Glancing at the girl, he saw that she was young and lovely. Despite her outward composure, he sensed how the rightness of this meeting, the place, the time, the mood stirred her as it did him.
He thought furiously, but could find nothing to say. No words came to him and the moment was drifting away.
“The lights,” prompted his radio.
“The lights are beautiful,” said Hanley, feeling foolish.
“Yes,” murmured the girl. “Like a great carpet of stars, or spearpoints in the gloom.”
“Like sentinels,” said Hanley, “keeping eternal vigil in the night.” He wasn’t sure if the idea was his or if he was parroting a barely perceptible voice from the radio.
“I often come here,” said the girl.
“I never come here,” Hanley said.
“But tonight . . .”
“Tonight I had to come. I knew I would find you.”
Hanley felt that the Romance Service needed a better script writer. Such dialogue, in broad daylight, would be ridiculous. But now, on a high rooftop overlooking the city, with lights flashing below and the stars very close overhead, it was the most natural conversation in the world.
“I do not encourage strangers,” said the girl, taking a step toward him. “But—”
“I am no stranger,” Hanley said, moving toward her.
The girl’s pale blonde hair glinted with starlight. Her lips parted. She looked at him, her features transfigured by the mood, the atmosphere and the soft, flattering light.
They stood face to face and Hanley could smell her faint perfume and the fragrance of her hair. His knees became weak and confusion reigned within him.
“Take her in your arms,” the radio whispered.
Automatonlike, Hanley held out his arms. The girl entered them with a little sigh. They kissed—simply, naturally, inevitably, and with a mounting and predictable passion.
Then Hanley noticed the tiny jeweled transistor radio on the girl’s lapel. In spite of it, he had to admit that the meeting was not only spontaneous and fateful, but enormously pleasant as well.
DAWN was touching the sky-scrapers when Hanley returned to his apartment and tumbled, exhausted, into bed. He slept all day and awoke toward evening, ravenously hungry. He ate dinner in a neighborhood bar and considered the events of the previous night.
It had been wild, perfect and wonderful, all of it—the meeting on the roof and, later, her warm and darkened apartment; and at last his departure at dawn, with her drowsy kiss still warm on his mouth. But despite all this, Hanley was disturbed.
He couldn’t help feeling a little odd about a romantic meeting set up and sponsored by transistor radios, which cued lovers into the proper spontaneous yet fated responses. It was undoubtedly clever but something about it seemed wrong.
He visualized a million young men in gray flannel suits and striped regimental ties, roaming the streets of the city in response to the barely heard commands of a million tiny radios. He pictured the radio operators at their central two-way videophone switchboard-earnest, hard-working people, doing their night’s work at romance, then buying a newspaper and taking a subway home to the husband or wife and kids.
This was distasteful. But he had to admit that it was better than no romance at all. These were modern times. Even romance had to be put on a sound organizational basis or get lost in the shuffle.
Besides, Hanley thought, was it really so strange? In medieval times, a witch gave a knight a charm, which led him to an enchanted lady. Today, a salesman gave a man a transistor radio, which did the same thing and probably a lot faster.
Quite possibly, he thought, there has never been a truly spontaneous and fated romance. Perhaps the thing always requires a middleman.
Hanley cast further thoughts out of his mind. He paid for his dinner and went out for a walk.
THIS time, his firm and hurried steps led him into a poorer section of the city. Here garbage cans lined the sidewalks, and from the dirty tenement windows came the sound of a melancholy clarinet, and the shrill voices of women raised in argument. A cat, striped and agateeyed, peered at him from an alleyway and darted out of sight.
Hanley shivered, stopped, and decided to return to his own part of the city.
“Why not walk on?” the radio urged him, speaking very softly, like a voice in his head.
Hanley shivered again and walked on.
