The 34th Golden Age of Science Fiction: C.M. Kornbluth

by C. M. Kornbluth

  “What do you wish?” she asked.

  “I daydream sometimes,” he said. His voice was almost inaudible. He was glad she couldn’t see his face. “About having kids. And a house where I can put my feet on the furniture if I want to. And having a job that makes me sweat and gives me an appetite and lets me sleep at night. And a wife who… liked me. My wife doesn’t like me, Joan. She doesn’t like children. Or feet on the furniture. Or small towns. Or men who sweat for a living.”

  “It’s too late now,” Joan said flatly. “You married her.”

  “Yes,” Boyce said. “I married her. Or she married me. I guess she married me. You saw from her picture that she’s no raving beauty. I guess she decided I was as good as she could do. I’m a shrimp but I’m a hard worker. So she wore tight sweaters and she rubbed up against me when we danced and she let me paw her. Then one night in Grant Park… she wasn’t a virgin but I was too dumb to know that because she said it hurt. Then she said she was pregnant. Only she wasn’t.” His voice had sunk to a haunted whisper.

  Nice little guy, Joan thought sadly. Hooked for good. Even if he was a man, even if men pushed you around and…

  The image of her father intruded, and with it the cloud of rage that it aroused in her.

  “My father was a monster,” she said slowly and poisonously. “He was a brainy, brilliant, sparkling, attractive monster. I think he must have had a woman a week. He killed my mother with his brains and brilliance. He made my life a hell on earth to the day he died. And after. You’ve no business feeling smug because you’re a downtrodden male. Women get kicked in the teeth too. By men.”

  “Don’t you want children? You another one of those people that think they don’t matter?”

  Joan began to cry. Yes; she wanted children.

  He put his arm tentatively around her and felt first her stiffening and shrinking, and then slow relaxation against his arm. “I’m afraid,” she said, flatly. There were no more tears.

  “Of being hurt?”

  “Of that. And of tying myself to a man. I know what they can do to you. What they… he… did to my mother.” But her shoulders were relaxed against his arm. She’s reminding herself of how she thinks she ought to be, Boyce thought cloudily.

  The porter appeared in his white, round-collared coat and took in the picture of them and thought he understood. In his softest, most impersonal after-dark voice he said delicately: “Folks, there’s a no-show drawingroom in the next cyah seems a pity to waste if you cain’t sleep. An’ the pullman conductor he won’t know if you set there a while. I don’ wake him up until four-thirty o’clock.”

  Joan went stiff against his arm… but didn’t speak. Boyce said: “That’s very kind of you,” to the porter. He took his arm from around the girl’s shoulders and gave the porter a five-dollar bill from his wallet.

  “Thank you suh!” he beamed. “Step this way, folks.”

  “Joan,” Boyce said. She rose like a sleepwalker and followed the porter.

  The sudden cold in the vestibule between the cars was startling. It bit through his pyjamas and robe and then was gone as they emerged into the dimness of the next car. The porter opened a door and said: “Heah ’tis, folks. I see you have a watch, suh.” Delicate reminder.

  “Yes. Thanks.” He closed the door on him. Joan was standing by the window.

  “Afraid?” he said.

  “Yes. Terribly. Where’s this going to end? It can’t just stop here. The thing is… with Mona, it could.”

  “That’s right. With her it wouldn’t be love. It would be an imitation of love.”

  “That word,” she said. “Do you love me? Do I love you? I don’t know. But I like being in here with you. I want to do things for you. I want you to like me. If anybody hurts you I want to claw their eyes out. Is that being in love?”

  “That’s about all there is to it,” he said.

  She laughed shakily. “Turn out the light,” she said. She was scared clear through to the marrow of her bones and she didn’t want him to know. He was a nice little guy…

  He found her in the dark and took her hand. It balled into a fist when he touched it, with a rigidity that made her a woman of stone. “Oh,” the rug man said in a low, sick voice, “what that bastard did to you.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help it. Truly, I can’t,” she whispered.

  “Sit here with me.” She did, and leaned timidly against him. He kissed her. Her lips were like marble.

