The boy left, looking remorseful, and Farwell told himself that not everybody could handle an out-of-the-way type that well. If he pasted the little sermon in his hat he’d be all right.
“Really creative synthesis!” Farwell snorted and poured himself a drink before he buckled down to planning a series of releases for the International Spacemen’s Union. The space lines, longing for the old open-shop days, were sniping at the I.S.U. wherever they found an opening. They had a good one in the union’s high initiation fee. The union said the high fee kept waifs and strays out and insured that anybody who paid it meant business and would make the spaceways his career. The union said the benefits that flowed from this were many and obvious. The companies said the union just wanted the money.
Farwell started blocking out a midwestern campaign. It might start with letters to the papers signed by SPACEMAN’S WIFE, WIDOW OF SCAB SPACER and other folks; the union could locate them to sign the letters. Next thing to do was set up a disinterested outfit. He tentatively christened it “The First Pan-American Conference on Space Hazards” and jotted down the names of a few distinguished chronic joiners and sponsors for the letterheads. They could hold a three-day meeting in Chicago, and conclude that the most important factor in space safety is experienced crewmen, and the longer their service the better. No mention of the I.S.U. initiation fee policy out of the F.P.A.C.S.H., but the union could use their conclusions in its material.
The union could use it to get a couple of state legislatures to pass resolutions endorsing the initiation fee policy. G. & B. would write the resolutions, but the I.S.U.—an independent union—would have to swing the big federations into putting pressure on the legislatures in the name of labor unity.
Numerically the spacemen were insignificant.
He pawed through stacks of material forwarded to him as ammo by the union looking for the exact amount of fee but couldn’t locate it. The coyness was not surprising; it recalled the way corporation handouts bannered the “profit per dollar of sales” and buried the total profit in dollars and cents. He buzzed Copy.
“Mac, does anybody there know exactly what the, I.S.U. initiation fee is?”
“I’ll see, J. F.”
A moment later he heard Angelo’s voice. “It’s kind of complicated, Mr. Farwell—maybe to keep anybody from saying it’s exactly this or exactly that. Here’s the way it works: base fee, $1000, to be paid before they issue you a work card. What they call ‘accrual fee’ on top of that—$100 if you’re twenty years old, $200 if you’re twenty-two, $300 if you’re twenty-four and so on up to 30, and after that you can’t join. You can pay accrual fee out of your first voyage. From the accrual fee you can deduct $50 for each dependent. On top of that there’s a 5 per cent assessment of your first-voyage pay only, earmarked for the I.S.U. Space Medicine Research Foundation at Johns Hopkins. And that’s all.”
Farwell had been jotting it down. “Thanks, Angelo,” he said absently. The Space Medicine Research thing was good, but he’d have to be careful that they weren’t represented at the F.P.A.C.S.H.; you didn’t want a direct union tie-in there. Now what could you do about the fee? Get the union to dig up somebody who’s paid only the $1000 base because of age and the right number of dependents. Forget the accrual and the assessment. How many people on a space ship—50, 60? Make it 60 to get a plausibly unround number. Sixty into 1000 is 16.67.
“Dear Editor: Is there anybody riding the spaceways who would not cheerfully pay $16.67 cents to insure that the crewmen who hold his life in their hands are thoroughly experienced veterans of interplanetary flight? Is there anybody so short-sighted that he would embark with a green crew to save $16.67? Of course not! And yet that is what certain short-sighted persons demand! Throwing up a smoke-screen of loose charges to divert the public from the paramount issue of SAFETY they accuse—”
That wasn’t exactly it. He had made it look as though the passengers paid the I.S.U. initiation fee. Well, he’d struck a keynote; Copy could take it from there.
And then there ought to be a stunt—a good, big stunt with pix possibilities. Girls, or violence, or both. Maybe a model demonstrating an escape hatch or something at a trade show, something goes wrong, a heroic I.S.U. member in good standing who happens to be nearby dashes in—
He was feeling quite himself again.
The switchboard girl must have been listening in on the New York call. As Farwell stepped from his office he felt electricity in the air; the word had been passed already. He studied the anteroom, trying to see it through Greenbough’s eyes.
