Universe 4 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Terry Carr

  “Oh,” said Glendora. “I think I gave the diamond to the goat milk people to settle our last bill.”

  Custer smiled with his iron teeth. He pushed a button on his left hand, which was made of copper, and a folding of fax paper whirred out of the wrist slot. “I think I gave you this already, Glendora, but it won’t hurt to give you another copy. Tells you how to balance your budget I didn’t write it myself, though I’m a pretty good buddy of the computer who did. Really, anybody should be able to live within their means.”

  “Excuse me, Inspector,” said one of the lizard movers. “We can’t locate one set of drumsticks and one trombone.”

  “Here’s the trombone,” said Glendora.

  “We’ll forget about the sticks,” said Custer. “TCDA is capable of a magnanimous gesture now and again.”

  “I’d like to go in and take a shower,” said Josh. “If we still have a bathroom.”

  Custer’s right elbow clicked and a streamer of yellow paper came out. After consulting it, he said, “You kids are only thirty days behind on that solid-state compact health spa bathroom. So I won’t be coming after it for . . . oh, say, another month or two. Maybe by then you’ll get some coherence into your financial picture.”

  “I saw an ad in the last Sears catalog for a robot clerk,” said Glendora as she handed the trombone around to the lizard man, “who’s supposed to be very good at managing household funds. He’s about this high with a little green eyeshade and only costs fifteen hundred dollars.”

  “Gee, Glendora.”

  Custer said, “With all the retrievals today, Josh, I missed the public execution. It’ll be rerun, won’t it?”

  “At eight and ten tonight” said Josh. “And we sold an edited-down version to the Tarragon Kids’ Network, so it’ll be on all the schoolcasts across the planet tomorrow at ten a.m.”

  Snapping his copper fingers, Custer said, “Doggone. My oldest boy won’t be in school tomorrow. We have to take him into the capital to get his first tin ear. He’s a great fan of Ma Boskins.”

  “Oh, so?” said Josh.

  “I suppose she was one of the great mass poisoners of the decade,” said the inspector.

  “One of the great mass poisoners of the century,” corrected Josh automatically.

  “Both the boys have to have Ma Boskins Mass Poisoner Games and the littlest girl screamed for a Ma Boskins victim doll with three changes of costume,” said the still-smiling cyborg. “Of course my oldest girl prefers Stungun Slim. At that age they seem to go for the mad-dog killer type. When have you got him scheduled for?”

  “The execution date isn’t firm yet,” said Josh. “It’ll probably be the middle of next month.”

  Custer nodded. “You know, Josh, a young fellow like yourself with a topflight mind and an enviable position shouldn’t be in hock all the time. Maybe after you read that little budget booklet you’ll be able to get yourself unscrewed.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Josh pushed around the partially metal inspector and went into the house. It did look more spacious with Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers and one wall gone.

  * * * *

  Slightly hunched, Josh sat in his den talking to their computer. “For a nine-thousand-dollar portable table-top computer,” he told the little silver machine, “you’re not much help.”

  “What did I tell you before, ninny? You should have bought the four-thousand-dollar home computer J.C. Penney makes. It’s plenty good enough for your needs.”

  “Yes, but Glendora thought . . .”

  “Ah,” said the machine on Josh’s floating desk.

  “Okay, okay. I know she’s a little extravagant, but—”

  “I’ll say she is. Twelve thousand dollars for Jelly Roll Morton and His Red Hot Peppers in musical simulacra form from Sloane’s Barnum System Android Store,” remarked the little computer. “Twelve thousand dollars for a half-dozen mechanical jigaboos.”

  “I don’t know why they programmed you to be a bigot.”

  “Just one of the many extras in the nine-thousand-dollar model. Twelve thousand dollars for Jelly Roll Morton. That’s where the money goes.”

  “Yeah, but originally she wanted the Benny Goodman big band,” Josh reminded the computer.

  “You should have talked her into the Benny Goodman quartet,” said the machine. “I’ve always thought those Lionel Hampton andies were sort of fun, and they know their place.”

  “Look, the problem now is . . . how far in the hole are we?” said Josh. “I’ve stuck with a job I really have strong qualms about for almost a year mainly because of the relatively good salary. I mean, on an income of nearly fifty thousand dollars-a year I think we—”

  “Have you heard about the quint?”

  Josh slouched a little more in his servochair and watched the ceiling of the den for a moment. “The what?”

  “She just ordered a quint from Abercrombie and Fitch,” the computer told him. “Price tag: four thousand dollars.”

  “More sports equipment?”

  “Chump, a quint is a small furry animal native to the planet Murdstone. It is supposed to be quite intelligent and be able to speak a little. Quite a fad object in the upper-middle-class circles here on Tarragon.”

  “Fifty thousand dollars a year doesn’t put you in the upper middle class.”

  “So tell your wife.”

