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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Servant Problem, by Robert F. Young
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Servant Problem
+
+Author: Robert F. Young
+
+Release Date: October 29, 2007 [EBook #23232]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SERVANT PROBLEM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Iain Arnell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The Servant Problem
+
+
+    Selling a whole town, and doing it inconspicuously, can be a little
+    difficult ... either giving it away freely, or in a more normal
+    sense of "selling". People don't quite believe it....
+
+
+by Robert J. Young
+
+
+Illustrated by Schoenherr
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+If you have ever lived in a small town, you have seen Francis Pfleuger,
+and probably you have sent him after sky-hooks, left-handed
+monkey-wrenches and pails of steam, and laughed uproariously behind his
+back when he set forth to do your bidding. The Francis Pfleugers of the
+world have inspired both fun and laughter for generations out of mind.
+
+The Francis Pfleuger we are concerned with here lived in a small town
+named Valleyview, and in addition to suffering the distinction of being
+the village idiot, he also suffered the distinction of being the village
+inventor. These two distinctions frequently go hand in hand, and afford,
+in their incongruous togetherness, an even greater inspiration for fun
+and laughter. For in this advanced age of streamlined electric can
+openers and sleek pop-up toasters, who but the most naïve among us can
+fail to be titillated by the thought of a buck-toothed, wall-eyed moron
+building Rube Goldberg contrivances in his basement?
+
+The Francis Pfleuger we are concerned with did his inventing in his
+kitchen rather than in his basement; nevertheless, his machines were in
+the Rube Goldberg tradition. Take the one he was assembling now, for
+example. It stood on the kitchen table, and its various attachments
+jutted this way and that with no apparent rhyme or reason. In its center
+there was a transparent globe that looked like an upside-down goldfish
+bowl, and in the center of the bowl there was an object that startlingly
+resembled a goldfish, but which, of course, was nothing of the sort.
+Whatever it was, though, it kept growing brighter and brighter each time
+Francis added another attachment, and had already attained a degree of
+incandescence so intense that he had been forced to don cobalt-blue
+goggles in order to look at it. The date was the First of April,
+1962--April Fool's Day.
+
+Actually, the idea for this particular machine had not originated in
+Francis' brain, nor had the parts for it originated in his
+kitchen-workshop. When he had gone out to get the milk that morning he
+had found a box on his doorstep, and in the box he had found the
+goldfish bowl and the attachments, plus a sheet of instructions
+entitled, DIRECTIONS FOR ASSEMBLING A MULTIPLE MÖBIUS-KNOT DYNAMO.
+Francis thought that a machine capable of tying knots would be pretty
+keen, and he had carried the box into the kitchen and set to work
+forthwith.
+
+He now had but one more part to go, and he proceeded to screw it into
+place. Then he stepped back to admire his handiwork. Simultaneously his
+handiwork went into action. The attachments began to quiver and to emit
+sparks; the globe glowed, and the goldfishlike object in its center
+began to dart this way and that as though striking at flies. A blue halo
+formed above the machine and began to rotate. Faster and faster it
+rotated, till finally its gaseous components separated and flew off in a
+hundred different directions. Three things happened then in swift
+succession: Francis' back doorway took on a bluish cast, the sheet of
+instructions vanished, and the machine began to melt.
+
+A moment later he heard a whining sound on his back doorstep.
+
+Simultaneously all of the residents of Valleyview heard whining sounds
+on _their_ back doorsteps.
+
+Naturally everybody went to find out about the whining.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sign was a new one. At the most it was no more than six months old.
+YOU ARE ENTERING THE VILLAGE OF VALLEYVIEW, it said. PLEASE DRIVE
+CAREFULLY--WE ARE FOND OF OUR DOGS.
+
+Philip Myles drove carefully. He was fond of dogs, too.
+
+Night had tiptoed in over the October countryside quite some time ago,
+but the village of Valleyview had not turned on so much as a single
+streetlight--nor, apparently, any other kind of light. All was in
+darkness, and not a soul was to be seen. Philip began to suspect that he
+had entered a ghost town, and when his headlights darted across a dark
+intersection and picked up the overgrown grass and unkempt shrubbery of
+the village park, he was convinced that he had. Then he saw the girl
+walking the dog.
+
+He kitty-cornered the intersection and pulled up alongside her. She was
+a blonde, tall and chic in a gray fall suit. Her face was
+attractive--beautiful even, in a cold and classic way--but she would
+never see twenty-five again. But then, Philip would never again see
+thirty. When she paused, her dog paused too, although she did not have
+it on a leash. It was on the small side, tawny in hue, with golden-brown
+eyes, a slender white-tipped tail, and shaggy ears that hung down on
+either side of its face in a manner reminiscent of a cocker spaniel's.
+It wasn't a cocker spaniel, though. The ears were much too long, for one
+thing, and the tail was much too delicate, for another. It was a
+breed--or combination of breeds--that Philip had never seen before.
+
+He leaned across the seat and rolled down the right-hand window. "Could
+you direct me to number 23 Locust Street?" he asked. "It's the residence
+of Judith Darrow, the village attorney. Maybe you know her."
+
+The girl gave a start. "Are _you_ the real-estate man I sent for?"
+
+Philip gave a start, too. Recovering himself, he said, "Then _you're_
+Judith Darrow. I'm ... I'm afraid I'm a little late."
+
+The girl's eyes flashed. The radiant backwash of the headlights revealed
+them to be both green and gray. "I specified in my letter that you were
+supposed to be here at nine o'clock this morning!" she said. "Maybe
+you'll tell me how you're going to appraise property in the dark!"
+
+"I'm sorry," Philip said. "My car broke down on the way, and I had to
+wait for it to be fixed. When I tried to call you, the operator told me
+that your phone had been disconnected. If you'll direct me to the hotel,
+I'll stay there overnight and appraise your property in the morning.
+There _is_ a hotel, isn't there?"
+
+"There is--but it's closed. Zarathustra--down!" The dog had raised up on
+its hind legs and placed its forepaws on the door in an unsuccessful
+attempt to peer in the window. At the girl's command, it sank obediently
+down on its haunches. "Except for Zarathustra and myself," she went on,
+"the village is empty. Everyone else has already moved out, and we'd
+have moved out, too, if I hadn't been entrusted with arranging for the
+sale of the business places and the houses. It makes for a rather
+awkward situation."
+
+She had leaned forward, and the light from the dash lay palely upon her
+face, softening its austerity. "I don't get this at all," Philip said.
+"From your letter I assumed you had two or three places you wanted me to
+sell, but not a whole town. There must have been at least a thousand
+people living here, and a thousand people just don't pack up and move
+out all at once." When she volunteered no explanation, he added, "Where
+did they move to?"
+
+"To Pfleugersville. I know you've never heard of it, so save the
+observation." Then, "Do you have any identification?" she asked.
+
+He gave her his driver's license, his business card and the letter she
+had written him. After glancing at them, she handed them back. She
+appeared to be undecided about something. "Why don't you let me stay at
+the hotel?" he suggested. "You must have the key if it's one of the
+places I'm supposed to appraise."
+
+She shook her head. "I have the key, but there's not a stick of
+furniture in the place. We had a village auction last week and got rid
+of everything that we didn't plan on taking with us." She sighed. "Well,
+there's nothing for it, I guess. The nearest motel is thirty miles away,
+so I'll have to put you up at my house. I have a few articles of
+furniture left--wedding gifts, mostly, that I was too sentimental to
+part with." She got into the car. "Come on, Zarathustra."
+
+Zarathustra clambered in, leaped across her lap and sat down between
+them. Philip pulled away from the curb. "That's an odd name for a dog,"
+he said.
+
+"I know. I guess the reason I gave it to him is because he puts me in
+mind of a little old man sometimes."
+
+"But the original Zarathustra isn't noted for his longevity."
+
+"Perhaps another association was at work then. Turn right at the next
+corner."
+
+A lonely light burned in one of number 23 Locust Street's three front
+windows. Its source, however, was not an incandescent bulb, but the
+mantle of a gasoline lantern. "The village power-supply was shut off
+yesterday," Judith Darrow explained, pumping the lantern into renewed
+brightness. She glanced at him sideways. "Did you have dinner?"
+
+"As a matter of fact--no. But please don't--"
+
+"Bother? I couldn't if I wanted to. My larder is on its last legs. But
+sit down, and I'll make you some sandwiches. I'll make a pot of coffee
+too--the gas hasn't been turned off yet."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The living room had precisely three articles of furniture to its
+name--two armchairs and a coffee table. After Judith left him, Philip
+set his brief case on the floor and sat down in one of the chairs. He
+wondered idly how she expected to make the trip to Pfleugersville. He
+had seen no car in the driveway, and there was no garage on the property
+in which one could be concealed. Moreover, it was highly unlikely that
+buses serviced the village any more. Valleyview had been bypassed quite
+some time ago by one of the new super-duper highways. He shrugged.
+Getting to Pfleugersville was her problem, not his.
+
+He returned his attention to the living room. It was a large room. The
+house was large, too--large and Victorianesque. Judith, apparently, had
+opened the back door, for a breeze was wafting through the downstairs
+rooms--a breeze laden with the scent of flowers and the dew-damp breath
+of growing grass. He frowned. The month was October, not June, and since
+when did flowers bloom and grass grow in October? He concluded that the
+scent must be artificial.
+
+Zarathustra was regarding him with large golden eyes from the middle of
+the living-room floor. The animal did somehow bring to mind a little old
+man, although he could not have been more than two or three years old.
+"You're not very good company," Philip said.
+
+"Ruf," said Zarathustra, and turning, trotted through an archway into a
+large room that, judging from the empty shelves lining its walls, had
+once been a library, and thence through another archway into another
+room--the dining room, undoubtedly--and out of sight.
+
+Philip leaned back wearily in the armchair he had chosen. He was beat.
+Take six days a week, ten hours a day, and multiply by fifty-two and you
+get three hundred and twelve. Three hundred and twelve days a year,
+hunting down clients, talking, walking, driving, expounding; trying in
+his early thirties to build the foundation he should have begun building
+in his early twenties--the foundation for the family he had suddenly
+realized he wanted and someday hoped to have. Sometimes he wished that
+ambition had missed him altogether instead of waiting for so long to
+strike. Sometimes he wished he could have gone right on being what he
+once had been. After all, there was nothing wrong in living in cheap
+hotels and even cheaper rooming houses; there was nothing wrong in being
+a lackadaisical door-to-door salesman with run-down heels.
+
+Nothing wrong, that is, except the aching want that came over you
+sometimes, and the loneliness of long and empty evenings.
+
+Zarathustra had re-entered the room and was sitting in the middle of the
+floor again. He had not returned empty-handed--or rather,
+empty-mouthed--although the object he had brought with him was not the
+sort of object dogs generally pick up. It was a rose--
+
+A green rose.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Disbelievingly, Philip leaned forward and took it from the animal's
+mouth. Before he had a chance to examine it, however, footsteps sounded
+in the next room, and prompted by he knew not what, he thrust the rose
+into his suitcoat pocket. An instant later, Judith Darrow came through
+the archway bearing a large tray. After setting it down on the coffee
+table, she poured two cups of coffee from a little silver pot and
+indicated a plate of sandwiches. "Please help yourself," she said.
+
+She sat down in the other chair and sipped her coffee. He had one of the
+sandwiches, found that he didn't want any more. Somehow, her proximity,
+coupled with her silence, made him feel uncomfortable. "Has your husband
+already left for Pfleugersville?" he asked politely.
+
+Her gray-green eyes grew cold. "Yes, he left quite some time ago," she
+said. "A year ago, as a matter of fact. But for parts unknown, not
+Pfleugersville. Pfleugersville wasn't accessible then, anyway. He had a
+brunette on one arm, a redhead on the other, and a pint of Cutty Sark in
+his hip pocket."
+
+Philip was distressed. "I ... I didn't mean to pry," he said. "I'm--"
+
+"Sorry? Why should you be? Some men are born to settle down and raise
+children and others are born to drink and philander. It's as simple as
+that."
+
+"Is it?" something made Philip ask. "Into which category would you say I
+fall?"
+
+"You're in a class by yourself." Tiny silver flecks had come into her
+eyes, and he realized to his astonishment that they were flecks of
+malevolence. "You've never married, but playing the field hasn't made
+you one hundred per cent cynical. You're still convinced that somewhere
+there is a woman worthy of your devotion. And you're quite right--the
+world is full of them."
+
+His face tingled as though she had slapped it, and in a sense, she had.
+He restrained his anger with difficulty. "I didn't know that my celibacy
+was that noticeable," he said.
+
+"It isn't. I took the liberty of having a private investigator check
+into your background. It proved to be unsavory in some respects, as I
+implied before, but unlike the backgrounds of the other real-estate
+agents I had checked, it contained not the slightest hint of dishonesty.
+The nature of my business is such that I need someone of maximum
+integrity to contract it with. I had to go far and wide to find you."
+
+"You're being unfair," Philip said, mollified despite himself. "Most
+real-estate agents are honest. As a matter of fact, there's one in the
+same office building with me that I'd trust with the family jewels--if I
+had any family jewels."
+
+"Good," Judith Darrow said. "I gambled on you knowing someone like
+that."
+
+He waited for her to elaborate, and when she did not he finished his
+coffee and stood up. "If you don't mind, I'll turn in," he said. "I've
+had a pretty hard day."
+
+"I'll show you your room."
+
+She got two candles, lit them, and after placing them in gilt
+candlesticks, handed one of the candlesticks to him. The room was on the
+third floor in under the eaves--as faraway from hers, probably, as the
+size of the house permitted. Philip did not mind. He liked to sleep in
+rooms under eaves. There was an enchantment about the rain on the roof
+that people who slept in less celestial bowers never got to know. After
+Judith left, he threw open the single window and undressed and climbed
+into bed. Remembering the rose, he got it out of his coat pocket and
+examined it by candlelight. It was green all right--even greener than he
+had at first thought. Its scent was reminiscent of the summer breeze
+that was blowing through the downstairs rooms, though not at all in
+keeping with the chill October air that was coming through his bedroom
+window. He laid it on the table beside the bed and blew out the candle.
+He would go looking for the bush tomorrow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Philip was an early riser, and dawn had not yet departed when, fully
+dressed, he left the room with the rose in his coat pocket and quietly
+descended the stairs. Entering the living room, he found Zarathustra
+curled up in one of the armchairs, and for a moment he had the eerie
+impression that the animal had extended one of his shaggy ears and was
+scratching his back with it. When Philip did a doubletake, however, the
+ear was back to normal size and reposing on its owner's tawny cheek.
+Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he said, "Come on, Zarathustra, we're
+going for a walk."
+
+He headed for the back door, Zarathustra at his heels. A double door
+leading off the dining room barred his way and proved to be locked.
+Frowning, he returned to the living room. "All right," he said to
+Zarathustra, "we'll go out the front way then."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He walked around the side of the house, his canine companion trotting
+beside him. The side yard turned out to be disappointing. It contained
+no roses--green ones, or any other kind. About all it did contain that
+was worthy of notice was a dog house--an ancient affair that was much
+too large for Zarathustra and which probably dated from the days when
+Judith had owned a larger dog. The yard itself was a mess: the grass
+hadn't been cut all summer, the shrubbery was ragged, and dead leaves
+lay everywhere. A similar state of affairs existed next door, and
+glancing across lots, he saw that the same desuetude prevailed
+throughout the entire neighborhood. Obviously the good citizens of
+Valleyview had lost interest in their real estate long before they had
+moved out.
+
+At length his explorations led him to the back door. If there were green
+roses anywhere, the trellis that adorned the small back porch was the
+logical place for them to be. He found nothing but bedraggled Virginia
+creeper and more dead leaves.
+
+He tried the back door, and finding it locked, circled the rest of the
+way around the house. Judith was waiting for him on the front porch.
+"How nice of you to walk Zarathustra," she said icily. "I do hope you
+found the yard in order."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The yellow dress she was wearing did not match the tone of her voice,
+and the frilly blue apron tied round her waist belied the frostiness of
+her gray-green eyes. Nevertheless, her rancor was real. "Sorry," he
+said. "I didn't know your back yard was out of bounds." Then, "If you'll
+give me a list of the places you want evaluated, I'll get started right
+away."
+
+"I'll take you around again personally--after we have breakfast."
+
+Again he was consigned to the living room while she performed the
+necessary culinary operations, and again she served him by tray. Clearly
+she did not want him in the kitchen, or anywhere near it. He was not
+much of a one for mysteries, but this one was intriguing him more and
+more by the minute.
+
+Breakfast over, she told him to wait on the front porch while she did
+the dishes, and instructed Zarathustra to keep him company. She had two
+voices: the one she used in addressing Zarathustra contained overtones
+of summer, and the one she used in addressing Philip contained
+overtones of fall. "Some day," Philip told the little dog, "that chip
+she carries on her shoulder is going to fall off of its own accord, and
+by then it will be too late--the way it was too late for me when I found
+out that the person I'd been running away from all my life was myself in
+wolf's clothing."
+
+"Ruf," said Zarathustra, looking up at him with benign golden eyes.
+"Ruf-ruf!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Presently Judith re-appeared, sans apron, and the three of them set
+forth into the golden October day. It was Philip's first experience in
+evaluating an entire village, but he had a knack for estimating the
+worth of property, and by the time noon came around, he had the job half
+done. "If you people had made even half an effort to keep your places
+up," he told Judith over cold-cut sandwiches and coffee in her living
+room, "we could have asked for a third again as much. Why in the world
+did you let everything go to pot just because you were moving some place
+else?"
+
+She shrugged. "It's hard to get anyone to do housework these days--not
+to mention gardening. Besides, in addition to the servant problem,
+there's another consideration--human nature. When you've lived in a
+shack all your life and you suddenly acquire a palace, you cease caring
+very much what the shack looks like."
+
+"Shack!" Philip was indignant. "Why, this house is lovely! Practically
+every house you've shown me is lovely. Old, yes--but oldness is an
+essential part of the loveliness of houses. If Pfleugersville is on the
+order of most housing developments I've seen, you and your neighbors are
+going to be good and sorry one of these fine days!"
+
+"But Pfleugersville isn't on the order of most housing developments
+you've seen. In fact, it's not a housing development at all. But let's
+not go into that. Anyway, we're concerned with Valleyview, not
+Pfleugersville."
+
+"Very well," Philip said. "This afternoon should wind things up so far
+as the appraising goes."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening, after a coffee-less supper--both the gas and the water had
+been turned off that afternoon--he totaled up his figures. They made
+quite a respectable sum. He looked across the coffee table, which he had
+commandeered as a desk, to where Judith, with the dubious help of
+Zarathustra, was sorting out a pile of manila envelopes which she had
+placed in the middle of the living-room floor. "I'll do my best to sell
+everything," he said, "but it's going to be difficult going till we get
+a few families living here. People are reluctant about moving into empty
+neighborhoods, and businessmen aren't keen about opening up business
+places before the customers are available. But I think it'll work out
+all right. There's a plaza not far from here that will provide a place
+to shop until the local markets are functioning, and Valleyview is part
+of a centralized school district." He slipped the paper he had been
+figuring on into his brief case, closed the case and stood up. "I'll
+keep in touch with you."
+
+Judith shook her head. "You'll do nothing of the sort. As soon as you
+leave, I'm moving to Pfleugersville. My business here is finished."
+
+"I'll keep in touch with you there then. All you have to do is give me
+your address and phone number."
+
+She shook her head again. "I could give you both, but neither would do
+you any good. But that's beside the point. Valleyview is your
+responsibility now--not mine."
+
+Philip sat back down again. "You can start explaining any time," he
+said.
+
+"It's very simple. The property owners of Valleyview signed all of their
+houses and places of business over to me. I, in turn, have signed all of
+them over to you--with the qualification, of course, that after selling
+them you will be entitled to no more than your usual commission." She
+withdrew a paper from one of the manila envelopes. "After selling them,"
+she went on, "you are to divide the proceeds equally among the four
+charities specified in this contract." She handed him the paper. "Do you
+understand now why I tried so hard to find a trustworthy agent?"
+
+Philip was staring at the paper, unable, in his astonishment, to read
+the words it contained. "Suppose," he said presently, "that
+circumstances should make it impossible for me to carry out my end of
+the agreement?"