“Grace,” he told the switchboard girl, “get your handbag off the PBX and stick it in a drawer somewhere. Straighten that picture. And put on your bolero—you have nice shoulders and we all appreciate them, but the office is air-conditioned.”
She tried to look surprised as he went on into Art.
Holoway didn’t bother to pretend. “What time’s he getting in?” he asked worriedly. “Can I get a shave?”
“They didn’t tell me,” said Farwell. “Your shave’s all right. Get things picked up and get ties on the boys.” The warning light was off; he looked into the darkroom. “A filthy mess!” he snapped. “How can you get any work done in a litter like that? Clean it up.”
“Right away, J. F.,” Holloway said, hurt.
Copy was in better shape; McGuffy had a taut hand.
“Greenbough’s coming in today, I don’t know what time. Your boys here look good.”
“I can housebreak anything, J. F. Even Angelo. He bought a new suit!”
Farwell allowed a slight puzzled look to cross his face. “Angelo? Oh, the Libonari boy. How’s he doing?”
“No complaints. He’ll never be an accounts man if I’m any judge, but I’ve been giving him letters to write the past couple weeks. I don’t know how you spotted it, but he’s got talent. I have to hand it to you for digging him up, J. F.”
Farwell saw the boy now at the last desk on the windowless side of the room, writing earnestly in longhand. Two months on a fair-enough salary hadn’t filled him out as much as Farwell expected, but he did have a new suit on his back.
“It was just a gamble,” he told McGuffy and went back to his office.
He had pretended not to remember the kid. Actually he’d been in his thoughts off and on since he hired him. There had been no trouble with Angelo since his grim little interview with the boy. Farwell hoped, rather sentimentally, he knew, that the interview had launched him on a decent career, turned him aside from the rocky Bohemian road and its pitfalls. As he had been turned aside himself. The nonsensical “really creative synthesis of Pinero and Shaw” pattered through his head again and he winced, thoroughly sick of it. For the past week the thought of visiting a psychiatrist had pattered after Pinero and Shaw every time, each time to be dismissed as silly.
His phone buzzed and he mechanically said, “Jim Farwell.”
“Farwell, why didn’t you check with me?” rasped Greenbough’s voice.
“I don’t understand, Mr. Greenbough. Where are you calling from?”
“The Hotel Greybar down the street, of course! I’ve been sitting here for an hour waiting for your call.”
“Mr. Greenbough, all they told me from New York was that you were coming to Chicago.”
“Nonsense. I gave the instructions myself.”
“I’m sorry about the mixup—I must have misunderstood. Are you going to have a look at the office?”
“No. Why should I do anything like that? I’ll call you back.” Greenbough hung up.
Farwell leaned back, cursing whoever in New York had crossed up the message. It had probably been done deliberately, he decided—Pete Messier, the New York office manager trying to make him look bad.
He tried to work on an account or two, but nervously put them aside to wait for Greenbough’s call. At 5 he tried to reach Greenbough to tell him he was going home and give him his home number. Greenbough’s room didn’t answer the call or his next four, so he phoned a
drugstore to send up a sandwich and coffee.
Before he could get started on the sandwich Greenbough phoned again to invite him to dinner at the Mars Room. He was jovial as could be: “Get myself some of that famous Chicago hospitality, hey, Jim? You know I’m just a hick from Colorado, don’t you?” He went on to give Farwell about ten minutes of chuckling reminiscence and then hung up without confirming the dinner date. It turned out that it didn’t matter. As Farwell was leaving the deserted office his phone buzzed again. It was Greenbough abruptly calling off the Mars Room. He told Farwell: “I’ve got somebody important to talk to this evening.”
The branch manager at last dared to pour himself a heavy drink and left.
His bedside phone shrilled at 3 in the morning. “Jim Farwell,” he croaked into it while two clock dials with the hands making two luminous L’s wavered in front of him. His drink at the office had been the first of a series.
“This is Greenbough, Farwell,” snarled the voice of the senior partner. “You get over here right away. Bring Clancy, whatever his name is—the lawyer.” Click.
