ERRAND BOY

Yes, I'm the Malcolm Blyn who phoned you from the village. Mind if I come in and take a seat--I won't take up much of your time? Thanks. Now, here's the story, and if you're the man I've been tearing the country apart for, there's a million in it--

No, please! I'm not selling gold mine stocks or a patent for an internal combustion atomic engine: I'm not selling anything. I'm a salesman all right--been one all my life and I know I look like a salesman right down to my bottom adjective--but today I'm not selling anything.

Today I'm buying.

If you have the stuff, that is. The stuff the errand boy said you or someone with your--Listen! I'm not crazy, believe me till you hear it all! Please sit down and listen. He wasn't an ordinary errand boy; he was an errand boy like Einstein is an accountant. The errands he ran! But you must understand... here, have a cigar.

Here's my card. Blyn's Wholesale Paints and Painters' Supplies--that's me--Any Quantity of Any Paint Delivered Anywhere at Any Time. Of course, by "anywhere" we mean the continental United States only. But it looks good on the card. Salesmanship.

That's me, a salesman. Give me something to sell: an improvement, a service or a brand-new crazy novelty gimmick--I guarantee to get people tearing the lining out of their pants pockets. I've always kept Emerson's famous wisecrack framed on my office wall, you know: "If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door." Solid stuff. And I'm the guy that gets them interested in beating a path in the first place.

I'm good. I want you to understand that. I can put it over, whatever it is you've got--if only you're the guy that's got it. But I must have something to put over, something good. No hot air. No, I'm not accusing you of putting out the hot air. I don't know yet what you put out--raise chickens, mostly? Yeah. So listen.

Five weeks ago this coming Wednesday, we had a rush job. Three hundred gallons of flat white to the Expando Construction Corporation, an outfit I'd been trying to sell ever since they started up after the war. Eleven o'clock, and they wanted it delivered to their new development over in north Jersey by noon, so their men could start slapping it on the walls right after lunch.

I was out on the floor of the warehouse lighting a fire under Hennessey, my foreman, so he'd light a fire under his crew. Cans of paint were being stacked and shipped as fast as the bank says no to an extension of your loan, men were rolling this way, guys were hustling that way--when I heard Hennessey make a crack.

"Hey, that new errand boy's been gone a long time. Kid must have given up." About a dozen men stopped working and laughed for a while. They could see it was supposed to be funny--Hennessey was their boss.

"Since when do we have a new errand boy?" I stopped Hennessey in his tracks. "I do all the hiring and firing around here. Any new personnel have to go on the books--a dozen different ones these days. Do you want to get me into trouble? Haven't you ever heard of Social Security? Child Labor Laws? How old is the kid?"

"Aw, Mr. Blyn, how should I know? They all look alike to me. Maybe nine, maybe ten, eleven. A lot thinner than most kids I've seen, but a lot healthier. Looks--sorta rich."

"Well, if he's that young, he's got no business in the warehouse district this early in a weekday. Probably on the hook. I'll have the New York Board of Education on my neck as well as the working papers people. Don't I have enough trouble, Hennessey, with two road-happy truck drivers who use a Pennsylvania map to get lost in New Jersey, without--"

"I didn't hire him, honest. He come around here asking for a job in that funny voice like kid stars have in the movies. He says he's willing to start at the bottom and prove himself, he feels he's bound to rise, he's got the will to win, all he wants is a chance. I tell him the way business has been lately, we wouldn't hire Alexander Graham Bell to run our switchboard. He says he doesn't care; he wants to get a foot on the ladder of success. He'll work for nothing."

"So?"

"So, I make out I'm thinking--at ten this morning, things were slow on the floor--and finally I say I'll give him a crack at trying out for errand boy. I hand him an empty can and say I want it filled with green paint--it should have orange polka dots. I'm testing him, see? He grabs the can and takes off. He won't bother us any more. You shoulda seen the guys after he left, Mr. Blyn: they fit to died."

"Hold me up," I said. "I'm getting weak myself. Almost as funny as the time you locked Whalen in the washroom with a stink bomb. That reminds me--you'll be taking orders from Whalen if your crew doesn't get that truck loaded and out of here in ten minutes."

He wiped his hands on his overalls and started to say something. Then he changed his mind and began yelling up and down the warehouse. He asked his men if they didn't think it was time to crawl out of their coffins, he told them to get their asses behind every dolly that wasn't being used, he got the place hissing where before it was only humming.

