Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  He said obscurely, “Digging ditches, without it.” Then he giggled. “Greatest business in the world! But oh! the worries! The competition! And when you come down to it it’s all just aversion, right?”

  “I can see you have a great aversion to liquor,” I said politely.

  “No, stupid! The guests.”

  Stiffly I signaled for Number Eight, but the bartender misunderstood and brought another for my friend, too. I said, “You have an aversion to the guests?”

  He took firm hold on the bar and attempted to look squarely into my eyes, but wound up with his left eye four inches in front of my left eye and both our right eyes staring at respective ears. “The guests must be made to feel an aversion to alcohol,” he said. “Secret of the whole thing. Works. Sometimes. But oh! it costs.”

  Like the striking fangs of Nag, the cobra, faster than the eye can follow, my trained reflexes swept the beer up to my lips. I drank furiously, scowling at him. “You mean to say you ran a drunk farm?” I shouted.

  He was shocked. “My boy! No need to be vulgar. An ‘institute’, eh? Let’s leave the aversion to the drunks.”

  “I have to tell you, sir,” I declared, “that I have a personal reason for despising all proprietors of such institutions!”

  He began to weep again. “You, too! Oh, the general scorn.”

  “In my case, there is nothing general—”

  “—the hatred! The unthinking contempt. And for what?”

  I snarled, “For your blood-sucking ways.”

  “Blood, old boy?” he said, surprised. “No, nothing like that. We don’t use blood. We use gold, yes, but the gold cure’s old hat. Need new gimmick. Can’t use silver, too cheap. Really doesn’t matter what you say you use. All aversion—drying them out, keeping them comfy and aversion. But no blood.”

  He wiggled his fingers for Number Nine. Moodily I drank, glaring at him over my glass.

  “In the wrong end of it, I sometimes think,” he went on meditatively, staring with suspicious envy at the bartender. “He doesn’t have to worry. Pour it out, pick up the money. No concern about expensive rooms standing idle, staff loafing around picking their noses, overhead going on, going on—you wouldn’t believe how it goes on, whether the guests are there to pay for it or not—”

  “Hah,” I muttered.

  “You’ve simply no idea what I go through,” he sobbed. “And then they won’t pay. No, really. Fellow beat me out of $14,752.03 just lately. I’m taking it out of the cosigner’s hide, of course, but after you pay the collection agency, what’s the profit?”

  I choked on the beer, but he was too deep in sorrow to notice.

  Strangling, I gasped, “Did you say fourteen thousand—?”

  He nodded. “Seven hundred and fifty-two dollars, yes. And three cents. Astonishes you, doesn’t it, the deadbeats in this world?”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “You wouldn’t think it,” he mourned. “All those salaries. All those rooms. The hydrotherapy tubs. The water bill.”

  I shook my head.

  “Probably you think my life’s bowl of roses, hey?”

  I managed to pry my larynx open enough to wheeze, “Up to this minute, yes, I did. You’ve opened my eyes.”

  “Drink to that,” he said promptly. “Hey, barman!”

  But before the bartender got there with Number Ten the little man hiccoughed and slid melting to the floor, like a glacier calving into icebergs.

  The bartender peered over at him. “Every damn night,” he grumbled. “And who’s going to get him home this time?”

  My mind working as fast as Ngo, the dancing spider, spinning her web, I succeeded in saying, “Me. Glad to oblige. Never fear.”

  GARIGOLLI

  To Home Base

  Chief, All right, I admit we haven’t been exactly 144 p.g. on this project, but there’s no reason for you to get loose. Reciting the penalties for violating the Triple Directive is uncalled-for.

  Let me point out that there has been no question at any time of compliance with One or Three. And even Directive Two, well, we’ve done what we could. “To repay sentients in medium suitable to them for information gained.” These sentients are tricky. Chief. They don’t seem to empathize, really. See our reports. They often take without giving in return among themselves, and it seems to me that under the circumstances a certain modification of Directive Two would have been quite proper.

