Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  Suspiciously, the engineer pushed open the plastic door of Hennessey’s large, softly carpeted office.

  “Come in, doctor!” boomed the Chief of Personnel. “I have a distinguished visitor whom I want you to meet.”

  She was distinguished indeed. In her early thirties. Tall, dark-skinned, with rather everted lips but the classic brow and nose of an Arab and straight—or straightened?—black, glossy hair. Her plain dress was prudishly high at the neck and low at the hem. That and the small silver triangle pendant on her bosom meant she was a practicing Ma’dite. He had met very few of them and hoped his manners would be adequate.

  “Miss Vanderpoel—Dr. Vanderpoel, I should say—may I present Dr. Sloane, one of our most valued technical men.”

  SLOANE smiled politely and extended his hand. She ignored it. Murmuring “Salaam aleikum,” she touched brow, lip and heart and inclined her head. The engineer reddened and did the same, clumsily. She looked at him evenly and said, with a faint Dutch accent: “That is not necessary, Dr. Sloane. I am not an exchange-student, who eagerly gives up his own nation’s ways; but neither do I tacitly impose my own nation’s ways on my host. You may greet me in the future with what polite words you please, but you should not say the words of peace unless you mean them.”

  “Uh,” said Hennessey, “Dr. Sloane is the fellow who acquitted himself so well with, that Latamer agent. I trust you—”

  “You told me all that, Mr. Hennessey,” she said without inflection. “I will question him.”

  Hennessey hastily answered Sloane’s inquiring glance. The engineer had never seen him so flustered. “Dr. Vanderpoel is a V.I.P., Sloane. She is, of course, an African, and her visit is part of an experimental program to exchange S.M.R. data between her government and ours. I thought you might be the best person to take her on a tour of one of our domes. She, ah, she wants to be sure—” He hesitated.

  “I want to be quite sure,” said the woman’s precise voice, “that my guide is a qualified technical-man—”

  “Yes, of course,” Hennessey boomed heartily. “And I’m sure Dr. Sloane will satisfy you. He’s rated one of the best in the country—academically, of course.” You could hardly even call it a sneer, that faint deprecation as he qualified his praise. “Studied with Barrios himself, and I understand the Old Man gave him an extra-high recommendation when he came to us. Do you still see him, Sloane?”

  “I . . . heard from him today,” Lev said with difficulty, and promptly took the edge off the boast by adding: “I haven’t seen him for years.” It was somehow offensive to have Barrios’ name dragged in for display-purposes this way, after reading that letter this morning. Hardnose Hennessey probably didn’t even know just what it was Paul Barrios had done.

  “You know,” Hennessey rattled on cheerfully, “the Old Man always favored more exchange of information. That’s another reason I picked Dr. Sloane to guide you. I hear he’s on the same bandwagon himself.”

  Sloane didn’t need any help to catch the veiled threat in the smiling words. Show her the, dome, Hennessey was saying. Keep her happy. But keep your political notions out of it.

  “That is, I am sure, of great interest to you and Dr. Sloane,” the lady V.I.P. said icily. “My interest, as I started to say earlier, is in obtaining a qualified technical-man to guide me—not a more-or-less-disguised public-relations person who will use my limited time trying to influence me, rather than give me information. I should like to have some time to talk to Dr. Sloane now . . . alone, if you please, Mr. Hennessey.”

  LEV WAS emphatically not looking forward to the rest of this business, but whatever came afterwards couldn’t spoil this moment for him: he had the unadulterated pleasure of watching Hardnose Hennessey retreat, awkwardly, from his own office, under the frigid stare of a visiting V.I.P.

  “Sit down, Dr. Sloane,” she said as soon as the ‘public-relations person’ was gone. “And I hope you can be more informative than Mr. Hennessey.”

  “I’ll try,” he said drily. “If it’s engineering you want to know about, I’ll tell you all I can. You realize there are some questions I may have to refuse to answer, without instructions from a higher level than Hennessey.”

  “Your loyalty to your country is not under question, Doctor; that is one of the primary reasons why you were selected. I am not so foolish as to believe it impossible that the North American S.M.R.C. harbors some persons who may be agents of either Latin America or the Asia Union. Your adventure of last night—as reported by the newsrolls and verified by the African embassy—indicates as clearly as possible that you are not one of those persons. Now if we can get down to facts . . .?”

