They weren't going to let me go back. That would be foolish. I knew too much. Strangely. I felt no fear.

"You see our predicament, don't you?" asked the Head Auditor, and I swung back to look at him. I must have looked at him in amazement, because he added, "I couldn't help knowing wat you were thinking."

I nodded, reaching for a way to say what I wanted to say.

"We can't let you go back."

"Fine," I smiled a bit too eagerly. "Let me stay. I'd like to stay here. You can't imagine how fascinated I am by your planet."

And it was then, right in that instant, that I recognized the truth in what I'd said.

I hated Earth.

I hated the nine-to-five drudgery of the closed office and the boring men and women with whom I did business.

I despised my wife, who wanted More. And Better. And More Expensive. I realized bow I'd been fooled by her flippant and sometimes affectionate att.i.tude. I was a faceless thing to her. A G.o.ddam man in a grey flannel suit.

I despised the trains and the vacuum cleaners and the routine. I despised the lousy treadmill!

I loathed, detested, despised, abhorred, abominated and in all hated the miserable system. I didn't want to go back.

"I don't want to go back! I want to stay. Let me stay here!"

The Head Auditor was shaking his auditing head. "Why not?" I asked, confused.

"Look, we're overpopulated now! Why do you think we use the Suburbs out there? There isn't room here for anyone like you. We have enough non-working b.u.ms on our hands without you. Just because you stumbled into one of our Depots, don't a.s.sume we owe you anything. Because we don't."No, I'm afraid we'll have to--er--dispense with you, Mr. Weiler. We're not unpleasant people, but there is a point where we must stand and say. 'No morel' I'm sorry.'. He started to push a b.u.t.ton.

I went white. I could feel myself going white. Oh no, I thought! I've got to talk!

So I talked. I talked him away from that b.u.t.ton, because I suppose he had a wife and children and didn't really like killing people. And I talked him away from the killing angle entirely. And I talked and talked and talked till my throat was dry and he threw up his hand and said...

"All right, all right, stop! A trial, then. If you can find work here, if you can fit in, if you can match up, there's no reason why you shouldn't stay. But don't ever expect to go back!"

Expect to go back? Not on your life!

Then he shooed me out of the office, and I set about making a place for myself in this world I'd never made.

Well, I've done pretty decently. I'm happy, I have my own apartment, and I have a good job. They've said I can stay.

I didn't realize it, an those years, how much I hated the rush, rush, rush, the getting to the office and poring over those lousy briefs, the quiet nagging of Charlotte about things like the ashtrays, the constant bill collectors, the keeping up with the Joneses.

I didn't realize how badly I wanted out.

Well, now I'm out, and I'm happy. No more of that stuff for me.

Thanks for listening. Thought I'd get it straight, as long as you needed the story to open my charge account.

I'm here and I like it, and I'm out of the suburbanite climbing-executive rush-rush cla.s.s. At last I'm off that infernal treadmill.

Thanks again for listening. Well, I've got to go.

Got to get to work, you know.Current crazes fascinate me. Though I couldn't operate one to save my life, the hula hoop was an entrancing little path to dislocation of the spine and ultimate madness, and I watched with not too much lasciviousness as the pre- adult vixens of my acquaintance shimmied and swirled in the use of same. The telephone-booth-stuffing trend seemed to me abortive, and I was not at all surprised when it faded in lieu of the "limbo" acrobatics at voodoo calypso parties. Mah-jongg, Scrabble, ouija boards, Lotto, TV quiz shows, pennies in kids' loafers, bongo boards, snake dances, panty raids, rumble seats, trampoline cla.s.ses, croquet, Empire-line dresses, day-glo shirts, stuffed tigers in car back windows, Billy Graham and Fabian (no relation)--all of them awed and bemused me, as I watched the world swallow them whole, digest them and infuse them into the daily scene. Trends knock me out, frankly: Whether it be painting by the numbers or making your own full-scale skeleton of a tyrannosaurus, I think the most imaginative, and auctorially-useful fad of recent years has been the one aptly called.

Do-It-Yourself

Madge retina-printed her ident.i.ty on the receipt, fished in her ap.r.o.n for a coin, and came up with a thirty- center. It was a bit too much to give the boy, but she already had it in her hand, and there were appearances to keep up, in spite of everything. She handed it across, and took the carton.

