Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  Ryan, an old-time corporation lawyer, who has ruined himself through his addiction to the opiate, yen pox. He can still act as attorney of record and strategist, however, while Mundin does the legwork. The new combination evidently worries G-M-L, for Norma disappears.

  Lana, boss of the juvenile Belly Rave gang known as the Wabbits, will do practically anything for a price, including major surgery on a face with a broken bottle. Her scouts confirm Mundin’s suspicion that Norma has been snatched. Coached by Ryan, Mundin visits the New York Parimutuel Stock Exchange. By luck, shrewdness and the illegal assistance of a broker, he manages to buy one share of G-M-L common stock. This makes Mundin eligible to attend the G-M-L stockholders’ meeting. He manages to interest three important stockholders in his tale of representing a lost 25% of the stock, for they are eager to slip a knife into the existing directorate. He further uses them to force the release of Norma Lavin, who has become as important to Mundin as the case itself.

  Hubble , Coett and Nelson, the three stockholders whose aid Mundin had enlisted, being hard-headed, realistic financial raiders, will back him only it he produces the huge block of G-M-L shares he has been talking about. They give him until morning to do so. But how do you go about finding it when the only person who knows where it is goes into convulsions when it’s mentioned—and when conditioning or deconditioning is a quasi-legal process, reserved exclusively to the state for treatment of criminals, and a heinous crime in private practice?

  XVII

  IT was a ghastly night. Norma Lavin snapped, “You could have stalled them.”

  “Stalled them how?” Mundin asked, needled into snapping back at her. “One hint of indecision and they’d have pulled out.”

  “And where did you think we’d find the stock?”

  He looked hopefully at Ryan. “What about the possibility of duplicate certificates?”

  “Overnight?” Ryan said. “A thing like that takes weeks—assuming there’s no hitch, and G-M-L will create as many hitches as they can—and then there is still the question of Don’s conditioning against remembering where the stock is and being able to vote it.”

  He was jittering badly, although he had doped himself almost blind during the argument. He took another yen pox pill and his eyes began to close.

  “That’s great,” Mundin grumbled. “Now he’s no help.”

  Norma said contemptuously, “And you are, I suppose. At least he didn’t make any stupid promises.”

  “Maybe Don can give us a hint. One is all we’d need. They might not have blocked all his memories about—”

  “Leave him alone! You said you’d produce the stock. All right, produce it, but not by tormenting him!”

  Mundin knew it was desperate and cruel when he pushed past her and shook the boy awake, but at the very first question, Don Lavin’s eyes stretched wide in terror and he stammered, “K-k-k-k-k-k” and began to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” Mundin said inadequately and went back into the ramshackle living room while she glared at him and tried to calm her frightened brother. “Now what?” he asked Ryan.

  The old attorney roused slightly. “Tellmtruth,” he mumbled.

  “What?” Mundin exclaimed. “Who? About what?”

  “Hubblenthothers. ‘Bou’ Don. Stockenconditionnn.”

  Revolted, Mundin watched the drugged lawyer slide back into his opiate dreamworld, where problems like this could be solved magically just by telling the truth. It was idiotic and he didn’t give the suggestion another thought. There had to be a way out. All they had to do was think of one.

  But Ryan was doped and Don Lavin had fallen into an easy sleep again, protected by his conditioning as much against residual terror after questioning as from talking or doing anything about his G-M-L shares, and Norma was furious at Mundin.

  When morning came, he had blearily decided to do what he should have done in the first place—somehow put off Hubble, Coett and Nelson. Ryan, however, insisted that he bring Don along just in case.

  AT Hubble’s house, Mundin tried to be evasive, but Coett said impatiently, “Look, this represents a huge gamble for us. If you’ve just been bluffing and haven’t got the stock, come right out and say so, but don’t try using excuses on us—we know them all.”

  And Mundin, knowing he was blowing the case, hating himself because he hadn’t come up with the solution, told them the truth.

  “How do we know this isn’t another stall?” demanded Nelson.

  “Ask Don where the stock is,” Mundin said tiredly.