  “I’ll be glad to,” he said stiffly. “I’m not much on political talk myself.”

  “Good.” And she launched into a full hour of questions and answers covering every phase of dome operation. He had to remind her regularly: “I’m a processes-man, Miss Vanderpoel; that’s outside my field,” when she wanted to know about safety-measures and working-conditions. Again, she found herself saying with a frequency that seemed to surprise her: “I do not understand that, Doctor; perhaps you can amplify and explain it when I see it.”

  When, finally, she sat back in silence, and the interview was concluded, Lev was, almost beginning to like her. She certainly knew the field, and she had a rare talent for admitting her gaps of knowledge where they existed.

  “I think I shall be more than satisfied with your guidance, Dr. Sloane,” she said, and though imperiousness was apparently a basic part of her, there was less of it in this statement than at any time before. It returned in full force as she asked: “Is there some way to call that person back?”

  Lev studied the blank-faced intercom on Hennessey’s desk, and decided against the assumption of the prerogative. He went to the door, and addressed the request personally to the glamorous ice-maiden of a secretary.

  “She’s trying to find him,” Lev told Miss Vanderpoel.

  The V.I.P. sighed impatiently. “I hoped we could start the tour immediately,” she said.

  Sloane restrained a smile; he suspected the lady would not appreciate his amusement at her naivete. He hunted for an acceptably-polite way to explain to her that Domes could not possibly be entered that easily, that the law of the land required certain safeguards concerning visitors, no matter how important they were.

  But she obviously wasn’t going to listen. She took from a pocket in her dress a brown book with a silver triangle and a word in Arabic stamped on the cover, and began to read. Sayings of the Ma’di, he supposed—the African Bible. All right, let Hardnose tell her; Sloane wandered back to the outer office, and amused himself till Hennessey showed up—unexpectedly soon—by conducting an experiment to determine exactly how much ogling it took to make the beautiful secretary nervous.

  “Miss Vanderpoel wants a Dome tour arranged immediately,” Lev said, dead-pan when Hennessey rushed in.

  “We’re ready immediately,” Hardnose said with considerable self-satisfaction. “I got ahead of her that time. State pitched in, and cleared her in record time; here’s a pass for her.” He handed Sloane a stainless-steel tag with Miss Vanderpoel’s picture and thumbprint photographed onto it. Plastic protected it, and Sloane knew there was an invisible pattern of magnetized dots in the steel as well—though the trick was supposed to be ultra-secret.

  They went back to the private office, and Hennessey glowed under Miss Vanderpoel’s faint show of approval.

  “I think Dome Baker would be the best bet,” Sloane suggested, “I know it better than the others, and it’s not far.” Hennessy nodded.

  “Where is it?” the woman asked.

  “Just ten miles off the Jersey coast,” Lev told her, “I can drive you there myself in about an hour and we can have lunch in the Dome—if you wish.”

  “Very well.” She gave the African salutation to Hennessy in parting, and they went down to pick up Sloane’s car.

  WALKING with him down the marble corridor she asked crisp
ly: “What metals are extracted at your Dome Baker, Mr. Sloane?”

  “Mostly iron—which makes it typical of the North American S.M.R.C. Iron’s ninety percent of our output, of course. We buy our vanadium, chrome, tungsten—and so on for steelmaking—from Europe. Naturally, we have mothballed Domes set up to turn them out in case Sino-Russia jumps Europe and shuts off our supply.” He wondered if she’d comment on the politics of that. She didn’t, and her face was unreadable.

  “Another interesting point at Baker,” he went on, nettled; “the first Barrios cell ever made is still in use there.”

  “Oh?” She was clearly not impressed. “I am under the impression that the Barrios cell has been much improved since the first model.” It was a sneer.

  “Naturally. It’s a tribute to a great man.”

  “His work is done,” she said briefly.

  “You’re very casual,” Lev said with a hint of anger. “Paul Barrios was—is—a genius. You people owe him as much as we do.”

