Part 30 (2/2)

King's Free Park had been part of the San Diego Freeway, the section between Sunset and the Santa Monica interchange. Decades ago the concrete had been covered with topsoil. The borders had been landscaped from the start. Now the Park was as thoroughly covered with green as the much older Griffith Free Park.

Within King's Free Park was an orderly approximation of anarchy. People were searched at the entrances. There were no weapons inside. The copseyes, floating overhead and out of reach, were the next best thing to no law at all.

There was only one law to enforce. All acts of attempted violence carried the same penalty for attacker and victim. Let anyone raise his hands against his neighbor, and one of the golden basketb.a.l.l.s would stun them both. They would wake separately, with copseyes watching. It was usually enough.

Naturally people threw rocks at copseyes. It was a Free Park, wasn't it?

”They got one! Come on!” Ron tugged at my arm. The felled copseye was hidden, surrounded by those who had destroyed it. ”I hope they don't kick it apart. I told them I need it intact, but that might not stop them.”

”It's a Free Park. And they bagged it.”

”With my missiles!”

”Who are they?”

”I don't know. They were playing baseball when I found them. I told them I needed a copseye. They said they'd get me one.”

I remember Ron quite well now. Ronald Cole was an artist and an inventor. It would have been two sources of income for another man, but Ron was different. He invented new art forms. With solder and wire and diffraction gratings and several makes of plastics kit, and an incredible collection of serendipitous junk, Ron Cole made things the like of which had never been seen on Earth.

The market for new art forms has always been low, but now and then he did make a sale. It was enough to keep him in raw materials, especially since many of his raw materials came from bas.e.m.e.nts and attics. Rarely there came a big sale, and then, briefly, he would be rich.

There was this about him: he knew who I was, but he hadn't remembered my name. Ron Cole had better things to think about than what name belonged with whom. A name was only a tag and a conversational gambit. ”Russel! How are you?” A signal. Ron had developed a subst.i.tute.

Into a momentary gap in the conversation he would say, ”Look at this,” and hold out-miracles.

Once it had been a clear plastic sphere, golf-ball size, balanced on a polished silver concavity. When the ball rolled around on the curved mirror, the reflections were fantastic fantastic.

Once it had been a twisting sea serpent engraved on a Michelob beer bottle, the lovely vase-shaped bottle of the early 1960s that was too big for standard refrigerators.

And once it had been two strips of dull silvery metal, unexpectedly heavy. ”What's this?”

I'd held them in the palm of my hand. They were heavier than lead. Platinum? But n.o.body carries that much platinum around. Joking, I'd asked. ”U-235?”

”Are they warm?” he'd asked apprehensively. I'd fought off an urge to throw them as far as I could and dive behind a couch.

But they had had been platinum. I never did learn why Ron was carrying them about. Something that didn't pan out. been platinum. I never did learn why Ron was carrying them about. Something that didn't pan out.

Within a semicircle of spectators, the felled copseye lay on the gra.s.s. It was intact, possibly because two cheerful, conspicuously large men were standing over it, waving everyone back.

”Good,” said Ron. He knelt above the golden sphere, turned it with his long artist's fingers. To me he said, ”Help me get it open.”

”What for? What are you after?”

”I'll tell you in a minute. Help me get-Never mind.” The hemispherical cover came off. For the first time ever, I looked into a copseye.

It was impressively simple. I picked out the stunner by its parabolic reflector, the cameras, and a toroidal coil that had to be part of the floater device. No power source. I guessed that the sh.e.l.l itself 'vas a power beam antenna. With the cover cracked there would be no way for a d.a.m.n fool to electrocute himself.

Ron knelt and studied the strange guts of the copseye. From his rocket he took something made of gla.s.s and metal. He suddenly remembered my existence and held it out to me, saying, ”Look at this.”

I took it, expecting a surprise, and I got it. It was an old hunting watch, a big wind-up watch on a chain, with a protective case. They were in common use a couple of hundred years ago. I looked at the, face, said, ”Fifteen minutes slow. You didn't repair the whole works, did you?”

”Oh, no.” He clicked the back open for me.

The works looked modern. I guessed, ”Battery and tuning fork?”

”That's what the guard thought. Of course that's what I made it from. But the hands don't move; I set them just before they searched me.”

”Aah. What does it do?”

”If I work it right, I think it'll knock down every copseye in Kings Free Park.”

For a minute or so I was laughing too hard to speak. Ron watched me with his head on one side, clearly wondering if I thought he was joking.

I managed to say, ”That ought to cause all kinds kinds of excitement.” of excitement.”

Ron nodded vigorously. ”Of course it all depends on whether they use the kind of circuits I think -they use. Look for yourself; the copseyes aren't supposed to be foolproof. They're supposed to be cheap. If one gets knocked down, the taxes don't go up much. The other way is to make them expensive and foolproof, and frustrate a lot of people. People aren't supposed to be frustrated in a Free Park.” So?

”Well, there's a cheap way to make the circuitry for the power system. If they did it that way, I can blow the whole thing. We'll see.” Ron pulled thin copper wire from the cuffs of his s.h.i.+rt.

”How long will this take?” '

”Oh, half an hour-maybe more.”

That decided me. ”I've got to be going. I'm meeting Jill Hayes pit the Wils.h.i.+re exits. You've met her, a big blond girl, my height-”

But he wasn't listening. ”Okay, see you,” he muttered. He began placing the copper wire inside the copseye, with tweezers. I left.

Crowds tend to draw crowds. A few minutes after leaving Ron, I joined a semicircle of the curious to see what they were watching.

A balding, lantern-jawed individual was putting something together-an archaic machine, with blades and a small gasoline motor. The T-shaped wooden handle was brand new and unpainted. The metal parts were dull with the look of ancient rust recently removed.

The crowd speculated in half-whispers. What was it? Not part of a car; not an outboard motor, though it had blades; too small for a motor scooter, too big for a motor skateboard - ”Lawn mower,” said the white-haired lady next to me. She was one of those small, birdlike people who shrivel and grow weightless as they age, and live forever. Her words meant nothing to me. I was About to ask, when - The lantern-jawed man finished his work, and twisted something, and the motor started with a roar. Black smoke puffed out. In triumph he gripped the handles. Outside, it was a prison offense to build a working internal combustion machine. Here - With the fire of dedication burning in his eyes, he wheeled his internal machine across the gra.s.s. He left a path as flat as a rug. It was a Free Park, wasn't it?

The smell hit everyone at once: black dirt in the air, a stink of Half-burned hydrocarbons attacking nose and eyes. I gasped and coughed. I'd never smelled anything like it.

The crowd roared and converged.

He squawked when they picked up his machine. Someone found a switch and stopped it. Two men confiscated the tool kit and went to work with screwdriver and hammer. The owner objected. He picked up a heavy pair of pliers and tried to commit murder.

A copseye zapped him and the man with the hammer, and they both hit the lawn without bouncing. The rest of them pulled the lawn mower apart and bent and broke the pieces.

”I'm half sorry they did that,” said the old woman. ”Sometimes I miss the sound of lawn mowers. My dad used to mow the lawn on Sunday mornings.”

I said, 'It's a Free Park.”

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