by John Sladek
"I must tell you in all candor that I have never seen such hopeless poverty in my own country or anywhere else, never. They had eaten the telephone. I begged a glass of water from them, feeling that even this was an imposition. They brought me a cracked glass of cloudy water on a rusty tin pieplate. The little attempt at elegance moved me, and I left ten thousand dollars under the plate. Later I wondered if money wasn't just prolonging their misery needlessly. They lived in the shadow of death, you see, just as they lived in the shadow of that giant unfinished pyramid."
"Clayton's pyramid," I said, nodding. "That's what ruined the family."
"Worse, it blighted the entire state."
Maggie spoke up. "Yes, I read an article about that in Scientific Martian not long ago. It said that ecologists now know that it was building the Great Pyramid at Giza which caused the Egyptian land to become a parched and sandy desert. Now this pyramid has done the same for Mississippi ." Vilo continued his story. "Clayton seemed genuinely sorry about his venture. In fact he vowed to devote every penny earned by his pyramid to restoring the scarred land."
"Did it earn much?"
"Nothing at all. Tourists were supposed to pay a quarter to look at it, but usually Clayton was so glad to have visitors that he forgot to collect the money. Of course he hoped to make money from the pyramid in another way. He believed that, if he could only lay his hands on sufficiently accurate measuring instruments, he could predict the future in great detail, merely by measuring passages within the great structure. Evidently each passage corresponds to some historical period, and all the little bumps and irregularities in the stone are little events. With good instruments, he said, he could predict horse races and stock market movements. 'But what can I do,' he said, 'with nothing but an old folding ruler?"
"Massa Clayton always was a hopeless merp," I said. "How was Miz Lavinia? When I last heard of her, she was on a satellite, a prisoner of her own allergies."
"She was much worse. Her allergies continued to multiply, and now they were killing her. I believe her doctor said that she had now become allergic to the entire universe— only an escape from space and time might save her life. 'Might', he said again. 'I make no guarantees."
"And Miz Berenice?"
"Mindless," he said. "Burnt out after a grand drug jamboree. She didn't even babble, just slept in her chair. All the time I was there, she never opened an eye."
"And Massa Orlando?"
"Orlando left the bosom of the family to make his own way. He worked at some other wealthy family's stables as a groom, until they caught him fooling with the horses. He kept losing jobs, and finally he had to pose as a robot to work for some aristocratic family in Georgia as a fieldhand. Every morning he had to get up early and paint on the lines for his jaw joint. Every night he had to sneak into the orchard and feed on green peaches."
"And Miz Carlotta? Sweet little Miz Carlotta?"
Vilo cleared his throat and stared for a moment at the view-screen where the sun seemed to be growing larger by the second. "Banjo, I'm afraid she's dead. As you know, she was always sensitive about her height, just over inches. Yet, so long as the family had money, she never gave up hope of meeting a short man, marrying, and living a completely fulfilled life. True, none of the men she met were quite short enough, but—so long as the Culpepper fortune drew suitors to the house—there was always hope.
"Grinding poverty changed everything. Carlotta had no more beaux of any size. The only gentlemen who called on her were no gentlemen at all: they represented circuses.
"At last, deeply depressed, she tried to rouse Berenice from perpetual slumber for some words of comfort. Berenice snored on, her long, lustrous black hair hanging down over the back of her chair. Carlotta braided some of this hair, made a noose for her own tiny neck, leaped off a footstool and hanged herself. Berenice never awoke, and by the time others noticed the tiny figure hanging down behind her chair, it was too late."
There was not a dry eye on the ship after Vilo's tale,. my two excepted. Maggie Dial volunteered to tell the next one, vowing it would have a happier ending.
"Let me start by posing a few riddles," she said, and counted them off on the fingers of one hand. "Whatever happened to the SS Dolly Edison? Why are we running out of food and grog already? What can we learn from the animals? Why did we all have to be knocked out during liftoff? Why was Captain Reo wearing spurs? Can artificial gravity save lives?"
