Platinum Pohl - The Collected Best Stories

by Frederik Pohl

  “I’ve been burgled,” I explained, smiling. “They got through four door locks and an electric alarm system, slick as a whistle. You really have to hand it to them.”

  He looked at me doubtfully. “I could come back another time,” he offered.

  “Ah, no,” I said. “They don’t need me here anymore—I’ve told them everything I know. And the burglars got my TV, my stereo, my telephone machine, my exercise bike—I guess they’ve taken everything worth stealing already, so there’s nothing left to worry about. Let’s go down to the corner for a beer.”

  When we were seated at the bar he came out with it. “That girl you were with, eh? Marian? Is she your wife or anything?”

  “Of course not, Arne. Just a date.”

  For some reason he didn’t seem to like the sound of that, but he said stubbornly, “I’d like to see her again.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t know how to find her, that’s why not.”

  “I see,” I said, studying him over the rim of my glass. For some reason I felt drawn to the fellow. He was naive and obviously uncomfortable in the situation, but determined. He was not a handsome man—too short and squat, and his eyes squinted a little. Still, there are lots of men with features no better than his who rate a seven or even an eight on personality. Not, in his case, on grooming. He had received a new issue of uniform since the weekend at Coney Island, so at least his wrists didn’t stick out of the sleeves. He didn’t wear the uniform well, though, and he’d tied his tie in a hard knot stuck up under one corner of his collar. “All you have to do, Arne,” I said obligingly, “is call up the computer dating service and ask for her.”

  “I don’t know her last name, Wilbert.”

  “Well, neither do I! That’s not a problem. Just say you want a tall blonde, interested in classical music, baseball, about five seven and a hundred and fifteen pounds—there won’t be more than a dozen or so, and you can pick her out from the picture.”

  His expression said he wasn’t liking that part, either, but he stuck to his purpose. “Then they’ll give me her address, eh?”

  “Certainly not! If you wanted her address you should have got it while you were dancing! Don’t you know anything about dating? All you had to do was ask her if she’d ever been to the top of the World Trade Center, or if she’d like to visit the zoo…She didn’t dislike you, you know.”

  “What?”

  “She as much as said so,” I told him, thinking it would gratify him. But he only sighed and held up two fingers to the bartender.

  “I don’t understand you Yanks,” he said moodily.

  I laughed. “We’re just like anybody else,” I said.

  “The hell you are, Wilbert.”

  I shrugged. “Oh, we’re richer, I suppose. And we’re in a sort of a special position since the World’s War. But when you come right down to it, what do we want out of life? To have a few laughs, catch a few drinks, make it with some nice chicks—I guess it’s just about the same in Saskatchewan, right?”

  “You didn’t say anything about work,” he pointed out.

  “Well, of course we work,” I said, surprised. “Or we do when there’s a job, anyway. Right now I’m in one of those postwar retraining programs, learning how to manage municipal bond portfolios for large corporate investors. It’s real interesting, and there’s a good chance of employment when I finish the course. For income, of course, I’m on Supplemental. Not full Welfare—I’ve never been on full Welfare—just the federal subsidy to add to what I get from the retraining program.”

  He nodded absently. “I wonder if she really would like to see the zoo? We don’t have any good ones in my part of Saskatchewan.”

  “Ask her, boy,” I grinned. He didn’t respond. “Go on,” I encouraged. “Stick a quarter in the slot over there in the booth and dial the dating service.”

  “I’ve never done that,” he confessed.

  “There’s nothing to it. Just give your name and your credit card number, and tell them what you want. I’d do it for you myself,” I apologized, “but they got my computer deck along with everything else.”

  He looked at me thoughtfully, then reached into his pocket and spilled his change on the table. It was all Occupation money, but that worked as well as anything else. He picked out a quarter and stood up. Just before heading for the computer booth he paused and shook his head. “I guess I still don’t understand you Yanks,” he repeated.

