Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  They heard her—and seven people were shouting at once, even old Ryan. “—no better than a Democrat, young lady!” Nelson was howling. And “For God’s sake, let her talk!” screamed Mundin. And Coett was spouting endless shushes, with gestures patting the air.

  And the door opened. Mishal, the Ay-rab boy, stared in, terror on his face.

  “Visitor,” he told them, and disappeared.

  “Oh, hell,” Mundin said in the sudden silence, starting toward the door. “I told those idiots—oh, it’s you.” He looked irritatedly at the figure of William Choate IV, now entering. “Hello, Willie. Look, I’m awfully busy right now—”

  Willie Choate’s lower lip was trembling. “Hello, old man,” he said dismally. “I have a—message for you.”

  “Later, Willie, please.”

  Willie stood his ground. “Now.”

  He handed Mundin a square white envelope. Mundin, torn between annoyance and hysteria, opened it and glanced absently at the little white card inside.

  Then he glanced at it again.

  Then he stared at it until Coett came to life and leaped forward to take it out of his hand. It said in crabbed handwriting:

  Green, Charlesworth request the appearance of Mr. Charles Mundin and Miss Norma Lavin when convenient.

  IT was a long ride. Willie Choate apologetically took out a magazine as soon as they settled down in the car. “You know what Great-great-grand-daddy Rufus said, Charles—‘Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love for reading.’ I always like to—”

  “Sure, Willie,” said Mundin absently. “Look, what’s all this?”

  “Of course, he wasn’t my real Great-great-granddaddy. Grand-pap just kind of took that name when he bought into the firm. It’s just a way of—”

  “Willie, please. Remember how it was in law school, the way I helped you pass the exams and all?”

  Willie seemed about to cry. “Charles, what can I say?”

  “You can tell me what this is all about!”

  Willie looked at Mundin. Then he looked all around him, at glowering Norma, at the fittings of the car. Then he looked at Mundin again. The implication was unmistakable.

  “At least tell me what your connection is,” Mundin begged.

  “Gee, Charles!” But the answer to that one, at least, was plain, written in those soft cow eyes, spelled out in that trembling lip. Willie was what God had made him to be—an errand boy—and doubtless knew little more than Mundin about what, why or wherefore.

  Mundin gave up and let Willie read his magazine, while he stared morosely at the crumbled city they were driving through. Norma’s hand, startlingly, sought his for a moment, then jerked away.

  The building smelled old. They stepped into a creaking elevator and slowly went up fifty flights. A long walk and then another elevator, even smaller, even creakier.

  Then a small room with a hard bench. Willie left them there; all he said was, “See you.”

  Then—waiting. An hour, several hours. Norma talked about her childhood, her dedicated father, his miserable fate, her bitter disappointment that Don would not grow up to the responsibility of being that great thing, a Lavin. It was scared, compulsive babbling. Something in the air militated against logic and sense. Crawly fingers—

  At last she fell silent, her eyes jerking about the room.

  Mundin thought he was going to crack apart and start yelling.

  Then he realized that that was what Green, Charlesworth wanted him to think, and got a grip on himself.

  And, by and by, a small, quiet man came and led them into another room.

  There was no place to sit and no place to hang their coats. Mundin draped his over his arm and stood staring back into the unblinking eyes of the man seated at the desk. He was an imposing figure of a man, lean-featured, dark-haired, temples shot with silver. He leaned forward, comfortably appraising. His chin was in one cupped hand, the fingers covering his lips, his eyes following Mundin. His chest rhythmically rose and fell; otherwise, he was stock still.

  Mundin cleared his throat. “Mr.—ah—Green?”

  THE man said emotionlessly, “We despise you, Mr. Mundin and Miss Lavin. We are going to destroy you.”

  Mundin cried, “Why?”

  “You are Rocking the Boat,” the man said through his fingers, the piercing eyes locked with Mundin’s own.

  Mundin cleared his throat. “Look, Mr. Green—you are Mr. Green?”

  “You are Our Enemy, Mundin.”

  “Now wait a minute!” Mundin took a deep breath. Please! he silently begged his adrenal gland. Gently! he ordered the pounding sensation in his skull. He said temperately, “I’m sure we can get together, Mr.—sir. After all, we’re not greedy.”

