The Door Into Summer

  Jenny answered, “Danny, you’re working too hard. A weekend in the country will do you good.”

  “I can’t help it, Jenny. I have to. I’m sorry.”

  John got on the other phone and said, “What’s all this nonsense?”

  “I’ve got to work, John. I’ve simply got to. Say hello to the folks for me.”

  I went back upstairs, burned some toast, vulcanized some eggs, sat back down at Drafting Dan.

  An hour later they banged on my door.

  None of us went to the mountains that weekend. Instead I demonstrated both devices. Jenny was not much impressed by Drafting Dan (it isn’t a woman’s gismo, unless she herself is an engineer), but she was wide-eyed over Protean Pete. She kept house with a Mark II Hired Girl and could see how much more this machine could do.

  But John could see the importance of Drafting Dan. When I showed him how I could write my signature, recognizably my own, just by punching keys—I admit I had practiced—his eyebrows stayed up. “Chum, you’re going to throw draftsmen out of work by the thousand.”

  “No, I won’t. The shortage of engineering talent in this country gets worse every year; this gadget will just help to fill the gap. In a generation you are going to see this tool in every engineering and architectural office in the nation. They’ll be as lost without it as a modern mechanic would be without power tools.”

  “You talk as if you knew.”

  “I do know.”

  He looked over at Protean Pete—I had set him to tidying my work-bench—and back at Drafting Dan. “Danny...sometimes I think maybe you were telling me the truth, you know, the day we met you.”

  I shrugged. “Call it second sight...but I do know. I’m certain. Does it matter?”

  “I guess not. What are your plans for these things?”

  I frowned. “That’s the hitch, John. I’m a good engineer and a fair jackleg mechanic when I have to be. But I’m no businessman; I’ve proved that. You’ve never fooled with patent law?”

  “I told you that before. It’s a job for a specialist.”

  “Do you know an honest one? Who’s smart as a whip besides? It’s reached the point where I’ve got to have one. I’ve got to set up a corporation, too, to handle it. And work out the financing. But I haven’t got much time; I’m terribly pressed for time.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m going back where I came from.” He sat and said nothing for quite a while. At last he said, “How much time?”

  “Uh, about nine weeks. Nine weeks from this coming Thursday to be exact.”

  He looked at the two machines, looked back at me. “Better revise your schedule. I’d say that you had more like nine months’ work cut out for you. You won’t be in production even then—just lined up to start moving, with luck.”

  “John, I can’t!”

  “I’ll say you can’t.”

  “I mean I can’t change my schedule. That’s beyond my control...now.” I put my face in my hands. I was dead with fatigue, having had less than five hours’ sleep and having averaged not much better for days. The shape I was in, I was willing to believe that there was something, after all, to this “fate” business—a man could struggle against it but never beat it.

  I looked up. “Will you handle it?”

  “Eh? What part of it?”

  “Everything. I’ve done all I know how to do.”

  “That’s a big order, Dan. I could rob you blind. You know that, don’t you? And this may be a gold mine.”

  “It will be. I know.”

  “Then why trust me? You had better just keep me as your attorney, advice for a fee.”

  I tried to think while my head ached. I had taken a partner once before—but, damnation, no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye open. There wasn’t any way to be safe; just being alive was deadly dangerous...fatal, in the end.

  “Cripes, John, you know the answer to that. You trusted me. Now I need your help again. Will you help me?”

  “Of course he will,” Jenny put in gently, “though I haven’t heard what you two were talking about. Danny? Can it wash dishes? Every dish you have is dirty.”

  “What, Jenny? Why, I suppose he can. Yes, of course he can.”

  “Then tell him to, please. I want to see it.”

  “Oh. I’ve never programmed him for it. I will if you want me to. But it will take several hours to do it right. Of course after that he’ll always be able to do it. But the first time...well, you see, dishwashing involves a lot of alternate choices. It’s a ‘judgment’ job, not a comparatively simple routine like laying bricks or driving a truck.”

