Gladiator-At-Law

by Frederik Pohl

  Norvell dialed a bed and set the house to full automatic. As he lay down his pillow chimed softly, but he didn’t need sleepy music that night; with a curse, he reached over his head and turned it off. In the copper plexus at the house’s core transistors pulsed; solenoids barred the doors; microswitches laid traps for intruders; thermocouples tasted the incoming air and cooled it an additional four degrees. Commutator points roved around a hidden dial until they reached the stations where a sweeping clock hand would boil the water for the coffee, heat the griddle for the eggs, set the breakfast dishes. But by then Norvell was already asleep.

  Chapter Five

  reverse your telescope. Point the small end at a sign that is neither here nor now, a long way off in space and as many years past as it has been since the end of World War II.

  The sign is in a dozen chromatic colors, a picture of a vine-covered cottage with a curl of smoke winding from a fieldstone chimney, and an impossibly long-legged girl waving from the door. The giant letters read:

  BELLE REVE ESTATES

  “Gracious Living for America’s Heroes” VETS! OWN YOUR OWN HOME! $350 cash, $40.25 monthly, pays all

  FREE!

  3-speed washer, home freezer fifteen-foot picture window

  Before the paint on the sign was dry, three cars were parked in the muddy ruts in front of it and three couples were being guided through the model home by Belle Reve salesmen— estate managers, they preferred to be called.

  Their technique was identical. If any one of them had lost his voice, or been blasted to charcoal by a resentful God, any of the others could have taken his place in mid-syllable. And their movements were as exact as a ballet troupe; when salesman A brought his charges into a room, salesman B was just on the way out. The rooms were handsomely made and cutely furnished, but the sales director didn’t like to have too many people in a room at one time—gave the impression the rooms were small.

  When the salesman had finished, a prospect got back to the sparkling kitchen, where the closing desk was, under the dizzy impression that somehow he could move into the place tomorrow, furnished as it was, simply by signing his name Ťnd handing over the twenty-dollar binder. And a swimming pool would be on their lawn the day after to be shared with

  another nice couple like them, and the children could gambol on the grassy sward unmenaced by city traffic, and they would spit right hi the eye of the city apartment-house janitor after telling him they were getting out of the crowded, evil-smelling, budget-devouring, paper-walled, sticky-windowed, ahfless, lightless, privacyless hole in the wall forever. They were i^oing Home to Belle Reve. They signed and paid.

  Time passed.

  Belle Reve receded before them always like a mirage. The four-color circulars continued to arrive, and the statements of their down-payment balance due. Plus title-search fee. Plus handling charge. Plus interest. Plus legal fee. Plus sewer assessment. Plus land tax. Plus road tax. They paid.

  Time passed.

  Their house was built; their hour had struck! The kids wailed, “Is that it?” and began to cry. Whichever was weaker, the wife or husband, sagged shoulders and stared in horror at the sea of mud, the minute house riding it like an ark, like one ark hi a fleet of identical arks drawn up rank by rank for review by a snickering deity. Whichever was stronger, the husband or wife, squared shoulders and said loudly, “It may not look like much now, but give us a few weekends and we’ll have it just like the demonstration place. And we’ll be working for ourselves, not some landlord. This place isn’t an expense; it’s an asset.”

  Time passed.

  Sod was laid on the mud. It sank hi curious hummocks and swales when it rained. Takes a little time to settle, honey. Fill was dumped on the sod, and topsoil on the fill. Grass was planted on the topsoil to burn and die in the summer. Honey, we can’t water it this year because of the water rates. In a normal year, sure, but we have a few non-recurring charges, and once they’re out of the way—— The sewer assessment. The road assessment. The school tax. And we ought to do something about the foundation, I guess. You catch these little cracks early and you never have trouble again. Every house settles a little, honey.

  Time passed.

