Nightfall and Other Stories

  Mrs. Hanshaw remained standing before the quartzinium plate, staring blindly at its blank face. Her sense of family placed her for a few moments quite firmly on Richard’s side. Why did he have to use the Door if he chose not to? And then she settled down to wait and pride battled the gnawing anxiety that something after all was wrong with Richard.

  He came home with a look of defiance on his face, but his mother, with a strenuous effort at self-control, met him as though nothing were out of the ordinary.

  For weeks, she followed that policy. It’s nothing, she told herself. It’s a vagary. He’ll grow out of it.

  It grew into an almost normal state of affairs. Then, too, every once in a while, perhaps three days in a row, she would come down to breakfast to find Richard waiting sullenly at the Door, then using it when school time came. She always refrained from commenting on the matter.

  Always, when he did that, and especially when he followed it up by arriving home via the Door, her heart grew warm and she thought, “Well, it’s over.” But always with the passing of one day, two or three, he would return like an addict to his drug and drift silently out by the door--small “d”--before she woke.

  And each time she thought despairingly of psychiatrists and probes, and each time the vision of Miss Robbins’ low-bred satisfaction at (possibly) learning of it, stopped her, although she was scarcely aware that that was the true motive.

  Meanwhile, she lived with it and made the best of it. The mekkano was instructed to wait at the door--small “d”--with a Tergo kit and a change of clothing. Richard washed and changed without resistance. His underthings, socks and flexies were disposable in any case, and Mrs. Hanshaw bore un­complainingly the expense of daily disposal of shirts. Trousers she finally allowed to go a week before disposal on condition of rigorous nightly cleans­ing.

  One day she suggested that Richard accompany her on a trip to New York. It was more a vague desire to keep him in sight than part of any purposeful plan. He did not object. He was even happy. He stepped right through the Door, unconcerned. He didn’t hesitate. He even lacked the look of resentment he wore on those mornings he used the Door to go to school.

  Mrs. Hanshaw rejoiced. This could be a way of weaning him back into Door usage, and she racked her ingenuity for excuses to make trips with Richard. She even raised her power bill to quite unheard-of heights by suggesting, and going through with, a trip to Canton for the day in order to witness a Chinese festival.

  That was on a Sunday, and the next morning Richard marched directly to the hole in the wall he always used. Mrs. Hanshaw, having wakened particu­larly early, witnessed that. For once, badgered past endurance, she called after him plaintively, “Why not the Door, Dickie?”

  He said, briefly, “It’s all right for Canton,” and stepped out of the house.

  So that plan ended in failure. And then, one day, Richard came home soaking wet. The mekkano hovered above him uncertainly and Mrs. Han­shaw, just returned from a four-hour visit with her sister in Iowa, cried, “Richard Hanshaw!”

  He said, hang-dog fashion, “It started raining. All of a sudden, it started raining.”

  For a moment, the word didn’t register with her. Her own school days and her studies of geography were twenty years in the past. And then she remembered and caught the vision of water pouring recklessly and endlessly down from the sky--a mad cascade of water with no tap to turn off, no button to push, no contact to break.

  She said, “And you stayed out in it?”

  He said, “Well, gee, Mom, I came home fast as I could. I didn’t know it was going to rain.”

  Mrs. Hanshaw had nothing to say. She was appalled and the sensation filled her too full for words to find a place.

  Two days later, Richard found himself with a running nose, and a dry, scratchy throat. Mrs. Hanshaw had to admit that the virus of disease had found a lodging in her house, as though it were a miserable hovel of the Iron Age.

  It was over that that her stubbornness and pride broke and she admitted to herself that, after all, Richard had to have psychiatric help.

  Mrs. Hanshaw chose a psychiatrist with care. Her first impulse was to find one at a distance. For a while, she considered stepping directly into the San Francisco Medical Center and choosing one at random.

