Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  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 per cent 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 him. He said the note was just a formality, so Shirl didn’t bother me with it.”

  We turned the corner. Barney said, “Ginevra 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. I’ll 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. Shirl’s 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. Hint-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 14,752.03 MILES. DUPOIR OFF 147.52—no, that was a fly speck, not a decimal point—OFF 14,752.03 FOR NEW LOW, RAILS AND BROTHERS AND LAW MIXED IN ACTIVE TRADING. I always feel you’re more efficient if you start the day with the gist of the news straight in your mind.

  I arrived at the office punctually at 9:07, late enough to show that I was an executive, but not so late that Mr. Horgan would notice it. The frowning brow of my cave opened under the grim rock front that bore the legend “International Plastics Co.” and I walked in, nodding good morning to several persons from the Fourteenth Floor, but being nodded to myself only by Hermie, who ran the cigar stand. Hermie cultivated my company because I was good for a dollar on the numbers two or three times a week. Little did he know that it would be many a long day before he saw a dollar of mine, perhaps as many as 14,752.03 of them.

  GARIGOLLI

  To Home Base

  Further to my last communication. Chief,

  We ran into a kind of a setback. We found a suitable organic substrate and implanted a colony of modified organisms which extracted gold from environmental sources, and they were performing beautifully, depositing a film of pure metal on the substrate, which the Host was carrying with him.

  Then he folded it up and threw it in a waste receptacle.

  We’re still working on it, but I don’t know, Chief, I don’t know.

  Garigolli.

  I FIND it a little difficult to explain to people what I do for a living. It has something to do with making the country plastics-conscious. I make the country plastics-conscious by writing newspaper stories about plastics which only seem to get printed in neighborhood shopping guides in Sioux Falls, Idaho. And by scripting talk features about plastics which get run from 11:55 PM to 12:00 midnight on radio stations the rest of whose programs time is devoted to public-service items like late jockey changes at Wheeling Downs. And by scripting television features which do not seem ever to be run on any station. And by handling the annual Miss Plastics contest, at least up to the point where actual contestants appear, when it is taken over by the people from the Fourteenth Floor. And by writing the monthly page of Plastics Briefs which goes out, already matted, to 2,000 papers in North America. Plastics Briefs is our best bet because each Brief is illustrated by a line drawing of a girl doing something with, to or about plastics, and her costume is always brief. As I said, all this is not easy to explain, so when people ask me what I do I usually say, “Whatever Mr. Horgan tells me to.”

  This morning Mr. Horgan called me away from a conference with Jack Denny, our Briefs artist, and said: “Dupoir, that Century of Plastics Anniversary Dinner idea of yours is out. The Fourteenth Floor says it lacks thematic juice. Think of something else for a winter promo
tion, and think big!” He banged a plastic block on his desk with a little plastic hammer.

  I said, “Mr. Horgan, how about this? Are we getting the break in the high-school chemistry textbooks we should? Are we getting the message of polythene to every boy, girl, brother in law—”

  He shook his head. “That’s small,” he said, and went on to explain: “By which I mean it isn’t big. Also there is the flak we are getting from the nature nuts, which the Fourteenth Floor does not think you are dealing with in a creative way.”

  “I’ve ordered five thousand popup recycling bins for the test, Mr. Horgan. They’re not only plastic, they’re recycled plastic. We use them in my own home, and I am confident—”

  “Confidence,” he said, “is when you’ve got your eyes so firmly fixed on the goal that you trip on a dog-doodie and fall in the crap.”

  I regrouped. “I think we can convert the present opposition from the ecology movement to—”

  “The ecology movement,” he said, “is people who love buzzards better than babies and catfish better than cars.”

  I fell back on my last line of defense. “Yes, Mr. Horgan,” I said.

  “Personally,” Mr. Horgan said, “I like seeing plastic bottles bobbing in the surf. It makes me feel, I don’t know, like part of something that is going to last forever. I want you to communicate that feeling, Dupoir. Now go get your Briefs out.”

