Damon Knight - Orbit 19

Bill Sorel was amazed. Cow-Path’s explanation was gibberish, of course. But it sounded almost like the real explanation would sound if given in code, and it may have been just that. And Susie Corn-Flower’s divination that the thunder and the sound of thunder were two different entities was—well, it was a thunderous sort of intuition. Sorel felt very pleased and gratified with these two persons.

So he tried them with the final question.

“How do pebbles get under the eaves of houses and buildings?” he asked.

“Oh, I suppose they come off the roof,” Cow-Path said. “The rain must loosen them, and then they roll off the roof into the eaves-drop ditch.”

“No, Grandpa, no,” Susie Corn-Flower Daylight said. “Why would they ever be on the roof to fall off? The pebble angel puts the pebbles directly into the eaves-drop ditch. He puts them there as a sign that he is guarding that building and that everything is all right. Buildings without people living in them never have pebbles under the eaves.”

“No, I know they don’t, Corn-Flower,” Sorel said. “But did you ever hear that rotten people don’t have pebbles around their houses either?”

“I’ve never known any rotten people,” Susie Corn-Flower said. “We’ve never had any rotten people in our town.”

“That’s right. There never have been any here,” Cow-Path said.

Bill Sorel had The Child’s Big What and Why Book finished a week later—he was a fast worker—and it was ready to send off. But he had two versions of one page, and he had not yet made his selection between them. This was the page that covered the question, “How do the pebbles get under the eaves?”

Sorel went to the Wastrels’ Club to drink white rum and think about it. One version gave the old safe answer, that there are always pebbles around everywhere, and that the rain washes the dirt away from them and leaves the pebbles. This was the safe falsehood.

The other version was somewhat different. It was true, probably: or at least it was a coded statement of a truth. But could Sorel get away with a truth like that in the What and Why Book?

Etta Mae Southern was already in Wastrels’ with a handsome, rich, and goodhumored man. She made very small horizontal circles with her finger in the air.

“That’s the world’s smallest record playing, ‘I wish it were you instead,’ “ she called across the clubroom.

And Mrs. Justex was already in Wastrels’. She was drinking one of those lacteal gin-sloshes that are called Milky Ways. So Mrs. Justex did drink milk, sometimes, and in a way. That fact changed just about everything. It meant that the widest of improbables was still possible.

On the wall of Wastrels’ was a paragraph of wisdom:

“When one has discarded all absolutely impossible explanations of a thing, then what is left, however improbable it seems, must be accepted as the explanation until a better explanation comes along.”

Bill Sorel had seen that paragraph on the wall a dozen times, but it had never so hit him between the ears before.

A cop came into Wastrels’ and said it had started to rain outside. He had a Salty Dog. Cops are the only people left in the world who still drink them.

“You will be in my apartment in fifteen minutes,” Bill Sorel said.

“Why will I be?” the cop asked him.

“To try to make me stop hitting people on their heads with pebble-stones,” Sorel said. And Sorel left Wastrels’ and went to his apartment. He selected one of the two versions of the disputed page and put it with the rest of the pages. He sealed and stapled the completed What and Why, and went out and down in the elevator and out into the rain to mail the thing in the stand-up mailbox on the corner. And then he came back to his apartment with happy anticipation.

Then he was standing at his opened window in the early dark. It was raining and blowing and getting him pretty wet. He was scooping up handfuls, double-handfuls of pebbles from the ledge under his window and flinging them out at the lower world. He scooped out twenty, thirty, fifty handfuls of pebbles from that little ledge-trough that wouldn’t hold three handfuls at one time. But now that trough stood full of pebble-stones no matter how many he scooped out of it.

Somebody was banging at Sorel’s apartment door, and he let him bang. And pretty soon somebody was shaking Sorel’s shoulder, and he let him shake.

“Hey, you got to quit throwing pebbles down there,” the cop was saying. “You’re hitting people that are trying to get taxis in the rain, and you’re tearing their umbrellas. Those are bigger pebble-stones than you usually throw, aren’t they?”

“These are the biggest ever,” Sorel said happily. “These are prime pebbles. Say, I used the page about the pebble angel in the book. That’s going to hit a lot of people crossways. I mailed the whole thing off with that in it. I’m glad I did.”

“They come in just as fast as you throw them out, don’t they?” the cop said. “I wonder where they come from? I never noticed that that’s the way pebbles come when it rains. Can’t you throw more of them faster and get ahead of them?”

Oh, it was with a wonderful clatter that the pebbles arrived!

“Man, this is as fast as I can throw them,” Sorel panted. “I bet I’ve thrown a thousand pounds of them down already. It sure is fun. It looks like I made a breakthrough in pebbles. The pebble angel is showing that he likes the mention.”

“Maybe if we both scooped them and threw them as fast as we could, we could almost keep up with them,” the cop said. “Yeah, it is fun.” The cop threw lefthanded, and the two fitted well together at the window.

He was a good person, that cop. There weren’t any rotten people around there. (But have you looked under your eaves after a rain?)

I am sure they will be considered guilty until they are found not guilty. That’s the American way.

—Richard Nixon

* * * *

O Where Hae Ye Been, Colin Wilson My Son, Since 1930?

It was now mid-October; they were scheduled to leave for earth in the second week of November, arriving in mid-January. (At top speed, the Hermes covered four million miles a day.)

—The Space Vampires , by Colin Wilson (Random House, 1976), p. 14

* * * *

The Vega was one of two big space cruisers that had set out for the derelict a month ago. They could achieve up to four million miles a day.

—Ibid p. 26

* * * *

“You astound me, sir. An incredible coincidence.”

“That’s what I think. You didn’t report any meteor showers, did you?”

“There weren’t any, sir. Meteor showers are always associated with comets, and there wasn’t a comet within forty million miles.”

—Ibid., p. 28

* * * *

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