Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  THE Administration Building of the Planetary Affairs Commission, which occupied one entire side of the. center block, was sheathed in a muted green alumalloy; the P.A.C. Stores and official P.A.C. hotel, across the street, were respectively dull rose and dove gray. The doctor pointed out each building in turn to his wide-eyed group. The writer was as eager as any of the others, and asked as many questions. Tony was surprised; he had anticipated a bored sophistication.

  Graham responded equally unpredictably to the series of interruptions they met with en route. Chabrier was first, even before they had left the spaceport. He dashed up to pump Tony’s hand and babble that he was delighted to see him again, and how well Tony looked despite his drab sojourn in the so-dull Sun Lake where nothing ever happened.

  “But this is Mr. Graham, isn’t it?” he exclaimed in delight. “Yeah,” said the writer dryly. “How fortunate! Distillery Mars, my concern, small but interesting, happens to be preparing a new run of Mars liquor, 120 proof—we should be so honored if you could make a point of sampling our little effort, shall we say this afternoon? I have comfortable—” a sidelong glance at Tony—“transportation here.”

  “Maybe later.”

  “To a connoisseur of your eminence, of course, we should think it a privilege to offer you an honorarium—”

  “Maybe later, maybe not,” grunted the writer.

  Chabrier only shrugged and smiled; the gunther could say no wrong. “You will perhaps be pleased to accept a small sample of the product of Mars Distillery?” The little man held up a gaudily wrapped package. He pressed the gift into Graham’s indifferent grasp, wrung Tony’s hand warmly, said heartily, “We will look forward to see you soon,” and departed.

  Halliday of Mars Machine Tool was next. His manner was more that of a man inviting a guest to his country club, but he did mention that MMT would, of course, expect to provide for a writer’s necessary expenses. Graham cut off Halliday’s bluff assurances as curtly as he had stopped Chabrier’s outpourings.

  It was like that all the way.

  Everybody who was anybody on Mars was in town that day, and each of them managed to happen on the Sun Lake crowd somewhere along the road from the spaceport to the landing strip.

  THOSE who met Tony at any time in the past were all determined to stop him for a chat; then they noticed Graham, and extended a coincidental but warm invitation. Those who were unacquainted with Sun Lake’s doctor were forced to be more direct, and the bribe was sometimes even more marked than Chabrier’s or Halliday’s offers.

  Graham was cold and even nasty to them. But once he took Tony’s arm and said: “Wait. I see an old friend.” Commissioner Bell was up ahead, striding toward the Administration Building.

  “Him?” asked Tony.

  “Yeah. Hey, Commish!”

  Bell stopped as if he had been shot. He turned slowly toward Graham, and stood his ground as the writer approached. When he spoke, there was cold hatred in his voice. “Just the company I’d expect you to keep, Graham. Stay out of trouble. I’m the man in charge here, and don’t think I’m afraid of you.”

  “You weren’t the last time,” said Graham. “That was your big mistake—Commish.”

  Bell walked away without another word.

  “You shot his blood pressure up about 20 millimeters,” said Tony. “What’s it all about?”

  “I claim a little credit for sending Bell to Mars, Doc. I caught him with his fingers in the till up to his shoulder, at a time when his political fences were down, if you don’t mind a mixed metaphor. I couldn’t get him jailed, but I’ll bet up here he sometimes wishes I had.”

  A wild hope flared in Tony.

  This Is man was, sporadically, known as a crusader. Perhaps Graham’s annoyance at the crude plays for attention meant that an appeal could be made on the basis of decency and fair play.

  BY THE time they reached the plane, Tad was already on the spot with the portable health lab stowed away, and Bea was warming up the motors.

  “Hi!” she stuck her head out of the cockpit to grin at Tony. “Got everybody? Tad, hand out parkas to these people. Tony, they tell me you’re a hero—had it out with big, bad Brenner in real style!” She didn’t quite say: “I never thought you had it in you.”

  “Things get around, don’t they? Bea, this is Douglas Graham. He’s coining out to have a look at Sun Lake for a book he’s doing. This is Bea Juarez,” he told the writer. “She’s our pilot.”

