Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  He put his shoes on again, grunting, and chain-smoked until Miss Wynekoop knocked on his door. She was tall, thirty-ish and engaging in a lantern-jawed way. “Dr. Novak. I could tell you were a scientist.

  They have a look——It was very good of you to let me see you on a moment’s notice like this. But I hesitated to contact you through the A.S.F.S.F. In a way I suppose we’re trying to steal you from them. Of course our legal people would buy out your contract with them so they’d suffer no financial loss in retraining a man to take your place.”

  “Sit down, please,” he said. “What are these standards your firm wants me to meet?”

  She settled herself comfortably. “Personality, for one thing. Our technical people have looked over your record and decided that you’re the man for the job if you’re available—and if you’ll fit in. Our department head—you’d recognize the name, but of course I can’t tell you yet—our department head would like me to check on some phases of your career. We’re interested, for example, in the events that led up to your separation from A.E.C.”

  “Oh, are you?” he asked grimly. “As far as anybody is concerned, I resigned without notice after a short, hot discussion with Dr. Hurlbut, the director of the Argonne National Lab.”

  She giggled. “I’ll say. You socked him.”

  “Well, what about it? If you people thought that means I’m incurably bad-tempered you wouldn’t be here interviewing me now. You’d be trying the next guy on the list.”

  Miss Wynekoop became serious again. “You’re right. Naturally we don’t want a man who’s going to flying off the handle over a trivial difference of opinion. But we certainly wouldn’t hold it against you if you had actually been pushed to the breaking point by intolerable conditions. It could happen to anybody. If you will, I’d like you to tell me what brought the disagreement about.”

  The thing was sounding more legitimate by the minute—and is there anybody who doesn’t like to tell his grievance? “Fair question, Miss Wynekoop,” he said. “What brought it about was several months of being assigned to a hopelessly wrong job and being stymied every time I tried to get back to my proper work. That’s not just my subjective opinion; it’s not a gripe but a fact. I’m a ceramics engineer. But they put me into nuclear physics theory and wouldn’t let me out. Hurlbut apparently didn’t bother to acquaint himself with the facts. He insulted me viciously in public. He accused me of logrolling and incompetence. So I let him have it.”

  She nodded. “What are the details?”

  “Details. What details?”

  “Things like, when were you transferred and by whose authority. Your relationship with your superiors generally.”

  “Well, last August, about mid-month, my transfer order came through without warning or explanation. It was signed by the director of the Office of Organization and Personnel—one of the Washington big shots. And don’t ask me about my relationship with him; I didn’t have any. He was too high up. My orders before that had always been cut by my working directors.”

  She looked understanding. “I see. And the working directors: did they ride you? Keep you short of supplies? Stick you on the night-side? That kind of thing?”

  Night-side. He had known reporters, and that was newspaper talk. They said without thinking: day-side, night-side, city-side, sport-side. “Smear us, Novak” Anheier had grimly said, “and we’ll smear you hack” He tried not to panic. “No,” he said evenly. “There never was anything like that.”

  “What was your relationship with, say, Daniel Holland?”

  Novak didn’t have to fake a bewildered look. “Why, I had nothing at all to do with anybody on his level,” he said slowly. “Maybe there’s been a mistake. Do you have it clear that I was just a Grade 18? I wasn’t in the chain of command. I was just hired help; why should I have anything to do with the general manager?”

  She pressed: “But we understand that your transfer order was put through by the director of the Office of Organization and Personnel on the direct suggestion of Mr. Holland.”

  He shook his head. “Couldn’t be. You’ve been misinformed. Holland wouldn’t have known me from Adam’s off ox.”

  Miss Wynekoop smiled briefly and said: “We were pretty sure of our facts. There’s another matter. Your AEC Personnel Form Medical 11305 was altered by some means or other last September. Were you retested by the psychologists before that happened?”

  “What the deuce is my Personnel Form Medical whatever-it-was?”

  “ ‘Personality card’ is what they call it unofficially.”