  The place isn’t an expense, honey; it’s an asset. Do you realize we have an equity of eight thousand dollars hi this house we can recover at the drop of a hat if we can find somebody to buy the place and if there was some place else to go? It makes a man feel mighty good to know he has eight thousand dollars to his name. I know it runs a little higher than anybody figured, but things are up all over. Insurance, sewer assessment, road tax, fuel oil, interest, assessment in that stockholders’ suit whatever it was about—it isn’t more than a hundred twenty-five a month, if that. If I get the raise and swing that note on the car we can have the roof repaired before the November rams, and then get right to work on the oil heater—please don’t cry, honey. Besides. There’s. No. Place. Else. To. Go.

  Tune passed.

  You’ve got to talk to her, dear. Coming in past midnight after she was out with God-knows-who and telling me there isn’t any use asking her to entertain at home because we’d be right on top of her because the place is so small you can’t sneeze without blowing somebody’s Lat off you’ve got to talk to her I’m going out of my mind with worry she could get hi trouble and so are all the other mothers I know the place isn’t very attractive but can’t you get it painted somehow even if you aren’t as young as you once were she’s ashamed of the place and she’s right about it being too small and the washer’s broken again and I’m not as young as I once was and I can’t keep hauling water all my life and when are we going to fix the picture window it looks horrible with a big crack right down the middle not that I blame the Elliston boy the poor kid doesn’t have any place to play trapped like a rat here hi Belle Reve like the rest of us hi chicken coops crumbling around us while we watch but they never quite fall down as long as we keep patching and patching and patching and paying and paying and paying… .

  Tune passed.

  Over the back fence (patched and peeling; leaning this way and that, inadequate to keep the children in the yard or the prowling, huge rats out): I heard of them and I saw the ads. I don’t read much these days because of my eyes but he came home with the paper, for once he wasn’t gray and tired. G.M.L. Houses, he said. Wonderful G.M.L. bubble-houses— a complete departure. He said he knew it had to come some day, a complete break with tradition the way it said hi the ad. It has something to do with contracts. They lease the machines

  to the companies, I think, or something,’ and the companies build the houses for people who work for them. It gets around taxes or something. He was sure the company would lease the machines and we could get a G.M.L., but it didn’t come to anything because he doesn’t have a contract and theV just build them for their contract people. But heavens he’s lucky to have a job the way things are going; the boy’s been looking and looking and there doesn’t seem to be anything, I don’t know how we’d get by if it wasn’t for the allowance… .

  Time passed.

  Steady, pop, don’t snop your top. I swear 111 cool ya if ya give me more than a sufficiency of that cack. Me get a job? Some cack, ya old track! What have I got that a little black box hasn’t got more and better? Gimme that “fifty years with the company” once more and you’ll be flat on your bat. You get the allowance for me, don’t ya? If ya didn’t have crap in your cap you’d be a contract man and we’d be in a bubble for double instead of my being a lousy slave from Belly Rave. Me hitch to the city and look for work? Pterodactyl cackl Tell ya what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna have a big breakfast and hitch a ride to the Stadium. Good show today—Rocky Granatino, Rocky Bolderoni, Rocky Schistman and Kid Louis in a blindfold free-for-all with spiked gloves after the regular bouts. Then I’m gonna pick up a surrounded cavity and we’ll find a nice, empty dump here in Belly Rave and shove some love. Maybe the Wexley place down the street so you won’t worry about me getting lost. Old Man Wexley made contrac
t grade last week after fifteen years in night school, so he took off for Monmouth G.M.L. City like he had a fire in his lire. I bet the beds are still made, which might come in handy. Any questions?

  No; there were no questions. And the boy swaggered out across the screeching floorboards, the house trembling to his stride. The old man said, “Fifty years with the company,” and began to cry. He had been replaced last Friday by a little black box that never made mistakes, never got tired, never took a coffee break. From now on the allowance check would be tripled; as head of a family he had that coming to him. And he owned the house outright, almost. In just a few years it would be his, as soon as he cleared up the sewer assessments outstanding. I’ll sell, he schemed craftily, forgetting to cry. At

  the top of the market. Not right now, things were too dull. A few of the places on the street were empty, abandoned by owners who had made contract grade and won entitlement to a G.M.L. house. A kind of funny element was moving in; not the kind of people you talked to much. Bad for the children. He was sure that passing the abandoned Samuels place he had smelled something like the raw reek of alcohol and glimpsed shining copper pots and tubing through the ill-shuttered picture window. Sometimes police cars and copters descended on Belly Rave and left loaded—but that was on the outskirts, the neighborhood would pick up, the old man told himself sternly. And then he’d sell at the top of the market

  Time passed… .

