In the Problem Pit

by Frederik Pohl

  David Contacting the Leader

  One time when we were just getting ready to go to sleep, we went into the room we liked—not that there was much difference between them, but this one they had left the walls pretty natural, and there were nice, transparent, waterfally rock formations that looked good with the lights low—and Tina and Dev Stanwyck were sitting by themselves in a corner. It seemed as though Dev was crying. We didn’t pay much attention, because a lot of people cried, now and then, and after a while they went out without saying anything, and we got to sleep. And then, later on, Barbie and I were eating some of the frozen steaks and sort of kidding Dolly-Belly about her fruit and salads, and we heard a noise in the shower, and I went in, and there were Tina and Dev again. Only this time it looked as though Tina was crying. When I came back I told the girls about it. It struck me as odd; Tina letting Devon cry was one thing, Devon holding Tina while she was crying was another.

  “I think they’re in love,” said Dolly-Belly.

  “She’s twice as old as he is,” I said.

  “More than that, for God’s sake. She’s pushing sixty.”

  “And what has that got to do with it, you two Nosy Parkers? How does it hurt you?”

  ‘Peace, Barbie,” I said. “I only think it’s trouble. You’d have to be blind not to see she’s working herself in pretty deep.”

  “You’ve got something against being in love?” Barbie demanded, her brown eyes looking very black.

  I got up and threw the rest of my ‘light meal, steak” away. I wasn’t hungry any more. I said, “I just don’t want them to get hurt.”

  After a while Dolly said, “David. Why do you assume being in love is the same as being hurt?”

  “Oh, cut it out, Dolly-Belly! She’s too old for him, that’s all.”

  Barbie said, “Who wants to go in the pool?”

  We had just come out of the pool.

  Dolly said, “David, dear. What kind of a person was your wife?”

  I sat down and said, “Has one of you got a cigarette?” Barbie did, and gave it to me. “Well,” I said, “she looked kind of like Felice. A little younger. Blue eyes. We were married six years, and then she just didn’t want to live with me any more.”

  I wasn’t really listening to what I was saying, I was listening to myself, inside. Trying to diagnose what I was feeling. But I was having trouble. See, for a couple of weeks I’d always known what I felt about Lara, because I hurt. It was almost like an ache, as though somebody were squeezing me around the chest. It was a kind of wriggly feeling in my testicles, as though they were gathering themselves up out of harm’s way, getting ready for a fight. It was as if I was five years old and somebody had stolen my tricycle. All of those things. And the tiling was that I could feel them all, every one, but I suddenly realized I hadn’t been feeling them. I had forgotten to hurt at all, a lot of the time.

  I had not expected that would happen.

  Along about that time, I do not know if there was a casual relationship, I became aware of the fact that I was feeling pretty chipper pretty much of the time, and I began to like it. Only sometimes when I was trying to get to sleep, or when I happened to think about going back to Minnesota and remembered there was nobody there to go back to, I hurt. But I could handle it because I knew it would go away again. The cure for Lara was Barbie and Dolly-Belly, even though I had not even kissed either of them, except in a friendly goodnight way.

  Time wore on, we could only tell how much by guessing from things like the fact that we all ran out of cigarettes. Dolly’s were the last to go. She shared with us, and then she complained that Barbie was smoking them twice as fast as she was, and I was hitting them harder than that; she’d smoke two or three cigarettes, and I’d have finished the pack. It was our mixed-up time sense, maybe? Then Rufous came and shared a meal with us once and heard us talking about it, and later he took me aside and offered to trade me a carton for a couple of bananas. I grabbed the offer, ordered bananas, picked them off the dumbwaiter, handed them to Rufous, took the cigarettes and was smoking one before it occurred to me that he could have ordered bananas for himself if he’d wanted them. Barbie said he knew that, he just wanted to give me something, but he didn’t want me to feel obligated.

  We were all running out of everything we’d brought in with us. There wasn’t any dope. Dolly-Belly had brought in some grass, and I guess some of the others had too, but it was gone. Dolly smoked hers up all by herself the first night, or anyway the first time between when we decided we were sleepy and when we got to sleep finally, before we were really close enough to share.

