A Star Above It and Other Stories

by Chad Oliver

  “Give or take a few hundred thousand dollars,” Richard Mavor said agreeably. “We will insist on a thorough audit, of course.”

  “Isn’t that a little steep?”

  Mavor chuckled. “You can’t take it with you, Mr. Eddington. Either way. If you live out your life in your present circumstances, what is left after taxes will do you no good in your coffin. If you choose to accept our services, we have to insist on a clean break. This is for your own welfare, believe me. If the transfer is incomplete and tentative, you would be nothing but a rather peculiar tourist. Besides, it’s illegal to set aside a kind of emergency fund in case you change your mind.”

  “You can’t take it with you, either, but you want it.”

  Mavor managed to achieve a hurt expression. “I only work here, as I’m sure you understand. I don’t get the money.”

  “You get a commission, don’t you?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “I wasn’t born yesterday,” Harry said.

  “In that case,” said Richard Mavor, who had no intention whatever of letting this particular fish get off the hook, “you will certainly appreciate that our positions are different. You are—or were—a businessman, Mr. Eddington. You don’t expect to get something for nothing. The service we provide is highly specialized; it costs money. You came to us. We did not come to you.”

  “You sent me a letter,” Harry said stubbornly.

  “Come now. We do not advertise at random, but when we have reason to believe that a man is a potential client we offer him an opportunity. The fact that you came here is proof that you are interested.”

  “Okay, I’m interested. I don’t expect to get something for nothing. On the other hand, I don’t intend to get nothing for something. A whole hell of a lot of something. I worked hard to get where I am today.”

  Mavor smiled and moved in for the kill. “And where are you today, Mr. Eddington? That is the heart of the matter, it seems to me. You are fifty-one years old and you cannot work because of the retirement laws. You have no real interests apart from the business from which you are barred. Your children are married and you seldom see them. Your wife is younger than you are, and she has—ah—lost interest in you. A divorce would cost you a fortune, and your chances for happiness would be no better than they are now. You have made a great deal of money, I grant you that. If your money could buy you what you want—call it happiness, dignity, contentment, whatever you please—then you would be a fool to sign it over to us. If, however, your money is useless to you in your present circumstances, why try to hang onto it? You recall the story of the Spanish at Tenochtitlan, of course?”

  “Can’t say that I do,” Harry said, thinking that the man across the desk knew entirely too much about him.

  “Well, in brief, when Cortes was sacking the Aztec city, some of his men got themselves so loaded down with treasure that they were at a distinct disadvantage when the going got rough. In fact, when they had to swim for it across the canals, they sank like stones. You follow me?”

  “I get the picture.”

  “I’m sure you do, Mr. Eddington. Now, let’s put our cards on the table. There is really just one thing for you to decide. How much is your happiness worth to you? The choice is yours—your money gives you that choice. We don’t expect you to decide today. We would like for you to take some of our literature home with you—here, these four spools will do for a starter. Check them out and make up your own mind. If you feel that our offer is a good one for you, come back with your lawyer. I’ll be glad to answer any of your questions at any time, of course.”

  Harry hesitated. “Just one question for now. This is a true exchange, right? If I go, someone will—ummm—take my place?”

  Richard Mavor smiled his ready smile. “Nature abhors a vacuum, Mr. Eddington.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Well, Mrs. Eddington will not be left alone, I can assure you of that.”

  Harry grinned. “That has possibilities, doesn’t it?”

  Richard Mavor looked at him sharply. “Our experience has been that it works out very satisfactorily for all parties concerned.”

  Harry stood up and pocketed the spools. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Richard Mavor extended his smooth hand. “We’ll be expecting you, Mr. Eddington.”

  Harry Eddington woke up early the next morning, as always. All his life he had gotten up at dawn and had been in his office before eight. Now that there was no need for him to get up, he could not cultivate the habit of sleeping late.