  More than a century.

  Chapter Six

  four taxi drivers flatly refused to take Mundin to Belly Rave. The fifth was a devil-may-care youngster. “Just took this heah job waitin’ for the draft call,” he confided. “How can I lose? Anything goes wrong in this heah Belly Rave place, maybe Ah get beat up so bay-yud the oP army won’t take me.” He laughed. “But seriously, I figger it cain’t be as tough as they say.”

  Mundin did not contradict him and away they went.

  There was no sizable city which did not have the equivalent of Belly Rave. The festering slums of Long Island were another New York problem; Boston had its Springfield; Chicago its Evanston; Los Angeles its Greenville. None was worse than Belle Reve Estates. Mundin noticed that the battered streetlights of Belly Rave didn’t light; as they rolled past the first weed-grown yards and boarded-up houses he noticed ramshackle structures in the back. Occasionally they passed a burned-out area, but not often. The plots were generous enough in size to keep a normal fire from spreading from house to house. Unfortunately.

  There was life in Belly Rave: a furtive, crepuscular life

  called into being by the unpoliceable wilderness of tall weeds, endless miles of crumbling battered driveway unmarked by street signs or house numbers. The taxi wasn’t alone. Zooty little cars prowled along the crumbling concrete, occasionally pulling to the curb where a dim figure swung a phosphorescent handbag. They passed one block of houses that was ^ blaze of light and noise. The doorman trotted along beside the taxi urging: “Anything goes, mister. Spend the night for five bucks, all you can drink and smoke included. Why pay taxes, mister?”

  Sometimes the Alcohol & Hemp Tax Unit’s men raided such joints. Not often.

  The driver asked the doorman, “We anywheah close to 37598 Willowdale Crescent?” He stopped the cab.

  “What you need is a guide,” the doorman said promptly. “Jimmy!” Somebody jelled out of the dark. Mundin heard a fumbling at the door of the cab.

  “Step on it!” he yelled at the driver, snapping the door lock and running up the window. The driver stepped on it.

  The ambush left behind, they cautiously approached bag-swingers for directions. In half an hour they were on the 37-thousand block of Willowdale Crescent, counting houses.

  “This must be it,” said the driver, no longer devil-may-care.

  “I guess so. Wait here, will you?” Mundin said.

  “Nossir! How do I know you ain’t going to slip through a back door and stiff me? You pay me what’s on the clock an’ Ah’ll wait.”

  The meter read a whopping eight dollars. Mundin handed over a ten and started up the crumbled walk.

  Vroom! The taxi was on its way before he had taken half a dozen steps. Mundin cursed wearily and knocked on the door. He studied the boarded-up picture window while he waited. They were all broken, all boarded up. Inevitably in the years that had gone by since they were eased and puttied carefully into place, the rock had been flung, or the door had been slammed, or the drunk had lurched into the living room.

  The man who came to the door was old and sick.

  “Is this the Lavin place?” Mundin asked, blinking against a light haze of woodsmoke. “I’m Charles Mundin. She asked me to call in connection with a legal matter. I’m an attorney.”

  The old man started at the word. “Come in, Counselor,” he said formally. “I’m a member of the bar myself——”

  He broke off into a fit of coughing, leaning against the doorframe.

  Mundin half-carried him into the living room and eased him into a sagging overstaffed chair. A Coleman lamp, blowing badly, cast a metallic blue-green glare into every corner of the room. A fire smoldered on the hearth, billowing against a closed register. A tinny radio was blaring, “—nately was kept from spreading, though the four houses involved in the arson attempt were totally destroyed. Elsewhere in Belly Rave, warfare broke out between the Wabbits and the Goddams, rival junior gangs. One eight-year-old was killed instantly by——”

  Mundin clicked it off and opened the register. The smoke began to clear from the room and the fire to flicker. The old man was still folded up hi the chair, his parchment face mercilessly picked out by the flaring light. Mundin fiddled aimlessly with the valve and accidentally got it to stop roaring. There was a green glass shade; he put it on and the room was suddenly no longer a corner of a surrealist hell but simply a shabby room.

