Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  The doctor had been listening, and, cut him off. “Not necessary,” he said. “This is suicide. The man drank it like a shot of whisky—threw it right straight down. Was he a drinker, by the way?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thought so. There aren’t any smears on the lips or face and only a slight burning in the mouth, which means he didn’t try to retain it. He drank it himself, in a synchronized toss and gulp.”

  The sergeant looked disappointed, but brightened up to ask: “And who’s this gentleman?”

  Holland took out a green card from his wallet and showed it to the sergeant. Novak craned a little and saw that it was a sealed, low-number White House pass. “Uh,” said the sergeant, coming to something like attention, “I can’t see your name, sir. Your finger——”

  “My finger stays where it is, sergeant,” said Holland. “Unless, of course, you insist ?” He was all boss.

  “No, no, no, not at all, sir. That’s quite all right. Thank you.” The sergeant almost backed away as from royalty and began to snarl at his detail of two patrolmen for not having the meat loaded yet.

  They rushed into action and the sergeant said to nobody in particular and very casually: “Think I’d better phone this in to headquarters.” Novak wasn’t surprised when he heard the sergeant say into the phone, louder than he had intended: “Gimme the city desk, please.” Novak moved away. The thing had to come out sooner or later, and the tipster-cop was earning a little side money honestly.

  After completing his call, the sergeant came up beaming. “That wraps it up except for Mrs. Clifton,” he said. “She took her car? What kind?”

  “Big maroon Rolls Royce,” Novak said. “I’m not sure of the year—maybe early thirties.”

  “Well, that don’t matter. A Rolls is a Rolls; we’ll be seeing her very soon, I think.”

  Novak didn’t say what he thought about that. He didn’t think any of them would be seeing Lilly again. He thought she would vanish back into the underworld from which she had appeared as a momentary, frightening reminder that much of the world is not rich, self-satisfied, supremely fortunate America.

  In Anheier’s car on the road back to the Wilson Stuart place, the Security man asked tentatively: “What do you think, chief?”

  “I think she’s going to release everything she’s got to the newspapers. First, as she said, it means we’ll lose secrecy. Second, it would be the most effective form of sabotage she could practice on our efforts. The Bennet papers have been digging into my dirty work of the past year for circulation-building and for Hoyt, whom they hope to put in the presidency. The campaign should open in a couple of days, when they get Lilly’s stuff as the final link.

  “I’ve got to get to Washington and contract a diplomatic illness for the first time in my life. Something that’ll keep me bedridden but able to run things through my deputy by phone. Something that’ll win a little sympathy and make a few people say hold your horses until he’s able to answer the charges. I can stall that way for a couple of weeks—no more. Then we’ve got to present Mr. and Mrs. America with a fait accompli. Novak!”

  “Yessir!” snapped Novak, surprising himself greatly.

  “Set up a real guard system at the moon ship. If you need any action out of Mr. MacIlheny, contact Mr. Stuart, who will give him your orders. MacIlheny—up to now—doesn’t know anything about the setup beyond Stuart. Your directive is: build us that moon ship. Fast.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And another thing. You’re going to be busy, but I have some chores for you nevertheless. Your haircut is all wrong. Go to a really good barber who does theatrical people. Go to your dentist and have your teeth cleaned. Have yourself a couple of good suits made, and good shoes and good shirts. Put yourself in the hands of a first-rate tailor. It’s on the expense account and I’m quite serious about it. I only wish there were time for . . .”

  “How’s that, sir?” Novak couldn’t believe he had heard it right.

  “Dancing lessons,” snapped Holland. “You move across a room with all the grace of a steam thresher moving across a Montana wheat-field. And Novak.”

  “Yes?” said the engineer stiffly.

  “It’s going to be rough for a while and they may drag us down yet. Me in jail, you in jail, Anheier in the gas chamber, Stuart fired by his board—if I know the old boy he wouldn’t last a month if they took Western away from him. You’re going to be working for your own neck—and a lot of other necks. So work like hell. Hoyt and Bennet play for keeps. This is a bus stop? Let Novak out, Anheier. You go on downtown and let’s see production.”

  Novak stood on the corner, lonely, unhappy, and shaken, and waited for his downtown bus.

  His appetite, numbed by last night’s sedative, came on with a rush during the ride. After getting off, he briskly headed for a business-district cafeteria, and by reflex picked up a newspaper. He didn’t go into the cafeteria. He stood in the street, reading.

