American Science Fiction Four Classic Novels 1953-56 Read online

  Oddly, the most impressive thing about it to me was not the rocket itself but the wide swathe around it. For a full mile the land was cleared: no houses, no greenhouse decks, no food tanks, no sun traps. Partly security, partly radiation. The gleaming sand cut by irrigation pipes looked strange. There probably wasn’t another sight like it in North America. It troubled my eyes. Not for years had I focused them more than a few yards.

  “How strange,” Kathy said at my side. “Could we walk out there?”

  “Sorry, Dr. Nevin,” said one of the liaison men. “It’s a deadline. The tower guards are ordered to shoot anybody out there.”

  “Have contrary orders issued,” I said. “Dr. Nevin and I want to take a walk.”

  “Of course, Mr. Courtenay,” the man said, very worried. “I’ll do my best, but it’ll take a little time. I’ll have to clear it with C.I.C., Naval Intelligence, C.I.A., F.B.I., A.E.C. Security and Intelligence—”

  I looked at Kathy, and she shrugged with helpless amusement. “Never mind,” I said.

  “Thank God!” breathed my liaison man. “Excuse me, Mr. Courtenay. It’s never been done before so there aren’t any channels to do it through. You know what that means.”

  “I do indeed,” I said, from the heart. “Tell me, has all the security paid off ?”

  “It seems so, Mr. Courtenay. There’s been no sabotage or espionage, foreign or Consie, that we know of.” He rapped a knuckle of his right hand solemnly on a handsome oak engagement ring he wore on the third finger of his left hand. I made a mental note to have his expense account checked up on. A man on his salary had no business wearing that kind of jewelry.

  “The Consies interested?” I asked.

  “Who knows? C.I.C., C.I.A. and A.E.C. S.&I. say yes. Naval Intelligence, F.B.I. and S.S. say no. Would you like to meet Commander MacDonald? He’s the O.N.I. chief here. A specialist in Consies.”

  “Like to meet a Consie specialist, Kathy?” I asked.

  “If we have time,” she said.

  “I’ll have them hold the jet for you if necessary,” the liaison man said eagerly, trying hard to undo his fiasco on the tower guards. He led us through the tangle of construction shacks and warehouses to the administration building and past seven security check points to the office of the commander.

  MacDonald was one of those career officers who make you feel good about being an American citizen—quiet, competent, strong. I could see from his insignia and shoulder flashes that he was a Contract Specialist, Intelligence, on his third five-year option from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. He was a regular; he wore the class ring of the Pinkerton Graduate School of Detection and Military Intelligence, Inc. It’s pine with an open eye carved on it; no flashy inlay work. But it’s like a brand name. It tells you that you’re dealing with quality.

  “You want to hear about Consies?” he asked quietly. “I’m your man. I’ve devoted my life to running them down.”

  “A personal grudge, Commander?” I asked, thinking I’d hear something melodramatic.

  “No. Old-fashioned pride of workmanship if anything. I like the thrill of the chase, too, but there isn’t much chasing. You get Consies by laying traps. Did you hear about the Topeka bombing? Of-course-I-shouldn’t-knock-the-competitionbut those guards should have known it was a setup for a Consie demonstration.”

  “Why, exactly, Commander?” Kathy asked.

  He smiled wisely. “Feel,” he said. “The kind of thing it’s hard to put over in words. The Consies don’t like hydraulic mining— ever. Give them a chance to parade their dislike and they’ll take it if they can.”

  “But why don’t they like hydraulic mining?” she persisted. “We’ve got to have coal and iron, don’t we?”

  “Now,” he said with pretended, humorous weariness, “you’re asking me to probe the mind of a Consie. I’ve had them in the wrecking room for up to six hours at a stretch and never yet have they talked sense. If I caught the Topeka Consie, say, he’d talk willingly—but it would be gibberish. He’d tell me the hydraulic miner was destroying topsoil. I’d say yes, and what about it. He’d say, well can’t you see? I’d say, see what? He’d say, the topsoil can never be replaced. I’d say, yes it can if it had to be and anyway tank farming’s better. He’d say something like tank farming doesn’t provide animal cover and so on. It always winds up with him telling me the world’s going to hell in a handbasket and people have got to be made to realize it —and me telling him we’ve always got along somehow and we’ll keep going somehow.”