  And then it occurred to her that by doing that she would become merely an anonymous consultant. She would have no way of obtaining any greater consideration for herself than would be forthcoming to any public-Door user of the city slums. Now if she remained in her own community, her word would carry weight--

  She consulted the district map. It was one of that excellent series pre­pared by Doors, Inc., and distributed free of charge to their clients. Mrs. Hanshaw couldn’t quite suppress that little thrill of civic pride as she un­folded the map. It wasn’t a fine-print directory of Door co-ordinates only. It was an actual map, with each house carefully located.

  And why not? District A-3 was a name of moment in the world, a badge of aristocracy. It was the first community on the planet to have been estab­lished on a completely Doored basis. The first, the largest, the wealthiest, the best-known. It needed no factories, no stores. It didn’t even need roads. Each house was a little secluded castle, the Door of which had entry any­where the world over where other Doors existed.

  Carefully, she followed down the keyed listing of the five thousand fami­lies of District A-3. She knew it included several psychiatrists. The learned professions were well represented in A-3.

  Doctor Hamilton Sloane was the second name she arrived at and her finger lingered upon the map. His office was scarcely two miles from the Hanshaw residence. She liked his name. The fact that he lived in A-3 was evidence of worth. And he was a neighbor, practically a neighbor. He would understand that it was a matter of urgency--and confidential.

  Firmly, she put in a call to his office to make an appointment.

  Doctor Hamilton Sloane was a comparatively young man, not quite forty. He was of good family and he had indeed heard of Mrs. Hanshaw.

  He listened to her quietly and then said, “And this all began with the Door breakdown.”

  “That’s right, Doctor.”

  “Does he show any fear of the Doors?”

  “Of course not. What an idea!” She was plainly startled.

  “It’s possible, Mrs. Hanshaw, it’s possible. After all, when you stop to think of how a Door works it is rather a frightening thing, really. You step into a Door, and for an instant your atoms are converted into field-energies, transmitted to another part of space and reconverted into matter. For that instant you’re not alive.”

  “I’m sure no one thinks of such things.”

  “But your son may. He witnessed the breakdown of the Door. He may be saying to himself, ‘What if the Door breaks down just as I’m half-way through?’“

  “But that’s nonsense. He still uses the Door. He’s even been to Canton with me; Canton, China. And as I told you, he uses it for school about once or twice a week.”

  “Freely? Cheerfully?”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Hanshaw, reluctantly, “he does seem a bit put out by it. But really, Doctor, there isn’t much use talking about it, is there? If you would do a quick probe, see where the trouble was,” and she finished on a bright note, “why, that would be all. I’m sure it’s quite a minor thing.”

  Dr. Sloane signed. He detested the word “probe” and there was scarcely any word he heard oftener.

  “Mrs. Hanshaw,” he said patiently, “there is no such thing as a quick probe. Now I know the mag-strips are full of it and it’s a rage in some circles, but it’s much overrated.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Quite. The probe is very complicated and the theory is that it traces mental circuits. You see, the cells of the brains are interconnected in a large variety of ways. Some of those interconnected paths are more used than others. They represent habits of thought, both conscious and unconscious. Theory ha
s it that these paths in any given brain can be used to diagnose mental ills early and with certainty.”

  “Well, then?”

  “But subjection to the probe is quite a fearful thing, especially to a child. It’s a traumatic experience. It takes over an hour. And even then, the results must be sent to the Central Psychoanalytical Bureau for analysis, and that could take weeks. And on top of all that, Mrs. Hanshaw, there are many psychiatrists who think the theory of probe-analyses to be most uncertain.”

  Mrs. Hanshaw compressed her lips. “You mean nothing can be done.”

  Dr. Sloane smiled. “Not at all. There were psychiatrists for centuries before there were probes. I suggest that you let me talk to the boy.”

  “Talk to him? Is that all?”

  “I’ll come to you for background information when necessary, but the essential thing, I think, is to talk to the boy.”

  “Really, Dr. Sloane, I doubt if he’ll discuss the matter with you. He won’t talk to me about it and I’m his mother.”