  “Goodness! I’m certainly glad to find that at least one man understands housework. Did you hear what he said, dear? But don’t stop to teach him now, Danny. I’ll do them myself.” She looked around. “Danny, you’ve been living like a pig, to put it gently.”

  To tell the simple truth, it had missed me entirely that Protean Pete could work for me. I had been engrossed in planning how he could work for other people in commercial jobs, and teaching him to do them, while I myself had simply been sweeping dirt into the corner or ignoring it. Now I began teaching him all the household tasks that Flexible Frank had learned; he had the capacity, as I had installed three times as many Thorsen tubes in him as Frank had had.

  I had time to do it, for John took over.

  Jenny typed descriptions for us; John retained a patent attorney to help with the claims. I don’t know whether John paid him cash or cut him in on the cake; I never asked. I left the whole thing up to him, including what our shares should be; not only did it leave me free for my proper work, but I figured that if he decided such things he could never be tempted the way Miles had been. And I honestly did not care; money as such is not important. Either John and Jenny were what I thought they were or I might as well find that cave and be a hermit.

  I insisted on just two things. “John, I think we ought to call the firm ‘The Aladdin Autoengineering Corporation.’ ”

  “Sounds pretty fancy. What’s wrong with ‘Davis & Sutton’?”

  “That’s how it’s got to be, John.”

  “So? Is your second sight telling you this?”

  “Could be, could be. We’ll use a picture of Aladdin rubbing his lamp as a trademark, with the genie forming above him. I’ll make a rough sketch. And one other thing: The home office had better be in Los Angeles.”

  “What? Now you’ve gone too far. That is, if you expect me to run it. What’s wrong with Denver?”

  “Nothing is wrong with Denver, it’s a nice town. But it is not the place to set up the factory. Pick a good site here and some bright morning you wake up and find that the Federal enclave has washed over it and you are out of business until you get reestablished on a new one. Besides that, labor is scarce, raw materials come overland, building materials are all gray-market. Whereas Los Angeles has an unlimited supply of skilled workmen and more pouring in every day, Los Angeles is a seaport, Los Angeles is—”

  “How about the smog? It’s not worth it.”

  “They’ll lick the smog before long. Believe me. And haven’t you noticed that Denver is working up smog of its own?”

  “Now wait a minute, Dan. You’ve already made it clear that I will have to run this while you go kiyoodling off on some business of your own. Okay, I agreed. But I ought to have some choice in working conditions.”

  “It’s necessary, John.”

  “Dan, nobody in his right mind who lives in Colorado would move to California. I was stationed out there during the war; I know. Take Jenny here; she’s a native Californian, that’s her secret shame. You couldn’t hire her to go back. Here you’ve got winters, changing seasons, brisk mountain air, magnificent—”

  Jenny looked up. “Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’d never go back.”

  “What’s that, dear?”

  Jenny had been quietly knitting; she
never talked unless she really had something to say. Now she put down her knitting, a clear sign. “If we did move there, dear, we could join the Oakdale Club; they have outdoor swimming all year round. I was thinking of that just this last weekend when I saw ice on the pool at Boulder.”

  I stayed until the evening of 2 December 1970, the last possible minute. I was forced to borrow three thousand dollars from John—the prices I had paid for components had been scandalous—but I offered him a stock mortgage to secure it. He let me sign it, then tore it up and dropped it in a wastebasket. “Pay me when you get around to it.”

  “It will be thirty years, John.”

  “As long as that?” I pondered it. He had never invited me to tell my whole story since the afternoon, six months earlier, when he had told me frankly that he did not believe the essential part—but was going to vouch for me to their club anyhow.

  I told him I thought it was time to tell him. “Shall we wake up Jenny? She’s entitled to hear it too.”

  “Mmm...no. Let her nap until just before you have to leave. Jenny is a very uncomplicated person, Dan. She doesn’t care who you are or where you came from as long as she likes you. If it seems a good idea, I can pass it on to her later.”