+
+"In case of illness, you will already have taken the necessary steps to
+transfer the property to another agent who, in your opinion, is as
+completely honest as you are, and in case of death, you will already
+have taken the necessary steps to bequeath the property to the same
+agent; and he, in both cases, will already have agreed to the terms laid
+down in the contract you're holding in your hands. Why don't you read
+it?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now that his astonishment had abated somewhat, Philip found that he
+could do so. "But this still doesn't make sense," he said a short while
+later. "Obviously you and the rest of the owners have purchased new
+houses. Would it be presumptuous of me to ask how you're going to pay
+for them when you're virtually giving your old houses away?"
+
+"I'm afraid it would be, Mr. Myles." She withdrew another paper from the
+envelope and handed it to him. "This is the other copy. If you'll kindly
+affix your signature to both, we can bring our business to a close. As
+you'll notice, I've already signed."
+
+"But if you're going to be incommunicado," Philip pointed out, anger
+building up in him despite all he could do to stop it, "what good will
+your copy do you?"
+
+Judith's countenance took on a glacial quality. So did her voice. "My
+copy will go into the hands of a trusted attorney, sealed in an envelope
+which I have already instructed him not to open till five years from
+this date. If, at the time it is opened, you have violated the terms of
+our agreement, he will institute legal proceedings at once. Fortunately,
+although the Valleyview post office is closed, a mail truck passes
+through every weekday evening at eight. It's not that I don't trust you,
+Mr. Myles--but you are a man, you know."
+
+Philip was tempted to tear up the two copies then and there, and toss
+the pieces into the air. But he didn't, for the very good reason that he
+couldn't afford to. Instead, he bore down viciously on his pen and
+brought his name to life twice in large and angry letters. He handed
+Judith one copy, slipped the other into his breast pocket and got to his
+feet. "That," he said, "brings our official business to a close. Now I'd
+like to add an unofficial word of advice. It seems to me that you're
+exacting an exorbitant price from the world for your husband's having
+sold you out for a brunette and a redhead and a pint of Scotch. I've
+been sold out lots of times for less than that, but I found out long ago
+that the world doesn't pay its bills even when you ask a fair price for
+the damages done to you. I suggest that you write the matter off as a
+bad debt and forget about it; then maybe you'll become a human being
+again."
+
+She had risen to her feet and was standing stiffly before him. She put
+him in mind of an exquisite and fragile statue, and for a moment he had
+the feeling that if he were to reach out and touch her, she would
+shatter into a million pieces. She did not move for some time, nor did
+he; then she bent down, picked up three of the manila envelopes,
+straightened, and handed them to him. "Two of these contain the deeds,
+maps and other records you will need," she said in a dead voice. "The
+third contains the keys to the houses and business places. Each key is
+tagged with the correct address. Good-by, Mr. Myles."
+
+"Good-by," Philip said.
+
+He looked around the room intending to say good-by to Zarathustra, but
+Zarathustra was nowhere to be seen. Finally he went into the hall,
+opened the front door and stepped out into the night. A full moon was
+rising in the east. He walked down the moonlit walk, climbed into his
+car and threw his brief case and the manila envelopes into the back
+seat. Soon, Valleyview was far behind him.
+
+But not as far as it should have been. He couldn't get the green rose
+out of his mind. He couldn't get Judith Darrow out of his mind either.
+Nor could he exorcise the summer breeze that kept wafting through the
+crevices in his common sense.
+
+A green rose and a grass widow and a breeze with a green breath. A whole
+town taking off for greener pastures....
+
+He reached into his coat pocket and touched the rose. It was no more
+than a stem and a handful of petals now, but its reality could not be
+denied. But roses do not bloom in autumn, and green roses do not bloom
+at all--
+
+"Ruf!"
+
+He had turned into the new highway some time ago, and was driving along
+it at a brisk sixty-five. Now, disbelievingly, he slowed, and pulled
+over onto the shoulder. Sure enough, he had a stowaway in the back
+seat--a tawny-haired stowaway with golden eyes, over-sized ears, and a
+restless, white-tipped tail. "Zarathustra!" he gasped. "How in the
+dickens did you get in there?"
+
+"Ruf," Zarathustra replied.
+
+Philip groaned. Now he would have to go all the way back to Valleyview.
+Now he would have to see Judith Darrow again. Now he would have to--He
+paused in midthought, astonished at the abrupt acceleration of his
+heartbeat. "Well I'll be damned!" he said, and without further preamble
+transferred Zarathustra to the front seat, U-turned, and started back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The gasoline lantern had been moved out of the living-room window, but a
+light still showed beyond the panes. He pulled over to the curb and
+turned off the ignition. He gave one of Zarathustra's over-sized ears a
+playful tug, absently noting a series of small nodules along its lower
+extremity. "Come on, Zarathustra," he said. "I may as well deliver you
+personally while I'm at it."
+
+After locking the car, he started up the walk, Zarathustra at his heels.
+He knocked on the front door. Presently he knocked again. The door
+creaked, swung partially open. He frowned. Had she forgotten to latch
+it? he wondered. Or had she deliberately left it unlatched so that
+Zarathustra could get in? Zarathustra himself lent plausibility to the
+latter conjecture by rising up on his hind legs and pushing the door the
+rest of the way open with his forepaws, after which he trotted into the
+hall and disappeared.
+
+Philip pounded on the panels. "Miss Darrow!" he called. "Judith!"
+
+No answer. He called again. Still no answer.
+
+A summer breeze came traipsing out of the house and engulfed him in the
+scent of roses. What kind of roses? he wondered. Green ones?
+
+He stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. He made his way
+into the living room. The two chairs were gone, and so was the coffee
+table. He walked through the living room and into the library; through
+the library and into the dining room. The gasoline lantern burned
+brightly on the dining-room table, its harsh white light bathing bare
+floors and naked walls.
+
+The breeze was stronger here, the scent of roses almost cloying. He saw
+then that the double door that had thwarted him that morning was open,
+and he moved toward it across the room. As he had suspected, it gave
+access to the kitchen. Pausing on the threshold, he peered inside. It
+was an ordinary enough kitchen. Some of the appliances were gone, but
+the stove and the refrigerator were still there. The back doorway had an
+odd bluish cast that caused the framework to shimmer. The door itself
+was open, and he could see starlight lying softly on fields and trees.
+
+Wonderingly he walked across the room and stepped outside. There was a
+faint sputtering sound, as though live wires had been crossed, and for a
+fleeting second the scene before him seemed to waver. Then, abruptly, it
+grew still.
+
+He grew still, too--immobile in the strange, yet peaceful, summer night.
+He was standing on a grassy plain, and the plain spread out on either
+hand to promontories of little trees. Before him, the land sloped gently
+upward, and was covered with multicolored flowers that twinkled like
+microcosmic stars. In the distance, the lights of a village showed. To
+his right, a riotous green-rose bush bloomed, and beneath it Zarathustra
+sat, wagging his tail.
+
+Philip took two steps forward, stopped and looked up at the sky. It was
+wrong somehow. For one thing, Cassiopeia had changed position, and for
+another, Orion was awry. For still another, there were no clouds for the
+moon to hide behind, and yet the moon had disappeared.
+
+Zarathustra trotted over to where he was standing, gazed up at him with
+golden eyes, then headed in the direction of the lights. Philip took a
+deep breath, and followed him. He would have visited the village anyway,
+Zarathustra or no Zarathustra. Was it Pfleugersville? He knew suddenly
+that it was.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He had not gone far before he saw a highway. A pair of headlights
+appeared suddenly in the direction of the village and resolved rapidly
+into a moving van. To his consternation, the van turned off the
+thoroughfare and headed in his direction. He ducked into a coppice,
+Zarathustra at his heels, and watched the heavy vehicle bounce by. There
+were two men in the cab, and painted on the paneling of the truckbed
+were the words, PFLEUGERSVILLE MOVERS, INC.
+
+The van continued on in the direction from which he had come, and
+presently he guessed its destination. Judith, clearly, was in the midst
+of moving out the furniture she had been too sentimental to sell. The
+only trouble was, her house had disappeared. So had the village of
+Valleyview.
+
+He stared at where the houses should have been, saw nothing at first
+except a continuation of the starlit plain. Then he noticed an upright
+rectangle of pale light hovering just above the ground, and presently he
+identified it as Judith's back doorway. He could see through it into the
+kitchen, and by straining his eyes, he could even see the stove and the
+refrigerator.
+
+Gradually he made out other upright rectangles hovering just above the
+ground, some of them on a line with Judith's. All of them, however,
+while outlined in the same shimmering blue that outlined hers, lacked
+lighted interiors.
+
+As he stood there staring, the van came to a halt, turned around and
+backed up to the brightest rectangle, hiding it from view. The two men
+got out of the cab and walked around to the rear of the truckbed. "We'll
+put the stove on first," Philip heard one of them say. And then, "Wonder
+why she wants to hang onto junk like this?"
+
+The other man's voice was fainter, but his words were unmistakable
+enough: "Grass widows who turn into old maids have funny notions
+sometimes."
+
+Judith Darrow wasn't really moving out of Valleyview after all. She only
+thought she was.
+
+Philip went on. The breeze was all around him. It blew through his hair,
+kissed his cheeks and caressed his forehead. The stars shone palely
+down. Some of the land was under cultivation, and he could see green
+things growing in the starlight, and the breeze carried their green
+breath to his nostrils. He reached the highway and began walking along
+it. He saw no further sign of vehicles till he came opposite a large
+brick building with bright light spilling through its windows. In front
+of it were parked a dozen automobiles of a make that he was unfamiliar
+with.
+
+He heard the whir of machinery and the pounding of hammers, and he went
+over and peered through one of the windows. The building proved to be a
+furniture factory. Most of the work was being done by machines, but
+there were enough tasks left over to keep the owners of the parked cars
+busily occupied. The main manual task was upholstering. The machines cut
+and sewed and trimmed and planed and doweled and assembled, but
+apparently none of them was up to the fine art of spitting tacks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Philip returned to the highway and went on. He came to other buildings
+and peered into each. One was a small automobile-assembly plant, another
+was a dairy, a third was a long greenhouse. In the first two the
+preponderance of the work was being performed by machines. In the third,
+however, machines were conspicuously absent. Clearly it was one thing
+to build a machine with a superhuman work potential, but quite another
+to build one with a green thumb.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He passed a pasture, and saw animals that looked like cows sleeping in
+the starlight. He passed a field of newly-sprouted corn. He passed a
+power plant, and heard the whine of a generator. Finally he came to the
+outskirts of Pfleugersville.
+
+There was a big illuminated sign by the side of the road. It stopped him
+in his tracks, and he stood there staring at its embossed letters:
+
+    PFLEUGERSVILLE, SIRIUS XXI
+    _Discovered April 1, 1962
+    Incorporated September 11, 1962_
+
+Philip wiped his forehead.
+
+Zarathustra had trotted on ahead. Now he stopped and looked back. _Come
+on_, he seemed to say. _Now that you've seen this much, you might as
+well see the rest._
+
+So Philip entered Pfleugersville ... and fell in love--
+
+Fell in love with the lovely houses, and the darling trees in summer
+bloom. With the parterres of twinkling star-flowers and the expanses of
+verdant lawns. With the trellised green roses that tapestried every
+porch. With the hydrangealike blooms that garnished every corner. With
+Pfleugersville itself.
+
+Obviously the hour was late, for, other than himself, there was no one
+on the streets, although lights burned in the windows of some of the
+houses, and dogs of the same breed and size as Zarathustra occasionally
+trotted by. And yet according to his watch the time was 10:51. Maybe,
+though, Pfleugersville was on different time. Maybe, here in
+Pfleugersville, it was the middle of the night.
+
+The farther he progressed into the village, the more enchanted he
+became. He simply couldn't get over the houses. The difference between
+them and the houses he was familiar with was subtle, but it was there.
+It was the difference that exists between good- and not-quite-good
+taste. Here were no standardized patios, but little marble aprons that
+were as much a part of the over-all architecture as a glen is a part of
+a woods. Here were no stereotyped picture windows, but walls that
+blended imperceptibly into pleasing patterns of transparency. Here were
+no four-square back yards, but rambling star-flowered playgrounds with
+swings and seesaws and shaded swimming holes; with exquisite doghouses
+good enough for little girls' dolls to live in.
+
+He passed a school that seemed to grow out of the very ground it stood
+on. He passed a library that had been built around a huge tree, the
+branches of which had intertwined their foliage into a living roof. He
+passed a block-long supermarket built of tinted glass. Finally he came
+to the park.
+
+He gasped then. Gasped at the delicate trees and the little blue-eyed
+lakes; at the fairy-fountains and the winding, pebbled paths.
+Star-flowers shed their multicolored radiance everywhere, and starlight
+poured prodigally down from the sky. He chose a path at random and
+walked along it in the twofold radiance till he came to the cynosure.
+
+The cynosure was a statue--a statue of a buck-toothed, wall-eyed youth
+gazing steadfastly up into the heavens. In one hand the youth held a
+Phillips screw driver, in the other a six-inch crescent wrench. Standing
+several yards away and staring raptly up into the statue's face was the
+youth himself, and so immobile was he that if it hadn't been for the
+pedestal on which the statue rested, Philip would have been unable to
+distinguish one from the other.
+
+There was an inscription on the pedestal. He walked over and read it in
+the light cast by a nearby parterre of star-flowers:
+
+    FRANCIS FARNSWORTH
+    PFLEUGER,
+    DISCOVERER OF
+    PFLEUGERSVILLE
+
+    _Born: May 5. 1941. Died: ----_
+
+    _Profession Inventor. On the first day of April of the year of our
+    Lord, 1962, Francis Farnsworth Pfleuger brought into being a Möbius
+    coincidence field and established multiple contact with the
+    twenty-first satellite of the star Sirius, thereby giving the
+    people of Valleyview access, via their back doorways, to a New
+    World. Here we have come to live. Here we have come to raise our
+    children. Here, in this idyllic village, which the noble race that
+    once inhabited this fair planet left behind them when they migrated
+    to the Greater Magellanic Cloud, we have settled down to create a
+    new and better Way of Life. Here, thanks to Francis Farnsworth
+    Pfleuger, we shall know happiness prosperity and freedom from fear._
+
+    FRANCIS FARNSWORTH PFLEUGER, WE, THE NEW INHABITANTS OF SIRIUS XXI,
+    SALUTE YOU!
+
+Philip wiped his forehead again.
+
+Presently he noticed that the flesh-and-blood Francis Pfleuger was
+looking in his direction. "Me," the flesh-and-blood Francis Pfleuger
+said, pointing proudly at the statue. "Me."
+
+"So I gather," Philip said dryly. And then. "Zarathustra--come back
+here!"
+
+The little dog had started down one of the paths that converged on the
+statue. At Philip's command, he stopped but did not turn; instead he
+remained where he was, as though waiting for someone to come down the
+path. After a moment, someone did--Judith Darrow.
+
+She was wearing a simple white dress, reminiscent both in design and
+décor of a Grecian tunic. A wide gilt belt augmented the effect, and her
+delicate sandals did nothing to mar it. In the radiance of the
+star-flowers, her eyes were more gray than green. There were shadows
+under them, Philip noticed, and the lids were faintly red.
+
+She halted a few feet from him and looked at him without saying a word.
+"I ... I brought your dog back," he said lamely. "I found him in the
+back seat of my car."
+
+"Thank you. I've been looking all over Pfleugersville for him. I left my
+Valleyview doors open, hoping he'd come home of his own accord, but I
+guess he had other ideas. Now that you've discovered our secret, Mr.
+Myles, what do you think of our brave new world?"
+
+"I think it's lovely," Philip said, "but I don't believe it's where you
+seem to think it is."
+
+"Don't you?" she asked. "Then suppose you show me the full moon that
+rose over Valleyview tonight. Or better yet, suppose I show you
+something else." She pointed to a region of the heavens just to the left
+of the statue's turned-up nose. "You can't see them from here," she
+said, "but around that insignificant yellow star, nine planets are in
+orbit. One of them is Earth."
+
+"But that's impossible!" he objected. "Consider the--"
+
+"Distance? In the sort of space we're dealing with, Mr. Myles, distance
+is not a factor. In Möbius space--as we have come to call it for lack
+of a better term--any two given points are coincidental, regardless of
+how far apart they may be in non-Möbius space. But this becomes manifest
+only when a Möbius coincidence-field is established. As you probably
+know by now, Francis Pfleuger created such a field."
+
+At the mention of his name, Francis Pfleuger came hurrying over to where
+they were standing. "E," he declared, "equals mc²."
+
+"Thank you, Francis," Judith said. Then, to Philip, "Shall we walk?"
+
+They started down one of the converging paths, Zarathustra bringing up
+the rear. Behind them, Francis returned to his Narcissistic study of
+himself in stone. "We were neighbors back in Valleyview," Judith said,
+"but I never dreamed he thought quite so much of himself. Ever since we
+put up that statue last week, he's been staring at it night and day.
+Sometimes he even brings his lunch with him."
+
+"He seems to be familiar with Einstein."
+
+"He's not really, though. He memorized the energy-mass equation in an
+attempt to justify his new status in life, but he hasn't the remotest
+notion of what it means. It's ironic in a way that Pfleugersville should
+have been discovered by someone with an IQ of less than seventy-five."
+
+"No one with an IQ of less than seventy-five could create the sort of
+field you were talking about."
+
+"He didn't create it deliberately--he brought it into being accidentally
+by means of a machine he was building to tie knots with. Or at least
+that's what he says. But we do know that there was such a machine
+because we saw its fused parts in his kitchen, and there's no question
+but what it was the source of the field. Francis, though, can't remember
+how he made the parts or how he put them together. As a matter of fact,
+to this day he still doesn't understand what happened--though I have a
+feeling that he knows more than he lets on."
+
+"What _did_ happen?" Philip asked.
+
+For a while Judith was silent. Then, "All of us promised solemnly not to
+divulge our secret to an outsider unless he was first accepted by the
+group as a whole," she said. "But thanks to my negligence, you know most
+of it already, so I suppose you're entitled to know the rest." She
+sighed. "Very well--I'll try to explain...."
+
+When Francis Pfleuger's field had come into being, something had
+happened to the back doors of Valleyview that caused them to open upon a
+planet which one of the local star-gazers promptly identified as Sirius
+XXI. The good folk of Valleyview had no idea of how such a state of
+affairs could exist, to say nothing of how it could have come about,
+till one of the scientists whom they asked to join them as a part of the
+plan which they presently devised to make their forthcoming utopia
+self-sufficient, came up with a theory that explained everything.
+
+According to his theory, the round-trip distance between any two
+planetary or ²stella bodies was curved in the manner of a Möbius
+strip--i.e., a strip of paper given a half-twist before bringing the two
+ends together. In this case, the strip represented the round-trip
+distance from Earth to Sirius XXI. Earth was represented on the strip by
+one dot, and Sirius XXI by another, and, quite naturally, the two dots
+were an equal distance--or approximately 8.8 light years--apart. This
+brought them directly opposite one another--one on one side of the
+strip, the other on the other side; but since a Möbius strip has only
+one surface--or side--the two dots were actually occupying the same
+space at the same time. In "Möbius space", then, Earth and Sirius XXI
+were "coincidental".
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Philip looked over his shoulder at the little yellow sun twinkling in
+the sky. "Common sense," he said, "tells me differently."
+
+"Common sense is a liar of the first magnitude," Judith said. "It has
+misled man ever since he first climbed down from the trees. It was
+common sense that inspired Ptolemy's theory of cosmogony. It was common
+sense that inspired the burning of Giordano Bruno...."
+
+The fact that common sense indicated that 8.8 light years separated
+Earth and Sirius XXI in common-sense reality didn't prove that 8.8 light
+years separated them in a form of reality that was outside
+common-sense's dominion--i.e., Möbius space--and Francis Pfleuger's
+field had demonstrated as much. The back-door nodal areas which it had
+established, however, were merely limited manifestations of that
+reality--in other words, the field had merely provided limited access to
+a form of space that had been in existence all along.
+
+"Though why," Judith concluded, "our back doors should have been
+affected rather than our front doors, for example, is
+inexplicable--unless it was because Francis built the machine in his
+kitchen. In any event, when they did become nodal areas, they manifested
+themselves on Sirius XXI, and the dogs in the immediate vicinity
+associated them with the doorways of their departed masters and began
+whining to be let in."
+
+"Their departed masters?"