  “Of course,” said Josh, watching the silver machine again, “Glendora’s here alone all day while I’m at the prison. Maybe a pet would be good for her.”

  “Four thousand dollars good?”

  “That is a little steep.”

  “If you maybe had a couple of kids, chump, it might—”

  “You know that’s impossible. You saw the three-thousand-dollar bill for having that five-year birth control device implanted in Glendora.”

  “Macy’s had one for thirteen hundred dollars.”

  “My wife isn’t going around with a Macy’s five-year birth control device implanted in her.”

  The pixphone beeped. Josh waited to see if Glendora was going to pick it up in the bedroom. She didn’t, and he answered on the seventh beep. “Hello.”

  “Still up, huh? You look frazzled.”

  “Here goes another couple of thou,” said the computer when it recognized Josh’s father.

  “Are you and Glendora having one of your wild parties, Joshua?” asked his small weatherbeaten father.

  “No, I’m alone in my den working on the budget, Dad.”

  “Well, get rid of the computer. I have something confidential to say.”

  “No more money, Dad. I can’t loan you any more money.”

  His father sighed, wrinkles rippling his sixty-two-year-old face. “I don’t want to borrow anything, Joshua. I want to help you and Glendora get out of the financial hole you’re in.”

  “The last time he said that, we sunk three thousand dollars in his fried chicken teleporting business,” the computer reminded Josh.

  “I don’t want to come in on any more deals, Dad.”

  “I know your computer is badmouthing me, Son. Turn it off for a moment and listen to me. I’m your father, not some flimflam artist.”

  “Ha!” said the computer.

  “Dad, I’ll talk to you some other time. I’m working on our budget.”

  “Wouldn’t one hundred thousand dollars help you come out even?” his crinkled little father asked.

  “One hundred thousand dollars?” Josh turned off the computer. “Gee, Dad, how can we make that kind of money?”

  His father’s eyes narrowed. “You’re alone, huh?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Leaning forward on the pixscreen, his father said, “We could make as much as one million dollars on this, Joshua.”

  “A million?”

  “The only hitch is, I know I brought you up to be so damn honest.”

  “You didn’t bring me up to be honest. I’m honest as a reaction to you, to the way you’re always—”

  “We’
ll agree I sail closer to the wind than you, to save time. Now, you and Glendora are still up to your ears in debt. Right? She still spends money like a—”

  “Gee, Dad,” cut in Josh. “You don’t understand the situation. Glendora is a very bright, intelligent girl. Intelligent people are often sensitive. So that coming out here to Tarragon a year ago, and taking what is in many ways a disgusting job, it all puts a lot of pressure on Glendora. Because actually she had her heart set on going to Earth in the Solar System and us settling on an organic carrot farm near Cleveland, Ohio. Since we were already in debt on Barnum, though, we had—”

  “I understand, Joshua. I hung around with a cyborg hooker on Barafunda who was the same way,” said his little father. “That was when I was in the lifelike orange business.”

  “Some bimbo on Barafunda isn’t Glendora.”

  After a second of silence, his father said, “When I said it was one hundred thousand dollars, Joshua, that was because I don’t yet know how many ways we’ll have to split the million. That’s a minimum estimate, in other words. You’re going to make at least one hundred thousand dollars.”

  “But I have to do something dishonest.”

  “Is what you’re doing now all that honest, Son, being a handmaiden to the public executioner?”

  “Okay, I have some qualms about handling the merchandising on executed killers,” admitted Josh. “Here on Tarragon people think nothing of watching the executions on TV and buying souvenirs and novelties. Whatever it may be, it’s legal.”

  “Joshua, of all the parts in this scheme, yours is the least dishonest.”

  “What scheme?”

  “You know I’ve always been a true crime buff.”

  “You’ve always been a crook, is what you mean.”

  “You’re frazzled and worn down by domestic and money worries, so I’ll ignore the more direct insults, Joshua,” said his father. “The thing I’m getting at is that one of the safest crimes in the whole Barnum System, according to all the latest statistics, is highjacking. There’s little risk, very little violence and the odds against ever getting caught are—”

  “Wait, now, Dad. You’re asking me to come in on some kind of highjacking operation with you?”

  “I’m offering you a big hunk of a million dollars.”

  Josh looked from the phone screen to the silent computer. “What do you plan to highjack?”

  “Stungun Slim,” said his father.

  Josh hung up on him.

  * * * *

  Far below they were painting the bleachers which surrounded the scaffold. Josh turned away from the see-through wall of his office. This put him facing a chubby bushy-haired cat man named Floyd Inch, Jr. “We have to have ten thousand dollars, Floyd,” he said.

  Inch had a lapful of rough drawings, each protected with a plyo overlay. “Ten big ones? We licensed Ma Boskins for InchEmpire, Unlimited, for only five big ones, Josh.”

