Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol IX

by Various

  There were a couple of pretty tight elections which, of course, I followed fairly closely. After all, I had my vote, along with everyone else and I didn't want to waste it--even though, really, the political parties were pretty much the same and the elections were more questions of personality than anything else.

  Then one afternoon I went to my broker's office to shift around a few investments according to plans worked out the night before. I gave my instructions. Old man Henry Schnable checked over the notes he had made.

  "Now that's a funny thing," he said.

  "You think I'm making a mistake?"

  "Oh, no. You never have yet, so I don't suppose you are now. The funny thing is that your moves here are almost exactly the same as those another very unusual customer of mine gave me over the phone not an hour ago."

  "Oh?" There was nothing very interesting about that. But, oddly enough, I was very interested.

  "Yes. Miss Julia Reede. Only a child really, 21, but a brilliant girl. Possibly a genius. She comes from some little town up in the mountains. She has been in town here for just the past six months and her investments--well! Now I come to think about it, I believe they have very closely paralleled yours all along the line. Fabulously successful. You advising her?"

  "Never heard of the girl."

  "Well, you really should meet her, Mr. Barth. You two have so much in common, and such lovely investments. Why don't you wait around? Miss Reede is coming in to sign some papers this afternoon. You two should know each other."

  He was right. We should know each other. I could feel it.

  "Well, Henry," I said, "perhaps I will wait. I've got nothing else to do this afternoon."

  That was a lie. I had plenty of things to do, including a date with the captain of a visiting women's track team from Finland. Strangely, my people and I were in full agreement on standing up the chesty Finn, let the javelins fall where they may.

  Henry was surprised too. "You are going to wait for her? Uh. Well now, Mr. Barth, your reputation--ah--that is, she's only a child, you know, from the country."

  The buzzer on his desk sounded. His secretary spoke up on the intercom. "Miss Reede is here."

  Miss Reede came right on in the door without waiting for a further invitation.

  We stood there gaping at each other. She was small, about 5'2" maybe, with short, black, curly hair, surface-cool green eyes with fire underneath, fresh, freckled nose, slim figure. Boyish? No. Not boyish.

  I stared, taking in every little detail. Every little detail was perfect and--well, I can't begin to describe it. That was for me. I could feel it all through me, she was what I had been waiting for, dreaming of.

  I made a quick call on the inside switchboard, determined to fight to override the veto I was sure was coming. I called.

  No answer.

  For the first time, I got no regular answer. Of course, by now I always had a kind of a sense or feeling of what was going on. This time there was a feeling of a celebration, rejoicing, everybody on a holiday. Which was exactly the way I felt as I looked at the girl. No objections? Then why ask questions?

  "Julia," old Henry Schnable was saying, "this is Mr. John Barth. John, this is--John! John, remember----"

  I had reached out and taken the girl's hand. I tucked her arm in mine and she looked up at me with the light, the fire in the green depths swimming toward the surface. I didn't know what she saw in me--neither of us knew then--but the light was there, glowing. We walked together out of Henry Schnable's office.

  "John! Julia, your papers! You have to sign----"

  Business? We had business elsewhere, she and I.

  "Where?" I asked her in the elevator. It was the first word either of us had spoken.

  "My apartment," she said in a voice like a husky torch song. "It's close. The girl who rooms with me is spending the week back home with her folks. The show she was in closed. We can be alone."

  We could. Five minutes in a cab and we were.

  I never experienced anything remotely like it in all my life. I never will again.

  And then there was the time afterwards, and then we knew.

  It was late afternoon, turning to dusk. She lifted up on one elbow and half turned away from me to switch on the bedside lamp. The light came on and I looked down at her, lovingly, admiringly. Idly, I started to ask her, "How did you get those little scars on your leg there and ... those little scars? Like buckshot! Julia! Once, along about ten years ago--you must have been a little girl then--in the mountains--sure. You were hit by a meteor, weren't you??"

  She turned and stared at me. I pointed at my own little pockmark scars.