  “That often happens,” the psychiatrist assured her. “A child will some­times talk more readily to a stranger. In any case, I cannot take the case otherwise.”

  Mrs. Hanshaw rose, not at all pleased. “When can you come, Doctor?”

  “What about this coming Saturday? The boy won’t be in school. Will you be busy?”

  “We will be ready.”

  She made a dignified exit. Dr. Sloane accompanied her through the small reception room to his office Door and waited while she punched the co­ordinates of her house. He watched her pass through. She became a half-woman, a quarter-woman, an isolated elbow and foot, a nothing.

  It was frightening.

  Did a Door ever break down during passage, leaving half a body here and half there? He had never heard of such a case, but he imagined it could happen.

  He returned to his desk and looked up the time of his next appointment. It was obvious to him that Mrs. Hanshaw was annoyed and disappointed at not having arranged for a psychic probe treatment.

  Why, for God’s sake? Why should a thing like the probe, an obvious piece of quackery in his own opinion, get such a hold on the general public? It must be part of this general trend toward machines. Anything man can do, machines can do better. Machines! More machines! Machines for any­thing and everything! O temporal O mores!

  Oh, hell!

  His resentment of the probe was beginning to bother him. Was it a fear of technological unemployment, a basic insecurity on his part, a mecha-nophobia, if that was the word--

  He made a mental note to discuss this with his own analyst.

  Dr. Sloane had to feel his way. The boy wasn’t a patient who had come to him, more or less anxious to talk, more or less anxious to be helped.

  Under the circumstances it would have been best to keep his first meeting with Richard short and noncommittal. It would have been sufficient merely to establish himself as something less than a total stranger. The next time he would be someone Richard had seen before. The time after he would be an acquaintance, and after that a friend of the family.

  Unfortunately, Mrs. Hanshaw was not likely to accept a long-drawn-out process. She would go searching for a probe and, of course, she would find it.

  And harm the boy. He was certain of that.

  It was for that reason he felt he must sacrifice a little of the proper caution and risk a small crisis.

  An uncomfortable ten minutes had passed when he decided he must try. Mrs. Hanshaw was smiling in a rather rigid way, eyeing him narrowly, as though she expected verbal magic from him. Richard wriggled in his seat, unresponsive to Dr. Sloane’s tentative comments, overcome with boredom and unable not to show it.

  Dr. Sloane said, with casual suddenness, “Would you like to take a walk with me, Richard?”

  The boy’s eyes widened and he stopped wriggling. He looked directly at Dr. Sloane. “A walk, sir?”

  “I mean, outside.”

  “Do you go--outside?”

  “Sometimes. When I feel like it.”

  Richard was on his feet, holding down a squirming eagerness. “I didn’t think anyone did.”

  “I do. And I like company.”

  The boy sat down, uncertainly. “Mom?--”

  Mrs. Hanshaw had stiffened in her seat, her compressed lips radiating horror, but she managed to say, “Why certainly, Dickie. But watch your­self.”

  And she managed a quick and baleful glare at Dr. Sloane.

  In one respect, Dr. Sloane had lied. He did not go outside “sometimes.” He hadn’t been in the open since early college days. True, he had been athletically inclined (still was to some extent) but in his time the indoor ultra-violet chambers, swimming pools and tennis courts had flourished. For those with the price, they were much more satisfactory than the outdoor equivalents, open to the elements as they were, could possibly be. There was no occasion to go outside.

  So there was a crawling sensation about his skin when he felt wind touch it, and he put down his flexied shoes on bare grass with a gingerly move­ment.

  “Hey, look at that.” Richard was quite different now, laughing, his re­serve broken down.

  Dr. Sloane had time only to catch a flash of blue that ended in a tree. Leaves rustled and he lost it.

  “What was it?”

  “A bird,” said Richard. “A blue kind of bird.”

  Dr. Sloane looked about him in amazement. The Hanshaw residence was on a rise of ground, and he could see for miles. The area was only lightly wooded and between clumps of trees, grass gleamed brightly in the sunlight.

