“Really? A pebble?”
“At once the realization of the Principle of Sufficient Irritation came to me. Here was the origin of life. Eons ago, in the remote past, a bit of inanimate matter had become so irritated by something that it crawled away, moved by indignation. Here was my life work: to discover the perfect irritant, annoying enough to bring inanimate matter to life, and to incorporate it into a workable machine. The machine, which is at present in the back seat of my car, is called The Animator. But it doesn’t work.”
We were silent for a time. I felt my eyes slowly begin to close. “Say, Doc,” I began, “isn’t it time we—”
Doc Labyrinth leaped abruptly to his feet. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s time for me to go. I’ll leave.”
He headed for the door. I caught up with him. “About the machine,” I said. “Don’t give up hope. Maybe you’ll get it to work some other time.”
“The machine?” He frowned. “Oh, the Animator. Well, I’ll tell you what, I’ll sell it to you for five dollars.”
I gaped. There was something so forlorn about him that I didn’t feel like laughing. “For how much?” I said.
“I’ll bring it inside the house. Wait here.” He went outside, down the steps and up the dark sidewalk. I heard him open the car door, and then grunt and mutter.
“Hold on,” I said. I hurried after him. He was struggling with a bulky square box, trying to get it out of the car. I caught hold of one side, and together we lugged it into the house. We set it down on the dining table.
“So this is the Animator,” I said. “It looks like a Dutch oven.”
“It is, or it was. The Animator throws out a heat beam as an irritant. But I’m through with it forever.”
I took out my wallet. “All right. If you want to sell it, I might as well be the one who buys it.” I gave him the money and he took it. He showed me where to put in the inanimate matter, how to adjust the dials and meters, and without any warning, he put on his hat and left.
I was alone, with my new Animator. While I was looking at it my wife came downstairs in her bathrobe.
“What’s going on?” she said. “Look at you, your shoes are soaked. Were you outside in the gutter?”
“Not quite. Look at this oven. I just paid five dollars for it. It animates things.”
Joan stared down at my shoes. “It’s one o’clock in the morning. You put your shoes in the oven and come to bed.”
“But don’t you realize—”
“Get those shoes in the oven,” Joan said, going back upstairs again. “Do you hear me?”
“All right,” I said.
It was at breakfast, while I was sitting staring moodily down at a plate of cold eggs and bacon, that he came back. The doorbell commenced to ring furiously.
“Who can that be?” Joan said. I got up and went down the hall, into the living room. I opened the door.
“Labyrinth!” I said. His face was pale, and there were dark circles under his eyes.
“Here’s your five dollars,” he said. “I want my Animator back.”
I was dazed. “All right, Doc. Come on in and I’ll get it.”
He came inside and stood, tapping his foot. I went over and got the Animator. It was still warm. Labyrinth watched me carrying it toward him. “Set it down,” he said. “I want to make sure it’s all right.”
I put it on the table and the Doc went over it lovingly, carefully, opening the little door and peering inside. “There’s a shoe in it,” he said.
“There should be two shoes,” I said, suddenly remembering last night. “My God, I put my shoes in it.”
“Both of them? There’s only one now.”
Joan came from the kitchen. “Hello, Doctor,” she said. “What brings you out so early?”
Labyrinth and I were staring at each other. “Only one?” I said. I bent down to look. Inside was a single muddy shoe, quite dry, now, after its night in Labyrinth’s Animator. A single shoe—but I had put two in. Where was the other?
I turned around but the expression on Joan’s face made me forget what I was going to say. She was staring in horror at the floor, her mouth open.
Something small and brown was moving, sliding toward the couch. It went under the couch and disappeared. I had seen only a glimpse of it, a momentary flash of motion, but I knew what it was.
“My God,” Labyrinth said. “Here, take the five dollars.” He pushed the bill into my hands. “I really want it back, now!”
“Take it easy,” I said. “Give me a hand. We have to catch the damn thing before it gets outdoors.”
Labyrinth went over and shut the door to the living room. “It went under the couch.” He squatted down and peered under. “I think I see it. Do you have a stick or something?”
“Let me out of here,” Joan said. “I don’t want to have anything to do with this.”
“You can’t leave,” I said. I yanked down a curtain rod from the window and pulled the curtain from it. “We can use this.” I joined Labyrinth on the floor. “I’ll get it out, but you’ll have to help me catch it. If we don’t work fast we’ll never see it again.”
I nudged the shoe with the end of the rod. The shoe retreated, squeezing itself back toward the wall. I could see it, a small mound of brown, huddled and silent, like some wild animal at bay, escaped from its cage. It gave me an odd feeling.
“I wonder what we can do with it?” I murmured. “Where the hell are we going to keep it?”
“Could we put it in the desk drawer?” Joan said, looking around. “I’ll take the stationery out.”
“There it goes!” Labyrinth scrambled to his feet. The shoe had come out, fast. It went across the room, heading for the big chair. Before it could get underneath, Labyrinth caught hold of one of its laces. The shoe pulled and tugged, struggling to get free, but the old Doc had a firm hold of it.
Together we got the shoe into the desk and closed the drawer. We breathed a sigh of relief.
“That’s that,” Labyrinth said. He grinned foolishly at us. “Do you see what this means? We’ve done it, we’ve really done it! The Animator worked. But I wonder why it didn’t work with the button.”
“The button was brass,” I said. “And the shoe was hide and animal glue. A natural. And it was wet.”
We looked toward the drawer. “In that desk,” Labyrinth said, “is the most momentous thing in modern science.”
“The world will shake and shudder,” I finished. “I know. Well, you can consider it yours.” I took hold of Joan’s hand. “I give you the shoe along with your Animator.”
“Fine.” Labyrinth nodded. “Keep watch here, don’t let it get away.” He went to the front door. “I must get the proper people, men who will—”
“Can’t you take it with you?” Joan said nervously.
Labyrinth paused at the door. “You must watch over it. It is proof, proof the Animator works. The Principle of Sufficient Irritation.” He hurried down the walk.
“Well?” Joan said. “What now? Are you really going to stay here and watch over it?”
I looked at my watch. “I have to get to work.”
“Well, I’m not going to watch it. If you leave, I’m leaving with you. I won’t stay here.”
“It should be all right in the drawer,” I said. “I guess we could leave it for a while.”
“I’ll visit my family. I’ll meet you downtown this evening and we can come back home together.”
“Are you really that afraid of it?”
“I don’t like it. There’s something about it.”
“It’s only an old shoe.”
Joan smiled thinly. “Don’t kid me,” she said. “There never was another shoe like this.”
I met her downtown, after work that evening, and we had dinner. We drove home, and I parked the car in the driveway. We walked slowly up the walk.
On the porch Joan paused. “Do we really have to go inside? Can’t we go to a movie or something?”
“We have to go in. I’m anxious to see how it is. I wonder what we’ll have to feed it.” I unlocked the door and pushed it open.