Gladiator-At-Law

by Frederik Pohl

  “Oh, come now,” objected Mundin. “They could have teased the rights——”

  “And had them bottled up. Didn’t I already say they were dedicated men? They had designed a home that was cheaper than the cheapest and better than the best. It was a breakthrough in housing, like nothing that had gone before except, perhaps, the synthetic revolution in textiles or the advent of the Model T Ford. Don’t you see that even a millionaire could not have owned a better house than the G.M.L.? Daddy and Mr. Gorman wanted to give them to the people at only a reasonable profit; no manufacturer would dream of it until the top-price market had been filled. They weren’t big businessmen, Mundin. They were dreamers. They were out of their field. Then Moffatt came along with his plan.”

  Ryan stirred himself. “Most ingenious, really,” he said. “Adapted to the tax situation. By leasing manufacturing rights to large corporations, G.M.L. avoided capital outlay; the corporations gave their employees what could not be had elsewhere—and good-by to labor troubles. At first, G.M.L. leased the rights for money. Later, when they got bigger, the consideration was blocks of stock, equities in the firms.”

  The girl nodded soberly. “Within ten years, G.M.L. owned sizable shares of forty corporations, and Daddy and Mr. Gorman owned half of G.M.L. Then Daddy found outwhat was happening. He told Mr. Gorman, and I think it killed him—he was an old man by then, you see. Contract status. One word of back-talk and you get thrown out of your GM.L. house. Get thrown out of your G.M.L. house and you find yourself——” she hesitated, and her eyes roved around the sordid room “—here.”

  Mundin said wonderingly, “But if your father was one of

  the owners——”

  “Only twenty-five per cent, Mundin. And Mr. German’s twenty-five per cent went to distant cousins after the embolism. So there was Daddy at sixty-five. His vision was a reality; his bubble-homes housed a hundred million people. And they had become a weapon, and he was frozen out of the firm.” Don Lavin said dreamily, “They gave the plant guards his picture. He was arrested as drunk and disorderly when he tried to go to the stockholders’ meeting. He hanged himself in his cell.” He stared absently at Mundin’s shoe.

  Mundin cleared his throat. “I—I’m sorry. Wasn’t there anything to be done at all?”

  Ryan said, with a touch of professional admiration, “Very little Mr. Mundin. Oh, he still had stock. They impounded it. A trumped-up creditors’ committee got an order on his safe-deposit box against dissipation of assets when he died. They kept it impounded for twelve years. Then somebody got careless, or somebody quit or got fired and the new man didn’t know what the impoundment was for—anyway, G.M.L. blinked. The order expired. Norma and Don Lavin are twenty-five per cent owners of G.M.L.”

  Mundin looked around the shabby room and didn’t say a

  word.

  “There’s just one little thing,” Norma said bitterly. “Don got the stock out of the box and put it away. Tell us where

  it is, Don.”

  The brother’s dreamy eyes-Winked and widened. His face muscles worked wildly; he said, “K-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k” in a convulsion of stammering. The idiot stutter went on for long moments, until Don Lavin began raspingly to cry. Norma, -stone-faced, patted him on the shoulder.

  She said to the appalled lawyer, “When we began making trouble, as they said, Don was snatched. He was gone for three days and he doesn’t remember them. We took him to a doctor; the doctor said it looked like at least fifty hours of conditioning.”

  Mundin said, out of shock and rage, “That’s illegall Private persons can’t use conditioning techniques!”

  Norma flared, “Of course not! You’re our lawyer now, Mundin. Just straighten that out for us, will you? Get an injunction against G.M.L.”

  Mundin sat back. Habitual criminals—like his twerp—were conditioned in twenty-five hours of treatment over a week or more. Fifty hours in three days!

  “Why didn’t they just snatch the stock?” he asked.

  “That would be illegal,” explained Ryan—and hastily held up a hand. “No, seriously. A forced sale could be attacked, and perhaps set aside—by Don himself, or by his heirs or guardians. This way the stock is neutralized, and nothing pinned to G.M.L. They don’t need the stock; they’ve got plenty of stock. They just don’t want Don and Norma to have it.”