  I thought of asking for a salary advance of $14,752.03, but hesitated.

  “Is there something else?” “No, Mr. Horgan. Thank you.” I left quietly.

  Jack Denny was still waiting in my office, doodling still-life studies of cornucopias with fruits and nuts spilling out of them. “Look,” he said, “how about this for a change? Something symbolic of the season, like ‘the rich harvest of Plastics to make life more gracious,’ like?”

  I said kindly, “You don’t understand copy, Jack. Do you remember what we did for last September?” He scowled. “A girl in halter and shorts, very brief and tight, putting up plastic storm windows.”

  “That’s right. Well, I’ve got an idea for something kind of novel this year. A little two-act drama. Act One: She’s wearing halter and shorts and she’s taking down the plastic screens. Act Two: She’s wearing a dress and putting up the plastic storm windows. And this is important. In Act Two there’s wind, and autumn leaves blowing, and the dress is kind of wind-blown tight against her. Do you know what I mean, Jack?”

  He said evenly, “I was the youngest child and only boy in a family of eight. If I didn’t know what you meant by now I would deserve to be put away. Sometimes I think I will be put away. Do you know what seven older sisters can do to the psychology of a sensitive young boy?” He began to shake.

  “Draw, Jack,” I told him hastily. To give him a chance to recover himself I picked up his cornucopias. “Very nice,” I said, turning them over. “Beautiful modeling. I guess you spilled some paint on this one?”

  He snatched it out of my hand. “Where? That? That’s gilt. I don’t even have any gilt.”

  “No offense. Jack. I just thought it looked kind of nice.” It didn’t, particularly, it was just a shiny yellow smear in a corner of the drawing.

  “Nice! Sure, if you’d let me use metallic inks. If you’d go to high-gloss paper. If you’d spend a few bucks—”

  “Maybe, Jack,” I said, “it’d be better, at that, if you took these back to your office. You can concentrate better there, maybe.”

  He went out, shaking.

  I stayed in and thought about my house and brother in law and the Gudsell Medical Credit Bureau and after a while I began to shake too. Shaking, I phoned a Mr. Klaw, whom I had come to think of as my “account executive” at Gudsell.

  Mr. Klaw was glad to hear from me. “You got our lawyer’s note? Good, good. And exactly what arrangements are you suggesting, Mr. Dupoir?”

  “I don’t know,” I said openly. “It catches me at a bad time. If we could have an extension—”

  “Extensions we haven’t got,” he said regretfully. “We had one month of extensions, and we gave you the month, and now we’re fresh out. I’m really sorry, Dupoir.” “With some time I could get a second mortgage, Mr. Klaw.” “You could at that, but not for $14,752.03.”

  “Do you want to put me and my family on the street?”

  “Goodness, no, Mr. Dupoir! What we want is the sanitarium’s money, including our commission. And maybe we want a little bit to make people think before they sign things, and maybe that people who should go to the county hospital go to the county hospital instead of a frankly de luxe rest home.”

  “I’ll call you later,” I said. “Please do,” said Mr. Klaw sincerely.

  Tendons slack as the limp lianas, I leafed listlessly through the dhowani-bark jujus on my desk, studying Jack Denny’s draftsmanship with cornucopias. The yellow stain, I noted, seemed to be spreading, even as a brother in law’s blood might spread on the sands of the doom-pit when the cobras hissed the hour of judgment.

  Mr. Horgan rapped perfunctorily on the doorframe and came in. “I had the impression, Dupoir, that you had something further to ask me at our conference this morning. I’ve learned to back those judgments. Dupoir.”

  “Well, sir—” I began.

  “Had that feeling about poor old Globus,” he went on. “You remember Miss Globus? Crying in the file room one day. Seems she’d signed up for some kind of charm school. Couldn’t pay, didn’t like it, tried to back out. They wanted their money. Attached her wages. Well. Naturally, we couldn’t have that sort of financial irresponsibility. I understand she’s a PFC in the WAC now. What was it you wanted, Dupoir?”

