I shuddered at the thought. "If you're any kind of friend, you will; the hell with that Reserve stuff!"
"Ever been there?"
"No," I told him, "and I never will. A bunch of howling barbarians that couldn't stand the gaff, thought they were higher-strung than anybody else—sissies is what they are. They slip back culturally to the twentieth or fifteenth century and they think they're rugged he-men!"
"It could be worse," he said tolerantly. His eyes narrowed as he seemed to remember something: "I'm treating a woman now—pitiful case; hopeless, I fear. She'd be a hell of a lot better off if she'd been in the Utah Reserve for the past few years."
I gave him some stuff from a talk I'd had with Mr. Administrator Etterson. He'd had it absolutely firsthand that they were practicing human sacrifice in the Reserve. Caldicott just laughed; he simply didn't believe it. I asked him what he meant by that crack about the woman who should have run out. He said he'd show me. I had to get home to my wife, but he got me mad enough to forget about it for the time being. We took a flit to Bronnix, the Morrisania Hospital where he was Resident Psychiatrist.
He warned me outside the patient's room that I'd better keep my mouth shut the least little thing could send her off into one of her spasms. We went in.
The woman was knitting, her eye on a soapie screen. She turned to us—
not bad looking—and said to Caldicott: "Darling—you're …back!" Just like that. Then she registered alarm, apprehension and curiosity and said, batting her eyes at me: "But—won't you …introduce me?"
It was hard to keep from looking around for the mike and the console.
I've played and seen that situation a thousand times and now I was meeting it in real life!
"This is my associate," said Caldicott ambiguously. He snapped off the soapie just as Vera Venable, the Alienist's niece, was pleading with Professor Sykes not to fire her uncle from the clinic staff.
"Turn it on!" she screamed. "You've left poor Vera hanging in the ether!
Call her back! Don't leave her out there!"
Caldicott resignedly turned the soapie back on, and the woman said, arching her brows: "Why—thank you, darling! That was …very sweet!"
Running the last two words together and simultaneously lowering her eyes with a shy little smile. The line was another oldie, used several times a day to cover everything from passing an ashtray to a diamond ring.
We left and went to the hospital refectory.
The refectory soapie screen was on, of course, and I was alarmed to find I was alarmed at the number of people who were watching it. Caldicott read my expression, and gave a sour grin.
"She's the first," he said simply.
"Go to Dachau! I don't believe it!"
"You will soon. I tell you, she's the first. There are going to be more—
and more—and more."
"Consider: as long ago as the twentieth century there were housewives who never differentiated between real persons and the audio-performers whom they listened to daily. They worried with them, laughed with them, discussed them as though they were absent neighbors. With the slow development of the additional circuits—video, oleo, full-color and tactile for those who like it—the effect was magnified. With the Krebski Formula of the last century, which related the numerical quantities of music to the numerical quantities of the electroencephalogram curves produced by the music, the effect was perfected.
"The housewife of today, frankly, has a soft touch. She dusts, washes dishes, waxes floors and so on by tapping buttons. With her spare time she watches the soapie screen, and she has a lot of spare time. I've drawn a graph—"
He took out a sheet of paper and smoothed it carefully. I don't pretend to understand such things; I'm a consolist, not a tube-jockey, and I told him so.
"But look," he urged. "Here's the abscissa meaning log-log of number of Caldicott Syndrome cases at one time'—"
"Caldicott Syndrome?"
"That's what I call it," he said modestly. "And this red circle indicates where we stand on the time-axis now. You see the rise—"
I finally looked and laughed at what I saw. "You really think," I said,
"that the saturation point's been reached?"
"I predicted it a year ago," he said solemnly. "I was actually waiting for the case you just saw to turn up. I believe that there will be five hundred cases tomorrow, two thousand cases the next day, and so on.
Pfannkuchen's studies in mass hysteria—"
I got up. "If you're right," I said, "I'll be the first man to run out and join the wild-men in the Utah Reserve. But, Caldicott, I think you're all wet.