  The figure said steadily, “People like you would doom Civilization As We Know It if we let them. We do not intend to.”

  Mundin swept his eyes hopelessly around the room. This man was obviously mad; someone else, anyone else—But there was no one. Barring the desk and the man, there was nothing in the room but a pair of milky glass cabinets and Mundin and Norma.

  He said, “Look, did you call us down here just to insult us?”

  “You two put your Fingers in the Buzz Saw. They will be Lopped Off.”

  “Insane,” Norma muttered faintly.

  “Dammit!” Mundin yelled. He hurled his coat violently to the floor, but it did nothing to calm him. “If you’re crazy, say so and let me get out of here! I never came across such blithering idiocy in my life!”

  He stopped in the middle of a beginning tirade; stopped short.

  The man wasn’t looking at him any more. The same unblinking and unwavering gaze that had been on Mundin was now piercingly directed at the coat on the floor.

  To the coat, the motionless man said, “We brought you two here to see Infamy with Our Own Eyes. Now we have seen it and we will Blot It Out.” And then startlingly, shrilly, “Hee!”

  Mundin swallowed and stepped gingerly forward. Three paces and he was at the desk, leaning over, looking at what should be the neatly tailored trousers of the man’s modest suit.

  The personnel of Green, Charlesworth were not wearing trousers this year. The personnel of Green, Charlesworth were wearing bronze pedestals with thick black cables snaking out of them, and brass nameplates that read:

  SLEEPLESS RECEPTIONIST

  115 Volt A.C. Only

  “Hee!” shrilled the motionless lips, just by Mundin’s ear. “That’s far enough, Mundin. You were right, I suppose, Mrs. Green.”

  MUNDIN leaped back as though the 115 volts of A. C. had passed through his tonsils. A flicker of light caught his eye; the two milky glass cabinets had lighted up. He looked, peripherally aware that Norma had toppled in a faint beside him.

  He wished he hadn’t looked. The contents of the cabinets were Green and Charlesworth. Green, an incredibly, impossibly ancient dumpy-looking, hairless female. Charlesworth, an incredible, impossibly ancient string-bean-looking, hairless male.

  Mercifully, the lights flickered out.

  Another voice said, but from the same motionless lips, “Can we kill them, Mr. Charlesworth?”

  “I think not, Mrs. Green,” the Sleepless Receptionist answered itself in the first voice.

  Mundin said forcefully, “Now wait a minute.” It was pure reflex. He came to the end of the sentence and stopped.

  The female voice said sadly, “Perhaps they will commit suicide, Mr. Charlesworth. Tell him what he is Up Against.”

  “He knows what he is Up Against, Mrs. Green. Don’t you, Mundin?”

  Mundin nodded. He was obsessed by the Sleepless Receptionist’s eyes, now piercingly aimed at him again—attracted, perhaps, by the movement.

  “Tell him!” shrieked Mrs. Green. “Tell him about that boy. Tell him what we’ll do to him!”

  “A Child of Evil,” the male voice said mechanically. “He wants to take G-M-L away from us.”

  Mundin was galvan
ized. “Not you! Just Arnold and his crowd!”

  “Are Our Fingers Us?” the female voice demanded. “Are Our Arms and Legs Us? Arnold is Us!”

  The male voice piped, “The girl, Mrs. Green. The girl!”

  “Painted Courtesan,” observed the female voice. “She wants to free the slaves, she says. She talks about Mr. Lincoln!

  “But you know we fixed Mr. Lincoln’s Wagon, Mr. Charleworth,” chortled the female voice.

  “We did, Mrs. Green. And we will fix her wagon, too.”

  Mundin, thinking dazedly that he should have been more careful where he put Ryan’s yen pox—it was stupid of him to get it mixed up with his vitamin pills—said feebly, “Are you that old?”

  “Are we that old, Mrs. Green?” asked the male voice.

  “Are we!” shrilled the female. “Tell him! Tell him about the boy!”

  “Perhaps not now, Mrs. Green. Perhaps later. When we have Softened them Up. You two may go now.”

