The Midas Plague

by Frederik Pohl

  “Mere flesh wound,” he said with dignity. “Nothing to cause you least conshter—consternation, Henry. Now kindly shut your ugly face. Want to think.”

  And he slept in the car all the way home.

  It was worse than a hangover. The name is “holdover.” You’ve had some drinks; you’ve started to sober up by catching a little sleep. Then you are required to be awake and to function. The consequent state has the worst features of hangover and intoxication; your head thumps and your mouth tastes like the floor of a bear-pit, but you are nowhere near sober.

  There is one cure. Morey said thickly, “Let’s have a cocktail, dear.” Cherry was delighted to share a cocktail with him before dinner. Cherry, Morey thought lovingly, was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful-He found his head nodding in time to his thoughts and the motion made him wince.

  Cherry flew to his side and touched his temple. “Is it bothering you, darling?” she asked solicitously. “Where you ran into the door, I mean?”

  Morey looked at her sharply, but her expression was open and adoring. He said bravely, “Just a little. Nothing to it, really.”

  The butler brought the cocktails and retired. Cherry lifted her glass. Morey raised his, caught a whiff of the liquor and nearly dropped it. He bit down hard on his churning insides and forced himself to swallow.

  He was surprised but grateful: It stayed down. In a moment, the curious phenomenon of warmth began to repeat itself. He swallowed the rest of the drink and held out his glass for a refill. He even tried a smile. Oddly enough, his face didn’t fall off.

  One more drink did it. Morey felt happy and relaxed, but by no means drunk. They went in to dinner in fine spirits. They chatted cheerfully with each other and Henry, and Morey found time to feel sentimentally sorry for poor Howland, who couldn’t make a go of his marriage, when marriage was obviously such an easy relationship, so beneficial to both sides, so warm and relaxing…

  Startled, he said, “What?”

  Cherry repeated, “It’s the cleverest scheme I ever heard of. Such a funny little man, dear. All kind of nervous, if you know what I mean. He kept looking at the door as if he was expecting someone, but of course that was silly. None of his friends would have come to our house to see him.”

  Morey said tensely, “Cherry, please! What was that you said about ration stamps?”

  “But I told you, darling! It was just after you left this morning. This funny little man came to the door; the butler said he wouldn’t give any name. Anyway, I talked to him. I thought he might be a neighbor and I certainly would never be rude to any neighbor who might come to call, even if the neighborhood was—”

  “The ration stamps!” Morey begged. “Did I hear you say he was peddling phony ration stamps?”

  Cherry said uncertainly, “Well, I suppose that in a way they’re phony. The way he explained it, they weren’t the regular official kind. But it was four for one, dear—four of his stamps for one of ours. So I just took out our household book and steamed off a couple of weeks’ stamps and—”

  “How many?” Morey bellowed.

  Cherry blinked. “About—about two weeks’ quota,” she said faintly. “Was that wrong, dear?”

  Morey closed his eyes dizzily. “A couple of weeks’ stamps,” he repeated. “Four for one—you didn’t even get the regular rate.”

  Cherry wailed, “How was I supposed to know? I never had anything like this when I was home! We didn’t have food riots and slums and all these horrible robots and filthy little revolting men coming to the door!”

  Morey stared at her woodenly. She was crying again, but it made no impression on the case-hardened armor that was suddenly thrown around his heart.

  Henry made a tentative sound that, in a human, would have been a preparatory cough, but Morey froze him with a white-eyed look.

  Morey said in a dreary monotone that barely penetrated the sound of Cherry’s tears, “Let me tell you just what it was you did. Assuming, at best, that these stamps you got are at least average good counterfeits, and not so bad that the best thing to do with them is throw them away before we get caught with them in our possession, you have approximately a two-month supply of funny stamps. In case you didn’t know it, those ration books are not merely ornamental. They have to be turned in every month to prove that we have completed our consuming quota for the month.