  We were all running out, except Willie the Weeper. He had cigarettes. I saw them. But he didn’t smoke them. He also had a pocket flask that he kept nipping out of. And he kept ordering fruit off the dumbwaiter, which surprised me when I thought about it because I didn’t see him eating any. “He’s making cave drippings somewhere,” Dolly told me.

  “What’s cave drippings?”

  “It’s like when you make homemade wine. Only you drink it as soon as it ferments. Any kind of fruit will do, they say.”

  “How do you know so much about it if you’ve never been here before?”

  “Oh, screw you, David, are you calling me a liar?”

  “No. Honestly not, Dolly-Belly. Get back to cave drippings.”

  “Well. It’s kind of the stuff you made when you’re in the Peace Corps in the jungle and you’ve run out of beer and hash. I bet you a thousand dollars Willie’s got some stewing away somewhere. Only I don’t smell it.” And she splashed out of the pool and went sniffing around the connecting caves, still bare. There was a lot of Dolly-Belly to be bare, and quite a few of the people didn’t care much for group nudity even then. But she didn’t care.

  Out of all the people in our group, 16 of us altogether, Willie was about the only one I didn’t really care for. I mean, I didn’t like him. He was one of those guys my father used to bring home for dinner when I was little. So very tolerant of kids, so verv sure we’d change. So very different in what they did from the face thev showed the world. Willie was always bragging about his revolutionary youth and his commitment to Goodness and Truth, one of those fake nine-percenters that, if you could see his income tax form, wasn’t pledging a penny behind what he had to give. Even when he came in with us that first night and as much as asked us for help, you couldn’t believe him. He wasn’t asking what he did wrong, he was asking why the voters in his district were such perverse fools that they voted for his opponent.

  Some of the others were strange, in their ways. But we got along. Little Rufous stayed to himself, praying mosdy. That big broad Khanya would drive you crazy with how she had poltergeists in her house if you’d let her. Dev Stanwyck was a grade-A snob, but he was tight with Tina most of the time, and he couldn’t have been all lousy, because she was all right. I guess the hardest to get along with was the old black millionaire, or ex-millionaire, or maybe-about-to-be-ex-millionaire, Bob Sanger. He didn’t seem to like any part of us or the marathon. But he was always polite, and I never saw anybody ask him for anything that he didn’t try to give. And so everybody tried to help him.

  Some Solutions for Sanger

  After several days, only Tina knew exactly how many, the group found itself united in a desire to deal with the problems of Bob Sanger, and so a marathon brainstorming took place in the problem pit. Every chair was occupied at one time or another. Some 61 proposals were written down by Rose Galifiniakis, who appointed herself recorder because she had a pencil.

  The principal solutions proposed were the following:

  1. Reconvert to the manufacture of medical and surgical equipment, specifically noble-metal joints for prostheses, spare parts for cyborgs, surgical instruments “of very high quality” and “self-warming jiggers that they stick in you when you have your Papp test, that are always so goddamn cold you scream and jump right out of the stirrups.”

  2. Take all the money out of the company treasury and spend
it on advertising to get kids crazy about cotton candy.

  3. Hire a promoter and start a national fad for the hobby of collecting false teeth, bridges, etc., “which you can then sell by mail and save all the dealers’ commissions.”

  4. Reconvert to making microminiaturized parts for guided missiles “in case somebody invents a penetration device to get through everybody’s antimissile screens.”

  5. Hire a lobbyist and get the government to stockpile dental supplies in case there is another Cultural Revolution with riots and consequently lots of broken teeth.

  6. Start a saturation advertising campaign pitched to the sado-maso trade about “getting sexual jollies out of home dentistry.”

  7. Start a fashion for wearing different-colored teeth to match dresses for formal wear. “You could make caps, sort of, out of that plastic kind of stuff you used to make the pink parts of sets of false choppers out of.”

  8. Move the factory to the Greater Los Angeles area in order to qualify for government loans, subsidies, and tax exemptions under the Aid to Impoverished Areas bill.