  She stood up and said in a dull monotone: “It’s no use. I’m no good for you. I wish I were, but I’m not. That’s all there is to it. I’m sorry I’m such a fool and I’m sorry this hurts you, but I can’t do anything about it …”

  She blundered from the drawing room.

  Boyce sat in the dark, still with pain. It’s too late now, he thought. You weren’t man enough to make her want you. You’ve missed the last bus. Nobody else like that is going to come along. Very soon you’ll be forty, soon you’ll be fifty, soon you’ll be sixty and soon you’ll be dead without ever having known love.

  And her? Perhaps for her the imitation of love in the Mona-monster’s arms, the imitation that carried no responsibilities except not to get caught by the cops.

  He got up tiredly and walked back through the hundred night-noises… snores, coughs, creaks, stirrings… to his own berth and went to bed.

  Above him, in her own green-curtained privacy, he again heard Joan stirring restlessly, like a story-book princess locked up in the cold tower of her own body.

  Chapter XVII

  SNOW

  The B-25 bucked and heaved in dawn convection currents over the Rockies.

  The pilot wrenched the wheel hard over, fighting for trim in the choppy air. “You see anything?” he asked the copilot.

  “Snow,” the copilot said, profoundly.

  “Ho-ho, that’s rich,” the pilot said. “Are we over Raton Pass?”

  “Don’t know. Never did learn to navigate.”

  “Don’t think I think you’re kidding. Look for that goddam train, will you?”

  “Why?”

  “That’s a very good question, my friend. I wish I knew the answer. Operation Horseturd they ought to call this one.”

  “There it is, I guess,” the copilot said, pointing. It was a black thread on a rumpled white sheet far below.

  “Good for you. Take a couple of pictures and hook up the static line to the chutes.”

  When the pictures were snapped and the static line hooked the pilot opened his bomb bay. Five bunches of medical supplies and food tumbled out and blossomed parachutes.

  “Gonna land about twenty miles north of the train,” the copilot said.

  “Tough tittie,” the pilot said. “What am I supposed to do about it… land, climb out and hand them to the conductor? We’ll be lucky sons of bitches if we get home in one piece the way it is.”

  “It looks,” brooded the copilot, “as if that train is going to stay right there for a good long while.”

  “Operation Horseturd,” mumbled the pilot as they headed for home.

  * * * *

  Far below a wolf whimpered and shrank against a rock. There was no scent of game, hot-blooded game or offal for him to tear. There was only cold and snow and hunger racking his gaunt frame.

  * * * *

  In their own corner of the train, unguessed-at by passengers, the porters were talking.

  “How’d you make out, boy?”

  “Couple of hams over. Kinda short on blankets.”

  “Gimme a ham for two blankets.”

  A third, for the love of mischief, pretended to be shocked. “A whole ham for two bitty blankets?” he exclaimed. “Man, don’t you deal with him.”

  The porter with the blankets turned a baleful eye on the trouble-maker. “Advise you to keep out of this deal, Hoops.”r />
  “Who’s gonna make me, man?”

  “I got a good old friend on the Spirit of California getting a little tired of that run. You like this run here, don’t you, Hoops? Got a gal in Frisco you visit with. My friend has you beat on seniority by eighteen months and he’d just as soon bump you off this train as not—for a friend. You like to get bumped down to that L.A. run and stop seeing your Frisco gal, Hoops? Well, what you say, Hoops?”

  “I say nothing, Mister Cutshaw,” grinned Hoops. “My lips are sealed, Mr. Cutshaw, sir.”

  “They better be,” said Cutshaw. “How about it?” he asked the porter with the hams.

  “You got a deal, Cutshaw.”

  Hoops chattered: “Anybody wants to make a good deal, he can if he got some H or maybe C.”

  Cutshaw glared at him. “You buying? By God, Hoops, I’ll turn you in if I catch you with white stuff on the train!” He picked up Hoops by his collarless white jacket and shook him. “Brother Hoops, where you got it?”

  Hoops yelled: “Put me down, you crazy fool! I don’t mean for me. I mean that red-headed gal, the second-john’s wife in sixty-three! I was just kidding that she’s gonna be bustin’ for a fix if she runs out while we’re stalled.”

