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

by C. M. Kornbluth

  Between the two of them they blocked the passage. A rearbound man fidgeted through the harangue and finally said in a clear, poisonous voice: “Get out of the way, sister. I got to go to the can.”

  She gaped and stepped aside and started all over again, demanding that the trainman do something about the insult. He listened without a word, looking sick, until she ran down, said tonelessly: “Yes ma’am,” and went away.

  The woman turned to Joan and spouted: “Did you ever hear of such insolence? We should get up a letter to the company …”

  “Excuse me,” Joan said, and pushed past, hurrying until she made it to the next car. Foreman was lounging by the green curtains of the men’s room. He nodded curtly as if he didn’t want to talk. She gave him a meager smile and went on to the fat girl’s compartment with a weird sensation that the train was tilted downhill, that she was falling all the way and that it leveled off only at the compartment door.

  She wasn’t, by God, going to be turned away this time. She’d think of something…

  It was the doctor who opened the door and not his testy little wife. “Hello,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I thought there might be something I could do for you,” she said firmly. “I’ve had some nurse’s training. Maybe I can relieve you for a while.”

  “Good,” he said distractedly. “I have to go down the hall and my wife’s out like a light. I didn’t want to wake her. Come in.”

  She did. “Hi,” the fat girl said from her berth. Her face was like clay. “I’m between pains.”

  “This lady’s going to watch you for a couple of minutes,” the doctor said. To Joan he whispered: “No need to touch her. If there’s a syncope or the pulse becomes much weaker come and get me. I’ll rush anyway.” He threw a confident smile at the fat girl and left them.

  Joan sat by the girl and took her pulse… regular, fast and weak. “I don’t even know your name,” she said to the girl, “but I’ve been thinking about you.”

  “It’s a killer. Pilar Mackenzie y del Torres. Spanish mother. But names you can do something about. They call me Mack.”

  “Okay, Mack. I’m Joan Lundberg. Swedish father. They call me Joan. What’s going on down there?”

  “I got a big pain that’s the start of second-stage labor, he thinks. He can’t do a live Caesarian: no proper anaesthetics or instruments. My guess is he’s waiting for me to kick off and then he’ll do it posthumous.”

  “Oh, Mack!” Joan said, agonized.

  There was one rap on the door and Foreman walked in.

  “What are you doing here?” Joan asked sharply.

  “Came to see if the lady needed anything. I lent her my coat and it occurred to me that she might need some hot water like in the movies or something like that …” his eyes were darting around the little cubicle.

  “Oh,” Mack said amiably, “you’re the fellow. Thanks …” A spasm went across her clay-colored face. “Hang on,” she said. “Here we go again. Make a note of the time …” Her fingers clawed at Joan’s arm as the contraction shuddered through her, and her lips writhed away from her teeth. Under Joan’s middle finger her pulse fluttered and pounded, stronger, not weaker. She didn’t yell. It seemed to go on for an hour. The second hand on Joan’s wrist watch crawled like a minute hand on a clock around the dial once before her blurred eyes, twice, and half around again before the girl relaxed with a shuddering sigh. “That was a big one,” she whispered. “You’re supposed to feel the head crown, but I didn’t that time.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be soon,” Joan said. “I’m sure it’ll be all right, Mack. You mustn’t think it won’t. You’ll be all right.” She was aware through the back of her head that Foreman was no longer in the cubicle and wondered dimly why he had come, what he had done and why he had gone.

  The doctor came in without knocking, looking greatly relieved, and said: “Thank you,” to Joan. He took the girl’s wrist from her fingers and said after a moment: “You’re surprising me, Mrs. Mackenzie. That’s all right.”

  “There was another pain, doctor.”

  “We’ll have a look.” He turned to the compact dressing table, his open bag and an enamel pan full of blue liquid on its top, and rinsed his hands. Joan saw on the table, behind the bag where they could not be seen from the berth, an array of glittering scalpels and retractors. They were not lying in a pan of bichloride of mercury. The flesh they were ready to shear through would be forever beyond the danger of infection.

