Gladiator-At-Law

by Frederik Pohl

  that makes you suspect they’re turning up, blow the whistle. We’ll handle it.”

  Harry Coett said, “But this is just a precaution. There won’t be any trouble, I’m confident. They’ll go along with us when the chips are down. Fundamentally, after all, they’re progressive.”

  “Reactionary!” said Nelson.

  “Middle-of-the-roaders!” Hubble insisted.

  Norvie Bligh sang out: “Coshocton! End of the line!” Mundin jumped in his seat, and looked around dazedly. The copter was turning and swooping low.

  He peered out. There below lay Coshocton, the most average city in the most average state in the union. Fifty years before, Hamilton Moffatt, “father of the bubble-house,” had signed the first of the industrial-lease G.M.L. contracts with the Federated Casket Company of Coshocton. Mundin asked, “Can you find the bubble-city?” “We’re over it now. Get out your squirt sun.” It wasn’t a squirt gun; it was a belly tank pressurized with freon. Mundin pushed on a bowden wire to open the nozzle; the needle on the gauge before his eyes quivered to show that the “squirt gun” was squirting. “Make your first pass,” Mundin ordered. The coptor fluttered over the bubble-city at a thousand feet, trailing a falling plume of golden fluid. The drops partly vaporized; but the fluid was Leavy, and the liquid reached the bubble-houses in quantity large enough to film them.

  Four times Norvell Bligh quartered the bubble-city, until all of the fluid was gone. Then he set course for the long trip home, leaving behind the glittering domes which had been leased to Federated Casket for its contract employees; which had been duly absorbed by General Foundries when Federated Casket went under in the big switch to cremation; which had been duly swallowed by National Nonferrous; which was Mundin’s friend Mr. Nelson, who was at home gritting his teeth as he counted the cost of the night’s work that Mundin and Bligh were putting in.

  Chapter Twenty

  bligh was passing out cigars. “It’s a boy,” he proudly told anybody in the office who would listen. “I looked through the foetoscope myself. Doctor says it’s the finest forty-day embryo he’s ever seen, and that wasn’t just a snow-job. By God, when that kid gets born he’s going to have every advantage I——”

  Charles Mundin emerged from his office.

  “Morning!” Norvie Bligh bellowed. “It’s a boy, boss! The doctor raved about him. Have a cigar.”

  “Congratulations,” Mundin said sourly. “Norvie, can we get to work now? This is the big day, after all!”

  Norvie, sobered, said, “Yessir.” They entered Ryan’s office.

  A clerk had overheard. Norma Lavin, following half a minute behind Mundin and Bligh, saw the girl pick up a vase of flowers and hold it to her lips. Thirsty? Norma wondered. But the girl did not appear to be drinking the water; her lips were moving. Getting rid of her gum, Norma thought Or—talking? But then Bliss Hubble hailed her and she forgot it.

  Which was a pity, in a way, for the girl had not been getting rid of her gum. Norma Lavin vaguely heard the clerk’s low-pitched murmur, but by then Norma was slapping Bliss Bubble’s hand off her arm and no one was looking at the clerk.

  The girl put the vase back and returned briskly to work.

  The Big Seven—the two Lavins, Mundin, Ryari, Hubble, Nelson, and Coett—and Norvell Bligh were assembled in Ryan’s office.

  Norma was saying with fire, “I trust I do not impose on the biological fact that I am a woman, and I don’t expect anyone to impose on me. If Mr. Hubble can’t keep his damned hands to himself I at least expect him to leave me alone during working hours. After hours I can manage to avoid him.”

  Bliss Hubble grinned. “Sorry, Norma, but——”

  “Lavin!”

  “Sorry, Lavin, but I guess I was off-base. I don’t mind admitting I’m a little jumpy today; this is make-or-break, you know.”

  “We’re all a little tense, young lady,” soothed Harry Coett. “I must admit that I, for one, am a little tired of sitting here. You’re sure, Mundin, that your friend—uh—did what he was supposed to?”

  Mundin shrugged. After a moment he said, “Anybody want coffee or anything?”

  Nobody did. Nobody wanted anything except an end to their vigil. Except for Norma, whose fires were still raging internally, and Don Lavin, who was in a state of chronic joy after his long torpor, every face in the room was showing signs of worry.

  And then——

  Norvie Bligh, huddling over a muted radio in the corner, yelled, “Here it is!” He dived for the video and volume knobs.

  “—AT FIRST BLAMED ON VIBRATION,” bellowed the newscaster; then 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 vast 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, “Da-da-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—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 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, LL.B. 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 thing 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

  Pointe 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 Jam?” “I guess so,” Hubble said slowly. “You know, Mundin, we

  still haven’t been able to get a line on Green, Charlesworth.”