One thing about Hennessey: he might have been a practical joker from way back when he found all the amusing things you could do with diapers; but he was one crackerjack foreman. The way he made those monkeys hustle reminded me of the way I fit a fountain pen in a customer's hand just before he begins to purse his lips.

Then the kid walked in.

"Hey, Ernest," somebody yelled. "Look. Ernest's back."

Work stopped. The kid walked in, breathing hard, and set the can down in front of Hennessey. He was dressed in a white blouse, patched corduroy pants and high-laced brown shoes. But I'd never seen corduroy like that before, or that kind of white broadcloth in a shirt. The material seemed to be very thin--and, well, rich somehow. That's the only way to describe it. Like expensive imitation iron.

"Glad you're back, kid," Hennessey told him. "I've been needing a left-handed paintbrush. Shop around and see if you can pick one up for me. But it must be left-handed."

A couple of characters on the loading platform started to chuckle. The kid started out. He turned at the big sliding doors.

"I'll try, sir," he said in a voice like he had a flute in his throat. "I'll do my best. But this paint--I couldn't find any green paint with orange polka dots. This only has red polka dots. I hope it will do."

Then he left.

For a moment we all stared at the patch of sidewalk where he'd been standing. Then I laughed; in a second the roars were bouncing off the second-story ceiling. The men just stood there with dollies and paint stacked on them, laughing their heads off.

"Hennessey, the wise guy!" someone yelled.

"All I could find was green paint with red polka dots!"

"Please, sir, I hope it will do. Wow!"

"Did that kid let you have it!"

"Poor Hennessey!"

Hennessey stood there, his great big fists hanging at his sides and no one to use them on. Suddenly he noticed the can of paint. He drew his right leg back and came tearing at it with a kick that would have sent it into Long Island Sound. Only he missed it. He just touched a corner of the can--rocking it enough to spill a drop--missed his footing and came smashing down on his great big backside. The roars got louder as he scrambled to his feet.

In a second, the laughter had stopped cold and everyone and his brother was hustling again. Not a man in that warehouse wanted to attract Hennessey's attention after his joke had bounced back at him.

Still chuckling, I strolled over and looked at the can. I wanted to see what junk the kid had used to fill it. Looked like water. The liquid in the can was mostly transparent, with little brown flecks floating around. Not paint, certainly--no kind I knew.

I glanced at the floor where a drop had been spilled when my foreman tried to kick the can.

I began strangling on a howl.

The junk the kid had used to fill the can--the junk had been green paint with red polka dots. Red polka dots!

No doubt at all: a little oval puddle dripped up to the side of the can; the warehouse floor now had a spot painted green with red polka dots. And this kid--this errand boy--this Ernest--had found it somewhere.

One thing I told you I can tell. Saleability. I can tell the saleable something in somebody else's dream at night when I'm sleeping on the other side of town. I can sniff it--but, you know all that. But do you know how saleable that kind of paint would be? Sell it as a sure-fire novelty to manufacturers, sell it as a gimmick to guys who putter around their own home, sell it as a brand-new idea in design to interior decorators. It's a natural; it's a gold mine.

But I had to move fast. I picked up the can by the wire handle; I scuffed the paint spot carelessly with my foot. Luckily, it seemed to take a long time to dry: it mixed with the dust on the floor and lost its color. I walked out into the street where Hennessey was standing near the truck watching his crew load.

"What did you say that kid's name was? Ernest?"

He looked up. "Yeah," he brooded. "Ernest. Didn't give me his last name. But if he ever shows his wise puss around here--"

"OK. I have an important business appointment. Take over until I get back and get that flat white out." I turned and started in the direction the kid had gone. I knew Hennessey was staring at the can of paint I carried swinging from my left hand. He was wondering what I wanted with it, with the kid. Let him wonder, I told myself. Give Hennessey the curiosity; I'll take the profit.

--|--

I caught sight of the kid about three blocks away; he was going east, in the direction of the park. He stopped in front of a hardware store, thought a moment, walked in. By the time he came out again, I'd caught up with him. He was shaking his head unhappily.

We walked side by side for a while before he noticed me. I couldn't get over those clothes of his. Even the old-fashioned high shoes he was wearing weren't made out of anything I'd ever seen; the material hugged his foot like another layer of skin; it wasn't leather, I was sure of that.

"No luck?" I asked.

