Fredric Brown - The Second Fredric Brown Megapack

But I started to say, like that morning, I was sitting at my desk, the top of which was covered with grass. My feet were—or seemed to be—resting on a sheet of rippling water. But it wasn’t wet.

On top of the grass of my desk lay a pink flowerpot, into which, nose-first, stuck a bright green Saturnian lizard. That—reason and not my eyesight told me—was my pen and inkwell. Also an embroidered sampler that said, “God Bless Our Home” in neat cross-stitching. It actually was a message from Earth Center which had just come in on the radiotype. I didn’t know what it said because I’d come into my office after the B. F. effect had started. I didn’t think it really said, “God Bless Our Home” because it seemed to. And just then I was mad, I was fed up, and I didn’t care a holler what it actually did say.

You see—maybe I’d better explain—the Blakeslee Field effect occurs when Placet is in mid-position between Argyle I and Argyle II, the two suns it figure eights around. There’s a scientific explanation of it, but it must be expressed in formulas, not in words. It boils down to this; Argyle I is terrene matter and Argyle II contraterrene, or negative matter. Halfway between them—over a considerable stretch of territory—is a field in which light rays are slowed down, way down. They move at about the speed of sound. The result is that if something is moving faster than sound—as Placet itself does—you can still see it coming after it has passed you. It takes the visual image of Placet twenty-six hours to get through the field. By that time, Placet has rounded one of its suns and meets its own image on the way back. In midfield, there’s an image coming and an image going, and it eclipses itself twice, occulting both suns at the same time. A little farther on, it runs into itself coming from the opposite direction—and scares you stiff if you’re watching, even if you know it’s not really happening.

Let me explain it this way before you get dizzy. Say an old-fashioned locomotive is coming toward you, only at a speed much faster than sound. A mile away, it whistles. It passes you and then you hear the whistle, coming from the point a mile back where the locomotive isn’t any more. That’s the auditory effect of an object traveling faster than sound; what I’ve just described is the visual effect of an object traveling—in a figure-eight orbit—faster than its own visual image.

That isn’t the worst of it; you can stay indoors and avoid the eclipsing and the head-on collisions, but you can’t avoid the physio-psychological effect of the Blakeslee Field.

And that, the physio-psychological effect, is something else again. The field does something to the optic nerve centers, or to the part of the brain to which the optic nerves connect, something similar to the effect of certain drugs. You have—you can’t exactly call them hallucinations, because you don’t ordinarily see things that aren’t there, but you get an illusory picture of what is there.

I knew perfectly well that I was sitting at a desk the top of which was glass, and not grass; that the floor under my feet was ordinary plastiplate and not a sheet of rippling water; that the objects on my desk were not a pink flowerpot with a Saturnian lizard sticking in it, but an antique twentieth century inkwell and pen—and that the “God Bless Our Home” sampler was a radiotype message on ordinary radiotype paper. I could verify any of those things by my sense of touch, which the Blakeslee Field doesn’t affect.

You can close your eyes, of course, but you don’t—because even at the height of the effect, your eyesight gives you the relative size and distance of things and if you stay in familiar territory your memory and your reason tell you what they are.

So when the door opened and a two-headed monster walked in, I knew it was Reagan. Reagan isn’t a two-headed monster, but I could recognize the sound of his walk.

I said, “Yes, Reagan?”

The two-headed monster said, “Chief, the machine shop is wobbling. We may have to break the rule not to do any work in midperiod.”

“Birds?” I asked.

Both of his heads nodded. “The underground part of those walls must be like sieves from the birds flying through ’em, and we’d better pour concrete quick. Do you think those new alloy reinforcing bars the Ark ’ll bring will stop them?”

“Sure,” I lied. Forgetting the field, I turned to look at the clock, but there was a funeral wreath of white lilies on the wall where the clock should have been. You can’t tell time from a funeral wreath. I said, “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to reinforce those walls till we had the bars to sink in them. The Ark ’s about due; they’re probably hovering outside right now waiting for us to come out of the field. You think we could wait till—”

There was a crash.

“Yeah, we can wait,” Reagan said. “There went the machine shop, so there’s no hurry at all.”

“Nobody was in there?”

“Nope, but I’ll make sure.” He ran out.

That’s what life on Placet is like. I’d had enough of it; I’d had too much of it. I made up my mind while Reagan was gone.

When he came back, he was a bright blue articulated skeleton.

He said, “O.K., Chief. Nobody was inside.”

“Any of the machines badly smashed?”

He laughed. “Can you look at a rubber beach horse with purple polka dots and tell whether it’s an intact lathe or a busted one? Say, Chief, you know what you look like?”

I said, “If you tell me, you’re fired.”

I don’t know whether I was kidding or not; I was plenty on edge. I opened the drawer of my desk and put the “God Bless Our Home” sampler in it and slammed the drawer shut. I was fed up. Placet is a crazy place and if you stay there long enough you go crazy yourself. One out of ten of Earth Center’s Placet employees has to go back to Earth for psychopathic treatment after a year or two on Placet. And I’d been there three years, almost. My contract was up. I made up my mind, too.

“Reagan,” I said.

He’d been heading for the door. He turned. “Yeah, Chief?”

I said, “I want you to send a message on the radiotype to Earth Center. And get it straight, two words: I quit.”

He said, “O.K., Chief.” He went on out and closed the door.

I sat back and closed my eyes to think. I’d done it now. Unless I ran after Reagan and told him not to send the message, it was done and over and irrevocable. Earth Center’s funny that way; the board is plenty generous in some directions; but once you resign they never let you change your mind. It’s an ironclad rule and ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’s justified on interplanetary and intragalactic projects. A man must be 100 per cent enthusiastic about his job to make a go of it, and once he’s turned against it, he’s lost the keen edge.

I knew the midperiod was about over, but I sat there with my eyes closed just the same. I didn’t want to open them to look at the clock until I could see the clock as a clock and not as whatever it might be this time. I sat there and thought.

I felt a bit hurt about Reagan’s casualness in accepting the message. He’d been a good friend of mine for ten years; he could at least have said he was sorry I was going to leave. Of course there was a fair chance that he might get the promotion, but even if he was thinking that, he could have been diplomatic about it. At least, he could have—

Oh, quit feeling sorry for yourself, I told myself. You’re through with Placet and you’re through with Earth Center, and you’re going back to Earth pretty soon now as soon as they relieve you, and you can get another job there, probably teaching again.

But damn Reagan, just the same. He’d been my student at Earth City Poly, and I’d got him this Placet job and it was a good one for a youngster his age, assistant administrator of a planet with nearly a thousand population. For that matter, my job was a good one for a man my age—I’m only thirty-one myself. An excellent job, except that you couldn’t put up a building that wouldn’t fall down again and— Quit crabbing, I told myself; you’re through with it now. Back to Earth and a teaching job again. Forget it.