The Age of the Pussyfoot

by Pohl Frederik

  That night they ate their dinner in a restaurant. Over Whitlow’s protests, Forrester insisted on standing treat.

  The restaurant was a hangout for Forgotten Men—and Forgotten Women. It was something like a private home, something like an Automat. You had full joymaker service in it, but in order to make it work you had to feed money into a slot. The prices caused Forrester’s scalp to prickle, but he reassured himself that he was just learning the ropes and experience was worth paying for; so at Whitlow’s suggestion they started with a squirt of joy apiece (fifty dollars a shot), then cocktails (forty), then a clear, filling soup (twenty-five), then more drinks, and about then Forrester began to lose count. He remembered something that looked like meat but wasn’t—it seemed to be coated with a sort of vanilla fudge, although it was bloody inside—and then they began drinking in earnest.

  They were not alone. The place was crowded. Whitlow seemed to know everyone there, an assembly that hailed from six centuries, seven continents, and one or two extraterrestrial planets and moons.

  There was a huge red-faced man named Kevin O’Rourke na Solis Lacis, who gave Forrester a shock until they exchanged names, for he resembled Heinzie the Assassin. The reason was good, when Forrester found it out: they were both Martians. O’Rourke, however, was a poet. As a matter of principle, he refused to accept the bribes of what he called the iron-headed state. Probing, Forrester discovered that he was talking about foundation grants, which were available to poets in almost any quantity; but O’Rourke spurned them all. He had been briefly involved with the Ned Lud Society—but they were as bad as the iron-heads, he declared. All Earth was a disaster area. Let the Sirians take it away! “So why don’t you go back to Mars?” Forrester inquired, politely enough; but the Martian took it as an insult, glowered, and lumbered away across the room.

  “Don’ worry ‘bout heem,” said the pretty little dark girl who had somehow come to be leaning against Forrester’s shoulder, helping him drink his drink. “He be back. Certainement.”

  There was a certain United Nations quality to the gathering, Forrester was discovering. Apart from a few oddballs like the Martian poet, the bulk of the Forgotten Men seemed to come from nearly his own time. Had the hardest time fitting in, he supposed—and the hardest time earning money.

  But it was not always that. The tiny dark girl, for instance, had originally been a ballet dancer from Czechoslovakia, shot as a Chinese Bolshevik counter-revolutionary in 1991, frozen at great peril by the Khrushchevite underground, revived, killed seven times since in one way or another, and revived each time. Her reasons for hiding out with the Forgotten Men had nothing to do with money—she was loaded, Whitlow whispered; had made a collection of gold and gems from admirers in a dozen countries, over the centuries, and owned them with their pyramiding value now. But one of her assassinations had produced some cell changes in the brain, and now she awoke each time convinced that Stalinist agents lurked abroad, waiting for her. She did not exactly fear them. She objected to the idea of being killed somewhat as Forrester, in the old days, had objected to going to the dentist: you didn’t really worry about it, but you were pretty sure it would be unpleasant. As someone who had seen each of seven centuries, Forrester found her fascinating—and she was beautiful as well. But she quickly became so drunk that her reminiscences stopped making sense.

  He got up for another drink and found himself lurching slightly. Only slightly, he was sure, but somehow, when he got the drink, it spilled all over a lean, old, nearly bald man, who grinned and nodded and said, “Tenga dura, signore! E precioso!”

  “You’re right,” said Forrester, and sat down beside him. Whitlow had pointed him out as they entered, as a sort of curiosity; he had actually been born before Forrester himself. He had been a hundred and seven years old when, in 1988, he had died of an embolism. The embolism could have been repaired at once, but the ravages of age could not. Not then. After six centuries in the dreamless, liquid-helium sleep, his original stake had multiplied to the point where the trustees of the freezer had decided to revive him; but there had been only money enough to give him operational youth. Not much had been done cosmetically; and it had taken everything he had. “I bet you’ve had an interesting life,” Forrester told him solemnly, finishing what remained in his glass.