That woman upstairs is weak-minded and that's all there is to it. I work with the soapies; I can't believe that any normal person, like my wife, say, could be knocked off the trolley by them. I've got to go now; I'll be seeing you around."
I left and took a flit for Linden, where I live. Pfannkuchen's studies in mass hysteria, my eye!
But my wife met me at the door and said, with surprise, delight and apprehension: "Darling—you're …back!"
Would you pass me some more of that beef stuff?
The Goodly Creatures
[F&SF December, 1952]
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world,
That has such people in 't!
Miranda in The Tempest
FARWELL suddenly realized that his fingers had been trembling all morning, with a hair-fine vibration that he couldn't control. He looked at them in amazement and rested them on the keys of his typewriter.
The tremor stopped and Farwell told himself to ignore it; then it would go away. The copy in the typewriter said: Kumfyseets—and in the upper left-hand corner and under it:—hailed by veteran spacemen as the greatest advance in personal comfort and safety on the spaceways since—
Since what? It was just another pneumatic couch. Why didn't he ever get anything he could work with? This one begged for pix—a stripped-down model in a Kumfyseet, smiling under a pretended seven-G takeoff acceleration—but the Chicago Chair Company account didn't have an art budget. No art, and they were howling for tear-sheets already.
— comfort and safety on the spaceways since—
He could take Worple to a good lunch and get a shirt-tail graf in his lousy "Stubby Says" column and that should hold Chicago Chair for another week. They wouldn't know the difference between Worple and—
Farwell's intercom buzzed. "Mr. Henry Schneider to see you about employment."
"Send him in, Grace."
Schneider was a beefy kid with a practiced smile and a heavy handshake. "I saw your ad for a junior copywriter," he said, sitting down confidently. He opened an expensive, new-looking briefcase and threw a folder on the desk.
Farwell leafed through it—the standard presentation. A fact sheet listing journalistic honors in high school and college, summer jobs on weeklies, "rose to sergeantcy in only ten months during U.M.T. period."
Copies of by-line pieces pasted neatly, without wrinkles, onto heavy pages. A TV scenario for the college station. A letter from the dean of men, a letter from the dean of the journalism school.
"As you see," Schneider told him, "I'm versatile. Sports, travel, science, human-interest, spot news—anything."
"Yes. Well, you wouldn't be doing much actual writing to start, Schneider. When—"
"I'm glad you mentioned that, Mr. Farwell. What exactly would be the nature of my work?"
"The usual cursus honoruni—" Schneider looked blank and then laughed heartily. Farwell tried again: "The usual success story in public relations is, copy boy to junior copywriter to general copywriter to accounts man to executive. If you last that long. For about three months you can serve Greenbough and Brady best by running copy, emptying waste baskets and keeping your eyes open. After you know the routine we can try you on—"
Schneider interrupted: "What's the policy on salaries?" He didn't seem to l
ike the policy on promotions.
Farwell told him the policy on salaries and Schneider tightened his mouth disapprovingly. "That's not much for a starter," he said. "Of course, I don't want to haggle, but I think my presentation shows I can handle responsibility."
Farwell got up with relief and shook his hand. "Too bad we couldn't get together," he said, talking the youngster to the door. "Don't forget your briefcase. If you want, you can leave your name with the girl and we'll get in touch with you if anything comes up. As you say, you might do better in another outfit that has a more responsible job open. It was good of you to give us a try, Schneider …" A warm clap on the shoulder got him out.
Next time, Farwell thought, feeling his 45 years, it would be better to mention the starting salary in the ad and short-stop the youngsters with inflated ideas. He was pretty sure he hadn't acted like that beefy hotshot when he was a kid—or had he? —comfort and safety on the space-ways since—
He turned on the intercom and said: "Get me Stubby Worple at the Herald." Worple was in.
"Jim Farwell, Stub. I was looking at the column this morning and I made myself a promise to buzz you and tell you what a damn fine job it is. The lead graf was sensational." Modest protests.
"No, I mean it. Say, why don't we get together? You got anything on for lunch?"