+
+"The race that built this village. The race that built the factories and
+developed the encompassing farms. A year ago, according to the records
+they left behind them, they migrated to the Greater Magellanic Cloud."
+
+Philip was indignant. "Why didn't they take their dogs with them?"
+
+"They couldn't. After all, they had to leave their cars and their
+furniture behind them too, not to mention almost unbelievable
+stockpiles of every metal imaginable that will last us for centuries.
+The logistics of space travel make taking even an extra handkerchief
+along a calculated risk. Anyway, when their dogs 'found' us, they were
+overjoyed, and as for us, we fell in love with them at first sight. Our
+own dogs, though, didn't take to them at all, and every one of them ran
+away."
+
+"This can't be the only village," Philip said. "There must be others
+somewhere."
+
+"Undoubtedly there are. All we know is that the people who built this
+one were the last to leave."
+
+The park was behind them now, and they were walking down a pleasant
+street. "And when you and your neighbors discovered the village, did you
+decide to become expatriates right then and there?" Philip asked.
+
+She nodded. "Do you blame us? You've seen for yourself what a lovely
+place it is. But it's far more than that. In Valleyview, we had
+unemployment. Here, there is work for everyone, and a corresponding
+feeling of wantedness and togetherness. True, most of the work is
+farmwork, but what of that? We have every conceivable kind of machine to
+help us in our tasks. Indeed, I think that the only machine the Sirians
+lacked was one that could manufacture food out of whole cloth. But
+consider the most important advantage of all: when we go to bed at night
+we can do so without being afraid that sometime during our sleep a
+thermonuclear missile will descend out of the sky and devour us in one
+huge incandescent bite. If we've made a culture hero out of our village
+idiot, it's no more than right, for unwittingly or not, he opened up the
+gates of paradise."
+
+"And you immediately saw to it that no one besides yourselves and a
+chosen few would pass through them."
+
+Judith paused beside a white gate. "Yes, that's true," she said. "To
+keep our secret, we lived in our old houses while we were settling our
+affairs, closing down our few industries and setting up a new monetary
+system. In fact, we even kept our ... the children in the dark for fear
+that they would talk at school. Suppose, however, we _had_ publicized
+our utopia. Can't you imagine the mockery opportunists would have made
+out of it? The village we found was large enough to accommodate
+ourselves and the few friends, relatives and specialists we asked to
+join us, but no larger; and we did, after all, find it in our own back
+yard." She placed her hand on the white gate. "This is where I live."
+
+He looked at the house, and it was enchanting. Slightly less enchanting,
+but delightful in its own right, was the much smaller house beside it.
+Judith pointed toward the latter dwelling and looked at Zarathustra.
+"It's almost morning, Zarathustra," she said sternly. "Go to bed this
+minute!" She opened the gate so that the little dog could pass through
+and raised her eyes to Philip. "Our time is different here," she
+explained. And then, "I'm afraid you'll have to hurry if you expect to
+make it to my back door before the field dies out."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He felt suddenly empty. "Dies out?" he repeated numbly.
+
+"Yes. We don't know why, but it's been diminishing in strength ever
+since it first came into being, and our 'Möbius-strip scientist' has
+predicted that it will cease to exist during the next twenty-four hours.
+I guess I don't need to remind you that you have important business on
+Earth."
+
+"No," he said, "I guess you don't." His emptiness bowed out before a
+wave of bitterness. He had rested his hand on the gate, as close to hers
+as he had dared. Now he saw that while it was inches away from hers in
+one sense, it was light years away in another. He removed it angrily.
+"Business always comes first with you, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes. Business never lets you down."
+
+"Do you know what I think?" Philip said. "I think that you were the one
+who did the selling out, not your husband. I think you sold him out for
+a law practice."
+
+Her face turned white as though he had slapped it, and in a sense, he
+had. "Good-by," she said, and this time he was certain that if he were
+to reach out and touch her, she would shatter into a million pieces.
+"Give my love to the planet Earth," she added icily.
+
+"Good-by," Philip said, his anger gone now, and the emptiness rushing
+back. "Don't sell us short, though--we'll make a big splash in your sky
+one of these days when we blow ourselves up."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He turned and walked away. Walked out of the enchanting village and down
+the highway and across the flower-pulsing plain to Judith's back
+doorway. It was unlighted now, and he had trouble distinguishing it from
+the others. Its shimmering blue framework was flickering. Judith had not
+lied then: the field was dying out.
+
+He locked the back door behind him, walked sadly through the dark and
+empty house and let himself out the front door. He locked the front door
+behind him, too, and went down the walk and climbed into his car. He had
+thought he had locked it, but apparently he hadn't. He drove out of town
+and down the road to the highway, and down the highway toward the big
+bright bonfire of the city.
+
+Dawn was exploring the eastern sky with pale pink fingers when at last
+he parked his car in the garage behind his apartment building. He
+reached into the back seat for his brief case and the manila envelopes.
+His brief case had hair on it. It was soft and warm. "Ruf," it barked.
+"Ruf-ruf!"
+
+He knew then that everything was all right. Just because no one had
+invited him to the party didn't mean that he couldn't invite himself. He
+would have to hurry, though--he had a lot of things to do, and time was
+running out.
+
+Noon found him on the highway again, his business transacted, his
+affairs settled, Zarathustra sitting beside him on the seat. One o'clock
+found him driving into Valleyview; two-five found him turning down a
+familiar street. He would have to leave his car behind him, but that was
+all right. Leaving it to rust away in a ghost town was better than
+selling it to some opportunistic dealer for a sum he would have no use
+for anyway. He parked it by the curb, and after getting his suitcase out
+of the trunk, walked up to the front door of Number 23. He unlocked and
+opened the door, and after Zarathustra followed him inside, closed and
+locked it behind him. He strode through the house to the kitchen. He
+unlocked and opened the back door. He stepped eagerly across the
+threshold--and stopped dead still.
+
+There were boards beneath his feet instead of grass. Instead of a
+flower-pied plain, he saw a series of unkempt back yards. Beside him on
+an unpainted trellis, Virginia creeper rattled in an October wind.
+
+Zarathustra came out behind him, descended the back-porch steps and ran
+around the side of the house. Looking for the green-rose bush probably.
+
+"Ruf!"
+
+Zarathustra had returned and was looking up at him from the bottom step.
+On the top step he had placed an offering.
+
+The offering was a green rose.
+
+Philip bent down and picked it up. It was fresh, and its fragrance
+epitomized the very essence of Sirius XXI. "Zarathustra," he gasped,
+"where did you get it?"
+
+"Ruf!" said Zarathustra, and ran around the side of the house.
+
+Philip followed, rounded the corner just in time to see the white-tipped
+tail disappear into the ancient dog house. Disappointment numbed him.
+That was where the rose had been then--stored away for safe-keeping like
+an old and worthless bone.
+
+But the rose was fresh, he reminded himself.
+
+Did dog houses have back doorways?
+
+This one did, he saw, kneeling down and peering inside. A lovely back
+doorway, rimmed with shimmering blue. It framed a familiar vista, in the
+foreground of which a familiar green-rosebush stood. Beneath the
+rosebush Zarathustra sat, wagging his tail.
+
+It was a tight squeeze, but Philip made it. He even managed to get his
+suitcase through. And just in time too, for hardly had he done so when
+the doorway began to flicker. Now it was on its way out, and as he
+watched, it faded into transparency and disappeared.
+
+He crawled from beneath the rosebush and stood up. The day was bright
+and warm, and the position of the sun indicated early morning or late
+afternoon. No, not sun--suns. One of them was a brilliant blue-white
+orb, the other a twinkling point of light.
+
+He set off across the plain in Zarathustra's wake. He had a speech
+already prepared, and when Judith met him at the gate with wide and
+wondering eyes, he delivered it without preamble. "Judith," he said, "I
+am contemptuous of the notion that some things are meant to be and
+others aren't, and I firmly believe in my own free will; but when your
+dog stows away in the back seat of my car two times running and makes
+it impossible for me not to see you again, then there must be something
+afoot which neither you nor I can do a thing about. Whatever it is, I
+have given in to it and have transferred your real estate to an agent
+more trustworthy than myself. I know you haven't known me long, and I
+know I'm not an accepted member of your group, but maybe somebody will
+give me a job raking lawns or washing windows or hoeing corn long enough
+for me to prove that I am not in the least antisocial; and maybe, in
+time, you yourself will get to know me well enough to realize that while
+I have a weakness for blondes who look like Grecian goddesses, I have no
+taste whatever for redheads, brunettes, or Cutty Sark. In any event, I
+have burned my bridges behind me, and whether I ever become a resident
+of Pfleugersville or not, I have already become a resident of Sirius
+XXI."
+
+Judith Darrow was silent for some time. Then, "This morning," she said,
+"I wanted to ask you to join us, but I couldn't for two reasons. The
+first was your commitment to sell our houses, the second was my
+bitterness toward men. You have eliminated the first, and the second
+seems suddenly inane." She raised her eyes. "Philip, please join us. I
+want you to."
+
+Zarathustra, whose real name was Siddenon Phenphonderill, left them
+standing there in each other's arms and trotted down the street and out
+of town. He covered the ground in easy lopes that belied his three
+hundred and twenty-five years, and soon he arrived at the Meeting Place.
+The mayors of the other villages had been awaiting him since early
+morning and were shifting impatiently on their haunches. When he
+clambered up on the rostrum they extended their audio-appendages and
+retractile fingers and accorded him a round of applause. He extended his
+own "hands" and held them up for silence, then, retracting them again,
+he seated himself before the little lectern and began his report, the
+idiomatic translation of which follows forthwith:
+
+"Gentlemen, my apologies for my late arrival. I will touch upon the
+circumstances that were responsible for it presently.
+
+"To get down to the matter uppermost in your minds: Yes, the experiment
+was a success, and if you will use your psycho-transmutative powers to
+remodel your villages along the lines my constituents and I remodeled
+ours and to build enough factories to give your 'masters' that sense of
+self-sufficiency so essential to their well-being, and if you will
+'plant' your disassembled Multiple Möbius-Knot Dynamos in such a way
+that the resultant fields will be ascribed to accidental causes, you
+will have no more trouble attracting personnel than we did. Just make
+sure that your 'masters' quarters are superior to your own, and that
+you behave like dogs in their presence. And when you fabricate your
+records concerning your mythical departed masters, see to it that they
+do not conflict with the records we fabricated concerning ours. It would
+be desirable indeed if our Sirian-human society could be based on less
+deceitful grounds than these, but the very human attitude we are
+exploiting renders this impossible at the moment. I hate to think of the
+resentment we would incur were we to reveal that, far from being the
+mere dogs we seem to be, we are capable of mentally transmuting natural
+resources into virtually anything from a key to a concert hall, and I
+hate even more to think of the resentment we would incur were we to
+reveal that, for all our ability in the inanimate field, we have never
+been able to materialize so much as a single blade of grass in the
+animate field, and that our reason for coincidentalizing the planet
+Earth and creating our irresistible little utopias stems not from a need
+for companionship but from a need for gardeners. However, you will find
+that all of this can be ironed out eventually through the human
+children, with whom you will be thrown into daily contact and whom you
+will find to possess all of their parents' abiding love for us and none
+of their parents' superior attitude toward us. To a little child, a dog
+is a companion, not a pet; an equal, not an inferior--and the little
+children of today will be the grown-ups of tomorrow.
+
+"To return to the circumstances that occasioned my late arrival: I ... I
+must confess, gentlemen, that I became quite attached to the 'mistress'
+into whose house I sought entry when we first established our field and
+who subsequently adopted me when I convinced her real dog that he would
+find greener pastures elsewhere. So greatly attached did I become, in
+fact, that when the opportunity of ostracizing her loneliness presented
+itself, I could not refrain from taking advantage of it. The person to
+whom she was most suited and who was most suited to her appeared
+virtually upon her very doorstep; but in her stubbornness and in her
+pride she aggravated rather than encouraged him, causing him to rebel
+against the natural attraction he felt toward her. I am happy to report
+that, by means of a number of subterfuges--the final one of which
+necessitated the use of our original doorway--I was able to set this
+matter right, and that these two once-lonely people are about to embark
+upon a relationship which in their folklore is oftentimes quaintly
+alluded to by the words, 'They lived happily ever after.'
+
+"And now, gentlemen, the best of luck to you and your constituents, and
+may you end up with servants as excellent as ours. I hereby declare this
+meeting adjourned."
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
+
+This etext was produced from "Analog Science Fact Science Fiction"
+November 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Servant Problem, by Robert F. Young
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Servant Problem, by Robert F. Young
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Servant Problem
+
+Author: Robert F. Young
+
+Release Date: October 29, 2007 [EBook #23232]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SERVANT PROBLEM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Iain Arnell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 442px;">
+<img src="images/image1.jpg" width="442" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h1>The Servant Problem</h1>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Selling a whole town, and doing it inconspicuously, can be a little
+difficult &hellip; either giving it away freely, or in a more normal
+sense of &ldquo;selling&rdquo;. People don't quite believe it&hellip;.</p></div>
+
+
+<h2>by Robert J. Young</h2>
+
+<h3>Illustrated by Schoenherr</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 423px;">
+<img src="images/image2.jpg" width="331" height="400" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>If you have ever lived in a small town, you have seen Francis Pfleuger,
+and probably you have sent him after sky-hooks, left-handed
+monkey-wrenches and pails of steam, and laughed uproariously behind his
+back when he set forth to do your bidding. The Francis Pfleugers of the
+world have inspired both fun and laughter for generations out of mind.</p>
+
+<p>The Francis Pfleuger we are concerned with here lived in a small town
+named Valleyview, and in addition to suffering the distinction of being
+the village idiot, he also suffered the distinction of being the village
+inventor. These two distinctions frequently go hand in hand, and afford,
+in their incongruous togetherness, an even greater inspiration for fun
+and laughter. For in this advanced age of streamlined electric can
+openers and sleek pop-up toasters, who but the most na&iuml;ve among us can
+fail to be titillated by the thought of a buck-toothed, wall-eyed moron
+building Rube Goldberg contrivances in his basement?</p>
+
+<p>The Francis Pfleuger we are concerned with did his inventing in his
+kitchen rather than in his basement; nevertheless, his machines were in
+the Rube Goldberg tradition. Take the one he was assembling now, for
+example. It stood on the kitchen table, and its various attachments
+jutted this way and that with no apparent rhyme or reason. In its center
+there was a transparent globe that looked like an upside-down goldfish
+bowl, and in the center of the bowl there was an object that startlingly
+resembled a goldfish, but which, of course, was nothing of the sort.
+Whatever it was, though, it kept growing brighter and brighter each time
+Francis added another attachment, and had already attained a degree of
+incandescence so intense that he had been forced to don cobalt-blue
+goggles in order to look at it. The date was the First of April,
+1962&mdash;April Fool's Day.</p>
+
+<p>Actually, the idea for this particular machine had not originated in
+Francis' brain, nor had the parts for it originated in his
+kitchen-workshop. When he had gone out to get the milk that morning he
+had found a box on his doorstep, and in the box he had found the
+goldfish bowl and the attachments, plus a sheet of instructions
+entitled, DIRECTIONS FOR ASSEMBLING A MULTIPLE M&Ouml;BIUS-KNOT DYNAMO.
+Francis thought that a machine capable of tying knots would be pretty
+keen, and he had carried the box into the kitchen and set to work
+forthwith.</p>
+
+<p>He now had but one more part to go, and he proceeded to screw it into
+place. Then he stepped back to admire his handiwork. Simultaneously his
+handiwork went into action. The attachments began to quiver and to emit
+sparks; the globe glowed, and the goldfishlike object in its center
+began to dart this way and that as though striking at flies. A blue halo
+formed above the machine and began to rotate. Faster and faster it
+rotated, till finally its gaseous components separated and flew off in a
+hundred different directions. Three things happened then in swift
+succession: Francis' back doorway took on a bluish cast, the sheet of
+instructions vanished, and the machine began to melt.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later he heard a whining sound on his back doorstep.</p>
+
+<p>Simultaneously all of the residents of Valleyview heard whining sounds
+on <i>their</i> back doorsteps.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally everybody went to find out about the whining.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The sign was a new one. At the most it was no more than six months old.
+YOU ARE ENTERING THE VILLAGE OF VALLEYVIEW, it said. PLEASE DRIVE
+CAREFULLY&mdash;WE ARE FOND OF OUR DOGS.</p>
+
+<p>Philip Myles drove carefully. He was fond of dogs, too.</p>
+
+<p>Night had tiptoed in over the October countryside quite some time ago,
+but the village of Valleyview had not turned on so much as a single
+streetlight&mdash;nor, apparently, any other kind of light. All was in
+darkness, and not a soul was to be seen. Philip began to suspect that he
+had entered a ghost town, and when his headlights darted across a dark
+intersection and picked up the overgrown grass and unkempt shrubbery of
+the village park, he was convinced that he had. Then he saw the girl
+walking the dog.</p>
+
+<p>He kitty-cornered the intersection and pulled up alongside her. She was
+a blonde, tall and chic in a gray fall suit. Her face was
+attractive&mdash;beautiful even, in a cold and classic way&mdash;but she would
+never see twenty-five again. But then, Philip would never again see
+thirty. When she paused, her dog paused too, although she did not have
+it on a leash. It was on the small side, tawny in hue, with golden-brown
+eyes, a slender white-tipped tail, and shaggy ears that hung down on
+either side of its face in a manner reminiscent of a cocker spaniel's.
+It wasn't a cocker spaniel, though. The ears were much too long, for one
+thing, and the tail was much too delicate, for another. It was a
+breed&mdash;or combination of breeds&mdash;that Philip had never seen before.</p>
+
+<p>He leaned across the seat and rolled down the right-hand window. &ldquo;Could
+you direct me to number 23 Locust Street?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;It's the residence
+of Judith Darrow, the village attorney. Maybe you know her.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The girl gave a start. &ldquo;Are <i>you</i> the real-estate man I sent for?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Philip gave a start, too. Recovering himself, he said, &ldquo;Then <i>you're</i>
+Judith Darrow. I'm &hellip; I'm afraid I'm a little late.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The girl's eyes flashed. The radiant backwash of the headlights revealed
+them to be both green and gray. &ldquo;I specified in my letter that you were
+supposed to be here at nine o'clock this morning!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Maybe
+you'll tell me how you're going to appraise property in the dark!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I'm sorry,&rdquo; Philip said. &ldquo;My car broke down on the way, and I had to
+wait for it to be fixed. When I tried to call you, the operator told me
+that your phone had been disconnected. If you'll direct me to the hotel,
+I'll stay there overnight and appraise your property in the morning.
+There <i>is</i> a hotel, isn't there?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There is&mdash;but it's closed. Zarathustra&mdash;down!&rdquo; The dog had raised up on
+its hind legs and placed its forepaws on the door in an unsuccessful
+attempt to peer in the window. At the girl's command, it sank obediently
+down on its haunches. &ldquo;Except for Zarathustra and myself,&rdquo; she went on,
+&ldquo;the village is empty. Everyone else has already moved out, and we'd
+have moved out, too, if I hadn't been entrusted with arranging for the
+sale of the business places and the houses. It makes for a rather
+awkward situation.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She had leaned forward, and the light from the dash lay palely upon her
+face, softening its austerity. &ldquo;I don't get this at all,&rdquo; Philip said.