He jumped and stared a bit. Then he seemed to recognize the face as one of those that had been staring at him a while ago. "No. No... er, luck. The distributor said he was very sorry but he was just this moment fresh out of left-handed paintbrushes. Exactly what they all said when I asked them for the paint with the polka dots. I don't mean any offense, but... but this is an inefficient method of circulating goods."

I watched his face while he said that. Really meant every word of it. What a kid! I stopped and scratched my head. Should I come right out and ask him where he'd found the paint, or should I let him talk into the secret as most people will usually do?

He had turned pale and then begun blushing. I didn't like to see that in a boy. That musical soprano voice was bad enough, his thinness for a kid his size--he was almost as tall as me--I could take; but a boy who blushed had just never met a real school bully.

"Look, Ernest," I began. I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder, you know, fatherly-like. "Ernest, I--"

Zing! He jumped backward as if I'd gone to work on his neck with a can opener. And blush! Reminded me of a bride who'd led a full life and was doing her rosy best to convince the groom's mother at the altar that she hadn't.

"Don't do that," he said, shaking himself all over.

Better change the subject. "Nice outfit, you've got there. Where did you get it?" Subtle, you know. Catch him off guard.

He looked down complacently. "It was my costume in the school play. Of course, it was a little off-period, but I thought--"

His voice trailed away awkwardly like he'd just realized he was breaking a lodge secret. This thing had angles, all right.

"Where do you live?" I shot at him fast.

"Brooks," he came right back.

I thought that over. No, it couldn't be. "Brooks?"

"Yes, you know--Brooks. Or maybe it's Bronklyn?"

I stroked my chin, trying to work it out. He was shuddering again.

"Please," he said in that high voice. "Please. Do you have to skinge?"

"Do I have to what?"

"Skinge. Touch your body with your hands. In a public place, too. Spitting and belching are bad enough--though most of your people avoid it. But everyone--everyone is always skingeing!"

I took a deep breath and promised him I wouldn't skinge. But if I wanted to see his hole card, I'd have to flip mine over first. "Look, Ernest, what I wanted to say... well, I'm Malcolm Blyn. I--"

His eyes widened. "The robber baron of the warehouse!"

"The what?"

"You own Blyn's Paints. I saw your name on the door." He nodded to himself. "I've read all the adventure stories. Dumas... no, Dumas isn't right... Alger, Sinclair, Capon. Capon's The Sixteen Salesmen, there's one fully conscious book! I read it five times. But you wouldn't know Capon, would you? He wasn't published until--"

"Until when?"

"Until... until... oh, I can tell you. You're one of the ruling powers: you own a warehouse. I don't come from here."

"No? Where do you come from?" I had my own ideas on that. Some overeducated rich kid--a refugee, maybe, to account for his accent and slenderness.

"From the future. I shouldn't have done it; it may mean my being set back a whole responsibility group, but I just had to see the robber barons with my own eyes. Wolf bait! I wanted to see them forming pools, freezing out competitors, getting a corner on--

"Hold the economics, Jackson! From the future, did you say?" This kid was getting too big for his corduroy britches. Corduroy britches?

"Yes. According to the calendar of this time... let me see, and this part of the world, it would be... oh, the year 6130. No, that's still another calendar. According to your calendar I came from 2369 AD. Or is it 2370? 2369, I think."

I was glad he'd settled the point to his satisfaction. I told him so, and he thanked me. And all the time, I was thinking: if this kid's crazy, or if he's lying, how come paint that brushes out green with red polka dots? And how come his clothes? They hadn't been made in any factories I'd ever heard of. Check.

"This paint... that come from the future... from your time?"

"Well, the shops were all out of it, and I wanted to prove myself to Hennessey... he's a real swashbuckler, isn't he? I went home and probed the spirillix, and finally I found--"

"Spirillix? What spirillix?"

"The spirillix--the rounded usicon, you know. Your American scientist Wenceslaus invented it just about this time. I think it was just about this time--I remember reading of the trouble he had getting it financed. Or was it this time? Yes, I think--"

He was starting another of those debates with himself. I stalled him off. "OK. What's the difference, a hundred years more or less. This paint: do you know how it's made, what's in it?"

"How it's made." He swung a high-booted foot around in a little circle and studied it. "Well, it's hydrofluoric acid, of course. Triple-blasted. Although the container didn't mention the number of times it had been blasted. I assume it was triple-blasted, though--"

"Sure, sure. What do you mean--blasted, triple-blasted?"