  “As you will.” He let me tell it all, stopping only to fill our glasses—mine with ginger ale; I had a reason not to touch alcohol. When I had brought it up to the point where I landed on a mountainside outside Boulder, I stopped. “That’s it,” I said. “Though I was mixed up on one point. I’ve looked at the contour since and I don’t think my fall was more than two feet. If they had—I mean ‘if they were going to’—bulldoze that laboratory site any deeper, I would have been buried alive. Probably would have killed both of you too—if it didn’t blow up the whole county. I don’t know just what happens when a flat waveform changes back into a mass where another mass already is.”

  John went on smoking. “Well?” I said. “What do you think?”

  “Danny, you’ve told me a lot of things about what Los Angeles—I mean ‘Great Los Angeles’—is going to be like. I’ll let you know when I see you just how accurate you’ve been.”

  “It’s accurate. Subject to minor slips of memory.”

  “Mmm...you certainly make it sound logical. But in the meantime I think you are the most agreeable lunatic I’ve ever met. Not that it handicaps you as an engineer...or as a friend. I like you, boy. I’m going to buy you a new straitjacket for Christmas.”

  “Have it your own way.”

  “I have to have it this way. The alternative is that I myself am stark staring mad...and that would make quite a problem for Jenny.” He glanced at the clock. “We’d better wake her. She’d scalp me if I let you leave without saying good-bye to her.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it.”

  They drove me to Denver International Port and Jenny kissed me good-bye at the gate. I caught the eleven o’clock shuttle for Los Angeles.

  XI

  THE FOLLOWING EVENING, 3 December 1970, I had a cabdriver drop me a block from Miles’ house comfortably early, as I did not know exactly what time I had arrived there the first time. It was already dark as I approached his house, but I saw only his car at the curb, so I backed off a hundred yards to a spot where I could watch that stretch of curb and waited.

  Two cigarettes later I saw another car pull up there, stop, and its lights go out. I waited a couple of minutes longer, then hurried toward it. It was my own car.

  I did not have a key but that was no hurdle; I was always getting ears-deep in an engineering problem and forgetting my keys; I had long ago formed the habit of keeping a spare ditched in the trunk. I got it now and climbed into the car. I had parked on a slight grade heading downhill, so, without turning on lights or starting the engine, I let it drift to the corner and turned there, then switched on the engine but not the lights, and parked again in the alley back of Miles’ house and on which his garage faced.

  The garage was locked. I peered through dirty glass and saw a shape with a sheet over it. By its contours I knew it was my old friend Flexible Frank.

  Garage doors are not built to resist a man armed with a tire iron and determination—not in southern California in 1970. It took seconds. Carving Frank into pieces I could carry and stuff into my car took much longer. But first I checked to see that the notes and drawings were where I suspected they were—they were indeed, so I hauled them out and dumped them on the floor of the car, then tackled Frank himself. Nobody knew as well as I did how he was put together, and it speeded up things enormously that I did not care how much damage I did; nevertheless, I was as busy as a one-man band for nearly an hour.

  I had just stowed the last piece, the wheelchair chassis, in the car trunk and had lowered the turtleback down on it as far as it would go when I heard Pete start to wail. Swearing to myself at the time it had taken to tear Frank apart, I hurried around the garage and into their back yard. Then the commotion started.

  I had promised myself that I would relish every second of Pete’s triumph. But I couldn’t see it. The back door was open and light was streaming out the screen door, but while I could hear sounds of running, crashes, Pete’s blood-chilling war cry, and screams from Belle, they never accommodated me by coming into my theater of vision. So I crept up to the screen door, hoping to catch a glimpse of the carnage.

  The damned thing was hooked! It was the only thing that had failed to follow the schedule. So I frantically dug into my pocket, broke a nail getting my knife open—and jabbed through and unhooked it just in time to jump out of the way as Pete hit the screen like a stunt motorcyclist hitting a fence.

