by Fritz Leiber
“But that’s detestable,” said Whitlow righteously, as if seizing any opportunity to maintain resentment. “In my world there are soldiers, but at least we don’t try to gild the dungheap by paying them high wages.”
“What?” Saturnly asked. “You mean in your world an operative doesn’t get as much as a factory hand? Or doesn’t anyone make any money?”
“No,” Whitlow replied angrily, “a factory worker is well paid. We have wage scales governing such things.”
“But that’s terrible,” said Saturnly. He seemed shocked. “A front-liner has to have all kinds of skills, and besides, it’s dangerous work, as dangerous as mining—maybe more—maybe almost as risky as deep-sea diving.”
Whitlow wilted. He looked dazed. “Then those men that rushed in here a while back—they really were talking about a strike by front-line operatives?”
“Sure.”
“But how can you allow such a thing? Surely it will enable the enemy—” Whitlow looked up, his eyes widening. “Who is your enemy?”
“Right now it is the Fatherland Cartel,” Saturnly replied breezily. “You needn’t worry, Mr. Whitlow—it’s just a little sit-down strike the boys are having. They’ll hold the line if they have to. The only bad thing is that it’ll slow up the big push—for a while,” he added cryptically.
“Then you’re actually engaged in fighting a war—a real war? It’s a business—but at the same time it’s war?”
“Of course, Mr. Whitlow,” Saturnly replied patiently. “We try to defend our customers without fighting, but if we have to, we fight. Coldefinc always delivers.”
“And that war is like any other war? Battles, invasions, encirclement and annihilation of the enemy army?”
“Liquidation of his plant,” Saturnly corrected. “Though of course we’re all businessmen and try to avoid useless waste.” He airily waved a hand. “Oh, yes, those things happen, but they aren’t the really important part of the war. The important part is the underlying financial situation.”
“Yes?” A sudden new interest lighted Whitlow’s eyes. Neddar noted it, and his tense watchfulness was broken so far as his fingers were concerned. He lightwrote, “Concentrate on this angle. You’re going great. Just don’t get excited.”
Saturnly leaned forward, beaming. “Mr. Whitlow, I know I can trust you. You’re not of this world, and what’s happening in it doesn’t mean anything to you.” He paused. “Mr. Whitlow, it’s a dead secret, but in a few days Coldefinc will have the Fatherland Cartel by the tail. Through disguised holding companies in neutral countries we’ve been buying up stock in the component organizations of the cartel. The big push is mainly to scare a few people into letting go their shares. Pretty soon we’ll have more than fifty per cent, and then, Mr. Whitlow, this war will be over like that.” He snapped his fingers.
Whitlow goggled. “You mean all you have to do is to get a controlling interest in the enemy organization?”
“Sure.”
“And the enemy will submit to it?”
“What else can they do? Business is business.”
“And you won’t have to invade or annihilate them? Untold killing and destruction will be avoided? You won’t lose many of your operatives?”
Saturnly shrugged. “Not more than in normal times.”
“Mr. Saturnly!” Whitlow stood up. The new interest had grown to a consuming, fanatic flame. “I have a proposal to make to you. Could you do that sort of thing for my world?” He held out his hand as if he were giving it to Saturnly.
“Um-m-m.” Saturnly leaned back, frowning. Neddar rejoiced at the way he masked his triumph with an air of reluctance. “I’d have to think it over. It’s a big proposition, Mr. Whitlow.”
“I’d provide the means of entry,” the pacifist continued rapidly. “You could bring across whatever you’d need in the way of operatives and… er… plant.”
“I dunno,” said Saturnly dubiously. “Is there any business at all in your world, or does government run everything? If there isn’t, it’ll be pretty hard for us to get an in.”
“Oh, there’s business, all right,” Whitlow reassured him. “Though at present somewhat submerged.”
“And are there any neutral countries? Or are they all in the war?”
“There are still a few neutrals.”
Saturnly thought. Whitlow hung on his reactions.
“Well, we’d have to go slow at first,” Saturnly finally said ruminatively. “There’d be the matter of sales research, sizing up likely prospects, setting up pioneer offices, and also incorporating firms to front for us—that’s where the neutral countries would come in handy.” He began to warm up. “Then we build up plant and personnel—the latter mixed, from both worlds. Then feeler campaigns, trial balloons, preliminary advertising and promotion. With all that set, we really start in.” He turned to Whitlow. “Of course, if we get that far, there’s no doubt of our ultimate success, because we’ll be all business and they’ll be just maybe half business and half government—an awful jumble.”
Whitlow nodded eagerly. Neddar lightwrote: “You’ve got him, J.S.!”