  They did, and got the same fright reaction, and the same anger from Norma, and Hubble admitted uncomfortably, “It’s real, all right. Nobody could imitate conditioning that well.”

  “And there’s the way Arnold acted at the meeting,” Coett added. “He knew the Lavin stock was no phony.”

  Mundin listened to them in bewilderment. Drugged or not, Ryan was the better lawyer; he had come up with the right answer. They had accepted the shameful truth where they had rejected excuses and delays, and now they were discussing ways and means, shrewdly, clear-headedly, as if conditioning were just another problem in finance.

  “We could get duplicate certificates,” Mundin offered, which was accepted as a possibility when everything else failed; they shared Ryan’s belief that G-M-L would put every obstacle in their way.

  “I know a doctor,” Hubble said quietly.

  Coett and Nelson nodded as though a vote had been taken.

  “But deconditioning is illegal!” Mundin protested. “We can’t be parties to—”

  “Hah!” Norma snorted in scorn.

  “Who said anything about deconditioning?” asked Hubble. “The boy needs an operation, that’s all.”

  So Don Lavin had himself a brain tumor. A highly reputable diagnostician analyzed it as a spongioblastoma, the commonest and most malignant of the intracranial gliomas. He recommended immediate surgery and then bought himself a new Rolls ’copter with power doors, power windows, ramp and steering.

  The surgeon he suggested was in Wichita and had a private hospital. He extirpated the spongioblastoma—or at least the hospital Tissue Committee examined what he said he had removed from Don Lavin’s brain, and this indisputably was spongioblastoma multiforms, consisting of round, elongated and piriform cells, characteristically recalling the varied cytological picture in osteogenic sarcoma of bone.

  The surgeon then put down a sizable deposit for a new wing for his hospital.

  CHRONICALY suspicious, Norma scowled down at her brother, mumbling under the last of the anesthesia. She said to Mundin, “He might have left him an idiot. What better way to cover his tracks?”

  Mundin sighed. They had, purely on her insistence, watched the surgery. The lights, the sterilizers, the hole saw. The wisp of scorched smell from the bone, the nerve-wrenching moment when the disk of skull lifted out. Insertion of anode and cathode needles, minute electroshocks that smashed this pattern, blurred that memory, shattered one or another reflex into neuronic rubble. The hours before of endless tests and questions, the strobe flickers in Don’s eyes, the miles of EEG tape, the mapping of Don’s brain and its workings.

  Norvell Bligh, handy little man, looked in. “Doctor’s coming,” he said and, faithful little man, resumed his post outside the door.

  Dr. Niessen asked them, “Anything yet?”

  Don chose that moment to open his eyes and smile at Norma. “Hello, Sis. It feels better now.” Norma burst into tears and Dr. Niessen looked mightily relieved.

  “Check the blockage,” the doctor suggested to Mundin. “We can find out now if we’ve done it.”

  Don said, “The stock? Safe-deposit box 27,993, Coshocton First National. Identification—picture of me, my fingerprints, code phrase, “Gray, my friend, is all theory and green life’s golden tree’. ” He explained chattily, “Goethe. Dad used to say that one a lot after they put the boot to him. It used to cheer him up a little.”

  Dr. Niessen asked formally, “Is that essentially
it?”

  Norma choked and said, “Have you got it all back, Don? All?”

  Her brother winced. “Oy, have I! Including the time they worked on me. That part I don’t want to remember.”

  The doctor muttered, “Barbarous. We’re all lawbreakers here, but I’m glad of it in this case. Mr. Kozloff—” That was Don’s pseudonym—“are you able to verify my conjecture that flicker-feedback was the principal means employed?”

  “I guess so, if flicker-feedback is them shining a light in your eyes and you go into convulsions.”

  “That’s it. Well, Mr. Kozloff, I think you’ve recovered from your tumor. One of the staff physicians will check you for traveling. Come back if there’s anything new. In these spongioblastomas, there is always a slight possibility that some malignant tissue was overlooked. And if you can possibly arrange it, Mr. Kozloff, please don’t bring your sister.” Bligh opened the door for him. Mundin followed him out into the corridor for a smoke and refuge from the touching reconciliation scene. But he could hear it even out there.

