The Blunderer

MARIUS Baum looked at himself in the mirror with distaste. He often disliked himself—and never more than when he tried to "loosen up" or "be human" as his well-wishers were always urging he do.

The sight in the mirror would have repelled an even less self-critical man than Marius Baum. For his stocky form was encased in an emerald silk ballet-suit that had once clothed a dancer who portrayed Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake.

From the waist dangled a "ray-gun"—actually a child's toy, a flashlight in the form of a pistol. A scarlet cape topped off the outfit. Out of this gaudery rose the head of Marius Baum—an owlish-looking head with a swarthy skin, a bush of tightly-curled black hair and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. Marius winced.

Baum was dressed as the "man of the future" because Violet Rogers had told him she would go with him to the Hallowe'en party given by the engineers of the Laboratories only if he would go in costume. Much as he hated the idea of dressing up he had given in when confronted with this bald choice—no costume, no Violet.

His lip curled as he looked at the reflection. You cold fish, he thought. You stuffed shirt. You human slide-rule. You gargoyle.

However, since to stand sneering at one's own image is at best a tedious and unprofitable occupation Baum took off the fantastic cape, rolled it up, donned his overcoat and went out. On the front step of the house where he roomed he took a quick look up and down the street, then scuttled across the sidewalk and fairly leaped into his car.

A light drizzle was just trailing off into a mist. The slick black asphalt cast back colored reflections of the stoplights. Baum drove slowly through the early October dusk, wishing he had worn only a slicker over his costume. The combination of ballet-suit and overcoat was uncomfortably warm but he did not have the brass to discard the latter.

A NORMALLY careful driver, he drove more meticulously than ever. If he incurred the least mishap it would be horribly embarrassing to have to explain to some stupid sparrow-cop why he was driving around the city in a suit of long green underwear.

He took a good look in the rear-view mirrors from time to time to see if by any chance he were being followed. Not that anybody had ever actually followed him as far as he knew—but he suspected that if They ever wanted to find out what the Laboratories were up to They might well start working on the Classified Projects editor. He had not shared this speculation with anybody else, partly from natural taciturnity and partly from fear of ridicule.

One trouble with him, he continued, morosely introspective, was that he saw other people's faults too clearly for them to like him, saw his own too clearly even to like himself. Like that man in Gilbert and Sullivan—

"A charitable action I can skillfully dissect;

And interested motives I'm delighted to detect;

To everybody's prejudice I know a thing or two;

I can tell a woman's age in half a minute—and I do. But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can, Yet everybody says I am a disagreeable man!

And I can't think why!"

"Vi!" he called.

"Coming." And there she was, looking enchanting in her concept of the "woman of the future." Her costume consisted mainly of those French sun-suits that covered only the few ultimate square inches and, on top of that, an old velvet opera-cloak with an ermine collar, such as were the height of swank in the early years of the century. In fact Violet's finding of this garment in a trunk in her attic had given her this loathsome idea in the first place.

"How cold is it?" she asked.

"Warm. Around sixty."

"Then this will be enough," she said, enfolding herself in the opera-cape.

Baum ignored a taunt from Violet's younger brother about "Superman" and hurried the girl out into his automobile.

"How are you?" he asked gravely as they got under way.

"Fine. Where did you say this was being held?"

"At the Bradford." Then he relapsed into silence. While he was never a loquacious man the presence of Violet Rogers seemed to tie his tongue completely.

Maybe he ought to take up drinking. Alcohol was said to loosen up inhibited types like him. But not yet—not while he had the editorship. That was too responsible and confidential a job for him to let his tongue be loosened on any pretext.

Bump!

The car ahead of Baum had begun to make a left turn just as another car coming in the other direction, having slowed down as if to yield the right-of-way, started up again and sped across the intersection. The car ahead jammed on its brakes. So did Marius Baum—but not quite soon enough.

Now he was in for it. And if his garb would arouse comment when exposed to the shameful light of publicity, what about the almost non-existent one in which Violet was clad? He began to get out, feeling in his overcoat pocket for the wallet that held his driver's license—for the ballet-suit had no pockets. A man was getting out of the other car too.

"Pull over to the curb, you guys!" said the harsh voice of authority as a cop materialized out of the darkness and began unsnarling the traffic that had piled up around the two stalled automobiles.

BAUM got back into his car. So did the other driver and they moved their vehicles over to the nearest curb and got out again. Baum, looking at the front end of his machine, could see no damage except a small mark on the paint of his left front fender. Not even a dent.

The other driver was meanwhile examining the rear of his car. Presently he took a few steps towards Baum, saying, "No damage here."

"None here either," said Baum. "But just in case ..." And he extended his wallet with the license showing through one of the little plastic compartments.

The other driver got out a small pad and pencil and copied down the data given therein. Then he tendered his license in turn for Baum to copy.