  DEATH STRIKES AT 2nd ROCKET-CLUB CHIEF:

  POISONED ON VISIT TO 1st VICTIM’S WIDOW

  Post Special Correspondent

  Violent death struck late today at a leader of the American Society for Space Flight, nationwide rocket club, for the second time in less than a month. The first victim was club engineer August Clifton, who committed suicide by shooting in a room next door to a meeting of the club going full blast. Today club seeretray-treasurer Joel Friml, 26, was found writhing in pain on the floor of a Cahuenga Canyon bungalow owned by Clifton’s attractive blonde widow Lilly, 35. Both bodies were discovered by club engineer Michael Novak. A further bizarre note lies in the fact that on both occasions A.E.C. Security agent J.W. Anheier was on the scene within seconds of the discovery.

  Police Sergeant Herman Alper said Novak and Anheier paid a morning visit to Mrs. Clifton’s home and chatted with her and Friml, who had arrived earlier. Friml disappeared into the bedroom, alarming the other guests. They broke into the bedroom by smashing a window and found Friml in convulsions, clutching a two-ounce bottle of a medicine meant for external use. They called a doctor and tried to give milk as an antidote, but according to the physician the victim’s throat had been so damaged that it was a hopeless try.

  Friml was taken by ambulance under sedation to Our Lady of Sonora hospital, where no hope was given for his recovery. In the confusion Mrs. Clifton fled the house, apparently in a state of shock, and had not returned by the time the ambulance left.

  Friends could hazard no guess as to the reason for the tragedy. Friml himself, ironically, had just completed auditing the rocket club’s books in a vain search for discrepancies that might have explained the Clifton suicide.

  It was bad. Worse was coming.

  XVI.

  Novak moved out to the field, bag and baggage, that night and worked himself into a pleasant state of exhaustion. He woke on his camp cot at nine to the put-put of an arriving jalopy. It was a kid named Nearing. He made a beeline for Novak, washing up in a lab sink.

  “Hi, Dr. Novak.” He was uncomfortable.

  “Morning. Ready for business?”

  “I guess so. There’s something I wanted to ask you about. It’s a lot of nonsense, of course. My brother’s in the C.B.S. newsroom in L.A., and he was kidding me this morning. He just got in from the night shift and he said there was a rumour about Proto. It came in on some warm-up chatter on their teletype.”

  Already? “What did he have to say?”

  “Well, the A.S.F.S.F. was—‘linked’ is the word, I guess—with some big-time Washington scandal that’s going to break. Here.” He poked a wad of paper at Novak. “I thought he was making it up. He doesn’t believe in space flight and he’s a real joker, but he showed me this. He tore it off their teletype.”

  Novak unfolded the wad into a long sheet of cheap paper, torn off at the top and bottom.

  BLUE NOSE AND A PURPLE GOATEE.

  HA HA THATS A GOOD ONE. U KNOW ABT BISHOP OF BIRMINGHAM???

  SURE WHO DONT. OGOD THREE AM AND THREE HOU
RS TO GO. LOOK WHOS BITCHING. HERE ITS SIX AM AND SIX HOURS TO GO. WISH ID LEARNED A TRADE OR STAYED IN THE NAVY.

  WHAT U DO IN NAVY???

  TELETYPE OPR. CANT GET AWAY FROM DAM PTRS SEEMS AS IF.

  MIN FONE WHO WAS IT???

  ELEANOR ROOSEVELT ASKING FOR A DATE U NOSY BASTRD

  HA HA OGOD WOTTA SLO NITE. ANY NUZ UR SIDE??? NOT YET. FIRST CAST HALF HOUR. NUZMAN CAME IN WITH RUMOR ABT SOME UR LOCAL SCREWBALLS TO WIT LOS ANGELES SPACE FLITE CLUB.

  HEY HEY. NUZRITER HERE GOT KID BROTHER IN CLUB. WOT HE SAY???

  SAID STRICTLY PHONY OUTFIT WITH WA TIEUP TOP ADMININXXX

  ADMINISTRATION GOT IT FINALLY FIGURES.

  GOVT MONEY GOES TO CLUB AND CLUB KIX BACK TO

  GOVT OFFICIALS. SWEET RACKET HUH.

  MORE???

  NO MORE. MIN I ASK. SAYS GOT IT FM BENNET NUZ SVC MAN.

  NO MORE.

  TNX. COFFE NOW.

  WELCM. DONT SPILL IT.

  HA HA U R A WIT OR MAYBE I AM ONLY HALF RITE.

