! Are you going to vote straight Federal
Party all up and down the ballot? YES! You just bet you are!"
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Sometimes he screams, sometimes he wheedles, threatens, begs, cajoles. .
. but his voice goes on and on through one June 15th after another.
Punch
THE FELLOW was over seven feet tall and when he stepped on Buffie's flagstone
walk one of the stones split with a dust of crushed rock. "Too bad," he said
sadly, "I apologize very much. Wait."
Buffie was glad to wait, because Buffie recognized his visitor at once.
The fellow flickered, disappeared and in a moment was there again, now about
five feet two. He blinked with pink eyes. "I materialize so badly," he
apologized. "But I will make amends. May I? Let me see. Would you like the
secret of transmutation? A cure for simple virus diseases? A list of twelve
growth stocks with spectacular growth certainties inherent in our development
program for your planet, that is, the Earth?"
Buffie said he would take the list of growth stocks, hugging himself and
fighting terribly to keep a straight face. "My name is Chariton Buffie," he
said, extending a hand gladly. The alien took it curiously, and shook it, and
it was like shaking hands with a shadow.
"You will call me 'Punch,' please," he said. "It is not my name but it will
do, because after all this projection of my real self is only a sort of
puppet. Have you a pencil?" And he rattled off the names of twelve issues
Buffie had never heard of.
That did not matter in the least. Buffie knew that when the aliens gave you
something it was money in the bank. Look what they had given the human race.
Faster-than-light space ships, power sources from hitherto non-
radioactive elements like silicon, weapons of great force and metalworking
processes of great suppleness. His wife's aunt's brother-in-law, the colonel,
was even now off in space somewhere in a highly armed space ship built
according to their plans.
Buffie thought of ducking into the house for a quick phone call to his broker,
but instead he invited Punch to look around his apple orchard. Make the most
of every moment, he said to himself, every moment with one of these guys is
worth ten thousand dollars. "I would enjoy your apples awfully," said
Punch, but he seemed disap pointed. "Do I have it wrong? Don't you and certain
friends plan a sporting day, as Senator Wenzel advised me?"
"Oh, sure! Certainly. Good old Walt told you about it, did he? Yes."
That was the thing about the aliens, they liked to poke around in human
affairs. They said when they came to Earth that they wanted to help us, and
all they asked of us in return was that they be permitted to study our ways.
It was nice of them to be so interested, and it was nice of Walt Wenzel,
Buffie thought, to send the alien along to him. "We're going after mallard,
down to Little Egg, some of the boys and me. There's Chuck-he's the mayor
here, and Jer-Second National Bank, you know, and Padre-"
"That is it!" cried Punch, "To see you shoot the mallard." He pulled out an
Esso road map, overtraced with golden raised lines, and asked Buffie to point
out where Little Egg was. "I cannot focus well enough to stay in a moving
vehicle," he said, blinking in a regretful way. "Still, I can meet you there.
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