Robert F. Young

“ Judith Darrow wasn't really moving out of Valleyview after all. She only thought she was.
Philip went on. The breeze was all around him. It blew through his hair, kissed his cheeks and caressed his forehead. The stars shone palely down. Some of the land was under cultivation, and he could see green things growing in the starlight, and the breeze carried their green breath to his nostrils. He reached the highway and began walking along it. ”

“ On the first day of April of the year of our Lord, 1962, Francis Farnsworth Pfleuger brought into being a Möbius coincidence field and established multiple contact with the twenty-first satellite of the star Sirius, thereby giving the people of Valleyview access, via their back doorways, to a New World. Here we have come to live. Here we have come to raise our children. Here, in this idyllic village, which the noble race that once inhabited this fair planet left behind them when they migrated to the Greater Magellanic Cloud, we have settled down to create a new and better Way of Life. ”

“ Indeed, I think that the only machine the Sirians lacked was one that could manufacture food out of whole cloth. But consider the most important advantage of all: when we go to bed at night we can do so without being afraid that sometime during our sleep a thermonuclear missile will descend out of the sky and devour us in one huge incandescent bite. If we've made a culture hero out of our village idiot, it's no more than right, for unwittingly or not, he opened up the gates of paradise. ”

“ He set off across the plain in Zarathustra's wake. He had a speech already prepared, and when Judith met him at the gate with wide and wondering eyes, he delivered it without preamble. “Judith,” he said, “I am contemptuous of the notion that some things are meant to be and others aren't, and I firmly believe in my own free will; but when your dog stows away in the back seat of my car two times running and makes it impossible for me not to see you again, then there must be something afoot which neither you nor I can do a thing about. ”

“ For still another, there were no clouds for the moon to hide behind, and yet the moon had disappeared.
Zarathustra trotted over to where he was standing, gazed up at him with golden eyes, then headed in the direction of the lights. Philip took a deep breath, and followed him. He would have visited the village anyway, Zarathustra or no Zarathustra. Was it Pfleugersville? He knew suddenly that it was.
He had not gone far before he saw a highway. A pair of headlights appeared suddenly in the direction of the village and resolved rapidly into a moving van. ”

“ It was Philip's first experience in evaluating an entire village, but he had a knack for estimating the worth of property, and by the time noon came around, he had the job half done. “If you people had made even half an effort to keep your places up,” he told Judith over cold-cut sandwiches and coffee in her living room, “we could have asked for a third again as much. Why in the world did you let everything go to pot just because you were moving some place else?”
She shrugged. “It's hard to get anyone to do housework these days—not to mention gardening. ”

“ When Francis Pfleuger's field had come into being, something had happened to the back doors of Valleyview that caused them to open upon a planet which one of the local star-gazers promptly identified as Sirius XXI. The good folk of Valleyview had no idea of how such a state of affairs could exist, to say nothing of how it could have come about, till one of the scientists whom they asked to join them as a part of the plan which they presently devised to make their forthcoming utopia self-sufficient, came up with a theory that explained everything. ”

“ When you've lived in a shack all your life and you suddenly acquire a palace, you cease caring very much what the shack looks like.”
“Shack!” Philip was indignant. “Why, this house is lovely! Practically every house you've shown me is lovely. Old, yes—but oldness is an essential part of the loveliness of houses. If Pfleugersville is on the order of most housing developments I've seen, you and your neighbors are going to be good and sorry one of these fine days!”
“But Pfleugersville isn't on the order of most housing developments you've seen. In fact, it's not a housing development at all. ”

“ Judith said. “It has misled man ever since he first climbed down from the trees. It was common sense that inspired Ptolemy's theory of cosmogony. It was common sense that inspired the burning of Giordano Bruno....”
The fact that common sense indicated that 8.8 light years separated Earth and Sirius XXI in common-sense reality didn't prove that 8.8 light years separated them in a form of reality that was outside common-sense's dominion—i.e., Möbius space—and Francis Pfleuger's field had demonstrated as much. ”

“ It seems to me that you're exacting an exorbitant price from the world for your husband's having sold you out for a brunette and a redhead and a pint of Scotch. I've been sold out lots of times for less than that, but I found out long ago that the world doesn't pay its bills even when you ask a fair price for the damages done to you. I suggest that you write the matter off as a bad debt and forget about it; then maybe you'll become a human being again. ”

“ At the mention of his name, Francis Pfleuger came hurrying over to where they were standing. “E,” he declared, “equals mc2.”
“Thank you, Francis,” Judith said. Then, to Philip, “Shall we walk?”
They started down one of the converging paths, Zarathustra bringing up the rear. Behind them, Francis returned to his Narcissistic study of himself in stone. “We were neighbors back in Valleyview,” Judith said, “but I never dreamed he thought quite so much of himself. Ever since we put up that statue last week, he's been staring at it night and day. Sometimes he even brings his lunch with him.” ”

