The psychopathic world lay waiting, unsuspecting, while Van Buren prepared his electric shock therapy.

  No patient can cure himself. But a shock from outside—

  Van Buren made the last movement necessary.

  The channel opened between Alpha and Beta. The energy potentials of two probability-continua, no longer insulated from each other, met—and leveled.

  Only two volts difference—but enough to bring Uranium Pile Number One to critical mass.

  In his tank, the Freak opened his mouth and screamed.

  -

  Six weeks later Louis Breden sat before the transmitter, talking to Van Buren. Now, more than ever, the organization needed Van Buren's advice. Too much had happened—more than they had expected; but the man in Omega seemed unperturbed.

  "Things are working out," he said. "We have the other probability world for purposes of comparison. You say that germ warfare is already beginning; that's the natural progression."

  "I hope we survive it," Louis said.

  "Enough of you will. Drastic ills ... enough of you will."

  "Ortega didn't."

  "But already you've found a specific for his coryza-variant virus," Van Buren said. "You could cure him now, if he were alive. And you're curing others."

  It was true enough. Some died, but others would survive, sometimes the unexpected ones. The Freak had not only survived, but had been cured, brought out of his shock stupor and into complete rationality. He had somehow sensed or felt the atomic blast at the island, and had realized that this world, at any rate, was not doomed to destruction by the chain reaction. There was another earth that had been so destroyed, but apparently through use of a different, unstable artificial element or isotope. The Freak was cured, and was proving extremely useful, though he was still bound to his tank.

  Yet Ortega was dead, a victim of the mutated coryza virus. And the world was in chaotic anarchy. Decentralization had happened weeks ago, GPC was now only one of a dozen groups that strove for power. And through the struggle weaved the forces of the underground, not yet ready to reintegrate, deftly turning the kaleidoscope whenever it showed a tendency to settle into the wrong pattern.

  Ilsa Carter was still alive and useful. And Joseph Breden was alive too—in the confusion, it hadn't been impossible to arrange his escape from the Chancery of the bewildered GPC. He, too, was helping, finding some release for his talents, though not until peace came would they find their full scope. And Margaret was alive also, in a hideaway in the Rocky Mountains, nursing a baby girl who seemed perfectly normal and nonmutant.

  The shock treatment had worked. Now, perhaps, it was the stage of pentothal narcosynthesis—the patient was undergoing katharsis.

  "I'm on the trail of that longevity thing," Louis said. "We don't have the facilities yet, but we'll get them. However, the main thing for us now is to find protection against the coming biological attacks."

  "Being able to see the other probability-worlds will help," Van Buren repeated, and Louis, eying the blank wires of the transmitter, nodded. He was trying to visualize Van Buren's face as he had seen it in the Freak's mind. It was a face much like his own, but there were differences. Within the last month, rather oddly, Louis' expression had changed so that the resemblance was very marked—to the few who could make the comparison. Yet a basic difference would always remain. For Louis it would always be a little too late. He had a chance now to catch up, and there might be more of a chance later, if the longevity genes could be maneuvered satisfactorily.

  The Freak called Louis telepathically. Both Van Buren and Louis slipped into the Freak's mind, and saw, with his strange, intra-probability vision, an earth hey had not glimpsed before, far beyond the scope of Van Buren's mechanical scanner.

  "A nice world," Louis said inadequately. "So will ours be, some day. That one took the right route at some crossroads—I wonder when?"

  "There are so many crossroads, Louis, "Van Buren said. "There are the major ones and the minor. I think our major one was in 1945—we'd probably never have dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima if the Jap kamikaze fleet hadn't destroyed Washington."

  Louis said, "We might have. We've always been a sentimental nation—but we might have done it, just the same."

  "I hope not. We needed destruction in our own country to be able to understand it. You can't convey war to a nation through words or pictures. And we needed that bombing—or we'd never have respected atomic power enough to keep it under control. We had to make a decision and stick to it, not keep on compromising with politics and anachronistic social shibboleths. There were plenty of probability crossroads a hundred years ago, but I think the most important one was the Washington-bombing factor. There were earths where Washington wasn't bombed!"

  "Yes," Louis said, his thought escaping unfinished in the blaze of an incandescent memory that would always be blinding, no matter how often it returned to him. It was the earth once.

  Van Buren said, "We can tell, now, what happened to some of those earths, and what roads they took. Well, some of them haven't turned out to be failures. For others—it's too late. It was too late for them a hundred years ago."

  Louis forced his mind away from the shining horror of a memory. "All our yesterdays—" he said.

  "... Have lighted fools the way to dusty death," Van Buren finished the quotation. "No, Louis—not all. The ones that did—well, they stood at their crossroads and were given a fair choice. And they committed suicide. So forget about them—they're not important now."

