Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  “It must be very handy,” she agreed abstractedly. “But you’ll have to excuse me. I’m due back in town.”

  Novak stared after her, wondering what was biting the girl. And he went on into his lab.

  It was the dream layout he had sketched not too long ago, turned real by the funds of the A.S.F.S.F, Lilly was in the cooling department clocking temperature drops on six crucibles that contained, boron carbides in various proportions. She was looking flushed and happy as she sidled down the bench on which the crucibles were ranged, jotting down the time from the lab clock and temperatures from the thermocouple pyrometers plugged into each sample. Her blonde hair was loose on her creamy neck and shoulders; she wore shorts and a blouse that were appropriate to the heat of the refractories lab but intensely distracting. She turned and smiled, and Novak was distracted to the point of wondering whether she was wearing a brassiere. He rather doubted it.

  “What are the temperatures now?” he asked.

  She read off efficiently: “Seventy-two, seventy-four, seventy-eight, seventy eight point five, seventy-eight point five, seventy-nine.”

  The leveling was unexpected good news. “Interesting. Are you afraid to handle hot stuff?”

  “Naw!” she said with a grin. “Yust not vit’ my bare hands.”

  “Okay; we’ll let you use tongs. I want you to take the lid off each crucible as I indicate. I’ll slap the ingot in the hydraulic press, crush it, and give you the dial reading. Then I’ll put it in the furnace. After all the ingots are crushed and in the furnace I’ll turn on the heat and watch through the peephole. When they melt I’ll call out the number to you, and you note the temperature from the furnace thermocouple. Got it?”

  “I t’ink so, Mike.”

  It went smoothly. The ingots were transferred safely, they crushed under satisfactorily high pressure, and the furnace flashed red and then white in less than five minutes. Staring through the blue glass peephole at the six piles of glowing dust, waiting for them to shimmer, coalesce, and run into liquid, was hypnotically soothing—except that he could sense Lilly at his side, with her eyes on the thermocouple pyrometer and her full hips near him, giving him thoughts that he found alarming.

  He stared at the cones of glowing dust and thought bitterly: I don’t want to get any more mixed up in this than I am now. One of the glowing piles shimmered and looked mirrorlike. Abruptly it shrank from a heap of dust into a cluster of little globes like an ornamental pile of Civil War cannon balls and an instant later slumped into a puddle.

  “Number five!” he snapped.

  “Got it, Mike,” she said, and her thigh touched him.

  This thing’s hem coming on for a couple of weeks. I’ll be damned if I don’t think she’s giving me the business. She ought to be ashamed. But what a shape on her. Amy wouldn’t pull a stunt like this. He felt a little regretful and hastily clamped down on that train of thought. “Number three!”

  “Got it.”

  Minutes later he was at his desk with the figures, and she was an interested spectator. He explained laboriously: “The trick is to reduce your unknowns to a manageable number. We have mixing point of the original solution, rate of cooling, final temperature, and melting point. You call them T1dT/dt—that’s derivative of temperature with respect to time—T2 and T3. Do you follow it so far?”

  The leaned over his shoulder and began: “I don’ see——”

  “The hell with it,” he said, and kissed her. She responded electrically, and in her candid way indicated that she meant business. The faint voice of Novak’s conscience became inaudible at that point, and the business might have been transacted then and there if the lab door hadn’t opened.

  Hastily she pulled away from him. “You go see what is, Mike,” she ordered breathlessly.

  “Fine, thing,” he growled, and slapped her almost viciously on the rump.

  “I know how you feel, boy,” she grinned.

  “Oh—no—you—don’t.” He cleared his throat and stalked out from the small private office into the lab. One of the machine-shop kids was waiting. The boy wanted to know whether he should use hot-roll or cold-roll steel for the threaded studs of the acceleration couches; the drawings just said “mild steel.” Novak said restrainedly that he didn’t think it made any difference, and stood waiting for him to leave.

  When he got back to the private office Lilly was putting her face on. She said hastily: “No, Mike. Keep the hands off me for a minute while I tell you. This is no place. You wanna come to my house tonight, we do this t’ing right.”

