Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  You could talk, you could read, you could go into trance before the dayroom hypnoteleset, you could buy things, you could pick fights, you could drive yourself crazy thinking of what you might have been, or you could go to sleep.

  Mostly you went to sleep. Payday came as a surprise. I didn’t know two weeks had slipped by. It left me owing Chlorella Proteins only eighty-odd dollars and a few cents. Besides the various assignments I had made, there were the Employee Welfare Fund; union dues and installment on the initiation fee; withholding tax; hospitalization (but try and get it. the older men said); and old age insurance.

  One of the things I consoled myself with was the thought that when—when, I always said firmly—I got out, I’d be closer to the consumers than any ad man in the profession. Of course, at Fowler Schocken, we’d had our boys up from the ranks. I knew now that they had been afraid to give me the straight facts on consumers’ lives and thoughts, or hadn’t cared to admit them even to themselves.

  I learned that ads work more strongly on the unconscious than even we had thought. I was shocked repeatedly to hear advertising referred to as “that bull.” I was at first puzzled and then gratified to see it sink in and take effect anyway.

  The Venus-rocket response was naturally my greatest interest. For one week I listened when I could to enthusiasm growing among those men who would never go to Venus, who knew nobody who would ever go to Venus. I heard the limericks we had launched from Fowler Schocken Associates chuckled over, with their engineered-in message: that living on Venus increased male potency.

  Ben Winston’s sub-section on Folkways, I had always said, was one of the most important talent groups in the whole Schocken enterprise. They were particularly fine on riddles: “Why do they call Venus the Mourning Star?” for instance. Well, it doesn’t make sense in print; but the pun is basic humor, and the basic drive of the human race is sex. And what is more essential than to channel the deepest torrential flow of human emotion into its proper directions? (I am not apologizing for those renegades who talk fancifully about the “Death Wish” to hook their sales appeals to. I leave that sort of thing to the Tauntons of our profession; it’s dirty, it’s immoral, I want nothing to do with it. Besides, it leads to fewer consumers in the long run, if they’d only think the thing through.)

  For there is no doubt that linking a sales message to one of the great prime motivations of the human spirit does more than sell goods; it strengthens the motivation, helps it come to the surface, provides it with focus. And thus we are assured of the steady annual increment of consumers so essential to expansion.

  Chlorella, I was pleased to learn, took extremely good care of its workers’ welfare in that respect. There was an adequate hormone component in the diet, and a splendid thousand-bed Recreation Room on the 50th Tier. The only stipulation the company made was that children born on the plantation were automatically indentured to Chlorella if either parent was still an employee on the child’s tenth birthday.

  But I had no time for the Recreation Room. I was learning the ropes, studying my environment, waiting for opportunity to come. If opportunity didn’t come soon, I would make one; but first I had to study and learn.

  Meanwhile, I kept my ears open for the results of the Venus campaign. It went beautifully—for a while. The limericks, the planted magazine stories, the gay little songs had their effect.

  Then something went sour. The word “Venus” drifted out of the small talk. When the space rocket was mentioned, it was in connection with reference points like “radiation poisoning,” “taxes,” “sacrifice.” There was a new, dangerous kind of Folkways material—“Didja hear the one about the punchy that got caught in his spacesuit?”

  You might not have recognized what was going on, and Fowler Schocken, scanning his daily precis of the summafy of the digests of the skeletonized reports of the abstracts of the charts of progress on Venus Project, would never have the chance to question what was told him. But I knew Venus Project and I knew what was happening.

  Matt Runstead had taken over.

  THE aristocrat of Dorm Ten was Herrera. After ten years with Chlorella, he had worked his way up—topographically, it was down—to Master Slicer. He worked in the great, cool vault underground where Chicken Little grew and was cropped by him and other artisans. He swung a sort of two-handed sword that carved off great slabs of the tissue, leaving it to the packers and trimmers and their helpers to weigh it, shape it, freeze it, cook it, flavor it, package it and ship it off to the area on quota for the day.