  That was the second time I saw Arne Kastle. Once again I thought it was going to be the last, and was wrong. I graduated from the fund-management program. There weren’t any jobs there, though, so I signed up right away for another one, this time in hotel and motel management. Even the Apache Nation hired a lot of locals for mid-level jobs…and it was certainly a field I knew well from the other side of the desk!

  Because it was a presidential election year, there were a lot of public meetings going on. They interested me a lot. I’ve always considered myself well informed politically, and so I watched most of the meetings and debates on TV and went to some in person when I could. When the president came to New York for an open-air rally right in front of Macy’s, I was there.

  So was Arne Kastle. I might have guessed that, because there were at least four or five hundred Peacekeepers deployed there on crowd control, Iceland and Argentine detachments as well as the Canadians. But I wasn’t thinking about Arne. I was concentrating on sideslipping and squeezing through breaks in the crowd to get right up to the police barrier, and when I finally did it was a surprise when the SasPeace soldier right in front of me said, “How you doing, Wilbert?”

  I said warmly, “Nice to see you, Arne. Say. Did you ever connect with that girl, what’s her name—”

  “Her name is Marian,” he said shortly, and turned away to chase a ten-year-old back behind the linees. It took him a couple of minutes to get back to me. By then the president’s party was getting out of their limos, and I discovered the subject had been changed. Kastle jerked a thumb at the President. “Isn’t that the bloke that lost the war for you?” he asked.

  “Same one.” I agreed.

  “And he thinks he can get reelected?”

  I laughed at him. “Hell, Arne,” I said, “nobody blames him for that any more.”

  “They don’t?”

  “Of course not! I guess you don’t understand the American political process, Arne. See, he acted. He moved right away to limit damage to his administration. He fired his secretary of state and shook up the C.I.A. He acted fast and hard—what more could you ask?”

  “You could’ve asked that he not get in a losing war,” he said. I started to explain to him that that was ancient history, but a SasPeace lieutenant was scowling at us, “No talking politics with the locals, Private Kastle!” he barked.

  As soon as the lieutenant was out of earshot I whispered, “Listen, let’s talk about this. Give me a call. Maybe we’ll take in the zoo, if you’re so crazy to see it!”

  Evidently he was, because he did. About a week later we met at Prospect Park, and Kastle was like a kid. “Tigers and elephants!” he grinned. “Lead me to them!”

  I grinned back. “Elephants sí, tigers no.” I said, steering him around the seal tank.

  “Why no tigers?”

  “Well,” I explained, “during the last blackout somebody remembered that tiger-skin rugs were worth a lot of money. Here’s the elephants, though.”

  Kastle was the only Peacekeeper in sight—at least the only one in uniform. I could see him realizing that as we walked around, and I could see him worrying about it. When we took time out for a beer in the open-air cafe he fretted, “Maybe I should’ve come in civilian clothes—I don’t want to antagonize you Yanks unnecessarily.”

  It was a beautiful warm day. Little kids escaped from their mothers to gape at Kastle’s green uniform and his holstered machine-pistol, and some of the mothers were looking admiringly, too. I laughed. “They sure don’t look antagonized.” I sai
d.

  “Yeah, well, why not?” he demanded. “Why don’t you resent us, for God’s sake?”

  “Why should we?” I asked reasonably.

  “Well, if Canada had lost a war—especially that kind of a war—”

  I shook my head. “We’re not that kind of people, I guess.” Then there was a silence, while Kastle moodily tossed his complimentary little package of peanuts to the kids and we both hunted for a subject for conversation.

  We each came up with one at the same time. “How are you getting along with Marian?” I asked, and at the same moment he asked:

  “Did you get your job in municipal funds management?”

  There was something about his expression that told me he didn’t want to answer my question, so I answered his. “That’s over,” I said. “Hotel management’s what I’m into now. That’s a growth field, with all the new tourism.”

  “I thought that was all foreign?”