  The man gave him a grave nod. “Signore,” he said, “durante la vita mia prima del morte, era un uomo grande! Nel tempo del Duce—ah! Un maggiore del esercito, io, e dappertutto non mi dispiacciono le donne!”

  Whitlow patted the old man on the shoulder and led Forrester away. “Forebrain damage,” he whispered.

  “But he was talking in Italian.”

  “Sure, Chuck. He can’t learn raht, that’s what he’s doing here. You know, they ain’t many jobs for a fella that can’t talk lahk the rest of us.”

  The Martian lurched past them, his head twisted sidewise toward them. Whether he had been listening or not Forrester could not say, but he was declaiming, “Talk like de rest. Live like de rest. Live for de state, for de state knows what’s best.”

  The whole party was coming to life, thought Forrester, flushed and happy. A small man in a green ruff—it seemed to be an imitation of the Sirian coloration—cried, “And what’s best? Adolf Berle asked it half a millennium ago: ‘What does a corporation want?’ And the state has become a corporation!”

  The ballet dancer hiccoughed and opened glazed and angry eyes. “Stalinist!” she hissed, then returned to sleep; and Forrester dug deep for hundred-dollar bills and fed them to the joymaker slots for more drinks all around.

  Forrester was perfectly aware that he was rapidly depleting his last thousand dollars. In a way, it pleased him. He was drunk enough, euphoric enough, to let tomorrow face tomorrow’s fears. However badly the next day began, it could not be worse than this one had been. He saw advantages even in being a Forgotten Man: you could spend yourself into pennilessness, but not into bankruptcy; you could never go into debt, since you had no credit to begin with. Wise Tars Tarkas! Excellent kids, to have found him such fine advice. “Eat!” he cried, shaking off Whitlow’s cautionary whisper. “Drink! Be merry! For tomorrow we die, again!”

  “Domani morire!” shrilled the old Italian, uptilting his glass of heaven-knows-how-costly grappa that Forrester had provided for him, and Forrester returned the toast.

  “Listen, Chuck,” said Whitlow uneasily. “You better take it slow. We don’t get a mark lahk that space fella every day.”

  “Whit, shut up. Don’t be a grandma, will you?”

  “Well, it’s your money. But don’t blame me if you’re broke again tomorrow.”

  Forrester smiled and said clearly, “You make me sick.”

  “Now, cut it out raht there!” blazed Whitlow. “Whur’d you be if it wasn’t for me? God damn, Ah don’t have to take this kind of—”

  But the Martian with the Irish name interrupted them. “Hey, you fellows! Dat’s enough, dere. You got to buy drinks yet.” As Whitlow cooled off, Forrester turned to inspect him; something had been on his mind.

  “You,” he said. “How come you talk like that?”

  “Like what, ‘like dat’? You tink dere’s someting funny about de way I talk?”

  “Yeah, matter of fact. Why?”

  But something had occurred to the Martian. He snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute! Forrester, is dat what you said your name was?”

  “That’s right. But we’re talking about you—”

  “You should learn not to interrupt dat way,” reproved Kevin O’Rourke na Solis Lacis. “What I want to tell you is dis. Dere’s a Sirian been around looking for you.”

  “Sirian? One of the green fellows?” Fuzzily Forrester tried to concentrate, but it was not much fun. “You mean S Four?”

  “How de hell would I know his number? He came around in one of dem pressure-cloaks, but I could tell he was a Sirian. I saw plenty of dem.”

  “Probably wants to sue me for breach of contract,” Forrester said bitterly. “He’s w
elcome; there’s plenty of others.”

  “No, I don’t tink so, because—”

  “Cut it out,” interrupted Forrester. “You know, I hate the way you Martians keep changing the subject. What I want to know is why you all talk like that. This other one that wants to kill me, he had the same kraut accent, but in his case it figured, because he had a kraut name. But you talk the same way and you’re Irish, right?”