  Frostily, without breaking her stride, she said: “Dr. Sloane, it doesn’t be come a person with your load of ancestral blood-guilt to reproach me for a casual attitude toward one of your geniuses. The iron that Barrios found a new way to isolate was first given to man by my equatorial ancestors.”

  There was a warning of passion in her voice as she went on, and Sloane found it reassuring; she was human after all. “Your north-temperate ancestors,” she said, “were most notably casual—to use your word—in wiping out several of my equatorial ancestors’ cultures.” They were passing between the ionic columns of the. S.M. R.C. Building. “And I notice that you have—casually—adopted architectural devices invented by my ancestors. Of course you call them ‘Egyptian’, pretending that Egypt was not a part of Africa and did, not continuously exchange, culturally and genetically, with all its peoples.”

  “My car’s in the parking-lot here,” he said, and pointedly dropped the conversation; he wouldn’t argue ethnology with her.

  He drove his convertible to the S.M.R.C. flying field, underwent a fast overwater-readiness check and took off. Beside him, Miss Vanderpoel read her Sayings of the as they droned northeast to the coast. In a quarter-hour she dozed off, with the book in her lap held open by her slender hands.

  Sloane craned a little for a look at it. The graceful lines of Arabic meant nothing to him, but the condition of the book did. It was thoroughly thumbed and worn, from beginning to end—testimony that the woman was a serious believer in the Ma’di supposed to have lived, preached, worked wonders and died a century ago. He stole a glance at her face and thought with satisfaction: no wonder she believes—identification.

  Her face had about the same blend of features attributed to the Ma’di in the hearsay, traditional portraits that even he had seen. Her face—the Ma’di’s traditional face—were epitomes of the Ma’di’s preaching: Africa united, proud and forward-looking. Probably that cold, bad-tempered reply to his reproach had been in the best Ma’dite tradition. Certainly she’d had a good point: it was a fake and a swindle to make the traditional assumption that the achievements of Egypt owed nothing to the peoples of the desert, mountain, rainforest and grasslands.

  He wondered whether the Ma’di had been essential to the unification and industrialization of Africa, or whether he’d been a side-show to an inevitable technical-economic process. About one hundred million believers thought the former—fiercely enough to make the great of the world profoundly glad that Ma’dism was by nature non-exportable, and by decree of its founder non-aggressive. Not even the tactless, backward, ferociously godless SinoRussians claimed that Ma’dism was meddling with their internal affairs, a complaint they thundered regularly against every other major religion on Earth, and used often as pretext for a purge of unreliables.

  3

  SLOANE had to shake her gently awake as he homed on the radar beacon. She blinked and put away her book. “I should apologize,” she said. “My time in this country is limited, and I have been using it to the full.”

  “No apology necessary,” he assured her, and then was busy with landing, mooring and the transfer to the bathyvator. The bathyvator man, who had been unshaved and sloppily-dressed yesterday, now wore sparkingly clean coveralls and a couple of razor-nicks on his jaw.

  “You’ve been advised about Miss Vanderpoel?” Sloane asked.

  “Yes, sir. If I could just see her pass, we’ll go right down.”

  She produced it and the man said: “Thank you, ma’am.” Down they went, and the Security-guards at the bottom end were equally deferential. Hennessey must have scared the daylights out of them, Sloane thought.

  As they stepped out of the guardroom—and from under the gun-slits, to Sloane’s relief, as usual—Haywood bustled up to them. “A great pleasure, Miss Vanderpoel,” he burbled. “I’ll be happy to show you around my Dome—no eye like the master’s eye, eh? No offense, Sloane.”

  The woman said: “It is precisely to avoid the possibility of your showing me around your Dome that Dr. Sloane has accompanied me—if I may say so without offense. I should like some lunch and then freedom to inspect, with Dr. Sloane as my guide.”

  Haywood managed to take it as a joke. “Topside gets all the gravy,” he laughed painfully. “Sloane not only lives in a house and smokes when he wants to, but gets himself a good-looking girl to tour the Dome with.”

  Miss Vanderpoel looked at him as though he were a chimpanzee who had just asked for her hand in marriage. “My time is very limited,” she said. “If we may have something to eat—?”

