Aliens for Neighbors Page 8

  For leasing the same house more than once? Certainly not until it could be proved that someone had suffered damage and it was most unlikely that it could be proved.

  For doing away with people? But those people could be reached by telephone, could drive out through the gate. And they were well and happy and enthusiastic.

  "Perhaps", Steen said gently, "you have changed your mind. Perhaps you'll stay with us."

  "Perhaps I will," said Homer.

  He walked down the concourse to the bank. It was an impressive place. The foyer was resplendent in coppery metal and with brightly polished mirrors. There were birds in hanging cages and some of the birds were singing.

  There were no customers, but the bank was spick and span. An alert vice-president sat behind his polished desk without a thing to do. An equally alert teller waited shiny-faced behind the wicket window.

  Homer walked to the window and shoved through the money and the cheques. He took his passbook from his pocket and handed it across.

  The teller looked at it and said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Jackson, but you have no account with us."

  "No account!" cried Homer. "I have a quarter of a million!" His heart went plunk into his boots, and if he'd had Steen there, he'd have broken him to bits.

  "No," said the teller calmly, "you've made an error. That is all."

  "Error!" gasped Homer, hanging onto the window to keep from keeling over.

  "An understandable error," the teller said sympathetically. "One that anyone could make. Your account is not with us, but with the Second Bank."

  "Second Bank," wheezed Homer. "What are you talking about? This is the only bank there is."

  "Look, it says Second Bank right here." He showed Homer the passbook. It did say Second Happy Acres State Bank.

  "Well, now," said Homer, "that's better. Will you tell me how I get to this Second Bank?"

  "Gladly, sir. Right over there. Just go through that door." He handed back the passbook and the money.

  "That door, you say?" inquired Homer.

  "Yes. The one beside the drinking fountain."

  Homer clutched the passbook and the money tightly in his hand and headed for the door. He opened it and stepped inside and got it shut behind him before he realized that he was in a closet.

  It was just a tiny place, not much bigger than a man, and it was as black as the inside of a cat.

  Sweat started out on Homer and he searched frantically for the doorknob and finally found it. He pushed the door open and stumbled out. He strode wrathfully back across the foyer to the teller's window. He rapped angrily on the ledge and the teller turned around.

  "What kind of trick is this?" yelled Homer. "What do you think you're pulling? What is going on here? That is nothing but a closet."

  "I'm sorry, sir," the teller said. "My fault. I forgot to give you this." He reached into his cash drawer and handed Homer a small object. It looked for all the world like the replica of a bizarre radiator ornament.

  Juggling the object in his hand, Homer asked, "What has this got to do with it?"

  "Everything," the teller said. "It will get you to the Second Bank. Don't lose it. You'll need it to get back."

  "You mean I just hold it in my hand?"

  "That is all you do, sir," the teller assured him.

  Homer went back to the door, still unconvinced. It was all a lot of mumbo-jumbo, he told himself. These guys were just the same as Gabby Wilson—full of smart pranks. And if that teller was making a fool of him, he promised himself, he'd mop up the floor with him.

  He opened the door and stepped into the closet, only it was no closet. It was another bank.

  The metal still was coppery and the mirrors were a-glitter and the birds were singing, but there were customers. There were three tellers instead of the single one in the first bank and the bland, smooth vice-president at his shiny desk was industriously at work.

  Homer stood quietly just outside the door through which he'd come from the other bank. The customers seemed not to have noticed him, but as he looked them over, he was startled to discover that there were many whose faces were familiar.

  Here, then, were the people who had leased the houses, going about their business in the Second Bank. He put the miniature radiator ornament in his pocket and headed for the window that seemed to be least busy. He waited in line while the man ahead of him finished making a deposit.

  Homer could only see the back of the man's head, but the head seemed to be familiar. He stood there raking through the memories of the people he had met in the last six weeks.

  Then the man turned around and Homer saw that it was Dahl. It was the same face he had seen staring at him from the front page of the paper only the night before.

  "Hello, Mr. Jackson," said Dahl. "Long time no see."

  Homer gulped. "Good day, Mr. Dahl. How do you like the house?"

  "Just great, Mr. Jackson. It's so quiet and peaceful here, I can't tear myself away from it."

  I bet you can't, thought Homer.

  "Glad to hear you say so," he said aloud, and stepped up to the window.

  The teller glanced at the passbook. "Good to see you, Mr. Jackson. The president, I think, would like to see you, too. Would you care to step around after I finish your deposit?"

  Homer left the teller's window, feeling a little chilly at the prospect of seeing the president, wondering what the president might want and what new trouble it portended.

  A hearty voice told him to come in when he knocked on the door. The president was a beefy gentleman and extremely pleasant. "I've been hoping you'd come in," he said. "I don't know if you realize it or not, but you're our biggest depositor."

  He shook Homer's hand most cordially and motioned him to a chair. He gave him a cigar and Homer, a good judge of tobacco, figured it for at least a fifty-center. The president, puffing a little, sat down behind his desk.

  "This is a good set-up here," said Homer, to get the conversation started.

