to the breast pocket of his orange uniform. “Go on,” he said, amused. “It sounds interesting.” He tossed the dossier carelessly on the back seat.
Lanfierre sat stiffly behind the wheel, affronted. The cynical MacBride couldn’t really appreciate fine aberrations. In some ways MacBride was a barbarian. Lanfierre had held out on Fownes for months. He had even contrived to engage him in conversation once, a pleasantly absurd, irrational little chat that titillated him for weeks. It was only with the greatest reluctance that he finally mentioned Fownes to MacBride. After years of searching for differences Lanfierre had seen how extraordinarily repetitious people were, echoes really, dimly resounding echoes, each believing itself whole and separate. They spoke in an incessant chatter of cliches, and their actions were unbelievably trite.
Then a fine robust freak came along and the others—the echoes—refused to believe it. The lieutenant was probably on the point of suggesting a vacation.
“Why don’t you take a vacation?” Lieutenant MacBride suggested.
“It’s like this, MacBride. Do you know what a wind is? A breeze? A zephyr?”
“I’ve heard some.”
“They say there are mountain-tops where winds blow all the time. Strong winds, MacBride. Winds like you and I can’t imagine. And if there was a house sitting on such a mountain and if winds did blow, it would shake exactly the way that one does. Sometimes I get the feeling the whole place is going to slide off its foundation and go sailing down the avenue.”
Lieutenant MacBride pursed his lips.
“I’ll tell you something else,” Lanfierre went on. “The windows all close at the same time. You’ll be watching and all of a sudden every single window in the place will drop to its sill.” Lanfierre leaned back in the seat, his eyes still on the house. “Sometimes I think there’s a whole crowd of people in there waiting for a signal—as if they all had something important to say but had to close the windows first so no one could hear. Why else close the windows in a domed city? And then as soon as the place is buttoned up they all explode into conversation—and that’s why the house shakes.”
MacBride whistled.
“No, I don’t need a vacation.”
A falling piece of glass dissolved into a puff of gossamer against the windshield. Lanfierre started and bumped his knee on the steering wheel.
“No, you don’t need a rest,” MacBride said. “You’re starting to see flying houses, hear loud babbling voices. You’ve got winds in your brain, Lanfierre, breezes of fatigue, zephyrs of irrationality—”
At that moment, all at once, every last window in the house slammed shut.
The street was deserted and quiet, not a movement, not a sound. MacBride and Lanfierre both leaned forward, as if waiting for the ghostly babble of voices to commence.
The house began to shake.
It rocked from side to side, it pitched forward and back, it yawed and dipped and twisted, straining at the mooring of its foundation. The house could have been preparing to take off and sail down the....
MacBride looked at Lanfierre and Lanfierre looked at MacBride and then they both looked back at the dancing house.
“And the water,” Lanfierre said. “The water he uses! He could be the thirstiest and cleanest man in the city. He could have a whole family of thirsty and clean kids, and he stillwouldn’t need all that water.”
The lieutenant had picked up the dossier. He thumbed through the pages now in amazement. “Where do you get a guy like this?” he asked. “Did you see what he carries in his pockets?”
“And compasses won’t work on this street.”
The lieutenant lit a cigarette and sighed.
He usually sighed when making the decision to raid a dwelling. It expressed his weariness and distaste for people who went off and got neurotic when they could be enjoying a happy, normal existence. There was something implacable about his sighs.
“He’ll be coming out soon,” Lanfierre said. “He eats supper next door with a widow. Then he goes to the library. Always the same. Supper at the widow’s next door and then the library.”
MacBride’s eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. “The library?” he said. “Is he in with that bunch?”
Lanfierre nodded.
“Should be very interesting,” MacBride said slowly.
“I can’t wait to see what he’s got in there,” Lanfierre murmured, watching the house with a consuming interest.
They sat there smoking in silence and every now and then their eyes widened as the house danced a new step.
Fownes stopped on the porch to brush the plaster of paris off his shoes. He hadn’t seen the patrol car and this intense preoccupation of his was also responsible for the dancing house—he simply hadn’t noticed. There was a certain amount of vibration, of course. He had a bootleg pipe connected into the dome blower system, and the high-pressure air caused some buffeting against the thin walls of the house. At least, he called it buffeting; he’d never thought to watch from outside.
He went in and threw his jacket on the sofa, there being no room left in the closets. Crossing the living room he stopped to twist a draw-pull.
Every window slammed shut.
“Tight as a kite,” he thought, satisfied. He continued on toward the closet at the foot of the stairs and then stopped again. Was that right? No, snug as a hug in a rug. He went on, thinking: The old devils.
The downstairs closet was like a great watch case, a profusion of wheels surrounding the Master Mechanism, which was a miniature see-saw that went back and forth 365-1/4 times an hour. The wheels had a curious stateliness about them. They were all quite old, salvaged from grandfather’s clocks and music boxes and they went around in graceful circles at the rate of 30 and 31 times an hour ... although there was one slightly eccentric cam that vacillated between 28 and 29. He watched as they spun and flashed in the darkness, and then set them for seven o’clock in the evening, April seventh, any year.
Outside, the domed city vanished.
It was replaced by an illusion. Or, as Fownes hoped it might appear, the illusion of the domed city vanished and was replaced by a more satisfactory, and, for his specific purpose, more functional, illusion. Looking through the window he saw only a garden.
Instead of an orange sun at perpetual high noon, there was a red sun setting brilliantly, marred only by an occasional arcover which left the smell of ozone in the air. There was also a gigantic moon. It hid a huge area of sky, and it sang. The sun and moon both looked down upon a garden that was itself scintillant, composed largely of neon roses.
Moonlight, he thought, and roses. Satisfactory. And cocktails for two. Blast, he’d never be able to figure that one out! He watched as the moon played, Oh, You Beautiful Dolland the neon roses flashed slowly from red to violet, then went back to the closet and turned on the scent. The house began to smell like an immensely concentrated rose as the moon shifted to People Will Say We’re In Love.