  SHORTLY afterwards, they were seated alone in the minute cafeteria. The unsquashable Haywood was talking proudly: “We serve nine hundred meals a day here—in shifts of course. I pride myself on the highest safety-rating of any Dome in operation—by the S.M.P.C., of course. I suppose, though, we can’t hold a candle to your African Domes.” Sloane winced at his clumsy gallantry, but Miss Vanderpoel was merely puzzled, “Hold a candle?” she asked. “I do not understand the relevance.” She was eating quickly and delicately.

  “It means we aren’t as good as the African Domes,” Haywood explained largely. She said nothing, and he went on: “We’re one thousand percent safe. That bulkhead you’re leaning back against—half an inch of steel and plastic; on the other side seawater at unimaginable pressure, but you’re safe as if you were in your mother’s arms. Three warning-circuits slam W.T. doors compartmenting the Dome seconds after leakage occurs. Everywhere, instantly, available, are safety-suits.”

  “Where are the safety-suits in here, Mr. Haywood?” she asked.

  He looked embarrassed. “It isn’t S.M.P.C. Dome policy to provide them for diningrooms,” he said. “Wouldn’t do any good, I’m afraid. Imagine the place, jammed with seventy-five people and a plate giving way. Thirty seconds to get into a safety-suit—if a man’s kept up his drill the way he ought to. I’m very much afraid there’d be a panic and all lives lost, suits or not.”

  “We have suits in the public rooms of our Domes,” Miss Vanderpoel said.

  Sloane read in her face and words the contempt for dithering and hysteria, and the converse ideal of dignity and calm power. Haywood sensed a little of it and looked dubious. “Of course it’s not a major point,” he said. “Africa and North America are lucky enough to have stable subsea coastal ground. I’m damned if I’d go down into a Sino-Russ Dome in the Pacific, right smack on the Circle of Fire. And, of course, you never know with the censorship and lies what the Latamers are up to; but I hear they have some tom-fool business about Dome personnel making their wills and being posthumously decorated before they go downside. That smells like a terribly bad accident-rate to me. Of course you can get away with it if morale is high enough. Or, to be honest, your people are fanatics like the Latamer kids. But it’s a hell of a way to get production, isn’t it, Sloane?”

  “It is, if true. On the other hand, I was in several European Domes—the Adriatic Dome, the Tyrrhenian, the Cycladic and the Cnossos. They take safety serious
ly there. All personnel wear suits all the time. Three-day tours of duty only. Shut-down every month for inspection.”

  “Hell, they can afford it,” said Haywood, annoyed. “They turn out a few kilograms of tungsten or vanadium a day. Here we’re in production. What I think—”

  They never found out what he thought.

  WITH A NOISE that was half the roar of a seige-gun and half the shriek of a tortured animal, a section of the wall ripped loose and a solid, glassy column reaching from the wall smashed Haywood where he sat. Sloane was utterly paralyzed, hardly recognizing the stuff as water, for a split-second. Haywood was almost headless, and something had happened to the woman—she was floating limply awash in a foot of water fed by the roaring column.

  He ducked under it, shuddering, seized her as an alarm-bell began to bong, and raced, splashing, for the door of the cafeteria, threading his way through the tables and chairs. He was a yard from it, with the woman in his arms when it slammed murderously shut. Three warning-circuits slam W. T. doors . . .

  How long did he have—thirty seconds? The water was rising one foot in two seconds; his ear drums thudded inward as the air compressed, driven up by the water. It isn’t S.M.P.C. policy to provide them for dining-rooms . . .

  Sloane wrenched at the dogs, which had automatically turned as the door slammed, one-handed, with the woman on his bad arm. There were seven dogs, and the water was to his knees. He pounded with his fist at one, chest-high, and felt it sullenly turn. With the water at his waist, he pounded open a second and a third, cursing weakly, and the fourth and fifth, at the top of the W.T. door. He took a deep, sobbing breath of the thick air and hauled himself down by the doorframe into the icy water, with his arm still cramped around the woman. He didn’t remember how he turned the two remaining dogs; the next thing he knew, was that he was being swirled into the corridor adjoining the cafeteria, and was swimming one-handed for the red-painted breakaway panels where there were two safety suits.