Adolescents Only Part 5

He slipped out to the boys' workshop back of the garage. When he knocked on the door, Donald opened it two inches and quickly tried to close it again. But Elvin thrust his hand over the latch.

"No, Donald," he said sternly. "This time you don't get away with it.

You see, I know what happened when you ate the spheres."

The door creaked open. Elvin walked into the workshop, where all thirty of the tenth graders were gathered around the littered work table. The rocket was there, and they were studying the tiny motor. In a corner was a hastily constructed forge; three girls were working with it, turning out curved strips of metal, which a boy was machining on the metal lathe. In the center of the shop was a tall, gleaming bar of metal, surrounded by a network of wires and fastened to a wooden base made from an orange crate.

"You're cooking up some more surprises for us?" Elvin asked.

"No," Donald replied solemnly. "We're ashamed of--"

"As, indeed, you should be."

"We're doing our best to put everything back the way it was," Mabel Travis said. "Honestly, Mr. Elvin."

"It won't help much; the damage is already done."

"But it can be undone. We've already fixed up part of it."

"Yes," David Schermerhorn cut in anxiously. "When Don and I came back this morning, the first thing we did was bring back the bank. Our machine's kind of crude, Mr. Elvin, so we couldn't get it right at first. I guess we picked up a castle or something in between; but that's all right, now. And the gold--well, we're going to turn it back to gravel again tonight." He gestured toward the bar of metal.

"We can work from the edge of our field," David pointed out. "The whole desert will change at once, the way it did last night."

"And what will you do with all the people on it?"

"It won't hurt them."

"But when they find their gold is gravel, you'll have a major catastrophe on your hands."

Marilyn bit her lip. "That's why we haven't done anything yet. We don't want anybody to get hurt but--"

"So you've considered that at last." The more Elvin rubbed in the guilt, he reasoned, the more secure he would make himself.

"We could just transpose the whole area," Charles suggested. "We've considered that, too. Maybe in pieces, Mr. Elvin. You know, an acre or two to Australia, another to Germany, another to England. That couldn't cause much more than local riots."

"But the men would be mighty uncomfortable for a while."

"The only trouble is, our machines are so crude; we've had to build them out of sc.r.a.ps. And something could go wrong. We might try to send some of the mob to China, and end up putting them in the Pacific, or maybe back in time."

"You've done enough tampering," Elvin declared. "I won't help you at all, unless you promise to leave everything as it is. You have to put yourselves in a position to help the world, not destroy it."

Elvin had injected just the right tone of n.o.bility into his voice. The thirty adolescents consulted together in whispers. Then David asked,

"What do you want us to do, Mr. Elvin?"

"Let me act as your representative. I'll go to Was.h.i.+ngton and talk to responsible men in the government; I'll try to see the president himself. We should set up a scientific foundation for you, where you'll have the equipment you need and where your experiments won't do the rest of us any harm. But, if I'm to convince anybody, I'm going to have to do some tall talking. If you had one of the capsules left--"

"No, Mr. Elvin; they're all gone." David was not looking at him, and Elvin knew he was lying; but this was not the occasion to make an issue of it. Above everything else, he had to see to it that they had complete faith in his motives.

"Then one of your machines," he suggested. "I have to make them understand I'm not a crank."

"That sounds sensible. Which one, Mr. Elvin? The Degravitational Unit is the smallest, and it would do the least harm if--" David looked away again. "--if it got out of your hands."

"It isn't sensational enough. I rather wanted to show them this thing you used to transpose the bank and a square of jungle."

"Oh, no!" Marilyn broke in. "We couldn't--"

"Why that, Mr. Elvin?"

"I've already told you. It's the sort of thing that would attract the attention of the important officials immediately, because it could be converted so readily to a weapon of inestimable value."

There was a long silence, while the thirty youngsters looked from one to the other. It lengthened. Elvin felt a creeping edge of fear. David spoke at last,

"I think you're right, Mr. Elvin. We could show the world how to build a society adjusted to the needs of man; we could develop techniques for wiping out disease and mental disorders; we could show you how to conserve our resources, how to build material things for the mutual happiness of all people; how to create instead of destroying. But of course you're right. The only thing that would really interest any of us would be a new weapon, wouldn't it? All right; we'll give it to you."

Marilyn sprang up. "But, David--"

"I know what I'm doing!" he snapped at her in a tense whisper. Turning back to Elvin he added smoothly, "But we'll want something from you first, Mr. Elvin."

"Anything, my boy; anything to promote the welfare of mankind. But no more of your tricks, mind."

"This is far from a trick, Mr. Elvin."

"So long as that's understood--"

"We're working on a machine--a new one. We have everything we need except tungsten. They use that in building television sets, among other things. I want you to drive down to one of the plants in Los Angeles and get us a pound of tungsten. They won't sell it to you; you'll have to steal it."

"Now, David! Only a thick-skulled schoolboy would take such an unsocial att.i.tude! I'm a teacher, a responsible citizen, proud--"

"Do you want the machine for transposing matter?"

"Yes; for the good of the nation. But--"

"Then you'll have to take this risk. We'll give you a Degravitational Unit. That'll help you get away. When you bring us the tungsten, we'll deliver the transportation machine."

Elvin made the drive to Los Angeles in record time. The highway was jammed with traffic, but all of it was moving in the opposite direction, toward San Benedicto. He refused to think of the consequences if he were caught. The glittering dream was still blazing on the horizon of his mind. If they refused him the learning capsule, it was unfortunate, but there was nothing he could do about it. The important machine was the one that transposed matter through time. With that one device alone, Elvin could sway the world. Placed in the scales against such a reward, the moral issue of theft counted not at all.

Los Angeles whirled chaotically in the monetary crisis. The streets were jammed with people, buying everything they could before prices jumped again. In the confusion, Elvin had no difficulty breaking into a television plant. He didn't trip a burglar alarm until he was leaving the factory, but the Degravitational Unit made his escape easy. Within four hours he was back in San Benedicto. He hurried to the workshop. But when he pounded on the door, there was no response. He tried the latch and the door swung open.

The room was empty, but on the table was a large envelope addressed to him. A thin thread of wire was fastened to it; as he picked it up, the wire broke and somewhere in the distance a motor began to hum.

"Dear Mr. Elvin," he read. "It was unkind of us to play another trick on you, but we're sure you'll be clever enough to steal the tungsten without getting caught. When you came to talk to us, we realized that the conclusion we had reached was right. Children--adolescent minds--have wrecked our world. You know all about that, Mr. Elvin; teachers always do. And you've told us so often in cla.s.s about the unstable emotions of adolescents, their tantrums, their unpredictability, their unsocial behavior, their egocentricity and all the rest. We'd like to help, but there isn't much we can do, not really; you just want the machines we know how to make, not the ideas we've learned. We grew up, you see, on the day we turned the desert to gold.

We found out what happens when you give children dangerous toys to play with.

"We made our mistake, and we know how to straighten it out. We've only waited for you to read this so that you would understand, at least for a moment. We have isolated ourselves in suspended time; we're right here in the workshop with you, but you can't see us, naturally, because we started standing still in time more than an hour ago. When you opened your envelope, you tripped the motor of a matter transposition machine which will throw all time backward to last Friday night. None of this will have happened then. That should straighten everything out, don't you think?