  Graham surveyed Bea. “I hope everything in the Colony looks as good.”

  “We’ll be extra-careful to show you only the best,” she retorted. “Hey, Tad, get that mink-lined parka, will you? We’ve got a guest to impress.”

  Tony was delighted. If everyone else in the Colony could take the Great Man in stride so easily, he would be pleased and very much surprised.

  Tad came running up with a parka. “What kind did you say you wanted? This is the only one left, except Dr. Tony’s.”

  The three adults burst into laughter, and Tad retreated, red-faced.

  Graham called him back. “I’m going to need that thing if the temperature in the cockpit doesn’t go up.”

  “You’re going to need it anyhow,” Tony assured him. “There’s a lot to be said for Lazy Girl here, but she’s not one hundred per cent airtight.”

  “I get the idea,” the journalist assured him. “You people don’t throw heat around, do you?”

  “Not heat or anything else,” replied Tony. “You’ll see, if you can stick it out.”

  “What the hell, I was a war correspondent in Asia!”

  “This isn’t a war. There isn’t anything exciting to make up for the discomfort—except, say, when a baby gets born—”

  “No? I take it there was something going on just a little while ago. What were you saying about the doctor being a hero?” he called forward to Bea.

  She shrugged. “All I know is what I hear on the grapevine.”

  Tony heaved a mental sigh of relief—too soon.

  “I was there.” Tad had stuck right by them. “This man Mr. Brenner came over and asked Dr. Tony to come work for him, and he wouldn’t, and he tried to get him with a whole lot of money, but he still wouldn’t, and—”

  “HOLD on,” Graham interrupted. “First thing you have to learn if you’re going to be a reporter is to get your pronouns straight. This Brenner was doing the offering, and Doc was refusing; that right?”

  “Sure. That was what I was saying—”

  “Look, Tad, we were only kidding about impressing Mr. Graham,” Tony said quickly. “You don’t have to make a hero out of me. I just had a disagreement with someone,” he said to Graham, “and they’re trying to make a good story out of it.”

  “That’s what I’m after,” Graham came back, “a good story. Tell me everything that happened, Tad.”

  The boy looked doubtfully from the doctor to the guest and back again.

  “All right,” Tony gave in. “But let’s not make a 15-round fight out of it, Tad. Tell it just the way it happened, if you’ve got to tell it.”

  “Just exactly?”

  “Yes,” the doctor said firmly, “just the way it happened.”

  “Okay.” Tad was far from disappointed. If anything, he was gleeful. “So this Mr. Brenner wanted Dr. Tony to come work at his place, curing people from drugs, and he wouldn’t, and Mr. Brenner kept pestering him till he got mad, and he said he didn’t like him and wouldn’t work for him no matter what—I mean, Dr. Tony said that to Mr. Brenner—and Mr. Brenner got real mad, and started to swing at him, and—”

  “Well, don’t stop now,” Graham said. “Who won?”

  “Well . . . then Mr. Brenner started swinging and—I stuck my foot out and tripped him, and Mr. Chabrier came over right away and said how wonderful it was the way Dr. Tony had socked Mr. Brenner, and I guess that’s what everybody thought.” He looked up at Tony’s astonished face, and finished defensively, “Well, you said, to tell it just the way it happened.”


  CHAPTER TWELVE

  TONY fastened the hood of his parka more tightly around his head, as the chill air of flight crept into the cabin. Graham, beside him, was full of flip comment and curiosity, to which ordinary-decency, let alone special diplomacy, demanded reply. But Tony shifted position and let his eyelids drop closed.

  There was no mental eye to close and so thrust out the revised memory of the ridiculous incident with Brenner, nor any mental ear that could turn off the resounding echo of Bea Juarez’ hilarity.

  You knew all along you never bit Brenner, didn’t you? he asked himself angrily. You could hate figured it out for yourself—if you wanted to! All right, then, don’t think about that.

  The new colonists . . . he ought to do something about them, something to dispel the tense, apprehensive silence in the cabin. A speech of welcome, something like that.

