Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  “Naturally!” Arnie said, though he frowned blankly.

  “Mr. Mundin is associated with the—uh—the Coshocton bunch, Arnie. And he’s looking around—quietly, you know—for key men to replace some of the old duffers. And I took the liberty of mentioning you to him, Arnie. The only thing is, Mr. Mundin doesn’t know much about the technical end, you see, and he wasn’t sure just how much experience you’ve had.”

  “My record is in the professional journals, Norvell. Not that I would feel free to discuss it in this informal manner in any case, of course.”

  “Oh, of course! But what Mr. Mundin asked me was just what G-M-L Homes models you had worked on—serial numbers and locations and so on. And I had to tell him that all that information was locked up and you couldn’t possibly get your hands on it.”

  Arnie shook his head wonderingly. “Laymen,” he said. “Norvell, there is no reason in the world why I can’t get micro-films of all that information. It’s only corporate fiddle-faddle that causes all the secrecy. We Engineers are accustomed to cutting through the red tape.”

  Norvell looked worshipful. “You mean you can?”

  “I have already said so, haven’t I? It’s just a matter of going through the records and picking out the units I’ve worked on myself, then making microfilms—”

  “Better microfilm everything, Arnie,” Norvell suggested. “It’ll help Mr. Mundin understand the Broad Picture.”

  Arnie shrugged humorously. “Why not?”

  “Don’t forget the serial numbers,” Norvell added.

  “Laymen,” snorted Arnie Dworcas.

  XIX

  QUITE by chance, the Big Seven were gathered in Ryan’s office on the day it happened at the Museum of the National Association of the Builders of the American Dream.

  It was an ill-planned meeting, having more than one purpose. At the top level, it was a pep session and information seminar. On a lower level, three teams of auditors, one each for Hubble, Coett and Nelson, were going over the books of Ryan & Mundin. Don Lavin was amiably present and Norma had started things off right when Hubble absent-mindedly attempted to guide her to a seat.

  She snapped, “I do not impose on the biological fact that I am a woman and I don’t expect anybody to impose on me. If Mr. Hubble can’t keep his hands to himself, I expect him at least to leave me alone during working hours. After hours, I can manage to avoid him.”

  Bliss Hubble said with a straight face, “Sorry, Lavin. It won’t happen again.” To the rest, he said cheerfully, “Who’d like to take charge?” It was Coett, of course. He benignly told Mundin, “We’ll just ignore the audit boys outside, shall we? I’m sure their work will be purely routine. Now, among ourselves, how are we doing? I, for one, haven’t been able to pick up as much floating G-M-L stock as I’d wish, nor have the prices been right so far.”

  “Same here,” said Hubble. “Ah—I agree,” Nelson said.

  Old man Ryan raised his hand. “Up to now, it’s been rumors, gentlemen. Very shortly, things will begin to happen. I think you’ll find some dumping of G-M-L will begin within, say, a week. And with proper management and some luck, there will be as pretty a panic as you could wish within a month thereafter. There won’t be time for a rally. Our group, gentlemen, will make the next meeting with a clear majority.”

  Hubble said abruptly, “I can’t get through to Green, Charlesworth.”

  It was a challenge, flung at Coett. “The comptroller of my publishing outfit thought it would be a good idea to renew a mortgage they hold on the transmitter tower in Sullivan County. They said no, so he paid them off in cash from our contingency fund. I thought I’d better check; it looked like a new policy. But I can’t get through. When they want to be remote—you know.”

  “I find that very interesting, Bliss,” Nelson said, “Ah—I, too, have had occasion to make a routine inquiry regarding insurance policies. That was six weeks ago and as yet I’ve had no reply. Green, Charlesworth sometimes appears to be dilatory, of course—a natural reflection of their deeply rooted conservatism.”

  “They’re progressives,” Hubble said scornfully.

  “Middle-of-the-roaders,” insisted Coett.

  Hubble asked Coett directly, “Having any trouble, Harry? We’ve bared our bosoms.”

  “Nothing you could call trouble,” Coett said. “Just that I’m not—getting through. Like you gentlemen. Oh, I’m doing business with them, but no real communication.”