  He had more than a production job; he was a safety valve. Chicken Little grew and grew, as she had been growing for decades. Since she had started as a lump of poultry tissue, she didn’t know any better than to grow and fill her concrete vault and keep growing, compressing her cells and rupturing them. As long as she got nutrient, she grew.

  Herrera saw to it that she grew round and plump, that no tissue got old and tough before it was sliced, that one side was not neglected for the other.

  With this responsibility went commensurate pay, and yet Herrera had not taken a wife or an apartment in one of the upper tiers of the pylon. He made trips that were the subject of bawdy debate while he was gone—and which were never referred to without careful politeness while he was present. He kept his two-handed slicer by him at all times, and often idly sleeked its edge with a hone. He was a man I had to know. He was a man with money—he must have money after ten years—and I needed it.

  The pattern of the B labor contract had become quite clear: you never got out of debt. Easy credit was part of the system, and so were irritants that forced you to exercise it. If I fell behind ten dollars a week, I would owe $1,100 to Chlorella at the end of my contract, and would have to work until the debt was wiped out. And while working, a new debt would accumulate.

  I needed Herrera’s money to buy my way out of Chlorella and back to New York: Kathy, my wife; Venus Section, my job. Runstead was doing things I didn’t like to Venus Section. And God alone knew what Kathy was doing, under the impression that she was a widow.

  I tried not to think of Jack O’Shea and Kathy. The little man had been getting back at women for their years of contempt. Until the age of twenty-five, he had been a laughable sixty-pound midget, with a touch of grotesquerie in the fact that he had doggedly made himself a test pilot. At the age of twenty-six, he found himself the world’s foremost celebrity, the first man to land a ship on Venus. The story was that he’d been setting amatory records on his lecture tours. I didn’t like the story. I didn’t like the way he liked Kathy or the way Kathy liked him.

  AND I went through another day, up at dawn, breakfast, coveralls and goggles, cargo net, skimming and slinging for blazing hour after hour, dinner and the dayroom and, if I could manage it, a chat with Herrera.

  “Fine edge on that slicer, Gus. There’s only two kinds of people in the world—the ones who don’t take care of their tools and the smart ones.”

  Suspicious look from under his Aztec brows. “Pays to do things right. You’re the crumb, ain’t you?”

  “Yeah. First time here. Think I ought to stay?”

  “You gotta stay. Contract.” And he went to the magazine rack.

  Tomorrow’s another day. “Hello, Gus. Tired?”

  “Hi, George. Yeah, a little. Ten hours swinging the slicer. It gets you in the arms.”

  “I can imagine. Skimming’s easy, but you don’t need brains for it.”

  “Well, maybe some day you get upgraded. I think I’ll trance for a while.”

  And another:

  “Hi, George. How’s it going?”

  “Can’t complain, Gus. At least I’m getting a suntan.”

  “You sure are. Soon you be dark like me. Haw-haw! You pass for an Indian. How’d you like that?”

  “Porque no, amigo?”

  “Hey, tu hablas espanol! Cuando aprendes la lenǵua?”

  “Not so fast, Gus! Just a few words here and there. I wish I knew more. Some day, when I get a few bucks
ahead, I’m going to town and see the girls.”

  “Oh, they all speak English, kind of. If you get a nice steady girl, it would be nice to speak a little Spanish. She would appreciate it. But most of them know ‘Gimme-gimme’ and the English poem about what you get for one buck. Haw-haw!”

  And another day—an astonishing day.

  I’D been paid again, and my debt increased by eight dollars. I’d tormented myself by wondering where the money went, but I knew.

  I came off shift dehydrated, as they wanted me to be. I got a squirt of Popsie from the fountain by punching my combination—twenty-five cents checked off my payroll. The squirt wasn’t quite enough, so I had another—fifty cents. Dinner was drab, as usual; I couldn’t face more than a bite or two of Chicken Little. Later I was hungry and there was the canteen where I got Crunchies on easy credit. The Crunchies kicked off withdrawal symptoms that could be quelled only by another two squirts of Popsie from the fountain. And Popsie kicked off withdrawal symptoms that could only be quelled by smoking Starr cigarettes, which made you hungry for Crunchies . . .