Where was “here”? Farwell phoned the Greybar. “Don’t connect me with his room—I just want to know if he’s in.”
The floor clerk said he was and Farwell tried to phone the home of the Chicago branch’s lawyer, but got no answer. Too much time lost. He soaked his head in cold water, threw his clothes on and drove hell-for-leather to the Greybar.
Greenbough was in one of the big two-bedroom suites on the sixteenth floor. A frozen-faced blond girl in an evening gown let Farwell in without a word. The senior partner was sprawled on the sofa in dress trousers and stiff shirt. He had a bruise under his left eye.
“I came as quickly as I could, Mr. Greenbough,” said Farwell. “I couldn’t get in touch with—”
The senior partner coughed thunderously, twitched his face at Farwell in a baffling manner, and then stalked into a bedroom. The blond girl’s frozen mask suddenly split into a vindictive grin. “You’re going to get it!” she jeered at Farwell. “I’m supposed to think his name’s Wilkins. Well, go on after him, pappy.”
Farwell went into the bedroom. Greenbough was sitting on the bed dabbing at the bruise and muttering. “I told you I wanted our lawyer!” he shouted at the branch manager. “I was attacked by a drunkard in that damned Mars Room of yours and by God booked by the police like a common criminal! I’m going to get satisfaction if I have to turn the city upside down! Get on that phone and get me Clancy or whatever his name is!”
“But I can’t!” said Farwell desperately. “He won’t answer his phone and in the second place he isn’t that kind of lawyer. I can’t ask Clarahan to fight a disorderly-conduct charge—he’s a big man here. He only does contract law and that kind of thing. You posted bond, didn’t you, Mr. Greenbough?”
“Twenty dollars,” said the senior partner bitterly, “and they only wanted ten from that drunken ape.”
“Then why not just forget about it? Forfeit the bond and probably you’ll never hear of it again, especially since you’re an out-of-towner. I’ll do what I can to smooth it over if they don’t let it slide.”
“Get out of here,” said Greenbough, dabbing at the bruise again.
The blond was reading a TV magazine in the parlor; she ignored Farwell as he let himself out.
The branch manager drove to an all-night barber shop near one of the terminals and napped through “the works.” A slow breakfast killed another hour and by then it wasn’t too ridiculously early to appear at the office.
He dawdled over copy until 9 and phoned the Greybar. They told him Mr. Greenbough had checked out leaving no forwarding address. The morning papers came and he found nothing about a scuffle at the Mars Room or the booking of Greenbough. Maybe the senior partner had given a false name—Wilkins?—or maybe the stories had been killed because Greenbough and Brady did some institutional advertising. Maybe there was some mysterious interlock between Greenbough and Brady and the papers high up on some misty alp that Farwell had never glimpsed.
Don’t worry about it, he told himself savagely. You gave him good advice, the thing’s going to blow over, Clarahan wouldn’t have taken it anyway. He hoped Pete Messier in New York wouldn’t hear about it and try to use it as a lever to pry him out of the spot he held, the spot Pete Messier coveted. Maybe there was some way he could get somebody in the New York office to keep an eye on Messier and let him know how he was doing, just to get something he could counterpunch with when Messier pulled something like that garbled message stunt.
The intercom buzzed and Grace said, “Angelo wants to see you. He says it’s personal.”
“Send him in.”
The kid was beaming. He looked pretty good—not raw and jumpy; just happy.
“I want to say thanks and good-bye, Mr. Farwell,” he told the branch manager. “Look!”
The plastic-laminated card said “WORK PERMIT” and “Brother Angelo Libonari” and “International Union of Spacemen, Spacedockworkers and Rocket Maintenance Men, Unaffiliated (ISU-IND)” and “Member in Good Standing” and other things.
“So that was the game,” said Farwell slowly. “We take you and we train you at a loss hoping that some day you’ll turn out decent copy for us and as soon as you have a thousand bucks saved up you quit like a shot and buy a work card to be a wiper on a rocket. Well, I hope you show a little more loyalty to your space line than you showed us.”