  I fell over a rosebush. I don’t know whether Miles and Belle even tried to follow him outside. I doubt it; I would not have risked it in their spot. But I was too busy getting myself untangled to notice.

  Once I was on my feet I stayed behind bushes and moved around to the side of the house; I wanted to get away from that open door and the light pouring out of it. Then it was just a case of waiting until Pete quieted down. I would not touch him then, certainly not try to pick him up. I know cats.

  But every time he passed me, prowling for an entrance and sounding his deep challenge, I called out to him softly. “Pete. Come here, Pete. Easy, boy, it’s all right.”

  He knew I was there and twice he looked at me, but otherwise ignored me. With cats it is one thing at a time; he had urgent business right now and no time to head-bump with Papa. But I knew he would come to me when his emotions had eased off.

  While I squatted, waiting, I heard water running in their bathrooms and guessed that they had gone to clean up, leaving me in the living room. I had a horrid thought then: What would happen if I sneaked in and cut the throat of my own helpless body? But I suppressed it; I wasn’t that curious and suicide is such a final experiment, even if the circumstances are mathematically intriguing.

  But I never have figured it out.

  Besides, I didn’t want to go inside for any purpose. I might run into Miles—and I didn’t want any truck with a dead man.

  Pete finally stopped in front of me about three feet out of reach. “Mrrrowrr?” he said—meaning, “Let’s go back and clean out the joint. You hit ’em high, I’ll hit ’em low.”

  “No, boy. The show is over.”

  “Aw, c’mahnnn!”

  “Time to go home, Pete. Come to Danny.” He sat down and started to wash himself. When he looked up, I put my arms out and he jumped into them. “Kwleert?” (“Where the hell were you when the riot started?”)

  I carried him back to the car and dumped him in the driver’s space, which was all there was left. He sniffed the hardware on his accustomed place and looked around reproachfully. “You’ll have to sit in my lap,” I said. “Quit being fussy.”

  I switched on the car’s lights as we hit the street. Then I turned east and headed for Big Bear and the Girl Scout camp. I chucked away enough of Frank in the first ten minutes to permit Pete to resume his rightful place, which suited us both
better. When I had the floor clear, several miles later, I stopped and shoved the notes and drawings down a storm drain. The wheelchair chassis I did not get rid of until we were actually in the mountains, then it went down a deep arroyo, making a nice sound effect.

  About three in the morning I pulled into a motor court across the road and down a bit from the turnoff into the Girl Scout camp, and paid too much for a cabin—Pete almost queered it by sticking his head up and making a comment when the owner came out.

  “What time,” I asked him, “does the morning mail from Los Angeles get up here?”

  “Helicopter comes in at seven-thirteen, right on the dot.”

  “Fine. Give me a call at seven, will you?”

  “Mister, if you can sleep as late as seven around here you’re better than I am. But I’ll put you in the book.”

  By eight o’clock Pete and I had eaten breakfast and I had showered and shaved. I looked Pete over in daylight and concluded that he had come through the battle undamaged except for possibly a bruise or two. We checked out and I drove into the private road for the camp. Uncle Sam’s truck turned in just ahead of me; I decided that it was my day.

  I never saw so many little girls in my life. They skittered like kittens and they all looked alike in their green uniforms. Those I passed wanted to look at Pete, though most of them just stared shyly and did not approach. I went to a cabin marked “Headquarters,” where I spoke to another uniformed scout who was decidedly no longer a girl.

  She was properly suspicious of me; strange men who want to be allowed to visit little girls just turning into big girls should always be suspected.

  I explained that I was the child’s uncle, Daniel B. Davis by name, and that I had a message for the child concerning her family. She countered with the statement that visitors other than parents were permitted only when accompanied by a parent and, in any case, visiting hours were not until four o’clock.

  “I don’t want to visit with Frederica, but I must give her this message. It’s an emergency.”