"What you got on, mister?" said the cop, who had been inspecting the cars himself.

Baum realized that he had left his overcoat unbuttoned because of the temperature and that his man-of-the-future costume was fully visible.

"I'm on my way to a costume party," he said weakly.

"Hm," said the cop. "These cars don't seem damaged none, do they?" And he moved away to direct the still-fouled traffic at the intersection.

As Baum looked up from copying the other driver's license be became aware that the other occupants of the strange automobile had also got out and were standing around him. He could see by the street-light overhead that they were all dressed exactly alike—very plainly, in dark double-breasted suits, white shirts and dark neckties.

Ominously silent, they moved in on him from all sides. The thought struck Baum that they might be a gang of criminals or spies. Would they dare molest him with a policeman directing traffic a few yards away? One good yell

Even as he filled his lungs a bright light flashed in his eyes. His breath went out with a whoosh. In that fraction of a second all the starch had somehow gone out of him. He felt as weak as water, not physical weakness but a feebleness of will or spirit that left him limply receptive to any command or suggestion.

It was not long in coming. "Get in," said one of the men.

Like a man in a dream Marius Baum climbed into the strange car, which started up and whizzed away into the darkness. As they zipped around the next corner, Baum heard, faintly, the sound of a police-whistle. Dimly he apprehended that Violet, when she saw him get into the other automobile, must have climbed out of the one she was sitting in and accosted the policeman.

No further sounds followed them as they careened around other corners until Baum utterly lost track of where he was. Not that in his present state he much cared. He observed all these events with the sluggish detachment of a man sitting through a movie that bores him.

A long time later the car stopped. "Get out," said a voice, and Baum shambled up the front steps of an old brownstone house. They hustled him up a flight of stairs and into a room bare except for a large full-length mirror screwed to one wall.

One of the blue-suited men stepped up to the mirror and rapped sharply against the glass with a ring on one of his fingers, thus—

AND immediately the reflections in the mirror dissolved into mist so that they looked more like images on a television screen out of focus than true reflections.

"Come on," said one of the men and Baum walked with them through the mist.

He stepped into another room, quite different from the one he had left. Instead of a bare inclosure in a creaky old private house this looked like the reception-room of some public institution or industrial concern. On the linoleum-covered floor stood a plain desk and behind the desk sat a young man dressed (as Baum noted with a slight stir of surprise) much as he himself was, in a red outfit resembling a ballet-suit.

One of the men escorting Baum said something that sounded like, "The Dimai Jich!"

Whereupon the man at the desk called, "Pass five!"

There was a clank and a big gate of thick metal bars, like that into the safe-deposit vault of a bank, swung open. Baum had a glimpse of the man who swung it—another fellow in a union-suit, but this time, with a pistol of sorts dangling in a holster from his belt. He might have been another guest at the Engineers' Hallowe'en party who by some strange coincidence had decided to dress up in a costume of the same sort as that Baum wore.

The gate clanged shut behind them. They walked down the hall of a building which, judging by its looks, must be devoted to some technical enterprise—a hospital or laboratory building, perhaps.

PRESENTLY Baum's captors turned into a room that looked like a doctor's office. A man in black with a little white goatee on his chin sat behind a desk. Behind him a window opened onto landscaped grounds.

Through this window Baum caught a glimpse of something that stirred his interest despite the flaccid state of his volition. Beyond the hedges and lawns stood a tall iron fence and beyond the fence something vast and slaty-gray moved. It was an animal somewhat on the order of a sauropod dinosaur—a brontosaurus or diplodocus—and it was eating the long grass that grew beyond the fence.

"Here he is," said one of the escort.

The man at the desk looked at Baum, then opened his desk drawer and took out a sheet of paper with half-tone cuts and printing on it.

"Nonsense," said he of the beard. "He's no more like Dimai than I am. "You've made a mistake."

Baum's bound mind wondered vaguely at the fact that these people spoke common General American English. It would have been less surprising had they spoken Russian or Martian—assuming such a language as Martian existed.

"But looks at his clothes!" said one of the men in the blue serge suits.

"Let's see your clothes, son," said the beard.

Baum obediently shucked his overcoat.

"Hm," said Whiskers. "This does seem to call for an explanation. Prisoner, how come you're wearing Antichthonese costume? Have you changed clothes with Dimai?"

"I didn't know it was Ant—well, that it was the kind of costume you say it is. I rented it for a fancy-dress party."

Goatee chuckled. "See? Now you'll have to start over. It's not likely you'll find him in his original suit when he's been gone as many hours as this. As for you, son, I reckon we owe you an apology."

A light flashed in Baum's face again and he heard the beard's voice saying sharply, "Wake up!"

Life seemed to flow back into him, and Baum realized that he had regained his will. "Now," he said belligerently, "maybe you'll explain ..."