The streets were deserted now and silent as a tomb. Hanley hurried past gigantic windowless warehouses and shuttered stores. Some adventures, it seemed to him, were not worth the taking. This was hardly a suitable locale for romance. Maybe he should ignore the radio and return to the bright, well-ordered world he knew—
He heard a sound of scuffling feet. Glancing down a narrow alley, he saw three wrestling figures. Two were men and the third, trying to break free, was a girl.
Hanley’s reaction was instantaneous. He tensed to sprint away and find a policeman, preferably two or three. But the radio stopped him.
“You can handle them,” the radio said.
Like hell I can, Hanley thought. The newspapers were full of stories about men who thought they could handle muggers. They usually had plenty of time to brood over their fistic shortcomings in a hospital.
But the radio urged him on. And touched by a sense of destiny, moved by the girl’s plaintive cries, Hanley removed his hornrimmed glasses, put them in their case, put the case into a hip pocket, and plunged into the black maw of the alley.
He ran full into a garbage can, knocked it over and reached the struggling group. The muggers hadn’t noticed him yet. Hanley seized one by the shoulder, turned him and lashed out with his right fist. The man staggered back against the wall. His friend released the girl and went for Hanley, who struck out with both hands and his right foot.
The man went down, grumbling, “Take it easy, buddy.”
Hanley turned back to the first mugger, who came at him like a wildcat. Surprisingly, the man’s entire fusillade of blows missed and Hanley knocked him down with a single well-placed left.
The two men scrambled to their feet and fled. As they ran, Hanley could hear one complain to the other, “Ain’t this a hell of a way to make a living?”
Ignoring this break in the script, Hanley turned to the girl.
She leaned against him for support. “You came,” she breathed.
“I had to,” said Hanley, in response to a barely audible radio voice.
“I know,” she murmured.
Hanley saw that she was young and lovely. Her black hair glinted with lamplight. Her lips parted. She looked at him, her features transfigured by the mood, the atmosphere and the soft, flattering light.
This time, Hanley needed no command from the tiny radio to take her into his arms. He was learning the form and content of the romantic adventure and the proper manner of conducting a spontaneous yet fated affair.
They departed at once for her apartment. And as they walked, Hanley noticed a large jewel glittering in her black hair.
It wasn’t until much later that he realized it was a tiny, artfully disguised transistor radio.
NEXT evening, Hanley was out again, walking the streets and trying to quiet a small voice of dissatisfaction within him. It had been a perfect night, he reminded himself, a night of tender shadows, soft hair brushing his eyes and tears warm upon his shoulder. And yet . . .
The sad fact remained that this girl hadn’t been his type, any more than the first girl had been. You simply can’t throw strangers together at random and expect the fiery, quick romance to turn into love. Love has its own rules and enforces them rigidly.
So Hanley walked, and the conviction grew within him that tonight he was going to find love. For tonight the horned moon hung low over the city and a southern breeze carried the mingled scent of spice and nostalgia.
Aimlessly he wandered, for his transistor radio was silent. No command brought him to the little park at the river’s edge and no secret voice urged him to approach th
e solitary girl standing there.
He stood near her and contemplated the scene. To his left was a great bridge, its girders faint and spidery in the darkness. The river’s oily black water slid past, ceaselessly twisting and turning. A tug hooted and another replied, wailing like ghosts lost in the night.
His radio gave him no hint. So Hanley said, “Nice night.”
“Maybe,” said the girl, not turning. “Maybe not.”
“The beauty is there,” Hanley said, “if you care to see it.”
“What a strange thing to say . . .”
“Is it?” Hanley asked, taking a step toward her. “Is it really strange? Is it strange that I’m here? And that you are here?”
“Perhaps not,” the girl said, turning at last and looking into Hanley’s face.
She was young and lovely. Her bronze hair glinted with moonlight and her features were transfigured by the mood, the atmosphere and the soft, flattering light.
Her lips parted in wonder.
And then Hanley knew.
