“Slow down again,” I said. “Quoting whom? There isn’t enough printing in Centerville to add up to a tenth that much.”
“Not Centerville, Walter. New York. I’ve been getting work from the big book publishers. Bergstrom, for one; and Hayes Hayes have thrown me their whole line of reprints, and Wheeler House, and Willet Clark. See, I contract for the whole thing, and then pay somebody else to do the presswork and binding and just do the typography myself. And I insist on perfect copy, carefully edited. Then whatever alterations there are, I farm out to another typesetter. That’s how I got Etaoin Shrdlu licked, Walter. Well, will you?”
“No,” I told him.
We’d been driving in from the airport while he talked, and he almost lost control of the wheel when I turned down his proposition. Then he swung off the road and parked, and turned to look at me incredulously.
“Why not, Walter? Over two thousand dollars a week for your share? What more do you—”
“George,” I told him, “there are a lot of reasons why not, but the main one is that I don’t want to. I’ve retired. I’ve got enough money to live on. My income is maybe nearer three dollars a day than three hundred, but what would I do with three hundred? And I’d ruin my health—like you’re ruining yours—working twelve hours a day, and—Well, nix. I’m satisfied with what I got.”
“You must be kidding, Walter. Everybody wants to be rich. And lookit what a couple thousand dollars a week would run to in a couple of years. Over half a million dollars! And you’ve got two grown sons who could use—”
“They’re both doing fine, thanks. Good jobs and their feet on the ladder. If I left ’em fortunes, it would do more harm than good. Anyway, why pick on me? Anybody can set type on a Linotype that sets its own rate of speed and follows copy and can’t make an error! Lord, man, you can find people by the hundreds who’d be glad to work for less than three hundred dollars a day. Quite a bit less. If you insist on capitalizing on this thing, hire three operators to work three eight-hour shifts and don’t handle anything but the business end yourself. You’re getting gray hairs and killing yourself the way you’re doing it.”
He gestured hopelessly. “I can’t, Walter. I can’t hire anybody else. Don’t you see this thing has got to be kept a secret! Why, for one thing the unions would clamp down on me so fast that—But you’re the only one I can trust, Walter, because you—”
“Because I already know about it?” I grinned at him. “So you’ve got to trust me, anyway, whether you like it or not. But the answer is still no. I’ve retired and you can’t tempt me. And my advice is to take a sledge hammer and smash that—that thing. ”
“Good Lord, why?”
“Damnit, I don’t know why. I just know I would. For one thing if you don’t get this avarice out of your system and work normal hours, I bet it will kill you. And, for another, maybe that formula is just starting to work. How do you know how far it will go?”
He sighed, and I could see he hadn’t been listening to a word I’d said. “Walter,” he pleaded, “I’ll give you five hundred a day:”
I shook my head firmly. “Not for five thousand, or five hundred thousand.”
He must have realized that I meant it, for he started the car again. He said, “Well, I suppose if money really doesn’t mean anything to you—”
“Honest, it doesn’t,” I assured him. “Oh, it would if I didn’t have it. But I’ve got a regular income and I’ m just as happy as if it were ten times that much. Especially if I had to work with—with—”
“With Etaoin Shrdlu? Maybe you’d get to like it. Walter, I’ll swear the thing is developing a personality. Want to drop around to the shop now?”
“Not now,” I said. “Ineed a bath and sleep. But I’ll drop around tomorrow. Say, last time I saw you I didn’t have the chance to ask what you meant by that statement about dross. What do you mean, there isn’t any dross?”
He kept his eyes on the road. “Did I say that? I don’t remember—”
“Now listen, George, don’t try to pull anything like that. You know perfectly well you said it, and that you’re dodging now. What’s it about? Kick in.”
He said, ”
Well—” and drove a couple of minutes in silence, and then: “Oh, all right. I might as well tell you. I haven’t bought any type metal since—since it happened. And there’s a few more tons of it around than there was then, besides the type I’ve sent out for presswork. See?”
“No. Unless you mean that it—”
He nodded. “It transmutes, Walter. The second day, when it got so fast I couldn’t keep up with pig metal, I found out. I built the hopper over the metal pot, and I got so desperate for new metal I started shoving in unwashed pi type and figured on skimming off the dross it melted—and there wasn’t any dross. The top of the molten metal was as smooth and shiny as—as the top of your head, Walter,”
“But—” I said. “How—”
“Idon’t know, Walter. But it’s something chemical. A sort of gray fluid stuff. Down in the bottom of the metal pot. I saw it. One day when it ran almost empty. Something that works like a gastric juice and digests whatever I put in the hopper into pure type metal.”
I ran the back of my hand across my forehead and found that it was wet. I said weakly, “Whatever you put in—”
“Yes, whatever. When I ran out of sweepings and ashes and waste paper, I used—well, just take a look at the size of the hole in the back yard.”
Neither of us said anything for a few minutes, until the car pulled up in front of my hotel. Then: “George,” I told him, “if you value my advice, you smash that thing, while you still can. If you still can. It’s dangerous. It might—”
“It might what?”
“Idon’t know. That’s what makes it so awful.”
He gunned the motor and then let it die down again. He looked at me a little wistfully. “I—Maybe you’re right, Walter. But I’m making so much money—you see that new metal makes it higher than I told you—that I just haven’t got the heart to stop. But it is getting smarter. I—Did I tell you Walter, that it cleans its own spacebands now? It secretes graphite.”
“Good God,” I said, and stood there on the curb until he had driven out of sight.
I didn’t get up the courage to go around to Ronson’s shop until late the following afternoon. And when I got there, a sense of foreboding came over me even before I opened the door.
George was sitting at his desk in the outer office, his face sunk down into his bent elbow. He looked up when I came in and his eyes looked bloodshot.
“Well?” I said.
“I tried it.”
“You mean—you tried to smash it?”
He nodded. “You were right, Walter. And I waited too long to see it. It’s too smart for us now. Look.” He held up his left hand and I saw it was covered with bandage. “It squirted metal at me.”
I whistled softly. “Listen, George, how about disconnecting the plug that—”
“I did,” he said, “and from the outside of the building, too just to play safe. But it didn’t do any good. It simply started generating its own current.”
I stepped to the door that led back into the shop. It gave me a creepy feeling just to look back there. I asked hesitantly, “Is it safe to—”
He nodded. “As long as you don’t make any false move, Walter. But don’t try to pick up a hammer or anything, will you?”