Read Ebook: Remember the 4th! by Loomis Noel M

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Ebook has 158 lines and 15566 words, and 4 pages

Remember the 4th!

Slim Coleman's brain-finder worked all too well!

If, as has often been contended, the brain contains a complete record of all events the individual has experienced, consciously or otherwise, then a mechanical means of exploring someone's past might be found. It would show the discrepancies between the most reliable memories of events, and actual sense-impressions received at the time, for example. But few people would like such a device, and those few might like it much too much!

This was a warm day in August--a very warm day. Slim Coleman, my partner in detection work, says the sun is ninety million miles away, but this day it must have sneaked up pretty close. You could even see the heat waves coming up off the sidewalk. You can't fry an egg on the pavement in Fort Worth, though, because you can't stay out in the sun that long.

I mopped my brow, slung the water off my fingertips, and went into the lobby of the National Bank Building. The washed air made it cool and nice in there, and I slowed down to enjoy it. But one of the elevators came down, the door slid open, and the first man to get off was Swanberg, the building manager--our landlord--all dressed up in striped trousers and a fancy vest and wearing a high wing collar and a genuine cravat. He looked impeccable, immaculate--and cool.

I wheeled and marched back outside into the sun. Slim and I were three months behind with the rent, and I figured the only reason Swanberg hadn't ordered us out was that he just hadn't gotten around to it. I didn't want to run into him. If we could have paid our rent I wouldn't have been carrying ham sandwiches and a bottle of coffee in my coat-pockets up to Slim Coleman while he worked on the Brain-Finder.

The heat almost smothered me after the coolness of the lobby. Damn that guy Swanberg, anyway. He was always so perfect, so completely unaffected by the weather, so supercilious and so cold, so mechanical. You knew he'd never had any trouble and never would have, because he would never be swayed by anything but cold logic. It's only we humans with sentiments who get in trouble.

It was his untouchableness that griped me. He was so inhumanly perfect he always made me feel rough and uncouth. You know how it is. If I could just get something on him to throw off that complex, I'd be happy even if we did have to vacate. I guess I spent my time day-dreaming about Swanberg--Swanberg wearing an old-fashioned night-cap, Swanberg slurping his coffee, Swanberg sleeping with his socks on--anything human.

What wouldn't I have given to have a picture of him in the roller coaster the way I had been the night of July the Fourth, with a perfectly strange, perfectly gorgeous, slim blonde throwing her arms around his neck the way that one had around mine. I was willing to bet he had a big, hefty wife at home who made him step.

I shivered whenever I thought about that blonde. She was the kind I would have liked to marry, only one like that was way out of my reach. I didn't have much education and I didn't always know what to do around a real high-class female. That's why I had been riding the roller coaster alone.

Well, there was nothing for it now but the coal-chute. A truck was backed up to the sidewalk and two very black-faced men were pushing coal down a steel chute through a manhole in the sidewalk. I ducked into the alley, unrolled the bundle under my arm, and threw out a pair of khaki coveralls. I hated this, but I did it anyway; I had to. We couldn't afford to have my suit cleaned every time I went in through the sidewalk, so I got into the coveralls and zipped them up. I watched around the corner. When the truckers raised the steel bed, I walked up to the open hole in the sidewalk and dropped in casually.

I'm a short man anyway, a little on the chunky side, and that coal-hole was like a furnace. The sweat poured down my back and chest and the coal-dust poured into my nostrils. I got out of there as fast as I could and took the freight elevator to the twenty-second floor. I went through the hall, unlocked the door, got inside, and locked it again.

"That you, Doc?" came Slim Coleman's deep voice.

Slim Coleman looked up from a work-bench covered with wires, tubes, condensers, and all kinds of electrical gadgets. He had a soldering-iron poised above something that looked like a forty-eight-tube radio. He had deep, deep brown eyes that always looked through everybody, but Slim was a hundred-per-cent. In fact, it was his loyalty that had us behind the eight-ball now. If he had dissolved partnership instead of offering to pay the damages the time I fell from a second-story window and went through a skylight into a whole tableful of expensive orchids--but no, Slim paid it all--twenty-two hundred dollars before he got through, because the cold air ruined a lot more orchids. And I hadn't even gotten the evidence I was after.

"What luck?" said Slim in his husky voice.

"I served them, but look, Slim, I hope you get that Brain-Finder going pretty quick. Not that I mind crawling under the length of three pullman cars and cutting my ankles on the cinders to serve divorce papers on Tom Ellingbery, who's worth a million. Not that I mind doing all that for a measly five bucks, but when I have to come through the sidewalk in the summertime to duck the landlord--"

Coleman's face lighted up. "The Brain-Finder is ready for a tryout," he said. "Shall I show you yourself the night of July the Fourth?"

