Gladiator-At-Law

by Frederik Pohl

  Hubble opened his eyes. “Mundin,” he remonstrated faintly. That was all he could manage to say.

  Ryan said shakily, the jerks in his hands more visible than Mundin had seen them in weeks, “Maybe if one of us went to see them, Coett. Maybe——” his whole body was shaking, but he said, “111 do it myself. At the worst they’ll refuse to see me. That’s happened before, God knows, but I can’t see how we’ll be any worse off——”

  Coett said, “Shut your face, you old fool”

  Hubble, more kindly, said, “You know how it is, Ryan. If we sent anyone but a very top man—God!”

  “I’m not going,” said Nelson very positively.

  “I’m not,” said Harry Coett.

  And Nelson said, “So you see? There’s just too much to lose. Sorry.”

  Norma Lavin, pale and quivering, stood up. “My Daddy invented the bubble-house for——” she began tremblingly, then caught herself. “No! The hell with that. Leaving my Daddy out of this, one-quarter of G.M.L. Homes belongs to Don and myself. It’s ours, understand? Ours! Not yours or Green, Charlesworth’s. If you yellow bastards want out, you can have out. We’re sticking, and I can tell you right now we’re sticking until we drop dead, or hell freezes over, or we win—in descending order of probability. It isn’t just money, you know. We got along fine on no money. We can do it again. It’s people, Coett! 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 make some changes. You hear me?”

  They heard her, and that was the ball game. Seven people

  were shouting at once, even old Ryan: “—no better than a

  Republican, young lady!” Nelson was howling; and “For

  . God’s sake, let her talk!” screamed Mundin; and Coett was

  spouting endless obscenities.

  And the door opened. Mishal, the guide, stared in, looking upset. “Visitor,” he got out, and disappeared.

  “Oh, hell,” said Mundin in the sudden silence, starting toward the door, “I told those idiots—oh, it’s you!” He looked irritatedly at the figure of William Choate IV, now entering. “Hello, Willie. Look, I’m awfully busy right now.”

  Willie Choate’s lower lip was trembling. “Hello, old man,” he said dismally. “I have a—uh—message for you.”

  “Later, Willie. Please.” Mundin made pushing motions.

  Willie stood his ground. “Here.”

  He handed Mundin a square white envelope. Mundin, torn between annoyance and hysteria, opened it and glanced absently at the little white card inside.

  Then he glanced at it again.

  Then he stared at it until Coett came to life and leaped

  forward to take it out of his hand. It said in crabbed handwriting:

  Messrs. Green, Charlesworth

  request the appearance

  of Mr. Charles Mundin

  and Miss Norma Lavin

  when convenient

  It was a long ride.

  Willie apologetically took out a magazine as soon as they settled down in the car. “You know what Great-Great-Granddaddy Rufus said, Charles. ‘Happy is he who has laid up hi his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love for reading.’ I always like to——”

  “Sure, Willie,” said Mundin. “Look, what’s all this?”

  Willie smiled regretfully. “Of course,” he explained, “he wasn’t my real Great-Great-Granddaddy; Granpap just kind of took that name when he bought into the firm. It’s just a way of——”

  Mundin said urgently, “Willie, please. Remember how it was in law school?”

  Willie seemed about to cry. “Gee, Charles! What can I say?”

  “You can tell me what this is all about!”

  Willie looked at Mundin. Then he looked all around him, at Norma, at the fittings of the car. Then he looked at Mundin again. The implication was unmistakable.

  “At least tell me what your connection is,” Mundin begged.

  “Gee, Charles!” But the answer to that one, at least, was plain, written in those soft eow’s eyes, spelled out in that trembling lip. Willie was what God had made him to be: an errand boy, and doubtless knew little more than Mundin about what, why, or wherefore. Mundin gave up and let Willie read his magazine, while he stared morosely at the crumbled city they were driving through.

  The building smelled old. Mundin and Norma and Willie stepped into a creaking elevator and slowly went up fifty floors. A long walk, and then another elevator, even smaller, even creakier.

  Then a small room with a hard bench. Willie left them there; all he said was “See you.”

  Then—waiting. An hour, then several hours. They didnt talk.

  Mundin thought he was going to flip.

  Then he thought that that was what Green, Charlesworth wanted him to think, and got a grip on himself.