  Had Fowler Schocken thought of it in these terms when he organized Starrzelius Verily, the first spherical trust? Popsie to Crunchies to Starrs to Popsie?

  And you paid six per cent interest on the money advanced you.

  If I didn’t get out soon, I never would. I could feel my initiative dying, cell by cell, within me. The minute dosages of alkaloid were sapping my will, but most of all it was a hopeless, trapped feeling that things would always be this way, that it wasn’t too bad, that you could go into a trance or get really lit on Popsie or maybe try one of the green capsules that floated around from hand to hand at varying quotations; the boys would be glad to wait for the money.

  It had to be soon.

  “Como ’sta, Gustavo?”

  He sat down and gave me his Aztec grin. “Se fumar?” He extended a pack of cigarettes.

  They were Greentips. I said automatically: “No, thanks. I smoke Starrs; they’re tastier.” And automatically I lit one, of course. “I don’t feel so happy, amigo.” This was it. “I’m in a very strange situation.” Wait for him now.

  “I figured there was something wrong. An intelligent fellow like you, a fellow who’s been around. Maybe you can use some help?” Wonderful; wonderful. “You won’t lose by it, Gus. You’re taking a chance, but you won’t lose by it. Here’s the story—”

  “Sst! Not here!” he shushed me. In a lower voice he went on: “It’s always a risk. It’s always worth it when I see a smart young fellow wise up and begin to do things. Some day I make a mistake, seguro. Then they get me, maybe they brainburn me. What the hell, I can laugh at them. I done my part. Here. I don’t have to tell you to be careful where you open this.”

  He shook my hand and I felt a wad of something adhere to my palm. Then he strolled across the dayroom to the hypnoteleset, punched his clock number for a half-hour trance and slid under, with the rest of the viewers.

  I WENT to the washroom and punched my combination for a ten-minute occupancy of a booth—bang went another dime off my pay—and went in. The adhesive wad on my palm opened up into a single sheet of tissue paper which said:

  A LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS

  This is Contact Sheet One of the World Conservationist Association, generally known as “the Connies.” It has been passed to you by a member of the W.C.A. who judged that you are (a) intelligent; (b) disturbed by the present state of the world; (c) a potentially valuable addition to our ranks. His life is now in your hands. We ask you to read on before you take any action.

  Facts About The W.C.A.

  The W.C.A. is a secret organization persecuted by all the governments of the world. It believes that reckless exploitation of natural resources has created needless poverty and needless human misery. It believes that continued exploitation will mean the end of human life on Earth. It believes that this trend may be reversed if the people of the Earth can be educated to the point where they will demand planning of population, reforestation, soil-building, de-urbanization and an end to the wasteful production of gadgets and proprietary foods for which there is no natural demand. This educational program is being carried on by propaganda like this, by demonstrations of force and sabotage of factories which produce trivia.

  Falsehoods About The W.C.A.

  You have probably heard that “the Connies” are murderers, psychotics and incompetent people who kill and destroy for irrational ends or out of envy. None of this is true. W.C.A. members are humane, balanced persons, many of them successful in the eyes of the world. There are irrational, unbalanced and criminal persons who do commit outrages in the name of conservation, either idealistically or as a shield for looting. The W.C.A. dissociates itself from such people and regards their activities with repugnance.

  What Will You Do Next?

  That is up to you. You can (a) denounce the person who passed you this contact sheet; (b) destroy this sheet and forget about it; (c) go to the person who passed you the sheet and seek further information.

  We ask you to think before you act.

  I thought—hard. I thought the broadside was (a) the dullest, lousiest piece of copysmithing I had ever seen in my life; (b) a wildly distorted version of reality; (c) a possible escape route for me out of Chlorella and back to Kathy.