  "Oh, yes," the president said. "Most splendid. It's just a test, though, you know."

  "No, I hadn't known that."

  "Yes, surely. To see if it will work. If it does, we will embark on much bigger projects—ones that will prove even more economically feasible. One never knows, of course, how an idea will catch on. You can run all the preliminary observations and make innumerable surveys and still never know until you try it out."

  "That's true," said Homer, wondering what in the world the president was talking about.

  "Once we get it all worked out," the president said, "we can turn it over to the natives."

  "I see. You're not a native here?"

  "Of course not. I am from the city."

  And that, thought Homer, was a funny thing to say. He watched the man closely, but there was nothing in his face to indicate that he had misspoken—no flush of embarrassment, no sign of flurry.

  "I'm especially glad to have a chance to see you," Homer told him. "As a matter of fact, I had been thinking of switching my account and…"

  The president's face took on a look of horror. "But why? Certainly you've been told about the tax advantages."

  "I think that the matter got some mention. But, I must confess, I don't understand."

  "Why, Mr. Jackson, it is simple. No mystery at all. So far as the authorities of your country are concerned…"

  "My country?"

  "Well, of course. I think it might logically be argued, even in a court of law, that this place we're in is no longer the United States of America. But even if it should be a part of your great nation—I doubt that such a contention would hold up if put to the decision—why, even so, our records are not available to the agents of your country. Don't tell me you fail to see the implications of a situation such as that."

  "The income tax," Homer said.

  "Correct," said the president, smiling very blandly.

  "That is interesting. Interesting, indeed." Homer rose and held out his hand to the president. "I'll be in again."
r />   "Thank you," said the president. "Drop in any time you wish."

  On the street outside the bank, the sun was shining brightly.

  The shopping centre stretched along the mall and there were people here and there, walking on the concourse or shopping in the stores. A few cars were parked in the lot and the world of this Second Bank looked exactly like the First Bank's world, and if a man had not known the difference…

  Good Lord, thought Homer, what was the difference? What had really happened? He'd walked through the door and there was the other bank. He'd walked through a door and found the missing people—the people who had not been living in the empty houses of the First Bank's world.

  Because that other world where the houses still stood empty was no more than a show window? It might simply be a street lined with demonstration homes. And here was that second street of houses he'd dreamed up the other night. And beyond this second street, would there be another street and another and another?

  He stumbled along the concourse, shaken, now that he realized there really was that second street of houses. It was an idea that was hard to take in stride. He didn't take it in his stride. His mind balked and shied away from it and he told himself it wasn't true. But it was true and there was no way to rationalize it, to make it go away. There was a second street!

  He walked along and saw that he was near the gate. The gate he saw, was the same as ever, with its expanse of massive iron.

  But there was no gateman.

  And a car was coming up the road, heading directly for the gate, and it was moving fast, as if the driver did not see the gate.

  Homer shouted and the car kept on. He started waving his arms, but the driver paid not the least attention.

  The crazy fool, thought Homer. He'll hit the gate and…

  And the car hit the gate, slammed into it, but there was sound, no crash, no screech of rending metal. There was simply nothing.

  The gate was there, undented. And there was no car. The car had disappeared.

  Homer stalked to the gate. Ten feet away, he stopped.

  The road came up to the gate; beyond it was no road. Beyon the gate was wilderness. The road came up and ended and the wilderness began.

  Cautiously, Homer walked out into the road and peered through the gate.

  Just a few feet away, a giant oak towered into the air and behind it was the forest, wild and hoary and primeval, and from the forest was the happy sound, the abandoned sound of water running in a brook.

  Fish, thought Homer. Maybe that brook is where the trout came from.

  He moved toward the gate for a closer look and reached out his hands to grasp the ironwork. Even as he did, the forest went away and the gate as well as he stood in the old familiar entrance to Happy Acres, with the gate wide open, with the state highway running along the wall and the road from the development running out to meet it.

  "Good morning, sir," said the gateman. "Maybe you ought to move over to one side. A car is apt to hit you."

  "Huh?" Homer asked blankly.

  "A car. This is a road, you know."

  Homer turned around and brushed past the gateman. He hustled down the concourse, aiming for Steen's office.

  But the office was locked. Homer shook the door. He rapped wildly on the glass. He pounded on the frame. Absolutely nothing happened.

  Turning from the door, he stared out across the development with incredulous eyes—the vacant concourse, the empty houses among the trees, the faint patches of shining lake peeking through the clearings.

  He jammed his hands into his pockets and his fingers touched the little radiator ornament. He took it out and looked at it. He'd seen it before—not the little replica, but the ornament itself.

  He had seen it, he remembered, on the new cars parked outside his office by the people seeking leases. He had seen it on the car that had crashed the gate and disappeared.

  He walked slowly to the parking lot and drove home.

  "I don't think I'll go back to the office today," he told Elaine. "I don't feel so good."

  "You've been working too hard," she told him accusingly. "You look all worn out."

  "That's a fact," he admitted.

  "After lunch, you lie down. And see that you get some sleep."

