American Science Fiction Four Classic Novels 1953-56 Read online

  A midget space-jock named O’Shea

  Loved a girl who was built like a dray—

  Or:

  A socially misfit machinist

  Asked his sweetheart: “Dear, what’s come between us?”

  Or any of the others, with their engineered-in message: that Venus environment increased male potency. Ben Winston’s subsection on Folkways, I had always said, was one of the most important talent groups in the whole Schocken enterprise. They were particularly fine on riddles: “Why do they call Venus the Mourning Star?”, for instance. Well, it doesn’t make sense in print; but the pun is basic humor, and the basic drive of the human race is sex. And what is, essentially, more important in life than to mold and channel the deepest torrential flow of human emotion into its proper directions? (I am not apologizing for those renegades who talk fancifully about some imagined “Death-Wish” to hook their sales appeals to. I leave that sort of thing to the Tauntons of our profession; it’s dirty, it’s immoral, I want nothing to do with it. Besides, it leads to fewer consumers in the long run, if they’d only think the thing through.)

  For there is no doubt that linking a sales message to one of the great prime motivations of the human spirit does more than sell goods; it strengthens the motivation, helps it come to the surface, provides it with focus. And thus we are assured of the steady annual increment of consumers so essential to expansion.

  Chlorella, I was pleased to learn, took extremely good care of its workers’ welfare in that respect. There was an adequate hormone component in the diet, and a splendid thousand-bed Recreation Room on the 50th tier. The only stipulation the company made was that children born on the plantation were automatically indentured to Chlorella if either parent was still an employee on the child’s tenth birthday.

  But I had no time for the Recreation Room. I was learning the ropes, studying my milieu, waiting for opportunity to come. If opportunity didn’t come soon I would make opportunity; but first I had to study and learn.

  Meanwhile, I kept my ears open for the results of the Venus campaign. It went beautifully—for a while. The limericks, the planted magazine stories, the gay little songs had their effect.

  Then something went sour.

  There was a downtrend. It took me a day to notice it, and a week to believe it could be true. The word “Venus” drifted out of the small talk. When the space rocket was mentioned it was in connection with reference points like “radiation poisoning,” “taxes,” “sacrifice.” There was a new, dangerous kind of Folkways material—“Didja hear the one about the punchy that got caught in his space suit?”

  You might not have recognized what was going on, and Fowler Schocken, scanning his daily precis of the summary of the digests of the skeletonized reports of the abstracts of the charts of progress on Venus Project, would never have the chance to question or doubt what was told him. But I knew Venus Project. And I knew what was happening.

  Matt Runstead had taken over.

  The aristocrat of Dorm Ten was Herrera. After ten years with Chlorella he had worked his way up—topographically it was down—to Master Slicer. He worked in the great, cool vault underground, where Chicken Little grew and was cropped by him and other artisans. He swung a sort of two-handed sword that carved off great slabs of the tissue, leaving it to the lesser packers and trimmers and their faceless helpers to weigh it, shape it, freeze it, cook it, flavor it, package it, and ship it off to the area on quota for the day.

  He had more than a production job. He was a safety valve. Chicken Little grew and grew, as she had been growing for decades. Since she had started as a lump of heart tissue, she didn’t know any better than to grow up against a foreign body and surround it. She didn’t know any better than to grow and fill her concrete vault and keep growing, compressing her cells and rupturing them. As long as she got nutrient, she grew. Herrera saw to it that she grew round and plump, that no tissue got old and tough before it was sliced, that one side was not neglected for the other.

  With this responsibility went commensurate pay, and yet Herrera had not taken a wife or an apartment in one of the upper tiers of the pylon. He made trips that were the subject of bawdy debate while he was gone—and which were never referred to without careful politeness while he was present. He kept his two-handed slicer by him at all times, and often idly sleeked its edge with a hone. He was a man I had to know. He was a man with money—he must have money after ten years— and I needed it.

  The pattern of the B labor contract had become quite clear. You never got out of debt. Easy credit was part of the system, and so were irritants that forced you to exercise it. If I fell behind ten dollars a week I would owe one thousand one hundred dollars to Chlorella at the end of my contract, and would have to work until the debt was wiped out. And while I worked, a new debt would accumulate.