  “Me, Mr. Horgan? Wanted? No. Nothing at all.”

  “Glad we cleared that up,” he grunted. “Can’t do your best work for the firm if your mind’s taken up with personal problems. Remember, Dupoir. We want the country plastics conscious, and forget about those ecology freaks.”

  “Yes, Mr. Horgan.”

  “And big. Not small.”

  “Big it is, Mr. Horgan,” I said. I rolled up Jack Denny’s sketches into a thick wad and threw them at him in the door, but not before he had closed it behind him.

  GARIGOLLI

  To Home Base

  Listen Chief,

  I appreciate your trying to work out a solution for us, but you’re not doing as well as we’re doing, even. Not that that’s much.

  We tried again to meet that constant aura of medium-of-exchange need from the Host, but he destroyed the whole lash-up again. Maybe we’re misunderstanding him?

  Artifacts are out. He’s too big to see anything we make. Energy sources don’t look promising. Oh, sure, we could elaborate lesser breeds that would selectively concentrate, for instance, plutonium or one of the uraniums. I don’t think this particular Host would know the difference unless the scale was very large, and then, blooie, critical mass.

  Meanwhile morale is becoming troublesome. We’re holding together, but I wouldn’t describe the condition as good. Veliitot has been wooing Dinnoliss in spite of the secondary directives against breeding while on exploration missions. I’ve cautioned them both, but they don’t seem to stop. The funny thing is they’re both in the male phase.

  Garigolli.

  BETWEEN Jack Denny and myself we got about half of the month’s Plastics Briefs before quitting time. Maybe they weren’t big, but they were real wind-blown. All factors considered, I don’t think it is very much to my discredit that two hours later I was moodily drinking my seventh beer in a dark place near the railroad station.

  The bartender respected my mood, the TV was off, the juke box had nothing but blues on it and there was only one fly in my lugubrious ointment, a little man who kept trying to be friendly.

  From time to time I gave him a scowl I had copied from Mr. Horgan. Then he would edge down the bar for a few minutes before edging back. Eventually he got up courage enough to talk, and I got too gloomy to crush him with my mighty thews, corded like the jungle-vines
that looped from the towering nganga-palms.

  He was some kind of hotel-keeper, it appeared. “My young friend, you may think you have problems, but there’s no business like my business. Mortgage, insurance, state supervision, building and grounds maintenance, kitchen personnel and purchasing, linen, uniforms, the station wagon and the driver, carpet repairs—oh, God. carpet repairs! No matter how many ash trays you put around, you know what they do? They steal the ashtrays. Then they stamp out cigarettes on the carpets.” He began to weep.

  I told the bartender to give him another. How could I lose? If he passed out I’d be rid of him. If he recovered I would have his undying, doglike affection for several minutes, and what kind of shape was I in to sneer at that?

  Besides, I had worked out some pretty interesting figures. “Did you know,” I told him, “that if you spend $1.46 a day on cigarettes, you can save $14,752.03 by giving up smoking for 10,104 and a quarter days?”

  He wasn’t listening, but he wasn’t weeping any more either. He was just looking lovingly at his vodka libre, or whatever it was. I tried a different tack. “When you see discarded plastic bottles bobbing in the surf,” I asked, “does it make you feel like part of something grand and timeless that will go on forever?”

  He glanced at me with distaste, then went back to adoring his drink. “Or do you like buzzards better than babies?” I asked.

  “They’re all babies,” he said. “Nasty, smelly, upchucking babies.”

  “Who are?” I asked, having lost the thread. He shook his head mysteriously, patted his drink and tossed it down.

  “Root of most evil,” he said, swallowing. Then, affectionately, “Don’t know where I’d be with it, don’t know where I’d be without it.”

  He appeared to be talking about booze. “On your way home, without it?” I suggested.