  And by and by a small, quiet man came and led them into another room.

  There was no place to sit, and no place for Mundin to hang his coat. Mundin draped his coat over his arm, and stood, staring back Into the unblinking eyes of the man seated at the desk. He was an imposing figure of a man, lean-featured, dark-haired, temples shot with silver. He leaned forward, comfortably appraising; his chin was in one cupped hand, the fingers covering his lips. His eyes followed Mundin, and his chest rhythmically rose and fell; otherwise he Was stock-still.

  Mundin cleared his throat. “Mr.—ah—Green?” he inquired.

  The man said emotionlessly, “We despise you, Mr. Mundin. We are going to destroy you.”

  Mundin cried, “Why?”

  “You are Rocking the Boat, Mundin,” the man said through his fingers, the piercing eyes locked with Mundin’s own.

  Mundin cleared his throat “Look, Mr. Green—you are Mr. Green?”

  “You are Our Enemy, Mundin.”

  “Now, wait a minute!” Mundin took a deep breath. Please, he silently begged his adrenal gland. Gently! he ordered the pounding sensation hi his skull. He, said temperately, “I’m sure we can get together, Mr.—sir. After all, we’re not greedy.”

  The figure said steadily, “Men Like You would Ruin the World if we let them. We wonV

  Mundin swept his eyes hopelessly around the room. This man was obviously mad; someone else, anyone else—— But there was no one. Barring the desk and the man, there was nothing in the room but a pair of milky, glassy cabinets and Mundin and the girl. He said, “Look, did you call me down here just to insult me?”

  “You put your Fingers hi the Buzz-Saw, Mundin. They will be Lopped Off.”

  “Insane,” Norma murmured faintly.

  “Dammittohell!” Mundin yelled. He hurled his coat violently to the floor, but it did nothing to calm him. “If you’re crazy say so and let me get out of here! I never came across such blithering idiocy in my Me!”

  He stopped in the middle of a beginning tirade; stopped short.

  The man wasn’t looking at him any more. The same unblinking and unwavering gaze that had been on Mundin was now piercingly directed at the coat on the floor. To the coat the motionless man said, “We brought you here, Mundin, to See Infamy with Our Own Eyes. Now we have seen it and we will Blot It Out.” And then, startlingly, shrilly, “Hee!”

  Mundin swallowed and stepped gingerly forward. Three paces and he was at the desk, leaning over, looking at what should be the neatly tailored trousers of the man’s modest suit.

  The personnel of Green, Charlesworth were not wearing trousers this year. The personnel of Green, Charlesworth were wearing bronze pedestals with thick black cables snaking out of them, and brass nameplates that read:

  WESTERN ELECTRIC SLEEPLESS RECEPTIONIST

  115 Volt A.C. Only

  “Hee!” shrilled the motionless lips, just by Mundin’s ear. “That’s far enough, Mundin. You were right, I suppose, Mrs. Green.”

  Mundin leaped back as though the 115 volts of A.C. had passed through his t
onsils. A flicker of light caught his eye; the two milky glass cabinets had lighted up. He looked, peripherally aware that Norma had crumpled beside him.

  He wished he hadn’t

  The contents of the cabinets were: Green and Charlesworth. Green, an incredibly, impossibly ancient dumpy-looking, hairless female. Charlesworth, an incredibly, impossibly ancient string-bean-looking, hairless male. Mercifully, the lights flickered out.

  Another voice said, but from the same motionless lips, “Can we kill him, Mr. Charlesworth?”

  “I think not, Mrs. Green,” the Sleepless Receptionist answered itself in the first voice.

  Mundin said forcefully, “Now, wait a minute.” It was pure reflex. He came to the end of the sentence, and stopped.

  The female voice said sadly, “Perhaps he will commit suicide, Mr. Charlesworth. Tell him what he is up against.”

  “He knows what he is up against, Mrs. Green. Don’t you, Mundin?”

  Mundin nodded. He was obsessed by the Sleepless Receptionist’s eyes, now piercingly aimed at him again—attracted, perhaps, by the movement.

  “Tell him!” shrieked Mrs. Green. ‘Tell him about that girl! Tell him what well do to her!”

  “A Daughter of Evil,” the voice said mechanically. “She wants to take G.M.L. away from us.”