  “Foreign-owned. They sent representatives from the Saudis and the Puerto Ricans to my class to assure us they wouldn’t discriminate in hiring. The Japanese are even better about that, of course, but they’re all on the West Coast so far and I don’t think I want to relocate…Arne? Are you going to ask me if I resent something again?”

  He growled, “As a matter of fact, I was!”

  “Like the Apache Nation and the Puerto Ricans and so on taking their independence, you mean? But who can blame them for that? I do feel a little irritated at the Alaskans,” I admitted, smiling, “after all the federal money they got! Still, the World’s War had made us vulnerable, so they had their chance. You can understand why they took it.”

  “You,” he said heavily, “can understand damn near anything, can’t you?”

  “Now, Arne! What does that mean?”

  “It means you’re going to vote for the president who lost it for you.”

  I shook my head. “We’ve been over this,” I pointed out. “It was basically the secretary of state’s fault.” Secretary Messina had been doing his shuttle-diplomacy between Lesotho and Namibia and paying no attention at all to the Caribbean. When Grand Cayman suddenly declared war on the United States and the Soviet Union simultaneously, he was caught flat-footed.

  “But the president could’ve just blown Grand Cayman out of the water.”

  “Sure he could. He did dispatch the Fourth Fleet.”

  “But they didn’t do anything.”

  “How could they? Grand Cayman was at war with both us and the Russians. If we attacked them, the Russians would’ve had the right to too—and how would that have looked? Considering the Monroe Doctrine and all? No. The president handled it just right. He made that television speech warning the Russians to keep their hands off the Western Hemisphere. They did, too. And his ratings in the overnight polls went up fifteen percent!”

  He looked at me peculiarly. “And that you consider a success?”

  “You bet, Arne! Well. Almost a success, I guess. It would have worked perfectly, if it hadn’t been for—”

  “You mean San Marino,” he said.

  I nodded gloomily. “I mean San Marino. And then all the others. But who could have guessed that would happen?” For the second country to make a simultaneous and unexpected declaration of war against both the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. was the little country completely surrounded by Italy. They had no Monroe Doctrine to protect them, but what could either we or the Russians do? Neither one of us wanted to drop a missile that would splash fallout all over the Italians. The Italians wouldn’t grant us transit privileges so land forces might attack—and, since San Marino wasn’t an island, we couldn’t even steam a fleet around them.

  So there we were, the two most powerful nations the world had ever seen, stalemated in a war with the two feeblest. And then abruptly Lesotho made a surprise declaration of war on both of us, delighting Secretary Messina immensely—until Namibia did, too, half an hour later; and then Liechtenstein and Bangladesh, and Oman and Andorra. In seventy-two hours we were at war with every country in the world with a population under twenty million…and then the heavyweights began to come in. Mexico, Yugoslavia, Canada, East Germany, Brazil and Romania declared against both superpowers in a six-way conference-call satellite message that was seen by the whole world. Then France, then China, then Poland, then England…

  By the end of the week the whole world was technically at war. On one side, 141 nations. On the other, the Russians and us—and never a shot fired by anyone. After it was all over we got to see that famous tape of Secretary Messina in the Oval Office, sobbing and pleading with the president to declare war against the Soviets so we could fire the missiles at somebody. But how could we? They were the only ones on our side.

  And they didn’t like it any better than we did.

  I leaned across the table to Arne Kastle. “Man to man,” I coaxed, “was that whole thing set up in advance?”

  Kastle slammed down his beer cup. “How the hell would I know? The premier doesn’t consult prairie-province plow jockeys about his foreign policy.” He stood up agitatedly, reaching in his pocket for Peacekeeper coins to toss to the circle of kids. “Wilbert,” he said, “do you think life is just a spectator sport? Don’t you ever get tired of being a critic?”

  “We’re a very sophisticated audience,” I agreed.

  He glared at me. Then he shook his head and started to leave, but I put out a hand to detain him. For a minute I thought he was going to hit me, but all I wanted was to point to the cards on the table. They were cutouts in the shape of camels, and their covers said, Won’t You Bark/Roar/Growl/Chirp a Few Words of Advice for Us? “You forgot to fill out your comment sheet,” I reminded him. But he didn’t do it. He just sort of stared into my eyes, and then moaned and blundered away without another word. I had to fill them out for both of us.

