The Door Into Summer

  “I don’t care what you thought. I’ve got to leave right now.”

  “Oh dear! Such a pity. When will I see you again? Tomorrow? I’m terribly busy but I’ll break my engagements and—”

  “I won’t be seeing you again, Belle.” I left.

  I never did see her again.

  As soon as I was home I took a hot bath, scrubbing hard. Then I sat down and tried to add up what I had found out, if anything. Belle seemed to think that Ricky’s grandmother’s name began with an “H”—if Belle’s maunderings meant anything at all, a matter highly doubtful—and that they had lived in one of the desert towns in Arizona, or possibly California. Well, perhaps professional skip-tracers could make something of that.

  Or maybe not. In any case it would be tedious and expensive; I’d have to wait until I could afford it.

  Did I know anything else that signified?

  Miles had died (so Belle said) around 1972. If he had died in this county I ought to be able to find the date in a couple of hours of searching, and after that I ought to be able to track down the hearing on his will...if there had been one, as Belle had implied. Through that I might be able to find out where Ricky had lived then. If courts kept such records. (I didn’t know.) If I had gained anything by cutting the lapse down to twenty-eight years and locating the town she had lived in that long ago.

  If there was any point in looking for a woman now forty-one and almost certainly married and with a family. The jumbled ruin that had once been Belle Darkin had shaken me; I was beginning to realize what thirty years could mean. Not that I feared that Ricky grown up would be anything but gracious and good...but would she even remember me? Oh, I did not think she would have forgotten me entirely, but wasn’t it likely that I would be just a faceless person, the man she had sometimes called “Uncle Danny” and who had that nice cat?

  Wasn’t I, in my own way, living in a fantasy of the past quite as much as Belle was?

  Oh well, it couldn’t hurt to try again to find her. At the least, we could exchange Christmas cards each year. Her husband could not very well object to that.

  VIII

  THE NEXT MORNING was Friday, the fourth of May. Instead of going into the office I went down to the county Hall of Records. They were moving everything and told me to come back next month, so I went to the office of the Times and got a crick in my neck from a microscanner. But I did find out that if Miles had died any date between twelve and thirty-six months after I had been tucked in the freezer, he had not done so in Los Angeles County—if the death notices were correct.

  Of course there was no law requiring him to die in L. A. County. You can die anyplace. They’ve never managed to regulate that.

  Perhaps Sacramento had consolidated state records. I decided I would have to check someday, thanked the Times librarian, went out to lunch, and eventually got back to Hired Girl, Inc.

  There were two phone calls and a note waiting, all from Belle. I got as far in the note as “Dearest Dan,” tore it up and told the desk not to accept any calls for me from Mrs. Schultz. Then I went over to the accounting office and asked the chief accountant if there was any way to check up on past ownership of a retired stock issue. He said he would try and I gave him the numbers, from memory, of the original Hired Girl stock I had once held. It took no feat of memory; we had issued exactly one thousand shares to start with and I had held the first five hundred and ten, and Belle’s “engagement present” had come off the front end.

  I went back to my cubbyhole and found McBee waiting for me.

  “Where have you been?” he wanted to know.

  “Out and around. Why?”

  “That’s hardly a sufficient answer. Mr. Galloway was in twice today looking for you. I was forced to tell him I did not know where you were.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake! If Galloway wants me he’ll find me eventually. If he spent half the time peddling the merchandise on its merits that he does trying to think up cute new angles, the firm would be better off.” Galloway was beginning to annoy me. He was supposed to be in charge of selling, but it seemed to me that he concentrated on kibitzing the advertising agency that handled our account. But I’m prejudiced; engineering is the only part that interests me. All the rest strikes me as paper shuffling, mere overhead.

  I knew what Galloway wanted me for and, to tell the truth, I had been dragging my feet. He wanted to dress me up in 1900 costumes and take pictures. I had told him that he could take all the pix he wanted of me in 1970 costumes, but that 1900 was twelve years before my father was born. He said nobody would know the difference, so I told him what the fortuneteller told the cop. He said I didn’t have the right attitude.

