They couldn’t find anything by somebody named “Isaac Newton” and the girl decided he must be some revolutionary banned by the New York Tactical Police Force. But Heller persevered and they eventually came up with a book, Laws of Motion I Have Rewritten and Adapted from a Text by Dr. Still as Translated from an Archaic English Newtonian Work by Elbert Mouldy by Professor M. S. Pronounce, Doctor of Literature.
“You should have told me it would be in the literature section,” said the girl. “You don’t even know how to read a card catalogue.”
“I’ll try to find out,” said Heller.
“Jesus,” said the girl, “they teach card catalogues in the third grade! God, didn’t anybody ever teach you anything? There’s a staff at High Library devoted to showing students how to do it. You ask them over there. I’m here to sell books, not teach kindergarten! But let’s get on, this is an awfully long list! You’re keeping others waiting!”
They did make progress, however, and the pile of books grew and grew. Finally the girl, peering between the columns of books and lifting her glasses to see Heller, said, “You can’t carry all these. And I’m not going to wrap them. So you go over to the college store and get about five rucksacks while I get an assistant to add up this bill.”
Heller did as he was told.
When he returned, he packed the five rucksacks and paid the bill. Then he began to adjust straps and finally managed to get the sacks hung around him. Other students who had been waiting made room for him disinterestedly.
“Can you manage?” said the girl. “That must be about two hundred pounds. Books are heavy.”
“Just barely,” said Heller. “But we haven’t got everything on this list.”
“Oh, the rest of that stuff. Well, take that one about thirty from the top, World History Rewritten by Competent Propagandists for Kiddies and Passed by the American Medical Association, that’s fourth grade grammar school. We don’t carry that sort of thing. You’ll have to get them at Stuffem and Glutz, the city’s authorized school supplier. They’re on Varick Street.” And she gave him the number. “My God,” she added, “how’d you ever get here not knowing those texts?”
Heller turned to make his way through the backlog of student customers who stepped aside patiently. The girl said to the next student in line, “Jesus, what we get for freshmen these days.”
“It says on your slip there he’s a senior,” said the student.
“I got it!” said the girl. I quickly and hopefully jacked up the audio. “He’s here on an athletic scholarship! A weight lifter! Hey, call him back. I was awful impolite. I need a date for tonight’s dance! Boy, am I dumb! He was cute, too.”
Yes, she certainly was dumb! She had denied me opportunity after opportunity to file charges against Heller for Code breaks! And they had watched somebody heft two hundred pounds of rucksacks like they were air and I’m sure if they had looked out the door or window they would have seen Heller running along, clickety-clack, without a care in the world to the subway. My faith in the powers of observation of college students had suffered a heavy blow. Maybe they were all on drugs. That was the only possible explanation! An extraterrestrial right under their noses making all kinds of giveaways and they hadn’t even blinked an eye!
Heller got right on down to Varick Street on the same subway. He got into the city-authorized bookstore. And he was shortly showing a half-blind old man his list. In the subway he had ticked off missing titles with a red pen and now he handed it over, Voltarian shorthand and all, for the red checks to be filled.
The old man bustled off to a storeroom. “You want thirty copies of each?” he called back.
“One will do just fine.”
“Oh, you’re a tutor. All right.” And he came back in about ten minutes, staggering under a stack of books. “I’ll get the rest now.” And he went back and came out staggering under a second stack.
Heller checked off the titles. He got almost to the end. “There’s one missing: Third Grade Arithmetic.”
“Oh, they don’t teach that anymore. It’s all ‘new math’ now.”
“What’s ‘new math’?” said Heller.
“I dunno. They put out a new ‘new math’ every year. It’s something about greater and lesser numbers without using any numbers this year. It was orders of magnitude of numbers last year but they were still teaching them to count. They stopped that.”
“Well, I’ve got to have something about basic arithmetic,” said Heller.
“Why?”
“You see,” said Heller, “I do logarithms in my head and the only arithmetic I’ve ever seen done was by some primitive tribe on Flisten. They used charcoal sticks and slabs of white lime.”
“No kidding?” said the old man.
“Yes, it was during a Fleet peace mission. They wouldn’t believe we had that many ships and it was really funny to see them jumping about and counting and multiplying and writing it down. They were more advanced than others I’ve seen, however. One tribe had to use their fingers and toes to count their wives. They never had more than fifteen wives because that was all the fingers and toes they had.”
The old man said, “A Fleet man, huh? I was in the Navy myself, war before last. You just wait there.”
He went back and searched and searched and finally came out with a dusty, tattered text that had been lying around for ages. “Here’s a book called Basic Arithmetic Including Addition, Multiplication and Division With a Special Section on Commercial Arithmetic and Stage Acts” He opened the yellowed pages, “It was published in Philadelphia in 1879. It’s got all sorts of tricks in it like adding a ten-digit column of thirty entries by inspection. Old-time bookkeeper stuff. Lot of stage tricks: they used to go on stage and write numbers and do complicated examples upside down leaning over a blackboard and get the answer in three seconds and the audience would flip out. Mr. Tatters said to throw it out but I sort of thought I should send it to a museum. Since they passed the law that kids had to use calculators in class, nobody is interested in it anymore. But as you’re a navy man like myself you can have it.”
Heller paid and the old man wrapped up the books into two more huge packages. Another two hundred pounds of books. I expected Heller to heft them up and walk off. It disappointed me when he found four hundred pounds too cumbersome. I’m sure he could have, with some strain, walked off with them. He had them call him a taxi. The old man even got a dolly and helped him load up. Heller thanked him.
“Don’t throw that book away,” said the old man at the curb. “I don’t think there’s a soul in this country knows how to do it anymore. I don’t think they even remember it ever existed. When you’re through with it, give it to a museum!”
“Thanks for piping the side!” said Heller and the taxi drove away leaving the old man waving at the curb.
Code break. “Piping the side!” It must be some Voltarian Fleet term. No, wait a minute. I had never heard the term on Voltar. But Heller wouldn’t know Earth terms like that. Or would he? The Voltarian Fleet doesn’t use pipes. A lot of them use puffsticks. Only Earth people smoke pipes. It was moving into the New York rush hour so I had a lot of time to work on this. I got as far as Earth sailors as well as spacers have a lot to do with whores when my concentration was interrupted.
A houseman was wheeling all that book tonnage across the lobby and Vantagio popped out of his office like some miniature jack-in-the-box.
He stared at the packages, tore a piece of paper off a corner and opened a rucksack to verify they were books. “They accepted you!” He let out a wheeze of relief and mopped his face with a silk handkerchief. He waved the houseman on and pushed Heller into his office.
“You did it!” said Vantagio.
“I think you did it,” said Heller.