  The last time I saw Arne Kastle he just showed up at the door again. He appeared, still in uniform, with a six-pack of some Canadian beer, and the first thing he said was, “I guess I was a little out of line last time, eh?”

  I considered the question. Actually I would have given him no more than a four for congeniality and maybe less than that for tact, but I didn’t think he wanted to hear that. I just opened the door wide and said, “Come on in. The place is in a little better shape than the last time you saw it, isn’t it?”

  He glanced around. “Very nice,” he said politely—no more than a six for the words, but his tone was almost a nine. “I see you’ve replaced all the stolen stuff.”

  “That’s what insurance is for, Arne,” I grinned, putting out glasses and pulling the tabs on two of the beers. “Of course they ripped me off some,” I continued. “My alarm system was two years old, so they deducted twenty percent on the grounds of defective equipment. Then they depreciated everything for age and wear, I guess that was nearly thirty percent more. They really outfoxed me but what the hell, you have to hand it to them.”

  He exploded, “Why? Why do you have to hand it to them? Always the critic—you’re as bad as Marian!”

  The light dawned. “Ah,” I said sympathetically. “You’ve seen Marian, then.” He nodded sullenly. “Well then, listen, Arne, did you keep a copy of your card on her? I’d be interested to see how close we came in rating her.”

  “I didn’t rate her at all!” He took a long pull at his beer, looking sulky and distraught. “I proposed to her,” he said abruptly.

  “Proposed!”

  “What’s wrong with that?” he demanded. The expression was belligerent now, so I just shrugged. “Well, I did, and she didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no. All she said was that I’d hear from her in a couple of days, and when I did it wasn’t an answer. It was a checklist!” He dragged a blue-jacketed folder out of his pocket and hurled it at me.

  I opened it, keeping a cautious eye on him—he seemed in a very unstable mood. But then I got interested. You can learn a lot about another person by the way they rate someone else, and I could see that Marian had taken a lot of tr
ouble over this one. I was amused to see that she’d downrated him on “grooming” because his civilian suit wasn’t as well pressed as his uniform—this from Miss Lipstick Smear! Then I came across something that made me indignant. “Oh, hell, Arne, this isn’t fair! ‘Proper speech, four.’ But that’s unreasonable—you’re Canadian, after all; she can’t expect you to speak English as well as an American!”

  He began furiously, “A Canadian can damn sure speak English as well as a Yank!” But then he slumped back. “What’s the use? Look at the overall rating. Six point two. She says she won’t marry me unless I can get up to at least a seven—and then she wants a no-contest divorce if I ever drop down below seven again.”

  He stood up. “Well, thanks for listening,” he said, starting toward the door. “Our tour of duty’s almost over, so I guess I won’t be seeing you again.”

  “Back to Saskatchewan, then?” I asked.

  “And not a minute too soon,” he said bitterly. “But it’s been nice knowing you, Wilbert.”

  I said, “Same here, Arne. I’d give you an eight for originality in conversation and—” I hesitated, then decided to stretch a point in his favor—“maybe even a nine for good company!” But I couldn’t give him anything for good manners, because he didn’t even thank me.

  I never saw Arne Kastle again, and neither did Marian. The funny thing was that we did see each other. The computer dating service threw her picture up a couple weeks later, and on impulse I signed in. I was surprised when she agreed to another date. I guess it was the same reason in both cases. The little man had intrigued our curiosity, and we wanted to talk about him.

  I won the toss again and took her to the Starlight room of the Waldorf Asto-Rican—a little pricey for my pocket usually, but a hotel and motel management course had provided me with some two-for-one coupons. “I might almost have married him,” said Marian thoughtfully, neatly folding the paper parasol from her Puerto Pep and placing it beside her plate, “if it weren’t for his, well, craziness.”