  These people who deal in fancification to fool the public think nobody can read and write but themselves.

  McBee said, “You don’t have the right attitude, Mr. Davis.”

  “So? I’m sorry.”

  “You’re in an odd position. You are charged to my department, but I’m supposed to make you available to advertising and sales when they need you. From here on I think you had better use the time clock like everyone else...and you had better check with me whenever you leave the office during working hours. Please see to it.”

  I counted to ten slowly, using binary notation. “Mac, do you use the time clock?”

  “Eh? Of course not. I’m the chief engineer.”

  “So you are. It says so right over on that door. But see here, Mac, I was chief engineer of this bolt bin before you started to shave. Do you really think that I am going to knuckle under to a time clock?”

  He turned red. “Possibly not. But I can tell you this: If you don’t, you won’t draw your check.”

  “So? You didn’t hire me; you can’t fire me.”

  “Mmm...we’ll see. I can at least transfer you out of my department and over to advertising where you belong. If you belong anywhere.” He glanced at my drafting machine. “You certainly aren’t producing anything here. I don’t fancy having that expensive machine tied up any longer.” He nodded briskly. “Good day.”

  I followed him out. An Office Boy rolled in and placed a large envelope in my basket, but I did not wait to see what it was; I went down to the staff coffee bar and fumed. Like a lot of other triple-ought-gauge minds, Mac thought creative work could be done by the numbers. No wonder the old firm hadn’t produced anything new for years.

  Well, to hell with him. I hadn’t planned to stick around much longer anyway.

  An hour or so later I wandered back up and found an interoffice mail envelope in my basket. I opened it, thinking that Mac had decided to throw the switch on me at once.

  But it was from accounting; it read:

  Dear Mr. Davis:

  Re: the stock you inquired about.

  Dividends on the larger block were paid from first quarter 1971 to second quarter 1980 on the original shares, to a trust held in favor of a party named Heinicke. Our reorganization took place in 1980 and the abstract at hand is somewhat obscure, but it appears that the equivalent shares (after reorganization) were sold to Cosmopolitan Insurance Group, which still holds them. Regarding the smaller block of stock, it was held (as you suggested) by Belle D. Gentry until 1972, when it was assigned to Sierra Acceptances Corporation, who broke it up and sold it piecemeal “over the counter.” The exact subsequent history of each share and its equivalent after reorganization could be traced if needed, but more time would be required.

  If this department can be of any further assistance to you, please feel free to call on us.

  Y. E. Reuther, Ch. Acct.

  I called Reuther and thanked him and told him that I had all I wanted. I knew now that my assignment to Ricky had never been effective. Since the transfer of my stock that did show in the record was clearly fraudulent, the deal whiffed of Belle; this third party could have been either another of her stooges or possibly a fictitious person—she was probably already planning on swindling Miles by then.

  Apparently she had been short of cash a
fter Miles’ death and had sold off the smaller block. But I did not care what had happened to any of the stock once it passed out of Belle’s control. I had forgotten to ask Reuther to trace Miles’ stock...that might give a lead to Ricky even though she no longer held it. But it was late Friday already; I’d ask him Monday. Right now I wanted to open the large envelope still waiting for me, for I had spotted the return address.

  I had written to the patent office early in March about the original patents on both Eager Beaver and Drafting Dan. My conviction that the original Eager Beaver was just another name for Flexible Frank had been somewhat shaken by my first upsetting experience with Drafting Dan; I had considered the possibility that the same unknown genius who had conceived Dan so nearly as I had imagined him might also have developed a parallel equivalent of Flexible Frank. The theory was bulwarked by the fact that both patents had been taken out the same year and both patents were held (or had been held until they expired) by the same company, Aladdin.