  Cutshaw let go. “Very sorry,” he said. “I’ll give you half a ham first chance I get. I lost my temper—you know how I feel about it.”

  “Well, Cutshaw, I didn’t mean to call you crazy and thanks for the half a ham. And you don’t need to worry about me flirting with Rule Sixty-One. Hoops is a man that likes his job.” Rule Sixty-One is the prohibition law of the American railroads—instant dismissal for any employee under the influence of liquor or narcotics while on the job.

  * * * *

  The red-headed woman, Mrs. Richard Claiborn Moody III, was not asleep. Her husband, in the upper berth of their compartment, stirred quietly and then asked: “Joyce?”

  “We haven’t started yet,” she said.

  “We’ll be going by morning,” he said. “They have snow plows, things. I won’t miss the boat.”

  “It’s a plane,” she said.

  “Figure of speech,” he yawned. “Figures of speech are always a little behind the times. Joyce, is anything wrong?” From up there he could feel her tenseness.

  “I think I’ll have a nightcap,” she said.

  “Pthuh! I couldn’t take a drink now if you paid me. But I’ve been asleep. Haven’t you?”

  “No.” She got out of the berth and poured a large Scotch in a tumbler. She drank it down and went back to bed. Still tense.

  “What gets me,” her husband rambled, “is being under Navy control. The Air Force you can reason with. At least they have the same vehicular specifications. Well, it’s only a year and I need it for the record. Then, by God, my captaincy and a company. I hope it’s some place civilized so you can live on the post.”

  “And have your platoon leaders’ wives buttering up me for a change.”

  “Well, that’s the way it goes. You were swell with Mrs. Hertz, by the way—did I tell you?”

  “Old cow.”

  “Yes dear, but a colonel’s old cow. You were swell, though.”

  As the conversation drifted quite another part of Joyce Moody’s mind was very busy with arithmetic. Over and over she was computing that one and one and one and one are four and no more, and that she had counted on the four to take her to the Coast, where she knew of a clerk in a hotel pharmacy. She had used three, and there was one left, in her handbag. Perhaps the three had been cut more heavily than usual, because the yen was on her too early. Liquor didn’t help, liquor never helped though she always tried it.

  She was quietly angry with her husband and the United States Army; between them they had seen to it that she became defiled and an addict. The long hours of his unpredictable tour of duty, the night shifts at the Pentagon, the weekend tricks he had pulled—what on earth could anybody expect except what had happened? Naturally old Charlie had shown up, kind and attentive. Naturally Rickey had been pleased that this pleasant man of forty-five who had known Joyce as a child was escorting her here and there while he was on duty. Naturally they had wound up in bed together while Rickey was working through an unbroken forty-eight hours during the Quemoy flap. Naturally old Charlie had offered her the harmless white powder and naturally she had tried it.

  And got hooked.

  She opened her handbag and by feel found the little packet. She spread half the powder on her thumbnail and sniffed it sharply into her left nostril and then the rest into her right.

  “Catching cold, dear?” Rickey asked from above, concerned.

  “No,” she said. The good feeling was beginning to spread, and she was almost able to forget that now there were none left at all.

  “Hope I get a good G-S,” said Rickey. “Funny, but those civilians can make you or break you. Biffy Welch over at Chateauroux has a marvelous boy, G-S 12, used to be an Ordnance sergeant, runs his vehicle section like clockwork. Dear?”

  “Yes?”

  “Remember what I told you? About if the balloon goes up?”

  “I remember.”

  “Well—remember it. Think I’ll sleep now.”

  “Good night.” And then she could sleep too, though there were none left at all.

  * * * *

  Foreman looked about his roomette and then at his traveling clock. It was an early-morning hour and the train was not moving. He said aloud: “You stupid bastard, what have you got yourself into?”

  He had begun to suspect that he would never sleep again. He unpacked his gladstone far enough to find a bottle of Scotch picked up at the station liquor shop on an impulse. “Jolly old impulse, what?” he said, and wrestled with the seal. The bottle opened and he paused to consider what came next. Did you ring the porter for a shot glass? God, no. Ridiculous. You poured it into a tumbler and drank from the tumbler, like a hotel-room drunk. He poured a big one and swallowed it.