  Nearing said as Novak looked up from the paper: “Of course Charlie may have punched it out himself on a dead printer just to worry me.” He laughed uncomfortably. “Oh, hell. It’s just a rumour about a rumour. But I don’t like them tossing Proto’s name around. She’s a good girl.” His eye sought the moon ship, gleaming in the morning sun.

  “Yes,” Novak said. “Look, Nearing. I’m tightening up the guard schedule and I’m going to be very busy. I’d like to turn the job of handling the guard detail over to you. I’ll put you on salary, say fifty a week, if you’ll do it.”

  “Fifty? Why sure, Dr. Novak. That’s about what I’m getting at the shoe store, but the hell with it. When do I start and what do I do?”

  “Start now. I want two guards on duty at all times. Not under twenty-one, either. At night I want one guard at the gate and one patrolling the fence. I want strict identification of all strangers at the gate. I want newspapermen kept out. I want you to find out what kind of no-trespassing signs we’re legally required to post and how many—and then post twice as many. I want you to get the huskiest youngsters you can for guards and give them night sticks.” He hesitated. “And buy us two shotguns and some shells.”

  The boy looked at Novak and then at the Prototype and then at Novak again. “If you think it’s necessary,” he said quietly. “What kind of shells—bird shot?”

  “Buckshot, Nearing. They’re after her.”

  “Buckshot it is, Dr. Novak,” the shoe clerk said grimly.

  He worked all morning in the machine shop, turning wooden core patterns for the throat liner on the big lathe. Laminated together and rasped smooth, they would be the first step in the actual fabrication of the throat liner. Half a dozen youngsters showed up, and he put them to work routing out the jacket patterns. Some of the engineer-members showed up around noon on their Sunday visits and tried to shop-talk with him. He wouldn’t shop-talk.

  At three in the afternoon Amy Stuart was saying to him firmly: “Turn that machine off and have something to eat. Nearing told me you didn’t even have breakfast. I’ve got coffee, bologna on white, cheese on rye—”

  “Why thanks,” he said, surprised. He turned off the power and began to eat at a workbench.

  “Sorry they pulled rough stuff on you,” she said.

  “Rough?” he snorted. “That wasn’t rough. Rough is what’s coming up.” Between bites of sandwich he told her about the teletype chatter.

  “It’s starting,” she said.

  The next day the dam broke.

  Reporters were storming the gate by mid-morning. In due course a television relay truck arrived and from outside the fence peered at them with telephoto lenses.

  “Find out what it’s all about, Nearing,” Novak said, looking up from his pattern making.

  Nearing came back with a sheaf of papers. “They talked me into saying I’d bring you written questions.”

  “Throw ’em away. Fill me in in twenty seconds or less so I can get back to work.”

  “Well, Senator Hoyt’s going to make a speech in the Senate today and he’s wired advance copies all over hell. And it’s been distributed by the news agencies, of course. It’s like the rumour. He’s going to denounce Daniel Holland, the A.E.C. general manager. He says Holland is robbing the Treasury blind by payments to the A.S.F.S.F. and Western Air, and getting kickbacks. He says Holland’s incompetence has left the U.S. in the rear of the atomic weapons parade. Is my time up?”

  “Yes. Thanks. Try to get rid of them. If you can’t, just make sure none of them get in here.”

  There were days when he had to go into town. Sometimes people pointed him out. Sometimes people jostled him and he gave them a weary stare and they either laughed nervously or scowled at him, enemy of his country that he was. He was too tired to care deeply. He was working simultaneously on the math, the controls, installation of the tanks, and the setup for forming the liner and vane.

  One day he fainted while walking from the machine shop to the refractories lab. He came to in his cot and found Amy Stuart and her father’s Dr. Morris in attendance.

  “Where did you come from?” he asked dimly.

  Dr. Morris growled: “Never mind where I came from. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Novak. Playing the fool at your age! I’m telling you here and now that you are going to stay in bed for forty-eight hours and you are not going to use the time to catch up on your paper work either. You are going to sleep, eat, read magazines—not including the Journal of Metallurgical Chemistry and things on that order—and nothing else.”

  “Make it twenty-four hours, will you?” said Novak.

  “All right,” Dr. Morris agreed promptly and Novak saw Amy Stuart grin.

  Novak went to sleep for twelve hours. He woke up at eleven p.m., and Amy Stuart brought him some soup.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I was thinking—would you get me just the top sheet from my desk? It won’t be work. Just a little calculation on heat of forming. Really, I’d find it relaxing.”

  “No” she said.

