Fantastic Stories Present the Galaxy Science Fiction Super Pack #1. Edgar Pangborn
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There was a nasty looking device in the corner.
“I thought those things were illegal,” I said.
“Unfortunately, Mr. Jones, you are, as you know, quite right. We may not employ a telepath instrument on any unconvicted person.”
They looked sorry, but I wasn’t. A telepath would have told them immediately where I had Florence’s pet, and all about it. I smiled at them. They paid no attention, took my passport and began turning up the Lamavic manual on Antimony IX, Livestock of, Prohibited Forms. I had just come from there and so had Florence’s little diver, which I had brought as a happy surprise. I sat down. The two inspectors looked as if they were going to say something, then continued flipping pages of their manual.
“Here it is—Antimony IX.”
One of them read out the prohibitions and the other tried to watch me and the reflex counter behind me at the same time—a crude instrument which should be used, in my professional view, only to determine a person’s capacities for playing poker with success.
“Ants-water, babblers, bunces, candelabra plants, catchem-fellers, Cythia Majoris, divers, dunces, dimple-images, drakes, dunking dogs, dogs-savage, dogs-water, dogs-not-otherwise-provided-for, unspec., elephants-miniature, fish-any....”
They went on. Antimony IX is teeming with life and almost every specimen is prohibited on other planets. We had passed the divers, anyway. I smiled and gave the reflex counter a strong jerk just as the smaller inspector was saying “Mammoths.” They looked at me in silence.
“Funny man,” one said, and they went on reading.
“Okay,” the large inspector said at last. “We’ll examine him for everything.”
*
For the next three hours, they took blood specimens to see if I had microscopic livestock hidden there, they X-rayed me and my baggage, fluoroscoped everything again, put the baggage through an irritator life-indexer, investigated my orifices in detail with a variety of instruments, took skin scrapings in case I was wearing a false layer, and the only thing they found was my dark glasses.
“Why don’t you wear modern contact lenses?”
“It’s none of your business,” I said, “but these old-style spectacles have liquid lenses.”
There was a flurry and they sent away for analysis a small drop from one of the lenses. There were no signs of prohibited life in the liquid.
“I could have told you that,” I said. “It’s dicyanin, a vegetable extract. Diminishes the glare.”
I put the glasses on my nose and hooked on the earpieces. The effect was medieval, but I could see the little diver now. I could also see disturbing evidence of the inspectors’ mental condition. A useful little device invented by Dr. W. J. Kilner (1847-1920) for the study of the human aura in sickness and health. After a little practice, which I was not going to allow the Lamavic inspectors, the retina became sufficiently sensitive to see the micro-wave aura when you looked through the dicyanin screen. As was true of most of these psi pioneers at that time, nothing was done to further Kilner’s work when he died. I noticed, without surprise, that the inspectors had a mental field of very limited extent and that the little diver had survived the journey nicely.
“Can I go now?” I asked.
“This time, Mr. Jones.”
When I left, the repair staff was building a new inspection barrier to replace the parts the dragon had got. Such an amateur performance! Leave smuggling to professionals and we’d have Lamavic disbanded from boredom in ten years. I nearly slipped on the fine silica dioxide which had fused in the air when the dragon got annoyed. Nasty, dangerous pets.
The one for Florence was the only contraband I was carrying this trip, which was purely pleasure. She was waiting for me in her apartment, tall, golden, luscious, and all mine. She thought I was in import-export, which in a sense was true.
“I’ve missed you so much, Sol,” she said, twining herself on me and the couch like a Venusian water-nymph. “Did you bring me a present?”
I lay back and let her kiss me.
“Of course I did. A small but very valuable present.”
I let her kiss me again.
“Not—a Jupiter diamond, Sol?”
“Much rarer than that, and more useful.”
“Oh. Useful.”
“Something to help you in the house when we’re married, honey. Now, don’t pout so prettily, or I’ll never get around to showing you.”
My homecoming was not developing quite as I planned, but I put this down to womanly, if not exactly maidenly, quirks. When she found out what I had brought her, I was sure she would be all over me again. I put on my dark glasses so that I could see where the diver was.
“Would you like a drink, honey?” I asked.
“I don’t mind,” she said sulkily.
*
I looked at the diver, concentrated hard on the thought of a bottle from the cabinet, two glasses and a pitcher of ice from the kitchen. He went revolving through the air obediently and the items came floating out neatly. Florence nearly shattered the windows with her screams.
“Now calm down, honey,” I said, catching her. “Calm down. It’s just a little present I brought you.”
The bottle, glasses and pitcher dropped gently onto the table beside us.
“See?” I said. “Service at a thought. Remote control. The end of housework. Kiss me.”
She didn’t.
“You mean you did that, Sol?”
“Not me, exactly. I’ve brought you a little baby diver, honey, all the way from Antimony IX, just for you. There isn’t another one on Earth. In fact, I doubt if there’s another one outside Antimony IX. I had a lot of trouble securing this rare and valuable present for you.”
“I don’t like it. It gives me the creeps.”
“Honey,” I said carefully, “this is a little baby. It couldn’t hurt a mouse. It’s about six inches in diameter, and all it is doing is to teleport what you want it to teleport.”
“Then why can’t I see it?”
“If you could see it, I wouldn’t have been allowed to bring it for you, honey, because a whole row of nasty-minded Solar Civil Servants would have seen it too, and they would have taken it from your own sweet Sol.”
“They can have it.”
“Honey, this is a rare and valuable pet! It will do things for you.”
“So you think I need something done for me. Well! I’m glad you came right out and said this before we were married!”
The following series of “but—but—” from me and irrelevance from Florence occupied an hour, but hardly mentioned the diver. Eventually I got her back into my arms.
My urges for Florence were strictly biological, though intense. There were little chances for intellectual exchanges between us, but I was more interested in the broad probabilities of her as a woman. I could go commune with wild and exotic intelligences on foreign planets any time I had the fare. As a woman, Florence was what I wanted.
“Back on Antimony IX,” I explained carefully, “life is fierce and rugged. So, to keep from being eaten, these little divers evolved themselves into little minds with no bodies at all, and they feed off solar radiation. Now, honey, minds are not made of the same stuff brains are made of, good solid tissue and gray matter and neural cortex—”
“Don’t be dirty, Sol.”
“There is nothing dirty about the body, honey. Minds are invisible