  Mundin felt ill. He said, “I see. Sorry I was so stupid. So now Don doesn’t know where he put the stock and you want to find it.”

  Ryan looked at him with disgust. “No, Counselor,” he said heavily. “Not quite as simple as that. I may not have practiced at the Big Bar for some time, but I imagine that even I could manage to get duplicate certificates. Unfortunately our position is somewhat worse than that. Donald, as the male heir, was the obvious person——” Norma snorted “—the obvious person, I say, to conduct a suit, so Norma signed an irrevocable proxy of interest to him. That was an error, as it turned out. Donald can’t do the job. He can’t bring suit; he can’t tell us where the stock is; he can’t even discuss it.”

  Mundin nodded sickly. “I see. You’re stymied.”

  Norma made a contemptuous noise. “Great, Mundin,” she said. “You’ve put it in a nutshell. Now that it is established that we’re licked, we might as well lie down and die.”

  Mundin said stiffly, “I didn’t say that, Miss Lavin. We’ll do what we can.” He hesitated. “For instance,” he went on, “if it’s only a matter of conditioning, no doubt we can have

  your brother undergo a deconditioning course somewhere else. After all——”

  Norma raised an eyebrow. ” ‘Private persons can’t use conditioning techniques,’” she quoted. “Didn’t you say that just a moment ago?” ]

  “Well, yes, but surely someone will——” /

  All at once Norma seemed to collapse. She said to Ryan, “You tell him. Tell him what he’s up against.”

  Ryan said, “G.M.L.‘s assets are not less than fourteen billion dollars, comprising cash in the bank, negotiable securities, plant and properties and equities, as of their last statement, in eight hundred and four corporations. I don’t say that they can break the law with impunity, Counselor. But they can sure as hell keep us from breaking it”

  Chapter Seven

  fourteen billion dollars. Mundin, trudging apprehensively through Belly Rave’s dark streets, felt very small up against fourteen billion dollars. Still, he had accepted the case.

  A mournful hooting from the shadows made him quicken his step, but no lurking thugs showed up. Mundin shivered uncomfortably and turned up his coat collar. It had begun to rain.

  Luck was with Mundin. He was neither mugged nor lured into one of the clip joints. The footpads were stalking other streets, the roving gangs of armed adolescents plotted in their cellars instead of braving the ram, the cab Mundin spotted, ran after, and hailed was a legitimate cab and not a trap. He got out of Belly Rave without difficulty, and he never knew what he had missed.

  The cab ride gave him time to think. But the thinking came to very little. The Lavins, he was convinced, had a legitimate claim. He had promised them he would work on it; he had tried to reassure them that things were cot as hopeless as they seemed. He felt uncomfortably sure that the girl had seen through his empty words.

  The cab came to territory he recognized, and he stopped it at an all-night restaurant. Coffee might help. While he was waiting for it, he invested a dime in a call to his office; you never could tell, maybe someone had called.

  Someone had. The Sleepless Secretary hooted and groaned and came across with the record of a familiar, scared voice: “Mr. Mundin, uh, this is Norvell Bligh. Can you come and get me out of jail?”

  Chapter Eight

  norvie woke up with a start. They were joggling him, with identical, contemptuous smiles. Even hi the fog of sleep he felt a little stab of pride at Virginia’s beauty, a twitch of unhappiness at the same bony beauty smothered beneath the fat of her daughter.

  “What’s the matter?” he croaked.

  Hi
s voice sounded odd, and he realized he wasn’t wearing his hearing aid. He groped for it beside the bed. It wasn’t there. He sat up.

  He yelled at Alexandra, his voice thin and strange to him as it was sustained through the bones and cavities of his body rather than the neat chain of the auditory apparatus: “Where is it? If you’ve hidden it again 111 break your neck!”

  Alexandra looked smugly shocked. She mouthed at him, “Goodness, Norvell, you know I wouldn’t do that” The exaggerated mouthing was a mockery of consideration; he had repeatedly told her that exaggeration only distorted the lips.

  Virginia tapped him on the shoulder and said something, stiff-lipped. He caught an “eep” and a “larm.”

  He clenched his fists and said, “What?”