  “All right,” he said testily. “Did the doctor say you had to keep a twenty-four hour guard on me?”

  “He did not,” she told him, offended. “Please excuse me. There are some magazines and newspapers on the table.” She swept out and he wanted to call after her, but . . .

  He got out of the cot and prowled nervously around the room. One of the papers on the table was the Los Angeles paper of the Bennet chain.

  HOYT DARES “ILL” HOLLAND TO SHOW M.D. PROOF!

  shrieked its banner headline. Novak swore a little and climbed back into the cot to read the paper.

  The front-page first-column story was all about Hoyt daring “ill” Holland to show M.D. proof. Phrases like “since Teapot Dome” and “under fire” were liberally used. Also on the front page a prominent officer of a veterans’ organisation was quoted as daring “ill” Holland to show M.D. proof. So were a strident and aging blonde movie actress, a raven-haired, marble-browed touring revivalist, and a lady Novak had never heard of who was identified as Washington’s number-one hostess. The rest of the front page was given over to stories from the wire services about children rescuing animals from peril and animals rescuing children from peril.

  Novak swore again, a little more strongly, and leafed through the paper. He encountered several pages of department store ads and finally the editorial page and feature page.

  The double-column, heavily-leaded editorial said that no reasonable person could any longer ignore the cold facts of the A.E.C.-Western Air-rocket-crackpot scandal. Beyond any doubt the People’s money and the People’s fissionable material—irreplaceable fissionable material—was being siphoned into a phony front for the greed of one man.

  For Bennet patrons who wanted just the gist of the news, or who didn’t read very well, there was the cartoon. It showed a bloated, menacing figure, labelled “Dan Holland,” grinning rapturously and ladling coins and bills from a shoe-box Treasury Building into his pockets.
There was one ladle in each hand, one tagged “Western Aircraft” and the other “Rocket Crackpots.” A tiny, rancid, wormy, wrinkled old man was scooting in a wheel chair in circles about the fat boy’s ankles, picking up coins Holland carelessly let dribble-from the overflowing ladles. That was Wilson Stuart, former test pilot, breaker of speed and altitude records, industrialist whose aircraft plants covered a major sector of America’s industrial defence line. Other little figures were whizzing in circles astride July-fourth rockets. They also were grabbing coins. Wild-eyed and shaggy under mortarboard hats, they were the rocket crackpots.

  On the opposite page there was something for everybody.

  For the women there was a column that wept hot tears because all America’s sons, without exception, were doomed to perish miserably on scorching desert sands, in the frozen hell of the Arctic, and in the steamy jungles of the Pacific, all because of Daniel Holland. “How long, O Lord, how long?” asked the lady who wrote the column.

  For the economist there was a trenchant column headed: “This Is Not Capitalism.” The business writer who conducted the column said it wasn’t capitalism for Western Air’s board of directors to shillyshally and ask Wilson Stuart exactly where he stood vis-a-vis Daniel Holland and what had happened to certain million-dollar appropriations rammed through under the vague heading of “research.” Capitalism, said the business writer, would be for Western Air’s board to meet, consider the situation, fire Stuart, and maybe prosecute him. Said the business writer: “The day of the robber barons is past.”

  For the teen-ager there was a picture of a pretty girl, holding her nose at some wiggly lines emanating from a picture of the Capitol dome. Accompanying text:

  “Joy-poppers and main-liners all, really glom onto what Mamaloi’s dishing this 24. I don’t too often get on the sermon kick because young’s fun and you’re a long time putrid. But things are happening in the 48 that ain’t so great so listen, mate. You wolves know how to handle a geek who glooms a weenie-bake by yacking for a fat-and-40 blues when the devotees know it’s tango this year. Light and polite you tell the shite, and if he doesn’t dig you, then you settle it the good old American way: five-six of you jump him and send him on his meddy way with loose teeth for a soo-ven-war. That’s Democracy. Joy-poppers and mainliners, there are grownups like that. We love and respect Mom and Dad even if they are fuddy-duddy geeks; they can’t help it. But what’s the deal and hoddya feel about a grownup like Danny-O Holland? And Wheel-chair Wilson Stuart? And the crackpot cranks with leaky tanks that play with their rockets on dough from your pockets? Are they ripe for a swipe? Yeah-man, Elder. Are their teeth too tight? Ain’t that man right! Sound off in that yeah-man corner, brethren and cistern! You ain’t cackin’, McCracken! So let’s give a think to this stink for we, the youths of America today, are the adults of America tomorrow.”