  Kathy laughed incredulously and the commander went on: “They’re fools, but they’re tough. They have discipline. A cell system. If you get one Consie you always get the two or three others in his cell, but you hardly ever get any more. There’s no lateral contact between cells, and vertical contact with higherups is by rendezvous with middlemen. Yes, I think I know them and that’s why I’m not especially worried about sabotage or a demonstration here. It doesn’t have the right ring to it.”

  Kathy and I lolled back watching the commercials parade around the passenger compartment of the jet at eye level. There was the good old Kiddiebutt jingle I worked out many years ago when I was a trainee. I nudged Kathy and told her about it as it blinked and chimed Victor Herbert’s Toyland theme at us.

  All the commercials went blank and a utility announcement, without sound effects, came on.

  In Compliance With Federal Law, Passengers Are Advised That They Are Now Passing Over The San Andreas Fault Into Earthquake Territory, And That Earthquake Loss And Damage Clauses In Any Insurance They May Carry Are Now Canceled And Will Remain Canceled Until Passengers Leave Earthquake Territory.

  Then the commercials resumed their parade.

  “And,” said Kathy, “I suppose it says in the small print that yak-bite insurance is good anywhere except in Tibet.” “Yak-bite insurance?” I asked, astonished. “What on earth do you carry that for?”

  “A girl can never tell when she’ll meet an unfriendly yak, can she?”

  “I conclude that you’re kidding,” I said with dignity. “We ought to land in a few minutes. Personally, I’d like to pop in on Ham Harris unexpectedly. He’s a good kid, but Runstead may have infected him with defeatism. There’s nothing worse in our line.”

  “I’ll come along with you if I may, Mitch.”

  We gawked through the windows like tourists as the jet slid into the traffic pattern over San Diego and circled monotonously waiting for its calldown from the tower. Kathy had never been there before. I had been there once, but there’s always something new to see because buildings are always falling down and new ones being put up. And what buildings! They’re more like plastic tents on plastic skeletons than anything else.

  That kind of construction means they give and sway when a quake jiggles southern California instead of snapping and crumbling. And if the quake is bad enough and the skeleton does snap, what have you lost? Just some plastic sheeting that broke along the standard snap grooves and some plastic structural members that may or may not be salvageable. From a continental economic viewpoint, it’s also a fine idea not to tie up too much fancy construction in southern California. Since the H-bomb tests did things to the San Andreas fault, there’s been a pretty fair chance that the whole area would slide quietly into the Pacific some day—any day. But when we looked down out of the traffic pattern, it still was there and, like everybody else, we knew that it would probably stay there for the duration of our visit. Before my time there had been some panic when the quakes became daily, but I’d blame that on the old-style construction that fell hard and in jagged hunks. Eventually people got used to it and—as you’d expect in southern California—even proud of it. Natives could cite you reams of statistics to prove that you stand more chance of being struck by lightning or a meteorite than you do of getting killed in one of their quakes.

  We got a speedy three-man limousine to whisk us to the local branch of Fowler Schocken Associates. My faint uneasiness about Market Research exte
nded to the possibility that Ham Harris might have a tipster at the airport to give him time to tidy up for a full-dress inspection. And that kind of thing is worse than useless.

  The receptionist gave me my first setback. She didn’t recognize my face and she didn’t recognize my name when I gave it to her. She said lazily: “I’ll see if Mr. Harris is busy, Mr. Connelly.”

  “Mr. Courtenay, young lady. And I’m Mr. Harris’s boss.”

  Kathy and I walked in on a scene of idleness and slackness that curled my hair.

  Harris, with his coat off, was playing cards with two young employees. Two more were gaping, glassy-eyed, before a hypnoteleset, obviously in trance state. Another man was lackadaisically punching a calculator, one-finger system.

  “Harris! ” I thundered.

  Everybody except the two men in trance swiveled my way, open-mouthed. I walked to the hypnoteleset and snapped it off. They came to, groggily.

