Packer shook his head, a bit confused. “It might be all right, Tony. It might work the way you say. But who would believe you? Who would pay attention? It’s just too fantastic. They would laugh at you.”
“You leave all that to me,” said Tony. “That’s my end of the business. That’s where I come in.”
“Oh,” said Packer, “so we’re in business now.”
“I have a friend,” said Tony, who always had a friend, “who’d let me try it out. We could put a bucket of this stuff in his office and see how it works out.”
He looked around, suddenly all business.
“You got a bucket, Unk?”
“Out in the kitchen. You’d find something there.”
“And beef broth. It was beef broth, wasn’t it?”
Packer nodded. “I think I have a can of it.”
Tony stood and scratched his head. “Now let’s get this figured out, Unk. What we want is a sure source of supply.”
“I have those other covers. They all have stamps on them. We could start a new batch with one of them.”
Tony gestured impatiently. “No, that wouldn’t do. They are our reserves. We lock them tight away against emergency. I have a hunch that we can grow bucket after bucket of the stuff from what we have right here. Pull off a handful of it and feed it a shot of broth –”
“But how do you know –”
“Unk,” said Tony, “doesn’t it strike you a little funny that you had the exact number of spores in that one stamp, the correct amount of broth, to grow just one basket full?”
“Well, sure, but …”
“Look, this stuff is intelligent. It knows what it is doing. It lays down rules for itself to live by. It’s got a sense of order and it lives by order. So you give it a wastebasket to live in and it lives within the limits of that basket. It gets just level with the top; it lets a little run down the sides to cement the basket tight to the floor. And that is all. It doesn’t run over. It doesn’t fill the room. It has some discipline.”
“Well, maybe you are right, but that still doesn’t answer the question –”
“Just a second, Unk. Watch here.”
Tony plunged his hand into the basket and came out with a chunk of the spore-growth ripped loose from the parent body.
“Now, watch the basket, Unk,” he said.
They watched. Swiftly, the spores surged and heaved to fill the space where the ripped-out chunk had been. Once again the basket was very neatly filled.
“You see what I mean?” said Tony. “Given more living room, it will grow. All we have to do is feed it so it can. And we’ll give it living room. We’ll give it a lot of buckets, so it can grow to its heart’s content and –”
“Damn it, Tony, will you listen to me? I been trying to ask you what we’re going to do to keep it from cementing itself to the floor. If we start another batch of it, it will cement its bucket or its basket or whatever it is in to the floor just like this first one did.”
“I’m glad you brought that up,” said Tony. “I know just what to do. We will hang it up. We’ll hang up the bucket and there won’t be any floor.”
“Well,” said Packer, “I guess that covers it. I’ll go heat up that broth.”
They heated the broth and found a bucket and hung it on a broomstick suspended between two chairs.
They dropped the chunk of spore-growth in and watched it and it stayed just as it was.
“My hunch was right,” said Tony. “It needs some of that broth to get it started.”
He poured in some broth and the spores melted before their very eyes into a black and ropy scum.
“There’s something wrong,” said Tony, worriedly.
“I guess there is,” said Packer.
“I got an idea, Unk. You might have used a different brand of broth. There might be some difference in the ingredients. It may not be the broth itself, but some ingredient in it that gives this stuff the shot in the arm it needs. We might be using the wrong broth.”
Packer shuffled uncomfortably.
“I don’t remember, Tony.”
“You have to!” Tony yelled at him. “Think, Unk! You got to—you have to remember what brand it was you used.”
Packer whuffled out his whiskers unhappily.
“Well, to tell you the truth, Tony, it wasn’t boughten broth. Mrs. Foshay made it.”
“Now, we’re getting somewhere! Who is Mrs. Foshay?”
“She’s a nosy old dame who lives across the hall.”
“Well, that’s just fine. All you have to do is ask her to make some more for you.”
“I can’t do it, Tony.”
“All we’d need is one batch, Unk. We could have it analyzed and find out what is in it. Then we’d be all set.”
“She’d want to know why I wanted it. And she’d tell all over how I asked for it. She might even figure out there was something funny going on.”
“We can’t have that,” exclaimed Tony in alarm. “This is our secret, Unk. We can’t cut in anyone.”
He sat and thought.
“Anyhow, she’s probably sore at me,” said Packer. “She sneaked in the other day and got the hell scared out of her when a mouse ran across the floor. She tore down to the management about it and tried to make me trouble.”
Tony snapped his fingers.
“I got it!” he cried. “I know just how we’ll work it. You go on and get in bed –”
“I will not!” snarled Packer.
“Now listen, Unk, you have to play along. You have to do your part.”
“I don’t like it,” protested Packer. “I don’t like any part of it.”
“You get in bed,” insisted Tony, “and look the worst you can. Pretend you’re suffering. I’ll go over to this Mrs. Foshay and I’ll tell her how upset you were over that mouse scaring her. I’ll say you worked all day to get the place cleaned up just because of that. I’ll say you worked so –”
“You’ll do no such thing,” yelped Packer. “She’ll come tearing in here. I won’t have that woman –”
“You want to make a couple billion, don’t you?” asked Tony angrily.
“I don’t care particularly,” Packer told him. “I can’t somehow get my heart in it.”
“I’ll tell this woman that you are all tuckered out and that your heart is not so good and the only thing you want is another bowl of broth.”
“You’ll tell her no such thing,” raved Packer. “You’ll leave her out of this.”
“Now, Unk,” Tony reasoned with him, “if you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me—me, the only kin you have in the entire world. It’s the first big thing I’ve ever had a chance at. I may talk a lot and try to look prosperous and successful, but I tell you, Unk …”
He saw he was getting nowhere.
“Well, if you won’t do it for me, do it for Ann, do it for the kids. You wouldn’t want to see those poor little kids –”
“Oh, shut up,” said Packer. “First thing you know, you’ll be blubbering. All right, then, I’ll do it.”
It was worse than he had thought it would be. If he had known it was to be so bad, he’d never have consented to go through with it.
The Widow Foshay brought the bowl of broth herself. She sat on the bed and held his head up and cooed and crooned at him as she fed him broth.
It was most embarrassing.
But they got what they were after.
When she had finished feeding him, there was still half a bowl of broth and she left that with them because, she said, poor man, he might be needing it.