  But I had to know. And if this inventor was still alive I wanted to meet him. He could teach me a thing or four.

  I had written first to the patent office, only to get a form letter back that all records of expired patents were now kept in the National Archives in Carlsbad Caverns. So I wrote the Archives and got another form letter with a schedule of fees. So I wrote a third time, sending a postal order (no personal checks, please) for prints of the whole works on both patents—descriptions, claims, drawings, histories.

  This fat envelope looked like my answer.

  The one on top was 4,307,909, the basic for Eager Beaver. I turned to the drawings, ignoring for the moment both description and claims. Claims aren’t important anyway except in court; the basic notion in writing up claims on an application for patent is to claim the whole wide world in the broadest possible terms, then let the patent examiners chew you down—this is why patent attorneys are born. The descriptions, on the other hand, have to be factual, but I can read drawings faster than I can read descriptions.

  I had to admit that it did not look too much like Flexible Frank. It was better than Flexible Frank; it could do more and some of the linkages were simpler. The basic notion was the same—but that had to be true, as a machine controlled by Thorsen tubes and ancestral to Eager Beaver had to be based on the same principles I had used in Flexible Frank.

  I could almost see myself developing just such a device...sort of a second-stage model of Frank. I had once had something of the sort in mind—Frank without Frank’s household limitations.

  I finally got around to looking up the inventor’s name on the claims and description sheets.

  I recognized it all right. It was D. B. Davis.

  I looked at it while whistling “Time on My Hands” slowly and off key. So Belle had lied again. I wondered if there was any truth at all in that spate of drivel she had fed me. Of course Belle was a pathological liar, but I had read somewhere that pathological liars usually have a pattern, starting from the truth and embellishing it, rather than indulging in complete fancy. Quite evidently my model of Frank had never been “stolen” but had been turned over to some other engineer to smooth up, then the application had been made in my name.

  But the Mannix deal had never gone through; that one fact was certain, since I knew it from company records. But Belle had said that their failure to produce Flexible Frank as contracted had soured the Mannix deal.

  Had Miles grabbed Frank for himself, letting Belle think that it had been stolen? Or restolen, rather.

  In that case...I dropped guessing at it, as hopeless, more hopeless than the search for Ricky. I might have to take a job with Aladdin before I would be able to ferret out where they had gotten the basic patent and who had benefited by the deal. It probably was not worth it, since the patent was expired, Miles was dead, and Belle, if she had gained a dime out of it, had long since thrown it away. I had satisfied myself on the one point important to me, the thing I had set out to prove; i.e., that I myself was the original inventor. My professional pride was salved and who cares about money when three meals a day are taken care of ? Not me.

  So I turned to 4,307,910, the first Drafting Dan.

  The drawings were a delight. I couldn’t have planned it better myself; this boy really had it. I admired the economy of the linkages and the clever way the circuits had been used to reduce the moving parts to a minimum. Moving parts are like the vermiform appendix; a source of trouble to be done away with whenever possible.

  He had even used an electric typewriter for his keyboard chassis, giving credit on the drawing to an IBM patent series. That was smart, that was engineering: never reinvent something that you can buy down the street.

  I had to know who this brainy boy was, so I turned to the papers. It was D. B. Davis.

  AFTER QUITE A LONG time I phoned Dr. Albrecht. They rounded him up and I told him who I was, since my office phone had no visual.

  “I recognized your voice,” he answered. “Hi there, son. How are you getting along with your new job?”

  “Well enough. They haven’t offered me a partnership yet.”

  “Give them time. Happy otherwise? Find yourself fitting back in?”

  “Oh, sure! If I had known what a great place here and now is I’d have taken the Sleep earlier. You couldn’t hire me to go back to 1970.”

  “Oh, come now! I remember that year pretty well. I was a kid then on a farm in Nebraska. I used to hunt and fish. I had fun. More than I have now.”