  “Mum-mum-mum-mister Courtenay,” Harris stuttered.

  “We didn’t expect—”

  “Obviously. The rest of you, carry on. Harris, let’s go into your office.” Unobtrusively, Kathy followed us.

  “Harris,” I said, “good work excuses a lot. We’ve been getting damn good work out of you on this project. I’m disturbed, gravely disturbed, by the atmosphere here. But that can be corrected—”

  His phone rang, and I picked it up.

  A voice said excitedly: “Ham? He’s here. Make it snappy; he took a limousine.”

  “Thanks,” I said and hung up. “Your tipster at the airport,”

  I told Harris. He went white. “Show me your tally sheets,” I said. “Your interview forms. Your punchcard codes. Your masters. Your sigma-progress charts. The works. Everything, in short, that you wouldn’t expect me to ask to see. Get them out.”

  He stood there a long, long time and finally said: “There aren’t any.”

  “What have you got to show me?”

  “Finalizations,” he muttered. “Composites.”

  “Fakes, you mean? Fiction, like the stuff you’ve been feeding us over the wire?”

  He nodded. His face was sick.

  “How could you do it, Harris?” I demanded. “How—could—you—do it?”

  He poured out a confused torrent of words. He hadn’t meant to. It was his first independent job. Maybe he was just no damn good. He’d tried to keep the lower personnel up to snuff while he was dogging it himself but it couldn’t be done; they sensed it and took liberties and you didn’t dare check them up. His self-pitying note changed; he became weakly belligerent. What difference did it make anyway? It was just preliminary paperwork. One man’s guess was as good as another’s. And anyway the whole project might go down the drain. What if he had been taking it easy; he bet there were plenty of other people who took it easy and everything came out all right anyway.

  “No,” I said. “You’re wrong and you ought to know you’re wrong. Advertising’s an art, but it depends on the sciences of sampling, area-testing, and customer research. You’ve knocked the props from under our program. We’ll salvage what we can and start again.”

  He took a feeble stand: “You’re wasting your time if you do that, Mr. Courtenay. I’ve been working closely with Mr. Runstead for a long time. I know what he thinks, and he’s as big a shot as you are. He thinks this paperwork is just a lot of expensive nonsense.”

  I knew Matt Runstead better than that. I knew he was sound and so did everybody else. “What,” I asked sharply, “have you got to back that statement up with? Letters? Memos? Taped calls?”

  “I must have something like that,” he said, and dived into his desk. He flipped through letters and memos, and played snatches of tape for minutes while the look of fear and frustration on his face deepened. At last he said in bewilderment: “I can’t seem to find anything—but I’m sure—”

  Sure he was sure. The highest form of our art is to convince the customer without letting him know he’s being convinced.

  This weak sister had been indoctrinated by Runstead with the unrealistic approach and then sent in on my project, to do a good job of bitching it up.

  “You’re fired, Harris,” I said. “Get out and don’t come back. And I wouldn’t advise you to try for a job in the advertising profession after this.”

  I went out into the office and announced: “You’re through. All of you. Collect your personal stuff and leave the office. You’ll get your checks by mail.”

  They gaped. Beside me, Kathy murmured: “Mitch, is that really necessary?”

  “You’re damned right it’s necessary. Did one of them tip off the home office on what was going on? No; they just relaxed and drifted. I said it was an infection, didn’t I? This is it.” Ham Harris drifted past us toward the door, hurt bewilderment on his face. He had been so sure Runstead would back him up. He had his crammed briefcase in one hand and his raincoat in the other. He didn’t look at me.

  I went into his vacated office and picked up the direct wire to New York. “Hester? This is Mr. Courtenay. I’ve just fired the entire San Diego branch. Notify Personnel and have them do whatever’s necessary about their pay. And get me Mr. Runstead on the line.”

  I drummed my fingers impatiently for a long minute, and then Hester said: “Mr. Courtenay, I’m sorry to keep you waiting. Mr. Runstead’s secretary says he’s left for Little America on one of those tours. She says he cleaned up the A.I.G. thing and felt like a rest.”