  Oh. Personality cards he knew about; they were an A.E.C. joke. You took a battery of tests during employment processing and a psychologist evaluated the results and filled out the card with attention to such things as “attitudes,” “anxieties,” “responses,” and other items supposed to give your working director an idea of how to handle you. Your personality card went everywhere with you and it was never, never altered. It was a very peculiar question and it was becoming a very peculiar interview. “Yes,” Novak lied. “They ran me through the works again at N.E.P.A. It was some psychologist’s brilliant idea of a controlled experiment.”

  That rocked Miss Wynekoop back on her heels. She smiled with an effort and said, rising: “Thanks very much for your co-operation, Dr. Novak. I’ll call you early next week. Thanks very much.” When he saw the elevator door at the end of the corridor close on her, Novak called Information. He asked: “Do you have Directory Service in this city? What I mean is, I have a phone number and I want the name and address of the subscriber.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Information. “Just dial the exchange of the number and then dial 4882.” Same routine as Chicago.

  Directory Service said Miss Wynekoop’s phone was an unlisted number and that was that. He called Miss Wynekoop’s number again and a man with a pleasant voice answered, saying: “Howard here.”

  “Let me talk to the editor, Howard,” Novak said.

  There was a long pause and then: “Who is this, please?”

  Novak hung up. “Editor” had meant something to Howard—or maybe Howard just wasn’t a quick thinker.

  Novak had last seen Anheier, agent in charge for the Los Angeles Regional A.E.C. Security and Intelligence Office, at the inquest on Clifton. Novak had woodenly stood and recited his facts while Anheier’s calm eyes were on him, with their threat of instant and total ruin if he voiced his suspicion that Clifton had been murdered in some shadowy atomic intrigue. The verdict had been suicide . . .

  The engineer hesitated a long minute and called the Security Office in the Federal Building. “Mr. Anheier, please,” he said. “This is Dr. Michael Novak.”

  A man said: “Mr. Anheier’s gone home, sir. I’ll give you his home phone if it’s important, or take a message.”

  Novak said: “It’s important,” and got Anheier’s home phone number The agent in charge was as placid as ever. “Good to hear from you, Dr. Novak. What can I——”

  Novak cut him off. “Shut up. I just want to tell you something. You were afraid of my ideas getting into the papers. You said you’d smear me if I did anything to publicize them. I want you to know that the newspapers are coming to me.” He proceeded to tell Anheier what had been said, as close to verbatim as he could. At the end of the recital he said: “Any questions?”

  “Can you describe this woman?”

  He did.

  Anheier said: “It sounds like somebody who hit town today. I’m going into the Federal Building office now. Will you come down and look at some pictures? Maybe we can identify this Wynekoop.”

  “Why should I?”

  Anheier said grimly: “I want your co-operation, Dr. Novak. I want to be sure you aren’t leaking your story to the papers and trying to avoid retaliation in kind. The more co-operation we get out of you, the less likely that theory will seem. I’ll be waiting for you.” Novak hung up the phone and swore. He drank again from the bottle of bourbon and took a taxi to the Federal Building.

>   There was a long wait in the dimmed hall for the single after-hours elevator. When its door rolled open on the eighth floor, Novak saw that the Security office glass door was the only one on the floor still lit from inside. Twenty-four hours a day, he had heard, with the teletype net always up.

  He gave his name to the lone teletype operator doubling at night as receptionist.

  “Mr. Anheier’s in his office,” said the operator. “You see it there?”

  Novak went in. The tall, calm man greeted him and handed him a single eight-by-ten glossy print.

  “That’s her,” he said without hesitation. “A reporter?” Anheier was rocking gently in his swivel chair. “An ex-reporter,” he said. “She’s Mary Tyrrel. Senator Bob Hoyt’s secretary.”

  Novak blinked uncomprehendingly. “I don’t see what I can do about it,” he said, shrugging, and turned to leave.

  “Novak,” Anheier said. “I can’t let you out of here.”

  There was a gun in his hand, pointed at the engineer.

  “Don’t you know who killed Clifton?” Anheier asked. “I killed Clifton.”

  XIV.

  Night of a bureaucrat.

  The bachelor apartment of Daniel Holland was four rooms in an oldish Washington apartment house. After six years in residence, Holland barely knew his way around it. The place had been restrainedly decorated in Swedish modern by the wife of a friend in the days when he’d had time for friends. There had been no changes in it since. His nightly track led from the front door to the desk, and after some hours from the desk to the dressing closet and then the bed. His track in the morning was from the bed to the bathroom to the dressing closet to the front door.