  Kevin O’Rourke stared at him disapprovingly. “Forrester, you’re drunk. What de hell’s ‘Irish’?”

  How long the party lasted Forrester did not know. He remembered a long harangue in which the drunken ballet dancer was trying to explain to him that the accent was Martian, not German; something to do with six-hundred-millibar oxyhelium air, which got them out of the habit of hearing certain frequencies. He had a clear memory of reaching into his pocket one time and coming up empty; and a fuzzy, frightening recollection of something bad that had happened.

  But it was all hazy and distant and it came back to him only in random patches.

  What he knew for sure was that when he woke up the next morning he was back in the rough-hewn tunnel next to the joymaker shop. How he had gotten there he had no idea. And he was alone.

  Except, that is, for the granddaddy of all hangovers.

  He dimly remembered that Whitlow had warned him about that, too. There were no autonomic monitoring circuits on the public joymakers, Whitlow had said. He would have to decide for himself when he had had enough, because the joymaker would not stop service at the point of no return—not as long as the money held out.

  Apparently it had held out too long.

  He shook his head miserably. The movement sent cascades of pain down the back of his skull.

  Something bad had happened. He tried halfheartedly to recall it, but all that would come to his memory was a mosaic of mass terror. Something had broken up the party with drunken men and women racing around in terror, even the Italian and the ballerina rousing themselves enough to flee. But what?

  He was not sure; and he suspected that he would rather not remember, not just now.

  He lurched to the end of the tunnel, climbed down metal steps, and pushed a door ajar. He stood gazing out over the plantings, touched by a warm breeze in which he took no pleasure at all. It was daylight, and, except for a distant swish of hovercar traffic, there was no sound of anyone around.

  It was too soon to judge, on the basis of less than twenty-four hours’ experience. And no doubt his troubles were all his own fault. But Forrester was ready to concede that life with the Forgotten Men was not his place in this new world, either.

  If he had any place at all.

  By the time Whitlow showed up, looking fat and happy and as though hangovers had never existed in the world, Forrester had come to the conclusion that, since he was alive, he would have to go on living.

  “Ev’thing all raht this morning?” Whitlow asked cheerfully. “Man! You were flahing hah when we parted.”

  “I’m aware of that,” said Forrester glumly. “I guess I’ll have to take your word for the details. Whitlow, how do I go about getting a job again?”

  “What for?”

  “I think it’s about time I grew up,” said Forrester abjectly. “I’m not knocking you. But I don’t want to live this way.”

  “You better start with some money,” Whitlow offered. “Won’t anybody hah’r you if you come in this way.”

  “All right. So the first step is to panhandle a stake?”

  “Raht!” cried Whitlow. “And that’s whut Ah came to tell you, Chuck! The flah-boy’s around again. Whahn’t you see if you can score again with him?”

  They moved out across the broad green belt under the pylons, looking for open sky. Whitlow had seen the space pilot in a one-man flier, cruising aimlessly around; according to Whitlow, the man had looked as though he were about to land and stroll among the Forgotten Men again, but there was no sign of him. “Sorry,” Whitlow apologized. “But Ah’m sure he’s around somewhere.”

  Forrester shrugged. Truth to tell, he was thinking, he wasn’t sure he wanted to panhandle anybody. When you came right down to it, he had been living off this society without contributing anything in return. Not even anything in terms of the peculiar values of the society itself; something that, it appeared could be as little as a membership in Taiko’s revolutionary society dedicated to its overthrow. With the endless flexibility of employment available, Forrester thought, surely there was something he could do—something that he would enjoy, and think worth his while to do. . . .

  “Told you, Chuck!” Whitlow yelled. “See ‘im? There!”

  Forrester looked upward, and Whitlow was right. A face looked down from the flier; it looked like the astronaut’s face, the eyes regarding them thoughtfully.

  The figure picked up a joymaker and whispered into it. The flier dipped and slid away toward a landing.

  “He’s landing,” said Forrester unnecessarily.