  "A meteor--about ten years ago!"

  "Oh!"

  "I knew it. You were."

  "'Some damn fool, crazy hunter,' was what Pop said. He thought it really was buckshot. So did I, at first. We all did. Of course about six months later I found out what it was but we--my little people and I--agreed there was no sense in my telling anyone. But you know."

  It was the other ship. There were two in this sector, each controlled to colonize a person. My own group always hoped and believed the other ship might have landed safely. And now they knew.

  We lay there, she and I, and we both checked internal communications. They were confused, not clear and precise as usual. It was a holiday in full swing. The glorious reunion! No one was working. No one was willing to put in a lot of time at the communications center talking to Julia and me. They were too busy talking to each other. I was right. The other ship.

  Of course, since the other ship's landfall had been a little girl then, the early movements of the group had been restricted. Expansion was delayed. She grew up. She came to the city. Then--well, I didn't have to think about that.

  We looked at each other, Julia and I. A doll she was in the first place and a doll she still was. And then on top of that was the feeling of community, of closeness coming from our people. There was a sympathy. The two of us were in the same fix. And it may be that there was a certain sense of jealousy and resentment too--like the feeling, say, between North and South America. How did we feel?

  "I feel like a drink."

  We said it together and laughed. Then we got up and got the drinks. I was glad to find that Julia's absent roommate, an actress, had a pretty fair bar stock.

  We had a drink. We had another. And a third.

  Maybe nobody at all was manning the inner duty stations. Or maybe they were visiting back and forth, both populations in a holiday mood. They figured this was a once in a millennium celebration and, for once, the limits were off. Even alcohol was welcome. That's a line of thought that kills plenty of people every day out on the highway.

  We had a couple more in a reckless toast. I kissed Julia. She kissed me. Then we had some more drinks.

  Naturally it hit us hard; we weren't used to it. But still we didn't stop drinking. The limits were off for the first time. Probably it would never happen again. This was our chance of a lifetime and there was a sort of desperation in it. We kept on drinking.

  "Woosh," I said, finally, "wow. Let's have one more, wha' say? One more them--an' one more those."

  She giggled. "Aroun' an aroun', whoop, whoop! Dizzy. Woozy. Oughta have cup coffee."

  "Naw. Not coffee. Gonna have hangover. Take pill. Apsirin."

  "Can-not! Can-not take pill. Won' lemme. 'Gains talla rules."

  "Can."

  "Can-not."

  "Can. No rules. Rule soff. Can. Apsirin. C'mon."

  Clinging to each other, we stumbled to the bathroom. Pills? The roommate must have been a real hypochondriac. She had rows and batteries of pills. I knocked a bottle off the cabinet shelf. Aspirin? Sure, fancy aspirin. Blue, special. I took a couple.

  "Apsirin. See? Easy."

  Her mouth made a little, red, round "O" of wonder. She took a couple.

  "Gosh! Firs' time I c'd ever take a pill."

  "Good. Have 'nother?"

  It was crazy, sure. The two of us were d
runk. But it was more than that. We were like a couple of wild, irresponsible kids, out of control and running wild through the pill boxes. We reeled around the bathroom, sampling pills and laughing.

  "Here's nice bottla red ones."

  There was a nice bottle of red ones. I fumbled the top off the bottle and spilled the bright red pills bouncing across the white tile bathroom floor. We dropped to our knees after them, after the red pills, the red dots, the red, fiery moons, spinning suddenly, whirling, twirling, racing across the white floor. And then it got dark. Dark, and darker and even the red, red moons faded away.

  Some eons later, light began to come back and the red moons, dim now and pallid, whirled languidly across a white ceiling.

  Someone said, "He's coming out of it, I think."

  "Oh," I said. "Ugh!"

  I didn't feel good. I'd almost forgotten what it was like, but I was sick. Awful. I didn't particularly want to look around but I did, eyes moving rustily in their sockets. There was a nurse and a doctor. They were standing by my bed in what was certainly a hospital.