  MUNDIN was inescapably reminded of Captain Kowalik, unnerved and jittery because Commissioner Sabbatino didn’t talk to him any more. He asked bluntly, “Is this a bad situation?” They smiled politely and told him not to worry; it wasn’t his problem. Green, Charlesworth did nothing on the operating or manufacturing end. They were finance.

  Hubble said, “Frankly, I don’t know where they stand on this thing. It was my opinion that they wouldn’t give a damn one way or the other. Nelson agreed with me and Harry thought they’d be all for us—not that they vote any G-M-L stock, but with their moral influence. Still, they’re a funny outfit, so this lapse may not mean anything.” Mundin asked, “Want me to go calling on them? Level with them? Have it out? Meet whatever terms they may have?” Four heads swiveled and four incredulous stares drilled him. Coett spoke for all when he said gently, “No.”

  “My guess is that they’re onto us,” Hubble elaborated, “that they know every move we make find just haven’t committed themselves—yet.”

  Mundin looked at the three Titans in turn and asked wonderingly, “When you say ‘they,’ whom do you mean, exactly?”

  A three-cornered wrangle developed while old man Ryan dozed off. Coett believed that Green, Charlesworth were essentially the top men in the Memphis crowd plus Organic Solvents and New England utilities. He himself was most of the Southwest crowd and practically all of Inorganic Chemicals.

  Nelson, who was New England and Non-Ferrous Metals, believed that Green, Charlesworth were essentially California, coal-oil-steel and mass media.

  Hubble, who was mass media and New York, said that couldn’t be. Unless—with a hard look at Coett and Nelson—somebody was lying like hell. Green, Charlesworth, he thought, were essentially money.

  On that, everybody agreed. Worriedly.

  “Look,” said Mundin, “I just want to get this straight in my mind. Would we scuttle the whole project if Green, Charlesworth came out against it?”

  When somebody tells you, “Say, I’ve heard a rumor that two and two make four; do you put any stock in that stuff?”—that’s the kind of look Mundin got.

  Coett said quietly. “Why, yes, Charles. We would.”

  Hubble’s nervous voice cut in, “I don’t believe that’s going to happen, Charles. It’s simply a matter of getting in touch with them. After all, we’re taking a step forward and Green, Charlesworth have always been on the side of progress.”

  “Conservatism,” said Nelson.

  “Middle-of-the-roaders,” Coett insisted.

  That, clearly, was getting them nowhere.

  ANNOYED, Mundin demanded, “But who are they? Where are they?”

  Hubble said, “Their offices are in the Empire State Building—the entire building.”

  Mundin’s eyebrows climbed. “In New York? I thought the place was condemned. And are there a real Green and a real Charlesworth?”

  Hubble shook his head. They’re there, all right. As for a real Mr. Green and a real Mr. Charlesworth—the firm name is a couple of hundred years old, so I’m not sure. When you go there, you never see anyone important. Clerks, junior executives, department heads. You do business with them and there are long waits—weeks, sometimes—while they’re ‘deciding policy questions.’ I suppose that means while they’re getting their instructions. Well, now you know as much about Green, Charlesworth as anybody else. Just remember, if they turn up anywhere, or you encounter anything—well, anomalous that makes you suspect they’re turning up, blow the whistle. We’ll handle it.”

  “But there
won’t be any trouble,” Coett said hopefully, and Nelson nervously agreed.

  Norvell Bligh popped in. “It happened!” he yelped, and dived for the television screen. “We had a guy monitoring and it just—”

  “At first blamed on vibration,” roared a newscaster before Norvie got the sound where he wanted it. “Experts from G-M-L, however, said that at first glance this appears unlikely. A team of G-M-L engineers is being dispatched to Washington to study the wreckage. We bring you now a picture from our library of the first bubble house. As it was—” The slide flashed on; there stood G-M-L Unit One, dwarfed by the Hall of Basics.

  “—and as it is.”

  A live shot this time: Same site, same hall—but instead of the gleaming bubble house, a tangle of rubbish, with antlike uniformed men crawling about the wreckage.

  NORMA Lavin blubbered, “Daddy’s first house!” and burst into tears. The others gave her swift, incredulous looks and went right back to staring in fascination and fear at the screen.

  “Our Washington editor now brings you Dr. Henry Proctor, Director of the Museum. Dr. Proctor?” The rabbit face flashed on, squirming, scared.

