Critical Mass

by Frederik Pohl

  It was about a month after that that Myrion Flowers received the package containing Brubacker’s effects. There had been no one else to send them to.

  He was shaken, that controlled man. He had seen many folk-gods of his people go the same route, but they were fighters, entertainers or revivalists; he had not expected it of a young, brilliant university graduate. For that reason he did not immediately throw the junk away, but mused over it for some minutes. His next visitor found him with a silvery-coppery sort of helmet in his hands.

  Flowers’s next visitor was a former Corporation Counsel to the City of New York. By attending Dr. Powell’s church and having Dr. Flowers take care of his health he kept a well-placed foot hi both the principal political camps of the city. He no longer much needed political support, but Flowers had pulled him through one coronary and he was too old to change doctors. “What have you got there, Myrion?” he asked.

  Flowers looked up and said precisely, “If I can believe the notes of the man who made it, it is a receiver and amplifier for beta-wave oscillations.”

  The Corporation Counsel groaned, “God preserve

  me from the medical mind. What’s that in English?” But he was surprised to see the expression of wondering awe that came onto Flowers’s withered face.

  “It reads thoughts,” Flowers whispered.

  The Corporation Counsel at once clutched his chest, but found no pain. He complained testily, “You’re joking.”

  “I don’t think I am, Wilmot. The man who constructed this device had all the appropriate dignities -summa cum laude, Dean’s List, interviewed by mail by nearly thirty prospective employers. Before they found out the color of his skin, of course. No,” he said reflectively, “I don’t think I’m joking, but there’s one way to find out.”

  He lifted the helmet toward his head. The Corporation counsel cried out, “Damn you, Myrion, don’t do that!”

  Flowers paused. “Are you afraid I’ll read your mind and learn your secrets?”

  “At my time of life? When you’re my doctor? No, Myrion, but you ought to know I have a bad heart. I don’t want you electrocuted in front of my eyes. Besides, what the devil does a Negro want with a machine that will tell him what people are thinking? Isn’t guessing bad enough for you?”

  Myrion Flowers chose to ignore the latter part of what his patient had said. “I don’t expect it to electrocute me, and I don’t expect this will affect your heart, Wilmot. In any event, I don’t propose to be wondering about this thing for any length of time, I don’t want to try it when I’m alone and there’s no one else here.” He plopped the steel bowl on his head. It fit badly and was very heavy. An extension cord hung from it, and without pausing Flowers plugged it into a wall socket by his chair.

  The helmet whined faintly and Flowers leaped to his feet. He screamed.

  The Corporation Counsel moved rapidly enough to make himself gasp. He snatched the helmet from

  Flowers’s head, caught him by the shoulders and lowered him into his chair again. “You all right?” he growled.

  Flowers shuddered epileptically and then controlled himself. “Thank you, Wilmot. I hope you haven’t damaged Dr. Brubacker’s device.” And then suddenly, “It hit me all at once. It hurt!”

  He breathed sharply and sat up.

  From one of his desk drawers he took a physicians’ sample bottle of pills and swallowed one without water. “Everyone was screaming at once,” he said. He started to replace the pills, then saw the Corporation Counsel holding his chest and mutely offered him one^

  Then he seemed startled.

  He looked into his visitor’s eyes. “I can still hear you.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a false angina, I think. But take the pill. But-” he passed a hand over his eyes-“You thought I was electrocuted, and you wondered how to straighten out my last bill. It’s a fair bill, Wilmot. I didn’t overcharge you.” Flowers opened his eyes very wide and said, “The newsboy on the corner cheated me out of my change. He-” He swallowed and said, “The cops in the squad car just turning off Fulton Street don’t like my having white patients. One of them is thinking about running in a girl that came here.” He sobbed, “It didn’t stop, Wilmot.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Myrion, lie down.”

  “It didn’t stop. It’s not like a radio. You can’t turn it off. Now I can hear-everybody! Every mind for miles around is pouring into my head WHAT IT THINKS ABOUT ME-ABOUT ME-ABOUT US!”