  THE Columbus manager of Brinks-Fargo looked skeptical. “Now have I got this straight? Armored truck from here to Coshocton First National, guarded pickup of securities from there and immediate overland trip to New York, you four riding all the way. Right?”

  “Right,” Mundin said. “Twelve thousand, five hundred dollars,” the manager said after some scribbling. “For our biggest and best, with six guards.”

  It was paid.

  The pickup went off smoothly. A conditioned clerk handed over the little box in which were certificates of Don Lavin’s fantastic claim to 25 per cent of G-M-L.

  Mundin examined them wonderingly as the armored, eightwheeled land cruiser rolled bumpily through the streets of Coshocton. Three and one-half billion dollars at par, he kept saying to himself. Three and one-half billion dollars at par. He felt numb.

  Don, who had been revealed by conditioning as a happy-go-lucky kid, whispered to him, “Confidentially, I’d swap those things for a lifetime lease on a bubble house and fifty bucks a week pocket money. But Norma—you know. And maybe she’s right. The responsibility and everything,” he added vaguely.

  Norvell Bligh, inevitably, was the one sitting uncomfortably on a couple of folded money sacks. Only three welded-steel seats in the locked middle compartment where they rode as passengers. He hoped the ride would go on forever, jolts to the spine and all. He was working.

  Hubble said, when they arrived, “Did it work, Don?”

  Coett said, “If that sawbones couldn’t deliver after all his big talk—”

  Nelson said, “I hope it didn’t cost too much—”

  “I’m all right, thanks,” Don Lavin said.

  “And,” Mundin told them casually, “we came back through Coshocton.”

  They examined the stock certificates with awe, then gloating.

  “We’re in,” Coett said decisively, “as of the next stockholders’ meeting. Three months—plenty of time to shake the firm and pick up all we need for a majority. My God, a majority! Gentlemen, I move we now turn this operation over to Mr. Mundin. He understands us and we have, in addition to our usual activities, to pick up stock as it becomes available. Mr. Mundin, with an expense account of seven hundred and fifty thousand, will easily see to it that it does become available, I am sure.”

  COETT looked like some aged, still-ferocious jungle predator, and quite suddenly Mundin began to loathe him. The tactics, he thought, were disgusting and anti-social. Thus far, he had been persuaded by their papa-knows-best attitude and by the fact that Don Lavin, conditioned, had been his only talking point. Deconditioned and in possession of his stock certificates now . . .

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you gentlemen whether the smear against G-M-L is absolutely essential,” Mundin said.

  They were quite ready for him. Coett snapped, “That’s a closed question, Mundin. I’m sure Mr. Lavin realizes that we’re doing what’s best for him. Don’t you, Don?”

  The boy said, “I don’t really give a damn, Mr. Coett. Talk to Sis. You’ll have to, anyway.”

  Norma was undecided. “Old Ryan says your plans are quite routine under the circumstances and I have a great deal of faith in him. I suppose—I suppose the important thing is to get it done.”

  Coett spread his hands. “There’s your answer, Mundin. Now about—”

  “Hold it, please,” said Mundin. “I’m still not—”

  “Mundin,” Coett broke in sharply, “will you, for God’s sake, come to your senses? This thing is still a gamble and it’s our money everybody’s gambling with.”

  “Absurd quibbles about destroying some paper values,” Nelson sniffed. “You don’t understand these things. And I heartily endorse Mr. Coett’s reminder that we are putting up the capital to enable Mr. Lavin to realize his claim of interest.”

  “Smear’s the word,” Mundin said after a pause, feeling heavy-hearted.

  “Fine,” agreed young Hubble, but Mundin thought there was a twist to his mouth when he said it.

  “Now,” said Coett, “it is conceivable that Green, Charlesworth may take an interest in the contemplated operation. If they should show up, Mundin, don’t try to handle it yourself. Buck it to us. They have the reputation of not dealing with intermediaries.”