  “When they are turned in, they are spot-checked. Every book is at least glanced at. A big chunk of them are gone over very carefully by the inspectors, and a certain percentage are tested by ultra-violet, infra-red, X-ray, radioisotopes, bleaches, fumes, paper chromatography and every other damned test known to Man.” His voice was rising to an uneven crescendo. “If we are lucky enough to get away with using any of these stamps at all, we daren’t—we simply dare not—use more than one or two counterfeits to every dozen or more real stamps.

  “That means, Cherry, that what you bought is not a two-month supply, but maybe a two-year supply—and since, as you no doubt have never noticed, the things have expiration dates on them, there is probably no chance in the world that we can ever hope to use more than half of them.” He was bellowing by the time he pushed back his chair and towered over her. “Moreover,” he went on, “right now, right as of this minute, we have to make up the stamps you gave away, which means that at the very best we are going to be on double rations for two weeks or so.

  “And that says nothing about the one feature of this whole grisly mess that you seem to have thought of least, namely that counterfeit stamps are against the law! I’m poor, Cherry; I live in a slum, and I know it; I’ve got a long way to go before I’m as rich or respected or powerful as your father, about whom I am beginning to get considerably tired of hearing. But poor as I may be, I can tell you this for sure: Up until now, at any rate, I have been honest.”

  Cherry’s tears had stopped entirely and she was bowed white-faced and dry-eyed by the time Morey had finished. He had spent himself; there was no violence left in him.

  He stared dismally at Cherry for a moment, then turned wordlessly and stamped out of the house.

  Marriage! he thought as he left.

  He walked for hours, blind to where he was going.

  What brought him back to awareness was a sensation he had not felt in a dozen years. It was not, Morey abruptly realized, the dying traces of his hangover that made his stomach feel so queer. He was hungry—actually hungry.

  He looked about him. He was in the Old Town, miles from home, jostled by crowds of lower-class people. The block he was on was as atrocious a slum as Morey had ever seen—Chinese pagodas stood next to rococo imitations of the chapels around Versailles; gingerbread marred every facade; no building was without its brilliant signs and flarelights.

  He saw a blindingly overdecorated eating establishment called Billie’s Budget Busy Bee and crossed the street toward it, dodging through the unending streams of traflfic. It was a miserable excuse for a restaurant, but Morey was in no mood to care. He found a seat under a potted palm, as far from the tinkling fountains and robot string ensemble as he could manage, and ordered recklessly, paying no attention to the ration prices. As the waiter was gliding noiselessly away, Morey had a sickening realization: He’d come out without his ration book. He groaned out loud; it was too late to leave without causing a disturbance. But then, he thought rebelliously, what difference did one more unrationed meal make, anyhow?

  Food made him feel a little better. He finished the last of his profiterole an chocolate, not even leaving on the plate the uneaten one-third that tradition permitted, and paid his check. The robot cashier reached automatically for his ration book. Morey had a moment of grandeur as he said simply, “No ration stamps.”

  Robot cashiers are not equipped to display surprise, but this one tried. The man behind Morey in line audibly caught his breath, and less audibly mumbled something about slummers. Morey took it as a compliment and strode outside feeling almost in good humor.

  Good enough to go home to Cherry?
Morey thought seriously of it for a second; but he wasn’t going to pretend he was wrong and certainly Cherry wasn’t going to be willing to admit that she was at fault.

  Besides, Morey told himself grimly, she was undoubtedly asleep. That was an annoying thing about Cherry at best: she never had any trouble getting to sleep. Didn’t even use her quota of sleeping tablets, though Morey had spoken to her about it more than once. Of course, he reminded himself, he had been so polite and tactful about it, as befits a newlywed, that very likely she hadn’t even understood that it was a complaint. Well, that would stop!

  Man’s man Morey Fry, wearing no collar ruff but his own, strode determinedly down the streets of the Old Town.

  “Hey, Joe, want a good time?”

  Morey took one unbelieving look. “You again!” he roared.

  The little man stared at him in genuine surprise. Then a faint glimmer of recognition crossed his face. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “This morning, huh?” He clucked commiseratingly. “Too bad you wouldn’t deal with me. Your wife was a lot smarter. Of course, you got me a little sore, Jack, so naturally I had to raise the price a little bit.”