  Mundin automatically put on his coat and lifted Norma to his shoulder. He turned dazedly to the door. Halfway, he stopped, staring at the milky glass. Glass, he thought. Glass and quivering, moving corpses inside that a breath of air might—

  “Try it, Mundin,” challenged the voice. “We wanted to see if you would.”

  Mundin decided against it.

  “Too bad,” said the voice of Charlesworth. “We hate you, Mundin. You said we were not God Almighty.”

  “Atheist!” hissed the voice of Mrs. Green.

  XXI

  BACK in Ryan’s office, Mundin said, lying, “It wasn’t so bad.”

  Ryan had taken advantage of their absence to get coked to the eyebrows. He said dreamily, “Think of them, hundreds of years old. You know what H. G. Wells said? ‘A frightful queerness is coming into life.’ Nothing went right, no matter what you did. You know what Jonathan Swift called Green, Charleworth? Struldbrugs. Those were the only people were on to them. Gulliver said they had a law that no Struldbrug could keep his money after he was a hundred. Think of them, hundreds of years old, hundreds and hundreds and hun—”

  Don Lavin touched his shoulder and he stopped.

  Harry Coett, smiling affably at his own thumbnail, said gently, “How about a drink?”

  Mundin poured it for him, pretending not to notice that the big man was quite soaked with sweat there in the air-conditioned room.

  “We must proceed to an orderly liquidation,” Nelson said, his eyes jumping from one corner to another. “Naturally, any further action along our previous lines is out of the question.” Norma appeared at the door carrying a projector. Mundin had left her in her office under the care of the company nurse.

  “Is it all settled by now?” she asked grimly.

  “Everybody seems to be in agreement.” Mundin felt weighed down by a tremendous apathy. Four men who aggregated eight times his age, thirty times his business experience—you couldn’t buck all that.

  Norma opened the projector and swept papers from Ryan’s desk.

  “I just wanted to show you,” she said. “These are the family’s home movies. It’s kept me going through some hard times . . .” She dimmed the lights and turned on the projector.

  “Here’s Father,” she said. “In the plant.”

  Somebody had sneaked up with a camera, catching Lavin unaware. The “plant” looked very much like a cinder-block barn, with benches and presses. Three people working on a big breadboard electrical layout, backs to camera.

  Tired, authoritative voice: “You don’t seem to get the idea, Bernie. I don’t just want a door. The Egyptians had doors. I don’t just want a good door. Some doors have been pretty good in the past five thousand years. I want a perfect door. Hell, I guess my mistake is calling it a door.

  That creates a picture in your mind. Now let’s scrap all this junk of yours and think about entering-and-leaving devices.”

  An agonized protest: “Mr. Lavin, twenty-six months of work!”

  LAVIN lost his temper.

  “Twenty-six months of work, Gorman, versus five thousand years of drafts, squeaks, sticks, slams, irritation, muscle-strain, lost keys, burglary, scuffed thresholds, scarred panels, that damned ridiculous disproportionate strain on the upper hinge that guarantees malfunction, the stupidity of making doors too small for furniture and too large for people! Don’t come whining to me about your lousy twenty-six months of pooping around! Think about it, Gorman! Use your head for a change! We’re trying to bring some ease and graciousness into life for everybody! Let’s do something for people instead of whimpering about twenty-six months—”

  The speaker turned, then grinned startledly at whoever the cameraman was, and waved. Gorman looked sulky and defensive as the clip ran through. It was, Mundin uneasily realized, a foretaste of his eventual suicide because of frustration and defeat.

  Norma said, hushed, “A quick one of our living quarters.” It was a posed shot of Lavin and his wife. The background was something that looked like a chicken coop, but was more likely a variety of pre-fab dwelling. Beaverboard walls insecurely held together by battens, a smoky oil heater, a grotesque chrome-and-formica dinette set ferociously trying to elbow the two Lavins out of the picture altogether. Mr. Lavin was smiling absently. His wife looked sour and darted uncertain looks at the smoking heater. Obviously she couldn’t wait to get at it.

  “The trade show,” Norma said. “The awards banquet.”