+&ldquo;From your letter I assumed you had two or three places you wanted me to
+sell, but not a whole town. There must have been at least a thousand
+people living here, and a thousand people just don't pack up and move
+out all at once.&rdquo; When she volunteered no explanation, he added, &ldquo;Where
+did they move to?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To Pfleugersville. I know you've never heard of it, so save the
+observation.&rdquo; Then, &ldquo;Do you have any identification?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He gave her his driver's license, his business card and the letter she
+had written him. After glancing at them, she handed them back. She
+appeared to be undecided about something. &ldquo;Why don't you let me stay at
+the hotel?&rdquo; he suggested. &ldquo;You must have the key if it's one of the
+places I'm supposed to appraise.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. &ldquo;I have the key, but there's not a stick of
+furniture in the place. We had a village auction last week and got rid
+of everything that we didn't plan on taking with us.&rdquo; She sighed. &ldquo;Well,
+there's nothing for it, I guess. The nearest motel is thirty miles away,
+so I'll have to put you up at my house. I have a few articles of
+furniture left&mdash;wedding gifts, mostly, that I was too sentimental to
+part with.&rdquo; She got into the car. &ldquo;Come on, Zarathustra.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Zarathustra clambered in, leaped across her lap and sat down between
+them. Philip pulled away from the curb. &ldquo;That's an odd name for a dog,&rdquo;
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know. I guess the reason I gave it to him is because he puts me in
+mind of a little old man sometimes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But the original Zarathustra isn't noted for his longevity.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps another association was at work then. Turn right at the next
+corner.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A lonely light burned in one of number 23 Locust Street's three front
+windows. Its source, however, was not an incandescent bulb, but the
+mantle of a gasoline lantern. &ldquo;The village power-supply was shut off
+yesterday,&rdquo; Judith Darrow explained, pumping the lantern into renewed
+brightness. She glanced at him sideways. &ldquo;Did you have dinner?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As a matter of fact&mdash;no. But please don't&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bother? I couldn't if I wanted to. My larder is on its last legs. But
+sit down, and I'll make you some sandwiches. I'll make a pot of coffee
+too&mdash;the gas hasn't been turned off yet.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The living room had precisely three articles of furniture to its
+name&mdash;two armchairs and a coffee table. After Judith left him, Philip
+set his brief case on the floor and sat down in one of the chairs. He
+wondered idly how she expected to make the trip to Pfleugersville. He
+had seen no car in the driveway, and there was no garage on the property
+in which one could be concealed. Moreover, it was highly unlikely that
+buses serviced the village any more. Valleyview had been bypassed quite
+some time ago by one of the new super-duper highways. He shrugged.
+Getting to Pfleugersville was her problem, not his.</p>
+
+<p>He returned his attention to the living room. It was a large room. The
+house was large, too&mdash;large and Victorianesque. Judith, apparently, had
+opened the back door, for a breeze was wafting through the downstairs
+rooms&mdash;a breeze laden with the scent of flowers and the dew-damp breath
+of growing grass. He frowned. The month was October, not June, and since
+when did flowers bloom and grass grow in October? He concluded that the
+scent must be artificial.</p>
+
+<p>Zarathustra was regarding him with large golden eyes from the middle of
+the living-room floor. The animal did somehow bring to mind a little old
+man, although he could not have been more than two or three years old.
+&ldquo;You're not very good company,&rdquo; Philip said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ruf,&rdquo; said Zarathustra, and turning, trotted through an archway into a
+large room that, judging from the empty shelves lining its walls, had
+once been a library, and thence through another archway into another
+room&mdash;the dining room, undoubtedly&mdash;and out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>Philip leaned back wearily in the armchair he had chosen. He was beat.
+Take six days a week, ten hours a day, and multiply by fifty-two and you
+get three hundred and twelve. Three hundred and twelve days a year,
+hunting down clients, talking, walking, driving, expounding; trying in
+his early thirties to build the foundation he should have begun building
+in his early twenties&mdash;the foundation for the family he had suddenly
+realized he wanted and someday hoped to have. Sometimes he wished that
+ambition had missed him altogether instead of waiting for so long to
+strike. Sometimes he wished he could have gone right on being what he
+once had been. After all, there was nothing wrong in living in cheap
+hotels and even cheaper rooming houses; there was nothing wrong in being
+a lackadaisical door-to-door salesman with run-down heels.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing wrong, that is, except the aching want that came over you
+sometimes, and the loneliness of long and empty evenings.</p>
+
+<p>Zarathustra had re-entered the room and was sitting in the middle of the
+floor again. He had not returned empty-handed&mdash;or rather,
+empty-mouthed&mdash;although the object he had brought with him was not the
+sort of object dogs generally pick up. It was a rose&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A green rose.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Disbelievingly, Philip leaned forward and took it from the animal's
+mouth. Before he had a chance to examine it, however, footsteps sounded
+in the next room, and prompted by he knew not what, he thrust the rose
+into his suitcoat pocket. An instant later, Judith Darrow came through
+the archway bearing a large tray. After setting it down on the coffee
+table, she poured two cups of coffee from a little silver pot and
+indicated a plate of sandwiches. &ldquo;Please help yourself,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>She sat down in the other chair and sipped her coffee. He had one of the
+sandwiches, found that he didn't want any more. Somehow, her proximity,
+coupled with her silence, made him feel uncomfortable. &ldquo;Has your husband
+already left for Pfleugersville?&rdquo; he asked politely.</p>
+
+<p>Her gray-green eyes grew cold. &ldquo;Yes, he left quite some time ago,&rdquo; she
+said. &ldquo;A year ago, as a matter of fact. But for parts unknown, not
+Pfleugersville. Pfleugersville wasn't accessible then, anyway. He had a
+brunette on one arm, a redhead on the other, and a pint of Cutty Sark in
+his hip pocket.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Philip was distressed. &ldquo;I &hellip; I didn't mean to pry,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sorry? Why should you be? Some men are born to settle down and raise
+children and others are born to drink and philander. It's as simple as
+that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is it?&rdquo; something made Philip ask. &ldquo;Into which category would you say I
+fall?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You're in a class by yourself.&rdquo; Tiny silver flecks had come into her
+eyes, and he realized to his astonishment that they were flecks of
+malevolence. &ldquo;You've never married, but playing the field hasn't made
+you one hundred per cent cynical. You're still convinced that somewhere
+there is a woman worthy of your devotion. And you're quite right&mdash;the
+world is full of them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>His face tingled as though she had slapped it, and in a sense, she had.
+He restrained his anger with difficulty. &ldquo;I didn't know that my celibacy
+was that noticeable,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It isn't. I took the liberty of having a private investigator check
+into your background. It proved to be unsavory in some respects, as I
+implied before, but unlike the backgrounds of the other real-estate
+agents I had checked, it contained not the slightest hint of dishonesty.
+The nature of my business is such that I need someone of maximum
+integrity to contract it with. I had to go far and wide to find you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You're being unfair,&rdquo; Philip said, mollified despite himself. &ldquo;Most
+real-estate agents are honest. As a matter of fact, there's one in the
+same office building with me that I'd trust with the family jewels&mdash;if I
+had any family jewels.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good,&rdquo; Judith Darrow said. &ldquo;I gambled on you knowing someone like
+that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He waited for her to elaborate, and when she did not he finished his
+coffee and stood up. &ldquo;If you don't mind, I'll turn in,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I've
+had a pretty hard day.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I'll show you your room.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She got two candles, lit them, and after placing them in gilt
+candlesticks, handed one of the candlesticks to him. The room was on the
+third floor in under the eaves&mdash;as faraway from hers, probably, as the
+size of the house permitted. Philip did not mind. He liked to sleep in
+rooms under eaves. There was an enchantment about the rain on the roof
+that people who slept in less celestial bowers never got to know. After
+Judith left, he threw open the single window and undressed and climbed
+into bed. Remembering the rose, he got it out of his coat pocket and
+examined it by candlelight. It was green all right&mdash;even greener than he
+had at first thought. Its scent was reminiscent of the summer breeze
+that was blowing through the downstairs rooms, though not at all in
+keeping with the chill October air that was coming through his bedroom
+window. He laid it on the table beside the bed and blew out the candle.
+He would go looking for the bush tomorrow.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Philip was an early riser, and dawn had not yet departed when, fully
+dressed, he left the room with the rose in his coat pocket and quietly
+descended the stairs. Entering the living room, he found Zarathustra
+curled up in one of the armchairs, and for a moment he had the eerie
+impression that the animal had extended one of his shaggy ears and was
+scratching his back with it. When Philip did a doubletake, however, the
+ear was back to normal size and reposing on its owner's tawny cheek.
+Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he said, &ldquo;Come on, Zarathustra, we're
+going for a walk.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He headed for the back door, Zarathustra at his heels. A double door
+leading off the dining room barred his way and proved to be locked.
+Frowning, he returned to the living room. &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; he said to
+Zarathustra, &ldquo;we'll go out the front way then.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image3.jpg" width="500" height="314" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>He walked around the side of the house, his canine companion trotting
+beside him. The side yard turned out to be disappointing. It contained
+no roses&mdash;green ones, or any other kind. About all it did contain that
+was worthy of notice was a dog house&mdash;an ancient affair that was much
+too large for Zarathustra and which probably dated from the days when
+Judith had owned a larger dog. The yard itself was a mess: the grass
+hadn't been cut all summer, the shrubbery was ragged, and dead leaves
+lay everywhere. A similar state of affairs existed next door, and
+glancing across lots, he saw that the same desuetude prevailed
+throughout the entire neighborhood. Obviously the good citizens of
+Valleyview had lost interest in their real estate long before they had
+moved out.</p>
+
+<p>At length his explorations led him to the back door. If there were green
+roses anywhere, the trellis that adorned the small back porch was the
+logical place for them to be. He found nothing but bedraggled Virginia
+creeper and more dead leaves.</p>
+
+<p>He tried the back door, and finding it locked, circled the rest of the
+way around the house. Judith was waiting for him on the front porch.
+&ldquo;How nice of you to walk Zarathustra,&rdquo; she said icily. &ldquo;I do hope you
+found the yard in order.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 496px;">
+<img src="images/image4.jpg" width="496" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>The yellow dress she was wearing did not match the tone of her voice,
+and the frilly blue apron tied round her waist belied the frostiness of
+her gray-green eyes. Nevertheless, her rancor was real. &ldquo;Sorry,&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;I didn't know your back yard was out of bounds.&rdquo; Then, &ldquo;If you'll
+give me a list of the places you want evaluated, I'll get started right
+away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I'll take you around again personally&mdash;after we have breakfast.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Again he was consigned to the living room while she performed the
+necessary culinary operations, and again she served him by tray. Clearly
+she did not want him in the kitchen, or anywhere near it. He was not
+much of a one for mysteries, but this one was intriguing him more and
+more by the minute.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast over, she told him to wait on the front porch while she did
+the dishes, and instructed Zarathustra to keep him company. She had two
+voices: the one she used in addressing Zarathustra contained overtones
+of summer, and the one she used in addressing Philip contained
+overtones of fall. &ldquo;Some day,&rdquo; Philip told the little dog, &ldquo;that chip
+she carries on her shoulder is going to fall off of its own accord, and
+by then it will be too late&mdash;the way it was too late for me when I found
+out that the person I'd been running away from all my life was myself in
+wolf's clothing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ruf,&rdquo; said Zarathustra, looking up at him with benign golden eyes.
+&ldquo;Ruf-ruf!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Presently Judith re-appeared, sans apron, and the three of them set
+forth into the golden October day. It was Philip's first experience in
+evaluating an entire village, but he had a knack for estimating the
+worth of property, and by the time noon came around, he had the job half
+done. &ldquo;If you people had made even half an effort to keep your places
+up,&rdquo; he told Judith over cold-cut sandwiches and coffee in her living
+room, &ldquo;we could have asked for a third again as much. Why in the world
+did you let everything go to pot just because you were moving some place
+else?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She shrugged. &ldquo;It's hard to get anyone to do housework these days&mdash;not
+to mention gardening. Besides, in addition to the servant problem,
+there's another consideration&mdash;human nature. When you've lived in a
+shack all your life and you suddenly acquire a palace, you cease caring
+very much what the shack looks like.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shack!&rdquo; Philip was indignant. &ldquo;Why, this house is lovely! Practically
+every house you've shown me is lovely. Old, yes&mdash;but oldness is an
+essential part of the loveliness of houses. If Pfleugersville is on the
+order of most housing developments I've seen, you and your neighbors are
+going to be good and sorry one of these fine days!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But Pfleugersville isn't on the order of most housing developments
+you've seen. In fact, it's not a housing development at all. But let's
+not go into that. Anyway, we're concerned with Valleyview, not
+Pfleugersville.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; Philip said. &ldquo;This afternoon should wind things up so far
+as the appraising goes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>That evening, after a coffee-less supper&mdash;both the gas and the water had
+been turned off that afternoon&mdash;he totaled up his figures. They made
+quite a respectable sum. He looked across the coffee table, which he had
+commandeered as a desk, to where Judith, with the dubious help of
+Zarathustra, was sorting out a pile of manila envelopes which she had
+placed in the middle of the living-room floor. &ldquo;I'll do my best to sell
+everything,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but it's going to be difficult going till we get
+a few families living here. People are reluctant about moving into empty
+neighborhoods, and businessmen aren't keen about opening up business
+places before the customers are available. But I think it'll work out
+all right. There's a plaza not far from here that will provide a place
+to shop until the local markets are functioning, and Valleyview is part
+of a centralized school district.&rdquo; He slipped the paper he had been
+figuring on into his brief case, closed the case and stood up. &ldquo;I'll
+keep in touch with you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Judith shook her head. &ldquo;You'll do nothing of the sort. As soon as you
+leave, I'm moving to Pfleugersville. My business here is finished.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I'll keep in touch with you there then. All you have to do is give me
+your address and phone number.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head again. &ldquo;I could give you both, but neither would do
+you any good. But that's beside the point. Valleyview is your
+responsibility now&mdash;not mine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Philip sat back down again. &ldquo;You can start explaining any time,&rdquo; he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It's very simple. The property owners of Valleyview signed all of their
+houses and places of business over to me. I, in turn, have signed all of
+them over to you&mdash;with the qualification, of course, that after selling
+them you will be entitled to no more than your usual commission.&rdquo; She
+withdrew a paper from one of the manila envelopes. &ldquo;After selling them,&rdquo;
+she went on, &ldquo;you are to divide the proceeds equally among the four
+charities specified in this contract.&rdquo; She handed him the paper. &ldquo;Do you
+understand now why I tried so hard to find a trustworthy agent?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Philip was staring at the paper, unable, in his astonishment, to read
+the words it contained. &ldquo;Suppose,&rdquo; he said presently, &ldquo;that
+circumstances should make it impossible for me to carry out my end of
+the agreement?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In case of illness, you will already have taken the necessary steps to
+transfer the property to another agent who, in your opinion, is as
+completely honest as you are, and in case of death, you will already
+have taken the necessary steps to bequeath the property to the same
+agent; and he, in both cases, will already have agreed to the terms laid
+down in the contract you're holding in your hands. Why don't you read
+it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Now that his astonishment had abated somewhat, Philip found that he
+could do so. &ldquo;But this still doesn't make sense,&rdquo; he said a short while
+later. &ldquo;Obviously you and the rest of the owners have purchased new
+houses. Would it be presumptuous of me to ask how you're going to pay
+for them when you're virtually giving your old houses away?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I'm afraid it would be, Mr. Myles.&rdquo; She withdrew another paper from the
+envelope and handed it to him. &ldquo;This is the other copy. If you'll kindly
+affix your signature to both, we can bring our business to a close. As
+you'll notice, I've already signed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But if you're going to be incommunicado,&rdquo; Philip pointed out, anger
+building up in him despite all he could do to stop it, &ldquo;what good will
+your copy do you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Judith's countenance took on a glacial quality. So did her voice. &ldquo;My
+copy will go into the hands of a trusted attorney, sealed in an envelope
+which I have already instructed him not to open till five years from
+this date. If, at the time it is opened, you have violated the terms of
+our agreement, he will institute legal proceedings at once. Fortunately,
+although the Valleyview post office is closed, a mail truck passes
+through every weekday evening at eight. It's not that I don't trust you,
+Mr. Myles&mdash;but you are a man, you know.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Philip was tempted to tear up the two copies then and there, and toss
+the pieces into the air. But he didn't, for the very good reason that he
+couldn't afford to. Instead, he bore down viciously on his pen and
+brought his name to life twice in large and angry letters. He handed
+Judith one copy, slipped the other into his breast pocket and got to his
+feet. &ldquo;That,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;brings our official business to a close. Now I'd
+like to add an unofficial word of advice. It seems to me that you're
+exacting an exorbitant price from the world for your husband's having
+sold you out for a brunette and a redhead and a pint of Scotch. I've
+been sold out lots of times for less than that, but I found out long ago
+that the world doesn't pay its bills even when you ask a fair price for
+the damages done to you. I suggest that you write the matter off as a
+bad debt and forget about it; then maybe you'll become a human being
+again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She had risen to her feet and was standing stiffly before him. She put
+him in mind of an exquisite and fragile statue, and for a moment he had
+the feeling that if he were to reach out and touch her, she would
+shatter into a million pieces. She did not move for some time, nor did
+he; then she bent down, picked up three of the manila envelopes,
+straightened, and handed them to him. &ldquo;Two of these contain the deeds,
+maps and other records you will need,&rdquo; she said in a dead voice. &ldquo;The
+third contains the keys to the houses and business places. Each key is
+tagged with the correct address. Good-by, Mr. Myles.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good-by,&rdquo; Philip said.</p>
+
+<p>He looked around the room intending to say good-by to Zarathustra, but
+Zarathustra was nowhere to be seen. Finally he went into the hall,
+opened the front door and stepped out into the night. A full moon was
+rising in the east. He walked down the moonlit walk, climbed into his
+car and threw his brief case and the manila envelopes into the back
+seat. Soon, Valleyview was far behind him.</p>
+
+<p>But not as far as it should have been. He couldn't get the green rose
+out of his mind. He couldn't get Judith Darrow out of his mind either.
+Nor could he exorcise the summer breeze that kept wafting through the
+crevices in his common sense.</p>
+
+<p>A green rose and a grass widow and a breeze with a green breath. A whole
+town taking off for greener pastures&hellip;.</p>
+
+<p>He reached into his coat pocket and touched the rose. It was no more
+than a stem and a handful of petals now, but its reality could not be
+denied. But roses do not bloom in autumn, and green roses do not bloom
+at all&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ruf!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He had turned into the new highway some time ago, and was driving along
+it at a brisk sixty-five. Now, disbelievingly, he slowed, and pulled
+over onto the shoulder. Sure enough, he had a stowaway in the back
+seat&mdash;a tawny-haired stowaway with golden eyes, over-sized ears, and a
+restless, white-tipped tail. &ldquo;Zarathustra!&rdquo; he gasped. &ldquo;How in the
+dickens did you get in there?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ruf,&rdquo; Zarathustra replied.</p>
+
+<p>Philip groaned. Now he would have to go all the way back to Valleyview.
+Now he would have to see Judith Darrow again. Now he would have to&mdash;He
+paused in midthought, astonished at the abrupt acceleration of his
+heartbeat. &ldquo;Well I'll be damned!&rdquo; he said, and without further preamble
+transferred Zarathustra to the front seat, U-turned, and started back.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The gasoline lantern had been moved out of the living-room window, but a
+light still showed beyond the panes. He pulled over to the curb and
+turned off the ignition. He gave one of Zarathustra's over-sized ears a
+playful tug, absently noting a series of small nodules along its lower
+extremity. &ldquo;Come on, Zarathustra,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I may as well deliver you
+personally while I'm at it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>After locking the car, he started up the walk, Zarathustra at his heels.
+He knocked on the front door. Presently he knocked again. The door
+creaked, swung partially open. He frowned. Had she forgotten to latch
+it? he wondered. Or had she deliberately left it unlatched so that
+Zarathustra could get in? Zarathustra himself lent plausibility to the
+latter conjecture by rising up on his hind legs and pushing the door the
+rest of the way open with his forepaws, after which he trotted into the
+hall and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Philip pounded on the panels. &ldquo;Miss Darrow!&rdquo; he called. &ldquo;Judith!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>No answer. He called again. Still no answer.</p>
+
+<p>A summer breeze came traipsing out of the house and engulfed him in the
+scent of roses. What kind of roses? he wondered. Green ones?</p>
+
+<p>He stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. He made his way
+into the living room. The two chairs were gone, and so was the coffee
+table. He walked through the living room and into the library; through
+the library and into the dining room. The gasoline lantern burned
+brightly on the dining-room table, its harsh white light bathing bare
+floors and naked walls.</p>
+
+<p>The breeze was stronger here, the scent of roses almost cloying. He saw
+then that the double door that had thwarted him that morning was open,
+and he moved toward it across the room. As he had suspected, it gave
+access to the kitchen. Pausing on the threshold, he peered inside. It
+was an ordinary enough kitchen. Some of the appliances were gone, but
+the stove and the refrigerator were still there. The back doorway had an
+odd bluish cast that caused the framework to shimmer. The door itself
+was open, and he could see starlight lying softly on fields and trees.</p>
+
+<p>Wonderingly he walked across the room and stepped outside. There was a
+faint sputtering sound, as though live wires had been crossed, and for a
+fleeting second the scene before him seemed to waver. Then, abruptly, it
+grew still.</p>
+
+<p>He grew still, too&mdash;immobile in the strange, yet peaceful, summer night.
