The Servant Problem | Page 9

With the trellised green roses that tapestried every porch.
With the hydrangealike blooms that garnished every corner. With
Pfleugersville itself.
Obviously the hour was late, for, other than himself, there was no one
on the streets, although lights burned in the windows of some of the
houses, and dogs of the same breed and size as Zarathustra occasionally
trotted by. And yet according to his watch the time was 10:51. Maybe,
though, Pfleugersville was on different time. Maybe, here in
Pfleugersville, it was the middle of the night.
The farther he progressed into the village, the more enchanted he

became. He simply couldn't get over the houses. The difference
between them and the houses he was familiar with was subtle, but it
was there. It was the difference that exists between good- and
not-quite-good taste. Here were no standardized patios, but little marble
aprons that were as much a part of the over-all architecture as a glen is
a part of a woods. Here were no stereotyped picture windows, but walls
that blended imperceptibly into pleasing patterns of transparency. Here
were no four-square back yards, but rambling star-flowered
playgrounds with swings and seesaws and shaded swimming holes;
with exquisite doghouses good enough for little girls' dolls to live in.
He passed a school that seemed to grow out of the very ground it stood
on. He passed a library that had been built around a huge tree, the
branches of which had intertwined their foliage into a living roof. He
passed a block-long supermarket built of tinted glass. Finally he came
to the park.
He gasped then. Gasped at the delicate trees and the little blue-eyed
lakes; at the fairy-fountains and the winding, pebbled paths.
Star-flowers shed their multicolored radiance everywhere, and starlight
poured prodigally down from the sky. He chose a path at random and
walked along it in the twofold radiance till he came to the cynosure.
The cynosure was a statue--a statue of a buck-toothed, wall-eyed youth
gazing steadfastly up into the heavens. In one hand the youth held a
Phillips screw driver, in the other a six-inch crescent wrench. Standing
several yards away and staring raptly up into the statue's face was the
youth himself, and so immobile was he that if it hadn't been for the
pedestal on which the statue rested, Philip would have been unable to
distinguish one from the other.
There was an inscription on the pedestal. He walked over and read it in
the light cast by a nearby parterre of star-flowers:
FRANCIS FARNSWORTH PFLEUGER, DISCOVERER OF
PFLEUGERSVILLE
Born: May 5. 1941. Died: ----

Profession Inventor. On the first day of April of the year of our Lord,
1962, Francis Farnsworth Pfleuger brought into being a Möbius
coincidence field and established multiple contact with the twenty-first
satellite of the star Sirius, thereby giving the people of Valleyview
access, via their back doorways, to a New World. Here we have come
to live. Here we have come to raise our children. Here, in this idyllic
village, which the noble race that once inhabited this fair planet left
behind them when they migrated to the Greater Magellanic Cloud, we
have settled down to create a new and better Way of Life. Here, thanks
to Francis Farnsworth Pfleuger, we shall know happiness prosperity
and freedom from fear.
FRANCIS FARNSWORTH PFLEUGER, WE, THE NEW
INHABITANTS OF SIRIUS XXI, SALUTE YOU!
Philip wiped his forehead again.
Presently he noticed that the flesh-and-blood Francis Pfleuger was
looking in his direction. "Me," the flesh-and-blood Francis Pfleuger
said, pointing proudly at the statue. "Me."
"So I gather," Philip said dryly. And then. "Zarathustra--come back
here!"
The little dog had started down one of the paths that converged on the
statue. At Philip's command, he stopped but did not turn; instead he
remained where he was, as though waiting for someone to come down
the path. After a moment, someone did--Judith Darrow.
She was wearing a simple white dress, reminiscent both in design and
décor of a Grecian tunic. A wide gilt belt augmented the effect, and her
delicate sandals did nothing to mar it. In the radiance of the star-flowers,
her eyes were more gray than green. There were shadows under them,
Philip noticed, and the lids were faintly red.
She halted a few feet from him and looked at him without saying a
word. "I ... I brought your dog back," he said lamely. "I found him in
the back seat of my car."

"Thank you. I've been looking all over Pfleugersville for him. I left my
Valleyview doors open, hoping he'd come home of his own accord, but
I guess he had other ideas. Now that you've discovered our secret, Mr.
Myles, what do you think of our brave new world?"
"I think it's lovely," Philip said, "but I don't