The man in black held up his hand. "Later. First I'll have to know a bit about you. McMichael, you stay here. The rest of you go about your business. Now, my young friend, suppose you tell us who you are?"

The biggest of the four men in the double-breasted suits settled himself into a chair while the others filed out.

"Why should I tell you?" said Baum in tones of cold defiance. "Who are you?"

The other man smiled. "We seem to be at an impasse. If you'll tell me who you think we are, maybe we can clear things up."

"Aren't you working for Uncle Larry?"

"Uncle Larry?" said the other, plainly puzzled.

"Yes. Lavrenti Beria."

"Oh, you mean the Commies?" The man in black opened his mouth and laughed loud and long. "No," he said when he got himself under control. "We aren't. In fact we're after Dimai because he is. Now will you tell us about yourself?"

"Well," said Baum, somewhat mollified, more puzzled than ever and still suspicious, "my name's Marius Baum, I'm a native-born American and I have a technical editorial job with the U. S. Government." He gave a few more details of his background, avoiding any mention of the confidential nature of his work.

He concluded, "Where am I then? In another dimension?"

His interlocutor winced. "You're a smart lad but don't use 'dimension' in that pseudo-scientific sense! Call it another continuum."

"All right, another continuum. On a planet that occupies the same space as ours, only in this other plane—"

"Not 'plane'—that's occultism. Continuum."

"All right, continuum, that goes around its sun at the same speed as ours."

"You're mostly right, except there's no exact correspondence between Antichthon and Earth. Antichthon is actually somewhat smaller than the Earth and takes a longer time to go round a larger star at a longer radius.

"I can't explain it to you now but it's like those formulae for the location of an electron—they only tell you where it's most likely to be. So the connections between Earth and Antichthon are valid even though they don't coincide literally. Actually Antichthon is in the same continuum as Earth but at the other end, where the universe curves back on itself.

"However, you pose a problem for us. You can't stay here, not having been invited through the usual channels, and we can't send you back knowing about us. Don't look scared—we're not going to bump you off. Antichthon adheres to a strict standard of justice. But ...

"All I can think of is to destroy the memory of your visit to us. We don't much like to do that, since a man's memory is his most private possession. However ..."

"If you're on the level," said Baum, "You could trust me not to give you away."

THE white eyebrows rose. "We can find out about that." He threw a switch on the teletalk system and said, "Send Guzman in to me." He turned back to Baum. "He'll examine you."

"Who's he? Psychologist?"

The man in black nodded.

"Mean I've got to lie on a sofa for a month telling him about every lustful thought I ever had?"

"No, nothing like that. You'll see. My name's Harris, by the way. I'm an administrator."

"Pleased to know you. I suppose you've got some Utopia here and don't want a lot of nogoodniks from Earth swarming in and spoiling it?"

Harris smiled. "Wait till Guzman—ah, here he is.

Baum met a small dark man who took him into another office and kept him working on tests much like aptitude tests for a couple of hours.

Then Guzman brought Baum back to Harris's office, saying, "Reliability index ninety seven point eight, one of the highest I ever tested. It indicates in fact that he's one of those fanatically punctual and truthful people who make themselves unpopular with their more easy-going friends by too much exactness."

Harris said, "Such being the case, I think we can trust you."

"Can't I visit your world? I'd like a look at that live dinosaur at least."

"Sorry. Rules, you know. You see, as you guessed, we're trying to run a kind of democratic scientific Utopia. And it's hard enough, even with specially picked immigrants, because brains and character aren't simple Mendelian hereditary qualities, though heredity does influence them. So different characters do crop up."

"If you let more in," said Baum, "you'd relieve a lot of conditions on Earth."

"For how long? You're wasting your resources at an appalling rate and increasing so fast it'll soon be standing room only. And at the same time you're planning another ideological war that may blow up the planet."

"It's not us who are planning it," interrupted Baum.

"I know but I'm speaking generally. If we let a lot of you in it'd mean we'd soon be in the same fix—while those left behind would merely breed that much faster and be no better off than they were."

"How long has this been going on?"

"About thirty years. A physicist named Tanezaki discovered the way through but like a smart boy he kept it to himself until he was ready to let in a few carefully chosen colonists from various nations. It just happens that the life on Antichthon—"

"Where'd you get that name?"

"Classical literature. The life of Antichthon is in about the equivalent of your Mesozoic Era of evolution, so there are no intelligent inhabitants to worry about. Now, before you go ..."

"One more. Who's Dimai?"

"Franz Dimai, an Austrian Communist, only we didn't know it when we let him in. He ran out on us with the hope of blasting his way back in at the head of the forces of the so-called People's Democracies. Since he escaped in Antichthonion costume our men were looking for somebody dressed like that.

