The pilot was a naked, yellow-headed young fellow who touched down deftly and stepped on to the concrete. Uneasy, slightly shy, but a handsome young buck, shoulder holster firmly clasped against his muscles. Joe scrutinised the face: the lad was vaguely familiar. After a few moments he recognised him: Fell’s son, Juble.
“Hy, Joe,” Juble began cautiously.
“Who the hell are you and what d’you want?”
“Aw, you know me, Joe. Ah’m Juble.”
“Never heard of you,” Joe snapped. “Get out.”
“You do know me, Joe.”
Seeing that the youth’s hands were nervously alert in the direction of his gun, Joe more reasonably asked: “Well, what do you want?”
Juble explained carefully about his dislike of the Annual Tax for the Upkeep of Public Buildings and Institutions. “Ah thought… Ah might be able to help you, maybe, and pay in currency,” he finished.
Joe regarded him acidly, silent for several seconds. Then he snapped: “Idle scrounger! What about doing right by the community?”
That was something in which Juble had no interest, but he replied: “Ah’m still paying, ain’t Ah? Money is still used in some towns out west, so Ah hear.”
Joe grunted in disgust. “Know any electronics?”
“No… but car engines, Ah can do nearly anything with.”
“What about generators? Got one?”
“No… but they’re about the same as car engines, aren’t they?”
“Just about.” He gestured to a running motor on the far side of the roof. “Mine’s getting a bit cranky. Take a look, tell me if you can fix it.”
Juble walked over and tinkered with the generator, adjusting its speed. “Easy,” he called. “Just needs going over.”
“All right, you’re hired,” said Joe, crossing the roof and still wearing his look of disgust. “It’s only because you’re the son of my old friend Fell, young man, that I’ll do this. I want you to regard it as a personal favour.”
Juble nodded thankfully, and stood wondering what to do.
Joe left him to wonder for a few seconds. “Well, what are you doing standing there?” he questioned finally.
“… Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Joe screamed, “I pay you to work, not for nothing. Work!” Juble scrambled for his tool kit.
Taking another block of wood, Joe threw it under the knife and squatted down to watch. Once again he strained and strained, putting everything he had into an attempt to keep sight of the rapidly diminishing object.
The block became a speck, then passed out of his conscious world.
This time he took the failure more calmly and cast around for analysis. He began to catalogue: sky, sun, air, asphalt, all these things he could see and feel, and involve in his consciousness. But what about things very small, very big, things very far away? When he tried to grasp a direct knowledge of something inestimably huge, he found he couldn’t. It didn’t exist in the agglomeration of concepts comprising Joe’s conscious world.
He could contemplate it in an abstract imaginary way, of course, but that wasn’t the same as experiencing it. And as for things very small, at the other end of the scale, they were beyond the pale altogether.
Picking up a pebble lying in the sunlight, he looked at it and felt its bright smoothness. It was perception, sensory perception, that decided the limits of his world. Damn, he thought, damn, it’s intolerable! To be confined to this band of reality, which must be ridiculously narrow compared with the total spectrum! There has to be a way out, there’s gotta be a way!
He clumped around the room moodily, yelled insults at Juble, scratched his haunches, then got down to serious thinking again.
Then, as he desperately forced his intellectual faculty to its utmost, he had a sudden flash of inspiration in which he realised that there was no cause for dismay. He had just remembered some very interesting work he had done in an apparently unrelated field.
Some time earlier Joe had made the remarkable discovery that it was possible to produce high-frequency vibrations in a magnetic field without recourse to or effect on its associated electrical component. Furthermore, such vibrations impinged directly on the brain without passing through sense organs. It had long been established that fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field, brought about by the Moon, influenced the brain. Now, with his technique of magnetic vibration, Joe posited that he might have a powerful tool for extending the range of perception.
Also, a powerful weapon of attack or experiment on other human beings. Joe filed this thought for later reference.
After two hours spent in designing a suitable device, he was ready to begin work. By this time Juble had finished with the generator and was looking down below into the garden, a profusion of coloured fruits and prime vegetables.
It was the gardens that had set society free. Advanced agricultural techniques enabled everyone to grow ample food in his own back yard, loosing men from the obligation to work and making every day Sunday. Joe’s garden, Juble noticed, was well stocked.
“Ah’m getting hungry,” he hinted.
“Hungry?” Joe felt exasperated that his assistant should be so prosaic when he himself was in the midst of fantastic thoughts. “Come here,” he ordered, placing yet another block beneath the knife. “Tell me when you can’t see it.”
“Ah can’t see it now,” Juble said after a short time.
“Doesn’t it worry you that there are things you can’t see?”
“No. What’s this to do with me getting something to eat?”
As usual, Joe’s love of philosophical research was instrumental in increasing his contempt for his fellows. He expressed that contempt openly.
Juble was becoming weary of insult. “Go steady, Pop,” he warned, looking mean. “Ah got mah personal integrity, and you ain’t gonna infringe on me.”
Joe was taken aback. “Remember the money,” he said in a more subdued voice. “You can stay hungry. We’ve got work to do. I’ll need to filch some equipment from the Science Museum.”
Expressionlessly Juble opened the car door for him. “And it’s you who’s always on about doing right,” he complained.
The Science Museum was one of the public buildings for whose upkeep Juble payed the one-day tax; not because of conscience, but prompted by the fact that anyone who didn’t was liable to have a bomb thrown on his house, or a grenade through his window if he lived in an apartment.
“Damned cops,” he muttered when they had stopped before the entrance. “Why don’t they just wrap up.”
Joe felt it his duty to deliver a lecture on public morals. “Now, boy, be fair,” he admonished. “The police perform a valuable service, preserving public institutions, keeping the city in order. Without them there wouldn’t be nearly so much fun.” He chuckled. “Nor any place for me to steal equipment from. Then there’s personal protection.”
“Come off it, Pop, have you ever tried to claim protection? That law’s a farce, they’d just sling you in the gutter.”
“And rightly so! A man old enough to carry a gun should be able to take care of himself. But what about kids? Don’t tell me you’ve never seen the police shoot down a bunch of drunks because there were children around, perhaps? And people who endanger kids and defenceless women deserve it. But mind you, you don’t know how lucky you are to be living in a free civilisation. Why, a few hundred years ago you wouldn’t even be allowed to kill a man. And you know what, boy? You would have to work every day of your life! Know what would happen if you didn’t? You’d starve! Did you know that, son?”
“No.”
“Then shut your mouth, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Joe climbed out of the car in a disgruntled manner and with a jerk of his thumb ordered Juble to follow.