  "Don't ask," said the doctor. I wasn't going to. I didn't even care where I was, but he told me anyway, "You are in the South Side Hospital, Mr. Barth. You will be all right--which is a wonder, considering. Remarkable stamina! Please tell me, Mr. Barth, what kind of lunatic suicide pact was that?"

  "Suicide pact?"

  "Yes, Mr. Barth. Why couldn't you have settled for just one simple poison, hm-m? The lab has been swearing at you all day."

  "Uh?"

  "Yes. At what we pumped from your stomach. And found in the girl's. Liquor, lots of that--but then, why aspirin? Barbiturates we expect. Roach pellets are not unusual. But aureomycin? Tranquilizers? Bufferin? Vitamin B complex, vitamin C--and, finally, half a dozen highly questionable contraceptive pills? Good Lord, man!"

  "It was an accident. The girl--Julia----?"

  "You are lucky. She wasn't."

  "Dead?"

  "Yes, Mr. Barth. She is dead."

  "Doctor, listen to me! It was an accident, I swear. We didn't know what we were doing. We were, well, celebrating."

  "In the medicine cabinet, Mr. Barth? Queer place to be celebrating! Well, Mr. Barth, you must rest now. You have been through a lot. It was a near thing. The police will be in to see you later."

  With this kindly word the doctor and his silently disapproving nurse filed out of the room.

  The police? Julia, poor Julia--dead.

  Now what? What should I do? I turned, as always, inward for advice and instructions. "Folks! Why didn't you stop me? Why did you let me do it? And now--what shall I do? Answer me, I say. Answer!"

  There was only an emptiness. It was a hollow, aching sensation. It seemed to me I could hear my questions echoing inside me with a lonely sound.

  I was alone. For the first time in nearly ten years, I was truly alone, with no one to turn to.

  They were gone! At last, after all these years, they were gone. I was free again, truly free. It was glorious to be free--wasn't it?

  The sheer joy of the thing brought a tightness to my throat, and I sniffled. I sniffled again. My nose was stuffy. The tightness in my throat grew tighter and became a pain.

  I sneezed.

  Was this joy--or a cold coming on? I shifted uneasily on the hospital bed and scratched at an itch on my left hip. Ouch! It was a pimple. My head ached. My throat hurt. I itched. Julia was dead. The police were coming. I was alone. What should I do?

  "Nurse!" I shouted at the top of my voice. "Nurse, come here. I want to send a wire. Rush. Urgent. To my aunt, Mrs. Helga Barth, the address is in my wallet. Say, 'Helga. Am desperately ill, repeat, ill. Please come at once. I must have help--from you.'"

  She'll come. I know she will. They've got to let her. It was an accident, I swear, and I'm not too old. I'm still in wonderful shape, beautifully kept up.

  But I feel awful.

  Well--how do you suppose New England would feel today, if suddenly all of its inhabitants died?

  * * *

  Contents

  THE JUNKMAKERS

  By Albert Teichner

  I

  Wendell Hart had drifted, rather than plunged, into the underground movement. Later, discussing it with other members of the Savers' Conspiracy, he found they had experienced the same slow, almost casual awakening. His own, though, had come at a more appropriate time, just a few weeks before the Great Ritual Sacrifice.

  The Sacrifice took place only once a decade, on High Holy Day at dawn of the spring equinox. For days prior to it joyous throngs of workers helped assemble old vehicles, machine tools and computers in the public squares, crowning each pile with used, disconnected robots. In the evening of the Day they proudly made their private heaps on the neat green lawns of their homes. These traditionally consisted of household utensils, electric heaters, air conditioners and the family servant.

  The wealthiest--considered particularly blessed--even had two or three automatic servants beyond the public contribution, which they destroyed in private. Their more average neighbors crowded into their gardens for the awesome festivities. The next morning everyone could return to work, renewed by the knowledge that the Festival of Acute Shortages would be with them for months.

  Like everyone else, Wendell had felt his sluggish pulse gaining new life as the time drew nearer.