+He was standing on a grassy plain, and the plain spread out on either
+hand to promontories of little trees. Before him, the land sloped gently
+upward, and was covered with multicolored flowers that twinkled like
+microcosmic stars. In the distance, the lights of a village showed. To
+his right, a riotous green-rose bush bloomed, and beneath it Zarathustra
+sat, wagging his tail.</p>
+
+<p>Philip took two steps forward, stopped and looked up at the sky. It was
+wrong somehow. For one thing, Cassiopeia had changed position, and for
+another, Orion was awry. For still another, there were no clouds for the
+moon to hide behind, and yet the moon had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Zarathustra trotted over to where he was standing, gazed up at him with
+golden eyes, then headed in the direction of the lights. Philip took a
+deep breath, and followed him. He would have visited the village anyway,
+Zarathustra or no Zarathustra. Was it Pfleugersville? He knew suddenly
+that it was.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>He had not gone far before he saw a highway. A pair of headlights
+appeared suddenly in the direction of the village and resolved rapidly
+into a moving van. To his consternation, the van turned off the
+thoroughfare and headed in his direction. He ducked into a coppice,
+Zarathustra at his heels, and watched the heavy vehicle bounce by. There
+were two men in the cab, and painted on the paneling of the truckbed
+were the words, PFLEUGERSVILLE MOVERS, INC.</p>
+
+<p>The van continued on in the direction from which he had come, and
+presently he guessed its destination. Judith, clearly, was in the midst
+of moving out the furniture she had been too sentimental to sell. The
+only trouble was, her house had disappeared. So had the village of
+Valleyview.</p>
+
+<p>He stared at where the houses should have been, saw nothing at first
+except a continuation of the starlit plain. Then he noticed an upright
+rectangle of pale light hovering just above the ground, and presently he
+identified it as Judith's back doorway. He could see through it into the
+kitchen, and by straining his eyes, he could even see the stove and the
+refrigerator.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually he made out other upright rectangles hovering just above
+the ground, some of them on a line with Judith's. All of them, however,
+while outlined in the same shimmering blue that outlined hers, lacked lighted interiors.</p>
+
+<p>As he stood there staring, the van came to a halt, turned around and
+backed up to the brightest rectangle, hiding it from view. The two men
+got out of the cab and walked around to the rear of the truckbed. &ldquo;We'll
+put the stove on first,&rdquo; Philip heard one of them say. And then, &ldquo;Wonder
+why she wants to hang onto junk like this?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The other man's voice was fainter, but his words were unmistakable
+enough: &ldquo;Grass widows who turn into old maids have funny notions
+sometimes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Judith Darrow wasn't really moving out of Valleyview after all. She only
+thought she was.</p>
+
+<p>Philip went on. The breeze was all around him. It blew through his hair,
+kissed his cheeks and caressed his forehead. The stars shone palely
+down. Some of the land was under cultivation, and he could see green
+things growing in the starlight, and the breeze carried their green
+breath to his nostrils. He reached the highway and began walking along
+it. He saw no further sign of vehicles till he came opposite a large
+brick building with bright light spilling through its windows. In front
+of it were parked a dozen automobiles of a make that he was unfamiliar
+with.</p>
+
+<p>He heard the whir of machinery and the pounding of hammers, and he went
+over and peered through one of the windows. The building proved to be a
+furniture factory. Most of the work was being done by machines, but
+there were enough tasks left over to keep the owners of the parked cars
+busily occupied. The main manual task was upholstering. The machines cut
+and sewed and trimmed and planed and doweled and assembled, but
+apparently none of them was up to the fine art of spitting tacks.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Philip returned to the highway and went on. He came to other buildings
+and peered into each. One was a small automobile-assembly plant, another
+was a dairy, a third was a long greenhouse. In the first two the
+preponderance of the work was being performed by machines. In the third,
+however, machines were conspicuously absent. Clearly it was one thing
+to build a machine with a superhuman work potential, but quite another
+to build one with a green thumb.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image5.jpg" width="500" height="384" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>He passed a pasture, and saw animals that looked like cows sleeping in
+the starlight. He passed a field of newly-sprouted
+corn. He passed a
+power plant, and heard the whine of a generator. Finally he came to the
+outskirts of Pfleugersville.</p>
+
+<p>There was a big illuminated sign by the side of the road. It stopped him
+in his tracks, and he stood there staring at its embossed letters:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+PFLEUGERSVILLE, SIRIUS XXI<br />
+<i>Discovered April 1, 1962</i><br />
+<i>Incorporated September 11, 1962</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Philip wiped his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>Zarathustra had trotted on ahead. Now he stopped and looked back. <i>Come
+on</i>, he seemed to say. <i>Now that you've seen this much, you might as
+well see the rest.</i></p>
+
+<p>So Philip entered Pfleugersville &hellip; and fell in love&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Fell in love with the lovely houses, and the darling trees in summer
+bloom. With the parterres of twinkling star-flowers and the expanses of
+verdant lawns. With the trellised green roses that tapestried every
+porch. With the hydrangealike blooms that garnished every corner. With
+Pfleugersville itself.</p>
+
+<p>Obviously the hour was late, for, other than himself, there was no one
+on the streets, although lights burned in the windows of some of the
+houses, and dogs of the same breed and size as Zarathustra occasionally
+trotted by. And yet according to his watch the time was 10:51. Maybe,
+though, Pfleugersville was on different time. Maybe, here in
+Pfleugersville, it was the middle of the night.</p>
+
+<p>The farther he progressed into the village, the more enchanted he
+became. He simply couldn't get over the houses. The difference between
+them and the houses he was familiar with was subtle, but it was there.
+It was the difference that exists between good- and not-quite-good
+taste. Here were no standardized patios, but little marble aprons that
+were as much a part of the over-all architecture as a glen is a part of
+a woods. Here were no stereotyped picture windows, but walls that
+blended imperceptibly into pleasing patterns of transparency. Here were
+no four-square back yards, but rambling star-flowered playgrounds with
+swings and seesaws and shaded swimming holes; with exquisite doghouses
+good enough for little girls' dolls to live in.</p>
+
+<p>He passed a school that seemed to grow out of the very ground it stood
+on. He passed a library that had been built around a huge tree, the
+branches of which had intertwined their foliage into a living roof. He
+passed a block-long supermarket built of tinted glass. Finally he came
+to the park.</p>
+
+<p>He gasped then. Gasped at the delicate trees and the little blue-eyed
+lakes; at the fairy-fountains and the winding, pebbled paths.
+Star-flowers shed their multicolored radiance everywhere, and starlight
+poured prodigally down from the sky. He chose a path at random and
+walked along it in the twofold radiance till he came to the cynosure.</p>
+
+<p>The cynosure was a statue&mdash;a statue of a buck-toothed, wall-eyed youth
+gazing steadfastly up into the heavens. In one hand the youth held a
+Phillips screw driver, in the other a six-inch crescent wrench. Standing
+several yards away and staring raptly up into the statue's face was the
+youth himself, and so immobile was he that if it hadn't been for the
+pedestal on which the statue rested, Philip would have been unable to
+distinguish one from the other.</p>
+
+<p>There was an inscription on the pedestal. He walked over and read it in
+the light cast by a nearby parterre of star-flowers:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+FRANCIS FARNSWORTH<br />
+PFLEUGER,<br />
+DISCOVERER OF<br />
+PFLEUGERSVILLE<br />
+<i>Born: May 5. 1941. Died: &mdash;&mdash;</i>
+</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>Profession Inventor. On the first day of April of the year of our
+Lord, 1962, Francis Farnsworth Pfleuger brought into being a
+M&ouml;bius coincidence field and established multiple contact with the
+twenty-first satellite of the star Sirius, thereby giving the
+people of Valleyview access, via their back doorways, to a New
+World. Here we have come to live. Here we have come to raise our
+children. Here, in this idyllic village, which the noble race that
+once inhabited this fair planet left behind them when they migrated
+to the Greater Magellanic Cloud, we have settled down to create a
+new and better Way of Life. Here, thanks to Francis Farnsworth
+Pfleuger, we shall know happiness prosperity and freedom from
+fear.</i></p>
+
+<p>FRANCIS FARNSWORTH PFLEUGER, WE, THE NEW INHABITANTS OF SIRIUS XXI,
+SALUTE YOU!</p></div>
+
+<p>Philip wiped his forehead again.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he noticed that the flesh-and-blood Francis Pfleuger was
+looking in his direction. &ldquo;Me,&rdquo; the flesh-and-blood Francis Pfleuger
+said, pointing proudly at the statue. &ldquo;Me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So I gather,&rdquo; Philip said dryly. And then. &ldquo;Zarathustra&mdash;come back
+here!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The little dog had started down one of the paths that converged on the
+statue. At Philip's command, he stopped but did not turn; instead he
+remained where he was, as though waiting for someone to come down the
+path. After a moment, someone did&mdash;Judith Darrow.</p>
+
+<p>She was wearing a simple white dress, reminiscent both in design and
+d&eacute;cor of a Grecian tunic. A wide gilt belt augmented the effect, and her
+delicate sandals did nothing to mar it. In the radiance of the
+star-flowers, her eyes were more gray than green. There were shadows
+under them, Philip noticed, and the lids were faintly red.</p>
+
+<p>She halted a few feet from him and looked at him without saying a word.
+&ldquo;I &hellip; I brought your dog back,&rdquo; he said lamely. &ldquo;I found him in the
+back seat of my car.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you. I've been looking all over Pfleugersville for him. I left my
+Valleyview doors open, hoping he'd come home of his own accord, but I
+guess he had other ideas. Now that you've discovered our secret, Mr.
+Myles, what do you think of our brave new world?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think it's lovely,&rdquo; Philip said, &ldquo;but I don't believe it's where you
+seem to think it is.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don't you?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;Then suppose you show me the full moon that
+rose over Valleyview tonight. Or better yet, suppose I show you
+something else.&rdquo; She pointed to a region of the heavens just to the left
+of the statue's turned-up nose. &ldquo;You can't see them from here,&rdquo; she
+said, &ldquo;but around that insignificant yellow star, nine planets are in
+orbit. One of them is Earth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But that's impossible!&rdquo; he objected. &ldquo;Consider the&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Distance? In the sort of space we're dealing with, Mr. Myles, distance
+is not a factor. In M&ouml;bius space&mdash;as we have come to call it for lack
+of a better term&mdash;any two given points are coincidental, regardless of
+how far apart they may be in non-M&ouml;bius space. But this becomes manifest
+only when a M&ouml;bius coincidence-field is established. As you probably
+know by now, Francis Pfleuger created such a field.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At the mention of his name, Francis Pfleuger came hurrying over to where
+they were standing. &ldquo;E,&rdquo; he declared, &ldquo;equals mc&sup2;.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you, Francis,&rdquo; Judith said. Then, to Philip, &ldquo;Shall we walk?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They started down one of the converging paths, Zarathustra bringing up
+the rear. Behind them, Francis returned to his Narcissistic study of
+himself in stone. &ldquo;We were neighbors back in Valleyview,&rdquo; Judith said,
+&ldquo;but I never dreamed he thought quite so much of himself. Ever since we
+put up that statue last week, he's been staring at it night and day.
+Sometimes he even brings his lunch with him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He seems to be familiar with Einstein.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He's not really, though. He memorized the energy-mass equation in an
+attempt to justify his new status in life, but he hasn't the remotest
+notion of what it means. It's ironic in a way that Pfleugersville should
+have been discovered by someone with an IQ of less than seventy-five.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No one with an IQ of less than seventy-five could create the sort of
+field you were talking about.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He didn't create it deliberately&mdash;he brought it into being accidentally
+by means of a machine he was building to tie knots with. Or at least
+that's what he says. But we do know that there was such a machine
+because we saw its fused parts in his kitchen, and there's no question
+but what it was the source of the field. Francis, though, can't remember
+how he made the parts or how he put them together. As a matter of fact,
+to this day he still doesn't understand what happened&mdash;though I have a
+feeling that he knows more than he lets on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What <i>did</i> happen?&rdquo; Philip asked.</p>
+
+<p>For a while Judith was silent. Then, &ldquo;All of us promised solemnly not to
+divulge our secret to an outsider unless he was first accepted by the
+group as a whole,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But thanks to my negligence, you know most
+of it already, so I suppose you're entitled to know the rest.&rdquo; She
+sighed. &ldquo;Very well&mdash;I'll try to explain&hellip;.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When Francis Pfleuger's field had come into being, something had
+happened to the back doors of Valleyview that caused them to open upon a
+planet which one of the local star-gazers promptly identified as Sirius
+XXI. The good folk of Valleyview had no idea of how such a state of
+affairs could exist, to say nothing of how it could have come about,
+till one of the scientists whom they asked to join them as a part of the
+plan which they presently devised to make their forthcoming utopia
+self-sufficient, came up with a theory that explained everything.</p>
+
+<p>According to his theory, the round-trip distance between any two
+planetary or stella bodies was curved in the manner of a M&ouml;bius
+strip&mdash;i.e., a strip of paper given a half-twist before bringing the two
+ends together. In this case, the strip represented the round-trip
+distance from Earth to Sirius XXI. Earth was represented on the strip by
+one dot, and Sirius XXI by another, and, quite naturally, the two dots
+were an equal distance&mdash;or approximately 8.8 light years&mdash;apart. This
+brought them directly opposite one another&mdash;one on one side of the
+strip, the other on the other side; but since a M&ouml;bius strip has only
+one surface&mdash;or side&mdash;the two dots were actually occupying the same
+space at the same time. In &ldquo;M&ouml;bius space&rdquo;, then, Earth and Sirius XXI
+were &ldquo;coincidental&rdquo;.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Philip looked over his shoulder at the little yellow sun twinkling in
+the sky. &ldquo;Common sense,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;tells me differently.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Common sense is a liar of the first magnitude,&rdquo; Judith said. &ldquo;It has
+misled man ever since he first climbed down from the trees. It was
+common sense that inspired Ptolemy's theory of cosmogony. It was common
+sense that inspired the burning of Giordano Bruno&hellip;.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The fact that common sense indicated that 8.8 light years separated
+Earth and Sirius XXI in common-sense reality didn't prove that 8.8 light
+years separated them in a form of reality that was outside
+common-sense's dominion&mdash;i.e., M&ouml;bius space&mdash;and Francis Pfleuger's
+field had demonstrated as much. The back-door nodal areas which it had
+established, however, were merely limited manifestations of that
+reality&mdash;in other words, the field had merely provided limited access to
+a form of space that had been in existence all along.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Though why,&rdquo; Judith concluded, &ldquo;our back doors should have been
+affected rather than our front doors, for example, is
+inexplicable&mdash;unless it was because Francis built the machine in his
+kitchen. In any event, when they did become nodal areas, they manifested
+themselves on Sirius XXI, and the dogs in the immediate vicinity
+associated them with the doorways of their departed masters and began
+whining to be let in.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Their departed masters?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The race that built this village. The race that built the factories and
+developed the encompassing farms. A year ago, according to the records
+they left behind them, they migrated to the Greater Magellanic Cloud.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Philip was indignant. &ldquo;Why didn't they take their dogs with them?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They couldn't. After all, they had to leave their cars and their
+furniture behind them too, not to mention almost unbelievable
+stockpiles of every metal imaginable that will last us for centuries.
+The logistics of space travel make taking even an extra handkerchief
+along a calculated risk. Anyway, when their dogs &lsquo;found&rsquo; us, they were
+overjoyed, and as for us, we fell in love with them at first sight. Our
+own dogs, though, didn't take to them at all, and every one of them ran
+away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This can't be the only village,&rdquo; Philip said. &ldquo;There must be others
+somewhere.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Undoubtedly there are. All we know is that the people who built this
+one were the last to leave.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The park was behind them now, and they were walking down a pleasant
+street. &ldquo;And when you and your neighbors discovered the village, did you
+decide to become expatriates right then and there?&rdquo; Philip asked.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded. &ldquo;Do you blame us? You've seen for yourself what a lovely
+place it is. But it's far more than that. In Valleyview, we had
+unemployment. Here, there is work for everyone, and a corresponding
+feeling of wantedness and togetherness. True, most of the work is
+farmwork, but what of that? We have every conceivable kind of machine to
+help us in our tasks. Indeed, I think that the only machine the Sirians
+lacked was one that could manufacture food out of whole cloth. But
+consider the most important advantage of all: when we go to bed at night
+we can do so without being afraid that sometime during our sleep a
+thermonuclear missile will descend out of the sky and devour us in one
+huge incandescent bite. If we've made a culture hero out of our village
+idiot, it's no more than right, for unwittingly or not, he opened up the
+gates of paradise.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you immediately saw to it that no one besides yourselves and a
+chosen few would pass through them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Judith paused beside a white gate. &ldquo;Yes, that's true,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;To
+keep our secret, we lived in our old houses while we were settling our
+affairs, closing down our few industries and setting up a new monetary
+system. In fact, we even kept our &hellip; the children in the dark for fear
+that they would talk at school. Suppose, however, we <i>had</i> publicized
+our utopia. Can't you imagine the mockery opportunists would have made
+out of it? The village we found was large enough to accommodate
+ourselves and the few friends, relatives and specialists we asked to
+join us, but no larger; and we did, after all, find it in our own back
+yard.&rdquo; She placed her hand on the white gate. &ldquo;This is where I live.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at the house, and it was enchanting. Slightly less enchanting,
+but delightful in its own right, was the much smaller house beside it.
+Judith pointed toward the latter dwelling and looked at Zarathustra.
+&ldquo;It's almost morning, Zarathustra,&rdquo; she said sternly. &ldquo;Go to bed this
+minute!&rdquo; She opened the gate so that the little dog could pass through
+and raised her eyes to Philip. &ldquo;Our time is different here,&rdquo; she
+explained. And then, &ldquo;I'm afraid you'll have to hurry if you expect to
+make it to my back door before the field dies out.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image6.jpg" width="500" height="263" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>He felt suddenly empty. &ldquo;Dies out?&rdquo; he repeated numbly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. We don't know why, but it's been diminishing in strength ever
+since it first came into being, and our &lsquo;M&ouml;bius-strip scientist&rsquo; has
+predicted that it will cease to exist during the next twenty-four hours.
+I guess I don't need to remind you that you have important business on
+Earth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I guess you don't.&rdquo; His emptiness bowed out before a
+wave of bitterness. He had rested his hand on the gate, as close to hers
+as he had dared. Now he saw that while it was inches away from hers in
+one sense, it was light years away in another. He removed it angrily.
+&ldquo;Business always comes first with you, doesn't it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. Business never lets you down.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you know what I think?&rdquo; Philip said. &ldquo;I think that you were the one
+who did the selling out, not your husband. I think you sold him out for
+a law practice.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Her face turned white as though he had slapped it, and in a sense, he
+had. &ldquo;Good-by,&rdquo; she said, and this time he was certain that if he were
+to reach out and touch her, she would shatter into a million pieces.
+&ldquo;Give my love to the planet Earth,&rdquo; she added icily.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good-by,&rdquo; Philip said, his anger gone now, and the emptiness rushing
+back. &ldquo;Don't sell us short, though&mdash;we'll make a big splash in your sky
+one of these days when we blow ourselves up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image7.jpg" width="500" height="239" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>He turned and walked away. Walked out of the enchanting village and down
+the highway and across the flower-pulsing plain to Judith's back
+doorway. It was unlighted now, and he had trouble distinguishing it from
+the others. Its shimmering blue framework was flickering. Judith had not
+lied then: the field was dying out.</p>
+
+<p>He locked the back door behind him, walked sadly through the dark and
+empty house and let himself out the front door. He locked the front door
+behind him, too, and went down the walk and climbed into his car. He had
+thought he had locked it, but apparently he hadn't. He drove out of town
+and down the road to the highway, and down the highway toward the big
+bright bonfire of the city.</p>
+
+<p>Dawn was exploring the eastern sky with pale pink fingers when at last
+he parked his car in the garage behind his apartment building. He
+reached into the back seat for his brief case and the manila envelopes.
+His brief case had hair on it. It was soft and warm. &ldquo;Ruf,&rdquo; it barked.
