George stared into her contact lenses, straining for the truth.
“It’s a present tense sort of thing,” he said. “I learned you can only have what you have. You do not have what you want. All my happiness”—he gestured at the thriving basement room—“is learning to get along without Juleen.”
“Juleen!” cried the robot.
“What’s that?” the reproter asked.
“My teacher,” George said. “I learned it all from him.”
Two months later, Juleen married Perry Shapiro. George didn’t care—well barely—and he said heartily he was pleased for her.
But the robot penned a sonnet rhyming Juleen with sheen, pristine, and queen, then with mean, spleen, and careen. It was an awful poem. He epoxied it onto George’s betamax before splicing himself irrrevocably to a cancerous mixmaster. Slowly and painfully, the robot was totalled.
George’s robotic replacement had really been something. For long minutes the man stood over the blackened metal corpse.
But he had work to do, and tears just would not come.
1987
SPECTATOR PLAYOFFS
Is it still paranoia when the world really is out to get you?
Sure I look terrible—I got in a scrap with bad luck, and bad luck won. Yesterday all I wanted from life was to watch a hockey game. It might have been simpler to conquer Europe. Last night ESPN aired the final Stanley Cup match. I was ready. While the TV warmed up I leaned back on my new plaid sofa; I had a Coors in one hand and a good cigar in the other. “This is it!” announcer Bud Phillips was saying. “The game we’ve waited for: the Islanders versus the New York Rangers!” Then the color came up—how brilliant the red, blue, and white uniforms looked on cable! The players skated into the rink. Ah, life. I puffed on my cigar and washed down the smoke with beer. For a moment I closed my eyes; I was happy.
When my eyes opened, the screen was white. I stared, I blinked; still no picture. I clicked it off, then back on. And I saw the game all right—rotating. Vertical hold had gone kerblooie. I adjusted it, but the image paled into a maggot-infested snowfield, and the speaker only spewed a cross between a kettle whistle and a cackling laugh.
Was this a laugh-track from a neighboring station? I found nothing like it on any channel. When I leaned forward to check my hook-up, a hearty baritone voice came on.
“Sorry,” it said unsorrowfully, “but due to technical difficulties we are unable to bring you this historic match. We present instead a winsome 1979 children’s comedy: The Muppet Movie, starring Kermit the Frog.”
Coors flattened on my tongue. Hell, I thought, plunking the can down on the coffee table, Is one game too much to ask? I stalked off downstairs to Swenson’s. Jim Swenson and I have sweetened many a night with a vicious bout of chess. Jim met the door in his sweatsuit, mumbling his usual joyless, “Oh. Hi, Dodson.” But behind him I heard:
“There’s Dennis Potvin . . .” It was a voice caught in a game’s spell. “He’s split the defense; look at him—he’s going in on goal . . .” I stretched to see over Jim’s left shoulder. Potvin, a big number the 5 on his back, sailed into the net.
In the time it took to assimilate my relief into a smile, Potvin had vanished, and the screen was blank. In place of Bud Phillips, we had white noise and white light. But only on ESPN. The others worked fine. Jim and I waited by his set for something, anything, to happen.
“Because of circumstances beyond our control,” said an announcer. Oh, no, I thought. “We cannot broadcast the rest of this sports spectacular. We invite you to stay tuned for a John Muir Society feature: Brave Condors of the Andes.”
Some men live for hockey. To us, a telecast hockey game is a shot at life, like the governor’s reprieve is a special goodie for the condemned. Worst is not knowing. Not knowing breaks down hope, and after hopelessness comes bitterness, then Bellevue. But I wouldn’t lose it over one major hockey game, no sir. I left Jim and went for a walk.
Out on the sidewalks, the air felt light. Among their vegetable wares, the All Nite Market offered yellow and red tulips. And I began to feel better. So when I found myself passing Gilhoolie’s Saloon, I doubled back. Gilhoolie’s has big-screen stereo cable. I’d have a beer, commiserate with other hockey fans, maybe even cheer them up.