  She mouthed at him, “I said, you must have come in too drunk to set the alarm before you went to sleep. Get up. You’re an hour late for work now.”

  He leaped from bed, anguish spearing his heart, Oh, God! An hour late on this day, of all days!

  He found the hearing aid—on the floor in the entrance hall,

  where h6 couldn’t possibly Tiave left it, any more than he could possibly have failed to set the alarm. But he didn’t have time for that minor point. He depilated in ten seconds, bathed in five, dressed in fifteen and shot out of the house. ‘

  Fortunately Candella wasn’t in.

  Norvie sent Miss Dali to round up his staff and began the tooling-up job for the integrator keyboard, while the production men busied themselves with their circuits and their matrices, and the job began. This was the part of Nome’s work that made him, he confessed secretly to himself, feel most like God. He fed the directions to Stimmens, Stimmens fumblingly set up the punch cards, the engineers translated the cards into phase fields and interferer circuits… . And a World That Norvie Made appeared in miniature.

  He had once tried to explain his feelings to Arnie. Arnie had snarled something about the presumptuous conceit of a mere pushbutton. All Norvie did, Arnie explained over many glasses of beer, was to decide what forms and images he wanted to see. It was The Engineers who, in Then1 wisdom, transmuted empty visions into patterns of light and color that magically took the form and movement of tiny fighters and wrestlers and spear-carriers. The original thought, Arnie explained severely, was nothing. It was the tremendous technical skill that transformed the thought into visual reality in the table-top model previewer that was important.

  And Norvie humbly agreed. Even now he was deferential to the production men, those geniuses so well skilled in the arts of connecting Circuit A to Terminal IV, for they were Engineers. But his deference extended only to the technical crew. “Stimmens, you butterfingers,” he snarled, “hurry it up! Mr. Candella will be here any minute!”

  “Yessir,” said Stimmens, hopelessly shuffling the stacks of notes out of Norvell’s hands.

  Stimmens was coming along well, Norvie thought. A touch of the whip was good for him.

  It took twenty minutes and a bit more, and then Norvell’s whole design for a Field Day was on punch cards. While Stimmens was correcting his last batch of cards, the production men began the highspeed run-through. The little punched cards went through the scanners; the packed circuits measured

  voltages and spat electrons; and in the miniature mockup of the Stadium, tiny figures of light appeared and moved and slew each other and left.

  They were Norvell’s own, featureless and bright, tiny and insubstantial. Where Norvell’s script called for the bodies of forty javelin-throwers in the flesh, the visualizing apparatus showed forty sprites of light jabbing at each other with lances of fire. No blood spilled; no bodies stained the floor of the Stadium; only the little bodiless fire-figures that disappeared like any other pattern of excited ions when the current went off.

  Somehow, inside Norvell’s mind, it was here and not in the big arena that the real Field Days took place. He had heard the cries of the wounded and seen the tears of the next of kin waiting hopelessly in the pits, but they were not real; it was as mannikins that he thought of them always.

  One of the production men looked up and said approvingly, “Good show, Mr. Bligh.”

  “Thanks,” said Norvell gratefully. That was always a good sign; the technical crews had seen ‘em all. Now the question was, what would Candella say?

  He found out

  What Candella said, gently at first, was:

  “Bligh, the upcoming Field Day is important. At least, it seems to me that it is. It seems to me that everything we do is important. Don’t you think so?”

  Norvell said, “Well——”

  “I’m glad you agree. Our work is important, Bligh. It is a great and functional art form. It provides healthful entertainment, satisfying the needs of every man for some form of artistic expression. It provides escape—escape for the hardworking bubble-house class, escape for the masses of Belly Rave. For them, in fact, our work is indispensable. It siphons off then: aggressions so that they can devote their time to— uh—to comparatively harmless activities. Allotments and Field Days! Our society is built on them. You might call our work the very foundation of society, looked at in that way. Do you agree?”

  Norvell’s voice failed him. He said in almost a whisper: “Yes, sir.”