  Whitlow was rubbing his chin, watching the flier descend toward the ground. He said abstractedly, “Uh-huh.” His eyes looked worried.

  “What’s the matter?” Forrester asked.

  “Huh?” Whitlow frowned at him, then back at the flier. “Oh, nothing, Chuck. Only Ah have a bad feeling raht now.”

  “What about?”

  “Well . . . Nothing, Chuck. Only you never know what these flah-boys will want to do for fun, an’— Listen, Chuck. Ah believe Ah want to get out of here.” And he turned briskly, catching Forrester’s arm to pull him along.

  Alarmed only because Whitlow seemed to be alarmed, not yet comprehending what it was all about, Forrester went along. If he thought at all, he only thought that it was rather cowardly of Whitlow to be so fearful, and not untypical of this cowardly age, where the very hope of immortality had produced exaggerated fear of permanent death. It was not until he felt the rush of air overhead that fear struck him personally and acutely.

  The flier had taken off again, was now circling over them.

  “It’s him!” Forrester cried. “You’re right, he is after us!”

  He turned and ran, Whitlow dodging away in another direction, the two of them scattering as the flier dipped and turned overhead. . . .

  It was funny, Forrester realized tardily, but he hadn’t seen the man’s face looking out of the flier this time.

  At that moment he heard Whitlow’s yell. The man hadn’t been looking out of the flier. He hadn’t even been in it; had sent the thing on its autonomic circuits into a hovering pattern, while he himself waited on the ground. And he stood there now, holding something that looked like a whip, directly in Whitlow’s path, under the skirt of a tapering yellow building.

  Whitlow tried to turn again and run, but he never had a chance. The thing that looked like a whip was a whip. The spaceman seemed only to shake it gently, and its tip hissed out to touch Whitlow, then curled around his neck and threw him to the ground.

  Forrester turned and ran. Directly behind him was the hoverway, with its hissing, rocketing, ground-effect cars following each other like tracer rounds out of a machine gun. If one of them struck him, he would die as surely as at the hands of any assassin; but he did not wait, he flung himself across the broad strip and miraculously missed them. A copper was standing, regarding him curiously, as Forrester turned to look back.

  The spaceman was lifting the whip again, an expression of alert pleasure on his face. Over the whush of the hovercars Forrester could hear Whitlow’s scream. Their benefactor from space reached out again with the whip as Whitlow tried to rise; he was slashed back to earth again; he tried to get up once more, and his body shook as the whip flicked blood from the side of his head. He tried again, and was thrown down. And stopped trying.

  Forrester turned away and found he was sobbing.

  I have aright to be scared, he told himself, half crazed. No one could watch a friend whipped to death unmoved. Not when the death was so vicious and so pointless. Especially not when the victim cou
ld so easily have been himself.

  Could still be himself.

  Forrester started to run and blundered into the ruddy metal arms of the copper. “Man Forrester,” it said, staring into his eyes, “I have a message for you and good morning.”

  “Let go!” shouted Forrester.

  “The message is as follows,” said the copper inexorably. “Man Forrester, will you care to accept reemployment? It is from the one you know as Sirian Four.”

  “Let go of me, damn you!” cried Forrester. “No. Or, yes—I don’t know! I just want to get out of here!”

  “Your wishful prospective employer, Man Forrester,” said the copper, releasing him, “is nearby. He will see you now if you wish.”

  “He will go plumb to hell,” snarled Forrester, shaking himself. He trotted away, only coincidentally in the direction in which the copper had faced him; but it turned out that no coincidence was involved. The copper had pointed him toward the Sirian’s waiting aircar. Forrester saw the aircar first, and outside of it something he did not immediately recognize. It looked a little like a glittering mushroom, a little like a chrominum ice cream cone. It rested on ducted jets that swept it across a bed of storm-tossed poppies toward Forrester. It moved toward him very fast, so fast that recognition was tardy; he did not realize it was a pressure suit until he was close enough to see within the bulge of the mushroom, behind an inset band of crystal, a ring of bright green eyes.