  “I’ve got to go now,” Joan said, choking on the words.

  “’bye,” the girl said weakly. “Doctor, can she come back and see me later?”

  “I suppose …” the doctor began, and broke off, looking curiously into his black bag, letting the blue fluid drip into the pan. He dismissed the thought, whatever it was, and said: “I suppose so, later. Thanks very much, Miss…?”

  “Lundberg. Doctor, if you need me or if there’s anything I can do I’m in Compartment C, Car 17. If you can’t remember ask the porter for Miss Greer’s compartment.”

  His face fell into disapproval. “I see,” he said. “Thank you for the offer, Miss Lundberg.”

  She went out, her face flaming. He saw. What did he see? She had done nothing! Who the hell did he think he was to pass judgment on her and Mona? Sanctimoniously he had called Mack “Mrs.” though he must have seen there was no ring. If fornication was all right with him what was wrong with… she couldn’t bring herself to express the word. Anyway, she had done nothing. She had only made friends with a remarkable woman who had a great deal to offer intellectually.

  She stalked down the aisle, back to Mona’s compartment, her steps growing slower and slower. Abreast of the door she stopped…and then went on, slowly, to the next car, upper and lower berths only, where she belonged. She could see Boyce in his half of their shared seat.

  Joan ducked blindly into the green-curtained ladies’ room and dropped into the leather seat. The leather was cold, and she felt the embrace of lace and satin tighten around her like an Iron Maiden. Her breath steamed into the cold air and she wanted her good cloth coat desperately but could not bring herself to rise and get it from the dim compartment she shared with her fascinating new friend.

  A woman on the seat whom she had not even noticed, a woman bundled in a leopard coat… no, it was stenciled rabbit of course… said to her sympathetically: “Don’t let it get you down. The plows’ll be here in two hours.”

  “How do you know?” Joan asked hopelessly.

  “My husband found out from the conductor.”

  “How does the conductor know?”

  The woman stared at her. “Well, it’s his business. I guess he knows his business.”

  “I hope so.”

  “You’re a cheerful one, aren’t you?” the woman marveled.

  Suddenly there was complete silence. The last residual hum transmitted along the cars from the locomotive far ahead stopped, and simultaneously the dimly-glowing light bulbs went out. And stayed out.

  “My God!” the woman said, in an appalled whisper. She got up and hurried out.

  To her husband, Joan thought dully.

  * * * *

  Boyce had fallen into a light doze. When the power went off he woke with a start and blinked at the uneven light filtering through the snow-crusted windows into the car. A woman chattered hysterically behind him and a man was trying to calm her down.

  “What happened?” he asked, turning.

  “Your guess is as good as mine, brother,” the man said. The woman shut up with a stranger’s eyes on her and looked embarrassed. “The lights went out and the engine stopped. I guess it froze up or something… they don’t build them to perform as stationary power plants.”

  “I guess that means the heat goes too?”

  “I guess so. The heat must have been electric, maybe plus heat from
the diesels. Either way, it’s off. I wish to hell we could start a fire …”

  “Why not? There must be some kind of circulation for the air.”

  “Harvey, don’t be crazy,” the woman said, patting her hair. She explained to Boyce, very lady-like: “A Mr. Fixit from way back.”

  “You keep out of it, dear. At least we can try.” He lit a cigarette and blew a plume of smoke at the roof of the car. “See?” he said. “It goes into those slot things. I bet it would work.”

  The tall, harried trainman rushed past.

  “Conductor!” Harvey miscalled him sharply.

  He stopped like a gaffed fish and turned slowly. “Yes, mister?”

  “I was wondering if we could build a fire. The cigarette smoke seems to go out through those slot things …”

  “A fire? Hell, no, mister! You can’t do that. You just keep calm; I’m going up to see what the word is from the engineer. We’ll prob’ly have power on again soon.” He rushed ahead.

  “What about a fire?” asked a middle-aged woman across the aisle. “I surely could use one, but is it safe?”

