William Tenn - Lisbon Cubed

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Lisbon Cubed

William Tenn

The telephone rang. Alfred Smith, who had been hauling clothes out of his valise and stuffing them into

a typical hotel room bureau, looked up startled.

"Now, who—" he began, and shook his head.

Obviously it must be a wrong number. Nobody knew he was in New York, and nobody—this for a

certainty—knew he had checked into this particular hotel. Or come to think of it, somebody did.

The room clerk at the desk where he had just registered.

Must be some hotel business. Something about don't use the lamp on the end table: it tends to

short-circuit.

The telephone rang again. He dropped the valise and walked around the bed. He picked up the

phone.

"Yes?" he said.

"Mr. Smith?" came a thick voice from the other end.

"Speaking."

"This is Mr. Jones. Mr. Cohen and Mr. Kelly are with me in the lobby. So is Jane Doe. Do you

want us to come up or shall we wait for you?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Well, then, we'll come up. Five-oh-four, isn't it?"

"Yes, but wait a minute! Who did you say?" He realized they had hung up.

Alfred Smith put down the telephone and ran his fingers through his crewcut. He was a moderately

tall, moderately athletic, moderately handsome young man with the faintest hint at jowl and belly of recent

prosperity.

"Mr. Jones? Cohen? Kelly? And for suffering Pete's sake, Jane Doe?"

It must be a joke. Any Smith was used to jokes on his name. What was your name before it was

Smith? Alfred Smith? Whatever happened to good old Johnnie?

Then he remembered that his caller had just asked for Mr. Smith. Smith was a common name, like it

or not.

He picked up the phone again. "Desk," he told the operator.

"Yes, Desk?" a smooth voice said after a while.

"This is Mr. Smith in Room 504. Was there another Smith registered here before me?"

A long pause. "Are you having any trouble, sir?"

Alfred Smith grimaced. "That's not what I'm asking. Was there or wasn't there?"

"Well, sir, if you could tell me if it is causing you inconvenience in any way..."

He got exasperated. "I asked you a simple question. Was there a Smith in this room before me?

What's the matter, did he kill himself?"

"We have no right to believe he committed suicide, sir!" the desk clerk said em-phatically, "There

are many, many circumstances under which a guest might disap-pear after registering for a room!"

There was a peremptory knock on the door. Alfred Smith grunted. "Okay. That's all I wanted to

know," and hung up.

He opened the door, and before he could say anything, four people came in. Three were men; the

last was a mildly attractive woman.

"Now, look—" he began.

"Hello, Gar-Pitha" one of the men said. "I'm Jones. This is Cohen, this is Kelly. And, of course, Jane

Doe."

"There's been a mistake," Alfred told him.

"And how there's been a mistake!" said Cohen, locking the door behind him care-fully, "Jones, you

called Smith by his right name! When the corridor door was open! That's unpardonable stupidity."

Jane Doe nodded. "Open or closed, we must remember that we are on Earth. We will use only

Earth names. Operating Procedure Regulations XIV-XXII."

Alfred took a long, slow look at her, "On Earth?"

She smiled shamefacedly. "There I go, myself. I did practically the same thing. You're right. In

America. Or rather, to put it more exactly and less suspiciously, in New York City."

Mr. Kelly had been walking around him, staring at Alfred. "You're perfect," he said at last. "Better

than any of us. That disguise took a lot of hard, patient work. Don't tell me, I know. You're perfect,

Smith, perfect."

What in the world were they, Alfred wondered frantically—lunatics? No, spies! Should he say

something, should he give the mistake away, or should he start yelling his head off for help? But maybe

they weren't spies—maybe they were detectives on the trail of spies. He was in New York, after all.

New York wasn't Grocery Corners, Illinois.

And that suggested another possibility. New York, the home of the sharpie, the smart aleck. It could

be a simple practical joke being played by some city slickers on a new little hayseed.

If it were...

His visitors had found seats for themselves. Mr. Kelly opened the briefcase he was carrying and

grubbed around in it with his fingers. A low hum filled the room.

"Not enough power," Mr. Kelly apologized. "This is a small sun, after all. But give the rig a few

minutes: it'll build up."