  Mundin was galvanized. “Oh, no!” he cried. “Not you! Just Arnold and his crowd!”

  “Are Our Fingers Us?” the voice demanded. “Are Our Arms and Legs Us? Arnold is Us!”

  The female voice piped, “The girl, Mr. Charlesworth. The girl!”

  “Painted courtesan,” observed the male voice. “She wants to free the slaves, she says. Talks about Mr. Lincoln!”

  “We Fixed Mr. Lincoln’s Wagon, Mr. Charlesworth,” chortled the female voice.

  “We did, Mrs. Green. And we will Fix Her Wagon too.”

  Mundin, thinking dazedly that he should have been more careful where he put Ryan’s yen pox, it was stupid of him to get it mixed up with his vitamin pills, said feebly, “Are you that old?”

  “Are we that old, Mrs. Green?” asked the male voice.

  “Are we!” shrilled the female. “Tell him! Tell him about the girl!”

  “Perhaps not now, Mrs. Green. Perhaps later. When we have softened them up. You must go now, Mundin.”

  Mundin automatically picked up his coat and helped Norma to her feet. He turned dazedly to the door. Halfway he stopped, staring at the milky glass. Glass, he thought. Glass, and quivering, moving corpses inside, that a breath of air might——

  ‘Try it, Mundin,” challenged the voice. “We wanted to see if you would try it.”

  Mundin thought, and decided against it

  ‘Too bad,” said the voice of Charlesworth. “We hate you, Mundin. You said we were not God Almighty.” “Atheist!” hissed the voice of Mrs. Green.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  back in ryan’s office Mundin said, lying, “It wasn’t so bad.”

  Ryan had taken advantage of their absence to get coked to the eyebrows. He said dreamily, “Think of them. Hundreds of years old. You know what H. G. Wells said around 1940? ‘A frightful queerness is coming into life.’ Nothing went right, no matter what you did. Green, Charlesworth must have been hitting their stride about then. You know what Jonathan Swift called Green, Charlesworth? Struldbrugs. Only people were on to them, then. Gulliver said they had a law, no Straldbrug could keep his money after he was a hundred. Think of them. Hundreds and hundreds of years old, hundreds and hundreds and hun——”

  Don Lavin touched his shoulder and he stopped. Harry Coett was smiling affably at his thumbnail. He started and said gently, “How about a drink?”

  Mundin poured it for bom, pretending not to notice that the big man was weeping.

  “We must proceed to an orderly liquidation,” said Nelson, his eyes roving from one corner to another. “Naturally any further action along our previous lines is out of the question.”

  Norma appeared at the door. Mundin had left her with the company nurse; but she had obviously pulled herself completely together. “Is it all settled by now?” she demanded grimly.

  Mundin said, “Everybody seems to be in agreement.” He felt weighted down by a tremendous apathy. Green, Charlesworth. They spoke, and the Titans lay down to die. Four men who aggregated eight times his age, thirty times his experience—you couldn’t buck it.

  “An orderly liquidation,” nodded Nelson. “We’ll take our licking. Of course. Under the circumstances——”

  Norma cut in, “Do you want to fold?”

  Coett rubbed his face. “Is there any question?” he asked.

  “You mean you do. All right. Who else?”

  Nelson said stiffly, “Norma, are you out of your mind?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe I am. You tell me. I’ll tell you what I’m thinking, and you let me know if it’s crazy. I’m thinking that Green, Charlesworth are a couple of old imbeciles. I don’t know if they’ve lived a hundred years or a thousand. I don’t care. I suppose there’s no reason a man can’t live a long time, if he’s got plenty of money to spend on medicine; and I suppose that a man who pays the doctors to keep him going, no matter what, has plenty of chances to line up money. … I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. They’re human. I saw them, and, believe me, they’re human—old; feeble; half insane. At least half. What have they got?”

  Ryan, nodding his head to an inner music, chirped, “Money.” He smiled.

  “Money. So they’ve got it. As Mundin pointed out, so have we. Maybe they’ll lick us, but by God they can’t bluff us. I’m speaking just for me—I won’t deny they can do anything they like to me, but they’ll have to do it before I give up. Hear?”

  Mundin said quickly, “Me too!”