+&ldquo;Ruf-ruf!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He knew then that everything was all right. Just because no one had
+invited him to the party didn't mean that he couldn't invite himself. He
+would have to hurry, though&mdash;he had a lot of things to do, and time was
+running out.</p>
+
+<p>Noon found him on the highway again, his business transacted, his
+affairs settled, Zarathustra sitting beside him on the seat. One o'clock
+found him driving into Valleyview; two-five found him turning down a
+familiar street. He would have to leave his car behind him, but that was
+all right. Leaving it to rust away in a ghost town was better than
+selling it to some opportunistic dealer for a sum he would have no use
+for anyway. He parked it by the curb, and after getting his suitcase out
+of the trunk, walked up to the front door of Number 23. He unlocked and
+opened the door, and after Zarathustra followed him inside, closed and
+locked it behind him. He strode through the house to the kitchen. He
+unlocked and opened the back door. He stepped eagerly across the
+threshold&mdash;and stopped dead still.</p>
+
+<p>There were boards beneath his feet instead of grass. Instead of a
+flower-pied plain, he saw a series of unkempt back yards. Beside him on
+an unpainted trellis, Virginia creeper rattled in an October wind.</p>
+
+<p>Zarathustra came out behind him, descended the back-porch steps and ran
+around the side of the house. Looking for the green-rose bush probably.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ruf!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Zarathustra had returned and was looking up at him from the bottom step.
+On the top step he had placed an offering.</p>
+
+<p>The offering was a green rose.</p>
+
+<p>Philip bent down and picked it up. It was fresh, and its fragrance
+epitomized the very essence of Sirius XXI. &ldquo;Zarathustra,&rdquo; he gasped,
+&ldquo;where did you get it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ruf!&rdquo; said Zarathustra, and ran around the side of the house.</p>
+
+<p>Philip followed, rounded the corner just in time to see the white-tipped
+tail disappear into the ancient dog house. Disappointment numbed him.
+That was where the rose had been then&mdash;stored away for safe-keeping like
+an old and worthless bone.</p>
+
+<p>But the rose was fresh, he reminded himself.</p>
+
+<p>Did dog houses have back doorways?</p>
+
+<p>This one did, he saw, kneeling down and peering inside. A lovely back
+doorway, rimmed with shimmering blue. It framed a familiar vista, in the
+foreground of which a familiar green-rosebush stood. Beneath the
+rosebush Zarathustra sat, wagging his tail.</p>
+
+<p>It was a tight squeeze, but Philip made it. He even managed to get his
+suitcase through. And just in time too, for hardly had he done so when
+the doorway began to flicker. Now it was on its way out, and as he
+watched, it faded into transparency and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>He crawled from beneath the rosebush and stood up. The day was bright
+and warm, and the position of the sun indicated early morning or late
+afternoon. No, not sun&mdash;suns. One of them was a brilliant blue-white
+orb, the other a twinkling point of light.</p>
+
+<p>He set off across the plain in Zarathustra's wake. He had a speech
+already prepared, and when Judith met him at the gate with wide and
+wondering eyes, he delivered it without preamble. &ldquo;Judith,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I
+am contemptuous of the notion that some things are meant to be and
+others aren't, and I firmly believe in my own free will; but when your
+dog stows away in the back seat of my car two times running and makes
+it impossible for me not to see you again, then there must be something
+afoot which neither you nor I can do a thing about. Whatever it is, I
+have given in to it and have transferred your real estate to an agent
+more trustworthy than myself. I know you haven't known me long, and I
+know I'm not an accepted member of your group, but maybe somebody will
+give me a job raking lawns or washing windows or hoeing corn long enough
+for me to prove that I am not in the least antisocial; and maybe, in
+time, you yourself will get to know me well enough to realize that while
+I have a weakness for blondes who look like Grecian goddesses, I have no
+taste whatever for redheads, brunettes, or Cutty Sark. In any event, I
+have burned my bridges behind me, and whether I ever become a resident
+of Pfleugersville or not, I have already become a resident of Sirius
+XXI.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Judith Darrow was silent for some time. Then, &ldquo;This morning,&rdquo; she said,
+&ldquo;I wanted to ask you to join us, but I couldn't for two reasons. The
+first was your commitment to sell our houses, the second was my
+bitterness toward men. You have eliminated the first, and the second
+seems suddenly inane.&rdquo; She raised her eyes. &ldquo;Philip, please join us. I
+want you to.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Zarathustra, whose real name was Siddenon Phenphonderill, left them
+standing there in each other's arms and trotted down the street and out
+of town. He covered the ground in easy lopes that belied his three
+hundred and twenty-five years, and soon he arrived at the Meeting Place.
+The mayors of the other villages had been awaiting him since early
+morning and were shifting impatiently on their haunches. When he
+clambered up on the rostrum they extended their audio-appendages and
+retractile fingers and accorded him a round of applause. He extended his
+own &ldquo;hands&rdquo; and held them up for silence, then, retracting them again,
+he seated himself before the little lectern and began his report, the
+idiomatic translation of which follows forthwith:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Gentlemen, my apologies for my late arrival. I will touch upon the
+circumstances that were responsible for it presently.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To get down to the matter uppermost in your minds: Yes, the experiment
+was a success, and if you will use your psycho-transmutative powers to
+remodel your villages along the lines my constituents and I remodeled
+ours and to build enough factories to give your &lsquo;masters&rsquo; that sense of
+self-sufficiency so essential to their well-being, and if you will
+&lsquo;plant&rsquo; your disassembled Multiple M&ouml;bius-Knot Dynamos in such a way
+that the resultant fields will be ascribed to accidental causes, you
+will have no more trouble attracting personnel than we did. Just make
+sure that your &lsquo;masters&rsquo; quarters are superior to your own, and that
+you behave like dogs in their presence. And when you fabricate your
+records concerning your mythical departed masters, see to it that they
+do not conflict with the records we fabricated concerning ours. It would
+be desirable indeed if our Sirian-human society could be based on less
+deceitful grounds than these, but the very human attitude we are
+exploiting renders this impossible at the moment. I hate to think of the
+resentment we would incur were we to reveal that, far from being the
+mere dogs we seem to be, we are capable of mentally transmuting natural
+resources into virtually anything from a key to a concert hall, and I
+hate even more to think of the resentment we would incur were we to
+reveal that, for all our ability in the inanimate field, we have never
+been able to materialize so much as a single blade of grass in the
+animate field, and that our reason for coincidentalizing the planet
+Earth and creating our irresistible little utopias stems not from a need
+for companionship but from a need for gardeners. However, you will find
+that all of this can be ironed out eventually through the human
+children, with whom you will be thrown into daily contact and whom you
+will find to possess all of their parents' abiding love for us and none
+of their parents' superior attitude toward us. To a little child, a dog
+is a companion, not a pet; an equal, not an inferior&mdash;and the little
+children of today will be the grown-ups of tomorrow.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To return to the circumstances that occasioned my late arrival: I &hellip; I
+must confess, gentlemen, that I became quite attached to the &lsquo;mistress&rsquo;
+into whose house I sought entry when we first established our field and
+who subsequently adopted me when I convinced her real dog that he would
+find greener pastures elsewhere. So greatly attached did I become, in
+fact, that when the opportunity of ostracizing her loneliness presented
+itself, I could not refrain from taking advantage of it. The person to
+whom she was most suited and who was most suited to her appeared
+virtually upon her very doorstep; but in her stubbornness and in her
+pride she aggravated rather than encouraged him, causing him to rebel
+against the natural attraction he felt toward her. I am happy to report
+that, by means of a number of subterfuges&mdash;the final one of which
+necessitated the use of our original doorway&mdash;I was able to set this
+matter right, and that these two once-lonely people are about to embark
+upon a relationship which in their folklore is oftentimes quaintly
+alluded to by the words, &lsquo;They lived happily ever after.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And now, gentlemen, the best of luck to you and your constituents, and
+may you end up with servants as excellent as ours. I hereby declare this
+meeting adjourned.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="tnote"><h4>Transcriber's Note</h4>
+<p>This etext was produced from &ldquo;Analog Science Fact
+Science Fiction&rdquo; November 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any
+evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Servant Problem, by Robert F. Young
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+</body>
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@@ -0,0 +1,1604 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Servant Problem, by Robert F. Young
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Servant Problem
+
+Author: Robert F. Young
+
+Release Date: October 29, 2007 [EBook #23232]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SERVANT PROBLEM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Iain Arnell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The Servant Problem
+
+
+    Selling a whole town, and doing it inconspicuously, can be a little
+    difficult ... either giving it away freely, or in a more normal
+    sense of "selling". People don't quite believe it....
+
+
+by Robert J. Young
+
+
+Illustrated by Schoenherr
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+If you have ever lived in a small town, you have seen Francis Pfleuger,
+and probably you have sent him after sky-hooks, left-handed
+monkey-wrenches and pails of steam, and laughed uproariously behind his
+back when he set forth to do your bidding. The Francis Pfleugers of the
+world have inspired both fun and laughter for generations out of mind.
+
+The Francis Pfleuger we are concerned with here lived in a small town
+named Valleyview, and in addition to suffering the distinction of being
+the village idiot, he also suffered the distinction of being the village
+inventor. These two distinctions frequently go hand in hand, and afford,
+in their incongruous togetherness, an even greater inspiration for fun
+and laughter. For in this advanced age of streamlined electric can
+openers and sleek pop-up toasters, who but the most naive among us can
+fail to be titillated by the thought of a buck-toothed, wall-eyed moron
+building Rube Goldberg contrivances in his basement?
+
+The Francis Pfleuger we are concerned with did his inventing in his
+kitchen rather than in his basement; nevertheless, his machines were in
+the Rube Goldberg tradition. Take the one he was assembling now, for
+example. It stood on the kitchen table, and its various attachments
+jutted this way and that with no apparent rhyme or reason. In its center
+there was a transparent globe that looked like an upside-down goldfish
+bowl, and in the center of the bowl there was an object that startlingly
+resembled a goldfish, but which, of course, was nothing of the sort.
+Whatever it was, though, it kept growing brighter and brighter each time
+Francis added another attachment, and had already attained a degree of
+incandescence so intense that he had been forced to don cobalt-blue
+goggles in order to look at it. The date was the First of April,
+1962--April Fool's Day.
+
+Actually, the idea for this particular machine had not originated in
+Francis' brain, nor had the parts for it originated in his
+kitchen-workshop. When he had gone out to get the milk that morning he
+had found a box on his doorstep, and in the box he had found the
+goldfish bowl and the attachments, plus a sheet of instructions
+entitled, DIRECTIONS FOR ASSEMBLING A MULTIPLE MOeBIUS-KNOT DYNAMO.
+Francis thought that a machine capable of tying knots would be pretty
+keen, and he had carried the box into the kitchen and set to work
+forthwith.
+
+He now had but one more part to go, and he proceeded to screw it into
+place. Then he stepped back to admire his handiwork. Simultaneously his
+handiwork went into action. The attachments began to quiver and to emit
+sparks; the globe glowed, and the goldfishlike object in its center
+began to dart this way and that as though striking at flies. A blue halo
+formed above the machine and began to rotate. Faster and faster it
+rotated, till finally its gaseous components separated and flew off in a
+hundred different directions. Three things happened then in swift
+succession: Francis' back doorway took on a bluish cast, the sheet of
+instructions vanished, and the machine began to melt.
+
+A moment later he heard a whining sound on his back doorstep.
+
+Simultaneously all of the residents of Valleyview heard whining sounds
+on _their_ back doorsteps.
+
+Naturally everybody went to find out about the whining.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sign was a new one. At the most it was no more than six months old.
+YOU ARE ENTERING THE VILLAGE OF VALLEYVIEW, it said. PLEASE DRIVE
+CAREFULLY--WE ARE FOND OF OUR DOGS.
+
+Philip Myles drove carefully. He was fond of dogs, too.
+
+Night had tiptoed in over the October countryside quite some time ago,
+but the village of Valleyview had not turned on so much as a single
+streetlight--nor, apparently, any other kind of light. All was in
+darkness, and not a soul was to be seen. Philip began to suspect that he
+had entered a ghost town, and when his headlights darted across a dark
+intersection and picked up the overgrown grass and unkempt shrubbery of
+the village park, he was convinced that he had. Then he saw the girl
+walking the dog.
+
+He kitty-cornered the intersection and pulled up alongside her. She was
+a blonde, tall and chic in a gray fall suit. Her face was
+attractive--beautiful even, in a cold and classic way--but she would
+never see twenty-five again. But then, Philip would never again see
+thirty. When she paused, her dog paused too, although she did not have
+it on a leash. It was on the small side, tawny in hue, with golden-brown
+eyes, a slender white-tipped tail, and shaggy ears that hung down on
+either side of its face in a manner reminiscent of a cocker spaniel's.
+It wasn't a cocker spaniel, though. The ears were much too long, for one
+thing, and the tail was much too delicate, for another. It was a
+breed--or combination of breeds--that Philip had never seen before.
+
+He leaned across the seat and rolled down the right-hand window. "Could
+you direct me to number 23 Locust Street?" he asked. "It's the residence
+of Judith Darrow, the village attorney. Maybe you know her."
+
+The girl gave a start. "Are _you_ the real-estate man I sent for?"
+
+Philip gave a start, too. Recovering himself, he said, "Then _you're_
+Judith Darrow. I'm ... I'm afraid I'm a little late."
+
+The girl's eyes flashed. The radiant backwash of the headlights revealed
+them to be both green and gray. "I specified in my letter that you were
+supposed to be here at nine o'clock this morning!" she said. "Maybe
+you'll tell me how you're going to appraise property in the dark!"
+
+"I'm sorry," Philip said. "My car broke down on the way, and I had to
+wait for it to be fixed. When I tried to call you, the operator told me
+that your phone had been disconnected. If you'll direct me to the hotel,
+I'll stay there overnight and appraise your property in the morning.
+There _is_ a hotel, isn't there?"
+
+"There is--but it's closed. Zarathustra--down!" The dog had raised up on
+its hind legs and placed its forepaws on the door in an unsuccessful
+attempt to peer in the window. At the girl's command, it sank obediently
+down on its haunches. "Except for Zarathustra and myself," she went on,
+"the village is empty. Everyone else has already moved out, and we'd
+have moved out, too, if I hadn't been entrusted with arranging for the
+sale of the business places and the houses. It makes for a rather
+awkward situation."
+
+She had leaned forward, and the light from the dash lay palely upon her
+face, softening its austerity. "I don't get this at all," Philip said.
+"From your letter I assumed you had two or three places you wanted me to
+sell, but not a whole town. There must have been at least a thousand
+people living here, and a thousand people just don't pack up and move
+out all at once." When she volunteered no explanation, he added, "Where
+did they move to?"
+
+"To Pfleugersville. I know you've never heard of it, so save the
+observation." Then, "Do you have any identification?" she asked.
+
+He gave her his driver's license, his business card and the letter she
+had written him. After glancing at them, she handed them back. She
+appeared to be undecided about something. "Why don't you let me stay at
+the hotel?" he suggested. "You must have the key if it's one of the
+places I'm supposed to appraise."
+
+She shook her head. "I have the key, but there's not a stick of
+furniture in the place. We had a village auction last week and got rid
+of everything that we didn't plan on taking with us." She sighed. "Well,
+there's nothing for it, I guess. The nearest motel is thirty miles away,
+so I'll have to put you up at my house. I have a few articles of
+furniture left--wedding gifts, mostly, that I was too sentimental to
+part with." She got into the car. "Come on, Zarathustra."
+
+Zarathustra clambered in, leaped across her lap and sat down between
+them. Philip pulled away from the curb. "That's an odd name for a dog,"
+he said.
+
+"I know. I guess the reason I gave it to him is because he puts me in
+mind of a little old man sometimes."
+
+"But the original Zarathustra isn't noted for his longevity."
+
+"Perhaps another association was at work then. Turn right at the next
+corner."
+
+A lonely light burned in one of number 23 Locust Street's three front
+windows. Its source, however, was not an incandescent bulb, but the
+mantle of a gasoline lantern. "The village power-supply was shut off
+yesterday," Judith Darrow explained, pumping the lantern into renewed
+brightness. She glanced at him sideways. "Did you have dinner?"
+
+"As a matter of fact--no. But please don't--"
+
+"Bother? I couldn't if I wanted to. My larder is on its last legs. But
+sit down, and I'll make you some sandwiches. I'll make a pot of coffee
+too--the gas hasn't been turned off yet."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The living room had precisely three articles of furniture to its
+name--two armchairs and a coffee table. After Judith left him, Philip
+set his brief case on the floor and sat down in one of the chairs. He
+wondered idly how she expected to make the trip to Pfleugersville. He
+had seen no car in the driveway, and there was no garage on the property
+in which one could be concealed. Moreover, it was highly unlikely that
+buses serviced the village any more. Valleyview had been bypassed quite
+some time ago by one of the new super-duper highways. He shrugged.
+Getting to Pfleugersville was her problem, not his.
+
+He returned his attention to the living room. It was a large room. The
+house was large, too--large and Victorianesque. Judith, apparently, had
+opened the back door, for a breeze was wafting through the downstairs
+rooms--a breeze laden with the scent of flowers and the dew-damp breath
+of growing grass. He frowned. The month was October, not June, and since
+when did flowers bloom and grass grow in October? He concluded that the
+scent must be artificial.
+
+Zarathustra was regarding him with large golden eyes from the middle of
+the living-room floor. The animal did somehow bring to mind a little old
+man, although he could not have been more than two or three years old.
+"You're not very good company," Philip said.
+
+"Ruf," said Zarathustra, and turning, trotted through an archway into a
+large room that, judging from the empty shelves lining its walls, had
+once been a library, and thence through another archway into another
+room--the dining room, undoubtedly--and out of sight.
+
+Philip leaned back wearily in the armchair he had chosen. He was beat.
+Take six days a week, ten hours a day, and multiply by fifty-two and you
+get three hundred and twelve. Three hundred and twelve days a year,
+hunting down clients, talking, walking, driving, expounding; trying in
+his early thirties to build the foundation he should have begun building
+in his early twenties--the foundation for the family he had suddenly
+realized he wanted and someday hoped to have. Sometimes he wished that
+ambition had missed him altogether instead of waiting for so long to
+strike. Sometimes he wished he could have gone right on being what he
+once had been. After all, there was nothing wrong in living in cheap
+hotels and even cheaper rooming houses; there was nothing wrong in being
+a lackadaisical door-to-door salesman with run-down heels.
+
+Nothing wrong, that is, except the aching want that came over you
+sometimes, and the loneliness of long and empty evenings.
+
+Zarathustra had re-entered the room and was sitting in the middle of the
+floor again. He had not returned empty-handed--or rather,
+empty-mouthed--although the object he had brought with him was not the
+sort of object dogs generally pick up. It was a rose--
+
+A green rose.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Disbelievingly, Philip leaned forward and took it from the animal's
+mouth. Before he had a chance to examine it, however, footsteps sounded
+in the next room, and prompted by he knew not what, he thrust the rose
+into his suitcoat pocket. An instant later, Judith Darrow came through
+the archway bearing a large tray. After setting it down on the coffee
+table, she poured two cups of coffee from a little silver pot and
+indicated a plate of sandwiches. "Please help yourself," she said.
+
+She sat down in the other chair and sipped her coffee. He had one of the
+sandwiches, found that he didn't want any more. Somehow, her proximity,
+coupled with her silence, made him feel uncomfortable. "Has your husband
+already left for Pfleugersville?" he asked politely.
+
+Her gray-green eyes grew cold. "Yes, he left quite some time ago," she
+said. "A year ago, as a matter of fact. But for parts unknown, not
+Pfleugersville. Pfleugersville wasn't accessible then, anyway. He had a
+brunette on one arm, a redhead on the other, and a pint of Cutty Sark in
+his hip pocket."
+
+Philip was distressed. "I ... I didn't mean to pry," he said. "I'm--"
+
+"Sorry? Why should you be? Some men are born to settle down and raise
+children and others are born to drink and philander. It's as simple as
+that."
+
+"Is it?" something made Philip ask. "Into which category would you say I
+fall?"
+
+"You're in a class by yourself." Tiny silver flecks had come into her
+eyes, and he realized to his astonishment that they were flecks of
+malevolence. "You've never married, but playing the field hasn't made
+you one hundred per cent cynical. You're still convinced that somewhere
+there is a woman worthy of your devotion. And you're quite right--the
+world is full of them."
+
+His face tingled as though she had slapped it, and in a sense, she had.