  I needed Herrera’s money to buy my way out of Chlorella and back to New York: Kathy, my wife; Venus Section, my job. Runstead was doing things I didn’t like to Venus Section. And God alone knew what Kathy was doing, under the impression that she was a widow. I tried not to think of one particular thing: Jack O’Shea and Kathy. The little man had been getting back at womankind for their years of contempt. Until the age of twenty-five he had been a laughable sixty-pound midget, with a touch of grotesquerie in the fact that he had doggedly made himself a test pilot. At the age of twenty-six he found himself the world’s number one celebrity, the first man to land a ship on Venus, an immortal barely out of his teens. He had a lot of loving to catch up on. The story was that he’d been setting records on his lecture tours. I didn’t like the story. I didn’t like the way he liked Kathy or the way Kathy liked him.

  And so I went through another day, up at dawn, breakfast, coveralls and goggles, cargo net, skimming and slinging for blazing hour after hour, dinner and the dayroom and, if I could manage it, a chat with Herrera.

  “Fine edge on that slicer, Gus. There’s only two kinds of people in the world: the ones who don’t take care of their tools and the smart ones.”

  Suspicious look from under his Aztec brows. “Pays to do things right. You’re the crumb, ain’t you?”

  “Yeah. First time here. Think I ought to stay?”

  He didn’t get it. “You gotta stay. Contract.” And he went to the magazine rack.

  Tomorrow’s another day.

  “Hello, Gus. Tired?”

  “Hi, George. Yeah, a little. Ten hours swinging the slicer. It gets you in the arms.”

  “I can imagine. Skimming’s easy, but you don’t need brains for it.”

  “Well, maybe some day you get upgraded. I think I’ll trance.”

  And another:

  “Hi, George. How’s it going?”

  “Can’t complain, Gus. At least I’m getting a sun-tan.”

  “You sure are. Soon you be dark like me. Haw-haw! How’d you like that?”

  “Porque no, amigo?”

  “Hey, tu hablas español! Cuando aprendiste la lengua? ”

  “Not so fast, Gus! Just a few words here and there. I wish I knew more. Some day when I get a few bucks ahead I’m going to town and see the girls.”

  “Oh, they all speak English, kind of. If you get a nice steady li’l girl it would be nice to speak a li’l Spanish. She would appreciate it. But most of them know ‘Gimmy-gimmy’ and the li’l English poem about what you get for one buck. Haw-haw!”

  And another day—an astonishing day.

  I’d been paid again, and my debt had increased by eight dollars. I’d tormented myself by wondering where the money went, but I knew. I came off shift dehydrated, as they wanted me to be. I got a squirt of Popsie from the fountain by punching my combination—twenty-five cents checked off my payroll. The squirt wasn’t quite enough so I had another—fifty cents. Dinner was drab as usual; I couldn’t face more than a bite or two of Chicken Little. Later I was hungry and there was the canteen where I got Crunchies on easy credit. The Crunchies kicked off withdrawal symptoms that could be quelled only by anothe
r two squirts of Popsie from the fountain. And Popsie kicked off withdrawal symptoms that could only be quelled by smoking Starr cigarettes, which made you hungry for Crunchies . . . Had Fowler Schocken thought of it in these terms when he organized Starrzelius Verily, the first spherical trust? Popsie to Crunchies to Starrs to Popsie?

  And you paid 6 per cent interest on the money advanced you.

  It had to be soon. If I didn’t get out soon I never would. I could feel my initiative, the thing that made me me dying, cell by cell, within me. The minute dosages of alkaloid were sapping my will, but most of all it was a hopeless, trapped feeling that things were this way, that they always would be this way, that it wasn’t too bad, that you could always go into trance or get really lit on Popsie or maybe try one of the green capsules that floated around from hand to hand at varying quotations; the boys would be glad to wait for the money.

  It had to be soon.

  “Como ’sta, Gustavo?”

  He sat down and gave me his Aztec grin. “Como ’sta, amigo Jorge? Se fuma? ” He extended a pack of cigarettes.