  “Sure,” said Harvey. His wife rolled her eyes to heaven as he explained about the cigarette smoke and the woman nodded understandingly as the audience grew.

  “Let’s try it with a newspaper,” somebody said.

  A twisted page of the Chicago Tribune was ignited. Harvey waved it like a torch, explaining: “See? It goes into those slot things …” and broke off with a hacking cough as he got a lungful of smoke and dropped the blazing paper to the carpeted aisle. It was stamped out and Harvey explained that it was just a tricky draft, but it didn’t go down. He sat sulkily beside his wife, passengers drifted back to their seats and Boyce sat slumped, listening to the sporadic bickering behind him as the darkness and the coldness grew.

  * * * *

  Foreman was among the last at luncheon. The ten one-grain tablets of morphine sulfate from the vial in the doctor’s black bag were burning a hole in his pocket, but he deliberately forced himself to turn left instead of right as he slipped out of the one-woman maternity ward and headed for the diner. Let her wait, he thought listlessly. He didn’t owe her a thing, nor did she owe him. He would give her the tablets as a minor courtesy; just as she had lent him her body. It hadn’t meant anything in particular to either of them, except that it was better than sitting and waiting. Intensity had gone out of both their lives. She was a puppet of the one-grain tablets, he was a puppet of the red-faced businessmen. They had no big decisions left before them; things would just keep happening unavoidably. She would continue to take off until her foot slipped and she landed in the gutter. He would continue to do Syndicate chores until his foot slipped and he landed in the Drainage Canal with crabs on his face. No decisions any more: just mild choices. Bacon or sausage for breakfast. Salad or soup for lunch. Roast beef or pork chops for dinner. This tart or that for the night.

  He thought mildly of living with her during his weeks in San Francisco. He’d be doing a highly technical, absorbing, exacting job all day. It might be good to relax at night by committing adultery, putting the horns on an absent professional soldier who was guarding him while he slept. Her husband would be overseas in a few days and it would be a really rotten thing to do and so quite in keeping with him. The woman wasn’t as good as she thought she was, but she was pretty good.

  He got a table to himself. Lines were drawn through most of the things on the luncheon card. He checked the Vienna Cutlet with Poached Egg and the waiter apologetically told him that it would have to be an eggless cutlet today; seemed like all the eggs were just gone.

  “They’re handy little things to have around, aren’t they?” he asked the waiter blandly.

  “Suh?”

  “Skip it. I’ll take the cutlet.” Waiting, he thought of Joan Lundberg who still had a decision before her—exactly one decision. Straight or queer. She was a whole-hearted girl; he knew the type. If she went for politics, she got in up to her neck. If she went for Mona’s brand of fun she wouldn’t be one of the dabblers, one of the ambiguous people who take it or leave it alone, depending on circumstances. She was a woman who had to justify herself and be sure she was right, prove she believed in a way of life by living it to the hilt. One decision left. The wrong way, it led into a shabby, clandestine world of perverts and blackmail. God damn Mona Greer to hell, and what was holding up his cutlet?

  * * * *

  His compartment door was latched from the inside. He knocked and announced: “Landlord for the rent money, lady.” The lieutenant’s wife opened the door carefully, not letting herself be seen.

  “Have you got them?”

  “Here they are,” he said, counting them into her palm. “You don’t mind a few tobacco crumbs, do you?”

  “Ha ha,” she said. She stared at the pills for a long moment and then put them in her handbag.

  “There’s something I don’t get,” he said. “No needle marks on you. What do you do with it if you don’t inject it with a hypodermic?”

  “Of course you don’t get it, lover boy.” She spoke with condescending bravado, the air of a known defiant homosexual, a prison lifer—or an admitted addict. “You’ve been going to too many movies. I love Frank Sinatra with all my heart and soul, but his idea of an addict would make a cat laugh. Needles are for saps. They leave marks, as you wisely observed, and sometimes they leave abscesses that send you to the hospital, and sometimes they give you blood poisoning and you lose an arm or a leg. It all goes to the same place,” she said condescendingly. “If you swallow the stuff you get a slow glow that lasts. If you sniff it it gets to the brain faster and you get a brighter glow that doesn’t last. If you inject it, you get what a fellow told me was a ‘ping’. Now, do I look stupid enough to invite an abscessed leg for a lousy ping?”