  Ensal Brubacker, who had been a clinical psychologist and not a radio engineer, had not intended his helmet to endure the strain of continuous operation nor had he thought to provide circuit-breakers. It had been meant to operate for a few moments at most, enough to reroute a few neurons, open a blocked path

  or two. One of its parts overheated. Another took too much load as a result, and in a moment the thing was afire. It blew the fuses and the room was in darkness. The elderly ex-Corporation Counsel managed to get the fire out, and then picked up the phone. Shouting to be heard over the screaming of Myrion Flowers, he summoned a Kings County ambulance. They knew Flowers’s name. The ambulance was there in nine minutes.

  Flowers died some weeks later in the hospital-not Kings County, but he did not know the difference. He had been under massive sedation for almost a month until it became a physiological necessity to taper him off; and as soon as he was alert enough to do so he contrived to hang himself in his room.

  His funeral was a state occasion. The crowds were enormous and there was much weeping. The Corporation Counsel was one of those permitted to cast a clod of earth upon the bronze casket, but he did not weep.

  No one had ever figured out what the destroyed instrument was supposed to have been, and Wilmot did not tell. There are inventions and inventions, he thought, and reading minds is a job for white men. If even for white men. In the world of Myrion Flowers many seeds might sturdily grow, but some ripe fruits would mature into poison.

  No doubt the machine might have broken any mind, listening in on every thought that concerned one. It was maddening and dizzying, and the man who wore the helmet would be harmed in any world; but only in the world of Myrion Flowers would he be hated to death.

  THE GIFT OF GARIGOLLI

  This is the last story of the posthumous collaborations to be published, and in one sense it is the most dated of them. It is a pretty damn sexist story. Sbirl is Dorothy Vaneman Seaton out of Anita Loos: pretty, kind, charming and possessed of the I.Q. of a toad. Nobody would have written this story in the 1970’s, not Cyril, and certainly not I, and over a good many years I would from time to time look at the tattered manuscript again and try to find some way of detoxifying it. There never was one. There was a great deal of brightness and charm, but it was all bound up in the empty-headedness of Shirl. I couldn’t change that without destroying everything Cyril had put on paper, and so I finally took my courage in my hands, pretended that it was 1953 instead of 1973 and finished it up.

  Garigolli to Home Base

  Greeting, Chief,

  I’m glad you’re pleased with the demographics and cognitics studies. You don’t mention the orbital mapping, but I suppose that’s all complete and satisfactory.

  Now will you please tell me how we’re going to get off this lousy planet?

  Keep firmly hi mind, Chief, that we’re not com-plainers. You don’t have a better crew anywhere in the Galaxy and you know it. We’ve complied with the Triple Directive, every time, on every planet we’ve

  explored. Remember Arcturus XII? But this time we’re having trouble. After all, look at the disproportion in mass. And take a look at the reports we’ve sent in. These are pretty miserable sentients, Chief.

  So will you let us know, please, if there has ever been an authorized exception to Directive Two? I don’t mean we aren’t going to bust a link to comply-if we can-but frankly, at this moment, I don’t see how.

  And we need to get out of here fast.

  Garigolli

  Although
it was a pretty morning in June, with the blossoms dropping off the catalpa trees and the algae blooming in the twelve-foot plastic pool, I was not enjoying either my breakfast or the morning mail.

  The letter from the lawyer started, the way letters from lawyers do, with

  RE: GUDSELL VS. DUPOIR

  and went on to advise Dupoir (that’s me, plus my wife and our two-year-old son Butchie) that unless a certified check arrived in Undersigned’s office before close of business June llth (that was tomorrow) in the amount of $14,752.03, Undersigned would be compelled to institute Proceedings at once.

  I showed it to my wife, Shirl, for lack of anything better to do.

  She read it and nodded intelligently. “He’s really been very patient with us, considering,” she said. “I suppose this is just some more lawyer-talk?”

  It had occurred to me, for a wild moment, that maybe she had $14,752.03 in the old sugar bowl as a surprise for me, but I could see she didn’t. I shook my head. “This means they take the house,” I said. “I’m not mad any more. But you won’t sign anything for your brother after this, will you?”

  “Certainly not,”.she said, shocked. “Shall I put that letter hi the.paper-recycling bin?”