  “You skunk, you cheated my poor wife blind! You and I are going to the local station house and talk this over.”

  The little man pursed his lips. “We are, huh?”

  Morey nodded vigorously. “Damn right! And let me tell you—” He stopped in the middle of a threat as a large hand cupped around his shoulder.

  The equally large man who owned the hand said, in a mild and cultured voice, “Is this gentleman disturbing you, Sam?”

  “Not so far,” the little man conceded. “He might want to, though, so don’t go away.”

  Morey wrenched his shoulder away. “Don’t think you can strong-arm me. I’m taking you to the police.”

  Sam shook his head unbelievingly. “You mean you’re going to call the law in on this?”

  “I certainly am!”

  Sam sighed regretfully. “What do you think of that, Walter? Treating his wife like that. Such a nice lady, too.”

  “What are you talking about?” Morey demanded, stung on a peculiarly sensitive spot.

  “I’m talking about your wife,” Sam explained. “Of course, I’m not married myself. But it seems to me that if I was, I wouldn’t call the police when my wife was engaged in some kind of criminal activity or other. No, sir, I’d try to settle it myself. Tell you what,” he advised, “why don’t you talk this over with her? Make her see the error of—”

  “Wait a minute,” Morey interrupted. “You mean you’d involve my wife in this thing?”

  The man spread his hands helplessly. “It’s not me that would involve her, Buster,” he said. “She already involved her own self. It takes two to make a crime, you know. I sell, maybe; I won’t deny it. But after all, I can’t sell unless somebody buys, can I?”

  Morey stared at him glumly. He glanced in quick speculation at the large-sized Walter; but Walter was just as big as he’d remembered, so that took care of that. Violence was out; the police were out; that left no really attractive way of capitalizing on the good luck of running into the man again.

  Sam said, “Well, I’m glad to see that’s off your mind. Now, returning to my original question, Mac, how would you like a good time? You look like a smart fellow to me; you look like you’d be kind of interested in a place I happen to know of down the block.”

  Morey said bitterly, “So you’re a dive-steerer, too. A real talented man.”

  “I admit it,” Sam agreed. “Stamp business is slow at night, in my experience. People have their minds more on a good time. And, believe me, a good time is what I can show ’em. Take this place I’m talking about, Uncle Piggotty’s is the name of it, it’s what I would call an unusual kind of place. Wouldn’t you say so, Walter?”

  “Oh, I agree with you entirely,” Walter rumbled.

  But Morey was hardly listening. He said, “Uncle Piggotty’s, you say?”

  “That’s right,” said Sam.

  Morey frowned for a moment, digesting an idea. Uncle Piggotty’s sounded like the place Howland had been talking about back at the plant; it might be interesting, at that.

  While he was making up his mind, Sam slipped an arm through his on one side and Walter amiably wrapped a big hand around the other. Morey found himself walking.

  “You’ll like it,” Sam promised comfortably. “No hard feelings about this morning, sport? Of course not. Once you get a look at Piggotty’s, you’ll get over your mad, anyhow. It’s something special. I swear, on what they pay me for bringing in customers, I wouldn’t do it unless I believed in it.”

  “Dance, Jack?” the hostess yelled over the noise at the bar. She stepped back, lifted her flounced skirts to ankle height and executed a tricky nine-step.

  “My name is Morey,” Morey yelled back. “And I don’t want to dance, thanks.”

  The hostess shrugged, frowned meaningfully at Sam and danced away.

  Sam flagged the bartender. “First round’s on us,” he explained to Morey. “Then we won’t bother you any more. Unless you want us to, of course. Like the place?” Morey hesitated, but Sam didn’t wait. “Fine place,” he yelled, and picked up the drink the bartender left him. “See you around.”

  He and the big man were gone. Morey stared after them uncertainly, then gave it up. He was here, anyhow; might as well at least have a drink. He ordered and looked around.