  The offices of Alive, flagship of the Alive-Space-Chance publishing squadron, were rocking. Hot on the heels of the disaster in Washington, a new cataclysm had just flashed in from their stringer in Coshocton, Ohio.

  “Keep talking it!” yelled the editor to the stringer, switching him to a rewrite man. He yell
ed at the picture editor, “Standby squad to Coshocton, Ohio. Whole goddam bubble-city fell apart!” The picture editor acknowledged and spoke a few quiet words into a phone. Overhead on the landing stage, a transport plane that stood with its engines just ticking over, quickened to a roar and took off, its paunch laden with six photographers and their gear. A klaxon screamed in the ready room next the landing stage; another standby squad put down their poker hands and climbed into a second plane, which taxied to the take-off line and stood waiting.

  The editor snapped, “Morgue! Send up the file on. G.M.L. Home failures, collapses, service guarantees, and so on. Science! Put two writers on to whip it into a sidebar. Photoroom! Hold everything; stand by to remake the issue. Transmitter! Hold everything; stand by to remake; three pages of four-color transmission upcoming. Midwest! Midwest—what the hell held you up? Get a squad to Coshocton, Ohio; G.M.L. Bubble-City collapse. Art! Stand by for visualization—scene of collapsing bubble-houses——”

  And so on. Until ———

  The editor quite suddenly stopped what he was doing and softly said to his assistant, “Oh, Jesus. Take over, Manning. Policy.”

  He got up, fixed his cravat, and walked up a flight of carpeted stairs. When he got past the publisher’s secretary, he said delicately:

  “Of course, sir, it looks like big news to us. But we’d like the benefit of your judgment in a, well, sensitive area like this. I understand you hold some G.M.L. stock, sir, so naturally you’d have an insider’s slant. What I want to know is, do you consider it—uh—in the best public interest to splash the story?”

  “Splash it,” the publisher said nobly, in the best tradition of no-fear-nor-favor journalism.

  The editor, grateful but wondering, said, “Thank you, Mr. Hubble.”

  He almost backed out of The Presence.

  He said to his assistant, marvernq, “S^rtrHimes I think the old boy isn’t such a selfish louse after all.” He shrugged, and shook his head, and turned to his desk panel, yelling:

  “Hasn’t anybody got through to G.M.L. yet?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  norma lavin’s. office was more than comfortable; it was luxurious.

  But Norma was not particularly happy in it. Ryan thought it would be better if she didn’t venture out of the suite. Her brother Donald, over his spree, was busily engaged in office-managing the hundred employees of Ryan & Mundin. Mundin was busy. There wasn’t much for Norma to do but sit and think.

  She sat. And she thought.

  She thought: G.M.L. Bankruptcy. Melt down the bubble-houses. Destroy Daddy’s memorial, tear everything apart. Does it have to be that way? Does everything have to be ripped to pieces and slimied up and all the goodness taken out of it?

  She thought rebelliously, They treat me like some sort of degenerate because I’m a woman. Hubble with his crawly, girl-clutching hands. Coett with his fatherly, superior, shut-your-yap-little-girl look. Mundin with his—with his——

  She thought wonderingly, Mundin, with his infuriating, aggravating way of treating me as if I were not a woman… .

  She thought about that a great deal; after all, she hadn’t much to do but sit and think.

  Until she saw the beat-cop in the lobby talking to his night* stick.

  At first, Norma’s reaction was what anybody’s reaction would be if they saw someone talking into a nightstick. She thought he was nuts.

  But he wasn’t being flamboyant about it; he was off in a corner, hidden from sight—except the sight of someone who happened to be staring idly out of a window directly above him, like Norma. Just a few murmured, unselfconicious words. x

  She decided the cop was being whimsical, of course, (^absent-mindedly rehearsing a speech to the desk sergeant.

  Or else he really was nuts. There was some perfectly reasonable explanation; so she forgot about it and went back to sitting and thinking. She thought about the old days, with a touch of wistfulness—not the old old days, but the Belly Rave old days, when she and Mundin had had work to do together. When she was bankrupt and he was a pauper—instead of the way things were now, when she was well-to-do on the verge of billions, and he was busy.

  Damn Mundin, she thought Wonderingly … for she had never damned a man for failing to pay attention to her .before.

  It was three days before Norma’s boredom overbalanced the common-sense view about people talking into nightsticks; and it might not have done it then if Miss Elbers hadn’t had to take a day off with periodic functional disturbances.

  Miss Elbers was the clerk whom Norma had observed talking into a flowerpot.