A migrant tremor of pleasure swept her as she was closing the door; the messenger boy was a.s.saying her figure. It had been years, oh longer than that, since a young man had done that. Perhaps it was the new wash; she closed the door firmly and blanked it, patting her hair. Yes, it was the blonde rinse, that was it.

Abruptly, she realized she had been standing there, staring at the box in her hands, for some time. With mild terror.

Madge Rubichek, she chided herself, you contracted for this, and now it's here, and it's paid for, so what are you making faces like that for? Go in and sit down and open it, you silly goose!

She followed her silent instructions. In the kitchen, with the late afternoon operock program from Philly weirdly jangling the background--they were doing the new two-beat La Forza del Destino with alto sax accompaniment--she took a paring knife--my, how infectious that sort of teen-ager's music was!--to the thick, white scotchseal of the carton.

The box was secured around the edges, and she inserted the paring knife as she would have with a carton of soda crackers. She slit it open down one side, up the next.

Except this was not a carton of soda crackers.

This was--oh, how odd--a do-it-yourself kit. A modern marvel like all the new do-it-yourself marvels. Do-it- yourself house painting setups, and do-it-yourself baked Alaska mix, and do-it-yourself this and that and the other thing. There were even advertis.e.m.e.nts for do-it-yourself brain surgery kits and swamp digging kits, for cha.s.sis aligning kits and pruning kits. But this was no longer something offered in an advertis.e.m.e.nt; once it had been, but now it was a reality, and she held it in her hands. As much of that advertised breed as any do-it-yourself bookcase- construction kit, outfitted to the last set screw.

This was a particular kind of kit Madge had purchased: To be precise, a do-it-yourself murder kit.

Idly, as though without conscious direction, her eyes strayed to the magazine spindle where DO-IT- YOURSELF MONTHLY was canned up against Carl's FLIKPIX and her own mundane BEST HOUSEKEEPING.

Her eyes lingered for an instant, drank in through the impeding plastic of the container and the other spools the cla.s.sified advertis.e.m.e.nt near the end of the mag-reel... and pa.s.sed on around the room.

It was a nice room. A solid room, furnished in tasteful period furniture without too many curlicues and just enough modem angles. But it was mediocrity, and what else was there to say of it but that it typified her life with Carl. Mediocrity disturbed Madge Rubichek, as did the slovenly day-to-day existence of her husband.

For Madge Rubichek was a methodical woman.

She sighed resignedly, and busied herself lifting the top from the carton. It was a long, moderately-thin package, of typical brown box-plastboard. Her name had been neatly stated on the address label, and there was no return address.

"Well, impractical, but necessary," she mused, aloud, "but what a lot of merchandise they must lose," she added. Then it dawned on her that she had signed a return receipt, and that meant the boy who had come to the door must have gotten the carton from a central delivery robotic miller, or else...

Oh, it was too deep for her to worry about. They must have some way of insuring delivery. She set the box top beside her chair, and pulled away the tissue paper double-folded over the carton's contents.

What odd-looking mechanisms. Even for 1977, which Madge had always called--in the sanctum of hermind, where profanity was permitted--"too d.a.m.ned machiney for its own good!" these were strange.

There was a long, thin, coiled sticky-looking tube of grey something-or-other with a valve at one end, and a blow-nozzle attached. Was it one of those dragon balloons that you blew up so big? But what did that have to do with-- She would not think of what this kit had been invented to do. She would look at it as though it were some laborsaving household appliance, like her Dinner Dialer (that did not dial at all, but was punched, instead) or her Dustomat. Well, and she giggled, wasn't it?

Do-it-by-golly-yourself!

Beside the coil of grey tubing, hooked to it by soft wire and wrapped in tissue paper like a Christmas necklace, was another small parcel. She lifted it out, surprised at its heaviness, and stripped away the tissue.

It was a small gla.s.s square, obviously a bottle of some sort, filled with a murky, mercurial-seeming liquid that moved rapidly as she turned the container, sending up no air bubbles as it roiled in the bottle. It had a tiny, pinlike protuberance at one corner, with a boot fastened down on it, easily snapped off to open the vial. Quicksilver?

She found this item as mystifying as the preceding one. She stared at it a moment longer, with no apparent function coming to mind, and then she laid it aside.

It slipped down behind the chair's pillow, and she retrieved it at once, without examining the carton further.

Madge Rubichek was a methodical woman.

The next was a layer in itself; rather thick and quite black, it was almost of the consistency of an old beach ball, or a fish skin without scales, or What?