  Colors set in deeper green made red and yellow patterns. They were flowers. From the books he had viewed in the course of his lifetime and from the old video shows, he had learned enough so that all this had an eerie sort of familiarity.

  And yet the grass was so trim, the flowers so patterned. Dimly, he realized he had been expecting something wilder. He said, “Who takes care of all this?”

  Richard shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe the mekkanos do it.”

  “Mekkanos?”

  “There’s loads of them around. Sometimes they got a sort of atomic knife they hold near the ground. It cuts the grass. And they’re always fooling around with the flowers and things. There’s one of them over there.”

  It was a small object, half a mile away. Its metal skin cast back highlights as it moved slowly over the gleaming meadow, engaged in some sort of activity that Dr. Sloane could not identify.

  Dr. Sloane was astonished. Here it was a perverse sort of estheticism, a kind of conspicuous consumption--

  “What’s that?” he asked suddenly.

  Richard looked. He said, “That’s a house. Belongs to the Froehlichs. Co­ordinates, A-3, 23, 461. That little pointy building over there is the public Door.”

  Dr. Sloane was staring at the house. Was that what it looked like from the outside? Somehow he had imagined something much more cubic, and taller.

  “Come along,” shouted Richard, running ahead.

  Dr. Sloane followed more sedately. “Do you know all the houses about here?”

  “Just about.”

  “Where is A-23, 26, 475?” It was his own house, of course.

  Richard looked about. “Let’s see. Oh, sure, I know where it is--you see that water there?”

  “Water?” Dr. Sloane made out a line of silver curving across the green.

  “Sure. Real water. Just sort of running over rocks and things. It keeps running all the time. You can get across it if you step on the rocks. It’s called a river.”

  More like a creek, thought Dr. Sloane. He had studied geography, of course, but what passed for the subject these days was really economic and cultural geography. Physical geography was almost an extinct science except among specialists. Still, he knew what rivers and creeks were, in a theoretical sort of way.

  Richard was still talking. “Well, just past the river, over that hill with the big clump of
trees and down the other side a way is A-23, 26, 475. It’s a light green house with a white roof.”

  “It is?” Dr. Sloane was genuinely astonished. He hadn’t known it was green.

  Some small animal disturbed the grass in its anxiety to avoid the oncom­ing feet. Richard looked after it and shrugged. “You can’t catch them. I tried.”

  A butterfly flitted past, a wavering bit of yellow. Dr. Sloane’s eyes fol­lowed it.

  There was a low hum that lay over the fields, interspersed with an occa­sional harsh, calling sound, a rattle, a twittering, a chatter that rose, then fell. As his ear accustomed itself to listening, Dr. Sloane heard a thousand sounds, and none were man-made.

  A shadow fell upon the scene, advancing toward him, covering him. It was suddenly cooler and he looked upward, startled.

  Richard said, “It’s just a cloud. It’ll go away in a minute--looka these flowers. They’re the kind that smell.”

  They were several hundred yards from the Hanshaw residence. The cloud passed and the sun shone once more. Dr. Sloane looked back and was appalled at the distance they had covered. If they moved out of sight of the house and if Richard ran off, would he be able to find his way back?

  He pushed the thought away impatiently and looked out toward the line of water (nearer now) and past it to where his own house must be. He thought wonderingly: Light green?

  He said, “You must be quite an explorer.”

  Richard said, with a shy pride, “When I go to school and come back, I always try to use a different route and see new things.”

  “But you don’t go outside every morning, do you? Sometimes you use the Doors, I imagine.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Why is that, Richard?” Somehow, Dr. Sloane felt there might be signifi­cance in that point.

  But Richard quashed him. With his eyebrows up and a look of astonish­ment on his face, he said, “Well, gosh, some mornings it rains and I have to use the Door. I hate that, but what can you do? About two-weeks ago, I got caught in the rain and I--” he looked about him automatically, and his voice sank to a whisper “--caught a cold, and wasn’t Mom upset, though.”