“Business. Just here overnight. See a man named Wilcox.”
“Oh, Wilcox. Our local screwball—but don’t get me wrong; he’s a smart guy all right. Well, you can see him tomorrow. You’re coming home with me now, for dinner and to stay overnight. Maisie’ll be glad to see you. Come on, my buggy’s over here.”
“Sure. Finished whatever you were here for?”
“Yep, just to pick up the news on who came in on the train. And you came in, so here we go.”
They got in the buggy, and George picked up the reins and said, “Giddup, Bessie,” to the mare. Then, “What are you doing now, Pete?”
“Research. For a gas supply company. Been working on a more efficient mantle, one that’ll give more light and be less destructible. This fellow Wilcox wrote us he had something along that line; the company sent me up to look it over. If it’s what he claims, I’ll take him back to New York with me, and let the company lawyers dicker with him.”
“How’s business, otherwise?”
“Great, George. Gas; that’s the coming thing. Every new home’s being piped for it, and plenty of the old ones. How about you?”
“We got it. Luckily we had one of the old Linotypes that ran the metal pot off a gas burner, so it was already piped in. And our home is right over the office and print shop, so all we had to do was pipe it up a flight. Great stuff, gas. How’s New York?”
“Fine, George. Down to its last million people, and stabilizing there. No crowding and plenty of room for everybody. The air—why, it’s better than Atlantic City, without gasoline fumes.”
“Enough horses to go around yet?”
“Almost. But bicycling’s the craze; the factories can’t turn out enough to meet the demand. There’s a cycling club in almost every block and all the able-bodied cycle to and from work. Doing ’em good, too; a few more years and the doctors will go on short rations.”
“You got a bike?”
“Sure, a pre-vader one. Average five miles a day on it, and I eat like a horse.”
George Bailey chuckled. “I’ll have Maisie include some hay in the dinner. Well, here we are. Whoa, Bessie.”
An upstairs window went up, and Maisie looked out and down. She called out, “Hi, Pete!”
“Extra plate, Maisie,” George called. “We’ll be up soon as I put the horse away and show Pete around downstairs.”
He led Pete from the barn into the back door of the newspaper shop. “Our Linotype!” he announced proudly, pointing.
“How’s it work? Where’s your steam engine?”
George grinned. “Doesn’t work yet; we still hand set the type. I could get only one steamer and had to use that on the press. But I’ve got one on order for the Lino, and coming up in a month or so. When we get it, Pop Jenkins, my printer, is going to put himself out of a job teaching me to run it. With the Linotype going, I can handle the whole thing myself.”
“Kind of rough on Pop?”
George shook his head. “Pop eagerly awaits the day. He’s sixty-nine and wants to retire. He’s just staying on until I can do without him. Here’s the press—a honey of a little Miehle; we do some job work on it, too. And this is the office, in front. Messy, but efficient.”
Mulvaney looked around him and grinned. “George, I believe you’ve found your niche. You were cut out for a small-town editor.”
“Cut out for it? I’m crazy about it. I have more fun than everybody. Believe it or not, I work like a dog, and like it. Come on upstairs.”
On the stairs, Pete asked, “And the novel you were going to write?”
“Half done, and it isn’t bad. But it isn’t the novel I was going to write; I was a cynic then. Now—”
“George, I think the waveries were your best friends.”
“Waveries?”
“Lord, how long does it take slang to get from New York out to the sticks? The vaders. of course. Some professor who specializes in studying them described one as a wavery place in the ether, and ‘wavery’ stuck—Hello there, Maisie, my girl. You look like a million.”
They ate leisurely. Almost apologetically, George brought out beer, in cold bottles. “Sorry, Pete, haven’t anything stronger to offer you. But I haven’t been drinking lately. Guess—”
“You on the wagon, George?”
“Not on the wagon, exactly. Didn’t swear off or anything, but haven’t had a drink of strong liquor in almost a year. I don’t know why, but—”
“I do,” said Pete Mulvaney. “I know exactly why you don’t—because I don’t drink much either, for the same reason. We don’t drink because we don’t have to—say, isn’t that a radio over there?”
George chuckled. “A souvenir. Wouldn’t sell it for a fortune. Once in a while I like to look at it and think of the awful guff I used to sweat out for it. And then I go over and click the switch and nothing happens. Just silence. Silence is the most wonderful thing in the world, sometimes, Pete. Of course I couldn’t do that if there was any juice, because I’d get vaders then. I suppose they’re still doing business at the same old stand?”
“Yep, the Research Bureau checks daily. Try to get up current with a little generator run by a steam turbine. But no dice; the vaders suck it up as fast as it’s generated.”
“Suppose they’ll ever go away?”
Mulvaney shrugged. “Helmetz thinks not. He thinks they propagate in proportion to the available electricity. Even if the development of radio broadcasting somewhere else in the Universe would attract them there, some would stay here—and multiply like flies the minute we tried to use electricity again. And meanwhile, they’ll live on the static electricity in the air. What do you do evenings up here?”
“Do? Read, write, visit with one another, go to the amateur groups—Maisie’s chairman of the Blakestown Players, and I play bit parts in it. With the movies out everybody goes in for theatricals and we’ve found some real talent. And there’s the chess-and-checker club, and cycle trips and picnics—there isn’t time enough. Not to mention music. Everybody plays an instrument, or is trying to.”
“You?”
“Sure, cornet. First cornet in the Silver Concert Band, with solo parts. And—Good Heavens! Tonight’s rehearsal, and we’re giving a concert Sunday afternoon. I hate to desert you, but—”
“Can’t I come around and sit in? I’ve got my flute in the brief case here, and—”
“Flute? We’re short on flutes. Bring that around and Si Perkins, our director, will practically shanghai you into staying over for the concert Sunday and it’s only three days, so why not? And get it out now; we’ll play a few old timers to warm up. Hey, Maisie, skip those dishes and come on in to the piano!”
While Pete Mulvaney went to the guest room to get his flute from the brief case, George Bailey picked up his cornet from the top of the piano and blew a soft, plaintive little minor run on it. Clear as a bell; his lip was in good shape tonight.
And with the shining silver thing in his hand he wandered over to the window and stood looking out into the night. It was dusk out and the rain had stopped.
A high-stepping horse clop-clopped by and the bell of a bicycle jangled. Somebody across the street was strumming a guitar and singing. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
The scent of spring was soft and wet in the moist air. Peace and dusk.
Distant rolling thunder.
God damn it, he thought, if only there was a bit of lightning.
He missed the lightning.