  Uncle Piggotty’s was a third-rate dive disguised to look, in parts of it at least, like one of the exclusive upper-class country clubs. The bar, for instance, was treated to resemble the clean lines of nailed wood; but underneath the surface treatment, Morey could detect the intricate laminations of plyplastic. What at first glance appeared to be burlap hangings were in actuality elaborately textured synthetics. And all through the bar the motif was carried out.

  A floor show of sorts was going on, but nobody seemed to be paying much attention to it. Morey, straining briefly to hear the master of ceremonies, gathered that the unit was on a more than mildly vulgar level. There was a dispirited string of chorus beauties in long ruffled pantaloons and diaphanous tops; one of them, Morey was almost sure, was the hostess who had talked to him just a few moments before.

  Next to him a man was declaiming to a middle-aged woman:

  Smote I the monstrous rock, yahoot Smote I the turgid tube, Bully Boy! Smote I the cankered hill—

  “Why, Morey!” he interrupted himself. “What are you doing here?”

  He turned farther around and Morey recognized him. “Hello, How-land,” he said. “I—uh—I happened to be free tonight, so I thought—”

  Howland sniggered. “Well, guess your wife is more liberal than mine was. Order a drink, boy.”

  “Thanks, I’ve got one,” said Morey.

  The woman, with a tigerish look at Morey, said, “Don’t stop, Everett. That was one of your most beautiful things.”

  “Oh, Morey’s heard my poetry,” Howland said. “Morey, I’d like you to meet a very lovely and talented young lady, Tanaquil Bigelow. Morey works in the office with me, Tan.”

  “Obviously,” said Tanaquil Bigelow in a frozen voice, and Morey hastily withdrew the hand he had begun to put out.

  The conversation stuck there, impaled, the woman cold, Howland relaxed and abstracted, Morey wondering if, after all, this had been such a good idea. He caught the eye-cell of the robot bartender and ordered a round of drinks for the three of them, politely putting them on Howland’s ration book. By the time the drinks had come and Morey had just got around to deciding that it wasn’t a very good idea, the woman had all of a sudden become thawed.

  She said abruptly, “You look like the kind of man who thinks, Morey, and I like to talk to that kind of man. Frankly, Morey, I just don’t have any patience at all with the stupid, stodgy men who just work in their offices all day and eat all their dinners every night, and gad about and consume like mad and where does it all get them, anyhow? That’s right, I can see you u
nderstand. Just one crazy rush of consume, consume from the day you’re born plop to the day you’re buried pop! And who’s to blame if not the robots?”

  Faintly, a tinge of worry began to appear on the surface of How-land’s relaxed calm. “Tan,” he chided, “Morey may not be very interested in politics.”

  Politics, Morey thought; well, at least that was a clue. He’d had the dizzying feeling, while the woman was talking, that he himself was the ball in the games machine he had designed for the shop earlier that day. Following the woman’s conversation might, at that, give his next design some valuable pointers in swoops, curves and obstacles.

  He said, with more than half truth, “No, please go on, Miss Bige-low. I’m very much interested.”

  She smiled; then abruptly her face changed to a frightening scowl. Morey flinched, but evidently the scowl wasn’t meant for him. “Robots!” she hissed. “Supposed to work for us, aren’t they? Hah! We’re their slaves, slaves for every moment of every miserable day of our lives. Slaves! Wouldn’t you like to join us and be free, Morey?”

  Morey took cover in his drink. He made an expressive gesture with his free hand—expressive of exactly what, he didn’t truly know, for he was lost. But it seemed to satisfy the woman.

  She said accusingly, “Did you know that more than three-quarters of the people in this country have had a nervous breakdown in the past five years and four months? That more than half of them are under the constant care of psychiatrists for psychosis—not just plain ordinary neurosis like my husband’s got and Howland here has got and you’ve got, but psychosis. Like I’ve got. Did you know that? Did you know that forty per cent of the population are essentially manic depressive, thirty-one per cent are schizoid, thirty-eight per cent have an assortment of other unfixed psychogenic disturbances and twenty-four—”