Saturnly laid his hand authoritatively on the table. “First we sell the neutral countries—they’ll want protection the worst way, because they won’t know which side is going to jump them first. At the same time we start hiring out to do small jobs for the warring nations—we pose as kind of war-industrial specialists. Maybe the neutral countries get invaded and we have a chance to show our stuff. Maybe the small jobs grow into big ones. Maybe both.” He was really warmed up now. “Either way, our stocks boom. We put in more plant, increase personnel, start a major sales campaign. People begin to have more confidence in us than in their government armies. We pick one of the big powers—whichever is slipping, it doesn’t matter which—and buy it out. The other side—we outorganize ‘em, outbuy ‘em, hit ‘em hard on both the financial and operational fronts. And then—”
The phone purred. Automatically, Saturnly snatched it up and bawled into it, “Yes?” A wait, while Whitlow swayed forward in palefaced, hypnotized eagerness. Then in a roar, “What do you mean bothering me with trifles like the strike being called off when I’m fixed with something important?” Suddenly a wicked smile fattened his face. “Oh, it’s you, Dulger? You don’t like me sending whisky to those front-liners? Well, what would you want if you were out there in all that mud?” From beyond the walls, making them tremble faintly, came suddenly a many-voiced rumbling. It kept on. “Hear that, Dulger? It’s the big push. Oh, you’re going to indict me for corrupting my workers? Good. Good! Maybe some day when you start a real man he-man’s union, I’ll join it.”
He turned back. His lips formed, “And then—”
But there had been time for his previous words to ferment in Whitlow’s emotion-drunk soul. The pacifist’s face was a mask of fanatic ecstasy, and his voice was hoarsely vibrant against the grumbling guns as he finished for him: “And then, Mr. Saturnly, will come the millennium to which the nobler side of mankind has always aspired, that Utopia of perfect and gentle brotherhood which your world will so soon attain and, which you will ultimately bring to mine, that purified existence from which all hatred and strife, all greed and war, have been forever banished. I refer, Mr. Saturnly, to that most precious of all blessings—peace.”
“WHAT!” Slowly Saturnly came to his feet, crouching bearlike. Slowly his bulging neck suffused with red, with purple. In vain Neddar plucked, tugged, jerked at his sleeve, desperately lightwrote: “Don’t, J.S. Don’t! DON’T!” resorted to even more drastic efforts to shut him up. He might as well have tried to quiet a god. In the rapidly shifting excitement, the truth-telling mechanism buried deep in Saturnly had been set in motion and now could no more be stopped than if Saturnly had been Juggernaut’s car.
“You… you talk to John Saturnly of PEACE when you know War is his business?” He loomed over the astounded pacifist like a prehistoric idol. His voice boomed from the walls. “You’d have me wreck a worl
d organization that I built up with these hands? You’d have me throw my customers to the dogs? Bankrupt my stockholders? Fire millions of loyal employees out into the world where they would drift around unemployed and help start a real mess? No, Mr. Whitlow, I’ll gladly help you with your proposition, but you must understand that if Coldefinc tackles your world, it will be war from then on—forever!” He sucked up a great breath and drew himself erect. “Maybe, Mr. Whitlow, you didn’t read the motto over the door when you came in. ‘When there are bigger wars, Coldefinc will wage them!’ “
The pacifist shrank back in horror, shock, and fear.
“I… you—” he mumbled brokenly. Then it all came out in a whimpering rush. “I won’t have anything to do with you, you fiend!”
“Oh, yes, you will!” Saturnly came around the table, crouching. “You’re going to show us how to cross time.” He kept coming. The pacifist was wedged in a corner and fumbling with his coat. “We’ve been nice to you, Mr. Whitlow, but now that’s over. I don’t like people who try to go back on me.” Whitlow’s hands came out with what looked like a small gray egg. He fingered it in a panicky rhythm, and his face went blank as if he were desperately trying to concentrate on some thought. Saturnly closed in. “We’re going to have your secret, Mr. Whitlow, whether you get anything for it or not.” Then, suddenly, “Stop him, Neddar! Stop him! That way! No, that way!”
Both men dove, Saturnly with a bearlike lunge, Neddar with an incredibly pantherlike leap. They clutched air, scrambled up, looked around. Mr. Whitlow was gone.
For a long while nothing was said or done. Then, slowly, heavily, Saturnly walked back to the desk and sat down and pressed his face in his hands.
“He faded,” said Neddar in a voice that likewise faded. “He got misty and went curving off… at an increasing tangent… toward an alternate future—”
Then his rapierlike anger flashed out. His eyes seemed to spark and his black beard to crackle with the electricity of it. He whirled on Saturnly.
“You big, honest, imbecile! How you ever got this far, even with me to do your conniving for you, I don’t know. You had him sold. We had worlds within our grasp, worlds ripe for exploitation and conquest, worlds for sale at bargain prices, and you had to go sincere and scare him off—forever. Oh, you bumbling ape!”
“I know.” Saturnly pressed his face harder. Neddar twisted his features in one last bitter grimace, then tossed it off, sighed, and almost smiled.
Saturnly peeped at him guiltily between thick fingers.