  But I am not protesting the ruling. Especially since you’ve pointed out it won’t do any good. When I get old and skinny enough to retire to a sling in Home Base I guess I’ll get that home-base mentality too, but way out here on the surface of the exploration volume it looks different, believe me.

  And what is happening with the rest of our crew back at Host’s domicile I can’t even guess. They must be nearly frantic by now.

  Garigolli.

  THERE was some discussion with a policeman he wanted to hit (apparently under the impression that the cop was his night watchman playing hookey), but I finally got the little man to the Institute for Psychosomatic Adjustment.

  The mausoleum that had graduated my brother in law turned out to be three stories high, with a sun porch and a slate roof and bars on the ground-floor bay windows. It was not all that far from my house. Shirl had been pleased about that, I remembered. She said we could visit her brother a lot there, and in fact she had gone over once or twice on Sundays, but me, I’d never set eyes on the place before.

  Dagger-sharp fangs flecking white spume, none dared dispute me as I strode through the great green corridors of the rain forest. Corded thews rippling like pythons under my skin, it was child’s play to carry the craven jackal to his lair. The cabbie helped me up the steps with him.

  The little man, now revealed as that creature who in anticipation had seemed so much larger and hairier, revived slightly as we entered the reception hall. “Ooooh,” he groaned. “Watch the bouncing, old boy. That door. My office. Leather couch. Much obliged.”

  I dumped him on the couch, lit a green-shaded lamp on his desk, closed the door and considered.

  Mine enemy had delivered himself into my power. All I had to do was seize him by the forelock. I seemed to see the faces of my family—Shirl’s smiling sweetly, Butchie’s cocoa-overlaid-with-oat-meal—spurring me on.

  There had to be a way.

  I pondered. Life had not equipped me for this occasion. Raffles or Professor Moriarity would have known what to do at once, but, ponder as I would, I couldn’t think of anything to do except to go through the drawers of his desk.

  Well, it was a start. But it yielded very little. Miscellaneous paper clips and sheaves of letterheads, a carton of cigarettes of a brand apparently flavored with rice wine and extract of vanilla, part of a fifth of Old Rathole and five switchblade knives, presumably taken from the inmates. There was also $6.15 in unused postage stamps, but I quickly computed that, even if I went to the trouble of cashing them in, that would leave me $14,745.88 short.

  Of Papers to Burn there were none.

  All in all, the venture was a bust. I wiped out a water glass with one of the letterheads (difficult, because they were of so high quality that they seemed likelier to shatter than to wad up), and forced down a couple of ounces of the whiskey (difficult, because it was of so low).

  Obviously anything of value, like for instance co-signed agreements with brothers in law, would be in a safe, which itself would probably be in the offices of the Gudsell Medical Credit Bureau. Blackmail? But there seemed very little to work with, barring one or two curious photographs tucked in among the envelopes. Conceivably I could cause him some slight embarrassment, but nowhere near $14,752.03 worth. I had not noticed any evidence of Red espionage that might put the little man (whose name, I learned from his letterhead, was Bermingham) away for 10,104 and a quarter days, while I saved up the price of reclaiming our liberty.

  There seemed to be only one possible thing to do.

  Eyes glowing like red coals behind slitte
d lids, I walked lightly on velvet-soft pads to the kraal of the witch-man. He was snoring with his mouth open. Totally vulnerable to his doom.

  Only, how to inflict it?

  It is not as easy as one might think to murder a person. Especially if one doesn’t come prepared for it. Mr. Horgan doesn’t like us to carry guns at the office, and heaven knows what Shirl would do with one if I left it around home. Anyway, I didn’t have one.

  Poison was a possibility. The Old Rathole suggested itself. But we’d already tried that, hadn’t we?

  I considered the switchblade knives. There was a technical problem, Would you know where the heart is? Granted, it had to be inside his chest somewhere, and sooner or later I could find it. But what would I say to Mr. Bermingham after the first three or four exploratory stabs woke him up?

  The only reasonably efficient method I could think of to insure Mr. Bermingham’s decease was to burn the place down with him in it. Which, I quickly perceived, meant with whatever cargo of drying-out drunks the Institute now possessed in it too, behind those barred windows.