The door with a big carved G bounced shut behind me, and Stu the barman looked up. In a jar between us, sausages swam in what looked like formaldehyde. Below them, tropical fish swam in the glass bar.
“Hey Dodson,” Stu called. “Game’s just getting good.”
Above us hung a curving screen. There I saw everything—I saw Islander Mike Bossy flatten Dean Talafous. Dean got up, turning on Bossy. Fans were screaming and chanting. Players erupted from both benches. I watched along with everyone else in Gilhoolie’s.
And the screen turned a blinding white. For ten seconds no sound was transmitted, and, for lack of a better charm, nobody in Gilhoolie’s so much as whispered or sneezed. Finally, speakers at either side of the bar blared this announcement:
“We interrupt our program for a live-via-satellite interview with India’s Nobel Prize-winning Mother Teresa. This segment of Feeding the Diseased is brought you by Xerox.” The wavering grey image of a tiny woman overtook the big screen. I couldn’t make out what she was saying above the customers’ curses.
Gilhoolie’s is a nice place with seven kinds of beer, but anywhere the mood can get ugly. The customers are mostly yuppies in pinstripes, and a few commercial artists in Guess jeans. Like I say, these aren’t the type fellows who curse, shout or fight usually, but somehow I couldn’t risk the further disappointment of finding them uncivilized. So, slowly, I walked home to my high-rise.
Before I walked in I stared up at its even façade of lit and unlit windows; the building seemed a monument to sanity. Calmly I rode the elevator, a success at my new hobby of not thinking. But almost to my “unit,” as the super calls apartments, I heard what sounded like the game playing behind every door. I reached mine in time to hear Bud Phillips’s voice enthusing from 5A across the hall, “Rangers have a penalty; the Islanders are doing it again—a powerplay . . .”
The voice was coming from Mrs. Valerian’s apartment. With a step I’d crossed the hall and rung the bell. Mrs. Valerian took forever getting to the door. Her ankles were as big around as coffee cans.
“I’d like to borrow two eggs,” I lied.
She appraised the beer stain on my pants. “Dodson,” she said. She’s not much of a conversationalist. “You live across the hall.”
“Do you have eggs?” I asked in anguish. To me at that moment, Mrs. Valerian was just a wall between me and her TV.
Mrs. Valerian trudged toward the kitchen, muttering, “Three penalties already.” So she was human after all! She’d left the door open, and I stepped inside. Ah, the sight of royal blue jerseys glissading across the screen! “A dream showdown,” Bud Phillips was saying. “Look at that lateral movement. This is without doubt the best playing I’ve seen since—”
The program stopped. A man with imposing black-framed glasses glowered from the screen. The close-up got closer. And I recognized him. It was the guy on the commercial who says, “Do YOU suffer from nagging tension headache?”
Only this time he said, “Hello. I’m Glen Monroe Wilson. You know, over eight point seven million hockey fans in both the United States and Canada are watching the playoffs tonight. The Islanders—Rangers series has been so exciting that viewership has nearly doubled during this last game.”
He took off his glasses, sighed, and stared into the camera as sincerely as anyone who does that for a living. “Now I’m going to tell you something,” he went on. “Something we hoped could be left unsaid. Not everyone gets the privilege of seeing a game like tonight’s. Nobody likes this, and we never give reasons. But certain people—often true hockey fans—will miss the most exciting game of the season. It’s no good, Joseph Dodson.”
At the sound of my name, my heart stuck in my throat.
; “Dodson, it’s not in the cards,” he said. “Why screw things up for others? If you can’t take a hint, take a warning: You have a program listing; we’ve got a viewer list. And you are not on it. Can’t you find something better to do, Dodson? Dodson?”
For a moment it felt like I couldn’t move, like I’d turned to wood and was doomed to stand there until I got chopped down.
Then I discovered I could move; I could even run. I didn’t wait for Mrs. Valerian or the eggs. I didn’t close her door. I ran past mine, past the strange laughter behind it. I ran past the elevator, down the fire escape stairs, down the sidewalk, and since I had to run somewhere I ran to Gilhoolie’s.