“ It's ironic in a way that Pfleugersville should have been discovered by someone with an IQ of less than seventy-five.”
“No one with an IQ of less than seventy-five could create the sort of field you were talking about.”
“He didn't create it deliberately—he brought it into being accidentally by means of a machine he was building to tie knots with. Or at least that's what he says. But we do know that there was such a machine because we saw its fused parts in his kitchen, and there's no question but what it was the source of the field. ”

“ The park was behind them now, and they were walking down a pleasant street. “And when you and your neighbors discovered the village, did you decide to become expatriates right then and there?” Philip asked.
She nodded. “Do you blame us? You've seen for yourself what a lovely place it is. But it's far more than that. In Valleyview, we had unemployment. Here, there is work for everyone, and a corresponding feeling of wantedness and togetherness. True, most of the work is farmwork, but what of that? We have every conceivable kind of machine to help us in our tasks. ”

“ Just make sure that your ‘masters’ quarters are superior to your own, and that you behave like dogs in their presence. And when you fabricate your records concerning your mythical departed masters, see to it that they do not conflict with the records we fabricated concerning ours. It would be desirable indeed if our Sirian-human society could be based on less deceitful grounds than these, but the very human attitude we are exploiting renders this impossible at the moment. ”

“ To get down to the matter uppermost in your minds: Yes, the experiment was a success, and if you will use your psycho-transmutative powers to remodel your villages along the lines my constituents and I remodeled ours and to build enough factories to give your ‘masters’ that sense of self-sufficiency so essential to their well-being, and if you will ‘plant’ your disassembled Multiple Möbius-Knot Dynamos in such a way that the resultant fields will be ascribed to accidental causes, you will have no more trouble attracting personnel than we did. ”

“ Philip said.
He looked around the room intending to say good-by to Zarathustra, but Zarathustra was nowhere to be seen. Finally he went into the hall, opened the front door and stepped out into the night. A full moon was rising in the east. He walked down the moonlit walk, climbed into his car and threw his brief case and the manila envelopes into the back seat. Soon, Valleyview was far behind him.
But not as far as it should have been. He couldn't get the green rose out of his mind. He couldn't get Judith Darrow out of his mind either. ”

“ Judith concluded, “our back doors should have been affected rather than our front doors, for example, is inexplicable—unless it was because Francis built the machine in his kitchen. In any event, when they did become nodal areas, they manifested themselves on Sirius XXI, and the dogs in the immediate vicinity associated them with the doorways of their departed masters and began whining to be let in.”
“Their departed masters?”
“The race that built this village. The race that built the factories and developed the encompassing farms. ”

“ People are reluctant about moving into empty neighborhoods, and businessmen aren't keen about opening up business places before the customers are available. But I think it'll work out all right. There's a plaza not far from here that will provide a place to shop until the local markets are functioning, and Valleyview is part of a centralized school district. ”

“ Judith paused beside a white gate. “Yes, that's true,” she said. “To keep our secret, we lived in our old houses while we were settling our affairs, closing down our few industries and setting up a new monetary system. In fact, we even kept our ... the children in the dark for fear that they would talk at school. Suppose, however, we had publicized our utopia. Can't you imagine the mockery opportunists would have made out of it? The village we found was large enough to accommodate ourselves and the few friends, relatives and specialists we asked to join us, but no larger ”

“ He would have to leave his car behind him, but that was all right. Leaving it to rust away in a ghost town was better than selling it to some opportunistic dealer for a sum he would have no use for anyway. He parked it by the curb, and after getting his suitcase out of the trunk, walked up to the front door of Number 23. He unlocked and opened the door, and after Zarathustra followed him inside, closed and locked it behind him. He strode through the house to the kitchen. He unlocked and opened the back door. ”

“ The yellow dress she was wearing did not match the tone of her voice, and the frilly blue apron tied round her waist belied the frostiness of her gray-green eyes. Nevertheless, her rancor was real. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn't know your back yard was out of bounds.” Then, “If you'll give me a list of the places you want evaluated, I'll get started right away.” ”

“ In case of illness, you will already have taken the necessary steps to transfer the property to another agent who, in your opinion, is as completely honest as you are, and in case of death, you will already have taken the necessary steps to bequeath the property to the same agent ”

“ But for parts unknown, not Pfleugersville. Pfleugersville wasn't accessible then, anyway. He had a brunette on one arm, a redhead on the other, and a pint of Cutty Sark in his hip pocket.”
Philip was distressed. “I ... I didn't mean to pry,” he said. “I'm—”
“Sorry? Why should you be? Some men are born to settle down and raise children and others are born to drink and philander. It's as simple as that.”
“Is it?” something made Philip ask. ”

“ However, you will find that all of this can be ironed out eventually through the human children, with whom you will be thrown into daily contact and whom you will find to possess all of their parents' abiding love for us and none of their parents' superior attitude toward us. ”