  Holland was there in his second hour of paper work at the desk when his telephone rang. It meant a wrong number or—trouble. His eyes slid to the packed travelling bag he always kept beside the door; he picked up the phone and gave its number in a monotone.

  “This is Anheier in L.A., chief. Let’s scramble.”

  Holland pushed the scrambler button on the phone’s base and asked: “Do you hear me all right?”

  “I hear you, chief. Are you ready for bad news?”

  The general manager felt a curious relief at the words; the moment had arrived and would soon be past. No more night sweats. . . . “Let me have it.”

  “Hoyt’s got the personnel angle. Tyrrel’s been grilling Novak. The questions showed that she had just about all of it on ice.”

  “What does Novak know?”

  “Too much. I have him here.” The Security man’s voice became embarrassed. “I have a gun on him, chief. I’ve told him I shot Clifton to let him know I mean business. And we can’t leave him wandering around. Hoyt would latch on to him, give him a sugar-tit, listen to all he knows and then—we’re done.”

  “I don’t doubt your judgment, Anheier,” Holland said heavily. “Put him in storage somewhere. I’ll fly out to the coast. I’ve got to talk to him myself.”

  “You can’t fly, chief. It’d be noticed.”

  “Too much has been noticed. It’s a question of time now. Now we must ram it through and hope we’re not too late. Good-bye.” He hung up before Anheier could protest, and went to get his hat and coat.

  Novak listened to the Los Angeles end of the conversation, watching the gun in Anheier’s big, steady hand. It never wavered.

  The Security man put his odd-looking telephone back into his desk drawer. “Get up,” he said. “You won’t be killed if you don’t make any foolish moves.” He draped a light raincoat over the gun hand. If you looked only casually it would strike you as nothing more than a somewhat odd way to carry a raincoat.

  “Walk,” Anheier told him.

  In a fog, Novak walked. It couldn’t be happening, and it was. Anheier guided him through the office. “Back late to-morrow, Charles.” Yell for help? Break and run? Charles was an unknown, but the big black gun under the coat was a known quantity. Before the thing could be evaluated they were in the corridor. Anheier walked him down the lonesome stairs of the office building, sadly lit by night bulbs, one to a landing. Swell place for a murder. So was the parking lot back of the building.

  “I know you drive,” Anheier said. “Here.” He handed him car keys. “That one.”

  Use your head, Novak told himself. He’ll make you drive to a canyon and then you’ll get it without a chance in the world of witnesses. Yell here, and at least somebody will know——

  But the big gun robbed him of his reason. He got in and started the car. Anheier was beside him and the gun’s muzzle was in his ribs, not painfully.

  The Security man gave him laconic traffic directions. “Left. Left again. Right. Straight ahead.” Aside from that, he would not talk.

  After an hour the city had been left behind and they were among rolling, wooded hills. With dreamlike recognition he stopped on order at the police sentry box that guarded the wealthy from intrusion by kidnappers, peddlers, and thieves. The gun drilled into his ribs as he stopped the car, painfully now. Anheier rolled down his window and passed a card to the cop in the handsomely tailored uniform.

  Respectfully: “Thank you, Mr. Anheier. Whom are you calling on?” The best was none too good for the rich. They even had cops who said “whom.”

  “Mr. Stuart’s residence. They’ll know my name.” Of course. The gun drilled in.

  “Yes, sir,” said the flunky-cop. “If you’ll wait just a moment, sir.” The other man in the booth murmured respectfully into his wall phone; he had his hand casually on an elegant repeating shotgun as he listened. He threw them a nod and smile.

  “Let’s go, Novak,” Anheier said.

  The gun relaxed little when the booth was behind them. “You’re all in it,” Novak said at last, bitterly.

  Anheier didn’t answer. When they reached the Stuart place he guided Novak up the driveway and into the car port. Lights in the rangy house glowed, and somebody strode out to meet them. Grady, the Stuart chauffeur. “Get out, Novak.” For the first time, the gun was down.

