Now, mind you, the signature was absolutely genuine. It was no fake. There wasn’t an atom of fraud about the whole transaction. I want that understood. Lying on my uncle Otto’s broad hand was a signature indited with the Georgian hand of Rutton Gwinnett himself on the authentic parchment of the honest-to-God, real-life Declaration of Independence.

It was decided that my uncle Otto would travel down to Washington with the parchment scrap. I was unsatisfactory for the purpose. I was a lawyer. I would be expected to know too much. He was merely a scientific genius, and wasn’t expected to know anything. Besides, who could suspect Dr. Otto Schlemmelmayer of anything but the most transparent honesty.

We spent a week arranging our story. I bought a book for the occasion, an old history of colonial Georgia, in a secondhand shop. My uncle Otto was to take it with him and claim that he had found a document among its leaves; a letter to the Continental Congress in the name of the state of Georgia. He shrugged his shoulders at it and held it out over a Bunsen flame. Why should a physicist be interested in letters? Then he became aware of the peculiar odor it gave off as it burned and the slowness with which it was consumed. He beat out the flames but saved only the piece with the signatures. He looked at it and the name Button Gwinnett had stirred a slight fiber of memory.

He had the story cold. I burnt the edges of the parchment so that the lowest name, that of George Walton, was slightly singed.

“It will make it more realistic,” I explained. “Of course, a signature, without a letter above it, loses value, but here we have three signatures, all signers.

My uncle Otto was thoughtful. “And if they compare the signatures with those on the Declaration and notice it is all even microscopically the same, won’t they fraud suspect?”

Certainly. But what can they do? The parchment is authentic. The ink is authentic. The signatures are authentic. They’ll have to concede that. No matter how they suspect something queer, they can’t prove anything. Can they conceive of reaching through time for it? In fact, I hope they do try to make a fuss about it. The publicity will boost the price.”

The last phrase made my uncle Otto laugh.

The next day he took the train to Washington with visions of flutes in his head. Long flutes, short flutes, bass flutes, flute tremolos, massive flutes, micro flutes, flutes for the individual and flutes for the orchestra. A world of flutes for mind-drawn music.

“Remember,” his last words were, “the machine I have no money to rebuild. This must work.”

And I said, “Uncle Otto, it can’t miss.”

Ha!

He was back in a week. I had made long-distance calls each day and each day he told me they were investigating.

Investigating.

Well, wouldn’t you investigate? But what good would it do them?

I was at the station waiting for him. He was expressionless. I didn’t dare ask anything in public. I wanted to say, “Well, yes or no?” but I thought, let him speak.

I took him to my office. I offered him a cigar and a drink. I hid my hands under the desk but that only made the desk shake too, so I put them in my pocket and shook all over.

He said, “They investigated.”

“Sure! I told you they would. Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha?”

My uncle Otto took a slow drag at the cigar. He said, “The man at the Bureau of Documents came to me and said, ’Professor Schlemmelmayer,’ he said, ’you are the victim of a clever fraud.’ I said, ’So? And how can it a fraud be? The signature a forgery is?’ So he answered, ’It certainly doesn’t look like a forgery, but it must be!’ ’And why must it be?’ I asked.”

My uncle Otto put down his cigar, put down his drink, and leaned across the desk toward me. He had me so in suspense, I leaned forward toward him, so in a way I deserved everything I got.

“Exactly,” I babbled, “why must it be? They can’t prove a thing wrong with it, because it’s genuine. Why must it he a fraud, eh? Why”

My uncle Otto’s voice was terrifyingly saccharine. He said, “We got the parchment from the past?”

“Yes. Yes. You know we did.” “Over a hundred fifty years in the past. You said -”

“And a hundred fifty years ago the parchment on which the Declaration of Independence was written pretty new was. No?”

I was beginning to get it, but not fast enough.

My uncle Otto’s voice switched gears and became a dull, throbbing roar, “And if Button Gwinnett in 1777 died, you Godforsaken dunderlump, how can an authentic signature of his on a new piece of parchment be found?”

After that it was just a case of the whole world rushing backward and forward about me.

I expect to be on my feet soon. I still ache, but the doctors tell me no bones were broken.

Still, my uncle Otto didn’t have to make me swallow the damned parchment.

If I had hoped to be recognized as a master of humor as a result of these stories, I think I failed.

L. Sprague de Camp, one of the most successful writers of humorous science fiction and fantasy, had this to say about me in his science Fiction Handbook (Hermitage House, 1953), which, as you see, appeared not long after these (in my opinion) successful forays into humor:

“Asimov is a stoutish, youngish-looking man with wavy brown hair, blue eyes, and a bouncing, jovial, effervescent manner, esteemed among his friends for his generous, warm-hearted nature. Extremely sociable, articulate, and witty, he is a perfect toastmaster. This vein of oral humor contrasts with the sobriety of his stories.”

Sobriety!

On the other hand, twelves [sic] years later, Groff Conklin included BUTTON,BUTTON,in his anthology 13 Above the Niqht (Dell, 1965) and he said, in part, “When the Good Doctor… decides to take a day off and be funny, he can be very funny indeed…”

Now, although Groff and Sprague were both very dear friends of mine (Groff is now dead, alas), there is no question but that in this particular case I think Groff shows good taste and Sprague is nowhere.

Incidentally, before I pass on I had better explain that “generous, warm-hearted nature” crack by Sprague, which may puzzle those who know me as a vicious, rotten brute.

Sprague’s prejudice in my favor is, I think, all based on a single incident.

It was back in 1942, when Sprague and I were working at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. It was wartime and we needed badges to get in. Anyone who forgot his badge had to buck the bureaucracy for an hour to get a temporary, was docked an hour’s pay, and had the heinous misdeed entered on his record.

As we walked up to the gate on this particular day Sprague turned a pastel shade of green and said. “I forgot my badge!” He was up for a lieutenancy in the Navy and he was afraid that even a slight flaw in his civilian record might have an adverse effect on the whole thing.

Well, I wasn’t up for anything at all, and I was so used to being sent to the principal’s office during my school days that being yelled at by the authorities had no terrors for me.

So I handed him my badge and said, “Go in, Sprague, and pin this on your lapel. They’ll never look at it.” He went in, and they didn’t, and I reported myself as having forgotten my badge and took my lumps.

Sprague has never forgotten. To this day, he goes around telling people what a great guy I am, despite the fact that everyone just stares at him in disbelief. That one impulsive action has given rise to a lifetime of fervent pro-Asimov propaganda. Cast your bread upon the waters-

But, let’s move onward.