  Thank them for coming? Welcome them to Sun Lake? With the threat that hung over them all, new members and old, any speech like that would be ridiculous. Later in the day, they would be asked to sign final papers, turning over, once and for all, the funds they had already placed in the hands of the trustees on Earth, and receiving their full shares in the Colony. Before then they would learn the worst; they would be told about the accusation that might doom the Colony. But how could he tell them now, before they had ever seen Sun Lake, before they had glimpsed the spellbinding stretches of Lacus Solis, or had a chance to understand the promise implicit in the Lab’s shining walls, in Joe Gracey’s neatly laid out experimental fields?

  And in front of the gunther, too, how much could he say, how much did he dare to say? Graham could wreck their hopes with a word—or solve their problems as easily, if he chose. Graham had exposed the Commissioner’s corruptness once; he wasn’t always just a gunther; he was a part-time crusader. Possibly, he would understand Sun Lake’s desperate necessity . . . possibly?

  “Oh, by the way,” the writer was saying. “I’ve been wondering what kind of a checkup you have on these people for security.”

  “Security?” For a minute the word didn’t make sense; Tony realized suddenly that he hadn’t even heard the word for a year; not, at least, with that sinister, special meaning.

  “Don’t you investigate the newcomers’ backgrounds?”

  “The Sun Lake Society—the recruiting office—checks on their employment records and their schooling to see that we don’t get any romantic phonies masquerading as engineers and agronomists. That and plenty of health checks are all we need. The office wouldn’t have time for more, anyway. It handles all the Earthside paperwork on our imports and exports, advertises, interviews, writes letters to the papers when that damn fool free-love story pops up again—” He gave Graham a look.

  “All right,” laughed the writer. “I’ll make a mental note: Sun Lake doesn’t believe in sex.”

  TONY was ruefully aware that a comeback was expected of him, but he substituted a feebly appreciative smile and leaned back, tiredly letting his eyelids drop again, in an effort to simulate sleep.

  Through slitted eyes, he studied the new arrivals. They were crouched on the cabin floor, bundled into their parkas, talking only occasionally. Even Tad, at the far end of the cabin with the Jenkins’ children, was low-voiced and restrained. Tony could see him pulling miraculous Martian treasures from his pockets for display, then pouncing on the few Earth items the new children had to show in return, cautiously pulled forth from supposedly empty pockets, and held for view in a half-cupped hand.

  Near them, Bessie Jenkins, the mother of the two youngsters, sat half watching them, half talking to the mousier of the two single girls . . . Dantuono? Rose Dantuono, that was it. Anita Skelly, her vivid red hair concealed under the hood of her parka, was carrying on a conversation in monosyllables with Bob Prentiss; they seemed to be communicating a good deal more by hand pressure than by word of mouth. A shipboard romance, Tony wondered, or had they known each other back on Earth?

  He shifted his gaze to the other side of the cabin, where the remaining three men sat: Arnold Jenkins, the lanky Bond, and young Zaretsky. They were lined up in a silent row, leaning against the bulkhead, evidencing none of the interested enthusiasm one might have expected. His own depression, the doctor realized, was affecting everyone.

  What could he say to them? Here they were, newly escaped from Earth, from a madhouse with a time bomb in the basement. It had cost each one of them more than he could estimate, in courage, in money, in work, to make the escape—and what could he promise them now?

  With luck, with the help from Graham, with all the breaks, the best they could look forward to was the everyday life of the Colony: working like dogs, living like ants, because it was the only way to pull free of the doomed world from which they had fled. At worst, and the worst was imminent—back on the same rocket, or the next, or the one after that, back with all the others, destitute. Back to Earth, with no money, no job, no place to live, and no hope at all.

  “Tony.”

  It was Graham again.

  “Yes?”

  “It just occurred to me. Do you people charge for guest privileges? I’ll be happy to shell out anything you think is reasonable. Sun Lake looks like a good story to me, and I want to stay on top of it.”

  “It hasn’t come up before,” Tony told him. “That means we’ll have to vote on it. Personally, I’d vote for charging you.”

  “That’s the idea! If I roast you in the book, you can say I was sore because you soaked me. If I give you a good report, you can prove it wasn’t bought and paid for. Right.”