  A cybernetics engineer and machine tender, he was down to ten hours a week of work. Many others in the luxury-gorged economy had even smaller shares of the purposeful activities that remained. At night he dreamed of the slagger moving from house to house as it burned, melted and then evaporated each group of junked labor-blocking devices. He even had glorious daydreams about it. Walking down the park side of his home block, he was liable to lose all contact with the outside world and peer through the mind's eye alone at the climactic destruction.

  Why, he sometimes wondered, are all these things so necessary to our resurrection?

  Marie had the right answer for him, the one she had learned by rote in early childhood: "All life moves in cycles. Creation and progress must be preceded by destruction. In ancient times that meant we had to destroy each other; but for the past century our inherent need for negative moments has been sublimated--that's the word the news broadcasts use--into proper destruction." His wife smiled. "I'm only giving the moral reason, of course. The practical one's obvious."

  Obvious it was, he had to concede. Men needed to work, not out of economic necessity any more but for the sake of work itself. Still a man had to wonder....

  * * * * *

  He had begun to visit the Public Library Archives, poring over musty references that always led to maddeningly frustrating dead ends. For the past century nothing really informative seemed to have been written on the subject.

  "You must have government authorization," the librarian explained when he asked for older references. Which, naturally, made him add a little suspicion to his already large dose of wonder.

  "You're tampering with something dangerous," Marie warned. "It would make more sense for you to take long-sleep pills until the work cycle picks up."

  "I will get to see those early references," he said through clenched teeth.

  He did.

  All he had needed to say at the library was that his work in sociology required investigation of some twentieth century files. The librarian, a tall, gaunt man, had given him a speculative glance. "Of course, you don't have government clearance.... But we get so few inquiries in sociology that I'm willing to offer a little encouragement." He sighed. "Don't get many inquiries altogether. Most people just can't stand reading. You might be interested to know this--one of the best headings to research in sociology is Conspicuous consumption."

  Then it was Wendell's turn to glance speculatively. The older man, around a healthy hundred and twenty-five, had a look of earnest dedication about him that commanded respect as well as confidence.

  "Conspicuous consumption? An odd combination of words. Never heard of tha
t before. I will look it up."

  The librarian was nervous as he led his visitor into a reference booth. "That's about all the help I can offer. If anything comes up, just ring for me. Burnett's the name. Uh--you won't mention I put you on the file without authorization, I hope."

  "Certainly not."

  As soon as he was alone he typed Conspicuous consumption into the query machine.

  It started grinding out long bibliographical sheets as well as cross-references to Obsolescence, Natural; Obsolescence, Technological; Obsolescence, Planned, plus even odder items such as Waste-making, Art of and Production, Stimulated velocity of. How did such disparate subjects tie in with each other?

  * * * * *

  By the end of the afternoon he began to see, if only dimly, to what the unending stream of words on the viewer pointed.

  For centuries ruling classes had made a habit of conspicuously wasting goods and services that were necessities for the mass of men. It was the final and highest symbol of social power. By the time of Louis XIV the phenomenon had reached its first peak. The second came in the twentieth century when mass production permitted millions to devote their lives to the acquisition and waste of non-essentials. Hart's twenty-second century sensibilities were repelled by the examples given. He shuddered at the thought of such anti-social behavior.

  But a parallel development was more appealingly positive in its implications. As the technological revolution speeded up, devices were superseded as soon as produced. The whole last half of the 1900's was filled with instances where the drawing board kept outstripping the assembly line.

  Hart remembered this last change from early school days but the later, final development was completely new and shocking to him. Advertising had pressured more and more people to replace goods before they wore out with other goods that were, essentially, no improvement on their predecessors! Eventually just the word "NEW" was enough to trigger buying panics.

  There had been growing awareness of what was happening, even sporadic resistance to it by such varied ideologies as Conservative Thrift, Asocial Beatnikism and Radical Inquiry. But, strangely enough, very few people had cared. Indeed, anything that diminished consumption was viewed as dangerously subversive.