  “Dr. Proctor,” asked the mellow tones, “what, in your opinion, might be the cause of the collapse?”

  “I really—I really have no opinion. I’m—uh—completely in the—uh—dark. It’s a puzzle to me. I’m afraid I can’t—uh—be of the slightest—I have no opinion. Really.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Proctor!”

  To Mundin, rapt on the screen, it seemed that all was lost; any fool could read guilt, guilt, guilt plastered on the director’s quivering face and at once infer that Proctor had sprayed the bubble house with a solvent supplied by someone else; and it would be only moments until “someone else” was identified as Charles Mundin. But the newscaster was babbling on. The rabbit face flickered off the screen.

  The newscaster said: “Ah, I have a statement just handed to me from G-M-L Homes. Mr. Haskell Arnold, Chairman of the Board of G-M-L Homes, announced today that the engineering staff of the firm has reached tentative conclusions regarding the partial malfunction—”

  Even the newscaster stumbled over that. The listening men, recalling the pile of rubble, roared and slapped their knees in a burst of released tension.

  “The—uh—partial malfunction of G-M-L Unit One. They state that highly abnormal conditions of vibration and chemical environment present in the Museum are obviously to blame. Mr. Arnold said, and I quote, ‘There is no possibility whatsoever that this will happen again.’ End of quote.” The announcer smiled and discarded a sheet from the papers in his hand. Now chummy, he went on: “Well, ladies and gentlemen, I’m certainly glad to hear that and so, I’m sure, are all of you who also live in bubble houses.

  “And now, for you sports fans, the morning line on Grosse Point Field Day. It’s going to be a bang-up show produced by the veteran impresario Jim ‘Blood and Guts’ Hanrahan. Plenty of solid, traditional entertainment. First spectacle—”

  “Turn that thing off,” someone ordered Norvell. Wistfully, he did—straining to catch the last words—remembering.

  Harry Coett broke the silence brutally. “Well, that’s that. We’re committed. Is everybody here as terrified as I am?”

  THAT night, a ‘copter droned west from New York, Norvie at the stick and Mundin glumly toying with a lever that would push a bowden wire that would open the cock of a pressurized belly tank full of golden fluid.

  Norvie asked, “Did I tell you it’s a boy? Looked through the fetuscope myself. The doctor said it’s the finest forty-day embryo he’s seen in twenty years of practice. I tell you, that kid’s going to have every advantage I never—”

  “Swell, Norvie,” Mundin said with a snap in his voice.

  Norvie shut up.

  Mundin turned on a small pocket reader and slipped microfilm into it. Old records copied on the sneak by Norvie’s friend Amie Dworcas, brought to him proudly and furtively. Much guff about “We Engineers, Mr. Mundin” and “You won’t forget this, I hope, Mr. Mundin. As We Engineers say, you brace my buttress and I’ll brace yours, hah-hah-hah!”

  So the records said G-M-L No. 2 was the northwest corner of the Coshocton Bubble City; proceed along the western side of the polygon, then south . . .

  And where the golden drops rained down, Bubble House No. 2, then No. 3, then No. 4 through No. 280 would one by one crumble, leaving families naked to the foundry fumes and weather. And throughout the country, hysteria would be unleashed. G-M-L lessees would frantically hunt for the serial plate of their houses, scribble calculations, wildly phone their friends. There would be a terrific run on sporting goods stores; the morning after the night Coshocton began to crumble, not a sleeping bag or tent would be left on their shelves.

  But that was all right. Hubble, Coett and Nelson had quietly bought control of the leading sporting goods companies. The rise in their stocks would constitute a nice little by-product.

  Charles Mundin, attorney, checked the tanks for the dozenth time and Norvell Bligh looked rigidly at the instruments that were set on Coshocton.

  XX

  THE panic was as pretty as could be desired. Probably not one man-hour of work was done for days by anybody who occupied a bubble house. Hubble, Coett and Nelson flooded the New York Parimutuel Stock Exchange with agents. A satisfactory trickle of dumped G-M-L stock began to run into their portfolios, against bidding by scattered, unready, disorganized agents for the Arnold group that controlled the G-M-L Board.

  Clearly, it was time for another session on the neutral ground of Ryan & Mundin, Attorneys at Law.