Angelo’s face drooped in miserable surprise. “I never thought—” he stuttered. “I didn’t mean to run out, Mr. Farwell. I’ll give two weeks notice if you want—a month? How about a month?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Farwell. “I should have known. I thought I pounded some sense into your head, but I was wrong. You’re forgiven, Angelo. I hope you have a good time. What are your plans?” He wasn’t really interested, but why go out of his way to kick the kid in the teeth? Obviously he’d meant it when he registered surprise—he didn’t have the boss’s viewpoint and his other jobs had been one-week stands in hash houses.
The boy carefully put his work card in his breast pocket and beamed again at what he was saying—partly to Farwell, it appeared, mostly to himself in wonder at its coming true at last. “I’ll be a wiper at the start, all right,” he said. “I don’t care if I never get higher than that. I want to see it and feel it, all of it. That’s the only way the real thing’s ever going to get written. Higgins and Delare and Beeman and the rest of them—passengers. You can feel it in your bones when you read their stuff. One-trippers or two-trippers.
“They aren’t soaked in it. The big passage in Delare’s Planetfall, the takeoff from Mars: he’s full of the wonder of it, sure. Who wouldn’t be the first time? And he kept his eyes open, watching himself and the others. But I’m going to take off from Earth and Mars and Venus and Ganymede and the Moon twenty times before I dare to write about it. I’m going to get it all—brains, bone, muscle, and belly—takeoff, landings, free flight, danger, monotony—all of it.”
“Sonnets? Prose poems?” asked Farwell, just to be saying something.
Angelo flushed a little, but his eyes didn’t have the old pleading look. He didn’t have to plead; he had what he wanted. “They were good exercise,” he said stoutly. “I suppose I was trying to write form because I didn’t have content. I think it’s going to be novels—if I feel like it. And they can publish them or not publish them, just as they please.” He meant it, Farwell thought. He had what he wanted.
“I’ll look forward to them,” he said, and shook hands with the boy. He didn’t notice him leave. Angelo Messier, he thought; Pete Libonari. “—really creative synthesis of Pinero and Shaw—” pattered through his head, and the psychiatrist-thought followed naggingly after. He looked at his hands in amazement, suddenly realizing that they had been trembling all morning uncontrollably.
1953
The Mask of Demeter
With deadpan cogency Messrs. Pearson and Corwin argue that no matter how carefully you obse
rve them, things are not what they seem and nothing is as ephemeral as a planet.
THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION met once a year in New York City, which made it easy for members who lectured in Columbia or N.Y.U. Others had, often, to travel thousands of miles to partake of the delights that comprised the annual meetings. Among these delights were gratuitous insults, given and taken, violent challenges to debate which never came to anything, and—if it was a lucky year—a fist fight between two eminent figures in the realm of science.
The convention for 1951 wasn’t getting anywhere, it seemed. There had been a number of papers read, a few desultory impeachments of fact with half-hearted rejoinders from the platform.
Next on the program was the good Dr. Brewster, astronomer from Vernier Tech. His topic was “Some Recent Observations and Correlations Regarding the Spectrum and Band-Shifts of Demeter,” which was mysterious. Nobody could think for the moment of a star named Demeter, though there probably was one. If you look hard enough you could find a star with any name that comes to mind.
Dr. Brewster, with a slight cough, advanced on the stage, smiling. Not yet referring to his notes he began with the usual informal comments, intended to be humorous: “Well, gentlemen, I trust I can read a paper on Demeter without you all being scared out of your wits, eh?”
“Huh?” violently grunted a few of the members of the I.S.A.
“Now why should we be scared of anything he has to say?” demanded an astronomer from McGill University of a botanist from Yale.
Dr. Brewster chuckled mildly. “To wander a bit,” he said, “I was one of those very few who read the original romance in its first edition. I found it vastly thrilling, of course—and totally improbable. But Orson Welles had—shall we say—a knack of putting over the totally improbable with a plausibility that is terrifying to the uninitiate.”
The botanist from Yale looked at the astronomer from McGill. “What’s the man talking about?” he asked.
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