Well, partly because I guess I didn't have much real faith in the gadget, I said "Okay," and went to get the four ham sandwiches and the coffee in a milk-bottle out of my coat-pockets. That was why I couldn't take off the coat when I put on the coveralls--for fear of spilling the coffee. Then I groaned and ran for the desk. There was a brown puddle spreading on the desk and soaking up my coat. I very nearly said "Damn!"

"I've got your brain wave-length," Slim was saying. I started mopping up with my handkerchief while I hung the coat up to dry. "Now, all I have to do is--come here, Doc!"

I should have been more enthusiastic, but things were going so badly--"I don't care," I told him, "about being a great man, if I can just quit ducking the landlord. I want to walk in under his nose and not be scared of him. If you want to fill my cup to overflowing, just let me use that thing long enough to get something on him."

Slim was already turning dials. Tubes were lighting up. The set was humming. Pretty soon he pointed to a screen, and I damn near lost my breath. There on a screen about twelve by eighteen inches, big enough so there wasn't any mistake, I saw myself on the night of July Fourth, just as I bought one ticket for the roller coaster.

I guess my eyes stuck out a foot, for Slim was looking at me with that kind of sad smile. "Roller coasters," he said gently. "Got enough, Doc?"

I gulped. "Plenty. Cut it off, please." In the screen I saw the blonde just behind me, and I didn't want Slim to see her put her arms around me when the roller coaster went over the dip.

Slim smiled and snapped a bunch of switches. The lights in the tubes went out. "Think what this will mean in criminal prosecutions, to be able to follow a man in the past. Present-day testimony will be archaic. The courts won't have to take anybody's word for anything; they can follow a man and watch him in the past."

"Judge Monday wouldn't admit that kind of evidence," I pointed out.

Slim ran to the door while I ran for my pants. I ducked back into the other room and got them on. I heard the voice. It was a man's voice, and I had heard it before--just recently. I peeked out. Yes, it was Tom Ellingbery. I stayed quiet.

"A pot-bellied little guy just served divorce papers on me," he said harshly. "I got off the train and came here. A friend of mine sent me; I want your services."

"Yes," said Slim.

"Here's a hundred-dollar bill," Tom Ellingbery said. "Start shadowing my wife; get something on her. I'll give you five thousand to get something--ten if it's necessary," he said with a slight leer.

Slim gravely picked up the C note. "We don't do business that way," he said; "but if your wife has been misbehaving we'll find it out."

Ellingbery was a big man with a sharp go-getter look about him. He stared hard at Slim and Slim stared back. Ellingbery's expression didn't show anything; then he left.

Slim locked the door after Ellingbery, and I took off my pants and set up the ironing-board on the desk. Slim went back to adjust the dials on his machine.

"This gadget is a sort of super-sensitive radar," he said as it warmed up. "I can tune it to your brain-waves and pick you up anywhere within forty miles or three months."

A purple indicator began to wink. "It proves I've got brains, anyway," I pointed out.

"Yes, your waves come in at a frequency of approximately 1,832,956,000. That's as close as I can tune it so far, but that's plenty close enough. There are other characteristics, such as power and damping and height of crest and so on, that make it selective enough to pick out any one person in the United States if it could reach that far."

"And then you can see everything I do?"

"No, I can see only what you see with your own eyes."

Then I must have been staring at the blonde. I held my breath when I asked, "Can you tell what I'm thinking?"

"No."

I breathed again.

"I can translate what you say into language, though. Something happens when I throw two hundred and twenty volts into this bank of tubes. As near as I can figure, it creates a 'time-warp'--which doesn't mean much of anything objectively. I don't know how it works; I couldn't even duplicate it. I suppose some high-powered electronics engineer could figure it out, but I don't want anybody but you and me even to know about it. What I'm interested in is what we can do with it."

"What I'm interested in," I said, "is how much money we can make with it."

Slim looked at me with his great burning eyes while the steam rose from under the iron on my pants.

"You're about to find out." The ground-glass screen slowly lighted. A new bank of tubes began to sparkle and then settled down into a greenish glow. Slim turned dials, and there was the figure of a woman on the screen.

"That," said Slim, "is Mrs. Tom Ellingbery."

Well, of course I couldn't see her face. She was playing bridge, apparently. Her hands looked nice. The woman at her left said, "I hear you've filed suit against your husband."

Mrs. Ellingbery reached for a king, but her fingers were nervous. She played a six instead and lost the trick. "Yes," she said quietly, "I have." Her voice was sad.

I waited a minute. Then, "How did you know how to tune in on her?" I asked Slim.

"I got her wave-characteristics when she came up the other day to get us to serve the papers," he said. "I got Tom's today while we were talking. The machine was all set and the recording neFdles made a permanent record."

I swallowed. "Can you get the landlord's characteristics too?"

Slim held up a sheet of ruled paper. "Got his already. I was just practicing; I got him when he was trying to hammer the door down yesterday."

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