THIS adventure was truly fated and spontaneous! The radio had not guided him to this place, had not whispered cues and responses for him to murmur. And looking at the girl, Hanley could see no tiny transistor radio on her blouse or in her hair.
He had met his love, without assistance from the New York Romance Service! At last, his dark and fitful visions were coming true.
He held out his arms. With the faintest sigh, she came into them. They kissed, while the lights of the city flashed and mingled with the stars overhead, and the crescent moon dipped in the sky, and foghorns hooted mournful messages across the oily black river.
Breathlessly, the girl stepped back. “Do you like me?” she asked.
“Like you!” exclaimed Hanley. “Let me tell you—”
“I’m so glad,” said the girl, “because I am your Free Introductory Romance, given as a sample by Greater Romance Industries, with home offices in Newark, New Jersey. Only our firm offers romances which are truly spontaneous and fated. Due to our technological researches, we are able to dispense with such clumsy apparatus as transistor radios, which lend an air of rigidity and control where no control should be apparent. We are happy to have been able to please you with this sample romance.
“But remember—this is only a sample, a taste, of what Greater Romance Industries, with branch offices all over the world, can offer you. In this brochure, sir, several plans are outlined. You might be interested in the Romance in Many Lands package, or, if you are of an enterprising imagination, perhaps the piquant Romance through the Ages package is for you. Then there is the regular City Plan and—”
She slipped a brightly illustrated pamphlet into Hanley’s hand. Hanley stared at it, then at her. His fingers opened and the brochure fluttered to the ground.
“Sir! I trust we haven’t offended you!” the girl cried. “These businesslike aspects of romance are necessary, but quickly over. Then everything is purely spontaneous and fateful. You receive your bill each month in a plain, unmarked envelope and—”
But Hanley had turned from her and was running down the street. As he ran, he plucked the tiny transistor radio from his lapel and hurled it into a gutter.
FURTHER attempts at salesmanship were wasted on Hanley. He telephoned an aunt of his, who immediately and with twittering excitement arranged a date for him with a daughter of one of her oldest friends. They met in his aunt’s overdecorated parlor and talked in halting sentences for three hours, about the weather, college, business, politics, and friends they might have in common. And Hanley’s beaming aunt hurried in and out of the brightly lighted room, serving coffee and homemade cake.
Something about this stiff, formal, anachronistic setup must have been peculiarly right for the two young people. They progressed to regular dates and were married after a courtship of three months.
It is interesting to note that Hanley was among the last to find a wife in the old, unsure, quaint, haphazard, unindustrialized fashion. For the Service Companies saw at once the commercial potentialities of Hanley’s Mode, graphed the effects of embarrassment upon the psyche, and even assessed the role of the Aunt in American Courtship.
And now one of the Companies’ regular and most valued services is to provide bonded aunts for young men to call up, to provide these hunts with shy and embarrassed young girls, and to produce a proper milieu for all this in the form of a bright, over-decorated parlor, an uncomfortable couch, and an eager old lady bustling back and forth at meticulously unexpected intervals with coffee and homemade cake.
The suspense, they say, becomes almost overpowering.
HOLDOUT
Mr. Sheckley, whose stories are as pleasingly trim as his neat Ivy League attire, writes a parable which is also a puzzle, and one that may, I hope, fascinate and baffle you as thoroughly as it did me.
THE CREW OF A SPACESHIP MUST BE friends. They must live harmoniously in order to achieve the split-second interaction that becomes necessary from time to time. In space, one mistake is usually enough.
It is axiomatic that even the best ships have their accidents; the mediocre ones don’t survive.
Knowing this, it can be understood how Captain Sven felt when, four hours before blastoff, he was told that radioman Forbes would not serve with the new replacement.
Forbes hadn’t met the new replacement yet, and didn’t want to. Hearing about him was enough. There was nothing personal in this, Forbes explained. His refusal was on purely racial grounds.
“Are you sure of this?” Captain Sven asked, when his chief engineer came to the bridge with the news.