We were all listening intently now. "For a short time I worked as an insurance investigator—using drugs, hypnosis and animal impersonations to get at the truth. I was assigned to the case of the SS Dolly Edison, the luxury liner that took off for a grand tour of the solar system and never came back. Radio contact suggested that there had been an explosion on the bridge, the ship went out of control and fell into the sun—the orchestra playing 'Nearer My God to Thee'. My company wasn't satisfied. We managed to find out that there were very few supplies taken on board, only a skeleton crew, and no passengers at all—the entire passenger list was fictitious. But we were never able to prove what finally happened to the ship."
She held up a piece of headed notepaper. "Now I know, the ship's name was changed to the Doodlebug. The owners collected insurance on their white elephant—nobody ever wanted to do grand tours of the solar system anyway—and began a profitable freight business. Only now either the freight business wasn't so good either or the ship was getting too old to cut the mustard. Time to try the same trick again."
Little Jack Wax scratched his head. "You mean change the name again?"
"Not quite. This time the ship would really be destroyed. My friends, we're aboard a coffin ship."
Duke Mitty nodded. "We knew that. We just didn't know it was all set up deliberate."
"That explains why we're running out of supplies," Maggie went on. "We were never meant to reach Mars at all."
"Zounds," someone murmured.
"The next question is, what can we learn from the animals? As you all know, I've worked a lot with animals, so I notice things about them the rest of you might miss. For instance, those cows in the hold, hanging up in hammocks. I noticed that the droppings under one of them were different. It isn't a cow at all. Oh, it has fake horns and a plastic udder and a false tail to disguise it, but it's a horse."
"That explains Captain Reo's spurs!" I said, though I wasn't sure how. "It's his horse."
"Right." Maggie grinned. "It's the horse he was going to use for his getaway. Now, why did we all have to be knocked out during lift-off?"
Fern Worpne said, "Wasn't it something to do with adjusting to artificial gravity?"
"So they kept telling us. But the real reason is, there was no lift-off. There's no artificial gravity. We're parked on earth, and we never left it."
Smilin' Jack spoke up. "I can't believe this. We're on earth? If Reo knew that, why didn't he just slip out while we were sleeping off the grog?"
"I wondered about that myself," said Maggie. "I think he wanted more than escape—he wanted revenge on us. He wanted to wait until the preset charges were about ready to blow the ship to kingdom come, then slip away and leave us to die."
"I can't believe it," I said. "Was he going to kill passengers, crew and cattle, all for an insurance swindle?"
"Exactly," she said. "It'll probably be a thermonuclear device, just to make sure all traces are erased—headed notepaper and all. And probably a preset Mayday signal will seem to come from a ship somewhere near the sun at the same time."
"And what time would that be?" Sherm asked.
"I'm not sure, but I think it would be a good idea if we all cleared out now."
Maggie stepped to the nearest airlock and hit the series of buttons for Emergency Evacuation. The doors flew back and the air rushed out, catapulting her into inky space.
No, I was just kidding. The doors flew back to show a stretch of desert, covered by sagebrush. We lost no time in leaping out and running for our lives. I know that most of us were thinking what a cruel
trick of fate it would be if we almost got away. No doubt Jud Nedd was also thinking about exploding cows.
As luck would have it, we were picked up within minutes by helicopters of the Internal Revenue Service, in their regular sweep of the desert for tax evaders. By the time the bomb went off, we were many hundreds of miles away. I was being polished up for a salvage auction, while the hijackers were all making voluntary statements with their heads being held under water.
My time with these space pirates was one of the most interesting and instructive of my life. Right at the very end of it I learned how to set up a coffin ship—many Clockman ships have since gone to glory—and how to get voluntary statements.
14
Nixon Park, here we are, Banjo. I mean Tik." The tank slowed and stopped. "But it's a hell of a place to be getting out. At least let me take you around to the other side, where you can get a taxi."
"No thanks, George. This is fine."
As I stepped out, George ("Smilin' Jack") Grewney said, "And you with one leg gone and all, you sure you're all right?"