Rotten flesh...perhaps. Though she had no conception of what rotten flesh felt like. Or something.

She pulled it free, and almost immediately let it drop into the leaning carton top beside her chair. She just didn't want to touch it. Mental images of dead babies and salamanders and polyethylene bags filled with vomit came to mind when her fingers touched that night-black stuff.

She dropped it free, and found beneath.it a pamphlet without a t.i.tle, and a small gla.s.s globe with all the attributes of a snowstorm paperweight, the kind her Grandfather had had on his desk in the old law offices in Prestonsburg. It was on an onyx stand of some cheap material, and the globe itself swirled and frothed with the artificial whateveritwas inside. But there was no little town once the snow settled, and no large-thoraxed snowman with anthracite eyes, and no church. There was nothing in there but the lacy swirlingness. The snow just continued to whirl about, no matter how long it lay in one position. It would not settle.

She put it beside her on the chair, and nudged the carton, now empty, off her lap. She took the pamphlet in her hands, and opened it to the first page.

"h.e.l.lo," it said.

It did not read h.e.l.lo, it said h.e.l.lo. In a rich baritone, vaguely reminiscent of old-fashioned styrene records she had heard of pressings taken off even older platters made by Peter Ustinov, a mimic comedian of the Fifties. It was in many ways a comforting voice, and one that was subtly rea.s.suring, as well as inviting attention and forthrightness of manner, clarity of thinking, boldness of approach.

It was a mellow and warm voice.

It was, apparently, the voice of murder.

"h.e.l.lo," it said again, and this time there was a tinge of apprehension in its voice, as though it was not certain there was anyone on the holding end of the pamphlet.

"Uh, h.e.l.lo," she replied, not at all certain it was good taste to be conversing with a pamphlet. There was, in fact, a sense of Carrollian madness about it. Had a Dormouse erupted from the delicate Chinese teapot on the coffee table before the sofa, clearly enunciating Twinkle, twinkle, little bat...she would not have been overly surprised; it would have fitted in nicely.

"This is your own Do-It-Yourself Murder Kit," the pamphlet broke her literary reverie with harsh reality.

"The new guaranteed Murder Kit, with the double-your-money-back warranty, for your protection."

Well, she thought, frugally, that's nice, anyway. That double-your-money-back thing. She shivered a little with suppressed antic.i.p.ation. There was going to be profit... one way...or the other.

"Uh, where are you?" Madge asked nervously.

"Where am I where?" the pamphlet responded in confusion.

"Yes, precisely," she concurred.

"Dear Purchaser, you are perplexing me," cried the pamphlet. "If you wish to carry forward smartly to the objective for which this Kit was designed, please do not strain my conversational and a.n.a.lytical faculties."

"But I only--""Madam, if you desire success, you must put yourself wholly in my--er--hands. Do I make myself clear?"

Madge drew herself up, and an expression of haughty resignation suffused her face. "I understand quite well, thank you." After all, Grandfather Tabakow on her mother's side had been Southern aristocracy, well hadn't he? She felt imposed upon, this mere. booklet talking to her that way.

And a booklet without even the common self-respect of having a t.i.tle. After all, a t.i.tle-less pamphlet.

And wasn't the customer always supposed to be right?

It didn't seem so with this Kit.

The phrase nouveau-riche flitted across Madge's mind, with ill-concealed contempt.

"This guaranteed Murder Kit," the voice continued, "was shipped to you by our robotic mailer. There is no record of its sale in our hands. So in case you wish to exercise the warranty you must return the numbered warranty sheet on the last page of this pamphlet. To return the numbered warranty sheet to our files, merely b.u.m same in a non-chemical fire; this will automatically cancel the sympathetic-sheet in our files, and your money will be doubly, cheerfully refunded.

"This Kit contains three sure, clean and undetectable, I repeat, undetectable, ways to commit murder. No two kits are the same, through repet.i.tion occasionally occurs where the subjects to be murdered have common character traits. Again, though, no two kits are the same. Each of the three modus operandi is designed for you according to the application blank you sent us when you contracted for this Kit. Now. To prepare yourself for your murder--"

She snapped the pamphlet shut with quick, suddenly-sweating hands.

Do I hate him that much?

Where had their marriage gone wrong...somewhere in the eleven years? Where? An infinite sadness stole over her as she remembered Carl the way be had been when they first met. She remembered his ways, that had seemed rough and yet gentle, masculine yet graceful. And she recalled her own aristocratic nature, the fine background, and the womanly ways. But how bad it changed? How was it now?

