And he had said: once there was a girl. I remember now. Once there was a girl.
Her name had been Kathleen Preston and she had lived in a big brick house that sat up on a hill, a many-columned house with a wide porch and fanlights above the doors — an old house that had been built in the first flush of pioneer optimism when the country had been new, and the house had stood when the land had failed and ran away in ditches and left the hillsides scarred with gullied yellow clay.
He had been young then, so young that it hurt him now to think of it; so young he could not understand that a girl who lived in an old ancestral home with fanlights above the doors and a pillared portico could not seriously consider a boy whose father farmed a worn-out farm where the corn grew slight and sickly. Or rather, perhaps, it had been her family that could not consider it, for she, too, must have been too young to fully understand. Perhaps she had quarreled with her family; perhaps there had been angry words and tears. That was something he had never known. For between that walk down the enchanted valley and the next time he had called they had bundled her off to a school somewhere in the east and that was the last he had seen or heard of her.
For remembrance sake he had walked the valley again, alert to catch something that would spell out for him the enchantment of that day he had walked with her. But the crab apples had dropped their blossoms and the lark did not sing so well and the enchantment had fled into some never-never land. She had taken the magic with her.
The paper fell out of his lap and he bent to pick it up. Opening it, he saw that the news was following the same drab pattern of all other days.
The latest peace rumor still was going strong and the cold war still was in full cry.
The cold war had been going on for years, of course, and gave promise of going on for many more. The last thirty years had seen crisis after crisis, rumor after rumor, near-war always threatening and big war never breaking out, until a cold-war-weary world yawned in the face of the new peace rumors and the crises that were a dime a dozen.
Someone at an obscure college down in Georgia had set a new record at raw egg-gulping and a glamorous movie star was on the verge of changing husbands once again and the steel workers were threatening to strike.
There was a lengthy feature article about missing persons and he read about half of it, all that he wanted to. It seemed that more and more people were dropping out of sight all the time, whole families at a time, and the police throughout the land were getting rather frantic. There always had been people who had disappeared, the article said, but they had been individuals. Now two or three families would disappear from the same community and two or three from another community and there was no trace of them at all. Usually they were from the poorer brackets. In the past, when individuals had dropped from sight there had usually been some reason for it, but in these cases of mass disappearances there seemed to be no reason beyond poverty and why one would or could disappear because of poverty was something the article writer and the people he had interviewed could not figure out.
There was a headline that read: More Worlds Than One, Says Savant.
He read part of the story:
BOSTON, MASS. (AP) — There may be another earth just a second ahead of us and another world a second behind us and another world a second behind that one and another world a second behind… well, you get the idea.
A sort of continuous chain of words, one behind the other.
That is the theory of Dr. Vincent Aldridge.
Vickers let the paper drop to the floor and sat looking out across the garden, rich with flowers and ripe with sunshine. There was peace here, in this garden corner of the world, if there were nowhere else, he thought. A peace compounded of many things, of golden sunshine and the talk of summer leaves quivering in the wind, of bird and flower and sundial, of picket fence that needed painting and an old pine tree dying quietly and tranquilly, taking its time to die, being friends with the grass and flowers and other trees all the while it died.
Here there was no rumor and no threat; here was calm acceptance of the fact that time ran on, that winter came and summer, that sun would follow moon and that the life one held was a gift to be cherished rather than a right that one must wrest from other living things.
Vickers glanced at his watch and saw that it was time to go.
CHAPTER THREE
EB, the garage man, hitched up his greasy britches and squinted his eyes against the smoke from the cigarette that hung from one corner of a grease-smeared mouth.
"You see, it's this way, Jay," he explained. "I didn't fix your car."
"I was going to the city," said Vickers, "but if my car's not fixed…"
"You won't be needing that car anymore. Guess that's really why I didn't fix it. Told myself it would be just a waste of money."
"It's not that bad," protested Vickers. "It may look shackle, but it still has lots of miles."
"Sure, it's got some miles in it. But you're going to be this new Forever car."
"Forever car?" Vickers repeated. "That's a queer name for a car."
"No, it isn't," Eb told him, stubbornly. "It'll really last forever. That's why they call it the Forever car, because it lasts forever. Fellow was in here yesterday and told me about it and asked if I wanted to take it on and I said sure I would and this fellow, he said I was smart to take it on, because, he said, there isn't going to be any other car selling except this Forever car."
"Now, wait a minute," said Vickers. "They may call it a Forever car, but it won't last forever. No car would last forever. Twenty years, maybe, or a lifetime, maybe, but not forever."
"Jay," declared Eb, "that's what this fellow told me. 'Buy one of them, he says, 'and use it all your life. When you die, will it to your son and when he dies he can will it to his son and so on down the line. It's guaranteed to last forever. Anything goes wrong with it and they'll fix it up or give you a new one. All except the tires. You got to buy the tires. They wear out, just like on any other car. And paint, too. But the paint is guaranteed ten years. If it goes bad sooner than ten years you get a new job free."
"It _might_ be possible," said Vickers, "but I hardly think so. I don't doubt a car could be made to last a lot longer than the ones do now. But if they were built too well, there'd be no replacement. It stands to reason a manufacturer in his right mind wouldn't build a car that would last forever. He'd put himself out of business. In the first place, it would cost too much…"
"That's where you're wrong," Eb told him. "Fifteen hundred smackers, that's all you pay. No accessories to buy. No buildups. You get it complete for fifteen hundred."
"Not much to look at, I suppose."
"It's the classiest job you ever laid your eyes on. Fellow that here was driving one of them and I looked it over good. Any color that you want. Lots of chrome and stainless steel. All latest gadgets. And drive… man, that thing drives like a million dollars. But it might take some getting used to it. I went to open the hood to take a look at the motor and, you know, that hood doesn't open. 'What you doing there? this fellow asked me and I told him I wanted to look at the motor. 'There isn't any need to, this fellow says. 'Nothing ever goes wrong with it. You never need to get at it. 'But, I asked him, 'wnere do you put in the oil? And you know what he said? Well, sir, he said you don't put in no oil. 'All you put in is gasoline, he tells me.
"I'll have a dozen or so of them in within a day or so," said Eb, "You better let me save you one."
Vickers shook his head. "I'm short on money."
"That's another thing about it. This company gives you good trade-in value. I figure I could give you a thousand for that wreck of yours."