  Louis said, "Man got used to being given another chance. But there's no second chance with atomic power, is there? The failures—"

  "It's already too late," Van Buren repeated. "They don't matter any more."

  The End

  JUKE-BOX

  Thrilling Wonder Stories - February 1947

  with Henry Kuttner

  (as by Woodrow Wilson Smith)

  Nobody Loves Me, wails Jerry Foster—until a mechanical music-maker decides everything's just Moonlight and Roses

  -

  JERRY FOSTER told the bartender that nobody loved him. The bartender, with the experience of his trade, said that Jerry was mistaken, and how about another drink. "Why not?" said the unhappy Mr. Foster, examining the scanty contents of his wallet. " 'I'll take the daughter of the vine to spouse. Nor heed the music of a distant drum.' That's Omar."

  "Sure," the bartender said surprisingly. "But you want to look out you don't go out by the same door that in you went. No brawls allowed here. This isn't East Fifth, chum."

  "You may call me chum," Foster said, reverting to the main topic, "but you don't mean it. I'm nobody's pal. Nobody loves me."

  "What about that babe you brought in last night?"

  Foster tested his drink. He was a good-looking, youngish man with slick blond hair and a rather hazy expression in his blue eyes.

  "Betty?" he murmured. "Well, the fact is, a while ago I was down at the Tom-Tom with Betty and this redhead came along. So I ditched Betty. Then the redhead iced me. Now I'm lonely, and everyone hates me."

  "You shouldn't of ditched Betty, maybe," the bartender suggested.

  "I'm fickle," Foster said, tears springing to his eyes. "I can't help it. Women are my downfall. Gimme another drink and tell me your name."

  "Austin."

  "Austin. Well, Austin, I'm nearly in trouble. Did you notice who won the fifth at Santa Anita yesterday?"

  "Pig's Trotters, wasn't it?"

  "Yes," Foster said, "but I laid my dough right on the nose of White Flash. That's why I'm here. Sammy comes around to this joint now, doesn't he?"

  "That's right."

  "I'm lucky," Foster said. "I got the money to pay him. Sammy is a hard man when you don't pay off."

  "I wouldn't know," the bartender said. "Excuse me."

  He moved off to take care of a couple of vodka collinses.

  "So you hate me too," Foster said, and, picking up his drink, wandered away from the bar.

  He was surprised to see Betty sitting alone in a booth, watching him. But he was not at all surprised to see that her blond hair, her limpid eyes, her pink-and-white skin had lost all attraction for him. She bored him. Also, she was going to make a nuisance of herself.

  Foster ignored the girl and went further back, to where a bulky oblong object was glowing in polychromatic colors against the far wall. It was what the manufacturers insist on terming an automatic phonograph, in spite of the more aptly descriptive word juke-box.

  This was a lovely juke-box. It had lots of lights and colors. Moreover, it wasn't watching Foster, and it kept its mouth shut.

  -

  FOSTER draped himself over the juke-box and patted its sleek sides.

  "You're my girl," he announced. "You're beautiful. I love you madly, do you hear? Madly."

  He could feel Betty's gaze on his back. He swigged his drink and smoothed the juke-box's flanks, glibly protesting his sudden affection for the object. Once he glanced around. Betty was starting to get up.

  Foster hastily found a nickel in his pocket and slipped it into the coin-lever, but before he could push it in, a stocky, dark man wearing horn-rimmed glasses entered the bar, nodded at Foster, and moved quickly to a booth where a fat person in tweeds was sitting. There was a short consultation, during which money changed hands, and the stocky man made a note in a small book he brought from his pocket.

  Foster took out his wallet. He had had trouble with Sammy before, and wanted no more. The bookie was insistent on his pound of flesh. Foster counted his money, blinked, and counted it again, while his stomach fell several feet. Either he had been short-changed, or he had lost some dough. He was short.

  Sammy wouldn't like that.

  Forcing his fogged brain to think, Foster wondered how he could gain time. Sammy had already seen him. If he could duck out the back.

  It had become altogether too silent in the bar. He needed noise to cover his movements. He saw the nickel in the juke-box's coin-lever and hastily pushed it in.

  Money began to spew out of the coin return slot.

  Foster got his hat under the slot almost instantly. Quarters, dimes, and nickels popped out in a never-ending stream. The juke-box broke into song. A needle scratched over the black disc. The torchy mourning of "My Man" came out sadly. It covered the tinkling of the coins as they filled Foster's hat.

  After a while the money stopped coming out of the juke-box. Foster stood there, thanking his personal gods, as he saw Sammy moving toward him. The bookie glanced at Foster's hat and blinked.

  "Hi, Jerry. What gives?"

  "I hit a jackpot," Foster said.'

  "Not on the juke-box!"

  "No, down at the Onyx," Foster said, naming a private club several blocks away. "Haven't had a chance to get these changed into bills yet. Want to help me out?"