  9. Get into veterinarian dentistry, particularly for free clinics for the millions of cats roaming the streets of depopulated cities “that some old lady might leave you a million dollars to take care of.”

  10. Revive the code duello, with fistfights instead of swords.

  There were 51 others that were unanimously adjudged too dumb to be worth even writing down, and Rose obediently crossed them out. Bob Sanger did not say that. He listened patiently and aloofly to all of them, even the most stupid of them. The only effect he showed as the marathon wore on was that he went on looking thinner and blacker and smaller all the time.

  Of the ten which survived the initial rounds, Numbers 2, 3, 6, 7, and 10 were ruled out for lack of time to develop their impact. Bob thanked the group for them, but pointed out that advertising campaigns took time, maybe years, and he had only weeks. “Especially when they involve basic changes in folkways,” agreed Willie Murtagh. “Anyway, seriously. Those are pretty crazy to begin with. You need something real and tangible and immediate, like the idea I threw into the hopper about the Aid to Impoverished Areas funding”

  “I do appreciate your helpfulness,” said Bob. “It is a matter of capital and, again, time. I have not the funds to relocate the entire plant.”

  “Surely a government loan—”

  “Oh, drop it, Willie,” said Marge Klapper. “Time, remember? How fast are you going to get SAD to move? No, Bob, I understand what you’re saying. What about the idea of the cats? I was in Newark once and there were like thousands of them.”

  “I regret to inform you that many of my competitors have anticipated you in this, at least insofar as the emphasis of veterinary dentistry in concerned,” said Bob politely. “As to the notion of getting some wealthy person to establish a foundation, I know of no such person. Also the matter of stockpiling supplies has been anticipated. It is this that has kept us going since ‘92.”

  Rufous Jefferson looked up from his worry beads long enough to say, “I don’t like that idea of making missiles, Mr. Sanger.”

  “It wouldn’t work,” said Willie the Weeper positively. “I know. You couldn’t switch over and get the government back in the missile business in time anyway.”

  “Besides,” said Dolly-Belly, “everybody’s got plenty of missiles put away already. No, forget it, fellows, we’ve bombed out except for one thing. It’s your only chance, Bob. You’ve got to go for that surgical stuff. And that self-warming jigger. You don’t know. Bob, you’re not a woman, but I swear to God every time I go to my gynecologist I leap right up the wall when he touches me with that thing. Brrr!”

  “Dumb,” said Tina affectionately. “Dolores, dear, I bet you go to a man gynecologist.”

  “Well, sure,” said Dolly defensively. “It’s kind of a sex thing with me, I don’t like to have women messing me around there.”

  “All right, but if you went to a woman doctor she’d know what it feels like. How could a man know? He never gets that kind of an examination.”

  Bob Sanger uncrossed his legs and recrossed them the other way. “Excuse me,” he said with a certain amount of pain in his voice. “I am afraid I’m not quite following what you are saying.”

  Tina said with tact, “It’s for vaginal examination, Bob. In order to make a proper examination they use a dilator, which is kept sterile, of course, so it has to be metal. And it’s cold. My doctor keeps the sterile dilators in a little jar next to an electric light so they’re warm … but she’s a woman. She knows what it feels like. Long ago, when I was pregnant, I went to a male obstetrician, and it’s just like they say, Bob. You jump. You really do. A self-warming dilator would make a million dollars.”

  Sanger averted his eyes. His face seemed darker than usual; perhaps he was blushing. “It is an interesting idea,” he said, and then added reluctantly, “but I’m afraid there are some difficulties. I can’t quite see a place for it in Our product line. Self-warming, you say? That would make them quite expensive, and perhaps hard to sterilize, as well. Let me think. I can envision perhaps marketing some sort of little cup containing a sterile solution maintained at body temperature by a thermostat. But would doctors buy it? Assuming we were able to persuade them of the importance of it—and I accept your word, ladies,” he added hastily. “Even so. Why wouldn’t

  a doctor just keep them by an electric light, as Tina’s does?”

  “Come on, Bob. Don’t you have a research department?” Willie demanded.

