Fredric Brown: Placet Is a Crazy Place

“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 practically an iron-clad rule and ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’s justified on interplanetary and intragalactic projects. A man must be a hundred percent 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 sec 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 about 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 darn 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.

I was tired. I put my head on my arms on top of the desk, and I must have dozed off for a minute.

I looked up at the sound of footsteps coming through the doorway; they weren’t Reagan’s footsteps. The illusions were getting better now, I saw. It was—or appeared to be—a gorgeous redhead. It couldn’t be, of course. There are a few women on Placet, mostly wives of technicians, but she said, “Don’t you remember me, Mr. Rand?” It was a woman; her voice was a woman’s voice, and a beautiful voice. Sounded vaguely familiar, too.

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “How can I recognize you at midper—” My eyes suddenly caught a glimpse of the clock past her shoulder, and it was a clock and not a funeral wreath or a cuckoo’s nest, and I realized suddenly that everything else in the room was back to normal. And that meant midperiod was over, and I wasn’t seeing things.

My eyes went back to the redhead. She must be real, I realized. And suddenly I knew her, although she’d changed, changed plenty. All changes were improvements, although Michaelina Witt had been a very pretty girl when she’d been in my Extraterrestrial Botany III class at Earth City Polytech four… no, five years ago.

She’d been pretty, then. Now she was beautiful. She was stunning. How had the teletalkies missed her? Or had they? What was she doing here? She must have just got off the Ark, but— I realized I was still gawking at her. I stood up so fast I almost fell across the desk.

“Of course I remember you, Miss Witt,” I stammered. “Won’t you sit down? How did you come here? Have they relaxed the no visitors rule?”

She shook her head, smiling. “I’m not a visitor, Mr. Rand. Center advertised for a technician-secretary for you, and I tried for the job and got it, subject to your approval, of course. I’m on probation for a month, that is.”

“Wonderful,” I said. It was a masterpiece of understatement. I started to elaborate on it: “Marvelous—”

There was the sound of someone clearing his throat. I looked around; Reagan was in the doorway. This time not as a blue skeleton or a two-headed monster. Just plain Reagan.

He said, “Answer to your radiotype just came.” He crossed over and dropped it on my desk. I looked at it. “O.K. August 19th,” it read. My momentary wild hope that they’d failed to accept my resignation went down among the widgie birds. They’d been as brief about it as I’d been.

August 19th—the next arrival of the Ark. They certainly weren’t wasting any time—mine or theirs. Four days!

Reagan said, “I thought you’d want to know right away, Phil.”

“Yeah,” I told him. I glared at him. “Thanks.” With a touch of spite—or maybe more than a touch—I thought, well, my bucko, you don’t get the job, or that message would have said so; they’re sending a replacement on the next shuttle of the Ark.

But I didn’t say that; the veneer of civilization was too thick. I said, “Miss Witt, I’d like you to meet—” They looked at each other and started to laugh, and I remembered. Of course, Reagan and Michaelina had both been in my botany class, as had Michaelina’s twin brother, Ichabod. Only, of course, no one ever called the red-headed twins Michaelina and Ichahod. It was Mike and Ike, once you knew them.

Reagan said, “I met Mike getting off the Ark. I told her how to find your office since you weren’t there to do the honors.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Did the reinforcing bars come?”

“Guess so. They unloaded some crates. They were in a hurry to pull out again. They’ve gone.”

I grunted.

Reagan said, “Well, I’ll check the ladings. Just came to give you the radiotype; thought you’d want the good news right away.”

He went out, and I glared after him. The louse. The—Michaelina said, “Am I to start to work right away, Mr. Rand?”

I straightened out my face and managed a smile. “Of course not,” I told her. “You’ll want to look around the place, first. See the scenery and get acclimated. Want to stroll into the village for a drink?”

“Of course.”

We strolled down the path toward the little cluster of buildings, all small, one-story, one square.

She said, “It’s… it’s nice. Feels like I’m walking on air, I’m so light. Exactly what is the gravity?”

“Point seven four,” I said. “If you weigh… umm, a hundred twenty pounds on Earth, you weigh about eighty-nine pounds here. And on you, it looks good.”

She laughed. “Thank you, professor—oh, that’s right; you’re not a professor now. You’re now my boss, and I must call you Mr. Rand.”

“Unless you’re willing to make it Phil, Michaelina.”

“If you’d call me Mike; I detest Michaelina, almost as much as Ike hates Ichabod.”

“How is Ike?”

“Fine. Has a student instructor job at Poly, but he doesn’t like it much.” She looked ahead at the village. “Why so many small buildings instead of a few bigger ones?”

“Because the average life of a structure of any kind on Placet is about three weeks. And you never know when one is going to fall down—with someone inside. It’s our biggest problem. All we can do is make them small and light, except the foundations, which we make as strong as possible. Thus far, nobody has been hurt seriously in the collapse of a building, for that reason, but… Did you feel that?”

“The vibration? What was it, an earthquake?”