  “Thank you,” the old man muttered. “Counselor, would you please see if there is a small, round tin hi the bathroom cabinet?”

  The bathtub was full of split kindling and the cabinet shelves loaded with the smaller household staples—salt, spices, and such. There was an unmarked tin, which Mundin pried open. Small, gummy-looking pills and an unmistakable odor: Yen pox. He sighed and brought the old man the opened tin.

  The old man took it without comment and slowly swallowed five of the opium pills. When he spoke his voice was almost steady. “Thank you, Counselor. And let this be a lesson to you: Never get a belly-habit. It’s weakening, humiliating. You said you had an appointment with Norma? She should have been here hours ago. Naturally—the neighborhood— I’m worried. I’m Harry Ryan. Member of the S.E.C. Bar, and other things. Of course——” he stared at the tin of yen pox— “I’m retired from practice.”

  Mundin coughed. “I believe Miss Lavin mentioned you. As I understand it, you would be attorney of record and I’d do the legwork in some sort of stockholder’s suit, if we work it

  out.” He hesitated and went on to tell the old man about the arrest of the boy.

  “Yes,” Ryan said matter-of-factly. “I told her it was a mistake to go to Mr. Dworcas. It is inconceivable that Green, Charlesworth would not get wind of it.” i

  “Green, Charlesworth?” Willie Choate had once mentioned the name, in some connection or other. “Are they the investment house?”

  “They are. They are the investment house, just as you say.”

  “But she told me her business was connected with G.M.L. Homes. How does Green, Charlesworth get into it?”

  Ryan chewed another opium pill and swallowed it. “Mr. Mundin,” he said, “you will find that Green, Charlesworth do not get into things. They already are in everything. Raw materials, belt-transport patents, real estate, insurance, plant financing—you name it, Mundin.”

  “Even ward politics in the 27th?”

  “Even that. But don’t let it disturb you too greatly, Mundin, It is probable that Green, Charlesworth are only casually interested hi the Lavins at the present time. They no doubt wish to keep posted on what Don and
Norma are up to, but I do not expect they will intervene.”

  “You think that?”

  Ryan explained heavily, “I have to think that.” The door knocker rattled and the old man heaved himself from the overstaffed chair, waving Mundin aside. “I’ll get it,” he said. “Ah—this was just a temporary indisposition. You needn’t mention it to——” He jerked his chin at the door.

  He came back into the living room with Norma and Don Lavin.

  “Hello, Mundin,” she said tonelessly, her voice leaden with depression. “I see you found us. Have you eaten?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “Then excuse us while we have something. The Caddy broke down five times on the way out here. I’m beat.”

  She and her brother morosely opened a couple of self-heating cans of goulash. They spooned them down in silence.

  “Now,” she said to Mundin, “the background. I’ll make it short.” Her voice was satiric, hate-filled.

  “Don and I were born of rich but honest parents in Coshocton, Ohio. Daddy—Don Senior—was rather elderly when

  we came along; he spent the first fifty years of his life working. He started out as a plastics man with a small factory—bus bodies, fire trucks, that kind of thing. He happened to have gone to school with a man named Beraie German, who happened to have specialized hi electronics und electrical stuff. The two of them worked together, when they could find time, dreaming dreams and weaving visions. They were dedicated men. They invented, designed and constructed the first pilot model of the G.M.L. Home, otherwise known as the bubble-house.”

  Mundin said frostily, “I happen to know a little about G.M.L., Miss Lavin. Wasn’t there a man named Moffatt involved?”

  “Involved he was, but not until later. Much later. For almost thirty years, Daddy and Mr. German worked like dogs, starved themselves, gave up everything for their dream. Mother said she scarcely saw Daddy from month’s end to month’s end. Mr. German died a bachelor. They had designed the bubble-house, they had built it, but they didn’t have the capital to put it on the market.”