  “I see,” he said with a straight face. “You know exactly what you’re doing.”

  She looked up at him suspiciously and changed the subject. “What took you so long, anyway?” she snapped.

  “I had to wait for the doctor to go down the hall. Just be glad his bag wasn’t locked.”

  “I am, lover boy. How’s the girl with the baby?”

  “Dying.”

  “Tough,” she said flatly. “I think she spotted me for a user on sight. So did the doctor and so did you. Does it stick out all over me?”

  “Hell, no. Don’t worry about it. You must be wrong about the fat girl. How could she possibly? The doctor, hell, that’s to be expected. And me, I’ve seen hundreds in the lineups and still it was just a wild guess.”

  “Thanks,” she said with a wintry smile. “I’m going to go and find the lieutenant.” She kissed him expertly.

  “Thanks,” he said back. He opened the door and looked up and down the corridor. “Okay.”

  She slid out gracefully.

  “Hollow,” he said, thinking of her. “Like a dead tree with a few green shoots still to die.” Let Joan Lundberg be turned into that?

  The thin vibration of the train went dead and the lights went out. “Goddamn it,” he said. Joan Lundberg would be in Greer’s arms tonight.

  But not if he could help it.

  He got up and went out.

  Chapter XXX

  SNOW

  The old conductor was sitting in the galley of the club car with his head in his hands. The tall trainman found him there at last, after searching everywhere.

  “Mr. Nichols,” he said.

  “Oh, go away, kid,” the conductor groaned.

  “I got to ask you something. The toilets are freezing. What’ll we do?”

  The conductor sat up wearily. “Unlock a couple of the car doors. Women on the right and men on the left.”

  “Is that safe, Mr. Nichols? That soldier got frostbit.”

  “The passengers have got to use their heads sometime. It might as well b
e now. A few seconds outside won’t kill ’em. And it’ll be better than stinking up the train. Then people start heaving. Pass the word to the crew. Lock the toilets when you get a chance.”

  “Okay, Mr. Nichols,” the tall trainman said.

  The conductor sagged in the chair again, his head in his hands.

  Chapter XXXI

  SWITCH-BLADE

  Mona Greer heard the knock on her compartment door and composed herself a little more sleekly on the berth. The blonde had taken her time. She would pay for that. “Come in, little one,” she called in a silvery voice. “It’s not locked.”

  It wasn’t Joan Lundberg standing in the door. It was Foreman, the wire service toughie. He had no overcoat on and his tie was askew. He seemed to be just a little drunk. “I know that invitation wasn’t for me,” he said, “but I took advantage of it anyway.”

  Mona smiled. He was angry, but everything would be all right. The faint note of apology and uncertainty in his voice, all the more marked because he was trying to repress it, told her that. He was one down; he was just a wire service toughie with problems. She was one up; she was the famous Mona Greer, whose Thighs of the Wild Mare had surfboated on the Herald Tribune list of ten fiction best-sellers for eight weeks in the spring and was still skimming nicely along. And both of them knew it.

  “Sit down,” she said. “Would you like a blanket to drape around you?”

  “Thanks,” he said, and took one of the neatly-folded spares from the dressing table. He put it on like a shawl, gratefully, and Mona almost laughed aloud. What a fool! To let himself be costumed grotesquely in a thin gray blanket before quarreling with a woman sleek in mink!

  “A drink?” she asked, rising gracefully.

  “Rye?”

  “Surely.” She poured. “It was good of you to ease my loneliness, Mr. Foreman. How are things outside? I’ve pulled my hole in after me.”

  “Not good, not bad. Everybody’s scared and scared of showing it. A few hysterical women and children, but no general panic. I guess that’s because we’re laid out in a long string and you can’t have a panic that way. We’re a long string of little groups. If one group gets frantic it thins out in each direction… where’s Joan?”