  “You’re too shrewd for us Martian peasants, Graham. I was only thinking that we could use the money.”

  “Doc!” Bea yelled back into the cabin. “Radio!”

  TONY got up and leaned over into the cockpit to accept the earphones Bea passed him.

  “I can only spark a message back,” she told him. ”We didn’t load the voice transmitter this trip.”

  He nodded. Through the phones a self-consciously important teenage voice was saying: “Sun Lake to Lazy Girl, Dr. Hellman. Sun Lake to Lazy Girl, Dr. Hellman. Sun Lake—”

  “Lazy Girl to Sun Lake, I read you, Hellman,” he said and Bea’s hand sputtered it out on the key.

  “Sun Lake to Lazy Girl, I read you—uh—seventy-two at Pittco, can Lazy Girl sixteen Pittco, over.”

  “Dr. Tony to Jimmy Holloway,” he dictated, “cut out the numbers game, Jimmy, and tell me what you want, over.”

  The teen-age voice was hurt. “Sun Lake to Lazy Girl, medical emergency at Pittco Camp, can Lazy Girl change course and land at Pittco, over.”

  “Lazy Girl to Sun Lake, wilco, Jimmy, but where’s-O’Reilly, over.”

  “Sun Lake to Lazy Girl, I don’t know, Dr. Tony. They messaged us that O’Reilly wasn’t due back from Marsport all day, over.”

  “Lazy Girl to Sun Lake, we’ll take care of it, Jimmy, out.” He passed the phone back to Bea. “Somebody’s sick or hurt at Pittco. Drop me off there and I’ll get back on one of their half-tracks.”

  “Right.” Bea pulled out her map table.

  The doctor went to the rear of the cabin where Tad had stowed the portable lab. He came back with a box of OxEn pills, and stood in the doorway between the cabin and the cockpit, facing the assembled group.

  “These are the same pills you took on board the rocket this morning,” he told them. “I don’t think I have to warn you always to keep a few with you. Wherever you go, whatever you do, as long as you’re on Mars, don’t forget that it’s literally as much as your life is worth if you don’t take one of these every twenty-four hours.” They all knew that, of course; but there was no harm in impressing them with it again.

  There was more he should say, but he didn’t know what. He chose the next best alternative and sat down.

  “What’s cooking?” demanded Graham.

  “Somebody sick or something at the Pittco outfit across the hills from our place. Their doctor’s still in Marsport.”

  “
Mind if I stick with you? I’d like to have a look at the place anyhow—when they’re not ready for me.”

  Tony considered a moment, and decided he liked the idea. “Sure. Come along.”

  “I’d kind of like to see that girl who was for Pittco.”

  “You met her on the rocket?”

  “I met her, all right, but she gave me a faster freeze than your girl pilot here. What is she anyhow—a lady engineer? All brains and no bounce?”

  “Not exactly,” Tony said. “I guess she figured she was on vacation. She’s a new recruit for the company brothel. Those are the only women they’ve got at Pittco.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” Graham was silent a moment, then added thoughtfully, “No wonder she wasn’t interested!”

  ii

  LAZY GIRL touched down at Pittco near noon. The doctor and writer were met by Hackenberg, the mine boss, who drove out in a jeep as Bea zoomed her ship off over the hills to home.

  “I think you’re too late, Doc,” he said.

  “We’ll see. Hack Hackenberg, Douglas Graham.” They climbed in and the jeep rolled past the smokestacks of the refining plant, toward the huts of the settlement.

  “Hell of a thing,” grumbled Hackenberg. “Nobody’s here. Madame Rose, Doc O’Reilly, Mr. Reynolds, all off at Marsport. God knows when they’re coming back. Douglas Graham, did you say? You the reporter Mr. Reynolds was going to bring back? How’d you happen to come in with the doc?”

  “I’m the reporter,” Graham said, “but it’s the first I knew about coming here with Reynolds. Did he tell you that?”

  “Maybe he just said he hoped you would. I don’t know. I got my hands full as it is. I got a contract to be mine boss; everybody takes off and Big Ginny gets her chest busted up, the girls go nuts, and I take the rap. What a life!”