  “I’ll be there,” he said a little thoughtfully. Conscience was making a very slight comeback. He hadn’t been to the Clifton house since the day of the murder. But the lady was willing, the husband was six feet under, and it concerned nobody else.

  “Good boy. You go back to work now.”

  He watched her drive from the field in the big maroon Rolls and tried to buckle down. He got nothing done for the rest of the afternoon. He tried first to set up matrix equations to relate the characteristics of the six boron carbides and committed howler after howler. He decided he’d better lay off the math until he was feeling more placid. In the machine shop he took over from an uncertain volunteer who was having trouble threading the acceleration-couch studs. Novak, with a single twitch of the lathe’s cross-feed wheel, made scrap out of the job.

  It wasn’t his day. Among the condolences of the machine-shop gang he declared work over and bummed a ride back to Los Angeles in one of the kids’ jalopies.

  He bolted a meal in the hotel dining room and went upstairs to shower and shave. Not until he was dressed and down in the lobby did he realize that he didn’t remember the Clifton address—if he had ever heard it. Cahunga, Cahuenga Canyon, something like that, and he could probably find the house from a taxi window. He went to the phone book to look up Clifton, and found nothing under August. There were three A. Cliftons with middle initials, but none of them lived on anything that sounded like Cahunga, Cahuenga, or whatever it was. He tried Information and got the standard Los Angeles answer—unlisted number. A girl waiting outside the half-opened door of the phone booth turned red and walked away after overhearing part of his comments on that.

  Now what the devil did you do? He recalled suddenly that Friml was good on addresses, just the way you’d expect his card-file type to be. He looked up the Downtown Y.M.C.A. and was connected with Friml’s room.

  “This is Novak, Friml. I hate to bother you after hours, but I wonder if you can give me Clifton’s address. I, um, need it for some reports and he isn’t in the phone book.”

  The secretary-treasurer’s precise voice said: “Just one moment, Mr. Novak. I have it in a memorandum book. Please hold the line.” Novak held on for some time and then Friml gave him the address and—unsolicited—the phone number. He jotted them down and said: “Thanks. Sorry to be such a nuisance.”

  Friml said with a martyred air: “Not at all. I’m not good at remembering numbers myself.” There was a plain implication of: “So why the hell don’t you keep a memorandum book like good little me?” Mildly surprised at the admission, Novak thanked him again and hung up. Now for a taxi. Walking up the street to a stand where he could climb in without having to tip a doorman, he wondered how he’d got the notion that Friml kept his address book in his head. Probably just the type of guy he was made you think so. Probably he did nothing to discourage you from thinking so. Probably there was a lot of bluff behind any of these ice-water types . . .

  And then he stopped still in the street, realizing what had made him think Friml was a walking address book. He’d asked once for the Wilson Stuart address, and the secretary-treasurer had rolled it out absently as if it were no great feat to recall offhand where a rank-and-filer of the Society lived. He started walking again, slower and slower.

  There was something very wrong. Friml had memorized the Wilson Stuart address, presumably of negligible importance to him. All he could possibly have to do with the Wilson Stuar
t address was to send a bill for annual dues, meeting notices, the club bulletin—no not even that. All those items were addressographed. Friml had not memorized the August Clifton address or phone number, although presumably he’d be constantly dropping notes and making calls to him for engineering data. If he didn’t know the Clifton number and address offhand he was decidedly no good at numbers, as he admitted.

  Novak walked slowly past the cab rank and crossed the street. Stepping up to the curb, his right heel caught in the unfamiliar sag of his trouser cuff, and he thought: damn that belt.

  It was, clearly, the first break in the Clifton killing. Friml wasn’t what he seemed to be. Clearly there was a link of some sort between the secretary-treasurer and Amelia Earheart Stuart—or her father. Now how did you exploit a thing like this? Raid Friml’s Y.M.C.A. room looking for the Papers? Tell that fathead Anheier about it and have him laugh in your face? Confront Wilson Stuart with it and have him conk out with a heart attack—or throw you in jail for trespassing? Try to bluff the facts out of Amy?