  "Yes, dear," he said.

  So it began to fall into a pattern, he thought, lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling. Finally it was clear enough so a man could begin to make some head and tail of it.

  It was unbelievable, but there was no choice—one could not disbelieve in it. It was there to see. And if one looked at it any other way, it made no sense at all.

  Someone—Steen, perhaps, or maybe someone else for whom Steen was serving as a front—had found out how to build one house, yet have many houses, houses stretching back street after street from the first house, all shadows of the first house, but substantial just the same—substantial enough for families to live in.

  Dimensional extensions of that first house. Or houses stretching into time. Or something else as weird.

  But however they might do it, it was a swell idea. For you could build one house and sell it, or lease it, time and time again. Except that one was crazy to get hold of an idea that was as good as that and then let someone else make all the money from the leasing of the houses.

  And there was no question that Steen was crazy. That idea he had about the shopping centre was completely batty—although, stop to think of it, if one had five thousand houses and leased each of them ten times and had a monopoly on all the shops and stores—why, it would pay off tremendously.

  And the bank president's slant on sovereignty had certain angles, too, that should not be overlooked.

  A new idea in housing, Steen had told him. It was all of that.

  It was a new idea that would apply to many things—to industry and farming and mining and a lot of other ventures. A man could make one car and there would be many others. A man could build a manufacturing plant and he would have many plants.

  It was like a carbon copy, Homer thought—an economic carbon copy. And a man apparently could make as many carbons as he wished. Possibly, he speculated, once you knew the principle, there was no limit to the carbons. Possibly the ghostly parade of Happy Acres houses stretched limitless, forever and forever. There might be no end to them.

  He fell asleep and dreamed of going down a line of ghostly houses, counting them frantically as he ran along, hoping that he'd soon get to the end of them, for he couldn't quit until he did get to the end. But they always stretched ahead of him, as far as he could see, and he could find no end to them.

  He woke, damp with perspiration, his tongue a dry and bitter wad inside a flannel mouth. He crept out of bed and went to the bathroom. He held his head under a cold faucet. It helped, but not much.

  Downstairs, he found a note that Elaine had propped against the radio on the breakfast table:

  Gone to play bridge at Mabel's.

  Sandwiches in refrigerator.

  It was dark outside. He'd slept the daylight hours away. A wasted day, he berated himself—a completely wasted day. He hadn't done a dollar's worth of work.

  He found some milk and drank it, but left the sandwiches where they were.

  He might as well go to the office and get a little work done, compensate in part for the wasted day. Elaine wouldn't return until almost midnight and there was no sense in staying home alone.

  He got his hat and went out to where he'd parked the car in the driveway. He got into it and sat down on something angular and hard. He hoisted himself wrathfully and searched the seat with a groping hand to find the thing he'd sat on. His fingers closed about it and then he remembered. He'd sat on it on that day Morgan had showed up in answer to the ad. It had been rolling around ever since, unnoticed in the seat.

  It was smooth to the touch and warm—warmer than it should be—as if there were a busy little motor humming away inside it.

  And suddenly it winked.

  He caught his breath
and it flashed again.

  Exactly like a signal.

  Instinct told him to get rid of it, to heave it out the window but a voice suddenly spoke out of it—a thick, harsh voice that mouthed a sort of chant he could not recognize.

  "What the hell?" chattered Homer, fearful now. "What's going on?"

  The chanting voice ceased and a heavy silence fell, so thick and frightening that Homer imagined he could feel it closing in on him.

  The voice spoke again. This time, it was one word, slow and laboured, as if the thick, harsh tongue drove itself to create a new and alien sound.

  The silence fell again and there was a sense of waiting. Homer huddled in the seat, cold with fear.

  For now he could guess where the cube had come from.

  Steen had ridden in the car with him and it had fallen from his pocket.

  The voice took up again: "Urrr—urr—urrth—mum!"

  Homer almost screamed.

  Rustling, panting sounds whispered from the cube.

  Earthman? Homer wondered wildly. Was that what it had tried to say?

  And if that was right, if the cube in fact had been lost by Stcen, then it meant that Steen was not a man at all.

  He thought of Steen and the way he wore his shoes and suddenly it became understandable why he might wear his shoes that way. Perhaps, where Steen came from, there was no left or right, maybe not even shoes. No man could expect an alien, a being from some distant star, to get the hang of all Earth's customs—not right away, at least. He recalled the first day Steen had come into the office and the precise way he had talked and how stiffly he'd sat down in the chair. And that other day, six weeks later, when Steen had talked slangily and had sat slouched in his chair, with his feet planted on the desk.

  Learning, Homer thought. Learning all the time. Getting to know his way around, getting the feel of things, like a gawky country youth learning city ways.

  But it sure was a funny thing that he'd never learned about the shoes.

  The cube went on gurgling and panting and the thick voice muttered and spat out alien words. One could sense the tenseness and confusion at the other end.

  Homer sat cold and rigid, with horror seeping into him drop by splashing drop, while the cube blurted over and over a single phrase that meant not a thing to him.