  Candella looked politely apologetic. “I beg your pardon?” “Yes, sir!” Norvell, too late, found he was almost beljow—

  ing-

  Candella looked pained. “You needn’t shout.” he reproved —gently, smilingly. “There is nothing wrong with my hearing.” Norvell winced. You unutterable louse, he thought. But Candella was going right on. “—foundation of our society, as I say, but also an art form. The cultured classes appreciate our efforts on the artistic plane; the rabble of Belly Rave— with all respects, my dear Bligh, to the origin of your charming wife—need it on the glandular level. Every show we produce is important. But the Field Day——”

  He hesitated, and the composition of his features changed. His thick brows came down like the ragged anvils of thunderclouds; his temples pulsed. His voice became a bass roar. He thundered, “The Field Day, you asinine little tin-eared incompetent, is the biggest day of the yeai! Not just because it draws the biggest audience—but because that’s the one / am judged by! The Board attends. The Mayor attends. The men from G.M.L. attend. If they like it, good. If they don’t—it’s my head that’s on the line, Bligh! And I don’t want it lopped off because of the idiotic blunderings of a half-witted ass like

  you!”

  Norvell opened his mouth; it hung open, wordless. Candella roared on, “Not a word! I want no excuses. You had the assignment, and you muffed it. Your notion of what constituted a Field Day was, of course, uninspired. But I thought that, with patching and improvising, we might get by. However, I no longer think so—not since examining the superb presentation that was handed me this morning—at nine o’clock, I might add.” He slammed a sheaf of punch-cards on the desk. “By a member of your own staff, Bligh! A brilliant boy whom you have evidently been holding down. Thank God for his guts! Thank God for his loyalty! Thank God he had the courage and sense to come to me with this masterpiece instead of permitting you to destroy it!”

  There was a long pause. At last Norvell was able to croak,

  “Who?”

  Candella said triumphantly, “Stimmens.”

  Norvell was speechless. The thing was not possible. Stimmens? Wet behind the ears, untried, incompetent even at

  simple research? Stimmens who didn’t even want to stay with the firm, who had the infernal gall to ask for a contract release? Strlmmens?

  His hand stretched out for the cards, and then he stopped, abashed, realizing he had forgotten to ask permission. “Go ahead,” Candella said coldly.

  Norvell scanned them in astonishment. Why, he thought, this is impossible—and this bit here, we can’t——

  “Mind if I play these, Mr. Candella?” he asked and, getting an ironic nod, fed the punch-cards into Candella’s previewer. The circuits scanned the punched
holes and built a scene of electronic slaughter for him. He watched the little fire-figures in growing apprehension.

  When he looked up, he said, so bemused that he hardly remembered to be fearful, “Why, it’s good.”

  “Of course it’s good!”

  “No, really good, Mr. Candella.” He shook his head wonderingly. “Stimmens, eh? I never would have believed it. Of course, it’s rough—the emotional values need bringing out. The comedy stuff with the vitriol pistols ought to follow a tense thriller like Man Versus Scorpions instead of another comedy number like the Octogenarians with Flame Throwers. But that’s easy enough to fix. Race Against Man-Made Lightning is out too; Stimmens told me himself we couldn’t get the equipment from Schenectady. I suppose he forgot.”

  Candella was looking at him with an indescribable expression, but Norvell raced on, babbling nervously. “Real originality, Mr. Candella. I—I must say I admire him. Piranhas in the aquatic meet! Wonderful. And the octogenarians are a terrific switch. Number after number I’ve never heard of! I have to admit it, Mr. Candella, that boy has talent.”

  Candella said dangerously, “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Norvell stammered, “Why, the—the originality, Mr. Candella. The freshness.”

  Candella hardly heard him; he was mumbling to himself as he riffled through sheets of paper. He pounded them with his fist and glared at Norvell.

  “Originality! Bligh, do you think I’m nuts? Do you think I’m crazy enough to run untried novelties in a show like this?

  Every one of these features has been a smash success somewhere in the country within the last ninety days.”

  “Oh, not No, Mr. Candella, honest—I know. I’ve been getting all the reports, and none of this stuff—— Honesty Mr. Candella! I was saying to Stimmens just the other day, ‘It’s funny how little new stuff is turning up.’ Gosh, Stimmens was doing the research himself, he ought to know!”