  Friml has even visited the Clifton bungalow—feller who broke the big mirror and my Svedish glass pitcher and your cat’ode-ray tube. That was Friml, Mike. He gets pretty bad. It had been a gag—maybe. Nothing strange about a Friml swilling his liquor like a pig and breaking things now and then. And talking . . .

  He raised his arm for a passing taxi.

  “Downtown Y.M.C.A.,” he told the driver.

  XII.

  He called up from the lobby. “Friml? Novak again. I’m downstairs. I’m at a loose end and I wonder whether you’d care to join me for a drink or two some place. Maybe we can have a general bull session about the Society. I’ve been working like a dog and I need some unstringing.”

  The voice said grudgingly: “Well . . . come on up, Dr. Novak. I had some work for this evening, but . . .”

  Friml had a two-room suite, medium-sized and antiseptically clean. He seemed proud of his place. He showed Novak his desk: “Some people tell you it’s a sign of inefficiency to take your work home with you. I don’t believe that for a minute. You, for instance—I can tell that you don’t leave your job behind when you leave the field.”

  “I don’t think any really conscientious person would,” Novak agreed with gravity, and Friml glowed dimly at the implied compliment.

  “You’re right about—unstringing,” said the secretary-treasurer. “I’m not a drinker, of course. I’ll be with you in a minute.” He went into the bathroom and Novak heard the lock turn.

  He stood undecided over the desk and then, feeling that it was a childish thing to do, tried its drawers. They opened. In the shallow centre drawer where pencils, rulers, paper clips, and blotters are kept, Friml kept pencils, rulers, paper clips, and blotters. In the top left drawer were letterheads, carbon paper, second sheets, and onionskin in a rack. In the second left-hand drawer were card-file boxes and a corduroy-bound ledger with red leather corners and spine. In the bottom drawer were books with brown wrapping-paper covers on them, the kind school children use on text books.

  Friml appeared, looking almost cheerful. “There’s a quiet little place on Figueroa Street,” he said. “The pianist does request numbers. He’s pretty good.”

  “Fine,” said the engineer, depressed.

  The place on Figueroa Street wasn’t a fairy joint, as Novak had half expected it would be. They sat at a table and had a couple of drinks apiece while the pianist played blues. Novak knew vaguely that it was a big blues-revival year. The engineer made conversation about his membership report for the next meeting. “I don’t know just what the members expect, because Clifton spoke off the cuff and there aren’t any transcripts.”

  Friml said relaxedly: “Just give ’em the high spots. About fifteen minutes. And don’t go by what Clifton did. Some times he used to just get up and joke. Other times he used to be ’way over their heads with math and electronics.”

  “That sounds like him. I was wondering about visual aids. Do you think I ought to have some easel cards made up? I think the whole trouble is, I don’t know whether the membership report is just a formality or whether they really pay attention. If it’s just a noise I’m supposed to make so everybody will feel he’s getting his money’s worth from the Ph.D., then I won’t bother with the cards. If they really listen and learn, I ought to have them.”

  “You ought to just suit yourself, Novak,” Friml said rather expansively. “They like you and that’s the main thing. How’d you like my job, with everybody calling you a son of a bitch?” He took a deep swallow from his drink. He was having blended rye and ginger ale, the drink of a man who doesn’t like to taste his liquor.

  Novak excused himself and went to the phone booth. He called Lilly Clifton.

  “Mike?” she asked. “Ain’t you gonna come ’round tonight like you said?”

  “Later, I think,” he told her. “Listen, Lilly. I think I’ve found out something about the death of—of your husband.” It was an awkward thing to say.

  “So? Tell me.” Her voice was unexpectedly grim.

  It didn’t sound like much in the telling, but she was impressed.

  “You got somet’ing,” she said. “See if you can bring him around here later. I t’ink he goes for me.”

  He told her about Friml’s memory. She said dryly: “I see. I guess maybe he was a liddle bit queer for Cliff. It drived him nuts the time he was out here, the way Cliff played around vit’ me affectionate. Every time Cliff gimme a kiss or somet’ing, Friml took a bigger drink. I guess I was flatt’ring myself. You bring him anyway if you can.”

