“The manager was no god of mine,” Verne said. They had come to the porch. Verne walked up the wide steps and tapped with the end of the crowbar on the boards that were nailed across the door. “This is going to be hard.”
“Then we’re really going in?” Carl asked. “I never realized how well I’d learned all the Company rules and taboos. I thought with everyone leaving—”
“They hang on,” Verne said. “Old superstitions.” He took Carl by the arm and turned him around. “Look. Do you see all that?”
Carl was facing the great domain that was the land and property of the station. It lay stretched out before them, all the way to the foot of the mountains.
“See all that? Miles and miles of buildings and machinery, slag piles, pits, quarries. All deserted. No one there. No one at all. The buildings are empty. The factories, the miles of pits and excavations. You and I can do anything we want. We can go inside and wee-wee all over the floor, if we want. Rules and mores don’t mean a thing anymore. There’s no one here but us.”
“There’s nobody here to stop us,” Barbara said.
“There was nobody to stop the German soldiers. That was the whole point. They could do what they wanted.”
“But what does it matter?” Verne said. “The rules and codes were artificial. They were good only as long as they could be enforced. Now there’s no one to enforce them. So they don’t have any meaning. They were just conventions. Don’t confuse them with innate moral laws. They were just rules, nothing more. Man made. They came, now they’re gone again. The yuks will have their own rules.”
“I suppose so.”
“Well, forget about it. This was all your idea in the first place.” Verne hooked the crowbar behind the top board and began to pull. “Here we go.”
“Let me give you a hand.”
The two pulled together. After a while they had the boards off the door and stacked up on the porch railing.
“Now,” Verne said, pausing for breath. “Here comes the real question.” He tried the door handle. “Locked.”
“That’s bad,” Carl said.
“We’ll try the back. If it’s locked we’ll break it down.”
They went down the steps and around the side of the house. Along the path grew flowers and vegetables, plants of all kinds and descriptions, an amazing hodge-podge that stretched out in all directions. There were pansies, begonias, tulips, watermelon, carrots and rhubarb and orchids, all mixed in together without any order, planted wherever there seemed to be any space.
“How eclectic,” Carl said.
“It’s a mess,” Barbara murmured. “Look at them all growing together like that!”
They came to the back door. Verne and Carl tore the boards loose and stacked them up.
“Here goes,” Verne said. He tried the knob. The door was unlocked. He disappeared inside.
Carl turned to Barbara. “After you.”
“Thanks.” She went on in, Carl following excitedly behind. They were on the back porch where the laundry tubs were. Verne was not in sight.
“Where are you?” Carl called.
“I’m in here.” Verne was in the kitchen. Barbara and Carl came after him. And stopped short in amazement.
“Good lord,” Carl said.
The kitchen was filled with cooking equipment of all kinds. There was almost no space to walk. In one corner an immense gleaming stove jutted up from beside a refrigerator. Piled up on tables and on the floor were mixers, blenders, a waffle iron, an automatic toaster, countless white and silver shapes of all sizes and uses.
“A lot of this stuff hasn’t even been opened,” Verne said. “It’s still crated up.”
Along one side of the kitchen were packing crates and boards and nails and mounds of excelsior, wrapping paper and wire and heavy cord.
Carl picked up an object of chromium and steel, with an electric cord hanging from it. “What’s this?”
Barbara looked at the label. “It’s an electric egg dicer.”
Verne kicked at one of the crates. “God knows what might be in here. More egg dicers?”
“Probably a lot of different things.”
They left the kitchen and found themselves in the dining room. In the center of the room was a heavy oak table, covered with a fine-spun cloth. To one side was a cabinet with glass doors, mounted against the wall.
Barbara opened one of the doors. “Look at these.”
Verne came over and stood beside her. The cabinet was filled with dishes. Old dishes, their edges encrusted with gold like spider webs. Barbara brought out a crystal bottle and stopper, holding it up to the light.
“These must be worth a million dollars,” she said.
“Hardly.” Verne took one of the plates down and turned it around. “Early American. It’s worth something. Maybe not that much, but a lot.” He replaced the plate.
Carl came to the door. “Come in here!”
“What is it?”
Carl disappeared through a door. Verne shrugged. Barbara closed the cabinet and they followed after Carl. They found themselves in the library. Carl was ^gaping up and around him, his mouth open.
“Look!” he said. “Do you see?”
Verne rubbed his jaw. “Could he read them all?”
“Could anybody read them all?” Barbara said.
Books ran along the walls of the library, around them on all sides, up over their heads, higher and higher, as far as the eye could see. It made them dizzy to look up; the ceiling seemed hazy and indistinct, and a long way off. Verne reached up and plucked a volume at random from the shelf above his head. He handed it to Carl.
“Look at it,” he murmured.
Carl opened the book. It was incredibly ancient, a medieval illuminated manuscript, the vellum yellow and cracking. He turned it around— it was heavy.
“Here, too,” Verne murmured. There were more crates, big wood packing crates, bound with wire twisted into knots. Wisps of straw stuck out at the ends of the crates. Some had been partly opened. Books were packed inside, brand new books that had never been taken out of their packing.
“We get all this,” Carl said, dazed.
“Not exactly. We get to use this, for a while. But not more than a little while. A week, maybe. Very little.”
“We won’t get very many of these read in a week,” Barbara said.
Carl pulled some more books down and opened them. He put them back and gazed up. Some trick of the colors made the walls seem to fall back, farther and farther, the higher he looked. The number of books seemed to be growing, increasing as he watched. As if he were looking down the wrong end of the telescope. Faster and faster the walls of books fell away from him, until it seemed as if all the books in the world, each volume and pamphlet, each novel, each collection of stories, essay, study, everything man had put down on paper were collected here in this old-fashioned New England house, in one room.
“It makes me dizzy,” Barbara said. “How do you get up to the top?”
“Some sort of ladder.” Verne wandered out of the room. Carl and Barbara followed him.
“What’s all this?” Carl asked. They had come into a workshop of some kind, filled with objects, machinery and models of some kind, specimens, exhibits, displays.
“A television set,” Barbara said.
There were specimens of the phonograph, the telephone, rows of electric lights through all their stages of development, a power-driven saw, even a flush toilet. Most of the objects were piled helter-skelter, on top of each other, stacked here and there without order or design. Some were still crated up, pushed off to one side, crammed together in packing boxes.