+He restrained his anger with difficulty. "I didn't know that my celibacy
+was that noticeable," he said.
+
+"It isn't. I took the liberty of having a private investigator check
+into your background. It proved to be unsavory in some respects, as I
+implied before, but unlike the backgrounds of the other real-estate
+agents I had checked, it contained not the slightest hint of dishonesty.
+The nature of my business is such that I need someone of maximum
+integrity to contract it with. I had to go far and wide to find you."
+
+"You're being unfair," Philip said, mollified despite himself. "Most
+real-estate agents are honest. As a matter of fact, there's one in the
+same office building with me that I'd trust with the family jewels--if I
+had any family jewels."
+
+"Good," Judith Darrow said. "I gambled on you knowing someone like
+that."
+
+He waited for her to elaborate, and when she did not he finished his
+coffee and stood up. "If you don't mind, I'll turn in," he said. "I've
+had a pretty hard day."
+
+"I'll show you your room."
+
+She got two candles, lit them, and after placing them in gilt
+candlesticks, handed one of the candlesticks to him. The room was on the
+third floor in under the eaves--as faraway from hers, probably, as the
+size of the house permitted. Philip did not mind. He liked to sleep in
+rooms under eaves. There was an enchantment about the rain on the roof
+that people who slept in less celestial bowers never got to know. After
+Judith left, he threw open the single window and undressed and climbed
+into bed. Remembering the rose, he got it out of his coat pocket and
+examined it by candlelight. It was green all right--even greener than he
+had at first thought. Its scent was reminiscent of the summer breeze
+that was blowing through the downstairs rooms, though not at all in
+keeping with the chill October air that was coming through his bedroom
+window. He laid it on the table beside the bed and blew out the candle.
+He would go looking for the bush tomorrow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Philip was an early riser, and dawn had not yet departed when, fully
+dressed, he left the room with the rose in his coat pocket and quietly
+descended the stairs. Entering the living room, he found Zarathustra
+curled up in one of the armchairs, and for a moment he had the eerie
+impression that the animal had extended one of his shaggy ears and was
+scratching his back with it. When Philip did a doubletake, however, the
+ear was back to normal size and reposing on its owner's tawny cheek.
+Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he said, "Come on, Zarathustra, we're
+going for a walk."
+
+He headed for the back door, Zarathustra at his heels. A double door
+leading off the dining room barred his way and proved to be locked.
+Frowning, he returned to the living room. "All right," he said to
+Zarathustra, "we'll go out the front way then."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He walked around the side of the house, his canine companion trotting
+beside him. The side yard turned out to be disappointing. It contained
+no roses--green ones, or any other kind. About all it did contain that
+was worthy of notice was a dog house--an ancient affair that was much
+too large for Zarathustra and which probably dated from the days when
+Judith had owned a larger dog. The yard itself was a mess: the grass
+hadn't been cut all summer, the shrubbery was ragged, and dead leaves
+lay everywhere. A similar state of affairs existed next door, and
+glancing across lots, he saw that the same desuetude prevailed
+throughout the entire neighborhood. Obviously the good citizens of
+Valleyview had lost interest in their real estate long before they had
+moved out.
+
+At length his explorations led him to the back door. If there were green
+roses anywhere, the trellis that adorned the small back porch was the
+logical place for them to be. He found nothing but bedraggled Virginia
+creeper and more dead leaves.
+
+He tried the back door, and finding it locked, circled the rest of the
+way around the house. Judith was waiting for him on the front porch.
+"How nice of you to walk Zarathustra," she said icily. "I do hope you
+found the yard in order."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The yellow dress she was wearing did not match the tone of her voice,
+and the frilly blue apron tied round her waist belied the frostiness of
+her gray-green eyes. Nevertheless, her rancor was real. "Sorry," he
+said. "I didn't know your back yard was out of bounds." Then, "If you'll
+give me a list of the places you want evaluated, I'll get started right
+away."
+
+"I'll take you around again personally--after we have breakfast."
+
+Again he was consigned to the living room while she performed the
+necessary culinary operations, and again she served him by tray. Clearly
+she did not want him in the kitchen, or anywhere near it. He was not
+much of a one for mysteries, but this one was intriguing him more and
+more by the minute.
+
+Breakfast over, she told him to wait on the front porch while she did
+the dishes, and instructed Zarathustra to keep him company. She had two
+voices: the one she used in addressing Zarathustra contained overtones
+of summer, and the one she used in addressing Philip contained
+overtones of fall. "Some day," Philip told the little dog, "that chip
+she carries on her shoulder is going to fall off of its own accord, and
+by then it will be too late--the way it was too late for me when I found
+out that the person I'd been running away from all my life was myself in
+wolf's clothing."
+
+"Ruf," said Zarathustra, looking up at him with benign golden eyes.
+"Ruf-ruf!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Presently Judith re-appeared, sans apron, and the three of them set
+forth into the golden October day. It was Philip's first experience in
+evaluating an entire village, but he had a knack for estimating the
+worth of property, and by the time noon came around, he had the job half
+done. "If you people had made even half an effort to keep your places
+up," he told Judith over cold-cut sandwiches and coffee in her living
+room, "we could have asked for a third again as much. Why in the world
+did you let everything go to pot just because you were moving some place
+else?"
+
+She shrugged. "It's hard to get anyone to do housework these days--not
+to mention gardening. Besides, in addition to the servant problem,
+there's another consideration--human nature. When you've lived in a
+shack all your life and you suddenly acquire a palace, you cease caring
+very much what the shack looks like."
+
+"Shack!" Philip was indignant. "Why, this house is lovely! Practically
+every house you've shown me is lovely. Old, yes--but oldness is an
+essential part of the loveliness of houses. If Pfleugersville is on the
+order of most housing developments I've seen, you and your neighbors are
+going to be good and sorry one of these fine days!"
+
+"But Pfleugersville isn't on the order of most housing developments
+you've seen. In fact, it's not a housing development at all. But let's
+not go into that. Anyway, we're concerned with Valleyview, not
+Pfleugersville."
+
+"Very well," Philip said. "This afternoon should wind things up so far
+as the appraising goes."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening, after a coffee-less supper--both the gas and the water had
+been turned off that afternoon--he totaled up his figures. They made
+quite a respectable sum. He looked across the coffee table, which he had
+commandeered as a desk, to where Judith, with the dubious help of
+Zarathustra, was sorting out a pile of manila envelopes which she had
+placed in the middle of the living-room floor. "I'll do my best to sell
+everything," he said, "but it's going to be difficult going till we get
+a few families living here. People are reluctant about moving into empty
+neighborhoods, and businessmen aren't keen about opening up business
+places before the customers are available. But I think it'll work out
+all right. There's a plaza not far from here that will provide a place
+to shop until the local markets are functioning, and Valleyview is part
+of a centralized school district." He slipped the paper he had been
+figuring on into his brief case, closed the case and stood up. "I'll
+keep in touch with you."
+
+Judith shook her head. "You'll do nothing of the sort. As soon as you
+leave, I'm moving to Pfleugersville. My business here is finished."
+
+"I'll keep in touch with you there then. All you have to do is give me
+your address and phone number."
+
+She shook her head again. "I could give you both, but neither would do
+you any good. But that's beside the point. Valleyview is your
+responsibility now--not mine."
+
+Philip sat back down again. "You can start explaining any time," he
+said.
+
+"It's very simple. The property owners of Valleyview signed all of their
+houses and places of business over to me. I, in turn, have signed all of
+them over to you--with the qualification, of course, that after selling
+them you will be entitled to no more than your usual commission." She
+withdrew a paper from one of the manila envelopes. "After selling them,"
+she went on, "you are to divide the proceeds equally among the four
+charities specified in this contract." She handed him the paper. "Do you
+understand now why I tried so hard to find a trustworthy agent?"
+
+Philip was staring at the paper, unable, in his astonishment, to read
+the words it contained. "Suppose," he said presently, "that
+circumstances should make it impossible for me to carry out my end of
+the agreement?"
+
+"In case of illness, you will already have taken the necessary steps to
+transfer the property to another agent who, in your opinion, is as
+completely honest as you are, and in case of death, you will already
+have taken the necessary steps to bequeath the property to the same
+agent; and he, in both cases, will already have agreed to the terms laid
+down in the contract you're holding in your hands. Why don't you read
+it?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now that his astonishment had abated somewhat, Philip found that he
+could do so. "But this still doesn't make sense," he said a short while
+later. "Obviously you and the rest of the owners have purchased new
+houses. Would it be presumptuous of me to ask how you're going to pay
+for them when you're virtually giving your old houses away?"
+
+"I'm afraid it would be, Mr. Myles." She withdrew another paper from the
+envelope and handed it to him. "This is the other copy. If you'll kindly
+affix your signature to both, we can bring our business to a close. As
+you'll notice, I've already signed."
+
+"But if you're going to be incommunicado," Philip pointed out, anger
+building up in him despite all he could do to stop it, "what good will
+your copy do you?"
+
+Judith's countenance took on a glacial quality. So did her voice. "My
+copy will go into the hands of a trusted attorney, sealed in an envelope
+which I have already instructed him not to open till five years from
+this date. If, at the time it is opened, you have violated the terms of
+our agreement, he will institute legal proceedings at once. Fortunately,
+although the Valleyview post office is closed, a mail truck passes
+through every weekday evening at eight. It's not that I don't trust you,
+Mr. Myles--but you are a man, you know."
+
+Philip was tempted to tear up the two copies then and there, and toss
+the pieces into the air. But he didn't, for the very good reason that he
+couldn't afford to. Instead, he bore down viciously on his pen and
+brought his name to life twice in large and angry letters. He handed
+Judith one copy, slipped the other into his breast pocket and got to his
+feet. "That," he said, "brings our official business to a close. Now I'd
+like to add an unofficial word of advice. It seems to me that you're
+exacting an exorbitant price from the world for your husband's having
+sold you out for a brunette and a redhead and a pint of Scotch. I've
+been sold out lots of times for less than that, but I found out long ago
+that the world doesn't pay its bills even when you ask a fair price for
+the damages done to you. I suggest that you write the matter off as a
+bad debt and forget about it; then maybe you'll become a human being
+again."
+
+She had risen to her feet and was standing stiffly before him. She put
+him in mind of an exquisite and fragile statue, and for a moment he had
+the feeling that if he were to reach out and touch her, she would
+shatter into a million pieces. She did not move for some time, nor did
+he; then she bent down, picked up three of the manila envelopes,
+straightened, and handed them to him. "Two of these contain the deeds,
+maps and other records you will need," she said in a dead voice. "The
+third contains the keys to the houses and business places. Each key is
+tagged with the correct address. Good-by, Mr. Myles."
+
+"Good-by," Philip said.
+
+He looked around the room intending to say good-by to Zarathustra, but
+Zarathustra was nowhere to be seen. Finally he went into the hall,
+opened the front door and stepped out into the night. A full moon was
+rising in the east. He walked down the moonlit walk, climbed into his
+car and threw his brief case and the manila envelopes into the back
+seat. Soon, Valleyview was far behind him.
+
+But not as far as it should have been. He couldn't get the green rose
+out of his mind. He couldn't get Judith Darrow out of his mind either.
+Nor could he exorcise the summer breeze that kept wafting through the
+crevices in his common sense.
+
+A green rose and a grass widow and a breeze with a green breath. A whole
+town taking off for greener pastures....
+
+He reached into his coat pocket and touched the rose. It was no more
+than a stem and a handful of petals now, but its reality could not be
+denied. But roses do not bloom in autumn, and green roses do not bloom
+at all--
+
+"Ruf!"
+
+He had turned into the new highway some time ago, and was driving along
+it at a brisk sixty-five. Now, disbelievingly, he slowed, and pulled
+over onto the shoulder. Sure enough, he had a stowaway in the back
+seat--a tawny-haired stowaway with golden eyes, over-sized ears, and a
+restless, white-tipped tail. "Zarathustra!" he gasped. "How in the
+dickens did you get in there?"
+
+"Ruf," Zarathustra replied.
+
+Philip groaned. Now he would have to go all the way back to Valleyview.
+Now he would have to see Judith Darrow again. Now he would have to--He
+paused in midthought, astonished at the abrupt acceleration of his
+heartbeat. "Well I'll be damned!" he said, and without further preamble
+transferred Zarathustra to the front seat, U-turned, and started back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The gasoline lantern had been moved out of the living-room window, but a
+light still showed beyond the panes. He pulled over to the curb and
+turned off the ignition. He gave one of Zarathustra's over-sized ears a
+playful tug, absently noting a series of small nodules along its lower
+extremity. "Come on, Zarathustra," he said. "I may as well deliver you
+personally while I'm at it."
+
+After locking the car, he started up the walk, Zarathustra at his heels.
+He knocked on the front door. Presently he knocked again. The door
+creaked, swung partially open. He frowned. Had she forgotten to latch
+it? he wondered. Or had she deliberately left it unlatched so that
+Zarathustra could get in? Zarathustra himself lent plausibility to the
+latter conjecture by rising up on his hind legs and pushing the door the
+rest of the way open with his forepaws, after which he trotted into the
+hall and disappeared.
+
+Philip pounded on the panels. "Miss Darrow!" he called. "Judith!"
+
+No answer. He called again. Still no answer.
+
+A summer breeze came traipsing out of the house and engulfed him in the
+scent of roses. What kind of roses? he wondered. Green ones?
+
+He stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. He made his way
+into the living room. The two chairs were gone, and so was the coffee
+table. He walked through the living room and into the library; through
+the library and into the dining room. The gasoline lantern burned
+brightly on the dining-room table, its harsh white light bathing bare
+floors and naked walls.
+
+The breeze was stronger here, the scent of roses almost cloying. He saw
+then that the double door that had thwarted him that morning was open,
+and he moved toward it across the room. As he had suspected, it gave
+access to the kitchen. Pausing on the threshold, he peered inside. It
+was an ordinary enough kitchen. Some of the appliances were gone, but
+the stove and the refrigerator were still there. The back doorway had an
+odd bluish cast that caused the framework to shimmer. The door itself
+was open, and he could see starlight lying softly on fields and trees.
+
+Wonderingly he walked across the room and stepped outside. There was a
+faint sputtering sound, as though live wires had been crossed, and for a
+fleeting second the scene before him seemed to waver. Then, abruptly, it
+grew still.
+
+He grew still, too--immobile in the strange, yet peaceful, summer night.
+He was standing on a grassy plain, and the plain spread out on either
+hand to promontories of little trees. Before him, the land sloped gently
+upward, and was covered with multicolored flowers that twinkled like
+microcosmic stars. In the distance, the lights of a village showed. To
+his right, a riotous green-rose bush bloomed, and beneath it Zarathustra
+sat, wagging his tail.
+
+Philip took two steps forward, stopped and looked up at the sky. It was
+wrong somehow. For one thing, Cassiopeia had changed position, and for
+another, Orion was awry. For still another, there were no clouds for the
+moon to hide behind, and yet the moon had disappeared.
+
+Zarathustra trotted over to where he was standing, gazed up at him with
+golden eyes, then headed in the direction of the lights. Philip took a
+deep breath, and followed him. He would have visited the village anyway,
+Zarathustra or no Zarathustra. Was it Pfleugersville? He knew suddenly
+that it was.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He had not gone far before he saw a highway. A pair of headlights
+appeared suddenly in the direction of the village and resolved rapidly
+into a moving van. To his consternation, the van turned off the
+thoroughfare and headed in his direction. He ducked into a coppice,
+Zarathustra at his heels, and watched the heavy vehicle bounce by. There
+were two men in the cab, and painted on the paneling of the truckbed
+were the words, PFLEUGERSVILLE MOVERS, INC.
+
+The van continued on in the direction from which he had come, and
+presently he guessed its destination. Judith, clearly, was in the midst
+of moving out the furniture she had been too sentimental to sell. The
+only trouble was, her house had disappeared. So had the village of
+Valleyview.
+
+He stared at where the houses should have been, saw nothing at first
+except a continuation of the starlit plain. Then he noticed an upright
+rectangle of pale light hovering just above the ground, and presently he
+identified it as Judith's back doorway. He could see through it into the
+kitchen, and by straining his eyes, he could even see the stove and the
+refrigerator.
+
+Gradually he made out other upright rectangles hovering just above the
+ground, some of them on a line with Judith's. All of them, however,
+while outlined in the same shimmering blue that outlined hers, lacked
+lighted interiors.
+
+As he stood there staring, the van came to a halt, turned around and
+backed up to the brightest rectangle, hiding it from view. The two men
+got out of the cab and walked around to the rear of the truckbed. "We'll
+put the stove on first," Philip heard one of them say. And then, "Wonder
+why she wants to hang onto junk like this?"
+
+The other man's voice was fainter, but his words were unmistakable
+enough: "Grass widows who turn into old maids have funny notions
+sometimes."
+
+Judith Darrow wasn't really moving out of Valleyview after all. She only
+thought she was.
+
+Philip went on. The breeze was all around him. It blew through his hair,
+kissed his cheeks and caressed his forehead. The stars shone palely
+down. Some of the land was under cultivation, and he could see green
+things growing in the starlight, and the breeze carried their green
+breath to his nostrils. He reached the highway and began walking along
+it. He saw no further sign of vehicles till he came opposite a large
+brick building with bright light spilling through its windows. In front
+of it were parked a dozen automobiles of a make that he was unfamiliar
+with.
+
+He heard the whir of machinery and the pounding of hammers, and he went
+over and peered through one of the windows. The building proved to be a
+furniture factory. Most of the work was being done by machines, but
+there were enough tasks left over to keep the owners of the parked cars
+busily occupied. The main manual task was upholstering. The machines cut
+and sewed and trimmed and planed and doweled and assembled, but
+apparently none of them was up to the fine art of spitting tacks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Philip returned to the highway and went on. He came to other buildings
+and peered into each. One was a small automobile-assembly plant, another
+was a dairy, a third was a long greenhouse. In the first two the
+preponderance of the work was being performed by machines. In the third,
+however, machines were conspicuously absent. Clearly it was one thing
+to build a machine with a superhuman work potential, but quite another
+to build one with a green thumb.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He passed a pasture, and saw animals that looked like cows sleeping in
+the starlight. He passed a field of newly-sprouted corn. He passed a
+power plant, and heard the whine of a generator. Finally he came to the
+outskirts of Pfleugersville.
+
+There was a big illuminated sign by the side of the road. It stopped him
+in his tracks, and he stood there staring at its embossed letters:
+
+    PFLEUGERSVILLE, SIRIUS XXI
+    _Discovered April 1, 1962
+    Incorporated September 11, 1962_
+
+Philip wiped his forehead.
+
+Zarathustra had trotted on ahead. Now he stopped and looked back. _Come
+on_, he seemed to say. _Now that you've seen this much, you might as
+well see the rest._
+
+So Philip entered Pfleugersville ... and fell in love--
+
+Fell in love with the lovely houses, and the darling trees in summer
+bloom. With the parterres of twinkling star-flowers and the expanses of
+verdant lawns. With the trellised green roses that tapestried every
+porch. With the hydrangealike blooms that garnished every corner. With
+Pfleugersville itself.
+
+Obviously the hour was late, for, other than himself, there was no one
+on the streets, although lights burned in the windows of some of the
+houses, and dogs of the same breed and size as Zarathustra occasionally
+trotted by. And yet according to his watch the time was 10:51. Maybe,
+though, Pfleugersville was on different time. Maybe, here in
+Pfleugersville, it was the middle of the night.
+
+The farther he progressed into the village, the more enchanted he
+became. He simply couldn't get over the houses. The difference between
+them and the houses he was familiar with was subtle, but it was there.
+It was the difference that exists between good- and not-quite-good
+taste. Here were no standardized patios, but little marble aprons that
+were as much a part of the over-all architecture as a glen is a part of
+a woods. Here were no stereotyped picture windows, but walls that
+blended imperceptibly into pleasing patterns of transparency. Here were
+no four-square back yards, but rambling star-flowered playgrounds with
+swings and seesaws and shaded swimming holes; with exquisite doghouses
+good enough for little girls' dolls to live in.
+
+He passed a school that seemed to grow out of the very ground it stood
+on. He passed a library that had been built around a huge tree, the
+branches of which had intertwined their foliage into a living roof. He
+passed a block-long supermarket built of tinted glass. Finally he came
+to the park.