  Coett said reasonably, “Good-by.”

  He stood up, bowed, and headed for the door. Norma, suddenly shaking, said, “Damn you!” She pushed blindly past him.

  Coett paused and shook his head. “Crazy,” he said.

  And in a moment she was back, holding a small celadon vase with blue shoulder-band and medallions. A couple of roses and small ferns were dangling limply from its neck.

  Norma dumped the flowers and yelled to the vase, “I don’t give a damn what you do, Green, Charlesworth! The bubble-house is going to be used the way my father planned it! If you people get in the way you’re going out the window—and so are any of my yellow-bellied colleagues who don’t back me up!”

  The vase hummed and shattered in her hands. A flying chip of glass plowed a shallow, bloody furrow in her cheek. Among

  the shards on the carpet were tiny lumps of metal and crystal that glowed white-hot, fused and were gone. Mundin stamped out the dozen tiny fires on the rug, conscious of screams in the offices outside.

  There was pandemonium for ten minutes. The damnedest things were exploding—a pen in Coett’s jacket, the stockroom air-conditioner switch, a polarimeter in the lab, the ‘in’ basket on Ryan’s desk. But, except for hysteria among the women, there was no damage. The small fires were easily extinguished.

  Coett, dabbing at the scorched mess that was left of his jacket, bellowed at Norma, “You and your screwball schemes. Upset the contract-rental plan, will you? We’re slave-drivers, are we? You cheap——”

  He was hardly making sense. Mundin and Don started for him at the same time. Mundin was closer; he won the honor of knocking him down.

  Nelson picked Coett up and dusted off the carbon from the charred rug. “Blood-pressure, Harry,” he advised the older man. “Don’t worry. We’ll get these skunks.”

  Hubble was gnawing his nails. He said slowly, “You know, I was brought up to be a sensible, dollar-fearing young man, and Green, Charlesworth have more dollars than anybody else around… . You know—for God’s sake, don’t laugh at me. But I’m sticking, as long as my nerve holds out.”

  Norma flung her arms around him and kissed him. Charles said, “Hey, cut that——” and then stopped, as he realized he had no right to the sense o
f outrage which had suddenly overwhelmed him. The other two financiers looked scandalized.

  “Traitor,” Nelson said incredulously. “Well, all right. Get the hell out of this office—all of you lunatics. If I’d ever dreamed——”

  “Suppose,” Ryan told them gently, “you get out. Think it over. If you leave, you’re hi the clear—on paper at least. But we hold the lease; and you will kindly blow before we call the cops.”

  “Blood-pressure, Harry!” Nelson said sharply to Coett.

  They left, reducing the Big Seven to a Big Five—and Norvell Bligh, who truculently demandeu to be filled in.

  When he had been, he looked around at the glum faces and

  laughed. “Cheer up,” he said. “Worse things happen in Belly Rave.”

  “We’ll find out, no doubt,” Mundin said numbly.

  Norvell patted him on the shoulder. “Exactly,” he nodded. “Exactly, Charles; that’s the worst that can happen to you. And I’ve been there, folks. Oh, it’s hell, no doubt about it. But—what isn’t?”

  Norma said imploringly, “Charles, listen to him. He’s right. The world’s in jail, Charles, and my father put it there, trying to make things nice. I’m almost glad he’s dead, just so he can’t see what his bubble-house did to the world. Nero never had a weapon like the bubble-house! And think of it in the hands of people like Mrs. Green and Mr. Charlesworth!”

  Mundin said, breathing heavily, “Am I to understand that all you ask of an attorney is that he turn the world upside-down for you?”

  Norvie Bligh snapped, “Come off it, Charlie!” He advanced almost menacingly on the lawyer, staring up into the bigger man’s eyes. He said, “I’ve got a kid coming. I want him to have a chance at real life—not contract slavery. Oh, if it’s money you want, we’ll make money. G.M.L. is worth lots Of money, and as I see it our first move is to take over G.M.L. But that’s only the beginning!”

  His cocksure confidence made something in the bridge of Mundin’s nose tickle; he called it a beginning laugh, and suppressed it. But—Norvie Bligh, five-feet-four and without two nickels in his pocket, saying, “Let’s take over G.M.L.—fourteen billion dollars and a nation of resources… .”