calculated Risk part 2

[Leslie]

Calculated Risk part 2

They were in pasture land, their only company being some uninterested cows. Quite a way off they saw buildings. Wayner had miscalculated. He had put them on the outskirts of the town as it was in the 1950’s; but Wayhalt had expanded enormously through the construction of factories during World War 2. The 1950’s outskirts were a long hike from the 1926 edge of town, and it was a warm July day. They started to walk.
Dodging the cow-pats, they made it to a dirt road along which it was certain no buses were going to run. They kept walking. Things did not go well; Wayner’s shoes were a poor fit and soon began to rub his toes. To be a bit cooler, they took off their jackets and slung them over a shoulder, hooked on a finger.
Eventually they came to a shabby wooden house with a stoop along the front; Wayner sat gratefully and pulled off his shoes to caress his toes. Benguy was not averse to sitting; he pulled out a man-size handkerchief, patted his face and cussed all incompetent navigators and his misfortune in having to nanny one. Behind them a dried out door creaked; looking around they beheld a dried out, middle-aged woman in clothes as shabby as the house, but she smiled and said, “Darn hot day for walking, huh?” And looking more closely at them, “You two ain’t dressed for country rambles.”
The experienced Benguy replied before Wayner might put his unshod foot in it, “No ma’am. We miscalculated; friend dropped us off too far from town.”
“ ’spect you’d ‘preciate a drink,” she said, and both men nodded fervently. “Come in outa the sun,” she led the way into the ramshackle house. “Oswald, we got company!” she yelled, and a dried out man came through from what proved to be the kitchen.
There were brief introductions, cool fruit drinks were supplied, Oswald apologised and explained that he and Dorcas, his wife, must get on with their work. Wayner and Benguy followed them to the kitchen door and watched as their hosts made piles of sandwiches, deftly wrapping them in white paper. “We have a stall in town and sell these to folk who take them along for their lunch,” Dorcas explained.
“You hungry?” she asked the travellers. Benguy was travelled enough not to be shy and confessed that they had had no breakfast. “Got some left over meat filling here. I’ll do yuh a special,” she smiled and put a concoction of minced up meat into a pan where it was soon sizzling aromatically. The woman buttered crisp crusty ends of loaves, sandwiched the cooked meat between crusts and gave a portion each to the visitors. Between appreciative noises, Benguy said, “Hey, this is very good. You ought to make up crisp rolls like this, I bet you’d sell hundreds.”
Rested and reinforced with drink and food, the travellers were ready to resume their journey, which was made easy because Oswald was about to take the pile of sandwiches into town. The three men squeezed into the cab of Oswald’s old van and the rest of the long hike was covered in minutes.
A plan of the town as it had been was clear in Wayner’s mind and, enduring the sore toes, he led his scarcely enduring, totally uninterested keeper on a guided, over-narrated tour taking in the birthplace and the old school, ending up at the town library. There they had the Forthled Memorial Room to themselves; the undisturbed dust and general neglect suggested that no-one else had been in the place for many weeks.
Photographs around the walls depicted the hero’s life story –Wayner studied them in detail. Books and documents in glass-topped cases exhibited some of his theories and calculations. They were all familiar to Wayner, and had no attraction for Benguy. The cabinet that really gripped Wayner was the one containing some of the calculating machines that Forthled had made. Amongst them was the one Wayner had tried to copy; his model had never worked properly and he really wanted to know why. He tried lifting the lid but the cabinet was locked. He took a chance and went out to the librarian’s desk; he explained to the motherly woman on duty his great admiration for Forthled, how he had built a model of one the machines following directions in a magazine, that his model didn’t work and could he possibly open the cabinet and actually handle the original machine? Reverence for Forthled and all his works was obviously not as high amongst his hometown folk as it was with the visitor; mother librarian gave him the key with only an admonition to ‘be careful’.
Wayner was only a breath away from defying the Law of Gravity as he hurried back to the Memorial Room.
Cabinet open, the miraculous machine in his hands, Wayner was lost to everything else in the world. Benguy, already fed up after a quick tour of the photographs and the dusty cabinets, asked, “How long you going to be?” But Wayner didn’t even hear him. Benguy set off for another dismal circuit of the pictures. When he had completed the round Wayner was still fiddling with the machine. Benguy wandered to the door, leaned against the frame and surveyed the main room in the hope that some worthwhile talent might call in. He was carefully estimating the vital dimensions of a moderately eligible young woman when Wayner finished his investigation, admiration for the inventor greater than ever. A glance over his shoulder showed him that the watchdog was watching elsewhere; Wayner decided to pay the highest tribute he could to his hero and slipped his beloved solar calculator into the cabinet, hiding it under Forthled’s machine. He closed and locked the cabinet.
“Ready to go,” he said, and Benguy shoved himself off the door frame enthusiastically.
The key was handed back with genuine thanks and the pair left the building. Not far from the library they found Oswald selling sandwiches from a handcart; Wayner asked a few questions about the town, then Benguy asked about bus services to get out of town..
They alighted in the depths of the countryside, not without some curious looks from the driver and the couple of passengers. Benguy operated his Recall Recognition Transmitter and within a minute they were watching the walls of the Transfer Chamber reform around them.
Debriefing was routine. The magazine article got written and published in the next month’s issue. Wayner was proud; one or two statisticians actually congratulated him. How many other people read it was unknown.
One who happened to was a professor at a distant University, an admirer of Forthled and an acquaintance of the Director. Visiting Washington some months after the publication, he called on his acquaintance and mentioned that he would like to meet the author. So Wayner was summoned once again to the Director’s office.