A mouthful of perfect white teeth flashed out as he laughed right up and down the scale. "I wouldn't know that! It's all part of the Schmootz Dejector Process--my conditioning is two whole responsibility groups behind the Schmootz Process. I may never even reach it if I do well enough in self-expression. And I like self-expression better than conditioning; I only have two hours now, but--"

He raved on and on about how he was persuading some committee or other to give him more self-expression; I concentrated on worrying. This wasn't so good. I couldn't expect to import much more of the paint from this kid's hunting ground; my only hope was analysis of the sample he'd given me. And with this hydrofluoric acid and triple-blasting deal that didn't look so good.

Figure it out. Man has had steel for a long time now. But take some heat-treated steel from the best factory in Gary or Pittsburgh back to the time of that chemist character Priestley. Even if he had a modern lab available and knew how to use the equipment in it he wouldn't be able to find much useful information. He'd know it was steel maybe, and he might even be able to tell how much carbon, manganese, sulphur, phosphorus and silicon it contained--in addition to iron--if someone gave him a briefing on modern elementary chemistry, that is. But how it had acquired its properties, where its elasticity and tensile strength came from--the poor guy wouldn't know from nothing. Tell him "heat-treatment," "inward combustion of the carbon," and all he'd be able to do is open and close his mouth like a fish in Fulton Market wondering what happened to all the water.

Or spun glass. They had glass way back in ancient Egypt. Shove some of that shiny fabric we have at them, though, even say it's spun glass. They'd say, "Yah, sure. Have another piece of pie."

So I had the paint. One can of it hanging from my sweaty little palm. But it looked like a one-shot proposition unless I could be foxy grandpa himself--or, considering the kid, foxy great-great-great-grandpa.

Standing in front of me was the greatest errand boy a greedy businessman ever saw. And let me tell you I'm greedy; I admit it. But only for money.

How to swing it? How to turn this kid's errands into nice, bulging mounds of green paper with lots and lots of zeros on them? I didn't want him to get suspicious or upset; I didn't want him to feel I was using him as the tool I intended using him as.

I had to be a salesman; I had to sell him a bill of goods. I had to get him running the errands right, with a maximum of profit to all concerned, especially me.

Carelessly, I started walking in the direction he'd been going. He swung along beside me. "Where's your time machine, Ernest?"

"Time machine?" His delicate face wrinkled. "I don't have any time ma--Oh! You mean the chrondromos. Time machine--what a thought! No, I sunk a small chrondromos for my own personal use. My favorite father is an assistant engineer on the main chrondromos--the one they use for field trips? I wanted to go unsupervised for this once, no carnuplicators or anything. I wanted to see the ragged but determined newsboys rising steadily to riches. I wanted to see the great, arrogant robber barons like yourself--perhaps, I thought, I might even come across a real economic royalist! And I might get involved in some great intrigue, some market manipulation where millions of small investors are closed down and lose their last shred of--what is it again?--margin?"

"Yeah, they lose all their margin. Where did you sink this--this chrondromos?"

"Not where--when. I sank it after school. I'm supposed to be having self-expression now, so it doesn't make much difference. But I hope I can get back before a Census Keeper winds a total."

"Sure you can. I wouldn't worry about it. Uh... can I use this chrondromos of yours?"

He laughed real hard at my foolishness. "How can you? You have no conditioning, not even responsibility group two. No, you wouldn't know how to begin to unstable. I'll be glad to get back. Not that I haven't enjoyed myself. Wolf bait! To think I met a robber baron! This has been one fully conscious experience."

I dug into my tweed jacket and lit a baronial cigarette. "Guess you wouldn't have much trouble finding a left-handed paintbrush."

"Well, it might be difficult. I've never heard of one before."

"One thing I was wondering." I flicked ashes elaborately onto the sidewalk. "Do you have anything that sees ahead in time?"

"A revolving distringulatrix, you mean? There's one at the main chrondromos. I don't know how it works; they don't allow anyone from responsibility group four near it--you have to be at least six or seven."

Nasty. It had looked good. I might be able to persuade the kid to ferry back and forth with a couple of more cans of paint--but it would never amount to much. Especially if I couldn't get an analysis that would enable me to produce the stuff with present-day methods. But if I could get a gadget from the future--something I wouldn't have to sell, something I could make a million out of just by using it myself--like a dingus for seeing into the future, predicting race results, elections, sweepstake winners...

