Judith Merril - The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 4

I looked at it, fascinated. You know, I studied medicine once—might be in Harley Street by now, only there was a bureaucratic misunderstanding about four microscopes I borrowed. Silly old asses! I’d have got them out of pawn and put them back where I’d found them, as soon as my remittance came in. But no, they gave me the sack.

However, I have read some anatomy, and I solemnly swear that the kernel of my poor tictoc nut definitely and in detail resembled the human brain—convolutions, lobes, cerebrum, cerebellum, medulla—in every respect.

Most remarkable of all, when I touched it affectionately with my finger tip, it throbbed very faintly, and then lay still. Whereupon some of the virtue seemed to drain out of me, and I cried like a child.

But I pulled myself together and said, “Well, the bet is off. The game is null and void. Let me get my men together and push off.”

Then, in the light of torches, I saw bundles on the shore —very familiar bundles.

“To save your men unnecessary exertion,” the chief said, “I had them unload your canoes for you. I wish you no harm, but put it to you that you go quietly back where you belong. Come, you shall not go empty handed. Take as many small nuggets as your two hands can hold, and depart in peace. You overreached yourself. I would have given you the diamond for the thinking nut, and gladly, in fair exchange. But no, you had to cheat, to do bad trade, to bet on a sure thing. In this life, nothing is sure.”

I said, holding out the revolver, “And what will you give me for this?”

“Oh, two double handfuls of gold.”

“May I suggest three?”

“If you will allow me to test it first.”

I did. He fired one shot into the dark. I took the gun back and said, “First, the gold.”

Down by the river I took the liberty of scooping up a handful of heavy clay and filling up the barrel of that revolver. It would dry like brick. That old rogue would never play tictoc again.

But in burying the remains of my thinking nut, I had a weird feeling that I was leaving behind a certain essential portion of myself. Gold and jewels I can get again. But that, never.

“So I got to the coast and took ship, as a passenger this time, on a heavy freighter bound for Tampa, Florida. What with one thing and another, I arrived with only a few nuggets left, which I keep as ... I don’t know, call it keepsakes. You have been very kind to me. Let me give you one—a very little one—and then I must be on my way. Have this one.”

He dropped a heavy gold pellet on the wet table. It was not much larger than a pea, but shaped, or misshapen, beyond human conception. Fire and water had done that. “Have it made into a tie pin,” said Pilgrim. “But I couldn’t take a valuable thing like this,” I cried, “without doing something for you in return!”

“Not a bit of it. We limeys must stick together, and I’m on my way to Detroit. About seven days from now, John Pilgrim, at Detroit’s leading hotel, will find me. Help me on my way, if you like, but—” He shrugged.

“I have only ten dollars,” I said, deeply moved by a certain sadness in Pilgrim’s eyes. “You’re welcome to that.”

“You’re very obliging. It shall be returned with interest.”

“I must go now,” I said.

“So must I,” said he.

Marveling at the intricacies of the human mind, I walked until I found myself on Sixth Avenue, near West 46th Street, in which area congregate those who, with pitying smiles and a certain kind of shrug, can flaw a diamond carat by carat until you are ashamed to own it, and with a shake of the head depreciate a watch until it stops of its own accord. On impulse I went into a shop there and, putting down Pilgrim’s nugget, asked what such a bit of gold might be worth.

His reply was, “Ya kiddin’? Tickle me so I’ll laugh. What’s the current price of printer’s metal? . . . Worth? Kugel’s Kute Novelties sell those twelve for fifty cents, mail order. I can get ‘em for ya a dollar for two dozen. A teaspoonful lead, melt it and drop it in cold water. You can honestly advertise ‘no two alike.’ Gild ‘em, and there’s a nugget. A miniature gold brick. That manufacturer, so he puts out loaded dice ‘for amusement only’—he sells ‘em too. Seriously, did you buy this?”

I said, “Yes and no.” But as I dropped the nugget into my pocket and turned to go, the shopman said, “Wait a minute, mister—it’s a nice imitation and a good job of plating. Maybe I might give you a couple bucks for it!”

“Oh, no, you won’t,” I said, my suspicions aroused. I fondled the nugget in my pocket; it had the indescribable, authentic feel of real gold. As for that trick with melted lead and cold water, I suddenly remembered that I had played it myself about thirty years ago, with some broken toy soldiers, just for the sake of playing with fire. Recently-melted lead has a feel all its own, and is sharp at the edges. But my nugget felt old and worn.

“It could be, after forty years, for once I made a mistake,” the man said. “Let’s have another look.”

But I went out, and visited another shop a few doors away: one of those double-fronted establishments, in the right-hand window of which, under a sign which says OLD GOLD BOUGHT, there lies a mess of pinchback bracelets, ancient watch chains, old false teeth and tie pins. In the other window, diamonds carefully carded and priced at anything between two thousand and fifteen thousand dollars. The proprietor, here, looked as if he were next door but one to the breadline.

I put down my nugget and said boldly, “How much for this?”

He scrutinized the nugget, put it in a balance and weighed it; then tested it on a jeweler’s stone, with several kinds of acid. “Voigin gold,” he said. “Where’d you get it?”

“A friend gave it to me.”

“I wish I had such friends.” He called, “Giving, come here a minute,” and a younger man came to his side. “What d’you make of this?”

Irving said, “It ain’t African gold. It ain’t Indian gold. It ain’t a California nugget. I say South America.”

“Good boy. Correct.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

He shrugged. “You loin,” he said. “How d’you tell the difference between salt and sugar? You loin. . . . The market value of this little bit voigin gold is about forty dollars. I got to make a buck—I’ll give you thoity-five.”

“Eh?”

“Thoity-six, and not a penny more,” he said, counting out the money. “And if your friend gives you any more, come to me with ‘em.”

I took the money, caught a taxi, and hurried back to MacAroon’s place. The bartender was gazing into space.

“That man I was sitting with,” I said, “where is he?”

The bartender, with a sardonic smile, said, “He put the bite on you, huh? I can smell a phony a mile off. I didn’t like the looks of him as soon as he set foot in my bar. If I was you—”

“Which way did he go?”

“I didn’t notice. Soon after you left he ordered a double, no ice and put down a ten-dollar bill—left me fifty cents, and went out.”

“Here’s my telephone number,” I said. “If he turns up again, call me any hour of the day or night, and hold him till I get here. Here’s five dollars on account; another five when you call.”

But Pilgrim never came to MacAroon’s again.

I inquired high and low-—mostly low—but found no trace of him. A British-sounding man with an insinuating air, a malarial complexion and a misleading eccentric manner, who talks about the River Amazon and its tributaries —I will pay a substantial reward for information leading to his rediscovery.

Back to Cain and Abel, and ever since that time, there have been restless men, dissatisfied ones, the rovers, explorers, and adventurers. They are the men who traveled to India, discovered China, stumbled across America, pushed through the jungles of the Congo and the Amazon, charted the oceans, crested the mountains, and dog-sledded to the poles. To the stay-at-homes, these wanderers are sometimes heroes, sometimes worthless bums, depending as often as not on whether they do bring home nuggets of real gold (or silks, spices, slaves, oil leases). Now, very soon—as matters look, within our own lifetimes—the rovers will be going out to space. They will man our satellites and space stations, mine our moon, and colonize the other planets; eventually, it is they who will represent us to whatever alien life may have spawned from other stars.