I am a Nucleus
By STEPHEN BARR
Illustrated by GAUGHAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
No doubt whatever about it, I had the Indian
sign on me ... my comfortably untidy world had
suddenly turned into a monstrosity of order!
When I got home from the office, I was not so much tired as beatendown, but the effect is similar. I let myself into the apartment, whichhad an absentee-wife look, and took a cold shower. The present downtowntemperature, according to the radio, was eighty-seven degrees, butaccording to my Greenwich Village thermometer, it was ninety-six. I gotdressed and went into the living room, and wished ardently that mywife Molly were here to tell me why the whole place looked so woebegone.
What do they do, I asked myself, that I have left undone? I've vacuumedthe carpet, I've dusted and I've straightened the cushions.... Ah! Theashtrays. I emptied them, washed them and put them back, but still theplace looked wife-deserted.
It had been a bad day; I had forgotten to wind the alarm clock, so I'dhad to hurry to make a story conference at one of the TV studios Iwrite for. I didn't notice the impending rain storm and had no umbrellawhen I reached the sidewalk, to find myself confronted with an almosttropical downpour. I would have turned back, but a taxi came up and awoman got out, so I dashed through the rain and got in.
"Madison and Fifty-fourth," I said.
"Right," said the driver, and I heard the starter grind, and then goon grinding. After some futile efforts, he turned to me. "Sorry, Mac.You'll have to find another cab. Good hunting."
If possible, it was raining still harder. I opened my newspaper overmy hat and ran for the subway: three blocks. Whizzing traffic heldme up at each crossing and I was soaked when I reached the platform,just in time to miss the local. After an abnormal delay, I got onewhich exactly missed the express at Fourteenth Street. The same thinghappened at both ends of the crosstown shuttle, but I found the rainhad stopped when I got out at Fifty-first and Lexington.
As I walked across to Madison Avenue, I passed a big excavation wherethey were getting ready to put up a new office building. There was theusual crowd of buffs watching the digging machines and, in particular,a man with a pneumatic drill who was breaking up some hard-packed clay.While I looked, a big lump of it fell away, and for an instant I wasable to see something that looked like a chunk of dirty glass, the sizeof an old-fashioned hatbox. It glittered brilliantly in the sunlight,and then his chattering drill hit it.
There was a faint bang and the thing disintegrated. It knocked him onhis back, but he got right up and I realized he was not hurt. At themoment of the explosion—if so feeble a thing can be called one—Ifelt something sting my face and, on touching it, found blood on myhand. I mopped at it with my handkerchief but, though slight, thebleeding would not stop, so I went into a drugstore and bought somepink adhesive which I put on the tiny cut. When I got to the studio, Ifound that I had missed the story conference.
During the day, by actual count, I heard the phrase "I'm justspitballing" eight times, and another Madison Avenue favorite,"The whole ball of wax," twelve times. However, my story had beenaccepted without change because nobody had notice