  They were Greentips. I said automatically: “No thanks. I smoke Starrs; they’re tastier.” And automatically I lit one, of course. I was becoming the kind of consumer we used to love. Think about smoking, think about Starrs, light a Starr. Light a Starr, think about Popsie, get a squirt. Get a squirt, think about Crunchies, buy a box. Buy a box, think about smoking, light a Starr. And at every step roll out the words of praise that had been dinned into you through your eyes and ears and pores.

  “I smoke Starrs; they’re tastier. I drink Popsie; it’s zippy. I eat Crunchies; they tang your tongue. I smoke—”

  Gus said to me: “You don’t look so happy, Jorge.”

  “I don’t feel so happy, amigo.” This was it. “I’m in a very strange situation.” Wait for him, now.

  “I figured there was something wrong. An intelligent fellow like you, a fellow who’s been around. Maybe you can use some help?”

  Wonderful; wonderful. “You won’t lose by it, Gus. You’re taking a chance, but you won’t lose by it. Here’s the story—”

  “Sst! Not here!” he shushed me. In a lower voice he went on: “It’s always a risk. It’s always worth it when I see a smart young fellow wise up and begin to do things. Some day I make a mistake, seguro. Then they get me, maybe they brainburn me. What the hell, I can laugh at them. I done my part. Here. I don’t have to tell you to be careful where you open this.” He shook my hand and I felt a wad of something adhere to my palm. Then he strolled across the dayroom to the hypnoteleset, punched his clock number for a half-hour of trance and slid under, with the rest of the viewers.

  I went to the washroom and punched my combination for a ten-minute occupancy of a booth—bang went another nickel off my pay—and went in. The adhesive wad on my palm opened up into a single sheet of tissue paper which said:

  A Life Is In Your Hands

  This is Contact Sheet One of the World Conservationist Association, popularly known as “the Consies.” It has been passed to you by a member of the W.C.A. who judged that you are (a) intelligent; (b) disturbed by the present state of the world; (c) a potentially valuable addition to our ranks. His life is now in your hands. We ask you to read on before you take any action.

  Facts About the W.C.A.

  The Facts: The W.C.A. is a secret organization persecuted by all the governments of the world. It believes that reckless exploitation of natural resources has created needless poverty and needless human misery. It believes that continued exploitation will mean the end of human life on Earth. It believes that this trend may be reversed if the people of the Earth can be educated to the point where they will demand planning of population, reforestation, soil-building, deurbanization, and an end to the wasteful production of gadgets and proprietary foods for which there is no natural demand. This educational program is being carried on by propaganda—like this—demonstrations of force, and sabotage of factories which produce trivia.

  Falsehoods About the W.C.A.

  You have probably heard that “the Consies” are murderers, psychotics, and incompetent people who kill and destroy for irrational ends or out of envy. None of this is true. W.C.A. members are humane, balanced persons, many of them successful in the eyes of the world. Stories to the contrary are zealously encouraged by people who profit from the exploitation which we hope to correct. There are irrational, unbalanced and criminal persons who do commit outrages in the name of conservation, either idealistically or as a shield for looting. The W.C.A. dissociates itself from such people and regards their activities with repugnance.

  What Will You Do Next?

  That is up to you. You can (a) denounce the person who passed you this contact sheet; (b) destroy this sheet and forget about it; (c) go to the person who passed you the sheet and seek further information. We ask you to think before you act.

  I thought—hard. I thought the broadside was (a) the dullest, lousiest piece of copysmithing I had ever seen in my life; (b) a wildly distorted version of reality; (c) a possible escape route for me out of Chlorella and back to Kathy.

  So these were the dreaded Consies! Of all the self-contradictory gibberish—but it had a certain appeal. The ad was crafted —unconsciously, I was sure—the way we’d do a pharmaceutical-house booklet for doctors only. Calm, learned, we’re all men of sound judgment and deep scholarship here; we can talk frankly about bedrock issues. Does your patient suffer from hyperspasm, Doctor?

  It was an appeal to reason, and they’re always dangerous. You can’t trust reason. We threw it out of the ad profession long ago and have never missed it.