  He faced the day with a total lack of enthusiasm. He glanced at the door of Emily’s bedroom. It was closed and probably locked. He didn’t try it. He killed an hour in the bathroom, dressed with elaborate and pointless care, and went downstairs.

  The great house seemed empty, and for an excellent reason: it was empty. He rattled around in it like a marble in a mahogany barrel.

  He sat down alone at the dining table and jabbed the breakfast buttons. In eighty seconds—no more, no less—the serving cart rolled in from the kitchen with two poached eggs, four pieces of bacon, toast, and coffee. It all tasted like sawdust except for the coffee. The coffee tasted like dishwater.

  Harry got up and wandered through the deserted house. He had the whole day ahead of him and absolutely nothing to do. He had eaten breakfast. The next big item on the agenda would be lunch. Then would come the interminable wait until dinner. After that, God alone knew.

  He went into the TV room and stared at the blank gray screen that covered one wall. He decided that he wasn’t desperate enough yet for daytime television. He sat down and picked up the morning paper. It was a printed one; Harry was something of a traditionalist. He was not eager to read it, but a man had to do something.

  He checked the financial pages with a practiced eye and found that he had made about five thousand dollars while he slept. He glanced at the comics. Orphan Annie was the only one that had survived from his youth, and he was mildly reassured to find that she had developed neither eyeballs nor progressive political attitudes. He tried to get through the sports section to see how the Cards were doing. Not bad, but they still weren’t about to catch the General Dynamics Giants. The G.D. Giants, as they were known in the trade, had just enticed too many good ball players with fancy stock deals.

  There was nothing much in the news. The Mars Colony, staffed entirely by men and women under twenty, announced that it would be self-sustaining next year. Harry had heard that one before. The President, who was a mature old gentleman of twenty-five, had made a speech vowing to end conflict of interest contracts in the development of the Antarctic. The appearance of the Field Mice, a quartet of nine-year-old folk singers, had caused a near riot in New York. Critics had praised the group’s “purity of line” and “intuitive understanding” of such hallowed ballads as Pistol Packin’ Mama and Three Little Fishes. Harry hadn’t much cared for the songs the first time around. Scientists at the National Institute stated that human gills for undersea living could now be obtained at reasonable cost, and held out the distinct hope that there could now be “increased social interaction” between interested citizens and sperm whales. Harry wasn’t interested.

  He read the ads with a feeling somewhere between disgust and despair. Harry had nothing against advertising—quite the contrary—but the tone of the ads annoyed him. All of the models in the photographs were either bright-eyed children or impossibly virile men and women in their teens. Old people simply didn’t exist. The prize ad showed two women in seductive nightgowns stretched out side by side on a bed with silken sheets. WHICH GIRL IS THE GREAT GRANDMOTHER? asked the caption. ONLY THE FAMILY DOCTOR KNOWS FOR SURE! Bully for him, Harry thought. He read on. It seemed that regular injections of beeswax, Lunar dust, and apricot juice would keep a woman perpetually young and “active,” apparently right up to the time when she conked out from old age in the midst of an orgy.

  “Damnation,” he said, and lit a cigarette.

  It had been different in
the old days, Harry knew that. His father had not been any senior citizen at fifty-one. He hadn’t been this much out of things as an invalid of eighty.

  Still, if you were thinking about the good old days, you had to go back to Grandfather Eddington. Harry’s kids called him Harry when they bothered to speak to him at all. Harry had called his father Dad or Pop. Harry’s father had called his father just that: Father. And he had usually added that obsolete word, sir.

  Harry remembered Grandfather Eddington, remembered him vividly. He remembered him from those long-ago Sunday dinners in the big white house when he was a child, and he remembered him from the stories his father had told him. Grandfather Eddington had been an awesome figure of a man. He had ruled his household like a king.