  “Noted,” Mundin said. Green, Charlesworth. Insurance and bankers’ bankers. Old man Ryan had mentioned them.

  “Then we’re ready to rip and tear,” said Coett. “Go get ’em, Mundin. You’ve got three months and seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars to get them with.”

  Mundin nodded, but he felt shaky inside. It didn’t seem like much against the fourteen billion dollars G-M-L had.

  XVIII

  ONE month after the go-ahead, Del Dworcas, Regular Republican county committee chairman, stood incredulously before an office door. The sign said:

  RYAN & MUNDIN

  ATTORNEYS AT LAW

  The office occupied a solid floor through of a very good building.

  All he knew, standing there, was that Charles Mundin, his foredoomed candidate in the 27th ward, had first become inaccessible to him and then had moved and then had formed a partnership with somebody named Ryan and then—but there the stories became incredible. Dworcas had to check for himself.

  He took several long, deep breaths before he pushed the door open and announced himself to a ripely curved blonde receptionist.

  “Pleased be seated, Mr. Dworcas,” the girl cooed. “Mr. Mundin asked me to tell you that you’ll be the very next person he sees.”

  The dozen or so other individuals in the waiting room glared at Del Dworcas. However, being a professional politician, he had no difficulty in striking up a conversation with the fellows nearest him.

  One was a petrochemist who understood there were consultant jobs opening up at Ryan & Mundin. Another was a publishers’ bright young man who thought there must be a whale of a story in old man Ryan’s sensational comeback and stood ready to sign it up. The others were easy enough to tag—a couple of crackpots, two attorneys obviously seeking affiliation with the new firm, a handful of persons who seemed to be in the market for lawyers, and had suddenly come to think that it might be a good idea to retain Ryan 85 Mundin.

  Nobody in the waiting room seemed to have any idea of what, if anything, was going on in the remainder of the enormous suite.

  Dworcas—being a professional politician—was able to absorb information, pump for more, evaluate what he had heard and speculate on its meaning. But the answers were slight and cloudy. All he could make out for sure was that Ryan & Mundin were rising like a rocket and plenty of shrewd operators were trying to hitch a ride.

  At last he got the nod from the receptionist. A hard-faced young Ay-rab with a badge that said Guide took him in tow.

  Ryan 86 Mundin operated the damnedest law offices that Dworcas, in a full life, had ever seen. Law offices . . . complete with such eccentricities as chemistry labs and kitchens, living quarters and a TV studio
, rooms locked off from his view, and open rooms that he could make no sense of.

  DWORCAS said tentatively, “You must be proud to be working for Mr. Mundin. Of course you know his record with our Party in the 27th—right down the line for Arab rights.”

  “That’s nice,” the Ay-rab said. “Right in here, mister.” He guided Dworcas into a bay. It lit up with a shimmering violet light; the Ay-rab scanned a fluoroscope screen. “You’re clean. In that door.”

  “You searched me!” Dworcas gasped. “Me! Mr. Mundin’s oldest friend!”

  “That’s nice,” the Ay-rab said. “In that door.”

  Dworcas went through the door.

  “Hello, Del.” Mundin was abstractedly checking off items on a list.

  He said, “Excuse me,” and picked up an interoffice phone. Five minutes later, he put it down, glanced at Dworcas, and turned to another list.

  Dworcas, in cello tones, said, “Charles . . .”

  Mundin looked at him with annoyance on his face. “Well?”

  Dworcas waved a finger at him, smiling. “Charlie, you’re not treating me right. You really aren’t.”

  “Look, Del, business has picked up,” said Mundin tiredly. “I’m busy. What do you want?”

  “Nice office you’ve got. G-M-L fix it for you?”

  “What do you think?”

  Dworcas retained his smile. “Remember who got you in with G-M-L?”

  “You’ve got a point,” Mundin conceded unwillingly. “It isn’t going to do you much good, though. I haven’t got time for favors. Some other time, I’ll listen closer.”

  “I want you to listen now, Charlie. I want you to reconsider on the race.”

  Mundin stared. “Run for the Council?”