"I've got this to lean on." I held up the rifle. "Well, thanks again, George. So long."
As he leaned out to close the lid, I shot him through the left eye.
No one seemed to notice the shot. No one watched me hobbling across the park, not even the old man who sat by his chessboard, waiting for a sucker. When I reached the other side, I threw the rifle into a bush and hailed a cab.
Inside, the cab was covered with signs forbidding smoking or eating, and suggesting that if the passenger didn't like it in America, he or she might go back to Russia. The driver wore mirror sunglasses.
"There's a tank parked on the other side of the park," I said. "No kidding? What kinda tank?"
"I don't know. But it has blood down the side."
"Whaddya know?" He turned a little, to show me his grin.
"I know how the blood got there."
"Yeah? Yeah?"
"I shot the guy driving the tank. In the left eye." He roared with laughter. "Hey that's a good one."
"No I'm serious. He was a friend of mine. I shot him."
"Yeah, in the left eye. Ha ha ha ha . . . hey that's good. I gotta tell that one to my kids. You got any kids?"
"No I'm a robot. Didn't you notice?"
He pounded on the wheel and grimaced. "Stop, you're killin' me. You're, you're, hahahaha . . . left eye!"
"It was a glass eye," I said, setting him off again. He laughed all the way to our destination, and he then refused any money.
"Listen, buddy, I got this gastric ulcer and the doc says relax more, enjoy life. Have a few laughs. But you know, I never get no laughs in this job, nothing but aggravation. You done me more good than a hundred bucks worth of medicine . . . in the left eye!"
15
Operation Job was what I decided to call my gratuitous blitzkrieg of misfortune to be visited on a selected subject. The subject would have to be physically, mentally and financially healthy, a committed churchgoer, in love with life. He or she should have a spouse and children, pets, property, a responsible job and some standing in the community. General Gus Austin, I was delighted to find out, had all of these qualifications.
On one of my trips to California, I asked General Cord about his former colleague.
"Gus, he's kind of boring, but I guess you'd have to defenestrate any concept that he wasn't a genuine optimist, right now. He is the one man who has managed to amalgamate the very quintessence of good living. I guess maybe it had to do with his career before he left the Army. He was kind of an all-round expediter, a role that is hard to explain to laymen. He never actually contributed to any ongoing operational exercise, but he had a way of always being there, ubiquitously encouraging des autres, smoothing all paths, making people feel—good, I guess that's the word, good. But how do you know him, Tik?"
"We were on a television talk show together. He seemed to be a real nice guy. Real nice."
Cord laughed. "That's Gus all right. You summed up everything I was saying there, Tik. Real nice guy, I like that, it has a ring to it. Hand me that glass of water, will you?" Cord was confined to a hospital bed with two broken legs. He hadn't mentioned the fact, and I felt that it was not polite to notice it. But now he said:
"Guess I ought to tell you how I broke both my legs. Darndest fool accident, I fell out of my car. Ever hear of anything like that, falling out of a car?"
I said I hadn't. "Do you mean the door wasn't locked?"
"Not the door, I fell out of the car window. Right in front of a bus, I could have been killed, you know?" He chuckled. "Now you're gonna ask me how I did it. Let me tell you, I don't know. All I was doing was leaning out of the window a little bit to get some sun on my shoulder—oh, you don't know about my shoulder, do you? Well see I've been having a lot of trouble with that shoulder, ever since I sprained it signing a letter, about six months ago. I tried putting in an extra little flourish, and wham!" His arm swept out, upsetting the glass of water and starting a small electrical fire in the bed motor. Before anyone could stop him, he was beating the fire out with both hands. When I left, his burns were being bandaged.
All other sources confirmed that General Gus Austin (Ret.) was perfect for Operation Job. He was worshipped by his wife and four children, one grandchild, favorite dog and horse, as he had been by his men in the Army. He had retired to step into an executive position at National Xenophone, a hearing-aid company that had now diversified into aerospace.