  Well; there were obviously two ways to do it. I could go to the front office and put the finger on Herrera. I’d get a little publicity maybe; they’d listen to me, maybe; they might believe enough of what I told them to check. I seemed to recall that denouncers of Consies were sometimes brainburned on the sensible grounds that they had been exposed to the virus and that it might work out later, after the first healthy reaction. That wasn’t good. Riskier but more heroic: I could bore from within, playing along with the Consies. If they were the worldwide net they claimed to be, there was no reason why I shouldn’t wind up in New York, ready and able to blow the lid off them.

  Not for a moment did I have any doubts about being able to get ahead. My fingers itched for a pencil to mark up that contact sheet, sharpening the phrases, cutting out the dullness, inserting see-hear-taste-feel words with real sock. It could use it.

  The door of the booth sprang open; my ten minutes were up. I hastily flushed the contact sheet down the drain and went out into the day room. Herrera was still in the trance before the set.

  I waited some twenty minutes. Finally he shook himself, blinked, and looked around. He saw me, and his face was immobile granite. I smiled and nodded, and he came over. “All right, compañero? ” he asked quietly.

  “All right,” I said. “Any time you say, Gus.”

  “It will be soon,” he said. “Always after a thing like that I plug in for some trance. I cannot stand the suspense of waiting to find out. Some day I come up out of trance and find the bulls are beating hell out of me, eh?” He began to sleek the edge of his slicer with the pocket hone.

  I looked at it with new understanding. “For the bull?” I asked.

  His face was shocked. “No,” he said. “You have the wrong idea a little, Jorge. For me. So I have no chance to rat.”

  His words were noble, even in such a cause. I hated the twisted minds who had done such a thing to a fine consumer like Gus. It was something like murder. He could have played his part in the world, buying and using and making work and profits for his brothers all around the globe, ever increasing his wants and needs, ever increasing everybody’s work and profits in the circle of consumption, raising children to be consumers in turn. It hurt to see him perverted into a sterile zealot.

  I resolved to do what I could for him when I blew off the lid. The fault did not lie with him. I
t was the people who had soured him on the world who should pay. Surely there must be some sort of remedial treatment for Consies like Gus who were only dupes. I would ask—no; it would be better not to ask. People would jump to conclusions. I could hear them now: “I don’t say Mitch isn’t sound, but it was a pretty far-fetched idea.” “Yeah. Once a Consie, always a Consie.” “Everybody knows that. I don’t say Mitch isn’t sound, mind you, but—”

  The hell with Herrera. He could take his chances like everybody else. Anybody who sets out to turn the world upside down has no right to complain if he gets caught in its gears.

  9

  Days went by like weeks. Herrera talked little to me, until one evening in the dayroom he suddenly asked: “You ever see Gallina?” That was Chicken Little. I said no. “Come on down, then. I can get you in. She’s a sight.”

  We walked through corridors and leaped for the descending cargo net. I resolutely shut my eyes. You look straight down that thing and you get the high-shy horrors. Forty, Thirty, Twenty, Ten, Zero, Minus Ten—

  “Jump off, Jorge,” Herrera said. “Below Minus Ten is the machinery.” I jumped.

  Minus Ten was gloomy and sweated water from its concrete walls. The roof was supported by immense beams. A tangle of pipes jammed the corridor where we got off. “Nutrient fluid,” Herrera said.

  I asked about the apparently immense weight of the ceiling. “Concrete and lead. It shields cosmic rays. Sometimes a Gallina goes cancer.” He spat. “No good to eat for people. You got to burn it all if you don’t catch it real fast and—” He swung his glittering slicer in a screaming arc to show me what he meant by “catch.”

  He swung open a door. “This is her nest,” he said proudly. I looked and gulped.

  It was a great concrete dome, concrete-floored. Chicken Little filled most of it. She was a gray-brown, rubbery hemisphere some fifteen yards in diameter. Dozens of pipes ran into her pulsating flesh. You could see that she was alive.

  Herrera said to me: “All day I walk around her. I see a part growing fast, it looks good and tender, I slice.” His two-handed blade screamed again. This time it shaved off an inch-thick Chicken Little steak. “Crumbs behind me hook it away and cut it up and put it on the conveyor.” There were tunnel openings spotted around the circumference of the dome, with idle conveyor belts visible in them.