  He said he’d try, and went back to the table. Friml was a drink ahead of him by then, and said: “No more for me, Mike,” when Novak tried to order. He sounded as though he could be talked into it. The pianist, a little black man at a little black piano on a platform behind the bar, was playing a slow, rippling vamp between numbers. “Coffee Blues!” Friml yelled unexpectedly at him, and Novak started.

  The vamp rippled into a dragging blues, and Friml listened bleakly with his chin propped in his hand. He signaled their waiter after a few bars and drank his shot of blended rye without mixing or chasing it. “Great number,” he said. “I like my coffee—sweet, black, and hot . . . I like my coffee—sweet, black and, hot . . . won’t let no body fool . . . with my coffee pot . . . I always liked that number, Mike. You like it?”

  “Sure. Great number.”

  Friml beamed. “Some folks like—their coffee tan and strong . . . You ever know any coloured girls, Mike?”

  “There were a few from Chicago in my classes at Urbana.”

  “Good-looking?” Friml wouldn’t meet his eye; he was turning over in his hands the pack of matches from the table ash tray.

  “Some of them yes, some of them no.”

  Friml gulped his drink. “Could I borrow a cigarette?” he asked. Novak tapped one out of his pack and held the match for the accountant. Friml got his cigarette wet, but didn’t cough. From behind a cloud of smoke he asked: “Did any of the white fellows at the university go around with the coloured girls?”

  “Maybe some in Liberal Arts College. None that I remember in Engineering.”

  “I bet,” Frim said broodingly, “I bet a fellow could really let himself go with a colored girl. But if a fellow’s trying to build up a good solid record and get some place it wouldn’t look good if it got out, would it?”

  Novak let him have it. “It wouldn’t make much difference if a fellow was just fooling away his time on one bush-league job after another.”

  Friml quivered and stubbed out his cigarette, bursting the paper. “I really ought to be getting out of here,” he said. “One more and then let’s beat it, okay?”

  “Okay.” He signaled and told the waiter: “Double shots.” And inquiringly to Friml: “All right, isn’t it?”

  The secretary-treasurer nodded glumly. “Guess so. ’scuse me.” He got to his feet and headed for the men’s room. He was weaving. Novak thoughtfully poured his own doubl
e shot into Friml’s ginger ale.

  A sad little man, he thought, who didn’t have any fun. Maybe a sad little man who had slunk out of the auditorium of Slovak Sokol Hall during the movie and put a bullet through Clifton’s head for an obscure reason that had to do with the Stuarts.

  Friml came drifting back across the floor and plopped into his chair. “Don’t do this often,” he said clearly and gulped his double shot, chasing it with the ginger ale. He put a half dollar on the table with a click and said: “Let’s go. Been a very pleasant evening. I like that piano man.”

  The cool night air did it. He sagged foolishly against Novak and a cruising taxi instantly drew up. The engineer loaded him into it. “You can’t go to the Y in this shape,” he said. “How about some coffee some place? I have an invitation to Mrs. Clifton’s. You can get some coffee there and take a nap.”

  Friml nodded vaguely and then his head slumped on his chest. Novak gave the cabby the Clifton address and rolled down the windows to let a breeze through.

  Friml muttered during the ride, but nothing intelligible.

  Novak and the cabby got Friml to the small front porch of the Clifton bungalow, and Novak and Lilly got him inside and onto a couch. The engineer noticed uncomfortably that she was wearing the strapless, almost topless, black dinner dress she’d had on the night Cliff died. He wondered, with a faint and surprising touch of anger, if she thought it would excite him because of that. The bungalow inside had been cleared of its crazy welter of junk, and proved to be ordinary without it. One lingering touch: on spread newspapers stood a sketch box and an easel with a half-finished oil portrait of Lilly, full face and somber with green.

  She caught his glance. “I make that. Somet’ing to do.” She looked down at Friml and asked cheerfully: “How you feeling, boy? You want a drink?”