  It was the speakers table of any grand ballroom of any downtown hotel. The debris of squab with wild rice, cups of deathly black coffee and melting, multicolored ice cream being removed by sullen banquet waiters. A toastmaster pinged on his water glass as he rose and cleared his throat into the mikes.

  “Members and guests,” he said fruitily, “of the Delivered Dwelling Industrial Association. It is altogether fitting and proper tonight that we have gathered to do honor to a new star in the constellation of Delivered Dwelling manufacturers. Surely, as we review the meteoric rise of Donald Lavin, there can be none here who doubts that he is a man who does credit to the industry, a competitor who fights hard and clean, a designer of striking originality and a businessman whose acumen points the way toward an entirely new concept of Delivered Dwelling finance and underwriting. Members and guests, it gives me great pleasure to present to Mr. Donald Lavin of Coshocton, Ohio, this plaque designating him the Delivered Dwelling Manufacturer of the Year!”

  APPLAUSE; passing the plaque; still photographers crowding in for shots. Lavin rising. To his left, a man like an undernourished shoat—Gorman. To his right, a gaunt man who looked like an exceptionally lean gray rat—Moffatt.

  Lavin fumbled the plaque for a moment and then uncertainly put it down.

  He said, “Thanks. Maybe I’m accepting this thing under false pretenses—I know the title of my speech is supposed to be ‘New Approaches to the Delivered Dwelling,’ but first I’d like to give some credit where credit’s due and to make a correction in the introductory remarks. To my left is sitting Mr. Bernard Gorman, who deserves as much credit as I for the design of the Lavin House. I may be the dynamo some people have called me, but Bernie’s the detail man, the best I ever knew, and I’m not going to let him get away without taking a bow.”

  Gorman rose and bobbed, flushing.

  “Reference was also made to me as a businessman. I decline the honor. The only businessman on our premises is our good treasurer and comptroller, Hamilton Moffatt, without whose common sense and fiscal knowhow, my company would never have got off the ground.”

  The thin gray rat took a precise little bow, unasked.

  “And I should say that Mr. Walsh’s introductory remarks about our novel policy of financing and underwriting by industrial purchase and subsequent leasing are Mr. Moffatt’s idea and a darned good one, too, for a young company in need of working capital—but an idea that I hope we’ll be in a position to abandon shortly.

  “And now to my main heading. There’s no need for me to be modest, is there? You all know the Lavin H
ouse is good or you wouldn’t have given me that plaque. How’d it get that way? Partly because technology is at last developed to the point where good housing is possible; partly because I realized long ago that human stupidity is nowhere so marked and so costly as in housing.

  “I sat up one day in my bedroom. The floor was wooden. The walls were paint over paper, over plaster, over lath, over two-by-fours. The roof was gabled. The windows were steel-casement. The doors were hinged slabs. The stairs were stairs—and I can say nothing worse of them. The people in that house were hot in the summer, cold in the winter, assailed by pollen and every passing street noise—oh, yes, the house was, of course, equipped with central air-conditioning. The place was filthy, requiring a battery of cleaning machinery to be hauled about weekly or oftener.”

  LAVIN paused. “The house was a weird combination of the flexible and the rigid, which meant that there were cracks. It was a Tinker Toy structure—lots of little bits fastened to other little bits with little fastening devices, which meant that little bits were continually coming loose and falling off and having to be replaced. That house fought its occupants like a tiger—or I should say like a plague of ants. It nibbled away at its occupants’ leisure and serenity instead of supplying both in copious quantities.

  “I sat up in my bedroom and decided this foolishness had gone on long enough. The next day, I drew my first sketches of a better house, and I continued drawing for ten years. By then, I was ready to start on a pilot model, which took five years. After that, I was ready to start on the production problem, which we have only just licked—I say with my fingers crossed.

  “Am I wandering from the subject, New Approaches to the Delivered Dwelling? I hope not. My new approach, gentlemen, was to think of the dweller in the dwelling and give him a house that helps him instead of fighting him. A house at a cost he can afford, without any disasters in the way of repairs. A house that gives him light to see by, privacy, safety for his kids, leisure for his wife and him, variety to make homecoming a happy adventure instead of a revolting daily chore.