  “Well, to each his own. I like it now. But look, Doc, I didn’t call up just to talk philosophy; I’ve got a little problem.”

  “Well, let’s have it. It ought to be a relief; most people have big problems.”

  “Doc? Is it at all possible for the Long Sleep to cause amnesia?”

  He hesitated before replying. “It is conceivably possible. I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a case, as such. I mean unconnected with other causes.”

  “What are the things that cause amnesia?”

  “Any number of things. The commonest, perhaps, is the patient’s own subconscious wish. He forgets a sequence of events, or rearranges them, because the facts are unbearable to him. That’s a functional amnesia in the raw. Then there is the old-fashioned knock on the head— amnesia from trauma. Or it might be amnesia through suggestion... under drugs or hypnosis. What’s the matter, bub? Can’t you find your checkbook?”

  “It’s not that. So far as I know, I’m getting along just fine now. But I can’t get some things straight that happened before I took the Sleep...and it’s got me worried.”

  “Mmm...any possibility of any of the causes I mentioned?”

  “Yes,” I said slowly. “Uh, all of them, except maybe the bump on the head...and even that might have happened while I was drunk.”

  “I neglected to mention,” he said dryly, “the commonest temporary amnesia—pulling a blank while under the affluence of incohol. See here, son, why don’t you come see me and we’ll talk it over in detail? If I can’t tag what is biting you—I’m not a psychiatrist, you know—I can turn you over to a hypno-analyst who will peel back your memory like an onion and tell you why you were late to school on the fourth of February your second-grade year. But he’s pretty expensive, so why not give me a whirl first?”

  I said, “Cripes, Doc, I’ve bothered you too much already...and you are pretty stuffy about taking money.”

  “Son, I’m always interested in my people; they’re all the family I have.”

  So I put him off by saying that I would call him the first of the week if I wasn’t straightened out. I wanted to think about it anyhow.

  Most of the lights went out except in my office; a Hired Girl, scrub-woman type, looked in, twigged that the room was still occupied, and rolled silently away. I still sat there.

  Presently Chuck Freudenberg stuck his head in and said, “I thought you left long ago. Wake up and finish your sleep at home.”

  I looked up. “Chuck, I’ve got a wonderful idea. Let
’s buy a barrel of beer and two straws.”

  He considered it carefully. “Well, it’s Friday...and I always like to have a head on Monday; it lets me know what day it is.”

  “Carried and so ordered. Wait a second while I stuff some things in this briefcase.”

  We had some beers, then we had some food, then we had more beers at a place where the music was good, then we moved on to another place where there was no music and the booths had hush linings and they didn’t disturb you as long as you ordered something about once an hour. We talked. I showed him the patent records.

  Chuck looked over the Eager Beaver prototype. “That’s a real nice job, Dan. I’m proud of you, boy. I’d like your autograph.”

  “But look at this one.” I gave him the drafting-machine patent papers.

  “Some ways this one is even nicer. Dan, do you realize that you have probably had more influence on the present state of the art than, well, than Edison had in his period? You know that, boy?”

  “Cut it out, Chuck; this is serious.” I gestured abruptly at the pile of photostats. “Okay, so I’m responsible for one of them. But I can’t be responsible for the other one. I didn’t do it...unless I’m completely mixed up about my own life before I took the Sleep. Unless I’ve got amnesia.”

  “You’ve been saying that for the past twenty minutes. But you don’t seem to have any open circuits. You’re no crazier than is normal in an engineer.”

  I banged the table, making the steins dance. “I’ve got to know!”

  “Steady there. So what are you going to do?”

  “Huh?” I pondered it. “I’m going to pay a psychiatrist to dig it out of me.”

  He sighed. “I thought you might say that. Now look, Dan, let’s suppose you pay this brain mechanic to do this and he reports that nothing is wrong, your memory is in fine shape, and all your relays are closed. What then?”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “That’s what they told Columbus. You haven’t even mentioned the most likely explanation.”