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Spaceways, v. 3, issue 4, May 1941
Page 8
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8 SPACEWAYS 3 THE END OF PENNYWHISTLE by damon knight This is the true story of those horrible events which have shaken the world for the past seventeen and two-thirds week. I should not be telling it, even now, were it not for the fact that the payments on my yo-yo are two weeks overdue, and the finance company has already taken away the ceiling and one of my wives. But the persons vitally concerned, other than myself, are now all either dead or exiled to Peoria, Ill., and I know that the men who build up a new world out of the remains of the old will wonder, sometimes, what world-shattering events could have led up to the Great Catastrophe. Read, then, of the strange end of Mortimer Pennywhistle.... It was on a lovely autumn day in July, 1989, that the innocent prelude to the later terror was enacted. I was then employed as a floorwalker in that renowned department store, Gloober's, in the gay, glittering, wicket city of Thickerwhichet-on-the-Stinglebottom. Ah, those mad, carefree days! Little did we know, or, knowing, should we have cared that in a few short weeks, every maker of broom-straws and ratchet handle in our fair land would be deprived of his means of livelihood. Fools that we were! Were it not that the Thickerwhichet-on-the-Stinglebottomians remained so blind to the portent of events, the Indelicate Document might not have gone unheaded, and the whole ghastly train of affairs been turned aside. But that is history. It is my task to tell of the inner workings of the mechanism which precipitated the happenings with which we are all familiar. As I say, I had the honor to be employed as a floorwalker at Gloober's. It was my duty to stroll about the vast, brilliantly-lighted halls, dressed with scrupulous correctness in morning-coat, tuxedo, tails, pajamas, or whatever the time of day required, and to direct customers to those parts of the establishment with which I was acquainted. In such a way I first came to know Mortimer Pennywhistle. I noticed him, even before we met, because of his suave, erect bearing. "That man," I said to myself, while directing an elderly matron to the lingerie department, "would make a good floorwalker." How prophetic my unuttered words were to become! For even then, as I strolled in his direction, he strolled in mine, and, stopping courteously in front of me, addressed me: "Pardon me, sir," he said, "can you direct me to the office of the Personnel Manager in Charge of Engaging Floorwalkers?" I gasped with astonished delight. But even as I gasped, my long years of training carried on, without a pause. "Certainly," I replied, in a friendly yet deferential voice, "merely take the twenty-first floor tram to the Center Section, half-a-mile east of here, and ask the first information booth for further directions." He tanked me with a pleasant smile, and walked off toward the escalators. That was the first time I saw him. As the day wore on, my multitudinous affairs gradually drove the memory of his polite, suave face and erect bearing from my mind, and, in fact, it was not until early morning, when I went off duty, that I had cause to remember him again. I had taken the elevated from one of the outlying districts of the building, where I happened to be when the time came to leave work, and, arriving at the Center Section, was about to hang up my working clothes in my wardrobe locker, when the door of the floorwalkers' lounge, at the end of the hall, opened, and my acquaintance of the afternoon before approached me down the long row of lockers. He greeted me courteously, and I replied in kind. It was then, as he opened another locker near mine, and began to put his own clothing inside, that I learned his name, and something of his life. It seemed to me then, as I listened to his kindly, pleasant voice, that he was in no way remarkable from the general run of floorwalkers. Like all of us, he had been trained from youth to be everything that a floorwalker should be, and had engaged in our profession
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8 SPACEWAYS 3 THE END OF PENNYWHISTLE by damon knight This is the true story of those horrible events which have shaken the world for the past seventeen and two-thirds week. I should not be telling it, even now, were it not for the fact that the payments on my yo-yo are two weeks overdue, and the finance company has already taken away the ceiling and one of my wives. But the persons vitally concerned, other than myself, are now all either dead or exiled to Peoria, Ill., and I know that the men who build up a new world out of the remains of the old will wonder, sometimes, what world-shattering events could have led up to the Great Catastrophe. Read, then, of the strange end of Mortimer Pennywhistle.... It was on a lovely autumn day in July, 1989, that the innocent prelude to the later terror was enacted. I was then employed as a floorwalker in that renowned department store, Gloober's, in the gay, glittering, wicket city of Thickerwhichet-on-the-Stinglebottom. Ah, those mad, carefree days! Little did we know, or, knowing, should we have cared that in a few short weeks, every maker of broom-straws and ratchet handle in our fair land would be deprived of his means of livelihood. Fools that we were! Were it not that the Thickerwhichet-on-the-Stinglebottomians remained so blind to the portent of events, the Indelicate Document might not have gone unheaded, and the whole ghastly train of affairs been turned aside. But that is history. It is my task to tell of the inner workings of the mechanism which precipitated the happenings with which we are all familiar. As I say, I had the honor to be employed as a floorwalker at Gloober's. It was my duty to stroll about the vast, brilliantly-lighted halls, dressed with scrupulous correctness in morning-coat, tuxedo, tails, pajamas, or whatever the time of day required, and to direct customers to those parts of the establishment with which I was acquainted. In such a way I first came to know Mortimer Pennywhistle. I noticed him, even before we met, because of his suave, erect bearing. "That man," I said to myself, while directing an elderly matron to the lingerie department, "would make a good floorwalker." How prophetic my unuttered words were to become! For even then, as I strolled in his direction, he strolled in mine, and, stopping courteously in front of me, addressed me: "Pardon me, sir," he said, "can you direct me to the office of the Personnel Manager in Charge of Engaging Floorwalkers?" I gasped with astonished delight. But even as I gasped, my long years of training carried on, without a pause. "Certainly," I replied, in a friendly yet deferential voice, "merely take the twenty-first floor tram to the Center Section, half-a-mile east of here, and ask the first information booth for further directions." He tanked me with a pleasant smile, and walked off toward the escalators. That was the first time I saw him. As the day wore on, my multitudinous affairs gradually drove the memory of his polite, suave face and erect bearing from my mind, and, in fact, it was not until early morning, when I went off duty, that I had cause to remember him again. I had taken the elevated from one of the outlying districts of the building, where I happened to be when the time came to leave work, and, arriving at the Center Section, was about to hang up my working clothes in my wardrobe locker, when the door of the floorwalkers' lounge, at the end of the hall, opened, and my acquaintance of the afternoon before approached me down the long row of lockers. He greeted me courteously, and I replied in kind. It was then, as he opened another locker near mine, and began to put his own clothing inside, that I learned his name, and something of his life. It seemed to me then, as I listened to his kindly, pleasant voice, that he was in no way remarkable from the general run of floorwalkers. Like all of us, he had been trained from youth to be everything that a floorwalker should be, and had engaged in our profession
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