She conjured up visions of it now. The ashes on the carpets and the smell of musty cigar smoke that stayed in the curtains and chair coverings no matter bow much she aired and cleaned. She remembered the fat, nasty belly of the man while he sat pouring bock down his dribble-chinned throat, the clothes rank with sweat strewn across her immaculate bedroom, the rings in the bathtub, his rotten teeth and the odor when he kissed her...

And of course the quick animal urges all panting and grunting that were as nothing to her. Nothing but revulsion.

She answered her question firmly: Yes, yes, I hate him that much. And morel She opened the pamphlet again. Her hands had become dry and almost cool again.

"The first method of murder we have prepared for you," the pamphlet's voice continued, undaunted, "is the rabid dog method. You will notice a coil of grey substance. This is your Animaux Tube. Warning is issued at this point that instructions throughout the use of this Kit must be specifically followed, or failure will result. There is no mechanical failure possible with this Kit, only human failure through inefficiency and disregard of stated operating procedures. Is this understood?"

"Yes, I suppose so," Madge answered, surlily.

"With your Animaux Tube, attached by wire, is a vial of Essence, a specially-produced, copyrighted substance to be used only with the Animaux Tube. Again warning is issued to preclude any ill-use of materials included in your Kit. Unspecified use of the Essence included in your Kit will prove most unpleasant. In the human digestive tract it reacts violently, causing almost immediate convulsions and death. Care should be exercised to keep the vial away from children and pets."

She lifted the coil of stuff and it was sticky. After spreading a sheet of newsfax on the rug, she allowed the grey tubing to unroll itself out onto the fax sheet. There was no sense ruining a good rug with any odd chemicals from this Kit. She had always been a methodically neat woman, and just because she was doing what she was doing, was no reason to become a crude slob-like Carl The coil unrolled and it had queer blotches on it, almost like military camouflage canvas. What it was, she still could not ascertain.

"Take some article of clothing belonging to the intended victim," the pamphlet voice continued, startling her, "and place a small piece of it firmly against the Animaux Tube, on the orange blotch near its front. Press it, and it will adhere. Then inflate the Tube by blowing gently and evenly into the nozzle. Only after the Animaux Tube has been inflated should the Essence then be added. Screw the vial of Essence onto the air valve and allow it to drain completely into the Animaux Tube. Make certain that every drop enters. You will then have your Animaux rabid dog. Set the dog loose when the intended victim is near and it will inflict a bite wound that cannot be cured by regular methods; a bite wound that will cause violent death within a matter of minutes."She used one of his socks, holding it as far away from her as possible. It was hideously pungent and ripe after only one wearing. The dog itself took shape quickly. The Tube seemed to retain the air blown into it; there was no blowback.

The surge of antic.i.p.ation turned her hands clumsy when she hooked the Essence to the blown-up Tube and a few drops spilled onto the newsfax underneath it.

The thing moved softly. It looked for all the world like a medium-sized mongrel dog of no apparent lineage.

It limped toward the door and stood there whining, its jaws slavering hideously.

"Not for a few more minutes," she told it soothingly, afraid of it herself, yet exhilarated by what she was doing, what was to be done soon enough. "He won't be getting off the slipway for a few minutes." She spent the time neatly hiding the rest of the Kit and the now-silent pamphlet in her clothes closet, at the bottom of a moth-proof garment safette. Then, when it was time, she let the dog out.

Carl came gruffily into the house, cursing foully, and her heart sank.

The hairy arms surrounded her like a scratching womb, and she stood pa.s.sively hoping for a blast of lightning that would char him on the spot, and d.a.m.n the rug damage! She could smell his teeth rotting in his bead.

"d.a.m.n dog tried t'bite me when I got offa the expresswalk. Thing musta been sick." He nodded proudly, "Kicked it an' the sonofab.i.t.c.h died right there. Real soggy mess," and he laughed imbecilically. "Never even touched me."

The next morning, as soon as he had slipped to work, as soon as she had watched the slipway carry him out of sight over the horizon to the Bactericidal Dome, she went to get the Do-It-Yourself Murder Kit. She took the Kit from its hiding place at the bottom of the moth-proof garment safette, and carried it into the dining nook. She was really annoyed; this Kit had not cost a pittance, and she wanted value for her money.