  Harry could see him now, striding down the sidewalk on a Sunday afternoon, going to the park to feed the birds. He always dressed in white; he looked like a military snowman with his shock of white hair and his bushy white eyebrows. He carried a walking stick, a carved staff of ornate polished wood, and he twirled it as he walked. Family legend had it that Grandfather had cracked a skull or two with that stick when people had not gotten out of his way fast enough to suit him.

  When Harry had been very small, dressed in his hated Sunday suit of blue coat and knickers, he had been allowed to tag along behind Grandfather on those walks to the park. He had admired that walking stick more than anything else on earth. One day, he had promised himself, he would have a stick like that. He would be somebody.

  It hadn’t quite worked out that way.

  Harry had no walking stick, and people would have considered him balmy if he had bought one. Nobody walked anywhere these days. His authority in the family approximated absolute zero. As for being a wise old man whose advice was sought by all, that was a very large laugh. Nobody gave a hoot in hell what he thought about anything. The Field Mice? He still thought that Benny Goodman had been pretty hot stuff. The Mars Colony? He didn’t know an asteroid from a hole in the ground, and didn’t care. Baseball? He remembered Musial and Williams and Ol’ Diz—what could he possibly say about a Yankee first baseman who was fifteen years old? Sure, he knew that players came along much faster with all the organized pre-school training they got now, but after all….

  Face it. He was out of it, and that was that.

  He leaned back in his reclining chair. The massage started. He lapsed into daydream. He was doing that a lot lately—not quite asleep, not quite awake….

  Harry was walking briskly down the sidewalk, his white suit shining in the sun. His stick felt good and solid in his right hand, and he twirled it expertly as he strode along. “Good afternoon, sir,” a man said, touching his cap. Harry nodded indifferently; he had a decision to make. Now, about the new park that had been proposed. They could clear that shoddy area between Main and Fulmore, run a little rustic bridge over Clear Creek. put in some nice fat goldfish—

  “Harry!”

  He looked up with a start. Not a goldfish, alas. Emily had arisen.

  “Harry, you’re spilling ashes all over the rug.”

  “Oh. Sorry, dear.”

  “I’m going out,” Emily announced.

  He looked at her. She wasn’t hard to look at by any means. Her clear skin was unlined, her blonde hair soft but expertly waved, her figure young and appealing under her clinging green dress.

  “Going to see the swami?” Harry asked.

  “He’s not a swami, and you know it. He’s a certified Interpreter of Mysticism, and he’s a very fine man.”

  Emily had been going in for assorted cults of late, which really wasn’t like her at all. The cults all seemed to advocate abstinence from what they persisted in referring to as pleasures of the flesh, or so Emily said. That certainly wasn’t like Emily either, and Harry had his doubts.

  “Give the swami my regards,” he said.

  “I’ll do that.” Her voice was cool and unconcerned. “And try not to drink too much this afternoon, Harry. We’re going out tonight.”

  “Out?”

  “To the club. We’re playing Bingo.”

  Oh boy, thought Harry.

  Emily swished out, her hips swinging engagingly.

  Damn it, Harry thought, she does that on purpose. He had been forced to try other women from time to time—a couple of years of abstinence could be a very long time indeed, and Harry wasn’t all that old—but they hadn’t worked out very well. Basically, Harry was a decidedly conservative man.

  He went in and ate lunch by himself, as usual.

  He returned to his chair, dialed himself a bourbon and water, and took out the spools that Richard Mavor had given him.

  Harry Eddington had just about made up his mind.

  Still, he wasn’t a man who liked to rush into things.

  He didn’t entirely trust Mr. Richard Mavor.

  He intended to be very sure that he knew what he was doing before he put his John Henry on any contract.

  The spools, as he had feared, were rather heavy going.

  “You’d think,” he said aloud, “that with all the money they make they could afford some decent writers.”

  He stuck with them. The projections, he found, were oddly convincing despite their murky language. Harry could spot a phony pitch a mile away, and the spools struck him as being on the level. The problem was in trying to decipher what it was that they were saying.

