“The special part of that tube causing the modification of the carrier wave was calculated to last a precise length of time. The tube still functions, but that part of it is worn out. It wore out two hours after the departure of you and Anna from the Moon.”
Carmody closed his eyes. “Junior, please explain.”
“Cybernetics machines are constructed to help humanity. A major war—the disastrous results of which I could accurately calculate—was inevitable unless forestalled. Calculation showed that the best of several ways of averting that war was the creation of a mythical common enemy. To convince mankind that such a common enemy existed, I created a crucial situation which led to a special mission to the Moon. Factors were given which inevitably led to your choice as emissary. That was necessary because my powers of implanting post-hypnotic suggestions are limited to those with whom I am in direct contact.”
“You weren’t in direct contact with Anna. Why does she have the same false memory as I?”
“She was in contact with another large cybernetics machine.”
“But—but why would it figure things out the same way you did?”
“For the same reason that two properly constructed simple adding machines would give the same answer to the same problem.”
Carmody’s mind reeled a little, momentarily. He got up and started to pace the room.
He said, “Listen, Junior—” and then realized he wasn’t at the intake microphone. He went back to it. “Listen, Junior, why are you telling me this? If what happened is a colossal hoax, why let me in on it?”
“It is to the interests of humanity in general not to know the truth. Believing in the existence of inimical extra-terrestrials, they will attain peace and amity among themselves, and they will reach the planets and then the stars. It is, however, to your personal interest to know the truth. And you will not expose the hoax. Nor will Anna. I predict that, since the Moscow cybernetics machine has paralleled all my other conclusions, it is even now informing Anna of the truth, or that it has already informed her, or will inform her within hours.” Carmody asked, “But if my memory of what happened on the Moon is false, what did happen?”
“Look at the green light in the center of the panel before you.” Carmody looked.
He remembered. He remembered everything. The truth duplicated everything he had remembered before up to the moment when, walking toward the completed shelter with the whisky bottle, he had looked up toward the ringwall of Hell Crater.
He had looked up, but he hadn’t seen anything. He’d gone on into the shelter, rigged the airlock. Anna had joined him and they’d turned on the oxygen to build up an atmosphere.
It had been a wonderful thirteen-day honeymoon. He’d fallen in love with Anna and she with him. They’d got perilously close to arguing politics once or twice, and then they’d decided such things didn’t matter. They’d also decided to stay married after their return to Earth, and Anna had promised to join him and live in America. Life together had been so wonderful that they’d delayed leaving until the last moment, when the Sun was almost down, dreading the brief separation the return trip would entail.
And before leaving, they’d done certain things he hadn’t understood then. He understood now that they were the result of post-hypnotic suggestion. They’d removed all evidence that they’d ever actually lived in the shelter, had rigged things so that subsequent investigation would never disprove any point of the story each was to remember falsely and tell after returning to Earth.
He remembered now being bewildered as to why they made those arrangements, even while they had been making them.
But mostly he remembered Anna and the dizzy happiness of those thirteen days together.
“Thanks, Junior,” he said hurriedly.
He grabbed for the phone and talked Chief Operative Reeber into connecting him with the White House, with President Saunderson. After a delay of minutes that didn’t seem like minutes, he heard the President’s voice.
“Carmody, Mr. President,” he said. “I’m going to call you on that reward you offered me. I’d like to get off work right now, for a long vacation. And I’d like a fast plane to Moscow. I want to see Anna.”
President Saunderson chuckled. “Thought you’d change your mind about sticking at work, Captain. Consider yourself on vacation as of now, and for as long as you like. But I’m not sure you’ll want that plane. There’s word from Russia that—uh—Mrs. Carmody has just taken off to fly here, in a strato-rocket. If you hurry, you can get to the landing field in time to meet her.” Carmody hurried and did.
Daisies
Dr. Michaelson was showing his wife, whose name was Mrs. Michaelson, around his combination laboratory and greenhouse. It was the first time she had been there in several months and quite a bit of new equipment had been added.
“You were really serious then, John,” she asked him finally, “when you told me you were experimenting in communicating with flowers? I thought you were joking.”
“Not at all,” said Dr. Michaelson. “Contrary to popular belief, flowers do have at least a degree of intelligence.”
“But surely they can’t talk!”
“Not as we talk. But contrary to popular belief, they do communicate. Telepathically, as it were, and in thought pictures rather than in words.”
“Among themselves perhaps, but surely—”
“Contrary to popular belief, my dear, even human-floral communication is possible, although thus far I have been able to establish only one-way communication. That is, I can catch their thoughts but not send messages from my mind to theirs.”
“But—how does it work, John?”
“Contrary to popular belief,” said her husband, “thoughts, both human and floral, are electromagnetic waves that can be—Wait, it will be easier to show you, my dear.”
He called to his assistant who was working at the far end of the room, “Miss Wilson, will you please bring the communicator?”
Miss Wilson brought the communicator. It was a headband from which a wire led to a slender rod with an insulated handle. Dr. Michaelson put the headband on his wife’s head and the rod in her hand.
“Quite simple to use,” he told her. “Hold the rod near a flower and it acts as an antenna to pick up its thoughts. And you will find out that, contrary to popular belief—”
But Mrs. Michaelson was not listening to her husband. She was holding the rod near a pot of daisies on the window sill. After a moment she put down the rod and took a small pistol from her purse. She shot first her husband and then his assistant, Miss Wilson.
Contrary to popular belief, daisies do tell.
Daymare
It started out like a simple case of murder. That was bad enough in itself, because it was the first murder during the five years Rod Caquer had been Lieutenant of Police in Sector Three of Callisto.
Sector Three was proud of that record, or had been until the record became a dead duck.
But before the thing was over, nobody would have been happier than Rod Caquer if it had stayed a simple case of murder—without cosmic repercussions.
Events began to happen when Rod Caquer’s buzzer made him look up at the visiscreen.
There he saw the image of Barr Maxon, Regent of Sector Three.
“Morning, Regent,” Caquer said pleasantly. “Nice speech you made last night on the—”
Maxon cut him short. “Thanks, Caquer,” he said. “You know Willem Deem?”
“The book-and-reel shop proprietor? Yes, slightly.”
“He’s dead,” announced Maxon. “It seems to be murder. You better go there.”