“Absolutely certain, sir,” said engineer Hao. He was a small, flat-faced, yellow-skinned man from Canton. “We tried to handle it ourselves. But Forbes wouldn’t budge.”
Captain Sven sat down heavily in his padded chair. He was deeply shocked. He had considered racial hatred a thing of the remote past. He was as astonished at a real-life example of it as he would have been to encounter a dodo, a moa, or a mosquito.
“Racialism in this day and age!” Sven said. “Really, it’s too preposterous. It’s like telling me they’re burning heretics in the village square, or threatening warfare with cobalt bombs.”
“There wasn’t a hint of it earlier,” said Hao. “It came as a complete surprise.”
“You’re the oldest man on the ship,” Sven said. “Have you tried reasoning him out of this attitude?”
“I’ve talked to him for hours,” Hao said. “I pointed out that for centuries we Chinese hated the Japanese, and vice versa. If we could overcome our antipathy for the sake of the Great Cooperation, why couldn’t he?”
“Did it do any good?”
“Not a bit. He said it just wasn’t the same thing.”
Sven bit off the end of a cigar with a vicious gesture, lighted it, and puffed for a moment. “Well, I’m damned if I’ll have anything like this on my ship. I’ll get another radioman!”
“That won’t be too easy, sir,” Hao said. “Not here.”
Sven frowned thoughtfully. They were on Discaya II, a small outpost planet in the Southern Star Reaches. Here they had unloaded a cargo of machine parts, and taken on the Company-assigned replacement who was the innocent source of all the trouble. Discaya had plenty of trained men, but they were all specialists in hydraulics, mining, and allied fields. The planet’s single radio operator was happy where he was, had a wife and children on Discaya, owned a house in a pleasant suburb, and would never consider leaving.
“Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous,” Sven said. “I can’t spare Forbes, and I’ll not leave the new man behind. It wouldn’t be fair. Besides, the Company would probably fire me. And rightly, rightly. A captain should be able to handle trouble aboard his own ship.”
Hao nodded glumly.
“Where is this Forbes from?”
“A farm near an isolated village in the mountain country of the Southern United States. Georgia, sir. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”
“I think
so,” said Sven, who had taken a course in Regional Characteristics at Uppsala, to better fit himself for the job of captain. “Georgia produces peanuts and hogs.”
“And men,” Hao added. “Strong, capable men. You’ll find Georgians working on all frontiers, out of all proportions to their actual numbers. Their reputation is unexcelled.”
“I know all this,” Sven grumbled. “And Forbes is an excellent man. But this racialism—”
“Forbes can’t be considered typical,” Hao said. “He was raised in a small, isolated community, far from the mainstream of American life. Similar communities all over the world develop and cling to strange folkways. I remember a village in Honan where—”
“I still find it hard to believe,” Sven said, interrupting what promised to be a long dissertation on Chinese country life. “And there’s simply no excuse for it. Every community everywhere has a heritage of some sort of racial feeling. But it’s every individual’s responsibility to rid himself of that when he enters the mainstream of Terran life. Others have. Why not Forbes? Why must he inflict his problems on us? Wasn’t he taught anything about the Great Cooperation?”
Hao shrugged his shoulders. “Would you care to speak to him, Captain?”
“Yes. Wait, I’ll speak to Angka first.”
The chief engineer left the bridge. Sven remained deep in thought until he heard a knock at the door.
“Come in.”
Angka entered. He was cargo foreman, a tall, splendidly proportioned man with skin the color of a ripe plum. He was a full-blooded Negro from Ghana, and a first-class guitar player.
“I assume,” Sven said, “you know all about the trouble.”
“It’s unfortunate, sir,” Angka said.
“Unfortunate? It’s downright catastrophic! You know the risk involved in taking the ship up in this condition. I’m supposed to blast off in less than three hours. We can’t sail without a radioman, and we need the replacement, too.”
Angka stood impassively, waiting.
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