  “Progress, gentlemen,” Coett said happily after they had pooled information. “We are within sight of fifty-one per cent ownership!”

  Norma demanded, “Is there going to be any more wrecking?”

  Nelson sniffed. “If the Arnold group firms up within, say, two days, they’ll be able to hold against us. In that case, we’ll have to hit them with something new.”

  “No wrecking,” Norma said hoarsely.

  “You will kindly leave such decisions to us. If we must wreck, we will.”

  “And so will I!” She picked a vase from Ryan’s desk and threw it at Nelson. Her aim was true, but he ducked fast.

  The vase exploded with an electric snarl of blue light that charred the wall. Norma’s look of utter stupefaction matched any in the room. The silence lasted almost half a minute.

  “Call somebody in,” Coett said at last, his eyes not leaving the shards on the floor that still smoked.

  Mundin phoned, his voice shaky, for the firm’s top chemist.

  “Not my baby,” the chemist said after peering at the fragments. “Get Joe Panelli, Mr. Mundin. It seems to be electrical, whatever it is.”

  Panelli, communications engineer, pronounced the intact vase to have been a wonderfully clever communicator—whether one-way or two-way, he could not say yet. The crackle in its glaze had been metallic—the vase was small, but the crackle was fine—perhaps a hundred meters of antenna. There were relics of transistors, fused little lumps buried in the clay. The four medallions and the band about the shoulder of the vase might contain Chinese characters or might not. To him, the characters looked like unfamiliar printed circuits. The bell mouth of the jar suggested a non-directional mike and, yes, it could be a loudspeaker, too.

  MUNDIN asked urgently. “Can you find out if there are any more of these things around?”

  “Oh, sure, Mr. Mundin,” said Panelli. “They put out a signal, so we just scan the bands.”

  “Can you do that without whoever is listening in knowing about it?” Coett insisted.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. My guess is no. Whoever designed this could—maybe would—design the receiving equipment to indicate a drop in energy received when we put a tap on.”

  “Then don’t do it,” Coett said. Panelli gave him a rebellious look.

  Mundin said, “Just hold everything, Joe. I’ll let you know.” There was another long s
ilence. Hubble broke it with, “Scratch seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, gentlemen.”

  “It’s an idea,” Coett said. He took out his fountain pen, looked wonderingly at it and put it back in his pocket. He sighed.

  Old man Ryan put his face in his hands and groaned. Mundin had a fair idea of what was going through his mind. Back to Belly Rave and despair. And three days from the top.

  Mundin said loudly, “Speaking for my clients, the Lavins, I don’t see how I can conscientiously let you people back out of the agreement. Nor do I see any reason why you should. Somebody planted a microphone on us—so what? It happens every day.”

  “Quite a mike,” Hubble commented. He alone of the three money men seemed to be unscared. Mundin decided to concentrate on him.

  “Why the panic, Bliss? What’s wrong with these two?”

  “If you think I’m going to say one more word in your offices, Charles, you’re crazy. There may be more of those things around. Until this is wrapped up, I think it would be wisest to meet in turkish baths. I don’t see how Lavin could get in on such a conference, but perhaps that’s best. The fewer who know, the safer the secret.”

  Mundin exploded, “Damn it, this is crazy! So there’s somebody spying on us. What of it? They’re just people. They’ve got nothing but money. We’re people, too, and we’ve also got money—plenty of it. All right, maybe they have more, but that doesn’t make them God almighty. We can lick them if we have to!”

  He stopped. Hubble, Coett and Nelson were wincing at every word.

  Coett said faintly, “Don’t talk any more, Charles. You’ve said too much. Some interests—well, some people would call them relentless. Not that I’m agreeing for a minute.” His eyes were darting around the room.

  NORMA Lavin, pale and quivering, stood up. “My father invented the bubble house for—” She began tremblingly, then caught herself. “No! Leaving Daddy out of this, one-quarter of G-M-L Homes belongs to Don and myself. It’s ours, understand? Outs! Not yours or whoever’s scaring the wits out of you. It isn’t just money, you know. We got along fine without any. We can do it again. It’s people. It’s making life worth living for the poor slobs who buy their bubble houses with their life’s blood! Slavery’s against the law. G-M-L’s been breaking the law—but we are taking over—and we are going to stop slavery. You hear me?”