  “I suppose,” he said, “I ought to jot this down. Date and time. Foreman’s First Solitary Drink.”

  It was that. He had reached his thirties without taking a drink by himself in private. Getting mildly drunk at a bar did not count; neither did cocktails before lunch or dinner. Opening a bottle all by himself, expecting nobody to join him, and taking a drink was something he had never done before. It had never occurred to him that it might be a pleasant or profitable thing to do, so he had never done it.

  It tasted like any other jolt of straight medium-priced Scotch, and his vague expectation that it would immediately relax him and send him stumbling sleepily in the direction of his berth was not fulfilled. He had another, sitting up, and that did nothing either.

  Maybe this is how they do it, he reflected. He thought of Mike Sullivan, and shuddered. Mike had been one of his buck-an-hour desk men for a month. A jewel, a treasure for the first week, until payday. Fast, accurate, intelligent, untemperamental except for a very faint flavor of contempt for the unethical side of the operation. He wasn’t a child who could be kidded into thinking it was routine to steal the news. He was an experienced newsman and it was wonderful, until payday.

  Mike was supposed to come back after dinner and take over until closing at 11 P.M. Mike showed up at 9:30 P.M. with peppermint on his breath, unable to hit the teletype keys. He sent him home after getting him to understand that he could damn well pull the Saturday shift instead. Saturday morning, no Mike. He phoned him at home and Mike’s mother, very Ould Sod, said the boy’s stomach was a weechy bit upset and could Misther Foreman plase excuse him for the day. Mr. Foreman excused him and worked the Saturday and Sunday tricks, and Mike came in on Monday with apologies and was wonderful again for a week—until payday. That weekend he did not get over until Tuesday, and Foreman had a little talk with him, the upshot of which was that Mike’s paycheck would be mailed to his mother. It’s the best thing, said Mike;
I can’t control it. If I still had my faith I could take the pledge, but I’ve lost my faith. Mike was fine until Friday. It had not occurred to Foreman that when Mike got home and his mother gave him the check to endorse, the inevitable would happen. It happened, and there was no Mike McGowan until Tuesday again. He came in very sick, unable to work. Foreman sent him home to rest up and he came in on Wednesday and was fine until payday. That time the check had been made out, by special dispensation from New York, to Mike’s mother. On payday Mike jimmied open the petty cash box when he was alone on the night shift, typed an apologetic note and went out to get fried. He showed up Monday, drunk and weeping and promising to make restitution of the thirty-five dollars. Foreman told him to forget about the money and to come back if he ever got straightened out; meanwhile there was no job for him there. Evidently Mike never did get straightened out. Somehow later he got to believing that the service owed him thirty-five dollars, and would phone late at night from bars to demand his rights. All new deskmen had to be alerted to those calls from Mike; if you weren’t prepared for them they were an eerie experience. What he was living and drinking on, God alone knew. Perhaps his mother.

  Poor Mike, thought Foreman, and looked at the Scotch bottle.

  It was half empty.

  Foreman got to his feet and noticed that he was quite drunk. “Did I do that?” he asked fuzzily, staring at the bottle. “Must have.”

  He fell onto the bed in a heavy, dreamless sleep.

  * * * *

  The old lady in Drawing Room C said to her husband: “Harvey, wake up!”

  He woke from the thin and precious sleep of extreme old age. “What is it? What happened?”

  “I’ve decided,” she said. “I’ll plant the border with pompom zinnias, then behind them foxgloves, and behind them delphiniums—Guineveres.”

  “Splendid,” he said, and rolled over. They did not know yet that they would never see their garden bloom again.

  Chapter XVIII

  THE CORRUPTED

  Foreman woke at seven-thirty in the stalled train with a bad headache, sour stomach and all the other classic symptoms of a hangover. Aspirin didn’t help. Sitting woozily on the edge of his berth he contemplated his bottle and unscrewed the cap. The smell made him retch, but he choked down a mouthful of whisky.