  At this point I came face to face with myself.

  I wasn’t going to kill anybody. I wasn’t going to steal any papers.

  What I was going to do was, I was going to let Mr. Klaw’s lawyers go ahead and take our house, because I just didn’t know how to do anything else. I hefted the switchblades in my hand, threw them against the wall and poured myself another slug of Mr. Bermingham’s lousy whiskey, wishing it would kill me right there and be a lesson to him.

  GARIGOLLI

  To Home Base

  Now, don’t get excited. Chief,

  But we have another problem.

  Before I get into it, I would like to remind you of a couple of things. First, I was against exploring this planet in the first place, remember? I said it was going to be very difficult, on the grounds of the difference in mass between its dominant species and us. I mean, really. Here we are, fighting member to member against dangerous beasts all the time, and the beasts, to the Host and his race, are only microorganisms that live unnoticed in their circulatory systems, their tissues, their food and their environment. Anybody could tell that this was going to be a tough assignment, if not an impossible one.

  Then there’s the fact that this Host moves around so. I told you some of our crew got left in his domicile. Well, we’ve timed this before, and almost always he returns within 144 or 216 time-units—at most, half of one of his planet’s days. It’s pretty close to critical, but our crew is tough and they can survive empathy-deprival that long. Only this time he has been away, so far, nearly 432 time-units. It’s bad enough for those of us who have been with him. The ones who were cut off back at his domicile must have been through the tortures of the damned.

  Two of them homed in on us to report just a few time-units ago, and I’m afraid you’re not going to like what’s happened. They must have been pretty panicky. They decided to try meeting the Second Directive themselves. They modified some microorganisms to provide some organic chemicals they thought the Host might like.

  Unfortunately the organisms turned out to have an appetite for some of the Host’s household artifacts, and they’re pretty well demolished. So we not only haven’t given him anything to comply with Directive Two, we’ve taken something from him. And in the process maybe we’ve called attention to ourselves.

  I’m giving it to you arced, Chief, because I know that’s how you’d like it. I accept full responsibility.

  Because I don’t have any choice, do I?

  Garigolli.

  “WHAT the Hell,” said the voice of Mr. Bermingham, from somewhere up there, “are you doing in my office?”

  I opened my eyes, and he was quite right. I was in Mr. Bermingham’s office. The sun was streaming through Mr. Bermingham’s Venetian blinds, and Mr. Bermingham was standing over me with a selection of the switchblade knives in his hands.

  I don’t know how Everyman reacts to this sort of situation. I guess I ran about average. I pushed myself up on one elbow and blinked at him.

  “Spastic,” he muttered to himself. “Well?”

  I cleared my throat. “I, uh, I think I can explain this.”

  He was hung over and shaking. “Go ahead! Who the devil are you?”

  “Well, my name is Dupoir.”

  “I don’t mean what’s your name, I mean—Wait a minute. Dupoir?” “Dupoir.”

  “As in $14,752.03?”

  “That’s right, Mr. Bermingham.”

  “You!” he gasped. “Say, you’ve got some nerve coming here this way. I ought to teach you a lesson.” I scrambled to my feet. Mighty thews rippling, I tossed back my head and bellowed the death-challenge of the giant anthropoids with whom I had been raised.

  Bermingham misunderstood. It probably didn’t sound like a death-challenge to him. He said anxiously, “If you’re going to be sick, go in there and do it. Then we’re going to straighten this thing out.”

  I followed his pointing finger. There on one side of the foyer was the door marked Staff Washroom, and on the other the door to the street through which I had carried him. It was only the work of a second to decide which to take. I was out the door, down the steps, around the corner and hailing a fortuitous cab before he could react.

  By the time I got to the house that Mr. Klaw wanted so badly to take away from us it was 7:40 on my watch. There was no chance at all that Shirl would still be asleep. There was not any very big chance that she had got to sleep at all that night, not with her faithful husband for the first time in the four years of our marriage staying out all night without warning, but no chance at all that she would be still in bed. So there would be explaining to do. Nevertheless I insinuated my key into the lock of the back door, eased it open, slipped ghostlike through and gently closed it behind me.