  “Not just yet,” I said, taking off my glasses and hearing aid. Shirl knows perfectly well that I can’t hear her when my glasses are off, but she kept on talking anyway as she wiped the apricot puree off Butchie’s chin, rescued the milk glass, rinsed the plastic infant-food jar and dropped it in the “plastics” carton, rinsed the lid and put it in the “metals” box and poured my coffee. We are a very ecological household. It astonishes me how good Shirl is at things like that, considering.

  I waved fruit flies away from the general direction of my orange juice and put my glasses back on in time to catch her asking, wonderingly, “What would they do with our house? I mean, I’m not a demon decorator like Ginevra Freedman. I just like it comfortable and neat.”

  “They don’t exactly want the house,” I explained. “They just want the money they’ll get after they sell it to somebody else.” Her expression cleared at once. Shirl always likes to understand things.

  I sipped my coffee, fending off Butchie’s attempt to grab the cup, and folded the letter and laid it across my knees like an unsheathed scimitar, ready to taste the blood of the giaour, which it kind of was. Butchie indicated that he would like to eat it, but I didn’t see that that would solve the problem. Although I didn’t have any better way of solving it, at that.

  I finished the orange juice, patted Butchie’s head and, against my better judgment, gave Shirl the routine kiss on the nose.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m glad that’s settled. Isn’t it nice the way the mail comes first thing in the morning now?”

  I said it was very nice and left for the bus but, really, I could have been just as happy if Undersigned’s letter had come any old time. The fruit flies were pursuing me all the way down the street. They seemed to think they could get nourishment out” of me, which

  suggested that fruit flies were about equal in intelligence to brothers-in-law. It was not a surprising thought. I had thought it before.

  Garigolli to Home Base

  Chief,

  The mobility of this Host is a constant pain in the spermatophore. Now he’s gone off on the day-cycle early, and half the crew are still stuck in his domicile. Ultimate Matrix knows how they’ll handle it if we don’t get back before they run out of group empathy.

  You’ve got no reason to take that tone, Chief. We’re doing a good job and you know it. “Directive One: To remain undetected by sentients on planet being explored.” A hundred and forty-four p.g., right? They don’t have a clue we’re here, although I concede that that part is fairly easy, since they are so much bigger than we are. “Directive Three: Subject to Directives One and Two, to make a complete study of geographic, demographic, ecological and cognitic factors and to transmit same to Home Base.” You actually complimented us on those! It’s only Directive Two that’s giving us trouble.

  We’re still trying, but did it ever occur to you that maybe these people don’t deserve Directive Two?

  Garigolli

  I loped along the jungle trail to the bus stop, calculating with my razor-sharp mind that the distance from the house was almost exactly 14,752.03 centimeters. As centimeters it didn’t sound bad at all. As money, $14,752.03 was the kind of sum I hadn’t written down since Commercial Arithmetic in P.S. 98.

  I fell in with Barney Freedman, insurance underwriter and husband of Ginevra, the Demon Decorator. “Whatever became of Commercial Arithmetic?” I asked him. “Like ninety-day notes for fourteen thousand seven hundred and fifty-two dollars and three cents at six percent simple interest? Although why anybody would be dumb enough to lend anybody money

  for ninety days beats me. If he doesn’t have it now, he won’t have it in ninety days.”

  “You’re in some kind of trouble.”

  “Shrewd guess.”

  “So what did Shirl do now?”

  “She co-signed a note for her brother,” I said. “When he went into the drying-out sanitarium for the gold treatment. They wouldn’t take him on his own credit, for some reason. They must have gold-plated nun. He said the note was just a formality, so Shirl didn’t bother me with it.”

  We turned the corner. Barney said, “Ginerva didn’t bother me once when the telephone company-“

  “So when Shirt’s brother got undrunk,” I said, “he told her not to worry about it and went to California. He thought he might catch on with the movies.”

  “Did he?”