  "I'm no cash register," Sammy said. "I'll take mine in green."

  The juke-box stopped playing "My Man" and broke into "Always." Foster put his jingling hat on top of the phonograph and counted out bills. He didn't have enough, but he made the balance up out of quarters he fished from the hat.

  "Thanks," Sammy said. "Too bad your nag didn't make it."

  " 'With a love that's true, always—' " the juke-box sang fervently.

  "Can't be helped," Foster said. "Maybe next time I'll hit 'em."

  "Want anything on Oaklawn?"

  " 'When the things you've planned, need a helping hand—' "

  Foster had been leaning on the juke-box. On the last two words, a tingling little shock raced through him. Those particular two words jumped out of nothing, impinged on the surface of his brain, and sank in indelibly, like the stamp of a die. He couldn't hear anything else. They echoed and re-echoed.

  "Uh—helping hand," he said hazily. "Helping—"

  "A sleeper?" Sammy said. "Okay, Helping Hand in the third, at Oaklawn. The usual?"

  The room started to turn around. Foster managed to nod. After a time he discovered that Sammy was gone. He saw his drink on the juke-box, next to his hat, and swallowed the cool liquid in three quick gulps. Then he bent and stared into the cryptic innards of the automatic phonograph.

  "It can't be," he whispered. "I'm drunk. But not drunk enough. I need another shot."

  A quarter rolled out of the coin-return slot, and Foster automatically caught it.

  "No!" he gulped. "Oh-h-h!" He stuffed his pockets with the booty from the hat, held on to his glass with the grip of a drowning man, and went toward the bar. On the way he felt someone touch his sleeve.

  "Jerry," Betty said. "Please."

  He ignored her. He went on to the bar and ordered another drink.

  "Look, Austin," he said. "That juke-box you got back there. Is it working all right?"

  Austin squeezed a lime. He didn't look up.

  "I don't hear any complaints."

  "But—"

  Austin slid a replenished glass toward Foster.

  "Excuse me," he said, and went to the other end of the bar.

  Foster stole a look at the juke-box. It sat against the wall glowing enigmatically.

  "I don't exactly know what to think," he said to no one in particular.

  A record started playing. The juke-box sang throatily:

  " 'Leave us face it, we're in love ...' "

  -

  THE truth was, Jerry Foster was feeling pretty low in those days. He was essentially a reactionary, so it was a mistake for him to have been born in an era of great change. He needed the feel of solid ground under his feet. And the ground wasn't so solid any more, what with the newspaper headlines and new patterns for living emerging out of the vast technological and sociological changes the mid-Twentieth Century offered.

  You've got to be elastic to survive in a changing culture. Back in the stable Twenties, Foster would have got along beautifully, but now, in a word, he just wasn't on the ball. A man like that seeks stable security as his ultimo, and security seemed to have vanished.

  The result was that Jerry Foster found himself out of a job, badly in debt, and drinking far more than he should have done. The only real advantage to that set-up was that alcohol buffered Foster's incredulity when he encountered the affectionate juke-box.

  Not that he remembered it the next morning. He didn't recall what had happened for a couple of days, till Sammy looked him up and gave him nine hundred dollars, the result of Helping Hand coming in under the wire at Oaklawn. The long shot had paid off surprisingly.

  Foster instantly went on a binge, finding himself eventually at a downtown bar he recognized. Austin was off duty, however, and Betty wasn't present tonight. So Foster, tanked to the gills, leaned his elbow on polished mahogany and stared around. Toward the back was the juke-box. He blinked at it, trying to remember.

  The juke-box began to play "I'll Remember April." The whirling confusion of insobriety focused down to a small, clear, cold spot in Foster's brain. He started to tingle. His mouth formed words:

  "Remember April—Remember April?"

  "All right!" said a fat, unshaven, untidy man standing next to him. "I heard you! I'll—What did you say?"

  "Remember April," Foster muttered, quite automatically. The fat man spilled his drink.

  "It isn't! It's March!"

  Foster peered around dimly in search of a calendar.

  "It's April third," he affirmed presently. "Why?"

  "I've got to get back, then," said the fat man in desperation. He scrubbed at his sagging cheeks. "April already! How long have I been tight? You don't know? It's your business to know. April! One more drink, then." He summoned the bartender.

  He was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a man with a hatchet. Foster, blearily eying the apparition, almost decided to get out in search of a quieter gin-mill. This new figure, bursting in from the street, was a skinny blond man with wild eyes and the shakes. Before anyone could stop him, he had rushed the length of the room and lifted his hatchet threateningly above the juke-box.

  "I can't stand it!" he cried hysterically. "You spiteful little—I'll fix you before you fix me!"

  So saying, and ignoring the purposeful approach of the bartender, the blond man brought down his hatchet heavily on the juke-box. There was a blue crackle of flame, a tearing noise, and the blond man collapsed without a sound.