“You know, Neddy,” he said softly, “maybe in a way it’s just as well this didn’t go any farther. You know how I think—always while I’m doing something else. Well, while I was selling this guy I was thinking of something very different. You know, Neddy, our world is maybe kind of peculiar. We rate business and money and financial things above everything. They’re our ultimates. If something’s decided in a business way, it never occurs to us to try to go around it or look for any other answer. Maybe it isn’t that way in the other worlds. I know it’s hard to imagine, but maybe they wouldn’t think of business as the ultimate. Maybe the people in those other words are sort of different… sort of crazy—” His voice changed, took on a note almost of relief, as he finished, “At least, if they’re anything like that Whitlow guy!”
DAY DARK, NIGHT BRIGHT
He woke, feeling very refreshed and thansig, and instantly groped for the black plastic far-caller and punched the digits for Time of Day.
The firm, contralto voice came after the second ring. “The time is six forty-six and twenty seconds.” Why did they use their females on so many jobs? Cheaper, he supposed. A very grasping planet, indeed.
Light filtered through the cheap drapes of his one window. Careless when alone, he wriggled to his feet, not bothering to feign bones and joints, and pulled wide the drapes. It was an overcast morning, the low clouds thick. Good! He detested bright Sol with its overdose of ultraviolet radiations. Why couldn’t they have seven dull, clustered suns—gentle hydrogen-burning furnaces—as he had at home? And, of course, no (his thoughts hesitated at the horrible word) night.
He congratulated himself on picking the coastal, water-tempered city of San Francisco for his base. Only they didn’t have nearly as much fog as he desired and they advertised. And they did have smog. Liars, liars, liars—they deserved extinction. For dishonesty as well as for their (again the hesitation) night.
His three-orbed gaze—alone, he opened the third one, wrinkle-sealed, in his forehead—lighted automatically on the half-drunk bottle of rum on top of his midget refrigerator. It was good this planet had that liquid tranquilizing drug. How he hated solids! Solid food, to be chewed by his false teeth—another horror. But fortunately this rum (how queer to talk with sounds instead of thoughts) was almost as good as thansiger for waiting out, unconscious, the horrible night. Too bad he had run out of his supply of thansiger, but this had been an unusually long job. To be lost in complete dark—that was horrible and (but not quite) unimaginable. The seventh inner circle of Hell, as they called the place here.
For a moment his mind writhed back to his phone call. What a stupid species!—they really did deserve to be exterminated. They gave him Time of Day (though not Time of Night, thanks to Aahotis!) But they never told you where you were, or which day of the month and week, and which year according to their Christ-reckoning… and one other detail which he for the moment forgot.
The clouds were thickening overhead. Good, good! He would have a comfortable working day by his calculations. It was getting beautifully cool and dark.
He took the elevator downstairs from his sixth storey. The street was strangely empty. He crossed it at an economizing oblique angle. He picked up at the bakery two plastic cups of coffee and two Danish. They were good starch when you’d scraped the almonds off and dug the jam out. But the bakery’s trays were only half-filled and there were few Earthans about—sort of odd. He returned to his tiny apartment.
It was getting still darker. Good, good! Dull days were what he loved most—and all too infrequent on this planet. A lovely gloomy day—almost like Sartis, really. He got busy on the telephone. Quite a long job, but this was The Day. His careful preparations were paying off. He called Van Sittart about California and the whole West Coast. Everything ready for the earthquake. He called Siberia. Yes, it was all set to slide off into the Pacific and Arctic Oceans. India?—a famine unexperienced in her long history of famines. Africa?—suicide by inter-tribal warfare. Europe? (or, as the Americans sounded it, Yurrop)—atom-war, which would take care of the middle and eastern parts of the USA as well. The rest of the World (as they called it), well, fallout would do it. And so on, and so on (to get in the Polynesians, etc.) His listeners would let loose doom as soon as he called them a second time.
It was looking still darker outside his window. Good, good, good! A really Sartis day! Oh, how lovely to destroy a whole planet! Or maybe nine of them if his Sol-nova trick really worked.
He hesitated a minute there. Destroy! Destroy? He wouldn’t like to have his wives and cousins destroyed on his home planet, no matter what evil they had done.
Five minutes to explosion. He paced about, then walked to the window, losing his way half-way. But he got there.
He had forgotten that these Earthans did not work on the twenty-four hour principal, but divided each day (quite unreasonably) into twelve hours day and twelve hours…
… NIGHT.
And so he died.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Time Fighter
Femmequin 973
Night Passage
Moon Duel
Later Than You Think
Mirror
The 64-Square Madhouse
All the Weed in the World
The Mutant’s Brother
The Man Who Was Married to Space and Time
Thought
Crystal Prison
Bullet With
His Name
Success
To Make a Roman Holiday
Bread Overhead
The Reward
Taboo
Business of Killing
Day Dark, Night Bright