In my absence the convivial suit-and-tie crowd had degenerated into eight sore-looking defense-men types. Also a good deal of broken glass had sprung up on the floor. Stu the bartender looked half alive. Nevertheless, I sat down on a red barstool, ordered a Coors, downed it and ordered another.
So it didn’t take long to start talking with this guy Eddie, who said he fixes cars. That is, I tried talking to him, but he wanted to do the talking. “I’m going to sue that damn TV company,” he said. Eddie’s fist hit the glass-top bar. Below, in the aquarium, goldfish scattered. The brine in the sausage jars rocked. “And I’m suing TV Guide,” he said. “When they list a hockey game, I expect hockey. I been ripped off but good. These TV guys are messing with the wrong dude. They can’t do this to Eddie Brunner!”
“You!” I shouted. “I didn’t get to see the game either. What makes you so sure they didn’t do this to me?”
Then I told him about the headache commercial man I saw on Mrs. Valerian’s set, how he spoke to me by name.
“Yeah?” Eddie said. “Yeah?” He wanted me to tell that part again, and his friends Greg and Vito came over to hear.
No, I don’t guess they believed it. If they thought anything, it was that I was crazy. But messing with a crazy guy passes for fun in certain circles. They hadn’t had any fun all night.
“Okay,” Greg said slowly. “We’ll see if the trouble is you.”
“I didn’t say that,” I said. But Vito had already signaled the barman to turn on the set.
On TV, frail nuns carried soup to sad-eyed invalids. “Okay,” Greg said to me, gesturing at the screen, “See that?”
I turned my head and he swung a punch. His fist knocked me off the stool, which kept spinning. I landed under the bar, on the cold, glass-coated floor. Then the speakers rang out, “Sudden death overtime!”
From where I lay I couldn’t see the TV. I only saw an old Winston butt and an empty Planter’s wrapper. But I did hear the announcer shout, “It’s a goal!” I heard the fans scream.
1988
KLAXON
I.
ON THE SEVENTH day of Generius, in the year 932, Local Style, shortly past the noon hour, the great alarm bells went off in the town hall tower. When they persisted past the tenth second, we knew this was not a test. The radar network must have detected an intruder ship entering our stratosphere, and I’m sure in the minds of everyone in the city was the same thought. The Khalian raiders had returned after almost twenty-seven years.
We had been carefully drilled in what to do. All were to proceed quietly, without panic, to the nearest entrance of the underground defense system. Of course you can’t defend yourself very well underground. But our only alternative was to remain on the surface and either be slaughtered or carried away as slaves by the Khalia—those furry fiends had invaded our planet three times in seventy-three years.
By charter, we are not permitted to have planetary defenses or guard ships. We gave away those rights hundreds of years ago when we joined the Alliance. Now we must put our faith in the Great Fleet which protects most of the human planets and their allies against the incursions of the Khalia and other intransigent alien species. It wouldn’t have done us much good to try to protect ourselves: Trinitus is a small world with a total population of less than five million. There is only one city worthy of the name: Panador, my home. Still it irked us to give up the elementary right to self-defense.
The Fleet worked well for us, but they were spread pretty thin across I don’t know how many millions of miles of space. With over three hundred heavily populated planets to guard, it was natural that some would get neglected. It was also natural that the ones that got neglected would be worlds like Trinitus V, with small populations far from where most of the human populations dwelled.
Our underground defense system was actually a series of great caverns and natural tunnels existing beneath Panador, which we had extended over the centuries. Generally the Khalia couldn’t be bothered going down into the tunnels after us. What they sought were our goods and our foods. Only if they were on a slave raiding expedition would they pursue us down into the caverns. Sometimes there were desperate battles in the darkness, where the close confines of the space tended to make our weapons more or less equal to theirs.
