Andre Norton - The Science Fiction anthology

He cleared his throat. “Too bad we can’t listen to more phono-commercials, but even when there isn’t a crisis on the agenda, I find I have to budget my listening time. One minute per hour strikes a reasonable balance between duty and self-indulgence.”

The nearest wall began to sing:

Mister J. Augustus Krumbine,

We all think you’re fine, fine, fine, fine.

Now out of the skyey blue

Come some telegrams for you.

The wall opened to a small heart shape toward the center and a sheaf of pale yellow envelopes arced out and plopped on the middle of the desk. Krumbine started to leaf through them, scanning the little transparent windows.

“Hm, Electronic Soap ... Better Homes and Landing Platforms ... Psycho-Blinkers ... Your Girl Next Door ... Poppy-Woppies ... Poopsy-Woopsies....”

He started to open an envelope, then, after a quick look around and an apologetic smile at Potshelter, dumped them all on the disposal hopper, which gargled briefly.

“After all, there is a crisis this morning,” he said in a defensive voice.

Potshelter nodded absently. “I can remember back before personalized delivery and rhyming robots,” he observed. “But how I’d miss them now—so much more distingué than the hives with their non-personalized radio, TV and stereo advertising. For that matter, I believe there are some backward areas on Terra where the great advertising potential of telephones and telegrams hasn’t been fully realized and they are still used in part for personal communication. Now me, I’ve never in my life sent or received a message except on my walky-talky.” He patted his breast pocket.

Krumbine nodded, but he was a trifle shocked and inclined to revise his estimate of Potshelter’s social status. Krumbine conducted his own social correspondence solely by telepathy. He shared with three other SBI officials a private telepath—a charming albino girl named Agnes.

“Yes, and it’s a very handsome walky-talky,” he assured Potshelter a little falsely. “Suits you. I like the upswept antenna.” He drummed on the desk and swallowed another blue tranquilizer. “Dammit, what’s happened to those machines? They ought to have the two spies here by now. Did you notice that the second—the intended recipient of the letter, I mean—seems to be female? Another good Terran name, too, Jane Dough. Hive in Upper Manhattan.” He began to tap the envelope sharply against the desk. “Dammit, where are they?”

“Excuse me,” Potshelter said hesitantly, “but I’m wondering why you haven’t read the message inside the envelope.”

Krumbine looked at him blankly. “Great Scott, I assumed that at least it was in some secret code, of course. Normally I’d have asked you to have Pink Wastebasket try her skill on it, but....” His eyes widened and his voice sank. “You don’t mean to tell me that it’s—”

Potshelter nodded grimly. “Hand-written, too. Yes.”

Krumbine winced. “I keep trying to forget that aspect of the case.” He dug out the message with shaking fingers, fumbled it open and read:

Dear Jane ,

It must surprise you that I know your name, for our hives are widely separated. Do you recall day before yesterday when your guided tour of Grand Central Spaceport got stalled because the guide blew a fuse? I was the young man with hair in the tour behind yours. You were a little frightened and a groupmistress was reassuring you. The machine spoke your name.

Since then I have been unable to forget you. When I go to sleep, I dream of your face looking up sadly at the mistress’s kindly photocells. I don’t know how to get in touch with you, but my grandfather has told me stories his grandfather told him that his grandfather told him about young men writing what he calls love-letters to young ladies. So I am writing you a love-letter.

I work in a first-class advertising house and I will slip this love-letter into an outgoing ten-thousand-pack and hope.

Do not be frightened of me, Jane. I am no caveman except for my hair. I am not insane. I am emotionally disturbed, but in a way that no machine has ever described to me. I want only your happiness.

Sincerely ,

Richard Rowe

Krumbine slumped back in his chair, which braced itself manfully against him, and looked long and thoughtfully at Potshelter. “Well, if that’s a code, it’s certainly a fiendishly subtle one. You’d think he was talking to his Girl Next Door.”

Potshelter nodded wonderingly. “I only read as far as where they were planning to blow up Grand Central Spaceport and all the guides in it.”

“Judas Priest, I think I have it!” Krumbine shot up. “It’s a pilot advertisement—Boy Next Door or—that kind of thing—printed to look like hand-writtening, which would make all the difference. And the pilot copy got mailed by accident—which would mean there is no real Richard Rowe.”

At that instant, the door dilated and two blue detective engines hustled a struggling young man into the office. He was slim, rather handsome, had a bushy head of hair that had somehow survived evolution and radioactive fallout, and across the chest and back of his paper singlet was neatly stamped: “Richard Rowe.”

When he saw the two men, he stopped struggling and straightened up. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, “but these police machines must have made a mistake. I’ve committed no crime.”

Then his gaze fell on the hand-addressed envelope on Krumbine’s desk and he turned pale.

Krumbine laughed harshly. “No crime! No, not at all. Merely using the mails to communicate. Ha!”

The young man shrank back. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Sorry, he says! Do you realize that your insane prank has resulted in the destruction of perhaps a half-billion pieces of first-class advertising?—in the strangulation of a postal station and the paralysis of Lower Manhattan?—in the mobilization of SBI reserves, the de-mothballing of two divisions of G. I. machines and the redeployment of the Solar Battle Fleet? Good Lord, boy, why did you do it?”

Richard Rowe continued to shrink but he squared his shoulders. “I’m sorry, sir, but I just had to. I just had to get in touch with Jane Dough.”

“A girl from another hive? A girl you’d merely gazed at because a guide happened to blow a fuse?” Krumbine stood up, shaking an angry finger. “Great Scott, boy, where was Your Girl Next Door?”

Richard Rowe stared bravely at the finger, which made him look a trifle cross-eyed. “She died, sir, both of them.”

“But there should be at least six.”

“I know, sir, but of the other four, two have been shipped to the Adirondacks on vacation and two recently got married and haven’t been replaced.”

Potshelter, a faraway look in his eyes, said softly, “I think I’m beginning to understand—”

But Krumbine thundered on at Richard Rowe with, “Good Lord, I can see you’ve had your troubles, boy. It isn’t often we have these shortages of Girls Next Door, so that temporarily a boy can’t marry the Girl Next Door, as he always should. But, Judas Priest, why didn’t you take your troubles to your psychiatrist, your groupmaster, your socializer, your Queen Mother?”

“My psychiatrist is being overhauled, sir, and his replacement short-circuits every time he hears the word ‘trouble.’ My groupmaster and socializer are on vacation duty in the Adirondacks. My Queen Mother is busy replacing Girls Next Door.”

“Yes, it all fits,” Potshelter proclaimed excitedly. “Don’t you see, Krumbine? Except for a set of mischances that would only occur once in a billion billion times, the letter would never have been conceived or sent.”

“You may have something there,” Krumbine concurred. “But in any case, boy, why did you—er—written this letter to this particular girl? What is there about Jane Dough that made you do it?”