Dusty Zebra

I knew I was licked. “I’ve been trading.”

“Trading! After all I’ve said about Bill?”

“But this is different.”

“Trading is trading,” she said flatly.

Bill came in the front door, but he must have heard his mother say “trading", for he ducked out again. I yelled for him to come back.

“I want both of you to sit down and listen to me,” I said.

“You can ask questions and offer suggestions and give me hell after I’m through.”

So we sat down, all three of us, and had a family pow-wow.

It took quite a bit to make Helen believe what I had to tell, but I pointed out the dot in the desk and showed them the triangular glasses and the pair of glasses that had been refitted with the pink lenses and sent back to me. By that time, she was ready to admit there was something going on. Even so, she was fairly well burned up at me for marking up the floor around the desk legs.

I didn’t show either her or Bill the pen that was a fishing-rod, for I was scared of that. Flourish it around a bit and there was no telling what would happen.

Bill was interested and excited, of course. This was trading, which was right down his alley.

I cautioned both of them not to say a word about it. Bill wouldn’t, for he was hell on secrets and special codes. But bright and early in the morning, Helen would probably swear Marge to secrecy, then tell her all about it and there wasn’t a thing that I could do or say to stop her.

Bill wanted to put the pink-lensed spectacles on right away, to see how they were different from any other kind. I wouldn’t let him. I wanted to put those specs on myself, but I was afraid to, if you want to know the truth.

When Helen went out to the kitchen to get di

But to arrive at an understanding with whoever we were trading with meant that we’d have to set up some sort of communication system. And how do you communicate with someone you don’t know the first thing about, except that perhaps it has three eyes?

Then Bill hit upon what seemed a right idea. What we needed, he said, was a catalogue. If you were going to trade with someone, the logical first step would be to let them know what you had to trade.

To be worth anything in such a circumstance, it would have to be an illustrated catalogue. And even then it might be worthless, for how could we be sure that the Trader on the other side of the desk would know what a picture was? Maybe he’d never seen a picture before. Maybe he saw differently—not so much physically, although that was possible, too, but from a different viewpoint and with totally alien concepts.

But it was the only thing we had to go on, so we settled down to work up a catalogue. Bill thought we should draw one, but neither of us was any good at drawing. I suggested illustrations from magazines. But that wasn’t too hot an idea, either, for pictures of items in the magazine ads are usually all prettied up, designed to catch the eye.

Then Bill had a top-notch idea. “You know that kid dictionary Aunt Ethel gave me? Why don’t we send that to them? It’s got a lot of pictures and not much reading in it, and that’s important. The reading might confuse them.”

So we went into his room and started looking through all the junk he had, searching for the dictionary. But we ran across one of the old ABC books he’d had when he was just a toddler and decided it was even better than the dictionary. It had good clear pictures and almost no reading at all. You know the kind of book I mean—A for apple, B for ball and so forth.

We took the book into the den and put it on the desk, centring it on the dot, then went out to di

In the morning the book had disappeared and that was a little odd. Up until then, nothing had disappeared from the desk until late in the day.

Early that afternoon, Lewis called me up. “I’m coming down to see you, Joe. Is there a bar handy where the two of us can be alone?”

I told him there was one only a block from me and said I’d meet him there.

I got a few things cleared away, then left the office, figuring I’d go over to the bar and have a quick one before Lewis showed up.

I don’t know how he did it, but he was there ahead of me, back in a comer booth. He must have broken every traffic regulation on the books.

He had a couple of drinks waiting for us and was all huddled over, like a conspirator. He was a bit out of breath, as he had every right to be.

“Marge told me,” he said.

“I suspected she would.”

“There could be a mint in it, Joe!”

“That’s what I thought, too. That’s why I’m willing to give you ten per cent…”

“Now look here,” squawked Lewis. “You can’t pull a deal like that. I wouldn’t touch it for less than fifty.”

“I’m letting you in on it,” I said, “because you’re a neighbour. I don’t know beans about this technical business. I’m getting stuff I don’t understand and I need some help to find out what it is, but I can always go to someone else…”

It took us three drinks to get the details settled—35 per cent for him, 65 for me.

“Now that that’s settled,” I said, “suppose you tell me what you found.”

“Found?”

“That block I gave you. You wouldn’t have tom down here and had the drinks all set up and waiting if you hadn’t found something.”

“Well, as a matter of fact…”

“Now just a minute,” I warned him. “We’re going to put this in the contract—any failure to provide full and complete analysis…”

“What contract?”

“We’re going to have a contract drawn up, so either of us can sue the other within an inch of his life for breaking it.”

Which is a hell of a way to start out a business venture, but it’s the only way to handle a slippery little skate like Lewis.

So he told me what he’d found. “It’s an emotions gauge.

That’s awkward terminology, I know, but it’s the best I can think of.”

“What does it do?”

“It tells how happy you are or how sad or how much you hate someone.”

“Oh, great,” I said, disappointed. “What good is a thing like that? I don’t need a gauge to tell me if I’m sore or glad or anything.”

He waxed practically eloquent. “Don’t you see what an instrument like that would mean to psychiatrists? It would tell more about patients than they’d ever be willing to tell about themselves. It could be used in mental institutions and it might be important in gauging reactions for the entertainment business, politics, law-enforcement and Lord knows what else.”

“No kidding! Then let’s start marketing!”

“The only thing is…”

“Yes?”

“We can’t manufacture them,” he said frustratedly. “We haven’t got the materials and we don’t know how they’re made.

You’ll have to trade for them.”

“I can’t. Not right away, that is. First I’ve got to be able to make the Traders understand what I want, and then I’ll have to find out what they’re willing to trade them for.”

“You have some other stuff?”

“A few things.”

“You better turn them over to me.”

“Some that could be dangerous. Anyhow, it all belongs to me. I’ll give you what I want, when I want and…”

We were off again.

We finally wound up by adjourning to an attorney’s office.

We wrote up a contract that is probably one of the legal curiosities of all time.

I’m convinced the attorney thought, and still thinks, both of us are crazy, but that’s the least of my worries now.

The contract said I was to turn over to Lewis, for his determination of its technical and merchandisable nature, at least 90 per cent of certain items, the source of which I alone controlled, and with the further understanding that said source was to remain at all times under my exclusive control. The other 10 per cent might, without prejudice, be withheld from his examination, with the party of the first part having sole authority to make determination of which items should constitute the withheld 10 per cent.