+
+He gasped then. Gasped at the delicate trees and the little blue-eyed
+lakes; at the fairy-fountains and the winding, pebbled paths.
+Star-flowers shed their multicolored radiance everywhere, and starlight
+poured prodigally down from the sky. He chose a path at random and
+walked along it in the twofold radiance till he came to the cynosure.
+
+The cynosure was a statue--a statue of a buck-toothed, wall-eyed youth
+gazing steadfastly up into the heavens. In one hand the youth held a
+Phillips screw driver, in the other a six-inch crescent wrench. Standing
+several yards away and staring raptly up into the statue's face was the
+youth himself, and so immobile was he that if it hadn't been for the
+pedestal on which the statue rested, Philip would have been unable to
+distinguish one from the other.
+
+There was an inscription on the pedestal. He walked over and read it in
+the light cast by a nearby parterre of star-flowers:
+
+    FRANCIS FARNSWORTH
+    PFLEUGER,
+    DISCOVERER OF
+    PFLEUGERSVILLE
+
+    _Born: May 5. 1941. Died: ----_
+
+    _Profession Inventor. On the first day of April of the year of our
+    Lord, 1962, Francis Farnsworth Pfleuger brought into being a Moebius
+    coincidence field and established multiple contact with the
+    twenty-first satellite of the star Sirius, thereby giving the
+    people of Valleyview access, via their back doorways, to a New
+    World. Here we have come to live. Here we have come to raise our
+    children. Here, in this idyllic village, which the noble race that
+    once inhabited this fair planet left behind them when they migrated
+    to the Greater Magellanic Cloud, we have settled down to create a
+    new and better Way of Life. Here, thanks to Francis Farnsworth
+    Pfleuger, we shall know happiness prosperity and freedom from fear._
+
+    FRANCIS FARNSWORTH PFLEUGER, WE, THE NEW INHABITANTS OF SIRIUS XXI,
+    SALUTE YOU!
+
+Philip wiped his forehead again.
+
+Presently he noticed that the flesh-and-blood Francis Pfleuger was
+looking in his direction. "Me," the flesh-and-blood Francis Pfleuger
+said, pointing proudly at the statue. "Me."
+
+"So I gather," Philip said dryly. And then. "Zarathustra--come back
+here!"
+
+The little dog had started down one of the paths that converged on the
+statue. At Philip's command, he stopped but did not turn; instead he
+remained where he was, as though waiting for someone to come down the
+path. After a moment, someone did--Judith Darrow.
+
+She was wearing a simple white dress, reminiscent both in design and
+decor of a Grecian tunic. A wide gilt belt augmented the effect, and her
+delicate sandals did nothing to mar it. In the radiance of the
+star-flowers, her eyes were more gray than green. There were shadows
+under them, Philip noticed, and the lids were faintly red.
+
+She halted a few feet from him and looked at him without saying a word.
+"I ... I brought your dog back," he said lamely. "I found him in the
+back seat of my car."
+
+"Thank you. I've been looking all over Pfleugersville for him. I left my
+Valleyview doors open, hoping he'd come home of his own accord, but I
+guess he had other ideas. Now that you've discovered our secret, Mr.
+Myles, what do you think of our brave new world?"
+
+"I think it's lovely," Philip said, "but I don't believe it's where you
+seem to think it is."
+
+"Don't you?" she asked. "Then suppose you show me the full moon that
+rose over Valleyview tonight. Or better yet, suppose I show you
+something else." She pointed to a region of the heavens just to the left
+of the statue's turned-up nose. "You can't see them from here," she
+said, "but around that insignificant yellow star, nine planets are in
+orbit. One of them is Earth."
+
+"But that's impossible!" he objected. "Consider the--"
+
+"Distance? In the sort of space we're dealing with, Mr. Myles, distance
+is not a factor. In Moebius space--as we have come to call it for lack
+of a better term--any two given points are coincidental, regardless of
+how far apart they may be in non-Moebius space. But this becomes manifest
+only when a Moebius coincidence-field is established. As you probably
+know by now, Francis Pfleuger created such a field."
+
+At the mention of his name, Francis Pfleuger came hurrying over to where
+they were standing. "E," he declared, "equals mc squared."
+
+"Thank you, Francis," Judith said. Then, to Philip, "Shall we walk?"
+
+They started down one of the converging paths, Zarathustra bringing up
+the rear. Behind them, Francis returned to his Narcissistic study of
+himself in stone. "We were neighbors back in Valleyview," Judith said,
+"but I never dreamed he thought quite so much of himself. Ever since we
+put up that statue last week, he's been staring at it night and day.
+Sometimes he even brings his lunch with him."
+
+"He seems to be familiar with Einstein."
+
+"He's not really, though. He memorized the energy-mass equation in an
+attempt to justify his new status in life, but he hasn't the remotest
+notion of what it means. It's ironic in a way that Pfleugersville should
+have been discovered by someone with an IQ of less than seventy-five."
+
+"No one with an IQ of less than seventy-five could create the sort of
+field you were talking about."
+
+"He didn't create it deliberately--he brought it into being accidentally
+by means of a machine he was building to tie knots with. Or at least
+that's what he says. But we do know that there was such a machine
+because we saw its fused parts in his kitchen, and there's no question
+but what it was the source of the field. Francis, though, can't remember
+how he made the parts or how he put them together. As a matter of fact,
+to this day he still doesn't understand what happened--though I have a
+feeling that he knows more than he lets on."
+
+"What _did_ happen?" Philip asked.
+
+For a while Judith was silent. Then, "All of us promised solemnly not to
+divulge our secret to an outsider unless he was first accepted by the
+group as a whole," she said. "But thanks to my negligence, you know most
+of it already, so I suppose you're entitled to know the rest." She
+sighed. "Very well--I'll try to explain...."
+
+When Francis Pfleuger's field had come into being, something had
+happened to the back doors of Valleyview that caused them to open upon a
+planet which one of the local star-gazers promptly identified as Sirius
+XXI. The good folk of Valleyview had no idea of how such a state of
+affairs could exist, to say nothing of how it could have come about,
+till one of the scientists whom they asked to join them as a part of the
+plan which they presently devised to make their forthcoming utopia
+self-sufficient, came up with a theory that explained everything.
+
+According to his theory, the round-trip distance between any two
+planetary or  squaredstella bodies was curved in the manner of a Moebius
+strip--i.e., a strip of paper given a half-twist before bringing the two
+ends together. In this case, the strip represented the round-trip
+distance from Earth to Sirius XXI. Earth was represented on the strip by
+one dot, and Sirius XXI by another, and, quite naturally, the two dots
+were an equal distance--or approximately 8.8 light years--apart. This
+brought them directly opposite one another--one on one side of the
+strip, the other on the other side; but since a Moebius strip has only
+one surface--or side--the two dots were actually occupying the same
+space at the same time. In "Moebius space", then, Earth and Sirius XXI
+were "coincidental".
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Philip looked over his shoulder at the little yellow sun twinkling in
+the sky. "Common sense," he said, "tells me differently."
+
+"Common sense is a liar of the first magnitude," Judith said. "It has
+misled man ever since he first climbed down from the trees. It was
+common sense that inspired Ptolemy's theory of cosmogony. It was common
+sense that inspired the burning of Giordano Bruno...."
+
+The fact that common sense indicated that 8.8 light years separated
+Earth and Sirius XXI in common-sense reality didn't prove that 8.8 light
+years separated them in a form of reality that was outside
+common-sense's dominion--i.e., Moebius space--and Francis Pfleuger's
+field had demonstrated as much. The back-door nodal areas which it had
+established, however, were merely limited manifestations of that
+reality--in other words, the field had merely provided limited access to
+a form of space that had been in existence all along.
+
+"Though why," Judith concluded, "our back doors should have been
+affected rather than our front doors, for example, is
+inexplicable--unless it was because Francis built the machine in his
+kitchen. In any event, when they did become nodal areas, they manifested
+themselves on Sirius XXI, and the dogs in the immediate vicinity
+associated them with the doorways of their departed masters and began
+whining to be let in."
+
+"Their departed masters?"
+
+"The race that built this village. The race that built the factories and
+developed the encompassing farms. A year ago, according to the records
+they left behind them, they migrated to the Greater Magellanic Cloud."
+
+Philip was indignant. "Why didn't they take their dogs with them?"
+
+"They couldn't. After all, they had to leave their cars and their
+furniture behind them too, not to mention almost unbelievable
+stockpiles of every metal imaginable that will last us for centuries.
+The logistics of space travel make taking even an extra handkerchief
+along a calculated risk. Anyway, when their dogs 'found' us, they were
+overjoyed, and as for us, we fell in love with them at first sight. Our
+own dogs, though, didn't take to them at all, and every one of them ran
+away."
+
+"This can't be the only village," Philip said. "There must be others
+somewhere."
+
+"Undoubtedly there are. All we know is that the people who built this
+one were the last to leave."
+
+The park was behind them now, and they were walking down a pleasant
+street. "And when you and your neighbors discovered the village, did you
+decide to become expatriates right then and there?" Philip asked.
+
+She nodded. "Do you blame us? You've seen for yourself what a lovely
+place it is. But it's far more than that. In Valleyview, we had
+unemployment. Here, there is work for everyone, and a corresponding
+feeling of wantedness and togetherness. True, most of the work is
+farmwork, but what of that? We have every conceivable kind of machine to
+help us in our tasks. Indeed, I think that the only machine the Sirians
+lacked was one that could manufacture food out of whole cloth. But
+consider the most important advantage of all: when we go to bed at night
+we can do so without being afraid that sometime during our sleep a
+thermonuclear missile will descend out of the sky and devour us in one
+huge incandescent bite. If we've made a culture hero out of our village
+idiot, it's no more than right, for unwittingly or not, he opened up the
+gates of paradise."
+
+"And you immediately saw to it that no one besides yourselves and a
+chosen few would pass through them."
+
+Judith paused beside a white gate. "Yes, that's true," she said. "To
+keep our secret, we lived in our old houses while we were settling our
+affairs, closing down our few industries and setting up a new monetary
+system. In fact, we even kept our ... the children in the dark for fear
+that they would talk at school. Suppose, however, we _had_ publicized
+our utopia. Can't you imagine the mockery opportunists would have made
+out of it? The village we found was large enough to accommodate
+ourselves and the few friends, relatives and specialists we asked to
+join us, but no larger; and we did, after all, find it in our own back
+yard." She placed her hand on the white gate. "This is where I live."
+
+He looked at the house, and it was enchanting. Slightly less enchanting,
+but delightful in its own right, was the much smaller house beside it.
+Judith pointed toward the latter dwelling and looked at Zarathustra.
+"It's almost morning, Zarathustra," she said sternly. "Go to bed this
+minute!" She opened the gate so that the little dog could pass through
+and raised her eyes to Philip. "Our time is different here," she
+explained. And then, "I'm afraid you'll have to hurry if you expect to
+make it to my back door before the field dies out."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He felt suddenly empty. "Dies out?" he repeated numbly.
+
+"Yes. We don't know why, but it's been diminishing in strength ever
+since it first came into being, and our 'Moebius-strip scientist' has
+predicted that it will cease to exist during the next twenty-four hours.
+I guess I don't need to remind you that you have important business on
+Earth."
+
+"No," he said, "I guess you don't." His emptiness bowed out before a
+wave of bitterness. He had rested his hand on the gate, as close to hers
+as he had dared. Now he saw that while it was inches away from hers in
+one sense, it was light years away in another. He removed it angrily.
+"Business always comes first with you, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes. Business never lets you down."
+
+"Do you know what I think?" Philip said. "I think that you were the one
+who did the selling out, not your husband. I think you sold him out for
+a law practice."
+
+Her face turned white as though he had slapped it, and in a sense, he
+had. "Good-by," she said, and this time he was certain that if he were
+to reach out and touch her, she would shatter into a million pieces.
+"Give my love to the planet Earth," she added icily.
+
+"Good-by," Philip said, his anger gone now, and the emptiness rushing
+back. "Don't sell us short, though--we'll make a big splash in your sky
+one of these days when we blow ourselves up."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He turned and walked away. Walked out of the enchanting village and down
+the highway and across the flower-pulsing plain to Judith's back
+doorway. It was unlighted now, and he had trouble distinguishing it from
+the others. Its shimmering blue framework was flickering. Judith had not
+lied then: the field was dying out.
+
+He locked the back door behind him, walked sadly through the dark and
+empty house and let himself out the front door. He locked the front door
+behind him, too, and went down the walk and climbed into his car. He had
+thought he had locked it, but apparently he hadn't. He drove out of town
+and down the road to the highway, and down the highway toward the big
+bright bonfire of the city.
+
+Dawn was exploring the eastern sky with pale pink fingers when at last
+he parked his car in the garage behind his apartment building. He
+reached into the back seat for his brief case and the manila envelopes.
+His brief case had hair on it. It was soft and warm. "Ruf," it barked.
+"Ruf-ruf!"
+
+He knew then that everything was all right. Just because no one had
+invited him to the party didn't mean that he couldn't invite himself. He
+would have to hurry, though--he had a lot of things to do, and time was
+running out.
+
+Noon found him on the highway again, his business transacted, his
+affairs settled, Zarathustra sitting beside him on the seat. One o'clock
+found him driving into Valleyview; two-five found him turning down a
+familiar street. He would have to leave his car behind him, but that was
+all right. Leaving it to rust away in a ghost town was better than
+selling it to some opportunistic dealer for a sum he would have no use
+for anyway. He parked it by the curb, and after getting his suitcase out
+of the trunk, walked up to the front door of Number 23. He unlocked and
+opened the door, and after Zarathustra followed him inside, closed and
+locked it behind him. He strode through the house to the kitchen. He
+unlocked and opened the back door. He stepped eagerly across the
+threshold--and stopped dead still.
+
+There were boards beneath his feet instead of grass. Instead of a
+flower-pied plain, he saw a series of unkempt back yards. Beside him on
+an unpainted trellis, Virginia creeper rattled in an October wind.
+
+Zarathustra came out behind him, descended the back-porch steps and ran
+around the side of the house. Looking for the green-rose bush probably.
+
+"Ruf!"
+
+Zarathustra had returned and was looking up at him from the bottom step.
+On the top step he had placed an offering.
+
+The offering was a green rose.
+
+Philip bent down and picked it up. It was fresh, and its fragrance
+epitomized the very essence of Sirius XXI. "Zarathustra," he gasped,
+"where did you get it?"
+
+"Ruf!" said Zarathustra, and ran around the side of the house.
+
+Philip followed, rounded the corner just in time to see the white-tipped
+tail disappear into the ancient dog house. Disappointment numbed him.
+That was where the rose had been then--stored away for safe-keeping like
+an old and worthless bone.
+
+But the rose was fresh, he reminded himself.
+
+Did dog houses have back doorways?
+
+This one did, he saw, kneeling down and peering inside. A lovely back
+doorway, rimmed with shimmering blue. It framed a familiar vista, in the
+foreground of which a familiar green-rosebush stood. Beneath the
+rosebush Zarathustra sat, wagging his tail.
+
+It was a tight squeeze, but Philip made it. He even managed to get his
+suitcase through. And just in time too, for hardly had he done so when
+the doorway began to flicker. Now it was on its way out, and as he
+watched, it faded into transparency and disappeared.
+
+He crawled from beneath the rosebush and stood up. The day was bright
+and warm, and the position of the sun indicated early morning or late
+afternoon. No, not sun--suns. One of them was a brilliant blue-white
+orb, the other a twinkling point of light.
+
+He set off across the plain in Zarathustra's wake. He had a speech
+already prepared, and when Judith met him at the gate with wide and
+wondering eyes, he delivered it without preamble. "Judith," he said, "I
+am contemptuous of the notion that some things are meant to be and
+others aren't, and I firmly believe in my own free will; but when your
+dog stows away in the back seat of my car two times running and makes
+it impossible for me not to see you again, then there must be something
+afoot which neither you nor I can do a thing about. Whatever it is, I
+have given in to it and have transferred your real estate to an agent
+more trustworthy than myself. I know you haven't known me long, and I
+know I'm not an accepted member of your group, but maybe somebody will
+give me a job raking lawns or washing windows or hoeing corn long enough
+for me to prove that I am not in the least antisocial; and maybe, in
+time, you yourself will get to know me well enough to realize that while
+I have a weakness for blondes who look like Grecian goddesses, I have no
+taste whatever for redheads, brunettes, or Cutty Sark. In any event, I
+have burned my bridges behind me, and whether I ever become a resident
+of Pfleugersville or not, I have already become a resident of Sirius
+XXI."
+
+Judith Darrow was silent for some time. Then, "This morning," she said,
+"I wanted to ask you to join us, but I couldn't for two reasons. The
+first was your commitment to sell our houses, the second was my
+bitterness toward men. You have eliminated the first, and the second
+seems suddenly inane." She raised her eyes. "Philip, please join us. I
+want you to."
+
+Zarathustra, whose real name was Siddenon Phenphonderill, left them
+standing there in each other's arms and trotted down the street and out
+of town. He covered the ground in easy lopes that belied his three
+hundred and twenty-five years, and soon he arrived at the Meeting Place.
+The mayors of the other villages had been awaiting him since early
+morning and were shifting impatiently on their haunches. When he
+clambered up on the rostrum they extended their audio-appendages and
+retractile fingers and accorded him a round of applause. He extended his
+own "hands" and held them up for silence, then, retracting them again,
+he seated himself before the little lectern and began his report, the
+idiomatic translation of which follows forthwith:
+
+"Gentlemen, my apologies for my late arrival. I will touch upon the
+circumstances that were responsible for it presently.
+
+"To get down to the matter uppermost in your minds: Yes, the experiment
+was a success, and if you will use your psycho-transmutative powers to
+remodel your villages along the lines my constituents and I remodeled
+ours and to build enough factories to give your 'masters' that sense of
+self-sufficiency so essential to their well-being, and if you will
+'plant' your disassembled Multiple Moebius-Knot Dynamos in such a way
+that the resultant fields will be ascribed to accidental causes, you
+will have no more trouble attracting personnel than we did. Just make
+sure that your 'masters' quarters are superior to your own, and that
+you behave like dogs in their presence. And when you fabricate your
+records concerning your mythical departed masters, see to it that they
+do not conflict with the records we fabricated concerning ours. It would
+be desirable indeed if our Sirian-human society could be based on less
+deceitful grounds than these, but the very human attitude we are
+exploiting renders this impossible at the moment. I hate to think of the
+resentment we would incur were we to reveal that, far from being the
+mere dogs we seem to be, we are capable of mentally transmuting natural
+resources into virtually anything from a key to a concert hall, and I
+hate even more to think of the resentment we would incur were we to
+reveal that, for all our ability in the inanimate field, we have never
+been able to materialize so much as a single blade of grass in the
+animate field, and that our reason for coincidentalizing the planet
+Earth and creating our irresistible little utopias stems not from a need
+for companionship but from a need for gardeners. However, you will find
+that all of this can be ironed out eventually through the human
+children, with whom you will be thrown into daily contact and whom you
+will find to possess all of their parents' abiding love for us and none
+of their parents' superior attitude toward us. To a little child, a dog
+is a companion, not a pet; an equal, not an inferior--and the little
+children of today will be the grown-ups of tomorrow.
+
+"To return to the circumstances that occasioned my late arrival: I ... I
+must confess, gentlemen, that I became quite attached to the 'mistress'
+into whose house I sought entry when we first established our field and
+who subsequently adopted me when I convinced her real dog that he would
+find greener pastures elsewhere. So greatly attached did I become, in
+fact, that when the opportunity of ostracizing her loneliness presented
+itself, I could not refrain from taking advantage of it. The person to
+whom she was most suited and who was most suited to her appeared
+virtually upon her very doorstep; but in her stubbornness and in her
+pride she aggravated rather than encouraged him, causing him to rebel
+against the natural attraction he felt toward her. I am happy to report
+that, by means of a number of subterfuges--the final one of which
+necessitated the use of our original doorway--I was able to set this
+matter right, and that these two once-lonely people are about to embark
+upon a relationship which in their folklore is oftentimes quaintly
+alluded to by the words, 'They lived happily ever after.'
+
+"And now, gentlemen, the best of luck to you and your constituents, and
+may you end up with servants as excellent as ours. I hereby declare this
+meeting adjourned."
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
+
+This etext was produced from "Analog Science Fact Science Fiction"
+November 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Servant Problem, by Robert F. Young
+
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