  So these were the dreaded Connies! Of all the self-contradictory gibberish—yet it had a certain appeal. The ad was crafted—unconsciously, I was sure—the way we’d do a pharmaceutical booklet for doctors only. Calm, learned, we’re all men of sound judgment and deep scholarship here.

  It was an appeal to reason and that’s always dangerous. You can’t trust reason. We threw it out of the ad profession long ago and have never missed it.

  Well, there were obviously two ways to do it. I could go to the front office and put the finger on Herrera. I’d get a little publicity, maybe; they’d listen to me, maybe; they would certainly believe enough of what I told them to check. I seemed to recall that denouncers of Connies were sometimes brainburned on the sensible grounds that they had been exposed to the virus.

  Riskier, but more heroic: I could bore from within, playing along with the Connies. If they were the worldwide net they claimed to be, I might be able to reach Kathy and Fowler Schocken through them—I was smart enough to use them without being used.

  THE door of the booth sprang open; my ten minutes were up. I hastily flushed the contact sheet down the drain and went out into the dayroom. Herrera was still in the trance before the set.

  Finally he shook himself, blinked and looked around. He saw me and his face was granite. I smiled and nodded, and he came over. “All right, companero?” he asked quietly.

  “All right,” I said. “Any time you say, Gus.”

  “Always, after a thing like that, I plug in for some trance. I cannot stand the suspense of waiting to find out. Some day I come up out of trance and find the bills are beating hell out of me, eh?” He began to sleek the edge of his slicer with the pocket hone.

  I looked at it with new understanding. “For the bulls?” I asked.

  His face was shocked. “You have the wrong idea a little. For me. So I have no chance to rat.”

  I hated the twisted minds that had done such a thing to a fine consumer like Gus. It was something like murder. He could have played his part in the world, buying and using and making work and profits for his brothers all around the globe, ever increasing his wants and needs, ever increasing everybody’s work and profits in the circle of consumption, raising children to be consumers in turn. It hurt to see him perverted into a sterile zealot.

  Surely there must be some sort of remedial treatment for Connies like Gus who were only dupes. It was the people who had soured him on the world who should pay. I would ask—no, it would be better not to. People would jump to conclusions: “Once a Connie, always a Connie.”

  “Everybody knows that. I don’t say Mitch isn’t sound, mind you, but—”

  The hell with Herrera.
Anyone who sets out to turn the world upside down has no right to squawk if he gets caught in its gears.

  IX

  DAYS went by like weeks. Herrera talked little to me, until, one evening in the dayroom, he suddenly asked: “You ever see Gallina?” That was Chicken Little. I said no. “Come on down, then. I can get you in. She is something to see.”

  We walked through corridors and leaped for the descending cargo net. I resolutely shut my eyes. You look straight down that thing and you get the high-sky horrors. Tier Forty, Thirty, Twenty, Ten, Zero, Minus Ten—

  “Jump off,” Herrera said. “Below Minus Ten is the machinery.”

  I jumped.

  Minus Ten was gloomy and sweated water from its concrete walls. The roof was supported by immense beams. A tangle of pipes jammed the corridor where we got off.

  “Nutrient fluid,” Herrera explained.

  I asked about the apparently immense weight of the ceiling.

  “Concrete and lead. It shields cosmic rays. Sometimes a Gallina goes cancer.” He spat. “No good to eat for people. You got to burn it all if you don’t catch it real fast—” He swung his glittering slicer in a screaming arc to show me what he meant by “catch.” He swung open a door. “This is her nest,” he said proudly. I looked and gulped.

  It was a great concrete dome. Chicken Little filled most of it. She was a gray-brown, rubbery hemisphere towering over and away from us, as huge as a hypno-movie palace. Dozens of pipes ran into her. You could see that she was alive.

  Herrera said to me: “All day I walk around her. I see a part growing fast, it looks good and tender, I slice.” His two-handed blade shaved off an inch-thick Chicken Little steak. “Crumbs behind me hook it away and cut it up and put it on the conveyor.” There were tunnel openings spotted around the circumference of the dome, with idle conveyor belts visible in them.