What was generally unknown was that such objects could be dealt with — had to be dealt with. Like unruly servants, they had to be put promptly in their place, or the order of things would collapse. Chaos would reign.
But slamming the door frame wouldn’t accomplish it. He was upset, awash with anger. He’d cool down, move slowly. He turned on the hot water and worked up enough soap lather to shave with, very slowly and methodically, a step at a time, nodding at his razor, at his face, at the bar of soap to demonstrate his control. Shaving was a success. But there was a slit in the side of the toothpaste tube and blue paste squirted through it in a little ridge, smearing out over his finger. Nothing at all came out of the mouth of the tube. He laid it on the tiles and mashed it with the edge of his hand. Toothpaste shot out like a rubber snake. He picked up his brush, removed a predictable hair which seemed to be tied impossibly into the bristles, scooped up a wad of countertop toothpaste, and, taking his time over it, brushed his teeth one by one. He rinsed the brush, drank half a glass of water, and opened the door of the medicine cabinet into his eyebrow.
For a long moment he couldn’t breathe. His chest was constricted with fury and disbelief. The yawning mouth of the medicine cabinet mimicked his own open mouth, working toward a curse. “God damn!” he shouted, indifferent to the rest of the sleeping house. He slammed the door and chopped at the injured toothpaste tube, grabbing it finally and smashing the thing into a crimped ball. Then he twisted the ends back and forth, heaving and gasping and covering his hands with toothpaste until the tube was torn almost in two, the halves dangling by a little pressed seam at the bottom. He hurled the mined thing into the bathtub.
With a start he noticed that the first gray of daylight shone beneath the bathroom curtain. They’d conspired to rob him of his secrecy. They’d won. There was little satisfaction in having dealt so handily with the toothpaste tube, That was what came of a lack of self-control. The psychologists Were right. He washed the toothpaste from his hands and collected the ruined tube, debating for a moment the merits of pinning it to the wall with a thumbtack. But it would just make Edward roll his eyes. There would be no profit in it. Whatever irrational forces surfaced to animate inanimate things were already retreating. He could sense it. He hurried in to dress, collected a bag frill of food in the kitchen, and slipped out the back door, flinging the twisted remains of the toothpaste tube into the ivy along the rear fence before ducking into the maze shed. He peeked through into the aquarium room, toward the door, standing half open, that led to a little section of yard hidden entirely from view unless one stood within five or six feet of the rear wall. Beyond the door was an old stump, two feet high or so, positioned so that in an instant he could be out the back of the shed, onto the stump, and into the yard of the abandoned house. From there, if he were pursued, it was an easy matter to gain the street and the manhole cover that led to freedom.
He settled to it, taking time to light his pipe and put a pot of coffee on his hotplate. He chewed at yesterday’s glazed doughnut between pipes, letting his coffee grow cold, obsessed with the findings of T. G. Hieronymous, inventor of the Hieronymous machine, laughed into obscurity by the short-sighted. But the stone that the builder refused, thought William, squinting at the page, will be the cornerstone. There was truth in that observation. The machine made sense — and good sense, too — if one forgot preconceptions. Look at the phrenologists, considered a sort of joke by modern psychology and physiology for close to a hundred years, then vindicated in one monumental swoop by the investigations of Jones and Busacca into the life of the so-called “Bay Area Lump Man.” But this was, admittedly, complex. He grappled with it for three hours, trying to link, at least theoretically, the Hieronymous machine to the principle of Dean-drive.
He sketched a diagram of a modified Hieronymous box, a metal disc on top and a circuit inside. The box, Hieronymous had insisted, would work if there were simply the picture of a circuit inside. It was a matter of projection, after all, not of electricity. A person would rub the disc, round and round, sensing from the resistance of the surface the state of his health. But T. G. Hieronymous hadn’t gone far enough. He was a purist, it seemed to William, a scientist of the chart and caliper variety, undeniably accurate but perhaps short on imagination, on a sense of the mystical. A mandala is what the box wanted, a copper mandala, perhaps, something that would approximate the symbolic perpetual motion of an Indian prayer wheel.
If such a device could be built and could be harnessed to a Dean-drive system, turning the rotary motion into forward motion, it could propel their craft — the diving bell. It would pull energy out of the ether. In fact, there was no reason at all to suppose it wouldn’t be capable of separating oxygen out of seawater, serving as a self-propelled oxygenator and converting hydrogen atoms to fuel — a perpetual motion engine with a double function. William could see it in his mind. It was entirely feasible. If only he had Giles Peach to consult! If Edward hadn’t lost Ashbless in the sewer … but he had.
The whole thing would make a compelling short story, miles more substantial than the relativity story, at least in terms of its scientific basis. It was a sure-fire sale. A starship would be propelled by such a device, perhaps mounted externally to take complete advantage of the sun’s rays. An astronaut, ancient and bearded from eons of light speed travel, would lean out to rob the disc, throwing impossible sparks, propelling his ship through uncharted galaxies. There was no reason that the thing couldn’t be fitted with some sort of ratchet tongue and be made to speak, to moan out, over and over, some pressing question into the void. William could picture it. The illustration would be a blend of mysticism and science — the soaring ship, hurtling toward a pin wheel of stars, and the Hieronymous machine whirling on its rotor, itself a miniature replica of the distant nebula. And God Himself — why not? — leaning out of a cloud with a cupped hand to His mouth, shouting out an answer to the proffered question.
William snatched himself back to his sketch. There would be time enough for literature if the Earth held together in the coming weeks. It was the device that was consequential, not art. He looked at the mice, active in the cages before him, and at the bunch who had moved in with the axolotl. Only one wore a shred of clothing. But that was William’s fault, after all. They couldn’t be expected to have understood civility over-night. He’d have to keep after them.
How small, he wondered, could such a machine be built? If one applied Giles’ anti-gravity ideas to the Hieronymous machine, it might be entirely possible to equip, say, a mouse with such a device and obtain interesting results. Such was the nature of science — one thing led to another in an endless chain; links would break only to be forged anew by some intrepid pioneer, stamping in tin shoes toward the rising sun.
The door opened and Jim wandered in.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” asked William, looking at his watch.
“It’s Saturday.”
His father nodded. “Oh, so it is. Where’s Edward, still asleep?”
“No,” Jim replied, “he’s gone off to Gaviota with Professor Latzarel to work on the diving bell.”