'You mean I just hold it in my hand?'
'That is all you do, sir,' the teller assured him.
Homer went back to the door, still unconvinced. It was all a lot of mumbo-jumbo, he told himself. These guys were just the same as Gabby Wilson?full of smart pranks. And if that teller was making a fool of him, he promised himself, he'd mop up the floor with him.
He opened the door and stepped into the closet, only it was no closet. It was another bank.
The metal still was coppery and the mirrors were a-glitter and the birds were singing, but there were customers. There were three tellers instead of the single one in the first bank and the bland, smooth vice-president at his shiny desk was industriously at work.
Homer stood quietly just outside the door through which he'd come from the other bank. The customers seemed not to have noticed him, but as he looked them over, he was startled to discover that there were many whose faces were familiar.
Here, then, were the people who had leased the houses, going about their business in the Second Bank. He put the miniature radiator ornament in his pocket and headed for the window that seemed to be least busy. He waited in line while the man ahead of him finished making a deposit.
Homer could only see the back of the man's head, but the head seemed to be familiar. He stood there raking through the memories of the people he had met in the last six weeks.
Then the man turned around and Homer saw that it was Dahl. It was the same face he had seen staring at him from the front page of the paper only the night before.
'Hello, Mr. Jackson,' said Dahl. 'Long time no see.'
Homer gulped. 'Good day, Mr. Dahl. How do you like the house?'
'Just great, Mr. Jackson. It's so quiet and peaceful here, I can't tear myself away from it.'
I bet you can't, thought Homer.
'Glad to hear you say so,' he said aloud, and stepped up to the window.
The teller glanced at the passbook. 'Good to see you, Mr. Jackson. The president, I think, would like to see you, too. Would you care to step around after I finish your deposit?'
Homer left the teller's window, feeling a little chilly at the prospect of seeing the president, wondering what the president might want and what new trouble it portended.
A hearty voice told him to come in when he knocked on the door. The president was a beefy gentleman and extremely pleasant. 'I've been hoping you'd come in,' he said. 'I don't know if you realize it or not, but you're our biggest depositor.'
He shook Homer's hand most cordially and motioned him to a chair. He gave him a cigar and Homer, a good judge of tobacco, figured it for at least a fifty-center. The president, puffing a little, sat down behind his desk.
'This is a good set-up here,' said Homer, to get the conversation started.
'Oh, yes,' the president said. 'Most splendid. It's just a test, though, you know.'
'No, I hadn't known that.'
'Yes, surely. To see if it will work. If it does, we will embark on much bigger projects?ones that will prove even more economically feasible. One never knows, of course, how an idea will catch on. You can run all the preliminary observations and make innumerable surveys and still never know until you try it out.'
'That's true,' said Homer, wondering what in the world the president was talking about.
'Once we get it all worked out,' the president said, 'we can turn it over to the natives.'
'I see. You're not a native here?'
'Of course not. I am from the city.'
And that, thought Homer, was a funny thing to say. He watched the man closely, but there was nothing in his face to indicate that he had misspoken?no flush of embarrassment, no sign of flurry.
'I'm especially glad to have a chance to see you,' Homer told him. 'As a matter of fact, I had been thinking of switching my account and…'
The president's face took on a look of horror. 'But why? Certainly you've been told about the tax advantages.'
'I think that the matter got some mention. But, I must confess, I don't understand.'
'Why, Mr. Jackson, it is simple. No mystery at all. So far as the authorities of your country are concerned…'
'My country?'
'Well, of course. I think it might logically be argued, even in a court of law, that this place we're in is no longer the United States of America. But even if it should be a part of your great nation?I doubt that such a contention would hold up if put to the decision?why, even so, our records are not available to the agents of your country. Don't tell me you fail to see the implications of a situation such as that.'
'The income tax,' Homer said.
'Correct,' said the president, smiling very blandly.
'That is interesting. Interesting, indeed.' Homer rose and held out his hand to the president. 'I'll be in again.'
'Thank you,' said the president. 'Drop in any time you wish.'
On the street outside the bank, the sun was shining brightly.
The shopping centre stretched along the mall and there were people here and there, walking on the concourse or shopping in the stores. A few cars were parked in the lot and the world of this Second Bank looked exactly like the First Bank's world, and if a man had not known the difference…
Good Lord, thought Homer, what was the difference? What had really happened? He'd walked through the door and there was the other bank. He'd walked through a door and found the missing people?the people who had not been living in the empty houses of the First Bank's world.
Because that other world where the houses still stood empty was no more than a show window? It might simply be a street lined with demonstration homes. And here was that second street of houses he'd dreamed up the other night. And beyond this second street, would there be another street and another and another?
He stumbled along the concourse, shaken, now that he realized there really was that second street of houses. It was an idea that was hard to take in stride. He didn't take it in his stride. His mind balked and shied away from it and he told himself it wasn't true. But it was true and there was no way to rationalize it, to make it go away. There was a second street!
He walked along and saw that he was near the gate. The gate he saw, was the same as ever, with its expanse of massive iron.
But there was no gateman.
And a car was coming up the road, heading directly for the gate, and it was moving fast, as if the driver did not see the gate.
Homer shouted and the car kept on. He started waving his arms, but the driver paid not the least attention.
The crazy fool, thought Homer. He'll hit the gate and…
And the car hit the gate, slammed into it, but there was sound, no crash, no screech of rending metal. There was simply nothing.
The gate was there, undented. And there was no car. The car had disappeared.
Homer stalked to the gate. Ten feet away, he stopped.
The road came up to the gate; beyond it was no road. Beyon the gate was wilderness. The road came up and ended and the wilderness began.
Cautiously, Homer walked out into the road and peered through the gate.
Just a few feet away, a giant oak towered into the air and behind it was the forest, wild and hoary and primeval, and from the forest was the happy sound, the abandoned sound of water running in a brook.
Fish, thought Homer. Maybe that brook is where the trout came from.
He moved toward the gate for a closer look and reached out his hands to grasp the ironwork. Even as he did, the forest went away and the gate as well as he stood in the old familiar entrance to Happy Acres, with the gate wide open, with the state highway running along the wall and the road from the development running out to meet it.
'Good morning, sir,' said the gateman. 'Maybe you ought to move over to one side. A car is apt to hit