He did, but how about dinner? Hadn't been to the Mars Room for a coon's age.
"Oh, Mars Room. Sure enough all right with me. Meet you in the bar at 7:30?" He would.
Well, he'd left himself wide open for that one. He'd be lucky to get off with a $30 tab. But it was a sure tear-sheet for the Chicago Chair people.
Farwell said to the intercom: "Get me a reservation for 8 tonight at the Mars Room, Grace. Dinner for two. Tell Mario it's got to be a good table."
He ripped the Kumfyseets first ad out of the typewriter and dropped it into the waste basket. Fifty a week from Chicago Chair less 30 for entertainment. Mr. Brady wasn't going to like it; Mr. Brady might call him from New York about it to say gently: "Anybody can buy space, Jim.
You should know by now that we're not in the business of buying space.
Sometimes I think you haven't got a grasp of the big picture the way a branch manager should. Greenbough asked about you the other day and I really didn't know what to tell him." And Farwell would sweat and try to explain how it was a special situation and maybe try to hint that the sales force was sometimes guilty of overselling a client, making promises that Ops couldn't possibly live up to. And Mr. Brady would close on a note of gentle melancholy with a stinging remark or two "for your own good, Jim."
Farwell glanced at the clock on his desk, poured one from his private bottle; Brady receded a little into the background of his mind.
"Mr. Angelo Libonari to see you," said the intercom. "About employment."
"Send him in."
Libonari stumbled on the carpeting that began at the threshold of Harwell's office. "I saw your ad," he began shrilly, "your ad for a junior copywriter."
"Have a seat." The boy was shabby and jittery. "Didn't you bring a presentation?"
He didn't understand. "No, I just saw your ad. I didn't know I had to be introduced. I'm sorry I took up your time—" He was on his way out already.
"Wait a minute, Angelo! I meant, have you got any copies of what you've done, where you've been to school, things like that."
"Oh." The boy pulled out a sheaf of paper from his jacket pocket. "This stuff isn't very good," 'he said. "As a matter of fact, it isn't really finished. I wrote it for a magazine, Integration, I don't suppose you ever heard of it; they were going to print it but they folded up, it's a kind of prose poem." Abruptly he ran dry and handed over the wad of dog-eared, interlined copy. His eyes said to Farwell: please don't laugh at me.
Farwell read at random: "—and then the Moon will drift astern and out of sight, the broken boundary that used to stand between the eye and the mind." He read it aloud and asked: "Now, what does that mean?"
The boy shyly and proudly explained: "Well, what I was trying to bring out there was that the Moon used to be as far as anybody could go with his eyes. If you wanted to find out anything about the other celestial bodies you had to guess and make inductions—that's sort of the whole theme of the piece—liberation, broken boundaries."
"Uh-huh," said Farwell, and went on reading. It was a rambling account of an Earth-Ganymede flight. There was a lot of stuff as fuzzy as the first bit, there were other bits that were hard, clean writing. The kid might be worth developing if only he didn't look and act so peculiar. Maybe it was just nervousness.
"So you're specially interested in space travel?" he asked.
"Oh, very much. I know I failed to get it over in this; it's all second-hand.
I've never been off. But nobody's really written well about it yet—" He froze.
His terrible secret, Farwell supposed with amusement, was that he hoped to be the laureate of space flight. Well, if he wasn't absolutely impossible, Greenbough and Brady could give him a try. Shabby as he was, he wouldn't dare quibble about the pay.
He didn't quibble. He told Farwell he could get along on it nicely, he had a room in the run-down sub-Bohemian near north side of town. He was from San Francisco, but had left home years ago—Farwell got the idea that he'd run away— and been in a lot of places. He'd held a lot of menial jobs and picked up a few credits taking night college courses here and there. After a while Farwell told him he was hired and to see the girl for his withholding tax and personnel data forms.
He buzzed his copy chief about the boy and leaned back in good humor.
Angelo could never get to be an accounts man, of course, but he had some talent and imagination. Tame it and the kid could grow into a good producer. A rocket fan would be handy to have around if Sales stuck Ops with any more lemons like Chicago Chair.
Worple drank that night at the Mars Room like a man with a hollow leg and Farwell more or less had to go along with him. He got the Kumfyseets item planted but arrived at the office late and queasy as McGuffy, the copy chief, was bawling out Angelo for showing up in a plaid shirt, and a dirty one at that.
McGuffy came in to see him at 4:30 to ask about Angelo. "He just doesn't seem to be a Greenbough and Brady man, J. F. Of course if you think he's got something on the ball, that's good enough for me. But, honestly, can you see him taking an account to lunch?"
"Is he really getting in your hair, Mac? Give him a few days."
McGuffy was back at the end of the week, raging. "He showed me a poem, J. F. A sonnet about Mars. And he acted as if he was doing me a favor! As if he was handing me a contract with Panamerican Steel!"
Farwell laughed; it was exactly what he would expect Angelo to do. "It was his idea of a compliment, Mac. It means he thinks you're a good critic. I know these kids. I used to—" He broke off, dead-pan.
McGuffy grumbled: "You know I'm loyal, J. F. If you think he's got promise, all right. But he's driving me nuts."
After the copy chief left, Farwell shook his head nervously. What had he almost said? "I used to be one myself." Why, so he had—just about 25
years ago, a quarter of a century ago, when he went into radio work temporarily. Temporarily! A quarter-century ago he had been twenty years old. A quarter-century ago he had almost flunked out of college because he sat up all night trying to write plays instead of studying.
He hazily remembered saying to somebody, a girl, something like: "I am aiming for a really creative synthesis of Pinero and Shaw." Somehow that stuck, but he couldn't remember what the girl looked like or whether she'd been impressed. Farwell felt his ears burning: "A really creative synthesis of Pinero and Shaw." What a little—!
He told the intercom: "Send in Libonari."
The boy was more presentable; his hair was cut and he wore a clean blue shirt. "I've had a couple of complaints," said Farwell. "Suppose we get this clear: you are the one who is going to conform if you want to stay with us. Greenbough and Brady isn't going to be re
molded nearer to the heart's desire of Angelo Libonari. Are you going out of your way to be difficult?"
The boy shrugged uneasily and stammered: "No, I wouldn't do anything like that. It's just, it's just that I find it hard to take all this seriously—
but don't misunderstand me. I mean I can't help thinking that I'm going to do more important things some day, but honestly, I'm trying to do a good job here."
"Well, honestly you'd better try harder," Farwell said, mimicking his nervous voice. And then, more agreeably: "I'm not saying this for fun, Angelo. I just don't want to see you wasted because you won't put out a little effort, use a little self-discipline. You've got a future here if you work with us instead of against us. If you keep rubbing people the wrong way and I have to fire you, what's it going to be? More hash-house jobs, more crummy furnished rooms, hot in the summer, cold in the winter. You'll have something you call 'freedom,' but it's not the real thing. And it's all you'll have. Now beat it and try not to get on Mr.
McGuffy's nerves."
The boy left, looking remorseful, and Farwell told himself that not everybody could handle an out-of-the-way type that well. If he pasted the little sermon in his hat he'd be all right.
"Really creative synthesis!" Farwell snorted and poured himself a drink before he buckled down to planning a series of releases for the International Spacemen's Union. The space lines, longing for the old open-shop days, were sniping at the I.S.U. wherever they found an opening. They had a good one in the union's high initiation fee. The union said the high fee kept waifs and strays out and insured that anybody who paid it meant business and would make the spaceways his career. The union said the benefits that flowed from this were many and obvious. The companies said the union just wanted the money.
Farwell started blocking out a midwestern campaign. It might start with letters to the papers signed by spaceman's wife, widow of scab spacer and other folks; the union could locate them to sign the letters.
Next thing to do was set up a disinterested outfit. He tentatively christened it "The First Pan-American Conference on Space Hazards"
His Share of Glory The Complete Short Science Fiction Page 40