  The vase was on Miss Elbers’s desk still; Norma made several trips through the room, peering at it inconspicuously. It looked very much like any other vase with flowers in it.

  But she was bored. During the coffee break she photographed it from several angles; a Chinesey thing some eight inches tall. Even then, it took another three days before she got around to taking the photographs to a bric-a-brac dealer with Chinesey things in his window.

  He said promptly, “I don’t want it, lady. It’s a copy, and they copied it wrong.”

  She handed him money. He looked surprised, but he explained, “It’s a copy of a very well-known piece, a Chinese funerary jar. If memory serves——” and it obviously, pridefully did “—from the Fairy Kiln of Wu Chang, near Soo Chou. The proportions of this copy are good, and so are the colors. But the characters on the four medallions and on the band around the shoulder are wrong. Funerary jars always have the characters for ‘never,’ ‘mountain,’ ‘aging,’ and ‘green.’ I don’t know what these characters on the copy are, but they aren’t the right ones. I guess you got stuck.”

  “Thanks,” she said thoughtfully.

  Further inquiry turned up the name of a man who could translate the characters for her. A professor at Columbia.

  She caught the man wiping bis television makeup off in his office. He gallantly assured her it would be a pleasure. He wrinkled his brows over the photographs and finally said:

  “It’s gibberish. Not Chinese of any period, 111 swear to that. Here and there a piece of a character looks like something or other, but that’s as far as the resemblance goes. One can easily imagine the layman being fooled, of course. Does it matter? After all, somebody simply faked a vase, and did a poor job of decorating it. Though why he didn’t copy authentic characters I don’t understand.”

  “I do,” Norma Lavin whispered, her face bloodless.

  Ryan and Mundin and her brother shifted impatiently as she tried to explain:

  “They must be printed circuits. Maybe the crackle in the glaze is metallic—an antenna. There must be transistors and little silver-acid batteries and God knows what in the body of the thing. We could X-ray it—but anybody who’d make a communicator like that would probably have it booby-trapped.”

  Mundin asked slowly, “Have you handled the thing?”

  “No!”

  “Norma’s right,” Ryan said. “Work through the clerk. The gadget’s dynamite. Don, find out who she is.”

  Don Lavin went to his files. Mundin exploded, “Damn it, I’m not convinced. This thing coming right in the middle of our whole campaign—are Haskell Arnold and his crowd that smart?”

  “No,” Ryan said gravely. “Not Haskell Arnold and his crowd.”

  “Here it is.” Don Lavin produced a card. “The clerk’s name is Harriet Elbers. Single, twenty-six, B.B.A. from Columbia, corporate-case researcher for Choate Brothers three years, discharged hi staff reduction on closing a case. Um, efficiency rating high, yes, contract status standard—uh—nothing much else about her. Lives with widowed mother.”

  “Fine-sounding girl,” Ryan said dispiritedly.

  “Ryan, if it isn’t Arnold——”

  Ryan looked at Mundin and shrugged. “Who? Who but Green, Charlesworth? Arnold wouldn’t play it this way. He’s a slugger, nothing else. Green, Charlesworth—they’re judo experts. They wait until we’re charging full speed aheadand then they stick one foo
t out and we go crashing and break our

  necks. Or—they don’t. As they think appropriate. I tangled with them once. You may recall my recent career.”

  Mundin said, “One thing’s for certain. We’ve got to buzz Hubble, Nelson, and Coett on this. That’s orders; and they’ve been putting up the cash.”

  “Sure,” said Ryan absently. He was staring at the flower vase on his own desk.

  The three money-men weren’t scared; they were petrified.

  Coett said in a rage, “By God, those bastards! Letting us run along like idiots, spending money like water!”

  Nelson wailed, “My Coshocton employees! And this damn law-suit against G.M.L.—it’s already on the calendar! My God, Mundin, can’t there be some mistake?”

  Hubble was almost philosophical, as he could afford to be. He had spent least; if anything, he had picked up some change on increased circulation of his publications. “Better lose some than all,” he said consolingly. “Anyway, I’m still going to take some convincing that a screwy-looking vase and our— ah—breakdown of communications with Green, Charlesworth means that they’re against us. Naturally, when I am convinced, that’s that.”

  Norma Lavin looked thunderstruck. “You’d quit?” she gasped.

  They looked at her. “My dear,” Harry Coett said, “we remember what happened to your father. Don’t you?”

  Mundin said furiously, “Damn it, Coett, this is crazy! They’re just people. They’ve got nothing but money. We’re people and we’ve got money too, plenty of it All right, maybe they’ve got more, but they’re not God Almighty! We can lick them if we have to!” He stopped; Hubble, Nelson, and Coett were wincing at every word.