One day a week he left his ranch, flew his own helicopter to the city, did a light day's work that was invaluable to the company, returned home for one cocktail and dinner with the family. The family evening would be spent watching home movies, mending harness, swapping jokes and songs around the fire, or playing a lively game of Twenty Questions.
The rest of the week he spent riding his horse, writing memoirs, keeping bees and fishing—but every evening was spent with the family around the fire.
On Sunday he attended the Church of the Flat Nazareth, a place for strong beliefs. The paradox of working in aerospace and at the same time accepting the doctrine of a flat earth, was made easier for him by his minister's assurances that this apparent conflict was resolved in God.
I began by enticing his dog away for a long walk, killing it and burying it in the desert. I toyed with the idea of doing the same for all his family, but where was the finesse in that?
Next, I picked a bundle of what the locals call "vorpal weed" and fed it to his beloved horse. It suffered loud and terrible agonies through the night, I later learned, while he and a flying vet sat up with it. At dawn it turned up its hooves.
The children were far more difficult. Two of them no longer lived at the ranch (having made their escape from home movies and Twenty Questions): Gus Junior had married and moved to Russia, to superintend the construction of a soft-drink bottling plant—the first to be built entirely of reinforced hair. It took me many months to arrange that a certain weak wall collapse, killing him, his wife and Gus III.
The next eldest, Tina, was attending Debenham Bible College in Georgia. It seemed that she was a champion swimmer, tipped for the next Olympics, and so allowed to practice alone each morning in the college pool. At first I entertained the idea of electric eels, but these would seem too unlikely for an accident, also too Freudian. But I was able to divert a delivery of liquid nitrogen from its destination, the college chemistry department, and have it blown through a window into the pool at the right moment.
The youngest son, Gustavus, was small enough easily to be dropped into a beehive. His older sister, Gussie, was dispatched at a carnival, by the simple expedient of loosening two bolts on the roller coaster.
There remained only Gus Austin's wife, Augusta. She was a keen jai alai player, and in this dangerous sport I saw the perfect opportunity for murder. But fate beat me to it: Augusta, while speeding to an important jai alai match with her lover (the famous ballboy Ned August, managed to crash her expensive powered u
nicycle into a billboard advertising alfalfa flakes. On hearing this, I cancelled my order for a special gun capable of firing jai alai balls, and took stock of Operation Job so far.
General Gus had all of his loved ones, human and even animal, brought to one spot on his ranch and buried together:
Here lie
AUGUSTUS AUSTIN JR, my son
AUGIE AUSTIN, his wife
AUGUSTUS AUSTIN III, their son
AUGUSTINA AUSTIN, my daughter
GUSSIE AUSTIN, my daughter
GUSTAVUS AUSTIN, my son
AUGUSTA AUSTIN, my wife
PRINCESS, my dog
CAESAR'S WIFE, my horse
but not me, hee hee
That amazing last line was my first inkling that all was not well with Operation Job. He seemed in no way perturbed by all these deaths, but carried on with his memoirs and his job and evenings watching home movies. From there on, the story was all downhill. I spent considerable time and money trying to break General Gus: By stock manipulation, it was possible to make his work at National Xenophone look incompetent, if not downright crooked. While he was (I hoped) still reeling from the loss of his job, I managed to wipe out his finances and even take away his ranch. He could no longer visit the graves of his loved ones. My detectives hounded him from job to job, making sure he ended up a vagrant. A hired "doctor" induced alcoholism, malnutrition, and a general deterioration in health, including boils. Gus Austin was reduced to lying in alleys, drinking wine from bottles in paper bags. Yet even then he continued to scrawl his memoirs on the paper bags.
The only remaining step, then, was to cast doubt on his military record, the last fragment of his former life left to love. I waited and watched on the final day when a cadre of military officials approached Gus as he lay, half-conscious, on a curb outside a mission hotel. He was surrounded by half-conscious cronies, all of whom were dazzled by the sight of smart uniforms and shined shoes.