  “Felt like a rest. Good God almighty. Hester, get me a New York to Little America reservation. I’m shooting right back on the next jet. I want to just barely touch ground before I zip off to the Pole. Got it?”

  “Yes, Mr. Courtenay.”

  I hung up and found that Kathy was staring at me. “You know, Mitch,” she said, “I’ve been uncharitable to you in my time. Kicking about your bad temper. I can see where you got it if this has been a typical operation.”

  “It’s not typical,” I said. “It’s the worst case of flagrant obstructionism I’ve ever seen. But there’s a lot of it. Everybody trying to make everybody else look bad. Darling, I’ve got to get to the field now and bull my way onto the next Eastbound. Do you want to come too?”

  She hesitated. “You won’t mind if I stay and do a little tourist stuff by myself?”

  “No, of course not. You have a good time and when you get back to New York I’ll be there.”

  We kissed, and I raced out. The office was clear by then and I told the building manager to lock it until further notice when Kathy left.

  I looked up from the street and she waved at me from the strange, flimsy building.

  6

  I swung off the ramp at New York, and Hester was right there. “Good girl,” I told her. “When’s the Pole rocket shoot off ?”

  “Twelve minutes, from Strip Six, Mr. Courtenay. Here are your ticket and the reservation. And some lunch in case—”

  “Fine. I did miss a meal.” We headed for Strip Six, with me chewing a regenerated cheese sandwich as I walked. “What’s up at the office?” I asked indistinctly.

  “Big excitement about you firing the San Diego people. Personnel sent up a complaint to Mr. Schocken and he upheld you—approximately Force Four.”

  That wasn’t too good. Force Twelve—hurricane—would have been a blast from his office on the order of: “How dare you housekeepers question the decision of a Board man working on his own project? Never let me catch you—” and so on. Force Four—rising gale, small craft make for harbor—was something like: “Gentlemen, I’m sure Mr. Courtenay had perfectly good reasons for doing what he did. Often the Big Picture is lost to the purely routine workers in our organization—”

  I asked Hester: “Is Runstead’s secretary just a hired hand or one of his—” I was going to say “stooges” but smoothly reversed my field “—one of his confidants?”

  “She’s pretty close to him,” Hester said cautiously.

  “What was her reaction to the San Diego business?”


  “Somebody told me she laughed her head off, Mr. Courtenay.”

  I didn’t push it any harder. Finding out where I stood with respect to the big guns was legitimate. Asking about the help was asking her to rat on them. Not that there weren’t girls who did. “I expect to be right back,” I told her. “All I want to do is straighten something out with Runstead.”

  “Your wife won’t be along?” she asked.

  “No. She’s a doctor. I’m going to tear Runstead into five or six pieces; if Dr. Nevin were along she might try to put them back together again.”

  Hester laughed politely and said: “Have a pleasant trip, Mr. Courtenay.” We were at the ramp on Strip Six.

  It wasn’t a pleasant trip; it was a miserable trip on a miserable, undersized tourist rocket. We flew low, and there were prism windows at all seats, which never fail to make me airsick. You turn your head and look out and you’re looking straight down. Worse, all the ads were Taunton Associates jobs. You look out the window and just as you convince your stomach that everything’s all right and yourself that it’s interesting country below, wham: a sleazy, oversexed Taunton ad for some crummy product opaques the window and one of their nagging, stupid jingles drills into your ear.

  Over the Amazon valley we were running into some very interesting stuff, and I was inspecting Electric Three, which happens to be the world’s biggest power dam, when, wham:

  BolsterBra, BolsterBra,

  Bolsters all the way;

  Don’t you crumple, don’t you slumple;

  Keep them up to stay!

  The accompanying before-and-after live pix were in the worst possible taste, and I found myself thanking God again that I worked for Fowler Schocken Associates.

  It was the same off Tierra del Fuego. We went off the great circle course for a look at the whale fisheries, vast sea areas enclosed by booms that let the plankton in and didn’t let the whales out. I was watching with fascination as a cow whale gave suck to her calf—it looked something like an aerial refueling operation—when the window opaqued again for another dose of Taunton shock treatment: