Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  Well. It had been explained to him that the tuition, while decidedly not nominal, eighteen hundred dollars a year in fact, did not cover the cost per child. Somebody had to pay for the speech therapist, the dance therapist, the full-time psychologist and the part-time psychiatrist, and all the others, and it might as well be Mr. Crine at the office. And the lawyer.

  And half an hour later Mrs. Rose looked at the agenda, checked off an item and said, “That seems to be all for tonight. Mr. and Mrs. Perry brought us some very nice cookies, and we all know that Mrs. Howe’s coffee is out of this world. They’re in the beginners room, and we hope you’ll all stay to get acquainted. The meeting is adjourned.”

  Harry and the Logans joined the polite surge to the beginners room, where Tommy spent his mornings. “There’s Miss Hackett,” said Celia Logan. That was the beginners’ teacher. She saw them and came over, smiling. Harry had seen her only in a tentlike smock, her armor against chocolate milk, finger paints and sudden jets from the “water play” corner of the room. Without it she was handsomely middle-aged in a green pants suit.

  “I’m glad you parents have met,” she said. “I wanted to tell you that your little boys are getting along nicely. They’re forming a sort of conspiracy against the others in the class. Vern swipes their toys and gives them to Tommy.”

  “He does?” cried Logan.

  “Yes, indeed. I think he’s beginning to relate. And, Mr. Vladek, Tommy’s taken his thumb out of his mouth for minutes at a time. At least half a dozen times this morning, without my saying a word.”

  Harry said excitedly, “You know, I thought I noticed he was tapering off. I couldn’t be sure. You’re positive about that?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “And I bluffed him into drawing a face. He gave me that glare of his when the others were drawing; so I started to take the paper away. He grabbed it back and scribbled a kind of Picasso-ish face in one second flat. I wanted to save it for Mrs. Vladek and you, but Tommy got it and shredded it in that methodical way he has.”

  “I wish I could have seen it,” said Vladek.

  “There’ll be others. I can see the prospect of real improvement in your boys,” she said, including the Logans in her smile. “I have a private case afternoons that’s really tricky. A nine-year-old boy, like Tommy. He’s not bad except for one thing. He thinks Donald Duck is out to get him. His parents somehow managed to convince themselves for two years that he was kidding them, in spite of three broken TV picture tubes. Then they went to a psychiatrist and learned the score. Excuse me, I want to talk to Mrs. Adler.”

  Logan shook his head and said, “I guess we could be worse off, Vladek. Vern giving something to another boy! How do you like that?”

  “I like it,” his wife said radiantly.

  “And did you hear about that other boy? Poor kid. When I hear about something like that—And then there was the Baer girl. I always think it’s worse when it’s a little girl because, you know, you worry with little girls that somebody will take advantage; but our boys’ll make out, Vladek. You heard what Miss Hackett said.”

  Harry was suddenly impatient to get home to his wife. “I don’t think I’ll stay for coffee, or do they expect you to?”

  “No, no, leave when you like.”

  “I have a half-hour drive,” he said apologetically and went through the golden oak doors, past the ugly but fireproof staircase, out onto the graveled parking lot. His real reason was that he wanted very much to get home before Margaret fell asleep so he could tell her about the thumb-sucking. Things were happening, definite things, after only a month. And Tommy drew a face. And Miss Hackett said—

  He stopped in the middle of the lot. He had remembered about Dr. Nicholson, and besides, what was it, exactly, that Miss Hackett had said? Anything about a normal life? Not anything about a cure? “Real improvement,” she said, but improvement how far?

  He lit a cigarette, turned and plowed his way back through the parents to Mrs. Adler. “Mrs. Adler,” he said, “may I see you just for a moment?”

  She came with him immediately out of earshot of the others. “Did you enjoy the meeting, Mr. Vladek?”

  “Oh, sure. What I wanted to see you about isjhat I have to make a decision. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to go to. It would help a lot if you could tell me, well, what are Tommy’s chances?”

  She waited a moment before she responded. “Are you considering committing him, Mr. Vladek?” she demanded.

  “No, it’s not exactly that. It’s-well, what can you tell me, Mrs. Adler? I know a month isn’t much. But is he ever going to be like everybody else?”

  He could see from her face that she had done this before and had hated it. She said patiently, “ ‘Everybody else,’ Mr. Vladek, includes some terrible people who just don’t happen, technically, to be handicapped. Our objective isn’t to make Tommy like ‘everybody else.’ It’s just to help him to become the best and most rewarding Tommy Vladek he can.”

  “Yes, but what’s going to happen later on? I mean, if Margaret and I-if anything happens to us?”

  She was suffering. “There is simply no way to know, Mr. Vladek,” she said gently. “I wouldn’t give up hope. But I can’t tell you to expect miracles.”

  Margaret wasn’t asleep; she was waiting up for him, in the small living room of the small new house. “How was he?” Vladek asked, as each of them had asked the other on returning home for seven years.

  She looked as though she had been crying, but she was calm enough. “Not too bad. I had to lie down with him to get him to go to bed. He took his gland-gunk well, though. He licked the spoon.”

  “That’s good,” he said and told her about the drawing of the face, about the conspiracy with little Vern Logan, about the thumb-sucking. He could see how pleased she was, but she only said: “Dr. Nicholson called again.”

  “I told him not to bother you!”

  “He didn’t bother me, Harry. He was very nice. I promised him you’d call him back.”

  “It’s eleven o’clock, Margaret. I’ll call him in the morning.”

  “No, I said tonight, no matter what time. He’s waiting, and he said to be sure and reverse the charges.”

  “I wish I’d never answered the son of a bitch’s letter,” he burst out and then, apologetically: “Is there any coffee? I didn’t stay for it at the school.”

  She had put the water on to boil when she heard the car whine into the driveway, and the instant coffee was already in the cup. She poured it and said, “You have to talk to him, Harry. He has to know tonight.”

  “Know tonight! Know tonight,” he mimicked savagely. He scalded his lips on the coffee cup and said, “What do you want me to do, Margaret? How do I make a decision like this? Today I picked up the phone and called the company psychologist, and when his secretary answered, I said I had the wrong number. I didn’t know what to say to him.”

  “I’m not trying to pressure you, Harry. But he has to know.”

  Vladek put down the cup and lit his fiftieth cigarette of the day. The little dining room-it wasn’t that, it was a half breakfast alcove off the tiny kitchen, but they called it a dining room even to each other—was full of Tommy. The new paint on the wall where Tommy had peeled off the cups-and-spoons wallpaper. The Tommy-proof latch on the stove. The one odd aqua seat that didn’t match the others on the kitchen chairs, where Tommy had methodically gouged it with the handle of his spoon. He said, “I know what my mother would tell me, talk to the priest. ‘Maybe I should. But we’ve never even been to Mass here.”

  Margaret sat down and helped herself to one of his cigarettes. She was still a good-looking woman. She hadn’t gamed a pound since Tommy was born, although she usually looked tired. She said, carefully and straightforwardly, “We agreed, Harry. You said you would talk to Mrs. Adler, and you’ve done that. We said if she didn’t think Tommy would ever straighten out we’d talk to Dr. Nicholson. I know it’s hard on you, and I know I’m not much help. But I don’t know what
to do, and I have to let you decide.”

  Harry looked at his wife, lovingly and hopelessly, and at that moment the phone rang. It was, of course, Dr. Nicholson.

  “I haven’t made a decision,” said Harry Vladek at once. “You’re rushing me, Dr. Nicholson.”

  The distant voice was calm and assured. “No, Mr. Vladek, it’s not me that’s rushing you. The other boy’s heart gave out an hour ago. That’s what’s rushing you.” “You mean he’s dead?” cried Vladek. “He’s on the heart-lung machine, Mr. Vladek. We can hold him for at least eighteen hours, maybe twenty-four. The brain is all right. We’re getting very good waves on the oscilloscope. The tissue match with your boy is satisfactory. Better than satisfactory. There’s a flight out of JFK at six fifteen in the morning, and I’ve reserved space for yourself, your wife and Tommy. You’ll be met at the airport. You can be here by noon; so we have time. Only just time, Mr. Vladek. It’s up to you now.”

  Vladek said furiously, “I can’t decide that! Don’t you understand? I don’t know how.”

  “I do understand, Mr. Vladek,” said the distant voice and, strangely, Vladek thought, it seemed he did. “I have a suggestion. Would you like to come down anyhow? I think it might help you to see the other boy, and you can talk to his parents. They feel they owe you something even for going this far, and they want to thank you.”

  “Oh, no!” cried Vladek.

  The doctor went on: “All they want is for their boy to have a life. They don’t expect anything but that. They’ll give you custody of the child-your child, yours and theirs. He’s a very fine little boy, Mr. Vladek. Eight years old. Reads beautifully. Makes model airplanes.

  They let him ride his bike because he was so sensible and reliable, and the accident wasn’t his fault. The truck came right up on the sidewalk and hit him.”

  Harry was trembling. “That’s like giving me a bribe,” he said harshly. “That’s telling me I can trade Tommy in for somebody smarter and nicer.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way, Mr. Vladek. I only wanted you to know the kind of a boy you can save.”

  “You don’t even know the operation’s going to work!”

  “No,” agreed the doctor. “Not positively. I can tell you that we’ve transplanted animals, including primates, and human cadavers, and one pair of terminal cases; but you’re right, we’ve never had a transplant into a well body. I’ve shown you all the records, Mr. Vladek. We went over them with your own doctor when we first talked about this possibility, five months ago. This is the first case since then when the match was close and there was a real hope for success, but you’re right, it’s still unproved. Unless you help us prove it. For what it’s worth, I think it will work. But no one can be sure.”

  Margaret had left the kitchen, but Vladek knew where she was from the scratchy click in the earpiece: in the bedroom, listening on the extension phone. He said at last, “I can’t say now, Dr. Nicholson. I’ll call you back in-in half an hour. I can’t do any more than that right now.”

  “That’s a great deal, Mr. Vladek. I’ll be waiting right here for your call.”

  Harry sat down and drank the rest of his coffee. You had to be an expert in a lot of things to get along, he was thinking. What did he know about brain transplants? In one way, a lot. He knew that the surgery part was supposed to be straightforward, but the tissue rejection was the problem, but Dr. Nicholson thought he had that licked. He knew that every doctor he had talked to, and he had now talked to seven of them, had agreed that medically it was probably sound enough, and that every one of them had carefully clammed up when he got the conversation around to whether it was right. It was his decision, not theirs, they all said, sometimes just by their silence. But who was he to decide?

  Margaret appeared in the doorway. “Harry. Let’s go upstairs and look at Tommy.”

  He said harshly, “Is that supposed to make it easier for me to murder my son?”

  She said, “We talked that out, Harry, and we agreed it isn’t murder. Whatever it is. I only think that Tommy ought to be with us when we decide, even if he doesn’t know what we’re deciding.”

  The two of them stood next to the outsize crib that held their son, looking in the night light at the long fair lashes against the chubby cheeks and the pouted lips around the thumb. Reading. Model airplanes. Riding a bike. Against a quick sketch of a face and the occasional, cherished, tempestuous, bruising flurry of kisses.

  Vladek stayed there the full half hour and then, as he had promised, went back to the kitchen, picked up the phone and began to dial.

  1974

  The Gift of Garigolli

  I wonder what the vintners buy one-half so precious as used polyethylene containers?

  GARIGOLLI

  To Home Base

  Greeting, Chief,

  I’m glad you’re pleased with the demographics and cognitics studies. You don’t mention the orbital mapping, but I suppose that’s all complete and satisfactory.

  Now will you please tell me how we’re going to get off this lousy planet?

  Keep firmly in mind. Chief, that we’re not complainers. You don’t have a better crew anywhere in the Galaxy and you know it. We’ve complied with the Triple Directive, every time, on every planet we’ve explored. Remember Arcturus XII? But this time we’re having trouble. After all, look at the disproportion in mass. And take a look at the reports we’ve sent in. These are pretty miserable sentients. Chief.

  So will you let us know, please, if there has ever been an authorized exception to Directive Two? I don’t mean we aren’t going to bust a link to comply—if we can—but frankly, at this moment, I don’t see how.

  And we need to get out of here fast.

  Garigolli.

  ALTHOUGH it was a pretty morning in June, with the blossoms dropping off the catalpa trees and the algae blooming in the 12-foot plastic pool, I was not enjoying either my breakfast or the morning mail.

  The letter from the lawyer started, the way letters from lawyers do, with

  RE: GUDSELL VS. DUPOIR

  and went on to advise Dupoir (that’s me, plus my wife and our two-year-old son Butchie) that unless a certified check arrived in Undersigned’s office before close of business June 11th (that was tomorrow) in the amount of $14,752.03, Undersigned would be compelled to institute Proceedings at once.

  I showed it to my wife, Shirl, for lack of anything better to do.

  She read it and nodded intelligently. “He’s really been very patient with us, considering,” she said. “I suppose this is just some more lawyer-talk?”

  It had occurred to me, for a wild moment, that maybe she had $14,752.03 in the old sugar bowl as a surprise for me, but I could see she didn’t. I shook my head. “This means they take the house,” I said. “I’m not mad any more. But you won’t sign anything for your brother after this, will you?”

  “Certainly not,” she said, shocked. “Shall I put that letter in the paper-recycling bin?”

  “Not just yet,” I said, taking off my glasses and hearing aid. Shirl knows perfectly well that I can’t hear her when my glasses are off, but she kept on talking anyway as she wiped the apricot puree off Butchie’s chin, rescued the milk glass, rinsed the plastic infant-food jar and dropped it in the “plastics” carton, rinsed the lid and put it in the “metals” box and poured my coffee. We are a very ecological household. It astonishes me how good Shirl is at things like that, considering.

  I waved fruit flies away from the general direction of my orange juice and put my glasses back on in time to catch her asking, wonderingly, “What would they do with our house? I mean, I’m not a demon decorator like Ginevra Freedman. I just like it comfortable and neat.”

  “They don’t exactly want the house,” I explained. “They just want the money they’ll get after they sell it to somebody else.” Her expression cleared at once. Shirl always likes to understand things.

  I sipped my coffee, fending off Butchie’s attempt to grab the cup, and folded the letter and l
aid it across my knees like an unsheathed scimitar, ready to taste the blood of the giaour, which it kind of was. Butchie indicated that he would like to eat it, but I didn’t see that that would solve the problem. Although I didn’t have any better way of solving it, at that.

  I finished the orange juice, patted Butchie’s head and, against my better judgment, gave Shirl the routine kiss on the nose.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m glad that’s settled. Isn’t it nice the way the mail comes first thing in the morning now?”

  I said it was very nice and left for the bus but, really, I could have been just as happy if Undersigned’s letter had come any old time. The fruit flies were pursuing me all the way down the street. They seemed to think they could get nourishmnent out of me, which suggested that fruit flies were about equal in intelligence to brothers-in-law. It was not a surprising thought. I had thought it before.

  GARIGOLLI

  To Home Base

  Chief, The mobility of this Host is a constant pain in the spermatophore. Now he’s gone off on the day-cycle early, and half the crew are still stuck in his domicile. Ultimate Matrix knows how they’ll handle it if we don’t get back before they run out of group empathy.

  You’ve got no reason to take that tone, Chief. We’re doing a good job and you know it. “Directive One: To remain undetected by sentients on planet being explored.” A hundred and forty-four p.g., right? They don’t have a clue we’re here, although I concede that that part is fairly easy, since they are so much bigger than we are. “Directive Three: Subject to Directives One and Two, to make a complete study of geographic, demographic, ecological and cognitic factors and to transmit same to Home Base.” You actually complimented us on those! It’s only Directive Two that’s giving us trouble.

  We’re still trying, but did it ever occur to you that maybe these people don’t deserve Directive Two?

  Garigolli

  I LOPED along the jungle trail to the bus stop, calculating with my razor-sharp mind that the distance from the house was almost exactly 14,752.03 centimeters. As centimeters it didn’t sound bad at all. As money, $14,752.03 was the kind of sum I hadn’t written down since Commercial Arithmetic in P.S. 98.