The dingus was there all right. This revolving distringulatrix. But the kid couldn't lay his hands on it. Nasty, I tell you.

"What about books? Got any books lying around the house: chemistry books, physics texts, pamphlets on industrial methods?"

"I don't live in a house. And I don't study from books. Not chemistry or physics anyway. That's all handled by conditioning. I had six hours of conditioning last night--examinations are coming, you know."

My tongue knotted with the frustration of it. Millions of bucks walking next to me and I didn't know how to turn it into cash. Ernest had evidently seen all he wanted to see of the present, at least temporarily--hadn't he met a real, live, robber baron?--and he was heading home to mama and self-expression.

There must be an angle, somewhere!

"Where'd you plant your chrondromos? I mean, where's its other end come out?"

He waved ahead. "Behind a big rock in Center Park."

"Central Park, you mean. Mind if I tag along, watch you leave?"

He didn't. We padded across Central Park West and turned up a little unpaved path. I pulled a dry bough off a tree and switched it across my ankles; I just had to think of something before he took off. I began to hate the can of paint; it was light enough, but it looked like such a puny item to get out of the whole deal. Especially if it couldn't be analyzed.

Keep the kid talking. Something would turn up.

"What kind of government do you have? Democracy, monarchy--"

There he went laughing at me again! It was all I could do not to smash him across the face with the switch. Here I was losing fortunes right and left, and he thought I was making like a comic!

"Democracy! But you would think in political terms, wouldn't you? You have to consider your sick individuals, your pressure groups, your--No, we passed that stage long before I was born. Let me see, the last president they manufactured was a reversibilist. So I imagine you could say we are living in a reversibilism. An unfulfilled one, though."

That helped a lot. Solved everything. I sort of dropped down into a moony yearning for an idea, any kind of an idea. Ernest skipped along chattering about things with unpronounceable names that did unbelievable deeds. I thought unprintable words.

"--I get in responsibility group five. Then there are the examinations, not at all easy this time. Even the trendicle may not help."

I cocked an ear at him. "What's with this trendicle? What does it give out?"

"It analyzes trends. Trends and developing situations. It's really a statistical analyzer, portable and a little primitive. I use it to determine the questions I'll be asked in the examinations. Oh, I forgot--you probably have the scholarship superstitions of your period. You don't believe that the young should anticipate questions based on the latest rearrangements in the world, on the individual curiosities of their instructors. There it is!"

High up on a little wooded hill was a gray and careless rock formation. And, even at that distance, I could see a transparent, shimmering blue haze behind the largest rock.

Ernest beat it off the road and scurried up the hill. I choked after him. There wasn't much time; I had to think it out fast--this trendicle looked like the goods.

I caught up to him just as he reached the large rock. "Ernest," I wheezed, "how does your trendicle go?"

"Oh, it's simple. You punch all available facts into it--regular keyboard, you know--it analyzes them and states the only possible result or shows the trend the facts indicate. Built-in Skeebee power system. Well, goodbye, Mr. Blyn."

He started for the blue haze where it was thickest on the ground. I wrapped my paw around his chest and pulled him back.

"There you go again. Skingeing!" he wailed.

"Sorry, kid. The last time. How would you like to be in on a really big deal? Before you go back, you might like to see me get control of an international trust. I've been planning it for some time--one of the biggest bull markets. Wall Street has never seen my secret gilt-edged because I have a broker planted in Chicago futures. I'll hurry it along and do it today, just so you can see how we robber barons operate. The only thing is, this trendicle deal will make it sure-fire and I'll be able to do the whole thing much faster. What a spectacle! Hundreds of banks failing, I get a corner on synthetic rubber, the gold standard crashes, small investors frozen and down to their bottom margin! You'll see it all. And if you get the trendicle for me, why I'd let you handle the capitalization."

His eyes shone like brand-new dimes. "That would be fully conscious! Think of my getting involved in financial battle like that! But it's so risky! If a Census Keeper winds a total and finds I've been subtracted--If my guide catches me using a chrondromos illegally--"

I'm a salesman, I told you. I know how to handle people. "Suit yourself," I said, turning away and stepping on my cigarette. "I just thought I'd offer you the chance because you're a nice kid, a bright boy; I think you'll go far. We robber barons have a lot of pride, you know. It isn't every errand boy I'd trust with anything as important as capitalization." I made as if to walk away.