Mr. Jones leaned forward. "Listen, do you folks mind if I slip out of my disguise? I'm hot."

"You're not supposed to," Jane Doe reminded him. "The uniform is to be worn at all times when

we're on duty."

"I know, I know, but Sten-Durok—oops, I mean Cohen, locked the door. Nobody comes in

through windows in this particular place, and we don't have to worry about materialization. So how about

I relax for a second or two?"

Alfred had perched on the edge of the dresser. He looked Mr. Jones over with great amusement.

The pudgy little man was wearing a cheap gray sharkskin suit. He was bald; he wore no eyeglasses; he

had no beard. He didn't even have a mustache.

Disguise, huh?

"I say let him," Alfred suggested with an anticipatory chuckle. "We're all alone—he might as well be

comfortable. Go ahead, Jones, take off your disguise."

"Thanks," Jones said with feeling. "I'm suffocating in this outfit."

Alfred chuckled again. He'd show these New Yorkers.

"Take it off. Be comfortable. Make yourself at home."

Jones nodded and unbuttoned the jacket of his gray sharkskin suit. Then he un-buttoned the white

shirt under it. Then he put his two forefingers into his chest, all the way in, and pulled his chest apart. He

kept pulling until there was a great dark hole about ten inches wide.

A black spider squirmed out of the opening. Its round little body was about the size of a man's fist,

its legs about the size and length of pipe stems. It crouched on Jones's chest, while the body from which it

had emerged maintained its position in a kind of paralysis, the fingers still holding the chest apart, the

back and legs still rest-ing comfortably in the chair.

"Whew!" said the spider. "That feels good."

Alfred found he couldn't stop chuckling. He finally managed to halt the noise from his mouth, but it

kept on going in his head. He stared at the spider, at the stiff body from which it had come. Then,

frantically, he stared at the others in the room, at Cohen, at Kelly, at Jane Doe.

They couldn't have looked less interested.

The hum from the briefcase on Kelly's knees abruptly resolved itself into words. Alfred's visitors

stopped looking bored and leaned forward attentively.

"Greetings, Special Emissaries," said the voice. "This is Command Central speak-ing. Robinson, to

you. Are there any reports of significance?"

"None from me," Jane Doe told it.

"Nor me," from Kelly.

"Nothing new yet," said Cohen.

The spider stretched itself luxuriously. "Same here. Nothing to report."

"Jones!" ordered the voice from the briefcase. "Get back into your uniform!"

"It's hot, chief. And we're all alone in here, sitting behind what they call a locked door. Remember,

they've got a superstition on Earth about locked doors? We don't have anything to worry about."

"I'll tell you what to worry about. You get into that uniform, Jones! Or maybe you're tired of being a

Special Emissary? Maybe you'd like to go back to General Emissary status?"

The spider stretched its legs and performed what could only be described as a shrug. Then it

backed carefully into the hole in the chest. The hole closed behind it. The body of Jones came to life and

buttoned his shirt and jacket.

"That's better," said the voice from the briefcase on Kelly's knee. "Don't ever do that again while

you're on duty."

"Okay, chief, okay. But couldn't we cool down this planet? You know, bring on winter, start a new

ice age? It would make it a lot easier to work."

"And a lot easier to be detected, stupid. You worry about the big things like con-ventions and

beauty contests. We'll worry about the little things here, in Command Central, like arbitrarily changing the

seasons and starting new ice ages. All right, Smith, how about you? What's your report?"

Alfred Smith shook the thick gathered wool out of his head, slid off the dresser, and on to his feet.

He looked around wildly.

"Re-report?" A breath. "Why, nothing—nothing to report."

"Took you a long time to make up your mind about it. You're not holding any-thing back, are you?

Remember, it's our job to evaluate information, not yours."

Alfred wet his lips. "N-no. I'm not holding anything back."

"You'd better not. One beauty contest you forget to tell us about and you're through, Smith. We still

haven't forgotten that boner you pulled in Zagreb."

"Oh, chief," Jane Doe intervened. "It was only a local stunt to discover who was the tallest

card-carrying Communist in Croatia. You can't blame Smith for missing that."

"We certainly can blame Smith for that. It was a beauty contest, within the definition of the term you

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William Tenn - Lisbon Cubed

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