  “The Territorial Penal System feels Stungun Slim is a much more exploitable property.” Josh doodled the figure ten thousand dollars on the desk top with his thumbnail. “He ran amok in the ghettos of the territory for nearly two whole years before the police ran him to ground, striking terror into the hearts of all law-abiding . . . well, you know the story.” Josh returned to watching the public execution yard. The morning sun made the screws in the scaffold trap flare.

  The large fluffy cat man scratched at his whiskers. He propped one of the drawings up on his knee. “I think these’ll go real well,” he said, lifting the protective flap. “We’ve got to get into production today, though. Otherwise we won’t have them ready to hawk on the day of the execution.”

  “What are they?”

  “Salt and pepper shakers. Stungun Slim and his lovely blond victim,” explained the novelty-house president. “He’s pepper and the poor unfortunate harlot is salt.”

  Josh’s desk phone beeped. “Excuse me, Floyd. Hello?”

  Two tiny eyes appeared on the screen, surrounded by shaggy blue fur. “Hello, hello, hello,” said a small falsetto voice.

  “Gee, Glendora, will you stop letting that stupid damn quint play with the phone?”

  “He’s far from stupid, Josh. He punched your number and said hello very nicely.”

  “Hello, hello, hello,” said the quint.

  “Four thousand dollars for a hairy blue thing who knows how to use the phone.”

  “No, no, no,” complained the quint as Glendora pried him away from the phone.

  “Josh?” said his lovely willowy wife.

  “What?”

  “Inspector Custer is coming over.”

  Josh leaned down close to the phone to ask, “Gee, Glendora, what’s wrong now?”

  “It’s something about the guest houses,” said his wife. “Galactic Esso didn’t really explain about the additional teleport charges, and now the inspector says if we don’t pay an extra one thousand dollars he’ll have to cart them away.”

  “Which guest houses? The inflatable ones?”

  “No, I returned those to Neiman-Marcus because they kept springing leaks. These are the folding ones, and if we’re going to have that party after the Stungun Slim execution, we’ll need guest houses for your friends, since they’re always collapsing and having to spend the-”

  “Maybe we won’t have the party, Glendora. Frankly all these executions are starting to—”

  “Whether we have the party or not, we can always use an extra guest house or two.”

  “Hello, hello, hello, hello.” The quint blocked out the view of Glendora.

  “So can you get another one-thousand-dollar advance on your salary?”

  Inch had shuffled through his roughs and had a new one on his knee. When Josh glanced toward him the cat man said, “We’ve got this one just about ready to roll. A board game for young and old alike. Tentatively it’s called the Rape In The Fog Game. Six little harlot counters and one Stungun Slim. You each draw cards and get chased through this slum here on the board.”

  “Can you, Josh?”

  “I don’t think so, Glendora. I’ll phone you after lunch.”

  “But the inspector’s coming then.”

  “I have somebody here now. Stungun Slim’s public execution is only two and a half weeks off. The merchandising end of it is really accelerating. Bye.”

  “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye,” said the quint.

  “Here’s a design for a rubberoid pillow made up to resemble Stungun Slim.” Inch showed him a fresh drawing. “When your friends sit on it unawares, it gives off a loud raucous pooty-pooty sound. Good for a laugh.” He stroked his whiskers again. “Would a loan of a thousand bucks, one big one, help you out of your domestic dilemma, Josh?”

  Josh blinked. “Sure, Floyd, but I still don’t think I can sell you a product license on Stungun Slim for under ten thousand dollars.”

  From a pseudoleather billfold Inch took ten one-hundred-dollar bills. “Of course, Josh. I’ll drop in on you this afternoon to see what you’ve found out about the price. Oh, and we have to set up an interview with Stungun Slim himself. So my artists can get pictures of him for our merchandise.”

  “Everybody wants to interview him,” said Josh, checking a schedule. “Time, Newsweek and The Literary Digest are doing man-of-the-week cover stories on him, Calling All Girls is planning an in-depth interview. Gourmet wants to talk to him, too, though I’m not sure why.”

  “Maybe they’ve got him mixed up with Ma Boskins,” chuckled the cat man. He placed the bills on Josh’s desk, gathered his roughs together and stood. “Until this afternoon.”

  After Inch left, Josh sat with his hand on the money. Finally he reached out for the phone.

  He called his father.

  * * * *

  The dog-faced boy was very militant. He kept pacing around Josh’s den, buttoning and unbuttoning his paramilitary jacket. “I tell you what I’m going to do with my share of the booty,” he said. “I’ll give seventy percent... no, but at least sixty percent
or so . . . I’ll give sixty percent or so to the Dog-Faced Boys’ Liberation Front.”

  “Selma, sit down and listen,” ordered Josh’s wrinkled-up old father.

  L. Q. Selma snarled and seated himself on a see-through sofa filled with tinted glass balls. “You treat dog-faced boys like everybody else on this lousy planet.”