  “Grady,” Anheier said, “keep an eye on Dr. Novak here. We don’t want him to leave the grounds or use the phone or anything like that.” He stowed the gun in a shoulder holster. “Well, let’s get into the house, shall we?”

  The old man was waiting for them in his wheel chair. “What the hell’s going on, Anheier? You can’t turn this place into an office.”

  “Sorry,” said the Security man briefly. “It can’t be helped. The chief’s coming out to see Novak. He’s found out too much. We can’t leave him wandering around.”

  Wilson Stuart glared at Novak. “My daughter thinks you’re intelligent,” he said. “I told her she was crazy. Anheier, when’s all this going to happen?”

  “I don’t know. Overnight. He said he’d fly. I tried to talk him out of it.”

  “Grady,” the old man said, “put him in a bedroom and lock the door. I’ll have Dr. Morris mix something to give him a good night’s sleep.”

  Incongruously the chauffeur said: “This way, sir.”

  The bedroom was the same one Lilly had been put up in. Its solid door closed like the door of a tomb. Novak dashed to the long, low window and found it thoroughly sealed to the wall. The place was air-conditioned. Of course he could smash it with a table lamp and jump. And be brought down by a flying tackle or a bullet.

  Grady was back in five minutes with a yellow capsule in a pillbox. “Dr. Morris sent this for you, Dr. Novak,” he said. “Dr. Morris said it would help you rest.” Grady stood by expectantly as Novak studied the capsule. After a moment he said pointedly: “There’s water and a glass in the bathroom, sir.”

  Put on a scene? Refuse to take their nassy ole medicine? He cringed at what would certainly happen. These terrifying competent people would stick him with a hypodermic or—worse—have their muscle man hold him while the capsule was put in his mouth and washed down. He went silently to the bathroom and Grady watched him swallow.

  “Good night, Dr. Novak,” the chauffeur said,
closing the door solidly and softly.

  The stuff worked fast. In five minutes Novak was sprawled in the bed. He had meant to lie down for a minute or two, but drifted off. His sleep was dreamless, except that once he fancied somebody had told him softly that she was sorry, and touched his lips.

  A man was standing beside the bed when he awoke. The man, middle-aged and a little fleshy, was neither tall nor short. His face was a strange one, a palimpset. A scholar, Novak fuzzily thought—definitely a pure-research man. And then over it, like a film, slipped a look so different that the first judgment became inexplicable. He was a boss-man—top boss-man.

  “Pm Daniel Holland,” he said to Novak. “I’ve brought you some coffee. They told me you shouldn’t be hungry after the sleeping capsule. You aren’t, are you?”

  “No, I’m not. Daniel Holland. A.E.C.? You’re——”

  The top-boss face grinned a hard grin. “I’m in this too, Novak.” What was there to do? Novak took the coffee cup from the bedside table and sipped mechanically. “Are you people going to kill me?” he asked. The coffee was helping to pull him together.

  “No,” said Holland. He pulled up a chair and sat. “We’re going to work you pretty hard, though.”

  Novak laughed contemptuously. “You will not,” he said. “You can make me or anybody do a lot of things, but not that. I guess just a few clouts in the jaw would make me say anything you wanted me to. Those Russian confessions. The American police third degree. If you started to really hurt me I suppose I’d implicate anybody you wanted. Friends, good friends, anybody. You can do a lot of things to a man, but you can’t make him do sustained brainwork if he doesn’t want to. And I don’t want to. Not for Pakistan, Argentina, the Chinese, or whoever you represent.”

  “The United States of America?” asked Holland.

  “You must think I’m a fool,” Novak told him.

  “I’m working for the United States,” said Holland. God help me, but it’s the only way left. I was hemmed in with this and that——” There was an appeal in his voice. He was a man asking for absolution. “I’ll tell it from the beginning, Novak,” he said, under control again. “In 1951 a study was made by A.E.C. of fission products from the Hanford plutonium-producing reactors. Properties of one particular isotope were found to be remarkable. This isotope, dissolved in water and subjected to neutron flux of a certain intensity, decomposes with great release of energy. It is stable except under the proper degree of neutron bombardment. Its level of radioactivity is low. Its half-life is measured in scores of years. It is easy to isolate and is reasonably abundant. Since it is a by-product, its cost is exactly nothing.”