And this very afternoon he’d go over to Irving’s office and pay him back the twenty and explain how it was he couldn’t find the time to write the stuff he wanted.
Not that he wouldn’t have liked to help Irving out. But it would be sacrilege to write the kind of junk that Irving wanted on a machine as talented as the Classic.
He heard footsteps coming hurriedly across the floor behind him and he stood up and turned around, smiling at the salesman.
But the salesman wasn’t smiling. He was close to apoplexy.
“You!” said the salesman, choking just a little in his attempt to remain a gentleman. “That money! We’ve had enough from you, young man.”
“The money,” said Hart. “Why, it’s galactic credits. It –”
“It’s play money,” stormed the salesman. “Money for the kids. Play money from the Draconian federation. It says so, right on the face of it. In those big characters.”
He handed Hart the money.
“Get out of here!” the salesman shouted.
“But,” Hart pleaded, “are you sure? It can’t be! You must be mistaken –”
“Our teller says it is. He has to be an expert on all sorts of money and he says it is!”
“But you took it. You couldn’t tell the difference.”
“I can’t read Draconian. But the teller can.”
“That damn alien!” shouted Hart in sudden fury. “Just let me get my hands on him!”
The salesman softened just a little.
“You can’t trust those aliens, sir. They are a sneaky lot.”
“Get out of my way,” Hart shouted. “I’ve got to find that alien!”
The man at the Alien bureau wasn’t very helpful.
“We have no record,” he told Hart, “of the kind of creature you describe. You wouldn’t have a photo of it, would you?”
“No,” said Hart. “I haven’t got a photo.”
The man started piling up the catalogs he had been looking through.
“Of course,” he said, “the fact we have no record of him doesn’t mean a thing. Admittedly, we can’t keep track of all the various people. There are so many of them and new ones all the time. Perhaps you might inquire at the spaceport. Someone might have seen your alien.”
“I’ve already done that. Nothing. Nothing at all. He must have come in and possibly have gone back, but no one can remember him. Or maybe they won’t tell.”
“The aliens hang together,” said the man. “They don’t tell you nothing.”
He went on stacking up the books. It was near to quitting time and he was anxious to be off.
The man said, jokingly, “You might go out in space and try to hunt him up.”
“I might do just that,” said Hart and left, slamming the door behind him.
Joke: You might go out in space and find him. You might go out and track him across ten thousand lightyears and among a million stars. And when you found him you might say I want to have a blanket and he’d laugh right in your face.
But by the time you’d tracked him across ten thousand lightyears and among a million stars you’d no longer need a blanket, for you would have lived your stories and you would have seen your characters and you would have absorbed ten thousand backgrounds and a million atmospheres.
And you’d need no yarner and no tapes and films, for the words would be pulsing at your fingertips and pounding in your brain, shrieking to get out.
Joke: Toss a backwoods yokel a fistful of play money for something worth a million. The fool wouldn’t know the difference until he tried to spend it. Be a big shot cheap and then go off in a corner by yourself and die laughing at how superior you are.
And who had it been that said humans were the only liars?
Joke: Wear a blanket around your shoulders and send your ships to Earth for the drivel that they write there – never knowing, never guessing that you have upon your back the very thing that’s needed to break Earth’s monopoly on fiction.
And that, said Hart, is a joke on you.
If I ever find you, I’ll cram it down your throat.
Angela came up the stairs bearing an offering of peace. She set the kettle on the table. “Some soup,” she said. “I’m good at making soup.”
“Thanks, Angela,” he said. “I forgot to eat today.”
“Why the knapsack, Kemp? Going on a hike?”
“No, going on vacation.”
“But you didn’t tell me.”
“I just now made up my mind to go. A little while ago.”
“I’m sorry I was so angry at you. It turned out all right. Green Shirt and his gang made their getaway.”
“So Jasper can come out.”
“He’s already out. He’s plenty sore at you.”
“That’s all right with me. I’m no pal of his.”
She sat down in a chair and watched him pack.
“Where are you going, Kemp?”
“I’m hunting for an alien.”
“Here in the city? Kemp, you’ll never find him.”
“Not in the city. I’ll have to ask around.”
“But there aren’t any aliens –”
“That’s right.”
“You’re a crazy fool,” she cried. “You can’t do it, Kemp. I won’t let you. How will you live? What will you do?”
“I’ll write.”
“Write? You can’t write! Not without a yarner.”
“I’ll write by hand. Indecent as it may be, I’ll write by hand because I’ll know the things I write about. It’ll be in my blood and at my fingertips. I’ll have the smell of it and the color of it and the taste of it!”
She leaped from the chair and beat at his chest with tiny fists.
“It’s filthy! It’s uncivilized! It’s –”
“That’s the way they wrote before. All the millions of stories, all the great ideas, all the phrases that you love to quote. And that is the way it should have stayed. This is a dead-end street we’re on.”
“You’ll come back,” she said. “You’ll find that you are wrong and you’ll come back.”
He shook his head at her. “Not until I find my alien.”
“It isn’t any alien you are after. It is something else. I can see it in you.”
She whirled around and raced out the door and down the stairs.
He went back to his packing and when he had finished, he sat down and ate the soup. Angela, he thought, was right. She was good at making soup.
And she was right in another thing as well. It was no alien he was seeking.
For he didn’t need an alien. And he didn’t need a blanket and he didn’t need a yarner.
He took the kettle to the sink and washed it beneath the tap and dried it carefully. Then he set it in the center of the table where Angela, when she came, would be sure to see it.
Then he took up the knapsack and started slowly down the stairs.
He had reached the street when he heard the cry behind him. It was Angela and she was running after him. He stopped and waited for her.
“I’m going with you, Kemp.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. It’ll be rough and hard. Strange lands and alien people. And we haven’t any money.”
“Yes, we have. We have that fifty. The one I tried to loan you. It’s all I have and it won’t go far, I know. But we have it.”
“You’re looking for no alien.”
“Yes, I am. I’m looking for an alien, too. All of us, I think, are looking for your alien.”
He reached out an arm and swept her roughly to him, held her close against him.
“Thank you, Angela,” he said.
Hand in hand they headed for the spaceport, looking for a ship that would take them to the stars.