  “He didn’t even catch cold with the movies. Then they sent us the bill. Fourteen thou-well, they had it all itemized. Three nurses. Medication. Suite. Occupational Therapy. Professional services. Hydrotherapy. Group counseling. One-to-one counseling. Limousine. Chauffeur for limousine. Chauffeur’s helper for limousine. Chauffeur’s helper’s hard-boiled eggs for lunch. Salt for chauffeur’s helper’s hard-boiled-“

  “You’re getting hysterical,” Barney said. “You mean he just skipped?” We were at the bus stop, with a gaggle of other prosperous young suburbanites.

  I said, “Like a flat rock on a pond. So we wrote him, and of course the letters came back. They didn’t fool around, the Institute for Psychosomatic Adjustment didn’t.”

  “That’s a pretty name.”

  “I telephoned a man up there to explain, when we got the first letter. He didn’t sound pretty. Just tired. He said my wife shouldn’t sign things without reading them. And he said if his house was-something about joint tenancy in fee simple, he would break

  his wife’s arm if she was the type that signed things without reading them, and keep on rebreaking it until she stopped. Meanwhile they had laid out a lot of goods and services in good faith, and what was I going to do about it?”

  The bus appeared on the horizon, emitting jet trails of Diesel smog. We knotted up by the sign. “So I told him I didn’t know,” I said, “but I know now. Fll get sued, that’s what I’ll do. The Dupoirs always have an answer to every problem.”

  Conversation was suspended for fifteen seconds of scrimmage while we entered the bus. Barney and I were lucky. We wound up with our heads jammed affectionately together, not too far from a window that sucked in Diesel fumes and fanned them at us. I could see the fruit flies gamely trying to get back to my ear, but they were losing the battle.

  Barney said, “Hey. Couldn’t you sell your house to somebody you trusted for a dollar, and then they couldn’t-“

  “Yes, they could. And then we’d both go to jail. I asked a guy in our legal department.”

  “Huh.” The bus roared on, past knots of other prosperous young suburbanites who waved their fists at us as we passed. “How about this. I hope you won’t take this the wrong way. But couldn’t there be some angle about Shirl being, uh, not exactly competent to sign any kind of-“

  “I asked about that too, Barney. No hope. ShirPs never been hospitalized,
she’s never been to a shrink, she runs a house and a husband and a small boy just fine. Maybe she’s a little impulsive. But a lot of people are impulsive, the man said.”

  Garigolli to Home Base

  Chief,

  I think we’ve got it. These people use a medium of exchange, remember? And the Host doesn’t have enough of it! What could be simpler?

  With a little modification there are a couple of local organisms that should be able to concentrate the stuff out of the ambient environment, and then—

  And then we’re off the impaling spike!

  Garigolli

  The bus jerked to a stop at the railroad, station and we boiled out on successive rollers of humanity which beached us at separate parts of the platform.

  The 8:07 slid in at 8:19 sharp and I swung aboard, my mighty thews rippling like those of the giant anthropoids among whom I had been raised. With stealthy tread and every jungle-trained sense alert I stalked a vacant seat halfway down the aisle on the left, my fangs and molars bared, my liana-bound, flint-tipped Times poised for the thrust of death. It wasn’t my morning. Ug-Fwa the Hyena, scavenger of the mighty Limpopo, bounded from the far vestibule giving voice to his mad cackle and slipped into the vacant seat. I and the rest of the giant anthropoids glared, unfolded our newspapers and pretended to read.

  The headlines were very interesting that morning. PRES ASKS $14,752.03 FOR MISSILE DEFENSE. “SLICK” DUPOIR SOUGHT IN DEFAULT CASE. RUMOR RED PURGE OF BROTHER-IN-LAW. QUAKE DEATH TOLL SET AT 14,752.03. BODY OF SKID ROW CHARACTER IDENTIFIED AS FORMER PROSPEROUS YOUNG SUBURBANITE; BROTHER-IN-LAWS FLIES FROM COAST, WEEPS “WHY DIDN’T HE ASK ME FOR HELP?” FOSTER PARENTS OF “BUTCHIE” DUPOIR OPEN LEGAL FIGHT AGAINST DESTITUTE MA AND PA, SAY “IF THEY LOVE HIM WHY DON’T THEY SUPPORT HIM?” GLIDER SOARS 14,752.-