"Oh, please, Mr. Blyn!" He sprinted around in front of me. "I appreciate your offer. If only it weren't so dangerous--But danger, that's the breath of life to you, isn't it? I'll do it. I'll get you the trendicle. We'll rip the market open together. Will you wait?"

"Only if you hurry," I said. "I have a lot of manipulating to do before the sun goes down. Take off." I set the can of paint on the grass and crossed my arms. I swished the dry bough back and forth like the widget kings go in for--scepters.

He nodded, turned and ran into the blue haze just behind the rock. His body sort of turned blue and hazy too as he hit it; then he was gone.

What an angle! I mean, what an angle. You get it, don't you? This trendicle--if it was anything like the kid described it--could practically be used the way I said I was going to use it, in that fast double-talk shuffle I'd handed him. Predict movements of the stock market up and down--sideways even!; anticipate business cycles and industrial trends; prophesy war, peace and new bond issues. All I'd have to do would be to sock the facts into it--all the financial news, let's say, of the daily paper--and out would come multitudes of money. Was I set!

I threw my head back and winked at a treetop.

Honestly, I felt drunk. I must have been drunk. Because I'd stopped figuring. Just shows--never stop figuring. Never!

I wandered up to the shimmering blue haze and put my hand out toward it. Just like a stone wall. The kid had been giving me the straight goods on this conditioning deal.

He was a nice kid. Ernest. Nice name.

Nice.

The haze parted and Ernest ran out. He was carrying a long, gray box with a cluster of white keys set in one end. Looked like an adding machine that had been stretched.

I plucked it away from him. "How does it work?"

He was breathing hard. "My guide... she saw me... she called me... I hope she didn't see me go into the chrondromos... first time I've disobeyed her... illegal use of chrondromos--"

"Sure," I said. "Sure. Very sad. How does it work?"

"The keys. You punch the facts out on the keys. Like the ancient--like your typewriter. The resulting trend appears on the small scanner."

"Pretty small. And it'll take a terrifically long time to type out a couple of pages of financial news. Those stock listings, especially. Don't you people have anything that you just show the paper to and it burps out the result?"

Ernest looked puzzled. Then, "Oh, you mean an open trendicle. My guide has one. But it's only for adults. I won't get an open trendicle until responsibility group seven. With good leanings toward self-expression."

There he went on that self-expression gag. "Then that's what we need, Ernest. Suppose you trot back and pick up your guide's trendicle."

I've never seen so much shock on anyone's face in my life. He looked as if I'd told him to shoot the president. The one they just manufactured.

"But I told you! It isn't mine--it's my guide's!"

"You want to be in charge of capitalization, don't you? You want to see the greatest coup ever pulled in Wall Street--lambs fleeced, bears skinned, bulls broken? Go back to your guide--"

"You are discussing me?" A very sweet, very high voice.

Ernest twisted around. "Wolf bait! My guide," he fluted.

A little old lady in a nutty kind of twisted green dress was standing just outside the haze. She was smiling sadly at Ernest and shaking her head at me. I could tell the difference.

"I hope you are satisfied, Ernest, that this period of high adventure was in reality very ugly and peopled by individuals infinitely small. We've become a little impatient with the duration of your unstabling, however. It's time you returned."

"You don't mean--the Census Keepers knew all along that I was illegally using a chrondromos? They allowed me to do it?"

"Of course. You stand very high in self-expression; an exception had to be made in your case. Your involved and slightly retarded concepts of the romantic aspects of this era made it necessary to expose you to its harshness. We couldn't pass you into responsibility group five until you had readjusted. Come, now."

It was about time for me to break into the conversation. Between Ernest and the old lady, it sounded like a duet with fife and piccolo. Such voices!

"Just stay unstabled a second," I said. "Where do I come into all this?"

She turned hostile eyes to me. "I'm afraid you don't. We are removing it from you. The various items you have received from our time... you should never have gone so far, Ernest... will also be removed."

"I don't see it that way." I reached out and grabbed Ernest. He struggled, he had muscles in the strangest places; but I had no trouble holding on to him. I lifted the bough threateningly over his head.

"If you don't do just as I tell you, I'll hurt the boy. I'll--I'll skinge all over him!" Then I had an inspiration. "I'll demobilize him! I'll fragisticate every last bone in his body."

"Just what do you want?" she asked very quietly in that thin voice.

"That trendicle you have. The one without keys."