  I smelled like a distillery, I noticed, but my keen, jungle-trained senses brought me no other message. No one was in sight or sound. Not even Butchie was either chattering or weeping to disturb the silence.

  I slid silently through the mud-room into the half-bath where I kept a spare razor. I spent five minutes trying to convert myself into the image of a prosperous young executive getting ready to be half an hour late at work, but it was no easy job. There was nothing but soap to shave with, and Butchie had knocked it into the sink. What was left was a blob of jelly, sculpted into a crescent where the dripping tap had eroded it away. Still, I got clean, more or less, and shaved, less.

  I entered the kitchen, and then realized that my jungle-trained senses had failed to note the presence of a pot of fresh coffee perking on the stove. I could hear it plainly enough. Smelling it was more difficult; its scent was drowned by the aroma of cheap booze that hung in the air all around me.

  So I turned around and yes, there was Shirl on the stairway, holding Butchie by one hand like Maureen O’Sullivan walking Cheeta. She wore an expression of unrelieved tragedy.

  It was clearly necessary to give her an explanation at once, whether I had one or not. “Honey,” I said, “I’m sorry. I met this fellow I hadn’t seen in a long time, and we got to talking. I know we should have called. But by the time I realized the time it was so late I was afraid I’d wake you up.”

  “You can’t wear that shirt to the office,” she said woefully. “I ironed your blue and gray one with the white cuffs. It’s in the closet.”

  I paused to analyze the situation. It appeared she wasn’t angry at all, only upset—which, as any husband of our years knows, is 14,752.03 times worse. In spite of the fact that the reek of booze was making me giddy and fruit flies were buzzing around Shirl’s normally immaculate kitchen, I knew what I had to do. “Shirl,” I said, falling to one knee, “I apologize.”

  That seemed to divert her. “Apologize? For what?”

  “For staying out all night.”

  “But you explained all that. You met this fellow you hadn’t seen in a long time, and you got to talking. By the time you realized the time it was so late you we
re afraid you’d wake me up.”

  “Oh, Shirl,” I cried, leaping to my feet and crushing her in my mighty thews. I would have kissed her. but the reek of stale liquor seemed even stronger. I was afraid of what close contact might do, not to mention its effect on Butchie, staring up at me with a thumb and two Fingers in his mouth. We Dupoirs never do anything by halves.

  But there was a tear in her eye. She said, “I watched Butchie, honestly I did. I always do. When he broke the studio lamp I was watching every minute, remember? He was just too fast for me.”

  I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. That is not an unfamiliar situation in our house, and I have developed a technique for dealing with it. “What?” I asked.

  “He was too fast for me,” Shirl said woefully. “When he dumped his vitamins into his raisins and oatmeal I was right there. I went to get some paper napkins, and that was when he did it. But how could I know it would ruin the plastics bin?”

  I went into Phase Two. “What plastics bin?”

  “Our plastics bin.” She pointed. “Where Butchie threw the stuff.”

  At once I saw what she meant. There was a row of four plastic popup recycling bins in our kitchen, one for paper, one for plastics, one for glass and one for metals. They were a credit to us, and to Mr. Horgan and to the Fourteenth Floor. However, the one marked “plastics” was not a credit to anyone any more. It had sprung a leak. A colorless fluid was oozing out of the bottom of it and, whatever it was, it was deeply pitting the floor tiles.

  I bent closer and realized where the reek of stale booze was coming from: out of the juices that were seeping from our plastics bin.

  “What the devil?” I asked.

  Shirl said thoughtfully, “If vitamins can do that to plastic, what do you suppose they do to Butchie’s insides?”

  “It isn’t the vitamins. I know that much.” I reached in and hooked the handle of what had been a milk jug, gallon size. It was high-density polythene and about four hundred per cent more indestructible than Mount Rushmore. It was exactly the kind of plastic jug that people who loved buzzards better than babies have been complaining about finding bobbing around the surf of their favorite bathing beaches, all the world over.