  “I do, yes. What I don’t have is time. Still it could have been a useful addition to our line, under other circumstances, I am sure,” Bob said politely, once again addressing the crease in his trousers.

  Then nobody said anything for a while until Tina took a deep breath, let go of Dev Stanwyck’s hand and stood up. “Sorry, Bob,” she said’ gently. “We’ll try more later. Now how about the pool?”

  And the group dispersed, some yelling and stripping off their clothes, and slapping and laughing as they headed for the pool chamber, one or two to eat, Bob Sanger remaining behind, tossing a dumbbell from hand to hand and looking angrily at his kneecap, left alone.

  David Contacting the Group

  They keep the pool at blood temperature, just like one of Tina’s thingamabobs. As, in spite of everything, the walls stay cold—I suppose because of the cord miles and miles of rock behind them—it stays all steamy and dewy in there. And the walls are unfinished, pretty much the way God left them when he poked the caves out of the Puerto Rican rock. Some places they look like dirty green mud, like the bottom of a creek. Some places they look like diamonds. There is one place that is like a frozen waterfall, and one like icicles melting off the roof; and when they built the pool and lighted it, they put colored lights behind the rocks in some places, and you, can switch them to go on and off at random. We liked that a lot. We went racing in, and Dolly-Belly pushed me in right on top of Barbie and went to turn on the lights, and then she came leaping like a landslide into the pool almost on top of both of us. Half the water in the pool came surging out, it looked like. But it all drains right back and gets churned around some way to kill the bugs and fungi, and so we jumped and splashed most of it out again and yelled and dived and then settled down to just holding each other, half drowsing, until the pool got too crowded and we felt ourselves being pushed into a corner and decided to get out.

  We put some clothes on and sort of stood in the corridor, between the pool and the showers, trying to make up our minds what to do.

  “Want to get some sleep?” Barbie asked, but not very urgently. Neither of us said yes.

  “How about eating something?” I offered.

  Dolly-Belly said politely, “No thanks. I’m not hungry now.” I found one of Rufous the Third’s cigarettes and we passed it around, trying to keep it dry although the girls’ hair kept dripping on it, and then we noticed that we were in front of the door that opens into the empty caves. And we realized
we had all been looking at it, and then at each other, and then at the door again.

  So Dolly tried the knob, and it turned. I pushed on the door, and it opened. And Barbie stepped through, and we followed.

  It closed behind us.

  We were alone in the solid dark and cold of the caves. A little line of light ran around three sides of the door we had just come through; and if we listened closely, we could hear, very faintly, an occasional word or sound from the people behind it. That was all. Outside of that, nothing.

  Barbie took one of my hands. I reached out and took Dolly’s with the other.

  We stood silently for a moment, waiting to see if our eyes would become dark-adapted, but it was no use. The darkness was too complete. Dolly-Belly was twisting around at the end of our extended arms’ length, and after a moment she said, “I can feel along a wall here. There’s a kind of a rope. Watch where you step.”

  Someone had put duckboards down sometime. Although we couldn’t see a thing, we could feel what we were doing. I had socks on; the girls were barefoot. Since I had one hand in the hand of each of them, I couldn’t guide myself by the rope or the wall, as Barbie and Dolly could, but we went very slowly.

  We had done a sensitivity thing a while earlier, two sleeps and about 11 meals earlier, I think, blindfolding each of us in turn and letting ourselves be led around to smell and hear and feel things. It was like that. In the same way, none of us wanted to talk. We were extending our other senses, listening, and feeling, and smelling.

  Then Dolly-Belly stopped and said, “End of the rope.” She disengaged her fingers and bent down. Barbie came up beside me, and I slipped my hand free of hers and around her waist.

  Dolly said, “I think there are some steps going down. Be careful, hear? It’s scary.”

  I let go of Barbie, passed myself in front of Dolly, felt with my toes, knelt down and explored with my fingertips. It was queasy, all right. I felt as though I were falling over forward, not being able to see where I might be falling. There were wooden steps there, all right. But how far down they went and what was at the end of them and how long they had been rotting away there and what shape they were in, I could not tell.