“Wait a minute!” Herman was frowning. His lips moved as he thought. “What’s the answer?”
“I don’t know.” Onslow sat down and leaned forward. “If you take the units — dollars — at each stage, you get the full amount. They handed the manager thirty dollars. He kept twenty-five and gave the waiter five, still thirty. The waiter gave the men one each, three, kept two, five, and the manager had the other twenty-five. Still thirty. But the men went into the restaurant with thirty dollars, ten each. They come out with one dollar each, so they must have spent twenty-seven between them. If they guessed the waiter was robbing them, all they could reclaim was two. So we still get twenty-nine instead of thirty.”
He stood up as a car swished into the forecourt before the pumps. “You think about it while I serve this customer,” he suggested.
The car was new and the customer felt toward it the same emotion that a mother has for her child. He insisted on Onslow’s inspecting the oil, demanded a different brand from a sealed can, watched the pump gauge with a suspicious eye, asked to have his tires and battery checked and then wanted his plugs tested. By the time Onslow had finished, he was blue with cold and in a frame of mind to regret the passing of the horse as a means of locomotion. Herman glanced up from where he sat, a sheet of paper before him and a frown creasing his forehead.
“I don’t get it,” he said plaintively.
“Nor me.” Onslow shivered as he warmed himself at the stove. “You’d think that a guy had better things to worry about than a heap of steel and rubber.” He rubbed his hands together. “Plug testing at three A.M.! They’ll be wanting a wash and polish next!
“Service,” said Herman maliciously. “Service with a smile. Tip?”
“Go to hell.”
“It’s warm there, from what they tell me,” said Herman mildly. He scowled down at his sheet of paper. “I’ve been working on what you said. I still can’t see it. If you count in the money the men have, then you get two dollars over; if not, one dollar less.”
“Twenty-seven they paid, three they have, two the waiter has.” Onslow nodded. “Thirty-two units instead of thirty. I told you it was a good one.”
Herman blinked. He was annoyed at his inability to solve the problem, a little tired and more than a little irritated. “Why use units? Why not plain ordinary dollars?”
“It would work in any currency,” said Onslow mildly. “The paradox I mean. Or with anything similar. People, for example.”
“People!” Herman crumpled the sheet of paper. “You serious?”
For answer, Onslow picked up his newspaper and opened it at the column dealing with the latest disappearances. He tapped it.
“Why not? People are units just the same as the mythical dollars we were talking about. If you can lose a dollar by passing it from hand to hand, why not a man or a woman?”
“Hand to hand,” said Herman shrewdly. “You don’t pass people around that way.”
“Maybe not, but they move just the same.” Onslow listened to the hum of an approaching car. It mounted, reached a peak, fell away as the car drove into the night. “People are on the move all the time, driving, walking, on the subways, in trains, airplanes, boats, all the tune moving from one place to another.” He picked up the newspaper and glanced at it. “Just like the dollars in the paradox.”
“You’re crazy!” Herman snorted. “It isn’t the same at all.”
“No?” Onslow shrugged. “Call a dollar a unit and call a man a unit and you have the same thing. Pass them around, one way and another, and they are still the same thing. And if a dollar can get lost in the shuffle, then why not a man?”
“Men don’t vanish like that,” protested Herman. He flinched as Onslow held out the newspaper. “They can’t.”
“But they do.” The thin man smiled and produced his cigarettes. He passed them to Herman, lit them, inhaled with quiet luxury. “I used to work in a lost and found office one time. You wouldn’t believe the things people lose. Umbrellas, briefcases, parcels, books, all kinds of things.”
“I’ve lost stuff myself,” said Herman. “Anyone can forget a parcel or a book.”
“Sure, but that isn’t all.” Onslow stared through the office window. “What about false teeth, artificial legs, artificial eyes, a pair of crutches, trusses, things like that? How can a man lose his false teeth? They aren’t something you carry around in your hand or loose in a pocket. The same with artificial legs or eyes. And not wrapped» remember — we used to get them handed in just as they were found.” He looked at Herman. “Have you ever seen a man walking around with an unwrapped artificial leg under his arm?”
“Not that I can remember.”
“Of course you haven’t. And teeth — you wear false teeth, Herman. What do you do with them?”
“Keep them in my mouth. What else?”
“That’s what I mean. And yet you’d be surprised at the number of dentures handed in to every lost and found office every week.” Onslow shook his head. “It makes you wonder.”
“Not me, it doesn’t,” said Herman. “I don’t go for that sort of pipe-dream.”
Onslow thoughtfully turned back to the window and blew smoke against his reflection. “Twelve thousand a year. And that’s just in this country alone. No one knows how many people vanish all over the world. And people moving all the time. From one place to another and back again. From country to country, state to state, town to town, even from home to business. All moving — just like the dollars in the paradox.”
Herman didn’t answer. He was thinking of Mary’s younger brother, a serviceman who had gone to an overseas trouble spot. He’d been reported missing — not killed in action, not even believed to have been killed, just missing. Herman hadn’t thought it odd at the time, but now he couldn’t get it out of his mind.
“Maybe they shed their ‘bits’ when they vanish,” said Onslow reflectively. “A man gets lost in the shuffle and his teeth or spectacles or artificial leg just stays behind.”
“But where do they go?” Herman was still thinking of his missing brother-in-law.
“Where does the missing dollar go?” Onslow shrugged. “No one knows where they go. Maybe they’re still walking around somewhere, not knowing who they are. Or perhaps they just vanish, be as if they never were.” He dropped his butt and trod on it. “And it could happen at any time. You might leave for work and never get there, or start for home, or down the street and never arrive. You’d have made only one move too many or maybe just a move in the wrong direction. Who knows?”
“You’re kidding.” said Herman. “You made it all up just to pass the time, didn’t you?” He was a big man and irritated.
Onslow stared at him, then picked up the newspaper. “Sure” he said. “I just made it up.”
“Take a walk down the street and vanish!” Herman shook his head. “Crazy! But you made it all up, didn’t you?”
“That’s what I said.” Onslow glanced at his watch. It’s getting near dawn. How about coffee?”
Going down the road to the restaurant was a privilege Herman insisted on. Someone had to stand by the phone and pumps, so they couldn’t both go. Normally he was eager for the errand. This time, though, he didn’t move.
“You go,” he said.
SEA CHANGE, by Peter Oldale
It was not a pleasant catch. They hauled up on the tangled lines, bracing themselves against the surge of waves beating against the fishing boat’s bows. Once again, as they heaved, they saw it in the swirling waters, its dead fingers twisted, the torn ligaments bloody where the arm had once been attached to a body.