The tunnels were well laid out for defense. Scattered here and there were caches of weapons and ammunition, food, water, and fresh clothing. I had learned how to handle the short-range laser pistol and the various grenades which we were permitted to use in our self-defense. Though I was a girl and just eighteen that month, I was as good a shot as anyone. Although this was a terrible thing that was happening to us, yet I couldn’t help but feel a thrill of excitement, for girls are permitted to have heroic dreams, too. I had long had fantasies of defending my parents with a blazing laser pistol in either hand.
There was no time to go home and find my parents. We had been told to go into the nearest underground entrance when the alarm sounded. So I entered the tunnel shaft near the Theagenes Theater. If I had been thinking more clearly I would have wasted a few more minutes and gone to one of the entrances nearer to my home, because I knew the passageways around there tolerably well. One of the first things we learned in school was the layout of our home tunnel systems and how they fed into the main tunnels. No one could be expected to know all of the twistings and turnings of our defense system, because new additions were always being added, and dead end mazes were often put up to baffle invaders.
I hurried down alone into the gloom. I had never been into the Theagenes Theater entrance so it was new and adventurous for me.
First there were flights of stone steps, spiralling down ever deeper into the gloom. The walls were lit by dim bulbs, giving just enough light so that they threw enormous shadows as I descended, and these frightened me as much as anything.
The first branching was easy: the rule in the city was that no matter where you begin your descent, for the first three branchings you must always take the right-hand turn. After that I found scratches on the wall left by the workmen. They indicated to me the correct turns to take.
It was strange down there in the darkness. Of course, I had been in the tunnels many times. We used to have drills at school, and we would all go down into the defense system. By the third turning I had decided to slow down and arm myself. I found one of the arms caches, located the odd-shaped rock above it, and pressed in the way I had been taught. It opened as it was supposed to, and I took out a laser pistol.
Soon I came past the newer defenses into the cavern system. It began to disturb me that I saw no other people. There were stories about children, or even grownups, who took a wrong turning in the tunnels and ended up lost forever in the natural caverns underneath. Some said that the ghosts of dead children, who had never found their way back up to the light, still haunted this place, moving like shadows and beckoning you to follow them ever deeper, to a fiery region of sulphur pits and glowing lava.
After a while I had to pause for breath. My ankles ached from stumbling on the irregularly shaped rocks. I was a very great distance beneath the city of Panador, how far I could not tell. As I continued down, the lights became fewer in number. Some of them had burned out and had not been replaced. I began to fear I would misremember the turnings, and not find my way back. I slowed down and finally sat dow
n to catch my breath. Reason told me I had gone far enough. Surely the Khalia would not pursue past this point. They were always in a great hurry to scoop up whatever they could find and get away before a defense could be mounted.
I was just congratulating myself on my successful descent when I heard, from above, the sound of heavy footsteps. My heart froze. It could have been one of my own people, of course, but somehow I thought not. There was something ominous about those footsteps, something military. I knew I was in trouble. I got up to run. And then the man was upon me before I could think.
He was enormous, and he wore some sort of heavy uniform which in the darkness appeared to be gray. He had a broad face with big moustaches, and he seemed to be carrying some sort of beam weapon in one big fist.
He was saying something to me, but I couldn’t tell what it was. I lifted the laser pistol and took aim, walking backward at the same time. I tripped over a rock and in the next instant he was on me, pulling the pistol out of my hand, then lifting me to my feet.
“You’re not going to take me into slavery!” I screamed at him. “I’d rather die first!”
“No need for that, miss,” he said. “Don’t you know who I am?”
Then I looked at him—really looked at him—for the first time. I saw the insignia of the Alliance on his cap and on his uniform.
“You’re from the Fleet!” I gasped.
“Indeed I am,” he said. “What on earth did you take me for?”
“I thought you were one of the Khalia,” I said, feeling very foolish indeed.
“But the Khalia are five feet tall and covered in fur,” he pointed out.
“I know that. But I got excited. You’re really from the Fleet?”
“Aye, miss. I’m advance party from the cruiser Skua. Commander Shotwell, at your service.”
“Skua? That’s Admiral Esplendadore’s flagship!” I said.
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