"I'll be back shortly." She turned with a tinkle of the green dress and faded back into the chrondromos. Just like that.

One of the neatest deals I'd ever swung. Just like that! And guys work for a living.

Ernest writhed and twisted and shuddered, but I held him. I wasn't letting him go, no sir! He represented millions of dollars.

The blue haze shimmered again and the old lady stepped out. She carried a circular black thing with a handle in the center.

"Now, that's more like--" I started to say as she pulled the handle.

And that was all. I couldn't move. I couldn't even wiggle the hairs in my nose. I felt like my own tombstone.

The kid darted away. He picked up the small trendicle where I'd dropped it on the grass and ran to the old lady. She reached up with her free hand. She was speaking to him:

"A definite pattern, Ernest. Selfishness, cruelty, little wisdom. Avarice without the faintest signs of a social--" Her hand came down and the blue haze disappeared. I bounded forward, but there was empty air behind the rock. As if they'd never been there.

Not quite.

The can of paint still sat on the ground where I'd parked it. I chuckled and reached for it. There was a sudden flicker of blue.

The can disappeared. A musical voice said, "Ooops. Sorry!"

I whirled. Nobody there. But the can was gone.

For the next half hour, I almost went crazy. All that stuff I could have had. All the questions I could have asked and didn't. All the information--money-making information--I had missed.

Information. Then I remembered. Wenceslaus. The kid had said someone named Wenceslaus had invented the spirillix about this time; had a lot of trouble financing it. I don't know what it is: maybe it stuffs ballot boxes; maybe it enables you to scratch your left elbow with your left hand. But whatever it is, I made up my mind right then, I'm going to find it and sink every penny I have into it. All I know about it is that it's some sort of gimmick; it does things--and it does them good.

I got back to my office and began hiring detectives. You see, I'd already figured that it wouldn't be enough to check phone listings--my Wenceslaus of the spirillix might not have a phone. He might not even call the gadget a spirillix; that could be the name Ernest's people fastened on it.

Well, I didn't go into detail with the detectives. I just told them to find me people named Wenceslaus or close to it, anywhere in the country. I interview them myself. I have to tell them the whole story, so they'll get the feel of the thing, so they'll be able to recognize the spirillix if they've invented it.

That's where you come in, Mr. Wantzilotz. Anyone with a name so close can't be missed. Maybe I didn't hear Ernest right; maybe the name was changed, later.

Now you've heard the story. Think, Mr. Wantzilotz. Are you working on anything besides raising chickens? Are you inventing anything, improving on anything--

No, I don't think a homemade mousetrap is quite what I want. Have you written a book, maybe? Thinking of writing one? Developing a new historical or economic theory--the spirillix might be anything! You haven't?

Well. I'll be going. You don't have any relatives of the same name who fool around with tools and stuff--no? I've got a lot of people to visit. You'd be amazed at the number of Wenceslauses and variations there are--

Wait a minute. Did you say you'd made--you'd invented a new mousetrap?

Here, have another cigar. Sit down. Now tell me, this mousetrap of yours--just how does it work? It catches mice, yes. But exactly what does it do?

AFTERWORD

I wrote this story immediately after "Child's Play" was accepted by John W. Campbell, and I used the time-travel vocabulary and background of "Child's Play." I was dreaming of having my own special series in Astounding--my own version of Asimov's Empire, Heinlein's Future History, or H. Beam Piper's Paratime Police. It was cheeky of me, I eventually decided, and gave it up.

My greatest source of pride, though, when I had completed the story, was that it came out exactly as I had visualized it, the first time I had managed such a feat. I had yet to learn--as I did many years later, upon listening to a radio broadcast interview with E.M. Forster--that the most exciting and creative experience for a writer was to look upon a finished piece of work and say, "Now, where on earth did that come from?" And to realize that, to continue quoting Mr. Forster, "It came from nowhere on earth."

"Errand Boy" did not make nearly the splash that "Child's Play" did. The only strong reaction was from a paint manufacturing company. They informed me in a letter forwarded from Astounding that they had found the passage in which Ernest brings back paint from the future very interesting and profitable. They had experimented and found that they could actually produce in the present day a green paint with orange polka dots. It seemed to be marketable.

Did I have any other money-making ideas for paints, they wanted to know?

I wrote back and told them that there was something I wanted to know in my turn. What would be in it for me?

They were apparently too shocked at my crass commercial attitude to reply.