"It was a one-in-a-million coincidence that they happened to pick you up. You see even our super-psychologists miss once in a while." Harris grinned at Guzman. "As I was saying, we owe you for the inconvenience and if there's something we could do before you go back—money, for instance ..."

Baum thought fast. "Can you confer immortality?"

"Sorry, not yet. Another decade maybe."

"Well then, can your—uh—super-psychologists change or improve a man's character? Without his having to spend a year on a couch?"

"Reckon they can. Why, d'you feel in need of improvement? I'd have said you had a pretty solid character as you are."

Baum said, "Yes, but—It may sound silly but I want love. I want to be lovable. As Mr. Guzman said I'm one of those rigid characters everybody respects but nobody likes much. I'd like to be loosened up so I'd be popular and attractive. To women, for instance."

"Ah! We'll see. Jose, can you make Mr. Baum popular and truly sought-after without lowering his reliability to the danger-point?"

At that moment the telephone rang. Harris picked up the handset, listened, and replaced it with a chuckle. "We needn't worry about Dimai any more. He's been liquidated as a deviationist. Seems he told his story to the bigshots, who decided the idea of another continuum was idealistic fascisto-bourgeois monopoly-capitalist imperialist propaganda and therefore couldn't be true. Well, Jose?"

Guzman brooded over the question for a few seconds and said, "I think so. The Bendix treatment should do it. It may lower his index a few tenths of a point but that means nothing to us. Will you come now, Mr. Baum?"

NINE months later (Earth time) the Antichthonian receptionist heard the code knock 3-2-3-1 on the other side of the portal. He threw the switch. As the mirror faded into a shimmer of lines of force, a dark chunky curly-haired man stepped through. The receptionist recognized Marius Baum. Not having been told to admit Baum, he instantly pushed an alarm button.

Five minutes later Baum, handcuffed to two armed guards, was marched into Harris's office. Harris looked glumly at his Earthly acquaintance.

"I'm sorry for you," he said. "Whatever possessed you to do such a thing? You knew we consider illegal entry a serious crime."

"When I explain," said Baum, "I don't think you'll mind. At least, not if you're that fussy about justice. To make a long story short I want you to change me back the way I was. Then destroy my memories of visiting here and send me back through your trick looking-glass. That way I can't hurt you because I won't even know about you."

"I'll be hornswoggled!" cried Harris. "What's happened?"

"If you'll let me sit—thanks. Guzman's treatments worked too well."

"How's that possible?"

"I went around smiling at strangers and kidding the girls and before I knew it Violet Rogers and I were married and I'd been promoted one grade and assigned a secretary of my own. Pretty little thing too—Heloise Fabry. I used to have lunch with her in that lousy government cafeteria and before I knew it she was madly in love with me, not even knowing I had one wife.

"What with one thing and another she high-pressured me into marrying her too. Not that I was really in love with her but I loved everybody too much to hurt her feelings by telling her I was already married.

"Well, maybe you can get away with bigamy if your job takes you traveling so you can raise your two or three families in different cities. But not in my set-up. I should have known what would happen—but without the old Baum rigidity I couldn't resist temptation. And sure enough Vi called the office when I was out and Heloise answered.

"By a funny coincidence that was also the day when my boss told me he was so sorry but my recent promotion was rescinded and I was to be taken off confidential work and given some routine paper-shuffling job.

"Seems I'd become so popular I'd attracted a swarm of friends who were always hanging around the office to gas or hauling me into a beer-parlor after work to get soaked. So much so that now the heads didn't consider me a good security risk any more. The way they put it, I had been an ideal man for the job but I'd grown—too indiscriminately friendly, they said.

"Next thing I was in jail for bigamy and out of my editorship. When the Lab found out about my arrest they suspended me on a suspicion of moral turpitude and if I'm convicted I'm automatically fired.

"What's more, Violet's applied for a divorce, so it looks as though I'd end up with no wives, since my marriage to Heloise was illegal, just living in sin. I'm out on bail, waiting for my trial.

"My lawyer says he could get me off if I'd done these acts in a state of amnesia, but that the prosecution's psychiatrists can spot a fake case of amnesia in no time. So the only way out is for you to give me some genuine amnesia."

"But," said Harris, "why have your personality changed?"

"So I won't get into trouble like this again! When you've lived with a personality for thirty years you know what to expect, but when a brand new one is thrust upon you, no matter how good it looks on paper, it's certainly apt to throw you."

"You wouldn't want Guzman to make just a slight adjustment?"

"No! I want the old Baum back! He had his faults but he didn't do badly by me. Never anything like this mess. And after this I'm going to look gift horses so carefully in the mouth I could be a veterinary dentist."

"Very well," sighed Harris. "I'm sorry it turned out this way. Who said there are only two tragedies in life—not to get what you want and to get what you want?"

"Wilde?" said Baum.

"I think so. How right he was!" said Harris and pressed the lever of the squawk-box to call Guzman.