  The first one was wittily entitled, The Sociocultural Concomitants of Status and Role Transformation.

  Translated into a rough approximation of English, it said that every social system was marked off into a series of positions—statuses—and that for every status there was a role, the latter being the part that a person was supposed to play when be occupied a particular status. So far, so good. It seemed that status was determined in a variety of ways, depending on the culture of the group in question, but that much the same ingredients were used elsewhere in calculating status: age, sex, birth, property, personality characteristics, and so on. However, the value assigned to the various factors changed from society to society. Some systems gave high status to the old, some to the young; in some cultures it was great to be a man, in others it was better to be a woman. Harry began to get a headache. In addition, certain kinds of persons were more highly valued in one system than in another. A warrior was a big man among the Plains Indians, but if you were a Hopi you were supposed to be peaceful. There were rather too many examples along the same lines; Harry got the general idea without undue difficulty. It seemed that the role that went along with the status also varied at different times and places. The basic point was simple enough: the problem of individual happiness and contentment was largely a matter of being the right sort of person in the right place at the right time. In effect, Harry figured, the business of the Exchange was to match a given person with the culture that happened to value what that particular person had to offer.

  He followed it all the way through. Then he dialed another drink and tackled the second spool.

  It too, had a racy title: A Thematic Analysis of the American Culture Pattern.

  “Oh, brother,” Harry said.

  The idea this time hit close enough to home to be moderately interesting. The spool stated that the American culture in 1995 was classified as a dynamic, driven system: it was the precise opposite of a stable, passive culture type. The system retained a number of fundamental ideas that had characterized it for many years: an emphasis on very rapid technological and social change, a focus on youth, an isolation of the individual as a kind of social atom. “That’s me,” Harry said. The ideal in the old American culture, the spool projected, was the man of action, the go-getter, the practical man who got things done. Nowadays, the legacy of this notion still survived. The elderly—legally defined as those past fifty years of age—were in a tough spot because they were thought of as obsolete. They didn’t have much to offer in the way of traditional wisdom because the culture had literally passed them by: the culture changed so fast that the cultu
re in which they were expert no longer existed. If they had money, they could function as consumers. “Don’t I know it,” Harry said. Beyond that, they could only try to “think young” and masquerade as pot-bellied teen-agers. The passing of the frontier had put more economic power in the hands of women. The role of the male was becoming ambiguous….

  Harry felt worse than ambiguous. His headache was assuming classic proportions. He scanned the last two spools with something less than complete dedication.

  One was called The Legal and Ethical Aspects of Ego Exchange, and it was primarily a summary of a series of court decisions. The key point seemed to be that personality transfers were legal as long as both of the parties concerned had given their consent to the transaction. On the ethical side, the U.N., after a long procedural wrangle, had given its blessing in the form of its Manifesto Regarding the Rights of Individuals to Cultural Self-Determination, which sounded reasonably lofty,

  The final spool was The Dynamic Mechanics of Personality Transfer, which boasted a preface by the retired head of the American Medical Association. (A lengthy footnote said proudly that the good doctor was now a shaman on Tierra del Fuego.) The projection was a maze of circuit diagrams and obscure mathematical symbols, and it was all Greek to Harry.

  Well, no matter.

  Harry was ready for Mr. Mavor.

  “We want to be completely satisfied,” said Richard Mavor the next day.

  “That makes two of us.”

  “I believe you said that you had some specific questions?”

  “A few, yes. Let’s suppose that I agree to make the switch. Does the Exchange guarantee my future happiness?”

  Mavor pursed his lips. “That’s a large order.”

  “It’s your business, isn’t it?”

  Mavor leaned forward across the polished desk and chose his words with great care. “We can guarantee two things, certainly. First, we will put you—the essential you, so to speak—in a body that will—ah—harmonize with the new surroundings you choose. Second, we will place you in a functioning culture that will maximize the attributes you happen to possess.”