Not Snow
Nor Rain
By MIRIAM ALLEN DeFORD
Sam should have let the 22 nixies
go to the dead letter office ... or
gone there himself for sanctuary!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, November 1959.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On his first day as a mail carrier, Sam Wilson noted that inscription,cribbed from Herodotus, on the General Post Office, and took it toheart: "Not snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays thesecouriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."
It couldn't be literally true, of course. Given a real blizzard, itwould be impossible to make his way through the pathless drifts; andif there had been a major flood, he could hardly have swum to deliverletters to the marooned. Moreover, if he couldn't find the addressee,there was nothing to do but mark the envelope "Not known at thisaddress," and take it back to be returned to the addresser or consignedto the Dead Letter Office. But through the years, Sam Wilson had beenas consciously faithful and efficient as any Persian messenger.
Now the long years had galloped by, and this was the very last time hewould walk his route before his retirement.
It would be good to put his feet up somewhere and ease them back intocomfort; they had been Sam's loyal servants and they were more wornout than he was. But the thought of retirement bothered him. Molliewas going to get sick of having him around the house all day, and hewas damned if he was going to sit on a park bench like other discardedold men and suck a pipe and stare at nothing, waiting for the hours topass in a vacuum. He had his big interest, of course—his status as adevoted science fiction fan; he would have time now to read and reread,to watch hopefully from the roof of his apartment house for signs of aflying saucer. But that wasn't enough; what he needed was a project tokeep him alert and occupied.
On his last delivery he found it.
The Ochterlonie Building, way down on lower Second Avenue, was arundown, shabby old firetrap, once as solid as the Scotsman who hadbuilt it and named it for himself, but now, with its single open-cageelevator and its sagging floors, attracting only quack doctors anddubious private eyes and similar fauna on the edge of free enterprise.Sam had been delivering to it now for 35 years, watching its slowdeterioration.
This time there was a whole batch of self-addressed lettersfor a tenant whose name was new to him, but that was hardlysurprising—nowadays, in the Ochterlonie Building, tenants came andwent.
They were small envelopes, addressed in blue, in printing simulatinghandwriting, to Orville K. Hesterson, Sec.-Treas., Time-Between-Time,746 Ochterlonie Building, New York 3, N. Y. Feeling them withexperienced fingers, Sam Wilson judged they were orders for something,doubtless enclosing money.
In most of the buildings on his last route, Sam knew, at least bysight, the employees who took in the mail, and they knew him. A lotof them knew this was his last trip; there were farewells and goodwishes, and even a few small donations (since he wouldn't be therenext Christmas) which he gratefully tucked in an inside pocket of theuniform he would never wear again. There were also two or threeinvitations to a drink, which, being still on duty, he had regretfullyto decline.
But in the Ochterlonie Building, with its fly-by-night clientele, hewa